orwellian traditional media

If say a lie enough times, does it become true? Hamas' victory was a surprise. Bush is popular. Bush is winning the political battle on warrantless domestic spying. Democrats are divided. Democrats are weak on defense. Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman are the ones Democrats should listen to. DeLay is just a conservative guy, and everyone does it. Both parties have their hand in the Abramoff cookie jar.

Most bloggers say this is the right wing talking points trumping reality and the the media is buying them out of fear of being labled "liberal."

But in reality, it is the only propetual motion machine. I think the media have been conditioned to think this way, and when conservatives say it, well that's nice too for the media.

It is the media that are living in fear asking permission for what they should cover and how they should cover it.

sleepy in salt lake city

so today was my first day teaching at East High School. Way back in the 1930s my grandfather graduated from East as a validictorian. These days I roamed a completely different hall filled with minorities and kids who I swear should still be in middle school. Were kids really that small when I was in 9th grade? I was over six feet and growing facial hair at the time, so I am not a good judge.

Anyway, back to the story. I was expecting the real teacher to be giving them a little quiz on the constitutional convention but he decided to scrap it to be nice to them (or because he was too lazy to draw up a quiz). So these minutes I thought I had to kill where not there.

I got up there and ploughed through the first day's topic (introduction) and low and behold I had over an hour left. Crap. Was it because I didn't explain stuff adequately? Because the kids were half awake? Because they don't care? I tried to get them engaged by asking them if they had a driver's license, if they had a credit card, a cell phone, etc. to show them that the law is important to them. So with this hour left, I had them read the next unit (lawmaking) and then talked about that.

So now my Wednesday topic became monday part II and my reading for friday (the court system) became my reading for wednesday. For those of you who teach or have teached, any suggestions? I am thinking of having a review section at first on Friday and then going on to the the Courts. All suggestions are welcome.

The kids are dressed either grungy (white boys), hip hop (minority boys), stripes (nerdy white girls), and tight shirts (all girls). I even got a semi-flirty girl telling me good job and to calm my fears. Oh I hope she doesn't think that smile will get her anywhere. Especially since she showed up late.

living in terror for the sake of fear

Right now there are about 32,500 stories on Google News about bird flu. That is insane. I am sick and tired of seeing stories on the news about what the latest thing is that we should be afraid of. Terrorism in America happened long before September 11, 2001. The traditional media have been bombarding us with stories of unsafe drugs, consumer products, technology (remember Y2K?) roads, potential biological agents (remember the killer bees?) for at least a decade.

Why? Because fear sells. People tune in to learn what they should avoid and what they need to be concerned about. The Bush administration knew this as people in the ad business, so they sold fear to sell the president's policies and ultimately, his reelection. We had to be afriad of Saddam, a non-threat. Of social security collapsing. Of dirty bombs. Of "what kind of message that [Democratic policy] sends to the terrorists/evil doers." Enough is enough.

Americans need to kick their fear habit cold turkey, and the media need to stop feeding into the cycle of fearmongering. Enough exposes. This country was not built on living in fear, but living free. Free from fear in fact, we fought to keep British troops out of our homes and lands (see the 3rd Amendment), from tryannical rulers, from fear itself in World War II.

I for one am not going to live in fear. Avian flu is not going to happen any time soon if at all. It is like monkey's writing hamlet. While we were busy being afriad, Soviet nuclear caches go unguarded, Iran has started up its nuclear program, North Korea has build more nuclear weapons, and Osama bin Laden is still alive making silly attempts a truce. Forgive me if I don't watch the Oprah on bird flu and don't stock up 3 weeks worth of food, medicine, and batteries.

meet the mayors

today as I was waiting for my TRAX train up to the University, I saw Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson across the street. Who should be talking to him but Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Carroon. They must have had some meeting together downtown or something. It was funny to watch some people walk past in utter ignorance, and others recognize either one and stop and talk to them. Of the five to six people that strolled past, two talked to the mayors for some time.

It was a pretty amusing sight. I thought that if something were to knock out both of them at that moment, it would knockout 2/3s of the most prominantly elected Utah Democrats.

On Wednesday, I get to oberserve the civics class that I will be teaching in next week. It is classic TV high school, complete with the head football coach as civics teacher. I wonder how much material these students will be able to cover as we are planning on doing two "chapters" (which are like 5-10 "pages" of a HS text book covered in side bars, pictures and other crap to keep your MTV attention span brain on task) a day. This is a graduation requirement and it will be interesting to see the level of today's Utah public education.

The state has a 1 billion dollar surplus. Will we spend it on roads to commute to bedroom communities? Tax cuts? Or will the legislature improve education funding, cut adminstration and get the state out of competition with Mississippi with last in the nation schools? I wonder if the two mayors I saw today will speak about it with them...but then again, who will listen to them but the scant powerless democrats?

1600 Pennslyannia Madison Avenue

Every time the Bush Administration wants to engage in a major policy change, the sound like an ad agency. Remember that they saber rattling they did in August 2003, chief of staff Andy Card said you don't roll out a new product in August? So they launched It after Labor Day, a little thing called the Iraq war. When things don't go well, this president that doesn't care about polls goes to local media outlets on the theory that they won't ask as tough as questions as the national media.

Just ask Utah's Chris Vanocur and his Peabody about that one.

Most of their communications staff seem to come from the corporate and ad world. and instead of solving problems, it seems the communications staff go to work and making people think there is no problem or that there is another more pressing problem (see Saddam, Social Security, etc). it is really amazing to see their utter unwillingless to address any problems other than with a speech.

I guess you could also call the Bush White House post-modernist too. There is no reality for them, there is only everyone's own perception of what reality is. and so if they can change enough people's perceptions boom, there reality is changed. Too bad that bombs keep blowing up and terrorist recruitment and activity seem to increase rather than decrease while "the insurgency is in its last throes."

Another distraction technique they use is to equate known bad things with other things they don't like. Like Osama and Saddam...they would purposely confuse the two and intermingle the two topics. Or now, Osama and liberals. By saying that Osama's tape "sounds just like Michael Moore" it distracts people from the fact that its been like 5 years since we were attacked by bin Laden and he is obviously not dead or captured.

I didn't like Fehrenheit 9/11 that much, I thought that bowling for collumbine was a much better film, and I think Moore says stupid stuff all the time, but he doesn't sound anyhing anything like Osama. Even Moore or Sean Penn isn't dumb enough to call for a truce. I would say that bin Laden sounds like Star Jones! Man, I can't think of a worse insult to bin Laden, or anyone for that manner to be compared to than Star Jones.

Burns doesn't learn

For the junior Senator from Montana's 71st birthday, he is spending it with the only people he really loves--Abramoff tied lobbyists.

Instead of going back home to the Big Sky state, or hanging out with family or staff, Burns is going to make his birthday party into a at a fundraiser sponsored by Cassidy & Associates--the same folks that used to be Alexander Associates--until so many of their staffers were pleading guilty that they had to close shop briefly and rename themselves. Either Burns needs cash so badly that he has to go through the most tainted of sources, or he is just clueless, or politically suicidal. Or all of the above.

Hat Tip The Fix and Political Wire.

me MIA

two nights ago, I woke up very hot so I took off my shirt and went back to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, I was feeling achey, weak, and sweaty. The day turned out terrible as I was shivering indoors with my coat and gloves on. Boring classes were even worse. And because my wife had choir practice last night, I had to ride my bike to and from school because otherwise I wouldn't get home until 9:30 or 9.

I staggered into my house, make myself instant stuff and climbed into bed. About 30-45 minutes later, I took a shower and felt better. My wife babied me when she got home, and then I got so hot that I broke out in a sweat. My temp at that point was a little over 100 degrees. With the help of theraflu and gatorade, I feel better today, but not 100%.

Interestingly, my butt and lower back hurt. I wonder if it is from bicycling or how I sat up to eat or what.

Soon, I will be teaching a high school class 2 to 3 times a week with my friend whom I know from my days interning for Rep. Matheson. The girl I was originally scheduled to work with (whom I knew from High School and the year I lived in DC) dropped out last minute because of the conflict with her clinic. In some ways, I think this will be a better pairing for me. Expect postings on my experience with high schoolers in the next couple weeks.

King and Alito

So today is the day we celebrate the life work of Martin Luther King Jr. this is the day that folks spend 5 minutes to say racism still exists and we still have progress to make. And people will wonder what is life was like, and these days people remind the audience that Dr. King was vehemently against the Vietnam war and probably would have been against this war too had he lived.

But my post today is to remind people that was only 42 years ago. That none of the progress that was made was inevitable. Heck, King's birthday didn't become a holiday until the 1980s, and even then Republicans and Southern Senators had be dragged kicking and screaming. My parents were alive and aware when the civil rights movement broke out and I am sure many of my readers lived through it as well. It can all go back, history is not a 1-way street.

And with the selection of folks like Alito, the doors of discrimination will be able to open up more and more. Alito to me looks like a modern-day Roger B Taney, a justice has no respect for the law other than his ability to twist it into any shape he finds satisfying. Precedent say abortion is legal? No problem, just let Sam's "open mind" get cracking. The commerce clause gives congress the right to prohibit discrimination by private persons? Alito's got a few ideas (see his US v. Rybar opinion for creative use of commerce clause powers).

Alito isn't just conservative, he is reactionary. He is finally getting to let out all his frustration with being a nerd and unliked in college or law school by most people. His anger at how the world was changing while he was in school, and his efforts to strike back in the Reagan administration. Bush had this view too, when those damn women and minorities had to ruin his old Yale.

So again, my message is vigilance. We have to protect the progress that has been made in the last 40-50 years and strive for more progress. For universal access to health care, a national education system that puts other nations to shame, to good jobs and retirement security. We are a society that values its children, its old, its poor, its discriminated, its sick, its infirm, we don't throw them at the mercy of the winds anymore. And so we can't let others chisel away protection that we have worked so hard to build up over the years with circular logic and terrible reasoning filling the United States Reporters.

diggin' up 'balance'

How come Republicans can find has-beens with axes to grind to say anything bad about veterans and no one in the media calls it. But if some actual ex-administration official speaks the truth, they are labeled as spiteful liers by the traditional press?

Just compare what they said about Richard Clarke versus Don Bailey. Bailey, who lost to Murtha over twenty years ago in a primary, claims that Murtha told him he lied to get his purple hearts. First of all, even if that was true, which there is nothing behind it but lies...but even if it was true, how does that make what Murtha says about the war less true? He still would be a decorated war veteran and ex-Marine who has been the head of the House Defense Appropriation Committee and has garnered great respect for the brass at the Pentagon. He voted for the war. And now he strongly believes based on what he has been told by military folks in the field, that the war is unwinniable and that we need to go home.

Now, I don't know if I agree with Murtha. I think there is a lot of truth to what he says though. And I have more reason to trust him than say, Scott McClelland or Dick Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney or George W. Bush.

So why do we have to listen to repeated baseless attacks against veterans who oppose the war in Iraq? Why do these charges recieve any air time. One word: balance. THe right wing brutalized the traditional media into beliving that since the journalist themselves were culturally liberal, their news was similarily liberal. Of course, the TRUTH or FACTS are not liberal or conservative or moderate. They are just facts or truth. And the fact is, the war is not going well. The fact is, our troops keep dying and there is absolutely no stablity or security over in Iraq. In terms of everyday municipal services, life is worse post-Saddam than pre-Saddam. The electricity is off days at a time, there are Carter-style gas lines, no trash pick up, etc. Sure they have democracy, but what good are free elections if those elected will make your country Iran II?

can't get enough hearing highlights

Today's the last day of Senators questioning the nominee. Next up, interest groups gone wild!

But first, some irony (not Atlantis Morissette-style) Sen. Biden said Supreme Court nominees are so mum about the major legal issues at their Senate confirmation hearings that the hearings serve little purpose and should probably be abandoned. According to the NY Times, "Mr. Biden used about 1800 words in his 20 minutes Wednesday, down from about 3800 words during his 30 minutes Tuesday. In each case, Judge Alito got in about 1,000." Some more Biden moments, from the Times: "Discussing the Family and Medical Leave Act, he noted that his own wife, daughter-in-law and daughter had all worked through their pregnancies until the time that they gave birth. He noted that his daughter was now in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania. And he reiterated once again that he was an 'Irish Catholic kid from Claymont' who would not have been comfortable in the old days at Judge Alito's alma mater, Princeton."

Mrs. Alito broke down in tears yesterday. No one knows whether this was due to tremenous boredom, the Democrats' attempts at attacking Alito's character, or Republicans' at asking him overly soft questions.

Kohl sought to get Alito to say good things about O'Connor and that he would be just like her on the SCOTUS. Alito refused to go along, saying he would be the same guy that HW Bush appointed to the 3rd circuit.

Feingold says assume all procedures are perfect - is there a contitutional right to not be executed if one is innocent? Alito again stresses the procedural protections in place to prevent this.

Schumer showed little patience to sit and listen to Alito's rather lengthy responses, which were drawn out and utterly neutral explanations of methods of analysis: how he would approach a case, rather than how he would decide it. Schumer then tried a kind of multiple choice approach [no pens and bubble sheets jokes please]: "Judge, I'm going to give you two interpretations of the Commerce Clause....Which one is closer to your view of the Commerce Clause?" A. Congress can do whatever B. Morrison/Lopez rock C. Can we go in the way back machine to 1937?

Specter asks Grassley to tell Alito his Anita Hill story in order to give Alito a brief respite. Grassley says that during the Anita Hill hearings many people confused him with Specter and berated his questioning of Ms. Hill.

Turning to the "unified executive" theory, Sessions asks a hard question: "There are only three branches, aren't there?" Alito: Last time I checked. Previously, Sessions noted that Alito's sister is at the hearings and they were debate partners in school. Wants to know who was better. Alito takes the 5th.

more Alito fun

Biden, who rambled about being a Ivy League parent for a while yesterday, donned a a Princeton Univ. hat to show how he too was a concerned alumni of princeton (CAP).

Coburn expressed anger that Sen. Durbin changed his mind on the abortion question, but wasn't there. When Durbin got there, he was upset about the comment and wanted to respond, but Coburn was no longer there. When Coburn was there, and Durbin was only 20 seconds into his response he referred to Sen. Hatch, who, of course, wasn't in the room. Specter said they would have to get the 3 Senators in the hearing at the same time. Meanwhile, they are supposed to be asking questions to some guy who is could replace Sandra Day for life, what was his name again?

Kennedy motioned for the committee to go into executive session to consider issuing a subpoena for records related to Concerned Alumni of Princeton. Specter, caught off guard by Kennedy's motion, scolded Kennedy for not mentioning the proposal in advance. Kennedy said he sent Specter a letter on 12/22 requesting the "William Rusher papers" from the Library of Congress. Kennedy: "If you're going to rule it out of order, I want to have a vote on that." Specter to Kennedy: "I'm not going to have you run this committee" Specter: "There was no letter, which I received... I take umbrage at you telling me what I received." Then Kennedy presented Specter's reply to Kennedy's initial letter. Oops.

Sen. Feinstein wants to try "one more time" to get him to give her a satisfactory answer on Roe. She says that according to the Washington Post, yesterday Alito used a phrase to describe stare decisis -- that precedent "is not an exorable command" -- that the former Chief Justice used in a case in which he was arguing for overruling Wade. Did he mean to use it in the same way? Alito and Feinstein discuss whether one should believe everything one reads in the Washington Post.

And a congressional hearing wouldn't be complete without a sports or war analogy. Grassley Compared Alito to a quarterback whose team is ahead in the fourth quarter, charged that Democrats are going to keep "trying to sack you." "They haven't hit you all day," he said, so expect some "last minute Hail Marys." GROAN.

Hatch spent most of his time lobbing softball questions to Alito that allowed him to rebut criticisms made over the past two days by Democratic senators.

HATCH: But most employment discrimination cases really are decided at the lower level. ALITO: Most of them are. HATCH: And when they get up to your level it's generally decided on technical or a procedural basis. Am I wrong in that? ALITO: No, that's correct, Senator.

And now for some boring actual questions about pressing constitutional issues:

LEAHY: But does the president have unlimited power just to declare a statute -- especially if it is a statute he had signed into law -- to then declared that unconstitutional, and he’s not going to follow it?
ALITO: If the matter is later challenged in court, of course, the president isn’t going to have the last word on that question. That’s for sure. And the courts would exercise absolutely independent judgment on that question. It is emphatically the duty of the courts to say what the law is when constitutional questions are raised in cases that come before the court.
LEAHY: Now, that is an answer I agree with. Thank you.

hearing quote of the day

Sen. Lindsey Graham said he believes Judge Sam Alito when he says he doesn't remember certain parts of his murder boards.

Alito smiled appreciately.

Continued Graham: "And if any of us come before a court and say we can't remember Abramoff, you'll believe us."

"Abramoff who?" queried another Senator.

"Wasn't he the guy in the Bible?" asked a third.


It would be funny if so many Republicans weren't going to jail.

members of congress that hurt america

There are members of congress on both sides of the ailse that really upset me for all the crap they do that is a disservice to our system of governance.

1. Joe Biden (D-DE): All he does is talk. It took him over ten minutes to get to a question for ScAlito today. The Senator is on nearly every weekend on some Sunday talk show, and tries to squeeze in some time to talk to Jim Lehrer and Jon Stewart during the week. The George Hamilton of the Senate is so eagar to be on TV and in print that he is willing to be the guy that attacks his fellow Democrats and such a blow hard that even when he is trying to pitch for his team, he bores and annoys everyone in his path.

2. Tom Coburn (R-OK): Such a culture warrior that he has to cry about how divided this country is, and then do a crossword. I am sick of being lectured by someone on Abortion because they are a "doctor" and some how their opinion matters more. Not when your argument has nothing to do with medicine Senator.

3. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH): This Rep. makes long speeches on bridges not bombs and other oratory devices that put his former collegue James "convicted for bribery and money laundering" Trafficant to shame. Routinely endorces policies that either have no chance of occuring or if they do would be disasterous. See his term as mayor.

4. Richard Palmbo (R-CA): I am not sure if I spelled his name right, but all he cares about his how quickly resources can be extracted from the environment, planet and endangered species be damned. And he is the chair of the House Resources Committee.

5. Joe Lieberman (D-CT): for enambling a disasterous and rabidly administation to claim "bipartisan support" by having Joementum's support. Joe lives in the same fantasy world as Bush when it comes to how things in Iraq are going.

But really we should be talking about ScAlito and what a farce "advise and consent" has become in recent years. The judiciary committee should not be divided by party and with competing hyperpartisans. This a serious job for lifetime appointments. Maybe they should let staffers do it, or senators that are not ramblers, idiots, or generally crazy.

notice something?

Reuters Headlines
Sharon breathes on own, moves slightly
Cheney leaves hospital after breathing scare

Were the two related? Why do democracies keep electing old, fat overstressed men with a history of poor coronary health?

I was listening to the German equivalent of 60 Minutes daily recently and the commenters asked some damn good questions: Why wasn't there doctors around the clock with Sharon? Why was he at a farm so far away from medical care? Why did they not take him to the best hospital in the county? Why was he not on blood thinners?

The whole thing seemed rather botched and haphazard, like they had no idea the man had had a previous stroke, was old, and under lots of stress.

Then again, if Cheney died or had a Sharon-like stroke/coma, what would the Bush administration do? Katrina shows they are not good a preparing with or dealing with natural disasters. Even though this one has long been forseen, somehow I doubt they have any contingency plans. Bush would be very sad but then use the appointment of VP to change the topic and boost his own ratings.

Kos, Jerome and the Dean denial

First off, I think Howard is doing a good job as DNC chair and I am glad he the chair instead of Roemer or Vilsack. Just so you don't think I have an irrational hatred of Dean.

However, HoHo did himself in in 2004. Kos and Jerome in their new book seem to believe that it was the DLC and its allies that killed Dean. Not true. The DLC certainly called Dean names, and saw his rhetoric as dangerous for the party's chances in 2004, but if they are really as trival and on the downswing that Kose et al say they are, how could they take down a major presidential candidate.

The fact is, Dean blew millions on infomercials in Wisconsin, PR events in central park, and on Trippi's old ad firm itself. In December of 2003, the Dean campaign was focusing on getting endorcements from folks like Al Gore and Jimmy Carter. The burn rate of the campaign was amazing. Dean had thousands of his grassroots supporters, mostly from ultra-liberal, storm Iowa with with fancy hats and scarves and it backfired. Iowans got really annoyed with all the handwriten letters, the calls, the out of staters telling them how to vote. Meanwhile, Kerry had hired the best Iowa organzier in the early days of 2003, had locked up Ted Kennedy's endorsement and took out a mortgage on his house to barnstorm with Kennedy around Iowa. Edwards gave the same speech over and over again in small crowds of Iowans and agreed to a devils bargin with the Kucinich folks to insure an inflated result.

Meanwhile, Dean ran negative ad after negative ad against Dick Gephardt. Man, even typing that name makes me laugh, what a joke of a candidate. Gephardt's allies, not the DLC's, did a soft money ad comparing Dean to Osama. While Dean's campaign was wasting money, time, and effort on the wrong things, Kerry and Edwards focused on organizing reliable caucus goers.

And guess how they finished: Kerry, Edwards, Dean, Gephardt. THAT is what killed Dean, not replaying his crazy scream speech over 600 times.
Kerry had the entire Mass. Democratic establishment campaigning for him in New Hampshire. he had been broadcasting ads there since his 2002 senate reelection. Dean meanwhile, got a strong second in New Hamsphire, which is next door to Vermont and was his second home in 2002 and early 2003.

When I was in the "Live Free or Die!" state for Clark, I saw giantic Dean sign after giantic Dean sign held by Dean hat and scarved fans, who chanted their little slogans "hope not fear" and the like. Again, the spent lots of money changing the Dean signs from blue background and yellow writing to yellow background with blue writing. And again, for what?

Clark in the end did better than Dean, winning Oklahoma where Dean never won a single state (I don't know the delegate totals, but Clark had lots of 2nd places in the 3/2 states).

Please Deanies, don't blame the DLC for Dean's horrific flop in the primaries. Clarkies ultimately blamed our loss on our boss hesitating to get into the game so late that he couldn't compete in Iowa and that he got in so late that the only staff left to hire was Gore 2000 douchebags.

photoshop of the day

created by Corey Anderson

a change in Israel?

With Sharon suffering from a massive stroke just prior to leaving his ultra-conservative party (and being replaced by ex-PM Benjamin Netanyahu as party leader), just what will happen to Israel?

Most signs point to a Benjamin Netanyahu's resurgence as the next PM...he is trying to orchestrate a massive resignation from Sharon's cabinet. It was odd that Sharon in the last few years suddenly became a peace maker of sorts by force. Most recently, he unilaterally moved out of the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu makes Sharon look like a hippie and I predict more violence and bloodshed by bothsides.

After reading Jared Diamond's "Collapse" I think one of Israel/Palistein's real problem is not exclusively religion or "ancient ethnic hatred" but rather a biter fight over scarce resources. The Land of Cannan is afterall a desert, and these kibbutz(es) are really the main arm of the radical jewish settlers, not reconquering the kingdom of David.

I am neither jewish or muslim, as you might have guessed from my photo, but I believe the fate of Israel is critical for the U.S. and the world as a whole. With the resurgence of Iran--its sucess in Iraq, it nuclear program, its radical government-- there are legitimate fears that things in the middle east will get much worse before they get better, especially, with Netanyahu in charge (as I opined above).

All comments and thoughts are welcome on this subject, as always.

beyond corporate malfeasance

As I am sure most of you know by now, there were about a dozen miners trapped thousands of feet under the earth in West Viriginia. Only one person survived for the 40 hours it took to find the miners, mostly because of the life-threatening levels of Carbon Monoxicide that made it slow going for the resuers. At about midnight, the families of the miners (and their friends and neighbors who were with them) in the church across the street from the mine got word that everyone was alive, despite all the bad news that they had been hearing all day.

Bells rang out, and jubulant people streamed forth proclaiming a miracle. For 3 hours-- 180 minutes-- no one from the company bothered to tell the families or the media that this rumor they heard was tragically dead wrong. It is one thing to keep hope alive, it is quite another to let happy lies go uncorrected. The company could have told the families that they didn't know yet, that it was too soon to tell. Instead they let them rejoice until 3 AM and then broke the devastating news.

I don't know if a law was broken, other than the dozens of safety violations that went unenforced under Bush's OSHA, but what this company did to the relatives of its former employees was immoral. They can say it was a "miscommunication," they can trot out the governor to offer up a bogus explaniation, but the fact remains that they didn't correct the rumor when they had 3 hours to do so.

new year, same old crap

Well happy 2006 everyone. May this year be the one when corrupt Washingtonians see their bags packed by the voters and juries. While Bush boot licker Alberto Gonzales is investigating who blew the whistle on the NSA's warrantless wiretapping, we are supposed to ignore the fact that Gonzales was in this unconstitutional power grab neck deep. This marks at least the second time he gave his client (Bush) really bad legal advice by telling him what he wanted to hear (before it was its ok to torture). The job of WH counsel is not as an advocate of the president but as a confidential legal advisor. But at this White House, everyone has to be an advocate, or they are shown the door (or given nicknames of Democrats like DOJ's number 2).

Meanwhile, Abramoff sang to the Feds, giving up at least Ohio Republican Bob Ney and Texas Republican Tom DeLay. Who knows who else is lying underneeth Jack's bedsheets? Montana Senator Conrad Burns? Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich (whose last name is ironically German for honest)? The breadth and depth of this scandal could be such that the Justice Department would be in jepardy of handing a political victory to the Democrats by convicting enough members of Congress to sway control of a chamber (most likely the House). Of course, like AbScam, that won't happen.

Oh and sorry for not posting for so long. I was enjoying Christmas, all the family in town, our new place, and a week off with my wife. We got lots done, like installing a new lighting system under our kitchen cabinets. I litterally was lying on the stove hammering into the cabinets. And I got about half-way through Jared Diamond's Collapse. It is the flip side of his amazing (and Pulitzer Prize winning) book Guns, Germs and Steel. I love books that try to say one thing (or a couple of things) were/was the determining factor(s) in human history (like Salt).

Next week, I begin school again, which features teaching East High School students about law. I wish I could tell you more about what exactly I will be teaching and so on, but they haven't told me. Should be interesting and hopefully fun.

the difference between DC Republicans and DC Democrats

Of course, I could be overly generalizing, and to a degree I am. Nevertheless, I have been doing some thinking over the Christmas break about why things are so messed up and my conclusion is that those in power in DC (the heads of the GOP) fundamentally see government differently than those out of power (the heads of the Democratic Party). Bush, Cheney, Frist, DeLay, Blount, Cunningham...all down the line of leadership posts, those folks see government as a bad thing. Or at least they did before they got the strings in DC. So they have combined their idea of the government will always to do wrong with the idea that we might as well use the government to our advantage. Since the government has no real place in civil society, the federal government should just been a tool to enrich ourselves and our allies, while punishing our enemies.

By constrast, the Clinton administration saw the government as a tool to help the People of the US and the world. They saw the federal government as a well meaning but at times bumbling agency that could in some areas do more good if it turned things over to the private sector.

Bush and his friends saw the government as something that was never really well meaning and that since it never can do good, we might as well use it to be good to us. Privization was not to make the things government does now work better (like deliver the mail) but to enrich donors and other supporters (see Cunningham, DeLay, and the expanding Abramoff scandal). There was no need to place experts in any field in a department, but better to get jobs for folks that helped you get into power (see FEMA and Katrina).

Bush did a great job getting the private aid set up for the South Asian Tsunami and Katrina disasters via his father and his father's old nemisis Bill Clinton. But Bush couldn't and wouldn't get the federal government to do anything to actually help people.

What I am not saying in this piece is that Republicans in general are all theiving scoundrels, but that their leaders are. And that the idea of the federal government is your enemy--an idea that is the foundation of the modern conservatism movement does have a logical link to the cronyism, the war/disaster profiteering, and actual bribery that defines the GOP establishment in our Nation's Capital.

That is not to say that Democrats don't have their own profiteers and scoundrels, but those folks are not power positions, either in government or in the party superstructure, nor do such Democrats exist in such numbers.

The devaluation of what government has led to the situation we find ourselves in now.

Chalabi:Kucinich::Hatch:Lieberman

What do they all have in common? They are losers in the eyes of the electorate.

Preliminary results in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad indicate that Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress scored a minuscule 0.36 percent of the votes.
Out of almost 2.5 million voters in Baghdad, only 8,645 voted for Chalabi.
In the Shiite city of Basra, the results indicate he had an equally dismal showing of 0.34 percent of the vote.
In the violent Sunni province of Anbar, 113 people voted for him.

Ouch! that's got to hurt more than Joe Lieberman finishing fifth in New Hampshire with 9% (and that was his best finish outside Delaware and Connecticut).

Atrios wonders if Rummy et al will start defending Chalabi's claims of massive election fraud. Idiots like Doug Feith and the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee crew might, but they are the biggest jokes out there.

ID and its place in schools

This follow up is a response to commenter "Joe" from the previous post. He made two points, 1) any discussion of philosophy invariably involves a discussion of God or some sort of supernatural explanation for the way the world works and 2) there has to be gaps in the fossil record even assuming what science tells us is true--namely, that the Earth is billions of years old and is very dynamic. I will deal with the second one first as it is the easiest to dispense with.

Joe, when I talked about gaps in the fossil records, I am referring to ID proponents claims that there seems to be sudden changes that cannot be explained by gradual change, ergo creatures must have been created by some intelligent designer (which ID people won't say is the Judeo-Christian God, but let's face it, that's to who they are referring).

Undoubtedly, we cannot trace the evolutionary development of every single species from the dawn of life until present day, due to volcanoes, meters, earthquakes, erosion, etc. But the Plaintiff experts certainly convinced Judge Jones (and me) that none of these "gaps" necessitate that the theory of evolution is flawed. "Dr. Padian’s unrebutted testimony demonstrates that Pandas distorts and misrepresents evidence in the fossil record about pre-Cambrian-era fossils, the evolution of fish to amphibians, the evolution of small carnivorous dinosaurs into birds, the evolution of the mammalian middle ear, and the evolution of whales from land animals." Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board at 85.

In short, the judge analyzed each and every critique of evolution and every critique of ID and came out in the favor of evolution as good science and ID as non-science.

To your first point, that discussions of God and the supernatural are long traditions in philosophy. In the ancient days, philosophy and science were inseperable, they both sought to discover the way the universe works. That's why Aristotle was both a botanist and a ethicist (other than the fact that he was really smart).

In my courses on philosophy (one taught in a German college prep school, another taught at Brown University), we talked about supernatural explanations of things, but never about God or the will of God. That was for religion classes.

Personally, I think scientists do what they do not because they want to be or think they are God(s) but because they are trying to understand God's work. God could have very well created the rules that we call physics, how chemicals react, etc. This still seems consistant with the beginning of the Gospell according to John [which by the way really should be "In the beginning was the idea..." because the word John actually used Logos does not necessarily mean "Word"]. To me, there can still be a creator and Lord of us all without having to disprove or discount evolution. Natural section could be God's way. I truly belive that "everything happens for a reason."

Philosophers, like theologians, are involved in figuring out how one should live their life. But ethics is completely independant of evolution, notwithstanding ID supporter's statements that evolution contridicts "every word in the Bible." Philosophy no longer muses about the origin of life, that is again left to either biology or theology.

Utah legislature: (un)intelligent design

"That ruling won't affect my bill at all. . . . My bill isn't written in that manner," Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, said about yesterday's ruling on intelligence design in Pennslyvania. Buttars wants ID tought in an humanities or philosphy class. That sounds like making a philosphy class a theology class. But, wait it gets worse.

"It does challenge the school board, that they're going to have to rewrite their position on evolution to some degree," Buttars said. "Let me put it this way: There is no consensus in the scientific community regarding how life began . . . (so) to have a teacher teaching how life began and calling it fact really offends me. . . . I'm going to stop that. That's all I'm going to say right now."

From yesterday's Kitzmiller decision: "Despite the scientific community’s overwhelming support for evolution Defendants and ID proponents insist that evolution is unsupported by empirical evidence...[Plaintiff expert and paleontologist] Dr. Padian’s demonstrative slides, prepared on the basis of peer-reviewing scientific literature, illustrate how Pandas systematically distorts and misrepresents established, important evolutionary principles." Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, --F.3d -- (M.D.Pa. 2005) pp.83-84 of Document 342.

I guess Buttars really didn't have time to read this through debunking of ID as any sort of science and that ID backers distort and misrepresent any dispute amoung scientists about evolution. There are no "gaps in the fossil record" and the book "Of Pandas and People" is bad science, even the Defense experts acknowledged that.

Slate's William Saletan, argues that, "Scientifically, [Judge] Jones settles the issue. Culturally, he fails." Perhaps this is a better explaination for why Buttars insists on going forward, despite there being scientific consensus on how life began and developed. There is still cultural debate about how allegorical or literal the Book of Genesis is. Yet the whole ID movement is premised on the idea that you can either believe in God or Darwin, and not both.

One of the Plaintiff's experts, Brown Biology Professor Kenneth Miller, is an ardent Catholic, yet he is one of the leading defenders of Natural Selection and doesn't see it as conflicting with his beliefs. "Certainty of outcome means that control and predictability come at the price of independence." Miller explained to Brown Alumni Magazine. "By being always in control, the Creator would deny His creatures any real opportunity to know and worship Him. Authentic love requires freedom, not manipulation." That freedom, Miller concludes, "is best supplied by the open contingency of evolution, and not by strings of divine direction attached to every living creature."

Miller has even written books about this very notion, called Finding Darwin's God.

But let's get back to public policy. "The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the board who voted for the ID policy," Jones wrote, "The students, parents and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources."

And yet, Buttars was well recieved by his GOP collegues behind (of course) closed doors. This is the same group that thinks it is ok for LDS Institutes of Religion to be across the street from High Schools, and to get course credit for it (this has since stopped). Or who stop everything to ban all High School clubs and groups because of gay-straight alliance clubs. The culture wars are winning issues for Utah Republicans, but a losing issue for the progress of society here.

Cheney thinks we're all Homer

Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
Lisa: That's specious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock. (Cohen, 1996)

VP Dick Cheney, defending Bush's domestic NSA spying sans FISA warrants: "It's not an accident that we haven't been hit in four years." 12/20/05

the golden rule of presidenial power

Thanks to the power hungry Ford Administration veterans like Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, along with the Al Qaeda attacks on 9/11, the hotest area of constitutional law these days in executive authority.

Folks like Bill Kristol and John Yoo are arguing that the president has the authority to go above the law and the constitution when there is a threat to national security. Besides the fact that this is utter lies, I would bet any amount of money that had Gore won the recount, and a president Gore done what Bush did with the NSA, these same folks would be screaming bloody murder.

My golden rule is this, if it is something you would grant Richard Nixon/Ronald Reagan/GW Bush to do, it has to also be something you would grant Bill Clinton/Al Gore/John Kerry to do. For example, I am fine with all of their fingers on the button, but I am not cool with all of them locking people up without charges or access to lawyers. Or spying on Americans in the US without a warrant.

First Bush compared himself to Churchill and FDR, but now he is trying to compare himself to the extraconstitutional actions of Lincoln, who ignored supreme court decisions he didn't like and suspended habeas corpus. Not surprisingly, neither action is viewed today as legal and we only don't talk about it so much because he won the civil war and freed slaves.

During the War of 1812, the president didn't have the powers that our does now. And then we were actually being invaded. Washington, DC was aflame. And Lincoln was at war with the Southern states. Bush is at war with an extreme religious ideology that is transnational and decentralized. The Al Qaeda of 2001 is gone, now we have a Hydra-headed organization whose primary goal is to kill Americans, especially American soldiers in Iraq.

Destorying it will take creativity, cunning, and people able to infiltrate parts of the organization; data mining Arabs and extreme left groups isn't the ticket.

Bush: "Congress"=4 Senators

Bush and Gonzales claim that they met with and consulted "Congress" several times while wiretapping via the NSA without FISA warrants. Of course, he failed to mention that only 4 senators knew about this, Rockafeller is the only one I know of so far that knew about it. Since Rockafeller was told (and not allowed to consult is staff or committee attorneys) the obstructionist yes man Roberts must have known too. So who else? It wasn't Min. Leader Reid, who found out hours before the story broke (which had been held for a year). My guess, two republicans. I wonder if Jane Harmon in the House knew, or was the Senate Intelligence Committee it?

There was no consultation, there was only we will tell you but you can't tell anyone. If these Senators said no, would the Bush administration have stopped? What kind of details were revealed (whom were they listening to)? If the Senators had leaked the information, I am sure the White House would have pushed to expel them from the committee.

Liberals in the House and Senate are seriously talking about impeachment. I wonder if in 2007 Bush's number will be up.

FEC pay for play

The Bush White House will leave no sector of the federal government under utilized as a carrot or stick for its political agenda. Case in point, the FEC, usually a bastion of party hacks, who collectively agree to let the big parties do whatever they want within reason. But now, Bush has appointed a replacement whose wife just testified before Fitzgerald's Grand Jury on the Plame Affair. How much can we really trust her testimony?

Let's hear from anti-campaign finance reform ex-FEC member (appointed by Clinton) Bradley Smith:

"Lenhard’s name has been in play – indeed, more than in play, the presumptive nominee - for two and a half years, not one. The first scare release was issued back in the summer of 2003.

Of course, the plot could be more devilish than we think. Clearly Lenhard was offered the opportunity to serve on the FEC, knowing that his wife would become a player in the Rove scandal, and then was left hanging by the White House for two years while they made sure that his wife lived up to her end of the bargain.

Will the corruption never cease?"

The end line of this line of logic is that Bush will pardon lots of people say January 2009 and resign a tad early to have Cheney pardon him too.

another reason Gonzales should be dismissed

The strength of a good attorney is not coming up with some argument to defend what you want to do anyway, but to honestly look at the law and give their client the best advice they can. And some times that advice is "don't do it" or "ask Congress for more power" or "sue" to get what you want. But to stretch statutes and the constitution beyond recognition doesn't do anyone any favors.

I guess Bush doesn't care about the law, he just wants to know how he can do what he wants to do. Afterall, this is the same guy that said things would be easier if the US were a dictatorship, if only he were the dictator. And that to me sums up his outlook on the Presidency-- I should be able to do whatever I want to becuase I have good intentions.

Who cares if we are a nation of laws and not men, Bush has looked into their hearts and his own and seen that they are good men and knows they will do what is alright. Just go back asleep and don't worry about a thing, I will keep you safe he says. Only, they have made things much much worse. More groups hate us, and more countries are less stable than they were prior to his actions. We have no support from the rest of the non-bribable world.

Despite their illegal and unconstitutional wiretapping of American citizens, we haven't stopped any plots, we haven't been able to convict anyone. The Bush legal team has been a disaster. I know we haven't stopped any plots becuase we would have heard about it, like we heard about that "sleeper cell" near Buffalo, NY whose only crime was traveling to Afghanistan. As far as I know, they never recieved any orders from Al Qaeda or training, even if they ended up in one of the camps. They held Jose Padilla for about three years without any charges and barely access to attorneys, yet they dismissed criminal charges against him and other than their leaked complaint/information, there was no legal action taken against him.

And who are they spying on anyway, radical Islamic folks? People who makes lots of trips to the middle east? Nope, anti-war protestors. That the best part, those fools can barely organize a rally, and you are worried about them? Wiretapping could save lives when dones against real threats, but you could always get rhetroactive FISA warrants 72 hours after the fact and 99% the courts approve it, and ther other 1%, they just amend the warrant.

So please, explain to me why the President must circumvent the constitution and the US Code, because he means well, because he is a war president? Because Cheney wants to move executive powers back to pre-Watergate levels? No president could lawfully do what this guy is doing, and none should. It doesn't help us, it only hurts America.

burrying the lede

I will admit, I am a dork. I TiVoed Washington Week because I was out at a law school Christmas party and when I watched it this morning, I was aghast (but not all that surprised) that they chose the Iraqi elections as the lede and talked about Bush personally authorizing NSA easedroppings on American citizens as part of the "Congress, especially Republicans in Congress, are staking out their independence of Bush" meme.

Incredible. Here we have a president flagrantly violating the constitution and all they do is show a clip of Bush talking to Jim Lehrer about how he believes in his heart that it is important to the war on terrorism. So? It would be really helpful to pull people off the streets who we have some information that they might be drug dealers to the War on Drugs, but we don't do that, because we need a warrant first. Or, there are plenty of exigent circumstances were you don't even need a warrant...but 4th Amendment be damned, Bush doesn't even bother.

It would be one thing if the congress went along with it, like the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, but here only a few members of Congress signed off on it. Who? The Chairs of the Intelligence Committees? The ranking members too? The entire committtee? The House and Senate Leadership? Who are they to speak for congress on such a vital issue of constitutional law? A handfull of congresscritters in a room does not a qurom make.

I hope historians look back on 2005 and say this was the year that turned the tide, when Americans woke up started demanding a more accountable President, a more responsive, powerful Congress, a solution for Iraq, an end to corruption and cronyism. In 2006, this feeling may help Democrats regain Congress, but it will ultimately help America. Democrats deserved to be kicked out of power in 1994, many who were thrown out were arrogant, out of touch, and corrupt. Some good ones were lost, and some terrible ones held on because of their position and incredibly favorable district. But one gets the feeling that it is 1994 all over again 12 years later. I just hope if Democrats regain control of the chambers that they won't succumb to the lure of power as much or as quickly as Republicans did.

middle east musings

The first thing that set me off to write today was idiotic statement Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who said that 1) the holocaust was a "fairy tale" and 2) that Israel should pick up and move to Europe or North America. Let's deal with them one at at time shall we? Gen. Eisenhower specifically visited and recorded his visits to consentrations camps because he wanted to make sure the world never forgot and never pertended that 6 million jews just dissipeared. Does Ahmadinejad really need a tour of Dachau and the rooms of shoes, suitcases, and the like? Does he need to go see the ovens, and the bones that are still inside? Does someone need to dig up the mass graves for him to peer into? How much more proof do you need? It would be a pretty amazing stunt to make 6 million people just vanish and have all this archival footage and consistant survivor/perpetrator memories and tatoos etc. and have the massacre not be true.

Maybe Ahmadinejad can't stand the idea of Jews outvictiming Muslims. Most middle east countries with muslim control maintains its power by using the plight of the palistians, and blaming everying on Western Imperalists. True, the British and French are to blame a lot that is wrong in the middle east, including putting the house of Suad in charge, and divving up borders to match up with oil pipeline routes, not ethnic or religious groups.

Secondly, Ahmadinejad is an idiot for saying if the US and EU "believe" in the holocaust so much, we should carve out turf for Israel given all the wrongs that the Germans "purportedly" did to the Jews. While 10 men and a torah equals a congration, a whole bunch of Jews in one spot doesn't equal Israel (it probabbly means Ghetto, notice you never hear of little Israel, but you hear of little Tokyo or Chinatown or little Italy). The idea of Israel is based on the land of Canaan itself. If you were to read almost any part of the Torah Ahmadinejad, you would see reference after reference to that piece of land.

The problem facing the land of Canaan is that both Jews and Palistians have pretty much equal right to be there. One can go back and say my people had it first, but how accurate are these records anyway, and should that really be the basis of a who gets to live where? Somehow both groups need to learn to live together. There isn't much mystery as to the best way to do it--all these peace plans are basically the sam e thing--it just take willingness to sacrifice on all parties the goal of getting it all. Ideally, the country would be one with islamic law and the talmud coexisting and some basic law that apply to both sets of peoples (and the various christians or others that choose to live there). Threatening one side with an atomic bomb will never win the debate.

And on to Lebanon, where moronic Syrian thugs again killed another prominant anti-Syrian politican. The predictible result: 300,000 Lebanese mourners marched through cities denouncing Syria. Just when things had died down and people were forgetting about Lebanon and Syria, Syria makes it worse by trying to rid itself of a foe. Meanwhile, even dumber neo-cons still think Syria is next on the list of nations to invade and occupy. Do they really have no clue how badly things have gone, how stretched US forces are, how little support they have with the American people (let alone the world)?

And finally, Iraq. Today the purple fingers return, and not much will really change. For all Bush's talk about how an artificial time table is bad for withdrawl, we already have one--the crazy election/constitution schedule. After a few months, Bush will claim victory/sucess and get out, say around September or October. Meanwhile, Iraqi leaders are purposely not adaquately arming or training their personel because they hope that will stall US troop withdrawl. Silly Talibani, Bush never really means what he says.


Today is my 700th post, wow, how times fly. On my way to work, I saw a man at a stoplight holding a sign saying "Why are you polluting the air?" and then flipped the sign to show the horrible air quality rating (106 particulates per whatever I think it said) of the Wasatsch Valley these past view days. The funny thing was, I hate driving. I had just dropped off my wife and was going to work via car only because I don't think I should have to take 2 bus lines that never match up in the cold (and on the way back, dark) to get from home to work. We choose where we lived so that we could be close to downtown and the University and I otherwise take public transit most days or walk. This guy picked the wrong motorist.

southern discomfort

sorry for the long no post period faithful readers. This weekend was one shopping bonanza after another. The Apple Store came to Salt Lake and my wife had her birthday on Monday. In between long errand runs, I have been working on a paper for Judge McConnell's course on the constitution 1793-1861.

The thesis I have come up with is that all these debates after the first few Congresses were little more than Kabuki theater to protect slavery. It is amazing the lengths to which smart men wasted their brains trying to come up with arguments and rationales for doing something that they belived would preserve their immoral and backwards system. Thousands and thousands of men lost their lives in the Civil War because of this as well.

It seems the U.S. has been placating southerns for quite some time. Our modern version of this is that presidents can't get elected unless they win southern states. Majority leaders in the Senate and House and President Bush all claim former slave states as their homes. How has the south been so sucessful in maintaining its disportionate dominance of the country since the birth of the nation? As big as Florida and Texas are, most of their growth is coming from Middle and South America, and not white flight.

Don't get me wrong, I have been to many parts of the South and have friends from places like Georgia and North Carolina and I like most of it. Heck, my parents in law live in Virginia. Yet I could never see myself living there. And it isn't just the weather that bothers me, no there is some general feeling that I don't belong there, even though I am a red head and from a state that sided with the Confederacy.

A Western Democrat speaks out

How the West was lost and where it got us: on the need for a separate agenda for Rocky Mountain States

Federal presence:

Unlike other parts of the country, where the federal government is seen regularly only in the form of the post office, the federal government is the biggest landholder in the West. Eighty-eight percent of all the Nation's federal public land (including National Parks, Wilderness Areas, and National Forests) resides in the West. While these lands are managed for the public nationwide, laws, policies and management decisions for public lands disproportionately impact those living, both economically and socially, in the Western states. Western residents and communities depend upon public lands for tourism income and economic support from federal resource-dependent industries, water supplies, flood protection, resource use and/or extraction, wildlife habitat, recreation, hunting and fishing, and aesthetic values. Although the management of federal lands under current statutory authority and policies has generally been effective in assuring resource sustainability while providing for multiple use, it has become inefficient and frustrating to both the public and to land managers.

As a result of a top-down approach to public lands, great antagonism has been directed toward the "party of big government"- Democrats. In fact, some of the most Republican districts in the country lie directly on these same Federal lands.

Instead of siding with either environmentalists or ranchers, farmers, and developers, a Third Avenue is to create solutions revolving around increased state and local control without neglecting legitimate environmental concerns.

Water allocation and rights:

Although the Eastern seaboard of the US is currently experiencing a drought, Western states still receive scant rainfall. The competition for this scarce, life-giving natural resource pits ranchers and farmers against city-dwellers and divides states.

The Endangered Species Act also disproportionately impacts Westerners. The constraints on water use, logging, mining, and other natural resources to protect endangered species such as the suckerfish or the spotted owl has led to conflicts and tensions.

felons and life after prison

There's an ongoing trend of late to prevent ex-felons from reintegrating into society. Many states, like Florida, won't let them vote, most companies won't hire ex-cons, and same goes with most public institutions, whether by statute or in practice. In someways, what is the point of letting them out if you won't let them be part of the outside world?

Some argue that by committing a felony, these people have waived their right to vote, and to work in certain industries etc.

Something we can all agree on though, they shouldn't be attorneys (especially not criminal defense attorneys). In Arizona, a man who shot and killed two people in a drug-related drug robbery tried to get admitted to the bar. The AZ supremes said no thanks. I have to say though, he did pass the bar and did graduate from an ABA acredited law school (oh and he got his bachelor's behind bars too). You can't fault the man for not trying to make himself better. And hey if he can do it, why can't I?

In their opinion, the judges cited ex-cons refusal to take responsibility or appologize for what he did. The article says his sentence was commuted, why?

keep Katrina front page

sorry for the long no posting period, and thanks for the comments on my last post. Iraq vis a vis Vietnam is a tough nut to crack. These last couple days we have been smelling gas from our vents, so we had the gas company out and they traced the leak to our heater on the roof. Since then, it has rained and snowed for several days. Our heat has been shut off and no repairmen will dare climb up and fix it. The home owner's insurance company at least gave us $75 for space heater, but we spent the last couple days at my parents house in the canyon. And as a result of the cold, the lack of food, lack of company, and old age, our pet fish died.

And while we morn our loss and lement our cold, I can't help but think of the hundreds of thousands of homeless people as a result of Katrina. How the federal government failed them by not building the levees past catagory 3, by not getting help and supplies out there for days. For leaving the poor, mostly black populace to die.

It was just Friday that former residents of the lower 9th ward got to visit their homes for a brief moment or two (called a "look and leave") Almost everything was destoryed by the salt water, the mold, and neglect. How come Bush could interrupt his vacation to sign the Terri Shaivo bill, but couldn't be bothered to stop his San Diego sing-a-long to help the victims of Katrina.

A whole city was destroyed. A bustling metropolis of over 1.2 million people now has population of 70,000. My buddy who went to Tulane law isn't going back, he is transfering to BYU law (because Utah Law won't let him transfer), and I imagine lots of people won't move back. There are lots of ideas of how to fix the city, by raising it up, making the levees catagory-5 proof, or Denny Hastert's idea, abandoning it.

Whatever we do, we can't ignore the problem or pretend its been solved by time. There is now a Katrina cough because of the excessive mold spores there. Whole neighborhoods are beyond repair. There is a profound sorrow that makes profiteers like Mike Brown even more disgusting than their incompetence.

binded by the past

Does the Democratic Party's experience during and after Vietnam have any baring on what it should do now? For three years, the DLC has said so. When I was a staffer there, we had an internal meeting with senior staff letting the junior staff ask questions about the then impending war. Will Marshall insisted it was all about the WMD's and how we couldn't take the risk that Saddam might give them to some terrorists. Us youngins said why would he be so stupid to do that, and anyway it doesn't seem like Saddam has any WMDs anyway, why not have inspections with the threat of military strikes?

And then one of them, maybe it was Ed Kilgore, made the point that Ed Kilgore of 2005 says, it looks bad. The DLC was founded after watching democrats fall flat on their face after being hijacked by the overly liberal wings of the party who appeared weak to middle America's eyes. They saw the Iraq war as a chance to show that democrats are tough and they can be trusted with National Security, something they haven't trusted with since about the Cuban Missle Crisis. It was this good faith, honest belief and effort that drove them to support this terrible war.

Maybe it is a generational thing and since I wasn't alive during the late 60s and early 70s I don't have their superior perspective. But unlike their liberal counterparts, I am not stuck in the mode of equating every war to Vietnam either. Having only older collegues, my parents, and scholarly work to rely on about that era, I don't know if the two are that similar or if history is repeating itself. It is easy for baby boomers to equate the two: they were against the one and for the other. It makes them feel like they are gaining back their idealism by opposing the war at this late stage.

Perhaps Kilgore is right in that the only difference between "benchmarked withdrawal from Iraq based on estimated dates, and a timetable withdrawal contingent on benchmarks" is tone and image. But can't we explain that one policy is better than the other and that neither is "cutting and running?" Are Americans so easily brainwashed by repetitive talking points that Democrats aways cut and run?

The fact is, we are getting out of Iraq soon, the GOP can't afford to keep going at this pace without sacrificing their majorities in Congress and eventually the White House for George W. Bush's attempt to reverse his father's faults. The fact that Bush's plan is Sen Joe Biden's and reality might look a lot like the fall of Siagon in 1972 seems to me that the outcome politically will be different.

Democrats fought against themselves for the most part on Vietnam, with Southern conservative democrats supporting the war for the most part, and liberals from the coasts opposing it. Nixon took over the war that he never started it with a "secret plan" to get us out with dignity and while the results weren't very dignified, his party didn't pay the price. Will George W. Bush's? Who supported it ever step of the way, spinning bad facts month after month? Democrats did split over the war but they all seem to agree that it is going badly and we need to get out.

Kilgore says

The lesson is this: So much as many of us might wish to focus on the policy details of proposals about what to do now in Iraq, you can't take the politics out of politics, and the "tonal" or "contextual" implications of various proposals, despite their substantive similarity, matter a great deal.

Or is the lesson that we need a post-Vietnam generation of leadership on both sides, one that won't see everything from this prism? Perhaps he is right, until the voting population is more post-Vietnam than Vietnamers, we will keep having to relive that war through every national security decsion we make.

TX reredistricting illegal

in our latest we should be shocked but somehow we aren't segment, internal DOJ staffers disgruntled with the blatantly partisan hacks above them leaked their memo to the Washington Post.

It was the unnanimous conclusion of the DOJ staff attorney's in the election law section that Tom "indicted" DeLay's power grab violated the law...yet higher ups overrulled them. It even forced these people to sign gag orders to prevent them from talking about it.

All this comes in the wake of the Supreme Court stalling on its announcement of what to do about the TX redistricting case before it. While juries aren't supposed to read newspapers to arrive at their decisions, I sure hope the court's law clerks and justices are. And I hope it turns at least one hard heart around. The last time a redistricting case like this was heard
Vieth v. Jubelirer [caution, PDF of lengthy opinion] on the Penn. redistricting that was almost as egregious, the court said partisan redistricting is ok by a 5-4 vote. Maybe CJ Roberts will have too much respect for the law and these staff attorneys to look the other way, but it is pretty unlikely alas.

However, one could argue that the two cases are different. Here is not just partisanship for the sake of gaining seats, but at the expense of minorities. Texas went from 30 to 32 seats, but there remained only 11 minorities in their delegation. Moreover, the representation lost 5 democrats in 2004, who supported minorities' interests, even if the representatives are themselves white.

This case needs to say that it was the wrong thing to do on minority rights grounds AND that reredistricting itself is illegal. Otherwise, every time a state legislature changes political hands, parties will be tempted to reredistrict mid-decade, using increasingly inaccurate census data. For example, millions more people live in Texas in 2003 (especially Hispanics) when the reredistricting occured than when the 2000 census was conducted. By relying on old data, you effectily disinfrancizing and weighting some votes more heavily than others. This violates the 1 person, 1 vote holding of Reynolds (which incidently ScAlito seems to want to overturn) set out by the Warren court.

ScAlito's farce ends

Remember when ScAlito's job application surfaced with his proclaimations that he would like to overturn the Warren court, especially the 1 man, 1 vote rule, and oh by the way Roe was wrongly decided? And then, get this, despite having authored a dissent of the last key abortion case (Casey v. Planned Parenthood), he claimed that he was just saying whatever he could to get a job with the solicitor general's office during the Reagan years? Oh what a laugh. Liberals didn't believe him, but of course, the press had to report it as if it was fact because...well don't ask why.

Then FOIA request by the liberal judicial group People for the American Way uncovered an internal ScAlito memo while in said Reagan solicitor general's office trying to convince his boss to file a Amicus brief in support of an abortion restriction. He thought they should use the brief to promote "the goals of bringing about the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade, and in the meantime, of mitigating its effects." And more importantly, to "make clear" to the Supreme Court that we "disagree with Roe v Wade," and "would welcome" the opportunity to brief the issue of overturning it.

So the fake lie has been exposed for all to see. Now remember polls said that if ScAlito was in favor of overturning Roe that the Senate should not vote for him/fillabuster him. If he was for restrictions, well that was a closer issue and moderates could agree to some reasonable limitations. It would seem then that this should be all that pro-choice senators need to vote against ScAlito and possibly even fillabuster him.

The showdown begins in little over a month.

the invisable 2008 primary

Warner made a big spash by prevent Virginia from executing 1,000th person...with help from Ex specical prosecutor Ken Starr and his old oposition for Governor Mark Earley. The merits of case were good for Warner to have it both ways, but appearing concerned about innocence but without really weakening on death penalty, saying clemency should be granted only when the courts have failed to do proper justice. To me this seems like a semi-slap in the face to George Ryan and his mass clemancy of the entire death row in IL.

It was the political play of the week and it is only Tuesday. Warner leaves a good legacy in VA and has a solid base to run from in 2008. His speech on Iraq seemed wanting to many liberals but really inside the Clark-Clinton continum exit policy. This was a great rebound.

the idea free presidency

This week, President Bush is dusting off his immigration policy in typical fashion: all vagueries and platitudes, no specifics. Why no details, it is not as Bush tells the press, because of his view of the constitutional roles that the executitve and legislative branches play, rather, it is a way to sneak in radicial changes and radical policy that would otherwise be unpopular with either his base or the American people. This way he can say one thing to the Pat Bucanan's of his party and another to his Chamber of Commerce friends.

But what is really striking about all this is that the President has done absolutely nothing innovative. Everything he has proposed is either an idea from his 2000 campaign, something he stole from moderate democrats (NCLB, Rx drugs, homeland security, exit plan for Iraq, etc.), or retreads from past presidents (like JFK and the Moon, Reagan and Star Wars).

The only aberation was 9/11, and most of that legislation was created out of the Ashcroft Justice Department and the Cheney West Wing, dedicated to torture, privacy evasion and tossing out the Geneva Convention.

I am all for people doing what they campaign on, but it wasn't like Bush's campaign promises were fulfilled either. Washington has become more corrupt, more partisan, and the White House has been dragged further in the mud by George W. Bush's presidency and tactics than Bill Clinton's. Foreign policy promises of 2000 were banished rapidly and 9/11 was no excuse for the massive military buildup and invasion of Iraq. If anything, the military needed to get more nimble and smarter, not more missles and tanks and planes and helocopters. Environmental promises were banishes, as were all efforts to work with Democrats and concilate.

Instead of having a bold new idea of how to get himself out of his unpopularity, Bush went to the bare cubard and found one dusty can of "immigration reform" which is sure to make the Tom Tancredo's of the world very upset and never really please Hispanics or big business really.

The much ballihooed State of the Union will be a laudry list of fake accomplishments, vagueries and platitudes. I expect nothing new out of this president since he never arrived with any real ideas in the first place.

Post headlines GOP-favored

The Washington Post captions it as McDonnell Wins Attorney General Race, but the real title should be "323 vote win for McDonnell in VA AG race, Deeds requests recount." That would be a better summary and more accurate depiction of what happened.

Here is another example, Medicaid Cutbacks Divide Democrats. Why focus on Democrats when it is also moderate republicans that balk at some of the provisions.

I think it is a good idea for Medicare to make it harder for rich people to hide their assets from the government to gain Medicare coverage, but I think it is a bad idea to

...save $2.4 billion over five years by allowing state governments to impose higher health insurance deductibles, co-payments and premiums on poor Medicaid recipients, including, for the first time, impoverished children and pregnant women. An additional $3.9 billion would be saved by relaxing mandated preventive health care and screening of children and pregnant women.

These savings asume that heath care costs won't be higher at the other end by the inevitable illnesses that children and pregnant women will have that won't be caught by mandated screening. And that $2.4 billion will be coming out of the pockets of those already too poor to afford normal insurance...do we really think that people won't drop out of the program as a result of hiking the premiums?

Why not let those who want to be in medicare via hiding assets buy their way into the system. And how about letting Medicare use its bulk purchasing power to lower the costs of pharmauticles? A good way to save hundreds of billons would be to scrap the prescription drug plan as passed and start over with a real one that will actually cover people and actually cut costs overall.

Here's a third: Rep. Cunningham Enters Guilty Plea, Resigns why not add the big part in there? How about "Cunningham Pleads Guilty to $2.4M in Bribes, Resigns" The first draft of this blog post by Chris Cillizza talked mosly about the tax evasion charges steming from a bribe of a house and boat via various defense industry lobbyists...seemingly an attempt to make the issue confusing and not as damning as bribery for defense contracts during a war. He also tried to equate Democratic Reps. Ballance and Jefferson to GOP Reps. Ney and DeLay. And there is a big difference between a 1st term rep doing something terrible and allegations of a more senior one and what Cunningham, Ney and DeLay, members of the house leadership have done. Cunningham and Ney look to have taken bribes. DeLay and Ney were involved a scheme to push GOPers into K street and Democrats out and meanwhile extort campaign contributions from Native American tribes, and large corporations in exchange for favorable legislation.

That is the the nature of corruption folks. There is no need to muddy the waters but parrotting party talking points. Why not say GOPers compare this to Jefferson and Balance, but here are the differences judge for yourself reader, instead of substituting your opinion or actual facts for dueling press releases? I mean really, how hard is it to report a story?

greeting the seasons

I go out of town for the week, leaving fall and 40s and 50s to 20s and 30s and winter. My welcome back consisted of snowy skies and sleepy streets.

As much fun as it was to see civil war sites, eat great food, and visit the in-laws, I think we are happy to be back. We love our home and this is such a great city.

I am still pretty sleepy though after getting about 5 hours of shut eye and traveling since 7 AM eastern. It is time to get out the winter coats, sweaters and put away those flimsy coats. And time to get out the Christmas decor. Tonight I am reading a passage from Isaiah [40:1-15] at lessons and carrols; advent has begun.

Thanksgiving roundup

hello there...sorry for not posting this week. I am at my in laws out of state and studying for the various finals I have in the coming weeks.

I was reading the Richmond Times-Dispatch this week and it was interesting to see how they talked about Gov.-elect Kaine, who is fulfilling at least one campaign promise by having town hall meetings about transportation around the state of VA. The writers seemed to suggest that the consensus of the Richmond meeting was that people didn't want higher taxes since no one mentioned it, yet that Kaine wanted higher taxes since he referenced the last time the state seriously addressed the issue and said it was solved with higher taxes.

Personally, I don't think Virginia can built its way out of the traffic mess with more freeways. They really just need to make their cities, especially near DC, more commuter friendly by expanding the Metro, Rapid Transit Buses, and VRE (the commuter rail lines that go all the way to Fredericksburg). It seems like everyone has a car and they all want to drive it on the roads right now.

My daily outrage is Justice Scalia's comments about Bush v. Gore. In typical GOPer fashion of late, he blames someone else for his mistake. "The election was dragged into the courts by the Gore people. We did not go looking for trouble." What was really at stake was not who won rather, "The issue was whether Florida's Supreme Court or the United States Supreme Court [would decide the election.] What did you expect us to do? Turn the case down because it wasn't important enough?" How about turn the case down because the Florida Supreme Court got it mostly right.

Gore's people should have challenged statewide and the FL court told them as much but I really don't know why a Federal court should decide state election law.

"I was for medicare before I was against it"

Late last night, those 20-odd GOP congress buckled under pressure and the budget passed, sans ANWAR. Like the 1993 budget, this was a completely partisan affair with no support from one party, which predicited dire results.

This time, the naysayers are right. Why does the GOP-controlled congress feel the need to screw poor people so openly, not to pay for Katrina, but to pay for $70 billion in tax cuts for the rich? There couldn't be a starker contrasts between the parties right now. I am ever so proud of Democrats, conservative and liberal sticking together on this one.

Especially Utahs most popular politican--Democrat US Rep. Jim Matheson! Well the poll isn't that great becuase the stats are suspect to a degree. The margin of error in each congressional district was 8 percent and the number polled was really low--130-145. So perhaps Governor Huntsman is more popular. But Matheson is much more popular than Chris Cannon or Rob Bishop, who hover around 50 percent. Of course, part of that is a high number of people who don't know who they are. Yet those morrons still get reelected because they are Republicans. Amazingly, Bush has a a disapproval rating of 36 in Utah, which is about his popularity rating in the rest of the county. Below is a more detailed run down.

Someday, I hope Jim runs for Senate, I would love to have him suceed Watergate waterbody Bob Bennett and horrific hypocrite Orin Hatch.

the corruption of fame

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notes from a patriot

one of the would be 3Ls at my law school was called up to serve in Iraq. I believe he was Army ROTC in college and he kept telling people that he knew this was part of the deal when he signed up.

For veteran's day, the students have been trying to send out a care package to him. Here are portions of his reply, edits were made to keep him safe:

Fortunately, we don’t need much of anything here. So many people have sent care packages that we have toiletries to last us a decade. The amenities are great too. I’m fortunate enough to be based out of [redacted], a state of the art military camp that even has two swimming pools, a movie theater and [...a] basketball court [...]. Food is plentiful; we have stores; we have everything we need.

Don’t get me wrong. Frankly, Iraq sucks. I much rather take a civil procedure exam from [redacted] than convoy through some of the streets here. (1Ls, you will shortly find out what I mean). But this is a war, and for all its savagery, things aren’t so bad.

Instead of asking for something for himself, our student asked us to do something else:

First, Vote!!! Vote on any election you have the right or privilege to cast a ballot. Whether municipally or nationally, vote. For better or worse, we are here now and we are going to make the best out of it. But having seen the conditions under which most Soldiers are serving here, and having been through two years of Socratic grilling at the U, I can’t help but question whether we came for the right reasons at the right time. At bottom, we reason that the American citizenry voted in support of attacking. However superficial, this logic is the best we got. So vote!

Second, and more pragmatically, instead of sending us stuff, send small toys for us to distribute to the local kids. It’s amazing how far a toy goes. I’ve had the opportunity to travel along on many civil affairs missions and I can tell you that even if only for a minute a toy seems to take these kids away from this ravaged place. These missions have obvious tactical advantages too. But more importantly, they give us the opportunity to put a different face to the coalition. Animal beanie babies are the safest bet, given cultural sensitivities. Hard candy, pens and crayons are also helpful. UofU stickers will also help us broaden our fan base.

Well, I am sure that it is more likely that Sunni and Shia Muslims of Iraq can unite as Ute fans than Cougar fans.

Personally, I have a lot more respect for this student now than I ever did when he was at the law school whining about pens and bubble sheets every 5 emails.

flop of the times

It is the talk of the leftblogosphere: increasing numbers of 2008 Democrats and past staunchly pro-war candidates have said that if they knew then what they know now about pre-war intelligence, that they wouldn't have voted for the Iraq war resolution. The liberal blogs have made such a conversion a litmus test to any Democrat seeking the nomination in 2008, and so far John Edwards, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Dick Gephardt, and a few others have jumped at the command.

Or so it seems. These folks are not reacting to the online activists, rather, they are just politicans looking at the polls. They were in favor of the war when people approved of it 60-40 and now that people are against it 60-40, they are against it to. This latest stance is just a DC consultant correographed pivot.

This is not to say that many of them might actually believe in their stance both times, but their underlying motivation is to do what the masses want or what polls say they want.

Real test shouldn't be how you voted or would have voted in 2002, it should be what your plan is for solving the mess we are in right now. Many faulted Wesley Clark for being vague in his plan, but it was a heck of a lot clearer than George W. Bush's. If someone like Tom Daschle actually wins the nomination, we can count on at least 4 more losing years. But if we get someone like Clark or Warner out there, we at least have a good shot.

Strategery

As happy as I am that Virgina and New Jersey will continue to have competant leadership and hateful campaigning was trounced, I am puzzled about why Bush decided at the last minute to campaign for VA GOP candidate Jerry Kilgore.

I mean, a few months after 9/11, Bush decided not to campaign for Early, was running against Mark Warner. Warner eeks out a victory and Bush saves his political capital for more tax cuts and more war down the road. 4 Years and 2 months after 9/11, and Bush races home from a terrible reception at the summit of the americas to campaign for VA AG Jerry Kilgore in a hanger in Virginina. And yet Bush at this time is WAY more unpopular than he was in 9/11. And Kilgore loses by more than Early.

The math just doesn't add up from a political strategy standpoint. +90% approval, and you pass up getting more Republican governors, especially in states with 9/11 victims as residents commute to NYC and DC. 35-40% approval, and you do a one stop whistle stop campaign.

I guess the Bush team was hoping that Jerry would pull it off, and they could claim credit. And Jerry was glad that it was so close to election day that the majority of Virginians that don't approval of Bush wouldn't notice and those who did would come out and vote. I guess they both were wrong, since Tim Kane is governor elect.

No matter how much Kilgore tried to make it about the death penalty, gays, illegal immigrants, and other wedge issues, people voted for Kaine because they wanted 4 more years of Warner-eque competent government. If only the Virgians of 2005 were the voters of 2000 in swing states across the country, we would be talking about President Al Gore more.

Speaking of presidents, Mark Warner can now begin his presidential campaign. I would say he is my second choice behind Wesley Clark. And if the ticket were Clark/Warner or Warner/Clark, I would be happy.

newer isn't better

Today I walked to my local polling place and voted for Ms. House because "Eric!" failed to respond to an email I sent to his office last year about a problem I had with the trash/recycling. I had enough trouble figuring out the punch card balloting, and eriliy enough in 2000, when voting absentee, I thought to rip off my chad that might have made my vote not count.

But across the country, voters are having difficulties with the Diebolt voting machines. And it isn't just left-wing conspirators, in California, Gov. Schwarzenegger had to cast a provisional ballot for his own intiatives, voters in Virginia couldn't get the machine to let them vote for Democratic candidate for Governor LG Tim Kaine, and Ohio is always problematic. This time, they couldn't find the memory cards.

I think this is going to be a good year across the nation for Democrats: most of the California intiatives will fail (the redistricting scheme was flawed), Most of the reform Ohio Now ballot initiatives will suceeed (I pray that the redistricting one will pass), and we will have Gov. Corzine and Gov. Kaine soon. At least, those are my predictions.

Hot lesbian cheerleaders?

In a rare intersection between football, cheerleaders, and gay rights (and it is not a porn movie), two Carolina Panthers cheerleaders were kicked off for having sex with each other in a Tampa Bay bathroom.

A woman was getting upset that they were hogging the stalls and taking so long, and one of the cheerleader punched that woman in the face.

"The cheerleaders were kicked off the team Monday for violating a signed code of conduct, Panthers spokesman Charlie Dayton said. The two violated a rule that bans conduct that's embarrassing to the team or organization."

What was embarrassing? Engaging in gay sex? punching a woman? Doing it in a bathroom stall? If so, many players should be suspended...like the whole Minnesota Vikings team.

How much do you want to bet either a porn like this has already been made, and if not, will soon? It just goes to show how all those fantasies of players and cheerleaders are just that.

like Bush, like Huntsman

In Utah, this is a compliment still. Yet looking over the longer time range, it is a mistake to hire mostly corporate folks and pay them way more than most government empoyees. The Salt Lake Tribune discovered that

The average salary of a Huntsman staffer is about $10,000 more than what was offered by former Gov. Olene Walker and $13,000 more than the average pay in former Gov. Mike Leavitt's office. These average salaries only count employees paid by the Governor's Office or those who work for the lieutenant governor.

I would just like to think of all the great things these corporate types accomplished for Bush: record spending, record deficits, gross incompetence on matters of life and death, image over substance, etc. Not a good omen to be sure.

And as true fiscal conservatives point out, "The only way that this could be justified is if these new people generate some serious and quantifiable improvements in how the state operates," said Mike Jerman, vice president of the business-backed Utah Taxpayers Association. "Justifying salaries based on the size of government is a built-in incentive to grow government."

Ironic isn't it, that business is attacking its own. Huntsman is the CEO governor like Bush was the CEO governor and then CEO president. Look how well it worked out for Texas and the U.S. Both men's main claim to business fame is that they shared their rich and famous dad's name. Hopefully, Huntsman won't drive this state into the ground like Bush is did in Texas and now is working hard to do on a national scale.