The war that dare not speak its name

Apparently our President is such a bumbling fool that even Newt Gingrich realizes it, and he has some advice for Dubya: don't say anything about the war.

Newt Gingrich is offering President Bush some interesting advice about winning support for the Iraq war: The president, he says, should stop talking about it. “Simply be quiet, say nothing” is what the former Republican leader is urging. Mr. Bush instead should leave the war talk to General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who have much more credibility with both Democrats and Republicans. […]

“Petraeus and Crocker will get a better deal on Iraq than Bush, and it will be much harder for the Democrats to oppose Petraeus and Crocker,” Mr. Gingrich said.

Now I know what you're thinking - why just keep quiet about the war? I mean, what about those other low points in his presidency, i.e. Katrina, habeus corpus, the US Attorneys, or Walter Reed Hospital.

In fact, given that everything this President touches turns to crap, maybe Bush shouldn't say anything at all, apart from an occassional "How are y'all doing?", or "Five polyps. Didn't see 'em. Felt 'em though. Ha ha ha. Cancer free. That's a good thing. Gotta go."

Personally, I like it when the George Bush speaks. When my grandkids ask me one day "Grandpa, what was it like living under the worst President in US History?", I'll need more material than a David Petraeus quote.

Après la guerre

"I guess while I was there, the general attitude was, A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi," said Spc. Jeff Englehart, 26, of Grand Junction, Colorado. Specialist Englehart served with the Third Brigade, First Infantry Division, in Baquba, about thirty-five miles northeast of Baghdad, for a year beginning in February 2004. "You know, so what?... The soldiers honestly thought we were trying to help the people and they were mad because it was almost like a betrayal. Like here we are trying to help you, here I am, you know, thousands of miles away from home and my family, and I have to be here for a year and work every day on these missions. Well, we're trying to help you and you just turn around and try to kill us."

from The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness, in The Nation

Stigmata sold separately

From Cliff Schechter, via C&L:

Wal-Mart said Tuesday it will test sales in some stores of biblical action figures whose makers say they are aimed at Christian parents who prefer their children play with Samson, David or Noah rather than with a comic book character or Bratz doll.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien said the toys made by One2believe, a Valencia, California, company, will be offered in 425 of Wal-Mart's 3,376 discount stores...

One-believe Chief Executive David Socha said his products were part of a "battle for the toy box" with dolls and figures that he said carry negative messages.

"If you're very religious, it's a battle for your children's minds and what they're playing with and pretending. There are remakes out there of Satan and evil things," Socha said.

Playing and pretending are important to any child's develop,ent, and while I'm not crazy about the crap that passes for children' toys these days, I am certain that Biblical action toys have the same potential crapiness built in. The key to childhood development is imagination: through plays, children imagine ways to adapt to the real world in all its permutations.

Imaginative play teaches children the skills they will need to develop into functioning, productive adults, including literacy, mathematical reasoning, creativity and social skills. Those social skills include the ability to share, negotiate, compromise, make and revise rules, and adapt the perspective of others.

Biblical action figures by themselves are not bad, unless combined with a dogmatic interpretation of the owners manual, The Bible. In fact, dogma of any type is anathema to imagination. Let's face it - the real world is a non-dogmatic, random, imaginative, disheveled, scary place. If everybody did exactly what the Bible tells them to do, think about how much less frightening it would be. This is the dream of Biblical literalists - a return to a world that never existed, and most likely never will, where uncertainty is vanquished like the Philistines, and the rule of law is indistinguishable from the word of God.

Talk about imaginative play.

Photoblogging

Photo by Heraldblog

Real journalist spotted in White House

Administration urges calm.

Volunteer Sunday

The metaphor defense

How good to know that in our dumbed down world, literary analysis has clawed its way into the news cycle not once, but twice this past week. The metaphor, favored by poets, hopeless romantics, and slimy defense attorneys, has found new life as an excuse for saying stupid things. First there was neo-con apologist Fouad Ajami's non-metaphorical explanation that he was merely being metaphorical when he compared convicted felon Scooter Libby to a slain American soldier. CNBC's David Schuster tore Ajami a new one, with the help of a literal Iraqi-War vet who pointed out the obvious - that Libby is a metaphorical lying sac du merde, unlike the honorable men and women who risk their lives in combat.

The other metaphorical shoe hit the ground today when finance professor Don Chance explained he was merely being metaphorical when he blamed that libertine pleasure-seeking Mr. Rogers for an epidemic of youthful narcissism that is ruining America's future.

Signs of narcissism among college students have been rising for 25 years, according to a recent study led by a San Diego State University psychologist. Obviously, Mr. Rogers alone can't be blamed for this. But as Prof. Chance sees it, "he's representative of a culture of excessive doting."

Prof. Chance teaches many Asian-born students, and says they accept whatever grade they're given; they see B's and C's as an indication that they must work harder, and that their elders assessed them accurately. They didn't grow up with Mr. Rogers or anyone else telling them they were born special.

By contrast, American students often view lower grades as a reason to "hit you up for an A because they came to class and feel they worked hard," says Prof. Chance. He wishes more parents would offer kids this perspective: "The world owes you nothing. You have to work and compete. If you want to be special, you'll have to prove it."

Chance later explained that he doesn't know what he's talking about, and besides, he was just being metaphorical:

The reference to Mr. Rogers was just a metaphor. I have no professional qualifications to evaluate the real problems or propose solutions. Mr. Rogers was a great American. I watched him with my children and wouldn’t hesitate to do so again if I had young children.

The metaphor defense is obviously catching on, its application broadened to explain the numerous gaffes, malapropisms and dissembling that led America to an ill-advised war.
For instance, when George Tenet said the evidence for WMD was a "slam dunk", he wasn't speaking literally, unless there was backboard and hoop installed in the Oval Office. He was speaking metaphorically, comparing the case for WMDs to the actions of a 7-foot tall power forward on a court full of 6-footers.

President Bush was likewise waxing metaphorical when he told America that the smoking gun of terrorism would come in the shape of a mushroom cloud. I mean, c'mon, terrorists don't use guns anymore, and who cares if they smoke anyway? We have laws against smoking in public, remember?

Don't bother us with facts - we're Republicans

Zachary at Internal Monologue links to Jeff Weintraub's post regarding immigration and crime. In case you've been listening to Fox News, it's not what you think.

[A]mong men age 18-39 (who comprise the vast majority of the prison population), the incarceration rate of the native-born is much higher than the incarceration rate of the foreign-born.

Immigrants in every ethnic group in the United States have lower rates of crime and imprisonment than do the native born. This is true for all immigrant groups ­- including the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans who comprise most of the undocumented immigrants in the country. Even though immigrants from these countries are far more likely than natives to have less than a high-school education and to live in poverty, they are far less likely to be behind bars or to commit crimes. Moreover, teenage immigrants are much less likely than native-born adolescents to engage in risk behaviors such as delinquency, violence, and substance abuse that often lead to imprisonment.

The problem of violent crime in the United States is not caused by immigrants, regardless of their legal status. [....]

There are real dangers inherent in the myth that immigrants are more prone to criminality than are the native-born. [....] We, as sociologists, criminologists, legal scholars and other social scientists, both academics and practitioners in the criminal justice system, including prosecutors, police officers, and criminal attorneys, strongly urge state and national policymakers who are drafting laws that affect immigrants to base these laws on demonstrated facts rather than on false assumptions.

Basing laws on demonstrated facts rather than false assumptions - now where I have heard that one before? Isn't that how the Iraq War started? When the facts don't line up just so for the lizard-brain right, false assumptions will just have to do.

We see false assumptions every day. Fox News is telling us that socialized medicine will lead to more foreign born doctors, some of whom may be jihadists! So addition that hernia exam ("Turn your head and die, American devil!") you'll also be contributing to the downfall of Christianity when you pay your doctor.

Meanwhile, proto-fascist nativists are alienating more and more Hispanics, many of whom agree that our immigration laws need fixing. President Bush attracted 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004 - these days, only 11 percent of Hispanics identify themselves as Republicans, while three times as many lean Democrat.

Even more telling: all the Democratic contenders accepted invitations to address NALEO, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, held recently in Orlando.

All of the Republican candidates declined invitations to join a NALEO forum held a day earlier, citing scheduling conflicts.

Sickening

Bill Kristol: Liar

Tony Snow: Liar

President George W. Bush: Liar

The only consolation to the Libby pardon is that Bush was acting out of fear. White knuckle, fill your pants, crawl into a closet and curl into a fetal position fear. It's the end of the republic as we know it.

Could be both

From today's WaPo:

"You don't get any feeling of somebody crouching down in the bunker," said Irwin M. Stelzer, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who was part of one group of scholars who met with Bush. "This is either extraordinary self-confidence or out of touch with reality. I can't tell you which."

Bush has self confidence in spades, but it doesn't come from a belief in his own competence. Dear Leader is a True Believer whose religiosity has created its own reality, far afield from the world he was elected to deal with.

Guantanamo, mon amour

Who else would describe Gitmo as a clean, safe, and humane facility, other than the poor military prosecutor who drew the short straw? Col. Morris Davis, who would also torture kittens if ordered by a superior, tries his hand at packaged vacation brochure writing in today's New York Times:

Today, most of the detainees are housed in new buildings modeled after civilian prisons in Indiana and Michigan. Detainees receive three culturally appropriate meals a day. Each has a copy of the Koran. Guards maintain respectful silence during Islam’s five daily prayer periods, and medical care is provided by the same practitioners who treat American service members. Detainees are offered at least two hours of outdoor recreation each day, double that allowed inmates, including convicted terrorists, at the “supermax” federal penitentiary in Florence, Colo.

Davis omits the fact that the majority of Gitmo prisoners, I mean, guests, have been held for years on little or no evidence. Or that the Bush Administration claimed that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to The War Against Terror®. Or that the CIA own's operatives have reported the same tales of abuse as the detainees themselves.

Davis tells us that Australian David Hicks told his sentencing judge that he had been treated humanely - more evidence of the benign nature of indefinite detention without charges at Club Dread. But Davis knows the US agreed to a shorter sentence (nine months) if Hicks agreed to lie about his treatment. The only reason Hicks even received a "trial" was because the Australian prime minister pressured Dick Cheney on the issue.

If we doubled Guantanamo, as Mitt Romney suggested, does that mean the US has to lie twice as much about what is happening there?

Glenn Greenwald has more.

Immigration is hard work

Expect to hear more about the 1965 Immigration Act in the weeks to come, as the right revs up to full indignation mode over the influx of non-white people crossing our borders. Lloyd Billingsley at the execrable Front Page is worried that brown people will demand to be treated fairly, and that just ain't right.

Why all the fuss? Here's a little background.

The Immigration Act of 1965 essentially repealed the immigration act of 1924. The '65 law had the support of Dems and Republicans.


The 1924 Immigration Act was a product of its time - namely, it was racist. It excluded certain ethnic groups, especially Chinese. America was all freaked out about communism in 1924, and KKK 2.0 had been recently rolled out as a user friendly Christian organization that attracted millions of white people. So naturally Congress gave America the immigration act it wanted.

But the issue today is illegal immigration. The 1965 act set quotas on legal immigration. But that's how the right argues. It conflates one thing with another. So Al Qaeda is the same as Shiites, and illegal border crossers are the same as foreigners with green cards.

As far as I can tell, critics of the 1965 act are upset because it lets in too many brown people. This is very upsetting to Republicans who think the US is meant to look like the cast of a Frank Capra movie. But the really cool part about America is that every nationality has contributed something to our culture. I challenge you to go one day without brushing against something that was brought to our shores by a non-white ethnic group. Jazz, margaritas, sushi, hummus, Pokemon, peanut butter, canoes, kung fu all vie for our time and dollars in the great American marketplace.

Immigrant fears and American xenophobia are nothing knew. Virtually every immigrant group suffered the wrath of ignoramuses at some point in the long American experience. Even the Swedes were abused at some point. How do you make fun of a Swede, for God sakes! "Hey Lars, we don't need your, uh, things that you do around here. Go back."

The Republican right talks a great game when it comes to staying the course in Iraq. The standard answer to every criticism of the war is "Don't be a quitter", and dissent is equated with treason. But the right's patriotic mettle turns to limp rigatoni when the issue is non-white people living here. Suddenly the knuckledragging wantwits who make up Bush's base turn white with fear, and dishonor 200 years of immigration history. "Oh no, immigration is hard work!"

We can't have that now, can we?

Goat fences make goat neighbors

Trent Lott (R-There's a Nigra on Ma Roof!), hasn't quite figured out the immigration question, but he has rolled out an important analogy: brown people are like goats.

"Now people are at least as smart as goats," Lott continued. "Maybe not as agile. Build a fence. We should have a virtual fence. Now one of the ways I keep those goats in the fence is I electrified them. Once they got popped a couple of times they quit trying to jump it.

"I'm not proposing an electrified goat fence," Lott added quickly, "I'm just trying, there's an analogy there."

Asked for clarification as to what exactly the analogy was, Lott spokesman Lee Youngblood said that the senator supported a variety of measures in the immigration bill, including unmanned aerial surveillance vehicles, radar and more border patrol agents, as well as a fence to reduce the flow of illegal immigration.

"A fence in and of itself is not enough," said Youngblood. "You can have technology to support the fence and to supplement the fence."

Analogies sure are fun. I think I'll try one. OK, how about this: Trent Lott is to the US Senate, as a turd is to a swimming pool.

Museum of Bad Art

In troubled times such as these, when a corrupt President subverts the constitution while his cronies line up for more lucre, it is comforting to know we have place to turn. I'm talking about bad art.



UNSEEN FORCES #12
Think Again
Acrylic on canvas by Unknown
Acquired by Scott Wilson from trash

This disturbing work "makes an offer you can't refuse". The chilling, matter-of-fact manner in which the subject presents the severed head to us is a poignant reminder of just how numb we have become. The understated violence implicit in the scene speaks volumes on our own desensitization, our society's reflexive use of force, and the artist's inability to deal with the hindquarters of the animal.

Alas, one day reason and honor will return to our nation's capital, and the need for bad art will slip away. But until then, enjoy!

Clinton's war on terror

The next time some right wing revisionist blames Clinton for Bush's War, tell him to STFU. A comment left at Carpetbagger Report tells us why:

CLINTON Developed the nation’s first anti-terrorism policy, and appointed first national coordinator of anti-terrorist efforts.

CLINTON Stopped cold the Al Qaeda millennium hijacking and bombing plots.

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to kill the Pope

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up 12 U.S. jetliners simultaneously

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up UN Headquarters

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up FBI Headquarters

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Washington

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up Boston airport

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up Lincoln and Holland Tunnels in NY

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up the George Washington Bridge

CLINTON Stopped cold the planned attack to blow up the US Embassy in Albania

– Tried to kill Osama bin Laden and disrupt Al Qaeda through preemptive strikes (efforts denounced by the G.O.P.).

– Brought perpetrators of first World Trade Center bombing and CIA killings to justice.

– Did not blame Bush I administration for first World Trade Center bombing even though it occurred 38 days after Bush left office. Instead, worked hard, even obsessively — and successfully — to stop future terrorist attacks.

–Named the Hart-Rudman commission to report on nature of terrorist threats and major steps to be taken to combat terrorism.

- Clinton sent legislation to Congress to TIGHTEN AIRPORT SECURITY. (Remember, this is before 9/11) The legislation was defeated by the Republicans because of opposition from the airlines.

- Clinton sent legislation to Congress to allow for BETTER TRACKING OF TERRORIST FUNDING. It was defeated by Republicans in the Senate because of opposition from banking interests.

- Clinton sent legislation to Congress to add tagents to explosives, to allow for BETTER TRACKING OF EXPLOSIVES USED BY TERRORISTS. It was defeated by the Republicans because of opposition from the NRA.

- Clinton increased the military budget by an average of 14 per cent, reversing the trend under Bush I.

- Clinton tripled the budget of the FBI for counterterrorism and doubled overall funding for counterterrorism

-Clinton detected and destroyed cells of Al Qaeda in over 20 countries

-Clinton created national stockpile of drugs and vaccines including 40 million doses of smallpox vaccine.

-Of Clinton’s efforts says Robert Oakley, Reagan Ambassador for Counterterrorism: “Overall, I give them very high marks” and “The only major criticism I have is the obsession with Osama”

-Paul Bremer, Bush’s appointed leader (Civilian Administrator) of Iraq disagreed slightly with Robert Oakley as he believed the Clinton Administration had “correctly focused on bin Laden.

-Barton Gellman in the Washington Post put it best, “By any measure available, Clinton left office having given greater priority to terrorism than any president before him” and was the “first administration to undertake a systematic anti-terrorist effort”

Cartoon physics

The latest disrupted-in-the-nick-of-time terror attack, and the improbability of the mayhem that would allegedly ensue, reminds me of this news item from last summer:

WASHINGTON, July 7 (Reuters) - A plot to bomb New York's Holland Tunnel in an effort to flood the Wall Street financial district has been uncovered by the FBI, with a suspect arrested in Lebanon, New York's Daily News reported on Friday.

The newspaper, quoting unidentified counterterrorism sources, said the investigation involved what officials considered a "serious plot" to detonate enough explosives inside the landmark tunnel to destroy it and send devastating floodwaters through lower Manhattan.

The idea that puncturing an underwater tunnel would cause land the lies above sea level to flood is absurd, in the absence of a tremendous pressure that would force the water out of the tunnel and onto Manhattan.

Now comes word that an Islamist plot to blow up a jet fuel terminal at JFK airport would cause fuel lines buried underneath the Bronx to explode. A US Attorney who wants to keep her job says "“The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable, one of the most chilling plots imaginable.”

Yes. Right up there with covering yourself with vanishing cream so you can sneak past a mean guard dog in order to kidnap Tweety Bird. The Bush Administration, in yet another desperate attempt to scare the bejeeezus out of us, is still resorting to cartoon physics.

MSNBC quotes Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline expert and president of Accufacts Inc., an energy consulting firm that focuses on pipelines and tank farms, who said the force of the explosion would depend on the amount of fuel under pressure, but it would not travel up and down the line.

“That doesn’t mean wackos out there can’t do damage and cause a fire, but those explosions and fires are going to be fairly restricted,” he said.

What a torturing nation loses

From a Spanish journalist, Gomez Carillo on the front lines with French troops in 1915:

One morning a Bavarian soldier who had come out of his hole in search of some beetroot left in a field by labourers, mistook his path and wandered into the enemy's lines. The troopers caught him by the feet and brought him into the dugout of the captain of the company, who asked him:

"What are you doing here?"

"I was looking for something to eat," said the German.

"It isn't the dinner hour."

"I know, but we have had nothing for two days."

The captain ordered a sumptuous meal for him: meat, eggs, sardines, cheese, coffee, cognac, and even a penny cigar. When the feast was finished, the captain cried:

"And now be off, we have had enough of you."

"Oh! " said the poor fellow, thinking of the abundant menu of the French trenches, "I consider myself your prisoner."

"No, no, we can't be bothered with one single Boche. Be off. Later on, if we catch you with all your companions, we will keep you. We have enough provisions here for a regiment. Good-bye!"

At nightfall twenty soldiers to whom the honest Bavarian had described his adventure, came over and gave themselves up in the trench of the sardines and cheese. As a recompense they were given a splendid dish of fried potatoes. "Fried potatoes," said Ch—, "are our favourite dish, and the cook is esteemed or detested according as he prepares them well or ill. When we see him coming along there from the south with his saucepans, the first thing we ask is whether he has brought us our favourite dish. The worst of it is that generally he won't take the trouble to cook them to a turn, and so when they get here they are uneatable. Only yesterday we held a court-martial on the cook of our trench, and we condemned him to be degraded for not doing potatoes properly. If they are not good to-day we will condemn him to death."

Another Bush flip flop

President Bush thinks it's wrong to "rile up people’s emotions" with misinformation.

This startling admission follows six years of his pandering to the worst human instincts for the purpose of forcing one party rule on the world's oldest democracy.

The Extinguisher in Chief

President Bush fights forest fires in Georgia so we don't have to fight them over here. This just in from the White House:

I’ve just had an extensive briefing on the fires here in Georgia and Florida. You can see on the map back here, the fire covers a lot of area; a lot of timberland is being burned down. A lot of people's livelihoods are being affected. A lot of good country is being destroyed. And a lot of good people are fighting the fires.

And a lot of Americans are getting a lot tired of the President when he sounds like a third grader doing show and tell.

Memorial Day

I can't think of a major US holiday more drained of meaning than Memorial Day. As commercialized as Christmas has become, most Americans still know its origins. Meanwhile, Memorial Day has become a three-day weekend, with a whiff of military history thrown in that few Americans can tell you about.

Memorial Day grew out of the American Civil War, as was first recognized in 1868. By 1890, all the northern states recognized it as a day to remember and honor the Civil War war dead, north and south. The southern states stubbornly held their own remembrance day until after World War One, when the holiday officially honored all of America's war dead.

Originally, Memorial Day was always on May 30. It was changed to the last Monday of May when Congress passed the Uniform Holiday Act of 1971.

I would argue that Memorial Day is our most important federal holiday. Thanksgiving is a celebration of revisionist history. Christmas is a state-sponsored marketing tool. Labor Day is a redundancy - don't we already get days off from work?

But Memorial Day gives us pause to reflect on our species' worst instints, and that is important in times such as these. When our own government tries to ban photographs of flag-draped coffins, and media propagandists attack news outlets for reading the names of our war dead, we can at least turn to Memorial Day to remind ourselves about some awful truths.

And we can listen to men like Kenneth Rice, an 86-year-old Michigan man, who was held prisoner by the Japanese for three terrible years:

Over the weeks, Nichols Field's detail shrunk to 135 men as prisoners died or were transferred because of illness. That's how Rice escaped Pete's tyranny.

The Japanese sent the Marine, ailing with appendicitis, back to Cabanatuan after two months. There, doctors removed his appendix without giving him an anesthetic.

Six months later, the Japanese reinserted him into the labor force, sending him to his longest and last destination.

Nagasaki.

Read the whole story.

The best antidote to the sound of trumpets is a strong dose of reality. That's what Memorial Day is all about.

Hitch on Falwell

And he says it so well. I take back everything I wrote yesterday:

The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing: that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get yourself called Reverend.

Who would, even at your network, have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September the 11th were the result of our sinfulness and were God's punishment if they hadn't got some kind of clerical qualification?

People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup.

OK, not everything. But there is a difference between churlish, ad hominem attack and valid criticism. Hitch's comments easily fall into the latter category.

Falwell

Jerry Falwell is dead. The leader of the moral majority, the man who blamed 9/11 on homos and the ACLU. The clown prince of American Christiandom. Falwell was to reason and tolerance what Yogi Berra was to English syntax: "If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being." "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." "The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country." Falwell failed to surpise years before his death.

But now he's dead, and I hope in a place where that kind of bigotry is not tolerated.

It's time for liberals and progressives to get past Falwell. His star was eclipsed last November, when the American public kicked the Republican theocrats out of power. He has been irrelevant ever since.

So why all the anger? The comments at various liberal blogs are lit up with the worst kind of bile. "While you're in hell, tell Hitler he's an asshole for me, ok Jerry?" says Jason at Crooks and Liars. "Hell for this guy should be having to tortured by everyone killed at the WTC as he explains how their deaths were brought about by homosexuals in the US," opines SupremeCommanderThor at Atrios. In all fairness, both blogs asked readers to be civil, but to little avail. The anger was just too great.

Let him go. Any psychologist will tell you that anger and fear are two sides of the same coin. Falwell can't hurt us anymore. He's gone.

It's time to stop being afraid. The grown ups are in charge now.

Hey look! News!

I am sensitive to the suffering caused by California wildfires, and the terrible drought in south Florida, and so, apparently, is NBC News, by the significant airtime that Bryan Williams gave these events last night. But I don't understand the media silence on two recent developments that impact the whole country.

Exhibit A is an interview yesterday by Lawrence Wilkinson, a Retired Army Colonel, the former Chief of Staff at the State Department from 2002 to 2005 under then Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Vietnam War veteran, the former Acting Director of the Marine Corps War College at Quantico, and currently a teacher of national security at William and Mary College. He said what too many others are only thinking: that President Bush and Vice President Cheney need to be impeached.

This is significant, as Wilkinson is so far removed from the George Soros - Move On universe. Just because he runs the Marine Corps War College doesn't make him a clueless academic.

Speaking on National Public Radio (where else?), Wilkinson said:

"Thlanguage in (the constitution), the language in those two or three lines about impeachment is nice and precise – it's high crimes and misdemeanors. You compare Bill Clinton's peccadilloes for which he was impeached to George Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors or Dick Cheney's high crimes and misdemeanors, and I think they pale in significance.

"I think we went into this war for specious reasons. I think we went into this war not too much unlike the way we went into the Spanish American War with the Hearst press essentially goading the American people and the leadership into war. That was a different time in a different culture, in a different America. We're in a very different place today and I think we essentially got goaded into the war through some of the same means."

Ouch!

In even more hopeful news, the Iraqi Parliament is sounding more and more like the US Congress, proving that George Bush's war to make them just like us is working!

A majority of Iraq's parliament has signed a proposed bill that would require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq and freeze current troop levels, a sign of a growing division between Iraqi legislators and the prime minister that mirrors the widening gulf between the Bush administration and its critics in Congress.

The draft bill would create a timeline for a gradual departure, much like what some Democrats in the United States have demanded, and require the Iraqi government to secure parliament's approval before any further extensions of the U.N. mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, which expires at the end of 2007.

"We haven't asked for the immediate withdrawal of multinational forces, we asked that we should build our security forces and make them qualified and at that point there would be a withdrawal," said Baha al-Araji, a parliamentarian allied with the anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose supporters drafted the bill. "But no one can accept the occupation of his country."

And this isn't news, why?

This was inevitable

Two in five Americans favor the I-word

A few months ago, the Republican response to calls for impeachment was "bring it on". The GOP narrative was that the "I" word is such a nutty idea, that the Democrats would fatally wound themselves with the great majority of Americans, most of whom deep down really loved their bumbling President.

But that was then and this is now. A recent poll by conservative Human Events shows that 39% of Americans favor impeachment of both the President and Vice President.

Anti-war Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania is prominent among some Democrats in his use of the "I" word -- impeachment -- about President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Murtha made his comments on CBS's "Face the Nation" and elsewhere.

Few serious observers think things will ever get to actual impeachment. And yet the American public seems more open to the concept than many imagine, according to a new national poll. The implications of this public sentiment could be huge for the 2008 presidential elections.

There's much for Republicans to hate about this poll: independents, who are likely to decide the 2008 elections, favor impeachment by 42 percent.

Life of the party

The Presidential candidates are starting to comment on SCOTUS' partial birth abortion ruling today, and responses are predictable. Recovering liberal Rudy Giuliani applauds the justices 5-4 decision to uphold a federal law that bans the procedure. So does Saint John McCain. Meanwhile, Obama and Edwards warned that Roe was next.

Republicans love to run as the "party of life", yet in recent years a majority of Americans favor safe, legal abortion with some restrictions. Republicans seized on partial birth abortion because, well, the name is so gruesome. The same people who have trouble feeling sympathy with a cluster of cells no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence are sure to have an emotional attachment to a late term fetus that could, theoretically, live on its own outside the womb.

Doctors call the procedure intact dilation and extraction, or IDX. Republicans tried to ban the procedure in 1995 and again later, but couldn't overcome President Clinton's veto. Congress passed another law in 2003, which was upheld today.

Politically speaking, the ruling is probably a good thing for Democrats. IDX is hard for politicians to defend to most people, and now they won't have to. It also takes away a potent wedge issue from the Republicans, who would much rather talk about collapsed fetal craniums than the President's collapsed foreign policy.

V Tech

The full horror of the Virginia Tech massacre hasn't hit me yet. I'm sure it will when the breathless survivor stories are told, and we know more about the gunman. Right now I'm too busy being disgusted by the media coverage, which included custom graphics and theme music before the bodies were counted.

Brian Williams was particularly appalling on the NBC Nightly News last night, with his fawning interviews of students and paramedics. "Virgina Tech will always be known as the site of this horrible massacre" said Williams, thus making sure the Virginia Tech will always be knows as the site of this horrible massacre.

It also bothers me that violent death by crazed gunmen happens everyday in Baghdad, but doesn't warrant a tenth of the US media coverage. Thirty-two dead students is "Another bloody day in Baghdad" the talking heads will tell us, then quickly move on to more Panda videos, or a story about Prince Harry's jilted girlfriend.

Update
ABC News shows off its math skills.

The number of dead is almost twice as high as the previous record for a mass shooting on an American college campus. That took place at the University of Texas at Austin on Aug. 1, 1966, when a gunman named Charles Whitman opened fire from the 28th floor of a campus tower. Whitman killed 16 and injured 31.

Actually, 32 is exactly twice as many as 16. Is ABC hedging on whether to count the shooter among the dead? Strange.

Mother and daughter

Mrs. Heraldblog and our daughter, Natalie, hamming it up.

Good riddance to Imus

It wasn't the government or even political correctness that brought Imus to his knees. It was the advertisers who support the show. They, ultimately, have the say, and some really big names put NBC on notice that they would advertise elsewhere if the network didn't clean house. Plus, there are more African American decision makers in the nation's major corporations.

Yeah, Imus is gone. What's the problem? On the list of pressing free speech issues, I'd put Northshore Ned's right to act like Dr. Dre alongside the right to keep and bear sniper rifles.

Gwen Ifil was dead on this morning on Meet the Press. Politicians from both sides of the aisle have been quiet about the I Man's dismissal. Over the years, Imus has hosted free speech advocates, bigots, liberals, theocrats and independents, and from them the silence is deafening.

Down the Hatch

In follow up to my Sunday Meet the Press post, I've learned that San Diego USA Carol Lam 1) never fundraised for President Clinton 2) was never a law professor and 3) has 15 years experience as a prosecutor.

On the other hand, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Confabulation) told Tim Russert last Sunday that Lam 1) was a Clinton fundraiser 2) was just a law professor and (3) had little or no prosecutorial experience.
I love a good mystery, and the mystery here is why a sitting US Senator would go before millions and tell back to back to back whoppers. I'm not talking about little white lies here, or highly questionable opinions stated as fact. Hatch's three assertions are not only false, they are demonstrably false. It's like saying Orrin Hatch quit the Klan last month to spend more time with his start-up porn business. Acutally, Hatch's lies were worse, because they don't involve proving a negative.

So why would Hatch subject himself to such exposure. Here are some explanations.

First, he thought the media would be too distracted by Britney's shiny, lumpy cranium to notice.

Second, he was just repeating the talking points that his chief of staff heard at the last GOP We-Don't-Have-A-Prayer breakfast with Karl Rove.

Three, he's advocating for Gonzales, which means he has no business sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee. And he's a liar.

h/t Josh

Update: Josh sheds more light on Hatch's prevarications. The Senator has issued an explanation for his MTP moment: Everything he said was true, except that he wasn't really talking about Carol Lam. He meant to say Alan Bersin, the previous San Diego USA under Clinton.

Bersin was a law professor with little prosecutorial experience who was appointed in 1993 because he was friends with Clinton at Yale and raised money for the Clinton campaign. So take out "Bersin" and insert "Lam" and voila, a senior-sleaze moment.

This is about what we could expect from Orrin Hatch, a former drifter/drug addict who entices young men into his apartment for sexual perversion, murder, necrophilia and cannibalism. He is an embarrassment to the country, and deserves to be clubbed to death in the prison weightroom.

Update: The above paragraph is factually accurate, except that I accidentally used Hatch's name instead of Jeffrey Dahmer's. But I still stand behind everything I wrote.

April is Poetry Month

To An Athlete Dying Young
by A. E. Housman

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

Smell the fear

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Lickspittle) is losing it on Meet the Press over the attorney general scandal, while Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy looks on.

Hatch is calling the Democratic investigation a tempest in a teapot. He admits the White House didn't handle the situation well, but insists there isn't a shred of evidence that anything untoward has happened.

Did Russert just say "Horrin Hatch"? OMG.



Hatch said Carol Lam, the former USA from San Diego, should have been fired three years ago. Other USAs weren't aggressively prosecuting pornography, or illegal aliens, or tearing the tags off mattresses. Funny that none of these issues were brought up in private emails prior to the firings.

Now Hatch says he likes AG Alberto Gonzales because he's Hispanic, and a nice guy. He is "incapable of lying."

Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy is masterful: "Sen. Hatch says Gonzales has always been truthful. Unfortunately, he was not truthful to the US Senate, and that is why he is coming back."

Stay tuned.

Time for national health care

Republicans hate the very idea of publicly-funded national health care, but the fact is, we already have it. Dr. Edwin Leap explains the inconvenient truth:

The system is set up so that those who pay, cover their own bill and the bills of others. Fair or not, it’s the way it works. But it’s not unheard of. It’s similar to the way the costs of shoplifting are passed on to other consumers in retail stores. Someone is going to pay, because the store can’t absorb all of the cost of stolen items. Not that I’m equating non-payment with theft; it’s just a financial analogy. But there’s a parallel. When someone says to me that they wanted to see their doctor, but owe them money, and the same person drinks alcohol every weekend and smokes two to four packs per day, has a camera phone and a fresh tattoo, it’s hard to believe they simply can’t pay a bill. In that sense, the theft analogy may hold some water. But in the end, two facts remain; health care is expensive, and someone has to pay or else the system will not survive.

Read the whole thing.

Drowning in the mainstream

Republicans used to get away with calling Democrats "out of the mainstream". It worked when the mainstream was stocked with plump social issues like abortion, gay marriage, and school prayer.

There may have been a time when Democrats weren't mainstream for opposing the Iraq War. But those days are gone. Today, 59 percent of Americans say they support the August, 2008, Democratic withdrawal date for Bush's War. And while 33 percent oppose the bill, I can't help but wonder if some of those folks simple want the withdrawal date to be set even earlier.



But facts rarely get in the way of the Bush Administration's fantasies. Today, White House spokesblonde Dana Perino called Congress "out of the mainstream" for passing a spending bill that sets time limits on a troop withdrawal from Iraq.

“Now, their proposal is well outside of the mainstream. This is not a moderate bill. It is contrary to the Baker-Hamilton report. It’s contrary to the judgment of the President’s military advisors, and it’s contrary to the unanimous judgment of our intelligence community.”

There is so much wrong with these four sentences. First, since when does Bush care about the Iraq Study Group recommendations? The Democrats are more inline with the ISG than Bush. Second, two out of three Americans want Congress to set a withdrawal date from Iraq. Bush stamps his tiny feet and says "no", then calls Congress out of the mainstream.

Which means that a majority of Americans are also "out of the mainstream."

Let's get real. Bush doesn't care about the mainstream, whatever that means. He's said over and over he doesn't care about polls, or what the newspapers say. No, our President is playing to future generations of historians, and the grateful crowds who line George W. Bush Memorial Parkway on Uniter Not a Divider Day, to cheer the passing Christian-themed floats and military bands. They stand in awe of the President who brought Western-style freedoms to the heathen Muslims, thus vanquishing the terrorists who brought bedlam to our shores.

He knows this will happen, in the same way a chronic gambler knows the next roll will be lucky sevens.

A show about nothing

Here's Senator Leahy's response to President Bush's lame offer to let Rove and the rest dissemble off the record about the USA firings.



Kudos to the Senator from Vermont for not taking the bait.

DeLay on Meet the Press

Tom DeLay (R-Prison Bound) just said we are fighting the 9/11 terrorists in Iraq.

Richard Perle hopes the surge will win the war in Iraq.

Now Delay says it's better to fight the terrorists in Iraq than "over here".

Democratiic Rep. Joe Sestak, who actually fought in Iraq, is being much to nice to DeLay. "Shouldn't you be in prison or something?" He didn't really say that, but he should.

300 ways to hate 300

This guy really, really doesn't like 300.

The Persian army is depicted as an army of monsters. They are all less than human: they're all horribly mutated in one way or another, hunchbacked and grotesque. They're not white. They're sexual perverts! (And while we get jokes about boy-loving men [this from Spartans, mind you—Spartans who are all dressed in very manly and heterosexual giant leather jockstraps], of course what we see is women engaging in some form of pantomime lesbianism—because why not titillate while also casting moral judgment?) Obviously, they deserve to be brutally slaughtered. It must be the will of God.

Never has a film made me feel so physically ill to be in the theater watching it. And it wasn't all the beheadings, although those were copious. I felt like I was being made to watch a Leni Riefenstahl movie, or the very worst bits of Birth of a Nation. And then there was even more to feel sick about, like the fact that the sole female character's only role seemed to be to allow herself to get raped by her husband's rival—and this was presented as heroic. What a vile, vile piece of trash.

I don't get out to the movies a much as I'd like, so the next time I do go, it probably won't be 300.

Update: The classical scholars at Obsidian Wings and their readers are all about ancient Sparta and triremes.

Bob Novak - a cautionary tale

I'm shock - shocked, I tell you - that Robert Novak would lie in an opinion column just so he could smear Hillary Clinton. The 76-year-old paleoconservative claims Hillary recently made up a story about growing up in Chicago and attending a Martin Luther King rally because she's scared of Barak Obama's candidacy. This spake Novak:

Hillary Clinton's road to the White House is not going as planned. Instead of a steady procession to coronation at the Denver convention, she is involved in a real struggle against credible opponents, led by Obama. No wonder she and her handlers were tempted to imply the existence long ago of a teenager in Chicago's suburbs who never really existed.

But Hillary had written about her Chicago childhood, and seeing MLK, in her 2003 book Why Robert Novak is a Lying Weasel. Nobody outside of Illinois had even heard of Obama four years ago.

To cut Novak a little slack here, it's worth noting his unusual childhood in Joliet, not far downriver from Hillary's hometown. Robert grew up Jewish, and his father, an itinerant organ grinder, coerced young Bobby to play the monkey as the two wandered up and down Canal Street in the Windy City, charming out of town businessmen and street pimps with their motley collection of fauz-Italian ballads. When Robert was a teenager, he fled his family to join a traveling carnival, where he was billed as Ho-Jo the Monkey Boy - 37 Flavors of Eye Scream! It was a horrible pun, but Novak had never spent a day in school and never noticed, or so he wrote in his 1972 autobiography Why I Am Such a Douchebag.

Sure, making up stories about political figures to score political points in a column that only really stupid people like to read is wrong, and I'm not excusing Novak, but a little background is in order.

I love it when Republicans eat their young

That sound you hear is the GOP coalition splitting:

The political equivalent of Britney Spears shaving the hair off her head, Ann Coulter made headlines at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) by calling Democrat John Edwards a faggot. Wearing a leather dress and a Christian cross around her neck, Coulter must be a liberal infiltrator whose purpose is to give conservatism a bad name.

Yes folks, that was written by a typing troglodyte at GOP USA.

300 big dumb guys

Check out A.O. Scott's inspired review of 300, which opened today.

The Persians, pioneers in the art of facial piercing, have vastly greater numbers — including ninjas, dervishes, elephants, a charging rhino and an angry bald giant — but the Spartans clearly have superior health clubs and electrolysis facilities.

Libby guilty

Jury found Scooter guilty on four our of five counts of perjury. He's a felon now. Can't vote or own a gun. But the Vice President will always return his calls.

Heraldblog v. prior restraint

A Kansas judge doesn't want you you to read this:

Breaking News: BPU Could Face Thousands in Fines
A confidential report reveals the utility didn't follow federal pollution regulations when upgrading its plants.
Justin Kendall
Published: March 1, 2007
The Board of Public Utilities in Kansas City, Kansas, may be liable for thousands of dollars in fines for failing to comply with anti-pollution regulations, according to a confidential document obtained by the Pitch.

Subject(s): Mary Gonzales, EPA, Board of Public Utilities, Susan Allen, Marc Conklin
The document was prepared November 16, 2004, by lawyer Stanley A. Reigel. It weighs the pros and cons of admitting to the Environmental Protection Agency that upgrades at BPU power plants did not comply with the federal Clean Air Act.

The report was hand-delivered to Marc Conklin, BPU general counsel and human resources director. The report is stamped “CONFIDENTIAL” and warns against duplication without Conklin’s approval. Conklin did not return a call from the Pitch.

BPU spokeswoman Susan Allen also declined to comment and instead sent an e-mail that read: “BPU cannot comment on a BPU confidential report. The Pitch should be aware that it possesses a confidential, legally protected document. The document should be returned to BPU.”

Mary Gonzales, president of the board of directors that oversees the utility, said Thursday that she was unaware of the report. Reigel did not immediately return a phone call on Friday to his office at the law firm of Stinson Morrison Hecker in Kansas City, Missouri.

When Reigel’s report was written, the EPA was auditing utility companies to see whether upgrades and repairs made after 1980 at coal-powered power plants followed federal guidelines. The letter indicates that the BPU was preparing to respond if audited by the EPA. However, it’s unclear what action, if any, the BPU took after Reigel delivered his letter.

Kim Olson, an EPA spokeswoman in Kansas City, tells the Pitch that the BPU has not contacted the agency to disclose its failure to seek repair permits and follow regulations when making upgrades.

According to Reigel’s letter, his report was spurred by a November 14, 2003, analysis of BPU’s coal-fired power plants by Burns & McDonnell Engineers. The engineering firm estimated that upgrades to the plants to make them comply with federal regulations would cost the utility nearly $160 million.

Reigel’s 15-page document identifies 73 repairs or upgrades that may not have followed EPA rules. The work was done at the utility’s three power plants: Nearman Creek Power Station, Quindaro Power Station and the now-closed Kaw Power Station. The work was completed between January 1980 and November 2004. Reigel determined that 15 of those repairs and upgrades were “questionable” and another 15 projects would be “probably not defensible” if the EPA conducted an audit.

Any one of those projects “puts BPU at risk” for an audit by the EPA, Reigel warned. Fines for utility companies in similar cases amounted to $1,000 for each megawatt of energy produced by the plant. Together, the Nearman and Quindaro plants produce 631 megawatts.

The audits Reigel refers to in his letter fall under an EPA initiative called New Source Review. The program was established by Congress in 1977 as part of the Clean Air act. It requires permits before construction on new power plants. It also calls for modifications at plants to be “as clean as possible,” according to the EPA’s Web site.

Reigel’s report indicates that the BPU did not get the permits “for any of the projects.”

“Thus, failure to conduct pre-project NSR and failure to monitor post-project emission constitutes a violation itself, unless the project is exempt, even if the project does not increase actual emissions above the allowable increment,” the report says.

h/t Josh

Rudy and the right

Digby says that the Right's apparent embrace of thrice married, cross-dressing, gay-friendly Rudolph Giuliani is evidence that the envangelicals' Kulturkampf is and always was bullshit.

Now Digby is a tremendous blogger, and a compelling political observer, but I'm not buying this time. Evangelicals believe in redemption, so their faith allows for Giuliani's switch from cross-dressing libertine to man of God. They just can't countenance somebody going in the other direction.

Evangelicals are as pragmatic as the rest of us, too. I loathe Hillary Clinton, but would support her if I thought she had a better chance if beating a Republican in 2008. Does that mean progressive political values are bullshit? Does it make me a hypocrite? Or just someone who wants to win?

Maybe I'm misreading Digby, but she seems to be saying 30 million Americans never cared that much about family values, gay marriage, prayer in schools, etc. Watch Jesus Camp and tell me that. So it's quite a leap Digby's making. The only thing the Christian right's Rudy support tells me is that many think he's the only viable candidate they've got. Eight years ago, the fundies would have followed Brownback over the cliff just to make a point. But the movement has matured, and that probably makes them all the more dangerous. Never underestimate these people.

Condi's continuum

During her Sunday morning pedicure/oatmeal mask on Fox News Sunday, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice defended the 2002 authorization of force against Iraq with an historical comparison so breathtakingly inane that it caused Chris Wallace to, well, he didn't say anything:

"…It would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that, so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown."

Keith Olbermann does a better job of anybody picking this one apart, and it's worth watching.

Condi claimed that stabilizing Iraq is "part of a continuum" which flows organically, much like flowers and chocolates from a Sadr City mosque, and whose genesis, nay, immaculate conception is traced to the 2002 war resolution. Ipso facto the Democrats should just butt out and let the continuum do it's metaphysical thing.

Just like the Democrats did in 1945, after Nazi Germany was defeated and the President went back to Congress for a $12.5 billion resolution to rebuild Europe. I'm sure Congress told President Truman, "Resolution? Resolution? Sheeet Harry, you don't need no stinkin' resolution! You have continuum on your side!"

Continuum models explain variation as involving a gradual quantitative transition without abrupt changes or discontinuities, according to a definition I found at Wikipedia. So Condi is saying that the transition from fabricating evidence for war, to invading a country for no reason, to precipitating the violent deaths of 500,000 Iraqis, to taking more time to pacify Baghdad than it took FDR to defeat Imperial Japan, to fomenting Civil War between the Shiites an Sunni, to spending yet more blood and treasure on a war we already lost, is a continuum, a non-stop flight to Freedomville, without an annoying stopover in Rule-of-Law-istan.

Oh no, not Utah!

From cartoonist Pat Bagley at the Salt Lake Tribune.

h/t Josh

Press the meathead

"Vice President Cheney's credibility is close to zero."
- Michigan Sen. Carl Levin on Meet the Press 30 seconds ago.

Yes! Russert asked Levin about Cheney's remark that the Democrats' anti-surge resolution "would validate the al Qaeda strategy." Levin's answer was dead on. We need to see more of this. Spread the meme: Cheney is a joke, he's been wrong on everything for the last six years, and there's no reason to take him seriously anymore.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's response earlier this week doesn't cut it anymore: "I hope the president will repudiate and distance himself from the vice president's remarks." Pelosi reportedly tried to complain about Cheney to President Bush but could not reach him.

Stop complaining, Dems. You're in charge.

The Great Prevaricator

There's only one thing Republicans love more than dead Democratic Presidents - tax cuts for the wealthy. And after that comes fake Abraham Lincoln quotes.

Some ink-stained wantwit name Frank Gaffney manufactures Lincoln quotes for the Washington Times, which Lincoln once called "a bastion of shallow little cowards who need two hands to wipe their noses."* Last week, Gaffney quoted Lincoln as having once said "Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged." Lincoln never said that.

But that doesn't matter. Soon a Republican congressman was repeating the fake quote on the House floor during debate over the war. Numerous media poodles followed, and pretty soon reanimated Lincoln was zombie walking through Greenwich Village, feasting on the brains of liberal bloggers.

But truth caught up with Gaffney, and he apologized, sort of, in the Washington Times, which Lincoln also called "a scandalous rag not fit for John Wilkes Booth's privy"*. Gaffney tells his credulous Washington Times subscribers, whom Lincoln onced called "an addle-pated flock of libidinous roosters chasing their peckers"*, that he was merely paraphrasing the Great Emancipator. Then he cherry picked out-of-context Lincoln quotes to make the same point: that Jack Murtha should be hanged for treason.

"Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier-boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?” Lincoln wrote that the Vallandigham “arrest was made because he was laboring, with some effect, to prevent the raising of troops; to encourage desertions from the Army; and to leave the rebellion without an adequate military force to suppress it.”

Lincoln scholars know that Honest Abe took extraordinary, extra-legal steps only because the nation was at war with itself. He spoke often of the dangers his country faced from the "uprising" or "insurrection." He wrote, "I concede that the class of arrests complained of can be constitutional only when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require them."

It's hard to know what Lincoln, or even a Lincolnesque American President would do in the wake of 9/11. But one thing is certain - he would distinguish between civil insurrection at home, and a war of choice abroad. And he certainly wouldn't turn the nation's grief and anxiety into a power grab.

________________________________________

* Fake Lincoln quotes

Freedom on the March

From Time Magazine:

It has come to this: the hatred between Iraq's warring sects is now so toxic, it contaminates even the memory of a shining moment of goodwill. On Aug. 31, 2005, a stampede among Shi'ite pilgrims on a bridge over the Tigris River in Baghdad led to hundreds jumping into the water in panic. Several young men in Adhamiya, the Sunni neighborhood on the eastern bank, dived in to help. One of them, Othman al-Obeidi, 25, rescued six people before his limbs gave out from exhaustion and he himself drowned. Nearly 1,000 pilgrims died that afternoon, but community leaders in the Shi'ite district of Khadamiya, on the western bank, lauded the "martyrdom" of al-Obeidi and the bravery of his friends. Adhamiya residents, for their part, held up al-Obeidi's sacrifice as proof that Sunnis bore no ill will toward their Shi'ite neighbors across the river.

Eighteen months on, one of the men who jumped into the river to help the Shi'ites says al-Obeidi "wasted his life for those animals." Hamza Muslawi refuses to talk about how many he himself saved, saying it fills him with shame. "If I see a Shi'ite child about to drown in the Tigris now," says the carpenter, "I will not reach my hand out to save him." In Khadamiya, too, the narrative about Aug. 31 has changed. Karrar Hussein, 28, was crossing the bridge when the stampede began. Ask him about al-Obeidi, and his cheerful demeanor quickly turns sour. "That is a myth," hisses the cell-phone salesman. "That person never existed at all. He was invented by the Sunnis to make them look good." Rather than jumping in to help, he claims, the people of Adhamiya laughed and cheered as Shi'ites drowned.

Who could have seen that one coming? I mean, besides the mideast experts that the Bush administration shut out of the war planning.

Wolcott on Hume

If Brit Hume gets any more vaccuous, he'll have Tony Snow's job.

Hume's lack of self-knowledge would be comic if it weren't so hateful. Like so many white conservative males, he's seething with anger and touchy superiority, yet has apparently convinced himself that it's everybody else who's being emotional. He--he sees things as they are, with rational proportion and worldly perspective; it's women and girly-men liberals and other moral weaklings who lets their sloppy feelings get the best of them. But challenge Brit's patriarchal authority and or contradict him once too often and he goes Aguirre, Wrath of God on you.

Sharks and Jets revisited

West Bank Story trailer

Soft in the head

In geopolitical terms, soft power is a combination of cultural, financial and moral influences that that one country holds over others. There was a time when no country wielded as much soft power as the US. America was the preferred destination for the world's tired and poor. Its music could be heard in the dustiest cantina on the planet. The American way of life was a promise that better days could be had.

And then President Bush happened. Today, America is more likely to stand for Abu Graib than Elvis. Where were were once a force for stability, the US now promises war without end. American leaders where once revered around the world - now we're led by the punchline to a bad joke. Sullivan has been particularly poignant on the consequences of America's draining reserve of soft power:

Soft power can be over-hyped. It's no substitute for military prowess. But soft power still matters. Once, for all the residual anti-Americanism out there, it was a significant plus for the U.S. Bush has somehow managed to give the U.S. a soft-power deficit - in a war against some of the most barbaric, evil enemies we have ever faced. That really is an achievement. And it will take another generation to fix it. It's one reason Obama is so appealing, I think. Electing him after Bush-Cheney would amount to the strongest signal that America is moving past the Bush-Cheney era. That's a message the world is desperate to hear, and it would make enlisting more allies in the war against Islamist terror much easier.

The term "soft power" was coined by Harvard University professor Joseph Nye, who explains the term this way:

The basic concept of power is the ability to influence others to get them to do what you want. There are three major ways to do that: one is to threaten them with sticks; the second is to pay them with carrots; the third is to attract them or co-opt them, so that they want what you want. If you can get others to be attracted, to want what you want, it costs you much less in carrots and sticks.

Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and other unindicted war criminals saw only sticks. Or perhaps their macho sensibilities discounted the effectiveness of any influence that doesn't involve blowing stuff up. Could they really be that cynical?

Carpetbagger passes 10,000th post

Congrats to the Carpetbagger Report for its 10,000th post. CR is one of the sharpest political blogs in the blog o'sphere. Mr. and Mrs. CB are entering their fifth year of blogging, and the hard work shows.

Here's CB's post today on the curious exchanges between President Bush and some well-prepped citizens at a health care roundtable Q&A in Chattanooga.

Free ponies for everyone!

The British are starting to pull troops out of Iraq, and the Bush Administration is calling it a "sign of progress".

That might be true in normal circumstances, meaning one in which the war wasn't being run by incompentent buffoons. If all of Iraq was as tranquil as Basra, it would be reason to chisel President Bush's clueless mug alongside Jefferson's and Roosevelt's on Mount Rushmore.

In reality the country is in a death spiral, with no reason to believe things are getting better. There are reports that the Shiite death squads are lying low, but only President Bush thinks it's out of deference to American resolve. In truth, the militias are waiting for the US military to weaken the Sunni insurgency, so the ensuing ethnic cleaning will be easier.

Obviously, no matter how grim the news from Iraq, the administration will find a silver lining. Optimism is fine, but needs to be tempered by reality. Insurgents are now using chlorine gas bombs to exterminate civilians. Silver lining? They haven't figured out how to properly disperse the gas, since most of it burns up in the accompanying explosion. More good news? Iraq's technical schools are secure enough to train bright, innovative chemical engineering grads who will get it right.

Instapundit unleashes the poodles of war

I totally missed the decades long war with Iran.

In fact, nearly three decades. Instapundit Glenn tells us that the US has been at war with Iran since 1979, since the shameful US embassy takeover in Teheran.

Of course, Professor Glenn uses some ad hoc reasoning to arrive at this conclusion. He started by recently calling for the assassination of Iranian leaders in that right wing wank fest he calls a blog. Then another law professor, only one who knows a lot of stuff about, you know, law, took Instapundit to task for advocating violence against a country we're not at war with.

Instapundit shot back that his critic “hurts his credibility up front by saying that Iran is not at war with us — when, in fact, it has been since 1979, with the deaths of many Americans, soldiers and otherwise, on its hands.”

Basically, Glenn redefined war to win debating points. But that's OK, since lawyers are seldom specific in their language when they argue. What's that? They are specific?

Never mind.

But let's go with Instapundit's thesis for a moment. Let's say that a state of war has existed between Iran and the US since Jimmy Carter was in office. Then explain, as Anonymous Liberal asks, why Ronald Reagan sold arms to the Mullahs? Isn't that high treason?

And why did President George W. Bush reject Iran's request for dialogue in May, 2003, one month into the Iraq War? Didn't he know about the war?

Creationist logic

McCain recall drive underway

It's an uphill battle for recall supporters, but if the mood in Arizona is no different than the rest of the country, St. John could lose his Senate parking spot before his term is officially up. Wouldn't that be sweet?

A new recall drive targets Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a top contender for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination.

Organizers oppose McCain's continued support of the unpopular Iraq war and consider him complicit in what they perceive as the erosion of American civil liberties associated with the war on terror.

"For the most part, he's been all right, but he's supposed to be representing Arizona, and right now he seems to be just representing himself," said William Crum, treasurer of Americans for Integrity and Justice, the Glendale-based recall committee. "He's got tunnel-vision for the presidency."

The recall application filed Tuesday with the Arizona Secretary of State's Office accuses McCain of "shirking his duties as a senator from the great state of Arizona" and of having "acquiesced in his role as a member of the legislative branch to strongly check the power of the chief executive, who has for all intents and purposes become a king."

[..]The recall group faces long odds. It must collect 381,696 valid petition signatures by June 13 to force a statewide vote. That is 25 percent of all votes cast in the 2004 Senate election. Although McCain is a federal officeholder not bound by the Arizona Constitution's recall provisions, he has signed a voluntary pledge on file with the Secretary of State's Office agreeing to resign immediately if defeated in a recall election.

Let's face it, McCain doesn't stand a Sunni's chance in Sadr City of winning his party's nomination. But this has to have McCain scared, and if he tempers his stupid rhetoric even a little, or if his wingnut Senate pals see the same writing on the walls back home, then the effort will be worth it.

h/t Crooks and Liars

Child advocacy group dumps steaming O'Reilly

Congrats to John at Crooks and Liars for ruining Bill O'Reilly's day. The Center for Missing and Exploited Children withdrew a request to the Fox News wantwit speak at its Florida fundraising dinner next month. C&L and its readers were instrumental in exposing O'Reilly for the pathetic, twisted little man that he is.

O'Reilly said Shawn Hornbeck, the young man who was kidnapped, sodomized, and held for four years, was in fact having a great time of it. O'Reilly also cast doubt on Stockholm Syndrome, and said only he can call on the sum of human knowledge, which he keeps safe in his lower colon.

Just the fax, m'am

I think I've finally figured out the Bush Administration's strategy to avoid total collapse from scandal.

More scandal.

It's sort of like slamming a hammer on your big toe to take your mind off of the thumb that you pounded the moment before. Only in this case, it's the American public getting pounded.

In addition to 9/11, lying the US into war, ignoring the Iraqi insurgency, New Orleans, and a bunch of other crazy stuff, now it turns out that Bush told Iran that the US wasn't interested in a peaceful co-existence with Iraq's neighbor to the east, even if the Iranian government was willing to recognize Israel.

Some uppity Democratic senators just asked Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice about the Iranian overture, which was faxed to the US State Department through a Swiss intermediary, but she couldn't remember the details. In fact, she's not sure if the offer was ever made. Some things are so minor, so inconsequential, that they escape our memories in order to make room for the theme from Rawhide, or where Dubya keeps the keys to his pickup.

Rice was pressed Wednesday on whether the Bush administration missed an opportunity to improve relations with Iran in 2003, when Tehran issued a proposal calling for a broad dialogue with the United States, including cooperation on nuclear safeguards, action against terrorists and possible recognition of Israel.

Although former administration officials have said the proposal was discussed and ultimately rejected by top U.S. officials, Rice said she never saw it.

"I have read about this so-called proposal from Iran," Rice told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, referring to reports in the Washington Post and other publications last year. "I think I would have noticed if the Iranians had said, 'We're ready to recognize Israel.' ... I just don't remember ever seeing any such thing."

Rice's comments add a new level of complexity to an issue that has generated debate among foreign-policy experts: Did the Bush administration forego a chance to pursue a dialogue with Iran shortly after the fall of Baghdad, when U.S. power seemed at its height?

The Iranian document, conveyed to Washington via the Swiss Embassy, listed a series of Iranian aims for potential talks, such as ending sanctions, full access to peaceful nuclear technology, and recognition of its "legitimate security interests," according to a copy that has circulated in Washington and was verified by Iranian and U.S. officials.

Iran agreed to put a series of U.S. aims on the agenda, including full cooperation on nuclear safeguards, "decisive action" against terrorists, coordination in Iraq, ending "material support" for Palestinian militias and accepting a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The document also laid out an agenda for negotiations, including possible steps to be achieved at a first meeting and the development of road maps on disarmament, terrorism and economic cooperation.

Flynt Leverett, Rice's former staff member, had publicly discussed seeing the proposal when he worked at the White House.

Leverett said Wednesday he became aware of the two-page offer, which came over a fax machine at the State Department, in his waning days in the U.S. government as a senior director at the National Security Council, but that it was not his responsibility to put it on Rice's desk because Rice had placed Elliott Abrams in charge of Middle East policy.

Abrams is currently deputy national security adviser in charge of the Middle East and democracy promotion. A security council spokeswoman, speaking on behalf of Abrams, said Wednesday that Abrams "has no memory of any such fax and never saw or heard of any such thing."

I'm probably making too big a thing of this. After all, if the Bush administration did follow up on Iran's offer, they would have dropped the ball.

Who would Jesus kick?

Chuck Norris (yes, that Chuck Norris) plays constitutional scholar at World Net Daily this week. To be resolved: Muslims have no place in elected office.

Rev. Daniel Fosters’ [sic] inspirational address [in 1790] to these magistrates is a must read for anyone concerned with the future of our country and criteria for properly appointed representatives…. The words he shared that day were not only stirring but reflective of a general consensus and credo of what citizens (not just clergy) expected of their legislative leaders. Its components still contain what I would call a primer for the election of the presidency or any other chosen representative. […]

For Foster and our Founders, government is a ‘’divine appointment,'’ an ordained institution of God, and ‘’an important mean of delivering us from the evils of the apostasy; and designed to prepare us for the more encouraging restraints the gospel enjoins.'’ As such, it too has Jesus Christ, not some nebulous and neutered god, as its head. […]

Unlike today, no politician then would have ever even thought of Foster’s words as religiously pejorative or prejudice, for Christianity was the only religion upon which our Republic was founded. It was clergy, not imams, who were called to speak before legislatures. Even Jefferson did not propose a separation between mosque and state, just as he could never have imagined a democracy in which its congressmen were sworn into government upon a Quran.

Barbara Streisand can never embarrass me again.

h/t Carpetbagger

Showdown at the Sterling Family Restaurant

It's official - President Bush's act won't play in Peoria.

During his stopover in that quintessential midwestern town last week, where he spoke to some Caterpillar plant workers and threatened to flatten the press corp with a big ass earthmoving machine, Bush visited a local diner for some coffee with a side order of adulation.

At least the coffee was warm.

In town to deliver remarks on the economy, the president walked into the diner, where he was greeted with what can only be described as a sedate reception. No one rushed to shake his hand. There were no audible gasps or yelps of excitement that usually accompany visits like this. Last summer, a woman nearly fainted when Bush made an unscheduled visit for some donut holes at the legendary Lou Mitchell’s Restaurant in Chicago. In Peoria this week, many patrons found their pancakes more interesting. Except for the click of news cameras and the clang of a dish from the kitchen, the quiet was deafening.

“Sorry to interrupt you,” Bush said to a group of women, who were sitting in a booth with their young kids. “How’s the service?” As Bush signed a few autographs and shook hands, a man sitting at the counter lit a cigarette and asked for more coffee. Another woman, eyeing Bush and his entourage, sighed heavily and went back to her paper. She was reading the obituaries. “Sorry to interrupt your breakfast,” a White House aide told her. “No problem,” she huffed, in a not-so-friendly way. “Life goes on, I guess.”

Heraldblog salutes the patrons of the Sterling Family Restaurant in Peoria, Illinois.