TheBetsyBlog

And one for the Beach House

2009-05-05T14:41:00.000-05:00

This will be up at Relaxed Politics --- the Beach House this evening.

Happy Cinco de Mayo

2009-05-05T14:39:00.000-05:00

This pic is also up at Mock, Paper, Scissors.

cute pix

2008-03-13T21:07:00.000-05:00

patriotism

2007-11-27T23:37:00.000-06:00

Ummmm, no, not really.

Tapping hurts the constitution

2007-11-08T18:15:00.000-06:00

Tapping hurts us.
Tapping hurts the constitution.

Lady Liberty's phones

2007-11-08T18:05:00.000-06:00

Do we get amnesty too?

2007-11-08T17:34:00.000-06:00

4th amendment to the constitution

2007-11-08T16:42:00.000-06:00

Where I usually post

2007-11-08T13:50:00.001-06:00

I rarely use this blog anymore unless I am posting via Picasa. Look for my stuff here instead:

Betsy's news blogs:
Blog & News Tidbets and
Reality Based News Feed
(some content is the same)

---Betsy

Who's looking?

2007-11-08T13:44:00.000-06:00

Who is looking over your shoulder? And did they get a warrant first?

warrant

2007-11-08T13:39:00.000-06:00

Shouldn't Congress make them get a warrant first?

Tapdance

2007-11-08T13:18:00.000-06:00

Tapdancing around the law to tap your private communications,
without a warrant.

poor little things

2007-10-30T10:13:00.000-05:00

Brokeback Ruined Things for Cowboys

2007-10-23T08:33:00.000-05:00

My New Blogs

2007-10-06T13:29:00.000-05:00

Here's where you can now read the news articles and blog posts I've found interesting:

true cost of the war

2007-09-23T01:12:00.000-05:00

$500,000:
via Think Progress by Amanda on 9/22/07

Amount the war in Iraq costs per minute, according to a new analysis by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard's Linda Bilmes, put out by the American Friends Service Committee. The study finds that this $720 million a day could buy homes for 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children.

Who is the irresponsible one?

2007-09-22T20:43:00.000-05:00

Bush: Kids' health care will get vetoed (AP)
from Yahoo! News
AP - President Bush again called Democrats "irresponsible" on Saturday for pushing an expansion he opposes to a children's health insurance program.

The democrats irresponsible? Give me a FFFFFFFFF break! Never mind all this:

A bipartisan group of lawmakers announced a proposal Friday that would add $35 billion over five years to the program, adding 4 million people to the 6.6 million already participating. It would be financed by raising the federal cigarette tax by 61 cents to $1 per pack.

The idea is overwhelmingly supported by Congress' majority Democrats, who scheduled it for a vote Tuesday in the House. It has substantial Republican support as well.

But Bush has promised a veto, saying the measure is too costly, unacceptably raises taxes, extends government-covered insurance to children in families who can afford private coverage, and smacks of a move toward completely federalized health care. He has asked Congress to pass a simple extension of the current program while debate continues, saying it's children who will suffer if they do not.

"Our goal should be to move children who have no health insurance to private coverage — not to move children who already have private health insurance to government coverage," Bush said.

The bill's backers have vigorously rejected Bush's claim it would steer public money to families that can readily afford health insurance, saying their goal is to cover more of the millions of uninsured children. The bill would provide financial incentives for states to cover their lowest-income children first, they said.

Time to get out of Iraq

2007-09-18T22:22:00.000-05:00

Stories I missed

2007-09-15T18:51:00.000-05:00

I was offline for much of the last three days, and missed quite a few news stories. These are the ones that seem to have gotten the least press in the mainstream:


	Sep 15, 2007 (8 hours ago) "Lean" McCain Campaign Cuts Bush Mentions From Stump Speech from Huff Po by The Huffington Post News Editors Defiant and energetic, Senator John McCain has taken his "No Surrender" tour to V.F.W. halls, parades and barbecues in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. He talks about his support for a renewed effort to win the Iraq war. He pays tribute to Gen. David H. Petraeus and the report he issued about progress in Iraq. The one thing that Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, does not talk about is President Bush.
	Remove starUnshareEmailAdd tags


	Sep 15, 2007 (8 hours ago) Thousands of protesters march to Capitol (AP) from Yahoo! News AP - Thousands of protesters marched Saturday from the White House to the Capitol to demand an end to the Iraq war.
	Remove starUnshareEmailAdd tags


	Sep 15, 2007 (14 hours ago) Arctic ice melt opens Northwest Passage (AP) from Yahoo! News AP - Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.
	Remove starUnshareEmailAdd tags


	Sep 15, 2007 (22 hours ago) Coalition of the Barely Willing from TPM Josh Marshall by Josh Marshall There was so much crap in the president's speech last night that analyzing requires a fairly aggressive form of crap triage to distinguish the merely bogus from the bogus and hilarious or the bogus and unconscionable. So let me focus in again on the president's reference to the "the 36 nations who have troops on the ground in Iraq." One way the president comes up with this number is to rope in something called the NATO Training Mission-Iraq (NTM-1). As Spencer Ackerman notes here, most of the countries involved in this initiative have agreed to let Iraqis come to their countries for training, not the other way around. So for instance, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report, Spain "plans to train groups of 25 Iraqis in mine clearance at a center outside Madrid." And who has boots on the ground in country? One example from the president's list of 36 is Iceland which has sent a single public information officer to serve in the NATO mission in Baghdad. More robustly, Italy has 8 officers on the NTM-I mission in Baghdad, Portugal is considering sending "up to 10."
	Remove starUnshareEmailAdd tags


	Sep 15, 2007 (22 hours ago) The President's Math from TPM Josh Marshall by David Kurtz The White House has provided us with the list of 36 nations the President was referring to last night in his speech when he said, "We thank the 36 nations who have troops on the ground in Iraq and the many others who are helping that young democracy. " The key phrase there is "troops on the ground." If you take a look at the list we were provided, by a National Security Council official, the first heading is "Countries with troops on ground in Iraq." Only 26 countries appear in that category. The remaining 10 countries are assigned to either United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq or to NATO Training NTM-I. So by the President's own accounting, the math is wrong. As Spencer Ackerman points out, there are other problems with the numbers. Canada is listed, for example, among the 36, but it pulled out its one and only person in Iraq months ago. The numbers, in short, are a sham. Now, whether it's 36 countries or 106, shouldn't distract from the larger shams, such as the implication that there remains international support for the U.S. mission in Iraq or the suggestion that anyone other than the U.S. is doing virtually all of the heavy lifting there. But after the famous 16 words on Niger in his State of the Union speech, after 4 1/2 years of duck and cover on Iraq, after all of the lies, deceptions, and falsehoods, it plumbs news depths of dishonesty to include such a bogus number as "36 nations" in a speech that begins with the following lines: "In the life of all free nations, there come moments that decide the direction of a country and reveal the character of its people. We are now at such a moment." The President once again revealed his character. Were that it was of the same quality as that of the people he leads.
	Remove starUnshareEmailAdd tags


	Sep 15, 2007 (23 hours ago) Webb Plan To Give Troops Greater Time At Home Close To Passage from Huff Po by The Huffington Post News Editors Now that President Bush and General David H. Petraeus have charted their course for the Iraq war, Democrats in the Senate say one of their proposals aimed at shifting the president's strategy is finally close to winning enough Republican support for a real chance at being approved. The proposal, by Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, would require that troops spend as much time at home as on their most recent tour overseas before being redeployed. Top Democrats said the practical effect of adding time between deployments would be to force Gen. David H. Petraeus to withdraw troops on a substantially swifter timeline than the one he laid out before Congress earlier this week, and would protect troops from serving protracted and debilitating deployments.
	Remove starUnshareEmailAdd tags


	Sep 15, 2007 (23 hours ago) MoveOn.org Flexes Its Muscle Amid Iraq War Debate from Huff Po by The Huffington Post News Editors There is no mistaking the influence of MoveOn.org, with its 3.2 million members and powerful fund-raising apparatus, within the Democratic Party. This liberal activist group has come to occupy a prominent seat at the table among the party elite, so much so that Republicans leaped at a chance to hold Democrats and their presidential candidates responsible for the organization's positions after it ran an advertisement attacking the credibility of Gen.
	Remove starUnshareEmailAdd tags


	Sep 15, 2007 (23 hours ago) NJ's Corzine to Defy New Health Care Rules from t r u t h o u t Christopher Lee reports for The Washington Post, "Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine informed President Bush this week that New Jersey will not obey federal rules that would make it harder to enroll middle-income kids for a popular government-subsidized health insurance program."
	Remove starUnshareEmailAdd tags


	Sep 15, 2007 (23 hours ago) Washington "Misled" Blair Over Plans for Postwar Iraq from t r u t h o u t Greg Hurst for The Times Online UK writes that "Britain's outgoing ambassador to Washington has accused the Bush administration of misleading Tony Blair over its much-criticized plans for the reconstruction of Iraq after the invasion of 2003."
	Remove starUnshareEmailAdd tags


	Sep 15, 2007 (23 hours ago) Fox airs no Dem reply to Bush speech from RawStory (CBS4) DORAL Miami-Dade police have arrested four people connected to the gunman who opened fire with a high-powered weapon on four Miami-Dade County police officers, killing one of them. Cmdr. Linda O’Brien from the Miami-Dade police department says Alba Bello, 47; her son, Alain Gonzalez, 24; and Bello’s boyfriend, Lazaro Guardiola, 35, have been charged with accessory after the fact for harboring Shawn LaBeet. They are all being held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.
	Remove starUnshareEmailAdd tags


	Sep 15, 2007 (23 hours ago) More anonymous Iraqi victims buried now than under Saddam from RawStory Every month in Iraq hundreds of victims are struck down by sectarian violence or massive bombing campaigns, and a small band of volunteers has taken it upon themselves to give the unclaimed dead a proper burial. "We've been doing this for 20 years, under Saddam, but the numbers have increased, as have the difficulties," Sheik Jamal al-Sudani, who leads the volunteers, tells CNN correspondent Michael Ware. "Because now it is as if the streets are flowing with...
	Remove starUnshareEmailAdd tags


	Sep 15, 2007 (23 hours ago) Conviction tossed in Jena beating from RawStory NEW ORLEANS - A state appeals court on Friday threw out the only remaining conviction against one of the black teenagers accused in the beating of a white schoolmate in the racially tense north Louisiana town of Jena...
	Remove starUnshareEmailAdd tags


	Sep 15, 2007 (23 hours ago) Man accused in pot muffin prank pleads guilty from HoustonChronicle A former student accused of delivering marijuana-laced muffins to a high school teacher's lounge pleaded guilty Friday.
	Remove starUnshareEmailAdd tags

Why don't we care anymore?

2007-09-10T20:52:00.000-05:00

Seems more and more like we as a nation don't care about our citizens. When we decide that we want tax cuts more than we want a working government keeping us safe, things begin to fall apart. Things like bridges. And here are two more examples from today's paper:

Injuries, Deaths Tied to Consumer Drugs Rise Sharply | The Head-On Radio Network America's Libera...
http://headonradionetwork.com/blog/2007/09/10/inju...

MONDAY, Sept. 10 (HealthDay News) — The number of serious adverse drug events more than double between 1998 and 2005 in the United States, as did the number of related deaths, a new study found.

“This is the first study to ask the question, ‘Are we gaining ground or losing ground in drug safety and improving patient safety in prescription drugs?’ And I think, inescapably, the conclusion is that we’re losing ground,” said study lead author Thomas Moore, of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, in Huntingdon Valley, Pa.

(more)

and

2 Key Middle School teachers taken to hospital | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5...

Two teachers left Key Middle School in ambulances this morning, reigniting the union's concerns that the northeast Houston campus is unsafe.

The two women were taken to the hospital after vomiting and experiencing watery eyes and difficulty breathing, said Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers. Fallon suspects the cause is mold or some other air-quality problem.

Terry Abbott, spokesman for the Houston Independent School District, said the administration has not heard an official medical report about the teachers. He emphasized that a private inspection company found a week ago that Key Middle, located at 4000 Kelley, did not have unusual levels of mold and that city inspectors agreed with that assessment.

"We understand the building was hot this morning. That may have had something to do with those who felt badly today," Abbott said. "We have had nothing at all unusual among the children."

Eating their own ...

2007-09-05T23:06:00.000-05:00

So much fun watching the repugs eat their own ....

Ney threatened staffer with ‘abusive phone calls.’
from Think Progress by Amanda
Neil Volz, a former top staffer to Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) who pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the Jack Abramoff scandal, is now asking for “house arrest” instead of prison time. Documents filed in federal court last week said that Volz has “endured harsh criticism, including abusive phone calls” from Ney when the former congressman suspected he was helping investigators.

Current list of repuglican scandals

2007-09-02T19:46:00.000-05:00

Thanks to ccmask and assorted FDL folks. Leave a comment if you have an addition.

GOP SCANDAL SHEET

Jack Abramoff -prison
Bob Allen -Veteran Park sex scandal
George Allen -called an American voter a Macaca
Michael Ray Aquino -involved in espionage thru Cheney’s office
Dan Bartlett -DOJ Investigation
Ken Blackwell- Election Theft
Michael Brown -Resigned over his handling of Katrina and aftermath.
Conrad Burns –dropped out
Ken Calvert’s - land deal scrutiny
Tucker Carlson -Tracked & beat up a gay man with a buddy
Dick Cheney -Involved in Plame affair; said troops would be greeted with flowers
Ann Coulter -Voter Fraud
Larry Craig -resigns over public toilet sex scandal
Duke Cunningham -prison
Tom DeLay -dropped out – Under indictment
Petey Domenici -Iglesias firing investigation
John Doolittle -Entagled with the Jack Abramoff Affair
Barry S. Edward -Rudy fundraiser steps down wrt sex & stolen computers
Alan B. Fabian -Romney co-chairman indicted fraud, obstruction & laundering
Tom Feeney -focus Abramoff investigation
Ari Fleisher - Resigned; Involved in Plame Affair
Dusty Kyle Foggo -Indicted for fraud, conspiracy & money laundering
Mark Foley -sex scandal
Jeff Gannon -Illegal White House entry
Alberto Gonzales- Cut & Run on heels of investigation
Ted Haggard -removed for sex and drug abuse scandal
Katherine Harris -dropped out
Duncan Hunter -Involved in ongoing Abramoff investigation
Bernard Kerik -Under scrutiny for tax invasion
Doug Lamborn -Left threatening voicemails to locals questioning his fundraising
Ken Lay -Bush’s biggest contributor scams millions
Jerry Lewis -under federal investigation
Scooter Libby -Guilty by his peers; Innocent by his Prez
Rush Limbaugh - Illegal drug use and Importation
Harriet Miers -DOJ Investigation Subpeona Refusal
Gary Miller -FBI investigation on tax evasion;Withdrew DHS nomination
Lisa Murkowski -land deal scandal
Bob Ney -prison
Wally O’Dell -Bush fundraiser and CEO of Diebold; Insider trading suspicion
Richard Pombo -Allegation of corruption and misuse of official resources
Thomas Ravenel -Indicted on Cocaine charges
Rick Renzi -home raided
John Rowland - convicted and sent to jail for bribe-taking and kickbacks.
Karl Rove -Resigned for involvement of AG scandal; Hatch Act; Outed CIA agent
Don Rumsfeld -Resigned. Failed to plan for a post-war Iraq.
David Safavian -convicted in Jack Abramoff scandal
Kyle Sampson - Resigned over the AG Scandal
Michael Scanlon -Guilty of corruption charges in Abramoff scandal
Brad Schlozman -Resigned from DOJ. Involved in the AG scandal
Ted Stevens -under investigation
David Vitter -sex scandals
Curt Weldon -dropped out
Heather Wilson -Iglesias firing investigation
Don Young -under investigation

And already some additons from James ....

Ralph Reed - investigation for his part in Abramoff scandal
Bradley Schlozman- resigned amid charges of politicizing DoJ
Monica Goodling - resigned amid charges of Hatch Act violations
J. Timothy Griffin - resigns amid charges of voter caging.

And then there’s this from McClatchey:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales - Resigned Monday, effective Sept. 17.
Kyle Sampson, Gonzales’ chief of staff - Resigned in March.
Monica Goodling, Gonzales’ counselor - Resigned in April.
Michael Battle, head of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys - Resigned in March.
Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty - Resigned in May, effective late this summer.
Michael Elston, McNulty’s chief of staff - Resigned June 15.
Tim Griffin, interim U.S. attorney for Arkansas - Resigned effective June 1.
Bradley Schlozman, former acting civil rights chief and U.S. attorney for Kansas City - Resigned from a Justice Department post in mid-August.
Wan Kim, chief, Civil Rights Division - Resigned Aug. 24
White House officials:
Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, White House’s top political adviser - Resigned effective at the end of this week.
Sara Taylor, political director — Resigned in May.

Did they hire Halliburton?

2007-09-01T10:25:00.001-05:00

I saw this article on my news feed this morning and my very first reaction was to wonder if they'd privatized infrastructure there as well. Who built the bridge? Same contractors who built all of the insta-crumbling infrastructure we commissioned in Iraq? Halliburton getting any contracts from the Pakistan government?

Six die in Pakistan bridge collapse
An investigation into the collapse has been ordered [AFP]

A recently constructed road bridge has collapsed in the southern Pakistan city of Karachi, killing at least six people and injuring others.

Rescuers were trying to clear the wreckage to retrieve those trapped and injured amid fears the death toll from Saturday's accident could rise.

At least two cars and a police van were crushed under the debris, and a truck with a trailer and a minibus lay upturned by the fallen bridge.

The bridge was opened only two months ago by Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president.

Mustafa Kamal, the mayor of Karachi, said the authorities were using heavy machinery and bulldozers to remove debris and pull out injured people trapped in at least two or three vehicles.

The cause of the accident was not immediately clear.

Probe ordered

Witnesses said a portion of the bridge known as Northern Bypass fell with a huge bang while traffic was on it.

Mohammed Iqbal, a survivor who escaped through the window of a small bus that fell from the bridge, told the Pakistani Geo news channel he had heard cries for help from those trapped in the rubble.

Zahid Khan, a witness, said "It created such a huge sound that we thought it was an earthquake."

Shaukat Aziz, the Pakistani prime minister, expressed sorrow over the loss of life and concern over the quality of construction of the bridge.

"Investigations have been ordered to find the reasons of the collapse and people responsible for substandard construction would be taken to task," Aziz said.

Gonzo is GoneZo. Who is next?

2007-08-31T12:42:00.000-05:00

political cartoons about Republican Senator Craig

2007-08-31T12:08:00.000-05:00

Betsy's news & blog pix for today

2007-08-28T17:35:00.000-05:00

Click daily to see what I've posted.

Betsy

Bush's Herd of Loyal Texas Advisers Continues to Thin
via t r u t h o u t on Aug 28, 2007
Dave Montgomery, of the McClatchy Newspapers writes: "They were fiercely loyal, unfailingly disciplined and, as a unit, offered the president a comforting touchstone from his home state. Now, Team Texas is moving ever closer to extinction. The already thinning cadre of advisers who followed George W. Bush from Austin to Washington is unraveling even further, with Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove heading toward the door."

American Nightmare: Gonzales “wrong and illegal and unethical”
via Greg Palast by Greg Palast on Aug 28, 2007
by Greg PalastTuesday, August 28.

“What I’ve experienced in the last six months is the ugly side of the American dream.”

Last month, David Iglesias and I were looking out at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island where his dad had entered the US from Panama decades ago. It was a hard moment for the military lawyer who, immediately after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fired Iglesias as US Attorney for New Mexico, returned to active military duty as a Naval Reserve JAG.
Captain Iglesias, cool and circumspect, added something I didn’t expect:

“They misjudged my character, I mean they really thought I was just going to
roll over and give them what they wanted and when I didn’t, that I’d go away
quietly but I just couldn’t do that. You know US Attorneys and the Justice
Department have a history of not taking into consideration partisan politics.
That should not be a factor. And what they tried to do is just wrong and illegal
and unethical.”

When a federal prosecutor says something is illegal, it’s not just small talk. And the illegality wasn’t small. It’s called, “obstruction of justice,” and it’s a felony crime.

Specifically, Attorney General Gonzales, Iglesias told me, wanted him to bring what the prosecutor called “bogus voter fraud” cases. In effect, US Attorney Iglesias was under pressure from the boss to charge citizens with crimes they didn’t commit. Saddam did that. Stalin did that. But Iglesias would NOT do that - even at the behest of the Attorney General. Today, Captain Iglesias, reached by phone, told me, “I’m not going to file any bogus prosecutions.”
But it wasn’t just Gonzales whose acts were “unethical, wrong and illegal.“

It was Gonzales’ boss. Iglesias says, “The evidence shows right now, is that [Republican Senator Pete] Domenici complained directly to President Bush. And that Bush then called Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General, and complained about my alleged lack of vigorous enforcement of voter fraud laws.“ In other words, it went to the top. The Decider had decided to punish a prosecutor who wouldn’t prosecute innocents.

All day long I’ve heard Democrats dance with glee that they now have the scalp of Alberto Gonzales. They nailed the puppet. But what about the puppeteer? The question that remains is the same that Watergate prosecutors asked of Richard Nixon, “What did the President know and when did he know it?” Or, to update it for Dubya, “What did the President know and how many times did Karl Rove have to explain it to him?” During the Watergate hearings, Nixon tried to obstruct the investigation into his obstruction of justice by offering up the heads of his Attorney General and other officials. Then, Congress refused to swallow the Nixon bait. The only resignation that counted was the one by the capo di capi of the criminal-political cabal: Nixon’s. The President’s.

But in this case, even the exit of the Decider-in-Chief would not be the end of it. Because this isn’t about finagling with the power of prosecutors, it’s about the 2008 election.“This voter fraud thing is the bogey man,” says Iglesias.

Beck: "Nobody Cares" About Gonzales Resignation
via The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com by The Huffington Post News Editors on Aug 28, 2007
Yesterday on his CNN Headline News show, Glenn Beck mentioned the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, stating that he was "surprised" the "media jumped all over this story":
Well, after weathering the storm of congressional calls for his resignation, Alberto Gonzales has finally done just that, he has resigned. But the thing is, I don't think anybody cares. I don't think how he -- anybody cares how he was connected to the firing of those nine U.S. attorneys.

U.S. most armed country with 90 guns per 100 people (Reuters)
via Yahoo! News: Top Stories on Aug 28, 2007
Reuters - The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world, a report released on Tuesday said.

Craig Recants Misconduct Plea
via washingtonpost.com - Politics by Paul Kane on Aug 28, 2007
Facing a revolt from his closest GOP allies, Sen. Larry Craig today disavowed his own criminal plea agreement for disorderly conduct in an airport men's restroom in June, declaring he was "not gay" and vowing to continue to serve in the Senate.

NJ tops nation in household income
Bridgewater Courier News - 21 minutes agoBy RAJU CHEBIUM WASHINGTON - Though New Jersey is one of the country's richest states, more than 1 million of its residents lack health insurance.Household incomes rise but ... CNNMoney.comUS Income and Poverty Rates Improved in 2006 New York TimesReuters - Dallas Morning News (subscription) - Indianapolis Star - The Coloradoan all 260 news articles
NJ no longer richest state, Camden no longer poorest US city - Newsday
via Google News on Aug 28, 2007
KARE NJ no longer richest state, Camden no longer poorest US cityNewsday - 1 hour agoBy GEOFF MULVIHILL AP Writer 3:03 PM EDT, August 28, 2007 MOUNT LAUREL, NJ - New Jersey is no longer the nation's wealthiest state and Camden is no longer the nation's poorest city, according to federal data released Tuesday

Trainers faulted in Fort Hood GI death
via Statesman - Top Stories on Aug 28, 2007
A 1,700-page Army investigative report, obtained by The Associated Press, details a multitude of violations, judgment errors and alleged misconduct.

Gannon: I’m ‘the most honest’ White House reporter.
via Think Progress by Matt on Aug 28, 2007
Jeff Gannon, the infamous former male escort who for two years gained a White House press pass using a pseudonym, is releasing a book next week, in which he chronicles what he sees as liberal bias in the White House press corps. “In my mind, I was the most honest reporter [in the White House press corps] because I was absolutely transparent with regards to my [conservative] perspective,” Gannon told the Washington Examiner. “My work has never been discredited.”

See more of betsy's shared items ...

How to tell you're driving too fast

2007-08-26T12:43:00.000-05:00

The Bush Flowchart

2007-08-24T16:39:00.000-05:00

(Click to enlarge.) Thanks to Alfred for sending this in. He found it here.

The Post Turtle

2007-08-22T11:34:00.000-05:00

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old Texas rancher whose hand had been caught in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to former Texas Governor George W. Bush and his elevation to the White House.

The old Texan said, "Well, ya know, Bush is a post turtle." Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a post turtle was.

The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle."

The old man saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain. "You know he didn't get there by himself, he doesn't belong there, he doesn't know what to do while he's up there and you just want to help the dumb shit get down."

A nice image

2007-08-21T03:33:00.000-05:00

Thanks to AfterDowningStreet for the image. Click to enlarge.

Deciding how to best spend MY hard-earned money

2007-08-20T09:09:00.000-05:00

Dear "conservative" friend,

I've decided that you're right. I should be paying far less in taxes and I should be deciding how best to spend MY hard-earned salary. Government's a mess anyway, right? Here's my plan:

Sundays I'll handle all the faith-based initiatives programs.
Mondays I will inspect mines and bridges.
Tuesdays I will run the court system.
Wednesdays are homeland security.
Thursdays I will run the army & the air force. Military is important, but those generals earn too much. I can do it cheaper.
Fridays I'll be an air traffic controller.
And I can look out for business interests on Saturday. Except that's my day off. Sorry.

How does that sound?

Now, when do I earn all the money that I won't be taxed on?

Sincerely,
Your newly conservative friend, who is always willing to help out.

At the State Fair

2007-08-20T00:36:00.001-05:00

What kinds of shoes do you wear to the state fair? My guess is that they're not quite as dressy as the ones Fred Thompson wore.

Why Karl left

2007-08-19T21:42:00.000-05:00

click to enlarge

It's about money and not about healthcare

2007-08-19T10:20:00.003-05:00

It is ALL about money. They don't even pretend that it's about people and their health anymore. Shameful!

New rule: Medicare will stop paying for errors at hospitals

From The New York Times

Change is to save money, improve care of patients

WASHINGTON

In a significant policy change, Bush administration officials say that Medicare will no longer pay the extra costs of treating preventable errors, injuries and infections that occur in hospitals, a move that could save thousands of lives and millions of dollars. Private insurers are considering similar changes, which they said could multiply the savings and benefits for patients.

Consumer groups welcomed the change, set forth in rules to be published Aug. 22. Although hospital executives endorsed the goal of patient safety, they said, the policy would require them to collect large amounts of data they do not now have.

Under the new rules, Medicare will not pay hospitals for the costs of treating certain “conditions that could reasonably have been prevented.”

Among the conditions that will be affected are bedsores, or pressure ulcers; injuries caused by falls; and infections resulting from the prolonged use of catheters in blood vessels or the bladder.

In addition, Medicare says it will not pay for the treatment of “serious preventable events” like leaving a sponge or other object in a patient during surgery and providing a patient with incompatible blood or blood products.

“If a patient goes into the hospital with pneumonia, we don’t want them to leave with a broken arm,” said Herb B. Kuhn, the acting deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The new policy - one of several federal initiatives to improve care paid for by Medicare, at a cost of more than $400 billion a year - is sending ripples through the health-care industry. It also raises the possibility of changes in medical practice as doctors hew more closely to clinical guidelines and hospitals perform more tests to assess the condition of patients at the time of admission. More…

Protest in Sudan

2007-08-19T08:40:00.000-05:00

I am glad that someone, somewhere is protesting the way that our government treats prisoners/enemy combatants. We must insist that Guantanamo prisoners be given fair trials.

Families of Sudan detainees in U.S. prison protest

By Abigail Hauslohner

Families of nine Sudanese detained in the U.S. Guantanamo prison camp protested at the U.S. embassy in Khartoum on Sunday demanding their release, following news that one may be freed soon.

Last week the brother of detained Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj said Washington had outlined a conditional release for Hajj provided he does not leave Sudan.

Hajj's brother Asim al-Hajj told Reuters the conditions were unfair but welcomed his possible release. He said the group was marching outside the embassy in solidarity with all nine.

"We are here in solidarity to demand the release of our brothers, sons, and fathers from Guantanamo and for their return to their families," he said.

"This suffering needs to end ... it has continued for longer than 67 months, without any hearing for the detainees before a court, and without charge," he added.

The U.S. holds nine Sudanese at the internationally criticized prison camp, all detained in Pakistan and Afghanistan on suspicion of "terrorist" activity and later transferred to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, family members leading the protest said.

Family members of the nine said the possibility for Hajj's release was good news but they wanted all to be freed.

"This news gladdens us, news of the release of any one of the detained brothers is good news," said Adil al-Tayyib, holding a banner picturing his brother-in-law Adil Hassan Hamad who was arrested by U.S. forces while working as an aid worker in Pakistan.

One of the protesters presented U.S. embassy official Joel Maybury with a petition of 5,000 Sudanese signatures for the release of the detainees.

Maybury said the embassy would convey the message to Washington.

He said review of Hajj's case was a regular procedure.

"It gives an opportunity for people who know them or governments who are responsible for them ... to provide any information that might help in determining the person's status," he added.

Maybury declined to comment on the likelihood of the release of any of the prisoners.

We Won't Back Down

2007-08-18T18:33:00.000-05:00

Excellent video by Ava at PeaceTakesCourage.

Assorted news and blog links

2007-08-16T23:14:00.001-05:00

GOPer: Iraqi Parliament Works Better Than Dem Congress

Rep. Thelma Drake (R-VA) went to Iraq and found a government she can get behind.

Biden's Son to Serve in Iraq

U.S.: Taliban Still in Tora Bora

Peru Quake Death Toll at 450

Stocks Plunge in "Correction"

Maliki Makes New Alliance

Army Suicides At 26-Year High

Census Bureau wants to halt 2010 raids Thu Aug 16, 7:45 PM ET

WASHINGTON - The Census Bureau wants immigration agents to suspend enforcement raids during the 2010 census so the government can better count illegal immigrants.

For Giuliani, Ground Zero as Linchpin and Thorn

By RUSS BUETTNER 23 minutes ago

As Rudolph W. Giuliani campaigns around the country, his stewardship of New York City after the Sept. 11 attacks has become a topic of scrutiny.

Three nabbed for adding maggots to supermarket meat

Thu Aug 16, 9:20 AM ET AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Three young men in the northern Dutch town of Damwoude were charged with damaging property after adding maggots to supermarket meat that was later sold to a customer, police said Thursday.

Couple tried to name baby "@" Thu Aug 16, 9:19 AM ET
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese couple tried to name their baby "@," claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said Thursday.

Majority of Americans Don't Trust Petraeus

Despite the White House PR blitz, people don't think

Mueller Notes: Ashcroft out of White House Surveillance Loop

The FBI Director's hospital showdown pages reveal that the Attorney General wasn't trusted with details of warrantless wiretapping. Conyers wants to know more.

MSNBC

Olbermann First Anchor To Turn Spotlight On Mining Czar's Safety Record

Man told to "walk off pain" after shooting Thu Aug 16, 9:17 AM ET
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A South African man shot three weeks ago was told to "walk the pain off" and is still trying to persuade hospitals to remove the bullet lodged in his side, a newspaper said Thursday.

CIA/FBI/Wikipedia

CIA, FBI Edited Wikipedia Entries About Iraq And Gitmo

Another Collapse At Utah Mine

At Least Nine Rescue Workers Injured..."The Floor Slipped"...Four Ambulances And Two Helicopters...Medics Seen Doing Chest Compressions

Bush Approves Using Spy Satellites On Americans

Fewer Than 2 Percent Of Newspaper Errors Corrected

Open Thread: No national parks without a passport, bud.

CNN.com: Federal ID plan raises privacy concerns.

The cards would be mandatory for all “federal purposes,” which include boarding an airplane or walking into a federal building, nuclear facility or national park, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the National Conference of State Legislatures last week. Citizens in states that don’t comply with the new rules will have to use passports for federal purposes.

An embarrassed Fox News hits Wikipedia

By: Steve Benen

It’s been a rough week for our ol’ friends at Fox News. Thanks to some IP-address based research, the political world learned that the FNC was responsible for “touching up” Wikipedia pages, editing content that didn’t fit with the partisan network’s political agenda.

Download (1870) | Play (2457) Download (629) | Play (1020)

For example, embarrassing content from Media Matters about FNC personalities was quietly removed. Criticism of Keith Olbermann and Al Franken was accenuated. The network that specializes in on-air propoganda had taken its usual schtick to Wiki pages.

With that in mind, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Fox News’ Chris Wallace — you guessed it — sought to undermine Wikipedia’s credibility with a report tonight.

The irony is rich. Pay particular attention to the references to “self-serving agendas” and businesses desperate to “improve their public image.”

Fox News tried to exploit Wikipedia, and got caught, so naturally it’s time to undermine the source of the network’s embarrassment. Typical.

At least 510 dead in 8.0 quake in Peru

Texas couple to get $80,000 settlement after being arrested for anti-Bush T-shirts

Feds pay $80,000 to pair arrested for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The federal government has agreed to pay $80,000 to a Texas couple arrested and charged with trespassing in 2004 after they refused to cover up homemade T-shirts with anti-Bush slogans.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of Nicole and Jeffery Rank of Corpus Christi, Texas, announced the settlement on Thursday.

The Ranks were handcuffed, removed from the July 4, 2004, rally at the state Capitol and held in police custody for between one and two hours.

"This settlement is a real victory not only for our clients but for the First Amendment," said Andrew Schneider, executive director of the ACLU of West Virginia. "As a result of the Ranks' courageous stand, public officials will think twice before they eject peaceful protesters from public events for exercising their right to dissent."

An order closing the case was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Charleston.

"We are pleased that this matter has been concluded," said White House spokesman Blair Jones. "The parties understand that this settlement is a compromise of disputed claims to avoid the expenses and risks of litigation and is not an admission of fault, liability, or wrongful conduct."

The recent revelation of the existence of a presidential advance manual made it clear that the government tries to exclude dissenters from the president's presidential appearances, the ACLU said in a prepared statement. "As a last resort," the manual says, "security should remove the demonstrators from the event."

The front of the Ranks' T-shirts bore the international symbol for "no" superimposed over the word "Bush." The back of Nicole Rank's T-shirt said "Love America, Hate Bush." On the back of Jeffery Rank's T-shirt was the message "Regime Change Starts at Home."

Jeffery Rank, who was a Republican who disagreed with Bush, said he found it ironic that the government manual encourages event organizers to use young Republicans as "rally squads to oppose messages like ours at presidential appearances." Rank has since changed his party affiliation, the ACLU notes in its release.

Erin leaves a mess — Surfers fled the beach and flash floods swept trucks onto railroad tracks. Images from the storm's impact on Houston.

Video of today's storms

Rainy weather expected to continue for days — The Houston area is in for a soggy few days, meteorologists say. During the next 24 hours, an additional one to three inches of rain will fall throughout Harris County. Meanwhile about 7,000 households remain without power. READ STORY

Randalls roof collapse in Clear Lake kills Coca-Cola worker

HFD rescues woman trapped under downtown bridge

Get flooding reports, service outages and closings

•

Texas billionaire target of Russian identity theft

Woman has rare identical quadruplets 1 minute ago HELENA, Mont. - A 35-year-old Canadian woman has given birth to rare identical quadruplets, officials at a Great Falls hospital said Thursday. Karen Jepp of Calgary, Alberta, delivered Autumn, Brooke, Calissa and Dahlia by Caesarian section Sunday afternoon at Benefis Healthcare, said Amy Astin, the hospital's director of community and government relations.

LAST batch of Rove cartoons

2007-08-15T00:34:00.000-05:00

2nd batch of Rove cartoons

2007-08-15T00:33:00.001-05:00

Assorted Rove cartoons

2007-08-15T00:33:00.000-05:00

some oldies but goodies

2007-08-15T00:31:00.000-05:00

The "Liberal" Media

2007-08-13T22:13:00.000-05:00

Dave Lindorff has a great piece up over at Buzzflash where he asks why Dennis Kucinich has disappeared from the paper of record even though he's clearly still in the race, and beating Biden and Richardson in some polls. Lindorff states that

Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has been "disappeared." Not in the sense of victims of America's so-called War on Terror. He hasn't been carted off in an orange jumpsuit to some black site in Kazakhstan. But he has been "disappeared" by the reporters and editors of The New York Times.

He notes that

In an article by Jeff Zeleny and Mark Santora on Sunday headlined "Democrats Say Leaving Iraq May Take Years," the Times reports that Democratic candidates, with only candidate Bill Richardson "standing apart," are saying that troops will have to stay in Iraq and the area around Iraq for a long time.

But wait. Kucinich, who in many polls does as well as or better than Biden and Richardson (in a new straw poll of Democratic activists in California, he ranked right behind Edwards and Obama, and ahead of Clinton and the rest of the crowd), not only wants the U.S. out of Iraq; but also he has submitted an actual bill in Congress (HR 1234) calling for a removal of all U.S. troops within three months' time, and barring the expenditure of any funds on future military activity in the region, except for the purpose of orderly withdrawal.

So why was Kucinich left out of the Times article on Democratic candidates' positions on the Iraq War? The answer seems clear. The Times has decided that Kucinich isn't a candidate. He doesn't exist. He has been disappeared.

But to me, the kicker is actually the following paragraph, which notes that Kucinich's candidacy is not the only think missing from the New York Times.

The same is true on the issue of impeachment. The Times has only twice mentioned the bill, H Res 333, for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney, which Kucinich filed on April 24. The first mention was a three-sentence "National Brief" item that ran the day Kucinich filed the measure, half of which was taken up with a Cheney spokeswoman's mocking response; the only other was a phrase tucked within a parenthetical comment in a April 27 article reporting on a lackluster candidate's debate.

Americans who get their news from the Times -- and that would include millions who read or watch news that itself is produced by organizations whose editors' opinions are shaped by the Times -- would not know that over the course of the last three and a half months, some 20 members of Congress, including six members of the crucial 23-member House Judiciary Committee, have signed on to Kucinich's Cheney impeachment bill. That is roughly 10 percent of the House Democratic caucus.

I am ever grateful for the existence of the blogs at a time when the paper vilified by the right-wing as "liberal" can't be bothered to report the news.

some of the pix from YKos2

2007-08-08T11:24:00.000-05:00

great billboard

2007-07-28T14:51:00.000-05:00

2007-07-28T10:02:00.000-05:00

Assorted news & blog briefs

US demands, Europe agrees to provide, info on whether foreign travelers to US are gay, union members, religious beliefs
by John Aravosis (DC) · 7/28/2007 10:23:00 AM ET
Discuss this post here: Comments (17) · digg it · reddit · FARK · · Link

And what the hell business is it of the US government whether a foreign visitor is gay, let alone all the other new information they're demanding? And worse, how is this not a violation of EU privacy laws - how in the world did the European governments approve of this?

From the Washington Post:
The United States and the European Union have agreed to expand a security program that shares personal data about millions of U.S.-bound airline passengers a year, potentially including information about a person's race, ethnicity, religion and health.

Under the agreement, airlines flying from Europe to the United States are required to provide data related to these matters to U.S. authorities if it exists in their reservation systems. The deal allows Washington to retain and use it only "where the life of a data subject or of others could be imperiled or seriously impaired," such as in a counterterrorism investigation.

According to the deal, the information that can be used in such exceptional circumstances includes "racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership" and data about an individual's health, traveling partners and sexual orientation.
And what a surprise, the US is saying that if we only had this kind of information before September 11, we could have prevented the attacks.
If available at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Chertoff said, such information would have, "within a matter of moments, helped to identify many of the 19 hijackers by linking their methods of payment, phone numbers and seat assignments."
Uh huh. Had we only known which way Mohammad Atta swung in bed, maybe then George Bush wouldn't have gone on vacation for an entire month after having read a memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US." And in any case, notice how nothing Chertoff is saying has anything to do with your sexual orientation, philosophical beliefs, union status or anything else that is ACTUALLY on the list of info they're requesting.

There is nothing our government won't do, no rights they won't violate. But for Europe to agree to this mess, this incredible violation. It's time for you Europeans to have a little chat with your own governments.

Oh, and let me just say that had we a Congress that actually cared about privacy, perhaps we could have avoided this mess. Just saying.

52,375 veterans treated or evaluated for PTSD after Iraq or Afghanistan | Salon News

http://www.salon.com/news/primary_sources/2007/07/...

Newly released reports show that the Department of Veterans Affairs alone is responsible for that many; only 19,000 have received disability benefits.

July 27, 2007 | Editor's note: Yesterday, a presidential panel recommended an overhaul of the healthcare system for U.S. veterans, highlighting treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder as one of the biggest challenges. Today, new evidence shows just how much the problem is growing.

A nonpublic report from the Department of Veterans Affairs sent to the Government Accountability Office says that 52,375 veterans who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan, and are now home, have been treated or evaluated for PTSD by the department.

The military provides some healthcare for wounded soldiers. Once they are out of the military, that job falls to the VA, the agency also responsible for handing out disability payments, if needed. That 52,375 number represents only patients seen by the VA and excludes an unknown number of soldiers diagnosed as having PTSD by the military. It also excludes another unknown number of soldiers who suffer from PTSD but have not yet been diagnosed by the military or the VA.

The document was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Veterans for Common Sense. That organization has also obtained a VA document showing that only 19,015 of those 52,375 veterans are receiving disability payments, suggesting a problem getting payments to those who deserve it. Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, says, "This is of great concern to us."

Republican Sex Offenders

http://www.republicansexoffenders.com

**NOTICE**:All information on this website is public information gleaned from reputable news sources and public court records. No part of this information can be considered defamatory, libelous or slanderous. ...

The former head of the Michigan Federation of Young Republicans, Michael Flory, admitted Tuesday that he sexually abused a colleague during a national convention in Cleveland last summer

Republican legislator Ted Klaudt was charged with raping girls under the age of 16.

Republican city councilman Joseph Monteleone Jr. was found guilty of fondling underage girls.

Republican congressional aide Jeffrey Nielsen was arrested for having sex with a 14-year old boy.

Republican County Commissioner Patrick Lee McGuire surrendered to police after allegedly molesting girls between the ages of 8 and 13.

Republican prosecutor Larry Corrigan was arrested for soliciting sex from 13-year old girls.

Republican Mayor Jeffrey Kyle Randall was sentenced to 275 days in jail for molesting two boys -- ages ten and 12 -- during a six-year period.

Republican County Board Candidate Brent Schepp was charged with molesting a 14-year old girl and killed himself three days later.

Republican Congressman Mark Foley abruptly resigned from Congress after "sexually explicit" emails surfaced showing him flirting with a 16-year old boy.

Republican executive Randall Casseday of the conservative Washington Times newspaper pleaded guilty to soliciting sex from a 13-year old girl on the internet.

Republican chairman of the Oregon Christian Coalition Lou Beres confessed to molesting a 13-year old girl.

Republican County Constable Larry Dale Floyd pleaded guilty to charges of soliciting sex from an 8-year old girl. Floyd has repeatedly won elections for Denton County, Texas, constable.

Republican judge Mark Pazuhanich pleaded no contest to fondling a 10-year old girl and was sentenced to 10 years probation.

Republican Party leader Bobby Stumbo was arrested for having sex with a 5-year old boy.

Republican petition drive manager Tom Randall pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 14, one of them the daughter of an associate in the petition business.

Republican County Chairman Armando Tebano pleaded guilty to fondling a 14-year-old girl.

Republican teacher and former city councilman John Collins pleaded guilty to sexually molesting 13 and 14 year old girls.

Republican campaign worker Mark Seidensticker is a convicted child molester.

Republican Mayor Philip Giordano is serving a 37-year sentence in federal prison for sexually abusing 8- and 10-year old girls.

Republican Mayor Tom Adams was arrested for distributing child pornography over the internet.

Republican Mayor John Gosek was arrested on charges of soliciting sex from two 15-year old girls.

Republican County Commissioner David Swartz pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 11 and was sentenced to 8 years in prison.

Republican legislator Edison Misla Aldarondo was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping his daughter between the ages of 9 and 17.

Republican Committeeman John R. Curtain was charged with molesting a teenage boy and unlawful sexual contact with a minor.

Republican anti-abortion activist Howard Scott Heldreth is a convicted child rapist in Florida.

Republican zoning supervisor, Boy Scout leader and Lutheran church president Dennis L. Rader pleaded guilty to performing a sexual act on an 11-year old girl he murdered.

Republican anti-abortion activist Nicholas Morency pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer and offering a bounty to anybody who murders an abortion doctor.

Republican campaign consultant Tom Shortridge was sentenced to three years probation for taking nude photographs of a 15-year old girl.

Republican racist pedophile and United States Senator Strom Thurmond had sex with a 15-year old black girl which produced a child.

Republican pastor Mike Hintz, whom George W. Bush commended during the 2004 presidential campaign, surrendered to police after admitting to a sexual affair with a female juvenile.

Republican legislator Peter Dibble pleaded no contest to having an inappropriate relationship with a 13-year-old girl.

Republican advertising consultant Carey Lee Cramer was sentenced to six years in prison for molesting two 8-year old girls, one of whom appeared in an anti-Gore television commercial.

Republican fundraiser Lawrence E. King, Jr. organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.

Republican lobbyist Craig J. Spence organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.

Republican Congressman Donald "Buz" Lukens was found guilty of having sex with a female minor and sentenced to one month in jail.

Republican fundraiser Richard A. Delgaudio was found guilty of child porn charges and paying two teenage girls to pose for sexual photos.

Republican activist Mark A. Grethen convicted on six counts of sex crimes involving children.

Republican campaign chairman Randal David Ankeney pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault on a child and was arrested again five years later on the same charge.

Republican Congressman Dan Crane had sex with a female minor working as a congressional page.

Republican activist and Christian Coalition leader Beverly Russell admitted to an incestuous relationship with his step daughter.

Republican Judge Ronald C. Kline pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography on his home computer.

Republican congressman and anti-gay activist Robert Bauman was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy he picked up at a gay bar.

Republican Committee Chairman Jeffrey Patti was arrested for distributing a video clip of a 5-year-old girl being raped.

Republican activist Marty Glickman (a.k.a. "Republican Marty"), was taken into custody by Florida police on four counts of unlawful sexual activity with an underage girl and one count of delivering the drug LSD.

Republican legislative aide Howard L. Brooks was charged with molesting a 12-year old boy and possession of child pornography.

Republican Senate candidate John Hathaway was accused of having sex with his 12-year old baby sitter and withdrew his candidacy after the allegations were reported in the media.

Republican preacher Stephen White, who demanded a return to traditional values, was sentenced prison after offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him.

Republican talk show host Jon Matthews pleaded guilty to exposing his genitals to an 11 year old girl.

Republican anti-gay activist Earl "Butch" Kimmerling was sentenced to 40 years in prison for molesting an 8-year old girl after he attempted to stop a gay couple from adopting her.

Republican Party leader Paul Ingram pleaded guilty to six counts of raping his daughters and served 14 years in federal prison.

Republican election board official Kevin Coan was sentenced to two years probation for soliciting sex over the internet from a 14-year old girl.

Republican politician Andrew Buhr was charged with two counts of first degree sodomy with a 13-year old boy.

Republican legislator Keith Westmoreland was arrested on seven felony counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition to girls under the age of 16 (i.e. exposing himself to children).

Republican anti-abortion activist John Allen Burt was found guilty of molesting a 15-year old girl.

Republican County Councilman Keola Childs pleaded guilty to molesting a male child.

Republican activist John Butler was charged with criminal sexual assault on a teenage girl.

Republican candidate Richard Gardner admitted to molesting his two daughters.

Republican Councilman and former Marine Jack W. Gardner was convicted of molesting a 13-year old girl.

Republican County Commissioner Merrill Robert Barter pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual contact and assault on a teenage boy.

Republican City Councilman Fred C. Smeltzer, Jr. pleaded no contest to raping a 15 year-old girl and served 6-months in prison.

Republican activist Parker J. Bena pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography on his home computer and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and fined $18,000.

Republican parole board officer and former Colorado state representative, Larry Jack Schwarz, was fired after child pornography was found in his possession.

Republican strategist and Citadel Military College graduate Robin Vanderwall was convicted in Virginia on five counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the internet.

Republican city councilman Mark Harris, who is described as a "good military man" and "church goer," was convicted of repeatedly having sex with an 11-year-old girl and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Republican businessman Jon Grunseth withdrew his candidacy for Minnesota governor after allegations surfaced that he went swimming in the nude with four underage girls, including his daughter.

Republican campaign worker, police officer and self-proclaimed reverend Steve Aiken was convicted of having sex with two underage girls.

Republican director of the "Young Republican Federation" Nicholas Elizondo molested his 6-year old daughter and was sentenced to six years in prison.

Republican president of the New York City Housing Development Corp. Russell Harding pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer.

Republican benefactor of conservative Christian groups, Richard A. Dasen Sr., was found guilty of raping a 15-year old girl. Dasen, 62, who is married with grown children and several grandchildren, has allegedly told police that over the past decade he paid more than $1 million to have sex with a large number of young women.

Republican Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the rape of children in Iraqi prisons in order to humiliate their parents into providing information about the anti-American insurgency. See excerpt of one prisoner's report here and his full report here.

Schumer will block any Bush SCOTUS nominee between now and 2009

2007-07-27T23:38:00.000-05:00

Schumer will block any Bush SCOTUS nominee between now and 2009:

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) declared that his decision not to lead a successful filibuster in January 2006 of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s nomination was one of his “greatest failings” as a senator.

In an address to liberal legal scholars of the American Constitution Society, Schumer said that after watching the work of the newly constructed “Roberts court” the past 18 months, he would block any future Supreme Court nominee of President Bush’s should a vacancy arise between now and January 2009.

Schumer’s address covered his views on the confirmation processes for Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts. Conservatives have hailed Roberts and Alito for their rulings and generally have said that their confirmations may prove to be the single lasting legacy of President Bush’s second term.

But Schumer and liberals were alarmed by many of the 5-4 rulings that went against their interests, as well as the strong denunciations of the right wing of the court by the elderly liberal wing in its dissents. The Roberts court overturned previous rulings on partial birth abortion and campaign finance reform.

Some news headlines

2007-07-27T21:49:00.000-05:00

Iraqi lawmakers take their time - Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes. com/news/ na...

BAGHDAD — Missing from Thursday's session of the Iraqi parliament were about half of the members, including the speaker, the former speaker and two former prime ministers.

Also missing: a sense of urgency.

American officials have been pressing Iraqi leaders to prove their commitment to ending sectarian strife by enacting landmark legislation before mid-September, when the Bush administration is to present its next report on Iraq to Congress.

But even as parliament's monthlong August break approaches, key issues aren't being discussed. Quorums are marginal, or fleeting.

Despite the high stakes here, the Iraqi parliament appears to be deliberating at a pace to rival plodding legislative bodies around the world.

Thursday's session, the 50th of the year, convened half an hour late.

A bell rang in the Convention Center in the fortified Green Zone reminding members to take their seats and raise their hands for roll call (the electronic system is broken). It showed 145 in attendance. That dropped to 137 as some members walked out after the first vote. The speaker on occasion has dismissed parliament for falling below the quorum of 100 legislators, but on Thursday, they proceeded. The opening Muslim prayer and 275-name roll call took half an hour, a quarter of the time, in what turned out to be a roughly two-hour session.

I will be live blogging next week.

2007-07-27T17:20:00.000-05:00

Excellent videos on Gonzales

2007-07-26T11:19:00.001-05:00

And this morning's press conference my Sen. Schumer:

breaking news ---- it's about time!

2007-07-25T06:20:00.000-05:00

2 Bush aides to face contempt citations

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 47 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Heading toward a separation-of-powers showdown, House Democrats prepared contempt of Congress citations against two White House aides who have refused to comply with subpoenas for information on the abrupt firings of federal prosecutors.

The White House has said that Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former legal counselor Harriet Miers, among other top advisers to President Bush, are absolutely immune from subpoenas because their documents and testimony are protected by executive privilege.

House Judiciary Committee Democrats, led by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., reject that claim and have drafted for a vote Wednesday a resolution citing Miers and Bolten with contempt of Congress, a federal misdemeanor punishable by up to a $100,000 fine and a one-year prison sentence.

The panel's vote is the first step on the road to a possible constitutional showdown in federal court.

If history and self-interest are any guide, the two sides will resolve the dispute before then. Neither side wants a judge to settle the question about the limits of executive privilege.

But no deal appeared imminent. White House Counsel Fred Fielding has offered to make top administration officials available for private, off-the-record interviews about the administration's role in the firings. But he has invoked executive privilege and directed Miers, Bolten and the Republican National Committee to withhold almost all relevant documents. Miers did not even appear at a hearing to which she had been summoned, infuriating Democrats.

Democrats rejected Fielding's "take-it-or-leave-it" offer and advised lawyers for Miers and Bolten that they were in danger of being held in contempt of Congress.

If the citation passes the committee and then the full House by simple majorities, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi then would transfer it to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. The man who holds that job, Jeff Taylor, is a Bush appointee. The Bush administration has made clear it would not let a contempt citation be prosecuted because the information and documents sought are protected by executive privilege.

The Justice Department reiterated that position in a letter to Conyers on Tuesday. Brian A. Benczkowski, principal deputy assistant attorney general, cited the department's "long-standing" position, "articulated during administrations of both parties, that the criminal contempt of Congress statute does not apply to the president or presidential subordinates who assert executive privilege."

Benczkowski said it also was the department's view that the same position applies to Miers.

Contempt of Congress is a federal crime, but a sitting president has the authority to commute the sentence or pardon anyone convicted or accuses of any federal crime.

Congress can hold a person in contempt if that person obstructs proceedings or an inquiry by a congressional committee. Congress has used contempt citations for two main reasons: to punish someone for refusing to testify or refusing to provide documents or answers, and for bribing or libeling a member of Congress.

The last time a full chamber of Congress voted on a contempt citation was 1983. The House voted 413-0 to cite former Environmental Protection Agency official Rita Lavelle for contempt of Congress for refusing to appear before a House committee. Lavelle was later acquitted in court of the contempt charge, but she was convicted of perjury in a separate trial.

Great mural from the men's room wall

2007-07-21T20:41:00.000-05:00

(Click to enlarge photo.)
This is just too funny not to share. Description follows.

Men's Restroom Mural

Edge Designs is an all-women run company that designs interior office space. They had a recent opportunity to do an office project in NYC.The client allowed the women of this company a free hand in all design aspects. The client was a company that was also run by all women Execs. The result, well... We all know that men never talk, never look at each other, and never laugh much in the restroom.

The men's room is a serious and quiet place. But now, with the addition of one mural on the wall, lets just say the men's restroom is A place of laughter and smiles now.

Melting the ice

2007-07-15T11:18:00.000-05:00

But wait ----- Aren't there still people in Mississippi who don't have AC and could use that ice?
Betsy

Hurricane Katrina Ice Going Down Drain

GLOUCESTER, Mass. — After nearly two years, thousands of truck miles and $12.5 million in storage costs, a cold relic of the flawed Hurricane Katrina relief effort is going down the drain.

The federal government is getting rid of thousands of pounds of ice it had sent south to help Katrina victims, then north when it determined much of the ice wasn't needed. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had been hanging on to the ice in case it was needed for another disaster, but decided to get rid of it because it couldn't determine whether it was still safe for human consumption.

"We just didn't take any chances," FEMA spokeswoman Alexandra Kirin told the Gloucester Daily Times.

The ice, held at AmeriCold Logistics in Gloucester and at 22 similar facilities nationwide, is being melted. The cost of storing the ice at all the facilities since Katrina is $12.5 million.

The Army Corps of Engineers acknowledged after the August 2005 hurricane that it had ordered too much ice because of faulty estimates by local officials. Truckers received up to $900 a day to move the ice to storage sites around the country.

Gloucester received 118 truckloads of ice that September, but 99 of those were sent to Florida in October 2005 to help with relief efforts after Hurricane Wilma. By November 2005, only four truckloads, weighing between 40,000 and 84,000 pounds each, remained in Gloucester.

FEMA contracts required disposal of the ice three months after purchase, but Kirin said the agency decided to keep the excess ice for the 2006 hurricane season. With fewer storms than expected, the ice was not needed, and the agency decided not to save the ice for the 2007 season.

She added that FEMA tried to donate the ice, but "had no takers."

A Must-Read (must get angry) blog post

2007-07-15T01:15:00.000-05:00

A friend forwarded this to me. Appalling!

Send Liberals to "Gas Chambers." ... Astonishing Right-Wing Extremism!

A good investigative journalist, if needed, can hide aboard a cruise full of white supremacists and manage not only to escape without punching someone and thereby blowing their cover, but also get out with one hell of a story. That is exactly what Johann Hari did when he joined the National Review cruise and their motley of hate. The result is breathtaking and incredibly frightening. One has to wonder how Jewish travelers aboard this hate vessel did not recognize the rhetoric and make way directly to the nearest inflatable device.

From the masterful Hari article, I give you The Ship of Fools:

"I am standing waist-deep in the Pacific Ocean, both chilling and burning, indulging in the polite chit-chat beloved by vacationing Americans. A sweet elderly lady from Los Angeles is sitting on the rocks nearby, telling me dreamily about her son. "Is he your only child?" I ask. "Yes," she says. "Do you have a child back in England?" she asks. No, I say. Her face darkens. "You'd better start," she says. "The Muslims are breeding. Soon, they'll have the whole of Europe.""

If you are concerned that the hate constituency hates only Muslims, don't worry, they hate everyone who is unlike them and suggest not so novel ideas for taking care of undesirables (emph mine):

"I am getting used to these moments – when gentle holiday geniality bleeds into... what? I lie on the beach with Hillary-Ann, a chatty, scatty 35-year-old Californian designer. As she explains the perils of Republican dating, my mind drifts, watching the gentle tide. When I hear her say, " Of course, we need to execute some of these people," I wake up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand lazily. "A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country," she says. "Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that's what you'll get." She squints at the sun and smiles. " Then things'll change.""

The gas chamber, eh? Executions for fellow citizens? Is that where we are now?

"I am travelling on a bright white cruise ship with two restaurants, five bars, a casino – and 500 readers of the National Review. Here, the Iraq war has been "an amazing success". Global warming is not happening. The solitary black person claims, "If the Ku Klux Klan supports equal rights, then God bless them." And I have nowhere to run."

You can assume that some of the 500 of the floating confederacy included American right wing hate stars who will soon no doubt have their talking points ready to put at arms length the few bad apples among them. But that won't fly, not when books written by white supremacist Ann Coulter advocating for terrorist attacks against US citizens are flying off book shelves.

But what is really striking is that there are Jews in this Neo-Nazi filth and that there are blacks counted among these racists and that there are Americans among these imperialists. Obviously hate is more compelling than one's own citizens, religious and ethnic background, or the cruel lessons of history.

"To my left, I find a middle-aged Floridian with a neat beard. To my right are two elderly New Yorkers who look and sound like late-era Dorothy Parkers, minus the alcohol poisoning. They live on Park Avenue, they explain in precise Northern tones. "You must live near the UN building," the Floridian says to one of the New York ladies after the entree is served. Yes, she responds, shaking her head wearily. "They should suicide-bomb that place," he says. They all chuckle gently. How did that happen? How do you go from sweet to suicide-bomb in six seconds?"

From Ann Coulter's rotted out brain to the lips of a Park Avenue society lady. No difference, a monster is a monster.

"There is something strange about this discussion, and it takes me a few moments to realise exactly what it is. All the tropes that conservatives usually deny in public – that Iraq is another Vietnam, that Bush is fighting a class war on behalf of the rich – are embraced on this shining ship in the middle of the ocean. Yes, they concede, we are fighting another Vietnam; and this time we won't let the weak-kneed liberals lose it. "It's customary to say we lost the Vietnam war, but who's 'we'?" the writer Dinesh D'Souza asks angrily. "The left won by demanding America's humiliation." On this ship, there are no Viet Cong, no three million dead. There is only liberal treachery. Yes, D'Souza says, in a swift shift to domestic politics, "of course" Republican politics is "about class. Republicans are the party of winners, Democrats are the party of losers.""

A Profile in Cowardice

2007-07-13T12:31:00.000-05:00

Where are the rest of the repug cowards?

Ricardo Thomas / The Detroit News

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Col., is the sole Republican candidate to address the NAACP convention. He was flanked by lecterns with placards for nine other GOP candidates -- all no-shows.

(from http://info.detnews.com/pix/photogalleries/newsgallery/12072007_prescandidates/index12.htm)

My gift to congressional democrats

2007-07-11T13:29:00.000-05:00

Would you like me to recommend a surgeon who can help with the installation?

Girl students in Afghanistan

2007-07-10T17:57:00.000-05:00

I run a program for high school immigrants and refugees. Five years ago we had our first student with almost no formal schooling. (We now have 8-10 at any given time.) This first girl was a 16 yr old from Afghanistan who had been taught to read and write using a stick in the dirt, where the letters and words could easily be erased if Taliban came. She was then in some sort of British-run or NATO-run school for older girls, perhaps peace-corps or something of the sort. (All the girls were members of families that were leaving Afghanistan.) She came to Texas a year after that and was my student for a year. Amazing thirst for knowledge. Amazing young lady.

At the time, we were all excited about the new horizons and new possibilities opening up for these girls in their own country. I cry to read stories like this.

July 10, 2007 from the New York Times

As War Enters Classrooms, Fear Grips Afghans

Joao Silva for The New York Times

Children entering class for an exam Monday at the Qalai Sayedan School in Logar Province, Afghanistan.

QALAI SAYEDAN, Afghanistan, July 9 — With their teacher absent, 10 students were allowed to leave school early. These were the girls the gunmen saw first, 10 easy targets walking hand-in-hand through the blue metal gate and on to the winding dirt road.

The staccato of machine-gun fire pelted through the stillness. A 13-year-old named Shukria was hit in the arm and the back, and then teetered into the soft brown of an adjacent wheat field. Zarmina, her 12-year-old sister, ran to her side, listening to the wounded girl’s precious breath and trying to help her stand.

But Shukria was too heavy to lift, and the two gunmen, sitting astride a single motorbike, sped closer.

As Zarmina scurried away, the men took a more studied aim at those they already had shot, killing Shukria with bullets to her stomach and heart. Then the attackers seemed to succumb to the frenzy they had begun, forsaking the motorbike and fleeing on foot in a panic, two bobbing heads — one tucked into a helmet, the other swaddled by a handkerchief — vanishing amid the earthen color of the wheat.

Six students were shot here on the afternoon of June 12, two of them fatally. The Qalai Sayedan School — considered among the very best in the central Afghan province of Logar — reopened only last weekend, but even with Kalashnikov-toting guards at the gate, only a quarter of the 1,600 students have dared to return.

Shootings, beheadings, burnings and bombings: these are all tools of intimidation used by the Taliban and others to shut down hundreds of Afghanistan’s public schools. To take aim at education is to make war on the government.

Parents are left with peculiar choices. “It is better for my children to be alive even if it means they must be illiterate,” said Sayed Rasul, a father who had decided to keep his two daughters at home for a day.

Afghanistan surely has made some progress toward development, but most often the nation seems astride some pitiable rocking horse, with each lurch forward inevitably reversed by the backward spring of harsh reality.

The schools are one vivid example. The Ministry of Education claims that 6.2 million children are now enrolled, or about half the school-age population. And while statistics in Afghanistan can be unreliably confected, there is no doubt that attendance has multiplied far beyond that of any earlier time, with uniformed children now teeming through the streets each day, flooding classrooms in two and three shifts.

A third of these students are girls, a marvel itself. Historically, girls’ education has been undervalued in Afghan culture. Girls and women were forbidden from school altogether during the Taliban rule.

But after 30 years of war, this is a country without normal times to reclaim; in so many ways, Afghanistan must start from scratch. The accelerating demand for education is mocked by the limited supply. More than half the schools have no buildings, according to the Ministry of Education; classes are commonly held in tents or beneath trees or in the brutal, sun-soaked openness.

Only 20 percent of the teachers are even minimally qualified. Texts are outdated; hundreds of titles need to be written, and millions of books need to be printed. And then there is the violence. In the southern provinces where the Taliban are most aggressively combating American and NATO troops, education has virtually come to a halt in large swaths of the contested regions. In other areas, attacks against schools are sporadic, unpredictable and perplexing.

By the ministry’s estimate, there have been 444 attacks since last August. Some of these were simple thefts. Some were instances of tents put to the torch. Some were audacious murders under the noon sun.

“By attacking schools, the terrorists want to make the point of their own existence,” said Mohammad Hanif Atmar, the minister of education.

(more)

More Comal River

2007-07-09T11:33:00.000-05:00

Comal River, New Branfeuls TX

2007-07-09T11:31:00.000-05:00

Now THIS is funny

2007-07-07T23:16:00.000-05:00

Who did the make up?

Organic Food really IS better

2007-07-07T01:00:00.000-05:00

From the BBC:

Organic food 'better' for heart

Tomatoes contain compounds which are good for the heart

Organic fruit and vegetables may be better for you than conventionally grown crops, US research suggests.

A ten-year study comparing organic tomatoes with standard produce found almost double the level of flavonoids - a type of antioxidant.

Flavonoids have been shown to reduce high blood pressure, lowering the risk of heart disease and stroke.

Writing in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the team said nitrogen in the soil may be the key.

Dr Alyson Mitchell, a food chemist at the University of California, and colleagues measured the amount of two flavonoids - quercetin and kaempferol - in dried tomato samples that had been collected as part of a long-term study on agricultural methods.

These findings also confirm recent European research, which showed that organic tomatoes, peaches and processed apples all have higher nutritional quality than non-organic

Peter Melchett, Soil Association

They found that on average they were 79% and 97% higher respectively in the organic tomatoes than in the conventionally grown fruit.

New Scientist magazine reported that the different levels of flavonoids in tomatoes are probably due to the absence of fertilisers in organic farming.

Flavonoids are produced as a defence mechanism that can be triggered by nutrient deficiency, such as a lack of nitrogen in the soil.

The inorganic nitrogen in conventional fertiliser is easily available to plants and so, the researchers suggests, the lower levels of flavonoids are probably caused by over-fertilisation.

Conflicting evidence

Flavonoids have also been linked with reduced rates of some types of cancer and dementia.

The Food Standards Agency says there is some evidence that flavonoids can help to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and they are currently carrying out a study to look at the health benefits in more detail.

However, a spokesperson said there was no evidence that organic food was healthier.

"Our long-standing advice on organic food is there can be some nutrient differences but it doesn't mean it's necessarily better for you."

For example, a recent study found that organic milk had higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids, but the FSA points out that these short-chain fatty acids do not seem to have the health promoting benefits offered by long-chain omega-3 oils found in oily fish.

Peter Melchett, Soil Association policy director said: "We welcome the now rapidly growing body of evidence which shows significant differences between the nutritional composition of organic and non-organic food.

"This is the second recent American study to find significant differences between organic and non-organic fruit.

"These findings also confirm recent European research, which showed that organic tomatoes, peaches and processed apples all have higher nutritional quality than non-organic."

"As further scientific evidence emerges from new research looking at differences between organic and non-organic food, the Soil Association will be asking the FSA to keep their nutritional advice to consumers under review."

Knitting an iPhone? Cool!

2007-07-06T10:22:00.000-05:00

Alfred sent this in. It's from DaddyTypes.com.

My Mom Hand-Knit An iPhone

My mom was insanely cool even before she knitted an iPhone. Last week, as the hype was peaking, I braced for reports of kids across the country grabbing for their parents' new iPhones; it was a drool-soaked disaster waiting to happen, like all those people who flung their Wii controllers into their flatscreens because they didn't think they really needed that wrist strap. Obviously, I thought, a kid needs his own iPhone so he won't play with his dad's. So I asked my mom if she could knit one. And she did. Frankly, I think it's cooler than the Steve Jobs version.

Here is her knitting saga, and the tips and details to help other knit-happy folks save $800.

Because it looked similar, I had forwarded a link to BitterSweet's instructions for knitting a Pop Tart cell phone cozy. Just change the colors, put buttons on instead of bead sprinkles, and you're done! I thought.

She tested a variety of yarns to get the best gauge. Some yarns that didn't work included a metallic silver and a fat, furry chenille. The frosting-as-screen never looked quite right, though, so she settled on making icons on an all-black face, and a black-and-grey back, using a slightly heavy gauge of wool.

Her iPhone is the same size as the original: 2.5 x 4.5 inches. She made it with #6 needles, and had 15 stitches, 6 per inch. The body is made using a stocking knit stitch, knit 1 purl 1, with 6" of black, and 3" of grey added to the end. This ends up being much easier than setting in a separate screen section.

The icons are sewn on with 2-ply tapestry yarn. Some little details are stitched using a single ply of the yarn; others are made using a 2-ply French knot. If you're giving this to a teeth-equipped kid, it's possible that the knots and icon stitches could get gnawed off. If anyone has another idea for icons and the screen--like recreating an image or wallpaper on it, for example--definitely share it below.

It's important to block the body flat before adding the icons; use a steam iron and cloth and press on the wrong/purl side. That makes the icons much easier to sew. [On the last test version, my mom sewed up three sides of the phone, then started embroidering the buttons. This was all insane and backwards. But the buttons on before you assemble the phone. [And double check the placement and orientation; you know the old saying, measure twice, knit once. Though she asked me about it a couple of times, I couldn't see exactly where the fold would be; as a result, the buttons are upside down. Moral: Listen to your mothers, especially on the subject of knitting.]

To assemble it, fold the body strip in half and sew around three edges. [In order to give it a consistent edge, she even sewed across the end where it's folded.] I cut a piece of slightly dense foam just larger than the dimensions and stuffed it into the knitted pocket. I thought of putting a rattle inside it, but it seemed annoying.

Then she sewed it closed. She used the same grey yarn to sew it together. In order to create the chromey edge, she chain-stitched around the black edges of the face. I think it really stood out nicely.

The PopTart, she figures, would take just 30-45 minutes to make. The iPhone was considerably longer. Not counting the various tests and unpicking, the time requirement breaks down as follows:
knitting: 0.5 hours
buttons: 3 hours
sewing, stuffing, edging: 1 hour-plus
Total: 4-5 hours

Did I mention my mom is really cool?

10 Politically Incorrect Truths

2007-07-06T10:18:00.000-05:00

(From Alfred) This is from Psychology Today.

Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature
Why most suicide bombers are Muslim, beautiful people have more daughters, humans are naturally polygamous, sexual harassment isn't sexist, and blonds are more attractive.

By:Alan S. Miller Ph.D., Satoshi Kanazawa Ph.D.

Human nature is one of those things that everybody talks about but no one can define precisely. Every time we fall in love, fight with our spouse, get upset about the influx of immigrants into our country, or go to church, we are, in part, behaving as a human animal with our own unique evolved nature—human nature.

This means two things. First, our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are produced not only by our individual experiences and environment in our own lifetime but also by what happened to our ancestors millions of years ago. Second, our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are shared, to a large extent, by all men or women, despite seemingly large cultural differences.

Human behavior is a product both of our innate human nature and of our individual experience and environment. In this article, however, we emphasize biological influences on human behavior, because most social scientists explain human behavior as if evolution stops at the neck and as if our behavior is a product almost entirely of environment and socialization. In contrast, evolutionary psychologists see human nature as a collection of psychological adaptations that often operate beneath conscious thinking to solve problems of survival and reproduction by predisposing us to think or feel in certain ways. Our preference for sweets and fats is an evolved psychological mechanism. We do not consciously choose to like sweets and fats; they just taste good to us.

The implications of some of the ideas in this article may seem immoral, contrary to our ideals, or offensive. We state them because they are true, supported by documented scientific evidence. Like it or not, human nature is simply not politically correct.

Excerpted from Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa, to be published by Perigree in September 2007.

Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)
Long before TV—in 15th- and 16th- century Italy, and possibly two millennia ago—women were dying their hair blond. A recent study shows that in Iran, where exposure to Western media and culture is limited, women are actually more concerned with their body image, and want to lose more weight, than their American counterparts. It is difficult to ascribe the preferences and desires of women in 15th-century Italy and 21st-century Iran to socialization by media.

Women's desire to look like Barbie—young with small waist, large breasts, long blond hair, and blue eyes—is a direct, realistic, and sensible response to the desire of men to mate with women who look like her. There is evolutionary logic behind each of these features.

Men prefer young women in part because they tend to be healthier than older women. One accurate indicator of health is physical attractiveness; another is hair. Healthy women have lustrous, shiny hair, whereas the hair of sickly people loses its luster. Because hair grows slowly, shoulder-length hair reveals several years of a woman's health status.

Men also have a universal preference for women with a low waist-to-hip ratio. They are healthier and more fertile than other women; they have an easier time conceiving a child and do so at earlier ages because they have larger amounts of essential reproductive hormones. Thus men are unconsciously seeking healthier and more fertile women when they seek women with small waists.

Until very recently, it was a mystery to evolutionary psychology why men prefer women with large breasts, since the size of a woman's breasts has no relationship to her ability to lactate. But Harvard anthropologist Frank Marlowe contends that larger, and hence heavier, breasts sag more conspicuously with age than do smaller breasts. Thus they make it easier for men to judge a woman's age (and her reproductive value) by sight—suggesting why men find women with large breasts more attractive.

Alternatively, men may prefer women with large breasts for the same reason they prefer women with small waists. A new study of Polish women shows that women with large breasts and tight waists have the greatest fecundity, indicated by their levels of two reproductive hormones (estradiol and progesterone).

Blond hair is unique in that it changes dramatically with age. Typically, young girls with light blond hair become women with brown hair. Thus, men who prefer to mate with blond women are unconsciously attempting to mate with younger (and hence, on average, healthier and more fecund) women. It is no coincidence that blond hair evolved in Scandinavia and northern Europe, probably as an alternative means for women to advertise their youth, as their bodies were concealed under heavy clothing.

Women with blue eyes should not be any different from those with green or brown eyes. Yet preference for blue eyes seems both universal and undeniable—in males as well as females. One explanation is that the human pupil dilates when an individual is exposed to something that she likes. For instance, the pupils of women and infants (but not men) spontaneously dilate when they see babies. Pupil dilation is an honest indicator of interest and attraction. And the size of the pupil is easiest to determine in blue eyes. Blue-eyed people are considered attractive as potential mates because it is easiest to determine whether they are interested in us or not.

The irony is that none of the above is true any longer. Through face-lifts, wigs, liposuction, surgical breast augmentation, hair dye, and color contact lenses, any woman, regardless of age, can have many of the key features that define ideal female beauty. And men fall for them. Men can cognitively understand that many blond women with firm, large breasts are not actually 15 years old, but they still find them attractive because their evolved psychological mechanisms are fooled by modern inventions that did not exist in the ancestral environment.
Humans are naturally polygamous
The history of western civilization aside, humans are naturally polygamous. Polyandry (a marriage of one woman to many men) is very rare, but polygyny (the marriage of one man to many women) is widely practiced in human societies, even though Judeo-Christian traditions hold that monogamy is the only natural form of marriage. We know that humans have been polygynous throughout most of history because men are taller than women.

Among primate and nonprimate species, the degree of polygyny highly correlates with the degree to which males of a species are larger than females. The more polygynous the species, the greater the size disparity between the sexes. Typically, human males are 10 percent taller and 20 percent heavier than females. This suggests that, throughout history, humans have been mildly polygynous.

Relative to monogamy, polygyny creates greater fitness variance (the distance between the "winners" and the "losers" in the reproductive game) among males than among females because it allows a few males to monopolize all the females in the group. The greater fitness variance among males creates greater pressure for men to compete with each other for mates. Only big and tall males can win mating opportunities. Among pair-bonding species like humans, in which males and females stay together to raise their children, females also prefer to mate with big and tall males because they can provide better physical protection against predators and other males.

In societies where rich men are much richer than poor men, women (and their children) are better off sharing the few wealthy men; one-half, one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a wealthy man is still better than an entire poor man. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, "The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the exclusive possession of a third-rate one." Despite the fact that humans are naturally polygynous, most industrial societies are monogamous because men tend to be more or less equal in their resources compared with their ancestors in medieval times. (Inequality tends to increase as society advances in complexity from hunter-gatherer to advanced agrarian societies. Industrialization tends to decrease the level of inequality.)
Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy
When there is resource inequality among men—the case in every human society—most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man.

The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife. True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that's much better than not marrying anyone at all.

Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don't realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy.
Most suicide bombers are Muslim
Suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, but according to Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of Making Sense of Suicide Missions, when religion is involved, the attackers are always Muslim. Why? The surprising answer is that Muslim suicide bombing has nothing to do with Islam or the Quran (except for two lines). It has a lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the absence of sex.

What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don't get any wives at all.

So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region.

However, polygyny itself is not a sufficient cause of suicide bombing. Societies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are much more polygynous than the Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa. And they do have very high levels of violence. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a long history of continuous civil wars—but not suicide bombings.

The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser.

It is the combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings. Consistent with this explanation, all studies of suicide bombers indicate that they are significantly younger than not only the Muslim population in general but other (nonsuicidal) members of their own extreme political organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. And nearly all suicide bombers are single.
Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce
Sociologists and demographers have discovered that couples who have at least one son face significantly less risk of divorce than couples who have only daughters. Why is this?

Since a man's mate value is largely determined by his wealth, status, and power—whereas a woman's is largely determined by her youth and physical attractiveness—the father has to make sure that his son will inherit his wealth, status, and power, regardless of how much or how little of these resources he has. In contrast, there is relatively little that a father (or mother) can do to keep a daughter youthful or make her more physically attractive.

The continued presence of (and investment by) the father is therefore important for the son, but not as crucial for the daughter. The presence of sons thus deters divorce and departure of the father from the family more than the presence of daughters, and this effect tends to be stronger among wealthy families.
Beautiful people have more daughters
It is commonly believed that whether parents conceive a boy or a girl is up to random chance. Close, but not quite; it is largely up to chance. The normal sex ratio at birth is 105 boys for every 100 girls. But the sex ratio varies slightly in different circumstances and for different families. There are factors that subtly influence the sex of an offspring.

One of the most celebrated principles in evolutionary biology, the Trivers-Willard hypothesis, states that wealthy parents of high status have more sons, while poor parents of low status have more daughters. This is because children generally inherit the wealth and social status of their parents. Throughout history, sons from wealthy families who would themselves become wealthy could expect to have a large number of wives, mistresses and concubines, and produce dozens or hundreds of children, whereas their equally wealthy sisters can have only so many children. So natural selection designs parents to have biased sex ratio at birth depending upon their economic circumstances—more boys if they are wealthy, more girls if they are poor. (The biological mechanism by which this occurs is not yet understood.)

This hypothesis has been documented around the globe. American presidents, vice presidents, and cabinet secretaries have more sons than daughters. Poor Mukogodo herders in East Africa have more daughters than sons. Church parish records from the 17th and 18th centuries show that wealthy landowners in Leezen, Germany, had more sons than daughters, while farm laborers and tradesmen without property had more daughters than sons. In a survey of respondents from 46 nations, wealthy individuals are more likely to indicate a preference for sons if they could only have one child, whereas less wealthy individuals are more likely to indicate a preference for daughters.

The generalized Trivers-Willard hypothesis goes beyond a family's wealth and status: If parents have any traits that they can pass on to their children and that are better for sons than for daughters, then they will have more boys. Conversely, if parents have any traits that they can pass on to their children and that are better for daughters, they will have more girls.

Physical attractiveness, while a universally positive quality, contributes even more to women's reproductive success than to men's. The generalized hypothesis would therefore predict that physically attractive parents should have more daughters than sons. Once again, this is the case. Americans who are rated "very attractive" have a 56 percent chance of having a daughter for their first child, compared with 48 percent for everyone else.
What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have in common with criminals
For nearly a quarter of a century, criminologists have known about the "age-crime curve." In every society at all historical times, the tendency to commit crimes and other risk-taking behavior rapidly increases in early adolescence, peaks in late adolescence and early adulthood, rapidly decreases throughout the 20s and 30s, and levels off in middle age.

This curve is not limited to crime. The same age profile characterizes every quantifiable human behavior that is public (i.e., perceived by many potential mates) and costly (i.e., not affordable by all sexual competitors). The relationship between age and productivity among male jazz musicians, male painters, male writers, and male scientists—which might be called the "age-genius curve"—is essentially the same as the age-crime curve. Their productivity—the expressions of their genius—quickly peaks in early adulthood, and then equally quickly declines throughout adulthood. The age-genius curve among their female counterparts is much less pronounced; it does not peak or vary as much as a function of age.

Paul McCartney has not written a hit song in years, and now spends much of his time painting. Bill Gates is now a respectable businessman and philanthropist, and is no longer a computer whiz kid. J.D. Salinger now lives as a total recluse and has not published anything in more than three decades. Orson Welles was a mere 26 when he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane.

A single theory can explain the productivity of both creative geniuses and criminals over the life course: Both crime and genius are expressions of young men's competitive desires, whose ultimate function in the ancestral environment would have been to increase reproductive success.

In the physical competition for mates, those who are competitive may act violently toward their male rivals. Men who are less inclined toward crime and violence may express their competitiveness through their creative activities.

The cost of competition, however, rises dramatically when a man has children, when his energies and resources are put to better use protecting and investing in them. The birth of the first child usually occurs several years after puberty because men need some time to accumulate sufficient resources and attain sufficient status to attract their first mate. There is therefore a gap of several years between the rapid rise in the benefits of competition and similarly rapid rise in its costs. Productivity rapidly declines in late adulthood as the costs of competition rise and cancel its benefits.

These calculations have been performed by natural and sexual selection, so to speak, which then equips male brains with a psychological mechanism to incline them to be increasingly competitive immediately after puberty and make them less competitive right after the birth of their first child. Men simply do not feel like acting violently, stealing, or conducting additional scientific experiments, or they just want to settle down after the birth of their child but they do not know exactly why.

The similarity between Bill Gates, Paul McCartney, and criminals—in fact, among all men throughout evolutionary history—points to an important concept in evolutionary biology: female choice.

Women often say no to men. Men have had to conquer foreign lands, win battles and wars, compose symphonies, author books, write sonnets, paint cathedral ceilings, make scientific discoveries, play in rock bands, and write new computer software in order to impress women so that they will agree to have sex with them. Men have built (and destroyed) civilization in order to impress women, so that they might say yes.
The midlife crisis is a myth—sort of
Many believe that men go through a midlife crisis when they are in middle age. Not quite. Many middle-aged men do go through midlife crises, but it's not because they are middle-aged. It's because their wives are. From the evolutionary psychological perspective, a man's midlife crisis is precipitated by his wife's imminent menopause and end of her reproductive career, and thus his renewed need to attract younger women. Accordingly, a 50-year-old man married to a 25-year-old woman would not go through a midlife crisis, while a 25-year-old man married to a 50-year-old woman would, just like a more typical 50-year-old man married to a 50-year-old woman. It's not his midlife that matters; it's hers. When he buys a shiny-red sports car, he's not trying to regain his youth; he's trying to attract young women to replace his menopausal wife by trumpeting his flash and cash.
It's natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair (but only if they're male)
On the morning of January 21, 1998, as Americans woke up to the stunning allegation that President Bill Clinton had had an affair with a 24-year-old White House intern, Darwinian historian Laura L. Betzig thought, "I told you so." Betzig points out that while powerful men throughout Western history have married monogamously (only one legal wife at a time), they have always mated polygynously (they had lovers, concubines, and female slaves). With their wives, they produced legitimate heirs; with the others, they produced bastards. Genes make no distinction between the two categories of children.

As a result, powerful men of high status throughout human history attained very high reproductive success, leaving a large number of offspring (legitimate and otherwise), while countless poor men died mateless and childless. Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty, the last Sharifian emperor of Morocco, stands out quantitatively, having left more offspring—1,042—than anyone else on record, but he was by no means qualitatively different from other powerful men, like Bill Clinton.

The question many asked in 1998—"Why on earth would the most powerful man in the world jeopardize his job for an affair with a young woman?"—is, from a Darwinian perspective, a silly one. Betzig's answer would be: "Why not?" Men strive to attain political power, consciously or unconsciously, in order to have reproductive access to a larger number of women. Reproductive access to women is the goal, political office but one means. To ask why the President of the United States would have a sexual encounter with a young woman is like asking why someone who worked very hard to earn a large sum of money would then spend it.

What distinguishes Bill Clinton is not that he had extramarital affairs while in office—others have, more will; it would be a Darwinian puzzle if they did not—what distinguishes him is the fact that he got caught.
Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist
An unfortunate consequence of the ever-growing number of women joining the labor force and working side by side with men is the increasing number of sexual harassment cases. Why must sexual harassment be a necessary consequence of the sexual integration of the workplace?

Psychologist Kingsley R. Browne identifies two types of sexual harassment cases: the quid pro quo ("You must sleep with me if you want to keep your job or be promoted") and the "hostile environment" (the workplace is deemed too sexualized for workers to feel safe and comfortable). While feminists and social scientists tend to explain sexual harassment in terms of "patriarchy" and other ideologies, Browne locates the ultimate cause of both types of sexual harassment in sex differences in mating strategies.

Studies demonstrate unequivocally that men are far more interested in short-term casual sex than women. In one now-classic study, 75 percent of undergraduate men approached by an attractive female stranger agreed to have sex with her; none of the women approached by an attractive male stranger did. Many men who would not date the stranger nonetheless agreed to have sex with her.

The quid pro quo types of harassment are manifestations of men's greater desire for short-term casual sex and their willingness to use any available means to achieve that goal. Feminists often claim that sexual harassment is "not about sex but about power;" Browne contends it is both—men using power to get sex. "To say that it is only about power makes no more sense than saying that bank robbery is only about guns, not about money."

Sexual harassment cases of the hostile-environment variety result from sex differences in what men and women perceive as "overly sexual" or "hostile" behavior. Many women legitimately complain that they have been subjected to abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment by their male coworkers. Browne points out that long before women entered the labor force, men subjected each other to such abusive, intimidating, and degrading treatment.

Abuse, intimidation, and degradation are all part of men's repertoire of tactics employed in competitive situations. In other words, men are not treating women differently from men—the definition of discrimination, under which sexual harassment legally falls—but the opposite: Men harass women precisely because they are not discriminating between men and women.

The posts from Alfred

2007-07-05T23:16:00.000-05:00

Why Bush's commute was really a pardon

It's all about cause and effect.

Just days after President Bush commuted the prison sentence of Scooter Libby, legal scholars now say his probation will likely get axed as well. The sentenced stated that Libby's probation would include "supervised release." But according to federal law, someone can only serve a supervised release after being released from prison. Since Libby will not go to prison, there is no precedent that forces him to serve his probation.

SCOTUSblog explains it for us:

The federal judge who sentenced former vice presidential aide I. Lewis Libby for lying to federal investigators and a grand jury on Tuesday raised the possibility that Libby might not have to serve two years on "supervised release" after all. In a two-page order (found here), U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton told lawyers on both sides to file briefs on the issue by Monday.

When President Bush in granting clemency on Monday nullified the 30-month prison sentence Walton had imposed, the President said he would leave intact the part of the sentence that required two years of supervised release -- a form of probation. But Walton on Tuesday noted that the federal law governing such a requirement states that it is to be served "after imprisonment."

Expect Libby's lawyers to argue that it would be unprecedented for their client to go on "supervised release" if he never went to jail. They will want the probation waved.

Even if the probation is waved, Libby still has to pay the $250,000 fine. However, Libby's friends, such as Fred Thompson, are continuing to raise money for him -- which would more than cover the cost.

Bush will not even need to pardon Libby at all. He already has been pardoned. He is not going to jail. He might not serve probation. His friends will help him pay the $250,000 fine. So Justin was correct in reporting on Monday that Libby succeeded in "Getting Off 'Scoot' Free."

Sicko inspires grassroots action in Dallas cinema

Here's a first-hand account of a trip to see Michael Moore's Sicko in a suburban mall in Dallas, in which the audience of conservative cowboys were converted to health-care activists:

When the credits rolled the audience filed out and into the bathrooms. At the urinals, my redneck friend couldn’t stop talking about the film, and I kept listening. He struck up a conversation with a random black man in his 40s standing next to him, and soon everyone was peeing and talking about just how fucked everything is.

I kept my distance, as we all finished and exited at the same time. Outside the restroom doors… the theater was in chaos. The entire Sicko audience had somehow formed an impromptu town hall meeting in front of the ladies room. I’ve never seen anything like it. This is Texas goddammit, not France or some liberal college campus. But here these people were, complete strangers from every walk of life talking excitedly about the movie. It was as if they simply couldn’t go home without doing something drastic about what they’d just seen. My redneck compadre and his new friend found their wives at the center of the group, while I lingered in the background waiting for my spouse to emerge.

The talk gradually centered around a core of 10 or 12 strangers in a cluster while the rest of us stood around them listening intently to this thing that seemed to be happening out of nowhere. The black gentleman engaged by my redneck in the restroom shouted for everyone’s attention. The conversation stopped instantly as all eyes in this group of 30 or 40 people were now on him. “If we just see this and do nothing about it,” he said, “then what’s the point? Something has to change.” There was silence, then the redneck’s wife started calling for email addresses. Suddenly everyone was scribbling down everyone else’s email, promising to get together and do something… though no one seemed to know quite what.

I've seen this movie twice now -- once by downloading it from The Pirate Bay and once in the cinema, and it was incredibly moving and inspiring both times. This is the must-see movie of the summer. Link (via Making Light)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6272168.stm

Australia 'has Iraq oil interest'

Australia has about 1,500 military personnel in the Gulf

Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson has admitted that securing oil supplies is a key factor behind the presence of Australian troops in Iraq.

He said maintaining "resource security" in the Middle East was a priority.

But PM John Howard has played down the comments, saying it was "stretching it a bit" to conclude that Australia's Iraq involvement was motivated by oil.

The remarks are causing heated debate as the US-led Iraq coalition has avoided linking the war and oil.

Oil concerns

Australia was involved in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and has about 1,500 military personnel still deployed in the region.

There are no immediate plans to bring them home.

In comments to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Mr Nelson admitted that the supply of oil had influenced Australia's strategic planning in the region.

"Obviously the Middle East itself, not only Iraq but the entire region, is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world," he said.

"Australians and all of us need to think what would happen if there were a premature withdrawal from Iraq.

"It's in our interests, our security interests, to make sure that we leave the Middle East, and leave Iraq in particular, in a position of sustainable security."

Australians and all of us need to think what would happen if there were a premature withdrawal from Iraq

Brendan Nelson

Howard's stand on Iraq

This is thought to be the first time the Australian government has admitted any link between troop deployment in Iraq and securing energy resources.

But Prime Minister John Howard was quick to play down the significance of his defence minister's comments.

"We didn't go there because of oil and we don't remain there because of oil," he told a local radio station.

"A lot of oil comes from the Middle East - we all know that - but the reason we remain there is that we want to give the people of Iraq a possibility of embracing democracy," he added.

Opposition criticism

Opposition politicians, though, have chastised Mr Howard's government over the comments.

"This government simply makes it up as it goes along on Iraq," Labor leader Kevin Rudd told reporters.

Anti-war protesters say the government's admission proves that the US-led invasion was more of a grab for oil rather than a genuine attempt to uncover weapons of mass destruction.

But ministers in Canberra have brushed aside the criticism, saying they remain committed to helping the US stabilise Iraq and combat terrorism.

They have also stressed that there will be no "premature withdrawal" of Australian forces from the region.

Go to Original

Republican Senators May Back Contempt Charge
By Elana Schor
The Hill

Tuesday 03 July 2007

As Democrats tangle with the White House over executive privilege, Senate Republicans must decide whether to block a criminal contempt charge against the administration or allow it and thus bring the constitutional clash before a federal judge.

Both chambers' judiciary committee chairmen have given the White House a July 9 deadline to explain in detail its executive-privilege claim to withhold subpoenaed documents on the mass firing of U.S. attorneys. If their deadline is not met, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) likely will pursue a contempt citation - and some Republicans are unlikely to bail out President Bush.

Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), vice chairman of the GOP conference, told The Hill on Friday that he thinks Republican cooperation with a criminal contempt finding will be required.

"It's just a formal process that sets up a legal challenge," Cornyn said. "We've got to cut out some of the politics and get this to the courts."

One Senate GOP aide, requesting anonymity, agreed that Republicans might approve a contempt finding as a procedural step. Should the White House continue to resist the subpoenas, only one of the two chambers has to approve a criminal citation before the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia can empanel a grand jury.

Yet the spectacle of Republicans turning on President Bush by finding his advisers in contempt could rub salt in the wounds of an already riven GOP. Senators who have blasted the U.S. attorneys investigation as a partisan charade would have an especially difficult time staying silent on a resolution of contempt.

"There isn't a Republican in Congress who's not thinking long and hard about how they can be a loyal member of the party and at the same time be faithful to their oath of office as a member of Congress," said Douglas W. Kmiec, professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine Law School and head of the Office of Legal Counsel under President Reagan.

Complicating the dilemma, several Senate Republicans have suggested letting the judiciary resolve the executive privilege dispute, setting themselves up for a Democratic campaign to support a criminal contempt finding.

"At the end of the day, this will be settled by the courts," Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said.

"I think this is an issue that's going to be handled by the courts," agreed Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).

"In the end, the courts will decide this anyway," said Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), who has called for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's resignation in response to the firings.

"We can't have a Congress that's constantly bringing administration officials in to harass them," said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). "But it's a matter for the courts."

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called a contempt vote "the last thing the country needs," but advised lawmakers to "let the courts fight this out."

In fact, two equally difficult options exist for Democrats to enforce the subpoenas without a chamber-wide contempt vote, according to former House general counsel Stan Brand. Senators can either pass a jurisdictional bill to send the dispute to court or ask the sergeant at arms to arrest White House officials named in the subpoenas and use a habeas corpus motion to bring the case before a judge.

Citing the precedent of a 1982 contempt citation, however, Brand noted another problem: "The U.S. attorney won't necessarily bring this matter to a grand jury. So it could be an act of futility."

In 1982, during current White House Counsel Fred Fielding's first stint in the position, the U.S. attorney declined to bring a contempt charge against a Reagan administration official, instead seeking an injunction against the House. But Leahy has predicted that the capital's sitting U.S. attorney would be hard-pressed this year to ignore a criminal finding.

The U.S. attorneys probe, which hinges upon Democratic allegations of improper politicization at the Department of Justice, has played out largely on the committee level up to this point. In addition, the complex legal questions surrounding the subpoenas are prompting many Republican senators to keep their powder dry, criticizing neither Democrats nor the Bush White House.

There is also the issue of timing: If the matter goes to the courts, it is unlikely to be resolved soon, perhaps winding down past the 2008 election.

"It's only theoretical at this point, so I wouldn't opine one way or the other," Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said.
Sen. Mel Martinez (Fla.), who is also chief of the Republican National Committee, called the investigation "all politics," but added, "I'm not sure how I'll deal with this."

Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) similarly declined to discuss his approach to the contempt vote, calling it "too big a leap to take at this time. I'm not ready to jump to conclusions."

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) said he is unlikely to support a contempt finding but added that he would need to look more closely at the situation.

Meanwhile, a second subpoena standoff may be in store for the Senate as Leahy awaits a July 18 deadline for documents relating to the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program. But Kmiec, the former Reagan administration counsel, sees a possible Republican endgame: support contempt in the U.S. attorneys inquiry, but defend White House prerogatives on the eavesdropping summonses.

"While it's true that the [attorneys] subpoenas relate to a core executive power … the executive has not done a good and sufficient job of explain[ing] why the dismissals were undertaken," Kmiec said.

By contrast, said Kmiec, the wiretapping inquiry may run into a stronger case for executive privilege due to the wartime and national-security context. By showing some "reasonableness" on the attorneys issue, Republicans could convince a few Democrats to join them in shunning a contempt finding for the second round of subpoenas, he added.

The White House did not return a request for comment on Fielding's response to next week's deadline. A senior administration official, briefing reporters last Thursday, declined to address the scenario of a contempt citation.

Go to Original

No Quick Debate in Iraq On Oil Law
By Mussab Al-Khairalla and Ahmed Rasheed
Reuters

Wednesday 04 July 2007

Iraq's parliament might take a week to start debating a key draft oil law, officials said on Wednesday, as complaints from Shi'ite and Sunni Arab politicians and Kurdish authorities signaled its passage could be rocky.

Washington has pushed Iraq for months to speed up passage of the law and other pieces of legislation seen as vital to curbing sectarian violence and healing deep divisions between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.

Presentation of the draft to parliament after the cabinet approved it on Tuesday was a big step towards meeting a key political target set by the United States.

But Mohammed Abu Bakr, head of parliament's media office, said the law had first to go to the energy and oil committee.

"We need seven days to get the draft on the agenda of parliament to discuss it," he said.

In fresh violence, a suicide car bomber killed seven people on Wednesday, including three policemen, when he drove into a police patrol that had pulled up at a restaurant for lunch in Baiji, 180 km (120 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

American soldiers backed by war planes killed 25 gunmen during a clash in Diyala province north of Baghdad, the military said. It said fighting took place during a three-day operation that ended on Monday. It did not specify the day of the clash.

The oil law is intended to ensure a fair distribution of the world's third largest oil reserves, which are located mainly in the Shi'ite south and the Kurdish north of Iraq.

Sunni Arabs, the backbone of the insurgency, live mainly in central provinces that have little proven oil wealth and have long feared they would miss out on any windfall.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki should have enough support in the 275-member parliament to get the law passed. But in a sign of trouble, the movement of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said it had rejected the draft.

Sadr's bloc, which has 30 parliamentary seats, said the law must state that no contracts may be signed with firms from countries with troops in Iraq, an official said.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) said it had not seen nor approved the draft.

"We hope the cabinet is not approving a text with which the KRG disagrees because this would violate the constitutional rights of the Kurdistan region," the KRG said in a statement.

Iraq's cabinet originally approved the draft in February but faced stiff opposition from Kurdistan, which felt it was getting a raw deal.

The draft, which has not been made public, decides who controls Iraq's reserves and aims to provide a legal framework for foreign investment. The Kurds had previously said some of the law's annexes were unconstitutional.

Another complication could be Sunni Arab politicians, who have voiced concern about foreign domination of the industry.

Saleem al-Jubouri, spokesman for the main Sunni Arab bloc, the Accordance Front, said his group believed the cabinet had agreed to the changes too hastily and would seek amendments, although he added it was not trying to derail the measure.

The bloc is boycotting cabinet and parliament meetings over what it says is unfair treatment of its members.

Meanwhile, a hardline Sunni Arab clerical body, the Muslim Scholar's Association, issued a fatwa or religious edict saying the draft was "religiously prohibited" because it would allow foreigners to exploit Iraq's oil wealth.

A companion draft law that covers revenue sharing and which has been agreed by the Kurds would be approved by the cabinet soon and submitted to parliament next week, officials have said.

Parliament is running out of time to debate and approve the oil laws and other measures aimed at ensuring Sunni Arabs are cemented in the political process. It has extended its current session to the end of July, before legislators take a month off.

That leaves little time before the U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker have to present a much-anticipated report to Washington in the middle of September on Iraq's security and political progress.

Go to Original

House Balks at Bush Order for New Powers
By Jim Abrams
The Associated Press

Tuesday 03 July 2007

Washington - President Bush this month is giving an obscure White House office new powers over regulations affecting health, worker safety and the environment. Calling it a power grab, Democrats running Congress are intent on stopping him.

The House voted last week to prohibit the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from spending federal money on Executive Order 13422, signed by Bush last January and due to take effect July 24.

The order requires federal officials to show that private companies, people or institutions failed to address a problem before agencies can write regulations to tackle it. It also gives political appointees greater authority over how the regulations are written.

The House measure "stops this president or any president from seizing the power to rewrite almost every law that Congress passes, laws that protect public health, the environment, safety, civil rights, privacy and on and on," said Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., its sponsor.

"OIRA has quietly grown into the most powerful regulatory agency in Washington," the House Science investigations subcommittee, chaired by Miller, said in a report in April.

The administration contends Bush's order merely strengthens a similar directive issued by President Clinton in 1993 giving the White House budget office oversight of federal agency rulemaking.

Andrea Wuebker, a spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget, which manages the White House regulatory affairs office, said the order, along with an OMB good guidance bulletin, "will help increase the quality, accountability and transparency of agency guidance documents."

Bush's executive order:

Requires agencies to identify "market failures," where the private sector fell short in dealing with a problem, as a factor in proposing a rule. The White House regulatory affairs office is given authority to assess those conclusions.
States that no rulemaking can go forward without the approval of an agency's Regulatory Policy Office, to be headed by a presidential appointee.
Directs each agency to provide an estimate of costs and benefits of regulations.
Requires agencies to inform the White House regulatory affairs office of proposed significant guidance documents on complying with rules. Critics say this will create a new bottleneck delaying the issuance of guidelines needed to comply with federal regulations.

"This can only further delay implementing health, safety and environmental protections," said Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a private watchdog group that joined numerous labor and good-government groups, including the AFL-CIO, Public Citizen and the Union of Concerned Scientists, in opposing Bush's order.

Miller tried unsuccessfully at a hearing in April to persuade the White House regulatory affairs office's former acting administrator, Steven Aitken, to reveal what private groups might have been involved in rewriting the Clinton-era order.

Aitken stressed that the Clinton order also used market failure as a criteria in advancing new rules and directing agencies to appoint regulatory policy officers, many of whom were political appointees. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., backed Aitken up at the hearing.

"The pattern is that we are challenging the president's authority, hoping to find a mistake and then making a lot of political hay about it," Rohrabacher said.

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service noted in an analysis last February that President Reagan made the White House regulatory affairs office the central clearinghouse for substantive rulemaking, reviewing 2,000 to 3,000 proposed regulations per year. With Clinton's 1993 order, White House reviews of proposed regulations dropped to between 500 and 700 a year, the researchers said.

Bill Kovacs, vice president for regulatory affairs with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the White House's regulatory affairs office now has about 35 people to keep track of the 4,000 rules federal agencies issue every year.

"It's only reasonable that you have some way of monitoring what your agencies are doing," Kovacs said, adding that the White House needs to assert control over the process.

----------

The House bill is HR 2829.

Text of Jan. 18 Executive Order 13422: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/orders

Libby's Money Pimp

Turns out Fred Thompson has a long history of helping the insiders. He's especially adept at helping those under investigation for serious crimes against the Constitution and betraying we the people.

I'm shocked! Shocked.

Thompson tipped off the White House that the committee knew about the taping system and would be making the information public. In his all-but-forgotten Watergate memoir, "At That Point in Time," Thompson said he acted with "no authority" in divulging the committee's knowledge of the tapes, which provided the evidence that led to Nixon's resignation. It was one of many Thompson leaks to the Nixon team, according to a former investigator for Democrats on the committee, Scott Armstrong , who remains upset at Thompson's actions.

"Thompson was a mole for the White House," Armstrong said in an interview. "Fred was working hammer and tong to defeat the investigation of finding out what happened to authorize Watergate and find out what the role of the president was." ... ..

Not all would put a heroic sheen on Thompson's Watergate role

So the man who wants to be president was a rat for Richard Nixon.

Having lived through Watergate, I find this incredibly disturbing. It illustrates to me a penchant by old Fred to support an executive branch that is an authority unto itself, not unlike Mr. Bush, though you'd have to have a Cheney type in place to make it complete.

Red flags, people. Big, bold red flags on Fred.

A baby moose

2007-06-28T14:11:00.000-05:00

Baby Moose, 12 hours hold, with its mama.

cat pix

2007-06-20T19:53:00.000-05:00

Pix of me & Stetty

2007-06-13T12:41:00.000-05:00

Fresh Pix

2007-05-27T14:28:00.000-05:00

2007-05-24T12:52:00.000-05:00

Pollution

2007-05-21T14:51:00.000-05:00

Is Pollution a problem where you live as well?

2007-05-18T15:36:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my blog!

2007-05-18T15:31:00.000-05:00

Please check out our REAL blog

2007-01-17T16:27:00.000-06:00

A group of us are trying to help the Mississippi Katrina victims. This is our blog:

http://texastoms.headonradionetwork.com/

http://texastoms.headonradionetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/missionlogo-50-percent.jpg

This is Cassie's blog http://frecklescassie.wordpress.com/

TheBetsyBlog

And one for the Beach House

Happy Cinco de Mayo

cute pix

patriotism

Tapping hurts the constitution

Lady Liberty's phones

Do we get amnesty too?

4th amendment to the constitution

Where I usually post

Who's looking?

warrant

Tapdance

Tapdancing around the law to tap your private communications,without a warrant.

poor little things

Brokeback Ruined Things for Cowboys

My New Blogs

true cost of the war

Who is the irresponsible one?

Time to get out of Iraq

Stories I missed

Why don't we care anymore?

Eating their own ...

So much fun watching the repugs eat their own ....

Current list of repuglican scandals

Did they hire Halliburton?

Gonzo is GoneZo. Who is next?

political cartoons about Republican Senator Craig

Betsy's news & blog pix for today

How to tell you're driving too fast

The Bush Flowchart

The Post Turtle

A nice image

Deciding how to best spend MY hard-earned money

At the State Fair

Why Karl left

It's about money and not about healthcare

Protest in Sudan

We Won't Back Down

Assorted news and blog links

Feds pay $80,000 to pair arrested for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts

LAST batch of Rove cartoons

2nd batch of Rove cartoons

Assorted Rove cartoons

some oldies but goodies

The "Liberal" Media

some of the pix from YKos2

great billboard

Assorted news & blog briefs

Schumer will block any Bush SCOTUS nominee between now and 2009

Some news headlines

I will be live blogging next week.

Excellent videos on Gonzales

breaking news ---- it's about time!

Great mural from the men's room wall

Melting the ice

A Must-Read (must get angry) blog post

Send Liberals to "Gas Chambers." ... Astonishing Right-Wing Extremism!

A Profile in Cowardice

My gift to congressional democrats

Girl students in Afghanistan

More Comal River

Comal River, New Branfeuls TX

Now THIS is funny

Organic Food really IS better

Knitting an iPhone? Cool!

My Mom Hand-Knit An iPhone

10 Politically Incorrect Truths

The posts from Alfred

A baby moose

cat pix

Pix of me & Stetty

Fresh Pix

Pollution

Please check out our REAL blog

Tapdancing around the law to tap your private communications,
without a warrant.