by Bill Press
I have a new hero: Senator Russ Feingold.
He’s the only Democrat in the Senate with balls. And he proved it by introducing a resolution to censure President Bush over his illegal NSA wiretapping.
Now, here’s what I don’t get. You expect those knee-jerk Republicans to line behind Bush and attack Feingold.
But what happened to the Democrats?
Once he called for censuring President Bush, Democrats ran away from Feingold faster than cockroaches running away from Tom Delay.
Why? What are they afraid of?
This is not complicated. Did Bush break the law? Yes! Does he deserve censure? Yes! So do it!
Instead, Democrats gave all kinds of bogus reasons for abandoning Feingold.
Some said: We should have an investigation first. Ca ca! Surely, they must know: Republicans have said they will block any such investigation.
Others said: It sends the wrong message? Say what? Wrong message? What’s wrong with telling the world we expect even the president to obey the law?
And still others said: Censuring the president for spying on Americans without a court order makes Democrats look too mean.
They’ve got it backwards. Refusing to hold Bush responsible, kissing Bush’s ass, makes Democrats look too soft.
And, besides, Republicans impeached – not censured, remember: impeached! – Bill Clinton for a hell of a lot less.
Come on, Democrats. Stand up with Russ Feingold. Censure President Bush. Show some backbone. Please! Just this once!
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Feingold Accuses Senate Democrats of "Cowering" To Bush
Sen. Feingold said the following to Fox News’ Trish Turner:
"I’m amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president’s numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide. … Too many Democrats are going to do the same thing they did in 2000 and 2004. In the face of this, they’ll say we’d better just focus on domestic issues. … [Democrats shouldn’t] cower to the argument, that whatever you do, if you question the administration, you’re helping the terrorists."
"I’m amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president’s numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide. … Too many Democrats are going to do the same thing they did in 2000 and 2004. In the face of this, they’ll say we’d better just focus on domestic issues. … [Democrats shouldn’t] cower to the argument, that whatever you do, if you question the administration, you’re helping the terrorists."
No-Balls Democrats Dither
washingtonpost.com
A Senate Maverick Acts to Force an Issue
Democrat Feingold's Motion to Censure the President Roils Both Parties
By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 15, 2006; A01
For months the Democrats have resisted calls from their liberal base to more aggressively challenge President Bush. Now a maverick Democratic senator from Wisconsin has forced his party and Congress to confront head-on the question of whether Bush should somehow be punished for secretly ordering warrantless wiretaps of U.S. citizens.
Sen. Russell Feingold's call this week to formally censure Bush for what some say was a clear violation of a federal statute regulating domestic surveillance has touched off a fierce debate on Capitol Hill that is likely to persist throughout the congressional campaign season.
GOP leaders who had been reeling from the impact of Republican political scandals, an unpopular war and Bush's mishandling of the port-security issue sensed that Feingold overplayed his hand and denounced the censure resolution as a political stunt by an ambitious lawmaker positioning himself to run for president in 2008. Many Democrats, while sympathetic to Feingold's maneuver, appeared to be distancing themselves from his resolution yesterday, wary of polls showing that a majority of Americans side with the president on wiretapping tactics.
Feingold, 53, says he is convinced that Bush broke the law in ordering National Security Agency wiretaps of overseas telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens that involved people suspected of terrorist activities without first obtaining special court approval, and that his party must take a firm stand in protest. Unless Democrats make the case that they are more trustworthy than Republicans on national security issues, Feingold says, the party cannot win control of the White House or Congress.
"We have a great case that they have done a poor job of fighting the war against terrorism," Feingold said of the Republicans in an interview yesterday. "We need a different strategy, one that shows we stand for something."
Feingold's resolution, formally introduced Monday, would censure Bush for approving an "illegal program to spy on American citizens on American soil." The senator's intention was to refer the matter to the Judiciary Committee for hearings and a vote before consideration by the full Senate. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) tried to force an immediate vote, to put the Democrats on the spot, but Democratic leaders objected, and for now the censure measure appears to be stalled.
Censure, or official Senate condemnation, is a rare tool that has been used against only one president -- Andrew Jackson, in March 1834. Jackson ignored the censure, and it was expunged three years later. Censuring is a symbolic act compared with impeachment -- an indictment by the House permitted under the Constitution, which, if approved, leads to a Senate vote on acquittal or removal from office. Feingold has not called for Bush's impeachment, although the senator called the wiretapping case "right in the strike zone of the concept of high crimes and misdemeanors."
In the past two years, liberal groups have urged Congress to take action against Bush for various alleged misdeeds in the waging of war in Iraq and efforts to combat terrorism. In February 2004, MoveOn.org and other liberal groups called for Bush's censure because he used what proved to be false intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in justifying the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Last December, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) called for an investigation of the administration's prewar use of intelligence and offered motions to censure Bush and Vice President Cheney for failing to respond to Democratic inquiries about the planning and execution of the war. Feingold's censure motion specifically addresses the issue of illegal wiretaps.
Republicans seized on Feingold's presidential ambitions as the motivation behind his bid. Feingold "should be ashamed of this political ploy," said Frist, who also has presidential ambitions.
Democratic views were mixed . Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) dismissed the proposed censure as "getting way down the road on this issue." When asked on NBC's "Today" show yesterday morning whether Feingold was "grandstanding for 2008," Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), himself a 2008 prospect and a leading Democratic voice on foreign policy, replied: "No, I think it's more of an intense frustration. Do any of you in the news media or any of us have any idea what the president is doing?"
Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said he hoped the Feingold measure would spur the intelligence committee to complete an investigation of the wiretapping program, to determine whether Bush broke the law. "Senator Feingold is a man of principle," said Reid. "I think that people should cool their jets and let the process takes its course."
When Feingold first ran for the Senate in 1992, he was much the same person he is today: a Democratic outsider and iconoclast and a darling of progressives.
While other Democrats speak more colorfully, or show up more often on television, Feingold has carved a niche as one of the least-predictable senators. As he contemplates a presidential bid, he is emerging as an anti-establishment maverick, a blend of Howard Dean, John McCain and the late Wisconsin progressive senator William Proxmire.
The Rhodes scholar and Harvard Law School graduate was elected at age 29 to the Wisconsin legislature, defeating an incumbent by a handful of votes. He turned back two better-known Democratic challengers in the 1992 Senate primary by ignoring their mudslinging and running humorous ads, including one in which he conducted a tour of his Madison area home, noting the closet space and saying, "Look, no skeletons."
Feingold has shown little of that humor in the Senate. He rarely engages in small talk with colleagues and is so independent that fellow Democrats rarely seek his help in legislative battles or include him in public events. He irritated many colleagues in his long crusade for campaign finance reform, which Democrats feared would put them at a fundraising disadvantage; by his opposition to dropping all charges against President Bill Clinton during impeachment proceedings; and with his support for the confirmation of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
But it is Feingold's national security views that have stirred the most controversy, vaulting him into the national spotlight. Before the censure bid, he was the first Senate Democrat to call for a troop withdrawal from Iraq, and he waged a solo filibuster against the renewal of the USA Patriot Act.
The left wing of the party has greeted Feingold's censure call ecstatically. He was the front-runner in a Jan. 31 survey of 2008 presidential candidates by the liberal blog Daily Kos. Feingold garnered 30 percent support among the more than 11,000 respondents, eclipsing retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who dropped to second place after leading in the previous five bimonthly polls.
Feingold said he is "extremely pleased with the way this is going." He said he is particularly buoyed the barrage of criticism from Republicans. "If such a crazy idea has such limited appeal, why do they have the attack dogs calling all over the country about this?" Feingold asked. "It touches a nerve."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
A Senate Maverick Acts to Force an Issue
Democrat Feingold's Motion to Censure the President Roils Both Parties
By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 15, 2006; A01
For months the Democrats have resisted calls from their liberal base to more aggressively challenge President Bush. Now a maverick Democratic senator from Wisconsin has forced his party and Congress to confront head-on the question of whether Bush should somehow be punished for secretly ordering warrantless wiretaps of U.S. citizens.
Sen. Russell Feingold's call this week to formally censure Bush for what some say was a clear violation of a federal statute regulating domestic surveillance has touched off a fierce debate on Capitol Hill that is likely to persist throughout the congressional campaign season.
GOP leaders who had been reeling from the impact of Republican political scandals, an unpopular war and Bush's mishandling of the port-security issue sensed that Feingold overplayed his hand and denounced the censure resolution as a political stunt by an ambitious lawmaker positioning himself to run for president in 2008. Many Democrats, while sympathetic to Feingold's maneuver, appeared to be distancing themselves from his resolution yesterday, wary of polls showing that a majority of Americans side with the president on wiretapping tactics.
Feingold, 53, says he is convinced that Bush broke the law in ordering National Security Agency wiretaps of overseas telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens that involved people suspected of terrorist activities without first obtaining special court approval, and that his party must take a firm stand in protest. Unless Democrats make the case that they are more trustworthy than Republicans on national security issues, Feingold says, the party cannot win control of the White House or Congress.
"We have a great case that they have done a poor job of fighting the war against terrorism," Feingold said of the Republicans in an interview yesterday. "We need a different strategy, one that shows we stand for something."
Feingold's resolution, formally introduced Monday, would censure Bush for approving an "illegal program to spy on American citizens on American soil." The senator's intention was to refer the matter to the Judiciary Committee for hearings and a vote before consideration by the full Senate. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) tried to force an immediate vote, to put the Democrats on the spot, but Democratic leaders objected, and for now the censure measure appears to be stalled.
Censure, or official Senate condemnation, is a rare tool that has been used against only one president -- Andrew Jackson, in March 1834. Jackson ignored the censure, and it was expunged three years later. Censuring is a symbolic act compared with impeachment -- an indictment by the House permitted under the Constitution, which, if approved, leads to a Senate vote on acquittal or removal from office. Feingold has not called for Bush's impeachment, although the senator called the wiretapping case "right in the strike zone of the concept of high crimes and misdemeanors."
In the past two years, liberal groups have urged Congress to take action against Bush for various alleged misdeeds in the waging of war in Iraq and efforts to combat terrorism. In February 2004, MoveOn.org and other liberal groups called for Bush's censure because he used what proved to be false intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in justifying the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Last December, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) called for an investigation of the administration's prewar use of intelligence and offered motions to censure Bush and Vice President Cheney for failing to respond to Democratic inquiries about the planning and execution of the war. Feingold's censure motion specifically addresses the issue of illegal wiretaps.
Republicans seized on Feingold's presidential ambitions as the motivation behind his bid. Feingold "should be ashamed of this political ploy," said Frist, who also has presidential ambitions.
Democratic views were mixed . Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) dismissed the proposed censure as "getting way down the road on this issue." When asked on NBC's "Today" show yesterday morning whether Feingold was "grandstanding for 2008," Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), himself a 2008 prospect and a leading Democratic voice on foreign policy, replied: "No, I think it's more of an intense frustration. Do any of you in the news media or any of us have any idea what the president is doing?"
Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said he hoped the Feingold measure would spur the intelligence committee to complete an investigation of the wiretapping program, to determine whether Bush broke the law. "Senator Feingold is a man of principle," said Reid. "I think that people should cool their jets and let the process takes its course."
When Feingold first ran for the Senate in 1992, he was much the same person he is today: a Democratic outsider and iconoclast and a darling of progressives.
While other Democrats speak more colorfully, or show up more often on television, Feingold has carved a niche as one of the least-predictable senators. As he contemplates a presidential bid, he is emerging as an anti-establishment maverick, a blend of Howard Dean, John McCain and the late Wisconsin progressive senator William Proxmire.
The Rhodes scholar and Harvard Law School graduate was elected at age 29 to the Wisconsin legislature, defeating an incumbent by a handful of votes. He turned back two better-known Democratic challengers in the 1992 Senate primary by ignoring their mudslinging and running humorous ads, including one in which he conducted a tour of his Madison area home, noting the closet space and saying, "Look, no skeletons."
Feingold has shown little of that humor in the Senate. He rarely engages in small talk with colleagues and is so independent that fellow Democrats rarely seek his help in legislative battles or include him in public events. He irritated many colleagues in his long crusade for campaign finance reform, which Democrats feared would put them at a fundraising disadvantage; by his opposition to dropping all charges against President Bill Clinton during impeachment proceedings; and with his support for the confirmation of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
But it is Feingold's national security views that have stirred the most controversy, vaulting him into the national spotlight. Before the censure bid, he was the first Senate Democrat to call for a troop withdrawal from Iraq, and he waged a solo filibuster against the renewal of the USA Patriot Act.
The left wing of the party has greeted Feingold's censure call ecstatically. He was the front-runner in a Jan. 31 survey of 2008 presidential candidates by the liberal blog Daily Kos. Feingold garnered 30 percent support among the more than 11,000 respondents, eclipsing retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who dropped to second place after leading in the previous five bimonthly polls.
Feingold said he is "extremely pleased with the way this is going." He said he is particularly buoyed the barrage of criticism from Republicans. "If such a crazy idea has such limited appeal, why do they have the attack dogs calling all over the country about this?" Feingold asked. "It touches a nerve."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Fw: House Vote on Iraq War Wednesday or Thursday - FCNL
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kathy Guthrie" <kathyguthrie@fcnl.org>
To: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2006 5:11 PM
Subject: House Vote on Iraq War Wednesday or Thursday - FCNL
Your representative will have an opportunity this week to vote in favor
of legislation banning permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq. Rep Tom
Allen (ME) will introduce an amendment to the Iraq war supplemental
funding bill stating that no funds in that measure may be spent to
build permanent U.S. bases in Iraq. The Allen legislation would
essentially put FCNL's Iraq STEP Resolution into law. To read more
about the STEP Resolution visit
http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=1353&issue_id=35
This could be the best opportunity yet to change U.S. policy in Iraq,
but we have to act in the next 24 to 48 hours. Please call your
representative now to ask for his or her support. If you can, please
forward this email to five other people who might make similar calls.
*Take Action Now*
Please call your representative's Washington, DC office today. Ask that
she or he vote in favor of an Allen amendment to ensure that funds will
not be spent on permanent bases in Iraq.
Use FCNL's web site to find your representative's phone number and
talking points to help you make your call. . You can also call the
Captiol Switchboard directly at 202-224-3121 and ask for your
representative by name.
*Background*
The administration is requesting $65 billion in additional funding this
year to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Debate on the fiscal
year 2006 (FY06) supplemental appropriations bill, which contains this
request, will begin on the House floor tomorrow, Wednesday, March 15.
FCNL opposes this supplemental funding legislation, but we expect it
will pass by a large majority. Rep. Allen has been a strong supporter
of FCNL's Sensible Transition to Enduring Peace (STEP) proposal. The
amendment that Rep. Allen is proposing is intended to block the
establishment of permanent U.S. bases in Iraq. The amendment states
simply: "None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made
available by this Act may be obligated or expended to construct
facilities for the permanent basing of United States Armed Forces in
Iraq."
Rep. Allen has asked FCNL and other groups for help to secure quick
grassroots calls to members of the House asking their support. Please
call today.
We expect that a number of other amendments aimed at restricting or
conditioning funds for the war in Iraq will also be offered to the Iraq
war supplemental funding request. Some members may oppose the measure
altogether because of the large amount of additional funding contained
in the bill for the war in Iraq. Ask your representative to vote in
favor of all measures that would bring a swift end to this costly and
explosive conflict.
*The beginning of the Iraq debate in Congress*
The House vote on the Iraq war supplemental funding legislation is the
first of several votes on U.S. policy in Iraq that may happen in the
next month. The Senate will begin voting on the Iraq war supplemental
at the end of March, right after senators return from the St. Patrick's
Day recess.
Your senators will be back in their home districts next week for the
St. Patrick's Day recess (March 18 - 26). This is an ideal time to
lobby your senators on Iraq. Take a group from your meeting, church, or
organization to a St. Patrick's Day event that your senators will also
attend. Hold up "War Is Not the Answer" signs
(http://www.fcnl.org/pdfs/wina_yardsign.pdf) and hand out FCNL's
special 3rd Anniversary of the Iraq War flier "No More Money for
Iraq War" (http://www.fcnl.org/pdfs/iraq/mar06flyer.pdf).
_______________________________________
The Next Step for Iraq: Join FCNL's Iraq Campaign, http://www.fcnl.org/iraq/
Contact Congress and the Administration:
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bumper stickers and yard signs:
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We seek a world free of war and the threat of war
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We seek a community where every person's potential may be fulfilled
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Africa's Brutal Lebensraum
The New York Times
March 14, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
BILDIQ, Chad
The villagers in this hamlet of thatch-roof mud huts told me that they had shot dead a member of the brutal janjaweed militia and pointed to his body. I walked over to look at the corpse — and his eyes opened.
He was a teenager, perhaps 16, shot down as he and four other raiders attacked this village along the Chad-Sudan border. Most of these villages near the town of Adé are unarmed, and it is easy for members of the Arab janjaweed to kill, rape and pillage with impunity, while yelling racial epithets against the black African tribes they attack. But someone in this village had an AK-47 and used it to fend off the attack.
The boy on the ground was slight and wearing old and filthy clothes. He followed me with his eyes for 10 seconds and then closed them, moaning softly. He had been shot in the waist and could not move.
The janjaweed are the brutes, armed and paid by the Sudanese government, who have engaged in a genocidal campaign to destroy villages of African tribes in the Darfur region of Sudan. Now Sudan, encouraged by the feebleness of the international community's response, is expanding the genocide by sending the raiders to attack the same tribes in neighboring Chad.
The villagers vowed not to kill the boy (they were indignant that I thought they might), and promised to turn him over to the government. And then they showed me someone still more interesting: another captured janjaweed youth who was able to tell his story.
This young man was tied up, not particularly harshly, in a hut. He had a bloody gash on his forehead where he had been hit with a machete, and it seemed he might lose his eye, but he was easily able to answer questions.
"My name is Isak Muhammad," he began. "I am 21 years old."
Mr. Isak was not driven by racist abhorrence for the Wadai tribe of this village, for he is a Wadai himself. He said a militia leader had simply promised the raiders $250 if they succeeded in killing the sheik, as a way to terrorize villagers and drive them away.
Where did the militia leader get his money? Almost certainly from the Sudanese government.
The Sudanese authorities may not have the money to feed their people, but they are spending lavishly on arming proxy forces to invade Chad, in hopes of destabilizing tribes and installing a pro-Sudanese pawn as the leader of Chad.
So the genocide is not just driven by hatred, but also by opportunistic mercenaries. Consider the founder of the janjaweed, Sheik Musa Hilal, a ferocious Arab nationalist who has shown particular vigor in slaughtering members of the Zaghawa tribe. According to a longtime acquaintance of Mr. Musa, the sheik's own mother is Zaghawa.
As in Rwanda or even during the Holocaust, racist ideologies sometimes disguise greed, insecurity and other pathologies. Indeed, one of the genocide's aims is to drive away African tribes to achieve what Hitler called Lebensraum: "living space" for nomadic Arabs and their camels.
So this village is simply a window into an entire region drenched in fear. Men walk about carrying homemade spears and machetes, and parents tie amulets around their children's necks.
As we left the village, I met a search party looking for six men who had disappeared after an attack by other raiders. "We heard gunshots over there a couple of minutes ago," said one man, pointing to a nearby hill. "We'll wait two hours and then go over and see who was shot."
As the local county leader, Saudi Hassan, puts it, "The janjaweed are using humans as targets — they kill a person as if he were a chicken." Whether the offenders are Nazis or Hutu extremists or Sudan's janjaweed, that is a crime not only against the victims but also against all humanity. You can get ideas about what you can do at www.savedarfur.org, the Web site of the Save Darfur Coalition, which is planning a major rally on the Washington Mall on April 30.
It is brutally demoralizing for people in these villages to be hunted down as if they were wild beasts, to have their children pulled from their arms and thrown into burning huts. But we should be just as demoralized by our own indifference. The shame belongs not to the good people of Darfur and Chad, but to ourselves.
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
March 14, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
BILDIQ, Chad
The villagers in this hamlet of thatch-roof mud huts told me that they had shot dead a member of the brutal janjaweed militia and pointed to his body. I walked over to look at the corpse — and his eyes opened.
He was a teenager, perhaps 16, shot down as he and four other raiders attacked this village along the Chad-Sudan border. Most of these villages near the town of Adé are unarmed, and it is easy for members of the Arab janjaweed to kill, rape and pillage with impunity, while yelling racial epithets against the black African tribes they attack. But someone in this village had an AK-47 and used it to fend off the attack.
The boy on the ground was slight and wearing old and filthy clothes. He followed me with his eyes for 10 seconds and then closed them, moaning softly. He had been shot in the waist and could not move.
The janjaweed are the brutes, armed and paid by the Sudanese government, who have engaged in a genocidal campaign to destroy villages of African tribes in the Darfur region of Sudan. Now Sudan, encouraged by the feebleness of the international community's response, is expanding the genocide by sending the raiders to attack the same tribes in neighboring Chad.
The villagers vowed not to kill the boy (they were indignant that I thought they might), and promised to turn him over to the government. And then they showed me someone still more interesting: another captured janjaweed youth who was able to tell his story.
This young man was tied up, not particularly harshly, in a hut. He had a bloody gash on his forehead where he had been hit with a machete, and it seemed he might lose his eye, but he was easily able to answer questions.
"My name is Isak Muhammad," he began. "I am 21 years old."
Mr. Isak was not driven by racist abhorrence for the Wadai tribe of this village, for he is a Wadai himself. He said a militia leader had simply promised the raiders $250 if they succeeded in killing the sheik, as a way to terrorize villagers and drive them away.
Where did the militia leader get his money? Almost certainly from the Sudanese government.
The Sudanese authorities may not have the money to feed their people, but they are spending lavishly on arming proxy forces to invade Chad, in hopes of destabilizing tribes and installing a pro-Sudanese pawn as the leader of Chad.
So the genocide is not just driven by hatred, but also by opportunistic mercenaries. Consider the founder of the janjaweed, Sheik Musa Hilal, a ferocious Arab nationalist who has shown particular vigor in slaughtering members of the Zaghawa tribe. According to a longtime acquaintance of Mr. Musa, the sheik's own mother is Zaghawa.
As in Rwanda or even during the Holocaust, racist ideologies sometimes disguise greed, insecurity and other pathologies. Indeed, one of the genocide's aims is to drive away African tribes to achieve what Hitler called Lebensraum: "living space" for nomadic Arabs and their camels.
So this village is simply a window into an entire region drenched in fear. Men walk about carrying homemade spears and machetes, and parents tie amulets around their children's necks.
As we left the village, I met a search party looking for six men who had disappeared after an attack by other raiders. "We heard gunshots over there a couple of minutes ago," said one man, pointing to a nearby hill. "We'll wait two hours and then go over and see who was shot."
As the local county leader, Saudi Hassan, puts it, "The janjaweed are using humans as targets — they kill a person as if he were a chicken." Whether the offenders are Nazis or Hutu extremists or Sudan's janjaweed, that is a crime not only against the victims but also against all humanity. You can get ideas about what you can do at www.savedarfur.org, the Web site of the Save Darfur Coalition, which is planning a major rally on the Washington Mall on April 30.
It is brutally demoralizing for people in these villages to be hunted down as if they were wild beasts, to have their children pulled from their arms and thrown into burning huts. But we should be just as demoralized by our own indifference. The shame belongs not to the good people of Darfur and Chad, but to ourselves.
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
Scott McClellan and the straw man
by Tim Grieve
There's arguing and then there's lying. As Glenn Greenwald notes today, Scott McClellan has just crossed that line.
Asked about Russ Feingold's plan to introduce a resolution censuring George W. Bush for instituting a warrantless spying program and then misleading the country about its existence, the White House press secretary said: "I think it does raise the question, 'How do you fight and win the war on terrorism?' And if Democrats want to argue that we shouldn't be listening to al-Qaida communications, it's their right and we welcome the debate. We are a nation at war."
We didn't catch McClellan's press briefing today, but we sure hope some enterprising reporter asked him to name one Democrat -- just one -- who is arguing that the government "shouldn't be listening to al-Qaida communications." We haven't heard any Democrat make that argument, and indeed Feingold himself has said exactly the opposite. In a statement issued by his office Sunday, the Wisconsin Democrat said: "This issue is not about whether the government should be wiretapping terrorists -- of course it should, and it can under current law."
The issue, as Feingold frames it, is whether the president should be free to break the law and lie to the people who elected him. If Republicans like McClellan want to make that argument, it's their right, and the Democrats ought to welcome the debate. We are a nation at war, but it's a war premised -- at least now and then -- on the notion that democracy is better than dictatorship.
There's arguing and then there's lying. As Glenn Greenwald notes today, Scott McClellan has just crossed that line.
Asked about Russ Feingold's plan to introduce a resolution censuring George W. Bush for instituting a warrantless spying program and then misleading the country about its existence, the White House press secretary said: "I think it does raise the question, 'How do you fight and win the war on terrorism?' And if Democrats want to argue that we shouldn't be listening to al-Qaida communications, it's their right and we welcome the debate. We are a nation at war."
We didn't catch McClellan's press briefing today, but we sure hope some enterprising reporter asked him to name one Democrat -- just one -- who is arguing that the government "shouldn't be listening to al-Qaida communications." We haven't heard any Democrat make that argument, and indeed Feingold himself has said exactly the opposite. In a statement issued by his office Sunday, the Wisconsin Democrat said: "This issue is not about whether the government should be wiretapping terrorists -- of course it should, and it can under current law."
The issue, as Feingold frames it, is whether the president should be free to break the law and lie to the people who elected him. If Republicans like McClellan want to make that argument, it's their right, and the Democrats ought to welcome the debate. We are a nation at war, but it's a war premised -- at least now and then -- on the notion that democracy is better than dictatorship.
Fishing for a Pretext in Iran
by Juan Cole
Juan Cole is a regular contributor to Truthdig.com, where this article was originally published.
Iran threatened last week to use the oil weapon if the United Nations Security Council imposes sanctions on the country because of its nuclear research program, promising "harm and pain" to the United States.
In addition to consumer anxieties about oil prices, rumors of a planned U.S. or Israeli airstrike on Iran keep flying, and neighboring Iraqi Shiites have threatened reprisals if that is done to their brethren. What is driving the crisis between the Bush administration and Iran and ratcheting up the rhetoric?
Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi said on Friday, "If sanctions are imposed, we will definitely use the oil tool and other tools and we will stop at nothing." The regime is clearly fearful of an international economic boycott, but feels it has its own advantages in the struggle. With increasing demand from India and China and instability in Nigeria and Iraq, Iran's crude oil exports are important in maintaining an affordable price, especially in the winters. In some ways, by invading Iraq and destabilizing it, as well as fostering the rise of Shiite religious parties in Baghdad, the Bush administration has inadvertently strengthened Shiite Iran's hand.
Click here to read the rest.
Juan Cole is a regular contributor to Truthdig.com, where this article was originally published.
Iran threatened last week to use the oil weapon if the United Nations Security Council imposes sanctions on the country because of its nuclear research program, promising "harm and pain" to the United States.
In addition to consumer anxieties about oil prices, rumors of a planned U.S. or Israeli airstrike on Iran keep flying, and neighboring Iraqi Shiites have threatened reprisals if that is done to their brethren. What is driving the crisis between the Bush administration and Iran and ratcheting up the rhetoric?
Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi said on Friday, "If sanctions are imposed, we will definitely use the oil tool and other tools and we will stop at nothing." The regime is clearly fearful of an international economic boycott, but feels it has its own advantages in the struggle. With increasing demand from India and China and instability in Nigeria and Iraq, Iran's crude oil exports are important in maintaining an affordable price, especially in the winters. In some ways, by invading Iraq and destabilizing it, as well as fostering the rise of Shiite religious parties in Baghdad, the Bush administration has inadvertently strengthened Shiite Iran's hand.
Click here to read the rest.
It's Regime Change, Again
Published on Monday, March 13, 2006 by TomPaine.com
by Tom Porteous
Make no mistake. The current posture and policy of the United States are leading inexorably towards a military showdown with Iran that could have profoundly negative consequences for Iran, for the region and for the United States.
For all the studied vagueness and ambiguity of senior United States and European officials, for all the talk of a long diplomatic process, of economic sanctions and political isolation, at the end of this road lies the opening of another front in America's "Long War."
The Egyptian IAEA chief, Mohammed ElBaradei, implicitly acknowledged the high risks at stake when he appealed to both Western and Iranian leaders on March 7 to "lower the rhetoric" and adopt a "cool-headed approach." But, as the Iranian dossier now moves to the U.N. Security Council, there is little sign of such an approach either in Tehran or in Washington.
"The Iranian regime needs to know," Dick Cheney told the annual policy conference of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington on March 7, "that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose meaningful consequences. For our part, the United States is keeping all options on the table in addressing the irresponsible conduct of the regime. And we join other nations in sending that regime a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."
Pressed by reporters on whether Cheney's "meaningful consequences" meant military action, hapless White House press spokesman Scott McClellan insisted that the vice president was merely "stating our policy".
But Cheney's message, delivered with symbolic, if not verbal, precision against the backdrop of a massive graphic of the Israeli national flag merging into the Stars and Stripes, was clear enough: the United States will use military force if diplomacy and economic pressure do not persuade the Iranian government to back down.
Two days later, on March 9, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice further raised the temperature, reiterating her claim that Iran is the Middle East's "central banker for terrorism."
"We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," she said, "whose policies are directed at developing a Middle East that would be 180 degrees different than the Middle East that we would like to see develop."
The problem with the United States' confrontational approach to Iran is that it is based on a misreading of the internal situation in Iran and on an over-confident assessment of the strategic position of the United States in the region in the aftermath of the U.S. military invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Diplomatic pressure, far from bringing about a change of heart in Tehran, is already strengthening the domestic political position of the hardliners around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and reinforcing their determination to press ahead with their nuclear enrichment plans in defiance of the United States, Europe and Israel. Furthermore, President Bush's nuclear deal with India has significantly undermined the diplomatic argument against Iran by blowing a hole in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Because of the size of Iran's shadow economy and its relative economic self-sufficiency, any economic sanctions against Iran will be ineffective and could further bolster the hardliners' internal political standing. Furthermore, as Iranian officials have pointed out, Iran's status as a major oil producer means that it is in a position to retaliate to economic sanctions in kind, pushing up the price of oil.
The scarcely veiled threat of U.S. military action is no more likely to deter Iran's hardliners. Ahmadinejad calculates, correctly, that a full-scale invasion of Iran is out of the question and that United States or Israeli air strikes would simply help to strengthen Iran's political position in the region and provide a pretext for further consolidation at home (e.g. a crackdown on political opponents). Furthermore, Iran could respond to military action by piling the pressure on the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq, and on Israel from Lebanon and Palestine.
The absence of a cool-headed approach to the crisis on the part of Ahmadinejad and his supporters seems to be based on a very cool calculation of their own factional political interests within Iran's political maze and of Washington's strategic difficulties in the region.
All this points in one direction: at some point in the not too distant future, once the diplomatic process at the U.N. is exhausted and economic sanctions have failed to get the Iranians to change their tune, there won't be any options left on Washington's table except military ones. And Iran's leaders are probably right in their assessment that those options are not good ones.
U.S. firepower could do a lot of physical damage and might even put back Iran's nuclear programme by a few years. But it would also do a lot of political damage: to the prospects of political reform in Iran; to the stability of Iraq, Afghanistan and the wider region; and to U.S. political and strategic standing in the world.
The United States is making the same mistakes with regard to Iran as those which it made with regard to Iraq. The consequences are likely to be just as fraught, and perhaps even more damaging.
Although several leading members of the neo-conservative movement, which provided the theoretical and intellectual underpinning for the invasion of Iraq, have now recanted and admitted they were wrong about Iraq, the prospect of U.S. military action against Iran is not getting the critical attention it deserves.
Washington has missed several good opportunities in recent years to engage with Iran and to influence internal Iranian politics in a positive and peaceful manner. It is unlikely that any more will present themselves now or that this U.S. administration will seek to engage in bold, transformational diplomacy with the Iranian government. That would count as appeasement in Washington's current political vocabulary.
So there is no serious debate about the credible alternatives to military action in Iran. The United States is drifting unnecessarily towards military confrontation with the largest and richest state in the Middle East, with grave implications for the future of Western relations with the Muslim world. And everyone is busily pretending that it is not happening.
Tom Porteous is a freelance writer and analyst who was formerly with BBC Africa and served as Conflict Management Advisor for Africa with the British Foreign Office.
by Tom Porteous
Make no mistake. The current posture and policy of the United States are leading inexorably towards a military showdown with Iran that could have profoundly negative consequences for Iran, for the region and for the United States.
For all the studied vagueness and ambiguity of senior United States and European officials, for all the talk of a long diplomatic process, of economic sanctions and political isolation, at the end of this road lies the opening of another front in America's "Long War."
The Egyptian IAEA chief, Mohammed ElBaradei, implicitly acknowledged the high risks at stake when he appealed to both Western and Iranian leaders on March 7 to "lower the rhetoric" and adopt a "cool-headed approach." But, as the Iranian dossier now moves to the U.N. Security Council, there is little sign of such an approach either in Tehran or in Washington.
"The Iranian regime needs to know," Dick Cheney told the annual policy conference of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington on March 7, "that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose meaningful consequences. For our part, the United States is keeping all options on the table in addressing the irresponsible conduct of the regime. And we join other nations in sending that regime a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."
Pressed by reporters on whether Cheney's "meaningful consequences" meant military action, hapless White House press spokesman Scott McClellan insisted that the vice president was merely "stating our policy".
But Cheney's message, delivered with symbolic, if not verbal, precision against the backdrop of a massive graphic of the Israeli national flag merging into the Stars and Stripes, was clear enough: the United States will use military force if diplomacy and economic pressure do not persuade the Iranian government to back down.
Two days later, on March 9, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice further raised the temperature, reiterating her claim that Iran is the Middle East's "central banker for terrorism."
"We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran," she said, "whose policies are directed at developing a Middle East that would be 180 degrees different than the Middle East that we would like to see develop."
The problem with the United States' confrontational approach to Iran is that it is based on a misreading of the internal situation in Iran and on an over-confident assessment of the strategic position of the United States in the region in the aftermath of the U.S. military invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Diplomatic pressure, far from bringing about a change of heart in Tehran, is already strengthening the domestic political position of the hardliners around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and reinforcing their determination to press ahead with their nuclear enrichment plans in defiance of the United States, Europe and Israel. Furthermore, President Bush's nuclear deal with India has significantly undermined the diplomatic argument against Iran by blowing a hole in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Because of the size of Iran's shadow economy and its relative economic self-sufficiency, any economic sanctions against Iran will be ineffective and could further bolster the hardliners' internal political standing. Furthermore, as Iranian officials have pointed out, Iran's status as a major oil producer means that it is in a position to retaliate to economic sanctions in kind, pushing up the price of oil.
The scarcely veiled threat of U.S. military action is no more likely to deter Iran's hardliners. Ahmadinejad calculates, correctly, that a full-scale invasion of Iran is out of the question and that United States or Israeli air strikes would simply help to strengthen Iran's political position in the region and provide a pretext for further consolidation at home (e.g. a crackdown on political opponents). Furthermore, Iran could respond to military action by piling the pressure on the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq, and on Israel from Lebanon and Palestine.
The absence of a cool-headed approach to the crisis on the part of Ahmadinejad and his supporters seems to be based on a very cool calculation of their own factional political interests within Iran's political maze and of Washington's strategic difficulties in the region.
All this points in one direction: at some point in the not too distant future, once the diplomatic process at the U.N. is exhausted and economic sanctions have failed to get the Iranians to change their tune, there won't be any options left on Washington's table except military ones. And Iran's leaders are probably right in their assessment that those options are not good ones.
U.S. firepower could do a lot of physical damage and might even put back Iran's nuclear programme by a few years. But it would also do a lot of political damage: to the prospects of political reform in Iran; to the stability of Iraq, Afghanistan and the wider region; and to U.S. political and strategic standing in the world.
The United States is making the same mistakes with regard to Iran as those which it made with regard to Iraq. The consequences are likely to be just as fraught, and perhaps even more damaging.
Although several leading members of the neo-conservative movement, which provided the theoretical and intellectual underpinning for the invasion of Iraq, have now recanted and admitted they were wrong about Iraq, the prospect of U.S. military action against Iran is not getting the critical attention it deserves.
Washington has missed several good opportunities in recent years to engage with Iran and to influence internal Iranian politics in a positive and peaceful manner. It is unlikely that any more will present themselves now or that this U.S. administration will seek to engage in bold, transformational diplomacy with the Iranian government. That would count as appeasement in Washington's current political vocabulary.
So there is no serious debate about the credible alternatives to military action in Iran. The United States is drifting unnecessarily towards military confrontation with the largest and richest state in the Middle East, with grave implications for the future of Western relations with the Muslim world. And everyone is busily pretending that it is not happening.
Tom Porteous is a freelance writer and analyst who was formerly with BBC Africa and served as Conflict Management Advisor for Africa with the British Foreign Office.
U.S., Google Set to Face Off in Court
Back to Story - Help
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer
The Bush administration will renew its effort to find out what people have been looking for on Google Inc.'s Internet-leading search engine, continuing a legal showdown over how much of the Web's vast databases should be shared with the government.
Lawyers for the Justice Department and Google are expected to elaborate on their opposing views in a San Jose hearing scheduled Tuesday before U.S. District Court Judge James Ware.
It will mark the first time the Justice Department and Google have sparred in court since the government subpoenaed the Mountain-View, Calif.-based company last summer in an effort to obtain a long list of search requests and Web site addresses.
The government believes the requested information will help bolster its arguments in another case in Pennsylvania, where the Bush administration hopes to revive a law designed to make it more difficult for children to see online pornography.
Google has refused to cooperate, maintaining that the government's demand threatens its users' privacy as well as its own closely guarded trade secrets.
The Justice Department has downplayed Google's concerns, arguing it doesn't want any personal information nor any data that would undermine the company's thriving business.
The case has focused attention on just how much personal information is stored by popular Web sites like Google — and the potential for that data to attract the interest of the government and other parties.
Although the Justice Department says it doesn't want any personal information now, a victory over Google in the case would likely encourage far more invasive requests in the future, said University of Connecticut law professor Paul Schiff Berman, who specializes in Internet law.
"The erosion of privacy tends to happen incrementally," Berman said. "While no one intrusion may seem that big, over the course of the next decade or two, you might end up in a place as a society where you never thought you would be."
Google seized on the case to underscore its commitment to privacy rights and differentiate itself from the Internet's other major search engines — Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Time Warner Inc.'s America Online. All three say they complied with the Justice Department's request without revealing their users' personal information.
Cooperating with the government "is a slippery slope and it's a path we shouldn't go down," Google co-founder Sergey Brin told industry analysts earlier this month.
Even as it defies the Bush administration, Google recently bowed to the demands of China's Communist government by agreeing to censor its search results in that country so it would have better access to the world's fastest growing Internet market. Google's China capitulation has been harshly criticized by some of the same people cheering the company's resistance to the Justice Department subpoena.
The Justice Department initially demanded a month of search requests from Google, but subsequently decided a week's worth of requests would be enough. In its legal briefs, the Justice Department has indicated it might be willing to narrow its request even further.
Ultimately, the government plans to select a random sample of 1,000 search requests previously made at Google and re-enter them in the search engine, according to a sworn declaration by Philip Stark, a statistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley who is helping the Justice Department in the case.
The government believes the test will show how easily it is to get around the filtering software that's supposed to prevent children from seeing sexually explicit material on the Web.
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer
The Bush administration will renew its effort to find out what people have been looking for on Google Inc.'s Internet-leading search engine, continuing a legal showdown over how much of the Web's vast databases should be shared with the government.
Lawyers for the Justice Department and Google are expected to elaborate on their opposing views in a San Jose hearing scheduled Tuesday before U.S. District Court Judge James Ware.
It will mark the first time the Justice Department and Google have sparred in court since the government subpoenaed the Mountain-View, Calif.-based company last summer in an effort to obtain a long list of search requests and Web site addresses.
The government believes the requested information will help bolster its arguments in another case in Pennsylvania, where the Bush administration hopes to revive a law designed to make it more difficult for children to see online pornography.
Google has refused to cooperate, maintaining that the government's demand threatens its users' privacy as well as its own closely guarded trade secrets.
The Justice Department has downplayed Google's concerns, arguing it doesn't want any personal information nor any data that would undermine the company's thriving business.
The case has focused attention on just how much personal information is stored by popular Web sites like Google — and the potential for that data to attract the interest of the government and other parties.
Although the Justice Department says it doesn't want any personal information now, a victory over Google in the case would likely encourage far more invasive requests in the future, said University of Connecticut law professor Paul Schiff Berman, who specializes in Internet law.
"The erosion of privacy tends to happen incrementally," Berman said. "While no one intrusion may seem that big, over the course of the next decade or two, you might end up in a place as a society where you never thought you would be."
Google seized on the case to underscore its commitment to privacy rights and differentiate itself from the Internet's other major search engines — Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Time Warner Inc.'s America Online. All three say they complied with the Justice Department's request without revealing their users' personal information.
Cooperating with the government "is a slippery slope and it's a path we shouldn't go down," Google co-founder Sergey Brin told industry analysts earlier this month.
Even as it defies the Bush administration, Google recently bowed to the demands of China's Communist government by agreeing to censor its search results in that country so it would have better access to the world's fastest growing Internet market. Google's China capitulation has been harshly criticized by some of the same people cheering the company's resistance to the Justice Department subpoena.
The Justice Department initially demanded a month of search requests from Google, but subsequently decided a week's worth of requests would be enough. In its legal briefs, the Justice Department has indicated it might be willing to narrow its request even further.
Ultimately, the government plans to select a random sample of 1,000 search requests previously made at Google and re-enter them in the search engine, according to a sworn declaration by Philip Stark, a statistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley who is helping the Justice Department in the case.
The government believes the test will show how easily it is to get around the filtering software that's supposed to prevent children from seeing sexually explicit material on the Web.
The Sopranos and us
The show echoes who we are and what we are
Albert J. Bergesen
"The Sopranos" tells us a lot about America. As the show starts its sixth season tonight, what does it say about us that we watch it? David Chase, the show's creator, thinks it connects to some "zeitgeist going on." But even he is unsure how that happens.
Let's start with Tony Soprano. He is the head of a crime family, and I don't mean to diminish that, but it is also true that he is a middle-age guy, at mid-career, in the middle of raising kids, in an upper middle-class environment. Tony, though, is not just about the angst and stress of middle age. There is more, for with all his power he can't seem to control anything.
No matter how many people he kills he can't control his kids, or wife, or work associates, or his uncle, and certainly not his mother. And he is the boss of North Jersey. Worse, the angst this contradiction creates is turned inward as stress. Tony blacks out, takes Prozac and sees a psychiatrist.
Think of the United States. With all our power we can't seem to control events either, whether in Iraq or New Orleans. We have everything, yet we can't seem to control anything, and so maybe we relate to Tony because his power-plus-impotency condition also reflects what we see in government. Like Tony, we know something has changed and we feel it in our collective gut. As he told Dr. Melfi, "I am getting the feeling that I came in at the end. ... The best is over."
To see how things have changed, remember an earlier gangster character, Michael Corleone of "The Godfather." As late as the 1970s he still embodied the traditional American value of starting anew. Horace Greeley said, "Go West young man," and Michael did. He took his New York crime family to Nevada. He had vision: He got into the casino and resort business. He had dreams: He wanted to go legit. And he had will: He killed all his tormentors in one swoop.
And Tony Soprano? He has no vision. He's not going to get into the casino business. No way he's going to leave Jersey. And for all his power, he has no ability to rise up and set things straight once and for all.
Tony is America. It's why we watch. His life is our collective existence.
We have all the power in the world: America is an empire, as we are constantly being told. Tony's empire is North Jersey. Yet for all their power and violence, neither mobster nor country seems to be able to control things. In this sense, "The Sopranos" taps a deep American feeling about a loss of potency.
Family shows are perfect metaphors for larger societal concerns. With America on the ascendancy in the 1950s, the story line was more about firm control and patriarchal authority. Think "Father Knows Best," 1954-1963. Or in the '60s and '70s with racial conflict and Vietnam, a prominent image was the angry white male lashing out at forces he didn't understand. Think of Archie Bunker and "All in the Family" in the '70s. Now it's Tony Soprano. He's no Robert Young in denial or Archie Bunker acting out, but a stressed-out mob boss turning it all inward.
Everyone on "The Sopranos" is stuck in their unsatisfying lives and can't get out. Worse, they won't even try to get out. Carmela isn't satisfied with Tony, but never completely leaves. Tony isn't satisfied with Carmela but doesn't leave either. He isn't happy with his crime family, or his kids, for that matter. Nor are Tony Jr. and Meadow satisfied with Mom and Dad.
The Sopranos' lives are our political parties, which are as deadlocked and stuck as Tony is in Jersey. Year after year, Republicans and Democrats repeat their ideological mantra, just as Tony and Carmela come home every night and fail to resolve their problems. Their lives are like the movie "Groundhog Day," a repeat every day.
Such a defeatist national outlook has not always been the case, and no doubt social change will someday make a show like "The Sopranos" seem outdated. But for now, it seems to fit the climate of the age we live it. And so we watch.
Albert J. Bergesen is a professor of sociology at the University of Arizona. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.
Albert J. Bergesen
"The Sopranos" tells us a lot about America. As the show starts its sixth season tonight, what does it say about us that we watch it? David Chase, the show's creator, thinks it connects to some "zeitgeist going on." But even he is unsure how that happens.
Let's start with Tony Soprano. He is the head of a crime family, and I don't mean to diminish that, but it is also true that he is a middle-age guy, at mid-career, in the middle of raising kids, in an upper middle-class environment. Tony, though, is not just about the angst and stress of middle age. There is more, for with all his power he can't seem to control anything.
No matter how many people he kills he can't control his kids, or wife, or work associates, or his uncle, and certainly not his mother. And he is the boss of North Jersey. Worse, the angst this contradiction creates is turned inward as stress. Tony blacks out, takes Prozac and sees a psychiatrist.
Think of the United States. With all our power we can't seem to control events either, whether in Iraq or New Orleans. We have everything, yet we can't seem to control anything, and so maybe we relate to Tony because his power-plus-impotency condition also reflects what we see in government. Like Tony, we know something has changed and we feel it in our collective gut. As he told Dr. Melfi, "I am getting the feeling that I came in at the end. ... The best is over."
To see how things have changed, remember an earlier gangster character, Michael Corleone of "The Godfather." As late as the 1970s he still embodied the traditional American value of starting anew. Horace Greeley said, "Go West young man," and Michael did. He took his New York crime family to Nevada. He had vision: He got into the casino and resort business. He had dreams: He wanted to go legit. And he had will: He killed all his tormentors in one swoop.
And Tony Soprano? He has no vision. He's not going to get into the casino business. No way he's going to leave Jersey. And for all his power, he has no ability to rise up and set things straight once and for all.
Tony is America. It's why we watch. His life is our collective existence.
We have all the power in the world: America is an empire, as we are constantly being told. Tony's empire is North Jersey. Yet for all their power and violence, neither mobster nor country seems to be able to control things. In this sense, "The Sopranos" taps a deep American feeling about a loss of potency.
Family shows are perfect metaphors for larger societal concerns. With America on the ascendancy in the 1950s, the story line was more about firm control and patriarchal authority. Think "Father Knows Best," 1954-1963. Or in the '60s and '70s with racial conflict and Vietnam, a prominent image was the angry white male lashing out at forces he didn't understand. Think of Archie Bunker and "All in the Family" in the '70s. Now it's Tony Soprano. He's no Robert Young in denial or Archie Bunker acting out, but a stressed-out mob boss turning it all inward.
Everyone on "The Sopranos" is stuck in their unsatisfying lives and can't get out. Worse, they won't even try to get out. Carmela isn't satisfied with Tony, but never completely leaves. Tony isn't satisfied with Carmela but doesn't leave either. He isn't happy with his crime family, or his kids, for that matter. Nor are Tony Jr. and Meadow satisfied with Mom and Dad.
The Sopranos' lives are our political parties, which are as deadlocked and stuck as Tony is in Jersey. Year after year, Republicans and Democrats repeat their ideological mantra, just as Tony and Carmela come home every night and fail to resolve their problems. Their lives are like the movie "Groundhog Day," a repeat every day.
Such a defeatist national outlook has not always been the case, and no doubt social change will someday make a show like "The Sopranos" seem outdated. But for now, it seems to fit the climate of the age we live it. And so we watch.
Albert J. Bergesen is a professor of sociology at the University of Arizona. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.
Monday, March 13, 2006
The Right's Man
The New York Times
March 13, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
By PAUL KRUGMAN
It's time for some straight talk about John McCain. He isn't a moderate. He's much less of a maverick than you'd think. And he isn't the straight talker he claims to be.
Mr. McCain's reputation as a moderate may be based on his former opposition to the Bush tax cuts. In 2001 he declared, "I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us."
But now — at a time of huge budget deficits and an expensive war, when the case against tax cuts for the rich is even stronger — Mr. McCain is happy to shower benefits on the most fortunate. He recently voted to extend tax cuts on dividends and capital gains, an action that will worsen the budget deficit while mainly benefiting people with very high incomes.
When it comes to foreign policy, Mr. McCain was never moderate. During the 2000 campaign he called for a policy of "rogue state rollback," anticipating the "Bush doctrine" of pre-emptive war unveiled two years later. Mr. McCain called for a systematic effort to overthrow nasty regimes even if they posed no imminent threat to the United States; he singled out Iraq, Libya and North Korea. Mr. McCain's aggressive views on foreign policy, and his expressed willingness, almost eagerness, to commit U.S. ground forces overseas, explain why he, not George W. Bush, was the favored candidate of neoconservative pundits such as William Kristol of The Weekly Standard.
Would Mr. McCain, like Mr. Bush, have found some pretext for invading Iraq? We'll never know. But Mr. McCain still thinks the war was a good idea, and he rejects any attempt to extricate ourselves from the quagmire. "If success requires an increase in American troop levels in 2006," he wrote last year, "then we must increase our numbers there." He didn't explain where the overstretched U.S. military is supposed to find these troops.
When it comes to social issues, Mr. McCain, who once called Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance," met with Mr. Falwell late last year. Perhaps as a result, he is now taking positions friendly to the religious right. Most notably, Mr. McCain's spokesperson says that he would have signed South Dakota's extremist new anti-abortion law.
The spokesperson went on to say that the senator would have taken "the appropriate steps under state law" to ensure that cases of rape and incest were excluded. But that attempt at qualification makes no sense: the South Dakota law has produced national shockwaves precisely because it prohibits abortions even for victims of rape or incest.
The bottom line is that Mr. McCain isn't a moderate; he's a man of the hard right. How far right? A statistical analysis of Mr. McCain's recent voting record, available at www.voteview.com, ranks him as the Senate's third most conservative member.
What about Mr. McCain's reputation as a maverick? This comes from the fact that every now and then he seems to declare his independence from the Bush administration, as he did in pushing through his anti-torture bill.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Guantánamo. President Bush, when signing the bill, appended a statement that in effect said that he was free to disregard the law whenever he chose. Mr. McCain protested, but there are apparently no hard feelings: at the recent Southern Republican Leadership Conference he effusively praised Mr. Bush.
And I'm sorry to say that this is typical of Mr. McCain. Every once in a while he makes headlines by apparently defying Mr. Bush, but he always returns to the fold, even if the abuses he railed against continue unabated.
So here's what you need to know about John McCain.
He isn't a straight talker. His flip-flopping on tax cuts, his call to send troops we don't have to Iraq and his endorsement of the South Dakota anti-abortion legislation even while claiming that he would find a way around that legislation's central provision show that he's a politician as slippery and evasive as, well, George W. Bush.
He isn't a moderate. Mr. McCain's policy positions and Senate votes don't just place him at the right end of America's political spectrum; they place him in the right wing of the Republican Party.
And he isn't a maverick, at least not when it counts. When the cameras are rolling, Mr. McCain can sometimes be seen striking a brave pose of opposition to the White House. But when it matters, when the Bush administration's ability to do whatever it wants is at stake, Mr. McCain always toes the party line.
It's worth recalling that during the 2000 election campaign George W. Bush was widely portrayed by the news media both as a moderate and as a straight-shooter. As Mr. Bush has said, "Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
March 13, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
By PAUL KRUGMAN
It's time for some straight talk about John McCain. He isn't a moderate. He's much less of a maverick than you'd think. And he isn't the straight talker he claims to be.
Mr. McCain's reputation as a moderate may be based on his former opposition to the Bush tax cuts. In 2001 he declared, "I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us."
But now — at a time of huge budget deficits and an expensive war, when the case against tax cuts for the rich is even stronger — Mr. McCain is happy to shower benefits on the most fortunate. He recently voted to extend tax cuts on dividends and capital gains, an action that will worsen the budget deficit while mainly benefiting people with very high incomes.
When it comes to foreign policy, Mr. McCain was never moderate. During the 2000 campaign he called for a policy of "rogue state rollback," anticipating the "Bush doctrine" of pre-emptive war unveiled two years later. Mr. McCain called for a systematic effort to overthrow nasty regimes even if they posed no imminent threat to the United States; he singled out Iraq, Libya and North Korea. Mr. McCain's aggressive views on foreign policy, and his expressed willingness, almost eagerness, to commit U.S. ground forces overseas, explain why he, not George W. Bush, was the favored candidate of neoconservative pundits such as William Kristol of The Weekly Standard.
Would Mr. McCain, like Mr. Bush, have found some pretext for invading Iraq? We'll never know. But Mr. McCain still thinks the war was a good idea, and he rejects any attempt to extricate ourselves from the quagmire. "If success requires an increase in American troop levels in 2006," he wrote last year, "then we must increase our numbers there." He didn't explain where the overstretched U.S. military is supposed to find these troops.
When it comes to social issues, Mr. McCain, who once called Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance," met with Mr. Falwell late last year. Perhaps as a result, he is now taking positions friendly to the religious right. Most notably, Mr. McCain's spokesperson says that he would have signed South Dakota's extremist new anti-abortion law.
The spokesperson went on to say that the senator would have taken "the appropriate steps under state law" to ensure that cases of rape and incest were excluded. But that attempt at qualification makes no sense: the South Dakota law has produced national shockwaves precisely because it prohibits abortions even for victims of rape or incest.
The bottom line is that Mr. McCain isn't a moderate; he's a man of the hard right. How far right? A statistical analysis of Mr. McCain's recent voting record, available at www.voteview.com, ranks him as the Senate's third most conservative member.
What about Mr. McCain's reputation as a maverick? This comes from the fact that every now and then he seems to declare his independence from the Bush administration, as he did in pushing through his anti-torture bill.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Guantánamo. President Bush, when signing the bill, appended a statement that in effect said that he was free to disregard the law whenever he chose. Mr. McCain protested, but there are apparently no hard feelings: at the recent Southern Republican Leadership Conference he effusively praised Mr. Bush.
And I'm sorry to say that this is typical of Mr. McCain. Every once in a while he makes headlines by apparently defying Mr. Bush, but he always returns to the fold, even if the abuses he railed against continue unabated.
So here's what you need to know about John McCain.
He isn't a straight talker. His flip-flopping on tax cuts, his call to send troops we don't have to Iraq and his endorsement of the South Dakota anti-abortion legislation even while claiming that he would find a way around that legislation's central provision show that he's a politician as slippery and evasive as, well, George W. Bush.
He isn't a moderate. Mr. McCain's policy positions and Senate votes don't just place him at the right end of America's political spectrum; they place him in the right wing of the Republican Party.
And he isn't a maverick, at least not when it counts. When the cameras are rolling, Mr. McCain can sometimes be seen striking a brave pose of opposition to the White House. But when it matters, when the Bush administration's ability to do whatever it wants is at stake, Mr. McCain always toes the party line.
It's worth recalling that during the 2000 election campaign George W. Bush was widely portrayed by the news media both as a moderate and as a straight-shooter. As Mr. Bush has said, "Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Feingold Calls for Bush's Censure
Wisconsin Democrat Asks Senate to Rebuke the President for NSA Wiretaps
By ED O'KEEFE
March 12, 2006— - In an exclusive interview on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold called on the Senate to publicly admonish President Bush for approving domestic wiretaps on American citizens without first seeking a legally required court order.
"This conduct is right in the strike zone of the concept of high crimes and misdemeanors," said Feingold, D-Wis., a three-term senator and potential presidential contender.
He said President Bush had, "openly and almost thumbing his nose at the American people," continued the NSA domestic wiretap program.
President Bush has long asserted that the so-called 'warrantless wiretaps' are an essential tool in the war on terror.
But in a copy of the censure resolution obtained by ABC News, Feingold asserts the president, "repeatedly misled the public prior to the public disclosure of the National Security Agency surveillance program by indicating his administration was relying on court orders to wiretap suspected terrorists inside the United States."
Feingold cites three instances over a year-long period in which Bush outlined the necessity of a court order or a judge's permission prior to a domestic wiretap of a U.S. citizen.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., also appearing exclusively on "This Week," defended Bush.
"Russ is just wrong, he is flat wrong, he is dead wrong," Frist said.
The most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll put the president's approval rating at 41 percent, nearly a career low. But that not necessarily mean Feingold's censure resolution will succeed.
Censure, essentially a public disapproval by the Senate as a whole, has only been applied to one president, Andrew Jackson, in a politically-charged move the Senate historian's office describes as "unprecedented and never-repeated tactic."
Frist called the censure attempt "political" and a "terrible, terrible signal" to enemies of the U.S. abroad. He assured Stephanopoulos that the resolution would never gain traction in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Feingold, best known for his bipartisan fight for campaign finance reform with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., intends to introduce the resolution this week -- insisting the move is not a political stunt.
"We, as a Congress, have to stand up to a president who acts like the Bill of Rights and the Constitution were repealed on Sept 11, [2001]," Feingold said.
Video of Feingold's and Frist's full interviews will be posted at www.thisweek.abcnews.com.
By ED O'KEEFE
March 12, 2006— - In an exclusive interview on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold called on the Senate to publicly admonish President Bush for approving domestic wiretaps on American citizens without first seeking a legally required court order.
"This conduct is right in the strike zone of the concept of high crimes and misdemeanors," said Feingold, D-Wis., a three-term senator and potential presidential contender.
He said President Bush had, "openly and almost thumbing his nose at the American people," continued the NSA domestic wiretap program.
President Bush has long asserted that the so-called 'warrantless wiretaps' are an essential tool in the war on terror.
But in a copy of the censure resolution obtained by ABC News, Feingold asserts the president, "repeatedly misled the public prior to the public disclosure of the National Security Agency surveillance program by indicating his administration was relying on court orders to wiretap suspected terrorists inside the United States."
Feingold cites three instances over a year-long period in which Bush outlined the necessity of a court order or a judge's permission prior to a domestic wiretap of a U.S. citizen.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., also appearing exclusively on "This Week," defended Bush.
"Russ is just wrong, he is flat wrong, he is dead wrong," Frist said.
The most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll put the president's approval rating at 41 percent, nearly a career low. But that not necessarily mean Feingold's censure resolution will succeed.
Censure, essentially a public disapproval by the Senate as a whole, has only been applied to one president, Andrew Jackson, in a politically-charged move the Senate historian's office describes as "unprecedented and never-repeated tactic."
Frist called the censure attempt "political" and a "terrible, terrible signal" to enemies of the U.S. abroad. He assured Stephanopoulos that the resolution would never gain traction in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Feingold, best known for his bipartisan fight for campaign finance reform with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., intends to introduce the resolution this week -- insisting the move is not a political stunt.
"We, as a Congress, have to stand up to a president who acts like the Bill of Rights and the Constitution were repealed on Sept 11, [2001]," Feingold said.
Video of Feingold's and Frist's full interviews will be posted at www.thisweek.abcnews.com.
When Black Republicans Go Bad
by Trey Ellis
Why are we so surprised that Claude Allen, until recently the President's chief domestic policy advisor, is being accused of scamming Target out of over $5000? He's a black man who got his start working for Jesse Helms, the former Senator who had the delightful habit of calling all black people, "Fred."
Man, what I wouldn't give to be Claude Allen's shrink. The inside of his brain must look like Saigon in the last days of the war ("We shall overcome! / Shut up, nigger. / Who you calling nigger? / Did I say, "nigger." I meant, "Fred.").
There must be something about being a black Republican that drives you a little batty. Just look at Allen's comrades in arms Allen Keyes and Clarence Thomas. I mean, who in their right mind sees pubic hairs in a can of Coke?
Many black Republicans, it seems, stake out ultra-right-wing positions perhaps to prove their bona fides to their white superiors. Claude Allen, while working for Helms, accused Helms' then opponent of being linked to "queers," and, according to the Washington Post, "once he kept Medicaid funds from an impoverished rape victim who wanted an abortion." And time and time again Justice Thomas has proven to be just an echo chamber, a double vote, for his intellectual overseer Justice Scalia.
I've got it. Maybe black Republicans are like transvestites? Transvestites affect a hyper-femininity, their nails are always perfect, their bags always match their shoes. In the same way, many black Republicans, it seems, affect a "hyper-whiteness," staking out positions that even whites in the South grew out of in the Fifties.
No wonder every now and again they snap. Perhaps in Mr. Allen's warped ideology he associated petty criminality with "blackness" and he'd been in drag so long that he longed desperately to come "home." And remember Clarence Thomas also acted out, only in hyper-sexual ways, bragging to Anita Hill about the size of his schlong.
Mr. Allen, Justice Thomas, blackness isn't crime, violence and sexuality. Willie Horton isn't the sum of us. He's just how many on your side have summed us up.
Don't believe the hype.
Why are we so surprised that Claude Allen, until recently the President's chief domestic policy advisor, is being accused of scamming Target out of over $5000? He's a black man who got his start working for Jesse Helms, the former Senator who had the delightful habit of calling all black people, "Fred."
Man, what I wouldn't give to be Claude Allen's shrink. The inside of his brain must look like Saigon in the last days of the war ("We shall overcome! / Shut up, nigger. / Who you calling nigger? / Did I say, "nigger." I meant, "Fred.").
There must be something about being a black Republican that drives you a little batty. Just look at Allen's comrades in arms Allen Keyes and Clarence Thomas. I mean, who in their right mind sees pubic hairs in a can of Coke?
Many black Republicans, it seems, stake out ultra-right-wing positions perhaps to prove their bona fides to their white superiors. Claude Allen, while working for Helms, accused Helms' then opponent of being linked to "queers," and, according to the Washington Post, "once he kept Medicaid funds from an impoverished rape victim who wanted an abortion." And time and time again Justice Thomas has proven to be just an echo chamber, a double vote, for his intellectual overseer Justice Scalia.
I've got it. Maybe black Republicans are like transvestites? Transvestites affect a hyper-femininity, their nails are always perfect, their bags always match their shoes. In the same way, many black Republicans, it seems, affect a "hyper-whiteness," staking out positions that even whites in the South grew out of in the Fifties.
No wonder every now and again they snap. Perhaps in Mr. Allen's warped ideology he associated petty criminality with "blackness" and he'd been in drag so long that he longed desperately to come "home." And remember Clarence Thomas also acted out, only in hyper-sexual ways, bragging to Anita Hill about the size of his schlong.
Mr. Allen, Justice Thomas, blackness isn't crime, violence and sexuality. Willie Horton isn't the sum of us. He's just how many on your side have summed us up.
Don't believe the hype.
There's right, there's wrong, and then there's shoplifting from Target
by Michelle Goldberg
It is sometimes tempting for liberals to think that militant religious conservatives are driven by some kind of underlying neurosis. Such a theory, condescending as it is, helps explain their obsession with other people's sex lives and their single-minded quest to impose their conception of biblical virtue by fiat. Thoughtful progressives often struggle to transcend such dismissive, self-serving analysis. But people like Claude Allen make it damn hard.
Allen, the first African-American aide to notorious civil rights foe Jesse Helms, was one of the religious right's favorite Bush administration officials -- Focus on the Family called him "one of the staunchest family advocates in government." He served first as the deputy secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, where he was the administration's chief advocate of abstinence-only sex education. In 2003, Bush nominated him to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, but Democrats filibustered him, citing, among other things, his attacks on former North Carolina Gov. James Hunt, Helms' 1984 Senate challenger, for having links to "the queers" and "radical feminists." Unable to get him on the court, Bush instead made Allen his chief domestic policy advisor in 2005.
Claude Allen likes to talk about virtue and absolute standards. "I am proud to be part of an administration that is not afraid to say what is right and what is wrong," he said at an abstinence conference in 2005. Educating kids about condoms, he said on another occasion, is "like telling your child, 'Don't use the car,' but then leaving the keys in the Lamborghini and saying, 'But if you do, buckle up.'"
How rich, then, to learn that this pious scold appears to be a compulsive thief. Allen submitted his resignation last month, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. But as the Chicago Tribune's Washington blog, The Swamp, says, "It appears now that he may have been seeking more time with his defense attorney." Allen, it seems, has been perpetrating petty scams at department stores, netting thousands of dollars.
The sordid story unspooled after Allen was caught at a Target in Gaithersburg, Md., allegedly stealing merchandise and then trying to return some of it for a refund.
According to a press release from Maryland's Montgomery County Police Department:
"The Target loss prevention manager contacted Montgomery County Police and, through the police investigation, it was learned that Allen had been receiving refunds in an amount exceeding $5,000 during last year. Some of the fraudulent returns were made at Target stores and some at Hecht's stores. He would buy items, take them out to his car, and return to the store with the receipt. He would select the same items he had just purchased, and then return them for a refund. Allen is known to have conducted approximately 25 of these types of refunds, having the money credited to his credit cards.
"Throughout 2005, he obtained refunds for items ranging from clothing, a Bose theater system, stereo equipment and [a] photo printer to items valued only at $2.50."
Why would Allen do this? A former lawyer at the ultra-powerful firm of Baker & Botts, he has plenty of money -- according to the New York Times, in October 2005 he bought a new house for $958,300. But the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention explains that for "almost all non-professional shoplifters, stealing from stores is basically a reflection of a person's ability (or inability) to cope with a multitude of situations in his or her life. . . . In addition to feeling good, shoplifters quickly observe this 'high' temporarily eliminates their feelings of anger, frustration, depression or other unhappiness in their life. Realizing how easy it is to get that 'high' feeling, they are pulled toward doing it again . . .'just one more time' . . . and their addiction begins to develop."
Like his fellow ideologues William Bennett and Rush Limbaugh, then, Allen seems to be a sick man. One wonders whether, after this, he'll still push an approach to AIDS and STD prevention based entirely on the impulse-controlling powers of faith.
It is sometimes tempting for liberals to think that militant religious conservatives are driven by some kind of underlying neurosis. Such a theory, condescending as it is, helps explain their obsession with other people's sex lives and their single-minded quest to impose their conception of biblical virtue by fiat. Thoughtful progressives often struggle to transcend such dismissive, self-serving analysis. But people like Claude Allen make it damn hard.
Allen, the first African-American aide to notorious civil rights foe Jesse Helms, was one of the religious right's favorite Bush administration officials -- Focus on the Family called him "one of the staunchest family advocates in government." He served first as the deputy secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, where he was the administration's chief advocate of abstinence-only sex education. In 2003, Bush nominated him to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, but Democrats filibustered him, citing, among other things, his attacks on former North Carolina Gov. James Hunt, Helms' 1984 Senate challenger, for having links to "the queers" and "radical feminists." Unable to get him on the court, Bush instead made Allen his chief domestic policy advisor in 2005.
Claude Allen likes to talk about virtue and absolute standards. "I am proud to be part of an administration that is not afraid to say what is right and what is wrong," he said at an abstinence conference in 2005. Educating kids about condoms, he said on another occasion, is "like telling your child, 'Don't use the car,' but then leaving the keys in the Lamborghini and saying, 'But if you do, buckle up.'"
How rich, then, to learn that this pious scold appears to be a compulsive thief. Allen submitted his resignation last month, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. But as the Chicago Tribune's Washington blog, The Swamp, says, "It appears now that he may have been seeking more time with his defense attorney." Allen, it seems, has been perpetrating petty scams at department stores, netting thousands of dollars.
The sordid story unspooled after Allen was caught at a Target in Gaithersburg, Md., allegedly stealing merchandise and then trying to return some of it for a refund.
According to a press release from Maryland's Montgomery County Police Department:
"The Target loss prevention manager contacted Montgomery County Police and, through the police investigation, it was learned that Allen had been receiving refunds in an amount exceeding $5,000 during last year. Some of the fraudulent returns were made at Target stores and some at Hecht's stores. He would buy items, take them out to his car, and return to the store with the receipt. He would select the same items he had just purchased, and then return them for a refund. Allen is known to have conducted approximately 25 of these types of refunds, having the money credited to his credit cards.
"Throughout 2005, he obtained refunds for items ranging from clothing, a Bose theater system, stereo equipment and [a] photo printer to items valued only at $2.50."
Why would Allen do this? A former lawyer at the ultra-powerful firm of Baker & Botts, he has plenty of money -- according to the New York Times, in October 2005 he bought a new house for $958,300. But the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention explains that for "almost all non-professional shoplifters, stealing from stores is basically a reflection of a person's ability (or inability) to cope with a multitude of situations in his or her life. . . . In addition to feeling good, shoplifters quickly observe this 'high' temporarily eliminates their feelings of anger, frustration, depression or other unhappiness in their life. Realizing how easy it is to get that 'high' feeling, they are pulled toward doing it again . . .'just one more time' . . . and their addiction begins to develop."
Like his fellow ideologues William Bennett and Rush Limbaugh, then, Allen seems to be a sick man. One wonders whether, after this, he'll still push an approach to AIDS and STD prevention based entirely on the impulse-controlling powers of faith.
A Warning From South Dakota
New York Times Editorial
Published: March 12, 2006
When President Bush's Supreme Court nominees were asked about abortion and Roe v. Wade, their answers ranged from vague to opaque. But the state legislature in South Dakota felt it heard the underlying message loud and clear. Now, South Dakota has thrown down the gauntlet.
It adopted a law last week that makes every abortion that is not necessary to save the life of the mother a crime. The law is clearly unconstitutional under existing Supreme Court rulings. But its backers are hoping that the addition of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the court will be enough to change things.
The law should be struck down because it imposes an unacceptable burden on women. But it should also serve as a warning that the threat to abortion rights has reached a new level.
South Dakota's abortion law is the most restrictive one adopted by any state since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. It does not contain exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape or from incest. Nor does it allow abortions that are necessary to preserve the health of the mother. The law is unlikely to go into force anytime soon. If it did, it would simply drive women — as in the pre-Roe days — to risk their lives to end their pregnancies with illegal back-alley abortions.
Gov. Mike Rounds, who signed the bill into law, said that the "true test of a civilization" was how it treated "the most vulnerable and helpless," including "unborn children." But his state has hardly been a leader in protecting vulnerable children who have left the womb. The nation's three worst counties for child poverty at the time of the last census were all in South Dakota, according to the Children's Defense Fund. Buffalo County, home to the Crow Creek Indian Reservation, was dead last.
South Dakota's law defies Supreme Court precedents, which hold that states cannot put an "undue burden" on abortion rights and cannot ban abortions necessary to preserve the mother's health. But anti-abortion forces seem eager to see how firm those precedents will be with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito changing the balance.
The test seems premature, since even if both men voted to overturn Roe there would still only be four votes. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a moderate conservative, has sided with the court's four liberals on this point. But abortion opponents may be hoping he can be pressured to change. They have also begun predicting that Justice John Paul Stevens, the oldest member, will leave the court, allowing President Bush to appoint another anti-Roe justice.
Whatever the fate of the South Dakota law, it seems likely to jump-start a whole new era of abortion battles. More states may soon follow South Dakota's lead, and if the membership of the Supreme Court changes, abortion may become illegal in much or even all of the country. Roe ushered in three decades of complacency for the majority of Americans who support abortion rights. South Dakota's harsh new law is a clear sign that the time for complacency is over.
Published: March 12, 2006
When President Bush's Supreme Court nominees were asked about abortion and Roe v. Wade, their answers ranged from vague to opaque. But the state legislature in South Dakota felt it heard the underlying message loud and clear. Now, South Dakota has thrown down the gauntlet.
It adopted a law last week that makes every abortion that is not necessary to save the life of the mother a crime. The law is clearly unconstitutional under existing Supreme Court rulings. But its backers are hoping that the addition of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the court will be enough to change things.
The law should be struck down because it imposes an unacceptable burden on women. But it should also serve as a warning that the threat to abortion rights has reached a new level.
South Dakota's abortion law is the most restrictive one adopted by any state since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. It does not contain exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape or from incest. Nor does it allow abortions that are necessary to preserve the health of the mother. The law is unlikely to go into force anytime soon. If it did, it would simply drive women — as in the pre-Roe days — to risk their lives to end their pregnancies with illegal back-alley abortions.
Gov. Mike Rounds, who signed the bill into law, said that the "true test of a civilization" was how it treated "the most vulnerable and helpless," including "unborn children." But his state has hardly been a leader in protecting vulnerable children who have left the womb. The nation's three worst counties for child poverty at the time of the last census were all in South Dakota, according to the Children's Defense Fund. Buffalo County, home to the Crow Creek Indian Reservation, was dead last.
South Dakota's law defies Supreme Court precedents, which hold that states cannot put an "undue burden" on abortion rights and cannot ban abortions necessary to preserve the mother's health. But anti-abortion forces seem eager to see how firm those precedents will be with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito changing the balance.
The test seems premature, since even if both men voted to overturn Roe there would still only be four votes. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a moderate conservative, has sided with the court's four liberals on this point. But abortion opponents may be hoping he can be pressured to change. They have also begun predicting that Justice John Paul Stevens, the oldest member, will leave the court, allowing President Bush to appoint another anti-Roe justice.
Whatever the fate of the South Dakota law, it seems likely to jump-start a whole new era of abortion battles. More states may soon follow South Dakota's lead, and if the membership of the Supreme Court changes, abortion may become illegal in much or even all of the country. Roe ushered in three decades of complacency for the majority of Americans who support abortion rights. South Dakota's harsh new law is a clear sign that the time for complacency is over.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Desperate G.O.P. Attacks the Clintons
By: Joe Conason
When Republican politicians get in trouble, their defense often includes one or both of the following arguments: The Democrats are equally guilty, and it’s all Bill Clinton’s fault anyway. Such claims may be inaccurate as well as irrelevant, but if echoed often enough by conservative pundits on the airwaves and in the papers, they can serve to distract from the original embarrassment.
Consider the example of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who diligently greased his fellow Republicans. The Indian tribes represented by Mr. Abramoff greatly increased the proportion of their political donations to Republicans, while diminishing their donations to Democrats. But many in the media regurgitated the Republican spin that implicated both parties equally.
The controversy over Dubai’s attempt to purchase control of American ports is provoking a similar response. Quickly and mindlessly, the Bush administration approved the takeover by Dubai Ports World, a state-owned company. By pushing the Dubai deal—with a veto threat against any Congressional interference—Mr. Bush has drawn fresh attention to his family’s Middle East entanglements. (Remember his handholding with that Saudi prince?) The Carlyle Group boasts deep financial connections to the United Arab Emirates as well as the Bush family. The President’s father and brother Neil have both benefited directly from the largesse of Emirate rulers.
As Dubya’s public approval plunged toward Nixonian levels and shudders of fear wracked the Republican Party, a snarling counterattack was predictable. Just as inevitable was that the target would be the Clintons.
The sideshow began after the Financial Times reported, with more than a touch of exaggeration, that Dubai Ports World executives had received advice from the former President. What should have remained a minor story swiftly blossomed into headlines—and a concerted effort to damage his wife, Hillary Clinton, the junior Senator from New York and possible Presidential candidate.
Indignant critics have denounced the Clintons, although for what isn’t quite clear. Representative Duncan Hunter, the California Republican now embroiled in the defense-lobbying scandal that brought down his friend Randy (Duke) Cunningham, wrongly accused Bill Clinton of endorsing the Dubai deal. “President Clinton now is on record,” said Mr. Hunter on ABC’s This Week program, “as advising the emir [of Dubai] on how to make this deal go through.”
Similar charges have erupted from a columnist at The Nation magazine on the left and from commentators for Fox News and NewsMax on the right—all accusing the Senator and the former President of sneaky perfidy.
It is true that the former President’s friendship with the Emirate rulers has proved rewarding in the most concrete ways. Like many others around the world, including major corporations, universities, charities and media outlets, they have paid him handsomely over the past several years to deliver speeches, and they contributed to the cost of constructing his library in Little Rock, Ark. Mr. Clinton serves on the board of an investment company that is involved in business deals with Dubai’s rulers.
To the full extent demanded by Senate rules—which ought to require more information—those foreign sources of family income are disclosed on Mrs. Clinton’s personal financial reports. But there is no logical inference that financial emoluments have bought political influence.
On the evening of Feb. 17, while Mr. Clinton was traveling in India, he received a call from two Dubai Ports World executives. According to his spokesman, he listened as they explained their troubles with Washington. He responded by advising them to submit to more thorough federal investigation and to guarantee that, should they eventually prevail, they will greatly enhance security in the U.S. ports they oversee.
Almost simultaneously with that brief conversation on the other side of the world, Senator Clinton was preparing to introduce legislation that would bar any company owned by a foreign government from owning American port facilities. She announced her plan the same day. Passage of her bill, co-sponsored by New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez, would instantly and permanently kill the Dubai deal.
So despite her husband’s friendship with Dubai, Senator Clinton acted against the interests of the emirate’s rulers. She could easily have deferred to her senior colleague, Senator Charles Schumer, who has also denounced the Dubai ports deal and introduced restrictive legislation.
As for the former President, he is not an advisor to Dubai Ports World and has publicly endorsed his wife’s legislation. “Whether it passes or not,” said the statement released by his office, “he believes this purchase should not be approved unless the security of our ports can be dramatically improved.”
Had either of them endorsed the Dubai deal, the outcry over the former President’s connections with the United Arab Emirates would be justified. Instead, she has moved to block the deal, and he has supported her bill—and yet their critics are still inflamed.
To understand this curious situation, it helps to know that what the Clintons actually say or do never matters. They’re always wrong.
When Republican politicians get in trouble, their defense often includes one or both of the following arguments: The Democrats are equally guilty, and it’s all Bill Clinton’s fault anyway. Such claims may be inaccurate as well as irrelevant, but if echoed often enough by conservative pundits on the airwaves and in the papers, they can serve to distract from the original embarrassment.
Consider the example of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who diligently greased his fellow Republicans. The Indian tribes represented by Mr. Abramoff greatly increased the proportion of their political donations to Republicans, while diminishing their donations to Democrats. But many in the media regurgitated the Republican spin that implicated both parties equally.
The controversy over Dubai’s attempt to purchase control of American ports is provoking a similar response. Quickly and mindlessly, the Bush administration approved the takeover by Dubai Ports World, a state-owned company. By pushing the Dubai deal—with a veto threat against any Congressional interference—Mr. Bush has drawn fresh attention to his family’s Middle East entanglements. (Remember his handholding with that Saudi prince?) The Carlyle Group boasts deep financial connections to the United Arab Emirates as well as the Bush family. The President’s father and brother Neil have both benefited directly from the largesse of Emirate rulers.
As Dubya’s public approval plunged toward Nixonian levels and shudders of fear wracked the Republican Party, a snarling counterattack was predictable. Just as inevitable was that the target would be the Clintons.
The sideshow began after the Financial Times reported, with more than a touch of exaggeration, that Dubai Ports World executives had received advice from the former President. What should have remained a minor story swiftly blossomed into headlines—and a concerted effort to damage his wife, Hillary Clinton, the junior Senator from New York and possible Presidential candidate.
Indignant critics have denounced the Clintons, although for what isn’t quite clear. Representative Duncan Hunter, the California Republican now embroiled in the defense-lobbying scandal that brought down his friend Randy (Duke) Cunningham, wrongly accused Bill Clinton of endorsing the Dubai deal. “President Clinton now is on record,” said Mr. Hunter on ABC’s This Week program, “as advising the emir [of Dubai] on how to make this deal go through.”
Similar charges have erupted from a columnist at The Nation magazine on the left and from commentators for Fox News and NewsMax on the right—all accusing the Senator and the former President of sneaky perfidy.
It is true that the former President’s friendship with the Emirate rulers has proved rewarding in the most concrete ways. Like many others around the world, including major corporations, universities, charities and media outlets, they have paid him handsomely over the past several years to deliver speeches, and they contributed to the cost of constructing his library in Little Rock, Ark. Mr. Clinton serves on the board of an investment company that is involved in business deals with Dubai’s rulers.
To the full extent demanded by Senate rules—which ought to require more information—those foreign sources of family income are disclosed on Mrs. Clinton’s personal financial reports. But there is no logical inference that financial emoluments have bought political influence.
On the evening of Feb. 17, while Mr. Clinton was traveling in India, he received a call from two Dubai Ports World executives. According to his spokesman, he listened as they explained their troubles with Washington. He responded by advising them to submit to more thorough federal investigation and to guarantee that, should they eventually prevail, they will greatly enhance security in the U.S. ports they oversee.
Almost simultaneously with that brief conversation on the other side of the world, Senator Clinton was preparing to introduce legislation that would bar any company owned by a foreign government from owning American port facilities. She announced her plan the same day. Passage of her bill, co-sponsored by New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez, would instantly and permanently kill the Dubai deal.
So despite her husband’s friendship with Dubai, Senator Clinton acted against the interests of the emirate’s rulers. She could easily have deferred to her senior colleague, Senator Charles Schumer, who has also denounced the Dubai ports deal and introduced restrictive legislation.
As for the former President, he is not an advisor to Dubai Ports World and has publicly endorsed his wife’s legislation. “Whether it passes or not,” said the statement released by his office, “he believes this purchase should not be approved unless the security of our ports can be dramatically improved.”
Had either of them endorsed the Dubai deal, the outcry over the former President’s connections with the United Arab Emirates would be justified. Instead, she has moved to block the deal, and he has supported her bill—and yet their critics are still inflamed.
To understand this curious situation, it helps to know that what the Clintons actually say or do never matters. They’re always wrong.
About That Rebellion ...
The New York Times
March 11, 2006
Editorial
We keep hearing that the Republicans in Congress are in revolt against the president.
Some rebellion.
Yes, the Republicans defied President Bush on the United Arab Emirates ports deal. But it wasn't over a major principle, like the collapse of Congressional supervision of the executive branch or the incredibly lax security in the nation's ports, or even the security issues posed by this particular deal.
The Republicans dumped the ports deal into the harbor because of xenophobia and electoral tactics. Republican pollsters have been saying the president could be a liability in the fall elections, so lawmakers posed as rebels for voters who, they think, want rebels. They know those voters are unhappy about globalization, and specifically hostile toward Arabs.
The idea that a happy few are charging the White House ramparts is ridiculous. Republican lawmakers don't just turn a blind eye when they learn that the president is making profoundly bad choices, like cutting constitutional corners, abrogating treaties and even breaking the law. They actually legalize the president's misdeeds.
Take domestic spying, held up as another area of Republican revolt. The program violates the law. Congress knows it. The public knows it. Even President Bush knows it. (He just says the law doesn't apply to him.) In response, the Capitol Hill rebels are boldly refusing to investigate the program — or any other warrantless spying that is going on. They are trying to rewrite the law to legalize warrantless spying. And meanwhile, they've created new subcommittees to help the president go on defying the law.
Over the last couple of years, Republican lawmakers have been given proof that American soldiers and intelligence agents abused, tortured and even killed prisoners, or sent them to other countries to be tortured. Without hesitation, the Republicans did nothing — no serious investigation, no accountability.
Congressional and White House negotiators then watered down the new anti-torture law, which Mr. Bush said did not really apply to him anyway. And they passed another law actually encouraging the abuse of prisoners by allowing the use of coerced evidence at hearings on the prisoners' status.
After 9/11, Mr. Bush created a network of prisons outside the American legal system so he could hold people indefinitely without any hearings. When the Supreme Court said twice that he was reaching beyond his powers, the Republicans in Congress were determined not to let this assault on the rule of law continue. So they rose as one, and legalized the president's actions. In case there was any confusion about its resolve, Congress told the courts that they could no longer rule on these matters. Mr. Bush got the message, loud and clear. He sent his lawyers right out to inform the judges, including the Supreme Court, that they had to drop all the cases that were already before them.
And all this does not even include the act of open rebellion by which the Senate is helping the White House cover up the hyping of intelligence on Iraq.
With rebels like these, who needs loyalists?
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
March 11, 2006
Editorial
We keep hearing that the Republicans in Congress are in revolt against the president.
Some rebellion.
Yes, the Republicans defied President Bush on the United Arab Emirates ports deal. But it wasn't over a major principle, like the collapse of Congressional supervision of the executive branch or the incredibly lax security in the nation's ports, or even the security issues posed by this particular deal.
The Republicans dumped the ports deal into the harbor because of xenophobia and electoral tactics. Republican pollsters have been saying the president could be a liability in the fall elections, so lawmakers posed as rebels for voters who, they think, want rebels. They know those voters are unhappy about globalization, and specifically hostile toward Arabs.
The idea that a happy few are charging the White House ramparts is ridiculous. Republican lawmakers don't just turn a blind eye when they learn that the president is making profoundly bad choices, like cutting constitutional corners, abrogating treaties and even breaking the law. They actually legalize the president's misdeeds.
Take domestic spying, held up as another area of Republican revolt. The program violates the law. Congress knows it. The public knows it. Even President Bush knows it. (He just says the law doesn't apply to him.) In response, the Capitol Hill rebels are boldly refusing to investigate the program — or any other warrantless spying that is going on. They are trying to rewrite the law to legalize warrantless spying. And meanwhile, they've created new subcommittees to help the president go on defying the law.
Over the last couple of years, Republican lawmakers have been given proof that American soldiers and intelligence agents abused, tortured and even killed prisoners, or sent them to other countries to be tortured. Without hesitation, the Republicans did nothing — no serious investigation, no accountability.
Congressional and White House negotiators then watered down the new anti-torture law, which Mr. Bush said did not really apply to him anyway. And they passed another law actually encouraging the abuse of prisoners by allowing the use of coerced evidence at hearings on the prisoners' status.
After 9/11, Mr. Bush created a network of prisons outside the American legal system so he could hold people indefinitely without any hearings. When the Supreme Court said twice that he was reaching beyond his powers, the Republicans in Congress were determined not to let this assault on the rule of law continue. So they rose as one, and legalized the president's actions. In case there was any confusion about its resolve, Congress told the courts that they could no longer rule on these matters. Mr. Bush got the message, loud and clear. He sent his lawyers right out to inform the judges, including the Supreme Court, that they had to drop all the cases that were already before them.
And all this does not even include the act of open rebellion by which the Senate is helping the White House cover up the hyping of intelligence on Iraq.
With rebels like these, who needs loyalists?
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
Friday, March 10, 2006
Fw: Save the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Senate Budget Debate Next Week - FCNL
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kathy Guthrie" <kathyguthrie@fcnl.org>
To: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 5:04 PM
Subject: Save the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Senate Budget Debate Next
Week - FCNL
Next week (week of March 13), the Senate is set to debate once again
opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration.
Please contact your senators today. Urge them to oppose. The vote is
expected to be close. Your calls and emails can make a difference.
Getting your friends and family to call and email can make an even
bigger difference.
*Act Now*
Please email your senators now. Ask your friends and family to do the
same. You can email your senators directly from FCNL's web site, as
well as find talking points to help you write your message:
http://www.fcnl.org/redir/2606arctic/
*More Information*
It took thousands of years for the plant and animal communities to
co-evolve in the frozen, forbidding environment that is the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge, and it took epochs to lay down and store the
hydrocarbons in the rock strata beneath. But it will take only a couple
of short decades for the oil industry to disrupt the fragile web of
life on the surface, extract the energy value that lays beneath it, and
release millions of years' worth of stored carbon to the atmosphere --
all for the equivalent of six to twelve months of U.S. oil consumption.
Is this wise stewardship of the earth? What kind of legacy will this
leave to our descendants?
Read More: The Alaska Oil Treadmill: The More We Pump; The Warmer We
Get, FCNL Washington Newsletter, April 2005:
http://www.fcnl.org/redir/2706oilnl/ (free registration required)
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Enough of the D.C. Dems
Published in the March 2006 issue of The Progressive
by Molly Ivins
Mah fellow progressives, now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the party. I don’t know about you, but I have had it with the D.C. Democrats, had it with the DLC Democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch up there, and that includes Hillary Rodham Clinton.
I will not be supporting Senator Clinton because: a) she has no clear stand on the war and b) Terri Schiavo and flag-burning are not issues where you reach out to the other side and try to split the difference. You want to talk about lowering abortion rates through cooperation on sex education and contraception, fine, but don’t jack with stuff that is pure rightwing firewater.
I can’t see a damn soul in D.C. except Russ Feingold who is even worth considering for President. The rest of them seem to me so poisonously in hock to this system of legalized bribery they can’t even see straight.
Look at their reaction to this Abramoff scandal. They’re talking about “a lobby reform package.” We don’t need a lobby reform package, you dimwits, we need full public financing of campaigns, and every single one of you who spends half your time whoring after special interest contributions knows it. The Abramoff scandal is a once in a lifetime gift—a perfect lesson on what’s wrong with the system being laid out for people to see. Run with it, don’t mess around with little patches, and fix the system.
As usual, the Democrats have forty good issues on their side and want to run on thirty-nine of them. Here are three they should stick to:
1) Iraq is making terrorism worse; it’s a breeding ground. We need to extricate ourselves as soon as possible. We are not helping the Iraqis by staying.
2) Full public financing of campaigns so as to drive the moneylenders from the halls of Washington.
3) Single-payer health insurance.
Every Democrat I talk to is appalled at the sheer gutlessness and spinelessness of the Democratic performance. The party is still cringing at the thought of being called, ooh-ooh, “unpatriotic” by a bunch of rightwingers.
Take “unpatriotic” and shove it. How dare they do this to our country? “Unpatriotic”? These people have ruined the American military! Not to mention the economy, the middle class, and our reputation in the world. Everything they touch turns to dirt, including Medicare prescription drugs and hurricane relief.
This is not a time for a candidate who will offend no one; it is time for a candidate who takes clear stands and kicks ass.
Who are these idiots talking about Warner of Virginia? Being anodyne is not sufficient qualification for being President. And if there’s nobody in Washington and we can’t find a Democratic governor, let’s run Bill Moyers, or Oprah, or some university president with ethics and charisma.
What happens now is not up to the has-beens in Washington who run this party. It is up to us. So let’s get off our butts and start building a progressive movement that can block the nomination of Hillary Clinton or any other candidate who supposedly has “all the money sewed up.”
I am tired of having the party nomination decided before the first primary vote is cast, tired of having the party beholden to the same old Establishment money.
We can raise our own money on the Internet, and we know it. Howard Dean raised $42 million, largely on the web, with a late start when he was running for President, and that ain’t chicken feed. If we double it, it gives us the lock on the nomination. So let’s go find a good candidate early and organize the shit out of our side.
Molly Ivins writes in this space every month. Her latest book is “Who Let the Dogs In?”
by Molly Ivins
Mah fellow progressives, now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the party. I don’t know about you, but I have had it with the D.C. Democrats, had it with the DLC Democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch up there, and that includes Hillary Rodham Clinton.
I will not be supporting Senator Clinton because: a) she has no clear stand on the war and b) Terri Schiavo and flag-burning are not issues where you reach out to the other side and try to split the difference. You want to talk about lowering abortion rates through cooperation on sex education and contraception, fine, but don’t jack with stuff that is pure rightwing firewater.
I can’t see a damn soul in D.C. except Russ Feingold who is even worth considering for President. The rest of them seem to me so poisonously in hock to this system of legalized bribery they can’t even see straight.
Look at their reaction to this Abramoff scandal. They’re talking about “a lobby reform package.” We don’t need a lobby reform package, you dimwits, we need full public financing of campaigns, and every single one of you who spends half your time whoring after special interest contributions knows it. The Abramoff scandal is a once in a lifetime gift—a perfect lesson on what’s wrong with the system being laid out for people to see. Run with it, don’t mess around with little patches, and fix the system.
As usual, the Democrats have forty good issues on their side and want to run on thirty-nine of them. Here are three they should stick to:
1) Iraq is making terrorism worse; it’s a breeding ground. We need to extricate ourselves as soon as possible. We are not helping the Iraqis by staying.
2) Full public financing of campaigns so as to drive the moneylenders from the halls of Washington.
3) Single-payer health insurance.
Every Democrat I talk to is appalled at the sheer gutlessness and spinelessness of the Democratic performance. The party is still cringing at the thought of being called, ooh-ooh, “unpatriotic” by a bunch of rightwingers.
Take “unpatriotic” and shove it. How dare they do this to our country? “Unpatriotic”? These people have ruined the American military! Not to mention the economy, the middle class, and our reputation in the world. Everything they touch turns to dirt, including Medicare prescription drugs and hurricane relief.
This is not a time for a candidate who will offend no one; it is time for a candidate who takes clear stands and kicks ass.
Who are these idiots talking about Warner of Virginia? Being anodyne is not sufficient qualification for being President. And if there’s nobody in Washington and we can’t find a Democratic governor, let’s run Bill Moyers, or Oprah, or some university president with ethics and charisma.
What happens now is not up to the has-beens in Washington who run this party. It is up to us. So let’s get off our butts and start building a progressive movement that can block the nomination of Hillary Clinton or any other candidate who supposedly has “all the money sewed up.”
I am tired of having the party nomination decided before the first primary vote is cast, tired of having the party beholden to the same old Establishment money.
We can raise our own money on the Internet, and we know it. Howard Dean raised $42 million, largely on the web, with a late start when he was running for President, and that ain’t chicken feed. If we double it, it gives us the lock on the nomination. So let’s go find a good candidate early and organize the shit out of our side.
Molly Ivins writes in this space every month. Her latest book is “Who Let the Dogs In?”
Colonization of Palestine Precludes Peace
Published on Thursday, March 9, 2006 by TomPaine.com
by Jimmy Carter
For more than a quarter century, Israeli policy has been in conflict with that of the United States and the international community. Israel’s occupation of Palestine has obstructed a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land, regardless of whether Palestinians had no formalized government, one headed by Yasir Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas, or with Abbas as president and Hamas controlling the parliament and cabinet.
The unwavering U.S. position since Dwight Eisenhower’s administration has been that Israel’s borders coincide with those established in 1949, and, since 1967, the universally adopted U.N. Resolution 242 has mandated Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories. This policy was reconfirmed even by Israel in 1978 and 1993, and emphasized by all American presidents, including George W. Bush. As part of the Quartet, including Russia, the U.N. and the European Union, he has endorsed a “Road Map” for peace. But Israel has officially rejected its basic premises with patently unacceptable caveats and prerequisites.
With Israel’s approval, The Carter Center has monitored all three Palestinian elections. Supervised by a blue-ribbon commission of college presidents and distinguished jurists, they have all been honest, fair and peaceful, with the results accepted by winners and losers.
Hamas will control the cabinet and prime minister’s office, but Mahmoud Abbas retains all authority and power exercised by Yasir Arafat. He still heads the PLO, the only Palestinian entity recognized by Israel, and could deal with Israeli leaders under this umbrella, independent of Hamas control. He has unequivocally endorsed the Quartet’s Road Map. Post-election polls show that 80 percent of Palestinians still want a peace agreement with Israel and nearly 70 percent support Abbas as president.
Israel has announced a policy of isolating and destabilizing the new government (perhaps joined by the United States). The elected officials will be denied travel permits, workers from isolated Gaza barred from entering Israel and every effort is being made to block funds to Palestinians. The Quartet’s special envoy, James Wolfensohn, has proposed that donors assist the Palestinian people without violating anti-terrorism laws that prohibit funds from being sent directly to Hamas.
In the short run, the best approach is to follow Wolfensohn’s advice, give the dust a chance to settle in Palestine and await the outcome of Israel’s election later this month. Hamas wishes now to consolidate its political gains, maintain domestic order and stability and refrain from any contacts with Israel. It will be a tragedy—especially for the Palestinians—if they promote or condone terrorism.
The preeminent obstacle to peace is Israel’s colonization of Palestine. There were just a few hundred settlers in the West Bank and Gaza when I became president, but the Likud government expanded settlement activity after I left office. President Ronald Reagan condemned this policy, and reaffirmed that Resolution 242 remained “the foundation stone of America’s Middle East peace effort.” President George H.W. Bush even threatened to reduce American aid to Israel.
Although President Bill Clinton made strong efforts to promote peace, a massive increase of settlers occurred during his administration, to 225,000, mostly while Ehud Barak was prime minister. Their best official offer to the Palestinians was to withdraw 20 percent of them, leaving 180,000 in 209 settlements, covering about five percent of the occupied land.
The five percent figure is grossly misleading, with surrounding areas taken or earmarked for expansion, roadways joining settlements with each other and to Jerusalem and wide arterial swaths providing water, sewage, electricity and communications. This intricate honeycomb divides the entire West Bank into multiple fragments, often uninhabitable or even unreachable.
Recently, Israeli leaders have decided on unilateral actions without involving either the United States or the Palestinians, with withdrawal from Gaza as the first step. As presently circumscribed and isolated, without access to the air, sea or the West Bank, Gaza is a nonviable economic and political entity.
The future of the West Bank is equally dismal. Especially troublesome is Israel’s construction of huge concrete dividing walls in populated areas and high fences in rural areas—located entirely on Palestinian territory and often with deep intrusions to encompass more land and settlements. The wall is designed to surround a truncated Palestine completely, and a network of exclusive highways will cut across what is left of Palestine to connect Israel with the Jordan River Valley.
This will never be acceptable either to Palestinians or to the international community, and will inevitably precipitate increased tension and violence within Palestine and stronger resentment and animosity from the Arab world against America, which will be held accountable for the plight of the Palestinians.
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and others pointed out years ago that Israel’s permanent occupation will be increasingly difficult as the relative number of Jewish citizens decreases demographically both within Israel and in Palestine. This is obvious to most Israelis, who also view this dominant role as a distortion of their ancient moral and religious values. Over the years, opinion polls have consistently shown that about 60 percent of Israelis favor withdrawing from the West Bank in exchange for permanent peace. Similarly, an overwhelming number of both Israelis and Palestinians want a durable two-state solution.
Casualties have increased during the past few years as the occupying forces imposed tighter controls. From September 2000 until March 2006, 3982 Palestinians and 1084 Israelis were killed in the conflict, and this includes many children: 708 Palestinians and 123 Israelis.
There is little doubt that accommodation with Palestinians can bring full Arab recognition of Israel and its right to live in peace. Any rejectionist policies of Hamas or any terrorist group will be overcome by an overall Arab commitment to restrain further violence and to promote the well-being of the Palestinian people.
Down through the years, I have seen despair and frustration evolve into optimism and progress and, even now, we need not give up hope for permanent peace for Israelis and freedom and justice for Palestinians if three basic premises are honored:
1. Israel’s right to exist—and to live in peace—must be recognized and accepted by Palestinians and all other neighbors;
2. The killing of innocent people by suicide bombs or other acts of violence cannot be condoned; and
3. Palestinians must live in peace and dignity, and permanent Israeli settlements on their land are a major obstacle to this goal.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter led The Carter Center/National Democratic Institute observation of the Palestinian elections in January.
© 2006 Project Syndicate and The Council on Foreign Relations
by Jimmy Carter
For more than a quarter century, Israeli policy has been in conflict with that of the United States and the international community. Israel’s occupation of Palestine has obstructed a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land, regardless of whether Palestinians had no formalized government, one headed by Yasir Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas, or with Abbas as president and Hamas controlling the parliament and cabinet.
The unwavering U.S. position since Dwight Eisenhower’s administration has been that Israel’s borders coincide with those established in 1949, and, since 1967, the universally adopted U.N. Resolution 242 has mandated Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories. This policy was reconfirmed even by Israel in 1978 and 1993, and emphasized by all American presidents, including George W. Bush. As part of the Quartet, including Russia, the U.N. and the European Union, he has endorsed a “Road Map” for peace. But Israel has officially rejected its basic premises with patently unacceptable caveats and prerequisites.
With Israel’s approval, The Carter Center has monitored all three Palestinian elections. Supervised by a blue-ribbon commission of college presidents and distinguished jurists, they have all been honest, fair and peaceful, with the results accepted by winners and losers.
Hamas will control the cabinet and prime minister’s office, but Mahmoud Abbas retains all authority and power exercised by Yasir Arafat. He still heads the PLO, the only Palestinian entity recognized by Israel, and could deal with Israeli leaders under this umbrella, independent of Hamas control. He has unequivocally endorsed the Quartet’s Road Map. Post-election polls show that 80 percent of Palestinians still want a peace agreement with Israel and nearly 70 percent support Abbas as president.
Israel has announced a policy of isolating and destabilizing the new government (perhaps joined by the United States). The elected officials will be denied travel permits, workers from isolated Gaza barred from entering Israel and every effort is being made to block funds to Palestinians. The Quartet’s special envoy, James Wolfensohn, has proposed that donors assist the Palestinian people without violating anti-terrorism laws that prohibit funds from being sent directly to Hamas.
In the short run, the best approach is to follow Wolfensohn’s advice, give the dust a chance to settle in Palestine and await the outcome of Israel’s election later this month. Hamas wishes now to consolidate its political gains, maintain domestic order and stability and refrain from any contacts with Israel. It will be a tragedy—especially for the Palestinians—if they promote or condone terrorism.
The preeminent obstacle to peace is Israel’s colonization of Palestine. There were just a few hundred settlers in the West Bank and Gaza when I became president, but the Likud government expanded settlement activity after I left office. President Ronald Reagan condemned this policy, and reaffirmed that Resolution 242 remained “the foundation stone of America’s Middle East peace effort.” President George H.W. Bush even threatened to reduce American aid to Israel.
Although President Bill Clinton made strong efforts to promote peace, a massive increase of settlers occurred during his administration, to 225,000, mostly while Ehud Barak was prime minister. Their best official offer to the Palestinians was to withdraw 20 percent of them, leaving 180,000 in 209 settlements, covering about five percent of the occupied land.
The five percent figure is grossly misleading, with surrounding areas taken or earmarked for expansion, roadways joining settlements with each other and to Jerusalem and wide arterial swaths providing water, sewage, electricity and communications. This intricate honeycomb divides the entire West Bank into multiple fragments, often uninhabitable or even unreachable.
Recently, Israeli leaders have decided on unilateral actions without involving either the United States or the Palestinians, with withdrawal from Gaza as the first step. As presently circumscribed and isolated, without access to the air, sea or the West Bank, Gaza is a nonviable economic and political entity.
The future of the West Bank is equally dismal. Especially troublesome is Israel’s construction of huge concrete dividing walls in populated areas and high fences in rural areas—located entirely on Palestinian territory and often with deep intrusions to encompass more land and settlements. The wall is designed to surround a truncated Palestine completely, and a network of exclusive highways will cut across what is left of Palestine to connect Israel with the Jordan River Valley.
This will never be acceptable either to Palestinians or to the international community, and will inevitably precipitate increased tension and violence within Palestine and stronger resentment and animosity from the Arab world against America, which will be held accountable for the plight of the Palestinians.
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and others pointed out years ago that Israel’s permanent occupation will be increasingly difficult as the relative number of Jewish citizens decreases demographically both within Israel and in Palestine. This is obvious to most Israelis, who also view this dominant role as a distortion of their ancient moral and religious values. Over the years, opinion polls have consistently shown that about 60 percent of Israelis favor withdrawing from the West Bank in exchange for permanent peace. Similarly, an overwhelming number of both Israelis and Palestinians want a durable two-state solution.
Casualties have increased during the past few years as the occupying forces imposed tighter controls. From September 2000 until March 2006, 3982 Palestinians and 1084 Israelis were killed in the conflict, and this includes many children: 708 Palestinians and 123 Israelis.
There is little doubt that accommodation with Palestinians can bring full Arab recognition of Israel and its right to live in peace. Any rejectionist policies of Hamas or any terrorist group will be overcome by an overall Arab commitment to restrain further violence and to promote the well-being of the Palestinian people.
Down through the years, I have seen despair and frustration evolve into optimism and progress and, even now, we need not give up hope for permanent peace for Israelis and freedom and justice for Palestinians if three basic premises are honored:
1. Israel’s right to exist—and to live in peace—must be recognized and accepted by Palestinians and all other neighbors;
2. The killing of innocent people by suicide bombs or other acts of violence cannot be condoned; and
3. Palestinians must live in peace and dignity, and permanent Israeli settlements on their land are a major obstacle to this goal.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter led The Carter Center/National Democratic Institute observation of the Palestinian elections in January.
© 2006 Project Syndicate and The Council on Foreign Relations
Rummy Flunks History
by Arianna Huffington
Earlier this week, I blogged about the Bush administration's increasingly absurd efforts to spin the war in Iraq, including Don Rumsfeld's attempt to lay the blame for the White House's Iraq troubles at the feet of America's history teachers: "I think the biggest problem we've got in the country is people don't study history anymore. People who go to school in high schools and colleges, they tend to study current events and call it history... There are just too darn few people in our country who study history enough." Readers curious to learn more about the scourge of the high-school history teacher could follow the link we provided to the Department of Defense website to read the rest of the interview.
In it, Rumsfeld the historian expounds on the public's across the board disapproval of war. "There's never been a popular war," said Rummy, trying to explain away the president's 60% disapproval rating. "You can't name a popular war. There isn't such a thing." Then, like a gruff professor, he rattled off some quick backup for his claim: Revolutionary War? "George Washington was almost fired." Civil War? "The Civil War was the ugliest thing -- carnage. 10,000, 15,000 people killed in a battle." What about World War II? "Same thing in World War II... Franklin Roosevelt was one of the most hated people in the country and he was President of the United States. He was Commander-in-Chief. He did a terrific job." Wow.
No wonder Bush's approval rating is so low. People even disapproved of FDR -- and he was fighting the Big One, the one we had to win, the one that made the world safe for freedom. And he did "a terrific job," as opposed to the hapless job Rummy's boss is doing. Pretty persuasive, Mr. Secretary. Only trouble is, it's completely bogus history.
A brief fact check reveals that public support for WW II never slipped below 75 percent, even though more than 200,000 Americans had been killed by mid-1945. As for the public's "hatred" of FDR, the facts tell a very different story: Roosevelt's approval rating during the war never fell below 66%, and his disapproval rating never climbed above 25%.
And that wasn't Rumsfeld's only historical inaccuracy. He also claimed that, due to the Korean War, "Harry Truman went out of office with 23% popularity in the polls." Not true: in the last poll before he left office, Truman's approval rating was 32%. What's more, his approval rating was just 37% even before the Korean War started (it did, at one point, drop to 22% before rebounding). Thus, Truman lost just 5% overall. By comparison, Bush's Gallup approval just before the invasion of Iraq was 58%, so he'd need to win back 15% of the public to match Truman's numbers. Not going to happen.During his history rant, Rumsfeld suggested, "frankly, journalists ought to do a better job of providing context for what's taking place." I agree.
So here's the context for what's taking place: Bush, Rumsfeld, and company misled us into an unnecessary war and have utterly botched the occupation. And the public is finally holding them accountable. So now Rummy is desperately trying to sell the idea that Iraq isn't an unmitigated disaster but rather just part of a historical norm. Even if it means making stuff up. So, in the name of all the history teachers Rummy cast aspersions on, let's give him an "F" as a student of history, and an "A" as a propagandist. Wait ... better make that an "A+"; it looks like Rummy and the gang at the DoD did some extra-credit homework.
Soon after I posted about Rummy's "biggest problem" quote and linked to the DoD website, the entire interview suddenly vanished from the site. It's disappeared from the list of recent transcripts, and the page where the interview once was is now completely blank. All part of their reverence for history and truth, no doubt. As Schwarz sums it up: "I guess that, while it's a good thing for people to know history, there's no reason to make it easy for them."
Earlier this week, I blogged about the Bush administration's increasingly absurd efforts to spin the war in Iraq, including Don Rumsfeld's attempt to lay the blame for the White House's Iraq troubles at the feet of America's history teachers: "I think the biggest problem we've got in the country is people don't study history anymore. People who go to school in high schools and colleges, they tend to study current events and call it history... There are just too darn few people in our country who study history enough." Readers curious to learn more about the scourge of the high-school history teacher could follow the link we provided to the Department of Defense website to read the rest of the interview.
In it, Rumsfeld the historian expounds on the public's across the board disapproval of war. "There's never been a popular war," said Rummy, trying to explain away the president's 60% disapproval rating. "You can't name a popular war. There isn't such a thing." Then, like a gruff professor, he rattled off some quick backup for his claim: Revolutionary War? "George Washington was almost fired." Civil War? "The Civil War was the ugliest thing -- carnage. 10,000, 15,000 people killed in a battle." What about World War II? "Same thing in World War II... Franklin Roosevelt was one of the most hated people in the country and he was President of the United States. He was Commander-in-Chief. He did a terrific job." Wow.
No wonder Bush's approval rating is so low. People even disapproved of FDR -- and he was fighting the Big One, the one we had to win, the one that made the world safe for freedom. And he did "a terrific job," as opposed to the hapless job Rummy's boss is doing. Pretty persuasive, Mr. Secretary. Only trouble is, it's completely bogus history.
A brief fact check reveals that public support for WW II never slipped below 75 percent, even though more than 200,000 Americans had been killed by mid-1945. As for the public's "hatred" of FDR, the facts tell a very different story: Roosevelt's approval rating during the war never fell below 66%, and his disapproval rating never climbed above 25%.
And that wasn't Rumsfeld's only historical inaccuracy. He also claimed that, due to the Korean War, "Harry Truman went out of office with 23% popularity in the polls." Not true: in the last poll before he left office, Truman's approval rating was 32%. What's more, his approval rating was just 37% even before the Korean War started (it did, at one point, drop to 22% before rebounding). Thus, Truman lost just 5% overall. By comparison, Bush's Gallup approval just before the invasion of Iraq was 58%, so he'd need to win back 15% of the public to match Truman's numbers. Not going to happen.During his history rant, Rumsfeld suggested, "frankly, journalists ought to do a better job of providing context for what's taking place." I agree.
So here's the context for what's taking place: Bush, Rumsfeld, and company misled us into an unnecessary war and have utterly botched the occupation. And the public is finally holding them accountable. So now Rummy is desperately trying to sell the idea that Iraq isn't an unmitigated disaster but rather just part of a historical norm. Even if it means making stuff up. So, in the name of all the history teachers Rummy cast aspersions on, let's give him an "F" as a student of history, and an "A" as a propagandist. Wait ... better make that an "A+"; it looks like Rummy and the gang at the DoD did some extra-credit homework.
Soon after I posted about Rummy's "biggest problem" quote and linked to the DoD website, the entire interview suddenly vanished from the site. It's disappeared from the list of recent transcripts, and the page where the interview once was is now completely blank. All part of their reverence for history and truth, no doubt. As Schwarz sums it up: "I guess that, while it's a good thing for people to know history, there's no reason to make it easy for them."
What took you so long?
The New York Times
March 10, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Conservative Epiphany
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Bruce Bartlett, the author of "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy," is an angry man. At a recent book forum at the Cato Institute, he declared that the Bush administration is "unconscionable," "irresponsible," "vindictive" and "inept."
It's no wonder, then, that one commentator wrote of Mr. Bartlett that "if he were a cartoon character, he would probably look like Donald Duck during one of his famous tirades, with steam pouring out of his ears."
Oh, wait. That's not what somebody wrote about Mr. Bartlett. It's what Mr. Bartlett wrote about me in September 2003, when I was saying pretty much what he's saying now.
Human nature being what it is, I don't expect Mr. Bartlett to acknowledge his about-face. Nor do I expect any expressions of remorse from Andrew Sullivan, the conservative Time.com blogger who also spoke at the Cato forum. Mr. Sullivan used to specialize in denouncing the patriotism and character of anyone who dared to criticize President Bush, whom he lionized. Now he himself has become a critic, not just of Mr. Bush's policies, but of his personal qualities, too.
Never mind; better late than never. We should welcome the recent epiphanies by conservative commentators who have finally realized that the Bush administration isn't trustworthy. But we should guard against a conventional wisdom that seems to be taking hold in some quarters, which says there's something praiseworthy about having initially been taken in by Mr. Bush's deceptions, even though the administration's mendacity was obvious from the beginning.
According to this view, if you're a former Bush supporter who now says, as Mr. Bartlett did at the Cato event, that "the administration lies about budget numbers," you're a brave truth-teller. But if you've been saying that since the early days of the Bush administration, you were unpleasantly shrill.
Similarly, if you're a former worshipful admirer of George W. Bush who now says, as Mr. Sullivan did at Cato, that "the people in this administration have no principles," you're taking a courageous stand. If you said the same thing back when Mr. Bush had an 80 percent approval rating, you were blinded by Bush-hatred.
And if you're a former hawk who now concedes that the administration exaggerated the threat from Iraq, you're to be applauded for your open-mindedness. But if you warned three years ago that the administration was hyping the case for war, you were a conspiracy theorist.
The truth is that everything the new wave of Bush critics has to say was obvious long ago to any commentator who was willing to look at the facts.
Mr. Bartlett's book is mainly a critique of the Bush administration's fiscal policy. Well, the administration's pattern of fiscal dishonesty and irresponsibility was clear right from the start to anyone who understands budget arithmetic. The chicanery that took place during the selling of the 2001 tax cut — obviously fraudulent budget projections, transparently deceptive advertising about who would benefit and the use of blatant accounting gimmicks to conceal the plan's true cost — was as bad as anything that followed.
The false selling of the Iraq war was almost as easy to spot. All the supposed evidence for an Iraqi nuclear program was discredited before the war — and it was the threat of nukes, not lesser W.M.D., that stampeded Congress into authorizing Mr. Bush to go to war. The administration's nonsensical but insistent rhetorical linkage of Iraq and 9/11 was also a dead giveaway that we were being railroaded into an unnecessary war.
The point is that pundits who failed to notice the administration's mendacity a long time ago either weren't doing their homework, or deliberately turned a blind eye to the evidence.
But as I said, better late than never. Born-again Bush-bashers like Mr. Bartlett and Mr. Sullivan, however churlish, are intellectually and morally superior to the Bushist dead-enders who still insist that Saddam was allied with Al Qaeda, and will soon be claiming that we lost the war in Iraq because the liberal media stabbed the troops in the back. And reporters understandably consider it newsworthy that some conservative voices are now echoing longstanding liberal critiques of the Bush administration.
It's still fair, however, to ask people like Mr. Bartlett the obvious question: What took you so long?
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
March 10, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
The Conservative Epiphany
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Bruce Bartlett, the author of "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy," is an angry man. At a recent book forum at the Cato Institute, he declared that the Bush administration is "unconscionable," "irresponsible," "vindictive" and "inept."
It's no wonder, then, that one commentator wrote of Mr. Bartlett that "if he were a cartoon character, he would probably look like Donald Duck during one of his famous tirades, with steam pouring out of his ears."
Oh, wait. That's not what somebody wrote about Mr. Bartlett. It's what Mr. Bartlett wrote about me in September 2003, when I was saying pretty much what he's saying now.
Human nature being what it is, I don't expect Mr. Bartlett to acknowledge his about-face. Nor do I expect any expressions of remorse from Andrew Sullivan, the conservative Time.com blogger who also spoke at the Cato forum. Mr. Sullivan used to specialize in denouncing the patriotism and character of anyone who dared to criticize President Bush, whom he lionized. Now he himself has become a critic, not just of Mr. Bush's policies, but of his personal qualities, too.
Never mind; better late than never. We should welcome the recent epiphanies by conservative commentators who have finally realized that the Bush administration isn't trustworthy. But we should guard against a conventional wisdom that seems to be taking hold in some quarters, which says there's something praiseworthy about having initially been taken in by Mr. Bush's deceptions, even though the administration's mendacity was obvious from the beginning.
According to this view, if you're a former Bush supporter who now says, as Mr. Bartlett did at the Cato event, that "the administration lies about budget numbers," you're a brave truth-teller. But if you've been saying that since the early days of the Bush administration, you were unpleasantly shrill.
Similarly, if you're a former worshipful admirer of George W. Bush who now says, as Mr. Sullivan did at Cato, that "the people in this administration have no principles," you're taking a courageous stand. If you said the same thing back when Mr. Bush had an 80 percent approval rating, you were blinded by Bush-hatred.
And if you're a former hawk who now concedes that the administration exaggerated the threat from Iraq, you're to be applauded for your open-mindedness. But if you warned three years ago that the administration was hyping the case for war, you were a conspiracy theorist.
The truth is that everything the new wave of Bush critics has to say was obvious long ago to any commentator who was willing to look at the facts.
Mr. Bartlett's book is mainly a critique of the Bush administration's fiscal policy. Well, the administration's pattern of fiscal dishonesty and irresponsibility was clear right from the start to anyone who understands budget arithmetic. The chicanery that took place during the selling of the 2001 tax cut — obviously fraudulent budget projections, transparently deceptive advertising about who would benefit and the use of blatant accounting gimmicks to conceal the plan's true cost — was as bad as anything that followed.
The false selling of the Iraq war was almost as easy to spot. All the supposed evidence for an Iraqi nuclear program was discredited before the war — and it was the threat of nukes, not lesser W.M.D., that stampeded Congress into authorizing Mr. Bush to go to war. The administration's nonsensical but insistent rhetorical linkage of Iraq and 9/11 was also a dead giveaway that we were being railroaded into an unnecessary war.
The point is that pundits who failed to notice the administration's mendacity a long time ago either weren't doing their homework, or deliberately turned a blind eye to the evidence.
But as I said, better late than never. Born-again Bush-bashers like Mr. Bartlett and Mr. Sullivan, however churlish, are intellectually and morally superior to the Bushist dead-enders who still insist that Saddam was allied with Al Qaeda, and will soon be claiming that we lost the war in Iraq because the liberal media stabbed the troops in the back. And reporters understandably consider it newsworthy that some conservative voices are now echoing longstanding liberal critiques of the Bush administration.
It's still fair, however, to ask people like Mr. Bartlett the obvious question: What took you so long?
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
Thursday, March 09, 2006
House Votes to Dump State Food Safety Laws
Published on Thursday, March 9, 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle
by Zachary Coile
WASHINGTON - The House approved a bill Wednesday night that would wipe out state laws on safety labeling of food, overriding tough rules passed by California voters two decades ago that require food producers to warn consumers about cancer-causing ingredients.
The vote was a victory for the food industry, which has lobbied for years for national standards for food labeling and contributed millions of dollars to lawmakers' campaigns. But consumer groups and state regulators warned that the bill would undo more than 200 state laws, including California's landmark Proposition 65, that protect public health.
"The purpose of this legislation is to keep the public from knowing about the harm they may be exposed to in food," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, a chief critic of the measure.
Several critics argued that the bill was rushed through the House without complete hearings as a favor to a specific industry -- at the same time that members are talking about the evils of lobbying and proposing stricter ethical rules.
Under the bill, any state that wanted to keep its own tougher standards for food labeling would have to ask for approval from the Food and Drug Administration, which has been criticized by food safety groups as slow to issue consumer warnings.
The measure was approved after a debate in which House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco accused the Republican majority of "shredding the food safety net that we have built in this country."
The measure passed 283 to 139, with the support of many Democrats. The Bay Area's 12 Democratic members opposed the bill, while Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, supported it. The legislation faces a tougher battle in the more evenly divided Senate, and there are signs of growing opposition to the measure.
California's two Democratic senators are threatening to block the bill from coming to the Senate floor. A group of 39 state attorneys general, including many Republicans, has warned of the consequences of the measure. State food and drug regulators and agricultural officials also are urging the Senate to reject the bill.
A major target of the legislation is Prop. 65, which was approved by two-thirds of California voters in 1986 and requires labeling of substances that may cause cancer or birth defects. The law has inspired other states to follow suit with their own rules on food labeling that are more stringent than federal standards.
Critics say the laws have added costs for food manufacturers and distributors, who must comply with different rules in different states. The industry's backers claim the different warning labels confuse consumers.
"There is no reason nor is there any excuse to allow regulatory inconsistency to drive up costs and keep some consumers in the dark on matters that may affect their health," said Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga.
But California officials said the new legislation would reverse the gains made through Prop. 65. Many companies, fearing the warning labels, have changed their food to meet the state's tougher standards. Bottled water companies have cut arsenic levels, and bakers have taken potassium bromate, a potential carcinogen, out of many breads, doughnuts and other bakery goods.
"We've had a lot of success in getting them to reformulate," said California Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
Opponents of the bill complained that it was rushed to the House floor without a public hearing, where state regulators and food safety advocates could have testified against it.
"That is the job of Congress, to hold hearings, to introduce facts, to listen to debate," said Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., who co-sponsored the bill but opposed it on the floor, saying it needed a thorough public debate. "I am wondering right now what the food industry is afraid of. Why are they trying to ram this piece of legislation through the House?"
Critics of the measure also have been frustrated that California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has not taken a position on the bill despite being urged to do so by Waxman and Rep. Mary Bono, R-Palm Springs, early last month.
"Your silence on this legislation is inexplicable," Waxman wrote in a letter to the governor. "It not only rolls back essential existing laws, but it takes away your ability, and the ability of the California Legislature, to respond to future public health issues."
A spokeswoman for the governor said Schwarzenegger may still jump into the debate.
"The office is reviewing it," said spokeswoman Margita Thompson. "Once the determination is made if the governor should weigh in and how, we will."
The vote Wednesday was a sign of the tremendous power of the food industry in Congress. Corporations and trade groups that joined the National Uniformity for Food Coalition, which backed the bill, have contributed more than $3 million to members in the 2005-06 election cycle and $31 million since 1998, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.
The industry also has many top lobbyists pushing the bill, including White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card's brother, Brad Card, who represents the Food Products Association.
by Zachary Coile
WASHINGTON - The House approved a bill Wednesday night that would wipe out state laws on safety labeling of food, overriding tough rules passed by California voters two decades ago that require food producers to warn consumers about cancer-causing ingredients.
The vote was a victory for the food industry, which has lobbied for years for national standards for food labeling and contributed millions of dollars to lawmakers' campaigns. But consumer groups and state regulators warned that the bill would undo more than 200 state laws, including California's landmark Proposition 65, that protect public health.
"The purpose of this legislation is to keep the public from knowing about the harm they may be exposed to in food," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, a chief critic of the measure.
Several critics argued that the bill was rushed through the House without complete hearings as a favor to a specific industry -- at the same time that members are talking about the evils of lobbying and proposing stricter ethical rules.
Under the bill, any state that wanted to keep its own tougher standards for food labeling would have to ask for approval from the Food and Drug Administration, which has been criticized by food safety groups as slow to issue consumer warnings.
The measure was approved after a debate in which House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco accused the Republican majority of "shredding the food safety net that we have built in this country."
The measure passed 283 to 139, with the support of many Democrats. The Bay Area's 12 Democratic members opposed the bill, while Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, supported it. The legislation faces a tougher battle in the more evenly divided Senate, and there are signs of growing opposition to the measure.
California's two Democratic senators are threatening to block the bill from coming to the Senate floor. A group of 39 state attorneys general, including many Republicans, has warned of the consequences of the measure. State food and drug regulators and agricultural officials also are urging the Senate to reject the bill.
A major target of the legislation is Prop. 65, which was approved by two-thirds of California voters in 1986 and requires labeling of substances that may cause cancer or birth defects. The law has inspired other states to follow suit with their own rules on food labeling that are more stringent than federal standards.
Critics say the laws have added costs for food manufacturers and distributors, who must comply with different rules in different states. The industry's backers claim the different warning labels confuse consumers.
"There is no reason nor is there any excuse to allow regulatory inconsistency to drive up costs and keep some consumers in the dark on matters that may affect their health," said Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga.
But California officials said the new legislation would reverse the gains made through Prop. 65. Many companies, fearing the warning labels, have changed their food to meet the state's tougher standards. Bottled water companies have cut arsenic levels, and bakers have taken potassium bromate, a potential carcinogen, out of many breads, doughnuts and other bakery goods.
"We've had a lot of success in getting them to reformulate," said California Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
Opponents of the bill complained that it was rushed to the House floor without a public hearing, where state regulators and food safety advocates could have testified against it.
"That is the job of Congress, to hold hearings, to introduce facts, to listen to debate," said Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., who co-sponsored the bill but opposed it on the floor, saying it needed a thorough public debate. "I am wondering right now what the food industry is afraid of. Why are they trying to ram this piece of legislation through the House?"
Critics of the measure also have been frustrated that California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has not taken a position on the bill despite being urged to do so by Waxman and Rep. Mary Bono, R-Palm Springs, early last month.
"Your silence on this legislation is inexplicable," Waxman wrote in a letter to the governor. "It not only rolls back essential existing laws, but it takes away your ability, and the ability of the California Legislature, to respond to future public health issues."
A spokeswoman for the governor said Schwarzenegger may still jump into the debate.
"The office is reviewing it," said spokeswoman Margita Thompson. "Once the determination is made if the governor should weigh in and how, we will."
The vote Wednesday was a sign of the tremendous power of the food industry in Congress. Corporations and trade groups that joined the National Uniformity for Food Coalition, which backed the bill, have contributed more than $3 million to members in the 2005-06 election cycle and $31 million since 1998, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.
The industry also has many top lobbyists pushing the bill, including White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card's brother, Brad Card, who represents the Food Products Association.
Another front in the abortion war
by Tim Grieve
Just when we were ready to take a breather from the when-life-begins debate, along comes this: Hot on the heels of South Dakota's new abortion ban, the Indiana Legislature is considering a measure that would require doctors to tell women considering abortion that life begins at conception and that a fetus might feel pain during the procedure.
The Indianapolis Star says that the state's General Assembly included the language in a bill setting forth the written information doctors must provide their patients. The Senate removed the language, but now there's a push to get it back in through the conference committee process.
Planned Parenthood's Michael McKillip tells the Star that "to suggest to a woman, where no science is evident, that it is possible to feel pain before 20 weeks is nothing short of harassment." Republican state Sen. Mike Delph says women should be given the warning anyway because abortion is "the human-rights issue of our day."
Just when we were ready to take a breather from the when-life-begins debate, along comes this: Hot on the heels of South Dakota's new abortion ban, the Indiana Legislature is considering a measure that would require doctors to tell women considering abortion that life begins at conception and that a fetus might feel pain during the procedure.
The Indianapolis Star says that the state's General Assembly included the language in a bill setting forth the written information doctors must provide their patients. The Senate removed the language, but now there's a push to get it back in through the conference committee process.
Planned Parenthood's Michael McKillip tells the Star that "to suggest to a woman, where no science is evident, that it is possible to feel pain before 20 weeks is nothing short of harassment." Republican state Sen. Mike Delph says women should be given the warning anyway because abortion is "the human-rights issue of our day."
Victory in 2006 is possible
Dear MoveOn member,
The bigger plan to win in November—including the new Spring TV ad program—is within reach. So far 5,708 of us have contributed $250,966. We're half way to this week's $500,000 goal.
If 25,000 of us contribute $10 we'll beat our goal. Can you join with a $10 contribution? Together we can get over the top. Click below.
https://political.moveon.org/donate/06march2.html?id=7007-4626431-TswvThn6JpPIXVY0qNGSoA&t=2
Every dollar we raise is one step closer to breaking the Republican stranglehold on Congress in November—2006 is our best opportunity yet.
Last week Debra from New York City e-mailed and asked me to write more about the difference between Republican control and Democratic control of Congress. I thought for a day or so and decided that the best way to describe this was by talking about the people who will lead when Democrats win control of the House.
Taking just the House of Representatives, here is a small slice of who will be leading:
Nancy Pelosi—a progressive—becomes Speaker of the House of Representatives.
John Murtha—a veteran and anti-war champion—would become chair of the House subcommittee on defense appropriations. He would be in charge of the budget for the war in Iraq.
John Conyers—who forced a national debate on the Downing Street Memos—would be chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
Henry Waxman would be chairman of the Government Reform committee—he has a bulls-eye on war profiteers like Halliburton.
Barney Frank—who has led efforts to rein in out-of-control CEO pay—would be in charge of the Financial Services Committee.
David Obey—who led opposition to the Republican budget—would be chair of the House Appropriations committee—protecting Medicaid, food stamps, veteran's benefits, student loans and more.
Charles Rangel—who predicted the Medicare debacle—would be chair of the House Ways and Means committee—protecting Social Security.
George Miller—a big advocate for working people—would be chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and could bring a vote to raise the minimum wage.
That is just a sample—six of these eight are either members or founders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Put aside for a minute any disappointment you might have in the Democrats overall—these leaders are what we'll get if we win in November. They are champions on issues we all care about.
Victory in 2006 is possible and our big plan will make a difference. If each of us does our part we can fund the plan. Can you contribute? Click below.
https://political.moveon.org/donate/06march2.html?id=7007-4626431-TswvThn6JpPIXVY0qNGSoA&t=3
We can put progressive leaders in control of Congress when we break the Republican stranglehold on Congress. Hope is coming.
Thanks for all you do.
–Tom, Matt, Joan, Rosalyn and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Thursday, March 9, 2006
PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://political.moveon.org/?id=7007-4626431-TswvThn6JpPIXVY0qNGSoA&t=4
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
The bigger plan to win in November—including the new Spring TV ad program—is within reach. So far 5,708 of us have contributed $250,966. We're half way to this week's $500,000 goal.
If 25,000 of us contribute $10 we'll beat our goal. Can you join with a $10 contribution? Together we can get over the top. Click below.
https://political.moveon.org/donate/06march2.html?id=7007-4626431-TswvThn6JpPIXVY0qNGSoA&t=2
Every dollar we raise is one step closer to breaking the Republican stranglehold on Congress in November—2006 is our best opportunity yet.
Last week Debra from New York City e-mailed and asked me to write more about the difference between Republican control and Democratic control of Congress. I thought for a day or so and decided that the best way to describe this was by talking about the people who will lead when Democrats win control of the House.
Taking just the House of Representatives, here is a small slice of who will be leading:
Nancy Pelosi—a progressive—becomes Speaker of the House of Representatives.
John Murtha—a veteran and anti-war champion—would become chair of the House subcommittee on defense appropriations. He would be in charge of the budget for the war in Iraq.
John Conyers—who forced a national debate on the Downing Street Memos—would be chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
Henry Waxman would be chairman of the Government Reform committee—he has a bulls-eye on war profiteers like Halliburton.
Barney Frank—who has led efforts to rein in out-of-control CEO pay—would be in charge of the Financial Services Committee.
David Obey—who led opposition to the Republican budget—would be chair of the House Appropriations committee—protecting Medicaid, food stamps, veteran's benefits, student loans and more.
Charles Rangel—who predicted the Medicare debacle—would be chair of the House Ways and Means committee—protecting Social Security.
George Miller—a big advocate for working people—would be chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and could bring a vote to raise the minimum wage.
That is just a sample—six of these eight are either members or founders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Put aside for a minute any disappointment you might have in the Democrats overall—these leaders are what we'll get if we win in November. They are champions on issues we all care about.
Victory in 2006 is possible and our big plan will make a difference. If each of us does our part we can fund the plan. Can you contribute? Click below.
https://political.moveon.org/donate/06march2.html?id=7007-4626431-TswvThn6JpPIXVY0qNGSoA&t=3
We can put progressive leaders in control of Congress when we break the Republican stranglehold on Congress. Hope is coming.
Thanks for all you do.
–Tom, Matt, Joan, Rosalyn and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Thursday, March 9, 2006
PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://political.moveon.org/?id=7007-4626431-TswvThn6JpPIXVY0qNGSoA&t=4
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
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