Abramoff Scandal Updates

Abramoff had "a few staff-level meetings" at the Bush White House, according to presidential spokesman Scott McClellan. But he would not say with whom Abramoff met, which interests he was representing, or how he got access to the White House.

Uh huh.

The Texas Observer reports that Abramoff met with Bush on May 9, 2001, with his clients, the Coushatta tribe. (The chairman of the Coushatta tribe initially denied the meeting occured, but subsequently admitted that it did.) Abramoff charged his client 25,000 to arrange the meeting.

Aw oh.

AP Exclusive: Lawmakers pressured Interior while getting large donations from Abramoff tribes: Nearly three dozen members of Congress, including leaders from both parties, pressed the government to reject a Louisiana Indian casino while they collected large donations from rival tribes and their lobbyist, good ol' Jack'off.

Yee Ha!

Republicans Gone Wild: Sidney Blumenthal writes that historians in the future will examine the implications and nuances of the Abramoff affair, the K Street Project and the trajectory of the Republican Congress from the dawn of its "revolution" to its Thermidorian dusk. For now, however, the matter is in the hands of the prosecutors. Let's hope they do their jobs well.

Who in the Dickens will Gutsy-Up the Dems?

Maureen Dowd confirms what many a frustrated Democrat well knows: the Dems have failed to come up with a compelling message to bring down--or at least effectively combat-- Rove's White House of Lies.


Delusion and Illusion Worthy of Dickens
By Maureen Dowd
The New York Times

The Democrats will never win the White House as long as they're stuck in Bleak House. They're slipping and sliding in the same crust-upon-crust of mud and caboose-creeping fog and soft black drizzle and flakes of soot that blacken the chamber of law in the opening of the terrific Dickens novel (now an irresistible PBS series).

The lumbering pace of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce will pale compared with the time it will take the cowed and colicky Democrats to yank back power from Republicans skilled at abusing it.

The party simply seems incapable of getting the muscular message and riveting messenger needed to dispel the mud, fog, drizzle and soot emanating from Karl Rove's rag-and-bone shop on Pennsylvania Avenue.

As the White House drives its truckload of lies around the country, it becomes ever clearer that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Al Gore are just not the right people to respond to the administration's national security scare-a-thon.

We got mired in Iraq in the first place partly because Dick Cheney and Rummy thought that, post-Vietnam and post-Clinton, America was seen as soft. One shock-and-awe session, one tyrant stomped on, they reckoned, and the Arab world would no longer see Americans as wimps. That reasoning turned out to be dangerous, flying in the face of warnings from our own intelligence experts.

But Karl Rove is still dishing out the same line, and it's still working: those who want to re-evaluate the strategy in Iraq are soft. Those who want to rein in the Patriot Act are soft. Those who question the Alito doctrine of presidential absolutism are soft. Those who don't want to break the law and snoop on Americans are soft - not just soft, but practically collaborating with the terrorists.

"Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview" on national security, Mr. Rove said last week, "and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview. That doesn't make them unpatriotic, not at all. But it does make them wrong - deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong."

But you only need to check the paper daily to see that this administration has been deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong on everything: from the promise to rebuild Iraq and the consequences of deploying a strained Army this long in an insurgent war to the failure to respond to the aftermath of Katrina, after dissembling about pre-storm alarms.

The bumbling Bush team that ignored the warning "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" also ignored one that went something like: "Katrina Determined to Attack New Orleans." And now the White House is trying to inhibit Congressional questions on Katrina, just as it did for the 9/11 inquiries.

The administration's p.r. offensive on warrantless - and questionably effective - snooping is so aggressive that it has even risked exposing the president to an occasional unscripted, but still not tough, question. So he rambles on about steering clear of "Brokeback Mountain" and the therapeutic value of mountain biking. And he calls Barney, the Scottish terrier, "the son I never had." (Barney's dad is all bark and no bite.)

The White House is as skittish about bilked Indians as it is about billing-and-cooing cowboys. It admits it has pictures of the president with Jack Abramoff, but won't cough them up.

While he was out defending his scofflaw behavior, W. had to address the fact that the real nuclear threat (Iran), as opposed to the fake nuclear threat (Iraq), is embarrassing him. He told the Iranian people: "We have no beef with you." (State Department reporters puzzled over how that might be translated into Farsi: "We have no cow with you"?)

You couldn't turn on a TV this week without seeing Torture Guy Alberto Gonzales give all-purpose legal cover to Dick Cheney as that Grim Peeper ravages the Constitution. At a Georgetown University speech, W.'s legal lickspittle ignored a few student protesters, but he might have learned something from their banner, emblazoned with words of Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."

In their usual twisted way, the Bushies are reducing their abuse of the law to a test of testosterone - knowing that the Democrats will play Judy to their Punch.

The Dems need to drum up a decent message so they look as if they know what the Dickens they're doing before the November election. Otherwise, they'll look like bowed supplicants holding out gruel cups to Karl Rove and pleading, "Please, sir, I want some more."

Photo credit: Maureen Dowd. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Technorati tags: Maureen Dowd, New York Times, Karl Rove, Bush, Democrats, Rumsfeld, Cheney, White House

Trafficking Policies Against Trafficking Sex

Nicholas Kristof continues to call attention to the problem of human trafficking, urging Bush to make it a higher priority as well.

Hitting Brothel Owners Where It Hurts
By Nicholas D. Kristof
The New York Times

Calcutta

Imagine what you would have done if you'd been in Hasina Bibi's sandals.

She was a lonely 16-year-old working in a garment factory in Bangladesh when an older employee began mothering her. They grew close, and one day the older woman gave Hasina some cakes to eat.

Two days later, Hasina emerged from a drug-induced stupor in India, sold to a brothel in faraway Gujarat. The brothel's owner beat Hasina and threatened to deform her face with acid if she tried to escape. She had to do whatever the customers wanted, with or without condoms.

But Hasina, in contrast with most girls who are trafficked into brothels, had a fourth-grade education and was literate. So although she earned no money, Hasina asked customers for tips and was able to amass a secret stash of rupees. She learned a bit of Hindi. Finally one day she jumped into a rickshaw and ran away.

It would be nice to say that she lived happily ever after, but trafficked children rarely do. Ashamed to return home, Hasina is now an independent streetwalker here in Calcutta.

So as we try to develop policies to reduce sex trafficking, there are a couple of lessons here. First, it's difficult to extricate girls from prostitution after they've been trafficked. It's far more cost-effective to focus resources on reducing the number of newly trafficked people each year - now hundreds of thousands.

Second, educating girls is the best way to give them the tools to resist trafficking or escape brothels. In the long run, one effective way to knock down brothels is to build schools.

But that's for the long run. To have a more immediate impact, we need to reduce the economic incentives for traffickers. Here are my suggestions:

Pick our battles. Look, prostitution will always be around. But progress is possible by targeting the very worst abuses, like the brothels that imprison girls (some boys are also trafficked for sex, but not as many).

Emphasize criminal sanctions. Effective law enforcement may not rescue many individual children (those numbers are tiny), but it deters all brothel owners from forced prostitution and from pimping minors. If brothel owners see that they risk jail for imprisoning and peddling 13-year-olds, they instead employ semivoluntary 17-year-olds who claim that they are 18 (few people in poor countries have good documentation of age). In this world, that's real progress.

Focus on virginity sales. In some areas, like Southeast Asia, the business model of sex trafficking depends on selling virgins for $500 or more apiece. That's where traffickers reap their biggest profits. So let's encourage sting operations that arrest both buyers and sellers of virgins. Buyers are usually wealthy foreigners, often Arabs or ethnic Chinese, and a few heavily publicized arrests would help dry up sales of virgins.

Inspect brothels regularly for prisoners. Frequent inspections make the brothel owners more likely to employ willing prostitutes rather than unwilling ones. During inspections, girls should also undergo mandatory testing for diseases, including H.I.V.

Some people worry that cracking down on trafficking just drives it underground. I don't worry too much about that. The brothel business depends on being readily accessible, so driving it underground makes it less profitable and smaller. And my interviews with brothel owners suggest that many find the business only marginally more profitable than peddling pirated DVD's or smuggled cigarettes. Eat into their profits a bit more, and they'll switch businesses.

The first step is to put forced prostitution on the international agenda, just as the abolitionists put slavery there in the early 19th century. To his credit, President Bush, far more than his predecessors, has pushed other governments to crack down on sex trafficking. His State Department office on trafficking should get a medal.

Mr. Bush could make the issue a higher global priority by raising it in his State of the Union address and in his coming visit to India. Just imagine if he visited the New Light anti-trafficking center here in Calcutta. A local woman, Urmi Basu, used her savings and American foundation grants to build New Light, which battles trafficking, teaches English to the children of prostitutes and provides health services. (Here's a video of Ms. Basu and a list of aid groups that do great work fighting trafficking is at www.nytimes.com/ontheground.)

Mr. Bush could do so much good by leading dignitaries and TV cameras through a red-light slum and down a fetid alley to the sewer-side offices of New Light. The entourage could then spotlight reformers like Ms. Basu, the abolitionists of the 21st century.

In case you missed it, you can watch "A Call to War" from my recent trip to Sri Lanka and "The Next Atlantis?" from my visit to the Maldive Islands.

Photo credit: Nicholas D. Kristof (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Related Materials:

• The New York Times > Video > Interactive Feature > Courage in India
• The New York Times > Video > Interactive Feature > A Call to War

Technorati tags: Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, human trafficking, sex trade Bush, State of the Union

DEA Wages Unjust War on Doctors

John Tierney describes what can happen when good intentions and justice take a detour in the war on drugs....

Sex, Lies and OxyContin
By John Tierney
The New York Times

Jennifer Riggle, a drug addict, was a star witness in the trial of her doctor, Bernard Rottschaefer. She testified that he had fondled her breasts in the examination room and then given her prescriptions for OxyContin and Xanax in return for sex.

In testimony in federal court two years ago, Riggle quoted the doctor as saying, " 'You satisfy my needs and I'll satisfy yours.' "

Rottschaefer denied the allegations but was convicted and sentenced to six and a half years in prison. The "drugs for sex" trial in Pittsburgh appeared to be a triumph for the Drug Enforcement Administration, which had helped investigate the doctor. But now it looks more like a frightening example of what's wrong with the D.E.A.'s war against doctors.

The drugs-for-sex case was based on the testimony of Riggle and three other women. All were in trouble with the law and had something to gain by cooperating with the D.E.A. agents who interviewed them. During the trial, Rottschaefer's attorneys pointed out problems with the women's stories - one was unable to say whether the doctor was circumcised - but it wasn't until later that the most damning evidence appeared.

Riggle's former boyfriend, angry at her for dumping him, produced a batch of letters he had received in prison from her; in them, she said she had never had sex with the doctor. You might suspect that she just didn't want to admit infidelity to her boyfriend, but in one letter she volunteered the information that she'd had sex with another man for $50.

She explained to her boyfriend that she was committing perjury because she faced drug charges that could have sent her to prison for six years. "They're saying he was bribing patients with sex for pills," she wrote, referring to the doctor, "but it never happened to me. D.E.A. said they will cut my time for good testimony. I don't want to be a snitch but what should I do?" After she cooperated, she received probation instead of prison time for the drug charges.

In the letters to her boyfriend, she fretted about being caught for perjury and urged him to destroy the incriminating letters. She worried she might have to take a polygraph test. She berated herself for having told another inmate about her perjury:

"See babe, the reason why I've been so down is cause you know that big secret I told you about the doctor? Well, [I] told someone about it way back and I am scared to death that she will reveal it and I'd never go home." Later that inmate would indeed come forward and say that Riggle had confessed to making up the story about sex with the doctor.

Rottschaefer's lawyers are now appealing his conviction, arguing that it should be overturned because of the new evidence of perjury, but the federal prosecutors show no signs of remorse. (Neither they nor Riggle's attorney responded to my inquiries about the case.) So far Riggle has not been charged with perjury.

Instead, the prosecutors are still focused on punishing Rottschaefer. They've argued that even if he didn't trade drugs for sex, he still deserves prison because he should have examined patients like Riggle more carefully and realized that she was an addict who was lying to him in order to abuse drugs.

That's the same legal argument that has been used to convict other doctors. But it shouldn't be the job of federal law enforcement officials to decide what constitutes proper medical practice. Inept doctors can be sued for malpractice or lose their state medical licenses, but they shouldn't go to jail.

It's especially unfair for the D.E.A. to go after doctors who treat pain, because they're dealing with symptoms that are notoriously difficult to measure. Doctors can do tests, but they also have to make judgments based on what patients tell them - and the Rottschaefer case ought to show the federal drug warriors how tricky those judgments can be.

If you believe Riggle's letters, as I do, there are two possible conclusions about the behavior of the D.E.A. agents and prosecutors. At worst, some of them illegally encouraged a witness to commit perjury. At best, they were duped.

The agents and prosecutors are supposed to be experts at detecting liars, and they had far better investigative tools available to them than Rottschaefer did. Yet they apparently weren't careful enough or shrewd enough to see through Riggle's story. If they don't deserve prison time for that mistake, neither does her doctor.

Photo credit: John Tierney. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Technorati tags: DEA, Drugs, War on Drugs, Medical, John Tierney, The New York Times

Belafonte Belts Bush

Ol' Harry was beltin' it out, in his continuing tirade against Bush, and oh!--it was a mellifluous thing to hear!

He was equally dulcet in responding to the inane questions posed by the Drone Newsman himself, Wolf Ditzer, this afternoon. Never heard such stupid, idiotic questions answered so intelligently, truthfully, and effectively.

The Dems might want to hire Belafonte as their answer to Rove. The guy doesn't pull any punches--just belts away like an elder super hero come to save the day.

The advantage Harry'd have over Karl is that Belafonte actually tells the TRUTH. Plus he's a whole lot prettier and a heck of a lot more entertaining. Sing, Harry, sing!

A Rare Commodity: Some Good News

A Bush Ally Joins Authors Seeking US Wiretapping Ban: British writer Christopher Hitchens, one of the most reliable allies of the US administration's conduct of the war on terror, has joined a lawsuit seeking a ban on a domestic spy program authorized by President George Bush.
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Democrats unveiled a plan for overhauling the rules on lobbying a day after House Republican leaders released their own ideas. "Today we as Democrats are declaring our commitment to change - change to a government that is as good and as honest as the people," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, criticizing what he called a "culture of corruption" that means "the lobbyists get everything."

It's a start, better than the Republican plan....but is it enough?
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Harold Meyerson is Taking On the Hotels: Meyerson finds hope that organized labors' decline can be reversed by unions like UNITE HERE, which represents about 90,000 hotel workers and is on track to unionize the entire hotel industry. He says: "Alongside the living-wage ordinances and Wal-Mart mandates, UNITE HERE is opening a whole new front."
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Women's Anti-War Petition Circles the Globe: Eminent female writers, artists, lawmakers and social activists in the United States are reaching out to women leaders across the world in an attempt to forge a global alliance against the US-led war in Iraq. They have launched a global campaign to gather 100,000 signatures by March 8, International Women's Day.

As if We Didn't Have Enough to Worry About...

Don't know about you, but I'm already on overload...and now this:

Warren Buffett warns "the U.S. trade deficit is a bigger threat to the domestic economy than either the federal budget deficit or consumer debt and could lead to "political turmoil."
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Working for Change published a Corruption Digest that's guaranteed to give you indigestion, detailing how America's politicos are being sold to the highest bidders.
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Another congressman, Chris Cannon from Utah bites the corruption cookie. "Utah congressman Chris Cannon loaned nearly $100,000 to the president of a Nebraska bank who extended at least $250,000 in credit the following year to the representative's business venture in the state, RAW STORY has found."
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Is It Warm in Here? Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wonders how it can be that the news media is ignoring the biggest story in history -- climate change. "The failure of the United States to get serious about climate change is unforgivable, a human folly beyond imagining," Ignatius warns.
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As if global warming wasn't serious enough, UN experts now caution that climate change may be increasing the risk of landslides, which kill 800-1,000 people a year, from hillside slums in Latin America to Egypt's Valley of the Kings.
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And it gets worse. Cloudy with a Chance of Chaos,a ground-breaking article from Fortune magazine says that businesses and governments are not prepared for the likely impacts of climate change. A disturbing consensus has emerged among the scientists who study global warming: climate change may bring more violent swings than they ever thought, and it may set in sooner.
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Now that's definitely bad, but this is downright buggy. Today Senator Barbara Boxer, Rep. Henry A. Waxman, and Rep. Hilda L. Solis criticized a Bush Administration plan to promote pesticide experimentation upon humans. You heard right--experiment with bug spray on humans. The plan, contained in a final draft rule, was leaked to the legislators by a concerned Administration official (bless his little heart) who requested that the original copy of the plan not be duplicated in its entirety and widely distributed out of concern for anonymity. Shades Dr. Mengele?
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And just in case you still had any doubts about our country's impending run on worry beads, a new study ranks the United States 28th in the world on Environment A study of environmental performance shows that just six nations - led by New Zealand, followed by five from Northern Europe - have achieved 85 percent or better success in meeting critical environmental goals ranging from clean drinking water and low ozone levels, to sustainable fisheries and low greenhouse gas emissions.
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Senior citizen's outrage over the abominable new Medicare prescription drug program is posing yet another potential political problem for Republicans. Hoping to avoid a political backlash at the November elections, they are desperately trying to reassure seniors--of what, I'm not sure.

Good luck, fellas. If my dear ol' mom's reaction to the program is any indication of the reception you're getting, you're gonna need a whole lot more than luck. Better re-check that armor shortage situation.
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More corruption! FirstEnergy Admits to Nuclear Power Plant Cover-Up: FirstEnergy Corp. admitted on Friday that some of its employees made false statements to US regulators about safety violations at one of its nuclear plants and said it had reached a deal with the US Department of Justice to avoid indictment of the utility.

Colin Powell Talks: Iran, rendition, the decisions that took the US and Britain to war

Jeremy Paxman, has been speaking to Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell - about Iran, rendition, the decisions that took the US and Britain to war, and that notorious presentation to the United Nations on Iraq's weapons programme.

It's well worth watching; see it here.

Iran Reader 101

Iran scorns EU trio's draft nuclear resolution: European powers began circulating a draft resolution on Wednesday that asks the U.N. nuclear watchdog to report Iran to the Security Council, drawing a scornful response from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
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China, Russia would fight Iran oil sanctions: U.N. Security Council heavyweights China and Russia have too much riding on Iran's energy sector to let the West slap sanctions on Tehran to punish its nuclear ambitions, experts say.
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Moscow Will Not Follow West's Cue on Iran: Moscow has signaled a change in its stance toward Tehran. In recent days, officials including Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov have indicated they would not block a Security Council referral, although they would likely still oppose sanctions.
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The west has picked a fight with Iran that it cannot win: Iran is a serious country, not another two-bit post-imperial rogue waiting to be slapped about the head by a white man. It is the fourth largest oil producer in the world. Its population is heading towards 80 million by 2010. Its capital, Tehran, is a mighty metropolis half as big again as London.
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"Noam Chomsky said Iran would be �crazy� not to develop nuclear weapons: Speaking Tuesday to an audience of over 1,000 at University College, Dublin, �Ireland�'s largest university, �Chomsky said no sane person wants Iran to have nuclear weapons,� but added that the Islamic republic had to respond to alleged threats from Israel and the United States, both nuclear powers."
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Avoiding a War with Iran:������ "The march to war with Iran is continuing apace despite skyrocketing gold prices, a jittery oil market, and the unrelenting chaos in nearby Iraq.

Are we surprised?

The control of Middle East oil has always been a central part of the neocon strategy for global domination. That won't change.

The toppling of Iran's theocratic regime would consolidate dwindling resources under the stars and stripes and guarantee continued supremacy of US financial institutions, American energy giants, and the faltering greenback. Additionally, it would defang a potential rival to an emergent Israel, which sees itself as the prevailing power in the region.

Game; set; match! "
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U.S. nuclear forces, 2006: As of January 2006, the U.S. stockpile contains almost 10,000 nuclear warheads. This includes 5,735 active or operational warheads: 5,235 strategic and 500 nonstrategic warheads. Approximately 4,225 additional warheads are held in the reserve or inactive stockpiles.
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Photo credit: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks to the media during an official departure ceremony for Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov in Tehran, Iran January 18, 2006. (REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi)

Update: Spying on You and Me

While the White House defended domestic surveillance as a safeguard against terrorism, a Florida peace activist and several Democrats in Congress accused the Bush administration on Friday of spying on Americans who disagree with President Bush's policies.

In the meantime, illegal eavesdropping swept up vast quantities of Americans' private communications without any reasonable belief that they could be related to terrorism. The National Security Agency flooded the Federal Bureau of Investigation with thousands of names, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers and other tips that virtually all led to dead ends or to innocent Americans.

According to Michael Scherer, "civil liberties attorneys have been searching for the picture-perfect plaintiffs to challenge President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. The dilemma they faced was obvious: the only known targets of the secret spying are suspected or convicted terrorists, hardly the most politically palatable victims of government abuse. On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union revealed its solution to this problem in a spectacular fashion. It filed suit against the National Security Agency with a collection of litigants that reads like the guest list of an Arianna Huffington dinner party."

Elizabeth de la Vega makes a case that Bush doesn't know best: "Bush's illegal wiretapping program isn't just reckless and immoral - it will actually hurt the 'War on Terror.'"

A Slow Death for Freedom of Speech

What's Left Unsaid
By Bob Herbert
The New York Times

Have you ever talked sexy to your wife or your girlfriend - or your husband or your boyfriend - on the telephone? Would you keep talking if you thought that one of Dick Cheney's operatives was listening in?

Talk about a chilling effect.

What if you were thinking of running for Congress and you tried to bolster your understanding of terrorism by speaking with knowledgeable but controversial figures in the Middle East? How would you feel if you knew - or even suspected - that government agents were monitoring your conversations? Would you be less likely to engage in those conversations? Would you begin to censor yourself? Would your contacts still be willing to speak freely if they thought the feds were listening in?

Freedom of speech in the United States covers matters trivial and profound. The corrosive damage that is being done to the First Amendment, that cornerstone of free speech, has been largely overlooked in the controversy over President Bush's decision to permit the government to eavesdrop without warrants on phone calls and e-mail messages inside the United States.

Most of the attention generated by this domestic spying program has understandably been focused on its affront to the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches, and its brazen violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which established clear-cut rules for electronic surveillance in the U.S.

But there's an additional danger. When the government's spies are allowed to snoop willy-nilly on phone calls and e-mail in the United States, without the important legal constraint of having to seek a warrant, it means that the all-important First Amendment has developed a chill, symptomatic of a life-threatening illness.

The ostensible aim of the president's domestic surveillance program, conducted by the supersecret National Security Agency, is to home in on communications into and out of the United States that involve individuals or organizations suspected of some sort of terror connection. But, as The Times reported last week, F.B.I. officials have repeatedly complained that the N.S.A. has bombarded them with thousands upon thousands of unsubstantiated tips - names, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and so forth - that have either led nowhere, or to completely innocent individuals.

Whatever its stated goals, the N.S.A. seems to be operating the greatest fishing expedition in the history of the world.

The American Civil Liberties Union, in a lawsuit seeking a halt to the spying, warned that scholars, lawyers, journalists and others who communicate with people outside the U.S. are already experiencing a chilling effect. People who are doing nothing wrong, but who feel they may become targets of the program, for whatever reasons, are curtailing their conversations and censoring their correspondence, according to the suit.

Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, noted that people who are aware of the surveillance program and who believe that their political views may be seen as hostile by the government, may also become less candid in their telephone conversations and e-mail. Others could unwittingly become the victim of contacts by individuals that the government may be interested in.

He gave an example:

"I recently got a series of e-mails from someone, quite without invitation, that got rather scary in the sense that they started saying positive things about Osama bin Laden. I asked the person in reply to stop e-mailing me, and I got an e-mail today saying, 'Your request is permanently granted.' But in the meantime, granted or not granted, that could easily put me on some kind of targeting list."

Speaking about the potential long-term effect of widespread domestic spying, Professor Tribe said:

"The more people grow accustomed to a listening environment in which the ear of Big Brother is assumed to be behind every wall, behind every e-mail, and invisibly present in every electronic communication, telephonic or otherwise - that is the kind of society, as people grow accustomed to it, in which you can end up being boiled to death without ever noticing that the water is getting hotter, degree by degree.

"The background assumptions of privacy will be gradually eroded to the point where we'll wake up one day, or our children will, and it will seem quaint that people at one time, long ago, thought that they could speak in candor."

Technorati tags: Bush, Cheney, Freedom of Speech, War on Terror, Domestic Spying, First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Constitution

Power Failures & Failures of Power

A read of Paul Krugman's current New York Times piece (below) prompts the question 'could things in Iraq be any worse?' It's difficult to imagine a more dire situation and even more difficult to admit that the current quagmire is due to our bungling administration's total failure to wisely plan and manage postwar Iraq.

We have inexcusably failed the Iraqi people on so many levels; yet we now hear our administration ramping up the fear rhetoric to justify another war, this time in Iran.

Let the impeachment proceedings begin....and hurry.


Iraq's Power Vacuum
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

In the State of the Union address, President Bush will surely assert, to choreographed applause, that he has a strategy for victory in Iraq. I don't believe him. In fact, I believe that three years into the conflict his administration refuses to admit defeat but has given up even trying to win.

To explain myself, let me tell you some stories about electricity.

Power shortages are a crucial issue for ordinary Iraqis, and for the credibility of their government. As Muhsin Shlash, Iraq's electricity minister, said last week, "When you lose electricity the country is destroyed, nothing works, all industry is down and terrorist activity is increased."

Mr. Shlash has reason to be strident. In today's Iraq, blackouts are the rule rather than the exception. According to Agence France-Presse, Baghdad and "much of the central regions" - in other words, the areas where the insurgency is most active and dangerous - currently get only between two and six hours of power a day.

Lack of electricity isn't just an inconvenience. It prevents businesses from operating, destroys jobs and generates a sense of demoralization and rage that feeds the insurgency.

So why is power scarcer than ever, almost three years after Saddam's fall? Sabotage by insurgents is one factor. But as an analysis of Iraq's electricity shortage in The Los Angeles Times last month showed, the blackouts are also the result of some incredible missteps by U.S. officials.

Most notably, during the period when Iraq was run by U.S. officials, they decided to base their electricity plan on natural gas: in order to boost electrical output, American companies were hired to install gas-fired generators in power plants across Iraq. But, as The Los Angeles Times explains, "pipelines needed to transport the gas" - that is, to supply gas to the new generators - "weren't built because Iraq's Oil Ministry, with U.S. encouragement, concentrated instead on boosting oil production." Whoops.

Meanwhile, in the early days of the occupation U.S. officials chose not to raise the prices of electricity and fuel, which had been kept artificially cheap under Saddam, for fear of creating unrest. But as a first step toward their dream of turning Iraq into a free-market utopia, they removed tariffs and other restrictions on the purchase of imported consumer goods.

The result was that wealthy and middle-class Iraqis rushed to buy imported refrigerators, heaters and other power-hungry products, and the demand for electricity surged - with no capacity available to meet that surge in demand. This caused even more blackouts.

In short, U.S. officials thoroughly botched their handling of Iraq's electricity sector. They did much the same in the oil sector. But the Bush administration is determined to achieve victory in Iraq, so it must have a plan to rectify its errors, right?

Um, no. Although there has been no formal declaration, all indications are that the Bush administration, which once made grand promises about a program to rebuild Iraq comparable to the Marshall Plan, doesn't plan to ask for any more money for Iraqi reconstruction.

Another Los Angeles Times report on Iraq reconstruction contains some jaw-dropping quotes from U.S. officials, who now seem to be lecturing the Iraqis on self-reliance. "The world is a competitive place," declared the economics counselor at the U.S. embassy. "No pain, no gain," said another official. "We were never intending to rebuild Iraq," said a third. We came, we saw, we conquered, we messed up your infrastructure, we're outta here.

Mr. Shlash certainly sounds as if he's given up expecting more American help. "The American donation is almost finished," he said, "and it was not that effective." Yet he also emphasized the obvious: partly because of the similar failure of reconstruction in the oil sector, Iraq's government doesn't have the funds to do much power plant construction. In fact, it will be hard pressed to maintain the capacity it has, and protect that capacity from insurgent attacks.

And if reconstruction stalls, as seems inevitable, it's hard to see how anything else in Iraq can go right.

So what does it mean that the Bush administration is apparently walking away from responsibility for Iraq's reconstruction? It means that the administration doesn't have a plan; it's entirely focused on short-term political gain. Mr. Bush is just getting by from sound bite to sound bite, while Iraq and America sink ever deeper into the quagmire.

Photo credit: Paul Krugman. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Technorati tags: Paul Krugman, Bush, politics, Iraq, Oil, Electrical Power, Iraq reconstruction

Spice Up Your Emails with a Call to Impeach

Now you can easily raise the awareness of every American to realize that the government might be spying on THEM ... which is grounds for impeachment:

(Courtesty of The Bulldog Manifesto) Add The Following To Your Email Signature:

NOTICE: Due to Presidential Executive Orders, the National Security Agency may have read this email without warning, warrant, or notice. They may do this without any judicial or legislative oversight. You have no recourse nor protection save to call for the impeachment of the current President.

Or , if you prefer, post this alternate version from Culture Kitchen:

NOTICE: Due to Presidential Executive Orders, the National Security Agency may have read this email without warning, warrant, or notice. They may do this without any judicial or legislative oversight. Since Samuel Alito believes in giving unlimited power to the President, if he is confirmed to the Supreme Court they will continue to spy on us with impunity. You have no recourse nor protection save to call for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice-President Richard Cheney, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Got a better idea? Let us know. Post a "comment" below.

The Age of Truthiness

"Talk is cheap." "Actions speak louder than words." "Seeing is believing." "Go straight to the horse's mouth."

We should know better, but as Frank Rich so ably points out in the New York Times article below, we have a become a people almost totally lacking in skeptical thought and rather, a people Stepford-wife-like assimilating the next holy media bite as wholly believable.

Taking Rich's insights one step futher, we can trace the roots of this phenomenon to our ailing education system. Thanks especially to the largely failed "Leave No Child Behind" program, we are teaching our children to become non-thinkers--to absorb material without questioning its veracity and spit it back into a winning test score--rather than teaching them to think critically.

In order to understand the world around them, much less to begin to improve it, our children must be taught a healthy skepticism of everything they see, hear, and read. They must be taught to go to the original source, whenever possible, for the facts and to take all second-hand information and opinion with a grain of salt, weighing the motives, biases, and credibility of those sources carefully.

None of us should believe anything we read in newspapers or magazines or see on the news, whether on the boob tube or in cyberspace--including this blog--as gospel. We must diligently check out what is being said and dig below the fascile assertions to the facts, whenever possible. At the very least, we must responsibly educate ourselves to opposing views--with the same skeptical rigor.

Perhaps that is why the Bush administration has done nothing to improve education in this country--the facts indicate they have accomplished the opposite, with our children performing at ever inferior levels to many of their foreign counterparts.

After all, to a regime reliant on Rovian truthiness and falsiness to accomplish its destructive goals, a dumbed-down gullible public makes it so much easier to pull the wool over our eyes.



Truthiness 101: From Frey to Alito
By Frank Rich
The New York Times

IF James Frey hadn't made up his own life, Tom Wolfe would have had to invent it for him. The fraudulent memoirist is to the early 21st century what Mr. Wolfe's radical-chic revelers were to the late 1960's and his Wall Street "masters of the universe" were to the go-go 1980's: a perfect embodiment of the most fashionable American excess of an era.

As Oprah Winfrey, the ultimate arbiter of our culture, has made clear, no one except pesky nitpickers much cares whether Mr. Frey's autobiography is true or not, or whether it sits on a fiction or nonfiction shelf at Barnes & Noble. Such distinctions have long since washed away in much of our public life. What matters most now is whether a story can be sold as truth, preferably on television. The mock Comedy Central pundit Stephen Colbert's slinging of the word "truthiness" caught on instantaneously last year precisely because we live in the age of truthiness.

At its silliest level, this is manifest in show-biz phenomena like Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, juvenile pop stars who merchandised the joy of their new marriage as a lucrative MTV reality series before heading to divorce court to divvy up the booty. But if suckers want to buy fictional nonfiction like "Newlyweds" or "A Million Little Pieces" as if they were real, that's just harmless diversion.

It's when truthiness moves beyond the realm of entertainment that it's a potential peril. As Seth Mnookin, a rehab alumnus, has written in Slate, the macho portrayal of drug abuse in "Pieces" could deter readers battling actual addictions from seeking help. Ms. Winfrey's blithe re-endorsement of the book is less laughable once you start to imagine some Holocaust denier using her imprimatur to discount Elie Wiesel's incarceration at Auschwitz in her next book club selection, "Night."

This isn't just a slippery slope. It's a toboggan into chaos, or at least war. As everyone knows now - except for the 22 percent, according to a recent Harris poll, who still believe that Saddam helped plan 9/11 - it's the truthiness of all those imminent mushroom clouds that sold the invasion of Iraq. What's remarkable is how much fictionalization plays a role in almost every national debate. Even after a big humbug is exposed as blatantly as Professor Marvel in "The Wizard of Oz" - FEMA's heck of a job in New Orleans, for instance - we remain ready and eager to be duped by the next tall tale. It's as if the country is living in a permanent state of suspension of disbelief.

Democrats who go berserk at their every political defeat still don't understand this. They fault the public for not listening to their facts and arguments, as though facts and arguments would make a difference, even if the Democrats were coherent. It's the power of the story that always counts first, and the selling of it that comes second. Accuracy is optional. The Frey-like genius of the right is its ability to dissemble with a straight face while simultaneously mustering the slick media machinery and expertise to push the goods. It not only has the White House propaganda operation at its disposal, but also an intricate network of P.R. outfits and fake-news outlets that are far more effective than their often hapless liberal counterparts.

The selling of Samuel Alito is a perfect illustration of how our world works. From the moment Judge Alito emerged from Harriet Miers's penumbra, his supporters' story line was clear: he'd be presented as a humble exemplar of American values too mainstream to be labeled "out of the mainstream" by his opponents. In his first courtesy calls on Capitol Hill in November, we learned, Judge Alito often cited his father as a proud immigrant who instilled in him empathy for minorities and the poor - an empathy not remotely apparent in the judge's legal record. A particularly poignant anecdote had it that his father had once defended a black basketball player from discrimination in college.

Yet David Kirkpatrick of The Times reported then that "some colleagues and friends of the elder Mr. Alito, who died in 1987, said they had never heard some of the stories his son has recounted, including the episode about his support for the black student and the fact that his father immigrated from Italy as a child." No matter. If such questions couldn't stop an Oprah Book Club selection, they certainly wouldn't stop a nominee to the Supreme Court.

Once Judge Alito came before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Democrats decided to counter the Republicans' story by coming up with a fictional story of their own, or that's what they did once they stopped bloviating. Their fictional biography cast Judge Alito as an out-and-out bigot. The major evidence cited to support this characterization was his listing his membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP), a conservative group founded in reaction to the upheavals of the Vietnam era, on a job application for the Reagan Justice Department.

Judge Alito testified that he had joined CAP because it supported the R.O.T.C. on campus, adding that he did not remember having "done anything substantial in relation to this group, including renewing my membership." The Democrats plunged on, betting the house (or the Supreme Court) on Teddy Kennedy's insistence that Judge Alito could be linked to what the senator described as CAP's "repulsive anti-woman, anti-black, anti-disability, anti-gay pronouncements." In one of only two dramatic moments in the whole soporific confirmation process - a "Sunshine Boys"-style spat with the committee chairman, Arlen Specter - Mr. Kennedy threatened to subpoena CAP "documents in the possession of the Library of Congress" to hunt down Judge Alito's bigotry.

There was only one problem with the Democrats' fictional story line: it had been exposed as fake on the front page of The Times weeks before Mr. Kennedy presented it to the nation. Mr. Kirkpatrick reported that he had examined the same papers Mr. Kennedy was threatening to subpoena - as well as some others at Princeton's own library - and found no trace of Judge Alito's involvement with CAP as either an active participant or a major donor. When the Senate committee did Mr. Kennedy's bidding and looked at those documents yet again, it found exactly what The Times had in November, calling the senator's bluff and ending any remote chance the Democrats had for keeping Judge Alito off the court. It says everything about the Democrats' ineptitude that when they spin fiction, they are incapable of meeting even the low threshold of truthiness needed to make it fly in this lax cultural environment.

THE Republicans would never have been so sloppy. Indeed, hardly had Mr. Kennedy's melodramatic stunt blown up in his face than they came up with a new story line prompted by the other dramatic incident in the hearings: the departure of Martha-Ann Alito from the committee room in tears. She fled while a Republican senator, Lindsey Graham, was mocking the Democrats, not when the eminently mockable Democrats were mounting their lame assault. Whatever. As Time magazine later reported, a P.R. outfit called Creative Response Concepts immediately pumped up the media volume of her supposed martyrdom, breathlessly producing a former Alito clerk to provide eyewitness testimony of her suffering at the hands of those Democratic brutes.

Creative Response Concepts did similar work for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 campaign. Its roster of clients also includes the right-wing Media Research Center, itself the parent organization of something called the Cybercast News Service. For the new year, Cybercast News has an exciting fictional project of its own: just before John Murtha, the tough Congressional critic of the Iraq war, appeared on "60 Minutes" last Sunday, it started Swift Boating him by rewriting his Vietnam history to besmirch the legitimacy of his two Purple Hearts.

If Karl Rove's White House propaganda factory is the NBC Universal or Time Warner of G.O.P. fictionalization, then the Miramax and Focus Features of the right are such nominally "independent" satellites as Cybercast News, the Lincoln Group (which places fake news stories in Iraqi newspapers), the Rendon Group (which helped manufacture the heroic image of Ahmad Chalabi) and the now-dormant Talon News (the fake Republican-staffed news site whose fake White House correspondent, Jeff Gannon, was unmasked last year).

Fittingly enough against this backdrop, last week brought the re-emergence of Clifford Irving, the author of the fake 1972 autobiography of Howard Hughes that bamboozled the world long before fraudulent autobiographies and biographies were cool. He announced that he was removing his name from "The Hoax," a coming Hollywood movie recounting his exploits, because of what he judged its lack of fidelity to "the truth of what happened." That Mr. Irving can return like Rip van Winkle after all these years to take the moral high ground in defense of truthfulness is a sign of just how low into truthiness we have sunk.

To my readers: Starting next week, I will be on a book leave, writing nonfiction about our post-9/11 fictions. See you in the spring.

Photo credit: Frank Rich. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Related Materials:

An Education Idea - True Majority IdeaSwap: An interesting discussion about how to overhaul our education system for the better is taking place on the True Majority "IdeaSwap" blog. One of the contributers, Ronnie Bushnell, a teacher, has some really fresh, out-of-the-box ideas to get your own creative juices flowing. You may not agree with every detail of her proprosal, but I think she's on the right track.

Bushnell: Keep in mind that our school system has been deliberately eroded. Every year our students fall further and further behind the rest of the world. We need to do something to change that and it can’t be a quick fix. There is no short cut to education. Our schools are nothing more than factories that produce a product as if students are no longer flesh and blood. We produce docile, obedient kids who are capable of following orders blindly and our leaders without question. We need to educate them in terms of critical and creative thinking skills revolving around perceptive and conceptual analysis. And we need to start that in the first grade.

Right now we’re playing catch-up, and we’re loosing. We can’t afford to continue to produce students who do not understand the Constitution, and we should be graduating more students for college. An uneducated population ends up with exactly the kind of society we have today. Voters who don’t understand how to read and write will loose their freedom and not even realize it. In fact, that’s exactly what’s happening now.

Read the entire True Majority education dialogue here.

Technorati tags: Frank Rich, New York Times, truthiness, Tom Wolf, Oprah, Stephen Colbert, Seth Mnookin, Newlyweds, A Million Little Pieces, Politics, Alito, Iraq War, Karl Rove, Bush

Michael Moore plays JIHADBALL with Chris Matthews

Michael Moore gets the last laugh in retaliation against Chris Matthews recent remarks comparing Osama bin Laden to "an over the top Michael Moore here, if not a Michael Moore."

Pretty funny stuff. Have a look.

Technorati tags: Michael Moore, Chris Matthews, Osama bin Ladin, Political Humor

BushCo: A Chronic, Royal Pain

Party of Pain
By John Tierney
The New York Times

As the baby boomers age, more and more Americans will either be enduring chronic pain or taking care of someone in pain. The Republican Party has been reaching out to them with a two-step plan:

1. Do not give patients medicine to ease their pain.

2. If they are in great pain and near death, do not let them put an end to their misery.

The Republicans have been so determined to become the Pain Party that they've brushed aside their traditional belief in states' rights. The Bush administration wants lawyers in Washington and federal prosecutors with no medical training to tell doctors how to treat patients.

As attorney general, John Ashcroft decided that Oregon's law allowing physician-assisted suicide violated the federal Controlled Substances Act because he didn't consider this use of drugs to be a "legitimate medical purpose." Karen Tandy, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, has been using this same legal theory to decree how doctors should medicate patients with pain, and those who disagree with her medical judgment can be sent to prison.

You know Republicans have lost their bearings when they need a lesson in states' rights from Janet Reno, who considered the Oregon law when she was attorney general. For the federal government to decide what constituted legitimate medicine, she wrote, would wrongly "displace the states as the primary regulators of the medical profession."

The Supreme Court agreed with her this week in upholding the Oregon law. In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the federal drug law did not empower the attorney general "to define general standards of medical practice." It merely "bars doctors from using their prescription-writing powers as a means to engage in illicit drug dealing and trafficking as conventionally understood."

That's news to the D.E.A. and the federal prosecutors, who have gone way beyond any "conventionally understood" idea of drug trafficking. They've been prosecuting doctors for prescribing painkillers like OxyContin, even where there's no evidence of any of the drugs being resold on the streets. It doesn't matter that the doctor genuinely believed that the patient needed the drugs and was not abusing them. It doesn't matter that the patient was in pain.

No, doctors are now going to prison merely for prescribing more pain pills than the D.E.A. and prosecutors deem a "legitimate medical purpose." These drug warriors are not troubled by the enormous range in the level of pain medication that different patients need.

They don't even seem to worry much about the potency of the pills, just the number. They want enough pills of any dosage to make a good photo at a press conference. In some cases, doctors have been too careless or gullible, but those are offenses to be disciplined by state medical authorities, not criminal courts.

Tandy claims that only a few corrupt doctors have anything to fear from the D.E.A. She responded to a column of mine last year by saying that her agency had investigated only 0.1 percent of the 600,000 doctors in the U.S. But she was far too modest. Most doctors, after all, write few if any prescriptions for opioid painkillers.

The doctors who matter are the small number of specialists in pain treatment who prescribe opioids. Ronald Libby, a professor of political science at the University of North Florida, estimates that 17 percent of those doctors were investigated during one year by the D.E.A., and an even greater number of others were investigated by local and state authorities, typically in concert with the drug agency. That means a pain specialist might have a one-in-three chance of being investigated for prescribing opioids.

Faced with those odds, doctors are understandably afraid. As noted in The New England Journal of Medicine this month, the D.E.A. has made doctors reluctant to give opioids to desperately ill patients, even when these drugs are the most effective pain treatment. The article warned that a victory for the Bush administration in the Oregon case, besides affecting terminally ill patients in Oregon, could cause doctors across the country to "abandon patients and their families in their moment of greatest need."

The Supreme Court's decision is a victory for patients and their doctors - including, I hope, some of the ones in prison for violating the federal legal theory that has now been rejected by the court. The doctors should go free, and Republicans in the White House and Congress should restrain the drug warriors who locked them up. When this year's budget is drawn up, it's the D.E.A.'s turn to feel pain.

Photo credit: John Tierney. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Related articles:

Treating Doctors as Drug Dealers: The DEA's War on Prescription Painkillers (pdf) by Ronald T. Libby. Cato Institute, 28 pp., June 16, 2005

Justices Reject U.S. Bid to Block Assisted Suicideby Linda Greenhouse, New York Times, January 18,2006

Supreme Court Decision: GONZALES V. OREGON (law.cornell.edu)

Pain Relief Network

Technorati tags: John Tierney, New York Times, Pain, Medicine, Republicans, D.E.A., courts, Supreme Court

Don't Ogle My Google

Googling Past the Graveyard
Maureen Dowd
The New York Times

I don't like the thought of Dick Cheney ogling my Googling.

If you want to know why the Grim Peeper is willing to turn this country into a police state to take his version of democracy to other countries, just do a Google search under "antiterrorism," "government snooping," "overreaching" and "fruitcake."

It was hard to know which story yesterday was scarier: Osama bin Laden, still alive and taunting the U.S., or the Justice Department's trying to force Google to turn over a suspiciously broad array of information on millions of users' searches and Web addresses, supposedly to investigate online crime involving pornography.

The Internet is full of vile diversions, but prying without justification is just as vile. Innocent Americans - not just lonely guys in their boxers - could be swept up in the fishnet dragnet. Who decides what is porn? Will those who Google to find out-of-print copies of Lynne Cheney's juicy, cheesy lesbian Old West novel, "Sisters," be suspect? (The cheapest copy at Alibris.com is $195.)

When Fox News asked him about the fresh Osama audiotape, Mr. Cheney sounded like Mr. Moviefone. "Probably low production values," he said.

Osama may not have graduated to DVD's, but he has stayed alive, despite W.'s threat way back in the era of dial-up connections to smoke him out and hunt him down.

Officials first indicated that the U.S. had killed Ayman al-Zawahiri in a bombing in Pakistan last week - or at least his son-in-law or a friend of his son-in-law, or maybe the guy who delivered a kabob to him. Yesterday, Al Qaeda released a tape of Zawahiri's greatest verse hits - poetry for jihadists - like "Tears in the Eyes of Time." What rhymes with mujahedeen? Antihistamine?

None of the Bushies' actions in defiance of law and convention, none of the money or blood spilled in Iraq, have helped these so-called tough guys get the one guy they really need to get. That is truly galling.

W. and Vice don't even act upset about Osama's still being on the loose. Having played down his significance after they missed their chance to get him in Tora Bora, they continue to act as if it's no big deal when he hurls more threats.

Torquemada Cheney was torturing logic again in a speech to a conservative think tank in New York. "Some have suggested that by liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein, we simply stirred up a hornets' nest," he said. "They overlook a fundamental fact: we were not in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001, and the terrorists hit us anyway."

Yeah, Dick, because they weren't in Iraq, either.

The fact that federal snoopers are all over reporters, monitoring their phone calls, shows the sorry state of our intelligence. Even F.B.I. agents feel as if they have been wasting their time rummaging through library cards and tracing numbers that turn out to be Pizza Huts.

Maybe they could make an argument that it's worth bending the Constitution into a balloon elephant if we were getting Osama's area code and smashing his connections. We don't even bother to raise the terror alarm anymore when the Qaeda mass murderer releases a tape. The scare-level color code was a more useful tool before the 2004 election.

I just don't get why it's so hard to find Osama. So what if he's in what is often described as "the impossibly rugged mountain terrain" of Pakistan? We send people to the Moon, and W. wants to send someone to Mars. What's more impossibly rugged terrain than that?

If we can brave Big Brother, we could probably find Osama's lair on Google Earth (but not Dick Cheney's - it's censored).

The White House has always seemed less compelled to capture Osama than to use him as a pretext for invading Iraq and as a political selling point. Karl Rove, coming out of his "please don't indict me" crouch, tried to chase away the taint of the Abramoff scandal with a new round of terror-mongering for 2006: "We need a commander in chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity of this moment. President Bush and the Republican Party do. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for many Democrats."

So why did the White House set aside the gravest threat of all?

Photo credit: Maureen Dowd. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Related articles:

• Google Offers a Bird's-Eye View, And Some Governments Tremble - The Archive - The New York Times
• CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; On the Web, Fearlessness Meets Frivolousness - The Archive - The New York Times
• CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; On the Web, Photos Strain To Connect 7/7 and 9/11 - The Archive - The New York Times
• Fishing in Cyberspace - New York Times

Technorati tags: Maureen Dowd, Bush, News, Politics, commentary, New York Times, Cheney, Osama bin Laden, Google, Qaeda

Zogby poll: Majority supports impeaching Bush for wiretapping

WASHINGTON, D.C. — By a margin of 52 to 43 percent, citizens want Congress to impeach President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of Pres. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

The poll was conducted by Zogby International.

The poll found that 52 percent of respondents agreed with the statement: "If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment."

Of those contacted, 43 percent disagreed, and 6 percent said they didn't know or declined to answer. The poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percent.

"The American people are not buying Bush's outrageous claim that he has the power to wiretap American citizens without a warrant. Americans believe terrorism can be fought without turning our own government into Big Brother," said AfterDowningStreet.org co-founder Bob Fertik in a statement.

Responses to the Zogby poll varied by political party affiliation: 76 percent of Democrats favored impeachment, compared to 50 percent of independents and 29 percent of Republicans.

Responses also varied by age, sex, race, and religion. 70 percent of those 18-29 favored impeachment, 51 percent of those 31-49, 50 percent of those 50-64, and 42 percent of those older than 65. Among women, 56 percent favored impeachment, compared to 49 percent of men. Among African Americans, 90 percent favored impeachment, compared to 67 percent of Hispanics, and 46 percent of whites.

The new Zogby poll shows a major shift in support for Bush's impeachment since June 2005. In a Zogby poll conducted June 27-29, 2005 of 905 likely voters, 42 percent agreed and 50 percent disagreed with the identical statement asked about in this recent polling.

(1/16/2006)- Vermont Guardian

Technorati tags: Politics, Impeach, Zogby poll, Bush

Message to Frank Abramoff: Lighten Up.

Abramoff's dad bashes George Clooney's 'glib and ridiculous attack' in Golden Globes speech

What started as a joke at an awards ceremony has turned into another ludicrous "controversy." George Clooney, in his Golden Globes Award acceptance speech characteristically made some silly (and quite funny, as evidenced by the considerable audience laughter) off-the-cuff jokes about Jack Abramoff--a guy who is prominent in the news due to his central role and admitted guilt in the Washington lobby scandal.

So let's agree that George Clooney's obviously joking comments about Abramoff are rather innocuous compared to the quite nasty and very serious allegations journalists have been making about him.

Let's also agree that John Stewart, Bill Maher, and others of their ilk, regularly lampoon public figures for the sake of a laugh and nobody says "boo."

Let's further agree that a laugh is always at someone's expense. I defy you to think of any joke you know that doesn't lampoon some person or group or both. That is the nature of comedy.

My advise to anyone offended by Clooney's very funny comments is simple: get a sense of humor.

See Clooney video here.

See and Read Frank's actual letter here.

Erica Solvig of the Palm Springs Desert Sun writes:

The Rancho Mirage father of controversial Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff is responding to actor George Clooney for what he’s describing as a “glib and ridiculous attack” on his son.

Frank Abramoff, in a letter addressed to Clooney and sent to The Desert Sun this morning, said he was watching the Golden Globes Monday night when Clooney, during his acceptance speech for best supporting actor, thanked Jack Abramoff “just because” and made a comment about the lobbyist’s name.

“Who would name their kid Jack with the last words ‘off’ at the end of your last name? No wonder that guy is screwed up,” Clooney said during the internationally televised awards show.

In the letter, Frank Abramoff furiously defends the name, saying his son is named after Frank’s father. In the two-page letter, he calls Clooney’s acts a “lapse in lucidity” and an “obscene query.”

In a telephone interview with The Desert Sun this morning, Frank Abramoff said Clooney was “an idiot” and described the actions as “pure, unadulterated stupidity.”

“You want to make fun. You can do that, but you don't make fun of someone else's hardships and misery,” the 78-year-old Abramoff said. “We’ve gone through quite a bit in our family. But the political end of it and the media end of it and all the other areas are one thing. When you see something like that on a show for 500 million people, it was not only a slap in my son’s face but in my father’s.”

Clooney’s representative in Los Angeles declined comment, saying he had not seen Abramoff’s letter yet.

Jack Abramoff’s spokesman, Andrew Blum, also declined to comment.

In the letter, Frank Abramoff says he “wonders how your father would respond, were the roles reversed.”

Clooney’s dad, Nick, is an Augusta, Ky., resident who ran unsuccessfully for Congress and now writes a column for the Cincinnati Post.

In a phone interview with The Desert Sun today, Clooney said he wasn’t surprised by his son’s “off hand and flippant” remarks, but did relate with Frank Abramoff’s concerns.

“I understand what it is like to have one's son criticized in a very public way,” Clooney said. “It's very painful and it's very difficult.

“The difference here, and it must be said, is Mr. Abramoff's son, instead of pursing some positive efforts to do what he hoped would change the climate of the American politics has confessed and has been convicted by that confession of subverting the political process,” Clooney said.

“It’s not Mr Abramoff senior’s fault that he turned out to be who he is any more than it is to my credit that my son turned out to be what he turned out to be.”

Look for updates today at www.thedesertsun.com and see Friday’s edition of The Desert Sun for more on this story.

The dictionary defines "joke" as:

joke |jōk|
noun
a thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter, esp. a story with a funny punchline : she was in a mood to tell jokes.
• a trick played on someone for fun.
• [in sing. ] informal a person or thing that is ridiculously inadequate : the transportation system is a joke.

PHRASES
be no joke informal be a serious matter or difficult undertaking : trying to shop with three children in tow is no joke.
can (or can't) take a joke be able (or unable) to receive humorous remarks or tricks in the spirit in which they are intended : if you can't take a joke, you should never have joined.
the joke is on someone informal someone looks foolish, esp. after trying to make someone else look so.
make a joke of laugh or be humorous about (something that is not funny in itself).

Photo: Jack Abramoff

Technorati tags: Abramoff, Clooney, Politics

Lobbys: Prescription for Disaster

The K Street Prescription
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

The new prescription drug benefit is off to a catastrophic start. Tens of thousands of older Americans have arrived at pharmacies to discover that their old drug benefits have been canceled, but that they aren't on the list for the new program. More than two dozen states have taken emergency action.

At first, federal officials were oblivious. "This is going very well," a Medicare spokesman declared a few days into the disaster. Then officials started making excuses. Some conservatives even insist that the debacle vindicates their ideology: see, government can't do anything right.

But government works when it's run by people who take public policy seriously. As Jonathan Cohn points out in The New Republic, when Medicare began 40 years ago, things went remarkably smoothly from the start. But this time the people putting together a new federal program had one foot out the revolving door: this was a drug bill written by and for lobbyists.

Consider the career trajectories of the two men who played the most important role in putting together the Medicare legislation.

Thomas Scully was a hospital industry lobbyist before President Bush appointed him to run Medicare. In that job, Mr. Scully famously threatened to fire his chief actuary if he told Congress the truth about cost projections for the Medicare drug program.

Mr. Scully had good reasons not to let anything stand in the way of the drug bill. He had received a special ethics waiver from his superiors allowing him to negotiate for future jobs with lobbying and investment firms - firms that had a strong financial stake in the form of the bill - while still in public office. He left public service, if that's what it was, almost as soon as the bill was passed, and is once again a lobbyist, now for drug companies.

Meanwhile, Representative Billy Tauzin, the bill's point man on Capitol Hill, quickly left Congress once the bill was passed to become president of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the powerful drug industry lobby.

Surely both men's decisions while in office were influenced by the desire to please their potential future employers. And that undue influence explains why the drug legislation is such a mess.

The most important problem with the drug bill is that it doesn't offer direct coverage from Medicare. Instead, people must sign up with private plans offered by insurance companies.

This has three bad effects. First, the elderly face wildly confusing choices. Second, costs are high, because the bill creates an extra, unnecessary layer of bureaucracy. Finally, the fragmentation into private plans prevents Medicare from using bulk purchasing to reduce drug prices.

It's all bad, from the public's point of view. But it's good for insurance companies, which get extra business even though they serve no useful function, and it's even better for drug companies, which are able to charge premium prices. So whose interests do you think Mr. Scully and Mr. Tauzin represented?

Which brings us to the larger question of cronyism and corruption.

Thanks to Jack Abramoff, the K Street project orchestrated by Tom DeLay is finally getting some serious attention in the news media. Mr. DeLay and his allies have sought, with great success, to ensure that lobbying firms hire only Republicans. But most reports on the project still miss the main point by emphasizing the effect on campaign contributions.

The more important effect of the K Street project is that it allows the party machine to offer lavish personal rewards to the faithful. For a congressman, toeing the line on legislation brought free meals in Jack Abramoff's restaurant, invitations to his sky box, golf trips to Scotland, cushy jobs for family members and a lavish salary after leaving office. The same kinds of rewards are there for loyal members of the administration, especially given the Bush administration's practice of appointing lobbyists to key positions.

I don't want to overstate Mr. Abramoff's role: although he was an important player in this system, he wasn't the only one. In particular, he doesn't seem to have been involved in the Medicare drug deal. It's interesting, though, that Scott McClellan has announced that the White House, contrary to earlier promises, won't provide any specific information about contacts between Mr. Abramoff and staff members.

So I have a question for my colleagues in the news media: Why isn't the decision by the White House to stonewall on the largest corruption scandal since Warren Harding considered major news?

Photo credit: Paul Krugman. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Technorati tags: Paul Krugman, medical, Prescription, K Street, Healthcare, Politics, New York Times

Who are the REAL Evil Ones? or Looking Beyond the Mainstream Press

Every time one of Bin Laden's statements, whether on audio or video tape, surfaces and is deemed to be "authentic," I find myself wishing I personally knew a translator so that I could ask him or her to translate the original speech.

I do not trust the press to do so, in that, depending on the news outlet, they edit out information that, it would seem, the administration doesn't want the American people to see.

The latest audio message from Bin Laden is no exception. Yesterday, I could find only one translation of the tape, from CBS/AP.

Today, after doing another search, I found a different translation on CSPAN, one which included sections glaringly missing from the CBS version.

Incredibly, the CBS version was purported to be a "complete transcript." Obviously, the mainstream press is not a credible source of information.

Compare the two versions yourself. The CBS version is here. Scroll down further in this post for the CSPAN version.

My conclusion is the following:

1. The mainstream press cannot be trusted to give us accurate, unbiased information about anything.


2. Based on facts, not spin, Bin Laden, on the whole, makes more sense and is more truthful than BushCo.


3. Neither side is completely credible.


4. If I were President, I would do everything in my power to end the illegal war in Iraq, the (all but forgotten) war in Afghanistan, and terrorist attacks around the world by responding to Bin Laden that we would like nothing more than to resolve the problems of both his people and ours peacefully and that we would be happy to accept his offer of a truce in order to begin that process.


• If Bin Laden is bluffing, I will have called his bluff and his lack of response will show the world that his word cannot be trusted--which would benefit the United States by discrediting the leader of al Qaeda.


• If he were telling the truth, we would have the opportunity to open the door to peace.


5. This administration will never even consider initiating a dialogue in the interests of achieving peace--because their goals are the complete antithesis of peace: world domination by the United States, as stated in the various manifestos of the neo-con organization, Project for a New American Century. BushCo interests have nothing to do with freedom or human rights or peace. They are, rather, in direct opposition to those goals.

The facts are there for anyone to read, should they desire to do so. Take a look at 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' and the Project for the New American Century, by Bette Stockbauer for starters. Read the document in the context of the President's continually breaking our laws and ignoring our constitution in order to spy on U.S. citizens, the complete erosion of our privacy and civil rights, the promotion of torture and clandestine prisons around the world, the complete disregard for anyone or any nation in disagreement with their neo-con agenda.

I do not write this with any sense of joy or vindictiveness, my friends. I say it because I cannot sit by, as most Germans did during the rise of Hitler (remember, Germany was a democracy at the time), and just let our country be taken over by those seeking to end our democracy. The Germans didn't think it was possible. They were tragically proven wrong.

Only when people realize that those of us who are critical of what this administration is doing are NOT the enemy and that we care about this country as much as anyone possibly could -- only then will people stop the useless name-calling, ignore the manipulative spin of both sides, and just plain look. at. the. facts.

This administration has done it's utmost to promote hatred between Democrats and Republicans because when people become emotional about the issues, they no longer look at things rationally. By dividing us and promoting hatred instead of productive dialogue BushCo keeps us from seeing the reality of what they are doing, and we become unintended enablers of the destruction of our own freedoms and rights.

I sometimes think the most beneficial thing we could all do is to boycott CNN, MSNBC and all network and local news and instead look to CSPAN and various independent internet news sources for our information. That act alone would significantly change the discourse in this country.

Anybody for starting a boycott campaign?

CSPAN's (seemingly more complete) Translation of the Latest Bin Laden Tape:

My message to you is about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how to end them. I did not intend to speak to you about this because this issue has already been decided. Only metal breaks metal, and our situation, thank God, is only getting better and better, while your situation is the opposite of that.

But I plan to speak about the repeated errors your President Bush has committed in comments on the results of your polls that show an overwhelming majority of you want the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. But he [Bush] has opposed this wish and said that withdrawing troops sends the wrong message to opponents, that it is better to fight them [bin Laden's followers] on their land than their fighting us [Americans] on our land.

I can reply to these errors by saying that war in Iraq is raging with no let-up, and operations in Afghanistan are escalating in our favor, thank God, and Pentagon figures show the number of your dead and wounded is increasing not to mention the massive material losses, the destruction of the soldiers' morale there and the rise in cases of suicide among them. So you can imagine the state of psychological breakdown that afflicts a soldier as he gathers the remains of his colleagues after they stepped on land mines that tore them apart. After this situation the soldier is caught between two hard options. He either refuses to leave his military camp on patrols and is therefore dogged by ruthless punishments enacted by the Vietnam Butcher [U.S. Army] or he gets destroyed by the mines. This puts him under psychological pressure, fear and humiliation while his nation is ignorant of that [what is going on]. The soldier has no solution except to commit suicide. That is a strong message to you, written by his soul, blood and pain, to save what can be saved from this hell. The solution is in your hands if you care about them [the soldiers].

The news of our brother mujahideen [holy warriors] is different from what the Pentagon publishes. They [the news of mujahideen] and what the media report is the truth of what is happening on the ground. And what deepens the doubt over the White House's information is the fact that it targets the media reporting the truth from the ground. And it has appeared lately, supported by documents, that the butcher of freedom in the world [Bush] had decided to bomb the headquarters of the Al-Jazeera in Qatar after bombing its offices in Kabul and Baghdad.

On another issue, jihad [holy war] is ongoing, thank God, despite all the oppressive measures adopted by the U.S Army and its agents [which is] to a point where there is no difference between this criminality and Saddam's criminality, as it has reached the degree of raping women and taking them as hostages instead of their husbands.

As for torturing men, they have used burning chemical acids and drills on their joints. And when they give up on [interrogating] them, they sometimes use the drills on their heads until they die. Read, if you will, the reports of the horrors in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons.

And I say that, despite all the barbaric methods, they have not broken the fierceness of the resistance. The mujahideen, thank God, are increasing in number and strength - so much so that reports point to the ultimate failure and defeat of the unlucky quartet of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. Declaring this defeat is just a matter of time, depending partly on how much the American people know of the size of this tragedy. The sensible people realize that Bush does not have a plan to make his alleged victory in Iraq come true.

And if you compare the small number of dead on the day that Bush announced the end of major operations in that fake, ridiculous show aboard the aircraft carrier with the tenfold number of dead and wounded who were killed in the smaller operations, you would know the truth of what I say. This is that Bush and his administration do not have the will or the ability to get out of Iraq for their own private, suspect reasons.

And so to return to the issue, I say that results of polls please those who are sensible, and Bush's opposition to them is a mistake. The reality shows that the war against America and its allies has not been limited to Iraq as he [Bush] claims. Iraq has become a point of attraction and restorer of [our] energies. At the same time, the mujahideen [holy warriors], with God's grace, have managed repeatedly to penetrate all security measures adopted by the unjust allied countries. The proof of that is the explosions you have seen in the capitals of the European nations who are in this aggressive coalition. The delay in similar operations happening in America has not been because of failure to break through your security measures. The operations are under preparation and you will see them in your homes the minute they are through [with preparations], with God's permission.

Based on what has been said, this shows the errors of Bush's statement - the one that slipped from him - which is at the heart of polls calling for withdrawing the troops. It is better that we [Americans] don't fight Muslims on their lands and that they don't fight us on ours.

We don't mind offering you a long-term truce on fair conditions that we adhere to. We are a nation that God has forbidden to lie and cheat. So both sides can enjoy security and stability under this truce so we can build Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been destroyed in this war. There is no shame in this solution, which prevents the wasting of billions of dollars that have gone to those with influence and merchants of war in America who have supported Bush's election campaign with billions of dollars - which lets us understand the insistence by Bush and his gang to carry on with war.

If you [Americans] are sincere in your desire for peace and security, we have answered you. And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book "Rogue State," which states in its introduction: "If I were president, I would stop the attacks on the United States: First I would give an apology to all the widows and orphans and those who were tortured. Then I would announce that American interference in the nations of the world has ended once and for all."

Finally, I say that war will go either in our favor or yours. If it is the former, it means your loss and your shame forever, and it is headed in this course. If it is the latter, read history! We are people who do not stand for injustice and we will seek revenge all our lives. The nights and days will not pass without us taking vengeance like on Sept. 11, God permitting. Your minds will be troubled and your lives embittered. As for us, we have nothing to lose. A swimmer in the ocean does not fear the rain. You have occupied our lands, offended our honor and dignity and let out our blood and stolen our money and destroyed our houses and played with our security and we will give you the same treatment.

You have tried to prevent us from leading a dignified life, but you will not be able to prevent us from a dignified death. Failing to carry out jihad, which is called for in our religion, is a sin. The best death to us is under the shadows of swords. Don't let your strength and modern arms fool you. They win a few battles but lose the war. Patience and steadfastness are much better. We were patient in fighting the Soviet Union with simple weapons for 10 years and we bled their economy and now they are nothing.

In that there is a lesson for you.

Related Articles:

• t r u t h o u t - Robert Fisk | Osama, Is It Him?
• Here is an alternate complete transcript, uncut and uncensored.

Technorati tags: bin Laden, Politics, Bush