Hub Fans Welcome Kid Back

Best news of a depressing off-season by far:

Epstein to rejoin Red Sox

BOSTON --Theo Epstein is rejoining the Boston Red Sox, 2 1/2 months after he turned down a three-year, $4.5 million offer to remain as general manager.

Epstein and Red Sox management issued a joint statement Thursday saying he will return to the organization full-time, but they did not say in what capacity Epstein would rejoin the team. His return had been rumored almost since the day he slipped out of Fenway Park wearing a borrowed gorilla costume to avoid the media.

"As you know, we have spoken frequently during the last 10 weeks. We have engaged in healthy, spirited debates about what it will take over the long-term for the Red Sox to remain a great organization and, in fact, become a more effective organization in philosophy, approaches and ideals," the statement said.

"Ironically, Theo's departure has brought us closer together in many respects, and, thanks to these conversations, we now enjoy the bonds of a shared vision for the organizations future that did not exist on October 31. With this vision in place, Theo will return to the Red Sox in a full-time baseball operations capacity, details of which will be announced next week."

The statement came from Epstein, principal owner John Henry, chairman Tom Werner, president Larry Lucchino and Epstein.

Presstitute of the Day: Deborah Howell

Pissy, pissy, pissy little Deborah Howell.

Howell, you will remember, is the new ombudsperson at the Washington Post. (I'm a feminist. I refuse to call a woman an ombudsman, as the Post does. So sue me.) Howell's been wrong a few times now -- saying the answer to Bob Woodward not telling his editor about his involvement in the Plame case is for Woodward to get an editor, for example.

But her lowest moment (until today) was Sunday, when she published this statement of "fact":

a number of Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (N.D.), have gotten Abramoff campaign money.

As though it were fact. However, it is not. As it is not a true fact, it is, in fact, a lie. A very big lie, as this is the Republican Talking Point of the moment, intended to confuse the public.

For the Abramoff scandal is a Republican scandal. Abramoff gave all his campaign money -- $172,933 -- exclusively to Republicans. His clients, the Indian tribes, continued to give political contributions to Democrats, as they always had, but in lower amounts than before they hired Abramoff. Those same tribes, however, suddenly more than tripled their contributions to Republicans, at Abramoff's urging.

So it is a lie to say that Democrats have gotten Abramoff campaign money. They didn't get one thin dime. And it is a pernicious lie, as it is intended to mislead the public into thinking the Abramoff scandal is bipartisan. It is not. It is about Republicans cheating, stealing, and pigging out at the trough of political corruption. No Democrats participated in the K Street Project.

Well, blogtopia (yes! skippy coined the term!) was not happy to see a lie masquerading as the truth in the Washington Post. Bloggers, egged on by Jane Hamsher at firedoglake, began bombarding the Post's new blog, post.blog, with comments. (The comments were placed on the most recent post, entitled "New Blog: Maryland Moment", so the uprising of the readers on this issue will ever be known as The Maryland Moment.) Most of the comments were quite civil, pointed out the error, and asked for a retraction and a correction.

The Post's reaction was instructive. No correction has ever been made. Comments were deleted, first just a few, then en masse. (While the Post later blamed the disappearing of the comments on their blogvendor, Typepad, I have my doubts.) After an outcry, comments were reinstated. A Post reporter, Derek Willis, posted a comment in essence defending Howell's lie as truth. That reporter's comment was bombarded with angry denunciations. Then, Presstitute Howie Kurtz got in on the action, declaring Howell's statement had been "inartfully worded", and pushing the lie that
Abramoff was an equal opportunity giver if you looked at the contributions of the tribes. More derisive comments followed.

Still, as of this morning, no correction, no retraction.

Finally at 11:30 a.m. this morning, more than five days after the offending lie appeared in her column, Deborah Howell posted this on the post blog:

Posted at 11:30 AM ET, 01/19/2006
Deborah Howell Responds

I've heard from lots of angry readers about the remark in my column Sunday that lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to both parties. A better way to have said it would be that Abramoff "directed" contributions to both parties.

Lobbyists, seeking influence in Congress, often advise clients on campaign contributions. While Abramoff, a Republican, gave personal contributions only to Republicans, he directed his Indian tribal clients to make millions of dollars in campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties.

Records from the Federal Elections Commission and the Center for Public Integrity show that AbramoffÂ’s Indian clients contributed between 1999 and 2004 to 195 Republicans and 88 Democrats. The Post has copies of lists sent to tribes by Abramoff with specific directions on what members of Congress were to receive specific amounts.

One of those lists can be viewed in this online graphic, while a graphical summary of giving by Abramoff, his tribal clients and associated lobbyists can be viewed here. The latest developments in the Abramoff investigation are available in this Special Report.

-- Deborah Howell, Washington Post Ombudsman

So, she has (1) refused to admit that her original statement of "fact" was, indeed, a lie; and (2) offered yet another version of "everybody does it". But she's wrong. One of firedoglake's commenters deconstructs her statement and the skewed evidence she uses. In essence, she used an Abramoff document that doesn't match up with actual amounts contributed by the tribes. Nothing like a little misleading on a lovely Thursday morning.

This afternoon the Washington Post shut down its Comments. Indefinitely, they say. Forever, I predict.

So, for lying in print, refusing to correct that lie, replacing the lie with another lie, then shutting down the public's access to their spokeswoman, I award today's Presstitute of the Day award to Deborah Howell.

I have a feeling she'll win more than one of these.

The Incompetence, The Corruption, and The Cronyism, January 19, 2006

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
H.L. Mencken


The Incompetence:

The defining fiasco of the Bush Administration may prove to be the utterly disastrous Medicare prescription drug benefit, formally known as Medicare Part D. Already the newspapers are filled with stories about Medicare-Medicaid patients, the poorest of the poor, being denied prescriptions by the thousands because the government, with only two full years to prepare, didn't have its computer systems tested, up, and running when the program launched January 1. The pain is just beginning.

What's instructive about this project is that it provides a concrete illustration of what Social Security would have looked like after a Bush privatization job: A program that should be designed to serve citizens turned instead into a plaything for lobbyists and business interests. Had Social Security privatization gone through, it's plain, the financial services industry would have had the green light to inundate citizens with flagrantly misleading brochures promising benefits that they couldn't deliver. There are many words for this in the thesaurus, but the first one that comes to mind is "disgusting."

Golden State Column: Bush's Catastrophic Drug Benefit (Part One) by Michael Hitzik.

See, also, Americablog: It's Medicare Part D for Disaster


The Corruption:

The K Street Project was a giant money laundering enterprise. Many of the beneficiaries were non-profits: either religious or charitable organizations. One was organized by the hateful Grover Norquist, of 'drown the federal government in a bathtub' fame. If Jack Abramoff directed monies to Norquist organizations in exchange for meetings with President Bush or other favors, that's tax fraud. I wonder who gets to investigate this: the prosecutor after Abramoff, or the IRS?

Stuart Levine:

Grover Norquist and the Tax Code

Did Grover Norquist Commit Tax Fraud?



The Cronyism:

The most incompetent White House spokesman since Ron Ziegler, Scott McClellan, has a brother, Mark McClellan. Guess what government fiasco Mark McClellan runs? The clue here is "incompetent". As in Medicare Part D.

And are you asking yourself, "What about the other McClellan brother?" You'll recall that Medicare Plan D isn't working well? And that seniors and pharmacists and medical professionals who are trying to make sense out of the entire mess can't get a straight answer from the 1-800 hotline, even after waiting forever on hold to get to a person who is supposed to help them? Guess who is in charge of coordinating this non-helpful service (via The Plank):

I have an article about what's going on with the Medicare drug benefit--and why--coming out in this week's edition of the magazine. But one tidbit I came across in my research seems worth sharing now. It's a Government Accounting Office report, issued in December, warning that the Bush administration hadn't done enough to make sure the most medically and financially vulnerable Medicare beneficiaries could actually get their drugs.

If you do get around to reading it, make sure to check out the part where Mark McClellan, director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, says the GAO has it all wrong--the part where he insists that "CMS has established effective contingency plans to ensure that dual-eligible beneficiaries will be able to obtain comprehensive coverage and obtain necessary drugs beginning January 1, 2006."

Well, maybe not entirely effective.

Firedoglake: Profiles in Cronyhood: The McClellan Brothers

Big Day for Dr. Seuss

Another Seussical take-off. I like the Joe Biden verse the best.

Sam-I-Am and the neo-con-scam

Judge Samuel Alito's opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee:
I Am Sam, Sam I Am!
I may like this, I didn't do that,
I Am Sam, Sam I Am!"

[]

Senator Joe Biden:
First of all I'd like to say I love you, and I really mean that. I also love this country and all of the people in the Delaware valley who do or do not attend Princeton Universityn even if my grandfather will never forgive me. This includes all Americans and our allies that love freedom, democracy and safety. Even if safety comes with a second or third mortgage on freedom and democracy because interest rates at an all time low. I am concerned and confused, as many are, by your obvious lack of support for the hair club and civil liberties. I look forward to your help in clarifying any issues I may stumble across as I continue to ramble towards some point that I am trying to make. You need to ask yourself, are you ready to face the gag factor of the neo-con scam or give up your car and way of life? I think most Americans would choose freedom at any cost. With this overwhelming public support behind me I ask you: "Would you? Could you for car? Tell me! Tell me! who you are?"

I do not like the neo-con scam,
I would not could not for a car,
I do not like them in a box,
I do not like them even on FOX,
I do not like them in a house,
I would not, could not, with a mouse,
I do not like them here or there,
I do not like them anywhere,
I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.

'Meanwhile, the World Disappears'

From dailykos:

Meanwhile, the World Disappears

One by one, species are going extinct at an ever-accelerating pace, currently estimated at 1000 times the normal rate. ("Normal" meaning before human civilization.) The following random articles are all from the last six weeks. Keep in mind that these few examples are from well documented areas, accessible to scientists:

Click on the link to see photos of all the creatures close to extinction:

Presstitute of the Day: Howie Kurtz

For relentlessly flogging the Republican effort to Swiftboat Jack Murtha. His Media Notes Online article is front paged on the WaPo website today, giving life to a story that a real journalist would have ignored and let die its own pathetic death. But Howie is a presstitute through and through.

A Swift-Moving Story

Howie whines in response to Murray Waas's criticism of his original article:

I would welcome a deeper examination, as I had three hours to write the story on deadline. But I provided the needed context about Cybercast -- which was formerly called Conservative News Service -- and I'd note that the military, after all, decides when to hand out the medals.

Howie: If you didn't have time to research the story adequately, you shouldn't have submitted it for publication. Why were you in such a rush, anyway? Was Mrs. Kurtz, Sheri Annis, Republican operative, on your case? Maybe I should buy your cell phone records to find out.

The real story on Murtha is on the op-ed pages of the New York Times today, by "James Webb, a secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, [] a Marine platoon and company commander in Vietnam."


Purple Heartbreakers

The accusations against Mr. Murtha were very old news, principally coming from defeated political rivals. Aligned against their charges are an official letter from Marine Corps Headquarters written nearly 40 years ago affirming Mr. Murtha's eligibility for his Purple Hearts - "you are entitled to the Purple Heart and a Gold Star in lieu of a second Purple Heart for wounds received in action" - and the strict tradition of the Marine Corps regarding awards. While in other services lower-level commanders have frequently had authority to issue prestigious awards, in the Marines Mr. Murtha's Vietnam Bronze Star would have required the approval of four different awards boards.

I Do Not Like Jack Abramoff

Tom DeLay Denies All Charges (As Told by Dr. Suess)

That Abramoff!
That Abramoff!
I do not like that Abramoff!

"Would you like to play some golf?"

I do not want to play some golf.
I do not want to, Abramoff.

"We could fly you there for free.
Off to Scotland, by the sea."

I do not want to fly for free.
I don't like Scotland by the sea.
I do not want to play some golf.
I do not want to, Abramoff.

"Would you, could you, take this bribe?
Could you, would you, for the tribe?"............

Read the whole thing: It's priceless. Tip o' the cap to Micah Sifry on the Huffington Post: Green Cash and Scam

Operation Photo Op, Medicare Part D edition, 1.0

HHS Works to Fix Drug Plan Woes
Widespread Difficulties With New Medicare Benefit Reported

President Bush's top health advisers will fan out across the country this week to quell rising discontent with a new Medicare prescription drug benefit that has tens of thousands of elderly and disabled Americans, their pharmacists, and governors struggling to resolve myriad start-up problems.

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, who will visit Oregon and California, said yesterday that 24 million Medicare beneficiaries now have prescription coverage, compared with the 20.4 million who had been receiving drug benefits last year through state- or employer-sponsored plans. That means the new program, expected to cost $700 billion in the first 10 years, is providing drug coverage to 3.6 million new retirees.

Oh, this will fix everything. Go around the country and say how well the program is working. Incompetent photo-opping boobs.

If The Rainforest Dries Up, Will We Notice?

David Ignatious's column in today's Washington Post on climate change says scientists are reporting that the Amazon rain forest is drying up:

Is It Warm in Here?
We Could Be Ignoring the Biggest Story in Our History

What got me thinking about the recondite life rhythms of the planet, and not the 24-hour news cycle, was a recent conversation with a scientist named Thomas E. Lovejoy, who heads the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. When I first met Lovejoy nearly 20 years ago, he was trying to get journalists like me to pay attention to the changes in the climate and biological diversity of the Amazon. He is still trying, but he's beginning to wonder if it's too late.

Lovejoy fears that changes in the Amazon's ecosystem may be irreversible. Scientists reported last month that there is an Amazonian drought apparently caused by new patterns in Atlantic currents that, in turn, are similar to projected climate change. With less rainfall, the tropical forests are beginning to dry out. They burn more easily, and, in the continuous feedback loops of their ecosystem, these drier forests return less moisture to the atmosphere, which means even less rain. When the forest trees are deprived of rain, their mortality can increase by a factor of six, and similar devastation affects other species, too.

[]

So many of the things that pass for news don't matter in any ultimate sense. But if people such as Lovejoy and Kolbert are right, we are all but ignoring the biggest story in the history of humankind. Kolbert concluded her series last year with this shattering thought: "It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing." She's right. The failure of the United States to get serious about climate change is unforgivable, a human folly beyond imagining.

I didn't realize Lovejoy worked for one of the foundations controlled by Theresa Heinz Kerry.

Earlier post on Lovejoy: The Sky Is Falling

USSF's World Cup Ticketing Nightmare

I applied for World Cup tickets through the US Soccer Federation in December. There are all kinds of arcane rules about applying. You couldn't apply both to FIFA and to USSF. If you applied through both entities, both applications would be ignored and you would not get any tickets, ever.

I chose to go through our federation because I really want to see the US play, and I figured there would be less competition than going up against the world for tickets.

Wrong, moose breath.

USSF emailed me a password on December 12th, along with a PDF file application. I could apply by either fax or overnight mail, but not email. I don't have a real fax machine at home (where I was doing my application) but I thought, I better fax this application or I'll get shut out. (This was correct.) So I went to a printing press in my little town & paid to fax my application. This was at 2:30. The guy said, I can fax it for you, but you won't get a confirmation printout. This is a new machine, and they don't do that. I should have turned around and driven to Boston, but here I made my fatal mistake. He said, the machine will just keep redialing the number until it gets through. Well, USSF had said they were prepared to accept the influx of faxes, so I said OK, send it.

I didn't get a confirmation number from US Soccer the next day, so I over-nighted my application. I knew I was in trouble when my confirmation number came back two days later: 30xxx.

Then, I waited. We were supposed to be notified by January 6th about ticket allocations. January 6th came and went. I went to bigsoccer daily and read speculation about what was going on. January 12th ussoccer finally sent out a mass email saying they would absolutely, positively inform everyone by January 14th whether we got tickets, so if you didn't, you could get into the last round of the FIFA lottery, for which applications had to be filed by 6:00 p.m. January 15th. Whew.

But January 14th, there was no email. I left my email program on & hit refresh every 15 minutes or so as the Patriots went down in defeat to the Broncos. No email from ussoccer. Finally, I went to bed, resigned that I would have to file a FIFA application by 6:00 p.m. tomorrow without knowing if I had received tix.

When I got up on the 15th, I found a ussoccer email, sent to me at 1:49 a.m. on Sunday. I got shut out of the group round. No tickets for US-Italy, US-Czech republic, US-Ghana. But, oh, lucky me, I got awarded tickets to the later rounds (for which the US is unlikely to qualify, let's be honest here) and get to carry the charges on my credit card until then:

The following tickets will be issued to you.

Quarter Finals
4 -Category II

Semi Finals
4 -Category III

Finals
4 -Category III

So, I submitted my application to the FIFA lottery on Sunday. Very few tickets are left, but a girl can dream, can't she?

Maybe I should get a job at Home Depot. Supposedly the sponsors of the US Soccer got all the Category I tickets, as very few were allocated to the humble fans.

This was a poorly designed process. It's impossible to have "first come, first served" when (a) you have different methods of applying, as here, fax and mail; and (b) you do not have the technology adequate to receive the applications. I wonder how many faxed applications USSF actually received that first day. I wonder how many people were, like me, unable to get through?

This would have been easily solved if USSF had simply accepted applications by email. Since everyone who applied needed to be able to receive the password by email, everyone who applied had to have access to a computer.

I got screwed because I couldn't get through via my ancient fax machine. So I fedexed & got no tickets. No, worse than that, I have been charged through the nose for conditional tickets to the later rounds, which realistically the US is unlikely to reach.

I wonder how many tickets the USSF hierarchy allocated to themselves? I'm sure we'll see the whole group at the games. Bastards.

I'm not the only one who feels used and abused by the USSF process:

From We Call It Soccer, two posts: The USSF is Turning Our Hair Gray and Giving Us Tumors. And Tickets.

The USSF Ticket Debacle, For the Record and in Perspective

And two more from My Soccer Blog: The ticket sale that just will not end

More on US World Cup Tickets

And in the end, I find myself paraphrasing Don Rumsfield, of all people: You go to the World Cup with the Federation you have.

It could be worse. I could be from Trinidad and Tobago. The country's entire allocation of tickets was sold to a Vice President of FIFA, also the President of CONCACAF, Jack Warner, who coincidentally owns a travel agency. The entire allocation. So if you want a $200 ticket to the T&T game v. England, you have to buy a $4000 travel package from Mr. Warner, who stands to make millions from this major scam.

Blog Round-Up, January 17, 2006

Art Pottery, Politics and Food posts Scotty's hilarious sparring with the gaggle over Abramoff's visits to the White House, with a must-see picture: Jack-Jack Attack

RJ Eskow, Huffington Post, says it's a Clinton [George} thing: The Etymology of Nagin's "Chocolate City"

A compendium of this month's GWB lies, from Bottle of Blog: Just One Month

Glenn Greenwald gives us the background on how the Bush Administration waded into the Oregon assisted suicide case -- in the weeks after 9/11: Assisted suicide case shows the Administration's true colors

Unanimous

SJC says life support can end for alleged beating victim, 11

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled yesterday that life-support systems for an 11-year-old Westfield girl can be removed, saying that the child, who has been in a vegetative state since an alleged beating by her adoptive mother and stepfather, should be able to ''pass away with dignity."

The state's highest court unanimously rejected an appeal by the stepfather of Haleigh Poutre to keep the girl alive, saying it was ''unthinkable" to give him a voice in her care, because of his alleged role in her beating and the potential murder charges he faces if she dies.

The decision, written by Justice John M. Greaney, chronicled how the girl's many bruises and burns over the last few years were reported more than a dozen times to child-protection officials, who often misidentified the injuries as self-inflicted or common childhood mishaps.

In language that showed their belief that Haleigh's life is already over, the court referred to a larger message that can be taken from her brief life.

It's not hard to decide that an alleged murderer has no right to keep the victim alive to avoid murder charges. However, since we have a very progressive court in Massachusetts (almost all appointed by our Republican governors, Weld and Cellucci) it is likely that any right-to-die case would have a similar outcome. We're big on those old-time American values here, freedom and liberty.

The Globe also provides a comparison of Haleigh Poutre's case with the Schiavo case:

Two cases put spotlight on end-of-life decisions

The Right to Die With Dignity Upheld

The Supreme Court today upheld Oregon's assisted suicide law by a 6-3 vote.

Justices Uphold Oregon Assisted-Suicide Law
In a Blow to Administration, Ruling Paves Way for Other States to Follow Suit

Text of Court Ruling

It was a 6-3 decision, with new Chief Justice John Roberts, Scalia and Thomas in dissent. No surprise that Roberts joined the two most conservative members of the court in opposing assisted suicide. You wonder what Rehnquist would have done. Normally he was a reliable conservative vote. But after suffering for over a year during his thyroid cancer treatment, and after watching his wife's long battle with ovarian cancer (she died in 1991), I wonder if he might have ended up with the majority on this one.

I've represented people with cancer for years. Often they are in horrible, intractable pain from either the disease or the treatment. Pain that leaves them drawn, exhausted, barely able to think. They fight bravely but eventually come to that point where the pain is more than they can bear. I believe strongly that the individual should be able to make the decision to end the suffering. It's true freedom, the freedom to make decisions about your own body, about when you are ready to go.

I tell my friends, help me when I need it. Don't leave me to suffer in a hospital bed tied up with tubes. Make sure I have some good meds & let me go happy.

This was the right decision by the Court.

Some Things Never Change

Good catch from Echidne of the Snakes:

Madam President

And a tiny speck of feminism: My eagle's eye caught something about the way these new female presidents were introduced. At least a few sources do it this way:

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has been sworn in as Liberia's new president, becoming Africa's first elected female head of state and vowing to lead the country away from its turbulent past.

Sirleaf took the oath of office Monday at an inauguration ceremony in the capital of Monrovia attended by dignitaries and leaders from around the world.

The 67-year-old grandmother, who was elected in a run-off vote in November, has promised to unite Liberia by ending political corruption and rebuilding her country after civil war between 1989 and 2003 left some 200,000 dead.

The Chilean President-elect, Michelle Bachelet, has pledged to name a cabinet with an equal number of men and women.

The mother-of-three also told a news conference on Monday that she would strive to root out Chile's embedded social divide.

Bolds are mine. Have you ever read George Bush described as the father-of-two?

Poll

Gary Bauer's organization, Our American Values, has a poll running on illegal spying by the government. Here are the results so far:

How do you feel about the Bush Administration using wiretaps to gain information about potential terrorist plots?

No problem
127 votes. 38%

It is intrusion on privacy
205 votes. 62%

Not my issue
1 votes. 0%

Weekly Poll

Why don't you go vote? I did. Upper left hand corner of the page.

I've Been Deleted From the Washington Post -- Twice!!

The Washington Post is ticked off about the comments they've been receiving about Ombudsperson Deborah Howell's lies about Jack Abramoff. So ticked off, they've deleted over 600 comments from their readers from their blog.

I'm here to claim my two deleted comments.

The first I left Sunday night after I read the article. It was a joke, OK?

"Deborah, you're doin' a heckuva job." signed, George W. Bush.

This was deleted when I logged onto the blog the next morning. I thought, OK, they're deleting jokes. So I left another comment, to this effect:

The evidence shows that Deborah Howell's statement that Democrats received money from Jack Abramoff is not true. Despite this, the Post has issued neither a correction or a retraction.

Where is the truth?

Signed, truth.

Today, this comment has been deleted, along with 600 others.

Not exactly incendiary stuff.

So, my odd history with the Washington Post continues. They've reprinted my work, with nary an email beforehand, and now they've deleted me. Twice.

Time for another panel on blogger ethics, I guess.

Scalito Skating Onto SCOTUS

I keep meaning to mention this. Why don't the Senators on the Judiciary Committee use their staff to ask questions?

None of them could cross examine themselves out of a paper bag. They're lucky to get a question or two in during their long, bloviating soliloquies.

Now, you don't have to be a brain surgeon to examine a witness. But there are certain, simple rules.

Like, don't start out by saying "Just a few questions", when you're going to be up there for an hour.

Or don't trivialize your questions before you ask them by making only-funny-to-you self-deprecating statements (like this: BIDEN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I understand, Judge, I'm the only one standing between you and lunch, so I'll try to make this painless.)

This applies to all the Senators, not just Joe Biden (D-MBNA). But Biden was certainly the worst offender. Here's another little Biden gem:

[] But again, this is just by way of why some of us are puzzled. Because if I was aware of it, and I didn't even like Princeton...

(LAUGHTER)

I mean, I really didn't like Princeton. I was an Irish Catholic kid who thought it had not changed like you concluded it had.

I admit, one of my real dilemmas is I have two kids who went to Ivy League schools. I'm not sure my Grandfather Finnegan will ever forgive me for allowing that to happen.

But all kidding aside, I wasn't a big Princeton fan. And so maybe that is why I focused on it and no one else did. But I remember it at the time.

If you want your audience to take you seriously, be serious. Don't make stupid jokes. Is this a serious proceeding or not? Does a doctor make jokes in the middle of informing you about the medical condition of a loved one? Of course not. That would be inappropriate to the occasion. Biden's inability to stay on topic was incredibly annoying.

Also incredibly annoying, his/their habit of stating glowing conclusions about Alito's opinions and motives BEFORE asking questions in those very areas. Like this:

BIDEN: I don't think anybody thinks you are a man lacking in integrity. I don't think anybody thinks that you are a person who's not independent.

[]

So again, I'm not questioning your commitment to civil rights. What I do wonder about is, whether or not -- it's presumptuous of me to say this -- whether you fully appreciate how discrimination does work today.

Why bother questioning someone about their opinions on discrimination when you preface it like this:

I know you want to eliminate discrimination. Explain to me how that test is distinguishable from just plain old discrimination.

Well, why are we bothering to have these hearings if we "know" Scalito wants to eliminate discrimination? Isn't the reason we're here is that most of us Democrats believe, since he almost always rules against discrimination victims, that he's against the very concept of anti-discrimination law? As an employment lawyer, that's one of the reasons I don't want this jamoke on the Court. He's got his finger on the scale on the side of the employer.

Bring back the questioning by staff. Where is our Sam Dash, our Arthur Liman?

Tomorrow I'm calling my Senators and asking them to filibuster. Call yours.

Notorious House of Presstitution

This week's Notorious House of Presstitution Award goes to ..... drum roll, please ..... The Washington Post!

The Post triumphs over the rest of the fawning corporate media by having two blatant falsehoods trumpeted in its pages.

Article No. 1: On Saturday, Republican House Organ Howie Kurtz and Shailagh Murray published this little gem:

Web Site Attacks Critic of War
Opponents Question Murtha's Medals

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), the former Marine who is an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, has become the latest Democrat to have his Vietnam War decorations questioned.

In a tactic reminiscent of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth assault on Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) during the 2004 presidential campaign, a conservative Web site yesterday quoted Murtha opponents as questioning the circumstances surrounding the awarding of his two Purple Hearts.

David Thibault, editor in chief of the Cybercast News Service, said the issue of Murtha's medals from 1967 is relevant now "because the congressman has really put himself in the forefront of the antiwar movement." Thibault said: "He has been placed by the Democratic Party and antiwar activists as a spokesman against the war above reproach."

Here, Republican operative Sheri Annis' husband "reports" the hysterical allegations of a right-wing propaganda machine whose most prominent client is GOPUSA, the group that owned Talon News and pimped Jeff Gannon/Jimmy Guckert into a coveted seat in the White House pressroom.

Yes, Virginia, in this article the Washington Post cites Cybercast News Service (CNS). A Republican website that works for GOPUSA.

And then the Post runs a quote from Harry Fox from 1996.

The article included a 1996 quote from Harry Fox, who worked for former representative John Saylor (R-Pa.), telling a local newspaper that Murtha was "pretending to be a big war hero." Fox, who lost a 1974 election to Murtha, said the 38-year Marine veteran had asked Saylor for assistance in obtaining the Purple Hearts but was turned down because the office believed he lacked adequate evidence of his wounds.

However, the Post leaves out the very salient fact (which was in the original CNS article) that Mr. Fox is now 81 years old and because of health reasons can no longer communicate whether or not this quote is accurate.

The Post article also leaves out the extremely salient fact that Saylor, who the now incommunicative Fox is trying to quote, has been DEAD since 1973.

Murray Waas deconstructs this steaming pile of horsepucky.

And that's not all, folks, because on Sunday the Washington Post's ombudsperson, Deborah Howell, continued the Post's Republican talking points journey.

Getting the Story on Jack Abramoff

Several stories, including one on June 3 by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, a Post business reporter, have mentioned that a number of Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and Sen. Byron Dorgan (N.D.), have gotten Abramoff campaign money.

This is a stupid and demonstrably false statement by Howell. No Democrat received money from Jack Abramoff. They did receive money from Abramoff's clients: The Indian tribes who were ripped off by Abramoff. There is no evidence that the tribes were attempting to bribe the Democrats. There is ample evidence that Abramoff was stealing from the Indians to bribe the Republican officials to funnel the money back into the coffers of Republican-owned businesses by passing legislation to do just so. That's why Abramoff just took a plea, you idiot.

Firedoglake did the best send-up of Howell: The Naked Lies of Deborah Howell

So, for these two shining examples of naked presstitution, we give the Washington Post the coveted Notorious House of Presstitution award. For this week, at least.

The Sky Is Falling

For real. Scientist James Lovelock says that over the next 96 years, global warming cannot be stopped, and will kill billions of people and send the few remaining survivors to the Arctic to live.

Environment in crisis: 'We are past the point of no return'

Thirty years ago, the scientist James Lovelock worked out that the Earth possessed a planetary-scale control system which kept the environment fit for life. He called it Gaia, and the theory has become widely accepted. Now, he believes mankind's abuse of the environment is making that mechanism work against us. His astonishing conclusion - that climate change is already insoluble, and life on Earth will never be the same again.

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The world and human society face disaster to a worse extent, and on a faster timescale, than almost anybody realises, he believes. He writes: " Before this century is over, billions of us will die, and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable."

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Professor Lovelock draws attention to one aspect of the warming threat in particular, which is that the expected temperature rise is currently being held back artificially by a global aerosol - a layer of dust in the atmosphere right around the planet's northern hemisphere - which is the product of the world's industry.

This shields us from some of the sun's radiation in a phenomenon which is known as "global dimming" and is thought to be holding the global temperature down by several degrees. But with a severe industrial downturn, the aerosol could fall out of the atmosphere in a very short time, and the global temperature could take a sudden enormous leap upwards.

Lovelock's prediction:

Over the coming decades soaring temperatures will mean agriculture may become unviable over huge areas of the world where people are already poor and hungry; water supplies for millions or even billions may fail. Rising sea levels will destroy substantial coastal areas in low-lying countries such as Bangladesh, at the very moment when their populations are mushrooming. Numberless environmental refugees will overwhelm the capacity of any agency, or indeed any country, to cope, while modern urban infrastructure will face devastation from powerful extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans last summer.

The international community accepts the reality of global warming, supported by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In its last report, in 2001, the IPCC said global average temperatures were likely to rise by up to 5.8C by 2100. In high latitudes, such as Britain, the rise is likely to be much higher, perhaps 8C. The warming seems to be proceeding faster than anticipated and in the IPCC's next report, 2007, the timescale may be shortened. Yet there still remains an assumption that climate change is controllable, if CO2 emissions can be curbed. Lovelock is warning: think again.

President Gore Speaks

Just listened to Gore's speech on C-Span. Couldn't stop thinking, remember when our leaders were smart? Could string thoughts together? Didn't just parrot pet phrases over and over?

Last week during the Scalito hearings I was irritated to hear all the senators praising Sandra Day O'Connor to the skies. She's the bitch who gave us President Bush by stopping the counting of legitimate votes in Florida. I spit on her.