Revenge of the Magic Dolphins
Sorry, duckies, it's too late to turn back the sundial.
by James Wolcott

Peggy Noonan, Charles Krauthammer, and some of the honkers at NRO's Corner are issuing distress calls about the overegging of religion in the Republican primaries.

Noonan:
The Republican race looks--at the moment--to be determined primarily by one thing, the question of religious faith. In my lifetime faith has been a significant issue in presidential politics, but not the sole determinative one. Is that changing? If it is, it is not progress.

Krauthammer:
This campaign is knee-deep in religion, and it's only going to get worse. I'd thought that the limits of professed public piety had already been achieved during the Republican CNN/YouTube debate when some squirrelly looking guy held up a Bible and asked, "Do you believe every word of this book?"--and not one candidate dared reply: None of your damn business.

Back in 2000, when Noonan endorsed George Bush for president, his muscular Christianity reduced her to rhetorical mush:

George Bush is a compassionate conservative. He sees the needs other, older conservatives did not always see, or did not always think they must or could address. But he applies conservative solutions to these needs: more freedom, more choice, the inclusion in the public sphere of faith-based approaches. All the money in the world, he knows, cannot and will not turn around a troubled child’s heart. But God can, and his workers are eager. Bush does not fear faith as an opposing power center to the state. He likes it as an opposing power center to the state. After all, faith freed Poland; perhaps it can free a tough 16-year-old in inner-city Detroit too.

This doesn't sound so very different to me than the compassionate conservativism Mike Huckabee is espousing, as when he rebuked Mitt Romney over wanting to deny college aid to children of illegal immigrants. But now that Mike Huckabee has flapped his arms and scattered the pigeons, jeopardizing the candidacies of expensive empty suits such as Romney and Fred Thompson, not to mention Giuliani's big-state gameplan, the media's collective bobblehead brain trust has rediscovered the virtues of secular firewalls and tucking faith in the vest pocket rather than draping yourself in velvet yards of it. For the last seven years we've been subjected to hero-worshipping prose about Bush's faith and fortitude and his appealing to a "higher father" for guidance and succor, and saintly photographs of the presidential seal forming a golden halo around Bush's warrior profile (Lucianne.com loved running such jawline porn). And for longer than seven years, Democrats have been caricatured and reviled as the party that harbors hostility and sneery condescension towards people of faith and established religion, a godless sect barely indisguishable from a postmodern pagan cult. As liberal Democrats were being pounded from the right, concern trolls in the squishy center knitted their brows about the widening "faith gap" between Repubs and Dems and called for a restoration of religion in the fabled "public square" that doesn't really exist anywhere but inside the minds of journalistic deacons such as Jon Meacham and similar platitude mongers. Recall this serving of unsolicited advice from that bubblegum dispenser and aluminum-sided Beltway Boy, Mort Kondracke:

Democrats Need To 'Get Religion.' It's Not Scary

My post-election advice to Democrats is: Go to church. Don't go to "get religion," although it might be good for your soul. Just go, in the first instance, to "get" religion, i.e. understand what goes on in the heads and hearts of those who devoutly believe in God and how it affects their views of the world. It will help you politically.

I have the distinct impression that many secular Democrats believe that hidden away in most Evangelical Protestant churches is a secret room filled with white Klan sheets or maybe even Swastika armbands.

I have the distinct impression that he probably received that "distinct impression" from his Beltway Boy sidekick Fred Barnes, who in turn probably dug it out of his ass or plucked it out of thin air or whatever it is he does when not scribbling notes to himself on the set of Fox News as the other pundits are speaking.

Now, instead of urging Democrats to find a spot amid the bare ruined choirs, conservatives such as Krauthammer are finding a certain silent eloquence in the abandoned cathedrals that Mitt Romney verbally gestured to as a cautionary tale:

He spoke of the empty cathedrals in Europe. He’s right about that: Postwar Europe has experienced the most precipitous decline in religious belief in the history of the West. Yet Europe is one of the freest precincts on the planet. It is an open, vibrant, tolerant community of more than two dozen disparate nations living in a pan-continental harmony and freedom unseen in all previous European history.

When Bush was at his perihelion of power and popularity, such sentiments were less in circulation from our syndicated columnists.

There was a certain smugness in being able to count on the evangelical wing voting Republican and being sewn up as part of the permanent Rovian majority. But now the permanent Republican majority is a leaking sandbag and the front runner status of a Mormon or thrice-married Catholic threatens to incur the resentment of evangelicals, who don't enjoy feeling they're just allowed to be along for the ride as long as they don't dictate the parade route. Historian Richard Brookhiser, the shrewdest and most dryly acerbic observer at NRO's Corner, recognizes that the internecine strife underway as a self-inflicted folly. This is what happens when purity tests and theological thumb-wrestling take hold in the political process.

Conservatives wanted to cram religion down everyone's throats when they thought it was to their advantage and now they're the ones gagging. For Peggy Noonan, the Magic Dolphin lady herself, who rhapsodized after 9/11 that God was back, for her to lament "that faith has been heightened as a determining factor in how to vote, that such things as executive ability, professional history, temperament, character, political philosophy and professed stands are secondary, tertiary" is a jewel of irony worthy of a giftbox. Let Balloon Juice's John Cole break out the bubbly glee:

I simply can not tell you how much I am enjoying this. The GOP has been pandering to these stupid bastards for years, and every time I pointed it out I was called "anti-Christian" or something or other. Those of us who saw what the party was becoming were told to shut up, that it was good politics.

Enjoy your new GOP, folks. And here is something else to think about--are the evangelicals going to support Romney or Giuliani if you do manage to trash Huckabee enough to secure the nomination for them? Will the eye for an eye crowd learn to forgive and forget? Have fun!

Doesn’t Anybody Have WMD?

By Will Durst —

The list of folks who turn out not to have the ability to destroy the world is growing at a dangerous rate.

Bush Threatens To Veto Bill That Bans Torture

Military Leaders: Ignore Bush Veto Threat, Ban...

Observer Cartoon Mocking Cheney Tops Time's Editorial Cartoons Of The Year List

The Last Empire: China's Pollution Problem Goes Global

Al Gore tells the U.S. and China to end the stalemate spurring global warming. But is the environment the inevitable casualty of China's headlong rush to emulate the American way of life?

By Jacques Leslie

Francis Albert Sinatra (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998)
Performing here with the great Antonio Carlos Jobim

Waterboarding Our Democracy

By Robert Scheer —

When the CIA destroyed those prisoner interrogation videotapes, was it also destroying the truth about 9/11? After all, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, the basic narrative of what happened on that day comes from the CIA’s account of what those prisoners told their torturers. And what about those congressional leaders, including Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi, who were briefed on the torture program as early as 2002?

The GOP's Iran option is off the table

Rudy Giuliani was counting on Iran as a weapon of mass distraction in the '08 race. But the flailing Republican right has just been disarmed.

By Juan Cole

Follow the bouncing tapes

First it was a CIA decision. Then Harriet Miers knew. Now more lawyers were involved, and a source says the White House didn't say, "Hell, no."

by Tim Grieve

Dec. 11, 2007 In the Bush administration's first attempt to explain the destruction of videotapes showing the interrogations of suspected al-Qaida members, CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden said the decision to destroy the tapes was made "within the CIA."

That version of the story quickly gave way when as-yet unidentified administration officials revealed that former White House Counsel Harriet Miers knew about the tapes but had told the CIA that she didn't think they should be destroyed.

Now, as Hayden prepares for a closed-door session today with the Senate Intelligence Committee, there's a third version of the story to consider. An unidentified former intelligence official says that lawyers -- plural -- within the White House and the Justice Department advised the CIA not to destroy the tapes in 2003, but that the CIA continued to push for permission to do so, and the White House never quite got around to saying no.

"They never told us, 'Hell, no,'" the former intelligence official tells the New York Times. "If somebody had said, 'You cannot destroy them,' we would not have destroyed them."

The CIA declined to respond to questions from the Times, and the White House, citing ongoing investigations and the advice of counsel, won't say anything further about the matter at all. In uncharacteristic bit of understatement Monday, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said that she could "see where" the "cynicism that usually drifts" up from the White House press briefing room might "come up in this regard."

Another feather in Isiah's cap

December 10, 2007

Thomas Settles Harassment Case

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 6:26 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- Madison Square Garden and New York Knicks coach Isiah Thomas have settled the sexual harassment case brought by a former team executive who was awarded $11.6 million in punitive damages.

Terms of the settlement were not immediately disclosed.

''I am extremely pleased that we have reached a settlement,'' Anucha Browne Sanders said in a statement.

The deal came as compensatory damages were about to be added and as Browne Sanders was preparing to return to U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where her description of her ordeal with the Knicks exposed the club's tawdry side, from its dysfunctional clubhouse to its star player's sexual exploits with a Knicks intern.

''As I have said before, I am completely innocent,'' Thomas said. ''This decision doesn't change that. However, this is the best course for Madison Square Garden, and I fully support it.''

MSG added: ''We don't feel any less strongly than we did throughout the entire episode. The outcome was a travesty of justice, and we vehemently disagree with the jury's decision, however, at the strong request of (the NBA commissioner) and in the interest of focusing on basketball, we can all agree that it is time for us to move on and put this issue behind us.''

Justice to Investigate Destruction of CIA Tapes

Apropos of nothing in particular, this video explains quite a good deal about many things. For those who need to do so, separate the messenger (and the specific beliefs that are referenced) from the principal point being made:
-Glen Greenwald

A Tale of Two Giulianis

On the back of 9/11, Rudy Giuliani refashioned himself as a national hero, a top presidential candidate—and, through his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, became a very wealthy man. But the questionable backgrounds of some of the firm’s clients make one wonder what Rudy wouldn’t do to make a buck. As Giuliani’s former crony Bernard Kerik faces trial, the author uncovers troubling signs of greed, poor judgment, and conflict of interest.

by Michael Shnayerson

BUSH: NO RECOLLECTION OF CIA TORTURE TAPES

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, said that was "stretching credulity."
"There's something going on here," Dodd, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said on CNN's "The Situation Room. "We're not getting the full story, hence the reason why there should be an investigation. It goes to the heart of our national security, our protection, our safety, our isolation in the world. That's why this is so important."

Glenn Greenwald:“Missing” Evidence Is Familiar Bush Pattern

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse-Part 1


Part 2

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL: The Crisis of Faith

It was a distressing moment to witness Mitt Romney cowed into defending his faith by a powerful minority determined to impose its religious tenets.

The Tools of ignorance.

December 8, 2007

Op-Ed Contributor

Union-Busting at the Hall of Fame

By FAY VINCENT

Vero Beach, Fla.

THE National Baseball Hall of Fame, itself based on the historical error that baseball was invented in Cooperstown, N.Y., has just let one go right through its legs. On Monday, a committee of 12 baseball executives, newspaper reporters and former executives and players posthumously elected Bowie Kuhn, the earnest but unsuccessful former commissioner, to the Hall while overlooking Marvin Miller, the former union leader who dragged baseball, against strenuous resistance, into the modern age of labor relations. There is simply no way to comprehend this absurd decision by the Veterans Committee.

Here are some facts that even this historically challenged committee would have to acknowledge as accurate. Free agency came to baseball during Kuhn’s tenure. He fought it with the owners’ total support. The concept of baseball players having the same legal rights as the rest of us to bargain with their employers on even terms caused Kuhn to warn that baseball might not survive such a cosmic alteration in the relative power of the two sides.

Kuhn’s devotion to baseball was genuine, but his judgment was not sound. He was unwilling to seek middle ground with the baseball players’ union, despite protracted legal battles that the union repeatedly won, because to have done so might have cost him owner support and even his job. And he loved the job and title.

When Andy Messersmith, a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, sought free agency in 1975, the arbitrator in the case encouraged Kuhn and the owners to settle on the best available terms. Kuhn arrogantly dismissed the suggestion. He took the ridiculous legal position that he and his side would have the arbitrator’s decision overturned in federal court. Of course, he was wrong, and free agency has now become an accepted part of baseball.

During the era of free agency, baseball has profited beyond all possible expectations, with owners and players making enormous amounts of money. It is not possible to study that history without wondering how much baseball would have prospered in the 1970s and early 1980s had Kuhn provided better leadership at a much earlier stage.

The decision by the Hall to overlook Miller is grounded in a bad reading of history. Miller had a bigger impact on baseball than any commissioner, owner or player in the past 40 years. Part of his legacy is a powerful, well-run union. The more important part is the present legal and financial structure of the sport, including free agency, arbitration and the enormous pension and benefit programs for the players, all due largely to his efforts.

Miller was much smarter and more talented than Kuhn. Though not a lawyer, he was a public relations genius. He had been an economist with the United Steelworkers when he became the executive director of the players’ union. Miller presented the economic issues in baseball largely in moral terms. Kuhn was the lawyer who argued against change. Miller argued against evil. Guess which was more appealing?

Kuhn permitted Miller to portray the owners as unenlightened and mean-spirited rich men while casting the players as downtrodden and benighted workers who wanted only to be treated fairly. The owners never had a chance.

When Kuhn was pushed out of baseball — as I was years later — he went back to his law firm. In 1988, he and another lawyer started a new firm that was expected to be a grandly successful practice. At the end of 1989, Myerson & Kuhn filed for bankruptcy. At this point, Kuhn moved to Florida — a move that his creditors’ lawyers said was made to claim the protection of that state’s homestead exemption.

Under that law, the home of a debtor may not be used to satisfy debts, and so Kuhn, with a large, valuable and recently purchased Florida residence, was literally home free. In effect, he thumbed his nose at the banks and court in New York, and he left his partners, some of whom he had vigorously recruited, holding a huge empty bag. One such former partner, a tax expert, complained bitterly to me when I was in baseball. He has since died but I wonder how he would have felt about this latest honor by an institution that claims to value character when it considers candidates.

The members of the committee that elected Bowie Kuhn and passed on Marvin Miller should feel ashamed. But they do not. They almost surely believe that Miller and the union won the war, but they refuse him the honor of his victory. This is a set of actions by little men making small-minded decisions. Electing Kuhn and Miller together might have been a tolerable result. But electing Kuhn alone is intolerable.

These are old men trying to turn back time, to reverse what has happened. Theirs is an act of ignorance and bias. I am ashamed for them. I am ashamed that they represent our game.

Fay Vincent was the commissioner of Major League Baseball from 1989 to 1992.

Helen Thomas:Iran: Bush Loses Even More Credibility

John Lennon: Oct. 9, 1940-Dec. 8, 1980

What Does Bush Do When He Gets Intelligence Info?

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You can't say you weren't told....

Secret Torture Memos Disclosed on Floor of Senate

From remarks just delivered by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse: We will shortly consider making right the things that are wrong with the so-called Protect America Act, a second-rate piece of legislation passed in a stampede in August at the behest of the Bush Administration. It is worth for a moment considering why making this right is so important. President Bush pressed this legislation not only to establish how our government can spy on foreign agents, but how his administration can spy on Americans. Make no mistake, the legislation we passed in August is significantly about spying on Americans—a business this administration should not be allowed to get into except under the closest supervision. We have a plain and tested device for keeping tabs on the government when it’s keeping tabs on Americans. It is our Constitution. Our Constitution has as its most elemental provision the separation of governmental powers into three separate branches. When the government feels it necessary to spy on its own citizens, each branch has a role. The executive branch executes the laws, and conducts surveillance. The legislative branch sets the boundaries that protect Americans from improper government surveillance. The judicial branch oversees whether the government has followed the Constitution and the laws that protect U.S. citizens from violations of their privacy and their civil rights. It sounds basic, but even an elementary understanding of this balance of powers eludes the Bush Administration. So now we have to repair this flawed and shoddy “Protect America Act.” Why are we in Congress so concerned about this? Why is it so vital that we energetically assert the role of Congress and the Courts when the Bush Administration seeks to spy on Americans? Because look what the Bush Administration does behind our backs when they think no one is looking. For years under the Bush Administration, the Office of Legal Counsel within the Department of Justice has issued highly classified secret legal opinions related to surveillance. This is an administration that hates answering to an American court, that wants to grade its own papers, and OLC is the inside place the administration goes to get legal support for its spying program. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I was given access to those opinions, and spent hours poring over them. Sitting in that secure room, as a lawyer, as a former U.S. Attorney, legal counsel to Rhode Island’s Governor, and State Attorney General, I was increasingly dismayed and amazed as I read on. To give you an example of what I read, I have gotten three legal propositions from these OLC opinions declassified. Here they are, as accurately as my note taking could reproduce them from the classified documents. Listen for yourself. I will read all three, and then discuss each one. An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations. Let’s start with number one. Bear in mind that the so-called Protect America Act that was stampeded through this great body in August provides no—zero—statutory protections for Americans traveling abroad from government wiretapping. None if you’re a businesswoman traveling on business overseas, none if you’re a father taking the kids to the Caribbean, none if you’re visiting uncles or aunts in Italy or Ireland, none even if you’re a soldier in the uniform of the United States posted overseas. The Bush Administration provided in that hastily-passed law no statutory restrictions on their ability to wiretap you at will, to tap your cell phone, your e-mail, whatever. The only restriction is an executive order called 12333, which limits executive branch surveillance to Americans who the Attorney General determines to be agents of a foreign power. That’s what the executive order says. But what does this administration say about executive orders? An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it. “Whenever (the President) wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order,” he may do so because “an executive order cannot limit a President.” And he doesn’t have to change the executive order, or give notice that he’s violating it, because by “depart(ing) from the executive order,” the President “has instead modified or waived it.” So unless Congress acts, here is what legally prevents this President from wiretapping Americans traveling abroad at will: nothing. Nothing. That was among the most egregious flaws in the bill passed during the August stampede they orchestrated by the Bush Administration—and this OLC opinion shows why we need to correct it. Here’s number two. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II. Yes, that’s right. The President, according to the George W. Bush OLC, has Article II power to determine what the scope of his Article II powers are. Never mind a little decision called Marbury v. Madison, written by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1803, establishing the proposition that it is “emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Does this administration agree that it is emphatically the province and the duty of the judicial department to say what the President’s authority is under Article II? No, it is the President, according to this OLC, who decides the legal limits of his own Article II power. The question “whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II,” is to be determined by the President’s minions, “exercising his constitutional authority under Article II.” It really makes you wonder, who are these people? They have got to be smart people to get there. How can people who are so smart be so misguided? And then, it gets worse. Remember point three. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations. Let that sink in a minute. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations. We are a nation of laws, not of men. This nation was founded in rejection of the royalist principles that “l’etat c’est moi” and “The King can do no wrong.” Our Attorney General swears an oath to defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States; we are not some banana republic in which the officials all have to kowtow to the “supreme leader.” Imagine a general counsel to a major U.S. corporation telling his board of directors, “in this company the counsel’s office is bound by the CEO’s legal determinations.” The board ought to throw that lawyer out—it’s malpractice, probably even unethical. Wherever you are, if you are watching this, do me a favor. The next time you are in Washington, D.C., take a taxi some evening to the Department of Justice. Stand outside, and look up at that building shining against the starry night. Look at the sign outside- “The United States Department of Justice.” Think of the heroes who have served there, and the battles fought. Think of the late nights, the brave decisions, the hard work of advancing and protecting our democracy that has been done in those halls. Think about how that all makes you feel. Then think about this statement: The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations. If you don’t feel a difference from what you were feeling a moment ago, well, congratulations—there is probably a job for you in the Bush Administration. Consider the sad irony that this theory was crafted in that very building, by the George W. Bush Office of Legal Counsel. In a nutshell, these three Bush Administration legal propositions boil down to this: “I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them.” “I get to determine what my own powers are.” “The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is.” When the Congress of the United States is willing to roll over for an unprincipled President, this is where you end up. We should not even be having this discussion. But here we are. I implore my colleagues: reject these feverish legal theories. I understand political loyalty, trust me, I do. But let us also be loyal to this great institution we serve in the legislative branch of our government. Let us also be loyal to the Constitution we took an oath to defend, from enemies foreign and domestic. And let us be loyal to the American people who live each day under our Constitution’s principles and protections. We simply cannot put the authority to wiretap Americans, whenever they step outside America’s boundaries, under the exclusive control and supervision of the executive branch. We do not allow it when Americans are here at home; we should not allow it when they travel abroad. The principles of congressional legislation and oversight, and of judicial approval and review, are simple and longstanding. Americans deserve this protection wherever on God’s green earth they may travel.

Show me the money....

December 7, 2007

Sports of The Times

A-Rod’s Properties and Charity Suggest Some Stinginess

By SELENA ROBERTS

The veneer of Alex Rodriguez’s real estate empire of working-class housing is staged to disguise his inner Mr. Potter.

Past a psychic’s storefront and coin laundry on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Tampa, Fla., a sign reading “We ♥ Our Residents” is planted beside manicured shrubs and an iron gate with a fresh coat at the entrance of Newport Riverside apartments.

The paint is camouflage for the mottled backside of the complex, where an exhausted appliance sits on a porch, cardboard is taped over broken window panes and missing spindles give rickety banisters the look of a snaggletooth smile.

Some residents here tell tales of roaches overtaking kitchen cabinets in a bumper-to-bumper crawl to the corn flakes, of carpets stained in the 1990s and quick-trigger evictions.

“My mom comes here and she ain’t no rich person, but she thinks I live in the projects,” said Miguel Ruiz as he sat on the second-floor landing of Building 2-A on a recent Sunday afternoon. “She’s scared to come over here, for real.”

As Ruiz spoke, he pulled a boy named Elijah from a gap in the railing that opened when yet another piece of the banister rattled loose and fell to the ground.

“See, stuff like that, with kids around, it’s messed up here,” Ruiz said, adding, “Honestly, I was raised in a ghetto and I was brought up a little better than this.”

This is one of six apartment complexes in the Tampa area, and one of at least 16 nationwide, that Rodriguez owns and operates as the chief executive of Newport Property Ventures.

An examination of his high-rolling corporate side, as well as a glossy A-Rod Family Foundation short on largess, reveals a portrait of Rodriguez as a player about to enter Yankee Take II solely for business purposes, primarily as a branding tool. He emerges as an obsessive pursuer of cold, hard numbers on and off the bases, with serially disingenuous nods to his ever-challenged image.

A-Rod isn’t exactly a slumlord — some renters interviewed at his other properties had milder complaints — but he has become a landlord caricature among dwellers who hold him accountable for, say, the stack of molding mattresses by the dumpster at Newport Villas on MacDill Avenue.

A-Rod is the face on their leaky faucets, and yet his name isn’t in the welcome kit. Rodriguez’s brother-in-law, Constantine Scurtis, is the company manager — the one whose signature is on nearly $50 million in mortgages for properties in Tampa, according to records — but some of the cashiers and cooks who live at places like Newport Riverside know who holds their house keys.

To them, he isn’t A-Rod, a regular-season crackerjack on the verge of a Yankees deal potentially worth $300 million. To them, he is Tight-Rod, an apartment tycoon, who, renters say, has jacked late fees to $100 from $50 on units that run around $600 a month.

“He’s got everything, so why take money off our backs?” ” said Roberto Santiago, standing next to his neighbor, Ruiz.

Why, with so many investment options, would A-Rod put himself in the unwinnable position of profiting off struggling families?

Messages left on the voice mails of Rodriguez and Scurtis at Newport Property Ventures’ offices in Coral Gables, Fla., were unreturned. Repeated efforts to reach A-Rod through three layers of publicists — think booby traps around a precious stone — were unsuccessful.

A-Rod doesn’t talk biz, the P.R. folks echoed.

•

But Rodriguez’s CNBC devotions illuminate his baseball motivations. The next 10 years aren’t about team championships, but financial benchmarks linked to A-Rod’s rate of slugging, with a Monopoly game payout for eclipsing history: pass Barry Bonds, collect $6 million.

Money is A-Rod’s identity, engraving his social standing, with Warren E. Buffett on his I.M. buddy list. As any Buffett-phile knows, philanthropy stats are valued, too.

But A-Rod is a star constantly locked in a contradiction of conscience as evidenced by his charity. The homey surface of the AROD Family Foundation’s Web site, which promotes a slogan of helping “families in distress,” belies its cap on generosity.

Rodriguez has earned nearly $200 million over the past decade, but, according to 990 tax records dating to 1998, he is a cheap tipper to his foundation.

In eight years of available documents, donations averaged $30,000 a year and gifts distributed to the community averaged $13,000 a year. In 2002, A-Rod did not contribute more than $5,500. In 2006, the foundation did not give away more than $5,090 despite a fund-raiser that collected $368,000.

He isn’t on the platinum level of athlete donors. Tiger Woods has seeded his foundation with millions. And he isn’t on par with his teammates. Derek Jeter may have his I.R.S. issues, but he has given a total of $2 million to his Turn 2 Foundation since 1998.

Maybe A-Rod is simply generous in private. Publicly, he has written vanity checks for causes. In 2002, he contributed $3.9 million to a scholarship fund and baseball stadium renovations at the University of Miami, where the practice facility is named Alex Rodriguez Park.

The site is near a splendid oceanside estate in Coral Gables that property records show Rodriguez purchased for $12 million in 2004. The manse’s value is down — like everything with an address in South Florida.

An economic swoon may mean nothing to the A-Rod Empire — or does it?

Did A-Rod opt out as a Yankee only to realize he needed a bailout?

It was a flipper’s heyday when A-Rod plunged into real estate. In August 2004, he wrote the foreword for a book by Dolf de Roos called “Real Estate Riches: How to Become Rich Using Your Banker’s Money.”

“When I landed my well-publicized 10-year, $252 million contract, I set about finding an investment vehicle that would ensure my financial fitness long after baseball,” Alex wrote, adding that de Roos’s book gave “me the confidence to form Newport Property Ventures. I began by investing in a small duplex in an emerging area of South Florida, which led to the acquisition of several other income-producing properties.”

He didn’t just acquire. He binged. Property records indicate A-Rod’s company paid $58.7 million for Tampa complexes between 2004 and early this year. Those same properties, according to the county appraiser, have a current market value of $46.3 million.

Slump? Remember, A-Rod never uses that word in baseball.

“I’d say the best way to sum it up in the apartment market is to say there are short-term challenges,” said Jay Crotty, a respected Tampa real estate investment adviser who has represented Rodriguez in transactions.

There is an apartment glut as condominiums left unsold are being rented. On the grounds of Newport Square, a property on Himes Avenue with Yankee-esque bunting on the fences, signs offer residents $350 for referrals.

Are Alex’s rent rolls covering company costs?

“I can’t speak for Alex, but I think he has made sound investment decisions,” Crotty said. “This is a minor blip in his eyes.”

His fortune is probably safe. But vacancies aren’t healthy for anyone’s bottom line.

•

Some residents are eager to depart Rodriguez-ville. In a Web site that rates apartments, one exiting renter at Newport Villas wrote that since A-Rod “fired all the nice people in the office and his crew knows not a damn thing they are doing, I’m leaving. At least the old management would not have lost everybody’s rent. They sent me a letter stating they were evicting me five months after they lost my rent.”

Here is A-Rod, steeped in a paradox of principles, engaged in a corporate venture that binds the needy, the very same people his foundation was designed to help.

“As far as keeping the grounds clean, it’s fine,” said Horace Bacon, a resident of Normandy Park, a recent acquisition by Newport Property Ventures. “But the late fees? When I sign my next lease, it’s $100 for being a day late — a day. I don’t agree with that. So, you know, it’s not the outside of the apartment I’m worried about.”

Will A-Rod ever worry about what’s beneath a moneymaking veneer? Or will he forever be Mr. Potter in pinstripes?

E-mail: selenasports@nytimes.com

Romney and Huckabee's religious intolerance

Nonbelievers have long been more tolerant of believers in office than the other way around.

By Joe Conason

Quote of the Day

"I am disappointed that our relationship must end on this note. But we simply cannot tolerate your inability to ensure that your employees are legally permitted to work in the United States." -- GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, firing the landscaping company he continued to use after being told last year that it had sent illegal immigrants to do work at his home.

Amy Goodman:The Dubious Mr. Dobbs

The NIE changed everything . . . not
Bush can pretend it didn't happen, but the aftershocks of the intelligence community's reversal on Iran may be felt for a long time.
by Joan Walsh


An Iran bombshell for Bush
The White House knew months ago about Iran's stalled nuclear program. But Bush and Cheney have kept up the war rhetoric.
By Mark Follman

It Turns Out Ahmadinejad Was the Truthful One

By Robert Scheer —

Bush is such a liar. Or is he just out to lunch on the most important issue that he faces? In October, he charged that Iran’s nuclear weapons program was bringing the world to the precipice of World War III, even though the White House had been informed at least a month earlier that Iran had no such program and had stopped efforts to develop one back in 2003.

*********************************************

Bush and the Iran NIE: Don't Ask, Don't Tell
When the new Iran intelligence came in, the president did not ask what it might mean, and his aides were not quick to tell him. David Corn

The bill for Rudy Giuliani's love life

View some of the documents that set off a new controversy over spending for security details for the mayor, his ex-wife and his affair.

Ain't it the truth.....

December 5, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

Intercepting Iran’s Take on America

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

There are two intelligence analyses that are relevant to the balance of power between the U.S. and Iran — one is the latest U.S. assessment of Iran, which certainly gave a much more complex view of what is happening there. The other is the Iranian National Intelligence Estimate of America, which — my guess — would read something like this:

To: President Ahmadinejad

From: The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence

Subject: America

As you’ll recall, in the wake of 9/11, we were extremely concerned that the U.S. would develop a covert program to end its addiction to oil, which would be the greatest threat to Iranian national security. In fact, after Bush’s 2006 State of the Union, in which he decried America’s oil addiction, we had “high confidence” that a comprehensive U.S. clean energy policy would emerge. We were wrong.

Our fears that the U.S. was engaged in a covert “Manhattan Project” to achieve energy independence have been “assuaged.” America’s Manhattan Project turns out to be largely confined to the production of corn ethanol in Iowa, which, our analysts have confirmed from cellphone intercepts between lobbyists and Congressmen, is nothing more than a multibillion-dollar payoff to big Iowa farmers and agro-businesses.

True, thanks to Nancy Pelosi, the U.S. Congress decided to increase the miles per gallon required of U.S. car fleets by the year 2020 — which took us by surprise — but we nevertheless “strongly believe” this will not lead to any definitive breaking of America’s oil addiction, since none of the leading presidential candidates has offered an energy policy that would include a tax on oil or carbon that could trigger a truly transformational shift in America away from fossil fuels.

Therefore, it is “very likely” that Iran’s current level of high oil revenues will last for decades and insulate our regime from any decisive pressures from abroad or from our own people.

We have to note that obtaining open-source intelligence in America has become more difficult, because traditional news shows have become more comedic and more comedic news shows more authoritative.

For instance, CNN’s nightly business report is hosted by a man named “Dobbs.” Real journalists come on his show and present transparently propagandistic stories about immigration and trade and then he fulminates about them, much the way our ayatollahs used to do about “Satanic Americans” on late-night Iranian TV. So viewers have no real idea what’s happening in the U.S. economy.

Meanwhile, at 11 p.m., something called “The Daily Show,” which appears on Comedy Central, has fake journalists presenting what turns out to be the real news.

Yes, our last I.N.I.E. in 1990 concluded that after the collapse of communism, America was on track to become the world’s sole superpower and most compelling role model for Muslim youth — including our own. We were wrong. We now have “high confidence” that America is on a path of self-destruction, for three reasons:

First, 9/11 has made America afraid and therefore stupid. The “war on terrorism” is now so deeply imbedded in America’s psyche that we think it is “highly likely” that America will continue to export more fear than hope and will continue to defend things like torture and Guantánamo Bay prison and to favor politicians like Mr. Giuliani, who alienates the rest of the world.

Second, at a time when America’s bridges, roads, airports and Internet bandwidth have fallen behind other industrial powers, including China, we believe that the U.S. opposition to higher taxes — and the fact that the primary campaigns have focused largely on gay marriage, flag-burning and whether the Christian Bible is the literal truth — means it is “highly unlikely” that America will arrest its decline.

Third, all the U.S. presidential candidates are distancing themselves from the core values that made America such a great power and so different from us — in particular America’s long commitment to free trade, open immigration and a reverence for scientific enquiry wherever it leads. Our intel analysts are baffled that the leading Democrat, Mrs. Clinton, no longer believes in globalization and the leading Republican, Mr. Huckabee, never believed in evolution.

U.S. politicians seem determined to appeal either to the most nativist extremes in their respective parties — or to tell voters that something Americans call “the tooth fairy” will make their energy, budget, educational and Social Security deficits painlessly disappear.

Therefore, we conclude with “high confidence” that there is little likelihood that post-9/11 America will, as they say, “get its groove back” anytime soon.

Who needs nukes when you have this kind of America?

God is Great. Long Live the Iranian Revolution.

A British Reality Check On Progress In Iraq

UK 'failed to make Basra safe'

UK troops numbers in Iraq will be cut to 2,500 by next spring. The UK will hand over control of Basra to Iraqi forces despite failing in its goal to establish security there, an MPs' report says.

Why Bush's troop surge won't save Iraq

The influx of U.S. troops brought a relative lull in violence -- but the failing state remains in political chaos and is headed for collapse.

By Juan Cole

Will peace cost me my home?

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ageel1dec01,0,7237674.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

From the Los Angeles Times

Any Mideast pact must give Palestinians the right to return home.

By Ghada Ageel

December 1, 2007

Sixty years ago, my grandparents lived in the beautiful village of Beit Daras, a few kilometers north of Gaza. They were farmers and owned hundreds of acres of land.

But in 1948, in the first Arab-Israeli war, many people lost their lives defending our village from the Zionist militias. In the end, with their crops and homes burning, the villagers fled. My family eventually made its way to what became the refugee camp of Khan Yunis in Gaza. We were hit hard by poverty, humiliation and disease. We became refugees, queuing for tents, food and assistance, while the state of Israel was established on the ruins of my family's property and on the ruins of hundreds of other Palestinian villages.

Some people may tire of hearing such stories from the past. "Don't cry over spilled milk" is one of the first sayings I learned in English. But for me, the line between past and present is not so easily broken. I raise this story today because it remains profoundly relevant to the Middle East peace process -- and to help convey the deep-seated fears of Palestinian refugees that we will be asked to exonerate Israel for its actions and to relinquish our right to return home.

That cannot be allowed to happen. All refugees have the right to return. This is an individual right, long recognized in international law, that cannot be negotiated away. Palestinian refugees -- and there are more than 4 million of us registered with the United Nations today -- hold this right no less than Kosovar or Rwandan or any other refugees.

Of course, I understand that the clock cannot be turned back. Most of the Palestinian villages inside what is now Israel no longer exist. And experience shows that when the rights of refugees are recognized and backed by international communities, only a small portion opt to return.



But the option should be open to us. If a refugee decides to return, he or she should not be hindered. Anything less would be unacceptable to Palestinians, two-thirds of whom are refugees. Those who choose not to return must be fairly compensated for their losses.

My fear is that in the months ahead, enormous financial and political pressure may be brought against our fractured leadership to concede the rights of refugees.

In 2000, Yasser Arafat was castigated internationally for his refusal to accept what was perversely termed a "generous offer" from then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, even though it made no provision whatsoever for the return of refugees. However, Arafat was greeted as a hero by Palestinians for his principled unwillingness to sanctify ethnic cleansing.

Seven years later, we will perhaps be confronted with another "generous offer" aiming to formalize our dispossession. Tragically, world powers have little stomach to battle Israel for what they view as bygone peccadilloes.

There are real consequences for being stateless and weak. For two years, I have been unable to return to my home in Gaza. In 2006, I was stranded in the Sinai with my two small children, unable to get through the closed border from Egypt into Gaza. It is perhaps madness to want to enter such a prison, but it is where my family and loved ones live. I eventually gave up. Last summer, I tried and failed again.

Yet my ultimate destination is not Khan Yunis but Beit Daras. It is fundamentally unjust -- even all these years later -- that the world stands by and countenances the Israeli decision to expropriate my family's land.

And it is fundamentally racist to believe that I would pose a threat to Israel if I were to move back to my family's village (which I would do if I were given the option). The notion of a Jewish state that must always retain a Jewish character -- so that people of other ethnicities can be barred from living in their ancestral homes and minorities groups are treated as second-class citizens -- is frighteningly similar to the apartheid state of South Africa, where different ethnic groups were treated unequally under law.

If black and white South Africans could resolve their differences on the basis of equality, why is it inappropriate to insist that Israelis and Palestinians do the same? Surely all modern conceptions of justice and equality must decry a system that places Jews above Palestinians.

Both peoples have suffered enormously over the last several decades. Resolution, however, will not come by the powerful dictating to the weak, but only through insistence on equality between the two peoples.



Ghada Ageel is a third-generation Palestinian refugee. She grew up in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Gaza and teaches Middle Eastern politics at the University of Exeter in Britain.

---

The Real Risk to Hillary
By Matthew Rothschild

The hostage-taking at Hillary Clinton’s Rochester, New Hampshire, office brings home once again the genuine risk that Hillary herself faces on the campaign trail.

A year before Molly Ivins died, the great Texas columnist told me she didn’t want Hillary to run for two reasons: First, she didn’t think Hillary could win.

And second, she thought Hillary would be assassinated.

Ivins said the far right is in such a lather about Hillary that it reminded her of the climate in Texas before Kennedy was shot. Plus, the hatred of Hillary is so weird and sex-based, Ivins said, that she worried that there are enough nuts out there to do her in.

Just imagine what that would do to this country!

A similar possibility persists with Barack Obama, a worry that his wife and many others in the African American community have expressed. Not for nothing that Obama got Secret Service protection ahead of time.

Is our country so ill that a woman and an African American must fear for their lives when they run for President?

Sadly, the answer to that question is yes.

Politics >> Stunning: U.S. Report Says Iran Shelved Nuke Program Years Ago

Rescue the Constitution



Fox News has refused to air an ad produced by the Center for Constitutional Rights that criticizes the Bush administration for "destroying the Constitution" by the use of renditions, torture, and other tactics. The ad, "Rescue the Constitution," which is narrated by actor Danny Glover.

In an email provided to Media Matters for America by the Center, Fox News account executive Erin Kelly told Owen Henkel, the Center's e-communications manager, that Fox would not run the ad:

Hi Owen --

We cannot approve the spot with it being Danny Glover's opinion that the Bush Administration is destroying the Constitution. If you have documentation that it is indeed being destroyed, we can look at that.

Sorry about that,

Erin

In 2005, Fox refused to run an ad critical of then-Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito Jr., who had been nominated by President Bush to succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

—J.F.

More Men Detail Alleged Sexual Encounters With Larry Craig

Clay Evans:Endangered Truth: Exposing the Administration’s Lies on Science

WH INVOKES SECRECY ON ABRAMOFF VISITS

Helen Thomas to Perrino: Your regret "doesn't bring back a life."

The Book of Evel (Knievel)

An excerpt from Douglas Brinkley’s upcoming Vanity Fair feature about the legendary daredevil, who died Friday at age 69.

Bush's Next Preemptive Strike

by Harold Meyerson

As far as Bush is concerned, he doesn't need Congress's approval to make an enduring commitment of American force, treasure and lives in Iraq.

Giuliani's terrorist ties

Forget Rudy's trysts. The real scandal crying out for investigation is his firm's business with Qatar, a haven for al-Qaida.

By Joe Conason

Judy Nathan's Friends, Family Used NYPD Service

Cops Chauffeured Relatives Around Without Her In Car

Rudy's Ties to a Terror Sheikh

Giuliani's business contracts tie him to the man who let 9/11's mastermind escape the FBI

by Wayne Barrett
November 27th, 2007 3:39 PM
Illustration by Wes Duvall
Special reporting by Samuel Rubenfeld and additional research by Adrienne Gaffney and Danielle Schiffman

Three weeks after 9/11, when the roar of fighter jets still haunted the city's skyline, the emir of gas-rich Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, toured Ground Zero. Although a member of the emir's own royal family had harbored the man who would later be identified as the mastermind of the attack—a man named Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, often referred to in intelligence circles by his initials, KSM—al-Thani rushed to New York in its aftermath, offering to make a $3 million donation, principally to the families of its victims. Rudy Giuliani, apparently unaware of what the FBI and CIA had long known about Qatari links to Al Qaeda, appeared on CNN with al-Thani that night and vouched for the emir when Larry King asked the mayor: "You are a friend of his, are you not?"

"We had a very good meeting yesterday. Very good," said Giuliani, adding that he was "very, very grateful" for al-Thani's generosity. It was no cinch, of course, that Giuliani would take the money: A week later, he famously rejected a $10 million donation from a Saudi prince who advised America that it should "adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause." (Giuliani continues to congratulate himself for that snub on the campaign trail.) Al-Thani waited a month before expressing essentially the same feelings when he returned to New York for a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly and stressed how important it was to "distinguish" between the "phenomenon" of 9/11 and "the legitimate struggles" of the Palestinians "to get rid of the yoke of illegitimate occupation and subjugation." Al-Thani then accused Israel of "state terrorism" against the Palestinians.

But there was another reason to think twice about accepting al-Thani's generosity that Giuliani had to have been aware of, even as he heaped praise on the emir. Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network based in Qatar (pronounced "Cutter"), had been all but created by al-Thani, who was its largest shareholder. The Bush administration was so upset with the coverage of Osama bin Laden's pronouncements and the U.S. threats to bomb Afghanistan that Secretary of State Colin Powell met the emir just hours before Giuliani's on-air endorsement and asked him to tone down the state-subsidized channel's Islamist footage and rhetoric. The six-foot-eight, 350-pound al-Thani, who was pumping about $30 million a year into Al Jazeera at the time, refused Powell's request, citing the need for "a free and credible media." The administration's burgeoning distaste for what it would later brand "Terror TV" was already so palpable that King—hardly a newsman—asked the emir if he would help "spread the word" that the U.S. was "not targeting the average Afghan citizen." Al-Thani ignored the question—right before Giuliani rushed in to praise him again.

In retrospect, Giuliani's embrace of the emir appears peculiar. But it was only a sign of bigger things to come: the launching of a cozy business relationship with terrorist-tolerant Qatar that is inconsistent with the core message of Giuliani's current presidential campaign, namely that his experience and toughness uniquely equip him to protect America from what he tauntingly calls "Islamic terrorists"—an enemy that he always portrays himself as ready to confront, and the Democrats as ready to accommodate.

The contradictory and stunning reality is that Giuliani Partners, the consulting company that has made Giuliani rich, feasts at the Qatar trough, doing business with the ministry run by the very member of the royal family identified in news and government reports as having concealed KSM—the terrorist mastermind who wired funds from Qatar to his nephew Ramzi Yousef prior to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and who also sold the idea of a plane attack on the towers to Osama bin Laden—on his Qatar farm in the mid-1990s. more

Arianna Huffington: Karl Rove's Shameless, Remorseless, Soulless Attempt to Rewrite History

Giuliani billed obscure agencies for trips

Bush Gets “Preferential Treatment” for U.S. Companies in Iraq

By Matthew Rothschild

Bush just pulled the knee strings on his puppet in Iraq, and Nouri al-Maliki did the jig.

The prime minister signed on to a deal laying the groundwork for the long-term presence of U.S. troops there.

Permanent military bases, anyone?

To inaugurate the pact, U.S. troops in Baghdad killed three women on a bus that was approaching a U.S. roadblock.

The arrangement with the Maliki government will ultimately take the place of the U.N.-sanctioned presence of U.S. troops there, which itself is a blot on the U.N.’s record.

And part of the “enduring” relationship that Bush and Maliki laid out in this pact has nothing to do with the presence of U.S. troops, but with the profits of U.S. corporations.

The deal would give “preferential treatment for American investments,” AP reports, adding nonchalantly that this “could provide a huge windfall if Iraq can achieve enough stability to exploit its vast oil resources.”

There’s that dirty three-letter word again—oil, which this war was never supposed to be about but always, in part, was.

Oil and profits are two big reasons why Bush will keep probably more than 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

Those are not legitimate reasons to ask our soldiers to die for, and almost 4,000 of them have done so already.

But at least it’s out in the open now. The crassness, that is.

Playing Roulette in Pakistan

By Robert Scheer —

Everybody seems to have a pick for president, or even a couple of picks. Problem is, neither Musharraf nor Bhutto nor Sharif stands up very well when the historical record is scrutinized.

Jump on the Peace Train

By MAUREEN DOWD

President Bush and Condoleezza Rice have been consistently culturally obtuse on the Middle East, even with a pricey operation designed to keep them in the loop.

Happy Birthday Jimi!

Bush's New Resume

This individual seeks an executive position. He will be available January 2009, and is willing to relocate.
RESUME
GEORGE W. BUSH
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington , DC 20520 . . .