Monday's Mini-Report

I'm going to take a shot at this. Here's today's edition of quick hits:

* The market did not take kindly to the President's plan for the auto industry, with the Dow dropping a little over 3%.

* Another terrorist strike in Pakistan, as militants dressed as policemen stormed a police academy and left at least 20 dead. Pakistani authorities blamed Taliban-aligned elements. These brazen attacks have occurred with increasing frequency in Pakistan in recent weeks.

* The White House released a report today called The Cost of Inaction, detailing the perilous state of the US health care system and the need to act immediately to control costs and provide maximum coverage. Some good facts and figures inside this document.

* Mitch McConnell keeps saying that Obama is turning America into France. Sacre bleu! Now McConnell is one person I wouldn't mind to see "going Galt."

* Nearly 7 in 10 major weapons-buying programs were over-budget in 2008. When the President talks about reining in the contracting process, this is what he's talking about.

* DougJ caught this moment of clarity from Evan Thomas in his largely substance-free profile of Paul Krugman: "If you are of the establishment persuasion (and I am), reading Krugman makes you uneasy ... Members of the ruling class have a vested interest in keeping things pretty much the way they are. Safeguarding the status quo, protecting traditional institutions, can be healthy and useful, stabilizing and reassuring. But sometimes, beneath the pleasant murmur and tinkle of cocktails, the old guard cannot hear the sound of ice cracking." That's a good thing to know about the establishment media. It should be in every single one of their stories as a boilerplate at the top.

* Is the current chair of the DNC, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, really going to sign a ban on stem cell research funding in his state?

* One of the lawyers in the Spanish case against Bush Administration members, Gonzalo Boye, had a good retort to Douglas Feith's complaining about the possible indictment: "I would recommend that Mr. Feith first of all read the complaint, and secondly that he get a very good lawyer ... If he is so sure of what he is saying — then the address of the national court is #22 Genova Street, second floor.”

* President Obama signed the omnibus lands bill today providing for 2 million more acres of protected wilderness.

* I do indeed hope that at the very least we can relax the travel ban with Cuba, as it serves no legitimate purpose for either nation. Neither does the embargo.

* Talks on reducing nuclear arsenals between the United States and Russia is also change I can believe in.

* Fox News launched a conservative Web site today called "Fox Nation". I guess that they won't be offering comments, since Andrew Breitbart explained today that Obama supporters have been unleashed on right-wing comment sections, forcing sites like Instapundit to close them retroactively years before Obama became President. This is something that John McCain would never pay supporters to do.

* And for those uninitiated to Twitter, and inclined to, well, hate it, you will find this cartoon amusing and educational.

Quick Hits

So, life intervened today, as it sometimes does. My apologies and I must admit this is not the best way to kick off the fundraising week. But the link is over to your right, and I'd appreciate a donation.

Now, for some things that happened today that I had no time to write about:

• I'll give the Bush Administration some credit for helping to stop this Chinese ship full of armaments bound for Zimbabwe. They're implementing soft power to persuade African nations not to allow the ship to dock. It's a pretty clear-cut case but they have to be credited for this move.

• Cliff Schechter is dishing some more dirt about John McCain. It would be irresponsible not to speculate about all of this for the next six months.

• John Cusack's new film War Inc., which takes the outsourcing of the military to private contractors to its logical extreme, looks pretty darn good. He did a live chat at Crooks and Liars today.

• Republicans can't get anyone decent to run for Congress. And the scraps they end up with have baggage like looking the other way while employers on the Marianas Islands force their sweatshop workers into abortions. Bob Schaffer is a dead man walking in the Colorado Senate race.

• Turns out that the President violated federal law when he tried to restrict the eligibility requirements for S-CHIP. This is someone who is guilty of trying to keep sick children off the health insurance rolls. Even Mr. Burns looks at that and thinks "What a heartless bastard."

Quick Hits

Just want to get some things off my chest.

• In 2005, the Indian government got the better of American negotiators and struck a deal on nuclear energy, where the Indians would get practically everything they wanted (keeping their nuclear weapons, getting civilian energy), and now the whole thing is about to collapse because of Indian Communists, who aren't allowing the pact to go through. So sensible policymakers have to thank Communists in India who don't understand the sweetheart deal they got.

• So Giuliani flip-flopped on gay marriage. They're all a bunch of pander bears on the right, so what else is new? In order to stave off a third-party fundie run, Rudy will re-baptize himself and call for the forced abstinence of the entire nation. I mean, the guy has fallen in line with plenty of conservative articles of faith that he once disavowed. The guy apointed George Soros to a pro-immigrant coalition when he was NYC Mayor.

• So, why exactly should we be giving billions and billions more to the war effort in Iraq when, time and again, billions are outright lost to contractors?

(CNN) -- The U.S. State Department is unable to account for most of $1.2 billion in funding that it gave to DynCorp International to train Iraqi police, a government report said Tuesday.

"The bottom line is that State can't account for where it went," said Glenn D. Furbish, who was involved in putting together the 20-page report for the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction (SIGIR).

This isn't the first dodgy contract, dozens of similar revelations have come to light.

• Speaking of the contractor issue, you know how the State Department ended up having to hire Blackwater? Because Don Rumsfeld didn't want to give them troops to do the job. So now the State Department, completely unequipped to handle a private army (or, as we have seen, even the contracting for it), has no idea what to do, even to the extent of forcing sensitivity training on the mercenaries. I'm extremely confident that would work; a 5-minute training seminar would certainly stop Blackwater employees from shooting Iraqi civilians in a murderous rage.

• I missed Valerie Plame's 60 Minutes appearance, but she seems to have confirmed the reporting that she was, indeed, working on counterproliferation efforts in Iran. Gee, that could come in handy. Apparently, the CIA did whatever it could to keep the revelations in the book to a minimum, redacting enormous amounts of copy. Plame's publishers kept the black lines in, and added an appendix based on public information written by Laura Rozen. Larry Johnson elaborates on some of this:

Because of a pending appeal in her freedom of speech case against the CIA, she cannot say anything about joining the CIA in September of 1985 fresh out of college. She cannot say anything about her initial impression of her Career Trainee classmates–such as Jim Marcinkowski, Brent Cavan, Mike “the Griz” Grimaldi, Precious Flower, and mois. She is proscribed from telling you about wandering the forests of Camp Peary learning land navigation and she certainly will not, at least for now, be able to tell you about being taken hostage and subjected to torture for two days.

This lady is an American hero who the White House spat on to get back at political enemies. It's honestly the most revolting thing that's happened in this depressing era of government.

• Nice article on Joe Trippi's rising influence in the John Edwards campaign. 'Course, I'm trying to remember what Joe Trippi has won over the years...

TTFN

Quick Hits

Since I didn't get a week in review in last Sunday night:

• This month is the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School, a reminder of the roots of the civil rights movement. Vanity Fair has a fascinating article about an iconic picture taken back then, of a black schoolgirl and her white tormenter, and the history of those two figures through to this day.

• I didn't actually take a look at this video, where Ahmadinejad gets laughed at for his silly comments about homosexuals in Iran.



This minute of video validates Columbia's decision more than anything else. He's a clown, and he was exposed as a clown. Would that the bedwetters of the conservative movement could figure that one out. A confident nation welcomes dialogue and knows that their ideas will prevail. Duncan Hunter would rather defund the university who gave that dialogue a platform. Jon Stewart just had Evo Morales, the Bolivian President, on his show, and he's going to take a lot of heat for it, for being a useful idiot for propaganda from a "socialist." Stewart is a confident person. These conservatives are pants-pissers.

• Art Levine goes undercover at a union-busting seminar. Jim "Mad Money" Cramer cheers on such union-busting enthusiastically, and openly wishes for the destruction of the American manufacturing base in the name of moving stock prices.

Matthews: ” Do you see a future five, ten years from now where we don’t have an auto industry in this country, Jim Cramer?”

Cramer: “If you don’t break the UAW we won’t. There’s no real reasons to make cars here.”

Tell that to 75,000 productive GM employees.

• Jerry Weller is leaving the Congress, and as a parting shot, an aide of his pushed a reporter down the stairs. There's video, too.

• It somehow got by me that the President signed a sweeping ethics reform bill into law, marking yet another key reform that the Democrats have accomplished. Add it to the minimum wage increase, halving student loans and instituting the 9/11 Commission recommendations. Iraq takes up all the oxygen in the room, but there have been significant breakthroughs.

• I never wrote anything about the tasering incident at the University of Florida. I think Jesus' General had this one pretty much right.

Well, tasering is in the news again. Long time readers know that, like Our Leader and my beloved GOP, I believe submission to authority to be the ultimate act of patriotism. That's why I've applauded police in the past for tasering a 14 year old who refused to stop playing Nintendo and a five year old little girl who refused to stop raising hell in her school principal's office.

The way I see it is that it doesn't matter whether a person is armed or not, if they refuse, or are unable, to comply with an authority figure's commands, they're likely to be some kind of communist, islamunistofascist, or other kind of enemy of the state, and they deserve to have the hell tasered out of them.

That's why I cheer the officers involved in the lastest series of taserings making the news. You've probably already heard about the student who was tasered for not yielding the mic while questioning a US Senator, so I won't spend any more bytes on it, but I'd like to recognize the fine officers involved in the other incidents.

And there are a lot of them, as our society just becomes a little more brutal, a little more authoritarian, a little less American, at least in the conception I remember it.

• Hans von Spakowsky, a conservative ideologue dedicated to stopping minorities from voting, is up for a seat on the Federal Elections Commission in the Senate Rules Committee tomorrow. Time to make some phone calls - this guy should be nowhere near the FEC.

• Still nothing from Mitt Romney about his ties to Blackwater or the events surrounding their shooting incident in Iraq. In fact, Cofer Black, the head of Blackwater, will remain an adviser to the Mittster's campaign. Eventually, he'll be calling for a doubling of Blackwater.

• I'm just happy to link to Paul Krugman without it being behind a paywall. In this op-ed, Krugman discusses Jena but also the fundamental disconnect between Republicans and America's growing diversity.

One of the truly remarkable things about the contest for the Republican nomination is the way the contenders have snubbed not just blacks — who, given the G.O.P.’s modern history, probably won’t vote for a Republican in significant numbers no matter what — but Hispanics. In July, all the major contenders refused invitations to address the National Council of La Raza, which Mr. Bush addressed in 2000. Univision, the Spanish-language TV network, had to cancel a debate scheduled for Sept. 16 because only John McCain was willing to come.

If this sounds like a good way to ensure defeat in future elections, that’s because it is: Hispanics are a rapidly growing force in the electorate.

But to get the Republican nomination, a candidate must appeal to the base — and the base consists, in large part, of Southern whites who carry over to immigrants the same racial attitudes that brought them into the Republican fold to begin with. As a result, you have the spectacle of Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, pragmatists on immigration issues when they actually had to govern in diverse states, trying to reinvent themselves as defenders of Fortress America.

And both Hispanics and Asians, another growing force in the electorate, are getting the message. Last year they voted overwhelmingly Democratic, by 69 percent and 62 percent respectively.

In other words, it looks as if the Republican Party is about to start paying a price for its history of exploiting racial antagonism. If that happens, it will be deeply ironic. But it will also be poetic justice.

Indeed, some GOP leaders are increasingly worried that turning their backs on the future of the country will marginalize and doom their party. But those leaders' voices are being drowned out.

• CBS, according to court documents, tried to spike the Abu Ghraib story at the behest of executives and even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers, who personally called Dan Rather requesting a delay. Rather is being lampooned for this lawsuit against CBS, but this allegation that the network tried to take their scoop about Abu Ghraib off the air seems a bit significant to me. You?

• Finally, I'm thinking that the Minneapolis airport should just give in and call it WideStance Land and charge admission to the bathroom. I'm sure the EPCOT guys can contribute some animatronic exhibit.

Quick Hits

Just a few short bits to catch up on this scorcher of a day:

• It's official: Larry Craig resigns.
  

• Bush met Friday with military leaders, who pressed urgent concerns about strains on the military due to long deployments in Iraq. Nut graf: "Indications are that Bush intends to stick with his current approach, at least into 2008, despite persistent pressure from the Democrat-led Congress - including some prominent Republicans - to find a new course."

• Mitt Romney (thinks he) is More Important Than You Are: Romney's rather pliable view of law enforcement is in the news again. Romney received a police escort between campaign stops in South Carolina - complete with flashing lights and traveling 10 to 15 mph over the posted limit - by Saluda County Sheriff Jason Booth, who also happens to be a Romney supporter. Choice Booth quote: "We wanted to make sure he stays safe and gets to where he's going," Booth told The Associated Press.

• Fred Thompson will make an appearance at this Wednesday's Republican debate in New Hampshire. After the New Hampshire Union Leader warned that if he didn't show up, people might conclude he wasn't prepared, Thompson - wait a minute. He won't be onstage at the debate. He just bought time for an ad that will run immediately pre-debate. Hmm. Is it really the best strategy to remind people that you're not there?

• Apparently Rudy! cannot be prevented from attending the 9/11 commemoration - but some hope he's not permitted to speak. Spokesman Tony Carbonetti reponds: "If you know Rudy Giuliani, he'd be down there paying his respects whether he was invited or not," Carbonetti said in a statement. "To say he's politicizing it -- he never would do anything like that." Of course not.

• Taking a cue from television networks' annual upfronts, David Petraeus has booked Radio City Music Hall to unveil his report about the troop 'Surge.' No word yet on Jay Leno's availability as master of ceremonies.
  

Okay, I made up that last one.

Quick Hits

Yes, today was busy enough that I think it warrants a "best of the rest":

• The Chertoff-to-Attorney General trial balloon has officially popped.

I think, by the time I got to this story, BushCo had already decided Chertoff was an impossible replacement candidate (though if he's not, let's not forget the allegation that Chertoff allegedly okayed Chiquita Banana's funding of right wing terrorists in Colombia). Just on the off-chance that Chertoff really is named as Gonzales' replacement, Pat Leahy had the perfect response when asked if he would support a Chertoff nomination. I can't find the quote (it was NPR), but he basically said nothing more than, "You mean the guy who was in charge of the Katrina reconstruction?"

I agree with Glenn Greenwald, the next AG must come from outside the Administration, and no insider hack can be allowed to be confirmed.

• Yes, it's hysterical that on the same day Abu Gonzales resigns, the President goes and attends a fundraiser for Pete Domenici, who of course helped push out US Attorney David Iglesias after meddling in the middle of a state corruption investigation and pressuring Iglesias to indict Democrats. When Iglesias would not politicize his office, Domenici brought the hammer down. The reward is today's event, which I guess is the price of loyalty. There's a tragic sidenote to that event, as a police officer in Bush's motorcade died after crashing his vehicle.

• Bush is in Washington State tonight at another fundraiser for Rep. Dave Reichert, and the national netroots community made a huge push to raise $100,000 for his Democratic opponent Darcy Burner. And they've reached their goal. I met Burner at Yearly Kos and found her to be piercingly intelligent and very down-to-Earth. I can't wait to see her torch Reichert next year and make the trip to DC.

• Larry Craig, not content with destroying his own credibility, is taking down the Romney campaign's as well. Romney's team tried to scrub a pro-Mitt message from Craig (a co-Senate liaison until today), but it's hard to hide anything on the Internets. It's been found. Also Hugh Hewitt is calling on Craig to resign, no doubt because he might hurt Golden Boy Mitt, who is to Hewitt as a golden statue is to an idol worshipper.

• Meanwhile, this juxtaposition is just freaky. Apparently the Idaho Values Alliance has a shout-out to Sen. Craig on their site, and just underneath, a paragraph decrying the scourge of homosexuals using airport bathrooms for anonymous sex. Is that where Sen. Craig got the idea?

• This IAFF endorsement of Chris Dodd is news for his campaign, but I think that really falls under the category of "no endorsement," since they clearly didn't want to get into a top-tier fight. The IAFF endorsed John Kerry when it looked like he was about to drop out of the race, though, so maybe this will have some import.

• Here's something I missed from last week: some wingnut actually said "You're going to look super in a burka." Out loud. On television. There is this strain that really thinks we're about to be taken over by an Islamic caliphate. Really. They think that little of the United States.

• This is worrying but unsurprising. Apparently there's a loophole in the President's recent executive order outlawing torture that you can drive a truck through.

The Judge Advocates General of all branches of the military told the senators that a July 20 executive order establishing rules for the treatment of CIA prisoners appeared to be carefully worded to allow humiliating or degrading interrogation techniques when the interrogators' objective is to protect national security rather than to satisfy sadistic impulses [...]

The JAGs cited language in the executive order in which Bush said CIA interrogators may not use "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual." As an example, it lists "sexual or sexually indecent acts undertaken for the purpose of humiliation."

Among lawyers, "for the purpose" language is often used to mean that a person must specifically intend to do something, such as causing humiliation, in order to violate a statute. The JAGs said Bush's wording appears to make it legal for interrogators to undertake that same abusive action if they had some other motive, such as gaining information.

I try to refuse to be shocked anymore and I always fail.

• Finally, Fred Thompson is trying to set the record for most people fired from a campaign that hasn't even started yet.

The Rest of the Week In Review

So this is a new feature where I compile all the stories I would have gotten to write about in the last week if the President issued a signing statement that days now have 30 hours in them. It's essentially Quick Hits with a new name. Making it new to you!

• I can't believe that anyone is letting Republicans and Bush defenders get away with hyping up that whole Fort Dix plot. Not only was it an absurd plan to begin with (6 people attacking a military base? They can't dub a tape to DVD so they give it to a Circuit City employee?), but the FBI informant appeared to drive the boat, to the extent of scouting the locations and mapping out what weapons to buy.

• California is the only state in the country that doesn't help National Guard members with tuition expenses. That's kind of abominable.

• Al Gore has a new book out called The Assault on Reason. The excerpt in time kind of looks down its nose at the reader, and I didn't really respond well to it, actually. Gore is describing a real problem, but people aren't as stupid as, say, television executives think they are. Gore gets around to mentioning the Internet at the end of the excerpt, and actually ends up making a cogent argument for needing net neutrality.

• Oh yeah, Pakistan's going to hell. The issues in that country are so complex, and it's about the most dangerous place on the planet. The notion that the nation "is one bullet away from becoming an unstable extremist government with a nuclear weapon" is probably true.

• With all the food safety problems we've seen over the last few months, it certainly seems like we need the Food Safety Act of 2007 put together by Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut. Of course, if the Food and Drug Administration did its job, there would be no need for another regulatory agency. I'd rather see FDA more empowered, but as long as the guy doing the hiring is the same guy that hired Brownie, that's not really going to bear much fruit.

• This was a great op-ed by Ezra Klein about how we need good government, not the systematic destruction of government. It actually deserves more than a fleeting mention. I believe that this whole "no government, no taxes, nothing for anyone but me" attitude is losing steam, and if someone can articulate why we need government to do bold, great things, we can finally put that to bed forever.

• Dan Weintraub does a good rundown of the various health care proposals in California. I really think he gets it completely wrong. He's acting like the pressure is on the Democrats to get something done. It's not. The pressure's on the governor. Of course, this I agree with:

Economically, the most sensible approach still seems to be a requirement that everyone (not just employees) have insurance, with statewide or regional pools to maximize purchasing power for those who want to go that route, and subsidies for the poor and working poor. The subsidies would have to be financed with some kind of new fees or taxes, and the broader, the better.

Of course, both Nunez and Perata's bill doesn't cover everyone, and in fact only strives to cover employees. And the governor doesn't have a plan, at least not one that any legislator would carry. And anything with taxes requires a 2/3 vote. So I don't know what Weintraub is getting at here.

• We're at the point in the 21st century where CIA agents are testifying a fake beard and glasses. Whatever happened to the white curtain and the silhouette? By the way, this was at the Jose Padilla trial, and I just told you all of the evidence in the trial. In other words there really isn't any.

• And in a move that is sure to keep several thousand white men locked up with their transcripts of the Warren Report and the writings of Jim Garrison, a new scientific report is challenging the "magic bullet" theory and suggesting multiple shooters in Dallas in 1963. This should come as news to magic bullet theory creator Arlen Specter, but not to anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of physics.

Quick Hits

Time to clear the decks:

• Props to Jane Harman, CA-36, who not only voted for the McGovern Amendment to withdraw from Iraq, but now has joined the movement to close Gitmo. I once talked to Harman's campaign manager, and he swore up and down that she has not been changed by the primary challenge on her left in 2006. Don't believe it; Harman has been a pleasant surprise and is serving her constituents well.

• As a complement to closing Gitmo, which is vital if we ever want to restore any moral standing in the world, we must restore habeas corpus protections. We cannot hope to dictate how developing countries and nascent democracies should structure their government systems so long as we can indefinitely detain people without allowing them to understand the nature of their crimes. We have already destroyed any hope of America as a moral beacon; we can now only salve the wound.

• I don't think I was the only one that saw this Hamas Mickey Mouse story and thought, "Hamas thought the IDF was tough, wait until they get a load of Disney's lawyers!"

• One step forward, one step back: after mandating that all children in Texas be given the HPV vaccine, Governor Rick Perry won't veto the repeal of the vaccination order. Even Laura Bush said on CNN today that these girls should be given the opportunity to have this vaccine and eliminate the possibility of contracting cervical cancer. But the Christian right would rather see young women die than ever have sex. This is really one of those stories that shows the American Taliban for who they are.

• At the same time that consensus build on combating carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming, the federal government is subsidizing the construction of numerous coal plants, and they're doing so under the rural electrification program that dates back to the Depression, even when 100% of the country has access to electricity. Sigh.

• Good news, France, since the election of Nicholas Sarkozy, Bill O'Reilly has lifted his byocott! Now 70 year-olds from Kansas can finally make those bulk purchases of Bordeaux and Camembert that will revitalize the French economy! He's saving the Republic, that Billo!

• An example of "Wait, Wait, We Won't Tell You":

Some low-income seniors may have missed out on millions of dollars in federal subsidies because the government did not notify them that they could be reimbursed for past prescription drug purchases when they enrolled in Medicare's drug benefit, a Government Accountability Office study has found.

The problem is one of several that has complicated the enrollment of nearly 7 million "dual eligible" people who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid, according to the study being released today.

You don't think that the rules governing Medicare Part D were made intentionally obtuse, to confuse citizens and ensure that they wouldn't be likely to collect their fair share? Nawww.

• I still don't think redistricting will make as much of a difference as many believe, but if you're going to do it, you might as well have a national standard, which is what Zoe Lofgren seeks to administer at the federal level.

• Bob Geldof is a crank and probably a little jealous that someone is putting on a series of socially aware concerts without him, but he does have a point about Al Gore's Live Earth event. Any social movement should have a rallying cause in the form of a specific piece of legislation or a specific treaty. Raising awareness has its place, but exactly who doesn't know about global warming at this point? Besides every conservative spinner, I mean.

Weekend Quick Hits

A few items of interest before I go out into the beautiful weather:

• With our neighbors to the north, Canada, joining Australia in eliminating outdated and wasteful incandescent light bulb technology, suddenly California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine's legislation doesn't look so crazy anymore.

• There's a primary race for Governor in Kentucky in a couple weeks, one that may mean something for Democrats, as the Republican incumbent is enmeshed in corruption scandals. Jonathan Miller appears to be a decent Democratic candidate; Bruce Lunsford is one of those Republicans in Democrat's clothing who's contributed lots of money to Republicans, publicly endorsed the governor who might be his opponent in 2003, and has generally undermined progressive ideas and principles. Hopefully, Kentucky Democrats will make the right choice.

• This is a couple weeks old, but hilarious, as a Republican candidate to replace the late Charlie Norwood in GA-10 is sending mailers claiming that Democrats are trying to "steal" the seat by "running" a "candidate" and "asking" for "money." How shadowy!

• 11 Americans killed today in Iraq.

• Um, going on Stephen Colbert is not going to hurt any Congressman, and a candidate who tries to use anything from that show as proof that the Congressman is somehow debilitated or REALLY INTO HOOKERS AND COKE (that's really what this moron is claiming) will not get any traction. Period. Americans aren't that stupid.

• Liberal groups which are only a few years old control the media according to Billo.



David Brock has more. I think that these bizarre conspiracy notions go hand-in-hand with an increase in effectiveness. Media Matters exists to quote things that media figures on the right say and give them a wider audience. That's really all they do. I'm not sure how that can possibly be described as "disinformation," and yet it is. The right is just upset that they can't speak to their base with anonymity anymore.

• Oh, relax everybody, now China's going to test for chemicals in the food products they ship abroad. Well, that's a load off.

• Tony Blair's finally stepping down as Prime Minister of England, with Iraq as his legacy. This is evident in the fact that the Scottish National Party beat Labour in municipal elections in Scotland for the first time ever. Nonetheless, Blair insisted that his party would win the next general election despite their across-the-board losses this week. He's sounding more and more like Bush every day.

• In France, conservative Nicholas Sarkozy is the next President, easily defeating Socialist candidate Segolene Royal. A conservative in France isn't all that conservative; Sarko's in the same party as Jacques Chirac. The fact that he'll be the first French President born after World War II may be a plus; Sarkozy also reached out to the United States, wanting to be an ally and a friend. Here's an example of that friendship that I think the Bush Administration would see differently:

"I want to tell (the U.S.) that friendship is accepting that one's friends can act differently, and that a great nation like the United States has the duty to not obstruct the fight against global warming but on the contrary to take the lead," he said.

• I love animals, but when activists want a chimp to be declared a person, my support for them begins to weaken.

• Finally, this is the most important legal story in the history of anything ever, and shame on you for not blogging about it. More seriously, the fact that Paris Hilton's alibi consists of "nobody told me" is proof that the estate tax is necessary and right. People that have to rely on a staff of dozens to tell them how to follow the law, who have no responsibility for their own actions, don't deserve to have government protect their lottery-ticket-by-birth. Good for this judge to maintain the law for her the same as he would for any other citizen.

Quick Hits

This is the only way I'm going to catch up here.

• The President will veto the emergency supplemental on Iraq on Mission Accomplished Day. Nice little dig by the Democratic Congress. Bush says he wants to work with Democrats on a new bill, according to the headline of this piece. Here's what that "working with the Democrats" actually means:

Bush said that once he vetoes the bill, he's ready to work with Democrats on a new version that provides funds without strings attached.

Work with me to do everything I want!

• Virginia Governor Tim Kaine closed the loophole that allowed Seung-Hui Cho to buy the guns he used to kill 32 people at Virginia Tech despite mental illness. I think this episode is a testament to the importance of implementing laws and not just making them. Many state gun registries are woefully incomplete and don't coordinate with the national registry.

• Wolfowitz says he's being smeared and won't resign. Gonzales got heckled at his law school reunion and won't resign. There is a certain divorce from reality here.

• Good coverage from the SF Chronicle about bloggers at the CDP convention, except for one blind quote that warned about blogger's incivility and anonymity. The funny part is that it was a BLIND QUOTE warning about bloggers because they're anonymous!

• In addition to Randall Tobias, there was another big-time resignation on Friday that could be even more important:

A senior Justice Department official has resigned after coming under scrutiny in the Department’s expanding investigation of convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to a Justice Department official with knowledge of the case.

Making the situation more awkward for the embattled Department, the official, Robert E. Coughlin II, was deputy chief of staff for the criminal division, which is overseeing the Department’s probe of Abramoff.

He stepped down effective April 6 as investigators in Coughlin’s own division ratcheted up their investigation of lobbyist Kevin Ring, Coughlin’s long-time friend and a key associate of Abramoff.

So Coughlin was working in the division working on the Abramoff investigation, and yet he had to resign for being involved in the Abramoff investigation? The in-breeding in this Administration has reached Royal Family levels.

• Sadly, another one of the resolutions that went down to defeat this weekend was one to stop the construction of Blackwater West, an enormous mercenary training facility, in San Diego County. They didn't get the resolution constructed in time to put it through. Courage Campaign has the best information on this issue.

• If I thought Obama having Steve Westly in his camp, or Richardson having the Jane Harman people, was troubling, Hillary having Mark Penn as her de facto campaign manager is downright disqualifying. This article is a real wake-up call on the philosophy of that campaign.

• We heard staggeringly little about this incident of domestic terrorism. It's disgusting that it's ignored despite being an orchestrated effort to kill people for their beliefs.

A package left at a women’s clinic that performs abortions contained an explosive device capable of inflicting serious injury or death, investigators said today.

“It was in fact an explosive device,” said David Carter, assistant chief of the Austin Police Department. “It was configured in such a way to cause serious bodily injury or death.”

The package was found Wednesday in a parking lot outside the Austin Women’s Health Center, south of downtown Austin.

Nearby Interstate 35 was briefly closed, and a nearby apartment complex was evacuated while a bomb squad detonated the device.

• The New York Times has decided it might not be a good thing for journalism to sit and yuk it up with the same people you have to challenge the next day. Good for them for finally getting it.

• A fully functional version of Noah's Ark has been built by a Dutch creationist. I'm lobbyist to get my dog to be one of the two allowed passage.

Quick Hits

Just to get me through the weekend:

• John Edwards' hiring of Joe Trippi seems like a smart move by his campaign, but considering that Edwards was reportedly staffed up on consultants, I can't help but think that this is more of a public relations move to get the netroots on his side by hiring the hero of the Dean campaign. Still, the fact that a candidate is reaching out to the netroots at all is progress in this Presidential race.

• The House has been quietly moving forward on a variety of bills, including representation for DC residents in Congress and allowing shareholders a say in executive compensation packages. While completely reasonable (the DC bill is balanced by an extra seat for Utah, which will get one in 2010 anyway), it'll be a struggle for both these bills in the Senate. Man, we need some more friendly Senators and a Democratic President in 2008.

• It's absolutely disgusting that a known terrorist was set free from an American jail, solely because he's the RIGHT kind of terrorist - an anti-Cuban one. Luis Posada Carriles blew up an Air Cubana flight in Barbados in 1976, with the tacit support of the CIA. His whole dirty dossier is at the link.

• Somalia, the "big success" in the war on terror, is still a horror show. Over 300,000 people have fled the capital and it's rapidly becoming a humanitarian crisis. Speaking of which, I saw an hourlong committee hearing about Darfur on C-SPAN yesterday. It occurs to me that cable news is entirely useless on giving any kind of national or global perspective. As a result, the world has dithered for years on Darfur while hundreds of thousands die. Next week begins several days of global action at Save Darfur.

• Reasonable conservative Jon Swift was funnier than I was about Alberto Gonzales' memory loss.

• Charging drivers to enter congested areas in Manhattan sounds crazy, but as an environmental initiative it's pretty bold. New York is hardly the problem with regard to greenhouse gas emissions; in fact, on a per capita basis it's the greenest city in America, mainly because most people DON'T have cars. Apparently there is a 20-year history to this legislation, which is in place in central London.

• I missed out on writing about the Pulitzer Prizes. Charlie Savage's Boston Globe reporting on signing statements was extremely worthy of the honor. Why a reporter from Boston had to reveal this Washington issue should be of some consternation to the Washington Post.

• Hugo Chavez is putting a Zeppelin in the sky over Caracas, equipped with a camera to monitor street crime. But I agree with this comment at Unqualified Offerings: "Now they need to arm them, hang biplanes from them or pack them full of monkeys. Or pack them full of armed biplane-piloting monkeys."

• According to a report, "The French knew in 2001" that al Qaeda was plotting hijackings of aircraft within the United States, delivering 9 reports to US intelligence services.

• If you want a legal analysis of Gonzales v. Carhart, there's this from Yale law professor Jack Balkin. An excerpt:

The second point worth noting is that Justice Kennedy invokes what has become the new rhetoric of abortion opponents-- the notion that women often regret abortions and that they are deceived by doctors into having them... The new anti-abortion rhetoric attempts to demonstrate that few women in their right minds, who really understand what abortion involved, would defy their natural love for their children and consent to an abortion, much less seek to procure one. It tries to perform a rhetorical jujitsu move on the idea of choice, by suggesting-- without any empirical evidence, that women don't really choose abortions, and that to have an abortion is actually a violation of their "true" choices...

In fact, the argument about mother love seems to be a makeweight; it seems to involve the claim that Congress knows better than women do about what they would choose in certain situations. The law forecloses choice rather than informing it. As Justice Ginsburg points out in her dissent, this is the very sort of paternalism about women ability to make decisions about their reproductive lives that the right to abortion seeks to counter. Justice Kennedy's use of this new form of anti-abortion rhetoric reveals that this particular line of opposition to abortion, at least, is premised on the notion that women don't really know or really understand what they want when they seek abortions.

• "The tax burden in the U.S. is shifting away from the rich, to the point where in a few years it could change from being progressive to effectively flat, a new study says." Sorry, I'm playing class warfare. By quoting the Wall Street Journal.

• And finally, "I am the lizard king! I can do anything! Even get pardoned for a 37 year-old incident!" Seriously, Gov. Charlie Crist might be my new favorite Republican. He's not an action hero, but if the national media wanted to find a REAL post-partisan figure, it'd be Crist.

Weekend Quick Hits

I think I'll wrap up with a palate cleanser for the week ahead:

• Iowa and New Hampshire may move up their primaries to late December, and I agree with Chris Bowers that this would be essentially the best of a bad set of primary calendar options for 2008. At least we'd get a little daylight between those two states and Super Duper Tuesday, which would lessen their impact. And the absurdity of competing for 2008 delegates in 2007 could spur the big change needed in the primary calendar.

• I also agree with this week-old Matthew Yglesias post about redistricting. I question the efficacy of gerrymandering, and I think most people self-gerrymander based on socio-economic status, rural vs. urban vs. suburban vs. college town living, etc. If you strictly made redistricting geographical I'm not sure you wouldn't make districts even safer. And if there's a real choice and some financial parity, I don't really think that matters as much as everyone thinks. Ask Richard Pombo.

• In Oregon, incumbent Gordon Smith is polling behind Rep. Peter DeFazio in the 2008 Senate race. The only problem is that DeFazio hasn't committed to running. David Sirota explains why DeFazio would be a progressive champion in the Senate, and there's an online draft movement to get him to run. With Colorado already looking good, DeFazio's entry in Oregon would have Democrats looking good in two seats, already.

• I thought it was an amusing image to think of mullahs blogging, so go read it and you can amuse yourself.

• Global warming deniers are bested by a six-year old kid in today's installment of "Are You Smarter Than a First-Grader?"

• The US is once again giving away the farm in a trade agreement, this time to South Korea. Democrats will certainly act to try and make the deal more balanced, especially because this isn't your neoliberal Democratic Party anymore. But what's interesting is how the Bush Administration will apparently try to talk tough on China in order to get this South Korea deal through. That appears to be the gambit, anyway. They act like they're fixing the trade deficit with China in order to open yet another market abroad and sell out American workers. Expect more on this during the week.

• This book proposal masquerading as an op-ed by Benjamin Barber about the infantilization of the American public regarding capitalism is pretty good, and if I were a more high-traffic blogger I would simply DEMAND a review copy so I could write about it! Gimme gimme gimme!

Capitalism's core virtue is that it marries altruism and self-interest. In producing goods and services that answer real consumer needs, it secures a profit for producers. Doing good for others turns out to entail doing well for yourself.

Capitalism's success, however, has meant that core wants in the developed world are now mostly met and that too many goods are now chasing too few needs. Yet capitalism requires us to "need" all that it produces in order to survive. So it busies itself manufacturing needs for the wealthy while ignoring the wants of the truly needy. Global inequality means that while the wealthy have too few needs, the needy have too little wealth.

Read the whole thing.

• The Bush years have not only set back the cause of justice, they've set all of these landmines within the Justice system that we'll have to spend the next several decades rooting out.

But even in its darker days, Regent has had no better friend than the Bush administration. Graduates of the law school have been among the most influential of the more than 150 Regent University alumni hired to federal government positions since President Bush took office in 2001, according to a university website.

One of those graduates is Monica Goodling , the former top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who is at the center of the storm over the firing of US attorneys. Goodling, who resigned on Friday, has become the face of Regent overnight -- and drawn a harsh spotlight to the administration's hiring of officials educated at smaller, conservative schools with sometimes marginal academic reputations [...]

"It used to be that high-level DOJ jobs were generally reserved for the best of the legal profession," wrote a contributor to The New Republic website . ". . . That a recent graduate of one of the very worst (and sketchiest) law schools with virtually no relevant experience could ascend to this position is a sure sign that there is something seriously wrong at the DOJ."

Some of these Regent U. grads are in civil servant positions that will not be removed when the next President enters. We're going to need the equivalent of tunnel rats from the Vietnam days to find all of these unqualified office-holders.

• Finally, Entourage wasn't that good tonight, and if the whole season is going to be "will Vince go back to Ari," I think I'll tune out. It's looking too much like the Moonlighting season where all of a sudden Mark Harmon was Cybill Shepherd's boyfriend and Bruce Willis was hanging around and everybody would just look at each other longingly. Thanks but no thanks.

Quick Hits

Think I'll just do a little wrap-up and call it a day.

• John Edwards has taken the lead by pulling out of the CBC debate to be broadcast on Fox News. Edwards is definitely positioning himself as the movement candidate, as well as the one standing for bold, transformational change which appeals to populists and the rank-and-file. This is something to watch, and at this moment I do give him the inside track.

• I have hit Fabian Nuñez for a variety of reasons, but the grief he's taking for his support of the Compassionate Choices Act, being called a proprietor of the "culture of death" and worse by Catholic leaders. This demonization is so unhelpful, and obscures the point that the terminal should be allowed to choose their own fate and end their own suffering. I support Nuñez' stand on this one.

• The head of the General Services Administration, Lurita Doan, last seen so paranoid by the House Oversight Committee that she asked aides to take her drinking glass, is now under an investigation into politicizing the GSA which should have a subheading of "easiest investigation in the history of ever."

• Drug companies spent $155 million lobbying Congress over the past year and a half, a new record. And we wonder how things like the Medicare Bill gets passed with riders like "the federal government cannot bargain with pharmaceuticals for lower drug prices."

• More bullshit from the government that claims to keep us safe.

The Bush administration announced new security requirements for the nation's high-risk chemical plants yesterday, capping years of internal debate over industrial regulations following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks [...]

Congressional Democrats, state officials and environmental groups said the rules will undercut stronger state laws and block future efforts to limit the threat.

The federal rules do not set a timetable for changes or require the industry to take specific measures, such as switching to less hazardous chemicals or "inherently safer technology," as New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine (D) has proposed. They give the homeland security secretary discretion to decide which plants pose a high risk.

• Sen. Whitehouse becomes the ninth Senator to support the Feingold-Reid proposal to cut funding for the war if the President vetoes the current spending bill. Courageous.

• In Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai is claiming that he has met with Taliban leaders to stop the violence, and the Taliban denied it. What exactly is going on there? Is Karzai trying to burnish his fundamentalist bona fides? Is it because he has to do so? Weird.

• If Wal-Mart is spending so much money and trying so hard to cozy up to Democrats, maybe they could explain why they spy on their own workers, critics, vendors and consultants. I would think a political party that generally likes and respects workers would want to know.

• Arianna Huffington makes a great point about how the Presidential candidates have been completely silent about the drug war. Of course, the last President or nominee who even mentioned the drug war at all was George Bush I in 1988.

• Finally, Republicans hate pigeons and are beholden to the anti-pigeon agenda.

This time, city warriors hope a new tactic will turn the tide against the downtown menaces. Their plan: Lure the birds to new rooftop nesting grounds and then steal their eggs.

"We'll build them little condos. We'll keep taking the eggs, and they won't have little ones," said Bill Stephenson, the city's animal control supervisor. "Slowly they'll die off, I guess."

The pigeon problem is just one of many housecleaning chores the city is tackling in advance of the Republican National Convention, which will come to the Xcel Energy Center next year. Flocks of pigeons have laid down their glop on skyway ledges and sidewalks and have sullied downtown's image, officials and property owners say.

You're either with us or you're with the pigeons.

Quick Hits

Chew on this, my pretties:

• So now a rich real estate mogul from Chicago owns my hometown paper, to which I still perversely subscribe. And the word I heard is that layoffs in the newsroom will commence forthwith. Apparently the LA bigwigs (Geffen, Broad, Burkle) aren't out of the game yet, and still may buy the LA Times from Zell. Then maybe Hollywood buds like Brian Grazer could be hired to edit the op-ed page full-time!

• I guess the Presidential candidates raised a lot of money in the first quarter, none of it from me, mind you. Most surprising to me was that Mitt Romney was able to scrounge up $23 million based on his outlandish flip-flop-o-rama of a 2007 performance so far. I do agree with Chris Bowers; he'd be a dream candidate in the general (though I don't think McCain or Giuliani will be able to escape the downward spiral of the Republican Party to the extent that he does).

• Rudy now says that he should have done a better job vetting Bernie Kerik. Sounds like he did do a good job, he learned that Kerik had mob ties. It wasn't the vetting, it was the giving a damn ABOUT the vetting where Rudy ran into trouble.

• Mike Huckabee had a good line: "If Republicans in this election vote in such a way as to say a candidate’s personal life and personal conduct in office doesn’t matter,” he declared, “then a lot of Christian evangelical leaders owe Bill Clinton a public apology.” I don't agree that personal conduct should be a major factor, but noting the hypocrisy? Yeah, good show.

• Kos did an early outlook on the 2008 Senate races, and it's worth a read. A lot of seats are potentially in play, no doubt because of the longshot victories of Jim Webb and Jon Tester. And if the Club For Growth pulls another Chafee and primaries Gordon Smith, then there's at least a few seats that will be low-hanging fruit for the Dems.

• James Carville admits that he shouldn't be putting his face on Hillary's fundraising emails, but will CNN list him as a "Hillary consultant," that's the real question.

• Holy crap, the Tamil Tigers have an air force! This is a worrisome trend, technology has advanced to the point where non-state actors can jerry-rig a bunch of airplane kits and make a bomber. There's no bigger concern in the world right now, that a terrorist group could duplicate this. Haven't heard a peep from the White House yet.

• Apple and EMI will sell music tracks without digital rights management technology. Maybe I'd actually buy something from the iTunes store if I knew I could move it between my computers and mp3 devices. Emusic is light-years ahead on this score.

• More culture of corruption:

A defense company that got a federal contract with help from then-Republican Rep. Jim Gibbons, now governor of Nevada, hired Gibbons' wife to do consulting work, according to a published report Friday.

Dawn Gibbons was paid about $35,000 by Sierra Nevada Corp. of Sparks, Nev., in 2004, the same year her husband, who sat on the Armed Services and Intelligence committees, pushed for the company to get a $4 million contract to make a helicopter radar system, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Gibbons is now the governor of Nevada, and these continued troubles could do for that purple state what similar corruption stories did for Ohio in 2006, when Democrats swept every statewide race after having none previously.

• And finally, Scotty's ashes will be beamed up into space. No, really, the family's paying $500 to send the ashes up in a rocket. Apparently Gene Rodenberry's ashes were blasted into space 10 years ago as well. I think the whole funeral specific to a profession you didn't actually perform in real life thing is a little odd, but more power to 'em.

Quick Hits

Here we go with a little trip down news 'n' blog lane:

• CNN just reported (can't find a link yet) that Rudy Giuliani was briefed about Bernard Kerik's ties to the mob BEFORE hiring him as the NYC Police Commissioner in 2000. Look for that to be a major story tomorrow. UPDATE: link.

• As if Alberto Gonzales didn't have enough problems, he also looked the other way while the Texas Youth Commission was apparently running wild, with administrators sexually abusing the children in their care. And here I thought Alberto was doing it for the kids.

• Expect to hear this nonsense in the coming days about the Democrats' budget, that it's "the biggest tax increase in American history." Of course, this counts not extending the ridiculous Bush tax cuts for the wealthy as an increase, but you won't hear that part. And the Republicans are apparently going to set it up as a choice between popular entitlements and government programs or a tax increase for the wealthy, which is not a winning argument for most people, just their base.

• Apparently not learning the lesson of the Nevada Democratic Party, the Congressional Black Caucus has agreed to put a Democratic debate on Fox News. I imagine that the progressive blogosphere will ramp up on this one. What a shame.

• I thought this was an interesting post about Hillary and her appeal to women. I've experienced this exact situation described in this post. Clinton's highest level of support is among younger women, and this will be tough for any opponent to counteract. I believe in the words of Douglas Wilder, the first black governor in American history, who said "Don't run to make history as an African-American candidate, run to be the best-qualified candidate for that job." And I think Hillary (and Obama) is doing that, but the various groups that identify with them will find the historical implications hard to resist.

• There was a broad and systematic effort to undermine research on climate change coming out of the federal government, which we knew, but a report this comprehensive just brings it home so fully.

The group says it has identified hundreds of instances where White House-appointed officials interfered with government scientists' efforts to convey their research findings to the public, at the behest of top administration officials.

"The evidence suggests that incidents of interference are often top-down reactions to science that has negative policy or public relations implications for the administration," the group says in its report.

• One-way streets on my doorstep? It's an idea, but the congestion is just too, too much for that to make any real impact. It'd just put twice as many cars in each direction on those streets, which would have twice as much capacity. Net result: negligible.

• Great article on Jim Webb, who is fast becoming my favorite Senator. Someone near the top of the federal government talking about high incarceration rates? Hurt me!

• And finally, a guy got into a high-speed chase in Connecticut, and when he was pulled over, he claimed he was Dick Cheney. And then:

John Spernak, 42, later admitted he wasn’t Cheney but said he was actually “Charlie’s Angels” star Jaclyn Smith, police said. He also claimed to be the husband of Paris Hilton’s sister.

Cheney could not be reached for comment because he was busy designing a new line of handbags and stopping a ring of bikini smugglers.

Quick Hits

Some wrap-up that will hopefully allow me to get away from this damn computer for a minute.

• Ladies and gentlemen, meet the next Michael Moore: Rick Santorum. I heard he just finished a two-week course at the LA Film School and picked up a Canon XL-1 with a really good camera mike. And he knows someone that knows someone that knows Final Cut. Ready to go!

• This is lovely from a military recruiter:

"GO BACK TO AFRICA AND DO YOUR GAY VOODOO LIMBO TANGO AND WANGO DANCE AND JUMP AROUND AND PRANCE AND RUN ALL OVER THE PLACE HALF NAKED THERE."

-- U.S. Army recruiter Sgt. Marcia Ramode, using her military email address to respond to Jersey City resident Corey Andrew, after Ramode learned Andrew was gay.

Tell me again how Gen. Peter Pace's thoughts about homosexuality being "immoral" isn't the prevailing opinion of the officer corps.

• The ERA is back and it looks like it will get a vote this year. 25 years ago it came within three states of being ratified. I wonder how far it could get now. In many ways the country is more socially liberal now, but the concentration of conservatives in the smaller states may make it difficult to get the required 3/4 of them to ratify. Which is ridiculous, since it's such a simple document. "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." How could that be controversial in a country where 50.7% of the population are women?

• Putting a hold on a bill to ban cockfighting is just the latest example that Tom Coburn is running to be the leader of the island nation of Crazydumbfuckistan.

• It's come to this in the US Attorney scandal: DoJ officials are now apologizing to Congress for lying. Can you get off from a federal crime just by saying "I'm sorry?" We'll soon find out.

• Just when you think that nothing is possible anymore in the world, you read a story about Iain Paisley and Gerry Adams agreeing on a power-sharing agreement, and you begin to have hope that dreams can become reality.

• The director of the National Institutes of Health has now come out for repealing the ban on new lines of stem cells for research purposes, and said that "American science will be better served" by Bush reversing his policy and giving hope that life-saving cures can be discovered. He'll be leaving the NIH to spend more time with his family soon, I'm sure. Maybe some other Karl Rove aide needs a job!

• Dissent in Iran: "activists burned an effigy of (Ahmadinejad), set off firecrackers and interrupted his speech with chants of 'Death to the dictator!'" Dissent in America: "Though the participants say they did nothing more than wear T-shirts with peace signs and carry peace banners with messages like "Kids Not Bombs"... one cop kneed a woman in the groin as she lay on the ground. Another broke a wooden peace sign that one of the participants had been carrying... one photo shows a cop with his arm around the neck of a retired priest, Frank Cordaro, in an apparent chokehold." Freedom isn't free!

• And finally, this is an hilarious account of yet another person banned by Bill O'Reilly... only this one talks back and is frankly more entertaining than the show could ever be.

Boy, you really know how to hurt a girl.

You got me fired from a job I didn't have, at a station that wasn't paying me.

Now what am I going to do? I thought a had a real future there! I mean, okay, maybe I guested twice a month for something like 5 years and never got any compensation. But it's not like I had to pay to park!

Quick Hits

And let's wrap up the night with some extra news you can use.

• TAPPED's blog is one of my favorites, populated by great writers who go as in-depth on the issues as any progressive out there. Ezra Klein is absolutely correct that progressives need to support existing structures like The American Prospect, a fine magazine that is an outlet for these writers. If I wasn't 4 months behind on reading my New Yorkers I'd sign up tomorrow, but I suspect I will eventually. They really are some of the best progressives in the business.

• Rudy, Rudy, Rudy...



The right hates him, the left hates him... and he's the frontrunner on the Republican side.

• Bill O'Reilly breaks Godwin's Law and compares the progressive movement of MoveOn and Daily Kos to Dr. Joseph Goebbels. If "they're Nazis" is all you got, it's probably not worth saying anything.

• This is fun:

Shortly after noon, FEMA agents began rapping on the trailer doors, their knocks resounding inside the tinny white homes. Everyone in the park, the agents announced without warning, would have to pack and leave within 48 hours [...]

To the residents of the Yorkshire Mobile Home Park, all of them families displaced by Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency crews offered answers that were uncertain and sometimes contradictory. As residents spilled out of their homes to meet their similarly bewildered neighbors, the adults wondered where they would be sent next, and how far they might wind up from their jobs. Some began sobbing. Then the children, seeing their parents' tears, began crying, too. A woman fainted, and an ambulance came.

"It was like shock and awe," recalled Ron Harrell, 40, a tenant. "We called it Hurricane FEMA."

It's bad enough that construction in New Orleans has stagnated so that no affordable housing is available. The only housing left for the working poor, who lost everything in the flood, is being shuttered, and the residents forced to leave.

• Here's a new wrinkle for the prison system, give away a kidney and shorten your sentence! Makes perfect sense, let's harvest the organs of the incarcerated! And convicts who've given up one kidney are sure to be productive members of society, and deserving of a commuted sentence! This is perfect on all levels!

• A sorority at DePauw University kicked out members of its group who were black, Latina, Asian, or considered ugly or uncool. DePauw kicked them right off campus. Good.

• The scofflaws evading paying their fair share of taxes are nothing short of treasonous. They refuse to pay for the society that helped them become rich. They'd rather use their power and influence to rewrite IRS rules:

John D. Graham, the official appointed by President Bush to streamline the federal rule-making process and give private interests a greater voice, said even he was surprised by the I.R.S. plan.

"Whoever's pen the first draft comes out of has a big advantage," said Dr. Graham, who ran the Office of Regulatory and Information Affairs for the White House before becoming dean last week of the graduate school at RAND, the nonprofit research organization.

....A single word, sometimes one letter, can change the meaning of a rule: "must" or "may"; "and" versus "or"; "could" or "would."

....In recent years there has been a quickening pace of moves to outsource the actual work of regulation, hiring contractors to write the rules. Now the I.R.S. is proposing that outside experts do it at no charge, opening up the possibility that some firms providing the draft would be working on behalf of an individual, business or association seeking to plant a favorable nuance in a rule.

• Mayans have to cleanse a site in Guatemala visited by President Bush. And honestly, that's the most REPSECTABLE reaction to the President's trip to Latin America. Is it 2008 yet?

• Finally, I think this officially qualifies as the most insane story ever:

Israel has recalled its ambassador to El Salvador after he was found drunk and naked apart from bondage gear.

Reports say he was able to identify himself to police only after a rubber ball had been removed from his mouth [...]

Haaretz website reports that police found Mr Refael in the Israeli embassy compound where he had been found bound, gagged and naked apart from sado-masochistic sex accessories.

Weekend Quick Hits

Maybe if I get these out of the way, I can go about and put some sun on my face:

• Glenn Greenwald has a good column today about the FBI National Security Letter abuse and how it speaks to a larger pattern of lawbreaking in the Bush Administration. Once again, the White House only admits wrongdoing when trapped; and even then they claim it was inadvertent, or the result of a few bad apples, or whatever. That's about as believable as Planet Unicorn.

• Today's the day of the security summit in Baghdad. Iran and the United States in the same room!!! It trickled out this week that Iran may have stopped their nuclear program, but the Administration stifled that talk rapidly. Now will they shut down all camera access to the summit like they're doing to the military tribunals at Gitmo?

• These secular progressives are trying to take away Easter, AGAIN! Will these heathens never stop their Godless ways? Why are they so afraid of the piety inherent in the Easter Bunny and chocolate eggs and marshmallow Peeps?

• If you have a spare three hours and are an obsessive, this is a nice inside report from the Libby jury room.

• You forgot Georgia!

• Good to hear that William Jefferson's appointment to the Homeland Security Committee may be on permanent hold. Pelosi eventually does the right thing in most cases.

• Jane Harman is authoring a bill to restore habeas corpus. That primary challenge was the best thing that ever happened to her.

• Violent crime is way up over the last two years, aligning perfectly with both the repeal of the assault weapons ban, de-funding of the COPS program and the rise in national poverty rates until Bush. This is almost a complete reversal of declines in violent crime under Clinton. President Bush: less safe at home, less safe abroad. It's OK though, because Gov. Schwarzenegger said gangs are just a nuisance like soccer fans. He really said that, check the link.

• I was extremely remiss in not acknowledging the passing of the great Arthur Schlesinger. A giant in the field of history, and maybe the last of the public intellectuals.

• Quote of the week: "Before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment." That was conservative Republican Chuck Hagel.

• America, Fuck Yeah. The AP decides not to write about Paris Hilton for a week and the news everywhere is "AP Not Writing About Paris Hilton For A Week!"

I think my brain just died a little bit.

Quick Hits

This gives me something to do while I try to ignore the horror show that is "The Interpreter" on my teevee.

• Michelle Bachmann, freshman Rep. from Minnesota, is a clairvoyant, having access to secret knowledge of Iran's plans to split up Iraq, which included putting the Shiite region in the area most dominated by Sunnis. Her local paper is demanding her to explain how she got this information, which is silly of them, for nobody, not even Bachmann, can explain the inner workings of the human mind!

• Hey, guess what, Somalia's the next Afghanistan!

Weeks after Ethiopia routed the ICU from Mogadishu and the rest of the country, violence is flaring in the capital and throughout Somalia. While some of this violence is being instigated by the Islamists who lost power, there is evidence that warlords who have returned to the country after being defeated by the Courts movement are also to blame (somaaljecel.com, February 22). Reports coming out of Mogadishu claim that some warlords are rearming their militias and planning attacks on Ethiopian and TFG troops. These warlords—such as Mohamed Dheere, Muhammad Qanyare Afrah and Abdi Nur Siyad, who have allegedly formed an alliance—are angry over their role in the TFG government that is now controlling Somalia; the three warlords were reportedly seen purchasing large supplies of arms at the Bakaara weapons market (Shabelle Media Network, February 22).

That's a tribal country, one that would never become pliant in the face of an imposed governmental structure and a show of force from the country they hate most, Ethiopia. It was lunacy to think that they'd be pacified and have that be that.

• In more news of "making the world less safe," Venezuela is spending a mint on weaponry!

• John Kerry Swiftboated a Swiftboat Vets for Truth contributor yesterday at a Senate hearing. Crooks and Liars has the vid. It's a few years late, but Kerry realy raked this guy, a nominee for an AMBASSADORSHIP for cryin' out loud, and revealed him in all his hypocrisy. It was a clinic.

• This happened a little while back, but Prince Harry is going to serve in Iraq. No word on the military readiness from our version of the scions of royalty, Britney Spears' kids.

• Yet another Virgin Mary found, this time on a school cafeteria cookie sheet. I know the Lord is supposed to work in mysterious ways, but with baking grease? By the way, that looks as much like a guy flipping the bird as it does the Virgin Mary. I guess it's all how you look at it.

• This is an absurd ruling in Florida, where election officials simply decided that everything was fine with the election in the 13th District, and that the 18,000 missing votes had nothing to do with the voting software. Naw, those voters were probably just tired and skipped the most contested, most high-profile race on the ballot. Christine Jennings, who's been royally jobbed by this, has vowed to keep up the fight to obtain the voting machine source code.

• Last week the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi stepped down from his post because he couldn't get a foreign policy vote adding troops in Afghanistan and expanding a US military base in Northern Italy through the Parliament. Two Communists pulled out of the center-left coalition to vote against Prodi. We've really triggered a global isolationist movement. Afghanistan is in bad need of help. But our wrongheaded policies that look like imperialism have caused the whole world to adopt this isolationist pose, making things more dangerous. Prodi then survived a no-confidence vote to maintain his position, narrowly defeating Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing faction, and the only positive in all of this is to see Berlusconi lose again.

• Why aren't more people talking about the fact that a GOP fundraiser has been accused of funding terrorist training camps? And why doesn't anyone know that the President met yesterday with an anti-Semite who gloried in the killing of American soldiers? Why don't we have a media that reports this more often than the latest twists and turns on American Idol?

• And finally, a new study shows that college students are more narcissistic than ever... I'm sorry, what was I writing about? I was too busy Googling myself and touching up my Facebook picture in Photoshop to remember.

Quick Hits

A lot of little things floating around out there.

• Fox News will host a Democratic Primary debate (undoubtedly they'll call it a "Democrat Party" debate). There's no earthly reason for this; the last time they hosted a Democratic debate, they cut away before the end to go to Bill Bennett slandering all the candidates. The BlogPAC folks are fighting back. Go sign their petition. Also check out Fox Attacks.



• Headline writer's block: Robots could soon be calling the shots? Um, no, they can't. If I have to read one more article where Ray Kurzweil predicts singularity (and the target date always keeps going further and further back) I'm going to shoot myself, or have a robot do it for me.

• More on the changing times in America: an abortion ban bill doesn't make it out of committee in South Dakota, even after it was modified with exceptions for rape and incest and the life of the mother; and the Republican Speaker of the House stops a gay marriage ban bill in committee in WYOMING. The times, they are-a changin', and all that.

• I didn't really emphasize this enough in the blogger breakfast I attended with Sen. Durbin, but Mark Kleiman does, and yes, it was pleasantly surprising.

There we are, sitting around a table, mostly talking Senate inside baseball, which Durbin talks very cogently and entertainingly indeed. A lull falls in the flow of questions, so Durbin is able to bring up a topic on his own initiative.

What he wants to talk about is — no, I wouldn't have gotten it in three guesses, or thirty for that matter — Darfur [...]

The thought that the #2 guy in the Senate, unprompted, sitting around with a bunch of political junkies, wants to talk about how to save the lives of people who aren't going to vote for him or contribute to his campaign is enough to make me teary-eyed with gratitude for the results last November. It sure wouldn't have occurred to Trent Lott.

• I keep forgetting to post about this breathless bit of stupidity, where Chris Hitchens decides that we have to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities before the earth, moves, under their feet:

CH: Well, one thing to think about that is something that hardly ever gets mentioned, which is the following. Ask any seismologist you like. Iran has a huge earthquake coming sometime in the next few years. We don’t know exactly when, of course, but we know, we can study these faults and these fault lines quite well, and Iran is very, very high on the list for a very, very major earthquake. It will be a gigantic tragedy when it hits, by the way, because as someone who’s been in Tehran, I can tell you there isn’t a single building there that’s up to code in any way. It’s a mess of traffic jams and corruption. It’s built on a spider web of faults. I mention this because when it hits, the fact that there’ll be underground nuclear facilities will be not the least of the problem, and no one’s doing enough thinking about this, and I think it should be up to the United States government to say something in public, to the world, and to the Iranian people, saying that’s not an internal affair for you. This is going to concern us all, and we know about seismology, and indeed how to protect against earthquakes.

Because there's nothing that would be better to avert a seismic disaster than a surgical nuclear strike, right?

• Satellite radio companies to merge. Well, I didn't think the business model could make it anyway, so I guess they have a better shot at it together. I still don't understand the market that wants to pay for radio. And I've been aware of XM and Sirius since I visited both facilities for interviews in 2001.

• A second rape alleged in Iraq? You just know there are more than two and that this is a long-simmering issue. Things like these have been since the dawn of war. "Rape and pillage" isn't exactly a new phrase.

• They played a find the Racist College Republican Nutjob contest today on the campus of NYU. OK, actually the College Republicans played a game called "Find the Illegal Immigrant," but the effect was the same.

• Net neutrality ought to be a big thing in 2008. We need to make sure that the Internet is completely free and open. Mark Leno introduced a bill at the state level to ensure Net Neutrality in California. That would be an enormous step forward. Because if that's the standard here, it will almost have to be the standard nationwide.

• Australia going to fluorescents. As I said, great idea, but they need more sizes. Half the lamps I have don't take fluorescent bulbs because they won't fit.

• I actually didn't even notice this until tonight, but who the hell is this guy and how is he a sitting judge in any court in this nation?

• Call off the Eurovision Song Contest. Morrissey will not participate this year. Actually Eurovision is one of the greatest things ever: 24 countries send a band to a giant song-off? Makes American Idol look like some crappy variety hour from the 50s.