Give. It. Up.

Terri Schiavo's body died one year ago today. Check out how Human Events Online (a national conservative weekly) marks the occasion (via Rude Pundit):

One year ago, a severely disabled woman took her final breaths and slipped quietly into eternity.

While discussions about the legacy of Terri Schiavo have focused primarily on the circumstances of her tragic death, it is also useful, and extremely edifying, to reflect on what Terri's life can teach us.

What Terri and all persons with disabilities offer is something invaluable in today's world. They can show us how to love, and thus, how to live.

Weighing in two years before her death, a New York Times editorial philosophized: "True respect for life includes recognizing not just when it exists, but when it ceases to be meaningful." However, anybody who has spent significant time with a person with a disability understands how meaningful their lives can be.

Perhaps the only thing they can do is to receive the loving service of their family and nurses, as was the case with Terri Schiavo. But the deep, self-giving love that people with disabilities require allows those around them to learn the intrinsic value of service to others, of bearing another's burdens, of unconditional love. Can anyone doubt that Terri's family -- as they pleaded to take on the burden of caring for her -- learned these lessons well?

Nice try, Asshole. I mean, for God's Sake, the writer of that piece and everyone else like him where proven horribly wrong in every way possible, but these people are acting like a huge ethical and moral mistake was made when Schiavo's body was allowed to die. It was a sin that Schiavo's body was kept alive so long.

And check this out (also via The Rude One):

The Christian Defense Coalition, Generation Life, the National Clergy Council, Stand True Ministries, and the National Pro-life Action Center to lay hundreds of roses in front of the court to honor the legacy of Terri and work to ensure the rights of the severely disabled are protected.

Organization also to hold a news conference on Friday, March 31st, at 10:00 am in front of the Supreme Court to discuss the Schiavo case and the future of the disabled and addressing end of life issues.

The irony, of course, is that these people, for the most part, don't give two shits about disabled folks. I think what they are really promoting here is an anti-autopsy agenda.

Kaloogian Odds And Ends

I know I've been hitting that Kaloogian character pretty hard, but this guy is definitely a gift that keeps on giving.

Check out the latest from the Kaloogian camp:

"I made a mistake in posting the wrong picture, and I accept full responsibility for it.

"However, the anti-war activists who are supporting Democrat Francine Busby are trying to use this clerical mistake as justification for opposing the war. How silly.

"I will not apologize for supporting the missions our troops are serving in Iraq.

"I will not apologize for traveling to Iraq to afford our troops the opportunity to report back home the progress being made that is not being reported by the mainstream news media.

"I will not back down from supporting the mission our troops are serving in Iraq to defeat the terrorist threat. By bringing stability, democracy and freedom to the people who were long terrorized by the brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein, and eliminating safe havens for terrorists, we are ensuring American security at home.

"And, most importantly, I will not allow Francine Busby, her "Blame America First" friends, and the anti-military contingent to undermine America’s support for our military men and women and their mission in Iraq."

Hell, who needs an anti-war movement when you have . . . Kaloogian! He could end the U.S. occupation of Iraq single-handedly if he keeps this up.

The Kaloogian Debacle is starting to filter into the mainstream press. Here's are a couple of choice graphs from the San Francisco Chronicle (via Josh Marshall):

The campaign posted the photo from Kaloogian's July trip to Iraq, a mission dubbed the "Truth Tour" and organized to "tell the American people about the accomplishments (troops) are making in Operation Iraqi Freedom and the fight against terrorism,'' according to the tax-exempt group Move America Forward, a conservative grassroots organization Kaloogian helped found. * * *

The candidate said he hadn't recognized the error because "the military asked us to use our discretion and put things on the Internet that were nondescriptive ... (because) if we posted something that was easily identifiable, it could be a target."

The "Truth" Tour -- it just doesn't get any better than that.

And let me see if I got it all straight, Kaloogian -- you now claim that the military asked you to use your discretion on what you posted because if you "posted something that was easily identifiable, it could be a target." But I thought you posted that picture of Baghdad to demonstrate how peaceful and safe it is over there. What did you say originally? Oh yeah:

We took this photo of downtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it - in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism.

But I guess Kaloogian's story now is that Iraq is so dangerous that the military told him that merely posting pictures of public places in Iraq could help the enemy identify targets. Is that why he originally posted a picture of Istanbul instead -- in order to avoid the wrath of the U.S. military -- or did he really think he was posting an easily identifiable picture of downtown Baghdad, one that the terrorists could use to their advantage? Were you trying to help the evildoers, Kaloogian? It sure looks that way to me.

Kaloogian may be one of only a handful of people to have successfully committed the crime of attempted treason.

Finally, Wikipedia has this (via Josh Marshall again):

Kaloogian (n): A term that describes a false or out-of-context image used in order to advance an agenda.

- That photo shown on O'Reilly's show last night was a Kaloogian!

Named for Howard Kaloogian, a California state assemblyman. While running for Duke Cunningham's vacated congressional seat, Kaloogian used an image of a street corner in the Istanbul suburb of Bakirkoy in order to promote the notion that "downtown Baghdad" was "much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be," blaming the incorrect perception on the media.

The day after the Kaloogian was uncovered, candidate Kaloogian attempted a mulligan by submitting another photo depicting a calm Bagdhad. Although the newer photo appeared to be a picture of Bagdhad, it lacked the detail necessary to support his claim, in effect representing another Kaloogian.

I'm laughing so hard right now I think I might have a stroke.

Bush Knew Of Disagreement Within Administration RE: Aluminum Tubes

Murray Waas is reporting that Karl Rove "cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war [with Iraq] had been challenged within the administration."

Then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley determined that Bush had been informed prior to his 2003 State of the Union address that the whole "aluminum tubes being used to build nukes" story might be a load of bull, which caused Rove to be concerned about what would happen if the public knew about this:

The White House was largely successful in defusing the Niger controversy because there was no evidence that Bush was aware that his claims about the uranium were based on faulty intelligence. Then-CIA Director George Tenet swiftly and publicly took the blame for the entire episode, saying that he and the CIA were at fault for not warning Bush and his aides that the information might be untrue.

But Hadley and other administration officials realized that it would be much more difficult to shield Bush from criticism for his statements regarding the aluminum tubes, for several reasons.

For one, Hadley's review concluded that Bush had been directly and repeatedly apprised of the deep rift within the intelligence community over whether Iraq wanted the high-strength aluminum tubes for a nuclear weapons program or for conventional weapons.

For another, the president and others in the administration had cited the aluminum tubes as the most compelling evidence that Saddam was determined to build a nuclear weapon -- even more than the allegations that he was attempting to purchase uranium.

And finally, full disclosure of the internal dissent over the importance of the tubes would have almost certainly raised broader questions about the administration's conduct in the months leading up to war.

"Presidential knowledge was the ball game," says a former senior government official outside the White House who was personally familiar with the damage-control effort. "The mission was to insulate the president. It was about making it appear that he wasn't in the know. You could do that on Niger. You couldn't do that with the tubes." A Republican political appointee involved in the process, who thought the Bush administration had a constitutional obligation to be more open with Congress, said: "This was about getting past the election."

Wow -- most campaigns would try to counter allegations that their candidate is a complete moron who is perpetually out of the loop on important issues such as whether or not this country goes to war. But not the Bush campaign.

Indeed, Rove apparently viewed Bush's idiocy as a positive attribute that would actually help his boss get "reelected." God help us.

This Is An Outrage

On the front page of its website, MSNBC has a big photo of reporter Jill Carroll, and right next to it is the headline "Happy To Be Free." Clicking on that photo reveals a huge article -- well over 20 paragraphs long -- giving all sorts of details about her release.

Indeed, one would think that the release of Carroll was the only thing that happened today in Iraq. But if you scroll down MSNBC's front page, you'll see a tiny headline saying that "Gunmen ambush, kill eight Iraq oil refinery workers." And buried three paragraphs into that article is a single-paragraph reference to the fact that an American soldier died in Iraq today.

A single paragraph.

FoxNews does something similar. In fact, it's all about the release of Carroll over on Fox. I couldn't find a single reference to the attack on the refinery workers or the death of the American soldier (if such a story is there, then they buried it).

Anyone detect a pattern? It is pretty clear to me that Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more violent and unstable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media find any happy story occurring in the country and scream and shout about it - in part because many journalists fully support what Bush is doing in Iraq and therefore actively downplay all the bad things that are happening there.

In fact, below are a couple pictures of downtown Baghdad I took on one of my recent trips there. As you can see from these photos, the Bush-loving Corporate Media are not giving us the full story.

It makes me sick.

Update on Kaloogian Photo Fraud

The picture on the left is the new photo Kaloogian put up on his website after he was caught trying to pass off Istanbul as downtown Baghdad (via Atrios).


Here's what the Idiot Kaloogian has to say about all this:

Downtown Baghdad
We originally posted a photograph not of Baghdad, Iraq but from Istanbul, Turkey where our delegation traveled on the way home to the United States. We apologize for this mistake. We have corrected it with a photograph we took from Baghdad. We took this photo of downtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it - in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism.

Is that the best picture he could find to support his premise that "Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be" and that we're not getting the full story from Iraq because "many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism"?

Geesus, I knew Iraq was in pretty bad shape, but it took a complete imbecile to convince me that even my pessimistic outlook on Iraq is probably not pessimistic enough. Now I'm mad at the news media for so obviously under-reporting just how much of a catastrophe BushCo's Iraq Debacle has become.

Thanks for setting me straight on all this, Kaloogian. And good luck with the rest of your campaign.

A Duke-Stir Wannabe

Things must be really bad in Iraq given that a Republican was willing to go to these lengths to make it look peaceful over there.

From Editor & Publisher:

How far will critics of media coverage of the Iraq war go to prove reporters are wrongly focusing on the negative?

One answer came this week, in a shocking if amusing episode featuring one Howard Kaloogian, a leading Republican running for the seat in Congress recently vacated by indicted Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham.

He posted on the official Web site for his campaign a picture taken in “downtown Baghdad,” he said, during his visit to the city, which supposedly indicated that the media was wrong about the level of violence in the city. “We took this photo of downtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq,” he wrote. “Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it - in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism."

But the blogosphere quickly smelled a rat. The photo featured people who didn’t seem dressed quite right for Iraq, and signs and billboards that looked off, too.

* * * In less than a day, it was over. “Jem6X” at the popular DailyKos blog confirmed the street scene was in Istanbul, not Baghdad.

Tipped off by someone who recognized the actual intersection in Istanbul, Jem went through online photo galleries and in a matter of minutes today found a snap taken by a “Faruk” that lined up with the “Baghdad” photo in numerous conclusive ways. Game, set, and match to the blogosphere.

Think about it -- this Republican's point (which, of course, matched the GOP talking point on this issue) was that Iraq is really a super peaceful place and what is really going on is that the evil libral media are distorting the truth and making the situation in Iraq appear a lot worse than it really is. But in order to make his point, Kaloogian had to post a picture of Istanbul and then falsely claim it was downtown Baghdad.

One can only assume that either (1) it was too dangerous for him or his people to take any pictures of downtown Baghdad when he was there, or (2) any pictures this guy took of downtown Baghdad showed that it was a dangerous place and were therefore unusable as tools for GOP propaganda.

UPDATE: Here is Kaloogian's explanation:

[O]n the way back from Baghdad some of the crew stopped in Istanbul as a layover. We turned all the photographs [from the trip] over to the webmaster, and it appears he took one from the stopover and not from Baghdad. If a mistake happened, we'll correct it.

Kaloogian further noted that he "brought back 'hundreds and hundreds' of photographs from the trip," but he declined to identify his webmaster.

Nice try, you lying piece of dreck.

Here's Some Good News

From TVNewser:

In the first quarter of 2006, MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann beat CNN's Paula Zahn Now in the 25-54 demographic. "This marks MSNBC's first quarterly primetime victory over CNN in the demo in almost five years (2001 MSNBC Investigates beat CNN at 8 p.m. ET)," MSNBC's press release said today.

Countdown averaged 164,000 total viewers in the quarter, up 41% from Q1 2005. Zahn averaged 158,000 demo viewers (down 33 percent), according to MSNBC. Bill O'Reilly averaged 450,000 in the demo (down 24 percent).

Olbermann also beat Headline News star Nancy Grace in the demo. According to program ranker data, Grace averaged 154,000 demo viewers...

Here is an example of why Olbermann's numbers are so high -- it's his report on how the record is clear that Bush wanted to go to war with Iraq, even though Bush claimed a couple weeks ago that "no president wants war."

It shouldn't be too surprising that Olbermann is getting good numbers. After all, Bush is a very unpopular president, and Olbermann knows how to tap into that. In fact, he appears to be the only member of the mainstream media willing to aggressively go after Bush. Hopefully, CNN will get the message and start doing the same type of stuff.

And check out this exchange between Alec Baldwin and Heil Hannity (thanks for the link, Slic[k]). It's pretty good. Here's an article from Baldwin discussing the exchange.

John McCain Is A National Embarrassment

It doesn't get any more pathetic than this:

U.S. Sen. John McCain - a likely 2008 presidential candidate who once labeled the Rev. Jerry Falwell an “agent of intolerance” - will be Liberty University’s graduation speaker on May 13.

“I was in Washington with him about three months ago,” Falwell said. “We dealt with every difference we have. There are no deal breakers now. But I told him, ‘You have a lot of fence mending to do.’”

Falwell, LU’s chancellor, said McCain, an Arizona Republican, is among the presidential candidates he could support in 2008.

“This is not an endorsement,” Falwell said.

McCain, 69, was out of his Washington office on Monday and could not be reached for comment.

McCain’s visit to the LU campus is, at the very least, an attempt to make peace with conservative Christians prior to the presidential campaign.

While running against then- Gov. George W. Bush in the South Carolina and Virginia primaries in 2000, McCain denounced Falwell and Virginia Beach televangelist Pat Robertson in what was seen as a move to lure more moderate voters to his campaign.

“Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right,” McCain said at the time.

McCain lost the Virginia and South Carolina primaries and Bush won the nomination.

This year, some polls show McCain as the early front-runner for the Republican nomination in the campaign to become Bush’s successor.

Falwell said McCain’s appearance at LU’s graduation is another sign that McCain is wooing evangelical Christians.

“He is in the process of healing the breech with evangelical groups,” Falwell said.

I'm not surprised by this. As the photo on the left indicates, McCain is willing to do just about anything if he thinks it will improve his chances in 2008.

But this is the reality of GOP politics. If you want to win primaries, you have to aggressively pander to radical right wing religious extremists, even though Falwell and folks like him have more in common with Osama bin Laden than with anyone else.

One of these days, the Democrats might actually figure out how to use this GOP weakness to their advantage.

Your Move, George

It took awhile, but the Corporate Media are finally starting to realize that global warming is the "real deal." This is from Time Magazine:

Environmentalists and lawmakers spent years shouting at one another about whether the grim forecasts were true, but in the past five years or so, the serious debate has quietly ended. Global warming, even most skeptics have concluded, is the real deal, and human activity has been causing it. If there was any consolation, it was that the glacial pace of nature would give us decades or even centuries to sort out the problem.

But glaciers, it turns out, can move with surprising speed, and so can nature. What few people reckoned on was that global climate systems are booby-trapped with tipping points and feedback loops, thresholds past which the slow creep of environmental decay gives way to sudden and self-perpetuating collapse. Pump enough CO2 into the sky, and that last part per million of greenhouse gas behaves like the 212th degree Fahrenheit that turns a pot of hot water into a plume of billowing steam. Melt enough Greenland ice, and you reach the point at which you're not simply dripping meltwater into the sea but dumping whole glaciers.

By one recent measure, several Greenland ice sheets have doubled their rate of slide, and just last week the journal Science published a study suggesting that by the end of the century, the world could be locked in to an eventual rise in sea levels of as much as 20 ft. Nature, it seems, has finally got a bellyful of us.

I can't wait to see how the Bush Administration responds to this. Although I was encouraged by the fact that Bush didn't retaliate against NASA scientist James Hansen when he broke the Administration-imposed silence on global warming earlier this year, that doesn't necessarily mean that BushCo is going to do a 180 on this issue. After all, this administration still cannot admit that the decision to invade Iraq -- arguably the greatest foreign policy blunder in American history -- was a mistake.

Bush will never admit that he and his people were wrong on global warming, particularly given the effort that he and his administration put into discrediting the whole notion. Bush wouldn't even listen to his own defense department on this issue. The only way I see something like that happening is if Corporate America forced Bush to make such an admission, and the only hope on that front is an insurance industry that is tired of paying class-five-hurricane-related claims. But something tells me the insurance industry would rather cancel homeowners policies by the bushel instead of confronting Bush on the issue of global warming.

Bill Maher On Global Warming

I finally got around to watching the latest installment of HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher, and although I often disagree with Maher politically, he really nailed it with this show closer:

New Rule: Nobody can use the phrase "our greatest problem" anymore unless you're talking about global warming. President Bush has been saying we're in a war on terror, and now I get it. He's not saying "terror," he's saying "terra" as in "terra firma," as in the Earth. George Bush is an alien sent here to destroy the Earth! I know it sounds crazy, but it made perfect sense when Tom Cruise explained it to me last week.

Now, last week on "60 Minutes," James Hansen, who is NASA's leading expert on the science of climate delivered the world's most important message. He said, "We have to, in the next ten years, begin to decrease the rate of carbon dioxide emissions and then flatten it out. If that doesn't happen in ten years, we're going to be passing certain tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You can't tie a rope around an ice sheet." Although I know a certain cowboy from Crawford who might think you could.

And that cowboy and his corporate goons at the White House tried to censor Mr. Hansen from delivering that message, claiming such warnings were speculative. This from the crowd that rushed into a war based on an article in the Weekly Standard. This - this from the guy who thinks Kyoto is that Japanese emperor dude his dad threw up on.

Global warming is not speculative. It threatens us enough so that it should be considered a national security issue. Failing to warn the citizens of a looming weapon of mass destruction - and that's what global warming is - in order to protect oil company profits, well, that fits, for me, the definition of treason. And codified treason.

Please, wait a second. The guy in the White House who made the edits was Phil Cooney, who had been an oil industry lobbyist before given this job as head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. That's the office that is supposed to be watching out for us. But that's where Phil busied himself crossing stuff out in scientists' reports, because apparently in Phil's mind, he hadn't switched jobs. He was just doing his old job - oil industry lobbyist - from a different office. You know, in the "people's house."

Republicans have succeeded in making the environment about some tie-dyed dude from Seattle who lives in a solar-powered yurt and eats twigs. It's not. This issue should be driven by something conservatives are much more familiar with: utter selfishness. That's my motivation. I don't want to live my golden years having to put on a hazmat suit just to go down and get the mail. Those are my Viagra years. When I'll be thinking about having children.

But I wouldn't know what to tell a kid about our world in 20 years. "Dad, tell me about the birds and bees." "They're all gone. Now, eat your Soylent Green." We are letting dying men kill our planet for cash, and they're counting on us being too greedy or distracted, or just plain lazy, to stop them.

So, on this day, the 17th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, let us pause to consider how close we are to making ourselves fossils from the fossil fuels we extract. In the next 20 years, almost a billion Chinese people will be trading in their bicycles for the automobile. Folks, we either get our shit together on this quickly, or we're going to have to go to Plan B: inventing a car that runs on Chinese people.

Thanks to BushCo, we've wasted almost six years on this issue, and another two-and-a-half years will probably go by before any real action is taken. Meanwhile, Mt. Hood's glaciers are melting away.

I Hate The Corporate Media

MSNBC has a piece up right now about the Terri Schiavo Debacle which features an interview with Terri's husband, Michael. It is titled "Michael Schiavo's Side Of The Story: Terri's Husband On The Bitter Battle That Divided Two Families ... And America." (Emphasis added).

And America? Something like seventy-five percent of the country thought that BushCo and the Republican-run Congress should have stayed the hell away from that issue, yet MSNBC reports that the Schiavo story divided America. Hell, that was the first time in a while that the American people were pretty much in agreement on something, yet the Corporate Media insist on rewriting history and saying that the country was divided.

Indeed, Matt Lauer attempts to vilify Michael during the interview, even though the autopsy "backed her husband’s contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind."

Anyway, Michael Schiavo settles some scores in this interview and in his new book, and I'm glad he did. There were a lot of villains in that story -- Bill Frist, George Bush, Jeb Bush, Terri's parents, the one monk dude who wore the big cross -- and I'm glad that Michael Schiavo is finally ripping into them. A special place in hell has been reserved for those people.

And I'm glad this whole thing happened, because it exposed Frist and the Bush Brothers for what they really are, namely, a bunch of wacko extremist religious nutjobs who are about as far from being Christian as people can get. It also exposed Dr. Bill Frist as a quack of the first order.

The Democrats need to constantly remind the American people of Terri Schiavo during the run-up to the Mid-Term elections. This is an issue that hit home with a lot of people, mainly because a lot of Americans have to go through something like this at least once in their lives. And, like so many other issues, Bush and the GOP were squarely on the wrong side of it.

This Is Depressing

What pisses me off the most about this is how much money and resources the United States has squandered simply because the Idiot-In-Chief was determined to invade Iraq regardless of whether it posed a threat (via Kevin Drum):

During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, [Bush] made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons.

....The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation

...."The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."

It also described the president as saying, "The U.S. might be able to bring out a defector who could give a public presentation about Saddam's W.M.D," referring to weapons of mass destruction.

A brief clause in the memo refers to a third possibility, mentioned by Mr. Bush, a proposal to assassinate Saddam Hussein.

What a waste, especially when you consider that the resources we spent invading and occupying Iraq could have been used against legitimate threats, like Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I feel the same way when I read stuff like this:

The FBI, while waging a highly publicized war against terrorism, has spent resources gathering information on antiwar and environmental protesters and on activists who feed vegetarian meals to the homeless, the agency's internal memos show.

The Number One Asshole in the Senate, Pat Roberts of Kansas (I know -- that's a pretty big assertion to make, given that Santorum and Frist are also senators, but that's how I really feel) was on Wolf Blitzer yesterday talking about how "you don't have any civil liberties if you are dead," but he also had this to say:

We do have Al Qaeda in this country. We do have sleeper cells. We do have plots. The reason I know is that I've been briefed on the program.

So, we have Al Qaeda sleeper cells in this country plotting to do God knows what, and the FBI is spending the taxpayers' money gathering information on antiwar and environmental protesters and on activists.

That's pretty f*#ked up if you ask me.

Another So-Called "Signing Statement" from Der Führer

From The Boston Globe:

When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers.

The bill contained several oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain dates.

Bush signed the bill with fanfare at a White House ceremony March 9, calling it ''a piece of legislation that's vital to win the war on terror and to protect the American people." But after the reporters and guests had left, the White House quietly issued a ''signing statement," an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law.

In the statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would ''impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties."

Bush wrote: ''The executive branch shall construe the provisions . . . that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch . . . in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information . . . "

If I was in Congress, I think I'd be getting pretty tired of this shit by now. BushCo obviously considers Congress to be nothing more than a glorified advisory panel. But I'm sure Senator Pat Roberts and the rest of the police-state supporters in Congress are perfectly fine with this.

And on a completely related subject, Senator Russ Feingold had this to say about his fellow Democrats' opposition to his resolution to censure Bush for illegally authorizing the warrantless surveillance program:

"These Democratic pundits are all scared of the Republican base getting energized, but they're willing to pay the price of not energizing the Democratic base," he said. "It's an overly defensive and meek approach to politics."

Feingold is obviously right, and I just don't get it. Republicans running for reelection this year are going to be climbing over each other to distance themselves from the Bush Regime, and PoliceStateGate is merely a minor piece of the overall BushCo failure. As Time Magazine points out:

As the campaign season kicks into gear, Republican incumbents are having a hard time figuring out how close they want to be to the White House. Voters have plenty to take out on Republican candidates this year—ethics scandals, the g.o.p.'s failure to curb spending, the government's inept response to Hurricane Katrina, a confusing new prescription-drug program for seniors and, more than anything else, an unpopular President who is fighting an unpopular war. Iraq could make a vulnerability of the Republicans' greatest asset, the security issue.

The midterm contests in a President's second term are almost always treacherous, but this time around, Republicans thought it would be different. The 2006 elections, coming on top of their gains in 2002 and 2004, would make history and perhaps even cement a g.o.p. majority in Congress for a generation. George W. Bush's credibility on national security and the states' aggressive gerrymandering, they believed, had turned the vast majority of districts into fortresses for incumbents. But that's not turning out to be the case.

In recent weeks, a startling realization has begun to take hold: if the elections were held today, top strategists of both parties say privately, the Republicans would probably lose the 15 seats they need to keep control of the House of Representatives and could come within a seat or two of losing the Senate as well. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who masterminded the 1994 elections that brought Republicans to power on promises of revolutionizing the way Washington is run, told Time that his party has so bungled the job of governing that the best campaign slogan for Democrats today could be boiled down to just two words: "Had enough?"

Do most Democrats in the Senate really think that backing Feingold's censure resolution would work to reinvigorate such a wildly unpopular president? The answer to that question appears to be "yes." In other words, the Democratic Party seems to think that fully supporting Feingold's censure resolution will somehow cause the voting public to forget Katrina, the Iraq War, Tora Bora, global warming, Tom DeLay, TreasonGate, Jack Abramoff, Terri Schiavo, the Medicare Debacle, the Dubai Ports deal, etc. etc. etc.

I guess that is possible, but I think that Newt is probably right -- the American people have finally "had enough" of GOP leadership, and this means that the Democrats need to start aggressively refreshing the voters' memories with regard to why America hates Bush so much.

Washington Post's Newly-Hired Right-Wing Plagiarist Blogger Resigns

This didn't take long:

In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting with him to write a blog that launched Tuesday.

An investigation into these allegations was ongoing, and in the interim, Domenech has resigned, effective immediately.

When we hired Domenech, we were not aware of any allegations that he had plagiarized any of his past writings. In any cases where allegations such as these are made, we will continue to investigate those charges thoroughly in order to maintain our journalistic integrity.

Plagiarism is perhaps the most serious offense that a writer can commit or be accused of. Washingtonpost.com will do everything in its power to verify that its news and opinion content is sourced completely and accurately at all times.

Too bad the Washington Post didn't adhere to these same standards during the run-up to the Iraq Debacle.

UPDATE: This is worth a laugh or two:

In his first public comments since resigning earlier today as a blogger for washingtonpost.com, Ben Domenech says his editors there were “fools” for not expecting an onslaught of attacks from the left.

“While I appreciated the opportunity to go and join the Washington Post,” Domenech said, “if they didn’t expect the leftists were going to come after me with their sharpened knives, then they were fools.”

Domenech has been under a steady stream of criticism since washingtonpost.com launched the new blog, “Red America,” on Tuesday. Domenech, an editor at Regnery Publishing (a sister company to HUMAN EVENTS), was accused of plagiarism by several left-wing blogs.

Although Domenech says there is an explanation for nearly all the examples cited by the left-wing bloggers, he felt he was left no choice by washingtonpost.com but to resign.

“I felt like if I didn’t resign, they would have pushed me out—if not today, then Monday,” he said.

Six GOP "Weasel Kings" (And One Queen) Up For Reelection This Year

From CQ Politics (via Political Wire)

Tennessee Republican Rep. Zach Wamp this year is breaking a pledge he made in 1994 to seek no more than six terms, or 12 years, in the House.

Wamp also is overwhelmingly favored to win a seventh term this November — a fact that speaks volumes about how much the issue of congressional term limits has faded in recent years.

Wamp is far from alone. The advocacy organization U.S. Term Limits counts seven other members, all Republicans, whose personal term-limit pledges are coming due in this year: Barbara Cubin of Wyoming, Phil English of Pennsylvania, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Timothy V. Johnson of Illinois, Ric Keller of Florida, Frank A. LoBiondo of New Jersey and Mark Souder of Indiana.

The point of the CQ Politics article is that these House members aren't all that worried about blowback because the term limits issue isn't on the voters' minds these days. But I think their Democratic opponents could effectively use this against them. In fact, one of them is doing exactly that:

Yet challengers to pledge-breakers are not dropping the issue. Wamp’s Democratic foe in Tennessee’s 3rd District, Terry Stulce, says he is running to “help Zach keep his word on at least one promise he made in 1994.”

Stulce — an Army veteran, social worker and first-time candidate — concedes that many voters are willing to overlook a broken term limit pledge, but he says the issue is a moral barometer. “You can’t say, ‘Okay, that was 12 years ago and things have changed and now I can’t leave even though I promised.’ I think it’s more about character,” Stulce said.

That's precisely how the Democrats should deal with this issue -- they should tie in these broken pledges with the whole failure of the so-called Republican Revolution which swept these seven Republicans into office. The GOP has clearly breached their 1994 "Contract With America," given that government spending is now out of control and the rest of the Republican domestic agenda is in shambles.

TraitorGate Update

Truthout.org is reporting that the White House recently turned over about 250 pages of emails from Dick Cheney’s office which directly relate to the Plame TreasonGate Scandal:

The emails are said to be explosive, and may prove that Cheney played an active role in the effort to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s prewar Iraq intelligence, sources close to the investigation said.

Sources close to the probe said the White House “discovered” the emails two weeks ago and turned them over to Fitzgerald last week. The sources added that the emails could prove that Cheney lied to FBI investigators when he was interviewed about the leak in early 2004. Cheney said that he was unaware of any effort to discredit Wilson or unmask his wife’s undercover status to reporters.

Cheney was not under oath when he was interviewed. He told investigators how the White House came to rely on Niger documents that purportedly showed that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country.

Cheney said he had received an intelligence briefing on the allegations in either December 2001 or January 2002.

Cheney said he was unaware that Ambassador Wilson was chosen to travel to Niger to look into the uranium claims, and that he never saw a report Wilson had given a CIA analyst upon his return which stated that the Niger claims were untrue. He said the CIA never told him about Wilson's trip.

However, the emails say otherwise, and will show that the vice president spearheaded an effort in March 2003 to attack Wilson’s credibility and used the CIA to dig up information on the former ambassador that could be used against him, sources said.

Thanks for the link, JTom.

Record Largemouth Caught -- And Released -- In California

Danimal -- who is currently blog-less -- referred me to this article (click on the link to check out the picture of this monster):

Mac Weakley of Carlsbad caught what could be the world-record largemouth bass early Monday at Dixon Lake in Escondido.

The bass weighed 25 pounds, 1 ounce on a hand-held scale, which – if approved – would shatter the world record, the 22-pound, 4-ounce bass caught by George W. Perry at Montgomery Lake in Georgia in 1932.

The catch will have to be approved by the International Game Fish Association.

That may be a problem, however, because Weakley said he foul-hooked the fish – meaning the hook lodged below the dorsal fin on the fish's side, not in the fish's mouth.

You really have to credit the honesty of these anglers. They followed the law and released the foul-hooked fish, even though a record largemouth would probably be worth at least $1,000,000 in product endorsements.

Some Random Thoughts RE: "The War On Terror"

Suicide bombers killed 35 people today in Iraq. This comes a day after Bush gave a speech on his "Plan for Victory" -- that's what all the signs said anyway.

Well, at least the signs didn't say "Mission Accomplished."

Bush has been really pushing the "stay the course" theme lately. ABC News had a piece last night which address an issue that BushCo raised the other day with regard to media coverage, namely, that the U.S. media do not cover any of the good things that are happening in Iraq. ABC's response was that it is often hard to travel around the country looking for the good stuff given that something like 85 journalist have been killed there since the war started three years ago and many more have been injured, including ABC News' own co-anchor.

Then ABC went down a partial list of the "positive" stories it has covered recently. One of them was a piece on how television comedy is returning to Iraq now that Saddam is out of power. But while the ABC news crew was filming this piece, the actors on an upcoming comedy show were informed that their producer has just been assassinated by gunmen. Anyway, I thought it was an excellent piece in that it demonstrated that the situation over there is complex and good news is often accompanied by bad news.

Take this story, for example:

Emboldened a day after a successful jailbreak, insurgents laid siege to another prison Wednesday. This time, U.S. troops and a special Iraqi unit thwarted the pre-dawn attack south of Baghdad, overwhelming the gunmen and capturing 50 of them, police said.

Although the raid failed, the insurgents' ability to put together such large and well-armed bands of fighters underlined concerns about the ability of Iraqi police and military to take over the fight from U.S. troops. Sixty militants participated in the assault, which attempted to free more jailed Sunni insurgents, police said.

Although there is some great news to be found here -- clearly our intelligence gathering in the region has improved immensely -- the fact that the insurgents are able to amount such an attack should give everyone some pause, particular given that this raid came a day after 100 Sunni gunmen freed 33 prisoners from a jail, police station and courthouse in a town northeast of Baghdad.

But this is certainly a positive story:

U.S. and British troops Thursday freed three Christian peace activists in rural Iraq without firing a shot, ending a four-month hostage drama in which an American among the group was shot to death and dumped on a Baghdad street.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the U.S. military spokesman, said the hostages were being held by a “kidnapping cell,” and the operation to free the captives was based on information from a man captured by U.S. forces only three hours earlier.

Both of the above-referenced stories were widely reported in the American Media, so I just don't think Bush's complaint of media bias with regard to Iraq is well-taken. Indeed, I have a feeling that the Iraq situation is far worse than is generally known.

And speaking of Christians in war zones, get a load of this:

An Afghan who has renounced his Islamic faith for Christianity faces the death penalty under Afghan law in a throwback to the brutal Taleban regime.

Abdul Rahman, 41, is being prosecuted for an "attack on Islam", for which the punishment under Afghanistan's draft constitution, is death by hanging.

The charge comes as Britain prepares to send 3,300 nominally Christian paratroopers to stabilise the troubled south of the country.

Mr Rahman converted to Christianity over 14 years ago, but his situation was bought to the attention of the authorities after he tried to gain custody of his daughters who had been living with their grandparents. His parents then denounced him as a convert and on arrest he was found to be carrying a Bible.

And I thought American custody battles were vitriolic.

Sure, I supported the War in Afghanistan, but it sounds like that draft constitution might need another draft or two. I heard on the radio last night that Rahman might avoid the death penalty because the court may determine that he is insane. I just love the irony of that.

Here's One For All You Lawyers Out There

This is an interesting decision:

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police cannot search a home when one resident invites them in but another tells them to go away.

In his first dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts raised concerns about the decision's potential impact on battered women.

The 5-3 decision put new limits on officers who want to search for evidence of a crime without obtaining a warrant first.

If one occupant tells them no, the search is unconstitutional, justices said.

Roberts dissented, predicting severe consequences for women who want police to come in but are overruled by abusive husbands.

Roberts' comment may be a bit of an over-reaction. This case involved a situation where an officer responded to a domestic dispute call and the wife -- over her husband's objections -- led the officer to her husband's cocaine stash. Justice Souter, who wrote for the majority, said that because there was no evidence of wrongdoing, the wife's invitation to enter did not work to override her husband's refusal to consent to the search. But if a husband was in a house beating his wife to a pulp, this decision would not prevent police from intervening; and if the husband's pile of coke was sitting on the coffee table in plain sight when the police entered to protect the wife, then the seizure of the coke and subsequent prosecution of the husband would not be unconstitutional.

What I am not sure about is whether the State could invoke some other exception to the search warrant requirement, like exigent circumstances (i.e., the wife told the cops that there was a ton of coke under the bed upstairs and the cops feared that the husband would flush it down the toilet if they took the time to get a warrant).

It's About Time

One thing that has really ticked me off over the past few years is how radical right-wing Fundamental Christian organizations are openly supporting theocratic candidates or otherwise overtly engaging in extreme right-wing political activities while maintaining tax-exempt status. Well, someone is finally doing something about this (from Raw Story):

The progressive Washington ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has filed an IRS complaint against a network of church leaders aiding Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), alleging that the group aided the senator's re-election campaign efforts in violation of federal law. . . .

According to an article by David D. Kirkpatrick appearing in the March 21, 2006 edition of The New York Times, the first training get-out-the-vote session set up by the Pennsylvania Pastors Network took place on March 6, 2006 and included a videotaped message from Senator and candidate for the United States Senate, Rick Santorum (R-PA). According to the article, after the videotape of Sen. Santorum was played, copies of the Senator’s book, It Takes a Family, were handed out.

One of the speakers at the meeting, the Reverend Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, emphasized the importance of control of the Senate in the event of vacancies on the Supreme Court stating, “[t]his particular president needs the kind of support that he has today but might not necessarily have after 2006.”

Bush Apparently Wants To Share The Blame

Our president had this to say about Iraq yesterday:

President Bush suggested yesterday that US troops might stay in Iraq beyond his presidency, which ends in 2009, saying at a press conference that the issue of removing troops from the country ''will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq."

The president, responding to aggressive questioning at the hastily arranged morning session, declined to give a timetable for pulling US soldiers out of the increasingly unpopular war. But he warned several times about the danger of a ''premature" withdrawal.

Bush is clearly thinking about his legacy right now. The last thing Bush wants is for the Iraq Debacle to be a one-president catastrophe. Even though Johnson took the most heat for Viet Nam, that war did span the terms of at least three administrations.

I remember thinking last year that had Kerry won the election, then Iraq would have become his problem, meaning that Bush could later write in his memoirs that everything was going great in Iraq until Kerry took over the White House. But a Bush victory in 2004 meant that Iraq would forever be regarded as Bush's debacle and would help to permanently brand him as the worst president ever. This is something that Bush wants to avoid, apparently.

But there is, of course, more going on here than Bush worrying about his legacy. This country has spent a ton of money building "super-bases" in Iraq, no doubt to advance the PNAC plan to establish a permanent U.S. military presence in the heart of the Middle East. If the United States were to totally withdraw from Iraq, the Pentagon would have a hard time justifying the cost that went into constructing these bases.

Here's An Interesting Lawsuit

From Reuters:

A congressional watchdog group filed a suit on Tuesday in federal court challenging the constitutionality of a $39 billion spending-cut law that passed each chamber of Congress in different forms.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the president signs into law only bills that are passed in identical form by both chambers.

"We have filed a lawsuit against the Bush administration for trying to sign into law something that is unconstitutional," said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook.

If what the rest of the article says is true, then it does appear that Bush did violate the law by signing the Senate's version of the bill.

There is more than a mere technicality involved here. The spending bill in question was very controversial -- the House version barely passed, and Dick "Shooter" Cheney had to break a tie in the Senate. As the Reuters article notes: "If a court were to rule in Public Citizen's favor, it would be difficult for the Republican-controlled Congress to pass a new spending-cut bill so close to November congressional elections."

Gore Once Again Denies That He Is Running In 2008

On C-Span Radio the other night, I heard Al Gore address a gathering at a Democratic political fundraiser in Florida. It was a recording of an address he gave last week. Here is an article discussing this event. Although I enjoy his more formal speeches such as the ones sponsored by MoveOn.org, this address was more or less an off-the-cuff speech with no teleprompter and probably limited notes, and it was very effective.

Near the end of his address, Gore referred to when General Washington, while at Valley Forge, refused to allow his men to torture two captured British soldiers, even though the other side had mistreated captured Americans. Washington said something to the effect that he wasn't going to allow the torture because we as Americans are going to do things differently than everyone else and hold ourselves to a higher standard. Gore then discussed the torture policy of the current administration and said:

"In every war there have been excesses ... that have come out of the extremes of combat and war. * * * But never previously has it been official U.S. policy to depart from that respect that we should not torture."

Gore went on to remark that there is something terribly wrong with America right now and everyone knows this, but his overall speech was very positive and it reminded me how things could have been in this country had the Supreme Court simply let States' Rights prevail and stayed the hell away from the 2000 election.

That's why I hope Al Gore runs for president. Of all the potential Democratic candidates, he was consistently against the Iraq War from the start. Sure, Russ Feingold was also consistently against the war and I wouldn't mind seeing him get the nomination, but what Gore really has on his side is that he actually won the 2000 election and can honestly go down a list of Bush's many failures as president and describe to the nation how he would have done things differently.
So that's why I get a little bummed out when I read stuff like this:

Al Gore said "he's not planning to run for president in 2008 but hasn't ruled out a future in politics," the AP reports.

Said Gore: "I'm not planning to be a candidate again. I haven't reached a stage in my life where I'm willing to say I will never consider something like this. But I'm not saying that to be coy; I'm just saying that to be honest that I haven't reached that point."

When I read stuff like this, it makes me sad to think that someone like Hillary Clinton could get the nomination. Since folks like Clinton and Kerry supported the Iraq War, any GOP opponent they might have to run against would be able to effectively argue that they flip-flopped on Iraq. The response, of course, would be, "Well, sure I supported the war, but had I been commander-in-chief, I would have at least run the war in a competent manner."

I just don't think the Democrats will be able to get much traction with such an argument. I like what Atrios has to say about all this:

The incompetence dodge is just that. But it's precisely where the foreign policy line is being drawn in the Democratic party, between those who thought all along the war was a disaster and those who imagine that if they had been in charge things could've worked out better.

I'm with those (obviously) who think it's fundamentally important not just to repudiate the execution of policy by the Bush administration, but the policies themselves and their justifications. "Like Bush only better" will not win a presidential election.

Gore/Feingold 2008.

Better Late Than Never?

Your tax money at work:

A man was being held in a US military prison yesterday for deserting from the marines 38 years ago after being caught on the American-Canadian border amid a new drive to track down Vietnam-era deserters.

Allen Abney, 56, who lives in British Columbia and who is now a Canadian citizen, had frequently crossed into the US without incident. His family was caught by surprise when he and his wife were stopped by immigration officials on Thursday on their way to a social event in Reno, Nevada.

"They were crossing British Columbia-Idaho border, and they handed in their passports and they were told they would have to come inside," Jessica Abney, the couple's daughter told the Guardian. "I don't think he'd been worrying about it, because he'd been in the states hundreds of times since he deserted. I don't think he lived his life that way."

Mr Abney is not the only ex-marine to have been tracked down for desertion recently. Since he took over the marine corps Absentee Collection Centre in 2004, chief warrant officer James Averhart has reopened cold cases and claims to have tracked down 33 deserters. "I have a different leadership style than the guys who have had this job. My job is to catch deserters. And that's what I do," he told Florida's St Petersburg Times.

Something tells me that this James Averhart character might not be playing with a full deck.

Of course, I'd feel much better about what he was doing if he decided to go after the Most Famous Viet Nam War Deserter of All Time, but that probably won't happen because (1) it's not his department, and (2) I have a feeling that this guy is an avid Bush supporter.

Karl Rove's Ace In The Hole

Iraq is a mess -- in fact, the U.S. just launched a massive combat operation almost three years after Bush declared major combat operations over in that country. The fiscally irresponsible, Republican-run Congress just approved a $781 billion increase in the federal government's debt limit -- this is the fourth time lawmakers have raised the cap since the Supreme Court appointed Bush as president back in 2000. Bush's approval rating is somewhere in the mid-thirties. The Katrina Debacle continues to make the headlines.

Every Republican congressman running for reelection is scrambling to distance him or herself from the most unpopular president in a generation.

Yet the Democrats are still afraid to attack Bush. Why?

I think the Democrats' hesitancy can be summed up with one word: Iran:

The Bush administration, updating a national security strategy that laid the groundwork for invading Iraq, said that Iran and its nuclear ambitions are the biggest future challenges to the U.S.

``We face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran,'' a 49-page foreign policy doctrine released today says. ``We will continue to take all necessary measures to protect our national and economic security against the adverse consequences of their bad conduct.''

The document, which is mandated by Congress, reaffirms President George W. Bush's policy regarding potential national security threats that he outlined a year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. That doctrine, which stated that the U.S. reserves the right to pre-empt threats, was used as the basis for invading Iraq to deal with the risk that Saddam Hussein might use weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or provide them to terrorists.

Administration officials today said they had no second- thoughts about the policy, even though no weapons of mass destruction were found after Hussein was toppled.

``The doctrine of pre-emption remains sound,'' White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said in an address in Washington to present the updated strategy. ``We do not rule out the use of force before an attack occurs.''

There is no doubt in my mind that the U.S. will attack Iran during the run-up to the 2006 Mid-Term elections. In fact, Bush will have little choice but to do so. Karl Rove is betting that the American people will forgive all of BushCo's incompetence once American bombs start falling on Iranian nuclear and military facilities. It's a hell of a way to run a foreign policy, but there it is.

The Democrats know that this will happen, and are therefore afraid to challenge Bush. They truly are a pathetic bunch.

It will be interesting to see how Rove's strategy plays out. I have a feeling that it will be a complete success and that by December 2006, Bush's approval rating will be back in the mid-to-high 40s and the G.O.P. will have gained even more Congressional seats.

Yes, I really do have that little faith in the American people.

This Really Is A Quote For The Ages

From AmericaBlog:

"Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You didn't place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."

- Jamie Raskin, testifying Wednesday, March 1, 2006 before the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee in response to a question from Republican Senator Nancy Jacobs about whether marriage discrimination against gay people is required by "God's Law."

This Lawyer Could Be In A Bit Of Trouble (with updates)

I've had to deal a lot lately with a local attorney who is profoundly unethical and corrupt to the core. But BushCo attorney Carla Martin would certainly run a close second to that guy:

Saying she was troubled by witness coaching and other government missteps, Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that the jury deciding whether Moussaoui is executed or spends the rest of his life in prison won't hear from aviation security witnesses.

The judge delayed testimony until Monday to give federal prosecutors time to appeal.

Brinkema, who has presided over the trial for more than four years, decided to keep Federal Aviation Administration witnesses from the stand as a remedy for misconduct by a government lawyer, Carla J. Martin.

Martin was not a member of the prosecution team, but she sent trial transcripts and comments to seven witnesses by e-mail. The government cut one of those witnesses from its list.

A senior lawyer with the Transportation Security Administration, Martin did not testify Tuesday. She is no longer working as a liaison between prosecutors and the agency.

The government's misconduct, the judge said, went beyond coaching witnesses to include misrepresenting their willingness to talk with Moussaoui's defense.

"Whether these witnesses have actually been tainted or not is almost impossible to tell," Brinkema said.

"I don't think at this point the case needs to stop," the judge added. "However, in the annals of criminal law, I don't know if there has ever been a case with this many significant problems."

Of course, it doesn't surprise me that an attorney working for the Bush Regime would thumb her nose at a co-equal branch of government -- this is pretty much standard operating procedure for the current administration -- but this Moussaoui trial is clearly a part of the War On Terror and BushCo seems to be going out of its way to let the evildoers prevail on this one. Moussaoui must be laughing his ass off right now.

UPDATE: From the Washington Post:

A federal prosecutor in the death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui told the judge in the case that he saw "no point" in going ahead with the proceedings under a ruling that barred key government witnesses from testifying.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert A. Spencer, one of the prosecutors trying to persuade a jury that Moussaoui deserves the death penalty for his role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, made the comment in a conference call yesterday among U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema and lawyers for the prosecution and defense after Brinkema prohibited testimony and evidence from half a dozen federal aviation witnesses. Brinkema issued the ruling after a day-long hearing convinced her that misconduct by a federal lawyer had so tainted the proceeding that all evidence concerning aviation security must be stricken.

The decision gutted the case that prosecutors were building in their attempt to have Moussaoui executed for the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Moussaoui, 37, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, pleaded guilty last April to six conspiracy counts related to the Sept. 11 attacks. If the death penalty trial does not go forward or if the jury ultimately decides in favor of the defense, Moussaoui would be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Isn't that wonderful news? Man, I can't wait to find out how much this little trial cost the taxpayers.

Anyone want to bet that this Carla J. Martin character gets a promotion? Bush really loves rewarding incompetence, given that both Condi Rice and Paul Wolfowitz were promoted.

UPDATE II: Bush has a 33% approval rating in the most recent Pew poll.

Bush Out Of The Loop On Most Issues

From the conservative Insight Magazine:

President Bush has decided to stay out of the lion's share of decisions made by his administration.

Sources close to the administration said that over the last year, Mr. Bush has chosen to focus on two issues, leaving the rest to be decided by Cabinet members and senior aides. They said the issues are Iraq and the Republican congressional campaign in the 2006 elections.

"Lots of important issues that deal with national security are never brought to the president because he doesn't want to deal with them," a source familiar with the White House said. "In some cases, this has resulted in chaos."

The White House has acknowledged that Mr. Bush was not informed of the administration’s decision to approve a $6.85 billion takeover by the United Arab Emirates of a British firm that operates at least six major ports in the United States. The decision triggered a public firestorm and strong bipartisan opposition on Capitol Hill. This prompted the Dubai-owned company last week to bail on its bid to operate terminals in U.S. ports.

It makes sense that Bush would focus only on Iraq and the Mid-Term elections because (1) he's staked his entire presidency on his Iraq policy, and (2) a loss of either the House or the Senate in November would give the Democrats subpoena power, which will probably end up meaning prison time for a lot of Bush Administration officials.

By the way, here are some great words from Senator Russ Feingold:

I’m amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president’s numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide. … Too many Democrats are going to do the same thing they did in 2000 and 2004. In the face of this, they’ll say we’d better just focus on domestic issues. … [Democrats shouldn’t] cower to the argument, that whatever you do, if you question the administration, you’re helping the terrorists.

He makes a great point. A CBS poll that will come out today has Bush's approval number at 34%, and most polls are now showing that the American people trust the Democrats more on national security issues than they trust Bush.

What the hell are the Democrats waiting for, a sign from God? The GOP is clearly gearing up for a big fight (via Political Wire):

There's a new Tim Russert in town making sport of grilling Republicans--and they like it! Getting ready for the 2006 midterm elections, the GOP has started media training of House and Senate members to help them navigate TV minefields. They've turned to Adam Levine, a former Bushie who prepped top aides like Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld for Sunday talk shows. "It's going to be a tough election year," says Levine, "and the goal is to get everybody TV ready." A former Democrat who worked in TV-- Hardball and The McLaughlin Group--before joining the Bush team, Levine is considered the best at his trade. "He's the go-to coach for Sunday show prep," says Dan Senor, the former U.S. spokesman in Iraq. "He's got the Tim Russert thing down," added a top GOP official. Democrats seem jealous--they want their own Levine.

Now They Tell Us

From The Guardian:

Senior British diplomatic and military staff gave Tony Blair explicit warnings three years ago that the US was disastrously mishandling the occupation of Iraq, according to leaked memos.

John Sawers, Mr Blair's envoy in Baghdad in the aftermath of the invasion, sent a series of confidential memos to Downing Street in May and June 2003 cataloguing US failures. With unusual frankness, he described the US postwar administration, led by the retired general Jay Garner, as "an unbelievable mess" and said "Garner and his top team of 60-year-old retired generals" were "well-meaning but out of their depth".

That assessment is reinforced by Major General Albert Whitley, the most senior British officer with the US land forces. Gen Whitley, in another memo later that summer, expressed alarm that the US-British coalition was in danger of losing the peace. "We may have been seduced into something we might be inclined to regret. Is strategic failure a possibility? The answer has to be 'yes'," he concluded.

I find it interesting that these memos were written fairly early, just after Bush declared major combat operations over in Iraq.

New Low In Gallup Poll For Bush

From CNN:

Public opinion of President Bush hit a new low, with concerns about the war in Iraq driving his approval rating down to 36 percent, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll out Monday.

Only 38 percent said they believe the nearly 3-year-old war was going well for the United States, down from 46 percent in January, while 60 percent said they believed the war was going poorly. And 57 percent said they believe the March 2003 invasion of Iraq was a mistake, near September's record high of 59 percent in the same poll.

Warning: Major Rant Ahead

Oxycontin Rush was on the radio this morning all upset about how the American people reacted to BushCo's Dubai Port Debacle. And there seems to be a big push in the Corporate Media to rehabilitate the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the eyes of the American people, no doubt in an attempt to resurrect the Dubai port deal. CNN basically spent the better part of yesterday morning trying to make the UAE sound like the greatest thing since sliced bread.

My response to all this? The UAE (1) supported the Taliban in the run-up to the 9-11 attacks, (2) was the home country to two of the 9-11 hijackers, and (3) was the headquarters for a 9-11-related money laundering scheme. BushCo's reply: "Well, OK -- but look what they've done lately."

Well, I don't care what they've done lately, and apparently neither do most other Americans. People in this country simply don't want a nation with ties to the 9-11 attacks running six of our major ports. Is that really so hard to understand? After all, the Bush Regime has spent the last four-and-a-half years telling us that we need to be very afraid. Indeed, the 2004 election was "won" on that issue alone.

I more or less feel the same way about the United Arab Emirates as I do about Pakistan. Bush famously said after 9-11, "If you're not with us, you are against us." Of course, those words apparently did not apply to Pakistan, who maintained ties to the Taliban and Al Qaeda long after the 9-11 attacks.

I'll never forget how, back in November of 2001, the Bush Regime secretly approved the escape to Pakistan of thousands of Pakistani military advisers and intelligence agents who were in Afghanistan providing aid and advice to the Taliban and to Al Qaeda. We had these guys surrounded in the Afghan city of Kunduz and Bush just let them escape, along with an unknown number of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.

What do you call it when you provide aid and comfort to the enemy? You can read all about it here and here.

I think about this unfortunate occurrence every time I hear someone say that Bush is strong on national security (which is a comment I don't hear all that much these days). Why would Bush allow our enemies to escape so they could attack us another day? Well, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was apparently worried that the capture in Afghanistan of thousands of Pakistani military advisers and intelligence agents would threaten his political survival, and he made his concerns known to BushCo. Our cowardly president obviously didn't want some hard-line anti-U.S. regime to replace Musharraf as the head of a country that possessed nuclear bombs.

What would my response to Musharraf have been? Given that Al Qaeda had just murdered 3000 U.S. citizens a couple of months earlier, I probably would have said something like, "Well, I just counted our nukes, and we appear to have more of them than you guys do, so best of luck to you Pervez -- we're taking your people in Kunduz out."

And so what if Musharraf was deposed and a pro-Taliban/pro-Al Qaeda regime took his place and openly challenged us. I'd be a lot happier had we spent hundreds of billions of dollars bombing an openly-pro-Taliban Pakistan back to the Stone Age instead of spending that money turning a fourth-rate military power that posed no threat to us into the Mother of All Terrorist Training Grounds. At least we would have gotten some bang for our buck.

But what do we have now thanks to Bush's enemy identification problem? Well, bin Laden, by most accounts, is holed up in Pakistan somewhere, and we can't do a thing about it apparently. Those Pakistanis are really great allies, aren't they.

And then I read something like this:

The Pakistan foreign office had paid tens of thousands of dollars to lobbyists in the US to get anti-Pakistan references dropped from the 9/11 inquiry commission report, The Friday Times has claimed.

The Pakistani weekly said its story is based on disclosures made by foreign service officials to the Public Accounts Committee at a secret meeting in Islamabad on Tuesday.

The Pakistani foreign office defended the decision to hire lobbyists to influence the 9-11 Commission, saying that hiring lobbyists is "an established practice in the US."

Well, you can't argue with that.

Keep Running, Katherine

God, I hope this isn't what I think it is:

Rep. Katherine Harris fueled already rampant speculation about the status of her campaign for the U.S. Senate when she released a statement Saturday promising a "major announcement" about her future this week.

The Longboat Key Republican's campaign is barely stumbling along after revelations that she took thousands in illegal contributions from a defense contractor who bribed a California congressman.

And while she has had little to say about the matter, many others are talking, including Republicans worried about losing the Senate race and Democrats emboldened by the financial and political woes confronting Harris.

It didn't help when rumors circulated last week that Harris might not stay in the race.

In her statement, Harris acknowledged all the speculation, notifying Republican activists at a meeting in Memphis that she was canceling her scheduled appearance there Saturday night "as I prayerfully prepare with my family, friends and advisors to finalize the strategy for a major announcement next week concerning my candidacy for the U.S. Senate."

I would really hate to see Harris drop out of that race -- the longer she stays in, the more damage she'll do to the G.O.P.

Republican-Run House Still Ain't Done Twisting The Dubai Knife

Karl Rove must be mad enough to chew neutronium right now. From Reuters:

The U.S. House of Representatives will forge ahead with a vote on blocking an Arab-owned company from managing U.S. ports, to ensure the firm sheds its U.S. holdings as promised, a leadership spokesman said on Friday.

The Republican-run House's refusal to back away from the showdown vote was another blow to President George W. Bush, who suffered a stinging defeat Thursday when Dubai Ports World said it intended to back out of the deal his administration had approved.

Although Bush insisted the other day that Dubai Ports World’s announcement to sell was a decision made by that company under pressure from Congress, it turns out that the decision was actually made by Karl Rove:

[A]ccording to Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, the White House instructed DP World to concede. Appearing yesterday on Fox News, Kristol said Karl Rove canceled the deal with a phone call on the night of March 8:

He made that veto threat then he went on the trip to India and went silent basically. Karl Rove calls the people in Dubai two nights ago and tells them pull the plug on the deal, and I think as a result, the president looks weak, frankly.

Rove, a so-called political genius, obviously thought this Dubai thing would go away once he ordered DP World to pull the plug. He must have forgotten that this is an election year wherein a lot of Republicans are trying desperately to distance themselves from a wildly unpopular president.

Karl -- I'm laughing at the superior intellect.

Krugman

Here's the full text of Krugman's latest op-ed to which I referred in the previous post. It is titled The Conservative Epiphany:

Bruce Bartlett, the author of "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy," is an angry man. At a recent book forum at the Cato Institute, he declared that the Bush administration is "unconscionable," "irresponsible," "vindictive" and "inept."

It's no wonder, then, that one commentator wrote of Mr. Bartlett that "if he were a cartoon character, he would probably look like Donald Duck during one of his famous tirades, with steam pouring out of his ears."

Oh, wait. That's not what somebody wrote about Mr. Bartlett. It's what Mr. Bartlett wrote about me in September 2003, when I was saying pretty much what he's saying now.

Human nature being what it is, I don't expect Mr. Bartlett to acknowledge his about-face. Nor do I expect any expressions of remorse from Andrew Sullivan, the conservative Time.com blogger who also spoke at the Cato forum. Mr. Sullivan used to specialize in denouncing the patriotism and character of anyone who dared to criticize President Bush, whom he lionized. Now he himself has become a critic, not just of Mr. Bush's policies, but of his personal qualities, too.

Never mind; better late than never. We should welcome the recent epiphanies by conservative commentators who have finally realized that the Bush administration isn't trustworthy. But we should guard against a conventional wisdom that seems to be taking hold in some quarters, which says there's something praiseworthy about having initially been taken in by Mr. Bush's deceptions, even though the administration's mendacity was obvious from the beginning.

According to this view, if you're a former Bush supporter who now says, as Mr. Bartlett did at the Cato event, that "the administration lies about budget numbers," you're a brave truth-teller. But if you've been saying that since the early days of the Bush administration, you were unpleasantly shrill.

Similarly, if you're a former worshipful admirer of George W. Bush who now says, as Mr. Sullivan did at Cato, that "the people in this administration have no principles," you're taking a courageous stand. If you said the same thing back when Mr. Bush had an 80 percent approval rating, you were blinded by Bush-hatred.

And if you're a former hawk who now concedes that the administration exaggerated the threat from Iraq, you're to be applauded for your open-mindedness. But if you warned three years ago that the administration was hyping the case for war, you were a conspiracy theorist.

The truth is that everything the new wave of Bush critics has to say was obvious long ago to any commentator who was willing to look at the facts.

Mr. Bartlett's book is mainly a critique of the Bush administration's fiscal policy. Well, the administration's pattern of fiscal dishonesty and irresponsibility was clear right from the start to anyone who understands budget arithmetic. The chicanery that took place during the selling of the 2001 tax cut -- obviously fraudulent budget projections, transparently deceptive advertising about who would benefit and the use of blatant accounting gimmicks to conceal the plan's true cost -- was as bad as anything that followed.

The false selling of the Iraq war was almost as easy to spot. All the supposed evidence for an Iraqi nuclear program was discredited before the war -- and it was the threat of nukes, not lesser W.M.D., that stampeded Congress into authorizing Mr. Bush to go to war. The administration's nonsensical but insistent rhetorical linkage of Iraq and 9/11 was also a dead giveaway that we were being railroaded into an unnecessary war.

The point is that pundits who failed to notice the administration's mendacity a long time ago either weren't doing their homework, or deliberately turned a blind eye to the evidence.

But as I said, better late than never. Born-again Bush-bashers like Mr. Bartlett and Mr. Sullivan, however churlish, are intellectually and morally superior to the Bushist dead-enders who still insist that Saddam was allied with Al Qaeda, and will soon be claiming that we lost the war in Iraq because the liberal media stabbed the troops in the back. And reporters understandably consider it newsworthy that some conservative voices are now echoing longstanding liberal critiques of the Bush administration.

It's still fair, however, to ask people like Mr. Bartlett the obvious question: What took you so long?

Bushist dead-enders -- I like it.

O'Connor Goes After DeLay And Cornyn

From The Washington Monthly:

O'CONNOR SMACKS DOWN REPUBLICANS....Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor gave a speech yesterday at Georgetown in which she slammed Republicans--singling out Tom DeLay and John Cornyn--for undermining the judiciary. (You can listen to NPR coverage of the speech here.) She quoted DeLay's attacks on the court during Justice Sunday, and then turned on the sarcasm: "This was after the federal courts had applied Congress' one-time-only statute about Schiavo as it was written--not as the Congressman might have wished it were written. The response to this flagrant display of judicial restraint was that the Congressman blasted the courts..."

As for Cornyn, O'Connor said, "It doesn't help when a high-profile senator suggests there may be a connection between violence against judges and decisions that the senator disagrees with."

When O'Connor announced her retirement last year, there was outpouring of praise for her "wisdom" and "moderation" and "thoughtfulness." That won't stop Republicans from turning around now and denouncing her comments, but it will make it harder for them to press their case. And--who knows?--maybe it will inspire some of her former colleagues across the judiciary. The pool of self-hating judges has to be fairly small.

What I liked about O'Connor's comments is how she openly suggested that certain partisan-driven suggestions for "judicial reforms" (e.g., recommendations for massive impeachments of judges, stripping certain courts of jurisdiction, the de-funding of certain courts, etc. ) are nothing more than early steps toward dictatorship.

Danimal -- it sounds like Justice O'Connor agrees with you. Here's how a reader responded to Danimal's statement that the United States is moving toward a dictatorship:

Feel free to ignore the real-world lack of evidence that this country is turning into anything like a dictatorship or theocracy. Do you know what those words mean? Because there are *actual* dictatorships and theocracies in this world, and they aren't in North America.

It saddens me to read intelligent people writing stuff like this. It is so far from reality. I hope that after a few more losses, the Democrats can finally start coming to their senses. Here's a hint: Get rid of Howard Dean.

When hardcore Bush apologists invoke Howard Dean or say stuff like "it saddens me to read intelligent people writing stuff like this," then you know you've really hit a nerve. This is because a lot of these Bush supporters are engaged in a struggle within themselves.

A lot of the intelligent Bush supporters -- and believe me, there are a few of those -- are more than willing to put up with a ton of fascist-leaning crap in exchange for the illusion of safety, even though their conservative impulses must be screaming to them that Bush is leading this country down the wrong path (as noted in an earlier post, half of Republicans now believe this country is on the wrong track).

But it isn't simply O'Connor who has made such comments. Last month, leading neocon Francis Fukuyama stated that the neoconservative position articulated by people like William Kristol and Robert Kagan -- and implemented by the Bush Regime in Iraq -- is a "Leninist" position in that "they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will."

You know things must be bad when conservatives are saying and writing things like that.

UPDATE: Krugman had some great things to say today on this topic:

We should welcome the recent epiphanies by conservative commentators who have finally realized that the Bush administration isn't trustworthy. But we should guard against a conventional wisdom that seems to be taking hold in some quarters, which says there's something praiseworthy about having initially been taken in by Mr. Bush's deceptions, even though the administration's mendacity was obvious from the beginning.

According to this view, if you're a former Bush supporter who now says, as Mr. Bartlett did at the Cato event, that "the administration lies about budget numbers," you're a brave truth-teller. But if you've been saying that since the early days of the Bush administration, you were unpleasantly shrill.

Similarly, if you're a former worshipful admirer of George W. Bush who now says, as Mr. Sullivan did at Cato, that "the people in this administration have no principles," you're taking a courageous stand. If you said the same thing back when Mr. Bush had an 80 percent approval rating, you were blinded by Bush-hatred.