Esther Kaplan, author of a new book about George Bush and the Christian Right, talks about the Evangelicals' new messiah: Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.
...
If you were able to ask Alito one question during January's confirmation hearings, what would you ask?

I would ask him if he really believes that women, and people with AIDS, and gay people, and people of color are equal in the eyes of the law. I would ask him if he believes that they need every opportunity to challenge discrimination against them in court and if they have the right to control their own bodies and private lives. His record clearly implies otherwise.

11.27.2005 "Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt ..." By Frank Rich

Sooner or later - probably sooner, given the accelerating pace of recent revelations - this embarrassing information will leak out anyway. But the administration's deliberate efforts to suppress or ignore intelligence that contradicted its Iraq crusade are only part of the prewar story. There were other shadowy stations on the disinformation assembly line. Among them were the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, a two-man Pentagon operation specifically created to cherry-pick intelligence for Mr. Cheney's apocalyptic Iraqi scenarios, and the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), in which Karl Rove, Karen Hughes and the Cheney hands Lewis Libby and Mary Matalin, among others, plotted to mainline this propaganda into the veins of the press and public. These murky aspects of the narrative - like the role played by a private P.R. contractor, the Rendon Group, examined by James Bamford in the current Rolling Stone - have yet to be recounted in full.

"We are deputizing the military to spy on law-abiding Americans in America. This is a huge leap without even a [congressional] hearing," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a recent interview.
...
Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said the data-sharing amendment would still give the Pentagon much greater access to the FBI's massive collection of data, including information on citizens not connected to terrorism or espionage.

The measure, she said, "removes one of the few existing privacy protections against the creation of secret dossiers on Americans by government intelligence agencies." She said the Pentagon's "intelligence agencies are quietly expanding their domestic presence without any public debate.
...
Among the steps already taken by the Pentagon that enhanced its domestic capabilities was the establishment after 9/11 of Northern Command, or Northcom, in Colorado Springs, to provide military forces to help in reacting to terrorist threats in the continental United States. Today, Northcom's intelligence centers in Colorado and Texas fuse reports from CIFA, the FBI and other U.S. agencies, and are staffed by 290 intelligence analysts. That is more than the roughly 200 analysts working for the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and far more than those at the Department of Homeland Security.

The case for manipulation is pretty strong. It relies on several things, but I think the most important of them has been the discovery that the administration deliberately suppressed dissenting views on some of the most important pieces of evidence that they used to bolster their case for war. For future reference, here's a list of seven key dissents about administration claims, all of which were circulated before the war but kept under wraps until after the war:

"This apparently modest motion may be the iceberg toward which Blair's Titanic is sailing," said Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond.
...
"This House believes there should be a select committee of seven Members, being Members of Her Majesty's Privy Council, to review the way in which the responsibilities of government were discharged in relation to Iraq and all matters relevant thereto in the period leading up to military action in that country in March, 2003 and in its aftermath."
...
The inquiry would be led by senior MPs of all parties who have also been made members of the Privy Council, a medieval hangover that is mainly an honorific post but does allow its members full access to intelligence material.

Another giveaway is the administration's lack of outrage over the bad intelligence they now claim to have been victimized by. Only Colin Powell, before his U.N. speech, seems to have pushed back with any skepticism about charges he was being asked to retail. And only Powell has expressed any outrage after it became evident that his U.N. speech had been a case of garbage in, garbage out.

Powell's old colleagues now defend themselves by saying they didn't know their claims about Iraq weren't true. But the truth is most of them didn't care whether their assertions were true or not, and they still don't.

11.25.2005 Kevin Drum:

THE MORAL ARGUMENT AGAINST TORTURE....Over at Unfogged, Ogged picks up on my biggest frustration with the current state of the torture debate: namely that it's almost impossible to convincingly make the moral case against torture to anyone who's not already predisposed to think it's immoral. Stripped to its core, I realize that the only real argument I have against torture is "But don't you see that it's wrong? Don't you?" And that's just immensely frustrating, because if you don't see it then I have no ammunition left.

Had the government waited, tested its facts, kept expectations low, then delivered a series of convictions of even small-time al-Qaida foot soldiers, we in this country would feel safer and we would doubtless be safer. Instead Padilla, like Hamdi, was used as fodder for big speeches. They became the justification for Bush's position that some people are so evil that the law does not deter them, that new legal systems must be invented—new systems that bear a striking resemblance to those discredited around the time of Torquemada.

The facts of the Hamdi, Padilla, Lindh, Moussaoui, and other terror cases have never mapped onto the propaganda used to sell them. The trouble, yet again, is those bedeviled facts. The problem the Bush administration keeps having with the legal system is that no matter how long you stall, speechify, and deny, in the end it all comes down to facts—facts that become increasingly inconvenient with every passing day.

... I can't bear the thought of my grandson living in the world these bastards are creating. We have to do all we can to defeat them.

A listing of all requests made of the Pentagon under the Freedom of Information Act since 2000, acquired by RAW STORY, provides new insight into the aggressiveness of American news agencies.

This New York Times article confirms something I suspected as soon as Padilla's indictment was announced. The Bush administration is desperate to avoid accountability on its detention and interrogation policies not because of what it may need to do in the future but rather because of the illegality of what it has already done.

Almost 20 years ago, the Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP) collapsed like a modern House of Usher, so rotten from within from its own deceptions and peculiar madness that it could no longer sustain its own weight. For Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito '72, the reappearance of CAP in the national press last week because he included it on that now infamous 1985 job application must have been as shocking as the reappearance of Roderick Usher's dead twin sister in Poe's famous story.
...
Even today, they lie. The Daily Princetonian reported Friday that CAP's longtime board member Andrew Napolitano '72 denies that the group opposed coeducation! This is like denying that the Catholic Church opposed abortion. Opposition to the presence of women at Princeton was CAP's central precept.

It would be nice if we could have a coherent public discussion about staying or going in Iraq, and you can't do that without talking about the oil of the Middle East.
...
America is leading the current crusade because we are the society most desperately addicted to oil, and the Middle East is where two-thirds of the world's remaining oil lies. The one thing that we apparently cannot bring ourselves to talk about is our addiction itself. The commuters whizzing around the edge cities and metroplexes of this land probably got a big charge out of Congressman Murtha's anti-war blast taking over drive-time radio last Friday. I wonder if they thought about how it might affect their commuting.
...
Unless an anti-war opposition has a plan to withdraw from the project of suburban sprawl, we're going to have to keep soldiers in Iraq, if not in the cities, then out in desert bases guarding the oil works and keeping planes ready to fly in case some al-Zarqawi-type maniac mounts a coup in Saudi Arabia. It would certainly be legitimate for the Democratic party to oppose the idea that we can continue to be crippled by car-dependency, or that we ought to keep subsidizing that way of life -- which Vice-president Cheney called "non-negotiable." We'd better negotiate that or somebody else is going to negotiate it for us, and that is exactly what they are doing with IED's in Iraq and elsewhere.

But Dana Priest has had other major scoops as well -- perhaps the greatest recent one being the revelations about secret detention centers abroad where American authorities and/or their proxies are detaining prisoners in an "off the books" manner.

Immediately, after Priest's story, Senate Republicans began attacking each other -- thinking that one or more of them had spilled classified information to Dana Priest as the revelation of such detention centers was allegedly made by Vice President Cheney at a Republican caucus meeting in the Senate. Bill Frist and Dennis Hastert actually called for an investigation of who leaked the information to Priest rather than calling for an investigation of the secret detention facilities.

WRONG--

"Scalia-Cheney Trip Raises Eyebrows" WASHINGTON, Jan. 17, 2003 -- CBS NEWS " (CBS) Vice President Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spent part of last week duck hunting together at a private camp in southern Louisiana, just three weeks after the court agreed to take up the vice president's appeal in lawsuits over his handling of the administration's energy task force, the Los Angeles Times says in its Saturday editions"

11.23.2005 "... 9% believe Mr. Bush is trying to make the Supreme Court too liberal, according to the poll." WSJ

11.23.2005 "BOMBING AL-JAZEERA....This goes right to the top of the "seriously weird" pile:" Kevin Drum

11.22.2005 "Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel" By Murray Waas

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

• The State Department was convinced the Niger uranium claim was bogus.
• The source for the claims about biological weapons was a questionable character called "Curveball," who had a drinking problem and was distrusted by German intelligence, which had worked with him.
• We were told with great alarm that Saddam had drones that could deliver weapons, but the Air Force thought that was a joke.
• The Department of Energy never believed the famous aluminum tubes had anything to do with a nuclear program.
• Colin Powell's warnings about mobile weapons labs were not based on solid information.

11.22.2005 Josh Marshall:

How much of a difference there was or how relevant that difference may be to the underlying debate -- those may be a up for discussion. But the claim that members of Congress had access to the same intelligence the president did is just demonstrably false.

Why create a he said/she said, when the facts on the table are not in dispute?

In an ironic twist, the new Medicare drug program is about to curtail a benefit touted by the pharmaceutical industry and enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of uninsured patients: free medicine.

Under federal rules effective Jan. 1, low-income and elderly patients who enroll in the program, known as Medicare Part D, will lose the ability to get free medications through the drugmakers’ tax-deductible charities, known as patient-assistance programs

Some companies, going further, said this week that they would drop patients who were merely eligible for Part D, whether or not they actually enrolled in it, as allowed under long-standing rules.

As a result, in about six weeks, up to half of the roughly three million to four million charity patients nationwide may lose free access to more than 1,200 brand-name drugs, according to estimates of three companies. Other recipients should be unaffected.

News of the cut-off followed a ruling last week by the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services barring companies from giving free drugs to Part D enrollees, hoping to prevent fraud. While suggesting an alternative charity system, the ruling threw a confusing twist into the already-baffling Medicare prescription-drug program.

11.21.2005 "RUMSFELD'S REWRITE OF PREWAR HISTORY"

11.19.2005 Riverbend: (regarding white phosphorus)

Few Iraqis ever doubted the American use of chemical weapons in Falloojeh. We've been hearing the terrifying stories of people burnt to the bone for well over a year now. I just didn't want it confirmed.

I didn't want it confirmed because confirming the atrocities that occurred in Falloojeh means verifying how really lost we are as Iraqis under American occupation and how incredibly useless the world is in general- the UN, Kofi Annan, humanitarian organizations, clerics, the Pope, journalists… you name it- we've lost faith in it.
...
The Pentagon spokesman recently said:

"It's part of our conventional-weapons inventory and we use it like we use any other conventional weapon,"
"Classified Pentagon Document Described White Phosphorus As 'Chemical Weapon'"
'US Army rules say: 'Don't use WP against people'' Independent Online

From my advantaged position, I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth -- or even had an interest in knowing the truth.

One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result. His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, (Bush 41) when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power."
...
According to one senior administration official involved in intelligence-budget decisions, half of the CIA's work is now performed by private contractors -- people completely unaccountable to Congress. Another senior budget official acknowledges privately that lawmakers have no idea how many rent-a-spies the CIA currently employs -- or how much unchecked power they enjoy.
...
In modern warfare, he (Rendon) believes, the outcome depends largely on the public's perception of the war -- whether it is winnable, whether it is worth the cost. "We are being haunted and stalked by the difference between perception and reality," he says. "Because the lines are divergent, this difference between perception and reality is one of the greatest strategic communications challenges of war."

By the time the Gulf War came to a close in 1991, the Rendon Group was firmly established as Washington's leading salesman for regime change. But Rendon's new assignment went beyond simply manipulating the media. After the war ended, the Top Secret order signed by President Bush to oust Hussein included a rare "lethal finding" -- meaning deadly action could be taken if necessary. Under contract to the CIA, Rendon was charged with helping to create a dissident force with the avowed purpose of violently overthrowing the entire Iraqi government.

In fact, those highly critical on the right (we need more power and a better plan) and on the left (we need to withdraw) agonize over the situation the troops overseas are in. Those critical of war policy on the right and left love America just as much as anyone else does. Even as much as George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Duncan Hunter and Jean Schmidt. Maybe even as much as Ann Coulter.

We can't pitch democratic values overseas if we don't genuinely honor, cherish, practice and celebrate them over here — and voters should encourage politicians who don't quite understand that to start updating their resumes ASAP for new jobs in the private sector in 2006 and 2008.

GENEVA OVERHOLSER, FMR. "WASHINGTON POST" OMBUDSMAN: I honestly believe he does play by a different set of rules. And I think that that's quite problematic.

What we've seen here, Howie, plays right into public concerns about whether or not reporters are mostly focused on serving the public's need to know, or cozying up with sources. And Woodward is doing now a very different thing from what he did in Watergate.

Where he was the quintessential outsider reporting on people in power and using anonymous sources to do so, now he's the quintessential insider, giving voice to those in power. And also using anonymity, but in a very different interest.

Conservatives have argued that there is a double standard at work here, that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed despite her "radical" espousal of abortion, polygamy, and other mad notions. But of course, besides the fact that so many of the claims made about Ginsburg's views are false or distorted, Ginsburg was willing to discuss her views of abortion and women's rights quite openly. Also, her views were in line with the law. What part of her confirmation hearing makes it acceptable to retreat to smoke signals when the nominee opposes Roe?

11.19.2005 "Bill Authorizes Private Purchase of Federal Land"

DENVER, Nov. 19 - Private companies and individuals would be able to buy large tracts of federal land, from sagebrush basins to high-peak hiking trails around the West, under the terms of the spending bill passed Friday by a two-vote margin in the House of Representatives.

On the surface, the bill reads like the mundane nip and tuck of federal mining law its authors say it is. But lawyers who have parsed its language say the real beneficiaries could be real estate developers, whose business has become a more potent economic engine in the West than mining.

11.6.2005 " Levin Says Newly Declassified Information Indicates Bush Administration’s Use of Pre-War Intelligence Was Misleading"

11.19.2005 James Moore:

Last night, 220,000 people were cut from the Food Stamp program. And Democrats considered that an accomplishment. States will now be asked to seek co-payments from Medicaid beneficiaries to supplement a shortfall of federal funding, and congress wants to cut funding for state programs aimed at child support enforcement. No one even seemed particularly disturbed when they debated taking 40,000 children off of the student lunch program at the same time their parents were being dropped from Food Stamp rolls.

The context for all of this goes unnoticed. While we hand out no-bid contracts to Halliburton for billions of dollars we are trimming the budget in the Spaghetti-Os of impoverished children. Food Stamp recipients are being forced to pay for the president's latest $50 billion in tax cuts. Medicaid patients have no choice over a co-pay that will help our president and our congress pay for the current war without end. One estimate I read indicated that the first round of funding for the Iraqi invasion, which was $84 billion dollars, was enough to pay for full health care for every man, woman, and child in America for one year; no deductions, no co-pays. We are not just wasting lives in those ancient deserts.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. Effort does not always produce results. Some of us fail, regardless of how hard we try. The question for our country is whether we ignore the people who have fallen into the ditch or do we stop and give them a hand. And do we turn our backs on their children even though they had nothing to do with the circumstances in which they find themselves? And what do we lose if we walk away from them? There is no way to measure unlived lives or unrealized potential.

I want my America back.

ISSUE 3 (Revise campaign contribution limits)
PRE-POLLING: 61% Yes, 25% No, 14% Undecided
FINAL RESULT: 33% Yes, 66% No

A North Carolina man who was charged yesterday with accepting kickbacks and bribes as a comptroller and financial officer for the American occupation authority in Iraq was hired despite having served prison time for felony fraud in the 1990's.

The job gave the man, Robert J. Stein, control over $82 million in cash earmarked for Iraqi rebuilding projects.
...
The affidavit yesterday alleges that on Jan. 22, 2004, Mr. Stein transferred $200 of money obtained through bribes to the clerk of United States District Court in North Carolina's Eastern District.

The payment, the affidavit explains, was an installment on the restitution payment that Mr. Stein had been ordered to pay on his earlier felony conviction.

11.17.2005 "In challenging war's critics, administration tinkers with truth" By James Kuhnhenn and Jonathan S. Landay

• Baghdad Burning
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Guantanamo ... Social Security ... Wilson/Plame Timeline ... Judicial Nominations

The Scalito, Mafia PDF

Alphabet Soup

The Project for the New American Century's Statement of Principles, and its pre-2000 writings about Iraq.

The U.S. Constitution
See also

Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau

Kos: Katrina Timeline

US Code, Section 793 Espionage and Censorship

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