THERE'S MORE THAT STINKS IN ALASKA POLITICS THAN JUST DON YOUNG AND THE TED STEVENS FAMILY-- MEET LISA MURKOWSKI, DAUGHTER OF FRANK

Lisa comes from a proud tradition of Republicrooks. That's her daddy in the middle, between criminal senator Ted Stevens and Rumsfeld

Tomorrow's NY Times brings up the sticky question of the lack of ethics of the third member of Alaska's corrupt congressional delegation, Lisa Murkowski. While Young and two Stevenses are probably headed for prison, Murkowski, at least so far, just looks like someone without any ethics. A criminal investigation into her doesn't seem to have started, at least not yet.

She comes from a family background where ethics was a word used with complete contempt and disdain. Her father, Frank Murkowski, may well have been the most corrupt-- and disliked-- governor in the history of Alaska. He appointed her senator to replace him when he swapped out of the Senate and into the Governorship.

But she has been forced to defend herself publicly against conflict-of-interest accusations and announced last week that she would sell back 1.27 acres of riverfront land that she had bought for $179,500 from a local real estate developer who is tied to the investigation of Mr. Stevens.

Ms. Murkowski’s announcement came a day after a self-described ethics watchdog group in Washington filed a complaint over the land deal with the Senate Ethics Committee. The complaint accused Ms. Murkowski of paying an Anchorage developer, Bob Penney, only a small fraction of the true value of the land and said the deal amounted to an improper and potentially illegal gift.

Local real estate agents in Alaska said the property, on the banks of the Kenai River, had a value of up to $350,000.

This is a common Republican Party trick used to illegally funnel bribes to lawmakers in return for earmarks, government contracts and special favors. If investigators tie Murkowski's "good deal" to anything illegal, she'll be facing prison just like the other two. She's already denying everything, of course, which they must teach you the first week you become a GOP member of Congress. One of her flacks told the Times that her "decision to sell the land was made before the complaint by the watchdog group, the National Legal and Policy Center, and had nothing to do with it." What a coincidence!

"WITCH HUNT! WITCH HUNT," CRIES POOR, PUT-UPON DARTH CHENEY

A day barely goes by without Nancy Pelosi taking the impeachment of another Republican arch-criminal off the table. I'm surprised the Justice Department was able to raid Ted Stevens' home without her claiming it would be disruptive to her plans-- which will be obstructed to death in the Senate like every single thing she does anyway-- for health care for impoverished children in Darfur.

But her exceedingly "moderate" stance on impeachment for the worst constitutional criminals in the history of America-- or at least since they ideological antecedents started the Civil War-- hasn't quieted Cheney down. Today he was on an Infotainment show-- Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Anna Nicole Smith's breasts being otherwise occupied-- raving about how the hardworking Bush Regime is being persecuted by evil Democratic witch hunters.

With respect to the U.S. Attorneys, there has been, I think, a bit of a witch hunt on Capitol Hill as they keep rolling over rocks hoping they can find something. But there really hasn’t been anything that has come up to suggest that there was any wrongdoing of any kind... Al’s [Abu Gonzo] a good man, a good friend, on a difficult assignment."

Tony Snow is also on a difficult assignment, daily doing a snow job on the American public. Yesterday he created a charming alliteration to mock the congressional investigations of the monumental wrongdoing by the Bush Regime in virtually every endeavor they have undertaken since first stealing the election in 2000. Like Cheney, Snow says the investigations haven't yielded a damn thing. He and Cheney neglect to mention that the Bush Regime has done all in their power-- some of it illegal-- to prevent witnesses from testifying. That's exactly why-- this obstructionist mentality-- that the government is failing to function the way the Constitution mandates.

Oh, and speaking of future indictee Cheney's criminal behavior, he, like the long line of crooks and disgraceful charlatans who have preceded him-- doesn't remember, or as Jane puts it... he's having a ginko moment.

WILL STEVENS STEP DOWN FROM HIS COMMITTEES? NOT LIKELY

Taxpayers for Common Sense sent Miss McConnell (R-KY) a letter urging him to ask Stevens to step away from his Senate committee assignments until the FBI/IRS investigation of his criminal conduct is finished. There's no chance McConnell will ask and no chance Stevens would do any such thing. He's on the Appropriations Committee, the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Rules and Administration and Joint Library Committee.

In the interests of bipartisanship DWT has sent Miss McConnell a compromise proposal. Stevens should only be forced to step down from the committees he directly used to enhance his bribery scams. The $30 or so million he was able to funnel to VECO, for example, didn't have anything whatsoever to do with the Joint Library Committee. He should step down from the Appropriations Committee and Commerce Committee, allowed to stay on the Library Committee. A panel should be set up to investigate whether or not Stevens used the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to defraud the taxpayers or not and report back in no more than 90 days at which time it can be decided if he should step down from that committee too. I haven't heard back from Miss McConnell but I ran it by Matt Stoller and he said "it sounds fair."

GONZALES IMPEACHMENT OFF THE TABLE TOO? MAYBE DEMOCRATIC VOTERS NEED TO SEND PELOSI A STRONGER MESSAGE

As I mentioned a few times, I really like H.R. 333, the bill to begin impeachment proceedings against Cheney. It needs 17 co-sponsors to get off the ground. It has 14. I started calling progressive congressmen. They-- or their staffers-- all read from the same sheet of talking points about why it's a bad idea to impeach Cheney (and Bush). Ari Berman in The Nation got right to the heart of the matter: Nancy Pelosi, the force behind the talking points which, I suspect, came from Rahm Emanuel. Ari points out that if Nancy weren't Speaker she would probably favor impeachment. As Speaker she says she has other priorities: "ending the war in Iraq, expanding health care, creating jobs and preserving the environment. 'I know what our success can be on those issues. I don't know what our success can be on impeaching the president,'" she told Ari. She also told him that the votes aren't there to pass an impeachment resolution.

What about Inslee's bill to impeach Abu Gonzo? She's for children's health care and an energy bill.

She is greatly disturbed by the lawlessness of this Administration and its contempt for checks and balances. "I take an oath to defend and protect the Constitution, so it is a top priority for me and my colleagues to uphold that." She notes the vigorous oversight hearings held by committee chairman like John Conyers and Henry Waxman.

But Pelosi sees impeaching Gonzales and his superiors as a distraction from the ambitious agenda she has crafted for the House. "If I can just hold my caucus together," she says, "I can take them to this progressive place."

UPDATE: MAYBE I WAS TOO HASTY ON NANCY: SHE JUST DOESN'T WANT TO IMPEACH GONZALES THIS WEEK

Turns out Speaker Pelosi isn't commenting on impeaching Gonzales in a general sense-- but she's just asking that it not be done this week when she has so much on her plate agenda-wise. I can wait an extra week if it's ok with Inslee.

ARLEN IS SNARLIN': GIVES BUSH 18 HOURS TO COME CLEAN OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES-- OR IS IT JUST A WHITE-WASH IN THE MAKING?

It wasn't that long ago that Bush was flying high and the extremists who dominated his party were demanding that the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee not be given to the unpredictable and volatile Arlen Specter (R-PA). Specter was humiliated by the right and forced to agree to a series of horrific demands regarding what he could and could not do if they allowed him to take the chairmanship. He was allowed to huff and puff, but other than that, he had to clear everything with Rove. Now the Democrats control the committee, Patrick Leahy is chairman and Arlen is the ranking minority member. He's getting his revenge on the extremists-- or is he?

According to the Hill he "emerged from a crucial Monday briefing and gave the Bush administration 18 hours to resolve the controversy over apparent contradictions in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s congressional testimony." I think Leahy didn't put a date on a similar demand he made Sunday on Face the Nation. We now have 4 influential senators requesting a special prosecutor, half a dozen congressmen introducing an impeachment motion in the House, and the two highest ranking members of the Judiciary Committee demanding an explanation to something that can't be explained without a resignation.

Specter is hinting that Tuesday afternoon will see a bombshell.

“Given the difficulty of discussing classified matters in public, I think it is preferable to have a letter addressing that question [of Gonzales’ veracity] from the administration … by noon tomorrow, which will be made available to the news media,” Specter wrote in the statement. “The administration has committed to producing such a letter.”

Specter expects the letter clarifying the attorney general’s testimony to be addressed to himself and Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who declined to comment on the matter.

Specter has a long and untrustworthy history. He is always on the verge of standing up for what is right... but never does... never. We'll have to see what happens today, but my bet is that Specter and the White House have cooked up some bullshit exculpatory memo that will give him and other Republicans-- and reactionary Democrats-- the wiggle room they need to let Gonzales off the hook. I hope I'm wrong. Update any minute.


UPDATE #1: WHITEWASH EXPECTED LATER TODAY

The whitewash Specter cooked up with the Bush Regime is late but Tony Snow just announced it will be coming soon. They're still making up crafting the final touches.


UPDATE #2: WHITEWASH DELIVERED

This is a bombshell? That it's all classified?

The Regime sent out a legalistic Philadelphia lawyer type of rationale for how Gonzales may have mislead but technically didn't exactly commit perjury. It's pure hogwash. Arlen, you still snarlin'?


UPDATE #3: SNARLIN' ISN'T COMMENTING YET... STILL NOT SATISFIED BUT WAITING TO HEAR FROM ABU GONZO

Wolf Blintzer had Arlen Specter on today to ask him about the bombshell that never exploded. Actually it didn't even go Pop! Specter seems to think Gonzales' late explanation will be forthcoming any minute, although... "If he doesn’t have a plausible explanation then he hasn’t leveled with the Committee," he told Blinzter.

WILL SENATOR MARY LANDRIEU (D-LA) OFFICIALLY JOIN THE GOP-- OR THE CONNECTICUT FOR LIEBERMAN PARTY?

Mary Landrieu up in Connecticut campaigning against the Democratic Party nominee

There is only one vulnerable Democratic senator up for re-election in 2008 who is considered vulnerable, Louisiana's Mary Landrieu. Landrieu's difficulties are three fold: her rubber stamp, Republican-like support for much of Bush's toxic agenda, her inability to fight effectively for Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (partially because of being stabbed in the back by her old ally Joe Lieberman, Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee) and the loss of much of Louisiana's most loyal Democratic constituency, African-Americans who were displaced by the tragedy and abandoned.

Landrieu has the third most reactionary voting record of any Democrat in the Senate, worse than even Lieberman's. The only two Democrats who vote more frequently with the Republicans are Max Baucus and Ben Nelson. As a result, she more and more frequently finds herself in bed with Republican backers.

Yesterday's Times-Picayune says her donor list is getting redder (just as her voting record is).

When she first ran for the U.S. Senate in 1996, Mary Landrieu enjoyed the financial backing of abortion rights groups, environmentalists and national liberal-leaning organizations eager to keep a Democratic foothold in what was quickly becoming the Republican South.

As she gears up to run for a third term next year, Landrieu has been financially abandoned by some of those early supporters as she has moved steadily and purposefully to the ideological center [they actually mean the extreme ideological right of the Democratic Party but they are victims of Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch] as a means of political survival. She has found, however, that especially in a closely divided Senate, it can be quite profitable occupying the middle of the road.

She collects from all sides-- labor, corporations, trial lawyers and business executives, mostly because the unions and trial lawyers are too political lame to understand she's their enemy. Since the Democratic takeover of the Congress right-wing donors find reactionary Democrats like Landrieu the perfect investment. She has no scruples whatsoever and no loyalty to any Democratic or progressive values, so her ass is always for sale to the highest bidder. Her voting record reflects it.

The profile of Landrieu's donor list has shifted dramatically since her first campaign in 1996. Back then, EMILY's List, the San Francisco-based Democratic fundraising powerhouse that backs abortion-rights female Democrats, was her single biggest donor.

The group's political action committee gave Landrieu $10,000 and, through its national network of donors, steered $102,000 to her narrowly victorious campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Since then, EMILY's List hasn't given Landrieu a dime. In 2002, EMILY's List cut off Landrieu because of her vote to limit a controversial late-term abortion procedure.

Landrieu has likewise seen a slippage of financial support from other liberal-leaning donors such as the National Abortion Rights Action League, the National Organization for Women and the Sierra Club as she has moved rightward and established herself as a business-friendly, moderate senator who is consistently ranked among the most conservative Democrats in the chamber.

The Sierra Group and other environmentalists have been dismayed by her utterly Republican voting record on their issues and they have abandoned her. Her response? "Losing the support of liberals helps Landrieu politically as she woos conservative voters in Louisiana. Her pro-business stands have also paid financial dividends."

Unions are too slow to be effective political players and they still finance her despite her record of consistently voting against their interests. They are still huge donors to her campaign but she gets far more from corporate power players-- and she is far more responsive to their demands. Big Energy, Big Pharma, Big Finance, lobbyists representing communications, anti-health care, oil companies, are who keep her campaign humming and who she pays attention to when it's time to vote.

Of course you're not supposed to kick a guy when he's down, but surely Ted Stevens--megalomaniac and bully as well as supercrook--has it coming

Aren't you tired of seeing Sen. Ted Stevens' crooked old puss? Just
for a change, wouldn't you rather see, say, his crooked son Ben?

With the entirety of Alaska's First and Second Families, the Stevenses and the Murkowskis, apparently prison-bound, and at least one Young with them, somebody might want to fine-tooth-comb all of this year's congressional appropriations bills--you know, the ones Chimpy the Prez is threatening to veto now that he's discovered fiscal responsibility--to see if there isn't a billion-buck earmark buried somewhere for rush construction of a luxury compound called something like the Ted Stevens and Frank Murkowski Memorial Slammer and Golf Club (Featuring the Don Young Crooked Wing), a facility open only to inmates with Deep Pull.

My wish: When Senator Ted has his "Duke Cunningham moment" for the cameras, announcing his plea bargain (shedding Duke Cunningham tears, one can only hope), the networks will juxtapose it with footage of him in one of his imperial "I Am the Chairman" Senate committiee moments, like the famous hearing where his energy-industry-honcho cronies were allowed to testify not under oath, despite the urgent pleas of some other committee members, and Senator Ted thoughtfully explained, before having them led off to their executions, that there was a simple, logical reason why. You guessed it: "I'M THE CHAIRMAN."

As memory serves, this was not long before the Chairman, in his role as the Senate's ranking expert on technology, deigned to explain to us how those Internet tubes work.

You just have yourself one fine day, Mr. Chairman! And don't forget to offer those feds rummaging around your house some milk and cookies.

WILL TED STEVENS AND DON YOUNG GET TO BE PRISON ROOMIES-- OR DO THEY SEPARATE MEMBERS OF THE SAME GANG IN JAILS?

The FBI doesn't go running around raiding the homes of prominent politicians, especially not powerful members of Congress who vote on departmental budgets. The Bush Regime has punished law enforcement officials-- U.S. Attorneys or, I should say, former U.S. Attorneys, who have strayed a little too close to major Republican lawbreakers like Jerry Lewis (R-CA). It was cataclysmic inside the GOP when the FBI raided the homes of corrupt congressmen Rick Renzi (R-AZ) and John Doolittle (R-CA). Just one week ago Karl Rove told Republicans in a closed-door session that the Iraq war didn't do anything to hurt Republicans last November and that it can't touch them-- as long as they don't get associated with corruption and sex scandals.

Alaska has 3 members of Congress, all Republicans, 2 senators and an at-large House member. Judging by the news, neither the House member, Don Young, nor the senior senator, Ted Stevens, is likely to be at large for very long-- and the other senator, Lisa Murkowski, from one of the most corrupt political families in the history of the state, was just caught in some financial and real estate improprieties which aren't likely to be swept under the rug too quickly either.

Earlier today we were looking at the case building against Don Young, the crooked congressman who was named, when Rolling Stone examined the records of every member of Congress, one of the 10 worst congressmen (the third worst, to be exact) and dubbed Mr. Pork. By the time our story was posted, the news about FBI and IRS agents swarming through Senator Ted Stevens' home was breaking. This morning it was Young; this afternoon it was Stevens. Last week it was Murkowski's shady real estate dealings.

Stevens, 83 years old-- and not nearly as mentally alert as he was just a few years ago-- is he longest-serving Republican in Senate history. Tomorrow's Hill paints a dismal picture for the Dean of the Senate Republicans:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) raided the home of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) on Monday, advancing the corruption probe that has ensnared the once-untouchable GOP dean.

...That home has fueled the investigation into Stevens’ ties to oil-field services company Veco, whose two top executives recently resigned after pleading guilty to bribery and fraud.

Bill Allen, Veco’s former CEO, is a longtime friend and business partner of Stevens, and investigators are examining Allen’s involvement in a 2000 renovation of the senior Republican appropriator’s house. The construction project added a story to the building, and contractors have reportedly testified before a grand jury that Allen and Veco received the bills for their work.

Stevens has denied any appearance of impropriety in the home renovation, stating specifically earlier this month that every bill he and his wife received was paid with their personal money, “and that’s all there is to it.” The famously combative senator has acknowledged that the federal probe may complicate his reelection effort next year-- a concept still almost unthinkable to many in Alaska, where Stevens’ talent for securing federal dollars has made him a legend.

That legend has become somewhat tarnished of late as Alaskans have come to realize that considerable amounts of those federal dollars have flowed directly into the pockets of the Stevens, Young and Murkowski families. More people now think it is time to elect a new senator in Alaska than think it would be wise to keep Stevens (if, by some quirk, he escapes going to prison).


UPDATE: THE WASHINGTON POST HAS MORE

When the GOP ruled the Senate, Stevens was head of the Appropriations Committee and was able to help funnel more than $30 million dollars into Veco contracts. Veco was very generous to him and his family in return.

Stevens is not the only Alaska Republican to be spending large sums on lawyers, according to congressional financial disclosures. From April through June, Rep. Don Young (R) spent more than $262,000 on two law firms. A local office director for Young formerly lobbied for Veco, and Allen used to hold an annual fundraiser for Young.

Part of Allen's plea agreement included charges that he illegally laundered donations to federal officials by reimbursing company officials for contributions they made in 2005 and 2006 to campaign committees. In that period, Stevens and Young were the top recipients of Veco cash, taking in $37,000 and $30,250, respectively.

Allen also pleaded guilty to illegally underwriting the cost of political fundraisers. the Wall Street Journal reported last week that Young recently amended his campaign filings to show $38,000 in payments to Allen for "fundraising costs." Young has declined to comment on the Veco matter.

Would you think it strange if some visitor came here, looked over our newspapers and assumed the Republican Party was a huge criminal enterprise? Would they be wrong?


UPDATE: A FLY IN THE OINTMENT

While Ken and I were writing about Alaska's criminal congressionals yesterday and today, something kept gnawing at me: why did the FBI wait so long? I mean there have been stories in the papers for weeks about the investigation. Couldn't Stevens-- a wily operator-- have destroyed all the evidence? Michael Froomkin at Is That Legal? may have been thinking along the same lines. He found the same Washington Post line that troubled me:

Stevens said in a statement that his attorneys were advised of the impending search yesterday morning.

And Michael continues: "I spent nearly 9 years as a federal prosecutor. I'm not aware of a single instance when any prosecutor or agent told anyone outside the Justice Department that a search warrant was going to be executed later in the day. Telling outsiders-- especially lawyers for the person whose property will be searched-- defeats one of the principal purposes of a search warrant: SURPRISE to ensure the integrity of the evidence field."

The Anchorage Daily News reports today that the Feds were at Chez Stevens for about 12 hours starting at 11AM and they hauled off "undisclosed items from inside and taking extensive pictures and video." Is it worth anything? I guess we'll have to watch the court case unfold.

GOP DILEMMA: HOW TO MAKE VOTERS THINK YOU WANT CHANGE IN IRAQ WITHOUT PISSING OFF CHENEY

America has finally turned against the Bush Regime's Iraq occupation agenda. Bush and Cheney don't give a damn-- except inasmuch as it's a serious threat to GOP incumbents whose support they need. Mitch McConnell, their Chief Obstructionist in the Senate, for example, would lose his seat if the election were held today. In the Senate, at least 6 rubber stamp Republicans besides McConnell would probably lose elections-- John Sununu (R-NH), Susan Collins (R-ME), Pete "Sneaky Pete" Domenici (R-NM), John Warner (R-VA), Norm Coleman (R-MN) and Ted Stevens (R-AK)-- and in the House literally dozens of rubber stamp Republicans could be swept away.

So Republican congressional leaders have devised a plan to make it seem that they're changing course, while, of course, not changing anything at all. The new GOP mantra, which will be in heavy rotation on Fox and Hate Talk Radio, is "a new approach." The new approach, of course, is the old, failed approach. The premise is that U.S. troops would be taking on "narrowly limited missions" and Bush decides if and when they leave. Doesn't that sound... like more of the same?

Rubber stamp Republicans and WINOs are jumping for joy with the prospect of their brilliant new strategy. Grotesque rubber stamp Republican Phil English thinks he can save his seat. "This is a necessary adjustment in the national debate to reintroduce bipartisanship, to stop the `gotcha' politics that are going on that seem to be driven by fringes on both sides and change the terms of the discussion," said English as he downed a roast chicken, 7 hamburgers and a large chocolate fudge cake. New Mexico' worst rubber stamp phony, Heather Wilson, carefully keeping out of striking distance of English's jaws, agreed, as did the whole contingent of Republicans who have consistently voted to make it possible for Bush to go on the rampage in Iraq-- while they wrung their hands-- from Chris Shays (R-CT) to Mike Castle (R-DE)

Even easier for the rubber stamp Republicans is to just have their old co-conspirators from the media and the "think thanks"-- the ones who cheerled us into Iraq in the first place-- doing all the lying for them. If the Hearst papers' Yellow Journalism bore any responsibility for the Spanish American War and the sense of Manifest Destiny which still plagues this country-- and they did-- then the NY Times and the Washington Post must be held to account for their role in whipping up popular sentiment for the Republican lies that preceded the invasion of Iraq. The Times was back at it again today.

They published an Op-Ed by two notorious Neocon warmongers, Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, claiming progress in Iraq. Glenn Greenwald has all the dope on these two shameless shills. "...the exact same people who urged us into the war in Iraq, were wrong in everything they said, and issued one false assurance after the next as the war failed, continue to be the same people held up as our Serious Iraq Experts. The exact "experts" to whom we listened in 2002 and 2003 are the same exact establishment "experts" now."

The Op-Ed is an exercise in rank deceit from the start. To lavish themselves with credibility -- as though they are war skeptics whom you can trust -- they identify themselves at the beginning "as two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq." In reality, they were not only among the biggest cheerleaders for the war, but repeatedly praised the Pentagon's strategy in Iraq and continuously assured Americans things were going well. They are among the primary authors and principal deceivers responsible for this disaster.

Worse, they announce that "the Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility," as though they have not. But let us look at Michael O'Hanlon, and review just a fraction of the endless string of false and misleading statements he made about Iraq and ask why anyone would possibly listen to him about anything, let alone consider him an "expert" of any kind.

And then he does. And it ain't pretty. Of course, neither is this , something which hasn't been addressed by the Bush Regime or it's apologists like McConnell, O'Hanlon, Pollack.

About eight million Iraqis-- nearly a third of the population-- are without water, sanitation, food and shelter and need emergency aid, a report by two major relief agencies says.

WHEN WILL BOEHNER MAKE DON YOUNG GIVE UP HIS COMMITTEE POSITIONS?

I guess Junket John Boehner has his own problems right now, but wonders are wondering why he hasn't forced Don Young to resign from his committee positions, the way he did with Rick Renzi and John Doolittle when it came out they're under FBI investigation on corruption charges. Last week the Wall Street Journal blew the whistle on one of Alska's three most corrupt federal politicians.

Yesterday's Fairbanks Daily News made sure the voters back home where aware what their crooked congressman has been up to.

The Journal article, which cited anonymous sources, is the first time Young’s name has been linked to the criminal investigation involving possible political favors for oil-services company VECO Corp. that has also ensnared U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and his son, former state Senate President Ben Stevens.

VECO chief executive Bill Allen pleaded guilty in May to bribing Alaska legislators and has agreed to cooperate with the ongoing investigation.

Young received $157,000 from VECO employees and its political action committee between 1996 to 2006, according to public documents.

According to the report "the story sparked speculation that Republican leadership in the House could ask Young to surrender his committee seats. Young is the ranking Republican on the Natural Resources Committee and a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Young also holds a seat on the House Steering Committee, which doles out committee assignments... House Minority Leader John Boehner has reportedly asked to speak with Young about the investigation. Boehner’s office did not return calls for comment for this story."

A Young flack said communication with leadership is confidential and that the congressman has no comments-- on anything. Young is one of the most hated men inside the House Republican caucus. He has virtually no allies and many Republicans would rather see a Democrat win than see Young come back to Congress. "Republican budget hawks have been contemplating Young’s downfall since a clash between him and New Jersey Republican Scott Garrett caused ruffled feathers on the House floor earlier this month over an attempt to cut education funding beneficial to Alaska Natives."

Young has been spending a great deal of his campaign money on attorneys trying to keep from being indicted, so far over a quarter million dollars. Whether Young winds up in prison before of after the November '08 election, he will have a new opponent. Jake Metcalfe, "former Anchorage School Board president and former head of the state Democratic Party, announced late Sunday that he plans to run against Don Young in the 2008 congressional election."


UPDATE: FBI & IRS JUST RAIDED TED STEVENS' HOUSE

The more crooked of Alaska's two crooked senators, Ted Stevens, just had his home raided by the FBI and IRS. Is there any way to not wonder if the Republican Party is something other than an organized crime ring?

UNLIKE TAUSCHER, SOME DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMEMBERS HAVE READ THE CONSTITUTION-- JAY INSLEE WILL OFFER A RESOLUTION TO IMPEACH GONZALES TOMORROW

No one who favors the rule of law here

Yesterday we had a good laugh over reactionary Democrat Ellen Tauscher's idiotic response to the calls for the impeachment of serial perjurer Alberto Gonzales. Tauscher must still be getting her talking points from Karl Rove's office. Washington Congressman Jay Inslee, on the other hand, is neither a reactionary nor an ignoramus. He also, unlike Tauscher, values the rule of law. Tomorrow he'll be introducing a bill to impeach Gonzales. The text:

RESOLUTION
Directing the Committee on the Judiciary to investigate whether Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.
Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary shall investigate fully whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to impeach Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Simple enough-- even for an Ellen O. Tauscher.


DON'T COUNT ON CHENEY TO VOTE FOR THE RESTORATION OF THE RULE OF LAW IF THERE'S A TIE

According to CBS the most hated man in American contemporary politics just loves little Alberto. Cheney may be the only Republican in elective office to support Gonzales but he told CBS he's a "big fan" or Gonzales (and of Scooter Libby's). Since "None of the Above" continues to be the overwhelming favorite in every Republican primary poll, I don't understand why there hasn't been a Draft Cheney Movement. No one represents the heart and soul large intestines of the GOP the way Cheney does.


UPDATE: CHENEY & BUSH MAY BE THE ONLY ONES IN AMERICA WHO THINK GONZALES SHOULDN'T BE FIRED

This weekend the editorial boards were busy. You already saw what the NY Times had to say. But papers from every part of the country were calling on Congress to impeach or on Gonzales to resign:

• Brattleboro Reformer: "If Congress wishes to remain a meaningful... branch of our government, it must rein in the executive branch. The tool for doing this is impeachment."
• Hartford Courant: Gonzales "put on a pathetic performance" in front of the Senate Judiciary Committtee 7/25, and the nation "would be better served without Mr. Gonzales in charge."
• Kentucky Post: Senate Dems' call for a special counsel "would be overkill," because "if Gonzales did willfully mislead, there's no way the president can keep him on."
• Lousiville Courier-Journal: "These days" the WH "operates in a different world... There is ample evidence for the Senate to pursue perjury charges against Mr. Gonzales, and it should do so."
• Newsday: "If Gonzales doesn't have the good sense to resign... then the Congress will have no choice but to demand a special counsel... Bush is making a big mistake in placing loyalty above integrity."
• New York Times: Gonzales either "lied to Congress," used "a bureaucratic dodge to mislead lawmakers and the public," or else is "helping Mr. Bush cover" up "more wiretapping than has been disclosed." If a special prosecutor is not appointed, "Congress should impeach Mr. Gonzales."
• Norfolk Virginian-Pilot: "How can America tell the attorney general is lying to Congress? His lips are moving." If Gonzales "really" wanted to improve the DOJ's credibility, "he'd resign."
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "The attempts of the Congress to obtain information" from the WH "are worthy of respect... this kind of 'We are above the law' lack of accountability on the part of Mr. Bush... has now gone far enough."
• Portland Oregonian: Last week "Gonzales sank even further, if that's possible... Every day he remains in office inflicts further damage to the nation's once-respected" DoJ.
• Portland Press Herald: "It is the White House that is out of control, not the Congress." The call for a special prosecutor is "justified"

UPDATE: GONZALES' IMPEACHMENT IS BEING HANDLED BY CONGRESSMEN WHO WERE FORMER PROSECUTORS

Joining Jay Inslee in co-sponsoring the bill to impeach Gonzales in the House are former prosecutors Xavier Becerra (D-CA), Michael Arcuri (D-NY), Ben Chandler (D-KY), Dennis Moore (D-KS) and Bruce Braley (D-IA). The spans the whole party ideologically. Chandler and Moore are very conservative. Becerra, Arcuri and Braley are pretty progressive.


UPDATE: MORE DEMOCRATS JUMP IN AS CO-SPONSORS

Although partisan Republican hack Lamar Smith (TX) was screaming hysterically that the impeachment resolution is just a political stunt-- sound familiar? it's what Republicans say about anything they disagree with-- more co-sponsors are signing on by the minute. Tom Undall (D-NM), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Peter DeFazio (D-OR) are now co-sponsors too. Do you know your congressmember's e-mail address or phone number? Let him or her know how you feel about this.

DEATHS: INGMAR BERGMAN, TOM SNYDER, BILL WALSH... WHAT ABOUT JOHN ROBERTS?

Only the good die young

A lot of people died today-- not just the regular victims of Bush's venal, toxic agenda in Iraq, but regular folks nowhere near Iraq. One of the world's most important film makers, Ingmar Bergman. The Swedish director was 89 and he is ranked up there with Federico Fellini and Akira Kurosawa in terms of influence on the genre.

In his more than 40 years in the cinema, Mr. Bergman made about 50 films, often focusing on two themes — the relationship between the sexes, and the relationship between mankind and God. Mr. Bergman found in cinema, he wrote in a 1965 essay, “a language that literally is spoken from soul to soul in expressions that, almost sensuously, escape the restrictive control of the intellect.”

...For many filmgoers and critics, it was Mr. Bergman more than any other director who in the 1950s brought a new seriousness to film making.

“Bergman was the first to bring metaphysics-- religion, death, existentialism-- to the screen,” Bertrand Tavernier, the French film director, once said. “But the best of Bergman is the way he speaks of women, of the relationship between men and women. He’s like a miner digging in search of purity.”

Hall of Fame football coach Bill Walsh was 75 when he passed away this morning. And last night Tom Snyder a pioneering and legendary television interviewer also took his last breath.

Earlier today CNN reported that extreme right wing fanatic/Bush Regime Supreme Court Chief Judge John Roberts fell on his head but has probably survived. Having suffered a seizure several years ago, he was rushed to a hospital, but is likely to live. No one will ever know if the fall has effected his ability to function as a judge. Friday we suggested that there are other ways to right the balance at the reactionary activist Court than through the deaths of the right-wing extremists on it.


UPDATE: HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

Apparently Roberts wasn't just a klutz; he had a seizure. When he was found he was foaming at the mouth, something he usually only does when he's confronted with a rational argument in court. The hospital said there was no cause for concern, which could be taken a number of ways, depending on whether or not you care about the welfare of America. One thing is certain-- if Roberts is dead or noticeably brain-dead it will be impossible for Bush to get anyone even nearly as extremist as him confirmed to the bench.


ROBERTS DIDN'T DIE... BUT HE STILL MAY

Roberts was let out of the hospital today but USAToday reports that he's "facing a greater risk" after his second seizure. Don't count on a more moderate Supreme Court based on the chances of an early demise for Roberts though. That's up to God, not you. Still, "Patients with a history of seizures would be advised to not drive for several months, not swim alone, avoid heights and take showers rather than baths... 'It's not rare that people drown in the bathtub from a seizure. Mark Twain's daughter died that way.'" You just can't count on it.

Say what you want about all those other Mrs. Giulianis, but Donna Hanover suffered enough just being married to the slug all those years

Sometimes you have to draw lines.

Now, with respect to the present Mrs. Rudy Giuliani (see Howie's post below), while I've never met the woman, I'm prepared to believe most any nasty or evil thing that's reported about her.

I just want to pencil in a line where the linkage occurs between Howie's unarguable observation that "Giuliani is well-known for making terrible choices in people" and the entire roster of folks our Rudy has been married to. I'd like to have that line wrap carefully around the longest-suffering of the Giuliani Wives, Donna Hanover.

Now, I've never met Ms. Hanover either. (Okay, if you're going to put it that way, I really haven't met much of anybody.) But I haven't heard of anybody who doesn't think of her as a nice and pretty classy lady.

In fact, she illustrates a quality of Rudy's that may be as disturbing as his propensity for hanging out with cheesy lowlifes: his apparent ability to cloud men's--and obviously women's--minds to see him as something other than, well, what he is. There shouldn't be any surprise that lowlifes gravitate to him--surely they can spot one of their own. But quite reasonable people seem open to believing the false images he creates of himself.

His image as a crusading U.S. attorney, for example--even though a staggering percentage of the convictions he won were chucked on appeal. Or his self-presentation as a pillar of law and order, even though as mayor of New York City he flouted the law whenever he felt like it, and sneeringly dared anyone who didn't like it to sue, opening the way for just about everybody who did sue to win and drain a steady flow of settlement money out of the city coffers.

Nobody knows better than Donna Hanover that she's made at least one whoppingly bad choice in her life. Well, which of us hasn't? I guess, back when Rudy was the object of such general adulation, it was possible to look at him and see . . . I'm sorry, you'll have to ask them what they saw. All I ever saw was a vicious little pile of crud who had presumably grown up having the stuffing kicked out of him by bullies, and who determined therefrom that he knew what he wanted to be if and when he ever grew up: the most ruthless and self-aggrandizing bully in town.

I don't know how long it took the second Mrs. G to discover the scope of her bad choice. She did, after all, have two kids with the slug. Possibly she thought that deep down she saw a prince, where those not vision-impaired by love saw a really hideous frog. At some point, though, she must have seen what's what. Nevertheless, she remained steadfastly private about her problems, even as Rudy began to humiliate her publicly.

If she had wanted payback, I think it's safe to say that she knew she had the goods with which to humiliate the son of a bitch into career oblivion. Yet she never said a word. You figure she didn't want to drag her children into the public eye, and wasn't about to contribute to the public embarrassment of their father, whatever she herself had come to think of him. (Plus, of course, considering how long she had stuck by him, anything she might have told us about him would hardly have reflected well on herself.)

If you want to think really ill of Rudy, you can speculate that he understood this about her, and took advantage of it when he kicked his career as Public Slimeball No. 1 into high gear, flaunting his relationship with Princess Judi*--and then blurting out publicly his intention to divorce his wife without, apparently, troubling to discuss it privately first.

It's a mark of Rudy's character that two of the luckiest strokes of his adult life were prostate cancer and 9/11. First, the cancer made it harder for people to hate him as much as growing numbers of New Yorkers had come to--harder, but not impossible. Then came his big score with 9/11, and literally overnight people forgot how low he had sunk in most every sense, including popularity.

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*Yes, I know the princess insists on being called "Judith." Knowing that being called "Judi" drives her nuts is why I think we should take pains to do so.

This is in accordance with what I call the Chipper Jones Rule. In the years when the New York Mets were struggling to escape perennial domination by the Atlanta Braves, no Brave loomed larger as a Mets-killer than third baseman Chipper Jones (the 1999 NL MVP). It turned out, though, that Chipper has an Achilles' heel: He can't stand being called Larry.

Now, there's nothing at all wrong about being named Larry, nothing the least bit embarrassing, but Mets' fans discovered that it just about made him weep, and so took care to chant vigorously, every time he came to bat: "Larry! Larry! Larry!" It didn't lead to any more wins that I recall, but it felt better just knowing how rotten it made him--make that "Larry"--feel.

Sometimes you settle for the small victories.

REPUBLICAN RETIREMENT WATCH IN CONGRESS GROWS DRASTIC

Virginia wingnut Bob Goodlatte has one of the hardest jobs in Congress. He's head of the Republican incumbent retention program. Hapless NRCC Chair Tom Cole has charged him with keeping Republican members, already sick of minority status (and the relative difficulty collecting regular bribes), from resigning. Last year the NRCC enlisted Bush to pressure Planet Denny Hastert into not resigning. Hastert gave Bush another term. He isn't expected to do it again and, in all likelihood, a carpenter and Iraq vet, whose parents were missionaries, will be the next congressman from IL-14.

And Hastert is hardly the only problem facing Goodlatte in Illinois. Longtime Hastert ally, Ray LaHood, already served notice on the GOP last week that he's had it. And Don Manzullo (IL-16, Rockford and the extreme NW of the state) is likely to bail too. And Illinois is just part of the dire situation for the Republicans, who are unlikely to feel comforted by Rove's good cheer last week that if they can just not get caught stealing or having sex with children, they can probably weather the little Iraq kerfuffle and get re-elected.

Of course, Goodlatte's most immediate problem is one he has no sway over, what today's RollCall doesn't called the Republican Culture of Corruption.

Several Members with ethical woes also are on the retirement watch list, including GOP Reps. Rick Renzi (Ariz.), Jerry Lewis (Calif.), John Doolittle (Calif.) and Don Young (Alaska)-- all of whom are under federal investigation.

RollCall is so polite-- and they left out so many potential indictees, like Gary Miller (R-CA), Tom Feeney (R-FL), Virgil Goode, Jr. (R-VA), Duncan Hunter (R-CA)... so many more. But let's leave the potential felons for the police and concentrate on the ones who just want out on their own.

Most likely to leave, aside from the Illinois trio are the two Republicans who were at the heart of the scandal of the way our vets were mistreated at Walter Reed, C.W. "Bill" Young (R-FL) and John McHugh (R-NY). Young's St. Petersburg Democratic-leaning district is unlikely to remain in GOP hands if he retires and McHugh's North Country district is also ready to say goodbye to the Republican Party forever, like so many upstate NY district's have since the national party took a sharp turn towards the extreme right in the last two decades.

Also on retirement watch are Ralph Regula (OH-16), the universally despised Barbara Cubin (WY), and Jo Ann Davis (VA). The other Virginia Davis, Tom, will likely leave his seat to run for the U.S. Senate if John Warner retires, which is likely. Davis will be soundly defeated by popular Democrat Mark Warner and his northern Virginia House seat will be lost to the Republicans.

Cole and Goodlatte are trying to put a best face forward but "privately, party strategists know they have some critical months ahead. September could be key for the GOP, as retirement announcements generally flourish after Members have spent the August recess back at home and have had down time to contemplate their futures. The state of the Iraq War by the fall also could have an impact on those deliberations. While not all retirements will produce competitive races, most open-seat contests end up costing the incumbent party some money."

That's a big problem for the Republicans; they don't have any. The NRCC under Cole is a disaster and in debt by millions of dollars. They won't be able to help any newcomers in open seats. Cole's Democratic counterpart, Chris Van Hollen is outraising him by a factor of 10. The DCCC has nearly $20 million in the bank and no debts. The NRCC has around $2 million and is loaded with debt after being forced to respond to Howard Dean's 50 state strategy and spend money on what were previously considered rock solid Republican districts in places like Idaho, Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming, etc.

Even an optimist like Mark Kirk (R-IL), who is likely to be defeated at the polls next year, feels that if the Republicans lose more seats-- plus, as looks likely, the presidency-- there will be an overwhelming rush for the exits.

Kirk said that while there could be a significant number of GOP retirements, he thought most Republicans were willing to wait to see the outcome of the 2008 race for the White House.

“Except for the really senior guys, most Members, I think, would like to serve at least at the start of a new presidency because they’d get to survey the lay of the land and understand who the new players are, and all of their future prospects are brighter if they’ve known and met the new team, and the new team could be very fun to work with,” Kirk said.

If you'd like to keep this ball bouncing in the right direction, let me point you to potential replacements for Planet Denny Hastert, John Doolittle, Randy Kuhl, and Mean Jean Schmidt, all of whom can use some assistance.

We knew it intuitively, but now the Writers Guild gives us the nuts 'n' bolts of why 'n' how TV-news viewers are so wildly under- and mis-informed

"A CBS television newswriter says: 'We take a lot of stuff from 'Entertainment Tonight.' We watch it at 6:30 and decide what to use.'"
--from a new report, "Broadcast Newswriters Speak About News Quality," prepared by the Writers Guild of America, East

Here's a report in which it's safe to guess that not a word will surprise any of us and yet every detail will still shock. For anyone who believes that the devil is in the details, and the really bad news can usually be found in the nuts 'n' bolts of how things get done, this report is self-recommending.

Actually, I haven't read the report itself yet. It's called "Broadcast Newswriters Speak About News Quality," and it comes from the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), and I can't help feeling that it will be just too depressing. But I have read the Daily Kos diary about the report by WGAE's Michael Winship.

I'll be surprised if the summary of Michael Winship's diary doesn't make you want to read the whole thing (and then the whole report):

It's a fact: Media conglomerates' labor practices are harming the quality of TV and radio news.

A CBS television newswriter says: "We take a lot of stuff from 'Entertainment Tonight.' We watch it at 6:30 and decide what to use."

Most Americans still get their news from "old media" like newspapers, TV and radio. There's concern about how Rupert Murdoch will gut the Wall St. Journal when he gets his hands on it. MSNBC Anchor Mika Brzezinski recently tried to burn a script on air in frustration over being asked to lead the day’s news with a story about Paris Hilton rather than Richard Lugar’s declaration that Bush’s Iraq strategy is failing. Who can we trust to tell us what's really going on? Now, a new study of broadcast journalists from the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) gives an inside look at how the media conglomerates are destroying broadcast news quality with the same tactics other big companies are using against their workers.

Want more? Winship poses the question: "Can you believe what you see on CBS?"

A recent article in New York Magazine about Katie Couric noted that CBS' Evening News budget was cut almost in half from 1991 to 2000 ($65 million to $35 million). CBS has cut the number of full-time news staff by about 60% since 1980, replacing many of them with temps and part-timers. In 1989, CBS network television news employed 28 researchers; by 1999, those positions were all gone. But what do these staff cuts mean to the public? Half the WGA members reported that at least several times a week, they use no more than a single website to check the accuracy of stories. I wonder how often that single website is Wikipedia. Some WGA members work "off the clock" to ensure that they are up-to-date on news developments and that facts are properly checked. Members tell lots of stories about how management pressures them for more fluff, more often. In fact 49% of all WGA members responding to the survey said that hard news stories were bumped for fluff or puff at least once a day. For local news outlets, that number went up to 57%.

JUDI THE FIRST LADY-- YUCK

Giuliani is well-known for making terrible choices in people. No one knows exactly how many times he's been married. His business partners are all wanted by the law. His campaign managers are diaper-wearing sex perverts and cocaine dealers. And who does he want to saddle us with as First Lady? Where once we had a Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and Nancy Reagan, we would have... Judi Nathan, what the new issue of Vanity Fair describes as "an opportunistic, puppy-killing homewrecker who has a full-time hairstylist and needs an extra seat on planes for 'Baby Louis,' her Louis Vuitton handbag."

The Vanity Fair story isn't online yet but reactionary Republican Hillary ally, Rupert Murdoch, previews it in his sleazy tabloid, the NY Post:

Judith thinks she's royalty, Bachrach maintains, and that's why she wore a tiara to her wedding at Gracie Mansion in 2003. "She really does see herself as a princess," a former Rudy aide is quoted. "Not as a queen. Queen is her goal. Queen is who she wants to be."

And don't call her Judi. Bachrach writes, "After her second divorce, she upgraded herself to 'Judith' with such vehemence that one Rudy aide confides, 'at City Hall we were prohibited from calling her Judi. She would bawl us out if we did.'"

Vanity Fair delves into the circumstances of how Rudy and Judith met. Bachrach claims it was at Club Macanudo in 1999: "It was she who approached Giuliani, who was then married and a father, with words of admiration and a proffered business card."

UPDATE: VANITY FAIR ON GIULIANI'S PRINCESS BRIDE

They don't like her. They start with a snarky question: "Who does Judith Stish Ross Nathan Giuliani think she is? These days, even with her husband, a freshly minted multi-millionaire, far ahead of the competition in the Republican presidential polls, no one, least of all Judith, 52, seems to have a clue. In a way, this is understandable. There have been so many different Judiths. As her second husband, Bruce Nathan, has told friends, 'She is in an ever changing mode upward.'"

It goes downhill from there. Example:

For years she appeared, in the public record, to have had only one failed marriage, but as it turned out she'd had two. It seemed that she had gone to Pennsylvania State nursing school, as The New York Times once reported, but she had not. She completed two years of nursing school, but left hospital work before a year was up. Nonetheless, Giuliani has publicly referred to her "expertise" in "biological and chemical" disasters, and believes she would be a help in the event of an anthrax attack.

She sure makes Jeri Thompson seem like a bargain.

ANTI-CHOICE FANATICS SIZE UP THE GOP PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFULS LOOKING FOR THE ONE MOST LIKELY TO DO THE MOST HARM TO THE MOST PEOPLE

Rudy, Thompson, Flip-Flop Mitt

The good news for the most extreme elements of the GOP-- all the candidates are committed to more extreme right wing ideologues for the Supreme Court of the Scalia-Thomas-Roberts-Alito genre-- regardless of the fact that Americans are becoming increasingly alarmed that the Court is seriously out of balance. They're worried though because Giuliani supports a woman's right to choice (as well as other social issues they find repugnant-- and most of the country finds perfectly fine). Today's NY Times examines the dilemma of the radical right fringe of the GOP, the fringe that has pretty much controlled the nominating process, especially in Iowa and South Carolina, but now faces a new-- unthinkable-- reality: "a convergence of forces, including the early primaries in moderate states like California, may have diminished the influence of the anti-abortion movement on the Republican nominating process."

Not that there is some far right dragon slayer they can all rally behind. Flip Flop Mitt is an untrustworthy cult member who changes his "values" more frequently than his underwear. And Republican lobbyist Fred Thompson follows the money; he gets behind whoever pays the most-- including, as a lobbyist-- pro-choice groups.

At the Republican straw poll in Iowa next month, abortion opponents will circulate a petition calling on the party to reassert its values, honor its platform and choose an anti-abortion nominee. “We have our eye on the goal,” said Kim Lehman, president of the Iowa Right to Life Committee, who said that the overwhelming majority of Iowa caucus-goers oppose abortion. “Our goal is to get a pro-life president, so we can be confident of his position on legislation and confident of his judges.”

Agreement ends there. One hysterical extremist, James Bopp of the National Right to Life Committee is on Team Romney, even though most Christians are aghast at the idea of a satanic cultist in the White House. The Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land is behind Fred Thompson and Jimmy Dobson is pushing for Newt Gingrich. Another neo-fascist leader, Phylis Schafly is looking for the lesser of a lot of evils. Many Republican elected officials, feeling Giuliani's more moderate stand on choice makes him the only electable Republican, are less sticklers for ideological purity. Texas congressional wingnut Pete Sessions and Louisiana sex pervert David Diapers Vitter are heading up Giuliani's campaign in some of the more backward, less enlightened parts of the country.

KARL ROVE TELLS GOP CANDIDATES IRAQ IS NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT-- BUT TRY NOT TO GET CAUGHT IN ANY CORRUPTION OR SEX SCANDALS

Karl Rove says it was the Republican Culture of Corruption in DC, more than Iraq, that did the GOP in last November. And he thinks Iraq won't hurt them much in 2008. Apparently he's lost his mind. But let's humor him for a moment.

Rove's clear advice to the candidates is to distance themselves from the culture in Washington. Specifically, Republican candidates are urged to make clear they have no connection with disgraced congressmen such as Duke Cunningham and Mark Foley.

I don't know whether or not Rove mentioned John Doolittle, Rick Renzi, Tom DeLay, David Diapers Vitter, Katherine Harris or Bob Ney in his little closed-door Tuesday chat with GOP House candidates and their (chatty) aides, but Bob Novak didn't mention any of them in his report of the off-the-record event.

Perhaps someone should, since, in all likelihood, at least some of these Republicans will be in the news between now and the Republican electoral debacle of 2008. Not to mention serial perjurer Alberto Gonzales, a bevy of Bush Regime-connected war profiteers, and... a certain over-tanned, weepy, House minority leader. All recent polling data shows conclusively that the Republican Party can't escape the DC web they created, broadly called the "Culture of Corruption," any more than they can escape the catastrophic war they started in Iraq. Off the top of my head I can name a dozen Republican House members being investigated by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, at least some of whom are likely to be indicted-- and I'm not just talking about the low hanging fruit like John Doolittle, Gary Miller and Rick Renzi. Friday's NY Times mentions that "Among members of Congress, Mr. Doolittle is far from alone in feeling heat from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department. More than a dozen current and former lawmakers are under scrutiny in cases involving their work on Capitol Hill."

Alaska has three members of Congress, a House member (Don Young) and two senators (Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski). It's hard to imagine that at least two of them won't be indicted-- possibly all three.

Abramoff is still a potent weapon if Bush doesn't pardon him and insiders say he will take down several GOP congressmen unless Bush springs him soon. If Abramoff starts talking Tom Feeney (R-FL) is likely to be the first-- but by no means the last-- to be arrested. Similarly, Duke Cunningham could certainly testify effectively against his old buddies, Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Virgil Goode, Jr. (R-VA), Tom DeLay (R-TX), Katherine Harris (R-FL) and God knows how many others. Many of these Cunningham-related crooks are also involved with several other unraveling cases, involving GOP rainmakers like Brent Wilkes, Bill Lowery, Thomas Kontogiannis, and Mitchell Wade.

And, since Rove, brought it up (Mark Foley), Republican sex and hypocrisy scandals certainly didn't begin and end with Foley and Vitter. "Everyone" in DC knows, for example, that extreme right-wing fanatic Larry Craig (R-ID) is as gay as he is homophobic. "Everyone" in DC knew about Foley too-- that he was gay and that he was molesting young men-- but no one told his constituents. (Now Rove wants people like Denny Hastert, Tom Reynolds, John Boehner, John Shimkus-- the people who covered up for Foley for years-- to claim they never knew him?) Even after he was caught, drunk and randy, trying to break into the congressional interns' dormitory, the Republican House leadership kept covering up for him; they didn't want to lose that seat. Well, there are at least a dozen Republicans in similar situations. Larry Craig's is starting to get noticed back in Idaho. Los Angeles radio hosts don't even use the word "alleged" any longer when referring to anti-gay Republican congressman David Dreier's homosexuality. Just last week a Columbia, South Carolina radio station did a spoof on Lindsey Graham's secret gay life and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's quick expulsion from the Army-- for fondling a private's privates-- is finally being discussed in Kentucky.

Something tells me that Iraq plus corruption is far greater than the individual parts and that the American public knows all it needs to to have already made up its mind about Rove's political party.

SHINZO ABE, BUSH'S JAPANESE PAL, SUFFERS CATACLYSMIC DEFEAT IN ELECTIONS-- JUST AS THE GOP WILL NEXT YEAR

Japan's Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, is a right wing kook cut from the Bush mold. And, like Bush, his widespread unpopularity has turned to disdain and even hatred. That unpopularity and disdain was expressed today at the polls when Japanese voters elected a new upper house of Parliament, something like our Senate. And the same way that most political observers see well-known Bush's rubber stamp senators like Susan Collins (R-ME), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Norm Coleman (R-MN), Pete "Sneaky Pete" Domenici (R-NM), Ted Stevens (R-AK), John Sununu (R-NH), possibly even John Cornyn (R-TX), Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), and John Warner (R-VA), many of Abe's most loyal rubber stamps went down to ignominious defeat today at the hands of the Democratic Party.

The main opposition Democratic Party seized control of the upper house by a landslide, capturing seats not only in cities but also in rural districts that have long been strongholds of the Liberal Democratic Party. The rout was widespread, with household names in the governing party falling one after another before opposition newcomers.

In a devastating rebuke to Mr. Abe, angry voters punished him for his mishandling of bread-and-butter issues and a series of scandals in a government seemingly in disarray. Past prime ministers have resigned in the face of similar losses, but Mr. Abe, even before all votes were counted, tried to head off inevitable questions about his leadership.

Instead of working on actual bread-and-butter problems that Japanese voters are concerned with, Abe "rammed through laws to instill patriotism in schools, elevate the status of Japan’s military and prepare for a referendum on revising the pacifist Constitution." Of the 121 seats being contested, Abe's coalition needed 64 to maintain a majority. They eked out only 43.

Unlike Republicans in the U.S., who would do anything to disassociate themselves from Bush and Cheney but can't, the misnamed Liberal Democrats (they are a right-wing party, a kind of cross between the GOP and the Nazi Party) are expected to kick Abe out of the leadership before the next election. The leader of the Democratic Party, Ichiro Ozawa, "focused on building support in rural areas whose backing the Liberal Democrats had secured for decades with public works projects and agricultural subsidies. Results showed that Mr. Ozawa’s party won overwhelmingly in rural Japan." It might be worth noting that last year in the U.S., the Democratic Party defeated quite a few Republican incumbents in once-safe rural strongholds. In 2008, Democrats are likely to win at least 2 dozen House seats in largely rural areas, from upstate New York to Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, Arizona, and California.

IF BUSH DID WANT TO CARRY OUT A COUP, I BET THERE ARE PLENTY OF GOOD GERMANS AMERICANS WHO WOULD HELP... WITHOUT BATTING AN EYE

Good Germans know what is expected of them

My first contact with another human being this morning-- not counting when I woke up and turned on the TV in time to see a Howie Kurtz discussion of McCain wearing "gay sweaters," while he boldly changed into a... gay sweater-- was an IM from a friend who works as an Air America host. He wanted me to read a blog post at Whatever about the unlikelihood of the Bush Regime being able to pull off a coup to perpetuate itself in office. Personally I didn't find it persuasive enough in an overall sense since it didn't take into account the catastrophe that the Regime could employ to trigger it-- something that would make the Reichstag Fire and 9/11 look like child's play, like a nuclear explosion in Manhattan or in Congress, something only the most illegitimate and heinous figures in American history could ever conjure. But let's leave that argument for another day. One of the premises of the post is that the Bush Regime is simply too incompetent to pull off a coup.

Assuming Bush did decide to declare martial law over the entire nation, how on Earth is he going to enforce it? The federal government, even at this late stage in the Bush administration, is not entirely composed of Regent University graduates; there aren't enough people in the government itself who would be willing to follow Bush down that road. And even if there were, does anyone believe the sort of people the Bush administration appoints-- folks who we know are picked for ideological purity over actual competence in their job -- are going to be able to administer a coup of this magnitude? For God's sake, it took them a week to find the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina. It's on maps. Does anyone really believe that this bunch could manage martial law-- an infinitely more complex undertaking-- any better?

That makes sense but, I moved on quickly to my e-mails and the first one I opened was from an old pal who manages a band that's recording their new album in Europe. He wanted to call my attention to a story I had just finished reading in this morning's Washington Post, Bush Aide Blocked Report-- Global Health Draft In 2006 Rejected for Not Being Political. Now we're back at Regent University output. Actually I don't know if the dull-looking hack referred to by the Post is a Regent U. alum or not-- like Bush, he could have gone to Yale, for all that it matters-- only that he's the son of a right-wing Republican congressman from Wisconsin who once hired Cheney to be his intern, is Bush I's godson, and got his job through cronyism via former Wisconsin Governor/Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson. And his job is Director of Global Health Affairs.

You may recall a week or two ago there was another of those passing scandals in the Bush Regime that might have caused more of a stir in a less controversial context, a context, say, where there isn't an impeachable offense committed on a weekly basis. This particular scandal had a whole gaggle of Surgeon Generals complaining to Congress how the Bush Regime tramples science-- and the nation's health and safety-- in the name of extremist ideological purity, not unlike what fascist dictators who have been admired in the Bush family have done in the past.

A surgeon general's report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration's policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.

The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate.

A few of the issues it focuses on, such as AIDS treatment and research, have been public health priorities for the Bush administration. But others-- including ratifying the international tobacco treaty and making global health an element of U.S. foreign policy-- are more politically sensitive. The report calls on the administration to consider spending more money on global health improvement, for instance. And it warns that "the environmental conditions that poison our water and contaminate our air are not contained within national boundaries... The use of pesticides is also of concern to health officials, scientists and government leaders around the world."

"Public health advocates have accused Steiger of political meddling before. He briefly attained notoriety in 2004 by demanding changes in the language of an international report on obesity. The report was opposed by some U.S. food manufacturers and the sugar industry." Bush appointed Steiger to be the U.S. Ambassador to Mozambique; he hasn't been confirmed.

Ex-Surgeon General Carmona had been trying to get the report that Steiger bottled up released-- but to no avail. "Thomas Novotny, a former assistant surgeon general who ran the global health office before Steiger, said, 'It's embarrassing, just ridiculous that the report hasn't come out.' Novotny, who served at HHS in the Clinton and in both Bush administrations, said that many nations have made health issues central to their foreign relations and trade policies, but that the United States has been reluctant to embrace that idea. 'It made perfect sense for the surgeon general to take up the issue because the U.S. used to be a leader in this field,' Novotny said. 'For the nation's top doctor to be unable to release the report shows that leadership is gone.'"

My pal over in Europe wrote that it's great that more decent people are starting to speak out. I hope it isn't too late. I suspect there are an awful lot of smiling Steigers out there, just waiting for their orders.

THE NY TIMES INSERTS AN "IF" INTO THEIR CALL FOR CONGRESS TO IMPEACH GONZALES

You know how most of us at DWT feel: impeach Bush and Cheney and the rest of the rotten regime can be taken care of within the bounds of the criminal justice system. That would include Bush's shameful excuse for an Attorney General, his pathetic Texas crony Alberto Gonzales. The Times has been 6 months or so behind us on most everything and they're not there on impeachment... yet. This morning, however, they do make the case-- or a mini version of the case-- for Gonzales' impeachment.

The editorial starts with the absolute premise of incompetence and then moves on to perjury. "Americans have been waiting months for Mr. Bush to fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who long ago proved that he was incompetent and more recently has proved that he can’t tell the truth. Mr. Bush refused to fire him after it was clear Mr. Gonzales lied about his role in the political purge of nine federal prosecutors. And he is still refusing to do so-- even after testimony by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller, that suggests that Mr. Gonzales either lied to Congress about Mr. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping operation or at the very least twisted the truth so badly that it amounts to the same thing."

The Times, in passing, also makes the case for Bush's own impeachment but, like I mentioned, they're still 6 months from figuring that out and speaking about it out loud. The Times is far more comfortable ignoring Bush and going for the low lowest hanging fruit, Abu Gonzo.

Democratic lawmakers are asking for a special prosecutor to look into Mr. Gonzales’s words and deeds. Solicitor General Paul Clement has a last chance to show that the Justice Department is still minimally functional by fulfilling that request.

If that does not happen, Congress should impeach Mr. Gonzales.

He won't; it's not. They should start Monday but they're afraid of the right-wing media, so they probably won't.


UPDATE: NOT EVEN FOX COULD FIND A RIGHT WINGER BRAVE ENOUGH TO COME ON TV AND DEFEND GONZALES

Think Progress has a riotous report out this morning about how Faux News talking head Chris Wallace tried to find a right winger to come on and defend Gonzales. None would. He contacted the far right senators on the Judiciary Committee-- Orrin Hatch, Jon Kyl, Jeff Sessions, Lindsey Graham, Tom Coburn, John Cornyn, Sam Brownback, Chuck Grassley-- who are all Bush Regime rubber stamp shills who will always vote to do whatever Bush and Cheney tells them to do. But none would make public spectacles of themselves, not even on their own propaganda network-- defending Abu Gonzo. Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, has this to say:

Both the president and country are better served if the attorney general is a figure of competence. Sadly, the current attorney general is not seen as any of those things. I think it’s a liability for the president. More importantly, it’s a liability for the United States of America.

The closest anyone would come to defending Gonzales is Utah's far right nutcase and Regime apologist Chris Cannon who, when asked by Chris Matthews last week if Gonzales is "a good attorney general," said, "He's a good guy."


HOUSE MEMBERS EARN GOOD SALARIES-- IF THEY'RE NOT WORTH IT WE SHOULD FIRE THEM

Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) has a record that not only merits firing, but makes me think she should refund her salary for the last year. She was singing a variation on the Democratic Leadership's anti-impeachment talking points. (Yes, my friends, the Democrats have talking points too. I called 7 progressive congressmembers in a row last week to ask them to co-sponsor H.R. 333 and it was word-for-word exactly the same message from each one.) But Tauscher went a step further when she wrote to one of her constituents to explain why she wouldn't support the impeachment of Alberto Gonzales. Tauscher's response:

The Attorney General serves at the pleasure of the president in a non-impeachable office. Unless convicted of an illegal act, the Attorney General cannot be removed from office without the president asking for or accepting his resignation. However, please be assured that I will keep your thoughts and concerns in mind as I review the circumstances surrounding recent allegations of impropriety within the Justice Department.

Apparently Ellen O. Tauscher has never read the U.S. Constitution, something that doesn't surprise me one bit. She's a reactionary horse's ass with a voting record only a Republican could like. The Constitution is very clear about impeachment-- Article II, Section 4:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the united States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

I took the liberty to emphasize a few words; Thomas Jefferson surely never imagined we would have elected officers in government as stupid and ignorant as Ellen Tauscher. Perhaps Ellen Tauscher can't be impeached-- but that's what primary elections are for.

IT ISN'T JUST McCAIN'S WIFE WHO'S CALLING THE SHOTS-- KERI THOMPSON RUNS THE SHOW OVER AT FRED THOMPSON'S NON-CAMPAIGN

Thompson laughed when the press speculated that his young spouse was just a trophy wife. Thompson, 64, is prematurely old and somewhat feeble, at least mentally. Jeri's the brains and the strength behind what is certainly a family endeavor, probably as much so as Hillary's campaign, Edwards' campaign and McCain's campaign. In the wake of all the reshuffling and the firings and walk-outs and the look of turmoil in Thompson's campaign, "Republicans are still trying to determine who is really calling the shots and how much power is held by Mrs. Thompson."

“It’s now become an open joke among people in the consultant community and political
movers and shakers that the senator’s wife is really running the campaign,” said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster and strategist. “The spouse needs to be an integral part of the campaign but it is never a good thing when the spouse runs the campaign because the spouse is never objective.”

Bush, on the other hand, trusts neither Cheney nor Laura to run his affairs. Hoping to groom David BetrayUs to run for the presidency against Hillary in 2012-- when pardons may be greatly needed-- Bush, according to Frank Rich, has made it clearer and clearer that the general is the "main man" who he trusts to give him "candid advice."

Come September, he will be the man who will give the president and the country their orders about the war.

And so another constitutional principle can be added to the long list of those junked by this administration: the quaint notion that our uniformed officers are supposed to report to civilian leadership. In a de facto military coup, the commander in chief is now reporting to the commander in Iraq. We must “wait to see what David has to say,” Mr. Bush says.

Or has Karl Rove already written everyone's lines for them?

DEMOCRATS LOOK AT WHAT THE DLC HAS TO OFFER-- AND RUN IN THE OTHER DIRECTION... EVEN HILLARY

The DLC stands for something-- but nothing to do with Democrats

All the Democratic presidential hopefuls-- even consummate Insider Hillary Clinton-- will be at the grassroots/netroots YearlyKos convention in Chicago next weekend. When I asked my travel agent to get a friend of mine a hotel room-- "try that awesome place you booked me in a few weeks ago when I went to interview John Laesch," I suggested-- it took her less than 15 minutes to get back to me with the report that every room in that hotel and every hotel like it was solidly booked. It isn't just the presidential candidates and the bloggers. Dozens of candidates for the House, for the Senate, people running for state legislatures... they're all converging on Chicago for YKos.

I bet Nashville wishes they had booked that convention instead of the pathetic DLC convention they got stuck with this weekend. Although Bill Clinton will be there, Hillary knows associating with the reactionary Lieberman/Ford wing of the Democratic Party is toxic. She won't be there (even if her heart will be) and neither will Obama or Edwards.

The ultimate interest group, the DLC is 100% bought and paid for you are a corrupt insider, as unfit for support from grassroots Democrats as any Republican. The corrupt reactionary shill that fronts for the DLC-- along with defeated discredited former right wing Democratic congressman Harold Ford-- is Al From. Instead of weeping that no Democratic candidates will get anywhere near his disreputable conclave, he claims they "
are focused on winning interest group votes... We were organized and always have been the force in the party that looks to the general election and tries to connect the Democratic Party to the mainstream values of the country." Philip Morris? Texaco? Merck? Enron? That's the DLC and that's Al From and Harold Ford and that's exactly the kinds of special interests-- as opposed to the grassroots voters-- Democratic candidates don't want to be associated with.

But there is no question that the energy and passion in the party will be on display in Chicago much more than in Nashville.

"Today, the energy is coming from new voices, new media, new technology and is much more to the left of the DLC," said former California Democratic Chairman and current radio talk show host Bill Press. "Look where the candidates are going. You don't need any further proof than that."

Even Press says the DLC's "time has come and gone"... David Sirota, founder of the Progressive States Network and a longtime foe of the DLC, said the DLC has become "radioactive" to candidates running in Democratic primaries because it only represents 'Washington elites and corporate lobbyists.' He added, 'Now that there is a reinvigorated counter to that-- whether through the Netroots or the unions or environmental groups-- it has lost its ability to dominate the space it exists in.'"

From, while acknowledging that "there will be more passion in Chicago," claims there will be 350 elected officials attending his get together. But he won't tell anyone who they are. The same way Republicans in the KKK or John Birch Society don't want to let non-KKK/non-John Birch Society members know that's their identity group, reactionary Democrats, post-Clinton have now grown reticent to let the cat out of the bag. Harold Ford and Al From and their media hacks can squawk all they want that the DLC is a "centrist" or "moderate" group, but the facts are the facts. The DLC is the extreme right of the Democratic Party. They are pro-war, pro-corporation and wrong on every important issue of the last decade.

In today's NY Times Noam Scheiber, a senior editor of the right-of-center New Republic (often referred to as the New Republican and once a dedicated mouthpiece for the DLC), writes that "Democrats, moderate and liberal, have been bewildered by the group’s post-Clinton agenda. Take, for example, the law passed by Congress in 2005 that makes it harder for ordinary people to declare bankruptcy. The measure’s only obvious beneficiary was the credit-card industry, and most Democrats opposed it. One main exception was a coalition of House members [like Al Wynn] allied with the council. In an implicit rebuke to their Democratic colleagues, these New Democrats declared their support for the bill 'as champions of both personal and fiscal responsibility.' ...Today, the council has almost no constituency within the Democratic Party."

This kind of Lieberman/Clinton triangulation-- trashing Democrats and Democratic values for personal advantage-- no longer plays. As I mentioned earlier today, Glenn Greenwald has a great article at Salon that examines how Beltway Insiders of the media variety twist and distort labels and definitions to keep their fraternity in power-- and to thwart the will of the feared and loathed unwashed masses (the rest of us). It will help you to understand how-- in the face of reality-- the DLC gets to be called "centrist" instead of "reactionary" or "moderate" instead of "right-wing."


UPDATE: IS HILLARY JUST MAKIN' BELIEVE?

BooMan makes a good case that even though she's publicly distancing herself from the reactionary conclave-- and letting her husband reassure the right-wing of the Democratic Party that she's still one of them-- down deep, and not even that deep, Hillary's as much a DLCer as her old pal Lieberman is.

MAILKI AND PETRAEUS AT EACH OTHER'S THROATS-- WHILE SAUDIS CLAIM MALIKI IS AN IRANIAN AGENT

(caption-writing contest)

The Elders of Republicanism have given up on 2008 and are trying to set up GOP hack David Betraeus as the reactionary opponent to President Hillary in 2012. Bush's puppet Iraqi Prime Minister was slapped down when he demanded that Petraeus and his thoroughly discredited strategy of arming Sunnis to fight al Qaeda-- isn't that how we got al Qaeda to begin with: arming Afghan Sunnis in that country's civil war?-- be shipped back to America. Prime Minister al-Maliki told Bush to remove Petraeus.

One Iraqi source said Mr Maliki used a video conference with Mr Bush to call for the general's signature strategy to be scrapped. "He told Bush that if Petraeus continues, he would arm Shia militias," said the official. "Bush told Maliki to calm down."

At another meeting with Gen Petraeus, Mr Maliki said: "I can't deal with you any more. I will ask for someone else to replace you."

Maliki will soon be dependent on a Petraeus-controlled evacuation helicopter to take him off the roof of the U.S. Embassy and fly him to safety, so maybe he better stop trying to interfere with Republican Party electoral strategy. Or maybe he's already decided that safety for him and his family will be through Tehran, not as a refugee in the U.S.

The New York Times claimed yesterday that Saudi Arabia was refusing to work with Mr Maliki and has presented "evidence" that he was an Iranian intelligence agent to US officials. "Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they say has been Saudi Arabia's counterproductive role in the war," it reported.

MILT SHOOK ON IMPEACHMENT, PART II: IT'S ALL ABOUT PRINCIPLES!

Do Your Duty, Lady!

Sometimes, you just have to do the right thing.

In the last few days, since I wrote my first piece detailing the case for impeachment, I have received a lot of feedback from both sides of the political spectrum, as well as a lot of people not known for hugging the soft gooey middle. Except for the abusive comments from wingnuts (tell Bill O'Reilly, no one is nastier than a wingnut, period.), most of them attempted to be useful.

Normally, I get at least a few critical missives that make me think twice about my position. I pride myself on being very open minded, with a keen ability to listen to alternate viewpoints and understand where they're coming from. It really helps to be able to do that, because it's necessary to making the distinction between a conservative with an honest difference of opinion, and a wingnut who just reacts, without taking the time to rub a couple of brain cells together. And sometimes, actual conservatives have an interesting take on things.

But this time, none of the arguments made sense, or were in any way relevant. I want to talk about a few of the reasons people give for not being in favor of impeachment, and address why they are completely irrelevant.

The number one reason given is "We don't have the votes."

Apparently, these people didn’t read the piece very closely, because I did address this problem somewhat.

I simply don't care that we don't have the votes to convict now. It really doesn't matter. No one ever said that doing the right thing was always going to be easy.

I think Democrats should spend their August recess making the case for drafting articles of impeachment. Once they vote on them, the Senate must hold a trial. Don't tell me there are no grounds for impeachment; if the Founding Fathers had been confronted with a George Bush, they would have impeached him without a moment's hesitation. This Administration doesn't value the Constitution, they don't value the rule of law, they have an exaggerated sense of the power they possess under our system, and they have no regard for the people. They created the mechanism of impeachment for two reasons; to remove people who abuse the power given to them by the people, and to remove incompetents from positions where they can do serious damage. In other words, in George Bush, we’ve hit the jackpot.

Impeachment is not supposed to be a political tool, used to get rid of people you don't like politically. The Republicans bastardized the process in 1998, when they impeached Bill Clinton, even though they knew damn well they wouldn't convict him. Yes, you read that right; the Republicans went ahead with a sham impeachment, based on complete bullshit, despite the fact that they didn't have enough votes. But Democrats can't push forward with a real impeachment based on real reasons?

Sometimes all of us, including politicians, have to actually go outside of their comfort zone to do the right thing, regardless of whether or not it's politically popular at the time. (Although half the country already thinks they should be impeached, and nearly three-quarters think they're bad for the country. I don't think it's even necessary to convict and remove Bush and Cheney in the end; at some point, we must put all of their misdeeds into the record, and show the people just what these people are doing to our country. At some point, the American people must be presented with all of the facts, laid out in one very concise presentation. As of today, much of Middle America senses that the Bushies are incompetent, but they have no clue as to what the details are. I mean, 41% of Americans are convinced of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda; isn't that evidence enough that real information isn't trickling down enough?

And when that information is presented by way of an impeachment trial, the Republicans in Congress will be faced with a choice. They will have to choose to stand for the rule of law and the Constitution they swore an oath to uphold (yes, it was an oath to the Constitution, not to the GOP or George Bush), or they can choose to stand beside the lamest of lame duck presidents and his crooked vice president. If they vote to convict, they uphold the rule of law, and we get to keep at least some standards for the presidency. If they vote to acquit, in the face of all of the evidence presented, they effectively kill the right wing and the current incarnation of the Republican Party for a generation, and we get either Hillary, Barack or John (or even Dennis?) into office, and we will have a president and enough seats in Congress that we can demand reform and have a fighting chance of getting it…

Either way, we win. We win, because this is a democracy, and we'll have a majority of the American people behind us, demanding reform of just about every mechanism the right wing has broken since 1980. An impeachment trial, win or lose, will expose the government for the crooks they are, and we will have the impetus for a real reform movement. (If, of course, we progressives play politics better than we have in the past. But that's another column for another time…)

The second-most popular complaint (again, among people who didn't read the whole piece) seemed to be "there just isn't enough time."

Between the passing of the Articles of Impeachment and the acquittal of Bill Clinton, less than two months passed. That means, if we can put forth genuine articles of impeachment, debate them thoroughly, and pass them by October, we could conceivably be done with these scumbags by Christmas. But even if we can't, February or March works for me. If anyone is worried that a "President Pelosi" might upset the Democratic nomination process, we could get her to agree to not run for an additional term if Bush and Cheney are impeached and removed. I don't get a sense that she particularly wants to be president, anyway, so she'd probably agree. (Might make Hillary a little mad, though; she wants to be the first…)

Just as an aside, why don't many liberals understand that the reason Pelosi took impeachment "off the table" was so that it didn't look like she was working in her own self-interest? She can't take anything 'off the table'; if the Judiciary Committee brings forth articles, she's not going to kill them. But if you're a potential recipient of the benefits of a particular action, doesn't it make ethical sense to remove yourself from the process, short of voting on it?

Sometimes, you simply must stand on principle, regardless of the consequences. If we don't get rid of them until January 19, 2009, then so be it; the point is to take back the rule of law. This is not about political payback, and it's not about Bush and Cheney, personally speaking. It's about restoring justice to the rule of law, starting with the most obvious breach of it in our lifetime.

Now, the third rationale is the most interesting to me. I actually had a couple of people write and say something to the effect, "well, what if this turns into a game; they impeached us, so we impeach them, then they do the same to us, and it becomes a cycle."

Well, what if?

First of all, I'm no conspiracy theorist, but in my opinion, Republicans were attempting to inoculate the next Republican president when they impeached Clinton. They didn't necessarily know that the next president would be George W. Bush (although, given the massive election fraud in 2000, maybe they did), but they did know that the next wingnut they elected would act in extraordinary ways. So, isn't it possible that they used that impeachment to make the public more reticent to engage in another one anytime soon? And if we allow them to get away with that concept, how gullible are we? We have to go after bad guys who get into office. If we end up with five impeachments in a row, then we need to look at our electoral process, and ask ourselves why we keep electing such assholes. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't get rid of them, just because we keep impeaching people.

Besides, the last impeachment was political theater, while this one would be a valid impeachment for valid reasons. This time, the exercise is not an attempt to "get" a president politically, nor is it an attempt to get rid of someone we don't like politically. I couldn’t stand Reagan or Bush 41 at all, but I was ambivalent about their impeachment. I probably wouldn’t have minded seeing more heads roll over Iran-Contra, but compared to the current bunch, the Reagan bunch were pikers. In the Reagan Administration, investigations were conducted, heads did roll, and there were lots of firings. The current administration sees every investigation as a major pain in its ass, and no one's ever been fired for doing anything wrong, although a few have been forced out for siding with the Constitution over their "fuehrers" Bush and Cheney.

Think about it this way. If you cared about your job, and your "legacy" to even the slightest degree-- hell, if you cared even one little bit about your promise to "bring honor and dignity" back to the White House-- how tolerant would you be of the crooks and liars inside of your administration? Ethical people would find it embarrassing to know that someone under them had betrayed the trust of the American people. Think about the various important yet unanswered questions regarding impropriety in the Bush Administration thus far; why would any ethical person not want to clarify any of these? (There are so many, I can actually list many that I didn't list in the first impeachment column…)

• Who in the Bush Administration assisted Enron in its attempts to escape blame for the largest corporate fraud in history? When it found out that Enron's illegal dealings resulted in millions of people losing billions of dollars in retirement savings, why was there no serious attempt to recover as much of that money as possible?
• What happened at those top secret meetings featuring Dick Cheney and top energy industry executives, and by what authority has Cheney continued to refuse to divulge the details of those meetings?
• Why did Bush wait seven minutes to even react after terrorists attacked New York City? Why has there been so little of the assistance promised in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks actually provided?
• Why does this Administration continue to hold hundreds of prisoners after nearly five years, without charges, without trial, and in most cases, without counsel? And is such disregard for the basic principles of justice out of a sense of keeping the country secure, or a reflection of their disdain for the rule of law?
• In the run up to war, why was there such a massive operation to lie about the rationale for invasion? Why hasn't anyone been held accountable for the "faulty intelligence" which led to more than 30,000 American casualties, and as many as half a million or more Iraqi civilian deaths?
• Who is responsible for the estimated tens of billions (some would say hundreds of billions) of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse by contractors in Iraq? In one very glaring example of fiscal irresponsibility, $8.8 billion dollars was "lost" several years ago by several contractors, and there was no accountability for that. No-bid contracts worth billions have been handed over to campaign donors, and the Vice President is still being paid by at least one contractor that has seen billions in profits from its operations in Iraq.
• And, in one of the most shocking events in American presidential history, who is responsible for the coordinated effort to smear a political opponent, by revealing the identity of his wife, a CIA undercover operative? And why has no one ever been held accountable for that?

So many actions by this administration rise to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors" that it's difficult to count them all. And we must do something about it. For six years, a rubber stamp Republican Congress neglected its oversight responsibilities, and the Democrats are now forced to play catch-up. This will be a condensed process, it will be an intense process, it will interfere with the presidential race, and it will cause all sorts of accusations to be thrown at Democrats; accusations of "partisan political theater" and trying to 'get' Bush and Cheney. But at this point, none of that matters. Much of what the government is allowed to do is based on precedent; and we cannot allow these people to set a precedent that allows a future administration to do the same sorts of things, and get away with it.

As I'll show in my next piece on impeachment, the drive to impeach these people is no longer the talk of a bunch of Commie leftist pinko liberals; a fair number of conservatives have joined us. And why not? This administration's actions transcend cheap partisan politics and labels. Every chance they get, these fools carve out an exception for themselves in every law they see, and they have issued a series of executive orders that are far more reminiscent of Saddam's Iraq than the land of the free and the home of the brave. In fact, Bush's last executive order, which is featured on this very blog, was issued July 17, and essentially asserts that the president (see, that’s the funny thing about executive orders, they're not president-specific) has the power to unilaterally decide that you are undermining the effort in Iraq and, without hearing, can just seize all of your assets.

Now, I know what many of you are thinking;

"I haven't done anything, so I have nothing to fear."

Those of you who believe that should know; the word "gullible" appears in no dictionary. Anywhere. You can go look; I'll wait.

If you give the government that kind of power, odds are they will use it. And if they take all of your assets, how do you plan to fight it? The wingnuts spent the 90s stalling as many Clinton-nominated judges as possible, and they spent the last six packing the courts with their own kind. Of course, it won't get that far, because you won't be able to afford a lawyer. You have no assets, remember? And keep in mind, wingnuts; the executive order doesn't expire when Bush leaves office. What if President Hillary decides to make the claim that everyone who has an assault weapon is aiding and abetting terrorism, because she's unilaterally decides that she wants to confiscate them, to make sure terrorists can't possibly get hold of them? Something tells me you'd probably want her impeached, and rightly so. And if President Obama ordered every preacher's assets taken, because he was sick of them ragging on gays, you'd be calling for his ouster, as well.

And you know what? We would be right there with you, because it's an abuse of power, no matter who's doing it. This may come as a shock to many on the right, but there are many issues that transcend simple politics, and which are simply either right or wrong, not right or left.

And right now, there is no excuse for not impeaching these people. The Constitution demands it.

BLUE AMERICA: MEET JIM HIMES

Jim Himes with Obama. Recognize anyone in the background?

A couple months ago Jane called me from Connecticut and said something like "I want you to meet someone you're going flip over." She introduced me to Jim Himes, the progressive Democrat who has decided it's time to do something about retiring WINO/rubber stamp phony Christopher Shays. I'm guessing Jane and Himes knew each other because they were both very early supporters of Ned Lamont's-- back when he too was taking on a treacherous Bush Regime rubber stamp.

It's not hard to figure out why Jane found Jim Himes such an appealing candidate. He's not a career pol, but a dynamic and forward-thinking young businessman dedicated to issues of affordable housing. He's lived all over the world and has a broad understanding of America's place, historically, economically, ethically. He has two young daughters who he is very aware will inherit the nation and the world we leave them. I got the feeling from our 3 or 4 phone conversations since Jane introduced us that that's the key reason behind his decision to run for Congress.

His parents were working in Peru in 1966 and he was born there and grew up speaking English and Spanish. He graduated from Harvard and won a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford. Afterwards his interest in business-oriented solutions to urban poverty led Jim to the Enterprise Foundation, where he researched financial services available to low-income people and, later, to running their NY operation, which included the construction of thousands of units of affordable housing in the New York Metro area. He was also a Commissioner of the Greenwich Housing Authority and later its chairman.

Taking on Shays, the last Republican member of the House from any New England state, is no easy task. CT-04, the southwest corner of the state closest to NYC, leans Democratic (Bush did badly in 2000 and 2004) but the 10 term incumbent has successfully passed himself off as a moderate, despite an abysmal rubber stamp voting record. Diane Farrell came close in 2004 and closer in 2006 but fallout from the Lieberman-factor helped save Shays neck while Connecticut's 2 other Republicans, Nancy Johnson and Rob Simmons went down to defeat.

Jim feels that the key to victory in CT-04 is a thoroughly grassroots campaign, which he's already in the midst of. "I'll meet every single voter in the district or die trying. Lately Shays has really shown himself for what he is. He's not Tom DeLay and he's not the outward fringe of the Republican right-- but he's there when they need him. He voted with them for the war, for tax cuts for America's wealthiest and on the privatization of Social Security."

Jim is a nuts and bolts can-do kind of guy and the things he wants to do aren't glamorous or sexy for a congressman. He wants to devote his time to energy policy and he dreams on being on the Transportation Committee, a position most congressmen-- like one Chris Shays-- couldn't care less about but is where he can help solve the real problems that are plaguing people in southwest Connecticut.

Shays may have flip flopped last week on the occupation he's tirelessly supported and promoted over the last five years. Sure enough, he called for American troops to be out of Iraq by December of 2008. It's not the first done he's pulled that stunt right before an election. He did the same thing in 2006-- and then went on to vote three times against actual proposals to withdraw troops from Iraq. It looks like Shays is finally realizing that the costs of this war, at least to his political prospects, may be too much to bear.

Jim wrote up his ideas on how the Iraq catastrophe, supported by Bush, the GOP, reactionary Democrats and fake moderates like Shays, has cost America a great deal in less obvious ways than we see in the papers everyday. The dead and maimed Americans and Iraqis, the half trillion dollars wasted, the strengthening of al-Qaeda... are bad enough, but there are less intuitive costs as well. "As awful as these costs and mistakes have been, they don’t fully capture the price that we, as a country, have paid for this war. Conventional wisdom says that Americans, other than those in the military, have not been asked to sacrifice for this war. That is not true.

"If you work in affordable housing, as I do, you know that millions of hard working Americans are paying more of their limited incomes for housing because federal housing assistance programs have been cut in favor of the war.

"If you worry about the solvency of the Medicare and Medicaid programs that provide healthcare to the most vulnerable Americans, you know that neither resources nor attention have been devoted to the sustainability of those programs, largely because of the demands of Baghdad.

"If you think we should have a sustainable national energy policy that holds relevant our national security and the demands of a deteriorating environment, you know that the development of such a thing will demand an unprecedented concentration of political capital and innovative thinking. But there is no political capital left now, nor even much credibility.

"The list of sacrifices the American people have made in Iraq goes on and on: the chance to address the plight of 45 million Americans with no health insurance, the opportunity to meaningfully improve the educational system which will be the determinant of our future prosperity. These things, so critical to individual American day-to-day lives, have been sacrificed in favor of a war which has apparently made us no safer than we were in 2001.

"Advocates of the war like Chris Shays persist in talking about the outcome in terms of victory, as though we might hope for a battleship surrender ceremony in which we accept swords from cowed Al Qaeda leaders, Sunni terrorists and Iranians. The only possible explanation for this fantasy is that the advocates understand, if only subconsciously, the horrible direct and indirect costs we have paid for their folly. How else but through victory can they find redemption?

"The reality, of course, is that the American people will eventually succeed in demanding an orderly and responsible withdrawal. If that withdrawal is accomplished with uncharacteristic competence and the backing of the world, we might have a legitimate hope of avoiding further catastrophe. But it won’t look like victory. Victory will come when we rededicate ourselves, our attention and our resources to the grand challenges of improving the lives of the American people."

Jane and I want to ask you to join us in doing all we can to make sure competent, ethical men and women like Jim Himes are the people working towards that victory. If you live in Jim's district, he can really use volunteers. Jim is the newest candidate on our Blue America page and if you can afford a contribution, even just $5 or $10, it will be put to good use. In 2006 Shays spent $3,804,187 to hold onto his seat, almost $36 per vote. The Republican Party and Shays corporate allies are willing to spend even more this year. Jim is off to a competitive start, having raised more money than any other Democratic House challenger this year. He'll never be able to match Shays dollar for dollar but no Democrat ever needs to. He just needs enough money to get his message out, enough money to show high-info voters in CT-04 the difference between false claims of political independence and moderation and a voting record that makes right-wingers more than happy to open their wallets for Chris Shays.


UPDATE: JIM HIMES LIVE AT FDL

This afternoon Jim will be engaing the Blue America community in a 2 hour live blog session at Firedoglake, 2pm (EDT), 11am (PT). Come over and meet Jim and ask him a question or, if you missed it, check out the discussion in the FDL archive.

WHY ARE REPUBLICANS SO AFRAID OF DEMOCRACY, OPENNESS AND PEOPLE-POWERED TECHNOLOGY?

the pygmies have arrived

So far only two minor candidates, John McCain and Ron Paul, have agreed to participate in CNN's Sept. 17th Republican YouTube debate-- and McCain says he's as likely as not to change his mind. Giuliani, who referred to a plurality of Americans yesterday as losers, has let it leak that he intends to find some convenient scheduling conflict, although it's not likely to involve either the head of the Giuliani Southern strategy, David Diapers Vitter (R-LA) or the disgraced former chairman of his South Carolina campaign, Thomas Ravenel, a Republican multimillionaire playboy who snorted up enough coke to cover the tax reductions of every South Carolina family making less than $50,000 per year.

No one bothered to tell Flip Flop Mitt, who, no doubt, will just do whatever everyone else does anyway, what YouTube is. He mentioned yesterday that it is "a website that allows kids to network with one another and makes friends and contact each other," a perfect description of MySpace, where GOP sex predators like Mark Foley hunt for children to prey on-- but hardly a description of YouTube.

The relatively freewheeling Democratic CNN/YouTube debate was so popular among voters-- and the mainstream media-- that over 400 video questioned have already been loaded up on the YouTube site. But the very openness and aliveness scares the hell out of the stiff and thoroughly scripted "bunch of," as Newt Gingrich, who knows them all well, put it, "pathetic pygmies."

The Republican Party of Florida, and that state's wildly popular moderate Republican governor, Charlie Crist-- who is far better liked than any of the pygmies-- is a co-sponsor of the debate. The candidates are all asking for a more easily controlled debate in Florida, one on Fox or some other dependable GOP propaganda outlet, where no one goes off script and no one can be made to look like an idiot except Ron Paul. Right now the pygmies are all grumbling that they'd rather be raising money than debating. And, no doubt that's true. Republicans have always felt more comfortable scraping and bowing in front of the rich than opening themselves up to the harsh light of reality in front of living, breathing... people.

Whatever there is of a Republican netroots-- and, being a stultified top-down bunch, there really isn't much at all-- thinks nixing the debate is a big mistake. Patrick Ruffini, for example, says appearing to be afraid of answering questions from regular people makes the pygmies look bad.

It’s stuff like this that will set the GOP back an election cycle or more on the Internet. No matter the snazzy Web features and YouTube videos they may put up, if they’re fundamentally uncomfortable with the idea of interacting with real people online, what’s the point?

Having spent the better part of a decade working at the intersection of politics and the Web, I can’t help but feel of a deep, deep sense of dismay that we’re missing something so basic. This is EXACTLY why I am afraid that we will be outraised by $100 million or more in 2008.

Now if you want to see the pygmies making asses of themselves in a YouTube debate, sign the petition put together by a whole herd of online wingnuts.

Maybe the pygmies would feel more comfortable if Ted Stevens were the moderator. Republicans, of course feel uncomfortable about young people (ages 18-29), who are far more likley to have open minds that haven't been brainwashed. Remember, the average age of an O'Reilly viewer is over 70, the perfect audience for a Republican, not in terms of what the GOP has to offer to the elderly but in terms of the ability to play on preconceptions and predictability. A new poll released today shows that young people have no more regard for the Republican candidates than the canddiates have towards them. The Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll found young people, the YouTube generation, "profoundly alienated from the Republican Party and its perceived values." In fact they are downright hostile to the GOP, the candidates and their ideas of almost every single issue.


UPDATE: GIULIANI AND FLIP FLOP MITT FORCE CNN TO "POSTPONE" THE YOUTUBE DEBATE

Whether it's fear of technology or fear of openness or fear of... uncontrolled masses of people-- remember Bush's ticket-holders only campaign stops?-- Giuliani and Romney have forced CNN to call off or "postpone, indefinitely" the YouTube debate scheduled for September in Florida. Ron Paul says he was informed by CNN that the 2 front-runners are claiming unspecified "other commitments" (forever). CNN bravely says they will work with the Giuliani and Mormon campaigns to find a new date that works for everyone.

NEW POLLING NUMBERS INDICATE TOUGH TIMES LIKELY OBLITERATION FOR REPUBLICAN PARTY

The SUSA Survey just released a new batch of approval ratings for Bush from 15 states. The news isn't good for the bad guys.

He does best in Alabama where only 55% of adults disapprove of the job he's doing (61% of women disapprove). You probably won't be surprised to read that in high-info states like California and Massachusetts, Bush fares far worse. 72% of adults in California disapprove of the job he's doing. He isn't popular in any area but the relatively progressive Bay Area gives him a disapproval rating of 87% while the far more conservative Inland Empire only gives him a 65% disapproval. Massachusetts is even more dismal for Bush. His disapproval rating is 79% (83% among women and 89% among people aged 18-34). Even self-described "pro-life" supporters (i.e.- anti-choice nuts) disapprove of Bush 60%-37%!

In Ohio, where then Secretary of State Ken Blackwell was able to steal the 2004 presidential election for him, Bush has an overall 67% disapproval rating (71% among Ohio women). Next door in Kentucky, which Bush won in 2000 and 2004, and which has a gubernatorial election this year and a crucial senate seat up for grabs (Mitch McConnell's) next year, Bush's disapproval numbers are down at 59% (65% for women). And although every region of the state has turned against Bush, predictably the highest-info part of the state, Metro Louisiville, disapproves by the widest margin (65%). Another state with an endangered rubber stamp Republican senator with an election next year (Norm Coleman) is Minnesota, where Bush's overall disapproval is 68% (and 71% among women). The overall disapprove number is identical in New Mexico, another state with an endangered rubber stamp senator (Pete "Sneaky Pete" Domenici) facing a tough election next year.

In New York, where only 23% of adults think Bush is doing a good job, the disapproval numbers are breathtaking-- 75% overall, 77% among women, 82% among people 18-34, 79% among self-described "moderates," 66% among gun owners, 61% even among people who oppose gay marriage! There's no area of the state where Bush's disapprove falls below 70% and in NYC it's 79%, although I can't imagine where they found 19% of New Yorkers to say they approve of the job he's doing.

Four heartland states:
Iowa-- 69% disapprove
Kansas-- 58% disapprove
Missouri-- 60% disapprove (70% in Kansas City, where the Democrats are running a former Democratic mayor, Kay Barnes against Sam Graves, an endangered 100% rubber stamp Republican congressman).
Wisconsin-- 62% overall disapproval, rising to 66% among adults 35 and over.

There's no salvation coming towards the Republicans from the Northwest. In Oregon Bush's disapproval is down to 66% (73% among women) and in Washington it's even worse, with 69% disapproving , 73% in Metro Seattle and even 60% in the reddest parts of Washington, the east out towards Idaho.

Virginia is the last of the states surveyed. It's a state that has been trending towards the Democrats and 64% of adults disapprove of Bush's job performance, something that augurs ill for rubber stamp senator John Warner who will have to face the voters in 2008.

COULD EDWARDS (OR OBAMA) ACTUALLY STOP CLINTON?

Obama got a load of media attention by going after Hillary. Who knows... maybe he or Edwards could actually shake up the race if one of them actually went after her in a real way. Now look at this Edwards talk in front of some grassroots Democrats in Iowa, where he's leading. The video will not just show why he's leading but might make you wonder if the "them" and "they" he's referring to are just Republicans or all Insiders, be they Republicans or Clintonistas.




UPDATE: WON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN? HILLARY IS BETTER THAN BUSH-CHENEY-- THE WAY A "D" IS BETTER THAN AN "F"

Hillary-- and everyone around her (especially them, and after all, they will be running the country come January 2009)-- is a quintessential Inside the Beltway Thing. They're not as "bad" as the Bush Regime Inside The Beltway Things but that's a standard so low that it should never be seriously considered. This morning Glenn Greenwald makes a great stab at explaining the pernicious Beltway media's ability to distort reality in defense of Inside the Beltway Thingism. It really is "us" (Americans) against "them" (the Beltway Things).

JOSEPH NACCHIO SENTENCED TO 6 YEARS IN PRISON, HUGE FINE-- RIGHT WING TEARS ARE FLOWING FOR HIM... AND LOUIS XVI

Maybe it didn't help that the stock market just had a week that roughly mirrors Bush's approval ratings but Judge Edward Nottingham sentenced Joseph Nacchio to 6 years and a forfeiture of $71 million dollars. He had been the CEO of Qwest Communications and was found guilty of 42 counts of insider trading in April.

Unlike Scooter Libby, Nacchio's request for bail while he was appealing was denied. He'll either have to figure out another way to evade prison or turn himself in in about 2 months. Nacchio wept in the court room, going nuts over the fine, while his lawyer begged for mercy based on the fact that Nacchio's son is mentally disturbed and attempted suicide in 2001.

“He has a devastating family situation,” Mr. Stern said, as Mr. Nacchio wiped his eyes beside him.

But a federal prosecutor, Colleen Conry, argued that David Nacchio’s immediate family was supportive enough to care for him. She pointed out that Mr. Nacchio did not quit his job with Qwest after his son’s suicide attempt.

“It didn’t matter enough to him then, and it shouldn’t matter to the court now,” she said.

The judge said Nacchio's undoing was his unbelievable greed and avarice-- typical Republican conditions that get worse with time. His political contributions are well hidden but he's known for having given predominantly to right wing Republicans like Wayne Allard and Elizabeth Dole.

Quoting from the Robert Bolt play A Man For All Seasons, about Sir Thomas More’s refusal to support Henry VIII’s wish for a divorce from his wife, Judge Nottingham said that rule of law must be respected and that Mr. Nacchio’s actions required punishment. Not everyone feels the same way. In fact, there are always self-loathing bootlicks who pay inordinate deference to the rich and privileged and mourn when they are brought down. One of these is a far right, self-styled professor, Richard Bishirjian, of a so-called Yorktown "University" in Denver.

Bishirjian was still grieving for Conrad Black, Dennis Koslowski, Michael Milken and Louis XVI when the news of Nacchio's sentencing hit. He admits he doesn't know anything of the facts... but, of course, that never stops a wingnut from spouting off about how the common masses are ruining the world.

There is some-thing in “Democracy” that pre-disposes us to judge the wealthy and privileged-- guilty.
 
Sometimes those executed deserved no better than a slap on the wrist, but by executing them a point was made.
 
My guess is that something like that has occurred in the instance of Joe Nacchio.

Predictably, Bishirjian seems to think Nacchio was sentenced because he's a visionary entrepreneur, instead of a greed-obsessed criminal. "For Nacchio’s audacity, he was sentenced today to six years in prison and compelled to pay restitution for the millions he gained for exercising stock options before his company’s stock went into the toilet. At the end of the day, Joe Nacchio stood alone in federal court and was sentence to spend six years of his life in jail.
Frankly, why not just kill him?"

Come on, be honest, did you ever meet a right winger who was sane?

CAPITOL HILL REPUBLICANS FEAR THAT NOVEMBER 2008 WILL BE EVEN WORSE THAN THE 2006 ELECTION WAS FOR THEM-- THEY'RE RIGHT

Public opinion has caught up with Bush and if his job approval ratings continue falling at even half the rate they have been for the last 2 years, by election day, 2008, they will be in the mid-teens. The concept of "rubber stamp Republican" is very hard to duck when years and years of voting records are now easily accessed by the public. Voting records have been very hard to find in the past and it now takes two or three clicks of a mouse to find out if your congressman or senator really was the "independent voice" he or she claimed to be or just a complete Bush Regime rubber stamp. Take a look at the voting records of John Cornyn (R-TX), Larry Craig (R-ID), James Inhofe (R-OK), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Miss McConnell (R-KY), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), John Sununu (R-NH), and Pete "Sneaky Pete" Domenici (R-NM). Not only do they look fairly identical, each could have been just cast by Dick Cheney while the senator was off with his colleague David Diapers Vitter interacting with the locals.

And the House doesn't look any better for Republicans. Even with the public expressing extreme disapproval for Congress in general, it's the Republicans in Congress, particularly their obstructionism, that the public hates most of all.

The release Thursday of the latest bipartisan “Battleground 2008” survey included sobering if not alarming news for members of Congress in both parties. A majority of respondents (52 percent) disapproved of the Democratic-led Congress-- but even greater majorities disapproved of the job performances of congressional Republicans (61 percent) and President Bush (61 percent). The poll is sponsored by George Washington University and was conducted of 1,000 registered likely voters on July 15-18 by the Democratic firm Lake Research Partners and the Republican firm The Tarrance Group.

...The survey found that voters prefer Democrats to Republicans on nearly every major policy issue-- usually by wide margins. Democrats held double-digit leads over Republicans when respondents were asked which party would “do a better job of handling” the Iraq war, jobs, energy independence, the federal budget deficit, Social Security, political corruption in Washington, D.C., and health care. Republicans held a 13-percentage-point lead on combating terrorism-- the GOP’s biggest edge on any issue-- and narrow advantages over Democrats on “moral values” and curbing illegal immigration.

So when today's Hill reports anxiety inside the Beltway and despair on K Street, they are far from off base.

The same bad news — the president’s low approval ratings, opposition to the war in Iraq, and the lingering taint of congressional scandal, from the Jack Abramoff investigation to Sen. David Vitter’s (La.) involvement with the alleged “D.C. Madam” — leave observers skeptical that the GOP can dent Democratic majorities, let alone reclaim power in the next election.

“The only thing that has changed is that everything that was bad got worse,” said Bernadette Budde, political director of the Business Industry Political Action Committee. BIPAC supports business-friendly candidates of both parties, though most of the group’s donations go to Republicans.

If the election were held today, “We’d be lucky to hold our own,” one House Republican said.

Very lucky. It's more likely that they'd lose at least a couple dozen House seats and 5 or 6 senate seats-- not to mention the presidency. Despite dismal polls, horrendous fundraising, lackluster candidate recruitment, and an increasing sense of "no confidence" in Republicans, the GOP shills who talk to the media try to keep up smiley faces and paint rosy scenarios. "Privately, Republican leaders say it will take six to eight years to win back the majority, one top GOP lobbyist said, adding, 'It’s a tough environment for Republicans.'"

It will get worse. In fact... help make it worse.

THE SUPREME COURT PROBLEM-- AND HOW TO FIX IT

Ironically, it's Snarlin' Arlen Specter (R-PA), rather than a Democrat, who seems most worked up that John Roberts and Sammy Alito lied their asses off to get their Supreme Court nominations confirmed. Specter has suggested in recent days that their nonchalant reversals of long accepted American judicial precepts directly contradict the promises they made to moderates and centrists allowing them to win confirmation. Roberts' and Alito's headlong dive into extreme and blatant right-wing politics from the moment they got onto the bench shouldn't really have surprised anyone, but I think Justice Breyer was referring to it in a recent dissent: "It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much." Yesterday John Amato over at Crooks & Liars asked me if there was anything that could be done about it. Mistakenly, I told him that, without resorting to violence, there isn't.

So wasn't I rather pleasantly surprised when I came across an Op-Ed in today's NY Times that completely contradicts my pessimism! Turns out when Supreme Court judges get wildly political, the way Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts are, there are perfectly acceptable political solutions.

When the court overreaches, the Constitution provides checks and balances. In 1805, after persistent political activity by Justice Samuel Chase, Congress responded with its power of impeachment. Chase was acquitted, but never again did he step across the line to mingle law and politics. After the Civil War, when a Republican Congress feared the court might tamper with Reconstruction in the South, it removed those questions from the court’s appellate jurisdiction.

But the method most frequently employed to bring the court to heel has been increasing or decreasing its membership. The size of the Supreme Court is not fixed by the Constitution. It is determined by Congress.

The original Judiciary Act of 1789 set the number of justices at six. When the Federalists were defeated in 1800, the lame-duck Congress reduced the size of the court to five-- hoping to deprive President Jefferson of an appointment. The incoming Democratic Congress repealed the Federalist measure (leaving the number at six), and then in 1807 increased the size of the court to seven, giving Jefferson an additional appointment.
In 1837, the number was increased to nine, affording the Democrat Andrew Jackson two additional appointments. During the Civil War, to insure an anti-slavery, pro-Union majority on the bench, the court was increased to 10. When a Democrat, Andrew Johnson, became president upon Lincoln’s death, a Republican Congress voted to reduce the size to seven (achieved by attrition) to guarantee Johnson would have no appointments.

After Ulysses S. Grant was elected in 1868, Congress restored the court to nine. That gave Grant two new appointments. The court had just declared unconstitutional the government’s authority to issue paper currency (greenbacks). Grant took the opportunity to appoint two justices sympathetic to the administration. When the reconstituted court convened, it reheard the legal tender cases and reversed its decision (5-4).

FDR botched an attempt in 1937 but that doesn't mean that President Hillary won't be able to pull it off in 2009, particularly if rubber stamp Republicans like Susan Collins (ME), John Warner (VA), John Cornyn (TX), John Sununu (NH), Miss McConnell (KY), Norm Coleman (MN), Gordon Smith (OR), Pete "Sneaky Pete" Domenici (NM), Ted Stevens (AK), Elizabeth Dole (NC), and James Inhofe (OK) are no longer able to routinely obstruct the will of the country. You want a Supreme Court that takes the side of people over corporations and defends rights instead of threats them? Vote for progressive Democrats.


UPDATE: SCHUMER SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER

A friend of mine was organizing around stopping the Alito confirmation. Reid and Schumer cut him off at the knees and instructed big Democratic donors to not fund the project. Does that surprise anyone? The Democrats can play politics as viciously as Republicans. The difference is that vicious Republicans have the sense to hit Democrats. Vicious Democrats hit other Democrats. Today Schumer was crying crocodile tears about Roberts and Alito duping the senators. What a crock! Schumer thought they were moderates? He's either a liar or an incompetent-- or both.

"Were we duped?" he asked.

"Were we too easily impressed by the charm of nominee Roberts and the erudition of nominee Alito?" Schumer asked. "Did we mistakenly vote our hopes when our fears were more than justified by the ultraconservative records of these two men?"

"Yes," he said.

"Hoodwinked," even. Schumer ingenuously claims there are 4 lessons to be learned from Alito and Roberts: Confirmation hearings are meaningless, a nominee’s record should be weighed more heavily than rhetoric, “ideology matters” and “take the president at his word... When a president says he wants to nominate justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas, believe him.” Does he think he's fooling someone?


UPDATE: AN INCREASING NUMBER OF AMERICANS ARE STARTING TO REALIZE THE SUPREME COURT IS SERIOUSLY OUT OF BALANCE

Tomorrow's Washington Post carries some interesting polling data of public perceptions of the Supreme Court. "Nearly a third of the public-- 31 percent-- thinks the court is too far to the right, a noticeable jump since the question was last asked in July 2005." Since 2005 Bush has nominated and a rubber stamp Senate has confirmed two extreme right-wing fanatics, John Roberts and Sammy Alito, to the nation's top court. They are both ideologues of the worst sort who, in a sane non-Bush situation would only be allowed in the Supreme Court as tourists or to defend themselves. Every single one of their noteworthy decisions is predictably anti-worker, anti-consumer, anti-human. That is, after all, why each was chosen.

The public seems to have noticed the shift. The percentage who said the court is "too conservative" grew from 19 percent to 31 percent in the past two years, while those who said it is "generally balanced in its decisions" declined from 55 percent to 47 percent.

Do you care? One sure way to do something about it is to be sure to not vote for any rubber stamp Republicans seeking re-election to the Senate. Senators who have rubber stamped every single Bush judicial nomination include Susan Collins (R-ME), Miss McConnell (R-KY), John Sununu (R-NH), Norm Coleman (R-MN), John Cornyn (R-TX), John Warner (R-VA), Larry Craig (R-ID), Gordon Smith (R-OR), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Pete "Sneaky Pete" Domenici (R-NM), Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), Ted Steverns (R-AK), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA). I might also add that a number of reactionary Democrats have also tended to rubber stamp Bush's judicial nominations: Max Baucus (D-MT), Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Mark Pryor (D-AR). But you want to do something positive? Contribute a few bucks to Tom Allen, who is running to replace Susan Collins in Maine. Allen would have voted to reject Alito and reject Roberts; he will never vote in favor of radical right judges if he's in the Senate.

TWO CONGRESSIONAL RETIREMENTS IN ILLINOIS-- AND THAT'S BEFORE PLANET DENNY HASTERT WEIGHS IN

Hard to believe he beat Denny Hastert to the punch, but Ray LaHood, a longtime Hastert ally, announced this morning that his 7 terms in Congress have been enough. The district leans pretty Republican but a moderate Democrat, like State Senator John Sullivan, could possibly pull off an upset, especially in the kind of anti-GOP shaping up for 2008. Among the others who might try for the seat are Democratic Peoria County state's attorney Kevin Lyons, LaHood's son, Darren, and a pair of Republican state Reps, Aaron Schock and David Leitch. Another possible retirement is more complicated and I asked a real Illinois political expert to give us a hand with this one.

When it comes to the intricacies of Illinois politics few are as astute as Larry Handlin, a PhD candidate in Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. His 4 year old blog, ArchPundit, is the first stop for anyone looking for the inside scoop on Illinois politics. When I heard that Luis Gutierrez might be retiring from Congress I asked Larry to handicap the Democrats who are already vying to replace him. His report:

The race to replace Luis may well include Luis Gutierrez (IL-4) himself. In March, Gutierrez confirmed he would retire from Congress at the end of this term touching off a scramble for the seat. One of the biggest questions is will he really retire. His initial desire to retire seemed to revolve around an interest in challenging Richard Daley for Mayor of Chicago. He chose not to run and he still seemed content to retire, but Laura Washington expresses many people's opinions that he might not be ready to go, especially with immigration reform not completed.

While he would have faced no serious opposition if he had run again, deciding to get back in the race would be difficult. Already candidates have amassed fairly large war chests to take him on and he's always been an anemic fundraiser to say the least. He also was delinquent in DCCC dues for some time during the 2006 cycle. He blamed poor fundraising on the nature of his district, but his would be successors are proving him wrong. He also has had some scandals pop up that raise several questions.

Already three announced candidates have raised nearly $1 million for the primary.  Leading the pack is 1st Ward Alderman Manny Flores with $478,029 raised in the last quarter alone. Right behind him is 22nd Ward Alderman Rick Munoz with $310,706. And third is Cook County Commissioner Roberto Maldonado with $192,857.

Other likely candidates include 25th Ward Alderman Danny Solis, State Representative Susana Medoza and 12th Ward Alderman George Cardenas.


The question of electability isn't an issue since the District is safely Democrat. In both 2000 and 2004 the District provided 79 percent of the votes for Gore and Kerry with a Cook Partisan Index of +31 D. No, that's not a typo. The percentage of Hispanic origin is just under 75 percent though the voting population is a significantly lower percentage.

It's safe to say the candidates are generally close on national political issues with the key differences residing along how close to Richard Daley and the Chicago Democratic Machine. Even including those who are Daley allies there are degrees of difference that provide an important understanding of how the race may play out.

Munoz and Flores have strong reputations as reformers having both defeated candidates backed by the Hispanic Democratic Organization (HDO). HDO is strongly aligned with Mayor Richard Daley and two leaders of the organization have been indicted by US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald for participating in patronage schemes throughout Chicago city government. 
 
Of the two, Munoz is considered less likely to back large developments as an Alderman and less likely to compromise, while Flores has worked to provide several large developments in his Ward and  willing to compromise and work with anyone to achieve legislation. Mostly, they are aligned with each other on most major issues including reform.

Close to having the same kind of anti-HDO credibility is Susana Mendoza, a State Representative who has fought with HDO every campaign. Her primary disadvantage is being a State Representative does not provide nearly the same base of support as being an Alderman. 

Maldonado has run an independent course not being close to HDO, but also not having had to go to war with them. He's been close to Gutierrez over the years and though he had some questions raised about patronage hires, he's largely seen as clean if not as dynamic as the younger Munoz and Flores.

Solis has been considered Daley's strongest Hispanic ally and was long backed by HDO, to have them switch their support in the 2007 election. Solis won and Daley supported him, but his ties to HDO were severed. He was one of the Alderman who defected from Daley and voted for the Big Box ordinance which required a higher wage to be paid by Big Box stores such as Walmart. After Daley vetoed the legislation, Solis switched his vote and helped Daley sustain the veto. 

Four of the five candidates discussed have a reform pedigree with Munoz and Flores perceived as standouts for their progressive politics and grassroots campaigning. Maldonado has a lot of deep community ties and while he is more low key and has some ties to the regular machine, he's respected by most everyone.

Solis is a machine candidate. Then there is George Cardenas who isn't just a machine candidate, but a machine hack. He might not qualify as the worst hack tied to HDO, he is a perfect example of the typical hack. He also switched his vote on the Big Box bill after Daley's veto and was challenged by the Chicago Federation of Labor for doing so.

Cardenas' reelection campaign was not only strongly backed by HDO, but Cardenas employed Al Sanchez, who was indicted in March on corruption charges related to his leadership role in HDO. 

Others may yet enter the race, but the danger is that with four decent to great candidates, the vote will be split providing Cardenas a victory, the worst possible outcome. The difficulty is for progressives and independents there are four decent candidates to choose from. 

Of the four, the intangibles are hard to gauge. Mendoza is probably the weakest in terms of long term prospects of being a leader in Congress. Maldonado is quieter than Munoz or Flores, but also deeply tied to his community and a hard working representative. Maldonado is the type of candidate who gets ignored by those on the outside looking in, but has many of the traits the community may appreciate.

Flores and Munoz are the most dynamic and most likely to take on a leadership role for progressive causes in Congress. And there is the key difference-- how will they do it. Munoz is far more likely to take strong stands and less likely to compromise. Flores is probably the best at reaching across diverse groups and finding compromises while still remaining progressive.

MAX BLUMENTHAL DISCOVERS THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM-- THE CRAZIEST RIGHT WING LOONS OF ALL

And they found their kapo: Joe Lieberman (of course).

REEFER MADNESS

by Woid

Like the "war on terror," the "war on drugs" shows every sign of going on forever. (That other "war" against an abstraction, LBJ's "war on poverty," is the only one that actually ended. Poverty won.)

You know the stats: the United States, that beacon of freedom, has over two million citizens in prison-- plus the hundreds of thousands more in local jails-- more than any other country on earth. (That's out of 9 million worldwide.) And, by various estimates that I just quickly googled, between 25% and an astounding 55% of them, depending on who you belive, are doing time for drug-related convictions. Even looking at the lower estimate, that means more than half a million Americans in jail for drugs. (More info.)

Some of those prisoners are big-time dealers, no doubt, convicted of big-time felonies. But lots of them were busted for mere possession, often for the most innocuous "drug" of them all, marijuana.

Until the 1930s, the weed wasn't seen as evil by the public. It was an underground phenomenon, restricted to the underclasses and the social outcasts (like artists and musicians). Then an ambitious Fed named Harry J. Anslinger saw an opening. Anslinger had been the Assistant Prohibition Commissioner (how's that for a job title?) in the Bureau of Prohibition. In 1930, he moved over to the newly formed Federal Bureau of Narcotics, just before his old job vanished with the end of alcohol prohibition. And he came up with something else to demonize: marijuana.

All of the laughable anti-pot propaganda of the past can be traced back to Anslinger's campaign against cannibis. At first, the government was less concerned with the evils of pot, and more with the revenue they were losing by not being able to tax its use. Anslinger changed that paradigm, and we're still living with the results.

He'd been in his Narc job for four years before he saw the opportunity at hand. In conjunction with William Randolph Hearst, whose newspapers gave him a platform, Anslinger began a relentless campaign against the threat of pot. Most of his sensational stories were completely baseless-- claims of mad potheads committing murder and assorted depravities. There was a strong racist element to the stories, many of which were about those perennial threats, "colored people" and Mexicans (who were threatening to flood the country and take away jobs-- sounds vaguely familiar).

Seventy years later, marijuana is still classified as a "narcotic"-- which it isn't-- and even misdemeanor possession can ruin lives. (Kids applying for federal college loans, for example, are permanently disqualified if they've ever been convicted on drug charges.)

Unsurprisingly, our cowardly political class has been afraid to do anything to change the situation-- even though many of them now make the ritualistic statement that they "experimented" with pot in their bygone days. The fact that literally hundreds of millions of Americans have smoked pot at one time or another (say, 4:20 p.m.) hasn't given Congress the courage to deal with the injustices of our drug laws... even those against the most innocuous of drugs, the one that's far safer than the alcohol that fuels their lobbyist-hosted lunches.

Over the past few years, states have been moving to modernize their ancient anti-pot laws-- against the objections of the DEA. A number of states have legalized medical marijuana, available from state-licensed dispensaries with a prescription. Opponents say that medical marijuana laws are just a wedge to open the door to legalization... and maybe that's true.

The dispensaries that have set up shop here in Southern California are like candy stores for potheads. (So they say.... your correspondent has not visited one.) Varieties of weed are labeled with names like "Purple Haze" and "Green Crack." Hash, hash oil, and other delicacies that have been extremely rare in the underground market for years are freely on sale, along with lollipops and other goodies. (So they say... etc.)

This has been infuriating to the DEA, the "Drug Czar," and the Bush "administration," who have been doing everything they can to ovverride the states.

This week, the House of Representatives did them a big favor. Yes, the new, Democratic, supposedly more progressive, House. For several years, Rep. Maurice Hinchey, a rare progressive voice from formerly conservative upstate New York, has introduced amendments cutting off funding for Federal efforts to crack down on state-sanctioned medical marijuana. His amendment came up for a vote on Wednesday, and lost-- by a smaller margin than in past years, but still decisively, 262-165. Surprisingly, 15 Replicants voted in favor, some for libertarian reasons, like Ron Paul and some who are allegedly stoners, like Dana Rohrabacher. More disturbingly, 79 Democrats voted against-- not just the regular reactionaries who always vote with the Republicans (like Barrow and Matheson and Taylor and Carney and Hill and Salazar...) but also some of the progressive freshmen like Mike Arcuri, John Hall, and Jerry McNerney.

So much for states' rights, that issue supposedly so dear to the Replicants. Worse, so much for the individual liberties that Democrats claim to stand for-- at least on this issue.

On Wednesday, the same day the Hinchey Amendment was defeated, the DEA raided and shut down 10 medical marijuana dispensaries in the L.A. area, arresting people who were there to protest. I'm not aware whether there were more raids in other cities-- but if there weren't, it's a safe bet there will be.

We're not just talking about potheads being deprived of their magic lollipops. Closing down the dispensaries, against the will of the voters of California or any other state, means that people whose pain could be eased by medical marijuana-- cancer patients, AIDS patients, glaucoma victims-- will just have to go back to suffering as they did before the medical marijuana laws passed.

There are many issues that are more life-and-death than this one. But here's just one more marker of our plodding progress toward becoming a police state. And among others, there are 79 Democrats who can take the credit, or the blame-- including quite a few who should have the courage to stand up on this issue. Some of them are on the Blue America list that DWT has done so much to support. The current Blue America candidates who voted in favor of Hinchey's legislation-- to leave marijuana to the states-- are Tom Allen (ME), Steve Cohen (TN), Jerrold Nadler (NY), Carol Shea-Porter (NH), and Hilda Solis (CA). Today might be a good day to show them a little love.

Maybe you'd like to talk to those other reps about this. If so, here's the complete list of who voted yes and who voted no; you can find their phone numbers on the house.gov site. Oh, and while you're on the phone, tell them to show some courage on impeachment too.

NEITHER MICHAEL VICK NOR ALBERTO GONZALES DID ANYTHING THAT WRONG, THEY EACH CLAIM

Snarlin' Arlen vs Alberto

Today the Atlanta Falcons' quarterback, Michael Vick, pleaded not guilty to charges that he was "involved" in a dog fighting conspiracy-- on his property. "Investigators found graves of dogs on the grounds of the Bad Newz Kennels, which Mr. Vick has owned since 2002. The [18-page] indictment said dogs that lost fights were put to death by drowning, hanging, gunshot, electrocution or being slammed to the ground." Nike pulled back the release of their new "Air Zoom Vick V athletic shoe" and the Falcons suspended him for now.

The evidence of far more serious wrong doing by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in a great many extremely grave matters is much more powerful than the case against Vicks. Today his own FBI Director, Robert Mueller III, called him a lying sack of shit (although in different words. You're not allowed to say "liar" or anything like it in the Congress).

Mr. Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee that the Bush administration’s secret eavesdropping program was the main topic at an encounter in the hospital room of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on March 10, 2004, contrary to what Mr. Gonzales told a Senate panel on Tuesday.

At the time, Mr. Gonzales was the White House counsel, and Mr. Ashcroft was recovering from gall bladder surgery. That March night, Mr. Gonzales went to the hospital room with Andrew H. Card Jr., then White House chief of staff.

In his testimony before the Senate panel on Tuesday, Mr. Gonzales said the subject in the hospital room was “intelligence activities” under debate in the administration, but not the secret eavesdropping program.

But Mr. Mueller contradicted that version of events today, several hours after four Senate Democrats called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate whether Mr. Gonzales perjured himself before Congress.

Four Senators had already called on the Soliciter General, Paul Clement, to immediately hire a Special Prosecutor to deal with Gonzales' repeated perjury at his Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. The 4 senators-- Russ Feingold, Sheldon Whitehouse, Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer-- are all Democrats, but at least one Republican seems as steamed as they are (and in tomorrow's Post Eugene Robinson makes the case in Bedtime for Gonzo that a feeling of bipartisanship is growing up around the desire of almost everyone to get rid of this bumbling imbecile..

It may have been tempting but Bush refrained from thowing Snarlin' Arlen Specter off Air Force One this morning when the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee ignored protocol and launched into a withering attack on the presidential crony right on Bush's own plane.

John D. McKinnon of the Wall Street Journal, the pool reporter for the president’s trip today, reports that the senator visited the press cabin before takeoff to hold court with reporters.

The senator from Pennsylvania let it rip.

According to Mr. McKinnon’s pool report, Mr. Specter said he didn’t think the White House wanted a court fight over executive privilege because “they don’t want to test it.”

And, writes McKinnon: “Specter was highly critical of Gonzales, but saw no indication of any change in Gonzales’s status. He attributed that to ‘personal loyalty’ on POTUS’s part. ‘Our hearing two days ago was devastating,’ he said. ‘But so was the hearing before that, and so was the hearing before that.’’’

The White House press office reports that Mr. Specter was, however, not dis-invited from the return trip to Washington.

HOW'S HOWARD DEAN GOING TO FIT IN WITH THE CLINTON INSIDER CROWD?

I live in California-- so I'll have the luxury of seeing Hillary elected president without having to compromise my integrity soil my soul by actually voting for her. She'll be a shoe-in in California no matter which of Gingrich's 9 pathetic pygmies is the nominee of his discredited and thoroughly reviled political party. That way, when she immediately turns around and fires Howard Dean as DNC Chair, I'll be able to say "I never voted for her."

And make no bones about it. The worst of the self-serving Insider Democratic establishment-- firmly entrenched as the Hillary for President campaign-- is already maneuvering to oust the grassroots hero they fear and hate most. A.P.'s Beth Fouhy is a cipher for Inside the Beltway slime Rahm Emanuel. The meat of her hit piece on Dean today comes right from Emanuel.

The attack starts out nonsensically with a reference to the fact that many states-- especially the big, powerful ones-- are sick of having presidential nominations determined in small unrepresentative states like Iowa and New Hampshire. More than anyone, it was Hillary's own operative who encouraged the big states like New York, California and Florida, where no one can effectively compete against her, to jump into the process early. Now the very same bags of trash you manipulated that behind the scenes are blaming Dean.

Critics contend that a stronger chairman might have persuaded Florida Democrats to abide by party rules not to jump ahead of Feb. 5 and refuse to participate in the January primary, which was championed by the state's Republican governor and legislature. Others say Dean did what he could to fight the change, including lobbying Democratic legislators. Ultimately, they said there was little he could do to alter the outcome.

There's also carping and finger-pointing about the convention being in labor-unfriendly Denver as though this were-- or will be-- also Dean's fault (if anything should go wrong). But the meat of the matter goes right to the real divide. Dean is the champion of the Democratic grassroots which is feared and hated by the self-entitled Inside the Beltway power-mongers. His vision for an open Democratic Party, responsive to people rather than Big Money special interests and insiders, is anathema to the Rahm Emanuels, James Carvilles, Harold Ickes, and Terry McAuliffe's and to the whole repulsive crowd around the Clintons.

The former Vermont governor is widely popular with state parties and many grass-roots Democrats, who helped fuel his insurgent 2004 presidential candidacy. But he's still viewed skeptically by much of the Washington-based political establishment, which challenges him both privately and publicly.

Some of Dean's most vocal detractors are former advisers to President Clinton, potentially complicating matters between the DNC and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the party's presidential front-runner. They include strategist James Carville, who once called Dean's leadership at the DNC "almost Rumsfeldian in its incompetence."

Dean's focus has been on strengthening state parties, irking those who believe the DNC's chief function is to help fund competitive races. The disagreement broke into open warfare in 2006, when Dean clashed over money and strategy with New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who ran the party's successful effort to win back control of Congress.

Dean's so-called "50-state strategy," which has sent paid organizers in state parties across the country-- including heavily Republican stalwarts like Mississippi and Indiana-- has been mocked by some as naive and ineffective. And his effort to create a national voter database within the DNC has been challenged by operatives, including Hillary Clinton adviser Harold Ickes, who have created a for-profit company building a competing voter file.

We may celebrate that Dean "has taken a much-needed sledgehammer to a calcified Democratic establishment" and helped Democrats win both Houses of Congress, as well as governorships and state legislatures in every part of the country. But the people whose 6 and 7 figure annual incomes is dependent on the hold they have over that calcified Democratic establishment are busy sharpening their knives. It will be up to us to defend him. If Hillary is the nominee, I doubt it will matter. She'll put a hack in there before anyone can say peep-- and that will be the harbinger of the kind of administration she will run.

"Among DNC members, there's just wild enthusiasm for Howard," said Elaine Kamarck, a former Democratic strategist and professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "The people he's upsetting are the Washington-based political class, who make a lot of money making television ads."

Earlier this year, Kamarck produced an analysis testing whether Dean's 50-state strategy had helped Democrats win closely contested House seats last year. She concluded that in districts where the DNC had placed operatives, Democratic voter turnout went up measurably beyond the "bounce" Democrats were getting nationally.

Dean hired three new staffers for the Indiana party, for example, including field organizers in two congressional districts that changed hands from Republican to Democrat in 2006.

"We've never received the kind of attention and investment from the DNC as we have since Howard Dean became chair," said Dan Parker, the Indiana Democratic Party chairman. "Before, the DNC only cared about states important for presidential races. Indiana is a very red state, so they ignored us."

Now if only Obama or Edwards would embrace the grassroots for real-- even more than this-- I'd get behind one of them instead of just sitting back and watching Hillary seep into the nomination and the presidency.

FOX ATTACKS KOS-- LET'S HELP

You want to take on Fox? I mean you! You can. Our pals at Brave New Films are helping to organize a push back against Fox's vast right wing conspiracy. What conspiracy? Well, I'd think most DWT readers already know but... just watch this little film they put together.



Now you can sign up here to help contact Fox advertisers when they lie. You might get very busy.

Did you catch Colbert last night? If you missed him, Crooks & Liars has the hillarious segment up where he slaps down O'Reilly's idiotic anti-Kos bullshit, bullshit only one of the 25% still supporting Bush could give any credence too.

OReilly: “It’s like the Ku Klux Klan. It’s like the Nazi party.”

Colbert: “Exactly! The Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis were both notorious for allowing people to express unpopular views in an open and free forum.”

UPDATE: KNOW YOUR ENEMY

My friend Sheri gives the whole backstory of why O'Reilly and NewsCorp are out to destroy the blogosphere, starting with Daily Kos and YouTube. She has some suggestions of how to fight back. Let me add one: think about the relationship between Rupert Murdoch and the Clintons. And think about it before you vote in the primary.

WILL JOHN BOEHNER BE THE NEXT GOP PERVERT CAUGHT UP IN THE DC PROSTITUTION SCANDAL?

The Buckeye State Blog has revealed that the next member of Congress who will be revealed as a client of the DC Madam's, the way David Diapers Vitter (R-LA) was, will be a Republican member of the Ohio congressional delegation. If you remove Senator DeWine, freshman Jim Jordan, and the 2 women-- Mean Jean Schmidt and Deborah Pryce-- from consideration, that leaves 8 possible perps: Steve Chabot, Michael Turner, Paul Gillmor, Dave Hobson (too old), John Boehner, Pat Tiberi, Steven LaTourette, and Ralph Regula (way too old). Most people Every single person we've contacted so far says it's Boehner.

WALL STREET JOURNAL CLAIMS INTERFERENCE FROM HIS WIFE IS WHAT HAS DONE IN McCAIN'S CAMPAIGN

The beer money calls the shots

Two of the most vicious right wing propagandists in the entire world, Russ Schriefer and Stuart Stevens, have no beef with McCain's message of endless war in Iraq. They just want the green. The two hired hands are the latest in a long, long list of McCain staffers who have abandoned his floundering campaign. Today's Wall Street Journal reports that McCain's campaign is imperiled.

After Terry Nelson and John Weaver and the last legitimate political operatives left McCain earlier in the month, he was forced to hire from way at the bottom of the barrel and wound up with one of DC's worst-regarded low-life crooks running his campaign, the notoriously corrupt lobbyist Rick Davis. Davis' reputation makes it impossible for any legitimate DC players to work for McCain. Over a dozen high ranking aides have quit McCain's campaign since Davis came on, not just in DC but all over the country. Even worse, fundraisers have stopped raising for the campaign since no one feels Davis can be trusted with money.

Now the loss of the Schriefer-Stevens media team is considered a new blow, Republican strategists say. The McCain campaign had long planned to begin running ads this fall in early contest states; those plans are at risk given Mr. McCain's debt, compounded now by the difficulty of getting donors to invest in a troubled campaign.

...The unraveling of the McCain team this month climaxes months of infighting between other McCain advisers and Mr. Davis. That came against a backdrop of a slide in the polls as Sen. McCain became identified with two unpopular issues, the Iraq war and immigration overhauls. Mr. Davis privately complained to Republicans outside the campaign about the Nelson-Weaver team's strategic leadership, while within the campaign his own actions were a source of building tension.

In particular, last year Mr. Davis and lobbying partner Paul Manafort had started and co-owned an Internet services firm, 3eDC, which billed the campaign more than $1 million. Mr. Davis also arranged for the campaign to give its property-management business to a second new company started by a lobbyist-friend's client, Indian-casino developer Richard Fields. That move came despite the fact that Mr. McCain had become known as the Senate's biggest critic of scandals involving Indian casinos. The campaign has ended both companies' deals, though it still owes them money.

The other advisers also objected that Mr. Davis and his firm lobbied for a Kremlin-backed Ukrainian Party that is opposed by the U.S. government and Mr. McCain.

As these issues festered, Mr. McCain twice agreed to sideline Mr. Davis as CEO, last December and in April. But Mr. Davis continued to advise the senator informally, and was a frequent traveling companion and confidant of the senator's wife, Cindy. McCain supporters privately attribute Mr. Davis's reemergence at the head of the campaign to her influence.

Cindy holds the purse strings and her bad personnel judgment, coupled with McCain's terrible policy judgment-- he was still claiming Iraq is doing great-- is what's behind the complete collapse of his presidential bid and why someone like Newt Gingrich could refer to him as just another pathetic pygmy as though he were as much a nothing as Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani or Tom Tancredo.

One McCain staffer who is staying put is arrested alleged sex predator Bob Allen, McCain's Florida co-chairman. McCain liked that his guy Allen wrote Florida's Sexual Predator Elimination Act but wasn't as pleased that Allen was caught trying to blow a policeman in a public toilet. It kind of took the smirk off poor Old McCain's face after Giuliani's Southern Major Domo, David Vitters, was caught with his diapers down. At least McCain supporter/rapist Michael Flory wasn't actually a paid staffer. One has to wonder what kind of administrations these nominees would put together if any of them were actually elected to the presidency. I guess it couldn't be any worse than Bush's. And GOP lobbyist Freddy Thompson, who still insists he's only "testing the waters," seems to just have experienced the wheels coming off his own non-campaign. Although, not unlike Bob Allen sticking with McCain, Thompson will still have Cheney operative Mary Matalin staying with him.

SPECIAL PROSECUTOR FOR GONZALES AND FINALLY A SUBPOENA FOR ROVE

As you may have guessed from what we've been writing in the last couple of days, weeks, months... I'm firmly in the Impeach Cheney camp now. I know it is unlikely that the Senate will find him guilty but, some things are about our Nation, not about politics. But not for politicians. For them, everything is about politics. DWT has been a big booster of Senator Russ Feingold (R-WI) and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). Not so much with regard to my old high schoolmate Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and my current Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). All 4 have, however, risen to new heights in terms of the Gonzales investigation on the Senate Judiciary Committee and I applaud the 4 of them.

Today they held a joint press conference and calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into bringing perjury charges against the Attorney General. Schumer did James Madison High School and Brooklyn, NY proud: "[Gonzales] took an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Instead he tells the half truth, the partial truth, and everything but the truth. And he does it not once, not twice, but over and over and over again. His instinct is not to tell the truth, but to dissemble and deceive."

Here's the letter the 4 senators sent to Solicitor General Paul Clement:

The Honorable Paul D. Clement
Solicitor General
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20530

Dear Mr. Clement:

We write to you in your capacity as Acting Attorney General for matters where Attorney General Gonzales has recused himself. We ask that you immediately appoint an independent special counsel from outside the Department of Justice to determine whether Attorney General Gonzales may have misled Congress or perjured himself in testimony before Congress.

We do not make this request lightly. We believe a special counsel is needed because it has become apparent that the Attorney General has provided – at a minimum – half-truths and misleading statements about the removal and replacement of U.S. Attorneys, about his role in trying to circumvent Acting Attorney General Comey, and about the Administration’s position on the NSA wiretapping program. For example:

• Attorney General Gonzales testified on February 6, 2006 that within the Administration “there has not been any serious disagreement about the [Terrorist Surveillance Program].” Yet, Attorney General Gonzales indicated in his testimony this week that the purpose of the March 10, 2004 briefing for the “gang of eight” was to advise them “that Mr. Comey had informed us that he would not approve the continuation of a very important intelligence activity.” General Hayden stated in unclassified testimony on May 18, 2006, that the very same briefing for the “gang of eight” was on the “warrantless surveillance program.” Thus, Mr. Gonzales’s statements about the lack of disagreement regarding the surveillance program are deeply troubling.


• Attorney General Gonzales testified that the purpose of the March 10, 2004, meeting “was for the White House to advise the Congress that Mr. Comey had advised us that he could not approve the continuation of vitally important intelligence activities,” which the Attorney General later testified was “not” the NSA wiretapping program. This is contradicted by an unclassified letter from John Negroponte, then Director of National Intelligence, to then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert on May 17, 2006, describing the same “Gang of Eight” briefing as being “on the Terrorist Surveillance Program.”


• On April 19, 2007 when discussing his role in the U.S. Attorney investigation, Attorney General Gonzales testified, “I haven't talked to witnesses because of the fact that I haven't wanted to interfere with this investigation”; however, Monica Goodling testified before the House Judiciary Committee that she had an “uncomfortable” conversation with the Attorney General where he outlined his recollection of what happened and asked her for her reaction.

Unfortunately, these are only a few examples. As the nation’s top lawyer and head of the Department of Justice, the Attorney General should be held to the highest ethical standards. While we believe the investigations of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) are important and must continue, we believe the question of the Attorney General's truthfulness in testimony before Congress is sufficiently important to merit the appointment of a special counsel, and sufficiently distinct from internal Department matters the Inspector General and OPR are investigating. This matter is sufficiently integral to the Department’s relationship with Congress that we would hope you would find it prudent to proceed expeditiously with special counsel.

The special counsel should be an independent person of unimpeachable integrity, ability, and experience, who can approach this investigation without any hint of conflict of interest or question of character, and who can be read into classified programs sufficiently to perform these duties.

The scope of the special counsel’s jurisdiction should include the veracity of the Attorney General’s testimony before Congress related to issues including the replacement and removal of U.S. Attorneys, the implementation of the PATRIOT Act’s provisions relating to U.S. Attorneys, and the authorization for the NSA wiretapping program. It should examine whether misleading statements have been made to Congress and the public, and whether potential charges should be filed involving obstruction of justice, perjury, and false statements.

This isn't impeachment of Cheney or Bush. It's a start though. And Leahy simultaneously issuing a subpoena to Rove is long overdue-- and something we should all congratulate him on-- after Rove tesifies.

IS IMPEACHMENT ENOUGH OR WILL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNALS BE NECESSARY?

When I called my congresswoman's office a few days ago one of her staffers was a pleasure to talk to. He corrected me when I mentioned she had one of the most progressive voting records in the entire Congress. "It's is the #1 most progressive," he claimed. (He must be using a different measuring system that I use; Diane Watson is always way up near the top but never as near as Raul Grijalva (AZ), Barbara Lee (CA), Janice Schakowsky (IL), Linda Sanchez (CA), Hilda Solis (CA), Tammy Baldwin (WI)-- or half a dozen freshmen with incredible voting records, like Keith Ellison (MN), Mazie Hirono (HI), Yvette Clarke (NY), Hank Johnson (GA), John Sarbanes (MD), Peter Welch (VT), Betty Sutton (OH) and Paul Hodes (NH). The member representing my hometown, Diane Watson, ranks as the #50 most progressive member of the House, right between Blue America freshmen John Hall (NY) and Mike Arcuri (NY). She scores a 92.68 in the ProgressivePunch scale. I don't remember ever having a beef with any of her votes. She's no Jerry Nadler or Carol Shea-Porter, but she can pretty much always be counted on to do the right thing. So I figured maybe she'd be one of the 3 co-sponsored needed to get action on H.R. 333, the bill to start impeachment proceedings against Cheney.

She was stuck on a plane from L.A. back to DC but her legislative assistant told me to forget it and parroted the Nancy Pelosi line-- same exact words I've heard from a dozen Democratic congressmembers about why impeachment is off the table. It's political calculus and it's not about what's right for America; it's about what's right for their political party. That's wrong-- even if you equate what's right for America with what's right for your party. After all, isn't that (that equation) why a growing number of people-- from across the political spectrum-- want to see Bush, Cheney and the rest of the big players of the Regime stand trial?

This morning two former Reagan aides, P.X. Kelley and Robert F. Turner, co-authored an OpEd in the Washington Post that seems to accuse Bush and his cronies of war crimes. Reagan appointed Kelley commandant of the Marine Corps in 1983. Turner, one of the founders of the University of Virginia's Center for National Security Law and a former chair of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security, was a Reagan White House attorney who "vigorously defended the constitutionality of warrantless National Security Agency wiretaps, presidential signing statements and many other controversial aspects of the war on terrorism."

Looking at their public service records one could not conclude anything but that these two are very conservative, very partisan Republicans who have generally bought into the whole authoritarian line. But even they have to draw the line when Bush jeopardizes national security and national honor and egregiously disregards the rule of law on which our entire society is based.

we cannot in good conscience defend a decision that we believe has compromised our national honor and that may well promote the commission of war crimes by Americans and place at risk the welfare of captured American military forces for generations to come.

The Supreme Court held in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld last summer that all detainees captured in the war on terrorism are protected by Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which prescribes minimum standards of treatment for all persons who are no longer taking an active part in an armed conflict not of an international character. It provides that "in all circumstances" detainees are to be "treated humanely."

This is not just about avoiding "torture." The article expressly prohibits "at any time and in any place whatsoever" any acts of "violence to life and person" or "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment."

Last week the Regime issued an executive order weaseling out of their obligations by reinterpreting it to suit their needs, something one would expect from a fascist dictator. Basically, the stand of the Bush Regime is now that "as long as the intent of the abuse is to gather intelligence or to prevent future attacks, and the abuse is not 'done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual'-- even if that is an inevitable consequence-- the president has given the CIA carte blanche to engage in 'willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse.'"

It is firmly established in international law that treaties are to be interpreted in "good faith" in accordance with the ordinary meaning of their words and in light of their purpose. It is clear to us that the language in the executive order cannot even arguably be reconciled with America's clear duty under Common Article 3 to treat all detainees humanely and to avoid any acts of violence against their person.

Bush and Cheney want to "compromise our honor" (as well as wreck our constitutional government and disregard crucial treaties that have helped civilization evolve-- although, of course, Bush doesn't believe in evolution).

To date in the war on terrorism, including the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and all U.S. military personnel killed in action in Afghanistan and Iraq, America's losses total about 2 percent of the forces we lost in World War II and less than 7 percent of those killed in Vietnam. Yet we did not find it necessary to compromise our honor or abandon our commitment to the rule of law to defeat Nazi Germany or imperial Japan, or to resist communist aggression in Indochina. On the contrary, in Vietnam-- where we both proudly served twice-- America voluntarily extended the protections of the full Geneva Convention on prisoners of war to Viet Cong guerrillas who, like al-Qaeda, did not even arguably qualify for such protections.

The Geneva Conventions provide important protections to our own military forces when we send them into harm's way. Our troops deserve those protections, and we betray their interests when we gratuitously "interpret" key provisions of the conventions in a manner likely to undermine their effectiveness. Policymakers should also keep in mind that violations of Common Article 3 are "war crimes" for which everyone involved-- potentially up to and including the president of the United States-- may be tried in any of the other 193 countries that are parties to the conventions.

Diane Watson, Nancy Pelosi and the scores of congressmembers who have not signed on to H.R. 333 are wrong. Christy Harden Smith, on the other hand, is correct. So are Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Maxine Waters (D-CA), Hank Johnson (D-GA), Keith Ellison (D-MN), Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), William Lacy Clay (D-MO), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Jim McDermott (D-WA), Jim Moran (D-VA), Bob Filner (D-CA), and Sam Farr (D-CA). I don't know about you, but I've suspended donating money to any House incumbent who has not signed on to H.R. 333. On our Blue America page that means Tom Allen, Steve Cohen, John Hall, Jerry McNerney, Patrick Murphy, Jerry Nadler, Carol Shea-Porter and Hilda Solis, among the best members of Congress in my lifetime-- but wrong on one of the most important issues of any of our lifetimes.


UPDATE: WHAT ABOUT THE WAR CRIMES TRIAL?

Did I leave this out? "Policymakers should also keep in mind that violations of Common Article 3 are 'war crimes' for which everyone involved-- potentially up to and including the president of the United States-- may be tried in any of the other 193 countries that are parties to the conventions." That includes Cheney.

CONGRESS TO DEAL WITH THE CONCEPT OF WAR AS A PROFIT CENTER

In the early 80s I read the first of the Robert Caro books on the life of LBJ. Maybe I was naive but I really was shocked to learn about the absolute, unadulterated venality of how Big Business-- not in the 1920s but in my own time-- intersected with politics. LBJ's career was also the story of Brown and Root which became KBR which became, in effect, Halliburton. Vietnam may have torn the country apart-- it did-- and destroyed Johnson's presidency and his legacy but it was a real honeypot for his cronies. A few days ago James Glanz told the more contemporary story of KBR and Halliburton in the NY Times, Bribery Network to Bloat War Coasts Is Alleged. No more Vietnam; now it's Iraq. And for LBJ we have Cheney and Bush.

Every soldier, every contractor and every journalist I know who has been to Baghdad says Halliburton and a handful of other Bush Regime-connected companies are raking in billions of dollars. No one calls the Green Zone anything but the Greed Zone. And the Times is reporting that "Federal
investigators have uncovered what they describe as a sweeping network of kickbacks, bribes and fraud involving at least eight employees and subcontractors of KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary, in a scheme to inflate charges for flying freight into Iraq in support of the war, according to court papers unsealed yesterday."

At the core of the case is a contract that KBR, previously known as Kellogg, Brown & Root, won before the war to supply the American military with food, fuel, housing and other necessities. The value of the contract soared with the Iraq invasion, and has so far paid KBR some $20 billion.

The company hired Eagle in a subcontract to fulfill part of that mission, carrying military goods from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to Baghdad. But the scheme by the Eagle executives began in November 2003 when a plane operated by a rival carrier, DHL, was struck by a missile and landed in Baghdad with its left wing in flames. The Eagle executives used that incident to charge a fraudulent “war-risk surcharge” of 50 cents for every kilogram (2.2 pounds) of freight on its own flights, the papers say.

Between November 2003 and July 2004, Eagle made 379 flights as part of the subcontract, charging some $13.3 million-- an amount that included $1.1 million in overcharges. It is not clear whether KBR knew of the overcharging scheme, but the papers say that Mr. Smoot and an Eagle subordinate delivered nearly $34,000 in gratuities to KBR employees “to obtain or reward favorable treatment” in connection with the contract.

According to the papers, the gratuities included “meals, drinks, golf outings, tickets to rodeo events, baseball and football games and other entertainment items.”

On Tuesday the House Judiciary Committee voted to make this kind of excessive overcharging, or biling, in Iraq and Afhanistan a "war profiteering" cime. Not a single Republican member of Congress dared to object, although the Bush Regime objects strenuously. If the bill passes the House-- it will-- and the Senate-- where McConnell plans to use his obstructionist tactics to bury it for as long as he can-- and then can overcome a Bush veto, it would make it a crime to overcharge on contracts during a war or reconstruction. The felony would carry penalties up to 20 years in prison and fines up to $1 million or twice the amount of illegal profits, whichever is higher. If you think Cheney was incensed over Scooter Libby, just watch him on this one!

Jim Webb and Claire McCaskill have introduced a similar bill in the Senate. Another freshman senator, Amy Klobuchar of Minneaota-- a former prosecutor-- in announcing her support for the bill explained that he office's motto was "follow the money and you'll find the bad guys. That's what we're trying to do with the legislation."


UPDATE: AND BECHTEL TOO

According to yesterday's NY Times "One of the largest American contractors working in Iraq, Bechtel National, met its original objectives on fewer than half of the projects it received as part of a $1.8 billion reconstruction contract, while most of the rest were canceled, reduced in scope or never completed as designed, federal investigators have found in a report" just released, "first of a planned series of audits of Western contractors that have received large slices of the roughly $40 billion in American taxpayer money that has been spent on the troubled program to rebuild Iraq."

TAG TEAMING AGAINST JAMES SENSENBRENNER (WI-05)

James Sensenbrenner, a 15-term fixture in Congress, hasn't had to worry much about re-election. His deep red Wisconsin district north and west of Milwaukee is wealthy and habitually Republican. Bush got over 60% of the vote there both times. Since becoming an incumbent, Sensenbrenner has only dipped below 70% twice-- in 2004 Bryan Kennedy held him to 67% and last year Kennedy actually got him down to 62%. Is the big man vulnerable? Today's CQ Politics offers a look at a unique kind of one-two punch shaping up against Sensenbrenner.

Two professors, friends in fact, are planning to run against him next year-- one as a Republican and one as a Democrat. Republican Jim Burkee and Democrat Jeff Walzboth teach at Concordia University. They are actually working together to bring down Sensenbrenner "as an effort to bring civility and action back to Congress."

“Jeff and I are friends,” said Burkee, a history professor. “He’s a Democrat and I’m a Republican, and we disagree on a lot in terms of how we get things done. But we generally agree that it is outrageous that on a whole range of issues nothing has gotten done.”

The candidates point to energy and immigration, along with fiscal policy and the expanding deficit, as issues that should have been dealt with by Congress. Several areas of agreement will be codified in a pact the candidates will sign a week after they officially launch their campaigns. Among their agreements: no personal attacks, no money from political action committees, no gifts from lobbyists and a self-imposed limit of three two-year terms in the House.

In a show of bipartisan comity rarely, if ever, seen before in congressional politics, Burkee and Walz will launch a joint campaign Web site at BurkeeandWalz.com and produce joint advertising, bumper stickers and yard signs. Burkee promised “Lincoln-Douglas style” debates, referring to the series of dialogues in 1858 between Republican Abraham Lincoln and Democrat Stephen A. Douglas as they competed for a Senate seat representing Illinois.

“You’re going to see that campaigning you’ve always wanted and deserved. It’s going to be clean, it’s going to be substantive, it’s going to be free of big money influences,” Burkee said. “It’s going to be, I think, the kind of campaign our founders expected.”

Neither plans to retire from teaching at Concordia if he wins, eschewing the idea of ever turning into a career politician like you-know-who and embrassing the idea of the citizen-legislator. And neither is bothering to even contact their national parties' congressional committees, the corrupt insider organizations the DCCC and RNCC. This may be silly, but Kennedy isn't running again and either of these two would be a vast improvement over a right-wing ideologue and ultimate self-entitled hack like Sensenbrenner.

CONSERVATIVES DON'T CARE IF WE STAY IN IRAQ FOREVER, BUT THEY WANT BUSH TO SAY WE'RE BRING THE TROOPS HOME... "SOON"

Today I noticed that Minnesota's rubber stamp Republican senator-- one of the leaders of the WINO coalition-- has reached a new lowpoint in voter job approval. According to the brand new SUSA poll, Norm Coleman's approval rating is now 43% by far his lowest ever, and widely considered incurable. Panic stricken Republican incumbents, who have rubber stamped ever single move the Bush-Cheney regime has taken in the last 7 years-- like Coleman, Susan Collins (R-ME), John Warner (R-VA), John Sununu (R-NH), Pete "Sneaky Pete" Domenici (R-NM), Miss McConnell (R-KY), Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), Ted Stevens (R-AK), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), John Cornyn (R-TX), James Inhofe (R-OK)-- are now pleading with Bush not to change policy but to at least start talking as though he were going to change course in Iraq.

Some conservative activist leaders, fearing voter anger with the Iraq war, want President Bush and GOP leaders to begin emphasizing that U.S. troops will be “leaving Iraq” to give Republicans cover as they head into a tough political landscape in 2008.

To assuage an angry public, the activists argue that the White House soon needs to articulate clearly that the war will end.

That tactic will help Republican presidential and congressional candidates focus on the domestic issues that could energize the base and win over independents, they say.

By talking openly about the war’s conclusion, Republicans could blunt criticism about supporting an open-ended conflict in Iraq while continuing to attack Democrats for “surrendering” by supporting a specific date for withdrawing troops from Iraq, the activists contend. Pointing to an end to the war will also help reshape the debate about what happens to Iraq after the U.S. leaves, an area that conservatives feel has been overshadowed by Capitol Hill’s continued focus on whether to withdraw troops from the region.

The Bush Regime's chief of ideological purity, bathtub boy Grover Norquist, is asking Bush to just throw in the word "leaving" now and then to confuse the kind of people who watch Fox-TV (the GOP base) "The one-paragraph explanation of what we’re doing in Iraq has to have the word ‘leaving’ in there,” said Norquist. “If Bush would move to ‘leaving,’ then other people, including the MoveOn.org people and the [Democrats], move to a more extreme position than you have, because they have put themselves in the anti-Bush position." And then you can drown it all in a bathtub-- like New Orleans.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said voters would see right through any contention by Bush that the U.S. would leave Iraq without setting a timeline for withdrawing troops.

“What you find now is a lot of Republicans who are talking the talk but not walking the walk,” Van Hollen said. “What we hope voters will do is hold them accountable and say, ‘If you think we really need a change in direction in Iraq, which we’ve argued that we need, then you also have to vote that way back in Washington.’”

Van Hollen, whose DCCC has outraised his Republican counterpart gigantically, may be able to put as many as 50 House races into serious contention in 2008. Likely losers next year will be Republicans who have consistently voted to stay the course, occupy, and escalate. Among the most vulnerable House members are:
John Doolittle (R-CA)
Robin Hayes (R-NC)
Chris Shays (R-CT)
Joseph Knollenberg (R-MI)
Dave Reichert (R-WA)
Bill Young (R-FL)
Mark Kirk (R-IL)
Mike Ferguson (R-NJ)
Randy Kuhl (R-NY)
James Walsh (R-NY)
Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO)
Mark Souder (R-IN)
Michele Bachmann (R- MN)
Deborah Pryce (R-OH)
Tim Walberg (R-MI)
Tom Reynolds (R-NY)
Don Young (R-AK)
Mean Jean Schmidt (R- OH)
Ralph Regula (R-OH)
Jim Gerlach (R-PA)
Barbara Cubin (R-WY)
Jon Porter (R-NV)
Gary Miller (R-CA)
Ralph Regula
Rick Renzi (R-AZ)
Vernon Buchanan (R-FL)
Dean Heller (R-NV)
Steve Chabot (R-OH)
Heather Wilson (R-NM)
Phil English (R-PA)
Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)
Mike McCaul (R-TX)
Charlie Dent (R-PA)

If you think we left someone off the list of most-endangered Republican House members, please let us know in the comments section.

BEYOND BUSH RUBBER STAMP AND INTO THE REALM OF HARD CORE CHENEYISM-- THE 2 DOZEN WORST EXTREMISTS ON IRAQ

So the House passed H.R. 2929 by a veto-proof 399-24 margin. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean much. Barbara Lee's bill prevents the creation of permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq and bars U.S. control of Iraqi oil. Even hard core warmongers who have voted for every single Bush-Cheney proposal on Iraq were able to vote for this one.

Casting his vote in favor, Republican Minority Leader took time off from a golfing afternoon to bitch that "Instead of wasting time with meaningless stunts and undermining our troops overseas through harmful rhetoric, members of Congress should be united and focused on preventing al Qaeda from establishing permanent bases in Iraq and using them to stage terrorist attacks against the United States and our allies. 'No permanent bases' is already the policy of the United States, and there is no such thing as a 'permanent' U.S. military base in foreign countries. All U.S. military bases abroad are subject to cooperative agreements with the respective host countries. The agreements can be altered or eliminated at any time." I guess the bill begs the question of defining "permanent." That will be up to the voters in November '08. If they vote for Giuliani, Romney, McCain, Thompson or any of the other pygmies, "permanent" becomes a rather relative thing.

So now the question comes up of who were the 2 dozen die hard dead end maniacs who couldn't even bring themselves to vote for this bill. This list, my friends, are the absolute dead-enders of the American political landscape when it comes to Iraq, the worst of the worst. None are in competitive districts so they don't even have to care that they're voting to thwart the will of the vast majority of the population. In fact, almost all of them are in ultra low-information districts where, I'm sorry to say, most of the voters are as ignorant and bigoted as they are. The hall of shame:

Spencer Bachus (AL- no opponent in 2006)
James Barrett (SC)
Joe Barton (TX)
Marsha Blackburn (TN)
Kevin Brady (TX)
Michael Burgess (TX)
John Campbell (CA)
Chris Cannon (UT)
Jeff Flake (AZ)
Trent Franks (AZ)
Phil Gingrey (GA)
Planet Denny Hastert (IL-- the one exception; he can be defeated)
Wally Herger (CA)
Robert Inglis (SC)
Jim Jordan (OH)
Steve King (IA)
John Linder (GA)
Jeff Miller (FL)
Steve Pearce (NM)
William Sali (ID)
John Shadegg (AZ)
William "Mac" Thornberry (TX)
Michael Turner (OH)

And then there's a dishonorable mention for one die hard Democrat who refused to vote for it; war monger and reactionary Jim Marshall (GA) abstained.

FRED THOMPSON: "EVEN A BLIND SQUIRREL SOMETIMES FINDS A NUT"

The new Reagan? Or a blind squirrel?

Fred Thompson doesn't count himself among Newt Gingrich's "pathetic bunch of pygmies," as the disgraced former Speaker accurately described the current Republican presidential field. That's because he hasn't officially declared yet. Then he'll be an official pathetic pygmy too? Well, maybe not-- according to Gingrich, who says he may not run if Thompson gets in-- or maybe yes, if you read the Fred Thompson profile in the latest issue of New York, The Actor.

Right from the git-go, writer Stephen Rodrick asks if the Thompson campaign's presentation of their packaged boy as "a true southern conservative and a plain-ol'-folks regular guy" is just another role he's playing. Rodrick has managed to find most of Thompson's weakest points: he maybe be lucky but he's lazy and he's a phony. "Since announcing this spring that he was considering a presidential run, Fred Thompson has improbably jumped to the front of the line for the GOP nomination. In two mid-July polls, Thompson led Rudolph Giuliani by a point or two, and while other recent surveys show the former New York mayor in the lead, Thompson’s strength in key southern states, including the aforementioned South Carolina, has not gone unnoticed. This despite the fact that the famously laid-back Thompson has barely campaigned, forgoing the roll-up-your-sleeves-and-make-a-thousand-trips-to-Iowa strategy in favor of the odd Leno appearance and a YouTube jab at Michael Moore, in which he essentially told Moore that if he didn’t love America, he should leave it, and go to Cuba."

So far, the Thompson bubble has floated skyward on several favorable updrafts. He’s the newest man in the race—and one with celebrity name recognition. He’s a Southerner and arguably the most conservative candidate in a field devoid of hard-liners. Despite his eight years in the Senate, people seem to buy the idea, for the time being anyway, that he’s a Washington outsider. And all of his opponents have significant liabilities. But then again, so does Thompson. Among them are his work ethic and authenticity.

Thompson's camp claims that Giuliani isn't conservative, that McCain isn't plausible and that Flip Flop Mitt isn't consistent. But the only plank on Thompson's platform is that he's more like Ronald Reagan than the rest of the pygmies. And many on the far right of the GOP (though not all) are falling for Thompson's dubious appeal. Like Reagan, he comes across as "affable." A man with no other discerbnable attributes, his affability has been all he's ever had to trade on, all that's gotten him ahead in the world. It's probably enough to get him the GOP nomination-- and, in all likelihood the biggest Republican general election smackdown since Barry Goldwater's.

HARRIET MIERS AND JOSH BOLTEN CITED FOR CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS

This morning the House Judiciary Committee didn't move forward with impeaching Cheney (H Res. 333). Instead they cited Miers and Bolten for contempt of Congress. It passed 22-17 in a party-line vote. The full House will take up the matter after the August recess.

According to committee chair John Conyers, "If we countenance a process where our subpoenas can be readily ignored, where a witness under a duly authorized subpoena doesn't even have to bother to show up... then we have already lost. We won't be able to get anybody in front of this committee or any other." Not a single Republican on the committee sees this as a problem. In fact, they all liked it better in the pre-accountability days where all you needed was a golf club, an expense account, and a rubber stamp and life was good.

The Regime "has made clear it intends to block prosecution of any contempt charges, arguing that a presidentially-appointed U.S. attorney cannot legally be forced by Congress to flout the president's determination that the materials and testimony sought are protected by executive privilege."

Aside from not pursuing impeachment, no one on the committee has bought up shipping Bush and Cheney to the Hague for the war crimes tribunal they have earned.

ARE ALL REPUBLICANS PERVERTS AND RAPISTS? NO, JUST THE ONES WHO GET INVOLVED IN POLITICS-- AND THEY START EARLY. YOUNG REPUBLICAN PLEADS GUILTY

Old folks, hide your wallets; Mothers, hide your daughters-- the GOP is lurking... everywhere

The last couple of weeks might not have been remarkable in terms of Republican mental illness manifesting itself in sexual aggression and perversion-- but more of it was exposed than normally comes to light. Louisiana Senator David Vitters (Giuliani's man in the South) it turns out, was preaching hatred towards Democrats for not being as committed to "Family Values" as much as he was while he was carrying on with a plethora of prostitutes for at least a decade and seems to be addicted to a diaper fetish. While Florida Rep. (and McCain election co-chair) Bob Allen was proposing a draconian Sexual Predator Elimination Act-- which would send sexual predators to prison for life-- he was prowling public toilets and asking men if he could pay them to perform fellatio on them. North Carolina Rep. David Almond sexually assaulted a legislative aide in the state Capitol and was forced to resign by his fellow Republicans when the cover-up didn't work. And one of NYC's only elected Republicans, Queens City Councilman Dennis Gallagher, was accused by a woman he picked up in a bar of raping her.

From hysterically homophobic Idaho Senator Larry Craig haunting the men's stall in Union Station's public restrooms to child predator Florida Congressman Mark Foley, there seems to be a definite connection between aggressively and angrily waving the flag of family values and attacking ones opponents for not being "pro-family" enough and being a deranged pervert. There are allegations of rank hypocrisy against anti-sex stalwarts/closet cases like Senator Mitch McConnell, Senator Lindsey Graham, Congressman Patrick McHenry, Ohio GOP political boss Alex Arshinkoff, etc.

And now it looks like the GOP is training their legions of sex criminals earlier than anyone feared. This morning's Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the former head of the Michigan Federation of Young Republicans raped a college student at the national Young Republicans convention in Cleveland's Warehouse District. With role models like Vitter, Arshinkoff, McConnell, Allen, et al, what can you expect. Michael Flory wanted to be a Republican player. So he played like the big shot respected, admired Republicans.

Didn't know any better? He's an attorney. He did manage to plea bargain his rape down to "sexual battery" though.

The teary-eyed college student he overpowered in a downtown hotel room gasped and dabbed her eyes as Flory replied to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Peter Corrigan's question, "Are you indeed guilty?"

"Sure - yeah," Flory said.

Michael Flory is was a rising star in the GOP. In 1992, when he was just 18 he gave a televised speech to the Republican National Convention in the Houston Astrodome. "Assistant County Prosecutor Carol Skutnik said Flory's lawyers, Henry Hilow and Bill McGinty, surprised her with a plea offer as trial witnesses from several states were arriving to testify. The plea bargain, she said, doesn't include any suggestion of leniency, and the state will seek incarceration. She also said she hopes to present evidence of several 'other incidents of sexual misconduct' in which Flory took advantage of vulnerable young women." This particular young woman had passed out after a typical Young Republican drunken party after the convention and when he thought she was sleeping, according to Skutnik, Flory "violently forced several sex acts upon her."

What even makes this more disgusting-- and more Republican-- is that Flory and his GOP political supporters tried silencing her by smearing her reputation in retaliation for her accusation that Floy had raped her. "People were using every opportunity to try to trash her, on Web sites or whatever," the prosecutor said. "He's been running around telling everybody what a piece of trash she is, so she was very happy to see him plead guilty."

Flory was appointed as a delegate to the 2005 White House Conference on Aging and his law practice specialized in Elder Law and Estate Planning, one of the types of law where unethical lawyers are able to take advantage of seniors and steal their money and property. Like Bob Allen, Flory is a McCain supporter. Needless to say, until today's surprise guilty plea, Flory denied everything-- like Republican always do when they're caught. "These charges are baseless and without merit, and I look forward to the opportunity to clear my name. As an officer of the court, I am confident the legal system can work, and will work, to vindicate me."


UPDATE: REPUBLICANS NO LONGER WELCOME AT MYSPACE

Thousands and thousands of Republican sex offenders and other perps have been kicked off MySpace according to the Christian Post. MySpace refuses to confirm or deny that Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Larry Craig (R-ID), Bob Allen (R-FL), Mark Foley (R-FL), David Almond (R-NC), Ed Schrock (R-VA), James McCrery (R-LA), Alex Arshinkoff (R-OH), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John Barrasso (R-WY), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), David Diapers Vitter (R-LA), Dennis Gallagher (R-NY), Michael Flory (R-MI), Ted Klaudt (R-SD), or dozens of other known GOP sexual predators were among the people whose pages were taken down.


UPDATE: COLLEGE DEMOCRATS OF AMERICA REPORT NO RAPES

Today Howard Dean joined Democratic presidential hopefuls Clinton, Edwards and Obama in addressing the 47th annual College Democrats of America convention in Columbia, SC. I once went to one of those. Unlike the GOP ones, there are never rapes at the Democratic ones. Democrats are different from Republicans in that way.

GEORGE BUSH-- THE MOST HATED MAN TO EVER LIVE IN THE WHITE HOUSE

And he's got over a year to increase that hatred, something he appears to work on every single day. The American Research Group has his approval rating down to 25% and sinking. 71% of Americans now disapprove of Bush's job performance. ARG is more leading edge. The Washington Post-ABC News poll lags by about 6-7 weeks. It shows Bush with a 65% disapproval rating. "In polls conducted by the Post or Gallup going back to 1938, only once has a president exceeded that level of public animosity-- and that was Richard M. Nixon, who hit 66 percent four days before he resigned."

Bush has been so down for so long that some advisers maintain it no longer bothers them much. It can even, they say, be liberating. Seeking the best interpretation for the president's predicament, they argue that Bush can do what he thinks is right without regard to political cost, pointing to decisions to send more U.S. troops to Iraq and to commute the sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff.

But the president's unpopularity has left the White House to play mostly defense for the remainder of his term. With his immigration overhaul proposal dead, Bush's principal legislative hopes are to save his No Child Left Behind education program and to fend off attempts to force him to change course in Iraq. The emerging strategy is to play off a Congress that is also deeply unpopular and to look strong by vetoing spending bills.

People have just given up on Bush and his regime. "Public disapproval of Bush is not only broad but deep; 52 percent of Americans 'strongly' disapprove of his performance and 28 percent describe themselves as 'angry.'"

People once thought he would be a nice guy to have a beer with. Now people wish he would have choked on that pretzel in a more serious way. His terrible ratings have endured far longer than Nixon's or his hated father's. More than half the country has disapproved of his job for over two years.

The deep antipathy to Bush has fueled grass-roots support for impeachment. Democrats have resolved not to do that, remembering the division when a Republican Congress impeached Bill Clinton in 1998 for perjury and obstruction of justice to cover up his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky. His public support, though, never fell as far as Bush's. Clinton's worst disapproval rating, 51 percent, came during his first term, and he soared to his highest approval rating days after the Lewinsky scandal broke.

WHEN YOU BECOME A REPUBLICAN DO YOU HAVE TO HAND IN YOUR HEART-- OR JUST YOUR BRAIN?

Michael Moore's newest film, SiCKO, was very compelling and also very startling in an emotional sense. One scene that has stuck with me involved corrupt Republican congressman-turned-lobbyist Billy Tauzin. (Even earlier than that he was a Democrat and one of the founders of the reactionary Blue Dog Coalition.) Tauzin played a key role in shepherding the pro-Corporate/anti-patient Medicare Prescription Drug Bill through Congress in 2004 and then immediately left Congress and went to work as the head of PhRMA, the industry lobbyist organization for the American drug industry. One of the most blatantly unethical men to ever hold public office, Tauzin's bribe from the drug companies for their bonanza is $2.5 million per year. The scene I was talking about was described by Alison Levy in Huff Po last week.

One of Sicko's most telling sequences captures the lobbying campaign mounted for the Medicare Prescription Drug bill. Though promoted as a boon to seniors it raised drug prices to benefit drug companies, according to Public Citizen. In one telling moment, Moore showed multiple clips of the Congressional spearhead, one time Congressman (R-LA) W.J. "Billy" Tauzin who aggressively promoted the bill, by shifting the discussion away from the real merits and beneficiaries of the bill to, of all people, his mother.

At countless gatherings, Moore shows Tauzin selling the bill because "I love my mother." In an act of marketing genius, playing the loyalty card totally obscured the relevant issues.
But as Moore wryly observes, the real question wasn't whether or not Tauzin and his camp cared for their own mothers, but whether as legislators they were loyal to their obligation to serve our mothers, fathers, grandparents, elderly relatives and senior selves.

No doubt Tauzin's Mom felt proud that her son got a hefty paycheck when he left Congress to head up to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which the L.A. Times called "one of the biggest beneficiaries of the bill Tauzin helped write."

But we and our mothers can now recognize that under the guise of mother love, Tauzin and other legislators' highest loyalty was to the lobbyists, financial backers, and future employers, not to us.
The fundamental question is whether anyone (government officials, legislators, health care systems, or media) can act in the public interest when they are beholden and loyal to their paymasters, their industry, their advertisers, or dancing back and forth between government and corporate bosses?

Yeah, that is the point-- which is why the scene struck me and stuck with me. And yet... I am still shocked by the response of Republicans to the plans to increase health insurance coverage for indigent children. They hate our mothers and they hate our children-- and they do it with a reassuring smile-- a reassuring smile that almost a third of Americans are taken in by. Who are these inhuman people?

For a minute it looked like the bill would pass and in a bipartisan manner with enough votes to override the expected veto from the monster in the White House. A compromise was worked out in the Senate Finance Committee-- this year's most only bipartisan agreement. It co-sponsored by conservative Republicans Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley and passed 17-4 with 6 Republicans joining all the Democrats to approve a $35 billion reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. But today it became clear that political hay can be made and the GOP leaders have decided to forget the compromise, go for the hay and let the kiddies... die. The Republicans on the Finance Committee opposing the bill were Jim Bunning (KY), John Ensign (NV), Jon Kyl (AZ) and Trent Lott (MS), each a die-hard arch-reactionary.

Earlier in the week passage was looking very optimistic-- between a small handful of Republicans with consciences and blind fear from the habitual rubber stamps knowing that voting against children's health care could look bad-- even to Republican voters. Democratic and Republican governors have been loudly campaigning for this bill. This morning's NY Times tamps down the optimism considerably.

The man who once handed out bribes in the form of campaign contribution checks from the tobacco lobby on the floor of Denny Hastert's House is now the Minority Leader-- and he's digging in his heels.

Republican leaders of the House and Senate on Tuesday attacked proposals that call for a major expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, to be financed with higher tobacco taxes.

“Republicans will fight these proposals,” said the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio.

In an unexpected turn of events, the top two Republicans in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Trent Lott of Mississippi, said they opposed a bipartisan bill that the Senate Finance Committee approved last week and would offer an alternative on the Senate floor...

Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, a leading proponent of the House bill, said: “For the longest time, I was mystified why Republicans would oppose expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program to kids who are eligible but not enrolled. Now I realize. They are trying to deny us a political victory. They want to be able to say that Democrats can’t get anything done.

“Unfortunately,” Ms. DeGette said, “Republicans are pursuing this strategy on the backs of poor children.”

A new poll found that the bill is supported by 91% of Americans. Will that stop Bush and the obstructionists in Congress? Of course not.

The Bush regime sends Idiot Al "The Torture Guy" forth with a message: You can't touch us, suckers! (Unless maybe we can get Miss Marple on the case)

"You must once more become that goddess of retribution and righteous anger, once more be Nemesis. 'Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everlasting stream.'"
--Miss Marple's mission (if she chooses to accept it), as inscribed on a gramophone record by her late friend Jason Rafiel, a lifelong seeker after justice, in the new televisualization of Agatha Christie's Nemesis [the "justice" quotation in the recorded message, which is also engraved on Mr. Rafiel's headstone, is from Amos, 5:24, according to the Nemesis teleplay--what the heck would I know about stuff like this?]

I'm hearing that our old pal Idiot Al "The Torture Guy" Gonzales, our one and only U.S. attorney general, put on yet another humdinger of a show in his latest belly-flop slapstick appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I saw some clips on Countdown, including Sen. Arlen Specter showering his contempt on the Little Fella, and it was pretty rank.

But I seem to have a different view from most folks regarding the significance of the event. Everyone seems to think it was some sort of embarrassment to the Bush regime. I think the regime was sending its critics a message, and that message is, approximately:

"You faggots can't touch us. From now till doomsday, no matter what you pathetic pansies do, you can't lay the fruitiest little pinky on us. Eat doody, suckers!"

The message, of course, is intended to cover not just the massive, flagrant constitutional breach of the U.S.-attorney firings. It is meant to cover the entire panoply of Constitution-shredding criminality, corruption, and totalitarianization that has been the unbroken record of this regime.

It was as if the vilest scumbuckets of the regime had stood before their fellow Americans, dropped their trousers, and taken a massive dump on us. "Let them eat doody" is the rallying cry, and then they mean to rub our faces in their putrid fecal matter. "We can do any frigging thing we please, absolutely anything, and all you can do about it is wallow in our contaminated excrement."

Yes, they can do anything. Launch a war of no rational purpose, sending our military men and women off to be butchered by the thousands so that tens of thousands of semihuman towelheads can be slaughtered. And warehouse all our combat casualties so they can be as resolutely ignored as our combat fatalities.

Meanwhile under cover of war they have nearly completed their transformation of all government institutions into ward heelers on behalf of the Party of Privilege, Greed, and World Domination, propped up by the armed hordes of the dimwitted and psychopathic. And we can't touch them.

Oh sure, the Republicans may continue to take some election hits, but that will be a temporary ritual of purification, since there are no Democrats capable of rallying our fellow Americans to a truly different vision of government and society. They either cower in fear of their GOP masters or actively imitate them.

What we need, it occurred to me watching the latest entry in the latest round of Miss Marple screen renderings, in fact perhaps our only hope, is Jane Marple as Nemesis, the role in which she learns she has been cast by her just-deceased old friend Jason Rafiel, a refugee from Hitler's Germany (where they burned his books), whose driving passion was the pursuit of justice.

Bring it on, Miss M! Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everlasting stream--to coin a phrase.

[In the photo, Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple is seen with Richard E. Grant as her nephew, the popular novelist Raymond West, whom she enlists as Nemesis's traveling companion on her coach journey to justice.]

IS GONZALES TRYING TO PROVOKE A CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS? OR IS HE JUST REALLY AS TOTALLY LAME AS HE COMES OFF?

It really pays to elect smart people to office. In the past 7 years we've seen what happens when you elect not so smart people. It has been really satisfying to watch freshmen like Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse effectively holding the evildoers in the Bush Regime accountable when they come before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Today he got another crack at Bush's hapless hack of an Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. Remember, last May Republican James Comey-- once Deputy Attorney General when Ashcroft was in charge of that dysfunctional department-- accused Gonzales, in sworn testimony, of "attempting to strong-arm the former attorney general into reversing a decision Comey had made to hold up the approval of an anti-terrorism program because of legal concerns. Ashcroft had transferred power to Comey while he was in the hospital." (At the time, Gonzales was working directly for Bush in the White House.)

Gonzales revealed today that he and Andrew H. Card Jr., then White House chief of staff, had decided to approach the bedridden Ashcroft on March 10, 2004, after an "emergency meeting" hours before with senior congressional leaders in the situation room in the White House.

"The consensus in the room from the congressional leadership is that we should continue the activities, at least for now, despite the objections of Mr. Comey," Gonzales testified. "There was also a consensus that it would be very, very difficult to obtain legislation without compromising this program, but that we should look for a way ahead."

Gonzales added: "It is for this reason that, within a matter of hours, Andy Card and I went to the hospital. We felt it important that the attorney general knew about the views and the recommendations of the congressional leadership, that as a former member of Congress and as someone who had authorized these activities for over two years that it might be important for him to hear this information."

Gonzales said he knew that Ashcroft was seriously ill; he had had his gallbladder removed the previous day and was in intensive care.

Both Democrats and Republicans seemed astounded by Gonzales' inability to tell be straight-forward about anything substantive. Gonzales contradicted himself repeatedly, exasperating the members of the Committee. "Gonzales came under withering criticism from the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), and from its top Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.)."

Leahy told him bluntly that he has lost the confidence of the Congress and of the American people and that he just doesn't trust him. "Specter said there was 'evidence of low morale' at the Justice Department and blasted what he described as Gonzales's lack of 'personal credibility.' He called the department 'dysfunctional." Specter raised the prospect of calling for a special prosecutor to press a potential contempt-of-Congress citation over the White House's refusal to provide certain documents and sworn testimony regarding the firing of nine federal prosecutors last year. He denounced the Bush administration's stand that it would prohibit the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia from pursuing a contempt citation."

Andrew Cohen, writing in this afternoon's Washington Post, makes the case for why "Gonzales Gonzales deserves to be fired for his testimony Tuesday alone; for morphing into Jon Lovitz's famous 'pathological liar' character (or maybe just one of the Marx Brothers) as he tried to dodge and duck responsibility before the Senate Judiciary Committee not just for his shameful leadership at Justice but also his shameless role in visiting an ailing John Ashcroft in the hospital to try to strong-arm him into renewing the warrantless surveillance program. Can anyone out there remember a worse, less-inspiring, less confidence-inducing performance on Capitol Hill? I cannot. No reasonable person watching Gonzales' tragically comedic performance Tuesday's on Capitol Hill-- especially his miserable exchange with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) in late morning-- can any longer defend his appalling lack of competence, courage and credibility." Watch the bobbing and weaving video at Think Progress.

But just as shocking, to me, was hearing Senator Whitehouse's questioning of Gonzales. I heard this on the radio when I was driving. I had to pull over and shut my car off so I could pay attention at what sounded absolutely startling-- the FBI trying to keep the "nefarious" Gonzales away from a doped-up Ashcroft in his hospital room.



After Russ Feingold accused Gonzo of "misleading Congress again and again" and the accused him of not adhering to a high standard of truthfulness in his past congressional appearances, Gonzales sheepishly admitted that "Obviously, I've not always met that standard." OK, obviously the Senate should do something about this-- like hiring a special prosecutor and getting to the bottom of his absurd web of lies.

ALASKA POLITICS HEATING UP AS BOTH YOUNG AND STEVENS BECOME MORE MIRED IN CORRUPTION INVESTIGATIONS

Both of Alaska's uber-corrupt senior representatives in Congress, Senator Ted Stevens and Congressman Don Young, have thought they could get away with murder-- or at least anything and everything just short of murder-- because the once proud Alaska Democratic Party has been fairly moribund. But with a new poll showing each is extremely vulnerable to defeat at the polls, they may get opposition-- from the right, as well as from Democrats.

A Republican polling outfit, Basswood Research, conducted a poll last week for the Club for Growth. The first question is open to several interpretations, but none of them are especially good for Ted Stevens.

True Or Untrue-- Stevens Has Done Some Good Things For AK, But After 40 Years In DC, It's Time For A Change?
True    47%
Untrue  45%

  
The Bridge to Nowhere questions-- heavily, even hysterically, pushed by both Stevens and Young-- will give neither any solace whatsoever. So much for bringing home the bacon pork.

Do You Approve of Spending $223 million in Federal Tax Money to Build a Bridge From Ketchokan to Gravina Island, Sometimes Called The "Bridge to Nowhere?"
Approve 25%
Disapprove 66%

Are You More Likely to Vote For A Congressional Candidate Who _______
Cuts spending 71%
Brings projects 17%

The extreme far right Club For Growth isn't certain whether or not to primary either of these codgers. Nochama Soloveichik, the wingnut organization's spokesperson said "Don Young and Ted Stevens have horrendous records and, obviously, it would be nice if we could replace them with real economic conservatives. But at this point we are just keeping our eyes and ears open."

If the Club For Growth gives the word that they'll finance campaigns against Stevens and/or Young, other Republicans eager to join in include former Lt. Gov. Loren Leman, former state Senate President Mike Miller, former state Senator John Binkley, Alaska House Speaker John Harris and state Senator Sean Parnell. None of these Republicans have been indicted yet on a corruption scandal that is sinking the entire state GOP (including, of course, Stevens and Young).

Stevens is likely to be challenged by Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich (D) and there is a chance that ex-state Senate Minority Leader Ethan Berkowitz will take on Young. Diane Benson, a progressive, grassroots Democrat who challenged Young in '06 is also likely to go after the seat again next year.

Just a year ago it was unimaginable that any Democrat could dislodge Stevens, the Senate's longest-serving Republican, or Young, who has held the state's lone House seat since 1973. But that was before the FBI began a wide-ranging public corruption investigation that could ensnare both lawmakers.

The FBI told Stevens to maintain records relating to Alaska-based Veco Corp., the oil services company, and a federal grand jury convened to scrutinize whether Veco officials were improperly involved in a remodeling project at Stevens' home in the resort town of Girdwood.

Last month, Veco founder Bill Allen and another former company official admitted they bribed state lawmakers. Allen is a personal friend and major supporter of both Stevens and Young.

Allen annually threw large pig roasts benefiting Young's campaigns. Separately, questions have arisen about an earmark Young sponsored when he was chairman of the House Transportation Committee that could lead to a financial windfall for one of his contributors.

A poll commissioned by the Alaska Democratic Party and conducted by Anchorage's Hays Research Group in mid-June showed fewer than half of the 401 Alaskans surveyed approved of the job either Young or Stevens was doing.

UPDATE: CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS FOR YOUNG AND STEVENS UNDER WAY

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that both Young and Stevens are in jeopardy not of losing their seats, but of losing their freedom. Both are under criminal investigation for corruption.

Young is being investigated for his alleged ties to VECO Corp., the Anchorage-based company whose former top two executives -- including former CEO Bill Allen -- have pleaded guilty to bribing Alaska state lawmakers, the Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, reported on its Web site late Tuesday.

Investigators are trying to determine whether Young or U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens took bribes, illegal gratuities or unreported gifts from VECO, the newspaper reported, citing only “people close to the case.”

UPDATE: YOUNG ISN'T IN JAIL YET, BUT...

This awesome Don Young interactive website suggests that he will be-- long before any bridges to nowhere are completed.

LEFTY BLOGGER MILT SHOOK TO DONATE A PORTION OF HIS BOOK SALES TO ACTBLUE

A few days ago we posted an impeachment rational by Milt Shook, an old buddy of mine from the earliest, pre-blog Internet wars. Last year, when I was getting ready for my trip to the end of the earth, I had mentioned that I was taking an advance copy of Milt's political novel, Talent on Loan to read while I was wandering around with the penguins. The book was a thrilling read and I recommend it highly. You can read a sample chapter here.

As Milt puts it himself, the story has some familiar-sounding elements:

• A fat, stupid right wing talk show host whose greed and sloth far exceed his intelligence?
• A power-mad megalomaniacal billionaire whose main purpose in life is to get revenge for the unfair treatment of the greatest president in history, Richard M. Nixon?
• A President whose two biggest problems are the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and a horny secretary?
• A wide-eyed Christian whose only concern is making sure the country is conservative?
• The gruesome death of a liberal foe in the billionaire's bathroom?
• And a compliant media, that only repeats what it's told, and refuses to let facts get in the way?

Today Milt sent me a note saying that for every book he sells on that site, he'll contribute between $1 and $2 to any ActBlue candidate you designate.

NEW LAW: CONGRESSIONAL WIVES MUST BEHAVE-- SONS AND DAUGHTERS? NOT SO MUCH

Crooked GOP Congressman John Doolittle and the crooked little Mrs.

Congress can't pass a law ex post facto in order to punish someone. If it wasn't a crime when they done it, there's nothing anyone can do. So, it's going to be very hard to go after Julie Doolittle, Gayle Sweeney, or Tom DeLay's moll wife, or the crooked wives of any number of Republicans whose wives served as their bag-ladies. That's because the House passed an ethics bill yesterday prohibiting congressmen to pay their wives for campaign work. Though few were as blatantly criminal as the Doolittles, almost 100 members of Congress were involved in what the new law forbids.

But even if people could be prosecuted ex post facto, two of the most corrupt members of Congress from the Bush years, Curt Weldon (R-PA) and Conrad Burns (R-MT)-- each ignominously defeated and swept out of public office after a series of corruption scandals-- would be safe. That's because each used their daughter to collect the bribes and enrich the family. The law is only about wives, not sons (see Denny Hastert Family) or daughters.

SOUTH CAROLINA REPUBLICAN PARTY IS A MESS-- BUT THERE IS NO SOUTH CAROLINA DEMOCRATIC PARTY

Lindsey always loved dressing up in different outfits

When Republican politicians get caught molesting young boys or distributing cocaine they deny everything and then check in to a country club-like rehabilitation center. Like GOP congressional child predator Mark Foley, South Carolina Treasurer/Giuliani state chairman Thomas Ravenel checked himself into the pricey, luxurious Sierra Tucson Center in Catalina, Arizona. Normal people would be thrown in jail but both of these are powerful southern politicians. Their only relationship to laws is making them, not being held accountable to them. This morning, rested and refreshed, 30 days after his coke bust, Ravenel makes his court debut. "Ravenel's attorneys entered a not guilty plea for the 44-year-old multimillionaire developer earlier this month. He is charged with possession with intent to distribute less than 500 grams of cocaine... If convicted, Ravenel faces up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine." No one thinks he will be.

The Ravenel saga isn't the only political news in South Carolina today. One of the state's Republican senators, Lindsey Graham, has to face the voters next year-- and an awful lot of voters have already made of their minds. They want anyone but Graham-- except Ravenel. Ravenel had been the favorite of the dominant far right extremists who control the state GOP and until his coke bust he was expected to take on Graham and, in all likelihood, beat him. Ravenel's crooked family could have easily financed what is expected to have been a very costly race, Graham flush with corporate donations from grateful recipients of his clear record of always selling out his constituents' interests to the greed and selfishness of Big Business.

In the wake of Ravenel's political demise, a flood of minor right-wing politicians has stepped up to make advantage of Graham's two big weaknesses-- his hysterical support for Bush's failed immigration bill and his slightly too-ajar closet door.

Today The Spoof!, a satirical magazine in Columbia, South Carolina published a parody of a secret that "everyone" knows about but that is never discussed in South Carolina-- that Lindsey, a homophobic fanatic, is actually gay himself.

University of South Carolina alumnus Lindsey Graham loves his 'Cocks.

"I have been a big fan of the 'Cocks since I was a little boy," acknowledged the Senator from South Carolina. "When people used to tell me that only girls liked the 'Cocks, I cried and screamed -- some boys like 'Cocks too!"

"While I was a student at the University of South Carolina, in addition to loving the 'Cocks, I enjoyed the Greek lifestyle as well," continued the never-married bachelor without kids. "If I could offer one piece of advice to a young Freshman entering his first year of college, I would wholeheartedly recommend joining a fraternity... and loving them 'Cocks!"

Joining a long list of other wingnuts who want a crack at Graham is Walter Witherspoon (aka, "Buddy"), a well-known orthodontist and a far right South Carolina Republican national committeeman. "Buddy" will have some real competition from former Rep. Tommy Hartnett, state Rep. Jeff Duncan, and Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer.

Even with the Know Nothing wing of the GOP, which in South Carolina is the GOP, furious at Graham and vowing revenge, he is viewed as the prohibitive favorite, mostly because there is no viable Democratic Party in the state and because insurgent Republicans rarely get anywhere in the top-down authoritarian party structure of South Carolina's Republican Party. Crazy right wing bloggers have been threatening to back a Blue Dog Democrat-- but none have stepped forward.


UPDATE: RAVENEL RESIGNS

Still claiming he's not guilty, South Carolina multimillionaire playboy Thomas Ravenel, who had earlier been forced to resign as Giuliani's state campaign chairman, this morning resigned as state Treasurer. This video doesn't show Ravenel snorting coke, but it does show the results of too much coke-snorting:



Of course, as son of South Carolina's racist ex-Congressman, Arthur Ravenel, what more could you expect. In fact, after Ravenel the Younger scooted off to his rehab, Giuliani appointed the racist Ravinel the Elder as his campaign head. What a team he's got down South, all headed by David Diapers Vitter.

IS TIM KAINE OUT OF HIS SCULL?

Kaine dancing to a bad GOP tune, seen here with fiddlers Griffith & Howell

I think I first heard about the outrageous new traffic fines Virginia just instituted-- up to $3,000-- from Ed Schultz on Air America a few weeks ago. I was concerned because I'm spending a week in Falls Church soon and because... Virginia does have a Democratic governor of sorts and this kind of regressive taxation may be a Republican wet dream come true, but is the worst thing a Democrat can do.

This morning's Washington Post informed us that this horrendous scheme is already a disaster in Michigan and New Jersey. Not that that stopped Virginia.

The licenses of tens of thousands of motorists in New Jersey and Michigan have been suspended because they cannot afford the fees, and little evidence has emerged that such fines improve highway safety, according to state officials and studies.

Numerous lawmakers, judges and social activists in both states have sought to either repeal the fees or make major changes in how they are collected. But once the programs are implemented, they are difficult to get rid of, because state lawmakers are unwilling to give up the revenue they raise, judges and lawmakers said.

"I think it is a very destructive piece of legislation that is designed primarily for revenue purposes and is disguised as a highway safety measure," said William C. Buhl, a Circuit Court judge in Van Buren County, Mich. "In my opinion, it increases the dangers on the highways because it creates an enormous, growing pool of unlicensed motorists."

Demonizing government and taxes and then making people think they are entitled to low taxes, regardless of what services they want/need/expect, inevitably leads to malfunctioning societies. Virginia, for example, had no money for highway upkeep. So what do you think the overwhelmingly Republican state legislature did? Certainly not raise taxes-- only Democrats do that. They raised traffic fines into the thousands of dollars. If a rich person gets a $1,000 fine, they get pissed off and pay it and grumble. If a poor person gets a $1,000 fine, it could wreck his or her life.

In 1983, New Jersey became the first state to assess the fees, which range from $300 to $4,500 over three years and pay for insurance for those unable to obtain coverage. The $100 million raised annually goes into the state's general fund.

New Jersey issues about 800,000 license suspension notices a year, a quarter of which result when people are unable to pay the surcharges, according to the New Jersey Treasury Department. A 2001 study by the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice found that the suspensions were creating a permanent underclass.

...The Michigan fees are supposed to raise $80 million to $100 million annually. But the state has a collection rate of 40 percent because so many people cannot afford to pay them, state officials said.

I can't believe Kaine even signed this idiotic bill but now he's defending it as more and more legislators from both parties want to scrap it. Democratic governors in New Jersey and Michigan can't get rid of the odious regressive tax because it is an integral part of each state's finance system. According to Bob Bushnell, Commonwealth Attorney for Henry County, "The way this thing works out, it is going to have an absolutely ruinous effect on financially challenged Virginians. To my knowledge, no one from the police was consulted. We weren't consulted. The court clerks weren't consulted. Had it come up, I think the General Assembly would have been aware of all kinds of concerns from Virginians about the unanticipated downside to this program."

YES, ROVE HAS BEEN POLITICIZING THE STATE DEPARTMENT TOO... JUST LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE

Front page in tomorrow's Washington Post Rove was politicizing the State Department the same way he was politicizing the Justice Department, the GSA, the Surgeon General's office... and every other piece of the machinery of government.

Rove and his deputies have illegally conducted god-only-knows-how-many (the Post says "at least half a dozen," which could mean a million but is probably somewhere between 6 and a million) Power Point presentations for diplomats "that named Democratic incumbents targeted for defeat in 2008." And if the Democrats don't do something-- something real about it, they don't deserve to escape what Rove has in store for them-- and we don't deserve such incompetent and flaccid leadership.

The documents show for the first time how the White House sought to ensure that even its appointees involved in foreign policy were kept attuned to the administration's election goals. Such briefings occurred semi-regularly over the past six years for staffers dealing with domestic policy, White House officials have previously acknowledged.

In one instance, State Department aides attended a White House meeting at which political officials examined the 55 most critical House races for 2002 and the media markets most critical to battleground states for President Bush's reelection fight in 2004, according to documents the department provided to the Senate committee.

Biden, the Democrats' joke of a Foreign Relations Committee Chair has been making some of his toothless Inside-the-Beltway low muffled bark-like sounds about this but, apparently no one ever told him what the Hatch Act is about and what it was meant to do. Either that or he doesn't care. Or both.

THE TOTAL BANKRUPTCY OF ULTIMATE INSIDE THE BELTWAY HACK JOE BIDEN

These 2 insider hacks should be kept as far away from policy as possible

When one thinks of "Senator Joe Biden" and "bankruptcy," the first thing that comes to mind is his slavish support for corporate contributors like the big banking and credit card industries. Biden took the Republican position that has destroyed American families and he did it for his big campaign contributors. (Interestingly, Biden is also the only Democrat who is getting the kind of relative support between corrupt insiders and the grassroots that Republicans get.)

That said, Joe Biden is not a serious candidate for president. He's a quintessential Inside-the-Beltway windbag who is auditioning to be Hillary's Secretary of State. Like Richardson, that's why he's running for president and wasting people's time and money. Would he make a good Secretary of State. No, he'd be as terrible as Condoleeza Rice. Early in tonight's debate Biden was asked which Republican he would consider for VP if he had to. He picked Chuck Hagel-- and then he gratuitously through in that he thought Dick Lugar would be a good Secretary of State, presumably whether he had to appoint a Republican or not. Before we talk about Hagel, and because Biden aspires to be Secretary of State himself, let's take a look at Lugar's foreign policy voting record in the Senate:

* Iraq: total Bush-Cheney rubber stamp
* Respect for International Law and the U.N.: a perfect zero
* Arms Control treaties: another perfect zero

Dick Lugar may be a friendly and collegial insider, like Biden, and I'm sure the two of them have far more in common with each other than they do with any of us. And neither should be put anywhere near our country's foreign policy.

As for Chuck Hagel, look at his ultra-reactionary voting record and remember that Biden was suggesting we place a heartbeat away from the presidency who is a total corporate hack, who is violently opposed to environmental legislation, who has rubber stamped the entire Bush-Cheney agenda (despite his WINO moaning) in Iraq, and who is 100% anti-choice, anti-union and always votes against the neediest and for the greediest. The only candidate I wouldn't vote for among the Democrats in Joe Biden. Other than Biden though, any of the Democrats would be a far better choice than one of what Newt Gingrich calls the 9 or 10 of the pathetic bunch of pygmies. It looks like most Americans would rather vote for a Democrat than a Republican. The latest Zogby poll, in fact, shows that Americans assign blame to almost all of America's problems to the GOP.

• War: 62% blamed Republicans vs. 14% Democrats
• Global Warming: 56% blamed Republicans vs. 10% Democrats
• Prejudice: 52% blamed Republicans vs. 22% for Democrats
• Poverty: 49% held Republicans accountable; 29% Democrats
• Corruption: 47% blamed Republicans vs. 31% Democrats

CNN has the transcript of the whole debate up.

DEMOCRAT HOUSE LEADERS SIGNAL THEIR ELECTORAL PRIORITIES FOR 'O8

The DCCC and Democratic House bigwigs are looking at dozens of Republican-held seats where Democratic challengers have a shot to replace rubber stamp Republican incumbents. You already know which candidates Blue America has endorsed so far. We ask each candidate a series of questions before we decide whether or not to endorse them. We try to make sure that if our candidates win they intend to go to Congress committed to protecting women's right to choice, committed to protecting the equal rights of minorities-- and we ask about gays, probably the minority most targeted for hatred and discrimination by the far right these days-- committed to figuring out how to end the occupation of Iraq (for real), and committed to taking bribes out of the electoral system.

The DCCC, on the other hand, has two criterion: they want candidates with an ability to raise a great deal of money and they want a candidate committed to voting for a Democratic House leadership. They don't care if their candidates are racist, anti-choice, homophobic, corrupt, pro-war or even if they vote with Republicans most of the time. You think I'm kidding? Look at the voting record of "Democrat" Gene Taylor, the most reactionary of any Democrat in Congress.

This week the top Democrat leaders in the House, including DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen and Speaker Pelosi signaled who their early favorites are. I'm assuming they're looking at electability more than anything else. They have power based on how many Democrats are elected, regardless of how those Democrats vote on issues. They picked six candidates so far, both progressives and reactionaries: Linda Stender running against Mike Ferguson (NJ); Larry Kissell running against Robin Hayes (NC); Dan Maffei running against James Walsh (NY); state Rep. Steve Driehaus, who is running against Steve Chabot (OH); state Sen. John Boccieri, running against Ralph Regula (OH); and former Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes, who is challenging Sam Graves (MO).

Some of the Democratic leaders, Hoyer, Clyburn and Emanuel, only donated to a few of the candidates. I suspect these clowns are more enthusiastic about conservatives like Barnes and Driehaus than the independent-minded grassroots progressives like Linda Stender.

According to Mark Wegner at CongressDaily "Early leadership donations, even when made from their personal committees, have the dual effect of promoting the party's most promising candidates and discouraging potential challengers in the party primary. On C-SPAN's Newsmakers, which aired Sunday, Van Hollen reiterated the DCCC's reluctance to get involved in primaries, but he said the committee works to field strong challengers. 'There could be cases where, certainly before people get into the primary, we might encourage somebody to try and work it out, and we may have a preference,' Van Hollen said. 'But when it comes right down to it, if everybody files, we sort of let the candidates go.' The policy could come into play in the case of Kissell, who faces possible Democratic primary opposition from state Rep. Rick Glazier. 'When it comes to official sorts of endorsements, we do not get involved in the primaries,' Van Hollen said. 'But where you have a candidate like Larry Kissell, who is the only declared candidate out in front, we're certainly doing everything we can to support Larry.'"

Van Hollen danced around an important and pointed question about incumbents facing primaries from antiwar candidates. In blue districts represented by pro-war and pro-corporate Democrats-- like Al Wynn (MD-04), John Barrow (GA-12), Dave Scott (GA-13), Jim Cooper (TN-05), Dan Lipinski (IL-03), Jerry Costello (IL-12), Marion Berry (AR-01), etc-- the only opportunity to hold representatives accountable is through primaries. But what Van Hollen said was, "The question for anyone challenging a Democratic member of Congress in the primary on the war is really saying ... 'What would you do differently?'" I'd like to introduce CVH to Donna Edwards and Mark Pera for starters.

WHY ARE DEMOCRATS TAKING IN FAR MORE MONEY-- ESPECIALLY FROM SMALL DONORS-- THAN REPUBLICANS?

You probably noticed that contributions are coming in at a much faster rate for Democrats than for Republicans this year. In fact, according to today's still Murdoch-free Wall Street Journal Democrats have raised something like $100 million more than the party of fat cats, greed, selfishness, and systemic corruption. This has never happened in the lifetimes of most DWT readers.

With more than a year to go before the 2008 elections, Democratic candidates have raised $100 million more in campaign contributions than Republicans, putting them on track to win the money race for the White House and Congress for the first time since the government began detailed accounting of campaign fund raising three decades ago.

Democrats have taken the lead by exploiting widespread disapproval of President Bush and the Iraq war to develop a more robust online network of new, small donors, as well as to gain traction with deep-pocketed business contributors.

In fact, small donors are making all the difference, and that's the aspect emphasized in a perceptive look in today's L.A. Times entitled Small Donor Playing Bigger Role in Campaigns. Their subtitle is even more telling: "Presidential candidates collect record amounts in small sums. Just as valuable: the support those dollars and cents represent."

Since 2004 ActBlue has collected over $25,200,000 for Democratic candidates, much of it from small online donors. Ben Rahn, ActBlue's president told me that they expect to shoot right past $100,000,000 before the Nov. '08 election. Ben graduated from MIT; he doesn't pull numbers out of thin air. Our own Blue America page has already taken in over $51,000, entirely in small donations (average donation this year $62.47 and the mean donation is approximately $20).

Obama, of course, has been the biggest beneficiary of small contributors, "receiving nearly 30% of his $58.5 million in small increments. The $16.5 million he raised in amounts of $200 or less in the first half of the year is more than all the other Democrats combined raised in such small donations. Much of it comes via the Internet unsolicited."

The $46.4 million that all candidates have raised in small chunks is about four times as much as all candidates raised in small donations for the same period in the last two presidential campaigns.

Small donations hearten advocates of campaign finance regulation. They hope Internet fundraising will lessen the influence of high rollers. But of course, influential players bundle small change into larger checks.

Republican front-runner Rudolph W. Giuliani has received several such blocks of money. One came from H. Douglas Barclay and his New York-based law firm, Hiscock & Barclay.

Until recently, Barclay was ambassador to El Salvador. The nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics counted $216,000 in federal donations this decade from Barclay and his family to Republicans, including to President Bush.

Now, Barclay and his law firm are donating to Giuliani. In addition to large donations from some partners, the firm recently bundled about $3,900 in amounts of between $5 and $57 from other attorneys in the firm. Federal election law permits law firms and other partnerships to give money and attribute the donations to partners.

The specific donations were a surprise to some partners.

"It's news to me," Hiscock partner Lawrence Zimmerman said of his two donations of $48 each to Giuliani. "I would not have contributed to Mr. Giuliani's campaign. I am a dyed-in-wool Kennedy Democrat."

The Journal points to another interesting, and, for the recipients of high roller money (like Giuliani, Biden, Romney and Clinton), worrisome. "Only half of Mr. Obama's donors have hit the giving limit for the primaries; about a quarter have given him less than $200, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that analyzes campaign contributions. By contrast, about two-thirds of those contributing to the campaign of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani have already hit their maximum; just 8% have given less than $200."

But this all isn't to say that the Democrats are going to swamp the Republicans in the area where Republicans always best thing (fundraising). The Senate Democrats are beating the Senate Republicans and the House Democrats are beating the House Republicans and the Democratic presidential candidates are beating the Republican presidential candidates, but, as the Journal is only too happy to point out, "it is still early in the campaign, and big business could well ramp up funding to Republicans, who have been its longtime allies. Moreover, a financial victory doesn't always guarantee electoral victory: Republicans lost control of the House and Senate last year despite outraising Democrats $1.2 billion to $1.1 billion. In fact, candidate and party fund raising is only part of the political balance sheet. Lightly regulated independent groups with wealthy backers can also shape political contests. During the 2004 campaign, advertising by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth damaged Democrat candidate John Kerry's reputation as a war hero."

I've noticed that for a Democratic congressional candidate in a purple district it generally takes only half of what a Republican spends to win the seat. Let me share some examples from last year. Carol Shea-Porter took on rubber stamp Republican incumbent Jeb Bradley in New Hampshire's 1st CD. He raised $1,111,590. She raised $360,380 and kicked his ass. Bush had won the district twice. In a slightly redder district, NY-19 (where Bush also won both times) rubber stamp Republican incumbent Sue Kelly spent $2,519,164 while victorious challenger John Hall spent $1,602,865. Slightly more red than NY-19 is NY-20 and there rubber stamp Republican incumbent John Sweeney spent $3,425,841, only to be beaten by Kirsten Gillibrand's $2,595,659. Even in a solidly red district like KS-02, far right incumbent Jim Ryun was beaten by Nancy Boyda, even though he spent $1,075,223 and she spent $676,738. Look at the heartbreaking race in NC-08, where just a couple hundred votes prevented a victory by Larry Kissell over rubber stamp incumbent Robin Hayes, despite Hayes having spent $2,475,169 while Kissell only spent $779,341. Same story in OH-02, where Mean Jean Schmidt spent $1,944,434 to beat Victoria Wulsin (who spent $1,0211,186) by a handful of votes in a solidly red district. Democrats need a lot less money than Republicans do because the basic Democratic message-- if it can be delivered-- resonates with voters. Republicans don't have a sensible message, just a need to brainwash people about fear and hatred-- and repetition is costly.

The Journal acknowledges the important role of Internet fundraising and the overwhelming the bottom-up orientation of Democrats have over the robotic, talking points repeating Republicans.

Democrats have also benefited because of their comparative strength with Internet activists. While Republican voters tend to gravitate toward traditional media like talk radio, Democratic voters with strong opinions are more likely to go online to read blogs. That, in turn, has led to an explosion in online giving to Democrats, who are building lists of thousands of small-dollar donors for a fraction of the cost of traditional direct mail.

Many Democrats give by clicking links to candidates on the Web site ActBlue, a clearinghouse for small donors. ActBlue has raised $5.6 million for Democratic House, Senate and presidential candidates, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, a Web site that tracks donations. It was the single biggest source of contributions to the party's presidential candidates during the first six months of the year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In a report last week, the center said ActBlue donors gave more in aggregate than the total from employees of heavy corporate contributors like Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

That report last week is about outfits like our own Blue America page. Feel proud-- and if you can afford to make a donation today, let me recommend worthy progressive Democrats facing primaries from reactionaries and opportunists who can really use some help: Donna Edwards, Darcy Burner, John Laesch, Angie Paccione, and Victoria Wulsin.

MITCH McCONNELL'S AGENDA OF OBSTRUCTIONISM COULD BE DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH-- OR KILL YOU

This morning while I was putting on my socks I happened to see a report on CNN about a couple in Harbin, China whose young daughter died because of a badly made drug she took. The Chinese manufacturer isn't allowed to make that particular drug any longer-- and they paid the couple $2,700 for the loss of their daughter. I wonder how much they paid Mitch McConnell and other Republican boosters for unrestricted Chinese trade in return for being allowed to continue to sell their poisonous productions into the United States... which, according to CNN, they do.

Aside from being a firm believer in "free trade" (as opposed to fair trade), McConnell is also a worshipper at the alter of "unrestricted" (i.e.- predatory) capitalism, which means that the market works things like this out, not the government. If a manufacturer, according the McConnell-think, makes poisonous products and people-- and their pets-- die, well, if enough of them die, then other folks will stop buying the product. (By the way, after watching the CNN report I spent an hour looking for the name of the company that makes it-- unsuccessfully.) A few days ago one of the newspapers read by many of Senator McConnell's constituents, the Cincinnati Post ran an editorial, Protect Us, Not China Trade. They didn't mention McConnell by name and many voters in Kentucky are unaware of his highly lucrative and possibly illegal connections to businesses in China. In any case, the 4 points in the editorial-- which basically asks if "the principle of free trade [is] really more important than the health of our citizens"-- were surely a stern warning to McConnell:

First, it's scary to learn that Chinese-manufactured toothpaste on our store shelves could be poisonous. There have been only close calls here, as far as we know-- with the long-term health effects, of course, yet to be determined. But in Panama, more than 100 people are known to have died from toxic cough syrup originating in China.

Other countries, too, have discovered import problems from China, including Canada, Spain and Liberia. Problems such as salmonella and outright putrefaction of food, not to mention adulterating tactics such as stuffing buns with flavored cardboard. We find foods and medicines filled with toxic melamine, diethylene glycol, nitrofuran and Malachite green-- just for starters.

Second, how many Americans knew that the federal role in inspecting imports has dwindled at the same time that trade with China has ballooned?

Today, China accounts for one-third of U.S. imports, worth some $300 billion. And, as everyone knows, China is one of the most polluted countries in the world. So we might ask our, uh, leaders in Washington: "If the Chinese are willing to trash their own country in the name of making a buck, why would they hesitate to trash us?"

And yet at a Tuesday hearing on Capitol Hill, we learned that just 1 percent of food imported into America is inspected, down from 8 percent in 1992.

Indeed, according to congressional investigators, inspectors in San Francisco have an average of 30 seconds to make a judgment on each shipment, including such basic questions as whether the shipment is accurately labeled as to country of origin-- which many are not.

Third, one of the great political achievements of the 20th century, The Pure Food and Drug Act, is now under assault - assault from overseas.

A little more than a century ago, in 1906, muckraking author Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, which opened Americans' eyes to conditions in the meatpacking industry. Within months, President Theodore Roosevelt signed legislation that ultimately led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration.

But now we are learning that the FDA has shrunk from the task of regulating Chinese imports. Why? Because China falls into the realm of "foreign policy," in which the well-being of Americans is subordinated to the well-being of trans-Pacific diplomacy, including trade.

In other words, the State Department, eager to keep Beijing happy at all costs, is the true arbiter of what gets into your stomach, not some low-level public health expert. Feel better?

Fourth, China's system is worse than you know-- but don't take my word for it.
"China's regulatory regime isn't really ready for the 21st century," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, speaking to ABC News.

Yeah, a cynic might say, the Center is a Nader-ite outfit that never met a government regulation it didn't like.

But it's harder to dismiss this warning: "As a developing country, China's food and drug supervision work began late and its foundations are weak. Therefore, the food and drug safety situation is not something we can be optimistic about." That's from Yan Jiangying, the alarmingly frank spokeswoman for China's food and drug agency, as recorded by the Washington Post.

This morning the Center For American Progress put out a report on obstructionism, the route McConnell and Senate Republicans like John Sununu (R-NH), Susan Collins (R-ME), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Gordon Smith (R-OR), Norm Coleman (R-MN), Pete Domenici (R-NM), John Cornyn (R-TX), George Voinovich (R-OH), John Warner (R-VA), James Inhofe (R-OK), and Ted Stevens (R-AK) has consciously decided to use to thwart the will of the American people on crucial matters like this.

The CAP report deals mostly with how McConnell and his team have been able to use parliamentary tricks to keep Bush's "Stay the Course" agenda in Iraq in place, despite the will of the majority in the Senate and the majority of Americans, but it's a tactic McConnell has been using all year-- and to devastating effect.

In the first seven months of the 110th Congress, conservatives have acted to obstruct legislation at a rate greater than in any previous Congress. While the House has successfully acted on a number of pressing issues, conservatives in the Senate have blocked legislation via filibuster 42 times, embracing a tactic they once threatened to eliminate. In the few instances where Congress has been able to overcome the politically-motivated obstruction, President Bush-- who demanded in January that Congress not "play politics as usual"-- has used the 110th Congress to score political points by vetoing legislation backed by the majority of the American people. Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-MS) boasted recently, "The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail.. and so far it's working."

WE DON'T WANT NO STINKIN' KING-- AND WE DON'T WANT A LAP DOG CONGRESS EITHER. WE WANT OUR DEMOCRACY BACK

Yesterday we ran a lengthy treatise from Milt Shook on the very compelling case for impeachment, something DWT has been advocating since Bush stole the presidential election in Florida in 1999, but with more vigor once he started seriously shredding the Constitution. In today's NY Times Adam Cohen looks at the impeachment question from the point of view the Founding Fathers meant it to be looked at.

Like many Americans, Cohen feels Congress and the Bush Regime are headed for a constitutional showdown. "The war is hardly the only area where the Bush administration is trying to expand its powers beyond all legal justification. But the danger of an imperial presidency is particularly great when a president takes the nation to war, something the founders understood well. In the looming showdown, the founders and the Constitution are firmly on Congress’s side." The Constitution is decidedly and very specifically anti-monarchial, a system Bush has publicly yearned for since the first moment he managed to weasel his way into the White House. Bush, who has probably never read the Constitution, at least not seriously, keeps yipping around yelling how Congress shouldn't try to manage the war, just fund it. Yet the Founding Fathers, in their wisdom were especially looking out for some two-bit tyrant like Bush who, as John Jay says, "will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal.”

Many critics of the Iraq war are reluctant to suggest that President Bush went into it in anything but good faith. But [DWT and] James Madison, widely known as the father of the Constitution, might have been more skeptical. “In war, the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed,” he warned. “It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle.”

When they drafted the Constitution, Madison and his colleagues wrote their skepticism into the text. In Britain, the king had the authority to declare war, and raise and support armies, among other war powers. The framers expressly rejected this model and gave these powers not to the president, but to Congress.

The Constitution does make the president “commander in chief,” a title President Bush often invokes. But it does not have the sweeping meaning he suggests. The framers took it from the British military, which used it to denote the highest-ranking official in a theater of battle. Alexander Hamilton emphasized in Federalist No. 69 that the president would be “nothing more” than “first general and admiral,” responsible for “command and direction” of military forces.

The founders would have been astonished by President Bush’s assertion that Congress should simply write him blank checks for war. They gave Congress the power of the purse so it would have leverage to force the president to execute their laws properly. Madison described Congress’s control over spending as “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”

The framers expected Congress to keep the president on an especially short leash on military matters. The Constitution authorizes Congress to appropriate money for an army, but prohibits appropriations for longer than two years. Hamilton explained that the limitation prevented Congress from vesting “in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence.”

It was shameful and repulsive that Bush's Republican lapdogs spurned their duty for 6 long years and rubber stamped all of his and Cheney's schemes and incompetent aggression. It is doubly shameful-- reflected in the polls-- that a Democratic Congress, though barking loudly, continues to let them get away with it, even with the overwhelming support of the public for a change in policy towards Iraq.

The Constitution cannot enforce itself. It is, as the constitutional scholar Edwin Corwin famously observed, an “invitation to struggle” among the branches, but the founders wisely bequeathed to Congress some powerful tools for engaging in the struggle. It is no surprise that the current debate over a deeply unpopular war is arising in the context of a Congressional spending bill. That is precisely what the founders intended.
Members of Congress should not be intimidated into thinking that they are overstepping their constitutional bounds. If the founders were looking on now, it is not Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who would strike them as out of line, but George W. Bush, who would seem less like a president than a king.

My friend Hunter sent me a note last night telling me his gut tells him it's all over for Cheney and that impeachment is just around the bend. "Conyers said at a rally in San Diego on Friday that if three more Representatives sign on to cosponsor Kucinich's Impeachment bill he will formally begin the Impeachment Proceedings. Apparently fourteen cosponsors is not enough, but seventeen seems to be the magic number." If your congressmember isn't on this list, make a call or send a letter or e-mail. These are the co-sponsores of HR Res 333, which seeks to impeach Cheney:

Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
Maxine Waters (D-CA)
Hank Johnson (D-GA)
Keith Ellison (D-MN)
Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)
Barbara Lee (D-CA)
Albert Wynn (D-MD)
William Lacy Clay (D-MO)
Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
Jim McDermott (D-WA)
Jim Moran (D-VA)
Bob Filner (D-CA)
Sam Farr (D-CA)

Suggestions of congressmembers who are sympathetic to impeachment but who just need some urging from their constituents: Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Peter Welch (D-VT), Linda Sanchez (D-CA), John Sarbanes (D-MD), Betty Sutton (D-OH), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Paul Hodes (D-NH), Dave Loebsack (D-IA), Hilda Solis (D-CA), Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH), John Olver (D-MA), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Kathy Castor (D-FL), Gwen Moore (D-WI), Jesse Jackson, Jr (D-IL), Albio Sires (D-NJ), John Tierney (D-MA), Mike Honda (D-CA), Donald Payne (D-NJ), Ed Markey (D-MA), Jim McGovern (D-MA), Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Mike Capuano (D-MA).

INSTEAD OF LOOKING AT POLITICIANS' SEX LIVES, WE SHOULD BE EXAMINING THEIR LIBRARIES

Today's NY Times delves into the role of personal libraries in the lives of CEOs.

Personal libraries have always been a biopsy of power. The empire-loving Elizabeth I surrounded herself with the Roman historians, many of whom she translated, and kept one book under lock and key in her bedroom, in a French translation she alone of her court could read: Machiavelli’s treatise on how to overthrow republics, “The Prince.” Churchill retreated to his library to heal his wounds after being voted out of power in 1945-- and after reading for six years came back to power.

Over the years, the philanthropist and junk-bond king Michael R. Milken has collected biographies, plays, novels and papers on Galileo, the renegade who was jailed in his time but redeemed by history.

It took Dee Hock, father of the credit card and founder of Visa, a thousand books to find The One. Mr. Hock walked away from business life in 1984 and looked back only from his library’s walls. He built a dream 2,000-square-foot wing for his books in a pink stucco mansion atop a hill in Pescadero, Calif. He sat among the great philosophers and the novelists of Western life like Steinbeck and Stegner and dreamed up a word for what Visa is: “chaordic”-- complex systems that blend order and chaos.

In his library, Mr. Hock found the book that contained the thoughts of all of them. Visitors can see opened on his library table for daily consulting, Omar Khayyam’s “Rubáiyát,” the Persian poem that warns of the dangers of greatness and the instability of fortune.

I often write about what music inspires congressional candidates. The question doesn't always lead anywhere but sometimes music is fundamental in the lives of some of these guys and they answer with enough honesty and passion to help form some kind of an opinion about how they might behave in office. This week, for example, Jon Powers, a former school teacher turned Army Captain turned non-profit CEO turned congressional candidate, spoke eloquently and knowledgeably about music, as had Darcy Burner the week before and Jamie Eldridge the week before that.

Perhaps a glimpse into what books have been meaningful in politicians' lives would be revealing. Like Bush and Camus, not to mention the three Shakespeares? No, we have to expect honest reporting, not Rovian spin, if we're going to look at data and expect meaningful analysis.

The last legitimately elected U.S. president released a list of his 21 favorite books (alphabetically by author):

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," Maya Angelou.

"Meditations," Marcus Aurelius.

"The Denial of Death," Ernest Becker.

"Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963," Taylor Branch.

"Living History," Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"Lincoln," David Herbert Donald.

"The Four Quartets," T.S. Eliot.

"Invisible Man," Ralph Ellison.

"The Way of the World: From the Dawn of Civilizations to the Eve of the Twenty-First Century," David Fromkin.

"One Hundred Years of Solitude," Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

"The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes," Seamus Heaney.

"King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa," Adam Hochschild.

"The Imitation of Christ," Thomas a Kempis.

"Homage to Catalonia," George Orwell.

"The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis," Carroll Quigley.

"Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics," Reinhold Niebuhr.

"The Confessions of Nat Turner," William Styron.

"Politics as a Vocation," Max Weber.

"You Can't Go Home Again," Thomas Wolfe.

"Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny," Robert Wright.

"The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats," William Butler Yeats.

Make of it what you will, I would very much like to take a look at the personal libraries of his wife, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani (if it were screened for porn first), Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson.

Before the 2004 election, the Washington Monthly wrote about the pitfalls of candidates answering the question, "What's your favorite book?" (which, I want to note, is very different from answering the question, "May I have a few hours to browse your personal library?").

ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked Sen. John Edwards to name his favorite book. Edwards replied that it was I.F. Stone's The Trial of Socrates. On the surface, that seemed to hit just the right note. It's plausible that an ex-trial lawyer like Edwards would enjoy a book about the ultimate historical trial, and by choosing that particular title-- a serious inquiry written for a popular audience-- Edwards conveyed a sense of weightiness without appearing snobbish. But the choice also opened him up to criticism. Conservative commentator Bob Novak fumed on CNN's "Capital Gang": "That's incredible! Did Senator Edwards know that Izzy Stone was a lifelong Soviet apologist? Did he know of evidence that Stone received secret payments from the Kremlin?" Novak's rant illustrated how the slightest stumble on the book question can come back to hurt a candidate.

What a candidate chooses to read may seem like a small thing. Yet a person's literary tastes can be very revealing, as anyone who's ever scanned a stranger's bookshelf can attest. Book choices are especially prized by reporters, who use them as material for the narratives they write-- narratives that often define candidates in the eyes of voters. Remember Michael Dukakis? His phlegmatic 1988 campaign was perfectly symbolized by his choice of vacation reading: a book entitled Swedish Land-Use Planning. Even if you knew nothing else about the Massachusetts governor, this tidbit suggested he was solution-oriented, practical to a fault, and probably not the sort of guy who'd be a lot of fun to have a beer with. Which is, of course, exactly the person the Democrats got.

Because the book question is so fraught with peril, candidates have increasingly figured out that they need to game the system. That's evident on the campaign trail today where, reporters say, Democratic candidates are toting the perfect "safe" book: volume three of Robert Caro's award-winning biographical series on Lyndon Johnson, Master of the Senate. The book is popular, serious, and imparts just the sort of gravitas presidential aspirants seek. Like a guy who reads Dostoyevsky in Starbucks to attract women, many candidates seem to choose books designed to impress reporters--though reporters, like women, often see through the charade. Says USA Today political columnist Walter Shapiro (who first unearthed Dukakis's book choice), "The number whom I've seen carrying the Caro book is greater than the people who've actually read it or finished it."

...During the 1988 presidential race, the book question became de rigueur. After Shapiro exposed Dukakis's soporific choice, reporter Brit Hume asked Republican vice-presidential candidate Dan Quayle to identify any work of literature, art, or film he'd experienced in the previous two years that had had a particularly strong effect on him. Quayle rattled off three books, Richard Nixon's 1999: Victory Without War, Sen. Richard Lugar's Letters to the Next President, and Bob Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra, about the fall of the Russian empire. Fine books all. But rather than impart to Quayle the mien of wisdom he'd no doubt hoped for, his choices, which seemed several grade levels beyond his intellect, telegraphed his very desperation to be taken seriously-- the need for which was underscored later when Quayle remarked that Paul Johnson's Modern Times was "a very good historical book about history."

...In 2000, Bill Bradley staunchly refused to answer the book question, insisting it was irrelevant to his fitness for office. But even this non-answer proved revealing. It showed that Bradley considered himself above having to play the game. Which in turn reinforced the notion that he was aloof, a criticism that stuck and came to characterize the Bradley campaign, much as Dukakis's dullness had characterized his. In the end, even Bradley himself seemed to recognize this. When he withdrew from the race, he began his announcement speech by joking, "I want to begin this morning with a discussion of my favorite books."

Also in 2004 we got a look into what Bush and the various candidates vying to defeat him said they were reading.

George W. Bush
President George W. Bush's favorite books range from Texas history to criticism of 1960s counterculture. According to the website of the Arizona Republic, AZCentral.com, Bush's favorite books are The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston by Marquis James (Univ. of Texas Press); Robert J. Samuelson's The Good Life and Its Discontents: The American Dream in the Age of Entitlement (Vintage), a book that delves into the modern American psyche in regards to the "American Dream"; and The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass by Myron Magnet (Encounter), which argues that the honorable intentions of 1960s liberals produced tragic consequences by ultimately creating today's underclass.

Howard Dean
In terms of the Democratic candidates, Howard Dean's list of preferred books offers insight into the political and social philosophies of the former Vermont governor. In his memoir Winning Back America (S&S), Dean lists as one of his favorites Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (Metropolitan/Holt), a Top Ten July/August 2001 Book Sense 76 pick. Other titles noted were All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (Harvest), Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey (Penguin), To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Little, Brown), and Truman by David McCullough (S&S).

Wesley Clark
A spokesperson for retired Army general and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Wesley Clark cited Pat Conroy's The Great Santini (Bantam), a novel about a Marine fighter pilot and his family, as Clark's favorite book. In addition, Clark has authored Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat (PublicAffairs), which was followed up with the recent Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire (PublicAffairs), an analysis of the Iraqi occupation by the U.S.

John Edwards
North Carolina Senator John Edwards' choice of books bespeaks an interest in history. According to the Arizona Republic, Edwards favorite book is The Trial of Socrates by I.F. Stone (Anchor). Additionally, the senator appeared on the MSNBC special news show Hardball: Battle for the White House in October and told host Chris Matthews that he had just finished The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (Doubleday) and thought it was a "great book." Edwards, who is also an attorney, wrote Four Trials (S&S), an account of four of his courtroom experiences.

John Kerry
Massachusetts Senator John Kerry's campaign office told BTW that the senator recently read Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan (Random House) and that Trinity by Leon Uris (Bantam), an epic novel taking place during Ireland's struggle for independence, ranks as one of his favorites. In addition, the Arizona Republic's website lists Flags of Our Father, a nonfiction book about Iwo Jima by James Bradley and Ron Powers (Bantam), and Undaunted Courage, a biography of Meriwether Lewis that details the opening of the American West, by Stephen Ambrose Pierce (S&S), as favorites of Kerry's as well. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran who is now serving his fourth term in the Senate, wrote the autobiographical A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America (Viking Press) and The New War: The Web of Crime That Threatens America's Security (Touchstone), an overview of international crime published in 1998.

Dennis Kucinich
U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich's office told BTW that Kucinich favored the works of Studs Terkel and that the congressman had recently finished reading The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq by Christopher Scheer, Robert Scheer, and Lakshani Chaudhry (Seven Stories). Kucinich, who, in 1977, became mayor of Cleveland at the age of 31, is the author of A Prayer for America (Thunder's Mouth), a collection of speeches.

I took a look on some of the current presidential contenders' Facebook pages and saw their choices in literary diversion. John Edwards is still sticking with The Trial of Socrates but has added David Shipler's The Working poor: Invisible in America and Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer.

Obama, aside from the obligatory Bible chose Toni Morrison's