MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: July 22, 2007

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July 27, 2007

Henry Rollins: Down With the Troops

Musician, spoken word artist and writer Henry Rollins may hate the war, but he's got nothing but love for U.S troops fighting in Iraq.

The former Black Flag singer spoke with Mother Jones recently about his experiences doing several USO tours in Iraq, the legacy of punk rock, same-sex marriages, Wal-Mart and William Shatner. And we got it all on tape.

The Return of the "Banana Wars"

Yesterday, a federal jury in Alabama cleared Drummond, a Birmingham-based coal company, of all charges in a suit that alleged company executives had orchestrated the execution of three Colombian labor activists representing workers at Drummond's La Loma mine in that country's northern Cesar department. The lawsuit, brought by victims' families, invoked the rarely-used Alien Tort Claims Act (circa 1789; originally drafted to fight piracy), which, under certain conditions, allows foreign nationals to sue for damages in U.S. courts. The plaintiff's attorneys have said they will appeal.

The trial focused on the 2001 murders of three union leaders by Colombian paramilitaries. In March of that year, Valmore Locarno Rodriguez and Victor Hugo Orcasita Amaya—president and vice president of the Sintraminergetica union—were pulled from a bus shortly after leaving the mine. Locarno was immediately shot in the head, while Orcasita was beaten and kidnapped. His tortured body was found the next day. Later, in October, Locarno's replacement, Gustavo Soler, was also executed on his way home from work.

The suit alleged that executives with Drummond Ltd., the Colombian division of the privately-owned Drummond Co. Inc., paid Colombian paramilitaries to murder the union leaders, knowing full well that such executions are rarely investigated. Witnesses for the prosecution detailed how Drummond provided housing, food, and transportation for the paramilitaries, ostensibly for defense of the mine. In reality, claimed prosecutors, the relationship was much more sinister and involved Drummond's active engagement of the paramilitaries as contract killers. Defense attorneys—as well as a parade of senior executives from Drummond, who testified at the trial—responded that the charges were without foundation and claimed that Drummond maintains a strict policy against collaboration with paramilitaries.

While the victims' families file thier appeal, the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on human rights is planning to hold a hearing on Drummond's operations in Colombia. In addition, Colombian government investigators are continuing their inquiry into Drummond and the alleged shady dealings of several other U.S. multinationals, including Chiquita, Coca-Cola, Dole, and Del Monte.

Earlier this year, banana company Chiquita agreed to a $25 million fine after admitting that, since 1997, it had paid $1.7 million in protection money to the AUC, an umbrella organization for various Colombian paramilitaries. The payments continued even after the U.S. government designated the AUC as a terrorist organization.

More to follow in the days and weeks to come on the subject of Drummond, et. al, and their alleged dealings with Colombian paramilitaries...

Say it Ain't So: Republicans Dodging the YouTube Debate?

Uh oh. Maybe I was wrong.

Update: I like Josh Marshall's take on this: "If they can't face Youtube how can they defeat the terrorists?"

Was Pat Tillman Murdered?

The AP is reporting new details about the death of former NFL player Pat Tillman, who was killed under suspicious circumstances in Afghanistan in 2004:

Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman's forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player's death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

"The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.

The doctors - whose names were blacked out - said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

Henry Waxman's Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing in late April, nearly three years to the day that Tillman was gunned down in Afghanistan, examining how the military spun the circumstances of Tillman's death (the Pentagon originally claimed Tillman was killed by enemy fire during an ambush). Waxman is not letting the issue drop. He has scheduled a hearing next week that will zero in on what senior Pentagon officials knew about Tillman's death and when they knew it. Among those called to testify is former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. No word yet on whether Rummy will accept the invite, but check back here for coverage of the hearing.

July 26, 2007

Badgers and Squirrels and Iran, Oh My!

TAPPED has a great post today summing up all the crazy animal-related foreign policy news of the past week. The lead items? Iran accusing the U.S. of using trained squirrels as spies, and the belief, widely held by the inhabitants of Basra in southern Iraq, that the British military has released man-eating badgers into the city.

The U.S. and the British have denied all squirrel- and badger-related activity (one Foreign Office official called the squirrel story "nuts"), but suspicions remain. From one of TAPPED's commentators, on a British spokesman's statement that "We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area.":

That's sort of a lawyerly non-denial denial, isn't it? Maybe the badgers eat women and children, but not men.

Good point. Reminiscent of the famed (and possibly fake) killer dolphins set loose by Katrina.

— Nick Baumann

Political Trivia for July 26

Today's question comes (again) courtesy of cqpolitics.com, and it's a tough one:

How many years after the historic Nixon-Kennedy debates in 1960 was the next debate between the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees?

No googling, just guessing. If you have a trivia question to suggest, email it to mojotrivia@gmail.com.

Update: As two commenters correctly guessed, it was 16 years later, in 1976.

— Nick Baumann

Lawmakers Have a Sense of Humor About This "Paying For Sex" Business

An item from today's Hill, reproduced without comment but with plenty of giggles:

Which member of Congress was scaring the bejesus out of colleagues late Tuesday night by putting in fake reporter requests to speak to lawmakers about Deborah Jeane Palfrey, aka the D.C. Madam?

Reporters long have filled out cards in the Speaker’s Gallery to request face-time with members. An aide brings the card to the particular member on the House floor and he or she decides whether to come out and chat with the requesting scribe.

The rambunctious lawmaker filled out cards posing as a Washington Post reporter, only to watch the color drain from the faces of unsuspecting co-workers when confronted with the cards from a "journalist" writing about Hill types caught up in a scandal related to an alleged prostitution ring.

Sexist "We Only Describe What Female Politicians Are Wearing" Media Moment of the Day

Anyone who reads newspapers with any frequency recognizes the trend: reporters love to talk about what powerful women are wearing. You'll never hear about the cut of Robert Byrd's suit or where Harry Reid got his shoes, but, boy, does Nancy Pelosi look good in that Armani suit. And that Condi Rice has been looking fine, too — especially in boots. Smart people know that talking about Hillary Clinton's cleavage is a meaningless (not to mention sexist) distraction from the issues, so we'll take care to try to point out some of the more egregious examples we come across.

From today's Washington Post:

[California Rep. Loretta] Sanchez, ... resplendent in a black outfit with silver sparkles.

"Resplendent"? Really? Tongue-in-cheek or not: give me a break.

— Nick Baumann

How Do You "Make" a Terrorist Threat?

Prosecutors have accused Olutosin Oduwole, a student at Southern Illinois University, of planning a Virginia Tech-style massacre on his campus. He has been charged with "attempting to make a terrorist threat," according to today's Washington Post. Police say Oduwole's abandoned car contained a note that demanded $50,000 — to his PayPal account! — to avert a "murderous rampage" at a "highly populated university."

If SIU really was Oduwole's target, he doesn't think too highly of it. According to the Post, the note "suggested the shooting would target a "prestigious" university, but that word was crossed out." (If you want to learn more about Mr. Oduwole, the AP thinks it has found his myspace.com page here).

So yesterday, on his 22nd birthday, Oduwole pleaded not guilty to making a terrorist threat. But how do you "make" a terrorist threat? Is it enough to just have a note in your car? The ATF has noted that Oduwole was legally entitled to the guns he ordered online. His friends ("hundreds" on facebook.com according to the AP) say this is all a big misunderstanding because Oduwole likes violent rap music and guns. What are the laws about planning to make a terrorist threat? Does the first amendment protect threatening writing if you never show it to anyone? And, if Oduwole actually did write the note, what could drive an apparently popular, happy young man — the president of his fraternity, the kid with hundreds of friends — to even consider writing something so stupid?

— Nick Baumann

Choose Your Friends Carefully—They Could Make You Fat

The once-permissive society of yesteryear—the one captured on black-and-white celluloid, in which attractive movie stars puff unfiltered cigarettes and shoot their whiskey straight—has been replaced by a world of worrywarts. Yeah, okay. . . We all know that smoking and drinking can kill you. So can bird flu, AIDS, car crashes, and al Qaeda. Hell, add falling pianos to the list. But now comes word of the latest threat: fat friends. According to the results of a study to be published tomorrow in the New England Journal of Medicine, people with obese friends are at a much elevated risk of becoming obese themselves. The study, which analyzed health records collected between 1971 and 2003 on 12,067 adults, enabled researchers to create detailed maps of obesity, linking wives to husbands, brothers to brothers, and friends to friends. From today's front-page Washington Post story on the study:

The researchers found that when one spouse became obese, the other was 37 percent more likely to do so in the next two to four years, compared with other couples. If a man became obese, his brother's risk rose by 40 percent.

The risk climbed even more sharply among friends -- between 57 and 171 percent, depending on whether they considered each other mutual friends. Moreover, friends affected friends' risk even when they lived far apart, and the influence cascaded through three degrees of separation before petering out, the researchers found...

Sophisticated statistical analyses revealed distinct groupings of thin and heavy individuals, and found that siblings and spouses had less influence than friends, supporting the idea that the study's findings were not the result of people eating the same food, engaging in the same activities or sharing genes.

And though environmental factors such as living in neighborhoods with lots of fast-food restaurants and no good grocery stores or sidewalks probably play a role, the researchers found no effect among neighbors unless they were friends, and being friends had an effect, regardless of whether they lived nearby. That ruled out common surroundings as explanations for the findings, the team said.

Scientists are hailing the study as "brilliant" and "groundbreaking." Maybe it is. Its use of social networks to track obesity as if it were a virus is pretty cool. But, as people learn about the study, it makes you wonder how they will relate to their overweight friends. According to the Post:

The researchers cautioned that people should not sever relationships with friends who have gained weight or stigmatize obese people, noting that close friendships have many positive health effects. But the results do support forming relationships with people who have healthful lifestyles.

Law & Order and Campaign Finance (Or: What Will TNT Do Without Fred Thompson?)

In the campaign finance system, there are two separate yet equally important groups: candidates who have a myriad of film and television credits to their name and the networks who broadcast them. These are their stories:

Wondering why Fred Thompson is taking achingly long to throw his hat in the ring? Well NPR had a nice bit this morning on what role "Law & Order" might have to do with it. Seems that according to "equal time" provisions of campaign finance law, NBC would have to provide Thompson's competitors commercial time that would amount to the time Thompson is on camera in each episode.

Which isn't a lot. According to the formula of "Law & Order," the DA figure (now played by Thompson) typically appears three or four times. One: to urge Jack McCoy to take a deal/and or bemoan how the case will hurt his reelection changes. Two: to yell at Jack when he/the cops screw up. Three: Twist in case requires sage insight and/or reprise point one. Four: Witty bot mot at end of episode, typically over a glass of what looks to be mighty fine bourbon.

Still, that probably adds up to 5 minutes. And if NBC had to give all of Thompson's primary opponents 5 minutes of prime time, that could add up. So NBC has decided to stop airing any repeats that contain Thompson once he announces (all hail, Adam Schiff!), and next season Sam Waterson (aka Jack McCoy) will be promoted to DA. (Which, I might add, makes no sense, given how Jack has done everything in his power to piss off the political establishment and voters low these many, many, many years.)

TNT, however, since they are not a broadcast network is taking the stand that it does not have to provide equal time, and is free to continue running "Law & Order" episodes containing Thompson over and over and over and over and over....

To say nothing of The Hunt for the Red October, which they play with mind-boggling regularity.

But there's some chatter that the cable exception to equal time could be challenged and the Thompson campaign would be the test case. So if you're with Fred, the actor, better watch him now, before everything from In the Line of Fire to No Way Out to Curly Sue to old episodes of "Bonanza" get scrubbed from TV Land. The concept, not the channel. Wait, that too!

GOP Candidates Can't Chicken Out on YouTube Debate

Joe Klein makes an interesting point about the Republican YouTube debate that's scheduled for September: why would they do it? YouTube appears to lean left (otherwise, why would conservatives need to start a right-wing version?), and when you let everyday people ask the questions, instead of professional journalists, the questions are bound to be more raw and biting. And from Iraq, to their flip-flopping, to their various party apostasies, the Republican candidates have a lot of material for angry YouTubers to work with.

Also, speculates Klein, FOX might be whispering to the GOP canidates, "The Dems bailed on our debate, you can bail on CNN's."

But CNN anticipated the problem and Klein reports its solution:

CNN has taken the clever step of getting the Florida Republican Party and Governor Charlie Crist to co-sponsor the CNN/YouTube Republican debate...Which will make it hard for the candidates to chicken out. Can't wait.

Neither can I. As you can tell from my massive live blog from the Democrats' YouTube debate a few days back, I love this format. It's going to be awesome.

July 25, 2007

If Only a Doping Scandal Could Mean Victory in Iraq

If you aren't following the Tour de France you’re not alone. Without Lance and those yellow bracelets there's little interest (even though an American sits in third place). So instead of following what is quite possibly the most difficult athletic endeavor known to man, Americans are instead fixated on baseball, on Barry Bonds, in his quest to do what only one man has ever done.

Both feats are mired in controversy, and by controversy I mean doping shitstorms. In two years, the Tour went from having an American seven-time, cancer-surviving, positive-drug-test free champion in Lance Armstrong to last year having “winner” Floyd Landis still disputed by his positive tests for elevated testosterone (the results of which he's opened up to a wiki-jury to vindicate himself), to this year's catastrophe.

Only four days from the finish of the three-week, 2,500 mile race, and just after the deciding day in the Pyrenees, race leader, Dane Michael Rasmussen, was booted today for mysteriously disappearing during testing days this spring. And earlier this week another favorite failed a drug test, which revealed he had had a blood transfusion before a stage he ended up winning.

And then there's Barry. A man who has hit 753 home runs—an astounding number. Three more and he'll eclipse Hank Aaron's record. Of course, Bonds has hit many of those while on performance-enhancing drugs, drugs that we are now seeing to be so prevalent that the pitchers he is facing may be as juiced up as he is.

Sports are awash with doping scandals. It ain't good for kids to watch Rasmussen sail up a grueling, 10-mile mountain road in the morning and find out he's a champion because of drugs in the afternoon. But let's be honest, drugs are a technological advance that feeds into the frenzy that is not only sports, but our entire culture.

Tiger Woods has laser eye surgery to improve his game. Actors have plastic surgery to extend their lucrative careers. We invent Teflon to keep our food from sticking to cookware. Cars that go faster, or that use less gas, do so because of science, the same science used to dope athletes.

We like advances that make life easier, better, more exciting. And we want to see winners, bikers chugging up mountains, men hitting baseballs unfathomable distances. After all, it distracts us from what we are losing, soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, hearts and minds everywhere. Win at all costs, isn't that the American Way?

FEMA's Post-Brown Efficiency Melts Away

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and the levees broke in New Orleans, people in Louisiana and Mississippi desperately needed ice to prevent spoliage of tons of food. But despite urgent pleas for ice, none came. You may recall that several trucks filled with ice sat in another state for days--just sat there. Finally, when the ice did arrive, there was way too much of it.

FEMA's own regulations clearly state that unused ice must be disposed of after three months, but FEMA ignored its own rules and put the ice in storage in various parts of the country. Now, after two years, the agency has realized that the ice may be contaminated, and is dumping it. But only after taxpayers--you and I--paid $12.5 million to store it.

Department of 'Cover Your Ass'

It may be the best barometer available to gauge our risk of terrorist attack: the degree to which politicians scramble to cover their asses. If so, head for the hills, because there isn't a bare butt left in town.

First, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff famously confessed his "gut feeling" that we're due for another attack. Then, last week, the U.S. intelligence community released the latest National Intelligence Estimate, stating that al Qaeda has reconstituted itself in the ungoverned tribal regions of northwest Pakistan and is preparing to strike. Finally, today, a late-scheduled joint session of the House Intelligence and Armed Services committees was called to examine the NIE's findings.

For a moment, there was a sense of anticipation that something new would be revealed, some light shed on the degree of the terrorist threat or the current disposition and capability of the enemy. Reporters climbed over each other to reach their seats along the back wall of the hearing room. A capacity crowd overflowed into two additional rooms equipped with closed-circuit TVs. A panel of witnesses from the Defense Department and the National Counterterrorism Center assembled at a long table under harsh lights. Then the hearing began...and the anticipation quickly faded to boredom.

Reporters scribbled half-heartedly in their notebooks, if only to keep up appearances, but there was very little hard information on offer. Even the congressmen looked uninterested; at one point, almost half of them were cradling their chins and staring off into space. Perhaps they were just waiting for the closed session (scheduled to follow the public one), but it seems doubtful that the classified version would be much better. The take-aways:

Al Qaeda has reconstituted itself along Pakistan's northwest frontier.

Osama Bin Laden is probably there.

Al Qaeda's "safe haven" in Pakistan is troubling, but there's not much we can do about it.

There's no evidence that al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan are cooperating with insurgents in Iraq to attack the United States.

(Note: This last point doesn't quite mesh with what Bush has been saying this week, but, hey, he's never been one to let facts get in the way of a preconceived notion.)

Despite the lack of new information, the congressmen seemed eager to express publicly their outrage that more was not being done to disrupt al Qaeda. One even told of how reading the NIE was a wake-up call that "set my hair on fire." Is it summer 2001 all over again? Who knows, but with all the political cover being taken, it seems that Chertoff's gut feeling is spreading.

Alabama: Where the Constitution and DNA Don't Matter

Solid evidence indicating that lethal injection is cruel and unusual has halted executions in several states over the past two years, but Alabama's not one of them. The constitutionality of the state's lethal injection protocol will be challenged in federal court this October, however Darrell Grayson, a black man convicted of robbing, raping, and killing an 86-year-old woman by an all white jury in 1982, doesn't have time to wait. He's scheduled to die at 6 p.m. tomorrow.

Grayson, who admits he doesn't remember whether or not he committed the crime because he was, well, wasted, recently filed an unsuccessful challenge to lethal injection. The 11th Circuit Court, which rules over Alabama, dismissed it because Grayson waited too long to file his appeal. Grayson has also petitioned to have DNA testing performed, but the courts have denied that request as well despite evidence that points to Grayson's innocence. Two men claim Grayson was passed out in another location at the time of the crime and his co-defendant mysteriously asked for Grayson's forgiveness before he was executed in 1999.

Grayson's request to delay the execution is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, but things aren't looking good. Alabama Attorney General Troy King argued yesterday that "justice has been delayed too long." Ironically, justice will be denied forever if Grayson is killed before his DNA is tested and the challenge to Alabama’s lethal injection procedure is resolved.

—Celia Perry

Bush/Cheney Threats to the Endangered Species Act

Two government entities are investigating the Bush administration over the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The Christian Science Monitor reports the US Interior Department is reviewing the scientific integrity of decisions made by a political appointee, Julie MacDonald, who recently resigned under fire. Fish and Wildlife Service employees complained that MacDonald bullied, insulted, and harassed the professional staff to alter their biological reporting. The inspector noted that although she has no formal educational background in biology, she nevertheless labored long and hard editing, commenting on, and reshaping the endangered species program's scientific reports from the field. Last week Fish and Wildlife announced that eight decisions MacDonald made under the ESA would be examined for scientific and legal discrepancies.

Meanwhile Congress is investigating evidence that Vice President Dick Cheney interfered with decisions involving water in California and Oregon resulting in a mass kill of Klamath River salmon, including threatened species. As the CSM reports, both episodes illustrate the Bush administration's resistance to the law. Earlier, the Washington Post ran the story of Cheney's personal interference in the water decision that killed the salmon in 2002:

In Oregon, a battleground state that the Bush-Cheney ticket had lost by less than half of 1 percent, drought-stricken farmers and ranchers were about to be cut off from the irrigation water that kept their cropland and pastures green. Federal biologists said the Endangered Species Act left the government no choice: The survival of two imperiled species of fish was at stake. Law and science seemed to be on the side of the fish. Then the vice president stepped in. First Cheney looked for a way around the law, aides said. Next he set in motion a process to challenge the science protecting the fish, according to a former Oregon congressman who lobbied for the farmers. Because of Cheney's intervention, the government reversed itself and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season, declaring that there was no threat to the fish. What followed was the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.

Or, in the words of Bruce Barcott in MoJo's piece, What's A River For?:

On the morning of September 19, 2002, the Yurok fishermen who set their gill nets near the mouth of the Klamath River arrived to find the largest salmon run in years fully under way. The fish had returned from the ocean to the Klamath, on the Northern California coast, to begin their long trip upstream to spawn; there were thousands of them, as far as the eye could see. And they were dying. Full-grown 30-pounders lay beached on shore-line rocks. Smaller fish floated in midriver eddies. Day after day they kept washing up; by the third day, biologists were estimating that 33,000 fish had been killed [since revised upward to 70,000] in one of the largest salmon die-offs in U.S. history. The Yurok knew immediately what had happened. For months they, along with state experts and commercial fishermen, had been pleading with the federal government to stop diverting most of the river's water into the potato and alfalfa fields of Oregon's upper Klamath Basin. But the Bureau of Reclamation, the agency in charge of federal irrigation projects, refused to intervene.

The CSM reports the House Natural Resources Committee has scheduled a hearing next week to investigate political influence on agency science and decisionmaking. As reported in the Blue Marble scientists are aware of the persistent unsciencing of their work. Thirty-eight prominent wildlife biologists and environmental ethics specialists recently signed a letter protesting a new Bush administration interpretation of the Endangered Species Act. They're concerned for the future of animals such as wolves and grizzly bears. If Interior Department Solicitor David Bernhardt has his way, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will have to protect animals and plants only where they're actually battling for survival, not where they're in good shape. That means, for instance, that Bald Eagles would never have been protected decades ago since they were doing fine in Alaska, although practically extinct in the lower 48.

During Bush/Cheney, the listing of endangered and threatened species has slowed to a fraction the number the Bush senior made in only four years (58 new listings compared with 231), and most of those were court-ordered, according to the CSM. New funding has been cut as well, and only 278 candidate species are waiting to join the list of 1,352. Mother Jones' recent piece, Gone, detailed why the presence of many kinds of life on earth is important to the survival of life itself. Seven of 10 biologists believe the sixth great extinction currently underway is a greater threat to life on earth than even global climate change.

It's ephemerally comforting to think George W. Bush might go down in history as the worst of all U.S. presidents. More realistically, Dick Cheney will get the honor. . . Assuming there's a history to come. JULIA WHITTY

Contempt of Congress! Will Likely be Ignored!

A big step in the U.S. Attorneys case.

The House Judiciary Committee voted today to issue contempt citations for two of President Bush's most trusted aides, taking its most dramatic step yet towards a constitutional showdown with the White House over the Justice Department's dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys.

The panel voted 22-17, along party lines, to issue citations to Joshua B. Bolten, White House chief of staff, and Harriet E. Miers, former White House counsel. Both refused to comply with committee subpoenas after Bush declared that documents and testimony related to the prosecutor firings were protected by executive privilege.

It remains to be seen what this means, because after these contempt citations pass the full House they are referred to the U.S. Attorney of the District of Columbia, an employee of the Justice Department. And the White House has already said, in an unprecedented move, that it will block the DOJ from prosecuting any contempt charges. My dream scenario: Supreme Court showdown!

Regime Change Here at Home

Is this our future?

I'm looking forward to the 2030s: hottest, drunkest presidents ever.

It's an incredibly slow news day, folks.

Survey: Muslim Support for Suicide Bombings Declining

This morning’s Washington Post reports on the results of a recent Pew Global Attitudes survey, showing that most of the world’s Muslims reject suicide bombings and violence against civilians. The poll, conducted between April 6 and May 29, surveyed 45,239 people in 46 countries. Not surprisingly, Palestinians were the most enthusiastic supporters of suicide bombings: 70 percent of them responded that such attacks are “sometimes” or “often” justified. The countries showing the least amount of support? Egypt (8 percent) and Pakistan (9 percent). The survey also suggested that, in many countries, enthusiasm for suicide attacks has fallen sharply since 2002. At that time, 74 percent of Lebanese, 43 percent of Jordanians, and 26 percent of Indonesians agreed that at least some suicide bombings could be justified; today, those statistics stand at 34 percent, 23 percent, and 10 percent, respectively. Pew also discovered waning support for Osama Bin Laden in many of the same countries. The most precipitous decline was in Jordan, where just 20 percent of respondents voiced confidence in the Al Qaeda leader, down from 56 percent in 2002.

July 24, 2007

Is the Onion Smarter Than the Entire Foreign Policy Establishment?

Note the date on this Onion point-counterpoint. The humorists knew what was coming.

— Nick Baumann

Dick Morris, Breaking Big Stories. Fred Thompson, Playing the Dirty Money Game

Mother Jones loves exposing the Washington game wherein lobbyist children work with their lawmaker parents, a game that results in a shocking (shocking!!) rate of success for the lobbyists and lots of money spread around for all involved.

Today, with an assist with Dick Morris, we bring you a consultant son working with his presidential candidate father, with, oh yes, lots of dirty money...

What did Fred Thompson's son, Daniel, do to earn the more than $170,000 that his firm, Daniel Thompson Associates, was paid from his father's federal political action committee, the Fred D. Thompson PAC?

The records suggest he did next to nothing.

Undeclared candidate (I love that phrase) Thompson has been running a PAC since 2003 with the leftover money from his senatorial campaign committee. He began the PAC with $378,601 and did nothing with the organization except give that money away. Of the payouts, $176,000 went to Thompson's son's firm, $46,000 went to federal races, $35,000 went to "other political donations," and $62,700 went to charity. Meaning over half of the PAC's payments have gone to Fred Thompson's son. One might even say this was a conscious effort to enrich a family member: a scam, in short.

Evidence of that theory lies in the fact that, as Morris writes, "it's hard to find any evidence of bona fide work done by Daniel Thompson Associates for his father's PAC." Thompson's PAC didn't do anything that would require a consultant, except maybe write checks. Or find people to write checks to, a service that would hardly require a payout of almost $180,000.

Thompson is from an earlier era of congressional Republicans — let's call them the pre-2006 era Republicans. They played fast and loose with ethics rules and campaign donations, and got slammed by voters as a result. It's no surprise that the presidential frontrunners for the GOP are a mayor, a governor, and the strongest supporter of campaign finance reform in the country. Do they really want to add a dirty money man to that list?

Understatement of the Day

From Daniel Benjamin (Brookings Institution) and Steve Simon (Council on Foreign Relations) in their op-ed in today's New York Times, which suggests that we use the CIA to root out Al Qaida in Pakistan:

While the C.I.A. doesn’t have an unblemished record...

Posted without further comment.

— Nick Baumann

July 23, 2007

Hatch Act Violations Extend to Diplomatic Corps

We've blogged in the past about Karl Rove's political PowerPoints that Rove's deputies went around Washington showing to federal employees, acts of politicalization that are obvious violations of the Hatch Act.

The Post has an A01 story revealing that those PowerPoints even reached foreign policy folks, specifically top diplomats.

White House aides have conducted at least half a dozen political briefings for the Bush administration's top diplomats, including a PowerPoint presentation for ambassadors with senior adviser Karl Rove that named Democratic incumbents targeted for defeat in 2008 and a "general political briefing" at the Peace Corps headquarters after the 2002 midterm elections.

The briefings, mostly run by Rove's deputies at the White House political affairs office, began in early 2001 and included detailed analyses for senior officials of the political landscape surrounding critical congressional and gubernatorial races, according to documents obtained by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Why members of the foreign service need to know which Democrats are targeted for removal in 2008 is beyond me, but if you're going to taint the federal government, you might as well taint all of it. Go big or go home: it's the American way.

Update: The original headline of this article said "diplomatic corp" instead of "diplomatic corps." Mea culpa.

CNN/YouTube Debate Live Blog! Part 4

A question in the form of a rap song about No Child Left Behind. Kind of cringe-inducing, but kind of neat. Richardson and Biden, who have differences on Iraq, as documented below, both agree on scrapping it. This is Bush's single greatest domestic accomplishment! What an awful legacy!

Wait, Biden's wife and daughter were killed? Did he just say that? How can everyone talk about John Edwards' dead son without ever mentioning the fact that Biden has lost his wife and daughter? I'm hitting Wikipedia.

Okay, here's what Wikipedia says (authoritative source, I know): "In 1966, while in law school, Biden married Neilia Hunter. They had three children, Joseph R. III (Beau), Robert Hunter, and Amy. His wife and infant daughter died in an automobile accident shortly after he was first elected to the U.S. Senate [in 1973]. His two young sons, Beau and Hunter, were seriously injured in the accident, but both eventually made full recoveries. Biden was sworn into office from their bedside." Biden remarried in 1977.

We just had a question from two fake hillbillies and a question from a snowman. CNN's producers are punchy tonight. (Boy, awkward transition.)

The candidates on stage are trying to illustrate how their environmental positions can be distinguished from one another. Gonna be tough — they're all just about the same, which is to say, equally excellent.

Clara Jeffery, MoJo's Editor-in-Chief, writes in, "Dennis Kucinich just asked us to text peace! Arrrgh I want my computer." Yes, Kucinich did ask us to text peace, but I'm not exactly sure what that means — maybe DK's website has more? Also, two girls with incredibly bright smiles just spoke on behalf of raising the minimum wage and then asked everyone on stage if they would work for the MW. Pretty much everyone said yes. And now there's a question about taxes in the form of a song, with a joke about a parking ticket pardon at the end. This is shaping up to be the most entertaining and yet substantive debate ever. I am fully, completely on board with YouTube politics. This is awesome.

Other notes: Everyone loves God. Seriously, everyone on stage looooves God.

Richardson is surprisingly inarticulate for a man who has spent a lifetime in public service. It's so disappointing that he's less than the sum of his parts. Biden, who looked sad and defeated frequently tonight, is the source of fantastic one-liners. Barack Obama can't reach rhetorical heights in this clipped format.

And we're going to go out on a lovefest. The final question — the 36th, I believe — asks the candidates to look to their left and say something positive and negative about the person standing there. Everyone is thanking each other for their courage and lives of service. Everyone loves everyone, Joe Biden especially loves Dennis Kucinich's wife!

Fun night; maybe the best debate I've ever seen. Honest.

Postscript: John Edwards is answering additional questions in a live webcast right now, which is pretty neat. You can vote on the questions he should answer. Also, Chris Dodd is in the spin room answering questions from reporters; that's being fed live here.

More live blog: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

CNN/YouTube Debate Live Blog! Part 3

Gravel = righteous anger. Seriously. The man is a cauldron of fury. If you think lives were lost in vain in Vietnam and lives are being lost in vain in Iraq, and more importantly, you want a president who is willing to say so loudly, Gravel might be the guy for you.

Question from a soldier in Japan for Hillary Clinton. Islamic states see women as second class citizens, he says. Given that, how can she hope to be taken seriously by leaders of those states? Hillary blows the question out of the water, saying as First Lady she visited 82 countries, including many Islamic ones, and that as a powerful senator she regularly has high-level talks with those folks. Also, there are and have been female leaders across the globe, including some in Muslim-dominated states, like Pakistan. Hillary has been really hammering her credentials and experience — usually by saying that she has the best ability to hit the ground running if elected — and it's hard to argue with her.

Bill Richardson and Joe Biden have very serious differences on Iraq. Richardson wants everyone out in six months with no residual troops. Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, insists that this isn't realistic, and that as long as troops are in Iraq, he will vote for funding that gives them the best equipment. Clinton is on the same side as Biden: not because either of them supports the war, but because they are more pragmatic and less willing to make extreme statements in an effort to get elected. Kucinich adds that all of this is predicated on the assumption that the war will still be going on when a Democrat takes office, and he rejects the idea totally — he favors bold action that will end the war ASAP, like cutting off funding.

A note on a different subject: this debate has featured a lot of, "Senator Clinton was right" and "I agree with John when he says..." Things have been friendly. Very friendly. Democrats are nice.

More live blog: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4.

CNN/YouTube Debate Live Blog! Part 2

Obama has a zinger. Asked about whether or not he has authenticity as a black man, he says he proves his credentials when he tries to catch a cab in Manhattan.

Hillary has a good one on whether or not her femininity is in question: "I can't run as anything but a woman." Now Edwards is taking on the question of women — more women than men have trouble getting the health care they need, more women are affected by the minimum wage, and so on. He commends Senator Clinton for her lifetime of work on behalf of women, but claims he is the best advocate for them.

A couple totally awesome questions on gay rights. A lesbian couple asking if the candidates would allow them to marry if they were elected, and then a Baptist pastor who said, if religion was used to justify slavery, banning interracial marriage, and other injustices, and we recognized that was wrong, how can we use religion to deny gay Americans the right to vote. This is the sort of stuff conventional moderators would not have brought up. At least one cheer for YouTube, and Politics 2.0!

Moving on... Bill Richardson has had very little airtime tonight, so he's trying to cram everything into his 30 or 60 seconds. A bit sad.

A question on Darfur illustrates a common phenomenon in big debates. Someone takes a strong position — like Joe Biden just did by calling, I believe, for American troops on the ground in Darfur — and then everyone else follows with other strong or kinda strong positions, and soon everyone's stance starts to sound the same. I love fringe candidates as much as anyone, but fewer folks here tonight wouldn't hurt.

More live blog: Part 1, Part 3, and Part 4.

CNN/YouTube Debate Live Blog!

We'll be here all night, folks, watching the Dems debate at the Citadel. Big question, according to the mainstream media anyway: will someone try to distinguish themselves by attacking Hillary Clinton, who leads in all the polls?

Today's questions don't come from moderators — they come from YouTube users who submitted 3,000 questions in the weeks leading up to the debates. CNN showed polls before the debate showing that the younger you are, the more likely you are to use the internet to follow campaign news. But the older you are, the more likely you are to watch a debate on television. What that means is, today is as an inter-generational affair, with old fogies tuning in only to be befuddled by all the youngsters with webcams appearing on their TV screens.

Okay, kicking things off. The first two questions are all crazy and in-your-face. I'm willing to bet CNN could have found enough serious and almost boring questions to make this a conventional affair. But they've been billing this as revolutionary for days, so things are going to have to be edgy. This might be a loooong night.

The candidates are taking these questions — no matter what they are — as opportunities to list their talking points. That means that so far, this has been like every debate ever.

All questioners are young, as expected — but several have directly accused candidates of dodging questions, which is unexpected. Having ordinary folks ask questions, instead of cynical reporters who have preconceived ideas of which topics are relevant and which aren't, is refreshing, I'll admit. But I wish candidates didn't have to fit their thoughts into 30 second bites.

Awesome comment below, by the way...

More live blog: Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Posted by Jonathan Stein on 07/23/07 at 3:55 PM | | Comments (4) | E-mail |