14 October 2006

Why Bush Should (but Won't) Be Impeached

by Paul Craig Roberts

The case for impeaching President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney is far stronger than the case against President Bill Clinton or the impending case that drove President Nixon to resign. With Republican control of Congress, especially of the House where impeachment must originate, it is hardly surprising that impeachment of the Republican Bush administration is a dead letter.

What is surprising is that conservatives with a long tradition of adulation for the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights have not been up in arms against the Bush regime's all-out assault on the foundation of America's political system. Instead, the case for impeachment has come from the left wing. This weakens the case, because it can be portrayed as a partisan political move instead of a last-ditch attempt to save the Constitution.

Obsidian Wings: Do You Feel Safer Now?

by hilzoy

So North Korea might have tested a nuclear device. Great. All over the conservative blogs, people are saying things like this:

"Prediction: The Democrats will come out tomorrow morning and place the blame for NoKo's test squarely at the feet of President Bush in an attempt to capitalize politically on this turn of events."

And this:

"I haven't looked for the commentary that attributes fault to the Bush administration or characterize North Korea's conduct as Karl Rove's October surprise, but I'm sure it's out there somewhere."

And this:

"The Left quickly attempted the shopworn tactic of pinning the blame on the Bush administration’s rhetoric or unwillingness to bribe Kim Jong-il."

Those ridiculous knee-jerk Democrats. Why on earth would they think that the person who has had complete control over America's foreign policy for the last six years should be blamed in any way for a foreign policy disaster of enormous proportions? Who could imagine that there could possibly be anything wrong with our policy towards North Korea?

Digby: Cheap And Tawdry

So, the religious right now claims they are all upset about the gay Republicans in their midst.
"It's time for what we call a 'Come to Jesus Meeting,'" said Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition. "Homosexuality is a dysfunctional lifestyle, and it must be addressed."

"Has the social agenda of the GOP been stalled by homosexual members and/or staffers?" Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council wrote in an e-mail to activists. "Does the party want to represent values voters or Mark Foley and friends?"

Digby: Crazy Jesus Lady

Roy reads the Crazy Jesus Lady's latest so you don't have to. She's impressed by how all the Republicans are doing an honest reassessment of their values in light of the party's "problems" while the Democrats are just being so rude about everything, as usual. She says we don't have "grace."

Here's a little advice for her, from her, to think about while she ponders how to deal with the social embarrassment of being a high profile member of the party of criminals, screw-ups and sexual deviants:
A lot of you--you need to stop, sit down, think, question yourself, look at your actions and ponder what you've become. And how somehow love for your side in the fight became hatred for the other.

Digby: Voodoo?

Some Republican strategists are increasingly upset with what they consider the overconfidence of President Bush and his senior advisers about the midterm elections November 7–a concern aggravated by the president's news conference this week.

"They aren't even planning for if they lose," says a GOP insider who informally counsels the West Wing. If Democrats win control of the House, as many analysts expect, Republicans predict that Bush's final two years in office will be marked by multiple congressional investigations and gridlock.

Digby: It's Not The Sex

...no matter how titillated he was by the pictures.

Chris Shays keeps digging:
"It was a National Guard unit run amok," Shays said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It was torture because sex abuse is torture. It was gross and despicable ... This is more about pornography than torture."
Uhm, no it isn't just that sex abuse is torture, although it is, which he apparently has finally discovered. But he and Rush and many on the right see this thing as pornography which is defined as "material that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement."

Competitive Era Fails to Shrink Electric Bills

Published: October 15, 2006

A decade after competition was introduced in their industries, long-distance phone rates had fallen by half, air fares by more than a fourth and trucking rates by a fourth. But a decade after the federal government opened the business of generating electricity to competition, the market has produced no such decline.

Instead, more rate increase requests are pending now than ever before, said Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, the association for the investor-owned utilities that provide about 60 percent of the nation’s power. The investor-owned electric utility industry published a June report entitled “Why Are Electricity Prices Increasing?”

Blaming Success, Upholding Failure

Center for American Progress: Think Again

Recent history is, sadly, all too often ancient history for many reporters. Time and again as events unfold, reporters--due either to deadline constraints, editorial meddling, or just a failure to grasp the realities of recent history--fail to put events in any sensible context, leaving readers and viewers at sea seeking to make sense of it all.

Comments made Tuesday by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) during a campaign stop are a classic case in point. McCain blamed the Clinton administration's 1994 "Agreed Framework" with the North Korean government, in which the North Korean regime agreed to halt its plutonium production and put it under lock and key overseen by an international team of inspectors, in return for energy assistance.

Book reveals White House contempt for religious right

With the Republicans on Capitol Hill on the defensive over the scandal involving former congressman Mark Foley, they could have done without a new book called Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction.

Set to go on sale on Monday, the book by a former White House official says George Bush's top political advisors privately ridiculed evangelical supporters as "nuts" and "goofy" while buttering them up in public. Even though the book appears in the shops, MSNBC has ensured that it will make waves.

Daily Kos: Rove's Secret Pledge To Give Millions To NRCC

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse
Thu Oct 12, 2006 at 09:06:14 PM PDT

Karl Rove tossed out a money carrot to Rep. Tom Reynolds, who is not only involved in the Foley cover-up, but is also chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) or the GOP money-making tree for elections. Last summer, Rove pledged to kick in $5 million dollars to match the same amount raised by Reynolds. "The arrangement was deemed so sensitive that no public announcement was made."

Here is the deal. The House GOP decided to increase their money target for their "Battleground" program run by Rep. Cantor. In the "Battleground" program, incumbent GOP lawmakers are "prodded to donate or raise money for use in races other than their own." Monies from the "Battleground" are given to the NRCC, which then pays for tv commercials and political mailings for races deemed most competitive. After Cantor met the initial goal of raising $17.5 million, the target was raised to $22.5 million with the understanding that Rove would provide a matching donation of $5 million. Now, the Battleground fund has $21 million in pledges.

Bush keeps revising war justification

WASHINGTON --President Bush keeps revising his explanation for why the U.S. is in Iraq, moving from narrow military objectives at first to history-of-civilization stakes now.

Initially, the rationale was specific: to stop Saddam Hussein from using what Bush claimed were the Iraqi leader's weapons of mass destruction or from selling them to al-Qaida or other terrorist groups.

But 3 1/2 years later, with no weapons found, still no end in sight and the war a liability for nearly all Republicans on the ballot Nov. 7, the justification has become far broader and now includes the expansive "struggle between good and evil."

Republicans seized on North Korea's reported nuclear test last week as further evidence that the need for strong U.S. leadership extends beyond Iraq.

Billmon: The Very Naughty Caterpillar

It looks like he ate a few too many of those leafy green $100 bills:

The Justice Department is investigating whether Republican Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania traded his political influence for lucrative lobbying and consulting contracts for his daughter, according to sources with direct knowledge of the inquiry.

The FBI, which opened an investigation in recent months, has formally referred the matter to the department's Public Integrity Section for additional scrutiny. At issue are Weldon's efforts between 2002 and 2004 to aid two Russian companies and two Serbian brothers with ties to strongman Slobodan Milosevic, a federal law enforcement official said.

That wasn't in the book.

Glenn Greenwald: The GOP war on the private sphere

(updated below)

With the bulk of the nation's political attention devoted to the Bush administration's radical terrorism and war policies, the relentless domestic invasions into the private realm of adult Americans usually go unnoticed. But underneath the media radar, the administration and its Congressional allies have been actively placating the religious "conservative" wing of the Republican Party through all sorts of liberty-infringing and highly invasive measures. On every level, it is difficult to envision a political party more hostile to individual liberty than the current Bush-led Republicans.

One of the leading items on the agenda of religious conservatives is their desire to prevent adult citizens who want to gamble from doing so -- not by persuading them of the evils of gambling, but by abusing the power of the federal government to make it a criminal offense for those adults to choose to gamble. Two weeks ago, Congressional Republicans, led by Sens. Bill Frist and John Kyl, attached a broad anti-gambling provision onto a bill designed to enhance port security, which means that nobody could vote against it. That provision "prohibit[s] gamblers [i.e., adults] from using credit cards, checks and electronic fund transfers to settle their online wagers," and it also dramatically enhances the enforcement powers of the federal government to arrest and imprison adults who choose to spend the money they earn by sitting in their homes and gambling online.

13 October 2006

Glenn Greenwald: Questions about the first treason indictment in 50 years

(updated below)

"Treason" is an accusation that is tossed around casually and frequently by Bush followers. Many of them seem to think that the bulk of the Democratic Party and large swaths of the non-Fox press corps are guilty of it. But treason is actually one of the most rarely charged crimes. Nobody has been indicted for treason in the U.S. in more than 50 years, and there have been only 30 or so treason prosecutions in all of American history.

Not a single American was accused of treason through the entire McCarthy era, during the Korean and Vietnam wars, nor at any time during the last four decades of the Cold War nor in connection with the rise of McVeigh-type anti-government militia movements of the 1990s. As intended by the Founders, the U.S. Government, regardless of which political party controls it, has traditionally exercised great discretion and restraint when it comes to charging Americans with that crime.

Glenn Greenwald: Peggy Noonan's poetic love of dissent, civility and grace

(Updated below - Update II - Update III)

Peggy Noonan has a new column in the Wall St. Journal solemnly lamenting the "fact" that, unlike the right, "the left" in America has no tolerance for dissenting views and does not understand the values of free speech or civility in political discourse. She cites four examples to "document" her thesis -- the recent protests by some Columbia University college students at an appearance by one of the Minutemen; criticisms allegedly voiced by unnamed "blog critics" and unnamed CBS employees over the airing by CBS News of a Columbine parent who blamed legalized abortion for the Columbine shootings; Barbra Streisand's use of a bad word when responding to a heckler at her concert; and an argument over gun control which Rosie O'Donnell had with Elizabeth Hasselback on The View.

Catching Up on Digby...

The PoMo President
Bush is less worried about his standing with history, telling aides that George Washington's legacy is still being debated two centuries later. But he understands that losing one chamber of Congress will cripple his lame duck-weakened final two years.
Here's how he put it a couple of years ago:
“After the second interview with him on Dec. 11, we got up and walked over to one of the doors. There are all of these doors in the Oval Office that lead outside. And he had his hands in his pocket, and I just asked, ‘Well, how is history likely to judge your Iraq war,’” says Woodward.
SOS

One of the things we all must be thinking about (if not talking about) as we go into the mid-term elections is whether the voting machines, both in the literal and metaphorical sense, are going to thwart an honest outcome. There is no doubt that in the last two presidential elections, the state voting apparatuses in Ohio and Florida made the difference between Democrats winning or losing.

Faithful Republicans

It is taken as an article of faith (pardon the pun) that the evangelical base of the GOP is upset about this Foley scandal and will fail to turn up at the polls this November as a result. I wonder.

This article in the NY Times asks the question and finds that evangelicals don't hold the Republican party responsible:
“This is Foley’s lifestyle,” said Ron Gwaltney, a home builder, as he waited with his family outside a Christian rock concert last Thursday in Norfolk. “He tried to keep it quiet from his family and his voters. He is responsible for what he did. He is paying a price for what he did. I am not sure how much farther it needs to go.”

The Democratic Party is “the party that is tolerant of, maybe more so than Republicans, that lifestyle,” Mr. Gwaltney said, referring to homosexuality.

Frozen Punditry

Jane Hamsher says I have a monkey named Chris Matthews on my back and I need serious help. Yes, my name is digby and I am a Hardball addict.

There's a reason for it. Chris Matthews, to me, is the perfect embodiment of the delusional, millionaire DC courtier who thinks he is channeling the common man. The beltway is full of those guys apparently, but Tweety has a very special perch from which he dispenses all kinds of what he thinks are folksy observations about "Real Americans" but which are actually 50's cartoon characters along the lines of Fred and Wilma Flintstone. He's a fascinating case study in how the dysfunctional DC political media are completely immersed in rightwing bias and don't even know it.

St John Tthe Anointed

I just love watching St. John McCain sticking it to the Democrats with everything he's got after they spent the month of September anointing him as the premiere national leader on security and military affairs. This looks pretty stupid now, doesn't it?

Dear God
A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.
A Man's Gotta Make A Living

All this lying McCainiac finger-pointing about Clinton being at fault for North Korea having nukes is par for the course. That's the GOP game -- if it wasn't Clinton it would have been Carter --- or Truman --- or Woodrow Wilson. It's never their fault. Here's Rich Lowry explaining it to us from their perspective:
The Clinton administration dealt directly with the North, producing the Agreed Framework, a sham that the North Koreans began cheating on, in the words of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, "as the ink was drying." The North agreed to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for two light-water nuclear reactors and fuel deliveries. Immediately, however, it set up a secret uranium-enrichment program and obstructed inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency. When the U.S. called the North on it in 2002, the North confessed, expelled IAEA inspectors, withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and accelerated its nuclear quest.

Short Term Death

Reading this article by Jacob Weisberg on the subject of Bush's creation of the Axis of Evil, I realized that one of the most frustrating aspects of right wing hawkish thinking is their belief that it is useless to have any kind of short-term solution to a problem unless it can be guaranteed to result in a long term resolution. Indeed, they even think of truces and ceasefires as weakness.

Don't Ask Don't Tell


The Republicans really, really need to deal with their latent sexual issues because this is getting ridiculous. I just flipped over to FoxNews and saw two scantily clad young men (with very unmilitary looking mop-tops) sitting across the desk of a giggling and blushing Neil Cavuto, flogging a Marine Hunk beefcake calendar. I'm not kidding.

Cogs In The Machine

One of the most hyped tales of political wizardry in recent years is the story of how Karl Rove energized the evangelical base and created an army of Republican GOTV foot soldiers. The facts are that the targeting of the evangelicals goes back much farther than Rove and can be attributed to earlier GOP grassroots strategists:
"With Paul M. Weyrich and Richard Viguerie, Blackwell met with Jerry Falwell to found the Moral Majority. 'Finally, on the verge of realizing his right-wing utopia, Weyrich harvested what his friend Morton Blackwell termed the greatest track of virgin timber on the political landscape: evangelicals. Out there is what you might call a moral majority, he told Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, Pennsylvania, in 1979. That's it, Falwell exclaimed. That's the name of the organization.' [David Grann, "Robespierre of the Right," New Republic, October 27, 1997]
Finally

The grown-ups have awakened from their stupors and have decided to save us:
MATTHEWS: The real grown-ups, gentlemen, and Margaret -- is that the best critics of this war are the Republicans. [Sen.] John Warner [R-VA], the chairman of the Armed Services [Committee] -- it's not the lefties, it's not Jack Murtha out there even. It's the smart, grown-up Republicans who are questioning this policy and calling for a change.
Scone Eating Surrender General

In America, it would be the equivalent of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Peter Pace, saying this
The head of the Army is calling for British troops to withdraw from Iraq "soon" or risk catastophic consequences for both Iraq and British society.

In a devastating broadside at Tony Blair's foreign policy, General Sir Richard Dannatt stated explicitly that the continuing presence of British troops "exacerbates the security problems" in Iraq.
Undaunted

We all know that before 9/11 the neocons didn't give a damn about terrorism (and still don't, really.) But what were they obsessed with? Saddam, yes. Israel, yes. But they reserved a whole bunch of their firepower for the great yellow peril, the Chi-Coms, whom they are anxious to blame for the North Korean nuclear threat today. They apparently don't feel we have enough problems, we need to start poking China in the eye too.

Sex Ring Republicans

I guess I've been living in some sort of dreamworld here in the wholesome Hollywood heartland, but I am honestly shocked at the degree of depravity and sadism that Republicans across the board seem to find normal. I don't consider myself a prude, but damn.

The original Limbaugh reaction to Abu Ghraib was pretty telling, but I figured he just represented the rich, S&M portion of the GOP constituency. And while I was a bit surprised that there was no outcry among the conservative moralists I figured it was just because they were being good soldiers in the GWOT. The Mark Foley thing has proven that they just don't much give a damn about sexual depravity or morals at all if it threatens their political power. The House leadership in charge looked the other way but the moralists are lining up to blame a fictitious gay cabal they believe has infiltrated "their" party. Talk about moral relativism.

It Doesn't Bother Him Politically

More dispatches from the GOP Freakshow:

MJ Rosenberg over at TPM Cafe makes note of religious conservative Dennis Prager's strong moral stand on Larry King last night. It's quite inspiring:
KING: ... Does the Foley matter bother you?

PRAGER: The matter bothers me but not politically. A congressman is given a page to nurture and take care of and not to try to have an affair with, with same-sex or opposite sex, so that bothers me. There's no question about it and a great deal in fact but, it doesn't bother me politically.
Do it For The Constitution

Glenn Greenwald's blog Unclaimed Territory sort of took the blogosphere by storm this past year or so and for good reason. He is fearless in taking on the right wing --- from the crazed harpy wingnut vloggers to the Wall Street Journal editorial page. And he makes such well-reasoned yet passionate arguments they are forced to engage him. His blog is does what the best lefty blogs have to do -- entertain, inform and... kick rightwing ass.

"Jesus will not ride into town on an elephant"

I would become a believer myself if this happened:
Dear Dr. Dobson and Friends

I write this letter to you as an admirer, and as one who is eternally grateful for all that you have done to fight for Christian values in America. Although fine Americans such as Don Wildmon, Dr. D. James Kennedy, Tony Perkins, Phyllis Schlafly, The Arlington Group and others have fought the fight as well, you more than anyone, are the face of the pro-family movement. You have the scars to prove it and I consider you an American hero.

But Dr. Dobson, it is time to build an ark. It is time to leave the Republican Party. Jesus will not ride into town on an elephant.

Billmon: Fiasco

Victor Davis Hanson is dictating straight from his rectum again:

Three recent books about the "fiasco'' in Iraq -- Cobra II by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, State of Denial by Bob Woodward and just plain Fiasco by Tom Ricks -- have attracted a lot of attention, and sales. All three well-written exposes repeat the now well-known argument that our government's incompetence and arrogance have nearly ensured America's failure in birthing democracy in Iraq.

It's worth noting, though, that many of the authors' critical portraits rely on private conversations and anonymous sources. The most damning informants in these books are never identified and so can't be questioned.

Note the print equivalent of air quotes around the word "fiasco" -- a way of signaling that Hanson, who has spent the past three years staunchly denying that the Titanic has hit an iceberg, is determined to go down with the ship.

Billmon: The Plot Thickens

First the Democrats and George Soros, then the Lavender Bund and a bunch of oversexed House pages, and now the head of the freaking British Army! It looks like everybody is out to get Bush this October:

Britain’s most senior military officer was quoted Friday as saying the British Army should leave Iraq, where it is America’s main ally, "sometime soon" . . . The Daily Mail quoted Sir Richard as saying that Britain should “get ourselves out sometime soon, because our presence exacerbates the security problems."

Billmon: Catching Up With Saddam

"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."

Apocryphal, often attributed to Joseph Stalin


It's hardly a laughing matter, but I had to laugh nonetheless at Shrub's reaction to the latest estimate that the war in Iraq has resulted in at least 655,000 Iraqi deaths -- a total that is not only still rising but accelerating:

"No, I don't consider it a credible report."

Well of course Bible Boy doesn't think it's credible. After all, what do Johns Hopkins University and The Lancet know about faith-based epidemiology? Nothing. They're just a bunch of doctors. Now if the study had been conducted by a committee of evangelical chiropractors from Oral Roberts University, that would be different.

Report refutes fraud at poll sites

WASHINGTON — At a time when many states are instituting new requirements for voter registration and identification, a preliminary report to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission has found little evidence of the type of polling-place fraud those measures seek to stop.

USA TODAY obtained the report from the commission four months after it was delivered by two consultants hired to write it. The commission has not distributed it publicly.

Colson's Complaint

Opponents of faith-based prison programs are enabling terrorists, says Watergate felon Charles Colson

Those opposed to faith-based prison projects are blind to the threat of terrorism in the "homeland" from former inmates who have converted to Islam while in America's prisons, Charles Colson charged in one of his recent BreakPoint commentaries.

Stung by a federal district court judge's recent decision that his InnerChange Freedom Initiative, a faith-based prison program operating in Iowa's prisons is unconstitutional, Colson, one of President Richard Nixon's key operatives during the Watergate years and currently the head of Prison Fellowship Ministries, is using a new report about the growing threat of Islamic terrorists being recruited in U.S. prisons to argue that support for his faith-based prison program is essential if terrorist attacks in this country are to be prevented.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 10/13/06

After dropping a political bombshell, in "one of the most outspoken interviews ever given by a serving soldier," General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of Britain's army, says he never meant to signal a rift.

As a bipartisan panel reportedly 'Rules Out Iraq Victory,' co-chairs James Baker and Lee Hamilton appeared on the PBS "NewsHour" to explain why their report won't be made public until after the midterm elections.

'A Soldier's Tale' After traveling to Fort Ashby, West Virginia, the American Prospect's Tara McKelvey is granted the first prison interview with Lynndie England, who offers up descriptions of pre-Abu Ghraib games with "Naked Chem-Light Tuesday" and a cat's head on a soda bottle.

In what is described as "the most deadly attack on members of the Iraqi news media since the 2003 invasion," 'Gunmen Kill 11' during "the first invasion of the offices of a media outlet," although 'U.K. minister urged Al-Jazeera bombing.'

As an 'Army "Big Brother" Unit Targets Bloggers,' the ACLU releases documents showing that the Pentagon kept tabs on a Florida antiwar group in a "military antiterrorism database."

Paul Krugman sees "a huge Democratic storm surge ... heading toward a high Republican levee," but Rigorous Intuition's Jeff Wells muses that "perhaps it's the election itself that distracts Americans ... away from the real war."

After Keith Olbermann reported that David Kuo's "Tempting Faith" quotes Karl Rove demanding, "Just Get Me A F—ing Faith-Based Thing. Got it?", a Los Angeles Times article on the book, quotes the "founding father" of the conservative movement quipping, "If Republicans win, it will prove God is a Republican, since it will take a miracle."

De la Vega, Debunking the Armitage Story

In the first of her two-part series on the Libby case (Pardon Me?), former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega suggested that George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their supporters might already be preparing the groundwork for a Libby presidential pardon, perhaps even before the case begins in mid-January. After all, who wants all that ugly 2002-2003 linen aired, as it will be, under oath? Aren't things bad enough?

Paul Krugman: Will the Levee Break?

The conventional wisdom says that the Democrats will take control of the House of Representatives next month, but only by a small margin. I’ve been looking at the numbers, however, and I believe this conventional wisdom is almost all wrong.

Here’s what’s happening: a huge Democratic storm surge is heading toward a high Republican levee. It’s still possible that the surge won’t overtop the levee — that is, the Democrats could fail by a small margin to take control of Congress. But if the surge does go over the top, the flooding will almost surely reach well inland — that is, if the Democrats win, they’ll probably win big.

The Coming Gay Republican Purge

by MAX BLUMENTHAL

[posted online on October 12, 2006]

Immediately after the Mark Foley scandal broke, some anti-Republican gay-rights activists composed a memo containing the names of closeted gay Republican Congressional staffers and sent it to leading Christian-right advocacy groups. The founder and chairman of one of those groups, the Rev. Don Wildmon of the American Family Association, told me he has received that memo, which he referred to simply as "The List." Based on The List's contents, Wildmon is convinced that a secretive gay "clique" boring within the Republican-controlled Congress is responsible for covering up Foley's sexual predation toward teenage male House pages. Moreover, Wildmon calls on the Republican Party leadership to promptly purge the "subversive" gay staffers.

"They oughtta fire every one of 'em," Wildmon told me in his trademark Mississippi drawl. "I don't care if they're heterosexual or homosexual or whatever they are. If you've got that going on, that subverts the will of the people; that subverts the voters. That is subversive activity. There should be no organization among staffers in Washington of that nature, and if they find out that they're there and they're a member, they oughtta be dismissed el pronto."

12 October 2006

Train jumps tracks

Gene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Only weeks ago, GOP campaign officials were breathing smoke and fire. According to Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds, R-N. Y., the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, hapless Democrats had no idea what they were up against. Relentlessly negative TV commercials funded by the party’s $ 50 million war chest were about to bury Democratic candidates under an avalanche of charges dug up by so-called opposition research—unpaid student loans, late tax payments, embarrassing lawsuits, etc. “We haven’t even begun to unload this freight train,” Reynolds boasted to The New York Times. Asked why the party that currently controls the White House and both houses of Congress wasn’t stressing positive themes in its TV ads, he burst out laughing. “If they moved things to the extent that negative ads move things,” he said, “there would be more of them.” A few days later, Reynolds himself got run over by an off-schedule freight train in the form of the nastiest Washington sex scandal in decades. It’s doubtful he’s laughing now. Reynolds, see, is the guy who says he and Rep. John Boehner, ROhio, warned House Speaker Dennis Hastert last spring about Rep. Mark Foley’s “overly friendly” e-mails to 16-yearold congressional pages.

The speaker recalls no such meeting.

5 Scandals that Could Put Republicans in Jail

By James Ridgeway, Mother Jones. Posted October 12, 2006.

The Foley cover-up is just the tip of the iceberg. If the Democrats succeed in retaking Congress this fall, here are five investigations they should get started on right away.

The stately Russell Senate Office Building stands at one corner of a domestic Green Zone, just northeast of the Capitol building at the intersection of Delaware and Constitution avenues. In the past few years a maze of blockades has sprouted along the shaded avenues and curving drives of the Capitol complex. Checkpoints are patrolled by heavily armed police; guards watch for suspicious characters and prohibited items (which now include food and beverages; cans, bottles, and sprays; and bags larger than 13 by 14 inches). At the Russell Building, visitors encounter another set of barriers and metal detectors before being granted admittance to the elegant structure. Then, at the top of a sweeping staircase, they'll find a room walled in white marble, draped in deep red, overhung by a gilded ceiling, and fronted, altarlike, with a raised dais.

People who self-censor opinions also avoid public politics

Americans who are reluctant to openly express their opinions when they believe others disagree also tend to avoid publicly visible political activity, such as working for a political campaign or circulating petitions, a new study shows. The results suggest that today's divisive political environment may make some citizens unwilling to participate publicly in the democratic process.

Ted Rall: The End of the U.S. as a Civilized Nation

SEATTLE--Students of historical hysteria immediately saw 9/11 as America's version of the Reichstag Fire. Both incidents were organic acts of terrorism (contrary to popular misconception, the Nazis didn't set the 1933 fire) seized upon by power-hungry government officials to justify the crushing of political dissent and the rolling back of civil liberties. Hitler began marching his people into the abyss immediately upon seizing power in 1933, but Nazi Germany's fate as a rogue nation wasn't sealed until two years later, in the late summer of 1935.

Before then there had been heinous violations of human rights. Nazi authorities detained thousands of socialists and communists in concentration camps (death camps weren't built until 1941). Many were tortured; some died in custody. Stormtroopers enforced state-sanctioned boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses. Brownshirts beat Jews in the streets as the police stood by and watched. Ignoring Germany's treaty obligations, Hitler poured millions into the armed forces and threatened to use them against Germany's neighbors. No one could doubt that Germany was in the hands of militaristic right-wing thugs.

Bush Faults Clinton Policy, But the Debate is Complex

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 12, 2006; Page A23

President Bush asserted yesterday that the administration's strategy on North Korea is superior to the one pursued by his predecessor, Bill Clinton, because Clinton reached a bilateral agreement that failed, while the current administration is trying to end North Korea's nuclear programs through multi-nation talks.

"In order to solve this diplomatically, the United States and our partners must have a strong diplomatic hand," Bush said at a news conference. "And you have a better diplomatic hand with others, sending the message, than you do when you're alone."

Blue Is Green

Why Democratic-leaning companies outperform Republican-leaning ones.




On the campaign trail, Democrats are loudly claiming that they can outperform Republicans in Washington when it comes to policy. Now they're making the same claim about mutual-fund investing.

As Moneybox reported in May, the Free Enterprise Action Fund, a tiny mutual fund run by lobbyists, uses stock ownership to push policies associated with the Republican Party. Through the first nine months of this year, it was up 5.59 percent, lagging the 8.53-percent gain for the Standard & Poor's 500. Starting next week, The Blue Fund will try to demonstrate that Democratic principles aren't simply better for the country—they're better for investors.

The Slime Talk Express

McCain is dead wrong about Bill Clinton and North Korea.




Sen. John McCain has skidded his Straight Talk Express off the highway into a gopher's ditch of slime. The moment came Tuesday, when he responded to charges by Sen. Hillary Clinton, his potential rival in the 2008 presidential election, that George W. Bush bears some responsibility for North Korea's newborn status as a nuclear-armed power.

Here, according to the Washington Post, is what McCain said in a campaign speech near Detroit:

I would remind Senator Clinton and other Democrats critical of Bush administration policies that the framework agreement her husband's administration negotiated [with North Korea] was a failure. Every single time the Clinton administration warned the Koreans not to do something—not to kick out the IAEA inspectors, not to remove the fuel rods from their reactor—they did it. And they were rewarded every single time by the Clinton administration with further talks.

11 October 2006

Experts claim EPA under fire from Bush Administration

Kate Raiford
Published: Tuesday October 10, 2006

In Jim Cornehls’ public policy classroom at the University of Texas-Arlington, federal employees are often invited to talk to his graduate students. Those from the Environmental Protection Agency speak of worsening conditions under the Bush Administration.

“They are afraid for their jobs if they say the wrong thing,” Cornehls said. “Young people from EPA say they are losing a lot of good young people because they don’t want to work under those conditions.”

Army to keep troop levels in Iraq steady through 2010

Posted 10/11/2006 11:28 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Army has plans that would keep the current level of troops in Iraq — about 15 brigades — through 2010, the top Army officer said Wednesday.

The Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, cautioned that people not read too much into the planning, because it is easier to pull back forces than to get units prepared and deployed at the last minute.

"This is not a prediction that things are going poorly or better," Schoomaker told reporters. "It's just that I have to have enough ammo in the magazine that I can continue to shoot as long as they want us to shoot."

James Wolcott: Ratfink Writes New Book

Such gorgeous weather we've been enjoying in New York. Good-to-be-alive weather, driving the blues away. The news has also cooperated with this morale lift. The Yankees went down in shabby defeat in the first round of the playoffs, igniting a welter of recriminations, which is always fun. The Mets advanced, inspiring Proustian memories of Mookie Wilson. The Eagles put a clamp on the Cowboys and T.O.'s fat mouth. The poll numbers for the midterms have been looking rather chipper. It would take a lot to spoil the splendor of this Indian summer interlude.

Then I opened my mail yesterday.

I got a lot of mail, much of it forwarded in boxes and bags from Vanity Fair. As a vital node in the cultural nexus of the universe, I'm understandably on the receiving end of a ton of personal mail, press releases, book galleys, preview DVDs, and similar various assorted crap. I sort through the mounting debris quickly, efficiently, tearing open envelopes and cardboard casings with my rugged Chuck Norris hands as the cats sneeze from the envelope-pad fluff. Most of the mail is mundane, routine. But every once in a while I receive something that gives me pause, spurs a reaction.

As when yesterday I received the galley of Dinesh D'Souza's new book from Doubleday, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, to be published in January 2007.

Water for millions at risk as glaciers melt away

· Crisis threatens parts of South America and Asia
· Decline accelerates as global warming takes hold


David Adam, environment correspondent
Wednesday October 11, 2006
The Guardian


The world's glaciers and ice caps are now in terminal decline because of global warming, scientists have discovered. A survey has revealed that the rate of melting across the world has sharply accelerated in recent years, placing even previously stable glaciers in jeopardy. The loss of glaciers in South America and Asia will threaten the water supplies of millions of people within a few decades, the experts warn.

America's dirty secret: India becomes the gasoline gusher

Subcontinent to fill the petrol production gap in the United States and Europe

Randeep Ramesh in Jamnagar, Gujarat
Wednesday October 11, 2006
The Guardian


Sitting on the edge of the water in the Gulf of Kutch on India's western shore is one of America's dirty secrets. A mass of steel pipes and concrete boxes stretches across 13 square miles (33sq km) - a third of the area of Manhattan - which will eventually become the world's largest petrochemical refinery.

The products from the Jamnagar complex are for foreign consumption. When complete, the facility will be able to refine 1.24m barrels of crude a day. Two-fifths of this gasoline will be sent 9,000 miles (15,000km) by sea to America.

Blogging Baghdad: Calling Bob in Baghdad

Posted by Jane Arraf, NBC News Correspondent (09:41 am ET, 10/10/06)

I am very, very lucky. I am alive in a war zone. Most of the time I have running water and when I turn on the lights, a series of generators ensures that they come on. I don't have to worry about saying goodbye to my family here in the morning and not knowing whether I'll see them in the evening. I know I'm lucky because almost everyone I know in Baghdad has to worry constantly about those things.

Some readers and viewers think we journalists are exaggerating about the situation in Iraq. I can almost understand that because who would want to believe that things are this bad? Particularly when so many people here started out with such good intentions.

I'm more puzzled by comments that the violence isn't any worse than any American city. Really? In which American city do 60 bullet-riddled bodies turn up on a given day? In which city do the headless bodies of ordinary citizens turn up every single day? In which city would it not be news if neighborhood school children were blown up? In which neighborhood would you look the other way if gunmen came into restaurants and shot dead the customers?

FBI Agents Still Lacking Arabic Skills

33 of 12,000 Have Some Proficiency

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 11, 2006; Page A01

Five years after Arab terrorists attacked the United States, only 33 FBI agents have even a limited proficiency in Arabic, and none of them work in the sections of the bureau that coordinate investigations of international terrorism, according to new FBI statistics.

Counting agents who know only a handful of Arabic words -- including those who scored zero on a standard proficiency test -- just 1 percent of the FBI's 12,000 agents have any familiarity with the language, the statistics show.

More on "Operation Condor," What Horrors May Await America, Kissinger, and the Disappeared

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

In our editorial that caromed around the Internet, "Torture, Murder, Bush, Kissinger and The Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina: America on the Brink of Horror
," we warned that the legacy of U.S. governments – particularly under the Rumsfeld/Cheney/Kissinger/Bush leadership through various GOP administrations – supporting torture and murder to suppress dissent in other countries may be coming to America.

This is no idle conspiracy theory. As we pointed out in our editorial, the U.S. Congress has now given Bush enough legal maneuvering room to declare U.S. citizens supporters of terrorists. Since Bush has openly accused any American who disagrees with his disastrous "war on terror" a "tool of the terrorists," he is legally now able to "disappear" us. This is not idle theory. We no longer have the protection of habeas corpus, if Bush invokes his powers to fight "terror."

Torture, Murder, Bush, Kissinger and The Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina: America on the Brink of Horror

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

October 9, 2006

Dateline -- Buenos Aires, Argentina

For some 30 years, the Argentine women known as the Madres (Mothers) de La Plaza de Mayo have marched every Thursday in front of the Presidential Palace of Argentina. They gather in memory of their children and grandchildren, who were among the estimated 30,000 people who disappeared during "Operation Condor." Another 50,000 people were murdered.

"Operation Condor" reached its peak in the 1970s. With assistance from the United States, and the support and knowledge of Henry Kissinger, five of the southern cone South American nations conducted a campaign of unspeakable torture and killing against their own citizens.

'Huge rise' in Iraqi death tolls

An estimated 655,000 Iraqis have died since 2003 who might still be alive but for the US-led invasion, according to a survey by a US university.

The research compares mortality rates before and after the invasion from 47 randomly chosen areas in Iraq.

The figure is considerably higher than estimates by official sources or the number of deaths reported in the media.

The 'Poison Plastic' Retailers Won't Talk About

By Lois Gibbs, AlterNet. Posted October 11, 2006.

PVC plastic (commonly used in toys, shower curtains, bags, shoes and more) has been linked to cancer and birth defects -- so why won't big-box stores like Target stop selling it?

To watch an original animated short about PVC, hot off the presses, go HERE.

Twenty five years ago I was raising my family in Love Canal near Niagara Falls when I discovered that my home was sitting next to 20,000 tons of toxic chemicals. That shocking discovery spurred me and my neighbors to lead a three-year struggle to protect our families from the hazardous waste buried in our backyards. Our fight at Love Canal led to President Jimmy Carter announcing an Emergency Declaration, which moved 900 families from this hazardous area and signified the victory of our efforts.

Today we have learned that we cannot escape poisonous chemicals in our communities. They are not only in factories and toxic dumps, but in everyday household goods like shower curtains and cosmetics. One of today's most dangerous toxic offenders is PVC, the poison plastic, also known as vinyl.


Corker saw to interests in 'blind' trust, records show

Shared tips, met with firms' employees while in office

By Marc Perrusquia
October 11, 2006

A blind trust set up to shield businessman Bob Corker from conflicts when he was Chattanooga's mayor may not have been all that blind, record show.

Corker met often with employees from his private companies while mayor from 2001 to 2005, and he shared business tips with others. Corker also got help organizing his 2001 mayoral campaign from City Hall, where a government secretary passed on voting lists and set up meetings for the millionaire commercial real estate developer.

10 October 2006

North Korea Tested an Atom Bomb; Now What?

Four potential scenarios—all bad.


Kim Jong-il has now done what the Iranian mullahs are still a few years from accomplishing and what Saddam Hussein never came close to pulling off. He has apparently exploded an atom bomb. He probably can't yet pack a nuke into the nose cone of a missile or drop one from a plane. But as the term is generally (and aptly) defined, North Korea is now a nuclear-armed power. What's the rest of the world going to do about it?

The "international community" has a chance to behave as if the term were more than a polite or ironic euphemism. If there's a single national leader in the world who likes this new development, he hasn't said so. The U.N. Security Council quickly voted 13-0 to condemn the nuclear test. Several nonmembers have joined in the criticism. Now all we need is a next step—action.

The Age of Terror - a landmark report

With chaos stretching from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, we have never lived in a more dangerous time. Over the next 15 pages and 7,000 words, our man in the Middle East looks back over a lifetime of covering war and death, and lays out a bleak future for all of us - one that even those living in the comfort of the Home Counties cannot escape

Published: 08 October 2006

A few days after Lebanon's latest war came to an end, I went through many of the reporter's notebooks I have used in my last 30 years in the Middle East. Some contained the names of dead colleagues, others the individual stories of the suffering of Arabs and Kurds and Christians and Jews. One, dated 1991, is even splashed with a dark and viscous substance, the oil that came raining down on us from the skies over the Kuwaiti desert after Saddam blew up the wells of the Emirate. It was only after a few minutes that I realised what I was looking for: some hint, back in the days of dangerous innocence, of what was going to happen on 11 September 2001.

And sure enough, in one notebook, part of a transcript of an interview I gave in Toronto in the late 1990s, I see myself trying to discourage the Middle East optimism of my host. "There is an explosion coming in the Middle East," I tell him. What was this explosion I was talking about? I find myself writing almost the same thing a couple of years later in The Independent - I refer to "the explosion to come" without locating it in the Middle East at all. What was I talking about? And then, most disturbingly, I re-run parts of a film series I made with the late Michael Dutfield for Channel 4 and Discovery in 1993. Called From Beirut to Bosnia, it was billed as an attempt to record "Muslims growing anger towards the West."

Expect Hastert's usual blind eye

Regarding "Foley's follies":

While House Speaker Dennis Hastert stalwartly rejects calls for his resignation, proclaiming his lack of early awareness of former Rep. Mark Foley's sexual Internet advances, yet another potentially explosive issue remains unexamined.

Where did the hundreds of thousands of dollars Foley so generously distributed to his party and congressional colleagues come from? What corporate entities and special interests contributed to Foley's huge campaign fund, and did these "gifts" influence legislation benefiting those generous donors, contrary to the interests of the public?

Helen Thomas: Asking Bush the Tough Questions

By Ann McFeatters, Ms. Magazine. Posted October 9, 2006.

Fearless White House correspondent Helen Thomas has covered nine presidents, and says Bush is undoubtedly the worst.

It was the talk of the blogosphere: As part of Stephen Colbert's eviscerating roast of President Bush at the annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in April -- wonkish Washington's equivalent of the Oscars -- he showed a hilarious video that was supposedly an "audition" for the job of White House press secretary.

His costar in the satiric short: none other than the octogenarian doyenne of White House correspondents, Helen Thomas.


09 October 2006

Billmon: Fascisize Me

Just published: Conservatize Me: How I Tried to Become a Righty with the Help of Richard Nixon, Sean Hannity, Toby Keith, and Beef Jerky by John Moe.

Using the methodology of the documentary Super Size Me, public radio commentator John Moe "wondered whether a sudden immersion in conservatism could change his worldview -- so he saturated himself with nothing but right wing people, media and culture for an entire month."

Now that's just downright gross.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 10/09/06

Bad news in Iraq continues to roll in, amid growing speculation that the Baker commission will recommend "cutting and staying" in Iraq. Plus: Democrats warned about "what Baker is cooking up."

"It is as if the Bushes and Blairs do not live on this planet any more," writes Robert Fisk, incredulous at how oblivious they remain to the depth of anger their policies have generated, as 'the war room machinations of the White House' are compared to scenes out of "Desperate Housewives."

With support for GOP control of Congress 'crumbling,' according to Congressional Quarterly, and the New Jersey Senate Race growing more critical, the Republican candidate is repeatedly hammered for his ties to the president.

Contradicting the timeline issued by Speaker Hastert, a congressman acknowledges seeing Foley's inappropriate messages in 2000, a liaison with an ex-page comes to light, and attention increasingly focuses on "Foley's after-hours visit to the pages' dorm."

In the latest of a series of scandals to hit Sen. George Allen, an AP review of his financial dealings finds that he failed to disclose stock options, and a New York Times story suggesting that Republican incumbents like Allen are unlikely to suffer Foley "fallout" among conservative Christians appears to be "missing" something.

As a new Pew poll finds that 52% of American Pentecostals believe "the government should take special steps to make the U.S. a Christian country," the Times reports on how religion trumps regulation, and how legislative and judicial "safe havens ... shield religious employers of all faiths from most employee lawsuits."

Musharraf faces new questions over Taliban

· Pakistani president to meet British commander
· Reports claim intelligence agency helps militants


Declan Walsh in Islamabad
Monday October 9, 2006
The Guardian


Pakistan's role in the fight against the Taliban will come under renewed scrutiny today at a meeting in Islamabad between a top British commander and Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf.

General David Richards, who commands 33,000 Nato troops in Afghanistan, says the meeting is routine. But it follows a string of accusations, some from within Nato, that Pakistan has failed to close down Taliban sanctuaries in the northern tribal belt, and that elements within its Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency may be assisting the insurgency. Nato said yesterday that the Taliban had launched 78 suicide attacks this year across Afghanistan, killing close to 200 people.

Cheney Back Delivering the Grim Campaign Speech

Democrats Cast As Foils to the Nation's Security

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 8, 2006; Page A14

MILWAUKEE -- Vice President Cheney sometimes starts speeches with a Ronald Reagan quotation about a "happy" nation needing "hope and faith." But not much happy talk follows. Not a lot of hope, either. He does, though, talk about the prospect of "mass death in the United States."

The not-so-happy warrior of the past two campaign cycles is back on the road delivering a grim message about danger, defeatism and the stakes of the coming election. If it is not a joyful exercise, it is at least a relentless one. Even with poll ratings lower than President Bush's, Cheney has become a more ubiquitous presence on the campaign trail than in the last midterm election.

U.S. Rules Allow the Sale of Products Others Ban

Chemical-laden goods outlawed in Europe and Japan are permitted in the American market.

By Marla Cone, Times Staff Writer
October 8, 2006

OAKLAND — Destined for American kitchens, planks of birch and poplar plywood are stacked to the ceiling of a cavernous port warehouse. The wood, which arrived in California via a cargo ship, carries two labels: One proclaims "Made in China," while the other warns that it contains formaldehyde, a cancer-causing chemical.

Because formaldehyde wafts off the glues in this plywood, it is illegal to sell in many countries — even the one where it originated, China. But in the United States this wood is legal, and it is routinely crafted into cabinets and furniture.

The Fear Factor

What last-minute scare tactic will the Republicans pull to swing the midterm elections? Our panel of experts predicts this fall's October Surprise

MARK BINELLI

On October 31st, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced a cessation of bombing in North Vietnam. The fact that the news came only a week before a close presidential election -- between Democratic hopeful Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon -- led some to conclude that more than military strategy was behind the move. The Vietnam War was deeply unpopular, and an eleventh-hour endgame by the sitting Democratic president would certainly be a plus for Humphrey.

Guantánamo defense lawyer forced out of Navy

McClatchy Newspapers

NEWARK, N.J. — The Navy lawyer who took the Guantánamo case of Osama bin Laden's driver to the U.S. Supreme Court — and won — has been passed over for promotion by the Pentagon and must soon leave the military.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, 44, said last week he received word he had been denied a promotion to full-blown commander this summer, "about two weeks after" the Supreme Court sided against the White House and with his client, a Yemeni captive at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

Guantánamo defense lawyer forced out of Navy

McClatchy Newspapers

NEWARK, N.J. — The Navy lawyer who took the Guantánamo case of Osama bin Laden's driver to the U.S. Supreme Court — and won — has been passed over for promotion by the Pentagon and must soon leave the military.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, 44, said last week he received word he had been denied a promotion to full-blown commander this summer, "about two weeks after" the Supreme Court sided against the White House and with his client, a Yemeni captive at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

Paul Krugman: The Paranoid Style

Last week Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, explained the real cause of the Foley scandal. “The people who want to see this thing blow up,” he said, “are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros.”

Most news reports, to the extent they mentioned Mr. Hastert’s claim at all, seemed to treat it as a momentary aberration. But it wasn’t his first outburst along these lines. Back in 2004, Mr. Hastert said: “You know, I don’t know where George Soros gets his money. I don’t know where — if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from.”

We Americans really ought to be ashamed

By ROBYN E. BLUMNER, Times Perspective Columnist
Published October 8, 2006

Did you hear that click, like the turning of a dial, auguring a new America?

It happened on Sept. 29 at 2:47 p.m. That was the seismic minute that Congress passed the Military Commissions Act and formally granted President Bush royal powers he had been unilaterally arrogating. The historic action may one day be remembered as the moment the great American experiment in liberty ended. It was a good run.

US lawmaker 'confronted in 2000'

Last Updated: Monday, 9 October 2006, 10:03 GMT 11:03 UK

A Republican colleague of disgraced ex-Congressman Mark Foley confronted him about his e-mails with teenagers as early as 2000, a US newspaper reports.

A young congressional worker had shown Jim Kolbe inappropriate messages from Mr Foley, the Washington Post said.

American Prison Camps Are on the Way

By Marjorie Cohn, AlterNet. Posted October 9, 2006.

Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of Bush's "unlawful enemy combatants." Americans are certain to be among them.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."


08 October 2006

Daily Kos: Habeas Corpus: The Definitive (Heh) Diary (Good News)

Sat Oct 07, 2006 at 04:26:50 AM PDT

Much has been written lately regarding the writ of habeas corpus and the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Unfortunately, a fair amount of that has been wrong to varying degrees on the law although the sentiment has been correct. In this diary I will give you a summary of the law, clarify the issues, and predict whether SCOTUS will accept habeas petitions post-MCA (they will). Also, I will give you some helpful resources for the non-lawyers who write on legal topics. Read on until your eyes glaze over:

The issue arises, of course, because many if not all of the Guantanamo detainees were being held without any judicial review whatsoever (or any review by anyone that we know of), and the legal mechanism for challenging unlawful detention absent trial and appeal is the writ of habeas corpus. In a series of three cases (Rasul, Hamdi and Hamdan) before the court on the writ, SCOTUS addressed and clarified the rules pertaining to status, detainment and later trial. Congress responded with the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and purported to strip the court of habeas jurisdiction

Daily Kos: Forgotten Founding Fathers: Casimir Pulaski

Fri Oct 06, 2006 at 09:49:03 PM PDT

Casimir Pulaski: Father of the American Cavalry

Casimir Pulaski (1745-1779) of Poland co-founded a separatist Polish confederation and was a commander in the confederation's army against Russia before coming to America to fight with the Continental Army, forming one of the few Continental cavalry regiments. He was killed at the Battle of Savannah.

Daily Kos: Corrupt, Cruel and Abusive

Fri Oct 06, 2006 at 09:40:13 PM PDT

Hard to beat David Sirota's awesome smackdown of Friedman today so I won't even try. That said, I came upon this item in the same edition of the NY times.

Pequot Says S.E.C. Won't Take Action
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON and WALT BOGDANICH Published: October 6, 2006

The staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission has notified Pequot Capital Management, a prominent hedge fund run by Arthur J. Samberg, that it will not recommend an enforcement action against the firm or its employees relating to an insider trading investigation, according to a letter sent yesterday by the fund to its clients. [snip]

The $7 billion hedge fund and its founder, Mr. Samberg, came under regulatory scrutiny in late 2004, when Gary J. Aguirre, a staff lawyer at the S.E.C., began investigating a number of profitable trades made by Pequot in advance of mergers or other market-moving news. The Pequot trades were flagged by stock exchange surveillance teams and forwarded to the commission.

The Sideshow: Rats in the walls

My head exploded when I saw this quoted at C&L:
On page 344, Woodward describes the doings at the White House in the early morning hours of Wednesday, the day after the '04 election.

Apparently, Kerry had decided not to concede. There were 250,000 outstanding ballots in Ohio.

So Kerry decides to fight. In fact, he considers going to Ohio to camp out with his voters until there is a recount. This is the last thing the White House needs, especially after Florida 2000.

So what happened?

James Carville gets on the phone with his wife, Mary Matalin, who is at the White House with Bush.

Americablog: Michael Steele really is just a GOP hypocrite

by Joe in DC - 10/07/2006 03:28:00 PM

Here in the DC market, we see the t.v. ads for the Maryland and Virgnia races. Michael Steele's has been running ads attacking Ben Cardin for taking money from the drug companies -- and makes the implication he won't be bought that way. Only problem for Steele is just before that ad began running, he was having a drug company fundraiser:
In a recent commercial advertising his bid for U.S. Senate, Maryland Republican Michael S. Steele tells voters that his opponent, Democrat Benjamin L. Cardin, has been tainted by contributions from pharmaceutical companies and special interests.

"Congressman Cardin took money from drug companies," Steele says. "I want to ban gifts from special interests."

The ad does not mention that less than a week before the commercial began airing, a top drug company executive and an industry lobbyist hosted a $1,000-a-person fundraiser for Steele at a K Street steakhouse in Washington.

Front-Group Alert: Softer Voices

This piece originally appeared on The Patriot Project

A front group run by a rather well-connected crowd appears to exist entirely to boost the campaign of Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum.

Softer Voices, another 527 front-organization, says on its website:

“Softer Voices is a conservative issue advocacy organization representing citizens concerned with national security, the economy, policies affecting families and society, and maintaining a free and democratic society.”

And which citizens does Softer Voices represent?

Softer Voices’ “Custodian of Records” is Cleta Mitchell, which the Washington Post describes as,

“a high-profile election lawyer with long ties to the national Republican Party.”

Ms. Mitchell shows up elsewhere. From The Hill’s September 19 Business & Lobbying column,

ETHICS. Cleta Mitchell, an attorney at Foley & Lardner, is lobbying on House and Senate ethics rules on behalf of the Heritage Foundation.”

All sound, fury, and popular entertainment: one decade on, Fox is top dog in the ratings

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 07 October 2006

It is the night of the Bush-Gore presidential election in 2000, perhaps the weirdest of all moments in America's recent political history. Already, the key state of Florida has been kicked around like a football – placed in the Gore column for a couple of hours and then, because of erroneous exit-polling data, yanked back and deemed too close to call.

The network anchors are settling in for a long night. On CBS, Dan Rather says the heat from Florida is "hot enough to peel house paint". Over at Fox News, the runt of the American cable news litter, the election desk is being manned by a certain John Ellis, who just happens to be George and Jeb Bush's first cousin. According to a new book by David Moore, a Gallup poll election veteran who was doing a very similar job that night for CBS and CNN, Ellis spent much of his evening on the phone to the Bush brothers.

Hidden victims of a brutal conflict: Iraq's women

Abduction, rape and murder are the punishments for any woman who dares to hold a professional job. A month-long investigation by The Observer reveals the terrible reality of life after Saddam

Peter Beaumont in Baghdad
Sunday October 8, 2006
The Observer


They came for Dr Khaula al-Tallal in a white Opel car after she took a taxi home to the middle class district of Qadissiya in Iraq's holy city of Najaf. She worked for the medical committee that examined patients to assess them for welfare benefit. Crucially, however, she was a woman in a country where being a female professional increasingly invites a death sentence.

As al-Tallal, 50, walked towards her house, one of three men in the Opel stepped out and raked her with bullets.