MAX BLUMENTHAL

I spent the hours before Kerry's speech chatting with a friend who's been researching the religious right for years about how maddening the Democrats' approach to countering their influence has been. For the most part, the Democrats' strategy has been incoherent, a blend of supine assimilation to the right's terms of the debate ("we believe in your god too"), and reactionary villification ("the religious right is a bunch of radical extremists"). Kerry and the party at large had yet to adhere to a well-planned strategy of direct confrontation, one which portrays the religious right to the American people as they are: bigoted theocrats whose agenda is anathema to the fundamental American values of religious freedom and as Kerry said, "our democracy itself." Not only did Kerry invoke the Founding Fathers, who manifested the Enlightenment in the Constitution, he invoked Lincoln -- and even Reagan. I'll let the Globe's Derrick Z. Jackson take it from here:

But faith has been another matter for the Democrats. Aside from Jimmy Carter in 1976, most polls show that the more that people go to church, the more they tend to vote Republican. Far more Republicans than Democrats believe, in a May Washington Post poll, that religious leaders should try to influence politics.

Bush has all but said that God has called him to invade Iraq, the most disastrous American action since Vietnam. For right or wrong, Bush joined the flag and faith at the hip and up to now the Democrats have been too afraid to question Bush's certainty in such matters.

But now, with the Muslim world and much of the rest of the world raging at our unilateralism, Kerry made a bold plea to question how certain God is that our actions in the world are right.

For those interested in learning more about the right-wing network in Western Pennsylvania, I've been made aware of a blog devoted entirely to the subject. A special focus of the blog is taking on the arch-conservative Pittsburgh radio host and Scaife mouthpiece, Fred Honsberger, who once said, "I give the truth from my perspective."
Also, Bill Berkowitz has informed me that the author the Tribune-Review's smear of Teresa Heinz is Ron Arnold, widely considered the father of the anti-environmental "wise-use" movement. Check out what Berkowitz has written about Arnold:

With friends in the Bush administration, a recent Playboy magazine interview under his belt, a series of radio appearances and PowerPoint presentations at industry-association gatherings, and a new anti-terrorism consulting contract, Arnold is back riding high in the anti-environmentalism saddle.

"Fifteen years after creating his 25 Point Wise-Use Agenda, an agenda prescribing unrestrained, unregulated and unconscionable abuse of the American commons, Ron Arnold is within striking distance of checking off every agenda item on his list," Scott Silver, executive director of Wild Wilderness, told me in a recent interview.

Arnold is no novice when it comes to leveling charges that environmentalists are eco-terrorists. Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber point out in their new book Banana Republicans (Tarcher/Penguin, 2004) that Arnold "has been tossing around the term eco-terrorism for years, defining it as 'any crime committed in the name of saving nature,' which 'includes but it not limited to crimes officially designated as 'terrorism' by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.' This definition... is so broad," Rampton and Stauber write, "that is even includes activities such as sit-ins and other forms of peaceful civil disobedience."

Read my latest at Alternet.org. Here's the teaser:

Colin McNickle, the political wife-beater for billionnaire Richard Mellon-Scaife's right-wing attack machine, has set his sights on Teresa Heinz-Kerry – good thing she's willing to stand up to it.

I hear Jerry Falwell will deliver the opening invocation of the Republican Convention. Am I right? I hope so.

Sorry I've been away from my blog for so many hours. I know there's so few "liberal bloggers" to choose from so you must have really missed me. I've been working on a piece for Alternet that will hopefully set the record straight on the "shove it" incident.
The cable company snuck into my yard today and cut my cable, so I missed Al Sharpton and had to watch a blurry John Edwards with a good, old Democratic antennae. But I've caught every other minute of the convention. Here are a few thoughts:
--John Edwards affirmed the Dems' commitment to "a safe and secure Israel" but unlike Bush invariably does, did not mention any commitment "a free and democratic Palestine." Why the omission? Is he trying to run to the right of Bush on the issue? Or is he saying a Kerry administration will not impose onerous demands on the Palestinian Authority? We may find out.
--John Edwards struck an unequivocably positive tone in his address tonight. Who could possibly characterize his speech as a scathing attack? Well, the Boston Herald managed to.
--My neighbor Tony hates Al Sharpton but came over to my house for the first time in over a year to tell me what a great speech he gave. Wish my cable didn't get cut. Donate to this site and help me get my cable back on.
--Howard Dean appeared disaffected and out of place in his speech. I found it distasteful for the DNC to impose such strict rules on the floor that Dean supporters couldn't wave Dean signs. On the other hand, the sober tone of Dean's speech could suggest that he envisions the party tilting in his direction in the future; perhaps he did not want to expend any energy on behalf of someone else, especially John Kerry, whose campaign employed some really underhanded tactics against Dean in Iowa. Tonight Dean was on PBS with Jim Lehrer trying to de-stigmatize the word "liberal" while bragging about his NRA endorsement.
--I never cared for Teresa Heinz Kerry in the past, but the more I learn about her and see her in action, the more I'm beginning to like her. Her internationalism seems like more than a posture.
--I have yet to find anything edifying about reading credentialed bloggers (of course there are a few notable exceptions). Amid all the convention fun they seem to have no time to research and even less time to write. Wonkette Ann-Marie Cox is just an annoying presence on TV (how many times can she say the word "like" in a sentence?") She reminds me of all the girls I went to college with who dressed up like cats for Halloween parties. Mickey Kaus reminds me of all the guys I went to college with who stayed home from Halloween parties and played pocket pool.
--The most brilliant phrase in Barack Obama's speech was, "In the red states, we don't want federal agents poking around in our libraries." What a clever way to appeal to the libertarian sensibility of Republicans in the West and in New Hampshire. It's ironic that the liberal son of an African immigrant threw more red meat rhetoric to former supporters of Helen Chenoweth and Pat Buchanan than Bush will be able to do at the RNC. Considering that both Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum and the ACLU oppose the Patriot Act, civil liberties is clearly a wedge issue this year.
--Why do the Republicans have to do everything in secret from undisclosed locations? I'd love to answer my own question but I'm running out now to see "Maria, Full of Grace," a film about Colombian drug mules. After watching three days of the convention, a little dose of realism couldn't hurt.
(By the way, some of you have complained that my blog is hard to access; that's because blogger.com often screws up url's. Try http://maxblumenthal.blogspot.com without the "www" next time you have trouble).

After watching hours of brain-dead coverage of the Tereza Heinz-Kerry "Shove It" incident, I've become so incensed I feel like chewing on aluminum cans and driving through plate glass windows. I have yet to see a single pundit on any network even hypothesize about what might motivate Heinz-Kerry to go out of her way to tell a reporter off. She's just being her good old "cantankerous" self, they say in a near-mantra.
Well, it was not just any reporter who she told to shove it, it was Colin McNickle, the editorial page editor of right-wing sugardaddy Richard Mellon-Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. It was McNickle who, in December, 2003, arranged to run a smear-piece claiming Heinz-Kerry was "secretively" granting money to:

"extreme left-wing activist groups whose interests include exclusion of humans from both public and private lands, anti-war protests, opposition to free trade, banning of firearms, abolition of the death penalty, unlimited abortion rights, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender advocacy, as well as and environmental extremism."

Whoa! Pretty extreme. Take away the Orwellian language and that sounds like a list of mainstream liberal causes. And upon close examination, what the article actually claims is that the Heinz Foundation -- which Teresa does not directly oversee -- granted money to a group that granted money to groups that are liberal or left-wing.
Moreover, the article was based on research conducted by the Capital Research Center, a right-wing think tank funded by none other than Richard Mellon-Scaife. The Tribune-Review failed to disclose this fact.
No pundit I watched has explained just who McNickle is. New York Daily News gossip columnist Lloyd Grove went on MSNBC and said of McNickle, "He's basically a straight reporter, someone who used to work for the newswires AP and UPI." Nevermind that UPI is owned by Sun Myung Moon; the fact that Grove missed is that McNickle is basically the non-union version of Ann Coulter. For a glimpse of McNickle's work, read his screed against "creeping Socialism," in which he rails against The New Deal, calls Pennsylvania's centrist Democrat governor Ed Rendell "a Socialist" and journalist Harold Meyerson a "Marxist" (it was Rendell who told Heinz-Kerry that McNickle was with the Tribune-Review).
McNickle ends that piece with a quote from Austrian author Friedrich Hayek, an Austrian aristocrat credited with providing the intellectual inspiration for the American conservative movement. Hayek's ideological soulmate and fellow conservative pioneer, Alfred Jay Nock, was a hysterical anti-Semite who hated the masses and hated FDR. Could it be that it was Hayek and Nock's ideas -- and by extension, McNickle's -- that Heinz-Kerry called "un-American?" And how are their ideas anything but un-American? Just asking.

If you can't beat em, join em. That's Robinson's strategy to get elected with no credentials and black skin in North Carolina's neo-Confederate 5th District. From cyber-rag Human Events:

If nominated, he is likely to be elected: North Carolina's 5th District, which GOP Rep. Richard Burr is giving up to run for the Senate, is strongly Republican. If elected, Robinson would become the first black Republican to represent a former Confederate state since Reconstruction.

Robinson's outspoken conservatism has attracted platoons of passionate volunteers, including many Young Republicans and College Republicans. He ran radio spots featuring recordings of Bill Cosby's much-publicized critique of why some black schoolchildren fail and said he taught his own children the very themes of hard work and self-reliance Cosby advocates.

In a development that attracted national attention, early Robinson backer Jack Kemp dropped his support when Robinson campaigned for strict enforcement of immigration laws. In one Robinson radio ad, the narrator said: "The aliens are coming and they're not from spaceships" as the theme from the "Twilight Zone" played in the background. In the ad, Robinson vowed to "safeguard our borders, cut off all welfare, and, once and for all, make English the official language."

Thank you, Bill Cosby. By airing your intra-racial grievances to White America, you have given Vernon Robinson a way to convince the far-right that he should be allowed in the Big House.

After reading the Ann Coulter column USA Today spiked, it becomes obvious that it was spiked because it was unfunny and juvenile, not because it was in any way controversial.
Word is she'll be replaced by Jonah Goldberg. Then she'll have more time for martinis with Hitchens.

I watched both MSNBC and CNN's Kerry docs tonight. Since I knew little about Kerry's history with Vets Against the War, I found the MSNBC feature fascinating. Especially dramatic was footage of Kerry's appearance on the Dick Cavett show in a debate against John O'Neill, a pro-war vet groomed by Chuck Colson to act as Kerry's foil.
O'Neil attacked like an unwieldly bludgeon, launching angry broadsides while Kerry was cool-tempered and sharp-witted, winning a round of laughter from the crowd when O'Neil asked him what his basis for accusing US troops of war crimes in Vietnam was. "The Geneva Convention. Perhaps you have heard of it," Kerry replied (Even as an old man, O'Neill can't seem to get over his humiliation, nor can the GOP seem to stop relying on him to dampen Kerry's impact).
Does the O'Neil/Kerry debate presage this fall's debates? MSNBC's doc seemed to suggest as much by showing footage of a swaggering, gum-chewing 25-year-old G.W. Bush cheering O'Neil's speech at the 1972 convention. If Kerry can provoke Bush and keep him off balance with a withering attack, perhaps Bush will resort to irrational anger. Bill Clinton believed Bush's bad temperament was a greater liability than his inarticulateness, and before the 2000 debates he advised Al Gore to provoke Bush's anger by taunting him about his "daddy."
I did not find CNN's documentary nearly as compelling as MSNBC's. By endeavoring to tell Kerry's life story in about 45 minutes, the film wound up glossing over major details and relying too heavily on soundbites from a scattershot of talking heads. The most egregious of the film's omissions was Kerry's heroic investigations into Iran-Contra and BCCI during the 1980's and early 90's. Though the film alluded to the investigations briefly, they were put into context by Bob Dole, who called Kerry a partisan always out "to hurt Republicans." To learn about Kerry's battle with BCCI, the most thorough account is the book "Outlaw Bank." For a quick but vivid recounting of Kerry's investigations, I also recommend this column.
By the way, I happened to meet two consultants who worked on the John Kerry bio-doc scheduled to show at the Democratic convention this week. They were veterans of the Corazon Aquino campaign in the Phillippines, Ed Rendell's campaigns for Philadelphia mayor and Pennsylvania governor, and Coke's campaign to recover from its devastating "New Coke" venture. In each campaign, they said, their clients succeeded because they affected the image of the insurgent or underdog. So naturally, the John Kerry bio will depict him as an insurgent, too.

At the book party last Thursday for Justin Frank's psychoanalysis of Dubya, "Bush on the Couch," (it's a good poolside read I bet, though I haven't been by the side of a pool for years) I had a chance to talk to Arianna Huffington and hear her insights on her former recall rival, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Even though she had yet to read the results of a recent poll showing Arnold's approval ratings plummetting largely because of his juvenile handling of a grinding budget battle, Arianna insisted he was an actor in "a Greek tragedy." The media went soft on him during the recall, she said, and now that he is facing political opposition for the first time, he is no longer the genial, charming uniter who swept into Sacramento with a smile -- he's an ogre.
If you live in rural or suburban California, it's not unlikely that you'll meet Arnold in the coming days; he's on a statewide tour of supermarkets to rally support for his draconian budget (no taxes, Social Darwinist spending cuts) and to grope for his previous levels of popularity. But with no budget in sight and money drying up for programs and institutions Californians have taken for granted for generations, it seems the honeymoon is over.

I don't usually respond to what other bloggers write, but I found Kevin Drum's post painting "those animal rights folks" as extremists who support killing scientists too absurd to leave alone. Beyond Drum's employment of a vintage McCarthyite tactic, highlighting the isolated remark of an extremist as emblematic of an entire movement, I don't understand why he feels compelled to attack the animal rights movement in the first place. As if progressive values and the humane treatment of animals are mutually exclusive.
For those of you with even cursory knowledge of my background, you know I grew up in an ardently Democratic family. But despite the fact that politics dominated my home life, I would credit growing up in Takoma, DC, near the left-wing bastion of Takoma Park, Maryland, with my initial politicization. It was there that I became exposed to the animal rights movement through literature available in local lefty bookstores and in turn, I came to understand how anathema corporate practices -- vivisection, factory farming, etc. -- were to my fundamental understanding of ethics and morality. I was keenly aware there was an extremist current within the animal rights movement which was analogous to the militant Operation Rescue wing of the anti-abortion movement; however, it was also clear to me and it should be clear to everyone that the mainstream animal rights movement is rooted in the ideas of liberal ethicists like Peter Singer, who, by the way, has written a decent book about the ethics of George Bush.
No movement should cede itself to extremists -- Democrats included. So I don't see why, simply because the Democratic party must rely on Wall Street to fund its candidates, even Democratic activists (ie. bloggers) feel compelled to cede traditional progressive values to corporate extremism in order to appear moderate and grounded. I'm not saying progressive Dems should even go as far as becoming vegetarian. But I do think it's time for those who profess to care about human rights and the well-being of the less fortunate to recognize that the fast-food industry, cosmetic industry and biotech industry's treatment of animals is not only unethical, it's unnecessary. I'll leave Kevin Drum with this portrait of a KFC chicken processing factory:

PETA said its investigator saw workers at the plant "ripping birds' beaks off, spray painting their faces, twisting their heads off, spitting tobacco into their mouths and eyes, and tying their legs together for 'laughs.'"

It also said there was footage showing workers "stomping live chickens for fun," drop-kicking live chickens and throwing the birds at doors, walls, and other employees .

PETA selected the plant in part because it was a major supplier to KFC, formerly known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, a longtime target of the animal rights group.

I understand there is now a congressional investigation into Pilgrim's Pride. Check out Kentucky Fried Cruelty. And ask yourself: do you really want to eat chickens that have been tormented? One simple thing non-vegetarians can do is eat free range chicken and eggs -- it tastes better and it's better for you.

I've been catching a lot of flak for calling Linda Rondstadt a "godawful" singer. Dena thinks she "has a nice voice" (I can't argue that one, Dena) and Bill Babiskin reminds me that,

"linda ronstadt did pirates of penzance on broadway with kevin kline, george rose, rex smith, estelle parsons. she was fantastic and it was one of best shows ever. good bye old friend is a terrific song. so is "a long long time."
even sinatra recorded a few lousy songs."

Since I don't know who my readers are, I can't please everybody. So while we may not share the same musical taste, I want to introduce something I think we can all agree on, since we all presumably like a good book and we want to support progressive causes. By joining The Progressive Book Club, you can do both, and for far less than you'd spend at Border's or on Amazon.com (full disclosure: this is my mother's new venture).
The word on the street is that the first thousand people to sign up get a free DVD of "The Hunting of the President." And of course, a percentage of each purchase goes to your choice of progressive organizations. It's kind of like the phone service Working Assets runs, except it's not a total scam.

As if things couldn't get any darker in Israel and occupied Palestine, Ha'aretz is reporting that Jewish extremists are threatening to crash a plane into the Temple Mount to sabotage Sharon's Gaza pullout.
This is yet another reminder that any and all brands of religious extremism can fuel terrorism -- not just radical Islam. 

The Republican party is a big, walk-in closet. That fact wouldn't matter if these folks weren't such a bunch of gay-bashers. But they are, so even the former head of the Florida Christian Coalition is fair game. I'm referring to John Dowless (above), a virulently homophobic Pat Robertson cadre and former staffer to anti-gay GOP Senate candidate Mel Martinez. The Washington Blade has broken the story:

It was about 10 p.m. on the evening of April 2 when a man called "Sam" entered the Lava Lounge, a gay bar in Orlando.

Sam, a gay resident of Washington, D.C., was in Orlando on business, and went out to meet a friend for drinks. After ordering a beer, Sam bumped into a former colleague from Washington, someone he describes as "a well-placed political operative."

When Sam asked the man how he liked working in Florida, the man replied that politics in the state was "weird."

"How so?" Sam wanted to know.

"He began telling me about this guy who used to be the head of the Christian Coalition," Sam said. "He said the guy is gay and out, and goes to the gay bars all the time, but is involved in all this anti-gay political campaigning. That struck me as incredibly hypocritical."

Twenty minutes later, John Dowless walked into the Lava Lounge.

"The guy I used to know from D.C. pointed Dowless out to me, and I made it a point to go over and meet him," Sam said. "I was just so intrigued that someone could play both sides of the fence this way."

Dowless identified himself as gay and conflicted about how to reconcile his sexual orientation with his religion and his political beliefs, according to Sam, whose account of Dowless' statements that evening was witnessed by a Washington Blade editor, who was also present.
(snip)
"When he admitted that he uses homosexuality as a weapon to win campaigns, I got the feeling this guy was not just struggling with the issue of being gay and Christian,” Sam said. "I felt maybe he's a ticking time bomb."
(snip)
But Dowless didn't let their difference of opinions stop him from making a pass, Sam said.

"John [Dowless] made it very clear he was interested in me, that he found me attractive," Sam said. "I just told him I was out with friends and couldn't get away to spend the evening with him. Then he said he wanted to see me again."
(snip)
Throughout his career, both at the Christian Coalition and after, Dowless has had a long history of pushing an anti-gay agenda.

As far back as 1994, Dowless, then the director of the Christian Coalition of Florida, was quoted in the New York Times opposing the popular Gay Days event at Disney World in Orlando because it allegedly was a threat to kids.

"This whole day is focusing on sex," Dowless was quoted as saying, "and when you put these elements together, there is the greater possibility of illegal activities on children or some harassment."

In 1997, Dowless, still in his role as director of the state's Christian Coalition, cheered when the University of Florida rescinded a student spouse ID card that had been given to the partner of a lesbian student. The card gave spouses of students special advantages, such as use of the university's libraries and recreational facilities.

"Marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman," Dowless told the Alligator, the student publication.

In 1998, Dowless successfully blocked a move by the state legislature to write the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into the state Constitution. The move would have prohibited discrimination based on a variety of attributes, including gender.

This revelation may have cost Dowless his job at a right-wing consulting firm; his bio has been recently removed from Millenium Marketing's web page. 

The latest conglomeration of neo-con troglodytes, The Committee On Present Danger, has hired an interesting managing director: Peter Hannaford, a former lobbyist for numerous African despots and Austrian neo-Nazi leader Jorg Haider.
I guess the enemy of my enemy is friend. Or is it the friend of my enemy is my friend? I'm confused since Jorg Haider was friends with Saddam Hussein. Help me out, Mr. Woolsey.

Danny "The News Dissecter" Schecter's MediaChannel.org has issued an interesting report comparing the level of the mainstream media's attention to the Kerry campaign to its attention to Bush's.
According to the study, all major networks have curtailed their coverage of Kerry significantly in the past months. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though, since Bush is garnering mostly negative coverage these days. And Kerry should be able to return to the headlines this week with the convention.

In a 45-minute interview with the Army Times, John Kerry tackled questions about the stop-loss policy, the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and the Defense budget. He also lambasted Wolfowitz and reiterated his call for Rumsfeld's resignation.
Whether you agree with his responses or not -- and he was being cautious -- it's clear this is a candidate who is more comfortable with foreign policy and national security issues than any Democrat since Kennedy. I'd hesitate to call Kerry "well-briefed," as reporters often describe Bush, because Kerry's knowledge of the military comes from years of experience on the Senate foreign relations and intelligence committees, not from prepared talking points.
An aside: I'd be curious to hear Kerry's response to a question about Iyad Allawi, a GOP-backed assassin whom he will probably have to work with if he's elected.

Now that bounty hunter and accused torturer Keith Idema's cover is blown, and now that Idema's claim that he worked with the Army has been proven true -- a total embarassment to the Pentagon, which had vociferously denied it -- it's worth harkening back to 2001. That is the year he arrived in Afghanistan claiming to be a humanitarian worker. And that is the year his cover should have been blown when this article appeared in the Fayetteville Online:

Idema, who was reached via satellite phone last week in Afghanistan, would not talk about exactly what he was doing.

‘‘I am working with the northern alliance,’’ he said.

He said he arrived in Afghanistan about a month ago to help build landing zones and drop zones so that airdropped food shipments could reach their targets safely.

A California-based organization, Knightsbridge International, is trying to make sure the food remains unspoiled and gets into the hands of starving Afghans, particularly before the start of a usually brutal winter.

The organization describes itself as a ‘‘not-for-profit corporation’’ dedicated to providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief worldwide.

Idema said he was also working with other nongovernmental aid groups, like Washington-based Partners International.

The article also hints at Idema's extensive criminal background, which includes fraud and countless bogus lawsuits. There have been many stories on Idema over the years -- he even appeared once on National Geographic; I'm only posting this particular article to show that he should have aroused suspicion early on and that there are probably many Keith Idema's throughout the world posing as NGO workers and US soldiers.
All Idema did was live the fantasy of so many Soldier of Fortune subscribers.

Dan Briody's book, "The Halliburton Agenda," is out. You can read an excerpt here.

Before I step up to the plate for Linda Ronstadt, I want to make myself clear: she is one of the most godawful singers I've ever heard. I mean, that syrupy schlock ballad she did with Aaron Neville in 1987, "I Don't Know Much," practically ruined my childhood. So I'd be more than happy to hear that some slot-addicted hicks from West Yehuvitzville heckled her and chased her off stage solely because she sucks. However, the fact that:
A. The owners of the casino removed her and banned her from ever returning simply because she dedicated a song to Michael Moore, and
B. That the initial reports about the incident which claimed she was chased off stage by a mob of angry Republicans are probably false,
are enough to make me want to stand up and cheer the next time I hear "Love Is A Rose."
The idea that right-wing business owners must censor someone as benign as Linda Ronstadt shows just how vulnerable Republicans feel this year. It also seems to say that Republicans think Bush is too weak to defend himself from a muzak-singing, has-been like Rondstadt.
As Bush gropes for Kerry's weak points, his campaign has become a desultory assault against Rondstadt and other forgotten members of the "Hollywood elite," especially Whoopi Goldberg, who hasn't had a major film role in nearly a decade. Check Bush out at a fundraiser on Tuesday:

Bush hammered away at Kerry, chastising him again for the nasty tone expressed at a New York fundraiser this month in which celebrities called the president a "thug" and comedian Whoopi Goldberg mocked Bush's name as a sexual innuendo.

He described the event as Kerry reaching out to his base, "his Hollywood friends."

"Evidently things got a little out of hand," Bush said. "My name came up a few times. Now the senator refuses to release a tape of that whole enchanted evening. Could be that his friends who he said represent the heart and soul of America actually embarrassed themselves and the candidate."

Hollywood liberals have become so threatening to Bush that he's forced to respond to their attacks instead of John Kerry's. How pathetic would Bill Clinton have looked if, in 1996, he spent his time and energy attacking Rush Limbaugh instead of countering Bob Dole? Clinton never went after Dole's surrogates, and I don't think he attacked Dole's running mate, Jack Kemp, one single time. But in recent weeks it seems Bush has been attacking John Edwards more than he has John Kerry. That's the mark of a desperate candidate battling a cautious and highly disciplined opponent.
One more thing. To whom exactly does Bush refer to when he lambastes the "Hollywood elite?" Could he perhaps be making a subtle reference to Jews? This might play well in auditoriums across middle-America, but somehow I don't think we'll be hearing Bush blast Hollywood at the next AIPAC conference.

Lou Sheldon's Traditional Values Coalition has published its latest piece of hilariously medieval Talibangelist propaganda, "Psychiatry and the Homosexual Agenda." The "report" blasts the American Psychiatric Association for removing homosexuality from their list of mental disorders. According to Sheldon's folks, they did it because psychiatrists are secretly gay:

"The removal of homosexuality as a disordered behavior was accomplished by closeted homosexuals inside the APA (and pro-homosexual psychiatrists) as well as radical homosexual groups outside of the APA."

Lou Sheldon isn't just some right-wing fringe figure, he's the jolly, grandfatherly guy standing next to Rick Santorum and Jerry Falwell, beaming down on Bush in the now-infamous photo of Bush signing the late-term abortion ban.

My libertarian sensibility leads me to believe that the government should stay out of our underpants, our library accounts, our homes, and should respect our right have a gun if (for some reason I can't understand) we want to get one.
But there is really no rational way to explain why anybody should be legally allowed to acquire an assault weapon. If the Columbine High massacre didn't make it clear what assault weapons do, then read what the US Army Medical Department has documented.
So I'm urging everybody to sign Tom Mauser's petition to renew the assault weapons ban. Tom's 15-year-old son, Daniel Mauser, (shown above) was one of 13 people murdered at Columbine High with a Tech-9.
I also want to make an appeal for support for Joanna Conti's campaign for congress (this is my first campaign endorsement). Conti is challenging right-wing wacko Rep. Tom Tancredo in Colorado's 6th district and by all accounts, she has a serious shot of taking him out.
Tancredo was at his home, just blocks from Columbine High, when the Columbine massacre occurred. Nevertheless, he is fervently opposing renewing the assault weapons ban. He is also the most virulently xenophobic, demagogic politician in the United States, a full-blooded fascist who vocally supports anti-immigrant vigilante groups who patrol the US/Mexico border with assault weapons. And though Tancredo supported the invasion of Iraq, he also supported the People's MEK, a cult-like terrorist group financed by Saddam Hussein. Tancredo is vulnerable and he must be defeated.  

Here's the latest installment of "As if I didn't already know Bush is a maniac," but what the hell, it's damn amusing to read this stuff. Here's what one of Bush's college professors has to say about his former student:

Tsurumi said he particularly recalls Bush’s right-wing extremism at the time, which he said was reflected in off-hand comments equating the New Deal of the 1930s with socialism and the corporation-regulating Securities and Exchange Commission with “an enemy of capitalism.”

“I vividly remember that he made a comment saying that people are poor because they’re lazy,” Tsurumi said.

Tsurumi also said Bush displayed a sense of arrogance about his prominent family, including his father, former U.S. President George H.W. Bush.

“[George W. Bush] didn’t stand out as the most promising student, but...he made it sure we understood how well he was connected,” Tsurumi said. “He wasn’t bashful about how he was being pushed upward by Dad’s connections.”

Tsurumi said that the younger Bush boasted that his father’s political string-pulling had gotten him to the top of the waiting list for the Texas National Guard instead of serving in Vietnam. When other students were frantically scrambling for summer jobs, Tsurumi said, Bush explained that he was planning instead for a visit to his father in Beijing, where the senior Bush was serving at the time as the special U.S. envoy to China.

If you can prove Joseph Wilson is a liar, Michael Turner will give you $200. It's that simple. All you have to do is:

(1) identify the sources with the full, in-context, direct quotes from both Wilson and from the person who demonstrates that he knew he was not telling the truth,

(2) copy, paste, supply URLs,

(3) send it off to leap@gol.com. (If that bounces, try turner@idiom.com)

So far, nobody's been able to claim the money, not even Susan Schmidt.

For any advocate of progressive change in this country, the way in which Ralph Nader is running his campaign and the nature of the support he is getting should be deeply alienating. Despite Nader's half-hearted disavowals of right-wing Republican support, that support continues to heighten and Nader continues to amplify his attacks on the Democrats.
Nader supporters like to say that his campaign is oblivious to the wealth of right-wing assistance he is receiving; but it's hard to deny that Nader has tacitly coordinated an assault not only on Democratic aspirations but on the Democratic party in general -- particularly its progressive wing.
Advocates of progessive change need to ask themselves just what is more harmful: Kerry muting his liberal appeal in a play for swing votes, or Nader allowing himself to be used as a Trojan Horse for the Bush/Cheney campaign and various right-wing social causes. As I showed in my piece, "Nader's Dubious Raiders," (I am not responsible for the corny title) Nader's bid for the Arizona ballot was not only aided by covert right-wing money, by colluding with Republican petition companies, the Nader campaign may have inadvertently helped an anti-immigrant ballot initiative get more signatures.
Here's a press release from The Nader Factor that includes an extensive catalog of instances of right support for Nader, and describes Nader's collusion with the right. My work is cited at length:

"It bothers me if (the Republican support) is organized,'' Nader said.
"We don't accept that kind of effort. ... but it's the Democrats who
have actually obstructed us.''
The San Francisco Chronicle, July 17, 2004.

“The Nader campaign has not asked for Bush supporters' help, is not
coordinating it and does not condone it in any state. The campaign does
not want to participate in a Republican plan to hurt Kerry, Zeese (Nader
Communication’s Director) said.”
The Associated Press, July, 2004


Based on recent reports, increasing evidence suggests that Republicans
– state parties, Republican activists and conservative groups – are
organizing, raising funds and collecting signatures for Nader’s candidacy
in targeted battleground states. The purpose of the
“Republicans-for-Nader” strategy is to help Nader qualify on the ballot in as many
battleground states as possible and use his candidacy to pull votes from John
Kerry.

A review of recent press reports illustrates an array of troubling
incidents that seem to suggest a growing effort by Republicans to help
Nader do what he cannot do alone.

- Targeted Battleground Efforts: Republicans have launched concerted,
coordinated and well-crafted efforts to boost Nader’s ability to get on
the ballot in Arizona, Oregon, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin,
Pennsylvania, and Florida;

- Right-Wing Contributions: Republicans are responsible for 1 in 10 of
Nader’s donations over $1000. One of Nader’s prominent donors is a Bush
Ranger, who raised more than $200,000 for the Bush campaign.

- Green lighting Republicans-for-Nader: The Nader campaign has
“flip-flopped” – formally accepting Republican state party support in Michigan.
By accepting Republican help in Michigan in order to qualify for the
ballot, Nader has effectively “green-lighted” similar right-wing efforts
across all battleground states.

While it is remains unclear whether Nader will indeed see his name on
any of these state ballots (the effort failed, for example, in Arizona
and Indiana) it now appears that with organized Republican assistance,
Nader could again prove to be a decisive factor in the 2004 election. In
fact, what is so shocking is the depth of involvement of the right-wing
in the Nader campaign. As the following actions highlight, the
right-wing Republican effort is comprehensive, substantial, and determined to
use Nader as a tool to help George Bush and continue his
administration's destructive radical policies.

A. Right Wing Provides Contributions

The San Francisco Chronicle published a thorough auditing of Nader's
campaign contributions. Based on their review, nearly 10 percent of
donations over $1,000 to the Nader campaign came from people who had also
given to the Bush-Cheney re-election committee or other Republican
causes.

Businessweek and The Boston Globe also reported that a top Bush
fundraiser and billionaire, former Ambassador Dick Egan, has “maxed” out to
Nader's campaign. Egan, a Bush Ranger, raised more than $200,000 for the
president and served as Ambassador to Ireland. Overall, tens of
thousands dollars have been contributed to Nader by Republicans who have
already contributed to the Bush campaign. Additional analysis will be
forthcoming as Nader’s campaign FEC quarterly report is submitted.

B. Right-Wing Actions in Oregon

On June 27, the Oregon chapter of Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) -
led nationally by former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey – funded
an aggressive field program to help Nader qualify for the Oregon
ballot. CSE conducted “robo-calls” calling on Republicans to help Nader meet
the 1000 person convention requirement in the state. As the robo-call
states,

"Nader could peel away a lot of Kerry support in Oregon ... Liberals
are trying to unite (but) we could divide this base of support" by
signing up for Nader.

Because questions still remain over the convention signatures, Nader’s
campaign has begun collecting signatures again state-wide in Oregon -
their 3rd attempt to get on the ballot. No updates are available as to
whether the GOP’s help during the convention resulted in enough
signatures to put Nader soundly on the ballot.

According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Citizen’s for a Sound Economy’s
national spokesman has vowed to use its power to collect signatures for
Nader in Wisconsin and Florida and will activate its 10,000 members in
Pennsylvania if necessary.

C. Anti-Immigration Proponents helped Nader in Arizona

While Nader was unsuccessful in getting on the state’s ballot (largely
because of a lawsuit by the Democratic Party), The American Prospect
uncovered that in its effort to get on the ballot in Arizona, “the Nader
campaign hired a petition company that is also gathering signatures for
a draconian anti-immigrant initiative pushed by right-wing elements in
the state. The initiative, called Protect Arizona Now (PAN), would
restrict access to public services by undocumented immigrants.”

In addition, according to the Prospect, “the Nader campaign was
assisted in its petition drive by… the ultra-conservative former executive
director of the Arizona Republican Party, Nathan Sproul. Sources say
Sproul -- who is also spearheading an initiative to block public funding
from political campaigns in the state -- made payments to the petition
contractors working on his public-funding initiative to gather signatures
for Nader as well.”

Nader's Arizona ballot bid began with an attempt to contract with Arno
Political Consultants, a California-based Republican consulting firm
which has handled past ballot-qualification efforts for Ronald Reagan and
George H. W. Bush. Arno's client list includes Occidental Petroleum,
Phillip Morris, and Wal-Mart.

Arno refused the contract and referred the Nader campaign to Jenny
Breslyn, owner of the Florida-based petition contractor JSM Inc. who was
already in Arizona to oversee PAN's ballot-qualification effort.
Breslyn's signature gatherers bundled Nader's petitions with the PAN petitions
-- resulting in thousands of signatures from Republicans. In fact, a
review of Nader’s signatures by a the Arizona Democratic Party found that
of the more than 21,000 signatures Nader garnered, 65 percent came from
Republicans.

D. JSM and Fraud

Two petition workers for JSM, the firm hired in Arizona and Nevada to
collect petition signatures for the Nader campaign were recently accused
of forging ballot-initiative petitions in Florida, According to Florida
Today.

On July 3, the paper reported that Bradley Adam Ables and Shannon
O'Conner Bartholomew were “charged with scheming to defraud, grand theft,
and uttering a forged document. Authorities say Florida company JSM
Incorporated hired Ables in February to collect signatures on four different
petitions, paying him between one and two dollars per signature.”

E. Michigan Republicans Helping Nader

On Thursday, July 8, the Associated Press in Michigan reported that
state Democratic Party officials claimed Republicans were helping Nader
collect enough signatures to qualify for Michigan 's ballot. In a news
conference, Democratic Executive Chairman Mark Brewer said, "This clearly
shows that a vote for Ralph Nader is a vote to re-elect George Bush.
The Republicans know that, and that's why they are desperate to have
Nader on the Michigan ballot."

Although Nader said he hoped to get on the state ballot through the
Reform Party, Michigan Republican Party officials handed in 43,000
petition signatures -- far more than the 30,000 needed -- to ensure Nader is
on the ballot regardless of whether he gets the Reform Party nomination.
Although the Nader campaign said late last week it would not accept the
help of Republicans, yesterday, the campaign reversed itself, accepting
all of the signatures.

Brewer said he thinks the state GOP exceeded a state political party
campaign limit of $5,000 in helping Nader get on the ballot.

F. Nevada and GOP Political Consultant Steve Wark

Nevada conservative Republican political consultant raved to the Las
Vegas Review Journal that he had raised $30,000 from Republicans through
“Choices for America” to help Nader qualify on the state’s ballot
solely to help President Bush's re-election campaign.
"Please join me in this gallant effort to give our President the best
chance possible of winning in November," said one GOP e-mail.
The Nader campaign turned in more than 11,000 signatures -- more than
double the number of names of registered voters required from
independent candidates.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported further that Nader's campaign
spokesman denied that Wark had worked or subcontracted with Nader's paid
signature-collectors in that state. But, Wark told the Chronicle he had
worked with Orange County-based operatives of Nader's signature
gathering firm, JSM, "to make sure the i's were dotted and the t's were
crossed.'' He also claimed to have solicited the funds to pay them.

Wark also said GOP loyalists in other swing states were also helping
Nader's cause: "The party itself, in places like Michigan, is taking an
active role in this,'' he said.

G. What’s up in West Virginia?

Kanawha County’s prosecutor has just announced he will investigate
whether people gathering signatures for Mr. Nader’s campaign in the state
are doing so legally.

Earlier this month, The Charleston Gazette reported that signature
gatherers at a Charleston grocery asked people to sign a petition to "get a
minority on the ballot.'' The men would not identify the candidate. In
other areas, signature gatherers wouldn’t identify themselves or
identified themselves as Bush supporters. Still, others would disclose they
were working for Nader, but not the name of the petition company. (JSM?)

Nader must collect the signatures of 12,962 registered voters by Aug.
2.

According to the AP, “The Nader campaign has not asked for Bush
supporters' help, is not coordinating it and does not condone it in any state.
The campaign does not want to participate in a Republican plan to hurt
Kerry, Zeese said.”

Just after anti-war demonstrators won the right not to be enclosed in metal cages in New York this August, an entirely different group won special permission to demonstrate directly outside both the Democratic and Republican conventions. They are Faith and Action and the Christian Defense Coalition, two groups run by former members of the hardline anti-abortion group, Operation Rescue. Most recently, these groups planned last year's raucous Judge Roy Moore/Ten Commandments demonstrations in Alabama. From Faith and Action's website:

The Cities of New York and Boston have granted special permission for Faith and Action and the Christian Defense Coalition to hold joint prayer vigils in anticipation of the Presidential conventions for both major political parties. New York gave its approval for the service to be the very last public event outside Madison Square Garden before roads and sidewalks are closed as a security measure in anticipation of the Republican National Convention which opens August 30. Boston officials settled out of court after Faith and Action and Christian Defense Coalition lawyers threatened to file a lawsuit over the City's manipulation of the permit process making it virtually impossible to hold such events.

Interestingly, the prayer vigil outside the Republican convention will be to demonstrate support for Bush:

Rev. Rob Schenck and Rev. Mahoney had planned the exercise as spiritual support for the incumbent president. However, when Rev. Mahoney applied for a permit he was told that for security purposes it could not be granted.

Schenck and Mahoney will also host prayer vigils outside John Kerry's Boston homes. I hope Schenck doesn't try to shove an aborted fetus in Kerry's face like he did to Bill Clinton on two occasions. Read my profile of Rob Schenck, a colorful and unique figure I had the chance to visit with last summer.

As George W. Bush promises an investigation into Riggs Bank's financial dealings with Augosto Pinochet and West African oil despot Teodoro Obiang, a few key items remain missing in most reports:
-- George W. Bush's uncle, Jonathan Bush, controls the investment arm of Riggs Bank. He is also a Bush "Pioneer."
-- Despite Obiang's monstrous human rights record, Bush gave him quite a warm welcome at the White House in 2001.
Check out my file on Riggs.

The Berger story is a juicy stories full of colorful images, including a pair of dress socks stuffed with national security secrets. But that doesn't mean it would have even made it to page A17 of the Times if it weren't for the partisan machinations of Ashcroft's Justice Department. The FBI investigation actually began in October, as the Washington Post reported on Monday. So why did the DoJ leak this now?
Just imagine if the DoJ had leaked this in October. Back then, John Kerry was stuck in trench warfare with Howard Dean, and he was getting his ass whooped. Nobody would have cared that Berger was informally advising what appeared to be a faltering candidate. Now that Kerry's the "presumptive nominee," reports are abound that Berger was to be his secretary of state. I don't know what evidence there is to support that claim other than gossip. And if it's gossip you want, consider the much more widely circulated rumor that Joe Biden is and has been the front runner for that job, not Berger.
Of course, Berger could have spared Kerry this whole ordeal by resigning when the investigation began.

These days I find myself watching most of what Bush does with a blithe cynicism; after watching him vamp for the camera for over three years, there's little he can do to get me going any more. But if there's one thing that still gets my blood boiling (besides watching him coddle Ariel Sharon), it's how he tries to blur the line between Fidel's Cuba and every other dictatorship in the world. I'm not saying Fidel is some misunderstood hero, but unlike the entire Bush administration, I've actually been to Cuba and can testify to the fact that Bush's characterizations of what that society's like and how it's run are incredulous to the point of the sublime.
Recently, Bush claimed "the dictator welcomes sex tourism," a double-pronged appeal to hardline Cuban exile geezers and the Christian right, which thinks morality only applies to sex. While it's true that sex tourism is rampant in Cuba (on more than one occasion I had to literally run away from over-solicitous young women), it is actually illegal and I witnessed police sweeps first hand.
Indeed, Bush's claim is prima facie false; it was based on the three-year-old research of an undergrad student from Dartmouth who is now claiming that Bush cynically took his paper out of context. From the LA Times:

Like many scholars, Charles Trumbull hoped that one day his work would attract attention in high places. So you might think he'd be thrilled that someone in the White House used one of his research papers to draft a speech for President Bush last week.

But he's not.

In a hotel conference room in Tampa, Fla., on Friday, Bush told law enforcement officials that Fidel Castro was brazenly promoting sex tourism to Cuba.

"The dictator welcomes sex tourism. Here's how he bragged about the industry," Bush said. "This is his quote: 'Cuba has the cleanest and most educated prostitutes in the world.' "

Asked about the source for the quote, White House officials provided a link to a 2001 paper, written by Trumbull, on the website of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy.

At the time he wrote the paper, Trumbull was a Dartmouth College undergraduate, and the paper won a prize from the association as the best student paper of the year. Now a law student at Vanderbilt University, Trumbull does not remember the source for the wording of the Castro quote, which he did not footnote.

"I don't know why I don't have a footnote for that," said Trumbull, 24, who is clerking this summer for a federal judge in Puerto Rico. "That was before I was in law school and understood that you have to footnote everything."

Trumbull says the quote was probably a paraphrase of comments the Cuban leader made in 1992, which have been oft-repeated and seem to have taken on a life of their own.

But regardless of the exact wording, Trumbull says the president's speech misconstrued the meaning, which he says should have been clear from his paper.

"It shows that they didn't read much of the article," Trumbull said in a telephone interview.

If anyone is responsible for the boom in prostitution and the influx of sleazeball tourists to Cuba -- mostly aging, married men from the US and the more parochial European countries -- it's Bush and his embrace of the embargo. Not only would ending the embargo put one of biggest US foreign policy failures to bed, increased trade to Cuba would be a boon to US farmers and it's beyond debate that it would open up a wealth of opportunities for Cuba's young women.

I'll be on Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now!" Tuesday morning. If you live in the United States or Canada, you will have a chance to hear me discuss my investigation into the International Republican Institute's role in last February's coup in Haiti. You can find your local listings here.

Amid reports that Russia is considering sending 40,000 troops to Iraq, an event that would deliver Bush's campaign a major dose of momentum, Vladimir Putin is backing up Dick Cheney's claim that there is "overwhelming" evidence linking Saddam and Al Qaeda. Naturally, like Cheney, Putin has neglected to state what that evidence is or where one might find it.
Since it's clear Putin wants to support Bush, his decision to send troops now seems to hinge largely on one factor: the insurgency in Chechnya.

Since it's election season, I don't see why this Texas tale of Bush's Harken hijinx shouldn't become an issue again.

In an interview with the BBC, Bill Clinton laid the blame for the Niger yellowcake claim solely on George W. Bush's shoulders, stating matter of factly that the CIA never gave Bush any intelligence on yellowcake. This may be corroborated by the second half of the Senate Intelligence Committee report, which will hopefully bear mention of the Office of Special Plans. Unfortunately, thanks to Republican pressure, I doubt the report will come until after the election. From the Guardian:

Mr Clinton told Sir David Frost: "Let me just say one other thing. Now this doesn't apply to the UK, it applies to America. There is no evidence that the CIA told the president or the White House that Saddam Hussein had gotten uranium yellow cake from Niger, or was close to having a nuclear weapon, a representation that was made.

"Now the intelligence in the UK may have told Prime Minister Blair but the evidence is to the contrary in America. And there is no evidence that the CIA ever said that Saddam Hussein was tied to al-Qaida and could have had anything to do with September 11 directly or indirectly," he said.

The implication of his remarks was that untrustworthy sources had briefed the White House and other agencies.

This was obviously a delicate realm for Clinton to venture in since he still maintains close ties with Tony Blair. He managed to make his criticism quite gracefully, but the fact that he needed to be nimble at all is yet another example of how Blair's blind support for the war has hurt the Democratic party.

Are you worried that guy sitting next to you on the plane is a terrorist? Does he have a beard? Is he of an unfamiliar race? Did you forget your meds today? What should you do?
Well, to begin with, you should prepare to engage in in-flight hand-to-hand combat situations by reading "Never Again: A Guide To Self-Defense For The Flying Public."
According to Amazon.com, people who like this book also like Sean Hannity's books for some reason.

If you live in the Los Angeles area, you can check me out this morning on the Ian Masters show, 11 AM-1 PM, 90.7 FM. It's the last non-kneejerk leftist show on the Pacifica network and in fact, there is no public affairs host as passionate and attuned to the news as Ian, so even if you're not in LA, click on the link and check out a streaming edition.
If I can wake up in time, I will be on at 11:20 AM discussing my investigation into this year's coup in Haiti.
By the way, sorry Saturday was such a light posting day -- like other human beings, and apparently unlike more popular, vitamin D deprived bloggers, I need sunlight every now and then. Check out this site Sunday evening.

Galveston, Texas has been hit by an epidemic of teenagers running around attacking homeless people with baseball bats. It's another tale of two Americas, though not the kind John Edwards speaks about, in which honest middle-class folks are trying to make ends meet while rich CEO's pilfer their retirement funds. This is something you can witness in any American downtown undergoing a "revitalization" process (read: gentrification) where the invisible poor are pitted against new business owners and by extension, the police. From the Houston Chronicle:

The attacks come as tension heightens between the transients and residents and business owners in the 61st Street area, which is experiencing a boom in new development. (snip)
One businessman, confronting a homeless man as he showed a reporter the site of a fire set in the camp, was blunter. "You're the ones setting these fires and breaking in," Mike Orlando shouted at the homeless man. "You're winos and drunks."
Although she was not familiar with the Galveston case, Ann Thomas, of the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County, suggested Seesman's group may be coming under attack simply because it is perceived as vulnerable. "With youth, there is a general lack of regard for anything outside their circle," she said. "A street person often is seen as unimportant."

You'd think after creating a national scandal and inviting a Justice Department investigation by smearing Joe Wilson, the Bush administration would know when to stop. But after Susan Schmidt's article, which parroted the Senate Republicans' recent claims without any hint of critical analysis, RNC chief Ed Gillespie felt compelled to send out an email to his "Team Leaders," entitled, "Liar, Liar, Liar." Here's an excerpt:

For more than a year, former Ambassador Joe Wilson led Democrats to make allegations against the President--that he lied about African uranium--that have now been proven false. Senator Kerry embraced
and repeated these false charges.

Every television network and all major newspapers played up the accusations, and yet you may not have heard about this recent development because only NBC and The Washington Post have reported the latest revelation: It is Joe Wilson who lied.

Forget that the ex-president of Niger has corroborated Wilson's claim; nevermind that Wilson and his wife have received threats on their lives by wing-nuts stirred up by RNC propaganda; and don't bother to examine what Wilson actually has to say. Oh, and ignore those impending indictments that will bring Scooter Libby and perhaps even Karl Rove before a grand jury. Bush has been vindicated, my fellow Team Leaders. The WMD's have been found and they're nuke-ya-ler.

Unbelievable quote from the Financial Times:
"[Bush] met three times with Muslim leaders before [Al] Gore was even returning our calls," says Salam al-Marayati, the director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a group that supported Bush in 2000.

In one such meeting, Mr Bush claimed that "under the Clinton and Gore administration, Arab-American air travellers have experienced harassment and delay simply because of their ethnic heritage . . . Such indiscriminate uses of passenger profiling must stop."

Will Ken Lay dish the dirt on Bush now that he's headed up the river? That may be wishful thinking considering Lay is represented by James Sharp, the lawyer Bush consulted on the Valerie Plame affair. Here's an excerpt from Lay's appearance on the Larry King show last week:

LAY: But we have a whole team -- Earl Silbert in Washington, D.C...

KING: You have Earl?

LAY: We have him. And...

KING: Former prosecutor.

LAY: Former U.S. prosecutor for over 20 years. Jim Sharp, former assistant U.S. prosecutor for a long time. We have Carrington, Coleman in Dallas, which has some excellent lawyers on the civil side.

The notion that Allawi and his government would ever be able to replicate anything close to the crimes perpetrated by Saddam is simply ridiculous. However, if this story (which is double-sourced) is true, Allawi deserves to be Saddam's bunkmate. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.

They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs.

They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they "deserved worse than death".

Just because they were insurgents does not excuse anything. Moreover, Saddam is on trial for ordering the killing of thousands. Allawi killed these people with his own bare hands. There have been countless stories about Allawi's penchant for thuggery. If the US doesn't investigate these killings, it only supports my theory that Allawi's primary role is to to oversee a state-of-the-art contra-style death squad operation before the US withdraws its conventional troops.

Read my latest, "The Other Regime Change," the product of a five month-long investigation into Republican ties to this year's coup in Haiti.
If you don't have a Salon.com subscription, get a day pass or pay a measly 20 bucks so poor schmucks like me can pay their rent.
And don't be shy about donating to this site either.

In the wake of the prisoner torture scandal, which went unexposed for months because of the military's culture of forced conformity, the National Guard is being instructed to stay on message when speaking to the media. From the AP:

The Idaho National Guard has told soldiers to use five approved ``themes'' when talking to the media, including support for war in Iraq and confidence in the superiority of American troops.

The suggestions were made on the front page of ``Snakebite,'' the official newsletter of the 116th Brigade Combat Team.

It does not prohibit soldiers from speaking about other issues, but says that referring to the themes ``adds continuity to the message we are portraying as a unit.''

No word on what happens to dissenters or those few non-automatons who diverge from the message.

Largely beneath the radar of the American media, John Kerry's brother, Cameron, traveled to Israel to reassure both Shimon Peres and Ariel Sharon that Kerry is committed to letting Israel do whatever it wants.
I find it hard to take this gesture at face value considering how much pressure Kerry's facing from AIPAC. Nevertheless, it's disheartening to see Kerry lend Ariel Sharon any more legitimacy than a two-bit gangster deserves.

How did a gay-rights activist from Sacramento win a bet for $5000 with Jerry Falwell? And how did he get Falwell to pay up?
This week is the 20th anniversary of Jerry Sloan's triumph.

Does anyone have any bright ideas about how to get us out of Iraq?

It's been rumored that Iyad Allawi's been obsessed with reviving some form of Saddam's feared secret police to tamp down on the insurgency. Those rumors were well-founded. From the Times:

At his news conference, Dr. Allawi offered few details about the new security division, called the General Security Directorate, except to say that it was intended to combat the insurgency. In an apparent effort to allay fears that the agency would be a reincarnation of Saddam Hussein's feared secret police, the interior minister, Falah al-Naqib, told reporters that the agency would be staffed by professionals with "clean hands."

Dr. Allawi has made security his chief focus. Last week, he announced emergency measures that, if invoked, would allow him to impose curfews, ban groups he considered seditious and order the detention of people suspected of threatening security. The reorganized Iraqi security forces have conducted several high-profile raids, including one this week that netted 15 people suspected of being members of Al Qaeda and its allies, government officials said

.
Allawi's oversight of a secret service makes sense considering his long relationship with the CIA, which is renowned for administering proxy forces to prop up unpopular governments. What hasn't been probed yet is the role of proconsul John Negroponte in setting up the secret service. Negroponte, of course, presided over CIA-trained Honduran death squads which tortured and massacred countless Nicaraguan revolutionaries and civilians during the 1980's. With Negroponte involved in this current operation, Allawi's secret service can viewed as nothing less than the state-of-the-art death squad the Bush administration needs to establish before it begins the inevitable withdrawal of troops.

The right has been mostly quiet about the Phillippines dropping out of the coalition of the billing. I guess they want to spare themselves the embarassment of having to acknowledge the inevitable demise of Bush's mock alliances. FOX News has chosen to drown out the seemingly never-ending string of negative stories for Bush with stentorian coverage of the suburban-trash Scott Peterson melodrama (I think FOX is the only cable news network actually covering the trial at all).
But one right-wing pundit has boldly stepped up to the plate to trash the Phillippines: Michelle Malkin. Malkin is best known as one of the most strident anti-immigrant writers on the right; she's a regular contributor to the white nationalist web mag VDare (named for Virginia Dare, the first white child born in the New World) and the author of the screed, "Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals and Other Foreign Menaces To Our Shores." In  her attack  on the Phillippines in a column for Town Hall, she pulls no punches, calling its government "the mollycoddling milksops of Manila."
There's one interesting fact about Malkin that may help explain her rage: she's a Filipina. As she writes in her piece, "I'm deeply, mortifyingly ashamed of my parents' native land." 

CQ HOMELAND SECURITY – COURTS & JUSTICE
July 14, 2004 – 7:37 p.m.

Justice Department Report Shows Patriot Act Not
Limited to Fighting Terrorism

By Justin Rood, CQ Staff

Last February, an 88-year-old Wisconsin woman was
kidnapped and held for ransom for days. When FBI
agents found her, she was bound in an unheated shed
during the cold Wisconsin winter.

She was freed, the Justice Department says, because of
the suite of anti-terrorism laws known as the Patriot
Act (PL 107-56).

“Without a doubt, the information obtained using
Section 212 and other provisions of the USA PATRIOT
Act was instrumental in solving the case quickly and
thus saving the victim’s life,” a July 13 Justice
Department report on the use of the act concluded.

The report is the Bush administration’s strongest
effort to date to make a public case for why the act —
passed as historic anti-terrorism legislation just
weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — is still
needed.

But some are concerned that the administration’s case
is not particularly focused on terrorism.

In fact, of the 38 cases cited in the report as
examples of how the Patriot Act has been used, 18
appear unrelated to terrorism. Many have to do with
crimes such as child pornography and child
molestation.

That leaves a few observers scratching their heads
over how such examples make the case for the law,
officially known as the Uniting and Strengthening
America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to
Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act.

“I don’t think any reasonable American has objections
to the Patriot Act being used to prevent terrorism,”
said Joseph McNamara, a veteran police chief of Kansas
City, Mo., and San Jose, Calif. McNamara, who began as
a beat patrolman in Harlem, is now a fellow at the
conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford
University.

“But when [the Patriot Act] is used so broadly, as the
attorney general indicates, then there are problems,”
McNamara said. “This blanket use of the Patriot Act
for any crime does away with constitutional
protections.”

The report’s authors allow that “some of the examples
in this report do not involve terrorism but instead
detail how the Department has used certain provisions
in the USA PATRIOT Act to combat serious criminal
conduct, such as child pornography and kidnapping.”

But, they say, “Congress chose not to limit certain
authorities contained in the USA PATRIOT Act only to
the context of terrorism, and the examples contained
in this report demonstrate the wisdom of that
decision.”
Unfounded Concerns

In a press briefing July 13 on the report, House
Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis.,
said concerns such as McNamara’s are unfounded.

“I’ve heard criticism that the Patriot Act has been
used in general criminal investigations. The answer to
that question is, yes, it has been,” Sensenbrenner
said, “because the criminals were using new
technology, but law enforcement wasn’t able to because
the law had not been updated.

“And the best example I can give is that 88-year-old
woman in my state,” said the chairman, referring to
the woman held in the unheated shed last February.
“She’s alive today because of the Patriot Act.”

Paul Rosenzweig of the conservative Heritage
Foundation agrees with Sensenbrenner, and said he
found the attorney general’s disclosures
“unprecedented.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this before, in terms
of the depth of detail, the references to ongoing
cases,” said Rosenzweig, formerly associate
independent counsel to Kenneth Starr, head of the
Office of Independent Counsel during the Clinton
administration.

“The South Pole threat was one that struck me,”
Rosenzweig said when asked to offer examples of
unprecedented disclosures.

In that instance, the report said, the FBI used the
Patriot Act to foil a hacker who had compromised the
computer controlling the life support systems for the
National Science Foundation’s South Pole Research
Station.

“I’ve hacked into the server of your South Pole
Research Station,” read an e-mail from the saboteur,
according to the report. “Pay me off or I’ll sell the
station’s data to another country and tell the world
how vulnerable you are.”

The South Pole Station “housed 50 scientists
‘wintering over’ during the South Pole’s most
dangerous season,” the report said. “At this time,
aircraft could not land at the South Pole for another
six months due to the harsh weather conditions.”

Thanks “in part” to Section 212 of the Patriot Act —
which allows for the disclosure of electronic
information in emergency situations — “FBI agents were
able to close the case quickly with the suspects’
arrest before any harm was done to the South Pole
Research Station,” the report concludes.

Although the report does not characterize the hacker
as a terrorist, it does say his threat was confirmed.
Core Arguments

But do instances like this support legislation sold to
the public as a cornerstone of the war on terrorism?

“A good majority of [these cases] could have been
thought of as terrorist cases when they began,”
suggested Rosenzweig.

He conceded that “the sexual assaults on children
things, child porn things, are outside the core of
what the key arguments for what the Patriot Act was
about.”

Orin Kerr, professor of law at George Washington
University and an expert on the Patriot Act, says this
is the rub of the legislation.

“This is sort of the strength and the weakness of the
Patriot Act,” said Kerr, himself a former assistant
U.S. attorney. “A lot of the controversial provisions
are not terror-related.”

Heritage’s Rosenzweig pointed out that the Justice
Department had a difficult row to hoe with the report:
If it is doing its job, many of the most effective
applications of Patriot Act powers should be in
successful intelligence efforts or ongoing
investigations — which department officials cannot
discuss publicly.

In its report, department officials say as much,
noting that they could not describe every case in
which the Patriot Act has been instrumental because
some are ongoing, whereas others — “including a number
of terrorism-related cases” — cannot be discussed
without disclosing classified information.

And the report notably does not discuss the use of
perhaps the two most contentious items in the act —
one having to do with sneak-and-peek searches, in
which the government is not required to notify
individuals if their premises have been searched, and
one giving government increased access to personal
data such as library records.

Thus, the report is not comprehensive — its authors
call it only “an unclassified overview.”

And what of the 88-year-old woman’s kidnapper?

“The people who kidnapped her are in jail today
because of the Patriot Act. And I think that’s good,”
Sensenbrenner said at the July 13 press conference.

The report mostly backs him up: One kidnapper was
indeed tried and convicted. But not by the Justice
Department.

“[I]t was determined the victim was not transported
across state lines,” the report’s authors note, “and
thus could be more effectively prosecuted in state
court” by state authorities.

I wonder if this bit from last year's Daily News gossip column will go in the Vogue profile:

"Good thing their dad didn't see Barbara and Jenna Bush at the party that hip-hop honcho Andre Harrell and Cognac prince Maurice Hennessy threw at Butter the other night. Our spies spotted the twins getting way down on the dance floor with rap king Sean Combs. And what was that fragrant smell that wafted over the room?"

I heard from a Canadian friend that this movie makes Fahrenheit 9/11 look like The Little Mermaid. It just hit LA, so I'll be checking it out soon.

"I want to encourage Republicans to give us money."
--Ralph Nader's running mate Peter Camejo, 7/12/04

It used to be that if you openly advocated executing abortion doctors as Oklahoma Republican senatorial candidate Tom Coburn does you had to be an avowed Christian Reconstructionist like RJ Rushdoony or Gary North. Nowadays, you can be a contender in a major national race. From the AP:

On the death penalty, he [Coburn] said: "I favor the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life."

He said he performed two abortions to save the lives of mothers who had congenital heart disease, but opposes the procedure in cases of rape.

"Under the mores we live under today, my lineage wouldn't exist," Coburn said, explaining that his great-grandmother was raped by a territorial sheriff.

Not only is Coburn endorsed by Dr. James Dobson and supported by the lobbying group Club For Growth, in 2002 Bush named him co-chair of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS. When Coburn was a member of congress, his most energetic campaign was to push the FDA to label condoms as ineffective against the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. This race deserves more attention.