MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: August 27, 2006

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September 2, 2006

It's a Good Day to Take Out the (9/11) Trash

In yet another classic Friday-afternoon "take out the trash" maneuver to bury bad news on a slow news day (how much slower can it get than the Saturday of Labor Day weekend?), the Transportation Department's Inspector General is recommending discipline for FAA executives who gave the 9/11 commission false information, reports the New York Times. Conspiracy theorists will have a field day with this; for our part, CYA looks like a perfectly good explanation, especially from an agency that has a lot of A to cover when it comes to 9/11. For more on that, see Jim Ridgeway's summary of FAA failures as part of his call for nine new congressional investigations in the most recent issue of Mother Jones; for even more, check out Michael Scherer and Barry Yeoman's MoJo piece, which among other things shows how much of this was known well before 9/11, here.

September 1, 2006

Attention Gay Wal-Mart Shoppers...

Wal-Mart has formed a partnership with the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, a move that Wal-Mart calls "a very sincere effort to reach out to people who are a significant part of our customer base."

As sincere as the effort may be, Wal-Mart chose not to announce the new partnership, leaving that job to the Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. And now that the word is out, there has already been some backlash from conservatives.

Wal-Mart does not offer benefits to domestic partners, though the company is said to be considering making a change in that area. At last count, Wal-Mart gave 85% of its political donations to the Republican Party, which has actively sought to curtail rights for GLBT citizens.

Wal-Mart discriminates against women in a variety of ways and is the defendant in several gender discrimination lawsuits. Wal-Mart also discriminates against working people in a variety of ways, too. Yet women and working people stand in line to shop there, so there is every reason to believe that GLBT citizens will also be sucked into the company's latest marketing ploy.

Federal Judge: Supressing Voter Registration Not an Option in Ohio

As noted yesterday, Sasha Abramsky has a piece up at Mother Jones cataloguing the worst places in America to vote (or even try to). Of Ohio, he writes:

Election activists don't have Florida's Katherine Harris to kick around anymore, but in a system where most states' top election officials are also politicians, there's no shortage of other nominees for worst secretary of state. The current leading candidate must be Ohio's Ken Blackwell, now a Republican candidate for governor, who seems intent on making sure as few Ohioans as possible are registered to vote.

In 2004 Blackwell achieved national notoriety when he announced that his office would accept only voter-registration forms printed on paper of at least 80-pound weight. Blackwell had to back off that requirement, but a slew of other restrictions remain, including one under which door-to-door registration workers must sign in with county officials, and another requiring them to personally mail in the registration forms they collect.

"The constant promulgation of rules and regulations keeps members of the Board of Elections jumping around like cats on a hot tin roof," says Chris Link, executive director of the Ohio ACLU. "And this essentially hurts Democrats. Who is newly registering? People who've just become citizens, young people who've just gotten the right to vote." Meanwhile, Blackwell's office has done nothing to inform voters that come Election Day this year, they will have to bring photo IDs to the polls -- guaranteeing that tens of thousands of mostly Democratic voters will be turned away.

Well, today brings some good news in that regard:

CLEVELAND, Ohio, Sept. 1 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A federal court in Cleveland today blocked enforcement of an Ohio state law enacted earlier this year that would have imposed crippling requirements on voter registration groups. The plaintiffs, civic and religious organizations and voting rights groups that have been working in Ohio through many election cycles without government interference, say that the law had dramatically curtailed their efforts to help eligible voters get on the rolls.

"This is a win for democracy and, coming on the heels of the similar decision in Florida on Monday, the beginning of a national trend of courts rejecting unreasonable barriers to voter registration," stated Wendy Weiser, deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and co-counsel to the plaintiffs in both the Ohio and Florida cases.

"This decision and the Florida decision will send a message to states and could help head off comparable voter-suppression statutes in Georgia, New Mexico and Colorado," continued Weiser.

"This is the third time in as many years that a federal judge said "No" to a state's efforts restrict voter registration activities," said Jehmu Greene, Project Vote's National director. "We hope other states learn the lesson that suppressing voter registration is not an option," continued Greene.

Polar Bear Penises Shrink—Are Humans Next?

Bristly, 1000-pound brutes willing to claw it out for females and whisk them off for a week of spirited shagging, male polar bears might hook up with several mates in a season. They are not the stripe of male to suffer from any image problems when it comes to, well, having the right equipment—not, at least, until today, when the Nunatsiaq News of the Nunavik region of Arctic Quebec—surely an authority on polar bears--reported that their penises are shrinking.

A photograph accompanying the article shows a woman holding 20-odd polar bear penis bones, which were found by a recent study to be significantly shorter in bears exposed to high levels of toxic chemicals. The findings, published last month in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, adds fuel to concerns that a massive buildup of pesticides in the bodies of Arctic animals and hunters is causing environmental and health problems (see the story in Mother Jones). The issue may compound troubles caused by the bears’ loss of Arctic habitat. “Added to the stress of climate change,” the Nunatsiaq News points out, “this could be bad news for their survival.”

The same toxic buildup taking place in polar bears is happening to a lesser but increasing degree in the fatty tissues of humans--even in some places outside the Arctic. For the sake of our own mating rituals, let’s hope the global masculinity index isn’t going bearish.

Predatory Payday Lenders Ground Thousands of Troops

This summer, Mother Jones reported on the ways the poor get taken by lenders who prey on the cash-strapped, including payday loans with average annual interest rates of 400%. It seems the government is finally paying attention. But it's not the pound-of-your-flesh interest rates that have the government concerned. Rather, it's the fact that soldiers whose debts amount to a third of their income cannot be sent overseas.

This policy exists because major financial problems are thought to make soldiers more vulnerable to bribes that would force them to reveal sensitive information. If that's the case, it's another example of the Bush administration hurting rather than helping national security. Since Bush took office, the number of sailors and Marines who could not be deployed as a result of financial problems has increased 150-fold.

Payday lending outlets cluster by the dozen around military bases, where soldiers are paid poorly. Currently, just 12 states have laws capping interest rates at 99%. Congress is now considering a law that would cap rates at 36%, and the Pentagon is on board. It's about time.

Pulitzer Prize Winner Jailed by Sudan's Government for Darfur Reporting

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Salopek sits in a Sudanese jail, charged with espionage and reporting “false news.” Basically his crime was sneaking across the border to report on Darfur. (Reporters need to sneak in, because the Sudanese government doesn’t want the press to expose how it supports the militias behind the atrocities.)

That he’s won the Pulitzer twice speaks to his skill as a reporter and writer. He’s also a great guy, as anyone who’s ever had even a passing acquaintance with him will tell you. A dozen or so years ago, my dad, then an editor at the National Geographic, hired Paul into a staff writing job, a hire that still makes dad feel like a genius, as he likes to joke. The position in question was mostly a desk job and Paul quickly outgrew it. He went to the Chicago Tribune in 1996 and got into the field. Over the last decade he won his Pulitzers for his Tribune reporting, and has written lyrical, probing features for the Geographic, for whom he was on assignment when arrested by the Sudanese thugs. As his former Tribune colleague Ken Armstrong points out in this moving piece, Paul’s known for chasing the tough story, the dangerous story, the story on the downtrodden and ignored:

He's told stories from Africa, Afghanistan, Asia and the Balkans, stories about refugees, rebels and victims of war, about pirates, poachers, gunrunners and killers, about a child in Ethiopia forced to marry at age 7 and a 13-year-old schoolgirl in Angola tortured for being a witch. He's told stories through hardship and will, with datelines like: THE MOUNTAINS OF WESTERN KOSOVO; THE SHOMALI PLAIN, Afghanistan; THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS OF ETHIOPIA.

The State Department has intervened on Paul’s behalf, and I’m sure the Tribune, the Geographic, and the CPJ are doing whatever they can to ensure his release.

Paul didn’t let his success go to his head. So I’m sure he’d be the first to point out that his fate is inexorably linked to other journalists doing dangerous work, often without such large, powerful institutions behind them. In reporting on Paul’s situation yesterday, NPR noted that while he’s been moved to a relatively decent jail, a Slovenian filmmaker who faced the same charges has been sentenced to two years, and is being held in what sounds like an absolute hell hole. Paul’s driver and interpreter, both Chadians, have also been arrested. The trial for the three of them is scheduled for September 10th.

August 31, 2006

Block the Vote: Eleven of America's Worst Places to Cast a Ballot

Two months ahead of major elections, and four years after the passage of the Help America Vote Act -- which was designed in part to eliminate, nationally, the kind incompetence and outright criminality that marred the 2000 election -- the machinery of US democracy still leaves much to be desired. As Sasha Abramsky notes in the current issue of Mother Jones, the chances that your vote will count, the ease with which you can cast your ballot, even your odds of getting on a voter roll, greatly vary according to where you live.

As it turns out, except for a rudimentary federal framework (which determines the voting age, channels money to states and counties, and enforces protections for minorities and the disabled), U.S. elections are shaped by a dizzying mélange of inconsistently enforced laws, conflicting court rulings, local traditions, various technology choices, and partisan trickery.

Among the more striking regional discrepancies:

In some places voters fill in paper ballots; in others they vote with ancient machines; in still others they use state-of-the-art touch-screen technology
Some states encourage voter registration, others make it a hassle
Some states allow prisoners to cast a ballot, others don't allow even ex-felons tovote

The piece offers a partial--but sadly emblematic-- list of "American democracy's more glaring weak spots."

Read it here...and weep.

Tucker Carlson Defends One of America's 10 Most Wanted

Yesterday Tucker Carlson got into a tiff with Utah's Attorney General Mark Shurtleff over the justification for putting Warren Jeffs on the FBI's 10 most wanted list. That the polygamist has been charged with first-degree felony rape and has victimized countless women and children doesn't stop Tucker from defending him.

"A lot of these things are not illegal...to teach animals to kill animals with your bare hands," for example. He goes on to argue that Jeffs is accused of doing things that are merely "titilating," adding: "There are 10 spaces on the list, but is this guy one of the 10 most threatening people to America?" Shurtloff points out that he doesn't have to be a threat to America but a threat to society and to individuals, thousands of them in this case.

Tucker counters: "He's more threatening than, say, the Islamic radicals huddling in a basement right now figuring ways to blow up airliners? Or people who are working to overthrow the government?" Shurtloff tells him that Osama is on the list, as are child abusers, rapists and the like.

If only Tucker had bothered to vist the FBI's site he would have seen, too, that there's a separate list of Most Wanted Terrorists. This list features not 10, but 26 mug shots, making Carlson's "either/or" argument all the more absurd.

Yet Another Frightening Story Out of Colorado

Eric Hamlin, a middle school geography teacher in Jefferson County, Colorado, received a letter of reprimand his very first week of class. The reason? He displayed the flags of Mexico, China and the United Nations in his classroom as teaching aids, as he has always done throughout his geography-teaching career.

Hamlin was told to take the flags down by the assistant principal. She said it was Jefferson County School District policy that he could not display the flags. Hamlin said he took issue with that, and an hour later, she returned, saying it was actually state law, and she handed him the statute:

Any person who displays any flag other than the flag of the United States of America or the state of Colorado or any of its subdivisions, agencies, or institutions upon any state, county, municipal, or other public building or adjacent grounds within this state commits a class 1 petty offense.

However, the statute does include an exception for “a temporary display of any instructional or historical materials not permanently affixed or attached to any part of the buildings.” Apparently, the word "instructional" is a new one to the administration at Hamlin's school. When he pointed it out, he was told that the flags "seemed permanent."

The principal then told Hamlin to take the flags down, which he refused to do. He was then given the letter of reprimand, and told that he could regain his good standing if her would agree not to display flags of foreign nations, and always obtain administrative approval for any classroom displays he put up. Hamlin refused, and was placed on administrative leave.

Once the news media learned about the incident, things changed. School and county officials agreed to "allow" Hamlin to rotate the flags on a temporary basis, which is what he has done for his entire career. Hamlin resigned from his job, but said that he feels bad for the principal, who is getting "unfair" emails, calling him "Nazi and things like that."

New Orleans Since Katrina: A Carnival of Ineptitude!

How's this for a blistering editorial, from the Beaver County Times?

One year after Hurricane Katrina slammed into Louisiana and Mississippi, huge swaths of that area look as bleak as they did in the days immediately following the storm.

Debris is piled in massive mounds everywhere; block after block of homes are boarded up; signs of rebuilding are few and far between; thousands of residents are still displaced.

In a way, that's to be expected. Katrina was a storm of such immense proportions and the geographic area it hit was so widespread and populated, especially in regard to New Orleans and Biloxi, Miss., that the resulting damage was on a scale that is and was unimaginable.

And yet, and yet...

[E]ven given the depth and breadth of the destruction, the response of government at the local, state and federal levels has been pathetically inadequate.

This isn't just about the rip-offs and scams, the squabbling over how to proceed, the blame-gaming and the power plays. These things are going to happen when dealing with an unprecedented event like Katrina.

However, it's the paralysis that continues to grip government that is long-term scary. For a nation and a people who pride themselves on problem solving, post-Katrina muddling stands as a rebuke to that can-do attitude. ...

...the failure of government post-Katrina to do what it is supposed to do - look out for the common good - is a bad sign.

Mark Fiore makes much the same point in his own inimitable way. (Click on the image below.)

Stop Global Warming and Get Rich Too? Only in California

California legislators really do seem to be poised to pass the modestly named Global Warming Solutions Act, which would require the state to bring greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels (and how sad that that's an ambitious idea). The Assembly has signed off and the Senate is expected to by midnight today; Arnold is on board. No doubt there's a downside to this somewhere, but until we find it, it looks a lot like saving our species from extinction comes with an economic bonus: A new University of California-Berkeley study finds that going back to 1990 emission levels would boost the annual Gross State Product (GSP) by $74 billion and create 89,000 new jobs by 2020.

August 30, 2006

Robots Gone Wild! (ABC Uses Science to Scare)

Ok, anything that gets the American public more interested in science is good. And yet, I really have to question the judgment of Neil de Grasse Tyson—the man who first demoted Pluto!; but on that front, people, deal—and other notable scientists for appearing on ABC’s pseudo-scientific offering, “Last Days on Earth!”

Now, given that a huge chuck of TV programming on any given night is devoted to the grossly overstated threat from serial killers and pedophiles (more on that in a later post), people are probably relieved to confront threats they cannot hope to protect against. ABC has obliged with a Top Ten list of scary, scary threats to the planet, such as:

No. 8: Gamma radiation from nearby astral implosion. Anyone got the odds on that one?

No. 7: Black hole swallowing earth. What, does it just appear astern, like on the season premiere of “Deep Space Nine”?

No. 6: AI Gone Wild! Yes, indeedy, many Disney-owned film clips were pressed into service.

Number 5: Killer asteroid. Yawn.

Number 4: Still not entirely sure. “Many of our threats come from above. Only one comes from below…” i.e. some kind of geophysical meltdown that, according to ABC, “might” happen under Yellowstone. (You know, it is one thing to rope in media-sophisticated scientists interviewed in some kind of Truthiness studio setting to do your bidding. It is another thing to interview every law-enforcement official and EMT guy in Rapid City, SD, and ask: What could you hope to do if a giant cloud of ash swallowed your city?)

Number 3: Nuclear war. Wait, that’s a real threat. Yet, while experts sanely noted the biggest risk still from U.S./U.S.S.R, most of the file footage was about Iran.

Number 2: Plague/Flu. Oddly, since 10 minutes earlier, ABC had made the point that only one threat “comes from below,” plague is now shouted out to be the only threat “not sent from above." And wait, plague or flu could be weaponized! One biologist notes: “some people say, thank god that Ted Kaczynski was a mathematician, not a biologist.” Snap!

Number 1: Wait for it…yes, it is global warming. And, though sensationalized and overly reliant on Al Gore (yet another indicator he’s running, btw.), the segment was relatively smart.

Smart enough that it made me wonder if this whole show wasn’t the product of some producers concerned about global warming asking themselves: How do we sell this to network brass/ advertisers? Wait! I know! A Top Ten list!

GM Petrified? Automaker Drops Survivor Sponsorship

Earlier today, General Motors announced that's it's ending its 6-year sponsorship of the CBS reality show, Survivor, saying it needs to shift its media dollars from prime-time to live sports and award shows. Officials insist the announcment has nothing to do with the show's controversial new format that divides contestants by race.That struggling GM needs to rethink its strategy on all fronts is understandable. That the announcement comes today, in the midst of protests over the show? Their denial has a familiar ring.

Remember last year when that other ailing car company, Ford, pulled its ads for Jaguar and Land Rovers from gay publications, right around the time when anti-gay-rights groups were threatening a boycott of the company? Ford insisted their decision was strictly about numbers, advertising, the bottom line.

Then a week later the company reversed its decision, making its earlier denials sound downright absurd. In this case GM could, even if its decision is totally unrelated, use this opportunity to highlight the importance of diversity in the workplace, to say something in acknowledgment of the controversy, however reality show-esque, that is unfolding. This was a sliver of a chance for GM to stand for something other than a tanking business, I mean, could it kill them to mention their diversity program?

The American public is tired of denials in such announcements, and there was potential for nobility in this one (as opposed to Ford's cowardice) that might have even distracted folks from a company that is creeping further afield, and that is becoming less and less of a survivor.

Scrub Pants On Fire

By now, most readers know that Sen. Bill Frist did not meet the requirements to have his medical license renewed in Tennessee. However, there is now a new twist to the story: Frist not only did not get the 40 ceus he needed for renewal--he informed the Tennessee Health Department that he did. Now Frist says he "may not have done his continuing education, after all."

Tennessee law states that physicians who do not complete their required continuing education "will be subject to disciplinary action."

This is not the first time Frist's medical ethics have been questioned. As a med student, he filled out adoption papers for a number of shelter cats, whom he later killed in order to do medical experiments. And during the Terri Schiavo affair, Frist "diagnosed" Shiavo via his television screen.

Supreme Court Now a Total Boys Club

A few days ago, a lawyer friend sent me a daily law journal article about the paucity of female Supreme Court clerks this year-- 19% of the 2006 clerks are women, down from 37-41% over the five previous terms. Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Souter hired only male clerks this term.

Somebody must have sent Linda Greenhouse the same article, because she's all over it today. (Legal Times covered this back in May, when the clerkships were announced.)

It's truly unfortunate that not only are there almost no women on the actual court, but the clerks (the people who actually write opinions and screen new cases) are also mostly male.

In a brief telephone interview, Justice O’Connor said she was “surprised” by the development, but declined to speculate on the cause. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg expressed no such surprise. In a conversation the other day, she knew the numbers off the top of her head, and [...] she also observed with obvious regret that “I have been all alone in my corner on the bench” since Justice O’Connor’s retirement in January.

Justice Ginsburg, who will have two women among her four clerks, declined during the conversation to comment further on the clerkship numbers. Why not ask a justice who has not hired any women for the coming term, she suggested.

Souter explains that this is "no more than a random variation," which is a really annoying excuse for his lack of female hires. I suppose the fact that there's only one female justice on the bench is also just a "random variation"?

The dearth of female clerks is certainly not for lack of women at prestigious law schools-- in fact, schools are where women in law have made the most progress. American Bar Association data shows about half of recent law grads were female, and the percentage of women in tenured positions at law schools increased from 5.9%5 to 25.1% between 1994 and 2002. Women are making professional progress, too, but the numbers aren't as dramatic when you start talking about positions of power after graduation.

It's also worth noting, as the Legal Times article did, that there are very few minority clerks, too:

Eight years after attention was first called to the dearth of minorities among high court clerks, it appears that only three of the 37 clerks serving at the Court this term are nonwhite. [...] It appears that the current number of minorities is substantially lower than in recent years. The three minorities this term compare with five last term, eight the previous term and a record nine in 2002. ...if the proof is in the pudding, the pudding, this term at least, is vanilla.

Male vanilla.

See the Volokh Conspiracy for more.

Its a great week for female anchors!

As many of you already know, the blogosphere erupted yesterday as the now infamous CNN "mic snafu" clip made its merry way across the internet. If you were living under a rock you missed the lovely Kyra Phillips--better know as that blonde anchorwoman from CNN--forget to turn off her mic on a trip to the ladies room and proceed to insult several members of her family, not to mention President Bush's glorious Katrina-anniversary press conference on live TV. Truly amazing televison...er...I mean news.

But if that wasn't enough, CBS had to get in on the action by grossly photoshopping their new claim to fame, Katie Couric, for a piece in the September issue of CBS' own "Watch" Magazine. Originally flagged by a reader of TVNewser the first photo was "the official first-pic-of-Katie released by CBS at this year's upfront." Fast forward a few months later and lo and behold you have Katie in the same photo, same outfit, same smile, just 20 lbs. lighter. Way to go CBS! You've managed to insult women world-wide and piss off your prize anchorwoman before her show debuts on September 5th.

Senator Holding Back Anti-Pork Bill Unmasked

In mid-August we reported that shortly before Congress recessed an anonymous senator placed a hold on widely popular anti-pork legislation introduced by Senators Barack Obama and Tom Coburn. The bill, which has backers on both sides of the aisle, would create a publicly accessible database that tracks federal contracts, loans, and grants, giving taxpayers the opportunity to actually see how their tax dollars are spent –- and, all too often, misspent.

After we broke the story, a grassroots campaign began in earnest to unmask the offending legislator, with citizens around the country contacting their senators. Well, the anonymous senator is no longer anonymous. TPMmuckraker is reporting that Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican, is holding the bill back from floor consideration. Yes, that's the same Ted Stevens who earmarked more than $200 million to build the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” which would connect Ketchikan, Alaska, a city of 8,900, with the its airport on Gravina island, home to all of 50 inhabitants. There's speculation that Stevens may have blocked this important legislation simply out of spite for its co-sponsor, Tom Coburn. Last fall, it was Coburn who led the charge to block Stevens’ outlandish earmark, suggesting that the money be spent instead on rebuilding a Louisiana bridge damaged during Hurricane Katrina. When Coburn's proposal was considered, Stevens “threw the senatorial version of a hissy fit,” as The Washington Post described it, during which he bellowed this warning to his fellow senators: “I will put the Senate on notice -- and I don't kid people -- if the Senate decides to discriminate against our state and take money only from our state, I will resign from this body.” As the Post put it, and no doubt many would agree, that “sounds awfully tempting to us.”

Update: This is rich. Stevens' spokesman, Aaron Saunders, is now saying that the senator placed a hold on the bill because he’s concerned about its potential cost. Stevens “wanted to make sure that this wasn’t going to be a huge cost to the taxpayer and that it achieves the goal which the bill is meant to achieve,” Saunders said. The whopping price tag of the database: about $15 million, which is approximately $208 million less than the amount Stevens earmarked for the “Bridge to Nowhere.”

Interactive Timeline, Lie By Lie, is Up and Running

Here. Have at it!

Leaving a Whole Lot of Americans Behind: Number of Uninsured Reaching Epidemic Proportions

And the bad news keeps on coming. New census figures released yesterday show that 46.6 million Americans had no health insurance in 2005, 16%, or one in six people. That's more than the estimated number of people living with HIV (an estimated 42.6 million), and we call that a pandemic.

Of those with insurance the percent covered by their employers fell to 59.5% from 59.8% a year earlier. This change may seem small but there are two things to remember: one, each tenth of a percent represents hundreds of thousands of people, and, two, these numbers have been on a steady decline since 2001 when:

-14.6% of Americans were uninsured (15.9% now).

-62.6% were covered by their employers (59.5% now).

The Census survey also found that Texas has the highest number of uninsured (24.6%) and Minnesota the lowest (8.7%), and that last year the number of uninsured children increased from 7.9 million to 8.3 million.

August 29, 2006

Suddenly There Came A Tapping...

A bill that would expand George W. Bush's power to wiretap American telephones is headed for the Senate Judiciary Committee next Thursday, according to The Raw Story. Written by Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, the bill institutes program-wide warrants that do not expire for a year.

The original intention of the committee was to bring NSA wiretapping into compliance with FISA guidelines, but as it reads now, Specter's bill gives Bush even more power. Specter is co-author, with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, of another bill that would do more to limit NSA wiretapping and would also require judicial review. That bill is also scheduled to appear before the committee next Thursday.

The mandatory judicial review is a sticking point for the White House, whose spokespeople said that "you can trust us....Just don't make it mandatory for us."

Specter has expressed frustration at having to write a wiretapping bill when he does not know the details of the NSA wiretapping program.

Coming Soon: Mother Jones' Interactive Timeline: The Bush Administration, Lie by Lie

In a speech last week, President Bush said “the terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.” Pressed by a reporter on what 9/11 had to do with Iraq, Bush testily responded: “Nothing. Nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack.”

That may be true in the most hairsplitting, literal sense. (Nobody said "Saddam ordered the attack," though you've got to believe it was on the tip of Dick Cheney's tongue more than once.) But a look at Mother Jones’ interactive timeline, Lie By Lie: A Chronicle of a War Foretold, to be released online tomorrow, reveals that on Sept. 24, 2002, Bush said “you can’t distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein when you talk about the war on terror.” Three days later, Donald Rumsfeld said that the link between Saddam and Al Qaeda was “accurate and not debatable.” And on back Sept. 9, 2002, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice went on the Sunday morning talk shows to warn Americans “the first sign of a smoking gun may be a mushroom cloud.” And so on. (And on. And on....)

This is just one example of how you'll be able to use our timeline. Each entry is sourced to original news accounts and source documents, and the timeline, as well as being fully searchable, will be sliceable and diceable by category and topic, allowing journalists, bloggers, and ordinary citizens to, say, parse what the president meant by “ordered” and judge for themselves.

Check back tomorrow for Lie by Lie.

Yet More Evidence That the Average Worker's Getting the Shaft

As those in the nation's highest income brackets continue to see gains, we now find out that the median hourly wage for American workers (adjusted for inflation) has declined a full 2% since 2003, even as the productivity of those workers has increased. Will the ever-increasing struggles of the average worker have an impact on Republican incumbents facing midterm elections this fall? That remains to be seen, but anyone who thinks the economy's not so bad for the every-man should think again. This summer Mother Jones detailed the many ways that, since Bush took office, the haves are getting more…

-In 2005, there were 9 million American millionaires, a 62% increase since 2002.

-Only estates worth more than $1.5 million are taxed. That’s less than 1% of all estates. Still, repealing the estate tax will cost the government at least $55 billion a year.

-Bush's tax cuts give a 2-child family earning $1 million an extra $86,722—or Harvard tuition, room, board, and an iMac G5 for both kids.

-A 2-child family earning $50,000 gets $2,050—or 1/5 the cost of public college for one kid.

-Public companies spend 10% of their earnings compensating their top 5 executives.

While the have-nots are getting even less...

-1 in 4 U.S. jobs pay less than a poverty-level income.

-Since 2000, the number of Americans living below the poverty line at any one time has steadily risen. Now 13% of all Americans—37 million—are officially poor.

-Among households worth less than $13,500, their average net worth in 2001 was $0. By 2004, it was down to –$1,400.

-Bush has dedicated $750 million to “healthy marriages” by diverting funds from social services, mostly child care.

-Bush has proposed cutting housing programs for low-income people with disabilities by 50%.

The lists go on, with sources here and here.

GOP Take Note: New Immigrant Voters Don't Respond Well to Offensive Comments

Try as they might, Republicans can't seem to make much headway with minorities.

One Republican senator described his house painter as a "little Guatemalan man." Another called an Indian man a "macaca," a type of monkey.

Just as the GOP is pushing for minority voters, the two recent gaffes have fed the perception among some blacks, Hispanics and Asian-Americans that Republicans are out of touch with the changing face of the nation.

"There is disconnect at some level," said Michael K. Fauntroy, a professor of public policy at George Mason University. "The country is becoming browner and new voters, particularly new immigrant voters, don't respond favorably to (offensive) comments."

(Whereas experienced voters take offensive comments in stride?) True, the piece offers a few examples of Democrats saying idiotic and racially insensitive things. But Republicans, of course, labor under the perception that this kind of thing is close to the norm for them--a little unfair, perhaps (stuff happens!), but not entirely unfounded. And calling such comments "misstatements," as does an RNC type quoted in this story, won't change that. Hence, the polls show minorities squarely, though to shifting degrees, in the Democratic camp.

Question for Rumsfeld: How Many More Catastrophes? And Victory for Whom?

Donald Rumsfeld, deploying an analogy as cliched as it is scurrilous (at least in this case), likens critics of the Bush administration to those who opted for appeasement in the face of the Nazi threat.

"I recount this history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism," he said.

"Can we truly afford to believe that somehow