MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: May 6, 2007

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May 11, 2007

Nebraska Teacher Taken Out Of Classroom For Showing Iraq Documentary

Last year, Michael Baker was one of only forty-seven teachers in Nebraska to obtain National Board Certification. Last month, he showed his students at East High School in Lincoln the documentary, Baghdad ER, which shows the lives of doctors, nurses, medics, and soldiers in Iraq. The next day, Baker was no longer in his geography classroom.

Says former colleague Michael Anderson: “I believe there were students who went home and were troubled about what they saw, and there were parental phone calls to the principal, and the next day she walked him out the door because she didn’t have the courage to stand up to the complainers."

Baker was suspended for ten days without pay. Apparently, school administrators have never liked his teaching style. Baker taught history by starting with the present and moving backwards, but the school forbade him to continue doing that. Then his history classes were taken away altogether.

A spokeswoman for the Lincoln public schools says that Baker asked to retire and his request was honored.

Divorce Rates Are Low—Because Fewer Are Marrying

Golly gee whiz, it must be hard to work at the Heritage Foundation: to have one's doe-eyed innocence dashed again and again. Even what seems like good news proves to be further evidence that Americans are just not as pure and perfect as the Heritage Foundation believes we should and could be. So it was when the righteous ones heard that divorce rates had fallen significantly from their peak in 1981. Further investigation showed that fewer were divorcing because fewer were bothering to marry in the first place. Frowny-faces all around at Heritage: This is bad for the children!

Still further investigation revealed that divorce rates were significantly lower among college-educated couples. You know why? Craziness! It turns out opportunity makes people happier! So perhaps we should reinvigorate our sagging social safety network. You know what else we could try? Letting gay people marry. Some of them actually want to do it, and their joyful celebrations could give the flagging institution a real shot in the arm. And the economy, too.

CBS Fires Anti-War General; MSM: No Comment

Here's a prime example of a story the MSM is self-interestedly neglecting to cover. CBS fired General John Batiste, who had served as a consultant for the network, after he appeared in a VoteVets ad opposing the war in Iraq. CBS claims the ad damaged Batiste's credibility by undermining his apparent objectivity. But CBS has now been revealed to allow consultant Nicole Wallace—formerly of the White House communications operation, now on John McCain's campaign staff—to comment on Bush's policies, McCain's beliefs, and life in general. Not only that, but the ad in which Batiste appeared was pretty objective and analytical. Could anyone seriously be accused of diminishing their credibility by saying that we were led to war on false pretenses and don't have an effective strategy for winning? I mean, these are facts.

Evangelical Leader: "Vote for Romney is Vote for Satan"

Yikes. Take a look at what an evangelical leader is saying about Mormon presidential candidate Mitt Romney. His name is Bill Keller, host of the Florida-based Live Prayer TV, and he writes in his daily devotional (which reaches 2.4 million people):

"If you vote for Mitt Romney, you are voting for Satan! ... Romney is an unashamed and proud member of the Mormon cult founded by a murdering polygamist pedophile named Joseph Smith nearly 200 years ago. The teachings of the Mormon cult are doctrinally and theologically in complete opposition to the Absolute Truth of God's Word. There is no common ground. If Mormonism is true, then the Christian faith is a complete lie. There has never been any question from the moment Smith's cult began that it was a work of Satan and those who follow their false teachings will die and spend eternity in hell."

I particularly like this crazy paranoid line, which betrays a deep insecurity:

"Romney getting elected president will ultimately lead millions of souls to the eternal flames of hell!"

I think it's important to condemn this sort of bigotry and ignorance. I know it's fun to watch a party with a problematic history with race relations -- and that is sometimes openly hostile to minority voters -- turn its prejudice in on its own, but liberal bloggers have an obligation to stay consistent. We would condemn this sort of nonsense if the angry reverend was attacking Muslim legislator Keith Ellison (D-MN), so we have a responsibility to condemn it when he attacks a Republican. Even if that Republican has no principles and is in the process of saying whatever he has to in order to be elected.

Man, this is fun, isn't it?

Round Mound of Rebound Sounds Off: Charles Barkley Knows His Stuff

Former NBA star and current TV personality Charles Barkley has talked about running for governor of Alabama in the past, and all previous indications were that he leaned right. It appears the events of the last five or six years have really changed him. He's knowledgeable, insightful, and sounds an awful lot like John Edwards in this interview with, of all places, The New Republic.

Curious Details Emerge on the Fort Dix Six

MSNBC has an update on the six foreign nationals who were arrested for plotting to attack Fort Dix Army base and it looks like they might have been a bunch of bumblers egged on by over-aggressive FBI informants -- leading to speculation that an entrapment defense is upcoming. (Spotted on TPM.)

As for the bumbling plotters: "The FBI learned of the alleged plot when the men went to a Circuit City store and asked a clerk to transfer a jihad training video of themselves onto a DVD."

As for the over-aggressive informants: "One of the [accused plotters]... called a Philadelphia police officer in November, saying that he had been approached by someone who was pressuring him to obtain a map of Fort Dix, and that he feared the incident was terrorist-related, according to court documents."

Also, here's the description of one of the informants actions: "He railed against the United States, helped scout out military installations for attack, offered to introduce his comrades to an arms dealer and gave them a list of weapons he could procure, including machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades."

But that might not be enough for an entrapment defense to fly. Entrapment has become extremely difficult to prove in the post-9/11 world, and as one long-time FBI agent told the AP, "If the source talks them into committing a crime, that is entrapment... [but] if they are predisposed to commit a crime, and you give them the opportunity, that’s fine." Pretty easy case to make.

Now I'm obviously in favor of giving the FBI the space and tools it needs to fight crime and violence, terrorism or no. If these guys legitimately had a plan to kill American servicemen, then throw them in the lock-up. But after the FBI and the Department of Justice strong-armed the prosecutions of the Lackawanna Six, John Walker Lindh, and Jose Padilla, you have to apply a skeptical eye to these things. The case of the Lackawanna Six is particularly instructive.

Gonzales Giggles Through Testimony, Ignores Even More New Evidence

Yesterday I wrote that a ninth purged U.S. Attorney had been found and that Alberto Gonzales, who was going before the House Judiciary Committee, was going to have to answer some tough questions.

Well, as it happens, Gonzales displayed the same combination of (feigned) cluelessness and (unwarranted) chutzpah as he did when appearing before the Senate last month in order to avoid saying much of anything at all. A major difference? No defensiveness -- Gonzales seems to know he can't or won't be fired, and has stopped caring what Congress or the American people think of him. He giggled throughout his testimony, in the face of weighty and sometimes damning questions.

He might want to get serious. McClatchy reports new evidence that Karl Rove essentially used Gonzales' Department of Justice as the enforcement arm for his Machiavellian schemes. Just weeks before the November 2006 elections, Karl Rove and his deputies twice urged the Department of Justice (using Gonzo's chief-of-staff Kyle Sampson as a primary contact) to investigate voter fraud in New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin -- even though it is DOJ policy not to open such investigations shortly before elections because of the possibility of influencing votes.

But that was the point. The cases that Rove wanted investigated where shams -- the allegations of voter fraud in Wisconsin, for example, were two years old and had already been thoroughly investigated, with no results. And obviously the voter fraud Rove wanted investigated was all one-sided stuff -- Republicans being disenfranchised by Democrats and not the other way around. How do we know? Rove's evidence of voter fraud came from a 30-page report compiled by Republican activists.

That's right -- conservative activists on the ground were in direct contact with the president's top political adviser, who in turn tried to turn the activists' loony schemes into official Department of Justice policy. Are we a banana republic yet?

May 10, 2007

Political Persecution of Michael Moore!

The federal government is investigating Michael Moore for violating the trade embargo on Cuba in filming his latest documentary, Sicko. Read more on The Riff.

New Evidence that Administration Withheld Emails About Rove

A new twist in the lost email/purged attorneys scandal.

Murray Waas reports that the "Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove's, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas."

Specifically, the emails -- which Waas saw courtesy of a mutinous "executive branch official" -- show that Alberto Gonzales' then-chief-of-staff Kyle Sampson consulted with the White House when drafting a letter to Congress explaining what Karl Rove did and did not know about the installation of Griffin (intro to Griffin here).

Of course, Sampson told Congress Rove wasn't involved, which he was. The executive branch official who showed the withheld emails to Waas also told Waas that Gonzales not only knows about them, but has reviewed them all, and has elected to stay silent on the point.

I suspect that the average man on the street long ago lost track of every detail of the U.S. Attorneys scandal, and every different bit of foul play over at Justice. But things are getting so complicated, with so many moving parts, that pretty soon journalists, bloggers, and government officials are also going to lose track.

Maybe that's part of some exceptionally smart and exceptionally devious plan. But in my eyes, when the federal department you oversee is so poorly run, so wracked with scandal, and so thoroughly politicized that it's making everyone's head spin -- it's probably time to, you know, resign.

Troops Now Face Longer Deployments AND Less Time at Home

The troops have to be pretty upset with the military brass right now.

In April, SecDef Robert Gates announced that tours in Iraq and Afghanistan were being extended from twelve months to fifteen months. The move was necessary, Gates said, if the Army wanted to ensure that every combat veteran had at least one full year at home before being sent back into a war zone.

Well, word is leaking out that those twelve months at home are just a fantasy. According to Stars and Stripes, a company in Europe is headed back to Iraq only nine months after a 13-month tour.

Other companies made find themselves in the same situation, because a Pentagon spokesman is calling the one year at home between tours a "goal" instead of a guarantee. As for Gates, he's as confused as anyone. "I'll be very interested in finding out more about that," Gates told Stars and Stripes. "We just need to find out about that, because I made it clear that people would have 12 months at home."

Spotted on ThinkProgress, who highlights a LA Times article from a few days back titled "Long tours in Iraq may be minefield for mental health."

New Info on the Ninth Purged U.S. Attorney as Gonzales Goes Before Congress

I wrote yesterday that there is speculation on the blogosphere that the eight purged U.S. Attorneys were actually nine purged U.S. Attorneys. Today, ~~the WaPo has~~ all the major papers have confirmed it.

The Post runs down Todd Graves, former U.S. Attorney from Missouri and the center of yesterday's speculation, and gets him on the record. He says that one of his bosses at the Dep't of Justice made it clear in January 2006 that the DOJ wanted a change of leadership at Graves' office to "give another person a chance." According to Graves, the conversation "made clear to me the fact I was getting a push... I felt like I was no longer welcome in the department."

The emergence of Graves is significant because it means the DOJ was forcing U.S. Attorneys out of their offices months earlier than previously suspected, and because it contradicts Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' testimony that the scandal was limited to the eight Attorneys already well-covered in the media. And the "give another person a chance" rational is exactly the same as the one given to other purged Attorneys.

As for the developing notion that voting rights are at the center of this storm, check out this paragraph:

Graves acknowledged that he had twice during the past few years clashed with Justice's civil rights division over cases, including a federal lawsuit involving Missouri's voter rolls that Graves said a Washington Justice official signed off on after he refused to do so. That official, Bradley J. Schlozman, was appointed as interim U.S. attorney to succeed Graves, remaining for a year until the Senate this spring confirmed John Wood for the job. Wood was a counselor to the deputy attorney general and is a son of [Republican Missouri Senator Kit] Bond's first cousin, although the senator's spokeswoman, Shana Marchio, said Bond did not recommend him for the job.

Alberto Gonzales is testifying before the House Judiciary Committee right now, where he will face questions about this topic and about the allegations of a stunning lack of diversity in the DOJ's civil rights division.

Funniest Campaign Ads So Far Belong To...

Bill Richardson! If the whole campaign was composed of reciting Richardson's resume and quirky ads like these, the man couldn't lose!

Spotted on Wonkette.

May 9, 2007

Global Warming Talking Points... A Push for Cap and Trade

Now that a majority of Americans want immediate action against global warming, what rhetoric and policy would best address this newly-bipartisan concern?

The message must inspire. And the most inspirational rhetoric emphasizes freedom, independence, and self-sufficiency, and taps into the "belief that America can do anything once we make the commitment," reports Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a Democratic pollster commissioned by the Center for American Progress.

On this particular point, however, Bill McKibben might disagree. The consultants say we should link healthy climate to economic growth, because clean energy would help to restore America as a leader in the world economy, create jobs, and raise incomes. McKibben, on the other hand, calls for no less than a philosophical rejection of the drive for economic growth.

What the firm considers a feasible political agenda:
•Mileage standards of 40 mpg
•Tax credits for people and companies using alternative energy
•A mandatory cap-and-trade market to reduce emissions by 2 percent per year

Speaking of which, the push for cap-and-trade made major headway this week. A major corporate petition has doubled its membership this week. The U.S. Climate Change Partnership now includes such giants as General Motors, Shell, DuPont, and Lehman Brothers. They have partnered with nonprofits such as Environmental Defense, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the World Resources Institute - plus two new groups, The Nature Conservancy and National Wildlife Federation. The want federal laws to curb the country's carbon emissions by 60 to 80 percent by 2050.

Also, ten states are creating the first mandatory carbon cap-and-trade program in the United States. They're trying to avoid the mistakes of the European Union's first go at it.

Cocaine In a Can, By Any Other Name

Surprise, surprise. In order to stay out of legal trouble, Redux Beverages, the maker of "Cocaine," a provocatively-branded energy drink, is in search of a new name for its signature product. This because last month the FDA accused Redux of marketing the drink as an alternative to the street drug (ya think?), leading some states to pull the cans off store shelves.

While "Cocaine" the drink may be out, cultivation of the real thing couldn't be more in, particularly among left-leaning South American leaders eager to flout the United States' expensive (and largely ineffective) interdiction campaign. Get the blow by blow here and here.

—Koshlan Mayer-Blackwell

Iraqi Parliament: U.S. Out of Iraq

In a comment to a previous blog post about the Baghdad Wall, a reader wrote:

The Iraqis don't want us out (at least not yet). If the Iraqis wanted us out now, they would communicate that to their representatives in the government, who would communicate it to us, and we would then leave. The fact is (as I saw during my time in Korea 30+ years ago), the Iraqis trust the Americans more than the trust fellow Iraqis. Thus, for now, they prefer we stay.

Even this reader must now concede that the Iraqis want us to get the hell out of Baghdad. Yesterday, a majority vote in the Iraqi parliament supported forcing the United States to set a timeline for withdrawal of troops.

So will we or will we not respect the budding Iraqi democracy? Reader poll in the comments section.

Immigration Officials Drug Detainees

Immigration agents drugged two men who were being wrongfully deported, according to the men and their lawyers. One man was in the country illegally and agents took him to the airport to deport him without notifying his wife or attorney. Before leaving, they asked him if he wanted a sedative and he said no. They then returned with an syringe, pulled down his pants, and injected him with one. When they arrived at the airport, they were ordered to return with the deportee because they had not followed proper notification procedures.

The other deportee had a legal stay or deportation, but was being "escorted" out of the country on a commercial jet. Agents had the man handcuffed, but when he asked to speak to the captain to explain what was happening to him, they took him to the ground and injected him with a sedative. The captain ordered them all off the plane.

The ICE officials' actions violated the agency's policies on sedating detainees as well as federal air regulations prohibiting the transport of drugged individuals. You have to question, too, whether it's not cruel and unusual punishment to deport people who may be persecuted in their native countries (as was the case with one of the men, a Chinese Christian) and then force-sedate them when they get upset about it.

Wildfire Tracker

Your MoJo weird weather watcher evaluates the weird-quotient for wildfires now burning in Southern California, Florida, and Minnesota on The Blue Marble.

Air Traffic Controllers In Newark Call For Criminal Investigation Over Carbon Monoxide Incident

Last month, several air traffic controllers at the Newark Airport claimed they were forced to direct planes while they were suffering from dizziness, confusion, headaches, and disorientation brought on by carbon monoxide poisoning. It turns out that a test of the facility's backup generator sent exhaust fumes into the building's ventilation system, thus releasing the carbon monoxide fumes. The controllers also say that they were not allowed to leave the building, or even to leave their posts, and that management refused to call the fire department. Some of the employees said they would call the fire department to come and test the air, and that they were told by the operations manager that, 'If you make the call, I will not let them in the gate and I will refuse them entry into the control room."

Later, after the sleepy, confused and physically ill controllers directed hundreds of planes, some of them went to the hospital, where it was confirmed that significant levels of carbon monoxide was in their blood.

Now the air traffic controllers are calling for a criminal investigation of the incident. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer has sent a letter to the FAA, asking for such an investigation. "We've sent a letter to the FAA today asking for a thorough investigation to what's happened," Schumer said, "and I have to tell you given my past experience here, the FAA does not have a good record."

WABC Eyewitness News has already done a series of reports on how staffing cutbacks have led to an increase in controller errors at the Newark Airport.

Murdoch Goes Green

Rupert Murdoch's speech this morning is a watershed in the history of climate change denial. Arguably the most powerful media mogul--and one of Bush's most powerful fans--has pledged to weave more global warming news into coverage.

"Our audience's carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours," Murdoch told employees. "Imagine if we succeed in inspiring our audiences to reduce their own impacts on climate change by just 1 percent. That would be like turning the state of California off for almost two months." Grist has the story.

If These Walls Could Talk, They'd Say the U.S. Army is Dumber than a Doornail

I blogged in late April that the Iraqi P.M. had vociferously opposed a U.S. military plan to wall off a particularly troublesome Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad. Despite their deep regard for Iraqi democracy, military commanders ignored the P.M.'s request and built the wall anyway.

Al-Maliki's opposition was echoed by both Sunnis and Shiites in the area. The military is now using that opposition as to argue that the wall has successfully improved security:

"At first I attributed [the decline in violence] to the American presence and the Iraqi presence," said Capt. Matthew Koehler…."I thought that was the extent of it, until I saw the insurgents trying to blow up those barriers."

That's right: If insurgents blow up the barriers, it must be because they're improving security. The gauge used to pronounce a decline in violence in the first place is the number of bodies dumped within the walled area—not how many deaths there are in the vicinity, but how many bodies are disposed of within the walled area. You have to wonder if even military spokesmen believe what they're saying.

Ninth Purged U.S. Attorney Found

Over at TPM, Josh Marshall thinks they've identified a ninth U.S. Attorney pushed out for being ideologically out of step with Alberto Gonzalez's Justice Department. His name is Todd Graves and he was formerly a U.S. Attorney in Missouri. Graves was on the DOJ firing lists shortly before resigning, and while he hasn't said outright that he was purged for political reasons, he has given quotes to the media like, "When I first interviewed (with the Department)…I was asked to give the panel one attribute that describes me. I said independent. Apparently, that was the wrong attribute."

Further fueling speculation is evidence of nefarious meddling by Republican Senator Kit Bond and the fact that Graves' replacement, Bradley Schlozman, has a history that matches the priorities of the Gonzales DOJ. According to Josh, Schlozman's "entire tenure at DOJ has been dedicated to turning back the clock on minority voting rights in the United States and more broadly to suppressing Democratic vote turnout."

Gonzales and Scholzman are being brought before Congress to explain the situation later this month.

Popular Conservative Blog: "Rudy's Done"

Many people have wondered when conservatives would get past the Rudy Giuliani 9/11 hero worship and recognize that he's badly out of step with them on gays, guns, and abortion. Well, on abortion at least, it's happening.

Giuliani in Drag, and Leather, and Fur, and Pearls... A Compendium

This is horrifying but also kind of awesome. It's a Slate sideshow of all of Rudy Giuliani's moments playing dress up -- as a crack addict, a greaser, the beast from Beauty and the Beast, and most commonly, a woman. Check it out.

Combine all this with the also horrifying but kind of awesome "ferret moment" from Rudy's radio show and you get the sense that Rudy is a guy who either didn't intend to run for president before 9/11 vaulted him to the national stage, or he did intend to run for president but didn't give a damn and insisted on living his life the way he wanted to live it. Which is kind of refreshing. His current reversals on all the positions he staked out in that carefree period, however, are not so endearing.

Update: While you're over there at Slate, take a look at this detailed dissection of Rudy's truly disastrous private life (three marriages, ugly and public divorces, adultery, and multiple estranged kids -- that enough?). Writes Slate, "It's not only the religious or the uptight that can be put off by an utter lack of personal morality in a presidential candidate."

Late Update: I feel bad calling Rudy's private life "truly disastrous." Who am I to judge? What say you? Is judging candidates on their private lives part of presidential politics? A legitimate evaluation of a man or woman's character, or part of the sordid underbelly of our political system? Leave thoughts in the comments...

Deflating the "Independents in '08!" Meme (and Taking a Knock at Howard Fineman)

Howard Fineman is once again following my lead. Hot on the heels of my blog post speculating about a Hagel-Bloomberg independent ticket in the 2008 presidential race, Fineman writes in Newsweek that, yes, an independent ticket in 2008 is a real possibility, but no, Hagel shouldn't be considered its most likely torchbearer. He cites Bloomberg, Gore, and get this, Arnold Schwarzenegger. It takes Fineman until the end of the piece to acknowledge that Arnold can't run and Gore likely won't. And having retracted two of the three heavy-hitters at the center of his article, Fineman somewhat lamely mentions Lieberman and Hagel as possibilities.

So I was right -- Hagel and Bloomberg. And maybe Lieberman. But one gets the sense that Fineman was on deadline, and wanted to take the "Independents in '08!" meme for a test drive without really having all the material he needed as fuel.

In fact, this whole "Independents in '08!" thing feels a little like a media creation -- something political journalists daydream about when bored of covering the same six frontrunners for... well, how long is the campaign season now? Two full years? It has a sideshow feel to it -- I should have conveyed that better in my post about Hagel and Bloomberg.

Witness, for example, Fineman's reasoning for why an independent candidate could win this year when such candidates have failed in every other year. The early primary schedule means that the winner of each party's nominations could be identified by early February of 2008, seven months before the parties' conventions. In those seven months, speculates Fineman, buyer's remorse will set in for some members of both parties and they will go looking for someone else to support.

Okay, I guess, except no committed Republican or Democrat treats party identification that trivially, and the independent voters won't have made up their minds that early, meaning buyer's remorse won't have time to set in. Besides, the GOP and the Dems probably realize there is too much time between the deciding primaries and their conventions and will likely move the convention dates up. Problem solved.

Fineman ends by saying, "Keep an eye on the independents. There’s where the action is, and will be." I say, meh. Take it all with a grain of salt.

May 8, 2007

No Domestic Partner Benefits For State Employeees In Minnesota

After Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty made it clear that he would veto any bill giving domestic partnership benefits to several state employees, the Minnesota legislator dropped the matter last week. Members of the House and Senate eliminated language in a major spending bill that would have given such benefits to domestic partners, including gay partners.

The original language provided benefits for gay couples only, but was expanded to cover other domestic partners, including siblings. The language was changed because of Pawlenty's threat to veto any bill that included giving benefits to same-sex partners of state employees. A spokesman for the governor said: "we really haven't had a chance to review" the new language, but added that "generally, the state government finance bill has a lot of question marks."

Extending insurance coverage to non-married partners had the backing of the League of Minnesota Cities and the Minnesota Association of Small Cities.

Weird Weather Watch

MoJo is tracking the effects of changed weather patterns on towns and wildlife. Read about the Southern California spring with no flowers or berries—but with serious economic impacts—on The Blue Marble.

D.C.'s Gun Ban Could Be Headed to the Supreme Court, Gun Laws Beware

Last month, I interviewed Robert Levy, the Cato Institute senior fellow and constitutional lawyer, who successfully used a broad interpretation of the Second Amendment to overturn the D.C. gun ban in March. When the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Levy's case, Parker v. District of Columbia, it dissolved the strictest gun regulations on the books in any state and marked the first time this interpretation of the Second Amendment has been used to successfully overturn a state's gun law. When Levy and I spoke about his victory, he mentioned the likelihood that Parker would go before the Supreme Court. Today, that likelihood just got greater. The D.C. federal appeals court denied D.C.'s request for a second ruling before the entire court. (Originally, the case was heard before a three-judge panel.) So, Levy is likely off to the Supreme Court. Gun laws beware! If Parker is upheld in the Supreme Court, the ruling will jeopardize state gun laws across the nation, making them vulnerable to more legal challenges.

NY Times Hears the Call on Postal Rate Increases

If you aren't following the story of USPS's postal rate increase that unfairly targets small, independent magazines, read up!

Now that the New York Times is on board, the fight is going mainstream!

Six Arrested in New Jersey for Worst Plot Ever

If you've scanned the news today, you've probably seen the story about the six men who were arrested before they could execute a plan to attack New Jersey's Fort Dix Army base and "kill as many soldiers as possible."

According to a federal spokesman, four of the men were born in the former Yugoslavia, one was born in Turkey and one was born in Jordan. A report on this that I saw earlier had a quote from a federal official calling their plot a potential act of terrorism, but that quote has been removed -- this is where definitions get murky -- and currently there is no evidence that a foreign terrorist organization was involved.

I will say this: Worst. Plan. Ever. Not to make light of a plot to kill American servicemen (or anybody, really), but is there a worse place for six random dudes to attack than a United States Army base? Why not rob the police station while you're at it? They couldn't think of something that might have a higher chance of success and lower than a 100% chance of death?

I guess that's the point -- martyrdom -- but seriously, folks.

One in Eight Iraqi Children Dies Before Turning Five Years Old

Incredibly depressing news about Iraq: "One in eight Iraqi children died of disease or violence before reaching their fifth birthday in 2005." I know this sounds simple-minded but my God, what an unbelievable horrible place to be a child, or maybe even worse, be a parent.

So yeah, the child mortality rate in Iraq has soared in recent years, and the war-torn country now ranks last in Save the Children's "child survival rankings." Ranking first is Iceland. The United States didn't do so well:

The U.S. placed 26th, tied with Croatia, Estonia and Poland. Nearly seven children die for every 1,000 live births in the United States. That was more than double the rate in Iceland, and 75 percent higher than rates in the Czech Republic, Finland, Japan and Slovenia.

Health care reform, anyone?

May 7, 2007

Obama on Energy Independence

The first two thirds of Obama's speech today got my hopes up that he was backing away from the corn-ethanol shtick. But the last third brought me down to earth. Even if corn-ethanol takes third place in his speech now, the corn-belt senator would probably never drop support for corn-ethanol subsidies, which may be the biggest greenwash ever.

All around, his proposals are better developed than in his speech one year ago. He proposes to raise fuel economy standards by 4 percent per year, instead of just 3 percent. He also wants to subsidize Detroit's move to hybrid vehicles. And he supports a carbon cap-and-trade system. What would work much better would be to tax carbon emissions and raise the fuel tax. But they don't call taxes the third rail for nothing.

Romney: I'll Make Up Anything if Pat Robertson Approves

Any francophiles out there that want to fact-check Mitt Romney?

"In France, for instance, I'm told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past."

Yup, Mitt Romney is courting the religious right (he made the statement at a graduation speech at Regent University, the college founded by Pat Robertson) the easiest way Republicans know how: bashing the French. Oh, and porn and violence:

"Pornography and violence poison our music and movies and TV and video games. The Virginia Tech shooter, like the Columbine shooters before him, had drunk from this cesspool."

Good heavens, can you imagine if Mitt Romney ever saw violent porn starring unmarried French people? His head would explode. But even a headless Mitt Romney would kowtow to the leaders of the religious right. You can't win in the GOP without doing so:

It was Romney's second appearance at Regent University in the past four months. His visits underscore the competition for support from top Christian conservative leaders such as Robertson, whose television programs have millions of viewers. Romney, along with several other GOP hopefuls, attended a convention of religious broadcasters in February. Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani will appear at Regent next month.

How Come Obama MySpace Page Creator Doesn't Have a Lawyer?

As Josh writes here, there has been quite the flurry over the changing of hands (from young paralegal and diehard supporter to Obama's official campaign staff) of the unofficial, yet official-looking, 160,000 friend-boasting Barack Obama MySpace page. When the scandal blew up, there was talk that the 160,000 MySpace friends Joe Anthony, said diehard supporter, rallied together were theoretically worth a bundle of cash, and therefore all moral questions aside, the Obama campaign should pay up. Micah Sifry, founder of techPresident, (a site that monitors campaigns' web strategies) noted on the site:

Care2, the massive progressive email list vendor, charges about $1 per email address that they generate for a campaign.

But like Sifry points out, Anthony could not have generated this large number of members if it weren't for Obama's success and charisma, so it's not like he could expect to make $160,000 plus, but I'm betting, if he'd played his cards right, he could've raked in some dough. I mean, these campaigns pay media consultants big money to gather supporters the way Anthony did. Apparently, though, contrary to what Obama's campaign staff were claiming -- that he was just looking for a "big payday" -- Anthony doesn't seem to be after money at all. Sifry writes on Friday:

Anthony is pondering donating the url over to a non-profit group, or trying to continue working with the community gathered around the site to make it into a kind of clearinghouse or forum on the presidential candidates in general.

He is also still planning to vote for Obama!? Alright, so, I know I should feel warm and fuzzy about this, but instead, I'm scratching my head. This guy could have made some money -- at the very least, he could have more adamantly demanded some compensation for his 2.5 year-long (Anthony maintained the page for 2.5 years) labor of love. Why didn't he? Are we really seeing loyalty to the Democratic movement trump selfish desires, did he just give up or did he not have the right counsel? He's a paralegal, right? Where were all his lawyer friends?

Military Identifies Media and Warlords as Non-Traditional Threats

Via CJR Daily and Wired, a look at the military's new list of traditional and non-traditional threats:

Yup. In light of the crackdown on milblogging, it only makes sense that the media would be considered a threat on par with al Qaeda, drug cartels, and my personal favorite, warlords. After all, when you're spreading democracy in Iraq, the first thing you want to do is illustrate exactly how hostile you are towards the First Amendment.

Prez '08: Hagel-Bloomberg on an Independent Ticket?

I've written at great length about the presidential chances of Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel. For a Republican base grown tired of the war and a bumbling president, but still committed to conservative positions on social issues, the anti-war but very culturally conservative Chuck Hagel is the closest thing out there to a perfect candidate -- he's certainly better than the flip-flopping and socially moderate trio of Romney, McCain, and Giuliani.

And as Hagel grows into the role of the White House's chief GOP antagonist (he's the first Republican to say Wolfowitz should step down at the World Bank), he has announced he's mulling an independent run for the presidency. The chance to grab anti-war voters from across the spectrum and Republican voters enchanted by his purist stances on social issues must be mighty appealing. Throw in the rumors that Hagel might partner on the ticket with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is highly effective and almost post-partisan, and you've got some worthwhile '08 drama. (The rumors, by the way, were started by Hagel and Bloomberg themselves in a delectable bit of stagecraft. They had dinner together in early May, then leaked the news and denied its significance in Bloomberg's own wire service.)

So my predictions of a Hagel-Huckabee ticket may not come to pass. Sadly, Hagel-Bloomberg just doesn't have the same ring.

May 11, 2007

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