What's most upsetting is that [Luskin] is employing a frivolous lawsuit in order to punish someone for exercising their First Amendment rights and that he is piggybacking an abusive subpoena to expose Atrios' identity. So he's not only engaged in frivolous litigation (aren't conservatives against frivolous lawsuits?), but also an abuse of the discovery process (aren't conservatives opposed to the dirty tricks of trial lawyers?). I guess Luskin is only opposed to frivolous lawsuits by other people, and dirty tricks by lawyers who are not representing him.

Paul Krugman writes in his latest column that in the Bush administration politics, including pandering to the Religious Right, takes precedence over the war on terror:

Why is aiding a brutal dictator O.K., while trying to understand why others don't trust us — and doing something to create that trust — isn't? Why won't the administration mollify Muslims by firing Lt. Gen. William Boykin, whose anti-Islamic remarks have created vast ill will, from his counterterrorism position? Why won't it give moderate Muslims a better argument against the radicals by opposing Ariel Sharon's settlement policy, when a majority of Israelis think that some settlements should be abandoned, and even Israeli military officers have become bitterly critical of Mr. Sharon?

The answer is that in these cases politics takes priority over the war on terror. Moderate Muslims would have more faith in America's good intentions if there were at least the appearance of a distinction between the U.S. and the Sharon government — but the administration seeks votes from those who think that supporting Israel means supporting whatever Mr. Sharon does. It's sheer folly to keep General Boykin in his present position, but as Howard Fineman writes in a Newsweek Web-exclusive column, the administration doesn't want "to make a martyr of a man who depicts himself as a Christian Soldier, marching off to war."

Muslims are completely wrong to think that the U.S. is engaged in a war against Islam. But that misperception flourishes in part because the domestic political strategy of the Bush administration — no longer able to claim the Iraq war was a triumph, and with little but red ink to show for its economic plans — looks more and more like a crusade. "Election Boils Down to a Culture War" was the title of Mr. Fineman's column. But the analysis was all about abortion and euthanasia, and now we hear that opposition to gay marriage will be a major campaign theme. This isn't a culture war — it's a religious war.

The whole column is here. (Yay! Finally figured out how to do that HTML thing!)

Illinois voters have soured so dramatically on President Bush, his handling of the economy and his Iraq policy that half say they don't want to see him re-elected next year while fewer than four in 10 say they do, a new Tribune/WGN-TV poll shows.

Bush's nose dive in popularity has been so precipitous that, in just four months, his approval rating among Illinois voters has dropped from 57 percent to 46 percent, the poll found. Over the same time, the share of voters who say they disapprove of the job he's doing as president has climbed from 34 percent to 44 percent.

 

Though Bush lost Illinois by a wide margin in the 2000 election, voters in the state warmed up to him considerably after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But the survey shows that the patriotic rally-round-the-president effect has rapidly melted away.

Especially troubling for Bush's standing in Illinois are the unfavorable attitudes toward him felt by voters who label themselves as political independents. Any Republican candidate must be able to attract the support of independents statewide in order to have a competitive chance to overcome the overwhelming number of Democratic votes coming out of Chicago.

. . .

 

Even in such traditional Republican enclaves as the collar counties, the latest survey showed only a bare 51 percent of voters there support a second term for Bush while one-third turn thumbs down. Among independents statewide, 44 percent reject a second Bush term while 31 percent support the president's re-election.

St. Petersburg Times columnist Robyn E. Blumner discusses the "improvements" Bush and Ashcroft want to make to the already-unconstitutional "USA PATRIOT" (for those not in the know, that stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism") Act:

Bush wants three additional powers from Congress. First, he wants to give the Justice Department the authority to confiscate records and compel testimony without review by a court or grand jury. ...Second, Bush wants to chip away at the right to bail. Current law allows a judge to deny bond for anyone shown to be dangerous or a flight risk. And, for anyone accused of international terrorism, there is a presumption against granting bond.

And third, Bush wants to expand the reach of the federal death penalty by making it applicable to "domestic terrorism."...Bush also wants the death penalty for those convicted of providing "material support for terrorism," a law that can be violated even when people think they are giving money to a charity and don't know the group is a designated terrorist organization.

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/10/26/Columns/No_pause_in_Patriot_A.shtml

Three citrus contractors were sentenced to prison terms Wednesday for enslaving undocumented farm workers, threatening them with violence and holding them hostage over alleged debts.

The three men were convicted in June of involuntary servitude, harboring undocumented workers, interfering with interstate commerce by extortion and using a firearm.

Brothers Ramiro and Juan Ramos employed more than 700 farm laborers, many of them undocumented immigrants from Mexico.

They each were sentenced to 12 years and three months in prison and must forfeit real estate and personal property worth $3 million. Their cousin, Jose Ramos, was sentenced to 10 years, three months in prison.
Defense attorney Joaquin Perez said the Ramoses were scapegoats for a larger industry-wide problem.
. . .

[Coalition for Immokalee Workers staff] member Julia Perkins said it was the fifth case that resulted in convictions on similar slavery charges in as many years. She accused the [Florida] state agriculture industry of looking the other way as contractors employ illegal aliens who have few rights. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/11/21/national/main530239.shtml

 

In a sweeping crackdown on undocumented workers, federal agents arrested more than 300 people at Wal-Mart stores in 21 states Thursday and raided the retail giant's world headquarters in Arkansas.

. . .

 

The cleaning crews did not receive health insurance and were paid below the minimum wage, sometimes as little as $2 a day, a federal official said. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2003-10-23-walmart-arrests_x.htm

Mr. Bush's handlers have often managed to have small achievements hailed as triumphs by persuading people to set the bar very low. Now his officials are trying to convince the public that if, after several years of dismal performance, they can achieve one year of job creation at a rate below the average rate Bill Clinton achieved over eight years, this will constitute a great economic victory.

Go read the rest at http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/24/opinion/24KRUG.html

Perhaps we should simplify the Bush Doctrine so everybody understands it. It is our policy to attack and kill everybody who doesn’t like us, because it stands to reason that if they don’t like us they must have an ambition to threaten us, and there’s the ball game right there.

http://gilroydispatch.com/news/newsview.asp?c=79053

The week-old embryos used for stem-cell research are microscopic clumps of cells, unthinking and unknowing, with fewer physical human qualities than a mosquito. Fetal-tissue research has used brain cells from aborted fetuses, but this is not that. Week-old, lab-created embryos have no brain cells.

Furthermore, not a single embryo dies because of stem-cell research, which simply uses a tiny fraction of the embryos that live and die as a routine part of procedures at fertility clinics. And actual stem-cell therapy for real patients, if it is allowed to develop, will not even need these surplus embryos. Once a usable line is developed from an embryo, the cells for treatment can be developed in a laboratory.

None of this matters if you believe that a microscopic embryo is a human being with the same human rights as you and me. George W. Bush claims to believe that, and you have to believe something like that to justify your opposition to stem-cell research. But Bush cannot possibly believe that embryos are full human beings, or he would surely oppose modern fertility procedures that create and destroy many embryos for each baby they bring into the world. Bush does not oppose modern fertility treatments. He even praised them in his anti-stem-cell speech.

It's not a complicated point. If stem-cell research is morally questionable, the procedures used in fertility clinics are worse. You cannot logically outlaw the one and praise the other. And surely logical coherence is a measure of moral sincerity.

If he's got both his facts and his logic wrong—and he has—Bush's alleged moral anguish on this subject is unimpressive. In fact, it is insulting to the people (including me) whose lives could be saved or redeemed by the medical breakthroughs Bush's stem-cell policy is preventing.

The whole thing is well worth reading:  http://slate.msn.com/id/2090244/

Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets.

 

To this problem, the Bush administration has found a simple solution: It has ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55816-2003Oct20.html

  I do not hate George W. Bush merely for the sake of hatred, or because he is a Republican.  I hate him because he is a cancer that is rotting out the guts of this country.  I hate him because he would not know the truth if it crawled up his leg and grabbed him by the nose.

Either Rush Limbaugh’s former housekeeper has been doping my morning coffee or we are living in Bizarro World. If you don’t recall the old DC comics, Bizarro World was created accidentally by the mad scientist Lex Luthor in a futile quest to clone Superman for evil purposes. Bizarro Superman turned out to have most of the Man of Steel’s powers, but none of his intelligence. Greenish in hue and speaking pidgin English like Tarzan or George W. Bush, he showed up at the Daily Planet and began stalking Lois Lane. Needless to say, the real Superman defeated his rival in aerial combat, although Bizarro World adventures became a continuing theme, a distorted mirror image of the Caped Crusader’s preferred reality of "Truth, Justice and the American Way." So has Lex Luthor cloned the GOP? The State Department’s battling the Pentagon over Iraq, the CIA’s at war with the White House over who leaked a covert operative’s identity, Rush Limbaugh’s a junkie, a steroid-enhanced masher’s governor of California, a threestar general’s making speeches claiming that God appointed George W. Bush to fight a holy war against Satan’s Islamic allies, and what’s the big problem worrying conservative pundits? Why, a scourge of irrational "Bush haters."

Michael Moore is asking a lot of questions about the Bush family's relationship with the Saudis, including the bin Laden family, in his new book "Dude, Where's My Country?" Here's a few:

Mr. Bush, in case you don't understand just how bizarre the media's silence is regarding your family's connections with bin Laden, let me draw an analogy to how the press or Congress might have handled something like this if the same shoe had been on the Clinton foot. If after the terrorist attack on the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, it was revealed that President Bill Clinton and his family had financial dealings with Timothy McVeigh's family, what do you think your Republican Party and the media would have done with that one? Do you think at least a couple of questions might have been asked, like "What is that all about?" Be honest, you know the answer. They would have skinned Clinton alive and thrown what was left of his carcass in Gitmo.

Or, to use the Clinton analogy again, imagine, in the hours after the Oklahoma City bombing, Bill Clinton suddenly started worrying about the "safety" of the McVeigh family up in Buffalo -- and then arranged a free trip for them out of the country. What would you and the Republicans have said about that? Suddenly, a stain on a blue dress probably wouldn't have been the top priority for a witch hunt, would it?

Mr. Bush, the bin Ladens are not the only Saudis with whom you and your family have a close personal relationship. The entire royal family seems to be indebted to you -- or is it the other way around?

You can read the entire excerpt at http://www.rollingstone.com/features/featuregen.asp?pid=1992.

An ABC News-Washington Post poll released today

found that more than half of Americans, 54 percent, are dissatisfied with the overall quality of health care in the United States while 44 percent are satisfied. That dissatisfaction is 10 percentage points higher than in 2000 and higher than it has been in the past decade when compared with earlier surveys. . . . By almost a 2-1 margin in this poll, 62 percent to 32 percent, Americans said they preferred a universal system that would provide coverage to everyone under a government program, as opposed to the current employer-based system.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-health-care-opinion,0,4932914.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

Someone threw a homemade grenade at the Americans, wounding 13 servicemen. According to the Oct. 8 Daily Threat Assessment—the Coalition’s internal casualty report, which was shown to NEWSWEEK—eight soldiers were wounded seriously enough to be evacuated to military hospitals. Yet at a press conference the next day, there was no mention of the attack. Pushed by reporters, U.S. officials would only say the incident was under investigation. It was as if the ambush, and the casualties, had never happened.

In Baghdad, official control over the news is getting tighter. Journalists used to walk freely into the city’s hospitals and the morgue to keep count of the day’s dead and wounded. Now the hospitals have been declared off-limits and morgue officials turn away reporters who aren’t accompanied by a Coalition escort. Iraqi police refer reporters’ questions to American forces; the Americans refer them back to the Iraqis.

Reporters and government officials have always squabbled over access; but the news coverage of the messy, ongoing conflict in Iraq has worsened the already tense relationship between the press and the administration. American officials accuse reporters of indulging in a morbid obsession with death and destruction, and ignoring how Iraq has improved since Saddam Hussein was toppled. Reporters grumble that the secretive White House and Pentagon hold back just how grim and chaotic the situation really is.

At a time when President Bush ought to be doing everything he can to show that he is an engaged commander in chief, he is acting as though there is nothing he can or should do to discover and punish the officials who leaked to columnist Robert Novak the identity of the CIA's Valerie Plame Wilson. Bush's passivity in response to a political dirty trick that harms US intelligence operations and demoralizes intelligence officers is an abdication of responsibility.

 

Bush has left the work of locating the leakers to the Justice Department and the FBI, while he plays the role of a detached observer. This stance makes him look like a weak leader presiding over a band of unruly subordinates who feud with each other, betraying patriotic Americans like Ms. Wilson, with no fear of being brought to hand by the president.

 

If he wished to do so, Bush could summon the likely suspects from the vice president's office, the Pentagon, and the National Security Council to the Oval Office and tell them that, as their president, he is ordering the officials who gave away Valerie Plame's cover to confess their role and resign.

 

What the leakers did was not a merely technical violation of the law. By revealing her identity, the dirty tricksters in the administration sacrificed all the informants and sources who had ever, wittingly or unwittingly, given Wilson intelligence information. Perhaps even more destructive was the leakers' apparent attempt to show the CIA there is a price to pay for refusing to tailor the agency's analyses to the wishes of policy makers.

October 1 The justice department announces it has launched an inquiry into the White House leak identifying a CIA undercover agent

October 2 The Iraq survey group, under weapons expert David Kay admits that six months after Baghdad's fall no weapons of mass destruction have been found

October 4 The foundation run by the president's father announces it will bestow the George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service to Senator Edward Kennedy, arguably the president's sternest critic, who denounced the Iraq war as "a fraud"

October 6 The White House confirms that management of the Iraq occupation will be centralised in a new coordinating group run by the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice

October 7 The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, says he was not told about the restructuring and insists there have been no real changes

October 15 Senate votes against president and insists that half Iraq's $20bn reconstruction budget should be in the form of loans

Don't miss the rest:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1065804,00.html And there's almost two weeks left in October!

"What we have here is a form of looting." So says George Akerlof, a Nobel laureate in economics, of the Bush administration's budget policies -- and he's right. With startling speed, we've blown right through the usual concerns about budget deficits -- about their effects on interest rates and economic growth -- and into a range where the very solvency of the federal government is at stake. Almost every expert not on the administration's payroll now sees budget deficits equal to about a quarter of government spending for the next decade, and getting worse after that.

What has utterly shocked me today is Al Franken's latest book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right."

I read the book in one sitting. It is an amazing book, and -- if you're a decent, honest, hard-working, patriotic, true-blue conservative who listens to Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and watches Fox News -- an earth-shattering book

. . . .

The leaders we conservatives have trusted have taken advantage of our trust to line the pockets of the wealthy and powerful, and it's time we rose up and drove out these greedy liars. They've hijacked and distorted our belief system for their own gain, and in doing so are destroying our credibility.

And if we decent, honest, hard-working, patriotic, true-blue conservatives of this country neglect the duty we have to our children and grandchildren, we will never be able to work with those decent, honest, hard-working, patriotic, true-blue liberal Americans that these lying creeps have taught us to despise. We will never be safe to debate them or, when warranted, to listen to them and maybe even agree with them. We will never be safe to work out our differences or to work together. And we will never be able to build on the all-American sense of unity that burst forth following 9/11, only to disappear shortly thereafter in a cloud of lying, greedy partisan politics.

I'm still a decent, honest, hard-working, patriotic, true-blue conservative. But Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and the rest of you lying liars -- I'm through with you!

http://www.oregonlive.com/commentary/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1066391961270050.xml Amen to that, Ms. Miller! I hope we're seeing the start of a trend here.

Bush insists that America is following a ‘clear strategy’ in Iraq, but it’s about as clear as a kaleidoscope, as explanations and rationalizations rotate in an endless jumble.

And yet despite the best efforts of America’s would-be Ministry of Truthsters to bedazzle and bamboozle the American people, the plain light of reality seems to be shining through. According to a Gallup Poll released yesterday, a majority of Americans, for the first time, disapprove of the way Bush is handling Iraq.

Of course, the administration won't give up without a struggle - including its struggle against reality, which has an awkward way of bleeding into their happy talk. In the meantime, someone needs to write a sequel to 1984. It would be called 2003.

Concerned about the appearance of disarray and feuding within his administration as well as growing resistance to his policies in Iraq, President Bush - living up to his recent declaration that he is in charge - told his top officials to "stop the leaks" to the media, or else.

News of Bush’s order leaked almost immediately.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/7023679.htm