9.30.2004 FRANK RICH: "Now on DVD: The Passion of the Bush" ... "Of the many cultural grenades being tossed that day, though, the one must-see is "George W. Bush: Faith in the White House," a DVD that is being specifically marketed in "head to head" partisan opposition to "Fahrenheit 9/11." This documentary first surfaced at the Republican convention in New York, where it was previewed in tandem with an invitation-only, no-press-allowed "Family, Faith and Freedom Rally," a Ralph Reed-Sam Brownback jamboree thrown by the Bush campaign for Christian conservatives. Though you can buy the DVD for $14.95, its makers told the right-wing news service WorldNetDaily.com that they plan to distribute 300,000 copies to America's churches. And no wonder. This movie aspires to be "The Passion of the Bush," and it succeeds.

9.30.2004 "U.S. Effort Aims to Improve Opinions About Iraq Conflict" By Dana Milbank and Mike Allen, Washington Post "The Bush administration, battling negative perceptions of the Iraq war, is sending Iraqi Americans to deliver what the Pentagon calls "good news" about Iraq to U.S. military bases, and has curtailed distribution of reports showing increasing violence in that country."

9.30.2004 "Scientists Hit Campaign Trail for Kerry " By AMY LORENTZEN, Associated Press Writer "DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Mixing science and politics, Nobel laureates and former presidential advisers are heading to campaign battleground states with a message that George Bush is no friend of scientists and should be replaced by John Kerry."

9.29.2004 "Congratulations to Porter Goss for being confirmed last week as the new Director of Central Intelligence. We hope he appreciates that he now has two insurgencies to defeat: the one that the CIA is struggling to help put down in Iraq, and the other inside Langley against the Bush Administration" WSJ Opinion Journal

9.29.2004 "Bush-Cheney flip-flops cost America in blood" By JOEL CONNELLY SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

9.29.2004 Juan Cole "Bush should stop slapping his thigh and guffawing about that flipflopper Kerry and being to think seriously about changing his mind on some key policies himself. Otherwise, an Iraq as failed state could pose a supreme danger to the United States, the kind of danger that the Bligh Reef posed to the Exxon Valdez."

9.29.2004 "Another View: Why I will vote for John Kerry for President" By JOHN EISENHOWER "The fact is that today's "Republican" Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word "Republican" has always been synonymous with the word "responsibility," which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today's whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion."

9.29.2004 "Judge Rules Against Patriot Act Provision" Reuters

9.29.2004 "Mr. Raines, who declined a request to discuss the report or his strategy for moving the company through its crisis, has already lost some control over Fannie Mae. On Monday, Fannie reached an agreement to raise its level of capital, forfeit significant oversight to its main regulator, and put "at least one person'' on the audit committee "with sufficient technical expertise to understand the implications of accounting policies to financial statements.'' New York Times

9.28.2004 Video - Billionaires for Bush

9.28.2004 Barbra Streisand has a blog which is focused and clear. Pointer from Drudge

9.28.2004 Daniel Ellsberg "Surely there are officials in the present administration who recognize that the United States has been misled into a war in Iraq, but who have so far kept their silence - as I long did about the war in Vietnam. To them I have a personal message: don't repeat my mistakes. Don't wait until more troops are sent, and thousands more have died, before telling truths that could end a war and save lives. Do what I wish I had done in 1964: go to the press, to Congress, and document your claims."

9.28.2004 "Bush screws national guardsmen" Kos

9.28.2004 "So who are the "stoned slackers" watching Jon Stewart?" By David Bauder, Associated Press

9.28.2004 "GOP Sen. Won't Commit to Voting for Bush --Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee Won't Commit to Voting for Bush, May Write in Candidate" The Associated Press
"Chafee added, "I have a lot of differences" with President Bush, who Chafee said is "opposite of all those" attributes of his father.
"It's been an assault on the environment. A pledge to overturn Roe v. Wade. We're mired in a difficult war" that we didn't have to fight, he said. "It's turned bloody and expensive." The Hill.com Via Carpetbagger

9.27.2004 "Bush's empty rhetoric on children's health care" Carpetbagger

9.27.2004 "The AP had a terrific item over the weekend under the headline, "Bush Twists Kerry's Words on Iraq." It was the kind of fact-checking the media, especially the AP, is supposed to do. ... A few hours later, however, the AP headline had changed to "Bush, Kerry Twisting Each Other's Words." Carpetbagger

9.27.2004 "'Staying the Course' Isn't an Option -- Iraq is probably already lost, says former military-policy planner Mike Turner. But there are still some smart strategies for Kerry to adopt" ... "To discern the truth about Iraq, Americans must simply look beyond the spin. This war is not some noble endeavor, some great struggle of good against evil as the Bush administration would have us believe. We in the military have heard these grand pronouncements many times before by men who have neither served nor sacrificed. This war is an exercise in colossal stupidity and hubris which has now cost more than 1,000 American military lives, which has empowered Al Qaeda beyond anything those butchers might have engineered on their own and which has diverted America's attention and precious resources from the real threat at the worst possible time. And now, in a supreme act of truly breathtaking gall, this administration insists the only way to fix Iraq is to leave in power the very ones who created the nightmare." Read the whole thing: Newsweek

9.26.2004 "We're Dodging the Draft Issue -- If we need to occupy another country that threatens us, we will either do it with the help of our allies or the conscription of our kids " By Jonathan Alter

9.26.2004 "Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill (search )., criticized the administration for not moving faster against a drug trade that threatens efforts to build a stable Afghan government. "The drug lords are getting stronger faster than the Afghan authorities are being built up," he said. Fox News

9.26.2004 George Packer, Another disillusioned hawk By Matthew Yglesias

9.26.2004 "Bill Buckley, you and I know the war was a mistake" Josh Marshall who quotes William Buckley:
"With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn't the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago. If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war."

9.25.2004 "ZAHN: Is the world a safer place because of the war in Iraq?
MUSHARRAF: No. It's more dangerous. It's not safer, certainly not." Steve Clemons

9.25.2004 "THE DEBATE WITHIN" by SEYMOUR M. HERSH What we were thinking in March, 2002. What were we thinking?!

9.25.2004 "I think that one of the most frustrating things about Bush's smarmy rejoinder "the world is better off without Saddam in power" is that you have to answer..."well, yes, BUT THERE ARE PRIORITIES, GODDAMIT..." Digby

9.25.2004 "CBS News said yesterday that it had postponed a "60 Minutes" segment that questioned Bush administration rationales for going to war in Iraq. ... "We now believe it would be inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election," the spokeswoman, Kelli Edwards, said in a statement. ... According to the Newsweek report, the "60 Minutes" segment was to have detailed how the administration relied on false documents when it said Iraq had tried to buy a lightly processed form of uranium, known as yellowcake, from Niger. The administration later acknowledged that the information was incorrect and that the documents were most likely fake." Reported by Corrente who says: "WHEN WOULD IT BE MORE APPROPRIATE TO RUN A STORY ABOUT FAKE DOCUMENTS THAT BUSH USED TO JUSTIFY THE WAR THAN BEFORE AN ELECTION IN WHICH BUSH IS RUNNING? HAS THE WHOLE WORLD GONE MAD? WHY DOESN'T CBS JUST SHUT THEIR WHOLE OPERATION DOWN? WTF?"

9.25.2004 "Doing Right by America" United States Senate Democrats
If you click on: Strong National Security > Halliburton and Iraq > House Committee on Government Reform, Minority Staff, Iraq Contracting (http://www.house.gov/reform/min/inves_admin/admin_contracts.htm) ,
you wind up with a government message: "The requested page could not be found"

"June 30: Former Halliburton Co. insiders have come forward with new allegations of massive waste of taxpayer money in Iraq. NBC's Lisa Myers reports." Nightly News

9.25.2004 "Twisting Dr. Nuke's Arm" By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, "I'm talking about the arrangement under which the U.S. cuts Pakistan some slack on nuclear proliferation, in exchange for President Pervez Musharraf's joining aggressively in the hunt for Osama - in the hope of catching him by Nov. 2."

9.24.2004 "Bush's Air Guard stint started well, then faded into mystery" By William H. McMichael Air Force Times Staff Writer

9.23.2004 "Taking Liberties" By David Cole , The Nation, via Alternet. "With the latest Detroit convictions overturned, Ashcroft has not convicted a single person of terrorism since 9/11."

9.23.2004 "How do you screw the poor without looking like you're screwing the poor? Easy: insist that income requirements for child tax credits increase with inflation even though the incomes of the poor have stagnated or even dropped in the past few years. Jack O'Toole has the dismal details" Kevin Drum.

9.23.2004 Juan Cole re. Cat Stevens "But I have a hard time rushing to Yusuf Islam's defense because I never forgave him for advocating the execution of Salman Rushdie in 1989. He endorsed Khomeini's "fatwa" or death edict against Rushdie for the novel, Satanic Verses." ... "So, to steal from Bill Maher:"
"NEW RULES: If you advocate the execution of novelists for writing novels, you and John Ashcroft deserve one another."

9.23.2004 "Breaking the News, Then Becoming It" By Tina Brown "In fact, cyberspace is populated by a coalition of political obsessives and pundits on speed who get it wrong as much as they get it right. It's just that they type so much they are bound to nail a story from time to time."

9.23.2004 Google results for worst president ever = 1,110,000

9.22.2004 "If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?" Juan Cole

9.22.2004 Andrew Sullivan: "Maybe some gays will vote for Bush this time around. But they must know it's a little like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders."

9.22.2004 "EPA Wording Found to Mirror Industry's -- Influence on Mercury Proposal Probed" "For the third time, environmental advocates have discovered passages in the Bush administration's proposal for regulating mercury pollution from power plants that mirror almost word for word portions of memos written by a law firm representing coal-fired power plants." By Juliet Eilperin, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39749-2004Sep21.html">Washington Post Staff Writer

9.22.2004 "3 DeLay Workers Indicted in Texas -- Aides Charged in Fundraising Probe" By Sylvia Moreno, Washington Post Staff Writer
And later-- "Dozens Indicted in Texas PAC Probe"By APRIL CASTRO The Associated Press

9.22.2004 "Texans Still at Odds Over Bush's Legal Reforms" By David G. Savage, LA Times Staff Writer

9.22.2004 "And as long as we're talking about the NIE, I'd like to add that the CIA prepared a 93-page estimate in 2002 on intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was filled with caveats, qualifiers, and footnotes of interagency dissent on several key points, all of which raised criticial questions about whether war was necessary to protect the U.S. And yet, by the White House's own admission, the president did not actually read the document before launching an invasion." Carpetbagger

9.22.2004 "Pentagon blocks site for voters outside U.S."
"In voting news, the Pentagon has restricted access to the website overseas voters, both military and civilian, can use for registering to vote, citing attempts to hack it. The story was first reported by the International Herald Tribune . Is the Pentagon, with its billions of dollars, incapable of building a simple website that is difficult to break into? And is the answer to attempted break-ins to disenfranchise overseas voters, including the servicemen and women who are defending this country with their lives? Is this how we support the troops? By taking away their right to vote?" ...
Fortunately, overseas voters, including members of the armed forces, who haven't registered yet can fill in the necessary registration forms online via overseasvote2004.com and then print them. Instructions for sending the printed forms to the U.S. are given on the Americans abroad page. But time is running out." Electoral-vote.com

9.22.2004 "As Oliver Willis and my friend Poppy noted, ABC's Peter Jennings did a straight-up piece last night, contrasting what Bush said about a John Kerry remark and what Kerry actually said. The segment demonstrated, quite clearly, that Bush's characterization was false. The president, in other words, was lying and hoping he wouldn't get called on it.
Of course, Jennings didn't use the "l" word, but he didn't have to. Show people the truth -- Bush's charge, then why Bush's charge is false -- and the public will have the information they need." Carpetbagger

9.22.2004 10 Questions for Jon Stewart, From the Sep. 27, 2004 issue of TIME:
DOES IT WEIRD YOU OUT THAT PEOPLE TAKE YOU SERIOUSLY AS A POLITICAL PUNDIT? Well, I don't know that that's the case. But I will tell you this: I don't put any stock in political commentating. Political commentators at this point are mostly rewarded by the extremity of their viewpoint. Most of the analysis you see on television doesn't reflect the general sense that the public feels about a situation. It's two sides advocating, with no arbitration.
SO YOU'D LIKE TO SEE MORE ARBITRATION? That's the change I would like to see - that the news media take a more active role in arbitrating, in mediating, in credibility. The way I've always looked at it is, politicians are - When you go to a zoo and you see a monkey throwing its s___, you can't get mad. That's what monkeys do. But you want the media at some point to go, "No! Bad monkey!" And that's really the direction that it should be going in. Not for Republican desires or Democrat desires but for truth.

9.22.2004 "Want to earn quick $4K? See GOP firm" By Bob Cusack , The Hill.com

"House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said, "It is pathetic, but not surprising, that front groups allied with the Bush administration are using the worst marketing tactics of HMOs and drug companies to 'sell' seniors their terrible Medicare bill. Paying health professionals to endorse federal legislation is wrong."
Via Carpetbagger, who says: And just as an aside, Republicans on the Hill yesterday offered a particularly annoying response to the controversy.
[Republicans noted] that more than 4 million Medicare senior citizens have signed up for the initiative.
This is supposed to be proof that the program is popular. What it doesn't mention is that about 3 million of the seniors who have "signed up" did so involuntarily -- their HMOs enrolled them automatically, which makes the numbers look better than they really are.

9.21.2004 "Airlines Told to Turn Over Passenger Data" Via Drudge. 9.21.2004 "Nominee Says Iraq Threat Was Perhaps Overstated" By DOUGLAS JEHL, The New York Times. "Under sharp questioning from a Senate Democrat, Mr. Goss, a Republican from Florida, said he agreed that statements by Vice President Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice that linked Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks; to Al Qaeda; and to an active nuclear weapons program appeared to have gone beyond what was spelled out in intelligence reports at the time."

9.21.2004 Students you may have some voting options.

9.20.2004 "Quick exit from Iraq is likely" BY ROBERT NOVAK, SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST. "Inside the Bush administration policymaking apparatus, there is strong feeling that U.S. troops must leave Iraq next year. This determination is not predicated on success in implanting Iraqi democracy and internal stability. Rather, the officials are saying: Ready or not, here we go."

9.19.2004 "Senators ask for Bush rethink of Iraq policies as elections loom" By William C. Mann, Associated Press "McCain said Bush was not being ''as straight as we would want him to be'' about the situation."
See also Carpetbagger

9.19.2004 "Britain to cut troop levels in Iraq" Jason Burke, chief reporter, Guardian Unlimited.

9.18.2004 "Things Get Even Worse."

Atrios says that even Little Russ now believes that the insurgency in Iraq is actually aimed at defeating Bush in November. In fact, we must now assume that all bad acts everywhere in the world are aimed at that one particular goal.
If this is true, we need to ask ourselves why God would throw three huge hurricanes in a row at the southeast of the United States just before the election. Coincidence? I think not. Obviously, God wants Bush to lose." Digby

9.18.2004 "9/11 Widows Group to Endorse Kerry" by Devlin Barrett / Associated Press

9.18.2004 "The Greed Factor --Sanctions against rogue regimes would have been abandoned if Dick Cheney had had his way." By David J. Sirota and Jonathan Baskin, The American Prospect

9.18.2004 Military now posts daily casualty tallies Pointer from Eric Umansky

9.18.2004 "Texas justice is accused of conflict -- Brister says he doesn't recall case linked to his campaign" Dallas News Pointer from Howard Bashman

9.18.2004 "Court backs city's quest for gun records" ... "The Republican-controlled Congress enacted appropriations measures in 2003 and again this year saying no funds could be used to release the federal data that traces the path of guns used in crimes." Read this The Chicago Sun Times.

9.18.2004 "Secrecy in the Bush Administration" "Rep. Henry A. Waxman has released a comprehensive examination of secrecy in the Bush Administration. The report analyzes how the Administration has implemented each of our nation's major open government laws. It finds that there has been a consistent pattern in the Administration's actions: laws that are designed to promote public access to information have been undermined, while laws that authorize the government to withhold information or to operate in secret have repeatedly been expanded. The cumulative result is an unprecedented assault on the principle of open government."

9.18.2004 "Collapse of 60 Charter Schools Leaves Californians Scrambling" By SAM DILLON, The New York Times.
9.18.2004 California "Teachers Lose Tax Breaks for Supplies" By ANDREA ALMOND, Associated Press Writer

9.17.2004 "T-shirt trespassers file suit against Bush White House" Carpetbagger
See also: 9.16.2004 Countdown, with Keith Olbermann "A political disaster in Hamilton, New Jersey, for Laura Bush, her speech interrupted by a heckler who had to be handcuffed and dragged out of the premises by police, a heckler who turned out to be the grieving mother of a soldier killed in Iraq. Arresting what used to be called a gold-star mother, never good politics." ... "OLBERMANN: And that was outside the hall."

9.17.2004 "Judge Rebuffs Reporter in Leak Probe", By Carol D. Leonnig, Washington Post"A federal judge, in an order released yesterday, ruled that New York Times reporter Judith Miller cannot avoid a subpoena to testify about her private conversations with news sources before a grand jury investigating whether senior administration officials leaked the identity of a covert CIA officer to the media. "

9.17.2004 "Hayek Smiled: Why Blogging Works" By Michael Van Winkle, Tech Central Station. "Hayek's work focused on how it is that complicated and reliable systems of cooperation come about without any centralized direction. When they do, they outperform systems of "command", systems that rely on central direction. Hayek was an economist and so his primary object of study was the market and how, seemingly counterintuitively, it can work without commands; and why it outperforms large scale centralized economies like the Soviet Union. It doesn't take a directive from Washington to get Apple Computers to make more iPods. Why? Because the market tells Apple how many will sell."

9.16.2004 "Iraq is a vision of hell, and the Republicans act as if it's a model kitchen. The president and vice president brag about liberating Iraqis and reassure us that they are stopping terrorist violence at its source and inspiring democracy in the region by bringing it to blood-drenched Iraq.
But what they haven't mentioned is that they have known since July that their rosy scenarios are as bogus as their W.M.D. That's when the president received a national intelligence estimate that spelled out "a dark assessment of prospects" for stability and governance in Iraq in the next 18 months, as Douglas Jehl wrote in today's Times 'Worst-case estimates include civil war or anarchy.'
Unlike the president, the young men and women trying to stay alive in the unraveling chaos of Iraq can't count on their daddies to get them out of the line of fire." Maureen Dowd, The New York Times

9.16.2004 "Green Zone is 'no longer totally secure" By James Drummond and Steve Negus in Baghdad, Financial Times

9.16.2004 "My Economic Policy -- A new CEO in Washington would be good for American business." BY JOHN KERRY The Wall Street Journal (free registration required).

9.16.2004 "Plame Game leaker is identified -- but we don't know who it is"Carpetbagger

9.16.2004 "Mad About Mercury" By Pat Hemminger, Common Ground via Alternet

9.15.2004 "LITIGATION DOWN: President Bush has vilified trial lawyers for everything from driving doctors out of medicine to driving health care costs up to devastating small businesses. The numbers don't back him up. Recent data put out by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics showed, "The number of civil trials in the nation's 75 largest counties dropped by 47 percent from 1992 to 2001." Plaintiffs won about half the time, but the overall damages award shrank from $65,000 in 1992 to $37,000 in 2001." The Progress Report.

9.15.2004 "TEXAS GUARD SECRETARY SURFACES: SAYS CBS DOCS 'FORGERIES', BUT STANDS BY ACCUSATIONS AGAINST BUSH" ... "Knox told the DRUDGE REPORT that she did not vote for Bush in 2000 because he is 'unqualified' for the job, and does not intend to vote for him in 2004, either." Drudge

9.15.2004 "THE AWOL PROJECT -- An Examination of the Bush Military Files" By "some guy from Philadelphia named Paul Lukasiak"

9.15.2004 "Ashcroft just can't seem to stay away from trouble" Carpetbagger

9.15.2004 "The day CBS News got 'blogged' down" James P. Pinkerton, Newsday

9.14.2004 "Kitty's Litter" By Matt Taibbi, AlterNet

9.14.2004 "The former secretary for the Texas Air National Guard colonel who supposedly authored memos critical of President Bush's Guard service said Tuesday that the documents are fake, but that they reflect real documents that once existed." By PETE SLOVER / The Dallas Morning News

9.14.2004 "Big Government in Charge -- Bush was against paternalism before he was for it." By William Saletan, Slate.

9.14.2004 "Why Bush Left Texas" by Russ Baker, The Nation.

9.14.2004 "Florida OK's Nader's Name on Election Ballot" ... "Florida Circuit Court Judge Kevin Davey issued a temporary injunction last week preventing the state from putting Nader on the 2004 ballot, siding with a Democratic challenge that the Reform Party did not qualify as a national party under state law. "
"In a memo to Florida's 67 county supervisors of elections, Division of Elections director Dawn Roberts said the uncertainty of Hurricane Ivan, which could hit parts of the state by week's end, forced her to act." Reuters
The Carpetbagger Report - Just four days after a Florida judge ruled that Ralph Nader's name must be left off the state's presidential ballot, the Florida's election chief has ordered Nader onto the ballot anyway It's as if the state was concerned that it wasn't a big enough embarrassment to democracy, so it wanted to ratchet things up a bit.

9.14.2004 "No More Mister Nice Blog - Bill Maher on Larry King Live last night:
KING: ...You don't think Iraq is becoming Vietnam, do you?
MAHER: No. In Vietnam, George Bush had an exit strategy.

9.14.2004 "Despite all evidence, Americans believe Bush is keeping us safe" ... "How, exactly, does a man abandon a war against a real enemy, launch an invasion under false pretenses and with inadequate planning and resources, ignore more pressing threats around the globe, "miscalculate" his way into the most dire foreign policy debacle in generations, and then turn around and run as a man who is trustworthy on national security?" ? Carpetbagger

9.14.2004 Carpetbagger "Stop me if you've heard this one... The Bush administration prepared a detailed government report on health care benefits for seniors, but "inadvertently" left out information that shows burdensome new out-of-pocket Medicare costs for millions of elderly Americans. Raise your hand if you're surprised. I didn't think so. ...
"What's that old line? Fool me once...

9.14.2004 "Agents knew case flimsy, Powell says -- Doubts on Iraq kept from him, he testifies" By Bryan Bender, Boston Globe Staff "Yet Powell's comments to the Senate committee mark the first detailed acknowledgement by a senior Bush administration official that there were deep doubts in the intelligence community before the war."
"The fact that there are those who believe the Bush administration has a shred of credibility left is something I will just never understand." Carpetbagger.

9.14.2004 Carpetbagger: "Now, in a normal political world, Bush would be embarrassed by this front-page revelation and quickly stop talking about Kerry's $2 trillion price tag since his own plan costs $1 trillion more than his opponent's. Of course, we live in a bizarro political world, where facts and truth are largely irrelevant, so Bush will no doubt continue to use this line and just assume voters won't know better."

9.13.2004 "Putin Tightens Grip on Power in Russia-- Russian President Says Moves Necessary to Combat Terrorism" By Peter Baker, Washington Post

9.13.2004 Atrios "As those of us who actually read at least parts of the 9/11 report discovered, the report is incredibly brutal to the Bush administration. Elizabeth Drew, who actually took the time to read it and to have some discusssions with the various commissioners explains what should have been obvious to everyone in our cowed media -- before and during 9/11, the absolute incompetence of the Bush administration is shocking.
I've linked to this before, but she's talking about it now on Franken's show. Everyone should read it.

9.13.2004 "Why conservatives must not vote for Bush" A Reaganite argues that Bush is a dangerous, profligate, moralizing radical -- and that his reelection would be catastrophic both for the right and for America. By Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He served as a special assistant to President Reagan and was a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

9.13.2004 "President Bush: Flip-Flopper-In-Chief" Thanks, Roe.

9.13.2004 "Lay interview, '94 campaign records at odds with Bush's claim" Houston Chronicle, Jan. 11, 2002

9.13.2004 "Novak wants other journalists to reveal secret sources" ... "Bob Novak, who identified an undercover CIA agent's identity -- after the CIA asked him not to -- wants to talk about other reporters' responsibility to divulge confidential sources?
Can someone explain to me how this man even has a job in professional journalism? Partisan hack? Check . Frequently wrong? Check . Conflict-of-interest ethics problems? Check ". Carpetbagger

9.13.2004 "Evangelist-in-chief strikes again ... "The point isn't that there's something wrong with worship; the point is Americans don't need their president telling them which days he wants them to pray. It's none of Bush's business and it far exceeds his job description." Carpetbagger

9.13.2004 "Key General Criticizes April Attack In Fallujah -- Abrupt Withdrawal Called Vacillation" By Rajiv Chandrasekaran Washington Post

9.12.2004 "The Dishonesty Thing" By PAUL KRUGMAN "It's the dishonesty, stupid. The real issue in the National Guard story isn't what George W. Bush did three decades ago. It's the recent pattern of lies: his assertions that he fulfilled his obligations when he obviously didn't, the White House's repeated claims that it had released all of the relevant documents when it hadn't." ... "In other words, many reputable analysts think that the Bush administration routinely fakes even its short-term budget forecasts for the purposes of political spin. And the fakery in its long-term forecasts is much worse."

9.12.2004 "But on the off chance that the Guard story really might matter to some people, let's note that, Killian aside, he lied about his military record then went on to tell some meta-lies about it in 1999 and some lies about a different aspect of the story in 1998. The last point -- which has nothing to do with Killian -- is, to me, the most damning one. Getting into the Guard in the first place was an act of shirking on George W. Bush's part, not an act of conscience. He supported the Vietnam War but was not only unwilling to serve in it, he was willing to have his family pull strings in order to allow him to evade service. Some other young Texan was forced against his will to serve in Lt. Bush's stead, and a rather large number of those forced to serve in a war Bush supported but couldn't be bothered to fight found themselves killed, taken prison, or suffering from rather severe mental or physical trauma. It's a kind of moral cowardice -- and unwillingness to take responsibility for the consequences of your political views -- that's been repeated time and again while in office. And, as he does about everything else, he lied about it." Matthew Yglesias

9.12.2004 The ACLU is fighting a case in Hawaii against a law which allows police to ban people from public places for up to a year. The law was used to keep a man out of a public library because he was accessing a gay site on the net. "Hernandez and the Center say the Web site, www.gayhawaii.com, is not a pornographic site, but a resource with information on events, travel, real estate and other services for the gay community.
The Center complained, and was told by a library official that the security guard issued the warning because the Web site contained photos of men without shirts, the lawsuit said." Eugene Volokh

9.12.2004 "U.S.-state pot fight snags area grower -- The court appeal of two ailing women may tip the scales." By Denny Walsh and Steve Wiegand -- Sacramento Bee.

9.12.2004 "Look at who's on the payroll" By Molly Ivins
• When the people who are running the Food and Drug Administration do so to benefit the big processors and the big drug companies, people get hurt, and some of them die.
• When the people in charge of prosecuting terrorists in this country screw up case after case, those people should be replaced.
• When the country endures a hideous terrorist attack, is it actually useful for the White House to oppose the commission assigned to find out how it happened? MORE

9.12.2004 "Amid Cheers, Terrorists Have Landed in the U.S. -- To curry favor with Cuban Americans, Bush turns a blind eye." By Julia E. Sweig and Peter Kornbluh, LA Times

9.12.2004 "New Book Says Bush Officials Were Told of Detainee Abuse" Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib by Seymour M. Hersh

9.12.2004 "Help! I'm Turning Libertarian! ... If the nation's fiscal health is restored, and if we successfully extricate ourselves from Iraq, the interests of libertarians and liberals may well diverge again. But in the short term-- the next five or so years-- they will have and should have a number of common goals. One of those goals, and perhaps the most important, is getting rid of this mendacious and incompetent Administration." Jack M. Balkin

9.12.2004 "Immediate communication, on the streets: Activists are using text messaging to organize. Can you hear me now? " By Jeremy Scahill, AlterNet

9.12.2004 "How Do You Solve the Problem of Sharia? -- Canada grapples with the boundaries of legal multiculturalism." By Dahlia Lithwick, via Dr. David D.

9.12.2004 "What kind of person lies about serving in the Air Force?" Carpetbagger.

9.12.2004 "Dressing Up Failure" By Bruce Mirken, AlterNet "Despite the feds' positive spin, a national survey shows that drug use remains at near-record levels."

9.11.2004 Joe Scarborough "But let's look over the past three, four years. We've had tax cuts. We've had an increase in spending at just record clips. I mean, it's basically Keynesian economics on crack, and yet our economy is still sputtering along. We've got these huge deficits. They're going to eventually lead to higher interest rates. It seems we've got this vicious cycle and I just don't know where it ends, short of a depression.

9.11.2004 "Anyone paying attention for the last few years knows that, as in other areas of life, bullies who spend a lot of time posturing and talking about how they're a bunch of badasses are inevitably compensating for something, in this case incompetence." Sean Aday.

9.11.2004 "Whether willfully or not, Brooks is utterly missing the point of the many criticisms of Russian "policy errors." It is, of course, appropriate to condemn the heinous acts committed in Beslan and those who committed those acts. It also appropriate, however, to consider whether some policy choices yield greater possibilities for mitigating terrorism than others." Jonathan Weiler

9.11.2004 (Senator Bob) "Graham book: Inquiry into 9/11, Saudi ties blocked" By FRANK DAVIES
Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Sen. Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.
The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers ''would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration,'' the Florida Democrat wrote.
And in Graham's book, Intelligence Matters, obtained by The Herald Saturday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees.

"In the past three and a half years we have repeatedly seen this Administration choose secrecy and lack of accountability over Rule of Law values. It is a sorry legacy, and each new revelation only makes one wonder what else they are hiding that is even worse." JB

9.11.2004 "Well, I guess the cat's out of the dime bag." Cliff Schecter

9.11.2004 "Hiding the bodies From Salon, By Jeff Horwitz, via Maureen.

9.10.2004 "According to KOTV Channel 6, Woolsey "says we need to defeat three radical groups in the Middle East -- the Bathists, Shiites and al-Qaida -- before the war can be won" (the spelling is not mine).
Isn't defeating the Shiites a bit of an over-reach, Jim? Isn't that like taking on all Baptists, or Episcopelians? The last I heard, the Shiites, along with Sunnis and Kurds were among the key stakeholders in Iran's evolving civil society." Steve Clemons

9.10.2004 "Bush uses Secret Service to keep reporters from protestors" ... "The hecklers have an iron-clad constitutional right to shout at their president and reporters have an iron-clad constitutional right to talk to the hecklers about it. The fact that Secret Service agents are interfering with free assembly is completely outrageous.
Welcome to civil liberties in Bush's America." Carpetbagger.

9.5.2004 "New York City follies... ...or, Guantanamo on the Hudson, part two. Tom Tomorrow's account of being arrested and detained with protestors in NYC during the Republican National Convention.

9.10.2004 "There's nothing Cheney won't say to get elected" ... "I don't have a real point here, other than to note that voters who assume that one side will say one thing, the other side will disagree, and the truth is probably in the middle are missing a key ingredient -- one side happens to be lying." Carpetagger.

9.10.2004 "Kerry would do five things differently:
(1) beef up homeland security, in part by making this a core mission of the National Guard;
(2) refocus on Afghanistan, where the Taliban appears to be making a comeback;
(3) get serious about finding and securing nuclear materials that may wind up in the hands of terrorists;
(4) provide some international support and clear direction to our troops in Iraq, resolving the mess that's currently the number one recruiting tool for al Qaeda; and
(5) rebuild our alliances and international institutions to make the war on terrorism a collective security mission instead of a unilateral U.S. effort."

9.9.2004 "California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has decided to intervene in a pending false claims case against Diebold Inc.'s Diebold Election Systems, effectively taking over the case." FCW.com
9.8.2004 "Consumer Report Part 1: Look at this -- the Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole"

9.9.2004 "LARIAM AND U.S. SPECIAL FORCES: PENTAGON DRUG PROBLEM?" ... "REMEMBER THE COURT-MARTIALED ARMY RESERVIST WHO REFUSED to take the military's anthrax vaccine ? It looks like the Pentagon may have more drug controversies on the way after a special report released tonight by UPI and CNN on the anti-malaria drug Lariam."

9.9.2004 "So How's That Recovery Doing, Anyway?" Four easy graphs

9.9.2004 "And voters apparently do punish politicians for acts of God. In a paper written in 2004, the Princeton political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels estimate that "2.8 million people voted against Al Gore in 2000 because their states were too dry or too wet" as a consequence of that year's weather patterns." Will the hurricanes hurt the Bush brothers?

9.8.2004 "On August 1, 1972, Col. Killian grounded Lt. Bush for failure to perform to U.S. Air Force/Texas Air National Guard standards and for failure to take his annual physical as ordered." CBS

9.8.2004 Kevin Drum "This story is a perfect demonstration of the difference between the Swift Boat controversy and the National Guard controversy. Both are tales from long ago and both are related to Vietnam, but the documentary evidence in the two cases is like night and day. In the Swift Boat case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence indicates that Kerry's accusers are lying. Conversely, in the National Guard case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence provides additional confirmation that the charges against Bush are true."

9.8.2004 Tuberculosis: "Staffs to face TB tests -- State employees, including (Governor) Granholm, are to be screened after coworker in Detroit is diagnosed" BY BEN SCHMITT and KATHLEEN GRAY, Detroit FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
8.15.2004 Tuberculosis: "Bush Forces a Shift In Regulatory Thrust OSHA Made More Business-Friendly" By Amy Goldstein and Sarah Cohen, Washington Post. "The demise of the decade-old plan of defense against tuberculosis reflects the way OSHA has altered its regulatory mission to embrace a more business-friendly posture."

9.8.2004 "The Nagging Connection Between Breast Cancer & Deodorant Use" by Rebecca Ephraim

9.8.2004 "Gay Activists in the G.O.P. Withhold Endorsement" By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, The New York Times

9.8.2004 "U.S. Conceding Rebels Control Regions of Iraq" By ERIC SCHMITT and STEVEN R. WEISMAN, The New York Times.

9.8.2004 Cheney: "Bringing the politics of fear to new depths" This is the kind of thing a candidate says when he or she is desperate to scare the public: Vote for me or you may die . It is, quite literally, demagoguery at its worst." Carpetbagger

9.8.2004 Medicare: "Tom Scully owes us some money" "I know this isn't nearly as exciting as, say, whether John Kerry was just past the Cambodian border in Christmas of 1969, but the Medicare scandal should hang like a weight around Bush's neck. His administration intentionally misled Congress, forced officials who knew the truth into silence, and continues to hide pertinent information from lawmakers and the public -- all the while, breaking several federal laws." Carpetbagger.

9.8.2004 "Giving fiscal irresponsibility new meaning" Carpetbagger

9.7.2004 "Report: Halliburton to Lose Iraq Contract " AP

9.7.2004 "The Pentagon, for instance, has just cashiered nine linguists, six of them Arabic-language specialists, for being gay. Apparently, its new policy is don't ask, don't tell, don't translate. That's madness. We have a potentially deadly shortage of Arabic speakers, and the Defense Department is getting tough on gay translators?" Mark Graber

9.7.2004 "Now Afghanistan is in chaos. There is no security in the countryside. Aid groups are leaving the country because it is too unsafe to work. The Taliban and al Qaeda are operating in the countryside. Opium production is back up, and is helping to finance al Qaeda. This is all the completely predictable result of our failure to put in the resources needed to do the job right." hilzoy

9.2.2004 Garison Keiller "We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore" ... "Our beloved land has been fogged with fear, the greatest political strategy ever. An ominous silence, distant sirens, a drumbeat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy and silence the opposition. And in a time of vague fear, you can appoint bullet-brained judges, strip the bark off the Constitution, eviscerate federal regulatory agencies, bring public education to a standstill, stupefy the press, lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the rich."
Thanks, Maureen, I needed this.

9.4.2004 "Leak Inquiry Includes Iran Experts in Administration" By Robin Wright and Dan Eggen, Washington Post Staff Writers

9.4.2004 "Tax cuts were just the beginning: the President is signalling a far more radical agenda." by JOHN CASSIDY, The New Yorker

9.3.2004 "Back to the Future -- What Bush would do if he were president." By William Saletan, Slate

9.3.2004 "Judge Reverses Convictions in Detroit 'Terrorism' Case" By DANNY HAKIM "The case fits into a broader pattern of the Ashcroft Justice Department overplaying its hand in terror cases and making broad allegations of terror without the evidence to back it up," said David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University." The New York Times

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