We Are Fox News, You Will Be Exterminated

No one has ever accused Fox News of being modest and low-key. When they do something, they go all the way. They have a long history of larding up their "news" coverage with sex, violence, fear and terror, but this one really takes the cake.

"Scientist: Terrorists May Use Robots in Future Attacks" screams the headline on one web story. And just to be sure the reader is good and scared, the story begins, "Terrorist groups may soon deploy killer robots against unsuspecting civilians, a British researcher warned Wednesday."

That definitely sounds familiar. Yep, it's the backbone of what seems like every other science-fiction story ever written. Just for good measure, the story includes a photo of a Dalek, a robotic monster from the British television series Doctor Who that goes around grating "Exterminate!" just before killing its victim.

Of course, anyone who takes a moment to read the press release upon which the story was based sees something very different. Professor Noel Sharkey is actually warning of the proliferation of "dumb" robots being used in combat, and the terrorist bit was a what-if tossed out as an afterthought. But naturally Fox seized on just that part of the release and puffed it up to terrifying proportions, unleashing it on the public as a clear and present danger.

As the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, Fox has a long history of doing stuff like this, but this one is just plain ridiculous. It goes so far it becomes something out of the Weekly World News. (In fact, my all-time favorite supermarket tabloid ran a story remarkably along these lines back in 2003.)

Next thing you know, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity will be demanding pre-emptive nuclear strikes on the planet Skaro just in case those killer robots make their way to Earth.

I'm Rubber and You're Glue

"People like Joe Stiglitz lack the courage to consider the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure. One can't even begin to put a price tag on the cost to this nation of the attacks of 9/11. It is also an investment in the future safety and security of Americans and our vital national interests. $3 trillion? What price does Joe Stiglitz put on attacks on the homeland that have already been prevented? Or doesn't his slide rule work that way?"

White House spokesman Tony Fratto sneering at Nobel Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz's estimate of a total Iraq War price tag of $3 trillion, evidently mistaking the White House for an elementary-school playground

Suck It Up

President Bush clearly isn't used to people disagreeing with him. The White House is filled with sycophants and yes-men. Speeches are made in front of handpicked audiences from whom any dissidents have been carefully weeded out. Too much of the Washington press corps is so scared of losing their all-important "access" that they don't dare say out loud what is obvious to everyone, that the emperor has no clothes.

Which is why he is having such a hard time with the House's refusal to pass the Protect America Act, the bill which would let the White House and telecom companies off the hook for illegal spying. In his press conference this morning, the Decider was in high dudgeon and larding up the fear: "I guess you could be relaxed about all this if you didn't think there was a true threat to the country. I know there's a threat to the country." And once again lying about how FISA is still very much in effect, he said that "the American people expect our Congress to give the professionals the tools they need to listen to foreigners who may be calling in to the United States with information that could cause us great harm."

He hit all the usual buttons - 9/11, terrorism, al Qaeda, etc - in trying to browbeat the nation into going along with his fear-and-loathing program. (Anyone playing Buzzword Bingo would have won the game within seconds.) For the most part, the White House press corps let him get away with it - with one exception.

CBS' Bill Plante clearly hadn't read the memo and asked dryly, "You can get the Congress to protect telecom companies from lawsuits, but then there's no recourse for Americans who feel that they've been caught up in this. I know it's not intended to spy on Americans, but in the collection process, information about everybody gets swept up and then it gets sorted. So if Americans don't have any recourse, are you just telling them, when it comes to their privacy, to suck it up?"

Bush's response was to smirk, chuckle, and say, "I wouldn't put it that way, if I were you, in public."

In other words, yes - we should suck it up and stop whining about all this namby-pamby freedom we're losing.

So he really thinks we should just grin and bear it? Ignore the government's wholesale snooping on our private communications and take one for the team? Toss aside just on his say-so the freedom for which we've fought for centuries? If we find ourselves in a Kafkaesque nightmare because the government spied on us with no warrant and no cause - well, that's just too bad?

No, I don't think so. Benjamin Franklin was entirely right when he said that, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

if we willingly give up our freedom in the face of demagoguery, we may never get it back.

The Perfect GOP Candidate

"Not only was I [a] football player, but I also was in social studies class, and I have a passion for how this country works."

Brock Olivo, a former NFL player for the Detroit Lions, on why he's running for Congress as a Republican despite (a) having never voted in any election ever and (b) being completely unable to articulate a single position on anything

What an Amazing Coincidence

Sunday night, the venerable CBS show 60 Minutes broadcast a segment on the case of Don Siegelman, the former governor of Alabama who is now in prison. There is widespread speculation that he was railroaded for being a Democrat in a largely Republican state, and his case was central to last year's furor over the politicization of federal prosecutors.

According to the segment, the local party machinery conspired with Karl Rove and others at the White House to indict Siegelman on trumped-up charges. And if all that wasn't enough, the show accused Rove of trying to get photos of Siegelman in a compromising position for blackmail purposes.

Just as the segment was about to begin, something very strange happened at WHNT in Huntsville, Alabama - the station went off the air. And it came back on the air right after the segment finished. The station originally blamed CBS for going dark, an explanation which fell apart for the simple reason that every other CBS station in the country was working just fine.

With the network mad at station management for trying to pass the buck, the blackout was then blamed on supposed "technical problems," but the station kept changing its mind as to just what those problems were. It appears that in what must be the most perfect case of timing in television history, the alleged problem started and ended just in time to prevent viewers from seeing a very interesting segment.

It sure looks like the station pulled the plug on the broadcast to prevent its viewers from seeing this particular story, and started up again once the segment was over. How nice of them.

Of course, the blackout scheme backfired quite badly, as people are now clamoring to watch the segment any way they can. Even people who never watch shows like 60 Minutes tend to take an extremely dim view of being told what they can and cannot watch in their own homes. And a few disturbing details have started to emerge:

• The station is owned by a former business partner of President Bush and a big GOP contributor.
• As commercials touting the segment made clear, the story was guaranteed to make the state GOP party and the White House look bad.
  
• The station was very critical of Siegelman when he was governor and openly supported his GOP rival.
  
• Management couldn't keep its story straight about who was responsible for the supposed "technical problems."

In a nutshell, this stinks to high heaven. Did the station owners order the blackout? Was it coordinated with the White House or Karl Rove? What, if anything, will the Justice Department or the FCC do about it? The stench is descending.

Class Personified

Hillary Clinton's presidential run has caused some of the wiggier elements of the Republican Party to come completely unglued. From talk radio to the campaign trail, pundits, candidates and others all weave apocalyptic tales of how President Hillary will destroy us all.

But this one really takes the cake for sheer tackiness.

Roger Stone became one of Richard Nixon's "dirty tricks" squad members at the tender age of nineteen and has gone downhill ever since. He was forced to resign from Robert Dole's 1996 campaign after it was revealed that he and his wife placed ads in magazines looking for, shall we say, adult friends with very open minds. Amid the 2000 election mess, he organized the infamous GOP "Brooks Brothers riot" that shut down the Florida recount. Last year, he further distinguished himself by leaving threatening messages on the answering machine of New York governor Elliot Spitzer's 83-year-old father.

And now, he has started up a new 527 political group called Citizens United Not Timid, "to educate the American public about what Hillary Clinton really is." (Like what? An iguana, maybe?)

So what makes this one worse than others?

Well, for starters other conservatives are really mad at him. Citizens United is a less wiggy but still quite conservative outfit whose latest claim to fame is releasing Hillary: The Movie, a pseudo-documentary smear job which aims to be this year's Stolen Honor. (You may remember that flick from the 2004 campaign, in which various former American POWs claimed that John Kerry's anti-Vietnam War activities harmed them.) They are not happy at Stone's new group and have sued to get the name changed.

This is not terribly surprising once you take a closer look at the group's name. Now read the initials. Now look at the group's logo on the website.

Classy, no?

Stone reportedly admitted he couldn't think up a name with the initials B.I.T.C.H. Thank heaven for that.

So with Clinton being attacked for having the plumbing associated with two X chromosomes and Barack Obama the target of new attacks smearing him as unpatriotic, the GOP has plunged right into the sewer and has no plans to come out.

It's gonna be a long campaign.

More Fear! More Fear!

President Bush's ever shriller efforts to terrorize the House into passing a permanent extension of the Protect America Act have now officially passed into farce. As Bush et al put it, government investigators have been helpless to wiretap suspects ever since the House let the PAA expire a week ago. Not only that, private companies will refuse to help out without the unlimited legal immunity the bill would provide. And if the terrorist-loving, America-hating House Demon-crats don't get off their duffs and vote the right way, we'll all die horribly.

It is, of course, a big fat hairy lie.

The House rejection of the PAA does not bar government surveillance, plain and simple. All it does is require that government follow existing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) rules in getting national-security warrants to wiretap foreign suspects. The existing law is hardly a huge burden; the FISA court almost never rejects warrants, and they can be requested retroactively by up to three days if emergency surveillance needs to start immediately. And companies are already provided immunity for complying with legal government requests for assistance.

Bush claims he objects to the House bill only because it doesn't immunize companies who secretly handed over their customers' private communications without a warrant. Indeed, he threatened that any bill which doesn't protect his corporate cronies will be vetoed regardless of whatever else it may contain. (So much for his "pass the law or we all die" line.) But he and his cronies are really throwing such a tantrum because the House finally grew a pair. They're standing up and telling him to his face, "No, we will not sanction another of your power grabs. No, you are not allowed to spy on anyone you like just because you feel like it with no accountability or oversight."

For the past six years, the GOP has been completely unable to sell their message to the American people without resorting to raw, naked, disabling fear. The fear that brown people with Arabic surnames are coming to kill us, that anyone who isn't the right kind of God-fearing Christian is a secret terrorist sympathizer, that a presidential contender whose parents gave him the middle name of "Hussein" is a Muslim version of the Manchurian Candidate.

They keep right on pushing the fear button, vainly hoping against hope that enough people will succumb to unreasoning terror to allow them to get their way one more time. And Bush himself keeps lying to the American people with a straw man argument, saying there will be no surveillance at all and "we're not going to be able to protect ourselves" unless he gets everything he wants.

But it doesn't work anymore. The human psyche simply cannot be kept distracted with fear indefinitely; instead, it inevitably slips back into a normal mindset and starts seeing all the lies for what they really are. That helps explain why Bush's approval rating has now fallen to an unheard-of 19% - because the American public has finally woken up to the fact that there's no there there.

Bush and his fearmongering cohorts are full of it. They don't give a rat's patootie about the safety of the nation, only about the expansion of their own power. And the American people realize it.

Ah, the Good Old Days...

Remember the good old days of the Soviet Union, where anyone accused of crimes against the state was guaranteed to be found guilty, no matter how trumped-up or ridiculous the charges? Yeah, me too. That's why I got a touch of Stalinist nostalgia on reading The Nation's interview with Colonel Morris Davis, who was the chief prosecutor at the Guantanamo Bay prison until he resigned in disgust over the rampant politicization of its military tribunals.

You see, Davis has come forward to say that with such outrages as secret evidence and torture, there is no way any of the prisoners can get a fair trial, if and when such trials ever take place.

Don't hold your breath; most of the prisoners have been there for half a decade and have yet to be charged with anything. The Bush Administration doesn't seem to be in any hurry and seems content to let most of them just rot in prison forever. It was announced only earlier this month that six of the prisoners, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be tried sometime this year and executed if found guilty.

Speaking of "if found guilty," the most appalling part of the story was Davis' recounting of an exchange with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes. When Davis told Haynes that acquitting some of the prisoners (especially the ones who weren't anywhere near the battlefield but were kidnapped and sold to us by our Afghan allies in exchange for bounty money) would help make the process seem less - well, bad - the reaction was very telling.

"Wait a minute, we can't have acquittals," Davis quotes Haynes as saying. "If we've been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can't have acquittals. We've got to have convictions."

Think about that for a moment. The man in charge of putting Guantanamo prisoners on trial has already declared them guilty, even though such trials have yet to begin. That it doesn't matter whether they're even actually guilty or not, as long as they're convicted. And even if by some miracle they are acquitted, the Bush Administration has already said it has no intention of ever releasing any of them.

Just think of what would happen if such an approach were applied to regular criminal law. Who needs a trial, or even a formal charge? If someone is suspected of something, just lock him up and leave him there. Or put a bullet through his brain. The mere fact of his being a suspect means he is automatically guilty. If and when a show trial is ever conducted, a guilty verdict means execution and a not-guilty verdict means life imprisonment.

Once again, we see how the Bush Administration defines such radical notions as "justice" and "fairness."

Those Damn Commie Babies!

"And how had these two come together at a time when it was neither natural nor easy for [interracial] relationships to flourish? Always through politics. No, not the young Republicans. Usually the Communist Youth League. Or maybe a different arm of the CPUSA [Communist Party USA]. But, for a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics... Time for some investigative journalism about the Obama family's background, now that his chances of being president have increased so much."

Lisa Schiffren, in National Review's "The Corner" blog, smearing Barack Obama's parents as Communists because they were in a mixed-race marriage and declaring open season on his family

So That Makes It Better, Then

"It is not like putting burning coals on people's bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological."

Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) on why waterboarding isn't really torture despite having been recognized as such ever since it was used by the Spanish Inquisition

A George W. Who Had It Right

"Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any Canadian or Indian, in his person or property, I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause: but I hope and trust, that the brave men who have voluntarily engaged in this expedition, will be governed by far different views. That order, discipline and regularity of behaviour will be as conspicuous, as their courage and valour. I also give it in charge to you to avoid all disrespect to or contempt of the religion of the country and its ceremonies. Prudence, policy, and a true Christian spirit, will lead us to look with compassion upon their errors without insulting them. While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious of violating the rights of conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of the hearts of men, and to Him only in this case, they are answerable. Upon the whole, sir, I beg you to inculcate upon the officers and soldiers, the necessity of preserving the strictest order during their march through Canada; to represent to them the shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and country, if they should by their conduct, turn the hearts of our brethren in Canada against us."

George Washington in a letter dated September 14, 1775

If You Don't Like It, Hide It

By now, it's obvious that standard operating procedure at Dubya's White House is to cover up or otherwise hide any facts which have the temerity to disagree with the official ideology.

For example, earlier this week the New York Times revealed that a 2005 Rand Corporation study criticizing the government's planning (or lack thereof) for occupying Iraq was kept under lock and key. The apparent object of burying the report was to avoid making any of the politically powerful people mentioned as having screwed up - President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, etc - look bad.

This is hardly unique. After all, the Bush Administration has hidden away other inconvenient truths, from increases in terrorist attacks and factory closings to everything in between. But their latest duck-and-cover-up is raising a few eyebrows even in shell-shocked Washington.

The government's Economic Indicators website gathers financial data from a myriad of official agencies and makes it readily available to the public for free. Presenting current information on everything from home construction to personal income to retail sales, the site is so useful that Forbes gave it a "Best of the Web" award.

Now, as it happens, economic numbers have been heading south lately, despite Bush's breezy reassurance that "we're not in a recession" and that any fiscal misery being endured by the American people will be over soon anyway. Because the facts don't jibe with the statements, the facts are by definition wrong and must go to the guillotine.

So the site is being shut down. Yes, visitors are being greeted with a notice saying that, "Due to budgetary constraints, the Economic Indicators service will be discontinued effective March 1, 2008." (It seems that with a $3.1 trillion budget, they still couldn't come up with a few hundred bucks to keep the data flowing.) It will still be possible to get the numbers, but it'll be a lot tougher, with a lot more digging needed. Or you can cough up $200 annually (per person) for one-stop shopping via the Commerce Department's STAT-USA website.

This is typical Bush Administration arrogance. Anything which makes them or their rhetoric look bad must be hidden away and never see the light of day again, blaming it on anything other than their own obsessive need to cover up.

Spy Hard With a Vengeance

In voting yesterday to approve every one of President Bush's demands to give him virtually unrestricted power to spy on anyone he feels like, too many Senate Democrats have - again - surrendered to GOP fear-and-smear tactics without putting up a fight. The final tally was 68-29, with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama ducking the final vote.

The bill is truly horrendous. If the House follows suit and passes this version, the following would become completely legal:

• The president can order the NSA, FBI and other intelligence agencies to intercept every E-mail, telephone or Internet communication of every American citizen and legal resident with at best minimal safeguards.
  
• Without bothering to get individual or particularized warrants from any court, intelligence agencies can suck up communications at random without regard to whether or not the targets warrant surveillance, with essentially no provisions for separating out innocent bystanders. Procedures allowing the secret FISA court to review such procedures have been badly weakened, along with measures to correct violations of even these limited procedures.
• If you are spied upon, you have no way to find out what information the government has collected, or to determine what the government does with that information. You will never know which people or government agencies are shown private information, and if your activities or travel are restricted because of this, it will be impossible to find out why or to challenge it.
• Telecommunication companies who participated in government's illegal spying activities (such as AT&T with its infamous Room 641A) would be permanently immune from any consequences for their actions and cannot be forced to disclose what they did.

So much for such niceties as the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and the basic American right to live free of arbitrary government snooping. Let's get busy. Contact your Representative and tell them to vote NO on this monster.

UPDATE: President Bush wasted no time in trying to terrorize the House into falling into line. Once again invoking 9/11 as he does ad infinitum whenever he wants something, he said the US will be more vulnerable to plots and attacks should the House not roll over and play dead. It's a lie, of course - FISA is a perfectly workable law - but he wants unlimited spying power. It remains to be seen whether the House will stand up to him.

Free-Fraud Zone, All Nice and Legal

"I hate to sound cynical, but what lobbyist working for a contractor in Iraq wanted this get-out-of-jail card?"

Taxpayers Against Fraud spokesman Patrick Burns, on new tougher government regulations against contractor fraud which specifically exempt "contracts to be performed outside the United States"

Tinker, Tailor, Doctor, Spy

Blue Cross/Blue Shield of California, a for-profit health insurance company, is always looking for ways to fatten its bottom line. Their latest tactic is one that was used back in the good old days of the Stasi, the late-and-unlamented East German secret police: enlist doctors to spy on their patients.

You see, doctors all over California received a letter from Blue Cross which said in part: "Any condition not listed on the application that is discovered to be pre-existing should be reported to Blue Cross immediately. We ask for your assistance to help identify medical omissions because you, being the primary provider, will have first-hand knowledge of services provided and/or requested."

In other words, Blue Cross is telling doctors to inform on their patients' medical conditions so the company can see if they were properly listed on the original application. If not, they're cut off. And if they are buried in medical bills and have to declare bankruptcy - well, them's the breaks.

And health insurance companies wonder why they are some of the most hated businesses in the country.

UPDATE: After the story hit the wires and the company was swamped by outrage, they quickly backed down. Nice to know they're not completely clueless.

Great Moments in "Fair and Balanced"

"Whether it is interrogation of terror prisoners or the intercepting of surveillance among al Qaeda members, are you ever puzzled by all of the concern in this country about protecting of rights of people who want to kill us?"

Loyal Fox News stenographer Chris Wallace interviewing President Bush, making even Bush say that "I wouldn't necessarily define some of the critics of my policy that way"

Supporting the Troops, Example #78,452

"You know what? Tough it out. All of us like to drink."

An Army alcohol counselor to a soldier who was hospitalized for bipolar disorder, alcoholism and multiple suicide attempts but was then ordered to leave the hospital and report for active duty deployment to Kuwait

Eh, Close Enough

"The people who cast the votes decide nothing," Josef Stalin is reported to have said. "The people who count the votes decide everything." With some very suspicious machinations surrounding the Washington State GOP caucus votes on Saturday, it appears that the state Republican Party is channeling the spirit of that long-dead Soviet tyrant.

You see, with just 87% of the vote counted, with about 1500 votes left to go and with just 242 votes separating John McCain and Mike Huckabee, the party chairman ordered the tally halted and McCain declared the winner. Unsurprisingly, Huckabee is not happy and sent a squad of lawyers to the Evergreen State to raise hell.

As a rule, I don't think much of Huckabee's folksy theocratic platform, but if the election really was stolen from him, he should fight it with all he's got.

The GOP has used similar tactics in the past to steal elections from Democrats to the yawns of the party rank and file. But now that the same thing is being done to disenfranchise them - well, it's amazing what a fuss is generated.

Dubya Feels Your Pain

"You know, life sometimes is, uh, you know, is unfair, and you don't get to play the hand that you wanted to play. But, the question is, when you get dealt the hand, how do you play it?"

President Bush trying to give a pep talk to residents of Tennessee whose homes were destroyed by a series of massive tornadoes

Reading Is Overrated Anyway

Anyone who's been to school (or has had kids in school) since the 1970s remembers Reading Is Fundamental, the program that brings books to kids who can't afford to buy them. It has proved enormously successful in getting books into the hands of children all over the country, setting them up for a lifetime love of reading.

Since it's been such a hit, President Bush naturally put RIF's federal funding on the chopping block. Yes, the man who is notoriously averse to reading anything more complicated than a gum wrapper has decided that reading isn't so fundamental after all. His proposed FY2009 budget entirely eliminates funding for the Inexpensive Book Distribution program.

The program costs $24.6 million and gives away about 16 million books per year. That means millions of children who otherwise wouldn't be reading at all get a chance for a book of their own.

To put it in perspective, the Iraq War is currently costing American taxpayers about $275 million a day. Therefore, $24.6 million pays for about two hours of fighting the Iraq War.

Getting millions of kids reading vs. two hours of war.

Nice to know the Decider has his priorities straight.

Good Enough for Government Work

Let's suppose you run a factory and you get a contract to build helmets out of Kevlar, a polymer thread used in bulletproof vests and such. You supply the military with a couple of million helmets, many of which are used in combat. What you don't bother to mention is that you cut manufacturing costs (and therefore increase your profits) by deliberately using less Kevlar than is required by Pentagon standards. And to get the under-protected helmets up to the proper weight, you lard them up with extra resin, which makes them more brittle. Which makes them break more easily. Which is bad.

In fact, you're pretty sure that soldiers wearing your product in a war zone are being injured or even killed, and your quality assurance officer knows it. "If we ever got audited," she admits candidly, "you know what they would do to us. Shut us down and fine us big time. Probably never see another government contract."

You'd think that once the scam is detected, you'd be tarred and feathered, right?

Wrong.

You see, this actually happened. Sioux Manufacturing of Fort Totten, North Dakota got the contract to build helmets for use in Iraq and Afghanistan but skimped on the Kevlar. Pentagon specifications require a weaving of 35 by 35 threads per square inch, but Sioux used 34x34 or even less. Doesn't sound like much, but the under-weaving makes the helmets a lot less effective. And "good enough for government work" isn't very comforting when the result is all that stands between your skull and a bullet, or a piece of shrapnel from a bomb explosion.

When the scheme came to light, the Justice Department took Sioux to court and the company agreed to pay a $2 million fine to settle the case.

And then the Pentagon turned around and gave Sioux another contract, worth $74 million, to build more helmets. No word yet on whether they'll actually do it right this time.

This is truly reprehensible. The same people who knowingly put our men and women in harm's way are given another chance to do the same thing all over again while making more profit.

Once again, we see how our mercenary-minded Pentagon supports the troops.

It's Legal Because We Say So

Everyone knows that American prisoners in the War on Terror™ are tortured, despite years of the Bush Administration's insistence that no torture takes place. But times have changed as the Administration gets more arrogant and more determined to hold on to power. The new White House line is this: torture is official government policy, President Bush approved it, it's justified because we use it only on Very Bad People, and it's 100% legal because we say it is.

And the Justice Department won't open a criminal investigation of the confirmed torture practices. Or the CIA's destruction of evidence of said practices. Or the secret wholesale spying on Americans. Why? Because the Justice Department says it's legal, and there is thus nothing to investigate. No, they won't explain why it's legal. We just have to trust them.

At least, that's what Attorney General Michael Mukasey, CIA Director Michael Hayden, and National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell told various congressional committees this week.

This simply boggles the mind. How far have we fallen? Once upon a time, the United States of America was a beacon of truth and justice the world over, where the rule of law and not the whim of men holds sway.

We have laws to restrict how government wields power - laws which say that the police cannot search your home simply because they want to, that the FBI cannot tap your phone or open your mail just because the president orders it, that a confession cannot be beaten out of you under any circumstances.

But all that has now changed. In this new and very scary Administration pronouncement, there are no longer any laws - at least, not laws which mean anything. If Bush or his minions want to do something, they get one of their pet lawyers to declare it legal. The declaration is then classified so no one can ever see it. Problem solved.

Despite widespread public outrage at the Administration's endless power plays, the congressional leadership is too terrified to do anything about it. The specter of GOP attack ads calling them "soft on terror" is apparently too daunting for them to even consider impeachment. Even in the current FISA debate, the Democratic leadership is showing every sign of folding under Bush's "give me everything I want or you're a terrorist-lover" fear-and-smear campaign.

And people wonder why Congress' approval numbers are even lower than Bush's. It's enough to make one fear for the Constitution's survival until the next president takes office.

Das Rudy May Be Gone, But His Tactics Live On

"Barack [Obama] and Hillary [Clinton] have made their intentions clear regarding Iraq and the war on terror. They would retreat and declare defeat. And the consequence of that would be devastating. It would mean attacks on America, launched from safe havens that make Afghanistan under the Taliban look like child's play."

Mitt Romney channeling Rudy Giuliani, taking a moment from announcing his withdrawal from the GOP presidential race to threaten the American people with death and horror should a Democrat be elected in November

That Was Then, This Is Now

"America is leading the fight against global poverty, with strong education initiatives and humanitarian assistance. We’ve also changed the way we deliver aid by launching the Millennium Challenge Account. This program strengthens democracy, transparency, and the rule of law in developing nations, and I ask you to fully fund this important initiative."

President Bush in his State of the Union speech on January 28

"$2.225 billion for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC)."

From Bush's proposed FY2009 budget for the State Department just one week later, cutting the MCC's budget by 26% from FY2008 and more than 50% below the originally-promised funding level of $5 billion

What's a Little Extortion Between Friends?

Turning from the largely inconclusive (at least on the Democratic side) Super Tuesday hoopla to the nation's capital, we have yet another wave of criminality coming out of the Bush Administration.

You may recall Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson from a 2006 fuss in which he bragged to a Dallas business roundtable that he denied a HUD contract because the prospective contractor was not a Bush supporter. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president," Jackson said, "so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

Many were not pleased by Jackson's depiction of government contracting as an bald patronage racket, and said so. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) demanded that Jackson resign and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) called for a congressional investigation. Of course, they got nowhere (this was when the GOP still controlled Congress, remember) and Jackson stayed where he was.

That may be a little more difficult after these latest revelations - that Jackson allegedly subjected the city of Philadelphia to an old-fashioned shakedown. According to the Washington Post, Jackson demanded that the city sell off a $2 million piece of public property at a steep discount to a developer with whom he had business connections. When the city refused, Jackson retaliated by threatening to strip the city of its authority to spend federal housing funds.

This is not meaningless bluster. The move would force the city to fire 250 workers and raise rents for some 84,000 people who live in low-income housing.

"The secretary was determined that we turn over this land to this specific developer," said Philadelphia Housing Director Carl Greene. "I refused. He didn't have the ability to remove me. So he resorted to these extraordinary measures to extract what he wanted."

(And if all that isn't enough, National Journal reported that a senior Jackson aide is under federal investigation for steering a $127 million New Orleans housing project to an Atlanta-based company which owes Jackson between $250,000 and $500,000 "for past services." Scott Keller is also accused of conspiring with Jackson to award equally lucrative contracts to the HUD secretary's friends and associates.)

This is extortion, plain and simple. The fact that Jackson wasn't the direct beneficiary of the proposed deal is irrelevant; it's still as crooked as the day is long. Jackson should resign immediately, or at least go on administrative leave. Considering the seriousness of the charges against him, that's the least he can do.

Setting Back the Cause of Women's Rights Everywhere

"And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He's picked the new guy over us. He's joined the list of progressive white men who can't or won't handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not 'this' one)."

From a January 28 press release by the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women, throwing a stereotypically "feminine" temper tantrum over Senator Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton

And They Believe "Jurassic Park" Was a Nature Documentary

"Young Earth Creationists believe, from the biblical account, that dinosaurs were created on day 6 of the creation week approximately 6,000 years ago, along with other land animals, and therefore co-existed with humans. As such, they reject the Theory of Evolution and the beliefs of evolutionary scientists about the age of the earth. They believe that dinosaurs lived in harmony with other animals, (probably including in the Garden of Eden) eating only plants; that pairs of each dinosaur kind were taken onto Noah's Ark during the Great Flood and were preserved from drowning; that many of the fossilized dinosaur bones originated during the mass killing of the Flood; and that possibly some descendants of those dinosaurs taken aboard the Ark are still around today."

From the "dinosaur" entry on Conservapedia, a website billed as a right-wing version of Wikipedia

That Makes Me Feel So Much Better

"We are prepared to respond. We are not prepared to respond with the speed, the efficiency and the effectiveness that we intend to achieve."

Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, insisting that the military can respond to a nuclear, chemical or biological attack on the US - just slowly, inefficiently and ineffectively

Oh, So That's Why We're There

"Success in Iraq will send an interesting message to its neighbor, Iran. Failure in Iraq would cause people to doubt the sincerity of the United States when it comes to keeping commitments. Failure in Iraq would embolden the extremists. Failure in Iraq would say to thugs and killers, the United States is a paper tiger. Failure in Iraq would embolden other extremists in the Middle East. Failure in Iraq would embolden Iran."

President Bush, telling a handpicked audience in Las Vegas that he sends our troops to fight and die in Iraq so he won't look bad in front of Iran