To Win a Fight, You Have to Fight

Late Friday night I caught part of the replay of British Member of Parliament George's Galloway's appearance before the Senate subcommittee investigating the UN "Oil for Food" scandal. The subcommittee is headed by the loathesome Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota. It's hard to believe that a seat that was once held by such greats as Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale is now occupied by this preening, sleazy, empty-headed idiot. (gratuitous before and after pictures of his teeth from his dentist's website here. Yup, he illegally got the teeth for free while Mayor of St. Paul, then quickly paid for them when the dentist's website was discovered by blogtopia.) Oh yeah, Minnesota is the same state that elected Jesse Ventura, professional wrestler, as its governor. I wonder what kind of crap is in their water?

I digress. This post is about George Galloway. The committee had already assembled a dossier (sinister Soviet music should be playing in your head) of its evidence indicting Galloway as a collaborator with Saddam Hussein. They brought Galloway in to put his head on a pike. But he turned the tables. He made mincemeat of them. If you get a chance to view it, you should. But at least read his testimony. Listen for his Scottish accent as you read.

This is how we must fight the lies of the right. You can't be moderate in your opposition to liars. You have to fight to win. When you are right, when you are speaking the truth, you will persuade. You will win.

Since the subcommittee has removed Mr. Galloway's testimony from its website, his opening statement is reproduced below in its entirety.

Published on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 by the Times Online (UK)
Galloway vs. The US Senate: Transcript of Statement
George Galloway, Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, delivered this statement to US Senators today who have accused him of corruption

* * * * *

"Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf.

"Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.

"Now I want to deal with the pages that relate to me in this dossier and I want to point out areas where there are - let's be charitable and say errors. Then I want to put this in the context where I believe it ought to be. On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false.

"I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as "many meetings" with Saddam Hussein.

"As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defense made of his.

"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce.

"You will see from the official parliamentary record, Hansard, from the 15th March 1990 onwards, voluminous evidence that I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do and than any other member of the British or American governments do.

"Now you say in this document, you quote a source, you have the gall to quote a source, without ever having asked me whether the allegation from the source is true, that I am 'the owner of a company which has made substantial profits from trading in Iraqi oil'.

"Senator, I do not own any companies, beyond a small company whose entire purpose, whose sole purpose, is to receive the income from my journalistic earnings from my employer, Associated Newspapers, in London. I do not own a company that's been trading in Iraqi oil. And you have no business to carry a quotation, utterly unsubstantiated and false, implying otherwise.

"Now you have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad. If you had any of the letters against me that you had against Zhirinovsky, and even Pasqua, they would have been up there in your slideshow for the members of your committee today.

"You have my name on lists provided to you by the Duelfer inquiry, provided to him by the convicted bank robber, and fraudster and conman Ahmed Chalabi who many people to their credit in your country now realize played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq.

"There were 270 names on that list originally. That's somehow been filleted down to the names you chose to deal with in this committee. Some of the names on that committee included the former secretary to his Holiness Pope John Paul II, the former head of the African National Congress Presidential office and many others who had one defining characteristic in common: they all stood against the policy of sanctions and war which you vociferously prosecuted and which has led us to this disaster.

"You quote Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me, I've never met Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee apparently has. But I do know that he's your prisoner, I believe he's in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges, punishable by death. In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay, including I may say, British citizens being held in those places.

"I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances. But you quote 13 words from Dahar Yassein Ramadan whom I have never met. If he said what he said, then he is wrong.

"And if you had any evidence that I had ever engaged in any actual oil transaction, if you had any evidence that anybody ever gave me any money, it would be before the public and before this committee today because I agreed with your Mr Greenblatt [Mark Greenblatt, legal counsel on the committee].

"Your Mr Greenblatt was absolutely correct. What counts is not the names on the paper, what counts is where's the money. Senator? Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars of money? The answer to that is nobody. And if you had anybody who ever paid me a penny, you would have produced them today.

"Now you refer at length to a company names in these documents as Aredio Petroleum. I say to you under oath here today: I have never heard of this company, I have never met anyone from this company. This company has never paid a penny to me and I'll tell you something else: I can assure you that Aredio Petroleum has never paid a single penny to the Mariam Appeal Campaign. Not a thin dime. I don't know who Aredio Petroleum are, but I daresay if you were to ask them they would confirm that they have never met me or ever paid me a penny.

"Whilst I'm on that subject, who is this senior former regime official that you spoke to yesterday? Don't you think I have a right to know? Don't you think the Committee and the public have a right to know who this senior former regime official you were quoting against me interviewed yesterday actually is?

"Now, one of the most serious of the mistakes you have made in this set of documents is, to be frank, such a schoolboy howler as to make a fool of the efforts that you have made. You assert on page 19, not once but twice, that the documents that you are referring to cover a different period in time from the documents covered by The Daily Telegraph which were a subject of a libel action won by me in the High Court in England late last year.

"You state that The Daily Telegraph article cited documents from 1992 and 1993 whilst you are dealing with documents dating from 2001. Senator, The Daily Telegraph's documents date identically to the documents that you were dealing with in your report here. None of The Daily Telegraph's documents dealt with a period of 1992, 1993. I had never set foot in Iraq until late in 1993 - never in my life. There could possibly be no documents relating to Oil-for-Food matters in 1992, 1993, for the Oil-for-Food scheme did not exist at that time.

"And yet you've allocated a full section of this document to claiming that your documents are from a different era to the Daily Telegraph documents when the opposite is true. Your documents and the Daily Telegraph documents deal with exactly the same period.

"But perhaps you were confusing the Daily Telegraph action with the Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor did indeed publish on its front pages a set of allegations against me very similar to the ones that your committee have made. They did indeed rely on documents which started in 1992, 1993. These documents were unmasked by the Christian Science Monitor themselves as forgeries.

"Now, the neo-con websites and newspapers in which you're such a hero, senator, were all absolutely @#%#*-a-hoop at the publication of the Christian Science Monitor documents, they were all absolutely convinced of their authenticity. They were all absolutely convinced that these documents showed me receiving $10 million from the Saddam regime. And they were all lies.

"In the same week as the Daily Telegraph published their documents against me, the Christian Science Monitor published theirs which turned out to be forgeries and the British newspaper, Mail on Sunday, purchased a third set of documents which also upon forensic examination turned out to be forgeries. So there's nothing fanciful about this. Nothing at all fanciful about it.

"The existence of forged documents implicating me in commercial activities with the Iraqi regime is a proven fact. It's a proven fact that these forged documents existed and were being circulated amongst right-wing newspapers in Baghdad and around the world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi regime.

"Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth.

"Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Halliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.

"Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it.

"Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government."

A Modest Proposal

An odd topic for a return post, but here goes:

Why don't the folks in charge of our roads invest in a little paint? I drove home late last night in the rain, and most of the roads on which I traveled had lane lines and markers that were completely worn away. Which made it very hazardous to be driving an unfamiliar route!

I bet if the lanes were just clearly marked with bright clear flourescent paint, there would be many fewer accidents, both night and day, but especially night.

Another brief break

My computer is going to the shop for a few days, so posting will be light or nonexistent until it returns to the fold.

David Brooks is Writing , He Must Be Lying

From today's New York Times:

Calling Democrats' Bluff

Democrats have been hectoring President Bush in the manner of an overripe Fourth of July orator. The president should be summoning us to make shared sacrifices for the common good. The president should care for the poor, and stop favoring the rich. He should make the hard choices and impose a little fiscal discipline on government.

**********

Over the past few weeks, the president has called their bluff. By embracing the progressive indexing of Social Security benefits, the president has asked us to make a shared sacrifice for the common good. He's asking middle- and upper-class folks to accept benefit cuts so there will be money for the people who are really facing poverty.

He has asked us to redistribute money down the income scale. Why should programs for children and families be strangled so Donald Trump can get bigger benefit checks?

He has made the hard choices. By facing up to the fact that there are going to be benefit cuts, he's offended Newt Gingrich, Jack Kemp, the supply siders and other important Republican constituencies.

This column is so full of lies and false assumptions it's hard to know where to begin. Like, since when are Newt Gingrich & Jack Kemp important Republican constituencies? Is it 1994 or am I am in a time warp? David Brooks is such a tool. He's a fine inheritor of the legacy of William Safire, the former biggest liar on the New York Times editorial page.

Other lies: Bush has made the hard choices. No he hasn't! He has no plan. He's wildly floating ideas now that he sees his initial idea for destroying Social Security has tanked. But that's still his goal. Progressive indexing is just a more upfront way of destroying Social Security. Let's lower benefits for most of the people who pay into the system! Nothing will be more effective in lowering popular support for the system than making it all a big welfare program. (Oh, and Republicans love welfare programs, right? NOT.) Most people hate paying taxes. Are they going to feel better about paying social security tax knowing they will have to be abjectly poor to collect? Of course not.

Now, remember that less than a month ago, the Republicans abolished the inheritance tax. Didn't affect one single middle-class person, as the ONLY estates taxed were those over one million dollars in value. (Legal note: Since most married people hold their houses in joint tenancy, the house is NOT part of the estate. It passes directly to the joint tenant when the other joint tenant dies. So, we are talking about one millions dollars in other assets! Not exactly a middle class issue.)

This progressive indexing idea will cut benefits to almost every middle class working person who pays into the system. So who does David Brooks use as an example of who will be affected? Donald Trump. What does Donald Trump care about a measly $1000 a month when he gets to pass his millions on to his heirs while avoiding millions in inheritance tax?

I can't believe the New York Times pays Brooks to write this horseshit.

Dailykos has a similar take: Stop The Presses, Brooks Lies Again

Next Democratic Star?

Life of the Party
Brian Schweitzer, the blue governor of the red state of Montana, may just have the answer to the Democrats' woes.

(this article is on salon.com, so to view it you have to watch an ad to get a "site pass")

April 19, 2005 | HELENA, Mont. -- The future is wearing a turquoise bolo tie wrapped around the open collar of a blue-and-white-striped button-down dress shirt. And if that doesn't sound quite right, then you haven't considered the mismatched gray suit coat or the blue jeans and boots down below. Meet Brian Schweitzer, the soil sciences major who grew up to be the governor of Montana -- and may be the next best hope of the Democratic Party.

On Nov. 2, George W. Bush beat John Kerry in Montana by 20 percentage points. On the same day, Montana voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage -- and elected as their governor a populist, pro-choice Democrat. Are Montana voters as schizophrenic as the governor's fashion sense, or is Brian Schweitzer just that good?

A lot of folks say it's the latter. Everyone from the Washington Monthly to the American Spectator has taken note of the rancher from Whitefish, Mont., and what the Wall Street Journal called his "well-spoken, gun-owning, dog-loving, native-ritual-doing, shot-of-whiskey-drinking true-west style." Democrats hungry for hope in the dark days after 2004 find themselves wondering whether another little-known governor from a small red state can somehow help them find their way back to the White House.

Ask Schweitzer about 2008, and he ticks off the names of Democratic governors who've proved they can appeal to red-state voters. What about him? "You know, all these people are saying, 'To be governor of Montana, he must have it figured out,'" Schweitzer says. "I'm telling you, I've broken more colts than there are days that I've been in office. I'm just a regular guy, getting things done in Montana. I don't know if that works nationally, but I don't care."

The Democrats need a candidate who can speak English. There's a reason Senators don't get elected President: They speak Senate-ese. An elite, effete, arrogant, wordy, indirect, imprecise, courtly, passive & ultimately unpersuasive language. They're like lawyers but worse. At least trial lawyers have to learn to persuade 12 regular folks so we HAVE to master the colloquial. It's not "Who among us does not love NASCAR?" It's either "NASCAR rocks!" or "NASCAR sucks!", depending on your point of view. (OK, I gotta admit, I just don't get the NASCAR thing. How can driving a car be a sport? How can people sit in a giant stadium for hours watching a bunch of cars go around in a circle? Give me an English Premiere League soccer game any day.)

So Schweitzer's my guy. He speaks English. He's direct. He tells stories to persuade, rather than telling people his conclusions in florid language.

No more Senators! Let's learn one thing from President Horse Fondler: It is better to speak simply & directly. People will believe you & vote for you EVEN IF YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!

Jumping off my soap box, heading to the kitchen to make dinner....NOT "In regards to the previous statement, I will withdraw and allow others to judge my proposal. Now is the time to prepare our repast."

Say it, and say it plainly. No more Senators.

Joey Has Two Moms

Mom's the Word

Years ago, then-Giants second baseman Jeff Kent was changing out of his uniform when he glanced at the nearby reporters and cracked, "There are no queers here, are there?" The comment barely raised an eyebrow.

Valentine is aware of the stigma. That is why his family asked that this story not be published until Valentine secured a spot on the major league roster.

"We've almost never been treated badly," said Deb Valentine, Joe's birth mother. "But we live in the real world, and you don't 100 percent know how people will react."

Here's the startling thing: Thus far in Joe Valentine's life, few have reacted.

Born in Las Vegas on Christmas Eve 1979, Joe is the biological son of Deb Valentine and a man she prefers not to discuss, a man Joe does not know. Deb declined to discuss the circumstances of the pregnancy, but when she delivered Joe at Sunrise Hospital, the person by her side was Doreen Price, her life partner since they first met in a bowling alley in 1975.

I think the Red Sox should trade for this kid. We need the pitching (David Wells, Curt Schilling & Keith Foulke are not exactly having career years) and then his two moms could get legally married in Massachusetts.

It's been a year since gay marriage came to Massachusetts (thank you Supreme Judicial Court) and look what's happened: NOTHING! We still have the lowest divorce rate in the nation, and there's been no plague of locusts or anything of the sort. Well , there was that moron Ron Crews who moved here from Georgia & ran for Congress against my Congressman, the estimable Jim McGovern, but Crews lost 2-1 & hopefully has taken the hint and gone down south of the Mason Dixon line again.

Haters need not apply here in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Since I Been Gone

We gotta a Pope who can be called "Joey Ratz", a former member of the Hitler Youth.

The Bible thumpers are after judges, most of whom are quite conservative.

John Bolton, a man who chases people who don't agree with him up & down the hallways of hotels in foreign countries, has been nominated to be our head diplomat at the UN.

The Secret Service has released records that show that the Presstitute didn't sign out of the White House, more than a dozen times. Which leads us to question, who was the Presstitute schtupping??? My money's on Scottie.

It was a good three weeks to be semi-conscious.

Time Out

Apologies to my readers for disappearing without notice. A friend's medical emergency took me off the blogging beat. Now my computer is bugging out. And Friday I have my own long-scheduled minor medical issue.

Whew. Not blogging is hard work.

I'll be back after tax day.

I Was Wrong - Jeb Has Lost His Mind

I suppose if I saw my national political career going down the tubes I might panic, too. Especially if I was the anointed one, the older, one, the smart one, the one who was supposed to be President first. It has to be galling to watch brother dumbBush preening from the throne Jebbie was supposed to occupy.

Speaking of "occupy", apparently Jeb sent law enforcement officers from two different Florida state agencies to seize poor Terri Schiavo, take her from her hospice & reinsert her feeding tube.

Police 'showdown' averted

Apparently one of those law enforcement officers realized they were being sent into a hornet's nest without a bee hood, because they called ahead to warn local police they were coming. Local police said Hell, No, no court order, no deal.

Insane. Were they going to hold a gun to a physician's head to force the reinsertion of the feeding tube? No doctor who wanted to have a medical license tomorrow would undertake a surgical procedure on the most famous hospice patient in the world.

God save me from becoming a political football. Fifteen years in a persistent vegetative state.

Did you know that until 2000, the parents of this poor woman admitted that she was in a PSV? According to the Miami Herald, in January of 2000 their own lawyer even admitted this in open court:

''We do not doubt that she's in a persistent vegetative state,'' Pam Campbell, then the Schindlers' lawyer, told the court. Later, Michael Schiavo's lawyer, George Felos, asked Mary Schindler, ''Is Terri in a vegetative condition now?'' to which she replied, ``Yes. That is what they call it.''

And there's no way the parents can "take care" of this woman. They couldn't do it 15 years ago; they certainly can't to it today. From the same article:

Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers brought Terri home briefly in the fall of 1990, but were overwhelmed.

There is a time to let go. It's long past. Stop the insanity & let this woman go.

Crackpot TV

I swear, I have never seen so many completely off-their-rocker people on TV before. Fox & CNN are competing to see who can put more right-wing nutjobs on the screen in an hour. Fox is of course winning but CNN is making a valiant effort. Just now, on CNN, the brainless newsreader breathlessly asked an "on-the-scene" reporter in Florida, (I'm paraphrasing here) "We just had [right-wing crackpot] on, and they are asking Governor Bush to throw out the Florida Constitution in order to save this woman's life. Is the governor considering this?" And she was SERIOUS, she gave this kind of wild, insane speculation credence.

Does CNN think Jebbie's cerebral cortex has liquified, too?

Apparently the religious wingnuts have decided that Jebbie is responsible, that if Terri Shiavo dies it's on his head & they will bring him down. Check out If Terri Dies It's Jeb's Fault on World O'Crap for the threats being made on Jebbie's political career. (Click on March 23rd when you go on World O'Crap.)

Years ago I had a client who had lung cancer. He loved Jack Kevorkian. My client had undergone incredibly painful & aggressive treatment for his cancer, and he was determined that when he couldn't take it anymore the decision to let go would be his. He thought Dr. Kevorkian was a hero & should be given a medal. My client died long before Kevorkian was put in jail for assisting two people with Alzheimer's to end their lives. He would have been horrified about Kevorkian being in jail. And he would be railing about Tom Delay, Bill Frist and the other meddling hypocrites in Congress for stepping into this very personal, painful & private decision.

In Sync With Katha Pollitt

I swear, I didn't read this:

Invisible Women by Katha Pollitt

Or maybe, like so many op-ed editors, they just don't see women, even when the women are right in front of them.

Before I wrote this:

Why I Can't Get a Column at the LA Times

Men just hire people who look like them (other men) and then look about wonderingly when women cry foul.

Read Katha, she's right on.

The Numbers Don't Lie

Benjamin Disraeli was right. There ARE lies, damned lies, and statistics. Barry Bond's statistics are the ultimate damned lie.

If I hear one more sportscaster (hello Hazel Mae!) say, in reference to Barry Bonds, "When it comes to Barry Bonds, the numbers don't lie", I will scream.

Hello, THAT'S THE POINT. The numbers of an admitted juicer are all lies. He cheated to get the stats. Therefore, the statistics are lies.

Could we stop saying that, please?

Christy Todd Spineless

Christy Todd Whitman was dumbBush's first EPA chief. She did nothing for the environment, let Cheney dictate policy, and resigned to write an "Aren't I a good Republican" book.

Bill McKibben lets her have it: Christy Todd Whitman: When Courage Was Called For, She Punted

Bush promised to lower carbon dioxide emissions during the 2000 campaign, actually had her to go the G-8 summit and promise the same, and then when she got back to DC he called her in & changed the policy. Now, says dumbBush, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant & the US will not agree to caps.

Did she fight this? Go all Elliott Richardson on Shrub & resign in high dudgeon over this? Oh, no. As McKibben describes it:

I can't think of an instance in modern U.S. history when a Cabinet member had been so neatly, quickly and publicly kneecapped. But instead of doing the right thing, Whitman did nothing.

In a spectacular display of political cowardice, she settled down at the EPA, devoting herself to minor pieces of legislation such as the one that extended limits on diesel emissions to vehicles for "non-road uses," like tractors and backhoes. Not a bad law, but in the end no big deal. Whitman had a chance to make a real difference on what one panel of Nobelists after another has called the worst dilemma human civilization yet has faced, and she'd passed it up.

Imagine what would have happened if she had simply quit, accusing the president of reneging on a promise, undermining relations with our allies and, more to the point, neglecting the most crucial environmental challenge that's ever appeared.

It would have lifted the issue out of its relative obscurity and set it at the center of American political debate. Whitman could have done more to move the United States off the dime about global warming than any politician before or since.

Whever any Democrat or liberal tells me we need to support moderate Republicans, I think of Christy. Not exactly a profile in courage. I'll stick with the Dems.

Bonds Turns Juice Into Whine

Woe is Barry Bonds. Barry Bonds is tired. Tired. Tired. The media has made him jump off a bridge (the Golden Gate?) Everyone is against him. It's making his children cry. Boo-hoo, woe is me, nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I'll go eat worms.

I gotta agree with Gary Peterson, in his article on MSNBC today: No one's buying Barry's pity party: Star has nerve to blame media for image he created

His concluding grafs:

For him to attempt to invoke pity is as impressive a feat as his low-orbit home run off Troy Percival in the 2002 World Series. Because, when you get right down to it:

Nobody told him to associate with trainer (and childhood friend) Greg Anderson, and nutritionist Victor Conte, two of the four targets in the BALCO case.

Nobody told him, when questioned by the BALCO grand jury in November, 2003, to give the literally unbelievable testimony (later leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle) that he used cream and clear substances thinking they were flaxseed oil and arthritis balm.

Nobody told him to keep a mistress for 10 years, an arrangement that is currently biting him in the hinder as she rats him out as a potential felon.

Nobody told him to sneer and scowl his way through the summer of 2001, when he set the single season home run record.

Nobody told him to loaf on ground ball outs to the point that local radio broadcasters were criticizing him on the air.

These are choices Bonds made, as is his right. The shocking thing is, he can't see how those choices have led to his stature as the least-loved player in the game.

But there he was on Tuesday, strapping on his pity party hat above sad, boo-hoo eyes. That's just another reason why, should this be the beginning of the end for Bonds, should he fail to hit the 53 home runs he needs to become baseball's all-time leader, a lot of people will be partying for another reason.

And they won't all be at Hank Aaron's house.

While MSNBCNBCFOXNEWSCSPAN et al are convulsed over the Schiavo case, very little of substance has hit the airwaves.

Here's the best commentary on the case, from the blogs(of course it's from the blogs, you were expecting actual news from the media?):

The Facts:

The Terri Schiavo Information Page, by Michael Conigliaro, from the Abstract Appeal blog

The Ethics:

Terri Schiavo, by hilzoy on the Obsidian Wings blog

Terri Schiavo, Part I: The Medical Post
Terri Schiavo, Part II: The Ethical Post by Rivka, on the Respectful of Otters blog

The politics are rather obvious.

I'd like to make it clear that it is my wish that I NOT be kept alive through medical treatment if I were in this situation. Give me a big dose of morphine & let me go.

Profile in Courage?

The judge who's been assigned the Schiavo case is named James Whittemore. Here's his bio:

Whittemore, James D.
Born 1952 in Walterboro, SC

Federal Judicial Service:
U. S. District Court, Middle District of Florida
Nominated by William J. Clinton on October 20, 1999, to a new seat created by 113 Stat. 1501; Confirmed by the Senate on May 24, 2000, and received commission on May 25, 2000.

Education:
University of Florida, B.S.B.A, 1974

Stetson University College of Law, J.D., 1977

Professional Career:
Private practice, FL, 1977
Assistant federal public defender, Office of Federal Public Defender, 1978-1981
Private practice, FL, 1981-1990
Judge, Thirteenth Judicial Circuit Court, Florida, 1990-2000


Race or Ethnicity: White

Gender: Male

Terri Schiavo Case

While Corporate Media reports every 15 minutes on "The Fight To Save Terri Schiavo", the phrase with which every story on MSNBCNNCNBCFOXNN is prefaced, here's what is missing from the coverage; from Digby:

By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient's family's wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother's wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are also aware that Republicans have voted en masse to pull the plug (no pun intended) on medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terry Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.

Those of us who read liberal blogs also understand that that the tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terry Schiavo's care thus far.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are aware that the bankruptcy bill will make it even more difficult for families who suffer a catastrophic illness like Terry Schiavo's because they will not be able to declare chapter 7 bankruptcy and get a fresh start when the gargantuan medical bills become overwhelming.

And those of us who read liberal blogs also know that this grandstanding by the congress is a purely political move designed to appease the religious right and that the legal maneuverings being employed would be anathema to any true small government conservative.

Those who don't read liberal blogs, on the other hand, are seeing a spectacle on television in which the news anchors repeatedly say that the congress is "stepping in to save Terry Schiavo" mimicking the unctuous words of Tom Delay as they grovel and leer at the family and nod sympathetically at the sanctimonious phonies who are using this issue for their political gain.

This is why we cannot trust the mainstream media. Most people get their news from television. And television is presenting this issue as a round the clock one dimensional soap opera pitting the "family", the congress and the church against this woman's husband and the judicial system that upheld Terry Schiavo's right and explicit request that she be allowed to die if extraordinary means were required to keep her alive. The ghoulish infotainment industry is making a killing by acceding once again to trumped up right wing sensationalism.

This issue gets to the essence of the culture war. Shall the state be allowed to interfere in the most delicate, complicated personal matters of life, death and health because a particular religious constituency holds that their belief system should override each individual's right to make these personal decisions for him or herself. And it isn't the allegedly statist/communist/socialist left that is agitating for the government to tell Americans how they must live and how they must die.

As an attorney, I am waiting to see if the federal judge who gets this case has the guts to declare the law unconstitutional and dismiss.

Why I Can't Get a Column at the LA Times

Shorter Michael Kinsley ("He wrote, she wrote") in today's Washington Post:

I can't hire women columnists because I have to give equal time to conservatives, and they're all white men.

Here's what he says:

Newspaper opinion sections also want diversity of political views. In recent years, that, frankly, has led to reverse discrimination in favor of conservatives. And an unpleasant reality is that each type of diversity is at war with the others. If pressure for more women succeeds -- as it will -- there will be fewer black voices, fewer Latinos and so on.

Why should this be so? Aren't there black women and conservative Latinos? Of course there are. There may even be a wonderfully articulate disabled Latino gay conservative who is undiscovered because she is outside the comfortable old-boy network. But there probably aren't two.

Hey moron, I got news for you: Every other group but gender has half men and half women! Really! You can look it up! Age, race, disability, nationality, ethnic origin, even sexual orientation, pretty much every group is half men & half women!

Men just hire people who look like them (other men) and then look about wonderingly when women cry foul.

I'm on the Washington Post (online)

I don't know how these things happen, but last night while I was reading the Washington Post I read words that seemed very familiar to me: my own!

Howard Kurtz excerpted my post on the baseball hearings in his Media Notes Extra column on Friday!

Here's how Howie (or more likely, one of his minions) cut and pasted my post:

The MainSt.USA blog: "Conveniently, Sammy Sosa has lost his ability to speak English . . . Jose Canseco is an idiot, but he's the only honest player on this panel...Mark McGwire has shrunk a great deal from his playing days . . . Congress is full of cowards. No one has even managed to make McGwire take the 5th Amendment, although it's clear that the 5th is his fallback position. They're letting him get away with "I'm not here to talk about the past" and offering to become a spokesperson against steroids which is just ridiculous. So we know: McGwire was juiced. Roger Maris still owns the single season home run record as far as I'm concerned. The only guys who have exceeded it are Bonds, McGwire & Sosa, The Juice Boys."

I wonder how they found me?

And if you're reading again, Howie, or as one of the players might have addressed you during the steroid hearings, Mr. Kurtz, a real journalist would identify himself as married to Sheri Annis, a Republican media strategist who runs a company called "Fourth Estate Strategies" selling her right wing media expertise. A real journalist would say that before every column, kind of like "I approved this message", so we'd all know where you're coming from. In baseball terms, the Kurtz/Annis family bats right and throws right. Right, not left, not center, right. Just so we're clear. I know I'm just a lowly pajama-wearing blogger, but we like to know these things up front.

If you're reading this blog after clicking on the link in the Post, leave a comment, please.

Colonel Mustard in the Study with the Candlestick

I don't know how I missed this yesterday, but Sammy "I No Speaka Da English" Sosa gave a very lawyerly answer to the question, 'Did he do steroids?'. Tom Boswell in the Washington Post heard what I didn't: an answer with a loophole big enough to drive a hypodermic needle through.

And what of Sosa? He spoke in a soft voice. He brought an interpreter and a lawyer who read his statement for him despite the fact that those of us who know him from the baseball beat realize that he is perfectly fluent in English. That Sosa statement was a 99.9 percent total denial of any use of steroids. However, cynics may parse his words in search of legal loopholes.

"To be clear, I have never taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs. I have never injected myself or had anyone inject me with anything. I've not broken the laws of the Unites States or the laws of the Dominican Republic," Sosa's statement read. "I have been tested as recently as 2004 and I am clean."

It is an awful world we live in. Within minutes of the statement's dissemination a veteran baseball writer said, "So, I guess that doesn't quite cover taking steroids orally if they were prescribed legally by a Dominican doctor." .

I was so busy laughing at Sosa's assertion that he didn't use steroids that I missed the essence of his statement: He didn't deny it completely. Of course he didn't. He's one of the players whose steroid use made him resemble Mr. Potato Head.

Roger Maris and Henry Aaron are the home run kings, and these guys are the Juice Kings.

Baseball Hearings

I'm laid up today, so have watched much of the baseball hearings. A few observations:

1. Conveniently, Sammy Sosa has lost his ability to speak English. His statement is read by his translator. I laughed out loud when the translator read that Sosa denied doing steroids. Just look at a picture of him from 1999. He's a juicer. During the hearings he has perfected the befuddled look I remember well from doing worker's comp hearings with clients for whom English was a second language, supposedly, although they did fine speaking with me outside the hearing room. I sincerely doubt that his English is this poor. (n.b., see #7, below) As the hearings go on, his answers become more and more confused. "I don't know" is his favorite answer.

2. Jose Canseco is an idiot, but he's the only honest player on this panel. He is being the honest idiot he is. At least he is answering the questions about baseball steroid use somewhat honestly. Sadly, he truly believes he is a hero for writing his book! He testifies that the hearings are taking place solely because of his book. He takes the position that steroids are a huge problem during the hearing, while in his book he sings the praises of steroids. Dolt.

3. Mark McGwire has shrunk a great deal from his playing days. Sammy Sosa is also very much smaller than he was in "The Year That Saved Baseball". Neither has the steroid acne today.

4. Congress is full of cowards. No one has even managed to make McGwire take the 5th Amendment, although it's clear that the 5th is his fallback position. They're letting him get away with "I'm not here to talk about the past" and offering to become a spokesperson against steroids which is just ridiculous. So we know: McGwire was juiced. Roger Maris still owns the single season home run record as far as I'm concerned. The only guys who have exceeded it are Bonds, McGwire & Sosa, The Juice Boys. I'm with Jim Bunning -- throw those tainted records out.

And why Roger Maris isn't in the Baseball Hall of Fame, I can't believe, that's another injustice that should be rectified.

5. The most powerful testimony by far was from the parents of the two young men who committed suicide after taking steroids. They must be furious watching these baseball players avoid the questions.

6. The funniest testimony has to be from the doctor who advised MLB on their steroid policy. He was combative from the get-go, for reasons that are unclear to anyone watching the hearings from the outside. He got members of Congress to shout at him! Didn't look like he was enjoying his 15 minutes of fame.

7. New entry for funniest moment: Dennis Kucinich addresses Sammy Sosa in Spanish, and Sosa answers in English! Second language duel-off!

8. Saddest testimony: All these multimillionaire baseball players saying they didn't see much steroid use, or they just can't say. Curt Schilling denying what he said three years ago about players using steroids & human growth hormone (difference between then & today: Today he's a player rep! Deny everything!) All I gotta say to you guys is, no guts, no glory. Slink off. Shame on you all.

I reiterate my call for the tiny hypodermic needle to be placed next to all of the records of the juicers. In addition, Mike Greenwell (I saw him hit for the cycle in Fenway Park!) should be awarded Conseco's MVP award.

Sports Movies

ESPN has a couple of articles on their site about the greatest lines in sports movies:

Top 100 Sports Movie Quotes

From some players, their favorite lines from the movies:

Sports Movie Liners

Both of these articles missed a few great lines:

"Attitude reflects leadership, Captain."
- Remember the Titans

"Coach: What are you?
Players: Mobile! Agile! Hostile!"
- Remember the Titans

"Sex and golf are the two things you can enjoy even if you're not good at them."
- Tin Cup

"Skip: You guys. You lollygag the ball around the infield. You lollygag your way down to first. You lollygag in and out of the dugout. You know what that makes you? Larry!
Larry: Lollygaggers!
Skip: Lollygaggers."
- Bull Durham

I got my idea for this post from Basegirl, who loves Jason Varitek & his favorite quote.

Hey, what Red Sox fan doesn't love the Captain of the World Champion Boston Red Sox?

I'd also like to point that Curt Schilling in his testimony today worked "World Champions" into the first sentence of his opening statement. Good job Curt! (You d***ed Republican.)

No More Snow on Kilimanjaro

Via Billmon, here's a picture of Africa's tallest mountain. Global warming has melted all the snow that covered it for centuries.

Modernizing Hemingway

The Real Cost of War

When Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi resigned on Dec. 8 after four years of service, he said: "It is now time for me to move on to fresh opportunities and different challenges." The Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter states that the real reason for Principi's leaving the Bush administration is a burgeoning scandal developing around the massive use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions in Iraq. Executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, Arthur N. Bernklau, wrote in the newsletter: "The real reason for Mr. Principi's departure was really never given, however a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of the 'Gulf War Syndrome' has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the U.S. Military." Not mincing his words Bernklau continued, "Out of the 580,400 soldiers who served in GW1 (the first Gulf War), of them, 11,000 are now dead! By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on Permanent Medical Disability, a rate of 56 percent. In Vietnam the rate of disability was 10 percent."

This was a UPI piece, reprinted in the Washington Times (that liberal bastion) and I found it via the Art Pottery, Politics and Food blog. Here's the original link: The Laughing Man

Courthouse Shootings

Today's news has been dominated by coverage of the shooting at the courthouse in Atlanta, Georgia. It seems pretty clear that the shooter, a criminal defendant in custody who was being transported from jail to the courtroom, took a gun from the lone deputy who was escorting him. The incident may have been prevented or the carnage lessened if the deputy had no weapon, or if the handgun was concealed.

I've been in many courthouses over the years & it always amazed me that while everyone had to go through security to get into the court building, many police officers appeared in court with guns hanging outside their uniforms. I can see a state trooper brushing by me in court one day as I sat in the attorney area in front of the bar, his gun at my eye (and hand) level as he passed by. I could so easily have reached out & grabbed that gun, not that I had any desire or intention to do so.

I don't think that court officers in Massachusetts wear sidearms. {5:10 p.m., just heard on NECN that I am correct; court officers in Massachusetts do not carry guns.} I recall seeing batons, but no guns. However, the deputy in Georgia who was escorting this man was wearing a gun.

In addition, and I hesitate to say this, most (not all) of the court officers I have known were not the sharpest knives in the drawer. If they were, they wouldn't have been court officers. It's the lowest level job in law enforcement, one step above security guard. Many court officers, in Massachusetts at least, are patronage appointments -- brothers-in-law of state representatives, etc.

99% of the time the court officers sit around & do nothing. They're processing prisoners from the jails, escorting them into court, then sitting in the courtroom waiting for something to happen. Not much does. I think they get complacent sitting around while nothing happens.

When I was a law student, I worked for the public defender's office. I handled arraignments & cases where the penalty was a sentence of less than 6 months. One day I was assigned a client for arraignment who had been in a bar fight. My client was a big man, a Vietnam veteran who'd been in & out of trouble for years, disheveled, obviously hung over, and angry. I met with him in lockup & explained what would happen at his arraignment, including, as my supervisor had informed me, that he would likely be granted bail of a few thousand dollars. While I was meeting with him, the probation department discovered that he was wanted on several outstanding warrants. When he was brought into the jury box, instead of the simple arraignment I had explained to him, he was "popped" (to use the court vernacular) and the judge ordered he be held on the outstanding warrants, and transferred to Walpole immediately.

My client became enraged. I was standing next to the jury box where he stood. He turned towards ME and lunged at me, his hands reaching for my throat. Suddenly I was flying in the air, over the bar towards the spectators' section. One of the court officers had picked me up & put me down out of harm's way. I was a little put out to be treated so cavalierly -- would a MALE law student have been thrown around like that? -- but also appreciated the rescue.

My client was furious with me. Like I had failed to show up for court after being granted bail on his old cases. Completely misplaced rage. Like the poor judge & court reporter & deputy who were killed today, I was the object of great anger, totally misdirected. I shudder to think what would have happened that day if someone were carelessly standing next to my client, wearing a sidearm.

Why Joe Biden Sold Out Working Class People & Voted for the Bankruptcy Bill

Because he's in the pocket of MBNA & the credit card lobby, natch.

from attytood.com:
Delaware: America's First State...in Democratic sellouts

It's especially disgusting to learn that MBNA has also bought off Biden's son, to the tune of a $100,000 "annual retainer" to "advise" them on bankruptcy issues.

His first advice was probably, "Buy off my dad. We're both for sale."

Paul Krugman said it best: [A]ny senator who votes for the bill should be ashamed.

Christopher Lydon returns

UML to Produce National Christopher Lydon Radio Show

Oh how I've missed Christopher Lydon. I usually keep my radio set to WBUR, the Boston public radio station which formerly carried his excellent show, The Connection. He always had smart guests & brought out their best with his witty commentary.

Jane Christo, the recently deposed WBUR tsar, dumped Lydon 4 years ago when he wanted licensing rights for his show (like the Car Talk guys have). While objectively I could understand that WBUR didn't want to give him money it could keep for itself, I always wished some compromise could have been reached.

Instead Lydon was canned and we got a parade of inferior hosts, culminating in the current ANNOYING host, Dick Gordon. Gordon over-enunciates everything he says, even his own name. I can listen to him for a few minutes, then I start shouting at the radio. I've just stopped listening to The Connection, I hate him so much.

And he's one of those "one the one hand, on the other hand" fake journalists who thinks that giving both sides of the argument equal time & stature contributes to public debate. Like he'd do a report on global warming and give some crackpot that says there is no global warming equal time, without even noting the huge scientific evidence for global warming. Please.

So, welcome back Chris. I'll change my radio pre-sets for you.

Don't Buy the Social Security Fear Factor!

While Bush is criss-crossing the country on Bamboozlepalooza, trying to sell the country on eviscerating Social Security, Democrats in Congress are rallying to stop him.

Here's a great article by Congressman Jim McDermott (D-Wa) who is senior Democrat on the Ways & Means Committee (and by the way, the psychiatrist/congressman who was in Fahrenheit 9/11!) on why Bush is all wet on Social Security.

The Legacy of Barry Bonds

Yesterday I took care of my friend's kids while she was at class.

The ten year old said he had something to show us. He sat on the couch, mimicked shooting a needle towards each of his shoulders, then popped his arms up and pumped his fists in a muscleman pose, shouting "BUFF!"

"I'm Barry Bonds!" he cried gleefully.

Getting a White House Day Pass

Jeff Gannon, a/k/a "The Presstitute", got a day pass into the White House Press Briefing daily for two years. So it must be pretty easy, no?

The FishbowlDC blog has been trying to get in on a daily pass for three days now, with no success.

Surprised? I didn't think so.

Best Alex Rodriguez Nicknames

He calls himself A-Rod, but here in Boston we call him

A-Fraud
F-Rod
Slappy McBlueLips (credit to Joy of Sox blog)
A-Lot
Pay-Rod
A-Wad
K-Rod

ICR: One of my favorites. Here's the explanation:

ICR
From Baseball Think Factory Wiki, the free encyclopedia.

ICR is one of the many nicknames given out by Yankee fans in Game Chatters, this one coined by sjohnny. ICR is short for "Inanimate Carbon Rod", and is the nickname given to Alex Rodriguez in lieu of "A-Rod". The reason for the nickname was A-Rod's poor performance in 2004 with runners in scoring position. Many sent ICR to the nickname graveyard after his game-tying double in the 2004 ALDS Game 2.

The phrase "Inanimate Carbon Rod" comes from a Simpsons episode where an inanimate carbon rod is named Employee of the Week at the power plant instead of Homer. This insult leads Homer to become an astronaut, where he averts a catastrophe (after starting it) on a shuttle mission using an inanimate carbon rod, which receives much more acclaim than Homer does.

What I'm reading today

And you were expecting a list of books? Here are the top five blogs I visit daily:

1) Eschaton
http://atrios.blogspot.com/
Duncan Black is an economist in Philadelphia. I don't always understand his economic analyses, but his rapier wit always makes me laugh. Updated constantly. This has been at the top of my bloglist ever since I first heard the term "blog".

2) DailyKos
http://www.dailykos.com/
Markos Zuniga runs this political community weblog. Many regular posters with different talents. Right now SusanG and NYBri are hot on the trail of the Presstitute, but you can find stories on everything that's hot on the left side of the aisle.

3) Steve Gilliard's News Blog
http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/
I just discovered this blog a few months ago. It's a spin-off from the Kos blog (Kos lists him as a "site alumni"). Black New Yorker, always edgy take on the news.

4) Talking Points Memo
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
Joshua Micah Marshall. Very smart guy. Currently obsessed with defeating Bush's crazy destroy Social Security scheme. Has adopted the phrases "Conscience Caucus" and "Fainthearted Faction" to label supporters & opponents of the scheme, but I can't keep those cutesy little terms straight. So it's a bit of an insider's club these days.

5) Women's Hoops Blog
http://www.womenshoops.blogspot.com/

Formerly known as Sara & Ted's Women's Hoops blog. Keeps me up with women's basketball (since it is so rarely on TV I rely on the internets to keep me up to date.) Follows the games & the issues. This is where I learned about the Rick Lopez case in Colorado. Ewww.

That's my top five. This month I've also been reading AmericaBlog (http://www.americablog.org/) for its coverage of the Presstitute, and as spring training is in full swing, The Joy of Sox (http://www.joyofsox.blogspot.com/)

Jeff Gannon, Presstitute

I have dubbed Jim/Jeff Guckert/Gannon "The Presstitute".

For obvious reasons, as his occupation immediately preceding his tenure in the White House briefing room was prostitute.

You say prostitute, I say presstitute, let's call the whole thing off!

Kind of like Bill O'Reilly & his falafel.

What is it with those wingnuts anyway?

Powerfully Hobbled

Condoleezza Rice's Commanding Clothes

Yes, today the Washington Post tells us that wearing stiletto heels is powerful.

Rice's coat and boots speak of sex and power -- such a volatile combination, and one that in political circles rarely leads to anything but scandal. When looking at the image of Rice in Wiesbaden, the mind searches for ways to put it all into context. It turns to fiction, to caricature. To shadowy daydreams. Dominatrix! It is as though sex and power can only co-exist in a fantasy. When a woman combines them in the real world, stubborn stereotypes have her power devolving into a form that is purely sexual.

Hogwash. Perching your body atop two thin pegs just makes it impossible for a woman to run. The body's weight is concentrated on the balls of the feet, and the heel is taken out of a woman's walk. If you can't put down your heel, you can't use the long muscles in your legs. If all your weight is on the balls of your feet, they hurt unmercifully. A woman in stiletto heels is hobbled.

The Post thinks she's more powerful because those heels are so sexy:

Countless essays and books have been written about the erotic nature of high heels. There is no need to reiterate in detail the reasons why so many women swear by uncomfortable three-inch heels and why so many men are happy that they do. Heels change the way a woman walks, forcing her hips to sway. They alter her posture in myriad enticing ways, all of which are politically incorrect to discuss.

"There is not need to reiterate in detail the reasons why so many women swear by uncomfortable three-inch heels....." Well, maybe there is such a reason. If heels were so great, wouldn't men wear them? They've taken up manicures, moisturizers, and face lifts. But men have never taken to heels, and certainly not to heels which are smaller than the foot that sits above them. Maybe the reason "why so many men are happy that they do" has more to do with the hobbling effect.

I'm going out for a walk. In my flat bottomed shoes.

Democrats Need a Spine Implant

David Podvin: 'A who's who of who sucks'

Here's the beginning & the end of the article - click the link to read the rest.

The United States Senate is a place where those who can't tell the difference between right and wrong perpetrate evil with the complicity of those who can. Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy can certainly tell the difference, but like his Democratic colleagues he doesn't allow that ability to affect his behavior.

When considering the nomination of Condoleeza Rice to be Secretary of State, Leahy noted that Rice was an incompetent National Security Advisor who had repeatedly deceived the American people. The senator then said this: "My vote in favor of Dr. Rice is difficult to explain. It is more the product of a belief than a cold analysis of her record. I believe that Dr. Rice is capable of learning from her mistakes and changing her ways. That she will rise to this new challenge. That she can be a good Secretary of State."

Leahy's vote is not difficult to explain. He is a coward whose stated principles have no practical significance. This real life Barney Fife is so obsessed with capitulating to an administration that has tarred Democrats as unpatriotic that he gave Rice the benefit of the doubt even after admitting there was no doubt.

**********

Liberals must ultimately assume responsibility for the sorry quality of their senators. Until primary voters stop supporting invertebrates like Leahy and Lieberman and Biden and Feinstein, the Republicans will maim the United States with impunity. The essential counterbalance to evil is resolve. For that quality to radiate again from the Democratic Party, a newly vigilant rank and file must at long last refuse to accept anything less.

Random Jottings

-- Harry Reid has been a great choice to lead the Senate Democrats. While the left blogosphere wailed when he got the job, I was happy -- he's the guy who worked on Jim Jeffords for a year to get him to switch from Republican to Independent (see "The Jim Whisperer", on salon.com). Therefore saving us from total Republican domination of government, until this year.

-- Censorship is everywhere. I watched "Remember The Titans", the Denzel Washington film about the first integrated football team in Alexandria, Virginia two nights ago with my friend's two kids. It was being shown on the Disney Channel. When they showed the scene in the lockerroom where Ronnie Bass kisses the quarterback (who has accused Bass of being a girl, or "one of them", for having long hair) Disney cut out the kiss! This made the next two scenes incomprehensible -- the other players reaction's to the kiss, and a subsequent scene in the cafeteria where the character Petey asks Bass if he's "like that".

Apparently Disney, which gives domestic partner benefits to gay couples, can't show a man kissing another man, even in jest. Sad.

-- Good news for US Women's National Team fans: April Heinrichs has submitted her resignation as coach of the national team. She was a terrible judge of talent (two time National Player of the Year Abby Wambach barely got on the 2003 World Cup squad) and a pathetic tactician (unless you like boot-and-chase soccer). Farewell & good riddance Ape.

The Corporate Media "Finds" Gannongate

In the New York Times today:

Frank Rich
The White House Stages Its 'Daily Show'

Maureen Dowd
Bush's Barberini Faun

And the Washington Post covered the story yesterday, albeit on the first page of the "Style" section:
Howard Kurtz
Online Nude Photos Are Latest Chapter In Jeff Gannon Saga

I'm waiting for an article by one of those pathetic "journalists" who sat in the White House press room with this fraud for two years & never even googled his name. Reporters? They hardly deserve the moniker.

Gannongate

I know it's been a few weeks since I last posted, so it has to be a bombshell.

Jeff Gannon, who was admitted to the White House press room for two years despite questionable credentials & the use of an alias, was a gay prostitute who peddled his services over the internets. AMERICAblog has the story:

A Man Called Jeff

WARNING: Clicking on the above link sends you to an article that contains screen captures of pornography.

Here's the end of the AMERICAblog story:

Why does this matter?

So in the end, why does this matter? Why does it matter that Jeff Gannon may have been a gay hooker named James Guckert with a $20,000 defaulted court judgment against him? So he somehow got a job lobbing softball questions to the White House. Big deal. If he was already a prostitute, why not be one in the White House briefing room as well?

This is the Conservative Republican Bush White House we're talking about. It's looking increasingly like they made a decision to allow a hooker to ask the President of the United States questions. They made a decision to give a man with an alias and no journalistic experience access to the West Wing of the White House on a "daily basis." They reportedly made a decision to give him - one of only six - access to documents, or information in those documents, that exposed a clandestine CIA operative. Say what you will about Monika Lewinsky - a tasteless episode, "inappropriate," whatever. Monika wasn't a gay prostitute running around the West Wing. What kind of leadership would let prostitutes roam the halls of the West Wing? What kind of war-time leadership can't find the same information that took bloggers only days to find?

None of this is by accident.

Someone had to make a decision to let all this happen. Who? Someone committed a crime in exposing Valerie Plame and now it appears a gay hooker may be right in the middle of all of it? Who?

Ultimately, it is the hypocrisy that is such a challenge to grasp in this story. This is the same White House that ran for office on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. While they are surrounded by gay hookers? While they use a gay hooker to write articles for their gay hating political base? While they use a gay hooker to destroy a political enemy? Not to mention the hypocrisy of a "reporter" who chooses to publish article after article defending the ant-gay religious-right point of view on gay civil rights issue.

Who in the White House is at the center of all of this? Who allowed this to go on in the People's House? Who committed the crime of exposing Valerie Plame? Jeff Gannon has the answers to these questions, and boy we know he loves to talk.

Let him talk to Patrick Fitzgerald.

Ethics? Torture Guy Don't Need No Stinking Ethics!

Torture Guy, Alberto Gonzales, had a unique way of being an impartial judge when he was on the Texas Supreme Court. He would accept money from the corporate defendants who had cases pending in his court, then rule in their favor!

How could such a lowlife be our next Attorney General? How has he even kept his bar license? Any Democrat who votes for this guy should be removed from office. Republicans should be ashamed. He deserves to be Borked. Will the Democrats be true to their ideals?

As Texas judge, Gonzales heard donors' cases

WASHINGTON -- When White House counsel Alberto Gonzales was a Texas Supreme Court justice running to stay in office in 2000, he took thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from companies that had business before him and he did not recuse himself from voting on their cases.

The practice is legal in Texas, and Gonzales was not the only judge to benefit from it. But his record in 2000 -- when he raised $539,000 for the Republican primary, outraising his opponent by a 1,047-to-1 ratio -- drew special criticism from an Austin-based group that tracks the influence of money on government.

**********

Gonzales had been appointed to the bench in 1999 by then-Governor George W. Bush, but had to run in 2000 to keep his seat. That year, he accepted $2,000 from an insurance company after the court heard arguments -- but before it issued a decision -- as to how much the company should pay a man injured in a car accident. In a similar case, he voted in favor of another insurance company whose law firm gave his campaign $2,500 just before the court heard arguments.

Both cases involved whether insurance companies had to pay interest to plaintiffs whose final awards were delayed because the case went to court. The watchdog group said the decisions were ''a costly slap in the face to Texas consumers."

Bush Has Been Trying to Privatize/Abolish Social Security Since 1978

George Bush claimed Social Security would be bankrupt in 1988 when he ran for Congress in 1978!

And we all know that happened -- NOT! It was all part of his plan to abolish Social Security by privatizing it. Different century, same old song.

Here's the Texas Observer article of June 25, 1999 (via bluebus.org):

According to Gary Ott, who was then a reporter for the Plainview Daily Herald, Bush stopped by the paper’s little office “maybe five or six times. He’d sit down at my desk; he was a fun guy. He was very outgoing, very friendly, and we would argue politics since I was a liberal. We’d argue over Carter policies.” Bush criticized energy policy, federal land use policy, subsidized housing, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“a misuse of power,” he said), and he warned that Social Security would go bust in ten years unless people were given a chance to invest the money themselves. None of this really distinguished him from Hance, though, so in the end Bush simply argued that a Republican could better represent the district: “If you want a chance in the way Congress has been run, send someone who will be independent from those who will run the Congress.”

We Love Lists

Especially lists of losers. Even when we're on them! (See number 3.)

The Beast 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2004

I would have left off Ben Affleck -- his movies suck, but he's harmless -- and substituted Torture Guy, aka Alberto Gonzales.

But the guy he's going to replace made the list:

8. John Ashcroft
Crimes: Promoting sexual shame, writing and singing alarmingly jingoistic and terrible songs, flattening constitutional protections, detaining brown people at will without charges or counsel, pretending to be a patriot, and intentionally ignoring terrorism in his pre-9/11 tenure.

Smoking Gun: Put a fucking curtain up to cover a naked breast on a statue. A statue.

Punishment: Only heterosexual judge on the supreme court in 2035.

What's on my turntable today

I think the word "turntable" gives me away. Even though they're CDs, not albums, I am a musical dinosaur.

Today's 5:

1. The Best of Warren Zevon (Rhino, 2002). A Christmas gift from my brother. Warren Zevon ruminating on the good, bad & ugly of life. From lawyers to rehab, this has it all. We all know the classics: Excitable Boy; Lawyers, Guns & Money; Werewolves of London; but there was so much more. Man, could this guy write lyrics.

2. Ray Charles, Genius Loves Company (Hear Music, 2004). Another Christmas gift, from my brother & sister-in-law (I assume my sister-in-law picked it). I forgot what a great voice Ray had and what a great phraser he was. He's the guy who sang the only version of "Georgia" that counts, right?

Except for a few clunkers (who decided to have Ray & James Taylor sing "Sweet Potato Pie", anyway?), a great disc. I love "Here We Go Again" with Norah Jones, "You Don't Know Me" with Diana Krall, and "It Was a Very Good Year" with Willie Nelson.

3. Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose (Interscope, 2004). Sometimes you have to buy your own Christmas gifts. Along with Kanye West, this disc was on many "Best of 2004" CD lists. Produced by Jack White of the White Stripes. Loretta Lynn stripped down to her bare country roots. Awesome. "Family Tree" reminded me of all the Loretta Lynn classics: "You Ain't Woman Enough To Take My Man", etc., and without the 60s/70s horn or string overlay. Just her great heartbroken voice.

4. Joss Stone, Mind Body & Soul (Curve Records/EMI, 2004). Another Christmas gift from bro & sisinlaw. Great voice, but very young & it shows in the lyrics. This is one of those rare discs that I've liked less the more I've listened to it. It gets another week, then if it doesn't hit me it goes out of rotation.

5. Los Lonely Boys (Oz Music, 2003). I gave this to my brother for Christmas & he liked it so much when I saw it on sale I bought it for myself. Reminds me of Los Lobos, high energy Tex-Mex rock. I hope they have Los Lobos' staying power. I remember being in LA for the Olympics in 1984, and my friend Jimbo read in the paper that "The Wolves - Do You Speak Spanish?" were playing in a club in East LA. Seeing them play live was one of the great musical experiences of my life.

Torture Guy's a Liar, Too

Torture Guy is a liar, too. Everyone else in the case reported by Newsweek, below, says he is lying about what he did to keep Bush's DUI from becoming public. A lying Attorney General. Well, the President's a liar too so he'll fit right in. Do you love that Bush "left blank" the question on the juror questionnaire asking whether he had ever been the accused in a criminal case. That's lying, too, by omission. Will the Senate show a backbone? Will these three officers of the court testify about Gonzales' lies? I doubt it, but an attorney can hope.

Gonzales: Did He Help Bush Keep His DUI Quiet?

Jan. 31 issue - Senate Democrats put off a vote on White House counsel Alberto Gonzales's nomination to be attorney general, complaining he had provided evasive answers to questions about torture and the mistreatment of prisoners. But Gonzales's most surprising answer may have come on a different subject: his role in helping President Bush escape jury duty in a drunken-driving case involving a dancer at an Austin strip club in 1996. The judge and other lawyers in the case last week disputed a written account of the matter provided by Gonzales to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It's a complete misrepresentation," said David Wahlberg, lawyer for the dancer, about Gonzales's account.

Bush's summons to serve as a juror in the drunken-driving case was, in retrospect, a fateful moment in his political career: by getting excused from jury duty he was able to avoid questions that would have required him to disclose his own 1976 arrest and conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) in Kennebunkport, Maine—an incident that didn't become public until the closing days of the 2000 campaign. (Bush, who had publicly declared his willingness to serve, had left blank on his jury questionnaire whether he had ever been "accused" in a criminal case.) Asked by Sen. Patrick Leahy to describe "in detail" the only court appearance he ever made on behalf of Bush, Gonzales—who was then chief counsel to the Texas governor—wrote that he had accompanied Bush the day he went to court "prepared to serve on a jury." While there, Gonzales wrote, he "observed" the defense lawyer make a motion to strike Bush from the jury panel "to which the prosecutor did not object." Asked by the judge whether he had "any views on this," Gonzales recalled, he said he did not.

While Gonzales's account tracks with the official court transcript, it leaves out a key part of what happened that day, according to Travis County Judge David Crain. In separate interviews, Crain—along with Wahlberg and prosecutor John Lastovica—told NEWSWEEK that, before the case began, Gonzales asked to have an off-the-record conference in the judge's chambers. Gonzales then asked Crain to "consider" striking Bush from the jury, making the novel "conflict of interest" argument that the Texas governor might one day be asked to pardon the defendant (who worked at an Austin nightclub called Sugar's), the judge said. "He [Gonzales] raised the issue," Crain said. Crain said he found Gonzales's argument surprising, since it was "extremely unlikely" that a drunken-driving conviction would ever lead to a pardon petition to Bush. But "out of deference" to the governor, Crain said, the other lawyers went along. Wahlberg said he agreed to make the motion striking Bush because he didn't want the hard-line governor on his jury anyway. But there was little doubt among the participants as to what was going on. "In public, they were making a big show of how he was prepared to serve," said Crain. "In the back room, they were trying to get him off."

Gonzales last week refused to waver. "Judge Gonzales has no recollection of requesting a meeting in chambers," a senior White House official said, adding that while Gonzales did recall that Bush's potential conflict was "discussed," he never "requested" that Bush be excused. "His answer to the Senate's question is accurate," the official said.

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

Freedom is on the march

Today is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.

Abu Ghraib is our most recent example of this axiom.

As a result, Donald Rumsfield & his top deputy Stephen Cambone cannot travel to Germany where they will be arrested for war crimes.

What goes around, comes around.

Not Everyone Agrees with Lizard Brain (Lawrence Summers)

The Boston Globe weighs in on Lawrence Summer's 20th century faux pas remarks:


Harvard women's group rips Summers

In his talk Friday at a conference on women and minorities in science and engineering, held at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Summers listed three possible explanations for the small number of women who excel at elite levels of science and engineering. He said he was deliberately being provocative, as he was asked to do by the organizers, and relying on the scholarship that was assembled for the conference rather than offering his own conclusions.

His first point was that women with children are often unwilling or unable to work 80-hour weeks. His second point was that in math and science tests, more males earn the very top scores, as well as the very bottom scores. He said that while no one knew why, "research in behavioral genetics is showing that things people attributed to socialization" might actually have a biological basis -- and that the issue needed to be studied further.

Several participants said that in making his second point, Summers suggested that women might not have the same "innate ability" or "natural ability" as men.

Summers' third point was about discrimination, and he said it was not clear that discrimination played a significant role in the shortage of women teaching science and engineering at top universities. However, he concluded by emphasizing that Harvard was taking many steps to boost diversity.

Summers' remarks were taped, but he has denied requests for a copy, saying it was a private, off-the-record meeting.

Perhaps it's gender block by Eileen McNamara

Personally, I blame PMS. Between the bloating and the foul mood, it was just easier to curl up with a heating pad and read romance novels than to measure the hypotenuse of a triangle.

I offer this possible explanation for the "F" I got in geometry in 10th grade, not in my official capacity as a columnist at The Boston Globe, but as a freelance provocateur. If unsubstantiated speculation about behavioral genetics is good enough for the president of Harvard, it's good enough for me.

I make no claim to the intellectual rigor that President Lawrence H. Summers brought to his unscripted remarks at a luncheon of the National Bureau of Economic Research the other day. I pulled my theory of female ineptitude out of thin air. Summers, on the other hand, characterizes as a "purely academic exploration of hypotheses" his idea that female scientists might be underrepresented in the academy and the professions because of innate differences between men and women.

To the untrained ear, that might sound like making it up out of whole cloth, but Larry Summers is the president of Harvard University, so let's just say his theory needs further study. Not that "anatomy is destiny" is exactly an original idea. Women have been hearing for eons that their lack of achievement, in the arts as well as the sciences, is the result of, variously, their weaker constitutions, their smaller brains, their delicate uteruses, and/or their unruly hormones.

GLOBE EDITORIAL
Summers's sense

ARE WOMEN and science like oil and water? Harvard's president, Lawrence Summers, says no, and in a statement Monday he described his deep commitment to the advancement of women in science.

But outrage flared last week when Summers spoke at a conference on women and minorities in the sciences and engineering. He raised questions about whether innate gender differences account for the low numbers of women in the sciences, the impact of long work weeks, socialization versus genes, and a possible dampening of discrimination.

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Are men and women innately different? It's a moot point, since women have already shown they can be first-class scientists.

DERRICK Z. JACKSON
Summers's tortured logic

HARVARD President Lawrence Summers had impeccable timing for his slip of the tongue. It was the beginning of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. Summers spoke at a conference titled, "Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce: Women, Underrepresented Minorities and their S. and E. careers." The conference came 44 years after King said: "If we are to implement the American dream we must get rid of the notion once and for all that there are superior and inferior races."

Four and a half decades later, Summers took to the podium to wonder why women struggle in those highly technical fields. He said perhaps one reason was because women with children were not willing or were unable to work 80-hour weeks. Then he noted, according to newspaper reports, how more boys than girls in late high school had superior test scores in science and math.

He wondered if "innate differences," "innate ability," or "natural ability" could be involved.

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Summers's mind was fixed on a target as stale as a decade ago when Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein tried to revive notions of racial inferiority in their best-selling book "The Bell Curve." The authors cited IQ scores as fixed facts that should make us abandon the American dream.

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Summers of course would say he meant nothing so crude. But every time a privileged white guy blurts out something verging on the Cro-Magnon (instead of, for instance, decrying 80-hour work weeks and demanding that fathers better share the parenting), it puts the discussion of what really holds back women and people of color into a holding pattern. That means further discouragement for the young and silent destruction of careers for the groups that do not share such privilege.

No Comment

Why women are poor at science, by Harvard president

The president of Harvard University has provoked a furore by arguing that men outperform women in maths and sciences because of biological difference, and discrimination is no longer a career barrier for female academics.

Lawrence Summers, a career economist who served as treasury secretary under President Clinton, has a reputation for outspokenness. His tenure at Harvard has been marked by clashes with African-American staff and leftwing intellectuals, and complaints about a fall in the hiring of women.

He made his remarks at a private conference on the position of women and minorities in science and engineering, hosted by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

In a lengthy address delivered without notes, Dr Summers offered three explanations for the shortage of women in senior posts in science and engineering, starting with their reluctance to work long hours because of childcare responsibilities.

He went on to argue that boys outperform girls on high school science and maths scores because of genetic difference. "Research in behavioural genetics is showing that things people previously attributed to socialisation weren't due to socialisation after all," he told the Boston Globe yesterday.

As an example, Dr Summers told the conference about giving his daughter two trucks. She treated them like dolls, and named them mummy and daddy trucks, he said.

Oh, so THAT'S the scientific basis for this bullshit theory. Ok, just so my tiny female brain can understand the rigorously developed scientific basis for this crap.

Dr Summers also played down the impact of sex bias in appointments to academic institutions.

He said: "The real issue is the overall size of the pool, and it's less clear how much the size of the pool was held down by discrimination."

At least half of his audience comprised women, several said they found the remarks offensive and one walked out.

"It was really shocking to hear the president of Harvard make statements like that," said Denice Denton, who is about to become president of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Others said Dr Summers's comments were depressingly familiar. "I have heard men make comments like this my entire life and quite honestly if I had listened to them I would never have done anything," said Donna Nelson, a chemistry professor at the University of Oklahoma.

A Harvard spokeswoman declined to comment yesterday, or to release the transcript of Dr Summers's remarks. Richard Freeman, who invited the Harvard president to speak at the conference, said Dr Summers's comments were intended to provoke debate, and some women over-reacted.

"Some people took offence because they were very sensitive," said Dr Freeman, an economist at Harvard and the London School of Economics. "It does not seem to me insane to think that men and women have biological differences."

During Dr Summers's presidency, the number of tenured jobs offered to women has fallen from 36% to 13%. Last year, only four of 32 tenured job openings were offered to women.

I guess the "pool" of qualified women dropped by two-thirds in the three years this lizard brain has been at Harvard? Or is my tiny biologically-impaired brain not understanding this really hard math thing?

Prick.

I've dealt with pigs like this guy all my life & I'm sick to death of it. He's the Al Campanis of our decade. Remember poor old Al Campanis saying on national TV that blacks didn't "have the necessaries" to be major league baseball managers? He was out on his keaster the next day. Lawrence Summers should be removed from his job immediately. Does Harvard have any integrity? Probably not. All alumni should withhold all contributions until this asshole has a new job. I'm sure the Bush Administration could find a place for this neanderthal.

I'm with Nancy Hopkins on this one:


Harvard Chief Defends His Talk on Women
By SAM DILLON

Nancy Hopkins, a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who once led an investigation of sex discrimination there that led to changes in hiring and promotion, walked out midway through Dr. Summers's remarks.

"When he started talking about innate differences in aptitude between men and women, I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill," Dr. Hopkins said. "Let's not forget that people used to say that women couldn't drive an automobile."

United We Stand

Joan Vennochi is an excellent columnist in the Boston Globe. Her comments on the Democrats fudging their message are right on:

Blurred messages from Democrats

HERE'S THE new Democratic Party slogan: We stand for nothing but victory.

Or, as Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the new chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told The New York Times: "Some people argue about old Democrats and new Democrats. I'm a Vince Lombardi Democrat. Winning is everything."

Inspirational, isn't it? That should lure those Red State voters to the Democrats' side.


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Pelosi is also encouraging former Representatative Tim Roemer of Indiana to seek to replace Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe. Roemer, who is Catholic and antiabortion, has a 94 percent rating from the national Right to Life Committee. Pelosi has a 100 percent prochoice voting record, as rated by NARAL, a national organization devoted to a woman's right to choose abortion.

Donna Brazile, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute, describes Pelosi's support for Roemer as a way to illustrate the party's new "big tent" commitment. Said Brazile, via e-mail: "As a party, we have a large tent, but our basic values will remain. The Democratic Party's problem is not what we stand for, as much as how we communicate our values. Roemer's personal views will not alter the Democratic platform on choice."

Put aside the practical matter of how the party plans to communicate values through a prochoice platform and a prolife party chairman. This is a way to win?

Roemer as head of the DNC sounds like a desperate effort to figure out which way the wind is blowing, long after the 2004 wind blew the Democrats away. Where does it leave Democrats when President Bush and his allies work to secure the appointment of Supreme Court justices who are anxious to repeal Roe v. Wade?

It also sounds like a way to institutionalize John Kerry's losing campaign strategy: When it comes to controversial issues, duck. Stand for everything and nothing. Whenever possible, avoid direct answers on issues like war and abortion.

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Senator Edward M. Kennedy had it right yesterday. In remarks prepared for delivery to the National Press Club, Kennedy said, "We cannot move our party or our nation forward under pale colors and timid voices. We cannot become Republican clones. If we do, we will lose again and deserve to lose."

Currently, Democrats like Pelosi and Emanuel sound confused, not reasonable. Indeed, adrift is a word that comes to mind.

Confusion and drift are ways to kill, not grow, a political party. But it appears to be the path of spooked Democrats after the Nov. 2 election loss.

The Crisis for Social Security is Bush

C+ Augustus* and his lies are skewered in the Washington Post today.

President of Fabricated Crises

So Iraq became a clear and present danger to American hearths and homes, bristling with weapons of mass destruction, a nuclear attack just waiting to happen. And now, this week, the president is embarking on his second great scare campaign, this one to convince the American people that Social Security will collapse and that the only remedy is to cut benefits and redirect resources into private accounts.

In fact, Social Security is on a sounder footing now than it has been for most of its 70-year history. Without altering any of its particulars, its trustees say, it can pay full benefits straight through 2042. Over the next 75 years its shortfall will amount to just 0.7 percent of national income, according to the trustees, or 0.4 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That still amounts to a real chunk of change, but it pales alongside the 75-year cost of Bush's Medicare drug benefit, which is more than twice its size, or Bush's tax cuts if permanently extended, which would be nearly four times its size.

In short, Social Security is not facing a financial crisis at all. It is facing a need for some distinctly sub-cataclysmic adjustments over the next few decades that would increase its revenue and diminish its benefits.

Politically, however, Social Security is facing the gravest crisis it has ever known. For the first time in its history, it is confronted by a president, and just possibly by a working congressional majority, who are opposed to the program on ideological grounds, who view the New Deal as a repealable aberration in U.S. history, who would have voted against establishing the program had they been in Congress in 1935. But Bush doesn't need Karl Rove's counsel to know that repealing Social Security for reasons of ideology is a non-starter.

So it's time once more to fabricate a crisis. In Bushland, it's always time to fabricate a crisis. We have a crisis in medical malpractice costs, though the CBO says that malpractice costs amount to less than 2 percent of total health care costs. (In fact, what we have is a president who wants to diminish the financial, and thus political, clout of trial lawyers.) We have a crisis in judicial vacancies, though in fact Senate Democrats used the filibuster to block just 10 of Bush's 229 first-term judicial appointments.

*I must credit Charles Pierce, local scribe, for "C+ Augustus", the latest & greatest name for the lesser Bush.

God Save Social Security from Bush

I haven't posted on this topic before, but C+ Augustus is trying to destroy the greatest & most successful social program in the history of the world: Social Security. A faux crisis has been announced (see WMD, 2002), and Social Security is under siege.

It's a disaster waiting to happen. As a matter of fact, a similar privatization plan was enacted by Great Britain in 1984. Read all about it:

A Bloody Mess

if you're to busy to read the article, here's the money quote:

....the plan set in train during Thatcher’s first term in 1979 and [] has since led Britain to the brink of a crisis. Since then, the nation’s basic pension, which is paid for out of tax receipts, has shrunk dramatically. The United Kingdom has the stingiest state pension program of any G8 nation, and there is growing consensus -- even among British conservatives -- that reform is needed. And ironically enough, considering that America is on the verge of copying Britain’s mistake, most experts seek reform in the direction of a more generous, and simpler, basic state pension -- one similar in design, in other words, to America’s Social Security program.

Richard Clarke's Doomsday Scenario

Clarke on Al Qaeda: They're Going to Disneyland!

Richard Clarke predicts the future & it ain't pretty.

Another Wingnut for Homeland Security

Bush just nominated Michael Chertoff to be head of the Homeland Security Department.

And who, might you ask, is Michael Chertoff?

In the second term, the answer is never good.

Alliance for Justice Report on the Nomination of Michael Chertoff to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit

Since September 11th Chertoff has played a key role in the war against terrorism, pursuing an aggressive agenda against suspected terrorists and Arab Americans from countries that the U.S. government claims have strong terrorism networks. Chertoff supervised the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui and has been described as “the driving force behind the Justice Department's most controversial initiatives in the war on terrorism.”3 Civil liberties advocates blame him for what they see as dangerous curtailments to free speech and the rights of criminal defendants. According to press reports, Chertoff has played a key role in several matters: first, the increase in FBI agents’ authority to conduct domestic surveillance; second, the use of “material witness” warrants to lock up people of Middle Eastern dissent; third, the interviewing of thousands of Middle Eastern men who entered the United States before and after the 9/11 attacks; fourth, the aggressive prosecution of Moussaoui, despite concern that the FBI had not found sufficient evidence to link him to the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. Chertoff’s has not only played an active role in these cases, he has also been the first to defend controversial Justice Department policies. He spoke up for the government’s right to hold suspects indefinitely without counsel as “enemy combatants,” as well as the government’s decision to interview 5,000 Arab Americans after the 9/11 attacks.

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Whitewater

As counsel to Senator Alphonse D’Amato (R-NY) in the Whitewater investigation, Chertoff proved his loyalty to the Republican Party and his willingness to turn a legal investigation into a political one. He ruthlessly pursued the Clintons, on behalf of the Republican controlled Senate. Shortly after the congressional Whitewater investigation had been finished, Chertoff utilized his role in the probe to promote Robert Dole’s presidential campaign. Chertoff stumped for Dole as a warm-up speaker at a fundraiser in Lyndhurst, New Jersey. Referring to his work in Whitewater, Chertoff asked the crowd, “[Clinton] promised us the most ethical administration in American history. Well, howmany of that administration are in jail now? Why does the White House spend more time hiding its files from subpoenas than it does pursuing drug dealers?'' How many members of this administration have to resign in disgrace?”13 Chertoff also wrote an article for Newsweek in 1996 entitled Why Whitewater Mattersdescribing the Clintons wrongdoing and why it was important. It is clear that Chertoff had no problem taking his knowledge of the investigation and using it to turn Americans against the President during an election campaign. Senators might ask if this is an appropriate role for an investigator in what was supposed to be an apolitical investigation.14

Michael Chertoff: Ashcroft's Top Gremlin
Spreading Mischief from DoJ to the Federal Bench

But now I have a new gremlin to watch, someone who is as intent on undermining the law and Constitution as Ashcroft. I am referring to the man behind the criminal prosecution of terrorists, Michael Chertoff. Chertoff, former chief of the Justice Department's criminal division, and a scary looking guy if ever there was one, has been elevated to the level of Court of Appeals judge--the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, whose jurisdiction includes Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. What's so scary about Michael? Well, besides having no judicial experience and being a right-ring radical who does not believe in the Constitution and wants to rewrite federal law and rules of procedure on an ad hoc, case by case basis, as it suits him, nothing I guess.

A good place to look for Chertoff's legal philosophy is in the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui , now taking place in the Eastern District of Virginia. Chertoff is not the prosecutor of course, Paul McNulty of the Eastern District is. But Chertoff is McNulty's boss and he is calling the shots. So Chertoff argued the government's case in the super secret hearing before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals last week. The government is trying to block trial judge Leonie Brinkema's ruling that Moussaoui and his lawyers have access to the government's star witnesses against him. The government has refused and appealed. Judge Brinkema, who still believes in the Constitution, rightly ruled that to deny Moussaoui that access is a blatant violation of the Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses.

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Chertoff argued to the 4th Circuit that the Court could not order the government to produce its start witness against Moussaoui because (are you ready?) he, the witness, is out of the country at an undisclosed location. True, but the witness is in the custody of the federal government! The out-of-the country argument is a sham. This is similar to a ruling recently by the federal court that ruled that Guantanmo Bay prisoners had no access to federal courts for claims that they be charged or release because-they are out of the country!! Of course, in federal custody, but that does not matter.

The absurd arguments contrary to the letter and spirit of all that not only the Constitution, but current federal law provides, is appalling and shameful.....

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Keep your eye on Michael Chertoff. As bad for the law and Constitution as many of Bush's judicial appointees are, Chertoff has been the architect of prosecutions in the "war on terror." And he may have big changes in mind for you, me, the courts, and the Constitution.

A friendlier bio piece:

CRACKDOWN
by JEFFREY TOOBIN
Should we be worried about the new antiterrorism legislation?