Digby: Tom Demento

Who knew Tom Delay had such a dry sense of humor?

Soon-to-retire Rep. Tom DeLay (R.-Tex.) said today he would personally file an ethics complaint against Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D.-Ga.) for striking a Capitol Police officer should no other House member do so first.

DeLay's comments came during a wide-ranging interview at his Capitol Hill office with reporters, including HUMAN EVENTS Editor Terry Jeffrey.

Digby: "It was good for me"

"Thanks, I owe you one. No, I owe you two, for today and last night."

Words of a lover? A John?"

Well yes, in a manner of speaking. These are the words of Chris Matthews verbally ***** Tom Delay during a commercial break yesterday. (Click that link to see the video)

Digby: Back On The Blue Babies

TBOGG (via media matters) catches Howie Kurtz's favorite mainstream conservative babbling incoherently and assumes, I think correctly, that he's hitting the hillbilly heroin again. This is just weird:

CALLER 1: Why is it, do you think, that you haven't heard hardly anything from Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton about the whole immigration thing? I mean, the silence is deafening from --

LIMBAUGH: Well, they're busy.

Digby: A Dime's Worth

The latest Rasmussen Reports election poll in the Keystone State shows Democrat Bob Casey leading Santorum 50% to 41%. That's the first time in all six polls we've conducted on this race that Casey's lead has slipped to single digits. It's also the first time Santorum has moved above the 40% mark since last July.

However, another aspect of the poll might be even more encouraging for Santorum... and troubling for Casey.

Digby: He Lies

What does it mean? Ask Mr CW:

SCHNEIDER: I think is it very damaging for the president to be seen here to have come out after his political enemies by authorizing -- no crime -- by authorizing the leak of classified information from the National Intelligence Estimate.

Again, we don't know what classified information that was, it's only described in the special prosecutor's report as certain information, key judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate, relevant portions that were aimed at discrediting the published views of Ambassador Wilson, who criticized the administration's intelligence-gathering efforts.

Cannon fodder at State

The U.S. is sending diplomats into Iraq, but refusing to give them military protection. No wonder Foreign Service morale is collapsing.

By Sidney Blumenthal

April 6, 2006 | Since the Iraqi elections in January, U.S. Foreign Service officers at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad have been writing a steady stream of disturbing cables describing drastically worsening conditions, say State Department officials who have seen them. Violence from incipient communal civil war is rapidly rising. Last month, there were eight times as many assassinations committed by Shiite militias as terrorist murders by Sunni insurgents. The insurgency, according to the cables, also continues to mutate. Meanwhile, President Bush's strategy of training the Iraqi police and army to take over from coalition forces -- "When they stand up, we'll stand down" -- is perversely and portentously accelerating the strife. State Department officials in the field report that Shiite militias use training as cover to infiltrate key positions. Thus the strategy to create institutions of order and security is fueling civil war.

Study may help slay 'Yellow Monster'

Research pioneers understanding of uranium toxicity

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.--Low-grade uranium ore is nicknamed "yellowcake" for its color and powdered consistency. The Navajo have another name: Leetso, or "yellow monster."

The yellow monster surfaced on the Navajo Nation with uranium mining that started in the 1940s and continued for the next several decades. In its aftermath came illnesses such as lung cancer among mine workers and worries about environmental contamination among people who live on that land.

The future of tropical forests

New projections hopeful

Deforestation and habitat loss are expected to lead to an extinction crisis among tropical forest species. Humans in rural settings contribute most to deforestation of extant tropical forests. However, "Trends such as slowing population growth and intense urbanization give reason to hope that deforestation will slow, regeneration will accelerate, and mass extinction of tropical forest species will be avoided," report S.J. Wright, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and H.C. Muller-Landau, University of Minnesota, in Biotropica online.

The authors show that the proportion of potential forest cover remaining correlates with human population density among countries in both the tropics and the temperate zone. They use United Nations population projections and continent-specific relationships between both total and rural population density and forest remaining today to project future tropical forest cover.

The damage remains

by James K. Galbraith

Tom DeLay is history, but it would take many years to rebuild the House of Representatives as a proud democratic institution.

Texans for Public Justice - yes, dear readers, we have such organizations - issued a short statement on the news that Tom DeLay is leaving Congress. Here it is in full:

How the mighty have fallen. The man who perfected the art of buying political offices now cannot buy his own seat in his own backyard at any price. K Street has thoroughly nauseated Main Street.

The glee is justified but my reaction barely rises to grim enjoyment. I grew up on the staff of the House of Representatives. I remember what it used to be like.

The Hyperpower Hype

By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com. Posted April 5, 2006.

While Bush talked a great game when it came to exporting democracy to the Middle East, his main exports have been mayhem and ruins.

Just last week, a jury began to deliberate on the fate of Zacarias Moussaoui, who may or may not have been the missing 20th hijacker in the September 11th attacks. At the same time, newly released recordings of 911 operators responding to calls from those about to die that day in the two towers were splashed across front pages nationwide. ("All I can tell you to do is sit tight. All right? Because I got almost every fireman in the city coming…")

Digby: Stop It

So Sorry. I didn't mean to go dark this week-end --- technical problems.

First I'd like to call out a big **** you to all the bloggers and wingut radio blowhards who assumed that since Jill Carroll isn't a screeching, GOP operative harpy like Laura Ingraham that she is sympathetic to terrorists. She had the guts to get out there and try to report from the belly of the beast and got kidnapped and terrorized while doing it. And these pathetic little chickenhawks had the unmitigated gall to attack her --- apparently because she managed to survive and because she was a journalist for the Christian Science Monitor. I knew they hated Christian peace activists and enjoy it when they get beheaded, but I hadn't realized that they wished that on journalists too.

Digby: Interspecies Marriage

Far be it for me to cast aspersions on anyone's choice of spouse. I'm a romantic. "Let me not to the marriage of true minds, admit impediments" and all that other crap.

But I think this illustrates some of what is going on with our political media --- and why those of us who are left of center find the cries of "liberal media" increasingly absurd.

Digby: Assuming The Worst

Howard Kurtz isn't satisfied quite yet with Jill Carroll's explanations as to why she didn't get herself beheaded for George W. Bush. Apparently, until he can "see into her soul" he can't judge whether she was truly not being a terrorist collaborator even though she said her statement was coerced.

Digby: Short Sighted Strategery

Joe Klein is piling on Bill Frist, no doubt in anticipation of his future fellatory profile of the man of his dreams, John McCain. He's just clearing the decks. It's enjoyable watching Frist get skewered, of course, but did anyone ever believe that such a dry socket could become president? Seriously, he makes Evan Bayh seem like Mick Jagger.

Digby: "I'd like to thank the craft service guy"

Be sure to visit the blogs of these Koufax award winners.--Dictynna

Congratulations everyone.

The Winners:

• Best Blog — Non Professional : Crooks & Liars


• Best Blog — Professional or Sponsored : Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo


• Best Blog Community : Daily Kos

Digby: Poster Boy

So Tom Delay is cuttin' and runnin'. I'm sure he'd like to stay in Texas, but the minorities have taken up all the good slots in prison.

My question is how these guys are going to explain themselves now. 3/30/05

Conservative leaders are crafting plans to launch a public campaign to defend House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

The move follows a meeting last week among DeLay, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the chief deputy majority whip, and nearly two dozen conservative leaders, including David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; Morton Blackwell, president of the Leadership Institute; and Edwin Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation.

Digby: Armtwisting For Jesus

There's lots of speculation about what "conservative organization" Tom Delay is going to work for in northern Virginia. Most people think he's going to become a lobbyist, but I would imagine that someone with his legal problems is not going to do that under the advice of his lawyers.

Digby: Voices From The front

I highly recommend this series in the LA Times about wounded military in Iraq and Afghanistan. (There are some very graphic pictures, so don't look if you have a weak stomach. It's the real face of the war in all its bloody horror.)

It's quite a tribute to these soldiers' courage and the miracle of modern medicine. There have been more than 17,000 wounded in Iraq thus far, an average of 110 per week. In past wars a vast number of them would have died. Today, with great battlefield medicine and immediate transport to Europe and the States, most of them pull through. But their wounds are grievous and their lives will never be the same. The primary means of wounding them isn't bullets --- it's explosive devices.

Digby: Democrats are from Earth, Republicans are from Pluto

Delay just said that the Democrats are drunk with power. I'm not kidding.

It's a common delusion among Plutonians. Here's Hindquarters:

By "the left" I'm including almost the entire Democratic Party, you can count the exceptions on your fingers, you can name them, Zell Miller, Joe Lieberman...The whole mainstream of the party is engaged in an effort that is a betrayal of America, what they care about is not winning the war on terror...I don't think they care about the danger to us as Americans or the danger to people in other countries. They care about power.

Digby: Delay's Dupes

Last summer I wrote a piece about a woman named Mary Fowler. She is a good, hard working woman from Oklahoma, a member of the Christian Right. Rose Aguillar interviewed her as part of a project to speak to peopple across the country:

Why do you think we're in Iraq? People say we're freeing the Iraqis one minute and then change their opinion and say they're horrible people.

Soldiers over there say we don't get half the news. There's so much good going on. The majority of the people appreciate the help. The majority, not the weirdos who are deceived.

Americablog: GOP House passes Big Brother education bill to force universities to move to the right ideologically

by John in DC - 4/04/2006 10:34:00 AM

Yes, because that's what government should be doing, forcing universities to become politically conservative. This is what the Republicans are focusing on when the nation is at war in a quagmire that's heading south, fast.

Surveillance, Infiltration, and Harassment of Environmental Organizations

Surveillance, Infiltration, and Harassment of Environmental Organizations, Part I

Hope Marston, Lane County Bill of Rights Defense Committee
t r u t h o u t | Transcript

Friday 10 March 2006

Hope Marston, of the Lane County Bill of Rights Defense Committee, spoke on the panel on "Surveillance, Infiltration, and Harassment of Environmental Organizations" at the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (pielc.org) held March 2-5, 2006, in Eugene, Oregon.

We have just heard a litany of horrible things that we are all dealing with all the time now and we've been dealing with for the last four years, and I don't know how many of you feel overwhelmed with it, but I do every day. I feel overwhelmed with all that's happening. The executive branch is now so far out of control that I'm really not sure how long it is going to take before we can restore our liberties, our Bill of Rights and our fundamental freedoms. The house cleaning that must take place, the dismantling of the repressive system that has now permeated our society, will be enormous.

Surveillance, Infiltration, and Harassment of Environmental Organizations, Part II

By Lauren Regan, Civil Liberties Defense Center
t r u t h o u t | Transcript

Wednesday 29 March 2006

Lauren Regan, Executive Director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center, spoke on the panel "Surveillance, Infiltration, and Harassment of Environmental Organizations," at the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (pielc.org), held March 2-5, 2006, in Eugene, Oregon.

I am going to start off by just giving you some brief overview and talking, generally, about harassment of activists.

But, just as far as context, right now, the Constitution of the United States, and many of you might already know this, but the Constitution, first and foremost, is a document that limits the power of the federal government. It prevents the President and Congress and the Supreme Court from doing certain things, but currently, the government is of the opinion that the Constitution is an enabling document and a document that authorizes the government to involve itself in nearly every aspect of our private and public lives.

Real Vague

The Democrats' national-security plan is bland and banal—but the Republicans' is worse.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Monday, April 3, 2006, at 6:16 PM

The Democrats' biggest challenge these days is persuading the American public that they, too, have the cojones to storm shores and drop bombs should the need arise, and so last week the party's congressional honchos released a brief, stars-and-stripes-lined document titled Real Security: The Democratic Plan To Protect America and Restore Leadership in the World.

It's more a rough outline than a "plan"; it raises at least as many questions as it answers; it reeks of banality. Then again, it's a committee-drafted, election-year banner, not a treatise in Foreign Affairs or an op-ed piece in the New York Times. Does it do the job? Will it assuage independent voters who dislike Bush but worry that liberals lack resolve? Probably not, by itself, but it does introduce some themes that we'll be hearing a lot more of in the coming months.

Ohio Official Invested in Vote Machine Co.

By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS
Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The state's top elections official said Monday he accidentally invested in a company that makes voting machines.

Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor, said he discovered the shares for Diebold Inc. while preparing a required filing for the Ohio Ethics Commission.

Atrios: Where Is That Counfounded Report

Perhaps the report contains 'inconvenient' facts...--Dictynna


In 2001 the Social Security Trustees released their annual report on March 19.

In 2002 it was March 26.

In 2003 it was March 17.

In 2004 it was March 23.

In 2005 it was March 23.

Big Easy May Face Showdown Over Internet

"And Now They Want to Take Free Internet Away from the Battered Poor of New Orleans..."--Buzzflash

By ALAN SAYRE, AP Business Writer Mon Apr 3, 5:20 PM ET

NEW ORLEANS - A showdown may be looming over a free wireless Internet network that New Orleans set up to boost recovery after Hurricane Katrina pummeled the city.

Calling the network vital to the city's economic comeback, New Orleans technology chief Greg Meffert is vowing to keep the system running as is, even if it means breaking a state law that permits its full operation only during emergencies.

He says he's ready to go to court, if necessary.

FAIR: Good News! The Rich Get Richer

Lack of applause for falling wages is media mystery

By Janine Jackson

The Bush administration made a concerted effort to trumpet a “booming” U.S. economy in early December, widely understood as an attempt to reverse what polls indicate to be the public’s largely negative views on the matter.

There are, of course, obvious reasons the majority of Americans dissent from the White House’s rosy presentation of the economy: Most American households are not, in fact, seeing their economic fortunes improve. GDP is up, but virtually all the growth has gone into corporate profits and the incomes of the highest economic brackets. Wages and incomes for average workers, adjusted for inflation, are down in recent years; the median income for non-elderly households is down 4.8 percent since 2000 (Economic Policy Institute, 8/31/05). The poverty rate is rising, as is the number of people in debt.

BradBlog: Breaking: 'The Hammer' Goes Down! Tom DeLay Quits!

To Drop Out of Upcoming Election and Leave Congress Shortly!

The Exterminator Gets Exterminated...

-- TIME Mag covers here... -- WaPo covers here... -- MSNBC covers here... -- CNN covers here... -- AP covers here... -- LATE ADDITION: Houston Chronicle offers more details, and...

-- TIME Mag covers here...
-- WaPo covers here...
-- MSNBC covers here...
-- CNN covers here...
-- AP covers here...
-- LATE ADDITION: Houston Chronicle offers more details, and DeLay's Political Obit in the early/late web edition (12:44am PT - Hat tip to Pokey A. in Houston)

From TIME...

Rep. Tom DeLay, whose iron hold on the House Republicans melted as a lobbying corruption scandal engulfed the Capitol, told TIME that he will not seek reelection and will leave Congress within months.
...
"I'm going to announce tomorrow that I'm not running for reelection and that I'm going to leave Congress," DeLay, who turns 59 on Saturday, said during a 90-minute interview on Monday.

2 NBC TV Stations Reject Move-On Ads

By WILL LESTER
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A liberal activist group's $1.3 million ad campaign criticizing four Republican House members for voting in support of "energy and big oil companies" was rejected Monday by NBC stations in Columbus, Ohio and Hartford, Conn.

The ads paid for by Move-on.org contend that the four GOP lawmakers - Reps. Chris Chocola in Indiana's 2nd district, Thelma Drake in Virginia's 2nd district, Nancy Johnson in Connecticut's 5th district and Deborah Pryce in Ohio's 15th district - are taking money from oil and energy companies and then supporting laws that reward those companies.

DeLay Announces Resignation From House

I wonder what is coming out about DeLay that caused him to resign.============

AP - 22 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Succumbing to scandal, former Majority Leader Tom DeLay said Tuesday he is resigning from Congress in the face of a tough re-election race, closing out a career that blended unflinching conservatism with a bare-knuckled political style. "The voters of the 22nd District of Texas deserve a campaign about the vital national issues that they care most about and that affect their lives every day, and not a campaign focused solely as a referendum on me," DeLay said in a statement.

Letter to STARS & STRIPES: Bush’s sorry legacy

Three years after “shock and awe,” now it’s called “the Long War,” just as the CATO Institute in 2003 said it would be.

Last month, President Bush casually informed Americans that troops would remain there past his second term, which ends on Jan. 20, 2009, and not a moment too soon.

What a disaster Bush will leave Americans when calculating the costs of his generational commitment to “democratize” the Middle East. Columbia and Harvard economics professors estimate the U.S. invasion/occupation of Iraq through 2010 will cost taxpayers $1 trillion, minimum.

Myth of the Opt-Out Mom

By Stephanie Coontz, Christian Science Monitor. Posted April 3, 2006.

Despite what naysayers would have you believe, the number of mothers who also work outside the home is actually on the rise.

In 1998, Brenda Barnes quit her job as head of Pepsi's North American Division to spend more time with her kids. Since then, hardly a month has gone by without some media outlet reporting that affluent, highly educated mothers are opting out of their jobs to become full-time homemakers. If Helen of Troy was the woman whose face launched a thousand ships, Ms. Barnes was the woman whose resignation launched a thousand myths.

Like most myths, the opt-out mom story contains a kernel of truth. It's hard to combine work and parenthood, and more moms than dads take time off from work while their kids are young. But also like most myths, the kernel of truth is surrounded by a comforting lie that relieves social anxieties without solving them, in this case by feeding the illusion that women will resolve our work-family conflicts by reversing the growing commitment to lifelong employment that they exhibited in the 1970s and 1980s.

Failed States, Rogue States and America

Democracy Now!. Posted April 3, 2006.

Noam Chomsky discusses his new book and offers some solutions to help rescue the United States from becoming a failed state.

[Editor's Note: This is an edited transcript of an interview from the radio program Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. The interview originally aired on March 31, 2006, and the full transcipt and podcast are available for download from Democracy Now!.]

AMY GOODMAN: The New York Times calls him "arguably the most important intellectual alive." The Boston Globe calls him "America's most useful citizen." He was recently voted the world's No. 1 intellectual in a poll by Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines.

We're talking about Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the foremost critics of U.S. foreign policy. Professor Chomsky has just released a new book titled "Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy."

David Neiwert: Tancredo Takes Aim

The 2006 midterm elections haven't even been held yet, and already the jockeying is beginning for the 2008 presidential race, particularly among Republicans. One name that deserves close watching is Tom Tancredo, the Colorado congressman who is trying to ride a wave of resurgent nativism regarding Latino immigrants all the way to the White House.

In addition to the anti-immigrant legislation he's spearheaded, he's been appearing regularly on national news shows as the voice of the extreme right on immigration, including his recent ABC appearance in which he attacked Hillary Clinton for citing Scripture. Tancredo also is frequently a runner-up in online polls for the Republican nomination, which mostly means that he's developing a devoted following. Already, there's an unofficial Tancredo for President site, and he's a favorite presidential contender among the Free Republic set.

Americablog: President Butthead

by Joe in DC - 4/02/2006 09:51:00 AM

The Washington Post does a profile on your President, the man who has your life in his hands:

As he takes to the road to salvage his presidency, Bush is letting down his guard and playing up his anti-intellectual, regular-guy image. Where he spent last year in rehearsed forums with select supporters, these days he is more frequently throwing aside the script and opening himself to questions from audiences that are not prescreened. These sessions have put a sometimes playful, sometimes awkward side back on display after years of trying to keep it under control to appear more presidential.

Paul Krugman: North of the Border

The New York Times

Monday 27 March 2006

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," wrote Emma Lazarus, in a poem that still puts a lump in my throat. I'm proud of America's immigrant history, and grateful that the door was open when my grandparents fled Russia.

In other words, I'm instinctively, emotionally pro-immigration. But a review of serious, nonpartisan research reveals some uncomfortable facts about the economics of modern immigration, and immigration from Mexico in particular. If people like me are going to respond effectively to anti-immigrant demagogues, we have to acknowledge those facts.

Paul Krugman: The Road to Dubai

The New York Times

Friday 31 March 2006

For now, at least, the immigration issue is mainly hurting the Republican Party, which is divided between those who want to expel immigrants and those who want to exploit them. The only thing the two factions seem to have in common is mean-spiritedness.

But immigration remains a difficult issue for liberals. Let me say a bit more about the subject of my last column, the uncomfortable economics of immigration, then turn to what really worries me: the political implications of a large nonvoting work force.

Blackwater USA says it can supply forces for conflicts

Blackwater USA runs a 6,000-acre operation in Moyock, N.C. Its Web site states: “We are not simply a 'private security company.’ We are a professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping and stability operations firm who provides turnkey solutions.”

By BILL SIZEMORE, The Virginian-Pilot
© March 30, 2006

Stepping into a potential political minefield, Blackwater USA is offering itself up as an army for hire to police the world's trouble spots.

Cofer Black, vice chairman of the Moyock, N.C.-based private military company, told an international conference in Amman, Jordan, this week that Blackwater stands ready to help keep or restore the peace anywhere it is needed.

'Fair Trade for All,' by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton

The Poor Get Poorer

Review by ROBERT B. REICH

It is not exactly a new debate. On my bookshelf sits "Which? Protection or Free Trade," edited by H. W. Furber and published in Boston in 1888. That was some 70 years after the British economist David Ricardo first suggested that the gains from trade exceed the losses regardless of whether trading partners are more or less economically advanced, as each nation shifts to where it has a comparative advantage. Most economists and policy makers now accept Ricardo's argument, although the popular debate over the merits of free trade continues.

The new and more interesting debate is about how the benefits of trade should be shared. During the 1990's, the so-called Washington consensus of officials from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and United States Treasury Department thought the best way to spur growth in developing nations was for them to quickly lower their trade barriers and deregulate their markets. But that prescription hasn't worked especially well, even though it still shapes American trade policy. Apart from China and India, the gap between rich and poor nations has continued to widen. More than two billion people worldwide live on the equivalent of less than a dollar a day. Trade talks initiated in Doha, Qatar, in 2001, were intended to redress the balance but have gone nowhere. The last major international meeting, in 2003 in Cancún, Mexico, ended in failure and recrimination, and there's been little progress since. The world's poorer nations think the richer ones are still offering a lousy deal.

Fixing damage done by Rumsfeld will take long time

By Joseph L. Galloway

WASHINGTON - Anyone else might be embarrassed when not one but two detailed studies of the way he's doing business conclude that his plans and assumptions are totally wrong, but not Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

A recent Rand Corp. study commissioned by the Pentagon of the U.S. Army in this time of war concluded that without an increase in manpower the Army ``simply cannot sustain the force levels needed to break the back of the insurgent movement'' in Iraq.

Yet another study, conducted by the Defense Department's own Institute for Defense Analyses, concluded that the Army's transformation program, intended to add combat brigades without boosting manpower, cuts the number of maneuver battalions in those brigades while adding more headquarters troops.

Digby: Down The Hatch

In the Feingold hearings today, Orrin Hatch said that censure is unconstitutional. Like all the rest of the hypocritical weasels of the Eunuch Caucus, he has a very short memory:

Republicans believe their aggressive pursuit of impeachment is not only required by the Constitution but also satisfies their more conservative political base.

The growing debate about punishment for Clinton short of removal from office stems from a hard political count. Hatch said proponents of ousting the president will almost certainly be short of the required two-thirds vote in the Senate.