DEATH WATCH

Death watch – this time, it’s for Tom DeLay

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7336386/

http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle_new.asp?ArticleID=10

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/30/1882/98404
Ronnie Earle, the bane of DeLay's existence, is still working his way through the DeLay inner circle. . . The District Attorney is on his third grand jury, this one focusing on Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick and the Texas Association of Business. There's no way to know when Earle will issue indictments, but this grand jury expires at the end of April, so that's the latest. . . Once this grand jury finishes its business, Earle is expected to convene the fourth grand jury on the matter targeting DeLay specifically. Rumors are already flying that those already indicted are singing in exchange for more lenient sentences. No one wants to rot in jail for DeLay's sake. . . The circle is closing in.

New anti-DeLay ad: http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/3/30/114441/945

Bush being drawn into the web? http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Lobbyist-Mariana-Islands.html

General Sanchez, former U.S. commander in Iraq, seems awfully close to a perjury charge

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2618

http://www.livejournal.com/users/insomnia/547941.html

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/03/sanchez_fingered_as_authorizing_torture_what_else_is_new.html

U.S now holding over 10,000 prisoners in Iraq, more than double the number of just a few months ago

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/03/a_disconcerting.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/30/gulag/index.html

When will there be a proper investigation into rendition practices?

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/30/rendition7/index.html

Those damn “activist courts”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10997-2005Mar29.html
A federal judge yesterday barred the Bush administration from transferring a group of detainees from the U.S. military prison in Cuba to the custody of foreign governments without first giving the prisoners a chance to challenge the move in court. . . U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. said he was preventing transfers without advance notice to bar the government from "unilaterally and silently taking actions" to move detainees outside the reach of U.S. courts.

Iraq’s new govt: a complete mess. It very hard to see how any kind of stable coalition comes out of this situation

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1242

Is the practice of banning people from taxpayer-funded events merely on the basis of their SUSPECTED political leanings, the last straw for Bush Co. arrogance and insularity? And isn’t posing as a Secret Service agent a crime?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12898-2005Mar30.html
The latest incident of audience screening at President Bush's public events is making quite a splash in the media today. Three people at a Bush event in Denver last week were told by a man dressed like a Secret Service agent that they were being ejected because someone spotted a "No Blood for Oil" bumper sticker on their car in the parking lot.

Press secretary Scott McClellan, in yesterday's press briefing, was asked about the incident.

But rather than express any condemnation -- or remorse -- McClellan chose to make an assertion that is not supported by the facts: "We welcome a diversity of views at the events," he said.

In reality, ticket distribution at Bush's Social Security events has been almost exclusively controlled by Republican officials, the audiences are sometimes stocked with supporters bused in by conservative groups, and I don't believe a single one of the carefully groomed panelists on stage has ever said anything remotely critical of the president or his deeply unpopular Social Security proposals.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_27.php#005290
Hmmm. . . a bit more on the Bamboozlepalooza event where the three non-Bush-loyalists were tossed by a guy who appeared to be a Secret Service agent.

According to this article in the Rocky Mountain News, the three in question were specifically told by event officials that they were being held until Secret Service agents came to escort them out of the building. . . So it seems it wasn't just a case of these guys seeing a guy in a black suit and an earpiece and figuring he was Secret Service.

The three also claim that the real Secret Service agent who later investigated the incident told them that there have been repeated incidents of Republican operative posing as Secret Service agents to toss folks who aren't Bush-True out of taxpayer-funded Bamboozlepalooza events.

More: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=krwashbureau/_bc_bush_dissenters_wa

Scotty lies about it

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2632

Bush still begging (disingenuously) for critics to come forward with alternatives to his moribund Social Security proposals

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush31mar31,1,7924443.story
"If you've got a good idea, we expect you to be at the table," he said. . . "I expect you to bring it forward," he said, "but more importantly, the American people expect you to bring it forward…. We want to listen to good ideas."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_27.php#005299
TPM Reader BG makes a good point: "The president says 'If you've got an idea, I expect you to be at the table. We want to listen to good ideas.' How does this square with the forcible removal from the presidential gatherings of anyone exhibiting the merest hint of an appearance of possibly harboring independent thoughts?"

Snow job -- he can’t possibly be this dumb, can he? If not, there is only one other explanation. . .

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/30/132527/423
Snow, in remarks to the Chamber of Commerce in Bozeman, said he believed personal accounts for young workers would be cost-free for the existing Social Security system and would not affect benefits to retirees or near-retirees. . . "Why wouldn't we do this? I have not heard one good reason not to and it's hard to figure out why anybody would oppose it," he said.

His assistant sect’y is shoveling the same manure too

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_27.php#005292
The Treasury Department representative, Rob Nichols, claimed that there would be no transition costs involved in creating "personal accounts". When the crowd reacted loudly, he repeated the claim, saying "this is precisely factual, [no transition costs]." That just provoked laughter.

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000607.html
Do they really think the press corps and the people are dumb enough to believe that? And why do they think it's to their advantage to set out such transparent lies?

Have we reached the limits of spin on this issue? EVERYONE is pointing out now that the Bush numbers simply don’t add up

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_27.php#005301

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_27.php#005300

One thing seems pretty clear as Bush keeps pounding his head against the Social Security wall: they are either going to cut a very partial deal (optional private accounts, or something like that), declare victory, and hope to fight again after the midterm elections; or they think they have a strategy to blame the Democrats, AARP, gays, and activist courts for the failure. I cant see any other reason why they keep raising the stakes by investing even more time, money, and flagging presidential prestige on this losing hand. What is very clear is that Bush’s limited rhetorical skills and impoverished grasp of the issues are on continual display – and if anything, are getting even worse

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2635

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/03/threatsis-he-just-stupid-or.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12913-2005Mar30.html
Two key GOP lawmakers who joined President Bush on Wednesday as he pitched restructuring Social Security said that Bush has failed to sell the American people on his plan to change the 70-year-old federal retirement system.

"Today, the public has not found his personal account approach compelling," Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) said in an interview late Tuesday, less than 24 hours before appearing with Bush at Kirkwood Community College here. . . [Charles] Grassley, chairman of the Senate panel responsible for Social Security, said in a separate interview Tuesday afternoon: "I don't think [Bush] has made much progress on solving the solvency issue or what to do about personal accounts. It concerns me because as time goes on, I was hoping the president would be able to make my job easier.”

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005983.php
Until Bush has the political courage to step up to the plate and send a serious proposal of his own to Congress, he shouldn't expect anyone else to do it either. In the meantime, he deserves nothing but scorn. His sustained display of political cowardice is setting a standard for generations to come.

CNN says that Bush may implement part of his Social Security plan by Executive Order. (I don’t believe it – the outcry would be immense. This story was planted for some other reason)

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/03/29/ace.up.sleeve/index.html

On Schiavo: the furious revolt among the “theocons” (love that word) that Bush’s sudden disappearance over the issue has engendered -- and a great photo

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/3/30/225325/222

The court has ruled: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/31/national/31schiavo.html
A federal appeals court in Atlanta refused Wednesday to reconsider the case of Terri Schiavo, with one of the judges rebuking President Bush and Congress for acting "in a manner demonstrably at odds with our founding fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people."

The ridiculous failure of today’s intelligence report to mention the most glaring aspect of the pre-war WMD sham: the WH was actively discouraging (or ignoring) any intelligence that didn’t fit their plans

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/31/opinion/31dowd.html

Interesting insights into how the “top secret” classification system actually works – and how much actually gets classified

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/03/shhhhhhh_its_a_secret.php

Another Dead Man Walking: I don’t see how Bolton can possibly go through an April 7th confirmation hearing like this

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000415.html
[Steven Clemons] I have spoken to several current and former senior foreign policy officials yesterday and this morning regarding John Bolton. Their chorus is the same. . . They report that Colin Powell and Richard Armitage hated dealing with Bolton and that Powell did not want Bolton on his team. No one trusts him. He is lustful for power and position, disdainful of process, and frequently sees it as his right and obligation to "make his own weather" when it comes to foreign policy.

One of the more interesting tidbits I picked up in these conversations -- with several people -- is that John Bolton regularly and frequently defied command and control within the State Department. . . Several sources report that Secretary of State Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage were livid that Bolton had threatened (intentionally or unintentionally) the Russians with a deadline -- and more importantly, had taken the lead himself (without vested authority) to argue under what terms the United States would abrogate the ABM treaty.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000416.html
This deep philosophical disjunction between the prevailing ethos of the United Nations and the fundamental American approach to governance is not something that will change in the foreseeable future. . . What, then, does the foregoing analysis mean for the United Nations, and for America's role within the organization? It means primarily that the rest of the world should have realistic expectations that the United Nations has a limited role to play in international affairs for the foreseeable future. . . According to Bolton, the UN can't become more relevant or effective through reform. And the "philosophical disjunction" is "not something that will change."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bolton31mar31,1,4953442.story
Democrats are likely to vote unanimously against John R. Bolton when his nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations comes before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next week, according to Democratic and Republican lawmakers and aides. . . It would be the first time that committee Democrats unanimously opposed a Bush diplomatic selection, and it could put the nomination in peril if any Republicans defected to vote against Bolton.

More: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000420.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000418.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000422.html

Yet another analysis confirms: exit polls show something fishy with the 2004 vote count

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/03/experts-election-fixedof-course.html
In November 2004, results of the poll differed sharply from the official vote tally. In fact, the weighted national poll predicted a Kerry victory by 3% in the popular vote, while the official count had Bush the winner by 2.5% . This was the largest discrepancy in the poll’s history. . . Our conclusion is that the data appear to be more consistent with the hypothesis of bias in the official count, rather than bias in the exit poll sampling. No data in the report supports the. . . hypothesis that Kerry voters were more likely than Bush voters to cooperate with pollsters and, in fact, there is some indication that the opposite may have been the case.

The GOP’s breach of “Contract With America”

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005/03/for-your-talking-points-collection.html

Bonus item: a great idea for a living will (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/27/Columns/Living_will_is_the_be.shtml
[Robert Friedman] Like many of you, I have been compelled by recent events to prepare a more detailed advance directive dealing with end-of-life issues. Here's what mine says:

* In the event I lapse into a persistent vegetative state, I want medical authorities to resort to extraordinary means to prolong my hellish semiexistence. Fifteen years wouldn't be long enough for me.

* I want my wife and my parents to compound their misery by engaging in a bitter and protracted feud that depletes their emotions and their bank accounts.

* I want my wife to ruin the rest of her life by maintaining an interminable vigil at my bedside. I'd be really jealous if she waited less than a decade to start dating again or otherwise rebuilding a semblance of a normal life.

* I want my case to be turned into a circus by losers and crackpots from around the country who hope to bring meaning to their empty lives by investing the same transient emotion in me that they once reserved for Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and that little girl who got stuck in a well.

* I want those crackpots to spread vicious lies about my wife.

* I want to be placed in a hospice where protesters can gather to bring further grief and disruption to the lives of dozens of dying patients and families whose stories are sadder than my own.

* I want the people who attach themselves to my case because of their deep devotion to the sanctity of life to make death threats against any judges, elected officials or health care professionals who disagree with them.

* I want the medical geniuses and philosopher kings who populate the Florida Legislature to ignore me for more than a decade and then turn my case into a forum for weeks of politically calculated bloviation.

* I want total strangers - oily politicians, maudlin news anchors, ersatz friars and all other hangers-on - to start calling me "Bobby," as if they had known me since childhood.

* I'm not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be nice if Congress passed a "Bobby's Law" that applied only to me and ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans without adequate health coverage.

* Even if the "Bobby's Law" idea doesn't work out, I want Congress - especially all those self-described conservatives who claim to believe in "less government and more freedom" - to trample on the decisions of doctors, judges and other experts who actually know something about my case. And I want members of Congress to launch into an extended debate that gives them another excuse to avoid pesky issues such as national security and the economy.

* In particular, I want House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to use my case as an opportunity to divert the country's attention from the mounting political and legal troubles stemming from his slimy misbehavior.

* And I want Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to make a mockery of his Harvard medical degree by misrepresenting the details of my case in ways that might give a boost to his 2008 presidential campaign.

* I want Frist and the rest of the world to judge my medical condition on the basis of a snippet of dated and demeaning videotape that should have remained private.

* Because I think I would retain my sense of humor even in a persistent vegetative state, I'd want President Bush - the same guy who publicly mocked Karla Faye Tucker when signing off on her death warrant as governor of Texas - to claim he was intervening in my case because it is always best "to err on the side of life."

* I want the state Department of Children and Families to step in at the last moment to take responsibility for my well-being, because nothing bad could ever happen to anyone under DCF's care.

* And because Gov. Jeb Bush is the smartest and most righteous human being on the face of the Earth, I want any and all of the aforementioned directives to be disregarded if the governor happens to disagree with them. If he says he knows what's best for me, I won't be in any position to argue.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:07 AM

 
DEMOCRACY AND THEOCRACY

Reverend Moon (Washington Times owner) announces that democracy is an outmoded system: says we need a “new organization”

http://iapprovethismessiah.com/2005/03/moon-work-with-congressmen-to-discard.html

Here we see the deep commitment of the Bush administration to basic democratic rights (here in the U.S., not in all those places where they want to “spread democracy” abroad) – I guess this is their way of setting an example. . .

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/29/113651/512
Very rarely does the everyday public get a glimpse of what happens behind the scenes in a normally-secret Bush Administration.

But Monday, March 28, the Secret Service called three everyday people into their offices to discuss why we were kicked out of a presidential event in Denver last week where Bush promoted his plan to privatize Social Security. What they revealed to us and our lawyer was fascinating.

There we were - three people who had personally picked up tickets from Republican Congressman Bob Beauprez's office and went to a presidential event. But as we entered, we were told that we had been "ID'ed" and were warned that any disruption would get us arrested.

After being seated in the audience we were forcibly removed before the President arrived, even though we had not been disruptive. We were shocked when told that this presidential event was a "private event" and were commanded to leave.

More astonishingly, when the Secret Service was contacted the next day they agreed to meet with us this Monday, March 28 to discuss the circumstances surrounding our removal. We had two big questions going into this meeting:

1. How is the Bush Administration "ID'ing" citizens before presidential events?

2. Why was an official taxpayer-funded event called a "private event" - leading to citizens being kicked out?

Most shocking of all, we got answers to both questions.

The Secret Service revealed that we were "ID'ed" when local Republican staffers saw a bumper sticker on the car we drove which said "No More Blood For Oil." Evidently, the free speech expressed on one bumper sticker is cause enough to eject three citizens from a presidential event. (Similarly, someone was ejected from Bush's Social Security privatization event in Arizona the same day simply for wearing a Democratic t-shirt.)

The Secret Service also revealed that ticket distribution and staffing of the Social Security event was run by the local Republican Party. They wanted us to be clear that it was a Republican staffer - not the Secret Service - who kicked us out of the presidential event. But this revealed something else that should be startling to all Americans. . .

I was emailed this account by the people involved, so it's straight from the horse's mouth. The AP did a story on this as well.

"They hadn't done anything wrong. They weren't dressed inappropriately, they didn't say anything inappropriate," Recht said. "They were kicked out of this venue and not allowed to hear what the president had to say based solely on this political bumper sticker.

"The very essence of the First Amendment is that you can't be punished for the speech you make, the statements you make," Recht said.

So to emphasize -- the White House uses taxpayer dollars to finance these propaganda events. THEN, in order to keep out anyone who might be critical, they "outsource" ticketing and security. That way they can label the events "private" and kick out anyone they want in violation of the First Amendment. . . Who in Congress will step up and call for an investigation?

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/03/first_amendment_and_bush_town_hall.html
These people got ejected from a Bush “town hall meeting” on Social Security because of a bumper sticker on their car: Secret Service investigating removal of three from Bush visit. What’s interesting here is that it’s possible the Secret Service didn’t do it but someone else, possibly pretending to be a Secret Service agent did the evictions. . .

• If the Secret Service had anything to do with this, it violated the law and the Constitution
• If the evictions were by private citizens misrepresenting themselves as government officials, they committed a crime
• If the evictions were by private citizens being intimidating, it could be a crime or civil offense (e.g. assault, threats, depends on state law)
• It’s conceivable that there might be a way for private citizens to artfully mislead people and give the impression they are secret service agents without actually making actionable mis-statements (“Sir? Could you please come this way? I need to talk with you. I’m sorry, but you will have to leave. Security. I’m sure you will understand.”) I just don’t know enough about the relevant law to be sure.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_27.php#005272
It seems the planners of these taxpayer-funded events hire rent-a-cops, dress them up to look like Secret Service agents and then have them boot people who don't seem Bush-true.

Example taken. In Iraq a free and independent democratic govt is looking more and more distant every day. How much longer before some strongman like Allawi steps in and says that “for the sake of national unity” he’s taking over (notice that so far Allawi hasn’t given up anything yet)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2605
During the session, an assembly member exhorted others to take action, saying a vote must be held as swiftly as possible while the body is in the world's spotlight.

At that point, the acting speaker kicked reporters out of the session and cut off the video feed from the convention center in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, where the assembly is meeting.

A Western diplomat watching the proceeding called the decision to cut the feed "an embarrassment."

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010180.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005920

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/03/30/iraqi_legislators_mired_in_strife/

http://www.newkerala.com/news-daily/news/features.php?action=fullnews&id=91818

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1241

Upcoming intelligence report may have a few snipes against Bush Co. lies and exaggerations after all!

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/29/iraq/index.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9634-2005Mar29.html
The super-secret commission grudgingly appointed more than a year ago by President Bush to investigate flawed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction is expected to deliver its report to the White House on Thursday. . . But the complete secrecy of the commission's deliberations -- it operated entirely behind closed doors -- raises questions about how avidly its conclusions will be embraced by the public. . . Its members are unfamiliar to most Americans. (My WMD Commission page is one of the few places on the Internet you can find out anything about them.) Its process is a mystery. And we still have no idea how forthrightly its leaders -- an intensely conservative Republican and a centrist Democrat -- chose to deal with one of the thorniest but most critical pieces of the puzzle: The White House's role.

(The report apparently has to remind the govt that dissent and the freedom to express a range of views within the intelligence services is a GOOD thing)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11145-2005Mar29.html

A reminder of the long list of WH lies about WMD: click on the Waxman report

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2602

Some grilling from Helen Thomas on the phony intelligence issue, and a few other good questions that get Scotty squirming

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2614

38 innocent “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo to be released, after almost three years of mistaken captivity, with nothing more than a “sorry, never mind”

http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2005/03/30/us_orders_38_freed_from_guantanamo/

John Danforth! I’ll never forgive him for shilling for Clarence Thomas, but he is at heart a decent man (and an Episcopal minister). Listen to this

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/opinion/30danforth.html
BY a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians. The elements of this transformation have included advocacy of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, opposition to stem cell research involving both frozen embryos and human cells in petri dishes, and the extraordinary effort to keep Terri Schiavo hooked up to a feeding tube. . . Standing alone, each of these initiatives has its advocates, within the Republican Party and beyond. But the distinct elements do not stand alone. Rather they are parts of a larger package, an agenda of positions common to conservative Christians and the dominant wing of the Republican Party. . .

The problem is not with people or churches that are politically active. It is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement. . . When government becomes the means of carrying out a religious program, it raises obvious questions under the First Amendment. But even in the absence of constitutional issues, a political party should resist identification with a religious movement. While religions are free to advocate for their own sectarian causes, the work of government and those who engage in it is to hold together as one people a very diverse country. At its best, religion can be a uniting influence, but in practice, nothing is more divisive. For politicians to advance the cause of one religious group is often to oppose the cause of another. . .

The changing nature of “conservatism”

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/03/conservatively-speakingi-wish-someone.html

Swing voters not moved by Bush Social Security proposals, or by his ads blaming Dems for not offering an alternative proposal

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/29/12178/6090

http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2614

Meanwhile, corporate backers of the Bush proposal are starting to run attack ads against REPUBLICANS (like Lindsey Graham, R-SC) who are off the reservation. Let the cannibal season begin!

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_27.php#005273
“Reforming Social Security with personal retirement accounts is the biggest domestic policy opportunity in America today,” said Pat Toomey, President of the Club for Growth. “Lindsey Graham’s proposal of a huge tax increase as part of a reform package would squander this opportunity and do more harm than good.”

In addition to the Club for Growth, other tax reform advocates have expressed dismay over Sen. Graham’s proposal. “Raising the cap on earnings subject to payroll taxes is not only economically destructive, but it’s unfair and wrong.”

Schiavo parents sell list of their supporters to a direct-mail company, who will then use it to send all those people miscellaneous right-wing fund-raising appeals and spam. Naturally, someone concerned about saving Terri’s life will also be fertile ground for anti-gay paranoia and conspiracy-mongering, right?

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/29/122724/208
[NYT] The parents of Terri Schiavo have authorized a conservative direct-mailing firm to sell a list of their financial supporters, making it likely that thousands of strangers moved by her plight will receive a steady stream of solicitations from anti-abortion and conservative groups. . . “These compassionate pro-lifers donated toward Bob Schindler’s legal battle to keep Terri’s estranged husband from removing the feeding tube from Terri,” says a description of the list on the Web site of the firm, Response Unlimited, which is asking $150 a month for 6,000 names and $500 a month for 4,000 e-mail addresses of people who responded last month to an e-mail plea from Ms. Schiavo’s father. “These individuals are passionate about the way they value human life, adamantly oppose euthanasia and are pro-life in every sense of the word!”

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005918

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/29/191914/848
And if you wonder who buys these lists, and what they send to them, here’s one example.

Eugene Delgaudio
Public Advocate of the U.S.
5613 Leesburg Pike, Suite 17
Falls Church, VA 22041
www.PublicAdvocateUSA.org
(703) 845-1808

April 11, 2005

Dear fellow conservative,

Tonight, after a long day of fighting the Radical Homosexuals, I just feel exhausted.

Beaten down, wrung out, and worn to the bone.

This has been a most difficult year.

The radical Homosexual Lobby is more intimidating than ever.

Now, they dare me to stand in their way . . . they laugh, and brag that they have the votes to kill the Federal Marriage Amendment and will legalize homosexual “marriage” state by state.

And they boast about ramming the Gay Bill of Special Rights and Thought Control Bill through Congress even with Republicans in charge . . . [More]

More reasons to worry about the health of democracy

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/29/opinion/29krugman.html?hp
[Paul Krugman] The Schiavo case is, indeed, a chance to highlight what's going on in America. . . One thing that's going on is a climate of fear for those who try to enforce laws that religious extremists oppose. Randall Terry, a spokesman for Terri Schiavo's parents, hasn't killed anyone, but one of his former close associates in the anti-abortion movement is serving time for murdering a doctor. George Greer, the judge in the Schiavo case, needs armed bodyguards. . . Another thing that's going on is the rise of politicians willing to violate the spirit of the law, if not yet the letter, to cater to the religious right. . . And the future seems all too likely to bring more intimidation in the name of God and more political intervention that undermines the rule of law.

Hey, what’s wrong with a few lies when you’re trying to save a life? The duplicity of Schiavo’s advocates (thanks to Mark Kleiman for the link)

http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/03/the_schiavo_cas.shtml#008971

Does the Schiavo case give impetus to the GOP’s “nuclear option” on judicial nominees?

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/03/senate_doomsday.html

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010178.html

Jargon watch: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005970.php
• First take: "Nuclear option." Didn't poll well.
• Second take: "Constitutional option." Nobody saluted when they ran it up the flagpole.
• Third take: "Byrd option." Huh?
• Fourth take: None yet. Still waiting for laughter to stop from third take.

Further jargon watch: morphing from the war against terror to the war against “extremism” – a term flexible enough to pick up lots of new enemies

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001811.html

Speaking of nuclear options, guess who is the biggest violator of the Nonproliferation Treaty?

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/03/29/nukes/index.html
Nuclear watchdogs in this country, however, warn that the Bush administration is fueling a new arms race. They contend the government is violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the 1970 international agreement that states that countries with nuclear weapons must work toward disarmament. The Bush administration, they charge, is pouring money into new nuclear weapons programs and performing nuclear tests, spurring other nations to do the same.

More on the upcoming Bolton battle, and what’s at stake

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005925

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000411.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000412.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000413.html
“CBS News Foreign Affairs analyst Pamela Falk said Bolton is "receiving so much bipartisan criticism that there is a widespread question about whether or not the administration was expecting the nomination to pass the Senate.”

Bonus item: who counts as a blogger? (read it all - hilarious)

http://billmon.org/archives/001787.html
A lot of people on the left side of the blogosphere seem to be outraged by the fact that sex entrepreneur Jeff "Bulldog" Gannon has been invited to join a panel session on journalism and blogging at the National Press Club in Washington. . . My point, to the extent I have one, is that Gannon/Guckert is going to fit in very well on that NPC panel -- as long, that is, as he's there to represent the professional journalists, not the bloggers. When it comes to blogging, Jim/Jeff doesn't have much to offer other than his cloddish prose and half-congealed "thoughts," which consist almost entirely of recycled Fox News talking points -- recycled in the same sense that cow sh-t is recycled grass. . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 9:45 AM

 
BUM INTELLIGENCE

Upcoming report will, once again, bash the CIA as the source of unreliable WMD intelligence, without looking at (a) the WH pressure they were under to provide only slanted, pro-war evidence and (b) the manipulative and misleading way that intelligence was portrayed by the WH

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/29/politics/29weapons.html

The miserable failure of the Senate WMD inquiry

http://dirtytrix.blogspot.com/2005/03/wmd-investigation-critical-of-bush.html
But the committee's report did not cover a crucial area: how the Bush Administration used -- or abused -- the prewar intelligence to build support for the Iraq invasion. Roberts claimed his committee was hot on that trail: "It is one of my top priorities," he said. The problem, he explained, was that there was not enough time before the November election to complete the assignment. Rockefeller took issue with that and complained that the "central issue of how intelligence was...exaggerated by Bush Administration officials" was being relegated into a "Phase II" investigation that would not begin until after the election. A Democratic committee staffer said that such an inquiry could easily be completed within months. . . Now -- with Bush re-elected -- Roberts no longer considers Phase II a priority. In mid-March, Roberts declared further investigation pointless. He noted that if his committee asked Bush officials whether they had overstated or mischaracterized prewar intelligence, they'd simply claim their statements had been based on "bum intelligence." Roberts remarked, "To go though that exercise, it seems to me, in a postelection environment -- we didn't see how we could do that and achieve any possible progress. I think everybody pretty well gets it.". . .

Following up yesterday’s post, more pre-war lies by Paul Wolfowitz

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005962.php
Mr. Wolfowitz...opened a two-front war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, "wildly off the mark." Pentagon officials have put the figure closer to 100,000 troops. . .

He said there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, as there was in Bosnia or Kosovo....He said Iraqi civilians would welcome an American-led liberation force....And he said that nations that oppose war with Iraq would likely sign up to help rebuild it....Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high. . .

Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher, ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion. "To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong," he said. . .

Rumsfeld too: http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000576.html

Still no govt in Iraq

http://billmon.org/archives/001782.html

Our hand: http://billmon.org/archives/001785.html
[U.S. News and World Report] U.S. officials in Baghdad said they are prepared to play diplomatic hardball – including the threat to withhold billions in promised reconstruction aid – to ensure that Iraq's political newbies stick to the game plan for a democratic, pluralistic, federalist, and unified state. "The Iraqis are free to choose whatever vision of Iraq they want. That's entirely up to them," says a diplomat in Baghdad. "It's entirely up to us, the United States, who we choose to support. We can use these funds elsewhere." [Read on!]

Given the miserable poll numbers on their Schiavo posturing, the GOP is in full spin mode in trying to redefine their stance and what the issue was all about. Track one is to tap into disability activism and to pretend that Terri S. is a disabled individual (false). Track two is to say that it’s all an issue of “judicial activism” (whereas the truly activist position would have been for courts to redefine the law to suit a particular case, as they wanted). Track three is to deny that the nearly universal condemnation of their attempt to interfere with a private family decision has anything to do with them

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/28/schiavo2/index.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005902

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/03/here_we_go_agai.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0329/p09s02-codc.html
There are some basic rules in politics. When the public is with you, claim a mandate by the will of the people. When the public is against you, claim a strong personal compass that isn't swayed by polls. And when you think your control and approval are slipping, talk about the conspiracy working against you. . .

Department of Ouch

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/28/122815/867

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2590

The Democratic response

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1236

Wall Street Journal editorial page, flagship of right-wing opinion, seems ready to cut Mr. DeLay loose (I read this as saying nothing special about their commitment to ethics, and a great deal about their concerns that DeLay could become the poster boy of GOP arrogance and corruption for the 2006 campaign, hurting the wider conservative movement)

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/28/133717/393
[WSJ] By now you have surely read about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's ethics troubles. Probably, too, you aren't entirely clear as to what those troubles are--something to do with questionable junkets, Indian casino money, funny business on the House Ethics Committee, stuff down in Texas. In Beltway-speak, what this means is that Mr. DeLay has an "odor": nothing too incriminating, nothing actually criminal, just an unsavory whiff that could have GOP loyalists reaching for the political Glade if it gets any worse. . . The Beltway wisdom is right. Mr. DeLay does have odor issues. . .

Taken separately, and on present evidence, none of the latest charges directly touch Mr. DeLay; at worst, they paint a picture of a man who makes enemies by playing political hardball and loses admirers by resorting to politics-as-usual. . . The problem, rather, is that Mr. DeLay, who rode to power in 1994 on a wave of revulsion at the everyday ways of big government, has become the living exemplar of some of its worst habits. Mr. DeLay's ties to Mr. Abramoff might be innocent, in a strictly legal sense, but it strains credulity to believe that Mr. DeLay found nothing strange with being included in Mr. Abramoff's lavish junkets.

Nor does it seem very plausible that Mr. DeLay never considered the possibility that the mega-lucrative careers his former staffers Michael Scanlon and Mr. Buckham achieved after leaving his office had something to do with their perceived proximity to him. These people became rich as influence-peddlers in a government in which legislators like Mr. DeLay could make or break fortunes by tinkering with obscure rules and dispensing scads of money to this or that constituency. Rather than buck this system as he promised to do while in the minority, Mr. DeLay has become its undisputed and unapologetic master as Majority Leader.

Whether Mr. DeLay violated the small print of House Ethics or campaign-finance rules is thus largely beside the point. His real fault lies in betraying the broader set of principles that brought him into office, and which, if he continues as before, sooner or later will sweep him out.

Desperate GOP now lying about what loyalists say at their town-hall Social Security meetings

http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=522
The pull-quote: Clif Smith, A Retiree From Joplin: “I Believe [Social Security] Needs Improved [Sic].”

The full quote:

“I believe it needs improved,” said Clif Smith, a retiree from Joplin, at the AARP gathering. “But nothing of the nature of what is being talked about in Washington.”. . . Smith said he opposes private accounts because he thinks they would drain money from the trust fund, but he said the fund itself should own stock.

The pull-quote: “[Kimberly] Holloway Sees Advantages In Personal Accounts In That It Would Encourage More Savings And Financial Responsibility …”

The full quote:

Holloway sees advantages in personal accounts in that it would encourage more savings and financial responsibility, she said. . . But she’s wary that this proposal feeds into the Bush administration’s trend to encourage self-centered thinking away from considering the welfare of the general society, she said. . . “We all should care because you don’t know what (misfortune) will happen,” Holloway said. “Don’t fiddle with the social safety net.”

The pull-quote: Scott Savelkol, Recent Graduate From Dickinson State University: “Doing Nothing Is Not An Option.”

The full quote:

Scott Savelkol, who recently graduated from Dickinson State University, said he also opposes to private accounts [sic]. He would prefer lawmakers lift a $90,000 cap on wages taxed for Social Security. . . “Doing nothing is not an option,” Savelkol said.

Public opinion on private accounts continues to drop

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/28/12017/9388

Conservative, pro-market analysts explain why private accounts are a losing proposition

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005963.php

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/03/crack-widenswhos-left-other-than-unka.html

Paging Dr. Frist…paging Dr. Frist

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9388

A big smooch for Karl – my only question is, why now?

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/28/rove/index.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005904

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000586.html

Andy Card’s brother: business as usual in the lobbying world

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_27.php#005263

Another Bush Co. attempt to radically restructure the nature of govt, which is not getting enough attention: the effort to destroy civil service unions

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005899

Another new law which seems obscure but would have a huge impact on ordinary Americans (like the bankruptcy bill): loosening protections against predatory lending practices

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005905

New developments on the “nuclear option”

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005907

Opposition to Bolton for the U.N. starts to grow

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/03/pearls-before-swinenot-that-anyonell.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000408.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000410.html

Judith Miller, once a more-or-less seriously regarded journalist

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2593

More blog-bashing, and blog-defending

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_27_atrios_archive.html#111203809480559641

http://slate.msn.com/id/2115883/

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_27_atrios_archive.html#111207512205132285

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/03/in_defense_of_comedy_and_of_wonkette.php

Bonus item: why liberals lose debates over “media bias”. Here the subject is media representations of the protestors at the Schiavo death watch (who combine both heartfelt and conscientious religious advocates and creepy wackos). Michelle Cottle, a sensible young woman, gets backed into admitting that just SHOWING these people (some of whom are self-parodying extremists) somehow represents media bias. In other words, because showing them makes them look goofy, it’s the media’s fault for showing them

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/28/12017/9388
Lord knows how biased the media would have been had they not put them on TV. Heads I win tails you lose.

Double bonus: “Christian soldier” (don’t miss it)

http://billmon.org/archives/001784.html

More: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_27_atrios_archive.html#111205894614578991

Triple bonus: on the creationism/evolution debate – a new low

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_27_atrios_archive.html#111203575681665486
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture." -- Pastor Ray Mummert

[NB: Now, of course, this is ridiculous. But think about it this way – he knows what he saying, so who is the audience to whom he thinks this is an absolutely clinching argument?]

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:36 AM

 
A CULTURE OF MORALITY

Bush squirming over selective morality in the Schiavo case – look, either it’s a moral imperative for the “culture of life” or it’s not. If one actually believed strongly against euthanasia in every case, or abortion in every case (or against the death penalty in every case), at least you would have to admire a consistent commitment to principle. But this selective outrage sounds a bit like something else, eh George?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3797-2005Mar26.html
The juxtaposition of racing through the night in Air Force One to sign legislation intended to force doctors to reinsert Schiavo's feeding tube and choosing not to use his bully pulpit to advocate for her life afterward demonstrates how uncomfortable the matter has become for the White House. For years, Bush has succeeded politically in stitching together the disparate elements of the conservative movement, marrying the libertarian and family-values wings of his party. Now he faces a major Republican rupture. . . Polls show the vast majority of Americans, including conservatives and evangelical Christians, disapprove of the decision by Bush and Congress to get involved in the Schiavo matter. And more worrying for the White House, those polls have also shown a significant drop in Bush's overall approval ratings.

Jeb too: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/now-that-jeb-bush-is-in-trouble.html

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/03/27/schiavo/
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said on Sunday there is nothing else he can do to save Terri Schiavo's life. . . "I cannot violate a court order," Bush said after attending Easter Sunday church services. "I don't have powers from the United States Constitution or -- for that matter from the Florida Constitution -- that would allow me to intervene after a decision has been made.". . . To Terri Schiavo's parents -- who have said Bush should do more to help their daughter -- the governor said: "I can't. I'd love to, but I can't.". . . "I'm sad that she's in the situation that she's in," Bush said. . .

On selective mortality

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_digbysblog_archive.html

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/schiavo_/2005/03/strategery_backfires.php

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/03/does_anyone_rea.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-assess28mar28,1,2065273.story

On the deal with the devil the GOP has made, and the price they will pay for it

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1234

Creepy: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=617689

But it gets worse: now Bush’s people are saying he never really wanted to sign the Schiavo bill in the first place! So, which is worse – to have made a big show of flying across country to sign this life-or-death bill, and then to run away from it (and the GOP leadership) when the poll numbers turn south, or to have signed it without actually believing in it in the first place? Either way, Mr. Decisive looks like a weasling puss

http://www.sundaymorningtalk.com/smt/2005/03/bush_approval_d.html
As Dubya starts to see his numbers slide, This Week reported that the Bush administration are starting to distance themselves from Republicans on Capitol Hill, leaking that Bush didn't even want to return to Washington to sign the Schiavo bill last Sunday. In the spin wars, it's now clear that while the Democrats might have ran for cover last week, their storyline of the Republicans politicizing a family dispute in Florida has had traction in the polls.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005958.php
If it's true, it's about as galactically craven and poll driven a rowback as I've ever heard. Did one of Bush's minions really say something this cowardly and gutless?

How bad was the Schiavo bill as a legislative precedent?

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005/03/delay-cest-moi-i-have-to-say-as-lawyer.html

Tom DeLay compares himself to Jesus – okay, the joke writes itself (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/000138.htm

Molly Ivins on why DeLay is an embarrassment even by the standards of Texas politics – which, if you follow Texas politics at all, is a stunningly low standard

http://www.qctimes.com/internal.php?story_id=1048015&t=Opinion&c=22,1048015

“All roads lead to Karl”

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/28/politics/28rove.html

In Michigan, a GOP-sponsored bill would allow physicians to withhold treatment from any patient on “moral, ethical, or religious grounds.” Could this defend them if they refused treatment to gay patients? Apparently so

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/michigan-preparing-to-let-doctors.html

And: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_27_atrios_archive.html#111198452908149912
Some pharmacists across the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control and morning-after pills, saying that dispensing the medications violates their personal moral or religious beliefs.

Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chair of the Senate committee that would have to draft Social Security legislation says, it ain’t gonna happen

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_27.php#005257

Paul Wolfowitz explains yet again how well things are going in Iraq

http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=520
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, 3/27/05:
[T]he real problem is that the conflict hasn’t ended…I think people shouldn’t have been surprised that a regime that had burrowed into Iraqi society over 35 years and killed and tortured and intimidated people so effectively didn’t quit just because they were driven out of Baghdad on April 9, 2003.

Vice President Cheney, 3/16/03:
I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators…I think it will go relatively quickly…(in) weeks rather than months.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 2/7/03:
It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.

Here’s the latest update on how victory and reconstruction are progressing

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/27/174847/446

http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/no-government-and-16-dead-us-generals.html

Defense Dept drafts a revised tribunal plan that might actually start giving Guantanamo prisoners some access to judicial review, but the proposal is being held up. Why? Because Dick Cheney doesn’t like it

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010162.html

Intelligence agencies STILL not sharing information – and the fault lies squarely with their boss, who refuses to lay down the law to them

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7306163/site/newsweek/

Meanwhile, Congress is shocked – shocked! – to learn that Rumsfeld’s lean and mean hi-tech rapid-response New Army is actually turning out to be MORE expensive

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/28/politics/28weapons.html
The Army's plan to transform itself into a futuristic high-technology force has become so expensive that some of the military's strongest supporters in Congress are questioning the program's costs and complexity.

CIA program to track Iran and Hezbollah-supported groups operating out of South America gets closed down to reallocate resources in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last time I looked, this was a long bus ride and a few bribes away from our southern border. . .

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001800.html
U.S. intelligence officials said the region's lax border security and active trade routes are attractions to an Islamic republic eager to use illicit means to acquire technology and materials that the country cannot otherwise get because of restrictions on trade with the United States and other nations. . . Iran and Hezbollah are believed to have used South America as an operational and recruiting base for at least two decades.

Republicans during the Gerald Ford era WANTED to transfer nuclear technology and materials to Iran (of course, our monster the Shah was in power at that point in time). Good thing they didn’t succeed, eh? And yes, it was some of the same people who are today all for attacking Iran over the fact that they now HAVE nuclear technology and materials

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001797.html

A harbinger of things to come: in Ohio, religious right groups announce an all-out campaign to take over the Republican party in that state and eventually to dominate its state offices. And guess who they want to start with as governor?

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/03/good-dogits-payback-timecolumbus-ohio.html

More from journalists who love to diss blogs (gee, it sounds a mite DEFENSIVE to me). I never thought that blogs were a threat to serious journalism. Any reason why journalists need to be defensive?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_27_atrios_archive.html#111194835631017110

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_03_27_digbysblog_archive.html#111194622288744536

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005956.php

Any reason at all?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_27_atrios_archive.html#111194387268462374
Mike Vasilinda, a 30-year veteran of the Tallahassee press corps, does public relations work and provides film editing services to more than a dozen state agencies. . . His Tallahassee company, Mike Vasilinda Productions Inc., has earned more than $100,000 over the past four years through contracts with Gov. Jeb Bush's office, the Secretary of State, the Department of Education and other government entities that are routinely part of Vasilinda's stories. . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005959.php
The real-time pace of Internet gossip has made it difficult for newspaper gossip columnists to stay ahead of the curve. [Gossip columnist Richard] Leiby said that many people in the Post newsroom monitored Wonkette.com, a Washington blog, all day long. "She often has the lead on me because she's in real time," he said.

[NB: This is a very revealing story. Wonkette is smart and potty-mouth funny. But of all the sites for reporters to be tracking “all day long,” this suggests a lot about the insularity and in-group thinking of the DC press corps]

Republican governors, once big supporters of tax cuts and no-tax pledges, now realize that the bills still have to be paid and that the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) and similar programs are ruining state budgets

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_27_atrios_archive.html#111193787114297981

In case you were wondering, this story confirms it: Fortune 500 companies are making out like bandits under Bush and the GOP

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/03/27/business_makes_gains_with_gop_control.html

Bonus item: “Parental Guidance Suggested”

http://billmon.org/archives/001778.html
The Army expects to miss its recruiting goals this month and next and is working on a revised sales pitch appealing to the patriotism of parents, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey said Wednesday. . . "I've challenged our human resource people to get as innovative as they can. And even as we speak we've got a number of new ideas.". . . One of those new approaches is designed to persuade more parents to steer their children to the Army.

Double bonus: coming to the small screen – more tv shows with religious themes

http://slate.msn.com/id/2115858/fr/rss/
In an effort to cash in on the great appetite the American public seems to have for religious entertainment, several television networks are currently developing comedy and drama series that have spirituality as a central theme, reports the WSJ. Of course, networks can't help but add their own twist to this religious programming. NBC, for example, is developing a drama called "Book of Daniel" where Aidan Quinn will play the role of a drug-addicted priest who talks about his problems with a "hip, modern-day Jesus." The priest will have to deal with his daughter getting arrested for marijuana and having a gay son. For its part, Fox is developing a series titled "Briar + Graves" about an excommunicated priest who fights evil in the name of God but also likes hard liquor and guns.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:44 AM

 
“AN ACT OF BARBARISM”

The story of the day: Tom DeLay pulled the plug on his own dad when he faced a similar life support decision. I think this won’t play well in the national news, do you?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-delay27mar27,0,5710023.story
A family tragedy that unfolded in a Texas hospital during the fall of 1988 was a private ordeal — without judges, emergency sessions of Congress or the debate raging outside Terri Schiavo's Florida hospice. . . More than 16 years ago, far from the political passions that have defined the Schiavo controversy, the DeLay family endured its own wrenching end-of-life crisis. The man in a coma, kept alive by intravenous lines and oxygen equipment, was DeLay's father, Charles Ray DeLay. . .

DeLay has denounced Schiavo's husband, as well as judges, for committing what he calls "an act of barbarism" in removing the tube.

In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die.

"There was no point to even really talking about it," Maxine DeLay, the congressman's 81-year-old widowed mother, recalled in an interview last week. "There was no way [Charles] wanted to live like that. Tom knew — we all knew — his father wouldn't have wanted to live that way.". . .

"The situation faced by the congressman's family was entirely different than Terri Schiavo's," said a spokesman for the majority leader, who declined requests for an interview.

[NB: Yes, the difference was, they didn’t have an a--hole like Tom DeLay trying to score political points off their painful and private family decision]

DeLay, after being front and center on this debate a week ago, suddenly makes himself scarce

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/26/politics/26delay.html
Mr. DeLay, the House majority leader, is not alone. Republican responses, including those of President Bush and Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, have become muted in the face of the legal setbacks and of polls that show overwhelming disapproval of Congressional intervention, as well as a perception among the public that lawmakers trying it were motivated by politics. . . Republican Congressional officials say the lower profile is. . . a gesture of respect to a dying woman and her family, rather than an accommodation to politics.

Still, for Mr. DeLay in particular, the decision to step forward in the first place - after weeks in which he had methodically avoided television cameras as he fended off questions about his ethics - may prove to be crucial in what could turn out to be his most difficult year in Congress. While the Schiavo case may have energized his conservative supporters, Democrats and some independent analysts say, it may also have thrust him into the national consciousness at the very moment his opponents are trying to make him a symbol of Republican excess and force another ethics investigation.

For Terri Schiavo and her family, looks like it’s all over except for the grim death watch. But already the struggle is on to spin why it happened this way and what it all means. David Brooks jumps in early, offering his very helpful mischaracterizations of the “liberal” position and blaming it all on an unfortunate clash of world views — and not on extremist groups bent from the very start on polarizing the issues and hiding behind “moral” posturing to label everyone who disagreed with them a “murderer” or worse. This is the phony kind of even-handed “equivalence” of which he is becoming the master

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/26/122327/513
[David Brooks] If you surveyed the avalanche of TV and print commentary that descended upon us this week, you found social conservatives would start the discussion with a moral argument about the sanctity of life, and then social liberals would immediately start talking about jurisdictions, legalisms, politics and procedures. They were more comfortable talking about at what level the decision should be taken than what the decision should be. . . What I'm describing here is the clash of two serious but flawed arguments. The socially conservative argument has tremendous moral force, but doesn't accord with the reality we see when we walk through a hospice. The socially liberal argument is pragmatic, but lacks moral force. No wonder many of us feel agonized this week, betwixt and between, as that poor woman slowly dehydrates.

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/26/14593/1820
[Sophie Brown] For those of you still willing to think about the Schiavo matter, I wanted to offer my response to the radical right wing pundits' claim that they occupy the moral high ground on this issue, and that the response from the rest of us has been murderous (Noonan) or coldly pragmatic (Brooks).

My answer is that the radical right hasn't taken a moral position at all.

The radical right has not argued for reinsertion based on a moral position. Instead they are disputing the facts and claiming that Schiavo is not in a persistent vegetative state.

More: http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/03/more_on_brooks_.html
Brooks' latest column is intellectually dishonest. . .

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_digbysblog_archive.html#111188155691284634

This is a better analysis (thanks to Lindsay Beyerstein for the link)

http://reasonandliberty.blogspot.com/2005/03/have-schiavo-parents-crossed-dangerous.html
[Steve Sanders] And so, no matter how deserving of our empathy he and his family might be, when Mr. Schindler goes before millions of people and incites contempt toward that system by calling a judge a murderer, he has crossed a dangerous line. . . He has enlisted himself -- and allowed his daugher to be exploited -- in a larger enterprise of the American political right: to undermine trust in, and attack the legitimacy of, the judiciary, which they regard as a hindrance to shaping law according to their social and religious vision.

Consider that the Schindler family decided four years ago to seek the help of leading figures on the religious right -- most notably, the controversial anti-abortion extremist Randall Terry. And consider that two of the family's most powerful supporters, Republican leader Tom DeLay and former Family Research Council president Ken Connor, both are on record with the belief that laws, even the Constitution itself, should be overriden when higher moral and religious imperatives (identified, presumably, by people like them) are at stake. DeLay, who earlier this week said Mrs. Schiavo had been sent by God to help energize the conservative religious movement, wrote yesterday in USA Today:

Behind the law — and I would argue, above it — is the universal law of right and wrong.... If our laws don't prevent a helpless, disabled woman, capable of rehabilitation, from being starved and parched to death by an estranged husband with a clear, personal conflict of interest, then our laws are meaningless.

One begins to understand that for Mrs. Schaivo's parents, as for DeLay and Connor, law has indeed become meaningless. The only thing that matters is that their personal and religious positions prevail. And in that fight all is fair, including raw political muscle in the form of direct interventions by Congress and Jeb Bush; media spin that misleads the public about the actual legal questions involved; and irresponsible attacks that cast doubt on the integrity of judges and on the very idea of law as a system of neutral rules and objective inquiries.

Aside from here or in other blogs, have you seen ANY discussion of Jeb Bush’s foolish and abortive plan to send in state police to “rescue” Schiavo?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111184858506492869

Yesterday Jeb was the hero, but today. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/its-all-jebs-fault-now.html
[NYT]Governor Bush, who has become a particular target of the protesters' scorn in recent days, has said that he has done all he can under the law. Advisers to the family were openly hostile to him on Saturday. . . "Governor Bush has stopped taking our calls," said Randall Terry, a longtime anti-abortion activist and an adviser to the Schindlers. "But we have not given up hope for a miracle."

[AP] Bob Schindler also pleaded with Gov. Jeb Bush to intervene by taking temporary custody of their daughter while court challenges are argued. . . ``With the stroke of his pen, he could stop this,'' Bob Schindler said. ``He's put Terri through a week of hell and my family though a week of hell. I implore him to put a stop to this. He has to stop it. This is judicial homicide.''

[NB: Maybe now he realizes the kind of people he’s been dealing with]

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/27/Columns/The_fight_isn_t_over_.shtml
U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay may be the scariest Republican playing a leading role in the Terri Schiavo drama, but Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is no less of a true believer. . . Some of the things Bush has done to intervene in the Schiavo case make him scary, too. He shares DeLay's contempt for an independent judiciary, constantly looking for ways to restrict the power of Florida courts, and in the "culture of life" he espouses, his concern seems to be primarily for the unborn and those kept alive by artificial means. He has little compassion for those in between. . .

A bad week for both the Bush boys

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/3/26/213913/990
The Schiavo wingnuttery is nearly proving the equal of Abu Ghraib in pushing [George] Bush's poll numbers south. Here are the numbers from the five polls that were in the field sometime during the past seven days, compared with the numbers from the last installment of each poll. . .

What comes after Schiavo?

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/03/pulling_the_fin.html
I got a chance to talk about the Schiavo case the other night with various liberal types who were more important than me. People wondered how liberals could effectively use the right's apparent overreach on the Schiavo question to make some larger points about the gang running the show right now, without simply ourselves sinking to their level of crassness and provoking an equal and opposite backlash. My suggestion was that the public's awareness of this case, and the multiple levels of tragedy taking place here, might be a good opportunity to bring home to people the human dimension of some Republican budgetary decisions. The fact that right before this congress decided to step in and "save" Terri it was busy cutting funding for the state Medicaid programs that provide hospice and nursing home care for the elderly and disabled around the country is surely something the American people ought to hear about -- especially when the budget returns from conference committee. Along the same lines, Shakespeare's Sister notes cuts for treating people with traumatic brain injury and the elimination of the Federal Traumatic Brain Injury Program. This isn't directly relevant to the Schiavo case (it's probably more relevant to our troops) but the moment of enhanced interest in brain injury issues is unmistakable.

Larry Franklin, accused of passing classified material, cuts a deal and IS NOW BACK AT WORK AT THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT (thanks to Laura Rozen for the link)

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/556863.html

If you have some time, go back and review the links below. This is an incredible story, which started to unravel before the election -- the scandal that should have brought down the Bush administration. It has all the bad actors in it, including a few former Iran-Contra hoods. Yet the whole story has never been fully investigated or reported, and of course Franklin’s plea deal was negotiated with people who had no intention of unraveling the whole plot

http://pbd.blogspot.com/2004_06_01_pbd_archive.html#108625745064918090
http://pbd.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_pbd_archive.html#109375164104548003
http://pbd.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_pbd_archive.html#109380917923079226
http://pbd.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_pbd_archive.html#109387448919558734
http://pbd.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_pbd_archive.html#109397388514321068
http://pbd.blogspot.com/2004_09_01_pbd_archive.html#109404554010494000
http://pbd.blogspot.com/2004_09_01_pbd_archive.html#109413628645021567
http://pbd.blogspot.com/2004_09_01_pbd_archive.html#109430995039472817
http://pbd.blogspot.com/2004_09_01_pbd_archive.html#109456621843581187

Ancient history, you say?

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=9361
For well over two decades now, dreamers and schemers who hope to overthrow the mullahs have been lurking along the banks of the Seine, passing secrets and lies through proxies, back channels, and middlemen. Among the Persian plotters marooned in the French capital is a former minister of commerce in the shah’s government, who has recently acquired the code name of “Ali.”

To the influential U.S. congressman who bestowed that somewhat unoriginal alias on him, the elderly bureaucrat is actually an oracle who passes along invaluable intelligence about terrorist conspiracies emanating from Tehran, and an important asset who should be cultivated by the CIA.

Yet “Ali” is actually a cipher for Manucher Ghorbanifar, the notorious Iranian arms dealer and accused intelligence fabricator -- and the potential instrument of another potentially dangerous manipulation of American policy in the Persian Gulf region. . .

Iraq: on the brink of civil war

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/03/27/fractured_iraq_sees_a_sunni_call_to_arms

John Bolton for the U.N.? Even worse than you imagine

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/index.ssf?050321ta_talk_power
“It is a President’s prerogative to name his ambassadors,” Secretary-General Kofi Annan meekly told reporters last week. When he was asked whether he saw the nomination as a hostile act, he laughed and said, “I’m not sure I want to be drawn on that one.” At U.N headquarters, staffers walked around in a daze of disbelief. . .

“I’m pro-American,” Bolton says, as if that required him to be anti-world. He dismisses the U.N.’s tools for promoting peace and security. International law? “It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so—because, over the long term, the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrict the United States.” (Never mind that such laws might have “constricted” the torture of detainees.) Humanitarian intervention? It’s “a right of intervention that is just a gleam in one beholder’s eye but looks like flat-out aggression to somebody else.” Negotiation as a way of dealing with rogue states? “I don’t do carrots,” Bolton says.

Cheney gets a State Dept position especially created for his daughter (Liz, the other one) in which, among other things, she’ll be involved with economic opportunities in the Middle East. Quick, buy your Halliburton stock right away

http://billmon.org/archives/001774.html

New details on the emergency flights to whisk the Bin Laden family and other Saudis out of the country just after 9-11

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/politics/27exodus.html
The F.B.I. gave personal airport escorts to two prominent Saudi families who fled the United States, and several other Saudis were allowed to leave the country without first being interviewed, the documents show.

Fascinating: how the Bush apparatus views the major news networks

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_digbysblog_archive.html#111185943793723215

Sunday talk show lineup

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/26/20364/1932
FOX NEWS SUNDAY: Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.)

THIS WEEK: Reps. David Joseph Weldon (R-Fla.) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.); Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, archbishop of Washington, and author Rick Warren.

FACE THE NATION: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

MEET THE PRESS: Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and authors Reza Aslan, the Rev. Robert F. Drinan, Richard Land, Jon Meacham and Jim Wallis.

LATE EDITION: Gen. John Abizaid; Javad Zarif, Iranian ambassador to the United Nations; and the Revs. Jerry Falwell, founder of Liberty University, and Al Sharpton, founder of National Action Network.

In other news. . .

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/03/guilty-until-proven-innocentoh-im-sure.html
The Transportation Security Administration misled the public about its role in obtaining personal information about 12 million airline passengers to test a new computerized system that screens for terrorists, according to a government investigation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4211-2005Mar26.html
The FBI admitted Saturday it accidentally gave classified documents back to the American translator who pleaded guilty to taking them from the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. . . Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, who was released from jail earlier this month, contacted the FBI's Boston office Tuesday after he realized agents had inadvertently given him the computer disk containing the secret files along with his personal property.

Bonus item: How the rest of the world views us – a valuable resource (thanks to Jeralyn Merritt for the link)

http://www.watchingamerica.com/
Discover What the World Thinks About U.S.
With Translated Foreign News Available NOWHERE Else In English

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:28 AM

 
DEATH THREATS

Torture in Iraq didn’t get anyone all that worked up. An unwanted war, justified by lies, costing thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars in future debt, ho-hum. A full-out assault on programs that millions of elderly people depend on for daily life, eh, business as usual. But a decision to take an irrecoverably brain-damaged person off a feeding tube (the kind of decision that is made in private between families and doctors hundreds of times every single day across the country), after FIFTEEN YEARS of court hearings and review, THIS is the outrage that cannot be borne? (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://www.oliverwillis.com/node/2194
[“Priests for Life”] "The Terri Schiavo case has demonstrated that we are being governed by un-elected judges, and that the legislative and executive branches of government lack the will to stand up to them when they authorize acts of violence. The matter, therefore, now rests with the people. When government fails to protect life, the people must do so directly. Today must mark the beginning of a new era of civil disobedience and conscientious objection, with simultaneous, determined efforts to curb the authority of the courts and restore government to the people through their elected representatives."

Or, there are other methods. . .

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2562
A man was arrested after trying to steal a weapon from a gun shop so he could ``take some action and rescue Terri Schiavo,'' authorities said. . .

Rather than blame the Republicans who cynically exploited their passions, vowed their support, and then ducked out when the poll numbers turned negative, the far right turns on the court system

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/25/gibson/index.html
[Fox News’ John Gibson is] eager to announce the low esteem in which he apparently holds all judges everywhere. Weeks after one judge was killed in his courtroom and the family of another judge was murdered in their home, you might think that Gibson would be careful about demonizing judges. You'd be wrong. After suggesting that judges don't think the way that "real people" do, Gibson asked himself whether he's saying that "judges aren't real people." His answer: "Well, judging by what happened" in the Schiavo case, "I'd say yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/25/181743/932
Over the last three days or so, however, the coverage on the Little Three news networks -- Fox, CNN, MSNBC -- has ceased to be humorous. There is a difference between bad coverage and willfully irresponsible coverage, and another line between willfully irresponsible coverage and dangerously irresponsible coverage. In the last three days, those lines have been crossed. Repeatedly. And it has been absolutely, definitively intentional.

If you have been paying attention to cable coverage of the Schiavo case, you will see two major themes repeated over and over. First, the repeated bookings of and citings of "witnesses" and "experts" that have previously been debunked, claiming that among other things Ms. Schiavo is "alert and oriented". . .

Against this background of exploitation and misinformation, the usual bevy of archconservative media pundits has in the last several days begun to increasingly endorse a premise that is, to any rational mind, remarkable: the notion that because the courts have ruled in this particular fashion, it is now time for individuals and government figures to disregard the courts, and take matters into their own hands.

And so, like clockwork. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/religious-right-hate-speech-leads-to.html
Surprise, surprise, surprise. You heard it here first. Who said, what, 3 weeks ago that the religious right's "judicial activism" hate speech was helping create a climate in which judges' very lives could be threatened. Today it happened.

Meanwhile, FBI agents have arrested a North Carolina man on suspicion of soliciting offers over the internet to kill Michael Schiavo and Greer. Richard Alan Meywes of Fairview is accused of offering $250,000 for the killing of Schiavo and another $50,000 for the "the elimination of the judge who ruled against Terry."

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/26/0250/21629
[Steve Gilliard] That line from Red October is running through my head again: "This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we will be lucky to live through it."

Why? Because the Republicans are still counting fundie votes. They think they can control this, that nothing will happen and the base will be excited. But most of the base is revolted. They are horrified at the sanctimony and the increasing rhetoric from people who should know better. Ignore judges? Kidnap a dying woman? Are they kidding?

Why is this happening? Because they thought it would be a gimmie. That the only people who would care is the radical right and their foot soldiers. They could get their way and trap the Dems in the process. But now, the Dems stepped out of the way and let the GOP take every bit of heat for this. You have the spectacle of Randall Terry, has-been, making demands on Jeb Bush, who meekly says "I can't go beyond my powers."

Bush and Bush seem to be puppets of the fringe elements, a group who would let their kids get arrested, which horrifies most people. . . If Judge Greer or Michael Schiavo is harmed in any way, that turd is going to land right on the doors of the White House and Congress. They unleashed this madness and the idea that they could escape it is unlikely.

Right wingers say liberals “want Terri Schiavo to die”

http://mediamatters.org/items/200503260001
In discussing the Terri Schiavo case, several prominent media conservatives have accused liberals of wanting Schiavo to die and have imputed motives to them far beyond the belief, expressed by many liberals, that the courts were right to allow Schiavo's husband to make end-of-life decisions on behalf of his wife.

Syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh suggested that liberals "want this woman to die because Christian conservatives want her to live," calling it "payback." MSNBC host Joe Scarborough mused aloud about whether liberals "hate George Bush so much that they are cheering for Terri's death only because the president of the United States and his brother are fighting for Terri's life." Wall Street Journal contributing editor Peggy Noonan claimed that the "pull-the-tube people" -- she specifically named CNN Crossfire host James Carville and the website Democratic Underground -- are "committed" to Schiavo's death. Fox News host Bill O'Reilly singled out New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, stating, "I don't know why some of these left-wing columnists want her to die." Bay Buchanan, president of the conservative advocacy group The American Cause and frequent CNN commentator, asserted that the "only reason" that people "want" Schiavo to die is that "they've decided this woman is the property of her husband and he can do what he wants."

Yet ironically. . .

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/25/153430/606
The majority of judges ruling on this case have been Republicans. One of the only dissents has been a Clinton appointee. The American Taliban will rail against "activist judges", but their own kin on the bench exposed the extremism of their agenda.

Looks like Jeb Bush will disappoint those who want him to flout the law to save Schiavo – but he’s still being lionized over his general handling of this issue. . .

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/03/idevouti_wimp_.html

http://mediamatters.org/items/200503250007

. . . until this morning, that is

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/03/schiavo_case_almost_led_to_state_cop_v_local_cop_showdown.html
According to today’s Miami Herald, Jeb Bush ordered state cops to grab Terri Schiavo at a point during the judicial proceedings at which, due to Florida’s automatic stay law, such a move would arguably have been if not legal at least not in direct violation of a court order. . . Local cops apparently didn’t get the word, or didn’t want to go along with the sneaky move, and were prepared to stand off the state cops.

In jest, one official said local police discussed “whether we had enough officers to hold off the National Guard.”

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_20.php#005249

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005948.php

Oh, Christ. . . now NADER weighs in (thanks to Mark Kleiman for the link)

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2005/03/nader-crosses-over-to-dark-side.html

[NB: Feeling left out, Ralph? Hungry for a little camera time?]

EVERYBODY’S cashing in on poor Terri

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/25/81616/4730
[NYT] Videotape of Terri Schiavo blinking at her parents has inspired donations from people around the country to the foundation set up to help pay for the family's legal battle. But many other groups are soliciting donations in her name as well, some for a much broader agenda.

"Help Save Terri Schiavo's Life!" says the Web site of the Traditional Values Coalition, a Christian conservative group best known for its campaigns against gay rights. Next to a link to the Web site of her parents' foundation is a pitch to "become an active supporter of the Traditional Values Coalition by pledging a monthly gift."

"What this issue has done is it has galvanized people the way nothing could have done in an off-election year," said Rev. Lou Sheldon, the founder of the group, acknowledging that the case of Ms. Schiavo, a severely brain-damaged Florida woman, had moved many to open up their checkbooks. "That is what I see as the blessing that dear Terri's life is offering to the conservative Christian movement in America."

Dr. William Hammesfahr (nominated for the “Nobel Peace Prize for Medicine”) – can we revoke his license?

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/25/experts/index.html
“Terri is completely aware and conscious and responsive. She is like a child with cerebral palsy. We have kids in the Pinellas County school system every day that are much worse than her, that we're educating.”

Bzzzzzt – ouch!

http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/03/electroschlock.php
[James Wolcott] Two prominent neurologists who have asked to remain anonymous have examined CNN behind closed doors and determined that the network is irreversibly brain-dead, as flooded with cerebral fluid as the hull of the S.S. Poseidon. It still retains some primitive reflexes and signs of animation, but a brain-scan revealed the sort of minimal activity usually associated with punch-drunk prizefighters condemned to a flophouse cot, or a broken toaster. "CNN barely has two brain cells left to rub together," one doctor said, lacing up his tennis shoes for a quick getaway.

Well, I can't say I was surprised by this grim diagnosis. The sadistic glee expressed by CNN boss Jon Klein over anchor-lunk Rick Sanchez's Fear Factor "shock-belt" exhibition is evidence of a news operation in advanced mental decay, and the network's performance in the Terry Schiavo masque of the red state death only brings additional confirmation. . .

Well, folks, I think we’ve reached rock bottom. Fox News brings on a psychic to interpret for us what Terri Schiavo’s “soul” really wants

http://mediamatters.org/items/200503250006

As Utah goes, so goes the nation

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/25/165055/917
[Salt Lake Tribune] Tom DeLay says he wants Terri Schiavo to live. And there is no reason to doubt that. . . But it is clear that the House majority leader is not above using the suffering of a woman he has never met to promote his own, increasingly shaky, political career. . .

The Texas Republican has gone so far as to suggest that Schiavo's situation is a gift from God that he can use to defend himself against charges brought by his political enemies--enemies whom he all but calls, in an echo of a defensive Hillary Clinton some years ago, a vast left-wing conspiracy. . .

Despite the fact that he was able to steamroller through Congress a particularly ill-advised piece of legislation that subverted federalism, the separation of powers and the privacy of medical decision-making, in order to make political hay out of the Schiavo case, DeLay wants the world to see him, too, as a victim. . .

DeLay, all the while, insists that he has done nothing wrong and that those who accuse him of ethical shortcomings are simply using personal attacks on him as a weapon to undermine the conservative causes he supports. . . . If conservative Republicans really want to talk about important issues, and not about Tom DeLay, they might start looking for a different leader.

Have you noticed a conspicuous silence out of DC since the circus last weekend?

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/25/republicans/index.html
The Republicans have inserted themselves into the Schiavo case, and now they're the ones stuck in the middle. . . Maybe that's why things have gotten so quiet in Washington. As the Chicago Tribune notes, "There was no rush to the television cameras" when the Supreme Court rebuffed Congress and Schiavo's parents Thursday. "There were no Washington political maneuvers. There was, in fact, barely a word of public reaction by President Bush or the leaders of Congress who were so quick to intercede in the matter only days ago." The Schiavo case? What Schiavo case? A "senior Republican official close to congressional leaders and the administration" tells the Tribune: "There is a realization that it looks very probably like Terri Schiavo will pass away. It's been a significant debate, but this debate is over for the remainder of the year. We do have a very full agenda.". . .

[NB: great post -- read the rest]

The GOP has taken to complaining that the intent of their legislation was to require the court to issue a temporary restraining order to re-insert Schiavo’s feeding tube and to review the case "de novo" (even though they considered and explicitly chose not to include that precise wording). Since then they’ve been griping that the courts haven’t done what they wanted them to. Mark Kleiman nails this one: if they really feel that way, go back and pass a bill with that wording (hello?. . . hello?)

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/03/.php
Therefore -- I don't suggest this, of course, but I point it out -- if Sen. Dr. Frist, Defendant DeLay, and Puppet Hastert really want a full trial in Federal court on the merits of the Schiavo case, they can still have it.

All they have to do is call the Congress back into session and pass a new law with a "shall-issue" or All Writs Act clause, and the lower courts will salute smartly, say "Yes, sir!" and order the feeding tube reinserted. The Supreme Court, which rarely intervenes at the TRO stage, won't touch the case. Terry Schiavo's feeding tube will be reinserted. Judge Whittemore will start holding hearings on the merits, with the entire national press corps watching. All of the evidence that convinced born-again Baptist Republican Judge Greer will be brought in. And then, after several months, Judge Whittemore will make the same finding Judge Greer made, leading to the tube being removed once more. But by then the whole country will know the facts about Terri Schiavo's medical condition, her prognosis, and her marriage.

Do I hear Mr. DeLay's voice saying "Never mind"? I thought I did. . . Now that the Republicans have mobilized their base to hate the judiciary even more than it did before, (see, for example, the vicious tone of Bill Kristol's latest screed) they've gotten what they needed from Terri Schiavo, and they're going to let her die.

GOP rank and file furious with their leaders for taking them down this dark road

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1944-2005Mar25.html
Republican lawmakers and others engaged in the debate say an internal party dispute over the Schiavo case has ruptured, at least temporarily, the uneasy alliance between economic and social conservatives that twice helped President Bush get elected.

http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2005/03/every_congress_.html
The quote below happens to refer to the House vote on the Schiavo case, but I propose that the Class of '04 adopt it with pride as their motto:

"It definitely would have gone down differently had it actually been considered," a senior aide to a moderate Republican senator said.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_20.php#005250
Grover Norquist, quoted in the Post: "Advocates of using federal power to keep this woman alive need to seriously study the polling data that's come out on this. . . I think that a lot of conservative leaders assumed there was broader support for saying that they wanted to have the federal government save this woman's life.". . . If this is really about 'sav[ing] this woman's life' why look at the polling data?

Schiavo and Roe

http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2005/03/schiavo_roe_and.html
[Sarah C. von der Lippe] Everytime they call for appointment of judges to the Supreme Court who will overrule or undermine Roe v. Wade, they assert that the matter should be left to the states. They assert that even if Roe v. Wade is overturned, it won't eliminate abortion in the states in which the duly elected state representatives do not take steps to outlaw the practice. But the Schiavo case reveals the true priorities of the right: they are happy to abandon the principles of federalism if the issue is related to questions of "life." But if they are willing to cast aside federalism in the Schiavo case, won't they be willing to do the same in the context of abortion? And if they are, won't that inevitably lead to attempts to pass federal legislation banning abortion? The actions of conservatives in the context of the Terri Schiavo case should give us pause as Bush nominates new justices to the Supreme Court -- especially, given conservatives' admitted goal of denying women's constitutional right to privacy and reproductive choice.

Final word: Passion Play

http://billmon.org/archives/001773.html
Maybe it will all blow over once Terri Schiavo's poor brain-dead body is finally laid to rest. But the emotional intensity of the event -- and the depth of the self-righteous hatred it has stirred on the religious right -- will be hard to forget. It feels like we've passed another milestone in the descent of our deeply divided, culturally inflamed society towards . . . well, I'd rather not think about what.

HIGH-larious: Cheney goes on the road to feel the popular pulse on Social Security reform and to shill for the Bush plan-which-is-not-yet-a-plan. Strangely, no transcript of the events is posted on the WH web site. Wonder why?

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2564
Funny thing, though - Cheney did two Baboon-a-palooza events yesterday, one in Battle Creek, Michigan, and a second in Pittsburgh, but the White House as of 8AM CST has not posted transcripts from either event.

So I turned to local press coverage of the two events and soon found out why the White House is holding onto those transcripts. Big Time Dick is getting blasted by both the local press and his hand-picked audiences.

Unlike Dear Leader, when Cheney does a Social Security "town hall" meeting he allows audience members to ask him questions instead of placing "regular folks" on stage with him for well-rehearsed exchanges on the evils of Social Security. Turns out that was a huge mistake on Dick's part. . .

Bush poll numbers tanking

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/25/gallup/index.html
Remember when George W. Bush had a "mandate" and "political capital" he could spend? If it was ever true, it isn't anymore. There's a new USAToday/CNN/Gallup Poll out today, and the results aren't pretty for the president: His approval rating has dropped seven points in just a week, hitting an all time low of 45 percent.

The biggest part of the slide may be coming from Bush's base: USA Today says Bush's approval ratings dropped most sharply "among men, self-described conservatives and churchgoers." Has the right's intervention in the Terri Schiavo case finally scratched some of the Teflon off of the president? The Republican National Committee says that's not it. RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt tells USA Today that a dip in the president's approval ratings isn't surprising because he's taking on "tough issues, whether it's to reform Social Security, promoting the spread of democracy or making a renewed pitch to Congress to pass comprehensive energy reform."

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/administration/whbriefing/

Support for Social Security plans drops among young Americans, who had been its biggest supporters

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_20.php#005239

Off-message: on the Social Security web site (until it gets pulled down)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2567
Question: I think I could do better if you let me invest the Social Security I pay into an individual retirement plan (I.R.A.) or some other investment plan. What do you think?

Answer: Maybe you could, but then again, maybe your investments wouldn't work out. Remember these facts:

• Your Social Security taxes pay for potential disability and survivors benefits as well as for retirement benefits.

• Social Security incorporates social goals - such as giving more protection to families and to low-income workers - that are not part of private pension plans; and

• Social Security benefits are adjusted yearly for increases in the cost of living - a feature not present in many private plans.

On-message: Washington Post editorial page joins the beltway echo chamber for Bush spin

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_20.php#005240
“[I]t's hard to take seriously the Democrats who say that Mr. Bush should switch focus from Social Security to the much bigger problem of Medicare: If they aren't willing to play a constructive role on the supposedly "minor" challenge of Social Security, why should anyone believe that they would behave constructively if the administration wanted to fix Medicare?”

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005887

The Bush legacy (thanks to A.G. Rud for the first link, Jan Pieterse for the second)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/25/opinion/herbert25.1.html
[Bob Herbert] President Bush believes in an "ownership" society, which means that except for the wealthy, you're on your own. The president's budget would cut funding for Medicaid, food stamps, education, transportation, health care for veterans, law enforcement, medical research and safety inspections for food and drugs. And, of course, it contains big new tax cuts for the wealthy.

These are the new American priorities. Republicans will tell you they were ratified in the last presidential election. We may be locked in a long and costly war, and federal deficits may be spiraling toward the moon, but the era of shared sacrifices is over. This is the era of entrenched exploitation. All sacrifices will be made by working people and the poor, and the vast bulk of the benefits will accrue to the rich.

F.D.R. would have stared slack-jawed at this madness. Even his grand Social Security edifice is under assault by the vandals of the G.O.P. . . .

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7170226/site/newsweek
[Robert Samuelson] If you've been following closely, you know that the dollar has been declining steadily against many foreign currencies. From recent highs—reached in mid-2001 or early 2002—the dollar has dropped 38 percent against the euro, 23 percent against the yen and 25 percent against the Canadian dollar. And most economists expect the slide to continue. . . The significance of the dropping dollar is that it's actually a symptom of a larger and more troubling development. For 15 years the American economy has been the engine for the world economy through ever-increasing trade and current-account deficits (the current account includes other overseas payments like travel and tourism). In 2004, the U.S. current-account deficit is estimated to have reached $650 billion, a record 5.6 percent of the economy (GDP). Other countries' economies benefit from sending their goods to eager American buyers, and the United States in turn sends massive amounts of dollars abroad to pay for those goods. The trouble is that there are now more dollars than foreigners want to hold. If there's a glut of anything—apples, computer chips, Beanie Babies—prices go down. So when surplus dollars are sold for euros, yen or pounds, then the dollar drops in value against those currencies.

If you sense a contradiction, you're right; and there's the dilemma. The world economy can't get along without our massive trade deficits—and perhaps can't get along with them, either. Americans' consumption binge is propping up global trade and employment, but it's also threatening a financial upheaval that could hurt global trade and employment. . . The doomsday scenario, considered unlikely by most economists but not impossible, is that a crash of the dollar would trigger a broader panic. Foreigners would sell their U.S. stocks and bonds, driving down those markets and bringing massive losses to everyone. They would sell because a dropping dollar would make their American investments worth less in their own currencies. Consumer and business confidence would drop; a recession in the United States and abroad might follow.

So, what happens to the Treasury Dept in an administration with no interest in objective economic expertise and advice? They can’t get people to work there

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000574.html
[F]rom the start of his administration, tax policy and economic policy - the purview of the Treasury - have been handmaids to politics and ideology emanating from the White House. Without the clear-cut opportunity to drive policy-making, the best and the brightest aren't exactly clamoring for jobs at Treasury. And Snow is still in his post, reprising his first-term performance as cheerleader for Bush's tax cuts in his current role as salesperson for Bush's misbegotten plan to privatize Social Security. . . Meanwhile, vacancies are piling up.

Pentagon, despite recommendations from their own investigators, will NOT charge 17 soldiers charged with prisoner deaths

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/26/politics/26abuse.html
The charges included murder, conspiracy and negligent homicide. While none of the 17 will face any prosecution, one received a letter of reprimand and another was discharged after the investigations.

More: http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/03/why_the_us_needs_to_join_the_international_criminal_court.html

A few bad apples? More evidence that prisoner abuse was systemic, not exceptional

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1327-2005Mar25.html

Who is forging Defense documents?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_20.php#005242
"I am extremely concerned that someone familiar with Defense Department classified reporting has forged this document and given it to the press in the hope that it would be reported as genuine. Such an action raises deeply troubling questions about the integrity of the department's processes and raises the possibility of an organized effort to intimidate me as a journalist."

That's a clip from a letter military analyst Bill Arkin recently sent to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. . .

And given Arkin's role in uncovering various unpleasant facts about those in power, the motive doesn't seem particular hard to figure out. Yet Larry DiRita says an investigation into the source of the forged document is "not likely."

We still don't know who forged the bogus Niger documents, even though we now know that their circuitous path into US hands was set in motion by a member of Italian military intelligence. (Any on-going -- such as it was -- investigation into this caper was finally ended earlier this month when Sen. Roberts shut down the promised second half of the investigation into pre-war intelligence on Iraq.)

Add this to the trove of phony documents which have flowed out of Iraq in the last two years and you end up with a lot of phony documents whose origins have never been explained.

Silberman/Robb committee to report on intelligence failures next week, and guess what? Once again, they find massive failures — but it isn’t anybody’s fault

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-intel25.html

More evidence on CIA/Nazi connections

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nazi26mar26,1,1825002.story

Controversial F-16 sale to Pakistan: popular in Fort Worth, Texas at least

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1963-2005Mar25.html

John Bolton’s (very long) enemies list

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000402.html

Howard Dean and Harry Reid: the new, aggressive face of the Democratic Party. How’s it going?

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/25/101148/379

Bonus item: Man invents “Fox blocker” – a device you can buy to block Fox’s signal on your cable tv. . . and HE GETS DEATH THREATS TOO

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/03/fox_blocker_maker_gets_death_threats.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:18 AM

 
SAY ANYTHING

This. . . was. . . a. . . lie

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=100480
"Unfortunately – unfortunately, my opponent, tonight, continued to say things he knows are not true – accusing our military of passing up a chance to get Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora. As the Commander in charge of that operation, Tommy Franks had said, it's simply not the case. It's the worst kind of Monday morning quarterbacking."

– President Bush, 10/29/04

http://www.suntimes.com/output/terror/cst-nws-bin23.html
A terror suspect held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, helped the al-Qaida leader escape his mountain hide-out at Tora Bora in 2001, according to a U.S. government document. . . The document, provided in response to a Freedom of Information request, says the unidentified detainee ''assisted in the escape of Osama bin Laden from Tora Bora.'' It is the first definitive statement from the Pentagon that bin Laden was at Tora Bora and evaded U.S. pursuers.

[NB: and they knew it]

British Attorney General ruled that the war in Iraq was illegal, but was pressured to reverse that judgment

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=623125
The critical paragraph of her letter, published yesterday under the Freedom of Information Act, was blanked out by the Government on the grounds that it was in the public interest to protect the privacy of the advice given by the Attorney General. But last night the contents of the paragraph were leaked, and Tony Blair was facing fresh allegations of a cover-up. There has long been speculation that Lord Goldsmith was leant on to switch his view, and to sanction the war - and confirmation of that would be devastating for the Prime Minister.

Tom Friedman, over-ripe and moralistic, suddenly seems to have realized that we have an administration that has engaged in widespread torture and prisoner abuse

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/24/8273/78095
The fact that Congress has just shrugged this off, and no senior official or officer has been fired, is a travesty. This administration is for "ownership" of everything except responsibility. . . I have a suggestion: Just find out who were the cabinet, C.I.A. and military officers on whose watch these 26 homicides occurred and fire them.

[NB: Uh, Tom, that would be ALL of them, including Bush and Cheney]

John Bolton on the U.N. – go, watch the video, and get ready for a hell of a confirmation battle

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000397.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000396.html
[Richard Holbrooke] “If you read his (John Bolton's) statements it's clear if he had a choice the United Nations would not exist at all.”

Rumsfeld lectures the new leaders of Iraq

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/24/rummy/index.html
Rumsfeld superficially made mention of Iraqi sovereignty, but U.S. interests topped his democracy primer: "The United States has got too much invested and too much committed and too many lives at stake for people to be careless about that. So we are urging those Iraqis that what they do is put in who you want - it's your country and your sovereignty - but be darned careful that you don't cause undue turbulence and weakness in the security forces."

(Still no agreement on forming a new govt, and none coming any time soon)

http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/no-government-any-time-soon-in-iraq.html

Have you figured out the Bush Co. position on Iran? Neither has anyone else. Here’s why

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001781.html

Far right tries desperately to debunk polls showing how extreme and unpopular their Schiavo position is (unfortunately for them, it IS extreme and unpopular)

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/24/121022/524

Fox News: “rule of law” – who cares?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111171360813802417
[John Gibson] “Just to burnish my reputation as a bomb thrower, I think Jeb Bush should give serious thought to storming the Bastille. . . By that I mean he should think about telling his cops to go over to Terri Schiavo's (search) hospice, go inside, put her on a gurney and load her into an ambulance. They could take her to a hospital, revive her, and reattach her feeding tube. It wouldn't save Terri exactly; she'd still be in the same rotten shape she was in before they disconnected the feeding tube."

Ditto: Bill Bennett (thanks to Mark Kleiman for the link)

http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.asp?ref=/comment/bennet_kennedy200503240814.asp
It is time, therefore, for Governor Bush to execute the law and protect her rights, and, in turn, he should take responsibility for his actions. Using the state police powers, Governor Bush can order the feeding tube reinserted. . . Some will argue that Governor Bush will be violating the law. We think he will not be violating the law, but if he is judged to have done so, it will be in the tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr. . . Governor Bush may have to face impeachment because of his decision.

In taking these extraordinary steps to save an innocent life, Governor Bush should be judged not by the opinion of the Florida supreme court, a co-equal branch of the Florida government, but by the opinions of his political superiors, the people of Florida. If they disagree with their governor, they are indeed free to act through their elected representatives and impeach him. Or they can vindicate him if they think he is right. . .

Governor Jeb Bush may find it difficult to protect Terri's rights without risking impeachment. But in the great American experiment in republican government, much is demanded of those who are charged with protecting the rights of the people. Governor Bush pledged to uphold the Florida constitution as he understands it, not as it is understood by some Florida judges. . .

Here’s a guy, Republican Congressman Dave Weldon (FL), who will say just about anything: his letter to the editor

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111167658720077029
We only have to go to the opening paragraphs of FLORIDA TODAY's Tuesday editorial "An outrageous act" about Congress's involvement in the Terri Schiavo case to see that even basic assertions of fact are at best disputable.

It states that Terri is in "a persistent vegetative state for 15 years since her heart attack" and "medical evidence showed Terri has no chance of recovery."

Did the editors interview registered nurse Carla Iyer, who personally treated Terri for a year and a half?

[NB: Ten years ago!]

She said in a sworn court affidavit that Terri "was alert and oriented. Terri spoke on a regular basis saying things like 'mommy' and 'help me" and 'hi' when I came into her room."

Iyer says Terri would sit up in the nurse's station from time to time and laugh at stories they told. She felt pain and would indicate so. Carla fed her by mouth and not by tube. Does this sound like a woman in persistent vegetative state for the past 15 years?. . .

Or are the editors aware of Dr. William Hammesfahr, Nobel Prize nominee neurologist, who examined Terri for 10 hours and said, "Terri does not require a feeding tube to be fed" and that "with proper therapy she would be able to regain some speech and mobility."

[NB: SHE HAS NO FUNCTIONING CORTEX]

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/24/162034/141
I was pretty dumbfounded to read this. I mean, I know that Republican mendacity knows no bounds, but this - like Tom DeLay's absurd lie that Terri Schiavo "laughs and talks" - just really has my head spinning. . . While we here in the reality-based community sadly shake our heads at Iyer's obvious fictions, fools like Weldon. . . parrot her lies. It's only the latest - but to me, most glaring - example of the right wing living in a truly alternate universe.

William Cheshire, MD, weighs in

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2558
"Although Terri did not demonstrate during our 90-minute visit compelling evidence of verbalization, conscious awareness or volitional behavior, yet the visitor has the distinct sense of the presence of a living human being who seems at some level to be aware of some things around her."

Here are the simple facts

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/schiavo_/2005/03/realitybased_conservatism.php
The American Council on Science and Health is an industry-funded group devoted to criticizing what it calls "junk science" in environmental and health-care research, e.g. by arguing that most "carcinogens" aren't actually carcinogenic. It's a solid part of the new conservative establishment. Yet ACSH has issued a blistering statment on the Schiavo case. In addition to criticizing Sen. Dr. Frist for making a diagnosis based on home movies, the statement lays out the medical facts of the case in blunt language:

Brain scans indicate that her cerebral cortex ceased functioning -- probably just after she experienced cardiac arrest in 1990. Ms. Schiavo's CAT scan shows massive shrinking of the brain, and her EEG is flat. Physicians confirm that there is no electrical activity coming from her brain. While the family video repeatedly shown on television suggests otherwise, her non-functioning cortex precludes cognition, including any ability to interact or communicate with people or show any signs of awareness. Dozens of experts over the years who have examined Ms. Schiavo agree that there is no hope of her recovering -- even though her body, face and eyes (if she is given food and hydration) might continue to move for decades to come. . . Let's call tripe when tripe is served. All of us are entitled to our own personal views on the Schiavo case, what her fate should be, and who should make decisions for her. But all of us should be united in rejecting politically-generated junk science.

The cable media, however, keeps bending over backwards to give legitimacy to the right’s extremist views (today CNN had Pat Robertson, foaming at the mouth and calling Michael Schiavo – private citizen – a “murderer”; then for “balance" someone from the Cato Institute discussing dry issues of state’s rights and federalism)

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/24/11466/6814

It’s so bad that even other conservatives are calling out the awful hypocrisy of the far right on this issue. Today’s installment: John Cole

http://www.balloon-juice.com/archives/004859.html
Sick bastards - defining losing your wife as a 'gain,' but all is fair in politics, right? And that is what this is - politics and symbolism on the right to life battlefield. I have said it before - this is jihad for these folks. They don't give two hoots in hell about Terri Schiavo - this is about abortion, religion, and most of all, about power and control. Their concept of morality is king, you see - your behavior in the bedroom, your choice in sexual partner, your desires about end of life decisions, abortion, even the medication you use to ease the pain when you are dying of terminal diseases - their religious text should have authority over you, and if all these 'small-government strict constructionists states right's advocates' have to attain that through government proxy, so be it.

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_digbysblog_archive.html#111171242360531136

“The GOP meltdown”

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/24/meltdown/index.html

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/schiavo_/2005/03/the_process_conservatives_arent_happy_either.php

Then, of course, there’s Maureen Dowd

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/24/opinion/24dowd.html
Oh my God, we really are in a theocracy.

Are the Republicans so obsessed with maintaining control over all branches of government, and are the Democrats so emasculated about not having any power, that they are willing to turn the nation into a wholly owned subsidiary of the church?

The more dogma-driven activists, self-perpetuating pols and ratings-crazed broadcast media prattle about "faith," the less we honor the credo that a person's relationship with God should remain a private matter. . .

“Dogma-driven activists”? Why, that’s Karl Rove’s whole strategy

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/24/national/24relig.html
The powerful outcry over Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose case has provoked a national debate over whether she should live or die, is a testament to the growing alliance of conservative Roman Catholics and evangelicals who have found common cause in the "culture of life" agenda articulated by Pope John Paul II.

Be careful what you ask for. Randall Terry: “hell to pay” if Schiavo dies

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/24/191745/931

Frist and DeLay’s “cruel hoax”

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/24/205228/401
Senator-Doctor Bill Frist and House Leader Tom DeLay have played a cruel hoax on the Schindler family by misleading them about the nature of the Congressional Bill which sent the Schiavo case into the Federal Court System.

Still more hypocrisy from Frist

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111169758487216228
[October 2004] Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist attacked Sen. John Edwards on Tuesday over a comment the Democratic vice presidential candidate made regarding actor Christopher Reeve. . . Edwards said Reeve, who died Sunday, "was a powerful voice for the need to do stem cell research and change the lives of people like him. . . "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again," Edwards said.

Frist, a Republican from Tennessee, called Edwards' remark "crass" and "shameful," and said it gave false hope that new treatments were imminent. . . "I find it opportunistic to use the death of someone like Christopher Reeve -- I think it is shameful -- in order to mislead the American people," Frist said. . . . "It is cruel to people who have disabilities and chronic diseases, and, on top of that, it's dishonest. It's giving false hope to people, and I can tell you as a physician who's treated scores of thousands of patients that you don't give them false hope."

The Bush Co. order of trumps

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62963-2005Mar24.html
[Dan Froomkin] Here's how one reader put it in my Live Online discussion yesterday: "Now we learn that the Republicans have a trumping order of issues. The sanctity of marriage trumps the rights of gays and state's rights, but the 'culture of life' trumps the sanctity of marriage and state's rights. . . Could you or some reporter you know please ask for a flow chart or block diagram for us to follow?"

Still debating whether the Dems have blown the Schiavo issue, or whether they’re letting the GOP have enough rope to hang themselves. Was there a better way to position ourselves on this situation early on?

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/24/111640/411

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/03/the_left_and_te.html
[NB: excellent and thoughtful post, as always, from Lindsay Beyerstein]

By the way, THIS is why I have little sympathy for the Schindlers (Schiavo’s parents)

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/schiavo_/2005/03/a_conspiracy_so_vast.php
[T]he Schindlers have testified that they would want their daughter's heart kept beating even if she had no cognitive function left, and even if her previously expressed wish had been to the contrary.

Bush Co. rethinking details of their Social Security plan (don’t get excited, it still stinks)

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000567.html

Why Bush Co. doesn’t want to talk about Medicare, whose solvency is a much bigger and more immediate issue than Social Security

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005932.php
On Wednesday, it turned out that the two independent trustees who oversee Social Security and Medicare were wondering the same thing:

"The financial outlook for Social Security has improved marginally since 2000," wrote [Thomas] Saving and [John] Palmer. "In sharp contrast, Medicare's financial outlook has deteriorated dramatically over the past five years and is now much worse that Social Security's."

You can guess the result: the Bush administration blackballed them from the unveiling of yesterday's trustees report. "They didn't particularly invite us," Saving said blandly.

More: http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2609

One more reason Medicare is in trouble

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005938.php
Last week, the Senate voted to repeal the 1993 law. This means that after tax benefits will be effectively increased for certain people. . . End result: rich retirees get higher benefits and Medicare gets less money.

Now THIS is a real solvency problem

http://asmatteringofignorance.typepad.com/a_smattering_of_ignorance/2005/03/more_about_bush.html
Here's a quote from the speech of the Comptroller General, of the General Accountancy Office (the "watch dog" of the Congress), talking about the need for "Transparency In The Budget Process."

"Assuming that tax cuts remain as adopted, and assuming further that discretionary spending continues at the same rate. . . there will be insufficient funds to pay the interest on the public debt by the year 2025."

Sleaze I

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_20.php#005231
Bush right-hand-man and Iraq contract rainmaker Joe Allbaugh gets a new contract to lobby for Halliburton.

Sleaze II

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_20.php#005230
The SEC tells Richard Perle it may sue him over financial improprieties tied to the looting and subsequent meltdown of Conrad Black's Hollinger media empire

Bush to Western states on nuclear dump sites: trust me

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/24/nuclear/index.html

Bush Co’s obsession with secrecy

http://www.slate.com/id/2114963/

On Plame: the Washington Post, trying to protect its reporters, files a court brief denying that any laws were broken (hence the investigation should be dropped and their reporters released from testifying). Problem is, as Kevin Drum points out, laws WERE broken

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005933.php
One of the reasons I continue to take this affair seriously is that I assume (a) the federal prosecutor wouldn't continue to waste resources on this case unless he was pretty sure a law had been broken, and (b) a court wouldn't issue the subpoenas in the first place unless the prosecutor had made a pretty decent prima facie case that there was a violation. The question of whether outing Plame was a violation of the law has been pretty thoroughly aired, after all, and both the prosecutor and the judge are surely aware of the issues at hand.

The Republicans’ hypocrisy on filibustering judicial nominees: even worse than you remember

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005875
[Bob Smith, R-NH: March 7, 2000] “If you disagree with us on the basis of why we are objecting, fine. But don't pontificate on the floor of the Senate and tell me that somehow I am violating the Constitution of the United States of America by blocking a judge or filibustering a judge that I don't think deserves to be on the circuit court because I am going to continue to do it at every opportunity I believe a judge should not be on that court. That is my responsibility. That is my advise and consent role, and I intend to exercise it. . . So don't tell me we haven't filibustered judges and that we don't have the right to filibuster judges on the floor of the Senate. Of course we do. That is our constitutional role.”

Did “Jeff Gannon” lie abut his military service too? (Thanks to John Aravosis for the link)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/24/111751/735

Good news (maybe). FEC may only adopt limited rules on political blogs

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/03/24/fec_proposes_limited_blog_regulation.html

Bonus item: Interview with the devil (thanks to Mathew Gross for the link)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/23/15501/7293

Double bonus: Paul Wolfowitz, Mr. Nice Guy

http://billmon.org/archives/001772.html

Triple bonus: Changes to Your Citizenship Agreement

http://slate.msn.com/id/2115254/fr/rss/

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:37 AM

 
BRAIN DEAD

Well, Bush and the GOP have unleashed a whirlwind, and they’re stuck in it now. Having just days ago proclaimed their intention to move heaven and earth to preserve a “culture of life” (DeLay: “we have to do everything that is in our power to save Terri Schiavo”), they now see the polls telling them a vast majority despises them for their grandstanding. But having staked out this position, how do they backtrack from it without (a) alienating their base, which really DOES expect them to move heaven and earth to save her, and (b) looking like the biggest bunch of poseurs and hypocrites on the planet? Maybe, just maybe, the Dems were crafty enough to see this coming, and to underplay their position as the Repubs went further and further out on this limb on their own

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111162110221397221
[CBS/AP] Congressional leaders have insisted their only motivation in getting involved in the Terri Schiavo case was saving a life. But Americans aren’t buying that argument, a CBS News poll finds. . . Just 13 percent of those polled think Congress intervened in the case out of concern for Schiavo, while 74 percent think it was all about politics. Of those polled, 66 percent said the tube should not be inserted compared to 27 percent who want it restored.

Bush: what a difference a day makes. . .

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111161488744470504
President Bush suggested that he and Congress had done their best to help the parents prolong Schiavo's life, and the White House said it has no further legal options.

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2548
The Texas Air National Guard, Arbusto Oil, and now the Culture of Life - Georgie gives up easily, doesn't he?

DeLay: His full comments to the Family Research Council, excerpted yesterday. You have to read the whole thing

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111161359968003755
And so it’s bigger than any one of us, and we have to do everything that is in our power to save Terri Schiavo and anybody else that may be in this kind of position.

And let me just finish with this: This is exactly the issue that’s going on in America. That attacks against the conservative movement, against me, and against many others. The point is, it’s, the other side has figured out how to win and defeat the conservative movement. And that is to go after people, personally charge them with frivolous charges, and link that up with all these do-gooder organizations funded by George Soros, and then, and then get the national media on their side. That whole syndicate that they have going on right now is for one purpose and one purpose only and that’s to destroy the conservative movement. It’s to destroy conservative leaders and it’s, uh, not just in elected office but leading. I mean Ed Feulner, today at the Heritage Foundation, was under attack in the National Journal. I mean they, they, this is a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in, and, and you need to look at this and what’s going on and participate in fighting back.

Don’t, you know, the one way they stopped churches from getting into politics was Lyndon Johnson, who passed a law that said you couldn’t get in politics or you’re going to lose your tax exempt status because they were all opposed to him when he was running for president. That law we’re trying to repeal; it’s very difficult to do that. But the point is, is when they can knock out a leader then no other leader will step forward for awhile because they don’t want to go through the same thing. When, if they go after and get a pastor then other pastors shrink from what they should be doing. It forces Christians back into the church and that’s what’s going on in America: “The world is too bad. I’m going to go get inside this building and I’m not going to play in the world.” Uh, that’s not what Christ asked us to do. And, and so this, they understand that it is a political maneuver, and, and they are, uh, going to try to destroy the conservative movement and we have to fight back.

So, please, this afternoon, each and every one of you, if you know a senator give him a call. Tell him, they’ll say, “Our bill can pass in the House.” Tell him, “That’s fine. Your bill’s okay but the House bill is better and, uh, I want the House bill.” Particularly if you know Democrats, uh, don’t let them get off the hook, um, by hiding behind one House and the other is adjourned. We can do anything we need to do to pass any bill that we need to pass. So I appreciate what you’re doing. God bless you and thank you for the Family Research Council.

[NB: Hope you caught that line about repealing the law preventing tax-exempt religious organizations from political activity. They’ve been flouting this rule anyway, but now their intention is clear.]

Frist: “poseur and hypocrite” aren’t strong enough words

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111160342761631336
Frist wrote a book in 1989 called Transplant where he advocated changing the definition of "brain dead" to include anencephalic babies. Anencephalic babies are in the same state as Terri Schiavo except that she suffered a physical trauma that put her into a vegetative state while the anencephalic babies are born that way.

This remarkable discovery buttresses the argument that Frist's advocacy for Schiavo is wholly political. How does he explain this remarkable inconsistency? Here is the relevant passage on Frist as quoted by the New Republic in 2003:

"And, although Frist writes frequently about the ethical issues surrounding transplants--for example, the question of when death begins--he approaches these issues in starkly scientific terms, with little patience for religious objections.

"Near the end of the book, for example, Frist suggests changing the legal definition of 'brain death' to include anencephalic babies, who are born with a fatal neurological disorder but show just the slightest hint of brain-stem activity. Such a change would make it possible to harvest their organs for transplant--something the Catholic Church and pro-life groups oppose. 'Three thousand anencephalic babies were born a year, enough to solve our demand many times over--but we never used them.'"

Jeb: Discovers a “Nobel Prize-nominated” neurologist to offer an ad hoc rediagnosis of Schiavo. Who is he?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111160973030486325
Sadly, the "renowned neurologist" wasn't the one who has been making all of the Fox News rounds and making a bunch of fools look even more foolish than usual. The guy has been going around telling people he's a "Nobel Prize Nominee" for medicine, because a very silly congressman nominated him. But, it gets funnier. . . The congressman actually wrote to nominate him for a "Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine," which doesn't, you know, exist. . . And, [Congressman Michael Bilirakis] isn't eligible to nominate anyone for the Medicine prize.

Sorry, two different neurologists. The one Jeb consulted is FAR more credible

http://slate.msn.com/id/2115250/fr/rss/
The New York Times, and to a lesser degree the Washington Post, do background checks on that neurologist [William Cheshire]. He's a member of a foundation for "Christian bioethicists," and his clinic said that while he "observed" Schiavo for an hour he "did not conduct an examination." One neurologist who did, said, "He has to be bogus, a pro-life fanatic. You'll not find any credible neurologist or neurosurgeon to get involved at this point and say she's not vegetative."

Good run-downs of the legal options remaining

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/schiavo_/2005/03/running_out_of_running_room.php

http://billmon.org/archives/001770.html

Outside the courtrooms: who are these protestors?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_digbysblog_archive.html#111163989813106023

Good point: what about the GOP’s famous dedication to the “sanctity of marriage”?

http://slate.msn.com/id/2115218/fr/rss/

Is it possible that the Repubs have set up the court system to reject their bill, only to come back later saying that this is why we need even more right-wing judges?

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/schiavo_/2005/03/the_schiavo_bill_and_the_nuclear_option.php

[NB: It’s a clever analysis, and they may try to work it this way after they lose, but I don’t think that was the plan. Given their outrageous interference and opportunism in this case, it is just as likely that people will say, “this is why we need courts that will say no to the President and Congress”]

The Dems (crafty, or just dumb luck?)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_20.php#005219
[From TPM reader PJ] “Everything you say about the Schiavo fiasco is true except your conclusion. The Democrats, for once, did exactly the right thing. By letting the Republicans do what they wanted, they have give the American public, at a very crucial time, the opportunity to see the Republicans in all their sleazy glory. The unspoken backdrop of political debate in the country will now be "Look what you get when the Republicans get to do what they want." No one will point to the Democrats to say they were in it too, but if they'd have kept the vote from taking place, some would have pointed to them as against life and none would have seen the courts' utter rejection of Republican over-reaching. Republican pronouncements from authority will be crippled by the obviously manipulative and mistaken pronouncements by Republican doctors in congress on Schiavo's condition. Even conservative Republicans are upset with DeLay now.”

On the other hand: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/what-he-said.html

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-opdol234186935mar23,0,2798444.column

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/another-kick-in-pants-for-dems-on.html

CNN: how low can they go?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200503230007
Anchor Kyra Phillips wrongly claimed on the March 23 edition of CNN's Live From... that Carla Sauer Iyer, a former nurse for Terri Schiavo, came forward for "the first time" the previous day with allegations that Terri's husband, Michael Schiavo, was a "threat" to her caregivers. In addition, CNN national correspondent Bob Franken incorrectly stated that no one had responded to Iyer's charges, then repeated other rumors of abuse without offering support for his allegations.

In fact, as Media Matters for America documented following an interview Phillips conducted with Iyer on the March 22 edition of Live From..., Iyer's charges are at least as old as her 2003 affidavit, and several news sources have discussed them since then (examples here and here).

Contrary to Franken's claim that Iyer's charges have not been answered, Florida circuit court judge George W. Greer considered Iyer's claims and, in a September 2003 order, rejected them as "incredible."

Fox: the winner and still champion. . .

http://mediamatters.org/items/200503230005
GIBSON: Is there -- before I run out of time and gotta run, because it's coming soon -- do we now have the following political divide: Republicans stand for parents' right and life, and Democrats have sided for questionable husband and dying?

BENNETT: In a lot of peoples' minds, that's it.

GIBSON: Despite the fact that some Democrats were with Republicans. [NB: and some Republicans were against it]

BENNETT: Yes, yes, some were. It really is tradition, common sense, belief in moral, spiritual things, and some kind of abstract notions of right -- which, of course, all the real notions of right we have, all the constitutional rights we have are derived from that religious tradition. What ironies, what a day, what a time, what times we live in.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005859
[Sam Rosenfeld] The cable news coverage of the Terri Schiavo story in the last week has got to have marked some kind of nadir for what was already a bottom-feeding and disreputable corner of the news industry. I’ve been watching this stuff for days now and the disregard for basic factuality and credible sourcing on display has simply been stunning -- and I've watched tons of crappy cable news for years. In the past few days, I saw the hackish Nobel-nominated doctor, I saw the fraudulent nurse -- twice! on two different networks! -- peddling outlandish stories of Mike Schiavo’s attempts to murder his wife. Cable networks’ obvious lack of concern for vetting the people who appear on their shows to utter knowingly fallacious statements is a longstanding problem that we all got to see in stark relief during last year's Swift Boat madness, but just because it isn't new doesn't make it any less of an outrage.

Moreover, the eggshells on which cable anchors have walked in discussing Schiavo’s (non)prospects for recovery and, especially, in interviewing Schiavo’s family -- who obviously have gone through a great deal and are emotionally invested in a belief that she is sentient and improvable -- have made a mockery of the notion that journalistic organizations have an obligation to discern facts and seek truth. . . Someone watching CNN or FOX News for all their information on this case in the last week would, without question, be left with an impression of this story that was on balance far more wrong than right. Run-of-the-mill mediocrity is one thing; actively and consistently misinforming viewers is quite another.

Social Security Trustees, showing due diligence in protection of their program, fiddle the numbers to get a projection of fund solvency even more pessimistic than Bush’s. Here's how they cooked the books:

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005852

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111159739455017183

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005916.php

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005847

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005857

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010133.html

The lousy AP coverage of the report (which, of course, is the version picked up by countless local and small-town news sources around the country)

http://mediamatters.org/items/200503230006

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005858

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111161683945769072

MSNBC too: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_20.php#005226

Why it matters

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_20.php#005227
[Josh Marshall] I hope the supporters of Social Security aren't resting on their collective laurels just because the president's jihad against the program got off to such an abysmal start.

Today, in newspapers and on websites across the country, headlines used words like 'broke', 'bankrupt' and 'bust' to describe what happens to Social Security when it starts running a deficit at some time in the middle of this century. Only weeks ago, President Bush was being forced to back off such misleading and deceptive language. And many Republicans were openly criticizing him for it. Now these are the words of choice in supposedly straight news reportage.

Supporters of Social Security really don't have the luxury of letting one lie or distortion go unchallenged or unanswered.

(Interesting: several headlines revised overnight)

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005926.php

Can ANYTHING be done to address this desperate shortfall?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111160775346500852
Assuming the Trustees' intermediate assumptions are realized, the deficit of 1.92 percent of payroll indicates that financial adequacy of the program for the next 75 years could be restored if the Social Security payroll tax were immediately and permanently increased from its current level of 12.4 percent (combined employee-employer shares) to 14.32 percent.

[Atrios] As I said, I don't support doing that because a) "pre-funding" is a sucker's game as long as Zombie Greenspan and his Republican Acolytes roam the Earth and b) it makes the tax code more regressive. But, nonetheless it's pretty damn painless.

But that’s not all: the LONG-term estimates (not what was covered by the press) are actually BETTER

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000561.html

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000562.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005856

Graphic: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005919.php

Crisis? Which crisis?

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2547
The Social Security Trustees latest report places the insolvency date at the year 2020. . . That's the Medicare insolvency date, they place the insolvency date for Social Security at 2041.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/24/politics/24social.html

Graphic: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/daily/graphics/trustees_032405.gif

Bush’s empty threats against those who oppose him on Social Security

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_20.php#005221
[Josh Marshall] There's an interesting article today in the Post which fronts the president's new threat that Democrats "will suffer political consequences if they continue to oppose his proposal without providing one of their own."

You'll notice that the article is datelined Albuquerque, where the president just held his most recent Bamboozlepalooza event. . . What caught my attention is that while the Post piece made such prominent mention of the president's 'threat', it neglected to mention the name Heather Wilson, who has been obstinately refusing to take any position on Social Security for months. . . Wilson, the representative from Albuquerque and the clear target of the president's visit, was afraid to be seen at the president's event today. . .

Bottom-line: While President Bush is seeding the media with bogus threats, his own Republicans are afraid to appear in public with him on his Social Security tours. . .

More from Albuquerque: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1222
[NYT] Even as he travels the country selling his Social Security overhaul, President Bush is beginning to acknowledge some of the constraints of his plan for individual accounts. . . Even the slogan at the president's public events has changed. At the New Mexico event, gone were the banners that once declared the president's interest in "Strengthening Social Security.". . . Instead they had a more targeted message: "Keeping Our Promise to Seniors." His last several outings have been dedicated to reassuring older voters that their Social Security payments are not in jeopardy, rather than demanding the bold restructuring that was once the focus of his sales pitch.

He has visited centers for older Americans, interrupting residents' card games to repeat the promise. He has brought along his mother, Barbara Bush, to show he understands older people's concerns. And he has enlisted prominent Republicans including Vice President Dick Cheney and Senator John McCain of Arizona to help mollify what polls show to be substantial opposition among the elderly to his approach.

. . . Unlike most other presidential appearances, the event inside the darkly lit Kiva Auditorium was sparsely attended, with hundreds of empty seats.

Why the Dems just need to hold on a little bit longer without getting tricked into offering an “alternative”

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/03/the_gospel_acco.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005926.php
Matt is exactly right about Dems standing firm on refusing to offer an alternative plan of their own. It's not necessary, since Social Security isn't in crisis, and it would be politically moronic — as no less an expert than George Bush himself has admitted. Bottom line: Bush is stuck in the quicksand on this issue, and it's not up to the Democratic party to throw him a rope. He's the one who claims there's a crisis, so let him make the first move.

Kafka at Guantanamo

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/bush-meet-kafka-kafka-meet-bush.html
Kafka came to Guantanamo Bay this year, once military proceedings started to review the cases of the prisoners being held and determine whether any of them should be released. Some lovely highlights: prisoners were refused the right to hear many of the charges against them or what evidence was used to buttress those charges (it's classified; stop whining) and the lawyers and others prosecuting them covered up their name-tags. . . Among the claims: guards at Guantanamo Bay pretend to be lawyers and meet with prisoners to get info; then, when the real lawyers show up, the prisoners don't trust them and refuse to cooperate in their own defense. Other prisoners meeting with lawyers have felt the wrath of guards after those lawyers leave and then don't want to see the lawyers when they return.

More on “ghost” detainees: a far more widespread and routine (and illegal) practice than we’ve been told

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61206-2005Mar23.html

Defense Dept continues to grow its independent intelligence efforts

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fg-intel24mar24,0,5181139.story

GOP scrubs fundraising records

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/03/cleaning-up-cookie-crumbsthey-remind.html
As attention grows on campaign fundraising and the relationship between top Republicans and a lobbyist under multiple federal investigations, the Republican National Congressional Committee has erased all online records of fundraising events for the last three years, RAW STORY has learned.

Previously, the website listed all RNCC fundraisers dating from late 2002 to the present. Now only an error message appears. . .

Bush’s conspicuous silence on the Minnesota shootings

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-life24mar24,1,6814918.story
Asked why the president had not commented on the shootings, which occurred Monday, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Bush's priority was to ensure that the FBI and Department of Justice provided support to the community.

"The president's focus is on making sure the federal government is responding" effectively, McClellan said.

[NB: Because, you know, he's just too darn busy managing the government to take out a few minutes to make a public statement of condolence and concern]

But Bush's aggressive response to Schiavo and virtual silence on the shootings has led critics to accuse him of political opportunism.

Plame: could it end with only the reporters going to jail (punished for protecting others who will get off scot free)??? Please tell me I’m dreaming (thanks to Susan Madrak for the link)

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000853514

Abortion: why pro-choice activists are rethinking their strategy

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=9362

Investigation into the checkpoint shooting of an Italian journalist runs into a bit of difficulty

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2545
The U.S. military command in Iraq has blocked two Italian policemen from examining the car in which an Italian intelligence agent was shot to death in Baghdad

Why the media CAN’T be “fair and balanced”

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005920.php
[Dan Froomkin] No one gets in trouble for reporting what he says and calling the events whatever the White House calls them. By contrast, if you consistently point out his errors and regularly describe the events in a unflattering way — especially without a named or unnamed "critic" to attribute it to — you are in some danger of being considered a partisan, a kook, and off the reservation.

This is what Bush Co. “background briefings” have come to

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59868-2005Mar23.html
"Q I guess it's -- I guess it's kind of pointless to try and get you guys to give us any specifics -- but the last caller seemed to try and get some idea of the scale of this. I mean, every time these leaders get together in a bilateral format, they announce some effort to speed the flow of people across the borders and trade goods, and at the same time, restrain the flow of terrorists and illegal products. So are you going to give us some idea of whether this is bigger than the U.S.-Canadian agreement -- the post-9/11 U.S.-Canadian agreement? And what has been done in terms of meetings between the ministers to set this up. This really, on the surface of it, doesn't look much more than an annual get-together for these guys.

"SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, I think, obviously we're not going to scoop the leaders. They're going to have to make the announcement of what they are going to put out. But in order -- I think as you look at what happens tomorrow, I think you'll have to -- as I tried to say in answer to the previous question, there's a number of things you need to look at. One is, what have we put in -- what are we doing that's different from previous announcements that have been made between the leaders. . .

"Q Is there a name for this initiative? . . .

"SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It does have a name. Are we sharing the name now?

"SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think let's hold off on that at this point.

"Q What should we call it? Should we call it a program, an initiative, a structure, a commission?

"SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think initiative."

Bonus item: Quote of the day

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/23/shays/index.html
"This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy," Connecticut Rep. Christopher Shays, one of five Republicans to vote against the Schiavo legislation, tells the New York Times. "My party is demonstrating that they are for states' rights unless they don't like what states are doing. This couldn't be a more classic case of a state responsibility."

Bonus quotes from the defenders of “a culture of life”

http://billmon.org/archives/001769.html
The fallout from last week's vote kept coming this weekend and on Monday, with protesters filling the [Florida state] Capitol, pleading with senators to intervene [in the Schiavo case] . . .

Ugly messages were left with lawmakers. Sen. Nancy Argenziano, R-Dunnellon, said one letter came from a self-identified Christian who "prayed" for Argenziano to die a painful death with stomach cancer.

Sen. Rod Smith, D-Alachua, said one caller to his office said, "I'm a Christian, and I hope you will die in your own vomit."

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:49 AM

 
AMERICAN TALIBAN

Courts say no: theocrats DeLay and Santorum claim that Congressional law ORDERED them to issue a temporary restraining order, not just to review the case (so much for separation of powers)

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/23/7253/87248

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111151226189193927

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/22/delay/index.html

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111150749397719003

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/23/schiavo1/index.html
Just after midnight this morning, a federal appeals court in Atlanta dealt another setback to those who want to extend the life of Terri Schiavo. In a 2-1 ruling, judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit refused to issue an order requiring doctors to re-insert the feeding tube that, until Friday, was keeping her alive.

In refusing to grant a temporary restraining order sought by Schiavo's parents, 11th Circuit judges Ed Carnes and Frank Hull -- appointees of Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, respectively -- affirmed the ruling of District Court Judge James Whittemore, who concluded less than 24 hours earlier that Schiavo's parents had not shown that they were likely to prevail on the merits of their claim that Florida courts had denied Schiavo her rights under the U.S. Constitution or other federal law.

Judge Charles Wilson, another Clinton appointee, dissented from the ruling. When Congress adopted emergency legislation, Wilson said, its intent was clear: Congress wanted the federal courts to issue a temporary restraining order requiring the re-insertion of Schiavo's feeding tube in order to keep her alive long enough for a full federal review of her case. "Denial of Plaintiffs’ petition cuts sharply against that intent, which is evident to me from the language of the statute, as well as the swift and unprecedented manner of its enactment," Wilson wrote, repeating, in many ways, the same argument House Majority Leader Tom DeLay made in the press Tuesday afternoon.

But the judges in the majority looked not to the desires of the congressional Republicans but to the text of the law that Congress passed and the president signed. On its face, the law does not require the federal courts to issue a temporary restraining order. Rather, it says that the courts "shall issue such declaratory and injunctive relief as may be necessary to protect" Schiavo's legal rights. If federal judges concluded that those rights had already been protected -- as Whittemore, Carnes and Hull all did -- then no injunction would be "necessary" to protect them further.

As Carnes and Hull explained, their reading of the words of the Schiavo law is buttressed by its legislative history in the U.S. Senate. In order to win unanimous consent for the bill from Senate Democrats, Republicans dropped a provision that would have required the issuance of a temporary restraining order -- a point Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist made perfectly clear in a discussion with Democratic Sen. Carl Levin on the Senate floor last week. Levin said he was opposed to an earlier version of the bill "because I believe Congress should not mandate" that a federal judge issue such an order. Levin then asked Frist whether he "shared" his view that the final version of the bill left the question to the discretion of the federal courts. Frist said:

"I share the understanding of the senator from Michigan, as does the junior senator from Florida who is the chief sponsor of this bill. Nothing in the current bill or its legislative history mandates a stay. I would assume, however, the federal court would grant a stay based on the facts of this case because Mrs. Schiavo would need to be alive in order for the court to make its determination. Nevertheless, this bill does not change current law under which a stay is discretionary."

It’s all about ME

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/22/politics/22cong.html
"One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America," Mr. DeLay told a conference organized by the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group. . . "This is exactly the issue that is going on in America, of attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others," Mr. DeLay said.

More: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111151565776566341

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111152055574233979

“Bonfire of the Vanities”

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_20.php#005214
And Tom DeLay, this is truly the last refuge for this man. The cable networks seem not quite to have caught on to the fact that almost every tentacle of the political machine this man has created is now careening toward federal or state indictments. So here he is wrapping himself in the cloth of this family tragedy, in an effort to whip up the most whippable of his supporters in his defense, and in so doing finding the hand of God working in this woman's hospice care and in his own exposure as one of the most corrupt congressional leaders in American history.

Conservatives revolting against the DeLay wing of the party. They realize that Social Security and Schiavo could bring them all down

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/22/142815/577

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/23/171/06297

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111155582080731322

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2539

The “Islamization” of the GOP

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2533

More: http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/schiavo-case-and-islamization-of.html

Who is Randal Terry?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200503220001

More voices of moderation and empathy

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/22/frc/index.html
Today, the ever-tasteful Family Research Council said that U.S. District Judge James Whittemore's ruling not to reinstate Schiavo's feeding tube "errs on the side of death," and proceeded to make its case with a helpful comparison using Osama bin Laden. (No, really.) We'll let you do the math on this one.

"Imagine terrorist Osama Bin Laden being put on trial in the United States and sentenced to die a slow, painful death. Now imagine during the appeals process a presiding judge saying, 'continue with the death sentence. If Mr. Bin Laden dies or suffers while I am thinking, then so be it.' Death penalty opponents would be rightfully outraged. Any human being, no matter how despicable, has certain rights -- especially in the U.S. court system. However these same rights are being denied to the innocent Terri Schiavo?"

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/22/15234/6337
The 2000 Republican Platform: "Medical decision-making should be in the hands of physicians and their patients."

The 2004 Republican Platform: "We must attack the root causes of high health care costs by: ... putting patients and doctors in charge of medical decisions."

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/03/23/frists_history_of_pulling_the_plug.html
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), "who has championed the 'rescue' of Terri Schiavo, is a renowned heart surgeon who has pulled the plug on a 'regular basis,'" the New York Daily News reports. But Frist says he "ended life support only when the patient was ruled brain-dead, and he is convinced Schiavo is not brain-dead.". . . After all, he did see video footage of Schiavo.

[NB: A video more than two years old, produced by the Schindlers, of selected random clips edited to appear that Terri is responding to external stimuli]

Go Mark! Mark Kleiman has a brilliant series of posts dissecting the Schiavo case and all the hypocrisies. I can’t clip them all – just go to his site

http://www.markarkleiman.com/

More lies from Scotty on Bush’s 1999 Texas law

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/22/1999law/index.html

Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle. . .

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005844

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1219

Hilarious! Bush pleads for an end to criticisms against his Social Security plan (even though he hasn’t proposed any plan yet, right?)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush23mar23,1,252132.story
At the start of a potentially crucial congressional recess, in which lawmakers will hear from constituents about President Bush's plans to overhaul Social Security, Bush and his allies asked Democrats and AARP on Tuesday to stop attacking their ideas.

More signs of desperation: http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2528

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56812-2005Mar22.html
President Bush's traveling Social Security roadshow passed through Tucson and Denver yesterday, and the lead stories in the local morning papers were more about the razzledazzle and less about the message that Bush is trying to get across.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2115141/fr/rss/
The president has lost on Social Security. How will he handle it?

“StrengtheningSocialSecurity.Gov” site being pulled? (it wasn’t loading this morning)

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/03/paging_the_gao.html
Considering the .gov url, isn't this site kinda um. . . illegal?

GOP revises its talking points on Social Security (again)

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005838
Thus it was with some pleasure that I received a copy of the House Republican Conference's latest set of talking points on the subject, useful because "you might encounter citizens with questions that are often difficult to answer in simple, understandable language." And, indeed, you might.

Meanwhile, the DC Conventional Opinion Brigade keeps granting legitimacy to the Social Security debate by refusing to acknowledge the rotting corpse in the middle of the room

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005829

(Conservatives are also rebelling against Patriot Act renewal)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/23/politics/23patriot.html

David Brooks (!) slams GOP for sleaze

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/22/opinion/22brooks.html
Back in 1995, when Republicans took over Congress, a new cadre of daring and original thinkers arose. These bold innovators had a key insight: that you no longer had to choose between being an activist and a lobbyist. You could be both. You could harness the power of K Street to promote the goals of Goldwater, Reagan and Gingrich. And best of all, you could get rich while doing it!

More: http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/22/2913/00957

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_20.php#005211

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005831

Bin Laden was in Tora Bora, Bush Co. knew it, he escaped, and they lied about it

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=4&u=/ap/20050322/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/bin_laden_afghanistan_3

Economists: Bush deficit bigger threat to U.S. than terrorism

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2530

War crimes, cover-up

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2529
U.S. law enforcement agents working at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, concluded that controversial interrogation practices used there by the Defense Department produced intelligence information that was "suspect at best," an FBI agent told a superior in a memo in May last year.

But the Justice Department, which reviewed the memo for national security secrets before releasing it to a civil liberties group in December, redacted the FBI agent's conclusion.

The department, acting after the Defense Department expressed its own views on which portions of the letter should be redacted, also blacked out a separate assertion in the memo that military interrogation practices could undermine future military trials for terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay.

It also withheld a statement by the memo's author that Justice Department criminal division officials were so concerned about the military interrogation practices that they took their complaints to the office of the Pentagon's chief attorney, William J. Haynes II, whom President Bush has nominated to become a federal appellate judge.

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/03/why_does_the_mi.html
The Pentagon has refused to reopen an investigation into allegations by three Iraqis working for Reuters that they were abused and mistreated by U.S. forces, saying it stood by an initial probe exonerating American troops. . . Reuters says the investigation, during which none of the three was interviewed, was inadequate and should be reopened.

More on the Bolton scandal

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005835

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000389.html

Desperate for new recruits, Guard and Reserve raise age limits (guess those young ‘uns just ain’t rushing to enlist any more, huh?)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58028-2005Mar22.html

More GOP redistricting (Georgia)

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/23/05635/4286
Meanwhile, Democrats in places like Illinois, New Mexico and Louisiana pat themselves on the back for "taking the high road", even as Republicans continue their mad power grab unimpeded by any pushback.

Recapture of House in 2006 judged unlikely

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/03/22/status_quo_predicted_in_2006_house_races.html

Freedom of speech? A photo essay

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2524

More on the FEC and political blogs

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/22/155821/232

Bonus item: “I like to get home. I like to remember -- to go back to my roots, where I was from”

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2534

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 10:15 AM

 
MAN OF ACTION

Tom DeLay, evil incarnate

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005823
"She talks and she laughs and she expresses likes and discomforts," he said Sunday evening. "It won't take a miracle to help Terri Schiavo. It will only take the medical care and therapy that patients require."

Scotty lies too

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/21/162132/268
“The legislation he signed is consistent with his views. You know, this is a complex case and I don’t think such uninformed accusations offer any constructive ways to address this matter…[P]rior to the passage of the ‘99 legislation that he signed, there were no protections…The legislation was there to help ensure that actions were being taken that were in accordance with the wishes of the patient or the patient’s family.”

The facts: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/bush-signed-1999-law-in-tx-to-pull.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/21/schiavo4/index.html
As Republicans plotted congressional intervention last week to extend the life of Terri Schiavo, a Texas woman named Wanda Hudson watched her 6-month-old baby die in her arms after doctors removed the breathing tube that kept him alive. Hudson didn't want the tube removed, but the baby's doctors decided for her. A judge signed off on the decision under the Texas futile care law -- a provision first signed into law in 1999 by then-Gov. George W. Bush. . . Under the 1999 law, doctors in Texas, with the support of a hospital ethics committee, can overrule the wishes of family members and terminate life-support measures if they believe further care would be futile.

More lies from Scotty: http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2517

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2519

“George Bush, Man of Action”

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/21/schiavo5/index.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/21/schiavo2/index.html

Political theatre

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54002-2005Mar21.html

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1218

The full GOP “talking points” on how to exploit the Schiavo tragedy (rumored to have come from Rick Santorum’s office)

http://www.dcinsidescoop.blogspot.com/
S. 529., The Incapacitated Person's Legal Protection Act

* Teri Schiavo is subject to an order that her feeding tubes will be disconnected on March 18, 2005 at 1p.m.

* The Senate needs to act this week before the Budget Act is pending business, or Teri's family will not have a remedy in federal court.

* This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue.

* This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of Florida - has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats.

* The bill is very limited and defines custody as "those parties authorized or directed by a court order to withdraw or withhold food, fluids, or medical treatment."

* There is an exemption for proceeding "which no party disputes, and the court finds, that the incapacitated person while having capacity, had executed a written advance directive valid under applicably law that clearly authorized the withholding or withdrawal of food or fluids or medical treatment in the applicable circumstances."

* Incapacitated persons are defined as those "presently incapable of making relevant decisions concerning the provision, withholding or withdrawal of food fluids or medical treatment under applicable state law."

* This legislation ensures that individuals like Teri Schiavo are guaranteed the same legal protections as convicted murderers like Ted Bundy.

Was the bill passed even legal?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111144920046649972

The implications for federalism

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005826

http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2603

What happens if (when) the federal court rules against the GOP?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111144665301604840

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_20.php#005203

Calling the GOP on their “culture of life” hypocrisy

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/gop-just-guaranteed-every-american.html

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9372

Terri Schiavo fundraising

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/21/list/index.html

Poll numbers heavily against GOP posturing and opportunism

ABC: http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/21/122254/745

CNN: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/new-cnn-poll-gop-in-trouble-over.html

More: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111142609184898942

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005897.php

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/21/boortz/index.html
Another indication of just how wildly out of step with public opinion the Bush White House is on Terri Schiavo: Even syndicated talk radio host Neal Boortz, typically a fierce defender of President Bush, is furious over Republicans' "shameless grandstanding" on the issue. Boortz is more Libertarian than right-wing Republican on social issues and the idea of keeping religion out of government, and his bottom line here is states' rights: "From this day on your right to die, your right to instruct your loved ones to not take extraordinary measures to keep you alive if disaster strikes, is a federal matter, not a state one." But the degree to which he denounces the cynical endgame currently being played out in Washington is telling:

"The congress of the United States worked into the early hours of this morning for one reason; to serve the interests of the so-called pro-life movement. This isn't about Terri Schiavo. It's about abortion. The anti-abortion movement saw an opportunity to take Terri's tragedy and turn it into a spectacular pageant in support of life. Quality of life means nothing to these people ... only the fact that some sort of life is present. Please ... keep them away from me if I should ever suffer a tragedy like that which befell Terri Schiavo. The Republicans in Washington have essentially taken Terri Schiavo hostage -- a hostage designed to please their anti-abortion constituency. We've heard much about torture in recent months ... the alleged torture of Muslim prisoners in Iraq. Can it be said that the Republicans are torturing the soul of Terri Schiavo, and doing it for votes?"

Why the Dems haven’t positioned themselves properly to take advantage of it

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005/03/no-bigger-outrage-la-times-finally.html

But. . . http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/21/135230/014

New tapes from Guantanamo “as explosive as anything from Abu Ghraib”

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/03/gitmo_tapes_explosive.html

U.S still hoping to maintain a permanent military presence in Iraq

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/03/the_elephant_in.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005896.php

Developing scandal around John Bolton

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9369

CNN sells out to the Christian Right

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_20.php#005205

New Congressional hearing on Ohio vote irregularities

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/03/the_hearing_you_are_not_hearing_about.html

Vulnerable Senate seats

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/21/151635/125

What happens when someone tries to ask Cheney a real question at one of those made-for-tv pep rallies

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2521

Bonus item: The Bush News Network

http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2005/03/21/tomo/index1.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 10:42 AM

 
WHAT KIND OF MAN IS HE?

Terri Schiavo: The Politics

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/family-research-council-politicizes.html
Pigs.

"If Congress fails to act in time, Terri's demise will be the legacy of those Democrats who have chosen to march to the beat of the radical, anti-life drumbeat of the left." - Family Research Council email update, tonight.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111134855580442708
[Atrios] One element of this Schiavo circus that hasn't yet gotten a lot of attention is the fact that we have a sitting member of Congress using his bully pulpit and media access to target and attack the character someone who is mostly a private citizen and who has not been accused of or convicted of any crime. I'm sure this isn't entirely without precedent, but the level of volume and personal vitriol which Tom DeLay has directed at Michael Schiavo should give us all pause, as should the fact that the media is treating it as a perfectly ordinary thing.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-schiavo20mar20,0,5041972.story
DeLay, who has been personally chastising Michael Schiavo, did not spare him on Saturday. "I don't have a whole lot of respect for a man that has treated this woman in this way," he said. "What kind of man is he?"

http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-nyhen204182572mar20,0,5541860.column
"Right now," Tom DeLay said on Friday, "murder is being committed against a defenseless American citizen in Florida. Terri Schiavo's feeding tube should be immediately replaced, and Congress will continue working to explore ways to save her."

"Mrs. Schiavo's life is not slipping away - it is being violently wrenched from her body in an act of medical terrorism," DeLay said.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005893.php
[Amy Sullivan] But what's really appalling about Frist's latest I'm-not-a-neurologist-but-I-play-one-in-the-Senate routine is that he does this all the time. For at least eight years, Frist has been making medical pronouncements on all manner of medical issues outside his specialty (he's a heart surgeon), and his message is always the same: You can't trust all those other doctors, but you can trust me because I am a doctor.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_20.php#005202
[Ed Kilgore] If I were a congressional Republican, or a supporter of the Schindler family's efforts to obtain federal intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, I'd be more than a little troubled by the high profile being assumed by the infamous anti-abortion extremist, Randall Terry. Terry accompanied Mary Schindler to a press appearance earlier today, and is also organizing an effort to get Jeb Bush and Florida legislators to visit Terri Schiavo.

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/nancy-pelosi-rocks.html
[Nancy Pelosi] "The case of Terri Schiavo is a sad and tragic situation. Congressional leaders have no business substituting their judgment for that of multiple state courts that have extensively considered the issues in this intensely personal family matter. The actions of the majority in attempting to pass constitutionally-dubious legislation are highly irregular and an improper use of legislative authority. . . Michael Schiavo is faced with a devastating decision, but, having been through the proper legal process, the decision for his wife's care belongs to him and to God. . . This rush to exploit a personal tragedy is not fair to those involved and will not create good policy."

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/gop-brags-that-schiavos-plight-is.html
[John Aravosis] This shouldn't be a tough issue for Democrats at all. It's an easy issue, and one that is begging to blow up in the Republicans' face. I'll bet lots of Americans have no desire to be kept alive in a vegetative state, and the last person they want deciding whether they should live or die is Tom DeLay. . .

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/3/20/203832/845
[Jerome Armstrong] The vote to assert federal control of the Schiavo vegetative case is expected to pass just after midnight in the House, at 12:01. At least 2 Democrats in the House (not sure which) had the hardball sense to make the Republicans fly in 218 members to create a majority. Bush is giving up a night in Crawford in order to pass it asap as well, probably with a post-midnight signing of the law.

This is one of those situations where you watch your opponent self-destruct, and you don't intervene. The crass nature of the Republican Party is on full display to the nation with their kneeling before their base, and it's revolting to a strong majority outside the echo chamber. The Republicans in Congress say that they don't want this to be a precedent, which exposes their motive as political, without principle. . .

Frist is a heart surgeon, and has no training to pass a medical judgement of Schiavo. Yet, with just a viewing of a video, Frist pronounces that the medical examiners in Florida are wrong, and this vegatative existence should be kept in 'life'. He's just getting started, yet Allen, Santorum, and others will give Frist strong competition in being the choice of their base. Evolution? It's a lie. Aids? It's contracted by saliva. NYC? A bed of sin. The UN? The antichrist. Even the erstwhile honest politician McCain has gotten into the act. . .

That's OK, the greater their fanaticism, the more obscene the Republicans in Congress and Bush will be in their obsequious of the nescient theo-cons. The Federal courts are going to slap this down just as quick as the state courts did, because it's nonsense. Ultimately, we'll likely see Bush issue an Executive Order that Schiavo remain in vegetative existence until the machines die.

[Correction on the Harry Reid statement criticized here yesterday: http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/20/124034/929]

The Principle

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/03/the_politics_of_the_schiavo_bill.html
[Michael Froomkin] So much one could say about the entire Schiavo mess — How can the GOP support this anti-federalist measure without any hint of shame? How can the same GOP that says federal power should be seen through the lens of a limited Commerce Clause and shrunken 14th Amendment claim that Congress has the power to act here? How can anyone care so much more about the feeding tube in a person with a liquefied cerebral cortex than about the feeding of hungry children both at home and abroad? And what about all the people who die for lack of medical care? Is the Schiavo bill a bill of attainder? Does the insertion of the Congress into an ongoing judicial matter violate separation of powers? — but other people are asking, or will ask, all these questions.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_atrios_archive.html#111133631465796651
[Andrew Cohen] QUESTION: So the years of state-court litigation would be wiped off the map, as if it never took place?

ANSWER: If Congress gets its way, yes. That's why the legislators in Washington put the words "de novo" into the legislation, so that the federal courts would not be bound by anything the state courts in Florida had done. . .

QUESTION: What does that concept do the regular give and take between the court systems, the idea of comity and cooperation between judges?

ANSWER: It destroys it. But that's the whole point of this Congressional action. Not liking a particular result in a case that has been litigated fully and completely by a court with competent jurisdiction, Congress now has said that the game must be re-done with new rules that heavily favor one side over the other. The implications of this move are astonishing. Just think about it. Anytime Congress doesn't like the result in a particular case, it could swoop in and call a "do-over," which is essentially what this legislation represents. And this from a Congress that has for a decade or so tried to keep all sorts of citizens-- including disabled employees-- out of federal court. If this law is declared valid, no decision in any state court in the country will be immune from Congressional second-guessing. It would throw out of whack the entire concept of separation of powers. The constitutional law expert Tribe calls it "trial by legislation" and he is right.

QUESTION: You are getting agitated again. Doesn't the legislation specifically say that it does not "constitute a precedent with respect to future legislation, including the provision of private relief bills"?

ANSWER: Yes, it says that. But so what. It said that the last time Congress did this and it didn't stop Congress from doing this now. Look, there is no other way to put it: this is the most blatant and egregious power-grab by one branch over another in my lifetime. Congress is intruding so far into the power of the judiciary, on behalf of a single family, that it is breathtaking. It truly will be fascinating to see how federal court judges react to this-- whether they simply bow down to this end-run or whether they back up their state-court colleagues. And it will be interesting in particular to see what the Supreme Court does with this case. Even the conservatives on the High Court-- and the Chief Justice in particular-- must be concerned about the precedent this sort of legislation would set.

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/03/schiavo_reprise.html
[Lindsay Beyerstein] 1. What is the issue here?

Morally and legally, the Terri Schiavo case is about a patient's right to refuse medical treatment. This piece by an editor of the American Journal of Bioethics gets to the heart of the matter. (I believe the author is Professor Glenn McGee.) As he notes, there is an overwhelming consensus any adult has the right to refuse any medical treatment. Disabled and incapacitated patients retain this right. The only difference is that these patients must be represented by guardians charged to speak on their behalf.

The Schindlers and their supporters have no principled objections to the system by which guardians are appointed. They aren't arguing that parents are more appropriate guardians than spouses in general, or that the Federal courts should arbitrate all guardianship cases, or even that the withdrawal of feeding tubes is unethical. All they care about is reversing a decision on a case in which they have a personal stake.

2. What's NOT at issue here?

This case has nothing do with euthanasia. Terri Schiavo's feeding tube has been removed because the Florida courts have determined that she would not have wanted it. She is not being deliberately killed, she is being allowed to die the death she would have wanted.

It is an insult to the hospice professionals who care for Terri to insinuate that she will die a grisly death. Terri is in the hands of skilled and compassionate professionals who will ensure that her death is as peaceful as possible. We have no evidence that Terri is capable of any subjective mental life, let alone suffering. But even those who dispute this point must admit that hospice professionals routinely manage the removal of feeding tubes in patients with normal levels of consciousness. There is nothing unethical about removing a feeding tube from a fully conscious person who doesn't want it. On the contrary, it would be medical malpractice not to honor the patient's wishes. The same principle applies to Terri Schiavo.

This case has nothing to do with the lurid gossip surrounding Terri's marriage. The courts have heard the allegations of abuse, infidelity and avarice and dismissed them as unfounded and irrelevant. The issue is whether Terri would have wanted a feeding tube. The courts decided that she wouldn't, based in part on Michael Schiavo's testimony. Michael Schiavo is Terri's legal guardian, but he chose to allow the court to make the final determination as to whether Terri would have wanted to be maintained in her current state.

In May of 1998 Michael Schiavo filed a petition for a court to determine whether Terri's feeding tube should be removed. In February of 2000, Judge Greer of the Circuit Court for Pinellas County ruled that there was clear and convincing evidence that Terri Schiavo would not have wanted a feeding tube (.pdf via Abstract Appeal, linked to previously).

Note to the too-much-TV crowd: If you think any of the soap opera allegations are relevant, read the actual decisions before repeating any more gossip. The decisions explicitly address the potential for conflicts of interest on both sides.* I guarantee that the presiding judges were better informed than you or I, having actually heard the testimony. If you still think that your contrary hunch about Michael Schiavo's motives is relevant, please explain why society at large should care about your inklings. On TV, you get to keep appealing the verdict until you get a result you like. In real life, the judge is generally considered the binding arbiter. Your disagreement about the import of various pieces of evidence doesn't count unless you can show a defect in his legal reasoning or a gross misrepresentation of the facts presented to the court.

The Second District Court affirmed Greer's decision in January, 2001, concluding:

In the final analysis, the difficult question that faced the trial court was whether Theresa Marie Schindler Schiavo, not after a few weeks in a coma, but after ten years in a persistent vegetative state that has robbed her of most of her cerebrum and all but the most instinctive of neurological functions, with no hope of a medical cure but with sufficient money and strength of body to live indefinitely, would choose to continue the constant nursing care and the supporting tubes in hopes that a miracle would somehow recreate her missing brain tissue, or whether she would wish to permit a natural death process to take its course and for her family members and loved ones to be free to continue their lives. After due consideration, we conclude that the trial judge had clear and convincing evidence to answer this question as he did.

Over the next several years, the Schindlers sought to reverse the decisions, arguing that new evidence had come to light about Terri's wishes and that new treatment could improve her condition. The "new evidence" in question consisted primarily of affidavits from Michael Schiavo's ex-girlfriend claiming that Schiavo had confessed to perjury. (Not surprisingly, they got relatively little milage out of this particular ploy.)

In October of 2002 Judge Greer held a new trial on the medical treatment issues. In his ruling, the judge addressed the major medical evidence, including the vaunted balloon footage:

At first blush, the video of Terry Schiavo appearing to smile and look lovingly at her mother seemed to represent cognition. This was also true for how she followed the Mickey Mouse balloon held by her father. The court has carefully viewed the videotapes as requested by counsel and does find that these actions were neither consistent nor reproducible. For instance, Terry Schiavo appeared to have the same look on her face when Dr. Cranford rubbed her neck. Dr. Greer testified she had a smile during his (non-videoed) examination. Also, Mr. Schlinder tried several more times to have her eyes follow the Mickey Mouse balloon but without success. Also, she clearly does not consistently respond to her mother. The court finds that based on the credible evidence, cognitive function would manifest itself in a constant response to stimuli.

For a more detailed discussion of the medical facts, see Rivka's excellent post at Respectful of Otters. The author is not only a lucid writer but also a clinical psychologist with post-graduate training in neuropsychology, not to mention a long standing interest in disability issues. Compare Schiavo's scan to that of a normal brain at Alas, a Blog.

Finally, this case is not about the semantics of the term "persistent vegetative state." As I will argue in my next post, there is no doubt that Terri Schiavo satisfies the clinical criteria for this diagnosis. Nor is there any doubt that her condition is permanent. Her higher brain centers have been destroyed and replaced by fluid. I'm putting the PVS material in a subsequent post because I think it ultimately detracts from the central issue of the case--Terri's wish not to continue as she is.

* Judge Greer found that the Schindler's financial motivations were just as conflicted as those of Michael Schiavo. Michael was awarded $300,000 for his own loss, and the Schindlers demanded that he share it. The money was paid out in February 1993. Schiavo and the Schindlers last spoke on February 14 of that year. Judge Greer wrote that that the Schindlers fell out with Schiavo over Michael's share of the malpractice settlement. (See the 2000 ruling linked to above)

The Hypocrisy

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_03_20_digbysblog_archive.html#111134934659869241
[Digby] By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient's family's wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother's wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are also aware that Republicans have voted en masse to pull the plug (no pun intended) on medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terry Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.

Those of us who read liberal blogs also understand that the tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terry Schiavo's care thus far.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are aware that the bankruptcy bill will make it even more difficult for families who suffer a catastrophic illness like Terry Schiavo's because they will not be able to declare chapter 7 bankruptcy and get a fresh start when the gargantuan medical bills become overwhelming.

And those of us who read liberal blogs also know that this grandstanding by the congress is a purely political move designed to appease the religious right and that the legal maneuverings being employed would be anathema to any true small government conservative.

Those who don't read liberal blogs, on the other hand, are seeing a spectacle on television in which the news anchors repeatedly say that the congress is "stepping in to save Terry Schiavo" mimicking the unctuous words of Tom Delay as they grovel and leer at the family and nod sympathetically at the sanctimonious phonies who are using this issue for their political gain.

This is why we cannot trust the mainstream media. Most people get their news from television. And television is presenting this issue as a round the clock one dimensional soap opera pitting the "family", the congress and the church against this woman's husband and the judicial system that upheld Terry Schiavo's right and explicit request that she be allowed to die if extraordinary means were required to keep her alive. The ghoulish infotainment industry is making a killing by acceding once again to trumped up right wing sensationalism.

This issue gets to the essence of the culture war. Shall the state be allowed to interfere in the most delicate, complicated personal matters of life, death and health because a particular religious constituency holds that their belief system should override each individual's right to make these personal decisions for him or herself. And it isn't the allegedly statist/communist/socialist left that is agitating for the government to tell Americans how they must live and how they must die.

One of the things that we need to help America understand is that there is a big difference between the way the two parties perceive the role of government in its citizens personal lives. Democrats want the government to collect money from all its citizens in order to deliver services to the people. The Republicans want the government to collect money from working people in order to dictate individual citizen's personal decisions. You tell me which is the bigger intrusion into the average American's liberty?

http://slate.msn.com/id/2115110/fr/rss/
[Eric Umansky] The New York Times points out that Bush's trip, helpful in the symbolism department, was little more than that. The president could have signed the bill from Texas (if, apparently, it had been flown out there). The Times says this is the first time Bush has broken from vacation to head back to the office.

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/bush-rushes-back-to-dc-ends-vacation.html
[John Aravosis] Yes, as you already know, Bush ended his vacation early -- a virtually unprecedented act for a President who spends a LOT of time on vacation -- and rushed back to DC so he could score political points on the painful private decision surrounding Terri Schiavo. Obviously, this took hours and hours of time when the papers he went to sign could have been flown to him in Texas without much difference. But this issue was too important and he wanted to spend hours flying there to emphasize to the far right how he had come through for them.

Now let's think about the many other times when Bush couldn't be bothered to spend an hour or two on an issue and decide if any of them were more important.

1. The tsunami victims -- More than 100,000 people died in the worst natural disaster of our lifetime. Millions were left homeless. . .

2. Investigating 9/11 with Congress -- Bush spent months hemming and hawing and avoiding having to meet with the bipartisan panel trying to look into the worst attack on US soil in history. . .

3. Heck, 9/11 itself -- On the day of the worst attack on US soil in our history, Bush spent hours and hours flying around the country when he could have just spent a few minutes to get in front of a camera and reassure the nation that he was in charge and we'd get through this.

4. Military funerals -- Bush is the first President in US history during wartime (and presumably peacetime as well) who has refused to attend a SINGLE military funeral to honor one of our fallen soldiers. . .

The Enablers

[NB] As much as I despise the Republicans, my real anger right now is directed toward the news (like CNN), which is giving this their full, breathless, wall-to-wall coverage, with ticking deadlines and chest-heaving bathos. This gruesome spectacle, while supposedly growing out of concern for the value of human life, is in fact exactly the opposite. The actual complex human questions of life, death, pain, family love, and responsibility have been completely transformed into sound-bite abstractions pontificated over by people who have no real stake, knowledge, or involvement with the situation but who for their own reasons see this issue as a way to get a bit more time on the tv screen and a bit more support from their constituencies. Shame on them all.

The Final Word

http://blogs.salon.com/0000014/2005/03/20.html#a856
[Scott Rosenberg] It's difficult to express just how outrageous and surreal are the antics of Congress and the president this weekend around the Schiavo case. It's like something out of DeLillo, a sickening mixture of TV-fueled tabloid theater and heartland hokum dressed up in a high moral dudgeon that can't fully conceal the crude political agenda at work. (See the GOP talking points on the issue if you really want to retch.) We wind up with a bizarre, unsettling misfiring of our constitutional system, in which two branches of government punch a ragged hole through the barrier between federal and state affairs and rudely throw their weight onto the scales of justice in one family's grieving dispute.

Our nation does, of course, possess a perfectly functional legal system that handles the sad and difficult details of cases like Terri Schiavo's. For anyone who wants more information about those details, I recommend a careful reading of this page (thanks to Rafe Colburn for the link) -- a thorough, dispassionate accounting of the facts of the case from a Florida attorney/blogger. To the extent this source is accurate, and it seems to be -- it's far better documented than TV news, tabloid articles and even what you will get from a serious newspaper -- the Schiavo case has run its course and more through the Florida courts. The legal record does not suggest even the thinnest reed of hope for a recovery. ("At this point, much of her cerebral cortex is simply gone and has been replaced by cerebral spinal fluid.") In a case like this, we're all entitled to our opinions, of course. But only if you're a congressman or a president do you get to ignore the courts, overrule judges and have your opinion trump the law.

So to hell with the courts, to hell with the evidence, and to hell with the careful determination of Terri Schiavo's wishes that the courts have made. Bush and his supporters aren't happy with the outcome, so they're going to federalize the case! The president himself -- who has, through international crises thick and thin, been unable to rouse himself from those long, long vacations at his Texas ranch, even when hundreds of thousands were killed by the Indian Ocean tsunami -- will fly back to Washington to sign the bill! Sanctity of life? The hypocrisy would be ludicrous if the case weren't so heart-rending. We will turn our backs on the myriad deaths in Sudan, we will pay any price in casualties to root out phantom weapons of mass destruction, we will execute the mentally retarded without lifting a pardoning executive finger -- but heaven forbid the courts from concluding that one poor woman whose brain shut down many years ago would have preferred her relatives let her die in peace. No, that cannot stand; we must bend or break our system of government to stop it.

This is a decadent circus the right has cooked up for us, worthy of that Late-Roman-Empire feeling that ever more deeply enshrouds the Bush era with each new turn of the news cycle. It is also a neon display of the contempt President Bush and his party hold for our legal system (I guess that when it comes to meddling with Florida courts, their track record is successful), and of their willingness to trample on due process and individual rights for the sake of a cause celebre cherished by the Base That Must Be Obeyed.

I keep thinking, in this dark time, that sooner or later Bush, DeLay & co. will cross the line of political propriety so blatantly and incontrovertibly that they will, like Senator Joseph McCarthy, find their ertswhile allies turning away from them in disgust. Maybe transforming the private conflict of a family dispute into grotesque public spectacle will be that sort of Rubicon for them. But I'm afraid that such an outcome would require a stiffer spine and a braver soul than most Democrats seem able to muster.

In the meantime, clearly, everyone who doesn't want George Bush and Congress to overrule relatives, doctors and courts to make those bedside end-of-life decisions for them needs to draw up that living will, pronto.

In other news. . .

The two-year anniversary in Iraq

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/20/172221/553
Insurgent attacks flared across Iraq today, exactly two years after the American military began its campaign to topple Saddam Hussein. The attacks showed that the guerrilla war still burns fiercely here, long after President Bush proclaimed major combat operations to be over and despite a high turnout among Iraqis in the Jan. 30 elections. In what appeared to be a pitched battle, insurgents and American forces fought at noon on the outskirts of Baghdad. The American military said that 24 insurgents were killed and seven wounded, and six American soldiers were injured. It did not give more details. . . Tensions between the Iraqi and Jordanian governments exploded again today, as each government called home its envoy from the neighboring country. . .

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-iraqarmy21mar21,0,5661765.story
Both U.S. and Iraqi commanders are so concerned about ethnic rivalries that they refuse to provide ethnic breakdowns of the new army's makeup. Hussein's army was dominated by Sunni Muslims and was used to crush Shiite Muslim and Kurdish uprisings. The new army has more Shiites and Kurds than Sunnis, prompting the latter to fear they will be targeted for retribution.

http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/wave-of-bombings-in-middle-east.html
The continued instability in the Middle East yielded on Saturday a harvest of deadly bombings in the region. . .

More: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2274

John Negroponte’s death squad background

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2508
A review of hundreds of declassified State Department and CIA documents suggests that Negroponte was preoccupied with "managing perceptions" about a country that had become a key U.S. ally in a decade-long campaign to stop the spread of communism in Central America. The documents show that he sought to depict Honduras in a generally positive light in annual human rights reports to Congress, and played down allegations of government abuse. . .

The Republican Actor’s Studio

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_20.php#005200
First, Harris reports on the acting studio that Rep. Jack Kingston, who chairs the House Republican Conference, has set up to train GOP congressmen and staff in how to deal with hostile constituents in all those Social Security town hall meetings they are reluctantly hosting. Turns out most of the sparse audience for Kingston's Method Acting production wants to know about substance, not style, and there the Georgian is at a bit of a loss. He is, however, offering pizza to his attendees. . .

As if the bullying of school boards by creationists wasn’t bad enough, now IMAX films are also being censored (thanks to Jessica Wilson for the link)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4365999.stm
Religious controversy has reportedly affected the distribution of educational films such as Cosmic Voyage, Galapagos and Volcanoes of the Deep Sea to Imax cinemas, some based within science museums. . .

Carol Murray, spokeswoman for Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, said the museum's Imax cinema decided not to screen the Volcanoes movie after showing it to a sample audience. . . In their written comments the audience made statements such as "I really hate it when the theory of evolution is presented as fact", and "I don't agree with their presentation of human existence".

Coming attractions

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/03/21/fec_considers_restricting_online_politics.html
The Federal Election Commission "has begun considering whether to issue new rules on how political campaigns are waged on the Internet, a regulatory process that is expected to take months to complete but that is already generating considerable angst online," the Washington Post reports.

"The agency is weighing whether -- and how -- to impose restrictions on a host of online activities, including campaign advertising and politically oriented blogs."

Bonus item: cathart your DeLay hatred here

http://billmon.org/archives/001761.html

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/03/just_asking.php

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:40 AM

 
A THREE-RING CIRCUS

For reasons I’ve discussed here before, I haven’t posted much about the Terri Schiavo case, which has already been overly publicized and sensationalized. But now that we have the spectacle of the Republicans in Congress opportunistically interjecting themselves into a clear state’s rights issue, sticking their noses into a very sad and complicated situation with no appreciation of the deeper issues at stake, this has morphed into a matter of public policy and politics. By purposely distorting the particular facts of the situation in order to turn it into a poster case for their wider “right to life” agenda, the Republicans (from Jeb Bush right up the ladder to Congress and his brother in the White House) have reached a new low in cynical opportunism. And by enabling this circus, without even attempting to raise questions about WHAT THE HELL BUSINESS IT IS OF THEIRS ANYWAY, the Democrats earn a dishonorable mention as well

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49701-2005Mar19.html
Congressional leaders tried again after being rebuffed by a determined Florida judge and agreed yesterday to pass a compromise that they said will require doctors to restore sustenance to Terri Schiavo for the third time in four years.

The extraordinary intervention by Washington for a single person, in a wrenching question that families typically wrestle with in private, required a Saturday session of the Senate during Easter recess and will bring both chambers back to the Capitol on Palm Sunday.

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/19/9451/84618
[NYT] For Republicans, it was a chance to try to carve out new territory in the "culture of life" issues so paramount to passionate religious conservatives, who have flooded Congressional offices with messages beseeching help in keeping Ms. Schiavo alive. For Democrats still struggling in the wake of their defeat in the November elections, the case offered a way to portray their newfound willingness to move to the center on such issues.

http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2005/03/from-linda-douglass-on-abc-news.html
ABC News has obtained talking points circulated among Republican senators explaining why they should vote to intervene in the Schiavo case. Among them: "This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited..." and "This is a great political issue... this is a tough issue for Democrats."

UPDATE: A commenter informs me that ABC has now posted this, which quotes the talking points and DeLay's response to them:

"I don't know where those talking points come from, and I think they're disgusting."

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2506
I won't go back through all the facts and the incredible amount of information and misinformation about Terri Shiavo - the story is everywhere. I just want to make something as clear as I can. Terri Shiavo's brain is mostly gone, replaced by fluid. Any number of doctors have testified to what anyone with even the most rudimentary understanding of physiology can see: without a functioning brain, there is nothing to receive nerve impulses. . . Consequently, if this whole carnival proves nothing else, it proves that the Religious Right and the Republicans care nothing about the real pain that real people suffer.

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/great-political-issue-and-randall.html
All weekend, I have talked to people across the spectrum who have had some kind of experience with a dying family member. To say that no one would want Congress involved is a bit of an understatement.

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/03/in_re_schiavo.html
[Matt Yglesias] The dilemma here falls on a continuum with a spectrum of painful, tragic choices that, to one degree or another, wind up impacting virtually every family nowadays to one degree or another. When something like this gets mixed up with intra-family disagreement, obviously, things only grow more difficult. But the rank partisanship, crass opportunism, and utter disregard for principle or common decency that the GOP's been displaying on this front for the past several days are quite possibly the most stomach-turning series of events it's been my misfortune to witness in my (admittedly small number of) years as an observer of the American political scene.

If we can draw any lesson from this appalling spectacle it should be, I think, that this is perhaps the clearest signpost of the absurd bankruptcy of ideological conservatism. Unable to devise a plan to halt the increasing disregard for traditional sexual ethics on the cultural front, or the demand for increased public expenditures on the economic front, we're treated instead to human tragedy transformed into a cynical three ring circus. In some sense, this approach clearly "works" as politics, but one day it's bound to simply collapse under the weight of its own contradictions and deep-seated unseriousness.

More outrage: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_digbysblog_archive.html#111126625260729260

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_13.php#005195

The Dems

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/19/175157/173

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1214

And that pious hypocrite George Bush? Read this

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_atrios_archive.html#111128106206105854
In 1999 then governor Bush signed a law which allowed hospitals to withdraw life support from patients, over the objections of the family, if they consider the treatment to be nonbeneficial.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_atrios_archive.html#111128227932624623
"If there is agreement on the part of all the physicians that the patient does have an irreversible, terminal illness," he said, "we're not going to drag this on forever. . . "When the hospital is really correct and the care is futile. . . you're not going to find many hospitals or long-term acute care facilities (that) want to take that case," he said. "Any facility that's going to be receiving a patient in that condition. . . is going to want to be paid for it, of course."

More: http://billmon.org/archives/001756.html

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/03/schiavo_hudson_and_nikolouzos.php

[NB: In other words, when this was a cost-cutting proposal from hospitals, he was all for it]

Here come the clowns (thanks to John Aravosis for the link)

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43347
Former Green Beret Commander Bo Gritz is trying to conduct a citizen's arrest of Terri Schiavo's husband and the judge who ordered the brain-damaged Florida woman's feeding tube removed so she can be legally starved.

The 66-year-old retired Army Lt. Colonel with his wife, Judy, arrived in Florida from their home in Nevada yesterday with the intent of arresting anyone involved in removing the life-sustaining tube.

Gritz came bearing a notarized "citizen's arrest warrant" addressed to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Attorney General Charlie Crist.

Jaafari: Iraq headed toward religious law

http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/jaafari-iraq-headed-toward-religious.html

Bush Co. lies in order to demonize North Korea (what, they couldn’t find enough true reasons to show it’s a dangerous rogue state?)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_atrios_archive.html#111129393555907999

“Top 10 Reasons Why Paul Wolfowitz Would Make a Good World Bank President” (thanks to Jan Pieterse for the links)

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0304-34.htm

More: http://www.wanniski.com/PrintPage.asp?TextID=4242

More on the Social Security “clawback,” and why it amounts to an additional benefits cut

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000545.html

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_atrios_archive.html#111126820565395306
This WaPo article is, as they say, a "must read." Short version: Even without cuts in guaranteed benefits, with the "clawback" in the Bush Social Security program, 32% of workers who divert their payroll taxes would do worse than those who don't, using the unrealisitically high rates of return assumed by the SSA actuaries. . . Under rates of return which sensible people believe in, and which are compatible with assumptions about the economy made by the SSA actuaries, 71% of workers would be worse off.

More: http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/03/iron_triangle.html

Joe Lieberman – still walking both sides of the street

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000547.html
“Everyone knows that Social Security is on a path to insolvency. Every year that we wait to make the program solvent will cost us more. . . I know that Mr. Krugman opposes the president's carved-out private savings accounts. So do I. But if we stop there, the victims will be tens of millions of seniors who need Social Security to escape poverty.”

Bush’s falling poll numbers

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_atrios_archive.html#111127558798421192
Only one-third of all Americans (33 percent) approve of his proposal to create investment accounts under Social Security, the poll found, while 59 percent disapprove. . . Forty-five percent of all Americans approve of the way he is doing his job, a five-point dip from early February; 48 percent disapprove, up six points.

Is the GOP getting worried?

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/20/01841/5832
[Robert Novak] Analysts at the Republican National Committee (RNC) have sent this warning to the House of Representatives: the party is in danger of losing 25 seats in the 2006 election and, therefore, of losing control of the House for the first time since the 1994 election. . . Although some Republicans on Capitol Hill believe the RNC is just trying to frighten them, concern about keeping the present 232 to 202 edge pervades GOP ranks.

How far can the GOP go?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gop20mar20,1,4442956.story

A new interview with “Jeff Gannon” – still lying, still dodging the real issues

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/nyt-interview-with-gg.html

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/if-gannonguckert-implies-he-wasnt.html

Sunday talk show lineup (count the Dems)

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/19/213051/154
MEET THE PRESS 10:30 a.m.: Myers.

LATE EDITION (CNN), noon: Sens. John E. Sununu (R-N.H.) and Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.); Lt. Gen. R. Steven Whitcomb; Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari; retired Gen. George A. Joulwan; retired Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong; and retired Maj. Gen. Don Shepperd.

FOX NEWS SUNDAY: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.)

THIS WEEK (ABC) 9 a.m.: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.); Gerry Adams, leader of Northern Ireland's Sinn Fein party; and Rumsfeld.

FACE THE NATION (CBS, WUSA), 10:30 a.m.: Gen. Richard B. Myers, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman; Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.); and Robert D. Manfred Jr., executive vice president of Major League Baseball.

LATE EDITION (CNN), noon: Sens. John E. Sununu (R-N.H.) and Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.); Lt. Gen. R. Steven Whitcomb; Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari; retired Gen. George A. Joulwan; retired Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong; and retired Maj. Gen. Don Shepperd.

Bonus item: “it’s all postmodernism’s fault”

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_digbysblog_archive.html#111129849311773378

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:44 AM

 
THE STRONG AND THE WEAK

The strong. . .

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-defense19mar19,1,7779545.story
Two years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon has formally included in key strategic plans provisions for launching preemptive strikes against nations thought to pose a threat to the United States. . . The doctrine also now stipulates that the U.S. will use "active deterrence" in concert with its allies "if we can" but could act unilaterally otherwise, Defense officials said.

The weak. . .

http://billmon.org/archives/001755.html
[AP] America’s strength is being challenged by “a strategy of the weak,” a Pentagon document says, listing diplomatic and legal challenges in international forums in the same sentence with terrorism. . . “Our strength as a nation state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak focusing on international fora, judicial processes and terrorism,” it says . . . Asked about the statement, Douglas Feith, the No. 3 official at the Pentagon, said during a news conference, “There are various actors around the world that are looking to either attack or constrain the United States, and they are going to find creative ways of doing that, that are not the obvious conventional military attacks.”. . . He went on, “We need to think broadly about diplomatic lines of attack, legal lines of attack, technological lines of attack, all kinds of asymmetric warfare that various actors can use to try to constrain, shape our behavior.”

[NB: Yes, you are reading this correctly. While we reserve the right to bomb to hell any country we perceive as a potential threat, regardless of international approval or legitimacy, at the same time we say that those who use international forums and rules to constrain what we are trying to do, are just collaborating with terrorists and others who might attack us. Relying on such international institutions is “a strategy of the weak”]

Hey, how are things going in Iraq (where?) – Iraq, that beacon of liberty in the Middle East?

http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/two-car-bombings-of-us-troops-iraqi.html

Where did they ever get the idea that having Bush talking even MORE about his Social Security plan would raise public sympathies toward it? Quite the contrary is happening – he seems to be getting even more incoherent

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2499
[Bush] “In the year 2027, there will be $200 billion beyond the payroll taxes necessary to pay for the promises the government has made. It increases every year, see. In 2018, it starts going negative -- increases, increases, increases -- to give you an extent -- by how much -- by 2027, it's $200 billion; greater than $200 billion the next year; greater than the next -- you know.” [Read on. . . it gets worse]

It’s contagious

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2500
Q Back on Social Security for a minute. The so-called scare tactics, to use your word, have they worked? Are you up against -- especially given the complexity of the issue, do you worry that some of these tactics, as you called them, used to get messages to seniors have been persuasive and that you're now trying to combat that?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, these are scare tactics that have been used for years. I mean, we have seen in a number of elections, including the President's and including a number of members of Congress, that running on an agenda to strengthen Social Security is a winning issue. The American people have elected members of Congress who ran on a platform of fixing the problems facing Social Security and strengthening it for our future generations. But these scare tactics have been used for quite some time.

VERY contagious

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2498
Republican lawmakers, trying to convince a skeptical public about the wisdom of their Social Security proposals, decided yesterday that it was time to roll out a new metaphor.

Their choice: a brown 1935 Ford three-window Coupe, which House GOP leaders ordered driven onto a sidewalk outside the Capitol. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) and a few colleagues stood in front of the antique, built the same year Franklin D. Roosevelt built Social Security, and likened the two.

"I wouldn't be caught dead in a 1935 automobile," said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (N.C.), vice chairman of the House Republican Conference's PR effort on Social Security. "And I want to make sure we have an updated system of Social Security, because that's America's investment vehicle."

But the car's owner, Henry Dubois, a retired government worker from Virginia, said McHenry's metaphor was off. "I didn't like that comment," he said, opening the hood to reveal a gleaming '41 Mercury hot-rod engine that was completely rebuilt two years ago. "It's in very good shape for a 1935," Dubois said, putting the Coupe's value at around $20,000. "It's been improved with an updated engine, so it keeps up with traffic."

A stupendously stupid (or maybe just dishonest and cynical) Social Security plan

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_atrios_archive.html#111117992056491605
Matthew Yglesias has some fun with the Ferrara/Sununu/Ryan plan for social security. Short version of the plan:

1) divert substantial social security tax revenues into private accounts
2) guarantee that private account + guaranteed benefits = currently promised benefits (if your account tanks, they still pay you)
3) maintain solvency of trust fund until infinity and beyond!

This is the have your cake and eat it and everyone else's too and then some free pie and here's a pony! plan.

It's quite an amazing plan, really -- I bet you're all scratching your heads wondering just how on Earth they manage to pull of this kind of magic wizardry!

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005804

More dishonesty

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005883.php
Wait until you see the new Bush Social Security ad. It's funny. It says "No one thought Social Security could ever go bankrupt. . . and no one thought the Titanic could ever sink either." Then it shows the demographic problem in a nice graph showing SS going into the red, and then the guy intones ". . . Then it will go bankrupt."

Then they show a clip of Bush from the SOTU: "But we must move ahead with courage and honesty.". . . One of the other notable things they do is that they flash a chyron on the bottom that reads "Source: Social Security Administration", which of course is meant to make the whole thing look like it's from the SSA.

It actually looks like the Dems are having fun these days

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005805
Q. Lastly on this issue, it seems like some of your Members have been concerned and the question they hear at home most is what is their alternative.

Ms. Pelosi. Oh, really? You think Democrats are concerned? There is nobody who wants the Democrats to have a plan on Social Security more than the Republicans.

The President of the United States, the most powerful person in the world, with all that goes with that in terms of power, discretion, bully pulpit, moral suasion, power of the office, said that Social Security was in a crisis. Not true. He said it would be bankrupt by 2018. Not true. He said he had a plan. Well, we have some provisions of it: Two provisions. One, private accounts, will destroy Social Security. The second one, indexing to prices rather than wages, will slash benefits by 40 percent.

He is the one who is creating the crisis with his deficit spending. If there were to be a crisis down the road, it would be because of his deficit spending. We must stop him. So if the President of the United States has not given us his full plan, but what we do know about some of its provisions is that it slashes benefits and bankrupts the Social Security trust fund, then why should we put a plan up?

Our plan is to stop him. Stop him. He must be stopped. He must not be allowed to go forward with these private accounts. He must not be allowed to put us on a trajectory of $15 trillion in deficit so we cannot pay the Social Security back what is owed it, the American people what is owed them.

So our plan is to, once they take that dangerous element of destruction to the Social Security trust fund off the table, we will go to the table with them and discuss how we deal with Social Security from 2050 to 2100. That's our plan. . .

[Sam Rosenfeld] One can’t help but suspect that Terence Samuel is right: Democrats in Congress just seem to be having more fun these days, and they have the president's obsession with destroying Social Security and Tom DeLay's flamboyant corruption to thank for it.

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005803

Meanwhile, GOP rank and file getting restless, feisty

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/18/senate/index.html
While Harry Reid has had some success in holding Democrats together on Social Security, Bill Frist suddenly seems to be having a harder time keeping his Republican charges in check. . .

Feckless, too

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005808
Mark Schmitt helpfully offers up a back-of-the-envelope ranking of the relative intellectual dishonesty and cowardice of Republican senators based on their combined votes on Russ Feingold’s PAYGO amendment and Gordon Smith’s amendment rescinding the budget’s Medicaid cuts. It should be added that the incoherence Senate Republicans displayed regarding federal revenues and expenditures wasn’t limited to those two amendments yesterday. The Senate also passed both an amendment to raise the five-year cap on discretionary spending by $5.4 billion and another amendment that nearly doubles the amount of tax cuts the Senate budget had originally called for (it even exceeds the more militant House’s tax cut total by $30 billion). The new tax cuts come from Jim Bunning’s amendment to rescind 1993 legislation increasing income taxes on the Social Security benefits of well-off retirees. There seems to have been a large amount of confusion among members about whether they were voting for a non-binding “sense of the Senate” resolution or an actual tax cut; turns out it was the latter. . .

In the House, hardball, as usual

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/18/harball/index.html

Simple, concise. Why Condi Rice will never be the GOP nominee for President

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005882.php
Condeleezza Rice says she is “mildly pro-choice”

More lies from govt scientists to justify Bush policies

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/18/dump/index.html

Media update: the sorry excuse we have for an independent press

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/administration/whbriefing/
The panel was called "Confronting the Seduction of Secrecy: Toward Improved Access to Government Information on the Record,”. . . There was much talk, on the one hand, about what panelists called the unprecedented secrecy with which the Bush administration operates. . . But sticking in pretty much everyone's craw was the persistence of those maddening White House briefings where a senior administration official stands in front of an auditorium full of reporters, says nothing remotely controversial, and yet insists on being cloaked in anonymity.

From the reporters' perspective, there is no excuse for it. The anonymity doesn't engender frankness; all it does is hinder accountability and undermine journalistic credibility. But what to do?

Bill Kovach, director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, described the short-lived revolt he tried to lead when he was Washington Bureau chief of the New York Times in the 1980s. "A few other reporters joined us at first when we asked briefings be kept open and left the room if they were not. But the support didn't last long," he said. "The main argument from other journalists was that they would surrender their independence if they took part in such group actions," he said.

But Kovach said that in this era of spin and misinformation, it's time to head to the ramparts again. "And maybe if we're lucky we can find that cooperation and collaboration are not threats to our independence but are the key to strengthen the value and the appeal of a journalism of verification to the American people."

Tom Curley, president and chief executive of the Associated Press, agreed: "We have to be able to walk out of the room when somebody goes off the record."

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/03/wrong-is-rightokay-so-theyre-admitting.html
Many media outlets self-censored their reporting on the Iraq invasion because of concerns about public reaction to graphic images and content, according to a survey of more than 200 journalists by American University's School of Communications.

The study, released Friday, also determined that "vigorous discussions" about what and where to publish information and images were conducted at media outlets and, in many cases, journalists posted material online that did not make it to print.

One of the most significant findings was "the amount of editing that went into content after it was gathered but before it was published," the study stated. Of those who reported from Iraq, 15% said that on one or more occasions their organizations edited material for publication and they did not believe the final version accurately represented the story.

Of those involved in war coverage who were in newsrooms and not in Iraq, 20% said material was edited for reasons other than basic style and length. Some 42% of those polled said they were discouraged from showing photographic images of dead Americans, while 17% said they were prohibited. Journalists were also discouraged from showing pictures of hostages, according to 36% of respondents, while only 3% reported being prohibited from showing them.

Bonus item: DC seems to be all agog over the power of “framing” (from Lakoff) and “controlling the narrative.” Interesting trend – politics does literary studies

http://slate.msn.com/id/2114799/fr/rss/
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich claims that "conservative Republicans have mastered the art of the political narrative and, in doing so, exiled Democrats from politics itself." He believes in "four stories that Americans had always heard and that made sense of the world they knew": the triumphant individual, the benevolent community, the mob at the gates, the rot at the top. Arguing that Kerry lost the election because he was unable to tap into these narratives, while Bush's war on terror "powerfully revived the Mob at the Gates tale," Reich insists that Democrats have to regain control over these stories.

http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/8/lakoff-g.html

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml

http://mixingmemory.blogspot.com/2004/09/lakoff-framing.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:19 AM

 
CRIMINAL MISCONDUCT

U.S. started planning to take over Iraqi oil BEFORE 9-11 (thanks to Jan Pieterse for the link)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4354269.stm

Wow – Bush’s latest poll numbers on Iraq (ABC/WP)

http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/poll-shows-bush-popularity-on-iraq.html
* [Bush's] “approval specifically on Iraq was 75 percent as the main fighting ended [in 2003]; it's 39 percent now, a career low.”

* 70% of Americans say that the level of US casualties in Iraq is "unacceptable."

* “53 percent, on balance, say the war was not worth fighting.”

* 41 percent say the Iraq war has made the US weaker in the world. Only 28 percent say it has made the US stronger. These numbers are a reversal from the year before.

* 2/3s of Americans oppose military action against Iran

Porter Goss basically admits that CIA interrogation techniques were illegal – so, next question: Who’s going to jail over this?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/18/politics/18intel.html
Porter J. Goss, the director of central intelligence, said Thursday that he could not assure Congress that the Central Intelligence Agency's methods of interrogating terrorism suspects since Sept. 11, 2001, had been permissible under federal laws prohibiting torture.

Under sharp questioning at a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mr. Goss sought to reassure lawmakers that all interrogations "at this time" were legal and that no methods now in use constituted torture. But he declined, when asked, to make the same broad assertions about practices used over the last few years.

"At this time, there are no 'techniques,' if I could say, that are being employed that are in any way against the law or would meet - would be considered torture or anything like that," Mr. Goss said in response to one question.

When he was asked several minutes later whether he could say the same about techniques employed by the agency since the campaign against Al Qaeda expanded in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks in the United States, he said, "I am not able to tell you that."

Meanwhile, Bush doubletalk

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2481
THE PRESIDENT: The post-9/11 world, the United States must make sure we protect our people and our friends from attack. That was the charge we have been given. And one way to do so is to arrest people and send them back to their country of origin with the promise that they won't be tortured. That's the promise we receive. This country does not believe in torture. We do believe in protecting ourselves. We don't believe in torture.

Amazingly, this is getting bad enough that even the jaded WH press corps seems to be taking it seriously

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2488
Q Are these reports wrong, or does he not believe that there's torture going on in these countries where these prisoners are being rendered back to?

MR. McCLELLAN: When people are rendered to another country, we seek assurances that they won't be tortured. When we return known terrorists to their countries of origin, or we render people to countries, we want to have assurances that they're not going to be tortured, because that's a value that we hold very dearly. And let's understand, though, that we are talking about -- I mean, Terry brought up earlier today, Khalid Shaykh Mohammad. Khalid Shaykh Mohammad is a known terrorist who is responsible for overseeing the attacks of September 11th that led to the killing of 3,000 innocent civilians in America. But I make very clear, again, what our view is.

Q I know. I know what the view is. I know what Khalid Shaykh Mohammad evidently did. That still doesn't answer the question. Does the President believe that there is no torture going on in any of these countries that are receiving prisoners that are part of this rendition program? Is he sure of that?

MR. McCLELLAN: David, we comply with our treaties and with our -- with our --

Q That's a non-answer, and you know it.

MR. McCLELLAN: David, will you let me finish my response?

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45119-2005Mar17.html

The See-No-Evil CIA

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/03/you_might_expect_the_cia_to_know_something.html
I guess I’m just too simple-minded to keep up with the news. . . But my understanding was that the CIA was an intelligence agency. That means that they are supposed to have a clue or two as to what goes on abroad. . .

What then to make of the CIA’s claims that it is shocked and surprised when the brutal foreign intelligence agencies to whom it hands over prisoners (via ‘renditions’) break their verbal commitments not to torture the prisoners, and instead proceed in their customary fashion?

At this point I’m left wondering whether the CIA wants us to think of them as really, really stupid or really, really guilty.

More torture updates

http://bodyandsoul.typepad.com/blog/2005/03/prisoner_deaths.html

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/18/101325/645
Edward Markey has introduced a bill, H. R. 952, that would outlaw extraordinary rendition. Most readers of this blog are probably familiar with extraordinary rendition, but just in case: Katherine summarized the issues in an earlier post, in which she wrote: ""Extraordinary rendition" is the euphemism we use for sending terrorism suspects to countries that practice torture for interrogation. As one intelligence official described it in the Washington Post, "We don't kick the sh*t out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the sh*t out of them." "

Markey's bill would require the Secretary of State to produce annually "a list of countries where there are substantial grounds for believing that torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment is commonly used in the detention of or interrogation of individuals." It would then prohibit the transfer of prisoners or detainees to any country on the most recent list, or to any other country which there is reason to think might transfer someone to a country on that list.

Wolfowitz’s confirmation to head up World Bank not a done deal, could face opposition (thanks to Jan Pieterse for the link)

http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/article.shtml?cmd[126]=i-126-b0a3e8f406dcd3fae7cc7c3c9b104f38

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2005/03/18/wolfowitz_mismanagement/

The only good thing about the Wolfowitz, Bolton, Feith departures is that they’re out of their old jobs at least

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001755.html

PAYGO defeated, now GOP can cut taxes all they want without explaining where the money to run the govt is going to come from

http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2005/03/some_followups.html

More from the press gaggle, this time over Bush energy policies: watch Scotty get testy

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2487
Q So with the vote yesterday, you're halfway to opening up the ANWR, which means that if things keep going your way, in eight to 10 years we might start to see some of the first oil from the Wildlife Refuge coming to market. What can the President do in the next few months to get the price of oil and gasoline down?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, John, the problem here is that Congress has failed to act on a comprehensive energy plan, because --

Q That's not the problem. The problem is that the price at the wellhead is $57, and the price at the pump will soon be $2.50. And even if they passed the energy bill three years ago, it wouldn't be doing anything about the price of oil.

MR. McCLELLAN: You can advocate your position, you're welcome to do that.

Q I'm just stating the facts.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, the facts are that we have run into this problem year after year because of a failure to act on a comprehensive energy plan. . .

Q But even if he had the opportunity to say, "yahoo" four years ago, we'd still be four years away from seeing the first oil flowing out of it, so the comprehensive energy plan would do nothing to ameliorate the prices that we're seeing at the pump right now. So what else can the President do?

MR. McCLELLAN: Do you have a suggestion on what you would like us to do? You seem to be very much the advocate that we need to do --

Q I'm just asking if you can do something.

MR. McCLELLAN: Do you have a suggestion? You said that -- you suggested that we could do something. Now, we can make sure that there's not price gauging going on --

Q If I were standing where you were, I'd probably have a whole lot of suggestions, but I'm not, I'm down here.

[NB: read the whole thing – fun!]

What should the press do when someone lies to them, on background, but because it’s anonymous they can’t “out” the liar?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46867-2005Mar18.html

I’m getting pretty fed up with Joe Lieberman – how about you?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/17/152518/576

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_atrios_archive.html#111115488469484742

Democrats pull a page from Newt’s 1994 playbook, start to build a case for nationalizing the 2006 elections over scandal, sleaze, and secrecy (and it all starts with Tom DeLay)

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/17/12429/2710

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005790

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9340

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2480

BUT: the danger of focusing too centrally on DeLay

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005794

After getting hammered in the first round, GOP members cancel town hall meetings with constituents to discuss Social Security

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/3/17/16335/7654

Two more phony WH “press” reports – sleazy, dishonest, but hey, they’re “legal”!

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/17/more_fake/index.html

Pucker up and smooch

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/17/time/index.html

Bonus item: Poppy on privatizing Social Security (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://home.earthlink.net/~fsrhine/2005.03.01_arch.html#1111163933651
[1987] “I think it's a nutty idea to fool around with the Social Security system and run the risk of [hurting] the people who've been saving all their lives.... It may be a new idea, but it's a dumb one.”

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 12:57 PM

 
JUST A FEW QUESTIONS

Wolfowitz to World Bank

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/16/12053/5244
So you help drag the nation into a bloody war with no exit strategy, cost the country $200 billion and counting, 1,500 American deaths and counting, tens of thousands of physical and mental injuries, and counting, and untold numbers of Iraqi dead.

All on false pretenses, with no real understanding of how our troops would be received. . . How are you punished?. . . Another "f-ck you" from Bush to the world community. Mind boggling.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_digbysblog_archive.html#111100507474895799
Via ThinkProgress:

“If we want stability on our planet, we must fight to end poverty. Since the time of the Bretton Woods Conference, through the Pearson Commission, the Brandt Commission, and the Brundtland Commission, through to statements of our leaders at the 2000 Millennium Assembly - and today - all confirm that the eradication of poverty is central to stability and peace.” – Outgoing World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn, 10/3/04

“These people are not fighting because they’re poor. They’re poor because they fight all the time. ” – President Bush’s nominee for World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, Congressional Testimony, 6/6/96

“We hear a lot of talk about the root causes of terrorism. Some people seem to suggest that poverty is the root cause of terrorism. It’s a little hard to look at a billionaire named Osama bin Laden and think that poverty drove him to it.” – Wolfowitz, 11/15/2002

More analysis: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/16/wolfowitz/index.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005761

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000532.html

Bush answers questions about Wolfowitz’s qualifications

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2475
Q Paul Wolfowitz, who was the -- a chief architect of one of the most unpopular wars in our history --

THE PRESIDENT: (Laughter.) That's an interesting start. (Laughter.)

Q -- is your choice to be the President of the World Bank. What kind of signal does that send to the rest of the world?

THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I think people -- I appreciate the world leaders taking my phone calls as I explained to them why I think Paul will be a strong President of the World Bank. I've said he's a man of good experiences. He helped manage a large organization. The World Bank is a large organization; the Pentagon is a large organization -- he's been involved in the management of that organization. He's a skilled diplomat, worked at the State Department in high positions. He was Ambassador to Indonesia where he did a very good job representing our country. And Paul is committed to development. He's a compassionate, decent man who will do a fine job in the World Bank. And that's why I called leaders of countries and that's why I put him up.

[NB: “They took my calls.” Well, THAT sounds like an enthusiastic endorsement]

What the Bolton, Wolfowitz selections indicate

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005860.php

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/03/whats_going_on.html

Yesterday we went with the report that, contrary to previous reports, as many as 26 prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan died in U.S. custody. That figure was much higher than any previously admitted to.

Today we find out that the actual number might be more than 108

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2474

Bush says he will meet anyone, discuss any option, to address the Social Security program – except that he will not abandon his commitment to personal accounts, even though that is clearly the one sticking point to any conceivable compromise. So one might reasonably ask, if personal accounts do not resolve the long-term solvency problem he calls a “crisis (if they in fact only make it worse), if there is almost no popular enthusiasm for them, and if they make a workable compromise impossible, where does this unyielding commitment come from?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40266-2005Mar16.html
[Dan Froomkin] Bush told the regional reporters that he is not about to take private accounts off the table -- a condition Democrats have set before they will join him in crafting a solution to Social Security's long-term solvency problem.

He also warned that there will be "political consequence for people who do not want to participate in coming up with a solution."

He made it clear that he is solely interested in "carve-out" accounts -- where the money would come out Social Security payroll taxes -- rather than "add-ons," which would be supplemental.

But he expressed astonishment that people constantly refer to "Bush's plan": "I haven't laid out a plan," he said. "I've laid out some ideas that I think ought to be considered for a plan, and that's what's important for people to know."

[NB: Now, ask yourself, why is it so important to specify that he “hasn’t laid out a plan”? First, because he doesn’t want headlines in a month or two saying “Bush Plan Fails.” Second, he still wants wriggle room to claim whatever compromise that might emerge from GOP/Dem negotiations in Congress as his own. But the question no one asked him was, “You PROMISED to deliver a plan for consideration – after months of talking about the urgency of this crisis, why haven’t you proposed one”? Read the rest of Froomkin’s piece to get a sense of the nonsense Bush was shoveling, and how poorly these editors performed in pinning him down. Undergraduate journalism students could have done a better job]

The transcript: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-031605bushtext_wr,0,6084931.story
Q Could I follow up? Everybody else has had a chance.

PRESIDENT BUSH: No, I'm trying to break the habit

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_13.php#005167
[Jonathan Chait] So let’s be clear where things stand. This is fundamentally an ideological fight. Democrats want to keep Social Security as a form of social insurance, and Bush wants to transform it into something else. Democrats are not willing to make a deal on solvency if it means giving up social insurance. And Bush is not willing to make a deal on solvency unless they do.

Given all this, how on earth can so many people continue to claim that Bush wants to save Social Security while the Democrats have their heads in the sand? How can this almost universally-accepted aphorism be said to have any basis in reality?

More: http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/3/16/215215/615

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005866.php

“I don’t have a plan.” But the WH web site says that he DOES (quick, read it before they take it down)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2476

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000535.html

Starting over from scratch: Chertoff orders top-to-bottom restructuring of DHS

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40603-2005Mar16.html

Also, Chertoff channels Kerry: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_atrios_archive.html#111103487149719649

One of the things that defines a “talk tough” administration is the continual need to make amends with groups you had previously demonized in stark, uncompromising terms. We’ve had several examples lately from Bush Co. – the latest is their tortured posturing on Hezbollah. Sit back and enjoy. . .

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2467
[Bush] We view Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, and I would hope that Hezbollah would prove that they're not by laying down arms and not threatening peace. . . Hezbollah has been declared a terrorist organization by the United States because of terrorist activities in the past.

[Scott McClellan]
Q Specifically, what would the President like to see Hezbollah do in Lebanon to join the political mainstream?

Q The President -- does he recognize that Hezbollah is a potent political force in Lebanon?

Q Scott, if we can go back to the President's remarks earlier today, he said, we view Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, and I hope that Hezbollah would prove that they're not by laying down arms and not threatening peace. Is the President giving Hezbollah an opportunity to change, to renounce terror? And if so, will the United States consider it a legitimate political organization?

Q Well, the President brought up the hypothetical when he said, I hope the Hezbollah would prove that they're not by laying down arms and not threatening --

MR. McCLELLAN: Right.

Q -- that they could become a legitimate organization, not a terrorist organization. . .

Q Does the administration believe that once a terrorist organization always a terrorist organization, or that any organization is redeemable, specifically Hezbollah?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not going to get into that in the context of this question.

Q Well, it's a policy question about whether or not a terrorist organization can change its behavior, moderate its actions, and change its relationship with the U.S. administration.

MR. McCLELLAN: Carl, I think that in terms of Hezbollah -- you're asking this question in terms of Hezbollah -- I just stated what our views are. Those views remain unchanged and --

Q And do they ever change?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not going to -- you're asking in the context of Hezbollah, and I think I've just made our views clear again what our views are, and I'm not going to get into playing "what ifs" when it comes to Hezbollah.

Q Well, as an example then, there have been Baathists who have been helpful to administration efforts in Iraq -- the Baathists clearly on the negative side of the ledger not too long ago -- because of their moderated behavior. Isn't that something that could be imaged by Hezbollah?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think -- let's distinguish here, because you're talking about -- you may be talking about people that may be members of organizations, but are not terrorists, versus terrorists, people who have blood on their hands. There's a big difference. . . [I]n the Palestinian Territories. . . you saw that there may have been people elected that may have been members of Hamas, but they weren't terrorists. They were people who advocated the importance of improving the quality of life for people in the region, people in the Territories. And they were businesspeople, they're professionals.

Why they hate Helen Thomas

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2468
Q How is the President going to mark the second anniversary of our war against Iraq and the start of the third year?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, there's still a few days off until the date that we began the liberation of Iraq, and --

Q The invasion of Iraq.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think the Iraqi people showed that they appreciate the sacrifices of the coalition forces, of Iraqi forces, and our men and women in uniform of the U.S. military, who helped --

Q Well, we're still there and we're still fighting, aren't we?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- to provide them with the opportunity to determine their own future, and to move away from their past of oppression and terrorism. And, obviously, we will --

Q How is the President going to mark the anniversary?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we will have more to say as we move closer to that, to express our eternal gratitude to the men and women of our Armed Forces who have served and sacrificed in the defense of freedom, and who have helped to liberate some 25 million people in Iraq. We are --

Q That isn't why you went in.

MR. McCLELLAN: We are forever grateful to our men and women in uniform. And the Iraqi people have expressed their gratitude, as well, and showed that they are committed to defying the terrorists who want to return to the past by going to the polls and voting for a future based on freedom and democracy. And the National Assembly that was elected by the Iraqi people, the transitional National Assembly, will be meeting for the first time tomorrow. It's an important step on the path to democracy. And we stand with the international community in doing everything we can to support the transition to democracy in Iraq. We stand with the Iraqi people, and we are greatly appreciative of our men and women in uniform who continue to serve and sacrifice for this important cause. We are also grateful to their families who have made sacrifices, as well.

Q How many people are dead?

MR. McCLELLAN: Go ahead, April.

[NB: Read the rest of this transcript to see how they are dodging responsibility for having done NOTHING to solve the anthrax terror threat.]

Bluster and bullsh-t: watch Rumsfeld bully the press

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=100480&lftnav=progressreport
"[T]he fact of the matter is that there are 130,200 who have been trained and equipped – no matter what [Sen. Joseph Biden] says. That's a fact.… [T]he idea that that number's wrong is just not correct. The number is right."
-- Sec. Rumsfeld, 2/2/05

"U.S. government agencies do not report reliable data on the extent to which Iraqi security forces are trained and equipped. … The reported number of security forces overstates the number actually serving."
-- Government Accountability Office, 3/14/05

The Bolton confirmation hearings should be interesting

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2478
The story goes likes this: On December 19, 2002, the State Department issued a fact sheet entitled "Illustrative Examples of Omissions from the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council." It included eight key areas where the Bush administration faulted Iraq's weapons declarations to the U.N. on December 7, 2002. Under the heading "Nuclear Weapons," the fact sheet read: "The Declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger. Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?". . . Waxman points out this was a bogus claim, and notes that "both State Department intelligence officials and CIA officials reported that they had rejected the claim as unreliable." So, wondered Waxman, who in the State Department prepped the lie?

MacLean’s, from Canada, has a couple of cheery articles on the future collapse of the U.S. economy (thanks to Mary Atkinson for the links). Why do we have to go outside the U.S. to get honest economic reporting?

http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/world/article.jsp?content=20050307_101541_101541

http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/politics/article.jsp?content=20050307_101554_101554

666 – the Mark of the Beast? No, the size of our record trade deficit

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2469
The United States deficit in the broadest measure of international trade soared to an all-time high of $665.9 billion in 2004, showing in stark terms the speed with which the country is becoming indebted to the rest of the world.

CIA “protections” for prisoners subject to rendition to torture-prone countries are “ineffective” – but isn’t that missing the point? Why were they being sent to those countries in the first place?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42072-2005Mar16.html
The system the CIA relies on to ensure that the suspected terrorists it transfers to other countries will not be tortured has been ineffective and virtually impossible to monitor, according to current and former intelligence officers and lawyers, as well as counterterrorism officials who have participated in or reviewed the practice.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005868.php
[Kevin Drum] The lede makes it sound as if we just have a quality control problem or a bureaucratic snafu of some kind, when in fact we all know perfectly well that this is deliberate policy on the part of our government. Fifty years from now I imagine we'll look back on this the same we look back at blacklists and World War II internment camps today. At least, I hope so.

Ranking Democrat on Senate Intelligence committee calls for review of CIA policies (and the only press source to cover this story is. . . ?)

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=7912703

House bill to ban the practice of rendition: of course it can’t pass, but I’d like to see the GOP argue on the floor for why they won’t support it

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/03/16/bipartisanship/

TERRIBLE press coverage on Tom DeLay

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005766

“The Daily DeLay”: http://dailydelay.blogspot.com/

The miserable excuse for “news” being peddled on cable tv these days: Congress votes on major bill to wreak havoc on Arctic wildlife refuge, but all the chattering squawk box can talk about is the Scott Peterson verdict

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_atrios_archive.html#111100897960273337

No surprise here: House refuses to approve an investigation into how a phony news reporter with a background of pornography and prostitution wrangled WH press clearance. For the umpteenth time, can anyone imagine what they would be doing if this had happened under a Democratic administration?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/house-judiciary-committee-votes-down.html

Cooked numbers: “poll” says people want GOP to invoke the nuclear option on Bush court nominees – except, of course, it doesn’t

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005769

The end of open government: Bush denying more and more Freedom of Information requests (where is the press outrage?)

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/16/secret/index.html

Kevin Martin, new choice to head the FCC, is even more conservative than Michael Powell

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/16/fcc_martin/index.html
"It is, sadly, a victory for the forces of so-called 'decency,'" says Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, which has battled the FCC over policy in recent years. “Religious and conservative groups campaigned for the elevation of Mr. Martin. They have succeeded in establishing a new 'litmus' test for the FCC chair --someone who will be at the forefront of monitoring programming.”

Bonus item: no joke. House GOP members watch clips from “Animal House” to inspire them to push budget issues (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/003749.html
Otter: "I think in this case we need to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires something really futile and stupid to be done on someone's part."

Bluto: "We're just the guys to do it. LET'S DO IT!!!!"

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:29 AM

 
AN OPPOSITION PARTY

Chastened by criticisms of their cynical promulgation of fake news, WH orders a rigorous analysis of the legality of putting out govt propaganda without even labeling it as a govt product. After countless billable hours, staff lawyers come back with their carefully considered analysis: HEY, NO PROBLEM!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36694-2005Mar15.html
Press Secretary Scott McClellan officially confirmed that the White House is blowing off the Government Accountability Office's finding that prepackaged administration video news releases constitute illegal covert propaganda.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?D2E852FAA
[Mark Kleiman] Like the DeLay nonsense, this is all a gift to the Democrats, who, if they're smart, will fight the next two elections on corruption and lawbreaking in Washington.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/15/fakenews/index.html
The OLC may well be the right entity to provide legal advice to the executive branch, but that doesn't mean that its advice is any better on the fake news stories than it was on the torture of detainees. In words that could have described either issue, the head of the GAO told the Post yesterday that the administration's approach to the fake news stories is not just illegal but wrong. "This is more than a legal issue," said Comptroller General David Walker. "It's also an ethical issue and involves important good government principles, namely the need for openness in connection with government activities and expenditures. We should not just be seeking to do what's arguably legal. We should be doing what's right.". . . A government that aspires to morality and not just to the bare minimum of legality? The notion seems so. . . quaint.

Boom! Bye-bye

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/15/17229/7847
Today, Sen. Bill Nelson introduced a social security "sense of the Senate amendment", which read in its entirety:

It is the sense of the Senate that Congress should reject any Social Security plan that requires deep benefit cuts or a massive increase in debt.

Rather unremarkable, except that in addition to all 44 Dems and Jeffords, the amendment also garnered votes from five Republicans -- Collins, Snowe, Dewine, Specter, and Graham.

In other words, five Republicans are now on record as opposing any social security plan that would either add to the deficit or would cut benefits.

Bush's plan is dead.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005760
THINK LIKE AN OPPOSITION. A helpful rapid response email I just received touts the five Republican senators -- Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Mike DeWine, Arlen Specter, and Lindsey Graham -- who joined the united Democratic caucus in voting for it. "So basically," it reads, "five Republicans are rejecting George Bush's plan that will both increase debt and cut benefits.". . . That's cute, but not really the point of Nelson's (valuable) exercise. . .

Democrats shouldn't be focusing on the Republicans who agree with them but the 50 Republican senators who are now on record supporting deep benefit cuts and massive debt. From now until 2006, Dems are going to want to seize every chance they can to put Republicans on the record, on everything from Social Security to the minimum wage to ethics rules, and rack up the roll call votes with which they can hang the Republicans come election time. As Matt just suggested, brainstorming talking points for Bob Casey, Jr. "Which is it you liked so much, Senator Santorum, the steep benefit cuts or the massive increase in debt?"

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005859.php
This is how the game is played, folks. More like it, please.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_13.php#005157
The stench of death is everywhere around Social Security privatization. Today the Washington Post publishes an analysis of its poll showing support for Bush on Social Security is falling yet again. Meanwhile, in the New York Times, David Brooks writes a “A Requiem for Reform,” in which he blames GOP miscalculation, Democratic partisanship, and the selfishness of the voters for killing privatization. . . Actually, if reform dies, it wasn’t selfishness that killed privatization. It was precisely the opposite.

The irony of Brooks’ complaint, which we’re sure to see repeated elsewhere, is that selfishness has always been at the core of Bush’s economic agenda. . . Unsurprisingly, Bush approached Social Security privatization in the same spirit. The strategy was to divide up the electorate and appeal to each segment in very self-interested terms. They would neutralize seniors with the assurance that their benefits wouldn’t be touched. The young would be lured in with promises of amassing great fortunes in private accounts. Blacks would be peeled off from the Democratic coalition with bogus claims that Social Security harms them disproportionately. And Wall Street and other businesses, who smelled large profits down the road, would pony up tens of millions of dollars to fund the whole campaign.

But it hasn’t worked. And the main reason is that the public is not quite as selfish as the conservatives thought.

The privatizers’ weakest assumption turned out to be their belief that the elderly would support privatization if they knew they wouldn’t be affected. For weeks, as polls have shown rising hostility to privatization, GOP pollsters and strategists have conceded that they need to do more to reassure seniors on this point. Bush has obligingly harped on it at every stop. . . Yet senior citizens overwhelmingly oppose Bush’s approach. And it’s not because they think their benefits will be cut – polls show they overwhelmingly they buy his reassurances. As today’s Post reports:

By and large, the elderly do understand the president has promised not to touch their Social Security checks, according to polling.

But that is not relevant to their political opposition, Smorodin said, noting that older people also worry that pension benefit cuts will hurt their children and grandchildren.

At 69, Gene Wallace knows the White House's proposal would have no impact on his Social Security check, but if Bush believes that will silence the Republican mayor of Coldwater, Mich., Wallace grumbled, "he's all wet."

"I'm a parent as well as a grandparent. Somewhere along the line, they are going to be eligible for retirement assistance," he said, with all the energy he could muster three weeks after open-heart surgery. "It's everybody's concern what happens to this country."

I find this pretty heartwarming. Who wouldn’t?

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005756

In case you care, the Brooks column

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/15/opinion/15brooks.html

More critiques: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005751

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005747

http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2596

But WAIT – there’s more. We haven’t even seen “Phase 2” of the Bush plan yet

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1205
[KR] Although polls indicate that Bush is losing ground in the battle for pubic support, the president and his allies say they remain confident that their strategy will pay off. . . The White House strategy essentially falls into two phases. Phase 1 seeks to convince Americans that Social Security needs an overhaul and to promote Bush's plan to let workers divert some of their payroll taxes into personal investment accounts. Phase 2 seeks to engage Congress in a debate over the hard choices needed to guarantee the retirement system's solvency well into the future. . . So far, Bush hasn't been talking about the only ways to bring funding in line with future benefits, which are scaling back benefits, increasing payroll taxes or some combination of the two. Advocates of making Social Security solvent hope to start the Phase 2 debate on options sometime this spring.

Well, you can see why the Bushites are so optimistic. Sure, polling support for private accounts is plummeting as people learn more about the plan. . .but just you wait, when they start to bring up the tax increases and benefit cuts, the popularity of this thing will really skyrocket!. . . Should be a fun spectacle. Line up the chairs and popcorn bowls

[NB: Of course, what will more likely happen is that unless poll numbers turn around, “Phase 2” will morph into something else – the damage control/blame game]

PAYGO – normally I would be very suspicious of proposals like this, but in the present climate it is a nightmare for Bush and the Republican majority . . . and so I’m all for it. Since they can’t live within this rule, the GOP can’t afford to pass it – but in not passing it they put themselves on record as passing tax cuts while KNOWING they will worsen the deficit. The Dems can’t ask for much better than that

http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2005/03/paygo.html
On Wednesday, Senators Chafee and Feingold are expected to offer an amendment to the budget resolution restoring the "Pay-as-you-go" rules, known as PAYGO, which will require Congress to pay for any further tax cuts with offsetting tax increases or spending cuts. The budget resolution as passed by the Senate Budget Committee lasts week instructs the Senate Finance Committee to come back with tax cuts totaling $70 billion, which will add to the deficit.

If the PAYGO rules, which were rejected on a party-line vote in the Budget Committee, pass, those tax cuts will either have to be paid for, or they will be subject to a "point of order" in the Senate which will require 60 votes.

More likely, if the PAYGO amendment passes in the Senate, it will not pass in the House, and the two houses will not be able to agree on a budget resolution, which is not the end of the world. It happened last year. Without a budget resolution, though, there can't be a budget reconciliation bill.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000377.html
This is the kind of fiscal conservatism that the Republican Party used to be about -- and by which most Americans want to see their legislators abide.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005754
[W]ith no PAYGO rules, the administration can easily slip billions more in tax cuts for the super-rich into law and largely avoid paying a political price for doing so. PAYGO will force the GOP to actually choose between its donor base and programs the public likes, setting the stage for the sort of debate between public investment and tax cuts uber alles that liberals want to have. This is the kind of obscure issue that's not likely to attract the scrutiny it deserves, but it really does deserve scrutiny.

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005744

Another smart move by the Dems: getting out front with a serious tax reform proposal

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005759
• It simplifies the tax code by eliminating deductions, reducing the number of brackets, and treating all income equally.
• It's progressive, cutting taxes for most people.
• It encourages saving, especially savings for the middle and working classes, by replacing tax deductions with tax credits as the main mechanism for making the tax code pro-savings.
• It strengthens Social Security both by injecting new revenue and offering legal protections that can make pre-funding workable.

Even GOP Senators are lining up to oppose further cuts in Medicaid

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005744

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/03/hearteninggooda-bipartisan-coalition.html

Dems force Wednesday House vote on whether to investigate GannonGate (thanks to Americablog for the links)

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=177

http://blog.dccc.org/mt/archives/002393.html

Dems make very clear what the “nuclear option” on filibusters could mean

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-reid16mar16,1,2091731.story
Senate Democrats threatened Tuesday to block virtually all business in that chamber if the Republican majority carried out a plan to unilaterally impose rule changes that would ensure confirmation of President Bush's most controversial judicial nominations. . . The threat, issued by Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), sharply escalated a partisan disagreement that could put the brakes on an array of legislative business in the upper chamber, where Democrats used the threat of a filibuster to block votes on 10 appellate court nominees last year.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=anMbnmkXbfY0&refer=top_world_news
During Bush's first term in office, the Senate confirmed 204 judicial nominees and Democrats blocked votes on 10 -- a confirmation rate of over 95 percent.

Bush renominated seven of those 10; two received recess appointments -- requiring that the Senate eventually review their nominations again. A third, Washington lawyer Miguel Estrada, formally withdrew his nomination.

During former President Bill Clinton's eight years in office, the Senate withheld a vote on 64 of Clinton's nominees.

More GOP advice for the Dems: trying to investigate Tom DeLay could backfire (don’t you love it when they bluster?)

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005854.php

Bush Co. releases new list of terrorist nightmare scenarios: but no, they aren’t trying to scare the public

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/16/politics/16home.html
The document, known simply as the National Planning Scenarios, reads more like a doomsday plan, offering estimates of the probable deaths and economic damage caused by each type of attack.

They include blowing up a chlorine tank, killing 17,500 people and injuring more than 100,000; spreading pneumonic plague in the bathrooms of an airport, sports arena and train station, killing 2,500 and sickening 8,000 worldwide; and infecting cattle with foot-and-mouth disease at several sites, costing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. Specific locations are not named because the events could unfold in many major metropolitan or rural areas, the document says.

The agency's objective is not to scare the public, officials said, and they have no credible intelligence that such attacks are planned. . .

"There's risk everywhere; risk is a part of life," [new DHS Director Michael] Chertoff said in testimony before the Senate last week. "I think one thing I've tried to be clear in saying is we will not eliminate every risk."

At least 26 prisoners died under U.S. mistreatment in Afghanistan, Iraq – many more than had previously been disclosed

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/03/killer-appsbut-wait.html

Prisoner mistreatment in Cuba so bad, Navy interrogators threatened to quit

http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2005/03/16/abuse_led_navy_to_consider_pulling_cuba_interrogators/
Top US Navy officials were so outraged at abusive interrogation techniques being used at the Guantanamo Bay prison in late 2002 that they considered removing Navy interrogators from the operation, according to a portion of a recent Pentagon report that has not been made public.

Growing sentiment to bring the National Guard and Reservists home NOW

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/15/resolutions/index.html

Iraqi assembly meets, with a bang AND with a whimper

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/16/international/middleeast/16cnd-iraq.html
The members of the 275-seat newly elected National Assembly walked quietly into the heavily fortified convention center on the west bank of the Tigris River, with little pomp but with a solemnity indicating they understood the gravity, and the immense difficulty, of their duties. . . The meeting was scheduled to begin at 11 a.m., but only a third of the assembly members had filed in by then. Fifteen minutes later, at least three nearby explosions rattled the windows of the building, sending some people outside scurrying for cover. . . The meeting took place in the grim shadow of uncertainty, given that Dr. Allawi was still in power and a new government still had not been formed by the time the assembly members convened. After weeks of negotiations, the major Shiite and Kurdish political parties had not been able to agree on how to cobble together a coalition government. Talks will continue later in the week, senior officials on both sides said, shrugging off the fact that the confidence of ordinary Iraqis in their elected leaders appeared to be eroding by the day. . . There is evidence the wrangling is deeply shaking the public's trust. Many Iraqis, particularly Shiite Arabs and Kurds, took part in the elections despite threats from guerillas and are now expressing growing disillusionment with the top parties, accusing them of selfishly grabbing for power at the expense of the country.

http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/parliament-meets-with-no-government.html
The parliament has to meet in the heavily fortified Green Zone, and one wonders whether the MPs and their families won't just have to move there permanently if they are to avoid being killed or kidnapped. As yet, I have seen no published list of the names of the elected members of parliament, which is quite extraordinary. What other election in modern history has been this anonymous?

Karen Hughes’ thankless new job – and why her predecessors (Charlotte Beers, Margaret Tutwiler) failed, as she will. You might ask, why do they keep giving this hopeless task to women?

http://slate.msn.com/id/2114854/fr/rss/

Greenspan tries to explain the tax cuts he helped trumpet in 2001, which are directly responsible for the catastrophic deficit he now decries

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_digbysblog_archive.html#111093138646309829
Greenspan countered that he warned in 2001 that tax reductions could lead to deficits and that a trigger was needed to force automatic spending cuts if deficits appeared. Congress didn't do that.

"It turns out we were all wrong," Greenspan said.

Clinton interrupted him. . . "Just for the record," she said, "we were not all wrong. . . “

Why John Danforth isn’t still our U.N. Ambassador – and why Bolton was nominated

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000371.html
John Danforth served about 8 months as America's Ambassador to the United Nations -- and I have just had information shared with me from someone close to him that he saw coming down the pike from Bush Central Command a combination of total disdain for the United Nations and recklessness about it that made his role practically impossible.

Chuck Hagel may be rethinking his endorsement: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000378.html

In Indiana, Planned Parenthood sues to block state seizure of private medical records

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2466&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Ari Fleischer’s memoirs of his days as Press Sect’y – and even though he isn’t getting paid for it any more, he’s still shoveling sh-t. You know, maybe he just ENJOYS shoveling sh-t.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2114874/fr/rss/

Bonus item: you know all those Ten Commandments plaques that religious groups are fighting to keep in courthouses, based on their inviolable religious freedoms? Turns out, most of them were put there as a marketing ploy (no kidding!)

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/03/ironicthis-is-kind-of-funny.html
Apparently all those courthouse Ten Commandment monuments were funded by Cecil B. DeMille to promote his movie, "The Ten Commandments"

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:56 AM

 
THE POTEMKIN PRESIDENCY

Matt Yglesias gives a nice recap on what Bush has brought us to: it’s worth quoting in full

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005722
ALL PROPAGANDA, ALL THE TIME. The revelation some time ago that the Bush administration was in the habit of offering payola to friendly columnists provoked a great deal of much-warranted outrage, some of it even admirably bipartisan and non-ideological. It's clear, however, that such conduct is only at one end of a wide spectrum of misconduct. Yesterday's New York Times contained an eye-opening report into the administration's habit of hiring actors to pretend to be news reporters and then sending out the resulting segments to be played on television stations as if they were news reports. As a result, we're now in the absurd position of people feeling the need to launch a website dedicated to stopping fake news.

The same Times article also made it clear that while government-sponsored (and probably illegal) fake news is a relative novelty to the media scene, corporate-backed fake news segments are to some extent old hat. That seems to be legal, but as John Quiggin argues it's certainly disturbing. What's more, in light of the current administration's habit of simply pushing the policy agenda of its corporate financers, it's not clear to me that stamping out government-sponsored fake news while letting the corporate-sponsored fake news run wild will really change anything. How any media outlet could have gotten it into its head that it's okay to broadcast something like this is beyond me.

Then there's the small matter of taxpayer money going to pay for closed-to-the-public events designed to create the appearance of public support for the Social Security phase-out. We've also got your money paying for this site designed to convince you that we ought to "strengthen" Social Security by eliminating it. The use of public monies for the creation of websites that do some advocacy work is only new in the sense that the Internet is new, but at the same time we've come to expect our .gov sites to meet some kind of standard of accuracy in describing government programs. The Treasury Department, which runs the site in question, is our source for lots of economic information that provides some kind of common ground in policy debates. But the new Social Security site says things like "The system of personal retirement accounts would be similar to the Federal employee retirement program, known as the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) . . . administrative fees, estimated at 30 basis points, would be for recordkeeping, which would be done by the government, not investment management done by Wall Street." But as The Washington Post reported several weeks ago, "Bush's proposed accounts differ substantially from the 19-year-old TSP. Moreover, they would be much more difficult to run than the TSP and have far higher administrative costs than the president and his supporters let on, some experts say."

At the most clearly permitted end of the spectrum you've got mere poor decision-making, like the idea that spinmeister Karen Hughes should be put in charge of America's public diplomacy operation so that she can use State Department resources to enhance the president's domestic political standing rather than advance actual policy goals. Or Karl Rove's new job as deputy chief of staff, where he'll be overseeing all the White House's policy operations and giving us an even more cynically politicized approach to substantive policy issues than we had in the first term. It's an ugly, ugly situation all the way down.

How to run a propaganda campaign

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1202

Bush is in good company: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/white-house-defends-propaganda-news.html

Growing opposition to “fake news”

http://www.prwatch.org/node/3365

How Scotty does it

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2443
The St. Petersburg Times' obsession with the gaggle results in a discussion of the history of the White House press briefing, sketches of some of the gaggles' main players, an account of some of Little Scottie's favorite dodges, and this handy seating chart. . .

Bush still saying whatever nonsense comes into his head on Social Security

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2439
It's a pay-as-you-go system, by the way; people pay in and the money goes out to pay for the benefits. Some people say, what about the Social Security trust? As if the government collects your money and holds it in your account and then when you retire, gives it back to you. That's not how it works. The government collects your money, and they spend it. (Laughter.) And they spend it on retirement benefits, but they were spending it -- or we spent it on other things, too.

How many times does it need to be repeated? Bush’s plan, as announced so far, does nothing to resolve future Social Security shortfalls, but only makes them worse

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_13.php#005151

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005842.php

On the upcoming SSA Trustees report, and why it matters

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_atrios_archive.html#111083685118186537

Ouch! Now that REALLY hurts: major corporate sponsor pulls out of Social Security coalition. This is the kind of thing that indicates how objectively bad Bush’s position has become: even companies that stand to benefit from his proposal don’t want to be associated with it

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-social15mar15,1,5089100.story

Support for Bush on Social Security drops like a stone

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/14/153519/308
Do you approve or disapprove the way Bush is handling social security?

Approve 35
Disapprove 56

We are winning this battle. Any Democrat who thinks we should compromise is blind. The GOP won't keep at this for much longer. The political danger is too high.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/14/social/index.html
The president may be bewildered by the public's resistance to his Social Security plan; it's certainly not what he sees as he travels the country promoting privatization. At stop after stop, Bush shares a stage with pro-privatization panelists and hears the applause from invitation-only audiences of supporters -- some of whom are driven to the events and armed with pro-Bush signs by local volunteers. If planners slip up and let in any dissenting voices -- the ones who represent about 65 percent of the public, apparently -- the naysayers are quickly quickly silenced or escorted away.

On the much-discussed Sebastian Mallaby’s WP article about why the Dems “must” propose an alternative to the nonexistent Bush proposal on Social Security – and what it reveals about the increasingly nepotistic and self-stimulating echo-chamber of inside-the-beltway pundits, politicians, and policymakers

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/03/mallaby_on_soci.html
If you're looking for a token of how blinkered the Beltway conventional wisdom on Social Security is, look no further than today's Sebastian Mallaby column, which is an exemplar of the genre. It's exemplary because Mallaby is neither a hack, a moron, nor an ideologue. He's a smart, well-meaning, moderate kind of guy who, typically of Washington's smart, well-meaning moderates totally fails to comprehend what's going on here.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_13.php#005146
One of the Democrats' greatest problems -- far more insidious than many realize -- is their desire to gain the approval and approbation of establishment Washington and its A-list pundits. The habit or inclination is rooted in a political world that ceased to exist 20 or 30 years ago, and even then was wrong-headed. Republicans, on the other hand, have long seen the relationship as fundamentally antagonistic (if not necessarily unfriendly) and have acted accordingly. On balance, that's led to better press treatment because, though they are loathe to admit it, the mix of editors and pundits and talk show hosts respect the treatment. . . Democrats, from top to bottom, would do themselves no end of good if they simply acted on the assumption that the Washington establishment is not a constituency they are trying to appeal to or cultivate.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005731
[Garance Franke-Ruta] Support for the president's as yet not fully described plan to transform the Social Security system has hit an all-time low. Even so, contra Yglesias, I'm still not conviced that this isn't going to be a case of winning the battle but not the war. Politics is like a game of chess. It's not just about the next move, but about thinking five moves in the future -- and in mutiple directions -- to set yourself up along a trajectory for victory.

Yglesias responds: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005741

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_atrios_archive.html#111082739922798613

Ken Mehlman offers helpful advice to the Democrats

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2450
``The reason I think we are going to get a bill is because the American public won't stand by and have Congress say, `We know it's a problem that only gets worse every single day and yet we're going to do nothing,''' said Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee.

“Blue Dog” Dems learn what cooperating with Bush gets you

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2447
The Blue Dogs are angry at Mr. Bush over the intensity of the president's -- and his party's -- campaigning against Democrats who backed him on tax cuts, the Iraq war and other issues. Casualties include a Blue Dogs founder, former Democratic Rep. Charles Stenholm of Texas, who had been a cosponsor of a bipartisan bill to make changes in Social Security similar to those the president seeks.

Conservative Democrats, with unusual passion, say trust is lacking. "It's about credibility," says Rep. Gene Taylor of Mississippi, who says lawmakers got faulty information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Medicare drug-benefit cost estimates and other issues. "So when this guy says, 'We have a crisis in Social Security and trust me to fix it,' the credibility isn't there," he says.

Mark Schmitt: how the Dems can seize this moment if they recognize the underlying dynamic of opportunity, risk, and security

http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2005/03/security_iis_io.html

More advice on a Democratic response: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1200

A good parody of Bush’s Treasury Dept-sponsored promotional site

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_13.php#005144

Now even GOP loyalists are starting to distance themselves from the rotten pile of corruption that is Tom DeLay

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/14/01656/7972
"If death comes from a thousand cuts, Tom DeLay is into a couple hundred, and it's getting up there," said a Republican political consultant close to key lawmakers. "The situation is negatively fluid right now for the guy. You start hitting arteries, it only takes a couple."

More: http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/03/14/delay_questions_grow.html

http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=430

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010035.html

Great summary: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005733

Repubs try to blame Dems for the collapse of the House Ethics committee (that’s rich)

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/14/14648/9361

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/03/see-your-face-slammed-into-my-fistits.html
[WP] Republicans are now trying, laughably, to portray the impasse as the result of Democrats' refusal to "put the ethics process above partisan politics," as a spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) put it. Democrats have no lack of partisanship on this issue, but the GOP spin is hard to take from the people who rigged the rules and changed the players when they didn't like the result.

New GOP budget so dishonest and irresponsible on the deficit, even some Republicans are starting to question it

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/03/not-with-programim-so-sorry-to-see.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005744
The basic fiscal unseriousness of our governing party is a disaster for the country, but it’s also a rather critical intellectual problem for conservatives. If Fred Barnes or George Will or David Brooks want to erect an elaborate philosophical edifice to justify “big government conservatism,” terrific! But big government, conservative or liberal, requires revenue. Relentless, dogged tax cutting cannot stand as a core policy of such a party program. (A different but similarly inescapable contradiction plagues the outlook of hardcore starve-the-beasters like Grover Norquist and a few of the Republican Study Group members in the House who seem to quietly think these days that a necessary precondition for smashing the welfare state once and for all is a financial collapse spurred on by ballooning deficits. . .)

The Lieberman Question

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_atrios_archive.html#111086115571401364

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_atrios_archive.html#111085331564841542

http://www.bullmooseblog.com/2005/03/grow-up-bloggers.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_13.php#005154

More bad news – and pictures – forthcoming from Guantanamo

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/03/14/prison_abuse/index.html
In recent months, the detention facility has become an increasing burden for the Bush administration. Since June of last year, a series of court decisions have overturned the administration's legal vision of the war on terror, rejecting its contention that "enemy combatants" in the war on terror can be held indefinitely. Meanwhile, a steady stream of charges from freed inmates about torture at the naval facility have made Guantánamo Bay a public relations nightmare for the Pentagon.

In the latest such revelation, Newsweek magazine reports Monday that U.S. military investigators have confirmed allegations that female military interrogators sexually humiliated prisoners at the base. Preliminary steps have been taken in preparation for the possible start of court-martial proceedings against about four female interrogators.

The alleged abuse, which took place in 2002 after Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld expressed frustration at the lack of useful intelligence emerging from Guantánamo, saw female interrogators rubbing up against inmates in an attempt to humiliate devout Muslims.

There may also be photographs of such sessions, the magazine reports, raising the prospect of a reenactment of last year's Abu Ghraib scandal.

[NB: Let me give you Rush Limbaugh’s reaction in advance: “You call this torture? Hey, any time a woman wants to come and rub herself against me, bring it on!”]

Bush, Cheney: a brief for impeachment

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000520.html

When the next attack comes, who will they blame for their own lapses in security?

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/14/safer/index.html

More poll numbers: on Iraq

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/14/10943/5125
Approve 45
Disapprove 53

The Neocons are still trying to paint anyone who opposes Bush's war as "out of the mainstream", but it is they that are falling increasingly out of it.

New calls for de-Baathification of the military bring Iraq once again to the brink of civil war (or, maybe it has already started)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2441

Previous estimates of the actual working strength of the Iraqi security forces have been all over the map – tens of thousands, 120,000, more? Here’s the truth: we have no idea at all

http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2594

Bolton: chosen by Cheney, Rove, Card – not by Rice

http://www.investors.com/breakingnews.asp?journalid=26423253

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000366.html

Why Bolton is so awful

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/03/bolton_time.html

And why his confirmation might really be in trouble

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000370.html
Waxman reveals that John Bolton promulgated the Niger-Uranium fiction at the State Department despite rejection of this claim by State Department and CIA intelligence analysts. . . Waxman then argues that not only did Bolton and his people then try and conceal Bolton's role in pushing the Niger-Uranium agenda by marking the material "sensitive but unclassified" and blocking it in case of a Freedom of Information Act request, the State Department actually LIED TO CONGRESS about John Bolton's role.

Stop Bolton

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005730

Counting votes: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000368.html

Watch Scotty try to spin why bringing Karen Hughes back isn’t a sign of desperation

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2449

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/03/14/hughes_takes_diplomatic_post.html
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice introduced Hughes "as the Bush administration's choice for a State Department post designed to change Islamic perceptions about America"

[NB: This just doesn’t make sense to me. What experience and credibility does she bring to international affairs? Why would anyone think that she would have influence in the Islamic world? I think something else is at work, something with DOMESTIC leverage – for example, spinning our efforts at restructuring the Middle East for domestic consumption, but doing it from the apparent distance and stature of the State Dept, not as part of the WH spin operation. This may signal a greater emphasis on foreign affairs as Bush’s domestic agenda seems to be collapsing. Perhaps Hughes is the "good cop" meant to counterbalance Bolton's "bad cop"]

Here’s something to watch for: the Hughes confirmation hearings

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/14/hughes/index.html

Could a President who sincerely wanted to improve education in this country give credence to claptrap like this?

http://slate.msn.com/id/2114771/fr/rss/
The WP fronts news that the battle over teaching evolution is intensifying, propelled by "a polished strategy crafted by activists on America's political right." Emboldened by President Bush, who has said he believes the jury is still out on evolution, policymakers in 19 states are weighing proposals that question evolution. Most of the proposals don't explicitly mention the Bible, but they do propose teaching "intelligent design," which states that life on earth is so complex that it could only have been designed by an intelligent agent.

More on ID: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005847.php

Is democracy itself under assault? At first I thought this was over-the-top, but then on reflection I realized, where is it guaranteed that in a conflict between capitalism and fundamentalism, on the one hand, and true democracy (and not just the trappings of democratic ritual) on the other hand, that we can assume a permanence of the rights and freedoms we take for granted?

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005/03/sliced-and-diced-by-occams-razor-ive.html

Weekend at Bernie’s

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_atrios_archive.html#111081460893289199
[NY Daily News] Former Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik accepted thousands of dollars in royalties from a book published to raise money for the families of heroes killed on Sept. 11, 2001, the Daily News has learned. . . Kerik contributed an 11-sentence foreword to the book of photographs, titled "In the Line of Duty," in which he praised police and firefighters who "desperately fought and struggled and bled and died in a noble effort."

"Theirs is a story beyond words; a story of bravery, fidelity and sacrifice; a story that must never be forgotten," Kerik wrote.

Kerik's royalties on the book have so far totaled $75,954.52, sources told The News. . . The deal came about when Kerik was engaged in a torrid year-long affair with the book's publisher, Judith Regan, as The News revealed in December.

Department of “Dog Bites Man” – so what else is new?

New federal budget cuts programs for the poor
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005736

Greenspan still decrying the budget deficit he partly helped create
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000521.html

Bush ignores environmental recommendations on mercury
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/politics/14mercury.html

Bush wants to (unilaterally) rewrite the Nonproliferation Treaty
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005850.php

Halliburton overcharges govt (because they haven’t raked in enough loot already, I suppose)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/business/14cnd-halliburton.html

Goofy, venal legislation in Texas and Florida (Bush country)
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005849.php
http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/03/i_am_not_making_this_up.html

Fox News found least objective cable news source, says recent study
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/03/14/fox/index.html

Bonus item: Bush tries to tell a joke

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2445

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33973-2005Mar14.html

[NB: I think he’s far funnier when he isn’t trying to be]

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:38 AM

 
GOVERNING COALITIONS

In Iraq, the tenuous UIA/Kurdish agreement to form a govt collapses, and now they’re back to square one again

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/complete/la-fg-iraq14mar14,1,5575480.story

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/13/214335/107
The winners of the Jan. 30 elections have come under criticism for stalling on the formation of a government. As talks drag on while the war continues, the confidence of the Iraqi people in their elected leaders is slowly ebbing.

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/03/stirring_moment.html
We saw something similar with the election, and those happy feelings may return when Jafari takes office. But as with Allawi before him, the mood will turn against the new government unless it manages to deliver the goods -- security, prosperity, something -- and that will be a very difficult task.

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1199
[Swopa] But as I've said before, the Kurds are playing with fire by being so intransigent. They may feel they hold the ultimate trump card by being necessary partners for the Shiite alliance to form a government, but in fact even that is outweighed by the sheer people power at the command of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, which led the United Iraq Alliance to its prospective parliamentary majority. . . If the UIA chooses to channel the growing popular frustration over the lack of a government into mass resentment of the Kurds for holding up a deal, a (perhaps literally) explosive ingredient will be added to the mix. And if the Kurdish leaders are so obstinate that the top Shiites feel they have to either take that chance or surrender, what's to stop the UIA from playing that card?

The problem remains: Kirkuk

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/international/middleeast/14kurds.html

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/13/23395/2578

http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/shiite-kurdish-deal-collapses-al-hayat.html

Big News: Federal court blocks latest rendition move

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32116-2005Mar13.html
A federal judge has blocked the government from transferring 13 Yemenis from the U.S. detention center for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until a hearing is held on concerns the detainees may be mistreated in another country.

More: http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/2005/03/primer_on_the_g.html

Unbelievable: several cases of suspects -- from Europe! -- being secretly rounded up by the CIA and shipped off to rendition hell-holes (thanks to Best of the Blogs for the link)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30275-2005Mar12.html
Although the CIA usually carries out the operations with the help or blessing of friendly local intelligence agencies, law enforcement authorities in Italy, Germany and Sweden are examining whether U.S. agents may have broken local laws by detaining terrorist suspects on European soil and subjecting them to abuse or maltreatment.

Bush Co. still trying to destabilize the freely-elected Chavez govt in Venezuela (so much for their commitment to democracy)

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1197

Follow-ups to the big story yesterday on the extent of the Bush WH fake news operation. Here’s the irony: during a time when the media is questioning the “credibility” of the blogs, their own judgment and credibility are increasingly doubtful. When you run govt (or corporate) propaganda without bothering to label it as such, you’ve sunk below even the minimum responsibility of giving people the Full Story.

This doesn’t mean that blogs will replace the press – there are still things that formal news organizations can do better (when they want to). But the task of blogs in providing a critical check on what the media covers, how they cover it, and what they refuse to cover, has never been more important. I think the “Fake News” meme can really be turned to good use here

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/03/propaganda-tv-alive-and-well-in-free.html
Over the holidays while visiting the US I was disgusted with the absolute, shameless propaganda pieces on the nightly news. I wasn't even watching Fox, which I expect to deliver such garbage. In an effort to cut costs and operate on high margins our so-called independent media has completely collapsed and willingly accepted automated "news" pieces.

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/03/13/propaganda-and-advertising/
What did strike me was that, while the NYT went in for plenty of handwringing about the government manipulating the news, the report showed no concern about the fact (news to me) that corporations have been doing this for years, more or less openly, to the extent that those involved in producing “video news releases” have their own association, annual awards and so on

And IT’S ILLEGAL

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/03/the_key_lines_f.html
[NYT] In three separate opinions in the past year, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that studies the federal government and its expenditures, has held that government-made news segments may constitute improper "covert propaganda" even if their origin is made clear to the television stations. The point, the office said, is whether viewers know the origin. Last month, in its most recent finding, the G.A.O. said federal agencies may not produce prepackaged news reports "that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials.". . .

On Friday, the Justice Department and the Office of Management and Budget circulated a memorandum instructing all executive branch agencies to ignore the G.A.O. findings. The memorandum said the G.A.O. failed to distinguish between covert propaganda and "purely informational" news segments made by the government. [NB: Ha, ha -- excuse me -- ho, ho, ho -- can't...stop...laughing] Such informational segments are legal, the memorandum said, whether or not an agency's role in producing them is disclosed to viewers.

[Stop Fake News: http://www.stopfakenews.org/ (thanks to Josh Marshall for the link). More on SFN: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010016.html]

Susan Madrak and Dan Froomkin remind the press of their fourth-estate duties in this Brave New World

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/03/basicsi-just-finished-reading-this.html
I was struck that the credentialed, "certified" White House press corps can't seem to execute basic Journalism 101. . . It's not very complicated. I did it myself, when I was a reporter. Here it is:

Check every single thing a politician reports to you as a fact.

Let me give you a real-life example: An insurance contract is awarded to the same guy who always gets the insurance contracts. . . I had pages and pages of notes from my three-hour interview with this guy. . . Just about everything he told me during our chat was a lie, except his name. I know; I checked it all out.

Would you believe I was the only reporter who ever did that? And because I did, I won an award for investigative reporting.

Read that again. Because I simply did my job, I won an award.

Most reporters don't. They don't like to work that hard, they don't want anyone to yell at them. And they don't always see the big picture, anyway.

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/13/8118/70131
Just how staggeringly empty the beat has been during the Bush era came through in an online chat with Dan Froomkin, White House Briefing columnist for the Washintgton Post. A Post reader said: "I'm interested in the current administration's diversionary phrases, in talking with the press," as in, "our views...are very well known."

[Dan Froomkin] Those aren't diversionary phrases. Those are the meaningless words padding the diversionary phrases that punctuate the hoary soundbytes from the approved phrasebook that obfuscate the lack of any substantial response to our questions. . . What the press corps needs to do -- and I am wracking my brain on some way to usefully add to the current raging discourse on this very issue -- is dramatically change the current paradigm, which they have tacitly accepted, and which is that they don't get answers -- from Scott, or anyone else in the White House. . . One possible solution, which I have repeatedly suggested, is that when they don't get answers, they should report that they didn't get answers.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_13.php#005135
When the man makes a good point, the man makes a good point. From today's David Broder column: "Few policy battles, Social Security being a current example, draw enough public and press interest for the legislators to feel real scrutiny. Most are in a netherworld where media coverage is cursory and interest groups' pressure determines the outcome. That's how bankruptcy reform made it through the Senate and why it will soon pass the House and be signed into law by President Bush."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_13.php#005139
Back around the time of the Clinton health care debate William Kristol drafted an influential memo suggesting that the best course for the GOP was "principled"/ideological opposition to ANY compromise on a universal health care plan. Beyond his ideological opposition to further government intervention in this area, he argued that politically, setting up a grand new entitlement (which would no doubt be tinkered with and expanded over the years) would redound to the Democrats long term political interests. He was very wrong on the substance of the issue - but very right on the politics of it. The Republicans paid no price, indeed prospered from their derailing of national health care.

Now we face the mirror image of the Clinton health care debate and it's instructive to see how both the media and the opposition party play their hands. I don't recall any hue and cry from the Beltway pundit class that the GOP needed to come up with an alternative to Clinton's plan. In fact the media focus was exclusively on Clinton and the trouble he was having crafting a plan and rounding up votes. By the way Clinton had much more support in congress (and in the country) on the health care issue than Bush does now on Soc Sec yet the Beltway pundits are putting the heat on Dems to come up with their own plan.

As for the Dems, it's a dispiriting commentary on the weakness and cowardice of the national party that people like Carville are falling for the "we can't be seen to be just obstructionists" line. Beltway Dems are so inured [to] the Russert/Cokie/Judy/Matthews Conventional Wisdom axis that their political radar is way off target. What they don't seem to understand is that standing firm against the destruction of Social Security IS an agenda and a statement of values.

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_13.php#005137

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_13.php#005138

We’ve reviewed many times why it would be politically foolish for the Dems to offer an “alternative” Social Security proposal at this point – as if the burden were suddenly on them (a minority party in both houses) to solve the problem. But here’s why it couldn’t even work in policy terms, no matter how good their proposal was

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_13_atrios_archive.html#111077909455555769

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/03/a_man_a_plan_a_.html

George Will: Social Security is for wusses

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005836.php
Will suggests that the Democratic defense of Social Security "really is rooted in reluctance to enable people to become less dependent on government." Unlike Will, sadly, I'm not a psychoanalyst, so I can't speak to ulterior motives, or to what liberals "really" believe. But I'd like to know, because I've heard this repeated more often than I can count, how on earth does Social Security foster "dependence" on government?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005835.php

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/03/old_folks.html

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1198
By continuing to show their opposition in polls to the anti-Social Security offensive, older Americans are showing that they don't just care about their own personal well-being, they care about the same safety net being available to future generations -- which is apparently something that caught the Bushites by surprise.

Their cynical cluelessness needs to be the beginning of a reframing effort by the Democrats. A fundamental difference between the parties is that Democrats think we're all in this together, while Republicans want to divide us.

The Social Security debate has demonstrated that on this issue, older Americans identify with the Democratic philosophy. They need to made aware of the side they've chosen, as vividly as possible. . . The message to seniors should be: "Look how far George Bush and his party are from your values. They think you can be bought -- that you'll sell out your kids and grandkids as long as they don't personally cut your benefits."

Ha – inadvertently hilarious. GOP strategist explains that the reason Bush is failing to move public opinion on Social Security is. . . because he has been too truthful

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1196

P.S. -- Who’s paying for the Bamboozlepalooza tour?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_13.php#005143

What Bush’s witch-doctor (beyond voodoo) economics has wrought

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7170226/site/newsweek/
If you've been following closely, you know that the dollar has been declining steadily against many foreign currencies. From recent highs—reached in mid-2001 or early 2002—the dollar has dropped 38 percent against the euro, 23 percent against the yen and 25 percent against the Canadian dollar. And most economists expect the slide to continue. By the year-end, the euro may rise to $1.45 from $1.34 and the yen to 97 from 104 (that's 97 yen to the dollar), says economist Nariman Behravesh of Global Insight. But, of course, you probably haven't been following closely. For most Americans, the subject of the dollar—its value on foreign-exchange markets—is a yawner. A depreciating dollar makes foreign vacations more expensive, puts pressure on the prices of imported cars and shoes and (the good part) improves the global competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers. Normally, these matters aren't high on our "must know" list. But now is not normal. . .

Why Bush has “Concerned Scientists” even more concerned

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2437

More: http://www.blueandred.net/blog/?p=12

Republicans find a way to save big agribusiness bailouts – hey, we can cut food programs for the poor instead!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7163199/
Cuts in food programs for the poor are getting support in Congress as an alternative to President Bush’s idea of slicing billions of dollars from the payments that go to large farm operations. . .

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said the $36 billion food stamp program is a good place to look for savings.

“There’s not the waste, fraud and abuse in food stamps that we used to see. . . That number is down to a little over 6 percent now,” he said. “But there is a way, just by utilizing the president’s numbers, that we can come up with a significant number there. . . I want this to be as painless to every farmer in America as we can make it,” he said.

Why we need filibusters

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010021.html

Another $2.5 million chapter to be written in the DeLay scandal mess

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/03/follow-moneyyou-mean-people-still-care.html

Does anyone remember what brought down Jim Wright?

http://election.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/04/60minutes/main678234.shtml
"When you look back at what brought down the most powerful member of Congress, Jim Wright, which was publishing a book, and having a bunch of copies go on bulk sales to people who then gave him royalties through some kind of subterranean process, wasn't even a violation of a law or a specific ethics rule," says Ornstein. "It was just the general sense that this is not how a member of Congress behaves. It was murkier than what we have now."

More on DeLay’s legal fees

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010022.html

2006

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17864
[Elizabeth Drew] When the Republicans took over the House in 1995, DeLay and Gingrich put into effect their "K Street strategy," demanding that law firms and trade associations hire more Republicans. (There are now so many such firms that they occupy space well beyond K Street.) DeLay was admonished by the ethics committee in 1999 for threatening retribution against a trade organization that hired a Democrat to head it; by now, the Republicans have made the K Street lobbyists an integral part of the legislative process—the lobbyists sit in congressional offices and help write many bills. This cozy arrangement is full of risks for Republicans if it becomes more widely known.

The Republicans' management of the House is far more high-handed than the behavior of Democrats when Gingrich set out to overthrow them in 1995. In fact, Gingrich himself in recent interviews has been openly critical of House Republicans for blocking the Democrats from even offering amendments to bills on the House floor. The Republicans have carried one-party rule to unprecedented lengths. They have often excluded Democrats from writing bills in committee and from House–Senate conferences on bills both chambers have passed. This year the House Republican leadership has been conducting a purge of Republican chairmen of committees and even subcommittees who have shown too much independence. DeLay, Hastert, and other Republican leaders have gone so far as to openly make a member's fund-raising for other House Republicans a criterion for a chairmanship.

The House Democrats, led by George Miller of California, are planning to make a major issue of the Republicans' behavior. They have not forgotten—as the House Republicans seem to have—that Gingrich brought down the Democrats on charges of arrogance and ethical lapses. But whether they will be as relentless and clever as Gingrich was in the 1990s is now an open question

2008

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-rice14mar14,1,781006.story
"I don't have any desire to run for president. I don't intend to. I won't do it," [Condoleezza] Rice said on ABC's "This Week." "I won't. How's that? Is that categorical enough?”. . . “I will not run for president of the United States," she said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "How is that? I don't know how many ways to say 'no' in this town."

I liked this one: what Joe Lieberman (D-Conn) can learn from Ben Nelson (D-Neb)

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/13/12225/5236

Bonus item: Progressive Christian organizations are (finally) getting more aggressive about not letting the Religious Right appropriate the “Christian” label as their own

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/3/13/13361/7021

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:01 AM

 
PUBLIC RELATIONS

The must-read of the day: Bush’s ongoing effort to convert the media into a distribution system for WH propaganda

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/politics/13covert.html
It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets. . . "Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers. . . To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. . .

E.J. Dionne, a normally sensible analyst, demonstrates flawlessly why the “so-called liberal media” actually tilt the playing field toward Republican PR strategies

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_03_06_atrios_archive.html#111065699281845493
E.J. Dionne writes about "Why are George W. Bush and his party so skillful in dealing with the abortion issue, and why are Democrats so clumsy?" The answer, it seems, is that people like Dionne make it easy.

More: http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/12/175256/158

Karen Hughes’ new job in the State Dept: burnishing the U.S. image overseas (i.e., exporting another shoddy domestic product). It is SO typical of these people that they think the issue of international opposition to U.S. policies is just a PR problem

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-briefs13.2mar13,1,2361816.story

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25347-2005Mar10

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/12/politics/12hughes.html

Reality check: the fact is that Bush is having trouble on every front, domestically and internationally, and his good will and “political capital” are earning him very, very little leverage

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/12/142721/277
[AP] Running into heavy resistance to his Social Security overhaul, President Bush has started emphasizing other parts of his domestic agenda and is promoting his foreign policy goals of defeating terrorism and spreading democracy. . . "These are amazing times," he tells audiences. Yet no matter which way he turns, he is finding a bumpy road. . .

Torture updates

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010018.html
Human Rights Watch reports that abuse of Afghan prisoners dates back to at least December, 2002 when two detainees were killed by U.S. troops. . .

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1194
Two Afghan prisoners who died in American custody in Afghanistan in December 2002 were chained to the ceiling, kicked and beaten by American soldiers in sustained assaults that caused their deaths, according to Army criminal investigative reports that have not yet been made public. . . One soldier, Pfc. Willie V. Brand, was charged with manslaughter in a closed hearing last month in Texas in connection with one of the deaths, another Army document shows. Private Brand, who acknowledged striking a detainee named Dilawar 37 times, was accused of having maimed and killed him over a five-day period by "destroying his leg muscle tissue with repeated unlawful knee strikes.". . . The attacks on Mr. Dilawar were so severe that "even if he had survived, both legs would have had to be amputated," the Army report said, citing a medical examiner. . . The reports, from the Army Criminal Investigation Command, also make clear that the abuse at Bagram went far beyond the two killings.

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010020.html
The Justice Department's Inspector General's office has completed a follow-up report finding abuse of Muslim prisoners at U.S. prisons. It also shows no one has been disciplined for the violations.

Hilarious hypocrisy: Bush lectures Lebanon that you can’t possibly have legitimate, fair elections under the condition of military occupation. . . uh, George?

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1195

More: http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/on-ending-military-occupations-in.html

And – ahem – how IS that Iraqi experiment in democracy coming along?

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-frustrated13mar13,1,170541.story
With Iraqis increasingly concerned about a security vacuum, the man who is expected to become the next prime minister on Saturday defended the winning blocs, which have not formed a government nearly six weeks after millions of people risked their lives to vote. . . In an interview, Ibrahim Jafari, the nominee of the slate that won the most votes in the Jan. 30 election, said it could take two more weeks to close a deal. . . Behind the scenes, the two largest vote-getters, Jafari's Shiite Muslim-dominated United Iraqi Alliance and the Kurds, are engaged in frantic negotiations. The groups are meeting almost round the clock, and there has been constant maneuvering as the two try to compromise while satisfying their respective constituencies.

Last week, some politicians announced that a government would be set by the first meeting of the new National Assembly, scheduled for Wednesday. But now it appears likely that the meeting will be ceremonial while negotiations continue. . . That leaves Iraqis, frightened by two large suicide bombings this month that killed nearly 200 people, wondering why they braved insurgents' threats to go to the ballot box.

The gift that keeps on giving. The looting of UNGUARDED Iraqi munitions was systematic and widespread

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/international/middleeast/13loot.html
"They came in with the cranes and the lorries, and they depleted the whole sites," Dr. Araji said. "They knew what they were doing; they knew what they want. This was sophisticated looting.". . . The threat posed by these types of facilities was cited by the Bush administration as a reason for invading Iraq, but the installations were left largely unguarded by allied forces in the chaotic months after the invasion.

More than one person has speculated that the only purpose of Bush’s apparently conciliatory offer of incentives to Iran (with clearly unacceptable conditions attached) was to entice them into rejecting it, thereby justifying an attack. Well. . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005830.php
The big foreign policy news of the day is that Iran has rejected an offer of economic incentives from the United States to abandon its nuclear program. So is that it? Were the Iran hawks right and now it's off to war we go?

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/03/war-is-goodi-think-its-great-how-weve.html
Israel has drawn up secret plans for a combined air and ground attack on targets in Iran if diplomacy fails to halt the Iranian nuclear programme. . . The inner cabinet of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, gave “initial authorisation” for an attack at a private meeting last month

DeLay scandal updates

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-golf9mar09,1,3511573.story

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28252-2005Mar11

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-golf13mar13,1,2157265.story

Here’s an interesting question: what sort of person dumps piles of money into a DeLay “defense fund”? And with what motives?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/politics/13delay.html

Meanwhile, the House GOP keeps itself handcuffed to DeLay’s legal and ethical problems

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005826.php
[Kevin Drum] Hot on the heels of the Tom DeLay fiasco, Republicans not only sacked the chairman of the ethics committee but also rewrote its rules to make future investigations much more difficult. Democrats are protesting by halting business, which is apparently like punishing a child by taking away his brussels sprouts:

Republicans criticized the decision as a publicity stunt, and indicated that they were in no hurry to get the committee functioning.

"The Democrats have chosen to shut down the ethics committee," said Ron Bonjean, press secretary for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). "The only way to get around this impasse is for the Democrats to put the ethics process above partisan politics."

The shamelessness of House Republicans is truly breathtaking. If they don't watch out, it could be their Waterloo.

An overview of Social Security news (though, frankly, I like ours better)

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/12/8341/56331

Brad DeLong systematically dismantles Greg Mankiw’s New Republic piece defending Bush’s Social Security plan

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000507.html

More: http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/03/mankiw_on_priva.html

James Roosevelt: stop using my grand-dad’s name to legitimize your wretched proposal

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-radio13mar13,1,1682351.story

More Bush Orwellianism

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000509.html
I'll Stop Calling This Crew "Orwellian" When They Stop Using 1984 as an Operations Manual

Republicans: Bush has been getting bad advice about Social Security (oh, so THAT'S the problem)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_03_06.php#005134

Could they be this diabolical? Or desperate?

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/03/republican_fant.html
The senior Republican senator said privately that the only way to avoid a bad deal on Social Security may be "to pull the trigger on the nuclear option.". . . This, he said, would mean changing Senate rules to force an end to Democratic filibusters and a vote on Mr. Bush's judicial nominees. The Democrats likely would retaliate by filibustering all Republican bills. Republicans then could blame Democrats for blocking Social Security reform.

[Matt Yglesias] I had to read that a couple of times until I got it. But now I see what the Senator meant. He means that he and his colleagues don't like being stuck between the president's pressure to endorse his plan, and the public's pressure not to pass his plan. The ideal way out of the impasse would be for the GOP to go nuclear on the filibuster issue, which will lead Democrats to shut down the Senate entirely, thus getting Republican Senators off the hook. To the White House and the privateer money bags they can say, "hey! we would have passed it if it hadn't been for those Democrats" and to the voters they can say, "hey! I never voted for any such thing."

[NB: Nope, I don’t buy it. If the Republicans think this is a winning combination – dodge the Social Security issue that they themselves have elevated to “crisis” status, AND force a bloody confrontation with the Democrats over extremist judges – I say, “bring it on”]

More on the “nuclear option” – will it happen, and what would it mean?

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/index.ssf?050314ta_talk_hertzberg

The future of organized labor

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005832.php
Those of us following the big internal debate over the future of organized labor know the basic story: A bunch of "upstart" unions, led by Andrew Stern of the SEIU, want to carry out a bunch of changes, that include withholding some dues from the AFL-CIO, labor's big umbrella organization, so that unions themselves have more money for organizing. Stern also wants, among other things, to merge many of the smaller unions together. Meanwhile, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, along with many of the bigger unions—and that includes the municipal employees' and teachers' unions—want to keep the money with the AFL-CIO so that there's enough cash to wage political warfare in Washington.

Condi pooh-poohs the idea of running for President (and people take this seriously – as if it isn’t EXACTLY what she ought to say at this stage)

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/3/12/151113/074
During a discussion with editors and reporters at The Washington Times, Rice was asked, "Would you consider running for president in 2008?". . . "I have never wanted to run for anything," Rice said in the interview published Saturday

Always read BOTH versions

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30282-2005Mar12.html
Rice, who took office Jan. 26 after four years as President Bush's national security adviser, said she "can't imagine" running to succeed her boss and that she is "not trying to be elected." But she said she knows people are talking about the possibility, and did not rule it out when pressed repeatedly.

Sunday talk show line-up

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/12/152949/320
ABC's "This Week" - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former baseball player Jose Canseco; Jeffrey Sachs, director of The Earth Institute.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Rice; Sens. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Joseph Biden, D-Del.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Rice; Reps. Tom Davis, R-Va., and Henry Waxman, D-Calif.; Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I.

CNN's "Late Edition" - National security adviser Stephen Hadley; Sens. Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.; Middle East analyst Adib Farha and Syrian Cabinet Minister Bouthaina Shaaban; former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former United Nations Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.

"Fox News Sunday" - Hadley; Mark Malloch Brown, chief of staff to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Bonus item: In Memphis, on the eve of a Bush visit, local businesses are called by “federal agents” and told they can’t display any anti-Bush signs. Now, which is worse: that these might actually BE federal agents, or that someone is posing as such? (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://thepeskyfly.blogspot.com/2005/03/may-we-call-them-fascists-now.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:53 AM

 
ON SECOND THOUGHT

Bush reverses course on Iran, and though I want to humiliate him for it, the fact is he’s probably doing the right thing

http://slate.msn.com/id/2114704/fr/rss/
Don't look now, but it seems that George W. Bush is committing diplomacy. The New York Times reports today that Bush has agreed to join France, Britain, and Germany in their nuclear-arms talks with Iran. This marks a major reversal for Bush, who until now has refused to negotiate with any Iranian officials, arguing that to do so would reward them for bad behavior.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/03/index.html#005711
This policy, incidentally, is what used to be known as "John Kerry's Iran policy" back when Kerry's national security policies were said to spell certain doom for the United States.

By the way, Kerry was right about this too

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1193
As a consequence, the importance of peacekeeping operations and help from allied militaries — ideas that some discounted three years ago as remnants of the President Clinton era — are back in vogue at the Pentagon. . . "There are smarter, more efficient ways to do regime change and occupation," said one senior civilian official at the Pentagon. "One of those ways is to rely much more on our friends and allies to do the back-end work."

Rendition turns out to be far from extraordinary – in fact, under Bush it has become quite routine, and now it is going to be expanded on an even more appalling scale

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005/03/extraordinary-disclosures-michael.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009994.html

A bit of clarity begins to emerge from the bargaining in Iraq

http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2589

http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/grand-ayatollah-ali-sistani-called.html

If there is anything good about a “weak” dollar, it is that it should help to remedy trade imbalances by making US products cheaper overseas. But in Bush’s topsy-turvy economy, the trade deficit actually gets WORSE (and no, it wasn’t due to oil prices)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/11/business/11wire-econ.html

Faith-based politics

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1192
The fundee-backed wingnuts in the House are trying to pass legislation that would enable religious organizations to actively campaign for candidates without losing their tax-exempt status. . . Congressmen already have a tool to 'reward' religious groups for their political support by granting funds to their 'charitable' efforts using taxpayer funds. If this new legislation passes, religious groups would then be able to legally lobby for their Congressional sugar-daddies - and still enjoy all that pork tax-free!. . . And of course Dubya has 'sweetened the pot' for the theologically-prejudiced, by enabling them to 'discriminate at will' by providing carte blanche exemptions to federal employment guidelines that prohibit workplace discrimination. Direct, tax-free, publically-funded special interest lobbying exempt from federal employment protections - pretty sinister stuff.

The American Taliban

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/11/12137/1913

Bush speaks out on Social Security, and says more than he probably wanted to

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/3/11/13570/3651
THE PRESIDENT: Let me ask you something about the Thrift Savings Plan. This is a Thrift Savings Plan that has a mix of stocks and bonds?

MS. WEBSTER: Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Now, how hard was that to learn how to do that?

MS. WEBSTER: And I chose the safe plan, government bonds. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: That's all right. Well, not so safe, unless we fix the deficit. But other than that -- (laughter). We're fixing the deficit. (Applause.)

[NB: Once again, a hint that they are preparing to default on Treasury bonds, if necessary. And I love the (laughter) inserts: “Heh, heh, we’ve screwed the federal budget through ridiculous tax cuts and we’re about to pass on the cost to you by taking it out of your retirement funds.” Hilarious!]

Bush still seems to think that the reason seniors oppose his Social Security plans is because they think their benefits will be cut. Let me explain it to you George: they understand how Social Security works better than you do – and their commitment to it isn’t based simply on interest-group self-interest

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/3/11/113941/606
"I want all seniors here and seniors listening to know that nothing will change for you," he said, animated and leaning into the lectern. "You will get your Social Security check. The government will keep its promise."

[NB: That last line is interesting, since it implicitly admits that the government will NOT keep its “promise” to others. This whole entry from MyDD is worth reading – you detect a growing tone of desperation in Bush’s pleas and phony threats. I love this one particularly: "I pity the politicians who stand in the way of a solution."]

Desperation?

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/03/11/game_over.html
"President Bush's bid to add individual accounts to Social Security faces such formidable opposition in the Senate that its supporters may be unable to bring it to a vote, according to a Washington Post survey of senators."

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_03/005823.php
The message coming out of the White House is that we'll fix Social Security by raising your taxes and cutting your retirement benefits and, to get something passed, we'll forget about the personal retirement accounts we promised. [That's like telling voters] 'Never vote for Republicans again — we lie.'"

The source? A "senior Republican senator."

Bush’s politics of fear and divisiveness, Part 204 (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://blog.dccc.org/mt/archives/002370.html
[Charles Rangel] Yesterday, as part of his pitch for privatizing Social Security, President Bush stated that opponents of privatization "say certain people aren't capable of investing...It kind of sounds like to me, you know, a certain race of people living in a certain area." (USA Today)

"It is clear that in their desperation to rescue their privatization plan, the White House has sunk to a new low. How far will they go? The White House strategy seems to be to sow divisions - young and old, men and women, Black and White, North and South - to achieve their political goals. The Republicans figure if they can divide the nation, they can conquer Social Security.

First, Republicans said that they would consider providing African American workers with a different level of benefits based on their race.

That did not go anywhere, so President Bush and his allies claimed that Social Security is a bad deal for African Americans, since African Americans tend to have a shorter life expectancy. But Blacks have a shorter life expectancy because of higher infant and teen mortality - problems that the Bush Administration has cruelly ignored. With its disability and survivor benefits, as well as retirement benefits, Social Security actually is a slightly better deal for African Americans than for the general population.

Now, the White House has changed its tune again and is saying that those of us who oppose privatization are somehow racist. This is totally outrageous. No one is saying that any certain group cannot invest - we are saying that no matter who you are, you need one asset that you can depend on, no matter what. That asset is Social Security. Without it, almost 60 percent of African American seniors would live in poverty as would millions and millions of other older Americans of all races.

The only thing easier than making money on Wall Street is losing money on Wall Street. That may be fine if you have the money, but for the millions of Americans that depend on Social Security for their survival, their independence, and their peace of mind, they can't afford to take the President's gamble.

Bamboozlement. Let’s just review the bidding, shall we? First, it’s privatization, but people don’t want that, so it gets called private – no, personal – accounts. These accounts are yours, they belong to you. . . except that they're actually loans, which you have to pay back -- with interest. And we're going to cut your benefits on top of that. But it’s about saving the program – well, no, the program can’t be saved, it’s about protecting you from the program’s inevitable default (which our proposal actually hastens). There is no “trust fund,” even though the Treasury Bonds are sitting right there – but they’re worthless, maybe, or perhaps we’ll just default on them. But people don’t want a “carve out” program, so it becomes an “add-on” program (which it’s not). People are afraid of losing their safety net, so then privatization becomes the new “safety net” (though the last thing it is, is safe). We’ll keep all our promises, except the promises we won’t be keeping. All options are on the table, says the President, except the options he has already taken off the table. He’ll negotiate with anyone, without the threat of retribution, except that the threats have already begun. Next?

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=100480

Excuse me, I just choked on my morning coffee

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush12mar12,1,7203545.story
"Franklin Roosevelt did a good thing when he set up Social Security. It has worked. . . And so the discussion today is not to get rid of Social Security; the discussion today is to build on what Franklin Roosevelt put in place."

This is illegal

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2433&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
[Scott McClellan] The Treasury Department is launching a Social Security website, strengtheningsocialsecurit