July 2004 Archives

You might think a political campaign requiring people to sign a loyalty oath before they can attend an event would remain in the rhelm of a Daily Show segment or an Onion story.

Well, except when the Bush-Cheney reelection team is in action. The Associated Press' Richard Benke reports:

Some Democrats who signed up to hear Vice President Dick Cheney speak here Saturday were refused tickets unless they signed a pledge to endorse President Bush.

Joshua Marshall has an excellent analysis of the situation.

I believe it quite pathetic that the Bush/Cheney team continues to use "security" as an excuse to stifle dissent against their policies.

From a Chicago Tribune news service report:

This year's federal deficit will soar to a record $445 billion, the White House projected Friday in a report that is sure to provoke election-season tussling over how well President Bush has handled the economy.

The government is borrowing nearly one-fifth of its total spending from future taxpayers. The Bush Administration and Republican leadership continue to argue, amazingly, for even more tax cuts.

Such tax cuts, since they are financed through debt, merely shift the cost of government to future taxpayers. Someone is going to pay for this imbalance. If not us, then our children and grandchildren.

Such generational irresponsibility is simply another reason to seek to work to keep President George W. Bush from winning reelection.

The scary thing is, whether we are rapidly approaching worldwide peak oil production is a serious question. With major consequences.

Which is why we should be doing much more to research and develop alternative technologies.

Shortstop Nomar Garciaparra is now a Chicago Cub after today's trade from the Boston Red Sox.

This is an excellent move for the Cubs. Even better that the Cubs were able to get him without trading pitcher Matt Clement. Nice work by the front office.

Now perhaps my beloved Cubbies can get on with getting the wild card and securing the team's first back-to-back winning seasons since 1971-72.

I think it worth noting a few presidential flip-flops about the 9-11 Commission included within just one paragraph of this Dana Priest and Walter Pincus' Washington Post story:

The president, who did not favor impaneling the commission and then said he was in no rush to institute further reforms, has now decided he must do something soon, aides have said. White House and congressional officials say the president seeks to blunt criticism by Democrats that he has not done enough to address what the commission concluded was an utter failure to detect any aspect of the terrorist plot.

I was very impressed with John Kerry's acceptance speech tonight at the Democratic National Convention.

A positive message, a needed critique of the Bush Administration, and a roadmap for the future.

Here are my favorite lines from the speech:

• We have it in our power to change the world, but only if we're true to our ideals. And that starts by telling the truth to the American people.

• I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war.

  I will have a vice president who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws.

  I will have a secretary of defense who will listen to the best advice of the military leaders.

  And I will appoint an attorney general who will uphold the Constitution of the United States.

• Now, I know there that are those who criticize me for seeing complexities -- and I do -- because some issues just aren't all that simple. Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so. Saying we can fight a war on the cheap doesn't make it so. And proclaiming "Mission accomplished" certainly doesn't make it so.

• And as president, I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: The United States of America never goes to war because we want to; we only go to war because we have to. That is the standard of our nation.

• And I will build a stronger military. We will add 40,000 active duty troops, not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended and under pressure.

  We will double our Special Forces to conduct terrorist operations, anti-terrorist operations, and we will provide our troops with the newest weapons and technology to save their lives and win the battle. And we will end the backdoor draft of the National Guard and reservists.

• In these dangerous days, there is a right way and a wrong way to be strong. Strength is more than tough words.

• Today, our national security begins with homeland security. The 9/11 commission has given us a path to follow, endorsed by Democrats, Republicans and the 9/11 families. As president, I will not evade or equivocate; I will immediately implement all the recommendations of that commission.

• We are here to affirm that when Americans stand up and speak their minds and say America can do better, that is not a challenge to patriotism; it is the heart and soul of patriotism.

• That flag doesn't belong to any president. It doesn't belong to any ideology. It doesn't belong to any party. It belongs to all the American people.

• We value an America that controls its own destiny because it's finally and forever independent of Mideast oil. What does it mean for our economy and our national security when we have only 3 percent of the world's oil reserves, yet we rely on foreign countries for 53 percent of what we consume?

  I want an America that relies on its ingenuity and innovation, not the Saudi royal family.

  And our energy plan for a stronger America -- our energy plan will invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and the cars of the future, so that no young American in uniform will ever be held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

• I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side.

• What if we have a president who believes in science, so we can unleash the wonders of discovery like stem-cell research and treat illness for millions of lives?

On all of those points.

Over on OMB Watch, John Irons points out that the Bush Administration believes that the nation will reach the current statutory $7.384 trillion national debt limit in October.

The Bush Administration has turned trillions of projected surpluses into trillions of real debt. Do we really need four more years of this fiscal mismanagement and generational irresponsibility?

Could someone explain to me how John Kerry's following NASA rules and wearing a clean suit during a tour of the shuttle Discovery is a story? Moreover how it represents a story, as some right-wing media outlets are spinning it, that reflects badly on him?

Right-wing media activist L. Brent Bozell used his position as a member of CNN's truth squad to spread a lie about Ken Lay spending 13 nights in the Lincoln Bedroom during President Bill Clinton's term.

Media Matters for America debunks this lie. Again. Ken Lay spent zero nights in the Lincoln Bedroom while Clinton was in office.

13 vs. 0. It's certainly easy to confuse those numbers.

Now, I admit that I am not surprised to see Bozell resort to these tactics.

I would note, moreover, that if the media were as liberal as Bozell and his ilk wrongly claim it is, a person like Bozell would never have an opportunity to spread lies like this on national television.

John Kerry made an excellent suggestion earlier today. The Washington Post's William Branigin reports:

Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry called Tuesday for extending the mandate of the bipartisan commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying it should keep working for an additional 18 months to help ensure that its recommendations are implemented.

President George W. Bush, who has fought the 9-11 Commission's establishment and wanted to saddle it with an impossible deadline, apparently does not agree that such an extension is worthwhile.

Why does Sean Hannity insist on peddling the false charge that former President Bill Clinton turned down an offer from Sudan to capture Osama bin Laden? Media Matters documents the entire sorry saga.

The 9-11 Commission has knocked this down. Of course, you should not expect the right-wing spin machine to stop in the face of such an inconvenient fact...

Boston Phoenix media commentator Dan Kennedy writes about a forum he attended today featuring Michael Moore and Howard Dean. As Kennedy reports, the national media (rightly) took a great deal of abuse.

At one point, Moore quipped, "I'm not picking on the press here today. I'm sure they'll kick the piss out of me later." Well, not here. Certainly not when Moore went on to point out that General Electric, which owns NBC, has $600 million worth of contracts in Iraq, making them "war profiteers." (That's harsh, but it's certainly true that NBC News's corporate parent has a direct interest in not crossing the White House on the war. How come Tom Brokaw doesn't tell us that?) Or how about Moore's contention that Disney, which refused to distribute Fahrenheit 9/11, turns out to have accepted a $300 million bailout from a member of the Saudi royal family for EuroDisney ... brokered by the Bush-connected Carlyle Group. A splendid story for Peter Jennings, whose employer, ABC News, is part of the Disney family.

Worse, as Kennedy noted in this earlier post, while Brokaw, Jennings, and Dan Rather have been around long enough to fight bogus right-wing criticism and those who place making profits ahead of reporting the news, their retirements are soon to arrive.

What will happen then?

My favorite lines from former President Bill Clinton's Democratic National Convention speech:

• In other words, they need a divided America. But we don't.

• The president had an amazing opportunity to bring the country together under his slogan of compassionate conservatism and to unite the world in the struggle against terror.

  Instead, he and his congressional allies made a very different choice. They chose to use that moment of unity to try to push the country too far to the right and to walk away from our allies, not only in attacking Iraq before the weapons inspectors had finished their work, but in withdrawing American support for the climate change treaty and for the international court on war criminals and for the anti-ballistic missile treaty and from the nuclear test ban treaty.

• We live in an interdependent world in which we cannot possibly kill, jail or occupy all of our potential adversaries. So we have to both fight terror and build a world with more partners and fewer terrorists.

• Their opponents will tell you we should be afraid of John Kerry and John Edwards, because they won't stand up to the terrorists. Don't you believe it. Strength and wisdom are not opposing values.

My favorite lines from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's Democratic National Convention speech:

• Last week, the bipartisan 9/11 commission issued its report. And that commission would never have been in existence had it not been for the brave family members who insisted that this government have a commission to look into 9/11.

• And we need to secure our borders, our rail lines and our ports as well as our chemical and nuclear plants. We need to reorganize our federal government to meet the new threats of these times. And we need to make sure that homeland security is a priority and that it is funded properly and that the resources go to the areas of greatest risk, like New York City.

• We need to increase our troop strength. We need to raise their pay. We need to provide our veterans, our National Guard and Reserve with the benefits they are entitled to for the service and duty they perform for our nation.
  

My favorite lines from President Jimmy Carter's Democratic National Convention speech:

• We had a confidence -- we had a confidence that our leaders, both military and civilian, would not put our soldiers and sailors in harm's way by initiating wars of choice unless America's vital interests were in danger. We also were sure that these presidents would not mislead us when issues involved our national security.

• Truth is the foundation of our global leadership, but our credibility has been shattered and we are left increasingly isolated and vulnerable in a hostile world. Without truth, without trust, America cannot flourish. Trust is at the very heart of our democracy, the sacred covenant between a president and the people. When that trust is violated, the bonds that hold our republic together begin to weaken.

• And finally, in the world at large, we cannot lead if our leaders mislead.

• Ultimately, the basic issue is whether America will provide global leadership that springs from the unity and the integrity of the American people, or whether extremist doctrines, the manipulation of the truth, will define America's role in the world.

• At stake is nothing less than our nation's soul.
  

My favorite lines from Vice President Al Gore's Democratic National Convention speech:

• The first lesson is this: Take it from me, every vote counts.

• Is our country more united today or more divided? Has the promise of compassionate conservatism been fulfilled, or do those words now ring hollow?

• For that matter, are the economic policies really conservative at all? For example, did you expect the largest deficits in history, year after year, one right after another, and the loss of more than a million jobs?

• Wouldn't we be safer with a president who didn't insist on confusing Al Qaida with Iraq?

Yes we would.

Troubling news from the California Independent System Operator, the independent agency that manages the state's power grid:

For the third day in a row, Californians set a new record peak demand for electricity usage; 44,360 megawatts was set Wednesday at 4:18 p.m. Yesterday’s record peak demand was 44,330 megawatts, breaking the previous record of 43,609 megawatts, which was set July 12, 1999.

Click here to read the CalISO press release in pdf format.

With the House Government Reform Committee taking a sudden interest in investigating former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, Nick Confessore over on TAPPED lists some of the items that committee has taken a pass on investigating.

I'm sure partisanship has nothing to do with it.

In another signal that the military has been overextended by the Bush Administration's misguided policies, the Pentagon is now considering keeping National Guard soldiers on active duty past the 24-month active service limit. The Los Angeles Times' Mark Mazzetti writes:

Doing away with the 24-month limit would be certain to upset many long-serving soldiers and their families, who say they are increasingly bearing the weight of a military stretched beyond its capacity. Over the last year, the conflict in Iraq has forced the Pentagon to keep more than 100,000 soldiers and Marines in the country for months after the Bush administration had expected to draw down the troop presence.

The Pentagon has issued orders preventing military personnel from leaving active duty, extended the tours of thousands of troops when insurgent activity in Iraq crested in the spring, and pulled troops out of South Korea to fill out Iraq rotations.

Last month, the Army was forced to dip into its pool of Individual Ready Reserve soldiers — troops who are not members of a specific reserve unit but have unexpired obligations to complete their military service — looking for roughly 5,600 to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Instead of listening to those who warned that the Administration was underestimating the number of troops needed to fight the war in Iraq, President Bush's people fired them. Instead of recognizing that its ill-advised policies will require an expansion of the size of our military, Bush has decided to paper-over the problem with the tactics described by Mazzetti above.

Tactics, make no mistake, that have created a de facto draft.

The Bush Administration's policies have also had an extremely negative impact on the National Guard's ability to help with emergency situations like forest fires and homeland security.

We should not tolerate such gross mismanagement.

I've seen some reports about a recent speech where New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh reported that much worse news about the torture at Abu Ghraib prison has yet to come out.

Well, Body and Soul has an excellent post about the subject today, and so I felt the need to point it out to the few readers of this little blog.

Jeanne hopes that the silence in our nation about these reports will not last. Reading the following paragraph from Hersh's speech should make you hope our media will begin to wonder about these horrors.

The boys were sodomized, with the cameras rolling, and the worst above all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking -- that you're government has. And they're in total terror it's going to come out. It's impossible to say to yourself, "How did we get there? Who are we? Who are these people who sent us there?"... And so we're dealing with an enormous, massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there and higher, and we have to get to it, and we will -- we will, I mean, you know, there's enough out there...

Yale Constitutional Law Professor Jack M. Balkin examines the Constitutional issues raised by proposals to create procedures to postpone a federal election.

Speaking of the Concord Coalition, Philadelphia writer Douglas Pike is concerned about the organization and offers some constructive criticism. Pike writes:

I admire these gentlemen, but their crusade [as deficit hawks] needs new tactics and fresh faces. It needs the daring of Ross Perot and the late Paul Tsongas. It needs the twentysomething spark of the "Lead or Leave" gang. It needs the Internet genius of the Dean campaign. It needs the brilliant simplicity of the MoveOn.Org ad that shows children slaving away to pay off the deficit.

But I don't think the Concord Coalition was ever designed, or could be designed, to fit that bill. As with any issue, a variety of tactics and organizations are needed to best make the case.

The Concord Coalition does a great job of analyzing and explaining the budget. That has always been its strength.

So, it would help if there were another organization (or organizations) that would join them in the ways Pike suggests above. One organization is rarely good at everything. The question is whether a support network can be created to energize those who think that leaving future generations a mountain of debt is immoral.

(Disclaimer: I worked for the Concord Coalition as a volunteer or as a staff member from 1994-1999. I remain a supporter.)

It's a small piece of positive news, but when it comes to the federal government's fiscal situation, even scraps of sanity are worth celebrating. The Concord Coalition issued the following media release today:

The Concord Coalition today praised a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators for proposing to offset the revenue loss from a one-year extension of three expiring tax breaks. The proposal by Senators Snowe (R-ME), Baucus (D-MT), McCain (R-AZ), Breaux (D-LA), Chafee (R-RI) and Lincoln (D-AR) would extend through 2005 the 10 percent bracket inflation adjustment, certain "marriage penalty" provisions and an enhanced $1,000 child tax credit. The revenue loss would be offset by closing corporate tax loopholes that have been targeted by the Senate Finance Committee and by extending customs user fees.

But, one must look at the political realities. The Bush Administration and its allies are talking about making permanent trillions in tax cuts without a thought about their impact on the national debt.

Recognizing the need for offsets is, at least, a start.

What Charles Pierce said over on Altercation:

There really is only one issue in this election. Since the Extended Florida Unpleasantness, this has been an Adminstration utterly unconcerned with any restraints, constitutional or otherwise, on its power. It has been contemptuous of the idea of self-government, and particularly of the notion that an informed populace is necessary to that idea. It recognizes neither parliamentary rules nor constitutional barriers. (Just for fun, imagine that the Senate had not authorized force in Iraq. Do you think for one moment that C-Plus Augustus wouldn't have launched the war anyway, and on some pretext that we'd only now be discovering was counterfeit?) It does not accept the concept of principled opposition, either inside the administration or outside of it. It refuses to be bound by anything more than its political appetites. It wants what it wants, and it does what it wants. It is, at its heart, and in the strictest definition of the word, lawless. It has the perfect front men: a president unable to admit a mistake because he's spent his entire life being insulated from even the most minor of consequences, and a vice-president who is viscerally furious at the notion that he is accountable to anyone at all. They are abetted by a congressional majority in which all of these un-American traits are amplified to an overwhelming din.

So, now we are faced with the question: Do you want to live in a country where these people no longer feel even the vaporous restraints of having another election to win?

And I think not.

Over on Atrios, Athenae links to a post on The Poor Man blog that exposes another Republican terrorism slander:

Louisville-AP -- A Republican leader applauded a bumper sticker being circulated in Louisville that reads "Kerry is bin Laden's Man/Bush is Mine" as Democrats decried it.

Jefferson County G-O-P chairman Jack Richardson the Fourth says he didn't know the bumper sticker's origins, but agreed with its message.

Richardson says the local G-O-P had no involvement in creating the bumper stickers, but said the stickers were available at the county's GOP headquarters.

I don't think I'll hold my breath.

Fred Clark has written one of the best posts I have read about the selective reading of the Bible that some Christians engage in to justify their anti-homosexual bias.

I strongly encourage you to go read it.

(Thanks to Body and Soul for the link.)

In a recent speech at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, President George W. Bush explained how he believes our nation and the world are safer today than they were three years ago.

Slate's Fred Kaplan wonders about what world President Bush is talking.

Good question, Mr. Kaplan. I understand a politician's need to put the best possible spin on the situation. But this speech by the president was way out there.

One of my great annoyances is with how easily reporters allow politicians and government officials to speak on background or without attribution.

Sometimes such an arrangement is necessary. But I believe our reporters are too quick to grant the request for anonymity.

That's why I was so happy to read Jack Shafer's report in Slate aboutt an incident last week where reporters refused to agree to a request that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz be referred to only as a "senior Defense Department official."

As Shafer explains, reporters who don't even try to get a source to speak on-the-record will never get the source to do so. Background sourcing should not be the default scenario.

Kevin Phillips has written an extremely interesting analysis of the presidential campaign.

John Kerry can win, given George W. Bush's incompetence, and White House strategists realize that. All the Democrats need to do is to peel away some of the Republican "unbase"--the most wobbly members of the GOP coalition. The caveat is that not many Democrats understand that coalition or why it has beaten the Democrats most of the time since 1968. Nor do most understand the convoluted but related role of Bill Clinton in aborting what could have been a 1992-2004 (or 2008) mini-cycle of Democratic White House dominance and in paving the way for George W.

Elements of this shortsightedness are visible in both the party and the Kerry campaign. While attempts to harness "Anybody but Bush" psychologies and to attract voters without saying much that is controversial might win Kerry a narrow victory, this strategy would be unlikely to create a framework for successful four- or eight-year governance. Deconstructing the Republican coalition is a better long-term bet, and could be done. The result, however, might be to uncage serious progressive reform.

However, in the case of Bush's running for election or re-election, it is also useful--and the Democrats of 2004 would find it particularly worthwhile--to focus on the GOP's "unbase." This, in essence, is the 20-25 percent of the party electorate that has been won at various points by three national anti-Bush primary and general election candidates with Republican origins: Ross Perot (1992), John McCain (2000) and, in a lesser vein, Patrick Buchanan (1992). Most of the shared Perot-McCain issues--campaign and election reform, opposition to the religious right, distaste for Washington lobbyists, opposition to upper-bracket tax biases and runaway deficits, criticism of corporations and CEOs--are salient today and more compatible with the mainstream moderate reformist Democratic viewpoint than with the lobbyist-driven Bush Administration. Perot and Buchanan's economic nationalism (anti-outsourcing, anti-NAFTA) and criticism of Iraq policy under the two Bushes is also shared by many Democrats.

Over on Altercation, correspondent Charles Pierce rightly condemns conservative pundit Tucker Carlson for minimizing as just a "jacuzzi case" an incident where an eight-year old was disemboweled by a faulty wading pool drain.

Why would Tucker be so mean? Because John Edwards was the lawyer who helped hold the company accountable, and there's a chance for some cheap political rhetoric.

Re-electing George W. Bush apparently makes it okay to minimize what happened to that then eight-year-old, who faces a lifetime of being fed through a tube for 12 hours a day.

Isn't compassionate conservatism grand?

The Denver Post's Anne C. Mulkern reports on another situation that highlights the Bush Administration's war against federal regulators:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lied and obfuscated when asked to explain why its lead attorney is helping drug companies fight consumer lawsuits, a congressman said Tuesday.

Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., had demanded answers from FDA Commissioner Lester M. Crawford in March after learning that FDA lead counsel Daniel E. Troy has filed court briefs in three lawsuits.

Troy in those cases argued that the suits against drug companies or medical-device makers were invalid.

(snip)

The Denver Post in May reported that Troy, at a conference of drug company attorneys in New York last December, said he was willing to assist them with cases and invited them to call his office for help.

Why would lawyer Troy forget his responsibility to the American people? I am sure it has nothing to do with the fact that Troy represented Pfizer before joining the FDA.

Hiring former industry advocates to regulatory positions is not uncommon for the Bush Administration, as Mulkern explains:

Troy, The Post reported, is one of more than 100 former industry advocates appointed by President Bush to jobs where they now regulate their former industries.

The Bush Administration has been waging an ideological war against our nation's regulatory system. We have seen various examples of how the Administration has tried to corrupt and/or co-opt our regulatory bodies for the president's industry friends.

Which is yet another reason to make sure this administration loses its re-election bid in November.

Columnist Matthew Miller warns Democrats to stop gloating and remember that a tough election fight lies ahead.

Yes, President Bush is beatable, but this is hardly the same thing as having been beaten. For most of the country, and especially for that small sliver of Americans who apparently still have an open mind (and who therefore decide who wins), the campaign hasn't even begun.

Candidates always tell their supporters that complacency means death, but in this case it's truer than usual.

Most voters have not started thinking about this election yet, and won't until after Labor Day. As Miller argues:

At this point, most people have no notion of Kerry's affirmative agenda. Some of this is unfair (and the media's fault) - Kerry's health plan, for example, is the most interesting and ambitious domestic policy proposal in years, and he's put real money behind it.

But the rest remains a blur. And those other guys are ruthless!

The only sure thing is that this election will be close, and probably ugly. As they head toward their convention, Democrats need to get out the gloat, and fight for every vote.

Jonathan Alter reminds us of the importance of language in politics, and gives us another example of how John Edwards can help John Kerry in this campaign.

A good political speech should resemble a good closing argument by a prosecutor (which Kerry was) or plaintiff's attorney (Edwards), where the case builds slowly and quietly—without hectoring—to a devastating conclusion about the defendant. The key is converting negative arguments into positive feelings toward the lawyer's client, in this case John Kerry.

If Edwards can help Kerry forget some of the Senatespeak he has learned to use, the Democratic ticket's chances will only improve.

The Los Angeles Times' Walter F. Roche Jr. and Ken Silverstein explain how some prominent supporters of the misguided Iraq war are now cashing in on war-related contracts.

For them, at least, the war's price was not too high.

The real shame: that this result was not obvious to more people when the asinine color-coded homeland terror warning system was announced. The New York Times' Eric Lichtblau reports:

The federal government's color-coded threat system is too vague and confusing to help many local and state law enforcement officials prepare for possible terrorist attacks, Congressional investigators said Monday in a report that prompted leading members of Congress to call for an overhaul.

The report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, cited widespread concern among federal, state and local officials about the quality and timing of threat information they received from the Department of Homeland Security. A survey sent to 84 agencies, states and United States territories as part of the study found that the warnings were often vague and inadequate, and had "hindered their ability to determine whether they were at risk" and what protective measures to take in response.

Are there cracks in the conservative base? The Associated Press' Scott Lindlaw writes:

When an influential group of conservatives gathers in downtown Washington each week, they often get a political pep talk from a senior Bush administration official or campaign aide. They don't expect a fellow Republican to deliver a blistering critique of President Bush's handling of the Iraq war.

But nearly 150 conservatives listened in silence recently as a veteran of the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations ticked off a litany of missteps in Iraq by the Bush White House.

"This war is not going well," said Stefan Halper, a deputy assistant secretary of state under President Reagan.

Oops, sorry. I mean, where some conservatives are willing to question this White House on its Iraq policy?

It's about time.

Timothy Noah reports on the latest example of one bedrock Bush Administration principle: if you tell the truth, you will get fired.

Do we really need such thugs running our government?

Investigators are looking at the fundraising practices used by one of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's political action committees. The question: did the PAC illegally use corporate donations (including money from Enron) to finance DeLay's successful (and contemptible) mid-decade Texas redistricting effort?

Update: Over at TAPPED, Nick Confessore asks an excellent question about this story:

It does beg the question of where, exactly, the vaunted investigative reporters of the New York Times are on this story. Apparently, when a president had lost money decades ago on a land deal in Arkansas, it was worth an enterprise team. But when the most powerful man in Congress allegedly breaks the law to funnel millions of dollars of corporate money into a plan to maintain control of the House, nobody gets on the case. What gives?

Wow. Two big Republican flip-flops in four paragraphs.

First, as President Bush and his surrogates try to portray Sen. John Kerry as a flip-flopper, it is worthwhile to shift the mirror back to a president who has shown a remarkable propensity not to live up to the promises he made during the 2000 campaign.

Charles Babington writes about another Bush says one thing, does another moment:

With time expiring on the decade-old assault weapons ban, gun control advocates are angry at President Bush for apparently doing nothing to extend it. In fact, the president never asked the House to continue the ban, which will expire in September, because he knew it was pointless, says Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).

In his 2000 campaign, Bush said he favored extending the 1994 ban on 19 semiautomatic assault weapons. But now, "time is running out, and President Bush's strategy is to remain silent," said Michael Barnes, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, in a recent statement.

Babington continues his report and highlights House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's latest hypocritical moment:

The Senate dropped efforts to extend the law in March, and the House never started. "We stated our position before the White House had to ask us," DeLay told reporters last week. The White House "knew not to [ask], because the votes are not there."

At the same news conference, DeLay took a different view on a proposed constitutional amendment to bar same-sex marriages. The House will vote on the question in September, he said, even though many Republicans say they are not close to rounding up the 290 votes, or two-thirds majority, that a constitutional amendment requires. "We feel like marriage is under attack," DeLay said, and amendment proponents can't wait for a guaranteed victory.

Josh Marshall gives Washington Post reporter Susan Schmidt a well-deserved smackdown over her report about the Senate Intelligence Committee's mention of Joe Wilson and the Niger-Iraq yellowcake claims. He writes:

In her fourth paragraph Schmidt writes that "contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address."

This is one of those cases in which it's helpful to actually read the report rather than just run with what you've got from the majority committee staffer who gave you the spin.

Via Body and Soul, here is another example of just how misguided our airline security efforts remain.

I panicked. If five years of working on this narrative couldn't liberate me from software sales, how was a five-minute pitch going to keep me out of jail? I barely got three sentences out when the guy's lids started to droop. Convinced I was headed for the gulag, I prattled faster. Despite my stuttering, the inquisitor must have liked my story, because he let me off the hook. Or at least that's how he made sure I felt: that he was letting me skip ... this time.

Maybe he sensed that I white-knuckle on airplanes unless I have three shots of vodka. Perhaps my background check told him that I'm a secular Jew or that ex-girlfriends contend that my fear of commitment surpasses that of any Hugh Grant movie character. In other words, I don't exactly fit the profile of someone who would align with a radical cause to bring down an airplane he's already afraid he'll crash in. Even so, the honcho gravely warned me that while I hadn't crossed the line, I had walked right up to it. And for that I would be on Homeland Security's watch list.

At least we'll make sure bad dialogue gets the punishment it deserves.

Eric Alterman comments on the stories warning about Al Qaeda's apparent planning for a terrorist attack prior to our November elections. In the comment, Alterman sums up the present situation, and the Bush Administration's multitude of policy errors, in one neat paragraph.

Thank goodness, therefore, that, instead of focusing on shutting down al-Qaida, we’ve encouraged it to rebuild and flourish, pulling troops and agents out of Afghan-Pakistani border in order to fight a war in Iraq and thereby created a second terrorist haven. I’m also thrilled that we’ve pretty much ignored homeland security while spending hundreds of billions on making sure that the entire Arab world hates our guts.

But that would be un-American. Or something.

I normally respect Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) since we share a deficit hawk mentality, and he was one of the few members of Congress who allowed the public to access Congressional Research Reports through his web site before the House leadership ended that program.

But he committed a terrorism slander during yesterday's PATRIOT ACT debate. As reported by the Center for American Progress' Progress Report, Shays told his colleagues that:

"I have 70 constituents who lost their rights on September 11; and to hear this debate, I am not sure we seem to care about that."

One thing I am really quite tired of seeing is Republican officeholders, staff members, and operatives slandering people as being anti-American or supporting the terrorists just because they dare to disagree with the GOP talking points.

So, I am creating this new category -- Terrorism Slander -- to keep a record of these baseless claims and pathetic charges.

Oh. And we have a nominee from yesterday's PATRIOT ACT vote debate.

Justifying the Republican leadership's decision to keep the vote open for an extra 23 minutes so they could strong-arm enough vote changes to avert a loss, Stuart Roy, a spokesperson for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) told the New York Times' Eric Lichtblau for the July 9 edition that:

"We're more interested in catching terrorists who are trying to kill Americans than we are in leaving the Capitol in time for happy hour."

Feel free to send future nominees for the Terrorism Slander category to slander(at)cheslog.com. Feel free to send blasts from the past as well.

The leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives once again showed its contempt for the chamber's voting rules by holding open a vote they were losing long enough to force enough members to change their minds. The Washington Post's Dan Morgan and Charles Babington write:

By a 210 to 210 tie vote that GOP leaders prolonged for 23 tumultuous minutes while they corralled dissident members, the House rejected a proposed change to the USA Patriot Act that would have barred the Justice Department from searching bookstore and library records. White House officials, citing the nearly three-year-old law's importance as an anti-terrorism tool, warned that an attempt to weaken it would be vetoed.

But the victory came only after GOP tactics infuriated Democrats and a number of Republicans. The vote, scheduled to last 15 minutes, dragged on for 38 minutes despite outraged shouts and a unified chant of "shame, shame, shame" from Democrats across the aisle.

I remember when Republican Members of Congress demanded an end to such abuses on the House floor. Actions, however, speak far louder than the talking points written by Frank Luntz and other GOP pollsters.

Political Animal Kevin Drum asks an excellent question:

Whenever you hear anyone — and you hear it from both liberals and conservatives — crowing about how conservative the country has become in the past couple of decades, just remember this: if America is so damn conservative, why is the Republican party afraid to put any red-blooded conservatives on prime time TV shortly before the election?

Just as an FYI:

The national debt has increased by an average of $1.68 billion a day so far this fiscal year.

Over on Atrios, Holden is unimpressed with all of this talk about increased terror danger, words unaccompanied with any change in the national terror alert level. Holden helpfully suggests adding a new category...

This story, which details how the plane carrying Kentucky Governor Ernie Fletcher (R) was nearly shot down as it approached Washington, D.C., for former President Ronald Reagan's funeral last month, does not exactly inspire confidence.

Worse, it appears that our federal agencies still are not communicating effectively with each other -- nearly three years after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Washington Post reporter Spencer S. Hsu explains:

On June 9, the Beechcraft King Air was flying with a broken transponder, a device that transmits an identifying signal picked up by ground controllers. After takeoff, the pilot, as required, notified Federal Aviation Administration officials in Ohio about the problem at 2:56 p.m.

But the FAA failed to notify military and homeland security officials, who monitored separate radar displays, about the broken transponder. To everyone but the FAA, radar showed an unidentified intruder entering restricted Washington airspace at 4:24 p.m.

President George W. Bush apparently has altered, radically, his criteria for deciding who can be president. As the Washington Post's Mike Allen writes:

Bush had cordially welcomed the freshman senator to the race hours after Kerry announced his choice of running mate, but when asked here how Edwards would stack up against Vice President Cheney, he snapped: "Dick Cheney can be president. Next?" Then Bush pivoted away from his questioner and toward the next one.

Well, let's use the political wayback machine and take a look at what George W. Bush's qualifications were when he decided to run for president. As this archive reminds us:

Bush announced an exploratory committee to seek the nation's highest political office on March 7, 1999 and said on June 12, 1999 in Iowa: "I am a candidate."

John Edwards, meanwhile, has been a United States Senator for more than five years and is a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

President Bush: major league hypocrite.

Not that the Bush Administration seems ready to address problems caused by the Iraq War, but at least some in Congress are looking at how we over overtaxing our reserve units. The Associated Press' Pauline Jelinek writes:

The Pentagon is taxing its Reserve soldiers "nearly to the breaking point" with repeated and extended deployments in its two ongoing wars, the ranking Democrat on the House military panel said Wednesday.

And the committee's Republican chairman said recent moves to find more combat soldiers for Iraq -- including the use of troops who normally train others -- could "mortgage the future" of the nation's military.

As noted here on December 29, 2003, President Bush and Congress should share the blame for their refusal to increase the size of the military to meet today's needs. We all should also recognize that these steps also amount to a de facto draft -- people are serving in our military against their will.

Of course, this was clear before President Bush and his administration launched the dubious war with Iraq. We should hold them accountable this November.

While I was away, President George W. Bush's fiscal policies ensured that the national debt would continue its rapid growth.

The national debt grew by $137.112 billion between March 22 (the date of my last post before going on break) and yesterday (when I started posting again).

I doubt future generations shall approve of such gross fiscal incompetence.

Paul Krugman refutes President George W. Bush's latest attempt to take a poor economic report and spin it into something complimentary to his policies.

On Friday, President Bush insisted that a seriously disappointing jobs report, which fell far short of the pre-announcement hype, was good news: "We're witnessing steady growth, steady growth. And that's important. We don't need boom-or-bust-type growth."

But Mr. Bush has already presided over a bust. For the first time since 1932, employment is lower in the summer of a presidential election year than it was on the previous Inauguration Day. Americans badly need a boom to make up the lost ground. And we're not getting it.

If you want a single number that tells the story, it's the percentage of adults who have jobs. When Mr. Bush took office, that number stood at 64.4. By last August it had fallen to 62.2 percent. In June, the number was 62.3. That is, during Mr. Bush's first 30 months, the job situation deteriorated drastically. Last summer it stabilized, and since then it may have improved slightly. But jobs are still very scarce, with little relief in sight.

This is an immoral policy that we must stop this November.

The Democratic National Committee was ready for the Bush campaign to release an ad featuring Senator John McCain.

It's good work.

The DNC's response makes note of just a few of the anti-Bush statements the Arizona Senator has made over the past few years.

I am pleased to see that McCain's feelings about the president will not be lost down the memory hole.

Label me pleasantly surprised that John Kerry picked Senator John Edwards as his vice presidential running mate.

I was hoping Kerry would pick Edwards, but I thought he might settle for one of the so-called "safer" choices.

Edwards' message is important for Democrats to champion. His campaigning skills are obvious, and compliment Kerry's. Edwards could make some red states a bit more competitive.

For me, however, the Democratic Party's Vice Presidential nominee has one vital job this year.

It's not about issues or ticket balancing. Thankfully, John Kerry mentioned it in his e-mail announcing that Edwards was the choice:

I can't tell you how proud I am to have John Edwards on my team, or how eager I am for the day this fall when he stands up for our vision and goes toe-to-toe with Dick Cheney. (emphasis added)

This year's Democratic VP pick cannot allow that to happen again. Edwards nees to fight back and point out Cheney's misrepresentations. I believe he can do so.

Kerry-Edwards vs. Bush-Cheney. Let's get it on.

The time has arrived for me to restart this blog after a hiatus that has lasted several months.

It was not a break I expected to take. But with some major life events in progress (a move, new house, new baby -- who wonderfully arrived home this past weekend), this blog had to take a back seat for a bit.

I thank those people who contacted me to see what was happening and to encourage me to get back to the blog as soon as I could. I appreciated the thoughts and encouragement!

Now, as I was saying...