JUSIPER
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Americablog on Aravosis
Apologies, no link:
So the Republicans are telling us that they never heard anything else about Foley in all the time he was in Congress. Very interesting. Because I certainly heard some rumors about Foley over the years, and when I got a copy of these emails several months ago, the rumors were not inconsistent. But to House Republicans, family value Republicans, this story wasn't important enough to even go beyond asking the perpetrator if he was really guilty. [...]
Seems so. Republican House Speaker Denny Hastert has some serious explaining to do, after today's revelations that they knew about ex-Congressman Mark Foley's sexscapades a good year ago, and did nothing.
Whether or not the kid's parents were fine with letting it go, which the story says is the case, why did Republican House Speaker Denny Hastert permit Foley to remain in the House GOP leadership for almost a year after they knew he was having sex talk with minors online, minors he met on the job?
Why did Republican House Speaker Denny Hastert leave Foley as the co-chair of the House body in charge of child sex offenses for a good year after they knew?
Why did Republican House Speaker Denny Hastert permit Foley to stay in the House at all, where he would be around other pages every day all day long?
And just as importantly, why did Republican House Speaker Denny Hastert let Foley lie publicly yesterday about the emails, claiming they were innocent, and simply a dirty attack from the Democrats, when the House leadership knew the real story?
And finally, we find out that the FBI was contacted two months about this story. Was there any follow-up from the Bush FBI? Or did they just let this potential case of child sex offense go by the wayside because it involved a friend of Bush?
And now, word that I may be wrong, and that Foley may have broken laws:
Federal authorities say such messages could result in Foley's prosecution, under some of the same laws he helped to enact.
"Adds up to soliciting underage children for sex," said Brad Garrett, a former FBI agent and now an ABC News consultant. "And what it amounts to is serious both state and federal violations that could potentially get you a number of years."
2:12 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Hastert and Boehner knew
They didn't inform the Democratic leadership about Foley, nor did they take action themselves--quite possibly because Foley is in a district that would be a battleground without the presence of an entrenched incumbent.
Now, my feeling about Foley is that it is still not clear whether he broke any laws. The age of consent in DC, apparently, is 16. As of yet, there is still no claim of physical contact between him and the pages. So far, we are still only talking about speech of a sexual nature between an extraordinarily hypocritical GOP congressman and two persons of legal age. If he was still the pages' boss while engaging in these conversations, however, the matter becomes about as serious as the Lewinsky matter: a highly unprofessional (and thus institutionally sanctionable) sexual relationship in the workplace.
As far as I am concerned, this should be a matter for voters to decide. Foley won't be on the ballot this year, but no matter: now, every vote in a House race this year will be a referendum on the House leadership that knew about his actions and kept them hushed up so that they could protect their tenuous majority.
1:30 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Friday, September 29, 2006
Hiatus
JUSIPER goes on hiatus but will return to live blog election night from a battleground state. Happy October!
12:30 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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The first Catholic Chief Justice
It's not John Roberts. Let's hope he's not as bad as the last one.
Here, in this place which is all politics, all the time, as you'd expect the Red Mass takes on a life of its own: the uber-event. Always scheduled for the day before the Supreme Court's annual opening on the first Monday of October, last year's liturgy in Washington became an even bigger-than-usual showcase, as President Bush showed up (Laura and Condi in tow) to celebrate the confirmation of John Roberts, the first Catholic chief justice of the United States since Roger Taney, author of the infamous Dred Scott decision, which greased the skids toward civil war. Of course, the elevated exposure made Cardinal McCarrick a very happy camper in his final turn as the Mass' celebrant.
12:13 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Mark Foley
On the one hand, I am disgusted by gay Republican congressmen who hypocritically vote for congressional leadership that deprives millions of their civil rights.
But, at least so far, the Mark Foley investigation does not seem to have come to much. BlogActive, on the other hand, is talking about going to the FBI.
Matt Drudge would never, ever cover a piece like this since it hits too close to home for a closted Republican. But as he might say, developing...
UPDATE: More details emerge. It doesn't look as if Foley has committed a crime here, but seems like rather poor judgement to tell a 16 year old page that his friend is hot. This is, at least so far, much more an issue of utter political hypocrisy than criminal wrongdoing.
12:07 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Thursday, September 28, 2006
McCain: "I seem to remember rather enjoying it"
The Senate "compromise" headed to Bush's desk is unclear as to whether it will permit rape. And I suppose it's right to: why should Al Qaeda be given a right not extended to our own prisoners?
11:51 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Senate predictions
Dems could go as high as 52, and Republicans could go as high as 55.
Pennsylvania is looking less like a horserace every day, but that still leaves eight tight races. If the election were held today, I believe Democrats would pick up RI, TN, OH, PA, MT and hold MD. I think Republicans would pick up NJ and hold MO and VA. So for the moment that comes to a 51-49 majority for Republicans, assuming Lieberman is a reliable 49th vote. And he may not be.
11:48 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Le Blog Bérubé
If only we could all defend ourselves with with savage wit. Via Brad DeLong.
11:27 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Will Bunch: a real journalist
Giving David Broder a piece of his mind. A call to arms:
Mad? Often. "Vituperative"?...sometimes, but "foul mouthed" never. I know some people have said and even sent some nasty things to you – I don’t endorse that. I would not and will not insult you; in fact, there was a time in my life when I very much wanted to be you, when I was a young man who wanted your seat one day as one of "the boys on the bus," covering the Making of the Next President. And you were very much a man for those times, the 1970s, when the rise of TV advertising meant that spin would complete the war to replace substance. America needed people like you then – with the right kind of cynicism to cut through all the crap on both sides of the aisle.
But what we used to call "a healthy dose of cynicism" eventually became toxic, for you and for so many of your "gang of 500" inside the Beltway. Somehow, exposing the lies of the system during the Watergate era, when you won a deserved Pulitzer, grew into benign acceptance that politics is pretty much a sport – a sport where, well, everybody lies.
And while you and your new lunch pals at the Palm knew you still had to expose the occasional lie, or at least get worked up about it, to maintain your journalistic credibility, you only went for the low-hanging fruit, the “objective lie,“ the DNA test on a blue dress from the Gap, not the elusive but ultimately false premises that would kill tens of thousands on a bloody war far from most Americans’ sight. Monica Lewinsky allowed you and your friends to prove that journalism was still about exposing...well, exposing something or other.
You, and your colleague Bob Woodward, and so many others, grew to admire the callous art of spincraft you'd been trained to expose -- so much so that when Hurricane Katrina devastated an American city and betrayed a stunning indifference to the fate of the nation's poorest, you could only write that Katrina "opens new opportunities for [Bush]to regain his standing with the public."
Your cynicism hardened as it grew -- to the point where your most famous quote is that "anybody who wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office." Ideas didn’t matter. Do you even remember what you wrote in 2000, when Al Gore gave his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. You said:
"I have to confess, my attention wandered as he went on through page after page of other swell ideas, and somewhere between hate crimes legislation and a crime victim's constitutional amendment, I almost nodded off."
And when “the dean of American journalism” writes that, no wonder that so many voters thought that Gore and George W. Bush were Tweedledee and Tweedledum, or that a protest vote for Ralph Nader or Pat Buchanan in what proved to be the closest presidential election in modern American history wouldn’t matter.
But it did matter, didn’t it? [...]
The night I became angry came in March 2003, the night that your friends and colleagues in the White House press room took a dive at a nationally televised press conference, and refused to challenge the president’s specious grounds for war. I was furious over what my profession -- the one where you had once inspired me a generation ago -- had now become. And frankly, a lot of people on the left side became angry, too -- because, frankly, nobody was listening when they were nice. Protest marches of half a million got inside-the-A-section type coverage; at least a little vitriol finally got your attention, Mr. Broder.
And this was all before so much else happened -- the made-up terror alerts, the chucking of the Geneva Convention and the torture and abuse that followed, the illegal spying, the willful defiance of laws enacted by Congress, the ignoring of the fundamental right of habeas corpus. I won’t waste a lot of space chronicling it all, because you know it all. You know it all…and yet you have done nothing.
That’s because your cynicism is degenerative disease, and it leads to paralysis. You were the dean overseeing the Great Game of American politics, and then some bad guys came along and changed all the rules, and you tried so very hard not to notice. Now that the unlawful nature of this presidency is becoming recognized by a majority, you are praying for a deus ex machina, this fictional “independence party” that will not just save America but most importantly save you, save you from having to make a choice.
It’s too late for that now, Mr. Broder. I do not blame you; I did not want to make this choice either; it chose me. I would have been much happier, frankly, spending my 40s the way that you spent your 40s, fighting for a Pulitzer Prize instead of fighting to preserve the basics of a democracy and a free press, the things that you and I and America were able to take for granted for so long. Nor do I expect you to join us; frankly, if that happens, it would probably would not happen until America has already fallen into the abyss, and I hope and pray that it does not come to that.
In the meantime, this journalist will use every weapon in his arsenal to preserve the values that allowed our craft to flourish in America -- including the weapon of anger. That may offend you from time to time; I guess on some level I hope that it doesn’t.
Either way, don’t expect me to apologize for it.
Because I won’t.
12:42 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Low gas prices=Republican holds
As these pages have warned for weeks, the drop in the price of gas is having real political impact. In the end, it may be sufficient to keep the House in Republican hands.
A poll released on Thursday by Zogby International showed Bush's approval rating had risen to 42 percent from 34 percent in mid-August. In the same period, average U.S. pump prices have fallen 21 percent to $2.38 a gallon.
While Democrats hold a 9-point lead over Republicans when voters were asked which party they will support in the November midterm elections, Zogby said Republicans could benefit from the climb in Bush's approval.
Many are skeptical about the change in prices:
The drop in gas prices so close to the election has sparked conspiracy theories in car-crazy America, where 65 percent of households own two or more vehicles and drivers can do their banking, fill a prescription and buy food and even alcohol without ever leaving their vehicle.
``Sure gas prices are down. There's an election coming. You think that's a coincidence?'' asked Indiana school bus driver and park director Mick Liggett, 61.
A Gallup poll showed 42 percent of Americans believed the Bush administration had deliberately manipulated the price of gas so that it would decrease before the November 7 midterm vote. Internet blogs are filled with skeptics questioning the relationship between Republicans and big oil.
That said, there are other problems:
Figures out on Thursday showed the pace of U.S. economic growth slowed more sharply than expected in the second quarter to just 2.6 percent, while prices continued to rise.
``It's a bit like trying to put lipstick on a pig,'' said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokeswoman Sarah Feinberg. ``Lower gas prices do not make you feel better about the fact that you're still earning the same wages you've been earning for years, and you still can't afford to send your kid to college.''
12:15 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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The new Ali G movie
Sacha Baron Cohen is remarkably remarkably unfunny for a successful comedian. It is always a pleasure, however, to give a dictator his comeuppance.
The foreign ministry spokesman, Yerzhan N. Ashykbayev, said in an interview here in Astana, the country’s capital, that “what we are concerned about is that Kazakhstan — terra incognita for many in the West — is depicted in this way.”
Mr. Ashykbayev denounced Mr. Cohen’s performance as host of the MTV Europe Music Awards in Lisbon last fall, in which a skit mocked the imperial aura that surrounds Mr. Nazarbayev, the country’s president since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Mr. Ashykbayev suggested that Mr. Cohen was acting on behalf of “someone’s political order” to denigrate Kazakhstan and that the government “reserved the right to any legal action to prevent new pranks of this kind.”
Mr. Cohen, who is Jewish, responded, as Borat, in a video posted on his Web site, citing Mr. Ashykbayev by name and declaring that he “fully supported my government’s decision to sue this Jew.”
“Since the 2003 Tulyakov reforms, Kazakhstan is as civilized as any other country in the world,” he goes on in the video, citing fictional details in the absurdly stilted English that is central to his act. “Women can now travel inside of bus. Homosexuals no longer have to wear blue hats. And age of consent has been raised to 8 years old.”
But it was the Foreign Ministry’s complaint that gave some in the country’s news media a chance to report on it, and that was when most Kazakhs first learned that a faraway British comedian had turned the world’s attention to their country.
In an atmosphere of legal constraints on press freedoms, if not outright censorship, the ministry’s statement offered a way to poke fun at Mr. Nazarbayev’s near-absolute political power, at least indirectly, by showing what the fuss was all about.
“There is an unwritten rule that the president’s personality is never criticized,” said Baryz Bayen, a correspondent and editor for TV 31, a privately owned channel in Almaty.
Last fall Mr. Bayen prepared a six-minute feature on the controversy over Mr. Cohen’s MTV performance that included clips of the skit depicting Mr. Nazarbayev, borrowed from Russia’s NTV channel. Mr. Bayen cited a history of political satire dating to Molière and recalled an old refrain from Soviet times: “I have never read Solzhenitsyn, but I condemn him absolutely.”
“I do not feel any false patriotism,” said Mr. Bayen, who, like all ethnic Kazakhs, bears no resemblance to Borat whatsoever. “I saw portions of his show, and I can say it is funny.”
And a lovely anecdote at the end:
Borat’s act is a matter of taste, here as elsewhere. Kseniya Udod, an editor who works for Astana, a television channel here owned by the state’s energy company, KazMunaiGaz, called it “humor below the waist.”
At the same time she noted the altogether different reaction in Finland to a running gag by Conan O’Brien, the host of NBC’s “Late Night,” based on his supposed resemblance to that country’s president, Tarja Halonen. Mr. O’Brien was warmly welcomed there when he visited in February following Ms. Halonen’s re-election.
Mr. Nazarbayev’s presidency, by contrast, is autocratic and tolerates little public criticism.
12:19 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Gallup shocker
According to a recent Gallup Panel survey, the American public puts the primary blame on Bush rather than Clinton for the fact that bin Laden has not been captured. A majority of Americans say Bush is more to blame (53%), compared with 36% blaming Clinton.
5:46 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Brilliant
The GOP takes its convention to the great city of Minneapolis and the battle moves to three blue Midwestern states that have gone redder and redder since 1996: Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa.
The Democrats, in a typically dumb move, are considering New York City, where they already hold a 5-1 registration advantage.
Says Steve Schier of Carleton College in Political Wire:
The political strategy behind this is twofold, concerning location and timing. First, the choice of location should not be seen as simply an attempt to target the state of Minnesota for political persuasion by the GOP in 2008. The bordering swing states of Iowa and Wisconsin are also targets of this convention strategy. The Twin Cities lie close to the Wisconsin border and their media market extends far into Western Wisconsin. The Iowa border is two hours south of the Twin Cities and Iowa media will give the convention heavy play. In the three state area, the Twin Cities is the largest population center and is centrally located.
Second, the timing of the decision reveals two goals. First and most obviously, the GOP seeks to preempt national Democratic efforts to convene in the Twin Cities. But also, the announcement gives Minnesota GOP candidates in 2006, particularly incumbent GOP governor Tim Pawlenty who is locked in a tight reelection race, something to crow about. Minnesotans tend to believe they don't get the national attention they and their state deserve, and this national GOP decision may curry favor with Minnesota voters by shining a spotlight on the state.
5:35 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Crazy Harvey on economists
Good one:
Harvey Mansfield, writing in this month's New Criterion:
"The building where I used to work was shared with economists, who, living the sort of life they describe, had no incentive to flush and sometimes failed to do so."
2:50 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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The latest Brownie
Caroline C. Hunter, Bush-Cheney's latest appointment to the Election Assistance Commission.
From Dan Tokaji's Election Law blog:
Under the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), the EAC consists of four commissioners, two of whom are Democrats and two of whom are Republicans. Ms. Hunter would be appointed for a four-year term as one of the two Republican appointees.
What's troubling about this announcement, at first blush, is that it's not clear that Ms. Hunter possesses the qualifications for the job. All of the prior EAC commissioners, Democrats and Republicans alike, have been people with substantial relevant experience. Republican Commissioners Donetta Davidson and Paul DeGregorio, for example, were previously election officials at the state and local level for years. [...]
I don't know Ms. Hunter personally and have never heard of her before. My attempts to find out information about her through the internet have yielded nothing of much relevance (though I did find this letter which she wrote on behalf of the RNC in 2003, telling TV stations to stop running an DNC advertisement critical of the President). It is certainly possible that there is something of which I'm not aware -- something not listed in the bio released by the White House -- that qualifies her for the job. But if not, there's reason to be concerned that this is someone who's being appointed not for her qualifications, but rather to look out for the political interests of the party to which she belongs.
It would be most unfortunate if this turned out to be the case. That is especially true, since this is a delicate period in the development of the EAC given the recent spat over Arizona's voter registration requirements, which I've discussed here and here. This dispute broke the EAC's tradition, up to that point, of operating by bipartisan consensus. The worry is that the EAC will become an agency in which the commissioners view their roles as protecting the interests of their parties, rather than promoting a better functioning election system as HAVA originally promised. That would likely lead to stalemates along party lines, which would effectively paralyze the EAC and destroy its ability to serve as an effective instrument for election reform.
2:19 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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"This is not America"
A simply horrifying series about the administration of justice in New York State. Long, but a must-read.
2:00 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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A rather different Katrina
More Republican family values. Beyond belief.
1:28 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Islam's latest victory over free speech
This time, in Germany:
Berlin's Deutsche Oper opera house is under fire for cancelling a controversial production of a Mozart opera which shows the severed heads of the Prophet Muhammad, Jesus and Buddha. Politicians have condemned the cancellation as self-censorship and cowardice.
12:36 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Using the N-word to make friends
George Felix Allen, a true, California born Southern heritage Republican.
12:14 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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More Thailand
Meanwhile, some bad news: Thaksin may make a comeback.
The astrologer of the ousted Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra said he had foreseen his demise - but also his return to power within little more than 18 months.
Phra Khru Wichitsuthakarn, 64, is the abbot of a monastery about two hours north of Bangkok, and one of the kingdom's foremost soothsayers.
His last consultation with Mr Thaksin was by telephone two weeks before the last week's coup removed him from power.
"When it's an important situation he will call me for a suggestion," the monk said in his office at Wat Khang Khao, or Bat Temple.
"I warned him before the coup to be careful; there will be enemies who want to attack you but they won't kill or hurt you. After this period, be careful of the revolution."
The abbot glossed over the fact that his advice had not saved the prime minister's job. "He couldn't stop the revolution happening. It has to happen this way," he said.
Phra Khru Wichitsuthakarn said Mr Thaksin's unpopularity would wane from April 16 next year, "and he will be the prime minister again".
His prediction will be carefully noted by Thais, the majority of whom subscribe to various superstitions. The monk said that General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, the coup leader, visited him some years ago.
12:11 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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The rebuttal
The unknown Jotman continues to be an incredibly useful source of information on the Thai coup. Today he posts excerpts from "Bad excuse for the coup," part of Thongchai Winichakul (a history professor at the University of Wisconsin)'s campaign against the coup.
His election victories were valid. No significant irregularity that would change the results of his two landslide victories. Academics, including myself, can argue against his populist policies, his horrible handling of the crisis in the Malay Muslim region, and so on. But Thai people elected his party and the “Thaksin regime.”
Democracy anywhere in the world is never a rule of the educated, the smarter, the urban, or the better-informed. It is a rule by popular mandate. No matter if/ how ignorant people are, the elected government has the rights to rule. It is true that democracy does not mean only election. But election is THE ultimate and inviolable source of legitimacy to rule. The higher moral or good ethics is not. The higher education is not. The better access to information is not. Nor are weapons or any unelected aristocrats. Democracy is never without corruption and abuses of power.
...democracy grows as the results of the unwavering struggles within the bound of constitution and rule of law. This is the ONLY SOLUTION to establish a strong democracy.... This excuse is shamelessly an elitist arrogance and prejudice that denies the rights of people who elected Thaksin as worthless and negligible. They are the majority of people but whose voices do not count. This excuse is utterly anti-democratic....
It (the constitution) was violated, ignored, and tampered with; probably similar to what Bush was doing now. But the constitution was still there to provide opportunities to fight the abusive regime. In fact many fights were successful and more were waging, thanks to the constitution....
On Thaksin and the media:
But it was never able to control or manipulated to such extent that differing views were shut down. Critics were frustrated for being shut up but they were never being shut down. Anti-Thaksin publications were among the best selling titles.... Thaksin the Evil was not able to close our eyes, ears and mouths. The struggles against the interferences had been going on and could go on. The coup is not necessary. Who would dare to say that media freedom and freedom of expression with no fear is better under a coup regime?
Winachakul's conclusion:
Does Bush deserve a military coup or some drastic measures to get rid of him as a necessary evil and the only solution to rescue the world?
It's a very striking conclusion, and a very odd one. Bush is highly unpopular outside the United States, highly corrupt, and the cause of an immoral war. It's almost as if he saved his least persuasive argument for last.
Recent times have hardly been a strong argument for democracy in the United States. By 2000, 20 of the last 28 years will have fallen under Reagan or a Bush.
Winichakul is right: under a democracy, those who live in a no-facts zone have the right to have their ballot counted. Their vote is indeed quite as legitimate as the vote of the learned. Each of the 43% of Americans who believes, against all evidence, that Saddam helped plan 9/11 has the same number of votes as Richard Clarke: one.
But what if the integrity of the electoral system itself was brought into question? What if the votes were not counted fairly? What if the voting machines were rigged? What if conditions were created legally, as they were in Ohio, that would make voting impossible for many working people? What if a segment of the population was systematically disenfranchised, often illegally, because of its skin color?
Winichakul is right: a person who believes in democracy must believe in the supremacy of the ballot box. But does that mean he would support a coup if Thaksin had not, in fact, been legitimately elected? And if so, what would the implications be for George W. Bush?
12:07 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Monday, September 25, 2006
Rasmussen polls Americans on the Pope
Only 54% have a "favorable opinion of the Pope." But that is a twenty point improvement since the conclave.
7:39 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Harold Ford: SMART
Watch every single one of his ads. This is how Democrats can win an election.
5:09 PM | Post or Read Comments (1)
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More George Allen
Figures:
Shelton, a tight end and wide receiver for the Cavaliers in the early 1970s, said Allen used the N-word only around white teammates.
Shelton said the incident with the deer occurred during their college days when he, Allen and another teammate who has since died were hunting on a farm the third man's family owned near Bumpass, Va., 40 miles east of the university.
Shelton said Allen asked the other teammate where black families lived in the area, then stuffed a female deer's head into the mail box of one of the homes.
"George insisted on taking the severed head, and I was a little shocked by that," Shelton said.
"This was just after the movie "The Godfather" came out with the severed horse's head in the bed," Shelton told the AP.
Shelton described himself as an independent who has supported Democratic and Republican candidates and has no political reason to attack Allen. He said he regretted that he had not spoken against Allen in the early 1980s, when he was first entering politics, and began writing down his recollections as Allen's career "ascended to heights I never could have imagined."
He said he came forward to Salon.com because of Allen's mention as a 2008 presidential candidate and because of the Macaca incident.
"When I saw the look in his eye in that camera and using the word 'macaca,' it just brought back the bullying way I knew from George back then," Shelton said.
4:59 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Chris Wallace goes the way of W
And insults his superior (in this case, far, far superior) father publicly. Pathetic.
According to the elder Wallace, he'd ask Bush:
"What in the world prepared you to be the commander in chief of the largest superpower in the world? In your background, Mr. President, you apparently were incurious. You didn't want to travel. You knew very little about the military. . . . The governor of Texas doesn't have the kind of power that some governors have. . . . Why do you think they nominated you? . . . Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that the country is so fucked up?"
This comment prompted Chris, "Rightwing Hack" Wallace to accuse his father of essentially going senile!
"He's lost it. The man has lost it. What can I say," the younger Wallace lamented to WRKO Boston radio host Howie Carr on Friday.
"He's 87-years old and things have set in," the Fox anchor continued. "I mean, we're going to have a competence hearing pretty soon."
It was so bad that the rightwing radio host who interviewed Chris Wallace even gave him an opportunity to retract what he said. But, to no avail!
Wallace Jr. quickly dispelled any notion that he was joking. When Carr suggested that his comments were likely to be covered by NewsMax, he responded: "You know what? Fine. Go ahead. Call them. That's fine. I'll stand by that."
I'm going to guess that Chris Wallace is a Bush backer. Which means that in 2008 he'll probably vote for another candidate who won't stand by his family. How will he choose between John Puto McCain and George Felix Allen?
4:55 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Jerry Brown for California Attorney General
This is an early endorsement for a fellow blogger. Never less than interesting, he will surely be the most politically experienced state Attorney General in American history.
2:07 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Mel Gibson's blasphemy
Now it turns out he's against the war in Iraq. Maybe the non-Catholic (yes, that's right, he is not Roman Catholic) anti-Semite and homophobe may not even be an evangelical hero.
He presented a work-in-progress screening of his Mayan adventure tale, and then took questions. About one-third of the full house gathered for the film gave him a standing ovation. The film is scheduled for a December 8 release via Disney.
In describing its portrait of a civilization in decline, Gibson said, ``The precursors to a civilization that's going under are the same, time and time again,'' drawing parallels between the Mayan civilization on the brink of collapse and America's present situation. ``What's human sacrifice,'' he asked, ``if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?''
The only thing that could offend a Religious Republican more would be a remake of Pasolini's Gospel According to St. Matthew. But no worries, evangelicals and Republican Catholics, he won't go that far. Like you, Mel was brought up to believe only in Christ--not his teachings.
1:33 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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This is how it's done
From Tester versus Burns in Montana:
Burns said he also supported programs monitoring international telephone calls against those suspected of terrorism.
"He wants to weaken the Patriot Act," he said of Tester.
Tester sought to clarify:
"I don't want to weaken the Patriot Act, I want to repeal it. What it does, it takes away your freedom ... and when you take away our freedoms, the terrorists have won," Tester said.
He came back to the subject near the end of the debate, when Burns tried to link him to New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is, Burns said, pro-gun-control.
"With things like the Patriot Act," Tester said, "We'd damn well better keep our guns."
Using the Second Amendment to protect the Fourth: now that's a smart Democrat.
1:06 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sunday, September 24, 2006
Fork time?
Many white Americans are comfortable voting for Republicans who are racist in their policies. But they are far less comfortable voting for those who give verbal expression to their racism.
Unfortunately for George Allen, he may be about to fall into the second category.
Three former college football teammates of Sen. George Allen say that the Virginia Republican repeatedly used an inflammatory racial epithet and demonstrated racist attitudes toward blacks during the early 1970s.
"Allen said he came to Virginia because he wanted to play football in a place where 'blacks knew their place,'" said Dr. Ken Shelton, a white radiologist in North Carolina who played tight end for the University of Virginia football team when Allen was quarterback. "He used the N-word on a regular basis back then."
A second white teammate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution from the Allen campaign, separately claimed that Allen used the word "nigger" to describe blacks. "It was so common with George when he was among his white friends. This is the terminology he used," the teammate said.
A third white teammate contacted separately, who also spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of being attacked by the Virginia senator, said he too remembers Allen using the word "nigger," though he said he could not recall a specific conversation in which Allen used the term. "My impression of him was that he was a racist," the third teammate said.
Shelton also told Salon that the future senator gave him the nickname "Wizard," because he shared a last name with Robert Shelton, who served in the 1960s as the imperial wizard of the United Klans of America, a group affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan. The radiologist said he decided earlier this year that he would go public with his concerns about Allen if a reporter ever called. About four months ago, when he heard that Allen was a possible candidate for president in 2008, Shelton began to write down some of the negative memories of his former teammate. He provided Salon excerpts of those notes last week.
11:27 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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"The Architect's nuts and bolts"
Profound: the eureka moment that explains the lurch to the extreme right.
11:07 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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What Graham is really after
Novak says it's AG if the coward gets elected:
Before reaching agreement Thursday on the military tribunals issue, the Bush White House was not happy about the defection of Chairman John Warner and two other Senate Armed Services Committee Republicans, but was most upset with Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Presidential aides claim that Graham had been on board with the administration's language until Sen. John McCain opposed it in early September. They contend that Graham is aiming at being attorney general in a McCain Cabinet.
As a House member, Graham defied party leaders in his state of South Carolina in 2000 to support McCain in a losing effort against George W. Bush.
10:43 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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GOP turnout booster
Gay marriage bans will be on the ballot in Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. Fortunately the first two races don't look too close. Harold Ford, meanwhile, opposes gay marriages and has run a very church-friendly campaign. So the strategy may not work this time around.
7:42 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Diebold refuses tests on its voting machines
Kudos to the New York Times for daring to touch the issue that is central to our legitimacy as a democracy:
On Sept. 13, when Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy posted its findings, Diebold issued a press release that shrugged off the demonstration and analysis. It said Princeton’s AccuVote machine was “two generations old” and “not used anywhere in the country.”
I spoke last week with Professor Felten, who said he could not imagine how a newer version of the AccuVote’s software could protect itself against this kind of attack. But he also said he would welcome the opportunity to test it. I called Diebold to see if it would lend Princeton a machine.
Mark G. Radke, director for marketing at Diebold, said that the AccuVote machines were certified by state election officials and that no academic researcher would be permitted to test an AccuVote supplied by the company. “This is analogous to launching a nuclear missile,” he said enigmatically, adding that Diebold had to restrict “access to the buttons.”
I persisted. Suppose, I asked, that a test machine were placed in the custodial care of the United States Election Assistance Commission, a government agency. Mr. Radke demurred again, saying the company’s critics were so focused on software that they “have no appreciation of physical security” that protects the machines from intrusion. [///]
Even before the minibar lineage of the AccuVote key had been discovered, the researchers had learned that the lock was easily circumvented: one of them could consistently pick it in less than 10 seconds.
If skeptics cannot believe what they read about the ease of manipulating an election, they can watch the 10-minute online video: the AccuVote lock is picked, a memory card is inserted and the malicious software is loaded; the machine is rebooted, and within 60 seconds the machine is ready to throw the election in favor of any specified candidate.
Computer scientists with expertise in security issues have been sounding alarms for years. David L. Dill at Stanford and Douglas W. Jones at the University of Iowa were among the first to alert the public to potential problems. But the possibility of vote theft by electronic means remained nothing more than a hypothesis — until the summer of 2003, when the code for the AccuVote’s operating system was discovered on a Diebold server that was publicly accessible.
The code quickly made its way into researchers’ hands. Suspected vulnerabilities were confirmed, and never-contemplated sloppiness was added to the list of concerns. At a computer security conference, the AccuVote’s anatomy was analyzed closely by a team: Aviel D. Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins; two junior associates, Tadayoshi Kohno and Adam Stubblefield; and Dan S. Wallach, an associate professor in computer science at Rice. They described how the AccuVote software design rendered the machine vulnerable to manipulation by smart cards. They found that the standard protections to prevent alteration of the internal code were missing; they characterized the system as “far below even the most minimal security standards.”
5:40 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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More Bhumiboi
An argument for benign monarchy:
Thailand was spared carnage largely because it was the only country in the region never to be colonised, thanks to the flexibility of its 19th-century kings, who instantly recognised the superior military might of Western gunboats as they sailed up the Chao Phraya River, and brilliantly played off the competing powers of Britain and France against each other until both settled for trade access without political control. As Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam resisted European muscle and lost, later to suffer the bloody birth pangs of independence, Thais adapted and endured.
Those skills have preserved the monarchy ever since. In 1932 a military coup — in an age where kings began to lose out across the world — overturned the absolute monarchy, turning it into a constitutional one. After 1945, 17 coups, 15 constitutions and 20 prime ministers followed.
Somehow or other the country managed to develop despite this chaos. Tourists began arriving in droves (and are unlikely to be put off by this week’s drama), while the King remaining a much-needed permanent fixture. Now 78, he has seen them come and go: uniformed tyrants, land-grabbing generals and more than a few good democrats along the way. The 1970s and 1980s saw a tragicomic succession of coups and counter-coups and brief respites of civilian rule.
Thailand’s darkest day came in May 1992, when 50 student protesters against the latest military ruler were killed by troops. The King has always been hailed for bringing the country back into the light. He summoned General Suchinda, the prime minister, to the palace and, live on television, ordered him to kneel. The General’s humiliation was complete and his iron rule over. Then came the longest unbroken run of imperfect, corrupt but indisputably elected governments. The media developed into the liveliest and most free in Asia; state agencies gained competence and a measure of transparency, while protest was tolerated.
Thaksin Shinawatra, the man ousted on Tuesday night, broke a developing consensus and was a different proposition from anything before. A telecoms billionaire who only started his political party Thai Rak Thai (‘Thais love Thai’) in 1999, two years before his election, he promised to make Thais rich. His money developed a huge power base. And while his predecessors were guilty of many things, none behaved like a president, or even a king. Thaksin’s great error, made over and over again, was to confuse the country’s good with his own; to judge an attack on him as an attack on the state. There is only one embodiment of the nation and the people, and that is the King. To an army fiercely loyal to the crown, the attack was intolerable.
He also angered the top brass by befriending the Burmese junta, with which he has a satellite television deal, and by reducing the Thai military presence on a volatile border. Bangkok’s middle classes, meanwhile, saw him as a tax-dodging crony capitalist who exploited his position and subverted democracy for the benefit of his family and friends. [...]
The rural masses may still love Thaksin, who introduced cheap healthcare and loan schemes, but they have been ignored as Thailand has proved unable to kick the coup habit. The generals simply dusted down their manual on how to stage a coup and followed it to the letter. In the longest reign of any living monarch, King Bhumibol has both backed coups and rebuffed them. Generals acting in his name have now overthrown the man with the biggest majority ever won, claiming that he was dividing the nation.
The King’s actions have always been guided not by his interests, but by the country’s, which is why the Thais will almost certainly accept his wishes once again, and why this coup will very probably work. The people, like their monarch, understand the limits of democracy and the boundless advantages of flexibility in a turbulent world.
5:26 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Chavez
He's up for re-election in just a few weeks. His popularity is in the fifties, but the price of oil is falling at a crucial moment. The geopolitics of calling Bush the devil may be debatable. But opposing Bush has been a proven election winner in Germany, England, South Korea, India, Italy, and Spain. South America, where the disgust is far deeper, is no exception. In the future it may be seen as a moment of electoral brilliance.
5:18 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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TPM: Will Bush invade Iran?
Depends on your definition of "rational."
My friend says that despite the Administration's well-documented bad ideas, as played out in the Iraq invasion, for example, it doesn't act irrationally, and that military action against Iran now is not rational.
He points, among other things, to the lack of troops, the fact that the Administration itself would view limiting the action to airstrikes as a demonstration of its own weakeness, and the absence of political support for the move even among Republicans compared with the support for the Iraq invasion.
All good points, but I don't have the same degree of confidence in the Administration's rationality. And even if I grant the rationality argument, it strikes me that attacking Iran might be "rational" if it means the difference between the GOP winning or losing Congress. Gary Hart lays out what seems to me like a plausible scenario for pre-election military action.
Unfortunately, my friend and I agree that if the GOP retains control of Congress, all bets are off and everything up to and including a ground invasion will be on the table.
5:09 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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"Blair: Out in no more than a year"
In which Michael Barone makes an interesting point:
It's unclear also how the new Conservative leader David Cameron would respond. He has been taking a skeptical-about-America line, partly because it's politically popular, I suppose, but also probably out of conviction. Americans should not assume that the Conservative Party is uniformly pro-American. There's a vein of dislike for vulgar Americans on the British right, and many Conservatives share the disdain of Foreign Office career diplomats for George W. Bush and American policies generally. The British prime ministers least sympathetic to America over the past 70 years were Neville Chamberlain and Edward Heath, both Conservatives.
3:01 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Saturday, September 23, 2006
Kerry "gets" religion
Two years too late. Sad.
In a speech he said he wishes he had given before the 2004 presidential election, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) yesterday described his religious life in greater candor and detail than ever before.
Kerry said in Malibu, Calif., that he "wandered in the wilderness" after the Vietnam War but came back to the Roman Catholic Church after a sudden and moving revelation in the late 1980s.
Kerry expressed regret over his reluctance to talk publicly about his faith during his failed presidential campaign. "I learned that if I didn't fill in the picture myself, others would draw the caricature for me. I will never let that happen again -- and neither should you," he told students at Pepperdine University.
In politics how long and it took a presidential run to learn that? He was Michael Dukakis' lieutenant governor and he didn't learn how the Bush family lies about its opponents? John Kerry would have been a great president, but no amount of explanation changes the fact that the candidate whose strong suit was electability allowed himself to be smeared with such impunity.
Yesterday, a new group called Red Letter Christians, named for the colored type that highlights the words of Jesus in popular editions of the Bible, called for Christians to "vote their values" by considering the war in Iraq, torture, environmental degradation and helping the poor to be vital religious issues.
"We believe in a Jesus who said 'Blessed are the peacemakers,' " said the Rev. Tony Campolo, a founder of the group, which says it is forming a grass-roots network of 7,000 clergy members.
Great news, but the Gospels are hard sell for your average evangelical.
4:49 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Casey's CUA lecture
But right wing Catholics are upset that a pro-life Democratic politician (and former Jesuit volunteer) was allowed to speak at a prominent Catholic university of which he was an alumnus. As always, these folks are Republicans first, Americans second, Catholics last.
For the record, this is what got them so upset:
U.S. Senate candidate Bob Casey Jr. used a speech at Catholic University yesterday to place himself among the growing number of Democrats seeking to loosen the Republican Party's grip on religious voters.
Decrying a climate of "fear" and division in the nation, Casey called for a renewed commitment to the "common good" and for political leadership that demands shared sacrifice in order to achieve it.
"We must recommit ourselves to affirming the human dignity of every individual," Casey said, outlining a political philosophy shaped by faith during a speech at the university's Columbus School of Law.
"We can live up to our moral obligation to promote the common good only when we see the connection between our individual well-being and that of our neighbors, and the connection between our national security and the security of all nations," Casey said. "This is an idea worthy of our sacrifice and the proud traditions of our nation and our faith." [...]
It is not enough to be against abortion, Casey said. "We cannot say we are against abortion of an unborn child and then let our children suffer in degraded inner-city schools and broken homes," he said. "We can't claim to be pro-life at the same time as we are cutting Medicaid or Head Start, and the Women, Infants, and Children's program." [...]
Casey, who does not support same-sex marriage but does endorse civil unions, said that moral issues had too often been exploited to divide voters and keep political power. He argued that the GOP, with tax breaks for the wealthy and ballooning budget deficits, threatened to cause "slow-moving Katrinas" based on "malign neglect" of the neediest in the nation.
"Justice demands our understanding that the hungry, the impoverished, and the uninsured in this country are not statistics, they are children of God. And they are our brothers and sisters."
4:34 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Mfume's son endorses Steele
The two Democratic senate seats at greatest risk are Maryland and New Jersey. This is a huge shot in the arm to sellout Michael Steele.
4:08 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Young voters
They back Democrats by a 21 point margin, but they are hardly a wild card. If they didn't turn out in massive numbers in 2004, there is no reason to expect them this time around.
3:33 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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GayHeroes.com: Was Lincoln Gay?
The United States has already had a gay president. Could Germany be next?
2:25 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Friday, September 22, 2006
Chomsky's at #1!
But Alan Dershowitz doesn't believe it will mean a whole lotin the end:
But Alan M. Dershowitz, the lawyer and Harvard Law School professor, said he doubted whether many of the current buyers would ever actually read the book.
“I don’t know anybody who’s ever read a Chomsky book,” said Mr. Dershowitz, who said he first met Mr. Chomsky in 1948 at a Hebrew-speaking Zionist camp in the Pocono Mountains where Mr. Dershowitz was a camper and Mr. Chomsky was a counselor.
“You buy them, you put them in your pockets, you put them out on your coffee table,” said Mr. Dershowitz, a longtime critic of Mr. Chomsky. The people who are buying “Hegemony” now, he added, “I promise you they are not going to get to the end of the book.”
He continued: “He does not write page turners, he writes page stoppers. There are a lot of bent pages in Noam Chomsky’s books, and they are usually at about Page 16.”
11:59 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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CO-4 news
Could the horridMarilyn Musgrave be going down to defeat in Colorado? She's 4 points ahead according to the latest Survey USA poll, 46-42. Meanwhile, the Reform Party candidate is at 8%, his support coming from all sides.
8:32 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Beijing's Bolivarian Venture
An important piece in the National Interest by Gabe Collins and Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky (young conservative Princeton alumni) about the politics of oil, China, Venezuela, and the long term impact of the United States' abandonment of Latin America under Bush. Let me reiterate what I've said many other times: the long term threat to the United States is not the Middle East but China.
China already has a strong relationship with a number of Islamic oil producing states. Its emerging economic relationship with Venezuela and many other Latin American nations is a real threat to American interests.
Chinese support for Chavez's regime would be consistent with Beijing's proven willingness to use its influence at the UN to shield unattractive but oil-rich regimes, like Sudan and Iran, from U.S. and allied pressure. A large and reliable Chinese market for Venezuelan oil makes Chavez's recurrent threats to shut off or slow the export of oil to the United States more credible.
For Venezuela to discontinue its exports to the United States today would be self-defeating, while doing so with a hungry Chinese market ready to absorb redirected supplies might be profitable. Chavez has almost said as much. In a recent speech he warned: "The government of the United States should know that if they go over the line, they are not going to have Venezuelan oil . . . I have already taken measures regarding this. I'm not going to say what because they think that I can't take these measures because we would not have any place to send the oil." Were he one day to follow through on his threats, the short-term supply disruption could roil the global oil market and increase American dependence on other unstable suppliers of oil--the Middle East, Africa and the former Soviet Union.
Finally, and perhaps most significantly, a large Chinese stake in Venezuela could mark the end of the comfortable strategic assumption that Washington can keep half an eye on the Western Hemisphere, swat at the occasional dictator, and otherwise focus its foreign policy further afield. U.S. officials with responsibility for Latin America should remember that Beijing has consistently sought to project power abroad to secure its energy supplies. China's military deployment in Sudan is but one example. Chinese strategists have long feared that U.S. naval forces could choke off their oil supply in the event of conflict over Taiwan. Accordingly, Beijing is sinking billions into constructing a blue-water navy as well as deep-water ports in Pakistan and Burma that could serve as bases for Chinese units protecting the shipment of oil from the Middle East to China.
If 20 percent of China's oil were ultimately to come from Venezuela, similar strategies might be extended into the Western Hemisphere. [...] Taken together, Bolivarian Venezuela, subsidized Caribbean governments, and the Panama Canal could form a chain of positions protecting the flow of oil from Venezuela to China--projecting Beijing's influence into an area where Washington has grown unused to competition.
International events regularly defy precise prediction. Nevertheless, three intertwining trends merit attention from U.S. policymakers: Venezuelan oil production--the lifeblood of Chavez's revolution--is declining and dependent on injections of foreign expertise and investment; Chavez's hostility to the United States has left U.S. companies increasingly unwelcome--and unwilling to do business--in Venezuela; while China, thirsty for oil, invests massively and enjoys much warmer relations with Chavez's government than the Unit