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Video: Alternative
Views
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Censured Casualties
features rare footage
of war crimes against the Iraqi people suffered during
and after the Gulf War. The footage is from former Attorney
General Ramsey
Clark in his attempt to document the injustice
of United States military actions in the region.
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Video: Alternative
Views
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Another Unknown
War
features a film on the
struggle of the indigenous people of West Papua to remain
sovereign in the face of an Indonesian invasion backed
by world capital. Footage of Noam
Chomsky on Western involvments in the region and
the relation to East Timor.
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Doug's New Books & Related
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TV/Radio
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Tuesday, January 31, 2006
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Monday, January 30, 2006
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Sunday, January 29, 2006
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Debate on Climate Shifts to Issue of Irreparable Change
have we reached tipping point to global warming? will there be irreparable damage to environment because Bush administration not only failed to do anything positive about environmental protection but unleashed multiple destructions of the earth?
Debate on Climate Shifts to Issue of Irreparable Change
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Bob Herbert: 'United States is faced with a chief executive who can do no right'
George W. Bush, wrong on every major issue and an Abject Failure
The Smirking Chimp: "Bob Herbert: 'United States is faced with a chief executive who can do no right'"
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Thursday, January 26, 2006
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Peter Daou: The triangle: 'Matthews, Moore, Murtha, and the media'
good analysis of how media framing of political narratives of the moment benefit the Bush administration
The Smirking Chimp
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Sydney H. Schanberg: 'The unseen war in Iraq'
fabled war reporter indicates how the real war in Iraq, the US Air War, is largely invisible....
The Smirking Chimp
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Al Gore, Sundance's Leading Man
Al Gore, a tireless educator on dangers of Global Warming, time is running out to deal with this problem....
Al Gore, Sundance's Leading Man
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Wednesday, January 25, 2006
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Bush the Incompetent
No doubt about it, Bush is one of the most incompetent Presidents in US history and Incompetent will be part of his legacy....
Bush the Incompetent
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Mr. Abramoff's Meetings
Even the Washington Post is making clear that Abramoff had close relations with Rove and possibly Bush; unpacking this could do the villains in....
Mr. Abramoff's Meetings
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Tuesday, January 24, 2006
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Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
Latest on Bush administration scandals from Salon:
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GOP congressman: Abramoff a "partisan, conservative Republican activist"
Well, you can give him points for honesty.
At a time when his party and some in the press are still trying to argue that the Jack Abramoff scandal is a bipartisan affair, Rep. John Doolittle -- a California Republican said to be under investigation in the case -- says he always thought of Abramoff as "a friend" for one simple reason: "I liked him, frankly, because he was a partisan, conservative Republican activist."
As the Sacramento Bee reports, Doolittle made the comments during his first extended interview on the Abramoff case since he was implicated in it a year and a half ago. The eight-term congressman consented to talk with Tom Sullivan, a conservative radio talk show host on the Sacramento station that gave Rush Limbaugh his start, only after Sullivan offered to tape the interview in advance and let Doolittle kill it if he didn't like how it turned out.
As you might expect, the interview wasn't exactly probing. While Sullivan didn't stoop to praising his guest for his altruistic ways, as Chris Matthews did for Tom DeLay Monday, he did give him a platform for distancing himself from the confessed felon of a lobbyist. "I've probably had about a million dollars' worth of negative publicity here locally, not to mention across the United States, where someone has put my name out there saying I'm one of [the lawmakers under investigation]," Doolittle said. "But I don't believe that. I think the fact they haven't contacted me should be a pretty good indicator. If there's any truth to that, come investigate me. Come contact me, because I know what the truth is, and I'll come out with a clean record."
As the Bee reports, Doolittle's campaign committees received $4,000 from Abramoff himself and almost $140,000 more from his clients and associates. The Associated Press says that Doolittle used Abramoff's luxury skybox at the MCI Center in Washington without initially reporting it, and that his wife and his former chief of staff both worked for the lobbyist. The grand jury investigating the Abramoff case has subpoenaed records from Doolittle's wife's company, and at least one House Republican has said that Doolittle has some explaining to do, especially if he wants to hold onto his spot on House Republican leadership team.
In another sign that he has slipped off the talking points, Doolittle suggested that he was unimpressed with the calls for ethics reform. "Our leaders think we have to show that we're doing something," he said in the interview. "This is about appearance. Those ethics reforms that are being proposed in my opinion have almost no bearing on whatever happened in the Abramoff matter, and I'm not sure they're terribly wise things to do."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [12:05 EST, Jan. 24, 2006]
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A hole in the president's Katrina defense
On Sept. 1, 2005, as much of New Orleans sat under water, George W. Bush appeared on "Good Morning America" to defend his administration's flat-footed response to Hurricane Katrina. "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees," he said.
We knew then that it wasn't true -- experts had warned for years that the city's levees would stand no chance against a large storm -- but we didn't know whether that knowledge had been delivered to the White House. Now we do. As the New York Times reports today, the Homeland Security Department warned the White House at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29 -- which is to say hours before Katrina struck New Orleans -- that "any storm rated Category 4 or greater will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [10:05 EST, Jan. 24, 2006]
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For Bush's spying program, a bad poll, a new name and some false facts
There's a new poll out on the president's warrantless spying program, and the results aren't so pretty for the White House. Fifty-one percent of Americans think the Bush administration was wrong to intercept conversations of U.S. citizens without warrants, and 58 percent say it's time to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate.
Of course, the poll was taken before George W. Bush unveiled a shiny new name for his spying program yesterday. "Warrantless spying on American citizens" was always a little unwieldy, so -- as the Associated Press reports -- the president is now calling it his "Terrorist Surveillance Program."
If only it were as simple as that. The president and his supporters say that most Americans would want to know if someone inside this country is talking with members of al-Qaida. About that, we have no doubt. We also have no doubt that if administration officials had gone to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and said, "Hey, we have probable cause to believe that Mrs. Johnson in Sioux Falls has been ringing Ayman al-Zawahiri," a warrant would have issued forthwith.
But that's not what they did. They simply helped themselves to the authority to eavesdrop and didn't bother asking for a warrant, first or after the fact. And while the White House insists that it can be trusted to protect Americans' civil liberties all by itself, Gen. Michael Hayden -- the president's No. 2 man on intelligence -- pretty much conceded Monday that the National Security Agency wasn't, in fact, using the legal standard that the FISA court would have applied if the NSA had asked for a warrant as the law requires.
As Editor & Publisher has it, Knight Ridder reporter Jonathan Landay asked Hayden during a talk at the National Press Club Monday about the "probable cause" standard set forth in the Fourth Amendment. Hayden interrupted him. "No, actually -- the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure."
Landay: "But the --."
Hayden: "That's what it says."
Landay "But the measure is 'probable cause,' I believe --."
Hayden: "The amendment says 'unreasonable search and seizure.'"
Landay: "But does it not say 'probable --.'"
Hayden: "No. The amendment says ... 'unreasonable search and seizure.'"
Landay: "The legal standard is 'probable cause,' General ... And a FISA court, my understanding is, would not give you a warrant if you went before them and say 'we reasonably believe'; you have to go to the FISA court, or the attorney general has to go to the FISA court, and say, 'We have probable cause.' And so what many people believe -- and I'd like you to respond to this -- is that what you've actually done is crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of 'reasonably believe' in place of 'probable cause' because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on 'reasonable belief,' you have to show 'probable cause.' Could you respond to that, please?"
Hayden: "Sure. I didn't craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order. All right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order. Just to be very clear -- and believe me, if there's any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment."
For those keeping score at home, the Fourth Amendment says: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
It was an embarrassing episode for a man who once assured us that we shouldn't be concerned about the spying program because nobody's calls were monitored unless a "shift supervisor" at the NSA signed off first. But Hayden's constitutional dipsy-doodle wasn't the only truth-challenged moment for the Bush administration Monday.
Defending his spying program in a talk at Kansas State University Monday, Bush said: "You know, it's amazing that people say to me, 'Well, he was just breaking the law.' If I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?" But Bush didn't "brief Congress" on the spying program; members of his administration chose to brief only a handful of members of Congress, a decision that the Congressional Research Service says was probably, in and of itself, a violation of the law.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [09:13 EST, Jan. 24, 2006]
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Are Libby's lawyers teeing up a pardon?
When the Bush administration needed a face-saving way to extract itself from the Harriet Miers nomination, it picked a fight over White House documents, immediately declared the conflict irreconcilable, then thanked Miers for withdrawing in order to avoid a constitutional crisis.
Was Scooter Libby paying attention?
On Friday, attorneys for Dick Cheney's former chief of staff said that they'll need to subpoena reporters -- lots and lots of reporters and the newspapers and magazines and TV networks for which they work -- in order to defend Libby against criminal charges in the Valerie Plame case. And earlier today, they said they're also going to need to get into some classified material, possibly about the work Plame was doing for the CIA, during the course of any trial in the case.
Maybe it's all on the up and up, steps Libby's lawyers honestly believe they'll need to take to make sure their client gets a fair trial. But it's hard not to notice what the two issues -- subpoenas for reporters and the request to use classified information -- have in common: They'll prompt legal disputes that will slow the proceedings considerably, and they'll raise questions about the relative merits of prosecuting Libby, protecting reporters from inquisitive lawyers and keeping classified information classified.
In other words, they'll set up exactly the same sort of dynamic that gave George W. Bush an out for withdrawing Miers' nomination. Now, Libby can't just withdraw himself from the criminal case against him. But if he thinks there's any hope that Bush will pardon him someday, he has every interest in dragging his case along -- and keeping himself out of federal prison -- for just as long as he can. Libby's lawyers' request to use classified information certainly serves that goal; as the Associated Press notes, the request launches "a highly secretive court process that could bog down the case." And together with the notice that they'll be seeking testimony from reporters and the companies that employ them, the request does something else: By inserting issues of press freedom and national security into the middle of the case, Libby's lawyers have given Bush a reason for saying that the nation would be better off he just set Scooter free.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [15:47 EST, Jan. 23, 2006]
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Bush and Abramoff: Photos don't lie, but did the White House?
So here's a question somebody ought to ask Scott McClellan today: Are the chairmen of Texas Indian tribes usually invited to White House Chanukah parties?
As we noted earlier today, Time says it has now seen five photographs of George W. Bush and Jack Abramoff together. McClellan said last week that Abramoff had visited the White House for a few "staff-level meetings" and a couple of Chanukah parties. And indeed, several of the photos Time has seen are of the sort that could have been taken at a White House holiday party: one of Bush and Abramoff in front of a blue drape, a few of Bush and Abramoff and various Abramoff kids.
But then there's the picture of Bush, Abramoff, a couple of unidentified men and Raul Garza Sr., the blue-jeaned and bolo-tied chairman of the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe, a Texas Indian tribe Abramoff represented.
It sure doesn't sound like a snapshot from a Chanukah party, and it isn't. The photo seems to have been taken during a May 2001 event in which Bush met with tribal leaders at the Old Executive Office Building -- a meeting arranged with the help of both Abramoff and Grover Norquist. As we noted the other day, Lou Dubose described such a meeting in a June 2005 article in the Texas Observer. The White House has said that its records don't show that Abramoff was in attendance. Time says that the photograph and three sources who were at the meeting all say otherwise.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [12:52 EST, Jan. 23, 2006]
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The ombudsman makes a case for truthiness
Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell admitted Sunday that she was wrong when she said, in a previous column, that Jack Abramoff "made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties."
"He didn't," Howell says now.
She could have gone on to lay out the truth.
She didn't.
Saying that Abramoff "didn't" make "substantial campaign contributions to both major parties" doesn't quite capture the exclusivity of Abramoff's devotion to the GOP -- or the enormity of the error that Howell made the first time around. It's not just that Abramoff didn't make "substantial campaign contributions to both parties." It's that, as Bloomberg News reported the other day, Abramoff gave more than $127,000 to Republican candidates and committees between 2001 and 2004 and exactly no dollars to Democrats during that same period of time.
Howell doesn't get into any of that in her column. She never says that Abramoff gave absolutely nothing to Democrats himself. Instead, Howell defends the essential truthiness of her original charge by saying that Abramoff "directed his client Indian tribes to make campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties." Now, people can argue about whether money that Abramoff "directed" is as tainted as money Abramoff gave out of his own pocket. The Bush-Cheney campaign doesn't seem to think so: It's giving up $6,000 in campaign contributions that came from Abramoff, his wife and an Indian tribe, but not an additional $100,000 that Abramoff raised for the president's reelection effort.
But even if you assume, as Howell seems to, that the money is all equally dirty, there's a question of magnitude here that Howell doesn't address. Abramoff's Indian clients were only slightly less one-sided than Abramoff himself when it came time to dole out political cash. Bloomberg analyzed campaign contribution reports and came to the conclusion that between 2001 and 2004, Abramoff's Indian clients were the only ones among the top 10 tribal donors who gave more to Republicans than to Democrats. So yes, Abramoff may have been "directing" his tribal clients to give money to Democrats, but isn't it funny how they still gave most of their money to Republicans rather than to Democrats when other Indian tribes were making the opposite choice?
To be fair to Howell, she does acknowledge now that the Abramoff case isn't a "bipartisan scandal." "It's a Republican scandal," she says, "and that's why the Republicans are scurrying around trying to enact lobbying reforms."
But to be fair to Howell's critics, that isn't anything like the way she characterized the Abramoff case in her first column -- the one in which she invoked memories of Monica Lewinsky, said that Abramoff had "made" major contributions to both parties, said that Democrats Harry Reid and Byron Dorgan had "gotten Abramoff money," and said that while the Post's reporting hasn't put Democrats "in the first tier" of people under investigation "so far," readers hoping to see Democrats implicated in the scandal should "stay tuned" because the "story is nowhere near over."
Howell portrays herself as mystified by the virulent reaction that column drew, and she says that her plan going forward is to "watch every word." Before she does that, she might take one more look back and -- in a third try at setting the record straight -- explain in full the real facts that the words and the tone of her first column obscured.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [11:56 EST, Jan. 23, 2006]
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The lobbyist, the president ... and a photographer
Two White House Hanukkah parties and "just a few staff-level meetings"? Time magazine says it has seen five photographs of George W. Bush with Jack Abramoff, suggesting "a level of contact between them that Bush's aides have downplayed."
-- Tim Grieve"
Salon.com Politics War Room Politics
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Conservative Alumnus Pulls Offer to Buy Lecture Tapes - New York Times
McCarthyite slimer withdraws offer to pay students to spy on faculty in face of threats of legal retaliation, bad media coverage, loss of even conservative support, and well-organized forces against him; today the UCLA Faculty meets to decide next steps....
Conservative Alumnus Pulls Offer to Buy Lecture Tapes - New York Times
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Monday, January 23, 2006
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The President's End Run
meanwhile even the neocon-infested Washington Post sees that Bush's spy program is illegal and his "justification" for the spying is flim flam
The President's End Run
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Attacks Strain Efforts On Terror
Afghanistan is unravelling: Bush didn't put enough US and coalition troops on the ground and bin Laden and top Taliban and al Qaeda leaders got away, leaving them to eventually regroup.....
Attacks Strain Efforts On Terror
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Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
latest buzz about the photos, Alito philisbuster and Rove's waiting for the indictment.
"Two White House Chanukah parties and "just a few staff-level meetings"? Time magazine says it has seen five photographs of George W. Bush with Jack Abramoff, suggesting "a level of contact between them that Bush's aides have downplayed."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [10:01 EST, Jan. 23, 2006]
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Facing the truth about Alito and Roe
Somebody asked us the other day if we believed in litmus tests for Supreme Court nominees. What we said was that we believed in honesty. If George W. Bush is nominating Supreme Court justices without regard to their views on abortion, isn't it odd that all three of his nominees so far have expressed strong antiabortion views in the past? John G. Roberts once wrote that Roe v. Wade was "wrongly decided and should be overruled." Harriet Miers once wrote that she would "actively support" a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion. And Samuel Alito once wrote that he "personally" believed "very strongly" that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."
But we're supposed to believe that the president has no litmus test on abortion? And that his nominees have "open minds" now? Please. During her confirmation hearing, Ruth Bader Ginsburg said unequivocally that she believed the Constitution guaranteed the right to an abortion, and senators were free to vote on her nomination with that fact on the table. Why couldn't Alito deal with the issue in a similarly straightforward fashion? Because 56 percent of the country wouldn't want him confirmed if it were clear that he would overturn Roe v. Wade.
So Alito never explained his views on Roe during his confirmation hearing and rebuffed some follow-up questions on the subject Friday, leaving the senators who will vote for him -- at least the ones whose political futures require some votes from the center -- free to disclaim responsibility for putting what seems like a surefire anti-Roe vote on the court.
"But he said he had no agenda!" "But he said that Roe was a precedent!" "But he said he'd have an open mind!" That's what they'll say when they discover that Justice Alito has just voted to overturn Roe. But thanks to two new shots of honesty -- one inadvertent, one not -- it just got a little harder for pro-choice Republicans Arlen Specter, Lincoln Chaffee, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to maintain the plausible deniability they'll need for a yes vote now and the right to outrage later.
The first came from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Although Frist's office insists that Alito is a "mainstream" jurist who won't legislate from the bench, the majority leader himself offered a somewhat different characterization of the nominee while giving some Republican Party activists a private tour of the Senate Friday night. Alito, Frist told them, is the "worst nightmare of liberal Democrats."
Now, why would that be? The New York Times' editorial board fills in the blanks this morning. In an editorial calling on senators to vote down Alito's nomination, the Times says that there is "every reason to believe" that Alito "would quickly vote to overturn Roe v. Wade." The Times doesn't reach that conclusion in spite of Alito's responses during his confirmation hearings; it reaches them, at least in part, because of them. As the Times says, Alito's "long paper trail and the evasive answers he gave at his hearings" make it awfully hard to reach any other conclusion about him.
The issue is joined, even if some senators need to pretend that it isn't. Sunday was the 33rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and antiabortion groups will mark the date today, as they always do, by crowding the Metro and then the National Mall with themselves, their children and thousands of pictures of bloody fetuses. (At a march in Texas over the weekend, a girl who looked to be about 10 or 12 carried a sign that said, "Please don't kill me, Mommy.") They're the noisy manifestation of what's at stake in the Alito vote. Over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times called attention to the quieter one: "Taking direct aim at Roe vs. Wade," lawmakers in Indiana, Ohio, Georgia and Tennessee are proposing "broad restrictions on abortion, with the goal of forcing the U.S. Supreme Court -- once it has a second new justice -- to revisit the landmark ruling issued 33 years ago today."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [08:58 EST, Jan. 23, 2006]
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Could there still be a filibuster in Alito's future?
Conventional wisdom -- including our own -- says the Democrats aren't going to filibuster the nomination of Samuel Alito. Dick Durbin says not so fast.
According to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times, the Democrat from Illinois thinks a filibuster is more likely than he did just a few days ago. "A week ago, I would have told you it's not likely to happen," Durbin said Thursday. "As of yesterday, I just can't rule it out. I was surprised by the intensity of feeling of some of my colleagues."
Durbin, who has announced that he'll vote against Alito, said he still doesn't know whether opponents of the nomination have the votes to pull off a filibuster. "It's a matter of counting," he said. "We have 45 Democrats, counting [independent] Jim Jeffords, on our side. We could sustain a filibuster if 41 senators ... are willing to stand and fight. We're asking senators where they stand. When it reaches a critical moment when five senators have said they oppose a filibuster, it's off the table, it's not going to happen. But if it doesn't reach that moment, then we'll sit down and have that conversation."
The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote -- probably along party lines -- on Alito's nomination Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will likely put the matter before the full Senate on Wednesday. So far, only one Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, has announced that he'll cross over to support Alito. But even if the rest of the Democrats stick together in opposition to Alito, there's a big difference between casting a futile no vote and going to the mat on a filibuster.
Can Durbin round up 40 colleagues who are willing to take that step? He says he won't know until he knows. We say, don't hold your breath.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [15:15 EST, Jan. 20, 2006]
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For Rove camp, the wait is a drag
We hate to give credence to the notion that men like to see others suffer, but we had a hard time shedding any tears as we read the Wall Street Journal's "Washington Wire" this morning. Noting that we haven't heard much from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald lately, the Journal's John Harwood says that Karl Rove's camp is "frustrated by uncertainty over his status" in the Valerie Plame case.
-- Tim Grieve
, Jan. 20, 2006] "
Salon.com Politics War Room Politics
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TIME.com: When George Met Jack -- Jan. 30, 2006 -- Page 1
Abramoff and Bush photos are about to circulate; while its well known that Rove and JACKabramOFF go way back and that Abramoff has been often to the White House so very no one has really gone into the Bush-Abramoff-Rove connections. In fact, these guys, DeLay, Cheney, Ney et al are at the heart of the corrupt Republican money machine that solicits money from lobbyists and corporations and pays back with laws, tax and regulatory break, contracts and legisltation. Its the sleaziest most corrupt White House in history and only the tip of the iceberg is exposed. Oh, and wait for Fitzgerald to come down on Rove and other White House insiders.....
TIME.com: When George Met Jack -- Jan. 30, 2006 -- Page 1
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Thursday, January 19, 2006
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Leahy Says He'll Vote Against Alito - New York Times
a vote for scAlito is a vote against Roe vs Wade, for the imperial presidency and a rightwing Reich; anyone who votes for him should be dishonored forever, kudos to Sen Leahy
Leahy Says He'll Vote Against Alito - New York Times
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Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
Latest political buzz from Salon=
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The arms race on ethics reform
The Republicans and the Democrats have unveiled their competing proposals for ethics reform, and now they'll play a game of "Quien es Mas Macho?" with them. It's not much of a contest: As the Washington Post reports today, the "Democratic plans go further than the Republicans' proposals."
The plan House Speaker Dennis Hastert proposed Tuesday would prohibit members of Congress from accepting free meals or travel from a lobbyist -- but not, as | |
