SHINING EXAMPLESWell, folks, thanks to your efforts, PBD is a finalist for “Best Blog” in the Koufax awards. Just to make the top ten is quite an honor, and I really appreciate it. There is now a final round of voting to determine a winner, and if you are so inclined, please go to this site, scroll to the bottom, and vote for “Progressive Blog Digest” via the Comments section:http://wampum.wabanaki.net/vault/2006/03/002506.htmlThere are a lot of deserving blogs in this category.I am out of the country right now, but I will keep posting whenever I can get reliable Internet access. By Monday March 27 I will be back on my regular daily schedule again.***SUNDAY IS THE LAST DAY OF VOTING***Just read thishttp://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/03/24/bush_shuns_patriot_act_requirement/When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers.
The bill contained several oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain dates.
Bush signed the bill with fanfare at a White House ceremony March 9, calling it ''a piece of legislation that's vital to win the war on terror and to protect the American people." But after the reporters and guests had left, the White House quietly issued a ''signing statement," an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law.
In the statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would ''impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties."
Our lawless governmenthttp://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/03/administration-tells-congress-again-we.html[Glenn Greenwald] Can that be any clearer for you - Congressmen, Senators, journalists? The President is bestowed by the Constitution with the unlimited and un-limitable power to do anything that he believes is necessary to "protect the nation." Thus, even if Congress passes laws which seek to limit that power in any way, and even if the President agrees to those restrictions and signs that bill into law, he still retains the power to violate it whenever he wants.
Thus, Sen. DeWine can pass his cute little bill purporting to require oversight, or Sen. Specter can pass his, or they can do nothing and leave FISA in place. None of that matters, because no matter what Congress or even the President do with regard to the law, the law does not restrict what the President can do in any way. They are telling the Congress to its face that all of the grand debates it is having and the negotiations it is conducting are all irrelevant farces, because no matter what happens, the President retains unlimited power and nothing that Congress does can affect that power in any way.
The reality is that the Administration has been making clear for quite some time that they have unlimited power and that nothing -- not even the law -- can restrict it. But here, they are specifically telling Congress that even if Congress amends FISA and the President agrees to abide by those amendments, they still have the power to break the law whenever they want. As I have documented more times than I can count, we have a President who has seized unlimited power, including the power to break the law, and the Administration -- somewhat commendably -- is quite candid and straightforward about that fact.
Bush’s shining example of success in the Iraq War (Tal Afar)? Well. . . http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/2773[Reuters] "I say that Bush is 100 percent a liar because the city of Tal Afar has become a ghost town rather than the example Bush spoke about," said Ali Ibrahim, a Shi'ite Turkmen laborer. . .
Sunni Turkmen Rafat Ahmed, 35, a shop owner said: "As I'm talking now the Americans and the Iraqi army are surrounding my neighborhood. If we leave our houses we could be arrested." . . .
The deployment last year of Iraqi troops, who were widely perceived locally as Shi'ite Arab outsiders, prompted the Sunni mayor of Tal Afar to tender his resignation in protest at what he described as a sectarian operation. The involvement of ethnic Kurdish forces was also a source of tension, local people said.
"Anyone who says Tal Afar is good and safe actually knows nothing because the reality is we are unsafe, even inside our houses, because we don't know when we'll be arrested," said pensioner Abdul Karim al-Anizi, 60, a Shi'ite Turkmen.
Nice analysishttp://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2006/03/index.html#009565[Michael Singer] I don't think our collective national mind can contain the two opposing ideas of (1) it's going fine and we're gonna win, (2) it's not going fine and we need an entirely new goal. For this reason, by concentrating the national mind (or by attempting to) so intensely on #1, the Administration is actually hurting us and the Iraqis.
When you start caring mostly about a political win -- as in the President's current five-day long political campaign to turn around public opinion on the war (and, in doing so, to attack the media) -- you stop attending to events. Opinion and events, like oil and water, don't mix. The aesthetic of the win -- of massaging and pushing and pulling public opinion -- becomes your paradigm, the way you see the world. It becomes binary -- your friends and foes -- with a sliding scale between (people who you can persuade to become a friend). . . [read on]
Oh, how Karl and the boys must chuckle over their cocktails. . .http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/3/24/213049/105This is ILLEGALhttp://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/3/24/85918/0245[The Hill] Democrats have suspected that Bush was aware when he signed the legislation that the House and Senate had passed slightly different versions. A Wall Street Journal article published Wednesday bolstered those suspicious by quoting a senior House GOP aide as saying congressional leaders consulted the White House about the discrepancy.
The House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) wrote a letter to the president that included a primer on congressional procedure: "A bill is not a law unless the same version is passed by both the House and Senate and signed by the President," they wrote.
"There is now growing evidence that your action on February 8 breached this fundamental tenet of our democracy with the full knowledge of high-ranking congressional and White House officials," Pelosi and Waxman assert.
Waxman wrote at letter to White House Chief of Staff Andy Card last week, asking the same questions: if the administration knew there was a discrepancy between the two versions of the bill.
The unraveling MZM scandal has the potential to blow the lid off a huge mess of troublesome details about phony pre-war intelligence, corruption, Iranian links, and more of the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Feith Dept of Defense. That’s why they are pressing so hard to keep the investigation internal and secret. Read onhttp://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_03_19.php#007989http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_03_19.php#008000More:
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/politics/14180681.htmWho’s doing the Pentagon’s domestic spying?http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/003904.htmlThe Department of Justice is still refusing to turn over information to Congress on domestic spyinghttp://talkleft.com/new_archives/014376.htmlhttp://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/ats-ap_top13mar24,0,6215902.storyThe National Security Agency could have legally monitored ordinarily confidential communications between doctors and patients or attorneys and their clients, the Justice Department said Friday of its controversial warrantless surveillance program.
Responding to questions from Congress, the department also said that it sees no prohibition to using information collected under the NSA's program in court. . . "Because collecting foreign intelligence information without a warrant does not violate the Fourth Amendment and because the Terrorist Surveillance Program is lawful, there appears to be no legal barrier against introducing this evidence in a criminal prosecution," the department said in responses to questions from lawmakers released Friday evening. . .
VERY suspicious:
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/014374.htmlThis Ben Domenech affair is important, not because the fate of this lying plagiarist matters, but because of what it tells us about conservative dishonesty, cronyism, and the pathetic way in which respectable news institutions are allowing themselves to be bullied and intimidated by the Right into giving platforms to people who could never earn a column or talk show based on merit. Call it “reactionary affirmative action”Domenech resigns over plagiarism chargeshttp://blog.washingtonpost.com/redamerica/2006/03/ben_domenech_resigns.html[WP] In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting with him to write a blog that launched Tuesday.
An investigation into these allegations was ongoing, and in the interim, Domenech has resigned, effective immediately. . .
Of course, like all good conservatives, Domenech does nothing but make excuses, portraying HIMSELF as the victim in all this (I have no doubt it will help his career – the wingnuts love the narrative of a courageous voice of the Right who has been silenced by the dastardly liberals)http://www.redstate.com/story/2006/3/24/151255/259[Short version: “My Editor did it”]http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=5597The narrative begins:
http://redstate.org/story/2006/3/24/231749/503“Resigned” or fired?http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/03/did-post-fire-republican-blogger.html[Human Events] Domenech said he was disappointed washingtonpost.com pulled the plug so quickly after the blog was launched.
“I guess the thing that bothers me the most about this is that the Post didn’t give this a chance to either blow over or work itself out,” he said. “And I feel that if they had done that, the blog would have been a great addition to their site.”
What is the status of his excuses? Not worth the paper they are written onhttp://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_03_19_atrios_archive.html#114324546006128042In his excuse making Box Turtle Ben implied that when he ripped off PJ O'Rourke that it was labeled with "as inspired by O'Rourke's original." I'm not entirely sure if he intended to make that claim or if it was just sloppy writing (as this was something he wrote himself it's hard to tell). Either way no such disclaimer was on it.
O’Rourke speaks:
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_03_19_atrios_archive.html#114326698342038222[NYT] Contacted at his home in New Hampshire, Mr. O'Rourke said that he had never heard of Mr. Domenech and did not recall meeting him. . . "I wouldn't want to swear in a court of law that I never met the guy, Mr. O'Rourke said of Mr. Domenech, "but I didn't give him permission to use my words under his byline, no."
More:
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/03/24/domenech/index.htmlhttp://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/03/national-review-finds-even-more-pieces.htmlThe National Review Online, for whom the Post blogger wrote previously, has now found numerous questionable cases of possible plagiarism while writing for the National Review, which pretty much blows the "college indiscretion" argument out the window. . .
[NB: So much for “My Editor did it”]How about the excuses made by others? Risiblehttp://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_03_19_atrios_archive.html#114323067041235652[Jeff Goldstein] Ben, for what ever mistakes he may have made, at least appended his own name to whatever he posted or wrote publicly.
[NB: Domenech posted at Red State under the pseudonym “Augustine”]http://billmon.org/archives/002364.html[Billmon] The Post, it seems, isn't so far gone it's willing to ride out the storm with a serial plagiarist. But the obvious reluctance of the paper and its editorial minions to face the facts, either before or after hiring Baby Ben, is rather telling -- as is the absurdity of their lies:
We obviously did plenty of background checks" on Domenech, Brady said . . . . Plagiarism, though, is not an easy thing to spot, Brady suggested.
So hard, in fact, it took a few left-wing bloggers three whole days to come up with about twenty zillion examples of Ben's journalistic offenses. (Note to Jim Brady: Google. Check it out.)
UPDATE: [Jim Brady] We appreciate the speed and thoroughness with which our readers and media outlets surfaced these allegations.
[
NB: That’s funny. It’s like knowingly distributing a buggy 1.0 version of an application to users, expecting them to find the problems and then bring them to your attention. I’m sure Brady “appreciates” progressive bloggers doing the Post’s job of vetting its job applicants for them – AFTER they’ve been hired]So how did an underqualified, 24-year old college dropout land a plum assignment at one of the nation’s most prestigious news organizations? The Myth, and the Realityhttp://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_03_19_atrios_archive.html#114321870838185527[WP – The Myth] At 18, Benjamin Domenech, of Round Hill, has landed himself a plum assignment in the world of inside-the-Beltway journalism. He writes a column, "Any Given Sunday," recapping the political talk television programs for the World Wide Web site of the conservative National Review magazine.
If there was a Top 10 list of young Loudoun County people to watch, he’d be on it. And agree with him or not, you would be hard pressed to deny that Domenech is a sharp writer with an obvious command of his national politics beat–especially considering that this is the first year he is eligible to vote.
"He really shows maturity beyond his years," said Richard Lowry, editor of the National Review.
Lowry said he runs into a lot of George Will-wannabes trying to break into national journalism circles at a very young age, but "few of them can actually pull it off. [Domenech] just seems to be just a couple steps in front of everyone else."
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/3/24/141635/041[DHinMI – Reality] Ben Domenech did not get his position at the Washington Post based on merit. He got his position because of connections. He was home-schooled in part because his family--unlike most American families--could maintain a comfortable living with only one parent working outside the home. He got in to William and Mary, but he did not come close to graduating. (And given his penchant for plagiarism, one would have to wonder if intellectual thievery prompted a forced departure from William and Mary.) Nevertheless, despite no degree or significant life accomplishments, he got some patronage jobs in the Bush administration, no doubt because his father is an upper level GOP apparatchik. . . And he parlayed all those connections in to getting the Washington Post gig while still in his mid-20's. . .
What has the Washington Post learned from this experience? Not much, apparentlyhttp://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/3/24/183323/642http://www.first-draft.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=5594[Athenae] Now, of course, the questions begin.
Who made the decision to hire him? What was the vetting process?
What does this say about the journalism of the Washington Post? Who will be held accountable for this debacle?
What can the rest of us learn from it?http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/03/bush-movement-is-unburdened-by.html[Glenn Greenwald] But Domenech loves George Bush and works as a Republican operative. He worked for Sen. Jon Cornyn, was a RedState regular, and edited Michelle Malkin's book. So behavioral standards don't apply to him. By definition, nothing that he does can be wrong -- certainly not that wrong -- because he's a person at his core who is incapable of doing anything truly blameworthy, and the proof of that is that he is a Bush supporter. As a result, in the face of this truly disturbing and facially conclusive evidence that Domenech is a serial plagiarist, his comrades at RedState are searching around desperately for some rationale to defend and justify his conduct, literally insisting that there is nothing wrong with overt acts of deliberate plagiarism. . .
There are now posts up at RedState entitled "We Must Defend" and "We Must Attack," insisting that Domenech did nothing wrong and demanding that Bush followers defend him regardless of whether he did. The former actually claims that all of this seems like plagiarism "only because permissions obtained and judgments made offline were not reflected online by an out dated and out of business campus newspaper"-- as though all of the magazines and journals in which his plagiarized articles appear, including magazines such as National Review, really did arrange permission with all of the authors from whom Domenech stole but simply forgot to include that permission. They resort to every excuse, every justification, every false defense in order to shield their comrades. . .
It is a base, tribal mentality where group allegiance cleanses any and all wrongdoing and immunizes the individual from any accusations of wrongdoing. We have seen this play out over and over with every Bush scandal, where no conduct is too extreme and too facially wrong to be beyond their willingness to defend it away and justify it. If you support George Bush, you can do anything -- including stealing, like Domenech did repeatedly and extensively -- and still be defended, because your allegiance to the Leader means that anything you do is good, right and justifiable. That is the mentality that has been governing our country for five years now, and it is vividly apparent with this tawdry debacle.
More:
http://billmon.org/archives/002364.htmlChris Matthews is shocked – SHOCKED – to realize that the Bush administration lied to get us into war, and are still lying about ithttp://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_03_19_atrios_archive.html#114323423672688447[CM, from the Imus newsletter] "Well I am just going to stick to this point that the president led us in there with the background music of American culture. Everybody was led to believe that we were getting payback, we were avenging what happened on 9/11 and that we are going to get them. Vice President Cheney said we are going to attack terrorism at its base. Over and over the language was, this is where it came from, in fact most recently the President suggested that it was always the hot pursuit, like a new York police chase, we chased them back into their country. We pursued the terrorists back to Iraq and it's all nonsense. The reason there are terrorists in Iraq today like Zarqawi is we created the opening by blowing the country apart. From the beginning it's been not true. Now you can't prove motive and you can't prove somebody lies, but from the beginning everything about how they've got WMD's, they are a threat to us, they are going to bomb us with a nuclear weapon, this country is going to be an easy liberate, it's going to be a cake walk. As Cheney said as recently as ten months ago the insurgents are in their last throws. Everything that is said is not true. And right to the end here, here we are now and it's not a civil war and when Allawi the prime Minster is saying it is a civil war and here is the president quoting his own people that it's not a civil war. I mean the denial has been continuous. So you really can't count on the administration to tell you what is going on. That is just the fact. You've got to check it out. By the way, the president said this week that he wants the whole truth about what is going on in Iraq, the whole truth and that the media isn't telling the whole story. I'll tell you what we are not telling. We are not showing pictures of the twenty five hundred bodies coming back because they won't let us show the pictures. They don't want the whole truth out and that's the fact."
"I think the president made a big mistake this week, and maybe I'm the only one that caught it, but when he came out and said he never said that we went to Iraq because of what happened on 9/11, that Saddam was never involved in 9/11, that whole mentality, the whole culture, the country music, everything, was saying this was payback. We are getting them in Iraq because of what they did to us on 9/11, and now they come out and say I never claimed that. Well you know it's in the actual language of when he said to congress, I'm now going to pick you up on that authorization to go to war, but we are going to war tomorrow, this is in 2003 in March, we are going to war tomorrow and the reason we are going is because we are going to get the countries attacked us on 9/11 we are going to get them. . . . To come out now and say I never said this was payback is B.S." . . .
"He said in the statement he gave to Congress when he said ok boys we are going to war tomorrow morning, in that statement he said I'm operating under the authorization that allows me to go after organizations or countries that attacked us on 9/11. Many times he said we can't distinguish between the people who attacked us on 9/11, we can't separate the two. The vice president was very clear, continually talking about coordination between the Iraqi intelligence and Muhammad Atta, who was the chief hijacker, it's right there in the tapes, and then Cheney comes out and denies it even though it's right on tape. Remember Gloria Borger interviewed him, I'm not sure if she was CBS at the time, but she interviewed him and he directly lied about it, and said that he did not say that. A number of times we have showed the tape and when he actually said exactly what he was denying on tape, we got the tape of what he was denying."
Video:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/03/24.html#a7654Bad news for Republicans in 2006http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/03/senate-race-poll-numbers-bad-for-gop.htmlThe latest survey released by SurveyUSA shows that Americans continue to lose confidence in their Republicans Senators. With Conrad Burns and Rick Santorum leading the pack, five of the Republicans facing strong Democratic challengers this November find themselves with approval ratings in the bottom fifth of the U.S. Senate. The following are the highlights of the latest survey. . .
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1176860,00.htmlTIME's latest poll finds American voters heading into November's election dissatisfied with the Republican-dominated status quo, but not necessarily convinced that the answer lies in voting Democratic. The poll, conducted March 22-23, finds Americans unhappy with the performance of the Republican-controlled Congress — 39% approve, versus 49% who disapprove — and gives Democrats a 9-point lead when voters are asked to state which party's candidate they would choose for a House of Representatives seat (50% answered Democrat, 41% chose Republican). Voters favor Democratic control of Congress by 49% compared with 38% for Republican control.
More:
http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/3/24/144842/261Republican candidates are running away from Bush as fast as they canhttp://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/03/24/gop_senate_campaigns_avoid_bush.htmlhttp://www.mydd.com/story/2006/3/24/1241/83460http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/3/24/171956/007[Georgia10] The GOP is scared. . .
I guess now he has to quit, toohttp://www.senatemajority.com/node/142[Ken Mehlman] “The position of the Republican National Committee is simple: we will not tolerate fraud; we will not tolerate intimidation; we will not tolerate suppression. No employee, associate, or any person representing the Republican party who engages in these kinds of acts will remain in that position.”
That letter, dated August 9, 2005, was sent just two days before the RNC admitted they were paying for James Tobin’s legal defense. . .
More:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/8/11/105918/618http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/06/03/ale06035.htmlThe Union Leader today reported that "court records show Ken Mehlman's office received more than 75 telephone calls from now-convicted phone-jam conspirator James Tobin from Sept. 30 to Nov. 22 of that year." At the time, Mehlman--the current RNC Chair--was White House political director. [Union Leader, 3/23/06] This raises the disturbing question of whether Tobin, who worked for the RNC and the NRSC at the time and has since been convicted on two criminal charges for his role in the scheme, discussed the plan with one of the President's most important political strategists.
More on the tax implications of Barbara Bush’s donation to “charity” (her son Neil’s charity)http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/03/barbara-bushs-compassionate-tax.html[Joe] Looks likes W's mother managed to pull a double tax dodge with her "gift" to Katrina. She contributed to a non-profit, so gets to take that as a charitable deduction. But, she earmarked the gift to her son's company via the non-profit. . . The reality of the transaction is that instead of giving Neil a direct gift, he gets the money funneled via the non-profit. Therein lies the second part of the dodge -- if Barbara gave the money directly to Neil, she'd have to pay a gift tax. . . Big tax deduction for her gift. Neil benefits from his mother's earmark. No gift tax. She's a shrewd one that Barbara Bush.
It's good to be Barbara Bush and not pay taxes...only the little people do that.
Good news: FEC won’t regulate blogshttp://www.mydd.com/story/2006/3/24/22335/2064http://politicalwire.com/archives/2006/03/24/fec_backs_down_on_blogs.html[Rick Hasen] "As a matter of substance, this is about everything that the Internet political community could hope for: broad exemptions for most political activity on the Internet... On the whole, I think these are very good rules in preserving robust political speech on the internet that takes place without much danger of the corruption of candidates."
Sunday talk show line-upshttp://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_03_19_atrios_archive.html#114325186024040311Meet the Press hosts Sec/State Condoleezza Rice and a roundtable of Washington Post's David Broder, New York Times' Elisabeth Bumiller, Cook Report's Charlie Cook, and Wall Street Journal's John Harwood.
Face the Nation hosts NSA Stephen Hadley and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA).
This Week hosts Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-MT) and a roundtable of George Will, Fareed Zakaria and Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel.
Fox News Sunday hosts Rice and Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI).
Late Edition hosts Rice and Sens. Jack Reed (D-RI) and Pat Roberts (R-KS).
Bonus item: Big Oops!http://thinkprogress.org/2006/03/24/inconvenient-facts/[President Bush, 9/16/05] We’ve got a strong ally in Russia in fighting the war on terror….we understand we have a duty to protect our citizens, and to work together and to do everything we can to stop the killing.
[AP, 3/24/06] The Russian government provided Saddam Hussein with intelligence on U.S. military movements and plans during the opening days of the war in 2003.
***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.***
Blue America
Judicial temperament
