The Blog From Another Dimension: Political Ranting Archives

Makes Ya Dizzy

There have been several recent announcements of Republican members of Congress who will not be running this election year, former Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert being the most notable. There are at least 6 GOP no-shows for the House so far, and one for the Senate (possibly two if Pete Dominici's health falters).

It signals a disastrous turn for the GOP, as it likely means that the GOP will lose several seats to Democratic challengers. They're in particular trouble in Ohio, where Rep. Pryce won by a razor-thin margin last election and already two desired GOP replacements have turned down the offer to run in her place.

Fox News, of course, is still shamelessly plugging on as the GOP's propaganda arm. Their headline?

"GOP Making Early Room for New Faces in Congress"

And some of them will be Democratic! How nice of the GOP to make room for them.

The spin over at Fox is such that you can't really blame them for being perpetually dizzy like that.

Justice Is Blind to Bias, Not to the Law

Jose Padilla has been found guilty in a court of law today. To be perfectly frank, I have no real understanding of whether he is guilty of the charges against him or not; he could be innocent, or he could be guilty. I don't know that aspect of the case well enough to judge. Maybe he was a terrorist in training, for all I know. However, that is not the aspect of the case which I find most important; it is, rather, the way his case was handled and the impact it has on the rights, freedoms and liberties of all American citizens.

Whatever Jose Padilla is or is not, he signifies a disturbing new power the government has granted itself: the power to detain and interrogate any American citizen in violation of their Constitutional rights.

Padilla was arrested on May 8, 2002 as a "material witness" stemming from a warrant issued after the 9/11 attacks. It was at the height of terror-related hysteria, at a time when the government was actively stoking such fears and looking for ways to expand their powers. After a month of imprisonment and two days before the "material witness" warrant was to be challenged in court, Bush ordered that Padilla be detained as an "enemy combatant" under authority theoretically granted to Bush by the Iraq War Resolution. He was moved to a military prison without notifying his family or attorney.

Right here we get into distressing territory: the idea that Bush has the power to invalidate the Constitution because Congress passed the Iraq War Resolution, saying:

That the president is authorized to use all necessary force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

This power is clearly limited to people who "planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001" or people who "harbored such organizations or persons." Even if we accept the original charges that Padilla joined al Qaeda and planned a "dirty bomb" attack on the U.S., he still would not fall into the classification described by the Iraq War Resolution. here is not even any question that the Bush administration went far, far beyond the law, or that the law would be unconstitutional even if it had granted Bush such powers. This was a signal to a new way of doing things at the White House: create new, extra-Constitutional powers out of whole cloth simply by claiming that they exist where they do not, and then maneuver to keep those powers from being challenged. If someone points out that they do not exist, simply keep insisting that they do, then suggest that such powers are necessary for national security, and then accuse the person who brought it up of sabotaging our safety.

The Bush administration declared that it had the power to consider Padilla an "enemy combatant," thus depriving him of any constitutional protections. The entire idea of "enemy combatants" was a legal fiction created by the Bush administration not out of necessity in dealing with Padilla, but rather out of the desire to ignore the law. They wanted to do whatever they wanted with Padilla, so they simply grabbed the legal definition that suited them best, and under cover of national fear and panic, ran with it. In this case, they wanted a definition that made Padilla an "unperson."

"Enemy combatant" (also called "unlawful combatant") status was used to declare Padilla did not have any rights, not even as a prisoner of war under the Geneva Conventions. It was similar to the justification of sending "terrorist" prisoners to Guantanamo Bay: because it was not on U.S. soil, it could evade responsibility under U.S. law, and the administration similarly claimed it was not answerable to the Geneva Conventions. The camp was not located at Gitmo because it was the best location for a prison camp, it was located there because it was the best way to evade U.S. and international law.

Padilla was held without charges for three and a half years, and was subjected to questioning without the right to consult an attorney. These facts are not in question. They clearly violate Padilla's Fifth Amendment rights (No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, ... nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law....) and his Sixth Amendment rights (In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.)

Padilla:

• was held without charges filed
• was interrogated without the right to remain silent
• was not allowed access to due process of law
• was not granted a speedy trial
• was not informed of the nature of the charges against him while being held in detainment
• was not allowed access to his attorney at multiple key points

Remember, we are talking about a mindset many conservatives have which, though honoring the Second Amendment, sees most of the rest of the Bill of Rights to be an annoying set of trivialities that allow the ACLU to set rapists and murderers loose on the streets. In this mindset, half of the Bill of Rights, specifically the 4th through 8th Amendments, is dead to them. They would probably love to call them "outdated," but that would only knock down the 2nd, so instead they just obviate and ignore the ones they don't like.

The Padilla case made its way through the courts, through appeals courts and was rejected initially by the Supreme Court on technical grounds. Eventually, the Bush administration backed down before the case could finally make its way to the Supreme Court. The administration removed Padilla to a civilian court, and completely dropped almost all allegations against Padilla that were issued after his arrest, and did not use any of the information gained by interrogating Padilla during those years in detainment.

However, this is hardly a comfort. The administration did these things not because they had suddenly seen the light, but because they had to in order to avoid being ruled against, to avoid having their illegal actions exposed in further detail. The actions they took similarly protected them from having their powers to do this again taken away.

In the end, the Bush administration violated the Constitution, avoided rulings against them for it, and have maintained their ability to do the same thing again. Padilla's innocence or guilt is immaterial to this dilemma.

There have been a few steps forward. In June 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that prisoners at Gitmo did have Geneva Convention rights. However, much of the issue still remains in legal limbo while still practiced by the government.

Just as the administration has evaded accountability and defied Congressional authority to subpoena members of the administration, it evades the law by violating it and then performing quick side-steps and legal maneuvers designed to keep such cases from coming before a court. It is the definitive abuse of power: the administration's prime duty is to execute the laws of the nation. Instead, it violates them at will and then uses a variety of tactics to make sure there is no accounting--whether it is the outright destruction of evidence (remember all of those "accidentally" lost emails?), pulling a case just before they are going to have a court decide on the matter, or simply not prosecuting themselves as they are bound by law to do. By abusing the supreme power of legal execution, they simply refuse to prosecute themselves for all the crimes they commit, knowing confidence that the "opposition" party will not have the guts to push them on it now or pick up the case after the current administration leaves power.

Some might excuse these abuses in the name of security; we have a "war on terror" to prosecute, after all. Do you want to go be an ACLU-card-carrying terrorist lover, or a patriot defending your country? Padilla is human trash and deserves to be treated that way. We must protect ourselves, and if that means getting tough with the bad guys, then too bad.

The problem with this attitude is that (1) assumes that we must violate our own highest laws to maintain security, and (2) that somehow decimating the legal and civil rights of Americans is going to protect us at all. Neither of these are true. We can maintain the law and fight terrorism; the idea that these are at odds is a fiction created by a segment of our society that prefers a police state. Look at Padilla: he's going to prison, probably for a long time, and could have been convicted such without the violation of the Constitution. Assuming that he is what the government claims he is, he is no longer a threat. There was no need to violate the laws of our nation in his case nor in any other.

Acceptance of such illegal actions by the government is also based on the false sense of security that "it won't happen to me." That we only prosecute bad guys, that innocents don't get caught up in the system. This is the same sense of rational blindness that allows so many to accept the death penalty, that allows people to ignore the fact that we do kill innocents; while ignorant, at least this view commits a lesser immorality. But there are those who are fully aware that we do kill innocents, but feel that it is an acceptable price to pay... and still, these people simply believe that it will never happen to them.

Even if they are right, and it will never happen to them, that is even worse than the see-no-evil types who believe innocents are never caught up in the system. If they truly believed that it could happen to themselves, that they could be arrested at an airport, declared an "enemy combatant," and thrown into a prison cell for years without charges being filed--at least then they would be upholding a system with the willingness to pay the ultimate price that system demands. But they don't. They are perfectly willing to sacrifice nameless and faceless others, but not themselves, just as so many Iraq War supporters vehemently insist the Iraq War is absolutely necessary, but would never volunteer to fight it themselves.

Acceptance of what the government has done also presumes that such powers will not be abused--when in fact, such powers are always abused.

Frankly, I am disgusted by the cowardly, frightened-child attitude which does not protest such actions. America is the Constitution; that is our true foundation, our true identity. Without it, we are no better than any tin-pot dictatorship, and there is little left to defend relative to anywhere else or anyone else.

We can never defend ourselves by destroying what we are.

Bits & Pieces, 8/16/2007

In any large population, there will always be a criminal element; therefore, it is inevitable that crimes, including horrific ones, will always surface where the perpetrator is of whatever group or category that you wish to imagine. So it should come as no surprise that a murder case has come up where one of the suspects is an illegal immigrant. So Newt Gingrich, who is sometimes able to say things reasonable enough that you can momentarily forget that he's a loon (and a Republican presidential candidate wannabe--interchangeable terms?), is now calling illegal immigrants worse than terrorists, and claims that there is mass slaughter of our children going on. No, I am not kidding:

There is a war here at home, and it is even more deadly than the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Far more Americans are being killed by violent, evil people here in America than in our official military "combat zones" overseas. ...

Either the killing of three young Americans is a horrendous event that requires us to act or we will go on with politics as usual while young Americans in our inner cities are massacred by people who should not be here.

There is a war here at home that is just as important as the war against terrorism overseas.

Gingrich's solution: when we catch criminals, we should check their immigration status, and if they are here illegally, then we should deport them. Good idea! Because we know that when we deport someone, they never come back! Problem solved!

I think someone just upped the throttle on their not-yet-announced presidential campaign.

The RIAA demands that people they accuse of downloading music illegally (even though they rarely if ever have any proof that the defendant committed such a crime) pay up, and pronto, or else they will come after you like the devil himself. After all, if the law says you must pay, then you must pay, right?

Well, apparently that does not go both ways. The RIAA was ordered, by a court of law, to pay one of their innocent victims' legal fees.

Guess what?

Josh Marshall, as usual, has the goods on a new form of political corruption and unconstitutionality committed by Republicans. The new scheme: change bills to add pork after the bill finished going through Congress.

This case was actually pretty sordid, as it involved Alaskan Representative Don Young doing a favor for a Florida real estate developer who raised money for him. The favor Young did was to get public funds to pay for roads connecting the developer's property to a major roadway under construction. Now, this is about as blatant as you can get where bribery is involved; a representative should be helping people in his state, not real estate developers clear across the country. The situation leaves no doubt whatsoever that there was a bribe and a payoff.

That in itself should be a story, but we seem to accept this sort of bribery without even blinking. There's something very wrong with that.

But in this case, Young went even further in his corruption. After the bill was passed by Congress, Young noticed that his earmark may not have been specific enough to profit the specific developer who bribed him. So he went back in and amended the bill in a process intended only to fix purely mechanical errors--instead changing the wording of the earmark completely.

Surprised? Neither am I. Republicans should simply drop the pretense and hold a Constitution-shredding party. Not that this incident was such a huge deal, but rather that it is representative of the sheer contempt Republicans hold for the Constitution, from Bush's violation of nearly all of the Bill of Rights, to the unconstitutionality of strict constructionism which Republicans have so strongly embraced, to stuff like this. When Republicans aren't busy using the Constitution as a punch line (remember the "Constitutional Option"?), they are busy trying to find ways to subvert it (like Bush did when he claimed that he could start a war without Congressional approval) to outright tearing it to pieces (see any one of the recent warrantless wiretapping stories over the past year or two).

Right-wingers have pointed to a July dip in Coalition fatalities in Iraq as a sign that the "Surge™" is working. If only it were so. July has seen a dip in fatalities every year for the past three years, and this year was no different--except in that the July fatality count was much higher this year. It only dipped in relation to higher fatalities overall in the past year or so. Go ahead, grab the numbers from the table in the link above, then paste them into Excel or Numbers and graph them out. It's pretty hard not to see the upwards trend, or the July dip.

In a grim and unhappy reminder that things are still bad in Iraq, the death toll has--predictably--climbed again so far in August. Not to mention overall. The average number of fatalities per day in 2006 was 2.38; this year, so far, it is 3.25.

But how about Iraq and the Iraqis? Are the insurgents having a harder time of it? Are Iraqis better off? Is the surge working?

In one sense, we simply can't judge that easily--there are so many factors involved, and the insurgents aren't letting us see the transcripts of their meetings with their shrinks so we can gauge their feelings on the matter. But considering stories like this one where 500 Iraqis were killed in a truck bombing, it is rather unlikely that things are cooling down. On the contrary, even air conditioning is not an option, as Baghdad residents only get two hours of electricity a day nowadays. Remember how Republicans used to use that yardstick to measure success? Have you noticed how you don't hear them using it any more these days?

The political situation is hardly any better. While our brave men and women in uniform slog it out and fight and die, the Iraqi Parliament has taken a full month's vacation from the summer heat. The Bush administration's spin? At least it wasn't a two-month vacation! Believe it or not, that was Cheney's actual defense.

This story has a lot of rather depressing but relevant facts and numbers on the matter. End impression: not good.

By this time, you gotta figure that right-wingers are just praying for another 9/11 attack, so that everyone will get scared again and run to the GOP, pleading, "Help us! You're the only ones who can help us! We'll slavishly support anything you say or do, we're so frightened! Please, please protect us!" A right-wing wet dream, to be certain.

Am I being harsh? Unreasonable? Surely no right-winger would actually want such a thing to happen, right? Oh, sure, Bill O'Reilly wants San Francisco to be attacked by terrorists, but everybody knows that he was just kidding. But how about this guy?

What would sew us back together?

Another 9/11 attack.

The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda.

Well, heck, there are always nutcases out there who will say anything, right? Certainly no other right-wingers would give this guy the time of day, much less air time or column inches, right? Except for the Drudge Report, but they're nutcases. Oh, and radio host Mike Gallagher, who boasts of 3.75 million weekly listeners. But hey, he's just another nutcase with a nationally syndicated radio show. He's not even as big as Bill O'Reilly. Now, John Gibson of Fox News wouldn't approve, right? He would certainly never have this guy as a guest on his show, or say anything like "I think it’s going to take a lot of dead people to wake America up."

Nah. Right-wingers would never actually hope for a terrorist attack just so they could have another political joyride! Shame on me for even thinking that!

And finally, someone at Fox Noise was caught with their hand in the Wikipedia jar. They thoughtlessly made edits to Wikipedia from a computer at Fox News itself, making it possible to see where the edits were coming from. Those hatemongers over at DailyKos have the story, with details and a link to the Fox News Wikipedia edits.

What did they edit? A lot of Fox News stuff, cleaning out some embarrassments relating to their own on-air personalities, such as Greta Van Susteren's plastic surgery, Shepard Smith's arrest, mug shot, and on-air gaffe, a Media Matters reference on Chris Wallace's page, controversial quotes by Carl Cameron, and multiple details of Brit Hume's article. Aside from changing articles about Fox to make themselves look better, the Fox Wikipedia scrubber also changed Keith Olbermann's page to add biased comments, not to mention similarly changing references to Olbermann on pages about their own anchors.

But hey, can you blame them? Those pages were probably written by Democrat Revisionistas! Fox is just setting the record straight!

Oh and hey, I also happen to know that real estate developer in Florida that Rep. Young was helping out; I hear that he's got some hot properties that you might want to invest in. Send me an email if you're interested.

Liberals Hate Everybody

This from George Will's commentary (via TPM):

But because he is a white Mississippian, many liberals consider him fair game for unfairness.

Will is writing about Leslie Southwick, Bush's new nominee for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, claiming that Democrats are resisting his nomination, at least in part, because he's white.

Now, look at this conservative commentary on why Democrats resisted other Bush nominees:

Despite their inevitable protesting to the contrary, it is clear that Ted Kennedy's gang of 45 [Democratic senators] discriminated against [Miguel] Estrada because he is Hispanic, like they discriminate against another nominee, William Pryor, for his devout Catholicism. Indeed, if Congress were an ordinary employer and a federal judgeship were treated as a job under federal antidiscrimination law, then Estrada would likely win on a claim of employment discrimination.

Hmm. So, Democrats hate Hispanics and Catholics as well.

When Democrats opposed Janice Rogers Brown, a black woman, because of her outrageous political extremism, this conservative echoed many others, saying "that's just what the Democrats fear more than anything else – a mature, black woman who loves her country and the Constitution."

Senator Orrin Hatch claimed Democratic senators reject women nominees because they don't like women, saying "I've heard for 27 years how much greater they are for women. Don't believe it. If they were, they wouldn't oppose these wonderful women nominees."

And that, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg; Republican claims of Democratic racism and sexism are virtually endless, though they especially arise whenever Democrats oppose a conservative nominee to the bench.

But the problem, of course, is that Democrats are painted as being racist and sexist against everybody; in the examples I have listed above, Democrats are supposedly bigoted against men and women, against whites, blacks, and Hispanics, as well as against Southerners and Catholics. Search more and I'm sure you will find claims that Democrats are bigoted concerning every single race, religion, region, and sexual orientation. Apparently, Democrats are prejudiced against all human beings in all their diverse forms.

Some conservatives cushion their argument, noting for the sake of an escape clause that it's really the conservatism in the candidates that the Democrats object to--but they do this only as a footnote, in between repeated statements that Democrats are opposing blacks, Hispanics, women, etc. etc. Which, of course, is a cop-out: if it's really about the nominees' political stances, then why bring up race and gender at all? Because, of course, they want to make the claim that Democrats are racist and sexist even as they protest that they're not claiming Democrats are racist or sexist, even though they are blocking these minority women from the bench for no good reason, and did I mention that the nominee is a black woman and the Democrats are opposed to her?

This goes right alongside the conservative knee-jerk reaction to opposition of the war, claiming that liberals "hate the troops" because they criticize Bush or other conservatives on their war stance. The same can be said about how conservatives claim that liberals want to tax the average American when they oppose more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, or that Democrats want to hurt small businesses when they propose a minimum wage hike or oppose any Republican measure to curry favor with Big Business.

The tactic is very simple: when Democrats oppose something that is conservative, find the closest group of sympathetic innocents and claim that the Democrats are doing what they're doing because they hate this group (or, sometimes, find an antagonistic group and claim that the Democrats love them). If they oppose a court nominee, it's really because of the nominee's race, gender, or religion, no matter which color, sex, or creed that nominee might have. If Democrats oppose any conservative proposal concerning the military, then it's because the Democrats hate the troops and love al Qaeda. If the Democrats oppose a conservative proposition regarding business, then it's because Democrats hate the average American worker, or small businesses.

There is always some innocent standing along the wayside that the Democrats supposedly hate. Call it projection, call it a tried-and-true political tactic, call it sheer hypocrisy--whatever it is, it is a common theme in conservative rhetoric.

Rearranging Deck Chairs

This just out:

In a new effort to crack down on illegal immigrants, federal authorities are expected to announce tough rules this week that would require employers to fire workers who use false Social Security numbers.

In a related story, in a new effort to crack down on illegal drug use, federal authorities are introducing tough new laws that require drug dealers to stop selling drugs to anyone who does not pay sales tax on a specific purchase.

I mean, seriously, the employers are the ones who entice the immigrants to come here in the first place; it's not as if no one is offering jobs specifically to immigrants, who are coming over and passing themselves off as citizens. Forcing an employer to fire an illegal using a forged SS# truly is like having a dealer stop selling to a user: one is enticing the other to commit an illegal act, and forcing them to stop will simply cause both to seek the same activity elsewhere.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: illegal immigration will stop when, and only when, we crack down on the employers, the people who are creating the problem in the first place. But Bush has made it clear that he is absolutely unwilling to do this. Ergo the Bush administration will do nothing but harm--costly harm, in more than one way--with their various plans and schemes.

Unfortunately, as with the "War on Drugs," the "War on Illegal Immigration" has a blindingly obvious solution, but one so politically unworkable that it will never be implemented, so instead we get treated to repeated garbage like we see today.

How Much More Disgusting Can This Get?

Do I really need to point out how full of crap Republicans are about national security? They went into Ultra-Shrill mode for the past couple of days, pressuring spineless Democrats into handing Bush broad new warrantless wiretapping powers that allow him to even further violate the 4th amendment to the constitution; the law is so vaguely worded that virtually any communication could be eavesdropped on, so long as the administration can say that it is "directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States" [italics mine]. In other words, they can eavesdrop on any call, and then claim they had "reason" to believe it involved some foreign person. It no longer has to even be someone suspected of terrorism or any other crime.

Four or five months after a FISA judge made this change "necessary," Bush and the Republicans in Congress ambushed the Democrats with a tried-and-true formula: drop it in at the last minute, block every attempt to attenuate the most radical and dangerous aspects of the bill, and then scream at the top of their lungs that Democrats were al Qaeda agents for even thinking of not giving the president the "necessary" powers, while not giving even the slightest hard evidence that such powers are in the least bit necessary. Of course, it worked, and Democrats are reduced to flaccidly saying that they will get right onto watering down that bill, after they get back from a month's vacation. Yeah, right.

So, how serious is Bush, how serious are the Republicans, about keeping America and Americans secure? So much so, that they let 190,000 weapons bought with U.S. taxpayer money "accidentally" fall into the hands of insurgents and possibly terrorists in Iraq.

So rest assured: Bush and the GOP are hard at work making sure that you are safe. Really. They're listening right now. Doesn't that make you feel all secure and everything?

After Months of Republican Delay, Hours of Democratic Delay Is Treasonous

Oh, this is too precious:

Republicans accuse Democrats of moving too slowly on spy bill

An angry group of Republican House members accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Saturday of delaying a vote on President Bush's legislative priority -- a measure amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Earlier in the day, House Democrats rearranged the schedule to place the measure in third place, after an energy bill and funding for the Defense Department.

This is ludicrous on at least three major levels: first, that the specifics demanded in the Republican version of the legislation are reasonable or necessary; second, that it is indeed an "emergency" and is needed now as opposed to later today or even tomorrow; and third, that the Republicans are railing at Democrats for delaying by a day or two what has been already delayed by the White House for months, at a time, when the Republicans in Congress are being massively obstructionist and stopping huge amounts of vital legislation with the filibuster for no better reason that it "works for us" politically. (That last was Trent Lott himself, who said in April: "the strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail ... and so far it's working for us. Democrats are the ones taking the blame for not getting anything done.")

The fact of the matter is, this recent FISA bill is another "Patriot Act" bamboozle: claim pressing national security, say it's an emergency and needs to be done yesterday, then wail on the Democrats like there's no tomorrow, screaming that they're putting the country at risk. And it's working, of course.

He and other GOP leaders have said that the country will be at a greater risk of a terrorist attack if Congress doesn't act immediately—and they have accused Democrats of "playing politics" by balking at some of the provisions the administration is seeking.

And so, from the CNN article:

Last night, the House rejected a Democratic version of the FISA bill, 218-207, with a two-thirds majority required for passage, but the Senate passed a Republican-sponsored bill Friday night, 60-28.

Some Democratic sources have predicted the House will pass the Republican-sponsored measure, and send it to Bush.

Republicans claim there's a huge rush on this, and that the Democrats have failed to respond to it:

"There's been a ruling, over the last four or five months, that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people from listening in to two terrorists in other parts of the world where the communication could come through the United States," Boehner said on an interview with Fox News anchor Neal Cavuto.

"This means that our intelligence agencies are missing a wide swath of potential information that could help protect the American people," Boehner added. "The Democrats have known about this for months."

Umm, okay... then what has the White House been doing? Or Republicans in Congress, for that matter? Apparently no Republican has seen fit to move on this in the same four- or five-month period. It has only become an issue in the last hours before August recess--when the White House and Republicans can conveniently pressure the Democrats into accepting a questionable version of the legislation.

One of the major sticking points: the administration's insistence that Alberto Gonzales be given broad new authority to oversee warrantless wiretapping. Now, why on Earth would Democrats want to object to that? Hasn't Gonzales proved himself to them yet? Why would they not be eager to hand over unprecedented power and authority to perform massive eavesdropping and wiretapping without oversight by any court or committee, to such an honorable, up-front, and honest guy like Alberto Gonzales?

Geez, what's wrong with those Democrats?

Of course, there's much more to it than just that. Read this article from Harper's for a fuller picture of the fraud that the Republicans are--again!--trying to pull on all of us.

Surprise! Bush White House Threatens to Veto Fair-Pay Bill

You may recall a few months ago when Bush's "Freshly Stacked™" Supreme Court issued a decision that changed the way pay discrimination is treated. Up until that time, discriminatory pay was actionable for 180 days after the last occurrence; if your employer started paying you less because of your gender or color say, twenty years ago, and you just found out with the last paycheck, you could sue them. But Bush's court re-interpreted that to mean 180 days after the initial decision was made to discriminate.

Under this new interpretation, it is virtually impossible to sue for discriminatory pay differences. It would force workers to constantly demand to see co-workers' pay amounts, constantly checking whether there is a discrepancy, and once one is found, leaves them virtually no time to resolve the matter out of court. It even rewards employers guilty of discrimination for breaking the law for longer periods of time--ironically, if an employer can come before the court and say that they violated this person's rights for longer than 180 days, they get off scot-free. It also encourages employers to create hostile, segregated, and intimidating environments to keep workers from discussing their pay.

The message was clear: employers got a huge green light to pay workers differently based upon sex, color, or whatever other distinction they saw fit.

This was argued as being an oversight in the creation of the original law; it would be hard to actually approve of discrimination, but hey, that's what the law says, so what are you going to do? The problem is, that's not what the law said--it was one possible interpretation of what the law said, and was not a necessary one.

So why get upset? Just have Congress amend the law, and we're okay again.

Well, aside from all discrimination suits now pending being voided and decades of lawbreakers given a free pass, there is the slight problem of getting such legislation past the Republicans obstructionists in Congress and the Bush White House. Just today, the House passed a bill that did the right thing:

To amend title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to clarify that a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice that is unlawful under such Acts occurs each time compensation is paid pursuant to the discriminatory compensation decision or other practice, and for other purposes.

Great! All good, right?

Except, of course, that a lot of stuff has gotten through the House... but it's the Senate where the Republicans are blocking everything, and this will be no different. Senate Republicans will use the filibuster (again, with utter hypocrisy) for the umpteenth time, and even if that hurdle is cleared, it stands to be vetoed (PDF) by the White House:

H.R. 2831 would allow employees to bring a claim of pay or other employment-related discrimination years or even decades after the alleged discrimination occurred. H.R. 2831 constitutes a major change in, and expanded application of, employment discrimination law. The change would serve to impede justice and undermine the important goal of having allegations of discrimination expeditiously resolved.

Yes, isn't it horrible that an employer can be sued even if they have continued to discriminate for decades!

Translation: the White House read is that discrimination only occurs at the time the initial decision to discriminate is made. So, in principle, if I were to start refusing today to hire a black person based upon their race, and then continued to make the same decision every week for 20 years, I would only be guilty of discrimination the first time I made such a decision, and not the subsequent 1,041 times after that. Presumably, this is based upon the "I forgot I was continuously breaking the law" defense, that a business could not be expected to remain aware of an ongoing illegal activity beyond a certain time frame.

As I mentioned above, the decision was originally played as being essentially a typo, and that the Supreme Court regrettably had to point out that typo though nobody really wanted it that way--but the White House stance is now that they agree with the typo, they believe the typo was the best thing all along, and that the typo should be followed, because it wasn't really a typo, it was actually a feature. It even goes so far as to claim that the Ledbetter Fair-Pay Act would be a "major change" when actually it would simply reverse the Bush Supreme Court re-interpretation, and bring the law back to where it has been for decades.

Really what the White House is saying is, "we like the fact that Roberts and our other stooges made it possible to discriminate based on sex and color and whatever else we like, and we want it to stay that way, otherwise it could cause all sorts of nasty legal problems for our bigoted corporate pals."

My take: don't expect fair pay to show its head again anytime soon--not until Democrats take a much bigger majority in the Senate and the White House as well. Which, hopefully, will be starting in January 2009.

Are Republicans Calling for Stevens to Step Down?

I don't think so. Even though the governor is a Republican and so the Dems would not pick up a seat, I'm pretty sure that Senator "It's a Series of Tubes!" Stevens will not be strongly pressured to resign, even though the FBI raided his house in a corruption investigation. They may not have found $100,000 in his freezer, but they have already found corruption galore which led them to the raid in the first place.

Frankly, I think that both Jefferson and Stevens should resign. Neither will, of course, until they're sentenced, and maybe not even then... but it's about time that Republicans started recognizing that corruption is far from being a Democrat thing. Shockingly, even Michelle Malkin seems to realize this.

Even More Overload: Disaster, Disgrace, and Dishonor

Trying to comment on all of the utter disgrace coming out of the Bush administration, not to mention right-wing politics as a whole right now, would be like trying to run commentary on ten different baseball games at once--which is one reason I haven't tried to over the past week (aside from being busy doing two jobs at once in addition during our busy weeks). But here is a look at only a few of the stories currently out there.

Alberto Gonzales has been responsible for such dishonor and misconduct that, under standards that were in effect before the Bush administration, he should have resigned in disgrace long ago. But this is the Bush administration, more specifically Bush 43, under which you can stay in office until you are actually put on trial for a crime, so long as you abide by the conservative code. Now there is solid proof that Gonzales perjured himself repeatedly--he is contradicted both by the records and by the head of the FBI in at least one case--but of course the White House is trying to spin it so that it only seemed that Gonzales was guilty of perjury--and the "Liberal Media™" obligingly and promptly changed headlines from "FBI Chief Contradicts Gonzales" to "FBI Chief Seems to Contradicts Gonzales." At issue in this case is whether the NSA wiretapping program was discussed when Gonzales and Andy Card made their visit to Ashcroft in his hospital room; Gonzales emphatically denied it, but FBI chief Mueller directly contradicted him. There is a long list of other examples where Gonzales perjured himself (when he wasn't practicing his contemptible string of "I don't know"s and "I'm not answering that"s), but the hospital visit is the spotlight case of perjury at the moment. The New York Times is now reporting that it's not just the FBI chief--now, at least six officials and former officials are directly stating that Gonzales lied.

At the heart of all this is the warrantless wiretapping case, which in itself is a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment--something which might actually have been acted upon if the Republicans hadn't been in charge of Congress at the time and squelched any investigation. I still say the Democrats should have, and still should start investigations anyway. But what the hell, it's only the the Constitution and the Bill of Rights we're talking about, right? It's not as if the Bush administration hasn't shredded those documents to pieces already anyway.

What else has been happening? We've found out yet again that a Bush political appointee blocked scientific reports that disagreed with the neocon worldview, this time preventing the Surgeon General from reporting on links between poverty and health. Yes, it has come to the point where something so blatantly obvious as the fact that poverty is not conducive to health is so politically damaging to the administration that the Surgeon General himself must be gagged and prevented from even reporting the matter, much less doing anything about it.

Meanwhile, politicization of the government proceeds unabashed. Bush has regularly appointed people wholly inappropriate for the positions they would hold--for example, appointing Steven Griles, a former lobbyist for the mining, oil, and gas industries, as Deputy Secretary of the Interior (he's now serving a 10-month sentence for obstruction of justice); anti-union Linda Chavez, appointed by Bush to head up Labor, followed by another appointee who was a severe critic of Affirmative Action; Gale Norton, a property-rights advocate who said that companies have a "right to pollute," to head up the Interior Department; and many, many others, including the current nominee for Surgeon General, a man who thinks that homosexuality is an illness that can be "cured."

So, of course, the streak continues. Bush is now appointing David Palmer to head up the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The irony? He was himself the subject of "at least one complaint of employee abuse," this while he was the chief of the employment litigation section in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Numerous veterans of that office decried Palmer's nomination, claiming that he failed to protect equal employment rights for minorities, shutting down discrimination cases while at the same time pushing "reverse-discrimination" cases which favor white males.

More news on how badly the administration lied about Pat Tillman: new reports suggest that his shooting may not even have been an accident. The proximity of bullet holes in Tillman's forehead suggest that he was fired upon with a machine gun at close range, as close as ten meters away or even closer--something which was also covered up. This is the second major revelation in the Tillman case since it was revealed that he was killed by friendly fire; newly released documents, in fact, say that there was no enemy activity in the area at all. Tillman's death was lied about by a Bush administration struggling to overcome the news of Abu Ghraib; they took Tillman, who was a critic of the war (calling it "illegal," and publicly planning to meet with Noam Chomsky, an Iraq War critic), and used him as a political prop to stoke patriotism to support the war. This new information has even sparked talk in far corners that the Bush administration actually had him killed to shut him up--but personally I see this as straying into "Vince Foster" territory.

Meanwhile, a soldier who served in Iraq is being pilloried by the right-wing chickenhawks for telling the truth, for reporting on the fact that war dehumanizes and that in a war, soldiers can find themselves doing things they would normally consider inappropriate--as if that's not blindingly obvious. But right-wingers will not stand anyone "attacking the troops" (that, after all, is their prerogative).

Things are going so swimmingly in Iraq that the Iraqi Prime Minister is demanding that Bush remove General Petraeus. Why?

Well, in part because the U.S. is arming Sunni tribesmen in a feeble attempt to "fight al Qaeda." This sounds great, but there's a problem: it's based upon fiction. In reality, al Qaeda is not so much a threat in Iraq, and would likely die off there once we leave. The real problem is the civil war. But in the Bush administration, politically contrived fictions are deciding policy, so in their worldview, the Iraqi civil war doesn't exist, and al Qaeda is our chief enemy there.

So to solve the politically contrived fictions, we are arming Sunnis, who will use those arms to enflame the civil war. A perfect example of how political fantasies can destroy the balance of reason in reality. Bush seems to have found a general willing to enforce such madness, which is why the Iraqi Prime Minister is hopping mad, and is now threatening to further arm and support Shi'ite militias... which will deepen even further the civil war. Bush's solution: to tell the Iraqi PM to "calm down." Excellent diplomatic skills there.

Back in the U.S., more and more evidence is becoming available to prove that the Republican Party knowingly participated in "voter caging" projects in key election states in 2004. "Voter caging" is when mass mailings are made to voters, and any mail which is returned as "undeliverable" is then the basis for challenging that voter's right to cast their vote. In one example, a large number of mailings were sent to mostly black voters who were college students; the mail was sent to the students at their school addresses during summer and was marked "do not forward." In other words, the mail was designed specifically to generate unsendable mail, so as to deprive large numbers of these young people of their voting rights. Tens of thousands of such challenges were generated by the GOP via huge numbers of such mailings. You can watch the video report on the matter here on PBS NOW, which notes that the U.S. media is virtually ignoring the story, while it is making some headlines overseas. The Liberal Media™ strikes again!

So, what has the media has been sharply focused on in past days an weeks? Hillary Clinton's cleavage and John Edwards' haircuts.

Changing Standards

Here's how it went with the Republicans when Clinton was in office: at the merest suggestion that there might have been a transgression of a Clinton White House official, a special prosecutor was assigned by Congress, with Democrats agreeing on the basis of avoiding a conflict of interest, and the White House cooperating (though the degree of compliance is debatable, at least they made a show of upholding the law).

Here's how it is now with the Democrats, with Bush in office: only when it has been positively proven beyond any doubt whatsoever that the Attorney General himself lied under oath and is guilty of overseeing massive corruption, a special prosecutor is now called for, but is opposed by Republicans despite conflicts of interest, and is fought tooth and nail by the White House to the extent of being further guilty of contempt of Congress, and further violating the law by having the aforementioned Attorney General, despite absolute conflict of interest, simply ignore the charges instead of (correctly and legally) recusing himself and having a subordinate take on the task.

Let me ask this: to the extent that the Republicans in office today have become, not just partisan, but so blatantly illegal in their actions, how can you be a Republican and not be totally ashamed of how your party is acting? I mean, Democrats are ashamed of their party for just not doing enough to call Republicans on it; and yet, Republicans seem adamantly stubborn in defending brazen violations of the law and flagrant disassembling of the Constitution of the United States of America.

This has gone beyond partisan politics. This has gone beyond the extent of "my party, right or wrong." We are now in the territory of, "my party, no matter how corrupt, destructive, or defiantly criminal they have become." Even the Republicans who try to make election-year hay out of "opposing" the president still can't go beyond mild criticism, usually consisting of stating the bloody obvious (e.g., "mistakes were made in Iraq"). So, what's the explanation? Loyalty until death? Hypnotism? Mass hysteria? Embarrassment? Or just plain approval of the corruption and lawbreaking?

Filibuster-Crazy Republicans

Via TPM, McClatchy has the numbers on the recent balls-to-the-wall filibuster "Surge™" the Republicans have been employing in Congress, an intentional strategy to block legislation for the sole purpose of making the other party look bad. Here's how it looks:

In short, they are projecting this to be the most obstructionist, filibuster-filled Congress in history, almost tripling the previous record. Frankly, I think that's a conservative estimate (no pun intended); when we get closer to the election, the GOP may really want to make the Democratic Party look like a "do-nothing" congress, unable to get "bipartisan cooperation." That's their bag, really--be as partisan as you can, then say it's the other guy's fault.

Follow-up on the Filibuster

Do a Google News search. Search first for the word "filibuster." I got 3007 results today. Now, do a search for the term "60 votes," in quotes. I got 4582 results. Do a search of the term "60 votes" and exclude the word "filibuster." I got 2889 results.

In another variation, if you search for "Senate" and "block" and exclude the word "filibuster," you get 4658 results.

It's pretty clear that the majority of media authors out there are avoiding the word "filibuster," even at a time when the Democratic leadership is doing everything in its power to highlight both the term and the fact that this is exactly what the Republicans are doing.

Now, that's pretty significant, especially considering how easily the media ran wild with the word "filibuster" when the Democratic minority was using the procedure, and Republicans were calling attention to it. That's understandable--a filibuster is a filibuster. But to not use the term in a majority of cases, especially when the word itself is a prime focus of the story of the day--that's pretty flabbergasting. It's like Bush vetoing a bill, but reporters do everything they can to avoid using the actual word "veto." It takes effort to do that, to not use the most natural and best-descriptive word about a situation. It's like writing a 700-word essay on water without actually using the word "water." Try it--it takes conscious effort.

Meanwhile, Media Matters has the rather incredible story that some news organizations who are using the term "filibuster" are actually claiming that it's the Democrats who are doing the filibustering! That's not just Fox News, it's also ABC. If you thought it took effort to not use the word at all, how much effort does it take to use it in reverse? The answer is probably both "a lot" and "none at all." That is to say, it takes a lot of effort to use it in such a way knowingly, and no effort at all if you're too dumb to know the difference.

Today's story brought to you by the Liberal Media™.

If It's Republican, It Can't Be a F*********

I have commented before on the hypocrisy of Republicans on the filibuster and the reticence of the media to call it that. In short, while Republicans called the filibuster "unconstitutional" and railed at Democrats even considering its use, ever since they lost their majority, they have used it incessantly, time and time again to block as much Democratic legislation as possible. The Democrats have not returned this hypocrisy by blasting the procedure itself; they still support the process, but in a show of consistency blast the intent to obstruct meaningful and popular legislation.

Meanwhile, the media, which previously went to extremes to announce filibusters by Democrats, now go to similar extremes of linguistic contortionism to avoid saying that Republicans are filibustering. Josh Marshall calls out yet another example of this by Reuters, in which they actually succeed in making Republican obstructionism to block the will of the American people sound almost virtuous:

Democrats have all but publicly acknowledged that they will be unable to pass their end-the-war amendment because opposition Republicans are insisting on 60 votes for a victory.

I mean, seriously, how could you make this sound better for Republicans and worse for Democrats without sounding like Fox News? The fact that it's not overtly anti-Democratic makes it worse, giving the impression of impartiality to a clearly biased piece of writing.

All that notwithstanding, the Democratic majority is finally making a smart move: they are forcing the Republicans to carry out the filibuster for real. Filibusters have almost always been granted without the actual process taking place; a vote against cloture is usually not followed by more debate, but is in itself enough to simply close down the whole bill so the Senate can go on to other business. None of this Jefferson Smith speaking-till-you're-hoarse romanticism.

You see, 40 votes are not enough to kill the bill--instead, it's enough to continue debate. Up until now, it has simply been assumed that the filibuster would be carried out and so the other side relents and gives up. However, this time, Democrats will not shut down debate after cloture fails; they will run it into the night, forcing Republicans to actually filibuster the bill, or allow the vote to happen.

If you ask me, however, the plan is not ambitious enough. From what I can tell, it's just one all-nighter. The Democrats should force the Republicans to go 24/7 for as long as it takes. If the Republicans want to stand on the floor around the clock for a week or two so that a bill that a majority of Congress, as well as a majority of the American people approve of cannot get to a final vote, then let them. It would be far more than "theatrics" or a "stunt," it would be an unmistakable spotlight on both Republican obstructionism (which is already far, far, far in excess of anything the Democrats ever even dreamed of) and the fact that Republicans are solidly against the will of the American people.

Is Anyone Buying It Anymore?

This harkens back to the Cold War, when The U.S. government knew something and the Russians knew it... but it was classified by our government, apparently just to keep it secret from our own people. This was the excuse used when something massively embarrassing to the politicians was covered up under the pretense of "national security."

Well, it's happening again, just like old times. The Bush administration is now claiming that between two-thirds and three-fourths of the al Qaeda leadership has been captured or killed, therefore rendering the terrorist organization "smashed." But how did they get that number?

White House and U.S. intelligence officials declined to provide any back-up data for how they developed the new number—or even to explain the methodology that was used, which they said was classified. The absence of any explanation, as well as the timing, prompted some counterterrorism experts to deride the figure as “meaningless” and predict the revision could fuel allegations that the administration is massaging terrorism data for political purposes.

Unless the administration is suggesting that al Qaeda does not know how many of its own people have been captured and/or killed, then there is no reason not to release a list of the names of said leaders, along with the outline of al Qaeda that would show that they represent 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the known operation. After all, they have let it be known what percent of the "known" leadership has been taken out, so al Qaeda now knows what we know about the size of their leadership, so obviously that's not a concern, either. So keeping the specifics secret is foolish--the U.S. government knows, al Qaeda knows... the only ones who don't know are the people.

Unless, of course, the numbers are a complete fraud, and the only reason to keep them "secret" is because there are no "facts" to reveal. In which case al Qaeda is certainly not fooled, just the American people. And that's really the idea, isn't it?

And let's face it, their organization is hydra-esque in that if you kill a leader, another fills his place just as easily. If we've killed "two thirds" of the "known" leadership, most of that is probably repeats. How many times have we captured or killed off Osama bin Laden's "number three" man, for example? There was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, Abu Hamza Rabia, Abu Zubaydah, Abdul Hadi Al-Iraqi, Mohammad Atef, and Saif al-Adel (still at large). And that's just the list I found after a few minutes' searching old news reports on Google.

There are two conclusions to be reached here: first, al Qaeda's leadership is replaceable, and so they are not "smashed" or destroyed or in their "last throes" or anything of the sort; on the contrary, Bush's war in Iraq has sent throngs of new recruits into al Qaeda's ranks, and their fundraising is not hurting, either. The second conclusion: the Bush administration has been responsible for keeping al Qaeda alive and thriving, failing to do any serious damage to the organization while repeatedly deciding to follow policies that benefit al Qaeda.

And then the Bush administration turns around and flings this clump of fecal matter at us, that they've been so successful in "smashing" al Qaeda. I'm surprised, frankly, that even one news organization in the "liberal" media has deigned to question the legitimacy of that claim.

Talking About It

Conservatives went all gaga when Democratic Louisiana Representative William J. Jefferson became the target of an FBI probe; couldn't get enough of him, went on and on. Well, now that a Louisiana Senator has been caught with his pants around his ankles, you'd think they'd go even more nuts. Of course, it's a Republican this time--so wingnuts like Michelle Malkin, who went batty over the Jefferson story, are curiously silent, as is Rush Limbaugh. Same with the other major blogs, like Little Green Footballs, PowerLine, The Neocon Express, Blogs for Bush, etc.; others, like Instapundit, have little throwaway lines on the matter. Those on the right who are speaking on the matter are essentially saying, "so what?" and excusing him because he's admitted to it and apologized (only when it was clear he'd get caught), and besides, he's from Louisiana, so he shouldn't do anything so silly as resign or anything, just for breaking the law.

Not that liberals enjoy talking about their own scandals either, but at least they're more up-front about them. When the Jefferson story broke, DailyKos instantly and roundly attacked Jefferson, and the story was well covered on left-wing blogs like Talking Points Memo, Think Progress, FireDogLake, Talk Left, and many others. Liberals were calling for his resignation, or at the very least that he step down from his committee seats.

And while Vitter's getting few easy breaks in the press today, I do not recall outlets like Time Magazine giving big wet kisses to William Jefferson, like they are to Vitter by asking if he got "hustled" by the D.C. Madam and Larry Flynt--despite not even the barest shred of evidence existing to suggest such a thing. Not surprisingly, the Vitter story is buried deep in the back pages of Fox News' web site, and the Washington Times doesn't even have his story on the front page.

But you have to admit, when you've got a stalwart Republican who is staunchly against gay marriage and scores 100% with Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition on family issues who then gets revealed as an adulterer with a prostitution service, the old "why am I not surprised" factor does play into it a bit. One might even be more surprised that he was not caught indulging in a gay prostitution service, being anti-gay and all. Wait--no, that's usually true with right-wing anti-gay preachers more than with congressmen. Gotta keep that scorecard straight.

So Much for Accountability

One has to remember that the executive branch, unlike the judicial, is not expected to recuse itself when self-interests are present, which explains why Bush was able to commute Scooter Libby's sentence and see to it that he didn't serve a single day in jail for his part in destroying the cover of a CIA agent working to uncover weapons of mass destruction.

I would comment on this more, but you know the drill; when the administration so commonly does stuff that provokes the gag reflex, you get used to it. I will refrain from making porn analogies here. But suffice to say that such completely reprehensible partisan corruption is par for the course in this White House.

Bush's Court Tears Down Another Section of the Wall of Separation

SCOTUS has just ruled not only that it's OK for the government to favor religious groups over secular ones, not only that it's OK to give taxpayer money to religious groups to engage in activities which include the promotion of their religion, but that taxpayers can't sue on the basis that it's their money being used to fund religious beliefs they disagree with:

In an opinion joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote that "the payment of taxes is generally not enough to establish standing to challenge an action taken by the federal government."

Given the size of the federal budget, "it is a complete fiction to argue that an unconstitutional federal expenditure causes an individual federal taxpayer any measurable economic harm," Alito said. "And if every federal taxpayer could sue to challenge any government expenditure, the federal courts would cease to function as courts of law and would be cast in the role of general complaint bureaus."

That statement intentionally, almost belligerently dismisses the true intent of the argument and replaces it with a blatant straw man. The argument is not that taxpayers will be "economically" harmed by such expenditures, it is instead that taxpayers will be harmed because they will be forced to fund a religious belief they do not believe in.

The ruling was similarly dishonest in the end-run it made around the funding source:

He noted that "Congress did not specifically authorize the use of federal funds to pay for the conferences or speeches that the plaintiffs challenged." Rather, those activities were funded from "general Executive Branch appropriations," he wrote.

So, apparently, we can't protest our tax money being spent on a religion we don't agree with because it was spent by the president and not specified by Congress? What an insult to reason. Taxpayer money is taxpayer money, it doesn't matter who makes the appropriation.

At the very least Alito and Roberts did not join ultra-extremists Scalia and Thomas in their predictable attempt to completely tear down church-state restrictions; instead, Alito and Roberts allowed it only with the "Executive" loophole. Still, it's a loophole, and you can expect to see this administration start to tear that hole in the Constitution to be as big as they can make it.

Souter, meanwhile, led the non-wingnut minority in giving the rather obviously correct decision:

In this case, "there is no dispute that taxpayer money in identifiable amounts is funding conferences, and these are alleged to have the purpose of promoting religion," Souter wrote. "When executive agencies spend identifiable sums of tax money for religious purposes, no less than when Congress authorizes the same thing, taxpayers suffer injury."

The White House, of course, was tickled pink that their bench-stacking was bringing such sweet dividends of Constitution-revising decisions:

A White House spokeswoman, Emily A. Lawrimore, said the decision "marks a substantial victory for efforts by Americans to more effectively aid our neighbors in need of help."

Which, of course, was the entire idea behind the whole enterprise, right? Bullshit. The only single objective of the entire program is to merge church and state, to open the door for direct funding of religious activities with taxpayer money in direct violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution. They could give jack about "effectively aiding our neighbors in need of help," as we saw so clearly demonstrated in New Orleans. This has nothing to do with charity, and everything to do with the advancing incursion of religion on the matters of governance.

Nor surprisingly, the media buried this story under the other ruling coming from SCOTUS about students not being allowed to make drug-related references in their speech, as they did when they unfurled a banner that read "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." As if that was somehow more critical a story than this ruling.

This latest decision by SCOTUS is of course in line with other recent moves out of this administration. PBS, which was once apolitical, has now become a propaganda tool for the religious right. The right wing always decried PBS as a left-wing bulwark, based apparently on the fact that it aired artsy-fartsy stuff and had good science documentaries that didn't pay lip service to fundamentalist claims. Well, they fixed that. A recent documentary titled Wall of Separation was nothing less than an hourlong piece of wingnut agitprop, a slick tome claiming that there is no such thing as separation of church and state, and that we've been a Christian nation all along.

I watched more than half of it before succumbing to overwhelming nausea, and "slick" was exactly the term for it. It aped the PBS documentary format with near-perfection--the subtle piano music in the background, black backdrops to the interviews, panning shots of artistically depicted scenes from history--but they went too far when they coached their "experts" and "historians" to speak in the soft, lilting affected tones we've heard in PBS documentaries before. They sounded like they were talking to children, it was weird.

Nor should it be surprising: PBS has been run for a few years now by Karl Rove ally Kenneth Tomlinson, and the production company that made the "documentary" is made up of people with solid right-wing and Christian credentials.

Is there any doubt that the Constitutional protections against theocracy are now under full-fledged attack?

Testing Contempt

Seeing the latest buffoonery coming from the White House, I began to wonder about something. It seems that Dick Cheney is saying he is not part of the executive branch, nor any other branch of government, and as such is not answerable to such rules or oversight (which Bush backs him on). I mean, this is so ludicrously absurd that you would expect it to come from The Onion, and not from the White House.

So what I began to wonder was, how can Republicans possibly support this administration and not be utterly embarrassed and ashamed by it? I mean, it's gone beyond simple partisan bounds. What Cheney is saying is so contemptible to sense and reason that anyone who is not embarrassed to support such people would have to have similar contempt for reason and the rule of law.

Which kind of sums it up, really.

But as the Bush administration becomes more and more absurd, it seems that they are pushing the envelope a bit too far. They have hit 26% in the polls and are pushing downward--almost to the point that Nixon hit months before he resigned in disgrace. But still 26% actually approve of crap like this--and even accounting for rabid partisanship, that's still an awfully big number. I'm pretty rabidly partisan myself, but were this a Democratic administration, I would have jumped off the bandwagon long ago.

Legal Interpretation by Popular Culture

This from a legal conference in Ottawa:

The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent's rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.

"Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. "Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so.

Scalia drawing legal frameworks based on popular culture are nothing new. Ignoring the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, he cites Fox Entertainment and the completely unsupported idea that torture elicits useful information to essentially circumvent the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, not to mention a slew of international laws and treaties.

And this is not the first time Scalia has done this. He was one vote short of voiding the separation of church and state, and based his legal argument (PDF) of the basis of religious incursions in popular culture:

Presidents continue to conclude the Presidential oath with the words “so help me God.” Our legislatures, state and national, continue to open their sessions with prayer led by official chaplains. The sessions of this Court continue to open with the prayer “God save the United States and this Honorable Court.” Invocation of the Almighty by our public figures, at all levels of government, remains commonplace. Our coinage bears the motto “IN GOD WE TRUST.” And our Pledge of Allegiance contains the acknowledgment that we are a Nation “under God.” As one of our Supreme Court opinions rightly observed, “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” ...

With all of this reality (and much more) staring it in the face, how can the Court possibly assert that “ ‘the First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between . . . religion and nonreligion,’” ... and that “[m]anifesting a purpose to favor . . . adherence to religion generally,” ... is unconstitutional?

In other words, because minor violations of the First Amendment have gone unchecked in the past, we should simply chuck the whole idea. Which is kind of like saying that since a shopkeeper didn't have a shoplifter arrested when they stole penny candy a few times, he has no right to call the police when the same person robs the store of thousands of dollars. Religious advocates get all hot and bothered when people challenge "small" and "insignificant" religious incursions, saying that things like mentioning God in the Pledge simply isn't worth getting upset about. But when the Supreme Court is on the verge of removing our most vital protection against theocracy based upon that "small" and "insignificant" incursion, it takes on a whole new light.

Of course, the overriding problem is that we have an ultra-right-wing nutjob on the Supreme Court, someone who should never have been allowed near the institution. Thomas is little different, he's simply been more quiet about it.

The Fall of the Soviet Union

Conservatives love to credit this to Reagan as part of their gut-based truthiness (as opposed to fact-based truth). The idea is that Reagan simply spent so much on the military that the Soviet Union collapsed because it couldn't keep up. Never mind that Reagan spent less on the military than Carter proposed in long-term budget proposals; that's the kind of irrelevant "fact" that goes against the gut-check, like the fact that Bush 41 instituted the post-Cold War "Peace Dividend" that cut military spending, which is a lot less satisfying than the truthiness of blaming Clinton for gutting the military.

But from the conservative American Enterprise Institute comes a paper by a man named Yegor Gaidar. He is the director of the Institute for Economies in Transition in Moscow. Between 1991 and 1994, he was acting prime minister of Russia, minister of economy, and first deputy prime minister. And he says that the Soviet Union collapsed for very simple reasons: grain and oil, and the Soviet policies concerning them.

Reagan acolytes may still say that Reagan's spending was the straw that broke the camel's back, but if so, it was more along the lines of coming upon an enemy who has already been beaten half to death, and simply poking him in the shoulder, then watching him fall down. Had Carter been re-elected and Mondale followed him, the results would have been the same, except Carter would not have given away so much to the wealthy and to corporations, and our own debts would have been lesser.

Hat tip to Marc Andreessen.

Obama Campaign Fumbles; Will It Recover?

There were two recent incidents where the Barack Obama campaign made stupid mistakes. One was when they pushed a story that Bill Clinton used 9/11 for making money off of private investors, and the second was using a quasi-slur in criticizing Hillary Clinton's ties to India. The first was mistaken because Bill Clinton did not make the appearance on 9/11, he made it via video from the U.S. on 9/10--it was 9/11 halfway around the world. Clinton attended charity events and other non-profit gigs on 9/11. The second was in reference to a joke made by Hillary that she could "certainly run for the Senate seat in Punjab and win easily." An oppo piece was circulated by the Obama campaign referring to Hillary as "D-Punjab." This was not seen as funny by those in the Indian-American community.

In both cases, Obama has taken responsibility for the error, noting that while neither was authored or personally approved by him, "I consider the entire campaign – and in particular myself – responsible for the mistake." Which is certainly the right tone to set.

The question is, after two such errors in rapid succession, is this less a random overreach by an ardent but foolish and tasteless staffer, or a sign of the culture of the campaign? If Obama corrects this, as he promised most recently to take "appropriate action to prevent errors like this from happening in the future," then he should recover without difficulty. But if stuff like this continues to pop up, it could cause greater problems to his image--which, after all, relies on him being a likable, straight-talking guy who strongly favors inclusion.

Trilemma

In describing Bush supporters, Brad DeLong invokes an Eastern European truism that supporters of a clearly corrupt regime can have personal dishonesty or intelligence, but not both:

Sincere conservative supporters are not bright. Bright conservative supporters are not honest. Bright and honest conservatives are not supporters...

Well said. Check it out. And Tom Tomorrow turned it into a cartoon.

Illegal Intent

This is how much the Bush White House knew they were breaking the law: they systematically set up an arrangement for an entire communications network which was illegal for the purpose of escaping scrutiny of their actions. The fact that they set up the alternate, private email system itself proves that they knew about the Presidential Records Act and the legal necessity of keeping White House records. That they were willing to violate the Presidential Records Act makes it clear that what they were doing in that communication was a lot worse than just violating the Presidential Records Act.

And now that everyone knows about the separate email system, the entire email records for 51 White House officials in that system have been erased. This goes beyond shameless. It goes into the territory where there is zero doubt left that there were major laws being broken--but since the records were destroyed, we can't say which laws and which officials. Which was the whole idea. Even though it is absolutely undeniable that they broke the law and did so with clear intent, by using the "whoopsie!" defense in claiming the records' destruction was "inadvertent," they give just enough wiggle room that they can probably slough the eventual criminal prosecutions off on some aide (Scooter's already booked for another gig, they'll have to look elsewhere).

So, when you catch a major criminal in the police evidence locker standing over a pile of smoldering ashes and claiming that "the match just slipped from his fingers" and accidentally burned that pile of evidence that happened to be at his feet, what are you going to do as he looks at you with knowing contempt?

Let me just say, for a group of people who claim one of the biggest problems in society is criminals getting off on technicalities because of a bleeding-heart liberal justice system, they sure do take advantage of those technicalities every chance they get, don't they?

Borrow and Spend

While Bush is castigating Democrats as being "tax and spenders," let's look at an interesting statistic about the Bush administration. And mind you, this is from a year and a half ago:

According to the Treasury Department, from 1776-2000, the first 224 years of U.S. history, 42 U.S. presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions, but in the past four years alone, the Bush administration borrowed $1.05 trillion.

I have a feeling that those figures are not adjusted for inflation, but I'll bet you that the Bush Debt still stands up respectably even after that; it would be hard to believe that any president in history has put us deeper in debt than Bush, save possibly for Reagan. For a good explanation with a chart, check out this page.

The expression "tax and spend" is a successful, time-tested political attack meme; as I noted a few posts back, it doesn't apply to Democrats nearly as well as conservatives want it to. But in a sense, the very nature of government is tax-and-spend. How else do you finance a government that does what we want it to? As for taxes, whatever happened to the principle of paying for what you get? At least Democratic politicians try to stand up for that principle.

A much worse paradigm is what Republicans have generated since Reagan, what Bush has so excelled at: borrow and spend. One would think that a core conservative value would be to pay for what you get. Maxing out your credit card is something that you can be sure they'd like to apply to liberals, but it is conservatives who have mastered the art.

Remember when Clinton actually balanced the budget and a surplus was at hand? Remember what Republicans then said we should do? Tax cuts! Why? Because it is unthinkable that the government is taking in more than it immediately spends each year. Republicans painted this as an atrocity. Democrats, meanwhile, bending to the idea of tax cuts as much as they had to, nevertheless pushed for a crazy, wild-eyed idea: paying off the national debt. Conservatives then bent to that idea as much as they had to, but once they had full power, they abandoned that concept with relish, and started maxing out the national credit card like there was no tomorrow.

Because Republicans are fiscal conservatives. Because they know what's best for the economy. Because Democrats are fiscally irresponsible. Because the Democrats will tax us out of existence and spend us into the poorhouse.

Nice when political memes describe reality so precisely, isn't it? All you have to do is reverse the terms, of course. Small detail.

Update: These charts shows the trends pretty clearly:

Focus on the red line at the bottom of the chart: that shows deficits. You can see some deficit problems happening at about the time of the Vietnam War, but a few big deficits started a trend in the Ford administration. Carter turned that around in 1976 and brought the deficits down a bit, but a few years into Reagan's term, the deficits started getting really big. The Reagan deficits continued, more or less, until the end of Bush 41's term. And then with Clinton, you see a sharp line, a definite trend upwards towards balancing the budget. That's Clinton erasing the deficits. Then you get to 2001, and bam, Bush 43 drives debt up hard, leading us into record deficits unseen since WWII. Things have improved a little in the past two years or so, but the deficits still are at a level as bad as the worst Reagan deficits. Republicans try to explain this off by saying that Reagan and Bush 41 were really responsible for giving Clinton a good economy, and Clinton was responsible for giving Bush 43 a bad one. But this cannot explain the overall trends that match so perfectly with entire administration lifetimes. One administration can set the trend for a year or two into the next president's term, but not for the following eight.

The disparity between Democratic and Republican administrations would be sharper still if you were to look at the figures in terms of budget gains and losses relative to administration starting points. You can see similar patterns in job growth in this post, which demonstrated how the worst-performing Democratic presidents created more jobs than the best-performing Republicans.

So, tell me again, exactly how did Republicans get the reputation for being economic geniuses?

Yeah, But What Can You Expect?

Democrats have traditionally been called tax-and-spenders and weak on security by the right wing. The tax-and-spend meme goes back a ways; I remember hearing it especially in the Reagan 80's. It's always been a lie, easily proved. Just go to your local library, like I did, and look up the budgets during those years. You'll find that out of the eight budget years during the Reagan administration, the Democratic-run Congress passed budget bills that were less than what Reagan had called for--in seven out of eight years. Had Democrats simply spent what Reagan asked for, we would have spent more; how that makes Democrats high spenders is not exactly explained by the right-wing rhetoric.

But today we see the conservative Reality Distortion Field™ even more strongly in play. For six years we suffered unchecked excessive porkbarrel orgies passed by the Republican-controlled Congress, not once vetoed by Bush for overspending (he only vetoed one bill, and it was over stem cell research). The Clinton surplus was destroyed right out of the gate by Bush and his Congress, and the deficit has been back up to Reagan-era levels ever since.

And yet, after all of this, Bush has the unmitigated gall to call the Democrats big spenders, whipping out the old, tired, but ultimately effective (thanks to that damned Liberal Media™!) canard about tax-and-spending Democrats:

President Bush warned Congress on Saturday that he will use his veto power to stop runaway government spending.

"The American people do not want to return to the days of tax-and-spend policies," Bush said in his radio address.

The House passed a $37 billion budget for the Homeland Security Department on Friday, but Republicans rallied enough votes to uphold a promised veto from Bush.

Six years. For six years Republicans in Congress spent more than any other Congress in history. More pork-barrel bills and amendments than ever before. And the president, who could have checked it with veto threats, never did so. Bill after expensive pork-laden bill, Bush instead signed off on them, all of them--reserving his sole veto for a partisan issue to satisfy the hard-core religious right. Bush and the Republican Congress overspent by hundreds of billions of dollars, with several billion taxpayer dollars lost through corruption and bad accounting in Iraq alone.

But maybe Democrats deserve to be called tax-and-spenders today; what kind of pork did they heap on to the latest bill?

The spending bill passed 268 to 150. It calls for $2.1 billion in spending, or 6 percent, above the president’s request and 14 percent more than in the current fiscal year.

The bill would double the president’s financing request for state antiterrorism grants to $550 million and set aside $400 million in grants for port security, $190 million more than the president proposed.

Yep, those damned Democrats have gone and blown a couple billion dollars on antiterrorism and port security funding. You know, the kind of stuff that the 9/11 commission urged that we spend, and the Bush administration and congressional conservatives have blocked for years. Because they're strong on defense. Democrats are tax-and-spenders because they oppose huge, multi-trillion dollar giveaways to the super-rich and to profit-heavy corporations, and they're for spending a few hundred million more on minimally funding local governments' ability to respond to terrorist attacks and other disasters. Because they're weak on defense. The bastards!

But if you look closer, you'll see a stronger underlying reason for Bush's opposition:

Perhaps the most hotly contested part of the bill is a requirement that department contractors pay their employees at least the local prevailing wage. The provision, part of broader Democratic efforts to enact legislation being pushed by unions, would allow the president to waive so-called Davis-Bacon restrictions only in times of national emergency.

You've probably heard of this provision before. Remember after Katrina, when Bush and Republicans poured billions of dollars into "rebuilding" New Orleans, but mostly just pumped the money into the pockets of their campaign contributors? At the same time, Bush and the Republicans were trying to short-change hired labor--the same people they were supposedly trying to uplift. You see, the corporations that were getting huge, no-bid contracts wanted to pad their own pockets by using emergency provisions to pay less than market wages for labor.

Well, those nasty, middle-class-hating Democrats are at it again, trying to make it so the government funding does not allow people receiving the funds to pay below-market wages. And that's the main reason Bush is against the bill. Forget that the workers deserve to be paid a fair wage--and that's exactly what it is, a fair, "local prevailing wage." Because it's pro-worker, that means it's pro-union, and therefore it must be an evil liberal plot.

Maybe if the Democrats had laden the bill with actual pork, Bush would have signed the bill out of sheer habit.

No Comparison

So right-wingers are in a frenzy because Drudge has reported that Clinton cashed in on 9/11, making a $100,000 speech to foreigners on that day. Of course, it's not true: Clinton gave the speech to a group in Hong Kong by video, from Chappaqua, where it was September 10th. On 9/11, Clinton's schedule did not include high-paying speeches to private parties.

Funny, however, that right-wingers are upset about a former president cashing in, as their hero of all heroes, their political savior and angel on Earth, Ronald Reagan, went to Japan to accept a $2 million gratuity for making two twenty-minute speeches. Not to mention that GOP front-runner Rudy Giuliani has a history of making $100,000 speeches, all of which are based solely upon his fame as the "9/11 mayor."

So please, right wingers, save the polemics for a situation that (a) isn't bogus, and (b) is slightly less than outrageously hypocritical.

Flag Day

Today (which is yesterday around the world) is Flag Day in the United States. No doubt a good number of politicians will be making good use of the day. Probably some of them will take the opportunity to resubmit anti-flag-burning laws. It's interesting how the recommended, respectful way to dispose of an old flag is by burning; presumably the flag-burning laws allow for that, but simply outlaw specific burnings, as done in protest. And that's what I wanted to comment on--what must be either utter cluelessness about what the flag represents, or the unmitigated opportunism of a politician to savage the core principles of America in order to gain a little in the polls.

Think about that dichotomy I just mentioned: a law that would allow burning for disposal but outlaw burning for protest. In short, burning itself is not being outlawed--instead, intent is being outlawed.* What's more, it's not violent intent, it's not even hateful intent--after all, the people who burn the American flag in hatred are usually overseas, where our laws don't apply; addressing this law to them would be impotent and stupid. No, the intent being outlawed here is simple: the intent to protest, the intent to maintain the freedoms and liberties inherent to the concept of America, the intent to practice free speech. In fact, the intent could even be one of celebration and respect.

* [Yes, I know your potential point about hate crimes and punishing intent; first, I would ask, if you oppose hate crimes for that reason, do you also oppose laws against flag burning for the same reason, and second, I see the hate crimes law not as outlawing intent itself, but identifying a more dangerous class of criminal as their harmful intent is toward a large group of people, and not just to an individual. But I digress.]

Now let's focus a little on what the flag is. The flag is not just a piece of cloth, it has meaning--that's what the whole brouhaha is about, in fact, and why some people object to flag-burning in the first place. But what does the flag represent? Does it represent the land, the physical fifty states embroidered on it as stars, or the original thirteen included as stripes? No. The flag represents America as an idea. And that idea is laid out in the Constitution of the United States of America and the Bill of Rights. The flag, essentially, is a symbolic representation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Keep that one in mind, it's important here.

When you have an idea so sacred and important as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the flag, no matter how sacred and respected it may be, takes a back seat. The flag, as a symbol, is not equal to, but rather is rather subordinate to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The flag is a symbol; you destroy it, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights still remain, as does America. But if you destroy the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the flag is meaningless, and America collapses.

Now, let's be clear on the fact that American people who burn the flag are usually idiots. Not because they're burning the flag in itself, but because of why they are doing it. These people usually think they are protesting our government in doing so, that the flag represents the administration in some way. Which, of course, shows their own ignorance: the flag does not represent any one president, any one bureaucracy, or any one modern administration. It does not represent the government. So when they burn the flag, they're burning the wrong thing. Idiots.

Fortunately, Americans who burn the flag in protest are extremely rare. Really, when was the last time you heard of Americans protesting the government and burning a flag? Even before 9/11? As Aaron Sorkin wrote for the fictional Jed Bartlet, "Is there an epidemic of flag burning going on that I'm not aware of?" It's not as if this is really an actual dilemma. It instead is manufactured by people who would just as soon urinate on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights if it meant more power for them.

But it's not the politicians who are the real problem: it is, instead, the sizable portion of Americans who have embraced the symbolism, bought into the hype and the fanfare, and have left the core principles behind. And yes, by that I mean conservatives. Not all conservatives, but a hearty majority.

Conservatives say they love the Constitution, but they rail against it being expressed most of the time. The tendency is to see most of the Bill of Rights as being a sop to criminals or a liberal knee-jerk reaction. The Fourth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendments can be scrapped when we get too scared of the bad guys. The Fifth Amendment is a loophole for criminals to squeeze through, and the Eighth is a namby-pamby, bleeding heart sellout for those who love criminals too much to give them what they really deserve. And don't even mention the Ninth Amendment, or else those liberals will go crazy with all the rights they think they have.

No sir, the only Amendment that conservatives seem to respect is the Second Amendment, and that part of the First Amendment that talks about religion, but only if it's interpreted to mean that religion can go anywhere and do anything, and to hell with the commie atheists.

In short, conservatives often dislike and disrespect many or most of the core ideas contained in the Bill of Rights (and all to often the Constitution itself as well). But they love the symbolism, the pomp and circumstance, as long as we leave the troubling issues of what they represent outside the door.

And that is the core issue represented by the flag burning debate. The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America was specifically designed to allow for free expression of ideas, whether they are expressed by speaking on a soapbox, drawing a political cartoon of a leader, or--yes--by burning a flag.

If we were to follow the lead of the opportunistic politicians who submit proposals to amend the Constitution to include a flag-burning amendment, we would be betraying the core principles upon which the Constitution was based. We would be killing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The flag would be protected, but the Constitution would be lessened, weakened, watered down. And as a result, the flag itself would lose an intrinsic value, an injury that could not be matched by the burning of a hundred thousand flags.

You burn a flag, I can make a thousand more, and each of those flags shines just as bright with meaning, perhaps even brighter since I will have proved that burning the flag cannot lessen it.

But you weaken the Constitution, I can't make a thousand more of that. There's only one, and when it's injured, everything else collapses.

So yes, the people who burn flags are usually idiots. However, they are tiny in number, and their feeble acts of protest harm the nation not at all. The people who want to weaken the Constitution because they buy into the hype and the symbolism empty of meaning--these are the real threat. The people who think the flag is more important than the Constitution, these people are legion in number, and if successful, they could deliver a body blow to the freedoms they make a show of admiring. These are dangerous idiots.

As an ending note, I would point out that there is a third group: those who burn the flag not out of hatred, and not out of protest--but out of respect and celebration for what the flag represents. Watch the video below. It's a scene from The West Wing, but in fact it is the closing act from Penn & Teller's Vegas show, but with additional content added on. Penn & Teller's original stage act can be seen here, but the clip below is just as, if not more, entertaining.

Here's a Question

Let's say that a Democratic candidate wins the 2008 election, and, for a while at least, we still have soldiers on the ground in Iraq. Will Republicans lay off criticizing the president, especially on war issues, during that time?

No, I don't think so either.

Fox Clarifies on Conyers "Error"

After Fox seemed to Do the Right Thing and broadcast a longer and more specific apology for showing the Conyers clip instead of Jefferson, they are back to being idiots with an explanation of what happened:

Fox pinned the error on a young staff member in an Associated Press report Tuesday night.

"Fox blamed the mistake on a 22-year-old production assistant hurriedly grabbing a wrong videotape. Fox's Washington bureau chief, Brian Wilson, said he was mortified by the error," the news service reported.

Okay, let's work this one out. The error was made by a "22-year-old production assistant" who "hurriedly grabbing a wrong videotape." First of all, stating the age of the person raises a tiny red flag--it's as if they're using that to explain the error by implying it was some inexperienced newbie, as if they are trying a wee bit too hard to place blame. But the real flags go up when you think about how this could have played out.

The production assistant hurriedly grabs the wrong videotape. Think about it: someone tells the assistant to get a tape showing Jefferson. The assistant runs to the archive and somehow grabs the wrong tape. But how does he make such an error? Are the archive tapes of black Democratic representatives in the House all bunched together or something? Clearly, the "hurriedly" part makes it clear that the assistant did not sit and view tapes, so that he himself made the error in identifying the person on the tape. So how did the assistant make the error?

This is clarified, sort of, by the on-air explanation as reported by the AP:

On Wednesday, Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum explained to viewers that a production assistant picked up a tape that had been identified as a meeting about Jefferson. The picture showed Conyers.

OK. So now we are supposed to believe that the assistant took the wrong videotape because it was identified wrongly (identified how--by a label or by someone telling the assistant?). So, how does that make this the fault of a "22-year-old production assistant"? Even if it was the assistant's job to review the tape, the person who initially misidentified the tape should be the one to blame.

All of this only removes the explanation one iteration and does not explain how the original mixup was made. The tape was not only obviously of Conyers, but the fact that Gonzales was there should have tipped off even the most inexperienced of interns.

So we are back to the original question: how did Fox News mix up one black representative with another? That's the question Fox is trying not to answer, and likely for good reason.

Parade of Conservative Shame for the Week

Read about one conservative saying that banning "partial birth abortions" is a good thing because the remaining legal alternatives have a higher risk of injuring or killing the mother.

Meanwhile the GOP chief from Arkansas said that "we need some attacks on American soil like we had on [9/11]..." in order to understand why Bush should be appreciated.

Here's a bold move by McCain in the Republican debate:

I'm going to give you a little straight talk. This war was very badly mismanaged. And Americans have made great sacrifices, some of which were unnecessary because of this mismanagement of the war.

What courage! In the face of being identified as tied to a failing, greatly unpopular administration, McCain says he's going to give "straight talk" and then promptly blames the administration. How brave of him to be so candid about someone else's mistakes, especially when McCain gains personally by distancing himself from them. He should get a freedom medal for that!

More brilliance from the Republican debate: Mitt Romney channels George Bush:

Well, the question is, kind of, a non sequitur, if you will. What I mean by that -- or a null set -- that is that if you're saying let's turn back the clock and Saddam Hussein had opening up his country to IAEA inspectors and they'd come in and they'd found that there were no weapons of mass destruction, had Saddam Hussein therefore not violated United Nations resolutions, we wouldn't be in the conflict we're in.

But he didn't do those things, and we knew what we knew at the point we made the decision to get in.

Note for those people who have already forgotten: Hussein did let the inspectors in, and they didn't find any WMD. Nevertheless, the Washington Post identified as "gaffe of the night" Governor Huckabee's misstatement that the previous day was Ronald Reagan's birthday. Yep, that's a lot worse.

And this from the Bush FCC chairman, on a court ruling that "non-literal," "fleeting expletives" were not actionable offenses that the FCC could clamp down on:

If ever there was an appropriate time for Commission action, this was it. If we can't restrict the use of the words "f * * *" and "s * * *" during prime time, Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want.

I know that it is in reference to the swear words in dispute, but nevertheless, the Bush FCC chairman expressing dismay that "Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want" is, you have to admit, both fitting to administration policy and, most likely, despite the immediate context, expressive of an ultimate agenda beyond the scourge of potty mouth.

In a rather bizarre instance of irony, however, the network that allowed the words to be uttered--the aforementioned "Hollywood"--is none other than, you got it: Fox.

However, probably the biggest shame among conservatives this week is the fact that, of all people, Scooter Libby was showered with letters sent to his judge pleading for lenience in his sentencing. These letters came from people like Henry Kissenger, Richard Perle, General Richard Meyers, General Peter Pace, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and a host of other conservative luminaries. In their letters, they pleaded for the judge to go easy of Libby because he's such an admirable human being.

Now, let's think about this. Scooter Libby probably wasn't the mastermind of this whole thing, but he wasn't a pure fall guy either--he was at the very least in the thick of it all. We're talking about someone who, in order to support a sham war that has brought this country to near ruin, to support a president in a shameful lie, as an act of petty political retribution, took the identity of a covert CIA agent working to find WMD, and released it publicly--thereby ruining the agent's life's work, derailing a part of our own national security, and putting the lives of people the agent ran in danger. Libby helped destroy the work of a CIA agent working against WMD so his president could lie and get us into a futile war.

And in his defense comes out virtually all of neocon Washington, high-profile people arguing that this is a man of great virt