Who really dishonors our men in uniform?

From Paul Begala 's column on the Huffington Post last week (9/20)...  If there's one man that should not be allowed to act appalled at slandering a member of the armed services, it's cokehead, draft-dodger George W. Bush.  He and his ilk have slandered more war heroes than anyone else in recent memory.  And I think it could be argued that he, too, dishonors General Petraeus by using him as a political shield.

 

-R

 

 

Democrats should attack Bush, not MoveOn

Before a single Democrat condemns MoveOn's ad, they should insist that George W. Bush and the Republican Party repudiate the anti-military smears on war heroes that have been the hallmark of Mr. Bush's political career.

Too many Democrats still think Mr. Bush's presidency is on the level. Let's be clear. Mr. Bush is not leading a serious, sober discussion about public discourse during a war. He wants to divide progressives and score political points. We should not let him. Throughout his career he's been willing to tolerate and benefit from vicious lies about military men. We should not concede that he is legitimately angry now.

Mr. Bush is, as he likes to say, a loving guy. But by golly the MoveOn.org ad criticizing Gen. David Petraeus has him madder than Larry Craig in a pay toilet.

When a "reporter" asked him a loaded question about the MoveOn ad (not mentioning, for example, that Petraeus wrote an op-ed in support of the Bush Iraq policy a few weeks before the 2004 election), Bush swung for the fences. But then again, he's always been pretty good at T-Ball - and this was definitely teed up for him.

He slammed MoveOn, repeating language he used Wednesday in a meeting with right-wing columnists, saying that criticizing Petraeus is tantamount to attacking the entire US military, and expressing astonishment that leading Democrats have not attacked MoveOn as courageously as Bush has.

Before Democrats fall all over themselves to agree with a president whose trust and honesty rating from the American people is even lower than his IQ, let's look at the real record of Bush's cowardice when it comes to speaking out against attacks on military heroes:

• In the 2000 South Carolina primary, George W. Bush stood next to a man described as a "fringe" figure - a man who had attacked Bush's own father - at a Bush rally. With Bush applauding him, the man said John McCain "abandoned" veterans. McCain, who was tortured in a North Vietnamese POW camp, was incensed. Five U.S. Senators who fought in Vietnam, including Democrats John Kerry, Max Cleland and Bob Kerrey, condemned the attack and called on Bush to repudiate it. When pressed on it at a debate hosted by CNN's Larry King, Bush meekly muttered that he shouldn't be held responsible for what others say. Even when he's standing next to them at a Bush rally.

• In the 2002 campaign, draft dodger Saxby Chambliss ran an ad with pictures of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, then said Sen. Max Cleland lacked courage. Max Cleland left three limbs in Vietnam as an Army captain. Mr. Bush's political aide, Karl Rove, later refused to disavow the ad, saying, "President Bush and the White House don't write the ads for Senate candidates."

• Also in the 2002 campaign, the PAC for the Family Research Council, a close Bush ally, ran an ad in South Dakota that pictured Sen. Tom Daschle and Saddam Hussein. "What do Saddam Hussein and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle have in common?" the ad asked. Apparently, they both opposed drilling in the Arctic wilderness. First, I had no idea that supporting drilling in the wilderness is a family values issue. Second, I have seen no reporting on the late Iraqi dictator's position on Alaska drilling. But I do know Tom Daschle is an Air Force veteran. Mr. Bush never disavowed the smear.

• But perhaps the worst was what was done to John Kerry. Kerry earned five major medals in combat: the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. And yet supporters of Bush and Cheney decided to smear his war record. The despicable, dishonest Swift Boat attacks alleged that Kerry fabricated reports that earned him the Bronze Star. The Swifties also suggested that Kerry's wounds were insignificant - and that one was even self-inflicted. Kerry's wounds were certainly more serious than Mr. Bush's, who suffered a cut on his finger from popping a beer can while avoiding his duty in the Alabama National Guard. At the 2000 GOP convention, rich, white Republicans were photographed gleefully putting Band-Aids with purple hearts on their chubby cheeks. Mr. Bush refused to condemn the attack - blandly noting he didn't like 527 groups generally - and later nominated one of the men who financed the smear to be Ambassador to Belgium.

Mr. Bush is a coward and a bully. He knows he'll never be the kind of hero his father was. He knows he lacks the heroism of John Kerry or Max Cleland, so he overcompensates with bluster and bravado. In fact, he told bloggers recently that he wishes he were fighting in Iraq. The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin reported that Bush told a blogger in Iraq that he'd like to be carrying a 50-pound pack and an M-16, but, "One, I'm too old to be out there. And, two, they'd notice me."

So Mr. Bush is too old to fight in Iraq, and he was too rich and well-connected to fight in Vietnam. But he's itchin' for a fight with a progressive interest group. Does anyone believe he'd have the same outrage if a right-wing group were attacking war heroes? Of course not.

Number of the Day

Some news from last week that I'm just getting around to posting.  This is about the saddest thing I've ever heard.  On the plus side though, they actually helped MoveOn to raise over $500k in a single day after this happened.  Morons...

 

-R

Number of the Day

72: Members of the U.S. Senate -- the same body that couldn't manage a vote Wednesday on habeas corpus rights for detainees or time off for troops -- who voted today in favor of a resolution condemning "personal attacks on the honor and integrity of Gen. Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces."

The Senate resolution didn't name MoveOn or its "General Betray Us" ad, but the group and those aligned with it were plainly the target.

Who gets the credit for this important legislative accomplishment? Democrats Max Baucus, Evan Bayh, Ben Cardin, Thomas Carper, Bob Casey Jr., Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan, Dianne Feinstein, Tim Johnson, Amy Klobuchar, Herb Kohl, Mary Landrieu, Patrick Leahy, Blanche Lincoln, Claire McCaskill, Barbara Mikulski, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Mark Pryor, Ken Salazar, John Tester and Jim Webb and independent Joe Lieberman joined every Senate Republican in voting for the measure.

Hillary Clinton and Chris Dodd voted no. Joe Biden and Barack Obama didn't vote.

The Right Fight for Democrats - Save the Children

I saw Bush speaking to the press last week about this bill, and his argument was that this would lead to the government insuring health care for every child, man and woman in America.  You could almost hear the crickets chirping as the assembled press, and everyone in front of their televisions across America, thought, "And that would be bad, why??"

 

Truthfully though, that's a bit of a stretch.  This measure would simply ensure that our children get the health care they deserve.  A child shouldn't be punished because his/her parents don't have health insurance.  Also, as pointed out in the article below, the difference btwn Congress' proposal and W's is about $6 billion, which is how much is wasted in a mere 41 days in Iraq.  How's that for fiscal responsibility?

 

-R

The Right Fight for Democrats

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007; A19

This week's showdown over children's health insurance is the first skirmish in the new battle for universal health coverage. It is also the first confrontation between the president and Congress fought out almost entirely on terms set by the new Democratic majority.

On no spending issue do Democrats have broader public support -- or more Republican allies -- than on expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program. That is why they have chosen this as the issue on which they want to take their first stand.

Bush, in the meantime, has confirmed what was clear when he was governor of Texas but little noted when he first ran for president: When it comes to expanding government-sponsored health insurance for low-income kids, he is a skeptic. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt coined a new word last week by saying that it's "the ideologic question that we want to focus on." He was candidly describing an administration dug into a posture that even conservative Republicans in Congress reject.

On its face, Bush's fight over SCHIP seems oddly chosen. The program provides coverage for children from families too poor to afford private insurance but not eligible for Medicaid. In many ways, it is a Republican creation. It made it through a GOP Congress in 1997 thanks to the work of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who is now furious about Bush's veto threat.

By virtually all measures, the program has achieved exactly what it promised, and at a reasonable cost. But Bush argues that the $35 billion, five-year expansion of the program, worked out between the Democrats and such leading Republicans as Hatch and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, might push too many children into government insurance. Bush wants a $5 billion expansion over five years, which the Congressional Budget Office says would eventually shove more than 1 million children out of the program at a moment when the number of children without health insurance is growing after years of decline. (That decline, by the way, was due in significant part to the success of SCHIP.) The goal of Hatch, Grassley and the Democrats is to expand the program to 10 million children from the roughly 6.6 million covered now.

This battle is central to the long-term goal of universal coverage. If a proposal with broad bipartisan support that is friendly to state governments and covers the most beloved group in society -- children -- can't avoid being gutted for ideological reasons, what hope is there for a larger health compromise?

Bush has been here before. He now says he wants to make sure the program is limited to children from families at 200 percent of the poverty level (roughly $41,300 a year for a family of four). But as governor of Texas, he wouldn't even go that far, seeking to limit coverage under SCHIP to families at 150 percent of the poverty line. Democrats in the Legislature finally pushed him to 200 percent. Bush was putting up his resistance in 1999, when Texas ranked second to last among states in the percentage of uninsured children.

Democrats feel confident in picking this fight because any presidential claim that this is a battle about fiscal responsibility (the difference between the president and Congress is roughly $6 billion a year) is belied by the president's $200 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan for this year alone. Democrats are arguing that 41 days' worth of Iraq spending would provide health coverage for 10 million children each year -- not a comparison the administration relishes.

In theory, SCHIP expires at the end of the month. Senate Republican leaders clearly fear that the president's expected veto would be seen as throwing children off the health insurance rolls. Therefore, they have insisted, in advance of a vote on the bill, that Democrats agree to grant a temporary extension if Congress fails to override Bush. This reduces the Democrats' leverage but is also a concession that Republicans know how vulnerable the administration is.

There are other pressure points. If Bush won't do business with the Democrats on a children's health bill, he could poison efforts to renew his No Child Left Behind education program, which also expires at the end of the month. Bush needs Democratic votes for renewal because of Republican defections. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), one of the leading sponsors of the children's health bill, could not resist arguing that "it's a bizarre thing that a president who believes in testing kids for math does not believe in testing kids for measles and mumps."

Democrats are placing a lot of chips on SCHIP. Only moderate Republicans and compassionate conservatives willing to challenge Bush's veto can save their party from the president's anti-SCHIP obsession.

Greenspan: Evil Comedic Genius

Man, this would be funny if it weren't so dead-on accurate...

Rudy vs. MoveOn

This is hilarious.  His hypocrisy knows no bounds!   No one can shoot himself in the foot like Rudy can.  I have to wonder why this hasn't been reported more in the mainstream media though.  A pretty big gaffe, if you ask me... 

-R

---

Rules Don't Apply to Rudy. Or Do They?

Lane HudsonMon Sep 24, 6:38 PM ET

Rudy Giuliani is a hypocrite who thinks he should live by rules different than others. He attacked MoveOn.org and the New York Times for the rate charged for a newspaper ad. Promptly, he ran an ad in response and paid... wait for it... the SAME amount.

Since the NYT says it was a mistake that they were charged the lower amount, MoveOn promptly paid the difference in an 'abundance of caution'. Rudy refuses to.

The wingnuts filed an FEC complaint against MoveOn and the NYT, but didn't include Rudy. That oversight has now been corrected:

September 24, 2007 Lane Hudson
Washington, DC

General Counsel
Federal Election Commission
999 E. Street, NW
Washington, DC 20463

Dear Counsel:

This is a formal complaint against the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee, Inc. for the receipt of corporate soft money contribution in excess of the limits established by the Federal Elections Campaign Act of 1971 and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. The information in this complaint is derived from publicly available reports on the internet and falls under 2 U.S.C. 441 B and 11 CFR S 114.2.

In response to an advertisement purchased by Moveon.org Political Action on September 19, 2007, the Giuliani Campaign purchased an advertisement to run in the September 14 publication of the New York Times. Both Moveon.org Political Action and the Giuliani Campaign paid $64,575 for their respective ads. This ad quote is known as the 'standby rate' because the day of publication and its placement are not guaranteed.

In a September 23, 2007 newspaper column, Public Editor of the New York Times, Clark Hoyt, admitted that the New York Times made a mistake in charging MoveOn.org the standby rate:

Catherine Mathis, vice president of corporate communications for The Times, said, "We made a mistake." She said the advertising representative failed to make it clear that for that rate The Times could not guarantee the Monday placement but left MoveOn.org with the understanding that the ad would run then. She added, "That was contrary to our policies."

MoveOn.org responded to the column by saying this on September 23: Now that the Times has revealed this mistake for the first time, and while we believe that the $142,083 figure is above the market rate paid by most organizations, out of an abundance of caution we have decided to pay that rate for this ad. We will therefore wire the $77,083 difference to the Times...

In the same column, Mr. Hoyt has this to say about the advertisement purchased by Mr. Giuliani: In the fallout from the ad, Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor and a Republican presidential candidate, demanded space in the following Friday's Times to answer MoveOn.org. He got it -- and at the same $64,575 rate that MoveOn.org paid.

According to the New York Times' own policy, Mr. Giuliani should have paid the fixed-date rate instead of the standby rate. Therefore, the difference, $77,083 is an in-kind corporate contribution, which far exceeds the limits allowed by law. Now that he has knowledge that his campaign is in receipt of an illegal $77,083 contribution from the New York Times, it is incumbent on Mr. Giuliani to repay the difference. If he does not, that is not just a violation of the law but a betrayal of the public trust at a time when Americans want integrity from our leaders. When Mr. Giuliani's campaign was called on to pay the difference, therefore avoiding a violation of law, his campaign declined to do so.

Respectfully submitted,

Lane Hudson

Kathy Griffin Gets Promoted to the A-List (thanks to outrageous remark at Emmys)

This is hilarious. First, I think everyone needs to recognize that Griffin is a comedienne, and said this remark ("Suck it, Jesus. This award is my god now.") was said only for shock value, not because she hates Jesus. Ever so predictably, however, the leading Christian organizations are outraged, and ironically keeping it a public spectical by doing so. A week later, how many people would remember anything Kathy Griffin said at an awards show, if there weren't someone constantly reminding us?

It gets better. A Christian theatre company in Pigeon Forge, TN (what a bizarre name for a town…) took out two $90,000 newspaper ads to decry Griffin's remarks. That's right, $180,000. $180k!!! To decry something a D-List star in Hollywood said a week ago that nobody remembers!

Now, if you go over to the website for The Christian Children's Fund, you'll see that it costs $24/month to sponsor a child. For $180,000, they could have sponsored 7500 children for a month, or 62(.5) kids for an entire year. Instead they spent that money to slander a comedienne for a couple days in a newspaper because they didn't like what she said about their religion. Wealthy newspaper owners get richer, children still starve, and I assure you Kathy Griffin is now selling more tickets for her stand-up shows than ever before. Brilliant! What would Jesus do?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20920371/site/newsweek/

-R

Ken Burns Does Luverne

Tomorrow night (9/23/07) the first episode of Ken Burns' new documentary about World War II, simply titled "The War", airs on PBS. Check your local listings for scheduling information. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, my hometown of Luverne, MN is prominently featured in this film. It's not often that Luverne, a sleepy rural town of roughly 4600 people, gets national attention, so I'm pretty excited to see it. Also, Ken Burns does outstanding work on any documentary, so you know it's going to be good. Any of you who have seen his other work, his most famous probably being his documentary on jazz music in America, know what I'm talking about.

Besides Luverne, three other American towns/cities are featured. They are Waterbury, CT, Mobile, AL, and Sacramento, CA. "The War" explores what the people of these towns lived through and what they gave for this war; not just the soldiers, but their families back home as well.

Tom Hanks narrates the documentary, which will air over the course of several episodes. You can also order the complete series on DVD.

A Star Tribune slideshow featuring the Luverne premiere can be viewed here.  PBS's page on "The War" can be viewed here, including a viewer's guide here.

Enjoy.

-Ryan

Why Housing Associations Suck

This is the perfect example of housing associations out of control.  This HOA is threatening legal action against one of its residents for - oh, your blood will boil when you hear of this outrageous, grievous offense - hanging her clothes out to dry!  Yup, the woman is simply hanging her clothes out to dry, and this is causing her neighbors to bitch and complain that she's making the neighborhood unsightly.

According to the source quoted in the article, clothes dryers (on average) "account for 6% of total electricity consumed by U.S. households".  That's a lot of electricity being used, and thus a lot of savings if you can avoid it.  It's also much better for the environment.  Unfortunately though, we've gotten to a point in this society where anything that's cheaper and more labor-intensive is considered lower status.  Hanging your clothes out to dry in today's age is tantamount to declaring you're poor white trash.  Forget saving the environment/earth, saving money, etc.  How does it appear to your neighbors??  It's just so sad…

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119007893529930697.html

-Ryan

"This bombards the senses," interior designer Joan Grundeman says of her neighbor's clothesline.

9/11 State of Emergency: How to use and abuse it?

Is he fucking kidding?  He's still using the "national emergency" he declared after 9/11 to continue abusing the military for his little crusade in Iraq?  Unbelievable....  You gotta give it to W though - he's got stones the size of Gibraltar.  How can there be no way for the Congrss to counteract this?  Whatever happened to checks and balances? 
 

Anyone remember the old phrase from during the Cold War, "Better dead than red."?  That phrase still seems appropriate today, but no longer having anything to do with communists.   Vote BLUE in '08!  :-)

 

-R

Bush on 9/11: The emergency continues

In a no-fanfare message sent to Congress Wednesday, George W. Bush decreed that the "national emergency" he declared three days after the attacks of 9/11 "is to continue in effect for an additional year." The president said that it's necessary to continue the state of "national emergency" because "the terrorist threat continues."

What does this mean? The Congressional Research Service has explained it all before. For at least one more year now, the president will retain for himself the power to suspend the operation of any law regarding the promotion, involuntary retirement, separation or numbers of commissioned officers in the military; to increase the number of active-duty military personnel beyond that authorized by Congress; to call all members of the Ready Reserve as well as retired Coast Guard personnel back into active duty; and to "detain enlisted members of the Coast Guard beyond their terms of enlistment."

 

Brain function of liberals and conservatives

< Conservatives, however, were less flexible, refusing to deviate from old habits "despite signals that this ... should be changed."  > 

 

Heh, heh, heh... ;-)  Of course, this study could be interpreted a number of ways, but the most obvious one is pretty funny.  Enjoy.

 

-Ryan

Homo politicus: brain function of liberals, conservatives differs

by Marlowe HoodSun Sep 9, 1:33 PM ET

The brain neurons of liberals and conservatives fire differently when confronted with tough choices, suggesting that some political divides may be hard-wired, according a study released Sunday.

Aristotle may have been more on the mark than he realised when he said that man is by nature a political animal.

Dozens of previous studies have established a strong link between political persuasion and certain personality traits.

Conservatives tend to crave order and structure in their lives, and are more consistent in the way they make decisions. Liberals, by contrast, show a higher tolerance for ambiguity and complexity, and adapt more easily to unexpected circumstances.

The affinity between political views and "cognitive style" has also been shown to be heritable, handed down from parents to children, said the study, published in the British journal Nature Neuroscience.

Intrigued by these correlations, New York University political scientist David Amodio and colleagues decided to find out if the brains of liberals and conservatives reacted differently to the same stimuli.

A group of 43 right-handed subjects were asked to perform a series of computer tests designed to evaluate their unrehearsed response to cues urging them to break a well-established routine.

"People often drive home from work on the same route, day after day, such that it becomes habitual and doesn't involve much thinking," Amodio explained by way of comparison in an e-mail.

"But occasionally there is road work, or perhaps an animal crosses the road, and you need to break out of your habitual response in order to deal with this new information."

Using electroencephalographs, which measure neuronal impulses, the researchers examined activity in a part of the brain -- the anterior cingulate cortex -- that is strongly linked with the self-regulatory process of conflict monitoring.

The match-up was unmistakable: respondents who had described themselves as liberals showed "significantly greater conflict-related neural activity" when the hypothetical situation called for an unscheduled break in routine.

Conservatives, however, were less flexible, refusing to deviate from old habits "despite signals that this ... should be changed."

Whether that is good or bad, of course, depends on one's perspective: one could interpret the results to mean that liberals are nimble-minded and conservatives rigid and stubborn.

Or one could, with equal justice, conclude that wishy-washy liberals don't stick to their guns, while conservatives and steadfast and loyal.

As to the more intriguing question of which comes first, the patterns in neuron activity or the political orientation, Amodio is reluctant to hazard a guess.

"The neural mechanisms for conflict monitoring are formed early in childhood," and are probably rooted in part in our genetic heritage, he said.

"But even if genes may provide a blueprint for more liberal or conservative orientations, they are shaped substantially by one's environment over the course of development," he added.

Obscuring causal links even more is the fact that the brain is malleable and neural functions can change as a result of new experiences.

The Real Rudy

Some pretty daming testimony regarding Giuliani's actions before and during 9/11. Find more vidoes and other information at http://www.therealrudy.org.

Camp Cupcake

It's all in where you go and how you decide to assemble your numbers...  The way this Administration cherry picks their numbers, you can rest assured you'll never get an accurate Iraqi death count.  "Oh no, they were stabbed to death.  We don't count stabbings in our numbers.  Oh, and that shooting occurred east of 44th street.  We don't count incidents on the east side."  That's about how stupid it is.

 

Even with American casualties, we're not being given the numbers that really tell the story.  For example, you might see on CNN that 3700 (or however high it is right now) American soldiers have died so far in Iraq.  The key restrictive term there is soldiers.  If they reported on how many Americans have been killed in Iraq, the number would be much higher, as many deaths have been incurred by private contractors (defense contractors, truck drivers, etc.).

 

-R

---

September 7, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

Time to Take a Stand

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Here’s what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress next week: he’ll assert that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq — as long as you don’t count Sunnis killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car bombs and people shot in the front of the head.

Here’s what I’m afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus’s uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They won’t ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they’ll desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops, if he feels like it.

There are five things I hope Democrats in Congress will remember.

First, no independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq is down. On the contrary, estimates based on morgue, hospital and police records suggest that the daily number of civilian deaths is almost twice its average pace from last year. And a recent assessment by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found no decline in the average number of daily attacks.

So how can the military be claiming otherwise? Apparently, the Pentagon has a double super secret formula that it uses to distinguish sectarian killings (bad) from other deaths (not important); according to press reports, all deaths from car bombs are excluded, and one intelligence analyst told The Washington Post that “if a bullet went through the back of the head, it’s sectarian. If it went through the front, it’s criminal.” So the number of dead is down, as long as you only count certain kinds of dead people.

Oh, and by the way: Baghdad is undergoing ethnic cleansing, with Shiite militias driving Sunnis out of much of the city. And guess what? When a Sunni enclave is eliminated and the death toll in that district falls because there’s nobody left to kill, that counts as progress by the Pentagon’s metric.

Second, Gen. Petraeus has a history of making wildly overoptimistic assessments of progress in Iraq that happen to be convenient for his political masters.

I’ve written before about the op-ed article Gen. Petraeus published six weeks before the 2004 election, claiming “tangible progress” in Iraq. Specifically, he declared that “Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt,” that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward” and that “there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security.” A year later, he declared that “there has been enormous progress with the Iraqi security forces.”

But now two more years have passed, and the independent commission of retired military officers appointed by Congress to assess Iraqi security forces has recommended that the national police force, which is riddled with corruption and sectarian influence, be disbanded, while Iraqi military forces “will be unable to fulfill their essential security responsibilities independently over the next 12-18 months.”

Third, any plan that depends on the White House recognizing reality is an idle fantasy. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, on Tuesday Mr. Bush told Australia’s deputy prime minister that “we’re kicking ass” in Iraq. Enough said.

Fourth, the lesson of the past six years is that Republicans will accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic no matter what the Democrats do. Democrats gave Mr. Bush everything he wanted in 2002; their reward was an ad attacking Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, that featured images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Finally, the public hates this war and wants to see it ended. Voters are exasperated with the Democrats, not because they think Congressional leaders are too liberal, but because they don’t see Congress doing anything to stop the war.

In light of all this, you have to wonder what Democrats, who according to The New York Times are considering a compromise that sets a “goal” for withdrawal rather than a timetable, are thinking. All such a compromise would accomplish would be to give Republicans who like to sound moderate — but who always vote with the Bush administration when it matters — political cover.

And six or seven months from now it will be the same thing all over again. Mr. Bush will stage another photo op at Camp Cupcake, the Marine nickname for the giant air base he never left on his recent visit to Iraq. The administration will move the goal posts again, and the military will come up with new ways to cook the books and claim success.

One thing is for sure: like 2004, 2008 will be a “khaki election” in which Republicans insist that a vote for the Democrats is a vote against the troops. The only question is whether they can also, once again, claim that the Democrats are flip-floppers who can’t make up their minds.

Woo hoo!  Perhaps our civil liberties have a fighting chance after all.  Now if we can just strike down all the other blatantly unconstitutional parts of that Act...

 

-R

 

From the New York Times:

 

 

September 7, 2007

Judge Strikes Down Part of Patriot Act

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 2:16 a.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- A federal judge struck down a key part of the USA Patriot Act on Thursday in a ruling that defended the need for judicial oversight of laws and bashed Congress for passing a law that makes possible ''far-reaching invasions of liberty.''

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero immediately stayed the effect of his ruling, allowing the government time to appeal. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said: ''We are reviewing the decision and considering our options at this time.''

The ruling handed the American Civil Liberties Union a major victory in its challenge of the post-Sept. 11 law that gave broader investigative powers to law enforcement.

The ACLU had challenged the law on behalf of an Internet service provider, complaining that the law allowed the FBI to demand records without the kind of court supervision required for other government searches. Under the law, investigators can issue so-called national security letters to entities like Internet service providers and phone companies and demand customers' phone and Internet records.

In his ruling, Marrero said much more was at stake than questions about the national security letters.

He said Congress, in the original USA Patriot Act and less so in a 2005 revision, had essentially tried to legislate how the judiciary must review challenges to the law. If done to other bills, they ultimately could all ''be styled to make the validation of the law foolproof.''

Noting that the courthouse where he resides is several blocks from the fallen World Trade Center, the judge said the Constitution was designed so that the dangers of any given moment could never justify discarding fundamental individual liberties.

He said when ''the judiciary lowers its guard on the Constitution, it opens the door to far-reaching invasions of liberty.''

Regarding the national security letters, he said, Congress crossed its boundaries so dramatically that to let the law stand might turn an innocent legislative step into ''the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values.''

He said the ruling does not mean the FBI must obtain the approval of a court prior to ordering records be turned over, but rather must justify to a court the need for secrecy if the orders will last longer than a reasonable and brief period of time.

A March government report showed that the FBI issued about 8,500 national security letter, or NSL, requests in 2000, the year prior to passage of the USA Patriot Act. By 2003, the number of requests had risen to 39,000 and to 56,000 in 2004 before falling to 47,000 in 2005. The overwhelming majority of the requests sought telephone billing records information, telephone or e-mail subscriber information or electronic communication transactional records.

The judge said that through the NSLs, the government can unmask the identity of Internet users engaged in anonymous speech in online discussions, can obtain an itemized list of all e-mails sent and received by someone and can then seek information on those communicating with the individual.

''It may even be able to discover the web sites an individual has visited and queries submitted to search engines,'' the judge said.

Marrero's lengthy judicial opinion, akin to an eighth-grade civics lesson, described why the framers of the Constitution created three separate but equal branches of government and delegated to the judiciary to say what the law is and to protect the Constitution and the rights it gives citizens.

Marrero said the constitutional barriers against governmental abuse ''may eventually collapse, with consequential diminution of the judiciary's function, and hence potential dire effects to individual freedoms.''

In that event, he said, the judiciary could become ''a mere mouthpiece of the legislature.''

Marrero had ruled in 2004, on the initial version of the Patriot Act, that the letters violate the Constitution because they amounted to unreasonable search and seizure. He found free-speech violations in the nondisclosure requirement, which for example, disallowed an Internet service provider from telling customers their records were being turned over to the government.

After he ruled, Congress revised the Patriot Act in 2005, and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals directed that Marrero review the law's constitutionality a second time.

Praying for Misfortune

Praying for bad things to happen to those who disagree with you.  Yeah, that sounds like a good, Christian thing to do...

-R

Can good people pray for bad things?

A pastor's request raises an issue as old as the Psalms

By Jennifer Garza - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, September 1, 2007

One morning last week, at about 5:30, callers to the Rev. Wiley Drake's telephone prayer ministry heard this request to the Almighty:

"Lord, I pray that you would intervene in this situation."

Drake, pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, may have been referring to the situation he has found himself in since he invoked another prayer, one that has been criticized by church leaders and debated by religion scholars -- and leads to the question, "Is it OK to pray for something bad to happen to others?"

That's essentially what Drake did. Two weeks ago, the pastor called for the use of imprecatory prayers -- prayers that ask for misfortune to fall on someone else.

Drake asked supporters to "go into action" with these prayers against the "enemies of God," specifically the group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

That a pastor would publicly ask others to pray for the hardship and misery of others -- Drake named two employees of the watchdog group -- took many in the religion community by surprise. Most denounced his tactics.

Religion scholars say imprecatory prayers have their place -- in a private conversation with God -- and that they are not intended to be used publicly. They add that the prayers are scripturally based and that, yes, sometimes it's all right to pray for bad things to happen.

"In some ways, you can see these prayers as a healthy expression of feeling, kind of like therapy. It's good to get those feelings out," said Walter Brueggemann, professor emeritus at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga. "You should not hold back when you pray. You should surrender it to God.

"Look at it as two little children fighting, and one asks their mother or father to punish the other one. The child is free to say that, but it doesn't mean the parent is going to do it."

Expressing those feelings in prayer to God is one thing, Brueggemann said. Asking the public to pray them against a specific person or organization is "destructive and a contradiction to everything the Christian faith stands for," he said.

Reached by phone, Drake said he would "love to talk" but is not giving interviews at this time on the advice of his attorneys.

In a news release calling for the prayers, Drake referred to the book of Psalms, where many of these imprecatory prayers can be found. Psalm 109, believed to have been written by David, is most often cited as an imprecatory prayer. Part of it reads:

"Let his days be few;
Let another take his office.
Let his children be fatherless,
and his wife a widow."

Harsh words. In these prayers, raw emotion is released to God, according to Merilyn Copland, professor of Bible, theology and archaeology at William Jessup University in Rocklin.

Often, these imprecatory -- which Copland calls "a fancy word for cursing" -- prayers are cries for vindication and justice. She says they are part of a larger group of Psalms called laments or lamentations.

"These are heat-of-the- moment prayers. David is releasing these feelings to God for him to deal with. They're more like a confession than an expectation that God would do those things," Copland said.

So is it acceptable to pray for others to suffer?

Copland and others say expressing such feelings is understandable and probably pretty common.

"The Bible is suggesting that there is a healthy way of dealing with anger from injustice. ... Leave it with him," Copeland said.

"Prayer and honest confession of hostile feelings certainly is better in maintaining relationships than to gossip, slander ... or take revenge," Copland wrote in a follow-up e-mail.

She says that since David released his feelings to God, he had no animosity toward Saul, who had tried to kill David several times.

"He asked God to deal with it and then let it go," Copland said.

Others pray for their enemy differently.

"You pray for your enemy to be guided," said Mohammad Azeez of the Sacramento Area League of Associated Muslims, who says there are no structured prayers wishing hardship on an enemy in Islam.

"You don't treat your enemy as evil, more as someone with a different point of view," Azeez said.

That is not to say some don't wish misfortune on their enemies.

"Oh, I'm sure it happens," he said.

Rabbi Mona Alfi of Congregation B'nai Israel in Sacramento said Jews should not pray for bad things to happen to other people. She said some may pray for their enemies' ventures to be unsuccessful or that they stop their ways.

"But mostly we pray for the sad things to end," she said.

She referred to a story in the Talmud that says instead of praying for sinners to be punished, one should pray for the sinful acts to stop.

The controversy about imprecatory prayers began in mid-August when the Americans United for Separation of Church and State asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the tax- exempt status of Drake's church. Drake had endorsed Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on church letterhead.

Shortly after the group asked that the government to look into the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, the pastor called for imprecatory prayers to be used. Americans United for Separation for Church and State has denounced Drake's actions. So have many religion scholars.

Many say this is the wrong use of imprecatory prayers -- calling them personal, heartfelt prayers to God -- and that the Bible shows another way Christians should deal with their enemies.

"Jesus never prayed imprecatory prayers aimed at those who had slandered, tortured and crucified him," Copland wrote. "He urged loving your enemies."

You know Bush and his minions have been saying over the last several months, "Just wait 'til September for Gen. Petraeus' report, before you judge whether or not the surge is working."  Well, guess who's actually writing the report?  That's right - the White House!  What a load of propaganda...

 -R 

White House to write Petraeus report

Posted August 15th, 2007 at 11:05 am

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The LAT had a thorough and detailed report today on Gen. David Petraeus’ current thinking about troop duties in Iraq. Unfortunately, the Times piece really buried the lede.

The thrust of the piece focused on Petraeus apparent belief that U.S. troops may soon be able to leave parts of Iraq where security conditions have improved. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean the troops can return home and the overall deployment can shrink — Petraeus may decide to simply move the soldiers from one part of Iraq to more dangerous areas.

But way down in the 28th paragraph of the article, the LAT explained:

Despite Bush’s repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report’s data.

If I’d heard this elsewhere, I’d long since forgotten about it.

For weeks, the White House has responded to every question about Iraq the same way: let’s wait until September and see what Petraeus and Crocker have to say. Given their credibility, the argument goes, their assessments should carry enormous weight. And on the other side of the aisle, critics of the administration have wondered how best to respond to a predictable report, written by Bush allies who have given skeptics reason to worry about their objectivity.

But this entire discussion seems to have been missing the point. Petraeus and Crocker aren’t going to report to Congress; they’re going to provide information to White House officials, who will in turn tell lawmakers how great things are going in Iraq. Petraeus and Crocker will apparently offer raw data, which the Bush gang will happily interpret on their behalf.

In other words, whether you find Petraeus and Crocker credible or not is irrelevant. Their much-anticipated September report will have their names on it, but will be ghost-written by the least credible sources the nation has on Iraq: the Bush White House.

What’s more, the same article (in the 30th paragraph) added this gem:

The senior administration official said the process had created “uncomfortable positions” for the White House because of debates over what constitutes “satisfactory progress.”

During internal White House discussion of a July interim report, some officials urged the administration to claim progress in policy areas such as legislation to divvy up Iraq’s oil revenue, even though no final agreement had been reached. Others argued that such assertions would be disingenuous.

So, when preparing a mandated status report in July, the administration openly considered and discussed the merits of lying to Congress. This apparently made some officials “uncomfortable.”

 

Circumventing the Legislative Process

Good god!  This is just as bad as W’s signing statements, which is where I’m sure Young probably got the idea…. 

-R

 

(this news is a few weeks old, but still relevant) 

 

Experts Question Legality, Ethics Of Young's Earmark
By Laura McGann - August 10, 2007, 5:06 PM

There are earmarks, and then there are earmarks.

Rep. Don Young (R-AK) has taken the political art form to an ethically questionable level that even some experts in the trenches have never seen. In 2005, Young waited until after the House and Senate passed a transportation bill, but before the president signed it into law, to rewrite a passage that would have granted $10 million for an interstate in Florida. His new wording targeted the money to a much smaller, more specific project to connect Coconut Road to that interstate. It's an unpopular project in the area, but a boon for real estate developer Daniel Aronoff, who held a $40,000 fundraiser for Young in Florida just before the earmark appeared.

Young has refused multiple requests for comment from different publications on these, and related allegations. Once he made an obscene gesture at a New York Times reporter who approached him about the earmark. His spokeswoman did not get back to us today.

I asked a few experts today for historical and ethical perspective on Young's move.

Former staff director of the House Appropriations Committee, Scott Lilly, said this is a very atypical procedure. Once the bill has been voted on by the House and Senate, only some very technical changes can be made by the clerk. Then it goes to the President.

"The committee chair really doesn't have any control over the bill at that point," Lilly said. "There are some really arcane things that you can do, but you would have to pass a resolution directing the enrolling clerk to make the change, but that would have to pass both Houses. There is very little the enrollment clerk can do. I don't know that they can change spelling mistakes."

The changes made by Young are far more substantive than spelling errors.

"To say it's unusual isn't enough," said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "It is an anomaly that we have never seen before."

Normally, members of Congress who want to clarify how an earmark is to be spent, outline the details in an accompanying report. These reports are only advisory, but are often followed to avoid falling out of favor for the next time an appropriation rolls around. Ashdown pointed out that the 2005 legislation was Young's last chance to oversee a transportation bill, which only come up every six years, as a committee chair. Advice from a sitting duck committee chair wouldn't carry the same heft as language in the law.

"[Young] knew that because this was a controversial project in the area, the only way to make sure his benefactor got the money was if he wrote it in the statute," Ashdown said.

So what can be done now that the change carries the force of law?

The executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said she thinks there's virtually no chance of the famously inactive House ethics committee pursuing the issue.

"I think that this is a highly unlikely thing for the ethics committee do anything about," Melanie Sloan said.

Sill, theoretically, another member of Congress could file a complaint against Young. Craig Holman, the campaign finance lobbyist for Public Citizen, said this issue could be taken up by the courts, by either a private citizen or another member of Congress.

"If anyone can just change the language of a bill carrying it to the President, then why even have a Congress?" Holman said.

"Alive Day"

For those of you that have HBO, you may want to check this out.

-R

 

   From the NYT: 

---

August 21, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

War’s Chilling Reality

By BOB HERBERT

Bryan Anderson, a 25-year-old Army sergeant who was wounded in Iraq, was explaining, on camera — to James Gandolfini, of all people — what happened immediately after a roadside bomb blew up the Humvee that he was driving.

“I was like, ‘Oh, we got hit. We got hit.’ And then I had blood on my face and the flies were landing all over my face. So I wiped my face to get rid of the flies. And that is when I noticed that my fingertip was gone. So I was like, ‘Oh. O.K.’

“So that is when I started really assessing myself. I was like, ‘That’s not bad.’ And then I turned my hand over, and I noticed that this chunk of my hand was gone. So I was like, ‘O.K., still not bad. I can live with that.’

“And then when I went to wipe the flies on my face with my left hand, there was nothing there. So I was like, ‘Uh, that’s gone.’ And then I looked down and I saw that my legs were gone. And then they had kind of forced my head back down to the ground, hoping that I wouldn’t see.”

HBO’s contribution to an expanded awareness of the awful realities of war continues with a new documentary, “Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq.”

Mr. Gandolfini, one of the executive producers of the film, steps out of his Tony Soprano persona to quietly, even gently, interview 10 soldiers and marines who barely escaped death in combat.

The interviews are powerful, and often chilling. They offer a portrait of combat and its aftermath that bears no relation to the sanitized, often upbeat version of war — not just in Iraq, but in general — that so often comes from politicians and the news media.

Dawn Halfaker, a 28-year-old former Army captain, is among those featured in the documentary. She lost her right arm and shoulder in Iraq, along with any illusions she might have had about the glory of war.

“I think I was a little bit naïve to what combat was really like,” she told me in an interview on Sunday. “When you’re training, you don’t really imagine that you could be holding a dying boy in your arms. You don’t think about what death is like close up.

“There’s nothing heroic about war. It’s very tragic. It’s very sad. It takes a huge emotional toll.”

Still, she said, there was much about her experience in Iraq that she was grateful for.

“Nobody in the film is asking for pity or sympathy,” she said. “We’re just saying we had this experience and it changed our lives, and we’re coping with it.”

The term “alive day” is being used by G.I.’s to refer to the day that they came frighteningly close to dying from war wounds, but somehow managed to survive. There are legions of them.

Miraculous advances in emergency medicine, communication and transportation are enabling 90 percent of the G.I.’s wounded in Iraq to survive their wounds, although many are facing a lifetime of suffering.

It’s become a cliché to talk about the courage of the soldiers and marines struggling to overcome their horrendous injuries, but it’s a cliché embedded in the truth. Sergeant Anderson, a chatty onetime athlete, is doing his best to put together a reasonably satisfactory life without his legs or his left hand, and with a damaged right hand

He told Mr. Gandolfini, “If I didn’t have my hand, if I lost both my hands, I’d really think, you know, it wouldn’t be worth it to be around.”

He has a wry take on the term “alive day.”

“Everybody makes a big deal about your alive day, especially at Walter Reed,” he said. “And I can see their point, that you’d want to celebrate something like that. But from my point of view, it’s like, ‘O.K., we’re sitting here celebrating the worst day of my life. Great, let’s just remind me of that every year.’ ”

Last year HBO produced a harrowing documentary called “Baghdad E.R.” that showed the relentless effort of doctors, nurses and other medical personnel to save as many lives as possible from what amounted to a nonstop conveyor belt of G.I.’s wounded in combat. At the time, Shelia Nevins, the head of documentary programming at the network, said, “We tried to put a human face on the war.”

They’ve done it again with “Alive Day Memories,” which is scheduled to premiere Sept. 9.

There are no politics in either production. They are neither pro- nor anti-war.

But the intense focus on the humanity of the men and women caught up in the chaos of Iraq, and the incredible sacrifices some of them have had to make, is an implicit argument in favor of a more thoughtful, cautious, less hubristic approach to matters of war and peace.

Disowning Senator Craig (NY Times editorial)

I think it's time for the Republicans to abandon their anti-gay agenda.  Too many within their own ranks, in fact some of the most ardent gay marriage opponents, are turning out to be gay themselves.  They can only keep on with this hypocritical crusade for so long...

 

-Ryan

August 31, 2007

Editorial

Disowning Senator Craig

The Republican Party is in quite a rush to keelhaul Senator Larry Craig for his run-in with the vice squad in an airport men’s room. Disclosure of the senator’s guilty plea to disorderly conduct set off a frenzy to demand an investigation by the Senate’s somnolent Ethics Committee and to strip Mr. Craig of his committee seniority. Some of the senator’s peers simply demanded that he resign.

No similar leadership chorus for judgment has been heard about any number of other scandalous revelations on the party’s plate.

There’s the F.B.I.’s inquiry into whether Senator Ted Stevens swung a quid-pro-quo deal for a government contractor who eventually renovated his Alaska home. There’s also Senator David Vitter’s presence on the client list of a Washington brothel. Mr. Vitter, a social conservative, pleaded guilty to “sin” (heterosexual) and no leadership call ensued for a thorough in-house ethics inquiry. Certainly, no Republican called for the resignation of Mr. Vitter, who comes from Louisiana, which has a Democratic governor who would then replace him. Mr. Craig is from a safe state with a Republican governor.

Mr. Craig’s explanation of his behavior may make little sense to the average voter trying to fathom how he was taken in by a police sting against lewd public behavior. The senator quietly copped a disorderly conduct plea after taking two months to consider his arrest and his options. Once it hit the media, he claimed his judgment was clouded but his heterosexuality unblemished.

Being stupid as a member of Congress is hardly a reason to be ridden on a rail from Washington. But Republican presidential campaigners are urging Mr. Craig to resign fast as a swift boat. One senator offered the ultimate rebuff between political pros by returning Mr. Craig’s campaign donation.

Underlying the hurry to disown the senator, of course, is the party’s brutal agenda of trumpeting the gay-marriage issue. To the extent Senator Craig, a stalwart in the family values caucus, might morph into a blatant hypocrite before the voters’ eyes, he reflects on the party’s record in demonizing homosexuality. The rush to cast him out betrays the party’s intolerance, which is on display for the public in all of its ugliness. But it also betrays their political uneasiness as the next election approaches.

In IOWA???

When even Iowa finally allows gay marriage, you know it's time to give up the battle.  Iowa isn't exactly a bastion of social liberalism.  Of course, now they're talking about a constitutional amendment banning it.  I'm so sick of the talk of constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, on both the state and federal levels.  If the people feel strongly that it should be banned, then fine, ban it.  However, do so with the standard legislative process, not by amending the Constitution.  The Constitution is a document that is meant to grant rights to the people, not to take them away.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20531786/  

-Ryan