MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: November 5, 2006

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November 11, 2006

Cheney: The Business Record Revisited

In the "Headlines you don't see often enough" department, a favorite recent entry is "Buying Cheney's Blunder," over a Floyd Norris piece that the New York Times tucked away in the Friday business section. You'll recall how, back in the Bush honeymoon days, we heard about Cheney's successful record as a businessman, cf. his tenure at Halliburton. Now comes news that Halliburton is selling off Kellogg Brown Root, the subsidiary that handles most of its overpriced work in Iraq, at what may quite possibly be a fire-sale price. But the liability of owning KBR is not, in fact, mostly the Iraq stuff: The division is tangled in legal problems that, for Halliburton, "serve as a reminder of a deal gone awry." Now then:

That deal was Halliburton’s $7.7 billion 1998 acquisition of Dresser Industries. Engineered by Dick Cheney, then Halliburton’s chief executive, the merger accomplished a major strategic goal, making Halliburton the world’s largest provider of oil field services.

But Halliburton’s due diligence failed to either uncover or appreciate the importance of some significant issues. There were asbestos liabilities, which ended up forcing some Halliburton units into bankruptcy and cost the parent company billions.

Halliburton also failed to notice what it now says may have been illegal behavior overseas at Kellogg, a Dresser subsidiary that is now part of KBR. It says that there appears to have been bribery of Nigerian officials for years in connection with contracts there and that similar behavior may have occurred elsewhere. The Justice Department is investigating possible violations of the foreign corrupt practices act, and Britain has a similar inquiry.

While looking into those charges itself, Halliburton found evidence that Kellogg “may have engaged in coordinated bidding with one or more competitors on certain foreign construction projects, and that such coordination possibly began as early as the mid-1980’s,” KBR says in its prospectus.

[...]Halliburton began unloading parts of Dresser soon after Mr. Cheney became the vice president of the United States in 2001, and while some Dresser operations have been integrated into Halliburton, the disposal of KBR would remove a major reminder of that deal. That it will have taken more than eight years is a reminder of how long an ordeal can result from a big decision made with poor information.

So to review. Cheney led a major takeover, ignoring evidence that it was going to lead to a quagmire, overlooking possible illegal behavior, and leaving, in the end, to an ignominious bailout. (Oh yeah, and helped create the monster in the first place). Companies, to paraphrase the old saw, sell their mistakes. Countries bury theirs.

Iran, Al Qaeda Endorse Dems

It's nice to have friends abroad, but there are some that should probably be left off the Ramadan greeting card list. Nancy Pelosi is undoubtedly less than pleased that both Iran and Al Qaeda in Iraq have hailed the Democrats victory as a triumph for their causes as well. At least Rush Limbaugh is enjoying himself.

How Did Robo Calls Affect the Election?

According to TPM Muckraker.com, voters in more than two dozens districts throughout the country were barraged with sometimes-harrassing robo calls in the weeks prior to the election. In at least seven of those districts, Democrats lost by margins of only a couple of thousand votes.

In Florida's 13th District, Democrat Christine Jennings, who is involved in a recount, lost the election by only 386 votes. In the last three weeks of the campaign, the Republican Party spent over $58,000 on robo calls against Jennings. In the case of Jennings and other candidates, people receiving such a call at first thought the caller was the Democratic candidate because of the call's misleading opening. Several voters complained about this. If a voter listens to the entire call, only then does she discover that the call comes from the Republican Party. But the majority of people, of course, hang up. The problem is that the phone rings again...and again and again and again, until the voter listens to the entire call. Since most people do not want to listen, voters are left with the impression that they are being harrassed by Democratic candidates.

Democrats have asked the FEC, the FCC and the Department of Justice to investigate the nature of campaign robo calls.

November 10, 2006

The Post-Election Price of Oil: Up, Up, and Away?

The analysts at New York Global Securities, a major investment strategy firm, didn't see a plot by oil companies to lower prices during the election. But they do believe speculators will now push up the price of oil to the extent they believe the government will let them get away with it. From their October 18 report, Speculation in the Oil Market and the U.S. Midterm Elections:

We believe that following the U.S. midterm elections on November 7, 2006, the price of oil is likely to test the tolerance of the market and the new members of Congress; that is, we believe that after the elections oil will appreciate until there is fear in the market that Congress will take action. It is too early to speculate on the exact level of the increase, but our recommendation at this time is to become progressively long oil at these prices as the election approaches, with the expectation that a topping test pattern will become clear shortly after the election. We believe that the last three major declines in the price of oil coincided with various U.S. Senatorial hearings and expectations surrounding the upcoming U.S. midterm elections. We further believe that these events may have caused speculators within the oil markets to become cautious, resulting in a drop of more than 20% in the price of oil. With regard to the two prior declines, once the Senate hearings were over and the Senate did not take any significant action, the price of oil began to increase. We expect that following the current U.S. elections the price of oil will again rise testing the tolerance of the new Congress.

So far, it's too early to tell if NYGS will be right.

No Joy in Jerusalem Pride Parade

There's something sad about gay groups cheering the passage of seven more anti-gay marriage amendments (because they passed with just a small majority), and journalists, myself included, taking heart that the measures didn't tilt the election in the Republicans' favor. After all, fewer than a handful of Democrats have promised to protect gay rights—employment or housing, much less marriage.

And in Jerusalem today, gays, lesbians and their allies were forced to stage their pride "march" in a stadium at the Hebrew University surrounded by police. Gay groups have been demanding the right to march in the holy city since June, the traditional gay pride month. Two weeks ago, ultra-Orthodox Jews, Muslims and Christians gave up battling each other and took to the streets in violent protest of the pending march. The Vatican also demanded that the march be cancelled. The story was scarcely reported in the U.S.—the Chicago Tribune followed it, and the AP gave it a quick blip:

Ultra-Orthodox Jews have rioted in Jerusalem nearly every night over the past week, burning garbage cans, blocking roads and assaulting police officers in an attempt to get the authorities to call off the march, approved months ago by the Supreme Court.

Where faith and regard for historic holy spots have been unable to check religious groups' mutual animosity in Jerusalem, their shared hatred of gays and lesbians has succeeded. There's no pride in that.

Grover Norquist: "Imagine There's No Dubya..."

At Grover Norquist's weekly conservative confab this Wednesday, the topic was how the GOP can get its groove back in the next two years. You gotta hand it to the K Street Project mastermind. Dude is cocky:

Despite short-term setbacks, Norquist said, the conservative movement is "perfectly healthy. No one is losing because they favor tax cuts, are pro-life, pro-gun or pro-growth.

"In two years, there is no George W. Bush and almost no Iraq war as presently constructed," Norquist said.

"And Democrats will be standing there, naked to the winds, having been forced by Nancy Pelosi to vote for tax increases, gun control and impeaching the president," he added, referring to the future speaker of the House.

Visions of disrobed Democrats aside, note how Norquist's smugness actually reveals his eagerness to get beyond Iraq and George W. Bush (echoing the neocons' new favorite theme). Yet somehow I suspect Republicans are going to have to confront those two issues in 2008 before they can get back to the business of being "real" conservatives. If only the Bush legacy could be drowned in the bath tub before then!

Firebombing Eco-Activists Plead Guilty, Get Prison

Four enviromental activists connected with the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front have plead guilty in federal court to participating in a five year campaign of arson crimes, a move that could net them each several years in prison. That brings to a total of 12 guilty pleas federal prosecutors have squeezed out of the clatch of so-called eco-terrorists wanted for attacks in several states whom they arrested in December. Mother Jones ran a searching piece on their most spectacular attack, the firebombing of a Colorado ski resort, shortly after it happened. And here's some background on the post-9/11 crackdown on eco-terror.

Word on Washington's K Street

Now that Democrats have control of the House and Senate, what of K Street? Some have started to speculate on the fate of the famed corridor, replete with suit-wearing self-professed “political junkies,” steakhouses built for power lunches and the odd vending table of knock-off purses.

The Hill reported that former Republican senators Jim Talent and Mike DeWine are being touted as “good catches” for the street’s business community. Meanwhile, based on contributions made to liberal Democrat Nancy Pelosi’s campaign, the National Journal’s Hotline has K Streeters leaning to the left.

I ventured out to the K Street Corridor on a balmy afternoon Thursday to catch people on their lunch breaks and get their opinions on the outcome of the mid-term election.

Robin Baldwin, who works in contracting with the US Army Corps of Engineers was lounging in the sun on a park bench, taking a break before having to go give a deposition. Baldwin didn’t predict any major changes.

“There is something about having a lobbyist come visit you and I think that as representative or a senator, it makes them feel more important,” she said. “I don’t know if they’ll necessarily be more liberal. Whoever pays the most money, that’s the way they’ll lean.”

This thought was echoed by a dark-suited man on the sidewalk at K and 20th who did not want to be named, but identified himself as an “expert.” “I’m a consultant,” he said. “I have been in Washington since 1968.”

“I’ve been here for a long time and every year the political environment has gotten harsher and nastier,” he said. “There’s a very brief honeymoon period and then the party in power abuses the party that they just kicked out.”

I found Dean Stoline, an attorney for the American Legion and proud Iowan (Democrats now control the state legislative and executive branches in his home state for the first time in 42 years), walking down K Street toward 18th Avenue. Wearing a grey suit and sporty sunglasses on the sunny day, Stoline was upbeat and already excited about the next election.

“As a political junkie I think this will be the best presidential campaign of my lifetime because it will be wide open in 2008,” said Stoline.

While taking a cigarette break on a sidewalk bench, a lawyer from Pennsylvania in recruiting for a K Street firm (who chose to be unnamed) said he was disappointed by the mid-terms. The Republican was also looking forward to the next presidential election.

“I wanted Rick Santorum to win and I felt that because he was tied in with George Bush and he’s a Republican he wasn’t given a fair deal,” he said. “I hope that Rudy Giuliani decides to run [for president] and win. I respect him.”

Down the street Jeff, a bike courier waiting for a taxi delivery, was hoping for lower gas prices but was happy that Donald Rumsfeld was out of his former job as Defense Secretary.

“There’s one of them out,” he said. “It’s going to take two more years for the next one.”

--Caroline Dobuzinskis

"Who's Rumsfeld?"

C.J. Chivers brings us this Borat-worthy, tragi-comic scene:

Hashim al-Menti smiled wanly at the marine sergeant beside him on his couch. The sergeant had appeared in the darkness on Wednesday night, knocking on the door of Mr. Menti’s home.

When Mr. Menti answered, a squad of infantrymen swiftly moved in, making him an involuntary host.

Since then marines had been on his roof with rifles, watching roads where insurgents often planted bombs.

Mr. Menti had passed the time watching television. Now he had news. He spoke in broken English. “Rumsfeld is gone,” he told the sergeant, Michael A. McKinnon.

“Democracy,” he added, and made a thumbs-up sign. “Good.”

The marines had been on a continuous foot patrol for several days, hunting for insurgents. They were lost in the hard and isolating rhythms of infantry life.

They knew nothing of the week’s news.

Now they were being told by an Iraqi whose house they occupied that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, one of the principal architects of the policies that had them here, had resigned. “Rumsfeld is gone?” the sergeant asked. “Really?”

Mr. Menti nodded. “This is better for Iraq,” he said. “Iraqi people say thank you.”

The sergeant went upstairs to tell his marines, just as he had informed them the day before that the Republican Party had lost control of the House of Representatives and that Congress was in the midst of sweeping change. Mr. Menti had told them that, too.

“Rumsfeld’s out,” he said to five marines sprawled with rifles on the cold floor.

Lance Cpl. James L. Davis Jr. looked up from his cigarette. “Who’s Rumsfeld?” he asked.

The accompanying photo is haunting

'It is Virginia that Turned the Senate Blue'

Shortly after George Allen conceded yesterday, shifting the balance of power in the Senate, Jim Webb appeared before supporters in Clarendon, Virginia, raising his son's combat boots in the air, which he'd worn throughout his hard-fought race.

"We have a much, much stronger Democratic Party," Webb told supporters.

Webb also told supporters he would vote soon on increasing the minimum wage and would address the war on Iraq in the approach he outlined throughout his campaign, calling for the withdrawal of American troops in Iraq, where Webb's son, a marine, is currently serving, and joint diplomatic talks with nations in the region. "I think people care about [Iraq] and that's one of the things that you saw in the election," Webb said. An Associated Press exit poll found the majority of moderates and independents in Virginia voted for Webb, influenced largely by his stance on the war in Iraq.

At the rally, there was quite a bit of jubilation and perhaps some disbelief at the fact that Webb's victory had clinched the Senate for the Democrats.

Supporter Tom O'Brien was impressed with the contribution of volunteers to Webb's campaign. "Just the fact that they had that much dedication and that he was able to get this far is pretty unusual," said O'Brien.

The election's first Virginia-wide poll found incumbent Senator George Allen ahead by 16 points in late July. Webb campaign volunteer S.R. Sidharth has been credited with turning the campaign in Webb's favor after George Allen called the young man of Indian descent 'macaca' in August.

"It is Virginia that turned the Senate blue," Chuck Schumer, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, told supporters at the rally.

-- Caroline Dobuzinskis

Official Reality

Given the turn of events the past few days, I am reminded of what someone told me for a piece on Iran contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar I published earlier this year in the magazine:

...To many who saw the Iran-Contra scandal unfold, it all adds up to a familiar picture. Jonathan Winer worked for a Senate committee led by John Kerry that, in the mid-1980s, probed rumors of the secret arms deals and of the funneling of the profits to Nicaragua’s right-wing Contra rebels. For years as the investigation continued, critics—led by then-congressman Dick Cheney—"called us conspiracy nuts," says Winer. The committee kept hearing tips about private individuals secretly carrying out the government’s business, he recalls. "Officials tell you none of it is true, because there’s no record that any of these things took place. It creates a situation where oversight is practically impossible because official reality is completely misleading, and unofficial reality—which is the truth—does not exist." In the end, the scandal was uncovered after control of Congress shifted to the Democrats and, simultaneously, more and more evidence was revealed in Iran-Contra-related lawsuits and media investigations.

"What has to happen is, you have to have the press and Congress and the courts all playing their constitutional role for the truth to come out," Winer says. "If any of those components don’t function, you can wind up with serious problems."

Press working: Check. Congress playing a role? Now, presumably in the coming months, yes, check. What Winer told me that didn't make it into the piece is that the whole exercise was not about punishing people, as far as he was concerned, that wasn't what he wanted; what he cared about was getting the truth -- so that official reality is no longer so misleading.

Lincoln Chafee: Leaving the GOP?

Lincoln Chafee, the moderate Republican Senator from Rhode Island who was unseated by Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in Tuesday's election, hinted at a news conference yesterday that he may exit the GOP. "I haven't made any decisions," he said. "I just haven't even thought about where my place is." But, according to the AP:

When pressed on whether his comments indicated he might leave the GOP, he replied: "That's fair."

Remaking Robert Gates

The Bush administration’s push for a Gates confirmation in the lame-duck Congress this year betrays a hint of unease over what might happen to the nominee for Secretary of Defense if he were to face a Democratic-controlled Congress.

While all of Washington is busily recasting this hard man of the Casey era into a cuddly, "pragmatic," experienced, and realistic diplomat, the past could still trip him up. Gates escaped indictment in Iran-Contra amidst indications he was lying to cover up his own role in the affair. The independent counsel who investigated the scandal, Lawrence Walsh, says in his own memoir he did not believe Gates' professed innocence. There is the suggestion of perjury in his testimony, which was replete with numerous lapses of memory and profuse apologies for not having more carefully considered the policy implications of this secret, unconstitutional war.

And while he escaped prosecution, the affair temporarily slowed the rise of Casey's protégé, slowed it enough to force withdrawal of his nomination to be head of the CIA in 1987. By 1991 the details of the scandal were all but forgotten, and Gates easily gained approval as Bush Senior’s CIA director. However, during the confirmation hearings several CIA employees with lengthy tenures at the agency came forward to testify against Gates, describing at length how Casey’s director of intelligence manipulated research so as to jibe with Reagan policy goals. "Gates knows how to develop his credentials and ingratiate himself," one colleague said of the nominee. He "ignored or scorned" views that didn’t conform to his own preconceptions Melvin Goodman, a senior official with a lengthy tenure noted. Gates’ role was "to corrupt the process and the ethics of intelligence."

Jennifer Lynn Glaudemans, a CIA employee testified, "I think he misrepresented what was in the record of finished intelligence…. Not only could we feel Mr. Gates’s contempt, we could sense his party line….We were told, 'do not come to a conclusion, it may offend the 7th floor.'"

All this is doubtless buried in a history no one in Washington wants to dredge up. Anyway, Gates is enjoying a makeover, with such people as Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, who served as head of the NSA and was deputy director of the CIA, comparing Gates to Clark Clifford, the well-regarded Washington lawyer who served as an intimate advisor to several presidents. A story in the Washington Post this morning pushes along the remake: "Bob Gates comes from the realist school of how to operate internationally," Dennis Ross, a Mideast envoy for Bush Senior, told the Post. "As such…it is pretty clear the neoconservative agenda on regime change and democracy promotion will take a back seat to stability and less pressure on regimes to open up their political systems."

This is the new refurbished Gates. Gone is the old Gates—the man who manipulated intelligence, plotted the overthrow of the Marxist-Leninist foothold country of Nicaragua, drew up plans for invading Libya, and twisted intelligence to show the Soviets were masterminds of international terrorism.

But one never knows in Washington what might happen amidst the shift in political alignments. If the new Democratic-controlled Congress were in session, someone might come forward at the Gates confirmation hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. In the new Congress that committee will be chaired not by John Warner, who had participated in Gates earlier confirmation to the CIA, but the Democrat, Carl Levin of Michigan. Could Bush depend on the liberal Levin, who has been in Congress since 1978 and is a vocal critic of the Iraq war, to get down for Gates? Maybe not. So best to get this over with quickly in the lame-duck session where the old dependable John Warner will see it through.

Gates, Rumsfeld, and Bush's "Truth Issues"

Granted, in the annals of Bush lies, it's no standout -- but still, there's something weird about the way this one is just slipping by. Except for this fabulous Howard Kurtz/WashPost headline: "President's Evasion Raises Truth Issues." It does, doesn't it?

Six days before the election, Bush told three wire-service reporters in an interview that Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney were doing "fantastic" jobs.

"You see them staying with you until the end?" asked Terence Hunt of the Associated Press.

"I do," Bush replied.

"So you're expecting Rumsfeld, Secretary Rumsfeld, to stay on the rest of your time here?" asked Steve Holland of Reuters.

"Yes, I am," the president said.

November 9, 2006

Arkansas is for Stoners

It wasn't only Democrats who made gains in Republican strongholds on election day: the diabolical drug known as marijuana also scored some unexpected victories. Regular readers are undoubtedly wondering about those five city-level initiatives to make pot the lowest priority for local police. Well, they all passed, even the ones in Montana and Arkansas. Sadder news for stoners in Nevada and Colorado, though, where statewide measures to decriminalize weed fell as short as a Haight Street dime bag.

RI Ex-Prisoners Freed to Vote

By the narrowest of margins, Rhode Islanders approved an amendment to the state constitution giving back the right to vote to prisoners who have completed their sentences. Rhode Island doesn't have a massive share of the over two million convicts held in American lockups, but it's still a potentially significant move that will hopefully set an example for the many other states that strip the franchise from former felons. Such laws may well have tipped the 2000 election in Bush's favor, as MJ.com reported the day after the polls closed that year.

18,000 Votes (and One Congresswoman) Lost

Count on Florida to devise the electronic equivalent of a butterfly ballot. In Sarasota,

Democrat Christine Jennings lost to Republican Vern Buchanan by 368 votes, making it the second closest congressional race in the country. More than 18,000 voters who showed up at the polls voted in other races but not the Buchanan-Jennings race…. If the missing votes had broken for Jennings by the same percentage as the counted votes in Sarasota County, the Democrat would have won the race by about 600 votes instead of losing by 368.

Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent played dumb at a press conference Wednesday, hinting that voters at the polls chose not to vote:

"I do not know what to attribute it completely to. It's not a mechanical issue; it would be voters overlooking the race. We did not have any equipment failure…. I'm not a mind reader."

But Dent knew about the problem before the election. She told poll workers to warn voters that the congressional race was easy to miss on the touch-screens. Someone better remind this Kathy what happened to another one not too far away.

While Buchanan, the Republican, says he has the voters' mandate, both parties are mustering lawyers and money.

Just goes to show how little technology can compensate for human error, much less corruption.

—April Rabkin

The Last Words

It’s all too easy right now to make fun of Republicans, but I can’t help but point out a blog post (the only blog post) from the National Republican Congressional Committee website Tuesday. Written in uncharacteristic bold face at 3:37 PM, as the routing was just getting underway, it says in its totality: “Happy Election Day!” Happy election day to you too! Anyway, as of today, that’s still the last post. Couldn’t they have taken a cue from the DCCC and instead written “Get Your Vote On”? Who knows, could have helped. The Republican National Committee and Senate Committee blogs have been equally silent since the election. The last post on the NRSC reads: “The NRSC is feeling very positive about recent election night developments.” It goes on to trumpet returns in Virginia, Missouri and Tennessee before concluding: “I am sure we will have more good news to share as the evening progresses, so stay tuned!”

Will Moderate Republicans Defect?

Over at Rolling Stone, Tim speculates:

I wouldn’t be surprised to see at least one Republican defection in the Senate in the coming months. If you’re Northeastern Republican this election ought to be writing on the wall. Especially in Pennsylvania, where four House seats dominoed to the Democrats, and Rick Santorum — the idological standard bearer for the Republican party — was rudely given his walking papers.

At the same time the Democratic party is clearly becoming a bigger ideological tent. If the devoutly pro-life Bob Casey is a Democrat why isn’t the pro-choice Arlen Specter?

If Jim Webb is a Democrat. Why isn’t Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins of Maine?

The Republican party is redefining itself as a regional party, and the region isn’t the Northeast. Specter nearly lost his seat in 2004. If he’d been running as a Republican this year, he’d be preparing for a lobbying career right about now.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid, meanwhile has zero wiggle room and a fickle Bush smoocher in Joe Lieberman on whom the whole game depends.

Reid’s a very pragmatic guy. He’s got powerful committee chairmanships to offer. Again, it’s just a feeling I’ve got. The Democrats’ majority is going to grow between now and 2008.

Thoughts?

In the Heartland, a Vote for Separation of Church and State

From the Associated Press:

BOISE, Idaho — City voters have rejected a proposal to return a Ten Commandments monument to a public park in a referendum on religious displays on public property.

With 99% of precincts counted, the vote was 37,568 to 33,747, about 53% to 47% against moving the monument back to city property.

Boise's debate began in March 2004 after Mayor Dave Bieter and the City Council agreed to move a 40-year-old granite monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments from Julia Davis Park to an Episcopal church across the street from the Statehouse.

Was the vote a bellwether for Midwestern social values? Maybe, maybe not. For what's it's worth, the AP notes that Boise had removed the statue to avoid a lawsuit brought by Rev. Fred Phelps of Kansas, who sought to erect an anti-gay monument in the same park. So maybe people were expressing sympathy for gays. Either way, Boise is busting out.

Eliot Spitzer, Enigmatic Superstar

Though he's not yet governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer is already making popular moves. The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle writes that the day after he was elected, Spitzer held a meeting between labor and big business, for a groupthink session on how to revitalize the New York state economy.

As Mother Jones reports, Spitzer has the ability to bring people together because of unique advantages that he had throughout campaign season. He has been considered the next governor of New York for so long, and led his opponent in the polls by so much, that he has never needed to throw his chits in with one side or another on labor issues, or for that matter, on any issues. The result is a rising progressive star who remains a question mark to most.

All of this and more from Mother Jones in a report and photo essay entitled, "Can Eliot Spitzer Stay Progressive?"

Oh, and if you want to work for Spitzer, he's accepting resumes now via his website.

Steny Hoyer’s K Street Project

Now that the Democrats have taken back Congress, members are jockeying for leadership positions. Among them is Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, who announced he would seek the number two job in the House leadership, Majority Leader, the morning after the election. By all accounts the Maryland Democrat has been paving the way for this post for some time. As Zach Roth points out in a recent profile of Hoyer in Washington Monthly, the Democrat, if successful in securing the job, will have something in common with one of his Republican predecessors -- Tom DeLay. Like DeLay, Hoyer has made it his business to cultivate close ties to K Street, which, Roth notes, may not make him the best choice for Majority Leader, particularly since the Democrats have taken pains to distance themselves from the lobbying scandals that ensnared top Republicans:

...There is no doubt he has worked hard to curry favor on K Street. Over the last year and a half, he has ramped up an effort—begun soon after taking over the whip’s job—to raise money for Democrats from Washington business lobbyists. Starting in late 2004, Hoyer and three close allies—Reps. Crowley, Tauscher, and John Tanner (D-Tenn.)—launched an energetic K-Street-outreach program, with a goal of raising $250,000 for vulnerable Democratic incumbents by June 2006. Later, they would switch the focus to raising money for promising Democratic challengers, increasingly basing their pitch on the growing likelihood that Democrats would retake the House this fall, and thus be in a position to pass legislation. Hoyer’s particular political gifts—his persuasiveness, his talent for negotiation, and his willingness to see all sides of an issue—appear to have made him well suited to the task. “We find mutual interests, mutual ways to help each other,” says [Bill] Cable, [Hoyer's] chief of staff.

But the outreach has at times complicated Democrats’ efforts to capitalize on the slew of Republican influence-buying scandals—from Abramoff to DeLay to Cunningham to Safavian to Ney—that has come to light over the last year and a half. After Hoyer’s office posted on its website a news story describing the fundraising project, Republicans were quick to call Hoyer a hypocrite for attacking the GOP over Abramoff while at the same time touting his relationships with lobbyists. Hoyer’s staff quickly took the story down.

...More problematic than the fundraising program has been Hoyer’s stance on lobbying reform, in which he has consistently stood in the way of Democratic efforts to unite behind a far-reaching approach. Hoyer’s opposition to reform appears to be of long standing, and well known on both sides of the aisle. Back in October 1994, Congress had been considering a lobbying reform bill that many lawmakers privately considered too restrictive. According to Roll Call, DeLay and Hoyer were walking down the Capitol steps shortly before leaving for the October recess in advance of the midterms that would bring the GOP to power, when the Texan “cupped his hands around his mouth and chuckled to Hoyer, ‘But lobbying reform is dead!’” DeLay, it seems, understood even then that he and Hoyer were of one mind on the issue.

Big D Stands for Democrat

JR is finally dead. Dallas, the city of the eponymous TV show, the city which has (somewhat unfairly) been linked more than any other in the national psyche with everything Republican, is Republican no more. As the Dallas Morning News says: Big D Means Democrat Again.

For the first time in decades, straight ticket voting in Dallas County (the county of my birth) leaned against the GOP. The upshot? A whopping 41 of 42 Republican county judges up for reelection this year were tossed out on the curb. As I reported for Mother Jones a few weeks ago, the shift is part of a demographic trend in Texas that could eventually put the entire state back in the hands of Democrats.

But don’t hold your breath. A big reason for the shift in Dallas County: white flight to exurbs such as (ironically-named) Frisco, a road stop on the Metroplex’s march towards Oklahoma. The northward sprawl is giving new meaning to a common joke in Dallas: Why doesn’t Texas fall into the Gulf of Mexico? Because Oklahoma sucks.

New Facts Appear In Tillman Shooting Affair

The latest inquiry into the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman is scheduled to end in December. However, the Associated Press has studied thousands of pages of documents, conducted a number of interviews, and has uncovered some rather interesting facts:

Staff Sgt. Trevor Alders, one of the shooters, underwent a PRK laser eye procedure not long before the Tillman incident, and his vision was "hazy." In the absence of "friendly identifying hand signals," he assumed that both Tillman and an Afghan ally were enemies.

Spc. Steve Elliott described his excitement over seeing rifles, muzzle flashes and "shapes." Spc. Stephen Ashpole said "he saw two figures, and just aimed where everyone else was shooting." Squad leader Greg Baker whose vision is 20/20, claims to have tunnel vision. He says he shot at who he thought was the enemy, but who turned out to be the allied Afgan fighter who was giving cover to the American soldiers.

None of the four shooters identified his target before firing, a violation of military training. Tillman's platoon had also run out of supplies, a condition which could contribute to fatigue and lapses in judgment. The same commander who was reprimanded for his role in the shootings was also responsible for delivering punishment to those in his command who fired the shots.

And there's even more: According to a field hospital report, someone tried to start Tillman heart with CPR after his head had been partly blown off and his corpse wrapped. Tillman's body armor and uniform were burned.

"I will not assume his death was accidental or 'fog of war'," said Tillman's father, Patrick Tillman Sr. This is the fourth investigation of the incident, which the Tillman family believes has been repeatedly covered up by the Pentagon.

The AP has many more details, which are available here.

George Allen Gone Today -- Back Tomorrow?

As expected, George Allen conceded the Virginia Senate race a moment ago, saying that a recount could drag until Christmas, and out of respect for the people of Virginia, and for the sake of mending divisions in the state, he would not seek a recount. He nodded briefly to the unlikelihood of any change in currently voting results.

The thing that stuck out, from this point of view, was Allen's elaborate tree analogy that came early in the speech that made it sound like he plans to return to Virginia and national politics. He is not a broken branch, he said. He is a strong tree, with deep roots; he will regrow. Or the tree will regrow. Or something.

Just a bit of theorizing: George Allen may be very smart to (almost) promise such a return. The Democrats have a lot of convincing to do if they're going to argue they made in-roads into red state America and now have an expanded (and durable) base of support. What seems much closer to the truth is that an unpopular war, unpopular President, and unpopular Congress all doomed a number of sitting Republicans, and those in the tightest races lost. In six years, Bush will have been out of office for four and Iraq will likely be off the national radar. Republican voters who voted Dem this time around could easily "come home," which sets the stage of George Allen's triumphant return in what is still a conservative state. After all, the guy spent day after day shooting himself in the foot and