5.12.05 Jerry and Joe Long:

Finally, here's one of our favorite quotes from Pat Robertson: ”One morning, when I was in that stage between sleep and waking, an awful depression seized me. I felt that everyone was against me, that people around me were failing, and that everything I was doing was falling to pieces. Discouragement overwhelmed me like a dark cloud. As I struggled to wake up, I realized I was under demonic attack”.

The exit poll discrepancies are to the evidence that massive disenfranchisement occurred in Ohio, as the canary is to the detection of harmful gases in a coal mine. When a canary dies in a coal mine, that alone is not proof positive that something is wrong (maybe the cause of death was just old age or as John Cleese once said, maybe he is "just sleeping"). But -- if you are working in the coalmine -- you just might want to check things out

Long recognizing that massive gaps in accountability exist regarding the reconstruction effort, I and my Democratic colleagues have on numerous occasions called for the creation of a modern-day Truman Commission, a body tasked with monitoring post-war U.S. government activities in Iraq and making sure that money and resources go where they are supposed to go - not into the pockets of a corrupt contractor or into the black hole of confusion produced by the fog of war, but to the Iraqis and American soldiers who need them.
...
Republicans have sought to hide the shameful lapses in judgment and accountability which have dogged our troops in Iraq rather than addressing and correcting them. This time, the consequences of their actions could not be more severe. By refusing to monitor post-war events in Iraq with a truly concerned eye, our soldiers have been directly endangered, left to struggle against the whims of unregulated companies and the irregularities of chance.
...
Our troops have been fighting two wars at once: one against a vicious insurgency which seeks to see them fail, and one against a self-interested party which seeks above all else to see itself escape being held accountable for its own mistakes and lapses in judgment. Such an approach to government must be ferociously opposed. Let us bring decency and accountability back to the House. Let us reconstitute a new Truman Commission dedicated to eliminating the corruption and waste plaguing American conduct in Iraq, and more broadly, reconstitute our commitment to honest and open government. We must do this not just for the good of the people of America, but for the good of the young men and women who are risking everything so that we may have a chance to live in society which is truly worthy of their ultimate sacrifice.

"I believe that Gen. Miller gave them the ideas, gave them the instruction on what techniques to use," she said in an interview on the ABC News "Nightline" program.
Asked if she was referring to the positioning of prisoners in human pyramids and putting dog leashes on detainees, Karpinski said, "I can tell you with certainty that the MPs (military police) certainly did not design those techniques, they certainly did not come to Abu Ghraib or to Iraq with dog collars and dog leashes."

If you want to know who our government is working for, you need look no further than this. Republicans rammed through a bill that made declaring bankruptcy harder on individuals while rejecting amendments that would've helped ensure Americans employed by struggling firms don't lose their financial base and thus have to declare bankruptcy. So the bill made it harder for individuals to declare bankruptcy, but easier for corporations to drive them to that point. Brilliant.

5.10.05 "The Super-Lobbyist's "Friend", By Art Levine, The American Prospect

Take pity on poor Bob Ney, who insists he's just another victim of lobbyist Jack Abramoff and public-relations consultant Michael Scanlon. Unlike the half-dozen Indian tribes that paid about $82 million to that scamming duo, however, the U.S. representative at least got campaign donations and a lavish trip to Scotland's legendary St. Andrew's golf course out of them. Whether he got more than that is now a matter of interest to Justice Department investigators, according to a knowledgeable source who says that the probers are seeking to discover whether Ney received any illegal donations from Abramoff.

Section 102 of H.R. 418 would amend the current provision to require the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive any law upon determining that a waiver is necessary for the expeditious construction of the border barriers. Additionally, it would prohibit judicial review of a waiver decision or action by the Secretary and bar judicially ordered compensation or injunction or other remedy for damages alleged to result from any such decision or action.
...
So if judicial review is the basic mechanism that enables the Federal court system—from the Supreme Court on down—to rule on the constitutionality of laws and government actions, then how could it be possible for Congress to pass a law that includes language prohibiting judicial review for the law in question? In other words, if Congress could somehow exempt a law from judicial review, then the principle of judicial review would be completely gutted because they could just exempt from judicial review any law they wanted to, even if that law is blatantly unconstitutional or it violates basic human rights. Surely this isn't possible?
...
Opponents of the concept of judicial review appeal to an obscure and cryptic article of the Constitution, the (in)famous Article 3, Section 2 (A3S2 for short), which states:

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

That last sentence is the kicker, because it looks for all the world like language that would enable Congress to wave a magic A3S2 wand over any piece of legislation no matter how outrageous and have it be completely exempt from review by the courts. The implications for the system of checks and balances if Congress actually invokes this provision are about as profound as it gets, which is why no Congress in American history has ever opted to open that particular can of worms... until now.

No, you really do have to wonder how they think they can get away with such radical changes that have no constitutional or even popular support. It really does make you have to at least consider the possibility that they know they will not lose elections.

About 4,500 more ballots than registered voters were cast in the election last November in Milwaukee, investigators said Tuesday.

Get to know Bill Pryor
...
He abhors the principle of church-state separation and has worked with the Christian Coalition to undermine the First Amendment, he is a National Rifle Association purist when it comes to gun ownership, he’s bent over backwards to help the tobacco industry, he is an ardent anti-abortion activist, he’s injected more partisanship into the office state attorney general than had previously been thought possible, his appreciation for “states’ rights” borders on Strom Thurmond circa 1948, he has urged the repeal of parts of the Votings Rights Act, he has demonstrated contempt for an individual’s right to privacy, he has fought to undercut the Americans with Disabilities Act, he needlessly injected himself into the Bush v. Gore case at the Supreme Court by selling out the states’ rights principle he claims to love, and he really, really hates gay people.
In fact, on that last point, Pryor has taken a Santorum-like approach to privacy. Pryor felt so strongly about a Texas law that prohibited gay people from having sex, he insisted that if the law were struck down, it would open the way for legalized “prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography and even incest and pedophilia.”
Actually, that’s kind of just scratching the surface. Pryor was also at the center of a major fundraising scandal in which he was soliciting political contributions from the same corporations facing litigation in his state.

The CBPP notes that the conventional wisdom, over the last couple of weeks, is that the bottom 30% of the population would be shielded from cuts in Social Security. The middle class would be screwed, the rich would make out like bandits with tax cuts, but at least low-income families would know that their Social Security benefits would be secure. Except, based on a document that the White House gave reporters in a press briefing on May 4, that’s not exactly true and a substantial number of low-income beneficiaries would be subject to cuts.

Another student asked Bush about the cost of the Iraq war, which is when the funny part happened: reporters were ushered from the room.

Media were then asked to leave, though the meeting, held in a window-lined room at a glorious chateau near Maastricht, went on for another half-hour.

5.10.05 "State Department says it won't turn over more Bolton documents" CNN

Democrats want to know if Bolton was spying on other government officials he suspected of disagreeing with or undermining his views on sensitive topics such as Cuban and Syrian weapons capabilities.
...
On Monday, 43 former U.S. ambassadors added their names to a letter signed earlier by 59 ex-ambassadors opposing the nomination. Among the new signers were A. Peter Burleigh, a former acting U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Most of them served in Republican administrations

'Politics is the art of controlling your environment.' That is one of the key things I learned in these years, and I learned it the hard way. Anybody who thinks that 'it doesn't matter who's President' has never been Drafted and sent off to fight and die in a vicious, stupid War on the other side of the World -- or been beaten and gassed by Police for trespassing on public property -- or been hounded by the IRS for purely political reasons -- or locked up in the Cook County Jail with a broken nose and no phone access and twelve perverts wanting to stomp your ass in the shower. That is when it matters who is President or Governor or Police Chief. That is when you will wish you had voted.

5.9.05 Paul Krugman:

In last fall's debates, Mr. Bush asserted that "most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans." Since most of the cuts went to the top 10 percent of the population and more than a third went to people making more than $200,000 a year, Mr. Bush's definition of middle income apparently reaches pretty high.
But defenders of Mr. Bush's Social Security plan now portray benefit cuts for anyone making more than $20,000 a year, cuts that will have their biggest percentage impact on the retirement income of people making about $60,000 a year, as cuts for the wealthy.

After years of free-floating propaganda, her colleagues are astonished to discover that she is collaborative and congenial.

5.8.05 Publius:

Bush has – from day one – set out to shift the tax burden to the middle class. In John Edwards’ underused phrase, he’s shifting it from wealth to work. But it’s more than just taxes – he is shifting costs from wealth to work too. That’s the common thread that runs through the massive income tax cuts, the estate tax repeal, Social Security reform, the cuts in Medicaid and other services, the bankruptcy bill, and class action reform. These are all about shifting costs (taxes, health care costs, etc.) from those most able to pay them to those least able to pay them.

Those figures show that the drug makers have told the Internal Revenue Service for years that their profits come mainly from international sales, even though the prices of medicines are far higher in the United States and almost 60 percent of their sales take place in America.
...
Though the companies stand behind their accounting, financial analysts and tax lawyers say that the drug makers' claim defies reality and that their profits come mostly from sales in the United States. But the I.R.S. lacks the resources to challenge the companies effectively, the analysts and lawyers say. As a result, the six major companies - Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Wyeth and Lilly - collectively pay a federal tax rate of less than 15 percent on their worldwide profits, with some companies paying much less

Infotainment has reached a new level of ubiquity in an era in which "reality" television and reality have become so blurred that it's hard to know if ABC News's special investigating "American Idol" last week was real journalism about a fake show or fake journalism about a real show or whether anyone knows the difference - or cares.

... Mr. DeLay's leadership campaign committee - Americans for a Republican Majority PAC - has delivered millions to Republican candidates, a prowess that would score points in any environment. All five Republican members of the ethics committee have gotten a boost from Armpac in the past; Representative Melissa Hart of Pennsylvania, tapped to run the DeLay ethics inquiry, has received $15,000 over the years.
...
But as the House ethics panel began the process of examining Mr. DeLay's activities last week, two of its Republican members, Lamar Smith of Texas and Tom Cole of Oklahoma, reluctantly recused themselves because they had donated money to the DeLay legal defense fund. The recusals serve as a reminder that although his allies are scattered everywhere, they may not always work to his advantage and may not be strong enough to weather all storms.

Washington: Hollywood studios and television networks were dealt a blow yesterday when a federal appeals court rejected an earlier federal ruling that required coming generation of digital apparatus like TVs, personal computers, DVD recorders to contain anti-piracy technology.

5.7.05 Publius: "Here are some choice excerpts from the UK memo (that Kevin Drum also emphasized):

Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action. . . . [T]he timeline [will begin] 30 days before the US Congressional elections."

5.7.05 TaxProf Blog via Publius

Median Income Data Mirrors Red State-Blue State Divide

There is a name for those who continue to sit at a gambling table even after they learn that the game is fixed. They are called fools.
...
Walking away from a rigged game is hard for some people, especially when those running it and the respected opinion-makers who support them insist that this time the game will truly be on the level. But, especially when the danger involves gambling away the future of Social Security, the truly responsible thing is to leave the table.

5.5.05 "The Grand Old Spending Party" Stephen Slivinski, The Cato Institute(with interesting graphs)

5.5.05 "New Rule Opens National Forest to Roads" By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer

The last 58.5 million acres of untouched national forests, which President Clinton had set aside for protection, were opened to possible logging, mining and other commercial uses by the Bush administration on Thursday.

5.5.05 "ACLU Urges Conferees to Remove "Real ID" From Funding Measure; Proposal Attacks the Persecuted, Harms Immigrants" (and the rest of us)

5.5.05 "The Christian Complex" By George F. Will

According to the American Religious Identification Survey, Americans who answer "none" when asked to identify their religion numbered 29.4 million in 2001, more than double the 14.3 million in 1990. If unbelievers had their own state -- the state of None -- its population would be more than twice that of New England's six states, and None would be the nation's second-largest state:
...
Unbelievers should not cavil about this acknowledgment of majority sensibilities. But Republicans should not seem to require, de facto, what the Constitution forbids, de jure: "No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust."

In March and early April, Pentagon audits showed more than $200 million in questionable costs in a massive, no-bid Halliburton Co. contract for delivering fuel to Iraq. Later in April, an inspector general's report concluded that a British security firm lacked proof that its armed employees had received proper weapons training and that the Army had not provided enough oversight of the company's work. And last week, a Government Accountability Office report said U.S. officials had all but abandoned their responsibility for overseeing a contract under which employees of CACI International Inc. had conducted interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison.

The Health Ministry said the clause that condemns prostitution -- which is legal in Brazil -- was not in the original agreement signed by Brazil, but was added later by the Bush administration.

5.3.2005 Eine kleine schadenfreude

5.3.2005 Atrios:

The only thing "to do" about Social Security is to improve its long run solvency. The only reasonable way to improve its long run solvency is to pre-fund the Trust Fund. But, we have a president running around claiming the trust fund is just a file cabinet, and a bunch of Republicans in Congress who agree. So, throwing more money into the "file cabinet" is just a way to throw more money at tax cuts for the rich. That is, in fact, what the president has told us.

Pre-funding is a sucker's game as long as the president is a liar.

Today’s White House press briefing included a lengthy exchange on whether the president believes in supporting the Treasury’s obligations. It didn’t go well.

5.2.2005 "War didn't and doesn't bring democracy" By Gen. Wesley Clark

But like the rooster who thinks his crowing caused the dawn, those who rule Washington today have a habit of taking credit for events of which they were in fact not the primary movers.

Despite having made a commitment to return power to the states, the Bush administration and the GOP- controlled Congress are using legislation and the legal system to quash state efforts to regulate industry, a trend state officials say is weakening hard-fought efforts to protect the health and safety of their constituents.
New and proposed federal rules or laws would overturn California's ban on a vaccine preservative some think contributes to autism, and would block any state's efforts to control small-engine emissions. New England would be thwarted in its efforts to control pollution wafting over from other states, while Massachusetts and California would not be able to keep unwanted liquefied natural gas terminals from their shores. A recent banking rule change severely limits the impact of state laws intended to protect consumers from shady banking practices.

Seven months before Sept. 11, 2001, the State Department issued a human rights report on Uzbekistan. It was a litany of horrors.
The police repeatedly tortured prisoners, State Department officials wrote, noting that the most common techniques were "beating, often with blunt weapons, and asphyxiation with a gas mask." Separately, international human rights groups had reported that torture in Uzbek jails included boiling of body parts, using electroshock on genitals and plucking off fingernails and toenails with pliers. Two prisoners were boiled to death, the groups reported. The February 2001 State Department report stated bluntly, "Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state with limited civil rights."

5.1.05 "Bush / Iraq Bombshell This Morning" by smintheus

The bombshell from the British papers this morning has had virtually no impact yet on D Kos, and I'm curious to know why it has not turned American politics upside down already. The leaked memo from the Prime Minister's office of a secret meeting (July 23, 2002) shows that after consulting with Bush and his administration, the British leaders met to strategize about an invasion of Iraq that Bush had already decided upon (months before the Congressional resolution)! The memo reveals the depths of cynicism of both the US and UK governments. For ex., the UK head of intelligence reports that for the Bush admin "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy". Much of the memo is devoted to developing a strategy to provoke a war against Iraq, and the problem that there was no apparent justification for it. The Foreign Secretary said "the case [for war] was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran." More on the flip, with a link to the evidence

"The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting some public broadcasting leaders - including the chief executive of PBS - to object that his actions pose a threat to editorial independence.
Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests' political leanings on one program, "Now With Bill Moyers."

• Baghdad Burning
• Billmon
• Carpetbagger
• Christian Coalition Ratings
• Steven C. Clemons
• DAOU (Subscription)
• Digby
• Maureen Dowd
• Drudge
• Gen. JC Christian, patriot
• Memeorandum
• No More Mister Nice Blog
• Publius
• Wikipedia
• Farid Zakaria

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