May 2006 Archives

The BBC reports on more progress from Iraq:

The coach of Iraq's tennis team and two players were shot dead in Baghdad on Thursday, said Iraqi Olympic officials.

Coach Hussein Ahmed Rashid and players Nasser Ali Hatem and Wissam Adel Auda were killed in the al-Saidiya district of the capital.

Witnesses said the three were dressed in shorts and were killed days after militants issued a warning forbidding the wearing of shorts.

Daniel Gross rightly is not impressed with the conservatives' battle against Congressional pork:

I'm sorry, but some skirmishes over miniscule earmarks doesn't a battle for the soul make. The article describes Rep. Jeff Flake's efforts "to strip out $229,000 for dairy education in Iowa, $180,000 for hydroopnic tomatoes in Ohio, $250,000 for the wine industry in California and $6.4 million for research on wood products in 10 sates." So this rabid fiscal conservative waged a battle to slash $7 million in spending, after he and his party have racked up a few trillion dollars in debt over the last few years? What's the point of trying to cut a few million dollars when you've created massive, permanent deficits on the order of several hundred billion dollars per year? Pear doesn't ask, and doesn't tell.

On fiscal matters, the battle for the soul of Republican party was over a long, long time ago. And the spending devil won.

Just a few days ago this same Congress voted for $70 billion in tax cuts. Now we are supposed to be impressed by cutting mere millions in earmarks?

I'm not. Not even a little. Neither will the future generations who are being left the tab for President George W. Bush and the radical conservatives' decision to run up trillions in debt.

Fred Kaplan is not impressed with President George W. Bush's attempt to compare himself with Harry Truman in a speech to West Point graduates.

It was patriotism, a sense of duty and a love of freedom that led Bush's West Point audience to enter our armed forces. It is that spirit, and that sacrifice, which we honor on Memorial Day. It's tragic that these young men and and women are being asked to clean up the mess that Bush himself made, to mend crockery that Bush himself broke, to pacify a terrorist breeding ground that Bush himself created. They are willing to risk their lives so that those who went before them to Iraq did not do so in vain; the disgrace is that it is Bush's vanity, not the cause of freedom, that makes their own sacrifice necessary.

Shorter Jonah Goldberg:

Don't expect me to hold myself to the standards to which I hold Democratic leaders. And just because I make an unsubstantiated charge in my Los Angeles Times column doesn't mean I want to make a big deal of it.

Here's the invaluable Digby on today's shameful New York Times story dissecting the Clinton's marriage:

No folks, that excerpt isn't from Hello magazine or even Vanity Fair. That's the New York fucking Times and it's on page one. If people aren't thinking about the Clintons in terms of infidelity and betrayal now, New York's newest tabloid rag is going to make damned sure they are reminded of it.

I do not know if Hillary is running for president and I'm not making a case for her candidacy. I do, however, think she has the right to try to earn the nomination without this gossip-at-the-hair salon coverage by the NY Times. And believe me, it won't just be her. Look at the spooky picture of Mark Warner on the cover of New York Times Magazine. He looked like something out of a David Lynch movie. I have no doubt that we are going to be reading many derisive accounts of Al Gore the bearded, earth toned circus freak. It's quite clear that if the Democrats are are coming into power, the Times is going to pick up right where it left off when it was last obsessed with Clinton's crotch and Hillary's cold, cold heart. Or perhaps, more to the point, this piece is just a first notice that they plan to.

Democrats be advised: the press is a bunch of braindead robots who are uninterested in changing their puerile Democratic storyline even in the face of the most disasterous administration in American history.It's shocking. You can love Hillary or hate her, I don't care. But goddamit the intimate state of her marriage to Bill Clinton is nobody's business and it NEVER HAS BEEN. If the gossip rags want to play this game, there's nothing anyone can do. But it is just shameful that the New York Times would go back to their cheap, tabloid coverage of politics when the world is on fire. I'm honestly stunned that this is happening again.

Will the New York Times be looking at John McCain, Rudy Guiliani, Newt Gingrich, and other GOP leaders in a similar vein? Has the Times decided to tabloid up in order to gain some wingnuttia credibility?

And, lest we think this is some mistake by a reporter, as Atrios notes:

I know he's being a bit sarcastic with the "slow news day" description, but to flesh it out a bit long 50-source front page stories about the personal lives of politicians don't bubble up from "slow days." Such stories are assigned by top editors.

Just what is the excuse for their obsession?

Our so-called liberal media at work is not a pretty thing to watch.

Atrios is right: if we must put the Clinton marriage under the microscope, why won't our so-called liberal media give similar attention to some, um, interesting GOP marriages?

Arianna Huffington liked the movie.

Click here to find out when the movie opens in your area.

Over at the Huffington Post, Larry Beinhart cuts through the b.s. and asks some important questions of the Bush Administration:

Get on the stand and regale with tales of success. Of plots thwarted. Of desperate measures intercepted. Of terrorists captured or killed.

Tell us how you’ve located Osama bin Laden.

It’s been over four and a half years. Unlimited budget. Unlimited military might. No visible moral constraints. Tell us how you’ve tracked him down, hung him high and busted up his ring!

Don’t tell merely that there have been no terrorists incidents since 9/11. It’s a lot tougher action to pull off since then, with every eye of every American, with all the airlines and airports and security companies, the local and state police, immigration and customs, all on alert. We don’t have to hear about all kinds of secret stuff you did to stop the next 9/11.

Let’s not bother with that namby-pampy wimpy liberal stuff about civil rights, the constitution and no one being above the law not even you and the president you rode in on. You’re argument is you gotta do what it takes and the ends justify the means and it is security that makes us safe to enjoy whichever liberties we have left that we would like to enjoy in moderation.

So, let’s take it on your terms. We see the horseshit. Show us the ponies.

It's the return of Mark Fiore's Snuggly the Security Bear!

I am shocked, SHOCKED, to see the Competitive Enterprise Institute charged with misrepresenting scientific research in their lame commercials responding to the new Al Gore movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

Speaking of this movie, you can find when it opens in your area by clicking here. It looks like I'll be seeing it around June 9.

I think Harry Shearer's analysis of the New Orleans election has considerable merit. He writes:

I've been absorbing all the analyses about Saturday's Mayoral election in New Orleans from the safe distance of Washington, D.C., and maybe it's that juxtaposition that makes this thought unavoidable: Mitch Landrieu, the challenger to once and future incumbent Ray Nagin, ran like a Democrat. Silas Lee, the pollster and political analyst, said this morning on CNN that Landrieu ran as the alternative to Nagin rather than as the challenger, giving people too little sense of why they should change leaders.

That's an important lesson. Challengers need to provide a clear reason for why a change is needed. Hoping that the voters "will get it" has not worked (see Kerry, John) and won't work in the future.

Hope is not a plan.

My friend MS really really really wants me to condemn Howard Dean for going on the Pat Robertson show and misstating the Democratic Party's position on gay marriage.

MS seems to think that if I am going to condemn John McCain for going to Liberty University, then I must stop everything in my life to blog about Dean. MS writes:

Given all the flak certain individuals on the left gave McCain after his Liberty U. visit (ahem, Craig ;) ), please let me know when the left starts to comment on this little tidbit. Until then, I really don’t want to hear it.

Okay, MS. Howard Dean was an idiot. Both for going on the loathsome Pat Robertson's show and for getting this fact wrong. At least for the latter, he's apologized.

Getting to McCain, he hasn't apologized for going to Liberty. He's reveled in it. It took a student at the New School to point out just how stupid and condescending his new speech is.

Straight talk, indeed.

I believe the Democratic Party needs to fight in all 50 states. I believe we should not talk only to the liberal choir. But Howard Dean should not go on the show of a man who claims to be God's voice while calling for the assassination of foreign leaders. (Media Matters has more of Robertson's bad faith statements here.)

But, MS lives for any opportunity for someone to say that Howard Dean was wrong. He appears obsessed by it. So, let me make MS's day: MS, Howard Dean was wrong.

And yet the Earth continues to rotate and revolve around the sun. Wow. Really. Who knew?

Oh, by the way, MS, lefty bloggers have been talking about it. (To start, see here, here, here, here, and here.)

So, does that mean you now want to hear more about McCain's hypocrisy? :)

As Atrios notes, when it comes to Iraq the deadline for success is always six months away.

Did I miss the memo explaining how former Senator Tom Daschle could be a viable presidential contender?

Think Progress shows how oil company backed organizations like to ignore science and common sense when it comes to climate change.

You may want to avoid ExxonMobil in response.

Jon Stewart on the new National Security Council phone logging revelations:

Well now it turns out that there was one specific type of domestic call the government was keeping tabs on. All of them....

The California Progress Report's Frank Russo writes:

In the 1960’s, when Kitty Genovese was stabbed and killed while New Yorkers in their apartments nearby did not lift a finger to help despite her pleas, it instantly became a symbol for what was wrong with our society. Yesterday, 15 Republican Assemblymembers failed to lift a finger to help pass emergency legislation, AB 813 so the state of California could continue to ensure that the most vulnerable amongst us receive medications they need to continue living and functioning while the federal government gets its act together in the fiasco that is known as Medicare Part D. They were joined by 5 of their colleagues who actually voted against extension of a program Governor Schwarzenegger had indicated he would sign.

What were they thinking? The problems with implementation of the Medicare prescription drug plan, dubbed “glitches” by the Bush Administration but disastrous to those affected, have made the headlines. According to the State Senate Appropriations Committee, the cost of continuing California’s emergency help is $12 million in fiscal
year 2006-07 and $56 million in 2007-08. Over 1 million California seniors and disabled individuals whose prescription drug costs were previously paid by Medi-Cal had their drug care transferred to Medicare on January 1, 2006. As of May 9, under emergency legislation, the state of California had helped 284,000 of these get their medications.

Thank God for the Democrats in the legislature and the handful of Republicans who passed this bill. Without it, help from the state of California is scheduled to end tomorrow, May 17.

Compassionate conservatism, California style.

After all, how important can life-sustaining prescription drugs be to a low-income senior anyway? That's certainly not as important as some tax cuts for the rich or tax breaks for corporations.

The man who thinks it is okay to expose covert CIA operatives also thought it was worthwhile to try to convince us that the Bush Administration has been really hard on the rich. E.J. Dionne does nice work in deflating this pathetic talking point:

Most astonishingly, Rove tried to make the case that Bush's tax cuts actually left the rich paying more. Everyone knows the Bush cuts in levies on dividends, capital gains and inheritances overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy. But here was Rove playing class politics by arguing that the wealthy now pay a larger share of total income taxes than they did before Bush.

This is statistical flimflam, of course. It leaves out payroll taxes, which hit most Americans the hardest. And the wealthy are paying more of the total share of income taxes, even though their rates are much lower, because their share of national income has gone up. Rove's numbers actually prove the rich are getting richer. But the fact that Rove tried to sound like William Jennings Bryan is the surest indicator that the administration is worried about its image as protector of the privileged.

They should be worried. I doubt future generations -- or even current ones -- are going to look kindly on President Bush and his retainers for their mortgaging of our national future to the benefit of the top one percent today.

As Brad DeLong explains, there is one surefire way to put an end to this kind of voodoo economics: stop electing Republicans.

No wonder First Lady Laura Bush ignores the polls.

Of course, my guess is that the United States remains more of a purple nation, albeit with a darker hue.

Atrios asks an excellent question.

Laura Rozen takes a leap and wonders if we are about to learn that our government has been using spy satellites to keep tabs on people within the United States.

The Chicago Cubs did not lose today!

Because it was an off day! Hooray!

Losing 14 of 16 games, and for the first-time losing every game the team will play in a season against a National League opponent (7 games to zero for San Diego) has The View From the Bleachers wondering what else we Cubs fans can talk about this year. After all, as Joe Aiello explains:

It's getting harder and harder to write about blowout losses day in and day out.

I still appreciate the effort.

This travesty -- racism included! -- is written by Time magazine's so-called liberal writer.

As Brad DeLong writes:

Joe Klein does Karl Rove's dirty work by launching the first Rove attack of the 2006 campaign season.

Not bad for a "liberal."

ABC News' Brian Ross is reporting that our federal government is using the PATRIOT Act to try expose reporters' sources by getting the phone records of journalists. As Josh Marshall writes:

In rule of law terms, I guess there's some extremely mild solace to be taken in the fact that the administration has apparently deigned to follow the law in this case. But a police state law still gets you a police state.

This is what the Patriot Act is being used for. In a free society, law enforcement goes before independent magistrates. Apparently we're now beyond that.

Our Constitutional Republic is in grave crisis. Are we really going to stand for the Bush Administration's privacy intrusions?

Does she really think we don't remember how Senator Joe Lieberman (?-Conn.) tried to sabotage Democratic efforts to fight the Bush Administration's horrible Social Security plans?

As Jane Hamsher explains, the answer is "apparently."

Ah, those weapons of mass destruction lies. The Associated Press' Charles J. Hanley writes:

A year after Bush administration claims about Iraqi "bioweapons trailers" were discredited by American experts, U.S. officials were still suppressing the findings, says a senior member of the CIA-led Iraq inspection team.

At one point, former U.N. arms inspector Rod Barton says, a CIA officer told him it was "politically not possible" to report that the White House claims were untrue. In the end, Barton says, he felt "complicit in deceit."

Barton, an Australian biological weapons specialist, discusses the 2004 events in "The Weapons Detective," a memoir of his years as an arms inspector, being published Monday in Australia by Black Inc. Agenda.

Much sought after for his expertise, Barton served on the U.N. Iraq arms inspection teams of 1991-98 and 2002-03. After the U.S. invasion, he was an aide to chief U.S. inspector Charles Duelfer.

The Washington Post reported last month that a U.S. fact-finding mission confidentially advised Washington on May 27, 2003, that two truck trailers found in Iraq were not mobile units for manufacturing bioweapons, as had been suspected.

Two days later, President Bush still asserted the trailers were bioweapons labs, and other administration officials repeated that line for months afterward.

In right wing world, of course, all of this is far less important than not being completely upfront about a consensual sexual encounter.

...and the myth of Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) being a moderate should be buried, perhaps in the Rev. Jerry Falwell's office.

Former Vice President Al Gore was very funny last night on Saturday Night Live. Click here to see the video.

Speaking of Gore, please get ready to see the movie featuring his presentation on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth. Click here to find it when it opens in your area.

And, if you want to do a little something about your carbon emissions, try Native Energy or Drive Neutral. Your donations to these groups may even be tax deductible.

(Hat tip to Atrios for the link to Gore on SNL.)

Over at the Huffington Post, Bob Burnett recaps a speech given recently by Senator Barack Obama:

Barack Obama said that the solution to this problem lies in the American people. It's time for the electorate to reassert their will, to say they've "had enough." "Enough of broken promises and failed leadership. Enough of can't do and won't try." He argued that we all should have had enough of an Administration that can't make our ports safe but will spend billions on crony contracts. That claims to be serious about defending the homeland, but could not respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina. That can't come up with plan for Iraq or to ensure our national competitiveness.

Obama remarked that the roots of this problem are clear. They lie "in the philosophy of this administration, in their believe that government is the problem." He said that taken to the extreme this ideology is "social Darwinism. The belief that we are all on our own. That each of us is responsible for our own education, healthcare, and levees."

The junior Senator from Illinois noted that the GOP approach does not work in a democracy. He argued that the American way of life has two components: "individual initiative and mutual regard, the belief that I am my brother's keeper and my sister's keeper." Democrats must reassert that mutual regard is a vital component of government.

The radical conversatives' war on government must be defeated. The idea that government is always the problem must be exposed as a lie. The conclusion that individuals are best left as free agents must be refuted with a frank conversation about the common good.

Despite what the radical conversatives may say, looking out for the common good is not a step on the road to socialism. It is, in fact, a way to keep our country strong and vibrant well into the future.

It is good someone is saying so.

Raw Story previews what appears to be a must-read Frank Rich column set for publication tomorrow:

"What really angers the White House and its defenders about both the Post and Times scoops are not the legal questions the stories raise about unregulated gulags and unconstitutional domestic snooping, but the unmasking of yet more administration failures in a war effort riddled with ineptitude," Rich writes.

"It's the recklessness at the top of our government, not the press' exposure of it, that has truly aided the enemy, put American lives at risk and potentially sabotaged national security," Rich continues. "That's where the buck stops, and if there's to be a witch hunt for traitors, that's where it should begin."

Vice President Dick Cheney apparently does not care so much about our Constitutional liberties. Perhaps someone could get him a refresher course on the American revolution?

The New York Times' Scott Shane and Eric Lichtblau report:

In the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney and his top legal adviser argued that the National Security Agency should intercept purely domestic telephone calls and e-mail messages without warrants in the hunt for terrorists, according to two senior intelligence officials.

But N.S.A. lawyers, trained in the agency's strict rules against domestic spying and reluctant to approve any eavesdropping without warrants, insisted that it should be limited to communications into and out of the country, said the officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss the debate inside the Bush administration late in 2001.

The N.S.A.'s position ultimately prevailed. But just how Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the agency at the time, designed the program, persuaded wary N.S.A. officers to accept it and sold the White House on its limits is not yet fully clear.

Remember this example the next time you think the selection of a vice president isn't important. As we have seen, it does not take much time or many people to place our liberties at risk.

Over on Hullabaloo, poputonian makes an excellent guest post, sending us to Boston in 1761 to remind us that securing our civil liberties against government intrusion is a long and constant struggle.

Over at Americablog, Chris points to stories describing new observations of climate change impacts in the United States and United Kingdom.

Eric Alterman is appropriately snarky about this news:

Meanwhile, the Republican sex cop who authored Ken Starr’s final report on Clinton’s Lewinsky relationship after Starr cut and ran, has been charged with stalking an ex-girlfriend, a law enforcement official said, here. Should we be surprised? I dunno. Ask Rush Limbaugh, Bill Bennett or Newt Gingrich.

After reading this story, scroll down further for an excellent roundup on the Bush Administration's NSA warrantless surveillance spying programs against you and me.

Via Americablog, we learn about another battle in the Republican War on Science. The Philadelphia Inquirer's Dawn Fallik writes about how an upcoming scientific panel was changed after a Republican Congressman demanded more balance:

Researchers organizing a federal panel on sexually transmitted diseases say the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allowed a congressman to include two abstinence-only proponents, bypassing the scientific approval process.

Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., who chairs the House subcommittee on drug policy, questioned the balance of the original panel, which focused on the failure of abstinence-until-marriage programs. In e-mail to Health and Human Services officials, his office asked whether the CDC was "clear about the controversial nature of this session and its obvious anti-abstinence objective."

Last week the title of the panel was changed and two members were replaced. One of them was a Penn State student who was going to talk about how abstinence programs were tied to rising STD rates.

The panel is to be held Tuesday at the National STD Prevention Conference in Jacksonville, Fla.

"It was clear that there was not a scintilla of something positive about the abstinence education method," said Michelle Gress, counsel for Souder on the subcommittee.

The congressman's office had asked for more balance, she said, but did not recommend specific speakers.

Another position taken by the party that clearly gets its facts from the gut.

Over at TalkLeft, we learn:

Death penalty proponents like to say that it has never been established that an innocent person has been executed in the United States. That may no longer be the case.

Halliburton sure has done well in the post-September 11 world.

It sure was a good thing they have a sitting Vice President earning compensation from the company during these turbulent times.

Is this part of the good news from Iraq about which the radical right-wing keeps telling us? The Los Angeles Times' Louise Roug writes:

More Iraqi civilians were killed in Baghdad during the first three months of this year than at any time since the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime — at least 3,800, many of them found hogtied and shot execution-style.

Others were strangled, electrocuted, stabbed, garroted or hanged. Some died in bombings. Many bore signs of torture such as bruises, drill holes, burn marks, gouged eyes or severed limbs.

Every day, about 40 bodies arrive at the central Baghdad morgue, an official said. The numbers demonstrate a shift in the nature of the violence, which increasingly has targeted both sides of the country's SunniShiite sectarian divide.

Brad DeLong links to an important Center for Budget and Policy Priorities analysis of the latest Social Security Trustees Report. In it, we see the true damage President George W. Bush's irresponsible tax cuts could cause in the future:

Anyone concerned about Social Security'9s long-term impact on the federal budget ought to be even more concerned about the long-term fiscal impact of extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. If made permanent, the tax cuts will cost nearly three times as much, over the next 75 years, as the 75-year deficit in Social Security (see Figure 1). Any attempt to address the looming fiscal challenges should include Social Security, Medicare (and the U.S. health care system as a whole), and overall government revenues.

But the Bush tax cuts are far worse for our nation's fiscal future. People who care about the fiscal and economic vitality of this nation in the future will allow these tax cuts to expire. They have caused enough damage.

A Democratic agenda for the House of Representatives, should they retake control in the November elections, is beginning to get some publicity. The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman explains:

To counter that perception, House Democrats have formulated a plan of action for their first week in control. Their leaders said a Democratic House would quickly vote to raise the minimum wage for the first time since 1997. It would roll back a provision in the Republicans' Medicare prescription drug benefit that prohibits the Department of Health and Human Services from negotiating prices for drugs offered under the program.

It would vote to fully implement the recommendations of the bipartisan panel convened to shore up homeland security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Democratic leaders said.

And it would reinstate lapsed rules that say any tax cuts or spending increases have to be offset by spending cuts or tax increases to prevent the federal deficit from growing.

It's not a bad start.

Kevin Drum links to a University of California professor's analysis that shows that NFL coaches should go for it on fourth down much more often.

I would agree. But, then again, no coach gets fired for punting on fourth and three.

The town in which I lived during my high school years, Limestone, Maine, is going to be featured in a Maine Public Broadcasting Series. The Bangor Daily News reports:

The Maine Public Broadcasting Network and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development are holding a Bangor press conference today to announce a $396,000 USDA Rural Development grant to MPBN to help develop a television series. The MPBN programs, which will air this September and October, will feature six cities and towns in Maine, specifically Limestone, Lincoln, Rockland, Waterville, Wilton, Bangor and Brewer.

The programs will highlight how the communities have been working to define and implement strategies leading to longer-term economic vibrancy. Their stories, lessons learned, successes and continuing challenges are of importance to Maine. The series will attempt to determine whether Maine towns can jump-start their economies from Main Street, or whether strong hometown economies are the answer.

AOL News' Daily Pulse asks: How Funny Was He?

My answer? Very.

(Hat tip: Atrios.)

The Education Sector's Kevin Carey debunks some myths about how immigration is affecting our schools:

But discussions about the education of immigrants are too often boiled down to simplistic narratives alleging that schools are being overwhelmed by a wave of primarily Mexican and often-undocumented immigrants who are difficult to teach because they can't speak English. A 2005 Urban Institute study finds that those ideas are at best over-simplified and at worse incorrect.

• First, most foreign-born students aren't Mexican.
• Second, the large majority of school-age children of immigrants aren't undocumented.
• Third, most children of immigrants are proficient in English.
• Fourth, most Limited English Proficient (LEP) students aren't foreign-born.

Steve Clemons is concerned about where we may be headed in our confrontation with Iran. He writes:

But Burns and Bolton are laying track -- no doubt about it -- and that track may take us back to a military option in the end, and that option, if triggered, could punctuate the end of American primacy in global affairs, particularly if outraged Middle East oil states band together, even in part, with China and Russia in a new, global stand-off regarding global rules, global finance, and the control and management of global strategic resources.

Over at the Huffington Post, Ari Emanuel asks an important question:

I'm confused. Why isn't more attention being paid to the Vice President's 2001 secret energy task force? Gas prices are going though the roof, oil is heading for $100 a barrel, and oil companies are making a mint. Shouldn't people be making a stink to find out what happened behind closed doors when Big Oil got a seat at the White House policy table?

I was checking out the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's web site for some hockey news, when I noticed this story: the Canadian dollar (known as the Loonie) closed above 90 U.S. cents for the first time in 28 years.

Wow. I went to high school in Limestone, Maine, less than two miles from the Canadian border. Given my memories, and how many times people went across the border to take advantage of the low Canadian dollar, I find it hard to imagine the Canadian dollar trading near parity.

Look at this CBC graphic -- and you can see just how much the U.S. dollar has fallen in comparison to Canada's over the past four years. Some analysts are even projecting parity between the U.S. and Canadian dollars by 2007 -- something that has not happened since 1976.

Why is this going on? As this CBC in-depth backgrounder explains:

The loonie's been flying in large part because the U.S. economy has been struggling to get off the ground. Washington is facing budget and trade deficits that have never been higher. In 2005, the U.S. bought $723.6 billion more in foreign goods and services than it sold, registering yet another record annual trade deficit.

To pay for those imports – including huge amounts of oil, gas, cars and car parts, lumber and numerous other products from Canada – U.S. consumers in effect have to buy them with foreign currencies. To do that, they have to sell U.S. dollars in international money markets. As in any market, the unending supply has pushed the price of the greenback down, as measured in other currencies.

I am surprised the U.S. dollar's fall is not a bigger story -- especially when we consider the large U.S. dollar reserves being built up by China and other countries financing our deficits. What happens if they stop accumulating dollars?

High gasoline prices? Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says it's Clinton's fault. Think Progress debunks this silly notion.

Given how many times Republican leaders blame Clinton for their problems, you might forget that they've had exclusive control of the government for several years now.

Sports Illustrated's Peter King visited New Orleans for the NFL Draft, and he's rightly disgusted about our national lack of reaction to the disaster.

Well, my wife and I were in a car last Wednesday that toured the hardest-hit area of New Orleans, the Lower Ninth Ward. We worked a day at a nearby Habitat for Humanity site on Thursday, and we toured the Biloxi/Gulfport/Long Beach/Pass Christian gulf shore area last Friday. And let me just say this: I can absolutely guarantee you that if you'd been in the car with us, no matter how much you'd been hit over the head with the effects of this disaster, you would not have Katrina fatigue.

What I saw was a national disgrace. An inexcusable, irresponsible, borderline criminal national disgrace. I am ashamed of this country for the inaction I saw everywhere.

Via Atrios, it appears President George W. Bush was for a Spanish version of the U.S. national anthem before he was against it.

And, as Think Progress documents, in 1919 the U.S. government commissioned a Spanish-language version of the Star Spangled Banner.

I realize Republicans think they need to pander to their radical right wing base. But this "issue" really does not make a lot of sense.

Atrios asks a series of important questions about our so-called liberal media:

Why does the press continue to internalize every right wing critique of them, all of which come from people who "have nothing but contempt for these people." Why did Bernie Goldberg get such a wide airing for his idiotic book? Why does CNN hire Bill Bennett who thinks journalists who report on the illegal activities of the federal government should be put in jail? Why are people like Hugh Hewitt and Assrocket, who simply believe that the news media should be entirely in service of a radical conservative agenda, regularly given a platform? Why is it in the "liberal media" there are so few liberal voices ever given an opportunity to speak? How was it that the New York Times, which spent years covering a land deal in which the Clintons lost money, decided to "discourage pieces that were at odds with the administration's position on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction and the alleged links of Al Qaeda"?

Here I am, watching the first period of the Calgary-Anaheim NHL playoff game tonight, and I see something that makes me angry as a fan of this great sport.

I've already complained about watching repeated long delays to allow video goal judges to review goals that go off a skate, to see if they can find a distinct kicking motion.

I don't mind the video review. It's the rule that needs reworking. The rule is so vague that two different people can come to two different conclusions. And goals in the playoffs are too precious to be left to such broad interpretation.

But, if we are going to have video review of goals, can someone explain to me what happened at 11:29 of the 1st period of the Flames-Ducks game?

Referee Don Koharski completely blew a goaltender interference call. Koharski's bad decision wiped out an Anaheim goal (which would have made the score 1-1 in an elimination game for the Ducks). Koharski ruled that a Duck player interferred with Calgary goaltender Miikka Kiprusoff, so the goal the Ducks thought they scored was stricken from the record.

But wait. The replay shows that the Duck player did not interfere with the goal. In fact, the contact on the play was caused by a Flames player.

You're telling me that this isn't reviewable? After watching all of these other video reviews, they can't go upstairs or to Toronto to correct this obvious mistake?

Pathetic. Really pathetic.

Update: The Ducks rallied to win, 2-1, to force a seventh game in this series. And, over at Off Wing Opinion, Eric McErlain agrees this call was "E. G. R. E. G. I. O. U. S."

McErlain then quotes the rulebook, explaining that the call could not be reviewed. Which is true.

And part of the problem. Goals that are waived off should be reviewable--especially in a world in which we are trying to figure out whether a player falling to the ice is using a "distinct kicking motion" when a puck deflects off the skate and into the net.

If this story proves true, I think we can drop all of the pretense about how nothing is more important to the Bush Administration than fighting weapons of mass destruction.

Jane Hamsher quotes tonight's report by MSNBC's David Shuster:

Intelligence sources say Valerie Wilson was part of an operation three years ago tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran. And the sources allege that when Mrs. Wilson’s cover was blown, the administration’s ability to track Iran’s nuclear ambitions was damaged as well.

Digby, as is so often the case, helps to put the Boston Globe's story about the president's extraconstitutional claims into a larger context:

At what point does this country begin to recognise that we are in the midst of a constitutional crisis?

Somebody asked Howard Dean the other day whether he thought Bush should be impeached and I wished that he had answered by pointing out that the Republicans lowered the bar so low that it's difficult to see how he could NOT be impeached.

...

That is what the leadership of the GOP believes. We are watching it in action. A president can be impeached for lying about a private sexual matter but "morally serious men and women" understand that a president could "shade the truth" in order to serve the common good.

Are we all clear on how this works now? Lying about fellatio leads to lethal abuse of power by the state. Flatly refusing to obey the laws he signed and lying about national security serves the common good. This is your modern Republican party in a nutshell: A dictatorship of puritanical busybodies.