After reading this yesterday I thought I had a pretty good handle on what was going on in the Plame investigation:
WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer's leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won't be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.
Then, this morning, I read this:
WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 - The special prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case has summoned Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, to return next week to testify to a federal grand jury in a step that could mean charges will be filed in the case, lawyers in the case said Thursday.
Maybe these reports are not as inconsistent as they sound: maybe the special prosecutor "summoned" Rove after Rove "offered" to come back in. But it sounds like a contrast to me. Maybe one of you can help me clear it up.
Friday, October 07, 2005
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Colleen
I meant to mention this long ago, but among the candidates vying to reverse the neo-con agenda in Congress in 2006 is Colleen Rowley, the famous 9-11, FBI-whisteblower.
She's running as a Democrat in Minnesota's 2nd congressional district, currently represented by Republican John Kline.
Colleen's the kind of representation the country needs in Congress. You can visit her website and contribute to her campaign here.
She's running as a Democrat in Minnesota's 2nd congressional district, currently represented by Republican John Kline.
Colleen's the kind of representation the country needs in Congress. You can visit her website and contribute to her campaign here.
Gore
Soon after television established its dominance over print, young people who realized they were being shut out of the dialogue of democracy came up with a new form of expression in an effort to join the national conversation: the "demonstration." This new form of expression, which began in the 1960s, was essentially a poor quality theatrical production designed to capture the attention of the television cameras long enough to hold up a sign with a few printed words to convey, however plaintively, a message to the American people. Even this outlet is now rarely an avenue for expression on national television.
(snip)
It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in American television also means that there is no "meritocracy of ideas" on television. To the extent that there is a "marketplace" of any kind for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly, with imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen.
The German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, describes what has happened as "the refeudalization of the public sphere." That may sound like gobbledygook, but it's a phrase that packs a lot of meaning. The feudal system which thrived before the printing press democratized knowledge and made the idea of America thinkable, was a system in which wealth and power were intimately intertwined, and where knowledge played no mediating role whatsoever. The great mass of the people were ignorant. And their powerlessness was born of their ignorance.
It did not come as a surprise that the concentration of control over this powerful one-way medium carries with it the potential for damaging the operations of our democracy. As early as the 1920s, when the predecessor of television, radio, first debuted in the United States, there was immediate apprehension about its potential impact on democracy. One early American student of the medium wrote that if control of radio were concentrated in the hands of a few, "no nation can be free."
As a result of these fears, safeguards were enacted in the U.S. -- including the Public Interest Standard, the Equal Time Provision, and the Fairness Doctrine - though a half century later, in 1987, they were effectively repealed. And then immediately afterwards, Rush Limbaugh and other hate-mongers began to fill the airwaves.
And radio is not the only place where big changes have taken place. Television news has undergone a series of dramatic changes. The movie "Network," which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1976, was presented as a farce but was actually a prophecy. The journalism profession morphed into the news business, which became the media industry and is now completely owned by conglomerates.
The news divisions - which used to be seen as serving a public interest and were subsidized by the rest of the network - are now seen as profit centers designed to generate revenue and, more importantly, to advance the larger agenda of the corporation of which they are a small part. They have fewer reporters, fewer stories, smaller budgets, less travel, fewer bureaus, less independent judgment, more vulnerability to influence by management, and more dependence on government sources and canned public relations hand-outs. This tragedy is compounded by the ironic fact that this generation of journalists is the best trained and most highly skilled in the history of their profession. But they are usually not allowed to do the job they have been trained to do.
The present executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations: from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. They placed a former male escort in the White House press pool to pose as a reporter - and then called upon him to give the president a hand at crucial moments. They paid actors to make make phony video press releases and paid cash to some reporters who were willing to take it in return for positive stories. And every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.
For these and other reasons, The US Press was recently found in a comprehensive international study to be only the 27th freest press in the world. And that too seems strange to me.
Among the other factors damaging our public discourse in the media, the imposition by management of entertainment values on the journalism profession has resulted in scandals, fabricated sources, fictional events and the tabloidization of mainstream news. As recently stated by Dan Rather - who was, of course, forced out of his anchor job after angering the White House - television news has been "dumbed down and tarted up."
(snip)
One of the only avenues left for the expression of public or political ideas on television is through the purchase of advertising, usually in 30-second chunks. These short commercials are now the principal form of communication between candidates and voters. As a result, our elected officials now spend all of their time raising money to purchase these ads.
That is why the House and Senate campaign committees now search for candidates who are multi-millionaires and can buy the ads with their own personal resources. As one consequence, the halls of Congress are now filling up with the wealthy.
Campaign finance reform, however well it is drafted, often misses the main point: so long as the only means of engaging in political dialogue is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will continue by one means or another to dominate American politic s. And ideas will no longer mediate between wealth and power.
And what if an individual citizen, or a group of citizens wants to enter the public debate by expressing their views on television? Since they cannot simply join the conversation, some of them have resorted to raising money in order to buy 30 seconds in which to express their opinion. But they are not even allowed to do that.
Moveon.org tried to buy ads last year to express opposition to Bush's Medicare proposal which was then being debated by Congress. They were told "issue advocacy" was not permissible. Then, one of the networks that had refused the Moveon ad began running advertisements by the White House in favor of the President's Medicare proposal. So Moveon complained and the White House ad was temporarily removed. By temporary, I mean it was removed until the White House complained and the network immediately put the ad back on, yet still refused to present the Moveon ad.
Wow. I'm not used to politicians speaking this way. The last five years have dumbed us all down.
Read the whole thing.
(snip)
It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in American television also means that there is no "meritocracy of ideas" on television. To the extent that there is a "marketplace" of any kind for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly, with imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen.
The German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, describes what has happened as "the refeudalization of the public sphere." That may sound like gobbledygook, but it's a phrase that packs a lot of meaning. The feudal system which thrived before the printing press democratized knowledge and made the idea of America thinkable, was a system in which wealth and power were intimately intertwined, and where knowledge played no mediating role whatsoever. The great mass of the people were ignorant. And their powerlessness was born of their ignorance.
It did not come as a surprise that the concentration of control over this powerful one-way medium carries with it the potential for damaging the operations of our democracy. As early as the 1920s, when the predecessor of television, radio, first debuted in the United States, there was immediate apprehension about its potential impact on democracy. One early American student of the medium wrote that if control of radio were concentrated in the hands of a few, "no nation can be free."
As a result of these fears, safeguards were enacted in the U.S. -- including the Public Interest Standard, the Equal Time Provision, and the Fairness Doctrine - though a half century later, in 1987, they were effectively repealed. And then immediately afterwards, Rush Limbaugh and other hate-mongers began to fill the airwaves.
And radio is not the only place where big changes have taken place. Television news has undergone a series of dramatic changes. The movie "Network," which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1976, was presented as a farce but was actually a prophecy. The journalism profession morphed into the news business, which became the media industry and is now completely owned by conglomerates.
The news divisions - which used to be seen as serving a public interest and were subsidized by the rest of the network - are now seen as profit centers designed to generate revenue and, more importantly, to advance the larger agenda of the corporation of which they are a small part. They have fewer reporters, fewer stories, smaller budgets, less travel, fewer bureaus, less independent judgment, more vulnerability to influence by management, and more dependence on government sources and canned public relations hand-outs. This tragedy is compounded by the ironic fact that this generation of journalists is the best trained and most highly skilled in the history of their profession. But they are usually not allowed to do the job they have been trained to do.
The present executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations: from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. They placed a former male escort in the White House press pool to pose as a reporter - and then called upon him to give the president a hand at crucial moments. They paid actors to make make phony video press releases and paid cash to some reporters who were willing to take it in return for positive stories. And every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.
For these and other reasons, The US Press was recently found in a comprehensive international study to be only the 27th freest press in the world. And that too seems strange to me.
Among the other factors damaging our public discourse in the media, the imposition by management of entertainment values on the journalism profession has resulted in scandals, fabricated sources, fictional events and the tabloidization of mainstream news. As recently stated by Dan Rather - who was, of course, forced out of his anchor job after angering the White House - television news has been "dumbed down and tarted up."
(snip)
One of the only avenues left for the expression of public or political ideas on television is through the purchase of advertising, usually in 30-second chunks. These short commercials are now the principal form of communication between candidates and voters. As a result, our elected officials now spend all of their time raising money to purchase these ads.
That is why the House and Senate campaign committees now search for candidates who are multi-millionaires and can buy the ads with their own personal resources. As one consequence, the halls of Congress are now filling up with the wealthy.
Campaign finance reform, however well it is drafted, often misses the main point: so long as the only means of engaging in political dialogue is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will continue by one means or another to dominate American politic s. And ideas will no longer mediate between wealth and power.
And what if an individual citizen, or a group of citizens wants to enter the public debate by expressing their views on television? Since they cannot simply join the conversation, some of them have resorted to raising money in order to buy 30 seconds in which to express their opinion. But they are not even allowed to do that.
Moveon.org tried to buy ads last year to express opposition to Bush's Medicare proposal which was then being debated by Congress. They were told "issue advocacy" was not permissible. Then, one of the networks that had refused the Moveon ad began running advertisements by the White House in favor of the President's Medicare proposal. So Moveon complained and the White House ad was temporarily removed. By temporary, I mean it was removed until the White House complained and the network immediately put the ad back on, yet still refused to present the Moveon ad.
Wow. I'm not used to politicians speaking this way. The last five years have dumbed us all down.
Read the whole thing.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
I'm standing here on the ground
The sky above won't fall down
See no evil in all direction
Resolution of happiness
Things have been dark
For too long
Don't change for you
Don't change a thing for me
from INXS, "Don't Change"
I've been walking forty miles of bad road
If the bible is right, the world will explode
I've been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can't win with a losing hand
Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheel barrow and wheeling her down the street
People are crazy and times are strange
I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range
I used to care, but things have changed
from Bob Dylan, "Things Have Changed"
I'm moving through some changes
I'll never be the same
Something you did touched me
There's no one else to blame
The love we had has fallen
The love we used to share
We've given up pretending
As if you didn't care
Change changing places
Root yourself to the ground
Capitalize on this good fortune
One word can bring you round
Changes
from Yes, "Changes"
Yesterday, in defending his choice of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, the president said this:
I know her well enough to be able to say that she's not going to change, that 20 years from now she'll be the same person with the same philosophy that she is today. She'll have more experience, she'll have been a judge, but, nevertheless, her philosophy won't change. And that's important to me. It was important to me when I picked Chief Justice Roberts; it's important for me in picking Harriet Miers.
What?
She's not going to change in 20 years? This is a bizarre statement (yes, I know, consider the source). But how can you, me, the president, or anyone know that someone won't change, at least in some small way? And isn't change desirable anyway? Isn't it a part of life to grow, to change? OK, yes, I realize this is code for "Harriet Miers is no David Souter, Harriet Miers is no Anthony Kennedy". But is conservative ideology, or any ideology or political program unchanging? After all, Kennedy was conservative when Reagan picked him, but as the conservative movement has become more radical, Kennedy's brand of conservativism has fallen out of favor.
Won't change? Just very bizarre.
The sky above won't fall down
See no evil in all direction
Resolution of happiness
Things have been dark
For too long
Don't change for you
Don't change a thing for me
from INXS, "Don't Change"
I've been walking forty miles of bad road
If the bible is right, the world will explode
I've been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can't win with a losing hand
Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheel barrow and wheeling her down the street
People are crazy and times are strange
I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range
I used to care, but things have changed
from Bob Dylan, "Things Have Changed"
I'm moving through some changes
I'll never be the same
Something you did touched me
There's no one else to blame
The love we had has fallen
The love we used to share
We've given up pretending
As if you didn't care
Change changing places
Root yourself to the ground
Capitalize on this good fortune
One word can bring you round
Changes
from Yes, "Changes"
Yesterday, in defending his choice of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, the president said this:
I know her well enough to be able to say that she's not going to change, that 20 years from now she'll be the same person with the same philosophy that she is today. She'll have more experience, she'll have been a judge, but, nevertheless, her philosophy won't change. And that's important to me. It was important to me when I picked Chief Justice Roberts; it's important for me in picking Harriet Miers.
What?
She's not going to change in 20 years? This is a bizarre statement (yes, I know, consider the source). But how can you, me, the president, or anyone know that someone won't change, at least in some small way? And isn't change desirable anyway? Isn't it a part of life to grow, to change? OK, yes, I realize this is code for "Harriet Miers is no David Souter, Harriet Miers is no Anthony Kennedy". But is conservative ideology, or any ideology or political program unchanging? After all, Kennedy was conservative when Reagan picked him, but as the conservative movement has become more radical, Kennedy's brand of conservativism has fallen out of favor.
Won't change? Just very bizarre.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
God Bless, Catherine Crier
A few bloggerings ago, I mentioned that Catherine Crier, a lawyer and former elected Republican judge in Texas, who went on to host her own show on Roger Ailes' Fox "News" network, and then moved over to Court TV, and who has written such anti-liberal books as The Case Against Lawyers, has finally had it up to here with the religious fundamentalism that's taken over her party and that has infected the mainstream of American politics (not for the first time, by the way).
She's written a new book entitled Contempt: How The Right Is Wronging American Justice. Now, I usually don't buy or read books that have the author's picture, particularly a near full body shot, draped all over the cover. But Crier's book is an exception.
Last night, the occasion of the Harriet Miers nomination had her on the Comcast channel discussing the pic, where she got to lay one in good about how the "right" is trying to enforce their narrow view of law and life on the rest of us, as a representative from one of the "family" organizations sputtered.
Hey, I'm a religious person. I read the Good Book almost daily and go to church weekly. I think there is a god or a higher power of consciousness. Catherine Crier and millions of others like her do, too. But the Bible is not a political theory or public policy text. And anyone who says it is plainly has not read, or seriously considered, what's written in it.
I'll provide examples later, but for now, thank you Catherine Crier for coming out of the religious liberty closet.
She's written a new book entitled Contempt: How The Right Is Wronging American Justice. Now, I usually don't buy or read books that have the author's picture, particularly a near full body shot, draped all over the cover. But Crier's book is an exception.
Last night, the occasion of the Harriet Miers nomination had her on the Comcast channel discussing the pic, where she got to lay one in good about how the "right" is trying to enforce their narrow view of law and life on the rest of us, as a representative from one of the "family" organizations sputtered.
Hey, I'm a religious person. I read the Good Book almost daily and go to church weekly. I think there is a god or a higher power of consciousness. Catherine Crier and millions of others like her do, too. But the Bible is not a political theory or public policy text. And anyone who says it is plainly has not read, or seriously considered, what's written in it.
I'll provide examples later, but for now, thank you Catherine Crier for coming out of the religious liberty closet.
Get Your Campaign On
85: That's how old liberal Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is. Today. And yes we're glad to hear he's spry for his age and even plays a round of tennis now and then. But four years from today, when there'll be a new president, he'll be 89. Right to Privacy? Hello? If you're worried now about the new shape of the Court, wait and see what another four years of Republicanism will do. Whoever it is that's planning campaigns for Evan Bayh, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, can you make this an issue? Nice Constitution and Bill of Rights we have here. Be a shame if we lost it. (and by the way, since the next president will likely have at least one Court appointment, I'm not going to be doing any hand-wringing if a Joe Biden or Evan Bayh gets the nomination. While none of the prospective 2008 field is my kind of progressive, who would you rather see holding this next appointment--Evan Bayh or Sam Brownback?)
George Will, the conservative dean of pundits, has a column out entitled Why The Voting Rights Act is Bad for Everyone. I won't do the disservice of linking to it, because the title about says it all (although I recognize that column titles are usually determined by the newspaper or media outlet). In any event, HRC, Joe Biden, Evan Bayh, John Edwards, in the course of your campaigns, can you find some time for arguing why we need to reauthorize those portions of the Voting Rights Act that are up for renewal in 2007?
Roy Moore, the "ten commandments judge" is running for governor in Alabama. He'll challenge fellow Republican Bob Riley in the primary. While I don't wish this man on the good people of Alabama, it's worth considering that, should he win in 2006, he'd be ripe for the Republican's top slot in 2008. Needless to say, I think it'd be great for the progressive cause, and for the next Dem nominee, if Moore runs for president in 2008.
George Will, the conservative dean of pundits, has a column out entitled Why The Voting Rights Act is Bad for Everyone. I won't do the disservice of linking to it, because the title about says it all (although I recognize that column titles are usually determined by the newspaper or media outlet). In any event, HRC, Joe Biden, Evan Bayh, John Edwards, in the course of your campaigns, can you find some time for arguing why we need to reauthorize those portions of the Voting Rights Act that are up for renewal in 2007?
Roy Moore, the "ten commandments judge" is running for governor in Alabama. He'll challenge fellow Republican Bob Riley in the primary. While I don't wish this man on the good people of Alabama, it's worth considering that, should he win in 2006, he'd be ripe for the Republican's top slot in 2008. Needless to say, I think it'd be great for the progressive cause, and for the next Dem nominee, if Moore runs for president in 2008.
Monday, October 03, 2005
Monday Morning Quarterback
Redskins, 3-0. Let's not get too excited, mkay guys. We've won by margins of 2, 1, and now, 3 points--in O.T. no less, after the other team's winning field goal hit the crossbar at the end of regulation. And even this guy is keeping the bandwagon in the garage. Two road games coming up, with Denver and KC, and both could easily be losses. So let's keep the celebrating and bragging down to a quiet roar.
But I can tell you what I did like from what I saw on Sunday. Brunell's completions on third and long. How many of those were there? Half a dozen? And he's throwing darts. More importantly, the team looks like it knows what it's doing on offense for the first time in years. True, Brunell through a bum deep pass towards David Patton that was too short and which got batted down by a defender as a result. But these long offensive drives, combined with clutch third and long performances have me very pleased with the team so far. I didn't like the switch to Brunell right after the first game, but Brunell has surprised me.
Who's in a world of hurt? The Vikings. 1-3 after getting hammered yesterday in Atlanta. Seems that the Arizona Cardinals recovered last night after spotting San Fran 14 defensive points. That keeps the 49'ers in the Reggie Bush sweepstakes. And at 1-3, Arizona is still in the Matt Leinert hunt.
I don't like the Pack, but now I feel sorry for them. They're 0-3 and in Carolina tonight. For the sake of Brett Favre, who's a class act, I hope GreenBay pulls the on-the-road upset tonight.
I suppose Vinnie Testaverde, age 42, will be starting for the Jets pretty soon, after exhibiting no offense yesterday in Baltimore. Putting up only three points, and that after being given a spot at the Ravens' one-yard line after a fumble return. But I don't think the Ravens are going anywhere. New quarterback there next year.
Buffalo already looks done for. Will Losman get benched this week?
Miami, off yesterday, looks to be in better shape in the AFC Least that we would have thought. Saban has them playing well and the Jets and Bills are hurt and struggling.
Don't know what's going on in the AFC West. San Diego blew up the Pats yesterday. Denver is 3-1. KC started well but like yesterday's collapse against the Eagles at home, they don't seem to have the stamina for the long haul.
Bengals, Colts and Bucanneers 4-0. Cincinnati looks to be for real. May come down to them and Pittsburgh in the AFC North. If the Patriots don't get it in gear, Peyton Manning won't even have to go through New England to get to the big dance.
But I can tell you what I did like from what I saw on Sunday. Brunell's completions on third and long. How many of those were there? Half a dozen? And he's throwing darts. More importantly, the team looks like it knows what it's doing on offense for the first time in years. True, Brunell through a bum deep pass towards David Patton that was too short and which got batted down by a defender as a result. But these long offensive drives, combined with clutch third and long performances have me very pleased with the team so far. I didn't like the switch to Brunell right after the first game, but Brunell has surprised me.
Who's in a world of hurt? The Vikings. 1-3 after getting hammered yesterday in Atlanta. Seems that the Arizona Cardinals recovered last night after spotting San Fran 14 defensive points. That keeps the 49'ers in the Reggie Bush sweepstakes. And at 1-3, Arizona is still in the Matt Leinert hunt.
I don't like the Pack, but now I feel sorry for them. They're 0-3 and in Carolina tonight. For the sake of Brett Favre, who's a class act, I hope GreenBay pulls the on-the-road upset tonight.
I suppose Vinnie Testaverde, age 42, will be starting for the Jets pretty soon, after exhibiting no offense yesterday in Baltimore. Putting up only three points, and that after being given a spot at the Ravens' one-yard line after a fumble return. But I don't think the Ravens are going anywhere. New quarterback there next year.
Buffalo already looks done for. Will Losman get benched this week?
Miami, off yesterday, looks to be in better shape in the AFC Least that we would have thought. Saban has them playing well and the Jets and Bills are hurt and struggling.
Don't know what's going on in the AFC West. San Diego blew up the Pats yesterday. Denver is 3-1. KC started well but like yesterday's collapse against the Eagles at home, they don't seem to have the stamina for the long haul.
Bengals, Colts and Bucanneers 4-0. Cincinnati looks to be for real. May come down to them and Pittsburgh in the AFC North. If the Patriots don't get it in gear, Peyton Manning won't even have to go through New England to get to the big dance.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
For the Senate
It's a rare day when I read the Wash Post Metro section, a rarer day still when I read the Metro section before the others.
But today was such a day.
First, there was an article and an opinion piece on the gubernatorial race announcement by Baltimore Mayor, Martin O'Malley. O'Malley's announcement was no surprise for those of us even remotely cognizant of Maryland politics. Fellow Democrat and Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan will also announce shortly.
Second, American University history professor Allan Lichtman announced for the U.S. Senate in Maryland, to succeed the retiring Paul Sarbanes. Lichtman is on TV a lot to comment on various political and historical comings and goings, but he has never run for office before, and is considered a dark horse to Congressman Ben Cardin, and former Congressman and NAACP chief Kwasi Mfume. But I like what Lichtman had to say:
"I am running to change what is wrong in Washington," Lichtman said. "My friends, today there is too much government intruding in our private lives and not enough government meeting our needs."
As readers of this blog will recognize, this is exactly what I believe Democrats should be talking about. Conservative leadership has and is producing a government and politics that is committed to invading our privacy and enforcing a narrow brand of morality while bungling it's duty to protect its most vulnerable citizens, all the while it shifts the balance of power even further to corporations and the wealthy.
How difficult is this for Democrats to say? It's a simple message, with an ample supply of evidence from five years of conservative Republican government to back it up. But most Democrats continue to tread softly and cautiously, afraid perhaps of offending somebody.
With the Republican's two majority leaders in Congress either already indicted or under serious criminal investigation, with a former official arrested, with a well-connected lobbyist under increasing scrutiny, with the White House's top political guru the subject of a grand jury investigation, with the after effects of Terry Schiavo and the two hurricanes, the continuing downward spiral in Iraq, if Democrats can't gain an audience, I have a hard time believing circumstances will give them the same kind of opportunity again.
Here's hoping the party leadership will follow Dr. Lichtman's lead, and call the Republicans out for their hostile agenda and offer an alternative.
But today was such a day.
First, there was an article and an opinion piece on the gubernatorial race announcement by Baltimore Mayor, Martin O'Malley. O'Malley's announcement was no surprise for those of us even remotely cognizant of Maryland politics. Fellow Democrat and Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan will also announce shortly.
Second, American University history professor Allan Lichtman announced for the U.S. Senate in Maryland, to succeed the retiring Paul Sarbanes. Lichtman is on TV a lot to comment on various political and historical comings and goings, but he has never run for office before, and is considered a dark horse to Congressman Ben Cardin, and former Congressman and NAACP chief Kwasi Mfume. But I like what Lichtman had to say:
"I am running to change what is wrong in Washington," Lichtman said. "My friends, today there is too much government intruding in our private lives and not enough government meeting our needs."
As readers of this blog will recognize, this is exactly what I believe Democrats should be talking about. Conservative leadership has and is producing a government and politics that is committed to invading our privacy and enforcing a narrow brand of morality while bungling it's duty to protect its most vulnerable citizens, all the while it shifts the balance of power even further to corporations and the wealthy.
How difficult is this for Democrats to say? It's a simple message, with an ample supply of evidence from five years of conservative Republican government to back it up. But most Democrats continue to tread softly and cautiously, afraid perhaps of offending somebody.
With the Republican's two majority leaders in Congress either already indicted or under serious criminal investigation, with a former official arrested, with a well-connected lobbyist under increasing scrutiny, with the White House's top political guru the subject of a grand jury investigation, with the after effects of Terry Schiavo and the two hurricanes, the continuing downward spiral in Iraq, if Democrats can't gain an audience, I have a hard time believing circumstances will give them the same kind of opportunity again.
Here's hoping the party leadership will follow Dr. Lichtman's lead, and call the Republicans out for their hostile agenda and offer an alternative.
What the Senator Reads
I saw over on Lindsay's blog where she listed the books she had read that are also on the American Library Association's list of most frequently challenged books of 1990-2000. Lindsay has read 29 of them. Pretty impressive. So I gave the full list to the Senator and asked him to identify which ones he had read.
Here is the Senator's list:
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
55. Cujo by Stephen King
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
So the Senator has read 10 of them (an eleventh, Brave New World, is on the Senator's night stand but he's only gotten through the first couple of chapters).
I remarked to the Senator that his list was long on Stephen King and short on classics like Mark Twain. Moreover, I was especially surprised to see #72, Women on Top on his list. Why had the Senator read this?
The Senator just gave me one of those looks and asked if I didn't have a hearing to attend or a constituent letter to write.
Here is the Senator's list:
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
55. Cujo by Stephen King
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
So the Senator has read 10 of them (an eleventh, Brave New World, is on the Senator's night stand but he's only gotten through the first couple of chapters).
I remarked to the Senator that his list was long on Stephen King and short on classics like Mark Twain. Moreover, I was especially surprised to see #72, Women on Top on his list. Why had the Senator read this?
The Senator just gave me one of those looks and asked if I didn't have a hearing to attend or a constituent letter to write.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Why "No" on Roberts
So some Democratic Senators are coming out against the Roberts nomination.
But what they are saying as to "why" they oppose his nomination sound strange to me.
Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh said Friday he will vote against the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to be the next chief justice of the United States because not enough is known about how Roberts will act.
"I cannot (conclude he'll be a great justice) because so much essential to reaching a considered judgment about this nominee remains unknown," Bayh said in a statement. "And that is not enough for a lifetime appointment to our nation's highest court, a court from which there is no appeal, a court that is the ultimate arbiter of our most basic rights and freedoms."
But we already know plenty about Roberts' background and views on important issues and values.
As special assistant to the Attorney General in the Reagan Administration, and later as a key legal strategist in the Reagan White House counsel's office, Roberts was an aggressive participant in the administration's attempts to restrict fundamental constitutional and civil rights. In fact, Roberts often came down to the right of ultraconservative legal luminaries, including Robert Bork, William Bradford Reynolds, and Ted Olson. He supported the legality of radical proposals to strip the courts of jurisdiction over certain school desegregation remedies, abortion, and school prayer. He denigrated what he referred to as the “so-called” right to privacy, resisted attempts to fully restore the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act, and worked against measures aimed at increasing gender equity. As the Washington Post has reported, at times he was “derisive, using words such as 'purported' and 'perceived' to describe discrimination against women.”
He has dismissed the Constitutional Right to Privacy (oh yes, he offered qualified support for a right to privacy during the hearings, but what did you think he was going to say in order to forestall a Democratic filibuster?).
Sounds like reason enough to me to oppose him. Democratic Senators would be doing themselves and their constituents a much greater service if they would acknowledge these concerns, rather than hide behind, what sounds to me as, a fig leaf of "not enough about Roberts is known".
But what they are saying as to "why" they oppose his nomination sound strange to me.
Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh said Friday he will vote against the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to be the next chief justice of the United States because not enough is known about how Roberts will act.
"I cannot (conclude he'll be a great justice) because so much essential to reaching a considered judgment about this nominee remains unknown," Bayh said in a statement. "And that is not enough for a lifetime appointment to our nation's highest court, a court from which there is no appeal, a court that is the ultimate arbiter of our most basic rights and freedoms."
But we already know plenty about Roberts' background and views on important issues and values.
As special assistant to the Attorney General in the Reagan Administration, and later as a key legal strategist in the Reagan White House counsel's office, Roberts was an aggressive participant in the administration's attempts to restrict fundamental constitutional and civil rights. In fact, Roberts often came down to the right of ultraconservative legal luminaries, including Robert Bork, William Bradford Reynolds, and Ted Olson. He supported the legality of radical proposals to strip the courts of jurisdiction over certain school desegregation remedies, abortion, and school prayer. He denigrated what he referred to as the “so-called” right to privacy, resisted attempts to fully restore the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act, and worked against measures aimed at increasing gender equity. As the Washington Post has reported, at times he was “derisive, using words such as 'purported' and 'perceived' to describe discrimination against women.”
He has dismissed the Constitutional Right to Privacy (oh yes, he offered qualified support for a right to privacy during the hearings, but what did you think he was going to say in order to forestall a Democratic filibuster?).
Sounds like reason enough to me to oppose him. Democratic Senators would be doing themselves and their constituents a much greater service if they would acknowledge these concerns, rather than hide behind, what sounds to me as, a fig leaf of "not enough about Roberts is known".
Using Force
From the Myrtle Beach Online, August 31, 2005 (via AllAmericaPac--Senator Evan Bayh's unofficial 2008 webpage):
He (Bayh) said Democrats need to improve their credibility on national security and convince Americans that Democrats are willing to use force when necessary.
Now, before delving into this statement--which is pretty much boilerplate for anyone affiliated with the DLC--I want to acknowledge the fact that, as Kos argues, progressives are going to have a hard time finding a candidate that satisfies all of their wishes in 2008. So I'm not about eliminating would-be candidates on the basis of any one statement or vote. What's more, I also need to add that despite what I'm about to say, I still like Bayh for the 2008 race, for reasons I will get into in another post. And of course, nothing I'm about to say is anything new.
Nevertheless, Bayh's statement is troubling on a lot of different levels.
The main one is it strikes me as a code message for: Bush was right to wage war on Iraq (and Democrats who supported the war were right to back the resolution providing its nominal authorization).
Among the statement's other implicit messages are that: (a) the public is worried about national security; (b) the display and deployment of military force is a, or the, proper and justified response to that worry; (c) the U.S. possesses nearly unlimited capacity and resources, political, economic, and moral, to wage war, and that (d) Democrats must campaign on a willingness, even a predisposition, to use military force to pursue the country's perceived security objectives.
While (a) is undoubtedly true, I would argue that (b), (c), and (d) are not. And I would argue that the idea that the Iraq war was, and is a fiasco, both as to lies leading to its start--up, as well as to the operational and political breakdowns in its carrying-out.
What's more, despite the subterfuge employed by leading political figures and the media, the public is coming to recognize the war's fallacies as well.
Again, none of these conclusions are new or unusual for a liberal blogger, but they point to the realization that Democrats don't need to be afraid to speak and act against the administration's war aims, especially when those aims are as flawed and dangerous as have been the ones pushed on the public since 9-11.
So why are Democrats like Bayh, Biden, and others, so hesitent to provide a more balanced view of the nation's security interests and the appropriate tools and responses for ensuring them?
Perhaps having voted for the war in the first place, they feel a need to "stay the course" as to their own political positioning, and thus to avoid any potential accusations of "flip-flopping". Perhaps they don't recognize the turnaround in public opinion, especially in the aftermath of Katrina and the soon to be fallout from Rita.
Whatever the cause, it is hoped that the next round of Democratic campaigns and candidates will begin to reassess their views and to come forward with a new framework for providing for the nation's security, one that recognizes the limits, economic, moral and military, to waging war, first, last and always.
He (Bayh) said Democrats need to improve their credibility on national security and convince Americans that Democrats are willing to use force when necessary.
Now, before delving into this statement--which is pretty much boilerplate for anyone affiliated with the DLC--I want to acknowledge the fact that, as Kos argues, progressives are going to have a hard time finding a candidate that satisfies all of their wishes in 2008. So I'm not about eliminating would-be candidates on the basis of any one statement or vote. What's more, I also need to add that despite what I'm about to say, I still like Bayh for the 2008 race, for reasons I will get into in another post. And of course, nothing I'm about to say is anything new.
Nevertheless, Bayh's statement is troubling on a lot of different levels.
The main one is it strikes me as a code message for: Bush was right to wage war on Iraq (and Democrats who supported the war were right to back the resolution providing its nominal authorization).
Among the statement's other implicit messages are that: (a) the public is worried about national security; (b) the display and deployment of military force is a, or the, proper and justified response to that worry; (c) the U.S. possesses nearly unlimited capacity and resources, political, economic, and moral, to wage war, and that (d) Democrats must campaign on a willingness, even a predisposition, to use military force to pursue the country's perceived security objectives.
While (a) is undoubtedly true, I would argue that (b), (c), and (d) are not. And I would argue that the idea that the Iraq war was, and is a fiasco, both as to lies leading to its start--up, as well as to the operational and political breakdowns in its carrying-out.
What's more, despite the subterfuge employed by leading political figures and the media, the public is coming to recognize the war's fallacies as well.
Again, none of these conclusions are new or unusual for a liberal blogger, but they point to the realization that Democrats don't need to be afraid to speak and act against the administration's war aims, especially when those aims are as flawed and dangerous as have been the ones pushed on the public since 9-11.
So why are Democrats like Bayh, Biden, and others, so hesitent to provide a more balanced view of the nation's security interests and the appropriate tools and responses for ensuring them?
Perhaps having voted for the war in the first place, they feel a need to "stay the course" as to their own political positioning, and thus to avoid any potential accusations of "flip-flopping". Perhaps they don't recognize the turnaround in public opinion, especially in the aftermath of Katrina and the soon to be fallout from Rita.
Whatever the cause, it is hoped that the next round of Democratic campaigns and candidates will begin to reassess their views and to come forward with a new framework for providing for the nation's security, one that recognizes the limits, economic, moral and military, to waging war, first, last and always.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
The Difference
As much as I'd like not to think about or reference anything written at NRO, this item is probably worth mentioning (via Tbogg who has more of a stomach than me):
Plainly it is not governmental inefficiency these agents are worried about. They find the anti-pornography crowd disturbing because they believe that policing pornography violates fundamental rights. This has become the dominant view in our society: As long as what I do doesn't harm you personally, I have a right to do it.* It's a silly view and a view rejected by law enforcement policies all over the country. Were we to truly recognize such a philosophy, we would have to legalize prostitution, drugs and suicide -- as well as the murder of homeless drifters with no family or friends. After all, if someone kills a homeless drifter, how does that affect anyone else?
Once again, let me remind you that the speaker of this fascist drivel is a conservative. You know, the ones that keep lecturing us about how bad government is and how they're all for less government and want to get the government off our backs, supposedly.
So let's be reminded: modern conservatism is not about less government. It's not about freedom or liberty. It's about the opposite. And the great travesty of the last 25 years of American politics has been the Democratic Party's failure to confront efforts (mostly covert)by Republicans to restrict individual liberties and trample human rights. The nomination of John Roberts and his anti-privacy-right views are the fruit the Democrat's meakness on civil liberties issues has wrought.
And for the record, Democrats should be clear, in fact, that public policy should seek to allow people the freedom to do what they want, behind closed doors, among consenting adults, as they see fit, as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. So Ben's ridiculous analogy of the homeless man doesn't hold water. Utilitarian liberalism protects the homeless man because his life has value. It wouldn't matter if he had no families or friends. Unlike conservatives, liberals believe that each individual life has equal value, regardless of gender, sexual preference, race, income, nationality, or upbringing. And while we're at it, yes, the our drug laws are a violation of individual liberties, too.
But the conservative response to Katrina, among other things, should help us all better understand how conservatives really feel about individuals not of their own kind.
And for the record, the Justice Department's anti-pornography efforts are a waste of time and public resources, a violation of individual liberties, and a shameless pandering to a conservative group of special interests.
*a well known proponent of this utilitarian view, that liberty is the right to do as one pleases as long it doesn't hurt anyone else, was John Stuart Mill, whose book, On Liberty, was "a classic defense of liberty and individual sovereignty" and which as a result earned an honorable mention by the conservative Human Rights Online as one of the 10 most harmful books of the 19th-20th century.
Conservatives hate freedom.
Plainly it is not governmental inefficiency these agents are worried about. They find the anti-pornography crowd disturbing because they believe that policing pornography violates fundamental rights. This has become the dominant view in our society: As long as what I do doesn't harm you personally, I have a right to do it.* It's a silly view and a view rejected by law enforcement policies all over the country. Were we to truly recognize such a philosophy, we would have to legalize prostitution, drugs and suicide -- as well as the murder of homeless drifters with no family or friends. After all, if someone kills a homeless drifter, how does that affect anyone else?
Once again, let me remind you that the speaker of this fascist drivel is a conservative. You know, the ones that keep lecturing us about how bad government is and how they're all for less government and want to get the government off our backs, supposedly.
So let's be reminded: modern conservatism is not about less government. It's not about freedom or liberty. It's about the opposite. And the great travesty of the last 25 years of American politics has been the Democratic Party's failure to confront efforts (mostly covert)by Republicans to restrict individual liberties and trample human rights. The nomination of John Roberts and his anti-privacy-right views are the fruit the Democrat's meakness on civil liberties issues has wrought.
And for the record, Democrats should be clear, in fact, that public policy should seek to allow people the freedom to do what they want, behind closed doors, among consenting adults, as they see fit, as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. So Ben's ridiculous analogy of the homeless man doesn't hold water. Utilitarian liberalism protects the homeless man because his life has value. It wouldn't matter if he had no families or friends. Unlike conservatives, liberals believe that each individual life has equal value, regardless of gender, sexual preference, race, income, nationality, or upbringing. And while we're at it, yes, the our drug laws are a violation of individual liberties, too.
But the conservative response to Katrina, among other things, should help us all better understand how conservatives really feel about individuals not of their own kind.
And for the record, the Justice Department's anti-pornography efforts are a waste of time and public resources, a violation of individual liberties, and a shameless pandering to a conservative group of special interests.
*a well known proponent of this utilitarian view, that liberty is the right to do as one pleases as long it doesn't hurt anyone else, was John Stuart Mill, whose book, On Liberty, was "a classic defense of liberty and individual sovereignty" and which as a result earned an honorable mention by the conservative Human Rights Online as one of the 10 most harmful books of the 19th-20th century.
Conservatives hate freedom.
Like I Was Saying
From Big Media Matt (via Digby):
WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH MISSISSIPPI? Apropos of nothing in particular, take a look at the exit poll data from Mississippi, where George W. Bush picked up the votes of 85 percent of the white population and just 10 percent of the African-American vote. In a state whose electorate is 65-percent white, that led to a hefty 60-40 win for the incumbent. Mississippi's an unusually stark case, but not all that much of an outlier.
Georgia saw 75 percent of whites and 12 percent of blacks pull the lever for Bush.
It was 75-9 in Louisiana, 78-15 in South Carolina, and a comparatively minor 63-6 in Arkansas (generally speaking, whites are most monolithically Republican in the least-white states like Mississippi and more open to Democrats in whiter states like Arkansas).
All of which is just to say that an awful lot of the post-election talk about "culture" and its impact on voting serves to obscure the extent to which a lot of politics is about race.
In Mississippi, Bush got a larger percentage of the vote from people who "somewhat dissaprove" of his administration than he did from black voters.
He did better among self-identified Democrats than he did among blacks, and far better (23 percent against 10 percent) among self-identified liberals than with non-whites.
I'm not sure exactly what follows from that, and I appreciate that commentators don't like to raise the point in order to avoid just engaging in naive allegations of racism, but it's really, really not possible to understand the politics of the South without delving into this stuff.
If you will recall, I posted about the racial characteristics of last fall's election in the south, some time ago, but Matt goes further with it than I did.
Now, it probably should be pointed out that these exit polling numbers should be viewed as not-quite-gospel accurate. If you look at the exit polls from all the states you'll stumble across some rather remarkable figures, and in some states, there were not adequate numbers of black or other minority voters to even figure into the final count, so the sampling and weighting of these poll numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.
Nonetheless, the continued racial impact on voting in the South goes a long way to explaining election outcomes and the public policy that results, such as the bizarre anti-labor, anti-working class efforts of southern representatives, including the president's Gulf Coast Wage Cut plan of post-hurricane reconstruction.
WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH MISSISSIPPI? Apropos of nothing in particular, take a look at the exit poll data from Mississippi, where George W. Bush picked up the votes of 85 percent of the white population and just 10 percent of the African-American vote. In a state whose electorate is 65-percent white, that led to a hefty 60-40 win for the incumbent. Mississippi's an unusually stark case, but not all that much of an outlier.
Georgia saw 75 percent of whites and 12 percent of blacks pull the lever for Bush.
It was 75-9 in Louisiana, 78-15 in South Carolina, and a comparatively minor 63-6 in Arkansas (generally speaking, whites are most monolithically Republican in the least-white states like Mississippi and more open to Democrats in whiter states like Arkansas).
All of which is just to say that an awful lot of the post-election talk about "culture" and its impact on voting serves to obscure the extent to which a lot of politics is about race.
In Mississippi, Bush got a larger percentage of the vote from people who "somewhat dissaprove" of his administration than he did from black voters.
He did better among self-identified Democrats than he did among blacks, and far better (23 percent against 10 percent) among self-identified liberals than with non-whites.
I'm not sure exactly what follows from that, and I appreciate that commentators don't like to raise the point in order to avoid just engaging in naive allegations of racism, but it's really, really not possible to understand the politics of the South without delving into this stuff.
If you will recall, I posted about the racial characteristics of last fall's election in the south, some time ago, but Matt goes further with it than I did.
Now, it probably should be pointed out that these exit polling numbers should be viewed as not-quite-gospel accurate. If you look at the exit polls from all the states you'll stumble across some rather remarkable figures, and in some states, there were not adequate numbers of black or other minority voters to even figure into the final count, so the sampling and weighting of these poll numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.
Nonetheless, the continued racial impact on voting in the South goes a long way to explaining election outcomes and the public policy that results, such as the bizarre anti-labor, anti-working class efforts of southern representatives, including the president's Gulf Coast Wage Cut plan of post-hurricane reconstruction.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Mo Dowd
Since the Senator is a print-subscriber in good standing, here she is:
The president won't be happy until he dons a yellow slicker and actually takes the place of Anderson Cooper, violently blown about by Rita as he talks into a camera lens lashed with water, hanging onto a mailbox as he's hit by a flying pig in a squall, sucked up by a waterspout in the eye of the storm over the Dry Tortugas.
Then maybe he'll go back to the White House and do his job instead of running down to the Gulf Coast for silly disaster-ops every other day.
There's nothing more pathetic than watching someone who's out of touch feign being in touch. On his fifth sodden pilgrimage of penitence to the devastation he took so long to comprehend, W. desperately tried to show concern. He said he had spent some "quality time" at a Chevron plant in Pascagoula and nattered about trash removal, infrastructure assessment teams and the "can-do spirit."
"We look forward to hearing your vision so we can more better do our job," he said at a briefing in Gulfport, Miss., urging local officials to "think bold," while they still need to think mold.
Mr. Bush should stop posing in shirtsleeves and get back to the Oval Office. He has more hacks and cronies he's trying to put into important jobs, and he needs to ride herd on that.
The announcement that a veterinarian, Norris Alderson, who has no experience on women's health issues, would head the F.D.A.'s Office of Women's Health ran into so much flak from appalled women that the F.D.A. may have already reneged on it. No morning-after pill, thanks to the antediluvian administration, but there may be hope for a morning-after horse pill.
Mr. Bush made a frownie over Brownie, but didn't learn much. He's once more trying to appoint a nothingburger to a position of real consequence in homeland security. The choice of Julie Myers, a 36-year-old lawyer with virtually no immigration, customs or law enforcement experience, to head the roiling Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency with its $4 billion budget and 22,000 staffers, has caused some alarm, according to The Washington Post.
Ms. Myers's main credentials seem to be that she worked briefly for the semidisgraced homeland security director, Michael Chertoff, when he was at the Justice Department. She just married Mr. Chertoff's chief of staff, John Wood, and she's the niece of Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
As a former associate for Ken Starr, the young woman does have impeachment experience, in case the forensic war on terrorism requires the analysis of stains on dresses.
Julie makes Brownie look like Giuliani. I'll sleep better tonight, knowing that when she gets back from her honeymoon, Julie will be patrolling the frontier.
As if the Veterinarian and the Niece were not bad enough, there was also the Accused. David Safavian, the White House procurement official involved in Katrina relief efforts, was arrested on Monday, accused by the F.B.I. of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into the seamy case of "Casino Jack" Abramoff, the Republican operative who has broken new ground in giving lobbying a bad name. Democrats say the fact that Mr. Safavian's wife is a top lawyer for the Republican congressman who's leading the whitewash of the White House blundering on Katrina does not give them confidence.
Just as he has stonewalled other inquiries, Mr. Bush is trying to paper over his Katrina mistakes by appointing his homeland security adviser, Frances Townsend, to investigate how the feds fumbled the response.
Mr. Bush's "Who's Your Daddy?" bravura - blowing off the world on global warming and the allies on the Iraq invasion - has been slapped back by Mother Nature, which refuses to be fooled by spin.
When Donald Rumsfeld came out yesterday to castigate the gloom-and-doomers and talk about the inroads American forces had made against terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, he could not so easily recast reality.
In Afghanistan, the U.S.'s handpicked puppet president is still battling warlords and a revivified Taliban, and the export of poppies for the heroin trade is once more thriving.
Iraq is worse, with more than 1,900 American troops killed. Five more died yesterday, as well as four security men connected to the U.S. embassy office in Mosul, all to fashion a theocratic-leaning regime aligned with Iran. In Basra, two journalists who have done work for The Times have been killed in the last two months.
The more the president echoes his dad's "Message: I care," the more the world hears "Message: I can't."
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
More of the same
As if the Katrina debacle hasn't been enough, other government endeavors are causing further head-scratching, bewilderment and sighing.
First, consider the case of David Safavian, the Bush-appointed, former head of government procurement at the Office of Management and Budget, and before that, chief of staff at the General Services Administration, who was recently arrested on charges related to obstruction of justice and influence peddling involving scandal-emeshed, Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Turns out that Safavian has a wife who's gainfully employed, mind you, as the Republican House Government Reform Committee's chief counsel for investigations (she has recused herself from any cases involving her husband and OMB).
Take some time to let that connection and influence swill around your mind, and see if you aren't ready for a stiff drink. Government Reform, no doubt.
And as if that isn't enough to about send you over the edge, kicking and screaming, think about the recent jailbreak engineered by the British military in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Um, the Brits had two undercover persons dressed in "full Arabic dress" were arrested by Iraqi policemen for shooting at Iraqi civilians. The Brits used a tank or tanks to bust through the jail, allowing 150 Iraqi prisoners of unknown criminal backgrounds to escape while the U.S.'s junior occupational partner retrieved their two spies. But the Iraqi police who arrested the Brits were policemen presumably trained and supported by the British military. So aren't the residents of Basra and its administration both supportive of, and supported by, the occupying "coalition"? Are we warring against ourselves in Iraq? Can a divided house stand?
Questions of sovereignty raised
The events raised questions about how much sovereignty Iraqi authorities really were granted when the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority handed over power to an interim Iraqi government in the summer of 2004.
How much Iraqi sovereignty? Um, that would appear to be none.
And I won't even bring up the other item on Atrios about the former Iraqi defense official under the previous U.S. installed, Allawi government, under investigation for embezzling funds.
Are there any more shoes left to drop?
First, consider the case of David Safavian, the Bush-appointed, former head of government procurement at the Office of Management and Budget, and before that, chief of staff at the General Services Administration, who was recently arrested on charges related to obstruction of justice and influence peddling involving scandal-emeshed, Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Turns out that Safavian has a wife who's gainfully employed, mind you, as the Republican House Government Reform Committee's chief counsel for investigations (she has recused herself from any cases involving her husband and OMB).
Take some time to let that connection and influence swill around your mind, and see if you aren't ready for a stiff drink. Government Reform, no doubt.
And as if that isn't enough to about send you over the edge, kicking and screaming, think about the recent jailbreak engineered by the British military in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Um, the Brits had two undercover persons dressed in "full Arabic dress" were arrested by Iraqi policemen for shooting at Iraqi civilians. The Brits used a tank or tanks to bust through the jail, allowing 150 Iraqi prisoners of unknown criminal backgrounds to escape while the U.S.'s junior occupational partner retrieved their two spies. But the Iraqi police who arrested the Brits were policemen presumably trained and supported by the British military. So aren't the residents of Basra and its administration both supportive of, and supported by, the occupying "coalition"? Are we warring against ourselves in Iraq? Can a divided house stand?
Questions of sovereignty raised
The events raised questions about how much sovereignty Iraqi authorities really were granted when the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority handed over power to an interim Iraqi government in the summer of 2004.
How much Iraqi sovereignty? Um, that would appear to be none.
And I won't even bring up the other item on Atrios about the former Iraqi defense official under the previous U.S. installed, Allawi government, under investigation for embezzling funds.
Are there any more shoes left to drop?
Edwards Gets It Right
From today's Wash Post:
The former senator -- who was tapped by Kerry to be his running mate last year and, like Kerry, is contemplating a 2008 presidential run -- said the administration has long favored wealth over work. He criticized Bush for suspending a law requiring federal contractors along the Gulf Coast to pay prevailing wages on reconstruction projects.
"I might have missed something, but I don't think the president ever talked about putting a cap on the salaries of the CEOs of Halliburton and the other companies . . . who are getting all these contracts," he said in a speech at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. "This president, who never met an earmark he wouldn't approve or a millionaire's tax cut he wouldn't promote, decided to slash wages for the least of us and the most vulnerable."
Of the potential 2008 presidential field, Edwards is the only candidate with a narrative. I'm not convinced he has the gravitas to pull it off, but he's at or near the top of my preference list anyway. Since Dean was already out of the race by the time my primary came around, I pulled the lever for Edwards. Maybe this time, it will be for a winning cause.
The former senator -- who was tapped by Kerry to be his running mate last year and, like Kerry, is contemplating a 2008 presidential run -- said the administration has long favored wealth over work. He criticized Bush for suspending a law requiring federal contractors along the Gulf Coast to pay prevailing wages on reconstruction projects.
"I might have missed something, but I don't think the president ever talked about putting a cap on the salaries of the CEOs of Halliburton and the other companies . . . who are getting all these contracts," he said in a speech at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. "This president, who never met an earmark he wouldn't approve or a millionaire's tax cut he wouldn't promote, decided to slash wages for the least of us and the most vulnerable."
Of the potential 2008 presidential field, Edwards is the only candidate with a narrative. I'm not convinced he has the gravitas to pull it off, but he's at or near the top of my preference list anyway. Since Dean was already out of the race by the time my primary came around, I pulled the lever for Edwards. Maybe this time, it will be for a winning cause.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
One State Free, But It's Not Over Yet
Yes, this is good news. I particularly liked the Wash Post's article on the vote:
Even though the amendment under consideration was known to be dead beforehand, its killing took on a party atmosphere.
First, there were speeches, from legislators who compared Massachusetts's place in the national debate to the radical role the state's Minutemen played in the Revolutionary War.
"We are as out of step today as we were on the village green in Lexington and Concord," said state Sen. Edward M. Augustus Jr. (D). "Massachusetts has always been the conscience of the nation."
Gotta like the twist opponents of the amendment used linking their support for gay rights to the fight for freedom exercised by the Massachusetts Bay Colonists during the Revolutionary War. If there's anything conservative reconstructionists hate, it's when progressives take back our history and unite the founders with our causes.
As for the current situation, in 2004, the constitutional amendment (crafted by Massachusetts state legislators in response to the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision in 2003 allowing gay marriage) banning gay marriage but allowing civil unions in Massachusetts passed by a 105-92 margin.
But because the constitutional amendment process in Massachusetts requires a proposed amendment pass in two consecutive legislative sessions before it could go to the voters in 2006, another vote was needed this year. This second vote on the measure was defeated soundly yesterday, 157-39.
What happened? Apparently some legislators who had voted for the measure the first time and initially opposed gay marriage, have had time to have second thoughts. Time that also allowed public opinion to become more favorable to gay marriage, time for the (no sky falling) results of gay marriage to be seen, and time for legislative supporters of gay marriage to face the voters after their votes and come away unharmed.
Unfortunately, the spin from anti-gay forces is that the current amendment's failing is just fine with them, since they didn't want even the civil unions permitted by the amendment allowed. What's more, anti-gay groups are pushing a new, anti-gay marriage, anti-civil unions "citizen's initiative petition" which
unlike a legislative constitutional amendment, ...needs just 50 votes in each of two successive constitutional conventions in order to be put to voters.
So the bar for passing a hostile amendment is much lower using this tactic. According to the NYT, the soonest this new anti-gay amendment could go to the voters would be 2008. Coupled with the highly financed opposition of groups like Focus on the Family, gay rights groups are not taking anything for granted in Massachusetts.
But today is a good day nonetheless. And the fact that a majority of Massachusetts voters approves of gay marriage means anti gay forces will have an uphill battle to fight in their efforts to scare people about how gay marriages will impact the lives and marriages of heterosexuals and the security of American families.
Even though the amendment under consideration was known to be dead beforehand, its killing took on a party atmosphere.
First, there were speeches, from legislators who compared Massachusetts's place in the national debate to the radical role the state's Minutemen played in the Revolutionary War.
"We are as out of step today as we were on the village green in Lexington and Concord," said state Sen. Edward M. Augustus Jr. (D). "Massachusetts has always been the conscience of the nation."
Gotta like the twist opponents of the amendment used linking their support for gay rights to the fight for freedom exercised by the Massachusetts Bay Colonists during the Revolutionary War. If there's anything conservative reconstructionists hate, it's when progressives take back our history and unite the founders with our causes.
As for the current situation, in 2004, the constitutional amendment (crafted by Massachusetts state legislators in response to the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision in 2003 allowing gay marriage) banning gay marriage but allowing civil unions in Massachusetts passed by a 105-92 margin.
But because the constitutional amendment process in Massachusetts requires a proposed amendment pass in two consecutive legislative sessions before it could go to the voters in 2006, another vote was needed this year. This second vote on the measure was defeated soundly yesterday, 157-39.
What happened? Apparently some legislators who had voted for the measure the first time and initially opposed gay marriage, have had time to have second thoughts. Time that also allowed public opinion to become more favorable to gay marriage, time for the (no sky falling) results of gay marriage to be seen, and time for legislative supporters of gay marriage to face the voters after their votes and come away unharmed.
Unfortunately, the spin from anti-gay forces is that the current amendment's failing is just fine with them, since they didn't want even the civil unions permitted by the amendment allowed. What's more, anti-gay groups are pushing a new, anti-gay marriage, anti-civil unions "citizen's initiative petition" which
unlike a legislative constitutional amendment, ...needs just 50 votes in each of two successive constitutional conventions in order to be put to voters.
So the bar for passing a hostile amendment is much lower using this tactic. According to the NYT, the soonest this new anti-gay amendment could go to the voters would be 2008. Coupled with the highly financed opposition of groups like Focus on the Family, gay rights groups are not taking anything for granted in Massachusetts.
But today is a good day nonetheless. And the fact that a majority of Massachusetts voters approves of gay marriage means anti gay forces will have an uphill battle to fight in their efforts to scare people about how gay marriages will impact the lives and marriages of heterosexuals and the security of American families.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
You Know It's Getting Bad When...
Catherine Crier feels compelled to write a book criticizing the right-wing's attempt to reconstruct American society and the Constitution according to their interpretation of the Bible. She also has a post up at the HuffingtonPost which is probably a good introduction and summary of the book's contentions and concerns.
Catherine Crier is a former Republican Texas (of all places) judge, a former Faux Nooz host, and resident criminal justice griper at CourtTV. And even she gets it.
That someone as prominent and conservative as Crier would come out with a book like this should be a good sign and an encouragement for other conservatives, if not greater numbers of moderates and liberals, to be more willing to address the threat posed by radical religious conservatism.
One can always hope.
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