Sara Robinson at Orcinus: All Over But the Shouting

2006 may go down in history as the year the Religious Right finally jumped the shark, going over the top so high at last (as every Great Awakening in history ever has) that even some of their own followers noticed that their utopian fantasies were, finally, unworkable. Unmoored at last from the real-world concerns of their own moderates, and convinced (as authoritarians usually are) that the only answer can ever be more intrusion, more patriarchy, and more control, they've given us some singularly gobstopping moments this year, as a stunned nation finally stood in shock and awe, taking in the fully revealed and spectacularly bizarre details of their version of a Christianized America.

Digby: Hallalujah

Here's another one of those creepy articles about religious zealots who are trying to blow up the world and bring on the bridegroom. Fine, whatever. There have always been end-of-the-worlders around.

But really, how do these nuts get to be so involved in the highest reaches of the US Government?

Digby: Signing On

So the generals have done the big el-foldo and are going along with the McCain escalation plan. (I'm sure we'll be hearing from these profiles in courage when they whisper in the ears of the media that they were only following orders.)

Digby: Good Neighbors

Everyone's been following the saga of Representative Virgil Goode of Virginia, I'm sure. He and Lou Dobbs and Tom Tancredo are clinging to one another on the fainting couch, wringing their little hankies and whimpering over the prospects of the brownskinned hordes streaming into the country and ruining our fabulous "culture."

TPM Muckraker has been stalking Republicans all day trying to get them to say whether they support Goode's comments. None seem to be available.

Digby: Yer On Yer Own

Now they're worried about costs...

Republican House staff members who are losing their jobs in the aftermath of November’s loss of control are hoping Democrats will re-extend the hand of largesse to them next month.

As the old Congress wound down in a scramble of post-election activity, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered to pay two months’ severance to staff members working on some committees and in House leadership offices. But her offer was scuttled — by Republican lawmakers, who complained they didn’t have the opportunity to study the proposal and look at costs.

Digby: Dissolute Rage

The last thing I want to do is re-open any self-inflicted wounds on the Christopher Hitchens front --- but I just can't help myself.

There is a long and interesting article in the October issue of New Yorker called "He Knew He Was Right" which is really worth reading. (Sadly, it's not online.) Perhaps his ranting represent some overaching philosophy that is above my head, but frankly, I just find the man incoherent --- if fascinating, in a trainwreck sort of way

Digby: Not Grandma! Ewwww

I remember reading a review of "Titanic" that said the movie was unbelievable because young ladies of that era did not have premarital sex. It made me laugh. Now I see that a new study says that 95% of American adults have had prermarital sex, and I'm laughing again:

More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.

Digby: Smart Politics

I read that Jon Corzine signed the new civil unions bill in New Jersey yesterday as a result of the NJ supreme court ruling that the state had to create marriage equality for gay people. There is an interesting story about this that I think is instructive for progressives as we start to dig our way out of this conservative era.

Digby: Where's Rover?

One of he things I always wondered about the Rove-as-genius myth was why Bush's adminstration was so lame if Rove was so great. It's true that Junior was very popular for a while after 9/11, but any president would have been. He was good at pretending he had won a mandate, but he never actually did it. He's a ruthless, slimy Republican operative, but no better than many other ruthless, slimy Republican operatives.

Digby: The Gulag Comes Home

The government is "keeping families together" in camps down in Texas while they await hearings or deportations. You can read all about it here .

The whole thing is an extrajudicial, privatized boondoggle (what else is new?) in which a bunch of people are basically jailed with little or no due process (what else is new?)

But can someone please tell me how this can be necessary?

Digby: Ponies Full Of Money

I have a little suggestion. Before anybody signs another blank check for Bush to expand the military, escalate the war or add more than 70 billion to the "emergency" supplemental, how about we make the Pentagon account for this:

The Pentagon is still struggling to get a handle on the unprecedented number of contractors now helping run the nation's wars, losing millions of dollars because it is unable to monitor industry workers stationed in far-flung locations, according to a congressional report.

TAPPED: Truths About Pharma

A new report out of the GAO sheds some useful light on that majestic pharmaceutical industry everyone's always talking about. The GAO was asked to look into the industry's trends because, despite R&D increases over the past decade, there's been a sustained drop in the number of genuinely new drugs being submitted to the FDA. The culprits? Well, among other things, entirely 68 percent -- more than two-thirds -- of the drug company's new applications are for "me-too" drugs, knockoffs of other company's blockbusters with enough molecular differences that they evade patent restrictions.

Insurer to limit policies in state

Allstate won't write new homeowners on water as storm risk moves north

By Laura Smitherman

Sun reporter

Originally published December 21, 2006

Allstate Corp., one of Maryland's largest insurers, will stop writing homeowners' policies in coastal areas of the state, citing warnings by scientists that a warmer Atlantic Ocean will lead to more strong hurricanes hitting the Northeast.

The company will no longer offer new property insurance beginning in February in all or part of 11 counties mostly along the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Existing customers won't be affected; a spokeswoman said Allstate intends to renew those policies even in coastal areas. It will continue to write new policies in Baltimore and Baltimore County.

South Korea asks U.S. to explain beef

By KELLY OLSEN, Associated Press Writer
Fri Dec 22, 10:26 PM ET

South Korea has asked the United States to explain why a shipment of American beef rejected for having banned bone fragments also contained unacceptable levels of the toxic chemical dioxin, an official said Friday.

The discovery was the latest bad news for the U.S. cattle industry in South Korea, already dealing with the rejection of three recent shipments of beef for including banned bone fragments, which South Korea fears could potentially harbor mad cow disease.

Officials said the beef with the dioxin was in the third of the shipments, which was rejected on Dec. 6.

Billmon: Rates of Return

"This is a country that is worth the investment because once it emerges as a country that is a stabilizing factor, you'll have a very different kind of Middle East. And I know that from the point of view of not just monetary costs, but the sacrifice of American lives, a lot has been sacrificed for Iraq, a lot has been invested in Iraq."

Condoleezza Rice
Associated Press interview
December 21, 2006

Yes, a lot has been invested. But just look at the dividends:

Billmon: An Iraq Retrospective

I've been spending some of my spare time these past few weeks rummaging around in the Whiskey Bar archives, trying to decide what, if any of it, is worth keeping and what could just as well be consigned to the electronic garbage can. If nothing else, the task drove home for me just how central the Iraq War has been to this blog -- beginning with my very first post, which was written the day after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.

[...]

What follows, then, are some selected passages from the Whiskey Bar in that first fateful year of the war, from the fall of Baghdad to the capture of Saddam. They have been edited for length, but not for content or context -- or at least so I think you will find, if you check the orginal posts.

Juan Cole: Swearing on the Qur'an And the Nut on Miami

Florida Governor Jeb Bush called Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo "a nut" for comparing Miami to a "third world" country. Cuban-Americans and other minorities who vote Republican in the fond hope that the American Right will accept them should reconsider. The American Right is about exclusion and hierarchy, not about the acceptance of diversity.

Tancredo is such a Scrooge that he actually voted against aid for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. And, he threatened to nuke Mecca.

Yup, I'd say that's pretty nutty.

Judge drops charges against abortion doc

By ROXANA HEGEMAN, Associated Press Writer
Sat Dec 23, 2:24 AM ET

WICHITA, Kan. - Kansas' attorney general, a vocal abortion opponent, charged a well-known abortion provider with illegally performing late-term abortions, but a Sedgwick County judge on Friday threw out the charges after less than a day.

Judge Paul W. Clark dismissed the charges against Dr. George Tiller at the request of Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston, who said her office had not been consulted by Attorney General Phill Kline.

US tests call-up system but denies return to conscription

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Saturday December 23, 2006
The Guardian

The Bush administration is planning a test run of America's emergency military call-up, stoking speculation about a return to a draft at a time when the White House is considering sending more troops to Iraq.

The secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, provided further evidence that the administration was leaning towards sending more troops to Iraq, acknowledging the high financial and human toll of the war so far, and indicating there would be further costs to bear.

White House, Joint Chiefs At Odds on Adding Troops

By Robin Wright and Peter Baker

Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 19, 2006; Page A01

The Bush administration is split over the idea of a surge in troops to Iraq, with White House officials aggressively promoting the concept over the unanimous disagreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intense debate.

Sending 15,000 to 30,000 more troops for a mission of possibly six to eight months is one of the central proposals on the table of the White House policy review to reverse the steady deterioration in Iraq. The option is being discussed as an element in a range of bigger packages, the officials said.

Program Widens School Funding Gap, Report Says

Rich States Are Found to Get More Than Poor Ones in $13 Billion Effort to Aid Low-Income Students

By Amit R. Paley, Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 21, 2006; Page A04

A $13 billion federal program to help students from low-income families has actually widened an education funding gap between rich and poor states, according to a study released yesterday.

The program, known as Title I, is part of a slew of federal, state and local policies that direct more resources to the nation's wealthiest children than to its poorest, the study concluded. It found that the highest-poverty school districts receive an average of $825 less each year per student in state and local funding than the wealthiest districts. It also found that state and local money often flows disproportionately to wealthy students within districts.

Watchdog says Berger hid classified papers

What an idiot...--Dictynna

By R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post | December 21, 2006

WASHINGTON -- On the evening of Oct. 2, 2003, former White House national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger stashed highly classified documents he had taken from the National Archives beneath a construction trailer at Ninth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW so that he could surreptitiously retrieve them later and take them to his office, according to a newly disclosed government investigation.

The documents he took detailed how the Clinton administration had responded to the threat of terrorist attacks at the end of 1999. Berger removed five copies of the same document without authorization and later used scissors to destroy three before placing them in his office trash, the National Archives inspector general wrote in a Nov. 4, 2005, report.

'Christian' Game Leaves Behind A Pile of Corpses

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com. Posted December 20, 2006.

The Left Behind video game encourages you to celebrate the birth of Jesus by wasting dozens of people at a time, using a variety of Christ-sanctioned weapons.

Left Behind: Eternal Forces allows you to command the tribulation force, uncover the truth about worldwide disappearances, and save as many people as possible from the antichrist.

Lead the Tribulation Force from the book series, including Rayford, Chloe, Buck and Bruce against Nicolae Carpathia -- the antichrist.

Defend yourselves from the forces of the antichrist. Engage in physical and spiritual warfare!

Contraception Saves Money and Marriages

By Cristina Page, TomPaine.com. Posted December 21, 2006.

Family planning has led to seismic change in our society, but not the kind of change the religious right would have you believe.

Listen to the apocalyptic rhetoric of the religious right and you'll find an important theme emerge: The introduction of contraception, which permits people to have sex for fun, is bound up with all of society's ills, from the imagined breakdown of the family to an undocumented surge in crimes against children. It's a cornerstone of right-wing thinking. And, no doubt, it's also the reason that not one pro-life group in the U.S. supports the use of contraception even though it's the only proven way to prevent abortion.

Sadly, most Americans seem afflicted by some strain of this prejudice. If they credit the pro-choice, birth control movement for anything, it's for the dubious honor of protecting vice. Planned Parenthood has never been tagged as a pro-family values group. A greater oversight has never been made.

Military Escalation: Bush Can't Kick the Habit

By Robert Scheer, Truthdig. Posted December 21, 2006.

The Bush Administration is hooked on the drug of military might, with Gates calling for sending more troops to a war we can't win.

Here we go again: A new secretary of defense and yet another call for ending the war in Iraq by escalating it. What are they smoking in the Bush White House?

Even as government statistics now show marijuana is America's No. 1 cash crop, it is important to remember that militarism is the most dangerous drug threatening our sanity. Yet even formerly sober folks -- first Colin Powell and now new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates -- get a contact high from cozying up to the walking hallucinogen that is our president.

Digby: Comedy Is Tragedy Plus Time

Matt Yglesias wonders why Tom Friedman is speaking in stupid riddles. (If I had a nickel for every time I've asked myself that question...)

In this particular case he can't figure out what Friedman means when he says:

"Do you think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line?"

Digby: Mission Accomplished

As I was reading the various stories today about escalating the war and increasing the size of the military, I came across this:

Admiral Kelly, Captain Card, officers and sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln, my fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.

Digby: Unaffordable

Fred Barnes just said that it's not true that the joint chiefs unanimously oppose an escalation of the war --- it's that they are afraid Bush won't send enough troops to get the job done and that if it's a temporary escalation, the whole place will fall apart after we pull those troops back out.

He didn't think those were important differences of opinion, naturally, because he has once again cast his lot with Junior, but really, these are huge and serious concerns.

Digby: Scarlet Barcode

I've been thinking a lot lately about how the busybody culture seems to be on the uptick. It's not just the Schiavo stuff, which is the worst of it in that it featured the president himself flying back to Washington in the dead of night to sign special legislation. It's more than that and it has to do with the religious right,corporations and government all working together (and sometimes using modern technology) to regulate personal behavior. I no like.

You have moral scolds and personal responsibility hypocrites and authoritarians and rapacious business interests that are determined, for a variety of reasons, to erase the idea of personal privacy on the one hand and the idea of redemption and reinvention on the other. Combined with a breathlessly intrusive tabloid media (dripping with hypocrisy and phony sanctimony) and you have a recipe for some very unpleasant social changes.

Digby: Dick or Peter?

Remember how our president used to say this stuff all the time?

It's not the kind of war that we're used to in America. The Greatest Generation was used to storming beachheads. Baby boomers such as myself, were used to getting caught in a quagmire of Vietnam where politics made decisions more than the military sometimes. Generation X was able to watch technology right in front of their TV screens -- you know, burrow into concrete bunkers in Iraq and blow them up.

Digby: Brownback Mountain

You cannot make this stuff up:

Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, who blocked the confirmation of a woman to the federal bench because she attended a same-sex commitment ceremony for the daughter of her long-time neighbors, says he will now allow a vote on the nomination.

Digby: As The Kewl Kidz Turn

I can understand the press being interested in the idea of what Bill Clinton's role would be in a Hillary Clinton white house. It makes sense. There's never before been a case where an ex-president might be married to a current one. But someone becoming president eight years after a close family member left the white house isn't exactly unprecedented now is it, so it's not so freakish that we can't imagine it. In fact, one could even say that it was once considered a benefit --- all that wise counsel from "grown-ups" and all.

Digby: Doomed To Repeat It

A lot of people are talking about this call by Juan Cole for Bush to fire Elliot Abrams, and for very good reason. It's a great idea, but since it took six years for him to dump Don Rumsfeld, I'm not holding my breath.

Digby: S'cuse Us, Yer Highness

Considering that I've been writing about aristocracy a lot these days, this is actually kind of amusing:

To: The Honourable Senator Olympia Snowe (Republican, Maine) The Honourable Senator John D. Rockefeller (Democrat, West Virginia)

Madame, Sir,

Uphold Free Speech About Climate Change Or Resign

The US Constitution guarantees the right of free speech. It is inappropriate for elected Senators such as yourselves to suggest that any person should refrain from exercising that right, as you have done in your letter of October 27 to the CEO of ExxonMobil.

Digby: Breaking Away

I think everyone knows I'm a godless hippie and all, but I am fascinated by the subjects of politics and history so naturally I find myself constantly reading about religion. It's all related.

So this story by Bruce Wilson at Talk to Action about the Episcopalian break-away over gay rights piques my interest:

Yesterday, seven Virginia Episcopal churches including two of the largest and wealthiest in the American Episcopal Communion voted to break away and, as a New York Times story written prior to the vote put it, "report to the powerful archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, an outspoken opponent of homosexuality who supports legislation in his country that would make it illegal for gay men and lesbians to form organizations, read gay literature or eat together in a restaurant." " Commentor Jim Naughton, who writes the "Daily Episcopalian", noted "this no longer seems to be a debate about the proper role of gay and lesbians Christians in the Church, but about the moral legitimacy of rolling back human rights for minorities"...

Corporatists vs. Racists (and Labor is Left Behind)

by Thom Hartmann

The corporatist Republicans ("amnesty!") are fighting with the racist Republicans ("fence!"), and it provides an opportunity for progressives to step forward with a clear solution to the immigration problem facing America.

Both the corporatists and the racists are fond of the mantra, "There are some jobs Americans won't do." It's a lie.

Americans will do virtually any job if they're paid a decent wage. This isn't about immigration - it's about economics. Industry and agriculture won't collapse without illegal labor, but the middle class is being crushed by it.

Scrooge & Marley, Inc. -- The True Conservative Agenda

by Thom Hartmann

"That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone."
--Thomas Jefferson to Horatio Gates, 1798.

There is nothing "normal" about a nation having a middle class, even though it is vital to the survival of democracy.

As twenty-three years of conservative economic policies have now shown millions of un- and underemployed Americans, what's "normal" in a "free and unfettered" economy is the rapid evolution of a small but fabulously wealthy ownership class, and a large but poor working class. In the entire history of civilization, outside of a small mercantilist class and the very few skilled tradesmen who'd managed to organize in guilds (the earliest unions) like the ancient Masons, the middle class was an aberration.

If a nation wants a middle class, it must define it, desire it, and work to both create and keep it.

Critics call EPA's new rule a loophole for big business

A new reporting rule, aimed to ease the burden on small firms, may instead help Ashland and other giant companies.

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

In a bid to trim the regulatory burden on small businesses, the Environmental Protection Agency is set to relax the rules on what toxic chemicals they have to report.

But in a twist, the EPA's newly revised Toxics Release Inventory rule will also make it possible for hundreds of large corporations to avoid reporting specific amounts of toxic chemicals they release into the air, land, or water, environmentalists warn.

Prosecutors Drop A.C.L.U. Subpoena in Document Fight

By ADAM LIPTAK

Federal prosecutors in New York yesterday withdrew a subpoena to the American Civil Liberties Union that had sought to retrieve all copies of a classified document.

In an opaque and defensive four-page letter to the judge in the case, the prosecutors said they were acting “in light of changed circumstances” and their determination that “the grand jury can obtain the evidence necessary to its investigation from other sources.”

Another factor may have played a role. A transcript of a closed hearing in the case that was unsealed yesterday suggested the government was going to lose.

The $2 Trillion Dollar War

A leading economist says the true cost of Iraq is far higher than President Bush claims -- and America will pay the price for decades to come.

CHARLES M. YOUNG

When America invaded Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration predicted that the war would turn a profit, paying for itself with increased oil revenues. So far, though, Congress has spent more than $350 billion on the conflict, including the $50 billion appropriated for 2007.

But according to one of the world's leading economists, that is just a fraction of what Iraq will actually wind up costing American taxpayers. Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, estimates the true cost of the war at$2.267 trillion. That includes the government's past and future spending for the war itself ($725 billion), health care and disability benefits for veterans ($127 billion), and hidden increases in defense spending ($160 billion). It also includes losses the economy will suffer from injured vets ($355 billion) and higher oil prices ($450 billion).

ISG: Defeat With Honor

by CHRISTIAN PARENTI

[posted online on December 18, 2006]

Having read the national bestselling paperback The Iraq Study Group Report, I am not so convinced by much of what I am reading about it from writers on the left. Many progressives have interpreted the document's real message as a call for "Stay the Course Lite" or as a not-so-cloaked argument for privatizing Iraq's massive petroleum reserves. (Of course the centrality of oil in all of this should never be in doubt, but the situation in Iraq has spun out of control in ways that go far beyond privatization schemes. And of course the ISGR is predicated on salvaging US imperial power, redeploying it and rebuilding. Pointing out such things is like "discovering" that the sun again came up in the east.)

Nor are the pundits of the gray center getting it: They seem bogged down in the report's seventy-nine suggestions. Shift US troops to advisory roles? Will Iran come to the table in good faith?

Federal Biologist Faces Firing For E-Mailing Environmentalists

— Bureau of Reclamation Cites “Subversive” Behavior in Revealing Agency Misdeeds

Washington, DC — The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has proposed to fire a biologist after finding e-mails he had sent to environmentalists and to other agencies, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). In its letter of proposed termination, the agency alleged the “subversive” activity of communicating with “environmental organizations which are opposed to Reclamation generally and adversarial in nature” justifies immediate removal.

Charles (Rex) Wahl, a GS-12 Environmental Specialist, has been on paid administrative leave for the past three months while the agency continues to ponder his fate. Shortly after Wahl was notified of his proposed firing on September 18th, the Bureau of Reclamation also dismissed his wife Cherie from a temporary clerk-typist position.

Robert Gates Lines Up with Bush

By Robert Parry
December 19, 2006

In early December, when Senate Democrats politely questioned Robert M. Gates and then voted unanimously to confirm him as Defense Secretary, they bought into the conventional wisdom that Gates was a closet dove who would help guide the United States out of George W. Bush's mess in Iraq.

The thinking was that Gates, a former member of the Iraq Study Group, would represent the views of James Baker and other "realists" from George H.W. Bush's administration. Hillary Clinton and other Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee praised Gates for his "candor" when he acknowledged the obvious, that the war in Iraq wasn't being won.

Since the Gates confirmation vote on Dec. 6, however, Bush and Gates have signaled that they have no intention of extricating the U.S. military from the Iraq quagmire. They still insist on nothing short of "victory" or "success," no matter how unlikely those ends and no matter how much blood must be spilled over the next two years to avert defeat.

FDL Book Salon: Whistling Past Dixie

By: Digby

(Today we'll be discussing "Whistling Past Dixie" by Tom Schaller, who will be joining us in the comments– JH)

It seems as if I've been thinking about southern politics all of my life. The truth is that since the founding, everyone who has ever been involved in American politics has thought about it their whole lives. The struggle over politics and culture and regional pride in the south is America's story — it is us and we are it, no matter where we live.

The day after the 2004 election we all looked at the electoral map and knew that we were now dealing with a rock solid Republican south. The realignment that had been in the works since the 1960's was complete. (In fact it was almost exactly the same electoral map of 1860, with the parties reversed.) The south has pretty much voted as a bloc from the very beginning. And it is also a fact that the south is the most conservative region in the country, always has been. (Even FDR had to agree to keep civil rights off the menu — and once the crisis of the depression passed, the Dixiecrats immediately got restless. That coalition forged in the depression was always on a collision course with itself.)

The Highwaymen

News: Why you could soon be paying Wall Street investors, Australian bankers, and Spanish builders for the privilege of driving on American roads.

By Daniel Schulman with James Ridgeway

January 1, 2007

"the road is one succession of dust, ruts, pits, and holes." So wrote Dwight D. Eisenhower, then a young lieutenant colonel, in November 1919, after heading out on a cross-country trip with a convoy of Army vehicles in order to test the viability of the nation's highways in case of a military emergency. To this description of one major road across the west, Eisenhower added reports of impassable mud, unstable sand, and wooden bridges that cracked beneath the weight of the trucks. In Illinois, the convoy "started on dirt roads, and practically no more pavement was encountered until reaching California."

With Democrats in control, Yucca project may be doomed

By DAVID WHITNEY, McClatchy Newspapers

A few years ago, the plan to store the nation's nuclear waste in Nevada seemed all but certain. Congress decided that highly radioactive waste from commercial nuclear-power plants, which takes centuries to decay, needed to be stored underground. And it reaffirmed by wide margins in 2002 that Yucca Mountain, 100 miles from Las Vegas, was the place to build such a repository.

New York Charter School Association, Completely Bought and Paid For

Filed under: General, Charter School, Labor — Leo Casey @ 5:47 pm

Long time readers of Edwize may recall that on a number of different occasions, we have written about how the UFT and Randi Weingarten have reached out, in public and in private, to the charter school community in New York. [The discussion is summarized here.] We offered to support an increase in the cap of charter schools for New York City, provided that it was accompanied by labor rights for teachers working in charter schools, so that they could freely choose to be represented by a union. We even suggested ways in which charter school issues such as full funding could be addressed.

In quest for Black votes, Republicans spin their wheels

While Black voters continue to reject the Republican Party, conservative Black ministers such as Bishop Harry R. Jackson are looking to Black mega-churches for GOP converts

Despite the calculated outreach efforts by the Bush Administration -- spearheaded by Ken Mehlman, the former head of the Republican National Committee -- to turn the Black vote, exit polling from the 2006 election showed that close to 90 percent of Black voters stayed firmly with Democratic Party candidates. And, although the GOP fielded what they thought were several attractive Black candidates for state-wide races around the country -- former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Lynn Swann ran for governor in Pennsylvania, Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele contended for that state's vacated Senate seat, and Ohio's Secretary of State, and longtime party activist, Kenneth Blackwell was that state's GOP gubernatorial candidate -- the Party failed to win any of those contests. (Swann received 13 percent of the Black vote; Steele received 25 percent; and Ohio's Blackwell received only 20 percent of the Black vote.)

Frank Rich: Mary Cheney’s Bundle of Joy

--The New York Times, December 17, 2006

It's not the least of John McCain’s political talents that he comes across as a paragon of straight talk even when he isn’t talking straight. So it was a surprise to see him reduced to near-stammering on ABC’s “This Week” two Sundays after the election. The subject that brought him low was the elephant in the elephants’ room, or perhaps we should say in their closet: homosexuality.

Senator McCain is no bigot, and his only goal was to change the subject as quickly as possible. He kept repeating two safe talking points for dear life: he opposes same-sex marriage (as does every major presidential aspirant in both parties) and he is opposed to discrimination. But because he had endorsed a broadly written Arizona ballot initiative that could have been used to discriminate against unmarried domestic partners, George Stephanopoulos wouldn’t let him off the hook.

NSA Wiretapping: One Year Old Today

By Jeralyn, Section War on Terror
Posted on Sun Dec 17, 2006 at 05:41:00 AM EST

Who knows how long Bush's NSA warrantless wiretapping has been going on, but it was a year ago today that Bush 'fessed up to it:

On Dec. 17, 2005, Bush publicly acknowledged for the first time he had authorized the NSA to monitor, without approval from a judge, phone calls and e-mails that come into or originate in the U.S. and involve people the government suspects of having terrorist links.

Blessed by a U.S. Official, China Will Buy 4 Nuclear Reactors

By KEITH BRADSHER

Published: December 18, 2006

HONG KONG, Dec. 17 — China will buy four Westinghouse nuclear reactors in a deal that shows the continued attractiveness of American technology, but may also stir worries in Washington that the United States is selling its competitive advantage one industry at a time.

Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman of the United States and Ma Kai, the minister of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, signed a memorandum of understanding for the reactors in Beijing on Saturday. The deal calls for the state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation to buy the reactors from Westinghouse Electric, which the Toshiba Corporation, based in Tokyo, bought earlier this year.

It Wasn't Feminism That Killed the Neanderthals

By Caryl Rivers, Women's eNews. Posted December 18, 2006.

Anthropologists who suggest early humans survived by dint of separate gender roles are grabbing headlines, displaying the media's fondness for evidence -- however dubious -- of the species being hardwired for male dominance.

Did Homo sapiens survive because they were a prehistoric version of "Leave It to Beaver," while Neanderthals perished because they practiced an early brand of feminism?

Did unisex hunting doom the big bipeds, while male Homo sapiens played the part of Ice Age Ward Cleaver, marching off to hunt big game while June tidied up the cave in her pearls? Did this behavior ensure that humans would take over the world?

Torture Is Now Part of the American Soul

By George Monbiot, The Guardian. Posted December 18, 2006.

You might have imagined that every possible means of inflicting pain had already been devised. But never underestimate the human capacity for invention. United States interrogators have found a new way of destroying a human being.

After thousands of years of practice, you might have imagined that every possible means of inflicting pain had already been devised. But you should never underestimate the human capacity for invention. United States interrogators, we now discover, have found a new way of destroying a human being.

In early December, defense lawyers acting for Jose Padilla, a US citizen detained as an "enemy combatant," released a video showing a mission fraught with deadly risk -- taking him to the prison dentist. A group of masked guards in riot gear shackled his legs and hands, blindfolded him with black-out goggles and shut off his hearing with headphones, then marched him down the prison corridor.

Living coral reefs provide better protection from tsunami waves

Healthy coral reefs provide their adjacent coasts with substantially more protection from destructive tsunami waves than do unhealthy or dead reefs, a Princeton University study suggests.

Initially spurred by the tsunami that devastated the coastlines of the Indian Ocean two years ago, a team of scientists developed the first-ever computer model of a tsunami strike against a reef-bounded shoreline, using a volcanic island as an example. The model demonstrates that healthy reefs offer the coast at least twice as much protection as dead reefs. The finding provides the first quantitative confirmation of a widely held theory regarding the value of living coral reefs as a defense against tsunami waves, which are often generated by powerful undersea earthquakes.

Digby: It's Important To Save The Frog

In keeping with the usual Saturday night at the movies here on Hullabaloo, I just watched An Inconvenient Truth and I am here to tell you that if you ever thought Al Gore was a boring has-been, this film will prove otherwise. It isn't that he's any less stiff or formal than he ever was. He's the same guy I always saw --- earnest, decent and human. But this film shows us a person who is doing something that so transcends any of the usual political and media calculations that he seems almost serene.

Digby: What A Shame

There's been quite an outcry in China (and here) about the recent public shaming of prostitutes. Everyone seems to acknowledge that there is something inherently discomfiting about this use public humiliation.

But it reminded me of a famous essay by someone you don't usually associate with totalitarian practices --- the godfather of communitarianism, Amitai Etzioni, who wrote some twenty years ago:

Public humiliation is a surprisingly effective and low-cost way of deterring criminals and expressing the moral order of a community. It is used by a few judges, but much too sparingly. Some jurisdictions publish the names of “Johns” who are caught frequenting prostitutes.

Digby: Meanwhile, Back At The Gulag

We knew this, but it's still good that the AP is investigating and reporting it:

The Pentagon called them "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth," sweeping them up after Sept. 11 and hauling them in chains to a U.S. military prison in southeastern Cuba.

Since then, hundreds of the men have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to other countries, many of them for "continued detention."

And then set free.

Digby: Up Escalator

Bill Richardson uses the "e" word and calls out St. John:

"The leading advocate for escalating the war is Senator John McCain. I have served with John in Congress and I respect him. But John McCain is wrong, dead wrong to think that we can solve Iraq's political crisis through military escalation."

Digby: Why Would They Do That?

Kevin Drum and Steve Benen wonder why the wingnuts haven't come up with anything good with which to smear Obama. Good question.

It reminds me of some earnest and straightforward analysis Bill Bennett dispensed earlier today:

BENNETT: Well, I mean, as a Republican partisan, let me just say that, for sure, I would rather face Al Gore than Hillary Clinton...

Digby: Illuminating Yawp

For days I have been half-heartedly trying to draft a post about Christopher Hitchens' flaccid and shrunken sense of self-awareness, but couldn't quite work up any enthusiasm.

Digby: Armistice

I'm listening to Rick Warren ("A Purpose Driven Life") talking about how people everywhere are tired of partisanship and want civility. He says that he thinks it's time for both sides to stop being mean to each other --- and he says that base politics are completely out of fashion.Isn't that terrific? We can all put the partisan ugliness of the past two decades behind us a work together.

But I can't help but wonder just a little bit about why all these people never said anything about this when the Republicans held a majority in both houses?

Digby: Natural Order

Most of you probably saw this already over at Kos, but I think it's worth taking another look at. It is interesting that nobody has mentioned this before:

Democrats now have 233 seats in the 110th congress, more than Republicans have had since 1952. The Republican "revolution" never secured this large a majority in the House.

Digby: Fuggedaboudit

Oh for gawd's sake. Why does anyone even pretend that Bush is going to listen to reason?

The president signaled Wednesday that neither the study group's pessimistic assessment nor the bleak situation in Iraq nor the results of the midterm elections have shaken his belief that victory in Iraq is possible.

Digby: Aid And Comfort

So the White House is having a little fit that some Senators are going to Syria. I guess they feel their diplomatic efforts have been so successful that they can't take a chance of anyone mucking things up:

The White House on Thursday stepped up its pressure on senators who are engaged in direct talks with Syrian leaders, saying their trips to Damascus risk undermining U.S. efforts to encourage democracy in the Middle East.

Digby: Raiders Of The Lost Wingnuts

I think if there is one thing I find more infuriating than anything else in politics it's obvious, phony spin that fools no one but which everybody nonetheless pretends is normal discourse. It's insults the intelligence.

Here's an example. Last night the Lehrer Newshour did a report on the meat packing immigration raids. They quoted Michael Chertoff at the big press conference saying:

Now, this is not only a case about illegal immigration, which is bad enough; it's a case about identity theft and violation of the privacy rights and the economic rights of innocent Americans.

Digby: Oiling The Hinges

Glenn Greenwald offers a fascinating anatomy of a small wingnut feeding frenzy today as he recounts the breathless, overwrought coverage on the right wing blogs (and National Review) of the bizarre story that the Clinton Administration had spied on Princess Diana. He had earlier noted when the story first broke that the conservatives instantly formed the theory that this somehow invalidated liberal arguments against the illegal spying. (I guess it's logical that conservatives would think that legally spying on British royalty in Paris without a warrant is the same as illegally spying on an American citizen in Cincinnati without one. They love the idea of monarchy.)

Digby: Good For Only One Thing

The Republicans (and some Democrats) have made a fetish of describing the warrantless surveillance programs as necessary to catch terrorists before they hit. They can't tell us anything about what these programs actually do --- it's quite clear there is more to it than "listening in on the phone calls of terrorists." One of the things that most people agree upon is that it includes some sort of datamining and I suspect that when this is explained to some of these congressmen and Senators, their eyes glaze over in the same way they do when anybody talks about the intertubes. They are, to be kind, very easily hoodwinked with technobabble.

Digby: Whiplash

It's amazing to realize that Lucianne Goldberg's offspring gets paid good money to write things like this in the Los Angeles Times.

Following on this new hagiography of free-market guru and all around successful leader Augusto Pinochet, Goldberg bizarrely implies that "the left" is agitating for an Iraqi Fidel, and argues that Iraq would be better off with an Iraqi Pinochet instead. He actually says, "if only Ahmad Chalabi had been such a man."

After all, Pinochet may have tortured and killed his political opponents for years, but it all came out ok in the end after he left office.

Digby: Blunderbuss Express

St. John wants to escalate the Iraq war and shut down the internet, too. What a guy.

Millions of commercial Web sites and personal blogs would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000, if a new proposal in the U.S. Senate came into law.

The legislation, drafted by Sen. John McCain and obtained by CNET News.com, would also require Web sites that offer user profiles to delete pages posted by sex offenders.

Digby: Removing The Stinger

Maureen Dowd does a spectacular Queen Bee Kill today of both Clinton and Obama, basically calling her a sexless schlub and him a metrosexual cipher. With her usual original insight she notes that Clinton is a woman and Obama is black and then ends the piece with this darling little observation:

So there is a second question, perhaps one that will trump race and gender. It's about whether he's tough and she's human.

Poputonian: Collective Conscience

The founders of the United States dealt with negative societal forces in different ways. To control the power of government, they established three coequal branches: executive, judicial, and legislative. To ensure freedom of religion, they separated church and state. To reduce the power of the military, they placed it under civilian control. But the founders understandably missed one other major threat to society: the corporation. There is a reason why they didn't foresee this threat. In their day, corporations were public charters that…

…could only exist for a limited time, could not make any political contributions, and could not own stock in other companies. Their owners were liable for criminal acts committed by the corporation and the doctrine of limited liability (shielding investors from responsibility for harm and loss caused by the corporation) did not yet exist. [Drutman essay: The History of the Corporation]

Digby: It's Getting Hot In Here

So, McCain has Silvestre Reyes and Joe Lieberman backing his "plan" to send in 20,000 more troops and now we hear the president is seriously considering it.

I will merely reprise my earlier post on this from last month:

I do not want to see anybody sent into that meat grinder and I'm not sure they can do it. But if they do, it will stab St. John right in the back. His rationale for winning in 2008 hinges on his calling for more troops and the Bush administration not listening. (Whoever wins the Republican nomination in 08 must run against both Bush and the Democrats.)

Digby: Fashion Police State

Kevin Drum discusses the media's unnatural obsession with certain politicians' sartorial choices, such as Jeff Greenfield's bizarre notion that Barack Obama is apeing the style of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (Really.)

He writes:

Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy "Armani Suit" Pelosi can all sympathize. (And yes, as near as I can tell, "Armani Suit" must be Pelosi's middle name or something. Not a profile goes by that doesn't mention her attachment to Armani.)

Digby: Truth And Consequences

Back when George W. Bush was riding high Bob Woodward asked him how history would judge the war. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead." He was a man of action, then, confident that he was ordained by God to rid the world of evil and that everyone worshipped him. (That's the same interview where he says he doesn't ask his father for advice because he appeals to a "higher father.")

My, how things have changed. Bush is now counting on history to redeem him, and being the shallow little nitwit he is, he will probably rest easy into his dotage believing that no matter how much his presidency may have screwed up the world, ultimately everything will work out. It's a shame about all the dead bodies, but sometimes that's the price others have to pay for the priviledge of getting the American way of life.

Digby: Not Quite Sure

Food for thought:

Multinational surveys have often reported that Americans are much more likely to believe in God than people in most other developed countries, particularly in Europe. However, a new Harris Poll finds that 42 percent of all U.S. adults say they are not "absolutely certain" there is a God, including 15 percent who are "somewhat certain," 11 percent who think there is probably no God and 16 percent who are not sure.

Digby: Not Our Problem

Atrios links to this article which explores the idea of the US accepting Iraqi refugees. I've thought about this quite a lot over the last two weeks; as we contemplate the consequences of the violent, chaotic occupation that led to their civil war, it seems to me this is the least we could do.