MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: October 21, 2007

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October 26, 2007

While South Africa Changes, Its Rugby Federation Appears to Stay the Same

The historical powerhouse that is South African Rugby won the World Cup on Saturday, defeating England 15-6 and bringing pride to this rugby-mad country. But the decision yesterday to drop Soweto from the team's victory parade itinerary is making people question whether the squad meant only to bring pride to the Afrikaners for whom rugby has been a whites-only tradition throughout South Africa's tumultuous history.

Soweto, a black township outside of the largest and most populous city in South Africa, Johannesburg, has been the epicenter of social justice movements and a thriving black culture since the first anti-apartheid uprisings, which occurred there in 1976. Despite the fact that South African rugby has historically been a white sport, this year's World Cup rallied the whole nation behind the Springboks (the nickname of the national team). Said African National Congress lawmaker Tsietsi Louw, "During the finals, the fan parks were filled with black people. The Township shebeens [bars] ran out of drinks with blacks supporting their team."

South African Rugby Federation officials blamed the omission of Soweto on time constraints and logistics, but this is an unconvincing excuse considering the team's history of not actively recruiting young blacks or trying to build popularity in the black community. What makes this so ironic is that although the Springboks only have two black players, one of them is Bryan Habana, who was just named 2007 World Player of the Year.

—Andre Sternberg

Edmund Burke Speaks Out About Blogs and the Failure of the Democrats

What did the famous British parliamentarian and political philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-1797) have to say about the internet and our current political circumstances? Quite a bit, it turns out.

Burke is beloved by conservative intellectuals. George Will, for instance, mentions him all the time. Quoting Burke gives their pronouncements a nice glossy sheen.

Yet their Burke-worship is genuinely bizarre. Few people understand this, since few people (including conservative intellectuals) bother to read what Burke wrote. Anyone who does, though, will immediately understand how strongly Burke would have opposed today's conservative movement, since he strongly opposed their 18th century equivalents.

This is particularly clear in Burke's 1770 pamphlet, "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents." It's not merely that Burke was writing during a time of uprisings in overseas colonies, and in opposition to a monarch named George who was trying to expand executive power and neuter the legislative branch. Almost every sentence Burke wrote applies precisely to today.

For instance, in one passage Burke sounds like he's describing current efforts by MoveOn and blogs to prevent Congress from granting telecom companies immunity for violating FISA:

Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with each other’s principles, nor experienced in each other’s talents, nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible that they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy. In a connection, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the public. No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours, are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Burke also covers George's insistence on appointing incompetent hacks to positions of power, to habituate Parliament to impotence; the way the King's cabal is mired in the "deepest and dirtiest pits of corruption" yet purports to be motivated by the "most astonishing prudery, both moral and political"; and the "futility, the weakness, the rashness, the perpetual contradiction, in the management of our affairs" in colonies across the sea. Then there's his description of a corrupted, weak legislature, which could have been written yesterday:

A vigilant and jealous eye over executory and judicial magistracy; an anxious care of public money, an openness, approaching towards facility, to public complaint: these seem to be the true characteristics of an House of Commons. But an addressing House of Commons, and a petitioning nation; an House of Commons full of confidence, when the nation is plunged in despair; in the utmost harmony with Ministers, whom the people regard with the utmost abhorrence; who vote thanks, when the public opinion calls upon them for impeachments; who are eager to grant, when the general voice demands account; who, in all disputes between the people and Administration, presume against the people; who punish their disorders, but refuse even to inquire into the provocations to them; this is an unnatural, a monstrous state of things in this constitution.

Parliament cannot with any great propriety punish others, for things in which they themselves have been accomplices. Thus the controul of Parliament upon the executory power is lost; because Parliament is made to partake in every considerable act of Government. Impeachment, that great guardian of the purity of the Constitution, is in danger of being lost, even to the idea of it. [Italics in original]

So if we truly want to remember the past, rather than repeat it, Burke's pamphlet is a good place to start. As another old dead guy, Thomas Jefferson, said:

...experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny...the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.

Skateboarding Dogs and Dramatic Chipmunks: I Love the '00s

When it comes time to commemorate the pop culture of the '00s, I sincerely hope it doesn't happen via a VH1 "I Love the '90s" clone. I hope it is online, viral, and ADDed to the extreme—in short, I hope it befits this glorious decade.

Maybe it'll look something like this...

If you can identify over 75 percent of the references in that video, you are basically Perez Hilton. If you can identify 50-75 percent, you win a free Nintendo Wii and a case of Sparks. If you can identify 25-50 percent, you need to use YouTube more. If you can identify under 25 percent, you can return to your volume of Elizabeth Barrett Browning poetry and not worry about it.

(This has nothing to do with social issues or political commentary. But if the squares at The Corner can post it, so can I.)

Getting Even in Alabama

Daniel Siebert, who was convicted of capital murder in 1987, was scheduled to be executed yesterday at Holman State Prison in Atmore, Alabama. The Alabama Supreme Court upheld his execution even though Siebert's lawyers argued that it should be postponed until the U.S. Supreme Court determines the constitutionality of lethal injection next year.

Alabama's determination to execute Siebert comes despite the fact that he is suffering from terminal cancer and only has a few months to live anyway. Locking up criminals is supposed to serve four aims—rehabilitation, retribution, deterrence, and societal protection. But Siebert's case surely proves that Alabama seeks only one of those ends when it comes to capital punishment: retribution.

The southern state claims it shouldn't have to wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether lethal injection is cruel or unusual because it has already changed its procedure in order to ensure that the condemned is not experiencing pain while he is being put to death. But the new safeguards are hardly adequate and they really don't address the problem. The Birmingham News reports that the adjustments consist of calling out the inmate's name, pinching his arm, and brushing a finger against his eyelash in order to see if he's conscious enough to feel pain. But the inmate cannot respond to such stimulation because one of the three chemicals used during lethal injection paralyzes him and makes it impossible for him to flinch when he's pinched, let alone cry out when the third deadly chemical pumps through his blood.

Thankfully the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals recognized the absurdity of all of this in the nick of time. On Wednesday it found that the changes to Alabama's procedure were insufficient, and delayed Siebert's execution until the U.S. Supreme Court makes its ruling. Maybe by then Siebert will have died from natural causes, rather than state-inflicted vengeance.

—Celia Perry

Jon Stewart Uses the Bully Pulpit for Gay Rights

Jon Stewart has been a consistent supporter of gay rights on the Daily Show. From a website called afterelton.com, here's a collection of his "greatest gay moments." Worth checking out; includes video.

Good Works for Fun and Profit: Socially Responsible Businesspeople Invade San Francisco

Yesterday I swung by the 2007 Business for Social Responsibility's annual conference. A BSR coordinator told me that more than 1,300 people had registered, and when I arrived, it looked as if most of them were milling around the imposing lobby of San Francisco's Grand Hyatt Regency hotel.

Why were they there? Cynics will always say that where business is concerned, social responsibility is useful only for PR purposes. In some cases, that still might be true, but these days, this idea is (thankfully) quickly becoming outmoded. At one session I attended, "Women's Health: The Key to Development?," the overall message was a no-brainer: When young female factory employees have access to medical care and information about workers' rights, absenteeism declines and overall morale improves. The logistics of such initiatives, though, can get hairy. In China, for example, factories typically won't allow any programs that could prompt workers to organize, so educators have to sneak lessons about labor rights into their health classes. Clever.

This is not to say that PR wasn't on the minds of many conference attendees. Another session, "NGOs in the YouTube World: Prepare for the Onslaught" packed a large conference room. The crowd laughed nervously as a panelist showed how Oxfam skewered Starbucks in a YouTube video about the company's poor treatment of coffee growers in Ethiopia. They seemed to cheer up a bit when they learned about the outcome: Starbucks cleaned up its act and made a response video, and Oxfam posted a thank you video in return. (You can see the whole heartwarming exchange here).

More companies seem to be figuring out that ostentatious displays of social responsibility are, as a rule, cringeworthy. But not everyone has learned this important lesson. Amidst the programs, annual reports, and maps of the hotel in my conference goody bag, I found some corporate schmaltz—a small purple Hallmark portfolio (Hallmark is one of the conference's main sponsors) containing three sample greeting cards and a sappy, glitter-strewn bit of text entitled "Hallmark's Environmental Vision." ("Enriching lives is our business and our passion. It is our promise for tomorrow as well as for today..."). Hallmark's glitter is now all over my keyboard, and the sample cards have gone to my recycle bin. Another souvenir was a booklet called If You Decide To Quit Smoking, produced by Philip Morris. Needless to say, this too headed directly into my recycle bin. Guess this year's conference theme, "designing a sustainable future," did not apply to the goody bags.

Willie Horton Redux?

Spotted in an American Spectator article (via Andrew Sullivan):

Gov. [Mike] Huckabee [of Arkansas] had a propensity to be almost as prodigal with pardons as was his famous predecessor by the name of Clinton. Indeed, Hillary Clinton's campaign team is probably licking their chops at the prospect of Huck as the nominee, because one of his pardons, in particular, was so outlandish as to make Willie Horton's case in Massachusetts seem almost child's play by comparison. After Huckabee helped secure the release of already-well-known rapist Wayne Dumond, the released convict sexually assaulted and murdered a woman in Missouri.

Yikes. The 30-second spot writes itself.

FEMA's Fake Press Conference

Yesterday, in response to the wildfires that have displaced more than a million people in California, FEMA's deputy administrator, Vice Admiral Harvey Johnson, called a last minute press conference. As Al Kamen recounts in today's Washington Post, it soon became clear that there was something very odd about the briefing. It seemed that the reporters in attendance were teeing up softball questions for Johnson to hit out of the park. One reporter asked, for instance, "what it means to have an emergency declaration as opposed to a major disaster declaration." As Kamen put it, "the media seemed to be giving Johnson all day to wax on and on about FEMA's greatness." That's because the "reporters" Johnson called on weren't reporters at all, but members of FEMA's PR shop, including the agency's deputy director of external affairs, Cindy Taylor, and its deputy director of public affairs Mike Widomski. Shameless.

Update: Johnson has officially apologized for yesterday's PR stunt, saying "We can and must do better, and apologize for this error in judgment. Our intent was to provide useful information and be responsive to the many questions we have received." Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has called the episode "inexcusable and offensive to the secretary." Are heads going to roll?

People Are Crazy, Mike Huckabee-Edition

In the middle of a long and mostly sane Q&A with Slate, man-of-the-moment Mike Huckabee has this insane moment.

Slate: Why is it unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon?

Huckabee: They've already announced their intention to destroy Israel. They've already announced that they would love to invade Iraq and take its oil... This is not a nation building up nuclear arms to defend against somebody, because there is no one threatening them.

I guess Mike Huckabee isn't aware who our vice president is. Or who our president is. Or who Rudy Giuliani, a man vying to be the next president, is. Nobody here is saying Iran should have a nuke, but pretending that Iran isn't threatened by the rhetoric of the United States, when that rhetoric is expressly designed to threaten Iran, is an act of willful denial.

And there's also a moment where Huckabee, as a Christian evangelical, demonstrates the illogical reasoning people of his ilk use to justify discrimination against gays while professing to oppose discrimination against racial minorities.

Slate: Barack Obama has been criticized for campaigning with a gospel singer who has called homosexuality a curse. Critics have claimed it's as if a white candidate campaigned with David Duke. What's your view on the equivalence of homosexuality with skin color in the civil rights debate?

Huckabee: Most of the African-American leaders with whom I'm familiar are very, very unhappy with tying the two together. First of all, because a person is black and discriminated against by sight. It's not a matter of a relationship. It's not a matter of even getting to find out that someone has a sexual preference other than hetero. If a person walks into a room and is black, you know it. You don't necessarily know that a person might be homosexual. There is a different level of bigotry and discrimination...

What? Because you can't immediately tell if someone is homosexual, it's okay to discriminate against them? Does Huckabee mean that if someone makes a nasty joke about homosexuals, he or she shouldn't be held to account if they offend a homosexual in the room because the joke-teller couldn't have known the offended party was a homosexual? That's the best I can do at deciphering this, and that's a pretty ridiculous argument. Shouldn't someone who claims to stand up for civil rights (as Huckabee does) be advocating the end of nasty statements about homosexuals instead of protecting those that make them?

People Are Crazy, Halloween-Edition

Fun facts for your Friday:

- 23 percent of Americans believe they have seen a ghost. 34 percent believe they exist.

- 48 percent believe in ESP, or Extra-Sensory Perception.

- 14 percent believe they have seen a UFO.

- 5 percent say they have literally seen a monster in their closet.

Update: To steal (and paraphrase) a line from Dana Milbank, this means as many people believe in ghosts as believe in George W. Bush's leadership.

October 25, 2007

That Was Quick: Times Tackles Rudy Story

Yesterday I complained that the New York Times had ignored a big story: Rudy Giuliani has been assembling a nightmarish group of extremist advisers. Today the Times' Michael Cooper and Marc Santora obliged with an A-1 piece on the subject. While "Senior Freedom Adviser" Peter Berkowitz, whom I called attention to yesterday, doesn't make an appearance, the Times folks did put together a handy chart on Rudy's foreign policy team. Check it out.

—Justin Elliott

Stephen Colbert's Fictional Campaign Beating Real Republicans in South Carolina

It's astounding that a TV personality pretending to be an preening, egomaniacal, over-the-top, hyper-bombastic Republican is now more popular amongst young voters than actual Republicans.

With the Republican Party in disarray and out of money, one wonders what Democrats will have to do to screw this presidential election up.

52-Year-Old Scientific Paper Retracted Due to Enthusiam Amongst Creationists

Delightful little story in the New York Times:

In January 1955, Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College, published a paper called "Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life" in American Scientist, the journal of Sigma Xi, the scientific honor society.

In it, Dr. Jacobson speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in Hadean time, billions of years ago when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Dr. Jacobson put it, "one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive."

Nobody paid much attention to the paper at the time, he said in a telephone interview from his home in Tarrytown, N.Y. But today it is winning Dr. Jacobson acclaim that he does not want — from creationists who cite it as proof that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention.

So after 52 years, he has retracted it.

These folks are going to be awfully disappointed. Dr. Jacobson is quite the character. More after the jump.

The retraction came about when, on a whim, Dr. Jacobson ran a search for his name on Google. At age 84 and after 20 years of retirement, "I wanted to see, what have I done in all these many years?" he said. "It was vanity. What can I tell you?"

He found many entries relating to his work on compounds called polymers; on information theory, a branch of mathematics involving statistics and probability; and other subjects. But others were for creationist sites that have taken up his 1955 paper as scientific support for their views.

Darwinismrefuted.com, for example, says Dr. Jacobson's paper "undermines the scenario that life could have come about by accident." Another creationist site, Evolution-facts.org, says his findings mean that "within a few minutes, all the various parts of the living organism had to make themselves out of sloshing water," an impossible feat without a supernatural hand.

"Ouch," Dr. Jacobson said. "It was hideous."

New CBO Report: War Still Really Expensive

The Congressional Budget Office released a report yesterday estimating that by 2017, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may have cost us up to $2.4 trillion. More than a quarter of that money will go to paying interest on the money we've borrowed to finance the conflict.

The White House, predictably, dismissed the numbers as "speculative." But if you look at what we have already spent, the numbers seem right on target—maybe even low. According to the CBO'S report, the country has spent $604 billion since 2001. The total amount of money requested for 2008 alone is up to $196 billion, nearly a quarter of what's been spent over the past five years. At that rate, we'll sail past $2 trillion by 2014. And that's not counting interest.

The report contains some other interesting reminders as well. Of the $604 billion spent since 2001, only $1.6 billion has been allocated to medical care, disability compensation, and survivor benefits. Only $30 billion has gone to training Iraqi and Afghan security forces. The Army estimates that it will need $12-$13 billion a year from now until at least two years after we leave just to repair its equipment. That's a lot of money, and it seems like even more when you place it in the context of other major wars.

The result of all this vanishing cash, of course, is a severely depleted Army that continues to fight amidst ever-worsening conditions. See our current issue for thoughts on how to break this cycle.

—Casey Miner

Only Top Notch Drug Dealers Support Rudy Giuliani

If you've seen the previews or commercials for the upcoming movie American Gangster, you are familiar with the real-life story of Frank Lucas, an African-American man who rose above the Italian mafia to create, in the words of one prosecutor, "one of the most outrageous international dope-smuggling gangs ever."

Turns out he's supporting Rudy Giuliani for president.

No kidding. In the video below, Lucas talks via speakerphone with Leroy "Nicky" Barnes, another legendary drug dealer who was considered, at one point, one of the most successful heroin dealers in the country. Barnes also likes Giuliani.

But they both echo conventional wisdom: no matter who they like, they are resigned to the fact that Hillary Clinton will be the next president. It's hard out there for a pimp.

(H/T War Room)

DREAM Act Fails

I like Ana Marie Cox's take on the DREAM Act.

The "DREAM Act" would allow undocumented high school graduates with no criminal record who have been the country for at least five years (and who entered the country before they were 16) a form of "conditional" legal status. They then must complete two years of college or two years of service in the military. In other words, it's aimed primarily at illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. by their parents who are now on a path to, you know, make a better life for themselves. Their illegal status is something that happened to them, their academic success is something they've earned.

You'd assume conservatives would want to rewards such self-starting, entrepreneurial behavior. You'd be wrong.

If you do a Google New search for "DREAM Act," you find a bunch of web commentaries from conservatives hating on the bill. It's a back-door version of amnesty, they say.

Well, they won this fight. Yesterday, Democrats failed to garner the 60 votes they needed to move the bill forward, yet more evidence of the importance of the 2008 senate races.

State's Security Chief Out Over Blackwater Shooting

Yesterday, Richard J. Griffin, head of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, became the first senior official to lose his job over Blackwater's September 16 shooting in Baghdad's Nisour Square. As head of State's law enforcement arm, Griffin, a former deputy director of the Secret Service, was charged with overseeing security for diplomats and dignitaries. In Iraq, where much of this function has been outsourced to private military contractors, this amounted to providing oversight of the more than 1,000 armed security operators attached to firms such as Blackwater, Triple Canopy, and DynCorp. Until recently, according to the Washington Post, these private contractors have been supervised by a mere 36 diplomatic security agents. A review panel convened to examine the State Department's security practices in Iraq, whose conclusions were released on Tuesday, found "there are an insufficient number of Diplomatic Security Service Special Agents assigned to the Embassy to provide the appropriate level of oversight to ensure adherence to the rules and procedures currently in place." The report also determined that "the licensing process for PSD contractors, both as to fees and procedures, is insufficiently clear and expeditious, increasing the risk that armed contractors will carry out their functions with an inadequate legal basis." As we speak, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is seated in 2154 Rayburn, preparing to testify before Henry Waxman's Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, where she will no doubt face some tough questions about her agency's performance in Iraq and its oversight of PMCs.

Update: Well, Rice is indeed facing tough questions at the Waxman hearing. She's just not answering them.

U.S. Imposes Toughest New Sanctions on Iran Since '79 Embassy Seizure

The Washington Post reports:

The Bush administration plans to roll out an unprecedented package of unilateral sanctions against Iran today, including the long-awaited designations of its Revolutionary Guard Corps as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and of the elite Quds Force as a supporter of terrorism, according to senior administration officials.

The package, scheduled to be announced jointly by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., marks the first time that the United States has tried to isolate or punish another country's military. It is the broadest set of punitive measures imposed on Tehran since the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy, the officials said. ...

The Bush administration plans to roll out an unprecedented package of unilateral sanctions against Iran today, including the long-awaited designations of its Revolutionary Guard Corps as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and of the elite Quds Force as a supporter of terrorism, according to senior administration officials.

The package, scheduled to be announced jointly by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., marks the first time that the United States has tried to isolate or punish another country's military. It is the broadest set of punitive measures imposed on Tehran since the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy, the officials said.

"I wonder why it took them so long," comments a Hill staffer of the administration's long reported plans to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps and/or its Quds Force as a sponsor of terrorism. "Sounds like a tug of war between Rice/Gates and the VP office. They apparently cut down the middle, designating the entire Revolutionary Guard as a WMD proliferator, but limiting the state sponsor of terror designation to the Qods Force alone."

Washington is ratcheting up the pressure as the administration continues to be riven by a dispute between those who believe the US should continue to pursue tough diplomacy to get Iran to change its behavior, and those who believe the US should strike Iran. As the Post notes, "Administration officials say that they are imposing new sanctions to demonstrate a commitment to diplomacy, even amid increasing rumblings from neoconservatives outside the administration about possible military action."

October 24, 2007

Freedom Agenda Proponents Depart State Department

One of the last remaining Liz Cheney acolytes is leaving the State Department. In an email sent to colleagues and friends yesterday and obtained by Mother Jones, David Denehy, who founded the State Department's Office of Iranian Affairs last year and has been a senior advisor on promoting democracy in Iran, announced he is leaving Foggy Bottom later this month.

Here's his email:

Friends:

October 26, 2007 will be my last day with the U.S. Department of State; my decision to leave the administration is due, in part, to my belief that I am better able to serve the goals of the President’s Freedom Agenda from outside of government. While there have been many challenges to the work we have done together, the rewards have been equally as great. I leave the Department proud that I was able to work with you to support those seeking to expand personal freedom and democracy in Iran. I urge you that no matter how strenuous the debate of our work that you continue to support those in Iran who cannot speak for themselves. I know that this will not be the last time our paths will cross and wish you all the best of luck in the future; post October 26, 2007, if you would like to write, please feel free to contact me at [redacted].

Please feel free to contact either [redacted], with any questions or concerns you may have regarding Iran democracy program activities.

Again, thank you for your friendship and support.

All the best,

David Denehy

Denehy's departure comes just a few weeks after his colleague, J. Scott Carpenter, left Foggy Bottom for a fellowship at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. At a forum there featuring Carpenter and other pro democracy experts earlier this month, the International Republican Institute's president Lorne Craner said he had reluctantly come to the conclusion that the whole Middle East pro democracy program should be moved outside the State Department (where it is unpopular), perhaps to a new institution modeled on the National Endowment for Democracy.

Denehy and Carpenter both previously worked for the International Republican Institute.

Denehy's and Carpenter's former boss at State, Liz Cheney, left the Bush administration in the spring of 2006 on maternity leave, but never really came back, sources say. Her departure left those she had brought into the State Department somewhat orphaned in a bureaucracy some consider hostile to their efforts to promote regime change in Iran.

Liz Cheney has since become a foreign policy advisor to the Fred Thompson campaign.

Rudy's 'Senior Freedom Adviser': Curtail Arab Birth Rate

Lately Philip Weiss, proprietor of the blog Mondoweiss, has been reading up on the work of Peter Berkowitz, a George Mason law professor who moonlights as Rudy Giuliani's "Senior Statecraft, Human Rights and Freedom Advisor" (pretty good gig, if you can get it). Today Weiss dug up a 2004 Weekly Standard article in which Berkowitz offers an analysis of Israeli demographic policies hinging on one overwhelming concern: How do we get Arabs in Israel to stop breeding so damn much? Berkowitz begins by acknowledging that the very term "demographic problem...conjures up illiberal images of a government classifying people by ethnicity, race, or religion." OK, duly noted. And then, natch, Berkowitz goes on to make some chillingly illiberal policy prescriptions. Weiss sums up:

[Berkowitz] said that Arab birth rates are a "threat" to Israel's "political sovereignty and territorial integrity" and came out for a policy aimed at curbing subsidies to large families, thereby limiting Arab birth rates in the Jewish state. It's hard not to describe this attitude as racist. Does Rudy Giuliani endorse such family-planning policies?

Yup, that would be yet another question for an enterprising campaign reporter to ask Giuliani on the trail. I nominate someone from the New York Times, which, as far as I can tell, has completely ignored the Giuliani advisers story. For now, see this American Prospect rundown and this Talking Points Memo video on the subject.

—Justin Elliott

D.C.'s Rich Get Richer (and Black Folks Get Nowhere)

If George Bush wanted to make record rates of income inequality a major legacy of his administration, he has succeeded wildly right here at home in D.C. A new study by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute shows that the nation's capital leads the country in both high poverty rates and the income gap between white and black people.

income%20growth%20chart.jpg

The median income for white people in the nation's capital has skyrocketed to $92,000 in 2006, from $55,000 in 1980. (Apparently all those lobbyists here are really bumping up the numbers!). But the city's black population (nearly 70 percent of city residents) has actually seen its median income fall since 1980, by .6 percent to $34,500. D.C.'s poverty rate is the highest it's been in a decade, and the unemployment rate among black adults is at a 30-year-high. These numbers are all the more stunning when you consider how bad things were ten years ago: the District government was creeping out of bankruptcy, Marion Barry was mayor, and the Redskins has just decamped for Maryland.

The latest bump in poverty and unemployment has occurred during a time of great prosperity in the city, and it's worse than nearly every other major city in America. I can never figure out why the political establishment isn't more ashamed about this. But I guess if you can let New Orleans drown, it's not that hard to ignore the starving masses in the shadow of the White House.

State Department Security Chief Resigns over Blackwater

The AP reports:

The State Department's security chief announced his resignation on Wednesday in the wake of last month's deadly Blackwater USA shooting incident in Baghdad and growing questions about the use of private contractors in Iraq.

Richard Griffin, the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, announced his decision to resign at a weekly staff meeting, according to an internal informational e-mail sent to colleagues.

"He read his letter of resignation at the weekly Diplomatic Security staff meeting," said the e-mail, which was read to The Associated Press by one its recipients. "There was no detailed reason provided and no effective date identified at this time." ...

Griffin announced his resignation just a day after Rice ordered a series of measures to boost government oversight of the private guards the department uses to protect its diplomats in Iraq.

Media Matters: Rudy Giuliani ≠ John Rambo

From the best Media Matters item ever:

In an August 23 article on former New York City mayor and Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani's recent campaign swing through New Hampshire, USA Today reporter Jill Lawrence wrote: "Suffice it to say Republicans have never had a presidential candidate like this -- half Woody Allen, half Rambo and 100% cerebral."

This is the first time Media Matters for America has documented a news outlet comparing Giuliani to the fictional character John Rambo, the Medal of Honor-winning former Green Beret portrayed by Sylvester Stallone in numerous action films. However, media figures have repeatedly depicted Giuliani as a tough guy:

* On the June 12 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, MSNBC host Chris Matthews called Giuliani a "street fighter," adding, "He was there on the curb when 9-11 struck. He had soot on his face."

Read on.

A New Twist on the Old Chain Gang

Somehow this seems so wrong on so many levels...

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has ordered the corrections' department to join the state's massive effort to combat the wildfires raging around San Diego. Not only do the prisons have a bunch of fire trucks to lend to the overtaxed fire departments, but the New York Times reports that more than 2,600 inmates, trained as firefighters, are now out there fighting to save ~~Mel Gibson's house~~ San Diego.

Fake News from PhRMA

The pharmaceutical industry apparently isn't succeeding in its traditional PR efforts to get reporters and TV shows to say nice things about drug companies, so it's decided to create its own TV news show to get the word out. The Hill reports that former Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin will be hosting "Healthcare Campfire" on Sundays in DC to put a positive spin on the industry that created Vioxx and fen-phen. The show, designed to look like any morning talk show, is actually a 30-minute infomercial paid for by Tauzin's employer, the industry group PhRMA, and will include guests like Montel Williams, a multiple sclerosis sufferer who's been flacking for PhRMA for a while now, and former White House press secretary Tony Snow. Clearly lots of people will be giving up football to tune in for this one!

Conservative Blog Bans Ron Paul Supporters

Ron Paul can't catch a break. He gets repeatedly disrespected by the media, he gets more contributions from the military than any other Republican presidential candidate but is slimed as a defeatist, and he does well in polls but can't get taken seriously. And now conservatives are turning against him because he's ginning up too much support.

Conservative website/blog hub Redstate is banning Ron Paul supporters. Says some fascist webmaster dude named Leon: "Effective immediately, new users may *not* shill for Ron Paul in any way shape, form or fashion. Not in comments, not in diaries, nada. If your account is less than 6 months old, you can talk about something else, you can participate in the other threads and be your zany libertarian self all you want, but you cannot pimp Ron Paul."

The reason? Swear to god: Leon thinks Ron Paul supporters are actually liberals in disguise. That's just ridiculous. There are conservative supporters of Ron Paul, there are some liberal supporters of Ron Paul, and (whouda thunk it?) there are libertarian supporters of Ron Paul. In addition, there are some people who don't claim a political identity or don't follow politics regularly that have been driven to Ron Paul's minimalism by the overreach and incompetence of the Bush Administration.

But there aren't any fakers, as far as I can tell. I've met a number of earnest Ron Paul supporters, but I've never met a Hillary Clinton supporter or Barack Obama supporter who went undercover at conservative sites and pimped Ron Paul to amuse themselves or to sow chaos.

To assume that Ron Paul's support is really a bunch of liberals in disguise is a particularly odd blend of denial and paranoia. And just look at the picture above. Who is Leon kidding?

Bob Kerrey Says No to Senate Run in Nebraska; Dems Chances Dim

The Democrats' dream of a 60-vote majority in the Senate just got a lot harder to realize. Bob Kerrey, former senator from Nebraska, announced this morning that he will not come out retirement to run for the senate spot Chuck Hagel is vacating.

Without Kerrey in the race, Democrats have little hope of gaining the seat. Election tracker Charlie Cook recently told Time, "If Kerrey does run it's probably 50-50 for the Democrats. If he doesn't run probably it's 10% for the Democrats."

Fox News Speculates: al Qaeda Behind California Fires?

Be scared, America! Al Qaeda is everywhere, and they know how to commit arson! They might have—maybe, possibly, this is completely baseless!—set the wildfires in California!

Just part of Fox News' campaign to make sure every American voter is very, very afraid at all times. If they need to fill time during their wildfire coverage, maybe they should report on this. But I'll bet they won't.

Clinton vs. Bush on Terrorism; Also, Kucinich Sees an Alien

The War Room is really humming today. Via them, here's how George Bush and Hillary Clinton recently chose to deconstruct and explain terrorism. Bush:

"We're at war with coldblooded killers who despise freedom, reject tolerance, and kill the innocent in pursuit of their political vision ... And one of the real challenges we face is, will we have confidence in the liberty to be transformative? Will we lose faith in the universality of liberty? Will we ignore history and not realize that liberty has got the capacity to yield the peace we want? So this administration, along with many in our military, will continue to spread the hope of liberty, in order to defeat the ideology of darkness, the ideology of the terrorists -- and work to secure a future of peace for generations to come. That's our call."

And here's Clinton, asked by Michael Tomasky whether terrorists "hate us for our freedoms" or if they have "specific geopolitical objectives":

"Well, I believe that terrorism is a tool that has been utilized throughout history to achieve certain objectives. Some have been ideological, others territorial. There are personality-driven terroristic objectives. The bottom line is, you can't lump all terrorists together. And I think we've got to do a much better job of clarifying what are the motivations, the raisons d'etre of terrorists. I mean, what the Tamil Tigers are fighting for in Sri Lanka, or the Basque separatists in Spain, or the insurgents in al-Anbar province may only be connected by tactics. They may not share all that much in terms of what is the philosophical or ideological underpinning. And I think one of our mistakes has been painting with such a broad brush, which