Bark Bark Woof Woof

You're not going to read anything at all on this blog - at least in the main postings - about anything whatsoever to do with Michael Jackson.

A recent survey among high school students shows that they have little awareness or regard for the First Amendment.

The way many high school students see it, government censorship of newspapers may not be a bad thing, and flag burning is hardly protected free speech.

It turns out the First Amendment is a second-rate issue to many of those nearing their own adult independence, according to a study of high school attitudes released Monday.

The original amendment to the Constitution is the cornerstone of the way of life in the United States, promising citizens the freedoms of religion, speech, press and assembly.

Yet, when told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes "too far" in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.

[...]

The results reflected indifference, with almost three in four students saying they took the First Amendment for granted or didn't know how they felt about it. It was also clear that many students do not understand what is protected by the bedrock of the Bill of Rights.

Three in four students said flag burning is illegal. It's not. About half the students said the government can restrict any indecent material on the Internet. It can't.

"Schools don't do enough to teach the First Amendment. Students often don't know the rights it protects," Linda Puntney, executive director of the Journalism Education Association, said in the report. "This all comes at a time when there is decreasing passion for much of anything. And, you have to be passionate about the First Amendment." [AP]

This kind of survey comes out every so often, usually showing that not just high school students but your average citizen thinks the First Amendment goes "too far" in protecting the rights of speech. It's slightly ironic in that if it wasn't for the First Amendment, the researchers would have a tough time getting permission to do the survey in the first place and publish the results.

I'm not surprised that high school students feel that the First Amendment is "no big deal." At that age they have spent all of their lives being told what they can't do - don't drink, don't smoke, don't do drugs, don't have sex. All good advice, but as a recovering teacher, I can hear the students saying, "Well, what CAN I do?"

Second, teenagers are still in the first-person stage of life: they don't think outside of themselves, and the idea of an abstract idea such as freedom of expression hasn't really sunk in as it relates to other people and society. In other words, it requires a certain amount of maturity and experience for the meaning to sink in. Some kids get it, some don't. Some never do.

A while ago I got an e-mail from Folkbum, a well-known blogger who is presently part of the collective Liberal Street Fighter. He has a regular feature called Oh, My Word! that is about writing and writers, and he wanted to interview me for a new series he's doing on writers. The results of that interview have been posted on the site here.

Stop by, take a look, and say thanks to Folkbum for promoting writing both as a craft and an artform. I'm humbly honored to be chosen for his first posting.

I'm glad it came off with a minumum of loss of life and to all apperances went smoothly. What happens next - the birth pangs of nation-building - is the hard part. But, as Bobby Cramer notes, "Hope is my greatest weakness."

Dr. James Dobson really opened a can of worms (pun intended) when he took on the sex life of SpongeBob SquarePants. According to David Helvarg:

When it comes to sex outside of marriage, the oceans that cover 71 percent of our planet are rife with reproductive strategies and behaviors that would make Caligula, or even Bill Clinton, blush.

SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg, who has a background in marine biology, had to be aware that in creating a cartoon sponge he'd be opening himself up to charge of marine-based immorality. Sponges can reproduce asexually, for example. And if Dobson's followers don't object to that, I'm sure they'll be distressed to learn that sponges can be hermaphrodites, too. Single sponges not only produce sperm and eggs but are broadcast spawners, indiscriminately releasing sperm in such profusion as to turn seawater smoky white.

Life in the sea, in fact, is largely about reproduction, not traditional family values.

Take the blue crab, pound for pound one of the most fearsome creatures on the planet. Yet when the female undergoes her molt of puberty, she releases a scent that makes the male's aggression dissipate like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the presence of Maria Shriver. They'll then copulate for between 10 and 48 hours before regressing to single-crab combat.

The sex life of the blue crab raises the question, Do marine organisms have orgasms? Which leads to related questions such as, Do they need to? And how does that make you feel when you order a tuna-fish sandwich?

We don't really know how much fun blue crabs or tuna are having. We do know that many species of fish vocalize, or at least produce sounds from within their bodies, at the moment they "broadcast their gametes."

And that's only the beginning. Certain species, such as blue-headed wrasses, are transgender. They all start out as females; some then flip a hormonal switch to function as males when they spawn together.

[...]

What about our fellow mammals? Because dolphins are intelligent, sociable and have jaw structures that make them appear to be smiling, we like to think of them as peace-loving and playful. The bottlenose dolphin of Flipper fame, however, has a sex life less like that of a hippie than that of a Hells Angel.

Male bottlenose dolphins will form alliances of two to four to isolate and have sex with a single female they like. They'll keep other males away while repeatedly copulating with her for several weeks at a time.

The terminally cute sea otter is a marine weasel into rough sex. The male otter's arms (legs, whatever) are effective for grooming their fine pelts or cracking shells on the rocks they place on their bellies, but they are too short for getting a good grip on a mate. So the male gets firm purchase by biting down on the female's nose before going for a little splendor in the kelp.

Afterward you can often spot the females hauled up on rocks along the shore, their fur matted and their noses bloody. It's not hard to imagine that a female with a heavily scarred nose might get a reputation as an easy otter.

Is it any wonder why hordes of college students rush to the beach for spring break? They're there to take lessons.

From the Sun-Sentinel:

VENETA, Ore. -- So far nobody has gotten Randy Cox's goat. But Cox wishes someone would. Cox found the affable brown-and-white male in his detached rec room when he came home from work Thursday, and the goat shows no sign of wanting to leave.

He found the animal communing with his dog, Dandy, and both seemed to be hitting it off.

Cox said he had seen the goat in his neighborhood, but doesn't think it lives there. Calls to the authorities didn't help much.

"I called animal control. They told me to call the sheriff. The sheriff said call animal control. Then they gave me an emergency number for loose livestock," he said.

Nobody answered.

[...]

That left Cox with a goat following him around and chewing on his jacket Thursday evening.

He's friendly, as long as you don't turn your back on him, Cox said.

"But he did butt my truck," he said.

And the goat-dog camaraderie ended when Cox started petting the goat and Dandy started barking.

"I think he's jealous," Cox said.

Okay, all together now: "Ba-a-a, sweet mystery of life at last I've found you..."

The Liberal Coalition has come together to oppose the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. Go here to read our statement, and follow the listed links to read our individual postings on the matter.

We've also joined the hundreds of other blogs listed here that are opposed to Mr. Gonzales's appointment. Feel free to sign up yourself or add your comments to our sites.

All The President's Men was on HBO yesterday afternoon. For those of you under thirty, it's a movie starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman that tells the story of how Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate story in the Washington Post in 1973. It's a good film and for those of us who remember the era it's nostalgic not just for the return to the era of typewriters, dial telephones, and wide lapels, but it also reminds us of real hardscrabble journalism in a time of bareknuckle politics. George W. Bush and his frat brothers are no match for the mob that ran the White House and the Nixon re-election campaign of 1972.

One of those men was John Mitchell, the Attorney General of the United States in the first Nixon administration. Mitchell had been a friend of Mr. Nixon and colleague in a New York law firm, and he maintained a powerful loyalty to his friend. In his role as AG he turned the Justice Department into a powerful wing of the Republican political machine, cracking down on anti-war demonstrators under the guise of "law and order" - the catchphrase that was the 1970's version of the "war on terror." Enforcement of the law took second place to advancing the political agenda of Nixon's so-called "Silent Majority," which mainly consisted of harassing long-haired hippies. In 1972 Mr. Mitchell resigned his post to run the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) and soon became a key player in the covert actions and subsequent cover-up of what became known as Watergate. He eventually pled guilty to a variety of charges but went to his grave claiming that he did nothing illegal and that he had no knowledge of any illegal activities that were attributed to CREEP or the people like G. Gordon Liddy who were paid by CREEP.

Is it just some karmic connection that John Mitchell comes to mind when the name of Alberto Gonzales comes up? Here is a man who has demonstrated that he is pliable to the politics of his party rather than the law of the land. His record in Texas shows that he tailors his opinions to will of the political wind and is fully capable of turning a blind eye to black-letter law when it proves to be inconvenient or "quaint." Mr. Gonzales's record shows that while he is quick to know what is legal or not, his perception of what is right is lacking, and as it has often been pointed out here and in other venues, just because something is legal does not make it right.

We expect the Justice Department to be the voice of law enforcement in this country, regardless of who is the plaintiff, defendant, or president. Only when the Justice Department speaks for the law and not for the administration can we hope to achieve this, and there have been serious questions raised about the ability of Mr. Gonzales to do that. The Senate should take their role of advising and consenting seriously, and in this case, advise the President to get someone else.

A Miami middle school is on the road to recovery a year after a tragedy.

The bathroom where the killing happened is locked up and used for storage.

The old gray hallways are now painted sunshine yellow and tropical shades of coral, sea green and teal. The only real trace that a tragedy occurred is a small, meticulously kept garden with two memorial benches decorated with, among other artwork, cartoons of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

But the changes at Southwood Middle School in Palmetto Bay are more than cosmetic.

The anguish will never fully disappear, but students and faculty members have worked hard to shed the stigma of the day young Jaime Gough died at school.

Thursday marks the first anniversary that the 14-year-old was found stabbed to death in an upstairs bathroom. Classmate Michael Hernandez is charged with murder.

And the students here want you to know that they love their school and their principal, and that their ranks include dancers and actors and fledgling documentary filmmakers.

They want you to know they are known as the Superstars -- rival schools poke fun of the nickname, but that is only because they are jealous of Southwood's successes.

And please, students say, Southwood is more than just a backdrop for live television news shots.

"We're more than what the media and everyone thinks we are," said Alexis Handley, 14, an eighth-grader. "We are an excellent school."

To honor their fallen classmate, Alexis and other members of the school's student body council have dubbed this week "Peace Week" and organized a series of speakers and activities that will culminate in a rally on Thursday.

"Southwood will always have some kind of connotation and that's sad because it is one of our better performing schools. It offers many wonderful things," said Frank Zenere, a Miami-Dade schools psychologist and crisis counselor.

Karl Rove and his minions are hoping to leave their clawmarks on the body politic long after they are gone.

When President Bush stands before Congress on Wednesday night to deliver his State of the Union address, it is a safe bet that he will not announce that one of his goals is the long-term enfeeblement of the Democratic Party.

But a recurring theme of many items on Bush's second-term domestic agenda is that if enacted, they would weaken political and financial pillars that have propped up Democrats for years, political strategists from both parties say.

Legislation putting caps on civil damage awards, for instance, would choke income to trial lawyers, among the most generous contributors to the Democratic Party.

GOP strategists, likewise, hope that the proposed changes to Social Security can transform a program that has long been identified with the Democrats, creating a generation of new investors who see their interests allied with the Republicans.

Less visible policies also have sharp political overtones. The administration's transformation of civil service rules at federal agencies, for instance, would limit the power and membership of public employee unions -- an important Democratic financial artery.

If the Bush agenda is enacted, "there will be a continued growth in the percentage of Americans who consider themselves Republican, both in terms of self-identified party ID and in terms of their [economic] interests," said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform and an operative who speaks regularly with White House senior adviser Karl Rove.

[...]

Republicans note that limiting the growth of lawsuits and damage awards, as well as proposed investment accounts in Social Security, are ideas Bush and other conservatives have championed for years. The Bush agenda lies "at the wonderful intersection where good policy is good politics for Republicans and conservatives," said Stephen Moore, president of the Free Enterprise Fund, which is lobbying for the Social Security changes.

But, one rung away from the White House, many Bush allies make no effort to disguise their glee at the payoffs these ideas could bring to interest groups allied with the GOP, and the heartburn they would cause interest groups allied with the Democrats.

In an interview last week, for instance, Norquist unabashedly dissected the political overtones of legislation to limit lawsuits.

"This will defund significantly some of the trial lawyer community, and it rewards the business community, the Fortune 500 guys who have been increasingly supportive of the broad center-right coalition," he said.

Of specific provisions protecting gun manufacturers from class-action lawsuits, Norquist added, "This will strengthen the Second Amendment community, especially the NRA." He was referring to the National Rifle Association, a core GOP constituency.

[...]

The expansive nature of the Bush agenda, said George C. Edwards III, a prominent presidential scholar at Texas A&M University, reflects how "this is a very strategic administration," which tries to use policies to advance its long-term party-building goals. "I think Karl Rove views this as his great legacy."

The danger for Bush is that there may be less support than he imagines for major changes of the sort represented by proposals for Social Security and plans to limit civil damages, some experts say.

"These are not incremental policies," Edwards noted. "They have a greater risk of failure."

Jacobson agreed, especially on the question of Social Security. "I'm not so sure that a program designed to increase the exposure of ordinary Americans to market forces in ever-broader aspects of life is politically sustainable in the long run -- wait till the next recession."

Thus, the hope of Democrats is that Bush's move to lay claim to the issue of retirement security will in the end only buttress the Democratic advantage on this issue.

Even the most calculating and politically gifted Democratic presidents in the last half-century, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton, did not prop up their legacy on the basis of securing one-party rule for their successor. They actually cared about the entire country, not their well-heeled cronies.

President Bush played the race card last week in his on-going WMD 2.0 campaign to gut Social Security. The irony is that Social Security is, according to this piece in The American Prospoect, a good deal for African-Americans.

The logic of the conservative groups is that blacks have shorter life expectancies than whites, and thus, a federal retirement program is nothing more than a massive redistribution of assets from working-age African Americans to older, more affluent white seniors.

A quick review of the facts should help us understand why much of the conservative argument is wrong and explain why most African Americans are right to oppose privatization.

As another commentator noted, Social Security has become the modern equivalent of "40 acres and a mule" - a promise to be kept - to the African-American elderly. And leave it to the Republicans, who have a history of fighting against both Social Security and civil rights, to use them as cannon fodder in this battle.

Link to this post | posted by Mustang Bobby @ 7:12 AM  

I've posted some more thoughts on writing over at Bobby Cramer.

Nothing says you've made it like getting a mention in the New York Times:

Sen. Barbara Boxer has always spoken up, but the California Democrat seems to have gotten a lot louder lately. Her opposition to Condoleezza Rice's secretary of state nomination was so combative that it was parodied on Saturday Night Live. That came on the heels of her decision to sign onto a House member's complaint about Ohio voting problems, forcing Congress to debate them before certifying President Bush's re-election victory.

She's being touted on liberal blogs as the Democrats' best hope for president in 2008. Conservatives are excoriating her as -- in House Minority Leader Tom DeLay's phrase -- the leader of the "'X-Files' wing" of the Democratic Party.

[...]

Barely five feet tall, Boxer must stand on a box -- which she sometimes refers to as "the Boxer Box" -- to see over the podium at press conferences. Fond of gold jewelry and colorful, occasionally mismatched outfits, she's energetic and aggressive, given to dressing down government officials at hearings, especially when reporters are within earshot.

[...]

But the combative qualities that turn some people off endear her to others.

"Democrats are so afraid of being criticized, or so afraid that they'll be accused of being too liberal, that they don't really act with the courage of their convictions. And then comes Barbara Boxer," says Madeleine Begun Kane, a writer from Queens, N.Y., who created a "President Boxer" blog. "She's been a shining light during an otherwise very depressing period." [Emphasis added.]

For the record, Boxer says she has no interest in running for president. But she's gratified by the blogs and the Boxer for President bumper stickers selling for $3.95 on the Internet.

Way to go, Madeleine! You've got the fire going. (And it should be humbly noted that this blog is on the blogroll of the President Boxer blog.)

Daily Kos is promoting a No to Gonzales database of blogs that have written posts opposed to the appointment of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. Check it out, and if you or someone you know has a blog that has written against the appointment, go here to add your name to the list.

Say No to Alberto. Hey, that has a nice rhythmic ring to it.

Sweden has some very tough anti-hate speech laws, and a Pentecostal preacher has run afoul of them.

One Sunday in the summer of 2003, the Rev. Ake Green, a Pentecostal pastor, stepped into the pulpit of his small church in the southern Swedish village of Borgholm. There, the 63-year-old clergyman delivered a sermon denouncing homosexuality as "a deep cancerous tumor in the entire society" and condemning Sweden's plan to allow gays to form legally recognized partnerships.

"Our country is facing a disaster of great proportions," he told the 75 parishioners at the service. "Sexually twisted people will rape animals," Green declared, and homosexuals "open the door to forbidden areas," such as pedophilia.

With these words, which the local newspaper published at his request, Green ran afoul of Sweden's strict laws against hate speech. He was indicted, convicted and sentenced to 30 days in jail. He remains free pending appeal.

[...]

In Sweden, Green's case has focused particular attention on the government's decision in 2002 to expand the country's longstanding law against hate speech to cover gays and lesbians.

Critics of the prosecution say that while the pastor's words might be hateful and extremist, the law was never intended to cover what a preacher said from the pulpit.

"My view is that one could argue about some words in his preaching, but he should not be put in jail for it," said Mikael Oscarsson, a Christian Democratic member of parliament who met with religious groups in Washington last fall to publicize the case. "As a nation we have signed declarations saying one should have the right to speak and to express oneself," he said. "This law goes against that right."

Not so, say supporters of the law. In their view, the issue is stopping people -- whether or not they are pastors -- from promoting intolerance of gays and lesbians.

"Ake Green is only using his religion to say very bad things about gay and lesbian people as a group," said Soren Andersson, president of the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights.

"If you look at his speech, and take away the word 'gay' and put in the word 'Jew,' you have a different picture.

"I don't think it's okay to say those things about Jews," Andersson said. "But when it comes to gays and lesbians, it's okay? Why? . . . This is about people -- it's about living people who are already treated very badly here."

While I admire the sentiment behind the Swedish law, I think it's over the top. History has proved that in a democratic society if you let the bigmouths and the crackpots just go ahead and talk, they'll end up as a laughingstock. Such laws undermine the premise that a free society can tolerate people intent on making fools of themselves.

William E. Gibson of the Sun-Sentinel looks at how talk about changing Social Security have got people fretting in Florida.

All five of the House districts with the largest numbers of Social Security recipients are in Florida. The state as a whole is second only to California in the total number of retirees.

Three of the nation's top five districts are in southern Florida. But the district with the most Social Security recipients is a fast-growing, less-affluent area along the west coast north of Tampa. In Florida's fifth district, where spreading suburbs are lined by orange groves, one of every four residents is retired.

Their representative in Congress was seething last week about an anonymous telephone message that tells her constituents: "Hi. I am calling to alert you that your congresswoman, Ginny Brown-Waite, supports privatizing Social Security. This plan would cost taxpayers two trillion dollars. It would also decrease future benefits to retirees by 47 percent."

The same phone message came to homes in South Florida.

Rep. Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, quickly issued a statement denouncing the message and asserting in bold letters: "I WILL NOT VOTE TO PRIVATIZE SOCIAL SECURITY."

"The older people who got these calls just had a stressful night," she said, after her office received 200 calls about the phone message. "I have so many seniors for whom this is the only income they have, people who have worked hard all their lives and moved to Florida to get out of the snow. It makes me especially attuned to the need for equity and making sure the Social Security recipients are held harmless and their Social Security is not cut in any form."

[...]

"My husband lost two-thirds of his retirement savings on Wall Street, where George Bush wants to put Social Security," said Florence Pettinger, 62, of Sunrise, her voice shaking with emotion. " The truth is there is nothing wrong with Social Security. We have other crises, with Medicare and Iraq, but Social Security is solvent. This is our hard-earned money, and George Bush should leave it alone."

[...]

Many Democrats favor reversing some of the recently enacted tax cuts to help finance the program.

"For the most part, the people in my district are against the president's plan. They are generally in favor of the notion of personal accounts if they are funded by a different source other than diverting Social Security funds," said Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, whose district in parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties has the nation's second largest recipient population. "I think they overwhelmingly support rescinding the president's tax cuts and putting money back into Social Security."

Gee, that sounds like a great idea! Haven't I heard that before? Oh yeah - John Kerry proposed that, and so did Al Gore. Hmmm.

The Bushies' second term policy will be to provide permanent solutions to temporary problems, and vice versa.

From NBC 6:

A University of Central Oklahoma student group is planning what it calls "Straight Pride Week" on campus.

Members of the College Republicans said despite objections from some, they have every right to celebrate.

"The general gist is that if you are a straight student on campus be proud, be loud, this is your time to shine," said college Republican Kyle Houts.

The group has posted fliers on campus that read, "we're here, we're conservative, we're out."

Members of the Gay Alliance for Tolerance and Equality say they consider the College Republican's celebration an attack on gay and lesbian students.

"What is there to say about it, 'I'm proud, and I'm straight and I guess white,' I don't know?" said GATE member Jennifer Rodriguez. "I think they definitely are being discriminatory because there's probably a lot of gay Republicans out there."

University officials have given the College Republicans permission to put up their fliers, but say their approval does not constitute an endorsement.

I'll bet if these guys took the little quiz below (also available from Lab Kat), they'd score below zero...not to mention their chances of scoring in any other way. Besides, isn't every week "Straight Pride Week"?

From the Miami Herald:

Two powerful Republican lawmakers are urging Gov. Jeb Bush to restore civil rights to felons who have completed their sentences -- and have vowed to support a voter referendum to end Florida's 137-year-old ban altogether if the governor refuses.

Sen. Stephen Wise, a Jacksonville Republican and chairman of the criminal justice committee, said the Legislature could put an amendment on the ballot that would permanently eliminate the ban from the Florida Constitution if a majority of voters approves.

"I think it has great potential," he said. "If our committee would do it, then we could get this [idea] out of the Legislature and get it onto a statewide ballot. Its time has come."

[...]

Florida is one of seven states that strip felons of their civil rights for life unless the Clemency Board, composed of the governor and Cabinet, restores them. The state Constitution gives the Board complete authority over who regains rights, including the right to vote and serve on a jury.

Bush did not directly address the proposals by Wise and Villalobos, but an e-mail from his spokesman Jacob DiPietre said the governor "believes the current process is fair.

"[Florida's clemency rules] require felons convicted of serious crimes to actively participate in the clemency process in order to have their rights restored."

After a Herald investigation late last year exposed widespread flaws in Florida's clemency system, Bush and the Cabinet revised some of the rules.

[...]

"It clearly doesn't help public safety to unreasonably deny reformed felons the right to vote," said Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, a former federal prosecutor. "I think you want reformed felons back into the workplace, back into society, returning as legitimate citizens."

But Gov. Bush is still disinclined to change the rules until he determines whether or not the convicted felons would be in a position to donate a truly interesting sum of money to his campaign.

I had no idea I was this cool.

I found this link via Houston at Dancing By Myself.

The weather's back to normal here in South Florida, just in time for the weekend.

Aside from the new blogroll members noted earlier this week, President Boxer, a blog by Mad Kane, joins the list, as does Bobby Cramer, my own blog dedicated to my writing and the occasional tidbits of fiction or drama I might share.

Here's what's going on in The Liberal Coalition recently:

All Facts and Opinon has both on the pay-for-plug story.

archy transcribes the semantic battle over what to call "screwing up Social Security."

Bark Bark Woof Woof on the right to live and let live (hey, it's my blog and my blogroll - I can plug my own stuff!)

BlogAmy really knows how to shovel it. I mean snow.

bloggg on teenage sex and love.

Chris has his Oscar picks.

Collective Sigh sneezes at the health insurance industry.

RDF at Corrente has some Declarative statments.

NTodd at Dohiyi Mir remembers Auschwitz.

Echidne of the Snakes ruminates on things as the snow falls.

edwardpig has the 411 on people to contact to oppose the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales.

First Draft on the interrogation techniques at Gitmo.

The Fulcrum has been quiet this week, but read his thoughts on the retirement of John Ashcroft from last week.

The Gamer's Nook lends a helping hand.

Happy Furry Puppy has the real press conference transcript.

iddybud wonders what Bush means by "freedom."

The Invisible Library reports that the CIA has a real puzzle in its backyard. (Keith has also revived his novel blog.)

Kick the Leftist on the Iraq exit strategy.

Left Is Right gets graphic over the deficit.

Make Me a Commentator serves up some Chile.

MercuryX23 shares a letter from his congressman.

Musing's musing's Michael is back from France.

Pen-Elayne tells us about the guy already waiting in line to see Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

The Republican Sinner of the week is Ricky Vandal, whoever that is.

Ugarte at Rick's discovers the key to happiness.

Rook's Rant is about what Bush has learned since the 1970's: not much.

Rubber Hose on the Iraq election.

Scrutiny Hooligans is on the alert for propaganda.

SoonerThought on the cuts in student financial aid.

Speedkill reports on conservatives making Do'h.

Steve Gilliard reports on Nightline's Town Meeting on Iraq.

T. Rex explains his blogroll system and sets a good example.

Trish Wilson has fun with a law site.

Wanda on the new Bush.

WTF Is It Now on some recent headlines.

The Yellow Doggerel Democrat has his own take on the Social Security flim-flam.

Happy Friday!

Bush: Hmm; the "crisis in Social Security" gambit didn't work, so... hey, what about racism? Yeah, that never fails!

Salon.com has unearthed another columnist being paid by the Bush administration to shill for them.

One day after President Bush ordered his Cabinet secretaries to stop hiring commentators to help promote administration initiatives, and one day after the second high-profile conservative pundit was found to be on the federal payroll, a third embarrassing hire has emerged. Salon has confirmed that Michael McManus, a marriage advocate whose syndicated column, "Ethics & Religion," appears in 50 newspapers, was hired as a subcontractor by the Department of Health and Human Services to foster a Bush-approved marriage initiative. McManus championed the plan in his columns without disclosing to readers he was being paid to help it succeed.

Read the rest here (subscription/Day Pass required). Don't you just love the irony of a guy who writes a column on ethics being on the take? But that's par for the course for the same crowd that produced Bill Bennett (aka Mr. Vegas) and Bill O'Reilly, who has done wonders for the dried-gourd business.

I'm gay. I didn't choose it, I didn't get it from having a psychological trauma as a child, nor did I get it from the way my parents raised me, because if that caused it, my two married brothers and my sister, a mother of two, have some catching up to do. I believe it's genetic; it comes from the same source of programming that made me right-handed and six feet tall with brown eyes. I believe that every other gay person on the planet is that way for the same reason I am; I have met far too many gay people from far too many varied backgrounds and cultures to blame it on reading Superman comics at the barber shop. It's not something that is chosen, it's not a lifestyle, and it's not something you can change without causing great damage to the heart and the soul. And I'm really getting tired of having to write basically the same post over and over again telling people that.

But it seems I have to. Once again the pompous, arrogant, sanctimonious, homophobic, and ignorant tightasses are at it again. Dr. James Dobson, Lou Sheldon, Donald Wildmon, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson I can put up with; they're big mouths with a dimbulb following, but they're not collecting their salary from the taxpayer (unless you consider the fact they probably have their income sheltered within an inch of the IRS code). But now we have a new Secretary of Education, one Margaret Spellings (now there's a name for an education secretary right out of Dickens) who objects to the PBS children's series Postcards from Buster peripherally showing two lesbian couples who live in Vermont as a part of an episode about sugaring. The Department of Education, which helps fund PBS, says it wants a refund on whatever money the producers got from them to make the episode. According to the New York Times, "Ms. Spellings said many parents would not want children exposed to a lesbian life style."

Well, Ms. Spellings, guess what. The first goal of education is to teach children that not everyone in the world is exactly like them or some Donna Reed / Ozzie and Harriet vision of what you think life is like, and the sooner children learn to accept that fact, the better off they will be. If they see Buster the Bunny visiting a lesbian couple's house on television, they may feel comfortable when they visit the home of one of their classmates who has two mommies - or two dads. By the way, Buster doesn't come from a perfect home: his own parents are divorced. I don't see Secretary Spelling getting all frothed up about that. So why is it okay to show a child (albeit it a fictional one and a ruminant at that) who comes from a broken home, but not children living in a happy family with two parents who love each other and who live in a state where their union is sanctioned by state law?

What bothers me the most about this is not the state-sponsored gay-bashing. I'm used to it, and I've come to expect it, even if it comes from the political party that says it is the champion of individual rights and limited government. But if they really believe in that so much, why the hell can't they stay out of my life? Why do they feel that they have the right to tell people that the lives of gay people are somehow unworthy of being shown on TV? Do they dare make the same judgement about showing the lives of black families, or Muslims, or interracial couples? Of course not - they've done that on Postcards from Buster without a peep from the Department of Education. But queers? Oh my God! Lock up the children!

These people are making judgements about my life and millions of others without knowing us. They assume that ten percent of the population - which is the commonly accepted percentage of gays and lesbians in the world - is unworthy of being portrayed as normal people. In plain English, the term for that is bigotry. My plain English reply to them is that they have no right whatsoever to pass judgement on me or anyone else, and the sooner they get out of my life - and the lives of any other group of people they don't like - the better off this world will be.

I know this isn't the last post I'm going to have to write about this. More's the pity, but I'm going to keep doing it until I don't have to. Consider it blogger security.

From a friend:

Muslims do not recognize Judaism as a religion.

Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah.

Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the leader of the Christian faith.

Baptists do not recognize each other at Hooters.

The far-right has Dr. James Dobson; the far-left has Ward Churchill. From the Rocky Mountain News:

A University of Colorado professor has sparked controversy in New York over an essay he wrote that maintains that people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were not innocent victims.

Students and faculty members at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., have been protesting a speaking appearance on Feb. 3 by Ward L. Churchill, chairman of the CU Ethnic Studies Department.

They are upset over an essay Churchill wrote titled, "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens."

The essay takes its title from a remark that black activist Malcolm X made in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Malcolm X created controversy when he said Kennedy's murder was a case of "chickens coming home to roost."

Churchill's essay argues that the Sept. 11 attacks were in retaliation for the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 U.S. bombing raid and by economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations following the Persian Gulf War.

The essay contends the hijackers who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11 were "combat teams," not terrorists.

It states: "The most that can honestly be said of those involved on Sept. 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course."

The essay maintains that the people killed inside the Pentagon were "military targets."

"As for those in the World Trade Center," the essay said, "well, really, let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break."

The essay goes on to describe the victims as "little Eichmanns," referring to Adolph Eichmann, who executed Adolph Hitler's plan to exterminate Jews during World War II.

The attacks on Sept. 11, he said, were "a natural and inevitable consequence of what happens as a result of business as usual in the United States. Wake up."

A longtime activist with the American Indian Movement, Churchill was one of eight defendants acquitted last week in Denver County Court on charges of disrupting Denver's Columbus Day parade.

His pending speech at Hamilton has drawn criticism from professors and students, including Matt Coppo, a sophomore whose father died in the World Trade Center attacks.

"His views are completely hurtful to the families of 3,000 people," Coppo said.

A spokesman for Hamilton College released a statement noting that Hamilton is committed to "the free exchange of ideas. We expect that many of those who strongly disagree with Mr. Churchill's comments will attend his talk and make their views known."

I remember Prof. Churchill from my years at CU, and I can't say I'm surprised to hear this from him. I also think his logic is right along the lines of Timothy McVeigh: the target isn't the individuals but the system, and the human victims are collateral damage. I've had followers of Prof. Churchill accuse me personally of being a slaveowner just because I am white, regardless of the fact that most of my immediate ancestors arrived in this country in the latter part of the 19th Century from England and Wales.

That kind of thinking and blaming accomplishes nothing other than cage-rattling. I don't know what kind of measured response he expects from this sort of incendiary approach - my experience tells me that he doesn't really care anyway. The result will be that people will do more shouting than talking. And what's the point of that except to get a few headlines and raise a stink?

Who says stand-up comedy is dying? Not President Bush; he tried it out yesterday at the press conference in answer to a question about the upbeat tone he's taking regarding the election in Iraq.

He said that if he had told the reporters in the room a few years before that the Iraqi people would be voting, "you would look at me like some of you still look at me, with a kind of blank expression."

[Rimshot]

Actually, the blank expression is a result of all the reporters, after hearing about over thirty Marines being killed in a helicopter crash, wondering "Why the _____ is he so happy?"

As I was a few posts ago, there's a lawmaker in Oklahoma who wants to provide domesticated fowl with sporting goods.

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) -- An Oklahoma senator hopes to revive cockfighting in the state by putting tiny boxing gloves on the roosters instead of razors.

The Oklahoma legislature outlawed the blood sport in 2002 because of its cruelty to the roosters, which are slashed and pecked to death while human spectators bet on the outcome.

But State Sen. Frank Shurden, a Democrat from Henryetta and a long-time defender of cockfighting, said the ban had wiped out a $100-million business.

To try to revive it, he has proposed that roosters wear little boxing gloves attached to their spurs, as well as lightweight, chicken-sized vests configured with electronic sensors to record hits and help keep score.

"It's like the fencing that you see on the Olympics, you know, where they have little balls on the ends of the swords and the fencers wear vests," said Shurden. "That's the same application that would be applied to the roosters."

You just can't make this up. God knows I try.

Richard Cohen in the Washington Post:

Today is the 60th anniversary of the last century's most searing event, the liberation of Auschwitz. It was appropriately marked at the United Nations earlier in the week, but most people in most places took no heed, and even if they did, they may not have known what to make of it. I understand. The enormity of Auschwitz, let alone the Holocaust, is such that the human brain can scarcely contain it. Even to let Auschwitz in is to let God out.

[...]

Here is my fear. Because we cannot understand Auschwitz, because it is an immense bump in the road in our belief in a good God -- "a just God," the president said in his inaugural address -- we will let it slip from memory, remembered maybe like some statue in the town square that memorializes something or other, maybe a war, maybe a man. Reminders will seem like nagging, and when the survivors are finally gone (they have been an incredibly hardy lot) so, too, will be the obligation to remember. Ah, what a relief!

Then, bit by bit, Auschwitz will fade, becoming something that happened in the last century to people who some may insist had it coming anyway -- Jews and commies and Gypsies and homosexuals . . . mostly. For most people, it may become -- it is already becoming -- too dense a historic burden, a hideously heavy truth about who we can be, not just who we would like to be. Prince Harry just chucked it all. Someday, I fear, so shall we all and then -- as it has in Rwanda and at Srebrenica -- it will happen again.

And again.

Recent stories about Rep. Tom DeLay and his arrogant re-working of the House Ethics rules have brought back memories of what got the House Democrats in trouble in 1994 that led to the "Gingrich Revolution." Even Democrats are saying that what the Republicans are doing is the same thing that got them in trouble in the 1980's and early 90's. Nonsense, says Sam Rosenfeld in The American Prospect. The Republicans are much worse.

This is getting old. Republicans have long peddled the moral-equivalence line in order to rationalize their behavior in the majority as just deserts and to characterize all Democratic complaints as sour grapes. The mainstream acceptance of the notion that the Jim Wright-Tom Foley era was some cesspool of moral lassitude and institutional autocracy only serves to frame contemporary Republican practices as a natural progression in a political cycle, a version of politics as usual. It behooves Democrats seeking to revive their party’s fortunes through a reformist appeal to challenge this received wisdom -- not the least because, in fact, it’s utter nonsense.

There are two components of the majority “arrogance” one hears about: autocratic rule and corruption. On both counts, the claim of moral equivalence between the later Democratic majorities and the modern GOP congress is unfounded.

[...]

Plenty of ethical lapses and pay-to-play lawmaking took place under the Democratic majorities. But Republicans, upon taking the reins in 1995, were immediately more corrupt. The relationship between lobbyists and legislators became instantly more incestuous. (And I do mean “instantly”: On January 3, 1995, two days before the Republicans were to take official control of Congress, Tom DeLay gathered a large group of industry lobbyists into his new office and inaugurated a deregulatory lobbying-lawmaking collaboration called Project Relief; it was the start of a very beautiful friendship.) The Republican leadership has raised the value limit on lobbying gifts by about tenfold while easing restrictions on free junkets. Lobbyists have a more direct involvement in the writing of legislation than they ever did under the Democrats. The willingness to eviscerate ethical safeguards and oversight emerged more gradually under Republican control, but, particularly as DeLay consolidated his power over the course of the late ’90s and into George W. Bush’s first term, emerge it did.

You've got to hand it to the Republicans - they make the Democratic lapses look like small potatoes.

Now there are two conservative columnists who have been outted as being on the take to promote the Bush agenda, and the rest of the White House cheerleading squad is getting defensive.

In light of the second revelation this month that the Bush administration had hired a Republican-friendly pundit to help promote policy initiatives -- payments that were kept hidden from readers and viewers -- conservative commentators are calling on the White House to come clean and detail any other controversial agreements. The opinion makers say they don't want a black cloud of suspicion hanging over their own columns and broadcasts.

"If other contracts exist, then the White House should disclose them," says Jonah Goldberg, editor at large for National Review Online.

The distrust arose three weeks ago when USA Today revealed that Republican-leaning pundit Armstrong Williams pocketed $241,000 from the Department of Education in exchange for hyping a White House school initiative. On Wednesday, the Washington Post disclosed that Universal Press Syndicate columnist Maggie Gallagher had written approvingly in 2002 about Bush's $300 million marriage initiative. Gallagher stated that the initiative "would emphasize the importance of marriage to poor couples [and] educate teens on the value of delaying childbearing until marriage." But she failed to inform readers that she had a $21,000 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the proposal. Now, the question is: What other pundits were cashing checks? [Salon.com]

I've already taken the pledge, so unless you see the Bush twins wearing Bark Bark Woof Woof t-shirts, you know I'm not on the take. Well, yeah, I'd have to be a right-winger, too, and that's not gonna happen.

But that's not going to stop Maureen Dowd:

I still have many Christmas bills to pay. So I'd like to send a message to the administration: THIS SPACE AVAILABLE. I could write about the strong dollar and the shrinking deficit. Or defend Torture Boy, I mean, the esteemed and sage Alberto Gonzales. Or remind readers of the terrific job Condi Rice did coordinating national security before 9/11 - who could have interpreted a memo titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" as a credible threat? - not to mention her indefatigable energy obscuring information undercutting the vice president's dementia on Iraq.

As Groucho Marx once said, "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."

Updated to get the exact Groucho Marx quote.

My office is north of downtown on the edge of the neighborhood known as Little Haiti. I usually get to work before dawn. It's quiet; there's very little traffic is on the streets, and this morning as I crossed the street from the parking lot, I thought I heard a rooster crowing. Huh? I'm in the middle of one of the largest urban areas in the country. But when I got to the curb I stood and listened, and once again I heard the rooster. It sounded pretty close, too.

Find out Who's Who in Bobby Cramer.

From the New York Times:

Condoleezza Rice was easily confirmed as secretary of state today, overcoming charges from some Democrats that she had been a disingenuous architect of a failed administration policy in Iraq.

The Senate voted, 85 to 13, to confirm Ms. Rice, who will succeed Colin L. Powell and will be the first black woman to serve as the United States' top diplomat.

[...]

Twelve of the Senate's 44 Democrats and the chamber's lone independent, James Jeffords of Vermont, voted against Ms. Rice. No Republican voted against her.

[...]

Ms. Rice's severest critics accused her not just of making mistakes on Iraq but of outright deception. "We cannot get the truth from this administration," Senator Mark Dayton, Democrat of Minnesota, said in debate on Tuesday.

[...]

Those who voted against Ms. Rice, besides Mr. Jeffords and Mr. Dayton, were Senators Barbara Boxer of California, Edward M. Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts, Carl Levin of Michigan, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Richard Durbin of Illinois, Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, Evan Bayh of Indiana, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Tom Harkin of Iowa.

And Alberto Gonzales cleared the Judiciary Committee on a vote of 10-8.

Is that noise we hear the sound of some Democrats growing backbones?

The Stop Gonzales movement is beginning to pick up some momentum. Both the New York Times and Washington Post have editorials that question the wisdom of making a man who plays fast and loose with the rights and responsibilites of a nation at war under the Geneva Convention the Attorney General. The Post notes that allowing Mr. Gonzales and the Bush administration to continue with their policy of narrow interpretation of the rules makes for a dangerous precedent. Not only that, it opens the door to other countries to treat their prisoners, which could include our citizens, with the same disregard.

This is not a theoretical matter. The CIA today is holding an undetermined number of prisoners, believed to be in the dozens, in secret facilities in foreign countries. It has provided no account of them or their treatment to any outside body, and it has allowed no visits by the Red Cross. According to numerous media reports, it has subjected the prisoners to many of the abuses Mr. Gonzales said "might be permissible." It has practiced such mistreatment in Iraq, even though detainees there are covered by the Geneva Conventions; according to official investigations by the Pentagon, CIA treatment of prisoners there and in Afghanistan contributed to the adoption of illegal methods by military interrogators.

In an attempt to close the loophole, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) sought to attach an amendment to the intelligence reform legislation last fall specifying that "no prisoner shall be subject to torture or cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment that is prohibited by the Constitution, laws or treaties of the United States." The Senate adopted the provision unanimously. Later, however, it was stripped from the bill at the request of the White House. In his written testimony, Mr. Gonzales affirmed that the provision would have "provided legal protections to foreign prisoners to which they are not now entitled." Senators who supported the amendment consequently face a critical question: If they vote to confirm Mr. Gonzales as the government's chief legal authority, will they not be endorsing the systematic use of "cruel, inhumane and degrading" practices by the United States?

The New York Times is even harsher, citing Mr. Gonzales's performance in both the White House and Texas as a poor advocate for the law as compared to his role as a politician.

Alberto Gonzales's nomination as attorney general goes before the Senate at a time when the Republican majority is eager to provide newly elected President Bush with the cabinet of his choice, and the Democrats are leery of exposing their weakened status by taking fruitless stands against the inevitable. None of that is an excuse for giving Mr. Gonzales a pass. The attorney general does not merely head up the Justice Department. He is responsible for ensuring that America is a nation in which justice prevails. Mr. Gonzales's record makes him unqualified to take on this role or to represent the American justice system to the rest of the world. The Senate should reject his nomination.

[...]

Other parts of Mr. Gonzales's record are also troubling. As counsel to George Bush when he was governor of Texas, Mr. Gonzales did a shockingly poor job of laying out the legal issues raised by the clemency petitions from prisoners on death row. And questions have been raised about Mr. Gonzales's account of how he got his boss out of jury duty in 1996, which allowed Mr. Bush to avoid stating publicly that he had been convicted of drunken driving.

Senate Democrats, who are trying to define their role after the setbacks of the 2004 election, should stand on principle and hold out for a more suitable attorney general. Republicans also have reason to oppose this nomination. At the confirmation hearings, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, warned that the administration's flawed legal policies and mistreatment of detainees had hurt the country's standing and "dramatically undermined" the war on terror. Given the stakes in that war, senators of both parties should want an attorney general who does not come with this nominee's substantial shortcomings.

If they're going to give Condoleezza Rice a pass to be Secretary of State after her demonstration of complete toadyism, the least the Senate can do is reject Mr. Gonzales. One toady is enough.

Not the real one.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Emmy-winning actress Stockard Channing was arrested for investigation of drunken driving after she tried to drive around a roadblock on the Hollywood Freeway, authorities said Tuesday.

Channing, 60, who won an Emmy for her role as first lady on NBC's "The West Wing," was stopped by California Highway Patrol officers on Dec. 14. She was jailed nearly three hours before being released without bail, the Sheriff's Department said.

Hey, if you had to give up your medical license because the Republicans were hounding your husband, President Jed Bartlet, you'd take a nip or two now and then.

From the Miami Herald:

A delegation sent by President Bush to Ukraine's presidential inauguration last weekend included a Ukrainian-American activist who has accused Jews of manipulating the Holocaust for their gain and blamed them for Soviet-era atrocities in Ukraine.

"Big money drives the Holocaust industry," Myron B. Kuropas wrote in August 2000.

The inclusion of Kuropas in the U.S. delegation to Sunday's inauguration of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, which was led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, appeared to be an embarrassment for the Bush administration.

A White House official, who refused to be identified by name, said Tuesday, "We were not aware of his previous statements. Had we been aware of such comments beforehand, we would not have invited Dr. Kuropas to be a member of the delegation."

[...]

The disclosure comes at a particularly awkward time.

Vice President Dick Cheney is to attend ceremonies on Thursday at the former Nazi death camp in Auschwitz, Poland, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps.

That's roughly the equivalent of sending David Duke to a ceremony honoring Nelson Mandela.

Paul Starr has a good op-ed in the New York Times about the choices Democrats have made in the past and how they can win in the future.

Democrats have paid a historic price for their role in the great moral revolutions that during the past half-century have transformed relations between whites and blacks, men and women, gays and straights. And liberal Democrats, in particular, have been inviting political oblivion - not by advocating the wrong causes, but by letting their political instincts atrophy and relying on the legal system.

To be sure, Democrats were right to challenge segregation and racism, support the revolution in women's roles in society, to protect rights to abortion and to back the civil rights of gays. But a party can make only so many enemies before it loses the ability to do anything for the people who depend on it. For decades, many liberals thought they could ignore the elementary demand of politics - winning elections - because they could go to court to achieve these goals on constitutional grounds. The great thing about legal victories like Roe v. Wade is that you don't have to compromise with your opponents, or even win over majority opinion. But that is also the trouble. An unreconciled losing side and unconvinced public may eventually change the judges.

And now we have reached that point. The Republicans, with their party in control of both elected branches - and looking to create a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that will stand for a generation - see the opportunity to overthrow policies and constitutional precedents reaching back to the New Deal.

That prospect ought to concentrate the liberal mind. Social Security, progressive taxation, affordable health care, the constitutional basis for environmental and labor regulation, separation of church and state - these issues and more hang in the balance.

Under these circumstances, liberal Democrats ought to ask themselves a big question: are they better off as the dominant force in an ideologically pure minority party, or as one of several influences in an ideologically varied party that can win at the polls? The latter, it seems clear, is the better choice.

[...]

And if a new Supreme Court overturns affirmative-action laws, Democrats will need to pursue equality in ways that avoid treating whites and blacks differently. Some liberals have long been calling for an emphasis on "race neutral" economic policies to recover support among working-class and middle-income white voters. Legal and political necessity may now drive all Democrats in that direction.

Republicans are leaving themselves open to this kind of strategy. Their party is far more ideologically driven and more beholden to the Christian right than it was even during the Ronald Reagan era. This is the source of the party's energy, but also its vulnerability. The Democrats' opportunity lies in becoming a broader, more open and flexible coalition that can occupy the center.

While the Democrats are certainly not in the best shape, they at least have the advantage of not being held hostage by a well-funded and big-mouthed extreme wing of their party. As crazy as this sounds, the Democrats could win back their majority by becoming the party of reason and sanity against the hubris and nutsery (vis. Dr. Dobson vs. SpongeBob SquarePants) from the other side...but only if they offer something more than "We're Not Nuts" and not apologizing for promoting liberal ideas and solutions.

Welcome some new blogs to the Favorites roll, as well as one returning. I usually do this as part of the Friday Blogaround, and I probably will again, but I thought that as long as I'm thinking of it, I'd do it now so I wouldn't forget.

Ezra Klein, formerly one of the Pandagon team, has struck out on his own.

Outside the Tent is sharp and sarcastic.

Silt 3.0, the blog of frequent commenter vaara, reports from Holland.

Vestal Vespa writes from one of my old stomping grounds - Longmont, Colorado.

Billmon's Whiskey Bar comes and goes like Brigadoon. Let's hope he's around to stay this time.

Take a look at them, and if they haven't blogrolled me, tell them to.

There's a new post on my writing - or lack of it - at Bobby Cramer.

The Senate Democrats seem to be the least of Bush's troubles.

A coalition of major conservative Christian groups is threatening to withhold support for President Bush's plans to remake Social Security unless Mr. Bush vigorously champions a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

The move came as Senate Republicans vowed on Monday to reintroduce the proposed amendment, which failed in the Senate last year by a substantial margin. Party leaders, who left it off their list of priorities for the legislative year, said they had no immediate plans to bring it to the floor because they still lacked the votes for passage.

But the coalition that wrote the letter, known as the Arlington Group, is increasingly impatient.

In a confidential letter to Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's top political adviser, the group said it was disappointed with the White House's decision to put Social Security and other economic issues ahead of its paramount interest: opposition to same-sex marriage.

[...]

The members of the coalition that wrote the letter are some of Mr. Bush's most influential conservative Christian supporters, and include Dr. James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the Southern Baptist Convention, the American Family Association, Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich.

Several members of the group said that not long ago, many of their supporters were working or middle class, members of families that felt more allegiance to the Democratic Party because of programs like Social Security before gravitating to the Republican Party as it took up more cultural conservative issues over the last 20 years.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, declined to talk about the letter, but said, "The enthusiasm to get behind his proposals is going to require that he get behind the issues that really motivated social conservative voters."

Asked to estimate the level of discontent with the White House among the group on a scale from one to 10, Mr. Perkins put it at 8.

This is what happens when you suck up to fanatics...they actually expect you to live up to your promises.

The Convention Diary has made it to the semi-finals of Wampum's 2004 Koufax Award for Best Series. Yip-yah! Go vote here.

There's talk again about secession - this time from the bitter blue states of the north, especially after 11/2.

If their plaints have an epicenter, it is in Charlotte, Vt., in the wood-frame house of Thomas Naylor, professor emeritus, agitator, author, Rage Against the Machine fan, and founder and chair of the "Second Vermont Republic." Naylor seeks the rebirth of Vermont as the independent nation it was between 1777 and 1791. White-haired, jowly and soft-spoken, Naylor describes his little band of "rebels" (the Second Vermont Republic boasts 125 card-carrying members) as "a peaceful, democratic, libertarian, grassroots movement opposed to the tyranny of the United States," which has become "too big, too centralized, too intrusive, too militarized, and too unresponsive to the needs of individual citizens and small communities."

There are all sorts of legal and possibly Constitutional issues that stand in the way of secession, but that's not stopping him from getting the buzz going.

Naylor is undeterred. He offers that no state is more historically prepared for going it alone than Vermont, which he calls "the most radical state in the Union" in terms of town meetings and direct democracy. Vermont, Naylor says, was the first state to outlaw slavery in its constitution of 1777, the first to mandate "universal manhood suffrage," and is currently one of only two states that allows incarcerated felons to vote. It has no death penalty and virtually no gun-control laws, yet remains one of the least violent jurisdictions in America. It has no military bases, no strategic resources, few military contractors. All three members of its congressional delegation voted against the Iraq war resolution.

Vermont is rural and wild, with the highest percentage of unpaved roads in the nation, the highest percentage of residents living in the countryside; it was the first state to ban billboards alongside highways. It is rebellious: It fathered Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys and 200 years later elected Howard Dean. With its vigorous environmental-impact laws, Vermont fended off the depredations of Wal-Mart superstores longer than any other state; Montpelier is the only state capital in America without a McDonald's restaurant. Following mock secession debates in seven Vermont towns in 1990, all seven voted for secession.

Now if we could only get Florida to let go of the Conch Republic...

Here we go again.

The U.S. Army expects to keep its troop strength in Iraq at the current level of about 120,000 for at least two more years, according to the Army's top operations officer.

While allowing for the possibility that the levels could decrease or increase depending on security conditions and other factors, Lt. Gen. James J. Lovelace Jr. told reporters yesterday that the assumption of little change through 2006 represents "the most probable case."

[...]

In a related development, Senate and House aides said yesterday that the White House will announce today plans to request an additional $80 billion to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That would come on top of $25 billion already appropriated for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. White House budget spokesman Chad Kolton declined to comment.

According to NPR, that brings the total to $300 billion for the whole megillah, including Afghanistan.

That's a lot of Frequent Flier miles.

Alberto Gonzales may have approved the use of torture for prisoners, but that might not be what trips him up in his quest to become the Attorney General. It could be something as mundane as doing a friend a favor, such as getting him out of jury duty. Michael Isikoff reports for Newsweek:

Senate Democrats put off a vote on White House counsel Alberto Gonzales's nomination to be attorney general, complaining he had provided evasive answers to questions about torture and the mistreatment of prisoners. But Gonzales's most surprising answer may have come on a different subject: his role in helping President Bush escape jury duty in a drunken-driving case involving a dancer at an Austin strip club in 1996. The judge and other lawyers in the case last week disputed a written account of the matter provided by Gonzales to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It's a complete misrepresentation," said David Wahlberg, lawyer for the dancer, about Gonzales's account.

Bush's summons to serve as a juror in the drunken-driving case was, in retrospect, a fateful moment in his political career: by getting excused from jury duty he was able to avoid questions that would have required him to disclose his own 1976 arrest and conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) in Kennebunkport, Maine—an incident that didn't become public until the closing days of the 2000 campaign. (Bush, who had publicly declared his willingness to serve, had left blank on his jury questionnaire whether he had ever been "accused" in a criminal case.) Asked by Sen. Patrick Leahy to describe "in detail" the only court appearance he ever made on behalf of Bush, Gonzales—who was then chief counsel to the Texas governor—wrote that he had accompanied Bush the day he went to court "prepared to serve on a jury." While there, Gonzales wrote, he "observed" the defense lawyer make a motion to strike Bush from the jury panel "to which the prosecutor did not object." Asked by the judge whether he had "any views on this," Gonzales recalled, he said he did not.

While Gonzales's account tracks with the official court transcript, it leaves out a key part of what happened that day, according to Travis County Judge David Crain. In separate interviews, Crain—along with Wahlberg and prosecutor John Lastovica—told NEWSWEEK that, before the case began, Gonzales asked to have an off-the-record conference in the judge's chambers. Gonzales then asked Crain to "consider" striking Bush from the jury, making the novel "conflict of interest" argument that the Texas governor might one day be asked to pardon the defendant (who worked at an Austin nightclub called Sugar's), the judge said. "He [Gonzales] raised the issue," Crain said. Crain said he found Gonzales's argument surprising, since it was "extremely unlikely" that a drunken-driving conviction would ever lead to a pardon petition to Bush. But "out of deference" to the governor, Crain said, the other lawyers went along. Wahlberg said he agreed to make the motion striking Bush because he didn't want the hard-line governor on his jury anyway. But there was little doubt among the participants as to what was going on. "In public, they were making a big show of how he was prepared to serve," said Crain. "In the back room, they were trying to get him off."

Gonzales last week refused to waver. "Judge Gonzales has no recollection of requesting a meeting in chambers," a senior White House official said, adding that while Gonzales did recall that Bush's potential conflict was "discussed," he never "requested" that Bush be excused. "His answer to the Senate's question is accurate," the official said.

See, it's always the little things that trip you up. Torture and violations of the Geneva Convention? Sure, no problem. But lie for a crony...

I've done some tidying up around the blog; just some general maintenance to make the place look a little neater and easier to read.

I've also signed up with CafePress.com to offer a modest line of Bark Bark Woof Woof stuff such as t-shirts, coffee mugs, bumperstickers, mousepads, and the like. Some even have Sam's picture on them. Stop by, take a look around, and pick up a souvenir or two.

Richard N. Haass in the Washington Post:

The idea, stated forcefully by President Bush in his second inaugural, that the United States would henceforth support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture "with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world" is by any yardstick an important declaration. A foreign policy doctrine, however, it is not. This is not to suggest that democracy doesn't matter. There is, for example, considerable evidence suggesting that mature democracies tend not to make war on one another. Today's Europe best illustrates this phenomenon.

Promoting democracy can also be useful as one component of the campaign against terrorism. Young men and women who are more involved in their societies and less alienated from their governments might see more reason to live for their causes than to kill and die for them. With luck, they might choose to become teachers rather than terrorists.

But there are more reasons to conclude that it is neither desirable nor practical to make democracy promotion the dominant feature of American foreign policy. The bottom line is that while the nature of other societies should always be a foreign policy consideration, it cannot and should not always be the foreign policy priority.

[...]

Prospects for the democratic improvement of a society can prove even worse absent occupation. Those who rejoiced 25 years ago in the overthrow of the shah of Iran should reflect on the fact that unattractive regimes can be replaced by something far worse. We thus need to be measured in what pressures we place on such countries as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Here as elsewhere it is important to observe the Hippocratic oath and first do no harm. Time is a factor in another sense. There is no realistic way that democracy will arrive in either North Korea or Iran before nuclear weapons do. And even if "freedom" were somehow to come to Tehran, it is almost certain that free Iranians would be as enthusiastic as the mullahs are about possessing nuclear weapons owing to the political popularity of these weapons and their strategic rationale given Iran's neighborhood.

Trade-offs for the United States are unavoidable. President Bush's statement Thursday that "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one" doesn't hold up to careful scrutiny. The United States has a vital interest in China helping to eliminate the North Korean nuclear program, in Russia helping to eliminate the Iranian one, in Pakistan going after al Qaeda, in Israelis and Palestinians making peace. We may prefer that China, Russia, Pakistan and Palestine also be democratic, but a preference is something markedly less than a vital interest. The United States simply cannot afford to allow promoting democracy to trump cooperation on what is truly essential.

Remember the mantra of the Carter Administration; human rights above all else? It was a noble goal, and it sounded like the perfect counterpoint to the dark tone of the Cold War. In practice it made more trouble for America than the policies of detente of the Nixon adminsitration in opening the door to China; accepting the lack of human rights in China while courting their billions of consumers seemed like the right way to defuse tensions and make a few bucks. (That doesn't apply to Cuba, but that's a whole other story.) Now Bush has basically said to the world, "My way or the highway," just stopping short of appointing Steven Segal as Secretary of State. I think he's going to have about as much luck with this bulging-bicep approach as Jimmy Carter did by enouraging everyone to hold hands and sing "Feelings."

It's 41 degrees at 7:00 a.m. Yeah, yeah, I know - that's balmy for the rest of the country, and for me barely worthy of wearing my Toledo Mud Hens jacket, but down here that's the coldest of the year.

The coldest period is expected between 4 and 8 a.m., Warner said, when wind, combined with the frigid air, will make it feel like it's freezing in South Florida. While Miami-Dade and Monroe counties -- with lows expected to bottom out around 39 degrees -- are likely to escape freeze warnings issued Sunday for the rest of the state, a windchill advisory went out for all of South Florida.

"That's for wind chills expected to be in the 30- to 35-degree range," Warner said. "That's how it will feel to the exposed skin."

[...]

Sergio Campos, a case manager at the Miami-Dade courthouse, said he was lucky compared to relatives in Queens, N.Y., who were buried under more than a foot of snow.

"It's not that big of a deal," Campos said. "It's only cold for a day. . . . Two days later it's going back to 80 degrees."

Make that three days. Warner said we'll need to bundle up again Tuesday and Wednesday morning.

"We get two more nights in the mid to upper 40s," he said. "But the wind won't be blowing as much."

Oh? That's good news?

Where's that other layer? [Miami Herald]

If you're not used to it, it can be somewhat startling, and for those of us who grew up in the north, we get these cool snaps once or twice a year just to remind us what we left behind.

PS: That reminds me; a couple of weeks ago I took the Mustang in for its oil change and I told the guy to be sure to check the anti-freeze. He said, "Check the what?" Turns out that down here they call the stuff in the radiator "coolant." You can take the boy out of Ohio...

Salon.com bids farewell to Johnny Carson.

I'm outta here, but before I go... I have to admit I'm still obsessed with Hillary.

I hear there's some weather up north, and also there's some football going on. Well, stay inside. Do some reading.

The New York Times has an article that answers the much-asked question: Who came up with the typeface for the GAS FOOD (which is often an accurate description of the menu at the IHOP) signs along the interstate?

More than a decade ago, a Federal Highway Administration study predicted that by 2005, 20 percent of American drivers would be over 65, creating a major safety problem. Age tends to diminish night vision, especially the ability to distinguish contrast, and older drivers are vulnerable to what engineers call "overglow" or "halation," when letters lighted by headlights blur together. The government's recommendation: Make the type on signs as much as 20 percent larger. But simply increasing the height of letters would mean much larger signs — 40 to 50 percent larger, with a resulting increase in cost as well as visual clutter.

But a team of researchers led by Donald Meeker, a sign designer in Larchmont, N.Y., and James Montalbano, a type designer in Brooklyn, offered a different approach. They urged replacing the familiar letters of the Federal Highway Administration Standard Alphabets for Traffic Control Devices with new ones designed to accommodate older drivers.

Devised by Mr. Meeker and Mr. Montalbano and researched by scientists at Penn State and Texas A&M, the new typeface is called Clearview, and in the world of sign engineers it is monumental. "It is the biggest change in the last 30 years of traffic control devices," said Art Breneman, who recently retired as the chief of traffic engineering and operations at the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

Now you will be able to see much clearer that you can't get there from here.

George F. Will suggests an early Frost will help the Democrats.

Having had their fill of post-election introspection, the 447 Democratic Party luminaries who will elect their new chairman Feb. 12 surely now yearn for stronger wine and madder music. Many yearn for Howard Dean, the highly carbonated tribune of "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." Dean is fun -- a scream, you might say.

But losing is not. So the 447 should wonder whether, after John Kerry's defeat, another liberal Northeasterner is the proper poultice for the party's wounds. Hotline's poll -- 42 percent of the 447 responding -- shows that a refugee from a red state is second behind Dean.

Martin Frost is a political lifer eager to prolong his engagement in party affairs, which began in 1968, when, as a Georgetown University law student, he volunteered at the headquarters of Hubert Humphrey's presidential campaign. Frost's 13-term congressional career was ended in November when he was one of four Texas Democrats who were victims of the mid-decade redistricting engineered by Rep. Tom DeLay. Democrats like victims as much as they dislike DeLay, so Frost has a double claim on Democrats' pity, which is their sincerest compliment.

[...]

Frost wants to reverse the atrophy of many state parties that happens when national Democrats chase the chimera of winning the White House by "running the table" in the 18 to 20 states they contest. His wife is the highest-ranking female general on active Army duty, and he supported a general -- Wesley Clark -- for the 2004 presidential nomination. Frost thinks that if Democrats will stop talking about gun control -- he talks about shooting awards he won at age 8 -- and if they can sound more serious about the U.S. military's guns, Democrats can carry some red states.

I respect Martin Frost, and if the Democrats want to win a few votes, they could make him the DNC chair. That would probably make Ralph Nader happy, too; it would prove his point that there's not a lot of difference between the two parties.

Harvey Fierstein takes over as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway. No, seriously.

A kazoo has joined the music makers of the placid Broadway revival of "Fiddler on the Roof" at the Minskoff Theater. From the moment it sounds its first word, Harvey Fierstein's voice causes an entire audience to prick up its ears in the manner of a dog startled by a sharp whistle.

Heard not so long ago issuing from the plus-size form of Edna Turnblad, the agoraphobic housewife in the musical "Hairspray," Mr. Fierstein's voice is one of the most distinctive in theater, belonging to the legend-making league of those of Carol Channing and Glynis Johns. And though a kazoo is what it most often brings to mind, it also variously evokes a congested saxophone, wind in a bottle and echoes from a crypt. It is, in a way, its own multicolored show. Whether it fits comfortably into the little Russian village of Anatevka, where "Fiddler" is set, is another issue.

When David Leveaux's production of this much-loved, much-performed 40-year-old musical of life on a Jewish shtetl first opened last February, it was notable principally for its elegant, autumnal set (by Tom Pye) and its anesthetizing blandness. In the central role of Tevye the milkman, a part created in 1964 by Zero Mostel, the usually excellent Alfred Molina seemed sad, tentative and often absent. The whole show appeared to suffer from a similar lack of engagement with its material.

Mr. Leveaux, the fashionable London director behind the Broadway revivals of "Nine" and Tom Stoppard's "Jumpers," may have been aiming for a tone of lyrical lament, of a goodbye to a folkloric way of life about to disappear. But it has always been the robustness as well as the sentimentality of Jerry Bock's and Sheldon Harnick's songs and Joseph Stein's book that has made "Fiddler" such an enduring favorite. Led by the somnambulistic Mr. Molina, and a bizarrely chic Randy Graff as Tevye's wife, Golde, Mr. Leveaux's interpretation sometimes barely had a pulse.

That omission has been remedied to some extent by Mr. Molina's new replacement. Even at his quietest, Mr. Fierstein, who won a Tony Award for "Hairspray," has the presence of a waking volcano. And lest anyone think he needs drag to be big, let it be noted that he wears Tevye's tattered trousers with a homey and winning ease. To see the gray-bearded, bright-eyed Mr. Fierstein pulling a horseless milk cart with sardonic resignation is, you may well think, to look upon the image of the Tevye of the Sholem Aleichem stories that inspired the show.

It is Mr. Fierstein's greatest asset as a performer, that unmistakable voice, that perversely shatters this illusion. Theatergoers who saw - or more to the point heard - this actor in "Hairspray" will require at least 10 minutes to banish echoes of Edna. But even audience members unfamiliar with Mr. Fierstein may find him a slightly jarring presence.

Tevye must to some degree be an everyman, albeit in exaggerated, crowd-pleasing form. And Mr. Fierstein, bless him, shakes off any semblance of ordinariness as soon as he opens his mouth. Every phrase he speaks or sings, as he shifts uncannily among registers, becomes an event. And the effect is rather as if Ms. Channing were playing one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's simple, all-American heroines in "Oklahoma!" or "Carousel."

I've seen everyone from Topol (in London in 1971) to Ernie Sabella (at the University of Miami in 1972) as Tevye, and I'd love to see this one, too.

I'm not sure who I want to see win the championship games today - all I know is that these games are usually a lot more interesting than the Super Bowl. Let the hype begin. And while the Northeast US digs out from the blizzard, I have several diversions: I taped The O.C. and CSI from Thursday, there are a couple of good books I'm in the middle of reading, there's some writing to do, the crossword to solve, and the annual Concours d'Elegance car show on the Miracle Mile in Coral Gables. Busy day, busy day.

Link to this post | posted by Mustang Bobby @ 7:44 AM  

Maureen Dowd in the New York Times:

Some of the same advisers who filled Mr. Bush's brain with sugary visions of a quick and painless Iraq makeover did mean the speech to be literal; they are drawing up military options for the rest of the Middle East. Once again, the lovable and malleable president seems to be soaking up the martial mind-set of those around him, almost like ... a sponge.

SpongeBush SquarePants!

We can only hope that Dr. Dobson doesn't pick up on the resemblance. SpongeBob, as his song goes, "lives in a pineapple under the sea/absorbent and yellow and porous is he!" SpongeBush lives in a bubble in D.C./absorbent and shallow and porous is he!

SpongeBush ensnared the country in a whale of a mess in Iraq because he guilelessly absorbed the neocons' dire warnings about Saddam's weapons capabilities and their rosy assumptions about Ahmad Chalabi's leadership capabilities.

Dick Cheney is a gruff Mr. Krabs taskmaster to SpongeBush, but SpongeBush is crazy about him anyhow. W. trustingly let his vice president make the worst-case scenario about Iraq a first-case scenario.

Mr. Bush might have thought he was just blowing pretty bubbles full of lofty ideals about freedom and liberty in his speech, but Mr. Cheney and the neocons seem intent on filleting Iran and Syria. (Doesn't Richard Perle remind you of the snarky and pretentious next-door neighbor to SpongeBob, Squidward Tentacles?)

The vice president told Don Imus that Iran was "right at the top of the list" of trouble spots, and that Israel "might well decide to act first" with a military strike.

Even if he's a little light in the flippers, SpongeBob has brought children good, clean fun. SpongeBush has brought the world dark, endless fights.

Next week: CIA Director Porter Goss does Blue's Clues.

I've created a blog for my writing called Bobby Cramer, and I've reprinted the Writing on Writing series over there. I may also post bits and pieces of the novel, but don't look for it right away; I'm more wrapped up in writing the story itself than I am about writing about writing the story.

Stop by if you like.

From the Sun-Sentinel:

RENO, Nev. -- A 50-year-old Reno man who was hospitalized after he castrated himself told police he learned of the procedure on the Internet and did so to lower his libido. The man, whose name was not released, called 911 at about 1:30 a.m. Monday and asked for help because he could not stop the bleeding from a self-castration operation, police said.

Reno police and medics responded to the man's home and he was taken by ambulance to the hospital.

Washoe Medical Center officials cited privacy issues on why they could not release any information on the man, including his condition. But police said hospital officials confirmed Wednesday the man successfully castrated himself.

"The man obviously needs some sort of counseling," Reno police Lt. Ron Donnelly told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

I have this vision of every man reading this story and involuntarily crossing his legs as a shudder runs through him. And I daresay there are some people who are Googling "self-castration."

As for the man needing counseling; well, I think that's the second thing he needs right now.

Here you go, Karl; I did my bit for The Speech. Leave a twenty on the dresser and toss me my beeper.

This New York Times editorial has come as close as it can to laughing out loud at Dr. James Dobson for his hyper hissy-fit over Spongebob Squarepants.

"Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?"

"SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS!"

"Absorbent and yellow and porous is he ..."

... not to mention dopey and charming and more hugely overexposed than ever, thanks to an anti-homosexual attack from the Christian right. Because of a media fuss ignited by the American Family Association and Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, this cartoon character is well on his way to culture-war immortality, up there with those moral saboteurs Murphy Brown and Tinky Winky.

It's not that Dr. Dobson has a problem with Mr. SquarePants per se. He is angry, rather, about a video made for grade schools by the We Are Family Foundation that features SpongeBob and other TV characters. It doesn't mention sex. But the foundation's Web site says this: "I pledge to have respect for people whose abilities, beliefs, culture, race, sexual identity or other characteristics are different from my own." How could anyone be against that?

Dr. Dobson is. He has denounced the video as a bait-and-switch, one that uses cartoons to legitimize a group that will corrupt children with a homosexual agenda.

We find it strange, actually, that the intolerant Dr. Dobson has not taken aim at SpongeBob himself, who is naughty and rude enough to give many parents pause. After "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie" came out, a Christian family Web site made a long list of worrisome bits, including "cartoon rear male nudity, repeatedly," "pinching of banner staff between nude buttocks" and "suggestion of sadomasochism in transvestitism."

As any weary parent knows, America's children spend billions of hours watching movies and shows like that, absorbing underwear jokes, flatulence gags and mushy messages of tolerance until their brains run out their ears.

There may be a threat in all that, but Dr. Dobson and his allies seem to have missed it entirely.

As anyone who has endured bullies and pompous fools knows, the one way to deflate them is to laugh at them. If this is as close as the Times can come, well, that's good enough.

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin said he is willing to put his political career on the line over the right for Canadians to have same-sex marriage.

Martin told reporters in Beijing that he wasn't keen to hold an election, but said he was willing to go to the polls over the issue.

The prime minister's remarks followed Conservative Leader Stephen Harper's allegation on Thursday that the Liberals' support for same-sex marriage could evolve one day into support for polygamy.

"It's not my intention to go into an election," Martin told reporters in French. "We want to govern. Am I ready to go into an election to uphold the Charter of Rights against those who would attack it? The answer is certainly yes."

Conservative member of Parliament Monte Solberg told CBC News Friday that Martin "better be careful what he wishes for." He said there were a lot of traditional Liberal supporters, particularly "ethnic" groups, who may "not be with him on same-sex." [CBC]

Not that I doubt for a minute that Mr. Martin hasn't done the research and the polling to be sure that the Liberals would win in an election, but I still think it takes a lot of guts to take this kind of stand. We know all too well that Mr. Bush and the Republicans were more than willing to stand for election by being against same-sex marriage - after all, it's easy to be against something - but do you think any American leader would be willing to go to the mat in favor of it? That will happen about the same time chickens start using dental floss.

I had this terrible dream last night that Bush was re-elected and he had a big party to celebrate. I gotta stop eating the shrimp and anchovy pizzas...

World O'Crap has joined the blogroll. I think I'm the last blogger in the world to add it. Also, ZJB-Radio Montserrat is on board to add the spice of the Caribbean to your listening pleasure. "Zed-Jah-Bee" has a mix of reggae, ska, and local favorites, and you can also catch up on the BBC World News and all the cricket scores.

Let's take a look around The Liberal Coalition on this day after the first day of the countdown to the eviction of Dubya.

Natalie of All Facts and Opinions has a detailed diary on her day of protest in Washington yesterday.

archy backs Kinky Friedman for Governor of Texas.

BlogAmy waxes poetic (she's a writer, too, y'know!)

bloggg celebrates snow.

Chris wonders why ADA Serena Southerlyn was really fired from Law & Order.

At Collective Sigh, Andante notes that there were other parties in D.C. last night.

The Farmer at Corrente lets fly on the manure that's feeding the roses...as in rosy scenario.

NTodd on the latest threat to kittens.

Echidne offers some poetic reflections.

According to edwardpig, there's hope that the same-sex marriage ban amendment will die in Massachusetts.

Holden at First Draft has pictures from the Inaugural festivities.

The Fulcrum goes shopping.

The Gamer's Nook says that the place to party in Australia is at a funeral.

Happy Furry Norbizness totes up the list of places where freedom ain't on the march.

Jude at Iddybud ponders the words and deeds of Bush's speech.

Keith at The Invisible Library has started posting chapters of his novel, The Tragic Circus. He's off to a good start.

Kick the Leftist is back and revamped. Welcome back, guys.

Left Is Right went dark for the day in protest.

Bryant on the comparison between FDR and Dubya on Social Security.

Michael reports from France.

Pen-Elayne has been cooking up something.

The Republican Sinner today is John Hinderaker.

Ugarte at Rick's tries out his act for the skiers at Winter Park, Colorado.

Rook's Rant takes on Wil Wheaton.

Upyernoz joins the kool kidz (like me).

Scrutiny Hooligans has the poop on Jerry Corsi, who wants to run against John Kerry.

Alex has revamped SoonerThought and brings us thoughts on yesterday's event.

Speedkill on the selling out of hip-hop.

Steve Gilliard reports on the lack of troops or armor in Iraq.

T. Rex on the obedience of the average NRA member.

Trish admits her guilty pleasures in rotten movies.

Wanda on our freedoms, such as they are.

WTF Is It Now on recent polling.

Steve tops the charts with his Inaugural Ball doggerel.

Don't forget that voting is still open at Wampum for the 2004 Koufax Awards, including (hint, hint) Most Deserving of Wider Recognition.

George W. Bush farts and I think it's better than Thomas Jefferson.

Dr. James Dobson has officially flipped out.

On the heels of electoral victories barring same-sex marriage, some influential conservative Christian groups are turning their attention to a new target: the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants.

"Does anybody here know SpongeBob?" Dr. James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, asked the guests Tuesday night at a black-tie dinner for members of Congress and political allies to celebrate the election results.

SpongeBob needed no introduction. In addition to his popularity among children, who watch his cartoon show, he has become a well-known camp figure among adult gay men, perhaps because he holds hands with his animated sidekick Patrick and likes to watch the imaginary television show "The Adventures of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy."

Now, Dr. Dobson said, SpongeBob's creators had enlisted him in a "pro-homosexual video," in which he appeared alongside children's television colleagues like Barney and Jimmy Neutron, among many others. The makers of the video, he said, planned to mail it to thousands of elementary schools to promote a "tolerance pledge" that includes tolerance for differences of "sexual identity."

Need I say more?

Someone had the inauguration on in the office so I listened to Bush's speech. I haven't heard such a steaming pile of sophomoric aphorisms, thudding metaphors, and sampler-stitched platitudes since I sat through a sales meeting pushing fake-wood-grain-finished vinyl windows at the Jeld-Wen factory in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, in 1994.

Did you know that there are millions of people who never paid into Social Security and that's why it's "in crisis"? Yep. According to World O'Crap:

"Part of the problem that we're seeing now with Social Security has to do with the fact that 40 to 50 million people who have been killed through abortions have not taken their role as productive citizens," Church of God in Christ Bishop George McKinney said, as reported by the AP.

Well, wait a minute. What about the "undead"? Zombies never paid into Social Security, either. That's a grave issue.

It's true. There Is No Crisis in Social Security, and I've joined the gang that's getting the message out. See the blogad at the bottom of the sidebar.

Thanks to edwardpig, among others, for pointing me to it.

(No funds were exchanged to induce me to post the blogad.)

Apparently there are big doings going on in Washington according to the ZJB Radio Montserrat. They mentioned something about a ceremony involving George W. Bush. This was after announcing the cricket scores.

Echidne of the Snakes and others are inviting us to participate in Not One Damn Dime today. Not to worry - I brought my lunch.

Wow, those Senate Democrats are getting really tough on Condoleezza Rice.

Trying to make their mark on President Bush's strategy in Iraq, Senate Democrats extracted a promise from Condoleezza Rice to level with them when she takes over as secretary of state.

And Rice seems agreeable, to a point.

"We can certainly have, I think, a healthy debate about the course that we should take going forward," she said Wednesday in response to Democrats who criticized Bush's rationale for overthrowing Saddam Hussein and his handling of a postwar insurgency that is taking a growing toll of American soldiers in Iraq.

"I will be candid," Rice promised. "My assessments may not always be ones that you want to hear. They may not always be the ones with which you agree. But I will tell you what I think."

And that, she said, "is a promise that I make to you today."

Who says the Dems are just a bunch of wussies? Getting someone from the Bush administration to actually promise to be candid is a giant leap forward, don't you think? I'm so proud of our stalwart representatives I could just plotz.

From CNN:

MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- O.J. Simpson's 19-year-old daughter was arrested after she refused to stop yelling at officers who had been summoned because of a fight outside a basketball game involving her old prep school, police said.

I get a weird feeling when I read a news story on CNN and realize that I'm personally acquainted with at least two people mentioned in the story.

From the AP:

Fox says it covered up the naked rear end of a cartoon character recently because of nervousness over what the Federal Communications Commission will find objectionable.

The latest example of TV network self-censorship because of FCC concerns came a few weeks ago during a rerun of a "Family Guy" cartoon. Fox electronically blurred a character's posterior, even though the image was seen five years ago when the episode originally aired.

Oy.

If you're in a part of the country that's in the deep freeze, follow this link and listen to ZJB - Radio Montserrat. The music and the weather forecast will warm you up.

Montserrat is a tiny island in the Eastern Caribbean. I've been there twice for vacation - 1993 and 1994 - and was getting ready to go back in 1997 when nature, in the form of volcanic eruptions starting in July 1995, interrupted the plans. About half of the 37-square-mile island was buried under volcanic ash and about half of the 10,000 population evacuated to other islands, England, and the U.S.

But the island is recovering. The old airport was wiped out and the only way to get to the island is by ferry or helicopter from Antigua, but the new airport is under construction and should be open soon. The tourist industry is coming back; hotels like the Vue Pointe, where I stayed, are open again. You really have to admire the indomintable spirit of the people there - not even the primal forces of nature can keep them down.

And if you're really cold and a glutton for punishment, visit the Montserrat Tourist Board site.

Florida Governor Jeb Bush announces his new budget:

Gov. Jeb Bush on Tuesday unveiled a proposed $61.6 billion state spending plan that would cut taxes paid by Florida's wealthiest while hitting students with higher tuition, cutting medical services to the state's neediest and providing little new money for public schools.

Buoyed by a robust economy and a boost in post-hurricane tax collections from rebuilding efforts, the governor's proposal is $4 billion higher than the state budget approved by the Legislature last spring and continues to add to Bush's tax cutting legacy with a call for $285 million in tax relief.

[...]

"I believe this is a common-sense budget based on sound conservative principles," Bush said. "Cutting taxes is a good thing if it spurs economic activity, which creates revenue for government at all levels. It's a lot easier to craft a budget when you have a good economy based on a strong business climate."

Although the governor's package calls for a $1.1 billion increase in public school spending, including items outside the education budget such as capital expenditures, local education officials said most of their share would be eaten up by the constitutional mandate to reduce class sizes and making room for thousands of new students.

"They'll make the argument that they put a lot of money in, but the budget is really short," said Broward Schools Superintendent Frank Till.

Broward would get $80 million in new funds under the governor's plan. Palm Beach County would get another $88 million and Miami-Dade, $93.6 million. But about half of the money would go toward reducing class sizes, with another large chunk going toward hiring more teachers for new students and paying for required programs such as reading.

[...]

Local advocates, meanwhile, blasted the governor's call to reduce $398 million in spending on the Medically Needy program, which provides medical services and prescription drugs for nearly 36,000 sick Floridians who can't get insurance coverage.

"I can't understand why they want to keep throwing away lives to give somebody a tax break," said Bill Rettinger of Hollywood, a severe asthmatic and bone transplant patient who has been in the Medically Needy program since 1999. "I can't understand that mind-set, where 36,000 are expendable but a $136 million [intangibles] tax break isn't."

[...]

Democrats immediately challenged Bush for cutting back on health care for the state's needy and relying more on local taxpayers to foot the bill for state programs while giving tax cuts to the wealthy and big business.

"The governor is once again determined to leave no millionaire behind," Senate Democratic Leader Pro Tem Skip Campbell of Fort Lauderdale said of Bush's plan to phase out the intangibles tax, which is paid by Floridians who have average assets of at least $1.2 million. [Sun-Sentinel]

I'm not sure if the Florida public schools and the needy can survive on such prosperity.

Susan Jacoby op-eds in the New York Times:

Shortly after the 1925 Scopes "monkey trial," the usually astute historian Frederick Lewis Allen concluded that fundamentalism had been permanently discredited by the prosecution in Dayton, Tenn., of John T. Scopes, who had taught his biology students about Darwin's theory of evolution. "Legislators might go on passing anti-evolution laws," Allen wrote, "and in the hinterlands the pious might still keep their religion locked in a science-proof compartment of their minds; but civilized opinion everywhere had regarded the Dayton trial with amazement and amusement, and the slow drift away from fundamentalist certainty continued."

This was a serious historical misjudgment, as most recently demonstrated by the renewed determination of anti-evolution crusaders - buoyed by conservative gains in state and local elections - to force public school science classes to give equal time to religiously based speculation about the origins of life. These challenges to evolution range from old-time biblical literalism, insisting that the universe and man were created in seven days, to the newer "intelligent design," which maintains that if evolution occurred at all it could never be explained by Darwinian natural selection and could only have been directed at every stage by an omniscient creator.

[...]

More sophisticated proponents of intelligent design, those who are religiously conservative but not insistent on literal adherence to the biblical creation story, use anti-Darwinist arguments from a tiny minority of scientists to bolster their case for a creator. Last month, a group of parents in Dover, Penn., filed the first lawsuit to address the issue, challenging the local school board's contention that "intelligent design" is a scientific rather than a religious theory and, therefore, does not violate the separation of church and state.

[...]

Perhaps the most insidious effect of the campaign against evolution has been avoidance of the subject by teachers, who, whatever their convictions, want to forestall trouble with fundamentalist parents. Recent surveys of high school biology teachers have found that avoidance of evolution is common among instructors throughout the nation.

The singular achievement of the fundamentalist minority has been to render evolution controversial enough to silence many teachers who know better. Only now, when the religious right is no longer satisfied with avoidance but is demanding that schools add anti-Darwinist intelligent design to the curriculum, are defenders of evolution fighting back against the intimidation that has worked so well since the premature declaration of the death of fundamentalism in the 1920's.

Why don't we also include The Silmarillion along with "intelligent design" and Genesis? It's certainly good writing, and it's as plausible a tale as that of the Pentateuch.

Not that I have anything against the Bible - after all, any book that starts off with two naked people and a talking snake makes for a good read - but to hold that up as the basis for the creation of the universe and to require it be taught on the same level as researched and proven science makes monkeys of us all. If we allow this kind of religious intimidation on the part of a noisy and rabid cult of superstitious bumpkins to overtake the serious issues of school funding and the desperate need to give our children the best education possible, then we will have failed the basic mission of civilization: to become better, smarter, and wiser than our ancestors.

Errol Morris tells us why John Kerry lost.

John Kerry lost because he concealed something that was completely honorable, even heroic: his opposition to Vietnam. George W. Bush told the truth about something that, to my mind, was not honorable: he supported that war but found a way to stay home. Mr. Kerry was forthright about almost everything except himself - and in this election that was not enough.

Mr. Morris's point is well-taken; the Kerry campaign let the opposition bring up his opposition to the war and run with it, while his advisers told him not to respond to the bullshit from the SBVT.

But it was more than just that. Kerry probably thought that reminding the voters of his opposition to one war could easily get confused with his stance on the current war. Rather than take the glaring example of how not to run a war in 1968 and compare it to Glaring Example 2.0, he hoped that his hero status alone would be enough. But what made him a headline in 1972 wasn't his three purple hearts; we have a lot of politicians with military service (Sens. McCain and Grassley for example). It was his opposition to the war in Vietnam and the work he did to raise the country's awareness of the lost cause that set him apart. Mr. Morris is right - John Kerry could have run on that. Whether or not he would have won is problematic, but it would have made it a lot harder for his opponents, and that might have made the difference.

I found this little quiz at Clarified:

You Are 24 Years Old

24 Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

Yeah, I'd say that's about right.

Tech-tip for bloggers: when you cut and paste the code in your blog, be sure to bump up the font for the age (font color="#0000CC" size="+72") to a legible size. It's currently set at +6, which is about the size of an ant turd. As you can see, I used +72.

This story was on Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me this last weekend as part of the "Bluff the Listener" segment. I thought it was the fake one, but I was wrong.

The U.S. military rejected a 1994 proposal to develop an "aphrodisiac" to spur homosexual activity among enemy troops but is hard at work on other less-than-lethal weapons, defense officials said Sunday.

The idea of fostering homosexuality among the enemy figured in a declassified six-year, $7.5 million request from a laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio for funding of non-lethal chemical weapon research.

The proposal, disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information request, called for developing chemicals affecting human behavior "so that discipline and morale in enemy units is adversely affected."

"One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior," said the document, obtained by the Sunshine Project.

I guess the theory behind it was that the enemy soldiers would be so busy trying to coordinate their accessories that they couldn't fight.

Would someone please explain to me how the "discipline and morale ... is adversely affected"? If you suddenly found yourself in a foxhole with the love of your life, wouldn't your morale (along with other things) go through the roof? As for discipline, well, there's lots of leather straps and toys in a Humvee for those into that kind of thing.

Anybody else want to hit this one out of the park?

From the Sun-Sentinel:

PEMBROKE PINES -- A disoriented 88-year-old driver backed over a couple in a Wal-Mart parking lot Monday afternoon, pinning them under her car and ramming a Mustang and an SUV, according to witnesses and a police spokesman.

A nearby shopper put the woman's Toyota Cressida in park and used a jack to raise a wheel off Josefina Pachon. Her husband, Able Pachon, remained trapped until paramedics arrived, according to Cmdr. David Golt, the police spokesman.

[...]

Police were still trying to determine exactly what happened in the 3:45 p.m. accident. But Golt said the driver, Marie Miller, pulled out of the diagonal parking spot too quickly, hit the Pachons and then rammed the other two vehicles across the aisle in the parking lot at the Wal-Mart on 184th Avenue and Pines Road.

It sounds like an updated (and more violent) opening to Driving Miss Daisy, except no one would ever confuse a Toyota Cressida for a 1948 Chrysler.

From the American Prospect:

A conservative government sweeps to power for a second term. It views its victory as a mandate to slash the role of the state. In its first term, this policy objective was met by cutting taxes for the wealthy. Its top priority for its second term is tackling what it views as an enduring vestige of socialism: its system of social insurance for the elderly. Declaring the current program unaffordable in 50 years’ time, the administration proposes the privatization of a portion of old-age benefits. In exchange for giving up some future benefits, workers would get a tax rebate to put into an investment account to save for their own retirement.

George W. Bush’s America in 2005? Think again. The year was 1984, the nation was Britain, the government was that of Margaret Thatcher -- and the results have been a disaster that America is about to emulate.

[...]

Britain’s experiment with substituting private savings accounts for a portion of state benefits has been a failure. A shorthand explanation for what has gone wrong is that the costs and risks of running private investment accounts outweigh the value of the returns they are likely to earn. On average, fees and charges can reduce pension lump sums by up to 30 percent on retirement. The nation’s savings industry, which sells those private accounts, has already acknowledged this. Which brings us to irony No. 2: Just as the United States prepares to funnel untold billions to its private sector for the management of private accounts, back in 2002, many U.K. insurance companies, mindful of tough new rules against giving bad advice, began to write to their customers urging them to consider abandoning their private savings and returning to the state pension system -- something hundreds of thousands of Britons have done already.

And this is the system that the United States is seeking to emulate?

Not only that, but has anyone considered the basic human instinct for making a buck that will kick in if privitization goes through? If you think you're getting bombarded with spam and harebrained schemes (not to mention the outright fraud) that goes on with prescription medicine, wait until the Barnums and bunco artists get their claws into just a small portion of the Social Security windfall. The one advantage that Social Security has over anything else is that it is a monopoly. There may be private pensions, 401(k) plans, and all sorts of investments for people to sock away their money, but they are supplemental to Social Security; they don't supplant it, and for all the talk about "limited government" from the Republicans, one of the basic duties of government is to provide a solid foundation for everyone. If we turn private enterprise loose on it, it will be a free-for-all of Ponzi schemes and shell games that would make a carnival midway look like a seminar at the Better Business Bureau.

The Republicans will never admit that there are just some things that are better left to being done by the government, and Social Security is one of them. Of course, I've never heard of a Republican who refused to accept a Social Security check, either...

Salon.com has compiled a list of all of the scandals and shenanigans that have cropped up in the first four years of the Bush administration. There are, by their count, 34 of them. Any one of these would make Whitewater look like a Quaker potluck dinner. But what will come of them?

If the next four years of Bush and the GOP running the federal government are anything like the previous four, however, potential scandals will lead to few political consequences for the Republicans. Bush opponents will likely be disappointed if they are waiting for a renewal of the supposed "second-term scandal jinx" dogging Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Clinton.

After all, Washington Republicans are insulated by a rabidly partisan Congress with no interest in investigating the executive branch (and little taste for disciplining itself). By contrast, presidents Nixon, Reagan and Clinton each faced an adversarial Congress. As the late Senate Watergate Committee counsel Sam Dash noted in 2003 about congressional oversight: "Although it worked then, it doesn't mean it would work now."

Moreover, Congress allowed the independent-counsel statute, the law that brought us Ken Starr, to expire as Bush assumed office. And the right-wing media -- cable news, talk radio, several newspapers -- are not about to replicate the drumbeat of scandal they pounded out while Clinton held office. Thus scandals are not a defining part of the GOP's current identity.

In other words, when you have the cops on the take and in on the crimes, you're not going to get busted.

Paul Krugman:

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I'll kick your ass.

David Brooks:

What worked for the Republicans - being ruthless and disciplined - won't work for the Democrats because... well, it just won't. So there.

Link to this post | posted by Mustang Bobby @ 5:13 AM  

Seymour Hersh reports that Iraq was only the beginning.

George W. Bush’s reëlection was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control—against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism—during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.

Despite the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the Bush Administration has not reconsidered its basic long-range policy goal in the Middle East: the establishment of democracy throughout the region. Bush’s reëlection is regarded within the Administration as evidence of America’s support for his decision to go to war. It has reaffirmed the position of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership who advocated the invasion, including Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Douglas Feith, the Under-secretary for Policy. According to a former high-level intelligence official, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the election and told them, in essence, that the naysayers had been heard and the American people did not accept their message. Rumsfeld added that America was committed to staying in Iraq and that there would be no second-guessing.

“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.” [Emphasis added.]

Read the rest here from the current issue of The New Yorker.

My head hurts.

A ten-year Army veteran becomes aware of his feelings that war is wrong.

It was Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, 1500 hours. Sgt. Kevin Benderman's company, a unit of the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga., had been ordered to assemble and begin preparations for deployment to Iraq. Their plane was leaving for Kuwait that evening. Benderman wasn't with his unit.

Instead, the sergeant was waiting at Brigade Headquarters outside the office of Sgt. Maj. Samuel Coston, one of the battalion chiefs, to say whether he was going to follow orders and get on the plane. One week had passed since Benderman had filed for conscientious objector status, claiming he was morally opposed to war and could not, in good conscience, participate on the battlefield.

For an active-duty soldier, C.O. status is tough to substantiate. After all, Benderman had volunteered to serve and was aware that the Army was not the Peace Corps. He'd been scrambling all week to try to get the necessary visits with a military chaplain and a psychiatrist: According to Army regulations, his claim to be a conscientious objector and his mental stability needed to be evaluated so that his application could be considered. But the chaplain wasn't returning Benderman's phone calls, and the psychiatrist wouldn't see him until the chaplain had.

[...]

Kevin Benderman, formidable at 6 foot 2 inches and 240 pounds, has a deep Southern voice and 10 years of decorated military service. He began having misgivings about war in general, and the Iraq war in particular, during his six-month tour of duty in Iraq in 2003. It's difficult for him to pinpoint exactly when it happened. Maybe, he said, it was when Iraqi children repeatedly climbed onto a wall and threw pebbles at his unit, and his commanding officer ordered the troops in the area to shoot them if they climbed back on the wall. Maybe it was when he was posted to the supposed site of the biblical Garden of Eden, and over a period of weeks watched green corn shoots sprout after a fellow soldier spilled a cooler of water on the parched soil. "I thought it was amazing that the seeds took root," Benderman said. "That showed me that the land was fertile, and that God's hand had not forsaken that land. Corn was growing in the middle of the desert."

Or maybe it was simply witnessing war itself. "When you see people having to drink water out of a mud puddle, and you see all of their homes destroyed, and when you're going up the main highway and you see young girls on the side of the road with their arms burned all the way up to their shoulders, you really have to say, Do I want to be responsible for that kind of action?"

In a letter he posted on the Internet, Benderman expanded on the story of the little girl with the burned arms. "Somewhere along the route there was this one woman standing along side the road with a young girl of about 8 or 9 years old and the little girl's arm was burned all the way up her shoulder and I don't mean just a little blistered, I mean she had 3rd degree burns the entire length of her arm and she [was] crying in pain because of the burns. I asked the troop executive officer if we could stop and help the family and I was told that the medical supplies that we had were limited and that we may need them, I informed him that I would donate my share to that girl but we did not stop to help her."

[...]

Benderman's experiences in Iraq turned him against not just this war, which for the record he regards as unjustified, but war itself. "I am opposed to all wars," he said. "We should be doing more than teaching young people how to look through the sight of a rifle and kill someone else." In the letter explaining why he refused his second deployment, he wrote, " I was in charge of a group of soldiers that were in their late teens through their early twenties and I had to constantly tell them to keep their heads down because they thought that the war was like the video games that they played back at the barracks. War is not like that at all and until you have the misfortune to engage in it for yourself you cannot begin to understand how insane it all is. There are no restart buttons on reality and that is why I cannot figure out why now we are pursuing such a policy in this day and age. War should be relegated to the shelves of history, as was human sacrifice. If you stop to think about it you become aware that war is just human sacrifice. There is no honor in killing as many as you can as quickly as you can."

Not surprisingly, the Army took a different view. "Two days after I filed my conscientious objector application, the first sergeant of my company called me into his little office and called me a coward," Benderman said.

[...]

On Tuesday, Jan. 4, Benderman received his orders to report for deployment that Friday. On Wednesday he spent most of the day trying to meet with a chaplain, with no success. "It's like the man's avoiding me," he said. Frustrated, Benderman was leaning toward refusing to deploy. "The thought is running through my head of just telling them no, I'm not going to go."

But on Thursday, Benderman started wavering. A battalion commander, Capt. Gary Rowley, had warned Benderman that he could be charged with violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for making "disloyal statements" and for showing "disrespect toward a superior commissioned officer," charges that could come with severe penalties, especially in wartime. The military had found Benderman's Internet articles and his radio interview. After his meeting with Rowley, Benderman said, "I guess I'm going to have to deploy."

While Benderman was still trying to speak with a chaplain on Thursday, his wife got a call from Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, who was returning her call. They talked for an hour. On the next day -- deployment day for Benderman's unit -- McKinney sent a letter to battalion chief Coston: "Given that your upcoming deployment in Iraq is meant to support the establishment of a Constitutional Democracy there, I would hope that Sergeant Benderman's right to conscience, protected by the First Amendment to our own Constitution, will receive the respect it deserves, and that his application for Conscientious Objector status will receive due consideration."

After a long delay, Benderman was asked to step into Coston's office. By now, it was already past 5 p.m., and almost everybody else in the building had gone home. Benderman's company was nearing the time to assemble in a gymnasium to get manifests: envelopes with I.D. cards, passports and orders. After several more formations, the soldiers would spend a last five or 10 minutes with family members before walking out the doors to the plane.

It was Benderman's last chance to follow orders. Instead, he requested a general court-martial. "I refuse to deploy to Iraq," he told his commander. Coston tried to convince Benderman he was making a big mistake. According to Benderman, Coston told him that he would deploy him without a weapon to Kuwait -- a nod to Benderman's stated objection to war. However, Benderman also said Coston told him that he would then be deployed with his unit to Iraq, although he would not have to serve in a combat capacity there. Coston said that he would try to see if Benderman's C.O. application could be considered while he was deployed. But Benderman did not feel he could compromise: If he truly opposed war, he couldn't participate in it just long enough for the military to consider his C.O. application. Coston filled out a statement attesting to Benderman's refusal to be deployed. Benderman's wife signed it as a witness. Coston gave Benderman one more chance. He said he'd rip up the sworn statement and let Benderman ship out with his unit. Benderman stood his ground.

"I looked and thought about it and said that if I'm true to my beliefs, then my actions have to follow," Benderman said this week. "I can't just speak words and not follow through."

Kent, the 3rd Infantry Division's spokesperson, said the division has not yet begun court-martial proceedings against Benderman. The sergeant is now officially assigned to what's known as rear detachment, which consists of soldiers who are non-deployable and who perform support duty at Fort Stewart. For Benderman, rear detachment duty at Fort Stewart was acceptable but noncombat duty in Iraq crossed a line.

According to Kent, there are two separate matters before the Army: Did Benderman violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice by disobeying a direct order? And, should the Army grant Benderman conscientious objector status? Even though Benderman violated a direct order, his C.O. application is still going to be considered. [Phillip Babich, Salon.com]

On the day set aside to honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose life's work was about putting peace and non-violence ahead of our baser instincts and who battled terrible forces that were all too willing to use the power of the state against him, the story of Sgt. Benderman is an example of a man willing to face the consequences of his actions and take the heat of this particular battle. Good luck, Sergeant.

The news business has hit a bad patch, but everything will work itself out, and even bloggers will turn mainstream. After all, they're just trying to figure out how to make money by working in their jammies.

Boy, I really resent that shot at bloggers, and as soon as I get dressed, I'm going to write a snarky reply.

George W. Bush shows his inaugural balls in an interview in the Washington Post.

President Bush said the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.

"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."

Pride goeth...

Michael Kinsley has a preview of coming attractions.

Will President Bush actually have the guts to nominate Clarence Thomas for chief justice when that opportunity arises, which will probably be soon? You know he's just aching to do it. Because of their shared judicial philosophy, of course. But also because of that arrogant willfulness Bush has that a more generous person than myself might even call integrity. Heck, why be president if you can't rub your critics' noses in it?

And will the Democrats have the guts to oppose Justice Thomas's elevation to chief, resisting all the cries of, "Oh, for mercy's sake, you people -- not that again"? Those cries are starting preemptively, in an effort to cow the opposition party out of opposing a Thomas nomination. I wish I could be as confident of the Democrats' guts as I am of the president's.

Christine Todd Whitman takes the lid off her view of the Bush administration.

When U.S. EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman left the agency in 2003, she said she wanted to "spend more time with her family." If you believed that, Bernard Kerik's got a tax-free nanny he'd like to sell you.

Those skeptical of Whitman's resignation excuse may soon have their suspicions confirmed. It seems she quit because she was hoodwinked and hamstrung by her superiors. Unable to implement her agenda at EPA, she was effectively captaining a ship that was on permanent autopilot.

Such is the implication of Whitman's new political memoir-cum-manifesto "It's My Party Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America," due to hit bookstores on Jan. 27.

Enviros may be disappointed to find the EPA dish rather scanty -- only one chapter is devoted to her experiences at the agency. The rest of the book examines the "rightward lurch" of the GOP under the Bush administration, which is causing a rift between moderate and hard-right Republicans along several fault lines, the environment being chief among them. Whitman fears this rift could threaten the long-term viability of the Republican Party.

Football: The Colts vs. the Pats. Is there another game? Well, yes, there is. Meanwhile, it's still a cool and cloudy weekend here in South Florida; perfect for staying in and doing the crossword and watching football.

Link to this post | posted by Mustang Bobby @ 8:05 AM  

Friends and family bade farewell to Troy this morning.

It was a cool and cloudy morning with a light mist of rain when we gathered at dawn at the place on Miami Beach where he walked into the sea last week. With fond remembrances, laughter and tears, we stood in a semicircle facing the waves and shared stories and readings. When all had spoken, his father, brothers and close friends waded into the water and shared the scattering of his ashes.

Then we held each other as we walked back from the shore.

The Miami Metrozoo has a 27-year-old rhinoceros, Toshi, who is single and on the hunt, shall we say, for a new mate. The Zoo obliged by borrowing Rosie, a 14-year-old female, from the Atlanta zoo. Object: matrimony, or whatever it is you call it when two rhinos get, uh, horny.

Metrozoo has even started a blog called Rhino love. Knock yourselves out, animal lovers.

America would be a lot better off if you women's libbers had stayed home and had more babies.

Here's a website where you can take a virtual stroll through Perrysburg, Ohio, the town where I grew up, and look at some of the cool architecture of the homes there.

My family lived in this house from 1957 to 1982, and the people who bought it from my parents have kept it pretty much the way we did.

I'm sure NTodd has fond memories of these houses, too, from his childhood - and his paper route.

Leonard Pitts in today's Miami Herald on the Armstrong Williams story.

Granted, every political administration seeks to spin the truth. But has any ever worked quite so energetically to propagandize the people, to subvert their right to know? Has any ever been so dismissive of their right to unvarnished facts? If so it's news to me.

Under the present administration, facts are routinely varnished like fine wood. That is, when they are not ignored outright. Consider the record. Where official reports have clashed with politics, they have been edited. Where science has offended political supporters, it has been quashed. Where the administration's own experts have contradicted its worldview, they have been ignored.

And henceforth, I suppose, where journalists are for sale, they will be bought.

[...]

It's becoming an occupational hazard as more and more income opportunities open up to high-profile journalists. I speak as one of the at-risk. Writing this column has led to speaking engagements, teaching positions and book contracts I could never have envisioned when I started it 11 years ago.

I won't lie to you: With apologies to Jimmy Stewart, it's a wonderful life. But the first day I don't understand that it is an ethical crime to rent this podium to the highest bidder, somebody please take me out in a field and shoot me because I have become too stupid to live.

Metaphorically speaking, that's pretty much what has happened to Williams. Tribune Media Services, which distributed his column (as it does mine), dropped him like a hairy spider right after the story broke.

To his credit, he has expressed regret forthrightly. He says he simply never saw himself as a journalist.

I think he's sincere. I also think it doesn't matter. The line he crossed is red neon. And once you've gone over it, you can't go back.

So as for not thinking of himself as a journalist, he needn't worry. No one will ever mistake him for one again.

Read the whole article here. The man is brilliant. Period.

I've heard it's gotten cold up north. That's called Chamber of Commerce weather down here in Miami - it brings the snowbirds just in time for Art Deco weekend out on Miami Beach, celebrating the architecture of the hotels along Collins Avenue and Ocean Drive on South Beach. The car club has a show to go along with the celebration; depending on the weather, I'll be there on Saturday morning.

Welcome Quaker in a Basement to the blogroll; it's always good to see other Friendly writing. Also new is Liberal Street Fight, a group blog that includes Folkbum.

Let's take a look at what's been heating up the blogosphere via The Liberal Coalition.

Steve at The Yellow Doggerel Democrat can't breathe easily in Houston.

WTF Is It Now?? laments that Kid Rock will not bring a new meaning to the term "inaugural ball."

Wanda at Words on a Page thinks about accountability.

Trish Wilson proves her props as Koufax nominee for Best Single Issue blogger.

T. Rex on how the Republicans really feel about veterans.

Steve Gilliard looks at the pay-for-praise business in blogging and reporting.

Speedkill is back in Boseman just in time to see the wingnuts are still rattling around.

SoonerThought plugs Greg Palast's blast at CBS.

Scrutiny Hooligans is looking for a party.

Rubber Hose introduces us to some great classical music of a different sort.

Rook's Rant on the background of Michael Chertoff.

Rick reviews Million Dollar Baby.

Respectful of Otters is still away, but revisit her post on Texas's attempt to keep teens from learning about life.

Republican Sinners profiles the sanctimony of Mark Sanford.

Musing's musings reports in from France.

Speaking of France, Make Me a Commentator cites Moliere.

Left Is Right notes that the DLC gets it right on NCLB.

Keith at The Invisible Library plans to do more writing - a sentiment I heartily endorse.

Happy Furry Norbizness dissects Howard Kurtz.

The Gamer's Nook on three new cartoon characters who really know dick.

Tena at First Draft on Bush's hijacking of the legacy of FDR.

edwardpig notes that we could learn a lot about how to reform Social Security by seeing where it's been reformed before.

Echidne reports that at least one radio station is giving right-wing radio the heave-ho.

NTodd says that the only thing worse than being sick is not having sympathy from co-workers.

Collective Sigh on the future - or not - for health insurance.

Chris's Top Ten for the week.

BlogAmy plays a game of Guess the Job.

archy on fake outrage.

All Facts and Opinions invites us to a conference on women and the media.

Corrente on Wal-Mart's wrestling with their public image.

The Fulcrum finds that sticks and stones may break some bones, but whips and chains...

Pen-Elayne counters the yellow-ribbon frenzy.

iddybud on Ted Kennedy and what the Democrats must do.

bloggg on the stupidity of standarized testing.

A lot of us are up for various Koufax Awards, so please go to Wampum and cast your vote for your favorites (hint; Bark Bark Woof Woof is up for Most Deserving of Wider Recognition). Meanwhile, enjoy the day, and stay warm, cool, or dry; whatever fits.

I finally resolved the slow sidebar loading issue. The Site Meter read-out is now at the bottom.

We learn by doing.

From the New York Times:

OLYMPIA, Wash., Jan. 12 - The swearing-in ceremony here that made the Democrat Christine A. Gregoire the new governor of Washington on Wednesday after one of the closest statehouse races in history had all the somber ritualistic touches, complete with prayers and bagpipes wailing "God Bless America."

But outside, on the airwaves, on billboards and in statements made by Republicans, Ms. Gregoire's hold on the office was questioned even as she gave her inauguration speech. Republicans and their candidate, Dino Rossi, have sued to overturn the election, which Ms. Gregoire won by 129 votes after two recounts.

The court case, filed in a Republican-leaning county, will most likely be settled only when this state's Supreme Court weighs in. Republicans say the election was flawed because of irregularities in the biggest and most Democratic county, while Gregoire supporters say the problems were not unusual for a large turnout, and did not change the outcome.

What was the mantra of the Republicans after Florida in 2000? What did they keep telling us all during the hanging chads and the Brooks Brothers riot at Miami-Dade election headquarters? What was the message behind all the "Sore Loserman" stickers? What was it?

From the Sun-Sentinel:

TALLAHASSEE -- A move is under way by conservative Republicans in the Florida Legislature to rewrite the Florida Constitution, setting off fears among skeptics that it will turn into a legislative assault on abortion rights, church-state separations and other controversial topics that have enjoyed protections from political intrusion.

Led by a pair of Central Florida legislators, backers of the rewrite proposal have already won the blessings of several top legislative leaders, including Senate President Tom Lee and Gov. Jeb Bush. Those leaders have been among the fiercest critics of many recent-years' changes to the constitution that mandated reforms that the Legislature had rejected, such as state spending on items like a high-speed rail system and public school class size reduction.

[...]

The idea, they say, will be for the Legislature to begin this spring a two-year review of streamlining the constitution and convert it into a more "pure" or "pristine" document. That new document, they say, would have to win approval from both the state House and Senate, and go to voters for approval as early as the fall 2006 elections.

"We'll be getting rid of things that ought not be in there, but at the same time, maybe putting in things that belong, a streamlining," said Rep. David Simmons, an Altamonte Springs Republican who heads the House Judiciary Committee.

[...]

While acknowledging that the constitution has become somewhat unwieldy, several Democratic state legislators said they are worried that the Republican-dominated Legislature would take a more ambitious bite at the constitution. They said they fear the undoing of such things as a privacy provision that the courts have used to throw out challenges to Florida's abortion laws.

They also foresee Republicans attempting to undo a provision of the constitution, known as a Blaine amendment, which prohibits the state from funneling taxpayer dollars to religious institutions. That argument is being used to challenge the state's public school voucher law.

Mark Twain was right: No one's life, liberty or property is safe when the Legislature is in session.

Bryan Curtis of Slate pays his respects to my fellow Miami blogger, Dave Barry.

Frank Rich takes on Armstrong Williams, Robert Novak, and wonders just who else is on the take.

One day after the co-host Tucker Carlson made his farewell appearance and two days after the new president of CNN made the admirable announcement that he would soon kill the program altogether, a television news miracle occurred: even as it staggered through its last nine yards to the network guillotine, "Crossfire" came up with the worst show in its fabled 23-year history.

This was a half-hour of television so egregious that it makes Jon Stewart's famous pre-election rant seem, if anything, too kind. This time "Crossfire" wasn't just "hurting America," as Mr. Stewart put it, by turning news into a nonsensical gong show. It was unwittingly, or perhaps wittingly, complicit in the cover-up of a scandal.

[...]

"On the right" was the columnist Robert Novak, who "in the interests of full disclosure" told the audience he is a "personal friend" of Mr. Williams, whom he "greatly" admires as "one of the foremost voices for conservatism in America." Needless to say, Mr. Novak didn't have any tough questions, either, but we should pause a moment to analyze this "Crossfire" co-host's disingenuous use of the term "full disclosure."

Last year Mr. Novak had failed to fully disclose - until others in the press called him on it - that his son is the director of marketing for Regnery, the company that published "Unfit for Command," the Swift boat veterans' anti-Kerry screed that Mr. Novak flogged relentlessly on CNN and elsewhere throughout the campaign. Nor had he fully disclosed, as Mary Jacoby of Salon reported, that Regnery's owner also publishes his subscription newsletter ($297 a year). Nor has Mr. Novak fully disclosed why he has so far eluded any censure in the federal investigation of his outing of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame, while two other reporters, Judith Miller of The Times and Matt Cooper of Time, are facing possible prison terms in the same case. In this context, Mr. Novak's "full disclosure" of his friendship with Mr. Williams is so anomalous that it raised many more questions than it answers.

[...]

[I]s Mr. Williams merely the first one of his ilk to be exposed? Every time this administration puts out fiction through the news media - the "Rambo" exploits of Jessica Lynch, the initial cover-up of Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire - it's assumed that a credulous and excessively deferential press was duped. But might there be more paid agents at loose in the media machine? In response to questions at the White House, Mr. McClellan has said that he is "not aware" of any other such case and that he hasn't "heard" whether the administration's senior staff knew of the Williams contract - nondenial denials with miles of wiggle room. Mr. Williams, meanwhile, has told both James Rainey of The Los Angeles Times and David Corn of The Nation that he has "no doubt" that there are "others" like him being paid for purveying administration propaganda and that "this happens all the time." So far he is refusing to name names - a vow of omertà all too reminiscent of that taken by the low-level operatives first apprehended in that "third-rate burglary" during the Nixon administration.

If CNN, just under new management, wants to make amends for the sins of "Crossfire," it might dispatch some real reporters to find out just which "others" Mr. Williams is talking about and to follow his money all the way back to its source.

It's one thing for a columnist or pundit to be sympathetic with the goals and aspirations of a presidential administration on either side of the aisle, but it reeks of desperation when you have to be paid to do it. It also gives hookers a bad name.

The nominations have been posted at Wampum for Most Deserving of Wider Recognition.

Bark Bark Woof Woof made the semis. I'm going to allow myself a modest smile. Thanks to those of you who put me in there.

There are a number of other members of The Liberal Coalition who are also nominated. Take a look at the list and vote, and then drop some coin on the folks at Wampum as a gesture of thanks for all their hard work.

I listened to this story yesterday on NPR's All Things Considered.

Nearly a year after Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake caused a national uproar over a Super Bowl performance, American families continue to worry about what their children watch on television. NPR's Robert Siegel visits two households that have decided to set strict limits on TV watching, and finds that the concerns run across political lines.

The two households - one labeled "liberal" and the other "conservative" with the requisite number of teen and pre-teen children - were remarkably alike in worrying about the "indecent" content on network television - sex, drugs (like ads for Levitra), and rock and roll - and coming to grips with how to handle it.

Well, not to be too simplistic about it, but I am unaware of any requirement by federal, state, or local governments to have a television in the house, nor am I aware of any requirement that everyone in the country has to watch TV. So the simple solution would be that if you don't like what's on TV, don't own one.

It's not that there's a lack of inoffensive or "family-friendly" programming. Just a quick scan of my Comcast listing shows such safe offerings as The Hallmark Channel, PAX-TV, ABC Family, Animal Planet (unless you're worried about seeing hippos humping), The Outdoor Channel, Golf, Food, a raft of Discovery Channels, and so forth, all in the basic cable offerings. Television remotes can be programmed to password-protect any channel the parents so deem. TV Guide shows ratings, as does each show in the upper left corner. So it's not like there aren't resources for parents to know what's out there and what they want or don't want their kids to see.

There was a discussion in this story about how the content has coarsened over the years and both families waxed nostalgic about their favorites such as "Gilligan's Island" and "The Brady Bunch." Well, there's always TV Land, but when those shows were running in prime-time forty years ago, the TV critics were all over those programs for their vapidity - "chewing gum for the mind" was one of the more polite terms - and they begged for something more substantial and challenging. Certainly television has evolved since the 1960's, but progress is never a bargain; you have to pay for every "Hill Street Blues," "All in the Family," "St. Elsewhere," "M*A*S*H," and "The West Wing" with crap like "Who's Your Daddy."

It's not as if this is a new problem. We have generational short-term memory loss. Parental involvement with these choices has been an important part of child-rearing for a very long time; my mom tells how she used to get scolded by her mother for spending too much time listening to the radio when she was a kid, and that tradition carried on to my childhood when we had the old Magnavox black-and-white and five grainy channels. But it goes back much further than the invention of the cathode ray tube or the crystal set. If you think we have shows depicting sex, drugs, and violence today, look at what those crazy kids were up to in Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare's plays are full of coarse culture, evil people who get away with murder, and bathroom humor. Titus Andronicus has fratricide and cannibalism, which was an old plot line from Medea. And he was one of the more moderate writers of that time period. Read Christopher Marlowe if you want to see some death, dismemberment, and gay characters not behaving exactly like "Will & Grace." There was rioting in the streets in 1879 after the premiere of A Doll's House, a play by Henrik Ibsen that showed a woman daring to think for herself, although the plays of Richard Brinsley Sheridan and George Farquhar had already depicted liberated women such as Lady Teazle in The School for Scandal (1775) and Mrs. Sullen in The Beaux' Stratagem (1707). Critics and the clergy were certain that civilization was doomed.

Underlying all of this is the argument that popular culture is more than a reflection of the society. It may show sides of life that some people may find unpleasant, but it's a mirror of us - all of us. More often than not it's like a funhouse mirror with distortions, but a mirror nonetheless. So if our culture has been coarsened by fart jokes on "Friends," it's living up to what Fred Allen once said: "Imitation is the sincerest form of television." To blame popular culture or television for how society turns out is like blaming your refrigerator because you are overweight. Parents who use television as an electronic babysitter have deeper problems with child-rearing than whether or not horny teenaged boys are having sex on "Life As We Know It."

Perhaps Groucho Marx said it best: "Television is very educational. Every time someone turns it on, I go into the other room and read a book."

Harold Meyerson on Bush's need to create crises:

Some presidents make the history books by managing crises. Lincoln had Fort Sumter, Roosevelt had the Depression and Pearl Harbor, and Kennedy had the missiles in Cuba. George W. Bush, of course, had Sept. 11, and for a while thereafter -- through the overthrow of the Taliban -- he earned his page in history, too.

But when historians look back at the Bush presidency, they're more likely to note that what sets Bush apart is not the crises he managed but the crises he fabricated. The fabricated crisis is the hallmark of the Bush presidency. To attain goals that he had set for himself before he took office -- the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the privatization of Social Security -- he concocted crises where there were none.

[...]

In short, Social Security is not facing a financial crisis at all. It is facing a need for some distinctly sub-cataclysmic adjustments over the next few decades that would increase its revenue and diminish its benefits.

Politically, however, Social Security is facing the gravest crisis it has ever known. For the first time in its history, it is confronted by a president, and just possibly by a working congressional majority, who are opposed to the program on ideological grounds, who view the New Deal as a repealable aberration in U.S. history, who would have voted against establishing the program had they been in Congress in 1935. But Bush doesn't need Karl Rove's counsel to know that repealing Social Security for reasons of ideology is a non-starter.

So it's time once more to fabricate a crisis. In Bushland, it's always time to fabricate a crisis. We have a crisis in medical malpractice costs, though the CBO says that malpractice costs amount to less than 2 percent of total health care costs. (In fact, what we have is a president who wants to diminish the financial, and thus political, clout of trial lawyers.) We have a crisis in judicial vacancies, though in fact Senate Democrats used the filibuster to block just 10 of Bush's 229 first-term judicial appointments.

With crisis concoction as its central task -- think of how many administration officials issued dire warnings of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein or, now, by Social Security's impending bankruptcy -- this presidency, more than any I can think of, has relied on the classic tools of propaganda. Indeed, it's almost impossible to imagine the Bush presidency absent the Fox News Network and right-wing talk radio.

[...]

Is it any wonder that the Education Department paid commentator Armstrong Williams $241,000 to promote its No Child Left Behind programs? In this administration, it is the role of a government agency to turn out pro-Bush news by whatever means possible. Fox News viewership in the African American community wasn't very large, and here was Williams, who seemed to have learned during his clerkship for Clarence Thomas that it was rude to decline any gifts.

We've had plenty of presidents, Richard Nixon most notoriously, who divided the media into friendly and enemy camps. I can't think of one, however, so fundamentally invested in the spread of disinformation -- and so fundamentally indifferent to the corrosive effect of propaganda on democracy -- as Bush. That, too, should earn him a page in the history books.

Forty years ago, presidential scholars worried about the "credibility gap" that was building up between the American people and then-President Johnson and his reasons for getting America involved in the war in Vietnam. They were concerned that Americans would lose faith in their leader and never be able to trust what he told us if it was proved - as it was - that our reasons for going to war in Southeast Asia were false or misleading. This gap was compounded by Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon. But by the time we got to the Reagan administration it was just taken as a matter of course that whatever came out of the White House was pure spin for public consumption and part of the political fabric. Every opposition candidate for the presidency since LBJ has run on the mantra of "restoring honor and dignity to the office," and the electorate, to the credit of American optimism - or naivete - has bought into it. Bush's policy of fabricating crises and believing he can get the population to go along with it is just another example of the symbiosis between the cynical and the duped.

From the Washington Post:

The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.

In interviews, officials who served with the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said the violence in Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information, led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas.

Four months after Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons hunt in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted nearly every prewar assertion about Iraq made by top Bush administration officials, a senior intelligence official said the findings will stand as the ISG's final conclusions and will be published this spring.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials asserted before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, had chemical and biological weapons, and maintained links to al Qaeda affiliates to whom it might give such weapons to use against the United States.

Bush has expressed disappointment that no weapons or weapons programs were found, but the White House has been reluctant to call off the hunt, holding out the possibility that weapons were moved out of Iraq before the war or are well hidden somewhere inside the country. But the intelligence official said that possibility is very small.

Duelfer is back in Washington, finishing some addenda to his September report before it is reprinted.

"There's no particular news in them, just some odds and ends," the intelligence official said. The Government Printing Office will publish it in book form, the official said.

I'm reminded of the D.E.A. raids where the police and S.W.A.T. teams burst into a house, trash the place looking for drugs, arrest the homeowners, and maybe fire a few shots before they realize - oops! - they got the wrong address. Except this time we killed a whole lot of people, including over 1,200 of our own and set off a powderkeg of insurgency and civil unrest that will last for generations. "Sorry about your house, lady," just doesn't cut it.

Time to start cleaning out the desk here. Hmmm, what's this...Character is Destiny. Oh, yeah, the draft for Reagan's third inaugural address, or was it Nixon's resignation speech? Whatever.

A friend passed on this from a friend. I'm guessing it's from a blog, but there's no attribution as to who wrote it, so I will pass it on intact. If anyone out there knows where it came from, let me know.

Southern Baptists called tsunami "a phenomenal opportunity"
by John in DC - 1/10/2005 10:00:11 AM

Well, glad the Southern Baptists are so thrilled that over 150,000 people died a horrible death.

"This [disaster] is one of the greatest opportunities God has given us to share his love with people," said K.P. Yohannan, president of the Texas-based Gospel for Asia. In an interview, Yohannan said his 14,500 "native missionaries" in India, Sri Lanka, and the Andaman Islands are giving survivors Bibles and booklets about "how to find hope in this time through the word of God."

In Krabi, Thailand, a Southern Baptist church had been "praying for a way to make inroads" with a particular ethnic group of fisherman, according to Southern Baptist relief coordinator Pat Julian. Then came the tsunami, "a phenomenal opportunity" to provide ministry and care, Julian told the Baptist Press news service.

Don't you just love it when God answers your prayers and wipes out 150,000 people? Makes me warm and tingly all over, hallelujah!

So the plan is that the religious right groups are planning on using the tsunami to convert Asians to christianity, and they plan to use disaster aid to do the converting.

In Andhra Pradesh, India, a plan is developing to build "Christian communities" to replace destroyed seashore villages. In a dispatch that the evangelical group Focus on the Family posted on its Family.org Web site, James Rebbavarapu of India Christian Ministries said a team of U.S. engineers had agreed to help design villages of up to 400 homes each, "with a church building in the center of them."

That is fucking sick.

That said, I did Google K.P. Yohannan and he does run a "ministry" called Gospel For Asia, and his website reads like he could very easily have said what's attributed to him. I guess there are no lengths to which some people won't go to exploit a crisis. I'll bet that if given the chance, there would have been guys like Yohannan standing outside Auschwitz telling the Jews that this would never have happened if they'd only accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior.

Update: Alert reader Robert of Interstate4Jamming found the origin of the quote at AMERICABlog. Thanks!

The Faithful Correspondent passed on Howard Dean's announcment that he's running for the DNC chairmanship and added the thought that "[w]e just need a mechanic to do what Terry has done money-wise and we'll be set. I hope."

Dear Supporter,

As I have traveled across our country, I have talked to thousands of people who are working for change in their own communities about the power of politics to make a difference in their own lives and in the lives of others. Every group I have spoken to, I encouraged them to stand up for what they believe and to get involved in the electoral process -- because the only sure way to make difference is to step up and run for office yourself.

Today, I'm announcing my candidacy for the Chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.

The Democratic Party needs a vibrant, forward-thinking, long-term presence in every single state and we must be willing to contest every race at every level. We will only win when we show up and fight for the issues important to all of us.

Another integral part of our strategy must be cultivating the party's grassroots. Our long term success depends on all of us taking an active role in our party and in the political process, by volunteering, going door to door and taking the Democratic message into every community, and by organizing at the local level. After all, new ideas and new leaders don't come from consultants; they come from communities.

As important as organization is, it alone can no longer win us elections. Offering a new choice means making Democrats the party of reform -- reforming America's financial situation, reforming our electoral process, reforming health care, reforming education and putting morality back in our foreign policy. The Democratic Party will not win elections or build a lasting majority solely by changing its rhetoric, nor will we win by adopting the other side's positions. We must say what we mean -- and mean real change when we say it.

But most of all, together, we have to rebuild the American community. We will never succeed by treating our nation as a collection of separate regions or separate groups. There are no red states or blues states, only American states. And we must talk to the people in all of these states as members of one community.

That word -- 'values' -- has lately become a codeword for appeasement of the right-wing fringe. But when political calculations make us soften our opposition to bigotry, or sign on to policies that add to the burden of ordinary Americans, we have abandoned our true values.

We cannot let that happen. And we cannot just mouth the words. Our party must speak plainly and our agenda must clearly reflect the socially progressive, fiscally responsible values that bring our party -- and the vast majority of Americans -- together.

All of this will require both national perspective and local experience. I know what it's like to lead hands-on at the state level and I know what it's like to run for national office.

With your help, this past election season, Democracy for America, already started creating the kind of organization the Democratic Party can be. This past election cycle, we endorsed over 100 candidates at all levels of government -- from school board to U.S. Senate. We contributed almost a million dollars to nearly 750 candidates around the country and raised millions of dollars for many more candidates.

Together, we helped elect a Democratic governor in Montana, a Democratic mayor of Salt Lake County, Utah and an African American woman to the bench in Alabama. Fifteen of the candidates we endorsed had never run for office before -- and won.

I also have experience building and managing a local party organization. My career started as Democratic Party chair in Chittenden County, Vermont. I then ran successful campaigns: for state legislature, lieutenant governor and then governor. In my 11-year tenure as governor, I balanced the state's budget every year.

I served as chair of both the National Governors' Association and the Democratic Governors' Association (DGA). And as chair of the DGA, I helped recruit nearly 20 governors that won -- even in states like Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Mississippi.

All of these experiences have only reaffirmed what I know to be true. There is only one party that speaks to the hopes and dreams of all Americans. It is the party you have already given so much to. It is the Democratic Party.

We can win elections only by standing up for what we believe.

Thank you and I look forward to listening to your concerns in the weeks ahead.

Governor Howard Dean, M.D.

I like the hard-headed approach here. Now we just need to make it more than words.

Think the GOP is in lock-step with Bush on changing Social Security? Think again.

Many Republicans are expressing reservations about the political wisdom of President Bush's vision for restructuring Social Security, as the White House today intensifies its campaign to restructure the entitlement program for the retired and disabled.

Bush, who relishes challenging the conventional wisdoms of Washington, has privately counseled Republicans that partially privatizing Social Security will be a boon for the GOP and has urged skeptics to hold fire until he builds a public case for change. But several influential Republicans are warning that Bush's plan could backfire on the party in next year's elections, especially if the plan includes cuts in benefits.

Most alarming to White House officials, some congressional Republicans are panning the president's plan -- even before it is unveiled. "Why stir up a political hornet's nest . . . when there is no urgency?" said Rep. Rob Simmons (Conn.), who represents a competitive district. "When does the program go belly up? 2042. I will be dead by then."

[...]

William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, is challenging the president's assertions that Social Security is in crisis and that Republicans will be rewarded for fixing it. Republicans are privately "bewildered why this is such a White House priority," he said. "I am a skeptic politically and a little bit substantively."

[...]

Some Republicans question whether Bush's victories had anything to do with Social Security. A post-election survey by Pew found that Social Security was named by 1 percent of voters as the most important or second most important issue in deciding their vote.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll in late December found that 1 in 4 Americans thinks the Social Security system is in crisis, and the percentage that says the country is facing a Social Security crisis has gone down, not up, since 1998.

"I don't buy the partisan argument that Republicans benefit by somehow carving up this Democratic program," Kristol said. He contended it could undermine other GOP initiatives, such as making Bush's tax cuts permanent, because it would sap money and the president's political capital.

Simmons said that few constituents cite Social Security as a major concern, and that numerous GOP colleagues say the same in private. [WaPo]

This may turn out to be Bush's version of the Clinton health plan overhaul - too much too fast and doomed by politics. The difference is that in 1993 we needed a comprehensive health insurance plan, and we still do. As many people on the left and right have pointed out, we don't need to radically overhaul Social Security any more than you buy a new car when one of the tires gets a flat. If it wasn't for the salivating over the political blood that Karl Rove is smelling, this would get about as much attention as the last loser on American Idol.

From the Sun-Sentinel:

LEMOORE, Calif. - Fed up with students' racy moves, a principal at a California high school has taken the unusual step of canceling the rest of this year's school dances.

Principal Jim Bennett of Lemoore Union High School said he warned students at a winter formal dance last month to either quit dirty dancing or face the possibility of not dancing at all.

But he said the students continued "freak dancing," a form of sexually suggestive dancing that involves grinding the hips and pelvic area.

The ban on dances includes the school's Sadie Hawkins dance in February and the junior and senior proms in the spring, but Bennett said they could be rescheduled if students modify their behavior.

Meanwhile, the school's drama club is planning a production of the musical Footloose.

On Social Security privatization:

There's an iceberg in front of us, all right. And Mr. Bush wants us to steam right into it, full speed ahead.

In light of the Armstrong Williams revelation and following the lead of Jeffrey Dubner at TAPPED and Atrios:

I affirm that I have never taken money -- neither directly nor indirectly -- from any political campaign or government agency -- whether federal, state, or local -- in exchange for any service performed in my job as a journalist (or commentator, or blogger, or whatever you think I should be called).

In true Quaker fashion, I changed the original swear to affirm; Quakers do not take judicial oaths. (Doesn't mean we can't cuss, though.)

Feel free to sign up, fellow bloggers or whatever.

From the New York Times:

An independent panel convened by CBS to investigate a discredited broadcast about President Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service has concluded that the network's news division rushed the report onto the air in September in a frenetic dash to beat its competitors. The report also says the network failed to seriously consider contradictory information raised not only before the segment was aired but for nearly two weeks afterward.

After releasing a 224-page report submitted to him by the independent panel, Leslie Moonves, co-president and co-chief operating officer of Viacom, the network's parent company, announced today that he had fired Mary Mapes, the longtime CBS producer who had prepared the segment.

Mr. Moonves also announced that he was demanding the resignations of three CBS News executives who had overseen the segment. They are Betsy West, a senior vice president and a top deputy to Andrew Heyward, president of CBS News; Josh Howard, who had become executive producer of the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes" only weeks before it broadcast the disputed segment; and Mary Murphy, his deputy.

That's four more people than the Bush administration has fired for getting us into a war based on false and misleading information. Just thought I'd point that out.

We took our usual lunchtime walk across the Venetian Causeway today. It's sunny and 75, and there was a nice breeze coming across the bay. It reminded me of a haiku I came up with last year about this time, and it bears repeating:

Winter in Miami

Biscayne Bay at noon;
Pelicans soar overhead.
Do I miss snow? No.

God can be a real bastard, but hey, he's God. That's why we love him.

Check out Michelle Goldberg's piece in Salon.com (subscription/Day pass required) about the new battle over the teaching of evolution in Dover, Pennsylvania.

It was an ordinary springtime school board meeting in the bedroom community of Dover, Pa. The high school needed new biology textbooks, and the science department had recommended Kenneth Miller and Joseph Levine's "Biology." "It was a fantastic text," said Carol "Casey" Brown, 57, a self-described Goldwater Republican and the board's senior member. "It just followed our curriculum so beautifully."

But Bill Buckingham, a new board member who'd recently become chair of the curriculum committee, had an objection. "Biology," he said, was "laced with Darwinism." He wanted a book that balanced theories of evolution with Christian creationism, and he was willing to turn his town into a cultural battlefield to get it.

"This country wasn't founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution," Buckingham, a stocky, gray-haired man who wears a red, white and blue crucifix pin on his lapel, said at the meeting. "This country was founded on Christianity, and our students should be taught as such."

Casey Brown and her husband, fellow board member Jeff Brown, were stunned. "I was picturing the headlines," Jeff said months later.

"And we got them," Casey added.

Indeed, by the end of 2004, journalists from across the country and from overseas had come to Dover to report on the latest outbreak of America's perennial war over evolution. By then, Buckingham had succeeded in making Dover the first school district in the country to mandate the teaching of "intelligent design" -- an updated version of creationism couched in modern biological terms. In doing so, he ushered in a legal challenge from outraged parents and the ACLU that could turn into a 21st century version of the infamous "Scopes Monkey Trial."

The Dover case is part of a renewed revolt against evolutionary science that's been gathering force in America for the past four years, a symptom of the same renascent fundamentalism that helped propel George Bush to victory. Since 2001, the National Center for Science Education, a group formed to defend the teaching of evolution, has tallied battles over evolution in 43 states, noting they're growing more frequent.

After 1987, when the Supreme Court declared the teaching of creationism in public school unconstitutional in Edwards vs. Aguillard, the doctrine seemed to be shut out of public schools once and for all. In the last few years, though, intelligent design has given evolution's opponents new hope. Now, emboldened by their growing political power, religious conservatives are once again storming the barricades of science education.

Next, they're going after Newton. After all, gravity is only a theory.

In a way, I feel sorry for these people who are so frightened by the possibility that their precious belief in the pleasant poetry of Genesis might be threatened by cold scientific reality. They must have so little in their own lives that they feel they must assault others in order to protect themselves. It isn't their faith they are defending, it's their grasp on anything that provides them with some sense of stability. This is why lonely widows give millions to televangelists or religious fanatics blow up buildings; it's their way of ensuring that their small piece of ground is stable and will provide them with a sense of comfort. I understand it, but I also know that it's desperate, and desperate people do dangerous things.

What I despise even more are those who would exploit them for political gain. And if you don't think someone like Karl Rove or Rick Santorum hasn't or won't take advantage of this, then you haven't been paying attention.

A headline in the Miami Herald:

Hispanic TV Explodes

No injuries were reported.

The New York Times editorializes on the exit of Tucker Carlson and Crossfire.

As it turns out, an important moment in the annals of modern culture may have occurred when Jon Stewart of Comedy Central went on CNN's "Crossfire" last October and decided to be serious. He told Paul Begala, on the left, and Tucker Carlson, on the right, that their show, which specializes in encouraging midlevel political types to yell slogans at each other, was "partisan hackery" that was lowering the level of political discourse. At the time, he was widely denounced for failing to be funny.

But the fact that Mr. Stewart, a comedian, is perhaps the most influential political commentator on television is in itself a sign of the times, and it turns out he may be prescient about programming as well. Jonathan Klein, president of CNN, announced last week that he was canceling "Crossfire" and steering CNN back toward actual news.

The Washington Post profiles Virginia Governor Mark Warner and looks at his chances for running for higher office.

A multimillionaire entering his final year as governor of a conservative, Southern state, Warner has cultivated an image of fiscal discipline and bipartisanship that is catapulting him into the ranks of "the mentioned" among Democrats. Many assume he will run for the U.S. Senate in 2006. Some believe he will make a bid to be president in 2008. A few people close to him say he wants to be governor again someday.

"There are a lot of people within the Democratic Party who believe the party needs to reclaim the center," Warner said in an interview on the eve of his last General Assembly session, which begins Wednesday. "There are a number of figures who can help move the party in that direction."

Carl Hiaasen opines in the Miami Herald on how easy it is to get a book published. Just make a damn fool of yourself.

Take Amber Frey. She briefly dated a man who turned out to be a killer, and now -- less than two months after his conviction -- she's out promoting a 214-page memoir.

In a bygone era, a person like Frey would have been so mortified by her fling with a monster like Scott Peterson that she would've dropped out of sight after the trial and attempted to resume a private, quiet life.

Such decorous retreats into anonymity are rare these days. Fame is like crack, and it's just about as accessible. We in the media are shamelessly ravenous for celebrity news, which means we require a steady manufacture of new celebrities.

Once she came forward to admit her affair with Peterson, Amber Frey was golden. Even her name seemed tailor-made for the tabloids.

Within days the unknown Fresno massage therapist was a household word, the willowy ''other woman'' in America's most sensational (for the moment) murder case.

Obviously, Frey didn't mind the attention as much as it first appeared. She quickly conjoined herself to a big-shot lawyer who went on every cable-news program in the free world to push Frey's story.

Gee, and here I am slaving over characters that I hope my readers will actually like and care about. What the hell am I thinking?

Football picks: They're still playing? Okay, sentimental favorites win out over records and statistics. I'll take Denver over Indianapolis and Minnesota over Green Bay for the simple reason that I've lived in Colorado and Minnesota. Is there a better way to pick?

Link to this post | posted by Mustang Bobby @ 9:12 AM  

From the AP:

American troops opened fire after their convoy was struck by a roadside bomb at a checkpoint south of Baghdad, killing at least two policemen and three civilians, police said Sunday, a day after the U.S. military acknowledged five people were killed when it bombed the wrong house during a search operation in northern Iraq.

The owner of the house, Ali Yousef, said 14 people were killed when the 500-pound GPS-guided bomb hit at about 2 a.m. Saturday in the town of Aitha, 30 miles south of Mosul. An Associated Press photographer at the scene said seven children and seven adults died. The discrepancy between the death counts could not be reconciled.

The U.S. military later released a statement saying it regretted the loss of "possibly innocent lives" in the strike, which occurred as U.S. ground troops searched for "an anti-Iraqi force cell leader." American troops recently sent more troops to Mosul, which has seen heavy clashes in recent weeks between insurgents and American forces.

To paraphrase Major Frank Burns: "Why don't these Iraqis go back to where they came from?"

Wampum is in the process of posting the semi-finalists for the 2004 Koufax Awards in blogging. So far the listings are up for:

Best Blog by a Non-Professional/Sponsored Blog

Best Group Blog

Most Humorous Blog

Best Single Issue Blog

Best Expert

Best Writing

There are a lot of blogs on my Favorites list up for these, not to mention quite a good showing from The Liberal Coalition. Go vote. And while you're at it, give Wampum a hand in their efforts.

By the way, Bark Bark Woof Woof was nominated for several categories that haven't posted yet. If I make it to the semis, I'll let you know.

From the New York Times:

Newt Gingrich is taking steps toward a potential presidential bid in 2008 with a book criticizing President Bush's policies on Iraq and a tour of early campaign states.

The former House speaker who led Republicans to power a decade ago said he soon will visit Iowa and New Hampshire to promote his book, try to influence public policy and keep his political options alive.

"Anything seems possible," including a White House race, Gingrich told The Associated Press.

The quotable and controversial former Georgia congressman, who now runs a consulting firm in Washington, is promoting, "Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America." He seemed to welcome the thought that a book tour will increase speculation about his political aspirations.

"It never hurts to maximize opportunities. That's the American tradition," Gingrich said. "If I can influence the reporters and political activists in Iowa and New Hampshire, they will influence the candidates."

Newt Gingrich is the one Republican that can raise money faster for the Democrats than Tom DeLay. Just as Hillary is the Pavlov bell for the Right, Newt's our boy to ensure a new Democratic majority. Just to remind you, he was the architect of the downfall of Speaker Jim Wright for an ethics lapse (accepting a book advance) that today wouldn't get Tom DeLay ten minutes in the time-out corner. Mr. Gingrich forged the "Contract With America" that conned the voters into the Republican take-over of the House in 1994 and set himself up as Speaker of the House with the sole intention of bringing down the presidency of Bill Clinton. This thrice-married harbinger of Moral Values left his first wife while she was in the hospital for cancer treatment, married his high school math teacher, then left her for a House intern while at the same time setting up the impeachment of President Clinton, reminding his colleagues never to mention the President without including the words "criminal conduct" in the same sentence. He has a very thin skin and is given to such petty rants that it is widely believed that he forced the shutdown of the government in November 1995 because he got bumped to the back of Air Force One on a long flight back from a funeral.

It's ironic that Mr. Gingrich, who claims to be a lover of history, didn't see the parallels between his rise to power and that of another historic revolutionary figure, Maximilien Robespierre, and that of the two, Mr. Gingrich was the lucky one. He was forced out as Speaker in 1998 not for his monumental lapses in his own behavior but because the Republicans lost seats in the mid-term elections. Robespierre got the guillotine.

In 2001 I moved to Miami to take a job teaching theatre at a private school. At the end of my first year I had creative differences with the school - I wanted to have a college-style curriculum of both performance and academic theatre, and they wanted nothing but "let's put on a show." I left on good enough terms with my department chair that I was included in the hiring process of my replacement. He was a talented young man named Troy with a background in teaching high school theatre - mine was more in college - and he was an enthusiastic and creative director, he was innovative enough to bring in some elements of academia under the radar, and the students loved him. I was happy to see the theatre program take off, and they did some amazing productions, including a hilarious Crimes of the Heart and, in November 2003, a magnificent production of The Miracle Worker.

But it came at a price. The stress of a full teaching load, directing three full-fledged productions as well as prepping for state and local drama competitions, and a family illness in a far-off city weighed down on Troy, and in the middle of his second year, he abruptly left the school. I had kept in touch with him and knew that he was dealing with some personal demons in the form of episodes of depression, for the which he was receiving some form of treatment. It seemed to help; every time I saw him he was "doing great," including eight weeks ago when we saw the school's production of The Diary of Anne Frank.

Yesterday afternoon I received an e-mail from a friend who is a parent of a child at the school. On Wednesday, January 5, an unidentified swimmer drowned off Miami Beach in what was believed to be an accident - there were dangerous rip currents at the time. More details came out, though - the swimmer was fully clothed and he was wearing a t-shirt from the school. Another friend who hadn't heard from Troy in a couple of days contacted the police, and the pieces of the puzzle were put together.

I don't think anyone can say with certainty what happened. All I know is that I feel a deep sense of loss, both for his family, students, and friends, and for himself. We all have struggles, and we all find ways - productive or not - to deal with them, and at this point whether or not Troy's death was accidental doesn't really matter. The gifts he had he shared. The lives he touched in the classroom and on stage are changed. I hope he knew that as he walked into the sea.

Now cracks a Noble heart, good night sweet Prince,
And flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest.
- Hamlet, Act V, scene 2

You can't make this shit up.

The first full work week of the new year - how's it going so far? Yeah, TGIF here too.

Welcome Flablog to the Florida Blogroll. Here's another astute and acerbic voice from the Sunshine State.

Let's see what the rest of The Liberal Coalition is writing about.

All Facts and Opinions takes a look at the year past in music.

archy sums up the Gonzales nomination and the Democrats' tactics in opposition.

blogAmy has tales from the Caribbean.

Best wishes to bloggg for a speedy recovery from carpal tunnel surgery.

Chris on Kerry's chicken dance.

Collective Sigh on Saudi tsunami relief (try saying that fast).

Corrente on the roll-over on Gonzales.

NTodd on Social Security - while we still have it.

Echidne of the Snakes demonstrates why her reputation as a great defender of feminism is well-deserved.

edwardpig on the Democrats' fighting spirit.

First Draft on tap dancing at the White House.

The Fulcrum still hasn't recovered from Christmas.

The Gamer's Nook celebrates a special day.

Happy Furry Puppy discusses torture methods.

iddybud on the courage - or not - of the Democrats.

The Invisible Library has several posts on moral theology vs. tsunamis.

Kick the Leftist is on winter break.

Left Is Right on inauguration overkill.

Make Me a Commentator on real sacrifices.

MercuryX23 wishes you and yours....

Musing's Musings est à Paris.

Pen-Elayne finds out where the $350 million for tsunami aid is coming from.

Republican Sinners, which is a new blog from Jesse, who brought you The Gotham City 13, joins the roll. Go see what he has to offer.

Respectful of Otters is on a break. Hurry back, Rivka!

Rick's Cafe Americain previews some coming attractions.

Rook's Rant on joining reality.

Rubber Hose on arguing with conservatives.

Scrutiny Hooligans on changes - not - in the Democratic party leadership.

SoonerThought on the crumbling reserves.

Speedkill on the oil-for-food faux-scandal.

Steve Gilliard on Kerry in Baghdad.

T. Rex reads and responds to his mail.

Trish Wilson on a weird crook.

Words on a Page on the Scriptures.

WTF Is It Now on Republican gloating.

The Yellow Doggerel Democrat on his local infrastructure failure. Bail, Steve!

Happy Friday!

According to Tim Grieve at Salon.com, yesterday was not a good day to be a Democrat in the Capitol.

Thursday was the first serious work day for the 109th Congress, and it was a day of humiliation and futility for the Democrats who still have jobs on Capitol Hill. Republicans picked up four Senate seats and three House seats in November, and signs of the Democrats' increasing powerlessness were everywhere Thursday. In a hearing room in the Hart Senate Office Building, Biden and his Democratic colleagues went through the motions of questioning an attorney general nominee whose confirmation is a foregone conclusion. On the floor of the House of Representatives, a handful of Democrats launched a meaningless protest against the certification of Bush's reelection.

[...]

The protest put a hold on the vote certification so that each house could retire to its respective chamber for debate and a vote on the issue. But Boxer -- or anyone else who thought the protest would lead to serious discussion of election reform -- must have been disappointed by the sorry spectacle that followed. There was no sense of history being made, no sense that anything was really happening at all. Although a few hundred people protested in the drizzle across the street from the Capitol, the visitor galleries in the Senate were mostly empty. Fewer than a dozen senators showed up for the debate, and only the ones who spoke -- among them, Hillary Rodham Clinton and, in his first floor speech, Barack Obama -- seemed to take it seriously. As Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin made an impassioned plea for a bipartisan effort to improve the electoral system, Dick Cheney and Sen. Rick Santorum sat slumped in a couple of chairs on the edge of the Senate floor, talking and laughing. They weren't listening. With solid majorities in both houses, they didn't have to.

[...]

The Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee were every bit as ineffective in securing commitments from Alberto Gonzales. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer asked Gonzales whether he would agree to urge Bush to consult with Democrats about potential Supreme Court nominees. Gonzales' response? He said he'd relay the request.

Gonzales' exchange with Schumer was one of several in which the nominee was either unable to or uninterested in engaging with the questions before him. Schumer praised Gonzales for working with him on judicial appointments, saying that because of their cooperation, Bush had appointed federal judges for New York who were conservative but not outside the mainstream. When Schumer asked why the administration hadn't been able to work cooperatively on nominations with Democrats elsewhere in the country, Gonzales said he'd wondered about that, too, then left it at that.

[...]

But even the most aggressive questioners were left looking a little pathetic. At one point Thursday afternoon, Ted Kennedy was reduced to begging Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter for all of 15 minutes to question Gonzales about issues like immigration and civil rights.

And after assuring Gonzales that his confirmation was in the bag, Joe Biden found himself groveling before the nominee, calling him the "real deal" -- remember when they said that about John Kerry? -- even as he pleaded with him to tell the truth about something. "We're looking for candor, old buddy," Biden told Gonzales Thursday morning. "We're looking for you, when we ask you a question, to give us an answer, which you haven't done yet. I love you, but you're not being very candid so far."

I can accept the fact that the Democrats are in the minority. I don't like it, but I can accept it. I remember from Al-Anon meetings that acceptance is one of the first steps to making a change, and if we're going to change this country, we have to accept what we're up against. But watching clips from the hearings and the popcorn-fart attempts at rising to the opposition, the Democrats seemed as if they were embarrassed to even open their mouths. Why didn't they just curl up into a ball and whimper in the corner, "Please don't hurt me."

Sixteen years ago today I flew from Longmont, Colorado to Traverse City, Michigan to pick up my new car. My dad had found it for me at Hertz Car Sales; a slightly used (5,683 miles) 1988 Pontiac 6000 LE Safari station wagon. It was navy blue with fake wood grain paneling and all the options: power windows, power seats, a cassette player, and a 2.8 liter EFI V-6 with overdrive. I plunked down a check for $12,500 and drove back to Colorado two days later.

It now has 238,702 miles on it, and I just drove it around the block to mark the occasion. Nine more years until it's an "antique."

From CNN:

In an attempt to answer his critics, attorney general nominee Alberto Gonzales plans to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday that he will abide by international treaties if he is confirmed.

"Wherever we pursue justice -- from the war on terror to corporate fraud to civil rights -- we must always be faithful to the rule of law," Gonzales says in a draft copy of his statement obtained by CNN.

"I want to make very clear that I am deeply committed to the rule of law."

Yeah, you'd kinda think that would be part of the job as the chief law enforcement officer in the land. So why don't I feel so assured that Mr. Gonzales has to make that promise? Might it have something to do with the eerie similarities between his legal opinions about torture and the methods used in, say, Argentina when it was under military dictatorship? That's what Marguerite Feitlowitz says in Salon.com:

It seems surreal: The president's nominee for the highest legal position in the land is a proponent of torture. In his notorious Jan. 25, 2002, memorandum to Bush, Alberto Gonzales clearly fancies himself a shrewd thinker, a smooth operator when it comes to finessing the inevitable outrage of our allies when they learn that we have violated the Geneva Conventions. His suggestion for rebuttal to, among others, Secretary of State Colin Powell, who argued that the Conventions applied to the Taliban and al-Qaida? "First, some of the language [of the Conventions] is undefined (it prohibits, for example, 'outrages upon personal dignity' and 'inhuman treatment')." Are personal dignity and inhumane treatment really so mysterious? So fungible?

[...]

Alberto Gonzales has paved the way of his own advancement with memos that are intellectually slovenly, that impute definitive powers to the executive, and whose attempts at shirking the basic moral precepts of international humanitarian law are not very skillful. If he is confirmed as attorney general, our nation will be shamed, shunned and endangered.

In spite of this, the White House has asked Senator Ken Salazar, the newly-elected Democrat from Colorado, to introduce Mr. Gonzales. There will be "contentious" questions, some fun sound bites, and then the Senate will confirm him. And the band plays on.

From the AP:

Be careful where you put that rectal thermometer.

That admonition is one of the finalists in an anti-lawsuit group's contest for the wackiest warning label of the year. The winner? A toilet brush that says, "Do not use for personal hygiene."

The Wacky Warning Label Contest is in its eighth year.

The sponsor, Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, says the goal is "to reveal how lawsuits, and concern about lawsuits, have created a need for common sense warnings on products."

[...]

A $250 second prize award went to Matt Johnson of Naperville, Ill. for a label on a children's scooter that said, "This product moves when used."

A $100 third prize went to Ann Marie Taylor of Camden, S.C., who submitted a warning from a digital thermometer that said, "Once used rectally, the thermometer should not be used orally."

[...]

The leader of a group that opposes the campaign to limit lawsuits admits some warning labels seem stupid but says even dumb warnings can do good.

"There are many cases of warning labels saving lives," said Joanne Doroshow, executive director of the Center for Justice and Democracy in New York. "It's much better to be very cautious ... than to be afraid of being made fun of by a tort reform group."

Oh, I don't know.... You're talking about a country where 51% of the voters fell for a product with a warning label: "I'm George W. Bush and I approved this message."

From the New York Times:

CNN has ended its relationship with the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson and will shortly cancel its long-running daily political discussion program, "Crossfire," the new president of CNN, Jonathan Klein, said last night.

Mr. Carlson said he had actually quit "Crossfire" last April and had agreed to stay on until his contract expired. He said he had a deal in place for a job as the host of a 9 p.m. nightly talk program on MSNBC, CNN's rival.

One NBC News executive said that no deal had been completed between MSNBC and Mr. Carlson. "Tucker is a great journalist and we are exploring options with him for a 9 p.m. job," said Jeremy Gaines, a spokesman for MSNBC.

"I don't know what CNN is saying," Mr. Carlson said. "But I have no dispute with CNN."

Mr. Klein said the decisions to part company with Mr. Carlson and to end "Crossfire" were not specifically related, because he had decided to drop "Crossfire" regardless of whether Mr. Carlson wanted to stay on.

Mr. Klein said, "We just determined there was not a role here in the way Tucker wanted his career to go. He wanted to host a prime-time show in which he would put on live guests and have spirited debate. That's not the kind of show CNN is going to be doing."

[...]

Mr. Klein specifically cited the criticism that the comedian Jon Stewart leveled at "Crossfire" when he was a guest on the program during the presidential campaign. Mr. Stewart said that ranting partisan political shows on cable were "hurting America." [At which time Mr. Stewart referred to Mr. Carlson as a "dick." - MB]

Mr. Klein said last night, "I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart's overall premise." He said he believed that especially after the terror attacks on 9/11, viewers are interested in information, not opinion.

Sounds like a case of "You can't fire me - I quit!" Whatever. Tucker Carlson has always come across as one of those snotty preppies who makes you want to just punch his lights out. (As a matter of fact, he is a member of St. George's Class of 1987 and comes from a long line of prep-school snarkmeisters that seem to be a requirement in the halls of higher learning; Draco Malfoy, for example. Trust me, there is a version of Tucker Carlson in Bobby Cramer, and he gets his comeuppance in spades.) CNN is also recognizing that they can't compete with the shouters and frothers at Fox, and as long as they have Robert Novak, Carlson serves only as a redundant stand-in for that dyspeptic right-wing frumphaven.

Carlson isn't going to be hitting the unemployment line, more's the pity. As Tim Grieve at Salon.com notes, "He still has his PBS show, and bottom-trolling MSNBC seems anxious to give him just about anything he wants. Tucker is down but not out; this is one dick we'll still get to kick around for a long time to come."

I knew it was too good to be true. The House Republicans caved on the DeLay rules, but they went ahead and further weakened the House Ethics Committee.

House Republicans pushed through a significant change in the handling of ethics complaints over strong Democratic objections Tuesday as the 109th Congress convened with a burst of pomp and partisanship.

The House, on a vote of 220 to 195, enacted a change that would effectively dismiss a complaint in the event of a deadlock in the ethics committee, which is equally divided between Democrats and Republicans. Its approval came after a retreat by Republicans on Monday on other proposed ethics revisions.

At the heart of both actions were calculations about how far Republicans should go to protect the House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay. Many party members were unhappy with the ethics committee for the three admonishments it delivered to Mr. DeLay last year. [New York Times]

This got the attention of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Sometime toward the middle of Tuesday afternoon, Republicans in the U.S. House must have started asking themselves: Is Tom DeLay worth it?

Last November, knowing that the House majority leader was under investigation by a Texas grand jury for questionable fundraising practices, GOP leaders quietly changed internal party rules so that DeLay wouldn't automatically lose his leadership post if indicted. The maneuver blew up in a storm of voter outrage. Then last week, GOP leaders drafted a plan to hamstring the House ethics committee, which had voted bravely to admonish DeLay for three separate conduct violations last year. Late on Monday night, facing an internal rebellion, the leadership had to reverse course on most of that package.

The encouraging side of this sordid episode is that voter outrage still works. Capitol Hill was flooded with angry phone calls on Monday, after Common Cause and other respected watchdog groups held a news conference to spotlight the ethics maneuvers. Rep. Joel Hefley, a Republican who chairs the ethics committee, issued a courageous statement blasting the leadership's proposal. Even Mark Kennedy, a conservative Republican from Minnesota who is typically loyal to party leaders, said through an aide on Monday that he found the proposed ethics changes "troubling."

The discouraging side is that DeLay and the other GOP leaders didn't give up. Yesterday evening they pushed through a separate plan to defang the ethics committee, a change in procedural rules which virtually guarantees that any ethics complaint sent to Hefley's committee will die a quiet death unless the House majority party says otherwise. "This is just a huge blow to the integrity of the House," said Mary Boyle of Common Cause.

What's troubling about Tuesday's vote is not that it insulates DeLay or demonstrates GOP unity, but that it entrenches a style of politics that has placed the consolidation of party power above conduct of the nation's business. The result for the typical member of the House is divided loyalty: On one side stands a powerful party leader who can dole out campaign cash and punish independent thinkers; on the other stand voters back home, who are offended by DeLay's sleazy fundraising and naked power politics. Responsible party leaders don't force their members into that sort of choice.

Yeah, well, "responsible party leaders" is a sobriquet that doesn't apply to the gang that blew the budget surplus on tax cuts for the rich, started a war on false evidence, and is now determined to gut Social Security unless their pals on Wall Street get a cut. What really pegs the Irony Meter is that the Republicans are doing exactly what they accused the Democrats of doing during the years that they were in the majority. Pete Townsend was right: "Meet the new boss; same as the old boss."

From the AP:

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- Federal authorities Tuesday used the Patriot Act to charge a man with pointing a laser beam at an airplane overhead and temporarily blinding the pilot and co-pilot.

The FBI acknowledged the incident had no connection to terrorism but called David Banach's actions "foolhardy and negligent."

Banach, 38, of Parsippany admitted to federal agents that he pointed the light beam at a jet and a helicopter over his home near Teterboro Airport last week, authorities said. Initially, he claimed his daughter aimed the device at the helicopter, they said.

He is the first person arrested after a recent rash of reports around the nation of laser beams hitting airplanes.

So, how dangerous are laser beams aimed at aircraft? Let's find out. Patrick Smith is an airline pilot and author of the column Ask The Pilot for Salon.com. Here's his take on the threat lasers pose for aircraft.

Two weeks ago, in what was intended to be a preemptive snuff of a burgeoning spark of hysteria, I discussed the implausibility of terrorists using laser beams to down a commercial airliner. Unfortunately, lasers are back in the news again, now getting the full attention of the major press and television networks.

In the past week, no fewer than eight aircraft are said to have been targeted. These include a Cessna executive jet preparing to land at Teterboro, N.J.; a SkyWest commuter plane approaching Medford, Ore.; and a jetliner at 8,500 feet above Cleveland. On New Year's Eve, a beam was aimed at a police helicopter over Trenton, N.J.

[...]

While these events are perplexing, and at least potentially dangerous, a presumed link to terrorist activity is, even if impossible to discount, still premature and wrongheaded. Alas that's a bit like whispering into a hurricane here in 2005 America, where the T-word has been spliced into the very DNA of our collective societal psyche. Thanks to one day's events more than three years ago, we've come to exist in a full-on reversion mode in which every anomaly that's at once potentially harmful and not instantly solvable takes automatic cover beneath the dark cloak of "terrorism" -- a paranoid pathology that shows no sign of relenting. We've concocted an upside-down religion, choosing to invest our faith in the cunning of an invisible adversary while disparaging our own voices of reason and good sense. At heart it's an old story, fear of the unknown, taken to new and self-destructive heights in a politically charged climate.

[...]

According to the National Transportation Safety Board and the Civil Aerospace Medical Institute, there is a docket of hundreds of laser events over the years, victimizing both civilian and military aircraft. Records at the NTSB cite more than 50 laser irradiations taking place around Las Vegas alone in a two-year span between 1993 and 1995. Ten years later a similar spate -- albeit one less purely accidental, most likely the work of copycat pranksters -- becomes a small-scale national security crisis.

And if there's one thing each of those hundreds of events has in common, it's a zero fatality rate. Crews have been left disoriented and in some cases injured, but not once did an airplane crash. "In certain circumstances," reads the December DHS/FBI alert, "if laser weapons adversely affect the eyesight of both pilot and copilot during a noninstrument approach, there is risk of airliner crash." Technically that's accurate, though the "noninstrument approach" reference is only partly relevant. Conspicuous in almost all analyses of this weird brouhaha is a presumption that approach and landing are the ideal time for such an attack, when in fact takeoff would be the more opportune moment. But to truly grasp the improbability of a laser inducing a crash, one needs to understand those "certain circumstances."

Hitting two pilots squarely in the face through the refractive, wraparound windshield of a cockpit would be extremely difficult and entail a substantial amount of luck, and a temporarily or partially blinded crew would still have the means to stabilize a climbing or descending airplane. Surviving even a worst-case attack would be challenging, but not impossible.

[...]

That's giving them too much credit, frankly, and we're plenty capable of keeping ourselves good and scared. In the meantime, our reaction to terror tends to be a quantum leap ahead of reality: iris scanning, biometric coding, elaborate plans to fly planes out of harm's way by remote control. All of which miss the point.

Listen to Michael, an Airbus A320 pilot for a major U.S. airline (who asks to be kept otherwise anonymous): "Here we have cleaners and caterers able to board and roam through aircraft with no security screening whatsoever, yet people are worried about laser beams? Our priorities are insane."

"In the hierarchy of threats," adds a 747 first officer at a different carrier, "this one is pretty far down the list."

Remember the woman who got all freaked out last year on the airplane because there were a lot of "Arabic-looking" men on her flight? They turned out to be a Syrian wedding orchestra - the Middle Eastern version of Tiny and His Polka Boys - on their way to a gig and yet she managed to earn her fifteen minutes of fame and freak out the gullible.

If history is any proof, terrorists have been woefully successful not with technology on the scale of a James Bond villain but with simple things like boxcutters and fertilizer. Why would they upgrade to something that requires a Ph.D. in applied physics when they know they can achieve their goals with a $1.95 tool from Wal-Mart?

Congratulations to USC, I guess. Rumor has it that there's another Top-Ten undefeated team...Auburn? But I guess if they say the Orange Bowl champ is the champ, well, that's the way it is.

Oh, by the way... the Orange Bowl itself - the stadium - was empty last night. The game called "The Orange Bowl" was played somewhere else in a place that used to be called Joe Robbie Stadium. Can't think of the name they call it now...

From the New York Times:

Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, intervened directly with Justice Department lawyers in 2002 to obtain a legal ruling on the extent of the president's authority to permit extreme interrogation practices in the name of national security, current and former administration officials said Tuesday.

Mr. Gonzales's role in seeking a legal opinion on the definition of torture and the legal limits on the force that could be used on terrorist suspects in captivity is expected to be a central issue in the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings scheduled to begin on Thursday on Mr. Gonzales's nomination to be attorney general.

The request by Mr. Gonzales produced the much-debated Justice Department memorandum of Aug. 1, 2002, which defined torture narrowly and said that Mr. Bush could circumvent domestic and international prohibitions against torture in the name of national security.

Until now, administration officials have been unwilling to provide details about the role Mr. Gonzales had in the production of the memorandum by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Mr. Gonzales has spoken of the memorandum as a response to questions, without saying that most of the questions were his.

[...]

Mr. Gonzales talked about the August 2002 memorandum in a meeting with reporters last June, when the White House sought to defend its actions at the height of the uproar over abuses of prisoners in Iraq.

Without discussing his own role in soliciting the document, Mr. Gonzales said that the memorandum was not a policy directive to officials in the field but a response to questions about the scope of the federal law prohibiting torture and the international convention on torture.

"The president has given no order or directive that would immunize from prosecution anyone engaged in conduct that constitutes torture," Mr. Gonzales said. "All interrogation techniques actually authorized have been carefully vetted, are lawful, and do not constitute torture."

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, who has signaled an intent to question Mr. Gonzales vigorously about his role in the memorandums, said Tuesday that he has been continually frustrated by the White House in trying to obtain answers and documents.

In a letter to Mr. Gonzales on Tuesday, Mr. Leahy wrote, "I am disappointed that, contrary to your promises to me to engage in an open exchange and answer my questions in connection with your confirmation process, you have not answered my letters" requesting documents.

I have to admire Sen. Leahy's dogged pursuit of answers, but is it too much to hope that he's going to actually do something? We know what will happen: the Democrats are going to ask a lot of "vigorous questions," put on a show, throw a lot of sound bites out there, get our hopes raised that there is one shred of backbone left in the Democrats on the Hill, and then vote to confirm him unanimously.

From the file of I Didn't Know That.

Forget about Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Year's. What are you doing for the Eighth of January - the 190th anniversary of Andrew Jackson's defeat of the British at the Battle of New Orleans?

If this were 1835 instead of 2005, you'd surely have plans because the day was a national holiday with parades, feasts, dances and speeches.

Perhaps no other major American holiday has been so forgotten, historians argue.

[...]

The Eighth was celebrated widely in the years after the battle and became a national event after Jackson took the presidency in 1828. Newspaper accounts tell of balls and parades and speeches in the nation's largest cities. One report from Nashville in 1844 recounts cannon blasts, early adjournment of the state Legislature, a parade and large crowds at The Hermitage, Jackson's home near Nashville.

"This was a national holiday that rivaled everything but July 4th. It was bigger than Christmas," said Tony Guzzi, curator of The Hermitage.

The Battle of New Orleans was the final engagement of the final war with England and came at a perilous time for the young republic. Jackson was a decided underdog, facing a much larger and better trained army of British forces with a ragtag group that included regular U.S. troops, New Orleans militia, Kentucky and Tennessee frontiersmen, freed slaves and blacks, and a band of outlaws led by the pirate Jean Lafitte.

[...]

Jackson's victory actually came after the war was over. The Treaty of Ghent was signed in Europe ending the War of 1812 weeks before the Battle of New Orleans. But word of the treaty didn't reach the United States until after the British were defeated at New Orleans.

Still, the victory made Jackson a national hero and propelled him to political prominence. He became a U.S. senator and ran for the presidency in 1824, but when neither candidate won a majority, the decision went to the House of Representatives and it chose John Quincy Adams.

Four years later, Jackson ran again and won the first of his two terms.

After that, the Eighth of January became intertwined with politics. Places that supported Jackson celebrated it more vehemently than those that didn't, and his political opponents used the day to hold rallies against him.

[...]

The battle was resurrected in popular culture again in 1959 with Johnny Horton's hit song, "The Battle of New Orleans," which was sung to a traditional American fiddle tune called "The Eighth of January."

Today, the anniversary is still celebrated in Nashville and New Orleans. A ceremony is held each year at Jackson's tomb at The Hermitage, with free admission to the home that day. At Chalmette National Battlefield, a living history encampment draws thousands. In New Orleans, the Daughters of 1812 have a wreath laying ceremony on Jackson Square.

But the attention is very different from what it was 170 years ago. In fact, on Jan. 8, Jackson is sure to be upstaged by another Tennessee icon.

"When I ask tour groups if they know why January 8th is important, someone always brings up Elvis' birthday," Forbis said. "January 8th is really a bigger deal in Memphis than anywhere else now."

"The Battle of New Orleans" was one of the songs in my campfire counselor repertoire at camp, but I never knew it was a national holiday. Well, in honor of that, I'm taking the 8th off from work. (Not that big a deal - it's a Saturday.)

He's back, rested, and ready to take on the lies, damned lies, and statistics. Today he patiently explains why the Chicken Littles are endangering Social Security.

Here's the truth: by law, Social Security has a budget independent of the rest of the U.S. government. That budget is currently running a surplus, thanks to an increase in the payroll tax two decades ago. As a result, Social Security has a large and growing trust fund.

When benefit payments start to exceed payroll tax revenues, Social Security will be able to draw on that trust fund. And the trust fund will last for a long time: until 2042, says the Social Security Administration; until 2052, says the Congressional Budget Office; quite possibly forever, say many economists, who point out that these projections assume that the economy will grow much more slowly in the future than it has in the past.

[...]

There are only two things that could endanger Social Security's ability to pay benefits before the trust fund runs out. One would be a fiscal crisis that led the U.S. to default on all its debts. The other would be legislation specifically repudiating the general fund's debts to retirees.

[...]

There are two serious threats to the federal government's solvency over the next couple of decades. One is the fact that the general fund has already plunged deeply into deficit, largely because of President Bush's unprecedented insistence on cutting taxes in the face of a war. The other is the rising cost of Medicare and Medicaid.

As a budget concern, Social Security isn't remotely in the same league. The long-term cost of the Bush tax cuts is five times the budget office's estimate of Social Security's deficit over the next 75 years. The botched prescription drug bill passed in 2003 does more, all by itself, to increase the long-run budget deficit than the projected rise in Social Security expenses.

Wow, even I understand that explanation. Good to have you back, Paul.

From the New York Times:

Stung by criticism that they were lowering ethical standards, House Republicans on Monday night reversed a rule change that would have allowed a party leader to retain his position even if indicted.

Lawmakers and House officials said Republicans, meeting behind the closed doors of the House chamber, had acted at the request of the House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay, who had been the intended beneficiary of the rule change.

[...]

Those attending the Republican meeting, which was held on the day before the opening of the 109th Congress on Tuesday, said Republicans unanimously agreed to restore the old rule after Mr. DeLay told them that the move would clear the air and deny Democrats a potent political issue. In the past year, he has been admonished by the ethics panel three times: for his tactics in trying to persuade a colleague to support the Medicare drug bill, for appearing to link political donations to support for legislation and for involving a federal agency in a political matter in Texas.

Even among skunks, one will turn to the other and say, "Whoa, dude, you really stink."

The Faithful Correspondent sent me this to encourage me that maybe there's a chance that Bobby Cramer could be published some day.


Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller - 12/31/04

The long break is over. It wasn't hard getting back to the usual morning routine since I never really broke it; the only thing is that I have to wait to get to the office to have my coffee.

I arrived at my office to find that the heating/cooling system, which was apparently shut down over the holidays, came back on without the cooling side being functional. Laugh if you will, you up in the northern climes, but it was about 85 F in here, and for the first hour or so I was schvitzing like a pig. But the building guys got on it, and it's already cooling off.

If this year is anything like last year in our school system, it's going to be an interesting ride. Hang on, campers!

From the AP:

COSTA MESA, Calif. (AP) -- Some parents and parishioners have accused the Roman Catholic diocese in Orange County of violating church doctrine by allowing a gay couple to enroll their children in a church school.

The group demanded that St. John the Baptist School in Costa Mesa accept only families that pledge to abide by Catholic teachings, the Los Angeles Times reported in Sunday's editions. Church doctrine opposes gay relationships and adoption by same-sex couples.

"The teachings of the church seem to have been abandoned," John R. Nixon told the Times. "We send our children to a Catholic school because we expect and demand that the teachings of our church will be adhered to."

School officials rejected the demand, and issued a new policy stating that a family's background "does not constitute an absolute obstacle to enrollment in the school."

The parents' demand would presumably prevent two adopted boys whose parents are both men from attending the school's kindergarten.

The Rev. Gerald M. Horan, superintendent of diocese schools, said that if Catholic beliefs were strictly adhered to, then children whose parents divorced, used birth control or married outside the church would also have to be banned.

"This is the quagmire that the parents' position represents," he said. "It's a slippery slope to go down."

The boys' parents, who enrolled their children at the beginning of the school year, declined to comment to the Times.

Some parents have promised to ask the Vatican to intervene and some have threatened to pull their children from the school. Others are worried the boys' attendance will set a precedent, saying their presence is part of a larger effort by the gay community to change the church.

"The boys are being used as pawns by these men to further their agenda," said Monica Sii, who has four children at the school.

Let's see; that agenda would include giving their children a decent education. Wow, that sounds pretty insidious to me.

Two interesting and powerful political figures passed from the scene over the weekend. The first was California Rep. Bob Matsui, who died on Saturday.

At his death, Rep. Matsui was the third-ranking Democrat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and among the highest-ranking Asian Americans in House history.

As an infant, he was interned in a detention camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. He later pushed through a bill hoping to redress the psychological damage of internees.

The second was former Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress and candidate for the presidency in 1972.

Chisholm was elected to the House from Brooklyn in 1968 and was an outspoken advocate for women and minorities during her seven terms. She was a riveting speaker who often criticized Congress as being too clubby and unresponsive.

"My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn't always discuss for reasons of political expediency," she once said.

Chisholm became a congresswoman the same year Richard M. Nixon was elected to the White House and served until two years into Ronald Reagan's tenure as president. She was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1969.

Both of these people earned the respect of the nation for their tireless work on behalf of more than just their constituency or their own ethnic group, and they did it in a way that brought people to them with hope instead of fear. There's a sore lack of that style of leadership today, and I hope that their legacy is that it will not be forgotten.

From the Albuquerque Tribune:

So much for bipartisanship. So much for working together in the best interests of the entire country. So much for the 48 percent of Americans who voted for something other than four more years. So much for leadership or statesmanship.

In announcing he will resubmit some 20 judicial nominations stalled during his first term because they represented extreme judicial positions or philosophies, President Bush clearly is spoiling for a political street fight. He deserves nothing less. The judicial terrain is vital and must be defended.

Bush isn't just spending some of that political "capital" that he thinks he amassed in the November election. And he certainly is not being presidential - as in being president of all the people, reaching out, respecting the opposition, governing from the center or revamping his so-called "compassionate conservatism."

Rather, he is back in the saddle, reprising his role as the cowboy in the black hat, who thinks because he has power he can act like a bully and get away with it. Here's hoping the town folk rise up in arms and run his unacceptable extreme judicial nominations out of the Senate.

Bush is ignoring the bitter reality that the political division in this country, represented vividly in red and blue in the recent election, is sharp, very deep, troubling and enduring. Democrats in the past four years compromised mightily, approving - as upcoming Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid pointed out - some 204 of Bush's nominations, holding up "only 10 of the most extreme" nominees.

Rather than finding the common ground on which most Americans want this country to stand, Bush chose instead on Christmas weekend to declare a partisan, ideological war. But it is not just war against liberals or Democrats or progressives, or even the so-called "activist" judiciary. In renominating these judicial candidates (one of whom oversaw the Bush legal analysis that sanctioned torturing of prisoners of war), Bush is openly declaring war against:

Women and the most fundamental of human rights, the right of every person to control their own body.

The Constitution, specifically the Bill of Rights and its legal, procedural protections and restraints on government power against individual citizens and in ensuring that every American has equal protection under law.

The constitutional requirement that U.S. officials abide by international treaties and laws to which the United States is a party, such as the Geneva Convention rules protecting prisoners of war.

Religion and its safeguards and governmental restrictions specified in no less than the First Amendment.

The environment and the long-standing rules protecting it, which are being grossly violated by the administration, which in turn is being challenged in the courts that Bush wants to refashion to conform to his economic, social and cultural values.

Bush chose to fire the first salvo in this war on this turf because he knows if he can prevail in the battle for the judiciary - including the big seats on the Supreme Court - he has a better chance of remaking America in his own image and ideology.

The Democratic Senate minority has no choice but to defend the country, the Constitution and all the people it represents. They should hold fast, using all procedural rules, including filibuster. If Bush insists on spending his political capital in this purely partisan, ideological fashion, Senate Democrats and wise Republicans must do all they can to ensure he goes politically bankrupt.

Because if Bush succeeds in this, America will be on its way to becoming a regressive, repressive, culturally monolithic society whose hallmark will be exclusion, not inclusion; conformity, not diversity; and, perhaps even theocracy over democracy. All Americans - regardless of gender, race, creed, sexual orientation or political ideology - must believe their judges will abide by and enforce the law, including the mother of all American law, the Constitution.

From the Guardian:

The tsunami will, overwhelmingly, be remembered as a catastrophic natural disaster. But it also marks a milestone in the development of the internet. At first it was total failure. The information revolution that can extract or send data from anywhere in the world in a fraction of a second, failed to transmit news of the doomsday waves to those affected despite a window of several hours during which potential victims could have been warned. Somehow the world's fax machines, emails, mobile phones, satellite phones, internet cafes, computers and texters failed to link up in a way that could have warned enough people in the path of the tsunami who could have spread the alarm. As a result tens of thousands of people died who might have had time to move to higher ground. This could easily be solved and must never be allowed to happen again.

Since that early systemic failure the internet has turned itself into an angel of deliverance. There has been an explosion of web sites on the internet and blogs (online journals) helping rescue work and also raising money for charities at a speed never known before. In Britain £45m had been raised by yesterday, much of it through online contributions which might not otherwise have been made. Hundreds of sites have been set up, mainly by volunteers, to identify victims and to coordinate rescue work. Yesterday a website was launched in Hong Kong enabling internet users worldwide to upload pictures of missing relatives which can be automatically scanned against a database of photographs of victims in Phuket, Thailand. It may be expanded to cover other affected areas.

This displays the awesome power unleashed by the internet when its global network of communications is allied to the community spirit that drives so many of its activities. There is one more task to do. The web's army of volunteers must ensure that the follow-through is effective once the powerful but transient presence of the world's media moves on to another place. They have a big role to play through blogging and web cameras to keep the world focussed on the massive reconstruction work that will have to be done before normal service can be resumed. So often in the past promised resources have not materialised once the initial horror has waned. If the internet community can help keep the world's politicians on continuous alert, it will be even more deserving of our gratitude.

From The Blade:

Security moms, girlie men, and values voters may look back in a few months and wonder where the catch-phrases we all lived by in 2004 went.

Fact is, they will simply give way to a whole new batch destined to have their 15 or so minutes of fame.

Frankly there should be a very large "coalition of the willing" eager to say good-bye to the detritus and buzzwords - political and otherwise - of the year just ended.

Bring it on, President Bush said in defiance of Iraqi insurgents. Bring it on, said Democratic candidate John Kerry in a reference to discussing national security issues with the President in their debates. But though Mr. Kerry might well have won all three debates, and sent all those Deaniacs to the woodshed in Iowa, we would say let's not bring it on, but instead thumb those catch-phrases out of here.

Not that 2005 is going to be that much better. Mr. Bush is using the phrase "ownership society" in connection with his effort to dismantle Social Security. He should be careful what he spends his "mandate" and political capital on, because if all the income safety-net programs are dismantled, the economy might just go in the tank next Christmas.

"Reverse the curse," the Red Sox fans prayed fervently, but now that the Bambino apparently has forgiven the Crimson Hose for selling him to the New York Yankees, what excuse will they offer for lousy seasons in future?

Is any part of Baghdad really a "green zone" in the horticultural sense?

In the continuing debate about what brand of car to buy, is it really appropriate to ask the question "What would Jesus drive"? But in 2004, a lot of people asked.

While we are on the subject of words, Lake Superior State University has issued its annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use, and General Uselessness. The words were chosen from among 5,000 entries.

Among these were "metrosexual" (an urban male who pays too much attention to his appearance, but could be taken for one who seeks sexual encounters on the subway); "companion animals," known to your father's generation as pets; "embedded journalists" or embeds, which sounds either like a painful growth in a sensitive part of the body or a new generation of robots.

Well, you go to war with the cliches you have, not necessarily the ones you might like to have. Another edict bans "smoking gun" instead of hard evidence; "shots rang out," and "in harm's way" which was a good title for a John Wayne war flick, perhaps, but as one writer noted "Who is Harm and why would you want to get in his way?"

And thanks for the most part to professional athletes, we gained yet another new expression in 2004: "It is what it is." Not sure just what that means, but well, it is what it is.

Many other cliches are out there that ought to be chilled but never chosen.

In the meantime we'll climb into our Swift Boats, cruise over to Little Gitmo, and try to Stop-Loss this Jib Jab before it really gets out of hand.

And, whoever thought of this editorial idea, here's another of 2004's hot-button expressions for you - you're fired!

Football picks: The Lions play the Titans. The Lions are out of the playoffs - what have they got to lose? The Dolphins play the Ravens. The Dolphins should be glad the season is over.

Link to this post | posted by Mustang Bobby @ 8:01 AM  

On January 1, 1995, I went out to my office in Harbor Springs, Michigan - that's where my computer was located - and began writing the first draft of what has become my current novel-in-progress, Bobby Cramer. I didn't have a title for it then, and two years into it I started it all over again when I switched from the Apple IIc to the Gateway. I had no idea where I was going with it; some would say I still don't, but I'm having a lot of fun, and last night when I stopped writing at 11:38 p.m., I was on page 784.

About five years ago I wrote the preface - the teaser, if you will. Here it is in its entirety.

The kitten is staring back at me. It looks startled, but it is unblinking, unmoving. Off in the distance I hear a series of high-pitched beeps. A soft female voice says, “Breathe.” I take a breath, the noise stops. I feel weak, my body heavy. I try to look around. Soft lighting, chemical smells, muffled sounds, people moving. The alarm sounds again and the voice repeats, “Breathe, Richard.” My throat is dry. I am very tired. Darkness moves in.

The light comes back slowly. My right hand is resting on my chest. A long metal cap like a thimble with a wire running from it encloses my index finger. I try to lift my arm, but it is too heavy. Once again I hear the beeping and I take a deep breath on my own.

My head is clearing. The kitten is a poster on the ceiling: Hang In There, Baby. I am in bed, the covers lightly tucked around me. My left leg throbs but I cannot move it.

“Are you awake?” says the voice. She is wearing a white coat, large glasses, and a shower cap. She smiles, adjusts something. “Where’s Bobby?” I whisper. She moves off. More darkness.

The next time I open my eyes she is at the foot of the bed. Someone who looks like Alan Alda in green scrubs and dark hair looks closely at my leg. “Need to loosen it a little.” A high whine, the smell of cut wood, the heaviness lessening. The noise stops. “Where’s Bobby?” I say.

The man looks at me. “You’re a very lucky man, Mr. Barlow.” He moves to my side. “Do you know where you are?”

“In a hospital, I guess.”

“Do you know which one?”

I try thinking, but nothing comes. For a moment I stare at him, then shake my head.

“You’re in Longmont United. Longmont, Colorado. Do you know how you got here?”

I shake my head again. Still nothing.

“Do you know the date?” says the woman.

“February something. Nineteen ninety-five.”

She puts a clear plastic tube into the needle in my arm.

“You’re still a little groggy,” says Alan Alda. “You’ve had surgery to reduce a fracture in your left ankle. I did the operation.”

“Thanks. Where’s Bobby?”

He pats my hand gently. “We’re going to keep you overnight for observation. Go back to sleep. We’ll talk later.” He looks at the nurse, she nods, and the kitten fades into the growing darkness. (Copyright 2005 by the author.)

That's enough for now. Back to work.

I've lived in a lot of states, and each one of them has their quirks; where else but in New Mexico would people build a shrine to the image of the Virgin Mary that showed up in a tortilla? Well, in Florida, she showed up in a grilled cheese sandwich. But that story doesn't even make the top ten for the year's collection of the silly, the stupid, the errant, and the just plain weird news from Florida.

Only in Florida could tigers and Tigger rank among the strangest news stories.

Tigger was on trial for groping a Disney World visitor and two tigers made the news, one during a highly publicized escape in Palm Beach County and another for attacking its handler when it was startled by a 14-year-old boy.

They were among a whole host of weird stories in Florida this year dealing with animals, politics, dumb criminals and a range of other subjects.

A man who portrayed Tigger was acquitted after his lawyer donned the character's costume in closing arguments. The man got his job back, but was later suspended when he pushed two co-workers while dressed as Goofy.

The Palm Beach tiger, Bobo, was owned by an actor who used to portray Tarzan in films. When it escaped, authorities searched for more than a day, eventually killing the animal when it lunged at a wildlife officer.

During the search, a woman pulled up with a 5-month-old pig in her trunk and told officers to grab the pig's hind legs or twist its ears, hoping the squeal would attract the tiger.

They declined and instead charged her with animal cruelty.

[...]

A couple of animals helped bring one-hit-wonder Vanilla Ice back in the news. His pets -- Bucky Buckaroo the wallaroo and Pancho the goat -- escaped and wandered around St. Lucie County before being captured.

Another singer from the past also made the news. Miguel Cancel, who was a teenage heartthrob when he sang for Menudo, is now a member of the Coral Gables SWAT team. He and three other officers were injured when a van they were in tipped over near Yeehaw Junction.

[...]

A Bay County couple called police and reported someone broke into their home and stole their marijuana. The thief, though, didn't take all traces of the pot and the couple was arrested. A police lieutenant said, "They're America's dumbest criminals."

A Callaway woman also landed in jail after she led police to her home. She accidentally dialed 911 and hung up. Police showed up and discovered she was running a methamphetamine lab out of the house.

Two men and a woman ducked into an attic to hide from police, but revealed themselves when they discovered a decomposing body hidden along with them. Police had almost given up their search when they heard a shout: "Get me out of here, there's a body!"

[...]

Plans were announced for Natura, a Christian nudist colony in Hudson. Developers promised a church, family building classes and good times.

"Get set to have a lot of wet and nude fun at Natura. No stupid, soggy, wet, uncomfortable, binding or un-needed swimsuits here!" a Web site proclaimed.

Though wet and topless, there wasn't much fun when a man and his bare-breasted female passenger drove through a Port St. John home and into a backyard swimming pool.

While that vehicle didn't float, another proved seaworthy. Eleven people tried to make the 90-mile trip from Cuba to Florida in a 1959 Buick.

They were stopped off the coast of the Florida Keys.

Also in the Keys, a 69-year-old woman opened fire at divers searching for lobsters in a canal behind her home. "They was taking the lobster, and we're not going to have no more lobsters," she said. No one was injured.

Nature can be inhuman.

I'm really looking forward to more of Mr. Brooks's inciteful grasp of the patently obvious during the coming year.

I stayed up to watch the ball drop in Times Square, the drag queen drop in Key West, and listen to my neighbors let off fireworks (hey guys, there's a fine line between celebration and creating a public hazard).

Fortunately, I don't have a hangover to contend with, not having had an alcoholic drink since October of 1992, but I'll bet there are a number of people with what W.C. Fields called a "conk." ("The two-headed boy in the circus never had such a headache.") To them I will whisper quietly, "happy new year," and suggest they drink plenty of cool water and take a couple of aspirin.

Oh, yeah; congratulations to the Miami Hurricanes for their win in whatever bowl they were playing in.