June 18, 2004

4:30 PM
Kerry's good idea

Everyone has a pet theory on what Kerry needs to do to win the election. Come up with a coherent message! Give us a plan on Iraq! Frame the debate! Be optimistic! Loosen up! All good advice, but sometimes nothing beats a simple, sensible policy proposal:

John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, said on Friday the minimum wage for US workers should rise to $7 an hour by 2007.

Mr Kerry said Americans were "living with a minimum wage that is lower in value than it's been at any time since 1949 when Harry Truman was president. That's unacceptable."

He's right. In real dollars, the minimum wage has hit its lowest point since the 1950s, and sits at 30% less than its 1968 peak, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). An increase is long, long overdue. (Incidentally, to get back to the 1968 levels, Kerry should be proposing $8/hour and indexing it to inflation, but for now, we'll gladly take the compromise.)

To their credit, the Bush campaign has refrained from denouncing the increase outright, though it did insist that states should be able to opt out of any increase. The thinking here, presumably, is that states with the highest percentage of low-wage workers--mostly red states such as Texas, Wyoming, Alabama, Mississippi--would be disproportionately affected. Not so. As the EPI revealed, the 1996-97 minimum wage increase had a negligible effect on employment, even in these low-wage states.

Kerry shouldn't shy away from being vocal about all this. Ignore the protests from business leaders. Polls have shown that voters love the idea of a wage increase, and the issue has been proven to boost voter turnout like none other. Focusing on wages will also highlight one of the key reasons why voters have not responded warmly to the Bush recovery--namely, the fact that wages have failed to keep pace with inflation. One of the under-reported stories in the 2000 election was that working class voters abandoned the Democratic party in droves. Kerry's wage increase is a decent first step towards reversing that trend.

- Bradford Plumer

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4:05 PM
Untested

While defense failings in a previous attack on America grabbed headlines this week, the Senate quietly set the stage for future such failings by putting a rush on the deployment of a missile defense shield.

The defense shield is designed to intercept ballistic missiles launched against the U.S. by another nation or a terrorist cell. But, as a recent General Accounting Office report argued, the system remains unproven, having failed multiple tests in recent years. As Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) succinctly put it:

"You don't deter something with a system that may not work."

The Senate disagreed, opting by a 55-44 vote to support the deployment of nine missile interceptors by the end of the year - but not setting the deadline for "operationally realistic" tests until October 2005.

Senate Democrats tried blocking the system and its financing until such time as independent tests were completed, but their amendment was defeated. So now we'll have a system in place that could possibly prevent a missile attack, or leave us just as vulnerable as we are today. Not a great deal for more than $3.7 billion in taxpayer money. Levin, again:

"To put billions of dollars into systems which are not shown to be effective at some point is to increase the chances that billions of dollars will be wasted."

- Jeff Fleischer

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3:17 PM
Preempting exemption

The continuing revelations of American guards abusing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan could not have come at a worse time for the Bush administration's efforts to prevent international prosecution for U.S. troops.

July 1 is the deadline for the United Nations to renew for a third year a resolution that exempts U.S. troops in U.N.-sponsored peacekeeping missions from any charges in the International Criminal Court. Secretary General Kofi Annan counts himself among those opposing such a renewal:

"I think it would be unfortunate for one to press for such an exemption, given the prisoner abuse in Iraq. I think in this circumstance it would be unwise to press for an exemption, and it would be even more unwise on the part of the Security Council to grant it."

More than 40 countries expect to debate the resolution in the U.N. next week, but only the 15 current members of the Security Council get to vote. According to the Washington Post, the U.S. might have trouble getting the nine votes it needs to keep the exemption. The paper said diplomats expect Russia, Britain, the Philippines, Pakistan, Algeria and Angola to support the resolution, while France, Spain, Germany, Brazil, Benin, Chile and Romania will likely abstain.

- Jeff Fleischer

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2:35 PM
Invisible in London

The editors of the London Guardian, who opposed the invasion of Iraq, and the editors of the Economist, who supported it are both unhappy with the invisibility of William Farish, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.K. As the Economist puts it:

All ambassadors to the Court of St James are officially designated extraordinary, but William S. Farish, the ambassador of the United States of America, may be the most extraordinary of the lot: he is invisible. So, in large measure, are the 120 or so diplomats in his embassy…. Being invisible does not mean you are not doing your job, if you consider, as the embassy does, that the projection of America's foreign policy to the British people is not part of it…. How often has the ambassador appeared on the two most influential current-affairs programmes, BBC Radio's early-morning Today" programme or BBC Television's 'Newsnight'? Once, on September 12th 2001, he gave a short statement on 'Today', but he has not risked a 'Newsnight' appearance. He has, however, entertained over 1,600 guests at his residence in Regent's Park since he arrived three years ago.

(Like many U.S. ambassadors, Mr. Farish, the grandson of the co-founder of Texas-based Humble Oil, is a wealthy man got his post as a reward for his generosity toward the president.)

Farish's invisibility is part of a system-wide problem: the general unwillingness of American ambassadors to explain U.S. foreign policy, especially when those policies are deeply unpopular. As Farish told the Houston Chronicle: "The government position is that the explanation is coming out of Washington daily. We don't need to be giving further explanation from the embassy." Others have suggested that the White House is displeased with Farish for not being enthusiastic enough about Iraq, although that was hard to discern from the ambassador's gung-ho editorial in the London Telegraph. Whatever the reasons for Farish's invisibility, the U.S. would do well to take the wise advice offered by the Guardian last year:

"Public invisibility does America few favors. It makes America seem indifferent and Europe seem spurned -- with some justice. If relations are to be rebuilt, as they must be, then a fresh dialogue must be started. One way to make this work would be if the US put more effort into appointing envoys who can relate to the publics of the countries to which they are posted, and articulate the US position with both flair and care. This is not happening at the moment -- and it shows."

- Nonna Gorilovskaya

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1:55 PM
Nader Watch

In today's LA Times, political analyst Charles Cook revisits the pervasive Democratic unease over Ralph Nader. Cook firmly believes that Nader won't peel off nearly as many Democratic votes this time around, but he also observes that the Kerry campaign isn't taking any chances:

This time, the signs are that the Kerry campaign and Democrats are going to be more aggressive with Nader, challenging election petitions in an effort to keep him off the ballot in some states, running advertising with the theme of "don't throw your vote away" in others. It's a good bet that a recent news story suggesting that Nader's campaign was running afoul of federal laws by using the facilities of a tax-exempt, nonprofit organization originated from Democrats eager to besmirch Nader's "Mr. Clean" persona.

Meanwhile, Ralph is bouncing around Mississippi, speaking out against tort reform, and desperately scrounging around for the 1,000 signatures he needs to get on the state's presidential ballot. Thus far, Nader has elbowed his way onto presidential ballots in eight states, and he's threatening to get on many more. On another note, we almost certainly won't be seeing Nader at any of the presidential debates this year.

Also of interest was Nader's recent interview with American Conservative, in which Nader inveighs against legalizing the status of illegal immigrants in the U.S.:

This is very difficult because you are giving a green light to cross the border illegally. I don't like the idea of legalization because then the question is how do you prevent the next wave and the next?…

We don't have the absorptive capacity for that many people. Over 32 million came in, in the '90s, which is the highest in American history. ... We have to control our immigration. We have to limit the number of people who come into this country illegally.

Come again? The progressive standard-bearer of American politics is now an enemy of immigrants? At its upcoming national convention, the Green Party will choose between nominating David Cobb and endorsing Ralph Nader. (If Nader gets the nod, he would get ballot access in 23 additional states.) Greens might want to read that American Conservative interview before deciding.

- Bradford Plumer

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1:30 PM
Martial law

Sadly, violence in Iraq doesn't really seem newsworthy anymore. Thursday's Baghdad bombing might prove an exception, though. The attack was so devastating that interim Interior Minister Falah Fakib said he would consider imposing martial law after the June 30th transfer of power: "If we see the need to do it, we won't hesitate."

Ominous? Juan Cole certainly thinks so:

Martial law usually involves strict curfews, armed troops in the streets, and shooting suspected miscreants on sight. Although you might think there are already US armed troops in the streets, in fact from the accounts I have seen they don't actually do much to provide security or policing to the Iraqi public, so al-Naqib's plan would be a real change.

Oh, one other thing about martial law. Often, as in Pakistan, it substitutes military rule for civilian, and indefinitely postpones elections.

Iyad Allawi, the US/UN-appointed "prime minister," has mainly worked with ex-Baath officers trying to make coups in the past decade and a half. This talk of "martial law" is pretty scary. You have to wonder whether those elections scheduled for January will actually happen.

Of course, it's questionable whether the Iraqi government will have the capacity to impose martial law without drastic U.S. military support. At present, according to the Iraq Index, the country can only field about 4,000 troops--far short of its stated goal of 35,000. Only 28% of the local police have received any sort of training--much of that only partial training. What's worse than a government crackdown? A government crackdown that fails--and provokes armed uprisings around the country.

And if the government does successfully impose martial law, we have all the makings of a new Iraqi dictatorship. This is precisely the reason why UN representative Lakhdar Brahimi wanted only technocrats and neutral civil servants in the caretaker government--to avoid having ambitious political figures in positions of power. But Bremer insisted on Iyad Allawi, the former CIA ally with a bent for "military politics," and now that choice may badly backfire.

- Bradford Plumer

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1:05 PM
Prozac Nation-building

President Bush will announce his new national mental-health plan next month, and there's already concern that it's shaping up as a giveaway to Big Pharma.

The plan, known as the New Freedom Initiative, will include massive mental-health screening for the entire U.S. population, according a new story in the British Medical Journal. A report released by the initative already recommended screening America's 52 million school kids, as well as preschoolers. While widespread screening would undoubtedly find many people with undiagnosed or untreated mental disorders, it also could be a fishing expedition for a new generation of potential psych-drug users. It doesn't inspire confidence that the report refers to the unscreened and as-yet-unmedicated millions as "consumers of all ages."

New Freedom is based on the Texas Medication Algorithm Project, a mental-health project implemented when Bush was governor. Similar plans have since sprouted in at least other 12 states, including Florida and Pennsylvania. This new "evidence-based" approach (as advocates call it) has been praised for its emphasis on community-based care rather than institutionalization. But the National Mental Health Association has warned that these programs "may be misused to contain costs and limit access to treatments." But drug companies are sold on the evidence-based programs, which often endorse their newest and most profitable antidepressants and antipsychotics. And, as a whistleblower from the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General told the BMJ in February, drug companies have ensured lawmakers' enthusiasm for the programs by dispensing "trips, perks, lavish meals and other payments."

Allen Jones, the Pennsylvania whistleblower, says that New Freedom, like the Texas program, will "treat mental illness with expensive, patented medications of questionable benefit and deadly side effects, and […] force private insurers to pick up more of the tab." And, as Jones and BMJpoint out, it's no secret Bush has close ties to the companies who stand to profit even more under the new plan:

Olanzapine (trade name Zyprexa), one of the atypical antipsychotic drugs recommended as a first line drug in the Texas algorithm, grossed $4.28bn worldwide in 2003 and is Eli Lilly's top selling drug. [...]

Eli Lilly, manufacturer of olanzapine, has multiple ties to the Bush administration. George Bush Sr was a member of Lilly's board of directors and Bush Jr appointed Lilly's chief executive officer, Sidney Taurel, to a seat on the Homeland Security Council. Lilly made $1.6m in political contributions in 2000-82% of which went to Bush and the Republican Party.

You'd think that after pushing the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the administration would take a breather before handing another costly gift to the drug industry. Apparently not.

- Dave Gilson

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11:53 AM
Jim Crow's got to go

Fifty years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision struck down segregated schools, some Southern states still have Jim Crow laws on the books.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports Georgia still has laws, passed in opposition to Brown - though obviously no longer enforced - that let the governor suspend compulsory education or close a public school, enable teachers at private segregated schools to earn state pensions and give students tuition credits to attend a segregated school.

"Having them on our books is embarrassing," Georgia Rep. Mike Coan said. "I guess that is part of our history, but having them still on the books is not a good policy. ... hopefully, we will get those laws off the books soon."

A study by the University of Arizona's Jim Crow Study Group found eight states still have laws supporting segregation. As law professor Gabriel Chin, who led the study, told the Journal-Constitution:

"I think it says something about where our society is today that no one has bothered to go back and repeal these offensive statutes. They were intended to support racial segregation and avoid compliance with the United States Constitution. They should be remembered as part of our painful history, not part of our current law."

Louisiana's state legislature took a big step toward that goal Monday, passing a bill to repeal more than 20 Jim Crow laws.

"I thought it was important that we tried to get past that and for our state to move forward," said state Rep. Cheryl Gray, who sponsored the bill

Let's hope other states will follow Louisiana's example - with all deliberate speed.

- Jeff Fleischer

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June 17, 2004

4:10 PM
The squeezed middle class

Unlike the super-wealthy they hope one day to become, middle class Americans have fared rather poorly under the Bush administration and its congressional allies. Hence John Kerry's emphasis, this week, on the "middle class squeeze." As he said the other day in Ohio:

"For nearly four years now, Washington has ignored the middle class, putting wealth ahead of work, something for nothing ahead of responsibility, and what's right for the few ahead of what's right for America.''

Now the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a nonpartisan think tank, has launched a web site, the middleclass.org, "an online headquarters for information about today’s squeezed middle class." It offers "talking points," a set of one-pagers to help people talk about issues through the lens of their impact on the middle class, an "injustice index" detailing "the real state of the union, by the numbers," and a Campaign 2004 section comparing Bush and Kerry on middle class issues.

Visitors to the site can also view a "report card" assigning their representatives a grade depending on how they voted on legislation of importance to the middle class in 2003.

- Jeff Fleischer

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3:44 PM
Gay Paris?

As Noël Mamère, the Green mayor of the southern French town Bègles found out, France may not be ready for gay marriage. Mamère, a sometime presidential candidate, has been issued a one-month suspension for presiding over the country's first same-sex marriage earlier this month. The defiant Green Party reacted by encouraging French mayors to follow Mamère's lead and “celebrate as many gay marriages as possible."

French politicians –- left and right –- have preferred to keep mum on same-sex marriage. France legalized same-sex civil unions in 1999, but gay couples are still prohibited from adopting children. The opposition Socialists, who would be expected to champion same-sex marriage have been split over the issue. And even some proponents of same-sex marriage are unhappy with Mamère's move. As the New York Times pointed out last weekend:

Gay marriage may be sweeping the Western world, but in France it has brought out a conservative impulse that will surprise those used to thinking of France as a progressive counterweight to a reactionary America. …

This is partly because of France's republican tradition, which is absolutist on the question of equality before the law and insists that every citizen of France be treated exactly the same. Republicanism à la française forecloses any wide use of affirmative action in schools, just as it forecloses any special autonomy for provinces like Corsica, which has a troublesome independence movement. It is unthinkable that Mr. Mamère should confer rights in Bègles that cannot be conferred in Paris (where the openly gay mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, has shown no zeal for same-sex marriage).

Delanoë, a Socialist, who may become the country's first openly gay presidential candidate in 2007, but don't expect him to follow Mamère's lead.

- Nonna Gorilovskaya

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2:54 PM
(Not) leading the charge

While the U.S. has been famously reluctant to file charges against suspected terrorists it already holds in custody, some of its allies have taken a far more proactive approach.

Jordan's military court on Wednesday convicted 15 men of plotting terrorist attacks against U.S. and Israeli targets within the country - even though only one of the men is in custody, and six of them are dead.

Also this week, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon completed his investigation of a Spanish al-Qaida cell. Garzon, who in 2002 issued the first indictment of Osama bin Laden, indicted a total of 41 suspects in the probe, including three charged with participating in the Sept. 11 attacks.

On Tuesday, another Spanish judge charged three more suspects in connection with the March 11 terrorist bombing in Madrid. That brings the total to 23 people charged in connection with the attack in the past three months.

Meanwhile, while allegations of abuse turn the spotlight on Guantanamo Bay, most of the roughly 600 U.S. prisoners there remain uncharged.

- Jeff Fleischer

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2:30 PM
Danger zone

Washington take note: there’s new evidence that climate change is already causing serious damage right here in the U.S. -- and in a swing state, no less. Specifically, scientists studying a "dead zone" -- an oxygen-starved area of the ocean where marine life has vanished -- off the Oregon coast appear to have established a link between the phenomenon and shifts in ocean currents caused by climate change.

The report, by a team of researchers from several Oregon universities and published in this week’s edition of Nature (and also recently described by journalist John Nielson on the NPR radio show All Things Considered) focuses on a dead zone that appeared in July 2002. It's long been known that the zones, which few marine species can survive -- they either suffocate or, if they’re lucky, flee the area -- are generally caused by human sources like waste treatment plants or fertilizer runoff from farms. The Gulf of Mexico, for example, has long been afflicted with dead zones caused by pollution from the Mississippi River.

(The zones have become increasingly common in recent years. According to the U.N., the number has doubled since 1990: there are now more than 150 worldwide, many of them along the U.S. coast.)

In Oregon there seemed to be no clear human cause. Until now. According to researchers, the sudden death of local fish and crab species was the result of a sudden shift in ocean circulation of the kind associated with global warming. The change brought sub-arctic waters -- which are colder, more saline, high in nutrients and low in oxygen -- closer to the Oregon shelf than they had ever come in the past. Local species were unable to tolerate the sudden change and died en masse.

Studies have shown that climate change (global warming, if you prefer) has the potential to change the flow of - Kari Lundgren

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12:46 PM
For the record

The Senate passed a unanimous resolution yesterday to hold the Bush administration accountable for the humane treatment of Iraqi prisoners. Now, the president should already be accountable to both the Senate and the Geneva Conventions, but evidently some administrations need more reminding than others.

Anyways, I'd applaud Senate Republicans for standing up to the president, if it wasn't for this bizarre paragraph tucked away at the end:

Passage of the proposal by voice vote came after Republicans, facing defeat on the measure, agreed to raise no objections and offer no alternatives if the vote was taken by voice instead of putting all senators on record with a roll call.

Right, it would be such a shame if they went on record against torture.

- Bradford Plumer

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12:10 PM
Asymmetric propaganda

Washington think-tanks rarely hold screenings for snuff films. But that's exactly what the American Enterprise Institute did, all in an effort to remind anyone who might listen about the brutal nature of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The film in question was a four-minute video documenting the abominable, inhuman treatment meted out by Saddam's torturers at Abu Ghraib. Now, it's not like we need a grisly 240 seconds of video to convince us that Saddam Hussein was a brutal tyrant. He was a monster all along. He was a monster when he was shaking hands with Donald Rumsfeld as Washington's best buddy, and he was a monster when he became an obsessive focus for Dick Cheney and the regime-changing neocons. But the folks at AEI and their pals in the punditsphere aren't really interested in dredging all that up. They're just in a froth over what they see as the media's unbalanced coverage of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. Remember, they tell us, Saddam did far, far worse.

Yes. But when we start measuring our nation against Baathist Iraq, we're in deep, deep trouble. And it's hard to take seriously such critiques from the folks at AEI, who long ago settled happily and grotesquely into the role of apologists for every Pentagon misdeed.

Still, there is an interesting and important grain at the heart of the neocon complaint, one cited by New York Post columnist Deborah Orin:

We highlight U.S. prisoner abuse because the photos aren't too offensive to show. We downplay Saddam's abuse precisely because it's far worse — so we can't use the photos. And that sets the stage for remarks like Sen. Ted Kennedy's claim that Saddam's torture chambers have reopened under "U.S. management."

Terrorism is sometimes called asymmetric warfare — America had to adjust to new tactics to deal with small bands of terrorists who were able to turn our airplanes into weapons against us. Now it turns out that we also face asymmetric propaganda — where the terrorists gain a p.r. advantage precisely because what they do is so horrific that our media aren't able to deal with it.

But Orin and her neocon hosts don't really want to talk seriously about the media. They aren't really interested in journalism. Instead, they want to discuss the ominous conspiracy they see behind every media issue; as AEI quote machine and National Review nabob Michael Ledeen told Orin, journalists have declined to provide images of Saddam's tortures because they "want Bush to lose."

Talk about asymmetric propaganda.

- Will Tacy

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11:55 AM
Back in action

Less than a year after the Supreme Court ruled that the University of Michigan could use race in its admissions decisions, affirmative action is the subject of debate on the Michigan House floor. Problems and even scuffles arose last week from an amendment tacked onto the state’s $1.7 billion higher education budget prohibiting “funding to a state university that discriminates against, or grants preferential treatment to, admission applicants on the basis of race.”

The amendment, which passed the House, blindsided school officials and ignores the constitutional autonomy of the state's 15 universities, which are governed by their own elected boards. If passed into law, the bill would effectively decimate the budgets of public institutions by pulling out state appropriations.

And to complicate matters further, on Friday the Michigan Court of Appeals reinstated a petition drive for a ballot proposal sponsored by California admissions guru Ward Connerly to end affirmative action at public universities throughout Michigan. Although Connerly and the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which is supporting this proposal, don’t anticipate having the 317,757 signatures necessary to get the petition on the November ballot, the initiatives opponents see it as a tactic to draw attention to the issue and motivate conservatives this fall.

But perhaps the biggest problem to arise from the controversy is outside of the courtroom -- on the University of Michigan campus. After instituting new affirmative action policies last fall, the school saw a drop in applications among African Americans and Hispanics, 25 and 13 percent respectively.

- Janelle Nanos

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11:37 AM
Same old story (II)

Over at NRO, meanwhile, Andrew McCarthy predictably savages the 9/11 Commission's trashing of an Saddam-al Qaeda link. Setting aside the partisan bluster, it's really remarkable how little we know about Iraq's terrorist connections, and how little, in this polarized climatem we are apt to find out.

For starters, the term "al Qaeda" has always been used rather carelessly. The way The New York Times and others bandy it about, you would think we were dealing with a tightly organized gang of fighters, with a definite leader (bin Laden) and a clear chain of command. Jason Burke recently debunked this conception in Foreign Policy:

[Al Qaeda] is less an organization than an ideology. The Arabic word qaeda can be translated as a "base of operation" or "foundation," or alternatively as a "precept" or "method." Islamic militants always understood the term in the latter sense. … It was the FBI-during its investigation of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa-which dubbed the loosely linked group of activists that Osama bin Laden and his aides had formed as "al Qaeda." …

Although bin Laden and his partners were able to create a structure in Afghanistan that attracted new recruits and forged links among preexisting Islamic militant groups, they never created a coherent terrorist network in the way commonly conceived. Instead, al Qaeda functioned like a venture capital firm-providing funding, contacts, and expert advice to many different militant groups and individuals from all over the Islamic world.

Right now, the insinuation is that an Iraq-al-Qaeda connection would entail a bunch of bin Laden's thugs receiving money and weapons from Saddam Hussein and using those weapons to attack America. In reality, we simply don't know what it would entail.

The fact that Iraq officials and al-Qaeda members had "meetings" tells us very little. People meet all the time, for all sorts of reasons: collaboration, truces, information-gathering.

It would be far more helpful to know the range of things Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda could have discussed, and exactly how that discussion could have evolved into action. An honest assessment of the rationale for war would look back at Saddam-era Iraq's capacity for terrorism, and put that together with what empirical evidence we have on Saddam, bin Laden, and others. Pointing to a few scattered meetings and shouting "aha!" escalates the partisan warfare without leaving us any the wiser. Here President Bush--aided by our lazy media--deserves the blame for woefully dumbing down the public debate on terrorism.

- Bradford Plumer

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11:06 AM
Same old story

What will it take for George W. Bush to give up on trying to link Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda?

Apparently not the evidence presented by the Sept. 11 commission Wednesday that no such link exists, as the president repeated the discredited argument to reporters Thursday morning:

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaeda [is] because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda."

Other U.S. allies responded to the report by downplaying previous arguments for a link and stressing other reasons for going to war. A spokesperson for Tony Blair said the British prime minister was not claiming a direct connection between Hussein and AQ, but still views the former Iraqi regime as a haven for terrorists:

"The prime minister has always said Saddam created a permissive environment for terrorism and we know that the people affiliated to al-Qaida operated in Iraq during the regime. The prime minister always made it clear that Saddam's was a rogue state which threatened the security of the region and the world."

Australian Prime Minister John Howard has not yet publicly responded to the commission's report, though his defense minister stressed the ongoing though seemingly futile hunt for WMD. But the opposition Labor Party quickly seized on the Sept. 11 report:

"This report today torpedoes amidships any remaining credibility John Howard had in the arguments he took to the Australian people before the war," Labor spokesperson Kevin Rudd said. "Once again, it's quite plain from what's been produced in the United States that the core argument advanced by John Howard that attacking Iraq was part of the war against terrorism has been blown apart."

Here at home, the New York Times demanded an apology from Bush for his continued efforts to draw parallels between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks:

"Mr. Bush is right when he says he cannot be blamed for everything that happened on or before Sept. 11, 2001. But he is responsible for the administration's actions since then. That includes, inexcusably, selling the false Iraq-Qaida claim to Americans.

There are two unpleasant alternatives: either Mr. Bush knew he was not telling the truth, or he has a capacity for politically motivated self-deception that is terrifying in the post-9/11 world.

- Jeff Fleischer

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11:00 AM
Donkeys in the Desert

The Green Zone is not all blue. That's the message of Donkeys in the Desert, a group of Democrat supporters serving in Iraq. The Donkeys meets weekly in the Coalition Provisional Authority HQ (the former Iraqi Republican Guard palace) to talk politics, drink beer, and eat pizza purchased from a Red Zone joint. They talked to Senator John Kerry last year and wants him -- or at least his running mate -- to pay a visit to Iraq.

The group was founded by Kael Weston, a State Department advisor, and is associated with Democrats Abroad, a group representing some 6 million ex-pats. It is not easy being a Donkey in the Desert. As Weston told the New Yorker: "A lot of Republicans walk around talking Republican stuff. We call them Palace Pachyderms." Several of the group's flyers have been torn down. But Weston believes that there are many potential Donkey converts out there:

"There's a misperception that if you're in the military you're going to vote Republican. But in the Army there are a lot of rinos: Republicans in Name Only. I think there's frustration from a lot of reservists, whose terms of service keep being extended."

- Nonna Gorilovskaya

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10:23 AM
Impeach Bush?

Taking up a cry long the sole province of bumper stickers, a group of legal scholars has called for Congress to consider impeaching George Bush.

More than 400 legal experts have signed a letter that asking that Congress name any high-level administration officials who approved the torture or mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The letter then calls for sanctions against those officials, including "impeachment and removal from office of any civil officer of the United States responsible."

Two Harvard Law professors presented the letter at a news conference alongside Senator Ted Kennedy. While Kennedy agreed the administration should be held accountable, he stopped short of joining the call for impeachment. Instead, he argued, the best way to fix the problem is to simply "elect John Kerry president."

- Jeff Fleischer

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June 16, 2004

4:10 PM
Convention deficit

If John Kerry wants to stress fiscal responsibility in his race for the presidency, the July convention to formally nominate him in Boston isn't providing a shining example.

Wednesday's Boston Globe reports the upcoming Democratic National Convention expects to exceed its $64.5 budget by about $10 million. Convention organizers told the Globe construction costs are almost double the original amount, and production costs are more than $3 million over budget.

Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan said the campaign is working with the host committee in raising money to offset the budget shortfall, which he blamed on costs the budget underestimated when it was written in 2002.

But things could be worse. The Republican National Convention in New York City has a total budget of $91 million and, as the CBS local news reports, its security costs alone could run as high as $65 million.

Funny how Republicans can always find money for spending on defense …

- Jeff Fleischer

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4:00PM
Faith, hope, and poverty

The plight of the poor has been largely absent from this year's presidential campaigns, with John Kerry focusing on the middle class squeeze and job loss. But giving poverty a higher profile could help Kerry secure support among some religious voters.

The Boston Globe reports that a non-partisan group of Massachusetts religious organizations plans to lobby at the Democratic National Convention next month. The coalition of Christian, Muslim and Jewish groups wants Kerry to focus on fighting hunger and poverty:

"Democrats have had a longstanding and significant commitment to issues of poverty and hunger and housing, yet we're always fighting over dollars -- there never seem to be enough -- so we're hoping to make a little bit of noise," Rev. Nancy S. Taylor told the Globe. "We want the delegates to understand that the religious voting community cares about these issues, and we hope those who are elected to serve us care as much."

The Massachusetts groups' pleas sound like to those voiced last month by organizers of a non-partisan Christian conference held in Washington and titled, "A Call to Unity: Making Poverty a Religious and Electoral Issue." Rev. Jim Wallis, who heads the Call to Renewal network of churches focusing on poverty, told the Washington Post:

"The poor are kind of missing in action in this campaign so far. The Republicans are taking care of their more wealthy constituents. The Democrats want to be the champion of the middle class, and so nobody prioritizes the needs of poor families."

Wallis also points to a 2002 national poll his organization and the Alliance to End Hunger commissioned, finding that more than 92 percent of likely voters considered fighting hunger an important issue, and a majority believed the U.S. didn't spend enough on hunger at home. When presenting the results, one of the pollsters said that "the data was a surprise to us all. Voters care more about this than we expected."

While faith-based groups look for ways to get that message to the candidates, a conference of religious progressives met last week in Washington to seek ways to increase the role of the "religious left" in the 2004 campaign. As conference attendee Melody Barnes of the Center for American Progress told the Washington Post:

"It really bothers me that whenever the media and others talk about people of faith, they talk only about the religious right and don't seem to realize there are people like me, who grew up Baptist and believe in God and have strong religious values, but who want different policy outcomes."

These two causes seem to be a natural fit. Fighting poverty has long been a theme in Democratic politics, and it might provide a way to bring people of faith into the party's flock.

- Jeff Fleischer

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12:10 PM
The missing link

The Sept. 11 commission released a preliminary report of its findings Wednesday. And while said report includes plenty of new information about al-Qaida's original plans for its attacks on America, the commission couldn't find any "credible evidence" of a link between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist network.

While the Bush administration repeatedly used a suspected al-Qaida link as part of its justification for war in Iraq, the only connection the commission could find was a meeting between an Iraqi intelligence official and bin Laden in 1994. But, the report explains, that meeting failed to produce a partnership:

"Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida also occurred…but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."

The report quotes two "senior bin Laden associates" as denying any ties between Iraq and al-Qaida. It also refutes an allegation made by Dick Cheney last year that hijacker Mohamed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague before the Sept. 11 attacks, saying the meeting never took place.

The mounting evidence against a Hussein/al-Qaida link comes just two days after Cheney repeated that allegation at a Florida fundraiser. During a speech Monday in Orlando, the vice president claimed the former Iraqi leader had "long-established ties" with Osama bin Laden's network and was a "patron of terrorism."

George W. Bush is on record as conceding that the administration has no concrete evidence of the Iraqi regime's involvement, but that didn’t stop him from defending Cheney's remarks on Tuesday. Bush argued that Hussein ''had ties to terrorist organizations," though he avoided mentioning al-Qaida specifically.

Even before the 9/11 commission released its findings, Cheney got slapped down by former head weapons inspector David Kay:

''At various times Al Qaeda people came through Baghdad and in some cases resided there. But we simply did not find any evidence of extensive links with Al Qaeda, or for that matter any real links at all."

''Cheney's speech is evidence-free. It is an assertion, but doesn't say why we should be believe this now."

Without evidence of a link, one wonders when the American public will stop believing Cheney's argument. There are some signs that We the People are beginning to wise up. An April poll by the University of Maryland found that 57 percent of people still believed Iraq had helped al-Qaida, while 20 percent believed in a link to Sept. 11. But at least that's down from September, when polls showed 69 percent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

- Jeff Fleischer

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June 15, 2004

5:40 PM
Vote count

The Denver Post uncovers a scheme afoot in Colorado to change the electoral vote process there. In most states, of course, one candidate carries the day and then snatches up all of that state's electoral votes. But in Maine and Nebraska, the EVs are doled out proportionally. That's what could happen in Colorado, if voters say yea.

First reaction: sweet! This means that if Bush wins Colorado with, say, 60 percent of the vote--as is quite likely--he'll only bank 9 of the state's 13 EVs, while Kerry gets to slink away with 4 freebies. Who can argue with that?

Second reaction: wait a second … doesn't this sound familiar? Ah, right: Rep. Cliff Cambell recently proposed hacking up California in a similar fashion. Suddenly this plan doesn't sound so hot if it means California's 55 EVs can be shared with Bush. Especially if a big GOP state like Texas refuses to follow suit.

So okay, what would happen if every state were to divvy up their electoral votes? That is, every state decided to give 2 EVs to the popular winner and split the rest proportionally.

That still wouldn't work well. Suppose Kerry repeats Gore's performance and snags 53 percent of the vote in California, coming to 5.8 million people. That leaves Bush with 47 percent, or 5 million votes. Kerry then gets 30 EVs, and Bush 25. (Kerry gets 2 for being the winner and 53 percent of the remaining 53.) Bush then wins North and South Dakota by his usual margins--500,000 voters total-- and picks up 3 EVs from each state. So now Bush has more EVs than Kerry among these three states, even though Kerry won more popular votes and won the biggest state by far!

The best bet: scuttle this bizarre scheme. If we truly want voting reform we should abolish the electoral college altogether. These extra-clever compromises will only confuse things needlessly.

- Bradford Plumer

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3:45 PM
Song-and-dance man

It seems a safe bet that John Ashcroft doesn't come off so great in Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11." But while the attorney general's image might suffer, his wallet could make out quite nicely.

"Farenheit 9/11" includes footage of Ashcroft singing "Let the Eagle Soar," a song he wrote himself. As Moore explained to Roger Ebert for the film critic's Chicago Sun-Times column, that means Ashcroft has the right to songwriting royalties from the film:

"Warner Records wants to release the soundtrack. I told the lawyers if he wants his fee, we should give it to him."

While in the Senate, Ashcroft, who is no mean pianist, formed a singing group with Trent Lott, Jim Jeffords and Larry Craig. And, according to the London Guardian, the attorney general has encouraged his staff to learn the lyrics to his work.

No word yet on whether Ashcroft plans to seek his royalties from "Fahrenheit." Does he deserve to cash in? See -- and hear -- for yourself.

- Jeff Fleischer

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12:45 PM
Sports, the Supremes, and discrimination

The well-practiced complaint about Title IX, the federal law requiring gender equality in public education, is that men (primarily male athletes) get the short shrift. And now the Supreme Court has decided to consider a male high school basketball coach's discrimination suit. The difference: The plaintiff's a girl's basketball coach, and he's alleging that he lost his job because he complained that his team was getting less funding than the boys' team -- a violation of the law.

The coach, Roderick Jackson, asserts that he was fired from his job at Ensley High School in Birmingham, Alabama, shortly after complaining that his team was being denied equal funding, equipment, and facilities. The city's board of education countered that Jackson had no right to sue under Title IX because he is not the direct victim of sex discrimination. While Jackson won his case in federal court, an Atlanta-based appeals court overturned that decision, setting the stage for the Supreme Court to step in.

If Jackson prevails, legal experts say, similar suits are sure to follow. "If the decision [of the appeals court] is left to stand and become the law, it really sets a very bad example and I think would make people cautious about stepping up to protect the rights of those who have been discriminated against," says Walter Dellinger, a Duke University Law School professor and former acting US solicitor general (who is representing Jackson).

- Elizabeth Gettelman

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June 14, 2004

4:10 PM
Scalia's selective recusal

Turns out the Supreme Court didn't need Antonin Scalia's help after all.

With Scalia recusing himself from the bench, the Court still ruled 8-0 Monday that atheist Michael Newdow cannot challenge the Pledge of Allegiance on his daughter's behalf. The Supreme Court successfully avoided looking at the First Amendment implications of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge, instead arguing that Newdow -- who never married his daughter's mother and is in the midst of a custody battle -- did not have the legal standing to bring the suit.

Scalia will be pleased with the result, which for now keeps God in the Pledge. He was asked to recuse himself after he participated in a Religious Freedom Day rally, arguing publicly against changing the Pledge.

Would that he were always so scrupulous!

Scalia still refuses to recuse himself in regard to Dick Cheney's appeal of lawsuits concerning his handling of an energy task force, even after the pair's much-discussed hunting trip together. And then there was last week's incident, in which a federal marshal seized -- and erased -- reporters' tapes of a Scalia speech.

As the other eight justices manage to generally avoid such controversy, Scalia would be smart to keep his opinions to himself - or to keep removing himself from future Court opinions.

- Jeff Fleischer

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4:00 PM
Cooking the books

The truth, as so often, got the Bush administration into trouble again last week when the White House was forced to fess up that its 2003 report, “Patterns of Global Terrorism,” had undercounted the incidences of terrorism last year. The report, which was released in April, announced a decrease in the number of attacks, fewer casualties, and a record 34-year low in international terrorist incidents, and was heralded by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as “clear evidence that we are prevailing in this fight.” Problem was, the document skipped over data collected after November 11, 2003, including a suicide bombing in Istanbul that killed 61 and injured more than 700. (The administration blames the CIA. Again.)

Now the administration is backpedaling, admitting that the number of terrorist incidents in fact increased during the past year. (Opening for Kerry, anyone?) Colin Powell was wheeled out in front of the Sunday talk show cameras to admit that, yes, a "very big mistake” had been committed, but that, no, nobody had tried to "cook the books" to make the administration look good.

Hmm. Why is that hard to believe? Let's see. How about the administration's recent track record of secrecy and dishonesty? Consider: its $134 million undercount of the cost of the Medicare bill; its failure to include $100 billion in Iraq-related costs in the FY 2004 budget; and its secret (and illegal) transfer of funds earmarked for Afghanistan to pay for Iraq war preparations. And that's reckoning without Cheney's industry-led energy task force, the Niger Yellowcake, and the dossier Powell presented to the U.N. just before the war purporting to prove that Iraq was a clear and present danger to the United States.

With a record like that, it's hard to give these guys the benefit of the doubt.

- Janelle Nanos

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2:50 PM
Blind into Baghdad

Speaking of Iraq, Juan Cole, the University of Michigan history professor whose blog has become the go-to spot for smart commentary on Iraq, posts an insightful email arguing that the U.S.'s refusal to allow early local elections in Iraq have led (in part) to many of the problems we're seeing today:

[E]ven if the Sadrists had won the election, their movement may have developed very differently over the past year if they could have built their political power by spending public funds for local reconstruction, rather than by recruiting soldiers for armed resistance.

The question, of course, is why local elections were denied:

It seems clear that the only people who really stood to profit from a policy of denying elections were emigre political leaders who did not want competition from the home-grown political factions that these local elections would have cultivated.

For "emigré political leaders", read: grand traitor Ahmed Chalabi and the rest of the neocon-backed Iraqi National Congress. So the Bush administration dismissed Lt. Gen. Jay Garner's calls for elections because of its blind insistence on promoting its INC friends? The very friends who now sell secrets to Iran? Great! This is all the more galling considering that last year the State Department's postwar planning group had expressly emphasized the importance of local elections.

If Cole's correspondent is right, the whole decision-making process really underscores the importance of pragmatism over ideology. You may think that John Kerry's plan for Iraq too closely resembles Bush's; but it's a pretty safe bet that Kerry wouldn't let stubborn ideology get in the way of practical decision-making. Even on the tiniest of decisions, that sort of flexibility can prove crucial.

- Bradford Plumer

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2:34 PM
Out of many, one

Four lawsuits arguing for and against same-sex marriage in California have now been wrapped into one tidy case to go before the state's Superior Court some time this year. So decided the Judicial Council, the policymaking body of the California courts, on Friday. The case ties together a bundle of arguments centering around the 4,000 same-sex marriages that took place in San Francisco this spring, and that plunged the state's marriage protocol into a legal twilight zone.

California's Attorney General Bill Lockyer requested that the cases, filed mostly in Los Angeles and San Francisco, be consolidated to speed up the process and relieve a ripple effect that the marriage status has on a variety of government functions such as public assistance, property ownership, spousal and child support, workers compensation benefits and tax liabilities.

The batch of already consolidated lawsuits makes an odd mix:

-The first was filed by the city of San Francisco and includes a complaint filed by six gay and lesbian couples and charges discrimination in the state's marriage laws.
-The second suit was filed by two gay couples in Los Angeles after they were denied marriage licenses.
-The last two lawsuits involve claims against same-sex marriage seeking to invalidate the more than 4,000 weddings held at San Francisco City Hall this spring.

San Francisco didn't want its suit lumped in with the others for fears that it would bog down the litigation and delay a prompt ruling. Richard Kramer, the Superior Court Judge assigned to hear the consolidated case, disagrees, saying that the coordination will allow for a unified and timely answer to a pressing legal question.

"There is a need to keep an eye on everything so as to see that the cases proceed as efficiently as possible and as expeditiously as possible. San Francisco is the most appropriate place for the coordinated cases to proceed.''

One lawyer for the city predicts the three other cases will fall off the docket given they are oranges to the city's apples argument. Bobbie Wilson said the other suits specifically address the authority of local officials to allow same-sex unions, while the city's suit deals solely with the constitutionality of state marriage laws. When the high court resolves that issue, she said, "we're going to be the only game in town."

- Elizabeth Gettelman

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2:10 PM
Cut and run?

This week, the editors of The Nation are calling for a complete U.S. withdrawal in Iraq by the end of the year.

To take these steps is not to "abandon" Iraq. Rather it is to assist in producing the stability we claim to want. The United States should continue to help Iraq by providing economic and humanitarian assistance and by supporting U.N. efforts to aid the interim government in conducting the earliest possible elections.

They can't be serious. "Staying the course" is more than a catchphrase—there are several major reasons to think twice about a quick retreat. Security, for starters. Recently, interim foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari (and a longtime Kurdish politician) told the Council on Foreign Relations that a "premature withdrawal" of coalition forces "would be disastrous," due to the unstable security situation. The Nation believes that U.S. troops are responsible for the unrest. To some extent, that's true. But there is mounting evidence that poverty and unemployment are the primary factors pushing restless young Iraqis into the ranks of armed militias like Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

That tide of discontent won't cease until Iraq's battered civil economy is rebuilt; but that won't happen so long as extremists are allowed free rein to abduct Iraqi doctors, assassinate civil professionals, and blow up power plants. It's a vicious cycle, and one that Iraq's under-trained security force is ill-equipped to break. Right now, we're the best hope. (Despite all the failings and mistakes of late, it's worth remembering that the U.S. military can still be quite good at handling security issues.)

The second reason to worry is that, with the Kurds still nervous over the future of federalism, full-scale civil war may yet erupt in Iraq. PM Iyad Allawi's declaration that the Kurdish issue is "resolved" rings a bit hollow when prominent Shiites like national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubiae are suggesting that "the assembly will likely disregard all or parts" of the federalist proto-constitution. There is a real danger that, after January elections, a Shia majority will seek to marginalize the Kurds. Although Juan Cole may be right in saying that Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani is a relative moderate, with no designs on an Iraqi dictatorship, the Kurdish media sees things differently, already calling for independence. Should the Kurdish provinces secede from Iraq, a war over the oil fields in Kirkuk could easily destabilize the region.

Like it or not, American soldiers remain the strongest deterrent against both anarchic militia rule and full-scale civil war. The Iraqi police can't do it. U.N. peacekeepers can't do it. If you want to see what a failed state looks like, see Afghanistan, where the police bleed recruits and the peacekeepers are afraid to venture out of Kabul. The Nation should know better: We've already abandoned one country to ruin and chaos; we should not abandon another.

- Bradford Plumer

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11:40 AM
Those San Francisco conservatives

Could it really be that readers in the famously liberal San Francisco Bay Area were exposed to more positive coverage of President Ronald Reagan than more buttoned-up folks back East? Yes, according to Stanford University's Grade the News project, which contrasted coverage of the two major Bay Area papers – the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News -- with that of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Here's the breakdown:

... Analysis of front-page and first-section news stories about the former president on Sunday reveals that both Bay Area papers contained four to five times as many positive assessments of Mr. Reagan's life as negative ones.

The Chronicle's cover report contained 58 paragraphs that cast Mr. Reagan in a positive light. Only 13 paragraphs tipped toward the negative, and 38 were neutral or mixed. The Mercury News' package of front-section stories contained 119 positive paragraphs and 25 negative, with 67 neutral or mixed.

By contrast, the two New York papers offered more sober, objective reports on Mr. Reagan's legacy. The Journal's first Reagan story on Monday contained seven positive paragraphs, 12 negative and 19 neutral.

The New York Times' obituary was both lengthy and more critical than positive. With a neutral headline, "Ronald Reagan Dies at 93; Fostered Cold-War Might; And Curbs on Government," the Times story contained 48 positive paragraphs, 70 negative and 71 neutral or mixed paragraphs.

- Nonna Gorilovskaya

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10:10 AM
Mind the gap

From what I've seen so far, the new study on the gender wage gap hasn't received nearly as much press as it should. The findings are utterly jaw-dropping: Between 1983 and 1998, women on average earned only 38 percent of what men did.

In his Times coverage, Jeff Madrick ticks off the usual explanations for the gap: women work fewer hours; they're expected to pick up most of the child-rearing burden; day care coverage stinks. All true. Most disturbing is the finding that gender segregation still "slots" women into lower-paying careers like teaching and nursing:

Among the relatively elite professional jobs, women were mostly teachers, nurses and social workers. Men were mostly business executives and scientists.

The middle level for women included secretarial positions, but for men it was typically well-paid blue-collar jobs.

In each tier, the researchers find, salaries are higher for the male-dominated categories than for the female categories, even though the educational requirements are similar.

Ms. Hartmann and Mr. Rose argue, most disturbingly, that these tendencies are self-reinforcing. Because wives usually earn less, they are more likely to give up their jobs to do child care.

The phrase "self-reinforcing" sounds so innocent. How about using—oh, I don't know—"discrimination"? As another recent study showed, a majority of women aspire to higher leadership positions. But, the study pointed out, "when bosses, peers, and counterparts are asked who has ''potential to be leaders, men get rated higher than women.'" Likewise, UAW has revealed that the pay gap exists even in the so-called "female-dominated" occupations. Most companies obviously don't have an explicit policy of discrimination anymore, but ingrained gender biases still lead to serious imbalances.

Let's not forget that under President Bush, the Labor Department has abolished its Equal Pay Matters Initiative, and has made it harder for women to file discrimination lawsuits. This needs to change--now. Hartmann and Rose's new study will, one hopes, return the wage gap issue to the fore and bolster support for measures like The Paycheck Fairness Act, as well as new policies to provide proper daycare and family leave for working mothers. Thirty-eight percent is not really a ratio we can ignore.

- Bradford Plumer

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9:45 AM
Trade Bluster

There are some good points to be made about globalization and the Middle East. Unfortunately, US trade representative Robert Zoellick is not the person to make them. Witness his Saturday op-ed in The New York Times, touting America's recent free-trade agreements with Bahrain and Morocco as evidence of a grand strategy to liberalize and reform the Middle East:

Through free-trade agreements ... we can embrace reforming states, encouraging their transformation and bolstering their chances for success even as we open new markets for American goods and services…

Piece by piece, the administration is building a mosaic of modernizers with a plan that offers trade and openness as tools for Muslim leaders looking toward the rebirth of an optimistic and tolerant Islam.

Let's concede a few things to Zoellick. The Arab world certainly needs freer trade as a matter of economic survival. Right now, the region has a population growth rate of around 25 percent annually. To absorb all that labor and avoid catastrophic unemployment rates, Middle Eastern countries will have to grow like crazy, and it's unlikely they'll be able to do so without lowering tariffs and creating large exporting sectors. We can also generally agree that liberalization, if done correctly, will help foster democratic institutions (although this can often take a painfully long time—see South Korea or Taiwan).

But rather than focus on actual economic development issues, the Bush administration has used free trade deals as a crass means of strong-arming its opponents and rewarding its allies. A year ago Zoellick called off US-Egypt trade talks when Egypt refused to join in the whining over Europe's genetically-modified food ban. Likewise, as Paul Magnusson pointed out last year in Business Week, the free-trade deals with Bahrain and Morocco make little economic sense to the region as a whole, and amount to little more than cute perks for Iraq war supporters.

Whenever Zoellick's ready to get serious about trade agreements, he should let us know.

- Bradford Plumer

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