A FOOLISH CONSISTENCY

http://www.bartleby.com/59/3/foolishconsi.html

Many Memorial Days yet to come – next year it will be over 2000 dead

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/lying-on-memorial-day.html
Today, Bush gave a speech at Arlington Cemetery. AP has the story, but the key passages aren't about what he said today. They are the paragraphs that describe what Bush said two years ago:

Before his Memorial Day remarks in 2003, Bush had declared major combat operations at an end, the U.S. government confidently predicted that weapons of mass destruction would be found and American generals said troops were in the process of stabilizing Iraq.

At that time, some 160 American soldiers had been killed in Iraq. Today, the total is over 1,650.

In his remarks today, Bush talked about dead soldiers and their sacrifice. Of course, he used the same lying language he's used for years now:

"We must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives; by defeating the terrorists."

Maybe Bush should have read his 2003 speech before he started talking today. Most Americans now understand that invading Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 or WMD or any of the other plethora of lies concocted by Bush and co. But he can't help spinning his lies....even on Memorial Day...even while talking about the soldiers who died in his war.

More: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2005/05/alas-what-mighty-props-have-fallen-on.html

The best of the Memorial Day editorials

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5427823.html
In exchange for our uniformed young people's willingness to offer the gift of their lives, civilian Americans owe them something important: It is our duty to ensure that they never are called to make that sacrifice unless it is truly necessary for the security of the country. In the case of Iraq, the American public has failed them; we did not prevent the Bush administration from spending their blood in an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes. Perhaps it happened because Americans, understandably, don't expect untruths from those in power. But that works better as an explanation than as an excuse.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/30/opinion/30herbert.html
This Memorial Day is not a good one for the country that was once the world's most brilliant beacon of freedom and justice. .. State Department officials know better than anyone that the image of the United States has deteriorated around the world. The U.S. is now widely viewed as a brutal, bullying nation that countenances torture and operates hideous prison camps at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in other parts of the world - camps where inmates have been horribly abused, gruesomely humiliated and even killed.

http://bobgeiger.blogspot.com/2005/05/conflicted-veteran-on-memorial-day.html
I got a call about a week ago from a very nice guy who lives in my town. He is one of the coordinators for our Memorial Day parade and, via some list or another, he knew I was a decorated Vet and asked me to join other veterans marching in honor of our country's war dead. . . "Well, to be honest – and I don't want to offend you politically –I don't feel terribly proud of my country right now," I said. "I am so opposed to the direction our country is moving and the way we are using our military, that I don't know that I can participate in something like this.". . .

Memorial Day should be the king of all nonpartisan events, a day when we put aside our political differences to observe something that we can all most assuredly agree upon – our gratitude for the people who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. . . After hours of thought, I realized that the core of my confusion rests in the extremely divided state of our country over the Iraq war and the strong difference of opinion on the reasons that 1,657 Americans have died in that conflict. I came to the conclusion that, no matter how apolitical this day should be, I simply cannot march should-to-shoulder with people who voted for George W. Bush and whom I hold at least partially responsible for the human losses we have suffered under his administration.

Man, whenever they let Cheney out of his protective bunker, you know it’s going to be to unleash a torrent of unbelievable lies. This is just a sample of the latest

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/30/politics/30cnd-cheney.html
Vice President Dick Cheney emphatically defended the handling of detainees at Guantánamo Bay in an interview to be broadcast tonight, saying that they had been "well treated, treated humanely and decently" and that some accusations to the contrary were "lies."

The vice president largely dismissed assertions that guards or interrogators at the American naval base in Cuba had mishandled the Koran or beaten detainees. He said that freed Guantánamo prisoners were now "peddling lies.". . . Last week, the human rights group Amnesty International compared Guantánamo to a brutal gulag-style camp. Asked about that characterization, Mr. Cheney replied, "Frankly, I was offended by it," according to a transcript.

[NB: Frankly, I’m offended by THAT comment]

He said that many Guantánamo detainees were "individuals who have been actively involved as the enemy, if you will, trying to kill Americans," and that some had provided "significant amounts of intelligence" to their interrogators.

[NB: Many? some?. . . uh, Dick, what about the INNOCENT ones?]

Mr. Cheney added, "What we're doing down there has, I think, been done perfectly appropriately."

[NB: Anyone who doesn’t acknowledge that even the Defense Dept’s own analyses have admitted serious errors “down there” is clearly a liar and a scoundrel]

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_29.php#005756

Rendition continues

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/national/31planes.html

[NB: How sick to be in a country where you want your own government brought up on war crimes charges]

I guess a sense of mortality helps to clarify one’s moral priorities

http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2005/05/31/push_on_to_clarify_rights_for_detainees
In what would be the first major effort by a Republican to get the GOP-led Congress to establish US detention law, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, has scheduled a hearing in June to launch his effort to create clear due process rules for suspected terrorists who are being held without trial.

They hope that Bush will change his mind on stem cells? Haven’t these people been paying attention?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0505310159may31,1,6639786.story

The “pro cure” movement

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/jonathan-alter-launch-pro-cure.html

Ooh, Lindsay, this is nasty (and hilarious)

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/05/the_womb_draft.html
I think the fundamentalists are being too soft on this issue. They make it sound like this is a morally optional procedure. But these are little people. Surely every Christian family must do its part. . . The believers should divide up all outstanding embryos and assign them to wombs immediately. . . A reproductive draft is the only fair way to settle this.

The Christian Right doesn’t want parity, influence, partnership, or compromise: they want total theocratic control. Paranoia? Exaggeration? Read on

http://harpers.org/FeelingTheHate.html
What the disparate sects of this movement, known as Dominionism, share is an obsession with political power. A decades-long refusal to engage in politics at all following the Scopes trial has been replaced by a call for Christian “dominion” over the nation and, eventually, over the earth itself. Dominionists preach that Jesus has called them to build the kingdom of God in the here and now, whereas previously it was thought that we would have to wait for it. America becomes, in this militant biblicism, an agent of God, and all political and intellectual opponents of America’s Christian leaders are viewed, quite simply, as agents of Satan. Under Christian dominion, America will no longer be a sinful and fallen nation but one in which the Ten Commandments form the basis of our legal system, Creationism and “Christian values” form the basis of our educational system, and the media and the government proclaim the Good News to one and all. Aside from its proselytizing mandate, the federal government will be reduced to the protection of property rights and “homeland” security. Some Dominionists (not all of whom accept the label, at least not publicly) would further require all citizens to pay “tithes” to church organizations empowered by the government to run our social-welfare agencies, and a number of influential figures advocate the death penalty for a host of “moral crimes,” including apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy, and witchcraft. The only legitimate voices in this state will be Christian. All others will be silenced.

The traditional evangelicals, those who come out of Billy Graham’s mold, are not necessarily comfortable with the direction taken by the Dominionists, who now control most of America’s major evangelical organizations, from the NRB to the Southern Baptist Convention, and may already claim dominion over the Christian media outlets. But Christians who challenge Dominionists, even if they are fundamentalist or conservative or born-again, tend to be ruthlessly thrust aside.

Is the FBI mishandling the Franklin investigation?

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002099.html

Does Trent Lott want his old job back?

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/05/30/lotts_fingerprints_on_deal.html

In Ohio, resignation isn’t enough for someone who invested millions of state funds in a quack scheme run by a big campaign donor, who turned out to be a crook

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/great-scathing-toledo-blade-editorial.html

Never, ever trust these people

http://slate.msn.com/id/2119842/fr/rss/
The LAT fronts a little-noticed provision in the recent military-spending bill that allows oil and gas drilling in a national park off the Gulf of Mexico. The area is zoned as "wilderness," meaning it has the highest level of federal protection. It's the first time moves have been made to drill on such sites.

More stats that suggest the vote totals in 2004 were jimmied (thanks to Doug Kellner for the link)

http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/27/18502/5421

In the interests of fairness: I linked to a story a couple of days ago that ridiculed “Homeland Security” agents for investigating illegal Star Wars downloads. As Mark Kleiman notes, since the entire Customs Dept is part of Homeland Security, that really isn’t a surprise, or necessarily a bad thing

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/terrorism_and_its_control_/2005/05/satire_vs_scandal.php
Right this second, "officials of the Department of Homeland Security" are calculating duties on imported rutabagas. . . but that doesn't make it a scandal that DHS is doing its ordinary jobs along with (we hope) its more sensitive job.

Bonus item: a glimpse inside the small, small town that is Washington, D.C. (and their chummy reactions to Bush’s lies vs their reactions to Clinton’s lies)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_29_atrios_archive.html#111749107772753237
When Establishment Washingtonians of all persuasions gather to support their own, they are not unlike any other small community in the country.

On this evening, the roster included Cabinet members Madeleine Albright and Donna Shalala, Republicans Sen. John McCain and Rep. Bob Livingston, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, PBS's Jim Lehrer and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, all behaving like the pals that they are. On display was a side of Washington that most people in this country never see. For all their apparent public differences, the people in the room that night were coming together with genuine affection and emotion to support their friends -- the Wall Street Journal's Al Hunt and his wife, CNN's Judy Woodruff, whose son Jeffrey has spina bifida.

But this particular community happens to be in the nation's capital. And the people in it are the so-called Beltway Insiders -- the high-level members of Congress, policymakers, lawyers, military brass, diplomats and journalists who have a proprietary interest in Washington and identify with it. . . They call the capital city their "town."

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010923.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 @ 7:52 AM

 
1657

http://icasualties.org/oif/

Not good

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/30/international/middleeast/30iraq.html
The largest Iraqi-led counterinsurgency operation since the downfall of Saddam Hussein set off a violent backlash on Sunday across Baghdad. At least 20 people were killed in the capital, 14 of them in a battle lasting several hours when insurgents initiated sustained attacks on several police stations and an army barracks. . . The violence, including at least four suicide car bombings, was a bloody start to an operation that Iraq's new Shiite-majority government had presented as a new get-tough policy toward Sunni Arab insurgents, first in Baghdad and then countrywide.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/international/middleeast/29iraq.html
The latest attacks raised the total number of Iraqis killed this month to about 650, in addition to at least 63 American troops who have been killed, the highest American toll since January.

General John Riggs on the Iraq mission (thanks to Mark Kleiman for the link)

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.riggs29may29,1,2350381.story
Riggs was blunt and outspoken on a number of issues and publicly contradicted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld by arguing that the Army was overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan and needed more troops. . . "They all went bat s- - when that happened," recalled retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, a one-time Pentagon adviser who ran reconstruction efforts in Iraq in the spring of 2003. "The military part of [the defense secretary's office] has been politicized. If [officers] disagree, they are ostracized and their reputations are ruined.". . .

Riggs spent 39 years in the Army, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery during the Vietnam War and working his way up to become a three-star general entrusted with creating a high-tech Army for the 21st century. . . But on a spring day last year, Riggs was told by senior Army officials that he would be retired at a reduced rank, losing one of his stars because of infractions considered so minor that they were not placed in his official record. . .

A senior officer's loss of a star is a punishment seldom used, and then usually for the most serious offenses, such as dereliction of duty or command failures, adultery or misuse of government funds or equipment.

General Richard Myers on freedom of the press

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/general-meyers-calls-media-and-civil.html
Here's what he said about Americans, like us, who are upset about what the US government is doing in Guantanamo, Cuba (from his appearance on Face the Nation, today):

This is about other people that are criticizing operations down there, in what I view, in many cases, an irresponsible way, and relishing the fact that they can put a spotlight on what should not be the debate.

[John Aravosis] Irresponsible? And "relishing" the fact that you're trashing the Constitution and the Geneva Convention?

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/29/175012/886

Myers doesn’t need to worry: why the press has always been fundamentally pro-war

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_29_atrios_archive.html#111738043389921419
It's a crime they aided and abetted. It's no wonder they aren't particularly interested in exploring why, once again, they were on the wrong side of an important issue.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/28/AR2005052800971.html
[Washington Post] THE LATEST FBI documents detailing allegations of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay are, like previous FBI documents, highly disturbing. . . But the status of these documents is nearly as disturbing as their content. They can be found, again like previous FBI documents, only on the Web site of the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained them by suing the government under the Freedom of Information Act. They did not, in other words, appear in the context of a government or military investigation.

[NB: Nor did they appear first in any PRESS investigation. Remember the Pentagon Papers? Remember what a free and independent press used to look like?]

Redefining the “Bush Doctrine”

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_29_atrios_archive.html#111740445557195607
[H]as anyone else noticed that our media allowed the "Bush Doctrine" to magically evolve from "pre-emptive war against anyone who might want to hurt us" to "spreading freedom and democracy throughout the world" without blinking?

Lawyers volunteer to go to Guantanamo

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/30/politics/30detain.html
[NYT] The increase in lawyers for Guantánamo detainees was set in motion last June when the Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration and said the prisoners there were entitled to challenge their detentions in federal courts.

The rate at which lawyers have stepped forward for the task may be a reflection of the changing public attitudes about Guantánamo Bay and its mission.

"In the beginning, just after 9/11, we couldn't get anybody," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a group based in New York that is coordinating the assigning of lawyers to prisoners. The earliest volunteers, Mr. Ratner said, were those who regularly handled death-penalty clients and were accustomed to representing the reviled in near-hopeless cases.

But in recent months, some of the nation's largest and most prominent firms have enlisted in the effort and devoted considerable resources to it, including Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale & Dorr; Clifford Chance; Covington & Burling; Dorsey & Whitney; and Allen & Overy. . . The law firms are bearing all the expenses, he said.

The influx of defense lawyers at Guantánamo Bay also seems to have had some impact on the character of the detention facility. Some of the lawyers say that it was likely a factor in the authorities' decision to end most of the interrogations in recent months. In addition, some lawyers and human rights officials say that the lawyers' presence has reduced reports of abusive treatment by guards and interrogators that previously were the subject of complaints from the Red Cross and the F.B.I.

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey C. Miller, who was the commander of the base for nearly three years, until August 2003, said during his tenure that the system was designed to make the prisoners as compliant as possible in order to make them thoroughly dependent on their interrogators. An important ingredient in accomplishing that, he and other military officials at the base said, was isolation from the outside world.

The Other Filibuster Compromise

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/27/AR2005052701740.html
Before good-government types go all weak in the knees about the Great Filibuster Compromise of 2005, they might do well to recall the Great Filibuster Compromise of 2004. . . Don't remember that one? That's understandable: It didn't change anything. . .

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010899.html

Bush’s likely Supreme Court nominations

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=5&u=/ap/20050530/ap_on_go_su_co/bush_supreme_court
"This White House — I congratulate it on its ability to be secret," McGinnis said. "It's entirely possible that Rehnquist has already communicated his intention to step down and the White House has a plan absolutely set."

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010909.html
The White House is busy researching potential Supreme Court replacements, in anticipation of a June retirement of Chief Justice Rehnquist who suffers from thyroid cancer. Some speculate he's already made his choice. Here is the list of those believed to be in the running.

I predict it's down to three choices:
• Former Solicitor General Ted Olson
• Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson
• 10th Circuit Judge Michael McConnell

. . . I think Bush will pick Ted Olson, the arch conservative and his lawyer in the Supreme Court in the Bush v. Gore case. Olsen has very strong ties to Richard Mellon Scaife, and is a staunch member of the New Theocracy.

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009619.html#009619
If you've been wondering what Ted Olson has been up to since leaving the Solicitor General's office, he's online managing editor of Christianity Today, a magazine that is one among several funded largely by the Scaife Foundations.

The United Methodist and other mainline Protestant churches are the targets of a continuing, orchestrated attack by determined right-wing ideologues who use CIA-style propaganda methods to sow dissention and distrust, all in pursuit of a radical political agenda.

The leader of this attack is an organization called the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), a pseudo-religious think-tank that carries out the goals of its secular funders that are opposed to the churches' historic social witness. The IRD works in concert with other self-styled "renewal" groups like Good News and the Confessing Movement. IRD answers only to its own self-perpetuating board of directors, most of whom are embedded in the secular political right (Howell, 1995).

The IRD board members operate and have access to conservative publications and media such as First Things, Good News, Christianity Today, Washington Times, The Weekly Standard and Fox News....A major portion of IRD's funding, from its inception, has come from right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife.

[NB: And, of course, Olson was a key player in the Scaife-funded assault on Bill Clinton:
http://dir.salon.com/news/col/cona/2001/04/05/olson/index.html
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20010528&s=20010515
http://archive.democrats.com/preview.cfm?term=Ted%20Olson
All good deeds get rewarded eventually, eh?]

Inside the Hastert machine

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0505290316may29,1,1588922.story
It is not difficult for a speaker of the House, of any party, to raise money, and Hastert's main campaign funds have taken in about $17.9 million since his elevation in 1999, slightly more than DeLay over the same period. . . But because the speaker also is in a relatively safe seat, he gives much of the money that he raises to other Republican candidates or the national party campaign committees.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/28/AR2005052801183.html
As chief of staff to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Palmer runs a congressional office that has been able to do just that for Aurora, the birthplace of his boss and the largest city in his boss's home district. . . Hastert has earmarked $24 million in grants for Aurora-based nonprofit groups since becoming speaker in 1999, using an obscure section of the big federal spending bills passed each year.

Our terrorist

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010901.html

The stem-cell debate: could still cause big problems for the GOP, not just for the unpopularity of their stance, but for what it shows about how much they are in the pockets of the Religious Right

http://www.suntimes.com/output/otherviews/cst-edt-ref29.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-outlook30may30,1,7428904.column

http://businessweek.com/technology/content/may2005/tc20050527_7309_tc120.htm

Arlen Specter on the stem cell issue and "life"

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/arlen-specter-gets-personal-on-this.html
Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), who looks like hell (no hair, sunken cheeks, raspy voice) is letting conservative Senator Sam Brownback really have it. Specter is "going personal" talking about his Hodgkins Lymphoma and how if the war on cancer had gotten the funding it needed and deserved he might not have cancer today. . . Brownback then says:

BROWNBACK: George [Stephanopoulos] and Arlen, when did each of your lives begin? When did your life biologically start? And we shouldn't be researching on that life at any time during its continuum unless we have your consent. When did your life start?

SPECTER: Well Sam, I'm a lot more concerned at this point about when my life is gonna end.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/29/stem.cells/index.html
Sen. Arlen Specter said Sunday he believes the Senate has enough votes to override a threatened presidential veto of legislation easing restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Fellow Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, however, vowed to keep the bill from reaching the Senate floor. Both appeared on ABC's "This Week."

"I've been taught a lot of lessons from the Democrats lately, so I've got some ideas on how one can get this done," Brownback said. "And I think it's important that we move forward.". . .

[NB: Of course, this is a meaning of the word “forward” that defies common sense]

The larger political implications of Coin-gate: will it cost GOP control of Ohio? A setback for the Christian Restoration project?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/toledo-blade-on-political-implications.html

http://blog.au.org/2005/03/ohio_restoratio.html

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/DominionistsTryToControlOhio.html

The mega-church phenomenon

http://www.harpers.org/SoldiersOfChrist.html

Bonus item: product placement in political ads (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_29_atrios_archive.html#111744093363953888
Holy crap. This really brings us into new territory.

http://www.slumdance.com/blogs/brian_flemming/archives/001627.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 @ 7:38 AM

 
FAILURES

How Bush policies have made the problem of international terror worse (must-read)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/28/AR2005052801171.html
The Bush administration has launched a high-level internal review of its efforts to battle international terrorism, aimed at moving away from a policy that has stressed efforts to capture and kill al Qaeda leaders since Sept. 11, 2001, and toward what a senior official called a broader "strategy against violent extremism."

The shift is meant to recognize the transformation of al Qaeda over the past three years into a far more amorphous, diffuse and difficult-to-target organization than the group that struck the United States in 2001. But critics say the policy review comes only after months of delay and lost opportunities while the administration left key counterterrorism jobs unfilled and argued internally over how best to confront the rapid spread of the pro-al Qaeda global Islamic jihad. . .

In many ways, this is the culmination of a heated debate that has been taking place inside and outside the government about how to target not only the remnants of al Qaeda but also broader support in the Muslim world for radical Islam. Administration officials refused to describe in detail what new policies are under consideration, and several sources familiar with the discussions said some issues remain sticking points, such as how central the ongoing war in Iraq is to the anti-terrorist effort, and how to accommodate State Department desires to normalize a foreign policy that has stressed terrorism to the exclusion of other priorities in recent years.

"There's been a perception, a sense of drift in overall terrorism policy. People have not figured out what we do next, so we just continue to pick 'em off one at a time," said Roger W. Cressey, who served as a counterterrorism official at the National Security Council under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. "We haven't gone to a new level to figure out how things have changed since 9/11.". . .

Much of the discussion has focused on how to deal with the rise of a new generation of terrorists, schooled in Iraq over the past couple years. Top government officials are increasingly turning their attention to anticipate what one called "the bleed out" of hundreds or thousands of Iraq-trained jihadists back to their home countries throughout the Middle East and Western Europe. "It's a new piece of a new equation," a former senior Bush administration official said. "If you don't know who they are in Iraq, how are you going to locate them in Istanbul or London?"

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_29.php#005753

Homeland Security failures: a debacle of mismanagement and pork barrel spending, and now this

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/26/AR2005052601397.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010888.html
Do you feel safer knowing that Homeland Security Agents, entrusted with securing our borders, are spending their time investigating and drafting and executing search warrants against sites that offer free downloads of the new Star War movies?

More: http://www.balloon-juice.com/archives/005262.html

The intelligence failure failure

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_22.php#005752
Almost across the board in this administration, the people responsible for this trail of error and/or untruth have been rewarded while those who resisted it or went along unwillingly have been marginalized, punished or fired. . . It's truly a national scandal -- but one, the surface of which has barely been scratched because the institutions with oversight responsibility have vested interest in not revealing what happened.

Over 10,000 imprisoned without charges

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-detain29may29,0,4067036.story
A year after the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal erupted, Iraqi anger has flared anew over the growing numbers of detainees held without charge at the notorious detention center and another prison in the south.

In the battle against the insurgency, U.S. military sweeps net many guerrillas, but also thousands of people whose offenses are nonexistent, minor or impossible to prove. They are often held for months, only to be released without explanation.

The population of long-term detainees at Abu Ghraib and the larger Camp Bucca, near Basra, has nearly doubled since August and now tops 10,000. With a large operation by Iraqi security forces underway in Baghdad, that number could rise.

Did the US/UK try to goad Iraq into war?

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010898.html
THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown. . . The new information, obtained by the Liberal Democrats, shows that the allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001, and that the RAF increased their attacks even more quickly than the Americans did.

The failure of the Nonproliferation Treaty talks – and guess who’s partly to blame?

http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2005/05/bolton_wheres_t.html
Bolton is still Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control. The UN's month-long conference on Non-Proliferation, an event that takes place only once every five years, just ended in unequivocal failure. It's no wonder John Bolton did not achieve more. He did not prepare and, from what I can tell, he didn't even show up, leaving the job of chief negotiator to someone else. Bolton and his backers might argue that accomplish anything at the NPT is tough, but that's true of the UN as a whole. If Bolton didn't make it happen now -- with the eyes of the Senate on him -- what basis is there to conclude that he will later.

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/28/82656/0007v

More fights to come on documents release

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000675.html
This is the line the White House press office is feeding the press:

"John Bolton enjoys majority [Senate] support, and it's a shame that Democrats are stopping a vote," said Erin Healy, a White House spokeswoman. "This is about partisan politics, not documents."

By the time opponents are done, I think that the chorus of Republican opposition will increase against Bolton and the White House is losing ground -- incremental as it may be -- at every single step in the Bolton process. In the end, I think he can be beaten on a floor vote -- but not yet.

The White House was stunned by the action on Thursday night, again completely caught off guard as its legislative team has been at most stages of the Bolton Battle.

Bolton's nomination is dead if the administration does not concede on the documents. The only other option is a recess appointment, which is the President's right, but even the veneer of respectability for Bolton will not be possible then if he takes the Ambassadorship.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000676.html

http://makeashorterlink.com/?D2A322A2B

McCain tries to mediate

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/28/politics/28bolton.html
One of John R. Bolton's leading Republican backers, Senator John McCain of Arizona, signaled his support on Friday for a compromise in which the White House might allow Senate leaders access to highly classified documents in return for a final vote early next month on Mr. Bolton's nomination as United Nations ambassador.

The conciliatory signal from Mr. McCain came as Senate leaders traded blame over who was responsible for the miscalculation that led to Mr. Bolton's nomination being blocked Thursday. But the White House showed no sign that the Bush administration might change course.

. . . Senators calling on the administration to share the documents "have some substance to their argument," Mr. McCain said.

More: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000674.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/28/232819/924
What is the White House hiding? That is the question EVERY self respecting reporter in Washington should be asking themselves right now. Let's see if ANYBODY asks that question tomorrow morning on the Sunday shows.

Behind the scenes of the filibuster deal: fascinating

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/28/142925/244

Aftermath: the Christian right swears vengeance against McCain (this almost makes me hope he DOES get the 2008 GOP nomination)

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=21294&mode=nested&order=0

One more time please: Lindsay Beyerstein explains why the “constitutional option” isn’t constitutional, and why it is a violation of the Senate’s own rules. If it should pass, will the whole case end up in the Supreme Court again – THIS Supreme Court?

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/05/filibuster_post.html

The moral confusion of “snowflake babies” (adopted and implanted embryos) – thanks to Susan Madrak for the link

http://jmhm.livejournal.com/1328213.html

This is pretty ironic: Miami-Dade now considers buying NEW voting machines, after the paperless debacle of 2004 (don’t say we didn’t tell you so)

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010890.html
Paper ballots that can be counted by an optical scanner are easy to use and they leave a verifiable paper trail that enhances voter confidence in the legitimacy of an election result. Miami-Dade County will become the first venue to replace controversial touch-screen machines with optical scanners if the county's election supervisor gets his way. . . The county paid $24.5 million for the touch-screen machines, and would need to spend another ten or twelve million to replace them.

Sunday talk show lineup

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/28/224735/641
Face the Nation: Gen Myers; Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va (The War In Iraq, Memorial Day, Steroids In Sports)

The McLaughlin Group: Issue #1) Filibuster #2) Stem Cells #3) Scopes Monkey Trial reincarnate #4) Predictions

Late Edition: John McCain; Dr Abdulla, Afghanistan foreign affairs minister; Gen Abizaid

This Weak: Mahmoud Abbas; Arlen Specter vs Sam Brownback (Stem-cells); Indy driver Danica Patrick

Foxx Propaganda: Gen Myers; Chris Dodd

Meet the Corporate Press: Sam Nunn, Dick Lugar, Tom Kean, Lee Hamilton & Fred Thompson (panel on nuclear terror)

Bonus item: On “right-wing postmodernism”

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/05/28/the-washington-post-discovers-right-wing-postmodernism/

***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 @ 6:18 AM

 
GROUNDHOG DAY

It’s a good joke, so why not repeat it?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/28/1353/35032
Groundhog Day In Iraq
[AP] More than 1,000 Marines, sailors and soldiers are taking part in a counterinsurgency operation in Haditha, a Sunni-dominated trouble spot 140 miles north of Baghdad, the military said Friday. Two Marines have been killed in the operation, which began Wednesday. . . U.S. forces returned to Haditha less than two months after they thought they cleaned up the Euphrates River town.

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1428
Groundhog Day in Haditha
Same as it ever was, isn't it? Just like the six-day occupation of Hit at the beginning of March, and Operation Matador just a couple of weeks ago. What a waste of lives.

[NB: Just Google "Groundhog Day" Iraq, and you will see the sad, pathetic pattern]

Why isn’t the fact that (a) Newsweek was right about the basic fact of Koran desecration and (b) Scott McClellan, Larry DiRita and others flatly lied about the lack of credible claims of desecration as big a national story as the attacks on Newsweek were?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/27/114412/827

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_22.php#005748
Remember, the McClellan/DiRita attacks on Newsweek weren't simply about getting a few facts wrong or weakly sourcing a story. Their claim was that the charges were outrageous, damaging and false, when in fact it turns out they were outrageous, damaging and quite likely true. And even more damaging for the US after McClellan and DiRita spent a couple weeks heaping attention on them.

The result of the White House and DiRita's jihad against Newsweek has only been to encourage a whole new round of international outrage and embarrassment about abuses we have to hope are now being addressed. And all, obviously, to score points in the media wars at home -- which the Bush administration so often seems to consider the true central front in the war on terror.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006385.php
No matter what you think about Newsweek, and no matter whether you think abusing a Koran is a serious problem or not, one thing is clear: DiRita was lying. We know for a fact that both the FBI and the Red Cross told the Pentagon about credible allegations months ago, and the Pentagon itself now admits that at least five of the allegations are substantially true.

When DiRita answered that question last week he knew perfectly well that credible allegations had been made on multiple occasions. What's more, only a child would believe that he didn't already know that some of them had been verified. But it wasn't convenient to say so at the time because the Bush administration was busy whipping up a firestorm of manufactured outrage against Newsweek. Now it's come back to haunt them.

Whatever else happens, DeRita flatly lied to the press. He should be fired.

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010874.html

Now who do they blame?

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3336
Now that Newsweek's Koran abuse story has been corroborated by the Red Cross, the FBI, and the Pentagon Muslims all over the world are taking to the streets.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/28/international/asia/28koran.html

More Abu Ghraib photos, disclosures ahead

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3327

The case for a war crimes investigation (thanks to Ann Lopez for the link)

http://www.progressive.org/july05/roth0705.php

This is why the blogosphere is so great: thousands of people poring over documents and reports, taking the time to read arcane things that no one else has the time to, then dispersing what they find through networks of exchange. Check this out!

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010883.html
From the newest crop of documents the Defense Department has turned over to the ACLU and made available on their website is this e-mail, spotted by this astute Democatic Underground reader:

DETAINEES-2797B

E-mail (from CTD employee to Frankie Battle). . .

Same document as Detainee-2797 with the following unredacted: "Of concern, DOD interrogators impersonating Supervisory Special Agents of the FBI told a detainee that the FBI…" and "These tactics have produced no intelligence of a threat neutralization nature to date and CITF believes that techniques have destroyed any chance of prosecuting this detainee." and "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done (by) the "FBI" interrogators. The FBI will (be) left holding the bag before the public."

Arms for dictators: it’s a democratizing influence, don’t you know

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=100480
The New York Times reports on a study by the World Policy Institute that revealed “[t]he sale of military weapons to other countries, including many that were once barred from making such purchases, has increased sharply since the attacks on Sept. 11.” In order to improve its relationship with new allies, the United States has sold weapons to countries that in the past could not receive American products because of their poor human rights records. In 2003, more than half of the top 25 recipients of weapons sales were countries the State Department has defined as undemocratic. In his remarks at his swearing-in, new U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman said trade can “deepen the roots of democracy.” Unfortunately, as the Bush administration’s actions are showing, trade can also deepen the roots of undemocratic regimes.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/business/27arms.html

Sources of exaggerated Iraq intelligence have been rewarded, not punished. And why shouldn’t they? IT WAS WHAT BUSH CO. WANTED

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/27/AR2005052701618.html

Could the U.S. be planning for the tactical use of nuclear weapons, not just in hypothetical war plans, but in setting a new precedent? What happens once we cross that line? This is a highly speculative story, but the very fact that it’s so plausible is pretty frightening

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/05/neoconplan_8022.html
CONPLAN 8022 is a series of operational plans prepared by Startcom, the U.S. Army's Strategic Command, which calls for preemptive nuclear strikes against Iran and North Korea. One of the plan's major components is the use of nuclear weapons to destroy the underground facilities where North Korea and Iran are developing their nuclear weapons. The standard ordnance deployed by the Americans is not capable of destroying these facilities. . .

Why the filibuster deal will eventually fall apart

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9798

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/5/27/83611/1191

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/politics/27cong.html

Mark Kleiman, as usual, puts his finger on a key question, also discussed here: Does the compromise agreement confirm the constitutionality of the judicial filibuster or not? It seems to me that in clear language it does, but the Republican signatories to it are now claiming that it doesn’t. This is too crucial an issue to leave up to matters of interpretation

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/05/compromise_or_appeasement.php

Will the WH budge on giving the Senate additional Bolton materials?

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000670.html

DeLay’s troubles continue, and his “what me worry?” attitude is becoming almost humorous

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/27/123859/394
A state judge ruled Thursday that the treasurer of a political fundraising committee organized by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) violated the state's election law. . . DeLay, asked by a reporter for CNN if the ruling had implications for him, responded: "Not for me. I'm not part of it."

Whoa. LA Times calls for Frist’s resignation (a good idea, as far as I’m concerned, but unexpected from a major newspaper)

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-frist27may27,0,1332926.story
It has been a particularly bad week for Frist. It started when he was outmaneuvered by Senate moderates in his effort to ram through the "nuclear option" and ban judicial filibusters. As this page has noted, Frist was right to try to get rid of the filibuster. But the defection of seven members of his own party, who joined with seven Democrats to reach a compromise on judicial nominations and leave the filibuster intact, didn't reflect well on his leadership skills.

That battle lost, Frist moved on to another defeat, on a bill that would ease restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. The bill passed in the House on Tuesday and seems to have a veto-proof majority in the Senate. But Frist is not part of it; he seems to have put his medical knowledge into something like a cryogenic chamber as he ponders whether he's presidential material. And then on Thursday, Frist stood by as Democrats forced a delay in the confirmation of John Bolton, the president's combative nominee for U.N. ambassador.

Frist may be bringing trouble on himself by trying to satisfy the exorbitant demands of his party's far-right wing, which, like the old Soviet Union, views one concession simply as an occasion to ask for another. Before Frist truckles any further to the conservative base, he would do well to remember that the Hippocratic oath should apply to the Senate as well: First do no harm.

A recap of the Ohio coin fund scandal, for those with no time to read

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/27/132620/583
Republican fundraiser was rewarded for his largess to Ohio Republicans with $50 million in state funds to invest in rare coins. $10 million of those funds, used to pay off worker comp claims, is missing. The investigation is looking into whether at least some of that missing money ended up back in GOP campaign coffers.

More: http://nytimes.com/2005/05/28/national/28coins.html

Matt Yglesias offers a neoliberal defense of NCLB (which I personally find absurd)

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006596
[T]he law has at its core a very laudable liberal goal: Forcing school administrators to get serious about educating black kids, Hispanic kids, poor kids, and generally speaking, those groups of students who tend not to do so well under the status quo. As the article shows, that wasn't just one of the main intentions of the law -- it's actually working. Schools across the country are scrambling to try and find ways to cope with a difficult problem that nobody really knows for sure how to solve, and that most folks charged with running schools would, if left to their own devices, just as soon ignore. . . Now it's pretty clear to me that, as critics like to point out, we haven't really put all the tools (financial and otherwise) that schools are going to need to meet this challenge at the disposal of the schools.

[NB: Three points, of the many questionable claims here: (1) it’s not “actually working” if educators required to educate kids from disadvantaged backgrounds don’t have the means or resources to do so; (2) the notion that educators didn’t care or worry about these kids until George Bush’s law forced them to, is insulting and absurd; (3) a law that requires schools to reach certain goals AND that refuses to give them the means and resources to do so isn’t about reform, it’s about locking schools into a trap in which they must fail – THAT’S the core purpose behind NCLB]

Renewal of the Higher Education Act, and the ugly secrets buried inside it (with more to come, no doubt)

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/05/27/11/06/9301/
[NYT] As the Senate moves to complete the spending bill for the Higher Education Act next month, a growing number of organizations concerned about privacy rights are fighting a Department of Education plan that would require colleges and universities to place personal information on individual students into a national database maintained by the government. . .

Interesting article: why the language of “underrepresented minorities” doesn’t really describe the status of Asian Americans (thanks to Jack Peng for the link)

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002276044_na16.html

Class warfare

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006600
Don’t miss Nathan Newman’s brief analysis of a federal judge’s decision to allow an anti-trust lawsuit to proceed against the three major grocery chains that colluded with each other to break last year’s United Commercial and Food Workers (UCFW) union strike in Southern California. The preemptive move by the grocers to establish a revenue-sharing deal that would prevent any one chain from profiting off of the others’ losses incurred by the UCFW’s actions was an effective and rather remarkable display of clear-eyed class solidarity on their part.

The full story: http://www.nathannewman.org/laborblog/archive/002986.shtml

“New Testament” tank photo finally removed from DoD website – but check out why

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/we-won-dod-removes-anti-muslim-tank.html
[W]e broke the story on the tank here last Sunday. . . the Washington Times reported on it this morning, which I'm sure is why the DOD finally freaked out.

The “liberal media”

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/05/27/12/41/taking-a-strategic-dive/
[Eric Alterman] It’s odd that of most prominent liberals writing in the nation’s newspapers and opinion magazines – E.J. Dionne, Robert Kuttner, Paul Krugman, Hendrik Hertzberg, Molly Ivins – not one has ever been given a regular slot on television, like say, Bob Novak, Fred Barnes, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Tony Blankley, Pat Buchanan, Bill O’Reilly or Brit Hume. Even PBS of late is populated by more journalists of the extreme right than of the moderate left. Indeed, one is hard pressed to come up with a single journalist or pundit appearing on television who is even remotely as far to the left of the mainstream spectrum as most of these conservatives are to the right.

The rising influence of Wesley Clark in the Democratic Party, and what it might mean

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/27/204533/318

Clinton/Clark 2008?

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/05/28/clinton_solidifies_fundraising_base.html

Final report on the theft of the 2004 election in Ohio (you think I’m exaggerating?)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_22_atrios_archive.html#111725148587036183

Bonus item: A social network analysis of left, right blog communities

http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2005/05/my_insularity_1.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 @ 7:20 AM

 
LOSING IT

The wider costs and consequences of the Iraq war

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/26/13944/9175
''Army recruiting is in a death spiral, through no fault of the Army,'' Krohn told me. Always defending uniformed personnel, he resents hard-pressed recruiters being attacked for offering unauthorized benefits to make quotas. In a recent e-mail sent to friends (mostly retired military), Krohn complained that the ''Army is having to compensate for a problem of national scope.''

The Army's dilemma is maintaining an all-volunteer service when volunteering means going in harm's way in Iraq. The dilemma extends to national policy. How can the United States maintain its global credibility against the Islamists, if military ranks cannot be filled by volunteers and there is no public will for a draft?. . .

The blame lies directly on Bush and Rumsfeld. They picked this war and they will have to deal with the consequences of it. Which is basically the end of American imperial power.

But the problem is that this isn't defending the country. It's a colonial war. And no one is running to fight that war.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_22_atrios_archive.html#111710892662349759
[Bob Herbert] People have been murdered, tortured, rendered to foreign countries to be tortured at a distance, sexually violated, imprisoned without trial or in some cases simply made to "disappear" in an all-American version of a practice previously associated with brutal Latin American dictatorships. All of this has been done, of course, in the name of freedom.

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/05/tactics_strateg.html
Bush and the GOP provide that vision: the terrorists are evil; democracies are good; America will defeat evil and support and spread good. It's simple, but extraordinarily compelling, especially to pro-Israel voters. Strategically, the Democratic answer to Bush's idealism can't be realpolitik (after all, these voters know that interests can change more easily than beliefs). Ideologically, it's not the answer either. Democrats have fought for generations to bring values into the practice of foreign policy, from Wilson trying to make the world safe for democracy to Truman's stand against Soviet expansion and Clinton's launching an air war to stop a genocide in the Balkans--and shouldn't allow Republicans to take that mantle. Democrats need to remember that for decades they have been able to speak to Americans' deep sense that we are a unique "city on a hill" and a "light unto the nations." Democrats must reclaim that heritage and make the case that Republicans have undermined America's moral standing (and, by extension, our security) both in the world and at home.

Oh, hell

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3325
Iraq's insurgents, described earlier this year by U.S. officials as a dwindling force, have resisted military efforts to halt their attacks and have an apparent new bombing strategy to inflict headline-grabbing casualties, according to diplomatic and academic experts.

The specialists, including one with extensive experience in Iraq, suggested that Washington misinterpreted a lull in attacks after January's national elections as a sign that the Iraqi insurgency was dying out or relaxing its effort to force a foreign military retreat.

Instead, the experts said, the insurgents have shown patience as they regrouped, devised new strategies and repeatedly demonstrated an ability to thwart U.S.-led efforts to stabilize Iraq. The persistent campaign of attacks has demoralized the population while proving the insurgents can withstand repeated military offensives designed to defang them.

[snip]

Toby Dodge, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the insurgents have exposed how vulnerable Iraqi police and army troops would be if U.S.-led multinational forces withdrew. As a result, U.S. and British troops, who form the largest foreign contingents, should expect to remain in Iraq indefinitely.

"I don't think we have a viable exit strategy," Dodge said. . .

And the new offensive in Baghdad, let me predict: a fiasco, if they think this way

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3320
The government announced Thursday that a security cordon of 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and police will ring Baghdad starting next week to try to halt a spree of insurgent violence that has killed more than 620 people this month. . . "Next week, we will have a strong and safe cordon around Baghdad like a bracelet that surrounds the hand. We will not allow anyone to cross this cordon," al-Duleimi said.

Poor Newsweek. Pentagon: well, yes, interrogators did “mishandle” the Koran, but it wasn’t intentional – well, yes it was sometimes intentional, but it didn’t involve any “flushing” – well, yes. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/nyt-rip.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006377.php

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/military-confirms-quran-was.html
Of the 13 alleged incidents, five were substantiated, he said. Four were by guards and one was by an interrogator. . . "None of these five incidents was a result of a failure to follow standard operating procedures in place at the time the incident occurred," Hood said.

Of course, the Pentagon makes a big deal that a prisoner (still incarcerated) who made the original toilet accusation has recanted – but it’s pretty obvious what such a recantation really means (it’s not even worth the “paper” it’s written on)

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/05/the_recantation.php

Were the “Koran riots” staged?

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/05/who_provoked_th.html

The ACLU starts to crack the façade of Defense Dept cover-ups

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010860.html

American torture: an interactive primer (well done)

http://slate.msn.com/id/2119122/fr/rss/

More proof that the media hates the military (I suppose)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3322

Dems block Bolton. This isn’t just about his crappy nomination any more. It’s about the refusal of the WH to provide documentation that even the Republican chair of the committee requested (and then buttressed by requests from Frist himself yesterday), to no avail. Maybe, just maybe, they won’t be allowed to stonewall and bully this time

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/26/19250/9496

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_22_atrios_archive.html#111714862058348243

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/politics/27bolton.html
"Just 72 hours after all the good will and bipartisanship, it's disappointing to see the Democratic leadership resort back to such a partisan approach," said Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman. Asked about the Democratic demands for additional documents, Mr. McClellan said, "They have all the information they need."

[NB: Boo, effin-hoo, Mr. McC. Things are changing on Capitol hill, and you’re going to have to adjust to it. You don't get to decide unilaterally what they need or not. I don’t think the Dems are going to let this vote go through until you fork over those documents. They’re crazy if they do.]

The reaction on Fox news (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://www.newshounds.us/2005/05/27/the_john_bolton_show.php
York said that when "Voinovich turned on us" the issue then became "a fight between the executive & legislative branch." Hume asked if the State Dept & the NSA will continue to "hold out" on the docs, & York gave a qualified "yes" response.

[“Us” again!!?!!]

On the vote

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000669.html
Defectors were Landrieu, Ben Nelson, and Mark Pryor.

[NB: I watched the vote, and Steve Clemons must understand how this goes down. All three of them waited until the last minutes to vote – once they saw that the Dems had their 41 votes, they were freed up to vote for cloture. I suspect that Reid could have had any or all of them if he’d needed them. My take is that as this morphs from a “block Bolton” vote to a “WH stonewalling and obstruction vote,” Reid may be able to gain support. Either way, this is the fight ahead, I think]

A similar fight brewing over the release of base-closing documents. We may have a meme developing here

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000666.html

As noted earlier, one of the key parts of the filibuster agreement in the Senate was a call to the WH for greater consultation and a return to a true “advise and consent” role for the Senate. The problem is, all this WH wants is “consent” (with their agenda)

http://mediamatters.org/items/200505270001
In response, White House press secretary Scott McClellan has twice signaled during his daily meetings with the press that Bush has no intention of changing the process by which he submits judicial nominations to the Senate. . .

Yep, this just about sums it all up

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1492198,00.html
President Bush's drive for absolute power has momentarily stalled. In a single coup, he planned to take over all the institutions of government. By crushing the traditions of the Senate he would pack the courts, especially the supreme court, with lockstep ideologues. Sheer force would prevail. But just as his blitzkrieg reached the outskirts of his objective, he was struck by a mutiny. Within the span of 24 hours he lost control not only of the Senate but temporarily of the House of Representatives, which was supposed to be regimented by unquestioned loyalty. Now he prepares to launch a counterattack - against the dissident elements of his own party.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006588
There's much to chew over in Jim VandeHei's analysis of the various long-term institutional transformations the Republicans have wrought while in power, changes whose "common theme is to consolidate influence in a small circle of Republicans and to marginalize dissenting voices that would try to impede a conservative agenda."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7954027/#050526
Call me shrill, ideological, or whatever you like, but I think we’re losing our Constitution, our civil liberties, and in many significant respects, our country. When future historians look back on this period, they will wonder, most of all, I think, how we let it go without a fight.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/26/AR2005052601538.html
I write about it now because of the new reports and because I fear that too many people in traditional journalism are becoming dangerously defensive in the face of a brilliantly conceived conservative attack on the independent media. . .

Today's conservative activists. . . shift attention away from the truth or falsity of specific facts and allegations -- and move the discussion to the motives of the journalists and media organizations putting them forward. Just a modest number of failures can be used to discredit an entire enterprise.

Of course journalists make mistakes, sometimes stupid ones. . . But this particular anti-press campaign is not about Journalism 101. It is about Power 101. It is a sophisticated effort to demolish the idea of a press independent of political parties by way of discouraging scrutiny of conservative politicians in power.

Bush’s “moral clarity” is a euphemism for the fact that he can only memorize one-line analyses of complex issues, repeat them endlessly, and can’t afford to consider more than one side of any issue. Exhibit A:

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3319

It ain’t working

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006582

It ain’t working at all

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/26/12186/6376
Four months into his second term, President Bush is increasingly viewed as being out of touch with the American people, according to a CBS News poll. . . Six in ten Americans say the president does not share their priorities, while just 34 percent say he does - the lowest numbers for Mr. Bush since the eve of his first inauguration.

Not at all. . .

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3324
Q There are news reports this morning that parents and children who were guests of the President, when they visited Congress, wore stickers with the wording, "I was an embryo." And my question is, since all of us were once embryos, and all of us were once part sperm and egg, is the President also opposed to contraception, which stops this union and kills both sperm and egg?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think the President has made his views known on these issues, and his views known --

Q You know, but what I asked, is he opposed -- he's not opposed to contraception, is he?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, and you've made your views known, as well. The President --

Q No, no, but is he opposed to contraception, Scott? Could you just tell us yes or no?

MR. McCLELLAN: Les, I think that this question is --

Q Well, is he? Does he oppose contraception?

MR. McCLELLAN: Les, I think the President's views are very clear when it comes to building a culture of life --

Q If they were clear, I wouldn't have asked.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and if you want to ask those questions, that's fine. I'm just not going to dignify them with a response.

Tom DeLay offers his own typical careful, sensitive analysis of the stem cell dispute

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006579
Supporters of liberalizing President Bush's restrictive approach to funding stem cell research, he said, were voting "to fund with taxpayer dollars the dismemberment of living, distinct human beings for the purposes of medical experimentation." Mr. DeLay called embryonic stem cell research, which may promise lifesaving treatments for various devastating conditions, a "scientific exploration into the potential benefits of killing human beings." Reasonable people can disagree regarding the morality of embryonic stem cell research, which we support. But if Mr. DeLay believes his irresponsible rhetoric, he should not stop at opposing more permissive rules for federal funding of such science. Instead he should introduce legislation to ban the in vitro fertilization treatments that create these embryos in the first place. . . The "murder is okay but federally funded murder is not" view is the mainstream position in the Republican Party, adhered to by the president of the United States and many of our nation's leading organs of conservative opinion.

Rick Santorum, prince of fake piety, took campaign money from such “baby killers”

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/santorum-took-money-from-stem-cell.html
Senator Rick Santorum this week re-emphasized his opposition to stem cell research, stating that he was “disheartened” to learn that the House of Representatives voted to expand stem cell research and that he does “not support taxpayer funding for scientific research that involves the destruction of human embryos.” Yet Santorum had no problem accepting $55,500 in campaign contributions from companies that conduct stem cell research.

The Wall Street Journal pretends it doesn’t understand what all the argument is about

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006580

Back in Texas, DeLay soon will face the music

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/politics/26cnd-delay.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/26/121135/405
An Austin judge ruled Thursday that the treasurer of a political committee formed by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay violated state election law. . . State District Judge Joe Hart says Bill Ceverha broke the law by not reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions and expenditures. . .

The civil case is separate form a separate criminal investigation into 2002 election spending being conducted by a Travis County grand jury. . . Ceverha was the only defendant left in the civil suit because Ellis and Colyandro were under criminal investigation and removed from the defendant list. Ceverha was much, much less involved than either of them.

More: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_22_atrios_archive.html#111712103307232586

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/26/delay/index.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006591

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_22.php#005747

Dum, da dum-dum

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/05/26/more_proof_delay_is_radioactive.html
A majority of House Republicans surveyed in a National Journal poll said they would not want House Majority Leader DeLay (R-TX) to campaign for them in next year's elections.

In Ohio: $10-12 million missing from coin fund

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/breaking-from-ohio-10-12-million.html
The state of Ohio has announced it is immediately pursuing additional civil and criminal measures against Tom Noe after his legal counsel informed the state that a substantial amount of assets from the Capital Coin Funds are missing.

[NB: You can go after Noe now, but soon enough the question will become, “who made the decision to put state funds in his hands?”]

Ah-nuld’s welcome wearing thin

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/26/arnold/index.html

Someone will write a history of when the Bush momentum started to disappear – and his stubborn and ill-conceived approach to Social Security will be a prime candidate

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_22.php#005745
There's an article in The Hill today that you should read. It's about a talk Bob Rubin, Clinton's Treasury Secretary, gave to the House Democratic caucus yesterday. The headline topic was Social Security. And his message was unequivocal: Democrats would be fools to fall into the trap of putting forward their own concrete plan on Social Security under current circumstances. . .

In such a setting, any process of negotiation would inevitably lead to a bad result (both politically and substantively) because Republicans exert so much control over the process of negotiation itself. And that would be so because the current Republican party is against Social Security itself. And no negotiation or process of compromise controlled by such a party could, by definition I think, yield a result which was favorable to Social Security. . . That has to be the case as long as Republicans are still sticking to their principles of private accounts and sharp benefit cuts for the middle class. And those are their principles -- quite explicitly, in fact

Add to this the fact that the president is clocking in at under 30% support on Social Security and most Americans now understand that he wants to dismantle the program and the whole thing really becomes a no-brainer.

In fact, Dems should really start making the point now that they are the ones who stopped President Bush from phasing out Social Security this year. . . Be loud, be proud.

Look out! It’s a trap!

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/05/26/majority_favor_clinton_in_2008.html
For the first time, a majority of Americans say they are likely to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton if she runs for president in 2008

The dilemmas of liberal hawks

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_22_atrios_archive.html#111713726318231084

The future of oil production (scary)

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006380.php

Bonus item: Kraft Foods does a good thing

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/we-really-really-heart-kraft.html
"The true test of any commitment is how you respond when challenged. Kraft is experiencing this to a degree right now, as a result of our decision to be one of several contributors to the 2006 Gay Games in Chicago. The games will bring together thousands of athletes in a competition that will take place in our corporate hometown....

"It can be difficult when we are criticized. It's easy to say you support a concept or a principle when nobody objects. The real test of commitment is how one reacts when there are those who disagree. I hope you share my view that our company has taken the right stand on diversity, including its contribution to the 2006 Gay Games in Chicago."

***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 @ 6:16 AM

 
ANTI-AMERICAN

Why does the FBI hate America? If this leads to more riots in Muslim countries, will they be condemned by the WH and the right-wing media hit squad, as Newsweek was?

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/25/gitmo.quran/index.html
Detainees at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, alleged in 2002 that guards mistreated the Quran, according to some of the hundreds of FBI documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union.

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/25/174341/318

And let me remind you what serial liar Larry Di Rita said just a few days ago

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2005/tr20050517-2841.html
MR. DI RITA: No, no, no, let me finish. Those types of allegations have not previously been -- there's -- we've not previously included that in any kind of previous investigations into detainee operations, because there haven't been credible allegations to that effect.

Wonderful. Amnesty International rates U.S. as one of the worst human rights violators (joining the Sudan and Zimbabwe in the international pantheon)

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/05/amnesty_international_report_2005.html

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3301

Ouch!

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010856.html
• Scott McClellan
"The [Koran flushing]allegations are ridiculous and unsupported by the facts. The United States is leading the way when it comes to protecting human rights and promoting human dignity."

• Amnesty International
Despite the US administration’s repeated use of the language of justice and freedom there was a huge gap between rhetoric and reality. This was starkly illustrated by the failure to conduct a full and independent investigation into the appalling torture and ill-treatment of detainees by US soldiers in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and the failure to hold senior individuals to account.

[NB: And follow the link in that story to Camp Cropper: a story I have been harping about for a year, possibly worse than Abu Ghraib, and still virtually unexplored by the main media:
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1029
http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk07242003.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5024068]

Building democracy abroad, destroying democracy at home

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/25/AR2005052501997_pf.html
Bush created a top-down system in the White House much like the one his colleagues have in Congress. He has constructed what many scholars said amounts to a virtual oligarchy with Cheney, Karl Rove, Andrew H. Card Jr., Joshua Bolton, himself and only a few others setting policy, while he looks to Congress and the agencies mostly to promote and institute his policies.

Justice Dept turning into Torture Rationale Central

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3308

Washington Post says Rummy gave orders to shoot down the wandering plane. NY Times says the Pentagon is denying that. Who do you believe? (And is this being spun as another “unnamed sources” story?)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/24/AR2005052400408.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/politics/26plane.html

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3305
So. . . the "two senior federal officials" who told the Post that Rumsfeld wanted to waste the errant pilot and the "senior federal law enforcement official" who corroborated their account are all liars?

WH, in their awe-inspiring efforts to make historical facts up out of whole cloth, now claims we were INVITED into Afghanistan and Iraq

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3310
[Helen Thomas] Q The other day -- in fact, this week, you said that we, the United States, is in Afghanistan and Iraq by invitation. Would you like to correct that incredible distortion of American history –

Traumatic brain injury

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/05/traumatic_brain.html
Traumatic brain injury is accounting for an alarming percentage of American casualties in Iraq. According to a recent paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, up to 60 percent of wounded American soldiers have sustained brain damage. . .

Dems vow to delay Bolton vote as NSA damage starts to leak out

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/25/politics/25cnd-bolton.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000662.html
On one front, the White House has defied Senate Foreign Relations Committee CHAIRMAN Richard Lugar -- a Republican and supporter of Bolton -- on his request for the NSA intercepts.

On another, John Negroponte flipped off Senator Biden by stating that to get information on the NSA intercepts, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would have to grovel before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for further information.

On yet another front, Senator Pat Roberts prevented Senators Lugar and Biden from attending the NSA intercepts briefing two and a half weeks ago given by Deputy Director of National Intelligence Michael Hayden.

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3306
The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said today that John R. Bolton might have mishandled classified information by sharing with another State Department official details about a communication intercepted by the National Security Agency.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000658.html
Senator George Voinovich has made the enticing offer to his Senate colleagues that he will share with them "what he knows" about why Bolton was nominated to the U.N. Ambassadorship position but is unwilling to state publicly on the floor. . . He has invited his colleagues to ask him what he knows in private.

Biden’s brief against Bolton: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000661.html

Rockefeller’s statement: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000660.html

More: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002080.html

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002079.html

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002078.html

I don’t get this. Several GOP signatories are now saying that the agreement doesn’t explicitly affirm that judicial filibusters are constitutional, and they retain the option of voting at some future time to ban them. This is nonsense. The agreement says that such filibusters should only be used in extraordinary cases – but this means that they CAN be used in extraordinary cases. The fact that there might be disagreement down the road about whether cases are extraordinary enough to merit filibusters is not a reason to rule such filibusters unconstitutional. The fact is, these guys signed an agreement explicitly saying that judicial filibusters ARE permissible. What part of the English language needs to be explained to them?

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006574
The central problem with the Senate filibuster deal is, of course, the absence in the text of an explicit disavowal of the nuclear option and an explicit acknowledgment that judicial filibusters are constitutional. As Kagro X discusses in a very valuable analysis, signatories Lindsey Graham and Mike DeWine have made it clear that they do not, in fact, believe either that the nuclear option is fundamentally illegitimate or that judicial filibusters are fundamentally legitimate. What is more, Graham and DeWine don’t appear to be the only Republican signatories sharing this opinion. As subscription-only Roll Call reports today, John Warner’s another one. . .

Why Bush’s Social Security “plan” is proving to be an even bigger fiasco than the Clinton health care proposal

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000925.html

Special Counsel refuses to enforce Bush’s own Executive Order against gay discrimination in federal workplaces

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/bush-counsel-says-he-wont-enforce.html

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/dear-scott-bloch.html

http://www.osc.gov/specialcounsel.htm
From 2001-2003, Mr. Bloch served as Associate Director and then Deputy Director and Counsel to the Task Force for Faith-based and Community Initiatives at the U.S. Department of Justice

Coin-gate now spreads into Ohio governor’s office – and check out the latest revelation

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/ohio-gop-coin-gate-hits-governors.html

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_22_atrios_archive.html#111709600837937175
The Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, which gave $55.4 million to an Ohio coin dealer to invest, said it was surprised that an inventory of assets is turning up more than rare coins. . . "We had not heard about being involved in any collectibles. Our expectation was that we have investments only in coins," spokesman Jeremy Jackson said.

The new “adopt an embryo” program – they haven’t quite worked out the nuances of this policy (probably because it makes NO SENSE)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3311

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3305
Asked about the possible veto of the House passed bill yesterday, Scott said that the President said he would veto the bill for reasons he stated in his East Room Speech on Tuesday. Twice he referred to embryos as "children as embryos". Scott was questioned about how the four to five hundred thousand embryos in storage were all going to be adopted and he went back to what the President stated yesterday. Scott was asked about the President's remarks that there is no such thing as a "spare embryo" and was asked about lost embryos in the artificial insemination process. He said that he would, “come back to that later."

Will Bush’s stem cell opposition lead to trouble?

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/05/bring_it_on_george.php

[NB: I’d like to post a longer piece on this later, but an emerging theme for 2006 and beyond, if the Dems can frame it right, is whether the public wants a Republican party utterly beholden to the religious right to be in charge. On issue after issue (Schiavo being the first big crack in the edifice), more and more people – including many Republicans and independents – are really appalled at the extremism, intolerance, and unwillingness to compromise (as they call it, the “moral clarity”) of Bush, Frist, and their fundamentalist backers. It’s job #1 of the Dems to handcuff the GOP inseparably to the Dobsons and Bauers of the world]

Terry Moran says that reporters have an “anti-military bias.” Did he WATCH any of the “embedded reporter” stories coming out of the Iraq war?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/25/123459/797

Bonus item: read it for yourself

http://mediamatters.org/items/200505250007
Responding to Sen. Trent Lott's (R-MS) suggestion that Senate Republicans had the necessary votes to invoke the so-called nuclear option and that such a step was necessary, Fox News anchor David Asman asked Lott why Republican senators had compromised on the issue. Why compromise, Asman asked, "if we should have done it and if we had the votes to do it."

[“We”?]

***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 @ 7:52 AM

 
BAD NEWS

Nine U.S. troops killed in the past 24 hours

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/05/24/iraq.main/index.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010837.html
The number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq is on the rise again - 14 in the past three days, 18 in the last week, 58 in the last month. These are big numbers.

More: http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/14-us-troops-dead-in-3-days-civil-war.html

Which brings up a simple question: the answer comes at the end of today’s post

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3285
On what day did we last experience no U.S. troop deaths in Iraq?

Juan Cole gives a calm, well-reasoned explanation of just where things stand in Iraq right now (short version: we’re screwed)

http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/sometimes-you-are-just-screwed-readers.html
The US military cannot defeat the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement any time soon for so many reasons that they cannot all be listed.

The guerrillas have widespread popular support in the Sunni Arab areas of Iraq. . .

The guerrillas are mainly Iraqi Sunnis with an intelligence or military background, who know where secret weapons depots are containing some 250,000 tons of missing munitions, and who know how to use military strategy and tactics to good effect. They are well-funded and can easily get further funding from Gulf millionnaires any time they like.

The Iraqi guerrillas are given tactical support by foreign jihadi fighters. There are probably only a few hundred of them, but they are disproportionately willing to undertake very dangerous attacks, and to volunteer as suicide bombers.

There are simply too few US troops to fight the guerrillas. . .

The guerillas have enormous advantages, of knowing the local clans and terrain and urban quarters, of knowing Arabic, and of being local Muslims who are sympathetic figures for other Muslims. American audiences often forget that the US troops in Iraq are mostly clueless about what is going on around them, and do not have the knowledge base or skills to conduct effective counter-insurgency. Moreover, as foreign, largely Christian occupiers of an Arab, Muslim, country, they are widely disliked and mistrusted outside Kurdistan.

US military tactics, of replying to attacks with massive force, have alienated ever more Sunni Arabs as time has gone on. . .

So far the new pro-American Iraqi troops have not distinguished themselves against the guerrillas, and it will probably be at least 3-5 years before they can begin doing so, if ever. Insofar as the new army is disproportionately Shiite and Kurdish, it may simply never have the resources to penetrate the Sunni Arab center-north effectively. There is every reason to believe that the new Iraqi military is heavily infiltrated with sympathizers of the guerrillas.

The guerrilla tactic of fomenting civil war among Iraq's ethnic communities, which met resistance for the first two years, is now bearing fruit. . .

The political process in Iraq has been a huge disaster for the country. The Americans emphasized ethnicity in their appointments and set a precedent for ethnic politics that has deepened over time. . .

In Iraq: cholera

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/05/25/06/37/quality-of-life/

Well, at least we have that success in Afghanistan to be proud of, right?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/24/134216/271
[UK] DEFENCE chiefs are planning to rush thousands of British troops to Afghanistan in a bid to stop the country sliding towards civil war, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.

Ministers have been warned they face a "complete strategic failure" of the effort to rebuild Afghanistan and that 5,500 extra troops will be needed within months if the situation continues to deteriorate.

An explosive cocktail of feuding tribal warlords, insurgents, the remnants of the Taliban, and under-performing Afghan institutions has left the fledgling democracy on the verge of disintegration, according to analysts and senior officers.

Human Rights Watch says two U.S. citizens were imprisoned and tortured in Pakistan – and says the FBI was involved

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/05/us_citizens_tor.html

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/05/pakistan_fbi_to.html

On the Koran story, Scotty lied, then lied about lying

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_22_atrios_archive.html#111697363699373915
At a White House press briefing Monday, Press Secretary Scott McClellan, pressed by reporters and with Afghan President Karzai in disagreement, retreated on claims that Newsweek's retracted story on Koran abuse cost lives in Afghanistan.

He also claimed that he had never said it did, even though a check of transcripts disputes that. On May 16, for example, he said, "people have lost their lives." On May 17, he said, "People did lose their lives," and, "People lost their lives" due to the Newsweek report.

And, gee, how could anyone imagine that our good Christian people could be so crass and intolerant as to suggest defacing another faith’s holiest document?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_22_atrios_archive.html#111697106825789786

More (thanks to Atrios for the link): http://coldfury.com/reason/?p=556

ACLU to demand torture documents, photos, memoranda

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010829.html

New charges against Larry Franklin

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/05/24/pentagon.secrets/index.html

As Attaturk says, compare this meager coverage to the Sandy Berger “documents in the pants” story

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_22_atrios_archive.html#111696161273357299

Bill Frist says, “Well *I* never signed any friggin’ compromise.” Good, in a way, to see the compromise put to the test right away. Will the GOP 7 stick by their guns?

http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=956

Oh-oh. Already some of the signatories seem to be redefining what the deal actually meant

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/24/graham/index.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006562

http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/052505/frist.html

The far right unleashes their attack against McCain and the other GOP traitors

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010831.html

John Aravosis is right: this is the most hilariously stupid press release of all

http://www.cwfa.org/articles/8216/MEDIA/nation/index.htm
Seven Republican Dwarves Sold Out Snow White—Left Democrats With Key to Castle

[Read on!]

What next?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/05/24/BL2005052400813.html
But this White House isn't keen on compromises. It hasn't had to compromise much so far. And it doesn't want to compromise now. . . Compromise means the Senate is not following the White House script. And where that leads is anyone's guess.

What does it mean for Frist? McCain? 2008?

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006559

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_22_atrios_archive.html#111700816049989303

Lots and lots of second thoughts about the deal

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_05_22_digbysblog_archive.html#111694904596190591
My only question going forward is this: if Janice Brown is not considered to be an "extraordinary circumstance" then who in the world could Bush possibly nominate who would be worse? Ann Coulter? (She does, after all, call herself a constitutional scholar.) I'm not sure that there are any judges who are to the right of Brown or who express more hostility not only to the constitution but to the enlightenment thought that guides it. The only thing absolutely worse would be to put an Islamic fundamentalist on the supreme court.

I suppose that they may have made some sort of informal agreement as to what constitutes a circumstance more "extraordinary" than this, but I don't know how much trust I would put in such a thing. If Brown, Owen and Pryor are confirmed, the bar has been set very, very low. It's hard to imagine how Bush could come up with anyone even less qualified or philosophically unacceptable than that, but they seem to be able to find the worst judicial freaks in the country so maybe they've been holding out on us.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006555
Of course, if Democrats had been filibustering half of Bush's 200-some nominees instead of only a handful, or if, for example, they had spoken endlessly of "maintaining balance on the courts" and insisted that Bush also nominate some "centrists" and not only "extremists," then a compromise position would have looked very different. But by bracketing the debate between two right-wing extremes--confirm every nominee except for a handful or confirm every nominee through use of the nuclear option--the Republicans had won before they'd even begun.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/24/112930/966
But here are the plain, unspun facts:

Democrats hold 44 seats in the 100 seat Senate. One independent sides with the Democrats, giving Dems a 10-seat deficit.

Reid had 49 votes. He needed 51 to defeat Frist's nuclear option.

Reid needed at least two of four undecided Republicans.

Had Reid come up short, the filibuster would be dead in judicial matters.

If the filibuster was dead, Bush would've been able to put anyone on the Supreme Court. Anyone.

Radical Christian Rightist James Dobson is demanding the right to choose the next Supreme Court nominee.

Dobson's biggest enemy is the filibuster. Hence, he forced Frist to engage in the nuclear option.

Because of the deal, Dobson can't choose the next Supreme Court justice. Bush's choice, if too extreme, faces the prospect of a filibuster.

In order to save face, Republicans have gotten up or down votes on most of the handful of judges who are currently being filibustered. It's a price, but a relatively small one to pay to protect the filibuster during the next Supreme Court battle.

Given that we have a 10-seat deficit in the Senate, that's no small feat.

And WHO WROTE this headline over the NYT story about the compromise deal?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/24/politics/24assess.html
A Modest Victory for Bush

That’s the WH line on all this: We’re makin’ progress. Gettin’ up or down votes. It’s hard work. But we’re makin’ real progress

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3292

Flush with their sense of success and bipartisan good will, compromising Democrats say they’re ready to break the Social Security impasse too (uh, guys, why not wait a couple of weeks to see if you get jobbed by Frist and the Republicans over judicial nominees before you start getting generous, okay?)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_22_atrios_archive.html#111697578809088918

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_22.php#005735

http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/05_05_22_corner-archive.asp#064125

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010842.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006556

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/24/194930/818
Republicans seem increasingly willing to abandon Bush-style accounts and their opposition to any tax increases. And Democrats have privately expressed a willingness to accept benefit cuts and hand Bush half a victory rather than be seen as blocking needed changes.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_22.php#005736
[H]e seems to be painting a picture in which carved out private accounts are tossed, the cap is raised, though not removed, and various benefit cuts are imposed.

[NB: Aside from the dubious question of trust, Dems in the Gang of 14 need to realize that a Social Security proposal won’t work the same way as the filibuster fight. Because of the narrow margins of votes on confirmation vs filibustering, this small minority basically controls the outcome of the decision on judges, so their agreement – if it holds – shapes the debate. But on Social Security or any other legislation, their proposal, however reasonable, will go through the meat grinder of a Republican-controlled legislative process. THEN there’s whatever the House comes up with – which will be terrible – THEN a GOP-controlled conference committee, with intense WH intervention. Starting a “compromise” process here simply gives new life and legitimacy to the Bush plan. DON’T DO IT!]

And what might such a deal look like? (a mess, that’s what it looks like)

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006548

Is Bush losing the moderates in his own party?

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000651.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-assess24may24,0,7478392.story

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/5/24/155220/843

Stem cell rebuke of Bush and DeLay

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/5/24/195829/546

Sanctimonious platitudes: Bush responds to the stem cell bill

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/hypocrites-at-wh-says-stem-cells-bill.html
The White House on Tuesday criticized as "morally troubling" legislation that would loosen restrictions on government funding of embryonic stem cell research, ahead of a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives.

At his press conference today, Bush said "every life is a priceless gift of matchless value."

Wow, where to begin. This White House talking about morals when it comes to life.

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3294
We should not use public money to support the further destruction of human life.

I could post some shocking images of the dead and mutilated children of Iraq, but what is the point?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/breaking-house-passes-real-stem-cell.html
During his speech today, Bush actually had the gonads to say: "We should not use public money to support the further destruction of human life." Yeah, that's his policy.

The moral incoherence of Bush’s stem cell policy

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/05/stem_cells.html

I don’t know about you, but reading these Bamboozlepalooza transcripts makes me wonder half-seriously if this man has some kind of brain disorder

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3290
“It's important for people to understand that aspect of Social Security. In other words, it's not a trust. In other words, we're not taking your money and holding it for you and then giving it back to you when you retire. We're taking your money, we're spending it on current retirees, and in that more money is coming in that needs to go out for the retirees, we're spending on other programs. And all that's left behind in Social Security is a group of file cabinets with IOUs in it. . .

Right now the benefits, by the way, increases are tied to wages. If you're the top 1 percent of workers in terms of income, your benefits would increase by the rate of inflation, not by the rate of wage. Your benefits increase, but not as fast as the folks at the bottom end of the spectrum. And if you're in between, depending upon your income, your benefits will increase somewhere between the rate of wage and the rate of price. . .

Notice I said "voluntary." In other words, the government should say to a younger worker, if you want to, you can put some of your own money aside. You don't have to. If you're uncomfortable with watching your money grow with a conservative mix of bonds and stocks, you don't have to do that. You can keep it the way -- into the system. And you'll get your check. If you're in the bottom 30 percent, your benefits over time will grow at wages. If you're in the top 1 percent, they'll grow with inflation. And if you're somewhere in between, they'll grow depending upon your income, but greater than the rate of inflation. . .

If you've retired, you don't have anything to worry about -- third time I've said that. (Laughter.) I'll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_22.php#005738
At the same time, President Bush warned members of his own party they would join Democrats in facing voters' wrath if they don't support his proposed overhaul.

[Josh Marshall] I guess in a way this is fair since, after all, don't Republicans deserve the chance to laugh at the president too sometimes?. . . I mean, this is really rich. Whether it's helped the Democrats or not, privatization has been pretty much a disaster for the president's party in Congress. It's certainly one of the most important reasons their public approval ratings have tanked over the last six months. Less than 30% of the public supports President Bush on this issue. But if these guys don't get on his sinking privatization ship, they'll face voters' wrath.

Voinovich pens a poison pen note to his colleagues on Bolton

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000652.html

Analysis: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006558

Will Bolton pass anwyay? Has the filibuster deal suddenly made the Dems all warm and squishy?

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000653.html
While the Dems and a couple of Republicans probably have enough votes to sustain a filibuster of Bolton, the fact is that the deal on the judges reached last night has made the caucus less eager to engage in that kind of brinksmanship -- though they seem eager to stand relatively united against Bolton.

There are rumors that even Senators Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieu are reconsidering their semi-positive leanings on Bolton.

There are fundamental issues unresolved in the Bolton Battle.

First, the administration has defied Congress in failing to provide the controversial and important "unedited" NSA intercepts which Bolton requested during his tenure.

Secondly, there are rumors that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is actually investigating Bolton's use of this NSA intercept material and attempting to ascertain whether Bolton compromised national security by mishandling and inappropriately using the intelligence information he gathered from these intercepts. It is remarkable that the Senate would consider a vote on any nomination in which there was such a major outstanding concern.

More: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002072.html

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=3&u=/nm/20050524/ts_nm/bush_bolton_dc
Democrats agreed on Tuesday to clear the way for the Senate to vote on the controversial nomination of John Bolton as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, which was expected to pass mainly on party lines. . . The Senate is to open debate on Wednesday on Bolton, the top U.S. diplomat for arms control and outspoken critic of the United Nations. . .

Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, lifted a procedural hold she had put on the nomination in an unsuccessful effort to wrest more documents on Bolton from the administration. . . "We're disappointed that we didn't get the information from the administration," said Boxer's spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz. . . But she said Boxer had agreed with Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, to let the nomination come up for a Senate vote. . . Lawmakers said they expected Bolton would be confirmed in the Senate where Republicans hold a 55-45 majority. But Democrats, joined by Ohio Republican Sen. George Voinovich, want a lengthy debate to press their case that he is unfit for the job.

[NB: Okay so let’s sum up. The Dems get roped into a dubious deal with “moderate” Republicans on filibusters. It may or may not prove to have been a trap, depending on whether the GOP 7 stand by their promises in writing. Frist is already planning to circumvent the deal if he can. Meanwhile, in some delusionary haze of good will, the same Dems seem prepared to back down on two other issues that have been extremely good for them politically: Social Security and Bolton. All three issues have been woven into an effective meme about Bush/Republican arrogance and over-reaching which has driven their poll numbers southward. WHY in the world would the Dems be offering them a way out on any of these issues?]

Ohio governor gets serious about investigating Noe, rare coins, and possible scandal – well, tries to get serious, except. . .read on!

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/more-ohio-gop-coin-gate-shenanigans.html

Dems still searching for a way to reframe the abortion debate. Howard Dean offers one

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006362.php

In Washington State, the battle to overturn the election goes to court

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/05/24/republicans_dealt_blow_at_trial.html
"The first-ever trial to settle a disputed Washington governor's election opened yesterday with Republicans launching a broad and bold attack on King County, alleging that 'sinister' fraud and corruption 'up the food chain' robbed Dino Rossi of the governor's office," the Seattle Times reports.

However, the judge "was quick to rein in such talk. He said fraud charges, which could make it easier for Republicans to get the November election thrown out, have not been part of the Republican case and can't simply be added now."

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer notes that without fraud, Rossi faces "the much more difficult task of proving that" Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) "owes her win to illegal and improper votes or actions."

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/05/24/08/00/get-over-it/
Hey, whatever happened to “You lost, get over it“?

PBS President defends her network

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/05/25/06/27/nuh-uh/

Bonus item: quote of the day

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/05/24/bonus_quote_of_the_day.html
"The only reason he's still up there in the 40's is that the Democrats are really brain-dead and have nothing positive to put on the table... This is more than a rough patch; it's a dark moment right now for Bush."

-- a "veteran Republican who has close ties to the White House"

The answer:

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3288
The Answer: December 17, 2004, 158 days ago.

[NB: CORRECTION: It turns out that this figure is in error. While the numbers have been horrendous, there have been days even as recently as May 15 with no US deaths. Still, the basic message is right -- we are in the midst of a long, brutal slog]

***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 @ 6:59 AM

 
NUCLEAR STANDOFF

I am very, very surprised. Surprised that the “compromise” deal actually happened, and extremely surprised that the Dems seem to have gotten the better of the deal. (Certainly they have decided to present it as a victory, and the far Right certainly is reacting to it as a defeat.) I guess that’s the good news.

The bad news is that it leaves a million questions up in the air, and might do nothing to forestall another showdown over the nuclear option down the road. While I agree that letting a couple of bad judges through now is a decent price to pay for preserving the right to block extremist Supreme Court nominees in the future, I think it is far from clear whether Bush will be discouraged in any way from forcing the issue again and again and again until he gets what he wants.

But the most interesting part of this story is how little leverage Frist actually had to prevent this result. If it is a loss for both sides, it is a huge loss for him – and undoubtedly McCain, and perhaps others, were happy to take a big chunk out of him in anticipation of the 2008 campaign.

Summary of the deal

http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=945

The text

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/05/23/the_deal.html

A sample of the range of reactions

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005/05/new-new-deal-looks-like-clarence.html
[T]he Democrats are the losers and so is anyone who believes that a minimum level of mental health and fair-mindedness should be required before individuals are elevated in the judiciary. The way I see it, Janice Rogers Brown is their problem now.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/23/19469/6395
It's not a good day to be Bill Frist. He looks weak, unable to control his own caucus. His winger friends go ballistic. They get some judges, sure, but ultimately, we can filibuster Bush's next Supreme Court nominee unless he picks a moderate.

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3284
The deal that was reached is good for Democrats in the following ways. They might very well have lost the vote, and been stuck with James Dobson's choice on the Supreme Court because we would have had no chance to filibuster. Given the choice of Owen and Brown or Mr. Justice Gonzales, I'll take Owen and Brown, thanks. The nuclear option is no more, folks. It's gone. Thank you, Harry.

This deal, and the WAY it was announced, did something important. It CASTRATED Frist. McCain and Graham and the other moderates up there made it look like they had to go and punish little Billy for writing in crayon on the Senate chamber walls. Frist was going bonkers, we all knew that. That press conference made it look like some Republicans are just starting to figure that out, too.

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010823.html
The worst, the compromise is in. Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown and William Pryor are in. Total capitulation by Democrats. Total victory for Frist. Let them spin it how they want, it's a loss for the Democrats. Henry Saad of Michigan is the fall guy. He won't get a vote. No one cared about him anyway. That's tossing the Dems a chicken bone.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/23/204634/095
This is the big caveat from Mike DeWine, which I also heard Lindsey Graham say:

Some of you who are looking at the language may wonder what some of the clauses mean. The understanding is – and we don’t think this will happen – but if an individual senator believes in the future that a filibuster is taking place under something that’s not extraordinary circumstances, we of course reserve the right to do what we could have done tomorrow which is to cast a yes vote for the constitutional option.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006545
MY SOURCES SAY YECCH. Well, that ain't pretty. Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen, and Bill Pryor will all pass cloture votes; Henry Saad and William Myers lose out. Unless Lindsay Graham was serious when he mumbled the words, "I think at least one would be rejected in a bipartisan way," we're now pretty much guaranteed a 4th Circuit judge who took campaign contributions from litigants before her in the Texas Supreme Court; a former attorney general who refused to prosecute corporations he was raising money from; and a D.C. Circuit Court nominee who thinks the entire regulatory apparatus of our federal government is a form of slavery. . . If the nominations of Brown, Owen, and Pryor don't constitute extraordinary circumstances, what will? This only delays the nuclear option and may even weaken the Dems' position at that point; if these nominees can be traded so freely, why oppose any of them? Bill Frist just said it himself: "All options remain." And here we thought Frist couldn't possibly come out a winner.

http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2005/05/how_i_stopped_w.html
Frist put himself out there with the religious right, made this a matter in which some of them chose to speak in "the prophetic voice," from which no compromise is possible. The mistake Frist made was a small one at the time, and he probably didn't even know he was making it. But by enlisting these outside groups as partners and permanent allies, he cut off his own freedom of maneuver. When he finally realized that a critical mass of his own caucus did not want to blow up the Senate, he was trapped by outside forces. Now he's utterly ruined. John McCain and Lindsay Graham are setting the agenda in the Senate, while to the religious right, Frist is not a martyr to principle, but just an ineffectual leader, a guy who talks big but can't deliver.

[NB: Kevin Drum is the only source I found who asks the same question I did]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006361.php
I guess I'm puzzled. A bipartisan group of 14 senators has agreed to a last-minute compromise that will avert Bill Frist's attempt to end judicial filibusters for good, but the text of the deal only mentions five nominees. The group agreed to invoke cloture for three of the filibustered nominees (Brown, Owen, and Pryor), which means they'll be confirmed, and made "no commitment" on two of the nominees (Myers and Saad), which presumably means at least a few of the Democrats will agree to continue filibustering them and their nominations are dead. . . But why aren't Griffin and McKeague mentioned? Presumably, not mentioning them is equivalent to "no commitment," right? So why not say so? What am I missing here?

As for the agreement to filibuster future candidates only under "extraordinary circumstances," well, who knows? That could mean pretty much anything, couldn't it?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/24/politics/24judges.html
Democratic officials said an unwritten aspect of the pact was that two nominees not named in the deal - Brett M. Kavanaugh and William J. Haynes - would not be confirmed and would be turned aside either at the committee level or on the floor.

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/05/dealmaking.html
Now if it turns out that not only does Rehnquist retire, but O'Connor or Stevens does too, and Bush nominates a real stinker, and the Democrats filibuster, and the Republican moderates stick by the deal under those circumstances, then the Democratic dealmakers will be vindicated. That strikes me as unlikely on a whole bunch of fronts. When someone has a plan that depends on moderate Republicans not caving under pressure, it's time to ask for a new plan.

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/5/23/23564/9546
Some will say that Republicans will try to remove the filibuster again in a future Congress, especially at a time when they have a larger majority. Well, duh. No victory is ever large enough to permanently remove a issue from the table. No matter how many times Democrats have saved Social Security over the past seven decades, Republicans have consistently attempted to destroy it again a few years later. They will again this time as well. Further, worries that our opposition was not strong enough to stop the filibuster from being destroyed in the event that we are in an even smaller minority are misplaced. Obviously, working to prevent us from being in an even smaller minority is obviously the first concern there. . . And I am sure that many others on our side won't like it for different reasons. For example, my brother / roommate said to me tonight that this in no way guarantees that we can stop a terrible Supreme Court nominee. He might be right, but we will have to see.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_22.php#005731
And the main issue isn't resolved so much as it's delayed. The moderate Republicans agree to preserve the filibuster so long as the Democrats use it in what the moderate Republicans deem a reasonable fashion. And yet the use of the filibuster, by its very nature, almost always seems unreasonable to those whom it is used against.

And finally there's the key problem: the White House. Can this agreement really withstand the appointment of another hard right nominee? The subtext of the compromise must be that neither side will be pushed beyond its limits. But that would, I think, force the Democrats to resort to the filibuster. And then everything, presumably, would unravel from there. It's hard for me to see how this deal survives the sort of appointee President Bush seems all but certain to appoint to the Supreme Court.

Having said all that, the whole tenor of the Republican ultras on the Hill today is to demand unimpeded power, to push past conventions and limits, to go for everything. And here they got turned back. A sensible Republican party might be satisfied to have gotten three of its nominees -- numerically speaking, they did fairly well. But this whole enterprise was based on wanting it all, on not accepting limits, on rejecting government by even a modicum of consensus with a sizeable minority party. They got stopped short. And the senate Republican leadership is undermined.

So this isn't a pleasant compromise. But precisely because the Republicans -- or their leading players -- are absolutists in a way the Democrats are not, I think this compromise will batter them more than it will the minority party, which is after all a minority party which nonetheless managed to emerge from this having fought the stronger force to something like a draw.

Harry Reid declares victory (whether it is or isn’t)

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/5/23/20310/0253
We have sent President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the radical arm of the Republican base an undeniable message: Abuse of power will not be tolerated, and attempts to trample the Constitution and grab absolute control are over. We are a separate and equal branch of government. That is our founding fathers_ vision, and one we hold dear.

I offered Senator Frist several options similar to this compromise, and while he was not able to agree, I am pleased that some responsible Republicans and my colleagues were able to put aside there differences and work from the center. I do not support several of the judges that have been agreed to because their views and records display judicial activism that jeopardize individual rights and freedoms. But other troublesome nominees have been turned down. And, most importantly, the U.S. Senate retains the checks and balances to ensure all voices are heard in our democracy and the Supreme Court make-up cannot be decided by a simple majority.

Feingold

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/23/223518/904
This is not a good deal for the U.S. Senate or for the American people. Democrats should have stood together firmly against the bullying tactics of the Republican leadership abusing their power as they control both houses of Congress and the White House. Confirming unacceptable judicial nominations is simply a green light for the Bush administration to send more nominees who lack the judicial temperament or record to serve in these lifetime positions. I value the many traditions of the Senate, including the tradition of bipartisanship to forge consensus. I do not, however, value threatening to disregard an important Senate tradition, like occasional unlimited debate, when necessary. I respect all my colleagues very much who thought to end this playground squabble over judges, but I am disappointed in this deal.

Dobson

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/dobson-has-been-betrayedthe-other-side.html
This Senate agreement represents a complete bailout and betrayal by a cabal of Republicans and a great victory for united Democrats. Only three of President Bush’s nominees will be given the courtesy of an up-or-down vote, and it's business as usual for all the rest. The rules that blocked conservative nominees remain in effect, and nothing of significance has changed. . . The unconstitutional filibuster survives in the arsenal of Senate liberals.

"We are grateful to Majority Leader Frist for courageously fighting to defend the vital principle of basic fairness. That principle has now gone down to defeat. We share the disappointment, outrage and sense of abandonment felt by millions of conservative Americans who helped put Republicans in power last November. I am certain that these voters will remember both Democrats and Republicans who betrayed their trust."

Bauer

"Under this agreement it is now more likely that radical social change will continue to be forced on the American people by liberal courts committed to same sex marriage, abortion on demand and hostility to religious expression. The Republicans who lent their names to this travesty have undercut their President as well as millions of their most loyal voters. Shame on them all."

More right wing rants: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/23/21552/1503

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/5/23/201133/386

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/5/23/215941/383

[NB: Okay, so what does this all mean? Since I was wrong in predicting that no compromise would even pass, who cares what I think? But here’s what I think: the two crucial aspects of the deal are (1) that the legitimacy of the judicial filibuster was explicitly affirmed by seven Republicans – since the broader purpose was to rule it unconstitutional, it is very hard to see these Republicans voting for a future deal which ends it entirely; and (2) politically, the nuclear option has become much tougher to pull off, even if the Dems block a future controversial nominee, because they have shown themselves willing to pass through even nominees whom they found deeply offensive – hence they come out of this looking more like the fair-minded compromisers (which most people like). In the present context, I think that anything which encourages the public expectation of compromise is good for the minority party.

Plus, there is this underdiscussed section of the agreement:

“We believe that, under Article II, Section 2, of the United States Constitution, the word "advice" speaks to consultation between the Senate and the president with regard to the use of the president's power to make nominations. We encourage the executive branch of government to consult with members of the Senate, both Democratic and Republican, prior to submitting a judicial nomination to the Senate for consideration. . . Such a return to the early practices of our government may well serve to reduce the rancor that unfortunately accompanies the advice and consent process in the Senate.”]

Then there is this tantalizing hint (see the “mumbled” comments from Graham in the “YECCH” posting, above)

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006361.php
NSF reports that Lindsey Graham claims that of the three who will get votes (Brown, Owen, and Pryor), one will end up getting defeated on a bipartisan basis. A secret codicil? Hmmm.....

The best news about this compromise is that it may reveal a certain growing unwillingness by GOP Senators to be seen as the rubber stamps of the Christian Right. Dobson et al. may have over-reached on this one

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/23/153546/666
"James Dobson: Who does he think he is, questioning my conservative credentials?" Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said in an interview. Dobson, head of the conservative group Focus on the Family, criticized Lott for his efforts to forge a compromise in the fight over the judges. Lott is still angry. "Some of his language and conduct is quite un-Christian, and I don't appreciate it," the senator said.

Hey, remember Iraq?

http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/49-killed-130-wounded-in-iraqs-day-of.html
Car bombs and other attacks killed at least 49 Iraqis on Monday and left at least 130 wounded, according to AP. Four American troops have also been killed in the past two days.

http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/100-million-mishandled-in-iraq.html
An international audit has found that the Allawi government "mishandled" $100 million in petroleum funds that should have been used for development, and that the US Coalition Provisional Authority gave out uncompetitive contracts and misspent development monies.

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/iraqi-oil-scandal-continues-now-us-and.html

What a maroon. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/23/17570/9352
Q: [...]And if I may ask you, Mr. President, as you know, the casualties of Iraq is again high today -- 50 more people dying. Do you think that insurgence is getting harder now to defeat militarily? Thank you.

PRESIDENT BUSH: No, I don't think so. I think they're being defeated. And that's why they continue to fight.

Bolton vote coming soon?

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006535
Congressional Quarterly is reporting that Bill Frist may forge ahead with the John Bolton nomination tomorrow morning, before the fallout from the nuclear option. According to the report, Frist may seek a cloture vote to preempt a Democratic filibuster of Bolton -- the probable Democratic response, as the Bush administration still refuses to hand over relevant information on how Bolton handled certain classified intelligence and personnel matters.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000645.html
Most who have been watching the battle over John Bolton's nomination to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations have been surprised at the ferocity exhibited by Dick Cheney and others supporting him as well as by the many opposed. . .

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000643.html
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar must be steaming about the fact that the administration stiffed him on the Bolton-related NSA intercepts as well as that John Negroponte has reported to the Ranking Member of the SFRC that if the Committee wants anything more on the NSA intercepts, it will have to go through the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000647.html
Rumor has it that Senator Rockefeller and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence staff have discovered patterns of conduct by Bolton and Fleitz that raise red flags. They are now "looking into" how Bolton and Fleitz used the intelligence from the NSA intercepts -- or better put, "misused it.". . . The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has been standing by waiting form some sort of communication from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which Negroponte said would be communicating with SFRC on the intercepts. This has not happened. . . Some senators on both sides will not vote to confirm Bolton simply on this issue -- all of the necessary information needed to make a decision is not in.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000646.html
If the Republicans overpower the Dems tomorrow on the first judicial standoff on the floor, then there are a number of Republicans willing to join up with George Voinovich's team opposing Bolton. Interestingly, whereas Voinovich has stated publicly that he will not try and whip up an anti-Bolton vote among his colleagues, TWN has learned that he is doing just enough to keep this race interesting.

If there is a deal on judges, then the chances are high that Reid and the Democratic leadership will give the Republicans Bolton as a gesture of good will, damaged goods though he will be. But so far, it looks like a collision over judicial appointments and a collision over Bolton.

In the case of Bolton, because there is so much Republican discomfort with him, the high-handedness of the push on Bolton is actually encouraging Republicans to defect from the pro-Bolton camp.

Here’s a suggestion: if you investigate someone for TEN YEARS and don’t have enough to charge them and take it to trial, it’s time to drop it

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/23/AR2005052301458.html

Dumbing down. Bush’s Social Security road show moves even more strongly (if that’s possible) in the direction of intentionally fostering misconceptions and misunderstandings about the state of the program

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/05/20/BL2005052000547.html

Dropping, dropping. . .

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/23/bush.poll/index.html
President Bush's job approval rating dropped to near its lowest point and Congress received poor marks as well in a national poll released Monday. . . Forty-six percent of 1,006 adults polled over the weekend said they approved of the overall job Bush is doing, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. . . The 46 percent figure is down about 4 percentage points since a poll taken at the beginning of May.

Scotty addresses the Downing Street memo, in that oh-so-Scotty manner

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3283
Q Scott, last week you said that claims in the leaked Downing Street memo that intelligence was being fixed to support the Iraq War as early as July 2002 are flat-out wrong. According to the memo which was dated July 23, 2002, and whose authenticity has not been disputed by the British Government, both Foreign Minister Jack Straw and British Intelligence Chief Sir Richard Dearlove said that the President had already made up his mind to invade Iraq. Dearlove added that intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. Do you think these two very senior officials of our closest ally were flat-out wrong? And if so, how could they have been so misinformed after their conversations with George Tenet and Condoleezza Rice?

MR. McCLELLAN: Let me correct you on the -- let me correct you on the characterization of the quote you attributed to me. I'm referring to some of the allegations that were made referring to a report. In terms of the intelligence, the -- if anyone wants to know how the intelligence was used by the administration, all they have to do is go back and look at all the public comments over the course of the lead-up to the war in Iraq, and that's all very public information. Everybody who was there could see how we used that intelligence.

And in terms of the intelligence, it was wrong, and we are taking steps to correct that and make sure that in the future we have the best possible intelligence, because it's critical in this post-September 11th age, that the executive branch has the best intelligence possible.

More on single-issue politics, and whether it hurts the Dems’ prospects

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/23/114852/912

Note to Ben Nelson (D-NE) – so you think that being accommodating earns you points with these people?

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/05/23/dole_says_nelson_can_be_beat.html
NRSC Chairwoman Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) told an audience that Sen. Ben Nelson's (D-NE) seat is "very vulnerable," and she vowed that Republicans "will capture his seat during the midterm elections," the Lincoln Journal Star reports. . . Although Dole said the race was "extremely important to the national Republican Party," she needs to offset President Bush's own praise of Nelson in February, when he said that Nelson is "a man with whom I can work."

One of the key turning points in the desecration of television news was putting their operations under the control of the entertainment division. Here’s what that gets you

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/05/23/13/47/but-can-they-tapdance/

Bonus item: “Jeff Gannon’s” highly unusual WH access (thanks to Doug Kellner for the link)

http://counterpunch.org/leupp05212005.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 @ 7:28 AM

 
MATTERS OF INTERPRETATION

This is a new one. Instead of apologizing for a clearly offensive remark, say you “regret the interpretation” of your remark

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/05/22/fox.blacks.ap/index.html

Looks like Condi is finally getting the hang of the Republican political style

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31232-2005Mar13.html
"I don't have any desire to run for president, I don't intend to, I won't do it," she said on ABC's "This Week." "I don't know how many ways to say 'No.'”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7173024/
DR. RICE: Tim, I don't want to run for president of the United States.

MR. RUSSERT: "I will not run"?

DR. RICE: I do not intend to run for--no. I will not run for president of the United States. How is that? I don't know how many ways to say "no" in this town. I really don't.

MR. RUSSERT: Period? Period? I will not run as president of the United States.

DR. RICE: I have no intention. I don't want to run.

MR. RUSSERT: "I will not run."

DR. RICE: I think people who run are great. I don't want to run.

MR. RUSSERT: That is a Shermanesque statement?

DR. RICE: Shermanesque statement.

MR. RUSSERT: You're done. You're out.

DR. RICE: I'm done.

MR. RUSSERT: There's news.

DR. RICE: I hope not.

MR. RUSSERT: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who just said she will never run for president, correct?

DR. RICE: Tim, why do you keep pressing me to make these statements?

MR. RUSSERT: Well, because if you're secretary of state, will it affect your ability...

DR. RICE: I don't want to run for president of United States. I have no intention of doing so. I don't think I will be president of the United States ever. Is that good enough?

MR. RUSSERT: And you will never run?

DR. RICE: I don't intend to run.

MR. RUSSERT: But it's different.

DR. RICE: I won't run.

MR. RUSSERT: Oh, we got it.

DR. RICE: All right. There you go.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/05/22/rice_wants_to_be_drafted_for_white_house_bid.html
Washington Whispers says "political associates" of Secretary of State Condi Rice "are stirring the 2008 presidential pot on her behalf. . . [T]hey're pushing her name out there. . . She definitely wants to be president. She wants to be drafted."

New Tom DeLay ad

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/22/122852/179
"The sharks are circling," says the ad, showing an underwater view of an approaching fish with jaws at the ready. "The media, the liberals, they're in a frenzy. Last year, they went after President Bush. . .

[NB: Uhh, I think they call that “an election”?]

. . . Now, they're after Tom DeLay and the free-market values he defends.""

[NB: Yep, that’s the problem. Vicious opponents fabricating scandal out of Mr. DeLay’s completely innocent flouting of House ethics rules. Once again we see the principle of politics: when you can’t defend the guilty, attack the accusers]

Speaking of which, I was over in England when MP George Galloway was here defending himself on charges he abused the oil for food program. Apparently he ripped a big hole in the Republican-led committee, especially its chair, Norm Coleman (R-MN)

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0517-35.htm
"Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf.

"Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice. . .

"Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.”

Here’s how the British press covered it

http://www.sundayherald.com/49803
If the indignant Brit wanted his day on the hill, they thought, why not? Big mistake.

Someone forgot to brief them on the fact that Galloway is possessed of the rhetorical gifts of an Edwardian grandee. Someone also forgot, or didn’t care, about all the demonstrable stupidity that produced the excuses for the Iraq war. Stupid is as stupid does.

Galloway took them to pieces. It was, by any measure, an extraordinary display. Norm looked like a man stunned to discover what free speech can do when you let the genie out of the bottle. The senator even seemed bemused that Galloway could speak easily and at length without notes. The quantity of facts overwhelmed the stately self-regard of America’s temple to democracy.

But here’s the punch line: the Senate now has pulled Galloway’s testimony (only his, of all the testimony it heard) from its web site

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_22_atrios_archive.html#111678851109557905

Hmm. . . .looks like Hamid Karzai thought we MEANT it when we put him in charge

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/22/214742/329
Mr. Karzai underscored cooperation with the United States, but also insisted that Afghans' sense of independence and self-reliance was growing. "No Afghan is a puppet, you know," he said in a Fox News interview. "There is a stronger ownership of the Afghan government and the Afghan people now."

More on poppy eradication: http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/drug_policy_/2005/05/the_yawn_afghan_poppy_eradication_program.php

Oh, great, now EVERYBODY hates us

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005/05/us-accuses-britain-over-afghanistans.html
American officials have accused Britain of being "substantially responsible" for the failure to make more progress in eradicating heroin production in Afghanistan, said a classified document published yesterday. . . The document accused President Hamid Karzai of a failure of leadership, by offering only ineffective backing to the campaign.

WTF? A “new offensive” in Baghdad?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/22/213658/861

Why haven’t the flagrant lies of the Bush administration to justify the war in Iraq received greater scrutiny and criticism? Here’s one big reason: the craven failure of the Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, especially their erstwhile leader, Jay Rockefeller (D – WV), who allowed themselves to be repeatedly screwed over by the chair, Pat Roberts (R- KS). Here is object lesson #432 for the Dems: accommodation and compromise gets you NOTHING with these people. Those days of respect and comity are long gone

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_22.php#005725
It certainly comes as no surprise to me that such a report would be incomplete and in some ways misleading. Certain highly sensitive subjects might be passed over for legitimate national security reasons and even authors who, as a general matter, wanted to keep the public informed, might shade the truth in some particulars.

But when I read the report's treatment of the topics that I'd gotten to know about in some detail I was genuinely surprised at how much it was not only misleading but how much almost the entire presentation of the facts was quite consciously engineered to give the reader precisely the opposite impression of what actually happened.

The level of mendacity was even more surprising because the report was signed off on by both the committee Republicans and the committee Democrats. And, no, I'm not saying that Democrats are intrinsically any less capable of bamboozlement than Republicans. But in this case they very much did have antagonistic political interests. And it wasn't clear to me why those political interests if nothing else would not have made them less willing to go along with such a whitewash of what happened.

I guess it was probably the same reason the Dems let themselves get scammed by Sen. Roberts with the long-awaited second-half of the committee's investigation (the one set to look at how the administration politicized and manipulated the intelligence), which he blew off once the election was safely over.

More: http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/05/the_mysterious_.html

Which leads us to the latest daily installment on the “compromise” on judicial nominations. The terms actually seem to be getting WORSE for the Dems with each passing day. Look: the Christian Right will not allow Frist et al. to make any compromise which is actually a real compromise. Yet serious people seem to still think this is a serious possibility

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010793.html

http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2005/05/back_from_the_n.html

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/05/22/one_last_chance_to_avert_showdown.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/opinion/22brooks.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-outlook23may23,1,215347.column
Frist is actively discouraging a deal.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/22/AR2005052200950.html
Reid also has named key Democrats as emissaries to the three Republicans that both sides consider the swing voters. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, is working on Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the panel and a co-sponsor with Leahy of a complicated asbestos bill working its way through the Senate. Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) is assigned to Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) has been teamed with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). Warner chairs the Armed Services Committee, and Collins chairs the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee; Levin and Lieberman are the ranking Democrats on those panels.

Mark Kleiman explains why the “constitutional option” is actually unconstitutional

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/05/cheating_ii.php
The "nuclear option" isn't changing the rules in the middle of the game: it's outright cheating.

The Senate rules can be changed, but doing so requires a two-thirds majority, which the Republicans don't have. So the plan is to have Vice-President Cheney, as President of the Senate, rule that the existing Senate rules are unconstitutional, and that the Constitutional provision that judges be appointed with "the advice and consent of the Senate" requires that a judge be confirmed as long as a simple majority of the Senate wants him confirmed. (Logically, that would seem to imply that no judicial nominee, or other nominee, could be held up in committee, but let that pass.)

But that ruling is blatantly false. The Constitution says nothing about each judicial nominee's being entitled to a floor vote. The Constitution does, explicitly, give the Senate the power to make its own rules. (Article 1, Section 5, Subsection 2.) If it's unconstitutional to use the filibuster to create an effective supermajority rule for judicial nominations, it must be equally unconstitutional to use the filibuster, or the budget rules, to create effective supermajority rules for legislation (since the Constitution specifies supermajorities for conviction on impeachment and for veto overrides).

Never before in the history of the Republic has a Vice-President used the power of the chair to rewrite the rules of the Senate, perhaps because never before has there been a Senate majority so partisan as to value party advantage over institutional prerogative. In making that ruling, Vice-President Cheney will be acting unconstitutionally. He will be blatantly violating his oath of office, as will every Senator who votes to sustain his action. . .

And am I the only one who finds it surprising that the unconstitutionality of the "nuclear option" hasn't gotten more attention?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006356.php
[T]he danger is an appeal to the Supreme Court. Normally, the Supreme Court is unwilling to interfere with internal congressional rules, but if the presiding officer makes a ruling based on a specifically constitutional interpretation, isn't it possible that they might be willing to get involved? And since this interpretation seems prima facie dubious, it might well get overturned.

The Jack Abramoff web of scandal ensnares Grover Norquist (oh, this could be good)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/23/politics/23norquist.html

For the Dems, changing their national fortunes depends on state-by-state fights. Here is the state of the states

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/5/22/13111/4457

NARAL backs Chafee (R – RI): the debate

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/23/3371/25466
Armando has rightly taken NARAL to task for their endorsement of Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee. NARAL was one of the groups that fully opposed anti-abortion Democrat Jim Langevin's short bid for the Senate seat. . . Nevermind that Langevin would've crushed Chafee and gotten us one seat closer to a Democratic-led Senate. And a Democratic-led Senate wouldn't ever let any abortion legislation see the light of day. But NARAL, myopic fools that they are, think Chafee is a better bet, despite his vote for Trent Lott, Bill Frist, and their allegiance to the James Dobson, American Taliban agenda.

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3272
Look, I've been following this NARAL nightmare over at Kos and this is where I come down on it. An anti-abortion Democrat as part of the overall pro-choice Democratic majority will not act in a way that will outlaw abortion. Harry Reid opposes abortion. If by some remarkable turn of events we take back the Senate in 2006, will Majority Leader Harry Reid introduce parental notification legislation and a host of other measures designed to punish poor women in order to make points with white men? Would Harry Reid, had he been majority leader since 2002, ever have proposed and pushed the ban on late-term abortions? Hell no.

A pro-choice Republican, however, as part of the overall anti-abortion Republican majority, will give Frist and his Dobson Militia the backing they need to take steps that will eventually outlaw abortion in this country, up to and including the confirmation of Supreme Court justices who will vote to overturn Roe. NARAL is acting in service to its principles in one particular race but the group isn't seeing the whole board here. The Republicans are playing chess and NARAL is playing tag blindfolded.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_22_atrios_archive.html#111684067166003512
This seems to be the hot topic in the liberal blogosphere but I can't really muster up strong feelings on the subject. But, I do think the power of single interest groups is overrated. If NARAL "drove" Langevin out of the RI race then that says more about Langevin than NARAL, I think. Yes, there are examples of single issue interest groups shooting their causes in the foot at times but to me NARAL's endorsement of Chafee (post-Langevin dropping out) is really an example of a good use of an opportunity to prove their necessary non-partisan bona fides in a way which won't have much of an impact on the election itself. . .

Howard Dean supporters = godless heathens. What the HELL is happening to political analysis in this country?

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/05/22/11/15/smackdown/

You go, Kevin

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006354.php
This is like watching Darkness at Noon in real life. Newsweek made a small error in a 300-word blurb a couple of weeks ago, and since then the right-wing media hate machine, like a jackal sensing a rare opportunity for blood, has somehow managed to convince them they bear responsibility for riots in Afghanistan that were staged by extremists who obviously used the Newsweek article as nothing more than pretext. . . This is really pissing me off. For the record, let's recap what we've learned over the past year or so. . .

Newsweek and the rest of the media need to get up off their knees and start fighting back. They've done enough apologizing.

[NB: Besides, Newsweek was right: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-koran22may22,0,3328867.story]

Unfortunately, instead of getting up off its knees Newsweek this week prostrates itself even further

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010807.html
In the upcoming issue of Newsweek, Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas have a new article on detainee claims of Koran mishandling by officials at Guantanamo. It refers only to Pentagon documents - incident logs created by guards and/or other military personnel. The article reports the Pentagon's conclusion, that none of the log entries reporting mishandling of the Koran were credible. . . Isikoff totally ignores claims made by released detainees. . . Isikoff writes that a released detainee's claim of Koran abuse contained in a lawsuit may have been a misperception on the part of the detainee. . .

So, the Bush administration is on record that they are scrupulously sensitive to Moslem sensitivities and would NEVER abuse the Koran or feed into the perception that we are engaged in some kind of Modern Crusade against Islam. So what is the Dept of Defense thinking about in posting this picture on their web site?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/dod-web-site-jokes-of-christian.html

“Custer Battles” (what a name) – a golden oldie on PBD

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/international/middleeast/22reconstruct.html

In Ohio, just say Noe

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/more-oh-gop-coingate.html
This thing gets more and more corrupt with every passing day. In today's Toledo Blade we learn that Tom Noe pretty much gave $850,000 in Ohio state money to a bankrupt colleague, Mark Chrans. It's good to be able to throw around public dollars to your friends. . . There is a big growing story here about how out of control the Ohio GOP has become. The actions taken by Tom Noe, who is the ultimate GOP fundraiser in Ohio, and others associated with this case show a complete and utter disdain for the law or good public policy. And, think about it, if they are this brazen, what else is out there?

Oooooh, ouch

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005/05/shrub-class-what-kind-of-man-sends-his.html
What kind of man sends his wife out to face a dangerous foreign mob but is too chicken sh-t himself to face a roomful of average Americans who haven't been screened in advance?

Seriously: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/did-laura-bushs-visit-almost-trigger.html
[T]he event sounded a little more sensitive than you might read in the AP version of the story.

"If the police hadn't stepped in," a Palestinian employee of the US consulate-general told The Independent, "there would have been a massacre. The Muslim officials didn't do anything to stop the protesters. If they'd got any closer, the American security men would have shot them."

http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/is-it-georges-fault-laura-bush-heckled.html
I blame her husband George for putting her in this danger. . .

GOP rift over stem cells widens (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=24921

Hardened criminals

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_22_atrios_archive.html#111681938826803178
Scores of convicted rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in New York have been getting Viagra paid by Medicaid for the last five years, the state's comptroller said Sunday.

Walter Jones (R-NC), Mr. “Freedom Fries,” now regrets his support for the war

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_22_atrios_archive.html#111683706397824798

Bonus item: In Florida, the dragnet closes around a major illegal drug buyer

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/4515933/detail.html
Limbaugh acknowledged his addiction to pain medication in October 2003, blaming it on severe back pain.

[NB: Addiction may be an excuse for self-medicating, but not for this:

http://www.nydailynews.com/10-02-2003/front/story/122839p-110349c.html
Talk-radio titan Rush Limbaugh is being investigated for allegedly buying thousands of addictive painkillers from a black-market drug ring

Just take his word for it:

http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/10/1652834_comment.php
"Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."]

***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 @ 6:07 AM

 
ONE LINERS

(But read the whole articles)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_05_15_digbysblog_archive.html#111669111263561180
[Digby] It looks to me as if the best way to convince Bush and his followers to support stem cell research is to propose that we only use arab embryos.

In Aghanistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/international/asia/22abuse.html
Despite autopsy findings of homicide and statements by soldiers that two prisoners died after being struck by guards at an American military detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, Army investigators initially recommended closing the case without bringing any criminal charges, documents and interviews show.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/21/14403/4797
President Hamid Karzai called on Saturday for control of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and demanded the United States take strong action against soldiers who abuse prisoners, following a report of alleged maltreatment of detainees at the main U.S. base here.

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010776.html

Karzai stands up to Bush Co. and guess what happens next? Just like clockwork, here comes the horse’s head. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/international/asia/22afghan.html
United States officials warned this month in an internal assessment that an American-financed poppy eradication program aimed at curtailing Afghanistan's huge heroin trade had been ineffective, in part because President Hamid Karzai "has been unwilling to assert strong leadership."

“Fickle” is too slight a word for it

http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/jun172004/f3.asp
[June 17, 2004] Afghan President Hamid Karzai was welcomed as a hero by the Bush administration and promised that this time the US would not abandon Afghanistan.

Civil war on the horizon in Iraq

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/21/93738/7597
[WP] Weeping and raising open hands to the sky, a Sunni Arab clerical leader announced an extraordinary closing of Sunni mosques across Baghdad on Friday to protest killings that some have blamed on militias allied with Iraq's new Shiite-led government.

http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/sadrists-clash-with-police-in.html
[Juan Cole] The US public has no idea how bad things are in Iraq, or what is really going on there. . .

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1400
[Reuters] Washington is far behind in plans to pump $21 billion into Iraq’s reconstruction, bogged down by an insurgency that has killed hundreds of contractors and diverted funds to security, a US official said on Saturday.

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010784.html
It's been more than two years since we invaded Iraq. How are the Iraqis doing? Not so good . .

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4569103.stm

Why they hate us (thanks to Athenae for the link)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/opinion/22rich.html
[Frank Rich] The administration has been so successful at bullying the news media in order to cover up its own fictions and failings in Iraq that it now believes it can get away with pinning some 17 deaths on an errant single sentence in a 10-sentence Periscope item that few noticed until days after its publication.

Four permanent U.S. bases in Iraq: they said it, they meant it, they’re doing it

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1404

[NB: to replace the bases in Saudi Arabia they quietly evacuated to placate Al Qaeda and other fundamentalists after 9-11]

Did you get what you paid for? (thanks to Jan Pieterse for the link)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/05/18/MN251738.DTL
The Department of Defense, already infamous for spending $640 for a toilet seat, once again finds itself under intense scrutiny, only this time because it couldn't account for more than a trillion dollars in financial transactions, not to mention dozens of tanks, missiles and planes.

No pictures, no problem (thanks to Megan Boler for the original link)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-iraqphoto21may21,1,5119073.story
A review of six prominent U.S. newspapers and the nation's two most popular newsmagazines during a recent six-month period found almost no pictures from the war zone of Americans killed in action.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006349.php
The editors interviewed for the story. . . made it clear that public reaction was intensely negative on the occasions when they did print pictures of dead or wounded U.S. soldiers.

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/05/blame_the_messe.html
This seems to me to be of a piece with the fact that there really is strong grassroots support for the notion that news organizations printing accounts of torture taking place in American detention facilities is a bigger problem than the reality of torture and abuse taking place. . .

More: http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/5/21/135627/380

Principled conservatism (yes, there still is such a thing – thanks to Kos for the link)

http://www.balloon-juice.com/archives/005188.html
[John Cole] Reporting on abuses that have been committed by our troops, in our name, is not anti-military. . .

Who is steering Frist and the Senate Repubs?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/weyrich-no-compromise-you-little.html
On Friday, reports spread among social conservative groups that have pushed hardest for the rule change that Republican aides were preparing them for a possible deal, officials of three groups said. . . "I immediately contacted Frist's office," said Paul Weyrich, founder of the Free Congress Foundation, who said he heard the reports from others. "They said flat-out it is just not true, period." Mr. Weyrich added, "I don't know if they have got the votes or not, but they are not involved in any compromise."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush22may22,1,1169641.story
Leahy. . . pleaded with Bush to help resolve the bitterly partisan Senate impasse over his judicial nominations. . . "We can settle this in an hour," Leahy said, citing three other leading senators he thought could work together on an agreement. But Bush wouldn't hear of it, the lawmaker said.

[NB: Of course, behind the scenes the WH is pressing furiously to keep this issue alive]

I’ve been harping on Owen and Rogers-Brown, but here’s the whole lineup of “highly qualified” judges Bush is trying to foist on us all

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/20/7_judges/
An assessment of the nominees' records suggests that all consider government regulation a central problem, while they view private enterprise and property a bedrock constitutional right.

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/05/21/1-all-others-are-2-or-lower/
You’ll never guess who was judged to be the worst Supreme Court Justice in Texas. . .

Judicial filibusters unprecedented?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/21/185744/298
There are plenty of ways, in the past, that even a single Republican Senator could derail a judicial nomination indefinitely. . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006350.php
[Kevin Drum] I'll repeat a deal I've suggested several times over the past couple of years, most recently in January: return all the other rules to the state they were in when Bill Clinton was president and Democrats would probably be willing to forego use of the filibuster. Republicans have no one but themselves to blame for the current game of nuclear chicken they find themselves in.

Oh-oh

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001605_pf.html
Inside an airport police station, Swedish officers watched as the CIA operatives pulled out scissors and rapidly sliced off the prisoners' clothes, including their underwear. . . So began an operation the CIA calls an "extraordinary rendition," the forcible and highly secret transfer of terrorism suspects to their home countries or other nations where they can be interrogated with fewer legal protections.

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/05/a_voice_from_civilization.html
[I]n Sweden a parliamentary investigator who conducted a 10-month probe … recently concluded that the CIA operatives violated Swedish law by subjecting the prisoners to “degrading and inhuman treatment” and by exercising police powers on Swedish soil. . . “Should Swedish officers have taken those measures, I would have prosecuted them without hesitation for the misuse of public power and probably would have asked for a prison sentence,” the investigator, Mats Melin, said in an interview.

Big Brother alert

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/05/21/08/22/feeling-safer-yet/
A Bush administration proposal would grant the FBI broad authority to. . . direct postal officials to turn in names, addresses and other material on the outside of letters sent to or from people connected to foreign intelligence investigations.

What WAS Bolton doing with the NSA intercepts?

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000640.html
What TWN has just learned from a source -- a single source -- is that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is now looking into whether or not Bolton misused the super-secret information he retrieved from the intercepts.

If the government actually had to manage their budget like normal people

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/05/funding_social_security_obligations.php
[T]he government could fund Social Security by paying down enough of its publicly-held debt now, while the OASDI surpluses are rolling in, to be in a good position to borrow later, when OASDI is running deficits. That's not technically "funding," but it's the functional equivalent, just as a family can save by paying down its mortgage.

Wasted money

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/21/AR2005052100778.html
[T]he government's internal audits have repeatedly questioned the cost and effectiveness of the equipment and security systems bought from corporations that received a torrent of money under loosened regulations, limited oversight and tight congressional deadlines

Decapitated

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-captains22may22,1,4160143.story
Last year, Army lieutenants and captains left the service at an annual rate of 8.7% — the highest since 2001.

At Calvin College

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010786.html
President Bush "courted his Christian base" in a speech at Michigan's Calvin College, only to find that not all Christians are of like mind. About a third of the Christian college's 300 faculty members signed a letter criticizing the values underlying the administration's policies. . . Some of the graduating students wore buttons bearing the phrase "God is not a Democrat or a Republican."

Have you read The Da Vinci Code?

http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/001893.html
But Sokolove passed here on a chance to mention why Santorum happened to be in Rome: He was flown there by the academic arm of the ultra-conservative Catholic group Opus Dei. The event was to honor Saint Josemaria Escriva, the Opus Dei founder whose life and subsequent canonization under Pope John Paul II has been shrouded in controversy.

I know you will think this is a joke – it would be a pretty funny joke – but it’s not a joke

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_15_atrios_archive.html#111672036149352162
The Office of Public Health and Science (OPHS) of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) announces the availability of funds for FY 2005 and requests applications for grants for public awareness campaigns on embryo adoption.

More: http://susiemadrak.com/2005/05/21/22/07/under-the-banner-of-heaven/

The Associated Press channels Fox News

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1403
Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean, who famously refused to prejudge Osama bin Laden's guilt, is standing by his judgment that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay may deserve jail time for allegations of corruption.

Coming attractions on 60 Minutes

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_15.php#005724
If you're going to be anywhere near a TV on Sunday evening, don't miss 60 Minutes. They have a segment they're running about the millions of dollars the federal government is spending to convince children and adolescents that condoms aren’t very effective at preventing STDs or pregnancy. You may be familiar with the general topic. But the interviews with Bush administration officials and those they're funding will really take your breath away.

Sunday talk show lineup

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/21/213014/817
Meet the Press: Howard Dean

Late Edition: General Clark vs Richard Perle; President Hamid Karzai; Lindsey Graham with Ben Nelson; Barham Salih, Iraqi minister of planning and development; Mohammed Al-Sabah, Kuwaiti foreign minister; U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen

Face the Nation: Mitch McConnell vs Dick Durbin

This Week: Lieberman with George Allen; Duncan Hunter with retired Capt. Rosemary Mariner; Dana Reeve of the Christopher Reeve Foundation with Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of evangelist Bill Graham, on Stem Cell Research.

Foxx Propaganda: John McCain; Mitt Romney; Boomer Esiason, former pro football player on steroids.

Bonus item: ombudsman (noun): “An official who investigates complaints and mediates fair settlements” (wiktionary)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/21/194538/201
[Daniel Okrent, outgoing NYT ombudsman] Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults. Maureen Dowd was still writing that Alberto R. Gonzales "called the Geneva Conventions 'quaint' " nearly two months after a correction in the news pages noted that Gonzales had specifically applied the term to Geneva provisions about commissary privileges, athletic uniforms and scientific instruments. Before his retirement in January, William Safire vexed me with his chronic assertion of clear links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, based on evidence only he seemed to possess. . .

[Armando] Oh, by the way, notice who escapes Okrent's criticism? Why our good friend David Brooks - the lyingest liar the New York Times has ever published on the Op-Ed page. Okrent is an unbelievable hack. . . I have detailed Brooks' lies in a tiresome number of posts. A quick search will reveal them to anyone interested.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/21/232642/985
My name is Byron Calame and I'm the new public editor. While Daniel Okrent doesn't formally put the title in my hands until Monday, the flood of reader e-mail criticizing The Times's coverage of the so-called Downing Street Memo has moved me to lease some space in his Web Journal a few days ahead of schedule. . . The Times's coverage. . . languished until this morning when a Times article from Washington focused on the reaction to the memo there. This has left Times readers pretty much in the dark until today. . . It's just unfortunate that today's Washington perspective, much of it based on reporting that could have been done days ago, didn't land in readers' hands sooner.

***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 @ 7:12 AM

 
A HOUSE DIVIDED

Okay, so you have a script for the presentation of a watershed moment in American politics – the start of a process that will, if successful, transform the face of the Senate, and the judiciary. Who do you pick to throw down the gauntlet? A person whose integrity and gravitas are unquestioned? Or. . .

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/cornyn-who-justified-violence-against.html
SENATOR JOHN CORNYN: "I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that's been on the news and I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in - engage in violence." [Senate Floor, 4/4/05]

[WP] Cornyn rejected the idea that proceeding with a de facto rule change to end filibusters against judicial nominees would lead to a "constitutional crisis." He added, "This is a controversy, a disagreement, not a crisis." Once the matter is resolved by a majority vote, he said, "we should get back to work.". . . In a floor speech preceding the cloture motion, Cornyn was critical of the bipartisan group of more than a dozen senators who have been trying to craft a compromise that would ensure votes on most of the contested nominees in return for preservation of the filibuster for use in "extraordinary circumstances.". . . The Texas senator said a resolution of the dispute should not be based on "some bogus suggestion, some deal cut by a handful of senators," that would "throw some nominees overboard" while leaving the main issue unresolved: the potential use of the filibuster to block a future Supreme Court nominee. . . "Now is the time to resolve this issue once and for all," Cornyn said.

[NB: The future face of American politics. . . ]

Cornyn’s pooh-poohing aside, this is an awesome, terrible passing in American politics. Look at the House of Representatives and imagine a Senate also controlled by majority fiat

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_15.php#005717
Another point, for anyone who's actually interested in the constitution, its history and its future, is the degree to which this whole operation is quite clearly being engineered from the White House. This isn't just about the internal workings of the senate. It is also about, indeed principally about, the executive clipping the wings of the Congress, part of the parliamentarization of the American government under the President Bush that we discussed back on November 5th.

http://buzzflash.com/
GOP Ready to Further It's One-Party State Control of America In "Nuclear Option" Showdown. It's All About Creating An Unaccountable, Permanent Republican America, Kind of Like the Old Soviet Union for the Benefit of the Wealthy and Far Out Christian Right.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-senate21may21,1,7579474.story
The rancorous Capitol debate over confirmation of federal judges is not just a power struggle between Republicans and Democrats. It also is a pivotal moment for the Senate as an institution. . . If a showdown over President Bush's nominees goes forward as planned next week, it would mark one more significant step in the Senate's transformation from a clubby bastion of bipartisanship into a free-wheeling political arena as raucous as the House of Representatives.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/20/221714/726
Reid has been blunt about the position the Democrats will take if the rules are violated; they will simply start ignoring the traditional role of the majority party, and introduce their own legislative agenda. They will also begin consistently denying unanimous consent for procedural motions that bring Republican legislation to the floor or allow committee work to take place -- thus grinding the Bush agenda to a screeching halt for the remainder of the Congress. Far from being a "shut down" of the Senate, however, this plan would simply enforce remaining rules in a way that fully demonstrates how the traditional sense of negotiation and sometimes-enforced goodwill in the Senate has served America for the last two centuries. If the minority party is to be afforded none of the traditional legitimacy that has permeated the last two hundred years of Senate history, after all, there seems little point in returning comity in exchange.

Yesterday I speculated that Hagel was the turning vote. Today the speculation is that it’s John Warner who holds the key

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9696

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/20/10116/6083

If Senators were voting their conscience, and principle: 62-38

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/20/175056/511
And yet, we are here. We are here primarily because moderate Republican Senators have lost all control of their own party, a marginalization that began when Rove's smear machine eviscerated McCain with racial attacks against his own children in South Carolina. Some, like Specter, seem effectively neutered at this point by Frist's threats against their own dwindling power. Others, like Hagel, Lugar and Alexander, seem more than begrudgingly willing to abandon their well-spoken, deep institutional values for a very fleeting party gain.

If there is anyone who would gain from the successful defeat (whether through compromise or vote) of the nuclear option, it is the more moderate Senate Republicans. Pulling their own party from the brink of the James Dobsons and Grover Norquists of the world would help to re-establish their own legitimacy; the Republican party itself is seeing devestating poll numbers on this issue, with most Americans fully aware of the difference between "reasonable" judges and those on the fringes, and the difference between following basic rules and breaking them.

If people were serious about finding a compromise, what would make sense?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_15.php#005716

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/20/13721/5639

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006513

But why a sensible compromise won’t happen: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006519

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010771.html

In the nuclear option, Cheney, sitting as presiding officer, would make a constitutional ruling from the chair to allow a vote to change Senate rules that is itself a violation of Senate rules (ruling in effect that the Senate’s own Rule 22 is unconstitutional). Hence this is called (by the GOP) the “constitutional option.” But here’s a good question: since Cheney has clearly already decided to rule in this way, isn’t it reasonable to question him about the rationale for such a decision? After all, we expect constitutional judgments to be based on reason, not just politics

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/05/questions_the_veep_should_answeer.html

Lame, extremely lame (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://mccarthy.vg/articles/05/05/20/1627200.shtml
Interesting MSNBC story by Tom Curry. One sentence caught my eye. The story concerns the filibuster of Abe Fortas in 1968, which began on or around Sept. 26 of that year. Curry writes:

There are sharp differences between the 1968 fight and any Supreme Court nomination Bush would make this summer: Johnson was an enormously unpopular lame duck. . .

Johnson's popularity, September 1968: 42% and rising
Bush's popularity, last week: 43% and falling

By the way, completely missing in this discussion is that the Senate vetting process (i.e., “give the President what he asks for”) has lost its capacity to actually review and judge the quality of these judicial nominees. Clarence Thomas should have been voted down, not because of Anita Hill, but because he lacked experience and gave little evidence of Supreme-court level judicial reasoning (which has become strikingly evident since he’s been on the bench). With Owen and Brown – ideology aside – you’re talking about people who have made goofy, ill-thought decisions that are often criticized even by their Republican colleagues and/or get reversed on appeal. Plus, in Owen’s case at least, perhaps corrupt

http://www.liberaloasis.com/archives/051505.htm#052005
More than $500,000 (37 percent) of the $1.4 million that Owen raised for her two Supreme Court campaigns came from lawyers and litigants who had cases in her courtroom.

Owen ranks No. 2 on the court in the share of campaign money that she took from these docket donors.

Owen’s 11 biggest litigant-donors (including Enron Corp., Farmers Insurance and Dow Chemical) appeared in her courtroom 26 times.

While these big docket donors prevailed an enviable 77 percent of the time before the court as a whole, Owen was even kinder—favoring them 85 percent of the time.

ANOTHER Bush counterterrorism chief quits (that’s number six, if you’re counting). Why hasn’t anyone asked why they can’t keep good people in this crucial post?

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/05/counterterroris.html

Bush plays filosofer

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/bush-will-veto-stem-cell-bill.html
"I've made it very clear to the Congress that the use of federal money, taxpayers' money, to promote science which destroys life in order to save life -- I'm against that. And therefore if the bill does that, I will veto it."

[NB: Now, apart from the intentionally ambiguous definition of “life” (is a fertilized cell a “life”?) and apart from the blatant hypocrisy of destroying life callously in his death penalty decisions and war policies – there is the simple fact that even within the domain of stem cell research, his earlier “compromise” already approved the use of stem cells for research. So where is the moral line, and at what point has it already been crossed? Of course, this is about nothing except posturing for the increasingly crucial theocon base that Bush must hold on to, and which is driving more and more Republican policy. What’s interesting about this case is that it pits the religious right against the pro-capital Republicans, as the research and commercial possibilities of stem cells are becoming more apparent – as in the recent story out of South Korea. The U.S. is losing valuable time in the race to develop new medical treatments, etc. Will the bill pass anyway, and will his veto be over-ridden?]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/politics/20cnd-bush.html
The Republican sponsor of the House bill, Representative Mike Castle of Delaware, said today he was not dissuaded by the veto threat, and believes the measure will pass when it comes up for a vote Tuesday. And the sponsor of an identical Senate measure, Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, vowed to "bring the matter to a head" in his Senate subcommittee, which controls federal funding for medical research.

"The United States is being left farther behind every day, this morning by South Korea," said Mr. Specter. He added, "I don't like veto threats and I don't like comments about overriding the veto, but this issue is going to be the focal point of my subcommittee."

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/20/82352/0192
[WP] But after Castle and other moderate Republicans angered conservatives by sponsoring polls in their districts on the issue, Hastert and Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said they would pair the bill with a separate measure to encourage umbilical cord stem cell research. . . DeGette on Thursday said the GOP leaders' plan was "a weak attempt to divert support from our bill."

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3263
[Juan Cole] A blastocyte is not a human being and it is not a person. It is a blastocyte. It may or may not develop into a human being. Large numbers of fertilized eggs never get attached to the uterine wall and just get flushed down the toilet. Shall we hold a funeral for each of them?

More on the incoherence of Bush’s position: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006528

http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/courses/ed253a/2005/05/sciences-moral-guidance-bush-style.php

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/05/oy.html

Defending Newsweek (it’s about time)

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006346.php
[Kevin Drum] I'm annoyed at Newsweek for knuckling under to the Pentagon over its Koran desecration piece, I'm annoyed at the reflexive press bashers for piling on even though Newsweek's reporters did nothing that every other reporter in Washington hasn't done a dozen times before, and I'm annoyed at my fellow liberals, who have been tepid in defense of Newsweek because the piece in question was written by Michael Isikoff, against whom we are all expected to hold a lifetime grudge because of his treatment of Bill Clinton.

It's time to grow up. If we want a vigorous press, that means going after thinly sourced stories. It means occasionally making mistakes. And it means sometimes our side takes it in the shorts too. That's life. But it's a helluva lot better than the alternative.

A revealing quote: http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=428&row=0
“It's appalling that this story got out there," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. . .

Saddam’s underwear photo: mistake? renegade military personnel? dark ops? Whatever it is, it’s illegal, and the Bush people are running away from it as fast as they can

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3259
[T]he mass-circulation daily quotes US military sources as saying they handed over the photos in the hope of dealing a body blow to the resistance in Iraq. . . "Saddam is not superman or God, he is now just an ageing and humble old man. It's important that the people of Iraq see him like that to destroy the myth," the source was quoted as saying.

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3259
Q Well, the administration has said that the Newsweek controversy, the alleged allegations that somebody stuffed pieces of the Koran down a toilet in Guantanamo, had a serious impact and people did die from that. Does the President feel that this could have some kind of serious impact, too?. . .

Q Is it fair to say that the President was angry about the leaking of these photos of Saddam Hussein?. . .

Q Is the U.S. government apologizing for this picture of Saddam Hussein?. . .

Q Can I ask you one question on the photo of Saddam. Are there rules for military guards that they cannot bring cameras when they're on duty at the prison?. . .

Q In your mind, in the President's mind, is there a difference between these images and the images which this government broadcast around the world after his capture, of his hair being inspected and his mouth being inspected by a physician?. . .

MR. DUFFY: There is, and I can get further details about why it's different. But the photos that were released today are a human being in custody, of a detainee, and they are possibly in clear violation of Geneva Convention guidelines. The photos that were released after Saddam Hussein's capture were within -- were within our guidelines under the Geneva Conventions, is my understanding.

Q I, for one, would be interested in how the administration views the distinction. Is that to say that a violation of the Convention is that these were -- there was an attempt to humiliate a prisoner here? Is that the idea -- you leak pictures of him in his -- you know, in a state of undress, and so forth?

MR. DUFFY: I'm not the international lawyer, but I think we can definitely get some more information about the differences, the distinction between the photographs that were released following his capture versus the ones we're talking about today.

Q If that could be sent out, I, for one, would be interested in that.

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006529

Oh, by the way, speaking of undressed photos (this is not a joke)

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/bush-to-dine-with-porn-star-so-not.html

[NB: For the umpteenth time, we ask, “what if Clinton did this”? Just imagine it.]

Why is the WH covering up the NSA intercepts that Bolton reviewed? I think we know the answer to that question

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000639.html

Noooooooo! Four Democrats could vote for Bolton (what, WHAT are they thinking?)

http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2005_5_20.html#7155E160

More: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000638.html

How much is the Iraq war costing, in real dollars, and what is it doing to the deficit? It’s even worse than you think

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/20/deficit/index.html

Militarily? Not good either

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1396

Of course, you have to read an international newspaper to learn about this

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010776.html
[Guardian] A leaked report on a military investigation into two killings of detainees at a US prison in Afghanistan has produced new evidence of connivance of senior officers in systematic prisoner abuse. The investigation shows the military intelligence officers in charge of the detention centre at Bagram airport were redeployed to Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003, while still under investigation for the deaths of two detainees months earlier. Despite military prosecutors' recommendations, the officers involved have yet to be charged.

Plame update

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20050520.html
[John Dean] A number of reporters have already voluntarily testified before the grand jury. But New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Mathew Cooper are not among them. In a recent column, I explained why the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia did not protect Miller and Cooper's ability to hide their sources - and why I believe the U.S. Supreme Court is very unlikely to step in. Someday soon, then, the grand jury is very likely to hear from Miller and Cooper - or else Miller and Cooper will opt for jail.

But beneath these legal issues, lies a mystery: Why has the investigation's focus fallen on them, in particular? Miller never wrote about the leak of Plame's identity; Cooper wrote about it well after Novak had included the leaked information in his column.

So these two would seem peripheral - but plainly, they are central. Why?. . .

For months, it has been rumored that Fitzgerald has found only a low-level leaker in the White House - one who seems not to have violated the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a crime to disclose an undercover CIA operative. But it is only criminal if the leaker knew the name was classified, and that the CIA sought to keep it classified. (A low-level person might not have had this knowledge.)

If so, that's odd. Remember, Novak credited two "senior" Administration sources. But let's suppose it's true. In that event, it is quite likely - and many lawyers following the case believe - that the investigation has shifted to possible charges of perjury and/or obstruction of justice, more than likely by big fish.

That would explain Judge Hogan's comment that the focus of the investigation, according to the government affidavit, has shifted. It would explain why a seasoned prosecutor has gone after Miller and Cooper, and why a number of federal judges have seen no problem in his doing so.

Finally, it would also explain why Cooper and Miller might now be central players: Their testimony may be needed to make a case of perjury or obstruction of justice. . .

Franklin update

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050606&s=rozen
[Laura Rozen] For a nondescript, middle-aged former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, Pentagon Iran desk officer Larry Franklin had the habit of showing up at critical and murky junctures of recent history. He was part of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, which provided much-disputed intelligence on Iraq; he courted controversial Iraqi exile politician Ahmad Chalabi, who contributed much of that hyped and misleading Iraq intelligence; and he participated with a Pentagon colleague and former Iran/contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar in a controversial December 2001 meeting in Rome--which, in a clear violation of US government protocol, was kept secret from the CIA and the State Department.

In all these endeavors, Franklin, 58, was hardly acting as a lone wolf. Rather, he was wired into a small network of like-minded Iran and Iraq hawks who lobbied fiercely inside and outside the Bush Administration for their policy positions, often in furious opposition to moderate bureaucrats in the State Department and the CIA. Because of their connections and status, the hawks were often successful in short-circuiting standard bureaucratic procedures and getting the attention of the White House. When the news first broke last summer that the FBI was investigating an alleged "Israeli mole" in the Pentagon--inaccurate, as it turned out--the chief suspect, Franklin, was portrayed as just one of 1,300 employees toiling anonymously under outgoing Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. In fact, Franklin was the Pentagon's top Iran desk officer. . .

Ohio. Rare coins. Massive corruption. Read on

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/another-day-another-blistering-article.html

That Tobin trial in New Hampshire: look at what his lawyers want prospective jurors to answer to

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_15.php#005718

The Frist connection: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_15.php#005721

Bonus item: oh, to hear the pillow talk

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/middleeast/20cnd-laura.html
Laura Bush said today that her husband should have been interrupted on a bicycle ride last week and told that an off-course plane had prompted a frantic evacuation of the capital. Her comments were the first in public from the White House to question the Secret Service's decision to keep President Bush in the dark. . . "Well, sure, I mean, I think he should have been interrupted," she said. . .

[NB: While she was potentially at risk – to say nothing about the rest of the government]

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3260&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Q Trent, what's the President's reaction to the First Lady saying she believes that, in fact, the President should have been interrupted during his bike ride when we had the plane scare at the White House? Does the President agree with the First Lady's assessment?

MR. DUFFY: The First Lady said that she has full confidence in the Secret Service, and so does the President. They do excellent work. They put their lives on the line each and every day to protect both the President and the First Lady, their families, the Vice President, Mrs. Cheney and their families. And that's all I have to say about it.

Q But the question is more, does he agree with the First Lady that he should have been interrupted, not whether he believes Secret Service does a good job.

MR. DUFFY: He agrees with the First Lady that the Secret Service does an outstanding job and they have the full confidence in the Secret Service.

***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).

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- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:14 AM

 
CAUGHT!

This is what blanket denials get you – it looks as if Newsweek has nothing to apologize for after all (but will this story get as much coverage?)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0505190306may19,1,278199.story
The International Committee of the Red Cross documented what it called credible information about U.S. personnel disrespecting or mishandling Korans at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and pointed it out to the Pentagon in confidential reports during 2002 and early 2003, an ICRC spokesman said Wednesday. . .

ICRC delegates, who have been granted access to the secretive camp since January 2002, gathered and corroborated enough similar, independent reports from detainees to raise the issue multiple times with Guantanamo commanders and with Pentagon officials, Schorno said in an interview Wednesday.

Following the ICRC's reports, the Defense Department command in Guantanamo issued almost three pages of detailed, written guidelines for treatment of Korans. . .

[NB: So, if the DoD took these accusations seriously enough to issue new guidelines, they must have taken place, right? QED]

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/5/19/17056/6677
Newsweek now claims that it contacted two defense department officials about the flushing story, neither of whom contradicted the story, before publication. Further, as Corrente has noted, these allegations have actually been in the public for a long time before they appeared in Newsweek. Quite frankly, I think that for the Pentagon to finally now step in and try to claim the story is false smells of blatant media manipulation ala the TANG memos last year. Shoot the messenger so we can ignore the message.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006341.php
Regarding Newsweek's Koran desecration story, editor Mark Whitaker says that "before deciding whether to publish it we approached two separate Defense Department officials for comment." Neither of these officials disputed the report.

Who were these officials? And if the Koran story was false, why weren't they willing to say so? That seems like odd behavior when presented with a story that everyone is now claiming was obviously irresponsible and incendiary.

Has anyone asked the Pentagon about this?

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006499
Eric Pfeiffer's "Beltway Buzz" has some good stuff on why the Pentagon didn't deny the flushed-Korans story (because there was reason to think it was true). . .

Mark Kleiman finds the money quote

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/lying_in_politics_/2005/05/whopper.php
Larry Di Rita, official Pentagon spokesman, May 17, responding to a question about desecration of the Koran:

Those types of allegations have not previously been -- there's -- we've not previously included that in any kind of previous investigations into detainee operations, because there haven't been credible allegations to that effect.

[Mark Kleiman] Remind me again why it's Newsweek's behavior that's supposed to be the scandal?

Oh yeah, I forgot: Newsweek was reporting news that we would prefer not be true.

That, of course, is completely unforgivable.

More: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/19/gitmo_abuse/index.html

More confirmation from Human Rights First

http://bodyandsoul.typepad.com/blog/2005/05/detainees_stori.html
Human Rights First. . . released a batch of recently declassified interviews with six Guantanamo detainees from Bahrain, about their treatment both at Guantanamo and in Afghanistan, that show a clear pattern of interrogators using people's faith as a weapon against them, in addition to physical abuse. Guards interfered with prayers, cursed Mohammed, placed shoes on top of the Koran, or threw it on the floor. They told detainees that there was a "holy war" against them. One guard told a prisoner that he beat him "because I'm Christian."

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010760.html

And in other news, new details on the brutality of prisoner mistreatment (makes electrodes on the genitals look like a. . . like a. . . .fraternity prank)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html
Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.

The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.

Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.

"Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"

At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

The story of Mr. Dilawar's brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point - and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. . .

Smells like victory

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005/05/joke-so-listen-this-is-so-great.html
So, listen, this is so great. You're going to laugh your ass off. So, there were these Iraqis, see, who live near the border and these foreign fighters kept coming over the border looking for trouble and strutting around the streets with their guns and stuff so the Iraqis decide to fight back. You with me so far? So, the local Iraqis set up roadblocks to stop them and starting burning down their safe houses and calling cousins in Baghdad to come and help drive them out.

Then, somebody had a bright idea: the Americans have a lot of guns; why don't we ask them to help us. And everybody agreed that was a good idea and they did.

Wait, it gets funnier. So the Marines go to help and they launch this Operation Matador thing that we read about in the papers and it's a huge success--body count of 125 "insurgents" and the Pentagon puts out a press release and the smell of napalm in the morning is everywhere and victory is just around the corner and everybody is really happy...except for the Iraqis who invited the Marines in in the first place. Turns out--this is so great--turns out that the Marines destroyed the local villagers' homes and killed everything that moved...including a whole bunch of the locals who invited them to come in the first place. Isn't that f--king hysterical?

Fafblog

http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2005/05/stop-newsweek.html
Stop Newsweek... Before It Kills Again!

Newsweek must be destroyed - for the sake of national security! Oh, dear readers, you may have believed it to be just an innocent newsweekly with an unnatural preoccupation for health features ("Your Liver: The New Urban Nightmare?"), but through such reliable sources such as the White House and some schmuck with a keyboard you will know the truth: that Newsweek has killed over a dozen Afghans with a toilet and will do it again unless it is stopped. But that's not all. The Great Toilet Stab-in-the-Back of '05 was merely the tip of the iceberg of Newsweek's many crimes against America.

The Medium Lobster has learned that while it was spreading lies about Korans at Guantanamo Bay, Newsweek managed to torture hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Afghanistan, killing dozens of them in the process. And apparently Newsweek has not been content to torture prisoners on its own. It has also kidnapped citizens of other countries and flown them to dictatorships to be tortured! The Medium Lobster has said it before and he will, no doubt, say it again: no blood for mainstream media.

If this were not enough, it has just come to my attention that Newsweek spread discredited rumors and outright lies to goad the United States into invading another country, with no justification and no plan for the occupation, costing tens of thousands of innocent lives. And not only has the lumbering dinosaur of legacy media turned to the callow slaughtering of innocents, but it hasn't even come up with an exit strategy! You can bet the plucky pajama-clad kids in the blogosphere would have us in and out of a war in a couple of months.

Newsweek - and the entire liberal media! - is responsible for smearing America's good name with the blood of innocents. This is a violation which must be answered for, and there is no answer for it but the replacement of the free press with the only entity pure enough and untainted enough to restore the image of America's government: America's government. The Medium Lobster can direct you to the torches and pitchforks.

Nuclear option: compromise? No compromise?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/tony-perkins-explains-one-more-time.html
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, rejected any talk of compromise on Wednesday. . . "Some of the Republican senators engage in this at their own political risk," Perkins said. "So much is riding on the courts. Someone that sells the American people short on this, they're going to have a hard time running for national office."

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/radical-right-hate-groups-not-happy.html
Radical right hate groups not happy until they control EVERYTHING. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/19/205658/165
[Armando] When we discuss the Nuclear Option, the Media and some other folks, of all political stripes, see the Dem position as somehow just typical partisanship. . . I think nothing could be further from the truth. There can be little doubt that the most favorable POLITICAL outcome for Dems is for Frist's Nuclear Option to narrowly succeed - most ideal would be Cheney casting the deciding vote. . .

The Republicans have ALWAYS hidden their dependence on the Extreme Right. But that dependence on the Extreme Right has now become total control of the Republican Party by Dobson & Co. . . Smart Republicans MUST know that Frist's Nuclear Option is, at the least, incredibly reckless politically. Not for Frist of course, whose chance at the Presidency lives or dies based on the result of this vote. But for the Republican Party.

More: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/19/mccain/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/19/filibuster.fight/index.html

[NB: It seems to me that this pas-de-deux over “compromise” is just a way for both sides to say that they pursued every alternative before the final showdown. It doesn’t seem like a deal either side could conceivably be willing to accept, and it guarantees another showdown the next time a controversial nominee comes forward – especially for the Supreme Court. In the end, I buy the argument that the Dems are willing for the Repubs to go nuclear, if they insist, because it gives them a strong “abuse of power” argument for future elections]

Vote counts

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006342.php
[Kevin Drum] The Carpetbagger suspects that Bill Frist is still a vote or two shy of victory in his effort to eliminate judicial filibusters by fiat:

If Frist brings the nuclear option to the floor and fails, his ability to lead is effectively over. He’ll have taken on the biggest risk for a Senate Majority Leader in recent history and, despite 55 Republican lawmakers in his caucus and the enthusiastic rabid support of the party base, Frist will have failed spectacularly. He’s already a lame-duck leader, but if the nuclear-option strategy falls apart, Frist may have to give up his leadership post.

Frist also can’t stall; the GOP base has told him in no uncertain terms that it’s now or never.

What about the possible six-by-six compromise, you ask? That, too, would be a disaster for Frist, not only because it would represent the failure of his nuclear-option strategy, but also because it would circumvent him altogether. The buzz is the deal isn’t going to happen anyway, but if it does, it’s the worst of all worlds for Frist — the filibuster rule remains in tact, nominees get left behind, and his leadership looks inept. (I’m opposed to the six-by-six deal, but the humiliation it would bring Frist makes it look a little better in my eyes.)

A lot of people forget this, but Bill Frist was, at first, a nuclear-option skeptic. Until last July, Frist didn’t think the plan would work and worried about the effect it would have on the Senate’s ability to function. Then he became Majority Leader, followed by the decision to run for president, followed by the realization that he had to keep the far-right happy. It’s been downhill for the guy ever since.

That sounds about right to me. This is high stakes poker for Frist, and who knows? In the end, it might come down to one or two senators who wouldn't mind derailing his presidential ambitions. They won't say that's their reason for voting against the nuclear option, but it's surely swirling around in the background.

Chuck Hagel goes over to the Dark Side (was this the final vote Frist needed?)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/19/162615/948

Words from the past

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/19/165437/047
Sirota digs up this quote from Don Nickles, former Republican senator from Oklahoma and long-time majority whip.

"I think it would be a mistake to eliminate all the rules of the Senate dealing with the filibuster...There's real wisdom in the fact that the Senate is a more deliberate body, that- not all legislation that we pass is good, and sometimes it makes good sense for us to look at it, and so, no, I wouldn't favor reducing the 60-vote margin to, basically, eliminate cloture or eliminate filibuster."

- Sen. Don Nickles, CNN, 1/5/95

And Nickles wasn't some "moderate" senator, either. Fact is, the filibuster is good for the Senate, but bad for Frist's presidential ambitions.

And in Frist's world, his presidential ambitions trump good politics, good policy, and the Constitution.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/19/165720/129
[David Broder] For traditionalists, the Frist effort -- the "nuclear option" -- is an assault on both of these institutional props. That explains why some Republicans with long memories and years of service, such as Indiana's Richard Lugar, a 28-year veteran, have expressed deep misgivings about the prospect of the nuclear option.

However, they are part of a distinct minority on the Republican side. Only 20 of the 55 GOP senators began their service before the Republicans secured a majority in January 1995. Except for the 18-month hiatus in 2001-02, when a party switch by Vermont's Jim Jeffords allowed Democrat Tom Daschle to become the majority leader, the other 35 Republicans have never experienced the frustrations of minority status. Nor do they know how important Senate rules have been in protecting the rights of individual senators.

Many of the newer Republican senators moved from the House of Representatives, where there are no permanent rules and where the majority party needs to give minimal consideration to the views of the minority.

[Hunter] The other surprising part about all of this, however, is just how effective the newer and more deeply, viciously partisan generation has been in getting the more moderate Republican elders to buckle under even in circumstances where the elders are very clearly aware of the dangerous path they're going down. Voinovich's dramatic speech outlining the catastrophe of John Bolton as a representative of American interests -- followed immediately by a thunderous cave-in of those principles under the new mantra of "it's really not up to me to decide these things", is one of the recent highlights. More recent still is Hagel's obvious cave to the nuclear option, which to hear him himself tell it is against "the interest of the country". If these moderate statesmen of the Senate have been losing their influence -- which they have -- it might be in part because of their own unwillingness to provide anything but paper-thin leadership.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_15.php#005714
[Josh Marshall] For all the constitutional mischief they're in the midst of making, we should probably thank the 50+ senate Republicans for giving us an extended moment to see so clearly just who they really are.

Remember that this entire political uproar is supposedly about originalism, the need for judges who will interpret the law and the constitution not according to our personal wishes or the political needs of the moment, but according to its original and long-settled meaning. That is, we're told, their aim. And yet to accomplish this they are quite happy to use a demonstrably bogus interpretation of the constitution to overturn two centuries of settled understanding of what the document means and requires.

Before everyone's eyes, everything about the constitution is subservient to their need for power.

Their very victory, should it come to that, is their badge of hypocrisy. Their arguments are all at war with themselves. But they don't care. This is just about perpetuating their own power by any means necessary, using narrow majorities to lock in their power for the long haul.

It starts this morning

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010766.html
The next stage of the Nuclear Option begins this morning when Sen. Bill Frist will move to invoke cloture on the Democrats' speeches about judicial nominee Priscilla Owen. . .

Judge Owen: a real princess (BTW, has anybody else noticed her recent “makeover”?)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/19/21387/6792

Recent photo: http://underneaththeirrobes.blogs.com/main/images/owen0426-thumb.jpg

Lately the news has started using an OLDER photo: http://womensenews.org/images/ci/Priscilla-R-Owen-1322.jpg

Nazi comparisons – okay when conservatives do it, but not anybody else

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/19/181715/564
[May 19] Said Santorum: "What the Democrats are doing is "the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying, 'I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine.' This is no more the rule of the senate than it was the rule of the senate before not to filibuster."

[March 3] "Senator Byrd's inappropriate remarks comparing his Republican colleagues with Nazis are inexcusable," Santorum said in a statement yesterday. "These comments lessen the credibility of the senator and the decorum of the Senate. He should retract his statement and ask for pardon."

More: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_15_atrios_archive.html#111653722869906084

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010761.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/19/231159/906

Santorum “apologizes”: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010767.html

A good time to ask: Can the Dems retake Congress in ’06?

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/05/19/can_democrats_take_the_house_in_2006.html
Larry Sabato looks at the political landscape and notes "the midterm elections represent a whole new ballgame. Not only is the DeLay matter more serious and prominent in the public mind than it has ever been, but the lack of a top-of-the-ticket presidential election in 2006 grants the actions of Congress a much higher level of media attention right off the bat. . . [But] a paucity of competitive districts as a result of partisan redistricting means that it would take a national wave of near-1994 proportions to sweep Republicans out of their 29-seat majority."

More Bush nonsense: Iraq is just like the early American colonies

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/19/174521/512
[NYT] President Bush called Wednesday for patience in assessing the progress of Iraq and other nations toward democracy. He said the United States had gotten off to a rocky start after its independence and that it could take years for newly free countries to establish the institutions necessary for stability and prosperity.

Speaking to the International Republican Institute, Mr. Bush said the American Revolution had been followed by "years of chaos," and that the first effort to develop a governing charter, the Articles of Confederation, had "failed miserably."

[Plutonium Page] So, let me get this straight. Bush is comparing the people rising up to free themselves (the American Revolution) to the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, and subsequent occupation, which has degenerated into chaos and anarchy... huh?

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006502
I've stopped trying to blog on Iraq on a day-to-day basis, since it's hard to come up with anything really worth saying. But in light of the renewed skepticism from the officers' corps here in the United States about the military situation over there, it's worth revisiting the question of what, exactly, it is we're trying to accomplish. Check out this paragraph from Spencer Ackerman's article on Iyad Allawi's potential political comeback:

Considering the worries that the United States has about the Jaafari government--chiefly its weakness and its warmth to Iran--that might not strike many American officials as such a bad thing. Rice didn't fool many people when she told the new premier "we know that you will be a strong leader." According to Knight Ridder, the CIA has refused to turn over a year's worth of records kept by the Iraqi intelligence service to the new SCIRI-controlled interior ministry and keeps the director of the new secret police, Muhammed Shahwani, on its payroll. (Shahwani's aides told Knight Ridder's reporters that Jaafari can't remove their boss from his position, which says more about Shahwani's understanding that he's got full U.S. backing than it does about Jaafari's legal authority.) Nor is concern over Jaafari's future course reserved to the U.S. intelligence community. During his briefing yesterday, Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita made it clear that the U.S. military doesn't consider itself bound by Dulaimi's ban on mosque raids. "I'm confident that [U.S.] commanders will develop a method of operating that will allow them to go after insurgents where they are," DiRita told reporters. "And if insurgents are threatening Iraqis from mosques, they'll have to work out some kind of an arrangement to take care of that."

One can understand the rationale for all these moves on the American government's part. On the other hand, they're obviously inconsistent with the idea that Iraq is a sovereign state governed by Ibrahim Jafari and the parliamentary coalition he leads. There's really an essential paradox here that can't be resolved by any set of policy choices. Either we need to put the bulk of the U.S. military's ground strength under the command of a foreign government (which would be a strange thing to do), or else Iraq is going to continue to be an American-occupied protectorate featuring a government to which we've devolved some ill-defined degree of decision-making authority.

Bolton lied

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000637.html

Those stage-managed Social Security road-shows: even more scripted than you think

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush20may20,0,4316498.story
[A] memo circulated this week among members of one group, Women Impacting Public Policy, illustrates the lengths to which the White House has gone to make sure the right points are made at the president's public appearances. . .

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3240
Chimpy took his Social Security Demolition Derby to Milwaukee today, where he went farther than he ever has before in denying that Treasury Bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America. . .

It's a pay-as-you-go. And then there's -- all that's left over is a file cabinet full of IOUs. I have seen the file cabinet in West Virginia firsthand, and I saw all the IOUs. But the system is not the kind of system where we're holding the money for you. That's not the way it works. We're spending your money and left behind some paper that can only be good if the government decides to redeem the paper.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_15_atrios_archive.html#111653935001243867
It is a clown show, an episode of stupidity of a jaw-dropping magnitude. . .

Robert Pozen, author of the original plan that Bush’s plan mimics, disavows the Bush proposal

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/politics/20social.html

Downing Street Memo: I think this gets it just about right

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_05_15_digbysblog_archive.html#111652706146663380
I suppose that I understand to a certain extent why the press is so disinterested in the Downing Street memo. It's because they think that the memo merely says the US was inevitably going to war as early as 2002 --- and everybody already knows that. In fact, we knew it at the time. As Juan Cole documents in detail in this Salon article, Bush and his national security team made it quite clear that they wanted to invade Iraq long before 9/11 and launched into high gear to make it happen immediately after. This memo is an official rendering of something that I think the press believes people have absorbed --- and assume that the election settled. They're wrong, but then what else is new?

Now this is scary: what people in Washington DON’T KNOW

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_15_atrios_archive.html#111650855173787862
[Al Franken] Meanwhile, the Coalition Provisional Authority, which we ran, has lost 8.8 billion dollars. By lost, I mean it’s totally unaccounted for. Not only has Congress not "looked into" this $8.8 billion and who might have it now, but it seems that some members are completely unaware that this staggering sum, which was supposed to go toward rebuilding Iraq, is missing. The Sunday morning after the White House Correspondents dinner, I ran into Senator George Allen at a brunch thrown by John McLaughlin and his wife. Allen had never heard of the missing $8.8 billion, or at least that's what he told me. And he's on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Stunned, I went up to Susan Page of USA Today and her husband Carl Lubsdorf of the Dallas Morning News, two veteran Washington political reporters, and told them about Allen’s ignorance of this huge scandal, which has no doubt contributed to hatred for America and the deaths of our troops. There’s less electricity in Iraq now than there was before we invaded Iraq.

Turns out that Page and Lubsdorf had also never heard of the unaccounted-for $8.8 billion. For a moment I thought that maybe I had been imagining things.

Then I spotted my friend Norm Ornstein, scholar from the American Enterprise Institute. "Would you believe it if Norm Ornstein told you about the $8.8 billion?" I asked Susan and Carl.

"Sure."

I brought Norm over, and indeed I had not been imagining things. "It was a huge story," Norm told them.

"Was it in the New York Times?" Carl asked Norm.

"Yes," Norm assured him.

What in God’s name is going on?

The politics of Star Wars – can boycotts be far behind?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/19/movies/19star.html

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/05/many_bothans_di.html
[Matt Yglesias] Saw The Revenge of the Sith. The boring consensus view seems to be about correct -- there's some real clunkers here but also some awesome stuff. A big step up from episodes one and two. The purported political content is, I think, largely not there. If you already think George W. Bush is an evil man hellbent on establishing a dictatorship you will, of course, see some parallels. But that would say more about the audience than anything about the movie.

Bonus item: Fair and balanced

http://mediamatters.org/items/200505190006

***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 @ 7:19 AM

 
DUE DILIGENCE

Man, you can’t take your eyes off these people for an instant. . .

Please tell me why this isn’t the lead story for every news outlet in the country? We need confirmation on this

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3223
How many American service men and women have given their lives. . . . 1624?. . . Soldiers For The Truth (via Daily Kos) says the actual total is at least 7,834 when you consider this jaw-dropping statistic:

U.S. Military Personnel who died in German hospitals or en route to German hospitals have not previously been counted. They total about 6,210 as of 1 January, 2005.

More: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/5/18/115832/501

Generals say, don’t expect a troop pulldown in Iraq any time soon

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/19/international/middleeast/19iraq.html
American military commanders in Baghdad and Washington gave a sobering new assessment on Wednesday of the war in Iraq, adding to the mood of anxiety that prompted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to come to Baghdad last weekend to consult with the new government. . . In interviews and briefings this week, some of the generals pulled back from recent suggestions, some by the same officers, that positive trends in Iraq could allow a major drawdown in the 138,000 American troops late this year or early in 2006. One officer suggested Wednesday that American military involvement could last "many years."

Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American officer in the Middle East, said in a briefing in Washington that one problem was the disappointing progress in developing Iraqi police units cohesive enough to mount an effective challenge to insurgents and allow American forces to begin stepping back from the fighting. . .

Bush admits mistakes in Iraq (sort of)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush19may19,1,3791093.story
"You know, one of the lessons we learned from our experience in Iraq is that while military personnel can be rapidly deployed anywhere in the world, the same is not true of U.S. government civilians," Bush said, addressing the International Republican Institute, a Washington group headed by prominent Republicans that promotes democracy and civil societies overseas.

Bush praised U.S. government workers in Iraq for performing an "amazing job under extremely difficult and dangerous circumstances." . . . "But the process of recruiting and staffing the Coalition Provisional Authority was lengthy, and it was difficult," he said.

For that reason, Bush said, his administration is proposing to spend millions more to create an "active response corps" made up of Foreign Service officers and civil service officials who can deploy in a hurry.

Wow, a permanent, mobile “nation-building” team – from the man who told us this:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1710.htm
Let me tell you what else I'm worried about: I'm worried about an opponent who uses nation building and the military in the same sentence. See, our view of the military is for our military to be properly prepared to fight and win war and, therefore, prevent war from happening in the first place.

http://www.fas.org/news/usa/2000/usa-001011.htm
I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building. I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war. I think our troops ought to be used to help overthrow a dictator when it's in our best interests. But in this case, it was a nation-building exercise. And same with Haiti. I wouldn't have supported either.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/03/02/once_against_nation_building_bush_now_involved/
The very words "nation building" were akin to an expletive when George W. Bush ran for the White House four years ago. But now, as he seeks a second term, United States intervention in Haiti is but the latest example of how nation-building has become a defining feature of his administration's foreign policy.

More: http://www.thebostonchannel.com/helenthomas/2117601/detail.html

Eyewitnesses to Koran desecration

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/more-independent-witnesses-say-koran.html

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/05/query.php
[Mark Kleiman] Can someone explain to me what Mike Isikoff and Newsweek were supposed to do when a senior Administration official confirmed the Koran-flushing incident? Not publish it, in order to forestall the prospect of riots? Wouldn't that be carrying "civic journalism" to an almost Soviet extreme?

As far as I can tell, there's no real reason to think that the incident didn't happen. So far at least, the Pentagon hasn't even said that it didn't happen.

We made this point a couple of days ago, but here is a nice elaboration: if desecrating the Koran to offend Moslem sensibilities is so far beyond the pale of what our military interrogators would do, then what about all the other things they ADMIT to doing?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/18/AR2005051800869.html
[Anne Applebaum] But surely the larger point is not the story itself but that it was so eminently plausible, in Pakistan, Afghanistan and everywhere else. And it was plausible precisely because interrogation techniques designed to be offensive to Muslims were used in Iraq and Guantanamo, as administration and military officials have also confirmed. For example:

· Dogs. Military interrogators deployed them specifically because they knew Muslims consider dogs unclean. In a memo signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez in September 2003, and available online, the then-commander in Iraq actually approved using the technique to "exploit Arab fear of dogs."

· Nudity. We know (and the Muslim world knows) from the Abu Ghraib photographs that nudity has been used to humiliate Muslim men. More important, we know that nudity was also approved as an interrogation technique by Donald Rumsfeld himself. He signed off on a November 2002 policy memo, later revised but also available online, that specifically listed "removal of clothing" as a permissible, "category II" interrogation technique, along with "removal of facial hair," also a technique designed to offend Muslims who wear beards.

· Sexual harassment. The military's investigation of U.S. detention and interrogation practices, led by Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III, stated that at Guantanamo there were "two female interrogators who, on their own initiative, touched and spoke to detainees in a sexually suggestive manner in order to incur stress based on the detainees' religious beliefs." Although the report said both had been reprimanded, there is no doubt, again, that the tactic was designed for men whose religion prohibits them from having contact with women other than their wives.

· Fake menstrual blood. When former detainees began claiming that they had been smeared with menstrual blood intended to make them "unclean" and therefore unable to pray, their lawyers initially dismissed the story as implausible. But the story has been confirmed by Army Sgt. Erik Saar, a former Guantanamo translator, who told the Associated Press that in a forthcoming book he will describe a female interrogator who smeared a prisoner with red ink, claimed it was menstrual blood and left, saying, "Have a fun night in your cell without any water to clean yourself."

There is no question that these were tactics designed to offend, no question that they were put in place after 2001 and no question that many considered them justified. . .

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3224
Q Can you assure us that there have been no instances of desecration of the Koran?

MR. McCLELLAN: The Department of Defense actually addressed that yesterday, and I talked about it, as well.

Q You can assure us of that, there are no cases?

MR. McCLELLAN: You ought to talk to the Department of Defense. They talked about it yesterday. They have found nothing to substantiate any such allegation that was made by the Newsweek report. And Newsweek, itself, retracted the report because they realized it was wrong.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/18/newsweek_followup/index.html
[Newsweek] staffer Evan Thomas gets it right in his assessment of the greater backdrop for the Islamic world's violent reaction. Though the Bush White House is plenty eager to make Newsweek (rather than its own foreign policy) responsible for the flames of anti-Americanism burning around the globe, the magazine's reporting debacle was more akin to a fresh piece of tinder tossed on a smoldering bonfire.

More on the Bush WH playing it both ways on the use of anonymous sources

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3217
Q In context of the Newsweek situation, I think we hear the caution you're giving us about reporting things based on a single anonymous source. What, then, are we supposed to do with information that this White House gives us under the conditions that it comes from a single anonymous source?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not sure what exactly you're referring to.

Q Frequent briefings by senior administration officials in which the ground rules are we can only identify them as a single anonymous source.

MR. McCLELLAN: Ken, I know that there is an issue when it comes to the media in terms of the use of anonymous sources. . . there is a credibility problem in the media regarding the use of anonymous sources. . .

Q What prevents this administration from just saying from this point forward, you will identify who it is that's talking to us?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, in terms of background briefings, if that's what you're asking about, which I assume it is, let me point out that what I'm talking about there are officials who are helping to provide context to on-the-record comments made by people like the President or the Secretary of State or others. I don't think that that is the issue here when it comes to the use or widespread use of anonymous sources by the media. . .

Q But to our readers, viewers and listeners, I think it's all the same. . . With all due respect, though, it sounds like you're saying your single anonymous sources are okay and everyone else's aren't.

A primer on what is at stake if the nuclear option goes forward

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/12/nuclear_option_primer/

The Top Ten filibuster falsehoods

http://mediamatters.org/items/200505180004

Ahhh. . . delicious

http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=906
This morning on the floor of the Senate, Sen. Chuck Schumer asked Majority Leader Bill Frist a simple question:

SEN. SCHUMER: Isn’t it correct that on March 8, 2000, my colleague [Sen. Frist] voted to uphold the filibuster of Judge Richard Paez?

Here was Frist’s response:

The president, the um, in response, uh, the Paez nomination - we’ll come back and discuss this further. … Actually I’d like to, and it really brings to what I believe - a point - and it really brings to, oddly, a point, what is the issue. The issue is we have leadership-led partisan filibusters that have, um, obstructed, not one nominee, but two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, in a routine way.

So, Frist is arguing that one filibuster is OK. His problem is that several Bush nominees have been filibustered. This position completely undercuts Frist’s argument that judicial filibusters are unconstitutional. (Which is, in turn, the justification for the nuclear option.) If judicial filibusters are unconstitutional there is no freebee. But Frist digs his hole even deeper:

The issue is not cloture votes per se, it’s the partisan, leadership-led use of cloture votes to kill - to defeat - to assassinate these nominees. That’s the difference. Cloture has been used in the past on this floor to postpone, to get more info, to ask further questions.

When Frist voted to filibuster Paez’s nomination it had been pending for four years. It’s hard to believe he couldn’t get all the info he needed or ask all the questions he had during that time. Make no mistake about it: Bill Frist was trying to kill the Paez nomination.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006484
Bill Frist is vastly overmatched. Just watching him try to announce his scheduling intentions and deal with clarifications and questions from Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy, and Pat Leahy, it was clear that they're more than up to the task of knocking him off course procedurally and substantively. Think Progress already has one good example; after that stumble, Frist refused to take any more questions from Chuck Schumer -- likely not because Schumer was trying to delay him, but because Frist couldn't handle them. The more face time he has to give, and the more he actually has to engage with the Democratic leaders on the floor, the worse he's going to look -- to the press and to his colleagues.

My best guess on Frist's strategy is that he's hoping the media coverage and public reaction will seem to lean enough toward his position to bring a wavering senator or two into his camp. Republican senators don't actually want to spend a week or two talking about this; they want to pass legislation for their constituents or contributors. If the debate really does drag on, Frist is more likely to lose support than to gain it. . .

The Big Lie

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_15.php#005712
[Josh Marshall] As we wait on the sidelines for the seemingly inevitable chain reaction to take place on the senate floor, it is worth observing and considering the fact that every Republican senator certainly knows that the proposition they're about to attest to is quite simply a lie. . . Whether you call it the 'nuclear option', the 'constitutional option' or whatever other phrase the GOP word-wizards come up with, what "it" actually is is this: the Republican caucus, along with the President of the Senate, Dick Cheney, will find that filibustering judicial nominations is in fact in violation of the constitution. . .

(Just to be crystal clear, what the senate is about to do is not changing their rules. They are about to find that their existing rules are unconstitutional, thus getting around the established procedures by which senate rules can be changed.)

Their reasoning will be that the federal constitution requires that the president makes such nominations "by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate" and that that means an up or down vote by the full senate.

Nobody believes that. . . Not Dick Cheney, not any member of the Republican Senate caucus.

The play-by-play so far

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/19/filibuster/index.html
Frist has fallen back on a more careful formulation; he says that there's no precedent for denying a floor vote to a judicial nominee who enjoys the support of a majority of the Senate. Frist injected that "majority support" qualifier into his speech Wednesday so often and so abruptly that it sometimes seemed that someone was sending him electric shocks to remind him.

No compromise

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/18/14194/2891
[Armando] A bunch of bloggers, including Markos and myself, got to talk to Senator Schumer for about forty minutes before he went on the floor to deliver his powerful speech.

I would not say alot of news was made, except I personally got the very strong sense that this is going all the way. There is no realistic compromise on the horizon.

It boils down to this - the Republicans will not give up the Nuclear Option. And the Democrats can not accept it.

Why are the Republicans doing this when, in Schumer's words, there are 25 Republican Senators who believe in the filibuster? Four words.

The Extreme Religious Right. James Dobson & Co. To put it plainly, this is Schiavo Part 2. Frist has made a despicable Faustian bargain - do what Dobson tells him on the Nuclear Option, judicial nominees, and just about everything else, and they will back him for President in 2008.

It is that simple. Senator Schumer expressed amazement at the total control that the Extremists have over the WHOLE Republican Party. He stated that is has never been like this before.

Indeed, one can see and feel it. This is NOT good politics for the GOP. And they know it. But the control of the Extreme Right is complete. They can NOT say no to Dobson and his reactionary friends.

Break the rules? Who cares say Dobson & Co. Do the nuclear option and do it now.

There will be no compromise I predict. Frist, and when I say Frist I mean Dobson, will not have it. They are determined to go nuclear.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/18/174655/626
Manny Manuel, the thief who was fired by Orin Hatch for stealing Democratic memos from Senate servers is now leading the Nuclear Option fight on behalf of Frist. In a recent email to Frist allies, he wrote:

[A] straightforward rallying cry: NO DEALS, VOTE PRINCIPLE

More on Miranda’s role: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/19/0346/29408

And why we don’t want “compromise” either

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010745.html
My source tells me they are talking about agreeing to allow up or down votes on all but two of the nominees and that Janice Rogers Brown would no longer be blocked. . . . Frist does not have 51 votes, even with Cheney. The Dems should hang on and fight.

The judges at the center of this mess

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010750.html

Will ending the filibuster cost the Republicans Bolton?

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000636.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000635.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000633.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/politics/18cnd-bolton.html
The panel's Republicans, who took the unusual step of voting to send Mr. Bolton's nomination to the Senate without a recommendation, submitted only an eight-page brief that described Mr. Bolton as "a highly qualified nominee" who had not sought to manipulate intelligence, notwithstanding the claims of his critics.

By contrast, the Democrats, who were united in opposition to the nomination, used their 64-page report to present a case against Mr. Bolton as someone whose conduct toward subordinates and intelligence analysts should disqualify him from the post. The Democrats also cited what they described as new evidence that Mr. Bolton, in his testimony to the panel, had "vastly understated" his role in seeking to oust a top Central Intelligence Agency analyst from his post in a dispute over Cuba.

Shame. Judge Lefkow lectures Congress on the irresponsibility of using the threat of violence to bash and intimidate judges. Who would do such a thing? Here’s a list

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/judge-lefkow-testifies-harsh-rhetoric.html

Which also provides a bit of context for Frist’s latest outrage

http://rawstory.com/exclusives/byrne/frist_assassinate_judges_518
On the same day that a federal judge whose family was assassinated testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about courthouse safety, Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) described Democratic efforts opposing some of President Bush’s judicial nominees as “leadership-led use of Cloture vote to kill, to defeat, to assassinate these nominees.”

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/frist-talks-of-assassinating-judges.html
[John Aravosis] Frist is a pig. The GOP is out of control. He should step down and the voters should slap that party hard. Their over-the-top comments and reactions and whines and complaints and outright lies have gone on long enough. . . Frist's words are particularly ironic when its GOP senators who have condoned the murder of judges and when it's their radical right hate group allies who have used language that could easily inspire violence against judges, or so says Sandra Day O'Connor and Judge Lefkow (the judge whose mother and husband were recently murdered in Chicago). The GOP has become the party of un-American, anti-American, far-right nutjobs who have no respect for the truth, the Constitution, the separation of powers, or the rule of law. They are beholdened to absolute power and their bigoted pseudo-religious patrons.

The K Street Project: why this “inside the beltway” story signifies an alarming trend in government graft – and how it drastically tilts the playing field in favor of Republican control

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006339.php

The Downing Street memo, and what happened behind the scenes to take us to war

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18034

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/19/lies/index.html

Bush’s terrorist buddies

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006334.php

Another evil milestone in the erosion of civil liberties under the Bush regime

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/05/fbi_harassment_is_not_tinfoil.html
New FBI documents to be released today show that anti-terrorism agents who questioned antiwar protesters last summer in Denver were conducting “pretext interviews” that did not lead to any information about criminal activity.

The memos were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of ongoing litigation and provide a glimpse of the FBI’s controversial efforts to interview dozens of members of leftist protest groups before the party conventions last year in Boston and New York. . .

Instead, one heavily censored memo from the FBI’s Denver field office, dated Aug. 2, 2004, characterized the effort as “pretext interviews to gain general information concerning possible criminal activity at the upcoming political conventions and presidential election.”

[Michael Froomkin] This is how freedom gets eroded, drip by drip.

If this story is true, then it seems that the federal police apparatus is now at least as corrupt (morally, not in the bribery sense) as it was in Nixon’s day. Given everything else we are hearing, maybe even more so.

Democracy was in danger then, and it’s in danger now.

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3212
FBI officials and then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said at the time that the interviews were based on indications that radical protesters may be planning violent disruptions. Authorities said one specific threat involved plans to blow up a media van in Boston. . . But the new memos provide no indication of specific threat information. . .

More: http://www.newsforreal.com/

WH reviews, edits “nonpartisan” testimony before a Senate committee

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-edits19may19,1,1612243.story

Pay no attention to the imminent fiscal catastrophe behind the curtain

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006481

Well, you always knew that Bush’s plan to funnel public money to “faith-based” social programs was just a front for subsidizing religious proselytization – but the facts are still pretty stunning

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/18/funding/index.html
[T]he American Civil Liberties Union announced it is suing the federal government for giving more than $1 million in faith-based funding to Silver Ring Thing, a program that encourages teens to take abstinence pledges. The ACLU says the program has used the fed funding to preach about God, hand out Bibles and give teens a silver ring inscribed with Scripture to symbolize their chastity vow. Over 30,000 teens in the U.S., Britain and South Africa have taken the pledge, and program founder Denny Pattyn has vowed to put two million rings on teens' fingers by 2010. ("We don't ever want to take the gospel out of our message because we believe the power for abstinence is a changed heart," Pattyn has said.)

The group's message obliterates any separation between church and state, said Carol Rose, Executive Director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, in a statement: "The Silver Ring Thing is nothing more than a vehicle for converting young people to Christianity. Our taxpayer dollars should play no part in such a program."

New polls

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3225
President's Handling of Iraq: 61% Negative Rating. . .

Confidence that US Policies in Iraq will Succeed: 54% Not Confident. . .

Attacking Iraq the Right Thing to Do: 48% No. . .

Situation for Troops in Iraq Getting Better: 21% Yes. . .

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/05/18/23/16/crisis-opportunity/
As the Senate marches closer toward a nuclear showdown over President Bush’s judicial nominees, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that the American public is dissatisfied — with Congress and its priorities, with Bush’s plan to overhaul Social Security and with the nation’s economy and general direction. Moreover, a majority believes that the Senate should make its own decision about the president’s judicial nominees, rather than just generally confirming them. . .

Perhaps the most revealing finding in the poll is the attitude toward Congress. Just 33 percent of the respondents approve of Congress’ job. That’s down 6 points since a poll in April and 8 points since January. . . “The public is exceptionally displeased with the Congress,” Hart said. “It is lowest set of numbers since May of 1994,” the year when congressional Republicans defeated their Democratic counterparts in the midterm elections to take control of both the House and Senate. According to this poll, by 47 percent to 40 percent the public says it would prefer Democrats controlling Congress after the 2006 elections.

Yes, there is still an active lawsuit contesting the results of the 2004 election, alleging widespread fraud, ballot stuffing, and other irregularities. Sour grapes? Can’t face facts and accept defeat? Unfortunately, it’s in Washington (state) not Washington (DC) – and it’s the Republicans crying foul

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/05/18/republicans_will_claim_ballot_fraud.html

Every day brings a new revelation in the Ohio rare coin fund scandal: now it looks like this is on the verge of breaking something very big wide open

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/ohio-what-tangled-web-we-weave.html

Bonus item: those wacky Republicans

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/18/124653/942

***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 @ 6:55 AM

 
SNAP!

Ha, ha. Bush Co. pushes hard on the Newsweek story, feeling yet another opportunity to put the media on the defensive. But, predictably, they go too far and get a nice little snap back

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/white-house-its-all-newsweeks-fault.html
[AP] "The report had real consequences," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Monday. "People have lost their lives. Our image abroad has been damaged. There are some who are opposed to the United States and what we stand for who have sought to exploit this allegation. It will take work to undo what can be undone."

McClellan said a retraction was only "a good first step" and said Newsweek should try to set the record straight by "clearly explaining what happened and how they got it wrong, particularly to the Muslim world, and pointing out the policies and practices of our military."

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3208
Q With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek? Do you think it's appropriate for you, at that podium, speaking with the authority of the President of the United States, to tell an American magazine what they should print?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not telling them. I'm saying that we would encourage them to help --

Q You're pressuring them.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I'm saying that we would encourage them --

Q It's not pressure?. . .

Q Let me follow up on that. What -- you said that -- what specifically are you asking Newsweek to do? I mean, to follow up on Terry's question, are you saying they should write a story? Are you going that far? How else can Newsweek, you know, satisfy you here?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, as I said, we would encourage them to continue working diligently to help repair the damage that has been done because of this --

Q Are you asking them to write a story?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- because of this report. I think Newsweek is going to be in the best position to determine how to achieve that. And there are ways that I pointed out that they can help repair the damage. One way is to point out what the policies and practices of our United States military are. Our United States military personnel go out of their way to make sure that the Holy Koran is treated with care --

Q Are you asking them to write a story about how great the American military is; is that what you're saying here?

MR. McCLELLAN: Elisabeth, let me finish my sentence. Our military --

Q You've already said what you're -- I know what -- how it ends.

http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=892
Today, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan lectured the media about a “journalistic standard that should be met” before running with a story. Fine, but isn’t there also a political standard of accountability that should be met as well? McClellan’s issue with the Newsweek story was that it was “based on a single anonymous source who cannot personally substantiate the report.”

Remember when we learned that the evidence for Iraq’s supposed mobile biological weapons labs came from an unreliable source? What was McClellan’s response then?

QUESTION: Does it concern the President that the primary source for the intelligence on the mobile biological weapons labs was a guy that U.S. intelligence never every interviewed?

MCCLELLAN: Well, again, all these issues will be looked at as part of a broad review by the independent commission that the President appointed… But it’s important that we look at what we learn on the ground and compare that with what we believed prior to going into Iraq.

[White House Press Gaggle, 4/5/04]

There you have it. When confronted with an anonymous source who provided faulty intelligence that the President relied upon to go to war, McClellan chose not to talk about standards of accountability that should be met. Instead, the White House passed the buck to an independent commission and suggested that it didn’t matter what subsequent information they learned about Iraq’s intelligence because they didn’t know it when they went to war. Newsweek has taken responsibility by retracting its story. Will President Bush take responsibility for his own errors?

QUESTION: He’s the president of the United States. This thing he told the country on the verge of taking the nation to war has turned out to be, by your own account, not reliable. That’s his fault, isn’t it?

MCCLELLAN: No.

[White House Press Briefing, 7/17/03]

More: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002054.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006467

It won’t surprise you to hear that Scotty is an outrageous hypocrite

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3200
January 14, 2004:
MR. McCLELLAN: Now, Les, here's my reaction. I don't think it's my position to be a media critic. There are some good media critics out there, and I'll let them continue to do their work.

May 28, 2004:
MR. McCLELLAN: One, I always try to avoid being a media critic from this podium. I'm here to address your questions.

July 8, 2004:
MR. McCLELLAN: I don't know the specifics about that. That's the first I've heard of that matter. But I don't put myself in the place of trying to be the media critic.

February 10, 2005:
MR. McCLELLAN: I don't think it's the role of the Press Secretary to get into being a media critic, and I think there are very good reasons for that. I've never inserted myself into the process.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_15.php#005703
The headline to this NBC article out this morning reads: "White House says move [i.e., Newsweek's retraction] 'a good first step,' but demands more action.". . . A question. What "more action" should a White House ever be in a position to demand after a story has been retracted, especially in a case where the White House is not even directly involved in the facts of the case.

Another angle to the story: the WH is using this case to hammer the media on the use of “anonymous sources” (though the WH flacks use that ploy all the time, and often INSIST that the media cite them that way).

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_15.php#005704

WH calls General Myers a liar

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3208
Q Back on Newsweek. Richard Myers, last Thursday -- I'm going to read you a quote from him. He said, "It's a judgment of our commander in Afghanistan, General Eichenberry, that in fact the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran." He said it was "more tied up in the political process and reconciliation that President Karzai and his cabinet were conducting." And he said that that was from an after-action report he got that day.

So what has changed between last Thursday and today, five days later, to make you now think that those -- that that violence was a result of Newsweek?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, clearly, the report was used to incite violence by people who oppose the United States and want to mischaracterize the values and the views of the United States of America. The protests may have been pre-staged by those who oppose the United States and who may be opposed to moving forward on freedom and democracy in the region, but the images that we have seen across our television screens over the last few days clearly show that this report was used to incite violence. People lost their lives --

Q But may I just follow up, please? He didn't say "protest," he said -- he used the word very specifically, "violence." He said the violence, as far as they know from their people on the ground -- which is something that you always say you respect wholeheartedly -- it was not because of Newsweek.

MR. McCLELLAN: Dana, I guess I'm not looking at it the same way as you do, and I think the Department of Defense has spoken to this issue over the last few days. But the facts are very clear that this report was used in the region by people opposed to the United States to incite violence and to portray a very negative image of the United States, one that runs contrary to everything that we value and believe, and it has done some serious damage to our image. . .

Q Scott, to go back to Dana's question, are you saying that General Myers was wrong, therefore, that this -- the violence he's talking about? Are you saying he was wrong in his assessment of what happened in Afghanistan?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, not at all. In fact, maybe you didn't hear me, but as I said, there are people that are opposed to the United States that look at every opportunity to try to do damage to our image in the region, and –

I told you Larry DiRita was a major league liar, didn’t I? See, it was the detainees who desecrated their own Korans. . .

http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=900
DIRITA: We’ve found nothing that would substantiate anything that you just said about the treatment of a Koran. We have, other than what we’ve seen – that it’s possible detainees themselves have done with pages of the Koran.

More: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_15_atrios_archive.html#111636114605651641

“Worse than Abu Ghraib”

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2005_05_15_dish_archive.html#111636053348158139

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/gop-nazis.html
Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) used even stronger language, saying that Isikoff had "fabricated" the Koran incident and branding Newsweek's behavior "criminal."

By the way, let’s be clear about exactly what the Newsweek “retraction” does and doesn’t say

http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/has-newsweek-retracted-it-is-being-yet.html
"Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay," Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker said in a statement issued here.

[Juan Cole] It says nothing about whether the Koran desecration occurred, or whether their government source accurately reported seeing a US government text documenting it.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/17/newsweek_fallout/index.html
Newsweek's blunder hinges on Pentagon acknowledgement of Quran abuse at Gitmo, not whether it or other abuses have occurred. . . Today, conservative bloggers are all piling on with the same woefully misguided (or just plain partisan) question: "How many other stories about torture at U.S. prisons have been bogus?"

In the midst of all this breast-beating, can we remember just one teeny little fact?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051701315.html
Newsweek magazine's now-retracted story that a military guard at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet has sparked angry denunciations by the White House and the Pentagon, which have linked the article to Muslim riots and deaths abroad. . . But American and international media have widely reported similar allegations from detainees and others of desecration of the Muslim holy book for more than two years.

Great analyses of why the media is so easily cowed these days by right-wing bullying (thanks to Susan Madrak, Atrios, and Kevin Drum for some of these links)

http://www.cjrdaily.org/archives/001522.asp

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000922018

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5409054.html

http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/001865.html

Star Wars: for real this time

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/business/18space.html

New poll: 43% Bush approval, and dropping

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_15_atrios_archive.html#111635085293084102

GOP Congress even worse: 35%

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=243

Negotiations break down: Reid says, bring on the nuclear option vote

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3199

A few reminders of what the nuclear option will do to Senate rules and traditions – they don’t call it “nuclear” for nothing

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/17/215741/246
[Norman Ornstein] Let us put aside for now the puerile arguments over whether judicial filibusters are unprecedented: They clearly, flatly, are not. Instead, let's look at the means used to achieve the goal of altering Senate procedures to block filibusters on judicial nominations. . .

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/18/22812/6652

And, for your continued enjoyment, a few cockeyed constitutional rationalizations from Scotty: “advise and consent” means “do what we tell you to do”

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3209

Is anybody paying attention to this?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051701238_pf.html
On the eve of a titanic partisan clash in the Senate, eggheads of the left and right got together yesterday to warn both parties that they are ignoring the country's most pressing problem: that the United States is turning into Argentina.

While Washington plunged into a procedural fight over a pair of judicial nominees, Stuart Butler, head of domestic policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, and Isabel Sawhill, director of the left-leaning Brookings Institution's economic studies program, sat down with Comptroller General David M. Walker to bemoan what they jointly called the budget "nightmare."

There were no cameras, not a single microphone, and no evidence of a lawmaker or Bush administration official in the room. . . But what the three spoke about will have greater consequences than the current fuss over filibusters and Tom DeLay's travel.

With startling unanimity, they agreed that without some combination of big tax increases and major cuts in Medicare, Social Security and most other spending, the country will fall victim to the huge debt and soaring interest rates that collapsed Argentina's economy and caused riots in its streets a few years ago.

Best of the Blogs gets this right: Bush cuts govt funding to the poor, then increases funding to “faith-based” programs that become their only alternative – driving them into the arms of Jesus

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/16/AR2005051601374.html

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005/05/gameplan-from-todays-washpost-yet-more.html

Hey! Some real Christians out there

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20050516-103313-9190r.htm
One-third of the professors at an evangelical Christian college in Grand Rapids, Mich., are taking out a large ad in a local newspaper Saturday to protest President Bush's commencement speech.

"As Christians, we are called to be peacemakers and to initiate war only as a last resort," the ad will say. "We believe your administration has launched an unjust and unjustified war in Iraq."

The 130 signatories, which include 20 staff members, work at Calvin College. Founded in 1876 as a school for pastors of the Christian Reformed Church, it now is one of the nation's flagship schools for a Christian liberal-arts education.

"No single political position should be identified with God's will," says the ad, which also chastises the president for "actions that favor the wealthy of our society and burden the poor."

Christians are to be characterized by love and gentleness, it adds, but "we believe that your administration has fostered intolerance and divisiveness and has often failed to listen to those with whom it disagrees."

Moreover, says the letter, set to run in the Grand Rapids Press, the Bush administration's environmental policies "have harmed creation," and it asks the president "to re-examine your policies in light of our God-given duty to pursue justice with mercy."

And then there are the “Christocrats”

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_05_15_digbysblog_archive.html#111635394159076230

Ohio, since the 2004 election, seems to be working hard to become GOP sleaze central: more on the rare coin scam

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/ohio-gops-coin-gate-keeps-on-giving.html

Meanwhile, percolating along on the back burner, the Franklin/AIPAC story still has the potential to blow the lid off the nexus of old Iran-Contra folks, the Office of Special Plans, Chalabi, Iran, and Israel

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1386

Bonus item: a jury of his peers? In the ongoing GOP effort to politicize the courts, an ingenious new defense from the New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal: Jim Tobin wants a jury only comprising Republicans (yeah, you heard that right)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_15.php#005707

***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 @ 6:18 AM

 
WORD CHOICE

As has been discussed here before, the Rove strategy is to weaken every institution that potentially can oppose their agenda. This isn’t just “working the refs” any more, to get a bit better coverage from the media: it is to punish and destroy every opponent. Newsweek publishes a claim that is widely conceded to be true, but errs in sourcing it to the wrong evidence. Watch how the Right gleefully jumps all over them

(And, of course, this completely swamps coverage of the Downing Street memo on Bush’s lies to start the Iraq war)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_15_atrios_archive.html#111627634520369818
[August Pollak] So now there's a bunch of right-wingers who are pitching the desecrated Koran riot story with the line "Newsweek Lied, People Died.". . . Get it? It's funny, because it's making fun of what all the anti-war people said when 1,700 Americans were killed based on lies they were warned about but didn't listen to.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/16/154122/166
"It's puzzling that while Newsweek now acknowledges that they got the facts wrong, they refused to retract the story," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "I think there's a certain journalistic standard that should be met and in this instance it was not.". . . "The report has had serious consequences," McClellan said. "People have lost their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged."

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3196
In the WaPo story Condi said:

The sad thing was that there was a lot of anger that got stirred by a story that was not very well founded.

Calling a story "not very well founded" is not the same as saying it is untrue, now is it?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_15.php#005697
I haven't followed every particular about the case of this blow-up over the article in Newsweek. But I do see a clear pattern -- a White House trying to decapitate another news organization.

The parallels with CBS are obvious. And yet, the production of the Rather/National Guard piece ended up containing egregious errors. On top of that, CBS dug in its heels for days even after manifest errors in the reporting had become obvious. CBS brought the Rather-gate avalanche down upon itself with some very sloppy journalism. But the White House quickly saw the opportunity and grabbed it, effectively taming an entire news organization.

What already seems to be happening here is that the White House is trying to replicate the pattern, even in a case with a quite different set of facts.

Smelling blood, the WH now says it wants even more out of Newsweek’s hide

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050517/ap_on_re_us/newsweek_quran

One thing that tells you what is going on is that they were even blaming Newsweek for attacks that began before the story was published

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_15_atrios_archive.html#111628202273233280
Before the Newsweek report even hit the newsstands, the Associated Press was already noting a "revived Taliban-led insurgency" and the Agence France Press said there was "an upsurge in violence by suspected Taliban rebels" which had left two U.S. Marines dead.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_05_15_digbysblog_archive.html#111626858320893643
"The nature of where these things occurred, how quickly they occurred, the nature of individuals who were involved in it, suggest that they may be organized events that are using this alleged allegation as a pretext for activity that was already planned," said DiRita.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7873141/#050516b
Last Thursday, General Richard Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Donald Rumsfeld’s go-to guy whenever the situation calls for the kind of gravitas the Secretary himself can’t supply, told reporters at the Pentagon that rioting in Afghanistan was related more to the on-going political reconciliation process there, than it was to a controversial note buried in the pages of Newsweek. . .

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/05/17/06/35/how-the-news-is-covered/
But only a few days earlier, in a briefing on Thursday, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had said that the senior commander in Afghanistan believed the protests had stemmed from that country’s reconciliation process. . . “He thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine,” General Myers said.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_15.php#005702
As I said earlier this evening, let Newsweek's reporting stand or fall on its own (though bear in mind that even at this point the Pentagon's denials seem rather technical). But do not miss the fact that the White House and the political appointees at the Pentagon are exploiting this in every way they can -- even going so far, it would seem, as to declare as a moral certainty claims that only a few days ago they professed to believe were false.

Does anyone think that for interrogators who thought it was a pretty good idea to rub women’s menstrual underwear in Islamic men’s faces, pile them naked in big bufu pyramids, and force them to eat unpermitted foods, that offending their religious sensibilities and pride in this way wouldn’t have seemed like a good idea too? Remember the words of THEIR SUPERIOR OFFICER

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1016-01.htm
Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin. . . former commander and 13-year veteran of the Army's top-secret Delta Force is also an outspoken evangelical Christian who appeared in dress uniform and polished jump boots before a religious group in Oregon in June to declare that radical Islamists hated the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian. . . and the enemy is a guy named Satan."

Discussing the battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, Boykin told another audience, "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

"We in the army of God, in the house of God, kingdom of God have been raised for such a time as this," Boykin said last year.

More stories on the truth of the underlying facts of the Newsweek story (thanks to Jan Pieterse for some of these links)

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/16/newsweek_gitmo/index.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010715.html

http://rawstory.com/exclusives/newsweek_koran_report_516.htm

http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=5959

GOP still angling on what to call their assault on Senate rules

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_15.php#005696
It seems that "nuclear option" has become such an effective Democratic slur that congressional Republicans just can't help saying it themselves. In fact, the GOP leadership on the Hill has to send out specific instructions to their members to stop using the phrase.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_15.php#005694
"Byrd Option" isn't the third Republican try at a publicly-acceptable name for abolishing the judicial filibuster. Apparently, it's one of at least six.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006465
The Senate will not be changing the rules – if we use constitutional option, it is restoring precedent and 200 years of tradition. . . .

In 2003, the Democratic minority unilaterally changed the rules to require a new confirmation standard of 60 votes, instead of 51, for certain judicial nominees.

Now as I understand it, this business about precedent is, as they say, a lie and Abe Fortas and other judicial nominees have, in fact, been filibustered in the past. Leaving that aside, there's a clear distinction between doing something that's never been done before and doing something that's against the rules. If you want to change the rules so that something which traditionally hadn't been done will, in the future, actually be against the rules, then that's just what changing the rules is. If Democrats chose in 2001 to utilize the Senate rules in an unusual way (or, to be more precise, to employ the very common practice of filibustering votes on the unusual topic of judicial nominations) that hardly counts as changing the rules.

English only

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006428
Last week The New York Times ran a story on a Nashville judge who demanded an immigrant Mexican woman learn English as a prerequisite for regaining custody of her child. It was odd to suddenly see this story now -- it's been an issue for several months, and this mother of an 11-year-old Mixtec girl (who has now, as the Times pointed out, become quite comfortable in her new upper-middle-class life) was not the only immigrant mother who has run up against Judge Barry Tatum in the Tennessee court system. . .

“Asbestos reform” (another way to describe their anti-tort proposal)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_15.php#005695

Sure enough, Bush’s persistent undermining of the full faith and credit of the U.S. government is starting to take a toll on foreign investment in T-bonds

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3190

We hear a lot about Halliburton these days, but let’s not forget the influence of Bechtel, another corporate giant, in driving U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East (thanks to Val Hoffman for the link)

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair05092005.html

Mark Kleiman nails this: it’s a potential blockbuster story about Bolton, lost in the details about what an a—hole he happens to be

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/05/on_whom_was_john_bolton_eavedropping.php
It's confirmed, and not denied, that Bolton asked for and got transcripts of NSA telephone intercepts. There's nothing improper about that on its face.

But it's charged that Bolton did so, not for any legitimate purpose, but to spy on bureaucratic rivals. That's a no-no. If he did so merely by getting the transcripts of conversations between foreigners about what various Americans said to them, that would be slightly sleazy but not actually improper. But if he used the NSA to listen in on his rivals, that would be a huge scandal, especially if, for example the Vice-President's office was involved in getting Bolton access to those transcripts.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has now seen redacted versions of the transcripts. It's unknown whether the redaction was so profound as to conceal the identities of the participants. What is known is that Sen. Roberts, who might have been expected to quickly say "Move along, folks. Nothing to see here," instead said the transcripts raise questions to which he wants answers. . .

“Astroturf” – here’s how it works

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_15_atrios_archive.html#111626372895744593

As Ohio goes, so goes the nation

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/building-theocracy-ohio-model.html
From America’s beginning, the Mayflower Compact openly declares that our forefathers were birthing this nation for “the advancement of the Christian faith.” All 50 of our state constitutions acknowledge and give honor to the Lord. The declaration of Independence declares that we are "endowed by our Creator, with certain inalienable rights." With only 5% of the world's population, God has blessed the United States with nearly 40% of the world's wealth. Now more than ever, we are convinced that God has blessed this nation with resources to share the light of God's Word with a world lost in darkness. America has had a mission to share a living Savior with a dying world.

During the past 50 years, that mission has come under heavy spiritual warfare. Recently, the birth pains have increased in frequency and intensity. The forces of hell understand Biblical prophecy better than most people sitting in the pews on Sunday morning. The intensity of the warfare for the heart and soul of America is escalating:

Teaching creation in our public schools has become a federal lawsuit.

Biblical definitions of marriage are being tragically altered by some judges who think they are smarter than God and begin to legislate secular dogma from the bench.

American universities have become the arteries of spiritual toxic waste.

“Homosexual marriages” are being paraded in 50 states

In some cities, abortions nearly outnumber births

HIV and sexually transmitted diseases will kill more Americans than every war this country has ever fought.

Secularists have hijacked our culture--one year at a time.

Denominational bigotry, division within the Body of Christ, and apostasy have weakened the voice of Biblical reason.

Around the globe, ministers of the Gospel are being threatened with “hate crimes” legislation.

And guess who is the beneficiary. . .

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/032805H.shtml
Christian conservative leaders from scores of Ohio's fastest growing churches are mounting a campaign to win control of local government posts and Republican organizations, starting with the 2006 governor's race. . . The initial goal is to elect Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell. . .

Bonus item: the sly commentary buried in Star Wars, episode 3

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1380
Revenge of the Sith is about how a republic dismantles its own democratic principles, about how politics becomes militarized, about how a Manichaean ideology undermines the rational exercise of power. Mr. Lucas is clearly jabbing his light saber in the direction of some real-world political leaders. At one point, Darth Vader, already deep in the thrall of the dark side and echoing the words of George W. Bush, hisses at Obi-Wan, "If you're not with me, you're my enemy." Obi-Wan's response is likely to surface as a bumper sticker during the next election campaign: "Only a Sith thinks in absolutes."

Much, much more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/05/16/BL2005051600615.html

[NB: When will the right-wing boycotts start?]

***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 @ 8:04 AM

 
FULL OF IT

Some days the audacity of their cynical lies is almost too much to believe – but the media just reports them, ma’am

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/05/15/iraq.main/index.html
Although the U.S. decision to launch the war in 2003 was condemned in many nations and the original justification -- Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction -- turned out to be based on flawed intelligence, Rice said, "This war came to us, not the other way around."

[NB: Just a reminder -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/15/mccain.memo/index.html
Sen. John McCain said Sunday he doesn't "agree with" the secret minutes of a high-level British meeting in 2002 saying "intelligence and facts were being fixed" to support a U.S.-led war in Iraq -- well before the president sought approval on the war from Congress.

[NB: He doesn’t agree with it, huh? It isn’t an opinion, John, it’s an explicit statement of policy and intent. Let’s just remember what it says]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/15/173553/127
[July 23, 2002] John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. . .

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action. . .

The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force. . .

[NB: Ladies and gentlemen, I can read the English language – and I’m sure you can too. That couldn’t be clearer, could it?]

Chapter and verse (thanks to Bill Kavanagh for the links)

http://billsrants.blogspot.com/2005/05/if-brits-knew-why-didnt-most-americans.html#comments

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/12/AR2005051201857.html

Why hasn’t there been more outrage over this “smoking gun” revelation?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006316.php
[Kevin Drum] I can only assume that everyone concluded long ago that of course the Bushies lied about the war and further evidence is just another dog-bites-man story. Sadly, it's hard to argue with that.

More: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=2486

And the human cost?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7818807/site/newsweek
[Christopher Dickey] The military and political future of Iraq remains so uncertain that the Pentagon in recent months has gone back to the Vietnam-era practice of citing bodycounts as measures of success. We’re told, for instance, that “as many as 100” insurgent fighters have been killed by the Matador forces. But of course that’s just a guesstimate, while the toll on the Americans and their Iraqi allies is all too concrete. Today alone, the insurgents managed to kill more than 60 would-be Iraqi military recruits and civilian bystanders in urban Iraq. The Americans are drawing lines in the sand, it would seem, while Tikrit and Baghdad are bathed in blood. Meanwhile, the total number of American dead in this war is now more than 1,600. And the Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. troops? Well, we’ll get back to that.

If there’s good news, it’s that while the Pentagon may obscure this grim reality in public presentations, it doesn’t seem to be kidding itself, as it did in Vietnam. An accidentally declassified Pentagon report about a killing on the road to Baghdad airport at the beginning of March shows quite clearly how much worse the overall situation is than the Bush administration would like us, or even its allies in the Coalition forces, to believe.

“The U.S. considers all of Iraq a combat zone,” says the report. . . “From July 2004 to late March 2005,” says the document, “there were 15,527 attacks against Coalition Forces throughout Iraq.” Then comes one of several paragraphs marked S//NF (secret, not for distribution to foreign nationals): “From 1 November 2004 to 12 March 2005 there were 3306 attacks in the Baghdad area. Of these, 2400 were directed against Coalition Forces.” In a span of four and a half months, which included the election turning point, that’s not only a hell of a lot of hits in the capital city, it’s just pure hell. . .

As I write this, I can’t help but think about my friend Marla Ruzicka, who was killed on the airport road on April 16. . . Because Marla’s passion was for helping people who’d suffered from the war, and because she had to deal with the military frequently to do that, she was sure that the same officials who kept such detailed numbers about everything else in the Iraq conflict had to be keeping a record somewhere of the civilians they killed and wounded. They always maintained they did not. But just before she died, Marla wrote a report with a partial number she said she’d received from U.S. military sources: 29 civilians killed by small-arms fire in Baghdad alone during firefights between U.S. troops and insurgents over the course of five weeks before April 5. Estimates of the total number of Iraqi civilian casualties in this war, calculated by reporters and human-rights groups, have ranged from about 10,000 to the much-less-plausible 100,000. Does the Pentagon know? If so, it should tell.

Aww. . . that’s sweet. Chalabi is a crook, wanted by Jordan for fraud and other crimes. Guess who’s intervening with Jordan to get them to drop the charges? (thanks to Laura Rozen for the link)

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/11/142250

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006320.php

Senate Republicans, having test-marketed “nuclear option” and “constitutional option” (to negative reviews), are still trying to find a way to suggest that it’s the Democrats’ fault why they have resorted to this desperate measure. Of course, they have intended to do it for months, and are just waiting for the right moment, reportedly this week. So now they are calling it the “Byrd option” (though Robert Byrd, Senate traditionalist to the n-th degree, is the most outraged opponent to it). What nerve

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_15.php#005688

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/15/203222/499

Add another wavering Republican to the list of possible opponents to the nuclear option

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/14/filibuster.fight.ap/index.html
The senators are Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, John Sununu of New Hampshire, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, John Warner of Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine and Mike DeWine of Ohio.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_15.php#005684
Sen. Roberts (R) of Kansas, a bamboozler on Niger uranium, now says he has doubts about using the nuclear option to end judicial filibusters

[NB: Headcounts say Frist needs five of these to come over to the dark side]

And please explain what special thing Karl Rove has for Priscilla Owen?

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010717.html

Those pathetic Republicans on the Foreign Relations committee

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/12/AR2005051201558_pf.html
[Dana Milbank] Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee heard yesterday that President Bush's choice to be ambassador to the United Nations was "arrogant" and "bullying." They heard that he "would have been fired had he worked for a major corporation." They heard that his confirmation "would send a contradictory and negative message to the world" and that "the United States can do better than John Bolton."

It sounded like more of the partisan attacks on Bolton that Democrats have delivered for the past two months -- except this time, the accuser was a fellow Republican, Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio. . . "No one really is excited about him," Voinovich told a swarm of reporters in the hallway after announcing his opposition. . .

Lugar, as shepherd of Bolton's nomination, was scarcely more helpful to the cause than Voinovich. The chairman's rap sheet said Bolton made "incorrect assumptions about the behavior and motivation of subordinates," failed "to use proper managerial channels" and "unnecessarily personalized internal disputes." On the positive side, Lugar continued, "there is no evidence that he has broken laws or engaged in serious ethical misconduct."

It was, perhaps, not the ideal slogan for confirmation: Bolton -- not a criminal. Only four days earlier, Lugar predicted that Bolton would be endorsed by the committee on a party-line vote. Yesterday, he was reduced to urging colleagues not to "reject Secretary Bolton without even granting him a vote on the Senate floor."

The difference, of course, was Voinovich, who challenged Bush and GOP leaders in a way few of his colleagues have dared. "What message are we sending to the world community?" he asked about Bolton. . . Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), who took a political risk by backing Bolton, stared at his water glass and looked as if he were about to cry. Bolton defender Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) fidgeted in his chair; Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), another Bolton fan, smirked. . .

Most Republicans, abandoned by Voinovich, offered faint praise for the nominee. Chafee said he was "apprehensive" and "concerned" but would support Bolton anyway. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) allowed that Bolton had been "inflammatory" and has a habit of "pushing that envelope," but she said he had her vote.

Newsweek apologizes copiously for its “flushing the Koran down the toilet" story, which sparked such outrage across the Moslem world. The problem with the apology is, the story was very likely TRUE. Yet another sad chapter in the disciplining of the media to fall in line with the Bush foreign policy agenda

http://slate.msn.com/id/2118814/fr/rss/
The Post and the NYT front Newsweek's apology for an inaccurate item about reported desecration of the Koran by American guards at Guantanamo Bay. The Newsweek story reported that according to an anonymous source, investigators had determined that military officials had flushed a Koran down a toilet. The report led to violent anti-American protests in Pakistan and Afghanistan during which several deaths occurred. Though the magazine acknowledged possible errors, it did not retract the report, and Michael Isikoff—Newsweek's veteran investigative reporter who mainly reported the story—said the magazine would continue to look into what he called "a very murky situation." Newsweek's editor said that a senior Pentagon official had initially declined to comment when shown a draft of the report. The Pentagon now calls the report false.

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/5/15/211444/985
The pressure on Newsweek is intense. The rightwing machine descended on the magazine, blaming its report for riots in Afghanistan, Palestine, Egypt, Sudan, Pakistan and Indonesia. . .

http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/guantanamo-controversies-bible-and.html
Newsweek explains that in response to Pentagon queries,

On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report.

Isikoff's source, in other words, stands by his report of the incident, but is merely tracing it to other paperwork. What difference does that make?

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1373
Newsweek promptly printed a retraction and announced the matter closed:

Late last week Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita told NEWSWEEK that its original story was wrong. . . While various released detainees have made allegations about Qur'an desecration, the Pentagon has, according to DiRita, found no credible evidence to support them.

Mr. DiRita's denial is good enough for Newsweek editors, who go on for some unseemly prostration and self-flagellation:

How did NEWSWEEK get its facts wrong? And how did the story feed into serious international unrest?

How indeed? Perhaps the dramatic outburst of the Pentagon spokesman might have had something to do with it:

Told of what the NEWSWEEK source said, DiRita exploded, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?"

[NB: Now, regular readers of PBD know that Pentagon spokesman DiRita is a serial liar himself, the author of some real howlers (some of which, yes, also cost many lives). But notice here that the fact that this report sparked outraged reactions and violence isn’t itself evidence that it wasn’t true]

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/newsweek-gets-koran-story-wrong-bull.html
And in that vein, check out this paragraph from the Newsweek "retraction":

Radical Islamic foes of the U.S.-friendly regime of Hamid Karzai quickly exploited local discontent with a poor economy and the continued presence of U.S. forces, and riots began breaking out last week.

Then there's this little tidbit from an AP photo about the story:

Pakistani lawmaker and the chief of a coalition of radical Islamic groups, Qazi Hussain Ahmed gestures during a press conference in Islamabad, Pakistan, Sunday, May 15, 2005

Gee, I guess the press got their White House talking points already. "Radical Islamic foes"? Wonder if Newsweek and the AP would refer to the religious right as "radical" if they protested over the Bible being flushed the down the toilet?

More on the story of why Bush was not interrupted during his bike ride as all of DC was in turmoil over a possible security alert. One interesting angle: wasn’t he concerned about his wife, at least?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/read-this-george-bush-hates-his-wife.html

I’ve seen this one before, but it’s time to share it. Church/state?

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3184

Bonus item: Here it is, your new screen saver (no, don’t thank me, thank Billmon)

http://billmon.org/archives/001864.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 @ 5:53 AM

 
AT THE STAKE (updated)

Sometimes you wonder why they even bother holding these press briefings. Watch Scotty find 27 ways not to answer a simple question about John Bolton

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3174

In a desperate attempt to salvage Bolton’s wounded nomination, Condi says he will be on a short leash, not allowed to freelance his statements before the U.N. What needs to be asked, of course, is why anyone would want a U.N. representative in the first place for whom such a muzzle would be necessary

http://www.insidebayarea.com/argus/news/ci_2733355
Biden was among several committee members who said they had been assured by Rice in recent weeks that Bolton's nomination should not cause alarm because he would be carefully supervised at the United Nations, with his speeches and other public remarks carefully reviewed. . . "Why would you send someone to the United Nations who needed to be supervised?" Biden said.

More: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000619.html

The brief against Bolton

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/14/51516/5747

How the WH strong-armed Republican Senators who realize perfectly well that John Bolton is a despicable excuse for a human being, to say nothing of being unqualified for the U.N., to still support him anyway. Do any of these Senators have an ounce of integrity?

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9666
And there it was: the power of the Bush presidency. George W. Bush has become the ultimate pivot point in American politics -- either you’re with him or against him. . . . Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN), who sits on the committee, said he believes that the clash over Bolton is in some ways a rehash of the last campaign; he added that Republicans need to stand up for Bush.

Politics is war by other means, they say: well if that is true, the Democrats seem to be ready for war over Bolton

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/13/un.ambassador.ap/index.html
Senate Democrats opposed to President Bush's nomination of John R. Bolton to be U.N. ambassador are trying to delay a Senate vote with a legislative maneuver that ultimately could lead to a filibuster. . . As a result, Senate consideration of the nomination is unlikely before the end of the month, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's spokesman said.

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002047.html
[Laura Rozen] Boxer is absolutely right to hold any debate on Bolton 'til State complies with all information requests put forward by the Senate committee mandated to vet Bolton's candidacy. . .

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000618.html
White House is Worried About Several More Weeks of Bolton News
[Steve Clemons] Beneath the surface, however, some in the Executive Office of the President think that "this Bolton hand may have been overplayed." Everyone agrees that there was serious underestimation of the concern about Bolton's record and behavior. They seem to know that even though they compelled the votes to get Bolton moved out of Committee that their caucus is extremely uncomfortable. . . Bolton won't get a vote before Memorial Day recess. This marathon has a long way to go, and I've been training.

Yes, war

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/05/13/BL2005051300770.html
Having failed to win the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's endorsement of John Bolton as United Nations ambassador, the vaunted White House political machine now opens its throttle even wider. . . Every possibly wayward Senate Republican is now likely to face the same sort of intense pressure from the White House that those on the foreign relations committee were getting. . . But it's also possible that the White House political machine is in danger of burning out. Because it's not just about Bolton. . .

Ronald Brownstein writes in a Los Angeles Times news analysis: "All the polarizing political dynamics of George W. Bush's presidency condensed into a single illuminating episode Thursday, as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to advance the nomination of John R. Bolton. . . . The vote demonstrated again Bush's willingness to live on the political edge -- to accept achingly narrow margins in Congress and at the ballot box to pursue ambitious changes that sharply divide the country. . . .

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000621.html
The battle over John Bolton, President Bush's pick for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is not a competition between Senate Democrats and Republicans. It's actually a brewing civil war inside the Republican foreign-policy establishment. None of the dramatic events of the four public hearings to date on Bolton's nomination would have been possible without the active complicity of a large swath of the GOP establishment. . .

What is at stake

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/05/why_bolton.html

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002045.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000623.html
Whereas much of the support for Bolton has had the veneer of being about United Nations reform, what Bolton proponents really want is a ferocious show-down with Iran and North Korea through the United Nations -- not because the U.N. is a good venue for such a battle but because the weaknesses of the U.N. and the problem of getting Security Council unity behind resolutions may allow Bolton to kick apart the institution.

Plame case: may be morphing from a leak case into a perjury case

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/12/AR2005051201556.html

Or not: http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/valerie_plame_/2005/05/valerie_plame_update_perjury_charges.php

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006309.php

Franklin investigation: once again, Bush Co. uses an investigation into their own leaks into an opportunity to browbeat reporters

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/14/politics/14inquire.html

Feeling a chill? How the Bush gang rationalizes the suppression of public information: openness would have a “chilling effect” on their desire to rule with a free hand

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1369

In Iraq: “Did the Elections Make Things Worse?”

http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/did-elections-make-things-worse-hannah.html

(Former) Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski isn’t going quietly: good for her

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3176
[Reuters] The former commander of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq blamed a ranking officer for introducing the use of human pyramids and dog leashes in the abuse of detainees and said in an interview on Thursday that abuse may be continuing there.

Col. Janis Karpinski, a former one-star Army Reserve general who was punished in the scandal, blamed Gen. Geoffrey Miller for the methods that were used to humiliate detainees. . . Miller headed the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and was sent to Iraq to recommend improvements in intelligence gathering and detention operations there.

"I believe that Gen. Miller gave them the ideas, gave them the instruction on what techniques to use," she said in an interview on the ABC News "Nightline" program.

Asked if she was referring to the positioning of prisoners in human pyramids and putting dog leashes on detainees, Karpinski said, "I can tell you with certainty that the MPs (military police) certainly did not design those techniques, they certainly did not come to Abu Ghraib or to Iraq with dog collars and dog leashes.". . .

Karpinski added in her interview that US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld knew about the abuse at Abu Ghraib before the scandal erupted.

Never forget: no statute of limitations on war crimes.

Yes, war crimes. . .

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/05/51_congressman_call_for_war_crimes_investigation.html
Congressman John Conyers has sent a letter (cosigned by 50 Congresspersons) to the Attorney General calling for a special prosecutor to investigate claims that the U.S. has violated the War Crimes Act at secret detention facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. . .

Christian soldiers

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/05/14/3309/
It doesn’t seem to me to be unreasonable to guess that there’s an indirect link between this NYT story on evangelizing Christians making life uncomfortable for non-believers in the armed forces, and the riots in Afghanistan that followed a Newsweek report that a copy of the Koran had been flushed down the toilet by Guantanamo interrogators. Other services than the Air Force have a spotty track record in the area of Christian-Muslim sensitivities; to the best of my knowledge, General Boykin was never disciplined for the flagrantly offensive comments that he made in 2003.

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000515.html
Many people before me have noticed the colorful and only slightly terrifying website of FORCE Ministries. But if you haven't seen it yourself, check it out. . . As you'll see, it's an organization of former and current Navy SEALs with the stated purpose of "equipping military personnel for Christ-centered duty.”

How conservatives are selling out their own principles by destroying the filibuster rule (they’re “conserving” nothing)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/13/194859/338

Head count: seven GOP Senators holding the balance

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/14/filibuster.fight.ap/index.html

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010707.html

What is at stake

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/14/0454/78714
What is the work that James Dobson sock puppet Senator Frist will do for the extremists in control of the Republican Party? Very simple - they want extremist judges AND Supreme Court Justices who will:

(1) Overturn Roe v. Wade, destroying a women's right to choose. To be followed by a federal law banning all abortions.

(2) Eviscerate the separation of church and state. To be followed by continued attacks on science and the imposition of the teaching of one belief system in the classroom. Creationism as science.

(3) Strip existing legal protections of the environment through judicially activist interpretations of federal law.

(4) Eliminate workers and union rights.

(5) Weaken civil rights protections through outlandish and unfounded readings of the Constitution and federal civil rights laws. End affirmative action, shred employment discrimination laws. Legalize discrimination against gays.

Bush’s Social Security spiel: sillier and sillier

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3172

The Ohio “rare coin” scandal continues to spread, now turning into a wider graft investigation

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/ohio-gop-rare-coin-scandal-keeps-on.html
[Toledo Blade] Gov. Bob Taft said yesterday he knew that his former chief of staff vacationed at local Republican fund-raiser Tom Noe’s Florida home, but was not concerned about it at the time.

“I assumed he would have complied with the state law, so there wasn’t any reason to do anything,” Mr. Taft said. He told The Blade that while his former chief of staff, Brian Hicks, typically held himself to “very high standards of ethical conduct,” it is a “disappointment” to him if Mr. Hicks acted unethically in vacationing at Mr. Noe’s home for less-than-market rates.

The Blade reported yesterday that Mr. Hicks paid Mr. Noe $300 to $500 for a five-night stay at the coin dealer’s Florida Keys home in 2001, and that he vacationed at the Noes’ home again in 2002. Mr. Hicks, who was Mr. Taft’s chief of staff during both visits, paid well below the market rate at the time, estimated by Florida rental agents at $2,000 to $3,500 for a week’s stay in the 3,600 square-foot waterfront home.

Under state campaign-finance laws, members of the executive branch — including the governor’s chief of staff — must disclose the source of gifts if their value exceeds $75. State officials are also prohibited from receiving gifts from those who have matters before their particular agency or the agency’s current or potential business partners.

Sunday talk show lineup

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/15/04236/3930
MEET THE PRESS WITH TIM RUSSERT (NBC)

Ahmed Nazif (Egyptian Prime Minister)

Panel: David Broder (Washington Post); Paul Gigot (Wall Street Journal); Eugene Robinson (Washington Post); Katty Kay (BBC)

THIS WEEK WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (ABC)

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR)

Panel: Paul Begala, Cokie Roberts and George Will.

FACE THE NATION WITH BOB SCHIEFFER (CBS)

Sen. Edward Kennedy (Democrat - Massachusetts);

Elisabeth Bumiller (The New York Times) and Colbert King (The Washington Post).

FOX NEWS SUNDAY WITH CHRIS WALLACE (FOX)

Stephen Hadley (National Security Adviser); Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky)

Bonus item: What Bush was doing while Washington DC was seized in a major terror alert. . .

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/13/bike/index.html

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/05/14/13/01/no-kids-at-the-big-table/

***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 @ 2:33 PM

 
NO, REPEAT, YES

Voinovich slams Bolton, says he’s no good for the job, then votes for him anyway (very slick). Will the Dems filibuster in the full Senate? Will they have to?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/12/122221/656

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/12/bolton_voinovich/index.html

http://slate.msn.com/id/2118601/fr/rss/

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002042.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_08.php#005672
Sen. Voinovich says he'll vote 'no' on Bolton before he votes 'yes'.

Nuclear option coming

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/12/112130/292

And, predictably, they start throwing slime at Harry Reid

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/13/2369/05702

Brewing trouble for Republican moderates in Congress

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/13/2412/69193
The Extremists in control of the Republican Party are at war with the moderates of their own party, and the moderates have started to notice. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/13/politics/13assess.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/12/112944/272

The mainstream media, weeks late, finally notices the blockbuster memo from England detailing how Bush decided to go to war, then lied to get the American people to accept it

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_08_atrios_archive.html#111588926615046035

ABC says it isn’t interested in covering the war any more

http://www.davidsirota.com/2005/05/abc-news-were-not-interested-in.html
[David Sirota] Just look at this from ABC News's "The Note" today:

"Brides gotta run, planes gotta stray, and cable news networks gotta find a way to fill a lot of programming hours as cheaply as possible...We say with all the genuine apolitical and non-partisan human concern that we can muster that the death and carnage in Iraq is truly staggering. And/but we are sort of resigned to the Notion that it simply isn't going to break through to American news organizations, or, for the most part, Americans...What is hands down the biggest story every day in the world will get almost no coverage."

Let me reiterate how unbelievable this actually is: A MAJOR AMERICAN MEDIA OUTLET HAS NOW DECLARED THAT THEY SIMPLY ARE NOT INTERESTED IN LETTING THE CARNAGE IN IRAQ "BREAK THROUGH" IN THEIR NEWS COVERAGE - AS IF IT IS SIMPLY NOT NEWSWORTHY.

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/sirota-smacks-press-on-iraq-they-whine.html

Another low-level officer found culpable in Abu Ghraib prison scandal

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/11/AR2005051101818.html
The Army has decided to punish the top military intelligence officer stationed at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003 with a letter of reprimand and a fine amounting to half of his pay for two months for his role in the notorious abuse of Iraqis, a senior Army official disclosed yesterday.

The officer, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, had operational control of the Abu Ghraib prison wing where military reservists had photographed Iraqis being threatened by police dogs, paraded without clothes, forced to simulate sex acts, and physically struck by their guards in October and November of that year. . .

Pappas was one of the last officers to be investigated for wrongdoing at Abu Ghraib; only the fate of his deputy, Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, remains undecided. A lone officer with more senior rank has been punished for the abuse -- Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the head of a military police brigade that supervised other areas in the prison besides the wing that Pappas controlled. She was demoted and reprimanded in a letter.

Army commanders rejected Pappas's repeated claims to investigators that the abuse originated in orders, pressure and encouragement by his superiors.

Pappas alleged last year, for example, that the use of dogs to intimidate Iraqi prisoners was approved by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller. . . Pappas, according to a transcript of an interview by Army investigators, also accused a military intelligence superior in Iraq, Col. Steven Boltz, of approving the CIA's use of Abu Ghraib prison as a place to store "ghost detainees," a term referring to prisoners whose correct names were not registered in prison rolls. . . Keeping ghost detainees violates the Geneva Conventions. . .

Brad DeLong nails the Social Security “reform” scam

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/05/statement_on_so.html

Once again, for the Bush gang, religion trumps science

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/11/AR2005051101812.html
Soon after the Food and Drug Administration overruled its advisory panel last year and rejected an application to make an emergency contraceptive more easily available, critics of the agency said it had ignored scientific evidence and yielded to pressure from social conservatives.

The agency denied the charge, but an outspoken evangelical conservative doctor on the panel subsequently acknowledged in a previously unreported public sermon that he was asked to write a memo to the FDA commissioner soon after the panel voted 23 to 4 in favor of over-the-counter sales of the contraceptive, called Plan B. He said he believes his memo played a central role in the rejection of that recommendation.

The new information comes from a videotaped sermon in October by W. David Hager. On the tape, he said he was asked to write a "minority report" that would outline why over-the-counter sales should be rejected. . . Hager said, "I was asked to write a minority opinion that was sent to the commissioner of the FDA. For only the second time in five decades, the FDA did not abide by its advisory committee opinion, and the measure was rejected.". . .

"I argued from a scientific perspective, and God took that information, and he used it through this minority report to influence the decision," Hager said. "Once again, what Satan meant for evil, God turned into good.". . .

Hager said the request for the report came from "outside the agency," but he had previously told two other journalists -- in one case in an e-mail that the recipient saved -- that the request came from an FDA staff member. . . An FDA spokeswoman said yesterday that the agency did not ask Hager to write a report and that Hager sent what she called a "private citizen letter" to Commissioner Mark McClellan. "We don't ask for minority reports and opinions," she said. "I've been advised that nobody from the FDA asked him to write the letter."

Hager has been a highly controversial figure because of his strong views against abortion and emergency contraception and in favor of abstinence education. In his October sermon, he said that Christians such as himself were at "war" with people who would take faith and values out of medical care. . . Hager said that White House officials called him in June 2001 and asked him to serve in some capacity -- initially as a candidate for surgeon general and later as a member of two advisory boards. After one month, Hager said, he was called by the White House and asked to resign from those committees and join the FDA's reproductive drugs panel instead because "there are some issues coming up we feel are very critical, and we want you to be on that advisory board."

[NB: So, who was it who contacted him and asked him to write this minority report? Someone from the White House?]

Wait, there’s more

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_08_atrios_archive.html#111588963462873108
Sex was always a source of conflict in the marriage. Though it wasn't emotionally satisfying for her, Davis says she soon learned that sex could "buy" peace with Hager after a long day of arguing, or insure his forgiveness after she spent too much money. "Sex was coinage; it was a commodity," she said. Sometimes Hager would blithely shift from vaginal to anal sex. Davis protested. "He would say, 'Oh, I didn't mean to have anal sex with you; I can't feel the difference,'" Davis recalls incredulously. "And I would say, 'Well then, you're in the wrong business.'"

By the 1980s, according to Davis, Hager was pressuring her to let him videotape and photograph them having sex. She consented, and eventually she even let Hager pay her for sex that she wouldn't have otherwise engaged in--for example, $2,000 for oral sex, "though that didn't happen very often because I hated doing it so much. So though it was more painful, I would let him sodomize me, and he would leave a check on the dresser," Davis admitted to me with some embarrassment. This exchange took place almost weekly for several years. . .

For the next seven years Hager sodomized Davis without her consent while she slept roughly once a month until their divorce in 2002, she claims. "My sense is that he saw [my narcolepsy] as an opportunity," Davis surmises.

The whole story: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050530&s=mcgarvey

The end of conservatism

http://blogs.salon.com/0000014/2005/05/11.html#a872
[Scott Rosenberg] [C]onservatives believe in the conservation of human institutions and values. Conversely, the word "radical" derives from the Latin for "roots," because radicalism is all about digging things up at the roots and starting over. . .

The Republican, "red state" agenda can be called "conservative" only by force of habit. Abroad, President Bush pursues a messianic vision, one part religious war and one part democratic crusade, neither pursued with any consistency but both leading to regime changes, bloodshed and the casual abandonment of carefully built institutions and alliances. At home, Bush, having enacted massive changes to the federal tax structure that are steadily bankrupting the government, seeks to scuttle Social Security, the most successful social program in American history.

The president is a radical. It is his Democratic opponents, fighting a rearguard action to protect the institutions of the liberal state that their predecessors built over the last century, who are now conservatives.

I'm thinking in this framework as I ponder the Senate's "nuclear option" mess. . . What's interesting about the Senate's procedural civil war is how completely the Republicans, in their triumphant eternal Now, have taken their eye off the past and the future. The past tells us that every party in power sooner or later falls out of the majority. In the future, the Republicans will surely want and need the filibuster that they are so gung-ho to eliminate today.

The Senate leadership's inability or unwillingness to imagine a future shoe-on-the-other-foot scenario has an analogue in the administration's casual attitude toward the Geneva Accords and other safeguards against torture. The military has traditionally understood the vital importance of sticking to these agreements, even with despicable and immoral enemies, because it's the only way you have any hope of insuring that your own people won't be tortured when they end up in the other side's prisons. But the Bush administration's end-justifies-the-means thinking has left this tradition in tatters.

Having squeaked into the White House twice in a row, these guys, it seems, can't picture a future in which they are no longer running the world. And their short-sightedness is not only beginning to wreck the government; it's trashing their own conservative tradition. I can't claim to understand why.

This is one of those “how you word it” stories. Let me rewrite it: Bush received more votes from touch screen machines, even after controlling for factors that could explain voter preferences. Any guess as to why he would be registering more e-votes?

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/05/12/did_touchscreen_voting_help_bush.html
In a National Bureau of Economic Research paper, David Card and Enrico Moretti conclude President Bush did better among voters using touch-screen machines, even when controlling for income and demographic characteristics of voters. However, they dispute Bush's better showing was caused by the irregularities.

Bonus item: Scotty tries (very badly) to explain the Cesna scare, and why the President couldn’t be inconvenienced

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3160

***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 @ 2:36 AM

 
DO NOT SPEAK ILL OF THE DEAD

Bush rewrites history again. Not satisfied with screwing up everything during his own term, he now wants to go back and undo – or denigrate – the achievements of every previous Democratic administration too. And, no, I don’t think this is a coincidence. For a country ignorant of history, this is Roveanism par excellence – reframe the past as a way of cementing the Republican realignment

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_08.php#005651
[Josh Marshall] I'm glad to see it is already garnering a slowly-rising chorus of criticism. But let me just start with a brief comment on President Bush's historically ignorant and morally hideous claim that "the agreement at Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact."

To compare the results of the Yalta Conference to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the key element of which was a secret agreement by which the 20th century's two great dictators agreed to carve up the defenseless neighbour between them, is truly unconscionable. And to compare it to Munich is little less so.

In making this argument the president joins a rich tradition of maniacs who believe that at the end of World War II we should have joined with the defeated remainder of the German army and fought our way through Eastern Europe to the border of Russia and, in all likelihood, on to Moscow to overthrow the Soviet Union itself -- certainly not a difficult proposition considering what an insubstantial land Army the Soviet Union had at the time.

http://hnn.us/articles/11835.html
Bush stopped short of accusing Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill of outright perfidy, but his words recalled those of hardcore FDR- and Truman-haters circa 1945.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006292.php
But here's what I'm curious about: why did Bush mention Yalta at all? For most people alive today this is long dead history, but Bush's speechwriters are well aware that "Yalta" was once a codeword extraordinaire among a certain segment of the population. In fact, it was perhaps the single biggest bugaboo of the wingnut right in the late 40s and 50s, right up there with Alger Hiss and Joe McCarthy's list of communists in the State Department.

But most of those people are dead. So who was the reference aimed at? Not just the Latvians, that's for sure. Bush is a master of using codewords in his speeches, and inserting Yalta into this speech wasn't a casual decision. It was there for someone. Who?

[NB: Well, you have my answer. Here’s the rude version: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2005/05/disposable-roosevelt-heres-little.html]

Tom Ridge admits that the Bush gang often inflated terror threat warnings against DHS’s recommendations

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20050511/pl_usatoday/ridgerevealsclashesonalerts
The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says. . . Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or "high" risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled.

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/5/11/14158/5143
Remember the chart that showed the relationship between Bush's approval rating and terror alters? The chart clearly suggested that terror alerts were used more frequently during times of unpopularity for Bush.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/11/terror/index.html
The two most questionable threat escalations came at crucial junctures for Bush. One, in February of 2003, came just as Bush was trying to rally the nation for war in Iraq, and the second, in August of 2004, in advance of Bush's Republican convention, where GOP officials dwelled on the war on terror. (Bush's handling of the war on terror consistently ranks as his highest scoring response in voter surveys.)

In Iraq, we have quietly INCREASED the troop numbers again – and it’s still not enough

http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/50-dead-90-wounded-in-iraq-bombings-on.html

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3139

HOW in the world can someone like John Bolton get approved for the U.N.? It’s almost ridiculous now that every day brings new reports on his screw-ups, while the committee seems to be framing the vote strictly as a loyalty test to the Bush gang. Does it even MATTER that he may have broken the law and perjured himself before the committee?

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000601.html

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/_/2005/05/perspective.php

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002033.html

And, though I hesitate to forward it, new sex allegations as well

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3148

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000602.html

[NB: Here’s the problem. Even if this brings him down, it’s not the way to do it. He should be rejected because he’s a lousy miserable excuse for a diplomat, and because putting him forward was an arrogant and cynical move by Bush in the first place. Let’s not let people lose sight of that. If he’s dropped because of distasteful sex allegations, it leaves people with a dirty feeling and even a bit of sympathy toward him. It’s just like Clarence Thomas – the Democrats didn’t have the nerve or the leverage to say what was obvious at the time: that he was an utterly unqualified candidate. Instead we got all caught up in Anita Hill’s allegations, and when those got deflected he was home free.]

Nevertheless, Lincoln Chafee says he will vote to confirm, using that gutless formulation “Bush should be able to have the team around him that he chooses.” Hey Senator Chafee: by this reasoning, WHY HAVE AN ADVISE AND CONSENT ROLE AT ALL?

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/11/bolton/index.html
"I won't deny a lot of the information certainly brings great pause," Chafee said. "But I fight the administration on so many issues; this is one of those that I've been with them on -- to appoint their team."

Vote may be delayed again

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/11/bolton/index.html
Though it may be too little too late, Senate Democrats appear to have reached a deal with the State Department on a slew of internal State documents that Bolton's opponents believe will reveal more about his career history. The department will turn over the documents in question if the Dems will reduce the scope of their request. . . The committee is scheduled to put Bolton's nomination to a vote on Thursday, though Biden has suggested that he might force another delay unless the State Department complies with Democrats' requests.

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002035.html
Senate Intelligence committee staff send word that tomorrow's Bolton hearings by their fellow Foreign Relations committee should be interesting. Senate Intel committee leadership were briefed yesterday on the NSA intercepts from which Bolton requested he be provided with the US persons identities on ten occasions. Senators Rockefeller and Roberts were apparently not told the names from the NSA intercepts; but go read the last two graphs of this wire report:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/05/11/national/w163635D47.DTL

Priscilla Owen (they’re destroying the Senate for THIS?)

http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/05/05/ale05070.html

Another govt department (Agriculture) paid for fake news

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/now-its-dept-of-agriculture-paying-for.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/11/payola/index.html

Bush apologists now want to deny that he is trying to privatize Social Security at all

http://blog.rockthevote.com/2005/05/michael-medved-twisting-in-wind.html

Can we put that silly “liberal media” tag away now?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200505110005

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/5/11/201136/084

Theocracy watch

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/12/education/12academy.html
A chaplain at the Air Force Academy has described a "systemic and pervasive" problem of religious proselytizing at the academy and says a religious tolerance program she helped create to deal with the problem was watered down after it was shown to officers, including the major general who is the Air Force's chief chaplain.

[NB: I love that, watering down the tolerance program – yeah, because we can’t have too much of THAT]

Bonus item: another goofy liberal

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/11/23651/7456
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 11/8/54

***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 @ 1:03 AM

 
ALL IN

Will Frist throw in all his chips on the filibuster vote? Does Reid sound like someone who is worried about losing?

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/11/nuclear/index.html
Senate Majority leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., is itching to go all in -- force a showdown over a handful of stalled judicial nominees, play the nuclear option and eliminate the filibuster. After some D.C. chatter last week that Frist was rethinking the radical strategy (a Washington Post/ABC poll showed it's a loser with most voters), Frist, waving off talk of a compromise, announced the showdown is all but certain for next week, and that Texas Supreme court justice Priscilla Owen will likely serve as the nominee who will set the confrontation in motion.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/10/15536/2555
[Reid] Two weeks ago, Bill Frist and I exchanged proposals in an attempt to avert a vote on the nuclear option.

One proposal allowed for up or down votes on all but four judges - which many of us on both sides of the aisle considered to be the goal of this hyped battle over judicial nominations. . . It also took the "nuclear option" off the table, which even Ken Starr said yesterday was damaging to the Senate as an institution and "amounts to an assault on the judicial branch of government.". . .

Senator Frist's proposal does nothing to end the judicial impasse, as it would wipe away the very checks and balances that have prevented an abuse of power for more than 200 years. . . That result is unacceptable.

I still consider this confrontation entirely unnecessary and irresponsible. The White House manufactured this crisis. Since Bush took office, the Senate confirmed 208 of his judicial nominations and turned back only 10, a 95% confirmation rate. Instead of accepting that success and avoiding further divisiveness and partisanship in Washington, the President chose to pick fights instead of judges by resubmitting the names of the rejected nominees.

This fight is not about seven radical nominees; it's about clearing the way for a Supreme Court nominee who only needs 51 votes, instead of 60 votes. They want a Clarence Thomas, not a Sandra Day O'Connor or Anthony Kennedy or David Souter. George Bush wants to turn the Senate into a second House of Representatives, a rubberstamp for his right wing agenda and radical judges. That's not how America works. . .

But I want to be clear: we are prepared for a vote on the nuclear option. Democrats will join responsible Republicans in a vote to uphold the constitutional principle of checks and balances. . .

I also suggest two reasonable ways to avert this constitutional crisis.

First, allow up or down votes on additional nominees, as I addressed in my proposal to Frist two weeks ago. If this is about getting judges on the courts, let's get them on the courts.

Second, allow the Senate to consider changing the rules without breaking the rules. Every one of us knows that there is a right way and a wrong way to change the rules of the Senate; the nuclear option is the wrong way. Senator Dodd will go to the floor this afternoon to expand on the way the Senate changes its rules. . .

Either of these options offers a path away from the precipice of the nuclear option. But if neither of these options is acceptable to you, let's vote.

Why compromise with the Republicans is impossible

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/05/10/08/38/no-quarter/

WSJ was backing the judicial filibuster when the Republicans were using it

http://mediamatters.org/items/200505110001

Bolton: muerte

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000596.html
[NYT] A new portrayal of John R. Bolton describes him as having so angered senior State Department officials with his public comments that the deputy secretary of state, Richard L. Armitage, ordered two years ago that Mr. Bolton be blocked from delivering speeches and testimony unless they were personally approved by Mr. Armitage.

The detailed account was provided to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Lawrence S. Wilkerson, a longtime aide to former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Mr. Wilkerson said that Mr. Bolton, who was then an under secretary of state, had caused "problems" by speaking out on North Korea, the International Atomic Energy Agency and other delicate issues in remarks that had not been properly cleared. . .

Mr. Wilkerson said that Mr. Bolton had been a major cause of tension and resentment at the highest levels of the State Department because of his temperament, his treatment of subordinates and the fact that he had "overstepped his bounds" on a number of occasions, including what Mr. Wilkerson called "his moves and gyrations" aimed at preventing Mohamed ElBaradei from being reappointed as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear monitoring body.

Mr. Wilkerson also disputed one account that had been provided by Mr. Bolton, and said that it was Mr. Armitage, and not Mr. Bolton, who decided in the summer of 2003 to postpone Congressional testimony that Mr. Bolton had planned to give on Syria and that had touched off significant opposition from American intelligence agencies. Mr. Wilkerson also provided a new account of the reaction within the State Department to a speech that Mr. Bolton delivered on North Korea in the summer of 2003, saying that the speech had not been fully vetted and that Mr. Armitage had become "very angry - that's to put it mildly" - at an assistant secretary of state who signed off on Mr. Bolton's language.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006409
[Murray Waad] John R. Bolton, President Bush's designate to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was one of more than a half dozen senior Bush administration officials who received highly classified NSA intercepts of conversations of private phone conversations of Mohammed ElBarbadei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to government officials familiar with the matter. The IAEA is the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency.

That the NSA was intercepting the phone calls of IAEA officers, particularly ElBarbadei, is in and of itself hardly big news. IAEA officials have known about the eavesdropping for more than a decade, and have made it a point not to conduct sensitive diplomacy over the telephone. An IAEA spokesman told reporters in Dec. of last year, for example: "We've always assumed that this kind of thing goes on. We wish it were otherwise, but we know the reality."

But Bolton differed from other consumers of the intelligence, according to two senior government officials familiar with the matter, in that when the intercepts proved all but useless to his cause to oust ElBarbadei from his IAEA post, he privately encouraged more aggressive intelligence gathering operations against the IAEA, the United Nations, and other international organizations.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/10/AR2005051001264.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000599.html

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3123

http://susiemadrak.com/2005/05/10/07/55/our-man-in-state/

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000600.html

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002029.html

Alternative names to Bolton already being floated?

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000597.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/05/index.html#006418

Social Security: they won’t give it up, even when their own numbers show that the Bush alternative would be a catastrophe

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/05/social_security_the_numbers_are_ugly.html

Still looking for the right description, as if it’s just poor word choice that people are rejecting

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_08.php#005650
Privatization 4.0 from Dick Cheney yesterday in Denver: "Personal property accounts."

But still it’s the liberal media’s fault

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/05/ah_media_bias.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_05_08.php#005654

Wow. A must read. . . (thanks to Attaturk for the link)

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050508/OPINION04/505080346/1054/OPINION
[Molly Bingham] But the basic point for this discussion is that we both thought it was really journalistically important to understand who it was who was resisting the presence of the foreign troops. If you didn't understand that, how could you report what was clearly becoming an "ongoing conflict?" And if you were reading the news in America, or Europe, how could you understand the full context of what was unfolding if what motivates the "other side" of the conflict is not understood, or even discussed?. . . Just the process of working on that story has revealed many things to me about my own country. I'd like to share some of them with you. . .

Bush’s blinders

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3128
Q: Mr. President, you are a transformational, they call it, and promoting democracy in the world is a very ambitious goal; and achieve peace, changing the world, and it's also acknowledging Europe. But such a far-reaching idealism can also easily lead to moral inconsistencies that risk to undermine your credibility. For instance, how does the way detainees at Guantanamo Bay are being handled, how does that relate to your promotion of democracy and the rule of law?

THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate that. That, and, for example, the pictures people saw about the prison -- prison abuse is different from the detainees in Guantanamo [Huh? Abuse of detainees in GITMO is not "prison abuse"?]. We're working our way forward, so that they -- and our courts, by the way, are adjudicating this. It is a clear, transparent review of the decision I made by the courts, so everybody can see it. And they're being argued in the courts as we speak. People are being treated humanely. They were illegal non-combatants [Huh? Non-combatants?], however, and I made the decision they did not pertain to the Geneva Convention [Again, huh? They did not pertain to the Geneva Convention ?]. They were not -- these were terrorists. Obviously, we've looked at Iraq differently.

I can understand people being concerned about prison abuse when they see the pictures out of Abu Ghraib, and it made Americans universally sick, because the actions of those folks didn't represent the heart and soul of America, didn't represent the sentiments of the American people. . . But I'm also a realistic person, and I'm realistic enough to know that images on TV have sullied our country's image, at times. And we've just got to continue to spread -- tell people the truth, be open about the mistakes of Abu Ghraib, hold people to account.

Why it’s important to read articles all the way through: buried in a generally favorable article on Rumsfeld is this bombshell

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/05/rumsfeld_unrave.html
"When it became evident that we were going to face a determined and prolonged insurgency, he was very resistant to increasing troop levels, stepping up production of up-armored Humvees, and modifying the game plan," said Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican on the Armed Services Committee.

[NB: Why a bombshell? Because all along Rumsfeld has said that his generals didn’t ASK for more troops, and that he would gladly have sent more if asked. Now we see how that decision was really made]

Here’s how hard up the military is getting for recruits. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/11/11427/2427
[KHOU, Houston] Sgt. Thomas kelt left this message on that young man's cell phone: "Hey Chris, this is Sgt. Kelt with the Army man. I think we got disconnected. Okay, I know you were on your cell probably and just had a bad connection or something like that. I know you didn't hang up on me. Anyway, by federal law you got an appointment with me at 2 o'clock this afternoon at Greenspoint Mall, okay? That's the Greenspoint Mall Army Recruiting Station at 2 o'clock. You fail to appear and we'll have a warrant. Okay? So give me a call back.". . .

[NYT] Interviews with more than two dozen recruiters in 10 states hint at the extent of their concern, if not the exact scope of the transgressions. Several spoke of concealing mental-health histories and police records. They described falsified documents, wallet-size cheat sheets slipped to applicants before the military's aptitude test and commanding officers who look the other way. . .

How deep in Delay’s pockets are Congressional Republicans? Very, very deep

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/5/10/13594/1005

The thoroughgoing corruption of the conservative movement

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_05_08_digbysblog_archive.html#111575200036679925
Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist came together as a power in the College Republicans during the Reagan years. Blackwell, Rove, Atwater, and many others powerful operatives and strategists had cut their teeth there, as well, but these guys came in at the beginning of the heady Reagan years and they were fueled by the belief that they were on the permanent winning side of history. The triumverate of Norquist, Abramoff and Reed is legendary --- and they are all implicated in the burgeoning Jack Abramoff/Tom DeLay scandal.

They have come to represent the three most important wings of the modern conservative movement --- the Christian Right (Reed), the movement ideologues (Norquist) and the big money boys (Abramoff.) They are the Republican party. And they are all corrupt. . .

The Franklin investigation, like the Plame investigation, may end up scrutinizing the incestuous network of government-media leaks and back channels. . . only this time, on the right-end of the spectrum

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3130

GOP fiscal accountability

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1360
Real wages in the US are falling at their fastest rate in 14 years, according to data surveyed by the Financial Times.

GOP family values

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/05/10/gop/index.html

Minister who kicked Democratic members out of his Baptist church gets kicked out himself. Otherwise the church was in jeopardy of losing its tax-exempt status

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/preacher-who-kicked-out-dems-quits.html

Another blow against open government

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/11/politics/11cheney.html
A federal appeals court said on Tuesday that Vice President Dick Cheney did not have to divulge details about how the White House's energy policies were shaped, ruling in a case that touched on the constitutional separation of powers.

Ohio stops investing in rare coin fund (gee, it seemed like such a good idea at the time)

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/ohio-stops-investing-in-gop-rare-coin.html

Bonus item: PBD gets its first mention in one of the Big Time blogs – but that’s not the point. Read this and think about it. . .

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_05_08_atrios_archive.html#111574686245206984
[Avedon] One reason I don't think it's at all paranoid to suspect that the Republicans have deliberately taken over the voting system in order to cheat is that they keep doing things that don't otherwise make sense. There's a rather long list of things you just wouldn't expect them to think they could get away with unless they really thought they could control the ballot box, because otherwise they would have to expect that the public would kick enough of them out to not only end some political careers but also make impeachment - and prison - a distinct possibility.

And then there's this nuclear option thing - why would they be willing to remove any possibility of stopping majority party initiatives unless they were absolutely sure that they could never become the minority party again?

Conservatives have made good use of the filibuster over the years, on judicial nominations and a lot of other things. Are they absolutely certain no one will wake up and get rid of them? Or are they just sure that how we vote isn't going to matter?

More, from Digby

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_05_08_digbysblog_archive.html#111576181700350905
As pointed out to me this morning by my favorite correspondent, the item at the top of the list (that may just be the "real" nuclear option) is this provision in the "Real ID" bill that removes judicial review. This article calls the hoohaw over the filibuster a trojan horse ---- it's the elimination of judicial review that's the constitution buster.

The right has held for decades that judicial review has no constitutional foundation. Because of various rulings over the past 50 years on civil and individual rights with which they disagree, they have developed the dogma that the courts do not have the right to determine if a law is unconstitutional. . .

http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/2655/1/315?TopicID=1
A bill to establish national identification card standards and restrict asylum claims also contains a controversial provision to empower the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive any and all laws in the course of securing the borders from illegal immigration. The provision also includes an exemption from judicial review that not only shields the waiver decisions from court scrutiny but also strips courts of any power to order remedies for anyone harmed by the consequences of such decisions.

***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 @ 10:46 AM

 
WAR STORIES

Onward Christian soldiers. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/9/154459/3494
Jerry Falwell:

God is pro-war

Throughout the book of Judges, God calls the Israelites to go to war against the Midianites and Philistines. Why? Because these nations were trying to conquer Israel, and God's people were called to defend themselves.

President Bush declared war in Iraq to defend innocent people. This is a worthy pursuit. In fact, Proverbs 21:15 tells us: "It is joy to the just to do judgment: but destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity."

One of the primary purposes of the church is to stop the spread of evil, even at the cost of human lives. If we do not stop the spread of evil, many innocent lives will be lost and the kingdom of God suffers.

James Dobson:

Today on his national daily radio broadcast, Focus on the Family President Dr. James Dobson expressed support for the troops serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and he called our nation to prayer. Dobson, heard by 8.9 million listeners each week, stated his support for President Bush by saying that the government has a "moral obligation" to stop evil and tyranny.

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3116
The Family Research Council has drawn attention to discrimination in the nation's courtrooms and in the halls of Congress against those who hold to a conservative Christian faith. Now such "Christophobia" is being exposed even in the military. Military chaplains have sued the Navy for denominational discrimination in assignments and promotions. Even more shocking are charges that evangelicals are being reprimanded for preaching the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ, instead of a more "pluralistic" message. This happens even though federal law explicitly protects the right of a chaplain to "conduct public worship according to the manner and forms of the church of which he is a member.". . .

[Tena] The reason this interests me is because it illustrates about as well as anything I've seen, the inside-out nature of the Right's framing. No one has ever tried to keep conservative Christians from practicing their religion except where that practice infringes on other people's freedom of religion. The Christian mullahs, however, would have it that they are always embattled and that Christianity is under siege in America. I've been told that it violates their constitutional rights when people say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas, and the guy seemed to be serious. Where the argument really goes inside out, however, is the assertion that restraining Christians from infringing on other peoples' rights or on the constitution itself, is a violation of the constitution. They seriously contend that unless they are allowed to abrogate the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state, their own constitutional right to freedom of religion has been violated. If that was true, the constitution would be in conflict with itself, and it isn't.

Army, Marine recruiting way down: maybe it’s time for those armchair war supporters to start filling out their enlistment cards

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/5/9/104813/3757
Yet the Jonah Goldbergs don't feel the cause is worthy enough to justify their well-being:

“As for why my sorry a** isn't in the kill zone, lots of people think this is a searingly pertinent question. No answer I could give -- I'm 35 years old, my family couldn't afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my a** is, er, sorry, are a few -- ever seem to suffice.”

[NB: His faux self-deprecations aside, there isn’t a single one of his self-described disqualifications that doesn’t fit hundreds, or thousands of soldiers now deep into their extended tours of duty. Of course, the honest answer is, “Who, ME enlist? Are you kidding? I'm an Important Person"]

Two accounts of the battle in Western Iraq: what happens when news is reduced to recycling military press briefings as opposed to actually reporting on site

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/05/always_look_at_.html
The New York Times and Washington Post both have stories on the top of their Web sites announcing a Marine offensive near the Syrian border. According to the stories, the jarheads are kicking some ass. . . Both stories rely on military spokesmen, since which is understandable since the stories are filed from Baghdad. . .

But turns out the Chicago Tribune has a reporter traveling with the Marines. It ain't such a pretty picture:

[James Janega] While some American units were able to conduct limited raids north of the Euphrates on Sunday, most of the rest were trapped south of the river while Army engineers struggled to build a pontoon bridge across it.

Overnight, the Army's 814th Multi-Role Bridge Company crawled along back roads towards the Euphrates, where it was to construct a pontoon bridge that would allow the Marines to cross. The trucks were forced to use their headlights to allow them to spot land mines along the route.

But the routine safety practice apparently alerted area residents to the convoy's presence. An entire town along the route switched off its lights all at once, a move Marines believe is used to send signals from one river town to the next.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/11605487.htm
[James Janega] The Marines who swept into the Euphrates River town of Ubaydi confronted an enemy they had not expected to find - and one that attacked in surprising ways. . . As they pushed from house to house in early fighting, trying to flush out the insurgents who had attacked their column with mortar fire, the Marines ran into sandbagged emplacements behind garden walls. Commanders said Marines also found a house where insurgents were crouching in the basement, firing rifles and machine guns upward through holes at ankle height in the ground-floor walls, aiming at spots that the Marines' body armor did not cover.

The shock was that the enemy was not supposed to be in Ubaydi at all. Instead, American intelligence indicated that the insurgency had massed on the other side of the river. Marine commanders expressed surprise Monday not only at the insurgents' presence but also the extent of their preparations, as if they expected the Marines to come.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2118366/fr/rss/
As you might notice, most of the papers' stories actually cite "as many as" 100 insurgents killed. (Kind of like TP is "as much as" 6ft. tall). Then turn to the LAT, which quotes the commander in the field puzzling over the hundred figure and saying "a couple of dozen" insurgents were probably killed.

More: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-offensive10may10,0,7177158.story

Members of Allawi’s interim government are sneaking out of Iraq to avoid prosecution for corruption

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3111

The dilemmas of Gitmo: what is Bush going to do with the det