Three Options for America's Future

By Robert Parry

March 17, 2006

Great nations must sometimes move expeditiously – and creatively – to avert catastrophe, especially when leaders have proven themselves unfit to lead. Such a moment now confronts the United States as George W. Bush and his inner circle have demonstrated on multiple fronts that they lack the wisdom and competence to protect America’s future.

Yet even as Bush’s failures come into sharper focus – from Iraq to Katrina to U.S. port security to the exploding national debt – the trickier question is whether the American people can act with the unity and foresight to implement a solution.

Lance Mannion: Living Large

"Voting Republican is first, last, and always a way of saying There is nothing more important than money and owning stuff."--Lance Mannion

One of the Right to Life crowd's recurring tropes is women who have abortions because babies cost money better spent on plasma TVs and expensive vacations.

This is a sub-topic in the Right's general argument that there are no poor people in America because everybody can afford a TV set and dinner out at McDonalds. Poverty only exists where people live in mud huts and till the ungenerous earth with sticks. There are no poor people here, there are only lazy people and spendthrifts who don't know how to set priorities and postpone gratification.

White House Briefing: A Rebellion Around the Edges

By Dan Froomkin

Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, March 17, 2006; 12:03 PM

So Republicans in Congress are telling President Bush they're sick and tired of being pushed around and aren't going to take it anymore?

So we hear. And yet their rebellion is only around the edges. Sure they forced Bush to back down on a deal that would have put port operations in the hands of the United Arab Emirates. But where's the oversight?

Corporate Home Wreckers

By Barbara Ehrenreich
The Progressive

March 2006 Issue

I was in the Atlanta airport recently, cruising a bookstore, when this catchy title leaped out at me: Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports. Since the author is National Review Washington editor and Fox News pundit Kate O'Beirne, I indulged my vanity and looked up my own name in the index. There I was, right up front on page four, credited with ruining our families.

If O'Beirne had done a little more research, she might have found me responsible for wrecking our military and schools, as well. But I can't complain: Destroying the family is a hefty accomplishment all by itself.

Michael Kinsley: To Your Health

Why modest reform is preferable to single-payer health care.

By Michael Kinsley
Posted Friday, March 17, 2006, at 6:08 AM ET

In the March 23 New York Review of Books, Paul Krugman makes the case for a health-care system that is not only "single payer," meaning that the government handles the finances, but in some respects "single provider," meaning that the government supplies the service directly.

Krugman and his co-author, Robin Wells, correctly diagnose the problem with the Bush administration's pet health-care solution of encouraging people (with tax breaks, naturally) to pay for routine care à la carte instead of through insurance. Like Willie Sutton in reverse, this notion goes where the money isn't. Annual checkups and sore throats aren't bankrupting us: It's the gargantuan cost of treating people who are seriously ill. People who can get insurance against that risk would be insane not to, and the government would be insane to encourage them not to.

The Great Immigration Debate: Getting Beyond Denial

A Dig led by Marc Cooper

UPDATE:

This Thursday (March 16), mostly under the media radar, the U.S. Senate inched closer to what some observers call a turning point in long-delayed comprehensive immigration reform.

Just when it looked as if all efforts were on the verge of collapse, the Senate Judiciary Committee apparently agreed on proposals that would offer the 12 million undocumented workers and their families living in the U.S. the possibility of earning permanent residence and citizenship.

Senators present at Thursday’s meeting have told the media that there is now a voting majority to back the so-called McCain-Kennedy measures, which are, without question, the most enlightened of all pending immigration proposals.

Daydream Believers

Are the folks behind America's national security strategy delusional?

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, March 16, 2006, at 6:43 PM ET

The White House today issued its latest edition of The National Security Strategy of the United States of America—a biennial treatise mandated by Congress—and, reading it over, one can't help but wonder if the authors are going through the bromidic motions or if they mean what they write. If it's the former, cliché and contradiction are in order. If it's the latter, and I suspect that's the case (there's too much impassioned rhetoric for it to have been drafted in someone's sleep), then it marks the latest—and, in some ways, most unnerving—sign that our government is run by delusionary utopians, daydream believers who are marching us into, at worst, disaster and, at best, a boggy muddle.

Spies Like Us

Listening to leakers could land you in jail.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, March 17, 2006, at 5:59 PM ET

If a recent ruling by a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., is accepted as the word of law, every national-security journalist and researcher in America stands in danger of going to prison.

This is not an exaggeration.

The ruling—made by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis on Jan. 20 and reprinted in today's edition of Steven Aftergood's invaluable Secrecy News—states that federal espionage laws apply not only to officials who leak classified information but also to private citizens who receive it.

'American Theocracy,' by Kevin Phillips: Clear and Present Dangers

March 19, 2006

Review by ALAN BRINKLEY

Four decades ago, Kevin Phillips, a young political strategist for the Republican Party, began work on what became a remarkable book. In writing "The Emerging Republican Majority" (published in 1969), he asked a very big question about American politics: How would the demographic and economic changes of postwar America shape the long-term future of the two major parties? His answer, startling at the time but now largely unquestioned, is that the movement of people and resources from the old Northern industrial states into the South and the West (an area he enduringly labeled the "Sun Belt") would produce a new and more conservative Republican majority that would dominate American politics for decades. Phillips viewed the changes he predicted with optimism. A stronger Republican Party, he believed, would restore stability and order to a society experiencing disorienting and at times violent change. Shortly before publishing his book, he joined the Nixon administration to help advance the changes he had foreseen.

Judges Overturn Bush Bid to Ease Pollution Rules

By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

Published: March 18, 2006

WASHINGTON, March 17 — A federal appeals court on Friday overturned a clean-air regulation issued by the Bush administration that would have let many power plants, refineries and factories avoid installing costly new pollution controls to help offset any increased emissions caused by repairs and replacements of equipment.

Spread the word: Campaign is a sham

'65-percent solution' to school funding seeks to advance a partisan political agenda
By Nora Carr, Columnist, eSchool News

There's a well-financed effort underway in states around the country to pass legislation that would overhaul school funding. The so-called "65-percent solution" aims to have 65 cents of every school dollar spent directly in the classroom. But as many online news sites and education blogs have exposed, this "solution" is no more than a slick campaign to advance a partisan political agenda during an election year. In this article, eSchool News columnist Nora Carr offers school leaders some savvy advice on how to fight back.

March 15, 2006—Political operatives have opened a new front in the war on public education.

Dubbed the "65-percent solution," the well-financed campaign to overhaul school funding is part of a partisan national strategy designed to split teachers and administrators in a fight for scarce education dollars. Simply put, it calls for legislation requiring 65 percent of school district budgets to be spent directly in the classroom.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 03/17/06

As almost all mainstream media outlets ignore poll on censure, the Pew Research director tells Reuters that Bush's "strong points as a president were being seen as personally credible, as a strong leader. That has all but disappeared."

Bob Herbert issues a call to 'Stop Bush's War,' 'pollyanna' bloggers join their pundit brethren, and given the "chance to make up for being wrong on Iraq," Thomas Friedman craps out.

After U.S. and Iraqi troops encountered no resistance in a 100-square-mile sweep, a U.S. military spokesman said, "We believe we achieved tactical surprise," and a new poll finds that half of Americans surveyed say they have cried because of the war.

Who Knew? "There is a significant amount of undiscovered oil in northern Afghanistan," said the acting director of the U.S. Geological Survey, after an assessment reportedly found that one area holds "18 times the oil and triple the natural gas resources previously thought."

A Black Commentator op-ed seeks to "identify the white moderates of our time, mainly the Democratic Party," as Margaret Kimberley identifies a 'Civil War in America,' and Robert Parry considers the options.

A graphic illustrates a professor's agrument that it's easier to rig an e-voting machine than a Vegas slot, and materials on voter fraud issued by the Texas State Attorney General's office, reportedly list the Dallas Cowboys emblem as an item that should not be worn at the polls.

Lawyers: Coaching Was to Aid 9/11 Airlines

More Bush Administration Betrayal of 9/11 Victims and Compromising the War on Terror to Help Out Corporate Cronies: "Lawyers for two airlines being sued by 9/11 victims prompted a federal attorney to coach witnesses in the Zacarias Moussaoui death penalty trial so the government's case against the al-Qaida conspirator would not undercut their defense, victims' lawyers allege." 3/18--Buzzflash

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN and LESLIE MILLER, Associated Press Writers
Fri Mar 17, 6:00 PM ET

Lawyers for two airlines being sued by 9/11 victims prompted a federal attorney to coach witnesses in the Zacarias Moussaoui death penalty trial so the government's case against the al-Qaida conspirator would not undercut their defense, victims' lawyers allege.

A United Airlines lawyer received a transcript of the first day of the Moussaoui trial from an American Airlines lawyer and forwarded it to Carla J. Martin, a Transportation Security Administration lawyer, the victims' lawyers, Robert Clifford and Gregory Joseph, claim.

Martin's attorney, former federal prosecutor Roscoe C. Howard, acknowledged that his client and United attorney Jeff Ellis were close friends and had talked about the two cases. "But I don't think there is any collaboration between them," Howard said.

On Scene: How Operation Swarmer Fizzled

Not a shot was fired, or a leader nabbed, in a major offensive that failed to live up to its advance billing

By BRIAN BENNETT/AL JALLAM

Four Black Hawk helicopters landed in a wheat field and dropped off a television crew, three photographers, three print reporters and three Iraqi government officials right into the middle of Operation Swarmer. Iraqi soldiers in newly painted humvees, green and red Iraqi flags stenciled on the tailgates, had just finished searching the farm populated by a half-dozen skinny cows and a woman kneading freshly risen dough and slapping it to the walls of a mud oven.

The press, flown in from Baghdad to this agricultural gridiron northeast of Samarra, huddled around the Iraqi officials and U.S. Army commanders who explained that the "largest air assault since 2003" in Iraq using over 50 helicopters to put 1500 Iraqi and U.S. troops on the ground had netted 48 suspected insurgents, 17 of which had already been cleared and released. The area, explained the officials, has long been suspected of being used as a base for insurgents operating in and around Samarra, the city north of Baghdad where the bombing of a sacred shrine recently sparked a wave of sectarian violence.

Boston Legal's Reality Episode

The Text from the Now Famous "Boston Legal" Closing Plea to a Jury That is What the Democrats in Congress Should be Blaring from Coast to Coast 3/18--Buzzflash

Boston Legal: Alan Shore's closing argument

Alan Shore: When the weapons of mass destruction thing turned out to be not true, I expected the American people to rise up. Ha! They didn't.

Then, when the Abu Ghraib torture thing surfaced and it was revealed that our government participated in rendition, a practice where we kidnap people and turn them over to regimes who specialize in torture, I was sure then the American people would be heard from. We stood mute.

Then came the news that we jailed thousands of so-called terrorists suspects, locked them up without the right to a trial or even the right to confront their accusers. Certainly, we would never stand for that. We did.

Politics Drives a Senate Spending Spree

By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, March 17 — The largess demonstrated by the Senate in padding its budget with billions of dollars in additional spending this week showed that lawmakers are no different from many of their constituents: they don't mind pulling out the charge card when money is tight.

Just hours after opening a new line of credit through an increase in the federal debt limit, the Senate splurged on a bevy of popular programs before approving a spending plan that was as much a political document as an economic one, its fine print geared to the coming elections.

Christian fish plate bill delayed

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 15, 2006

NASHVILLE — A proposal to put the Christian fish symbol on Tennessee license plates was taken off fast-track status in the Senate on Wednesday.

The measure calls for specialty plates featuring the simple line drawing of a fish, which many Christians already put on their bumpers. Specialty plates cost an extra fee, with the money going to a cause or charity.

Sen. Jim Tracy, R-Shelbyville and the Senate sponsor of the bill, withdrew the measure from the consent calendar, which is usually reserved for items with broad support.

Steve Chapman: The self-emasculation of a weak Congress

Published March 16, 2006

Sen. Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, thinks President Bush broke the law with his secret program to eavesdrop on Americans, and he wants Congress to censure Bush. He's right about the lawbreaking but wrong to think censure is the answer. That might give Americans the impression that Congress is something more than a supine slave of partisan interests. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Republicans on Capitol Hill, presented with the censure resolution, practically trampled each other to prove their slobbering devotion to the president. Sen. John Warner of Virginia assailed the proposal as "the worst type of political grandstanding." Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee accused Feingold of giving hope and encouragement to Al Qaeda: "The signal that it sends, that there is in any way a lack of support for our commander in chief who is leading us with a bold vision in a way that is making our homeland safer, is wrong."

I Owe $30,000 — And So Do You

Posted by Trish | Mar. 16, 2006, 2:53 pm

I just found out I’m deeper in the red than I thought. But at least I’m not alone. Every single American is right there with me, thanks to a Senate vote today to increase the national debt to $9 trillion. We’re all paying the price for Bush’s bad decisions, like tax breaks for the rich, pre-emptively going to war in Iraq and a delayed response to Hurricane Katrina.

Right-Wing Blocks Funding For Port Security, Disaster Preparedness

Moments ago, the House of Representatives narrowly defeated an amendment proposed by Rep. Martin Sabo (D-MN) that would have provided $1.25 billion in desperately needed funding for port security and disaster preparedness. The Sabo amendment included:

– $300 million to enable U.S. customs agents to inspect high-risk containers at all 140 overseas ports that ship directly to the United States. Current funding only allows U.S. customs agents to operate at 43 of these ports.

– $400 million to place radiation monitors at all U.S. ports of entry. Currently, less than half of U.S. ports have radiation monitors.

US evangelicals warn Republicans

By Jamie Coomarasamy
BBC News, Washington

Prominent leaders from the Christian right have warned Republicans they must do more to advance conservative values ahead of the US mid-term elections.

Their message to Congress, controlled by Republicans, is "must do better".

Support from about a quarter of Americans who describe themselves as evangelicals was a factor in President George W Bush's two election victories.

The Republicans will need to keep them onboard if they are to retain control of Congress in November.

Attytood: From "pre-emptive war" to "proactive arrests": NYC's thought police

There've been a lot of alarming stories this week, but none more so that this explosive article in tomorrow's N.Y. Times by a friend and former co-worker, Jim Dwyer. On a day when we ponder the third anniversary of a U.S. unprovoked invasion of another country and when President Bush reaffirms the need for pre-emptive war, we now learn that the New York (thought) police are busting folks who look like they might riot:

In five internal reports made public yesterday as part of a lawsuit, New York City police commanders candidly discuss how they had successfully used "proactive arrests," covert surveillance and psychological tactics at political demonstrations in 2002, and recommend that those approaches be employed at future gatherings.

Among the most effective strategies, one police captain wrote, was the seizure of demonstrators on Fifth Avenue who were described as "obviously potential rioters."

So Far, No Good

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted March 16, 2006.

As Rep. John Murtha put it, 'The only people who want us in Iraq are Iran and al-Qaida.'

President Bush has once more undertaken to explain to us "Why We Fight," which is also the title of an excellent new documentary on Iraq. According to the president, "Our goal in Iraq is victory." I personally did not find that a helpful clarification. According to the president, we are doomed to stay in Iraq until we "leave behind a democracy that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself."

That's not exactly getting closer every day. But, the Prez sez, "A free Iraq in the heart of the Middle East will make the American people more secure for generations to come." So far, no good. After three years, tens of thousands of lives and $200 billion, we have achieved chaos. As Rep. John Murtha put it, "The only people who want us in Iraq are Iran and al-Qaida."

Fog of War or War Crimes?

By Michael Slenske, Smith Magazine. Posted March 17, 2006.

Jimmy Massey, the Marines' most outspoken anti-war war criminal, talks about what really happened on the road to Baghdad.

If you haven't heard of him, Massey, a former Marine staff sergeant who spent 12 years in the Corps before being medically discharged with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and becoming a key figure in the peace movement with Veterans For Peace, rose to infamy last November after St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Ron Harris (followed lockstep by hawkish blogger Michelle Malkin) discredited claims made by Massey in his book Kill, Kill, Kill that he'd been party to (and a participant in) war crimes during his tour in Iraq with a Combined Anti-Armor Team (CAT) platoon.

Salon.com: The Abu Ghraib files

279 photographs and 19 videos from the Army's internal investigation record a harrowing three months of detainee abuse inside the notorious prison -- and make clear that many of those responsible have yet to be held accountable.

Editor's note: The 10 galleries of photo and video evidence appear chronologically in the left column, followed by an additional Salon report on prosecutions for abuse and an overview of Pentagon investigations and other resources. The nine essays accompanying the photo galleries were reported and written by Michael Scherer and Mark Benjamin. Photo and video captions were compiled by Page Rockwell. Additional research, reporting and writing for "The Abu Ghraib Files" were contributed by Jeanne Carstensen, Mark Follman, Page Rockwell and Tracy Clark-Flory.

By Joan Walsh

The human rights scandal now known as "Abu Ghraib" began its journey toward exposure on Jan. 13, 2004, when Spc. Joseph Darby handed over horrific images of detainee abuse to the Army's Criminal Investigation Command (CID). The next day, the Army launched a criminal investigation. Three and a half months later, CBS News and the New Yorker published photos and stories that introduced the world to devastating scenes of torture and suffering inside the decrepit prison in Iraq.

As U.S. Dissents, U.N. Approves a New Council on Rights Abuse

By WARREN HOGE

UNITED NATIONS, March 15 — With the United States in virtually lone opposition, the United Nations overwhelmingly approved a new Human Rights Council on Wednesday to replace the widely discredited Human Rights Commission.

The vote in the General Assembly was 170 to 4 with 3 abstentions. Joining the United States were Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau. Belarus, Iran and Venezuela abstained.

Secretary General Kofi Annan, who first proposed the council a year ago, hailed the decision, saying, "This gives the United Nations the chance — a much needed chance — to make a new beginning in its work for human rights around the world."

But John R. Bolton, the United States ambassador, said the proposed council was "not sufficiently improved" over the commission, which has been faulted for permitting notorious rights abusers to join.

Americablog: Chris Matthews accepted huge speaking fees in violation of NBC policy

by John in DC - 3/15/2006 09:05:00 PM

Well, looks like that debate is over.

Just a few days ago, NBC Universal president Rick Kaplan sent the following email to an AMERICAblog reader who was concerned about recent reports that NBC anchor Chris Matthews was accepting huge speaking fees from lobbyists in Washington.

Santa Cruz students nurture anti-war role: Pentagon listing has made them 'credible'

- Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Turning up on a Pentagon surveillance list has become a badge of honor for members of a student anti-war organization at UC Santa Cruz -- and made them a national face of the peace movement.

"We're not paranoid about it, and in a way, it's given us an opportunity to talk about the war to different people, to tell people that it was not OK to invade Iraq," said Kai Sawyer, 23, a member of Students Against War and a teaching assistant in the psychology department. "Berkeley may have the reputation for having a lot of anti-war activists, but I feel like Santa Cruz has had a lot more going on."

Calling off the case

Prosecutors may drop Moussaoui death-penalty case due to judge ruling out security evidence

BY JOHN RILEY
STAFF CORRESPONDENT

March 16, 2006, 10:52 AM EST

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Prosecutors have told U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema that they will likely give up their death-penalty case against al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui if they can't overturn her dramatic Tuesday ruling banning aviation-security evidence from the case.

"We don't know whether it is worth us proceeding at all, candidly, under the ruling you made," prosecutor Rob Spencer told Brinkema during a teleconference late Tuesday, according to a transcript released yesterday. "Without some relief, frankly, I think that there's no point for us to go forward."

Firm Failed to Protect U.S. Troops' Water

By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press WriterThu Mar 16, 7:27 AM ET

Halliburton Co. failed to protect the water supply it is paid to purify for U.S. soldiers throughout Iraq, in one instance missing contamination that could have caused "mass sickness or death," an internal company report concluded.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press, said the company failed to assemble and use its own water purification equipment, allowing contaminated water directly from the Euphrates River to be used for washing and laundry at Camp Ar Ramadi in Ramadi, Iraq.

The problems discovered last year at that site — poor training, miscommunication and lax record keeping — occurred at Halliburton's other operations throughout Iraq, the report said.

Supreme Court Justice Reveals Death Threats

By GINA HOLLAND, AP

WASHINGTON (March 16) - Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she and former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor have been the targets of death threats from the "irrational fringe" of society, people apparently spurred by Republican criticism of the high court.

Bush's Fantasy of Progress in Iraq

By Robert Scheer, AlterNet. Posted March 16, 2006.

If violence and constant mayhem is a sign of progress three years post-invasion, then Bush will be thrilled by what the future holds.

What is he thinking?

On a day when Shiite vigilantes conducted hangings in Sadr City in reprisal for the killing of scores of their co-religionists in a market bombing, President Bush continued to insist that progress in Iraq justified staying the course. "By their response over the past two weeks, Iraqis have shown the world that they want a future of freedom and peace," he said Monday. "We're helping Iraqis build a strong democracy so that old resentments will be eased and the insurgency marginalized."

Womenomics 101

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted March 16, 2006.

Life for women in the American workplace is far from paradise -- they face economic punishment for almost every aspect of their biology.

Women play a greater role in the American economy today than at any time since Rosie the riveter gave up making bombers for the baby boom after World War II, but American corporations -- enabled by a political class dominated by men -- continue to punish them for the high crime of being female.

[Missouri] House rejects spending for birth control

DAVID A. LIEB
Associated Press

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - An attempt to resume state spending on birth control got shot down Wednesday by House members who argued it would have amounted to an endorsement of promiscuous lifestyles.

Missouri stopped providing money for family planning and certain women's health services when Republicans gained control of both chambers of the Legislature in 2003.

But a Democratic lawmaker, in a little-noticed committee amendment, had successfully inserted language into the proposed budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 that would have allowed part of the $9.2 million intended for "core public health functions" to go to contraception provided through public health clinics.

Lawyer in Moussaoui Case Placed on Leave

By LESLIE MILLER, Associated Press Writer
48 minutes ago

The lawyer whose coaching of witnesses in the death penalty case of Zacarias Moussaoui caused his trial to be halted was placed on administrative leave from her job, the Transportation Security Administration said Thursday.

That decision was confirmed by agency spokeswoman Yolanda Clark.

Digby: Praying For Understanding

I got an e-mail from the writer of this post called "I'm Not Sick of Atrios or Digby: Building a Team Means Religious and Secular Liberals Hearing Each Other Out" in which Atrios and I are taken to task for our hostility to religion.

I love Atrios, but he's not exactly politically savvy when it comes to the concerns of religious moderates and liberals--the fastest growing part of the Democratic Party base. One would think that just as a matter of real politic that the fastest growing part of your coalition would be entitled to some basic respect if not props. But, alas, not from Atrios.

Digby: Rank and File Partisanship

So the Republicans are finally coming right out and saying that Russ Feingold is helping the terrorists by calling for censure. I'm just surprised it didn't happen sooner. Bill Frist pretty much said it himself on Sunday:

George, what was interesting in listening to my good friend, Russ, is that he mentioned protecting the American people only one time, and although you went to politics a little bit later, I think it's a crazy political move and I think it in part is a political move because here we are, the Republican Party, the leadership in the Congress, supporting the President of the United States as Commander in Chief, who is out there fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and the people who have sworn, have sworn to destroy Western civilization and all the families listening to us. And they're out now attacking, at least today, through this proposed censure vote, out attacking our Commander in Chief. Doesn't make sense.

Many Utilities Collect for Taxes They Never Pay

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Published: March 15, 2006

Many electric utility companies across the nation are collecting billions of dollars from their customers for corporate income taxes, then keeping the money rather than sending it to the government.

The practice is legal in most states. The companies say it is smart business.

Woman who says she was fired for bumpersticker is offered job; Liberal radio faces attacks

Miriam Raftery
Published: Wednesday March 15, 2006

The San Diego affiliate of Air America Radio has offered a job to Linda Laroca, a Vista, California woman who is suing her former employer after purportedly being fired for having the progressive talk radio station’s bumper sticker on her car.

Americablog: Washington Post. Sloppy Journalism. Stop it. Now.

by John in DC - 3/15/2006 12:11:00 AM

Sometimes I know what it's like to have kids.

You get tired of always having to be the parent. Always having to be the bad guy. Never getting any respect. But someone has to do it. And if not you, then who?

That's why liberal blogs are constantly berating the traditional media. Because the traditional media is made up of a growing number of increasingly sloppy children. And their sloppiness is now jeopardizing our democracy. It's gotten us into a war that's a disaster, and it's helped re-elect a president who isn't capable of managing our country. All because the traditional media let themselves be emasculated and lobotomized rather than simply doing their job.

Pledges and Punishment

By Esther Kaplan, AlterNet. Posted March 15, 2006.

The director of an HIV prevention program explains how the Christian Right's growing control over U.S. foreign aid policy may cost Indian prostitutes their lives.

Since George W. Bush's first day in office, Republicans in Washington have come up with creative ways to attach puritanical restrictions to U.S. foreign aid, often at a tremendous cost to public health.

Atrios: On Religion and Politics

Since I'm now getting angry emails about things I've never even said let's clear a few things up.

I'm not hostile to religion. I don't much care about religion. I'm not much interested in it. This isn't strange. Most people aren't much interested in religion other than their own, if that.

I'm not sick of religious people. I think it's great that they're free to believe and practice their religion in any way they want. I'd like to keep it that way.

I am sick of people who keep claiming that the Democratic party is hostile to religious people and controlled by secular liberals who are hostile to religion. If by "Democratic party" you mean "some people who post anonymous comments on the internet" you may have a point. Otherwise, the idea is ludicrous.

Atrios: HR 1606

I urge all good members of Congress to support HR 1606. Adam explains what's wrong with the alternative.

As we've stated before, we support HR 1606. It has been through hearings and fully considered in Committee, as well as in an earlier floor debate, and it is ready to pass. Its passage would be a strong signal to the FEC, which otherwise will be voting this Thursday on its regulations for the Internet -- which no one has seen yet.

Our problem with the CDT bill isn't so much what it does as what it accepts -- it accepts as its fundamental premise that citizen activity on the Internet ought to be regulated, and it's just a question of tinkering with the limits to afford optimal protection.

Pakistan weekly spills 9/11 beans

New Delhi, March 12: The Pakistan foreign office had paid tens of thousands of dollars to lobbyists in the US to get anti-Pakistan references dropped from the 9/11 inquiry commission report, The Friday Times has claimed.

The Pakistani weekly said its story is based on disclosures made by foreign service officials to the Public Accounts Committee at a secret meeting in Islamabad on Tuesday.

It claimed that some of the commission members were also bribed to prevent them from including damaging information about Pakistan.

Mystery Solved

So, that's what was going on in Powell's intercepts.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Monday, March 13, 2006, at 3:48 PM ET

One of the great mysteries of the Iraq war has been solved. The puzzler goes back to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's now-notorious briefing before the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, the one where he laid out the best case he could muster for the claim that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. In retrospect, the case was a shambles; even at the time, much of it seemed dubious. But there was one very persuasive section—playbacks of intercepted phone conversations between Iraqi military officers that suggested they were hiding WMD from the U.N. inspectors.

The first of these tapes, from Nov. 26, 2002, caught an Iraqi colonel and general talking about a suspected weapons site that the inspectors would be visiting the following day. The general said: "I'll come see you in the morning. I'm worried you could have something left." The colonel replied, "We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left."

O'Connor Forecasts Dictatorship

Why didn't the American press chase the story?
By Jack Shafer
Posted Monday, March 13, 2006, at 7:11 PM ET

The smoke drifting out of your computer over the weekend was not the result of a fried motherboard but the scent of bloggers setting themselves on fire in response to Nina Totenberg's NPR Morning Edition Friday, March 10, dispatch. Totenberg had attended a speech at Georgetown University given the night before by retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in which O'Connor invoked the word "dictatorship" to describe the direction the country may be headed if Republicans continue to attack the judiciary.

O'Connor's voice was "dripping with sarcasm," says Totenberg. But the retired justice didn't name Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, or Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, as the leading perps, in part because she didn't need to. (See Rawstory.com's transcription of Totenberg's NPR segment.)

Evidence shows group spied on 'simply for antiwar views'

RAW STORY
Published: Tuesday March 14, 2006

Documents released today by the American Civil Liberties Union reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigations has indeed monitored political groups solely on the basis that they opposed a U.S.-led war.

David Neiwert: Bush's lies

Monday, March 13, 2006

Andrew Sullivan's list of "what I got wrong about the war" is most notable, perhaps, for what he omits.

Evidently, Sullivan still has no regrets about having labeled the left-wing critics who questioned Bush's invasion plans and their rationale -- you know, the people who it turned out were right -- as a treasonous "fifth column".

Even more conspicuous by its omission from Sullivan's list was the reality that he was snookered by Bush's lies. It was so much easier, after all, to impugn the patriotism of people who were not.

Digby: Start The Hum

I wrote a post a while back that made a lot of people mad, called "learning to lose well." It is a difficult argument to make and I failed at making it. I'm going to try again.

We are a minority party with almost no institutional power and a majority that sees no margin in bipartisanship, even as their president is failing quite dramatically.

Digby: Fair Assumption

Drudge is reporting that Ben Bradlee has confirmed that Richard Armitage was Woodward's souce on Plame:

THE WASHINGTON POST's famous Watergate editor Ben Bradlee claims that it was former State Department Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage who was the individual who leaked the identity of CIA official Valerie Plame.

Digby: Chutzpah!

Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said he had not read it either and wasn't inclined simply to scold the president.

"I'd prefer to see us solve the problem," Lieberman told reporters.

Yes. Joe doesn't believe in scolding presidents does he?

Digby: Fortunate Flyboy

Atrios calls this a Rovian ratfuck and says that McCain should be thrilled about this and he's right:

Is John McCain a lesbian? Maybe we'll learn the answer from Edward Klein, who insinuated as much about Hillary Clinton in his 2005 biography -- largely a clip-job of hit pieces, reviewers said -- and is apparently hard at work on a poison-pen book about the Arizona senator. According to Crain's New York Business, Klein claims he'll chronicle the Republican presidential front-runner's "sexual infidelity, chronic gambling and anger management." I can hardly wait.

Atrios rightly claims that this is innoculation. To me it says Rove is working to get McCain elected.

Women and children are the first hurt by welfare reform

A study published in the latest issue of Health Services Research finds an unintended consequence of welfare reform. The reduction of insurance coverage is likely to decrease the quantity and quality of health care services of economically disadvantaged women and their children. The replacement of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is found to be associated with a little more than eight percent increase in the likelihood that a welfare-eligible woman was not insured, while TANF implementation was associated with a three percent raise in the probability that a welfare-eligible child lacked insurance.

Bank mergers bring down the neighborhood

A new study published in The Journal of Finance finds that neighborhoods affected by bank consolidation are subject to higher interest rates in the future, diminished local construction, lower real estate prices, and an influx of poorer households. The lack of competitiveness in the local loan markets results in lower commercial real estate investment and a drop in real estate prices. This causes unemployment to rise alongside an influx of lower-income households. Consequently, there is an increase in property crime within the affected neighborhoods.

Defenders of the Faith

By SLAVOJ ZIZEK

London

FOR centuries, we have been told that without religion we are no more than egotistic animals fighting for our share, our only morality that of a pack of wolves; only religion, it is said, can elevate us to a higher spiritual level. Today, when religion is emerging as the wellspring of murderous violence around the world, assurances that Christian or Muslim or Hindu fundamentalists are only abusing and perverting the noble spiritual messages of their creeds ring increasingly hollow. What about restoring the dignity of atheism, one of Europe's greatest legacies and perhaps our only chance for peace?

More than a century ago, in "The Brothers Karamazov" and other works, Dostoyevsky warned against the dangers of godless moral nihilism, arguing in essence that if God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted. The French philosopher André Glucksmann even applied Dostoyevsky's critique of godless nihilism to 9/11, as the title of his book, "Dostoyevsky in Manhattan," suggests.

Former top judge says US risks edging near to dictatorship

· Sandra Day O'Connor warns of rightwing attacks
· Lawyers 'must speak up' to protect judiciary

Julian Borger in Washington
Monday March 13, 2006
The Guardian

Sandra Day O'Connor, a Republican-appointed judge who retired last month after 24 years on the supreme court, has said the US is in danger of edging towards dictatorship if the party's rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary.

In a strongly worded speech at Georgetown University, reported by National Public Radio and the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Ms O'Connor took aim at Republican leaders whose repeated denunciations of the courts for alleged liberal bias could, she said, be contributing to a climate of violence against judges.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 03/13/06

Citing "the second significant error of the government affecting the constitutional rights of this defendant," the judge in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui said that "I do not want to act precipitously," but it is "very difficult for this case to go forward."

With 'No let up in Iraqi bloodshed,' after 'A massacre in Moqtada's back yard,' Knight Ridder reports that officials have confirmed that 'Death squads operated from inside Iraqi government.'

After the Knight Ridder board accepted a $4.5 billion offer from McClatchy Co., the new owner will sell twelve Knight Ridder papers, reports Editor & Publisher, including the two Philadelphia papers and the San Jose Mercury News.

Wendy Orent calculates 'The price of cheap chicken,' while Health and Human Services head Michael Leavitt advises Americans to prepare themselves for a bird flu epidemic by "storing canned tuna and powdered milk under their beds."

Time reprises correspondent's account of being cross-examined by Slobodan Milosevic, about whom one observer writes, "the truth ... was always a commodity to be manipulated in the single-minded pursuit of power," and, "Having smashed all the furniture [he] blamed everyone else for no longer wanting to sit down with him."

As 'Italy's Bizarre Election Campaign' unfolds, watch the prime minister storm off a state TV show, after reportedly calling the interviewer an example of someone "who has prejudices and is on the left." Plus: 'Morales' present for Rice seems laced with message.'

Following Keith Olbermann's interview -- video and text -- with "Mick" from Calling All Wingnuts, who spoke of being contacted by "Tony ... from Fox News security," Olbermann was the one fielding questions, from C-SPAN's Brian Lamb.

NYT Editorial: Gale Norton Resigns

Like her mentor, James Watt, the maniacally anti-environmental interior secretary under Ronald Reagan, Gale Norton came to Washington convinced that the pendulum of public policy had swung too far in favor of the protection of America's natural resources at the expense of their commercial exploitation — especially by the oil, natural gas and mining industries.

In this she was little different from the other ideologues whom President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney picked to fill most of the administration's important environmental posts. But as the cheerful, upbeat face of a retrograde public policy, she may have been the most successful of them all.

NYT Editorial: A Warning From South Dakota

When President Bush's Supreme Court nominees were asked about abortion and Roe v. Wade, their answers ranged from vague to opaque. But the state legislature in South Dakota felt it heard the underlying message loud and clear. Now, South Dakota has thrown down the gauntlet. It adopted a law last week that makes every abortion that is not necessary to save the life of the mother a crime. The law is clearly unconstitutional under existing Supreme Court rulings. But its backers are hoping that the addition of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the court will be enough to change things.

Finding out what Uncle Sam has on you

By David E. Kaplan

Posted 3/10/06

The U.S. Freedom of Information Act is approaching its 40th birthday. Given that March 12 begins national Sunshine Week–an effort to cast light onto the growing recesses of government secrecy–U.S. News is providing links so its readers can file requests for federal records under the FOIA and its sister statute, the Privacy Act. The process is surprisingly simple.

Since the original U.S. act in 1966, more than 55 nations have passed freedom of information laws. Still, in too many countries, experts say, the presumption is that all records are secret until officials deem otherwise. In contrast, the U.S legislation, as generally interpreted, presumes that all government records should be public – unless officials can show very good reasons to exempt them, such as for protecting national security or law enforcement sources. If citizens are not satisfied, they can take the government to court and ask a judge to decide.

The Fate of the Ocean

News: Our oceans are under attack, and approaching a point of no return. Can we survive if the seas go silent?

By Julia Whitty
Illustration: Yuko Shimizu

March/April 2006 Issue

WE’RE IN FOR A WILD RIDE, say Oceanus’ 13-person crew, salts old and young, most of them Cape Codders with lifelong careers on the water. Consequently, many of the 12 members of the scientific team—oceanographers, science technicians, and graduate students, along with this observer—scatter across the ship’s three decks in the moments before we sail, seeking privacy for our last cell phone calls home, backs turned to the rain, shouting against the wind. At 177 feet and more than 1,000 tons, R/V (research vessel) Oceanus is the smallest ship in the long-range fleet of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and I suspect there’s not one of us aboard this morning who doesn’t wish we were sailing on one of the larger vessels.

Paul Krugman: The Right's Man

The New York Times
March 13, 2006

It's time for some straight talk about John McCain. He isn't a moderate. He's much less of a maverick than you'd think. And he isn't the straight talker he claims to be.

Mr. McCain's reputation as a moderate may be based on his former opposition to the Bush tax cuts. In 2001 he declared, "I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us."

But now -- at a time of huge budget deficits and an expensive war, when the case against tax cuts for the rich is even stronger -- Mr. McCain is happy to shower benefits on the most fortunate. He recently voted to extend tax cuts on dividends and capital gains, an action that will worsen the budget deficit while mainly benefiting people with very high incomes.

Bigotry From Cradle to Grave

By Denise Shannon, Conscience Magazine. Posted March 13, 2006.

In the world view of the Religious Right, there is no place for gay people and their 'homosexual agenda.'

On November 8, 2005, voters in Texas, where I live, and in 10 additional states passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage, joining 11 other states that had done the same a year before. The results of all these referenda, hardly unexpected even if disappointing, were thanks in large measure to the efforts of an array of religious leaders and organizations and their allies who use fear and ignorance to mobilize followers.

These ballot initiatives were only the latest tactic in a 30-year movement to deny civil rights to gay people. Since the burgeoning of societal tolerance in the 1970s of gays, lesbians and the transgendered, the U.S. cultural landscape has seen a corresponding intensification of focus on homosexuality by the (mainly Protestant) fundamentalists we have come to know as the Religious Right.

Sharp rise in CO2 levels recorded

By David Shukman
BBC science correspondent

US climate scientists have recorded a significant rise in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, pushing it to a new record level.

BBC News has learned the latest data shows CO2 levels now stand at 381 parts per million (ppm) - 100ppm above the pre-industrial average.

The research indicates that 2005 saw one of the largest increases on record - a rise of 2.6ppm.

The figures are seen as a benchmark for climate scientists around the globe.

Bad judgments about people can affect memories of them, Cornell study finds

By Susan S. Lang

Viewing a person as dishonest or immoral can distort memory, a Cornell study suggests. So much so, that when we attempt to recall that person's behavior, it seems to be worse than it really was.

"In other words, our study shows that morally blaming a person can distort memory for the severity of his or her crime or misbehavior," said David Pizarro, assistant professor of psychology at Cornell.

Digby: Poster Boy

Favorite Claude Allen Katrina Quote:

"Just the mere fact you have pictures of the president on TV embracing grieving mothers, embracing pastors of churches that have been destroyed," Allen said. "That speaks about the personal character of our president, who is truly concerned about healing our nation."

Billmon: The Dao of American Politics

An excellent older post, well worth the time to read both parts and covering American political history from the beginning to 2003.--Dictynna

The Dao of American Politics, Part I

This the Dao, the ancient Chinese symbol for the duality of nature's forces -- life and death, darkness and light, male and female.

But it also symbolizes the timeless unity of those same forces -- the yin and the yang -- locked in an endless cycle, each holding within itself the seed of the other, represented by the two smaller circles. The universe in microcosm.

The West has its own version of the Dao, although being Western it's neither as simple nor as elegant. It's called the Dialectic.

That's not a new line of cell phones. It's a metaphysical concept -- first described by Aristotle, applied to the study of history by the German philosopher Hegel, and expropriated by Karl Marx to explain his theory of proletarian revolution.

That last bit of intellectual property theft has given dialectics something of a bad name in bourgeois society -- all the worse for the fact that so many of Marx's Leninist admirers came to rely on it to "prove" the historical inevitability of their various crimes.

But, dirty commies notwithstanding, the concept still has great analytical value. Marx got that much right. Dialectics is a powerful tool for understanding history -- political history in particular.

In fact, the entire history of American politics can be seen as a complex, continuous dialectical process, stretching out over more than two centuries. It's still in progress -- and will go on as long as the Republic does. Maybe even longer than that.

The Dao of American Politics, Part II