the michael j. fox ad

Most of you have probably already heard about the Michael J. Fox ad on stem cells that's being run for Claire McCaskill in Missouri. It's now being recut for use elsewhere in the country because it's proven so hard-hitting. Of course, Rush Limbaugh bashed Fox for making the commercial, even mockingly imitating his Parkinson's-induced swaying on his TV broadcast.

But then again, is there anyone out there still in the dark over whether Rush Limbaugh is the biggest douchebag in America?

As Atrios mentioned yesterday, you remember last cycle when all the talking heads freaked out over Fox supporting Arlen Specter (R-VA)?

Yeah, neither do I.


UPDATE: Thanks to MC for catching that Arlen Specter is, in fact, the senior senator from Pennsylvania, not Virginia. I swear I knew that, I just thought one thing and typed another.

news from the tiny African nation Hoogivsashit

I've been trying to wrap my head around this Madonna adoption case when I need a break from politics, and I have to admit, I can't figure this out. What's the problem here?

Here's the answer I've found. From The Guardian:

If the news of the adoption of a tiny black boy by a white pop diva isn't enough, there is an added sensation - Madonna and Guy Ritchie are adopting a boy with a living father. Why are the Ritchies doing this, knowing the controversy it will cause? And how are they going to get around Malawi's tough adoption rules, which require that foreigners be resident in the country for 18 months before adopting a child to ensure that welfare officials have time to monitor their suitability.

Only the Ritchies - and the government that drew up the shortlist - can answer the first question, and neither seems inclined to do so for now. Even though many of the children in Malawian orphanages have lost only their mother, it is highly unusual for these kids to be put forward for adoption by welfare officials.

"Only children without any living parents and circumstances that make it unlikely that they can ever return to their extended family are selected for adoption," says the director of a well-established infant home in Malawi, who asks not to be named. "This was a very unusual case."

Oh, goodness, a white woman adopting a black baby?!? What will the children think? And even worse, the father who put the boy up for adoption isn't even dead yet, and we all know that only orphans deserve to be adopted. Children with living parents, meanwhile, should just sit there --as if on layaway or something-- until the parents strike oil or invent the invisibility cloak or something.

And on top of that, "the Ritchies," as the Guardian crassly refers to Madonna and her husband (no doubt as a subtle pun on the word rich) have the temerity to allow the Malawi government to bend the rules for her just because she's, ya know, donating millions of dollars to improve the plight of orphans there. What. A. Bitch.

I don't understand what all the media's faux moralizing is about here, but I don't like what they're insinuating. Apparently the media now thinks it's wrong for rich people to adopt poor kids, or even more incensing, for white people to adopt black kids. Or rather, what they'll say is they think the rest of us have a problem with it and they're just reporting what we want to hear about, which goes to show you just how out to lunch these jerkoffs are nowadays.

It sounds like there's a little of insinuation that Madonna bribed the government to bend the rules as well, which is also apparently false. In fact, the more I think about this, the madder I get that these wankers are taking something Madonna did that's actually very generous and humanitarian and beautiful, and trying to spin it into something sleazy.

what the president really means

Here's what the State of the Union sounds like with the decoder ring:

Ken Lay goes all "Back to the Future" on us

Unbelievable. From the Washington Post:

A federal judge in Houston yesterday wiped away the fraud and conspiracy conviction of Kenneth L. Lay, the Enron Corp. founder who died of heart disease in July, bowing to decades of legal precedent but frustrating government attempts to seize nearly $44 million from his family.

The ruling worried employees and investors who lost billions of dollars when the Houston energy-trading company filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2001. It also came more than a week after Congress recessed for the November elections without acting on a last-ditch Justice Department proposal that would have changed the law to allow prosecutors to seize millions of dollars in investments and other assets that Lay controlled.
...
Legal analysts said Lake's ruling closely hewed to a long-held doctrine called abatement, which allows a conviction to be vacated if defendants die before they are able to exercise their right to appeal. Courts typically rule that defendants' constitutional rights to challenge their convictions outweigh other considerations, and the law hesitates to punish the dead, the analysts said.

So that's that. According to the law, Ken Lay was never convicted, never did anything wrong.

I know, I know, it was precedent. I understand that, and I don't wanna be like the conservatives, decrying judicial activism except when it suits my politics. I understand the theory behind it, that one has the right to full access to the law, meaning not just the trial, but the full panoply of legal protections from lawful arrest through fair trial through appeals. And I think I agree with it.

At the same time, though, theory can only take me so far. I can't help but look back at the particular case, at this scumbag who robbed his shareholders, his customers, and his employees of billions, walked away with millions, and at the end of the day, there's no punishment of any kind. Even after being convicted by a jury. And now it's gonna be even harder for all the people he screwed to get any recompense.

Some justice.

the straight-talking Republicans

Watch this:

This is Tom Kean, Jr., the Republican candidate for New Jersey's Senate seat. Why do you suppose he had such trouble with this one simple question?

UPDATE: corrected to show Kean is actually the candidate for New Jersey, not Maryland (that's Michael Steele, RNC Chair Ken Mehlman's BFF). (10-gallon tip MC)

kangaroo justice

From Common Dreams:

The Navy lawyer who led a successful Supreme Court challenge of the Bush administration's military tribunals for detainees at Guantanamo Bay has been passed over for promotion and will have to leave the military, The Miami Herald reported Sunday.

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift talks to reporters outside the Supreme Court in Washington in this June 29, 2006, file photo. Smith, who led a successful Supreme Court challenge of the Bush administration's military tribunals for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, has reportedly been passed over for a promotion and will have to leave the Navy. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook, File)

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, 44, will retire in March or April under the military's "up or out" promotion system. Swift said last week he was notified he would not be promoted to commander.

He said the notification came about two weeks after the Supreme Court sided with him and against the White House in the case involving Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who was Osama bin Laden's driver.

"It was a pleasure to serve," Swift told the newspaper. He added he would have defended Hamdan even if he had known it would cut short his Navy career.

What effect do you think this little bump-off will have on prospective future defenders in Bush's kangaroo court tribunals? What do you think are the chances that those defense attorneys will actually give it 100%, so that the defendants actually get a fair trial?

Not that they're gonna be fair trials anyway, of course, what with the admission of secret evidence that the defense can't try to defend themselves from and all...

half a million dead Iraqis

My God. From the Washington Post:

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.
...
The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war."

That comes out to about 500 deaths a day around the country due to the war.

da bomb

Yesterday's Washington Post has a great article by William Perry, who was Clinton's Secretary of Defense from 1994-1997. He lays out a simple timeline of recent US-North Korean diplomatic history:

The Clinton administration declared in 1994 that if North Korea reprocessed, it would be crossing a "red line," and it threatened military action if that line was crossed. The North Koreans responded to that pressure and began negotiations that led to the Agreed Framework. The Agreed Framework did not end North Korea's aspirations for nuclear weapons, but it did result in a major delay. For more than eight years, under the Agreed Framework, the spent fuel was kept in a storage pond under international supervision.

Then in 2002, the Bush administration discovered the existence of a covert program in uranium, evidently an attempt to evade the Agreed Framework. This program, while potentially serious, would have led to a bomb at a very slow rate, compared with the more mature plutonium program. Nevertheless, the administration unwisely stopped compliance with the Agreed Framework. In response the North Koreans sent the inspectors home and announced their intention to reprocess. The administration deplored the action but set no "red line." North Korea made the plutonium.

The administration also said early this summer that a North Korean test of long-range missiles was unacceptable. North Korea conducted a multiple-launch test of missiles on July 4. Most recently, the administration said a North Korean test of a nuclear bomb would be unacceptable. A week later North Korea conducted its first test.

This is pretty astonishing stuff. There are many points worth mining in this article: we could talk about how this is yet another place where Bush has failed to continue the real progress begun by Clinton, just like his failure to restrain the federal budget and to continue the decline in abortion rates nationwide. We could talk about how laughable on their face GOP attempts are to portray themselves as strong on national security, considering Bush's inability even to decide on a policy to pursue vis-a-vis North Korea. Unless, of course, they intentionally embarked on a "swagger toughly and carry a... ah, f&#k it. Whatever" approach to Kim Jong Il. We could even talk about how foolish and mendacious Condi Rice is, who had the audacity to lay blame for North Korean nukes at Clinton's door (c/o Josh Marshall).

Instead, however, I wanna talk about results. Results, as in, surely the Bush Administration knew that such a non-approach to Kim Jong Il would result in a bomb, and doing nothing would result in one faster than doing something, anything, right?

But look for yourselves: does it look like the Bush administration even tried to keep them away from the bomb? Why would the Administration do nothing, literally nothing, other than talk tough in front of the cameras?

The answer, I believe, lies within the question. The Administration was only interested in what it was doing "in front of the cameras," i.e., in maintaining the appearance of being tough on rogue nations, which is a much simpler thing to do. Just like it's not interested in balancing the budget, but rather only in maintaining the appearance of balancing the budget. And maintaining the appearance of fighting for a gay marriage ban. And maintaining the appearance of governing in general.

You see, when your campaign manager is in charge of White House policy, when the same campaign manager is allowed unprecedented influence in foreign policy as well, everything is about politics and nothing is about policy, that is, governing well. That's why Bush introduces gay marriage bans and then refuses to fight for them in congress. That's why he talks about "human/animal hybrids" in his State of the Union. That's why he continues a losing, but "tough"-looking, course in Iraq, having never even bothered to draw up a plan for keeping the peace there. That's why he'll cancel vacation immediately over euthanizing a dead white woman in Florida, but not for the destruction of a Democratic city full of black people in Louisiana.

After all, the destruction of New Orleans is proving to be the best thing that ever happened to the Louisiana GOP: all their opposition in the state disappeared overnight.

If you design an Administration solely to play politics, and not to govern, this is what you get: an Administration not only not governing but incapable of governing. An Administration so well trained only to consider the political/electoral implications of events that its priorities get turned on its head. Thinking in purely political terms, why try hard to keep nukes out of Kim Jong Il's hands when doing so could put you in politically precarious positions (pursuing war while in a weakened state with a war-weary populace or having to negotiate with an Axis of Evil country, thereby weakening your "tough" image) when you could just let China do all the work and hope they can at least delay the inevitable until you get out of office? Besides, you even have a plausible out via the Clinton defense, and Americans are notorious for rallying around Dear Leader when they're
threatened by other countries.

This is why the Bush Administration is so dangerous. This is why they're such a failure at governing. They never really even tried to.

football!!

O what a weekend it's gonna be in the world of the gridiron, folks, and the surprises have started already: after losing to NC State the Florida State Seminoles will almost certainly start next week... get this... unranked. You don't hear that too often, eh?

On the home front, Notre Dame has what should (but probably won't) be a cakewalk against possibly the worst Stanford team I've seen in a long time (and that says a lot). How bad are they, you're wondering? Well, for starters, they're winless, as in 0-5 winless. And it gets worse: in 4 of those 5 games they lost by 26 or more, including a 48-10 trip south by Oregon that left vaguely Cardinal-colored splattermarks all over the field.

Well, now that they've been scraped off of UCLA's shoes (this time a 31-0 shutout), they're headed to South Bend for the rematch of a game that really should not have been close (but, of course, was) last season. Most of the players are the same, and most of them are still struggling. On the other hand, at least this time the Irish won't have a kicker with peyote in his gatorade. Hopefully.

Meanwhile, Tech takes on Mizzou, their first chance to upset a ranked team since they screwed the pooch against TCU 2 weeks ago. Color me interested but skeptical. And of course, the big game, the Red River Shootout, is this week as Colt McCoy, Texas Quarterback! (cue Dixieland on banjo) tries to lead the #7 'Horns to a second straight win over #14 Oklahoma (who I hear this year actually have other players besides Adrian Peterson!). This one could be close.

Among the rest, #2 USC takes on a potentially resurgent Washington team (SC will win, obviously, but it will be interesting to see if the Huskies really are on their way back up), and all Hell breaks loose in the SEC: #9 LSU vs. #5 Florida and #13 Tennessee vs. #10 Georgia. Wow.

Oh yeah, and #11 Oregon and #16 California, two of the most perpetually overrated teams in NCAA, face off, too. Yawn.

the new Katherine Harris

Hang in there, Denny! You can do it!:

A defiant House Speaker Dennis Hastert fought Wednesday to hold on to his leadership post while fractures appeared among his lieutenants and a former senior aide to Mark Foley said he repeatedly had warned Hastert's top aide about Foley's inappropriate behavior toward underage pages more than two years ago.

In an interview with the Tribune on Wednesday night, Hastert said he had no thoughts of resigning and he blamed ABC News and Democratic operatives for the mushrooming scandal that threatens his tenure as speaker and Republicans' hold on power in the House.

I hear magic Kabbala water is the best protection from Democratic secret agents working for Charles Gibson. Viva Generalissimo Mickey! *cue the Imperial March*

our CARAAAAAAAZY Hoosier candidates!

So has anyone here seen any of Nancy "Vote for me and I'll send magic ponies to save the universe!" Dembowski? The candidate who "will fix the time zone problem." Seriously, she says she'll fix it. And on top of that, she's gonna give us lower taxes AND better schools! Color me impressed!

What's with all these Democrats with GOP-style delusions?

Oh, and you should also go vote for Steve "I hate Mexicans more than you do" Heim. Did you know that Mexicans sneak all the way up to Indiana and then immediately start drawing Social Security? Yup, and apparently they also move into the emergency room and just start ordering every surgical procedure in the house!

Let us prey...

Now that we've had a couple of days to watch the Foley fiasco unfold, I'd like to try to offer some thoughts. Maybe try to bring a little perspective to the discussion.

I think the whole affair has shown us the sincerity of the valyews-oriented Christian Right as well. From TPM Cafe, we get the official response (4 days down the road) from James Dobson's Focus on the Family. Just for a little perspective, here's their take on the Lewinsky scandal:

When assessing the legacy of Bill Clinton, we can’t overlook his shameful sexual behavior in the Oval Office, and then, his lies under oath to the American people to cover it up. Indeed, it is my belief that no man has ever done more to debase the presidency or to undermine our Constitution -- and particularly the moral and biblical principles upon which it is based -- than has William Jefferson Clinton.

Whew, that thar's some vit-tree-ole! And here's their righteous indignation toward a homosexual pederast Republican preying on adolescent Congressional pages with Republican leadership making sure the story doesn't get out:

"This is not a time to be talking about politics, but about the well-being of those boys who appear to have been victimized by Rep. Foley. If he is indeed guilty of what he is accused of, it is right that he resigned and that authorities are looking into whether criminal charges are warranted.

"This is yet another sad example of our society's oversexualization, especially as it affects the Internet, and the damage it does to all who get caught in its grasp."

That's right, folks. There's no need to bother with questions over anyone's complicity in covering for Foley and making sure that boys continued to be preyed upon in our very halls of government, no question about whether the GOP really deserves the support of Christians sensitive to the country's moral decay.

After all, far be it for Focus on the Family to go all, ugh, shrill over a politician's sexual indiscretions! Just a quiet nod of approval that Rep. Foley was stopped before more boys were molested, that's all you'll be hearing from the eminently unobtrusive, apolitical folks at FoF!

Pathetic.

WTF?!?!?!

From AP:

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan guerrilla war can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Taliban and their supporters into the Afghan government.

The Tennessee Republican said he had learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated by military means.

"You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished we'll be successful."

Yes, you read that right. No, as far as I can tell, this isn't a joke. After spending 2 years telling us that Democrats want to "cut and run" from Iraq, the Senate Republican Majority Leader wants to cut and run from Afghanistan.

Put another way, Democrats want to redeploy from Iraq so we can concentrate on Afghanistan and the War on Terror. Republicans want to hand Afghanistan back to the Taliban. The Taliban. The guys who really did harbor terrorists, especially Osama bin Laden-led Al Qaeda.

So tell me again, who's gone soft on the terrorists?

Via dKos, a number of rightwing bloggers have already chimed in to answer that question:

The Commissar: "I have decided to vote Democratic this fall."

Ace of Spades: "Goodbye GOP.

Perhaps we should make peace with Zawahiri as well? Let's negotiate, and see what terms we can get as good dhimmis.

The hell with the lot of them."

Allahpundit: "If we're going to do this, just pull everyone out. Don't lend an imprimatur of legitimacy to it by shepherding these medieval savages into a U.S.-backed government. Pull out, admit defeat, and let the Taliban take back the country through force. Then we can really and truly be back to September 10, 2001. Minus a skyscraper or two."

the unmasking of the maverick

From TPM Muckraker:

The Senate just killed an amendment to ensure federal courts could review the legitimacy of individual' imprisonment on suspicion of involvement in terrorism. The amendment had been proposed by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It is a fundamental protection woven into the fabric of our Nation," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who supported the measure. It was defeated 48-51, largely along party lines.

Former torture victim Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), portrayed as a "maverick" by earlier bucking the White House on the issue of detainee treatment, voted against the amendment. The White House also opposes the changes the amendment would make to the bill. Sens. John Warner (R-VA) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who had also challenged the White House over the bill,
joined McCain in voting against the amendment.

Hey wait a sec, I thought McCain was the principled maverick, willing to buck the administration for Truth, Justice, and the American Way! At least, that's what the McCainites and the media keep telling me!

Some maverick.

the experts agree!

From a group of 609 law professors, in a letter to Congress quoted by Tim Grieve at Salon:

"Taken together, the bill’s provisions rewrite American law to evade the fundamental principles of separation of powers, due process, habeas corpus, fair trials, and the rule of law, principles that, together, prohibit state-sanctioned violence. If there is any fixed point in the historical understandings of constitutional freedom that help to define us as a people, it is that no one may be picked up and locked up by the American state in secret or at an unknown location, or without opportunity to petition an independent court for inspection of the lawfulness of the lockup and of the treatment handed out by the state to the person locked up, under legal standards from time to time defined by Congress. This core principle should apply with full force to all detentions by the American state, regardless of the citizenship of detainees."

These rights are required for there to be a free society. To curtail them-- and by expert accounts, this bill would curtail them for everybody, citizen or otherwise-- would be nothing short of tossing the whole idea of civil rights in its entirety. If the government can deprive you of your freedom whenever it wants for any reason it pleases, you have no rights. Period.

Screw Iraq; we need to save democracy in the United States!

Here is a great article in Salon on the need to preserve habeas corpus from the McCain torture bill from the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

As with so many political issues currently facing us, there are serious outrages in the McCain Torture Bill not getting as much coverage in the news because they're, frankly, less glamorous than waterboarding. The biggest, scariest, most significant of those outrages is the abolition of the writ of habeas corpus for aliens captured outside of the US (and perhaps even of resident aliens, or even US citizens, for all we know: lawyers are still looking over the bill to unravel all its ramifications).

For those of you a little rusty on your political science, here is
a refresher on habeas corpus:

A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody. A habeas corpus petition is a petition filed with a court by a person who objects to his own or another's detention or imprisonment. The petition must show that the court ordering the detention or imprisonment made a legal or factual error. Habeas corpus petitions are usually filed by persons serving prison sentences. In family law, a parent who has been denied custody of his child by a trial court may file a habeas corpus petition. Also, a party may file a habeas corpus petition if a judge declares her in contempt of court and jails or threatens to jail her.

In Brown v. Vasquez, 952 F.2d 1164, 1166 (9th Cir. 1991), cert. denied, 112 S.Ct. 1778 (1992), the court observed that the Supreme Court has "recognized the fact that`[t]he writ of habeas corpus is the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action.' Harris v. Nelson, 394 U.S. 286, 290-91 (1969). " Therefore, the writ must be "administered with the initiative and flexibility essential to insure that miscarriages of justice within its reach are surfaced and corrected." Harris, 394 U.S. at 291. [emphasis mine]

Most of our modern civil rights were established, at best, with the Bill of Rights, and many not until much later. Habeas Corpus dates all the way back to the Magna Carta in 1215 (Habeas Corpus is the first 2 words of the writ originally delivered to the gaolers of Medieval Britain: Habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, or "Produce the body for the hearing."). It was also the only right considered so important and so universally agreed upon that the Founders included it in the Constitution itself (Article I, section 9).

Yet the top priority for Bush the Republican Congress right now is the curtailing of that right for anyone detained abroad. Of course, there is PLENTY wrong with the McCain "I Heart Waterboarding" Bill (I just can't help but wonder, why on earth would Bush want so badly to have Congress officially absolve everyone involved in torture from any future punishment just 6 weeks before Republicans may lose Congress? Hmmm...), but the sudden disappearance of what you might call "the first civil right" is a pretty freakin' huge step in the wrong direction.

In fact, has any free society ever existed without habeas corpus? Is it even possible to have a "free" society without it?

I fail to see how.

It seems that there's a little bit of slippage in the debate over habeas corpus rights as well. Democrats are talking about the merits of having this right in general, whereas Republicans and conservatives are only talking about preserving this right for non-citizens captured overseas, since that is apparently not quite as far down the road to totalitarianism.

Bushistas foolishly suppose that Jefferson, Madison and Co., when articulating the concept of inalienable rights in our most hallowed documents, were only talking about American citizens. It is patently obvious, however, that the founders intended for constitutional protections to apply to everyone, whether citizen or otherwise. Furthermore, contrary to the conservative "rights for terrorists" attack, civil rights by their very nature apply not just even, but especially, in case the person is suspected of a crime (remember, despite what Bill O'Reilly says, in a land where the accused are innocent until proven guilty, we're talking about alleged terrorists-- the whole point of due process is to more correctly ascertain guilt).

Bush apologists will then argue that the McCain "Habeas Shmabeas" bill would only apply to non-citizens outside the country's physical boundaries. Yet even assuming that those people are the only ones made vulnerable by this monstrosity (a big huge "if"), the bill would still contravene the spirit of the law because, again, do you really think the Founding Fathers only considered people on American soil to be "created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights" (yes, I know, that's in the Declaration of Independence, but surely that can be used to ascertain the founders' intentions when dealing with constitutional issues)? Now admittedly, civil rights in their legal manifestation are only understood to expressly apply to people currently in the country, but that's not because the founders thought that only American citizens deserve civil rights. Rather, it's because all American law generally only holds jurisdiction on American territory, which apparently Guantanamo Bay somehow is not.

Any advocacy of stripping habeas corpus rights from detainees, then, is in contravention of the Founding Fathers' understanding of human rights, and is a vile twisting of the law that will work to undo that which it is supposed to uphold: the protection of all humans as created equal and endowed with inalienable rights.

Which is the prerequisite to a free society.

they can still torture

From the Washington Post (c/o Digby):

The compromise language gives the
president a dominant -- but not exclusive -- role in
deciding which interrogation methods are permitted by
that provision of the treaty. It also prohibits
detainees from using the Geneva Conventions to
challenge their imprisonment or seek civil damages for
mistreatment, as the administration sought.
...
The biggest hurdle, Senate sources said, was
convincing administration officials that lawmakers
would never accept language that allowed Bush to
appear to be reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions.
Once that was settled, they said, the White House
poured most of its energy into defining "cruel or
inhuman treatment" that would constitute a crime under
the War Crimes Act. The administration wanted the term
to describe techniques resulting in "severe" physical
or mental pain, but the senators insisted on the word
"serious."

Negotiations then turned to the amount of time that a
detainee's suffering must last before the treatment
amounts to a war crime. Administration officials
preferred designating "prolonged" mental or physical
symptoms, while the senators wanted something milder.
They settled on "serious and non-transitory mental
harm, which need not be prolonged."

These definitions appear in a section of the
legislation that specifically lists "grave breaches"
of the Geneva Conventions that might bring criminal
penalties.

For lesser offenses barred by the Geneva Conventions
-- those lying between cruelty and minor abuse,
putting them at the heart of the intraparty dispute --
the draft legislation would give the president
explicit authority to interpret "the meaning and
application" of the relevant provisions in Common
Article 3. It also requires that such interpretations
be considered as "authoritative" as other U.S.
regulations.

But the language also requires that such
interpretations be published, rather than described in
secret to a restricted number of lawmakers. That
provision was demanded by the dissident lawmakers, who
resented the administration's past efforts to curtail
the number of members who were told of its policies.
The provision also affirms that Congress and the
judiciary can play their customary roles in reviewing
the interpretations, a statement that Senate sources
say the White House vigorously resisted.

A senior administration official, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity, said in an interview that
Bush essentially got what he asked for in a
different formulation that allows both sides to
maintain that their concerns were addressed. "We
kind of take the scenic route, but we get there," the
official said.

The New York Times editorial board is suitably pissed:

On other issues [than defendants seeing
evidence against them, which the Administration is
already backing out of], the three rebel senators
achieved only modest improvements on the White House’s
original positions. They wanted to bar evidence
obtained through coercion. Now, they have agreed to
allow it if a judge finds it reliable (which coerced
evidence hardly can be) and relevant to guilt or
innocence. The way coercion is measured in the bill,
even those protections would not apply to the
prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.

The deal does next to nothing to stop the president
from reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions. While the
White House agreed to a list of “grave breaches” of
the conventions that could be prosecuted as war
crimes, it stipulated that the president could decide
on his own what actions might be a lesser breach of
the Geneva Conventions and what interrogation
techniques he considered permissible. It’s not clear
how much the public will ultimately learn about those
decisions. They will be contained in an executive
order that is supposed to be made public, but Mr.
Hadley reiterated that specific interrogation
techniques will remain secret.

Even before the compromises began to emerge, the
overall bill prepared by the three senators had fatal
flaws. It allows the president to declare any
foreigner, anywhere, an “illegal enemy combatant”
using a dangerously broad definition, and detain him
without any trial. It not only fails to deal with the
fact that many of the Guantánamo detainees are not
terrorists and will never be charged, but it also
chokes off any judicial review.

Digby has a nice summary:

So the good news is that these fine
Republicans were all able to sit in Dick Cheney's
Senate office and hash out what "amount of time that a
detainee's suffering must last before the treatment
amounts to a war crime" in the last three days. We can
sleep better tonight knowing that they decided that
the suffering must do "serious and non-transitory
mental harm, which need not be prolonged." Excellent.
And now we know that "cruel or inhuman treatment" that
would constitute a crime under the War Crimes Act is
comprised of "techniques resulting in 'serious'
physical or mental pain, rather than 'severe.'" That's
just the kind of "clarity" they've been looking for.
On with the interrogations.

Oh and they will leave it up to the president to
decide if standing shackled naked in a cold room with
ice water splashed randomly on you for 72 hours is
torture. Or if being forced to walk around on a leash
like a dog or have fake menstrual blood smeared all
over your face is degrading. (I wonder what he'll
say?)

The best part is that they might let the prisoners see
classified evidence used against them that's been
redacted or summarized, nobody who was tortured will
be able to sue the government or hold anyone in it
legally liable and there's a nice fat habeas corpus
loophole so these embarrassingly innocent people down
in Gitmo will stay under wraps.

And from the
Washington Post editors:

In short, it's hard to credit the
statement by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) yesterday that
"there's no doubt that the integrity and letter and
spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved."
In effect, the agreement means that U.S. violations of
international human rights law can continue as long as
Mr. Bush is president, with Congress's tacit assent.
If they do, America's standing in the world will
continue to suffer, as will the fight against
terrorism.

This is truly unbelievable. I know I've been hearing people say that St. McCain will do the big Fold, that this was all bullshit kabuki to preserve McCain's maverick reputation and make Senate Republicans look eminently reasonable going into the final stretch of the elections.

Yet I was starting to hold out hope that, for once, McCain and Co. would actually make a real stand, that their principles would prevail against electoral shenanigans. At least they might wrangle with each other too long to actually pass any legislation, I thought.

But that which those of who've watched McCain closely the last year or two feared actually happened. The Republicans stand united against fair trials and for the very things we referred to as "torture" when the
Viet Cong did them to St. John McCain the Sensible Republican.

It was all about image. Scruples had nothing to do with it.

Remember this, all you McCain fans, remember. Because every time I hear anyone say something that the Maverick is anti-torture or is "a good man" or "has morals" or "is worth voting for," I'm going to throw this in your face. He used his signature issue for electoral gain, and shamelessly pretended that he won after giving the Bush Administration the prerogative to torture people and use their confessions in kangaroo courts.

What a scumbag.

meritocracy now

From the Washington Post (c/o Digby):

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .

Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.

This is how the Bush Administration prosecutes the War on Terrorism. These are the people we're supposed to consider the Serious Adults Who Will Protect America.

And they didn't just adopt this tactic in Iraq. Here's the Wall Street Journal on the reconstruction of New Orleans:

Congressional Republicans, backed by the White House, say they are using relief measures for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf coast to achieve a broad range of conservative economic and social policies, both in the storm zone and beyond.

Some new measures are already taking shape. In the past week, the Bush administration has suspended some union-friendly rules that require federal contractors pay prevailing wages, moved to ease tariffs on Canadian lumber, and allowed more foreign sugar imports to calm rising sugar prices. Just yesterday, it waived some affirmative-action rules for employers with federal contracts in the Gulf region.

Now, Republicans are working on legislation that would limit victims' right to sue, offer vouchers for displaced school children, lift some environment restrictions on new refineries and create tax-advantaged enterprise zones to maximize private-sector participation in recovery and reconstruction. Yesterday, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill that would offer sweeping protection against lawsuits to any person or organization that helps Katrina victims without compensation.

"The desire to bring conservative, free-market ideas to the Gulf Coast is white hot," says Rep. Mike Pence, the Indiana Republican who leads the Republican Study Group, an influential caucus of conservative House members.

There is no such thing as Republican pragmatism. There is only wild-eyed ideology with these kooks.

I actually feel sorry for sensible, Burkean conservatives: there really is no party for you anymore. At least the Rockefeller Republicans have the Democratic Party!

The Black Knight is circling Baghdad!

Unbelievable. From AP (c/o AMERICAblog):

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi security forces will dig trenches around Baghdad and set up checkpoints along all roads leading into the city to try to reduce some of the violence plaguing the capital, the Interior Ministry said Friday.
...
"We will leave only 28 inlets to Baghdad while all other inlets will be blocked. Supports will be added to the trenches to hinder the movements of people and vehicles. The trenches will be under our watch," he said.

He did not have any details, but did say that there would be no concrete walls or razor wire. Khalaf also did not know how deep or wide the trenches would be.

"They will surround Baghdad," he said of the trenches.

In modern warfare, trenches are used to shield your soldiers from machine guns. What they're building is a much older technique: it's called a moat.

Ann was here

The first gubernatorial election I remember, and remember taking sides on, was in 1990. I remember a spunky, sharp-tongued woman with the beehive hairdo who looked and sounded like the quintessential Texas matron mother making Clayton Williams, a typical rich whitebread oilman who's kind had been running the show since...what, Reconstruction?..., look like a fool when she beat him despite being decidedly left of the rest of the state (and, though no one would ever admit it, a woman).

A woman who was punished at the polls 6 years later for having the sheer chutzpah to allow avowed homosexuals to serve in her administration and to feel some apprehension at the idea of executing 14-year-olds.

In her short time in office, she built an impressive record of achievements and breaking down old walls. Here is a good article on that from Salon. Yet, what I remember most about Ann Richards was that, as a speaker, she was great on her feet and sharp as a tack. Some of her highlights:

While campaigning for Governor, she was asked if she supported or opposed the death penalty. She said, "I will uphold the laws of the State of Texas." The reporter then asked, "But what would you do if the Legislature passed a bill repealing the death penalty?" to which she replied, "I would faint."

Someone told me a story about Richards and a black judge being honored at some awards dinner. As everyone was filing across and shaking their hands, one white guy showed that he was clearly uncomfortable/hiding contempt over the judge as he clumsily congratulated him. The man then looked at Ms. Richards and, not recognizing her, asked, "Well, hello darling, what are you here for?" Without missing a beat, she pointed to the judge and replied, "He's my husband."

Ann Richards on How to Be a Good Republican:

1. You have to believe that the nation's current 8-year prosperity was due to the work of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, but yesterday's gasoline prices are all Clinton's fault.
2. You have to believe that those privileged from birth achieve success all on their own.
3. You have to be against all government programs, but expect Social Security checks on time.
4. You have to believe that AIDS victims deserve their disease, but smokers with lung cancer and overweight individuals with heart disease don't deserve theirs.
5. You have to appreciate the power rush that comes with sporting a gun.
6. You have to believe...everything Rush Limbaugh says.
7. You have to believe that the agricultural, restaurant, housing and hotel industries can survive without immigrant labor.
8. You have to believe God hates homosexuality, but loves the death penalty.
9. You have to believe society is color-blind and growing up black in America doesn't diminish your opportunities, but you still won't vote for Alan Keyes.
10. You have to believe that pollution is OK as long as it makes a profit.
11. You have to believe in prayer in schools, as long as you don't pray to Allah or Buddha.
12. You have to believe Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde were really faithful husbands.
13. You have to believe speaking a few Spanish phrases makes you instantly popular in the barrio.
14. You have to believe that only your own teenagers are still virgins.
15. You have to be against government interference in business, until your oil company, corporation or Savings and Loan is about to go broke and you beg for a government bail out.
16. You love Jesus and Jesus loves you and, by the way, Jesus shares your hatred for AIDS victims, homosexuals, and President Clinton.
17. You have to believe government has nothing to do with providing police protection, national defense, and building roads.
18. You have to believe a poor, minority student with a disciplinary history and failing grades will be admitted into an elite private school with a $1,000 voucher.

I'm pretty sure that every liberal Texan's love for Molly Ivins is founded upon the apparition of Ann Richards still jaunting around somewhere in their psyche. There was a lot of hope for the Lone Star State in those days, now seemingly so long ago.