Federal Prosecutors Widen Pursuit Of Death Penalty as States Ease Off

By CHRISTOPHER CONKEY and GARY FIELDS

February 3, 2007; Page A1

At a time when many states are backing away from capital punishment, the federal government is aggressively pursuing -- and winning -- more death sentences, including in jurisdictions that traditionally oppose them.

On Tuesday, federal prosecutors in New York persuaded a jury to give a death sentence to Ronell Wilson, a 24-year-old man convicted of killing two undercover detectives by shooting each in the back of the head. The decision -- the first time in more than 50 years that a federal jury in New York agreed to sentence someone to death -- marked something of a milestone for the Justice Department in its continuing effort to apply the death penalty more evenly across the country.

A Failed Cover-Up

What the Libby Trial Is Revealing

By David Ignatius

Friday, February 2, 2007; Page A15

Why was the White House so nervous in the summer of 2003 about the CIA's reporting on alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Niger to build a nuclear bomb? That's the big question that runs through the many little details that have emerged in the perjury trial of Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The trial record suggests a simple answer: The White House was worried that the CIA would reveal that it had been pressured in 2002 and early 2003 to support administration claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and that in the Niger case, the CIA had tried hard to resist this pressure. The machinations of Cheney, Libby and others were an attempt to weave an alternative narrative that blamed the CIA.

The Most Important Church-State Decision You Never Heard of

By Rob Boston, Church and State. Posted February 3, 2007.

Everson v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court decision that kicked off the culture wars, marks its 60th anniversary.

Television preacher Pat Robertson can barely contain his anger when he talks about a 1947 Supreme Court decision calledEverson v. Board of Education.

Robertson attacked the ruling on his "700 Club" several times last year. Everson came out of anti-Catholicism, he sputtered in January of 2006. Four months later, he blasted the decision because in it the justices "relied on a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists talking about a wall of separation that isn't in the Constitution."

Bush: Medicare, Social Sec. must change

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer

President Bush, poised to submit his new budget to Congress next week, warned Saturday that unless programs like Medicare and Social Security are changed, future generations will face tax hikes, government red ink or huge cuts in benefits.

Controlling spending requires the government to address the unsustainable growth of entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Bush said in his weekly radio address. He said spending for the programs is growing faster than inflation, faster than the U.S. economy and faster than taxpayers' ability to pay for them.

Paul Krugman: Missing Molly Ivins

Molly Ivins, the Texas columnist, died of breast cancer on Wednesday. I first met her more than three years ago, when our book tours crossed. She was, as she wrote, “a card-carrying member of The Great Liberal Backlash of 2003, one of the half-dozen or so writers now schlepping around the country promoting books that do not speak kindly of Our Leader’s record.”

I can’t claim to have known her well. But I spent enough time with her, and paid enough attention to her work, to know that obituaries that mostly stressed her satirical gifts missed the main point. Yes, she liked to poke fun at the powerful, and was very good at it. But her satire was only the means to an end: holding the powerful accountable.

Iraq at Risk of Further Strife, Intelligence Report Warns

By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus

Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 2, 2007; Page A01

A long-awaited National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, presented to President Bush by the intelligence community yesterday, outlines an increasingly perilous situation in which the United States has little control and there is a strong possibility of further deterioration, according to sources familiar with the document.

In a discussion of whether Iraq has reached a state of civil war, the 90-page classified NIE comes to no conclusion and holds out prospects of improvement. But it couches glimmers of optimism in deep uncertainty about whether the Iraqi leaders will be able to transcend sectarian interests and fight against extremists, establish effective national institutions and end rampant corruption.

Brzezinski's showstopper

February 1, 2007, 3:05 pm

Posted by Grant Gallicho

Here is the must-read statement delivered by Zbigniew Brzezinski in today's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. It's long, I realize, but stick with it. Take it all in.

Your hearings come at a critical juncture in the U.S. war of choice in Iraq, and I commend you and Senator Lugar for scheduling them.

It is time for the White House to come to terms with two central realities:

1. The war in Iraq is a historic, strategic, and moral calamity. Undertaken under false assumptions, it is undermining America's global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America's moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.

2. Only a political strategy that is historically relevant rather than reminiscent of colonial tutelage can provide the needed framework for a tolerable resolution of both the war in Iraq and the intensifying regional tensions.

Matt Taibbi: The Low Post: The Scum Also Rises

Fox kicks off the witch-hunting season

"Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?"

-- From Hannity.com, Monday night, long after the "madrassa" story had been debunked

Nearly two years before the next presidential election, we've already set the tone: Even the most outrageous media fictions about candidates are apparently going to go unpunished.

At least that was my thought, after watching last week's unfolding of the Obama-madrassa scandal -- the unofficial starting gun for the Great Slime Race, as the 2008 presidential campaign will someday be known. I found the entire affair puzzling. I know for sure that if I made a journalistic "mistake" of that magnitude, I'd be spending the rest of my life picking strawberries in the Siberian tundra. Most print journalists I know would expect the same thing; the legal ramifications alone of intentionally going to print with a story that missed by that much would guarantee that 80 cents out of every dollar you made for the next ten years would go to the victim of your libel. That's unless you're Tom Friedman and you can use congenital idiocy as a defense in court.

Americablog: Religious right misleads its followers in massive email blitz about weekend peace march

by John in DC - 2/01/2007 09:29:00 AM

What a surprise. Two of the largest and angriest groups of the religious right, the American Family Association (known for its failed boycotts of American companies that support civil rights) and the Family Research Council (known for its obsessive homophobia), were caught misleading their followers this week in an effort to denigrate the United States Capitol Police, the folks risking their lives to protect our members of Congress.

In separate emails, the AFA and FRC defamed the United States Capitol police by claiming that they knowingly permitted a small handful of individuals to deface the US Capitol during this weekend's anti-Iraq-war protest. AFA and FRC even urged their followers to contact Speaker Pelosi's office to complain about the apparently deficient police officers defending our nation's capitol. (One group even suggested that perhaps Pelosi herself had ordered the police to allow the graffiti!)

2006 Personal Savings Drop to 74-Yr. Low

Feb 1, 8:56 AM (ET)

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER

WASHINGTON (AP) - People once again spent everything they made and then some last year, pushing the personal savings rate to the lowest level since the Great Depression more than seven decades ago.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the savings rate for all of 2006 was a negative 1 percent, meaning that not only did people spend all the money they earned but they also dipped into savings or increased borrowing to finance purchases. The 2006 figure was lower than a negative 0.4 percent in 2005 and was the poorest showing since a negative 1.5 percent savings rate in 1933 during the Great Depression.

Wal-Mart pays itself rent, gets large tax breaks

02/01/2007 @ 9:17 am

Filed by Michael Roston

Wal-Mart, the nation's largest employer and the world's biggest retailer, is regularly paying itself rent and using the transaction to decrease the taxes it pays to state governments, according to a report in this morning's Wall Street Journal.

The article by Jesse Drucker shows that Wal-Mart has saved hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes in 25 states, and may not be the only company using the practice. Drucker shows that state governments are finally getting wise and working to close a complicated tax loophole that the federal government discontinued years ago.

Judiciary Chairman Conyers to probe signing statements

02/01/2007 @ 10:57 am

Filed by RAW STORY

"Asserting that President Bush’s frequent use of 'signing statements' to interpret federal laws have allowed the executive branch to effectively thwart Congressional intent, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) said Wednesday that his panel will launch a formal investigation into the practice," the paid-restricted Roll Call reports Wednesday.

Webbcast

By Hendrik Hertzberg
The New Yorker

Monday 29 January 2007

For more than forty years, it has been the custom for the President's State of the Union address to be followed by a formal televised response. In 1966, the leaders of the Republican minority in Congress, the florid Senator Everett Dirksen and the stolid Representative Gerald Ford, appointed themselves to deliver the first of these, after one of Lyndon Johnson's lordly extravaganzas. The Ev and Jerry Show, though charming in a ramshackle way, was less than a monster hit, and nearly all the subsequent post-SOTU presentations have likewise been little noted nor long remembered. Senator Bob Dole, with characteristic bleak wit, evaluated his response to President Clinton's 1996 address thusly: "I gave a fireside chat the other night, and the fire went out." It was different this time. This time the fire was on, and it was the rebuttal that had something truthful to say about the state of the union.

James Webb is a writer, the highly acclaimed author of six densely textured novels of men in battle. As of last Tuesday evening he had been a United States senator for all of twenty days. He was an unusual choice to deliver the Democrats' reply to President Bush's address, and, as it turned out, a canny one. Normally, the replier speeds through a miniature of the traditional SOTU laundry list, administering quick shoulder massages to as many interest groups as possible. Webb, pugnacious of temperament, chose instead to use his nine minutes to speak of "two areas where our respective parties have largely stood in contradiction." The first was the ballooning of economic inequality at home. The second was Iraq, where, he said, this country has patiently endured a mismanaged war for nearly four years. Many, including myself, warned even before the war began that it was unnecessary, that it would take our energy and attention away from the larger war against terrorism, and that invading and occupying Iraq would leave us strategically vulnerable in the most violent and turbulent corner of the world.

The Sunni-Shiite Folly

The Bush administration's cockeyed strategy to promote sectarian conflict in the Middle East.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2007, at 6:59 PM ET

The Iranians are expanding their presence in Iraq, the Saudis are cutting a separate deal with them to contain the strife in Lebanon, and who can blame either party?

Yes, as the AP reported Tuesday, this surge of Saudi-Iranian cooperation "could complicate Washington's efforts to isolate Tehran." But it is Bush's abandonment of diplomacy that has left the vacuum that the Saudis and Iranians are now trying to fill. And given the alternative of mayhem and anarchy, their new rapprochement might not be a bad thing.

Journalist Sy Hersh has harsh words for Bush

Kat Schmidt

Posted: 1/30/07

The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh closed out last week's symposium "The 'War on Terrorism': Where Do We Stand" with a scathing critique of President George W. Bush and his foreign policy in the Middle East.

"The fact of the matter is we have a government that will do what it wants to do for the next two years," he said. "The worst is yet to come. It's sort of like we're essentially powerless [and] just play it out."

One of the premier names in American investigative reporting, Hersh won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the 1968 My Lai massacre and helped break the story about U.S. prison abuses at Abu Ghraib in 2004. He previously spoke about Iraq at Tufts in 2004 and about the Iran-Contra Affair in 1988.

The Most Important Thing You Can Do To Stop Global Warming

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet. Posted February 1, 2007.

Evironmentalist Bill McKibben explains that forcing Congress to take action on climate change is the top priority. Fortunately, he has a plan.

It has been a winter for the record books in the Northeast and Midwest. People are golfing in Michigan instead of ice fishing, sap is running in Vermont, and cherry blossoms are blooming in Washington, D.C.

People are waking up to spring in January and the stark reality of climate change.

"Hurricane Katrina blew the door open and Al Gore walked through it with his movie," environmental writer Bill McKibben said. "Now we have to take that education and turn it into action."

Note to Progressives: Challenge Market Fundamentalism

By Ruth Rosen, AlterNet. Posted February 1, 2007.

If progressive causes are to get anywhere in the next Congress, we need to challenge the ingrained belief that the market can solve our problems.

Women have gained the potential of enormous power in DC with Nancy Pelosi elected as Speaker of the House. The Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues will grow to be perhaps the largest in Congress, but the question remains: how will these newly empowered women use their power?

Among the issues on the wish list of newly elected women, according to Women's eNews, are women's health, educational equity and sex trafficking, women in prison, and international domestic violence.

Iraqi, U.S. soldiers underestimated Soldiers of Heaven cult

By Richard Mauer
McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The ruins of the Soldiers of Heaven compound in Najaf yielded new evidence Tuesday that the religious cult had amassed huge wealth and weapons storehouses virtually under the noses of the Iraqi and U.S. militaries.

American soldiers confiscated perhaps as much as $10 million in U.S. currency from the compound, where the bodies of dead cultists still littered the ground.

The violent cult was largely wiped out Sunday in a fierce battle on its land a few miles north of Najaf after authorities learned that it planned to attack worshippers and Iraq's leading Shiite Muslim clerics during religious celebrations Tuesday. Security forces and provincial authorities said that 150 to 400 fighters had been killed, including the cult's leader, who claimed to be the "Hidden Imam" of Shiite theology.

The Most Feared Woman on Capitol Hill

By Linda Burstyn, Ms. Magazine. Posted January 31, 2007.

Corrupt politicians like Tom DeLay have complained miserably about Melanie Sloan and her ethics watchdog group -- so she must be doing something right.

A longer version of this article appears in Ms. Magazine.

If you paid close attention to the media lately, you would have heard many of the politicians who've been drowning in scandal pinning the blame for their problems on one woman -- as if the mere mention of her name would somehow float them to safety.

Charged with taking payoffs from Jack Abramoff's clients? Blame Melanie Sloan. Under FBI investigation for steering government business to your daughter? Blame Melanie Sloan. Indicted for accepting bribes of millions of dollars, antique furniture, cars, boats and houses? Blame Melanie Sloan.

New Fatherhood Initiative Leaves Some Dads in the Cold

By Amy DePaul, AlterNet. Posted January 31, 2007.

The Bush Administration's new initiative to improve fatherhood in America raises questions about how best to strengthen families: by encouraging parenting skills or by promoting marriage?

"What's up, man?"

It's rush hour on Beverly Boulevard in East Los Angeles. Cars whiz past noisily as a man strolls into a Latino community center and extends a warm greeting to his companeros. A few more guys soon wander in and plunk themselves on chairs and couches that form a circle, helping themselves to iced tea and pretzels on a tray.

Nestled in a row of storefront shops and offices, the Calmecac Youth Center offers an array of services to the surrounding community, among them educating young Latinos on STDs and birth control. At this moment, however, the talk is not about preventing pregnancy but rather being a good father. The center is the site of a class on fatherhood for Mexican-American men of a variety of ages, and it offers a window into recent efforts to improve fathering in America.

ExxonMobil's War on Science

By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., HuffingtonPost.com. Posted January 31, 2007.

With an elaborate network of phony think tanks and slick public relations firms, ExxonMobil has become today's Big Tobacco, defrauding the public and waging a war on science.

In a quarter-page advertorial in Thursday's New York Times, ExxonMobil launched a new greenwashing campaign to salvage its earned reputation as Earth's number one global warming villain.

For over a decade the giant oil company has waged a successful multi-million dollar propaganda campaign to deceive the public about global warming. Using phony think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, scientists-for-hire called biostitutes, slick public relations firms, and their indentured servants in the political process, they have intentionally defrauded the public by promoting the notion that global warming is a hoax or a sketchy theory that requires more study.

NY Times: Bush signs landmark executive order increasing power over federal agencies

01/29/2007 @ 8:50 pm

Filed by RAW STORY

President George W. Bush has given his administration a boost in how the government regulates key issues such as civil rights and the environment, The New York Times will report on its Tuesday front page.

The President "signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules that the federal government develops to regulate public health, safety," privacy and other issues, writes Robert Pear for the Times.

Report: FBI conducting sweeping Internet wiretaps that mirror warantless NSA surveillance

01/30/2007 @ 10:24 am

Filed by John Byrne

"The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed," according to a story posted Tuesday on ZDNet, a technology news website.

Agents engaging in investigations appear to be amassing huge databases of data on thousands of Internet users, rather than eyeing the activities of particular suspects -- similar to the sweeping approach employed by the National Security Agency. The NSA wiretaps program drew congressional uproar after it was revealed the program was taking place without supervision by a court.

Health Plan Deduction Cuts Social Security

By Elizabeth Auster
The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Saturday 27 January 2007

Washington - A little-noticed part of President Bush's new health insurance proposal could pose a sticky question: Is it worth getting a tax break for health coverage if it means you will end up with smaller Social Security checks when you retire?

Bush's proposal to create a tax deduction for health insurance, if enacted into law, could reduce Social Security benefits for many Americans because the deduction would apply not only to income taxes, but also to payroll taxes that go to Social Security. While most workers might welcome a cut in payroll taxes, the flip side is the less they pay into Social Security, the less they can collect when they retire.

Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihad

Founder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives

Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."

During a mid-December conference call Connerly allowed that he had scheduled visits to Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah during the upcoming months to get a handle on how many campaigns he might launch.

Reagan & the Salvadoran Baby Skulls

By Robert Parry
January 30, 2007

Ronald Reagan’s many admirers may find this idea offensive, but – given a new report by the Washington Post – it might be fitting to have a display at Reagan National Airport to show how Salvadoran baby skulls were used as candle holders and good luck charms. Perhaps the presentation could contain skeletal remains of Guatemalans and Nicaraguans, too.

It might be modeled after skeletons on display in Cambodia from the slaughters by the Khmer Rouge. After all, it was President Reagan – more than any other person – who justified and facilitated the barbarity that raged through Central America in the 1980s, claiming the lives of tens of thousands of peasants, clergy and students, men, women and children.

Reagan portrayed the bloody conflicts as a necessary front in the Cold War, but the Central American violence was always more about entrenched ruling elites determined to retain their privileges against impoverished peasants, including descendants of the region’s Maya Indians, seeking social, political and economic reforms.

One of the most notorious acts of brutality occurred in December 1981 in and around the Salvadoran town of El Mozote. The government’s Atlacatl Battalion – freshly trained and newly armed thanks to Reagan’s hard-line policies – systematically slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children.

Feingold To Chair Judiciary Hearing On Congress’s Power To End A War

January 25, 2007

Washington, D.C. – On Tuesday, January 30th, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold will chair a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing entitled, “Exercising Congress’s Constitutional Power to End a War.” Earlier this month, Feingold, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, became the first Senator to call on Congress to use its power of the purse to redeploy our troops safely from Iraq so that we can refocus on the global terrorist networks that threaten our national security. Feingold proposed this action after President George Bush announced plans to escalate our military involvement in Iraq despite the objections of members of both parties, military and foreign policy experts, and the American people.

Dan Froomkin: The Unraveling of Dick Cheney

By Dan Froomkin

Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, January 29, 2007; 12:18 PM

While Dick Cheney undoubtedly remains the most powerful vice president this nation has ever seen, it's becoming increasingly unclear whether anyone outside the White House believes a word he says.

Inside the West Wing, Cheney's influence remains considerable. In fact, nothing better explains Bush's perplexing plan to send more troops to Iraq than Cheney's neoconservative conviction that showing the world that we have the "stomach for the fight" is the most important thing -- even if it isn't accomplishing the things we're supposed to be fighting for. Even if it's backfiring horribly.

Wal-Mart's New Marketing Strategy Hides Dirty Practices

By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown. Posted January 30, 2007.

Wal-Mart is making over its image to cater to a more affluent crowd. But behind its increasingly upscale image are the same lowbrow business tactics.

You know that our world has turned totally topsy-turvy when Wal-Mart -- the low-price, bare-knuckle retailing behemoth known far and wide as the Bully of Bentonville for its ruthless corporate practices -- is suddenly putting on airs and positioning itself as (dare I say it?) metrosexual.

Yes, the world's largest and meanest merchandiser -- stung in the last few years by a grassroots rebellion of employees, small businesses, unions, neighborhood groups, environmentalists, and others that it has been so arrogantly stiffing -- is now straining to project a kinder and gentler image: urbane, upscale, green, socially responsible … even sensitive, for goodness sake. The image spiff-up comes as Wal-Mart executives have made a marketing decision to move from their suburban/rural base into cities, reaching out to a clientele that wants finer goods … and a more refined company.

Digby: Cheney's Strategery

I continue to be astounded by Dick Cheney's bizarre public behavior. He did an interview with Richard Wolffe at Newsweek last week and it was just as weird as the one he did with Wolf Blitzer.

The whole thing is delusional, but there are a couple of points that really must be highlighted for their sheer incoherence and wrongheadedness.

Digby: No Spit Zone

A bit more on the alleged spitting incident.

First of all, let me make it clear why this is a big deal. Most of you know that "spitting on veterans" is a big time hot button. We have been lucky to see very little hostility toward the troops during this war and I have seen no evidence that it is happening now. I think I speak for the vast majority of Americans when I say that we do not blame the soldiers and marines for what is happening and harbor no ill will toward them. We hold the political leaders who sent them over to that meat grinder responsible as is our right and responsibility as citizens.

Digby: More Spittle

The Cincinnatti Beacon found that people are picking up the Joshua "Zelig" Sparling spitting story as proof of the terrible treatment of veterans. One is a Vietnam Vet who recovered memories of his own spitting incident back in the 70's. (The Beacon also found that his story doesn't exactly add up --- as usual.)

Digby: Spitting Image

So the dirty, long haired hippies spit on wounded veterans yesterday. Isn't it just like them...

There were a few tense moments, however, including an encounter involving Joshua Sparling, 25, who was on crutches and who said he was a corporal with the 82nd Airborne Division and lost his right leg below the knee in Ramadi, Iraq. Mr. Sparling, who was not scheduled to speak, addressed the counterprotesters to voice his support for the administration's policies in Iraq.

Americablog: The Bush/right wing spin and smear machine: Cathie Martin on the inside, "The Insight" on the outside

by Joe in DC - 1/29/2007 09:53:00 AM

We're getting some real insight in to how the right wing, led by the White House press office, manipulates the media. Last week's testimony in the Libby trial by Cathie Martin, a top White House aide, showed how the Bush team plays the big name reporters, like Russert, for the fools they are. Martin is an ultimate Bush insider. Her husband, Kevin, is the Bush-appointed Chair of the Federal Communications Commission. Martin's trickery was analyzed this weekend by the Associated Press

No one served up spicier morsels than Cheney's former top press assistant. Cathie Martin described the craft of media manipulation - under oath and in blunter terms than politicians like to hear in public.

Daily Kos: The history of teaching (YKos)

by SDorn

Sat Jan 27, 2007 at 02:58:19 AM PST

This diary on the history of teaching is the third entry in the history of education series for the Education UpRising - Education for Democracy project. (See teacherken's key diary and earlier entries on the purposes of schooling and the history of school bureaucracy as well as last Saturday's diary on the most important lessons we learned.) Today I describe some key findings of historians about the history of teaching in two senses: the history of instruction and the history of teaching as an occupation.

Daily Kos: Universal Health Care Watch: State Level

by scott jones

Sat Jan 27, 2007 at 05:54:40 PM PST

After thorough research, I’ve compiled a list of meaningful health care reforms in all 50 states. Since 2004—and in the vacuum of leadership at the federal level—the states have taken the lead in a major way to ensure that all of their citizens have access to affordable health care. I invite you to read through the various plans in the fifty states and let me know what you think. Are there any reforms in your home state? What do you think of the plans? Which one is your favorite?

Daily Kos: Hurting Your Favorite Candidate (in 2 parts)

Part 1: The Importance of Not Pissing People Off

by lifelongactivist
Thu Jan 18, 2007 at 08:23:29 PM PST

In a posting today, Kos wrote:

“There will always be a number of people who aren't happy that I don't worship at the altar of their favorite candidate. Anything but blind worship is considered disrespect….Every election there's a crew that screams about biases and the like….Really, all the whining does neither you, nor your favorite guy any favors. It does the opposite -- it turns people off from your guy.”

I discuss this phenomenon of "activists influencing people AWAY from their cause" at length in my new book The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way (graciously reviewed on DK by both SusanG and OrangeClouds115).

Part 2: The Third Bitter Truth

by lifelongactivist
Sat Jan 27, 2007 at 07:51:09 PM PST

This is the second in a two part series on the fundamentals of effective activism, adapted from my book The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way, and written in response to a posting by Kos about how people who whine about how their candidate isn’t given fair exposure on Daily Kos, “[do] neither you, nor your favorite guy any favors. It does the opposite -- it turns people off from your guy.” UPDATE: Granny Doc just posted a powerful diary along the same theme here.

In the previous diary, I discussed the fundamentals of persuasion, focusing on two “bitter truths:” (1) “The success of your venture depends much less on the quality of whatever it is you are selling (including political candidates and social causes) than on the quality of the marketing and sales you use to sell it; and (2) "People buy a product (or candidate or cause) not because of its intrinsic qualities or characteristics, but because they believe it will either solve a problem or meet a need that they have."

So, did Bush ratfuck a FISA judge?

Submitted by lambert on Sun, 2007-01-28 01:14.

Department of When Foil is not Foily

It would be irresponsible not to speculate. LA Times:

On Thursday, Justice Department attorneys filed a motion at the 6th Circuit, asking the court to drop further consideration of ACLU vs NSA. [See Don’t pop the cork on the champagne yet.]

The lawsuit “no longer has any live significance,” said a brief filed by six department attorneys led by Solicitor General Paul D. Clement.

Translation: “Get over it. It’s time to move on.”

Paul Krugman: Who Was Milton Friedman?

1.

The history of economic thought in the twentieth century is a bit like the history of Christianity in the sixteenth century. Until John Maynard Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money in 1936, economics—at least in the English-speaking world—was completely dominated by free-market orthodoxy. Heresies would occasionally pop up, but they were always suppressed. Classical economics, wrote Keynes in 1936, "conquered England as completely as the Holy Inquisition conquered Spain." And classical economics said that the answer to almost all problems was to let the forces of supply and demand do their job.

But classical economics offered neither explanations nor solutions for the Great Depression. By the middle of the 1930s, the challenges to orthodoxy could no longer be contained. Keynes played the role of Martin Luther, providing the intellectual rigor needed to make heresy respectable. Although Keynes was by no means a leftist—he came to save capitalism, not to bury it—his theory said that free markets could not be counted on to provide full employment, creating a new rationale for large-scale government intervention in the economy.

Frank Rich: Hillary Clinton’s Mission Unaccomplished

Hillary Clinton has an answer to those who suspect that her “I’m in to win” Webcast last weekend was forced by Barack Obama’s Webcast of just four days earlier. “I wanted to do it before the president’s State of the Union,” she explained to Brian Williams on NBC, “because I wanted to draw the contrast between what we’ve seen over the last six years, and the kind of leadership and experience that I would bring to the office.”

She couldn’t have set the bar any lower. President Bush’s speech was less compelling than the Monty Python sketch playing out behind it: the unacknowledged race between Nancy Pelosi and Dick Cheney to be the first to stand up for each bipartisan ovation. (Winner: Pelosi.)

Paul Krugman: The Sum of All Ears

For those hoping for real action on global warming and energy policy, the State of the Union address was a downer. There had been hints and hopes that the speech would be a Nixon-goes-to-China moment, with President Bush turning conservationist. But it ended up being more of a Nixon-bombs-Cambodia moment.

Too bad: the rumors were tantalizing. Al Hubbard, the chairman of the National Economic Council, predicted “headlines above the fold that will knock your socks off in terms of our commitment to energy independence.” British officials told the newspaper The Observer that Mr. Bush would “make a historic shift in his position on global warming.”

Glenn Greenwald: Freedom is on the march

The following is a very revealing, and disturbing, video illustrating what is taking place in Baghdad (h/t Andrew Sullivan). The first part shows an almost exclusively Shiite group of Iraqi Army troops administering to handcuffed Sunnis what the watching, cheering American troops giddily refer to as the "Rodney King treatment." The second part documents various neighborhoods that were previously mixed with Sunnis and Shiites but which now are almost exclusively cleansed one way or the other:

Digby: Some Of His Best Friends

Glenn Greenwald writes one of his throughly satisfying lawyerly exposés of one of the most loathesome DC creatures of recent years, the hysterical anti-muslim, anti-arab racist, Martin Peretz. It's long overdue.

But Glenn's focus on Peretz's anti-arab diatribes unfortunately gives short shrift to his more homegrown bigotry. He has a little problem with yer african americans too. He's quite clever about it, but it's very similar to the proudly colorblind wingnuts who extoll the virtues of "good" blacks like Condi and Colin while unleashing standard racist vitriol toward "bad" negroes:

Digby: L'éminence Grise

This is interesting. A reader over at TPM writes:

Incidentally, Josh, you must have noticed that Bush's very expansive claims of executive authority are being made by the first President in our history to delegate to his Vice President anything close to the authority over policy and personnel that he has ceded to Cheney. Back in 1980 the GOP Convention audience was kept amused by an effort to establish a "co-Presidency" with Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, who'd have been given extensive authority if elected. Reagan decided then that it was a stupid idea; he wasn't running to be half a President. And now we have a President weak enough to make the "co-Presidency" a reality.

Digby: Wait Til Your Father Gets Home

I've always thought that Bush was the classic "Dad who is always mad" guy, the O'Reilly know-it-all, ordering everyone around, expecting his underlings to do what they're told, no questions asked even though they know he's completely full of shit. I expect that he's not the first president to have this attitude --- it is the refuge of slightly stupid privileged middle aged white guys the world over --- but I think he's the first to use this line with the American people and the congress.

Digby: Cornered Maverick

No, No, No. St. John doesn't get to punt on the McCain Doctrine by asking his "supporters" what they think. Nor does he get to differentiate himself from the most unpopular politician in the country at this late date by calling for "benchmarks" and pretending that it makes him a maverick. It was only two months ago that he was saying that such things would be a "recipe for disaster."

He's trying his damnedest to get out of the corner into which he's painted himself, but he can't. His entire strategy for 08 was to run against both the hippy Dems who wanted to cut-n-run and Bush who failed to follow his advice to send in more troops. He took that tack for good reasons. The conventional wisdom for years was that Bush would not escalate the war.

Digby: Strawberries

So, the big news emerging from the Libby trial so far is that Dick Cheney was so obsessively Queeglike about Joseph Wilson that he was even writing out talking points for his little dog Scooter to yap at reporters.

As predicted, this trial has also been fascinating for its insight into the relationship between the White House and the press corps.

Digby: Mickey Is A Wingnut

I'm sure that most of you have read about the dust-up between the blogger Spocko and ABC/Disney wherein Disney shut down his blog for posting pieces of air pollution they call talk radio at ABC's KSFO and alerting advertisers. It caused quite a stir. Disney was very angry that someone would use their clips without obtaining permission despite the fact that it was non-commercial and fell easily under fair use doctrine.

Digby: Creating The Debate

Ezra and others have noticed that Barack Obama's soaring rhetoric about health care is not backed up by any kind of bold proposal:

"In possibly the most telling section," I wrote, "he gives a great riff on health care, which manages to totally inspire while not actually saying anything sweeping or controversial. Watching it, you'd swear he just promised the stars, the sky, and universal insurance, when he really just committed to electronic records."

Kennedy to Republicans: "What is it about working men and women that you find so offensive?"

It's a sure bet that Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) has a lot of bottled-up frustration from years of fighting the Republican party to get a simple minimum wage increase for America's families and it boiled over on the floor of the Senate Thursday night.

[...]

"We have now had amendments that have been worth over 200 billion dollars… Amendments that have been offered. We've had amendments on education of 35 billion dollars. We've had health-savings amendments that will benefit people with average incomes of $112,000… We've had those kinds of amendments and we're looking at the Kyl amendment at 3 billion dollars. But we still cannot get two dollars and fifteen cents -- over two years. Over two years!

"What is the price, we ask the other side? What is the price that you want from these working men and women? What cost? How much more do we have to give to the private sector and to business? How many billion dollars more, are you asking, are you requiring?

Love the Warrior, Hate the War

Why progressives have more in common with the military than they think

By Lorelei Kelly

When Army Col. Ike Wilson returned home in March 2004 from a 12 month deployment in Iraq, one thought remained with him: “Why such a deliberate plan to fight the war, but none to win the peace to follow?”

Wilson, a West Point professor with years of military planning experience, knew that placing this question at the the center of national security policy discussions was the only way to truly learn from Iraq and Afghanistan. He soon founded the Beyond War Project as a hub to educate both the military and the public about a new vision for war, peace and America’s role in the world. Thus far, he’s signed up participants ranging from Cornell University’s Peace Studies Program to the U.S. Air Force.