This blog is dedicated to removing George W. Bush, the worst president in history, from office. I also
sometimes discuss other political and social issues. Please feel free to leave comments. Click on "Comment" under
any post to do so. In addition to the blog, check out my comprehensive lists of anti-Bush links and resources and book recommendations.
WASHINGTON - Charging the federal government is meddling in education policies that have long
been the province of states, lawmakers representing the 50 legislatures declared Wednesday that President Bush's "No Child
Left Behind" law sets reading and math standards that are impossible to meet, treads on states' constitutional rights, will
bankrupt state coffers and simply doesn't work.
With its list of 43 recommended changes that Congress needs to make to
the law, the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures delivered one of the most politically damaging indictments
of Bush's signature education reform measure since Congress approved it in 2001. [link via Eccentricity, via The Sideshow]
Here's a weird article by Robin Givhan in the Washington Post:
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived at the Wiesbaden Army Airfield on Wednesday dressed all in black. She was
wearing a black skirt that hit just above the knee, and it was topped with a black coat that fell to mid-calf. The coat, with
its seven gold buttons running down the front and its band collar, called to mind a Marine's dress uniform or the "save humanity"
ensemble worn by Keanu Reeves in "The Matrix."
As Rice walked out to greet the troops, the coat blew open in a rather swashbuckling way to reveal the top of a pair
of knee-high boots. The boots had a high, slender heel that is not particularly practical. But it is a popular silhouette
because it tends to elongate and flatter the leg. In short, the boots are sexy.
. . . .
Rice's coat and boots speak of sex and power -- such a volatile combination, and one that in political circles rarely leads
to anything but scandal. When looking at the image of Rice in Wiesbaden, the mind searches for ways to put it all into context.
It turns to fiction, to caricature. To shadowy daydreams. Dominatrix!
Does this have anything to do with Rice's relationship with the man she calls "my husband"? Developing . . . .
If John Ashcroft was right, then I was staring into the malevolent, duplicitous eyes of pure evil, the eyes of a man with
the mass murder of Americans on his mind. But all I could really see was a polite, unassuming, neatly dressed guy who looked
like a suburban Little League coach.
If Mr. Ashcroft was right, then Maher Arar should have been in a U.S. prison, not talking to me in an office in downtown
Ottawa. But there he was, a 34-year-old man who now wears a perpetually sad expression, talking about his recent experiences
- a real-life story with the hideous aura of a hallucination. Mr. Arar's 3-year-old son, Houd, loudly crunched potato chips
while his father was being interviewed.
"I still have nightmares about being in Syria, being beaten, being in jail," said Mr. Arar. "They feel very real. When
I wake up, I feel very relieved to find myself in my room."
In the fall of 2002 Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, suddenly found himself caught up in the cruel mockery of justice that
the Bush administration has substituted for the rule of law in the post-Sept. 11 world. While attempting to change planes
at Kennedy Airport on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities, interrogated
and thrown into jail. He was not charged with anything, and he never would be charged with anything, but his life would be
ruined.
Mr. Arar was surreptitiously flown out of the United States to Jordan and then driven to Syria, where he was kept like
a nocturnal animal in an unlit, underground, rat-infested cell that was the size of a grave. From time to time he was tortured.
He wept. He begged not to be beaten anymore. He signed whatever confessions he was told to sign. He prayed.
. . . .
The Justice Department has alleged, without disclosing any evidence whatsoever, that Mr. Arar is a member of, or somehow
linked to, Al Qaeda. If that's so, how can the administration possibly allow him to roam free? The Syrians, who tortured him,
have concluded that Mr. Arar is not linked in any way to terrorism.
. . . .
[N]othing can excuse the behavior of the United States in this episode. Mr. Arar was deliberately dispatched by U.S. officials
to Syria, a country that - as they knew - practices torture. And if Canadian officials hadn't intervened, he most likely would
not have been heard from again.
Mr. Arar is the most visible victim of the reprehensible U.S. policy known as extraordinary rendition, in which individuals
are abducted by American authorities and transferred, without any legal rights whatever, to a regime skilled in the art of
torture. The fact that some of the people swallowed up by this policy may in fact have been hard-core terrorists does not
make it any less repugnant.
. . . .
A lawsuit on Mr. Arar's behalf has been filed against the United States by the Center for Constitutional Rights in New
York. Barbara Olshansky, a lawyer with the center, noted yesterday that the government is arguing that none of Mr. Arar's
claims can even be adjudicated because they "would involve the revelation of state secrets."
This is a government that feels it is answerable to no one.
The distinguished legal scholar and human rights advocate Scott Horton has written a study, with the above title, of the Nazi regime's treatment of international humanitarian law such
as the Geneva Conventions. He notes that there are frightening parallels to what the Bush administration is doing
today:
The present study take us back to a point still within the memory of some, to a nation renowned for its legal scholarship;
a nation whose universities were considered at the forefront of the world and which drew scholars from around the world,
including the United States. It was also a nation of great religious, philosophical and artistic traditions.
Slowly, a radical rightist political party came to power in this nation. This party first entered the government with
a compromised and uncertain mandate. However, within a year a mysterious terrorist attack occurred on a building which was
the very landmark of the nation's greatest city. This provided a pretext for the rightists to disembowel the nation's liberal
democratic institutions and construct a new government, first authoritarian, then totalitarian. The indispensable tool in
this process was fear mongering--on a hitherto unknown scale. Government leaders spoke continuously of a "terrorist threat"
to the nation. The threat was ideological, even fanatical in nature and came from beyond the nation's borders. Still, suspicions
were raised against certain elements of society linked to this threat. Building on mass anxiety that they had induced,
the rightists solidified their control over most aspects of society, including the government, the legislature and the judiciary.
They advanced the view that in wartime, there was one supreme executive, one supreme legislator, one supreme judge. All resources
of the state were subordinated to this leader with the goal of empowering him to vanquish the nation's mortal foes.
A system of detention facilities was constructed to house those viewed as threats to the nation. Persons held in
these centers were beyond the reach of the law and of courts. Rumors of torture and abuse swirled around these centers, but
the rumors were aggressively denied by the government.
The nation began aggressively to question the treatment of its nationals living within the borders of other states, claiming
a role as guarantor of their human rights. It did this in reliance on the work of politically loyal legal scholars who twisted
the plain meaning of international agreements to suit the nation's political ends. These scholars were experts in asymmetrical
application of the law; they ridiculed traditional scholarship and interpretation as the product of a cosmopolitan élite divorced from the needs and interests of the nation. Domestically, the nation's positions were justified
by an increasingly messianic leader through a doctrine of nationalistic exceptionalism. In short order, however, this diplomacy
receded, and the nation began wars against several of its neighbors.
Claiming dire threat to the nation and its people, the nation took preëmptive action by invading and occupying a series
of neighbors. In this manner, the government was forced to consider the requirements of the law of armed conflict, particularly
as reflected in the Hague Convention of 1907 and the Geneva Conventions of 1929, to its military activities and to fix rules
for the treatment of detainees. Curiously, one institution in the nation proved a remarkable bastion of resistance to the
rightist government, and that was the military, famed for its traditional conservative values.
The rightist political leaders viewed international humanitarian law with ridicule and contempt. They argued that it
was ill-suited to warfare targeting an unconventional adversary: an international ideological movement which itself
disregarded the laws of war and which used terrorism as a principal tactic. Consequently, they denied application of the Geneva
Conventions to combatants they labeled "terrorists." This viewpoint was sharply resisted by military lawyers, who argued
that military morale and discipline depended on clear application of the rules of armed conflict. Moreover, the military felt
that enlightened self interest dictated such a stance, since a reputation for following those rules would protect the nation's
soldiers generally, and in future generations, even if there was no reason to expect reciprocity from the "terrorists."
The events described above occurred in Germany in 1933-44. They bear many unsettling similarities with events of
more recent memory, though, to be clear, there are also many stark differences. But in the debate over application of international
humanitarian law the similarities dominate. Indeed, virtually all the arguments played out in the recent internal debate over
detainee abuse were also raised and discussed in Germany in the opening phase of the Second World War. The position of military
traditionalists, passionately supporting a faithful application of the law, was consistent; as were the dismissive comments
of government leaders concerned about hard-nosed practicalities of warfare against a difficult opponent.
I typed out the above excerpt from the PDF of the 11-page article that Mr. Horton sent me. Unfortunately, it
doesn't seem to be published on the Internet, and I don't know how to attach a PDF to this blog post. Anyone who wants the
PDF can e-mail me and I'll send it to you.
The above is the title of a recent column by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation:
One of the most powerful executives in the cable news business, CNN's Eason Jordan, was brought down after he spoke out
of school during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in January. In a rare moment of candor, Jordan reportedly
said that the US military had targeted a dozen journalists who had been killed in Iraq. The comments quickly ignited a firestorm
on the Internet, fueled by right-wing bloggers, that led to Jordan's recanting, apologizing and ultimately resigning after
twenty-three years at the network, "in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy."
But the real controversy here should not be over Jordan's comments. The controversy ought to be over the unconscionable
silence in the United States about the military's repeated killing of journalists in Iraq.
Consider the events of April 8, 2003. Early that morning, Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Ayyoub was reporting from the
network's Baghdad bureau. He was providing an eyewitness account of a fierce battle between US and Iraqi forces along the
banks of the Tigris. As he stood on the roof of the building, a US warplane swooped in and fired a rocket at Al Jazeera's
office. Ayyoub was killed instantly. US Central Command released a statement claiming, "Coalition forces came under significant
enemy fire from the building where the Al-Jazeera journalists were working." No evidence was ever produced to bolster this
claim. Al Jazeera, which gave the US military its coordinates weeks before the invasion began, says it received assurances
a day before Ayyoub's death that the network would not be attacked.
At noon on April 8, a US Abrams tank fired at the Palestine Hotel, home and office to more than 100 unembedded international
journalists operating in Baghdad at the time. The shell smashed into the fifteenth-floor Reuters office, killing two cameramen,
Reuters's Taras Protsyuk and José Couso of Spain's Telecinco. The United States again
claimed that its forces had come under enemy fire and were acting in self-defense. This claim was contradicted by scores of
journalists who were in the hotel and by a French TV crew that filmed the attack. In its report on the incident, the Committee
to Protect Journalists asserted that "Pentagon officials, as well as commanders on the ground in Baghdad, knew that the Palestine
Hotel was full of international journalists."
In a chilling statement at the end of that day in Iraq, then-Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke spelled out the Pentagon's
policy on journalists not embedded with US troops. She warned them that Baghdad "is not a safe place. You should not be there."
Eason Jordan's comment was hardly a radical declaration. He was expressing a common view among news organizations around
the world. . . .
The US military has yet to discipline a single soldier for the killing of a journalist in Iraq. . . .
. . . .
[There are] credible accounts of journalists being tortured by the US military in Iraq, such as Salah Hassan and Suheib
Badr Darwish of Al Jazeera [see Christian Parenti, "Al Jazeera Goes to Jail," March 29, 2004] and three Reuters staffers who say they were brutalized by US forces for seventy-two hours after they filmed
a crashed US helicopter near Falluja in January 2004. According to news reports, the journalists were blindfolded, forced
to stand for hours with their arms raised and threatened with sexual abuse. A family member of one journalist said US interrogators
stripped him naked and forced a shoe into his mouth.
In many of these cases, there is a common thread: The journalists, mostly Arabs, were reporting on places or incidents
that the military may not have wanted the world to see--military vehicles in flames, helicopters shot down, fierce resistance
against the "liberation" forces, civilian deaths.
The liberal blogosphere has a love-hate relationship with Maureen Dowd. Writing on perhaps of the choicest
piece of journalist real estate in the world -- the op-ed page of the New York Times -- she spends way too many columns
writing silly fluff about things like Wesley Clark's apparel choices and her own present lack of a boyfriend. But when
she chooses to do so, no one can skewer Dubya better. Today she blasts him for preaching to Putin about democracy yet having no interest in it at home. Go read.
Writing at Media Matters, Duncan "Atrios" Black makes two points that have been sadly neglected by most of the media: (1) eliminating the income cap (which currently exempts all
income over $90,000 annually from taxation) would completely eliminate the Social Security "crisis" for the foreseeable
future and (2) privatizing Social Security would not solve its financial problem, but rather would make it much
worse:
The Social Security trustees project that removing the income cap entirely would enable the the program
to pay all benefits currently promised for 37 more years -- from 2042, as projected under current law, to 2079. That's because if the cap were eliminated, the surpluses accumulated prior to 2024 would
be substantially larger than projected under current law, and subsequent annual deficits would be smaller. These accumulated
surpluses, combined with the increased revenue stream from payroll taxes, would be sufficient to pay benefits much further
into the future. [Editor's note: Don't think that the sky will fall in 2080. Josh Marshall points out that the only significance of the 2079 date is that the Social Security Administration stops there because it doesn't
project more than 75 years out.]
Finally, since proponents of privatization often focus on the 2018 date as a crucial turning point toward insolvency and
crisis, NPR's Naylor should also have noted that Social Security's chief actuary recently informed the White House that under
President Bush's proposal to let workers divert a portion of payroll taxes into private accounts, "[a]nnual cash-flow deficits
(negative annual balances) appear in 2012, or six years earlier than under current law," as The Wall Street Journalreported [subscription required] on February 8.
Ann Coulter recently wrote one of her bizarre screeds. In this one, she declares that liberal bloggers' outrage over "journalist"/Republican hack/prostitute
James Guckert/"Jeff Gannon" is ridiculous. Indeed, Ann informs us that:
Liberals' hateful, frothing-at-the-mouth campaign against Gannon consists solely of their claim that he is gay.
Yes, liberals are frothing at the mouth about Gannon because he is gay, much the same way we opposed Condi
Rice's confirmation because she's African-American, and opposed Alberto Gonzales' confirmation because he's Hispanic. Right.
Diarist Brian Nowhere at Daily Kos has a hilarious piece in which he explains what Ann would say if it was proven
that Dubya had eaten a baby.
All the winners are extremely deserving, as are many, many who didn't make it (links to all the nominees are in
the left column, naturally). Congratulations to all the winners and nominees, and a huge thank you to the folks at Wampum, who spend a vast amount of time (and money for extra bandwidth) on the awards every year.
USANext took down its sleazy anti-AARP ad. Maybe someone explained the concept of "libel" to the folks at USANext. Steve Soto has some
excellent ideas for how AARP and the Democratic leadership (Dean, Reid, Pelosi) can punish USANext and its supporters in the White House
and Congress. I really hope these are implemented. Howard Dean is no shrinking violet, and Harry Reid has proven to be a very
pleasant surprise in that regard, too. They should punish these bastards for their slime campaign.
Who knew? But apparently that's the case in Michigan, where an artist got sentenced to 30 days in jail for painting a mural featuring a bare-breasted Eve on a wall outside his studio:
Stross, whose mural is a take on Michelangelo's "Creation of Man", depicts Eve with bare breasts and has the word "love"
is written on it. City officials say they gave the 43-year-old artist permission to paint on the wall but explicitly told
him he couldn't use letters or paint genitalia.
. . . .
In sentencing Stross on Thursday, Judge Marco Santia also put Stross on probation and ordered him to pay a fine and cover
up the breasts and the word "love." [link via Talk Left, via The Sideshow]
No doubt John Ashcroft would approve. The article says Stross' attorney plans to argue on appeal that breasts are not genitalia. Sounds like a pretty
powerful argument to me. (I recall my mother in my youth warning me that feeling up a girl would lead to pregnancy, but
I don't think she was suggesting that that act was sufficient in and of itself.)
In other stupid legal-sexual news, the Supreme Court has declined to review a 2-1 decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upholding an Alabama statute making
it a crime to sell vibrators and other sex toys. Texas has a similar law, as does Massachusetts (!)
UPDATE: Billmon impishly suggests that the Supremes aren't concerned about the Alabama law because it exempts sales of sexual devices "for a bona fide medical,
scientific, educational, legislative, judicial or law enforcement purpose." (Emphasis added.) I actually read
recently about a judge who was removed from office after it was discovered that he had rigged up some sort of device
to sexually stimulate himself while he was on the bench. I tried to find the story but, sadly, a Google search failed
to, er, bring it up.
FURTHER UPDATE: Dasher in comments found the story I alluded to above:
Jurors and others in Judge Donald Thompson's courtroom kept hearing a strange whooshing noise, like a bicycle pump or maybe
a blood pressure cuff. During one trial, Thompson seemed so distracted that some jurors thought he was playing a hand-held
video game or tying fly-fishing lures behind the bench.
The explanation, investigators say, is even stranger than some imagined: The judge had a habit of masturbating with a penis
pump under his robe during trials.
. . . .
The trials during which he allegedly used the pump included murder cases as well as a libel suit in which a jury ordered
the company that publishes The Oklahoman, a Web site and a TV station to pay $3.7 million.
The AP story has lots more sordid details for those who are interested. By the way, the judge was in Oklahoma, not one of those
depraved Blue States.
The New York Times reportsthat USANext has hired the same consultants who brought you the Swift Boat ads. Nothing is too sleazy or baseless
for these folks. The ad, on the American Spectator website, says "CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS," but when you
click on it you're taken to the front page of USANext's website, which offers no support for the assertions that AARP
is anti-military and pro-gay marriage. Unbelievable.
UPDATE: USANext's ad has inspired a lot of imitators. Billmon exposes "The REAL CUB SCOUT Agenda" and "The REAL WHITE HOUSE Agenda" and links (in the Irving Berlin song at the bottom of
his piece) to others who have been similarly inspired.
A clever reader of Talking Points Memo has discovered (seriously) USANext's next two anti-AARP ads (here and here). I had figured that USANext, having already claimed that AARP was anti-military and pro-gay marriage, would next
try to claim that AARP is trying to take away our Bibles and suck our babies out of our wombs. That wasn't far off the
mark, it seems. The last link is to a poll asking "Which organization is the MOST liberal: AARP, ACLU, NAACP,
NARAL?"
It's fine to disagree with his politics, but did they go too far, I think a lot of people are asking, in dragging in some
of this personal stuff?
"This personal stuff" in question is JimJeff's advertising of his sexual services (not work-friendly), complete with his hourly ($200) and weekend ($1200) rates, dozens of naked pictures (erect and
flaccid), penis size ("8+ cut!"), sexual preferences ("AGGRESIVE [sic], VERBAL, DOMINANT TOP"), and reviews by satisfied customers.
Atrios contrasts Howie's tut-tutting over bloggers' invasion of JimJeff's "personal stuff" with how Howie
and other members of the media salivated over revelations about Clinton adviser Dick Morris' relationship with a prostitute:
Missing, of course, is the handwringing about private lives, concern about whether "tabloids are going too far,"
etc... despite the fact that someone cavorting with a hooker has a somewhat understandable naive expectation of privacy, while
someone soliciting for johns on the internet, complete with pictures, doesn't...
Digby likewise reminds us of Ken Starr's taxpayer-funded detailed description of Bill and Monica's personal activities, which they, unlike GuckertGannon, did not splash across the Internet. But hey, you've gotta draw the line somewhere. And
most of the "liberal media" draws it at revealing anything that would embarrass a Republican president.
By the way, TBogg's commentary on JimJeff's threat to sue the bloggers who have exposed him (Sue them for what? Truth is an absolute defense to
a defamation lawsuit.) is not to be missed, unless you're easily grossed out. It concludes with what Digby describes as "the most disturbing metaphor I think I've ever read."
AMERICAblog continues to be the source for all things Gannon. It has all kinds of interesting stuff, including a
screenshot in which Bobby Eberle of GOPUSA last December extended his personal thanks to (among others) Karl Rove, Grover
Norquist, G. Gordon Liddy for their "assistance, guidance and friendship," and a link to this cartoon by Dan Wasserman of the Boston Globe. AMERICAblog also links to Bill Maher's coverage of Gannon. The
QuickTime video, which is hilarious, is at both Crooks and Liars and one good move. Among those on Maher's show are Lesley Stahl and Joe Biden, both of whom agree that the Gannon story is huge. One good
move also links to Toolz of the New School, which has the video of Anderson Cooper interviewing Gannon/Guckert on CNN. G/G comes across as a very shifty character, and says lots of
unintentionally funny things, starting with his claim that he went by "Jeff Gannon" because "Jim Guckert" was so difficult
to pronounce and remember. This comment on the site by Kristen, responding to G/G's whining about all the attention
being paid to his "personal life," cracked me up:
His personal and private life?! I've viewed Gannon's escort sites today and have seen him in more buck naked positions
than I've seen my own husband in during several years of marriage! It could hardly be called private.
Toolz also has a photo of the historic Guckert/Gannon White House press pass (scroll down).
Padraig pearse at Daily Kos, a self-described "seasoned gay man of a certain age," has an interesting diary entry speculating about whether JimJeff GuckertGannon had a gay sponsor or sponsors in the Republican party who facilitated
his meteoric rise as a "conservative journalist." I never understood why gays would embrace a party that publicly loathes
them (sort of like "Jews for Hitler"), but obviously there are such people.
Funny you should ask. The C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College (MD) recently commissioned a poll (PDF; scroll down to page 17 of 20, which is designated "PAGE 16" in the upper right-hand corner), in which Americans
were asked whether they would vote for George Washington or George W. Bush for president. Overall, Washington won
easily, 55% to 36%. Among Republicans, however, Bush won 62% to 28%. Democrats preferred Washington
85% to 10%, and independents preferred Washington 64% to 27%. (via David Corn, thanks to Scott H.)
Four years ago, the Fed chairman lent crucial political support to the Bush tax cuts. He didn't specifically endorse the
administration's plan, and if you read his testimony carefully, it contained caveats and cautions. But that didn't matter;
the headlines trumpeted Mr. Greenspan's support, and legislation whose prospects had previously seemed dubious sailed through
Congress.
On Wednesday Mr. Greenspan endorsed Social Security privatization. But there's a difference between 2001 and 2005. In 2001,
Mr. Greenspan offered a convoluted, implausible justification for supporting everything the Bush administration wanted. This
time, he offered no justification at all.
. . . .
Let me make a detour here. The way privatizers link the long-run financing of Social Security with the case for private
accounts parallels the three-card-monte technique the Bush administration used to link terrorism to the Iraq war. Speeches
about Iraq invariably included references to 9/11, leading much of the public to believe that invading Iraq somehow meant
taking the war to the terrorists. When pressed, war supporters would admit they lacked evidence of any significant links between
Iraq and Al Qaeda, let alone any Iraqi role in 9/11 - yet in their next sentence it would be 9/11 and Saddam, together again.
Similarly, calls for privatization invariably begin with ominous warnings about Social Security's financial future. When
pressed, administration officials admit that private accounts would do nothing to improve that financial future. Yet in the
next sentence, they once again link privatization to the problem posed by an aging population.
And so it was with Mr. Greenspan. He painted a dark (and seriously exaggerated) picture of the demographic problem, and
said that what we need is a "fully funded" system. He then conceded that Bush-style privatization would do nothing to improve
the system's funding.
. . . .
Mr. Greenspan went on to concede that the opponents of privatization are right to worry about the huge borrowing that Bush-style
privatization would entail.
. . . .
. . . Mr. Greenspan is no longer entitled to . . . deference. By repeatedly shilling for whatever the Bush administration
wants, he has betrayed the trust placed in Fed chairmen, and deserves to be treated as just another partisan hack.
In the New Yorker, Nicholas Lehmann writes that the mainstream media get pilloried by both sides of the political spectrum. I suppose that
members of the media take this as proof that they really are "fair and balanced." Lehmann quotes the executive editor
of the New York Times:
Bill Keller wrote, in an e-mail, "There is a significant liberal antipathy toward the, pardon the expression, mainstream
press. . . . Liberals perceive us, or claim to perceive us, as lapdogs of the Bush Administration, instigators of the war
in Iraq, sellouts to big business and panderers to red-state prejudices. Some of this is probably disingenuous - calculated
Mau-Mauing." [thanks to Bernice]
"Probably disingenuous - calculated Mau-Mauing"? I dunno, Bill. Maybe we liberals say those bad things about
the Times because of all those breathless front-page Judith Miller stories about Saddam's vast arsenal of WMD's.
And all those years of breathless front-page Jeff Gerth stories about the Whitewater "scandal" that was
going to bring down the Clintons. And the dozens of actual Bush administration scandals that the Times and the rest of the SCLM have virtually ignored.
Most recently, we have the JimJeff GuckertGannon scandal. Actual investigative journalism (what a concept!)
by AMERICAblog, various Daily Kos readers, World O'Crap and other denizens of the left blogosphere has shown that "Jeff Gannon," a "journalist" who received a White House press
pass and whom Bush called on at a press conference last month, is actually James D. Guckert, a Republican hack and gay prostitute.
This story has elicited a collective yawn from the Times and almost all the rest of the media (although
the Houston Chronicle has a clue). A search of the Times' website for "Guckert" yields just one hit, a short February 11 article by Katharine Seelye about two congressional Democrats' demand for an investigation.
Joe Conason, probably "Mau-Mauing," explains JG's significance:
Proof that "the liberal media" is but a figment of right-wing mythology has now arrived in the person of one James Guckert,
formerly known as Jeff Gannon. Were the American media truly liberal—or merely unafraid to be called liberal—the saga of Mr.
Guckert’s short, strange, quasi-journalistic career would be resounding across the airwaves.
The intrinsic media interest of the Guckert/Gannon story should be obvious to anyone who has followed his tale, which touches
on hot topics from the homosexual underground and the investigation into the outing of C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame to the political
power of the Internet. But our supposedly liberal media becomes quite squeamish when reporting anything that might humiliate
the Bush White House and the Republican Party.
. . . .
What Mr. Guckert seems to have been is not a journalist but a Republican dirty trickster. He was schooled
at the Leadership Institute—an outfit run by veteran right-wing operative and Republican National Committee member Morton
Blackwell. (It was Mr. Blackwell who distributed those cute "purple heart" Band-aids mocking Mr. Kerry’s war wounds at the
Republican convention last summer.) His former employers at Talon News include leading Republican fund-raisers and
former officials of the Texas Republican Party who have been active in partisan affairs for the past two decades.
How did this character obtain a coveted place in the White House? What did the White House press staff know
about him? How does his story fit within the larger scandal of payola punditry, with federal funds subsidizing Republican
propagandists in the press corps? Did someone in the Bush administration give him a classified document?
Such questions are evidently of little concern to our liberal media outlets, whose leading lights prefer
to deliver prim lectures about the unwarranted invasion of Mr. Guckert’s private affairs and his victimization for his conservative
views. In fact, everything known about him comes from material he posted on public Web sites, but that’s beside the point.
Imagine the media explosion if a male escort had been discovered operating as a correspondent in the Clinton
White House. Imagine that he was paid by an outfit owned by Arkansas Democrats and had been trained in journalism by James
Carville. Imagine that this gentleman had been cultivated and called upon by Mike McCurry or Joe Lockhart—or by President
Clinton himself. Imagine that this "journalist" had smeared a Republican Presidential candidate and had previously claimed
access to classified documents in a national-security scandal.
Then imagine the constant screaming on radio, on television, on Capitol Hill, in the Washington press corps—and listen
to the placid mumbling of the "liberal" media now.
UPDATE: The day after I wrote the above, the Times published columns
by Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, who clearly get it. Here's MoDo:
I'm still mystified by this story. I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration,
but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the "Barberini Faun" is credentialed
to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?
At first when I tried to complain about not getting my pass renewed, even though I'd been covering presidents and first
ladies since 1986, no one called me back. Finally, when Mr. McClellan replaced Ari Fleischer, he said he'd renew the pass
- after a new Secret Service background check that would last several months.
In an era when security concerns are paramount, what kind of Secret Service background check did James Guckert get so he
could saunter into the West Wing every day under an assumed name while he was doing full-frontal advertising for stud services
for $1,200 a weekend? He used a driver's license that said James Guckert to get into the White House, then, once inside, switched
to his alter ego, asking questions as Jeff Gannon.
I'll be very happily surprised if this story actually does get the huge coverage, and elicit the public outrage,
it deserves. But I'll believe it when I see it. Again and again during Bush's first term, the left blogosphere would
report some horrific scandal, and I'd think, "OK, they've gone too far. This scandal will be the one that takes Bush down." Again
and again, I was wrong (for example, no WMD's, Valerie Plame, the August 6, 2001 PDB Bush ignored, Abu Ghraib, the torture
memos, etc., etc.). As long as a Republican president kills tens of thousands of brown people, proclaims his hatred
of gays, and blathers about "freedom" and "liberty," that's good enough for a majority of the electorate. Heil Dubya.
In my post-election funk, I got out of the habit of reading Democratic Underground's weekly Top 10 Conservative Idiots. But it's still there, and still as funny as ever. Two weeks ago, J.D. Guckert/"Jeff Gannon" was No. 2 for asking Dubya
an absurd question at a press conference. JG, the Avis of conservative idiocy, sent Democratic Underground an e-mail promising
he'd try harder to reach No. 1. He's done it this week -- No. 1 with a bullet! Way to go! DU is having a fundraiser
this week, so if you like their work, consider throwing them some lucre. (Thanks to Mark C.)
JG reached the summit even before the news broke that he is a gay prostitute (be careful with this at work). This revelation has apparently caused the Poor Man to be born again -- or something like that:
Think about it: what are the chances that a media whore like Gannon would turn out to be an actual whore? It's impossible.
It boggles the mind how infinitely unlikely this is. It's like if you found someone pirating CDs, and it turns out he actually
had a peg leg and a parrot on his shoulder and sailed around the Caribbean saying "arrrrrr!" and plundering booty. You wouldn't
believe it. But there it is: impossible, but true. Impossible truths are miracles, and only God can work miracles. Ergo, God
exists. Q.E.D.
The rest of the story is that God's metaphors are about as subtle as a David Byrne art concept or, equivalently,
getting clocked on the head with a cinderblock. Yeah, "whore". It's a "big suit", David. We get it already. I think brainless
plankton on Neptune get the symbolism here. Jesus. (links via World O'Crap)
Personally, I took the tsunami the day after Christmas as a message from God. The anagram of "tsunami" is "I am
nuts" (which is, indeed, almost "tsunami" backwards). Just a coincidence? Draw your own conclusion.
This from Matt Miller's review of Christine Todd Whitman's book It's My Party, Too: The Battle
for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America:
Think about it: in 2004, John Kerry wouldn't have stood behind Richard Nixon's combined plans for universal health coverage
and a minimum family income because Nixon's agenda from the early 1970's is way too liberal for the mainstream Democratic
Party today.
Matt's site is here, but as far as I can tell his book review isn't available online as yet.
When Bush managed to get Congress to enact his Medicare prescription drug program into law, he claimed it would
cost "only" $400 billion in its first decade. The bill narrowly passed only after extraordinary arm-twisting in
the House, including a three-hour vote (House rules prescribe 15 minutes) and a bribe offered to Rep. Nick Smith on the House
floor. It's quite clear that the bill would not have passed had the cost been significantly higher. A few months after
that, we learned that the Bush administration had refused (on pain of firing) to allow an aide to tell Congress that
the actual estimated cost of the program was $534 billion. Now, a little over a year after Bush signed the bill
into law, the cost is now estimated at $1.2 trillion in the first decade, thrice the original number:
The White House released budget figures yesterday indicating that the new Medicare prescription drug benefit will cost
more than $1.2 trillion in the coming decade, a much higher price tag than President Bush suggested when he narrowly won passage
of the law in late 2003.
The projections represent the most complete picture to date of how much the program will cost after it begins next
year. The expense of the new drug benefit has been a source of much controversy since the day Congress approved it, with Democrats
and some Republicans complaining that the White House has consistently low-balled the expected cost to the government.
As recently as September, Medicare chief Mark B. McClellan said the new drug package would cost $534 billion over 10 years.
Last night, he acknowledged that the cumulative cost of the program between 2006 and 2015 will reach $1.2 trillion, but he
cited several major savings and offsets that he said will reduce the federal government's bottom-line cost to $720 billion.
The disclosure prompted new criticism by Democrats about the administration's long-term budget estimates. It also
showed that Medicare, the national medical insurance program for seniors, may pose a far more serious budgetary problem in
the coming decade than concerns about the solvency of Social Security.
Congress should pull the plug on this boondoggle, but of course that'll never happen. Oh, well, a trillion here, a trillion
there . . . . Is it going to take a full-blown economic collapse before the public and the media wake up? And do
the Republicans in Congress really want to make Bush the new Hoover? Apparently they're such ideologues (Tax cuts are always
good! Tax hikes are always bad! And the rapture is coming any day now, anyway!) that they refuse to confront the deficit
in a rational manner. Scary.
If you aren't already ashamed to be an American, Jane Mayer's article "Outsourcing Torture" in the New Yorker should cure that. Be sure to read Digby on the subject, too.
Writing in Sunday's L.A. Times, John Dean says that we will soon learn the identity of "Deep Throat," the secret source from whom Woodward and Bernstein
learned the information that brought down Nixon:
I have little doubt that one of my former Nixon White House colleagues is history's best-known anonymous
source — Deep Throat. But I'll be damned if I can figure out exactly which one.
We'll all know one day very soon,
however. Bob Woodward, a reporter on the team that covered the Watergate story, has advised his executive editor at the Washington
Post that Throat is ill. And Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of the Post and one of the few people to whom Woodward confided
his source's identity, has publicly acknowledged that he has written Throat's obituary. [link via Political Animal]
Wick Allison in D Magazine says that Kevin McCarthy (apparently a Dallas radio personality) has a theory:
I think I know who it is: Chief Justice William Rehnquist.....
Woodward has always said that he and Bernstein and Ben Bradlee won't ever reveal til he's dead. We're now told Deep Throat
is quite "ill" and Bradlee says the obit's already written.
Rehnquist was a Deputy Attorney General in the "Office of Legal Counsel" from 1969-1972 under Nixon's Deputy AG, Richard
Kleindienst. Rehnquist and Kleindienst were very good friends when both were lawyers in Phoenix, and Kleindienst recruited
Rehnquist into the Justice Department when Nixon got elected. Rehnquist stayed three years and then Kleindienst pushed Nixon
to appoint him to the Court, which happened in January of 1972. Just six months later AG John Mitchell resigned to head Nixon's
re-election committee (CREEP), and Kleindienst replaced Mitchell as AG just five days before the June '72 Watergate break-in.
Kleindienst resigned in 1973 along with Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Dean, but he and Rehnquist remained close.
So: we have Rehnquist in Washington throughout the relevant time frame, in the Nixon Justice Dept. for three years, presumably
maintaining numerous contacts within the Administration even after he went to the Court in January '72, and he's quite ill
right now. Seven of the eight clandestine meetings Woodward describes between himself & Deep Throat in the book "All The
President's Men" took place on weekends, presumably a time when Rehnquist's duties to the Court would not interfere. Not only
that, but the somewhat cryptic, elliptical, low-key style of speaking that Woodward attributes to Deep Throat in the book
(and so memorably recreated in the movie by Hal Holbrook) eerily mirrors the manner in which Rehnquist speaks in real life.
Woodward, incidentally, had unprecedented access to the Supreme Court for his best-selling 1975 book, "The Brethren: Inside
the Supreme Court" [link via K.J. Lopez at The Corner]
Writing today in the Santa Rosa (Cal.) Press Democrat, Chris Coursey speculates that Deep Throat may be one W. Mark Felt:
In a simple suburban house on a nondescript street in northwest Santa Rosa lives the man who may be the answer to the biggest
mystery in American politics.
W. Mark Felt is 88 years old now, and reportedly in ill health. He doesn't return repeated phone calls or answer a message
delivered to his front door. A housekeeper says yes, he's home, but he's sleeping and can't be disturbed.
This is the man whom Richard Nixon believed was "Deep Throat," the secret source who helped reporters Bob Woodward and
Carl Bernstein crack the Watergate scandal and bring down the 37th president.
Felt has denied it over the years. As early as 1974, he told the Washingtonian magazine, "It was not I, and it is not I."
But that hasn't stopped the speculation. . . .
That theory is bolstered by rumors of a 1999 visit to Santa Rosa by Woodward, the Washington Post reporter played by Robert
Redford in the movie "All the President's Men." Woodward supposedly had his limousine park[ed] several blocks from Felt's
house while he stopped in for a visit.
. . . .
The number-three man in the FBI when J. Edgar Hoover died in May 1972, [Felt] wrote that he hoped Nixon would appoint him
to replace the director. Instead, Nixon picked an outsider, L. Patrick Gray, who directed the bureau as the Watergate investigation
unfolded.
Almost immediately, someone close to the investigation began talking to Woodward.
Felt's name comes up twice on tapes from Nixon's Oval Office, first on Oct. 19, 1972, and again on Feb. 28, 1973. On the
first tape, Chief of Staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman tells his boss, "...we know who leaked it."
"Somebody in the FBI?" the president asks.
"Yes, sir. Mark Felt," Haldeman says.
On the second tape, Nixon and Dean talk about Felt, and how people would view an FBI agent who snitched on his president.
"The informer is not wanted in our society," Nixon said. "That's the one thing people do sort of line up against.... They
say, 'Well, that son-of-a-bitch informed. I don't want him around.' We wouldn't want him around, would we?"
Felt left the FBI in June 1973.
In a diary entry at Daily Kos, steverino discusses some other possibilities. Articles from 2002 (around the 30th anniversary of Watergate) discussing Deep Throat's identity
are here, here, here, and here. As far as I know, Rehnquist (who has throat cancer) and Felt are the only "candidates" known to be in particularly ill health.
If the choice is between Rehnquist and Felt, I have to go with Felt. Why would Rehnquist want
to take down the man who appointed him to the Supreme Court? It's a mystery what his motivation would be -- I can't believe
that he was alarmed by the specter of an "imperial Presidency." I also don't think he was ever part of the White House inner
circle (I recall an anecdote about Nixon not recalling his name and referring to him as "Renchberg").
Felt, having recently been passed over for FBI director, had a reason to be mad at Nixon. Haldeman
and Nixon thinking that Felt was Deep Throat certainly has to count for something. And if Woodward did
indeed visit Felt in Santa Rosa, that really makes him a strong suspect. Time will tell.
UPDATE: Editor & Publisherpolled its readers as to Deep Throat's identity:
Hundreds of entries poured in from journalists and casual readers, each offering a name and sometimes a reason why their
man or woman will eventually go down in history as the most famous source ever.
And, in a surprise, the winner is:
Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
. . . .
Here are the results:
Rehnquist: 15% Mark
Felt: 8% Fred Fielding: 6% Henry Kissinger: 6% L. Patrick Gray: 5% George H. W. Bush: 4% Gerald R. Ford: 3% Alexander
Haig: 3% Diane Sawyer: 3% Ben Stein: 3% Pat Buchanan: 2% Alexander Butterfield: 2% Bob Dole: 2% Leonard
Garment: 2% Pope John Paul II: 2%
Others who drew a smattering of support: William Safire, G. Gordon Liddy, Earl
Silbert, James Schlesinger, Linda Lovelace, Williams Ruckelshaus, Richard M. Nixon ("he was so self-destructive"), Pat Nixon,
James Schlesinger, Steve Bull, Richard Kleindienst, William Casey, Robert Thomas, John Dean, E. Howard Hunt, and "No One (Woodward
and Bernstein made him up)."
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that not only is Rehnquist not Deep Throat, but John Paul II isn't, either.
On the eve of the vote on Gonzales' confirmation, the Rude Pundit wrote an excellent letter to Sen. McCain:
Oh, dear John McCain, sweet Senator from Arizona, how the Rude Pundit feels for you. You remember every night, don't
you, Senator McCain, the pain and humiliation dealt to you at the hands of the Vietcong. . . .
They fucked you up - they re-broke bones that had healed, they jumped on injuries, they starved you, and they made
you stand for days on end. And they questioned you, over and over and over. They say solitary confinement is an unending nightmare,
and you were not only alone - your ventilation and light had been cut off, and the hell of your loneliness was compounded
by the wet heat of the peninsula. You know, Senator McCain, you alone in that Senate chamber know what is what when it comes to torture. . . .
Yes, yes, we know that you were a real soldier of a nation's military, a real prisoner of a real war so that the
breaking of the Geneva Convention was more clear-cut. But, in the end, what happened to you meets the boundaries of legal
torture laid out in the memo that Alberto Gonzales requested: you were never brought to organ failure or, indeed, death. If you support Gonzales or the
President on this, what you will say is that others deserve what you went through, that your torture at the hands of your
captors will be simply the average, expected behavior of our nation towards those we pre-deem evil. Like the North Vietnamese
believed you were.
. . . .
You know that the Geneva Convention is a golden rule agreement: do unto others as blah, blah, blah. So by voting
for Gonzales, you and anyone else will be saying that it's okay for others to waterboard American soldiers, tying them to
a board and plunging their heads under until they "think" they're going to drown. You'll say it's okay for American POWs to
have wet towels wrapped around their heads so that they begin to suffocate. And you'll be saying, really, truly, that America,
this country, which you represent, believes it's just fine that American soldiers may be placed into solitary confinement
for years, questioned by using violence and threats of violence, forced to stand until their muscles tear.
All those
nightmare things that happened to you, you poor bastard, all those aches that you feel on humid days, whenever you walk to
a podium to speak. Vote yes on Gonzales, Senator McCain, and no one should give a shit about your story and your pain ever again. [link via Jim Henley]
Here, from the official White House website, is the President of the United Statesattempting to explain his plan to "strengthen" Social Security:
Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate,
for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series
of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those
-- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered
to what has been promised.
Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things
that cause the -- like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase
of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases.
There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how
fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.
Okay, better? I'll keep working on it. [link via Digby]
Plutonium Page at Daily Kos has two great (if that's the right word) diary entries, with lots of links, here and here about what global warming, and the Bush administration's refusal to do anything about it, are doing to the planet.
I recently bought the game "20Q" after reading about it in the Chicago Tribune. It's a hand-held electronic version
of the game "20 Questions." You think of something, the computer asks you 20 questions (to which you answer "yes," "no," "sometimes,"
or "unknown"), and then the computer tries to guess what you were thinking of. If it fails, it asks five more questions
and then guesses again. If it still can't get it, it declares defeat.
Although not quite infallible, the thing is amazingly good. My experience has been consistent with these reviews from (apparently British) users:
"The '20Q Puzzle' is a fantastic mind reading game, and when I was told 'It can read your mind', I thought 'Yeah, right',
but to my amazement IT CAN! The creators must be exhausted from making up all the questions and possible answers! The thing
that I think makes this product unique is the cheeky comments it makes, things such as; "You're thinking of THAT!" and "I
know ALMOST everything" - these are what makes you laugh and want to play again... and again... and again...! Another good
thing about the 20Q puzzle is that it suits all ages, not only because it's so simple to use, but it also suits older... dirtier
minded people! It's not just got normal words in it, it's got an 'advanced user' age to it also! The fact that it causes you
to become ADDICTED just shows what an amazing product it is!"
Nikki B
"I am dumb. Despite my 2:1 honours degree and numerous A-levels, I am not the smartie pants my doting parents thought I
was. I have been outwitted by a purple plastic blob the size of a gerbil. The shame. No matter what I thought of... anything
from a DVD to an Osprey, the bloody thing guessed right. I am nothing. All hail 20Q."
Eleanor C, Eccles
"Really is an amazing little device! It guessed everything I threw at it - from Ocelot to Emerald. Everyone who uses this
'toy' is quite astonished. Highly recommended."
Errol, Fleet
You can play the game online or learn more about it here. (The online version has more choices for your answer than the hand-held version, so presumably does a somewhat better job.)
I bought my 20Q at Target for the grand sum of $12.99, but I don't see it on their site. Amazon has it here for $13.99. Toy & Game Warehouse (which I found through the website of Radica Games, the manufacturer) has the new 20Q "Gold Edition" here for $17.49. I don't know if it has anything besides the "exciting new design" to justify the extra $3.50.
Buy the thing for yourself and/or your kid. It might be the best fourteen or so bucks you'll ever spend. I
can attest that I've gotten way more enjoyment out of the $12.99 I spent on 20Q than I did from the much larger
sums I contributed to losing Democratic candidates in 2003-04.
I strongly recommend that parents of strong-willed and rebellious females, especially, quietly keep track of the particulars
of their daughters' menstrual cycles. Not only should you record when their periods begin and end each month, but also make
a comment or two each day about moods.
As S.Z. notes, Dobson doesn't elaborate on how parents are supposed to surreptitiously monitor their daughters'
menses. It struck me, in light of the above and Dobson's recent "outing" of SpongeBob SquarePants, that Dobson is sort of a sex-obsessed Santa Claus (except without the presents). This inspired me to write the following
bit of doggerel (with apologies to J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie):
He sees you when you're menstruating, He knows if you're on the rag, He knows if you're a cartoon character who's
a lesbian or a fag! Oh, you better watch out, You'd better be straight, You better make sure your period's not late, Reverend
Dobson is coming to town!
Bellatrys has some thoughts about Rev. Dobson's menstrual obsession. Don't miss her link to The Brick Testament's explication (using Legos) of Biblical teachings on menstruation and related matters.
Every stinking Senate Republican -- and six stinking Democrats -- have made torture champion
Alberto Gonzales Attorney General of the United States. It's heartbreaking to see the depths to which our once great
nation has descended. The 35 Democrats, and Independent Jeffords, deserve credit for taking a stand for decency, humanity,
and the rule of law. But that should be a no-brainer. The confirmation of this man is a disgrace.
Ezra Klein has Harry Reid's eloquent statement in opposition to Gonzales. You should also read Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh's devastating critique of the August 1, 2002 Office of Legal Counsel memorandum that Jay Bybee (now, appallingly, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit) wrote to
Gonzales. Gonzales obviously solicited the memo because the Bush regime was seeking a way to avoid complying with the Geneve
Conventions; the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treament or Punishment; and federal criminal
law. Reid quotes Gonzales as stating of the Bybee memorandum, "I don’t have a disagreement with the conclusions then
reached."
Dean Koh calls the memo "perhaps the most clearly erroneous legal opinion I have ever read." That is not just hyperbole:
The memorandum does not to mention that torture is universally condemned and forbidden by the Geneva Conventions; the
International Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treament or Punishment (the U.S. is a signatory
to both); and the United States Constitution.
The memorandum creates an absurd and untenably narrow definition of torture. "Torture," as defined by the memorandum,
occurs only if the interrogator has the precise objective of inflicting "physical pain . . . equivalent in
intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even
death." Incredibly, even rape is not torture under this definition. As Dean Koh notes, under this
definition, "many of the heinous acts committed by the Iraqi security services under Saddam Hussein would not be torture."
He cites a White House website decrying, and describing as "torture," acts by Saddam's security services including, among others, suspension
from rotating ceiling fans, rape, denial of food and water, extended solitary confinement in dark and extremely small compartments,
and threats to rape or otherwise harm family members and relatives. Each of those would not necessarily inflict physical pain
equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function,
or death -- and thus is not "torture" under the memo's definition.
The memorandum suggests that executive officials can escape prosecution for torture on the ground that "they were carrying
out the President's Commander-in-Chief powers." That is the "just following orders" defense that was condemned and rejected
almost 60 years ago by the Nuremberg tribunal led by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson. The Eighth Amendment flatly forbids
proscribes "cruel and unusual punishments" without adding an asterisk for "except when the Commander-in-Chief orders them."
The memorandum does not even mention the Supreme Court's 1952 decision in Youngstown Steel & Tube Co. v.
Sawyer, which is the leading explication of the president's powers during wartime.
The memorandum concludes that the "International Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment" in fact allows American officials to use cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment as permissible
interrogation tactics.
The memorandum takes a shockingly expansive view of the president's powers, stating that "[a]ny effort by Congress to
regulate the interrogation of battlefield combatants would violate the Constitution's sole vesting of the Commander-in-Chief
authority in the President." Dean Koh observes, "if the President has the sole constitutional authority to sanction
torture, and Congress has no power to interfere, it is unclear why the President should not also have unfettered authority
to license genocide or other violations of fundamental human rights."
Gonzales again: "I don’t have a disagreement with the conclusions then reached." Sixty senators have
no problem with confirming such a man. Nor, it seems, does most of the American public. Sickening.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." Thomas Jefferson
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong,
is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Theodore Roosevelt
"Some folks are born silver spoon in hand, Lord, don't they help themselves . . . . Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
ooh, they send you down to war" Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Fortunate Son"
"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Samuel Johnson
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people." Howard Zinn
"Killing a man to defend an idea isn't defending an idea. It's killing a man." Jean-Luc Godard, Notre Musique (2004)
"Killing one person is murder. Killing 100,000 is foreign policy." Unknown
"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they
are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same
in every country." Hermann Goering
"I actually think Bush is the greatest threat to life on this planet." London Mayor Ken Livingstone
"They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity
of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening." George
Orwell, 1984
that removing the income cap entirely would enable the the program
to pay all benefits currently promised for 37 more years -- from 2042, as 
