JUSIPER
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Utah House kills creationist bill
A big one, though creationists clearly erred in using the state as their test case:
In a defeat for critics of Darwin, the Utah House of Representatives on Monday voted down a bill intended to challenge the theory of evolution in high school science classes.
The bill had been viewed nationally, by people on each side of the science education debate, as an important proposal because Utah is such a conservative state, with a Legislature dominated by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
But the bill died on a 46-to-28 vote in the Republican-controlled House after being amended by the majority whip, Stephen H. Urquhart, a Mormon who said he thought God did not have an argument with science. The amendment stripped out most of the bill's language, leaving only that the state board of education "shall establish curriculum requirements relating to scientific instruction."
Legislative officials said the bill was not likely to be revived before the scheduled adjournment of the Legislature on Wednesday. The Origins of Life bill, in its initial form, would have required teachers to issue a disclaimer to their students saying that not all scientists agree about evolution and the origin of species. It did not mention any alternative theory to Darwinism, but was viewed by some supporters and opponents as part of the drive to encourage the teaching of intelligent design, which says that life is too complicated to have evolved without an architect.
Some Mormon legislators opposed the bill because they agreed with Mr. Urquhart that science and religion should remain separate, others because they thought intelligent design was not in keeping with traditional Mormon belief.
9:22 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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American Troops: Let's pull out of Iraq
A Zogby shocker:
An overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and nearly one in four say the troops should leave immediately, a new Le Moyne College/Zogby International survey shows.
The poll, conducted in conjunction with Le Moyne College's Center for Peace and Global Studies, showed that 29% of the respondents, serving in various branches of the armed forces, said the U.S. should leave Iraq "immediately," while another 22% said they should leave in the next six months. Another 21% said troops should be out between six and 12 months, while 23% said they should stay "as long as they are needed."
Different branches had quite different sentiments on the question, the poll shows. While 89% of reserves and 82% of those in the National Guard said the U.S. should leave Iraq within a year, 58% of Marines think so. Seven in ten of those in the regular Army thought the U.S. should leave Iraq in the next year. Moreover, about three-quarters of those in National Guard and Reserve units favor withdrawal within six months, just 15% of Marines felt that way. About half of those in the regular Army favored withdrawal from Iraq in the next six months.
7:55 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sunday, February 26, 2006
For the record
Intrepid reader G. points out that Tom Monaghan no longer owns Domino's. Monaghan, it turns out, sold the 93% of the company to Bain in several years ago.
Which certainly hasn't stopped Domino's from committing evil acts of a more banal kind.
In the meantime, more on Tom Monaghan:
Monaghan has supported various conservative Catholic causes during his lifetime including organizations opposed to abortion.and backing legislation to prevent legalized abortion. Monaghan says he will promote at the new University and his other religious schools “more vocations to the priesthood and nuns than any institution in the world.” Monaghan has reportedly employed Joseph Pearce, allegedly a former criminal nazi youth leader in London, and a well known author and academic on the religious far right, to the position of writer in residence at the sister Ave Maria College in Michigan.
Monaghan founded Legatus, an elite Catholic group of millionaires that reportedly backs a cult called The Word of God. Members of Legatus, among other qualifications, must be the head of a company doing $4 million in sales. Critics of The Word of God says the group is an authoritarian cult maintaining absolute control of its followers.
Monaghan reportedly set up the Siena Group, made up from wealthy and influential Catholics from the multi-thousand member Legatus. The Siena Group was reportedly instrumental in the formation of Human Life International. Critics say the group is militantly anti-abortion, anti-gay, and anti-women's rights. The Siena anti-abortion group was founded by Father Paul Marx who reportedly laid blame for "the abortion holocaust" on the "shoulders of the Jews."
For those of you who know Spanish, here is a must-read piece on Human Life International's appalling history by Mexican journalist Edgardo González Ruiz.
10:27 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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George Will: Iraq is in civil war
Via Think Progress, via the Fire, the Dog and the Lake:
ZAKARIA: It was a very bad week for iraq. The fundamental problem here remains the original one, which is when people don’t have a sense of security because there were not enough American troops, they will revert to their script, their tribal loyalty, the Sunni and Shiite. This happens in every society. That is what is happening, a pervasive sense of insecurity has made them search for security in the things they can find, which is their sectarian identities. But the fact that a few hundred people died — and it is a terrible tragedy — it does not necessarily mean we’re on the brink of civil war. India goes through sectarian violence from time to time. Nigeria does —
STEPHANOPOULOS: What does civil war look like?
WILL: This. This is a civil war.
6:29 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Saturday, February 25, 2006
Irma Thomas: alive and well
A great interview, affectionately written up by the best hometown paper in the country.
11:46 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sully
Far more than most writers, he's best writing about what he knows.
11:06 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Conspiracy theorists everywhere, rejoice!
There's enough here for a decades of speculation.
THE chauffeur of the car in which Diana, Princess of Wales died was working for the French secret service, the British team reinvestigating her death has been told.
The inquiry — headed by Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan police commissioner — into the Paris car crash that killed Diana is now trying to obtain the chauffeur’s files from French intelligence but is being delayed by the reluctance of the authorities to hand them over.
Stevens’s team has asked the country’s domestic intelligence service, the DST, to surrender all its “agent handling” files on Henri Paul, the chauffeur, to establish whether he was doing any work for his French intelligence bosses on the night of the crash. [...]
Well-placed sources say requests by the Stevens team for information about Paul’s activities on the day of the crash, and demands for complete records of tests taken on his blood after he died, have become bogged down by the “incredible bureaucracy” of the French justice system.
The role of Paul, who was deputy head of security at the Paris Ritz hotel, and what he was doing in the hours up to the crash are central to the inquiry. Mohamed al-Fayed, the Harrods tycoon and Dodi’s father who also owns the Paris Ritz, has claimed Diana and his son were murdered by British intelligence.
Scotland Yard sources disclosed last week that the French government had finally confirmed Paul’s employment by the DST during discussions last year.
A Yard source said: “We now know he was working for the French secret service and the French have got to give us access to the records of what he was doing. It’s an issue. We want to know where he was and what he was doing that evening.”
After Paul’s death French police discovered he controlled secret accounts containing more than £100,000 in 14 banks across France.
The Stevens inquiry has been complicated by the apparent refusal of the French authorities to allow Yard detectives to see several key witnesses to the accident.
10:19 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Remember what you are supporting
Next time you cave and buy Domino's Pizza.
9:34 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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First of several thousand cuts
Future University Professor Lawrence Summers, remembered by someone who doesn't hate him:
I first met Lawrence Summers back in 1988 on the Dukakis for President campaign. Summers was a noted economist and an adviser to Governor Dukakis. I was a young college graduate traveling everyday on the governor's campaign plane. We met over M&Ms. I had just opened a box on the plane when Summers leaned over and asked me for some. Five minutes later, the box was empty and Summers had poured every last M&M into his mouth. That was my first impression of Lawrence Summers.
3:13 PM | Post or Read Comments (1)
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Keith Boykin remembers Coretta
You won't hear this on Fox--or CNN or BET, for that matter.
For as long as I can remember, Coretta Scott King has been a hero to me. I met her several times in my life. I marched with her in the streets of Atlanta, and I traveled with her on a presidential delegation to Africa. I was concerned that her message might be whitewashed after her death until I remembered that her true legacy is bigger than any church, preacher or president.
Make no mistake about it: Coretta Scott King was unambiguous in her support for the LGBT community. "I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people," she said in 1998.
In 1994, Mrs. King supported the Employment Non Discrimination Act, a federal bill that would have outlawed employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. When Matthew Shepard was murdered in an anti-gay hate crime in 1998, she sent a personal letter to console his mother. And while the 2004 election brought out anti-gay enemies, Mrs. King steadfastly supported marriage equality for gay men and lesbians, a position that put her at odds with some popular black ministers.
But Mrs. King was more concerned about doing the right thing than doing the popular thing. While some black leaders said they were offended by comparisons between the black struggle and the LGBT struggle, Coretta Scott King challenged them. "Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood," she said.
Like her husband, she recognized the contributions that gays and lesbians had made to the civil rights struggle. "Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma . . . and many other campaigns of the civil rights movement," she said. "Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions."
Coretta and Martin were a team in their day, and in their lives they picked teammates from diverse backgrounds. Dr. King chose an openly gay African-American man, Bayard Rustin, to lead the famous 1963 March on Washington. And Mrs. King chose openly gay advisers to work by her side as well.
Although many contemporary leaders claim to be heirs to Dr. King's legacy, it was Mrs. King herself who fully understood the wide and inclusive expanse of her husband's vision.
2:56 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sunday, February 12, 2006
The Veep's moment to shine
Killing a millionaire wouldn't have even placed in Dick Cheney's top fifty violent public acts. Nonetheless, the poetry of the moment is both bizarre and terribly right.
Stung by bitter losses in 1994 and every election since 2000, the Democratic Party has decided that fighting the NRA is not worth the political cost. I more or less concur with that decision, but there is a human cost to our political expediency.
8:34 PM | Post or Read Comments (1)
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Monday, February 06, 2006
Hillary's big tent
In 1992, Bill Clinton shut then governor Bob Casey of Pennsylvania out of a speaking role at the Democratic Convention because he was pro-life. And as President of the United States and Beloved Chairman-for-life of the incredibly inspiring Third Way movement, there were only three positions Clinton would be genuinely inflexible on: pro-life, pro-death penalty, anti-prisoner.
Fast forward to yesterday:
Mrs. Clinton, who is seeking re-election this year, is thought to be mulling a presidential bid in 2008. As such she is a political target for Republicans in Washington, partly because those in New York have not found a high-profile Senate candidate to run against her.
Mrs. Clinton was also asked yesterday about her political action committee's recent donation of $10,000 to Robert P. Casey Jr., a Democratic challenger this year to Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. Unlike Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Casey opposes abortion rights. While some liberals are fighting his candidacy, many Democratic senators are behind Mr. Casey; Mrs. Clinton said a Casey victory could help Democrats displace the slim Republican majority in the Senate.
"I also know Bob Casey — I admire and like him, he is a good man," Mrs. Clinton said. "We may have disagreements about an important issue, but on every other issue that matters to people I represent — like Head Start, like trying to make sure we protect health care for vulnerable people — he's a real champion."
One of three rocks, gone. Just like that.
I am impressed at the brilliance with which Hillary Clinton has prepositioned herself on general election issues this early out, particularly abortion and immigration. She has gone out of her way to cultivate the Latino political community over the last few years in a way that John Kerry never did; the result is a mountain of goodwill that allows her to move right on a central issue in a state that may be key to the 2008 election: Colorado. And she will certainly get a free pass from women's groups on abortion.
And how smart is it to be working right wing Democrats in Pennsylvania this far ahead of the general election? That is one smart campaign.
Hillary is in a very strange position: she is likely to win the nomination despite her position on the issues and her personality. She is counting on $100,000,000 (and hopefully a lot of public speaking lessons) to soften her image for the generals.
But if she wins in November, it will be because of her ability to tack right on issues that divide the country without losing the Democratic base (my bet is that Iraq won't be the key nominating issue thre years from now while terrorism still will). By 2008, her positions will likely resonate with the American public far more than a George Allen's.
Hillary doesn't need 70% of the vote but only about 49.5%. She's already got about 40%; I see no reason to assume she can't get the remaining nine and a half.
10:43 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Priorities
Amazing:
NOTE: According to April 2004, Congressional testimony by OFAC, Between 1990 and 2003 it opened just 93 enforcement investigations related to terrorism and collected just $9,425 in fines for terrorism financing violations since 1994.
In contrast, OFAC opened 10,683 enforcement investigations since 1990 for possible violations of the long-standing economic embargo against Fidel Castro's regime, and collected more than $8 million in fines since 1994, mostly from people who sent money to, did business with or traveled to Cuba without permission.
At the end of 2003, OFAC had just 4 full-time employees dedicated to investigating Ousama Bin Ladin's and Sadam Hussien's wealth, while nearly two dozen were working on the terrorism of Cuban embargo violation.
12:45 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sunday, February 05, 2006
Damn straight
Yes, we do have the right to caricature God. The Pope and Jerry Falwell don't have the right to suppress freedom of speech or freedom of the press, and George W. Bush doesn't have it yet. This is the line no one gets to cross.
In the meantime, guess where the nerve center of the anti-free speech protest movement is? You guessed it, the Bush family's favorite Muslim country: that democratic stalwart and home of the Wahhabis, Saudi Arabia.
6:41 PM | Post or Read Comments (2)
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Friday, February 03, 2006
The cartoon
Martin Walker is an employee of Sun Myung Moon's propaganda outlet United Press International. These are excerpts from his editorial on the cartoon furor:
If Muslims who choose to live in Denmark or another European country where this tradition is valued and understood do not like it, then they are perfectly free to leave for more devout and authoritarian shores. They are also free to write letters of protest to the editor, march in protest around his newspaper, boycott the paper and its advertisers and adopt all the other forms of expressing strong, principled and peaceful dissent that are also intrinsic to democratic societies.
Muslims abroad are also entitled to express their views, although wild threats to kidnap European diplomats and the armed takeover of the European Union offices in Gaza Thursday are foolish and self-defeating. [...]
So in the spirit of Jonathan Swift's 'Modest Proposal' (and Muslim readers who may not know this work should look it up), it seems worth proposing some alternative uses for those EU funds.
One very deserving cause would be an education campaign to explain carefully to newspapers in the Arab world why their vicious cartoon depictions of Jews, and their now hackneyed way of depicting Ariel Sharon as Adolf Hitler, is in appalling taste. Not that they should be stopped for revealing their curious thought processes if they insist on repeating such Jew-baiting nastiness, but it might be useful to explain to them why it neither wins friends nor influences people.
The money might also be spent on holding public debates across Europe asking why sharia law demands the death penalty for any Muslim who abandons the faith, when Muslims are free to proselytize and win converts in Europe.
Or one might ask why Saudi Arabia allows no Christian churches on its soil, when the desert kingdom feels free to pump some $3 billions a year into building mosques and subsidizing Imams and proselytizing their puritanical Wahhabi sect of Islam. [...]
Some of the money might also be used to reprint the sensible editorial published by the splendidly-named Jihad Momani, editor of the Jordanian tabloid al-Shiran, under the headline: "Muslims of the world, be reasonabl
'What brings more prejudice against Islam, those caricatures or pictures of a hostage-taker slashing the throat of his victim in front of the cameras or a suicide bomber who blows himself up during a wedding ceremony in Amman?'
A good point, and hats off to Jihad Momanu for making it. A pity that he was fired just hours after that editorial appeared. A pity also that the editor of Paris newspaper France-Soir was fired by his paper's Egyptian owner after he reprinted the Danish cartoons. An even greater pity that the French supermarket group Carrefour decided to cave in to the boycott campaign's demand to remove Danish products from the shelves of its stores in the Arab world.
And it is a real tragedy that the Turkish premier Tayyip Erdogan should have called for limits on press freedom in response to this 'attack on our spiritual values.'
Erdogan is currently trying to get his country into the EU by insisting that Turkey now abides by EU standards of human rights and freedoms, and he may just with that remark have shot himself in the foot. He clearly understands freedom of the press no more than Saudi religious zealots understand a level playing field, no more than Egyptian cartoonists understand the Holocaust, no more than Hollywood understands Arab humor.
And that should give us all pause for thought, because it is not funny at all, so unfunny that if we didn't laugh about it, we'd have to cry.
I am sure the cartoons were offensive, but since most major Internet news sites are too cowardly to link to them, I haven't been able to judge that for myself as yet.
The counterproductiveness of the Bush years has allowed many in the left--and in particular the European left-- the luxury of casting a blind eye at antidemocratic, oppressive elements of Islamist thinking. The ability to criticize our institutions, religious or political, is not only the essence of freedom but the guarantor of reform. Those who would seek to take away that right challenge not only the basic principles of democracy but damage any hope for a rational critique of destructive religious structures.
So we should not be surprised that the Bush administration was among the first to criticize the cartoons rather than issue a ringing defense of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. An election stealer, after all, could hardly be counted on to be a defender of democratic values--however many wars he might initiate in their name.
11:45 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Thursday, February 02, 2006
Sufficient cause
Digby tells you all you need to know about why an independent counsel should be appointed to look into the White House email shocker.
7:09 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Juan Cole close reads SOTU
A fragment:
Moreover, elections in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lebanon and Egypt are not a "new chapter." They've had parliamentary elections before. Lebanon has been having them for decades, and they've often been pretty representative. In Iraq and Afghanistan foreign interference had a lot to do with the rise of subsequent dictatorships. This idea that the Middle East is a blank slate that never knew what a parliament was before Bush and Cheney showed up is insulting. And, calling the government set up under imperial auspices after an illegal invasion "self-government" is laughable.
Finally, the elections that Bush trumpets in all four countries, and in Palestine, which he did not mention in this regard, were rebukes to Bush, not affirmations of him. The Afghans elected warlords, the Iraqis put in the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Muqtada al-Sadr's people (the ones who killed Cindy Sheehan's son) along with the Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood and some Baathists. The Shiite parties of Hizbullah and Amal have new weight in Lebanon. The fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt got 88 seats, an unprecedentedly large number.
And in case you missed it, please make a point of reading Cole's ten predictions for 2006. It's short, and, I fear, prescient, although a month into the new year it now seems he was too optimistic about the Israel-Palestine situation.
6:55 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Strange
With J.C. Watts out, there was no longer any need for African American voter suppression within the GOP caucus. No voting machines either, (but plenty of future felons not yet disenfranchised); so instead Republicans opted for good ole ballot stuffing.
It's mildly exciting that K-street's candidate Boehner beat K-street's Blunt; there are indeed mild divisions among GOP members ("Should we screw poor blacks or poor Mexicans this year?" "Should we give more tax dollars to Pharma, Oil, or Confederate wapons-welfare?"). But as long as the GOP controls the House, the American people are always the losers. GOP attempts to interpret this as a housecleaning or a first sign of reform prior to November are simply laughable.
Gallows humor from Josh's readers:
Says TPM Reader JP: "This is priceless. They try to steal their own elections!"
TPM Reader JW is even more biting: "That's right, the Repubs are so corrupt they can't even hold an honest INTERNAL election..."
6:14 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Details, details
Four paragraphs from the bottom of the New York Times' piece on Bush's empty words on energy:
Energy analysts said the push on energy policy at the White House came in large part from Mr. Bodman, a former professor of chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as the former president of Fidelity Investments. Republicans said Mr. Bodman's push dovetailed with the view of Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's top political adviser, that high gas and home heating prices would be a potent political issue. Congress and the administration have at times sent conflicting signals about their priorities, further complicating Mr. Bush's prospects of pushing through his proposals.
The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget.
A veteran researcher said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. Those are two of the technologies that Mr. Bush cited on Tuesday night as holding the promise to replace part of the nation's oil imports.
The budget for the laboratory, which is just west of Denver, was cut by nearly 15 percent, to $174 million from $202 million, requiring the layoff of about 40 staff members out of a total of 930, said a spokesman, George Douglas. The cut is for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1.
4:26 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Evo Morales, Fashionista
And the New York Times' Juan Forero is clearly in love:
The question is: Will Mr. Morales, a strapping Aymara Indian with a Roman nose, an infectious smile and a shock of long black hair, catch on as a durable fashion influence?
Strange, perhaps, but clearly better than Spain's Francophile (the other kind) ABC:
Not everyone has been happy about his choice of dress. When he showed up in button-down Spain in early January, two weeks before his inauguration, to meet Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in a sweater, ABC, the conservative Madrid newspaper, scoffed.
"Is there no one who might lend Mr. Morales a dark suit?" asked a writer for the paper, which also noted that "pullovers like that" are given away to the poor in Spain. Reforma in Mexico wrote that the sweater was the "garment of discord, far from official protocol."
The fashion police, though, were quickly drowned out by the likes of José Saramago, the Portuguese Nobel Prize-winning author, who called all the hubbub the "stupid pride of civilized countries."
4:24 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Bush in Tennessee today
"My job is as much educator-in-chief as it is commander-in-chief."
1:04 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Wonkette turns into Cokie Roberts/Maureen Dowd clone
I suppose it was inevitable:
In the end, learning that the Alito filibuster was John Kerry’s brilliant idea really isn’t that surprising to us. It reflects the same shrewd political judgment and unerring strategic insight that Senator Kerry displayed in running his 2004 presidential campaign.
12:42 AM | Post or Read Comments (1)
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Go figure
Alito's first move as a judge was to refuse to let Missouri kill a death-row inmate, bucking fellow culture-of-life Catholics Roberts, Scalia and Thomas.
Don't expect more good news of this type down the road. There is nothing in Alito's record to suggest that he will vote compassionately on race, disability rights, and those few discrimination cases on which O'Connor was a progressive fifth vote.
12:37 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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CCR reponds to Bush SOTU surveillance lies
Useful. A fragment:
If al Qaeda is calling you, the government should be able to listen to the call
If the government had any evidence at all to back up such a claim, it could put a wiretap in place and seek FISA Court approval after the fact under the law. What the government is really claiming is the power to put a wiretap in place where there is no evidence at all that a person on the line is a member of al Qaeda.
The program is legal.
This program is unquestionably illegal-Congress has made all electronic surveillance outside the Wiretap Act and FISA a felony.
Many people within the administration felt this program was illegal. It has been widely reported that Deputy Attorney General James Comey refused to sign off on reauthorization of the Program in March 2004, when John Ashcroft was in the hospital, and White House officials were forced to visit Ashcroft in his hospital bed to seek reapproval.
The President has inherent power to conduct warrantless surveillance to gather foreign intelligence.
The federal appellate court cases the administration cites for this principle are all cases decided under the standards applicable before Congress created FISA (United States v. Clay; United States v. Brown; United States v. Butenko; United States v. Buck; and United States v. Truong). So are the historical precedents: Lincoln's telegraph wiretaps during the civil war, or FDR's wiretaps during World War II.
FISA was intended to be comprehensive, covering all electronic surveillance of foreign powers and their agents, and FISA makes all surveillance outside its terms a felony, including the NSA program.
12:14 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Sex for contracts!
The latest from Iraq. No word on any Abu Ghraib connection.
11:54 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Jimmy Carter to Larry King
"I don't have a security clearance. All I know is what I see on your show, the Daily Show, and other key sources of information these days."
Watch the repeat later tonight on CNN--a terrific interview.
10:36 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Blockbuster?
Making the Internets in a big way today is the last graf of the New York Daily News piece on Fitzgerald's investigation:
Fitzgerald, who is fighting Libby's request, said in a letter to Libby's lawyers that many e-mails from Cheney's office at the time of the Plame leak in 2003 have been deleted contrary to White House policy.
Computers are strange creatures. While I would fully expect a Cheney-led scrub job to get at every trace of emails, one never knows where mainframes and hard disks might hide duplicate archives. More importantly, an operation of this level of sophistication was almost certainly not carried out by a political appointee but rather a team of technicians--people who are not likely to get a post-Bush administration appointment at the Hoover Institute or the AEI, and hence more likely to talk.
And surely, surely, this means trouble for Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card; Al for making that fateful phone call to Andy, giving the plumbers that twelve hour head start, and Cheney, just because it's hard to imagine he wasn't involved.
If any of those emails are found, one begins to sense the possibility of impeachment--even without a recession.
10:28 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Novak apoplectic at SOTU
Bush is a caver, says our favorite treasonous reactionary journalist. Why?
The president did call for Congress to make permanent his tax cuts, but he did not chide Democrats for their inaction. While calling for control of spending, he did not challenge his Republican majority to restrain itself as federal outlays grow.
In foreign policy, he declared that Iran cannot be permitted to achieve nuclear arms. He insisted that the newly elected Hamas majority in Palestine must recognize the state of Israel. But his tone was far less forceful than White House aides had predicted it would be and, in fact, softer than Bush has been in private. [...]
One result [of the alleged decision to appear conciliatory] was the virtual disappearance of the two reforms--Social Security and tax -- that he had promised for his second term. He merely noted the failure of his personalized Social Security accounts, which resulted in Democrats in the hall giving themselves a standing ovation for killing the Bush plan. The president did not even mention tax reform. Instead, he proposed a commission on competitiveness reform that sounded to conservatives like more government on the way.
In excerpts of the speech released hours in advance, the White House put out the call to reduce the nation's "addiction" to oil. What the president proposed was the least Republican part of his speech. To free market conservatives, it sounded like an "industrial policy" with the government deciding which policy would succeed or fail. [...]
The question is whether George W. Bush was adjusting only his rhetoric or was embarking on a policy adjustment toward the left and the middle.
And wait till Novak hears that Bush (or his replacement) is going to raise taxes. It's inevitable by 2008, and it just might kill him.
5:45 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Strange Specter
It's almost as if he's trying to sabotage Man-on-Dog:
Sen. Arlen Specter, an unyielding Republican advocate of abortion rights, last Monday addressed more than 100 anti-abortion protesters from his state of Pennsylvania who had just participated in Washington's 33rd annual March for Life.
To the dismay of pro-life activists, Specter insisted on attending a reception for the marchers at the Capitol Hill Club. Before Specter arrived, he was lavishly praised by Pennsylvania's anti-abortion Republican Sen. Rick Santorum. Specter's performance as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, said Santorum, ''was wonderful and very, very key to Judge Samuel Alito's confirmation' for the Supreme Court.
Santorum, facing a tough re-election challenge, was criticized by his conservative base when he supported Specter's renomination in 2004. Pro-lifers at the reception did not object to Santorum's remarks, but several left the room when Specter began to speak. Specter declared he wouldn't be there as a U.S. senator were it not for Santorum.
5:16 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Gay marriage in Canada
If the Conservatives form a government after election day, do you think they should or should not bring back the issue of same-sex marriage to Parliament for another vote?
Should: 30%
Should not: 66%
DK/NA: 5%
Worth noting as the NDP-supported Stephen Harper decides to bring back the issue to satisfy his base:
An expected vote in the next House of Commons to re-establish the traditional definition of marriage would be close, but a narrow majority of MPs would likely agree to retain same-sex marriage, a Globe and Mail survey has found.
According to the tabulation, 153 incoming MPs either voted for same-sex legislation in June or indicated they would if the matter came before the House again. Another 136 either voted against the legislation or said they oppose same-sex marriage.
Nineteen members either would not comment or said variously they would abstain, follow their constituents' wishes or had not yet made up their minds. But their comments suggest that at least some of them do support same-sex unions. [...]
A substantial chunk of the 67 new MPs elected 10 days ago supports retaining same-sex marriage. That number includes at least three of the 10 new Conservative MPs elected in Quebec and two new Ontario Tories, as well as all 12 newly elected New Democrats and probably the 10 fresh faces from the Bloc Québécois.
Queen's University law professor Kathleen Lahey, an advocate for the legal recognition of same-sex relationships, said she strongly doubted the new government would be in a hurry to move on Mr. Harper's pledge.
Prof. Lahey noted that voters rejected some of the party's candidates most closely allied with the Christian right and most vehemently opposed to same-sex marriage as their connections became more apparent.
In particular, she cited Cindy Silver, considered likely to win election for the Tories in North Vancouver until reports surfaced that she was an anti-same-sex marriage activist.
Laurie Arron, director of advocacy for the homosexual rights organization Egale, identified 34 first-time Conservative candidates as being closely identified with the Christian right and said only 10 of them were elected -- mostly in Ontario.
McGill University political scientist Christopher Manfredi, an academic specialist on the Conservative Party, pointed out, as others have, that Mr. Harper is a libertarian economic conservative rather than a social conservative.
Prof. Manfredi said he did not think it would be Mr. Harper's personal inclination to vigorously promote a social conservative agenda, especially in a minority-government Parliament. He said Mr. Harper has the political capital to withstand pressure from the social conservative constituency that backs him because he has succeeded so manifestly in bringing the party from disarray to power in five years.
3:10 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Time for the NDP and Liberals to get together?
Ken Dewar of Halifx' Mount Saint Vincent University writes a very thoughtful piece in today's Globe and Mail on the necessity for a left-wing realignment in Canadian politics.
2:51 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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