To the Editor:
If, as suggested by "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History," states should be able to impose religion on their citizens, we might see the day when one large group of states mandates evangelical Christianity while another bloc sets a more secular standard.
In other words, we will wake up one morning to discover that we have become ... Iraq.
Harold Ickes, a leading Democratic activist and former aide to President Clinton, said Friday he is backing Howard Dean to be chairman of the Democratic National Committee -- giving a powerful boost to the front-runner.
"I think all the candidates who are running have strong attributes, but Dean has more of the attributes than the others," said Ickes, who considered running for chairman himself before dropping out in early January. "Many people say Howard Dean is a northeastern liberal, he is progressive, but his tenure as governor of Vermont was that of a real moderate."
Ickes, who is chairman of the political action committee of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said the endorsement was his alone and "does not reflect Sen. Clinton's opinion."
While Ickes would not comment on the Clintons' preferences, he is a close ally and would not be endorsing Dean against their strong objections.
"Senator Clinton is neutral in the race for DNC chair," said her spokesman, Philippe Reines. "She looks forward to working with the next chairman of the Democratic National Committee."
Ickes' endorsement comes at a critical time in the chairman's race and gives Dean almost 50 of the more than 215 votes he would need to win the post.
At yesterday's gathering of world leaders in southern Poland to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the United States was represented by Vice President Cheney. The ceremony at the Nazi death camp was outdoors, so those in attendance, such as French President Jacques Chirac and Russian President Vladimir Putin, were wearing dark, formal overcoats and dress shoes or boots. Because it was cold and snowing, they were also wearing gentlemen's hats. In short, they were dressed for the inclement weather as well as the sobriety and dignity of the event.
The vice president, however, was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower.
Cheney stood out in a sea of black-coated world leaders because he was wearing an olive drab parka with a fur-trimmed hood. It is embroidered with his name. It reminded one of the way in which children's clothes are inscribed with their names before they are sent away to camp. And indeed, the vice president looked like an awkward boy amid the well-dressed adults.
Like other attendees, the vice president was wearing a hat. But it was not a fedora or a Stetson or a fur hat or any kind of hat that one might wear to a memorial service as the representative of one's country. Instead, it was a knit ski cap, embroidered with the words "Staff 2001." It was the kind of hat a conventioneer might find in a goodie bag.
It is also worth mentioning that Cheney was wearing hiking boots -- thick, brown, lace-up ones. Did he think he was going to have to hike the 44 miles from Krakow -- where he had made remarks earlier in the day -- to Auschwitz?
A delegation sent by President Bush to Ukraine's presidential inauguration last weekend included a Ukrainian-American activist who has accused Jews of manipulating the Holocaust for their gain and blamed them for Soviet-era atrocities in Ukraine.
"Big money drives the Holocaust industry," Myron B. Kuropas wrote in August 2000.
The inclusion of Kuropas in the U.S. delegation to Sunday's inauguration of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, which was led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, appeared to be an embarrassment for the Bush administration.
A White House official, who refused to be identified by name, said Tuesday, "We were not aware of his previous statements. Had we been aware of such comments beforehand, we would not have invited Dr. Kuropas to be a member of the delegation."
Very early in the occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration recognized that a democratic Iraq, even a stridently anti-Saddam one, would not countenance the strategic U.S. goals the war was fought for: controlling the second-largest oil reserves in an energy-thirsty world, and establishing military bases required for undertaking the political transformation of the Middle East to serve American interests. A long-term occupation to secure these ambitious goals was no less tenable.
So even as the Americans proclaimed their mission as one designed to introduce democracy and human rights in Iraq, they fought against demands for early elections even from putative allies like the Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. They also maneuvered to put into place a self-governance and electoral plan that, through carefully circumscribed United Nations involvement, they thought would ensure that the hand-picked Iraqi leadership would enjoy some legitimacy, with the elections scheduled for Sunday providing an added boost of Shiite support.
But as this blood-stained election shows, the complete breakdown of this plan has been one of the most colossal U.S. policy failures of the last half-century. Indeed, this is not an election that any democratic nation, or indeed any independent international electoral organization, would recognize as legitimate.
For the only time in memory, electoral candidates are afraid to be seen in public and are forced to campaign from underground cells, with many afraid to even link their names to their faces in the media. There are no public rallies where voters might glean some information about candidates' positions. As one voter told CNN, he would prefer to vote for George Michael, since he knows more about the singer than about any of the candidates running for office.
[snip]
The wonder is that the United States, fully aware that holding this election would unleash an altogether new level of violence, chose to push ahead with what was bound to further destabilize the country and intensify hatreds that will take decades to heal.
The ultimate irony is that despite its enormous cost in human life, physical destruction and deepening hatreds, this election will in no way make life easier for the Americans, the Allawi dictatorship or Iraqis. That was the view of most Iraqi, Arab and Muslim analysts at a fascinating closed-door international consultation organized in the fall by the middle-of-the-road Oxford University Center for Islamic Studies. They argued at a minimum for the election's postponement.
At a time when even many developed sovereign governments cannot be trusted to hold free and fair elections without deep outside scrutiny, elections under hostile occupations should be forbidden, since they have no other purpose than to further entrench the occupier's interests.
It was clear to those of us in Baghdad right after Saddam Hussein's fall that no long-term American project there, let alone the brutish attempt to cow Iraqis through massive use of force in civilian areas, would succeed. The limited self-governance plan was particularly a non-starter because of the transparent control the United States exercised over the process in order to ensure the emergence of malleable Iraqi leaders.
In any event, virtually no Iraqis, not even those benefiting from the American presence, see the superpower either as a friend or as a promoter of human rights and democracy. Each U.S.-dictated self-governance milestone has therefore backfired, just like the current election has, generating wider support and bloodier attacks by an insurgency that has grown more effective in thwarting American ambitions.
What you will NOT see on tonight's ABC Nightline!!!
by NewWay4NewDay
Thu Jan 27th, 2005 at 19:19:41 PST
I just came from the townhall meeting hosted by Ted Koppel at St. John's Episcopal Church across from the White House in Washington D.C.
The topic is IRAQ: Why Stay?
The panel consisted of Joseph Wilson, Sen. George Allen (R), and Rep Marty Meehan (D)
There was some good dialogue, but mostly ended up that time was given primarily to the pro-war agenda. There were a few outbursts that will probably be edited out, and one major outburst from a Rabbi Waskau that you will not see because it was during a commercial break.
I am posting this now, so you are aware, and will watch Nightline, but am going to keep adding to this diary continuously until I can accurately describe the event as I witnessed it.
Diaries :: NewWay4NewDay's diary ::
It started out seemingly okay. People were asked to submit questions to producers.
I submitted a question... it was about the effects of Depleted Uranium on our military personnel and Iraqui Civillians, and I wanted to ask what has been done to protect our troops from exposure to radioactive dust particles, and wanted to know if the Veterans Administration is prepared for the long term health effects to soldiers & their offspring caused by over exposure to DU.
The producer told me that since there were no helath experts on the panel, it was not a proper question for the theme of the show, and So, I restructured my comment, and she said it was better and would run it by the executive producer: "As a navy veteran who was deployed to the Persian Gulf in 1991, I am concerned that America is not prepared for a resurgence of Gulf War Syndrome" and that the Veterans Administration is ill-equipped to deal with the long term health issues faced by soldiers who have been exposed to Depleted Uranium".
So, We all sat and waited for the program to begin.
It starts out with a Democratic congresswoman from Illinois (can't remember her name) underscoring that she felt the war was based on a lie etc.
Then Ted Koppel asked if their were any military people who wanted to respond. The first woman who got the mic (I think by accident) was a woman who had lost her husband in the war last year and said she was a part of a group (I think Millitary Famlies Speak Out, but not sure) who gave a heartfelt plea to pull out of Iraq before anymore spouses had to go through what she had gone through.
From there, it started becoming clear that the pro-war people were going to be given more time to speak than people who dissented. The next comment came from a woman who also lost her husband (actually in the same unit as the other wife) and she gave a patriotic speech about how poud she was that he had died for his country etc and that we needed to finish the job of bring freedom to Iraq.
So, it went on this way, with the pro-war side taking precedence.
Then, during the third commercial break Rabbi Waskau stood up and loudly said, "I was invited hear to speak, but then was told I could you would not allow anyone from the religious community to sit in the front row and that I would be allowed to make a comment later if I would take a seat in back. But now I have been told that I will not be allowed to speak at all."
(upon hearing that, I realized that nobody had spoken from a religious/faith based perspective, and wondered if that was indeed intentional).
He went on, "So I will ask my question now during the break so as not to cause embarrassment to you Mr. Koppel"
Ted Koppel said, "Thank you, go ahead"
The Rabbi spoke: "You do not want the religious community to speak beacause we DO see the BIG picture (reffrencng a marine who had spoken earlier saying that people who were for ending the occupation in Iraq di not see the big picture) "We know the story of the Pharoah, who tried to hold back God's people, and that the Pharoah's lust for power was so great that we pushed his army against the Hebrews again and again no matter how many time's he failed... he continued to deny the circumstances until the amry of Egypt was beat down and depleted at the expense of his subjects." (I wish I could communicate the eloquence with which he spoke)... "President Bush is the Pharoah, and he has stripped the American people of basic social services such as healthcare and education in order to arrogantly keep up his holy war. I will no longer stand for the U.S. governmen and the media denying the religious community our voice. The common people of the Untied States and of Iraq and elsewhere are suffering."
Then he said he was done, (there was definitely some applause during parts of his speech) and he was escorted out the church where the Nightline episode was being taped.
Antother outburst happened toward the last half hour when a tall older African American gentleman went up to a mic without permission and siad, "ask Richard Perle about the PNAC... that's all I've got to say... I'm outa here!"
Then, it went on and during the last break their was a similar occurence as to the rabbi's, when an Iraqi spoke loudly saying, there are many Iraqi's here sitting in the back, and we were told we could speak, but have been denied."
Before it went further, Ted Koppel said they would be given a chance to speak in the last seven minute segment.
However, when the show started again, one man was brought to the microphone from another section... not from where the first Iraqi said he and others were sitting. That one man said he was an Iraqi and represented the majority of Iraqi's and he supproted the U.S. freedom fighters, and only a small percentage of Sunni's were angered by the U.S. presence in Iraq. that was all.
Ted Koppel went to the closing statements and let each of the four guest panelists have their say, then started to do his closing.
I was upset that nothing was said about the health of our troops mentally, physically or otherwise.
So, I satrted chanting "GULF WAR SYNDROME" over and over again, very loudly so it filled the church and drown out Ted Koppel.
He replied, "I am sure I have no idea what you're taking about"
and I yelled, "It's about Depleted Uranium!"
Then I shut up, and he finished his closing and it was over.
As I was waiting to filter out with everybody else, I heard one of the Iraqi's, who was very upset, talking to a producer: "This is not what we expected, we were told we would get a chance to speak in the press release you sent us, and you did not give us the chance to say what we came to say."
The producer just kind of appeased him... nodded and stuff.
That's it.
I think they will probably re-shoot Ted Koppel's closing.
I just wanted you to post this so the whole story could get out there... pass it on as you deem appropriate.
I am really feeling at this moment that the media is intentionally trying to appear as they foster "free speech" and "open dialogue", but are actually doing everything they can to keep dissenting views muted and to a minimum.
One day after President Bush ordered his Cabinet secretaries to stop hiring commentators to help promote administration initiatives, and one day after the second high-profile conservative pundit was found to be on the federal payroll, a third embarrassing hire has emerged. Salon has confirmed that Michael McManus, a marriage advocate whose syndicated column, "Ethics & Religion," appears in 50 newspapers, was hired as a subcontractor by the Department of Health and Human Services to foster a Bush-approved marriage initiative. McManus championed the plan in his columns without disclosing to readers he was being paid to help it succeed.
Responding to the latest revelation, Dr. Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at HHS, announced Thursday that HHS would institute a new policy that forbids the agency from hiring any outside expert or consultant who has any working affiliation with the media. "I needed to draw this bright line," Horn tells Salon. "The policy is being implemented and we're moving forward."
[snip]
Horn says McManus, who could not be reached for comment, was paid approximately $10,000 for his work as a subcontractor to the Lewin Group, a health care consultancy hired by HHS to implement the Community Healthy Marriage Initiative, which encourages communities to combat divorce through education and counseling. McManus provided training during two-day conferences in Chattanooga, Tenn., and also made presentations at HHS-sponsored conferences. His syndicated column has appeared in such papers as the Washington Times, the Dallas Morning News and the Charlotte Observer.
Horn, who has known McManus for years, says he first learned about the payment on Thursday. In the wake of the Gallagher story, he asked his staff to review all outside contracts and determine if there were any other columnists being paid by HHS. They informed him about McManus. Horn says the review for similar contracts continues.
Horn insists that HHS was not paying Gallagher and McManus to write about Bush administration initiatives but for their expertise as marriage advocates. "We live in a complicated world and people wear many different hats," he says. "People who have expertise might also be writing columns. The line has become increasingly blurred between who's a member of the media and who is not. Thirty years ago if you were a columnist, then you were a full-time employee of a newspaper. Columnists today are different."
The problem springs from the failure of both Gallagher and McManus to disclose their government payments when writing about the Bush proposals. But one HHS critic says another dynamic has led to the controversy, and a blurring of ethical and journalistic lines: Horn and HHS are hiring advocates -- not scholars -- from the pro-marriage movement. "They're ideological sympathizers who propagandize," says Tim Casey, attorney for Legal Momentum, a women's rights organization. He describes McManus as being a member of the "extreme religious right."
Horn denies the charge: "It's not true that we have just been selectively working with conservatives." According to news accounts, the administration seeks to spend $1.5 billion promoting marriage through marriage-enrichment courses, counseling and public-awareness campaigns.
We can’t win this war. We can do what he's doing. We can bomb them into the stone ages. Here's the other horrifying, sort of spectacular fact that we don't really appreciate. Since we installed our puppet government, this man, Allawi, who was a member of the Mukabarat, the secret police of Saddam, long before he became a critic, and is basically Saddam-lite. Before we installed him, since we have installed him on June 28, July, August, September, October, November, every month, one thing happened: the number of sorties, bombing raids by one plane, and the number of tonnage dropped has grown exponentially each month. We are systematically bombing that country. There are no embedded journalists at Doha, the Air Force base I think we’re operating out of. No embedded journalists at the aircraft carrier, Harry Truman. That's the aircraft carrier that I think is doing many of the operational fights. There’s no air defense, It's simply a turkey shoot. They come and hit what they want. We know nothing. We don't ask. We're not told. We know nothing about the extent of bombing. So if they're going to carry out an election and if they're going to succeed, bombing is going to be key to it, which means that what happened in Fallujah, essentially Iraq -- some of you remember Vietnam -- Iraq is being turn into a “free-fire zone” right in front of us. Hit everything, kill everything. I have a friend in the Air Force, a Colonel, who had the awful task of being an urban bombing planner, planning urban bombing, to make urban bombing be as unobtrusive as possible. I think it was three weeks ago today, three weeks ago Sunday after Fallujah I called him at home. I'm one of the people -- I don't call people at work. I call them at home, and he has one of those caller I.D.’s, and he picked up the phone and he said, “Welcome to Stalingrad.” We know what we're doing. This is deliberate. It's being done. They're not telling us. They're not talking about it.
[snip]
I'm doing in The New Yorker, the Abu Ghraib stories. I think I did three in three weeks. If some of you know about The New Yorker, that's unbelievable. But in the middle of all of this, I get a call from a mother in the East coast, Northeast, working class, lower middle class, very religious, Catholic family. She said, I have to talk to you. I go see her. I drive somewhere, fly somewhere, and her story is simply this. She had a daughter that was in the military police unit that was at Abu Ghraib. And the whole unit had come back in March, of -- The sequence is: they get there in the fall of 2003. Their reported after doing their games in the January of 2004. In March she is sent home. Nothing is public yet. The daughter is sent home. The whole unit is sent home. She comes home a different person. She had been married. She was young. She went into the Reserves, I think it was the Army Reserves to get money, not for college or for -- you know, these -- some of these people worked as night clerks in pizza shops in West Virginia. This not -- this is not very sophisticated. She came back and she left her husband. She just had been married before. She left her husband, moved out of the house, moved out of the city, moved out to another home, another apartment in another city and began working a different job. And moved away from everybody. Then over -- as the spring went on, she would go every weekend, this daughter, and every weekend she would go to a tattoo shop and get large black tattoos put on her, over increasingly -- over her body, the back, the arms, the legs, and her mother was frantic. What's going on? Comes Abu Ghraib, and she reads the stories, and she sees it. And she says to her daughter, “Were you there?” She goes to the apartment. The daughter slams the door. The mother then goes -- the daughter had come home -- before she had gone to Iraq, the mother had given her a portable computer. One of the computers that had a DVD in it, with the idea being that when she was there, she could watch movies, you know, while she was overseas, sort of a -- I hadn't thought about it, a great idea. Turns out a lot of people do it. She had given her a portable computer, and when the kid came back she had returned it, one of the things, and the mother then said I went and looked at the computer. She knows -- she doesn't know about depression. She doesn’t know about Freud. She just said, I was just -- I was just going to clean it up, she said. I had decided to use it again. She wouldn't say anything more why she went to look at it after Abu Ghraib. She opened it up, and sure enough there was a file marked “Iraq”. She hit the button. Out came 100 photographs. They were photographs that became -- one of them was published. We published one, just one in The New Yorker. It was about an Arab. This is something no mother should see and daughter should see too. It was the Arab man leaning against bars, the prisoner naked, two dogs, two shepherds, remember, on each side of him. The New Yorker published it, a pretty large photograph. What we didn’t publish was the sequence showed the dogs did bite the man -- pretty hard. A lot of blood. So she saw that and she called me, and away we go. There's another story.
For me, it's just another story, but out of this comes a core of -- you know, we all deal in “macro” in Washington. On the macro, we're hopeless. We're nowhere. The press is nowhere. The congress is nowhere. The military is nowhere. Every four-star General I know is saying, “Who is going to tell them we have no clothes?” Nobody is going to do it. Everybody is afraid to tell Rumsfeld anything. That's just the way it is. It's a system built on fear. It's not lack of integrity, it's more profound than that. Because there is individual integrity. It's a system that's completely been taken over -- by cultists. Anyway, what's going to happen, I think, as the casualties mount and these stories get around, and the mothers see the cost and the fathers see the cost, as the kids come home. And the wounded ones come back, and there's wards that you will never hear about. That's wards -- you know about the terrible catastrophic injuries, but you don't know about the vegetables. There's ward after ward of vegetables because the brain injuries are so enormous. As you maybe read last week, there was a new study in one of the medical journals that the number of survivors are greater with catastrophic injuries because of their better medical treatment and the better armor they have. So you get more extreme injuries to extremities. We're going to learn more and I think you're going to see, it's going to -- it's -- I'm trying to be optimistic. We're going to see a bottom swelling from inside the ranks. You're beginning to see it. What happened with the soldiers asking those questions, you may see more of that.
To be a rightie is to harbor a sick, irrational hatred all manner of random things -- France, strong women, endangered species, the environment in general, and New York City, among other things. My hypothesis is that righties fear anything they can't control, and they hate whatever it is they fear.
A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a lower court judge erred when he dismissed parts of the lawsuit brought on behalf of two New York children.
U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet dismissed the lawsuit in 2003 because he said it failed to link the children's alleged health problems directly to McDonald's products.
But the appeals judges said New York's general business law requires a plaintiff to show only that deceptive advertising was misleading and that the plaintiff was injured as a result. The panel upheld other parts of the dismissal.
Y'know, the fact that McD's got rid of supersized meals and started offering salads AFTER "Supersize Me" came out may actually work AGAINST them.
Still not sure how I feel about this, but I still never, ever see nutritional info posted in a convenient place in a McD's. They never have the "mandatory" handouts, and the plaque is usually posted high and/or behind the counter. The fact that NYC food banks are trying to get poor folks to eat more (expensive) fruits and fresh produce rather than $1 meals at McD's--and the stated fact that they are doing this to reduce diet-related illnesses in poor minorities--speaks volumes.
We should all be able to agree that we want every child born in this country and around the world to be wanted, cherished, and loved. The best way to get there is do more to educate the public about reproductive health, about how to prevent unsafe and unwanted pregnancies.
Research shows that the primary reason that teenage girls abstain is because of their religious and moral values. We should embrace this -- and support programs that reinforce the idea that abstinence at a young age is not just the smart thing to do, it is the right thing to do. But we should also recognize what works and what doesn't work, and to be fair, the jury is still out on the effectiveness of abstinence-only programs. I don't think this debate should be about ideology, it should be about facts and evidence -- we have to deal with the choices young people make not just the choice we wish they would make. We should use all the resources at our disposal to ensure that teens are getting the information they need to make the right decision.
We should also do more to educate and involve parents about the critical role they can play in encouraging their children to abstain from sexual activity. Teenagers who have strong emotional attachments to their parents are much less likely to become sexually active at an early age.
Unprecedented times call for unprecedented actions. In this case, we, the undersigned bloggers, have decided to speak as one and collectively author a document of opposition. We oppose the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to the position of Attorney General of the United States, and we urge every United States Senator to vote against him.
As the prime legal architect for the policy of torture adopted by the Bush Administration, Gonzales's advice led directly to the abandonment of longstanding federal laws, the Geneva Convention, and the United States Constitution itself. Our country, in following Gonzales's legal opinions, has forsaken its commitment to human rights and the rule of law and shamed itself before the world with our conduct at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The United States, a nation founded on respect for law and human rights, should not have as its Attorney General the architect of the law's undoing.
In January 2002, Gonzales advised the President that the United States Constitution does not apply to his actions as Commander in Chief, and thus the President could declare the Geneva Conventions inoperative. Gonzales's endorsement of the August 2002 Bybee/Yoo Memorandum approved a definition of torture so vague and evasive as to declare it nonexistent. Most shockingly, he has embraced the unacceptable view that the President has the power to ignore the Constitution, laws duly enacted by Congress and International treaties duly ratified by the United States. He has called the Geneva Conventions "quaint."
Legal opinions at the highest level have grave consequences. What were the consequences of Gonzales's actions? The policies for which Gonzales provided a cover of legality - views which he expressly reasserted in his Senate confirmation hearings - inexorably led to abuses that have undermined military discipline and the moral authority our nation once carried. His actions led directly to documented violations at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and widespread abusive conduct in locales around the world.
Michael Posner of Human Rights First observed: "After the horrific images from Abu Ghraib became public last year, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insisted that the world should 'judge us by our actions [and] watch how a democracy deals with the wrongdoing and with scandal and the pain of acknowledging and correcting our own mistakes.'" We agree. It is because of this that we believe the only proper course of action is for the Senate to reject Alberto Gonzales's nomination for Attorney General. As Posner notes, "[t]he world is indeed watching." Will the Senate condone torture? Will the Senate condone the rejection of the rule of law?
With this nomination, we have arrived at a crossroads as a nation. Now is the time for all citizens of conscience to stand up and take responsibility for what the world saw, and, truly, much that we have not seen, at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. We oppose the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States, and we urge the Senate to reject him.
If you think you have seen this movie before—"Dean Against the Machine"—you have. Ever since the early days of the 2004 presidential campaign, the country doctor from the State of Ben & Jerry has been the agitating principal of a confused, fratricidal and essentially leaderless party. Then, as now, Dean inspired an outside-the-Beltway, Net-based crusade whose shock troops adored his social progressivism and his fearless opposition to war in Iraq. Then, as now, a party establishment—based in Congress, governors' mansions and Georgetown salons—viewed him as a loudmouthed lefty whose visibility would ruin the Democratic brand in Red States. Back then, insiders coalesced around Sen. John Kerry, who was stodgy but, Washington wise guys thought, a safe alternative. They trapped Dean in a crossfire in Iowa; his caucus-night Scream sealed his fate.
But the 477 DNC members who choose the party chair haven't settled on a leader of the 2005 version of the Anybody But Dean movement. For now, the front-running alternative is former congressman Martin Frost of Texas, a pro-labor moderate with a lifetime of traditional organizing who survived 13 terms in Dallas before the GOP redistricted him into oblivion. He's followed by Simon Rosenberg, a young Washington-based fund-raiser and strategist who claims to be as digitized and Net-friendly as Dean—and yet more popular than Dean among the bloggers, who are emerging as new grass-roots powers in the party. Pro-lifer Tim Roemer is also running.
In the meantime, with the DNC meeting approaching on Feb. 12, party insiders have been conducting an urgent, so far fruitless, search for a consensus Dean-stopper. The Clintons don't like Dean on substance or style, seeing him as too left and too loose-lipped. But they're being careful. Hillary, already eying a presidential run in 2008, doesn't want to alienate the possible winner; she's leaving DNC maneuvers to Bill, whose answer last month was to sound out current chairman Terry McAuliffe about remaining in the job. (He declined.) The Clintons are said to have encouraged a good friend, veteran organizer Harold Ickes, to enter the chairman's race, but he begged off, too. Party leaders approached former senator Bob Kerrey, but he told them he would rather keep his job as president of the New School University.
In long black overcoat and matching Resistol cowboy hat, former Wyoming governor Jim Geringer put the night into perspective before the Texas-Wyoming ball. "This is a celebration!" he said. "We believe the country has chosen the right president."
But, added Geringer, this is also a launching party. The president has set the country on a mission "to spread the opportunity for democracy."
Geringer said, "Let's do it. Now is not the time to hesitate."
"We enjoy good fortune," said Geringer's wife, Sherri. "It's time to share."
Though there was no official poem for the occasion, impressionist Rich Little, emceeing the Constitution Ball at the Hilton Washington, did provide a bit of inaugural doggerel.
The gist of it was: "Let's get together, let bitterness pass, I'll hug your elephant, you kiss my ass!" And the crowd went crazy.
Little said he missed and adored the late President Ronald Reagan and "I wish he was here tonight, but as a matter of fact he is," and he proceeded to impersonate Reagan, saying, "You know, somebody asked me, 'Do you think the war on poverty is over?' I said, 'Yes, the poor lost.' " The crowd went wild.
...not only did he [Newt Gingrich] leave wife number-one when she was ill; he did the same with wife number-two. Few people seem to realize that when Gingrich dumped Marianne, his second wife, on Mother's Day in 1999 (half a year after he was forced to resign as Speaker), she was in medical trouble. Eight months earlier, Marianne had been diagnosed with a neurological disorder that could lead to multiple sclerosis. The New York Post's Brian Blomquist reported this in July 2000. But the tidbit seems not to have become part of the Gingrich legend. Imagine the question, though, that could be put to Gingrich as a presidential candidate: You ended your first marriage when your wife had cancer, you divorced your second wife after she was diagnosed with a neurological disorder, can you please tell us what this says about your character and your respect for family values? Do you believe there is a need for an Eleventh Commandment: Thou shall not leave your wife when she is really sick?
Poverty Rate
2000: 11.3% or 31.6 million Americans
2003: 12.5% or 35.9 million Americans
Stock market
Dow Jones Industrial Average
1/19/01: 10,587.59
1/19/05: 10,539.97
NASDAQ
1/19/01: 2,770.38
1/19/05: 2,073.59
S&P 500
1/19/01: 1,342.54
1/19/05: 1,184.63
Value of the Dollar
1/19/01: 1 Dollar = 1.06 Euros
1/19/05: 1 Dollar = 0.77 Euros
Budget
2000 budget surplus $236.4 billion
2004 budget deficit $412.6 billion
That's a shift of $649 billion and doesn't include the cost of the Iraq war.
Cost of the war in Iraq
$150.8 billion
American Casualties in Iraq
Deaths: 1,369
Wounded: 10,252
The Debt
End of 2000: $5.7 trillion
Today: $7.6 trillion
That's a 4 year increase of 33%
MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you something else you said at the National Journal Forum that raised some eyebrows: "Women are living longer relative to men today than they were in 1940. Yet, we never ever have debated gender-adjusting Social Security. ...But, at some point if the age difference continues to separate and more women are in the workforce and you have more of an equality of pay structure in the workforce, at some point somebody might want to suggest that we need to take a look at the question of whether or not actuarially we ought to adjust who gets what, when, and how."
A gender adjustment--what does that mean?
REP. THOMAS: Well, it was one of my ways of getting people to focus on the issue of age. To move from 65 to 68, which we did in 1983, was a benefit cut. But it also creates hardships based upon the occupation that you have, and it creates inequities on who you are and how long you live. You could just as easily have a discussion about occupations as to when would be a fair or an unfair time to require. We also need to examine, frankly, Tim, the question of race in terms of how many years of retirement do you get based upon your race? And you ought not to just leave gender off the table because that would be a factor.
MR. RUSSERT: So if someone is a woman and they live longer, they would get less per year?
REP. THOMAS: It's not that you would do it; it's something that you need to look at. Because if you extend the age beyond 78, if you go to 80 or 82, all of those concerns about race, occupation and gender are exacerbated.
Senate Democrats put off a vote on White House counsel Alberto Gonzales's nomination to be attorney general, complaining he had provided evasive answers to questions about torture and the mistreatment of prisoners. But Gonzales's most surprising answer may have come on a different subject: his role in helping President Bush escape jury duty in a drunken-driving case involving a dancer at an Austin strip club in 1996. The judge and other lawyers in the case last week disputed a written account of the matter provided by Gonzales to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It's a complete misrepresentation," said David Wahlberg, lawyer for the dancer, about Gonzales's account.
Bush's summons to serve as a juror in the drunken-driving case was, in retrospect, a fateful moment in his political career: by getting excused from jury duty he was able to avoid questions that would have required him to disclose his own 1976 arrest and conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) in Kennebunkport, Maine—an incident that didn't become public until the closing days of the 2000 campaign. (Bush, who had publicly declared his willingness to serve, had left blank on his jury questionnaire whether he had ever been "accused" in a criminal case.) Asked by Sen. Patrick Leahy to describe "in detail" the only court appearance he ever made on behalf of Bush, Gonzales—who was then chief counsel to the Texas governor—wrote that he had accompanied Bush the day he went to court "prepared to serve on a jury." While there, Gonzales wrote, he "observed" the defense lawyer make a motion to strike Bush from the jury panel "to which the prosecutor did not object." Asked by the judge whether he had "any views on this," Gonzales recalled, he said he did not.
While Gonzales's account tracks with the official court transcript, it leaves out a key part of what happened that day, according to Travis County Judge David Crain. In separate interviews, Crain—along with Wahlberg and prosecutor John Lastovica—told NEWSWEEK that, before the case began, Gonzales asked to have an off-the-record conference in the judge's chambers. Gonzales then asked Crain to "consider" striking Bush from the jury, making the novel "conflict of interest" argument that the Texas governor might one day be asked to pardon the defendant (who worked at an Austin nightclub called Sugar's), the judge said. "He [Gonzales] raised the issue," Crain said. Crain said he found Gonzales's argument surprising, since it was "extremely unlikely" that a drunken-driving conviction would ever lead to a pardon petition to Bush. But "out of deference" to the governor, Crain said, the other lawyers went along.
Jonathan L. Snare has been named to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Just the guy we would have chosen ourselves, because his background is so relevant.
No, he's not an expert in health or safety, but he used to be the lobbyist for Metabolife, the ephedra diet pill that attracted so much unpleasant attention. Ephedrine was finally barred in 2003 after the Food and Drug Administration decided it had caused 155 deaths.
I guess we're lucky that President Bush didn't put Snare at the FDA. According to The Washington Post, Metabolife spent more than $4 million lobbying the Texas Legislature between 1998 and 2000. Snare was also general counsel to the Republican Party of Texas from 1999 to 2001 and has extensive experience in election law.
How this qualifies him to head OSHA is unclear -- maybe he's a quick learner.
Tony Blankley, editorial page editor of the Washington Times, is a walking museum. His syndicated column regularly retails Soviet-style hymns to the majesty of the state and its Dear Leader, thoughtfully published in pedestrian English prose so as to avoid the necessity of translation.
In his most recent offering, Commissar Blankley opines that investigative reporter Seymour Hersh committed "espionage" by publishing a detailed expose of the Bush administration's plans and preparations for war with Iran. According to Hersh, the administration has been conducting pre-war covert operations inside Iran. Those operations allegedly are being carried out through the Pentagon, rather than by the CIA, in order to avoid congressional oversight. Citing anonymous defense and intelligence sources, Hersh predicts that as many as ten nations might be on the list of possible U.S. military targets.
Many neo-conservative (or, more accurately put, neo-Trotskyite) commentators have dismissed Hersh's account as ideologically inspired speculation. The Pentagon has done likewise. But Blankley suggests, in all seriousness, that the veteran reporter – who compiled an impressive track record with a recent string of scoops regarding Abu Ghraib and related outrages – should be arraigned, and face possible execution, as an enemy spy.
Pontificates Blankley: "Title 18 of the United States Code (Section 794, subsection [b]) prohibits anyone 'in time of war, with the intent that the same shall be communicated to the enemy [from publishing] any information with respect to the movement, numbers, or disposition of any of the Armed Forces … of the United States … or supposed plans or conduct of any … military operations … or any other information relating to the public defense, which might be useful to the enemy." If found guilty, the accused faces "death or imprisonment for any term of years or for life."
"I am not an expert on these federal code sections," he continues. "But a common sense reading of their language would suggest, at the least, that federal prosecutors should review the information disclosed by Mr. Hersh to determine whether or not his conduct falls within the proscribed conduct of the state." Contending that Hersh's article has a "potentially lethal effect" on the Bush administration's effort to prosecute the "War on Terror," Blankley excoriates the "Washington political class" for its lack of zeal in dealing with the reporter. This reflects "a bad case of creeping normalcy," grouses Commissar Blankley, and because of our indifference we are "sleepwalking toward the abyss."
Before assuming his august post at the Washington Times, Blankley was an attorney and a top aide to disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Thus it's a touch disingenuous for him to affect mystification over the language of the U.S. Code. But even granting that he finds the statute in question ambiguous, there four key words that should clarify the matter: "In time of war."
Here's another critically important legal passage whose meaning is so clear that not even Commissar Blankley can miss it: "The Congress shall have the power … to declare war." Thus states Article One, Section 8, paragraph 11 of the U.S. Constitution. It is Congress, not the president or any of his subordinates, who places our nation in a state of war. As Alexander Hamilton – hardly an advocate of minimalist executive power – put it in a 1793 essay: "It is the province and duty of the Executive to preserve to the Nation the blessings of peace. The Legislature alone can interrupt those blessings, by placing the Nation in a state of War."
Simply put, our nation is not legally at war. Congress did not declare war on Iraq, and hasn't taken action of any kind regarding military action against Iran. The Bush administration, like Blankley, affects to find some ambiguity in the constitutional assignment of war powers, but the meaning of the language is utterly plain to honest people of even modest intelligence.
As the Rosenberg case illustrates, those who spy on behalf of foreign power in peacetime can be prosecuted, convicted, and executed as spies. But Blankely isn't accusing Hersh of doing this. He's not accusing the journalist of "communicating with the enemy," but of informing the public about military activities undertaken against a government with which we are not at war. Some who support the Bush administration's "war on terrorism" might contend that the moral difference between these cases is a matter of degree, not kind. But in any case, the legal distinction here is clear-cut: If Congress hasn't declared war, the espionage statute cannot be applied regarding Hersh's writings.
But Blankley, like many Republican-aligned pundits, insists that such constitutional questions have been rendered moot by the extraordinary times in which we live – and that George W. Bush, as the epitome of political goodness, is a man to whom we can entrust exceptional powers. Even if the latter were true, Mr. Bush will not occupy the Oval Office indefinitely, unless he plans to become President-for-Life, which would suit many of his most fervent supporters just fine. But even among such company, Blankley has distinguished himself as an unabashed exponent of a Soviet-style view of state power.
In the past four years churchgoing Americans have grown increasingly intolerant of politicians making compromises on such issues as abortion and gay rights, according to a survey released yesterday.
At the same time, those polled said they were growing bolder about pushing their beliefs on others, even risking offending people.
Rage and fury has gripped this tsunami-hit tiny Hindu village in India's southern Tamil Nadu after a group of Christian missionaries allegedly refused them aid for not agreeing to follow their religion.
Samanthapettai, near the temple town of Madurai, faced near devastation on the December 26 when massive tidal waves wiped it clean of homes and lives.
Most of the 200 people here are homeless or displaced , battling to rebuild lives and locating lost family members besides facing risks of epidemic,disease and trauma.
Jubilant at seeing the relief trucks loaded with food, clothes and the much-needed medicines the villagers, many of who have not had a square meal in days, were shocked when the nuns asked them to convert before distributing biscuits and water.
Heated arguments broke out as the locals forcibly tried to stop the relief trucks from leaving. The missionaries, who rushed into their cars on seeing television reporters and the cameras refusing to comment on the incident and managed to leave the village.
Disappointed and shocked into disbelief the hapless villagers still await aid.
"Many NGOs (volunteer groups) are extending help to us but there in our village the NGO, which was till now helping us is now asking us to follow the Christian religion. We are staunch followers of Hindu religion and refused their request. And after that these people with their aid materials are leaving the village without distributing that to us," Rajni Kumar, a villager said.
The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his "near total dependence on CIA" for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces.
Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places they declined to name. According to an early planning memorandum to Rumsfeld from Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the focus of the intelligence initiative is on "emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia." Myers and his staff declined to be interviewed.
The Strategic Support Branch was created to provide Rumsfeld with independent tools for the "full spectrum of humint operations," according to an internal account of its origin and mission. Human intelligence operations, a term used in counterpoint to technical means such as satellite photography, range from interrogation of prisoners and scouting of targets in wartime to the peacetime recruitment of foreign spies. A recent Pentagon memo states that recruited agents may include "notorious figures" whose links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed.
"...corporate leaders at companies as diverse as News Corp., Marriott International and Time Warner can profit by selling red-state consumers the very material that red-state culture is supposed to despise. Those elites then funnel the proceeds to the GOP, which in turn has used the money to successfully convince red-state voters that the other political party is solely responsible for the decline of the civilization."
The Republican National Committee apparently paid a Virginia networking firm to buy BushCheated.com on their behalf, RAW STORY has learned.
A representative for Network Solutions, LLC confirmed that they registered sites for the Republican National Committee. When asked if they registered BushCheated.com on behalf of the party, she said, “Yeah, then we probably did.”
A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee declined to comment and said they would return the call.
The domain, which has no content, was likely registered to prevent others from setting up a website at the address.
“Campaigns have been doing this since 2000 to protect themselves,” a Democratic Internet consultant, who asked to remain anonymous, said.
The consultant noted that the Bush campaign registered various derivatives of “Bush sucks” during the 2000 campaign.
Asked why the RNC registered the site in April 2003, the consultant said they probably had registered the site when the original registrant’s control of the domain expired.
A register.com lookup for the registrant of
BushCheated.com produces the following result.
Registrant: Make this info private
Republican National Committee (VAVFGNVHZO)
310 First Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
US
Phone: 202-863-8670
Domain Name: BUSHCHEATED.COM
Administrative Contact :
Republican National Committee (VAVFGNVHZO)
gopdomains@rnchq.org
310 First Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
US
Phone: 202-863-8670
Technical Contact :
Network Solutions, LLC. (HOST-ORG)
customerservice@networksolutions.com
13200 Woodland Park Drive
Herndon, VA 20171-3025
US
Phone: 1-888-642-9675
Fax: 571-434-4620
Record expires on 08-Apr-2005
Record created on 08-Apr-2003
Database last updated on 09-Jul-2004
Domain servers in listed order: Manage DNS
NS29.WORLDNIC.COM 216.168.228.17
NS30.WORLDNIC.COM 216.168.225.160
Show underlying registry data for this record
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