PAYBACK
U.N. inspector uncovering prisoner abuse fired under U.S. pressure
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001950.html
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=632719
The UN's top human rights investigator in Afghanistan has been forced out under American pressure just days after he presented a report criticising the US military for detaining suspects without trial and holding them in secret prisons.
Cherif Bassiouni had needled the US military since his appointment a year ago, repeatedly trying, without success, to interview alleged Taliban and al-Qa'ida prisoners at the two biggest US bases in Afghanistan, Kandahar and Bagram.
Mr Bassiouni's report had highlighted America's policy of detaining prisoners without trial and lambasted coalition officials for barring independent human rights monitors from its bases.
In Iraq, U.S. soldiers shoot first, ask questions later
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=632439
It is very easy to be accidentally killed in Iraq. US soldiers treat everybody as a potential suicide bomber. If they are right they have saved their lives and if they are wrong they face no penalty.
"We should end the immunity of US soldiers here," says Dr Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Kurdish politician who argues that the failure to prosecute American soldiers who have killed civilians is one of the reasons why the occupation became so unpopular so fast. . .
Every Iraqi has stories of friends or relatives killed by US troops for no adequate reason. Often they do not know if they were shot by regular soldiers or by members of western security companies whose burly employees, usually ex-soldiers, are everywhere in Iraq. . .
It was obvious to many American officers from an early stage in the conflict that the Pentagon's claim that it did not count civilian casualties was seen by many Iraqis as proof that the US did not care about how many of them were killed. . .
U.S. still trying to manipulate formation of Iraqi govt (thanks to Jan Pieterse for some of these links)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/international/middleeast/25iraq.html
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GD21Ak02.html
http://www.juancole.com/2005/04/jaafari-decides-to-exclude-allawi-al.html
"I'm a uniter, not a divider" (G.W. Bush)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1053595,00.html
The Inter-American Telecommunication Commission meets three times a year in various cities across the Americas to discuss such dry but important issues as telecommunications standards and spectrum regulations. But for this week's meeting in Guatemala City, politics has barged onto the agenda. At least four of the two dozen or so U.S. delegates selected for the meeting, sources tell TIME, have been bumped by the White House because they supported John Kerry's 2004 campaign.
The State Department has traditionally put together a list of industry representatives for these meetings, and anyone in the U.S. telecom industry who had the requisite expertise and wanted to go was generally given a slot, say past participants. Only after the start of Bush's second term did a political litmus test emerge, industry sources say. . .
Frist holds his Sunday service, starts lying from the get-go
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/24/14642/5369
[AP] Frist also said that the Democrats' filibuster against Bush's nominees was the first time ever that "a judicial nominee with majority support had been denied an up-or-down vote."
That is a complete lie of course and good on AP for pointing it out:
Republicans held a Senate majority for six of President Clinton's eight years in office and frequently prevented votes on his court appointments by bottling them up in the committee, knowing the nominees would be confirmed if allowed to go to a vote by the full Senate. . . One nominee, Richard Paez, a district court judge when he was nominated, waited more than four years before being confirmed to the appeals court.
One AP failing - failed to mention that Frist voted in favor of filibustering Judge Paez. Frist is a lying hypocrite.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_04_24_digbysblog_archive.html#111439133470846182
It is important for people to understand how the Republican Party sold its soul to these radicals. . .
Frist’s comments try to draw a line separating him from the “hate the judiciary” comments of Tom DeLay and others. But by aligning himself with their wider cause, he should be held accountable for the climate of viciousness they have fostered
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_24.php#005507
You'll note that in coverage of Frist's speech many reporters have bought into his spinners' claim that Frist is coming out against threats against the judiciary. But of course he's giving a speech at a pep rally for the people orchestrating the most extreme attacks on the judiciary. And he's doing nothing but dishing out praise for them. So as I said, Frist is trying to position himself on both sides of the threats against members of the judiciary debate. But actions speak louder than words.
More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/04/will-msm-hold-frist-accountable-for.html
Senate majority whip claims to have the votes
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/04/25/partisan_showdown_looms_on_filibusters
One more time about the term “nuclear option”
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_24.php#005508
[Frist] Now if Senator Reid continues to obstruct the process, we will consider what opponents call the “nuclear option.” Only in the United States Senate could it be considered a devastating option to allow a vote. Most places call that democracy.
[Josh Marshall] As you can see, Frist is pushing the bogus argument that "nuclear option" is a phrase coined by Democrats whereas in fact, as he certainly knows, it is a phrase coined by Republicans. . . [I]t's worth taking note of Frist's knowing falsehood because it is quite evidently part of a larger RNC push over the course of the last week.
I've been made privy to the internal communications of a number of national news organizations at which there are now running arguments over whether to go along with the Republican claim that 'nuclear option' is a Democratic epithet or term of abuse which should be banned except in cases where Democrats are directly quoted using it. . . So, as you're reading the coverage in the coming days, watch to see which news outfits have fallen in line with the RNC-directives.
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_04_24_atrios_archive.html#111439273749971672
November 14, 2004
FRIST: Oh, it's clearly one of the options. I've always said it's one of the options. . . What it basically -- it's called the nuclear option. . .
November 16, 2004
Sen. FRIST: If we continue to see obstruction where one out of three of the president's nominees to fill vacancies in the circuit court are being obstructed, then action would be taken. One of those is the nuclear option. . .
More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_24.php#005510
More on David Broder’s proposed “compromise” on judicial filibusters
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_24.php#005509
Broder's editors at the Post gave the piece the deeply Broderian title: "A Judicious Compromise.". . . Opinion page editors at Iowa's Quad-City Times gave it a read and decided they'd run it with a more apt title: "Democrats should back down."
More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_24.php#005506
Bolton: the hits just keep coming
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001949.html
[Time] In the meantime, Bolton's confirmation looks far from assured. That has not prevented the nominee, however, from moving through his to-do list. Government sources tell TIME that after he was nominated in early March, Bolton requested that all American employees of the U.S. mission to the U.N. submit their resumes for review. The move cast a chill over the operation, where some saw it as presumptuous. It may also have been premature.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/04/24/bolton.nomination/index.html
Bolton is not responding to allegations in the media while his confirmation process is under way.
[NB: Ha! And when SHOULD he be responding to these allegations?]
Bolton urged to withdraw
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=699066
Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., was asked if he thought Bolton should withdraw from consideration. "I would hope he would," Dodd told CBS' "Face the Nation."
"I think he's going to embarrass the president. I think he's going to … have a very difficult job serving if he's confirmed narrowly by the Senate. He should withdraw or the president ought to withdraw this nomination. There are plenty of other good people who embrace his ideological views who can go up" and achieve the major changes that Bush is pressing for at the United Nations. "John Bolton is not that individual."
http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/04/when_did_lying_.html
When Did Lying To Congress Become Okay?
[Matt Yglesias] Lurking in this Steve Clemons post on the Bolton nomination is a key observation: "TWN is also alarmed at the seeming indifference that Senators Lugar and others have attached to the fact that John Bolton seems to have lied to the Committee on a broad number of questions -- and seems to have lied in a robust, emphatic manner." Right. When did lying to Congress become okay? It seems to have happened when George W. Bush decided to appoint all manner of Iran-Contra veterans to key posts notwithstanding the fact that some of them had previously been actually found guilty of lying to Congress while new evidence made it clear that others (John Negroponte in particular) had, in fact, been lying back in the 1980s. Now it's considered to be of little concern that Bolton pretty clearly lied. . . Bracketing John Bolton and all partisan considerations, this is an odd and distressing development and I think it's genuinely weird that conservatives in general and Senate Republicans in particular are brushing it aside so casually. . .
Backing Bolton
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000508.html
Some Bolton allies -- including Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney, David Frum, and Cliff May -- have launched ConfirmBolton.com. I'm thrilled. This is assuring that the profile and background of John Bolton become even more widely known. The more debate the better. It's good for the country and for the nation that every nook, cranny, and edge of John Bolton's long career to be perused and investigated before the vote on confirmation.
Bolton nomination a test of WH loyalty
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000511.html
Polls (do they matter in this case?)
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000509.html
Today, CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" ran another "Quick Vote" on the subject of whether Americans thought John Bolton should be Ambassador to the United Nations. 92% have voted NO.
DeLay’s lame excuse
http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=704
Tom DeLay’s defense of his trips to South Korea and the UK, both allegedly funded by registered lobbyists in violation of House rules, is that as far as he knew, the expenses were properly paid by a nonprofit organization, the National Center for Public Policy Research. He claims whatever funds the lobbyists gave over to NCPPR to cover his trips are not his responsibility. In DeLay’s own words, “I can’t - no Member can be responsible for going into the bowels of researching what this organization, how it gets its money or how it’s funded.”. . . But according to today’s Washington Post, not only can House members be responsible for such information – they’re obligated to be responsible:
House ethics rules contain detailed provisions barring the acceptance of any travel funds from private sources if doing so would “create the appearance of using public office for private gain.” They also obligate lawmakers to “make inquiry on the source of the funds that will be used to pay” for any travel ostensibly financed by a nonprofit organization – to rule out the acceptance of reimbursements that come from one organization when a trip is “in fact organized and conducted by someone else.”
Dump him?
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/politics/25delay.html
Keep him?
http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/04/delay-must-stayjonathan-alter-and-i.html
[Jonathan Alter] But this smelly hypocrisy — assuming it's not found illegal — merely offends the senses. DeLay's views on muscling the judiciary and ending the separation of church and state (which he believes is a fiction) offend the Constitution. That makes it too important to leave to the media and the rest of the Washington scandal machine to remedy. This job belongs to the voters, who can hammer the Hammer by siding against his many acolytes in Congress. Let's make 2006 a referendum on the right wing. For that, DeLay must stay.
Info central for all matters Plame
http://whateveralready.blogspot.com/
[Murray Waas] "The grand jury uncovered evidence that several administration officials engaged in an aggressive and organized effort to discredit Wilson." And even lower, I write that federal investigators have for some time believed that columnist Novak has very likely lied to shield his sources from potential criminal culpability.
Rice learns the cover-up game
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1468541,00.html
A state department report which showed an increase in terrorism incidents around the world in 2004 was altered to strip it of its pessimistic statistics. . . Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, ordered the report to be withdrawn and a new one issued minus the statistics.
Pope Benedict XVI lays out his credentials for a Bush admin post
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_04_24_atrios_archive.html#111435400068074689
Pope Benedict XVI faced claims last night he had 'obstructed justice' after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church's investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret. . . The order was made in a confidential letter, obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001. . . It asserted the church's right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood. The letter was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected as John Paul II's successor last week.
“Jeff Gannon’s” unusual WH access (thanks to Susan Madrak for the link)
http://rawstory.com/exclusives/byrne/secret_service_gannon_424.htm
Guckert made more than two dozen excursions to the White House when there were no scheduled briefings. On many of these days, the Press Office held press gaggles aboard Air Force One—which raises questions about what Guckert was doing at the White House. On other days, the president held photo opportunities.
On at least fourteen occasions, Secret Service records show either the entry or exit time missing. Generally, the existing entry or exit times correlate with press conferences; on most of these days, the records show that Guckert checked in but was never processed out.
In March, 2003, Guckert left the White House twice on days he had never checked in with the Secret Service. Over the next 22 months, Guckert failed to check out with the Service on fourteen days. On several of these visits, Guckert either entered or exited by a different entry/exit point than his usual one. On one of these days, no briefing was held; on another, he checked in twice but failed to check out. . .
Others who have covered the White House say not checking in or out with the Secret Service is unusual, especially in the wake of Sept. 11. The Secret Service declined to comment. . . Guckert declined to comment, directing all questions to the Service.
Bonus item: “Astroturf” is the current term for coordinated, fake grassroots letters to the media: the text is provided by some central office and people can copy it and send it in under their own names (hence you get identical Letters to the Editor in newspapers all around the country). But astroturf is, at least, sent by real people: what do you call it when the names are as phony as the text?
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/24/142719/291
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Sunday, April 24, 2005
UNSTABLE
The longer Iraq is without a permanent stable govt, the worse the violence will be: so then why is Allawi continuing to undermine the duly constituted Jafaari administration?
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-iraq24apr24,0,6987317.story
The protracted delay in forming an Iraqi government is imperiling the appointment of its prime minister, providing a new impetus for the insurgency and fanning renewed suspicion of the U.S. role here, Iraqi and Western observers say.
One Western official said the equivalent of a filibuster had emerged in an attempt to thwart efforts by newly appointed Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, of the majority Shiite Muslim bloc, to form his government. If he fails to do so within two weeks, he will be replaced as premier. . . Ethnic Kurds and loyalists of outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi are said to have allied to stop Jafari, several Shiite insiders charge.
Violence escalates
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12417-2005Apr23.html
Violence is escalating sharply in Iraq after a period of relative calm that followed the January elections. Bombings, ambushes and kidnappings targeting Iraqis and foreigners, both troops and civilians, have surged this month while the new Iraqi government is caught up in power struggles over cabinet positions.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2005/04/24/us_military_worried_over_change_in_iraq_attacks/
Insurgents in Iraq have staged increasingly sophisticated attacks in recent weeks, according to US military assessments, moving beyond roadside bombings and suicide attacks to mount large-scale assaults against US and Iraqi forces and civilians. . . The greater coordination and larger scope of the attacks has prompted some commanders to reexamine their belief that the insurgency was on the wane. . .
War crimes
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2921
Drawing largely on news reports and publicly available military reviews, the group, Human Rights Watch, concluded that there was "overwhelming evidence that U.S. mistreatment and torture of Muslim prisoners took place not merely at Abu Ghraib, but at facilities throughout Afghanistan and Iraq as well as at Guantánamo and at 'secret locations' around the world in violation of the Geneva Convention and the laws against torture."
The report found no indication that Mr. Rumsfeld warned those under his command to halt abusive treatment of detainees and said that he should be investigated for abuses under a doctrine of "command responsibility." Mr. Rumsfeld has said he made it clear to subordinates that he did not condone mistreatment.
The report found that Mr. Tenet had been responsible for policies that sent detainees to countries where they were tortured, which made him potentially liable as an accomplice to torture. Mr. Tenet has not addressed the issue publicly, but C.I.A. officials have long said that Mr. Tenet insisted that agency personnel carefully follow the law.
A special prosecutor was needed to investigate these matters, the report said, because Alberto R. Gonzales, the attorney general, had a conflict of interest because he "was himself deeply involved in the policies leading to these alleged crimes."
More calls for a special prosecutor: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010449.html
What does Halliburton have to do before they are investigated for the fraud, corruption, and war profiteering that have been rampant under Bush/Cheney?
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_04_17_atrios_archive.html#111427721294253455
The Halliburton corporation, already the Iraq war's poster child for "waste, fraud and abuse", has been hit with a new double whammy. A report from the US State Department accuses the company of "poor performance" in its US$1.2 billion contract to repair Iraq's vital southern oilfields. . . And a powerful California congressman is charging that Defense Department audits showing additional overcharges totaling $212 million were concealed from United Nations monitors by the administration of President George W Bush.
Bolton: dead man walking?
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000504.html
[Steven Clemons] That means we will either see something that looks like a 12-6 or even 13-5 vote against Bolton, or we will see a 10-8 vote in favor of Bolton. One Senator can make the difference, but once one Senator unambiguously moves and indicates a decision to oppose, then several other Senators will quickly move as well.
The White House is the driver here -- and Lugar is feeling excruciating pressure not to have his committee collapse on this nomination, and it is nearly "abusive" of the White House to be doing this to Lugar and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee because the battle will soon not be cast as one between Democrats and the White House -- but rather between the White House and the Senate on whether the President will respect the role and function of the Senate confirmation process.
. . . There is new material on the way. . . There is a story brewing regarding John Bolton's role as a disruptive force in the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that involves a well-respected scholar, Jeremy Gunn. Dr. Gunn resigned his positions as Director of Research and Deputy General Counsel of the Commission because of matters that "related to Mr. Bolton."
TWN does not know more, but knows that Mr. Gunn has decided to share his experiences with Mr. Bolton with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee so as to have a more complete record of John Bolton's profile.
There is also a case of another still-closely-held, serious abuse incident that occurred at the State Department. TWN has no idea who the individual is -- but just that the incident is as offensive as the one involving Christian Westermann. For reasons I don't understand, this incident is still blacked out and serious political players in D.C. are trying to bring the incident and matter into the public record on Bolton -- while still protecting otherwise innocent people who might be harmed when matters are disclosed. This sort of issue is complicated -- as there seem to be many victims of Bolton abuse in Washington, but coaxing them to come forward and speak requires time and investigation. To be fair, John Bolton should also be given opportunity to respond.
TWN also believes that the most serious challenges regarding John Bolton are not his pattern of "serial abuse" but rather his pattern of delinquency and recklessness regarding national security objectives and delicate diplomatic initiatives. TWN is also alarmed at the seeming indifference that Senators Lugar and others have attached to the fact that John Bolton seems to have lied to the Committee on a broad number of questions -- and seems to have lied in a robust, emphatic manner. . .
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001946.html
Bolton had to be taken out of the Libya policy chain of command at Tony Blair's insistence, Newsweek reports, for it to succeed. . .
On several occasions, America's closest ally in the war on terror, Britain, was irked by what U.S. and British sources say were efforts by Bolton to undermine promising diplomatic openings. Perhaps the most dramatic instance took place early in the U.S.-British talks in 2003 to force Libya to surrender its nuclear program, NEWSWEEK has learned. The Libya deal succeeded only after British officials "at the highest level" persuaded the White House to keep Bolton off the negotiating team. . .
Read the Newsweek piece which is testimony to the fact that the US's most significant ally, Britain, refuses to work with Bolton because of the destructive role he has played in sensitive negotiations to persuade countries like Libya and Iran to abandon their nuclear programs. We already have the principal US negotiators on North Korea coming forward to say Bolton was a dangerous disaster on North Korea -- and the proof is in the pudding. These are substantive policy failures, where the combination of Bolton's inability to work with others who don't share his ideological worldview, and gross misuse of intelligence made him a danger and a hindrance for US policy goals.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4958508,00.html
“This nomination is not doomed, but it's on life support and the plug may well be pulled any day,'' said Allan J. Lichtman, a political history professor at American University.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_04/006180.php
Douglas Jehl writes in the New York Times today about "recently declassified" email exchanges between John Bolton's staff and various intelligence officials. . . It's not really a smoking gun, but it's pretty clear that Bolton was hell bent on saying whatever he wanted to say about Cuba, regardless of what every intelligence agency in town was telling him about our actual state of knowledge. . . I give him until Tuesday, maybe Wednesday.
More: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001944.html
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/04/white-house-fears-bolton-nomination.html
DeLay: the smoking credit card
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12416-2005Apr23.html
The airfare to London and Scotland in 2000 for then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was charged to an American Express card issued to Jack Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist at the center of a federal criminal and tax probe, according to two sources who know Abramoff's credit card account number and to a copy of a travel invoice displaying that number.
DeLay's expenses during the same trip for food, phone calls and other items at a golf course hotel in Scotland were billed to a different credit card also used on the trip by a second registered Washington lobbyist, Edwin A. Buckham, according to receipts documenting that portion of the trip.
House ethics rules bar lawmakers from accepting travel and related expenses from registered lobbyists. DeLay, who is now House majority leader, has said that his expenses on this trip were paid by a nonprofit organization and that the financial arrangements for it were proper. He has also said he had no way of knowing that any lobbyist might have financially supported the trip, either directly or through reimbursements to the nonprofit organization.
http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/corruption_in_washington_/2005/04/toast.php
Sure, taking airfare, hotel, and thousands of dollars in greens fees from a registered lobbyist is utterly trivial compared to the many serious ways Tom DeLay has disgraced his office and damaged this country. But it's also a bright-line violation of House rules.
Yesterday we talked about the Republican effort to attribute the “nuclear option” to Democrats while calling their own overturning of 200 years of legal practice “the constitutional option.” No way the media would fall for such a transparent and cynical attempt to redefine history, right? Think again
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/23/164823/703
So here's the deal for journalists. If you get bamboozled one more time on this - we will be left with only two possibilities in thinking about you: (1) you are a bought and paid-for GOP whore; or (2) you are a hopeless incompetent. . . Update: CNN, already a recognized GOP Whore, does not disappoint, as pointed out in comments below:
Frist's plan has been dubbed the "nuclear option" because Democrats have promised to retaliate by blocking the rest of Bush's legislative agenda -- excluding spending and highway bills and national security measures.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005499
[LA Times] "Frist is expected to try as early as next week to push the Senate to ban filibusters on judicial nominations — a move so explosive that Democrats are calling it the 'nuclear option.'"
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005497
[NY Times] "Democrats call this the nuclear option, while Republicans call this a constitutional option."
But. . .
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005497
[New Yorker, March 7] [S]oon enough, a group of Republican aides began to talk about changing the rules. It was understood at once that such a change would be explosive; Senator Trent Lott, the former Majority Leader, came up with “nuclear option,” and the term stuck.
Many more examples: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_04_17_atrios_archive.html#111429479120067896
Finally. . .
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005498
TPM Reader RR makes an inspired suggestion which, I think, more faithfully captures what's in play than either 'nuclear' or 'constitutional'. . . It's the Crybaby Option.
As he puts it, "Oh, boo-hoo, we only got 95% of what we wanted so we're changing the rules. Waaaaah!"
(p.s. the votes aren’t there)
http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/04/elsewhere_on_th.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-judges24apr24,1,7710550.story
Will the Dems cut a deal? David Broder thinks they should
http://www.liberaloasis.com/archives/041705.htm#042205
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/24/44228/6514
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_24.php#005502
[NB: I think they shouldn't. They are WINNING this issue. Frist can't even get the votes to end the filibuster in his own party. And even if they could pass it, the public doesn't like the appearance that the GOP is rewriting the rules to advance an extremist, theocratic agenda. Read on]
Bill Frist’s “Justice Sunday”
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/opinion/24rich.html
[Frank Rich] While Sinclair Lewis wrote that Gantry, his hypocritical evangelical preacher, "was born to be a senator," we now have senators who are born to be Gantrys. One of them, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, hatched plans to be beamed into tonight's festivities by videotape, a stunt that in itself imbues "Justice Sunday" with a touch of all-American spectacle worthy of "The Wizard of Oz."
Like the wizard himself, "Justice Sunday" is a humbug, albeit one with real potential consequences. It brings mass-media firepower to a campaign against so-called activist judges whose virulence increasingly echoes the rhetoric of George Wallace and other segregationists in the 1960's. . .
The fraudulence of "Justice Sunday" begins but does not end with its sham claims to solidarity with the civil rights movement of that era. "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias," says the flier for tonight's show, "and now it is being used against people of faith." In truth, Bush judicial nominees have been approved in exactly the same numbers as were Clinton second-term nominees. Of the 13 federal appeals courts, 10 already have a majority of Republican appointees. So does the Supreme Court. It's a lie to argue, as Tom DeLay did last week, that such a judiciary is the "left's last legislative body," and that Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, is the poster child for "outrageous" judicial overreach. Our courts are as highly populated by Republicans as the other two branches of government.
The "Justice Sunday" mob is also lying when it claims to despise activist judges as a matter of principle. Only weeks ago it was desperately seeking activist judges who might intervene in the Terri Schiavo case as boldly as Scalia & Co. had in Bush v. Gore. . .
Anyone who doesn't get with this program, starting with all Democrats, is damned as a bigoted enemy of "people of faith." But "people of faith," as used by the event's organizers, is another duplicitous locution; it's a code word for only one specific and exclusionary brand of Christianity. . .[read on!]
More word games
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_04/006182.php
A couple of days ago Jon Chait wrote that Republicans have won at least one great victory in the Social Security debate: they have forced the media to abandon the phrase "private accounts" in favor of "personal accounts". . . But anecdotes aside, has the use of "private accounts" really declined in the past few months?
Will the new Pope help the Bush gang advance their theocratic agenda?
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2922
[Maureen Dowd] As fundamentalism marches on - even Bill Gates seems to have caved to a preacher on gay rights legislation because of fear of a boycott - U.S. conservatives are thrilled about the choice of Cardinal Ratzinger, hoping for an unholy alliance. They hope this pope - who seems to want a smaller, purer church - encourages a militant role for Catholic bishops and priests in the political process.
Cardinal Ratzinger did not shrink from advising American bishops in the last presidential election on bringing Catholic elected officials to heel. He warned that Catholics who deliberately voted for a candidate because of a pro-choice position were guilty of cooperating in evil, and unworthy to receive communion. Vote Democratic and lose your soul.
Sunday talk show line-ups
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/23/21953/2129
Face the Nation: Chris Dodd and Mitch McConnell
This Week: Joe Biden and Jon Kyl
Late Edition: Ahmed Chalabi; Arlen Specter and Patrick Leahy; Al Haig
Fox News: Lindsey Graham and Dick Durbin; FRC Shill Tony Perkins.
Meet the Press: An All Catholic Clergy lineup to discuss the new Pope
The National Security State
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/04/24/in_terror_wars_name_public_loses_information/
Federal agencies under the Bush administration are sweeping vast amounts of public information behind a curtain of secrecy in the name of fighting terrorism, using 50 to 60 loosely defined security designations that can be imposed by officials as low-ranking as government clerks. . .
Bonus item: “Bush’s War on the Press”
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050509&s=alterman
[Eric Alterman] Make no mistake: The Bush Administration and its ideological allies are employing every means available to undermine journalists' ability to exercise their First Amendment function to hold power accountable. In fact, the Administration recognizes no such constitutional role for the press. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card has insisted that the media "don't represent the public any more than other people do.... I don't believe you have a check-and-balance function."
Bush himself, on more than one occasion, has told reporters he does not read their work and prefers to live inside the information bubble blown by his loyal minions. Vice President Cheney feels free to kick the New York Times off his press plane, and John Ashcroft can refuse to speak with any print reporters during his Patriot-Act-a-palooza publicity tour, just to compliant local TV. As an unnamed Bush official told reporter Ron Suskind, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." For those who didn't like it, another Bush adviser explained, "Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered two to one by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read the New York Times or Washington Post or the LA Times."
But the White House and its supporters are doing more than just talking trash--when they talk at all. They are taking aggressive action: preventing journalists from doing their job by withholding routine information; deliberately releasing deceptive information on a regular basis; bribing friendly journalists to report the news in a favorable context; producing their own "news reports" and distributing these free of charge to resource-starved broadcasters; creating and crediting their own political activists as "journalists" working for partisan operations masquerading as news organizations. . .
***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.***
The longer Iraq is without a permanent stable govt, the worse the violence will be: so then why is Allawi continuing to undermine the duly constituted Jafaari administration?
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-iraq24apr24,0,6987317.story
The protracted delay in forming an Iraqi government is imperiling the appointment of its prime minister, providing a new impetus for the insurgency and fanning renewed suspicion of the U.S. role here, Iraqi and Western observers say.
One Western official said the equivalent of a filibuster had emerged in an attempt to thwart efforts by newly appointed Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, of the majority Shiite Muslim bloc, to form his government. If he fails to do so within two weeks, he will be replaced as premier. . . Ethnic Kurds and loyalists of outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi are said to have allied to stop Jafari, several Shiite insiders charge.
Violence escalates
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12417-2005Apr23.html
Violence is escalating sharply in Iraq after a period of relative calm that followed the January elections. Bombings, ambushes and kidnappings targeting Iraqis and foreigners, both troops and civilians, have surged this month while the new Iraqi government is caught up in power struggles over cabinet positions.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2005/04/24/us_military_worried_over_change_in_iraq_attacks/
Insurgents in Iraq have staged increasingly sophisticated attacks in recent weeks, according to US military assessments, moving beyond roadside bombings and suicide attacks to mount large-scale assaults against US and Iraqi forces and civilians. . . The greater coordination and larger scope of the attacks has prompted some commanders to reexamine their belief that the insurgency was on the wane. . .
War crimes
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2921
Drawing largely on news reports and publicly available military reviews, the group, Human Rights Watch, concluded that there was "overwhelming evidence that U.S. mistreatment and torture of Muslim prisoners took place not merely at Abu Ghraib, but at facilities throughout Afghanistan and Iraq as well as at Guantánamo and at 'secret locations' around the world in violation of the Geneva Convention and the laws against torture."
The report found no indication that Mr. Rumsfeld warned those under his command to halt abusive treatment of detainees and said that he should be investigated for abuses under a doctrine of "command responsibility." Mr. Rumsfeld has said he made it clear to subordinates that he did not condone mistreatment.
The report found that Mr. Tenet had been responsible for policies that sent detainees to countries where they were tortured, which made him potentially liable as an accomplice to torture. Mr. Tenet has not addressed the issue publicly, but C.I.A. officials have long said that Mr. Tenet insisted that agency personnel carefully follow the law.
A special prosecutor was needed to investigate these matters, the report said, because Alberto R. Gonzales, the attorney general, had a conflict of interest because he "was himself deeply involved in the policies leading to these alleged crimes."
More calls for a special prosecutor: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/010449.html
What does Halliburton have to do before they are investigated for the fraud, corruption, and war profiteering that have been rampant under Bush/Cheney?
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_04_17_atrios_archive.html#111427721294253455
The Halliburton corporation, already the Iraq war's poster child for "waste, fraud and abuse", has been hit with a new double whammy. A report from the US State Department accuses the company of "poor performance" in its US$1.2 billion contract to repair Iraq's vital southern oilfields. . . And a powerful California congressman is charging that Defense Department audits showing additional overcharges totaling $212 million were concealed from United Nations monitors by the administration of President George W Bush.
Bolton: dead man walking?
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000504.html
[Steven Clemons] That means we will either see something that looks like a 12-6 or even 13-5 vote against Bolton, or we will see a 10-8 vote in favor of Bolton. One Senator can make the difference, but once one Senator unambiguously moves and indicates a decision to oppose, then several other Senators will quickly move as well.
The White House is the driver here -- and Lugar is feeling excruciating pressure not to have his committee collapse on this nomination, and it is nearly "abusive" of the White House to be doing this to Lugar and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee because the battle will soon not be cast as one between Democrats and the White House -- but rather between the White House and the Senate on whether the President will respect the role and function of the Senate confirmation process.
. . . There is new material on the way. . . There is a story brewing regarding John Bolton's role as a disruptive force in the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that involves a well-respected scholar, Jeremy Gunn. Dr. Gunn resigned his positions as Director of Research and Deputy General Counsel of the Commission because of matters that "related to Mr. Bolton."
TWN does not know more, but knows that Mr. Gunn has decided to share his experiences with Mr. Bolton with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee so as to have a more complete record of John Bolton's profile.
There is also a case of another still-closely-held, serious abuse incident that occurred at the State Department. TWN has no idea who the individual is -- but just that the incident is as offensive as the one involving Christian Westermann. For reasons I don't understand, this incident is still blacked out and serious political players in D.C. are trying to bring the incident and matter into the public record on Bolton -- while still protecting otherwise innocent people who might be harmed when matters are disclosed. This sort of issue is complicated -- as there seem to be many victims of Bolton abuse in Washington, but coaxing them to come forward and speak requires time and investigation. To be fair, John Bolton should also be given opportunity to respond.
TWN also believes that the most serious challenges regarding John Bolton are not his pattern of "serial abuse" but rather his pattern of delinquency and recklessness regarding national security objectives and delicate diplomatic initiatives. TWN is also alarmed at the seeming indifference that Senators Lugar and others have attached to the fact that John Bolton seems to have lied to the Committee on a broad number of questions -- and seems to have lied in a robust, emphatic manner. . .
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001946.html
Bolton had to be taken out of the Libya policy chain of command at Tony Blair's insistence, Newsweek reports, for it to succeed. . .
On several occasions, America's closest ally in the war on terror, Britain, was irked by what U.S. and British sources say were efforts by Bolton to undermine promising diplomatic openings. Perhaps the most dramatic instance took place early in the U.S.-British talks in 2003 to force Libya to surrender its nuclear program, NEWSWEEK has learned. The Libya deal succeeded only after British officials "at the highest level" persuaded the White House to keep Bolton off the negotiating team. . .
Read the Newsweek piece which is testimony to the fact that the US's most significant ally, Britain, refuses to work with Bolton because of the destructive role he has played in sensitive negotiations to persuade countries like Libya and Iran to abandon their nuclear programs. We already have the principal US negotiators on North Korea coming forward to say Bolton was a dangerous disaster on North Korea -- and the proof is in the pudding. These are substantive policy failures, where the combination of Bolton's inability to work with others who don't share his ideological worldview, and gross misuse of intelligence made him a danger and a hindrance for US policy goals.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4958508,00.html
“This nomination is not doomed, but it's on life support and the plug may well be pulled any day,'' said Allan J. Lichtman, a political history professor at American University.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_04/006180.php
Douglas Jehl writes in the New York Times today about "recently declassified" email exchanges between John Bolton's staff and various intelligence officials. . . It's not really a smoking gun, but it's pretty clear that Bolton was hell bent on saying whatever he wanted to say about Cuba, regardless of what every intelligence agency in town was telling him about our actual state of knowledge. . . I give him until Tuesday, maybe Wednesday.
More: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001944.html
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/04/white-house-fears-bolton-nomination.html
DeLay: the smoking credit card
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12416-2005Apr23.html
The airfare to London and Scotland in 2000 for then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was charged to an American Express card issued to Jack Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist at the center of a federal criminal and tax probe, according to two sources who know Abramoff's credit card account number and to a copy of a travel invoice displaying that number.
DeLay's expenses during the same trip for food, phone calls and other items at a golf course hotel in Scotland were billed to a different credit card also used on the trip by a second registered Washington lobbyist, Edwin A. Buckham, according to receipts documenting that portion of the trip.
House ethics rules bar lawmakers from accepting travel and related expenses from registered lobbyists. DeLay, who is now House majority leader, has said that his expenses on this trip were paid by a nonprofit organization and that the financial arrangements for it were proper. He has also said he had no way of knowing that any lobbyist might have financially supported the trip, either directly or through reimbursements to the nonprofit organization.
http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/corruption_in_washington_/2005/04/toast.php
Sure, taking airfare, hotel, and thousands of dollars in greens fees from a registered lobbyist is utterly trivial compared to the many serious ways Tom DeLay has disgraced his office and damaged this country. But it's also a bright-line violation of House rules.
Yesterday we talked about the Republican effort to attribute the “nuclear option” to Democrats while calling their own overturning of 200 years of legal practice “the constitutional option.” No way the media would fall for such a transparent and cynical attempt to redefine history, right? Think again
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/23/164823/703
So here's the deal for journalists. If you get bamboozled one more time on this - we will be left with only two possibilities in thinking about you: (1) you are a bought and paid-for GOP whore; or (2) you are a hopeless incompetent. . . Update: CNN, already a recognized GOP Whore, does not disappoint, as pointed out in comments below:
Frist's plan has been dubbed the "nuclear option" because Democrats have promised to retaliate by blocking the rest of Bush's legislative agenda -- excluding spending and highway bills and national security measures.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005499
[LA Times] "Frist is expected to try as early as next week to push the Senate to ban filibusters on judicial nominations — a move so explosive that Democrats are calling it the 'nuclear option.'"
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005497
[NY Times] "Democrats call this the nuclear option, while Republicans call this a constitutional option."
But. . .
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005497
[New Yorker, March 7] [S]oon enough, a group of Republican aides began to talk about changing the rules. It was understood at once that such a change would be explosive; Senator Trent Lott, the former Majority Leader, came up with “nuclear option,” and the term stuck.
Many more examples: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_04_17_atrios_archive.html#111429479120067896
Finally. . .
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005498
TPM Reader RR makes an inspired suggestion which, I think, more faithfully captures what's in play than either 'nuclear' or 'constitutional'. . . It's the Crybaby Option.
As he puts it, "Oh, boo-hoo, we only got 95% of what we wanted so we're changing the rules. Waaaaah!"
(p.s. the votes aren’t there)
http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/04/elsewhere_on_th.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-judges24apr24,1,7710550.story
Will the Dems cut a deal? David Broder thinks they should
http://www.liberaloasis.com/archives/041705.htm#042205
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/24/44228/6514
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_24.php#005502
[NB: I think they shouldn't. They are WINNING this issue. Frist can't even get the votes to end the filibuster in his own party. And even if they could pass it, the public doesn't like the appearance that the GOP is rewriting the rules to advance an extremist, theocratic agenda. Read on]
Bill Frist’s “Justice Sunday”
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/opinion/24rich.html
[Frank Rich] While Sinclair Lewis wrote that Gantry, his hypocritical evangelical preacher, "was born to be a senator," we now have senators who are born to be Gantrys. One of them, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, hatched plans to be beamed into tonight's festivities by videotape, a stunt that in itself imbues "Justice Sunday" with a touch of all-American spectacle worthy of "The Wizard of Oz."
Like the wizard himself, "Justice Sunday" is a humbug, albeit one with real potential consequences. It brings mass-media firepower to a campaign against so-called activist judges whose virulence increasingly echoes the rhetoric of George Wallace and other segregationists in the 1960's. . .
The fraudulence of "Justice Sunday" begins but does not end with its sham claims to solidarity with the civil rights movement of that era. "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias," says the flier for tonight's show, "and now it is being used against people of faith." In truth, Bush judicial nominees have been approved in exactly the same numbers as were Clinton second-term nominees. Of the 13 federal appeals courts, 10 already have a majority of Republican appointees. So does the Supreme Court. It's a lie to argue, as Tom DeLay did last week, that such a judiciary is the "left's last legislative body," and that Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, is the poster child for "outrageous" judicial overreach. Our courts are as highly populated by Republicans as the other two branches of government.
The "Justice Sunday" mob is also lying when it claims to despise activist judges as a matter of principle. Only weeks ago it was desperately seeking activist judges who might intervene in the Terri Schiavo case as boldly as Scalia & Co. had in Bush v. Gore. . .
Anyone who doesn't get with this program, starting with all Democrats, is damned as a bigoted enemy of "people of faith." But "people of faith," as used by the event's organizers, is another duplicitous locution; it's a code word for only one specific and exclusionary brand of Christianity. . .[read on!]
More word games
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_04/006182.php
A couple of days ago Jon Chait wrote that Republicans have won at least one great victory in the Social Security debate: they have forced the media to abandon the phrase "private accounts" in favor of "personal accounts". . . But anecdotes aside, has the use of "private accounts" really declined in the past few months?
Will the new Pope help the Bush gang advance their theocratic agenda?
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2922
[Maureen Dowd] As fundamentalism marches on - even Bill Gates seems to have caved to a preacher on gay rights legislation because of fear of a boycott - U.S. conservatives are thrilled about the choice of Cardinal Ratzinger, hoping for an unholy alliance. They hope this pope - who seems to want a smaller, purer church - encourages a militant role for Catholic bishops and priests in the political process.
Cardinal Ratzinger did not shrink from advising American bishops in the last presidential election on bringing Catholic elected officials to heel. He warned that Catholics who deliberately voted for a candidate because of a pro-choice position were guilty of cooperating in evil, and unworthy to receive communion. Vote Democratic and lose your soul.
Sunday talk show line-ups
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/23/21953/2129
Face the Nation: Chris Dodd and Mitch McConnell
This Week: Joe Biden and Jon Kyl
Late Edition: Ahmed Chalabi; Arlen Specter and Patrick Leahy; Al Haig
Fox News: Lindsey Graham and Dick Durbin; FRC Shill Tony Perkins.
Meet the Press: An All Catholic Clergy lineup to discuss the new Pope
The National Security State
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/04/24/in_terror_wars_name_public_loses_information/
Federal agencies under the Bush administration are sweeping vast amounts of public information behind a curtain of secrecy in the name of fighting terrorism, using 50 to 60 loosely defined security designations that can be imposed by officials as low-ranking as government clerks. . .
Bonus item: “Bush’s War on the Press”
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050509&s=alterman
[Eric Alterman] Make no mistake: The Bush Administration and its ideological allies are employing every means available to undermine journalists' ability to exercise their First Amendment function to hold power accountable. In fact, the Administration recognizes no such constitutional role for the press. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card has insisted that the media "don't represent the public any more than other people do.... I don't believe you have a check-and-balance function."
Bush himself, on more than one occasion, has told reporters he does not read their work and prefers to live inside the information bubble blown by his loyal minions. Vice President Cheney feels free to kick the New York Times off his press plane, and John Ashcroft can refuse to speak with any print reporters during his Patriot-Act-a-palooza publicity tour, just to compliant local TV. As an unnamed Bush official told reporter Ron Suskind, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." For those who didn't like it, another Bush adviser explained, "Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered two to one by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read the New York Times or Washington Post or the LA Times."
But the White House and its supporters are doing more than just talking trash--when they talk at all. They are taking aggressive action: preventing journalists from doing their job by withholding routine information; deliberately releasing deceptive information on a regular basis; bribing friendly journalists to report the news in a favorable context; producing their own "news reports" and distributing these free of charge to resource-starved broadcasters; creating and crediting their own political activists as "journalists" working for partisan operations masquerading as news organizations. . .
***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.***
Saturday, April 23, 2005
A HOUSE DIVIDED
I think we are in an interesting moment politically. There are several big battles going on: Bolton, DeLay, the filibuster fight, Social Security, and the deficit. In each case the main struggle is not between the Democrats and the Republicans, but between two segments of the Republican party: between the Bush absolutists (“our way or the highway”) and the few remaining Republicans who really believe in the rule of law, in reasoned public debate, in secular government, in an independent judiciary, in fiscal or moral accountability. The Bush gang is bringing out the heavy rhetorical artillery, not to sway Democratic votes, but to pressure Republicans who are increasingly alarmed by the extremism and inflexibility of Bush’s commitment to personnel decisions and policy goals for no other reason than because, having carved out a stance, he simply refuses to back down or compromise. Yet in each case public sentiment is strongly against the Bush position, and more than a few Republicans are refusing to drink the Kool-aid because unlike Bush they actually have to face the voters again. Of course the Democrats are squeezing every ounce of political advantage they can from these crises – but in actuality they are not driving events (except by refusing to give Bush’s policies bipartisan cover, which is a lesson they ought to have learned a long time ago). Bush, DeLay, et al are blaming the Democrats (the liberal media, and the tooth fairy), but their most serious opponents are in their own party
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001913.html
[Chris Nelson] If the fight over John Bolton’s UN nomination were just about John Bolton, he’d be history already. But this isn’t about Bolton, it’s about the exercise of power. Same thing with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. If this was even 5 years ago, he’d be toast. We are at the point now where the Republican Leadership refuses to allow the possibility of a loss on anything, regardless of the merits. This renders “debate” meaningless, since nothing said actually matters, so truth is irrelevant. “Science” depends on faith; everything is a test of power. Oppose something the President wants, and you aren’t just wrong, you are betraying the Party. The underlying message is that you are also offending a very particular definition of God.
The sad, sorry Bolton/DeLay spectacles are about total war, the kill-the-prisoners exercise of power that national US politics has become since the 2000 election. If it were merely about power, it wouldn’t be so terrifying. Washington is used to that...it’s what we exist for. But the fear, the self-loathing, the pathetic, cowardly, sniveling, excuse-making drivel from such “leaders” as Lugar, Hagel, Chafee, the entire House Republican Leadership under DeLay...and the ever-so-very carefully expressed angst of the Democrats...is about something far more dangerous to the Republic than mere political power. What we are seeing is a fight for the political soul of the nation. We’ve had these before, in the existential sense...in my political lifetime, the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement, the women’s rights versus, to a certain extent, the right to life movement. But this time it’s totally and completely a fight about God...specifically, whether God is going to rule in the United States. . .
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=oc33pgsKUtBeq6q0a8yCZR%3D%3D
[Andrew Sullivan] Conservatism isn't over. But it has rarely been as confused. Today's conservatives support limited government. But they believe the federal government can intervene in a state court's decisions in a single family's struggle over life and death. They believe in restraining government spending. But they have increased such spending by a mind-boggling 33 percent in a mere four years. They believe in self-reliance. But they have just passed the most expensive new entitlement since the heyday of Great Society liberalism: the Medicare prescription-drug benefit. They believe that foreign policy is about the pursuit of national interest and that the military should be used only to fight and win wars. Yet they have embarked on an extraordinarily ambitious program of military-led nation-building in the Middle East. They believe in states' rights, but they want to amend the Constitution to forbid any state from allowing civil marriage or equivalent civil unions for gay couples. They believe in free trade. But they have imposed tariffs on a number of industries, most famously steel. They believe in balanced budgets. But they have abandoned fiscal discipline and added a cool trillion dollars to the national debt in one presidential term. . .
Let me be rash and describe the fundamental divide within conservatism as a battle between two rival forms. . . Call one the conservatism of faith and the other the conservatism of doubt. They have co-existed in the past but are becoming less and less compatible as the conservative ascendancy matures. Start with the type now dominant in Republican discourse: the conservatism of faith. This conservatism states conservative principles--and, indeed, eternal insights into the human condition--as a matter of truth. Because these conservatives believe that the individual is inseparable from her political community and civilization, there can be no government neutrality in promoting such truths. Either a government's laws affirm virtue or they affirm vice. And the meaning of virtue and vice can be understood either by reflecting on the Judeo-Christian moral tradition or by inferring from philosophical understandings what human nature in its finest form should be. These truths are not culturally relative; they are universally valid.
The state, therefore, has a duty to protect, at a minimum, all human life, meaning it must regulate abortion and end-of-life decisions. The conservatism of faith sees nothing wrong with channeling $2 billion of public money to religious charities, as the Bush administration boasts; or with spending government money to promote sexual abstinence as a moral good; or with telling parents in government literature that a gay child may need therapy. Science must be hedged by faith, as the teaching of evolution is questioned and pharmacists are allowed to refuse prescriptions for contraception on religious grounds. And public education must have a moral component. As President Bush said in his first State of the Union, "Values are important, so we have tripled funding for character education to teach our children not only reading and writing, but right from wrong." The "we" referred to here is the federal government. The alternative, in the eyes of faith-conservatives, would be to allow those with a different morality to promote a rival agenda. Since neutrality is impossible, conservative truths trump secular values. . .
What other kind of conservatism is there? The alternative philosophical tradition begins in precise opposition to the new conservatives' confidence in faith and reason as direct, accessible routes to universal truth. The conservatism of doubt asks how anyone can be sure that his view of what is moral or good is actually true. Conservatives of doubt note that even the most dogmatic of institutions, such as the Catholic or Mormon churches, have changed their views over many centuries, and that, even within such institutions, there is considerable debate about difficult moral issues. They understand that significant critiques of human reason--Nietzsche, anyone?--have rendered the philosophical quest for self-evident truth even more precarious in the modern world. Such conservatives are not nihilists or devotees of what Pope Benedict XVI has called "the dictatorship of relativism." They merely believe that the purported choice between moral absolutism and complete relativism, between God and moral anarchy, is a phony one. Their alternative is a skeptical, careful, prudential approach to all moral questions--and suspicion of anyone claiming to hold the absolute truth. Since such an approach rarely provides a simple answer persuasive to everyone within a democratic society, we live with moral and cultural pluralism. . .
A fourth Republican is wavering on Bolton (thanks to Laura Rozen for some of the links)
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=694945
A spokeswoman for Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said the senator felt the committee "did the right thing delaying the vote on Bolton in light of the recent information presented to the committee.". . . Asked if Bolton had Murkowski's support, spokeswoman Kristin Pugh said, "I can't speculate on how she would vote.". . . She said Murkowski was traveling and could not be reached.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=694945&page=2
Vice President Dick Cheney urged members of the Republican National Lawyers Association to lobby for the nomination. . . "I've looked at all of the charges that have been made. I don't think any of them stand up to scrutiny. And if being occasionally tough and aggressive and abrasive were a problem, a lot of members of the United States Senate wouldn't qualify," Cheney told the lawyers' group. "They're all friends of mine."
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001934.html
[Joe Conason] What must be clear to anyone observing this process is that Democrats alone could scarcely have stalled Bolton, let alone inflicted what may be fatal damage to his nomination. . . If Bolton's prospects have been dimmed by "politics," however, the troubles appear to reflect a growing division within the president's own party. . . From the beginning, the president's advisors have pretended not to see or hear dissident Republicans. That insulting arrogance, which mirrors Bolton's own behavior, may well be the ultimate mistake in this misbegotten episode.
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001932.html
[Laura Rozen] You know what this is really all about? Far more than a partisan fight between Republicans and Democrats as the White House would have us believe, this is really all about a fight within the Republican party about whether all Republicans have to robotically be in lockstep with the White House on every issue, every nomination, or not. Are they allowed a smidgen of independence, ever? Now the WSJ is serving happily as the "fashion police" for the White House on how forcefully Republican Senators need to speak about a nominee Sen. Lugar has every substantive reason and right to consider unfit for that job. And for that matter, that he did almost all in his power to push through committee. He just didn't look happy enough about it for the White House. Is this a trial balloon, a threat, that Lugar could lose his committee chair, a la Arlen Specter, as Chris Nelson suggested earlier this week, if he doesn't manage somehow to push Bolton through? How truly incredibly stifling.
More on Colin Powell’s role behind the scenes: http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/04/22/senate.bolton/index.html
Armitage too: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000502.html
Bolton vote May 12, and he won’t be called back to testify (that’s a revealing development, since they clearly are assuming that further questioning will make him look worse, not better)
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001936.html
Every day brings a new Bolton revelation (and you know what that means)
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2911
White House worried: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001941.html
Bolton’s role in the 2000 Florida recount (great photo)
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/22/221225/706
It's just a reminder, because a number of people have expressed incredulousness at the lengths the White House will go to arm-twist fellow Republicans into supporting this Benard-Kerik-style walking disaster: Loyalty, young grasshoppers. Loyalty to The Movement over all else. They don't care what he's done. Or, more to the point, they like what he has done, and want him to continue doing it.
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/22/185229/072
In both the filibuster threats and the Bolton nomination, both on the floor of the Senate and during this weekend's Cirque du Spongebob or whatever the hell they're calling it, that's it in a nutshell. Ninety-five percent agreement with administration/conservative/religious policies is not enough, ninety-nine percent is not enough: you are either supportive of The Movement in every particular, without reservation or question, or you are a traitor.
How far is the Religious Right prepared to go to control judges? You won’t believe how far
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=100480#2
This past March, two radical right-wing evangelical leaders – Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and James Dobson of Focus on the Family – met privately with supporters at a conference in Washington. The Los Angeles Times obtained an explosive audio recording of that meeting in which the two leaders laid out their strategy to stack the courts, bypass the Constitution and destroy the system of checks and balances in the federal government. As Perkins said, "There's more than one way to skin a cat, and there's more than one way to take a black robe off the bench." Their idea? Perkins and Dobson want to skip the constitutional process of impeachment and remove judges who don't toe their ultra-right partisan line using a back door method: stripping funding from their courts to hamstring their work until they are forced out. Dobson spelled it out, saying, "Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court. They don't have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through battle. All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn't exist anymore and it's gone."
More: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-strategy22apr22,1,991543,print.story
Ted Olsen, former Bush Solicitor General and a Prime Loyalist, breaks ranks big time
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2914
Every day, thousands and thousands of judges -- jurists whose names we never hear, from our highest court to our most local tribunal -- resolve controversies, render justice, and help keep the peace by providing a safe, reliable, efficient and honest dispute resolution process. The pay is modest, the work is frequently quite challenging, and the outcome often controversial. For every winner in these cases, there is a loser. Many disputes are close calls, and the judge's decision is bound to be unpopular with someone. But in this country we accept the decisions of judges, even when we disagree on the merits, because the process itself is vastly more important than any individual decision. Our courts are essential to an orderly, lawful society. And a robust and productive economy depends upon a consistent, predictable, evenhanded, and respected rule of law. That requires respected judges. Americans understand that no system is perfect and no judge immune from error, but also that our society would crumble if we did not respect the judicial process and the judges who make it work.
We have recently witnessed tragic violence against judges, their families and court personnel in Chicago and Atlanta. These incidents serve as reminders of how vulnerable the judiciary is to those who may be aggrieved by judges' decisions. Violence and intimidation aimed at judges is plainly intolerable; all of us can, and should, be unequivocally unified on the proposition that judges must be protected from aggrieved litigants and acts of terrorism. The wall between the rule of law and anarchy is fragile; if it is penetrated, freedom, property and liberty cannot long endure.
[snip]
[A]bsent lawlessness or corruption in the judiciary, which is astonishingly rare in this country, impeaching judges who render decisions we do not like is not the answer. Nor is the wholesale removal of jurisdiction from federal courts over such matters as prayer, abortion, or flag-burning. While Congress certainly has the constitutional power, indeed responsibility, to restrict the jurisdiction of the federal courts to ensure that judges decide only matters that are properly within their constitutional role and expertise, restricting the jurisdiction of courts in response to unpopular decisions is an overreaction that ill-serves the long-term interests of the nation. As much as we deplore incidents of bad judging, we are not necessarily better off with -- and may dislike even more -- adjudications made by presidents or this year's majority in Congress.
Calls to investigate judges who have made unpopular decisions are particularly misguided, and if actually pursued, would undermine the independence that is vital to the integrity of judicial systems. If a judge's decisions are corrupt or tainted, there are lawful recourses (prosecution or impeachment); but congressional interrogations of life-tenured judges, presumably under oath, as to why a particular decision was rendered, would constitute interference with -- and intimidation of -- the judicial process. And there is no logical stopping point once this power is exercised.
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/04/index.html#006217
[Jeffrey Dubner] It makes me wonder, though -- why do we never hear Olson's name floated as a possible Supreme Court nominee? He can match any prospective nominee on three of the most important attributes to this administration: He's one of the most conservative and partisan lawyers in the country; he's got a touching personal story (his wife, Barbara Olson, died on Flight 77 on September 11); and he was a top official in George W. Bush's first term, a trait Bush seems to value highly. The obvious strikes against him are his age (64, older than any of the frontrunners); his long, ugly paper trail; and the difficulty he had getting confirmed as solicitor general in the first place. For all I know there's a backstory to his departure from the administration that hasn't been reported, too. Still, another one of these feints toward reasonableness and it'll be hard not to speculate.
Barry Goldwater, 1981
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/22/15152/3881
However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.'
John F. Kennedy, 1960
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005494
"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote -- where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference ... I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish -- where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source -- where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials." - president John F. Kennedy.
At the time, the speech was regarded as an attempt to refute anti-Catholic prejudice. Today, wouldn't the theocons regard it as an expression of anti-Catholic prejudice? Wouldn't Bill Frist see president Kennedy as an enemy of "people of faith"? Just asking.
Cheney comes out against the filibuster rule; Harry Reid fires back
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/23/politics/23judges.html
Vice President Dick Cheney plunged the White House into the judicial confirmation battle on Friday by saying he supported changing the Senate rules to stop the Democrats from blocking judicial nominees and would, if needed, provide the tie-breaking vote.
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/04/reid-blasts-bush-for-not-being-honest.html
“In the span of three minutes, the vice president managed to reinvent 200 years of Senate history and ignore the fact that Congress has already approved 205 of this administration’s nominees. Apparently, a 95 percent confirmation rate is not enough for this president. He wants it all, even if it means shattering the checks and balances in our government in order to put radical judges on the bench.
“Last week, I met with the president and was encouraged when he told me he would not become involved in Republican efforts to break the Senate rules. Now, it appears he was not being honest, and that the White House is encouraging this raw abuse of power.
David Brooks, “the reasonable Republican,” lies through his teeth about the filibuster
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/22/115348/276
"Every few years another civilizing custom is breached. Over the past four years Democrats have resorted to the filibuster again and again to prevent votes on judicial nominees they oppose. Up until now, minorities have generally not used the filibuster to defeat nominees that have majority support. They have allowed nominees to have an up or down vote. But this tradition has been washed away."
[Armando] This is a bald faced f-ing lie. And Brooks knows it. A deliberate lie. One of many. The fact is that the Senate never required the actual invocation of the filibuster very often precisely because Senators could stop a nomination, either secretly in committee, or before the nomination was brought to a vote. Brooks knows this. F-ing liar.
Frist keeps putting off the “imminent” vote on the filibuster (and you know what THAT means)
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/04/index.html#006213
Meanwhile, we’re back in one of those vocabulary battles
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005496
[Josh Marshall] Are things going even worse for the GOP on judges than I thought?
If you're conversant with the Republican national political debate taxonomy, you know that there is a point at roughly 15 to 16 days after the GOP starts losing a debate that crack teams of specially trained GOP spinmeisters are sent out to bamboozle gullible newspaper editors and TV producers into changing their vocabulary to make it conform to the latest findings of GOP focus groups.
And it seems they've found their first easy mark.
At the tail end of David Kirkpatrick's piece in Saturday's Times is this graf. . .
Current Senate rules require 60 votes to close debate on a confirmation, allowing Democrats to thwart the action by mustering 41 votes. Republicans want to lower the threshold for closing debate on all nominations to a simple majority. Democrats call this the nuclear option, while Republicans call this a constitutional option.
Now, maybe I'm just selective in my memory. But I seem to remember Republicans and Democrats using this phrase all the $%*#%&@ time. Needless to say, what's happened now is that Republicans are getting bad results in the polls. So they've come up with a new smiley-face vocabulary and they're hitting all the newsrooms telling editors that it's an example of bias to use the phrase 'nuclear option' since that's a slur devised by Democrats.
So is it really true that only Democrats use this phrase?
Well, setting aside that everyone who's listened to this debate for more than ten seconds knows that most Republicans used this phrase as their preferred one until about ten days ago, I still wanted to go back to the records and check. And I needed some way to narrow down the search. So I tried searching the Weekly Standard for any articles which included the word 'filibuster' and 'nuclear option'.
I came up with four hits, the first of which was from September 2004.
In the first article you don't have to go too far beyond the title: "Full Court Press; Will Senate Republicans 'go nuclear' over judges?"
Down into the article, author Duncan Currie writes, "With 10 nominations now blocked by filibuster, many GOP senators say it's time to use the 'nuclear option'--or, as they prefer to call it, the 'constitutional option.'" But even Currie seemed unable to keep a straight face for this early example of GOP word game bamboozlement since he continued to use the 'nuclear option' phrase through the rest of the article.
In December of last year, Currie was again writing about the subject and again using the phrase "nuclear option."
Then less than two weeks ago, on April 7th, Currie used this as the third line of yet another judges article: "Republicans talk of a 'nuclear option' to break the impasse."
The fourth example seems particularly apt since it actually takes place in the future -- the publication date is April 25th. In an editorial penned for the editors Philip Terzian, the first graf reads ...
THE SENATE MAJORITY LEADER, Bill Frist, and his Republican colleagues, face a momentous decision: Do they allow the Democratic minority to prevent the Senate from voting on judicial nominees, or do they invoke the "nuclear option"--that is, change the rules so a simple majority of 51 can force a vote?
Now, let's be frank. There's no intrinsic reason why banning filibusters for judicial nominations should be called the 'nuclear option'. And if Republicans want to start referring to it as the 'judicial act of love' they can do that. But one side in a debate shouldn't be able to order the refs in the game to rewrite the lexicon just because people don't like what's happening. And yet that's just what's happening. Republicans are now making a concerted push at a whole slew of news organizations, trying to convince them to stop using the term in their coverage, on the argument that it's an attack phrase concocted by the Democrats. And it would seem the editors and producers are either too ignorant or too lily-livered not to let them have their way.
Perhaps we can just call ending filibusters 'privatization'.
The latest on Plame: reportedly, a Bush admin official has admitted to leaking information on Plame and Wilson, but NOT the fact that she was a CIA agent
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9588
Rick Santorum, wanting to prop up private, commercial weather services, proposes to restrict National Weather Service information – which we all pay for already (that guy, he has the shrewd political instincts of a. . . of a. . .what? a dense thundercloud?)
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005493
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2005/04/21/m1a_wx_0421.html
Charles Grassley announces plans to develop a Republicans-only bill on Social Security. I say, be my guest. . .
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000774.html
Analysis: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005489
Bush’s next Bright Idea: “tax reform” (aka flat tax)
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005491
The Army officially clears all top command of any responsibility for Abu Ghraib abuse and torture
http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/04/so_much_for_command_responsibility_army_clears_gen_sanchez.html
More: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050422/D89KOOI80.html
The Democrats FINALLY get serious about an investigation into “extraordinary rendition” (aka outsourcing torture)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8008-2005Apr21.html
In Iraq: govt stability still far off
http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1313
Some leading Kurdish political figures are trying to stall the formation of a new Iraqi government in an effort to force out Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite chosen two weeks ago as prime minister, Iraqi and Western officials said.
. . . [An] American official said Friday that he expected that a new government would be formed within the next week with Dr. Jaafari as prime minister.
But several Iraqi political figures said they doubted that would happen. They cited strong opposition to Dr. Jaafari in the Kurdish alliance, which has agreed to form a coalition government with the Shiite majority. Under Iraq's transitional law, Mr. Jaafari will automatically lose his position if he does not name a cabinet by May 7, a month after his appointment.
"The Kurds are intent on delaying the government so that Jaafari will fall," said Sami al-Askari, a member of the Shiite alliance. A Western diplomat in Baghdad confirmed the effort to "filibuster" the negotiations.
Rumsfeld to quit soon?
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/04/23/rumsfeld_leaving.html
Bonus item: oh-oh, don’t bring in the junior flunky liar when you need a professional liar
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2918
Q What was the President's reaction to former Secretary Powell talking to Republican senators on the Hill about Bolton?
MS. PERINO: Scott McClellan addressed this with the pool this morning. We are not going to respond to anonymous sources. I would reiterate, though, that the President said yesterday that the Senate needs to put partisan politics aside and confirm John Bolton to be the U.N. Ambassador. Mr. Bolton is the right person at the right time for this important position.
Q But, Dana, it's not "anonymous sources," I mean, Powell's office put out a statement saying that, indeed, he's had conversations with at least two Republican senators about his reservations about the Bolton job.
MS. PERINO: "Anonymous sources" in terms of what those conversations were, that they had conversations is not --we don't know what those conversations were and "anonymous sources" we're not going to comment on, in terms of the content of them.
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I think we are in an interesting moment politically. There are several big battles going on: Bolton, DeLay, the filibuster fight, Social Security, and the deficit. In each case the main struggle is not between the Democrats and the Republicans, but between two segments of the Republican party: between the Bush absolutists (“our way or the highway”) and the few remaining Republicans who really believe in the rule of law, in reasoned public debate, in secular government, in an independent judiciary, in fiscal or moral accountability. The Bush gang is bringing out the heavy rhetorical artillery, not to sway Democratic votes, but to pressure Republicans who are increasingly alarmed by the extremism and inflexibility of Bush’s commitment to personnel decisions and policy goals for no other reason than because, having carved out a stance, he simply refuses to back down or compromise. Yet in each case public sentiment is strongly against the Bush position, and more than a few Republicans are refusing to drink the Kool-aid because unlike Bush they actually have to face the voters again. Of course the Democrats are squeezing every ounce of political advantage they can from these crises – but in actuality they are not driving events (except by refusing to give Bush’s policies bipartisan cover, which is a lesson they ought to have learned a long time ago). Bush, DeLay, et al are blaming the Democrats (the liberal media, and the tooth fairy), but their most serious opponents are in their own party
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001913.html
[Chris Nelson] If the fight over John Bolton’s UN nomination were just about John Bolton, he’d be history already. But this isn’t about Bolton, it’s about the exercise of power. Same thing with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. If this was even 5 years ago, he’d be toast. We are at the point now where the Republican Leadership refuses to allow the possibility of a loss on anything, regardless of the merits. This renders “debate” meaningless, since nothing said actually matters, so truth is irrelevant. “Science” depends on faith; everything is a test of power. Oppose something the President wants, and you aren’t just wrong, you are betraying the Party. The underlying message is that you are also offending a very particular definition of God.
The sad, sorry Bolton/DeLay spectacles are about total war, the kill-the-prisoners exercise of power that national US politics has become since the 2000 election. If it were merely about power, it wouldn’t be so terrifying. Washington is used to that...it’s what we exist for. But the fear, the self-loathing, the pathetic, cowardly, sniveling, excuse-making drivel from such “leaders” as Lugar, Hagel, Chafee, the entire House Republican Leadership under DeLay...and the ever-so-very carefully expressed angst of the Democrats...is about something far more dangerous to the Republic than mere political power. What we are seeing is a fight for the political soul of the nation. We’ve had these before, in the existential sense...in my political lifetime, the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement, the women’s rights versus, to a certain extent, the right to life movement. But this time it’s totally and completely a fight about God...specifically, whether God is going to rule in the United States. . .
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=oc33pgsKUtBeq6q0a8yCZR%3D%3D
[Andrew Sullivan] Conservatism isn't over. But it has rarely been as confused. Today's conservatives support limited government. But they believe the federal government can intervene in a state court's decisions in a single family's struggle over life and death. They believe in restraining government spending. But they have increased such spending by a mind-boggling 33 percent in a mere four years. They believe in self-reliance. But they have just passed the most expensive new entitlement since the heyday of Great Society liberalism: the Medicare prescription-drug benefit. They believe that foreign policy is about the pursuit of national interest and that the military should be used only to fight and win wars. Yet they have embarked on an extraordinarily ambitious program of military-led nation-building in the Middle East. They believe in states' rights, but they want to amend the Constitution to forbid any state from allowing civil marriage or equivalent civil unions for gay couples. They believe in free trade. But they have imposed tariffs on a number of industries, most famously steel. They believe in balanced budgets. But they have abandoned fiscal discipline and added a cool trillion dollars to the national debt in one presidential term. . .
Let me be rash and describe the fundamental divide within conservatism as a battle between two rival forms. . . Call one the conservatism of faith and the other the conservatism of doubt. They have co-existed in the past but are becoming less and less compatible as the conservative ascendancy matures. Start with the type now dominant in Republican discourse: the conservatism of faith. This conservatism states conservative principles--and, indeed, eternal insights into the human condition--as a matter of truth. Because these conservatives believe that the individual is inseparable from her political community and civilization, there can be no government neutrality in promoting such truths. Either a government's laws affirm virtue or they affirm vice. And the meaning of virtue and vice can be understood either by reflecting on the Judeo-Christian moral tradition or by inferring from philosophical understandings what human nature in its finest form should be. These truths are not culturally relative; they are universally valid.
The state, therefore, has a duty to protect, at a minimum, all human life, meaning it must regulate abortion and end-of-life decisions. The conservatism of faith sees nothing wrong with channeling $2 billion of public money to religious charities, as the Bush administration boasts; or with spending government money to promote sexual abstinence as a moral good; or with telling parents in government literature that a gay child may need therapy. Science must be hedged by faith, as the teaching of evolution is questioned and pharmacists are allowed to refuse prescriptions for contraception on religious grounds. And public education must have a moral component. As President Bush said in his first State of the Union, "Values are important, so we have tripled funding for character education to teach our children not only reading and writing, but right from wrong." The "we" referred to here is the federal government. The alternative, in the eyes of faith-conservatives, would be to allow those with a different morality to promote a rival agenda. Since neutrality is impossible, conservative truths trump secular values. . .
What other kind of conservatism is there? The alternative philosophical tradition begins in precise opposition to the new conservatives' confidence in faith and reason as direct, accessible routes to universal truth. The conservatism of doubt asks how anyone can be sure that his view of what is moral or good is actually true. Conservatives of doubt note that even the most dogmatic of institutions, such as the Catholic or Mormon churches, have changed their views over many centuries, and that, even within such institutions, there is considerable debate about difficult moral issues. They understand that significant critiques of human reason--Nietzsche, anyone?--have rendered the philosophical quest for self-evident truth even more precarious in the modern world. Such conservatives are not nihilists or devotees of what Pope Benedict XVI has called "the dictatorship of relativism." They merely believe that the purported choice between moral absolutism and complete relativism, between God and moral anarchy, is a phony one. Their alternative is a skeptical, careful, prudential approach to all moral questions--and suspicion of anyone claiming to hold the absolute truth. Since such an approach rarely provides a simple answer persuasive to everyone within a democratic society, we live with moral and cultural pluralism. . .
A fourth Republican is wavering on Bolton (thanks to Laura Rozen for some of the links)
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=694945
A spokeswoman for Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said the senator felt the committee "did the right thing delaying the vote on Bolton in light of the recent information presented to the committee.". . . Asked if Bolton had Murkowski's support, spokeswoman Kristin Pugh said, "I can't speculate on how she would vote.". . . She said Murkowski was traveling and could not be reached.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=694945&page=2
Vice President Dick Cheney urged members of the Republican National Lawyers Association to lobby for the nomination. . . "I've looked at all of the charges that have been made. I don't think any of them stand up to scrutiny. And if being occasionally tough and aggressive and abrasive were a problem, a lot of members of the United States Senate wouldn't qualify," Cheney told the lawyers' group. "They're all friends of mine."
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001934.html
[Joe Conason] What must be clear to anyone observing this process is that Democrats alone could scarcely have stalled Bolton, let alone inflicted what may be fatal damage to his nomination. . . If Bolton's prospects have been dimmed by "politics," however, the troubles appear to reflect a growing division within the president's own party. . . From the beginning, the president's advisors have pretended not to see or hear dissident Republicans. That insulting arrogance, which mirrors Bolton's own behavior, may well be the ultimate mistake in this misbegotten episode.
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001932.html
[Laura Rozen] You know what this is really all about? Far more than a partisan fight between Republicans and Democrats as the White House would have us believe, this is really all about a fight within the Republican party about whether all Republicans have to robotically be in lockstep with the White House on every issue, every nomination, or not. Are they allowed a smidgen of independence, ever? Now the WSJ is serving happily as the "fashion police" for the White House on how forcefully Republican Senators need to speak about a nominee Sen. Lugar has every substantive reason and right to consider unfit for that job. And for that matter, that he did almost all in his power to push through committee. He just didn't look happy enough about it for the White House. Is this a trial balloon, a threat, that Lugar could lose his committee chair, a la Arlen Specter, as Chris Nelson suggested earlier this week, if he doesn't manage somehow to push Bolton through? How truly incredibly stifling.
More on Colin Powell’s role behind the scenes: http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/04/22/senate.bolton/index.html
Armitage too: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000502.html
Bolton vote May 12, and he won’t be called back to testify (that’s a revealing development, since they clearly are assuming that further questioning will make him look worse, not better)
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001936.html
Every day brings a new Bolton revelation (and you know what that means)
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2911
White House worried: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001941.html
Bolton’s role in the 2000 Florida recount (great photo)
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/22/221225/706
It's just a reminder, because a number of people have expressed incredulousness at the lengths the White House will go to arm-twist fellow Republicans into supporting this Benard-Kerik-style walking disaster: Loyalty, young grasshoppers. Loyalty to The Movement over all else. They don't care what he's done. Or, more to the point, they like what he has done, and want him to continue doing it.
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/22/185229/072
In both the filibuster threats and the Bolton nomination, both on the floor of the Senate and during this weekend's Cirque du Spongebob or whatever the hell they're calling it, that's it in a nutshell. Ninety-five percent agreement with administration/conservative/religious policies is not enough, ninety-nine percent is not enough: you are either supportive of The Movement in every particular, without reservation or question, or you are a traitor.
How far is the Religious Right prepared to go to control judges? You won’t believe how far
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=100480#2
This past March, two radical right-wing evangelical leaders – Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and James Dobson of Focus on the Family – met privately with supporters at a conference in Washington. The Los Angeles Times obtained an explosive audio recording of that meeting in which the two leaders laid out their strategy to stack the courts, bypass the Constitution and destroy the system of checks and balances in the federal government. As Perkins said, "There's more than one way to skin a cat, and there's more than one way to take a black robe off the bench." Their idea? Perkins and Dobson want to skip the constitutional process of impeachment and remove judges who don't toe their ultra-right partisan line using a back door method: stripping funding from their courts to hamstring their work until they are forced out. Dobson spelled it out, saying, "Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court. They don't have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through battle. All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn't exist anymore and it's gone."
More: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-strategy22apr22,1,991543,print.story
Ted Olsen, former Bush Solicitor General and a Prime Loyalist, breaks ranks big time
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2914
Every day, thousands and thousands of judges -- jurists whose names we never hear, from our highest court to our most local tribunal -- resolve controversies, render justice, and help keep the peace by providing a safe, reliable, efficient and honest dispute resolution process. The pay is modest, the work is frequently quite challenging, and the outcome often controversial. For every winner in these cases, there is a loser. Many disputes are close calls, and the judge's decision is bound to be unpopular with someone. But in this country we accept the decisions of judges, even when we disagree on the merits, because the process itself is vastly more important than any individual decision. Our courts are essential to an orderly, lawful society. And a robust and productive economy depends upon a consistent, predictable, evenhanded, and respected rule of law. That requires respected judges. Americans understand that no system is perfect and no judge immune from error, but also that our society would crumble if we did not respect the judicial process and the judges who make it work.
We have recently witnessed tragic violence against judges, their families and court personnel in Chicago and Atlanta. These incidents serve as reminders of how vulnerable the judiciary is to those who may be aggrieved by judges' decisions. Violence and intimidation aimed at judges is plainly intolerable; all of us can, and should, be unequivocally unified on the proposition that judges must be protected from aggrieved litigants and acts of terrorism. The wall between the rule of law and anarchy is fragile; if it is penetrated, freedom, property and liberty cannot long endure.
[snip]
[A]bsent lawlessness or corruption in the judiciary, which is astonishingly rare in this country, impeaching judges who render decisions we do not like is not the answer. Nor is the wholesale removal of jurisdiction from federal courts over such matters as prayer, abortion, or flag-burning. While Congress certainly has the constitutional power, indeed responsibility, to restrict the jurisdiction of the federal courts to ensure that judges decide only matters that are properly within their constitutional role and expertise, restricting the jurisdiction of courts in response to unpopular decisions is an overreaction that ill-serves the long-term interests of the nation. As much as we deplore incidents of bad judging, we are not necessarily better off with -- and may dislike even more -- adjudications made by presidents or this year's majority in Congress.
Calls to investigate judges who have made unpopular decisions are particularly misguided, and if actually pursued, would undermine the independence that is vital to the integrity of judicial systems. If a judge's decisions are corrupt or tainted, there are lawful recourses (prosecution or impeachment); but congressional interrogations of life-tenured judges, presumably under oath, as to why a particular decision was rendered, would constitute interference with -- and intimidation of -- the judicial process. And there is no logical stopping point once this power is exercised.
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/04/index.html#006217
[Jeffrey Dubner] It makes me wonder, though -- why do we never hear Olson's name floated as a possible Supreme Court nominee? He can match any prospective nominee on three of the most important attributes to this administration: He's one of the most conservative and partisan lawyers in the country; he's got a touching personal story (his wife, Barbara Olson, died on Flight 77 on September 11); and he was a top official in George W. Bush's first term, a trait Bush seems to value highly. The obvious strikes against him are his age (64, older than any of the frontrunners); his long, ugly paper trail; and the difficulty he had getting confirmed as solicitor general in the first place. For all I know there's a backstory to his departure from the administration that hasn't been reported, too. Still, another one of these feints toward reasonableness and it'll be hard not to speculate.
Barry Goldwater, 1981
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/22/15152/3881
However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.'
John F. Kennedy, 1960
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005494
"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote -- where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference ... I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish -- where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source -- where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials." - president John F. Kennedy.
At the time, the speech was regarded as an attempt to refute anti-Catholic prejudice. Today, wouldn't the theocons regard it as an expression of anti-Catholic prejudice? Wouldn't Bill Frist see president Kennedy as an enemy of "people of faith"? Just asking.
Cheney comes out against the filibuster rule; Harry Reid fires back
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/23/politics/23judges.html
Vice President Dick Cheney plunged the White House into the judicial confirmation battle on Friday by saying he supported changing the Senate rules to stop the Democrats from blocking judicial nominees and would, if needed, provide the tie-breaking vote.
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/04/reid-blasts-bush-for-not-being-honest.html
“In the span of three minutes, the vice president managed to reinvent 200 years of Senate history and ignore the fact that Congress has already approved 205 of this administration’s nominees. Apparently, a 95 percent confirmation rate is not enough for this president. He wants it all, even if it means shattering the checks and balances in our government in order to put radical judges on the bench.
“Last week, I met with the president and was encouraged when he told me he would not become involved in Republican efforts to break the Senate rules. Now, it appears he was not being honest, and that the White House is encouraging this raw abuse of power.
David Brooks, “the reasonable Republican,” lies through his teeth about the filibuster
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/22/115348/276
"Every few years another civilizing custom is breached. Over the past four years Democrats have resorted to the filibuster again and again to prevent votes on judicial nominees they oppose. Up until now, minorities have generally not used the filibuster to defeat nominees that have majority support. They have allowed nominees to have an up or down vote. But this tradition has been washed away."
[Armando] This is a bald faced f-ing lie. And Brooks knows it. A deliberate lie. One of many. The fact is that the Senate never required the actual invocation of the filibuster very often precisely because Senators could stop a nomination, either secretly in committee, or before the nomination was brought to a vote. Brooks knows this. F-ing liar.
Frist keeps putting off the “imminent” vote on the filibuster (and you know what THAT means)
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/04/index.html#006213
Meanwhile, we’re back in one of those vocabulary battles
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005496
[Josh Marshall] Are things going even worse for the GOP on judges than I thought?
If you're conversant with the Republican national political debate taxonomy, you know that there is a point at roughly 15 to 16 days after the GOP starts losing a debate that crack teams of specially trained GOP spinmeisters are sent out to bamboozle gullible newspaper editors and TV producers into changing their vocabulary to make it conform to the latest findings of GOP focus groups.
And it seems they've found their first easy mark.
At the tail end of David Kirkpatrick's piece in Saturday's Times is this graf. . .
Current Senate rules require 60 votes to close debate on a confirmation, allowing Democrats to thwart the action by mustering 41 votes. Republicans want to lower the threshold for closing debate on all nominations to a simple majority. Democrats call this the nuclear option, while Republicans call this a constitutional option.
Now, maybe I'm just selective in my memory. But I seem to remember Republicans and Democrats using this phrase all the $%*#%&@ time. Needless to say, what's happened now is that Republicans are getting bad results in the polls. So they've come up with a new smiley-face vocabulary and they're hitting all the newsrooms telling editors that it's an example of bias to use the phrase 'nuclear option' since that's a slur devised by Democrats.
So is it really true that only Democrats use this phrase?
Well, setting aside that everyone who's listened to this debate for more than ten seconds knows that most Republicans used this phrase as their preferred one until about ten days ago, I still wanted to go back to the records and check. And I needed some way to narrow down the search. So I tried searching the Weekly Standard for any articles which included the word 'filibuster' and 'nuclear option'.
I came up with four hits, the first of which was from September 2004.
In the first article you don't have to go too far beyond the title: "Full Court Press; Will Senate Republicans 'go nuclear' over judges?"
Down into the article, author Duncan Currie writes, "With 10 nominations now blocked by filibuster, many GOP senators say it's time to use the 'nuclear option'--or, as they prefer to call it, the 'constitutional option.'" But even Currie seemed unable to keep a straight face for this early example of GOP word game bamboozlement since he continued to use the 'nuclear option' phrase through the rest of the article.
In December of last year, Currie was again writing about the subject and again using the phrase "nuclear option."
Then less than two weeks ago, on April 7th, Currie used this as the third line of yet another judges article: "Republicans talk of a 'nuclear option' to break the impasse."
The fourth example seems particularly apt since it actually takes place in the future -- the publication date is April 25th. In an editorial penned for the editors Philip Terzian, the first graf reads ...
THE SENATE MAJORITY LEADER, Bill Frist, and his Republican colleagues, face a momentous decision: Do they allow the Democratic minority to prevent the Senate from voting on judicial nominees, or do they invoke the "nuclear option"--that is, change the rules so a simple majority of 51 can force a vote?
Now, let's be frank. There's no intrinsic reason why banning filibusters for judicial nominations should be called the 'nuclear option'. And if Republicans want to start referring to it as the 'judicial act of love' they can do that. But one side in a debate shouldn't be able to order the refs in the game to rewrite the lexicon just because people don't like what's happening. And yet that's just what's happening. Republicans are now making a concerted push at a whole slew of news organizations, trying to convince them to stop using the term in their coverage, on the argument that it's an attack phrase concocted by the Democrats. And it would seem the editors and producers are either too ignorant or too lily-livered not to let them have their way.
Perhaps we can just call ending filibusters 'privatization'.
The latest on Plame: reportedly, a Bush admin official has admitted to leaking information on Plame and Wilson, but NOT the fact that she was a CIA agent
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9588
Rick Santorum, wanting to prop up private, commercial weather services, proposes to restrict National Weather Service information – which we all pay for already (that guy, he has the shrewd political instincts of a. . . of a. . .what? a dense thundercloud?)
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005493
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2005/04/21/m1a_wx_0421.html
Charles Grassley announces plans to develop a Republicans-only bill on Social Security. I say, be my guest. . .
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000774.html
Analysis: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005489
Bush’s next Bright Idea: “tax reform” (aka flat tax)
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005491
The Army officially clears all top command of any responsibility for Abu Ghraib abuse and torture
http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/04/so_much_for_command_responsibility_army_clears_gen_sanchez.html
More: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050422/D89KOOI80.html
The Democrats FINALLY get serious about an investigation into “extraordinary rendition” (aka outsourcing torture)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8008-2005Apr21.html
In Iraq: govt stability still far off
http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1313
Some leading Kurdish political figures are trying to stall the formation of a new Iraqi government in an effort to force out Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shiite chosen two weeks ago as prime minister, Iraqi and Western officials said.
. . . [An] American official said Friday that he expected that a new government would be formed within the next week with Dr. Jaafari as prime minister.
But several Iraqi political figures said they doubted that would happen. They cited strong opposition to Dr. Jaafari in the Kurdish alliance, which has agreed to form a coalition government with the Shiite majority. Under Iraq's transitional law, Mr. Jaafari will automatically lose his position if he does not name a cabinet by May 7, a month after his appointment.
"The Kurds are intent on delaying the government so that Jaafari will fall," said Sami al-Askari, a member of the Shiite alliance. A Western diplomat in Baghdad confirmed the effort to "filibuster" the negotiations.
Rumsfeld to quit soon?
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/04/23/rumsfeld_leaving.html
Bonus item: oh-oh, don’t bring in the junior flunky liar when you need a professional liar
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2918
Q What was the President's reaction to former Secretary Powell talking to Republican senators on the Hill about Bolton?
MS. PERINO: Scott McClellan addressed this with the pool this morning. We are not going to respond to anonymous sources. I would reiterate, though, that the President said yesterday that the Senate needs to put partisan politics aside and confirm John Bolton to be the U.N. Ambassador. Mr. Bolton is the right person at the right time for this important position.
Q But, Dana, it's not "anonymous sources," I mean, Powell's office put out a statement saying that, indeed, he's had conversations with at least two Republican senators about his reservations about the Bolton job.
MS. PERINO: "Anonymous sources" in terms of what those conversations were, that they had conversations is not --we don't know what those conversations were and "anonymous sources" we're not going to comment on, in terms of the content of them.
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Friday, April 22, 2005
LEAKING
As US troop casualties go down, the perception seems to be that this means the war in Iraq is going better. But the facts on the ground don’t support this
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/21/143749/505
http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2005/04/looking-at-iraq.html
http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/4/21/132920/652
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/21/iraq_suicide_bombs/
On Bolton, Scotty’s broken record repeats verbatim what he said yesterday: the difference is that the press has decided to actually question him about it. Notice however that the questions asked have no impact whatsoever on the answers Scotty actually gives
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2905&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Q You said the President was 100 percent in his backing of Bolton today. Can we infer from that, that the President simply doesn't believe these allegations that have been made about Bolton?. . . Does the President simply not believe the allegations that are out there, or does he feel that whether they're true or not, it's so important to have Bolton at the U.N. that just -- he should be confirmed?
MR. McCLELLAN: These are unsubstantiated accusations that Senate Democrats continue to bring up. They have been addressed by John Bolton in testimony before the Senate. . . It is time to move forward on his nomination, and the President wanted to make it clear today that the Senate needs to quit playing politics, and they need to move forward and confirm this person.
Q And the President simply does not believe the allegations.
MR. McCLELLAN: John, these are unsubstantiated accusations against John Bolton. John Bolton is a strong, effective diplomat who has a proven record of getting things done. . .
Q Scott, you say John Bolton gets things done, and yet, some U.S. officials are expressing today that they believe part of the reason why North Korea walked away from the six-party talks had -- in some part, had to deal with the strong language that John Bolton used in his speech in 2003 when he described North Korea as a "hellish nightmare." Given that, are you concerned that the longer this nomination takes to put through that there may be more reasons that might emerge for people not to vote for John Bolton?
MR. McCLELLAN: I disagree with that view, first of all. And second of all, as I stated, we're confident that he's going to be confirmed. We want to see him confirmed as quickly as possible because this is an important position that has a lot of important challenges that need to be addressed at the United Nations. . .
Q Scott, you said that these allegations against Mr. Bolton -- Secretary Bolton are unsubstantiated. . .
MR. McCLELLAN: . . . I think that these accusations are unsubstantiated. I think they have been addressed by John Bolton himself. And John Bolton is someone who has proven himself as a manager and proven himself as someone who has earned respect of those who he's worked with because he's someone that is committed to achieving meaningful results.
Will GOP Senators force the WH to withdraw Bolton’s nomination?
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2895
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/21/politics/21cnd-bolton.html
Or will Colin Powell? BIG development. (I think we’ve reached the tipping point)
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005487
Articles in Friday's NYTimes and Post describe how the former Secretary of State (and Bolton's boss in the first administration) has been doing what amounts to behind-the-scenes lobbying against Bolton's nomination.
The truth is that Powell is very much not the only Republican foreign policy heavyweight working in private to scuttle Bolton's nomination. But the degree to which he's going public is sort of extraordinary. While giving no comments himself and not explicitly stating he's bad-mouthing Bolton, Powell did authorize his spokesperson to confirm on the record that he has had recent phone conversations with Sens. Chafee and Hagel about Bolton while quite pointedly giving no reason to think much of anything he said was positive. If you look further into the articles you can see pretty transparently that on background Powell's people confirmed in some detail just what the former Secretary is doing.
That may well be fatal to Bolton's nomination. The foothold Bolton's supporters have in this fight is their contention that the only reason Bolton's in trouble is that Democrats are trying to take him down to score political points. Indeed, President Bush made that argument just yesterday. But Powells now-public lobbying knocks that argument right out of the park.
More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7420-2005Apr21.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/22/politics/22bolton.html
[NB: Recall that Powell was the one former GOP Sect’y of State who did NOT sign a petition endorsing Bolton: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001915.html. That Colin has surely learned the Washington art of driving the shiv in without leaving fingerprints]
Typical: even though the cause of the hold-up of Bolton is a lack of Republican support, the WH steals a page from Tom DeLay’s book and blames the Dems for “partisanship” (by which they mean, stubbornly refusing to lie down for the Republican agenda)
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/04/21/bolton/index.html
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001932.html
Far more than a partisan fight between Republicans and Democrats as the White House would have us believe, this is really all about a fight within the Republican party about whether all Republicans have to robotically be in lockstep with the White House on every issue, every nomination, or not. Are they allowed a smidgen of independence, ever?
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000500.html
Bush's team is trying to make this about White House infallibility.
Chafee: moving again
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000499.html
More reports of Bolton’s bullying and intimidation
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001929.html
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000498.html
Did Bolton lie under oath?
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_04_17_atrios_archive.html#111413173864815041
More: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bolton22apr22,0,2694252.story
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/04/21/more_bad_bolton/index.html
But if the WH doesn’t pull it, here’s what will eventually kill Bolton’s nomination: the NSA intercepts story
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_04/006167.php
“Bolton was running his own counterintelligence operation, was using the intelligence to figure out how he can get back at people.”
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001931.html
Why the Frist appeal to evangelical support in order to break the filibuster rule for Bush judges represents such an ominous trend (thanks to Kathy Martin for the link)
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=sojomail.display&issue=050421#3
What should progressives think about the filibuster (even if right now it serves our interests)?
http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/04/the_filibuster.html
The Republicans’ new identity politics
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/04/index.html#006211
Bad internal polling gives the GOP pause about their plan to oust the filibuster
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005483
GOP aides said Santorum has made known to the leadership reasons for why Republicans should not move forward on the nuclear or constitutional option.
“He was concerned that too many things are competing in the same area and you couldn’t get a clean shot at it,” a GOP aide said. The aide cited the “fallout” from congressional Republicans’ intervening in a Florida court’s decision to remove Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube and the subsequent controversy caused by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s (R-Texas) statement that “the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”
Democrats portrayed that statement as an incitement against judges, and it resulted in a spate of media critiques of DeLay and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who made a speech on the Senate floor raising the question of why judges are targets of violence.
Senate and House Democrats have woven the Republican intervention in the Schiavo issue, DeLay’s statement about judges who declined to save her life, and GOP consideration of the nuclear option into a broad message that Republicans are abusing power.
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/21/122047/030
Santorum and other Senate sources concede that, while a majority of Americans oppose the filibuster, the figures show that most also accept the Democratic message that Republicans are trying to destroy the tradition of debate in the Senate.
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/04/21/nuclear/index.html
While some Republicans no doubt consider the Schiavo case Exhibit A in the need for the nuclear option, others see the risk that voters will view the nuclear option as part and parcel of the party's unpopular intervention in the case and some of its members' ill-advised comments in the wake of Schiavo's death.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_04/006164.php
Let's face it: most Americans don't know or care much about any judge below the level of the Supreme Court, and most Americans don't know what a filibuster is either. To the extent they do, they probably associate it with a heroic James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. . . But they do know what Tom DeLay said and did in the Terri Schiavo case and they have heard about his wild attacks on the judiciary since then. And I imagine most of them don't like it much. Hell, I'll bet there are plenty of Republican senators who don't like it much either. Regardless of ideology, they think the Republican leadership has gone too far.
This morning: the poll leaks!
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/22/05432/0157
Their party discipline is fraying at the edges. Leaking this poll is disastrous for Frist's efforts to overturn traditional Senate protections for minority rights.
These officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a recent survey taken for Senate Republicans showed 37 percent support for the GOP plan to deny Democrats the ability to filibuster judicial nominees, while 51 percent oppose.
Additionally, the survey indicated only about 20 percent of Americans believe the Republican statement that Bush is the first president in history whose court appointees have been subjected to a filibuster, a tactic in which opponents can prevent a vote unless supporters gain 60 votes. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, noting the survey data has not been made public [...]
Republican strategists concede their efforts to swing public opinion behind their move suffered in the wake of congressional intervention in the case of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman in Florida who was being kept alive with a feeding tube. The survey suggested the GOP faces a challenge if it hopes to gain significant public support before moving ahead on banning judicial filibusters.
Hastert: Dems don’t want to investigate DeLay because it will shine a light on their own misdeeds. (Uh-HUH)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/04/21/hastert.ethics/index.html
The DeLay web of scandal is now catching up Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/04/this-delay-thing-gets-more-and-more.html
http://blog.dccc.org/mt/archives/002654.html
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001930.html
How has DeLay survived even this long? And will he survive now?
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=9537
DeLay will fight. The strategy was laid out to The Washington Post’s Mike Allen in mid-April: Leak stories that raise questions about Democrats and denounce the bias of the liberal media. Top Republican aides have daily conference calls to plot strategy and decide how to leak and to whom. Meanwhile, a handful of corporations stand at the ready to rush to DeLay’s defense, contributing thousands to his legal fund. . .
The school of thought holding that DeLay will go looks to recent history as a guide. When Nixon became too much of a liability, it was Republicans who came to him and said the gig was up. By this logic, the same dynamic will kick in at some point; probably sooner rather than later, and for the good of the party, DeLay will step down as majority leader and slither down to the back bench.
But this scenario makes two assumptions that one should be careful about making these days. The first is that recent history is a reliable guide. Nixon was a filthy and venal politician, but he was operating in a very different time, when Democrats controlled Congress and liberals actually did run the media. The second and related assumption is that today’s conservatives have some sense of shame that correlates roughly to the shame felt in 1974 by Republicans who thought Nixon had gone too far. Those Republicans -- late in the game, granted -- actually did put the integrity of their party ahead of even power itself.
Today’s crop is a very different cast of characters. Hence, the DeLay-will-survive school of thought: There’s no source of pressure that can make him go. The media can’t do it, unless they find an immense scandal; he and the people who believe in him pay no attention to the media. His fellow Republicans in Congress can’t make him go; he has too much power over them (and, probably, dirt on enough of them to enforce their loyalty). The White House -- ah, the White House. The White House can make him go. If DeLay steps down, it will be because Karl Rove decided he became a liability. One shudders when wondering what that would require.
And if DeLay goes, there will be people in Washington congratulating themselves on having been part of a system that, once again, “worked,” fumigating itself of an intruder who went too far and didn’t accept the rules.
Nonsense. The system isn’t working by a long shot. If the system had worked, DeLay would have been exposed long ago -- first by the media, which would have done far more to reveal the ethical and procedural corruption of his regime, and second by moderate Republicans, who could have made a difference if they’d had the nerve, en bloc, to stand up and say something. . .
DeLay helps ram through an Energy Bill provision protecting MTBE polluters. (MTBE is a virulent carcinogen that leaks into water supplies)
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/21/energy/index.html
http://www.ewg.org/reports/lapdog/
http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1308
House GOP committee chair says what he really thinks about a key provision of the Energy bill
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/04/21/energy.bill.pambo/index.html
House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-California, a key proponent of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, whispered, "This is bulls--t," to House Majority Whip Roy Blunt as the two men stood listening to Rep. John Doolittle, R-California, talk about the benefits of hydrogen fuel at a crowded Capitol Hill news conference. . . The remark, which was meant to be private, was overheard by a CNN reporter standing next to Blunt.
Bush, while using high gas prices to sell his lousy Energy Bill, admits that passing it will do nothing to bring prices down – and what he could do to lower prices if he really wanted to
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6885-2005Apr21.html
http://buzzflash.com/
Bush says he lacks the power to stop rising gas prices. Maybe President Cheney can step in and get something done.
I’m not sure I follow the logic of all this, but it makes sense that the U.S. fiscal crisis and rising oil prices are, in effect, taxing our economic rivals in Asia to channel money to our allies in the Middle East, which then goes to prop up our sagging currency (thanks to Jan Pieterse for the link)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Asian_Economy/GD09Dk01.html
Bush jokes about the collapse of the Social Security Trust Fund
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2903
“First, as I travel the country, I find out some people think there's such thing as a Social Security trust. By that I mean we collect your money through the payroll tax, and we hold your money for you, and then when you retire, we give you your money back. No -- (laughter) -- that's not the way it works. That's what you call a -- it was set up as a pay-as-you-go system, in other words, you pay and we go ahead and spend. (Laughter.)”
[NB: Hilarious, isn’t it? Payroll taxes collected since 1982, which if kept and invested in the Trust Fund would have secured its solvency as far into the future as the eye can see, have been used to fund ordinary govt expenses, including Bush’s massive tax cuts. Now that money is gone and Bush is seriously hinting at default. Ha, ha, ha]
With the stock market tanking, this probably isn’t the best time to try to convince people of a higher rate of return for private accounts: but does that stop Bush’s shameless lies?
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush22apr22,1,7793374.story
Greenspan tells Congress they need to do something about the deficit. Not the White House. Congress
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/21/business/21cnd-fed.html
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_04/006165.php
Alan Greenspan has yet again testified that budget deficits are out of control. Yet again he urged Congress to do something about it. And yet again he refused to acknowledge that Republican tax cuts on billionaires are making the problem ever worse.
In Denver, an investigation into who posed as Secret Service agents to boot audience members from a Bush town hall meeting
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/21/232831/611
How the media gets bullied into conservative-friendly news coverage
http://billmon.org/archives/001848.html
Bonus item: Hey, Bin Laden has rights too! Bush admin invokes privacy rights to avoid responding to FOIA request
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/21/223830/459
[NB: I bet a dollar to a donut that this is about protecting the privacy of Bin Laden family members and other closet supporters, not Bin Laden himself]
***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.***
As US troop casualties go down, the perception seems to be that this means the war in Iraq is going better. But the facts on the ground don’t support this
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/21/143749/505
http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2005/04/looking-at-iraq.html
http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/4/21/132920/652
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/21/iraq_suicide_bombs/
On Bolton, Scotty’s broken record repeats verbatim what he said yesterday: the difference is that the press has decided to actually question him about it. Notice however that the questions asked have no impact whatsoever on the answers Scotty actually gives
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2905&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Q You said the President was 100 percent in his backing of Bolton today. Can we infer from that, that the President simply doesn't believe these allegations that have been made about Bolton?. . . Does the President simply not believe the allegations that are out there, or does he feel that whether they're true or not, it's so important to have Bolton at the U.N. that just -- he should be confirmed?
MR. McCLELLAN: These are unsubstantiated accusations that Senate Democrats continue to bring up. They have been addressed by John Bolton in testimony before the Senate. . . It is time to move forward on his nomination, and the President wanted to make it clear today that the Senate needs to quit playing politics, and they need to move forward and confirm this person.
Q And the President simply does not believe the allegations.
MR. McCLELLAN: John, these are unsubstantiated accusations against John Bolton. John Bolton is a strong, effective diplomat who has a proven record of getting things done. . .
Q Scott, you say John Bolton gets things done, and yet, some U.S. officials are expressing today that they believe part of the reason why North Korea walked away from the six-party talks had -- in some part, had to deal with the strong language that John Bolton used in his speech in 2003 when he described North Korea as a "hellish nightmare." Given that, are you concerned that the longer this nomination takes to put through that there may be more reasons that might emerge for people not to vote for John Bolton?
MR. McCLELLAN: I disagree with that view, first of all. And second of all, as I stated, we're confident that he's going to be confirmed. We want to see him confirmed as quickly as possible because this is an important position that has a lot of important challenges that need to be addressed at the United Nations. . .
Q Scott, you said that these allegations against Mr. Bolton -- Secretary Bolton are unsubstantiated. . .
MR. McCLELLAN: . . . I think that these accusations are unsubstantiated. I think they have been addressed by John Bolton himself. And John Bolton is someone who has proven himself as a manager and proven himself as someone who has earned respect of those who he's worked with because he's someone that is committed to achieving meaningful results.
Will GOP Senators force the WH to withdraw Bolton’s nomination?
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2895
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/21/politics/21cnd-bolton.html
Or will Colin Powell? BIG development. (I think we’ve reached the tipping point)
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005487
Articles in Friday's NYTimes and Post describe how the former Secretary of State (and Bolton's boss in the first administration) has been doing what amounts to behind-the-scenes lobbying against Bolton's nomination.
The truth is that Powell is very much not the only Republican foreign policy heavyweight working in private to scuttle Bolton's nomination. But the degree to which he's going public is sort of extraordinary. While giving no comments himself and not explicitly stating he's bad-mouthing Bolton, Powell did authorize his spokesperson to confirm on the record that he has had recent phone conversations with Sens. Chafee and Hagel about Bolton while quite pointedly giving no reason to think much of anything he said was positive. If you look further into the articles you can see pretty transparently that on background Powell's people confirmed in some detail just what the former Secretary is doing.
That may well be fatal to Bolton's nomination. The foothold Bolton's supporters have in this fight is their contention that the only reason Bolton's in trouble is that Democrats are trying to take him down to score political points. Indeed, President Bush made that argument just yesterday. But Powells now-public lobbying knocks that argument right out of the park.
More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7420-2005Apr21.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/22/politics/22bolton.html
[NB: Recall that Powell was the one former GOP Sect’y of State who did NOT sign a petition endorsing Bolton: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001915.html. That Colin has surely learned the Washington art of driving the shiv in without leaving fingerprints]
Typical: even though the cause of the hold-up of Bolton is a lack of Republican support, the WH steals a page from Tom DeLay’s book and blames the Dems for “partisanship” (by which they mean, stubbornly refusing to lie down for the Republican agenda)
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/04/21/bolton/index.html
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001932.html
Far more than a partisan fight between Republicans and Democrats as the White House would have us believe, this is really all about a fight within the Republican party about whether all Republicans have to robotically be in lockstep with the White House on every issue, every nomination, or not. Are they allowed a smidgen of independence, ever?
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000500.html
Bush's team is trying to make this about White House infallibility.
Chafee: moving again
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000499.html
More reports of Bolton’s bullying and intimidation
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001929.html
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000498.html
Did Bolton lie under oath?
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_04_17_atrios_archive.html#111413173864815041
More: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bolton22apr22,0,2694252.story
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/04/21/more_bad_bolton/index.html
But if the WH doesn’t pull it, here’s what will eventually kill Bolton’s nomination: the NSA intercepts story
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_04/006167.php
“Bolton was running his own counterintelligence operation, was using the intelligence to figure out how he can get back at people.”
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001931.html
Why the Frist appeal to evangelical support in order to break the filibuster rule for Bush judges represents such an ominous trend (thanks to Kathy Martin for the link)
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=sojomail.display&issue=050421#3
What should progressives think about the filibuster (even if right now it serves our interests)?
http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/04/the_filibuster.html
The Republicans’ new identity politics
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/04/index.html#006211
Bad internal polling gives the GOP pause about their plan to oust the filibuster
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_04_17.php#005483
GOP aides said Santorum has made known to the leadership reasons for why Republicans should not move forward on the nuclear or constitutional option.
“He was concerned that too many things are competing in the same area and you couldn’t get a clean shot at it,” a GOP aide said. The aide cited the “fallout” from congressional Republicans’ intervening in a Florida court’s decision to remove Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube and the subsequent controversy caused by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s (R-Texas) statement that “the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”
Democrats portrayed that statement as an incitement against judges, and it resulted in a spate of media critiques of DeLay and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who made a speech on the Senate floor raising the question of why judges are targets of violence.
Senate and House Democrats have woven the Republican intervention in the Schiavo issue, DeLay’s statement about judges who declined to save her life, and GOP consideration of the nuclear option into a broad message that Republicans are abusing power.
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/21/122047/030
Santorum and other Senate sources concede that, while a majority of Americans oppose the filibuster, the figures show that most also accept the Democratic message that Republicans are trying to destroy the tradition of debate in the Senate.
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/04/21/nuclear/index.html
While some Republicans no doubt consider the Schiavo case Exhibit A in the need for the nuclear option, others see the risk that voters will view the nuclear option as part and parcel of the party's unpopular intervention in the case and some of its members' ill-advised comments in the wake of Schiavo's death.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_04/006164.php
Let's face it: most Americans don't know or care much about any judge below the level of the Supreme Court, and most Americans don't know what a filibuster is either. To the extent they do, they probably associate it with a heroic James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. . . But they do know what Tom DeLay said and did in the Terri Schiavo case and they have heard about his wild attacks on the judiciary since then. And I imagine most of them don't like it much. Hell, I'll bet there are plenty of Republican senators who don't like it much either. Regardless of ideology, they think the Republican leadership has gone too far.
This morning: the poll leaks!
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/22/05432/0157
Their party discipline is fraying at the edges. Leaking this poll is disastrous for Frist's efforts to overturn traditional Senate protections for minority rights.
These officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a recent survey taken for Senate Republicans showed 37 percent support for the GOP plan to deny Democrats the ability to filibuster judicial nominees, while 51 percent oppose.
Additionally, the survey indicated only about 20 percent of Americans believe the Republican statement that Bush is the first president in history whose court appointees have been subjected to a filibuster, a tactic in which opponents can prevent a vote unless supporters gain 60 votes. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, noting the survey data has not been made public [...]
Republican strategists concede their efforts to swing public opinion behind their move suffered in the wake of congressional intervention in the case of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman in Florida who was being kept alive with a feeding tube. The survey suggested the GOP faces a challenge if it hopes to gain significant public support before moving ahead on banning judicial filibusters.
Hastert: Dems don’t want to investigate DeLay because it will shine a light on their own misdeeds. (Uh-HUH)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/04/21/hastert.ethics/index.html
The DeLay web of scandal is now catching up Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/04/this-delay-thing-gets-more-and-more.html
http://blog.dccc.org/mt/archives/002654.html
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001930.html
How has DeLay survived even this long? And will he survive now?
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=9537
DeLay will fight. The strategy was laid out to The Washington Post’s Mike Allen in mid-April: Leak stories that raise questions about Democrats and denounce the bias of the liberal media. Top Republican aides have daily conference calls to plot strategy and decide how to leak and to whom. Meanwhile, a handful of corporations stand at the ready to rush to DeLay’s defense, contributing thousands to his legal fund. . .
The school of thought holding that DeLay will go looks to recent history as a guide. When Nixon became too much of a liability, it was Republicans who came to him and said the gig was up. By this logic, the same dynamic will kick in at some point; probably sooner rather than later, and for the good of the party, DeLay will step down as majority leader and slither down to the back bench.
But this scenario makes two assumptions that one should be careful about making these days. The first is that recent history is a reliable guide. Nixon was a filthy and venal politician, but he was operating in a very different time, when Democrats controlled Congress and liberals actually did run the media. The second and related assumption is that today’s conservatives have some sense of shame that correlates roughly to the shame felt in 1974 by Republicans who thought Nixon had gone too far. Those Republicans -- late in the game, granted -- actually did put the integrity of their party ahead of even power itself.
Today’s crop is a very different cast of characters. Hence, the DeLay-will-survive school of thought: There’s no source of pressure that can make him go. The media can’t do it, unless they find an immense scandal; he and the people who believe in him pay no attention to the media. His fellow Republicans in Congress can’t make him go; he has too much power over them (and, probably, dirt on enough of them to enforce their loyalty). The White House -- ah, the White House. The White House can make him go. If DeLay steps down, it will be because Karl Rove decided he became a liability. One shudders when wondering what that would require.
And if DeLay goes, there will be people in Washington congratulating themselves on having been part of a system that, once again, “worked,” fumigating itself of an intruder who went too far and didn’t accept the rules.
Nonsense. The system isn’t working by a long shot. If the system had worked, DeLay would have been exposed long ago -- first by the media, which would have done far more to reveal the ethical and procedural corruption of his regime, and second by moderate Republicans, who could have made a difference if they’d had the nerve, en bloc, to stand up and say something. . .
DeLay helps ram through an Energy Bill provision protecting MTBE polluters. (MTBE is a virulent carcinogen that leaks into water supplies)
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/21/energy/index.html
http://www.ewg.org/reports/lapdog/
http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1308
House GOP committee chair says what he really thinks about a key provision of the Energy bill
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/04/21/energy.bill.pambo/index.html
House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-California, a key proponent of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, whispered, "This is bulls--t," to House Majority Whip Roy Blunt as the two men stood listening to Rep. John Doolittle, R-California, talk about the benefits of hydrogen fuel at a crowded Capitol Hill news conference. . . The remark, which was meant to be private, was overheard by a CNN reporter standing next to Blunt.
Bush, while using high gas prices to sell his lousy Energy Bill, admits that passing it will do nothing to bring prices down – and what he could do to lower prices if he really wanted to
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6885-2005Apr21.html
http://buzzflash.com/
Bush says he lacks the power to stop rising gas prices. Maybe President Cheney can step in and get something done.
I’m not sure I follow the logic of all this, but it makes sense that the U.S. fiscal crisis and rising oil prices are, in effect, taxing our economic rivals in Asia to channel money to our allies in the Middle East, which then goes to prop up our sagging currency (thanks to Jan Pieterse for the link)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Asian_Economy/GD09Dk01.html
Bush jokes about the collapse of the Social Security Trust Fund
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2903
“First, as I travel the country, I find out some people think there's such thing as a Social Security trust. By that I mean we collect your money through the payroll tax, and we hold your money for you, and then when you retire, we give you your money back. No -- (laughter) -- that's not the way it works. That's what you call a -- it was set up as a pay-as-you-go system, in other words, you pay and we go ahead and spend. (Laughter.)”
[NB: Hilarious, isn’t it? Payroll taxes collected since 1982, which if kept and invested in the Trust Fund would have secured its solvency as far into the future as the eye can see, have been used to fund ordinary govt expenses, including Bush’s massive tax cuts. Now that money is gone and Bush is seriously hinting at default. Ha, ha, ha]
With the stock market tanking, this probably isn’t the best time to try to convince people of a higher rate of return for private accounts: but does that stop Bush’s shameless lies?
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush22apr22,1,7793374.story
Greenspan tells Congress they need to do something about the deficit. Not the White House. Congress
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/21/business/21cnd-fed.html
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_04/006165.php
Alan Greenspan has yet again testified that budget deficits are out of control. Yet again he urged Congress to do something about it. And yet again he refused to acknowledge that Republican tax cuts on billionaires are making the problem ever worse.
In Denver, an investigation into who posed as Secret Service agents to boot audience members from a Bush town hall meeting
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/21/232831/611
How the media gets bullied into conservative-friendly news coverage
http://billmon.org/archives/001848.html
Bonus item: Hey, Bin Laden has rights too! Bush admin invokes privacy rights to avoid responding to FOIA request
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/21/223830/459
[NB: I bet a dollar to a donut that this is about protecting the privacy of Bin Laden family members and other closet supporters, not Bin Laden himself]
***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.***
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