MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: October 28, 2007

« October 21, 2007 - October 27, 2007 | Main | November 4, 2007 - November 10, 2007 »

November 3, 2007

Lisa Nowak: Separating the Women from the Girls

Lisa Nowak, the diaper-wearing astronaut who went whacko over a man, is probably going to get away with stalking, assault, attempted kidnapping (to God's know what end) and, setting feminism back a thousand years.

A judge has thrown out everything but the supposed bats in Lisa Nowak's belfry. The evidence obtained from her car (including diapers, allegedly both used and unused): gone. Her statements to the police: gone. Her electronic ankle monitor: gone. Hell, it wasn't even me that Nowak stalked cross country and pepper-sprayed but I'd like to know where she is at all times; what if I'd accidentally scored some killer shoes on sale that she'd been eying? Fire alarms should accompany her every movement. This matters because Nowak's attorneys "in August filed a notice of intent to rely on an insanity defense, saying in court documents her diagnoses include a litany of more than a dozen psychiatric disorders."

How novel, women just can't control their emotions and shouldn't be held accountable. She was in love! I guess we should be grateful she isn't going with the PMS defense. "More than a dozen psychiatric disorders" and NASA never noticed? Females like Nowak hurt women everywhere with this kind of sorry-ass, female jealousy and emotional collapse. It's not bad enough that she was going to put a beat down on another human over a man, now she's going to make every woman in a high stress environment wonder if those around her are watching to see if she'll buckle and go haywire on the corporate retreat, let alone the flight deck.

Puh leeze. She's no crazier than the violent, stalker ex-boyfriends that feminists like me just love to see do hard time. You just don't get to go crazy in this way because you're a divorced mom of three who thinks no one will ever love you again, no matter how fucking brilliant you are. Because of how brilliant you are.

That was Susan Smith's deal, too, remember? I totally understood why she thought she had to make her children disappear so she could escape the no doubt loveless future in store for a plain, ignorant, hick town girl with a boatload of fatherless children. I also totally understand why she should never see the sky again--life's a bitch for women, no matter your income bracket, once you bring either children or a successful career into the picture. But we just don't get to handle our gendered problems this way. Astronauts don't get to make that other brilliant chick disappear just as 'hood rats don't get to make their children disappear. If infanticide occurs to you more than once, have some backbone: give them up for adoption, or, I don't know, decide to be happy without a man if it works out that way. If it's too hard to get laid as an astronaut hire a Chippendale. Hire two. Or, I dunno, stop being an astronaut. That was part of the reason for my leaving a shiny, but mostly dateless, career in the military. Don't know why it never occurred to me to take a few hostages.

Career, children, love, and sex - women don't usually get to have more than one of these at a time. Sucks. Totally unfair. Utterly sexist. I understand the pressure, believe me, but, women, find another kind of crazy if crazy you must go—get monstrously fat, become a religious nut and bother folks in the park with your ravings, become an obsessive scrap booker, marry your own personal K-Fed. Anything but out-sourcing your problems to innocents and dragging the rest of us back with you to the age of swooning. Feminists have no problem condemning male violence for exactly what it is, no matter how lunatic his state of mind, and we should feel no differently towards Lisa Nowak. She made her choices but she wasn't women enough to either live with them or make new choices. She's not crazy. She's weak.

The Conjugal Classroom

The latest female teacher caught boffing her young male student got busted in Mexico. Even women-haters take the weekend off, but you can bet that come Monday, the right wing blogosphere will be afire 'proving' that feminism = female monsters and that female criminals benefit from a double standard in public reaction and come sentence time.

These are crimes, to be sure, whatever the perp's gender but there's no arguing that the grown woman-paperboy thing is qualitatively different from the football coach abusing youngsters in his care. According to William Saletan at Slate, both should be punished but female abusers are rightfully punished less severely and regarded with less animus:

Move over, Mrs. Robinson. The new public enemy is the bespectacled babe who teaches our kids math in the classroom and sex in the parking lot. Dozens of female teachers have been caught with male students in recent years, and the airwaves are full of outrage that we're letting them off the hook. On cable news, phrases like "double standard" and "slap on the wrist" are poured like pious gravy over photos of the pedagogue-pedophile-pet of the month. "Why is it when a man rapes a little girl, he goes to jail," CNN's Nancy Grace complains, "but when a woman rapes a boy, she had a breakdown?"

I hate to change the subject from sex back to math, but this frenzy—I'm trying hard not to call it hysteria—reeks of overexcitement. Sex offenses by women aren't increasing. Female offenders are going to jail. And while their sentences are, on average, shorter than sentences given to male offenders, the main reason is that their crimes are objectively less vile. By ignoring this difference, we're replacing the old double standard with a new one.

The data are startling; women who having sex with young boys are wrong and deserve punishment, just not as much as the average, and far more numerous, male abuser. Now if we could just figure out why a love of children can lead to sex and how to stop it.

November 2, 2007

The Chutzpah of Bernard Lewis

A small group of Middle East studies academics, led by Bernard Lewis, have formed a new professional group, the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa, according to InsideHigherEd. Their stated reasons for establishing the group are "the increasing politicization of these fields, and the certainty that a corrupt understanding of them is a danger to the academy as well as the future of the young people it purports to educate." Funny, that, because Lewis, from his perch at Princeton, is probably the country's greatest practitioner of Mideast studies in the service of politics. A few of Lewis' greatest hits:

Participated in a pre-9/11 "study of ancient empires, sponsored by [Donald] Rumsfeld's office, to understand how they maintained their dominance," according to the Times.
Became one of the earliest and most public proponents of war with Iraq soon after 9/11, writing op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, including "A War of Resolve" and "Time for Toppling."
In a series of personal meetings after 9/11, helped disabuse Dick Cheney of "his former skepticism about the potential for democracy in the Middle East," according to Time.
Earlier this year, received standing ovation after defending the Christian crusades in his speech accepting the Irving Kristol Award at the American Enterprise Institute.

The new association rounds out its apolitical "Academic Council" with U.S. News columnist Fouad Ajami, National Review writer Victor Davis Hanson, and former Secretary of State George Schultz.

—Justin Elliott

Hindu American Foundation on the Defense About Lobbying Practices

Last month, the New York Times published an article about how the Hindu American Foundation, a "human rights group whose purpose is to provide a voice for the 2 million strong Hindu American community," sees Jews as a "role model in activism." The article states that HAF "learned from the success of Jewish groups that it needed a full-time staff member to lobby Congress."

The HAF has shot back with an online statement accusing the NYT of skewering the "views expressed in an interview" with one of its member. The statement says that "as a non-profit organization, the Foundation does not lobby officials for any legislation, and our efforts are limited to educating legislators as to issues of importance for Hindu Americans."

The thing is, there's a thin line between "educating" and "lobbying." HAF's response probably has a lot to do with the fear of being accused of prohibited lobbying activities as a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, but they proudly post press releases and photos about their "achievements" on Capitol Hill, like this Washington D.C. reception in September of this year —the fourth annual get-together of its kind during which they meet with senators and Congress members. In addition, they have a D.C. office to bring a "consistent Hindu American voice to Capitol Hill, the White House and non-governmental organizations in Washington, D.C."

None of these actions are unlawful, and non-profits brief Congress members on special interest issues all the time. But HAF's statement makes it seem like they aren't vigorously inclined to be politically active in Washington when they are clearly skirting the line between lobbying...and well, lobbying.

—Neha Inamdar

The Players Behind Anti-Muslim Pogrom Caught On Tape

Last week, the Indian independent weekly newspaper Tehelka published the findings of their six-month long undercover investigation into the Gujarat 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom which left more than 2,000 people dead. Armed with spy cams, journalist Ashish Khetan captured incriminating evidence of the state's collusion.

The expose reveals how various government and political party affiliates were involved in planning the carnage. One attacker said that Muslims should not be allowed to breed, and recounted how he ripped open the stomach of a woman nine months pregnant and pulled her fetus out, and then threw it in the fire.

The state's complicity is not new news. In 2002, the Human Rights Watch published a 68 page report pointing to the state's involvement and in 2005, the U.S. State Department revoked Gujarat's Chief Minister Narendra Modi's visa to the U.S. for his involvement. But the importance of this expose is that this time, it was all caught on tape.

At first, the expose elicited mud slinging that had little to do with the actual evidence of state complicity. Modi's party, the BJP, claimed that the expose is a "political stunt" and it's "confident" that it will still win the elections. Others charged that it was a "political conspiracy to defame the Hindus." But long time politician and Railways Minister Lalu Prashad Yadav has demanded the immediate arrest of Modi, while the Concerned Citizens of Gujarat, a civil society organization in Gujarat, protested yesterday, urging citizens to depose Modi's government and demanded a re-broadcast of the Tehelka expose since it has been banned in most of Gujarat. Let us hope that state officials do not escape justice.

—Neha Inamdar

Breaking: Schumer and Feinstein to Support Mukasey's Nomination

No sooner had Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy said he'd oppose Michael Mukasey's nomination when Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein announced they'd support him. Yesterday, David posed the question of whether the Dems would unite to torpedo Mukasey's nomination, in light of his views on executive power and refusal to call waterboarding torture, or whether they'd wimp out. Looks like we have our answer.

And Then There Were Five

Citing Michael Mukasey's reluctance to answer questions about the legality of waterboarding, Senator Patrick Leahy just added his name to the expanding list of Judiciary Committee Dems (five currently) who plan to vote against the president's AG nominee on Tuesday. "There may be interrogation techniques that require close examination and extensive briefings," Leahy said during a press conference in Vermont this afternoon. "Waterboarding is not among them. No American should need a classified briefing to determine whether waterboarding is torture."

When Did Negroes Become Nerds?

Mark Anthony Neal never fails. He finds a way to use his love of black music to talk about everything black at once. This time, he's gotten at something that's been worrying me for awhile now: when, and why, did public black culture become so degraded? I don't just mean rap's excesses but the paltry cultural footprint we're leaving these days when we used to mesmerize with our art.

No matter how much harder being black used to be, at least we knew we were the coolest people on earth. Hang us from trees though whites certainly did, they still envied us our style and rightfully so. We bad! and the world couldn't keep its eyes off us, on stage, screen or vinyl. The Temptations, afros, Chuck Berry, Lena Horne, The Cotton Club, jazz, blues, gospel. Now, public black culture is mostly rap, reality shows, overwrought r&b; and over-priced clothing lines. Neal notes:

In his too-brilliant-to-be-dismissed collection of essays bloodbeats: vol. 1, Los Angeles cultural critic Ernest Hardy writes that "selling blackness is permissible in the mainstream marketplace; celebrating it is not. Few folks know the difference." The occasion for Hardy’s observation was the release of the music video for Janet Jackson’s "Got Till It's Gone," of which he writes that the video "not only works the artfulness and artsiness that lie at the heart of everyday blackness but envisions a world of African cool, eroticism and playfulness that is electrifying in its forthrightness." "Got Till It's Gone" was released a decade ago and Hardy’s argument is no less true today. Indeed blackness seems an industry unto itself, accessible on myriad media platforms and as pervasive as the air; there’s rarely a moment where one can’t conceivable choke on blackness—especially as the remote surfs past another reality show under-written by the Viacom Corporation. But where does one celebrate blackness at this moment?

Blackness is everywhere but it doesn't seem to be about much. Ironically, this occurs to me on the ever rarer occasions when black artistry does what it's supposed to, what it used to do so much more reliably—remind me that blackness is amazing. Dreamgirls, the Color Purple and Corinne Bailey Rae shocked me. They made me cry; all those beautiful shades of black and all that talent. I had no idea how much I'd missed seeing myself being incredible, transcendant. Seeing blackness loved. They literally made me ache a little—I have to get out more—and realize that I missed blackness. I think the world does, too. 50 Cent is a poor replacement for Curtis Mayfield.

My days are filled with race. It's how I make my living when it used to be how I lived my life. But integration came and now, most of the time, blackness is work—Jena 6, Don Imus, Dog the Bounty Hunter, nooses, Barack Obama, predatory lending and crack-powder cocaine sentencing disparities. Blackness as problem, as politics. Blackness as duty and something for which I have to travel—back home to see the family, a soul food restaurant, a post-scandal rally. My bi-racial children wouldn't know collards and fried chicken if they tripped over them or how eight people shared one bathroom in the home their mother grew up in. They'll never be able to enjoy the bilingual's blessed retreat into Ebonics after a hard day fitting in on the job and they'll never know what they're missing. All they do know is when Mommy's talking to Grandma, though, because she "talks funny". At 6 and 4, they already sound like nerds, not Negroes. I'm as proud of their advanced vocabularies as I am worried that they'll grow up incog Negro. Credentialed, but bland. In an integrated world, how are they supposed to access a cultural blackness? There's a limit to how many times can I make them watch the Flip Wilson tapes I bought from Time-Life Books.

We eggheads are doing our part; what's up with the black artist contingent? It used to be much harder to be black but it was also a hell of a lot cooler. Ellington, Gaye and Pryor saw to that. Did they leave so few successors?

CBS' Vital Campaign News Coverage, Elizabeth Kucinich Still Has a Tongue Ring

Yesterday, Casey made the point—while reporting that the South Carolina Democratic Party voted not to include comedian Stephen Colbert on the state's primary ballot—that fringe candidates often get, well, pushed to the fringe during election season and never get a chance to weigh in on real issues. Case in point—CBS' interview with Dennis Kucinich and his wife Elizabeth. You can watch the entire interview here and Salon's Tim Grieve makes it so you don't have to. Basically, following a painful series of the same question ("So, you would be willing to meet with him?") surrounding Kucinich's already well-publicized assertion that he would be more than willing to speak directly with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad if he were elected president, CBS' Hannah Storm launches into how hot his wife is and asks to see her tongue ring. Honestly, I'd rather hear about what's in the presidential candidate's pockets or I don't know, what he thinks about healthcare or the world's energy crisis, but I guess I'm expecting a bit much from the Early Show.

Dueling Videos in the Aftermath of Hillary's Debate Stumble

After Hillary Clinton's subpar performance in the most recent debate, the Clinton campaign tried to take the spotlight off her blunders by releasing this video, called "The Politics of Pile On":

And it may come back to hurt her, because it invited the Edwards campaign to release this video, called "The Politics of Parsing":

Obama has been talking a lot about how he's going to start attacking Clinton. Edwards, on the other hand, has actually started attacking Clinton.

A Recess Appointment for Mukasey?

As David noted yesterday, Senate Dems will have a chance to block Michael Mukasey's nomination on Tuesday when the Judiciary Committee puts him to a vote. Whether or not they will do so remains a big if, given that it will require a no vote from each of the 10 Democrats on the committee and, as yet, only four have signaled that they will oppose his nomination. As it stands, New York Senator Chuck Schumer appears to be waffling. An early advocate of Mukasey, he said yesterday that “no nominee from this administration will agree with us on things like torture and wiretapping. The best we can expect is somebody who will depoliticize the Justice Department and put rule of law first.” Later today, Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy is expected to announce whether he will support Mukasey's nomination.

As the Los Angeles Times points out today, even if the Dems on judiciary stand firm on Mukasey, the president could attempt to install his AG pick in a recess appointment—one that will remain in effect until the close of his presidency—over Congress' upcoming holiday break. In that case, the Times notes, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could try to out maneuver the president, "by keeping some lawmakers in Washington over the break to ensure that the chamber was always in session."

Depending on the outcome of Tuesday's vote, the Dems could find themselves (again) in a showdown with the president, who came out swinging yesterday in defense of his nominee. Playing the Dems-won't keep-you-safe card, the president said that “on too many issues, Congress is behaving as if America is not at war” and that blocking Mukasey "would guarantee that America would have no attorney general during this time of war." The latter is a bit of a strange comment, one that doesn't display terribly much confidence in Peter D. Keisler, the acting attorney general, a founding member of the Federalist Society (the conservative lawyers group), and an ideological soulmate of the administration.

Blathering About Bill and Hillary: The Right's Lazy Attacks

Charles Krauthammer's column in the Post today accomplishes nothing. Offering no evidence, Krauthammer posits Americans are gripped by a "deep unease" over the possibility of a Hillary Clinton-Bill Clinton co-presidency. He doesn't use polls or anecdotal evidence to support this claim. He has done no interviews. He just declares this to be true.

And as for why Americans are wary of such a situation, Krauthammer insists that it goes beyond the psychodrama of Bill and Hillary's troubled marriage, but repeatedly falls back on that troubled marriage to make his point. For example, take this paragraph, with my thoughts in bolded brackets:

The cloud hovering over a Hillary presidency is not Bill padding around the White House in robe and slippers flipping thongs. [invokes Bill's infidelity while insisting that Bill infidelity is not the issue] It's President Clinton, in suit and tie, simply present in the White House when any decision is made. [why is that a bad thing?] The degree of his involvement in that decision will inevitably become an issue. [it will? evidence?] Do Americans really want a historically unique two-headed presidency constantly buffeted by the dynamics of a highly dysfunctional marriage? [presents no evidence that Americans object to "unique two-headed presidency"; again invokes Bill's infidelity while insisting Bill's infidelity is not at issue]

I can't help but note that considering how disastrously this administration has run the country, most Americans would probably welcome Bill Clinton back in the White House. But that's not the point. The point is Krauthammer has no evidence. The sort of sloppy, lazy writing on display in that paragraph is found throughout his column.

The real culprit here may be the standards of column writing, which have gotten so low that even columnists for the Post and the Times can blather on without making any substantive points and without including evidence. Here's a great example.

Did the Mormon Mafia Work Its Magic for Kyle Sampson?

Despite his spectacular fall from grace, Alberto Gonzales's former chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson has nonetheless managed to land a lucrative revolving-door post at the powerhouse law firm Hunton & Williams. Sampson, you'll recall, was the guy who drew up the hit-list of U.S. Attorneys slated to get fired for not being loyal enough to the GOP.

Hunton & Williams has hired Sampson for its food and drug practice, where business is booming thanks to Rep. Henry Waxman's renewed focus on the FDA. Sampson got a plug from Hunton partner David Higbee, who was Sampson's roommate at Brigham Young University. But the folks at Hunton aren't just providing a soft landing for a disgraced Bush administration official out of the goodness of their hearts. A Utah native and former Mormon missionary, Sampson also has close ties to one Orrin Hatch, for whom he worked on the Senate Judiciary Committee and who is a notorious foe of the FDA. Hatch is almost single-handedly responsible for preventing any meaningful regulation of dietary supplements, and will be a key focus of all major anti-FDA lobbying efforts.

Opening Salvo in the War on Halloween

Liberals make war on Christmas, conservatives make war on Halloween.

More on Bush PR Maven Hughes' Departure

Slate's Fred Kaplan weighs in on Karen Hughes' decision to quit her job as undersecretary of state to burnish America's image abroad and return to Texas:

It may be that, as [Hughes] focused more on the substance and less on the flash, she realized that what she'd been asked to do simply couldn't be done. If the measure of success was how well she was selling U.S. policy, she was failing because there was no good story to sell.

"My guess is that the next year is going to be brutal for anyone doing 'message' control and with the elections they will be irrelevant as well," a recent Foggy Bottom denizen explains Hughes departure to me. "Life is too short, so she threw in the towel."

Unmarried Women are the Democratic Party's Christian Evangelicals

There's a new poll out that reveals a key Democratic voting bloc for 2008. According to research done by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner on the 2006 elections, the gap between Democrats and Republicans amongst unmarried women is 36 points, a massive difference. At just over a quarter of the eligible voting age population, unmarried women are the single largest Democratic-leaning voting bloc, bigger than African-Americans and Hispanics put together. And they're loyal, too. Over the past several cycles they are second only to African Americans in terms of commitment to the party.

In terms of size, party ID, and loyalty, they resemble a key voting bloc from a different party: Christian evangelicals. According to the poll (see this pdf for full details), "In a generic presidential match-up, unmarried women favor the Democrat by a 70 – 24 point margin and in named match-up, Hillary Clinton leads Rudy Giuliani 66 percent – 30 percent among this cohort." [Ed. note: "Cohort"?] Unmarried women voted for Kerry by a 24 percent margin in 2004, which means the advantage Democrats have in this group is growing.

The key difference is turnout. Evangelicals' ability to get out every last vote is legendary, as is the Republican Party's willingness to pander to them. On the other hand, no one has ever focused a messaging or get-out-the-vote campaign exclusively towards unmarried women. Considering the fact that the percentage of America that is unmarried has risen from 27 percent to 47 percent over the last half century (and that number is only getting bigger) some serious organization, messaging, and hardcore focus on the part of the Dems is worthwhile here. Critical, even.

Oh, and PS — Hillary Clinton has been playing to women strongly in the last few months. Maybe Mark Penn has already done this research.

Update: My MoJo colleague Stephanie Mencimer writes me to take issue: "The democrats have an enormous message aimed at unmarried women. It's their stance on abortion/contraception, which has been completely unwavering. I would wager that this is one reason unmarried women stick to the party, which has of late tried to tone down the abortion rhetoric a little but still is pretty militant on this front. Get out the vote efforts are obviously a little different, but even then, abortion rights groups do a lot to turn out single women voters." Point taken.

November 1, 2007

What Does 60 Minutes Tell Us About "Curve Ball" We Didn't Already Know?

From the looks of this press release not much. Here's the news they're claiming to break:

Curve Ball is an Iraqi defector named Rafid Ahmed Alwan, who arrived at a German refugee center in 1999. To bolster his asylum case and increase his importance, he told officials he was a star chemical engineer who had been in charge of a facility at Djerf al Nadaf that was making mobile biological weapons. 60 Minutes has learned that Alwan’s university records indicate he did study chemical engineering but earned nearly all low marks, mostly 50s. Simon’s investigation also uncovered an arrest warrant for theft from the Babel television production company in Baghdad where he once worked.

Ok, his name is new. And that's big. But him being a liar, and a thief (and also, a sex offender) and a whole bunch of other things 60 Minutes is claiming to have uncovered have in actuality been known for years. You can read all about the Curve Ball saga in our Iraq War Timeline. And much of the original reporting on Curve Ball was done by the LA Times. And former CIA official Tyler Drumheller, the apparent big source for 60 Minutes, has been speaking out for years.

Which is not to say that Bob Simon's two year investigation won't yield some great new stuff. I'm sure it will. But I just wish they'd give credit to the LAT and others who broke or championed the Curve Ball story back before it was fashionable to call out the Bush administration.

Re: Serviam

Good for the conservative operatives behind Serviam for advancing the "We Are Rome" narrative by choosing a Latin name for their new merc mag. In explaining "what we mean by serviam" (Latin for "I will serve") they declare an "unabashed … professional editorial commitment to old-fashioned values." So it's pretty clear the Serviam folks want the Roman connection drawn. But perhaps they didn't think through all the implications.

Exactly why the Roman empire fell is a topic classicists have been debating pretty much since it happened (and when it happened is itself unresolved). But one oft-cited reason is—you guessed it—Rome's increasing reliance on vicious, untrustworthy mercenaries to police its empire. For any aspiring merc mag publishers, that's an, um, awkward fact you might consider before going with the cool-sounding Latin name. For fellow classics nerds, there's more on the Roman experience from Edward Gibbon's 18th century classic, The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, after the jump. Be warned, florid Augustan prose ahead:

[Traveling in Constantinople around 400 A.D. the Grecian philosopher] Synesius observes and deplores the fatal abuse which the imprudent bounty of the late emperor had introduced into the military service. The citizens and subjects had purchased an exemption from the indispensable duty of defending their country, which was supported by the arms of barbarian mercenaries.

In the same passage, Gibbon outlines Synesius' proposals to solve Rome's mercenary problem. Sixteen centuries later, in an America where "outsourcing war" has been called "an explosive trend," his ideas seem only slightly dated:

The measures which Synesius recommends are the dictates of a bold and generous patriot. He exhorts the emperor to revive the courage of his subjects by the example of manly virtue; to banish luxury from the court and from the camp; to substitute, in the place of the barbarian mercenaries, an army of men interested in the defence of their laws and of their property; to force, in such a moment of public danger, the mechanic from his shop and the philosopher from his school; to rouse the indolent citizen from his dream of pleasure; and to arm, for the protection of agriculture, the hands of the laborious husbandman.

—Justin Elliott

SC Dems Bar Colbert

The South Carolina Democratic party voted today to keep comedian Stephen Colbert off the state primary ballot, saying they considered him an insufficiently serious candidate. I guess he wasn't such welcome competition after all.

Putting aside the issue of whether or not Colbert makes the grade (though I don't see anyone else asking supporters to donate $100,000 to schools), what does it take to be considered a "serious" candidate? Do you need supporters? Do you have to want the job? The designation of "seriousness"—and, by extension, viability—tends to reflect the conventional wisdom of the media echo chamber far more than the candidate's actual merit. Call it the spoiler effect, wherein third parties and so-called "fringe candidates" are deleted from polls, kept off ballots, and literally forbidden to debate their better-heeled challengers. With such sparse options, it's no wonder that pundits and voters alike spend hours parsing the lead candidates' general statements for nuance and difference.

Bottom line, this country should welcome candidates who stray from the center and take principled, controversial positions, even if they lose in the end. If we broaden our definition of productive debate, we'll broaden our choices too, and maybe alleviate some of our cynicism. You want to be considered a serious candidate? Earn it.

—Casey Miner

Senators Warn White House on Iran

Thirty Senators have signed a letter sent to President Bush today, expressing concern with the administration's increasingly bellicose rhetoric on Iran.

"We are writing to express serious concern with the provocative statements and actions stemming from your administration with respect to possible U.S. military action in Iran," the letter states. "These comments are counterproductive and undermine efforts to resolve tensions with Iran through diplomacy."

"We wish to emphasize that no congressional authority exists for unilateral military action against Iran," it continues.

Among the thirty members who signed, Senators James Webb, John Kerry, Robert Byrd, Dick Durbin, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chris Dodd, Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein, Herb Kohl, Byron Dorgin, Jack Reed, Max Baucus, Debbie Stabenow, Claire McCaskill, Barbara Boxer, Daniel Akaka, Tom Harkin, Thomas Carper, Amy Klobuchar, Jay Rockefeller, Robert Casey, Maria Cantwell, Patty Murray, Sheldon Whitehouse, Sherrod Brown, John Tester, Ron Wyden, Bernie Sanders, and Barbara Mikulski.

You can read it here.

Meantime, as David Kurtz points out, it is notable that Vice President Cheney gave a speech today at the American Legion in Indiana in which he did not once mention Iran. An accidental omission? I doubt it.

More here and here.

Update: Now Barack Obama has introduced his own Iran measure. "Obama introduced a Senate resolution late Thursday that says President George W. Bush does not have authority to use military force against Iran, the latest move in a debate with presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton about how to respond to that country's nuclear ambitions."

Mike Davis on the SoCal Flame Blame Game

The search for someone to blame for the Southern California fires continues. Current top suspects: climate change and kids with matches. In today's TomDispatch, master of urban disaster Mike Davis lays the blame for the San Diego conflagrations at the feet of former city mayor Pete Wilson. Before he went on to become "the baddest governor to ever grab the mic and go boom!"*, Wilson sparked the development boom that turned the city's backcountry into "pyrophiliac gated suburbs and elite estates." And if you think the appeal of these little tinderboxes on the hillside has gone up in smoke, think again, says Davis:

...the new fire cataclysm seems to be rewarding the very insiders most responsible for the uncontrolled building and underfunded fire protection that helped give the Santa Ana winds their real tinder. While conservative ideologues now celebrate San Diego's most recent tragedy as a "triumph" of middle-class values and suburban solidarity, the business community openly gloats over the coming reconstruction boom and the revival of a building industry badly shaken by the mortgage crisis.

* For a recap of Wilson's greatest hits, check out the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy's 1992 version of "California Über Alles," which memorably skewered the then-presidential aspirant: "I give the rich a giant tax loophole / I leave the poor living in a poophole."

California Ballot Initiative: But That Didn't Stop it, it Came Back for More...

The Los Angeles Times reported last week that California Republicans are reviving an effort to change the state's winner-take-all system for allocating electoral votes (a move that could hand the 2008 Presidential election to Republicans). But progressives are raising questions about Arno Political Consulting, the group organizing the new signature drive. In a letter to the California Attorney General, Kristina Wilfore, the Executive Director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center (BISC), wrote:

In 2006, BISC worked extensively with the committee that opposed an extreme measure known as “TABOR” . . .Our work with these groups placed BISC in a unique position this cycle to witness firsthand several different types of fraud perpetrated by certain signature gathering firms, including but not limited to, Arno Political Consulting.

So there are some doubts about the reputation of the firm promoting this measure. I'm not surprised: the whole thing seems pretty stinky in the first place. But, as I've written before, none of this matters very much because there's a pretty convincing case (via Doug Kendall) that the ballot measure is unconstitutional:

In Article II, Section 1, the Constitution declares that electors shall be appointed by states "in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct." That's legislature.

Let the GOP and Arno waste their time and money gathering signatures. Even if they get the 650,000 signatures they want, it won't do a bit of good. Unless they want to throw out this part of the constitution, too...

(The title of the post is from here. Hail to the King, baby.)

Evangelicals: Clinton, Giuliani, Anyone? Anyone?

According to a Pew Research Center survey released yesterday, 55 percent of white evangelical Republicans say they would consider voting for a conservative third-party candidate in the 2008 presidential election if Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton were nominated by their respective parties.

Evangelicals make up a third (34 percent) of GOP and Republican-leaning voters, according to Pew and they're divided pretty much evenly among Giuliani, Fred Thompson and John McCain. It's unclear whether a third-party bid would be launched should Giuliani become the nominee. Several dozen conservative Christian leaders met privately in September to discuss that very possibility. Who knows, now they might just meet again.

Oh man, James Dobson is psyched.

Ron Paul — It's Slightly Less Real Than I Thought

This is interesting. It appears that a portion of Ron Paul's online buzz is fake, and actually illegal. According to the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Spam Data Mining for Law Enforcement Applications project (quite a name, that), which looks at hundreds of thousands of spam emails a month and recently got its hands on some Ron Paul forwards, some of the email support for Paul is coming out of spambots.

The university project received Paul emails with subject headers like "Ron Paul Wins GOP Debate! HMzjoqO" and "Ron Paul Exposes Federal Reserve! SBHBcSO." According to Wired:

The e-mails had phony names attached to real-looking e-mail addresses. When lab researchers examined the IP addresses of the computers from which the messages had been sent, it turned out that they were sprinkled around the globe in countries as far away from each other as South Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom, Nigeria and Brazil.

More after the jump:

"The interesting thing was that we had the same subject line from the same IP address, and it claimed to be from different users from within the United States," [project head Gary] Warner says.

One e-mail was designed to look as if it came from within a major Silicon Valley corporation, he notes. But when the researchers looked up the IP address, the computer from which the note was sent was actually in South Korea.

The emails, which actually include portions of Ron Paul's platform and recite many of the Paul talking points, apparently have been laundered through something called a botnet, which is illegal. The campaign has denied any knowledge of the phenomenon.

Okay. So here's the thing. The massive amount of support Ron Paul gets in the comments section of blogs across the internet can't be faked. (It was so extreme that Redstate.com went all Judge Dredd on its users and banned newbies from discussing Paul.) The money raised and the event turnout can't be faked.

So the well-intentioned Paul supporter who was trying to get his (or her) man's word out through this botnet operation probably did Paul more harm than good. The very real support Paul is getting can now be wrongfully dismissed as no more than internet shenanigans.

Move Over Soldier of Fortune, Here's the New Mag for Mercs

It was only a matter of time before an entrepreneurial publisher seized on the private military contracting boom—and all those untapped ad dollars—in order to give Soldier of Fortune, long the preeminent mag for hired guns, a run for its money. That time has arrived and the mag is called Serviam (Latin for "I will serve"). Edited by conservative author and think tanker J. Michael Waller and published by EEI Communications (whose president, James T. deGraffenreid, is a board member of Frank Gaffney's hawkish Center for Security Policy), the magazine bills itself as a provider of "accurate and actionable information about private sector solutions to promote global stability." Serviam is a sleeker, tamer version of SOF, which, like the companies it caters to, is seeking to soften the mercenary image, casting soldiers-for-hire as international peacekeepers.

To hear Waller tell it in his inaugural editor's note, private security firms are as central to America's heritage as the pilgrims themselves.

Private initiative, innovators, soldiers, pilgrims and missionaries, and entrepreneurs of all stripes founded what became the United States. With vision and ingenuity, toughness and grit, they built a new land of prosperity and safety for all who sought to participate. The early English colonists came to the wilds of America with no military support from their government, despite constant threats from Indians and other European powers. The immigrants and settlers and the investors who financed their expeditions defended themselves on their own and hired professionals to help them.

The spirit that embodied our country’s early pioneers—seeking one’s fortune while generously serving others—ideally motivates the best of today’s providers of private global stability solutions. That’s why in our first issue of Serviam we trace the history of one element of today’s global stability industry: private security contractors, or PSCs. As the nation celebrated the 400th anniversary of the first English settlement in the New World, the establishment of Jamestown, Va., it coincidentally observed four centuries of PSCs in America.

(h/t Danger Room)

Homies and Hospitals

Black people are so weird.

For some reason, which will no doubt take eons to figure out, blacks are those most likely to check themselves out of the hospital against medical advice:

In an analysis of more than 3 million discharges from U.S. hospitals in 2002, the researchers found that 1.4 percent were made against medical advice. Compared with white patients, African Americans were 35 percent more likely to opt for such a "self-discharge," the researchers report in the American Journal of Public Health.

In contrast, Hispanic patients were 10 percent less likely than whites to check out against medical advice...

It's unsurprising that men bolt more often than women and the young more than the old, but why blacks? The discrepancy holds true even when the researchers controlled for income (a brother can't lose his job) and Medicare/Medicaid receipt. Given that past studies (and common sense) indicate that going AWOL from the hospital is bad for your health, this is the kind of issue blacks should tackle as opposed to this one.

The Judge Gets Judged

Finally.

Philadelphia's Bar Association rebuked the judge who refused to punish a rapist since the victim was a prostitute. No comment from the judge but her lawyer put things nicely in perspective: ''The transcript doesn't necessarily tell the whole story,'' Bochetto said. He said Deni also considers a witness' tone of voice, demeanor and other factors in her rulings."

Can't imagine what those "other" factors were.

Just in Time For The Holidays, Blackwater's "Special Edition" Sig Sauer Handgun

Blackwater's recent troubles (the alleged indiscriminate killing of Iraqi civilians by the company's "independent contractors") have led to speculation that Erik Prince, Blackwater's founder and president, may seek to lead his company into new and perhaps less controversial lines of business. What better way to do that than by marketing a signature handgun? That's right, the embattled private military firm has apparently partnered with arms manufacturer Sig Sauer to offer a "Blackwater Special Edition P226," a 9mm handgun. According to the ad (posted to Wired's Danger Zone), "When personal protection of world leaders in high-risk environments is your job then you only want the best equipment." Run and get yours now while supplies last.

Ron Paul — It's Real, Get Over It

It's getting harder and harder for those fascists at Redstate to claim Ron Paul supporters are nothing more than "a bunch of liberals pretending to be Republicans." From Time:

Paul... is not only drawing impressive crowds (more than 2,000 at a postdebate rally at the University of Michigan last month) but also raising tons of cash. In the third quarter of 2007, Paul took in $5.3 million (just slightly less than GOP rival John McCain), mostly in small, individual donations. On Oct. 22, he aired his first TV ads, $1.1 million worth in New Hampshire.

The numbers are even more impressive considering that as of early October, 72% of GOP voters told Gallup pollsters they didn't know enough about Paul to form an opinion.

I'll say it again—insisting that Ron Paul supporters are liberals in disguise, as members of the right are doing, is a particularly pathetic blend of paranoia and denial, and it's only going come back to bite them in the rear. There is something real about Ron Paul (maybe it's the fact that Paul, as Frank Luntz says, is the candidate "the most likely to look at the camera during the debates and say, 'Hey, Washington, f____ you.'") that has tapped into the energy and enthusiasm of a bunch of voters that are internet-savvy, willing to donate, and politically educated. That's a group Republicans ought to be courting, not ostracizing.

And here's a fun Ron Paul anecdote from the Time article. "On Tuesday, both Paul and Tom Cruise were guests on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The actor went to Paul's dressing room to thank him for his work on a bill fighting the forced mental screening of grade-school kids. "Go. Go. Go. Go hard," Cruise said. Paul turned to an aide and asked, "What movies has he been in?""

Update: More on Paul in Iowa.

Just When We Thought We'd Heard the Last of Bernie Kerik

Remember Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani's former business partner, driver, bodyguard and New York City police commissioner? Well, apparently Kerik incurred significant legal fees defending himself from charges that he he let a mob-connected company seeking city contracts renovate his New York City apartment for free. And now, reports the Wall Street Journal, the law firm Fulbright & Jaworski is suing Kerik for more than $200,000 in unpaid legal fees related to all the investigations.

Maybe Rudy's firm should quietly pick up the tab so Kerik can go back under a rock during the presidential election season. Much of the focus on Giuliani of late has been on his autocratic tendencies as mayor of New York, but his close relationship with Kerik remains one of his biggest vulnerabilities, right up there with the fact that he once married his cousin.

October 31, 2007

Safety Commission Says No to Toy Safety?

Yesterday, after the summer's spate of high-profile toy recalls, the Senate Commerce committee passed the most significant legislation affecting CPSC since the agency was created more than thirty years ago. Sponsored by Senator Mark Pryor (D-Arkansas), the bill increases CPSC's budget from $63 million to $142.7 million by 2015, and raises the cap on civil penalties the agency can levy against companies that hide product defects, from $1.8 million to $100 million. The bill gives CPSC a couple of new responsibilities—the agency will credential independent third-party testing labs whose job it will be to safety-test toys, and it will have the authority to investigate and respond to safety-related whistleblower complaints made by company employees.

Acting CPSC chairman Nancy Nord opposes the bill. Voicing her objections in a five-page letter to the committee, Nord argued that CPSC would be overwhelmed by its new responsibilities, and that many of the bill's provisions would do little more than increase litigation. Nord doesn't think CPSC should be in charge of credentialing testing labs, she wants nothing to do with whistleblower complaints, and, using a bizarre logic that apparently makes sense to her (and to industry), concludes that increasing the civil penalty cap to $100 million will make it more likely that truly dangerous products will not reach CPSC's radar screen. Overall, Nord said, the bill would have the "unintended consequence of hampering, rather than furthering consumer product safety."

Most of Nord's complaints are identical to those voiced by industry trade groups, chief among them, the National Association of Manufacturers, whose chief lobbyist, Michael Baroody, President Bush had nominated to fill Nord's job a year earlier. (Baroody withdrew his nomination before this Senate confirmation hearings). House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) has called on Nord to resign. That the agency needs more resources and authority is clear, Pelosi said; the problem is that Nord simply does not understand "the gravity of the situation."

Today Nord issued a statement saying she has no intention of stepping down.

Consumer groups, who have been pushing for many of the bill's provisions for decades, were jubilant after the Commerce committee vote. "This bill is the most comprehensive product safety bill to have emerged from any House of Congress in decades," said Rachel Weintraub, general counsel for the Consumer Federation of America. "It makes giant strides forward in solving problems that have been plaguing CPSC for years."

The full Senate is expected to vote on the bill by Christmas. I write about the CPSC’s history of mishandling toy safety regulation in the current issue of Mother Jones. Read it here.

—E. Marla Felcher

New Webb Sign-On Letter On Iran

Carah Ong of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation reports that Sen. James Webb has started circulating a sign-on letter on Iran. The whole letter is available at the link, but the most important sentence is: "We wish to emphasize that no congressional authority exists for unilateral military action against Iran." It now has 22 Senate co-signers. (The list should be available soon.)

What's the significance of the letter? The answer has three parts:

1. Legally speaking, the letter has no significance whatsoever.
2. Moreover, it's legally false.
3. The legal aspect is essentially irrelevant. It's the political aspect that matters, and here it might have some impact.

Here's a more detailed explanation:

1. No legal significance
Sign-on letters are meaningless, legally speaking. And the number of signers is tiny for this kind of thing.

2. Legally false
There's no settled answer to what powers the president possesses in matters of war and peace. (See below.) Theoretically war can only be declared by Congress, but by precedent and law, they've clearly ceded enormous ground to the executive branch. The War Powers Act explicitly allows presidents to conduct a war for sixty days without congressional authorization. Moreover, Bill Clinton violated even this requirement during the 78-day Kosovo bombing campaign, with no consequences. It would be painful to listen to Hillary Clinton explain why he could do that but Bush can't attack Iran. (And if Bush does attack Iran, count on Republicans bringing up Kosovo over and over again.)

So if Bush decided to bomb Iran tomorrow, he would have an extremely strong legal case. But that doesn't matter anyway. Because:

3. War is purely a political question, and here the Webb letter might matter
I wrote about the general issue last spring in this Mother Jones article. The bottom line is if a president wants to attack another country, laws don't matter by themselves. He can do it if he's willing to pay the political price.

Imagine if Congress passed a law, over Bush's veto, prohibiting him from attacking Iran without further congressional authorization. If he still ordered the military to attack, high-ranking officers might resign. But eventually he'd find someone to do it. And off we'd go. Moreover Bush could rationally calculate that once the war started, Congress wouldn't have the balls to refuse to pass funding for it.

It's true such a law would have an enormous impact...but only because it would raise the political cost of war—causing more resignations, more Republican defections, and more angry editorials—rather than because it would make war "illegal." And here's the important point: Congress can raise the political cost without passing any new laws. See the Mother Jones article for some specific possibilities. But 22 Senators could make an enormous amount of noise if they were motivated and organized, particularly if they included presidential candidates.

It's here the letter might matter. It's unlikely the 22 Senators will end up causing too much trouble; note that (as far as I'm aware) there's been no coordination on this with outside groups. But the interesting thing about life is you truly never know.

Big Pharma Pressures Doctors in the Developing World

A new air conditioner, washing machine, microwave, camera, television, expensive crystals, and a luxury vacation.

A fabulous Showcase Showdown package? Nope. Just some of the loot that pharmaceutical companies like GSK, Novartis, Roche, and Wyeth are offering doctors in the developing world in exchange for prescribing their drugs, according to a report just released by Consumers International.

If all that schwag isn't enough to raise your hackles, consider the fact that as part of their promotional strategies, drug companies often bend the truth about the pills they're pushing. An example from the report:

An article in the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana’s (PSGH) newsletter claimed “Lifestyle modifications [such as diet and exercise] alone are usually ineffective in maintaining weight loss on a long term basis so there is usually the need to institute supported drug therapy.” While other types of treatments are mentioned, Roche’s Xenical is the only branded product named in the article. Below the packaged Xenical pills, as pictured on the left, the article advised readers to get customers to take one pill after a fatty meal.

No wonder, then, that another recent study found that 50 percent of drugs in the developing world are misprescribed.

Last Hired, First Fired but Merrill Lynch's Black CEO Had it Coming

Given all the turmoil that's been rocking the world of high finance, it wasn't surprising to hear that the first head had been chopped off—E. Stanley O'Neal at Merrill Lynch. What was surprising was finding out that he was black and that no protest squads have been dispatched to demand he be reinstated.

I'm money-stupid so what finance news I get is inadvertent, sandwiched between things I actually pay attention to on the radio. If my friends at NPR discussed O'Neal's race, it must have either been during a Manilow-moment or during mommy drive-time when I was rocking to "There's a Hole In My Bucket." Either way, it's remarkable that someone who follows 'black stuff' for a living wasn't hit over the head with discussions of the black CEO who got the boot, just with a CEO who got the boot. It's progress that black robber-barons, while still rare, are common enough that we forget their race after the initial hooplah of mag covers, fawning profiles and NAACP Image Awards and it's progress that, when they screw up, nobody black gives a damn. (Maybe that's because making Wall Street money makes you 'white,' and therefore on your own when you screw up.)

If you want to flashback to your freshman year of college, check the World Socialist Web Site's take on O'Neal and the evils of capitalism in general. Otherwise, check out Clarence Page on why black failure can sometimes equal black equality. As he notes:

O'Neal's departure is a disappointment to those of us who praised his rise after 16 years at the company to become the first African-American to lead a major Wall Street firm. But just as his rise was a sign of progress, so is his slide out the door, as long as it indicates that women and minorities have to meet the same rigorous profitmaking standards that white men do. ...America truly is a land where any kid can grow up to be president of, at least, a multibillion-dollar corporation."

And where any kid can get his hat handed to him for screwing up.

Update: Second Plain Dealer Blogger Leaves

The second of the liberal bloggers on the Cleveland Plain Dealer's political group blog Wide Open has decided to resign over the paper's decision to fire the first liberal blogger, Jeff Coryell. Coryell's termination was due to pressure from Repbulican Congressman Steve LaTourette.

The second blogger's name is Jill Miller Zimon, of Writes Like She Talks, and she's given money to Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown (D); if that means not writing about Brown or his opponents in the future, she's jumping ship. Her thoughts are after the jump.

The PD's decision to say to Jeff, essentially, either follow what we require of our traditional journalists when it comes to political donations and stop writing about a particular political official and his opponent, or leave, is an intolerable restraint for a blogger. It turns the blogger into nothing more than a traditional journalist, already subject to such restraints, who also has to blog.

There is nothing wrong with newsroom journalists being made to blog - we have excellent evidence of that in Ohio. However, Wide Open loses its width and its openness as soon as there is such a restraint. The restraint silences the unique voice that readers seek out from blogs - which is what was sought out by Jean Dubail, and rightly so. And the restraint replaces the blogger's voice with someone who has editorial restraints placed on him or her, just like a traditional journalist.

Do some political bloggers on some blogs agree to such restraints? Very possibly. But this experiment can neither be Wide or Open if I'm going to be told that I can't write about Sherrod Brown or his opponent or Marc Dann or his opponent because I gave them money.

Cleveland Plain-Dealer Fires Blogger After Congressman Complains

In August, the Cleveland Plain Dealer hired four political bloggers, two on the right and two on the left, to write a group blog called "Wide Open."

One of the bloggers on the left was Jeff Coryell, known as YellowDogSammy on Daily Kos. In previous blogging positions, but never with Wide Open, Coryell had frequently criticized Rep. Steve LaTourette (R) of Ohio's 14th district. Coryell had contributed $100 to LaTourette's opponent in the 2008 election. LaTourette complained to the online editor at the Plain Dealer (presumably on the assumption that Coryell would be a pain in LaTourette's side throughout the campaign) who then took the issue to the top editor at the newspaper. They asked Coryell to never write about LaTourette as a condition of working at the paper.

Coryell declined and was fired. What's stunning is that even though the Plain Dealer knows the difference between journalists and bloggers—it hires journalists to write objective news stories and hires bloggers to write partisan commentary—it held a blogger it hired (with the instruction of being partisan) to the non-partisan standard of journalists. Journalists in many newsrooms can't give money to politicians because it might compromise their objectivity in the eyes of their readers. That makes sense. But a blogger isn't objective! They are explicitly hired not to be objective! You would almost expect that they find multiple ways to support the candidates that represent their politics.

What's even stranger is that the firing came only as a result of pressure from an elected official. The Plain Dealer is arguing that the pressure from LaTourette is irrelevant because "had we known that he had contributed to the opponent of a person he was writing about, we wouldn't have hired him in the first place." Except, as Coryell points out, he has donated money to other candidates, but those donations don't seem to be relevant.

On Wide Open, the online editor is saying, "Our concern was that since Jeff and the other Wide Open bloggers are paid, his views might be taken as those of the paper, which could raise legitimate questions about our fairness." Which is nonsense, because no one would expect a blog, that features two liberal posters and two conservative ones, to stand for the views of the paper on each individual post. Moreover, the Plain Dealer could have simply put a disclaimer at the top of the blog reading, "The views of this blog do not represent the views of the Cleveland Plain Dealer."

In the end, the newspaper valued its relationship with a congressman more than it valued one of its employees. Simple as that.

Update: The second liberal blogger on Wide Open has resigned.

Bush PR Maven Hughes Quits for Texas

The AP reports that longtime Bush aide Karen Hughes plans to retire from improving America's image in the world and return to Texas. Alas, she acknowledges, the job is far from done. "Hughes said ... improving the world's view of the United States is a 'long-term challenge' that will outlast her," the AP reports. No arguments there. A recent poll found Turkish approval of the United States fell to nine percent -- the lowest in history. Another poll found fewer than one in five Pakistanis have a positive view of the United States. Hughes, a former TV journalist in Texas and press aide to then Governor Bush, was in the job two years.

Waterboarding is Torture... Period

In light of Mike Mukasey's waffling on whether waterboarding is torture, and Mort Kondracke's recent statement that the procedure is no big deal ("I'm sure it feels like torture, you know, it doesn't result in any lasting damage, but it feels like torture.") I want to point you all to a blog post over at Small Wars Journal that I found via The Plank. The title? "Waterboarding is Torture... Period." And the man making the argument is an authority.

As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people...

Having been subjected to them all, I know these techniques, if in fact they are actually being used, are not dangerous when applied in training for short periods. However, when performed with even moderate intensity over an extended time on an unsuspecting prisoner – it is torture, without doubt. Couple that with waterboarding and the entire medley not only “shock the conscience” as the statute forbids -it would terrify you. Most people can not stand to watch a high intensity kinetic interrogation. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American....

Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim’s face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.

Waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration –usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threaten with its use again and again.

You have to read the whole thing.

Anti-Drug Ads That Might Actually Work

Ever since the first President Bush held up a bag of crack at a 1989 press conference, the federal government has spent many millions of dollars on anti-drug advertising campaigns targeted at teenagers. All those fried-egg spots ("This is your brain on drugs") have been the butt of many a teenage joke, and as it turned out, they were highly effective at actually encouraging kids to smoke pot.

Some new anti-drug ads now airing in Montana, however, might actually be working, perhaps because they weren't made by dorks in Washington. The new campaign was produced by the Montana Meth Project, a private group founded by a local rancher. The ads are way edgier than anything the drug czar's office ever came up with, including one featuring a near-naked girl in a hotel room after her boyfriend pimps her for drug money and another of some kids dumping an unconscious girl on a hospital driveway before speeding away.

A new study suggests that Montana's ads have reduced teen meth use in the state by 45 percent, a figure compelling enough for the White House to get on the bandwagon and broadcast Montana's graphic ads in other states.

The Best Debate Moment Belongs to Joe Biden

The best answer in last night's Democratic presidential debate came not from the leading contenders but from Senator Joe Biden.

In his usual manner, moderator Tim Russert tried to put the candidates into a corner with one of his yes-or-no questions that do not allow for nuance or complexity:

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Biden, would you pledge to the American people that Iran would not build a nuclear bomb on your watch?

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards each wiggled his or her way out of the question, essentially pledging to do what they could to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Then Russert turned to Biden, and Biden threw the question back in Russert's face.

SEN. BIDEN: I would pledge to keep us safe. If you told me, Tim -- and this is not -- this is complicated stuff. We talk about this in isolation. The fact of the matter is the Iranians may get 2.6 kilograms of highly enriched uranium; the Pakistanis have hundreds, thousands of kilograms of highly enriched uranium.

If by attacking Iran to stop them from getting 2.6 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, the government in Pakistan falls, who has missiles already deployed, with nuclear weapons on them, that can already reach Israel, already reach India, then that's a bad bargain.

Presidents make wise decisions informed not by a vacuum in which they operate, by the situation they find themselves in the world. I will do all in my power to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, but I will never take my eye off the ball.

What is the greatest threat to the United States of America: 2.6 kilograms of highly enriched uranium in Tehran or an out of control Pakistan? It's not close.

Biden was taking the mature approach to foreign policy, daring to challenge the false dichotomy: let Iran go nuclear or start a war. A nuclear-armed Iran would indeed be a problem, but a U.S. military strike against Iran could cause greater problems. National security is not always an either/or proposition. Yet Russert, with his gotcha query, was trying to force the complicated Iran issue into such a box. This sort of framing does pervert the national debate, for it precludes serious discussion of the matter at hand and careful consideration of consequences. It also suggests that Americans can have it all—that is, a nuclear-free Iran without creating other difficulties.

Biden reminded Russert and the viewers that life ain't that simple and that decisionmakers and commentators have to be able to assess and balance risks. A nuclear Iran? No one wants that. But Biden, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, was suggesting that no one should get hysterical about a nuclear Iran—particularly if doing so leads to actions that trigger greater trouble. This sort of perspective is usually absent from the talk-show talk about Iran.

Political handicappers are assessing the debate by how effectively Obama and Edwards attacked Clinton and how effectively she deflected the blows. (Short version: Edwards slammed Clinton better than Obama did; Clinton defended herself well.) But the top moment of the night belonged to Biden, and it was a moment of pure substance.

Blackwater: Your Destination for "Rapid Response, Turn Key Solutions"

Blackwater's crisis management campaign has now ventured beyond Eric Prince's tightly scripted television appearances and into the realm of Orwellian propaganda. If you need a "turn key solution" to your pesky insurgency problem, you know who to call...

Debate Reaction: Hillary Clinton's Me-Too Problem

Hillary Clinton has a Me-Too problem, and it was illustrated perfectly at last night's Democratic presidential debate in Philadelphia.

Here's the problem. Clinton allows Barack Obama and John Edwards (and sometimes even Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd) to dictate the policy proposals of the Democratic field. By and large, she puts forward relatively moderate ideas that rely heavily on conventional thinking—until one or more of her competitors takes a more bold, populist stand. Then Clinton immediately embraces the new stand, and the competitor or competitors have nothing on which to run against her.

I wrote a comment on David's post on this yesterday, regarding opposition to Michael Mukasey's nomination to be attorney general. Clinton announced she opposed the nomination, though she was following Edwards, who was following Obama, who was following Dodd. "So is this how a candidate maintains frontrunner status?" I wrote. "Make sure there is not an inch of difference between her and any other candidate? In a word, mimicry?"

That doesn't strike me as true leadership. And yesterday's debate had a moment that illustrated this perfectly. Clinton was asked by Tim Russert if she supported New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's proposal to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. According to Russert, Clinton had told a group of newspaper editors that the idea made sense. Clinton responded approvingly, saying, "What Governor Spitzer is trying to do is fill the vacuum left by the failure of this administration to bring about comprehensive immigration reform." Illegal immigrants are on the roads and will get into accidents. It's a reality, she said, and we ought to have a system to handle it.

But then Chris Dodd criticized the idea, saying that a driver's license is a privilege and not a right. Clinton instantly said, "I just want to add, I did not say that it should be done." Dodd pounced: "Wait a minute. No, no, no. You said yes, you thought it made sense to do it." Clinton responded by trying to explain that Spitzer's plan included three different kind of licenses. She promptly got lost in the weeds and accused the assembled of playing "gotcha." With that, it was off to the races.

Edwards: "Unless I missed something, Senator Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes just a few minutes ago, and I think this is a real issue for the country. I mean, America is looking for a president who will say the same thing, who will be consistent, who will be straight with them. Because what we've had for seven years is double-talk from Bush and from Cheney, and I think America deserves us to be straight."

Obama: "I was confused on Senator Clinton's answer. I can't tell whether she was for it or against it, and I do think that is important. You know, one of the things that we have to do in this country is to be honest about the challenges that we face. Immigration is a difficult issue. But part of leadership is not just looking backwards and seeing what's popular, or trying to gauge popular sentiment. It's about setting a direction for the country, and that's what I intend to do as president."

And it wasn't an isolated case. On multiple occasions throughout the night, when Clinton was the third or fourth respondent to a question, she would begin her response by saying something to the effect of, "I agree with everything that my colleagues have just said." After she spent the night getting slammed on Iraq, Iran, and even on driver's licenses, the best she could do was tell everyone she had the same position as everybody on everything.

Update: Transcript of the debate here. Note that Chris Dodd supports the decriminalization of marijuana and Dennis Kucinich admits that he believes he has seen a UFO. Courage points for both, I suppose.

Update Update: A little on why the Spitzer proposal makes sense over at DMI Blog.

October 30, 2007

Blotted Democracy in India or Just no Democracy at All?

Recently, the Human Rights Watch, in collaboration with Ensaaf, an Indian human rights organization, published a report addressing the impunity given to the Indian government for its human rights violations during the Punjab counterinsurgency from 1984-1995. Tens of thousands of people died and thousands more were the victims of arbitrary detention, torture, extrajudicial executions, and enforced disappearances. To hide the evidence of their brutal actions, Indian security forces secretly cremated its victims. In just one district of Punjab, more than 6,000 cremations were uncovered by two human rights activists. The Indian government itself confessed to having illegally cremated more than 2,097 individuals in Amritsar alone. No one has been indicted to date. The HRW points out that the Indian government looks to the Punjab counterinsurgency operations as a model to follow elsewhere in India.

There has been a frightening amount of impunity granted to the state and its security forces: the anti Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in which the state was complicit in the killing of more than 2,000 people; the situation in Kashmir, the site of the largest troop deployment during peacetime in the world, where an estimated 40,000-60,000 have been killed and thousands are missing; and the atrocities in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, including rape, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings which have all been documented.

The irony is that every time a violation like this occurs, it is referred to as a "blot on Indian democracy." Yet these situations don't appear to be deviations from an otherwise functioning democracy, but rather, something far more symptomatic of a state which has not only evaded, but disregarded, accountability, justice, and equality for all citizens.

—Neha Inamdar

New Media Frontiers: Arkansas Ho!

It's the kind of hyper-local story that's always been the bread and butter of mid-sized papers like the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: A homeowner in suburban Sherwood confronts a man trying to steal a four-wheeler from his residence, fires pistol shots into the dark and, two days later, the would-be thief is found dead in a nearby ditch.

That story, to me, screams out for a few dozen column inches of cold, smudgy newsprint. Which is why it feels so odd that the website of the Little Rock-based Dem-Gaz now features a professionally-edited video report on the Sherwood incident, with swooshing digital graphics and a spiffy "Arkansas Online" intro sequence. There's something incongruous about watching an old-time Arkansan (or, as the really old-timers prefer, Arkansawyer) in a camo shirt talking about "firing five times into the top of these pine trees and … [emptying] the rest of the magazine of the gun into the creek bank" on a web-only clip with such high production values. Maybe that's because, amid the chatter about newspapers' new media imperative and the flash that goes with it, we forget that local stories are often, well, unexceptional.

I can say it's definitely a milestone that the rock-solid D-G (disclosure: I once worked there), whose owners are notoriously stuck in their ways, has finally embraced online journalism. The paper's homepage, released earlier this year, is flashy and content-heavy and looks great. New media has officially arrived in Arkansas. Whether the model is sustainable hinges on two issues: Is this really how folks want to get their local news? And will the extra videographers and web designers prove financially feasible?

—Justin Elliott

All I Want for Christmas is a Biodiesel Hummer. No, Really.

Think there are no real inventors anymore? That would be news to Johnathan Goodwin, proud creator of the world's most fuel-efficient Hummer.

Read the rest of this post on Mother Jones' environment and health blog, The Blue Marble.

—Casey Miner

Breaking: Supreme Court Halts Execution in Mississippi

Today seven justices voted to postpone the execution of Mississippi death-row inmate Earl Wesley Berry, with Justices Scalia and Alito dissenting (predictably). This move sets the stage for what could be a national moratorium on the death penalty until the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of lethal injection next year.

—Celia Perry

Trumping Bush's Troop Card

We have more vets every day, and, when this endless war finally peters to a close, we'll have even more ex-troops, and many of them will be uninsured. A new study, which will appear in December's American Journal for Public Health, finds that nearly 2 million veterans (12.7 percent of non-elderly vets) were uninsured and ineligible for VA care in 2004, up 290,000 since 2000. An additional 3.8 million members of their households were also uninsured and ineligible for Veterans Affairs services.

Other findings:

-Of the 1.768 million uninsured, only a third were Vietnam-era, the rest were veterans who served during “other eras” (including the Iraq and Gulf Wars).

-Uninsured veterans had as much trouble getting medical care as other uninsured Americans. 26.5% of uninsured veterans failed to get needed care due to costs; 31.2% had delayed care due to costs; 49.1% had not seen a doctor within the past year; and two-thirds failed to receive preventive care.

-Nearly two-thirds of uninsured veterans were employed.

And those who are uninsured are often turned away from VA care. Many face waiting lists, unaffordable co-payments for specialty care, or the lack of VA facilities in their communities. And while Bush has pledged to change the "antiquated system," largely in response to the cockroach dust-up at Walter Reed in February, remember that it was his administration that approved an early 2003 order that halted enrollment of most middle-income veterans.

This news, not surprising. But seriously, Bush really needs to cease playing the troop card ad nauseum. Earlier today even he used the "wounded warrior" defense to chastise Congress for a combined spending bill. And still, year after year, Bush's budgets make it more difficult for vets to receive care.

Bush is consistent in his speeches, supporting our troops, rooting out terror, yada yada, and one familiar, oft-repeated refrain is assuring our troops we will "give them everything they need to succeed." I guess he means everything they need to succeed in uniform, after that all bets are off.

And if David Duke Could Sing Like Donnie McClurkin?

If you want to hear what Donnie McClurkin said at the Obama rally this weekend, here it is. Let's hope he's a better singer than theologian. Given the backlash, what can be the meaning of allowing him to repeat his controversial message?

I've been waiting for thoughtfully ardent gay rights activist Andrew Sullivan to weigh in on all this but he hasn't seemed very exercised about. Here's his lengthiest statement to date on the subject:

To my mind, this isn't ultimately about the difficulty of forging any kind of alliance between gays and African-Americans. It is the inherent danger of mixing religion with politics. That's called Christianism. Some of us have not spent the last few years trying to rescue conservatism from the toxin of theocracy only to support a candidate who wants to do the same thing on the left. I don't think Obama wants to go that far; I still believe that broadly speaking, his is the only major candidacy right now that offers the kind of change we need. But what happened on that stage was inexcusable, stupid, and damaging. I don't blame any gay American for jumping the Obama ship over it.

I think the salient issue is a black hyper-religiosity which gets a pass on its anti-intellectualism (even for something a-rational), hypocrisy, misogyny, and bigotry, all things we looked to Obama, the thinking person's black Protestant, to confront. There was a time, not so long ago, when he was going to show liberal Dems how to reclaim religion for the left:

But somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart. It got hijacked. Part of it's because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, who've been all too eager to exploit what divides us. At every opportunity, they've told evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their Church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage; school prayer and intelligent design. There was even a time when the Christian Coalition determined that its number one legislative priority was tax cuts for the rich. I don't know what Bible they're reading, but it doesn't jibe with my version.

But I'm hopeful because I think there's an awakening taking place in America. People are coming together around a simple truth - that we are all connected, that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper. And that it's not enough to just believe this - we have to do our part to make it a reality. My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won't be fulfilling God's will unless I go out and do the Lord's work.

Was it the Lord's work he did with McClurkin? The majority of blacks say yes, this 'jibes with their version'. Their McClurkin-translation Bibles tell them so and their beliefs may not be interrogated.

For all this groovy, transcendent talk, the fact remains that as long as a black gospel choir shares the stage, you can spew anything you want; black religiosity is the one positive stereotype America employs so as to feel better about all the negative ones in play and it may not be critiqued. Why? Because whites don't expect very much in the way of black complexity -who cares if they make sense or not? And, it's a nuisance - look how much trouble that morally wracked King-fellow caused. Obama was supposed to be different. He was supposed to help raise black and liberal consciousness but if he's going to be just as kneejerk, unreflective and hypocritical when it suits him, then religion will continue to both bedevil and enhance black life, let alone America.

Whether or not McClurkin is a reason to vote against Obama is every individual's to decide. Whether or not he's different from any other 'jack leg' preacher? The window of opportunity for distancing himself from, let alone rejecting, black religion's excess is closing fast.

There's Hillary

As I noted minutes ago, this morning Barack Obama declared his opposition to Michael Mukasey's nomination to be attorney general. Then John Edwards quickly did the same. Though Clinton, through a spokesperson, had recently said she was troubled by Mukasey's statements on torture and executive power, she had stopped short of saying she would vote against him. The question I posed in the previous posting was this: could Hillary Clinton be far behind? The answer turns out to be, no. At mid-day, Clinton announced she will vote against George Bush's A.G. pick. It's another sign that Clinton will not give an inch—or an hour—to her opponents.

A Junket by Any Other Name..

So HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt is heading off to Switzerland and the Netherlands next week to learn more about those countries' health care systems, which have been widely touted as a model for what we might do in the U.S. Of course, Bush administration officials tell the New York Times that they have no plans to actually do anything with whatever information Leavitt gleans from his trip.

"We don’t have anything cooking that we haven’t announced,” the department official said. “We would not endorse a system like the Netherlands or Switzerland’s. But if there’s something we could learn about their system, we should learn about it.”

So either the trip is just designed to indulge Leavitt's intellectual curiosity—or it's a chance for him to get out of town on the taxpayer dime and pretend that his boss didn't just derail a major piece of legislation that would have given a few million poor kids health insurance right here at home. No word on whether Leavitt will be commandeering the CDC's private jet for the trip, but hopefully he'll live blog his European vacation.

Obama and Edwards Oppose Mukasey; Where's Hillary Clinton?

For months, Barack Obama and John Edwards have been trying to find issues that separate them from Hillary Clinton. On the Iraq war, HRC's strategy has been to provide neither of her main challengers much maneuvering room. Like them, she wants out. There may be differences in rhetoric or positioning. Edwards calls for an immediate pullout of 40,000 or more troops; Obama has urged withdrawing one or two brigades a month; Clinton has not been so specific. But these distinctions have not yet allowed Obama or Edwards to turn the war into an issue of traction.

Now comes Michael Mukasey. This morning, both Edwards and Obama announced they oppose his nomination as attorney general. Mukasey was once a shoo-in for the job, (If you Google "shoo-in," the third item that appears is a New York Times story on Mukasey. Literally.) But the judge has run into problems by refusing to state whether he considers waterboarding torture. In doing so, he is joining the Bush administration's word game. George W. Bush declares he doesn't torture, but he and his crew refuse to define torture. Though much of the world considers waterboarding to be torture, the Bush aides won't state if it's included in their definition of torture. So it seems Bush might well be saying "we don't torture" while thinking "waterboarding ain't torture." Mukasey also got into trouble during his confirmation hearing for essentially endorsing the administration's view that Bush is above the law when Bush determines that the Constitution allows him to be above the law.

Regarding Mukasey, this morning, Obama said,

We don't need another attorney general who believes that the president enjoys an unwritten right to secretly ignore any law or abridge our constitutional freedoms simply by invoking national security. And we don't need another attorney general who looks the other way on issues as profound as torture.

Shortly after that, Edwards released a statement saying,

George Bush's political appointees at the Justice Department have twisted the law to justify waterboarding and other interrogation techniques that have long been considered torture. Now the man who is supposed to clean up the Justice Department--Judge Michael Mukasey--says he does not know whether waterboarding is torture or not. What more information does he need? Waterboarding was used in the Spanish inquisition and considered a war crime in World War II.

Mukasey has also said that the president doesn't necessarily have to abide by acts of Congress. We need an Attorney General who will put the rule of law above the administration's short-term political interests, and Mukasey has already shown that he's unwilling to do that.

The sentiment among Democratic senators about Mukasey is shifting. Enough to imperil his nomination? Maybe not yet. As for Clinton, a Clinton spokesperson said that she is "deeply troubled by Judge Mukasey's unwillingness to clearly state his views on torture and unchecked executive power" and that Clinton has not yet decided how she will vote on the Mukasey nomination. But with Obama and Edwards opposing Bush's pick, can she be far behind?

Blackwater Tosses Local Reporters From Town Meeting

Blackwater USA likes to think of itself as a good neighbor. Last Thursday evening, the company hosted a community meeting at its 7,000-acre compound in Moyock, North Carolina. The twice annual event, organized by Blackwater President Gary Jackson, is meant to update neighbors about the firm's activities and allow local citizens to air complaints about Blackwater's impact on the surrounding community.

Sounds great, right? Well, in typical Blackwater fashion, the meeting—which focused solely on hyper-local issues like noise pollution and traffic congestion—was closed to reporters. No national security-related topics were discussed, nor were the company's activities in Iraq, but nevertheless reporters from Norfolk television station WTKR were turned away at the compound's front gate. According to a report on WTKR's website, several local citizens were also given the boot "because they did not live in neighborhoods next door to Blackwater." Blackwater reportedly publicized the meeting with a small advertisement in several local newspapers. Responding to criticism that it did not do enough to encourage local turnout, the company has pledged to advertise future meetings more aggressively.

October 29, 2007

Pirates, Somali Territory, and Hijacked Benzene on the Golden Mori

When will the presidential candidate stop dodging the issue of piracy on the high seas? We need to know how they will deal with situations like this.

Does Obama Need a New Issue to Catch Clinton?

Over at the Washington Monthly, Kevin Drum is arguing that the only thing that is going to pull Barack Obama even with Hillary Clinton is a brand new issue that catches Clinton off-guard. Obama's current plan of intensifying his attacks on Clinton, within the realm of commonly discussed issues, isn't going to work because, in Drum's words, there's "no there there." That is, the differences between Obama and Clinton aren't substantial enough to get anyone excited.

So what does Drum suggest? "Propose that the United States unilaterally offer to reopen its embassy in Tehran. Ditto for Cuba and North Korea." Or, "Propose a specific list of Bush administration executive orders that he would rescind." The first would get Obama killed by every Democratic contender, TV pundit, and foreign policy establishment wonk. The legitimacy of those three groups aside, the gain here is dubious and the price is simply too heavy. The second idea is a darn good one, and I wouldn't be surprised if all the Democratic candidates do something similar in time.

What did Drum's readers suggest? Ending the drug war and legalizing marijuana. Impeachment and war crimes. Naming a killer VP choice. Gay rights. National service.

I'm not sure any of these are going light the voting public on fire—all would energize a portion of the Democratic base, but none would energize everybody and none would put him in a good position in the general. (How many undecideds and Republicans do you think he'll win over after going to war over legalizing marijuana?) Besides, issues aren't at the heart of the Obama campaign. Obama is. It's a campaign about him. It's a campaign about a man who will restore the American dream, bring people together, change our politics, and on and on and on. You know the rhetoric. If that doesn't strike enough Americans as inspirational, I don't know that any new issues are going to save the campaign.

Rudy and Authoritarianism

This New Republic article on the origins of Rudy Giuliani's authoritarian instincts (hint: it developed long before he met the near-fascists he calls his foreign policy advisers), has a passage that strongly suggests America's Mayor is really George Bush Lite. Check it out:

Giuliani's seemingly insatiable appetite for authority was evident, first and foremost, in the way he ran his administration. Obsessed, as always, with loyalty, he demanded that power be centralized in his hands and that he receive credit for any of the administration's achievements. Even the Department of Environmental Protection's daily reports on the water level in the reservoir had to be cleared through Giuliani's press office before being released. He also replaced Dinkins-era officials with loyalists, some of whom had little preparation for their jobs. Tony Carbonetti, the grandson of Harold Giuliani's friend, was put in charge of the Office of Appointments, even though his previous experience consisted mostly of running a bar in Boston. According to Kirtzman, "one agency estimated that, of patronage hires, 60 percent were qualified, 20 percent had no experience, and 20 percent were 'dirtbags.' "

Placing loyalty above merit? Check and check. Unqualified losers that lack qualifications in high-level positions? Check. Altering scientific reports for political ends? Check.

The Rise and Fall of Lyndon LaRouche

If you've always been confused by the Lyndon LaRouche supporters who hand you pamphlets when you coming out of the subway (anyway subway in America, it feels), you should check out Avi Klein's article in the Washington Monthly. Those pamphlets, for many decades, have been the lifeblood of a bizarre movement that has been as ineffective as it has been tenacious.

In the almost forty years since its inception, despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a week in operations and annually printing millions of books and magazines, the LaRouche operation has had no significant effect on American politics. It is remarkable in its impotence.

Despite the unrelenting loyalty of his followers, LaRouche has never come remotely close to being elected president. In fact, no LaRouche cadre has been elected to office at any level higher than school board. Nor have his economic theories attained any kind of recognition. The LaRouche-Riemann Method, an economic model that LaRouche calls "the most accurate method of economic forecasting in existence," has gone unnoticed by the social science indexes. Many former members admit to not understanding it.

In one perverse way, of course, the movement did work. For thirty years, Ken Kronberg printed, and all the other members edited and distributed, everything that LaRouche wrote, whether anybody understood it or not. If, in the late hours of the night, LaRouche determined that 50,000 copies of his latest essay on the Treaty of Westphalia needed to be distributed around the country, his followers did their best to oblige.

But no longer. The LaRouche movement is on its last legs. The 2008 election will be the first in 32 years in which LaRouche does not run for president. Share your LaRouche stories in the comments.

A New Twist on "Sleeping It Off"?

Late last night, a fatal car accident forced the closure of the Capital Beltway, the major highway that loops around Washington D.C. According to the Washington Post, when police reopened the roadway a few hours later, they discovered several cars occupied by drunk people who had passed out while waiting for police to clear the accident scene. They were hauled off to jail for driving while intoxicated. Clearly all those "Who's Your Bud?" ads aren't doing the job...

Bush White House Outdoes Rose Mary Woods

Rose Mary Woods, Richard Nixon's White House secretary, only managed to hide eighteen and a half minutes of her boss's secretly tape-recorded conversations. The National Security Archive, a nonprofit outfit, says that the Bush White House deleted at least 5 million email records it should have kept. The Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have filed lawsuits that aim to recover the missing emails. (See Dan Schulman's piece on "The Emails the White House Doesn't Want You to See.")

Might this mass of data be a treasure trove of the administration's dark secrets? No one will know unless these lawsuits uncover the missing emails. On Friday, the Archive filed a motion requesting expedited discovery against the Executive Office of the President to determine what emails are missing from the White House email system and backup tapes. In a press release put out today, Archive General Counsel Meredith Fuchs says, "The pressing need for the information arises out of troubling representations by the EOP and its components about its document preservation obligations and the location of its backup tapes. We need information so we can take steps to preserve all possible sources of e-mails deleted from the White House servers."

Here's how the Archive recaps the legal case:

The Archive filed this case on September 5, 2007, against the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and its components seeking to recover at least 5 million federal e-mail records improperly deleted by the EOP. After the government failed to provide adequate assurances that backups and copies of the missing e-mail would be preserved throughout this litigation, on October 11, 2007, CREW filed a motion for a temporary restraining order against the White House defendants in its case. A hearing in CREW's case was held before Magistrate Judge Facciola on October 17, 2007. Magistrate Judge Facciola issued a Report and Recommendation on October 19, 2007, advising the Court to grant a temporary restraining order. The government has filed objections to Magistrate Judge Facciola's Report and Recommendation.

In other words, the Bush administration is doing what it can to dodge its pursuers. CREW notes,

The White House objected to the entry of any order [to preserve email records during the litigation], despite its refusal to give adequate assurances that all necessary back-up copies of the millions of deleted emails are being preserved, and objected to that part of the order that requires the White House to maintain back-up copies in a manner that makes them usable.

Bottom line: the White House is refusing to state what was lost and is refusing to vow it will preserve records that might be needed to recover what was lost. Rose Mary Woods would be impressed.

Check In on the Iowa Polling: Huckabee Up, Edwards Down

With both Iowa caucuses (the Republican and the Democratic) now firmly entrenched on January 3rd, let's take a look at some poll numbers.

According to a University of Iowa Hawkeye Poll, Mike Huckabee is a legitimate top-tier candidate in Iowa. He is now in third place (actually a statistical tie for second) with 12.8 percent. Rudy Giuliani has 13.1 percent, and the frontrunner, Mitt Romney aka Mr. Fantastic, has 36.2 percent. Romney has similarly huge leads in all the early states. Worth noting: (1) In August, Huckabee polled at two percent in the same poll. (2) Huckabee has spent $1.7 million on his campaign while Mr. Fantastic has spent $53.6 million, an object lesson in the limited power of money in politics. Who knew?

On the Democratic side, John Edwards has slipped a bit. His 20 percent support in Iowa represents a six point drop since August. Hillary Clinton tops the field with 28.9 percent and Obama places second with 26.6 percent. It's too bad John Edwards doesn't have this hilarious/awesome South Carolina mojo going for him in Iowa. I think that would win over a lot of caucus-goers.

Update: Here's an even more remarkable fact, considering the money disparity between Huckabee and Romney: Huckabee is actually beating Romney, though just barely, in a national Rasmussen poll. Maybe the Log Cabin Republicans are more effective that we know.

First Lady Elected President

The one on the left, not the one on the right. Early results from yesterday's Argentinian presidential election show that current first lady Cristina Fernandez will be the next president. Fernandez will be Argentina's first elected female head of state.

Fernandez is married to President Nestor Kirchner, who oversaw Argentina's emergence from financial crisis. The challenge of her presidency will be to capitalize on the stability her husband's term brought to the country.

Some are worried that a political dynasty, obviously already in place, could get out of control: Kirchner is eligible to take over at the end of his wife's term in 2011. Argentina has a history of spousal politics. Juan Perón was president from 1946-1955 and 1973-1974. His second wife, the famous Eva Perón, almost ran for vice president in 1951, and his third wife, Isabel Perón, took over the presidency after her husband's death. She was ousted in a military coup less that two years later.

Some of Obama's Best Friends Are Gay. No, Really

Are we supposed to applaud Sen. Obama's courage in standing up to the "special interests"?

Despite the backlash, gay-bashing preacher-singer Donnie McClurkin brought the noise to the contender's South Carolina, pander-to-black-hatred tour stop yesterday. So, not only is he legitimizing black bigotry, he's also a coward by choosing not to share a stage with McClurkin. Instead, the campaign scrounged around for a token to prove that some of it's best friends were gay:

Sidden is the white, gay pastor added to the concert bill as a last minute compromise by the Obama campaign. Sidden's appearance was notably brief and anti-climactic: He said a short prayer to the auditorium at the very beginning of the program, when the arena was only about half full, and then he left.

We're supposed to believe that Obama thought CP Time wouldn't be in effect for once?

Disgraceful, all around. Whether Obama had ever intended to attend the concert, he should have after the scandal broke or he should have cancelled it and admitted the error (pot calling the kettle black watch: didn't he hammer Sen. Clinton for waffling on admitting her Iraq War vote was a mistake?). Hiding behind the black masses and their unassailable hyper-religiosity will not soon be forgotten by those supporters who thought him the man who'd bring integrity and truth-telling back to Washington. If he doesn't soon answer this question, his silence will do the job for him: how does Obama reconcile his mild, but clear, support for gay rights with an embrace of those who believe God "saves" believers from the sin of homosexuality? No points, Senator, for hiding behind the bigotry of the black masses while positioning yourself as he who will tell blacks, and therefore the country, what they don't want to hear. I guess he just means the ones who'll still vote for him no matter what he does.

Maybe it's true what they (used to) say (out loud) about blacks and music: funk it up and anything blacks' ignorantly fear becomes sacrosanct and you, a racist, for objecting.

Iowa's Democratic Caucus Now January 3rd

The Iowa Democratic Party has just moved its caucus up to January 3rd, the day on which the Iowa Republican caucus is already scheduled. Political journalists everywhere rejoice at the idea of a New Year's in Des Moines...

Press release after the jump.

Iowa Democratic Party Announces New Caucus Date of January 3, 2008

Des Moines – After consultation with Chairman Dean of the Democratic National Committee, state Democratic party chairs, Governor Chet Culver and Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democratic Party State Central Committee tonight approved an amendment to the Iowa Delegate selection plan allowing the Iowa Democratic caucuses to take place on Thursday, January 3, 2008.

"This date maintains the important common-sense principle of beginning the delegate selection process in the same calendar year as the election for which we are selecting delegates," said Scott Brennan, Iowa Democratic Party State Chair. "But the overarching principle is to retain the importance of the caucuses. Holding the caucuses on the same day as the Republican Party of Iowa shows solidarity and unity in working to protect Iowa’s First-in-the-Nation status, an important argument in the years to come."

The State Central Committee is the governing body of the Iowa Democratic Party. There are 43 voting members of the Committee. They were called to meet on Thursday, October 25 at 3pm, and following the party constitution, met tonight, three days later.

November 3, 2007

November 2, 2007

November 1, 2007

October 31, 2007

October 30, 2007

October 29, 2007

RECENT ENTRIES

ARCHIVE

RECENT COMMENTS

SEARCH MOTHER JONES

TODAY ON...

BLOG LINKS

IN PRINT

DONATE TODAY