MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: May 13, 2007

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May 18, 2007

Gonzo Goes: Not "If" But "When" (and How)

As the Senate debates whether to conduct a purely symbolic no-confidence vote in Alberto Gonzales, Frank Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri, is on a journalistic campaign to have the Attorney General impeached. In Slate today, Bowman argues that Gonzales has essentially admitted David Iglesias was fired for not pursuing bogus voter fraud cases. Basically, Gonzales admitted that Iglesias was fired because the DOJ had received complaints about him, and those complaints all had to do with Iglesias' unwillingness to abuse his prosecutorial powers to serve narrow, immediate political interests.

The Attorney General can, in fact, be impeached—and impeachment seems like a valid option.

It's becoming more and more clear that the Department of Justice's political agenda was out of control. If a full third of all U.S. Attorneys weren't prosecuting "voter fraud" vigorously enough, it's because the DOJ wanted them to go beyond the bounds of good legal judgment. And let's remember what the endgame was: keeping minorities from voting so Republicans could establish their "permanent majority." Rove's list of states in which voter fraud was a problem consisted exclusively of battleground states. Marie Cocco at Truthdig puts it this way: "It's Watergate without the break-in or the bagmen," and she has a legitimate point.

In addition, there's been ample evidence of incompetence in Gonzo's DOJ, with Time charging today that Gonzo's poor-taste visit to an out-of-it Ashcroft probably involved serious mismanagement of classified information. (Ashcroft's wife was present, and classified information cannot be discussed in public places.)

Here's a question: If the Bush administration is so incompetent in so many ways, how are they still getting away with crap like this, without Congress even threatening to impeach? Look to another Time article for a somewhat sinister explanation: a "Washington truism that was proven once again this week by World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz: the longer a scandal-besmirched political appointee holds out against his critics, his party, his patrons and the press…the greater his odds of walking away with a measure of vindication…[T]here comes a time when simply leaving becomes the greatest chit he has to play in a final deal. And you can get a lot when you trade in that last chit."

Update: Furthering the point that the DOJ's agenda is corrupt, one USA's prosecution on corruption charges of a Democratic aide was reversed in circuit court. Judges called the evidence "beyond thin." The prosecutor continued to lean on the aide to give her boss up even after she was sentenced. Setting? The battleground state of Wisconsin. Timing? Just before the 2006 election.

House Probes ExxonMobil's Ongoing Funding of Global Warming Denial

As Antarctica thaws, ExxonMobil continues to fund global warming denial. Earlier this year ExxonMobil claimed to have stopped funneling grants to media groups that spread the myth (as Tom Tancredo did in Tuesday night's presidential debate) that scientists are evenly divided on whether humans are causing global warming or not. That lie was exposed in the company's "World Giving Report." Greenpeace found that ExxonMobil recently gave $2.1 million for global warming denial. That's more than half of what it gave in 2005.

There's a term for this genre of lies: pseudoskepticism. It's the same strategy that the tobacco industry used for decades to cast doubt over the dangers of smoking. And now the government is intervening, just as it finally did with tobacco in the mid-1990s.

Yesterday Brad Miller, the chairman of the House Science oversight committee, asked ExxonMobil to hand over a list of "global warming skeptics" it has funded. Predictably, the corporation's public response employs the same tactic these "thinktanks" use to undermine science: stirring up doubt over whether grant recipients like Steve Milloy and the Competitive Enterprise Institute deny global warming or not. ExxonMobil spokesman Dave Gardner said, "The groups Greenpeace cites are a widely varied group and to classify them as 'climate deniers' is wrong."

By the way, Mother Jones was the first to expose this scandal two years ago. Here's a chart of the grant recipients.

John McCain Hasn't Voted in Five Weeks. Seriously

Back in April we noted that John McCain had been too busy straight-talking on the campaign trail to vote on important legislation on Iraq. Turns out -- and this is kind of insane -- McCain hasn't voted since.

Yeah, that's right. McCain has gone five straight weeks without casting a vote in the Senate -- he's missed 43 straight votes. If he misses the next three votes, he'll have been absent for 50 percent of the votes in the 110th Congress.

And this isn't an inevitable product of running for president. Hillary Clinton has missed just 1.8 percent of the votes this year and Barack Obama has missed 6.4 percent.

What makes this all the more remarkable is that McCain is the only candidate in Congress who has done this before. He ran for president in 2000! He should know how to do it without looking like an idiot with an absentee problem. What on earth must the people of Arizona think?

Lord knows we aren't huge McCain fans around here, but good heavens John, you're better than this.

Gonzales Can't Make Up His Mind on How Much to Blame His Deputy

Hey, remember when Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty resigned a couple days ago and Alberto Gonzales tried to blame him for the entire U.S. Attorneys scandal? Specifically, Gonzo said:

"You have to remember, at the end of the day, the recommendations reflected the views of the deputy attorney general. He signed off on the names... And he would know better than anyone else, anyone in this room, anyone — again, the deputy attorney general would know best about the qualifications and the experiences of the United States attorneys community, and he signed off on the names."

That was basically all made up. Well, either that was made up or Gonzales was lying to Congress when he testified in April:

"Looking back, things that I would have done differently? I think I would have had the Deputy Attorney General more involved, directly involved."

Sometimes, these guys make this job way too easy. Spotted on ThinkProgress, who spotted this on the Daily Show.

Cheney Distorts Views of Arab Leaders, Version 2.0

When Dick Cheney was trying to drum up support for the Iraq War in 2002, he visited capitals in the Arab world and spoke with various heads of state. The message he got from them, he said upon his return, was that they all "shared our concern" about Iraq.

That was a lie. Arab leaders both publicly and privately opposed the war, and even warned about the disastrous after-effects that we are seeing now.

Well, Cheney just got back from another trip around the Arab world, and he's saying that leaders there agree that Iran is a "major source of concern." While that's closer to the truth than his statements about Iraq, it's still overselling their position. In private interviews, Arab leaders urge the United States to find a diplomatic solution to Iran's belligerence and nuclear ambitions. They do not advocate the hard line Cheney and his pals are taking.

One gets the sense that the real danger in the White House is Cheney, not Bush, because Cheney refuses to be humbled by the administration's spectacular failures. Read more about this situation from Time's bureau chief in Cairo.

War Czar as Figurehead? Errand Boy? Bush's Messenger?

Michael Hirsh writes in Newsweek that new war czar Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute faces almost insurmountable problems in his new job, problems that will essentially reduce him to being a high profile mouthpiece for the White House. He'll be the public face of the war effort, and he'll ferry the president's orders to various departments around Washington, but he won't be coordinating any fighting. Or giving orders to anyone, really.

Says Hirsh:

[Lute is] just a three-star general, and he’s still on active duty. What this means is that while nominally he’s the president’s man—his title puts him on par with national-security adviser Steven Hadley—militarily he’s still inferior in rank to four-star Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the multinational forces in Iraq. Neither will he be in a position to tell Defense Secretary Robert Gates or Rice what to do. "The term 'war czar' is terribly misguided," says [retired Gen. Barry] McCaffrey. "I do think he’ll be an extremely able White House operative."

Hirsh also notes that Bush is setting the poor guy up to fail. After all, if you're a messenger for an inattentive president who has no substantive messages to deliver, how can you possibly hope to improve things?

The only way for Lute to be even marginally effective is if a president who has been consistently uninterested in the details of the Iraq conflict for the past four years—and in the nitty-gritty of Afghanistan for most of the last five years—starts obsessing over those details with just 18 months to go in his term. And that’s unlikely to happen.

We wrote at the onset of the surge that assigning the smart-as-a-whip General Petraeus to lead the fighting in Iraq was like throwing good money after bad -- we were wasting a huge portion of the Army's talent on a lost cause. And when that talent inevitably goes down swinging in September 2007 or February 2008 or whenever, the Bushies can say they did all they could. The situation with Lute feels very much the same. Perhaps that's why the White House had so much trouble finding someone to fill the post.

Should have hired this guy.

The Numbers Add Up on U.S. Attorneys Firing Scandal

Let's review the numbers on the U.S. Attorneys scandal.

26 - The number of U.S. Attorneys that the DOJ targeted for dismissal, according to yesterday's reports. (That's roughly one in every four USA nationwide.)

9 - The number of U.S. Attorneys we previously knew had been targeted, and were either fired or resigned under pressure.

8 - The number of USAs Alberto Gonzales claimed in testimony to Congress composed the whole of the scandal.

6 - The number of Senate Republicans who have called for Gonzo's resignation.

And today you can add a new number to the list:

4 - The number of additional USAs the Washington Post reports this morning were also on the DOJ's hit list, bringing the total number of USAs targeted for firing to 30, roughly one-third of the entire U.S. Attorney team across the country.

Oh, and might as well add these, too:

1 - The number of no-confidence votes Senate Democrats will offer against Gonzales as early as next week.

0 - The amount of shame/credibility/integrity/respectability Alberto Gonzales has left.

May 17, 2007

Bay Buchanan: The Doctor Is In

A few years ago, when Bush on the Couch was published by psychiatrist Justin A. Frank, his publicist invited me to review it. I declined on ethical grounds. Frank, having never met George W. Bush, is not qualified to diagnose him, despite his using the technique of "applied psychoanalysis" which permits the psychological analysis of a public figure, but which--in my opinion--shoud be limited to analysis of the dead. (I am a psychotherapist, and I know that if I did such a thing, my board would come down hard on me.)

Enter Bay Buchanan, who is most definitely not a mental health practitioner of any kind, but who has provided us with a casual diagnosis of Sen. Clinton. In her book, The Extreme Makeover of Hillary (Rodham) Clinton, Buchanan hints that Clinton may have narcissistic personality disorder. (Buchanan calls it "narcissistic personality style," a term which does not exist in the mental health repretoire.)

In describing how she reached that conclusion, Buchanan refers to an endnote in the book that does not exist. All the same, Buchanan says that "[W]e are talking about a clinical condition that could make her [Clinton] dangerously ill-suited to become President and Commander-in-Chief." She then covers herself by saying "I pass no judgment as to whether this shoe fits the Lady Hillary."

Diagnosing someone from afar, especially if you are not a mental health expert, is wildly irresponsible, even if you say "I don't really mean it, I'm just saying...." There are plenty of former presidents who weren't quite right, like Kennedy (drug addiction and sexual compulsion) and Nixon (alcoholism and violence), and Buchanan's colleagues are ga-ga about at least one of them, and sometimes both of them. It wouldn't be too difficult apply phony mental health language to other candidates, but I could have guessed that an armchair psychotherapist would go after Clinton. She is an "ambitious" woman, and she is married to Bill. Who needs more information than that?

Breaking: Wolfowitz Is Out

The World Bank and its president, Paul Wolfowitz, announced today that Mr. Wolfowitz will step down in June. The statement reveals that Bush won the terms he wanted for the neocon's departure. The bank's board suggested that its ethics policies "did not prove robust to the strain under which they were placed." Which is really just fancy language for "Wolfie almost got away with it," but manages to convey that the fault was somehow institutional, as Bush wanted. The board's statement also included this hard-to-swallow gem: Wolfowitz "assured us that he acted ethically and in good faith in what he believed were the best interests of the institution and we accept that." Obviously, he also acted in the best interests of his girlfriend, whose salary skyrocketed under the arrangement Wolfie brokered, even as he presented himself as a veritable crusader (there's that word again) against government corruption. But there you have it: Bush and Wolfie took a parting shot at the institution that fights world hunger. You gotta love these guys.

Bush Opposes Pay Raises for Troops and Survivors

Last month, President Bush attacked congressional Democrats for depriving troops on the ground of funding by insisting on passing conditional funding bills they knew he would veto. Although Bush's claims were proven to be false—the war had already been funded through June, and even a long delay in reaching an agreement would only have caused the government a minor financial inconvenience—he continued to reiterate them, in the fashion of his Tourettes-inflicted vice president who could not stop saying that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11.

Now the Democrats have proposed a boost in survivor's benefits and a pay increase for the troops, who are facing increased danger since Bush's congressionally opposed surge began. Bush is threatening to veto the gesture of mercy. The president says military pay and benefits are already adequate. But that's not what Mother Jones found (and documented) in our Iraq 101 package. A widow with 3 children receives just $40,000 a year. And soldier's pay is so low that a quarter of military spouses applied for food stamps in 2004.

MySpace Outrage Was a Bit off Base

Mother Jones blogged earlier this week about the Pentagon's decision to prohibit soldiers from using MySpace or YouTube on DOD computers. There was a lot of outrage, but I think a clarification is in order: Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have never been allowed to use these sites on DOD-issue computers. They have been—and will continue to be—permitted to access them on privately issued computers available in internet "cafés" on base. In fact, soldiers, like the rest of us, are theoretically prohibited from conducting any personal business on company-issue computers. But up until now, troops deployed outside of war theatres have not been specifically blocked from using the bandwidth-consuming social networking sites. They and their families are the ones the ban will affect (although they, too, usually have some access to non-governmental computers).

Obama Won't Demote Oprah to VP

Via Taegan Goodard:

"I think Oprah is far more powerful than a vice president. I think that would be a demotion for her."

-- Sen. Barack Obama, interviewed on MSNBC this morning, on whether he would consider Oprah Winfrey as his running mate.

Afghanistan's "Staggering" Economic Growth Doesn't Stem Poverty

Recently, Alastair McKechnie, the World Bank director for Afghanistan, called the changes in Afghanistan "staggering." According to McKechnie, the Afghan economy has grown at a 10% rate, and though he concedes that there is no available data on unemployment, "people even in rural areas look more prosperous," and are "generally much better off."

Now the Bush administration has requested an additional $11.8 billion from Congress "to accelerate Afghan reconstruction projects and security forces training in 2007-2008," and to "help President Karzai defeat our common enemies.” This, they claim, is to demonstrate a "commitment to the Afghan people."

Hopefully, the average Afghan, including the Afghan government, will reap some benefits, but so far it's not looking good. IRIN reports that since the 2001, about 60 donors have spent $13 billion in reconstruction and development activities; yet ”out of every US dollar spent by donors in Afghanistan's reconstruction 80 cents finds its way out of the country.” The "rest has been spent by donors themselves," with some Afghan officials stating that the money has been allocated through foreign subcontractors, leaving little accountability of where all the aid money is going.

In February, 64 countries and 11 international organizations met in London, pledging $10.5 billion to Afghanistan by 2010 for “security, governance and economic development.” Not for the basic needs of the citizens, 6.5 million of whom are starving, most having no access to potable water, sanitation, and heath and social services, and more than half of Afghans living below the poverty line.

Further, the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out that perhaps 40% of promised aid is actually delivered, and,

“70% of U.S. aid is contingent upon the recipient spending it on American stuff, including especially American-made armaments. The upshot is that 86 cents of every dollar of U.S. aid is phantom aid.”

Why has pouring billions of dollars into Afghanistan been important? It's for "reconstruction," but reconstructing Afghanistan for the purposes of the "Great Game"-- a game that's about energy exports and ensuring US hegemony in South Asia.

—Neha Inamdar

DOJ Considered Firing 1 in 4 U.S. Attorneys

The Washington Post is reporting today, based on "sources familiar with documents withheld from the public," that Justice had considered firing as many as 26 U.S. Attorneys. That's more than 1 in 4. Contrast that to Alberto Gonzales's sworn testimony last week that the spate of firings was limited to the 8 USAs the public already knows about. The news reveals not just more potential creepiness on the part of the DOJ, given that the 8 firings have been pretty compellingly shown to be a strong-arming attempt to force USAs to prosecute "voter fraud," which doesn't really exist. It also reveals a greater degree of incompetence in the department. Some of the most frequently listed attorneys were not among those ultimately fired, suggesting that the process wasn't especially systematic. The purge was "handled badly" not just because it was ultimately discovered, but in pretty much every way imaginable.

In one especially bizarre development, prosecutor Christopher J. Christie in New Jersey appeared on one list of names. Christie is a major GOP donor, who conducted a corruption probe into Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez's real estate dealings (D-N.J.) and is among that elite and teensy-tiny class of prosecutors who have gotten indictments in terrorism cases.

Saddam's Scientists Helping Build Iran's Nuclear Program?

A couple days ago, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog IAEA issued a report saying it had made a "short-notice inspection" of Iran's main nuclear facility and found a more advanced program than anyone had previously thought. The IAEA noted that all 1,300 of Iran's centrifuges were running smoothly and producing nuclear fuel. While Iran insists the nuclear program is for civilian power, everyone believes they have their eye on building the bomb.

But the centrifuges are interesting. They're necessary for the production of low enriched uranium for civil purposes or highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. A country needs 3,000 properly functioning centrifuges to develop a nuclear warhead in one year, according to experts, but Iran is going big time -- it plans on installing 54,000 in the near future.

But as recently as February of this year, Iran was thought to have just slightly over 300 centrifuges. Where did they get the technical know-how and personnel for the expansion?

Maybe Iraq. Post-invasion Iraq, that is.

In late 2005, Mother Jones wrote about Iraqi nuclear scientists, including Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, the head of Saddam's nuclear centrifuge program, who were trying desperately to give themselves up to American forces. Yet, because of suspicion and disorganization on the part of the Americans they approached (and the threat of mistreatment in holding centers and prisons), many scientists simply slipped into the underground. Kurt Pitzer wrote:

I met [Dr. Faris Abdul Aziz] in Obeidi's garden, and he told me that in the days after the invasion, he had gone to Saddam's former Republican Palace to offer cooperation to the U.S. military on behalf of himself and other top nuclear scientists. But U.S. officials only wanted to know if he knew where Saddam was hiding and where they might find WMD stockpiles. They never asked him back for another interview. Today, no one seems to know where he is. "We've been trying to get in touch with these guys for months," [David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector] says. "But by now they're probably so jaded and suspicious that they want nothing to do with the U.S."

As it happens, Saddam's nuclear centrifuge program during the late 1980s was one of the most efficient covert nuclear efforts the world has ever seen. The scientists who pulled it off are very gifted men and women, many of whom are now out of work. Their names are still being kept secret by the international agencies familiar with their work. But a source close to one of those agencies recently said that of the 200-some scientists at the top of its nuclear list, all but three remain unaccounted for.

It's not hard to imagine that some of those hundreds of missing nuclear scientists made their way to Tehran, where they would have been welcomed with open arms and fat paychecks. Wouldn't it be ironic and tragic if instead of Iranians sneaking into Iraq to make trouble, as the Bush Administration is claiming, it was the other way around? And simply because the Administration that claimed to care so much about WMDs didn't bother to secure the people who worked on them.

You can read Pitzer's story, "In the Garden of Armageddon," here.

Controlling the Media to Win "Hearts and Minds"

Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon planned to enact the "Rapid Reaction Media Team" (RRMT) complete with hand-picked Iraqi media experts. Two of the contractors involved were the Rendon Group (a shady firm working in Afghanistan) and Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC) where- guess who?- Paul Wolfowitz's lover Shaha Ali Riza worked until 2003.

"Strategic communication" to serve global US interests in countries that are geo-strategically significant is not new. In Afghanistan, for example, the Rendon Group and Lincoln Group work around the clock to construct favorable press about American military interventions in countries that have been invaded by the US.

Indeed, Richard A. Boucher, Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs, says that because "there are few places more critical to our interests or in greater need of sustained U.S. attention than South Asia," "free and independent information is the number one means to clearly portray U.S. interests in South Asia 's economic growth and democratic reform." And as such, we need to "support journalism training to attract students and journalists from across South Asia region."

So much for the freedom of the press.

—Neha Inamdar

Shocker: Presidential Candidates Very Rich

If you're interested, the FEC released the financial disclosure forms filed by the presidential candidates yesterday. (With some exceptions. Romney, McCain, and Clinton were granted extensions.)

You can read about it here and here, but there are only a couple things of note.

First, everyone is rich. Edwards has $30 million in assets (he gave $350,000 away in charity). Giuliani has made $16.1 million in the last sixteen months, mostly in speaking fees. Romney is expected to disclose a ~~new~~ net worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And so on.

Second, Obama and Republican candidate Sam Brownback divested -- they sold all mutual funds that are invested in companies operating in Sudan.

Third, Rudy Giuliani told a divorce court he had only $7,000 in assets just six years ago, but has now amassed a net worth of more than $30 million. (It's those speaking appearances -- Rudy can charge $100,000-$200,000 per speech in a post-9/11 world.) Giuliani also made $496 in "theatrical royalties" in 2006. Perhaps for this?

Fourth, Bill Richardson, who like all Democrats has called for the reduction in the use of fossil fuels, has hundreds of thousands of dollars in stock of the Valero Energy Corp. He served on Valero's board of directors for little over a year, and was formerly Secretary of Energy under Clinton.

Fifth, Obama has made $572,490 off his two books, "Dreams of My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope." Enough to make any writer jealous.

We'll have another post when Romney, Clinton, and McCain release their numbers. Just 18 months until the election!

Former Generals Reprimand GOP for Tough Torture Talk

Many people took note of the moment during the GOP debate when Brit Hume proposed a hypothetical in which American shopping centers had been bombed and perpetrators had been caught. How hard do you interrogate the perps, Hume asked, to prevent another attack?

Pretty much every candidate used coded words to say they endorsed torture, or something close to it. Use "enhanced interrogation techniques," said Romney. Let the interrogators use "any method they can think of," said Giuliani. (John McCain, of course, is the exception here; he has been a strong opponent of torture. For a detailed account of what torture did to McCain's body in Vietnam, see the second page of this LA Times feature.)

The crowd loved the tough talk, but you know who was a bit disgusted? Members of the military.

Today, two former generals articulate in the Washington Post what made ~~millions~~ thousands [Ed. Note: Sorry, no one watches these things.] of Americans queasy after the debate:

Fear can be a strong motivator. It led Franklin Roosevelt to intern tens of thousands of innocent U.S. citizens during World War II; it led to Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt, which ruined the lives of hundreds of Americans. And it led the United States to adopt a policy at the highest levels that condoned and even authorized torture of prisoners in our custody....

The American people are understandably fearful about another attack like the one we sustained on Sept. 11, 2001. But it is the duty of the commander in chief to lead the country away from the grip of fear, not into its grasp. Regrettably, at Tuesday night's presidential debate in South Carolina, several Republican candidates revealed a stunning failure to understand this most basic obligation. Indeed, among the candidates, only John McCain demonstrated that he understands the close connection between our security and our values as a nation....

This war will be won or lost not on the battlefield but in the minds of potential supporters who have not yet thrown in their lot with the enemy. If we forfeit our values by signaling that they are negotiable in situations of grave or imminent danger, we drive those undecideds into the arms of the enemy. This way lies defeat, and we are well down the road to it.

Dilbert Creator for War Czar?

We might be a little late to the party on this, but Scott Adams, the creator of the cartoon Dilbert, has a plan to end the Iraq war that might have put him in the running to be the White House's war czar.

Adams suggests that we withdraw from all combat operations and instead build a heavily fortified perimeter around all of Iraq's oil interests. As long as the civil war blazes, we continue to pump the Iraqis' oil, with all proceeds going to help the Palestinians (and presumably other downtrodden members of the Arab world). When the sectarian fighting ends and a stable government is established in Iraq, the Iraqis can start pumping the oils themselves and use the natural resources that are rightfully theirs to benefit their own country.

In addition to giving the Iraqis a strong incentive to stop killing one another, the plan should end the loss of American lives because (1) American troops would no longer be in the streets trying to tamp down sectarian violence and (2) they wouldn't be attacked while guarding the pipelines because any disruption to the flow of oil only hurts the Palestinians, and public opinion and diplomatic pressure fro the Arab world would probably keep that from happening.

Is it fanciful? Yes. Is it impractical? Yes. Is it ripe for corruption and exploitation? Yes.

Is it just about as good as anything else we've got going on right now? You bet.

May 16, 2007

Bush Stages Show-Stopper to Protect Vestiges of Wolfowitz's Honor

The Bush Administration is really going out on a limb to save its favorite neocon son, Paul Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz has been embroiled in an ethics scandal as president of the World Bank. As it became clear yesterday that the World Bank board would unanimously support firing Wolfie, Bush offered a compromise: Wolfowitz would step down voluntarily and the bank would share the blame for his ethics violations. (Wolfowitz claims he asked for guidance on handling the ethics of getting his Arab girlfriend a security clearance-required position in the State Department where she earns more than the Secretary of State.)

The board didn't bite and continued moving towards a statement that Wolfowitz had broken the bank's ethical standards and damaged its credibility (Note: His primary campaign was to hold borrowing countries accountable for government corruption). Bush's latest desperate intervention was to shut today's proceedings down early, before the board could issue its statement. The stunt bought time for Bush's precious Wolfie to resign rather than being fired. The board and Mr. "They will greet us as liberators" Wolfowitz are now huddled in closed negotiations. If experience serves as any guide, Wolfie would rather be fired than admit he was wrong.

Jerry Falwell, Unintentional Free Speech Hero

Let's take a short break from the Jerry Falwell posthumous pile-on to remember the one thing we can thank him for. As Hustler publisher and Falwell foe-turned-amicable sparring partner Larry Flynt pointed out yesterday:

The most important result of our relationship was the landmark decision from the Supreme Court that made parody protected speech, and the fact that much of what we see on television and hear on the radio today is a direct result of my having won that now famous case which Falwell played such an important role in.

Flynt's referring to the 1987 libel lawsuit the reverend filed after Hustler ran a spoof ad in which Falwell described having sex with his mother while "drunk off our God-fearing asses." The Supreme Court ruled 8-0 in favor of Flynt, upholding our First Amendment right to take the piss out of public figures. Amen to that! Now we return to the blowhard-bashing already in progress.

F-16 Pilot Ignites Massive Wildfire in New Jersey

A military pilot began a wildfire that now encompasses nearly 13,000 acres in New Jersey, forcing 2500 people to evacuate. Is New Jersey wildfire country?, you ask. It didn't used to be. Read more on The Blue Marble's Weird Weather Watch.

Future of State Gun Laws in the Hands of D.C.'s Mayor?

Last week, I wrote that the case, Parker v. District of Columbia, which repealed D.C.'s gun ban, is likely headed to the Supreme Court. The district's federal circuit court, which ruled in favor of Parker in March, denied D.C.'s request for review before the court's full panel of judges. (The case was originally heard before a three-judge panel.) The court's decision brought the case one step closer to a Supreme Court hearing. Parker marks the first time that a broad interpretation of the second amendment has been used to overturn a state's gun regulations. If the case is upheld before the high court, state gun laws across the nation could be in jeopardy.

Today, in an Op-ed in The Hill, Robert Levy, the man who wielded the second amendment, illuminates an interesting twist in the potential fate of Parker. Levy writes:

Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) has the Second Amendment in his crosshairs. He faces a crucial choice over the next 90 days with major implications for residents in D.C. and across the country.

The crucial decision -- should Fenty fight the case and risk a victory for Parker before the Supreme Court, which would have far-reaching implications for state gun laws across the nation, or change the District's gun laws, avoid a Supreme court battle, and face the music at home? Mayor Fenty will likely not be making this decision on his own. Anti-gun groups across the nation will urge Fenty not to appeal to the Supreme Court, while his constituents will push for the opposite. D.C.'s mayor is left to decide whether he acts to serve the interests of his citizens or those of the nation. I don't envy him.

Thanks, Exxon: Families Spend $1,000 More on Gas Per Year

There was a mini-firestorm Monday when I reported that the average price for a gallon of gas is at its highest level ever and asked SUV owners to justify their choice of car in the comments. You can see the results here.

Today, a follow up. A study led by consumer groups shows that American households spend $1,000 more per year on gasoline than they did just five years ago.

Click the chart for a larger version.

You know how every so often there is a news story about how ExxonMobil has set a new record for quarterly profits? They did it again in the first quarter of 2007. Their earnings from January to March of 2007 exceeded their already astronomical quarterly earnings record by 10%. Total take in three months: $9.3 billion.

Thoughts?

Fun Tidbit from Comey's Testimony

I wrote yesterday about how former Deputy Attorney General James Comey's testimony before Congress shed even more light on why Alberto Gonzales is unfit to be Attorney General, and why Gonzales' behavior during the warrantless wiretapping episode rendered his nomination disgraceful from the beginning. (For an in-depth examination of all of Comey's testimony, see Glenn Greenwald.)

Today, I found this entertaining tidbit from Comey's testimony. Comey is speaking with Arlen Specter, senator from Pennsylvania.

SPECTER: Can you give us an example of an exercise of good judgment by Alberto Gonzales?

[Gap in testimony.]

SPECTER: Let the record show a very long pause.
COMEY: It's hard -- I mean, I'm sure there are examples. I'll think of some. I mean, it's hard when you look back. We worked together for eight months.
SPECTER: That's a famous statement of President Eisenhower about Vice President Nixon: "Say something good." "Give me two weeks."
COMEY: Right.

Full transcript available here.

The Worst of Jerry Falwell

Timothy Noah let loose on Jerry Falwell yesterday in Slate. Calling the late reverend a "bigot, a reactionary, a liar, and a fool," Noah let Falwell's own statements prove him right. If you've ever wanted a compendium of Jerry Falwell's most intolerant and outrageous statements, you now have one.

On Sept. 11: "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way—all of them who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

On Martin Luther King Jr.: "I must personally say that I do question the sincerity and nonviolent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left-wing associations."

On feminists: "I listen to feminists and all these radical gals. ... These women just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it and they're mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They're sexist. They hate men; that's their problem."

On Islam: "I think Mohammed was a terrorist. I read enough of the history of his life, written by both Muslims and non-Muslims, that he was a violent man, a man of war."

The whole list is very good -- it hits on gays, Jews, and global warming, among other things. Check it out.

Hating on Muslims: GOP's Second Debate Same as the First

When the Republicans held their first debate two weeks ago, I was disturbed by the facile interpretations of Islamic terror that they presented. I wrote:

It has always bugged me that these guys misunderstand or understand and then deliberately misrepresent the reasons why certain factions of the Muslim world hate the United States. They don't hate our freedoms. Okay, maybe a tiny number of al Qaeda types do, but the 70 percent of the Islamic world (rough estimate) that currently tells pollsters that they can't stand the U.S. don't hate our freedoms; they hate that we have supported pro-Western dictatorships in their region, they hate that we reliably and sometimes unthinkingly support Israel, and they hate that we invaded a country that posed no threat to us and completely destroyed it.

The more insidious cousin of the "they hate our freedoms" explanation is the "it's in their religion" explanation. When Republicans argue vaguely that Islam orders followers to kill infidels, it amounts to saying the West is at war with Islam, and that our fights in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in the global war on terror really are a clash of civilizations. (One might even call them a "crusade.") Worse than that, though, is that we lump all Muslims together -- in with Osama bin Laden and his henchmen, we throw millions and millions of peace-loving Muslims who might be convinced that the United States and not their violent, extremist enemies hold the keys to freedom and prosperity.

So when Tom Tancredo said yesterday that al Qaeda is trying to kill us "because it is a dictate of their religion," he needs to know he is doing far more harm than good to our interests. Fueling the sense in the Muslim world that their religion is our enemy -- and not its most wackjob adherents -- makes the prospect of peace in the region all the more dim.

One Last Bit of Military-MySpace Outrage

Elizabeth blogged yesterday about the military banning the use of YouTube by the troops. I wanted to add just one note about why I find the situation particularly obnoxious -- it comes on the heels of the military itself deciding it wants to use YouTube as a PR tool, hosting its own videos so everyday American citizens get a look at the "real war" the "media doesn't cover." By posting videos of its own but hypocritically banning videos posted by the troops, the Pentagon effectively becomes the censor/filter that it claims the media is. Obnoxious, right?

May 15, 2007

Is MySpace Your Space? Not If You're In The Military

Just two weeks after the Army restricted troops from blogging, on Friday the Department of Defense announced that social networking, from MySpace to YouTube, is now off limits.

The