MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: March 11, 2007

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March 17, 2007

Right Wing Backs Terrorist When His Target is Ex-Prez Carter

Remember the buzz about anonymous commenters damning their luck that the attempt in Afghanistan on VP Dick Cheney’s life was unsuccessful? In fact, several commenters on my post yesterday about Donald Rumsfeld’s recent hospitalization have accused me of wishing the former Secretary of Defense dead.

Well, in the spirit of tit for tat, I call your attention to Glenn Greenwald’s blog post on responses at the major conservative blog Little Green Footballs to news that among the many—too many—things that KSM has confessed to was a plot to assassinate Carter. (How old is this guy?)

Greenwald’s post is worth reading in its entirety, but here are a few of the choicest comments:

Can we furlough him--just so he can realize the Carter plot? Please? /Is this wrong?

Can we trade Carter to get the WTC and it's occupants back?

#31 Earth2moonbat Can we trade Carter to get the WTC and it's occupants back? Yes. Absolutely. We won't get them back in the trade, but we will have gotten rid of Carter, so there is still a net benefit.

Really, why would Islamic terrorists plan to kill Jimmy Carter...the man is their best friend.

"Mohammed also admitted to planning assassination attempts on former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter." Even this schmuck had some good ideas.

Here are some supporting the torture that almost certainly, err, facilitated KSM's catch-all confessions:

But they got those confessions through torture! And worse than that, they probably hurt his feelings too.

They probably gained those confessions through brutal torture - you know, panties on the head and all.

Little Green Football's blogger-in-chief Charles Johnson has already blocked the link from Greenwald's post (which took time, Greenwald points out, that Johnson could have used to delete the comments), so check them out before they're gone.

March 16, 2007

FAA Backs Down: Reinstates Inspector Fired for Talking to MoJo

Mike Gonzales, the FAA inspector who had been on administrative leave for almost ten months, is back at work in the FAA's Scottsdale, Arizona, office. Gonzales, you may remember, was notified that the FAA had begun termination proceedings against him for supposedly "abusing his position" by escorting a Mother Jones reporter into a TIMCO aircraft-repair facility without identifying his guest as a journalist. The allegation was BS, as Frank Koughan, the reporter in question, demonstrated in this story, which features sound clips that clearly refute the FAA's allegations.

The irony is that the FAA could have avoided all this simply by letting its employees talk to Mother Jones in the first place. But instead they would only allow FAA staff to speak in their capacity as representatives of their union. Mother Jones honored that agreement, only to have the FAA harass staff who did speak to us. The original story on the FAA, "Waiting to Happen," painted a picture of an agency that is in bed with the industry it is supposed to regulate: By trying to muscle out one its own staff in order to protect the repair facility, the FAA only confirmed that its customer is the aircraft industry, not the flying public.

Adding to the outrage, remember that Gonzales was on full pay for the nine and half months he was placed on leave, a waste of taxpayer dollars that could have been better spent on letting him inspect aircraft!

Breaking: Rumsfeld Underwent Heart Procedure

Politico is reporting that Donald Rumsfeld was held overnight in the VIP unit of Washington Center for a heart procedure. He was released yesterday. No more information is available, but we'll keep you posted.

Mainstream Media Catching Up on KSM Doubts

Ah, the blogosphere is again one day ahead of the MSM. Yesterday, when news of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confessions came out, Jim and I expressed our doubts. Now we're seeing the same sentiment in the AP, TIME, and Newsweek.

Robert Baer, CIA agent extraordinaire and popular author, writing in TIME:

On the face of it, KSM, as he is known inside the government, comes across as boasting, at times mentally unstable. It's also clear he is making things up. I'm told by people involved in the investigation that KSM was present during Wall Street Journal correspondent Danny Pearl's execution but was in fact not the person who killed him. There exists videotape footage of the execution that minimizes KSM's role. And if KSM did indeed exaggerate his role in the Pearl murder, it raises the question of just what else he has exaggerated, or outright fabricated...

Although he claims to have been al-Qaeda's foreign operations chief, he has offered no information about European networks. Today, dozens of investigations are going on in Great Britain surrounding the London tube bombings on July 7, 2005. Yet KSM apparently knew nothing about these networks or has not told his interrogators about them.

The fact is al-Qaeda is too smart to put all of its eggs in one basket. It has not and does not have a field commander, the role KSM has arrogated.

Michael Hirsh, who has broken some important scoops on the Iraq War, writes in Newsweek about how the KSM case is a perfect illustration of how not to fight a war against terror:

Had the case been handled properly, KSM’s confession to plotting 9/11 and many other actual or planned terror acts could have made him a "showcase defendant" for America’s cause, rallying support and allies around the world. "He could have been charged within six months of his detention and prosecuted in a proceeding, which would have added to the reputation of our country for justice," says [Scott] Horton[, a human rights attorney.]

Instead, the legal black hole is only getting deeper. The transcript released Wednesday night indicates that KSM’s references to his previous treatment are all carefully redacted. [John] Sifton [of Human Rights Watch] and others say the redactions clearly indicate that KSM was referring to his secret interrogations—during which he might well have been physically abused. The question of whether such dubiously extracted testimony could be used in any legal proceeding will probably prolong his case for years to come.

Sifton notes, accurately, that the administration has been wildly inconsistent over the past six years. Some terror suspects are held without recourse to habeas corpus at Gitmo; others have been prosecuted in the U.S. courts. In one case involving a Pakistani father and son living in New York, Saifullah and Uzair Paracha, the two have been treated completely differently. "The young Paracha is in federal prison. The older is at Gitmo," said Sifton. (The father, Saifullah, was arrested in Bangkok; his son in the United States, both on suspicion of agreeing to help an Al Qaeda operative sneak into the United States to carry out a chemical attack.) "There are no principles guiding this. It would be fine if the “war on terror” were just a metaphor, but it’s not," says Sifton.

And the AP:

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's claims that he was responsible for dozens of successful, foiled and imagined attacks in the past 15 years relies on a loose definition of the word "responsible." Officials say the 9/11 mastermind was key to some plots but a bit player in others...

While there apparently is truth in much of the statement, several officials said, there's also an element of self-promotion. They view the claims as at least in part a rallying cry to bolster his image and that of al-Qaida...

One official cautioned that many of Mohammed's claims during interrogation were "white noise" — designed to send the U.S. on wild goose chases or to get him through the day's interrogation session.

Look -- KSM is a nasty, nasty dude. I said as much when I blogged about him yesterday. And I'm sure he's guilty of enough to be executed a dozen times over. But when the military releases a statement from a terrorist mastermind owning up to every unresolved high-profile terrorist act over the last ten years and releases with it no photos, no video, no audio, and no corroborating evidence, I have questions. I think, given the Bush Administration's record of being forthright with the nation, we all should.

Update: Colleagues report that the mainstream media began debunking KSM's claims as early as yesterday morning. So, kudos to the appropriate parties. I only found the print articles today, which led to this blog post.

Valerie Plame to Congress: I Was Covert

One of the unresolved issues of Plamegate is whether or not Valerie Plame was covert when she was outed as a CIA agent in Bob Novak's column. Conservatives have long maintained that she was not (Sean Hannity earlier this month: "She did not meet the criteria, in any way, shape, matter or form as a covert agent.") and have speculated that because no one was ever charged with revealing the name of a covert agent, Plame must not have met the strict definitions of "covert" under the law. Reporting from over a year ago said that Plame did covert work within five years of the leak, but was unlikely to do any more.

Well, for what it's worth, Valerie Plame went before Congress today and said that she was in fact covert. She's in a position to know, obviously. ThinkProgress has video, but her statement was:

"In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA, still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified."

"While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence."

Update: A congressman is claiming that CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden recently told Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) explicitly that "Ms. Wilson was covert."

The Ethanol Debate

Maybe Fidel and Hugo aren't so dumb! Stanard Schaefer in Counterpunch points out that the ethanol binge already has driven corn prices through the roof and, now wrapped in the Bush (and most Democrats') free trade mantra, promises to earmark corn in the developing world for export, thus, removing land from the production of food.

"There are other potential problems," he says. "In Indonesia, ancient forests are being burned up to make room for oil-palm biofuel. They're already digging up the rainforests in Brazil to plant soybeans that will be used in NutriSystem microwavable food packages designed to help fat Americans lose weight. As demand for ethanol increases to be equal to current oil consumption, it is almost guarantees forests will be dug up in the Global South to plant more sugar cane, since after all that is where it grows best. How then can ethanol be called carbon neutral when it will increase deforestation, when its promoters such as BP are notorious human rights violators, when companies such as BP are under a grand jury investigation for spilling 267,000 gallons of oil in Prudhoe Bay?"

No Surprise: Republicans Also Dodge "Is Homosexuality Immoral" Question

I slammed Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for this yesterday, so I suppose I should do the same with the Republicans: John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani have all refused to give a straight response on whether or not homosexuality should be considered immoral. Romney and Giuliani, who have a history of supporting the gay community, actually come off as pretty good guys, though, and I think their relatively nuanced answers are worth evaluating in full. Each candidate's response taken from this Politico article...

McCain:

"The senator thinks such questions are a matter of conscience and faith for people to decide for themselves. As a public official, Senator McCain supports don’t ask, don’t tell." --McCain spokesman Danny Diaz. Per the AP, McCain was asked about the matter on the campaign trail in Iowa yesterday and declined to answer.

Romney, who once was a strong supporter of gay rights:

"I think General Pace has said that he regrets having said that, and I think he was wise to have issued an apology, or a withdrawal of that comment. I think that we, as a society, welcome people of all differences, whether there are differences in ethnicity, faith or sexual preference, and I think he was wise to correct his comment and to suggest that that was an inappropriate point to have made."

Giuliani, who supported civil unions as mayor of New York:

"We should be tolerant, fair, open, and we should understand the rights that all people have in our society."

Sam Brownback, who is crazy:

Sen. Sam Brownback... not only affirmed his view that homosexuality is immoral but sent a letter of support on behalf of Pace to the White House.

Still More KSM Doubts

Jonathan's and my blogs yesterday raised questions about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confessions. Today suspicions continue to grow. Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story suggests in her blog, At-Largely, that at least one of KSM's targets didn't exist when he decided to blow it up.

KSM says in his confession: "I was responsible for planning, training, surveying, and financing for the New (or Second) Wave of attacks against the following skyscrapers after 9/11: ...Plaza Bank, Washington state."

Larisa looked up Plaza Bank's website and found that the Plaza Bank was not founded until 2006. According to their official Web site:

"Founded in early 2006, with a vision of creating the leading commercial bank in the Pacific Northwest, Plaza Bank’s story quickly captured the hearts and passion of some of the region's leading business minds. From Jack Creighton, former CEO of Weyerhaeuser and United Airlines, to former Seattle Mariner Edgar Martinez, and nationally acclaimed salon operator Gene Juárez, the story of a bank founded to bring "class to the mass" simply could not be contained."

March 15, 2007

Department Of Labor Ignores Law, Fails To Protect Nuclear Industry Whistle-Blowers

Though federal law requires the Department of Labor to safeguard whistle-blowers from reprisal, the department has been ignoring the law with regard to those who have complained about environmental and nuclear safety problems. Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Commission, is accusing the DOL of being compliant in blacklisting, which is a violation of federal law.

According to DOL documents Dingell obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, over 60% of nuclear industry-related whistle-blower settlements since 2000 have included permanent bans on working for the employer in question. The Government Accountability Project has petitioned the DOL to prohibit the bans. The department says it is "giving careful consideration" to the petition. One supposes that under this administration, "giving careful consideration" to the prospect of obeying the law should be looked at as progress.

Copyright? Right, Right, Viacom and Google Are Both Bullies

We won’t bore you with another news article about Viacom lunging at Google’s YouTube jugular. But there's oh so much more to learn about these finicky media giants beyond copyright squabbles.

Dollars may be at issue with this lawsuit but its content that's the real battleground. With each merger or media consolidation and with each ownership change, content is owned and determined by fewer, wealthier folks. News organizations are dealing with content wars in all kinds of ways, such as buying out older employees and investing more in online and niche operations. Eric Klinenberg offers, another take on the media melee, arguing that the hunt for larger profit margins among traditional media companies, not the Internet and its subversion of original content, is what is in fact killing the news. And for well over 25 years Viacom has been trying smash the little guys with media mergers.

What do DreamWorks, Infinity Broadcasting, King World, BET, Blockbuster, Paramount, Showtime, UPN, and VH1 all have in common? They are all part of the Viacom/CBS media machine. Google, too, is not exactly an innocent bystander in the media intimidation game. The gobbler in many a merger, the fledgling giant runs fast and loose with that little thing called privacy. So we'll see how things play out with this lawsuit, but truth be told they might just end up being one company someday, all owned by Time Warner maybe?

For a doomsday scenario for media in general check out the Museum of Media History’s mockumentary EPIC 2012 that predicts the final collapse of the Fourth Estate.

--Gary Moskowitz

Obama's Poor Showing on the Gay Immorality Question

This morning, I wrote about Hillary Clinton's refusal to give a straight answer to a question about whether she agreed Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who got in hot water for saying homosexuality is immoral. Instead of saying, "No, I don't agree with General Pace. I am a long time supporter of gay rights," Clinton said, "I’m going to leave that to others to conclude." Realizing the insanity of the situation, Clinton's campaign later released a statement saying that Clinton does not agree with the General.

Looks like Obama did the same thing, at least sort of. A Newsday reporter caught Obama as he was leaving Capitol Hill and asked him if he agreed with Pace. Obama said, "I think traditionally the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman has restricted his public comments to military matters. That's probably a good tradition to follow." When asked for a straight answer, the senator from Illinois, in an attempt to reframe the question as one about "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," said, "I think the question here is whether somebody is willing to sacrifice for their country."

Actually, the question is, "Do you think homosexuality is immoral?" And the answer is "Of course not." Recognizing that, the Obama campaign did like the Clinton one and released a statement later in the day saying Obama disagrees with Pace.

I truly look forward to a time a generation from now when America will have politicians who will face questions like the ones Obama and Clinton faced today, and say, "Don't be ridiculous." I know homophobia won't be stamped out, but at least being a homophobe won't be acceptable publicly and even desirable (!) politically.

Emergency Contraception, Is It Just Around Your Corner?

I love Feministing for finds like this. They call it "Head-banging emergency contraception." Ha. It's a Planned Parenthood commercial for ec.

More on the KSM Confessions

In addition to Jonathan's post below, there are other reasons to think something is fishy with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confessions. Kyle Hence at the 9/11 Citizens Watch puts it this way: "For a number of reasons I am just not buying this so-called confession by KSM. Why can't we hear the audio of the so-called confessions? And why is it no one in the media or general public, not a single person, has a seen but two photos of this man and not a single clip of video? Think about it. It's been three years since his capture and we have only two photos of the man whose story was at the core of the 9/11 Commission Report. Why are there no cameras, even military ones, in the tribunal courtroom? Were there no photographers, even military photographers, on the flight that transferred him to Guantanamo? What national security concerns could possibly nix cameras or digital audio recorders from documenting the professed 'mastermind' of the worst terrorist attack in history?"

Readers: Any idea what's going on here?

KSM Admits to Planning 9/11 and Every Terrorist Act Ever: Should We Be Suspicious?

So it looks like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al Qaeda No. 3 long-reputed to be the mastermind behind 9/11, was a worse dude than anyone thought. Last night, the Pentagon released a 26-page transcript of a closed hearing in which KSM (as he's called) admitted to planning or executing 31 terrorist acts, some successful and some unsuccessful. I think it's safe to assume he's sealed his death sentence.

From the AP, snippets of things KSM reportedly admitted to:

- The 9/11 attacks.

- The 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

- The failed Richard Reid shoe bombing.

- The beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

- Attempted assassinations of Pope John Paul II, President Clinton and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

- The 2002 bombing of a Kenya beach resort.

- The 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali, Indonesia.

- Planned but unexecuted attacks on the Sears Tower, the Empire State Building, the New York Stock Exchange, the Panama Canal, the Big Ben clock tower in London, and Heathrow Airport.

The two questions I have are:

(1) Were these admissions the product of torture? I mean torture in the immediate sense and in the "KSM has been through the black site prison system for three years and has probably been tortured dozens of times, creating a lasting psychological effect that might impair his ability to think, judge, and communicate." If KSM were to be tried in a court of law, would his confessions hold up?

(2) Should we be suspicious of the timing? Who knows when these admissions were actually made. All we do know -- as Josh Marshall points out -- is that their release is timed to knock Alberto Gonzales and the Attorney General flap off the front pages. Remember when Jose Padilla's arrest was announced? John Ashcroft interrupted a trip to Russia to declare that the U.S. had arrested a domestic terrorist and heroically stopped his "dirty bomb" attack. As it turned out, Padilla had been arrested a month before and Ashcroft's announcement was timed to knock a bunch of bad news out of the headlines. And the government could never prove the "dirty bomb" charge.

It's a true shame that even when a really nasty guy is caught and proven guilty, alert citizens have to be suspicious and skeptical of the Administration's behavior. But it poisoned the well from which we all drink.

Brownback Doing Just Fine in the Polls, Thank You Very Much

In an encouraging sign for right-wing Bible thumpers who want to see the American government run like a Christian theocracy, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback ("God's Senator"!) has done surprisingly well in recent head-to-head polls against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Sen. Hillary Clinton - 46%
Sen. Sam Brownback - 41%

Sen. Barack Obama - 49%
Sen. Sam Brownback - 34%

I hope we can chalk this up to the fact that most Americans don't know much about Sam Brownback. Like how he refused to sign Newt Gingrich's Contract with America because it wasn't conservative enough. Or how his political idol is Jesse Helms. Or how his wife boasts, "Basically, I live in the kitchen." Or how he once stonewalled a judicial confirmation because the nominee had attended the lesbian commitment ceremony of a longtime neighbor's daughter. Or how he said that abortion has become such a problem in America that youth today "feel they're the survivors of a holocaust." Either Americans are willing to answer poll questions about people they are almost completely ignorant of, or there's some divine intervention going on here.

Prosecutor Purge: Senate Doesn't Care What Bush Says, Going to Subpoena White House Officials

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on whether to authorize subpoenas for top White House officials who have been implicated in the recent firings of eight U.S. Attorneys. Throughout his presidency, Bush has asserted his executive privilege often. If Bush denies requests by the Senate and House to speak with Harriet Miers, Miers' top aide William Kelley and Karl Rove, it could get ugly. From TPMmuckraker's news-culling of today's papers, we see that the senate committee doesn't really care whether the president authorizes the officials to explain themselves or not. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy said, "Frankly, I don't care whether Fielding (White House counsel who will report the President's decision to Congress) says he's going to allow people or not. We'll subpoena the people we want.... If they want to defy the subpoena, then you get into a stonewall situation I suspect they don't want to have."

Did I mention I love divided government?

Giuliani and Hugo Chavez, Quite the Couple

Found this hilarious: Rudy Giuliani's law firm is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby on behalf of Citgo, the Houston-based oil company controlled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Chavez, as you know, refers to Bush as "the devil," once claimed at the U.N. when speaking a day after George W. Bush that the podium shared by both smelled "of sulfur," and lobbed insults at Bush repeatedly as our beloved presidente traveled South America on his recent tour.

Giuliani's people are claiming that even though the law firm is named Bracewell & Giuliani, Giuliani had nothing to do with the account. Whoops!

Seriously, WTF? Hillary Clinton Waffles on Whether or Not Homosexuality is "Immoral"

What a pathetic little saga. When ABC News asked Hillary Clinton yesterday if she agreed with General Peter Pace's comment that homosexuality is "immoral," Clinton responded, "Well I’m going to leave that to others to conclude." This despite her long history of supporting the gay community and her previously stated opposition to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

It was either the biggest brain fart of the campaign season to date, or a really, really ugly attempt to tack to the center -- what's a little bigotry in the name of campaign-season moderation? I've always agreed with the sentiment that Clinton is running for the general election, not the primary -- everything she says and does is geared towards making her palatable to the country as a whole, not just the hardcore Dems that vote in primaries. But nonetheless, this is insane.

And the Clinton camp thought so too. So later in the day, the communications folks there released a statement from Clinton saying, "I disagree with what [Pace] said and do not share his view, plain and simple.... It is inappropriate to inject such personal views into this public policy matter, especially at a time in which there are young men and women in such grave circumstances in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in other dangerous places around the world."

There are rumors that Barack Obama also dodged the question when asked about it yesterday. If so, expect another indignant blog post later in the day.

March 14, 2007

Mother Jones Nominated for Two National Magazine Awards

Well, the moment long awaited by a couple hundred magazine editors and virtually unnoticed by the rest of the world has finally arrived! Finalists for the 2007 National Magazine Awards (read: stuff we all printed in 2006) were announced today, and Mother Jones scored two nominations, which is less than the New Yorker, but just as many as Time.

We got the big one, General Excellence! Which is sort of like being nominated for Best Picture. OK, in our circulation size (between 100,00 and 250,000), it's probably more like Best Foreign Feature. But still! Our fellow nominees are: Foreign Policy, Philadelphia Magazine, Salt Water Sportsman, Seed. If we get just a little bigger (hint: subscribe, you webbies) we'd be up against the likes of (this year) The Atlantic, New York, Audubon, Texas Monthly, and Cookie (sadly, not as yummy as it sounded).

Check out the three issues that got us this far here, here, and here.

And we were also nominated for Best Interactive Feature, for our fabulous(ly labor intensive) Lie by Lie: Iraq War Timeline. Learn more about it here.

MoJo last won in 2001, for General Excellence. Last year we were nominated for Public Interest for our ExxonMobil exposé.

A list of the mags that got multiple nominations is after the jump. You can go to the full breakdown here.

Meanwhile, thanks to everyone involved. Staff, former staff, writers, illustrators, photographers, fact-checkers, web designers, subscribers, donors, advertisers, to say nothing of our agents, personal trainers, life coaches, Harvey Weinstein....

New Yorker (9)
Esquire (7)
New York (7)
National Geographic (5)
Field & Stream (4)
GQ (4)
Vanity Fair (4)
The Atlantic Monthly (3)
Newsweek (3)
Gourmet (3)
The Believer (2)
BusinessWeek.com (2)
City (2)
Condé Nast Traveler (2)
Foreign Policy (2)
Glamour (2)
Martha Stewart Living (2)
Mother Jones (2)
O, The Oprah Magazine (2) [BTW, do they call it that so we won't think it is the orgasm magazine?]
The Paris Review (2)
Rolling Stone (2)
Seed (2)
Slate (2)
Time (2)
The Virginia Quarterly Review (2)
W (2)
Wired (2)

Military Man in a Pickle Over Anti-Gay Remark

Comments made by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, in an interview with the Chicago Tribune may make his, from a PR perspective, one of the most disastrous interviews ever given.

Pace said he believed homosexuality was immoral and that he doesn't "believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way." He compared homosexuality to adultery, I suppose to avoid the obviously delusional comparisons conservatives such as Rick Santorum have made. But his comparison raises the question: Will the military institute a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy with regard to adultery?

Of course, Pace was only saying what most military men think—but the military, led by Colin Powell, carefully crafted an alibi for its homophobia when it demanded in 1993 that Clinton not allow out gays to serve in the military. It's not that we're homophobic, the brass said; it's that the grunts are so homophobic they'd sooner fight a gay platoon-mate than the enemy—and that's OK.

Pace also violated another military stance in speaking the truth that dare not speak its name. The military is, at present, desperate not to revisit the gays in the military issue, because commanders know now would be an opportune time to repeal the rule. Homophobes can get down with the idea of sending gays and lesbians off to die for them, as evidenced by the drop by half in the annual number of soldiers discharged for being gay since 9/11. More than half of all Americans support lifting the ban.

John Warner, a Republican on the Armed Services Committee, suggested that the policy will at least be reviewed when he said, "I respectfully but strongly disagree with the chairman's view that homosexuality is immoral." A Republican! This could only happen with the military desperate to boost its numbers.

California Woman, Kept Alive With Marijuana, Again Declared A Potential Federal Criminal

Angel Raich has an inoperable brain tumor, a seizure disorder, scoliosis, severe chronic pain, chronic nausea, and some other ailments that leave her unable to eat and cause her to be officially dying. You may recall that, five years ago, the 41-year-old Oakland woman sued then-U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft and the federal government over her right to use medical marijuana, which is legal in California. According to her doctors, she will die without it. According to a federal appeals court, she can drop dead.

The Supreme Court ruled against Raich two years ago, saying medical marijuana users and their suppliers could be prosecuted for breaching federal drug laws even if they lived in a state such in which medical marijuana is legal. Today, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals also ruled that Raich and her suppliers could be prosecuted for violating federal drug laws. However, the court left open the possibility that if Raich were arrested, her attorneys may be able to mount a "medical necessity defense."

Raich says she will continue to smoke and eat marijuana.

State of Texas: A Plague of Warts on You

After years of living in Texas, I developed a handy rule of thumb: If the State of Texas does something reasonable, it's not going to stick. And so it is with Governor Rick Perry's order to mandate HPV vaccinations for public schoolgirls.

(I should clarify that the strains of the HPV virus linked to cervical cancer are not the same ones that cause warts. Yet another reason why vaccinations will not encourage kids to have sex.)

Center for American Progress' Campus Progress Launches New Iraq Campaign and Film Project

Campus Progress, the campus arm of Washington-based think-tank the Center for American Progress, has just launched two new programs, the Iraq Campaign and the Iraq Film Project, both geared toward changing the course of the war through advocacy and education. Campus Progress is offering grants of $200-1,000 to students working on Iraq advocacy and education campaigns on their college campuses. The group is sponsoring the Iraq Film Project, whereby Iraq movies can be screened on campuses nationwide, "as a means of intensifying and enhancing [the] debate on the war, and engaging young people in a search for the right course going forward." They are dedicated to assisting students who want to plan an event and have award-winning films available, like The War Tapes and Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (read the Mojo review of the film here), as well as speakers available for the events. Several schools including Lehigh, Princeton and Amherst have already planned screenings for their schools. To get involved or for more information, click here.

For a comprehensive look at the situation in Iraq, read Mother Jones' new report, "Iraq 101" in our current issue. And for a look at other activism happening on campuses nationwide, check out our 13th annual roundup of campus activists here.

Why is Salon Running Garrison Keillor's Ridiculous Stereotypes of Gay Men?

In a column called "Stating the Obvious" no less, Keillor spouts:

The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men -- sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in over-decorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers and go in for flamboyance now and then themselves. If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control. Parents are supposed to stand in back and not wear chartreuse pants and black polka-dot shirts. That's for the kids. It's their show.

Does Marine Staff Sgt. Eric Alva who fought and was wounded in Iraq fit this stereotype? Does John Amaechi, a retired NBA player? Keillor is just vomiting up his own homophobic impressions.

Write Salon and ask why they're giving bigotry a platform.

Watchdog Group Files FEC Complaint Against Duncan Hunter's PAC

Today, CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed a FEC complaint against long-shot Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter's leadership PAC. According to CREW, Hunter's PAC, Peace Through Strength Political Action Committee (PTS PAC), has illegally supported the presidential candidate. Before a potential candidate declares a bid for the presidency, they are able to "test the waters" (money can be spent on travel, polling and under $5,000 can be spent on ad campaigns). It appears Hunter didn't follow the rules. PTS PAC spent $17,575 to run an ad campaign last December (before he announced his bid) in NH, which promoted the Representative's support for the construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Mother Jones didn't need CREW to tell us that Hunter is a bit of a shady character. Read some fun tidbits about the Rep. in Mother Jones' "The Men Who Would Beat Hillary" and don't miss our profile on him and his humanitarian brother John Hunter in our current issue. You'd think they were "separated at birth."

Senate Low-Balls 9/11 While NYFD Fight Giuliani

Five years after 9/11 the Senate has finally gotten around to endorsing the proposals of the 9/11 Commission, weak as they may be. The Senate legislation in its current form faces a veto because it supports the rights of Transportion Security Administration workers to organize. That's anathema to Republicans on the usual anti-union grounds, and in this instance, the outcry will be intense since it was the breaking of the air traffic controllers PATCO union in the early 1980s that launched the Reagan Revolution’s march to privatization.

The Senate bill is weaker than the House version. Probably the biggest terrorist threat to the U.S. comes in the form of ignored or non-existent security measures on the docks on incoming freight. Many of the freight containers come from China and are marked in Chinese. They are unloaded in ports like New York or Newark, loaded onto Chinese trucks, and driven away. Any one of them could contain explosives, a load of poison, even a low-level nuclear device. The House bill would have these ships checked at points of origin. The Senate version does not. The Bush administration opposes doing so.

The House bill also would require that all baggage being loaded into a plane be inspected in the same manner as the passengers. The government says that would cost too much and it's plenty OK just to check 30 percent of the baggage as is the current process. The machines that check the baggage are of questionable value, meaning the 30 percent figure probably is on the high side.

On top of all this, the Darth Vader of 9/11, Rudy Giuliani, is using his ill-gotten reputation as a national hero to run for the presidency. NYFD doesn't think he's a hero. This evening at 6 pm, a group called 9/11 Firefighters and Families will hold a press conference outside the New York City Sheraton, the site of Rudy's fundraiser, to expose his failures on 9/11 and before. Here is what they have to say:

"On 9/11/01 NYC was completely unprepared for a terrorist attack, despite the fact that the WTC was first targeted in 1993 with dire consequences, and those responsible vowed to 'return to finish the job.' The first WTC attack was characterized by disorganization, lack of radio communications, lack of an integrated FD & PD command structure, and yet an honorable and heroic response was made by our firefighters and emergency responders."

"History was repeated on 9/11. With eight years as Mayor of NY to correct the problems & protect our city, Rudy Giuliani left the City of NY defenseless on 9/11, resulting in the needless deaths of 343 firefighters and nearly 3,000 innocent victims. Rudy Giuliani was responsible for our City's lack of emergency planning, emergency preparedness, emergency management and the most critical lack of FDNY working radios which doomed the NYC Fire Department on September 11th.** We love our country & America's fire service and they need to know the truth about the real Rudy Giuliani. Since he did not prepare NYC for the second terrorist attack on 9/11, how can the American people trust him to safeguard our entire nation?’’

Prosecutor Purge: New Development, Carol Lam Not Fired for Cunningham Investigation

TPMmuckraker reports today that Carol Lam, one of the USAs fired, was on a DOJ list of prosecutors to be removed months before the Duke Cunningham scandal was revealed. Lam's successful prosecution of Cunningham has been widely believed to be the reason she was fired. This list created by the AG's chief of staff Kyle Sampson may tell another story. Was Lam then actually fired for performance-related reasons? It hasn't appeared so. Last Tuesday, at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on prosecutorial independence of U.S. attorneys, where Lam, along with 3 other prosecutors testified, Dianne Feinstein produced a letter from the DOJ which praised Lam's performance. Well, so why then, was she fired? At last Tuesday's hearing, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions claimed she was asked to resign because she did not prosecute enough gun cases. Um...doubtful. Stay tuned!

Republican Reaction Must Get Stronger Before Gonzales Resigns

Luckily for Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, the Senate is leaving him alone today as it plunges into the Iraq war debate. From Mexico City, Bush signaled lukewarm support for Gonzalez, saying he is "not happy" about the US Attorney mess, but adding, "I do have confidence in AG Al Gonzales." While Gonzales should have more involved in the whole affair, said Bush, the firings were "entirely appropriate." Gonzalez himself tried to wiggle clear and keep his job by saying he accepts responsibility for the mess. Yesterday he uttered the famous phrase "mistakes were made.''

At mid day the Republican leadership in the Senate was holding firm on the Attorney General, refusing to join the growing number of Democrats who want his resignation. Gonzalez himself told CNN it was up to the President whether he stays or goes. Bush, as everyone knows, is extremely stubborn and up to a few months ago wouldn't budge on hardly anything. But his administration is visibly shaken. With Libby down, and Rove a prime Democratic target because of the U.S. Attorneys scandal, it's always possible he will break. The damage control has to start somewhere and Gonzalez might well walk the plank for the president.

While editorial pages across the country are calling for Gonzales to resign, senior Senate Republicans either had nothing to say, or in the case of Arlen Specter, the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, urged restraint. On the Senate floor yesterday he asked for more hearings. He wants Harriet Miers to testify before Congress, and had this to say: "There's been a request for witnesses from the Administration, from the White House. Well, why condemn the parties, why condemn the Department until we have found out what the facts are? My view, as I expressed last Thursday at the Executive Session, has been to tone down the rhetoric." Another important Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, said this: "This was a poorly handled matter, and it happened on his watch... you can go to anyone who is a U.S. attorney, say, 'Thank you for your service, your time's up and we want someone new.' And no one can say a word about it. This idea of trying to make up reasons that people didn't perform well, to me, that are at least questionable allegations, is just unseemly."

Among Republicans, Senator John Ensign of Nevada was among the most outspoken. Yesterday he " target="new">declared, "The Department of Justice completely mishandled the dismissal of Dan Bogden as Nevada's United States Attorney. I appreciate the Attorney General's coming forward today to take responsibility for the mistakes that were made, to find out what went wrong and to address these problems immediately."

Late Update: "Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire on Wednesday became the first Republican in Congress to call for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' dismissal." From the AP.

-- James Ridgeway

Pakistan: Musharraf the Latest Pawn in Our Political Game

The New York Times ran a Week in Review article this week about how Pakistan's General Musharraf figures into the power equation and how we should "handle" him. Questions of how "fragile" and "tenuous" Musharraf's grip on power is, worries about a power vacuum if Musharraf were to leave, India and Pakistan's political contentions and whether the US has "leverage" make it seem like Pakistan- and indeed, any other country like Afghanistan, India, and so on- is just a pawn in the Great Game of Power Politics.

Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that General Musharraf is in fact, a military dictator. Astonishingly, the article notes that analysts view the military in Pakistani as "a largely secular institution that takes seriously its role as protector of Pakistan's identity and would not allow Islamists to become the dominant force in Pakistan." (Really? There are Pakistani citizens who would roundly disagree.) There's also no mention in the article of Musharraf's human rights abuses, such as in Balochistan (which some argue is actually ethnic cleansing) under the excuse of the war on terror.

This Times piece is just one example of the general trend we see today in our mass media. Entire nations, peoples, and societies are collapsed into ideologies of "Islamists," "US interests," and "national security" and how they figures into power politics- where the US, reigns supreme, for now. All the while the people of these countries are taking significant actions we barely hear about. For example, did you hear about the latest brouhaha in Pakistan?

On Monday, several thousand Pakistani lawyers and the Pakistani Bar Association protested and boycotted courts throughout Pakistan in dissent over Musharraf's decision to sack and detain Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, the chief justice of the Supreme Court who has been vocal about the government's human rights violations and undertakings. The fact that the independence of the judicial branch is challenged caused Syed Zulfiqar Ali Bokhari, the secretary of the Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association, to say "Today, the entire lawyer community is out protesting and giving a unanimous message that we're against President Musharraf's action, we condemn it." Chaudhry is now set for a closed hearing. Human Rights Watch has condemned this, but the State Department hasn't.

Major American newspapers and the administration speak of Pakistan and Musharraf in terms of cold geo-politics. Will Musharraf help us reach our objectives? Is Musharraf of any benefit to us? Will Pakistan help secure "US interests"? Pakistan is regarded as devoid of citizens, individuals, activists, and critics. You can say the same for basically any other country in our national conversation. So while Pakistani lawyers chant "Musharraf: killer of justice!" and "Down with Musharraf!," the US doesn't want to hear it. Even if they do, they'll just ignore it and they will continue to prop up dictators who can keep a firm grip on its population so that the US can have its way. Sound familiar?

--Neha Inamdar

Clinton, Edwards Call on Gonzales to Resign

Yesterday, presidential candidates John Edwards and Hillary Clinton called on U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign. This followed Senator Chuck Schumer's reiteration of his call for the AG to resign. Edwards was first. Here is an excerpt from the statement released by his campaign (courtesy of TPMcafe):

"Attorney General Alberto Gonzales betrayed his public trust by playing politics when his job is to enforce and uphold the law. By violating that trust, he's done a great disservice to his office. If White House officials ordered this purge, he should have refused them. If they insisted, he should have resigned in protest. Attorney General Gonzales should certainly resign now."

Hillary was not far behind in condemning Gonzales' actions. During an interview with Good Morning America, Clinton had this to say:

"The buck should stop somewhere...and the attorney general — who still seems to confuse his prior role as the president's personal attorney with his duty to the system of justice and to the entire country — should resign."

Thanks to Think Progress for spotting these.

March 13, 2007

Castro and Chavez Yuck It Up Over Ethanol

Heading into the presidential campaign both Hillary Clinton and John McCain, both of whom once detested ethanol, are slobbering all over the place in its support. That's because they want votes in Iowa's caucuses.

Meanwhile, in a March 4 radio chat on the Venezuelan program "Hello President," Hugo Chavez warmly welcomed the recovering Fidel Castro, and in short order the two fell into an animated discussion on the same subject:

Chavez: Do you know how many hectares of corn are needed to produce one million barrels of ethanol?

Castro: To do what?

Chavez: To produce one million barrels of ethanol?

Castro: Ethanol. I believe you told me about that the other day. Somewhere around 20 million hectares.

Chavez:[Laughing] Just like that.

Castro: Go ahead, remind me.

Chavez: Indeed, 20 million. You are the one with an exceptional mind, not me.

Castro: Twenty million. Well, of course. The idea of using food to produce fuel is tragic, is
dramatic. No one is sure how high the price of food will rise when soy is being used for fuel, with the need there is in the world to produce eggs, milk, to produce meat. It is a tragedy. One of many today.

I am happy to know that you have taken up the flag to save the species because... there are new problems, very difficult problems and therefore to see someone become a great preacher of the cause, a champion of the cause, an advocate of the life of the species. For that, I congratulate you. Continue fighting [words inaudible] to educate the people so they can understand.

There are things that I read and review every day. I am very aware of the threat of war,
environmental threats and food threats. We have to remember that there are billions of people famished. These are realities, and for the first time in history, the governments are getting involved. Governments that are able and have the moral authority to do it, and you are one of those rare examples...

The two heads of state reminisced as they rambled along over the radio...

Castro: Venezuela has a territory of nearly one million square kilometres. We are just a nut shell that the Gulf current pushed too close to our friends to the north. [Chuckles]

Chavez: [In English] Our friends Fidel, listen.

Castro: Well, you say that I know English. I did at one time.

Chavez: Did you forget it?

Castro: The trauma afterwards has made me forget it. This is why I no longer have that excellent memory you have, the capacity to summarise or your musical ear, your talent to remember songs. I cannot believe that you have partied so much as to remember all those songs.

Chavez: I never partied as much as you.

Castro: I envy you that.

When it came time to say goodbye, Chavez said, "Do you know how many people listen to the first hour of the programme? Forty percent. As you know, the audience of "Hello President" is huge. Let's gain ground. We will win the battle for life. We will win that battle. Thank you for your call."

Castro thanks Chavez and they continue.

Chavez: Let's give Fidel a round of applause. [Applause] A hug. Comrade, companion, and you know, I do not have any qualms about calling you father in front of the world. Onward to victory.

Castro: Onward to victory.

Chavez: We will prevail.

Castro: We will prevail. [Applause]

You can read the entire transcript, originally provided by the BBC, at the National Post of Canada's site.

-- James Ridgeway

Conference of Pro-Israel Group Brings Applause for Attack-Iran Backers

The annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference this weekend may have taken us a step closer to war with Iran. One featured speaker was John Hagee. Hagee is a powerful evangelical leader who founded the Christians United for Israel lobby last year. Hagee is a staunch supporter of Israel; that much is clear. But he is a literal reader of the Bible who thinks Armageddon in the Middle East is a good thing, and conveniently misinterprets most of Judaism to make it a helpmate for Christianity.

Even so, AIPAC delegates may be right to conclude that Hagee is good for the Jews, but The American Prospect's Sarah Posner argues:

Whether Hagee is good for Israel is beside the point. The real problem is that he represents a catastrophe for the United States and its standing in the world -- not because he might love the Jews too much, or might in fact secretly hate them, but because…the notion that Hagee -- whose status is only elevated by invitations like AIPAC's -- is leading a political movement based on nothing more than a supposedly literal reading of his Bible only reinforces the view that the United States is being led by messianic forces at odds with world peace and stability.

Hagee's speech, which compared Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Pharaoh and Hitler, went over big.

Nancy Pelosi also spoke at the AIPAC meeting, but she didn't make quite as big a splash. In fact, she was booed when she called the war in Iraq a failure. She was using a much more pragmatic rubric: "whether it makes the U.S. safer, the U.S. military stronger and the region more stable." Just moments before, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) had received a standing ovation when he said that the U.S. had no choice but to win in Iraq. (By the way, Stephen Cohen has a powerful take-down of that argument in The Nation today.)

So why does this pro-Israel group need us to stay in the war in Iraq? It wants to turn up the heat on Iran. One of its priorities is to push Congress to approve tougher sanctions on Iran, which is hostile to Israel. For a rundown of the ears most primed to receive reasons to attack Iran, read this.

(AIPAC is also skeptical about candidate Barack Obama because he once told the Des Moines Register that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people.")

New Mexico Will Require HPV Vaccine

Merck, the maker of the new vaccine to protect against the strains of the HPV virus that cause cervical cancer, succumbed to pressure from Christian groups to cease lobbying for mandatory vaccination programs. As Salon put it, "New [Parenting] Rule: If you don't think your daughter getting cancer is worse than your daughter having sex, then you're doing it wrong." (The other metaphors in this article are a bit, err, saltier, but it's laugh-out-loud funny.)

The only state Merck had persuaded was Texas, where Governor Rick "Goodhair" Perry circumvented the legislature and mandated vaccines by executive order. Lawmakers are now rallying to supersede his order because they're more frightened of their daughters having sex than they are of them getting cancer.

It's not clear if Merck had made significant headway in New Mexico when it called off its lobbying efforts, but the legislature there has delivered a bill to Governor Bill Richardson's desk. Richardson, whom Jonathan would like to see become Secretary of State, has said he will sign the bill.

Newspapers Cutting Along the Color Line

What do you cut when your publication's in a financial pinch? Diversity programs, of course. The Associated Press just announced its decision to terminate the 2007 "Diverse Visions / Diverse Voices" minority mentoring program—a week after the Feb. 15 application deadline. Students received a letter informing them that due to limited resources, the 5-day workshop would not take place. Applicants were required to submit a resume, three writing samples, a 500-word essay, and two letters of recommendation. The AP said it would run the program "every other year." We'll see.

The AP isn't the only program to add insult to injury in cutting minority programs. The Village Voice pulled a similar stunt last spring, when it announced days after the application deadline for its Mary Wright Minority Fellowship that the program would be suspended because of the paper's purchase by New Times (now Village Voice Media). Again little comfort to those who hustled to get the lengthy application form to the paper's Cooper Union headquarters on time. The program is, however, happily back on track and now offers a weekly stipend of $400, instead of the previous $150.

Village Voice also recently replaced its self-declared "white male Jew from the Upper West Side" editor-in-chief, David Blum, with a Latino, Tony Ortega, after Blum's mostly-white hiring policies were challenged in a story meeting. Blum didn't apologize for who he was, and was, the Huffington Post reports, the subject of complaints from minority staffers. Blum argued that there were only so many qualified minority candidates, and that journalism schools like Columbia University, where he was formerly an adjunct professor, were "98 percent white." As a Columbia J-school alum, I can say that the program at least felt diverse with tons of international students, plenty of Hispanics, a couple of Asians, and an ample helping of Jews—thought it was woefully lacking in African-Americans. Ortega will be the Voice's 5th Editor-in-Chief since the publication was bought by New Times, revealing that maintaining diversity may be one of the Voice's lesser problems.

Speaking of faltering New York papers, Newsday announced last week that it is losing Mira Lowe, associate editor of recruitment, and John Gonzales, the paper's court reporter. Lowe, whose always-friendly face was a regular at media job fairs in New York City, is moving on to Chicago to work on recruitment at Ebony and Jet, and she's taking her African-American husband, Newsday reporter Herbert Lowe, with her. Gonzales is going to New Orleans to join the AP in covering Hurricane Katrina recovery. Seems they're interested in minority issues.

Newsday has lost 6 other journalists of color since December of 2006. This is a serious blow to the publication, which prides itself on covering issues in the heavily-ethnic New York boroughs and Long Island that papers like The New York Times tend to ignore.

For Mother Jones' coverage of newspapers in peril, click here.

—Jen Phillips

Chuck Schumer to Bush on Prosecutor Purge: Explain Yourself

Today, Senators Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein held a press conference (above) to discuss the most recent developments in the case of the fired U.S. Attorneys, namely how shady the Justice Department and the White House appear to have been, and to make clear that the stepping down of Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' chief of staff, "does not take heat off the attorney general." If you haven't been following the investigation, both Schumer and Feinstein give a good chronology of events. (TPMmuckraker was nice enough to transcribe for us.)

There were several things worth noting from both Feinstein and Schumer's speeches. Schumer called again for Alberto Gonzales to step down and said:

"Attorney General Gonzales has either forgotten the oath he took to uphold the Constitution or just doesn't understand that his duty to protect the law is greater than his duty to protect the president."

Schumer called on Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and George Bush to come forward and explain themselves. Schumer says of Bush:

"The president must clarify his role in this whole matter...the cloud over the U.S. attorneys, the cloud over the Justice Department is getting darker and darker."

Feinstein went on to discuss most notably the Patriot Act:

"We now know that it is very likely that the amendment to the Patriot Act... might well have been done to facilitate a wholesale replacement of all or part of U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation."

This is an interesting part of the probe because it not only implies careful calculation on the part of the White House and the DOJ but it may implicate Senate Judiciary Committee (the senate committee investigating the firings) Ranking Minority Member Arlen Specter, whose chief of staff Michael O'Neill, under "orders from the DOJ," slipped the amendment into the Reauthorization of the Patriot Act. Specter is now co-sponsoring a bill to reverse the amendment -- perhaps to save face?

I love divided government!

The Continent Itself is Obese on Worldmapper

If you prefer to process global politics visually or if you just have a map fetish, Worldmapper is worth checking out. The site hosts several "density-equalizing" maps that depict the world according to demographic statistics ranging from total population, to the slightly more unique and topically relevant carbon emissions increases, greenhouse gasses, and nuclear waste. While other maps typically portray these statistics using icons and color-coding, these density equalizing maps resize landmass to account for the statistics in question. The maps depicting nuclear waste and wealth both show a hugely ballooned Northern Hemisphere and an atrophied Southern Hemisphere.

—Rose Miller

Bob Novak and the Horse's Mouth

Bob Novak, the columnist affectionately known among Washington journalists as the prince of darkness and author of the Valerie Plame scoop, hosts an Off The Record luncheon from time to time with high officials, such luminaries as Dick Cheney, John Bolton, Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Al Gore, Bill Frist and so on. You might think these people are inaccessible, but for Novak they talk, answering questions, participating in the conversation. For a moment, however brief, you are on the inside track.

But, like all good things, there is a hitch. Novak only takes 70 people into his off the record briefings so there is a real scramble to get a seat. To obtain a seat at his April 26 lunch costs $595. (You can bring guests for $395 per person.) The affair is sponsored by the conservative paper Human Events.

The result: "I was able to get the straight scoop on the economic forecast," says Fred Jones, former president of Citicorp, in one blurb. "With that guidance, I was able to make the correct business decisions in the following months -- saving my company millions."

If you want to go, originate your petition here.

Attack of the Career-Killing Girlfriend

Just as the media hype surrounding the backstabbing sexual exploits San Francisco's glossy-haired, white-wine-guzzling mayor was being artfully supplanted with promises of free bus rides and bon fires on the beach, Gavin Newsom's penchant for loquacious women has the mayor's career-damaging personal life front and center once more.

Mayor girlfriend and actress, best known for her role as "Younger Woman in Market" in Something's Gotta Give Jennifer Siebel (shown right in happier, more sultry times) defied all reason and PR manuals when she told the San Francisco Chronicle the "the woman was the culprit" in the Mayor's recently revealed affair with the wife of his friend and campaign manager. But the real meltdown didn't occur until Siebel took it upon herself to defend her comments in a post to local blog, the SFist, which had criticized her remarks. A sample of the ramblings, which begin so innocently, with "hey there" and quickly spiral out of control to the point that the Chronicle declined to reprint the entire post:

i am not going to blindly support a woman who has cheated on her husband multiple times and watch while my boyfriend is the only one who gets punished..and, what, for something a long time ago when the man was going through a crises- divorce, the loss of his mother, the pressures of being mayor, etc. and he was vulnerable and lonely? and, what's your definition of affair? he's been so hurt by this all -- personally and professionally- and it was a few nothing incidents when she showed up passed out outside of his door. come on guys, have a heart. I have tried to see Ruby's side of the story but unfortunately everyone near to her has stories and says she is bad news.

And, most sadly, especially since she's about to get dumped, ends:

gavin is and has taken responsiblity and it's not like i haven't given him tough love through this at times. but anyone close to him knows he is a good man and a great mayor and think what you want of me, i'm just trying my best and obviously making mistakes here and there. i didn't know i was getting into this mess in the first place and it's been a hard position to be in. i hope you all will just leave me out of this...and let the past stay in the past.

Siebel apologized (concisely) earlier today, but so much for the Mayor's 1 month sober.

New Ad Plans to Scare You Into Voting for McCain

We're with Wonkette: this is one of the worst campaign ads in a long time. From the weird Survivor-like wind pipes at the beginning, to the ominous music, to the scary echoing audio, to the complete lack of coherent message... just terrible all around. Wonkette's hypothesis: "McCain’s depressed campaign team clearly wants him to drop out and settle at one of those Del Webb retirement communities in Phoenix, where he’ll have far less opportunity to start a nuclear war with somebody. This isn’t a campaign ad so much as a cry for help." Hard to argue.

It seems like the kind of campaign that other aging dark war horse, Dick Cheney, might run. (And, yes, I've blogged about four candidates for the Republican nomination in one morning.)

New Poll is Very Good News for Hagel

I wrote yesterday about how a Chuck Hagel presidential bid would directly question whether or not there is room in the Republican Party for an anti-war candidate. (On this issue, Hagel announced yesterday that he had nothing to announce.) According to a new New York Times/CBS News poll, the answer is a resounding yes.

Let's start with some of the other interesting numbers from the poll. Republicans are dreary, depressed, and despondent: while only 12% of Democrats think the opposition party will win the White House this year, a whopping 40% of Republicans do. And it's justified: if the election were held today, an unnamed Democrat would beat an unnamed Republican by 20 percentage points, according to the poll. Further, Republicans acknowledge that backing Bush's war policies will be a huge disadvantage in 2008 and suggest they are open to supporting a candidate who breaks with the president on Iraq. From the Times:

Asked what was more important to them in a nominee, a commitment to stay in Iraq until the United States succeeds or flexibility about when to withdraw, 58 percent of self-identified Republican primary voters said flexibility versus 39 percent who said a commitment to stay.

That's got Chuck Hagel's name written all over it: he's easily the loudest and most prominent GOP critic of the war. Also, consider the fact that in the same poll 60 percent of Republican respondents said they wanted more choices in the race for their party's nomination. So the frontrunners -- Giuliani, McCain, and Romney -- aren't satisfying the base and Republicans would prefer someone who isn't an ardent supporter of the Iraq War. Are you listening, Chuck?

Oh, and about Giuliani's supposedly massive lead in the polls? About 50 percent of respondents say they don't know enough about the candidates -- even the frontrunners -- to form an opinion. When they do learn more, I think Giuliani's in trouble (see "How to Swiftboat Rudy Giuliani" below). It's time for Hagel-Huckabee, people. How many times do I need to say it?

The Romney Strategy: Buy Off Opponents

Mitt Romney is so wrong for the Republican base on so many issues, he's made a lot of enemies within his own party. Now that he's running for president, each one of those enemies can find a national platform to slam the helmet-haired flip-flopper. But Romney has a solution: pay everyone to shut up.

In The Nation, Max Blumenthal writes that Romney has made large donations out of his personal fortune to the National Review Institute, the Federalist Society, and the Massachusetts Family Institute, which is a local affiliate of James Dobson's Focus on the Family. Each of these entities disagree with Romney in principle, and said as much until they received $10,000+ from the candidate. Now they sing his praises.

Maybe this is how politics is practiced by the very wealthy. In the end, though, not even Romney has enough money to buy off everybody.

How to Swiftboat Rudy Giuliani

The key to a good Karl Rove attack is not going after the target's weaknesses, but going after his or her strengths. John Kerry had a number of vulnerabilities in the 2004 campaign, and he was attacked for them all, but nothing was so viciously slammed as his service in Vietnam, which, if you saw his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, was meant to be his calling card and greatest asset.

Rudy Giuliani can be approached in the same way, argues a new Salon article. Instead of focusing on his support of civil unions, his support for abortion rights, his flip-flops to cover up these positions, his almost draconian gun laws, his many marriages (including one to his second cousin) and his estrangement from his children, his dressing up in drag, his voting for George McGovern, his yada yada yada -- Rudy's opponents should instead go after 9/11.

Sounds crazy, right? But Giuliani campaigns on 9/11 and little else, if you knock that out from under him, he's toast. And as it turns out, that's easier to do than commonly thought.

...the country's largest union of firefighters hates "America's mayor" with a passion.

The International Association of Fire Fighters, which represents most of the nation's paid firefighters, initially declined to invite Giuliani to its bipartisan presidential candidates forum on Wednesday, March 14. Giuliani was the only major candidate from either party who didn't get an invite. The organization drafted a blistering letter to explain why it was snubbing him. After the IAFF leadership relented on March 5 and decided to ask Giuliani to attend after all, they shelved the letter. When Giuliani said scheduling conflicts would keep him from attending the forum, the letter leaked out. It blasted Giuliani for his "disgraceful" order of November 2001 that forced hundreds of New York firefighters to stop searching ground zero for the remains of their fallen brethren.

"Our disdain for him," said the letter, "is not about issues or a disputed contract. It is about a visceral, personal affront to the fallen, to our union and indeed, to every one of us who has ever risked our lives by going into a burning building to save lives and property."

The Salon article also has the story of Rosaleen Tallon, who lost her brother, a firefighter, on 9/11 because his radio wouldn't work and he couldn't hear "mayday" calls from his superiors. Turns out, the firefighters had fought long and hard to have the radios replaced because they were known to be defective. The reason they weren't replaced? The ineffectiveness or the unwillingness of Rudy Giuliani.

The whole situation is ripe for an attack ad. But it would be brutal, and it would have to reinvent a lot of the myths of 9/11. Is that territory Democrats will have the courage to revisit? It might pay dividends.

...imagine what a talented and aggressive Democratic media consultant could do with Giuliani's real 9/11 record. Imagine Rosaleen Tallon and a Greek chorus of angry, bereaved New Yorkers in a spate of heart-tugging commercials. The ads could include not only the family members of men and women killed on 9/11, but also hard hats sickened by prolonged exposure to the toxic ground zero air that Giuliani declared safe to inhale within days of the attack. And the chorus could include the mayor's downtown constituents, who were left to rid their homes of chemical dust without city assistance, risking their own well-being. The New York City government now estimates that 43,000 people have significant 9/11-related health problems. Many, no doubt, would gladly go on camera.

In the end, what's more damning that angry firefighters? And boy are they angry. The Giuliani campaigns must have nightmares about these guys.

"He has alienated pretty much everybody in the 8,000-member fire department -- by and large, we all resent him," said New York City Fire Capt. Michael Gala... "We don't forget. That's the big thing -- we don't forget."

So That's Why Don't Ask, Don't Tell Still Exists

Homophobia in the highest ranks of the military, of course! General Peter Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday that he supports the Clinton era "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" program because homosexual acts "are immoral." Pace analogized being gay to having an affair, and finished by saying -- I think -- he'd prosecute both homosexuality and adultery.

"As an individual, I would not want [acceptance of gay behavior] to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else's wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior."

You're already thinking this, but I think it's self-evident that anyone who had vocal and unrepentantly anti-Semitic or racist views would be immediately disqualified from being one of the nation's top military servicemen. If Pace had said, "I would prosecute black people, because I was raised not to approve of them as people," the calls for his dismissal would come flying from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

This was spotted in the Chicago Tribune, which elaborated on why the military needs gay servicemen and women now:

A 2005 government audit showed that about 10,000 troops have been discharged because of the policy. Among those discharged were more than 322 linguists, including 54 Arabic specialists, according to the Government Accountability Office report. The U.S. military, like the nation's foreign service and intelligence community, faces shortages of foreign-language specialists.

"The real question is: What is moral about discharging qualified linguists during a time of war simply for being gay or lesbian?" said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.

Over half the country thinks gay people should be allowed to serve openly in the military. If you're in that half, don't get too angry about this -- the Pentagon might start monitoring your emails.

March 12, 2007

Price for Iraq War Just Went Up, Again

It feels like deja-vu all over again: The Congressional Quarterly reports that

The first full draft of the emergency supplemental spending bill for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan totals $124.1 billion — $21.1 billion more than the president's request...

Every year the administration asks for more [PDF] and more "emergency supplemental appropriations." If they are not asking for more money, they are worried about Iraq's trade and economy rather than the hundreds of thousands of people dying. And why wouldn't they be? The Bush administration and its oil-industry allies are going to reap the rewards.

As Americans pay and pay for the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's no surprise that the administration still won't pony up for health care for (all) its citizens.

More on the ever-mounting cost of the Iraq War in our handy Iraq 101 guide, here.

—Neha Inamdar

University of Nebraska Takes Matters Into Its Own Hands

The University of Nebraska has a specialty in the study of indigenous peoples, so it decided to hire Bolivian expert Waskar Ari as an assistant professor of history and ethnic studies, to teach from August 15, 2005, to May 16, 2008. However, Professor Ari has yet to teach a class because the Department of Homeland Security will not process his paperwork. The university paid $1,000 for expedited processing, which guarantees a response in fifteen days. DHS returned the $1,000 and explained that it was waiting for security checks and clearance. Apparently, these have never taken place.

On March 2, the University of Nebraska filed a lawsuit against DHS and DHS director Michael Chertoff, and others. The suit was filed to stop the agency from "unlawfully withholding or unreasonably delaying action" on the university's petition. The suit also argues that DHS did not have the authority to investigate security allegations during the employer’s petition stage.

Immigrant Life and the Streets of New York

While the politicians argue over the border and the yuppie environmentalists gnash their teeth over miles per gallon, the U.S. economy runs on the backs of immigrants — like it always has. In New York the Center for an Urban Future recently released a report that demonstrates the economy there and in other big cities is propelled not by Citicorp, but by thousands upon thousands of small immigrant entrepreneuers. These are the people who Tom Tancredo and his supporters want to run out of the country, the people hunted down by the posses in the southwest. Baiting immigrants is the lifeblood of every politican — liberal or conservative.

And yet these people have become the economic heartbeat of the nation. Neither they nor their children have health care. They are denied food. There is no unemployment insurance. They are picked up on the corner and dragged off to jail before being returned to their native lands. And, of course, if they are Muslims, they face the very real prospect of being labelled terrorists in which case they are denied even the most basic legal rights. The sweat shop all too often looks like a commodious modern workplace to many of them. They live in the wonderful Victorian world the conservatives have designed for them. And it's not just the conservatives. It's the liberals — the politicians in Washington, the upper classes in Manhattan, the smug yuppies of San Francisco and Northern California, swaggering yahoos of Texas, who haggle over whether immigrants, illegal or legal, should receive basic social services.

In New York earlier today in a wrenching funeral service at a mosque, hundreds of West Africans prayed in the streets for the nine children and one woman killed in last Thursday's fire in the South Bronx. Some of the children were buried in New Jersey. Others will be buried in Mali.

"We will see what we can do in terms of housing, in terms of employment, in terms of ensuring health care, in terms of ensuring that a community that is so much a part of New York City as every immigrant community is, is tended to and is understood and appreciated," Governor Spitzer said. Spitzer at least might turn out to be a politician with some populist leanings. At least, he is no Rudy Giuliani or Hillary Clinton.

"Immigrant entrepreneurs have emerged as key engines of growth for cities from New York to Los Angeles,'' says the Center for an Urban Future study. "…starting a greater share of new businesses than native-born residents, stimulating growth in sectors from food manufacturing to health care, creating loads of new jobs, and transforming once-sleepy neighborhoods into thriving commercial centers. And immigrant entrepreneurs are also becoming one of the most dependable parts of cities' economies: while elite sectors like finance (New York), entertainment (Los Angeles) and energy (Houston) fluctuate wildly through cycles of boom and bust, immigrants have been starting businesses and creating jobs during both good times and bad."

You can read the study here [pdf].

The Religious Times, They Are A-Changin'

Here's a nice trend: religious diversity in Congress is increasing. This past November, Minnesota elected the nation's first Muslim to Congress. Now Pete Stark, a congressman from California first elected in 1973, is the nation's first openly nontheist lawmaker. In a response to a question from the Secular Coalition for America, Stark acknowledged recently that he does not believe in God. He's the first federal-level lawmaker in American history to say this publicly.

Anywhere from 8-15% of Americans don't believe in God, according to surveys and census data. Thus, "If the number of nontheists in Congress reflected the percentage of nontheists in the population," says the director of the Secular Coalition, "there would be 53-54 nontheistic Congress members instead of one."

Spotted on The Plank.

Coulter's Remark a PR Ploy?

When I blogged briefly earlier this month about Ann Coulter's most recent use of discriminatory epithets (in a room filled with big-ticket Republicans), many of the comments scolded me for mentioning her at all. There's a whole movement, it seems, of folks pushing media outlets to turn Ann into the bigot who dare not speak its name. They claim that Coulter is the shock-jock of conservatism, saying whatever will win her the most attention.

Score one for them. Coulter has a new book coming out.

Iraq's Refugee Crisis, Nobody Spared

The refugee crisis in Iraq is dire and affects everyone, as is evident from Elizabeth's post below and this feature in our current issue. Newsweek reports today that the mass flight of Iraqis from their homeland has dwindled the educated class as well. "The exodus has...hollowed out Iraq's most skilled classes—doctors, engineers, managers and bureaucrats," the article reads. This is not entirely new news but has obvious future adverse effects for the rebuilding of a nation. Back in January, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that according to the U.N., 40 percent of Iraq's middle class had fled its country. "Most [were] fleeing systematic persecution and have no desire to return," the article read.

What's most interesting is that this statement regarding the middle class' desire never to return directly contradicts what the U.N. has been claiming most recently; that most refugees want to return to their homeland once the fighting stops. But of course, as I wrote here, many believe the U.N. only uses this as an excuse for the U.S.'s "miserly" asylum quota. And, miserly, it is. Regardless of the escalating crisis in the country, the United States continues to more or less ignore it, placating the situation with negligible assistance. A Refugees International rep., interviewed for the Newsweek article, echoed what I, and many others, have been saying for the past few months. The United States will continue to downplay this crisis, because in order to deal with it on the appropriate scale, it would have to admit how bad the situation actually is; that people in Iraq are dying to leaving their country because it is so unsafe for them. And admitting this would mean admitting the Iraq war has been lost -- something this administration, believe it or not, is still not willing to do.

Republican Senator Jon Kyl to Block U.S. Attorney Legislation

Last Tuesday, Senator Jon Kyl made a short appearance at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the prosecutorial independence of U.S. Attorneys, during which four of the fired prosecutors appeared to testify. The Republican member of the committee was there to show his objection to a bill put forth by Dianne Feinstein to overturn a provision slipped into the Reauthorization of the Patriot Act last year. The provision allows for the Attorney General to have unfettered power in appointing interim U.S. Attorneys, allowing them to remain in their position for the remainder of the president's term. Historically, interim USAs needed Congress approval after 120 days in office. The new provision drastically increased executive power over appointing USAs and has been a hot issue during the investigation of the eight fired U.S. Attorneys. On Friday, Alberto Gonzales agreed to relinquish his absolute power and said the Bush administration would not stand in the way of the new law proposed by the Senate to tighten restrictions for appointing USAs.

TMPmuckraker reports today that Kyl is not going to give up so quickly and plans, despite the fact that the administration has caved to Senate pressure, to block Feinstein's bill. The senator from Arizona has already blocked the bill once.

Iraqi Allies "A Population at Risk"

Last night 60 Minutes ran a piece on the forgotten Iraqi fighters of this war, not the insurgents nor the Iraqi Security Forces, but the translators, the drivers, the guides, the civilians who signed up to work with the US Army early on, and are paying for it with their lives and security now.

In our current issue, on newsstands now, David Case looks at this very issue, reporting that only 291 Iraqis have been granted refugee status in the United States since the war's beginning, and "meanwhile the line outside the UNHCR's gates gets longer every week, and the wait for an interview stands at five months." Read the whole thing, here.

Several (disguised) Iraqis, who have had to flee the country, spoke to 60 Minutes, expressing their frustration, and fear. One man whose leg was shattered in an explosion two years ago when he was working with the Mississippi National Guard said he was told by the State Department that he knew "the danger when you work with the U.S. Army" when he asked for support in leaving the country.

Retired Major General Paul Eaton, who was in charge of training the Iraqi army in 2003 and 2004, called on the President and Congress "to admit that a population is at risk. At risk because they have thrown their lot in with us." By 60 Minutes' tally at least 100,000 translators have worked for the armed forces in Iraq. "Add their families and you’re well over a half a million people at risk. How many of them have been allowed to immigrate to the United States? About ten."

This, and the total of 291 Iraqi refugees, is in stark contrast to the 131,000 Vietnamese allowed into the United States in 1976, under Gerald Ford. In just 8 months. The Bush administration, on the other hand even after congressional hearings on refugees in January, has decided to let in 7,000 this year, which, with 2 million Iraqis already displaced is next to nothing.

Hagel-Huckabee Not Happening -- YET!

So, blergh. Chuck Hagel's big announcement about whether he was running for president turned out to be Hagel telling America, "I'm punting." What a waste of everyone's time and CNN's cameras. Here's the relevant quote from Mr. I-Can't-Make-Up-My-Mind.

"I'm here today to announce that my family and I will make a political decision on my future later this year."

Whatever, dude. I was all set to facetiously pimp your candidacy. If you want to read some of what Hagel had to say -- he did speak about his life story, his voting record, what America needs now, blah, blah, blah -- take a look at this story from a local Omaha news station.

I'll Tell You Chuck Who

I remember the moment I fell out of love with Chuck Hagel. I was writing the blog post that Leigh links to below and decided to do some digging into the Nebraska senator's background. I found out that the Republican I half-revered as Congress's loudest war objector and Bush Administration critic actually voted with the White House more frequently in 2006 than any senator of any party. The man is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. You can see his record at the link I provide above.

And tell me: How is that not the best possible candidate for the Republican nomation? In the eyes of the conservative base, Hagel is perfect on every social and economic issue. The one place he diverges from the party line is the one place where America diverges from the party line. Some are speculating that there isn't a place for an anti-war candidate in the Republican Party. I say if there will ever be a time for an anti-war candidate, it is now. And considering how flat wrong all the frontrunners for the Republican nomination are on key issues like abortion, gay rights, and guns, I think even if the base finds Hagel hard to stomach on Iraq, they'll take him. Hagel-Huckabee '08!

Chuck Who? Americans Don't Know Much About the Potential Prez Candidate

Today, Senator Chuck Hagel is set to announce whether or not he will run for president. But will anyone care? The New York Times' blog, the Caucus, reported this morning that few Americans know enough about the guy to offer any opinion at all. The paper, in conjunction with CBS News, conducted a poll from last Wednesday through last night of 1,266 registered voters nationwide. 75 percent of the polled voters say "they had not heard enough about Mr. Hagel to offer an opinion of him either good or bad." For more info on the guy, read this post by Jonathan, "The Changing Dynamics of the Chuck Hagel Phenomenon."

March 11, 2007

The Apple iRack

glumbert.com - The Apple iRack

NM GOP Party Leader Says Rove Had Hand in Firing USA

As I wrote last Thursday, Karl Rove is making it clear that he does not think the mass firing of eight U.S. Attorneys, now under investigation by both the House and Senate, is a big deal. It appears that perhaps the president's adviser is insisting that the purge is a non-issue because of his potential implication in the situation. Yesterday, McClatchy reported that the New Mexico Republican Party Chairman Allen Weh admitted to having a conversation in 2005 with a White House liaison to Rove, during which, he urged the White House to fire David Iglesias because the USA had failed to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation. Weh claims to have followed up with Rove personally in the winter of 2006. The party chairman inquired as to whether anything would happen to Iglesias (read: would he be fired) and Rove said, "He's gone." Weh responded, "Hallelujah." As McClatchy points out, this directly contradicts what the Justice Department has been saying about White House involvement; that they merely approved a DOJ-created list of attorneys to be fired.

Chuck Schumer, New York Times Call for AG Gonzales to Resign

Saying that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "either doesn’t accept or doesn’t understand that he is no longer just the president’s lawyer, but has a higher obligation to the rule of law and the Constitution," Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called for Gonzales to resign today on Face the Nation. You can see the video on ThinkProgress.

An editorial in the New York Times today says essentially the same thing. It calls for Gonzales to step down because he "never stopped being consigliere to Mr. Bush's imperial presidency." Gotta love the Times.

The Times makes it clear that Gonzales has got to go not just because of this new flap with the fired U.S. Attorneys and not because of the F.B.I.'s newly exposed overreach in gathering information about Americans. It's because of his body of work.

It was Mr. Gonzales, after all, who repeatedly defended Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize warrantless eavesdropping on Americans' international calls and e-mail. He was an eager public champion of the absurd notion that as commander in chief during a time of war, Mr. Bush can ignore laws that he thinks get in his way. Mr. Gonzales was disdainful of any attempt by Congress to examine the spying program, let alone control it.

The attorney general helped formulate and later defended the policies that repudiated the Geneva Conventions in the war against terror, and that sanctioned the use of kidnapping, secret detentions, abuse and torture. He has been central to the administration’s assault on the courts, which he recently said had no right to judge national security policies, and on the constitutional separation of powers.

His Justice Department has abandoned its duties as guardian of election integrity and voting rights. It approved a Georgia photo-ID law that a federal judge later likened to a poll tax, a case in which Mr. Gonzales’s political team overrode the objections of the department’s professional staff.

The Justice Department has been shamefully indifferent to complaints of voter suppression aimed at minority voters. But it has managed to find the time to sue a group of black political leaders in Mississippi for discriminating against white voters.

The Bush Administration has a long history of naming appointees to oversee areas they once lobbied on. It would make sense, then, that the Attorney General "more than anyone in the administration, except perhaps Vice President Dick Cheney... symbolizes Mr. Bush’s disdain for the separation of powers, civil liberties and the rule of law."

If You Blinked, You Missed Our "Diplomacy" With Iran

We've written a ton about the need for diplomacy with Iran here at MoJoBlog. Here's my position, from an earlier post:

...talks with Iran fundamentally make the United States safer. Right now we have no influence over Iran, and, if anything, continue to antagonize them. Entering a tense but workable diplomatic relationship humanizes both sides, allows them to talk through grievances, and begins the process of making concessions and finding middle ground.

I've always felt, "Hey, why not try it? It can't make things worse." Well, it's happened. After a period in which the White House repeatedly changed course over whether they would establish contact with the Iranians, and if so, to what extent, the two sides finally met a long-awaited meeting of regional leaders in Iraq. But when I say they "met," I mean they shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. From the Wall Street Journal:

...the two sides merely had a quick "meet and greet" and then exchanged remarks within the larger forum. U.S. and Iranian officials said there were no private conversations of any substance.

The optimist in me says, "It's a start, but we can and must do better." The cynic in me says that the White House simply used the announcement of talks with Iran as a way to generate positive headlines and never had any intention of performing true diplomacy.

March 17, 2007

March 16, 2007

March 15, 2007

March 14, 2007

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March 11, 2007

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