The Torture President

George W. Bush wants to go down in history as the man who led a righteous crusade campaign to bring freedom to the Middle East. He wants to be remembered as the Hero of 9/11, the Scourge of Saddam, the Terror of Terrorists.

He will actually be remembered as the man who legalized torture, as long as it's committed by the United States of America.

He will be remembered as the Torture President.

Congress passed a bill barring the CIA from using waterboarding, beatings, and other "interrogation techniques" instantly recognized worldwide as torture. The bill would have brought the intelligence agency into line with practices used by the military, which specifically bars torture techniques up to and including mock executions, starvation and rape.

The Army Field Manual says very specifically on page 102, "Use of torture by US personnel would bring discredit upon the US and its armed forces while undermining domestic and international support for the war effort. It could also place US and allied personnel in enemy hands at greater risk of abuse."

Bush likes to make a big deal of how he "listens" to his military generals and does whatever they recommend - except when they disagree with him.

So he vetoed the bill, insisting on the right of the CIA to torture War on Terror™ prisoners whenever they feel like it. In his weekly radio address Saturday announcing the veto, he once again used all the same buzzwords (9/11, al Qaeda, "hardened terrorists," etc) and said that "we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists."

Including torture, it seems.

Waterboarding has been around since the Spanish Inquisition. Japanese officers during World War II were convicted of war crimes for ordering prisoners waterboarded, as were American soldiers during the Vietnam War. Everyone knows it's torture.

Bush's "logic" is that since the Army Field Manual is freely available online, suspected terror prisoners can be "trained to resist the methods outlined in the manual. And this is why we created alternative procedures to question the most dangerous al Qaida operatives, particularly those who might have knowledge of attacks planned on our homeland." You can almost hear the telescreens shouting, "Be afraid! Be afraid!"

Speaking of the Army Field Manual, White House press secretary Dana Perino actually claimed last month that the Manual "is a perfectly appropriate document that is important for young GIs, some so young that they're not even able to legally get a drink in the states where they're from." In other words, she said that America's soldiers are young and stupid and don't know any better, a statement which would bring howls of outrage from the GOP had it been uttered by a Democrat. Way to support the troops, Dana. (By an incredible coincidence, the transcript containing Perino's outrageous statement is conspicuously missing from the White House website - but it's still available elsewhere.)

If we follow Bush's supposed logic, since everyone now knows we use beatings and waterboarding, Osama bin Laden (remember him?) should now be teaching his minions how to resist them. Bush's prophecy is thus self-fulfilling - as some forms of torture become widely known, we must move on to other and more severe forms of torture.

Where does it end? Will prisoners be burned with hot coals? Hung by their arms until their shoulders dislocate? Bones broken and organs damaged? If they still don't talk, will their family members be hauled in to face the same treatment? And what happens if they are determined to be innocent? Will they be patched up (if that) and dumped on a roadside somewhere with an "oops, sorry about that" note?

The truly revolting part of this whole obscenity is that torture doesn't work, despite what the TV show 24 is teaching American soldiers. Anyone who has ever dealt with it knows it. Torture doesn't make prisoners tell the truth, it makes them tell the torturer anything he wants to hear. In fact, the supposed plots Bush mentioned in his radio address all turned out to be at best in the planning stages. Most of them turned out to be nothing at all, just kooks muttering in their beer with an FBI agent listening in.

The Army knows this very well, as it makes clear on page 97 of the Field Manual: "Use of torture is not only illegal but also it is a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the HUMINT [human intelligence] collector wants to hear. Use of torture can also have many possible negative consequences at national and international levels."

And yet information gained via torture is used anyway as a political weapon, to terrorize the public into accepting the wholesale destruction of the values which have made the United States a beacon of freedom and liberty.

All this is enough to make one wonder - again - if Bush is actually bin Laden's sleeper agent in the White House. After all, everything he's done has presented al Qaeda with a gold-plated recruiting poster.

Ghouls

If there's one country in the world that knows how to handle terrorism, and handle it smartly (for the most part, anyway), it's Israel. For its entire 60-year existence, the country has been under attack by those who want to destroy it utterly. Not change it into what they want, destroy it.

Every time Israel's sons and daughters are killed on a bus, in a school, in a restaurant, the world sits silently.

And every time Israel strikes back, the world rushes to condemn.

Our TV screens are filled with images of grieving Palestinians every time Israel retaliates for a rocket attack or bombing. But how often do we see scenes like this in our living rooms?

Yes, those are crowds of Palestinians actually cheering yesterday's attack on a yeshiva (a Jewish religious school) in Jerusalem. Eight people were killed.

Two of them were just fifteen years old.

And these ghouls celebrate the slaughter. Children sing and clap happily. Candies are handed out. What kind of society so twists the minds of its young people to the point where they rejoice in the killing of fellow human beings, let alone those barely older than themselves?

Contrary to Palestinian propaganda, the vast majority of Israelis want peace with their neighbors, and they want it desperately. But how can a negotiated peace be possible when your neighbors mark the occasion of your son's brutal murder by throwing a block party?

It's enough to make one despair.

Gee, Thanks a Lot

Back during the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush unleashed his flying monkeys to carry out a truly despicable whispering campaign in still-race-sensitive South Carolina, saying Senator John McCain's dark-skinned daughter was the result of a tryst with a black prostitute.

Bridget McCain was actually adopted from Bangladesh.

Classy.

Relations between the two men have been tense ever since, to put it mildly. But what a difference eight years makes - now that McCain has clinched the Republican nomination, Bush has come off the sidelines to endorse him. And so yesterday they gritted their teeth, put aside their differences (or at least tried to) and met at the White House so Bush could pass the GOP mantle to McCain.

It didn't go well. McCain looked like he would much rather have been back in the Hanoi Hilton being tortured by the Viet Cong. For his part, Bush hogged the spotlight, rambled incoherently, and basically did all he could to push his would-be successor out of the picture. Such as when he grabbed a question about the economy and replied with a rant about "an enemy that lurks, an enemy that wants to strike us."

With the event such a disaster, McCain's campaign and the Republican National Committee have been conspicuously silent about the endorsement, leaving it off their websites.

Good gravy, you'd think they didn't want anyone to know about it.

Fortunately, the Democrats are more than pleased to get the word out, displaying it prominently on their own page.

A Bush endorsement is quite simply the kiss of death. The president is so unpopular and so toxic that any endorsement by him is almost guaranteed to have the opposite effect. Independents, Democrats tempted by the nominee's "maverick" persona and disgruntled Republicans will see a McCain presidency as little more than four more years of Dubya. But as with his acceptance of wingnut televangelist John Hagee's endorsement, McCain knows he can't rally the GOP power structure to his side without the support of the current president.

With his warmongering speeches and relentless flip-flopping on positions, McCain has anchored himself firmly to Bush. And as the Decider sinks like a stone, he will drag McCain down with him. Fine by me.

So Much for the Jewish Vote

"Anti-Semitism is an oxymoron. An anti-Semite is someone who is driven by hate. A Christian is someone who's driven by love. Therefore, there's no such thing as a Christian anti-Semite."

Megachurch pastor and McCain endorser John Hagee to CNN pundit Glenn Beck, ignoring the many, many examples of Christian anti-Semitism throughout history

Waving the White Flag, Again

President Bush's approval ratings are in the toilet, and his response to some extremely rare Congressional backbone on his secret-spying program is to throw a series of carefully scripted temper tantrums. The Republican Party and political pressure groups unveil TV ads basically accusing House Democrats of wishing everyone dead. The American public is unconvinced and roundly says no to indiscriminate snooping, urging Congress to stand firm in the cause of freedom and the Fourth Amendment.
Meanwhile, Congressional Democrats propose extending the Protect America Act while a permanent bill is worked out, but the GOP says no to any extension, apparently preferring to keep the public in mortal peril (at least, according to their hyperbolic rhetoric) rather than negotiate.

So what is Congress preparing to do? Surrender, of course. Yes, the Washington Post is today reporting that House and Senate Democrats are working on a supposed "compromise" that would give the president everything he's been so hysterically demanding.

Unrestricted power to spy on anyone? Sure.

A toothless FISA court with no real oversight authority? No problem.

Immunity for telecom companies who helped the White House break the law? You got it.

So what is this compromise? Well, it would give Congress the opportunity to vote on two bills, one legalizing the spying and the other letting AT&T etc. off the hook.

That's it. That's the entire compromise.

Part of me can't believe that Congress is once again willing to knuckle under to Mr. 19%, that these gutless cowards are actually caving in to the GOP's fear-and-terror tactics. Then the other part reminds the first part that unconditional surrender is what Congressional Democrats seem to be doing best nowadays.

Contact your Senators and Representative and tell them to hold the line on spying. No more.

With Friends Like These...

The right wing hates John McCain. I mean really hates him. He's one of those occasionally principled Republicans who rejects torture, thinks our current legalized-bribery system of campaign financing needs to be cleaned up, and tells the Falwell wing of the party to get lost. Wingnuts from Rush Limbaugh to Ann Coulter have said they'd rather vote for Hillary Clinton over McCain - and considering how they believe Clinton to be just short of the Antichrist, that's saying quite a lot.

Well, so much for those pesky beliefs. McCain's handlers realize that he has no chance of winning in November without the support of the wildest GOP nuts out there, so he has tossed those principles under the bus. He now embraces the use of torture, is notably silent on the wash of corrupting money in politics, and accepted John Hagee's endorsement.

Hagee, the pastor of a Texas-based megachurch, is the holder of political views which can be described politely as "Neanderthal." For example, he:

• Blamed Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans' annual Gay Pride parade and the city's "level of sin that was offensive to God"
• Held a mock "slave sale" as a fundraiser
• Calls the Vatican "the Great Whore" and is vehemently anti-Catholic
• Wants to attack Iran, the consequences be damned
  
• Calls the Harry Potter series an inducement to witchcraft and Satanism
• Says feminism is about "throwing off authority in rebellion against God's pattern for the family"
• Says Muslims are religiously required to kill all non-Muslims
  

And if all that isn't enough, he is strongly pro-Israel for all the wrong reasons. Rather than supporting Israel because it's a solid and friendly democracy, he does so because an independent Jewish state fits into his theology. According to some sects of fundamentalist Christianity, the Second Coming and the End Times cannot take place until a strong Israel exists and all Jews convert to the "correct" faith. (The Left Behind series illustrates this notion to gory extremes.)

His views about unconverted Jews aren't hard to fathom. In his book Jerusalem Countdown, Hagee blames anti-Semitism on the Jews themselves:

"It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God's chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day... How utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God for His chosen people to credit idols with bringing blessings He had showered upon the chosen people. Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come...it rises from the judgment of God upon his rebellious chosen people."

So let's see now - Hagee hates women, Catholics, blacks, gays, Jews, Muslims, and pretty much everyone else who isn't white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Is this really someone McCain wants by his side?

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

Just Kidding!

"To build a future of energy security, we must trust in the creative genius of American researchers and entrepreneurs and empower them to pioneer a new generation of clean energy technology... Let us fund new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions."

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

"Several lawmakers from Illinois said Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman made it clear in a meeting in Washington on Tuesday that he was poised to pull the plug on a showcase clean coal energy project slated for Downstate Illinois."

The Chicago Tribune, reporting how the Bush Administration dropped support for a clean-energy facility just one day later

Maybe a Cigar Really Is More Than a Cigar...

As a rule, I don't hold much stock in the so-called "9/11 Truth Movement." This motley bunch claims that there was a deliberate government conspiracy to pull off the 9/11 attacks, either by standing back and letting it happen or by staging it themselves. Generally, the bigger an event is, the more conspiracies tend to crop up around it - for example, just look at the number of people who even today are convinced that the moon landings were faked.

I tend to take the 9/11 conspiracy theories with a very large grain of salt for several reasons, including:

• The Bush crowd has proven themselves to be so inept at everything they touch that there's no way in the world they could have put together something like this. The job would have been farmed out to Halliburton, been overcharged by 500% on a cost-plus contract, and the wings would have fallen off the planes long before reaching their targets.
• The circle of people who would have to have been involved in such a scheme is so large, encompassing the Pentagon, the FAA, NORAD, the National Transportation Safety Board, etc, etc, that someone would have talked by now. A secret this big and involving so many people simply cannot stay hidden for a long time.

Of course, the Bush Administration didn't help matters; they gave rise to much of this speculation all by themselves. After all, they fought both the Congressional and 9/11 Commission investigations tooth and nail until they were publicly shamed into complying by the victims' families, then stonewalled them any way they could. Almost thirty pages, redacted from the Congressional 9/11 report, were almost instantly described as concerning al Qaeda connections to the Saudi royal family. And they rushed to take political advantage of the attacks with truly obscene haste, turning 9/11 into just another weapon with which to bludgeon their electoral opponents.

But once in a while, something happens to make me wonder. After all, the Pentagon and the FAA both deceived and refused to hand over documents to the 9/11 Commission, covering up their actions on that day.

And now, ABC is reporting that according to a new book by Philip Shenon, 9/11 Commission executive director Philip Zelikow was in secret cahoots with the White House:

9/11 Commission co-chairs Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton hired former Condoleezza Rice aide Philip Zelikow to be executive director, Zelikow failed to tell them about his role helping Rice set up President George W. Bush's National Security Council in early 2001 – and that he was "instrumental" in demoting Richard Clarke, the onetime White House counterterrorism czar who was fixated on the threat from Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, according to Holland's version of Shenon's tome.

Not only that, Zelikow routinely talked with Karl Rove - despite a strict ban on such contacts - and ordered his assistant not to log such conversations. Was he working behind the scenes with the Administration to sabotage the Commission's work? Maybe he was "just" trying to protect his boss Condoleezza Rice, who was National Security Adviser at the time, from being exposed as a staggeringly incompetent political hack. We'll see what develops.

I'll Tell You What I Want, But It's Gonna Cost You

"It's Mickey Mouse. Bush has never submitted a balanced budget to Congress in his entire presidency, and he's playing Mickey Mouse with Congress."

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), on the Bush Administration's plans to make everyone - including members of Congress and federal agencies - shell out $200 per printed copy of the Administration's proposed budget

Oh, Grow Up Already

Everyone knows that when it comes to such delicate matters as diplomacy, the Bush Administration resembles not a group of thinking, reasoning adults but rather a room full of spoiled brats. We now have further evidence of that. It seems that when Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to the United Nations, was in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Form, he committed the faux pas of sitting next to Manouchehr Mottaki.

Mottaki is the Iranian foreign minister. The panel discussion was about Iranian foreign policy. You can see the pattern here.

The White House had a collective fit and "expressed anger" at Khalilzad for his traitorous defiance of political orthodoxy and his thoughtless act of diplomacy. You could almost hear the thuds coming from Pennsylvania Avenue as White House ideologues got the vapors and fainted dead away en masse.

Of course, it's not like Khalilzad or Mottaki talked or anything. They didn't even shake hands, they just sat next to each other. Doesn't matter to the neoconservatives who still hold sway in the Oval Office; they still insist that Iran is the linchpin of the Axis of Evil™ and any contact between Us and Them is a Very Bad Thing.

Oh, please. This is truly pathetic. This is like something out of grade school, where kids pout and hold grudges for the stupidest of reasons. The White House should grow up and act like adults.

More Signing-Statement Shenanigans

President Bush yesterday signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008. Of course, being Bush, he couldn't resist slipping in one of his noxious "signing statements" eviscerating some of the new law's provisions. Evidently, he hoped no one would notice amid the State of the Union hoopla.

The language he used is pretty dry: "Provisions of the Act, including sections 841, 846, 1079, and 1222, purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the President's ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to execute his authority as Commander in Chief. The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President."

But once you actually look at the text, this becomes a big deal:

• Section 841 establishes a "Commission on Wartime Contracting" to investigate fraud and profiteering in war contracts
• Section 846 protects whistleblowers employed by contractors from reprisal for exposing fraud, waste or other criminal wrongdoing
• Section 1079 requires the White House to either hand over any documentation to the House or Senate Armed Services Committee or give a good reason why not within 45 days after it is requested
• Section 1222 bars permanent American military bases in Iraq or American control of Iraqi oil resources

In other words, Bush is - once again - declaring himself to be above the law. If he feels like letting his Halliburton or Blackwater buddies run wild, or let them lock up gang-rape victims to prevent them from telling anyone, or if he just feels like telling Congress to go fly a kite, then gosh darn, he's the Commander Guy, and he can do whatever he feels like.

Can't we impeach the guy already?

Back on Message, You Unpatriotic Cur

"Seven years ago, right before September 11th, I think that people would say that the country certainly felt better off. There's been - once we were confronted with terrorists who would fly jumbo jets into buildings and kill thousands of our citizens in an instant, it created a sense of fear and nervousness about our security. And that's why the President decided to take on the terrorists head on and go on the offense."

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, on being asked whether "the country [is] better off now than seven years ago"

Lessons Learned: None

"The advance of liberty is opposed by terrorists and extremists - evil men who despise freedom, despise America, and aim to subject millions to their violent rule."

President Bush in his last State of the Union speech, showing that he still sees his War on Terror™ as a one-dimensional, good-versus-evil propaganda poster

But Wait, There's More!

"There's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars."

Senator John "Bomb Bomb Iran" McCain, promising voters that he will launch even more failed wars should he be elected

Hitlery Redux?

With Hillary Clinton in the running for president this year, many progressives have been watching the primary season with some trepidation. Those of us who lived during the 1990s remember the poisonous political atmosphere of the time, the limitless smears and attacks, the unremitting accusations and endless investigations, all boiling down to a doomed impeachment effort based on sex.

The Republican lineup this year is so uninspiring that the "None of the Above" candidate routinely wins opinion polls. The candidates spend half their time running as far away from George W. Bush as they can and the other half embracing his War on Terror™ while promising more of the same. GOP voters are likewise unimpressed by their choices this year, and the party's fear-and-smear tactics aren't working. Primary turnout is down this year, and the way it's going, many GOP voters may refuse to vote in November.

That may all change if Hillary gets the nomination. In his New York Times column today, Paul Krugman says that Hillary is not unique and that any Democrat elected this year will face the same relentless attacks that Bill Clinton did when he became president. He's right, of course. The current crop of Republicans is so politically and morally bankrupt that destruction is all they know how to do.

But that doesn't mean we have to make it easy for them.

During the 1990s, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton was attacked as "Hitlery," a Lady Macbeth-type who had her political opponents bumped off. Unfortunately, many Republicans believed the smears and still believe them today - which is why GOP bigwigs are probably praying for a Clinton nomination. That way, they can drag out all the old smears and use the specter of "President Hillary" to scare voters into supporting the eventual Republican nominee - whoever it turns out to be - for the simple reason that he is Not Hillary.

The old bugaboo of "electability" has been used to oppose progressive candidates for years. Voters are told that they have to support someone they don't really agree with just because the person they really support is guaranteed to spark ferocious opposition.

But this time, this concern may really be valid.

Hey, It Worked Before

"If Congress does not act quickly, our national security professionals will not be able to count on critical tools they need to protect our Nation, and our ability to respond quickly to new threats and circumstances will be weakened. That means it will become harder to figure out what our enemies are doing to recruit terrorists and infiltrate them into our country."

President Bush, demanding that Congress approve a permanent FISA "modernization" bill handing him unlimited power to spy on anyone he chooses with no accountability, thus betting that he can once again scare the Democrats into doing his bidding

Fear Me, For I Am Rudy

The fact that Rudy Giuliani's presidential hopes have performed a crash-and-burn of almost biblical proportions is no accident. After all, his campaign is focused almost entirely on terrorism while his tactics are, well, terrorist: threatening the public with horrible consequences unless they vote for him. His endless repetitions of the 9/11 mantra - and virtually nothing else - made no impression on a public already numbed by six constant years of fear-based politics. And his less-than-total fealty to the evangelical agenda, combined with his rather messy personal life, doomed him with the Christian right.

But this latest item can't possibly help. Looking back on his tumultuous eight years as mayor, the New York Times examined Giuliani's legendary habit of punishing anyone who disagrees with him. Not simply snubbing them at social events - no, that was too ordinary for him. Nope, Das Rudy actually had his critics arrested:

In August 1997, James Schillaci, a rough-hewn chauffeur from the Bronx, dialed Mayor Giuliani's radio program on WABC-AM to complain about a red-light sting run by the police near the Bronx Zoo. When the call yielded no results, Mr. Schillaci turned to the [New York] Daily News, which then ran a photo of the red light and this front page headline: "GOTCHA!"

That morning, police officers appeared on Mr. Schillaci's doorstep. What are you going to do, Mr. Schillaci asked, arrest me? He was joking, but the officers were not.

They slapped on handcuffs and took him to court on a 13-year-old traffic warrant. A judge threw out the charge. A police spokeswoman later read Mr. Schillaci's decades-old criminal rap sheet to a reporter for the Daily News, a move of questionable legality because the state restricts how such information is released. She said, falsely, that he had been convicted of sodomy.

Then Mr. Giuliani took up the cudgel.

"Mr. Schillaci was posing as an altruistic whistle-blower," the mayor told reporters at the time. "Maybe he's dishonest enough to lie about police officers."

Mr. Schillaci suffered an emotional breakdown, was briefly hospitalized and later received a $290,000 legal settlement from the city. "It really damaged me," said Mr. Schillaci, now 60, massaging his face with thick hands. "I thought I was doing something good for once, my civic duty and all. Then he steps on me."

The thought of such a man possessing the powers of the presidency evidently unnerved Republican voters already heartily sick of seven years of Bush-Cheney lawlessness. After all, who wants to have a president who feels he can send someone to Guantanamo Bay simply to satisfy a personal or political grudge? No one, apparently.

Maybe there's hope for the GOP yet.

Obama, I'm Scared of a Guy Named Obama...

With Barack Obama winning the Iowa caucuses and giving Hillary Clinton a pretty decent run for her money in other states, the wingnuts are letting loose with all sorts of ludicrous attacks against the junior senator from Illinois. He's a secret Muslim! He's a black supremacist Christian! He's both!

They all come together in a remarkably ugly Investor's Business Daily editorial titled "Obama's Church." In just under a thousand words steeped in racism and bigotry, they mostly attack not Obama himself but the people around him.

For example, the paper accuses the Trinity United Church of Christ of encouraging "blacks to group together and separate from the larger American society by pooling their money, patronizing black-only businesses and backing black leaders." (The church's website naturally says nothing of the sort, instead saying only that members should "pledge to allocate regularly a portion of personal resources for strengthening and supporting black institutions.") And "its dashiki-wearing preacher" Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who officiated at Obama's wedding and baptized his children, is "militantly Afrocentric."

After bashing Wright around for a little while, the paper turns to Obama's background. Sneering that the candidate is "spending an inordinate amount of his campaign time on the Kenyan crisis," they never quite get around to mentioning that his father was from Kenya and he has quite a few family members who still live there.

The paper accuses Obama of backing the wrong person in Kenya's election crisis: "Obama appears to have sided with opposition leader Raila Odinga... Odinga is a Marxist who reportedly has made a pact with a hard-line Islamic group in Kenya to establish Shariah courts throughout the country." (Of course, they provide no evidence for such wild notions.) For good measure, they attack Obama's brother as "a militant Muslim who argues that the black man must 'liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture.'"

And - again - they mutter darkly about the candidate's imaginary "Muslim past," a full year after this nonsense was definitively debunked. In a masterful display of chutzpah, they then dismiss their own smears as "not the signal issue before the electorate" right after airing them.

Harking back to the anti-Catholic bigotry that was used against John Kennedy in the 1960 election campaign, the paper asks rhetorically, "Would Obama put African tribal or family interests ahead of U.S. interests?" Their answer is, of course, yes.

The whole article is so slimy one needs to take a shower after reading it. It's nothing more than a laundry list of sleazy guilt-by-association assaults peppered with mindless anti-Muslim prejudice. The editors, who apparently hope that people will see the buzzwords and start fearing Obama right off the bat, should be ashamed of themselves for printing such hateful tripe.

Yup, We're Proud of That, All Right

"I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We're the working-est state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours, we have people that are working two jobs."

Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), actually bragging that her constituents have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet

Gee, I Wonder Why

"I'm sure people view me as a warmonger and I view myself as peacemaker."

President Bush, plaintively insisting that despite all the evidence he is not actually a reckless, trigger-happy cowboy

Onward Christian Soldiers, and to Hell with Everyone Else

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than trying to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family."

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, on how he wants to turn America into a fundamentalist Christian theocracy

Big Brother Is Watching You

Want some scary reading to keep you up at night? Forget anything by Stephen King or Dean Koontz. All you have to do is open the 1/21/08 issue of The New Yorker and take a gander at Lawrence Wright's "The Spymaster." The story is a profile of Mike McConnell, the new Director of National Intelligence.

Do you use the Internet at all? Chew on this:

In order for cyberspace to be policed, Internet activity will have to be closely monitored. Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving government the authority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer, or Web search. "Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation," he said. Giorgio warned me, "We have a saying in this business: 'Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'"

That's right - it doesn't matter what you do on a computer, Uncle Sam is demanding the power to look over your shoulder permanently in the name of security. "Americans will have to trust the government not to abuse the authority it must have in order to protect our networks," Wright notes somewhat dryly, "and yet, historically, the government has not proved worthy of that trust."

To McConnell's (very small) credit, he knows that getting a permanent government tap on the Internet will not be easy. "This is going to be a goat rope on the Hill," he admits. "My prediction is that we're going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens."

Think about that for a moment. McConnell is actually looking forward to another 9/11-style attack. Once that happens, he apparently hopes the American public will be terrorized into accepting the perversion of our nation from a bastion of free expression into a repressive surveillance state. In this new Oceania, everything you say will be monitored and God help you if you say the "wrong" thing.

Do we feel safer yet?

Recycling at the White House

Who knew President Bush's speechwriters were members of the Writers Guild of America? They're all walking the picket lines with their fellow scribes - that must be why the White House is in reruns, recycling the very same rhetoric that scared us into invading Iraq. Only this time, the target is Iran.

During his great Middle East Tour of 2008, Bush has visited country after country to drum up support for attacking Iran. Frankly, even Bubble Boy must know this is a lost cause, as the Arab people think he's crusading pond scum. In fact, his only fans in the region are the oil sheiks who happily buy another gold-plated toilet whenever the price of crude noses still higher in response to Bush making threatening noises.

But noises he does make, and he's using the same lines as he did five years ago:

Iran is today the world's leading state sponsor of terror. It sends hundreds of millions of dollars to extremists around the world - while its own people face repression and economic hardship at home. It undermines Lebanese hopes for peace by arming and aiding the terrorist group Hezbollah. It subverts the hopes for peace in other parts of the region by funding terrorist groups like Hamas and the Palestine Islamic Jihad. It sends arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan and Shia militants in Iraq. It seeks to intimidate its neighbors with ballistic missiles and bellicose rhetoric. And finally, it defies the United Nations and destabilizes the region by refusing to be open and transparent about its nuclear programs and ambitions. Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. So the United States is strengthening our longstanding security commitments with our friends in the Gulf - and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late.

Sound familiar? It should; it's the same accusations Bush threw at Iraq prior to his unprovoked attack. All you have to do is change one letter and it fits perfectly.

Will Congress and the American people be scared into yet another pointless war? It remains to be seen whether the Democrats have the stones to stand up to Bush.

Bombs Away!

In the alternate universe inhabited by the Republican Party and Fox News, the incident in the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week proves that Iran is out to destroy America and should immediately be pounded into the sand with all the bombs we can drop on them.

The Fox debate in South Carolina last night was like something out of a grade-B action movie. "Fair and balanced" moderator Brit Hume introduced the correct ideological stance right off the bat when he asked whether "the American commander in the Strait of Hormuz the other day [made] the right decision by responding passively when approached aggressively by Iranian fast boats believed to be from the Revolutionary Guards."

That got all the candidates competing to see who could deliver the toughest sound bite.

• Fred Thompson: "I think one more step and they would have been introduced to those virgins that they're looking forward to seeing."
• Mike Huckabee: "Be prepared that the next things you see will be the gates of Hell, because that is exactly what you will see after that."
• Rudy Giuliani: "This incident should wake a lot of people up."
• John McCain: "Don't think that this wasn't a serious situation of the utmost seriousness."
  

And so on. Ron Paul, who is right about the Iraq War but wrong about absolutely everything else, tried to serve as the sole voice of reason. He pointed out that the American warship "could take care of those speedboats in about five seconds" and that "this incident should not be thrown out of proportion to the point where we're getting ready to attack Iran."

In response, Mitt Romney sneered that "Paul should not be reading as many of Ahmadinejad's press releases." A cheap shot, to be sure - especially considering that Paul wasn't saying anything the Pentagon hadn't already said.

You see, back in the real world, the official narrative is already falling apart.

The Navy admitted to ABC News that they can't actually prove that the Iranians radioed to the American ships that "you will explode after a few minutes." This came after various bloggers and Iranian-Americans loudly poked holes in the story, mentioning that the language was not Farsi and that the voice was too clear, with too little background noise, to be coming from a roaring, bouncing speedboat. Nor is there any sign of those threatening white boxes the Iranians supposedly dumped overboard. It's not on the released video, nor the accompanying audio.

In other words, it now looks like this was just a few idiots in speedboats proving their manhood by playing chicken with an American destroyer. Dumb by any definition, but aggressive and warlike? Doesn't sound like it. But the incident was nevertheless puffed up into a jingoistic they-can't-screw-with-us story. Doesn't matter that it's already leaking water; it's already embraced by the GOP for purely political purposes.

Sounds par for the course to me.

The Man Who Reached the Top

Like many armchair adventurers, I enjoy reading about mountain climbing, particularly climbs of Mount Everest. The tallest mountain in the world, Everest reaches more than five miles into the sky, topping out at 29,028 feet. Whether it's the blizzard-wracked disaster of Into Thin Air or the mystery of George Mallory in Ghosts of Everest, the mountain has always fascinated me.

Not enough to climb, of course. I leave that for those fitter and wealthier than myself.

But I could not resist a pang of sadness upon learning that Sir Edmund Hillary died this afternoon. Along with his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay, Hillary became the first person to ascend the summit of Everest, literally standing atop the world. When he did so half a century ago, he became a hero not only to his native New Zealand, but around the world.

In his later years, Hillary was a tireless advocate of the Sherpa people of the Himalayas, campaigning to build schools and hospitals to improve their standard of living. Controversially, he also decried the increasing commercialization of Everest, disdaining the many for-profit expeditions that promised summiting the mountain for a price. It ain't cheap - various commercial groups charge about $60,000.

On behalf of everyone who has ever looked up a steep hill and wondered what was at the top, farewell, Sir Edmund. You will be missed.

Gulf of Tonkin, 2008 Edition

With the GOP in electoral disarray and the various candidates loath to mention President Bush on the campaign trail, with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton duking it out for the Democratic nomination, the time is ripe for some good old-fashioned emotional manipulation.

Such was my reaction upon hearing of the supposed confrontation between American warships and Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz. We all know that Darth Cheney and his neocon cabal in the Bush Administration have been hot for war with Iran for years, right up there with attacking Iraq. The collapse of their "Iran is building nukes" line with the release of the National Intelligence Estimate last month simply made them change direction.

And so now we have a highly suspicious incident in a highly volatile section of the world, one that is crucial to the shipment of Middle Eastern oil. Sounds like the Gulf of Tonkin incident all over again.

For those who have forgotten, there was a loudly-decried confrontation in 1964 between an American destroyer and several North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of North Vietnam. President Lyndon Johnson seized on the incident and used it to launch the full-scale Vietnam War. Decades later, it was determined that the supposed attack never occurred at all, and the destroyer crew was shooting at nothing. But at the time, Johnson announced that "the United States is united in its determination to bring about the end of Communist subversion and aggression in the area."

We all know the result.

This latest "incident" between the US and Iran sounds awfully familiar. At a time when Tehran is seeking to defuse tensions with Washington, why in the world would they take action to raise them? And it cannot be a coincidence that the Administration, which loudly blamed Iran's Revolutionary Guard for supposedly getting involved in the Iraqi civil war (even though no real evidence was ever presented) now loudly blames the same people for this alleged confrontation. The supposed incident took place right before the key New Hampshire primary election as well as on the eve of Bush's trip to the Middle East, in which he is expected to rally regional support against Iran. What better way to do that than to "prove" Iranian aggression?

This whole thing stinks to high heaven of duplicity and manipulation. Will Congress and the American people fall for a second Tonkin-style fake?

UPDATE: CNN is reporting that Bush turned up the rhetoric in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, calling Iran "a threat to world peace" and warning of "serious consequences." It's the same saber-rattling that preceded the invasion of Iraq. I have a sinking "here we go again" feeling...

He Hadn't Mentioned 9/11 For At Least Two Minutes

"None of this worries me - September 11, there were times I was worried."

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, commenting on his sixth-place finish in the GOP Iowa caucus

The (New) Hundred Years' War

"Make it a hundred."

Senator John McCain (R-AZ), suggesting that American troops stay in Iraq for another century, regardless of how the American or Iraqi people may feel about it

All Terror, All the Time

With the Iowa caucuses finally taking place this evening after about 42 years of pre-caucus debates, polls and handicapping, there's time for one last stab at fear-mongering by (who else?) Rudy "9/11, L'est Moi" Giuliani.

Will his ad scare the socks off enough Iowans to revive his dead-in-the-water campaign? We'll find out tonight.