Out of My Mind

WE'VE MOVED!!

2006-08-13T09:38:00.000-04:00

After 712 posts, this blog has been moved:

http://thesyndicalist.blogspot.com

The reason for the move is totally not worth going into let alone the time needed to do so.

However, the new name in the URL will make it easier for the NSA to find us and make friends with us because we want to make friends with people supposedly protecting us -- or at least spying on us for our own damn good.

US Foreign Policy for Dummieshttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

2006-08-11T03:53:00.000-04:00

The great and wonderful Nicholas von Hoffman explains it all -- for dummies :)

Good News! The American Democracy Takes Another Giant Step Down the Slippery Slope to its Death

2006-08-11T03:44:00.000-04:00

From the War Room, wonderful news for haters of democracy and freedom i.e. our leaders and their supporters:

The Bush administration scored a major victory Thursday in its efforts to criminally prosecute journalists and others involved in the leaking and reporting of classified information. A federal district court in Virginia refused to dismiss a criminal indictment brought by the Bush Justice Department under the Espionage Act of 1917 against two former employees of the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC), who are alleged to have received classified information from a former Bush defense department official, and then passed it on to a journalist and an Israeli diplomat. Background on this extremely important case -- and the way in which it is being used by the Bush administration to enhance their ability to prosecute journalists -- can be found here.

In essence, this is the first time the U.S. Government has ever prosecuted anyone under the Espionage Act who was not a government employee and who did not have a security clearance. What is extraordinary about the prosecution is that the defendants are private citizens who merely received and disseminated classified information from a government employee -- something which investigative journalists, by definition, do every day. The Bush administration contended, and the court today ruled, that such conduct can be the basis for being charged with felony violations of the Espionage Act.

The essence of the district court's ruling (.pdf) today is that the Espionage Act authorizes the federal government to prosecute even private citizens (and therefore, presumably, journalists) who knowingly receive and transmit classified information. As the court put it (p. 53): "the government can punish those outside of the government for the unauthorized receipt and deliberate retransmission of information relating to the national defense."

The court additionally ruled that the imperatives of national security outweigh any First Amendment interests which a citizen might have in publicizing such information. As Secrecy News points out, this ruling would almost certainly expose those who revealed Abu Grahib abuses to criminal prosecution. It also strongly bolsters the Bush administration's ability to prosecute journalists involved in the reporting of the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program and the secret, lawless Eastern European prisons revealed late last year by the Washington Post's Dana Priest.

History Preserved

2006-08-09T04:45:00.000-04:00

The GOP 2006 playbook is here.

Short version: Lie and spread fear.

Great Big Load of Hooey

2006-08-09T04:01:00.000-04:00

This is from the Journal Op-ed page so of course it's demented crap but this guy has it so exactly wrong and ass-backwards. Israel, with US enabling, has weakened its position with the Lebanese excursion, as it were. Case close. And if these rightwing nutjobs see it as simple defense they're very mistaken -- and any Israeli reads that as true support for a demented policy birthed in military ignorance and political weakness -- well, God bless him or her. They'll need it....

However, the world as we know it today -- post-Holocaust, post-9/11, post-sanity -- is not cooperating. Given the realities of the new Middle East, perhaps it is time for a reality check. For this reason, many Jewish liberals are surrendering to the mindset that there are no solutions other than to allow Israel to defend itself -- with whatever means necessary. Unfortunately, the inevitability of Israel coincides with the inevitability of anti-Semitism.

This is what more politically conservative Jews and hardcore Zionists maintained from the outset. And it was this nightmare that the Jewish left always refused to imagine. So we lay awake at night, afraid to sleep. Surely the Arabs were tired, too. Surely they would want to improve their societies and educate their children rather than strap bombs on to them.

If the Palestinians didn't want that for themselves, if building a nation was not their priority, then peace in exchange for territories was nothing but a pipe dream. It was all wish-fulfillment, morally and practically necessary, yet ultimately motivated by a weary Israeli society -- the harsh reality of Arab animus, the spiritual toll that the occupation had taken on a Jewish state battered by negative world opinion.

Despite the deep cynicism, however, Israel knew that it must try. It would have to set aside nearly 60 years of hard-won experience, starting from the very first days of its independence, and believe that the Arab world had softened, would become more welcoming neighbors, and would stop chanting: "Not in our backyard -- the Middle East is for Arabs only."

It is true that Israel has entered into peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan that have brought some measure of historic stability to the region. But with Israel having withdrawn from Lebanon and Gaza, and with Israeli public opinion virtually united in favor of near-total withdrawal from the West Bank, why are rockets being launched at Israel now, why are their soldiers being kidnapped if the aspirations of the Palestinian people, and the intentions of Hamas and Hezbollah, stand for something other than the total destruction of Israel? And if Palestinians and the Lebanese are electing terrorists and giving them the portfolio of statesmen, then what message is being sent to moderate voices, what incentives are there to negotiate, and how can any of this sobering news be recast in a more favorable light?

The Jewish left is now in shambles. Peace Now advocates have lost their momentum, and, in some sense, their moral clarity. Opinion polls in Israel are showing near unanimous support for stronger incursions into Lebanon. And until kidnapped soldiers are returned and acts of terror curtailed, any further conversations about the future of the West Bank have been set aside.

Not unlike the deep divisions between the values of red- and blue-state America, world Jewry is being forced to reconsider all of its underlying assumptions about peace in the Middle East. The recent disastrous events in Lebanon and Gaza have inadvertently created a newly united Jewish consciousness -- bringing right and left together into one deeply cynical red state.

The rest is here.

An Open Letter to Ehud Olmert

2006-08-07T07:33:00.000-04:00

An Open Letter to Ehud Olmert

Dear Ehud:

Just in case you haven’t figured it out, Israel has lost the war so for the sake of your nation’s security, you better be working on a plan for the earliest possible cessation – well, not of hostilities but stupidity.

Again, the radical right-wing habit of talking trash from a position of weakness resulting in a completely pointless military excursion – excuse me – avoidable disaster.

Let me put it this way: You have weakened the security of Eretz Yisroel as well as the Middle East and points beyond.

In case you still don’t understand, you’ve empowered Hezbollah, weakened the non-sectarian Lebanese government (which wasn’t much to begin with but was at least a start), empowered Iran and radicalized more Islamofascists.

And I’m very scared that either you had no idea what you were getting or worse the Mossad was clueless.

(Note to myself: Add to those never to vote for: tough-talking pussies.)

VTY, &c.

Fiscal Responsibility and Enhanced Security. Hahahahaha!

2006-08-05T05:29:00.000-04:00

Not here:

All this we know. Less well remembered nowadays, though -- in fact, almost never discussed in the major media -- was another implicit prong of the argument: that invading Iraq would be cheap and easy, leaving plenty of resources for other purposes. When White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey stumbled off message in September 2002 with his prediction that war could cost $100 billion to $200 billion, the administration flew into crisis mode. Budget Director Mitch Daniels was trotted out to label the estimate “very, very high.” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz opined -- in testimony to Congress, no less -- that reconstruction would cost virtually nothing in light of Iraq’s promising oil revenues. Daniels proffered an estimate in the $50 billion to $60 billion range, substantially less than the $80 billion inflation-adjusted cost of the Persian Gulf War. Lindsey, famously, was soon after fired -- for his troublesome cost estimates and, reportedly, the President’s annoyance at his poor personal fitness habits.

By April 2006, a Congressional Research Service (CRS) inquiry concluded that Lindsey’s estimate was, indeed, way off -- but in the other direction. Around $261 billion had already been spent. Given the human stakes, it may seem crass to worry overly much about the dollar cost of a military conflict. But the fact that a CRS report is needed at all, as opposed to the straightforward accounting that either the White House or the Pentagon could surely provide were they so inclined, points to the basic reality that the war’s proponents are continuing the prewar pattern of covering up the costs. And with good reason: They’re enormous. Scandalously enormous.

The same CRS report indicated that before it ends, the war will likely cost somewhat more than the $549 billion spent (adjusted for inflation) in the much more lethal Vietnam War. But even this figure will likely prove to be off by hundreds of billions of dollars because it accounts only for funds directly appropriated for war fighting. As Linda Bilmes, a leading Harvard budgetary expert, and Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz point out in their January 2006 paper, “The Economic Costs of the Iraq War,” the spending captured by the CRS, even in strict budgetary terms, is “only the tip of a very deep iceberg.”

The rest of the sordid, ugly story is here.

A Number but Fewer than All of the Reasons W and the Entire Administration Should be Impeached, Kicked Out of Office and, Well, OK, Tried for Treason

2006-08-05T05:24:00.000-04:00

There's a lot of stuff here. Not the whole story but a start. Of course their sins are greater than just this stuff.

As Prepared as We Were for Iraq

2006-08-05T05:05:00.000-04:00

Humor in the Wall Street Journal (sub required)?

Our leaders are "pondering" for a post-Fidel era? They're great at that. We're waiting for them to start pondering Iraq and what a fabulous job they've done weakening our national security.

Obvious Quote of the Day

2006-08-02T04:15:00.000-04:00

"Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything." -- Frank Dane

It obviously works....

Mel's Christian Love

2006-08-02T03:46:00.000-04:00

As you reap, so shall you sow.

Mel's a radical Christian, a Catholic whose Catholicism is not very Catholic in pretty much any sense of the word. As such, a certain level of anti-everyone-elsism is part of his beliefs. Obviously not in an overt way but it's there.

Here's today's thought exercise: Is a miniseries predicated depicting the Holocaust from the point of view of Christians who help Jews likely to put a very accurate spin on what the Holocaust was about? Or more likely to focus on how strong Christian beliefs enable a couple of believers to help some Jews escape the Holocaust? Is the latter therefor likely to be historically accurate other than as a sidebar as it were?

In other words, from a historical perspective, at its most benign, who needs it?

And lets skip over "Passion" other than to say a sensitive believer would not have made a movie based on Anti-semitic medieval passion plays buts a good old bio of a(n allegedly) loving god.

So his asking Jews to help the healing is hypocritical crap.

Still, despite being a crap actor, he looks cute in his mug shot. Maybe even g@odd#m cute :)

And actually, IIRC, this is only Gibson's first run-in with the law with anti-Semitic overtones. I'm reminded, so to speak, by the accompanying graphic and by this one.

Meanwhile, the indictment is here in its glory.

And Bill Maher of all people nails it pretty well (obviously his Jewish half talking, not the good... Catholic boy half).

he Diebold Voting Machines are Even Worse than We Knew, a Really Big Threat to America

2006-08-01T04:04:00.000-04:00

So post-democratic America.

But then, what does one expect from our current leadership? Resistance to the corruption of the proto-fascist state: Big contributions from Diebold and its ilk plus the ease of riggng elections -- how can they proto-fascists resist? And their principals benefit -- the principal of power at all costs.

The bad news is here.

Obscenity of the Day

2006-07-31T04:06:00.000-04:00

Echoes of the Nixon era

Arlen Specter's FISA bill would put President Bush above the rule of law, just as an earlier president would've wanted.

By Glenn Greenwald

Jul. 31, 2006 | With one piece of legislation, Sen. Arlen Specter seeks to expand the Bush administration's radical theory of executive power beyond the wildest dreams of Dick Cheney or even John Yoo. Just when it looked as though some semblance of checks and balances was being restored, Specter -- the Pennsylvania Republican who masqueraded for months as a tenacious opponent of the White House -- offers a bill that would strike an immeasurable blow for the Bush vision of an imperial presidency.

* * *

In reality, Specter does not want to amend the mandates of FISA so much as abolish them. His bill makes it optional, rather than mandatory, for the president to subject himself to judicial oversight when eavesdropping on Americans, in effect returning the nation to the pre-FISA era. Essentially, the president would be allowed to eavesdrop at will, precisely the situation that led to the surveillance abuses of the Nixon White House and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI.

The whole obscene story is here....

Project for the Day

2006-07-30T06:09:00.000-04:00

Let's try and stop this.

Have I said I don't think electoral politics offers a solution for all the damage Our Leaders have done?

Our "Intelligence Czar" is Against Intelligence

2006-07-30T06:07:00.000-04:00

Two depressing to even quote so here's the link.

Our Brilliant Leader, Part 2

2006-07-30T06:05:00.000-04:00

Q: Mr. President, both of you, I'd like to ask you about the big picture that you're discussing.

Mr. President, three years ago, you argued that an invasion of Iraq would create a new stage of Arab-Israeli peace. And yet today there is an Iraqi prime minister who has been sharply critical of Israel.

Arab governments, despite your arguments, who first criticized Hezbollah, have now changed their tune. Now they're sharply critical of Israel.

And despite from both of you warnings to Syria and Iran to back off support from Hezbollah, effectively, Mr. President, your words are being ignored.

So what has happened to America's clout in this region that you've committed yourself to transform?

Bush: David, it's an interesting period because, instead of having foreign policies based upon trying to create a sense of stability, we have a foreign policy that addresses the root causes of violence and instability.

For a while, American foreign policy was just, Let's hope everything is calm - kind of, managed calm. But beneath the surface brewed a lot of resentment and anger that was manifested on September the 11th.

And so we have, we've taken a foreign policy that says: On the one hand, we will protect ourselves from further attack in the short run by being aggressive in chasing down the killers and bringing them to justice.

And make no mistake: They're still out there, and they would like to harm our respective peoples because of what we stand for.

In the long term, to defeat this ideology - and they're bound by an ideology - you defeat it with a more hopeful ideology called freedom.

And, look, I fully understand some people don't believe it's possible for freedom and democracy to overcome this ideology of hatred. I understand that. I just happen to believe it is possible.

And I believe it will happen.

And so what you're seeing is, you know, a clash of governing styles.

For example, you know, the notion of democracy beginning to emerge scares the ideologues, the totalitarians, those who want to impose their vision. It just frightens them.

And so they respond. They've always been violent.

You know, I hear this amazing kind of editorial thought that says, all of a sudden, Hezbollah's become violent because we're promoting democracy. They have been violent for a long period of time. Or Hamas?

One reason why the Palestinians still suffer is because there are militants who refuse to accept a Palestinian state based upon democratic principles.

And so what the world is seeing is a desire by this country and our allies to defeat the ideology of hate with an ideology that has worked and that brings hope.

And one of the challenges, of course, is to convince people that Muslims would like to be free, you know, that there's other people other than people in Britain and America that would like to be free in the world.

There's this kind of almost – you know, kind of a weird kind of elitism that says well maybe - maybe certain people in certain parts of the world shouldn't be free; maybe it's best just to let them sit in these tyrannical societies.

And our foreign policy rejects that concept. We don't accept it. And so we're working.

(Link.)

We're Really Led by a Bunch of Irredeemable Scumbags

2006-07-30T06:03:00.000-04:00

Chapter 97,824.

Our Brilliant Foreign Policy, Our Brilliant Leader

2006-07-30T06:02:00.000-04:00

Our Leader dispenses his wisdom and understanding of an important foreign policy issue.

Persons of Deep Principle

2006-07-30T05:58:00.000-04:00

Gotta increase the minimum wage. Have something to give to the voters besides two more years in the Iraq quagmire.

A minimum wage increase.

Including in the bill estate tax repeal.

How stupid do they think we are (rhetorical). But why should they worry? You don't see this being covered with any significance or focus in the corrupt Big Media.

Freedom

2006-07-30T04:52:00.000-04:00

We've got here:

Man charged after videotaping police

And here.

Cell Phone Picture Called Obstruction Of Justice

Man Arrested For Shooting Photo Of Police Activity

The War Against the Jews

2006-07-29T19:21:00.000-04:00

As they say, even paranoids have enemies.

As we move towards an undemocratic Christian theocracy here, the democratic secular tolerance for non-Christians ebbs away. Like here. And here. Fanning the flames of war in the Middle East isn't enough (can't wait for Armageddon when we have the power to bring it on).

And of course no one should expect anything like tolerance from a Christo-fascist second-rate actor/crappy director -- so when caught driving drunk (oops! allegedly drunk), blame the Jews. Of course.

UPDATE: Gibson blames it on being a life-long alcoholic. An obvious effort to seek Christian forgiveness. It was booze making him say things he didn't actually believe. Me, I beg to differ: the booze only enabled him to say what was always there, the beliefs he was taught.

Obscene Headline of the Day

2006-07-29T18:05:00.000-04:00

Off the Times:

Bush Sees a Chance for Change to Sweep Mideast

Must belabor the obvious: Has this administration not done enough harm yet, particularly in the Middle East? Is the world not a more dangerous place thanks to our leaders? (Last is a rhetorical question but the answer is yes, undoubtedly, irrefutably yes.)

Capitol Hill's 50 Most Beautiful

2006-07-29T18:01:00.000-04:00

Actually, thought they're all supposed to singles looking for axxxion. Anyway, a great rack on an enabler of the destruction of America still adds up to something ugly in my book....

Thoughts for the Weekend

2006-07-29T17:53:00.000-04:00

Nothing too new, just nicely put. Krugman busts out of the TimeSelect barrier:

Amid everything else that’s going wrong in the world, here’s one more piece of depressing news: a few days ago the Harris Poll reported that 50 percent of Americans now believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when we invaded, up from 36 percent in February 2005. Meanwhile, 64 percent still believe that Saddam had strong links with Al Qaeda.

At one level, this shouldn’t be all that surprising. The people now running America never accept inconvenient truths. Long after facts they don’t like have been established, whether it’s the absence of any wrongdoing by the Clintons in the Whitewater affair or the absence of W.M.D. in Iraq, the propaganda machine that supports the current administration is still at work, seeking to flush those facts down the memory hole.

But it’s dismaying to realize that the machine remains so effective.

Here’s how the process works.

First, if the facts fail to support the administration position on an issue — stem cells, global warming, tax cuts, income inequality, Iraq — officials refuse to acknowledge the facts.

Sometimes the officials simply lie. “The tax cuts have made the tax code more progressive and reduced income inequality,” Edward Lazear, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, declared a couple of months ago. More often, however, they bob and weave.

Consider, for example, Condoleezza Rice’s response a few months ago, when pressed to explain why the administration always links the Iraq war to 9/11. She admitted that Saddam, “as far as we know, did not order Sept. 11, may not have even known of Sept. 11.” (Notice how her statement, while literally true, nonetheless seems to imply both that it’s still possible that Saddam ordered 9/11, and that he probably did know about it.) “But,” she went on, “that’s a very narrow definition of what caused Sept. 11.”

Meanwhile, apparatchiks in the media spread disinformation. It’s hard to imagine what the world looks like to the large number of Americans who get their news by watching Fox and listening to Rush Limbaugh, but I get a pretty good sense from my mailbag.

Many of my correspondents are living in a world in which the economy is better than it ever was under Bill Clinton, newly released documents show that Saddam really was in cahoots with Osama, and the discovery of some decayed 1980’s-vintage chemical munitions vindicates everything the administration said about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. (Hyping of the munitions find may partly explain why public belief that Saddam had W.M.D. has made a comeback.)

Some of my correspondents have even picked up on claims, mostly disseminated on right-wing blogs, that the Bush administration actually did a heck of a job after Katrina.

And what about the perceptions of those who get their news from sources that aren’t de facto branches of the Republican National Committee?

The climate of media intimidation that prevailed for several years after 9/11, which made news organizations very cautious about reporting facts that put the administration in a bad light, has abated. But it’s not entirely gone. Just a few months ago major news organizations were under fierce attack from the right over their supposed failure to report the “good news” from Iraq — and my sense is that this attack did lead to a temporary softening of news coverage, until the extent of the carnage became undeniable. And the conventions of he-said-she-said reporting, under which lies and truth get equal billing, continue to work in the administration’s favor.

Whatever the reason, the fact is that the Bush administration continues to be remarkably successful at rewriting history. For example, Mr. Bush has repeatedly suggested that the United States had to invade Iraq because Saddam wouldn’t let U.N. inspectors in. His most recent statement to that effect was only a few weeks ago. And he gets away with it. If there have been reports by major news organizations pointing out that that’s not at all what happened, I’ve missed them.

It’s all very Orwellian, of course. But when Orwell wrote of “a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past,” he was thinking of totalitarian states. Who would have imagined that history would prove so easy to rewrite in a democratic nation with a free press?

Enough!!!

2006-07-28T04:08:00.000-04:00

Just a quicky: I am so sick of how the majority of Amuricans disagree with our leaders, on moral stuff in this case.

Really, let them get off hir asses and vote the c*cks^ckers out or let them shut up. Voting is the very least they can do, not whining like little tit babies....

Save American Culture!!!

2006-07-27T04:54:00.000-04:00

Here. Now! Just do it.

Freedom Spreads Through the American Democracy

2006-07-26T04:08:00.000-04:00

Marshals: Innocent People Placed On 'Watch List' To Meet Quota

Marshals Say They Must File One Surveillance Detection Report, Or SDR, Per Month

The whole beautiful story is here.

We are Victorious in Iraq and the Benefits of our Victory are Spreading

2006-07-25T03:57:00.000-04:00

We have succeeded in Iraq, mission is indeed accomplished, and the fruits of our victory are spreading:

Shiite militias are sending men to Lebanon.

Obviously to support democracy and peace in that country.

Bravo, our beloved leaders!!

Flash! Essential Reading

2006-07-25T03:55:00.000-04:00

Did you know that our leaders are perverting the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. It is now set up and operating to weaken civil rights. All you need to know is here.

Photos from this Week's War

2006-07-23T06:12:00.000-04:00

Of course Israel's response is disproportonate.

But with that as a given, next question has to be -- not What is proportionate? -- but What has to be done to stop the threat and initial source? Particularly when the problem is created in part by an electorate who put terrorists in power?

Here's some photos from one side.

Exemplars of Morality

2006-07-23T06:10:00.000-04:00

Haven't bitched about the scum that fuels the GOP counter-revolution against America in, like, days.

So here's a golden oldie, as it were.

Absolute scum.

True Leadership

2006-07-23T06:07:00.000-04:00

Crap on enough of the Muslim nations and they'll become our democracy-loving allies. Look at our long history of success in Lebanon since the Reagan years and our successes in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq and the success of democracy in empowering, legitimizing and effectively legalizing terroristas and terrorism in Lebanon and Palestine.

Our leaders are keeping up the good work.

An Introduction to the Middle East for Dummies and Our Leaders

2006-07-23T05:21:00.000-04:00

Once again, Josh nails it.

All I'd add it that our absolute ineptitude in starting fires unnecessarily then refusing to very much constructive is summed up Our Leader's idiotic remark about someone other than our leaders getting Syria to get Hezbollah to stop the shit is awfully emblemic of all that is wrong about our approach to the Middle East. (Aside: Love how our temperorary, deranged neutrality still allows us to rush weapons to Israel. See this and this.)

The immaturity of making a mess one refuses to clean up makes one think that maybe W is a decider after all. Could the entire administration be as %$#&ed as he??

Don't Forget Joe

2006-07-23T05:10:00.000-04:00

Unlike other blogs, including those with readers, this isn't Lieberman bashing just for the sake of bashing.

Rather, it's a reminder that part of the problem here is that really is no meaningful opposition to our America-hating administration and its supporters.

After all, Dems like Lieberman and the whole DLC have failed to come forward and explain exactly why they're not Republicans. What does Lieberman believe in that prevents him from joining the GOP?

Now this is an Interesting Ticket for 28 -- The Only Way I'd Vote for Condi....

2006-07-22T18:30:00.000-04:00

I'm Not the Only One....

2006-07-22T18:27:00.000-04:00

At least someone else thinks the compromise between Spector and W on the illegal, unconstitutional wiretapping isn't a compromise but, well, a simple capitulation.

Read it here....

Essential Reading for Our Leaders

2006-07-22T18:24:00.000-04:00

This will be required Sunday reading for all of them....

Our Ideal Democracy

2006-07-22T18:19:00.000-04:00

Oppressive, repressive, and doesn't share its nukes. And willing to work for us really, really cheap.

Justice??

2006-07-22T18:18:00.000-04:00

One can hope....

Our Honest Leaders: Can Stop the Lying

2006-07-22T05:05:00.000-04:00

From the War Room (or did I just say that?):

When George W. Bush acknowledged in his NAACP speech Thursday that "many African-Americans distrust my political party," several men in the audience took to their feet and shouted epithets. As the Washington Post's Dana Milbank reports, NAACP chairman Julian Bond approached the podium to help the president; Bush said, "Don't worry about it, I'm almost finished"; and Bond said, "I know you can handle it."

On the White House Web site, the incident is described this way. "AUDIENCE: Yes! (Applause)."

And an honest report and analysis is here.

Our Leaders' Accomplishments: Today's Middle East Round-Up

2006-07-22T04:57:00.000-04:00

From the War Room:

The Bush administration has long insisted that news stories about violence in Iraq obscure the progress that is being made on the political front.

Perhaps it's time to put that story to rest.

In an extraordinarily gloomy report from Baghdad, Reuters correspondent Mariam Karouny says that Iraqi leaders have "all but given up on holding the country together." Among the ideas now on the table: Divide Baghdad into two zones, one for Shiites and one for Sunnis, in the hopes of stopping the bloodshed between the two.

The harsh words from one unnamed government official: "Iraq as a political project is finished."

This is good; I never knew Our Leaders ever saw Iraq as a "political project." Well, I mean other than a political issue for domestic use in rallying their supporters (as opposed to a political project in Iraq).

And our leaders are fully aware of what's going down in Iraq because they have improved the intel after the intel debacle that resulted in the present debacle.

Not.

And the WaPo shows it support for our leaders by bringing us the good news from Iraq:

Thursday was one of the quietest days in one of the year's bloodiest weeks, with no single reported attack in Iraq claiming more than 13 lives.

Then from the War Room again:

Top headline at the Washington Post’s Web site: "Bush Sees Mideast Strife as a Step Toward Peace."

I report. You decide. Fair and balanced.

Proof of What Kind of Absolutely Stupid Imbeciles Wingnuts are

2006-07-21T04:51:00.000-04:00

From the Times:

“His approach is to first destroy and then think about what to build,” Mr. Walesa said of the country’s current president, Lech Kaczynski, who served as Mr. Walesa’s national security chief.

Really? Really?? Walesa was really that stupid? I want to think not but then again, stupid as it is, sounds like our leaders' pre-war plan for Iraq: Destroy and after that, whatever....

Math Lesson: Love for Our Beloved Leader

2006-07-21T04:46:00.000-04:00

Our Leader is really, really loved.

50% or more approve of him in three states.

50% or more disapprove of him in 47 states.

Numbers don't lie, at least here.

If Only This is the Answer and People Follow the Advice and it Works -- and We have Free Elections Again

2006-07-21T04:02:00.000-04:00

From smirkingchimp.com, the whole piece:

Mark Crispin Miller: 'How to pre-empt a 'November Surprise''
Date: Thursday, July 20 @ 09:55:08 EDT
Topic: Elections

Mark Crispin Miller

If the GOP should lose the House and/or the Senate on Election Day, they will pick out a handful of the "closest" races--as many as they need to hang on to majority control--and start to scream like hell about ELECTION FRAUD.

That's right: the major perpetrators of such fraud will cast themselves as victims of the very crime that put them where they are, and charge the Democrats with having used the very tactics that the Bush Republicans have now perfected: legal/bureaucratic disenfranchisement, e-voting manipulation, hostile challenges to would-be voters, covert efforts at disinformation, countless ballots thrown away, and so on.

This is what we'll hear non-stop from Rush, O'Reilly, Hannity and Coulter; Hastert, Boehner, Sensenbrenner, Graham and Coburn; even Bush and Cheney and Karl Rove himself.

This, of course, is how the Busheviks routinely operate; and yet I'm basing this prediction not just on their history as war-propagandists, but on the blunt admission of a certain high-placed GOP insider, who recently told Thom Hartmann that this is the party's plan, if they should lose control of either side of Congress. It's very easy to imagine such a plan succeeding, with the party's Mighty Propaganda Wurlitzer ahowl day after day, night after night, with all its stops pulled out; and with the mainstream press too busy being "balanced" to point out the truth (and no doubt piously harrumphing that such dirty deeds have surely been committed "on both sides"); and with the Democrats, as ever, playing feeble defense, fighting back too little and too late when they ought to have been out there slugging all along.

In other words, the Bush Republicans will certainly succeed--unless the Democrats, and others to their left, start working to pre-empt that strategy right now. The only way to foil that plan is to define the conflict truthfully and clearly, and to begin to do it now. However low the Bush regime may sink in the opinion polls, the Democrats, and all the rest of us, are simply cooked, if they do not stand up like vertebrates, and speak as patriots, and tell the nation the unpleasant truth: that these BushRepublicans are where they are today because they have committed vast election fraud, in 2000, and in 2002, and in 2004; and that they lately have committed it again in San Diego, and have more planned in Texas, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, California and Virginia, and wherever else they have the system rigged, whether at the state or county level. In short, it's time to cut the crap, stop worrying about the epithet "sore losers" (the Republicans would never let that stop them), and trot out all the evidence that the Establishment has thus far largely waved away.

Right now, for example, the Democrats ought to be raising holy hell about the growing evidence of fraud in San Diego. What's more, they have to set the record straight about Christine Gregoire's 2004 election as the governor of Washington. It is now gospel on the right--and very often hinted in the mainstream--that Gregoire robbed Dino Rossi of his rightful victory. The tales to that effect are everywhere, and yet the Democrats have made no effort to correct them. We've heard all about that crucial little bunch of pro-Gregoire votes that appeared as if by magic right at the eleventh hour; but we have heard nothing of the thousands of pro-Rossi votes, in both Snohomish and Yakima Counties, that were concocted through the DRE machines.

The American people ought to hear about those phantom votes. And if, in fact, the Democrats did cut some corners in that race, they ought to say so, and atone for it, so as to drive home the essential point that the Republicans stole many more. The system is indeed corrupt, and both sides have committed fraud--but, since 2000, only one side has repeatedly and vastly disenfranchised the American electorate. While neither party is republican or democratic, there is only one side that cannot succeed without subverting the electoral process. The Democrats (or those of them who actually support American democracy) should say it loud and clear; for even it it means that they too must come clean, it will be better for them in the long run; and in any case a thorough cleansing is exactly what this filthy system needs.

Unless the Democrats speak out right now, the GOP will manage to co-opt the issue of election fraud--by playing, as ever, on the perennial fear of foreign "terrorism." Specifically, the party will augment the sturdy myth of rampant Democratic "voter fraud" by linking it to the resurgent threat of those dark-skinned "illegals" scurrying across our southern border. Sequoia, the smallest of the three top vendors of e-voting machinery, is now owned by a Venezuelan company, and Hugo Chavez's party uses its machines to count the Venezuelan vote. That fact will be used to limn a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy-involving Chavez, Lopez Obrador, John Conyers, Rahm Emanuel, Michael Moore, George Soros, Barbara Streisand, Jesse Jackson, Hillary Clinton and al Qaeda--to trash American democracy and thereby force the Bush Republicans from power.

That paranoid scenario depends, of course, on a complete inversion of the truth: Sequoia's product, just like the machines from Diebold and ES&S, helped the Republicans to score their startling "re-election" victory in 2004. For instance, the party used Sequoia DRE machines to hype the Rossi vote in those two counties in Washington. (The evidence was so compelling that the state will now no longer use Sequoia's wares.) And yet that inconvenient fact can be erased quite easily by the GOP's terrific army of professional liars, who will keep lividly implying that Sequoia was a weapon in the Democratic plot to seize power in Olympia. And that Big Lie also will succeed, unless the Democrats speak out against it now.

Hav-A-Laff -- At Wingnut Expense

2006-07-20T04:17:00.000-04:00

From the War Room:

Let's go back to the American Enterprise Institute. Danielle Pletka, AEI's vice president for foreign and defense policy studies, tells the Washington Post that she doesn't know anyone who is "not beside themselves with fury at the administration" just now. The right's complaint? As the Post says, "Conservatives complain that the United States is hunkered down in Iraq without enough troops or a strategy to crush the insurgency. They see autocrats in Egypt and Russia cracking down on dissenters with scant comment from Washington, North Korea firing missiles without consequence, and Iran playing for time to develop nuclear weapons while the Bush administration engages in fruitless diplomacy with European allies. They believe that a perception that the administration is weak and without options is emboldening Syria and Iran and the Hezbollah radicals they help sponsor in Lebanon."

Well, right. And why is that? Why are Iran and North Korea able to do what they want with little fear of serious repercussions? Why might Syria and Iran and Hezbollah think the administration is weak and without options for stopping them? It gets back to the beginning of all of that, the part about those U.S. troops "hunkered down" in Iraq. They're there, of course, because Bush sent them there -- and because people at places like the American Enterprise Institute applauded so enthusiastically when he told them what they'd been telling him: Invade Iraq, and we'll transform the Middle East. Invade Iraq, and we'll make the world a safer place.

Are they chastened by the experience? Wiser for the knowledge that the deaths of 2,544 Americans and more than 50,000 Iraqis have bought? It doesn't look that way. This morning on Fox News, neocon pundit Bill Kristol said that the United States has to be ready to use military force against Iran. "Think what this crisis would be like given what we now know about the Islamic Republic of Iran, its regime, its recklessness, its close, close ties to terrorist groups," Kristol said. "Think what the world would be like with an Iran with nuclear weapons."

It sounded like satire, only Kristol was dead serious -- even as he delivered the greeted-as-liberators punch line: The Iranian people "dislike their regime," he said, and they might just welcome "the right use of targeted military force."

They're so pathetic -- and we moreso for not getting rid of the scum, for not ending the national nightmare of being led by these America-hating traitors....

Headline of the Day

2006-07-19T04:19:00.000-04:00

So hard not to laugh.... From the Journal:

Bush's Risky Mideast Strategy:
Seek Change, Not Quick Peace

Umm, in other words, same old, same old. Seeking change did a very great deal of bring us -- the world -- to where we are now.

Windows Breaking

2006-07-19T04:07:00.000-04:00

Back to this blog' occasional Microsoft bashing:

Just a reminder that bloated Vista is a) still delayed and oops! b) not going to be the, uh, Great Leap Forward claimed. As to the latter, with M$ getting into the anti-spyware/malware/virus buiness, what would expect other than high-maintenance crap. (And the answer of course is a dual-boot Mac, spending as little time in Windows as possible. Look folks; even if we spend too much time at work and God forbid bring it home, we do come home and take care of personal stuff. Think of your computer as the same thing: Windows is work. Why should that be the sole place you do computer stuff, specially when it sucks?)

A Public Request

2006-07-19T04:05:00.000-04:00

Can we finally please stop acting as if W is actually leading our nation? He is merely the electoral front and primary salesman for the cabal that is (mis)leading our nation. I mean, there's a big difference. Let's focus on the real leadership, in the shadows....

Back to Form

2006-07-19T04:02:00.000-04:00

The Times is back to its old form, back doing its courtier thing, sucking up to Our Leaders by gratiously -- and falsely and incorrectly -- slamming Dems. (They're so slammable you can do a enough bashing and harm by being accurate -- as long as one didn't also practice a double standard where the wingnuts can do no wrong.

(Speaking of which it was terrible not having Busmiller around to cover the S word matter.)

Hear it Now! True Colors

2006-07-18T04:13:00.000-04:00

Our Leader, who is only the front man for the true leaders in the shadows, who is far less of a decider than he wants and needs us to believe, whose administration has done its fair share to bring chaos and death to the Middle East by totally dropping the ball on the Israeli-Palestinian mishugas as well as by compelling the spread of democracy and thereby enabling and empowering Islamo-fascist terrorists, who can't do a damn thing as Israel and Lebanon and Gaza burn, shows his true abilities or, rather, his lack of all true leadership abilities other than being a complete and utter lying sack of crap:

President Bush's feelings about the U.N. chief's approach to the
Mideast crisis, punctuated with an expletive, were made public
unintentionally as he shared lunch with G-8 leaders.

That's the Times, the audio is here. (Maybe even uncensored.) (Free sub. required of course.) Links to a video are here so if censored you can at least lip read.

Our Leader has no control over Syria. Fine. Here's a really brief history lesson: We never got anywhere fully ostracising a nation and had our greatest successes opening up to them and being, well, welcoming. Hey, look! there's North Korea! Another foreign policy success for our leaders! (An overview of our success in the Middle East is here.)

Of course, our leaders really want the non-oil producing parts of the Middle East (except Iran, I guess) to burn.

Ahh, here's a transcript from the WaPo:

President Bush was caught on an open microphone talking with other leaders at the Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg as they ate lunch before adjourning on Monday. At times the television camera was on Bush, at times it was panning the room. Some of the exchange was hard to hear over the clinking of plates and pouring of drinks. Here's a transcript by The Washington Post:

Someone, probably an aide, asks Bush something, evidently whether he wants prepared closing remarks for the end of the summit:

Bush: No. Just gonna make it up. I'm not going to talk too damn long like the rest of them. Some of these guys talk too long.

The camera is focused elsewhere and it is not clear whom Bush is talking to, but possibly Chinese President Hu Jintao, a guest at the summit.

Bush : Gotta go home. Got something to do tonight. Go to the airport, get on the airplane and go home. How about you? Where are you going? Home?

Bush : This is your neighborhood. It doesn't take you long to get home. How long does it take you to get home?

Reply is inaudible.

Bush : "Eight hours? Me too. Russia's a big country and you're a big country."

At this point, the president seems to bring someone else into the conversation.

Bush : It takes him eight hours to fly home.

He turns his attention to a server.

Bush : No, Diet Coke, Diet Coke.

He turns back to whomever he was talking with.

Bush : It takes him eight hours to fly home. Eight hours. Russia's big and so is China.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair approaches.

Bush : Blair, what are you doing? You leaving?

Blair : No, no, no, not yet.

Blair, standing over Bush as the president eats, tries to engage on the stalled global trade negotiations.

Blair : On this trade thing . . .

Some of the ensuing conversation is inaudible. Blair evidently wants Bush to make a statement on the talks.

Bush : If you want me to. I just want some movement. Yesterday, I didn't see much movement. The desire's to move.

Blair : No, no there's not. It may be that it's impossible.

Bush : I'll be glad to say it. Who's introducing me?

Blair : Angela. [German Chancellor Angela Merkel ]

Bush : Tell her to call on me. Tell her to put me on the spot.

Bush then changes the subject, presumably to a gift Blair must have given him for his recent 60th birthday.

Bush : Thanks for the sweater. Awfully thoughtful of you. I know you picked it out yourself.

Blair : Oh, absolutely.

Both of them laugh. Then Bush turns serious, asking Blair about comments apparently made about the Middle East crisis by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, another guest at the summit.

Bush : What about Kofi? That seems odd. I don't like the sequence of it. His attitude is basically ceasefire and [then] everything else happens. You know what I'm saying?

Blair : Yeah. No, I think -- the thing that's really difficult is we can't stop this unless you get this international presence agreed. Now, I know what you guys have talked about but it's the same thing.

The next remarks are i naudible, but the conversation turns to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

Blair : . . . see how reliable that is. But you need that done quickly.

Bush : Yeah, she's going. I think Condi's going to go pretty soon.

Blair : Right. Well, that's, that's, that's all that matters. If you -- see, it'll take some time to get out there. But at least it gives people a --

Bush : A process, I agree. I told her your offer too.

It's unclear what offer he means, but apparently Blair offered to make some sort of public statement.

Blair : Well, it's only if it's -- I mean, you know, if she's gotta -- or if she needs the ground prepared, as it were. Obviously, if she goes out, she's got to succeed, as it were, whereas I can just go out and talk.

Bush : See, the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it's over.

Blair : Who, Syria?

Bush : Right.

Blair : I think this is all part of the same thing. What does he think? He thinks if Lebanon turns out fine, if we get a solution in Israel and Palestine, Iraq goes in the right way, he's [inaudible ] . That's what this whole thing's about. It's the same with Iran.

Bush : I felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen. We're not blaming Israel. We're not blaming the Lebanese government."

At this point, Blair notices the microphone and turns it off.

Musical Quiz of the Day

2006-07-16T13:37:00.000-04:00

Two sets of lyrics. The song with asinine lyrics and the flacid empty bromides was written by obviously hypocritical US Senator Orrin Hatch. The lyrics for the other was written (presumably) by M. Jagger for a track on the recent Stones album.

Guess which is which. And bonus question: Guess which is in heavy rotation on the iPod.

1.

Heal our land
Please grant us peace today
And strengthen all who lack the faith to call on Thee each day
Heal our land

Please keep us safe and free
Watch over all who understand the need for Liberty
Heal our land
Heal our land

And guide us with thy hand
Keep us ever on the path of Liberty
Heal our land
Heal our land

And help us understand that we must put our trust in Thee
If we would be free
Protect us by the power of thy rod
And keep us as one nation under God
Heal our land
Heal our land

And guide us thy hand
Keep us ever on the path of Liberty
Heal our land
Heal our land

And help us understand
That we must put our trust in Thee
If we would be free

You call yourself a Christian
I think that you're a hypocrite
You say you are a patriot
I think that you're a crock of shit

And listen, I love gasoline
I drink it every day
But it's getting very pricey
And who is going to pay

How come you're so wrong
My sweet neo con.... Yeah

It's liberty for all
'Cause democracy's our style
Unless you are against us
Then it's prison without trial

But one thing that is certain
Life is good at Haliburton
If you're really so astute
You should invest at Brown & Root.... Yeah

How come you're so wrong
My sweet neo con
If you turn out right
I'll eat my hat tonight

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah....

It's getting very scary
Yes, I'm frightened out of my wits
There's bombers in my bedroom
Yeah and it's giving me the shits

We must have loads more bases
To protect us from our foes
Who needs these foolish friendships
We're going it alone

How come you're so wrong
My sweet neo con
Where's the money gone
In the Pentagon

Yeah ha ha ha
Yeah, well, well

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...
Neo con

Now, This is Depressing; True but Depressing

2006-07-16T12:33:00.000-04:00

'Talking Right,' by Geoffrey Nunberg

They Write the Songs

Review by STANLEY FISH

In some quarters repairing the Democratic Party has taken the place of baseball as the national pastime. All you need to play is, first, an analysis of what the Democrats are doing wrong (which is usually an analysis of what the Republicans are doing right) and, second, a strategy for regaining the political advantage. Most of those who enter this sweepstakes are (relatively) strong on the diagnosis part and woefully weak on the remedy part. Geoffrey Nunberg's "Talking Right" is no exception.

Nunberg's thesis is that if you want to get people to do certain things — vote for your candidates, support your policies — you must first get them "to talk in certain ways." Capture the field of language and the political field will be yours because the words everyone responds to will have the meanings you have conferred on them. Over the past quarter-century, Nunberg says, the Republicans have been so good at this that even those on the left "can't help using language that embodies the worldview of the right." So, for example, if the word "values" turns up in a political conversation, it will be understood without reflection to refer to a specific set of stances — pro-family, pro-American, pro-merit, pro-religion, anti-special-interests, anti-quotas, anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage, anti-assisted-suicide.

Of course these are not the only values, and Democrats are free to argue for an alternative set, but if the contest is between those whose values come to mind immediately with the very mention of the word and those whose values have to be explained —"I'm not against traditional marriage, I'm just for anti-discrimination" — the game is over before it begins. "The left has lost the battle for the language itself," Nunberg, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, declares at the outset. "The challenge facing liberals and Democrats is to recapture that ordinary language." That, he announces, is "what this book is about."

Actually, no. What this book is really about is the rueful admiration Nunberg feels for the ability of the political right to appropriate what he (following Richard Rorty) calls the "final vocabulary" of American politics. A succession of lively chapters explains how the Republicans turned "government into a term of abuse"; torpedoed affirmative action by introducing and promoting reverse discrimination; made "liberal" into a word of accusation; redefined the middle class so it encompassed everyone from the proprietor of a corner grocery to the president of the United States (all standing in alliance against the effete mob of latte-drinking, Volvo-driving Eastern seaboard snobs); invented a cultural divide that masks the economic divide between the haves and have-nots; narrowed Franklin Roosevelt's four freedoms into the freedom of corporations to do what they like; drove a wedge between "patriotic" and "liberal," so that one cannot be said to be both; and, in general, "radically reconfigured the political landscape" in ways that even liberals themselves accede to because the right's language is now the default language for everyone.

On the way to proposing a counterstrategy (it never really arrives), Nunberg pauses to engage in a polite disagreement with his fellow linguist George Lakoff, who has provided a rival account of the conservative ascendancy. Lakoff argues that Republicans have articulated — first for themselves and then for others — a conceptual framework that allows them to unite apparently disparate issues in a single coherent worldview. "As Lakoff tells it," Nunberg writes, "the same principles that lead you to favor the flat tax would lead you to oppose abortion and favor abstinence-only programs." But there is a simpler answer to the question of what connections link conservative social and economic views, Nunberg says: "There aren't any." In place of a conceptual unity, there is only a rhetorical unity (Nunberg doesn't use the word, but the entire history of rhetoric from Quintilian to Kenneth Burke stands behind him), a "hodgepodge of conflicting metaphors, symbols and rules of thumb . . . self-interest and moral principles in different proportions," all woven together not in a philosophically consistent framework but in a narrative "that creates an illusion of coherence."

Once again, the Republicans have such a narrative — "declining patriotism and moral standards, the out-of-touch media and the self-righteous liberal elite . . . minorities demanding special privileges . . . disrespect for religious faith, a swollen government" — but "Democrats and liberals have not offered compelling narratives that could compete" with it. Eighty pages later he is still saying the same thing. "The Democrats need a compelling narrative of their own." No doubt, but it is a need this book does not supply. What it does supply is the kind of debating point Nunberg correctly dismisses as ineffective. Democrats, he says, should shore up their position on religion not by arguing for secularism but by explaining that secular values protect freedom of religion by not allowing a particular sect to occupy the entire religious space. That's not a bad argument, and it's a familiar one in judicial debates about the First Amendment's religious clause, but it won't fly in the political arena, if only because, as Nunberg says of a feeble Democratic slogan, "you have to do a little mental stutter step" to understand it.

Nor will you get much political mileage by pointing out, as Nunberg does, that conservative pundits sometimes say journalists are inevitably subjective (when they complain that most mainstream reporters are liberals) while at other times they ridicule postmodernists and left-wing academics who question objectivity and absolute truth. Again, the observation is accurate, but it does no useful polemical work. Instead, it pays still another compliment to the ability of conservatives to play both sides of the discursive street whenever it is to their advantage.

So a book that promises to teach liberals how to defeat the political right ends up being a paean to its resourcefulness. Cheerleading may be the intention, but resignation, bordering on despair, is finally the effect. The message seems to be, these guys are just too good; there must be something we can do. But all Nunberg can think to do is claim for the left an advantage that is irrelevant to his book's project: "Liberals have a linguistic advantage of their own, in the form of truth." That is to say (and he says it), the right's success is built on a structure of "distortions." "We" are truth tellers; "they" are political liars.

This notion is particularly odd given an earlier section of the book in which Nunberg does a nice critical number on what is surely the most overrated essay in the modern canon, George Orwell's turgid, self-righteous and philosophically hopeless "Politics and the English Language." Commenting on Orwell's distinction between words politically inflected and words that plainly name things, Nunberg points out that plain language is as political as any other and will probably be all the more effective because it "seems to correspond to concrete perception." The point, as he has been saying all along, is not to strip all of the political overlay from your language but to make the language that carries your political message the lingua franca of the public sphere.

This is not to disdain the truth; in the final analysis the question of what is true and false is paramount. But Nunberg isn't offering a final analysis here, only a rhetorical and political analysis. His claim that he is allied with the truth against the forces of conservative darkness may be endearing, but it is utterly unhelpful.

From the Times Book Review.

Part of the tragedy of the triumph of the radical Right, the crypto-fascists, is that they are generally wrong about everything past a few very basic points. That's why Iraq has been a screw-up in every way possible for one example.

It's more tragic because the majority of the people really agree with the crypto-fascists. The American-haters running our country have persuaded the people to vote for stuff antithetical to them by the use of words, by selling gold-plated $#!t.

Which is the ultimate lameness and irrelevance of the Dems: They don't know how to speak to the people and they are learning how to do it or the need to do it. No way can they win except in fluke circumstances where the Republicans lose the races for themselves.

Project for the Day: Stop the Destruction of our Country

2006-07-16T09:43:00.000-04:00

Go here and do what you're supposed to do.

Today's Craft Project: Use These

2006-07-16T08:50:00.000-04:00

Giuliani for President!

2006-07-16T08:43:00.000-04:00

That's a joke. His administration was, to the extent it wasn't a lie, a joke.

I despise him too: "Thank God George W. Bush is President!"

What a lying, pandering piece of scum.

So it joys me that a book's coming out soon doing a slice + dice on him.

Here's the full review/preview (and yes, it will be interesting to see how Big Media, particularly the Times, handle it):

Preview of Upcoming Book That Roasts Rudy Giuliani -- Over 9/11

By Kirkus Reviews

Published: July 13, 2006 10:20 AM ET
NEW YORK A long-awaited re-appraisal of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's much-hailed actions surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks will be published in September to mark the fifth anniversary of the tragedy. It's called "The Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11," written by Wayne Barrett, the longtime Village Voice writer and author of a biography of the former mayor, and Dan Collins, a senior producer for CBSNews.com. The publisher is HarperCollins.

"When he assured New York that things would come out all right, he was blessedly believable." That was on 9/11. Things haven't been as good for Rudy Giuliani since. And this book won't make it any better.

Compared to the bewildered George W. Bush, Giuliani projected confidence, calm and leadership in the terrible hours after the Twin Towers fell. That was all to the good. However, Barrett and Collins assert, Giuliani's subsequent claims that he had expected and had been preparing for a terrorist attack since taking office do not match the facts, which the authors explore in abundant (and just this side of numbing) detail.

Giuliani, for instance, detailed an Office of Emergency Management, but then located its headquarters inside what had long been identified as a prime target—the World Trade Center. It was, the authors write, "the only bunker ever built in the clouds."

The heads of various crisis-management-and-response units were political appointees, most in way above their heads. Giuliani and his subordinates were never able to coordinate communications among various fire, police, dispatch, public-health and other agencies; had they been successful, there's a good chance, the authors maintain, that the civilians who were told to stay in place inside the burning towers would have been evacuated, as the fire chiefs had ordered.

The authors' account verges on indictment when they explore why the firefighters' handy-talkies did not work, a congeries of causes ranging from the technological to the political. Suffice it to say that the Giuliani City Hall seems to have been no stranger to sweetheart deals and patronage, so that the employee in charge of emergency broadband communications had a sister who worked as a lobbyist for the phone provider who just happened to win the lucrative contract. That employee later committed suicide.

Now a millionaire, Giuliani may not have been directly responsible for all those woes, but they happened on his watch. This careful condemnation will raise eyebrows.

Pointing out the Obviously Simply Enough to be Understood by Anyone

2006-07-16T08:38:00.000-04:00

Greenwald:

The media's reports on this travesty illustrate, yet again, that the single greatest problem our country faces -- the principal reason the Bush administration has been able to get away with the abuses it has perpetrated -- is because our national media is indescribably lazy, inept, dysfunctional and just plain stupid, for reasons discussed in this comment from Jao and my response.

The reporters who write on these matters literally don't understand the issues they are reporting, even though the issues are not all that complicated. Notwithstanding the fact that this bill expressly removes all limits on the President's eavesdropping powers -- and returns the state of the law regarding presidential eavesdropping to the pre-FISA era, when there were no limits on presidential eavesdropping of any kind -- Charles Babington and Peter Baker told their readers in The Washington Post -- in an article hilariously entitled: "Bush Compromises On Spying Program" -- that "the deal represented a clear retreat by Bush" and that "the accord is a reversal of Bush's position that he would not submit his program to court review."

Anyone with a basic understanding of what FISA was and of the conflicts in play could read the Specter bill and see that the last thing it does is entail "compromises" on the part of the White House. Nobody who knows how to read could read that bill and think that. At this point, I believe they don't even read the bill. It's hard to see how they could read the bill and then write that article. Instead, it seems that they just call their standard sources on each side, go with the White House-Specter assessment that this is some grand "compromise" on the ground that it is a joint view of both warring sides, and then throw in a cursory ACLU quote somewhere at the end just to be able to say that they included some opposing views. But the reporters who are writing about this - and I mean the ones writing in the pages of our country's most important newspapers - don't actually have any idea what they're talking about.

Babington is the same reporter who falsely told his readers on the front page of the Post in March that the Republican "compromise" bill from the Senate Intelligence Committee (offered in lieu of an actual investigation into the NSA program) entailed substantial Congressional oversight of the program, even though a quick reading of the actual bill would have revealed that it entailed no such oversight. Representatives from Sen. DeWine and Snowe's office apparently told him what great oversight their bill provided and so he printed as fact what he was told.

After bloggers pointed out this error, the Post, several days later, was forced to issue a correction (appended to the top of the original article). But the same thing that happened there is happening here - Republican Senators and White House representatives with a vested interest in how the story gets reported characterize the bill in a certain way, and then lazy, uninformed reporters like Babington uncritically regurgitate that version as fact in the newspaper.

As Jao observed in his comment, the damage here is that it becomes conventional wisdom that this bill is now some sort of "compromise" on the part of the White House, such that beltway journalists and other types will simply assume that it's some sort of moderate, middle-of-the-road result which only extremists and obstructionists would oppose. The reality, of course, is the opposite: this bill bolsters the President's theories of unlimited executive power beyond Dick Cheney's wildest dreams. But the media, as is so often the case, fails in its duty to inform Americans as to what the Government is actually doing, which then prevents anything from actually being done about it. For every instance of presidential abuse of power or profound policy failure over the last five years, that dynamic is a major cause.

While an arguement can easiy be made that this administration has committed any number of treasdonous acts, the Big Media aren't just enablers but their enabling of the destroyers and haters of democracy and of this country is treasonous as well.

Thy're Still Going to Destroy Social Security

2006-07-16T08:34:00.000-04:00

Except now they learned their lesson; it's going to be done in secret. Like in any other oppressive state. (We're now in a post-freedom pseudo-democracy. Hey; maybe all the bad whether is caused by the founding fathers spinning in their graves!)

Don't believe Social Security phase-out is coming down the pike again next year?

This from a press release just out from from Finance Committee ranking member, Sen. Max Baucus ...

"U.S. Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, today blasted the President’s renewal of a plan to privatize Social Security and slash benefits for millions of Americans. The Mid-Session Budget Review released by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) today included a proposal that would spend $721 billion – nearly $10 billion more than originally planned in the President’s original Fiscal Year 2007 budget – to turn Social Security into a system of private accounts with lower guaranteed benefits to Americans. The President’s proposal to privatize Social Security includes significant cuts in guaranteed benefits for the vast majority of Social Security recipients through the indexing of initial benefits to prices, rather than wages.

"This is only one of several behind the scenes initiatives over the last few weeks aimed at laying the groundwork for phasing out Social Security next year. Is Social Security phase-out a good issue for Democrats in the mid-term elections? Yep, absolutely. But the president and his allies on the Hill really are getting ready to do phase out the program next year."

Don't pretend you weren't told in advance.

The press is ignoring it. And a lot of Dems across the country are too.

And as long as they do, candidates around the country can refuse to say where they stand on the issue until after election day. Tom Kean, Jr. in New Jersey is just one example.

But there's actually something you can do. Right now. Find out where the candidates in your state and district stand on the issue. Are they in favor of preserving Social Security or will they vote for phasing it out and replacing it with private accounts? Simple question. And you can get an answer.

-- Josh Marshall

The post with links is here.

These Guys Hate You and Me and Everyone

2006-07-16T08:32:00.000-04:00

But poor Black people moreso:

In advance of its August publication date, GQ has released a big piece on Ralph Reed today, with one gem in particular: a plan hatched by Reed and Jack Abramoff which sounds suspiciously like "mortgaging old black people," as a former Reed associate told the magazine.

In July of 2003, Abramoff and Reed considered launching something called the Black Churches Insurance Program.

We know how this scheme would have gone, because Abramoff pitched something similar to a cash-strapped Texas tribe, the Tigua. Basically, since the tribe couldn't pay Abramoff, he offered to arrange "a life-insurance policy for every Tigua 75 or older." When those elders died, the death beneﬁts would have gone to Abramoff through one of his non-profits. The Tigua didn't take Abramoff up on the offer, but it was too good of an idea to let go.

The whole ugly story is here.

These people are sick and should be put down like dogs. Or at least neutralized.

D'uh du Jour

2006-07-16T08:25:00.000-04:00

Journalistic courage should include the refusal to publish in a newspaper or carry on a TV or radio news show any statements made by the President or any other government official that are designed solely as a public relations tool, offering no new or valuable information to the public.

No $#!t.

The whole pointing-out-the-obvious piece is here.

In fairness, it's a posting at one of mainstream journalism's most prestigious organization sites, so even if obvious that the piece is posted is not insignificant.

History Lesson

2006-07-16T08:22:00.000-04:00

Just in case one thought the right wing only recently discovered the virtues of blatant lying and endless repetition of proven lies:

Wrong!

Look here.

Is This What's Going on in the Middle East??

2006-07-16T08:10:00.000-04:00

Besides bringing freedom and democracy and thereby enabling terrorists:

July 15, 2006
Some Questions Regarding Israel's Objectives: Is Israel Trying to Curb America's Deal-Making in Middle East?

When I visited Israel in March, one of the more interesting dinner discussions I had was with former Mossad Director Danny Yatom, now a Labor Party member of the Knesset.

As head of the Mossad, Yatom gave orders to have the head of Hamas, Khaled Meshal, assassinated by poison. The effort was botched, and the failed attempt became globally embarrassing news for Yatom and then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But the fact remains despite this one failed case that Israel has been extremely skillful at knocking off serious enemies in covert, lethal, under the radar screen ways.

Why is Israel pounding most of Lebanon rather than just the South and rather than pinpointing its attack against Hezbollah assets? Why the dramatic bombing of explosive fuel centers? The attacks both in Gaza and in Beirut seem made for Fox News, CNN and the next Schwarzenegger movie.

I think that there is little doubt that a significant part of the explanation can be attributed to the fact that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his more liberal partner in this effort, Amir Peretz -- now Defense Minister -- are not former field command generals and want to demonstrate that they can be responsible stewards of Israel's national security -- and that they won't be timid in using Israel's military capabilities.

But that doesn't explain it all. The Israeli response to the Hezbollah incursion is exactly what Hezbollah wanted. Adversaries rarely give each other the behaviors the other actually desires unless there are other objectives involved.

My view is that three broad threats were evolving for Israel from the American side of the equation. One one front, the U.S. will be attempting to settle some kind of new equilibrium in Iraq with fewer U.S. forces and some face-saving partial withdrawal. To accomplish this and maintain any legitimacy in the eyes of important nations in the region -- particularly among close U.S. partners among the Gulf Cooperation Council states -- America "might have" tried to do some things that constituted a broad new bargain with the Arab Middle East. The U.S. had even previously flirted, along with the Brits, in trying to get Syria on a Libya like track and out of the international dog house.

There was also pressure building to push Hamas -- or at least the "governing wing" of it -- towards a posture that would move dramatically closer to a recognition of Israel. Abbas was becoming increasingly entrepreneurial in creating opportunities for the constructive players in Hamas to squirm towards eventual negotiations with Israel that could possibly be packaged in terms of "final status negotiations" on the borders and terms of a new Palestinian state. George W. Bush is the first President to actually call the Palestine territories "Palestine" and may have eventually come around on trying to pump up Abbas's legitimacy as the father of a new and different state. I am doubtful of this scenario -- but some in Israel had serious concerns about this unfolding.

Lastly, despite lots of tit-for-tat tensions and enormous mistrust, Iran and the U.S. were tilting towards a deal to negotiate about Iran's nuclear pretensions and other goals.

Some in Israel viewed all three of these potential policy courses for the U.S. -- a broad deal with the Arab Middle East, a new push on final status negotiations with the Palestinians, and a deal to actually negotiate directly with Iran -- as negative for Israel.

The flamboyant, over the top reactions to attacks on Israel's military check points and the abduction of soldiers -- which I agree Israel must respond to -- seems to be part establishing "bona fides" by Olmert, but far more important, REMOVING from the table important policy options that the U.S. might have pursued.

Israel is constraining American foreign policy in amazing and troubling ways by its actions. And a former senior CIA official and another senior Marine who are well-versed in both Israeli and broad Middle East affairs, agreed that serious strategists in Israel are more concerned about America tilting towards new bargains in the region than they are either about the challenge from Hamas or Hezbollah or showing that Olmert knows how to pull the trigger.

The rest is here.

An Important Public Service Announcement

2006-07-16T08:08:00.000-04:00

Don't have the time to redo the links (long boring story having to do with committing to a format).

But if and when I bother to, this is as important a link as any:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/grandolddocket.php

Bringing America a Stronger Economy

2006-07-15T19:08:00.000-04:00

Randy Forsyth, Capitalist Tool (R) (so to speak), at barrons.com:

***
President Bush trumpeted Tuesday that this year's federal budget deficit is projected to total only $296 billion, $127 billion less than the previous forecast from the Office of Management and Budget. Next year's shortfall is estimated to total $339 billion, down from the previous forecast of $354 billion.
David Stockman, the OMB head in the first Reagan Administration, was, in his words, "taken to the woodshed" for forecasting $200 billion deficits "as far as the eye can see." Allowing for inflation over the two decades, $200 billion in red ink then is about the same as $300 billion now. But in it's not just the value of the dollar that's been debased over time; so have our standards.
***
The way to judge a nation's solvency is not to measure the cash inflow and outflow in any one year, as the government does it, but to examine the lifetime fiscal burdens on current and future generations, he writes. Based on that criterion and the work of Jagadeesh Gokhale and Kent Smetters, the current U.S. fiscal gap is $65.9 trillion! That's trillion with a "t" and Kotlikoff's exclamation point.

To put that in perspective, $65.9 trillion is more than five times gross domestic product and almost twice the size of national wealth.

The rest of the gore is here.

Actually, the situation is even worse than that....

It Was Better When He Kept His Mouth Shut

2006-07-15T18:57:00.000-04:00

"Israel has a right to defend herself. Every nation must defend...against terrorist attacks and the killing of innocent life."

-- President Bush

-- as quoted in Barron's.

But let's parse this....

In regard to Hamas and the Palestinians: a soldier is kidnapped and justifiable defensive retaliation is killing a number of innocents.

Hezbollah is more complex but even if excessive force is warranted, destroying Beirut is, well, difficult to justify.

But Our Leader does justify it.

Which now exacerbates the situation and even makes a regional problem our problem.

First, it justifies the violence. If Israel's overreaction is justified, then overreaction to Israeli overreaction sureley must be justified as well.

Second, it gives the Muslim and Arabic disaffected more reason to hate the West. Not a good thing.

It also and further justifies Iran's work to generate nuclear arms as well as, to a slightly lesser degree, Pakistani assistance towards that goal.

Our leaders are really, really doing a great job in the Middle East.

Yes, thank God George W. Bush is president. We and the world are far safer with him in charge.

The Tsumani of Scum Never Ceases....

2006-07-15T15:43:00.000-04:00

As I was saying:

This dick gets appointed Speaker of the House as a result of scandal. So what does he do, under the vigilant (not) eyes of Big Media and the DC Courtiers?

Why, he ups the ante.

Of course.

And the Times has it, on the front albeit a Saturday.

Now if only Keller realizes that the SWIFT operation was a) no secret and b) initially publicized by proud Republicans....

Props to the Times; Two Good Ones

2006-07-15T15:39:00.000-04:00

Two terrific stories, both on the front page, reminiscent of the days of old.

First, contrary to a slightly misleading headline, public schools on average, are doing as well as private schools, actually generally better. So much for private and charter schools. (Also left out of the print version, I believe, is that the actual report is here.)

Second... ah, it's worth a post of its own....

Success!

2006-07-15T06:31:00.000-04:00

No need for no stinkin' links, it's all over everything, but isn't it great how we are successfully spreading democracy through the Middle East bringing with it peace? Hezbollah empowered in Lebanon, Hamas running the Palestinian entity, Iraq on the slow road to break-up with the Shia state becoming a satellite of peace-loving pro-Western near-nuclear-powered Iran. (And of course, the Likud, the party of former terrorists and their acolytes, have been in near-continuous power in Israel for almost thirty years.)

This is success; the Dems couldn't have done this.

All hail our wonderful leaders!

Where is the Outrage? Checks and Balances: The Light, Illusory Version

2006-07-15T04:54:00.000-04:00

Sigh.... This is better put that I could do without more time than I have but it lays it all out nice neatly. Amazing how Big Media treated it with a straight face, though. From the War Room:

The White House has apparently reached a deal with Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter over the president's warrantless-spying program. Under the deal, the president will be required to submit the program to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for legal review. At least that's how Specter sees it. "If the bill is not changed, the president will submit the Terrorist Surveillance Program to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court," the Associated Press quotes Specter as saying. "That is the president's commitment." The White House sees it differently. Again, from the AP: "An administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the bill's language gives the president the option of submitting the program to the intelligence court, rather than making the review a requirement."

Not that the language matters, of course. Assuming for a moment that the deal actually requires Bush to submit the program to the FISA court -- and assuming that Specter's legislation actually makes it through Congress -- Bush could use one of his signing statements to write the legal review requirement right out of the bill.

But even if Congress does require legal review, and even if Bush doesn't eliminate it with a stroke of his pen, isn't this all a little amazing? The president gets caught running a spying program that violates federal law, about which he was legally required to brief Congress but didn't, and the reaction from the tough-talking Senate Judiciary Committee chairman is a deal that will, as the New York Times explains, reaffirm the president's "constitutional authority" to spy on foreign powers and their agents; give the administration more authority to use "emergency" wiretaps with retroactive court approval as well as other surveillance tools; and deny jurisdiction to anyone but the FISA court to hear challenges to the warrantless wiretap program.

This is what the Times' David Sanger calls a "tactical retreat" for the White House. It sounds more like a gold-plated rubber stamp to us -- accommodation and after-the-fact approval where serious oversight would seem to be required. It's an "interesting bargain," says Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. "[The president is] saying, 'If you do every single thing I tell you to do, I'll do what I should have done anyway.'"

Well, not exactly. What the president is actually saying is, "If you do every single thing I tell you to do, I might do what I should have done anyway." We don't know when "checks and balances" became an "option" for the executive branch to consider -- actually, we do -- but it sure is good work if you can get it.

The rest of it here. And an alleged breakdown of how bogus the deal is is here.

Modern Lynching

2006-07-14T05:00:00.000-04:00

The sad, pathetic story starts here and there's more here.

Memo to Bill Keller: You're SWIFT Story Still Wasn't a Secret Before You Ran Your Story -- See Scoop Below!!

2006-07-14T04:52:00.000-04:00

If you still labor under the fantasy that the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal divulged "classified information" that put U.S. lives at risk or hampered our ability to track terrorist financial assets, you are willfully ignorant or have been living in a sensory isolation tank.

The rest of the story, chapter and verse, is here.

Updated: The Republican Congress spilled the beans! For real!! OK, so let's bust Keller, Pinch and everyone at the Times for the SWIFT story after we impeach all the 'publican in Congress -- the real traitors!!

Scoop: El-Qaida training Camp Organized and Financed by US!

2006-07-14T04:35:00.000-04:00

Word. We're helping them find recruits, indoctrinate them and giving them the opportunity to engage in some basic training. The story and documentation are here.

50 Easy Questions for Our Leaders Who Always Have the Answers

2006-07-13T04:22:00.000-04:00

From the HuffPo:

Robert J. Elisberg: '50 easy questions to ask any Republican'
Date: Wednesday, July 12 @ 09:48:31 EDT
Topic: Republicans

Robert J. Elisberg, The Huffington Post

Anyone can ask tough, intricate, confrontational questions. But all that ever does is start an argument, and it gets people nowhere. On the other hand, these are...well, easy. These are friendly questions. These are questions that allow another person to actually explain their thoughts, and explain fully. And to do so in as comfortable, as simple a way as possible.

Without feeling attacked. Without feeling pressure. Without feeling no one cares what they have to say. Friendly. Easy.

Print them out, carry them around in your pocket, and the next time someone begins quoting from a Republican talking points memo, take the list out and ask.

1. What are the Top Seven best things that the Bush Administration has done?

2. Is the Iraq War is going well?

3. After three years thus far, when do you think Iraq might be able to "stand up" so that America can "stand down"?

4. For his part in the event, how would you rate the job the President did protecting New Orleans from devastation?

5. How do you think the rebuilding of New Orleans is going?

6. When Dick Cheney and the oil company and energy executives met in private to plan America's energy policy, how much of their goal was to benefit consumers?

7. Do you believe in the President's call for an Era of Personal Responsibility?

8. Since Republicans control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, how personally responsible are they for conditions in America today?

9. Why do you think they haven't been able to find anyone who can verify that George Bush ever showed up for National Guard duty in Alabama?

10. Would you want Donald Rumsfeld to plan your daughter's wedding?

11. Are you aware that no government in the history of civilization, other than the Bush Administration, has lowered taxes during a war?

12. Are you married?

13. Do you personally feel threatened by gay marriage?

14. Since getting elected, do you think the President has been more a uniter or a divider?

15. How do you explain the President's approval rating going from a high of 90% to the current mid-30%?

16. Do you like the government collecting personal data on you without a warrant?

17. How much money do you have in your bank account, stocks and investments?

18. What's your partner's favorite sex position?

19. If you have nothing to hide, why aren't you answering?

20. Should we build a wall along the Mexican border?

21. Why isn't anyone building a wall along the Canadian border?

22. Does that terrorist gang arrested in Canada count as a threat?

23. If you shot someone in the face while drinking, how fast would the police show up to arrest you?

24. If Donald Rumsfeld had planned your daughter's wedding three years ago, would the guests still be there?

25. Even if no laws are broken, do you think it's okay to reveal the name of a covert agent?

26. During your lifetime, approximately how often have you changed your mind?

27. Why shouldn't people dismiss you as a flip-flopper?

28. Where do you think the Weapons of Mass Destruction might be?

29. Where do you think Osama bin Laden might be?

30. Is it fiscally responsible to cut taxes, increase spending and create a $9 trillion federal debt?

31. Are you glad liberals passed such programs as Social Security, Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, women's suffrage, federal deposit insurance, unemployment compensation, rural electrification, child labor laws, minimum wages and the 40-hour work week?

32. What are the Top Ten best things that conservatives have given to America?

33. If you were on life support, would you want a doctor you'd never met making a diagnosis about you via remote television?

34. Do you think man-made greenhouse gases have anything at all to do with depleting the ozone layer?

35. If Donald Rumsfeld had planned your daughter's wedding three years ago, and guests were still there, how many factions would they now be split into?

36. How good is it that the terrorist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was killed?

37. Are you aware that in 2002 the Pentagon knew where al-Zarqawi was and presented three separate plans to kill him, but the Administration refused to act each time?

38. Is George W. Bush the kind of guy you'd want to sit down and have a beer with?

39. When he started talking about being a Born Again Christian, would you want to stay or leave?

40. Is Ray Romano the kind of guy you'd want to sit down and have a beer with?

41. Would you want him to be President?

42. Does the Administration have an environmental policy that benefits the environment?

43. Since George Bush campaigned for President strongly against nation building, in what ways are our actions in Iraq not nation building?

44. What's the maximum amount of time you'd want to spend alone with Dick Cheney?

45. After dismissing Saddam Hussein's old Iraqi army, was it a good idea to let them keep their rifles?

46. Would a policy that allows torture be something that makes you proud as an American?

47. Has the Mission been Accomplished?

48. Do you feel comforted that Dick Cheney is a heartbeat away from being President?

49. If Donald Rumsfeld had planned your daughter's wedding, and guests started fighting and were killed, would you expect to be allowed to view the caskets when they were returned home?

50. How glad do you think George Bush is that he's no longer active in the National Guard?

Maybe I'll send them to my congressperson....

Then again, these guys are, on a certain level, pretty stupid, so maybe we can reduce it two questions:

1. Why are you wrong on everything? Do you hate America that much?

2. Why the constant lying? Are you incapable of ever telling the truth or did your parents just do a really lousy job raising you?

Is the End? Do We Now Know Everything?

2006-07-13T04:11:00.000-04:00

Of course not, but has everything come out that will ever come out?

First, the crypto-official version:

Novak: My role in Plame leak probe
July 12, 2006
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

WASHINGTON -- Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has informed my attorneys that, after 2-1/2 years, his investigation of the CIA leak case concerning matters directly relating to me has been concluded. That frees me to reveal my role in the federal inquiry that, at the request of Fitzgerald, I have kept secret.

I have cooperated in the investigation while trying to protect journalistic privileges under the First Amendment and shield sources who have not revealed themselves. I have been subpoenaed by and testified to a federal grand jury. Published reports that I took the Fifth Amendment, made a plea bargain with the prosecutors or was a prosecutorial target were all untrue.

For nearly the entire time of his investigation, Fitzgerald knew -- independent of me -- the identity of the sources I used in my column of July 14, 2003. A federal investigation was triggered when I reported that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was employed by the CIA and helped initiate his 2002 mission to Niger. That Fitzgerald did not indict any of these sources may indicate his conclusion that none of them violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

Some journalists have badgered me to disclose my role in the case, even demanding I reveal my sources -- identified in the column as two senior Bush administration officials and an unspecified CIA source. I have promised to discuss my role in the investigation when permitted by the prosecution, and I do so now.

The news broke Sept. 26, 2003, that the Justice Department was investigating the CIA leak case. I contacted my longtime attorney, Lester Hyman, who brought his partner at Swidler Berlin, James Hamilton, into the case. Hamilton urged me not to comment publicly on the case, and I have followed that advice for the most part.

The FBI soon asked to interview me, prompting my first major decision. My attorneys advised me that I had no certain constitutional basis to refuse cooperation if subpoenaed by a grand jury. To do so would make me subject to imprisonment and inevitably result in court decisions that would diminish press freedom, all at heavy personal legal costs.

Sources signed waivers

I was interrogated at the Swidler Berlin offices on Oct. 7, 2003, by an FBI inspector and two agents. I had not identified my sources to my attorneys, and I told them I would not reveal them to the FBI. I did disclose how Valerie Wilson's role was reported to me, but the FBI did not press me to disclose my sources.

On Dec. 30, 2003, the Justice Department named Fitzgerald as special prosecutor. An appointment was made for Fitzgerald to interview me at Swidler Berlin on Jan. 14, 2004. The problem facing me was that the special prosecutor had obtained signed waivers from every official who might have given me information about Wilson's wife.

That created a dilemma. I did not believe blanket waivers in any way relieved me of my journalistic responsibility to protect a source. Hamilton told me that I was sure to lose a case in the courts at great expense. Nevertheless, I still felt I could not reveal their names.

However, on Jan. 12, two days before my meeting with Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor informed Hamilton that he would be bringing to the Swidler Berlin offices only two waivers. One was by my principal source in the Valerie Wilson column, a source whose name has not yet been revealed. The other was by presidential adviser Karl Rove, whom I interpret as confirming my primary source's information. In other words, the special prosecutor knew the names of my sources.

When Fitzgerald arrived, he had a third waiver in hand -- from Bill Harlow, the CIA public information officer who was my CIA source for the column confirming Mrs. Wilson's identity. I answered questions using the names of Rove, Harlow and my primary source.

Testified before grand jury

I had a second session with Fitzgerald at Swidler Berlin on Feb. 5, 2004, after which I was subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury. I testified there at the U.S. courthouse in Washington on Feb. 25.

In these four appearances with federal authorities, I declined to answer when the questioning touched on matters beyond the CIA leak case. Neither the FBI nor the special prosecutor pressed me.

Primary source not revealed

I have revealed Rove's name because his attorney has divulged the substance of our conversation, though in a form different from my recollection. I have revealed Harlow's name because he has publicly disclosed his version of our conversation, which also differs from my recollection. My primary source has not come forward to identify himself.

When I testified before the grand jury, I was permitted to read a statement that I had written expressing my discomfort at disclosing confidential conversations with news sources. It should be remembered that the special prosecutor knew their identities and did not learn them from me.

In my sworn testimony, I said what I have contended in my columns and on television: Joe Wilson's wife's role in instituting her husband's mission was revealed to me in the middle of a long interview with an official who I have previously said was not a political gunslinger. After the federal investigation was announced, he told me through a third party that the disclosure was inadvertent on his part.

Following my interview with the primary source, I sought out the second administration official and the CIA spokesman for confirmation.

I learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in Who's Who in America.

I considered his wife's role in initiating Wilson's mission, later confirmed by the Senate Intelligence Committee, to be a previously undisclosed part of an important news story. I reported it on that basis.

And this spin from Salon's War Room:

Novak: Fitzgerald knew, but I'm still not saying

Within two weeks of beginning his investigation into the CIA leak case, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald apparently knew the identity of the Bush administration official who outed Valerie Plame.

The rest of us? We're still waiting.

In a long-promised "tell all" column that tells substantially less than all, Robert Novak says that Fitzgerald knew the names of the sources for his Plame column before Novak confirmed them for him on Jan. 14, 2004. Two days before their meeting -- and just two weeks after he was named special prosecutor -- Fitzgerald told Novak's lawyer that he'd be bringing two waivers with him. "One was by my principal source in the Valerie Wilson column, a source whose name has not yet been revealed," Novak writes. "The other was by presidential adviser Karl Rove, whom I interpret as confirming my primary source's information. In other words, the special prosecutor knew the names of my sources."

So who was the first source? In a column in October 2003, Novak described the source as a "senior administration official" who was "no partisan gunslinger." Novak still won't say who the official was, and he hasn't added much to his previous description. The source is clearly a male -- Novak refers to him in his new column as a "he" -- and Novak tells the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz that he's "not a political operative."

Is the source still in legal jeopardy, if he ever was? From Novak's perspective, the answer to that question seems to be no. Novak says that his source has "not come forward to identify himself." We'll take that to mean that the source hasn't come forward in public, not necessarily that the source hasn't testified before Fitzgerald's grand jury. But either way, Novak says he feels free to discuss his role in the case publicly because Fitzgerald has told his lawyers that the investigation "concerning matters directly relating to me has been concluded." If Fitzgerald were still thinking about the possibility of charges against Novak's original source, it's probably safe to assume that he wouldn't have delivered such a message to Novak now.

There's at least one more question to answer here: Why has Novak's account of the administration's motivations shifted over the past three years? In July 2003, Novak told Newsday that his sources came to him with Plame's identity. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

Now Novak tells Kurtz that he doesn't think leaking Plame's identity was "part of a plan to discredit anybody," and he writes in his column that his still-secret source told him after the fact, through an intermediary, that his disclosure of Plame's identity had been "inadvertent." As for the "they gave me the name" part? Novak has changed his story on that, too. Now he says that the administration officials who told him who Plame was didn't use her name; he got that, he says, from Joseph Wilson's "Who's Who" entry.

-- Tim Grieve

Of course, the whos is far less important than the significance of White House law-breaking and the ffect of a political snit on the intel community (to coin a phrase). And, of course, the irony: the rightist national security administration telling covert agents that their own gummint will be happy to expose and endanger them if political partisan circumstances require i.e politics trump security.

UPDATED: Or maybe not; here's how Novak is still full of crap.

Honesty, Cont'd

2006-07-12T03:57:00.000-04:00

Liars.

I know, I know -- what else is new? Just the scale, of course....

And it's kind of bipartisan, too (fair, balanced...).... Unless for these purposes one was to count Lieberman as a Republican. Look!

The Paper of Record

2006-07-11T04:47:00.000-04:00

Of a lousy, hagiographic record.

A big wet puff piece of crazy man Ricky Santorum, starting off by his desire to be another Alphonse D'Amato and no reference to one distinction of possible significance. The Fonz actually lived in New York, Ricky only owns an empty house in the state. More rightist respect for law: owning an unlived in house is the same as residing.

Scoop: We are Succeeding in the Middle East

2006-07-11T04:11:00.000-04:00

We are successfully spreading democracy in the Middle East:

From the Wall Street Journal (sub reqd.):

When Syrian troops left Lebanon last year, the Bush administration saw a prime opportunity to de-fang a group one U.S. diplomat once called the "A-Team" of terror groups: Hezbollah, which receives major backing from Syria.

The end of Syria's nearly three-decade occupation was a watershed moment for President Bush's campaign to spread democracy in the Middle East as an antidote to violent Islamic movements. Millions of Lebanese celebrated the country's liberation. With an election approaching, Hezbollah was worried. "We felt danger," says Nawar Saheli, a political leader in the group.

It also has helped the group elude a big threat: international pressure, led by the U.S. and France, to disarm. Over the past year "Hezbollah built a big shield over its military wing," says Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at the Lebanese American University.

How the militant group turned adversity to opportunity reveals a conundrum for the Bush administration: Rather than resisting Washington's democracy drive, some radical Islamic groups, including organizations the U.S. deems terrorist, are using it to promote their agendas.

The rest of it is here and see this too.

What I don't understand is why a nation like Syria is scared to adopt the American model or Iranian model of rigged elections: democracy and entrenched power: win-win for the established leadership.....

Another Scoop!

2006-07-11T04:07:00.000-04:00

You missed this because of the ;iberal media: Our leadeer is really, really loved by conservatives:

Gentle reader, did you know that in April President Bush went to Stanford University to speak to the Hoover Institution fellows at the invitation of former Secretary of State George Shultz but was not allowed on campus? The Stanford students got wind of it and blocked Bush's access to the campus. The Hoover fellows had to go to Shultz's home to hear Bush's pitch for war and more war.

It's here.

Anyone Understand This?

2006-07-09T12:17:00.000-04:00

The Times page 1 above-the-fold column 6 headline reads:

Surprising Jump in Tax Revenues Is Curbing Deficit

Great news, of course, were it true. And the idea that there is an increase, maybe even a "jump", I don't doubt.

Still, too lazy to actually read the article, I check out the graphic -- 1,000 words, and so on and so forth.

And what I see is this:

Which, disappointly (for a graphic), raises questions.

First, what is the interplay of dark bars and light?

What's this first 9 months nonsense?

Most importantly, why in God's name, are the figures not adjusted for infaltion?

Well, 30 seconds of thought, give or take, leads to the obvious: Adjusted numbers would show a very modest increase in revenues compared to the last couple of years. More specifically, unlike the unadjusted numbers, adjusted would likely show a slowing in the drop in revenues, that is, the downward trend is somewhat lessening.

Which means the Times is back doing courtier duty.

SCOOP! FLASH! CORRECTION!!

2006-07-09T11:27:00.000-04:00

Iraq? Not a slam dunk after all. Tenet never said it. Just words attirbuted to him. (Of course, if he had gone public with that, then he would have won his medal.)

The truth of the story -- that Big Media is unsurpisingly missing -- is here and here.

Of course, when Big Media is in the charge of people like Keller and Schulzberger and Russert and their ilk and the delusionals that think Faux Nooz is something to be emulated, not a tiny niche provider of lunacy to a fringe audience, what do you expect?

A little taste from the first link:

As Suskind documented in his book, the "slam dunk" statement came in the form of a memo written by the White House and transmitted to Woodward. Accordingly, it wasn't the independent recollections of several individuals, but an authorized coordinated story put together by a team and vetted by the White House communications office. Such coordination of interested testimony would never make it past the Courthouse steps, much less get admitted in a Court of law, yet it is repeated as gospel by White House flacks and the mainstream media.

But they forgot something. There is a paper trail. Not a paper trail from the meeting itself, but a paper trail of White House coordinated statements that suggests that this "slam dunk" comment was a manufactured propaganda phrase in the days when the Iraq intelligence fiasco was becoming clear.

Like the Early Years of the USSR

2006-07-09T07:16:00.000-04:00

Wingnuts discussing anything like political morality. Like murderes denouncing jaywalkers or something.... And Big Media keeps pushing this crap....

Spoke to someone recently who was surprised I don't watch TV news. Why should I? It's the least reliable source for news. (I do watch Headline News and CNN but that for the anchor girls, not for any news (Soledad and Christianne excepted, more or less).)

Just in Case We Forget How Ruthless the Wingnuts Are....

2006-07-09T07:13:00.000-04:00

Here. And here.

OK, here's one example:

Following in David Horowitz’s ever-unfortunate footsteps, token black wingnut La Shawn Barber juxtaposes liberals’ cruel attacks on neo-Nazi jailbait pop group “Prussian Blue” with their complete silence on the continued existance of the NAACP. Oh, the hypocrisy! She bloviates:

If defending and advocating for your race is a bad thing, it should be bad across the board. Disband the congressional black and hispanic caucuses. Shutter the NAACP, which has become nothing more than a clique of partying elitists who give out awards to pedophiles. Why are racial minorities allowed to honor their race, while whites are not? Why is there a stigma against being proud of your white skin, but not black or brown skin?

And she doesn’t even mention how the NAACP sells crack to finance vote fraud! Which is, like, totally true!

I’m going to say this e-x-t-r-a s-l-o-w-l-y so maybe even the terminally stupid Ms. Barber can understand:

1. Fun fact about white people: we can, and do, join white ethnic organizations all the damn time, and nobody says anything. When you poke your head in the local Polish-American club, do not expect to see a Benetton ad. Expect to see lots and lots of white people. Ditto the Italian-American club, the endless Irish-American organizations, etc., etc. It all seems rather pointless to me, but they tend to have cheap beer, so I keep these sorts of idle opinions to myself.

2. There’s nothing necessarily racist about having an umbrella “white pride” organization - I know of no fundamental physical law which would force it to be racist - it’s just that nobody but racists seems to have any real interest in joining and/or forming such a group, and it is awfully difficult to imagine what practical, non-racist rationale such a group would have for existing. In most parts of the country, you can’t whip a Kenny G CD without pegging at least three white people, so most white people tend to spend a lot more time trying to avoid each other than seeking each other out. In addition, white people generally don’t have a lot in common with other white people. There’s only so long we can make small talk about different brands of sunscreen before it comes out that someone converted someone else’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather to Christianity at swordpoint or blighted someone else’s great-great-grandfather’s potatoes, and then things can become quite awkward quite quickly. If white people want to get together and just kind of “get your white on”, well, knock yourselves out, but I promise not to be offended if you forget my invitation.

3. Prussian Blue are Nazis. They were raised in the National Vanguard/National Alliance neo-Nazi movement. They throw Nazi salutes in concert. The name “Prussian Blue” is apparently a coded shout-out to a certain theory of Holocaust denial. I know you hate liberals and everything; and, not being you mom, I would never presume to tell you who your friends should be; but maybe, just maybe, you don’t really want to be legitimizing Naziism while you’re at it. So I want you to think extremely carefully here. While you’re thinking, you may wish to look over this handy chart I’ve put together, which goes over the many similarities - and differences! - between the NAACP and the Nazis:

National Socialism/Neo-Naziism National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Begins with the word “National” TRUE TRUE
Uses crack cocaine to finance massive vote fraud FALSE FALSE
Gets accused by right-wingers of using crack cocaine to finance massive vote fraud FALSE TRUE
Is “nothing more than a clique of partying elitists who give out awards to pedophiles” FALSE FALSE
Gets accused by right-wingers of being “nothing more than a clique of partying elitists who give out awards to pedophiles” FALSE TRUE
Invaded Poland, precipitating the bloodiest war in human history TRUE FALSE
Deny gassing millions of Jews TRUE TRUE
But actually did gas millions of Jews TRUE FALSE
Are “liberals”, according to Jonah Goldberg TRUE UNKNOWN
Are “liberals”, according to people who aren’t brainless Pillsbury Doughboy-looking wanker douchebags FALSE TRUE
Are, in our considered Editorial opinion, the sort of people you want to be making excuses for to facilitate your bog-standard wingnut ax-grinding FALSE COULDN’T CARE LESS
Hope this helps. We now return to our regularly-scheduled blogofascism.

(Sorry about the loss of formatting. Click here for the original post.)

Coulter: Just Because She's Vile

2006-07-09T07:11:00.000-04:00

I feel for anyone who isn't a demented wingnut who has to read anything of Coulter's: she's the quee of rightwing dementia -- she's beyond a wingnut. But still, just to keep it out there, the whole piece from Media Matters:

Ann Coulter's "Flatulent Raccoon Theory"
Executive summary

Ann Coulter's Godless: The Church of Liberalism Evolution Misinformation

In her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism (Crown Forum, June 2006), right-wing pundit Ann Coulter devotes two chapters to a bizarre attempt to disprove the theory of evolution. With a mix of misleading claims, pseudo-scientific arguments, distortions of evolutionary theory, and outright falsehoods, Coulter places herself not only outside the mainstream but truly toward the lunatic fringe. After all, no reasonable person argues that one cannot believe in God and simultaneously accept the findings of decades of accumulated research on evolution. Yet, Coulter appears to believe that in order to prove that liberals are "godless," she must attack evolutionary theory itself.

Though she stops short of saying that the earth is 6,000 years old and Adam and Eve rode through the Garden of Eden on the backs of dinosaurs, in her quest to disprove evolutionary theory, Coulter echoes the arguments of the creationists from whom even many religious conservatives distanced themselves long ago.

Among her falsehoods, misinformation, and distortions, Coulter:

Misstates how fossils demonstrate the evolutionary transition from reptiles and mammals, as well as the fossil record of dinosaurs and mammals.
Distorts the likelihood that a living creature will be fossilized.
Distorts the duration of the period known as the Cambrian explosion, omits important information about its significance, and suggests that 10 million years is "sudden."
On transitional fossils, misrepresents relation of the Archaeopteryx to modern birds.
Omits information regarding the Piltdown man and Archaeoraptor hoaxes.
Misrepresents the evolution of the eye and ignores recent research.
Falsely suggests that "irreducible complexity" disproves evolutionary theory.
On the drawings and theories of Ernst Haeckel, omits a century of scientific criticism while falsely suggesting that textbooks still use Haeckel.
Falsely suggests that the Miller-Urey experiment did not accurately reflect early Earth atmosphere.
Throughout the book, displays her own misunderstandings regarding evolutionary theory (i.e. descent with modification, the evolution of bacteria).
Offers only classic creationist arguments from discredited, unscientific ideas, despite a claim on the inner jacket sleeve of the book stating that Coulter writes "with a keen appreciation of genuine science."
According to the weblog of William Dembski, a supporter of intelligent design, all of the above-mentioned falsehoods, misinformation, and distortions can be attributed to his "generous tutoring."

The evidence reveals that Coulter's two chapters on the theory of evolution display her own ignorance toward the subject while providing an avenue to make ad hominem attacks against scientists, progressives, and Democrats.

Ann Coulter's "Flatulent Raccoon Theory"
Robert Savillo
Media Matters for America
June 2006

Introduction

According to right-wing pundit Ann Coulter, "flatulent raccoon theory" is as valid as Darwinian evolution. On Page 214 of her new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, she states:

Throw in enough words like imagine, perhaps, and might have -- and you've got yourself a scientific theory! How about this: Imagine a giant raccoon passed gas and perhaps the resulting gas might have created the vast variety of life we see on Earth. And if you don't accept the giant raccoon flatulence theory for the origin of life, you must be a fundamentalist Christian nut who believes the Earth is flat. That's basically how the argument for evolution goes [emphasis in original].

Coulter uses this "theory" that she has concocted throughout the book to suggest that Darwinian evolution is similarly questionable once one has all the facts. Coulter appears to be trying to develop a parody of evolution analogous to Bobby Henderson's parody religion, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster -- created in response to the Kansas School Board's decision to require the teaching of "intelligent design" as an "alternative" to the theory of evolution. Henderson's Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster serves as an alternate version of "intelligent design" because of the obvious parallels. But while the satirists who created the Flying Spaghetti Monster use its similarities with intelligent design to comic effect, Coulter identified no comparable parallels between "flatulent raccoon theory" and the theory of evolution. Furthermore, Coulter's analogy makes a mistake common to many creationists who confuse Darwinian evolution, the explanation of how different species develop, with theories about the origin of life.

Coulter devotes two whole chapters to the discussion of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Throughout, she offers falsehoods, misleading statements, and distortions of evolutionary theory, all packaged with smears of prominent progressive and Democratic figures as well as news reporters and media personalities. Coulter doesn't actually present new evidence to make her case against evolutionary theory; she only uses the space to criticize evolution, which is a tired tactic of creationists. Page after page, the reader is bombarded with classic creationist arguments. But evolution is a scientific theory that has the support of the National Academy of Sciences; it has no relation to beliefs that cannot be tested, thus the suggestion that "liberals think evolution disproves God" is completely illogical.

The arguments that Coulter uses echo those made by several other creationists. She recites arguments first published by Henry Morris in his 1974 book, Scientific Creationism, about the fossil record and reiterates his distortions about the Cambrian period and the drawings of 19th-century embryologist Ernst Haeckel. Another creationist source whose arguments Coulter repeats is the book, Life -- How Did It Get Here?, which contained distortions of the Cambrian period and the Miller-Urey experiment. Coulter also pushes arguments by Duane Gish, a faculty member of the Institute for Creation Research, including distortions of transitional fossils and the Piltdown man hoax. In addition, Coulter misrepresents the evidence about the evolution of the eye, as do Francis Hitching, author of the 1982 book, The Neck of the Giraffe, and Walt Brown of the Center for Creation Science. Other apparent sources for some of Coulter's arguments include Jonathan Wells's Icons of Evolution, published in 2000.

The jacket of Coulter's book states that Coulter writes from a "keen appreciation for genuine science." Inside, she credits a cadre of supporters of intelligent design:

I couldn't have written about evolution without the generous tutoring of Michael Behe, David Berlinski, and William Dembski, all of whom are fabulous at translating complex ideas, unlike liberal arts types, who constantly force me to the dictionary to relearn the meaning of quotidian. [emphasis in original]

Wells, Berlinski, Dembski, and Behe are senior fellows with the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, a nonprofit think tank that aims to "replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God," as recorded in a 1998 internal memo.

The Center for Science and Culture describes itself as supporting "research by scientists and other scholars developing the scientific theory known as intelligent design." "Intelligent design" is an idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally, and so, an "intelligent designer" must have created all life on Earth. Behe's concept of "irreducible complexity" is an attempt to provide empirical evidence in support of this idea; but U.S. District Court Judge John E. Jones III stated in his conclusion for the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District court case that "intelligent design" is not science because it fails in three ways:

(1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's; and (3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.

In addition, Jones also acknowledged that the Discovery Institute's 1998 internal memo, often referred to as the Wedge Document, is further evidence that the think tank's ultimate motives reflect those of creationists. The judge quoted a National Academy of Sciences booklet that places "intelligent design" and creationism in the same category: "Creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science."

Because Coulter relies on the discredited arguments of proponents of "intelligent design" and creationism, her book contains the same falsehoods, misinformation, and distortions that prevent those ideas from being accepted as solid science.

The fossil record

Coulter claims several times that the fossil record in no way supports Darwin's theory of evolution. On Page 199, she claims that evolution is "a make-believe story, based on a theory that is a tautology, with no proof in the scientist's laboratory or the fossil record." Again, on Page 215, she claims that there's "absolutely nothing in the fossil record to support it [evolution]." To support her claim, Coulter attempts to show that several well-known examples of the fossil record do not provide evidence of evolution.

Scientists have compiled a well-documented case demonstrating "large-scale, progressive, continuous, gradual, and geochronologically successive morphologic change" between reptiles and mammals. Coulter argues, on Page 228, that scientists "have no idea if the reptiles are even related to the mammal-like reptiles, much less to the mammals." However, contrary to Coulter's claim, science has observed links between reptiles and mammals through an existing succession of transitional fossils. Skeletal features are used to distinguish between reptilian fossils and mammalian fossils. While many characteristics differ between reptiles and mammals, scientists have observed reptilian fossils that over time took on characteristics of mammals, such as the construction of the lower jaw. Reptiles' lower jaw consists of multiple bones, while mammals' lower jaw is a single large bone. Additionally, most bones in reptiles and mammals are homologous, which suggests that the bones are of common origin. The most important homologous bones between reptiles and mammals are several skull and jaw bones of reptiles and middle ear bones of mammals. Furthermore, synapsids (a particular group of reptiles) share an additional homologous structure with mammals -- an opening behind the eye socket in the skull. This is very characteristic of mammals, which is why synapsids are referred to as mammal-like reptiles.

When scientists have placed the fossils of reptiles and mammals in the proper geochronological order, they have observed a natural succession in synapsids that becomes more mammalian and less reptilian. The lower jaw successively increases in size until the entire lower jaw is one bone. Coulter is aware of this evidence, but does not refute it. On Page 229, she states, "The jawbone metamorphosis didn't prove evolution," but she doesn't offer any evidence to explain why evidence of jawbone metamorphosis should not be seen as evidence of evolution; the reader is apparently expected to have faith in Coulter's unsupported conclusion and disregard the work of professional scientists. Scientists also have observed successive, geochronological change from reptilian sprawling limb posture to mammalian upright limb posture.

Another example that Coulter uses to make her argument that the fossil record does not support the theory of evolution involves bats. On Page 230, she claims that "the bat appears in the fossil record millions of years ago, fully formed and largely indistinguishable from today's bats." However, according to the University of California-Berkeley Museum of Paleontology's website, the earliest bat fossils -- which are of teeth only -- exhibit characteristics of both bats and insectivores (an order of mammal that includes hedgehogs, shrews, and moles). The museum also concludes that because the fossils are only teeth, scientists "don't know what the rest of the animal was like"; however, the fossils still exhibit characteristics of two different orders of mammal. Additionally, the website states:

[Bats] are one of the least common groups in the fossil record. Bats have small, light skeletons that do not preserve well. Also, many live in tropical forests, where conditions are usually unfavorable for the formation of fossils.

This suggests that the reason that bats seem to appear in the fossil record as "fully formed" is probably due to the even rarer chance of fossilization compared to other mammals. Furthermore, New Scientist reports that a change in only a single gene allowed bats to evolve wings, which could explain why the appearance of bats in the fossil record seems to be "sudden."

Coulter continues to distort the fossil record when she speaks of dinosaurs and mammals. On Page 217, she states, "Dinosaurs appeared, lived 150 million years, and then disappeared, only to be quickly replaced with mammals." This statement distorts the true fossil record. According to an article in Science magazine, a pair of researchers studied the genetic differences of hundreds of vertebrate specimens and concluded that modern orders of mammals -- such as primates, rodents, and carnivores -- date back well into the Cretaceous period (approximately 144 million to 65 million years ago), in some cases more than 100 million years ago. Previous studies of the fossil record led scientists to suggest that mammals first appeared 225 million years ago (during the Triassic period) as only small, shrew-like animals (still putting mammals and dinosaurs in existence at the same time), and only after the mass extinction of the dinosaurs did modern orders of mammals appear. But more recent research shows that modern orders of mammals existed at the same time as dinosaurs. Additionally, the fossil record shows that dinosaurs inhabited the planet for approximately 185 million years (approximately 250 million to 65 million years ago), not 150 million years.

Coulter uses the examples of reptiles, mammals, bats, and dinosaurs to make her larger claim that because there are gaps in the fossil record, it does not support evolution. She states, on Page 216, "New species suddenly appear[] out of nowhere, remain[] largely unchanged for millions of years, and then suddenly disappear[]." Again, on Page 217, she states, "What the fossil record shows is sudden bursts of all manner of animals, modest change, and then sudden and total extinction." But, in fact, the fossil record supports evolutionary theory.

The Cambrian explosion

Coulter attempts to use the phenomenon known as the Cambrian explosion to cast doubt on Darwinian evolution, but her arguments are based on several distortions. The term "Cambrian explosion" is used to describe the fact that a significantly greater number of fossils have been found of organisms that existed during the Cambrian period than existed before. Scientists have proposed numerous explanations for why more fossils are found from organisms that lived during this period. One explanation suggests that because species that predate the Cambrian period by 45 million years were microscopic, evolutionary changes in the fossils of pre-Cambrian organisms may be too small to see. Another explanation suggests that because the Earth was coming out of an ice age during the beginning of the Cambrian period, complex development could have been hindered before then or populations could have been kept low in number. Yet another explanation suggests that because early predators first appeared in the late pre-Cambrian period, hard-bodied parts are likely to have begun to evolve as a response in the early Cambrian period. Because hard-bodied parts are more likely to be fossilized than soft-bodied parts, the Cambrian explosion suggests that it is likely there are more fossils but not necessarily more organisms. Coulter falsely claims that the existence of the Cambrian explosion casts doubt on Darwinian evolution by selectively quoting scientists, by misrepresenting the true duration and fossil discoveries of the Cambrian period, and by falsely stating that one of the possible scientific explanations for the Cambrian explosion -- that soft-bodied organisms are not easily fossilized -- is not supported by the facts.

Coulter ridicules the scientific argument that soft-bodied organisms are much less likely to be fossilized by stating that this claim is on "par with the Flatulent Raccoon Theory of life's origins." She argues that, in explaining the Cambrian explosion, evolutionists "respond to all problems in the fossil record by asking us to assume all creatures we would expect to find if evolution was true and really did exist (really!) -- but somehow never fossilized" [emphasis in original]. Coulter argues that the soft-bodied organisms that fossilized in Chengjiang, China, found in 1984, disprove this scientific theory: "The interesting thing about the pre-Cambrian organisms is that they are soft-bodied, microscopic creatures -- precisely the sort of animal the evolution cult claimed wouldn't fossilize."

Coulter's statements clearly mislead the reader about the process of fossilization -- not to mention the fact that she falsely claims that the fossils found in Chengjiang are "pre-Cambrian," when, in fact, they are dated at approximately 525 million years ago, or during the Cambrian period. A peer-reviewed study by James W. Hagadorn -- who studied the fossils found in Chengjiang -- titled, "Chengjiang: Early Record of the Cambrian Explosion," explains how these soft-bodied organisms became fossilized:

In general, fossils appear to be exquisitely preserved because they have undergone minimal transport and sustained minimal postburial taphonomic overprinting.

[...]

[Evidence] suggests that fossils were likely entrained in and/or buried by a series of microturbidites deposited in a relatively quiescent setting; fine-grained sandstones likely reflect the influence of sporadic strong storm events.

Additionally, the article to which Coulter refers to make her claim, "Spectacular Fossils Record Early Riot of Creation" [The New York Times, 4/23/91], quotes a paleontologist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, Jan Bergstrom, who analyzed the fossils found in Chengjiang:

A violent storm probably stirred up the sea bottom and the mud settled over a large area, cutting off the animals' oxygen and preserving them.

Furthermore, Coulter's suggestion that fossilization is not difficult -- in particular, fossilization of soft-bodied organisms -- is false. Science News Online describes the process of fossilization as a rare occurrence:

Not every organism that dies becomes a fossil. In fact, fossilization is the exception, not the rule. Only certain combinations of biological materials, environmental conditions, and fate will preserve a recently dead organism and give it a chance at fame in a museum display.

The University of California-Berkeley Museum of Paleontology also states that "[f]ossilization is a rare event." In addition, BBC's "Science & Nature: Prehistoric Life" section reports that "[f]ossilisation of soft-bodied animals is a strange, lengthy and very rare process."

But Coulter doesn't stop there. On Page 224, she states that "[t]he Cambrian period isn't a small gap in the fossil record chock-full of evolutionary evidence. There is no evidence in the fossil record." This statement suggests that the Cambrian explosion is evidence against evolution. She claims that biology teacher Roger DeHart of Burlington-Edison High School in Washington state was "banned from teaching biology" because he "tried to tell his students about the Chinese fossils." However, the article that she cites as evidence, "Enlisting Science to Find the Fingerprints of a Creator" (Los Angeles Times, 3/25/01), makes no mention of the Chengjiang fossils, and she offers no further support for her claim.

To support her suggestion that the Chengjiang fossils are evidence against evolution, Coulter takes several quotes from paleontologists and other experts out of context. On Page 222, Coulter claims that "Jan Bergstrom, a paleontologist who examined the Chinese fossils, said the Cambrian period was not 'evolution,' it was 'a revolution.' " In contrast, the full quote of Bergstrom from the article that Coulter cites [The New York Times, 4/23/91], "[The fossils] suggested that the Cambrian transition was 'a revolution perhaps more than evolution,'" does not suggest that evolution did not occur. Furthermore, she quotes Harvard professor Andrew Knoll from the same article:

"Most of everything that was going to happen, all the ways of making invertebrate animals, had already happened by the mid-Cambrian. Now, it seems the new life forms were invented within the first few million years of the Cambrian."

Coulter then claims that Knoll is "pretending the Cambrian explosion never happened." But the quote that Coulter uses directly references the Cambrian explosion and the Chengjiang fossils. This is evident in Knoll's last sentence: "[I]t seems the new life forms were invented within the first few million years of the Cambrian." Finally, Coulter takes another quote out of context, this time from University of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne. From his New Republic Online article (subscription required), "The Case Against Intelligent Design: The Faith That Dare Not Speak Its Name," Coulter quotes Coyne:

We still do not understand why many groups originated in even this relatively short time, although it may reflect an artifact: the evolution of easily fossilized hard parts suddenly made organisms capable of being fossilized.

While Coulter is ignoring scientific research that supports Coyne's quote, she goes on to claim that "[t]wenty years later after the Chinese fossils were discovered, Coyne was still pretending not to have heard of them." She suggests that Coyne believes no soft-bodied organisms have been found as early as the Cambrian period, but Coyne's article also states that "600 million years ago, we see the appearance of rudimentary animals with shells, and many soft-bodied marine organisms." Coyne later discusses the Cambrian explosion in his article as well. Coulter misleadingly suggests that these scientists believe that no soft-bodied organism can fossilize, when they are stating that soft-bodied organisms are much more unlikely to become fossilized than hard-bodied organisms, and therefore, those fossils will be much rarer.

Coulter also distorts other aspects of the Cambrian period. On Page 221, she claims, "The best estimate for the duration of the Cambrian explosion is [...] 5 to 10 million years. And that is the maximum length." However, Simon Conway Morris of the University of Cambridge writes that the part with the most evolutionary interest of the Cambrian period (the Cambrian explosion) is between "the diverse Ediacaran faunas of latest Neoproterozoic age and the Chengjiang Burgess Shale-type faunas," approximately 550 million to 530 million years ago, or 20 million years. Further, the University of California-Berkeley Museum of Paleontology states that the earliest age during the Cambrian period lasted approximately 23 million years. On the previous page, Coulter also distorts the Cambrian explosion, describing the event as "a period of less than 10 million years" and "a sudden explosion of nearly all the animal phyla we have today." While 5 to 10 million years is within the range of estimates for the duration of the Cambrian explosion, it is by no means "the maximum length" according to scientists. Additionally, even 5 million years -- the shortest estimate -- is hardly "sudden." Furthermore, not all "animal phyla we have today" first appeared during the Cambrian period. According to Daniel Y.-C. Wang, Sudhir Kumar, and S. Blair Hedges, in a paper (subscription required) published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Cnidarians and sponges are found before the Cambrian period. The paper also states that at least six animal phyla have been found from before the Cambrian period, according to molecular evidence.

Transitional fossils

On Page 226, Coulter claims on that "Darwiniacs do not have a single observable example of one species evolving into another by the Darwinian mechanism of variation and selection." Coulter cites The New York Times article, "Fossil Called Missing Link From Sea to Land Animals," [4/6/06] and suggests that the 375 million-year-old fish the article discusses is not a transitional fossil. Coulter apparently expects the reader to believe her explanation of the fish over the team of scientists who discovered it, led by University of Chicago professor Neil H. Shubin, who is quoted in the article. Coulter claims that the research team found only "an odd-looking fish with weird appendages" and then asserts that "only if evolution is assumed" is there any connection between fish and land animals. Coulter does not attempt to discuss any of the anatomical traits of the fish to prove her claim; however, The New York Times article to which she refers goes into great detail about the anatomical traits of the fish and how those traits "anticipate the emergence of land animals -- and is thus a predecessor of amphibians, reptiles and dinosaurs, mammals and eventually humans." Additionally, the article quotes Dr. Michael J. Novacek, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan:

"We've got Archaeopteryx, an early whale that lived on land, and now this animal showing the transition from fish to tetrapod. What more do we need from the fossil record to show that the creationists are flatly wrong?"

On Page 219, Coulter makes a claim about the Archaeopteryx, stating:

For over a hundred years, evolutionists proudly pointed to their same sad birdlike animal, Archaeopteryx, as their lone transitional fossil linking dinosaurs and birds.

[...]

Alas, it is now agreed that poor Archaeopteryx is no relation of modern birds.

Contrary to Coulter's claim, the Archaeopteryx shows a clear relation to both dinosaurs and modern birds. The University of California-Berkeley Museum of Paleontology describes several of these features:

Unlike all living birds, Archaeopteryx had a full set of teeth, a rather flat sternum ("breastbone"), a long, bony tail, gastralia ("belly ribs"), and three claws on the wing which could have still been used to grasp prey (or maybe trees). However, its feathers, wings, furcula ("wishbone") and reduced fingers are all characteristics of modern birds. [emphasis in original]

While recent discoveries have found that feathers may not be characteristic of birds alone, this article points to other features found in the Archaeopteryx that are characteristic of only modern birds and features that are characteristic of only dinosaurs. The article states:

This is why Archae[opteryx] is a true transitional species, because it shares some characters which are diagnostic of one group whilst still retaining characters diagnostic of its ancestral group.

Upon review of the evidence provided by the museum, Coulter's claim that "Archaeopteryx is no relation of modern birds" is false. In addition, the museum also writes about the strong connections between birds and dinosaurs, which also addresses the recent discoveries of possibly feathered dinosaurs. The museum states, "It appears that many coelurosaurs were cloaked in an external fibrous covering that could be called 'protofeathers,' " while also discussing the relation between scales and feathers.

In discussing transitional fossils, Coulter also omits the fact that scientists have discovered numerous transitional fossils from the Cambrian explosion, such as lobopods, which are intermediate between arthropods and worms.

Piltdown man and Archaeoraptor

Coulter writes about two hoaxes, Piltdown man and Archaeoraptor (not to be confused with Archaeopteryx), to cast doubt on real evidence that supports the theory of evolution. But in each case, she omits important information.

The Piltdown man fossil was reportedly discovered in 1912 by Charles Dawson and Arthur Smith Woodward near a gravel pit in Piltdown, England. The fossil was believed to be a 500,000-year-old British "ape-man." In 1953, the fossil was revealed to be a hoax; the jawbone had been stained and filed down to appear ape-like, and the skull was a recent human fossil. But in discussing this event, Coulter leaves out the fact that it was scientists who discovered that Piltdown man was a hoax, which demonstrates that scientists were skeptical of the Piltdown man fossil from the beginning. Of course, scientists stopped using Piltdown man fossil as evidence as soon as it was proved to be a hoax.

Unlike the Piltdown man, Archaeoraptor was never accepted by any mainstream scientists. Coulter fails to inform the reader that a Chinese fossil hunter claimed to discover the fossils and assembled them to be more marketable to collectors. Additionally, articles about Archaeoraptor were not published (subscription required) in peer-reviewed scientific journals but in the popular press, such as the National Geographic. Furthermore, the papers describing the fossil were rejected (subscription required) by Nature and Science, whose editors suspected that the fossil was illegally smuggled and doctored.

Moreover, the Archaeoraptor fossil was discovered to be made up of two previously unknown species, Microraptor zhaoianus and Yanornis martini. The site where these fossils were found has been a hotbed for fossils that have provided evidence confirming the link between birds and dinosaurs. The article also quotes Kevin Padian of the University of California-Berkeley Museum of Paleontology:

Chinese villagers who found the specimen don't make a lot of money, and they don't know what these animals look like. There was no hoax. These are poor people trying to make a little extra money by selling fossils on the black market.

Coulter's failure to include these facts in her discussion of Piltdown man and Archaeoraptor distorts the truth about the two hoaxes.

The evolution of the eye

On Page 201, Coulter claims that "evolution is the eminently plausible theory that the human eye [...] came into existence purely by accident," suggesting that the human eye is too complex to have evolved naturally. Coulter uses the human eye example throughout her chapters on evolution to suggest that biological evolution cannot explain how the eye was formed. On pages 222 and 223, Coulter states that the "eye appeared at the beginning of the Cambrian period" and that "there were no light-sensitive pits" for the eye to evolve from. She ridicules New Scientist for stating that "the first eyes 'probably evolved from light-sensitive cells' " and asserts that because the eye appears fully formed in the Cambrian period that it could not have evolved naturally. But recent research from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory has found evidence that the "light-sensitive cells of our eyes [...] come from an ancient population of light-sensitive cells that were initially located in the brain." The laboratory's press release announcing the discovery also notes:

The scientists discovered that two types of light-sensitive cells existed in our early animal ancestors: rhabdomeric and ciliary. In most animals, rhabdomeric cells became part of the eyes, and ciliary cells remained embedded in the brain.

The scientists studied a marine worm that closely resembles its ancestors from 600 million years ago, Platynereis dumerilii, to come to the conclusion that the eyes evolved from the brain. Using a technique called "molecular fingerprinting," the scientists were able to determine that cells of the marine worms and humans share common ancestry. Scientist Kristin Tessmar-Raible concluded:

When I saw this vertebrate-type molecule active in the cells of the Playtnereis brain -- it was clear that these cells and the vertebrate rods and cones shared a molecular fingerprint. This was concrete evidence of common evolutionary origin. We had finally solved one of the big mysteries in human eye evolution [emphasis in original].

This evidence shows that the first eyes probably evolved from light-sensitive cells that were originally located in the brain. Additionally, PBS reports the stages of how the eye probably evolved and states that "eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species." Additionally, PBS reports that "only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch," which is considerably less time than the duration of the Cambrian explosion, during which Coulter suggests the eye appeared without evolutionary explanation.

Irreducible complexity

Coulter also touts the work of Michael Behe, an intelligent design proponent who has made arguments regarding other biological systems similar to those that creationists make about the eye. On Page 204, Coulter claims that "Behe disproved evolution." Behe's basic idea is that there are in organisms "irreducibly complex" systems that cannot be explained by random mutation and natural selection. These "irreducibly complex" systems would cease to function if any one part fails -- which Behe claims rules out evolution and leaves only design. There are several problems with Behe's idea of "irreducible complexity."

The first is that, contrary to Behe's argument, irreducibly complex systems can evolve. Because an irreducibly complex system is defined as one that fails if any one part ceases to function, the concept indicates only that the addition of single parts did not evolve the system. Therefore, other mechanisms of evolution are still left, including deletion of parts, duplication of the system, change of function, addition of a second function to a single part, and gradual modification of parts. Additionally, when two mechanisms that are particularly common -- gene duplication and deletion of parts -- happen together, irreducible complexity is an expected result. This was discovered in 1918 by Nobel prize-winning geneticist Hermann Muller, who referred to the phenomenon as interlocking complexity. Furthermore, there are irreducibly complex systems whose evolutionary origins have been described in detail, such as the Krebs citric acid cycle.

Another problem is in Behe's definition of parts. Biochemists count parts as individual atoms, because that is the smallest level of organization they consider in their analyses. In contrast, Behe counts sets of molecules as parts and does not provide an explanation for this decision. This creates a problem for an idea that claims to be science -- if Behe does not explain how he arrived at his definition of a single part, then other scientists cannot repeat his work. Repetition is a key component of the scientific method.

One of Behe's examples that Coulter touts, the flagellum, further calls Behe's assertions into question. On Page 204, Coulter repeats the false claim that "[t]he absence of almost any one of the parts would render the flagellum useless." In reality, the flagellum still functions as either a simpler flagellum or a secretion system if certain parts are lost. Additionally, there are dispensable proteins found in the eukaryotic flagellum.

Furthermore, Behe's ideas on "irreducible complexity" have never been published in a peer-reviewed paper or article. And during the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case in 2004, Behe admitted under oath that his own simulation model of the evolution of biochemical systems revealed that irreducibly complex systems could evolve in 20,000 years, even if the model is rigged to make that outcome as unlikely as possible.

Coulter endorses Behe's claims of design on Page 205, stating that "[l]ife at the molecular level, he [Behe] concluded, 'is a loud, clear, piercing cry of design.' " To the contrary, the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case concluded that Behe's arguments against evolution did not constitute evidence for design. The presiding judge in the case -- John E. Jones III, who was nominated by President Bush -- stated in his decision:

ID proponents primarily argue for design through negative arguments against evolution, as illustrated by Professor Behe's argument that "irreducibly complex" systems cannot be produced through Darwinian, or any natural, mechanisms. However, we believe that arguments against evolution are not arguments for design.

Jones proceeded to dismiss many of Behe's ideas in his decision, stating:

Professor Behe's concept of irreducible complexity depends on ignoring ways in which evolution is known to occur.

[...]

Although both Professors Behe and [Scott] Minnich assert that there is a quantitative aspect to the inference, on cross-examination they admitted that there is no quantitative criteria for determining the degree of complexity or number of parts that bespeak design, rather than a natural process.

[...]

Professor Behe excludes, by definition, the possibility that a precursor to the bacterial flagellum functioned not as a rotary motor, but in some other way, for example as a secretory system.

[...]

[E]vidence, based upon peer-reviewed studies, [suggests] that they [Behe's biomechanical system examples: the bacterial flagellum, the blood-clotting cascade, and the immune system] are not in fact irreducibly complex.

[...]

Accordingly, the purported positive argument for ID does not satisfy the ground rules of science which require testable hypotheses based upon natural explanations.

Finally, Jones noted that the National Academy of Sciences has rejected Behe's arguments for "irreducible complexity," as has the scientific community in general through peer-reviewed papers.

Ernst Haeckel's drawings

Coulter suggests that the discredited theories of Ernst Haeckel, a 19th-century proponent of the idea that evidence in embryology, his idea that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," supported the theory of evolution, are still used by evolutionists. Haeckel suggested that the ancestral experiences of a given organism are physically echoed during the embryonic development of that organism, and he published falsified drawings to illustrate this idea. Coulter suggests that Haeckel's ideas were a part of Darwin's theory of evolution, but in fact, Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, seven years before Haeckel came up with his ideas and 15 years before Haeckel's drawings were published. Moreover, the University of California-Berkeley Museum of Paleontology's history on Haeckel states, "Although trained as a physician, Haeckel abandoned his practice in 1859 after reading Darwin's Origin of Species," which suggests the opposite of what Coulter claims. On Page 239, Coulter quotes Darwin suggesting that embryology is " 'the strongest single class of facts' supporting his theory." Not only is Coulter confusing embryology in general with the work done by Haeckel, but she is ignoring the fact that Darwin's theory of evolution influenced Haeckel, not the other way around. Additionally, the quotes attributed to Darwin are sourced to the work of intelligent design proponent Jonathan Wells, which pulled the quotes from 1859 and 1860, before Haeckel published his ideas.

Coulter claims on Page 240 that "the Darwiniacs aren't giving up just because Haeckel's drawings were fake." She also claims that the drawings were exposed as fakes only in 1997, suggesting that they were accepted as fact until relatively recently. She cites Wells, senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, who also argues that Darwin's The Origin of Species was influenced by the work of Haeckel. Wells cites many authors who support evolutionary theory in his discussion of Haeckel: Adam Sedgwick (1894), William Garstang (1922), Gavin de Beer (1958), William Ballard (1976), Stephen J. Gould (1977 and 2000), Richard Elinson (1987), Jane Oppenheimer (1987), and Michael Richardson (1995) -- all of whom were critical of Haeckel's ideas, which is a fact that Wells conveniently omits in his book Icons of Evolution. Additionally, this detailed article about Haeckel and Wells states that Haeckel's ideas "were invalidated by Mendelian genetics and the neo-Darwinian synthesis." The article concludes that:

Haeckel's work was discredited in the 19th century, and has not been relevant to biology since the rediscovery of Mendel's laws of genetics. That the biogenetic law is false has been the consensus of biologists for over 100 years, and developmental biologists have been working constructively to provide alternative explanations, which have so far all been evolutionary in nature.

Further, the author of the 1997 study that Coulter, Michael K. Richardson, had this to say about Wells's interpretation of his work:

A recent study coauthored by several of us and discussed by Elizabeth Pennisi (Science, 5 Sept. 1997, p. 1435) examined inaccuracies in embryo drawings published last century by Ernst Haeckel. Our work has been used in a nationally televised debate to attack evolutionary theory and to suggest that evolution cannot explain embryology. We strongly disagree with this viewpoint. Data from embryology are fully consistent with Darwinian evolution. ... [T]he mixture of similarities and differences among vertebrate embryos reflects evolutionary change in developmental mechanisms inherited from a common ancestor. ... Haeckel's inaccuracies damage his credibility, but they do not invalidate the mass of published evidence for Darwinian evolution. Ironically, had Haeckel drawn the embryos accurately, his first two valid points in favor of evolution would have been better demonstrated.

Additionally, Coulter continues to discuss Haeckel's drawings as if they are still being used today. Also on Page 240, Coulter claims that:

Fully five years later [after Richardson's 1997 study], the New York Times reported that biology textbooks were still running Haeckel's doctored drawings. The Times specifically singled out the third edition of Molecular Biology of the Cell, 'the bedrock of the field,' as one of the culprits.

Coulter fails to inform the reader that the very same Times article, printed April 8, 2001, also mentions that the authors of Molecular Biology of the Cell planned to correct the error in a subsequent edition. An online version of the fourth edition, published February 28, 2002, can be viewed here. In addition, other textbooks also corrected the problem after Richardson's study was published in 1997. Furthermore, the textbook argument Coulter uses was also pushed by Wells, whose Icons of Evolution chapter on the falsified drawings contained numerous distortions of biology textbooks. By omitting the fact that textbooks had corrected the error after Richardson's study and that the textbook she cited, Molecular Biology of the Cell, corrected the problem shortly after the Times article, Coulter suggested that the falsified drawings of Haeckel are still being used in textbooks.

The Miller-Urey experiment

Another scientific study that Coulter distorts is the Miller-Urey experiment. The experiment, designed to simulate early Earth atmosphere, produced amino acids, which are the building blocks of life, within one week. On Page 241, Coulter claims that "geochemists realized that the Earth's early atmosphere was probably nothing like the gases used in the Miller-Urey experiment." The simulated atmosphere in the Miller-Urey experiment consisted of water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen. And according to a recent Washington University research:

Using primitive meteorites called chondrites as their models, earth and planetary scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have performed outgassing calculations and shown that the early Earth's atmosphere was a reducing one, chock full of methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water vapor.

Moreover, subsequent experiments using different gases and different sources of energy have yielded similar -- if not better -- results than the Miller-Urey experiment. As Alan D. Gishlick of the National Center for Science Education noted, "new experiments since the Miller-Urey ones have achieved similar results using various corrected atmospheric compositions."

Distortions of evolutionary theory

Throughout Coulter's two chapters on evolutionary theory, she offers up her own rhetorical questions, as if they accurately represent evolutionary theory. She posits these questions in the context that evolutionary theory says, "X is possible, so why haven't we seen X in the fossil record, or why hasn't X mutation been found?"

On Page 218, Coulter writes:

It [the theory of evolution] doesn't explain why we don't find any bad mutations -- a dog that mutated antennae, or gills, or a tail on its head [emphasis in original].

Coulter appears to be suggesting that we should find "some spectacular failures" in evolutionary history. She then falsely equates these "bad mutations" with beneficial, transitional mutations. She states that "[i]n order to mutate the good stuff ... there would have to be countless mutations that were at least better than what existed before." Her comment suggests that she is aware that evolutionary theory is based on the principle that only beneficial mutations are likely to survive multiple generations, let alone millions of years of generations (a point which refutes her claim about bad mutations). Therefore, given that fossilization is a rare occurrence, one can logically conclude that the reason we don't find "bad" mutations in the fossil record to the extent that Coulter suggests is because it's likely that the number of generations would be incredibly small; it is much more unlikely that "bad" mutations would be fossilized than progressively beneficial mutations. Additionally, PBS reports that seemingly "bad" mutations, such as sickle-cell anemia, persist in the gene pool because they are also beneficial in some way. And while most mutations are nonbeneficial, those mutations are almost always recessive in the genetic code, which prevents their traits from being expressed.

Also on Page 218:

There is no reason to expect, for example, that the first place our eyes ever appeared was on the front of our faces. Why don't we have ancestors with eyes on the bottom of their feet, on their arms, or on the top of their heads?

Coulter fails to explain how eyes on the bottom of our feet would be beneficial. She also demonstrates her ignorance of recent research that provides evidence that the light-sensitive cells that evolved into our eyes migrated from their original location in the brain, which raises the question: Why would these light-sensitive cells travel the furthest distance from the brain before evolving into our eyes?

On Page 228:

The successive appearance of more complex species does seem to show something that looks like progress. But that has nothing to do with the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection. One also sees progress in the Wright brothers' increasingly complex airplanes, a master's paintings, and the advance from the peace pipe to Marlboro Lights -- progressions all notable for being the product of "intelligent design."

Here, Coulter misleadingly compares living, biological, autonomous beings with inanimate, human-made objects. This is an illogical comparison that serves only to highlight the illogicality of Coulter's argument.

On pages 230-231, Coulter writes:

Moreover, if all species evolved from the same single-celled organism beginning in the same little mud puddle, why hasn't the earthworm made a little more progress? Was it never, ever desirable in any of the worm's many dirt holes to mutate eyes or legs or wings or a brain?

But Coulter doesn't explain how the mutation of "eyes or legs or wings" would have been beneficial to an earthworm, and she falsely suggests that earthworms don't have brains.

Finally, on pages 231-232:

Even the evolution fetishists do not claim that a mutating AIDS virus is on its way up the tree of life, soon to be a kangaroo. If a rapidly mutating bacterium or virus were proof of "evolution," then after 3 billion years of nonstop evolution, the only life forms we would have on earth would be extremely sturdy bacteria and viruses. Humans develop a tolerance for alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine, but no one imagines a high tolerance for alcohol will somehow lead to a new organ, like a tail or a pair of wings.

Coulter's analogy reveals a basic misrepresentation of evolutionary theory. She suggests that when bacteria and viruses are bombarded with antibiotics or other medicines that the cells "develop a tolerance." In reality, the weak cells die and the stronger cells live to reproduce. This is the basic mechanism of evolution, that beneficial mutations (the stronger cells that are better able to survive the medicines) are more likely to survive multiple generations over time, thereby changing the gene pool of the population and creating a new strain of bacteria or virus. But Coulter suggests that a developed tolerance of the effects of alcohol leads to the next step of "a new organ, like a tail or a pair of wings" -- although she does not explain why such organs would naturally evolve to deal with increased alcohol consumption. Furthermore, Coulter appears to be ignorant of more recent research, reported in New Scientist, which establishes that alcohol tolerance is related to a "hangover" gene.

Smears of Democrats and progressives

No work of Coulter's would be complete without her gratuitously smearing progressives and Democrats while discussing unrelated topics. Throughout her two chapters on evolutionary theory, Coulter slanders prominent progressive and Democratic figures, as well as news reporters and media personalities. These smears work only to undermine the supposed "keen appreciation for genuine science" that Coulter writes from, as stated on the inside jacket sleeve of Godless.

Page 199:

[L]iberals think evolution disproves God.

[...]

If you want something that complicates a belief in God, try coming to terms with Michael Moore being one of God's special creatures.

Page 205:

But most of the cult reacted to Behe's argument the way feminists do to the suggestion that men and women might possibly have different aptitudes for math and science -- they got nasty, they cried, and they denied that anything had been proved.

Page 207:

Darwin's solution is like explaining how humans evolved by saying, "Assume Dennis Kucinich. Now, through slight improvements over a billion years, successive generations would eventually become taller, grow opposable thumbs, and generally become more humanlike until one day -- wham! -- you have yourself a human being."

Page 219:

The bizarre bird [Archaeopteryx] is just an odd creation that came out of nowhere and went nowhere, much like Air America Radio.

Page 221:

This is where all the deep thinking about evolution is being done these days, in the "social sciences" and Style section of the New York Times.

[...]

The New York Times will write honestly about Air America's ratings before high school biology textbooks will tell the truth about the Cambrian explosion.

Page 227:

No one disputes that a monkey looks like a human, especially in the case of Al Franken.

Page 229:

Michael Moore's essence is consistent with the Flatulent Raccoon Theory for the origin of life.

Page 231:

Forget getting to humans, which liberals rank as the lowest form of life.

Page 234:

My headline the day Clinton was impeached: "God Theory Is Proved True."

Page 235:

Yes, the same process [radiocarbon dating] that recently helped us pin down the exact year of Helen Thomas's birth ...

Page 236:

For two years black moths were bused out of the inner-city areas to the suburbs, while white moths were bused into the inner-city areas... (Is it just me, or does this scenario sound oddly familiar?)

Page 239:

And he [Ernst Haeckel] could show what humans looked like 1 million years ago by pointing to James Carville.

Additionally, Coulter repeatedly equates the religion of Scientology with the theory of evolution. She does so four times throughout her chapters on evolution, suggesting that there is almost as much valid science in the religion of Scientology as in the theory of evolution.

Page 199:

Liberal's creation myth is Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which is about one notch above Scientology in scientific rigor.

Page 209:

The evolutionists' response [to Behe's irreducible complexity theory] is Well, it's possible. You can't say it couldn't 'possibly' happen -- and that was the test Darwin of Nazareth set for himself. It's also possible that galactic ruler Xenu brought billions of people to Earth 75 million years ago, piled them around volcanoes, and blew them up with hydrogen bombs, sending their souls flying every which way until they landed on the bodies of living humans, where they still invisibly reside today -- as Scientology's L. Ron Hubbard claimed. Yes, it's possible. [emphasis in original]

Page 215:

These people [evolutionists] make L. Ron Hubbard look like Aristotle.

Page 235:

Evolution's Piltdown Man makes Scientology's "e-meter" look like a particle accelerator at Los Alamos.

Besides these passing references equating the religion of Scientology with the theory of evolution, Coulter offers no in-depth explanation or justification for her comments.

Conclusion

While Coulter purports to have a "keen appreciation for genuine science," her chapters on evolutionary theory serve only to repeat scientifically discredited arguments that creationists have been parading around for decades. Rather than support her claims with scientific evidence, she instead substitutes the ad hominem attacks that have become her trademark.

We Can Forget All About Immigration Reform

2006-07-09T07:02:00.000-04:00

From the Times:

Republicans both inside and outside the White House say Mr. Bush, who has long insisted on comprehensive reform, is now open to a so-called enforcement-first approach that would put new border security programs in place before creating a guest worker program or path to citizenship for people living in the United States illegally.

The whole point of the nexus between the two was to put together a majority. Doing just increased security means that reform is dead.

That's leadership -- of the pussy brigade. But of course, our leader is a Bush and his mommy's oy....

We [heart] Joe -- the Joementum Continues

2006-07-09T06:43:00.000-04:00

Wingnuts in America

2006-07-09T06:39:00.000-04:00

This guy likes chasing Jews out of town and you can guess how liberal he is -- not.: Just another dumbass wingnut. My colleague, the general, has the story.

Reminder

2006-07-09T06:37:00.000-04:00

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776.
THE UNANIMOUS
DECLARATION
OF THE
THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
WHEN, in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's GOD entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes which impel them to the Separation.
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their CREATOR, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that Governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.
HE has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.
HE has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
HE has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People, unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyranny only.
HE has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures.
HE has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People.
HE has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining, in the mean Time, exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and Convulsions within.
HE has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
HE has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
HE has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries.
HE has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance.
HE has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the Consent of our Legislatures.
HE has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
HE has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
FOR quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us:
FOR protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
FOR cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:
FOR imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
FOR depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:
FOR transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences:
FOR abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rule into these Colonies:
FOR taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
FOR suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever.
HE has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection, and waging War against us.
HE has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.
HE is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with Circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation.
HE has constrained our Fellow-Citizens, taken Captive on the high Seas, to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners of their Friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
HE has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes, and Conditions.
IN every Stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every Act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.
NOR have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them, from Time to Time, of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our Connexions and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of Consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the Rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
WE, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in GENERAL CONGRESS Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connexion between them and the State of Great-Britain, is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that as FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which INDEPENDENT STATES may of Right do. And for the Support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of DIVINE PROVIDENCE, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honour.

More Moral Exemplars

2006-07-08T16:16:00.000-04:00

Or: Yet another story missed by Big Media.

These guys just have to lie and lie and lie. Because their demented ends justify their demented means. Just like their playbook: "Mein Kampf."

UPDATE: This one is all zero tolerance for drug users -- unless the drug user is a client of the senator's lawyer. (FYI: I am not per se anti-drug, wouldn't wish a Midnight Express pretty much on anyone... well, there's one ex-cokehead, but that's another story.... Just want the senator to start practicing a little full disclosure. "My name is Orrin and I am a recurring, pathological liar, enabled to be such in part by a total contempt for the people who vote for me....")

Real Threats

2006-07-08T15:49:00.000-04:00

Seven trash-talking idiots: Major threat.

Foreign terrorists who have never been to America who plan to flood Manhattan by blowing up a tunnel -- an impossibility although an excellent way to flood part of the emaining parts of the tunnel: Major threat. (Just the latest reference to that is here.)

A repressive dictatorship with more nukes than it needs and who even sells or otherwise exports the materials if not the know-how: A concern but not a terribly pressing one. And not while we're helping current allies develope nukes themselves. (UPDATE: Oops! Within, like, hours of posting the last version of this post, it gets obsoleted -- blown away, you might say. Thank goodness, India's our ally. At the moment. For now. Wonder tho' whether we, umm, provided any help on the missle? Not that our leaders, famously anti-proliferation, would ever do that. If they said they wouldn't, they wouldn't, they're so honest.)

Thank God the GOP is in power, not wussy liberals who don't know a threat when they see one or how to deal with one.

Now go read this.

Someone Please Forward to Steve Keller

2006-07-08T04:40:00.000-04:00

Send him this link so he can understand the most immediate reason why the Bushies are dead wrong on the Times and the SWIFT story. I know this will be news to him because no stoy like this has run in the Times and his crowd doesn't discuss this kind of stuff. (Referencing the first amendment would be too involved and complicated for Keller -- over his head if his series of op-ed pieces were any clues -- and of course, Our Leaders have no need for the Bill of Rights (except for the sacred second amendment)).

The Bushydo System for Deciding When to Fight

2006-07-08T04:34:00.000-04:00

Easy-to-beat weaponless military and gobs of oil: invade.

Difficult nation to fight, possessing genuine weapons of nuclear destruction: talk pointlesly and futilely while said nation builds and exports to enemies more and more of said weapons (even as we encourage today's allies to expand their nuke stockpiles).

That's how our leaders are making the world safer.

The "liberals" can't do that.

Our Leader's Honesty is a Beacon in the Darkness of Lies

2006-07-08T04:32:00.000-04:00

From Salon's War Room:

Sometimes, it's hard to keep up.

Sept. 17, 2001: George W. Bush is asked if he wants Osama bin Laden dead. "I want justice," he says. "There's an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'"

March 13, 2002: At a press conference, Bush says that he doesn't know if bin Laden is dead or alive. "You know, I just don't spend that much time on him. . . . And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him."

Oct. 13, 2004: "Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations."

Jan. 31, 2006: "Terrorists like bin Laden are serious about mass murder -- and all of us must take their declared intentions seriously."

May 25, 2006: "I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner -- you know, 'Wanted dead or alive,' that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted, and so I learned from that."

July 4, 2006: The New York Times reports that the CIA last year disbanded a secret unit assigned to track down bin Laden and his top lieutenants in an effort to focus on "regional trends rather than on specific organizations or individuals."

July 7, 2006: At a press conference in Chicago, Bush calls the Times report "just an incorrect story." "I mean, we got a -- we're -- we got a lot of assets looking for Osama bin Laden. So whatever you want to read in that story, it's just not true, period." Asked if he's still on the hunt for bin Laden, the president says: "Absolutely. No ands, ifs or buts. And in my judgment, it's just a matter of time, unless we stop looking. And we're not going to stop looking so long as I'm the president." Bush said he had announced regret over the "dead or alive" comment only because "my wife got on me for talking that way."

Have-A-Rush

2006-07-08T04:27:00.000-04:00

[I]n the meantime, the adult industry can help the morally-challenged radio talker by henceforth referring to any hard-on helper, pill or injection, as "limbaugh":

"You feelin' all right, Chuck? You seem to be having a little trouble with this scene, and we're runnin' a little behind schedule. Can I get you some limbaugh to help you along?"

Or, "Say, Bud, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, and I've been doin' two scenes a day for the past week. Have you got any limbaugh to help me get through today?"

It's the least the adult industry can do to pay tribute to one of the biggest jack-offs ever to grace America's airwaves.

That's from here.

And inquiring minds want to know: what was the need for the ED meds?

The answer --that is, documentation -- is here and here is the story:

Rush Limbaugh was traveling with four other men--including the producers of the hit show "24"--when he was detained over a mislabeled bottle of Viagra found in his luggage during a Customs search. A Department of Homeland security passenger manifest shows that Limbaugh and his four buddies flew from the Dominican Republic on a Gulfstream IV jet owned by Premiere Radio Networks, which syndicates his radio program. Limbaugh returned to Palm Beach, Florida on June 26 with Joel Surnow, "24"'s co-creator and executive producer and Howard Gordon, another of the Fox hit's executive producers (Hollywood agent Jeffrey Benson was also part of the Limbaugh quintet). With all those guys in tow, it is unclear what Limbaugh needed with those 29 100mg Viagra pills. The passenger manifest was among several documents released today by the Palm Beach County State's Attorney in response to a TSG open records request. Included in the material released were a copy of the handwritten statement Limbaugh provided investigators after he was detained upon the discovery of the impotency drug. An affidavit sworn three days later by Limbaugh was also released. In that document, Limbaugh explains that the Viagra "was intended for my exclusive use" and that the drug had been prescribed in the name of his drug treatment doctor, Steven Strumwasser, "to further maintain and protect my privacy."

Respect for and Upholding the Law

2006-07-07T04:04:00.000-04:00

From Salon's War Room:

Waas' latest scoop, if it is right, shows that at least some of the retribution was ordered from the top. One of Waas' sources says Bush told Cheney, "Get it out," or "Let's get this out." Libby later testified that Cheney gave him similar instructions about the classified pre-war intelligence on Iraq.

But the President apparently claimed that his oversight of the attack on Wilson only went so far. Waas writes, "Bush told investigators that he was unaware that Cheney had directed I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, to covertly leak the classified information to the media instead of releasing it to the public after undergoing the formal governmental declassification processes."

So that's Libby's defense, sort of.

As a defense, it's a great set-up for a pardon, not a dismissal or acquital.

Because the law against outting covert agents is not something that can be circumvented or negated by presidential fiat, it's a law. Like perjurying about a blowjob from a woman who is not one's wife.

Which of course begs a question.

If lying about having some sort of sex is a high crime and/or misdemenaor sufficient to support impeachment, where does a repeated and recurring disrespect and ignoring of law rank? Or repeated refusal to execute the laws of the land, support the Constitution, rpeatedly violate the presidential oath of office?

Bushydo of course ranks it lower....

SWIFT for Dummies and Keller

2006-07-06T05:42:00.000-04:00

A good brief overview. Now Keller's pols won't need a formal briefing.

Honesty

2006-07-05T04:58:00.000-04:00

Won't get it from Ann Coulter. Pandering and psychopathic babblings, yes.

But, to say something nice, I never knew she has a pretty nice rack.

Paper confirms Coulter plagiarism reported online first

RAW STORY
Published: Sunday July 2, 2006

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"Conservative scribe Ann Coulter cribbed liberally in her latest book, Godless, according to a plagiarism expert," reports The New York Post today.

"John Barrie, the creator of a leading plagiarism-recognition system, claimed he found at least three instances of what he calls "textbook plagiarism" in the leggy blond pundit's "Godless: the Church of Liberalism" after he ran the book's text through the company's digital iThenticate program," writes Philip Recchia.

Some of the examples of Coulter's plagiarism have already been reported online, but this is the first time the allegations have travelled to the print media.

Last summer, blogger The Rude Pundit first blogged about a few examples of possible Coulter plagiarism he found in her Jun. 29, 2005 column, "Thou Shall Not Commit Religion," and RAW STORY followed up after finding more.

Nearly a month ago, The Rude Pundit found at least one sentence that appeared to have been lifted elsewhere in Coulter's new book. Then RAW STORY, again, followed up with more.

Belated Joke for the 4th

2006-07-05T04:51:00.000-04:00

From Andy Borowitz:

BUSH DECLARES INDEPENDENCE FROM CONSTITUTION
Blasts Historic Document in Fourth of July Address

In a nationally televised Fourth of July address, President George W. Bush stunned the nation by announcing that he was declaring himself independent from the United States Constitution.

“Just as our forefathers threw off the horrible yoke of British rule on July 4, 1976, today I am throwing off the yoke of this truly annoying document,” Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Bush said that the original copy of the Constitution would be auctioned on eBay and that proceeds from that sale would help pay for a “long overdue” cut in the estate tax.

According to the president’s aides, ever since the Supreme Court decided last week that the use of military tribunals in Guantanamo was unconstitutional Mr. Bush had been looking for a way around that decision, even contemplating sending the Justices themselves to Guanatanamo.

Ultimately, one aide said, the president decided that a declaration of independence from the Constitution was the most workable solution: “The fact is, whenever we’re trying to get something done around here, that stupid Constitution gets in the way.”

Mr. Bush acknowledged that some legal scholars would call his declaration of independence from the Constitution unconstitutional, but added, “To those people I say, no backsies.”

The president said that while he was no longer required to obey the U.S. Constitution, he still respected the Declaration of Independence, “because it has a really cool treasure map on the back.”

Of course, for a change, Andy's nailed a real story (sort of) and did so after the fact.

Our Leader -- An Assessment for July 4th

2006-07-04T06:21:00.000-04:00

We'll probably know for certain the extent to which our unelected leader is merely acting as president. The decider? The hell he is, not to any significant extent. But here he is allegedly taking the responsibility for outing Valerie Plame (well, indirectly). Hell of a defense for Libby: If the president OKs outing a covert agent, the law to the contrary doesn't matter, at least to our leaders. Of course, different people may have differing opinions about the rule of law....

Microsoft Recommends

2006-07-04T06:19:00.000-04:00

See what it uses to run a demo -- the best laptop out there.

Amusing

2006-07-04T06:14:00.000-04:00

Doonesbury on the future of medical care. If only....

Flash! Keller Comes Clean!

2006-07-04T06:08:00.000-04:00

Finally admits that the banking story wasn't exactly news as it had been publicly discussed. But where was that story in the Times? (And yes, it could well have been there and I missed it; OTOH, it's as much a front page story as the initial story -- properly -- was.)

CORRECTION: Now I've the read the "Face the Nation" transcript and Keller seems to come up with every defense but that it was all old news. Indeed, he claims the pols that were on the Times had not been briefed on SWIFT snooping -- the implication being that Keller and the pols are all out of it, unaware of the news of the world. Again, it's clear that Pinch got the exec ed he, but not the readers, wants and deserves: as dumb and ignorant as himself, someone who doesn't make him look as bad as as he is, someone he doesn't need to look up to. Why should Pinch pull himself up when he can just surround himself with incompetents and mediocrities?