Bark Bark Woof Woof

OK, so we've nailed this down. It would have been against state law for Harry Reid to have reimbursed the Nevada Athletic Commission for credentials.

Clearly, this is pretty far down in the weeds. But the AP actually got a pretty significant fact wrong. So let me run through the details.

Bob Arum, the boxing promoter who gave the credentials to Reid and Sen. John McCain, made that claim to The Las Vegas Review Journal. But I wanted to check up on that, so I called Keith Kizer, the Executive Director of the Nevada Athletic Commission. Kizer should know - he is a lawyer and former Chief Deputy Attorney General for the state of Nevada.

"It would be illegal," Kizer said, explaining that it fell under a state law prohibiting agencies or individuals for charging access to government property. The credentials provide access to the commission's area near the ring. "It would be like charging someone for access to a senator's office," Kizer added with no apparent sense of irony.

He went on to explain that credentials are given out to governmental officials and others in order to observe the commission's activity. Sometimes the credentials are provided in addition to tickets - sometimes officials sit in the commission's area.

Reid's office, meanwhile, confirmed that Reid received a credential, and not a ticket to the bout: "We know it for a fact that he had a credential.”

I have written to the AP asking whether they planned on issuing a correction and was promised a reply "this afternoon." In his piece, John Solomon referred to Reid having received (reimbursable) "tickets" to the fight.

Al Gore has made his sharpest attack yet on the George Bush presidency, describing the current US administration as "a renegade band of rightwing extremists".

In an interview with the Guardian today, the former vice-president calls himself a "recovering politician", but launches into the political fray more explicitly than he has previously done during his high-profile campaigning on the threat of global warming.

Denying that his politics have shifted to the left since he lost the court battle for the 2000 election, Mr Gore says: "If you have a renegade band of rightwing extremists who get hold of power, the whole thing goes to the right."

But he claims he does not "expect to be a candidate" for president again, while refusing explicitly to rule out another run. Asked if any event could change his mind, he says: "Not that I can see."

Mr Gore, who appeared at the Guardian Hay literary festival over the bank holiday weekend, is promoting An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary and book detailing the climate change crisis that he warns "could literally end civilisation".

The new levels of attention he is receiving have led some Democrats to call on him to run again for president, while others have responded with anger that Mr Gore did not show the same level of passion in the 2000 campaign.

He has since acknowledged that he followed too closely the advice of his consultants during that campaign, and - before he started to scoff at the idea of running again - swore that if he ever did so, he would speak his mind.

Just over a year ago, Alaa Seif al-Islam was one of a growing number of Egyptian bloggers who recounted their lives online, published poetry, provided Web tips, helped private aid agencies use the Internet and stayed out of politics.

But on May 25, 2005, Seif al-Islam witnessed the beating of women at a pro-democracy rally in central Cairo by supporters of the ruling National Democratic Party. He was then roughed up by police, who confiscated the laptop computer ever at his hand.

After that, Seif al-Islam's blog turned to politics. It began not only to describe the troubles of Egypt under its authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak, but also described acts of repression and became a vehicle for organizing public protests.

On May 7, Seif al-Islam took part in a downtown sit-in to show support for two judges whose jobs are threatened because they denounced electoral fraud during parliamentary elections in November.

Police with sticks broke up the protest and trucked dozens of demonstrators, including Seif al-Islam, to jail, where he remains.

At least six bloggers are among about 300 protesters jailed during the past month's suppression of demonstrations. The bloggers, supporters say, were singled out by police, who pointed them out before agents rushed in to hustle them away. In the view of some human rights observers, the Egyptian government has begun to note political activity online and is taking steps to rein it in.

[...]

Under Egypt's emergency laws, which have been in place for 25 years, the bloggers can be jailed indefinitely. A special court reviews such detentions only every 15 days. Some prisoners held under emergency laws have been jailed for more than a decade.

Among the charges lodged against Seif al-Islam is insulting Mubarak, who has been Egypt's president for a quarter-century.

[...]

Publicity about the recent demonstrations, with pictures of beatings and arrests spreading throughout the Egyptian press, on Arabic satellite television stations and on the Internet, appears to be getting under Mubarak's skin. In an interview published Tuesday in the state-run Al Gumhuria newspaper, he called the protests "evidence of democracy" but went on to say that coverage of the demonstrations reflects "mean intentions and a desire to achieve personal benefits.

"Most of what they are writing could be punished according to the law, because it is libel and blasphemy," Mubarak said. Referring to himself as the source of whatever free speech exists in Egypt, he added: "If they think that what they are doing is an expression of their freedom, they should remember who gave them this chance, and who is insisting on its continuity."

Mr. Ford, 36, is a Democrat in a conservative state that has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1990. He is the scion of a polarizing political family with an uncle under indictment on federal corruption charges, or, as Mr. Ford dryly puts it on the campaign trail, "You may have read a few things about my family." He is an African-American in a region that has not sent an African-American to the Senate since Reconstruction.

Moreover, the South has become a Republican stronghold in recent years, the castle keep for the party's Senate majority. Democrats lost five seats in the region in 2004. Of the 22 Senate seats in the South, only 4 are now held by Democrats. Party leaders are keenly aware that until they make inroads in the South, any stable majority in the Senate will be hard to achieve. But they have hopes that Mr. Ford can begin to turn the tide.

And Mr. Ford, a five-term congressman from Memphis, rouses his audiences, white and black, with little parables of political possibility: How he was driving back to Memphis one day on the campaign trail, fired up after a meeting at a church, and decided to stop and shake hands at a bar and grill called the Little Rebel. How he looked with some trepidation at the Confederate flag outside and the parking lot filled with pickup trucks, covered with bumper stickers for President Bush and the National Rifle Association.

And how he was greeted, when he walked through the door, by a woman at the bar who gave him a huge hug. "And she said, 'Baby, we've been waiting to see you.' "

[...]

It was viewed as a measure of Republican concern when the National Republican Senatorial Committee began a series of personal attacks with a Web site called "Fancy Ford," mocking Mr. Ford for vacationing in the Hamptons, socializing and raising money with stars like Sarah Jessica Parker, and wearing Armani suits. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee responded with a Web site called "Fancy Frist," cataloging the patrician tastes of the current Republican senator.

"My grandmother used to say, 'bless their hearts,' " Mr. Ford said of the attacks while campaigning across eastern Tennessee. "When people don't have anything meaningful to say, they go on the attack."

[...]

In the tradition of other Southern Democrats who prospered in conservative times, Mr. Ford presents himself as a pro-growth, centrist, fiscal hawk.

He voted for the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq (he has also called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld), for a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage and for the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. NARAL Pro-Choice America considers him "mixed choice" on abortion; the National Rifle Association gave him a grade of C in the 2004 election. He also backs a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget.

Mr. Ford is known as something of an ambitious maverick in his party; he challenged Representative Nancy Pelosi of California for the minority leader's job in 2002. According to Congressional Quarterly ratings, he voted with his party 83 percent of the time in 2005, below the average Democratic party unity score of 88 percent. Republicans say he is still the most liberal member of the Tennessee delegation.

Mr. Ford agrees that "the most toxic word in the political vocabulary in this state is liberal" and fights the ideological characterization. He is an accomplished, seemingly effortless campaigner, slipping comfortably between the old cadences of Southern populism, "new Democrat" optimism and the rich oratory of the black church.

About 16 percent of Tennessee's population is black; in addition to "campaigning everywhere," as Mr. Ford puts it, his campaign needs a major turnout in black communities. "I can't do this without you," he told a group of black ministers in Knoxville. After a day of frenetic campaigning, with more to come into the night, he ended simply: "I just want to be a good senator. If we make some history, fair enough."

Reid, D-Nev., took the free seats for Las Vegas fights between 2003 and 2005 as he was pressing legislation to increase government oversight of the sport, including the creation of a federal boxing commission that Nevada's agency feared might usurp its authority.

He defended the gifts, saying they would never influence his position on the bill and was simply trying to learn how his legislation might affect an important home state industry. "Anyone from Nevada would say I'm glad he is there taking care of the state's No. 1 businesses," he told The Associated Press.

Reid, D-Nev., took the free seats for Las Vegas fights between 2003 and 2005 from the Nevada Athletic Commission as he pressed legislation to increase federal oversight of boxing, including the creation of a government commission.

Reid defended the gifts, saying they would never influence his position on the boxing bill and that he was simply trying to learn how his legislation might affect an important home state industry. "Anyone from Nevada would say I'm glad he is there taking care of the state's No. 1 businesses," he told The Associated Press.

It is very difficult to believe that this was anything other than intentional on the part of the Associated Press. They appear to have changed a story - taken the most significant piece of information out of a story - in order to better smear a sitting US Senator. And before the AP says it was a simple mistaken edit, a number of the top blogs wrote about that very sentence yesterday, showing how that sentence proved the AP story was a hatchet job. Would AP now have us believe that they never heard of the criticism, and the sentence simply disappeared by accident?

I believed, you know? I was sincere. I was sincere and I was shell-shocked. September 11 changed everything for me. I’d seen war up close — or rather I thought I had — and it changed everything.

But here we are, four years later plus a few months. Not one but two enemy nations invaded and defeated, and terrorism is still with us. Four and a half years of unprecedented diplomatic rhetoric, and terrorism is still with us. An overseas prison camp full of captured enemies — or suspected enemies — and terrorism is still with us. The most concerted, comprehensive signals intelligence campaign in human history, and terrorism is still with us. Still with us, and growing stronger, emboldened by anger at our excesses.

Oh, sure. The exegencies of war, right? In a war, you do whatever you have to do to win and to win quickly, because once the battle has been joined, that’s the only way to save lives. But here’s the thing: We’re not at war. War is more than a legal condition. It’s a state of political will. We as a nation never had the political will to wage the kind of generations-long campaign against the ideology of radicalism and terrorism onto which we reflexively embarked after 9/11. And the sitting President — whom I sincerely believe to be a man of faith and conscience — did nothing to engender that kind of political will.

We’re not at war. But we’re doing the kinds of things, both at home and abroad, that would only be justified — could only be excused — in a war. And not a war of convenience, either, or a war to enforce the edict of some pseudo-legal body. The tactics we’ve employed in the past four years could only be tolerated in a desperate and frantic war for our very survival.

And that’s just not where we are. It’s not where we are, and it’s not where we’re willing to put ourselves.

And most important of all, it’s not where we have to be.

[...]

Now, don’t misunderstand me. I don’t have any answers here, none at all. I don’t know what that third way is. All I know is that we’re on the wrong path — as a nation, as a people, as a world — and that trying to return things to status quo ante bellum is a fantasy. There has to be another way. There has to be.

I just don’t know what it is. Or where to find it.

So what’s my answer? Close the prison camps, pull our troops out of foreign lands, disband the NSA? No, of course not. That’s what I’m saying: I don’t have an answer. But because the men and women whom we’ve elected to represent us and lead for us aren’t even asking the questions, I can no longer stand behind them.

Hear me now, Internet: I do not give a damn about government spending. I don’t give a damn about immigration. I don’t even give a damn about Iran at the moment. Right now, I can’t give a damn about any of those things. Because they’re just polishing the brass on the Titanic, man. They’re just fiddling while Rome burns all around us.

We have to find a way out. We went down the wrong path after 9/11, and we’re still barreling down the wrong path at full speed.

We have to find a way out. We have to find a way out.

Hoping to win a Congressional majority in November, some optimistic Democratic lawmakers have taken to referring to Representative Nancy Pelosi as "speaker," as in speaker of the House. So have some optimistic Republicans.

"She ought to be a big component of the fall campaign," said Ed Rogers, a Republican strategist and lobbyist. "There are some Democrats who make really good bad guys."

Ms. Pelosi, the California Democrat and House minority leader, lends herself to easy caricature by Republicans. She is an unapologetic liberal, with a voting record to match (the Republican National Committee chairman, Ken Mehlman, said she was neither a "New Democrat" nor an "Old Democrat" but a "prehistoric Democrat"). She is wealthy (married to an investment banker, she has assets listed at more than $16 million). She represents San Francisco, which Republicans love to invoke as a hotbed of counterculture decadence and extremism.

"Is America ready for Nancy Pelosi's Contract With San Francisco?" asked Representative Ric Keller, Republican of Florida, posing a question that, one imagines, could form the basis of many Republican advertisements this fall.

After three decades in public life, New York's junior senator is one of the most recognized women in the world, her every move and utterance interpreted amid the assumption in Democratic circles and her own circle that her reelection campaign this fall will pivot into a run for president in 2008. Yet for all her fame, there are missing pieces to the Clinton puzzle: What does she stand for? And where would she try to take the country if elected?

[...]

Her detractors find much -- and much different -- to criticize. Liberal columnist Molly Ivins dismisses Clinton as the embodiment of "triangulation, calculation and equivocation." Markos Moulitsas, whose Daily Kos Web site often attacks the Democratic establishment, ridicules her as a leader who is "afraid to offend." The Rev. Jerry Falwell, echoing a view shared by many Republicans, calls her a liberal "ideologue" who is far more doctrinaire than her husband.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) accepted free ringside tickets from the Nevada Athletic Commission to three professional boxing matches while that state agency was trying to influence him on federal regulation of boxing.

Reid took the free seats for Las Vegas fights between 2003 and 2005 as he was pressing legislation to increase government oversight of the sport, including the creation of a federal boxing commission that Nevada's agency feared might usurp its authority.

He defended the gifts, saying that they would never influence his position on the bill and he was simply trying to learn how his legislation might affect an important home state industry. "Anyone from Nevada would say I'm glad he is there taking care of the state's number one businesses," he said. "I love the fights anyways, so it wasn't like being punished," added the senator, a former boxer and boxing judge.

Senate ethics rules generally allow lawmakers to accept gifts from federal, state or local governments, but specifically warn against taking such gifts -- particularly on multiple occasions -- when they might be connected to efforts to influence official actions.

Solomon's foil for Reid's alleged ethical shortcoming is Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who "insisted on paying $1,400 for the tickets he shared with Reid for a 2004 championship fight." He's the hero of Solomon's piece, the one who went the extra distance to make sure there was no appearance of impropriety. That's commendable, but it's by no means apparent that it was a step McCain was obligated to take. I for one can't muster up even a puff of indigation over the fact that a former boxer and boxing judge, former head of the Nevada Gaming Commission, and current Senator from Nevada accepted free tickets to boxing matches in Las Vegas.

Solomon is so dead-set on illustrating bipartisan parity on corruption that he's blind to the weakness of the arguments he's making. If this is the best that he can come up with after several months, I have to say that Reid seems remarkably incorruptible.

Three decades after the Vietnam War and nearly two years after Mr. Kerry's failed presidential bid, most Americans have probably forgotten why it ever mattered whether he went to Cambodia or that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth accused him of making it all up, saying he was dishonest and lacked patriotism.

But among those who were on the front lines of the 2004 campaign, the battle over Mr. Kerry's wartime service continues, out of the limelight but in some ways more heatedly — because unlike then, Mr. Kerry has fully engaged in the fight. Only those on Mr. Kerry's side, however, have gathered new evidence to support their case.

The Swift boat group continues to spend money on Washington consultants, according to public records, and last fall it gave $100,000 to a group that promptly sued Mr. Kerry, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, for allegedly interfering with the release of a film that was critical of him.

Some of the principals behind the Swift boat group continue to press their claims. John O'Neill, the co-author of the group's best-selling manifesto, "Unfit for Command," criticizes Mr. Kerry on television talk shows and solicits money for conservative causes and candidates. In a South Carolina newspaper, William Schachte recently reprised his allegation that he was aboard the small skimmer where Mr. Kerry received the injury that led to his first Purple Heart, and that Mr. Kerry actually wounded himself.

Swift boat message boards and anti-Kerry Web sites still boil with accusations that Mr. Kerry fabricated the military reports that led to his military decorations.

Mr. Kerry, accused even by Democrats of failing to respond to the charges during the campaign, is now fighting back hard.

"They lied and lied and lied about everything," Mr. Kerry says in an interview in his Senate office. "How many lies do you get to tell before someone calls you a liar? How many times can you be exposed in America today?"

Administration officials said [Friday] that the specter of top-level resignations or firings at Justice and the FBI was a crucial turning point in the standoff, helping persuade President Bush to announce a cease-fire on Thursday. Bush ordered that the Jefferson materials be sealed for 45 days while Justice officials and House lawmakers work out their differences, while also making it clear that he expected the case against Jefferson to proceed.

[...]

The talk of resignations adds another dramatic element to the remarkable tug of war that has played out since last Saturday night, when about 15 FBI agents executed a search warrant on Jefferson's office in the Rayburn House Office Building.

The raid -- the first physical FBI search of a congressman's office in U.S. history -- sparked an uproar in the House, where Hastert joined Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in demanding that the records be returned because they viewed the search as an illegal violation of the constitutional separation of powers.

Witnesses to the slaying of 24 Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines in the western town of Haditha say the Americans shot men, women and children at close range in retaliation for the death of a Marine lance corporal in a roadside bombing.

Aws Fahmi, a Haditha resident who said he watched and listened from his home as Marines went from house to house killing members of three families, recalled hearing his neighbor across the street, Younis Salim Khafif, plead in English for his life and the lives of his family members. "I heard Younis speaking to the Americans, saying: 'I am a friend. I am good,' " Fahmi said. "But they killed him, and his wife and daughters."

The 24 Iraqi civilians killed on Nov. 19 included children and the women who were trying to shield them, witnesses told a Washington Post special correspondent in Haditha this week and U.S. investigators said in Washington. The girls killed inside Khafif's house were ages 14, 10, 5, 3 and 1, according to death certificates.

Two U.S. military boards are investigating the incident as potentially the gravest violation of the law of war by U.S. forces in the three-year-old conflict in Iraq. The U.S. military ordered the probes after Time magazine presented military officials in Baghdad this year with the findings of its own investigation, based on accounts of survivors and on a videotape shot by an Iraqi journalism student at Haditha's hospital and inside victims' houses.

An investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service into the killings and a separate military probe into an alleged coverup are slated to end in the next few weeks. Marines have briefed members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and other officials on the findings; some of the officials briefed say the evidence is damaging. Charges of murder, dereliction of duty and making a false statement are likely, people familiar with the case said Friday.

"Marines overreacted . . . and killed innocent civilians in cold blood," said one of those briefed, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a former Marine who maintains close ties with senior Marine officers despite his opposition to the war.

I won't join the sudden surge of speculation about whether "An Inconvenient Truth" will make Mr. Gore a presidential contender. But the film does make a powerful case that Mr. Gore is the sort of person who ought to be running the country.

Since 2000, we've seen what happens when people who aren't interested in the facts, who believe what they want to believe, sit in the White House. Osama bin Laden is still at large, Iraq is a mess, New Orleans is a wreck. And, of course, we've done nothing about global warming.

But can the sort of person who would act on global warming get elected? Are we — by which I mean both the public and the press — ready for political leaders who don't pander, who are willing to talk about complicated issues and call for responsible policies? That's a test of national character. I wonder whether we'll pass.

President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair last night acknowledged a series of errors in managing the occupation of Iraq that have made the conflict more difficult and more damaging to the U.S. image abroad, even as they insisted that enough progress has been made that other nations should support the nascent Iraqi government.

In a joint news conference, Bush said he had used inappropriate "tough talk" -- such as saying "bring 'em on" in reference to insurgents -- that he said "sent the wrong signal to people." He also said the "biggest mistake" for the United States was the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, in which guards photographed themselves sexually tormenting Iraqi prisoners, spawning revulsion worldwide. "We've been paying for that for a long period of time," he said.

All Facts and Opinions has the Lay/Skilling story.

archy on Bill O'Reilly's blasphemy.

Bark Bark Woof Woof reviews The Da Vinci Code.

blogAmY reminds us that the Taliban is still around.

bloggg finds there are college possibilities for all kids.

Collective Sigh speaks up about a moment of silence.

NTodd on the possibility of living a longer life.

Echidne on long life...and chocolate.

the farmer has a Tippy Hedron moment.

FDL on Bob Novak covering Karl Rove's commodious ass.

First Draft updates Bush's polls.

The Fulcrum has the story of some pissed-off West Pointers.

Happy Furry Puppy celebrates a blogiversary as only HFPST can.

iddybud takes the pledge.

Left is Right on laptops for every kid.

Lefty has a meme of all sorts of things.

Liberty Street burns up Mort Kondracke.

Make Me a Commentator has an idea for the next round of American Idol.

MercuryX23 gets involved in his new hometown politics.

Musing's musings has the local take on the Hastert flap.

Pen-Elayne with more pictures and commetary from her trip to the Scepter'd Isle.

Rook's Rant on Ray Nagin's re-election.

rubber hose has a link to a map that lets you know if you live in a place where you might someday need a snorkel to get to work.

Coturnix takes Manhattan.

Scrutiny Hooligans reveals the truth -- some wingers are really thick.

Sooner Thought reports on Dodd seeking the nod.

Speedkill on education in Saudi Arabia.

Steve Gilliard on the cost of corruption in New Orleans.

Nat at T. Rex on the importance of stem-cell research and the false science behind the lies of those who are against it.

The Countess on the best beer in the world.

The Invisible Library has news of a scientific discovery with a very Harry Potter connection.

WTF Is It Now?? on Rudy's image with the GOP in NY.

The Yellow Doggerel Democrat on George F. Will's language problem.

...You Are A Tree on a blistering floor speech in Congress.

The book was better than the movie, and the book was crap.

There's two and a half hours and $8.75 I'll never get back.

Enron former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling and founder Kenneth Lay were found guilty Thursday of conspiracy and fraud in the granddaddy of all corporate fraud cases.

On the sixth day of deliberations, a jury of eight women and four men convicted the former executives of misleading the public about the true financial health of Enron, whose collapse in late 2001 symbolized the wave of corporate fraud that swept the United States early this decade.

Skilling was found guilty on 20 counts of conspiracy, fraud, false statements and insider trading. He was found not guilty on eight counts of insider trading.

Lay was found guilty on all six counts of conspiracy and fraud.

The two sides of Hillary Rodham Clinton -- the opposites that make her potential presidential candidacy such a gamble -- came into sharp focus on Tuesday morning at the National Press Club.

For the better part of an hour, the senator from New York held forth in a disquisition on energy policy that was as overwhelming in its detail as it was ambitious in its reach.

But the buzz in the room was not about her speech -- or her striking appearance in a lemon-yellow pantsuit -- but about the lengthy analysis of the state of her marriage to Bill Clinton that was on the front page of that morning's New York Times.

[...]

But for all the delicacy of the treatment, the very fact that The Times had sent a reporter out to interview 50 people about the state of the Clintons' marriage and placed the story on the top of Page 1 was a clear signal -- if any were needed -- that the drama of the Clintons' personal life would be a hot topic if she runs for president.

[...]

At the end of her talk, little time remained for questions, and the first three simply asked for clarification of points in the energy plan.

The final moment of her speech had been interrupted by a woman shouting anti-war slogans, and the fourth question gave the senator a chance to respond. She said, as she had before, that ''I regret the way the president used'' the authority to make war in Iraq that she had joined in giving him, and now felt that, with a permanent Iraqi government almost complete, it is their responsibility to curb sectarian violence, end the insurrection and get about rebuilding the country.

Three times in the question-and- answer session, she referred to her husband as ''Bill,'' praising him for seeing that his library in Little Rock incorporated a lot of energy-saving features.

Other than that, the elephant in the room went unmentioned.

A court filing on Wednesday by the special counsel in the C.I.A. leak case suggested that Vice President Dick Cheney would testify as a government witness in the trial of his former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr.

The legal brief did not say with certainty that Mr. Cheney would be called as a witness. But the latest filing, like earlier court papers, underscored the prosecutor's contention that the vice president's role was critical to understanding Mr. Libby's wrongdoing. But the new filing was the first to indicate that Mr. Cheney himself might be called as a government witness.

On the issue of whether Mr. Cheney will testify, the brief said, "Contrary to defendant's assertion, the government has not represented that it does not intend to call the vice president as a witness at trial."

The prosecution brief, signed by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel, added, "To the best of government's counsel's recollection, the government has not commented on whether it intends to call the vice president as a witness."

COURT CLERK: Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

WITNESS: Go fuck yourself.

Law enforcement sources told ABC News that convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff has provided information to the FBI about Hastert and a number of other members of Congress that have broadened the scope of the investigation. Sources would not divulge details of the Abramoff’s information.

"You guys wrote the story very carefully but they are not reading it very carefully," a senior official said.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, is under investigation by the FBI, which is seeking to determine his role in an ongoing public corruption probe into members of Congress, ABC News has learned from high level official sources.

Federal officials say the information implicating Hastert was developed from convicted lobbyists who are now cooperating with the government.

Part of the investigation involves a letter Hastert wrote three years ago, urging the Secretary of the Interior to block a casino on an Indian reservation that would have competed with other tribes.

The other tribes were represented by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff who reportedly has provided details of his dealings with Hastert as part of his plea agreement with the government.

The letter was written shortly after a fund-raiser for Hastert at a restaurant owned by Abramoff. Abramoff and his clients contributed more than $26,000 at the time.

The day Abramoff was indicted, Hastert denied any unlawful connection and said he would donate to charity any campaign contribution he had received from Abramoff and his clients.

A spokesman for Speaker Hastert told ABC News, "We are not aware of this. The Speaker has a long history and a well-documented record of opposing Indian Reservation shopping for casino gaming purposes."

This week, Hastert has been outspoken in his criticism of the FBI for its raid on the office of another congressman under investigation, Democrat William Jefferson of Louisiana.

It's hard to say which was more bizarre about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's threat to prosecute The Times for revealing President Bush's domestic spying program: his claim that a century-old espionage law could be used to muzzle the press or his assertion that the administration cares about enforcing laws the way Congress intended.

Mr. Gonzales said on Sunday that a careful reading of some statutes "would seem to indicate" that it was possible to prosecute journalists for publishing classified material. He called it "a policy judgment by Congress in passing that kind of legislation," which the executive is obliged to obey.

Mr. Gonzales seemed to be talking about a law that dates to World War I and bans, in some circumstances, the unauthorized possession and publication of information related to national defense. It has long been understood that this overly broad and little used law applies to government officials who swear to protect such secrets, and not to journalists.

But in any case, Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Bush have not shown the slightest interest in upholding constitutional principles or following legislative guidelines that they do not find ideologically or politically expedient.

[...]

If Mr. Gonzales has developed a respect for legislative intent or a commitment to law enforcement, he could start by using his department's power to enforce the Voting Rights Act to protect Americans, rather than challenging minority voting rights and endorsing such obviously discriminatory practices as the gerrymandering in Texas or the Georgia voter ID program. He could enforce workplace safety laws, like those so tragically unenforced at the nation's coal mines, instead of protecting polluters and gun traffickers.

He could uphold the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture, instead of coming up with cynical justifications for violating them. He could repudiate the disgraceful fiction known as "unlawful enemy combatant," which the administration cooked up after 9/11 to deny legal rights to certain prisoners.

And he could suggest that the administration follow Congress's clear and specific intent for the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: outlawing wiretaps of Americans without warrants.

Resentment boiled among senior Republicans for a second day on Tuesday after a team of warrant-bearing agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation turned up at a closed House office building on Saturday evening, demanded entry to the office of a lawmaker and spent the night going through his files.

The episode prompted cries of constitutional foul from Republicans — even though the lawmaker in question, Representative William J. Jefferson of Louisiana, is a Democrat whose involvement in a bribery case has made him an obvious partisan political target.

[...]

"It is consistent with a unilateral approach to the use of authority in Washington, D.C.," Philip J. Cooper, a professor at Portland State University who has studied the administration's approach to executive power, said of the search.

"This administration," Dr. Cooper said, "has very systematically and from the beginning acted in a way to interpret its executive powers as broadly as possible and to interpret the power of Congress as narrowly as possible as compared to the executive."

Some Republicans agreed privately that the search was in line with what they saw as the philosophy of the Justice Department in the Bush administration. They said the department had often pushed the limits on legal interpretations involving issues like the treatment of terrorism detainees and surveillance.

Republicans may have a potential self-interest beyond defending the institutional prerogatives of the legislative branch. With some of the party's own lawmakers and aides under scrutiny in corruption inquiries tied to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the former lawmaker Randy Cunningham, Republicans would no doubt like to head off the possibility of embarrassing searches of their members' offices.

which, among other things, requires that lawmakers be "privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same." Many people may wonder why a Congressional office cannot be searched in a criminal case and what members of Congress are complaining about.

To many lawmakers, that is secondary to the larger separation-of-powers principle they see at risk.

Iran has followed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent letter to President Bush with explicit requests for direct talks on its nuclear program, according to U.S. officials, Iranian analysts and foreign diplomats.

The eagerness for talks demonstrates a profound change in Iran's political orthodoxy, emphatically erasing a taboo against contact with Washington that has both defined and confined Tehran's public foreign policy for more than a quarter-century, they said.

[...]

"You know, two months ago nobody would believe that Mr. Khamenei and Mr. Ahmadinejad together would be trying to get George W. Bush to begin negotiations," said Saeed Laylaz, a former government official and prominent analyst in Tehran. "This is a sign of changing strategy. They realize the situation is dangerous and they should not waste time, that they should reach out."

MIAMI (AP) -- A reverend who introduced Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist during a breakfast with other pastors Monday said the Lord came to him in a dream two years ago and told him Crist would be the state's next governor.

The Rev. O'Neal Dozier said that before the dream he did not know Crist, nor had Crist made known his plans to run for governor.

"The Lord Jesus spoke to me and he said 'There's something I want you to know,'" said Dozier, pastor of the Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach. "'Charlie Crist will be the next governor of the state of Florida.'"

Since then, Dozier has spent time with Crist and talked with him at length about policy. He told the group that Crist would be uncompromising in his Christian faith.

"I introduce to you, as the Lord Jesus has said, the next governor of the state of Florida, Charlie Crist," Dozier said.

Crist's first words were, "Well, as they say, the praise doesn't get any higher."

Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher, who is opposing Crist in the primary, wouldn't comment on the remarks after the event.

Democrats these days are a party on a mission that might sound impossible: to persuade evangelical Christian voters to consider converting -- to the Democratic Party.

Just as Republicans have worked, and to some extent succeeded, at peeling off some African American voters from the Democratic Party, evangelical voters are too big a part of the electorate (about a quarter) for one party simply to write off.

Democrats have a shot at luring some of them, but it's a long shot, and one that poses dangerous temptations for the party as it tries to narrow the God gap.

[...]

To some extent, Democrats could help themselves with evangelicals simply by showing up -- at the megachurches, on Christian radio and in other venues where Democrats have been scarce. Whether the Democrats are deploying the right messengers is more questionable: a liberal San Francisco Democrat and a civil union-signing Vermont governor may not be the party's best bet with evangelicals. More important, occasional drop-bys and clunky dropping of biblical references aren't going to do the trick. These voters weren't born again yesterday.

Rather, the Democrats' discussion with evangelicals has to get beyond linguistic "reframing" to substantive areas where the Democrats and evangelicals can find common ground: poverty, the environment, Darfur.

The question is whether differences on the much hotter-button issues of abortion and gay rights are nonetheless deal-breakers. For the traditionalist evangelicals, almost certainly they are. But some centrists may be reachable; they may be opposed to same-sex marriage, for example, but more supportive of other equal rights measures for gays.

We desire to be bridge builders in the Christian community. We are a congregation that seeks to bridge the non-gay community with the gay and lesbian communities through our relationship with Christ. Our primary purpose is to minister to the spiritual needs of the gay and lesbian community in the metro Washington, DC, area by providing a safe, nurturing environment for praise and worship, Christian fellowship, and study of the practical application of Bible-based principles of how to live a spiritually fruitful and prosperous life through our covenant relationship with our Heavenly Father!

Bill and Hillary Clinton flew to Chicago together last month to deliver speeches a few hours and a few miles apart. And like any couple, they thought about having dinner at day's end. But life is not so simple when you are married to a Clinton.

The former president kept a low profile and left early for Washington, in part to avoid distracting the news media from his wife's speech. They decided later that dinner would not work, so Mr. Clinton did what he often does: He rounded up some familiar faces — former aides including Joe Lockhart and Mike McCurry — and went out for a late bite at Lauriol Plaza, the bustling Tex-Mex restaurant in Dupont Circle. Only afterward did the Clintons end up at home together.

[...]

When the subject of Bill and Hillary Clinton comes up for many prominent Democrats these days, Topic A is the state of their marriage — and how the most dissected relationship in American life might affect Mrs. Clinton's possible bid for the presidency in 2008.

Democrats say it is inevitable that in a campaign that could return the former president to the White House, some voters would be concerned or distracted by Mr. Clinton's political role and the episode that led the House to vote for his impeachment in 1998.

"There's no question that it's a complicated candidacy for a lot of voters because of the history of that relationship and what they've been through," said Leon E. Panetta, Mr. Clinton's chief of staff from 1994 to 1997. "They've been through a lot of challenges as a couple, though in the end if you're with them together, you know there's something there that basically bonds them."

Democrats' plans to make Republican corruption a theme of their election strategy this year have been complicated by accusations of wrongdoing in their own ranks, leading the party to try on Monday to blunt the political effects of the unfolding case against Representative William J. Jefferson.

[...]

Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Mr. Jefferson's situation was that of an individual who had yet to be charged formally. The Democratic case against Republicans, he suggested, went to a pattern of trading influence for personal gain within an incestuous world of revolving-door staff members, lobbyists and campaign fund-raisers that Republicans helped establish.

"They are different scales," Mr. Emanuel said. "One is a party outlook and operation; the other is an individual's action. They have institutional corruption."

Experts: Hurricane season won't match '05

The next Atlantic hurricane season could produce up to 16 named storms, six of them major hurricanes, suggesting another active year but not the record pounding of 2005, scientists said Monday.

Some parts of the Gulf Coast are only starting to rebuild from Hurricane Katrina, the worst of last year's record 28 named storms, 15 of which were hurricanes, seven of them Category 3 or higher.

While such a season is not predicted this year, National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield warned: "One hurricane hitting where you live is enough to make it a bad season."

Another busy hurricane season is predicted

Hurricane season returns next week, and it is likely to be a rough one. Again.

Government scientists on Monday predicted another unusually active season, with 13 to 16 tropical storms that grow into eight to 10 hurricanes. Four to six of those hurricanes could become particularly intense, with winds above 110 mph.

More ominously, government statisticians calculated that at least two -- and as many as four -- of those hurricane could hit the United States.

Mounties get their men -- each other

The Force is with them as RCMP officers to wed
By DAN ARSENAULT Staff Reporter

METEGHAN — On a Friday night in Yarmouth this June, Const. Jason Tree (left) and Const. David Connors will don their scarlet dress uniforms, stand before family, friends and co-workers and wed in the first same-sex marriage in the RCMP’s storied history.

In an interview in their Meteghan home Wednesday afternoon, the men said they’ve had great support from the national police force, the community and their families.

"I’ve never had a single problem," said Const. Tree, 27, a native of Fredericton, who has worked in southwestern Nova Scotia for six years and is posted in Meteghan.

The pair, who’ve dated since meeting at the University of New Brunswick more than eight years ago, will be married by a justice of the peace at the Rodd Grand Hotel on June 30. Each will write his own vows, and each will have a best man. They expect plenty of fellow officers to attend and have yet to decide if they’ll have their colleagues form an honour guard for them. They plan to honeymoon in France and England.

Provincial RCMP spokesman Sgt. Frank Skidmore said the force was happy to hear about the union, adding that they’re proud RCMP officers reflect all aspects of the community.

"This is a first for us," Sgt. Skidmore said Wednesday. "Certainly, the RCMP welcomes a workforce that is representative of Canadian society, and that is the case here."

Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), the target of a 14-month public corruption probe, was videotaped accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from a Northern Virginia investor who was wearing an FBI wire, according to a search warrant affidavit released yesterday.

A few days later, on Aug. 3, 2005, FBI agents raided Jefferson's home in Northeast Washington and found $90,000 of the cash in the freezer, in $10,000 increments wrapped in aluminum foil and stuffed inside frozen-food containers, the document said.

The 83-page affidavit, used to raid Jefferson's Capitol Hill office on Saturday night, portrays him as a money-hungry man who freely solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, discussed payoffs to African officials, had a history of involvement in numerous bribery schemes and used his family to hide his interest in high-tech business ventures he promoted in Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria.

Queen Victoria - 1819-1901

A lot of hot air was spent on an English-only debate in the U.S. Senate last week -- and for no good reason. The debate centered around ideological grounds and contributed nothing to the immigration reforms that senators ostensibly were shaping.

Instead of obsessing about a symbolic statement, senators would have been better served to discuss the need for Americans to learn the foreign languages essential to thriving in an increasingly globalized world.

Miami-Dade well knows the self-defeating English-language arguments. Amid a tidal wave of Cuban and Haitian immigrants, county commissioners approved an English-only ordinance in 1980. The law mandated the county to conduct nearly all business in English. Supporters believed it would protect America's language and culture.

But many Hispanic immigrants, even those who spoke perfect English, believed the law was a slap in the face. The law also was impractical. Instead of encouraging newcomers to learn English, it frustrated them by denying them vital government information in a language that they understood. By 1993, the commissioners who unanimously repealed the law agreed that it had done more to divide the community than to promote unity.

Now the U.S. Senate is treading down the same road. Last week, senators voted to make English the ''national language.'' In addition to concerns that such a law could threaten government services and information in other languages, the measure smacks of xenophobia.

English already is a dominant world language. Foreigners take pains to learn it just to get ahead in their own lands. Yet too many Americans limit themselves to their native tongue. While foreign students routinely learn two or more languages, U.S. schools haven't caught on to the linguistic needs of a global village.

Most U.S. immigrants know that learning English is the ticket to better opportunities. Every immigrant wave -- German, Irish, Italian, Chinese, etc. -- has assimilated into this great melting pot. Congress shouldn't mandate the obvious. The Senate should reverse its English-only measure.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales raised the possibility yesterday that New York Times journalists could be prosecuted for publishing classified information based on the outcome of the criminal investigation underway into leaks to the Times of data about the National Security Agency's surveillance of terrorist-related calls between the United States and abroad.

"We are engaged now in an investigation about what would be the appropriate course of action in that particular case, so I'm not going to talk about it specifically," he said on ABC's "This Week."

[...]

...Gonzales said, "I understand very much the role that the press plays in our society, the protection under the First Amendment we want to promote and respect . . . but it can't be the case that that right trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity."

Confronting the worst poll numbers seen in the West Wing since his father went down to defeat, President Bush and his team are focusing on the fall midterm elections as the best chance to salvage his presidency and are building a campaign strategy around tax cuts, immigration and national security.

Modern history offers no precedent of a president climbing from a hole as deep as the one Bush finds himself in, and White House strategists have concluded that no staff shake-up or other quick fix will alter their trajectory. In the sixth year of his tenure, they said, Bush cannot easily change the minds of voters whose impressions are fully formed.

[...]

If Republicans retain Congress in November, Bush advisers note, he could assert that for the third straight election, the party defied historical patterns and popular predictions. Bush, they said, could advance a fresh agenda in early 2007.

With Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove reassigned from day-to-day policy management to concentrate on the fall campaign, the White House has begun setting an agenda.

Fri May 19th, 2006 at 04:23:39 PM EDT :: Fitzgerald Investigation

On Saturday afternoon, May 13, 2006, TruthOut ran a story titled, "Karl Rove Indicted on Charges of Perjury, Lying to Investigators." The story stated in part that top Bush aide Karl Rove had earlier that day been indicted on the charges set forth in the story's title.

The time has now come, however, to issue a partial apology to our readership for this story. While we paid very careful attention to the sourcing on this story, we erred in getting too far out in front of the news-cycle. In moving as quickly as we did, we caused more confusion than clarity. And that was a disservice to our readership and we regret it.

As such, we will be taking the wait-and-see approach for the time being. We will keep you posted.

Marc Ash, Executive Director - t r u t h o u t
mailto:director@truthout.org

Several experts are casting doubt on reports that Iran had passed a law requiring the country’s Jews and other religious minorities to wear coloured badges identifying them as non-Muslims.

The Iranian embassy in Otttawa also denied the Iranian government had passed such a law.

A news story and column by Iranian-born analyst Amir Taheri in yesterday’s National Post reported that the Iranian parliament had passed a sweeping new law this week outlining proper dress for Iran’s majority Muslims, including an order for Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians to wear special strips of cloth.

According to the reports, Jews were to wear yellow cloth strips, called zonnar, while Christians were to wear red and Zoroastrians blue.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre and Iranian expatriates living in Canada had confirmed that the order had been passed, although it still had to be approved by Iran’s “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenehi before being put into effect.

Hormoz Ghahremani, a spokesman for the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa, said in an e-mail to the Post yesterday that, “We wish to categorically reject the news item.

“These kinds of slanderous accusations are part of a smear campaign against Iran by vested interests, which needs to be denounced at every step.”

Sam Kermanian, of the U.S.-based Iranian-American Jewish Federation, said in an interview from Los Angeles that he had contacted members of the Jewish community in Iran — including the lone Jewish member of the Iranian parliament — and they denied any such measure was in place.

After an emotional debate fraught with symbolism, the Senate yesterday voted to make English the "national language" of the United States, declaring that no one has a right to federal communications or services in a language other than English except for those already guaranteed by law.

The measure, approved 63 to 34, directs the government to "preserve and enhance" the role of English, without altering current laws that require some government documents and services be provided in other languages. Opponents, however, said it could negate executive orders, regulations, civil service guidances and other multilingual ordinances not officially sanctioned by acts of Congress.

Jim Lehrer of The Newshour

Peter Mayhew, aka Chewbacca

David Hartman, formerly of Good Morning, America

Steven Ford, actor and son of former President Gerald Ford

Nancy Kwan, actor in Flower Drum Song

Nora Ephron, screenwriter and director

Pete Townshend of The Who

All Facts and Opinion engages in Idol talk.

archy continues his examination of racism and the definition of it.

Bark Bark Woof Woof has some choice words for the Senate bigots.

blogAmY deciphers that new movie.

Moi at bloggg reviews the Pennsylvania primary results.

Collective Sigh has a series on health care.

Dodecahedron is happy to see the Pentagon consider alternative fuels.

NTodd has some questions for Gen. Hayden.

Echidne responds to the idea of the "pre-pregnant" woman.

the farmer salutes a veteran investigator.

FDL on the Connecticut senate race wherein Joe Lieberman screws his party leaders.

First Draft on the really important news in Chicago.

Happy Furry Puppy on what The Left is up to.

Left Is Right on the devastation of bird flu in Florida and other hilarity.

Lefty says goodbye to The West Wing.

Liberty Street on the accusations of atrocities in Iraq.

Make Me a Commentator with Part 1 of a discussion of immigration's impact on the GOP.

MercuryX23 on Frau Coulter's latest brown-shirted screed.

Newly-graduated master Michael has some choice words for the English-only crowd.

Pen-Elayne reports from England and turns the reins of her site over -- temporarily -- to Desi and Wayne.

Rook's Rant reports in from indefinite hiatus to rage against the nuts.

rubber hose takes to soothsaying via Lipton left-overs.

Science and Politics on Project Exploration.

Scrutiny Hooligans heralds the arrival of a new book by a fellow blogger, Anonymoses.

Sooner Thought on Bush buying votes.

Speedkill on the warnings of Christian scientists.

Steve Gilliard relays Kevin Phillips's concerns about the rest of the Bush term.

Kenneth at T. Rex explores the world of deviant drug and alcohol use.

The Countess counts down the Worst Movies Ever.

The Invisible Library has an inside track to the NSA.

WTF Is It Now?? has the latest on the Rove watch.

The Yellow Doggerel Democrat on the Senate doing something.

...You Are A Tree on who pays taxes.

A Senate committee approved a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage Thursday, after a shouting match that ended when one Democrat strode out and the Republican chairman bid him "good riddance."

"I don't need to be lectured by you. You are no more a protector of the Constitution than am I," Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, shouted after Sen. Russ Feingold declared his opposition to the amendment, his affinity for the Constitution and his intention to leave the meeting.

"If you want to leave, good riddance," Specter finished.

"I've enjoyed your lecture, too, Mr. Chairman," replied Feingold, D-Wisconsin, who is considering a run for president in 2008. "See ya."

In another in a series of notable pronouncements, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says God told him storms and possibly a tsunami will hit America's coastline this year.

[...]

"If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms," Robertson said May 8. On Wednesday, he added, "There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest."

Towards the beginning of this year, when I realized that Republican strategists were planning to make illegal immigration one of their keystone issues or the midterm elections, I was worried about it unleashing a wave of overt racism. The xenophobic nature of the War on Terrorism was already pushing Americans in that direction and appealing to fear has been one of this administration's most dependable campaign tools. With the war in Iraq becoming less popular, people feeling insecure about the economy, and the well of public opinion already primed to fear brown foreigners, it was an easy segue to refocus our fear on undocumented Latin American immigrants.

[...]

The party of Lincoln has been involved in this dance with racism for forty years now. When the Democratic Party unambiguously embraced civil rights and desegregation in the sixties, the Republicans could have joined with them in a bi-partisan effort to erase the great shame of American society, racism. At that point in history, the Republican Party had the better record on race. Instead, they chose to view it as an opportunity to pick up disgruntled white Southern voters.

The Southern Strategy transformed the Republicans in ways they didn't anticipate. It spelled the death of the liberal/social-reforming wing of the party. As the Democratic Party faded from the South, the Republican Party faded from New England. When the Republican leaders of the sixties wooed Southern racists with code phrases, winks, and nods, it didn't occur to them that those new voters would eventually become the majority of the party and take over its positions of power and the creation of its ideology. The Southern Strategy didn't result in the republicanization of the South; it resulted in the southernization of the Republican Party.* Whereas the identifying mark of Republicans was once a dour New England deportment, now it is Southern-style, vocal Protestantism. And racism, instead of disappearing, simply retreated for a generation to transform itself into a new style for a new generation.

The cynical and unprincipled strategy that the Republican Party has chosen for this election has the potential to release something very ugly in American culture. Once unleashed, it won't be easy to contain it again. But, making these kinds of cynical and unprincipled tactical decision in the name of simply acquiring and keeping power has been the hallmark of the Republican Party for over a decade now and I didn't really think they would stop now just because their action are hurting America.

*obligatory disclaimer: Of course when I say this, I do not mean to imply that all white Southerners are racist crackers or that there has never been racism outside the South. Some of the most principled and courageous Americans have come from the South and the shame of racism is a common heritage of all regions. However, this doesn't change the fact that the Republican Party's descent into overt racism has been the direct result of their decision to use racism to woo disgruntled white Southern voters.

A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood," a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.

From the beginning, Iraqis in the town of Haditha said U.S. Marines deliberately killed 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children.

One young Iraqi girl said the Marines killed six members of her family, including her parents. “The Americans came into the room where my father was praying,” she said, “and shot him.”

On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true.

Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps' own evidence appears to show Murtha is right.

[...]

Murtha, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, said at a news conference Wednesday that sources within the military have told him that an internal investigation will show that "there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

Military officials say Marine Corp photos taken immediately after the incident show many of the victims were shot at close range, in the head and chest, execution-style. One photo shows a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer, shot dead, said the officials, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity because the investigation hasn't been completed.

One military official says it appears the civilians were deliberately killed by the Marines, who were outraged at the death of their fellow Marine.

“This one is ugly," one official told NBC News.

As Republicans have become increasingly nervous about whether they will be able to maintain control of the House in the midterm elections, they have resorted to the straw-man strategy of identifying a parade of horrors to come if Democrats gain the majority. Among these is the assertion that I, as the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, would immediately begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush.

I will not do that. I readily admit that I have been quite vigorous, if not relentless, in questioning the administration. The allegations I have raised are grave, serious, well known, and based on reliable media reports and the accounts of former administration officials.

But none of these allegations can be proved or disproved until the administration answers questions.

[...]

The committee's job would be to obtain answers -- finally. At the end of the process, if -- and only if -- the select committee, acting on a bipartisan basis, finds evidence of potentially impeachable offenses, it would forward that information to the Judiciary Committee. This threshold of bipartisanship is appropriate, I believe, when dealing with an issue of this magnitude.

When U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez shed $2,500 in January that his campaign took from an Ohio congressman tied to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a spokeswoman said the Florida senator wanted no contributions with "even a hint of impropriety."

But Martinez continues to hold on to $250,000 that his 2004 campaign collected at a Washington kickoff fundraiser that was co-chaired and attended by the now disgraced lobbyist.

Abramoff pleaded guilty in January in Miami and Washington to a variety of fraud, tax and corruption charges.

The $1,000-per-person reception at the Ronald Reagan Republican Center was held Feb. 10, 2004 -- two months after Martinez stepped down as President Bush's secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

[...]

Court papers filed last week by federal prosecutors in Washington said Abramoff enlisted U.S. Rep. Robert Ney, an Ohio Republican, in a January 2003 effort "to influence the decisions and actions" of then-HUD Secretary Martinez. At the time, Ney was the incoming chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees HUD.

The statement made no allegation that Martinez did anything improper. Ney has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged.

HE: "Would you sleep with me for a million bucks?"
SHE: "Sure!"
HE: "Okay, well, how about for twenty bucks?"
SHE: "Hell, no! What do you think I am?"
HE: "We've already established that; now all I'm doing is negotiating the price."

An aggressively annoying new phrase in America's political lexicon is "values voters." It is used proudly by social conservatives, and carelessly by the media to denote such conservatives.

This phrase diminishes our understanding of politics. It also is arrogant on the part of social conservatives and insulting to everyone else because it implies that only social conservatives vote to advance their values and everyone else votes to... well, it is unclear what they supposedly think they are doing with their ballots.

[...]

Attempts to assign values-seriousness can get complicated: Freedom and happiness are valuable. Arguably, governmental actions that did much to increase freedom and happiness in the past half-century were state laws liberalizing divorce. These made important contributions to the emancipation of men and especially women from mistaken marriages. Perhaps the most important of these laws -- it was among the most liberal and was in the most populous state -- was signed by a divorced governor, Ronald Reagan. What do socially conservative values voters make of that?

House Democrats, trying to capitalize on conservative dissatisfaction with Republicans, are reaching out to Christian voters with radio advertisements critical of Republican proposals to overhaul Social Security.

In a campaign tied to appearances by President Bush on behalf of House candidates later this week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has bought time on stations with Christian and conservative audiences to try to remind those who traditionally vote Republican of their party's plan to add private investment accounts to Social Security.

While Republicans have stepped up efforts in recent years to cut into traditional Democratic strength among Catholics, Hispanics and older Americans, among other groups, the radio campaign is a rare effort by Democrats to appeal to a dependable Republican constituency.

"We are going to keep them back on their heels and make them compete for their own base," said Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, chairman of the House campaign organization.

[...]

In an advertisement scheduled to begin running Wednesday in five House districts in Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Virginia, an announcer says that "retirement has become an uncertain time for many of us." The commercial goes on to suggest that the Social Security approach championed by Mr. Bush and many Congressional Republicans could undermine the stability of the retirement program while adding $2 trillion in federal debt.

Mr. Emanuel said the advertisement raised the debt issue to spotlight another sore spot among conservatives — the level of spending overseen by Republicans in Congress. The rise in the debt limit and criticism of the growth in federal spending bills is adding to unrest among conservatives that is contributing to low public support for Congress. Even if the party is unable to convert conservatives, the advertisements could help hold down Republican support in districts where races could be tight.

A White House press corps smitten with the telegenic, emotional nature of Tony Snow's first formal briefing yesterday -- he laughed! he cried! -- largely neglected to mention a few salient aspects of his performance.

Like, for instance: His inconsistent responses; his sloppiness with certain facts; and his embarrassing verbal gaffe.

Repeatedly questioned about the National Security Agency's collection of data on domestic telephone calls, Snow acknowledged the existence of the program enough to defend it in general terms -- but when it came to answering specific questions, he refused to admit it existed.

He misreported poll numbers when it served his purposes -- then refused to answer questions about poll numbers he didn't like.

He got away almost scot-free using a term -- "tar baby" -- that many consider racist.

Plus, he brusquely rebuffed an inquiry about Karl Rove -- along with several other legitimate questions -- without even the pretense of explaining why.

Yes, Snow's congeniality is a pleasant change from Scott McClellan's robotic droning. But in terms of content, Snow was hardly an improvement.

A mixture of fiction, fact and faith, "The Da Vinci Code" has made its worldwide film debut, opening the Cannes Film Festival -- but while the book was a mega-selling hit, the critics largely panned the cinematic version.

[...]

One scene during the film, meant to be serious, elicited prolonged laughter from the audience. There was no applause when the credits rolled; instead, a few catcalls and hisses broke the silence.

"The Da Vinci Code" storyline proposes Mary Magdalene and Jesus were married, had a child, and that a powerful organization linked to the Church conspired to commit murder to keep it secret.

Christian leaders across Asia denounced "The Da Vinci Code," fearful that the movie may spread misinformation about their religion, as groups planned boycotts and attempted to block or shorten screenings ahead of its debut Wednesday.

Christians in India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand have protested or expressed concern about the film, premiering Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival. Thai groups have persuaded censors to edit the movie, and India is putting the film's release on hold after a flurry of complaints.

One of the premises of the movie, adapted by Ron Howard from Dan Brown's worldwide best seller, is that Jesus Christ married Mary Magdalene and fathered children and that his descendants are still alive.

Christians in Asia are particularly worried about the movie because they believe it could threaten a religion that is already a minority in many countries.

"If Jesus Christ had a child and a wife, then Christianity would be destroyed," said Thongchai Pradabchananurat, of the Thailand Protestant Churches Coordinating Committee.

A coalition of Christian groups in Thailand, which is more than 90 percent Buddhist and less than 1 percent Christian, demanded that censors cut the last 15 minutes of the movie, which reveal that Jesus' lineage has survived to this day.

The country's censorship board agreed to snip the last 10 minutes.

Rachot Dhiraputra, general manager for distribution for Sony Pictures Releasing International, said the company refused to cut any part of the film but has offered to add a disclaimer at the beginning saying it is fictional. It has appealed the board's decision.

"People can differentiate between what's fiction and what's not," said Rachot.

University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill stole the work of others, twisted facts to bolster his own theories and repeatedly violated the most basic standards of scholarly research, the committee assigned to investigate him wrote in a stinging report made public Tuesday.

One of the five committee members recommended Churchill be fired. Two said he should be suspended without pay for two years; the two others recommended a five- year suspension without pay.

The final decision will be left to Provost Susan Avery and arts-and- sciences Dean Todd Gleeson, and it is not expected until mid-June.

[...]

Despite the harsh findings, the committee expressed its concern about the timing and possible motives for the university to bring charges at this time.

Some of the allegations against Churchill had been known for a decade, and the inquiry was launched only after his controversial Sept. 11 essay came to light last year, they noted.

In that essay, Churchill said the attacks were the predictable result of a U.S. foreign policy that caused the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children.

He referred to some of the victims of the attack on the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns," a reference to Nazi Adolf Eichmann, who helped coordinate the Holocaust. The people who died at the Pentagon, he wrote, weren't innocent victims but "military targets, pure and simple."

After the essay was widely publicized, lawmakers and many in the public called for Churchill to be fired.

While CU officials said Churchill's comments were covered by free speech, they apologized to the nation and ordered a full investigation into his work.

Political veteran Bob Casey, the heavy favorite, easily won the Democratic nomination in Pennsylvania on Tuesday to challenge conservative Republican Sen. Rick Santorum in the fall.

[...]

The 46-year-old Casey, son of the late Gov. Robert P. Casey, now serves as Pennsylvania treasurer. He was courted by national Democratic Party leaders to take on Santorum, the Senate's No. 3 Republican and a close ally of President Bush. The race could cost a combined $50 million.

Santorum, seeking a third term, was unopposed in the GOP primary.

Casey cruised past two political newcomers in the Democratic primary, Philadelphia pension lawyer Alan Sandals and Philadelphia college professor Chuck Pennacchio.

With 91 percent of precincts reporting, Casey had 587,622 votes, or 85 percent of the total.

[...]

Some Democratic voters said they were more interested in picking a candidate who could defeat Santorum than in sending a message to Casey that some of his positions, like his opposition to abortion, are too conservative.

"I'm too old at this point in my life for symbolic victories," said Philadelphian David Hyman, 52.

A judge on Tuesday struck down Georgia's ban on same-sex marriage, saying a measure overwhelmingly approved by voters in 2004 violated a rule that limits ballot questions to a single subject.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Constance C. Russell said the state's voters must first decide whether same-sex relationships should have any legal status before they can be asked whether to ban same-sex marriages.

"People who believe marriages between men and women should have a unique and privileged place in our society may also believe that same-sex relationships should have some place -- although not marriage," she wrote.

The single-subject rule in the state constitution "protects the right of those people to hold both views and reflect both judgments by their vote," the judge said.

Such procedural requirements "rarely enjoy popular support," she said, but they "ensure that the actions of government are constrained by the rule of law."

[...]

Gov. Sonny Perdue said the decision ran counter to the voice of Georgia voters in defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

"The people of Georgia knew exactly what they were doing when an overwhelming 76 percent voted in support of this constitutional amendment," he said. "It is sad that a single judge has chosen to reverse this decision."

Perdue said the state is considering its options, which include appealing directly to the Georgia Supreme Court.

After more than a little trying I think I've finally gotten a handle on this immigration debate. Or at least the president's slice of it, which goes by the name of 'comprehensive immigration reform'. If I understand this right, 'comprehensive' reform is reform that's so comprehensive that it reforms the thing in question in every way possible at the same time.

So, for instance, comprehensive sex reform -- which, given how things are going in Washington, could be just around the corner -- would mean expanding abstinence education and reducing the number of sexually active teenagers while also fulfilling the universal dream of teenagers everywhere to get laid.

Best Musical

Best Book of a Musical - Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical - John Lloyd Young

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical - Christian Hoff

Best Direction of a Musical - Des McAnuff

Best Orchestrations - Steve Orich

Best Scenic Design of a Musical - Klara Zieglerova

Best Lighting Design of a Musical - Howell Binkley

When Karl Rove emerged from the White House Monday morning to speak at the American Enterprise Institute, the most ominous moment came during the introduction. Christopher DeMuth, the president of the conservative think tank, went out of his way to praise Rove's "equanimity" in the face of "sharks in the water."

In Washington, when they are about to erect a statue in your honor, they praise your "genius and vision." When they are trying to decide whether to send a handwritten note in case of your indictment, they praise your "calm and equanimity."

For Woody Allen, 90 percent of life is showing up. For Rove these days, it is 100 percent. While Rove was supposedly at AEI to offer an overview of the president's inspiring economic record, that cover story was as preposterous as claiming that America invaded Iraq to safeguard its vineyards. Monday's speech and the 30-minute question-and-answer session that followed was all about projecting the image of control and nurturing the illusion of business as usual.

But everything in the world of George W. Bush these days smacks of desperate improvisation. Apologizing that his purportedly long-standing date at AEI conflicted with the thematics of the president's Monday night television address, Rove said, "I am so completely off message on a day that we're talking about immigration, I don't know if they'll let me back into the gates at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

[...]

But the big story of this dispiriting week for Bush is that Godot-like drama called, "Waiting for the Grand Jury." Rove's indictment has been confidently forecast on the blogosphere more often than Fidel Castro's downfall with, thus far, similar results. In contrast, I will confess to being the only journalist on the Web who has no idea when or whether Patrick Fitzgerald will charge Rove with a crime in the CIA leak inquiry.

Still, Rove's Monday appearance at AEI gave off a whiff of a farewell tour over the battlefield of political argument. Rove, who normally prefers big themes in politics rather than boring details, brandished number after number in a bold attempt at statistical prestidigitation to convince Americans that they have never had it so good. I almost expected Rove to start asking, "Who are you going to believe? My statistics or your checkbook balance?"

But when the president's approval rating is bobbing around 30 percent and less than a quarter of the electorate thinks that America is on the right track, a political strategist like Rove can carry braggadocio only so far. Asked to explain Bush's dismal poll ratings, Rove sounded like Cindy Sheehan in blaming everything on the Iraq war. "Look, we're in a sour time," he said. "I readily admit it. I mean, being in the middle of a war where people turn on their television sets and see brave men and women dying is not something that makes people happy and optimistic and upbeat."

That was an oddly passive answer, as if Rove and the president whom he has so loyally served had nothing to do with the foreordained decision to invade Iraq. But then, as he waits for a final legal determination by Fitzgerald, Rove may be getting used to dealing with life-changing issues that are utterly beyond his control.

President Bush proposed a plan on Monday that could place up to 6,000 National Guard troops along the border with Mexico for at least a year, but he urged Congress to address illegal immigration in a way that maintains the nation's tradition of openness.

Stepping directly into the middle of a debate raging within his own party and in cities and towns across the country, Mr. Bush offered a menu of proposals on the issue, which has rapidly emerged as among the most challenging confronting Congress and the White House.

[...]

White House officials said in a briefing for reporters Monday afternoon that the president was calling for $1.9 billion included in a supplemental budget bill now before Congress to be used for his proposals.

Some of the border state governors, Democrats in Congress, and others immediately raised questions about the practicality of the plan. Mr. Bush's broad approach also drew tepid reviews from some House Republicans and conservatives, whose support he will need as he grapples with a problem that has defied decades of proposed solutions: the continued economic imbalances between the United States and its trading partners to the south.

The reactions underscored the slender line the president is trying to walk between not only Democrats and warring members of his own party who are trying to hammer out legislation, but also between the increasingly powerful Hispanic voters he hopes to recruit to his party and the conservatives who still form its base.

[...]

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has been deeply involved in the Senate negotiations on immigration, praised Mr. Bush "for his courage," but said he was worried the National Guard was already spread too thin.

But among the most important voices will be those of the governors of the four states abutting the southern border: Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California. It falls to them to make the plan for deploying the guard work.

Administration officials said governors would have to ask for the Guard troops, and are free to decline them. And, officials said governors would often have to ask for National Guard troops from fellow governors in nonborder states, who could also say no.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, a Republican, called the plan a "Band-Aid solution" in a statement Monday night and complained that he had not been fully consulted.

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a Democrat, said the plan fell short. "The president is putting the onus on border governors to work out the details and resolve the problems with this plan," Mr. Richardson said in a statement.

"The White House is now saying the troops would only be temporary. But temporary until when? I guess just until there aren't any more illegals trying to come across the border from Latin America."

In other words, you're suggesting the White House doesn't have an exit strategy from getting the troops out of ... our own country?

Brian Ross and Richard Esposito Report:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

One former official was asked to sign a document stating he was not a confidential source for New York Times reporter James Risen.

Our reports on the CIA's secret prisons in Romania and Poland were known to have upset CIA officials.

People questioned by the FBI about leaks of intelligence information say the CIA was also disturbed by ABC News reports that revealed the use of CIA predator missiles inside Pakistan.

Under Bush Administration guidelines, it is not considered illegal for the government to keep track of numbers dialed by phone customers.

The official who warned ABC News said there was no indication our phones were being tapped so the content of the conversation could be recorded.

A pattern of phone calls from a reporter, however, could provide valuable clues for leak investigators.

Which was the moment that touched you the most?

When the president told off the Dr. Laura clone,

When President Bartlet was stoned on painkillers for his back and held a meeting in the Oval Office,

The turkey-pardoning.

In the dark days of the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt counseled Americans to avoid fear. George W. Bush is his polar opposite. The public's fear is this president's most potent political asset. Perhaps his only asset.

Mr. Bush wants ordinary Americans to remain in a perpetual state of fear — so terrified, in fact, that they will not object to the steady erosion of their rights and liberties, and will not notice the many ways in which their fear is being manipulated to feed an unconscionable expansion of presidential power.

If voters can be kept frightened enough of terrorism, they might even overlook the monumental incompetence of one of the worst administrations the nation has ever known.

[...]

The Bush crowd, which gets together each morning to participate in a highly secret ritual of formalized ineptitude, is trying to get its creepy hands on all the telephone records of everybody in the entire country. It supposedly wants these records, which contain crucial documentation of calls for Chinese takeout in Terre Haute, Ind., and birthday greetings to Grandma in Talladega, Ala., to help in the search for Osama bin Laden.

Hey, the president has made it clear that when Al Qaeda is calling, he wants to be listening, and you never know where that lead may turn up.

The problem (besides the fact that the president has been as effective hunting bin Laden as Dick Cheney was in hunting quail) is that in its fearmongering and power-grabbing the Bush administration has trampled all over the Constitution, the democratic process and the hallowed American tradition of government checks and balances.

Short of having them taken away from us, there is probably no way to fully appreciate the wonder and the glory of our rights and liberties here in the United States, including the right to privacy.

[...]

If you listen to the Bush version of reality, the president is all powerful. In that version, we are fighting a war against terrorism, which is a war that will never end. And as long as we are at war (forever), there is no limit to the war-fighting powers the president can claim as commander in chief.

So we've kidnapped people and sent them off to be tortured in the extraordinary rendition program; and we've incarcerated people at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere without trial or even the right to know the charges against them; and we're allowing the C.I.A. to operate super-secret prisons where God-knows-what-all is going on; and we're listening in on the phone calls and reading the e-mail of innocent Americans without warrants; and on and on and on.

The Bushies will tell you that it is dangerous and even against the law to inquire into these nefarious activities. We just have to trust the king.

Well, I give you fair warning. This is a road map to totalitarianism. Hallmarks of totalitarian regimes have always included an excessive reliance on secrecy, the deliberate stoking of fear in the general population, a preference for military rather than diplomatic solutions in foreign policy, the promotion of blind patriotism, the denial of human rights, the curtailment of the rule of law, hostility to a free press and the systematic invasion of the privacy of ordinary people.

A majority of Americans disapprove of a massive Pentagon database containing the records of billions of phone calls made by ordinary citizens, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. About two-thirds are concerned that the program may signal other, not-yet-disclosed efforts to gather information on the general public.

The survey of 809 adults Friday and Saturday shows a nation wrestling with the balance between fighting terrorism and protecting civil liberties.

By 51%-43%, those polled disapprove of the program, disclosed Thursday in USA TODAY. The National Security Agency has been collecting phone records from three of the nation's largest telecommunication companies since soon after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Most of those who approve of the program say it violates some civil liberties but is acceptable because "investigating terrorism is the more important goal."

"The combating-terrorism issue still has resonance with the American public," says political scientist Richard Eichenberg of Tufts University in Massachusetts. "But the public's tolerance for this sort of invasion of privacy may be topping out. It may be people are starting to say: 'When is the other shoe going to drop? What else are they doing?' "

About two-thirds say they're concerned that the federal government might be gathering other information about the public, such as bank records and data on Internet use, or listening in on domestic phone conversations without obtaining a warrant.

When he was asked about the National Security Agency's controversial domestic surveillance program last Monday, U.S. intelligence chief John D. Negroponte objected to the question and said the government was "absolutely not" monitoring domestic calls without warrants.

"I wouldn't call it domestic spying," he told reporters. "This is about international terrorism and telephone calls between people thought to be working for international terrorism and people here in the United States."

Three days later, USA Today divulged details of the NSA's effort to log a majority of the telephone calls made within the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- amassing the domestic call records of tens of millions of U.S. households and businesses in an attempt to sift them for clues about terrorist threats.

Some of President Bush's most influential conservative Christian allies are becoming openly critical of the White House and Republicans in Congress, warning that they will withhold their support in the midterm elections unless Congress does more to oppose same-sex marriage, obscenity and abortion.

"There is a growing feeling among conservatives that the only way to cure the problem is for Republicans to lose the Congressional elections this fall," said Richard Viguerie, a conservative direct-mail pioneer.

[...]

"I can't tell you how much anger there is at the Republican leadership," Mr. Viguerie said. "I have never seen anything like it."

In the last several weeks, Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and one of the most influential Christian conservatives, has publicly accused Republican leaders of betraying the social conservatives who helped elect them in 2004. He has also warned in private meetings with about a dozen of the top Republicans in Washington that he may turn critic this fall unless the party delivers on conservative goals.

[...]

But it is unclear how much Congressional Republicans will be able to do for social conservatives before the next election.

No one expects the same-sex marriage amendment to pass this year. Republican leaders have not scheduled votes on a measure to outlaw transporting minors across state lines for abortions, and the proposal faces long odds in the Senate. A measure to increase obscenity fines for broadcasters is opposed by media industry trade groups, pitting Christian conservatives against the business wing of the party, and Congressional leaders have not committed to bring it to a vote.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and another frequent participant in the Council for National Policy, argued that Christian conservatives were hurting their own cause.

"If the Republicans do poorly in 2006," Mr. Norquist said, "the establishment will explain that it was because Bush was too conservative, specifically on social and cultural issues."

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than half a day Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing Karl Rove.

During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning.

Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, did not return a call for comment. Sources said Fitzgerald was in Washington, DC, Friday and met with Luskin for about 15 hours to go over the charges against Rove, which include perjury and lying to investigators about how and when Rove discovered that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative and whether he shared that information with reporters, sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said.

It was still unknown Saturday whether Fitzgerald charged Rove with a more serious obstruction of justice charge. Sources close to the case said Friday that it appeared very likely that an obstruction charge against Rove would be included with charges of perjury and lying to investigators.

An announcement by Fitzgerald is expected to come this week, sources close to the case said. However, the day and time is unknown. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the special prosecutor was unavailable for comment. In the past, Samborn said he could not comment on the case.

A majority of Americans initially support a controversial National Security Agency program to collect information on telephone calls made in the United States in an effort to identify and investigate potential terrorist threats, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The new survey found that 63 percent of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism, including 44 percent who strongly endorsed the effort. Another 35 percent said the program was unacceptable, which included 24 percent who strongly objected to it.

Has the Bush administration gone too far in expanding the powers of the President to fight terrorism? Yes, say a majority of Americans, following this week’s revelation that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone records of U.S. citizens since the September 11 terrorist attacks. According to the latest NEWSWEEK poll, 53 percent of Americans think the NSA’s surveillance program “goes too far in invading people’s privacy,” while 41 percent see it as a necessary tool to combat terrorism.

It's been reported that the National Security Agency has been collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans. It then analyzes calling patterns in an effort to identify possible terrorism suspects, without listening to or recording the conversations. Would you consider this an acceptable or unacceptable way for the federal government to investigate terrorism? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?

Acceptable NET -- 63
Unacceptable NET -- 35

As you may know, there are reports that the NSA, a government intelligence agency, has been collecting the phone call records of Americans. The agency doesn't actually listen to the calls but logs in nearly every phone number to create a database of calls made within the United States. Which of the following comes CLOSER to your own view of this domestic surveillance program:

41 -- It is a necessary tool to combat terrorism
53 -- It goes too far in invading people’s privacy
6 -- Don’t know

Within the last week, Karl Rove told President Bush and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, as well as a few other high level administration officials, that he will be indicted in the CIA leak case and will immediately resign his White House job when the special counsel publicly announces the charges against him, according to sources.

Details of Rove's discussions with the president and Bolten have spread through the corridors of the White House where low-level staffers and senior officials were trying to determine how the indictment would impact an administration that has been mired in a number of high-profile political scandals for nearly a year, said a half-dozen White House aides and two senior officials who work at the Republican National Committee.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, sources confirmed Rove's indictment is imminent. These individuals requested anonymity saying they were not authorized to speak publicly about Rove's situation. A spokesman in the White House press office said they would not comment on "wildly speculative rumors."

The telecommunications company Qwest turned down requests by the National Security Agency for private telephone records because it concluded that doing so would violate federal privacy laws, a lawyer for the telephone company's former chief executive said today.

In a statement released this morning, the lawyer said that the former chief executive, Joseph N. Nacchio, made the decision after asking whether "a warrant or other legal process had been secured in support of that request."

Mr. Nacchio learned that no warrant had been granted and that there was a "disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process," said the lawyer, Herbert J. Stern. As a result, the statement said, Mr. Nacchio concluded that "the requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act."

With a tip of the War Room Kevlar helmet to Wonkette, here's Republican Florida state Rep. David Rivera on the Republicans' inability to come up with a more promising candidate to run against Sen. Bill Nelson in November: "Katherine Harris is the horse we're going to ride to the finish line, and it's time for us to saddle up."

Congressional Republicans and Democrats alike demanded answers from the Bush administration on Thursday about a report that the National Security Agency had collected records of millions of domestic phone calls, even as President Bush assured Americans that their privacy is "fiercely protected."

[...]

Several lawmakers predicted the new disclosures would complicate confirmation hearings next week for Gen. Michael V. Hayden, formerly the head of the N.S.A., as the president's nominee to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.

A few days before Bush's second inauguration, The New York Times carried a story headlined "Warning from a Student of Democracy's Collapse" about Fritz Stern, a refugee from Nazi Germany, professor emeritus of history at Columbia, and scholar of fascism. It quoted a speech he had given in Germany that drew parallels between Nazism and the American religious right. "Some people recognized the moral perils of mixing religion and politics," he was quoted saying of prewar Germany, "but many more were seduced by it. It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured [Hitler's] success, notably in Protestant areas."

It's not surprising that Stern is alarmed. Reading his forty-five-year-old book "The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology," I shivered at its contemporary resonance. "The ideologists of the conservative revolution superimposed a vision of national redemption upon their dissatisfaction with liberal culture and with the loss of authoritative faith," he wrote in the introduction. "They posed as the true champions of nationalism, and berated the socialists for their internationalism, and the liberals for their pacifism and their indifference to national greatness."

Fascism isn't imminent in America. But its language and aesthetics are distressingly common among Christian nationalists. History professor Roger Griffin described the "mobilizing vision" of fascist movements as "the national community rising Phoenix-like after a period of encroaching decadence which all but destroyed it" (his emphasis). The Ten Commandments has become a potent symbol of this dreamed-for resurrection on the American right.

[...]

Dominion theology comes out of Christian Reconstructionism, a fundamentalist creed that was propagated by the late Rousas John (R. J.) Rushdoony and his son-in-law, Gary North. Born in New York City in 1916 to Armenian immigrants who had recently fled the genocide in Turkey, Rushdoony was educated at the University of California at Berkeley and spent over eight years as a Presbyterian missionary to Native Americans in Nevada. He was a prolific writer, churning out dense tomes advocating the abolition of public schools and social services and the replacement of civil law with biblical law. White-bearded and wizardly, Rushdoony had the look of an Old Testament patriarch and the harsh vision to match -- he called for the death penalty for gay people, blasphemers, and unchaste women, among other sinners. Democracy, he wrote, is a heresy and "the great love of the failures and cowards of life."

[...]

Speaking to outsiders, most Christian nationalists say they're simply responding to anti-Christian persecution. They say that secularism is itself a religion, one unfairly imposed on them. They say they're the victims in the culture wars. But Christian nationalist ideologues don't want equality, they want dominance. In his book "The Changing of the Guard: Biblical Principles for Political Action," George Grant, former executive director of D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries, wrote:

"Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.

But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice.
It is dominion we are after. Not just influence.
It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time.
It is dominion we are after.

World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less...

Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land -- of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ."

All Facts and Opinions continues looking into the candidacy of Chuck Pennacchio.

archy says it's time for Rush to be randomly tested.

Bark Bark Woof Woof has a look at the fun in Florida politics.

blogAmY catches Denny Hastert hitchin' a ride.

bloggg leaves a message for the NSA.

Send Andante at Collective Sigh some love as she eyes an upcoming surgery.

Dodecahedron looks over the specs of the next fleet of presidential choppers.

NTodd makes his feelings known.

Echidne looks at a seriously strange Ann Coulter piece.

the farmer finds that AT&T may be in big trouble for making room for spying.

FDL wonders if today could be Fitz-de-Mayo.

At First Draft they have the story of what was going through Bush's mind on the morning of 9/11.

Happy Furry Puppy details the sins of The Left.

iddybud on Mary Cheney.

Left is Right explains where he's been and what's up.

Lefty answers questions.

Liberty Street changes phone service.

Make Me a Commentator reviews Cal Thomas's five-men theory.

MercuryX23 has moved to the Valley of the Sun. (BTW, it gets hot there in summer...)

Michael muses on Mary and prepares for graduation.

Pen-Elayne pays tribute to a caring teen in Washington who's helping kids in New Orleans have a prom. (Bon voyage, Elayne and Robin.)

Rick on a petulant judge.

rubber hose on citizens suing the state for spying on us.

Coturnix celebrates the birthdate of a scientist.

Scrutiny Hooligans has the links to encrypt your e-mails.

Sooner Thought takes the fun out of UFO hunting.

Steve Gilliard on net neutrality.

T. Rex on Putin's response to Cheney.

The Countess has the vibe on a very special holiday in Brazil.

The Invisible Library says dolphins have names.

Words on a Page has numbers to call to protest Sec. Jackson.

WTF Is It Now?? on the president's pal not visiting the White House.

Steve gets a new laptop computer.

...You Are A Tree has issues with photos being stolen. Well, yeah, who can blame him?

Just because something is technically legal doesn't make it right. After all, getting a blow job isn't illegal, either.

If the NSA was tracking gun sales, the defenders of the president would go up like a puff of smoke.

House Speaker Allan Bense rejected the high-level push from the White House, the governor and their political network Wednesday and decided not to enter the U.S. Senate race, leaving U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris the lone Republican.

And he handed his party a mess to mend.

Bense told Gov. Jeb Bush and others Wednesday that he preferred to head home to Panama City rather than seek the Republican nomination to challenge U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson in November -- despite warnings this week from Bush that Harris "can't win" and pledges from Bush-family backers to send Bense money and support.

"It was a great time to do some soul-searching and figure out what I'm going to do when I grow up, but I decided that the U.S. Senate was not something I could do right now," said Bense.

Bush said he was disappointed and agreed to support Harris, but suggested she still may not be the nominee. "I'm going to support the Republican nominee, if she is the nominee," Bush said. "Sure. If there's no one else filing, she will get the support of all God-fearing Republicans."

Republicans have little time left before Friday's filing deadline to find a challenger to Harris or get behind her campaign.

Some Republicans say Harris' campaign, already wracked with trouble, now becomes more vulnerable after the public spectacle of Bush and others courting someone to run against her.

Harris, in a statement, tried to steer clear of continued doubts about her candidacy and said she was focused on beating Nelson, whom she again branded as a "liberal." But at the same time, Harris said she would be an "independent voice," giving at least a hint that she was prepared to forge ahead without the blessing of top Republicans.

"Former Sen. Zell Miller [of Georgia] once said, it's not what team you're on that is important, it's what side you're on that matters," Harris' statement said. "I couldn't agree more, and plan to cast every vote as a United States senator with the philosophy that I will always be on the side of Floridians and our nation, first and foremost."

Disaffection over spending and immigration have caused conservatives to take flight from President Bush and the Republican Congress at a rapid pace in recent weeks, sending Bush's approval ratings to record lows and presenting a new threat to the GOP's 12-year reign on Capitol Hill, according to White House officials, lawmakers and new polling data.

Bush and Congress have suffered a decline in support from almost every part of the conservative coalition over the past year, a trend that has accelerated with alarming implications for Bush's governing strategy.

The Gallup polling organization recorded a 13-percentage-point drop in Republican support for Bush in the past couple of weeks. These usually reliable voters are telling pollsters and lawmakers they are fed up with what they see as out-of-control spending by Washington and, more generally, an abandonment of core conservative principles.

There are also significant pockets of conservatives turning on Bush and Congress over their failure to tighten immigration laws, restrict same-sex marriage, and put an end to the Iraq war and the rash of political scandals, according to lawmakers and pollsters.

The conventional notion here is that Democrats want to “nationalize” the 2006 elections—dwelling on broad themes (that is, the failures of the Bush administration)—while the Republicans will try to “localize” them as individual contests that have nothing to do with, ahem, the goings-on in the capital.

That was before the GOP situation got so desperate. The way I read the recent moves of Karl Rove & Co., they are preparing to wage war the only way open to them: not by touting George Bush, Lord knows, but by waging a national campaign to paint a nightmarish picture of what a Democratic Congress would look like, and to portray that possibility, in turn, as prelude to the even more nightmarish scenario: the return of a Democrat (Hillary) to the White House.

Rather than defend Bush, Rove will seek to rally the Republicans’ conservative grass roots by painting Democrats as the party of tax increases, gay marriage, secularism and military weakness. That’s where the national message money is going to be spent.

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

[...]

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said.

The sources would talk only under a guarantee of anonymity because the NSA program is secret.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, nominated Monday by President Bush to become the director of the CIA, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005. In that post, Hayden would have overseen the agency's domestic call-tracking program. Hayden declined to comment about the program.

The NSA's domestic program raises legal questions. Historically, AT&T and the regional phone companies have required law enforcement agencies to present a court order before they would even consider turning over a customer's calling data. Part of that owed to the personality of the old Bell Telephone System, out of which those companies grew.

Ma Bell's bedrock principle — protection of the customer — guided the company for decades, said Gene Kimmelman, senior public policy director of Consumers Union. "No court order, no customer information — period. That's how it was for decades," he said.

The concern for the customer was also based on law: Under Section 222 of the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, telephone companies are prohibited from giving out information regarding their customers' calling habits: whom a person calls, how often and what routes those calls take to reach their final destination. Inbound calls, as well as wireless calls, also are covered.

The financial penalties for violating Section 222, one of many privacy reinforcements that have been added to the law over the years, can be stiff. The Federal Communications Commission, the nation's top telecommunications regulatory agency, can levy fines of up to $130,000 per day per violation, with a cap of $1.325 million per violation. The FCC has no hard definition of "violation." In practice, that means a single "violation" could cover one customer or 1 million.

HOW TO TELL IF YOU NEED TO PRAY AT WORK

When a co-worker comes in a little too happy singing "Good morning!" to everyone and you think, "Somebody needs to slap the s#@! out of her"...You need to pray at work.

When someone comes in and announces, "Office meeting in five minutes," and you think, "What the f*&% do they want now?"...You need to pray at work.

When your computer is mysteriously turned off and you want to say, "Which one of you sons of b*&^%$# turned off my computer?"...You need to pray at work.

When you and a co-worker are discussing something and a third person comes in and says, "Well, at my last office...," and you want to throw a stapler at him...You need to pray at work.

When you hear a co-worker call your name and the first thing that crosses your mind is, "What the h*&^ does she want now?" and you try to hide underneath your desk...You need to pray at work.

When you are asked to stay late and help do someone else's work and the first thing that pops in your head is, "Both of y'all can kiss my a@@!!"...You need to pray at work.

When you're in the elevator and it stops to pick up someone who stood for five minutes waiting for the darn thing only to go DOWN one floor, and you say "That lazy b*&%$#"...You need to pray at work.

When you take some vacation time and come back to find a mountain of paperwork sitting on your desk because no one else would do it and you think, "Sorry a## M#$^%F%&#s"...You need to pray at work.

If you have ever thought about poisoning, choking, punching, slapping or flattening someone's tires that you work with...You need to pray at work.

If you avoid saying more than "Hello" or "How are you doing?" to someone because you know it's going to lead to their life story...You need to pray at work.

If you know all the words that have been bleeped out...You need to pray at work!

LET US ALL BOW OUR HEADS

For you moms out there, how do you like to be honored on Mother's Day, if at all?

For everyone else, how do you -- or did you -- honor your mom on Mother's Day?

Mr. Bush's approval ratings for his management of foreign policy, Iraq and the economy have fallen to the lowest levels of his presidency. He drew poor marks on the issues that have been at the top of the national agenda in recent months, in particular immigration and gasoline prices.

Just 13 percent approved of Mr. Bush's handling of rising gasoline prices. About a quarter said they approved of his handling of immigration, as Congressional Republicans try to come up with a compromise for handling the influx of illegal immigrants into the country.

The poll showed a further decline in support for the Iraq war, the issue that has most eaten into Mr. Bush's public support. The percentage of respondents who said going to war in Iraq was the correct decision slipped to a new low of 39 percent, down from 47 percent in January. Two-thirds said they had little or no confidence that Mr. Bush could successfully end the war.

[...]

Mr. Bush's overall job approval rating hit another new low, 31 percent, tying the low point of his father in July 1992, four months before the elder Mr. Bush lost his bid for a second term to Bill Clinton. That is the third lowest approval rating of any president in 50 years; only Richard M. Nixon and Jimmy Carter were viewed less favorably.

Mr. Bush is even losing support from what has been his base: 51 percent of conservatives and 69 percent of Republicans approve of the way Mr. Bush is handling his job. In both cases, those figures are a substantial drop in support from four months ago.

"He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years," Jackson said of the prospective contractor. "He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something ... he said, 'I have a problem with your president.'

[...]

"He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

There is only one circumstance I can think of where that reply would come up in a sales call - IF THE CEO WAS ASKED FOR A CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION.

I certainly would never bring up politics with any customer unless I knew what their politics were in advance and that they were compatible.

The politics issue has to have come from Jackson.

That is why he is making this peculiar statement, what he is really doing here is repeating his internalized self-justification for demanding a bribe and being rebuffed. [Emphasis in original]

The emerging Republican game plan for 2006 is, at bottom, a tautology: If the Democrats retake Congress it will mean, well, that the Democrats retake Congress. (Cue lightning bolt and ominous clap of thunder.) Karl Rove and his minions have plumb run out of issues to campaign on. They can't run on the war. They can't run on the economy, where the positive numbers on growth are offset by the largely stagnant numbers on median incomes and the public's growing dread of outsourcing. Immigration may play in various congressional districts, but it's too dicey an issue to nationalize. Even social conservatives may be growing weary of outlawing gay marriage every other November. Nobody's buying the ownership society. Competence? Ethics? You kidding?

The Republicans' problem is not simply their inability to run their government and wage their war of choice, it is also their bankruptcy of ideas. On taxes, the Republican legislative leaders' top priorities are to make permanent the tax cut on investment income and to repeal the estate tax -- economics, as ever, for our wealthiest 1 percent. (This at a time when the entire theory of trickle-down has been negated by the propensity of U.S. corporations to use their shareholders' investments to expand abroad rather than at home.) On energy, the notions of tougher fuel economy standards and mandating a shift to renewable energy sources are so alien to the Republicans' DNA that they come forth with such proposals as Bill Frist's $100 rebate, the most short-lived legislative initiative in recent memory.

[...]

And so, to stave off the specter of Democratic rule, Rove has decided that the only way to rally the Republican base is to invoke the specter of Democratic rule. Democrat John Conyers, who would become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has spoken of investigating the president for high crimes and misdemeanors. Henry Waxman and Ted Kennedy will get subpoena power if the Democrats win both houses. Unspecified horrors lurk behind every corner if the Democrats take control and hold hearings about the administration's relations with the oil and pharmaceutical industries. A sea of partisan vendetta, Republicans prophesy, stretches to the horizon if the Democrats are allowed to win.

A networking issue caused both Blogger and Blog*Spot to be sluggish and and partially unresponsive for a period of about 2 hours this morning. We are now recovered from this outage.

Let's say she's a little bit out of her element. Mary Cheney, daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, had made it her business to fly under the radar. She's a pro at shunning the limelight. As the openly gay daughter of a man running for office in a party opposed to gay marriage, she took the hits and let them slide off her as if she were coated with Teflon. Kind of like daddy.

Alan Keyes refers to her as a "selfish hedonist"? No response. Gay-rights activists lampoon her by putting her face on a milk carton ("Have you seen me?")? No response. Her sexual orientation becomes fodder for a presidential debate? No response.

Protesters show up in her hideout home town of Conifer, Colo., and plant a "Bride of Satan" sign outside her house? Nope, not a word.

Until now, that is. Cheney's self-written story of life as a political daughter, campaign strategist and happily partnered gay woman is out this week, with a carefully planned media campaign surrounding its release. At 37, she's trying out the Washington life -- swapping snowboarding in the Rockies for commuting on the Dulles Toll Road -- and heading out on the publicity trail while longtime partner Heather Poe rips up pink shag carpet in their new Great Falls home and consults with Lynne Cheney, Mary's mom, about redecorating plans.

Called "Now It's My Turn: A Daughter's Chronicle of Political Life," Cheney's book is primarily an insider's story on campaign politics, a primer for those outside the D.C. political bubble on what life is really like in the midst of a presidential campaign -- with the added insight of what it's like to be a candidate's child.

Rupert Murdoch, the conservative media mogul whose New York Post tabloid savaged Hillary Clinton's initial aspirations to become a US senator for New York, has agreed to host a political fundraiser for her re-election campaign.

The decision underlines an incongruous thawing of relations between Mr Murdoch and Mrs Clinton, who in 1998 coined the phrase "vast rightwing conspiracy" to denounce critics of her husband, such as Fox News, the conservative cable channel owned by Mr Murdoch's News Corporation.

Mr Murdoch will host the fundraiser, due to be held by July, on behalf of News Corp.

One person involved in the event said it reflected his views of her as a senator, rather than as a presidential candidate. "They have a respectful and cordial relationship. He has respect for the work she has done on behalf of New York. I wouldn't say it was illustrative of a close ongoing relationship. It is not like they are dining out together."

With Democrats increasingly optimistic about this year's midterm elections and the landscape for 2008, intellectuals in the center and on the left are debating how to sharpen the party's identity and present a clear alternative to the conservatism that has dominated political thought for a generation.

Many of these analysts, both liberals and moderates, are convinced that the Democrats face a moment of historic opportunity. They say that the country is weary of war and division and ready — if given a compelling choice — to reject the Republicans and change the country's direction. They argue that the Democratic Party is showing signs of new health — intense party discipline on Capitol Hill, a host of policy proposals and an energized base.

[...]

This discussion of first principles and big goals marks a psychological shift for many in the party; a frequent theme is that Democrats must stop being afraid, stop worrying that their core beliefs are out of step with the times, stop ceding so much ground to the conservatives.

Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, said, "One of the most successful right-wing ploys was to demonize any concern about the distribution of income in America as, quote, class warfare."

Many of these analysts argue that Republicans have pushed the ideological limits of the American people so far — notably, with Mr. Bush's tax cuts for the affluent and his effort to partly privatize Social Security — that Americans are ready for something different. Elaine Kamarck, a former top aide to former Vice President Al Gore, argues that the combination of the Sept. 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina has driven home to Americans the need for strong and effective government, "and gets us back to our strengths — a government that can deliver."

An opening now exists, as it hasn’t in a very long time, for the Democrats to be the visionaries. To seize this moment, the Democrats need to think differently -- to stop focusing on their grab bag of small-bore proposals that so often seek not to offend and that accept conservative terms of debate. And to do that, they need to begin by looking to their history, for in that history there is an idea about liberal governance that amounts to more than the million-little-pieces, interest-group approach to politics that has recently come under deserved scrutiny and that can clearly offer the most compelling progressive response to the radical individualism of the Bush era.

What is the creepiest commercial you've seen recently?

The recent White House shake-up was an attempt to jump-start the administration and boost President Bush's rock-bottom approval ratings, but have those efforts come too late to salvage the presidency? A prominent GOP pollster thinks that may be the case.

"This administration may be over," Lance Tarrance, a chief architect of the Republicans' 1960s and '70s Southern strategy, told a gathering of journalists and political wonks last week. "By and large, if you want to be tough about it, the relevancy of this administration on policy may be over."

A conspiracy theory, says Wikipedia, "attempts to explain the cause of an event as a secret, and often deceptive, plot by a covert alliance." Claims that global warming is a hoax and that the liberal media are suppressing the good news from Iraq meet that definition. In each case, to accept the claim you have to believe that people working for many different organizations — scientists at universities and research facilities around the world, reporters for dozens of different news organizations — are secretly coordinating their actions.

But the administration officials who told us that Saddam had an active nuclear program and insinuated that he was responsible for 9/11 weren't part of a covert alliance; they all worked for President Bush. The claim that these officials hyped the case for war isn't a conspiracy theory; it's simply an assertion that people in a position of power abused that position. And that assertion only seems wildly implausible if you take it as axiomatic that Mr. Bush and those around him wouldn't do such a thing.

The truth is that many of the people who throw around terms like "loopy conspiracy theories" are lazy bullies who, as Zachary Roth put it on CJR Daily, The Columbia Journalism Review's Web site, want to "confer instant illegitimacy on any argument with which they disagree." Instead of facing up to hard questions, they try to suggest that anyone who asks those questions is crazy.

Indeed, right-wing pundits have consistently questioned the sanity of Bush critics; "It looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again," said Charles Krauthammer, the Washington Post columnist, after Mr. Gore gave a perfectly sensible if hard-hitting speech. Even moderates have tended to dismiss the administration's harsh critics as victims of irrational Bush hatred.

But now those harsh critics have been vindicated. And it turns out that many of the administration supporters can't handle the truth. They won't admit that they built a personality cult around a man who has proved almost pathetically unequal to the job. Nor will they admit that opponents of the Iraq war, whom they called traitors for warning that invading Iraq was a mistake, have been proved right. So they have taken refuge in the belief that a vast conspiracy of America-haters in the media is hiding the good news from the public.

Unlike the crazy conspiracy theories of the left — which do exist, but are supported only by a tiny fringe — the crazy conspiracy theories of the right are supported by important people: powerful politicians, television personalities with large audiences. And we can safely predict that these people will never concede that they were wrong. When the Iraq venture comes to a bad end, they won't blame those who led us into the quagmire; they'll claim that it was all the fault of the liberal media, which stabbed our troops in the back.

Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald is wrapping up his investigation into White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove's role in the CIA leak case by weighing this central question:

Did Rove, who was deeply involved in defending President Bush's use of prewar intelligence about Iraq, lie about a key conversation with a reporter that was aimed at rebutting a tough White House critic?

Fitzgerald, according to sources close to the case, is reviewing testimony from Rove's five appearances before the grand jury. Bush's top political strategist has argued that he never intentionally misled the grand jury about his role in leaking information about undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame to Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper in July 2003. Rove testified that he simply forgot about the conversation when he failed to disclose it to Fitzgerald in his earlier testimony.

Fitzgerald is weighing Rove's foggy-memory defense against evidence he has acquired over nearly 2 1/2 years that shows Rove was very involved in White House efforts to beat back allegations that Bush twisted U.S. intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to sources involved in the case.

All Facts and Opinions helps a Pennsylvania senate candidate.

archy notes International Respect for Chickens Day. Go get clucked.

Bark Bark Woof Woof on the Moussaoui sentence.

David at blogAmY has another question.

bloggg on exhorbitant pay for oil execs.

Collective Sigh on how to get rich from bird flu.

Dodecahedron is back with his own thoughts on what to do with those oil company profits.

NTodd wants to know how confident you are.

Echidne of the Snakes on how much you'd earn if you were paid to be a mom.

the farmer on the fun and paranoid world of Dick Cheney.

FDL sees the Day of Reckoning looming.

First Draft on Scott McClellan's next-to-last day and the Dole fundraising letter.

Happy Furry Puppy checks out the opposition.

iddybud pays tribute to the Sago miners.

Left is Right helps the veterans.

Lefty gives away a giveway.

Liberty Street replies to the death penalty advocates for Moussaoui.

Make Me a Commentator remembers Kent State. (Do you?)

Michael finds out his true major in college. (According to this, I should have been a journalist. No, really.)

rubber hose on Mrs. Bush being bilingual.

Science and Politics notes that migrating birds are starving.

Scrutiny Hooligans on "lobbying reform."

Sooner Thought on Rummy fudging.

Jeff at Speedkill has a sly take on an essay from Newsweek.

Steve Gilliard on blacks, Mexicans, and the Minutemen.

Kenneth at T. Rex on global terrorism.

The Countess is rightly outraged.

The Invisible Library announces that the original Force will be with us.

Wanda on a part of the correspondents' dinner last week.

Steve on cruel punishment.

...You Are A Tree has pictures of our troops in Iraq.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq, doesn't exactly look like a terrorist mastermind in a new videotape released by the U.S. military today.

In blooper-type footage from a Zarqawi video released last week, the al Qaeda in Iraq leader is seen fumbling with a machine gun.

U.S. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said the video was found during a series of raids in April on purported terror cell safe houses southwest of Baghdad.

Lynch said Zarqawi decided not to publicize the piece, which shows him decked out in New Balance sneakers. In it, he said, Zarqawi had trouble firing his automatic weapon and needed assistance from an aide, and his associates "do things like grab the hot barrel of the machine gun and burn themselves."

President Bush likes to drop a few words of Spanish in his speeches and act like he's proficient in the language. But he's really not that good, his spokesman said Thursday.

"The president can speak Spanish but not that well," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. "He's not that good with his Spanish."

VILNIUS, Lithuania -- Vice President Dick Cheney, in remarks that caused a stir in neighboring Russia, accused President Vladimir Putin Thursday of restricting the rights of citizens and said that "no legitimate interest is served" by turning energy resources into implements of blackmail.

"In Russia today, opponents of reform are seeking to reverse the gains of the last decade," Cheney told a conference of Eastern European leaders whose countries once lived under Soviet oppression, and now in Russia's shadow.

[...]

He said Russia has a choice to make when it comes to reform, and said that in many areas, "from religion and the news media to advocacy groups and political parties, the government has unfairly and improperly restricted the rights of the people."

Other actions "have been counterproductive and could begin to affect relations with other countries," Cheney said, mentioning energy and border issues.

"No legitimate interest is served when oil and gas become tools of intimidation or blackmail, either by supply manipulation or attempts to monopolize transportation," he said.

"And no one can justify actions that undermine the territorial integrity of a neighbor, or interfere with democratic movements."

There's always been a strain of paranoia running through American politics. Back in the mid-1960's, when the right felt powerless, the John Birch Society thrived. Today, when the left feels disinherited, liberals seize upon the conspiracy fantasies of Kevin Phillips, whose book "American Theocracy" is in its fifth week on The Times's best-seller list.

Phillips's method is pretty conventional for conspiracists — he takes a single issue or set of data points and constructs an all-explaining story line to show how hidden cabals are controlling America.

In the first part of "American Theocracy," he describes the rise of the "fossil-fuels political alliance." Dwight Eisenhower was "born in oil country" and in 1952 became the first Republican to sweep the Southern oil centers. Nixon too "had an oil-state childhood" and deepened oil's influence.

Pretty soon, Republicans could count not only on energy and automobile producers but also on "secondary cadres" including "racing fans, hobbyists, collectors, and dedicated readers of automotive magazines, as well as the tens of millions of automobile commuters from suburbs and distant exurbs."

By 1997, reasons were mounting to take over Iraq's oil, Phillips asserts. "A near-final decision to invade seems to have been made in early 2001," he adds, months before 9/11. The Iraq war was born.

The oil alliance melded with another hidden army, the "end-times electorate," Phillips continues. Relying on the fact that millions of people read the "Left Behind" apocalyptic fantasy novels, Phillips asserts that 50 to 60 percent of Republicans believe in Armageddon and are influenced by the argument that the "destruction of the new Babylon" in Iraq will hasten the coming of the messiah.

Phillips says that the Bush White House sends messages to these Americans through "double-coding" in his speeches — phrases that mean one thing to secular America but contain hidden meanings to people with the "biblical worldview." Phillips cites research showing President Bush used the phrase "I believe" 12 times in his 2004 G.O.P. convention speech — code for religious zealots.

Needless to say, Phillips's book is rife with bizarre assertions. He writes that "many Orthodox Jewish females cannot even study the Torah," that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon "has been close to the Bush family," that the American Revolution was "in many ways a religious war."

But his method is pretty standard. First, he takes advantage of the record of his liberal readers' ignorance of evangelical communities to make ludicrous assertions. Second, as Jacob Weisberg noted in Slate, Phillips will begin a chapter making some grand accusation. Then he will depart on what Weisberg accurately calls "a pompous, pedantic history tour" of medieval mineralogy or 16th-century politics. Then, without presenting any evidence or answering any objections, he will repeat his accusation in stronger language.

Third, Phillips is a master of slicing reality so that it conforms to predetermined conclusions. To take one example among many, in 2002 the evangelist Franklin Graham organized a meeting to address the AIDS crisis. Graham said evangelicals should be ashamed of how slowly they've responded to the crisis, "I have to point the finger at myself and say, 'I'm late.' " AIDS is not about homosexuality, he continued, "the danger is to all of us." He praised Colin Powell's efforts, even though Powell is a strong advocate of condoms. He accelerated what has become a strong evangelical mobilization against AIDS.

Philips writes about that meeting, but ignores all of this. Instead Phillips lumps the conference in with gay-bashing and writes, "Only Jesus Christ can bring about the societal change needed to stop AIDS, preacher Franklin Graham told a 2002 Washington conference."

This is intellectual dishonesty on stilts. Nonetheless, Phillips's books fly off bookstore shelves, and he's given respectable platforms in the major media and at universities.

We're at a moment when crude conspiracy mongering — whether it is academic papers on the Israel lobby or George Clooney's "Syriana" — is emerging from the belly of the American establishment.

And while many informed critics have picked apart Phillips's fantasies, other Americans, at once cynical and naïve, are willing to believe any whacked-out theory, so long as it focuses hatred on Bush.

It's a funny way to run a theocracy.

So it has come to this: A group of Senate Republicans has proposed $100 rebates to low-income people to ease their "pain at the gas pump." They also are entertaining the possibility of higher taxes on oil industry profits, as if government does a better job of spending money than private industry. Have they forgotten the last time government imposed a "windfall profits tax" from 1980 to '88? Oil production fell (but demand grew) as "big oil" had less incentive to explore.

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial called the $100 rebate proposal "destined for the pandering hall of fame." When Democrats want to hand out checks, Republicans call it "welfare," and they claim to oppose it on principle. What should it be called when Republicans do it? Hypocrisy?

GOP impotence in the midst of fuel price hikes may be the final proof that this is a party that has run out of gas. Democrats aren't any better and should they regain a congressional majority this fall, it won't be long before they again indulge in the same pandering, unethical behavior and content-free politics that has exposed Republican ineptness.

[...]

In this fall's election, can Republicans go to voters with a positive agenda and solid record of accomplishment? From the volatile subject of illegal immigration and lawbreakers demanding "rights" they do not have, to spending on wasteful and unnecessary projects, to a deficit and national debt that would almost shame Democrats (but doesn't shame Republicans), a majority of congressional Republicans are giving voters little reason to vote for them.

How could a party go from a visionary like Ronald Reagan who changed the world, not to mention restoring American optimism, to the tunnel vision of his illegitimate offspring who seem to care less about change than perpetuating themselves in office? They aren't even doing a good job of that as the fall election results may show, unless somebody or something quickly lights a fire under them. Never has the derogatory phrase, "Republican in name only," applied to so many who have done so little for so few.

"If Democrats take control of the Senate in '06, they will cancel the Bush tax cuts, allow liberal activist judges to run our courts and undermine all Republican efforts to win the War on Terror. Even worse, they will call for endless congressional investigations and possibly call for the impeachment of President Bush!"

A federal court jury spared the life of Zacarias Moussaoui today, voting to send him to prison for the rest of his days rather than condemn him to death for the carnage of Sept. 11, 2001.

The teenage crush you had that confirmed your sexual orientation.

Sen. John McCain likes the moral high ground, and he takes palpable pleasure in delivering zingers to errant Russians, Iranians and Europeans, as he did at a conference here last weekend. But as the apparent front-runner in the 2008 presidential race, McCain is spending more of his time in the bog of American politics, and it's no picnic.

McCain's critics have accused him of playing a game of political Twister the past few months. When he accepted a speaking invitation from Jerry Falwell, the polarizing prince of the Christian right, liberals saw it as a betrayal of values. When he voted to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent, despite his own past warnings about the country's fiscal mess, budget balancers attacked him as a hypocrite.

When I asked McCain, in between his speeches to the Brussels Forum here, if the criticism bothered him, he answered quietly, "Oh, yeah." He says liberals need to understand that he's not a man of the left, or even the center. "I haven't changed. My record is the same on all issues, which is that of a conservative Republican. Not a liberal Republican, not a moderate Republican." But in the next breath, he lists all the positions he has taken that have made him the darling of centrist Republicans and Democrats, from torture to ethics reform to climate change.

[...]

McCain is a walking embodiment of the Catch-22 of presidential politics. To get the nomination, a candidate must appeal to his party's activist wing. But even as he buffs his credentials with the base, the candidate inevitably tarnishes his image with the center. A successful campaign almost requires some fibbing -- the candidate is either less extreme than he's telling his party's base, or more extreme than he's telling the general public. The trick is not to get caught -- not to be too obvious in the tactical compromises that are necessary in the marathon race of a presidential campaign.

Part of McCain's appeal is that he seems to straddle such partisan political calculations. He's the victim of torture who opposes torture, the man caught in the "Keating Five" ethics scandal who insists on reform, the critic of Iraq policy who insists that America must win the war, the conservative who is beloved by moderates. A McCain candidacy, if he makes the formal decision next year to run, will be rooted in his image as a man of principle. But it will also be something of a balancing act -- one that the candidate himself is likely to find uncomfortable.

The right wing is up in arms over a new version of the Star-Spangled Banner written in Spanish. Last week President Bush stated that “the national anthem ought to be sung in English.” Yesterday Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) introduced a resolution requiring the Star-Spangled banner to be sung only in English:

That flag and that song are a part of our history and our national identity. … That’s why in 1931 Congress declared the Star-Spangled Banner our national anthem. That’s why we should always sing it in our common language, English.

In his press release, Alexander said the Star-Spangled Banner has “never before…been rendered in another language.”

But in 1919, the U.S. Bureau of Education commissioned a Spanish-language version of “The Star Spangled Banner.” The State Department’s website also features four-separate versions of the anthem in Spanish.

It appears xenophobia isn’t part of the American tradition.

Prosecutors accused him of illegally deceiving multiple doctors to receive overlapping prescriptions, a practice known as doctor shopping. After seizing his medical records, authorities learned Limbaugh received up to 2,000 painkillers, prescribed by four doctors, in six months.

However, the single charge only alleges that Limbaugh illegally obtained about 40 pills, said Mike Edmondson, a state attorney's spokesman. He would not explain why prosecutors scaled back the case.

Do you know when your ancestors arrived in the U.S. and whether or not they were documented when they arrived?

According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.

[...]

While many have speculated that Plame was involved in monitoring the nuclear proliferation black market, specifically the proliferation activities of Pakistan's nuclear "father," A.Q. Khan, intelligence sources say that her team provided only minimal support in that area, focusing almost entirely on Iran.

[...]

Intelligence sources would not identify the specifics of Plame's work. They did, however, tell RAW STORY that her outing resulted in "severe" damage to her team and significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation.

Plame's team, they added, would have come in contact with A.Q. Khan's network in the course of her work on Iran.

The day was meant as a demonstration of immigrant power -- with many foreign workers attending rallies and marches instead of tending the fields, building condos or learning grammar and math. But as the sun set on South Florida it was clear organizers' goal of paralyzing cities did not materialize. Most area businesses stayed open and some immigrant communities remained torn about joining the boycott and rallies.

Several thousand -- perhaps as many as 10,000 combined -- attended rallies and events from Homestead to Miami to Fort Lauderdale, but those figures were low compared to previous protests by Cuban exiles. Some Cuban Americans attended the rallies, though legalization is not an issue for them because by law undocumented Cuban migrants get to stay in the United States if they reach land.

South Florida's Caribbean community -- Haitians and Jamaicans in particular -- did not come out in force either, many viewing the May 1 rallies as a Mexican-generated idea that did not apply to them even though thousands of Caribbean people are living in the shadows.

In your travel experience, which is the best airport to be stranded in? Which is the worst?

SHADYSIDE, Ohio - Charlie Wilson needs a glossy, fold-out brochure to show Democrats how to send him to Congress. He needs only a couple of numbers to tell them why.

Eighty: The percentage of voters in this snaking Southeast Ohio district who, according to Mr. Wilson's polling, believe the country is on the wrong track under Republican leadership.

And 500: The number of jobs lost in the most recent round of layoffs from one of the steel mills that used to power thriving economies here and in similar small towns up and down the Ohio River.

"This election is special in many ways," Mr. Wilson, a state senator, told about 50 Shadyside residents and two Fox News cameramen who gathered on the cracked blacktop of the town basketball courts last week. "What I'm hearing from people everywhere I go is we need a guy who will go to Congress and stand up against jobs being exported out of our country."

The 6th Congressional District election is special in other ways for Mr. Wilson - most notably, the signature-gathering problem that forced him to mount a million-dollar write-in campaign.

But his message rings familiar in three of the Democrats' most crucial Ohio primaries: Democratic candidates are melding charges of Republican corruption with attacks on America's trade policy in hopes of harnessing two rivers of voter unrest - and winning control of the U.S. House.

In an age where gerrymandering renders relatively few House seats truly competitive, Democrats must gain 15 of them in November to capture the chamber. To do that, analysts say, the party must defend its vulnerable seats, win most of the so-called "toss-up" races, and spend heavily to challenge in areas where its candidates historically failed.

Ohio's congressional lines are largely drawn to favor one political party - the GOP. But analysts say as many as five seats could be up for grabs here this year.

Democrats smell opportunity in controversy surrounding indicted Republican fund-raiser and coin dealer Tom Noe - and in Ohio voters' low opinions of Gov. Bob Taft and President Bush. They recruited potentially strong candidates for races against Reps. Deborah Pryce (R., Upper Arlington) and Steve Chabot (R., Cincinnati).

On a battlefield there is a name for armies that spend all their time and energy planning and conditioning themselves to defend against their opponents' attacks. They're called defeated armies. You defend yourself when and where you must. But you do everything you can to maintain the initiative. And that pretty much always means bringing the attack to the other side.

This isn't just a good way to win political fights. It's also a window into the meta-message that often makes Republican attack politics so damaging for Democrats. If you think back to the Swift Boat debacle of 2004, the surface issue was John Kerry's honesty and bravery as a sailor in Vietnam. Far more powerful, however, was the meta-message: George Bush slaps John Kerry around and Kerry either can't or won't hit back. For voters concerned with security and the toughness of their leaders, that's a devastating message -- and one that has little or nothing to do with the truth of the surface charges. Someone who can't fight for himself certainly can't fight for you. At the time I called it the "Republicans' bitch-slap theory of electoral politics."

With respect to what's coming on Iran, what is in order is a little honesty, just as was the case with the Social Security debate a year ago. The only crisis with Iran is the crisis with the president's public approval ratings. Period. End of story. The Iranians are years, probably as long as a decade away, and possibly even longer from creating even a limited yield nuclear weapon. Ergo, the only reason to ramp up a confrontation now is to help the president's poll numbers.

This is a powerful message because it is an accurate message. We have many challenges overseas today. Chief among them, as one of the Democrats' senate candidates puts it, is "refocusing America's foreign and defense policies in a way that truly protects our national interests and seeks harmony where they are not threatened." The period of peril the country is entering into isn't tied to an Iranian bomb. It turns on how far a desperate president will go to avoid losing control of Congress.

Go to his heart. Go to his weaknesses. Though the realization of the fact is something of a lagging indicator, the man is a laughing stock, whose lies and failures are all catching up with him.

To the president the Democrats should be saying, Double or Nothing is Not a Foreign Policy.

The great bulk of the public doesn't believe this president any more when he tries to gin up a phony crisis. They don't believe he'd have much of an idea of how to deal with a real one. Enough of the lies. Enough of the incompetence and failure.

Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.