One Night in Bangkok

I'm completely nuts about Thai food and have learned to make quite a bit of it. The recipes I use to judge the quality of a new restaurant kitchen I'm trying out are the classic soup, tom kha gai, and the Thai street food dish, pad thai. There are some foods I think I could eat every day (Greek avgolemono soup and tom kha gai would be among them. I think I warded off the flu last year with avgolemono from the Greek Deli on 19th Street in DC, and DemfromCT is recommending chicken soup for avian flu this year. Make the Greek version and be very, very happy. My new blog colleague premiere Greek kitchen in the DC metro, and he may well be right. The link takes you his DC ethnic resaurant reviews. If you live around DC, Baltimore or Annapolis, you might want to bookmark the link. He just updated it. He owes me lunch right now (he's in Texas researching a book on Barbeque and globalization) so we'll be eating in one of these places next week.

Anyway here is a reliable tom kha gai recipe. This makes two servings without the traditional rice Thai addition, you can scale it up for a larger crowd. Here is a link to a mail order source for Thai goods (galangal, lemon grass) if you don't have an ethnic grocery nearby. One of the things I love about living in the DC metro (there are many, many things I *don't* love) is the plethora of excellent ethnic restaurants (cheap!) and ethnic grocery places. I've got Mercado Maria right down the street for an excellent source of queso fresco for my enchiladas.

Tom kha gai is not difficult, if you can find the ingredients.

Ingredients

16 fluid ounces soup broth (chicken stock)
4-5 kaffir lime leaves, shredded
4 or 5 2 inch pieces fresh lemongrass, bruised to release flavor
1 inch cube (or a bit more) galangal sliced thinly.
4 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons lime juice
4 oz chicken breast cut into smallish bite sized pieces
5 fluid ounces coconut milk
small red Thai chile peppers, slightly crushed (to taste)
coriander (cilantro) leaves to garnish.

Note the number of red peppers is a personal choice. It can be as few as half a chilli per diner, to
as many as 8-10 per diner, but the dish should retain a balance of flavors and not be overwhelmend
by the chili peppers. We suggest about 8-12 chili peppers for this recipe.

Method

Heat the stock, add the lime leaves, lemongrass, galangal, fish sauce, and lime juice. Stir thoroughly,
bring to a boil, and add the chicken and coconut milk, then the chile peppers. Bring back to the boil,
lower the heat to keep it simmering and cook for about 2 minutes (until the chicken is cooked through).
Enjoy!

Not really intended to be eaten as a separate course, we like it served ladled over a bowl of steamed
Thai jasmine rice. This quantity serves 4 with other food, but is probably only enough for two if eaten
separately.

Pad Thai

Ingredients

* 1/2 Pad Thailb. dried thin gkuay dtiow or rice noodles (also known as ban pho to the Vietnamese)
* 3 Tbs. fish sauce, to taste
* 3 or more Tbs. tamarind juice the thickness of fruit concentrate, to taste
* 2 Tbs. palm or coconut sugar, to taste
* 4 Tbs. peanut oil
* 1/3 lb. fresh shrimp, shelled, deveined and butterflied
* 3/4 cup firm pressed tofu, cut into thin strips about an inch long, half an inch wide and a quarter inch thick
* 4-5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
* 3 shallots, thinly sliced (or substitute with half a medium onion)
* 1/4 cup small dried shrimp
* 1/4 cup chopped sweetened salted radish
* 2-3 tsp. ground dried red chillies, to desired hotness
* 3 eggs
* 3 cups fresh bean sprouts
* 1 cup garlic chives, cut into 1 1/2-inch-long segments (optional)

Garnish

* 2/3 cup chopped unsalted roasted peanuts
* 1 lime, cut into small wedges
* A few short cilantro sprigs
* 4 green onions - trim off root tip and half of green leaves and place in a glass with white end in cold water to crisp (optional)

Soak the dried rice noodles in cool or lukewarm tap water for 40 minutes to one hour, or until the noodles are limp but still firm to the touch. While the noodles are soaking, mix the fish sauce with the tamarind juice and palm sugar; stir well to melt the sugar. Taste and adjust flavors to the desired combination of salty, sour and sweet. Prepare the remaining ingredients as instructed.

When the noodles have softened, drain and set aside. Heat a wok over high heat until it is smoking hot. (Note: If your wok is small, do the stir-frying in two batches. The recipe may also be halved to serve two.) Add 2 teaspoons of oil and quickly stir-fry the shrimp until they turn pink and are almost cooked through. Salt lightly with a sprinkling of fish sauce and remove them from the wok.

Swirl Pad Thaiin the remaining oil, save for 1 teaspoon, to coat the wok surface and wait 20 to 30 seconds for it to heat. Add the tofu, frying 1 to 2 minutes, or until the pieces turn golden. Add garlic and stir-fry with the tofu for 15 to 20 seconds. Follow with the sliced shallots and cook another 15 seconds. Then add the dried shrimp, sweetened salted radish and ground dried chillies. Stir and heat through a few seconds.

Add the noodles and toss well with the ingredients in the wok. Stir-fry 1 to 2 minutes and when most of the noodles has changed texture and softened, push the mass up along one side of the wok. Add the teaspoon of oil to the cleared area, crack the eggs onto it and scramble lightly. When the eggs have set, cut into small chunks with the spatula and toss them in with the noodles.

Add the sweet-and-sour seasoning mixture. Stir well to evenly coat noodles. If the noodles are still too firm to your liking, sprinkle 1 to 2 tablespoons of water over them to help cook. Taste and adjust flavors as needed to your liking by adding more fish sauce or tamarind juice; if the noodles are not sweet enough, sprinkle in a small amount of granulated sugar.

When the noodles are cooked to your liking, toss in 2 of the 3 cups of bean sprouts and the garlic chives (if using). Sprinkle with half the chopped peanuts and return the shrimp to the wok. Stir and when the vegetables are partially wilted, transfer to a serving platter, or dish onto individual serving-size plates, and garnish with the remaining bean sprouts and chopped peanuts, the lime wedges, cilantro and green onions.

Serves 4 as a one-dish lunch with rice. Squeeze lime juice over each portion before eating.

I like to order a meal of appetizers in Thai places. Satays are among my favorite foods because there is so much to play with. Indonesians and Malaysians also make satays, and I enjoy the slight differences in the cooking traditions of each country. This is super finger food and your kids will like it because of the peanut butter sauce. You can make this with beef, pork or chicken, whatever you've got in the house, just adjust which broth you use for the sauce.

6 Chicken breast halves
- boned, skinned -- and cut
- into 1/2" wide strips

-----MARINADE-----
1 Tablespoon Light brown sugar
1 Tablespoon Curry powder
2 Tablespoons Crunchy peanut butter
1/2 Cup Soy sauce
1/2 Cup Freshly squeezed lime juice
2 Garlic cloves -- minced
Crushed dried chile peppers

----------------------------PEANUT SAUCE--------------------------------

2/3 c Crunchy peanut butter 1 1/2 c Coconut milk, unsweetened 1/4 c Freshly squeezed lemon juice 2 tb Soy sauce 2 tb Molasses (or brown sugar) 1 ts Fresh ginger root, grated 4 Garlic cloves, minced 1/4 c Chicken broth 1/4 c Heavy cream Cayenne pepper Grated lime zest Fresh cilantro sprigs.

To make the marinade, combine the first 7 ingredients in a shallow dish. Thread the chicken strips onto bamboo skewers in a serpentine fashion. Place the skewers into the soy sauce mixture and let marinate in the refrigerator at least 2 hours, although overnight is preferable.

Make the peanut sauce by combining the next 7 ingredients (peanut butter through garlic) in a saucepan. Season to taste with cayenne pepper. Cook over moderate heat, stirring constantly, until the sauce is as thick as heavy cream (about 15 minutes). Transfer to a food processor or blender and puree briefly. Add chicken broth and cream and blend until smooth. This mixture can be made several hours ahead and stored in the refrigerator. Bring to room temperature before serving.

Prepare moderate-hot charcoal coals or preheat a broiler.

Cook the skewered chicken, turning several times and basting with the marinade, until crispy on the outside but still moist on the inside, about 8 minutes. Sprinkle grilled chicken with lime zest and garnish with cilantro leaves. Serve with the peanut sauce for dipping. Rest the skewers on lettuces on the presentation plate and garnish the plate with more chopped cilantro and grated carrots which have been marinated in rice wine vinegar with juilliened green pepper slivers.

Traditionally, this is served with a salad of cucumbers and chilis in a vinigar dressing.

My favorite Thai place serves three different chili sauces on the table to Thai customers, but anglos have to ask for them. Warning, Thai chilis are not for the faint of heart. I measure my chilis in Scoville Units and one of the local mom and pop Thai places challenged me (Tyler likes this one). I asked for my favorite beef dish "Bangkok hot" one night and barely lived to regret it. The garden hose was involved after I got home. And I use Tabaso pretty much like water.

Cooking with hot chilis means using food hygiene: you have to keep your hands away from your face when working with these really hot things. God help you if you rub an eye with a contact lens in it. Been there, done that, learned the lessons. I now wear gloves. And my glasses.

First Courses

It's easy to find good, fresh mussels in ordinary grocery stores these days. I like them in the classic Italian preparation. Typically this is served as a first course, but with a crusty loaf of bread, it's a meal for me. The wonderful Italian place down the street makes a recipe similar to this. They also serve a selection of breads with herbed olive oil on the table for dipping the bread. Yum. This serves four as a first course.

steamed mussels in a white wine sauce

Mussels are best if served as quickly after purchase as possible. If you must store them, keep them in icy cold water in the refrigerator. When you are ready to prepare them, check to see if any of the mussels have opened. If so, discard them.

4 pounds of mussels, washed and beards removed

for sauce:
4 tablespoons butter
2 cups chopped onion
2 cups light white wine wine (Pinot Grigio is great)
3 crushed garlic cloves

preparation:
1. Using a vegetable steamer, or a collander in a heavy sauce pan, steam the mussels over one quart of boiling water approximately 20 minutes. At this point the mussels should open - discard those that have not opened.
2. Melt butter in a sauce pan over medium heat, add the onions, wine and garlic. Simmer until the wine reduces to half.
3. Once the mussels are steamed add three cups of the mussel broth to the sauce and stir together.
4. Place the opened mussels in a large bowl and pour the sauce over them.

Mussels are tricky to eat. First separate the shell at the joint. Using the empty side of the shell loosen the mussel from the other side. Scoop up some of the broth in the shell and eat together with the mussel. Messy but delicious! You can also serve them with seafood forks and dig the meat out that way.

Happy Halloween

I hope everyone is safe and having fun and had lots of little goblins and witches come by. The area we went trick or treating in had more kids than I've ever seen.

Happy Halloween!

PS. Let me know if you see the Great Pumpkin...

An Italian Evening

Enough politics for tonight!

This is a lighter version (meatless) of the Sicilian classic. Local eggplants are available most places in the US right now. The preparation time is about 2 hours (much is letting the eggplant sit), and cooking time an hour. To serve 5-6:

Sicilian Macaroni Timballo -- Timballo di Maccheroni alla Siciliana

INGREDIENTS:

* 3/4 pound rigatoni (ridged pasta similar to ziti but larger)
* 1 1/4 pounds eggplant
* 1/3 cup unsalted butter
* 1 1/4 pounds sun-ripened plum tomatoes, blanched, peeled, seeded and chopped
* 1 medium-sized onion
* 1 clove garlic
* 1 tablespoon minced basil
* 1/4 pound fresh caciocavallo or mild provolone cheese
* Oil for frying

PREPARATION:
Slice the eggplant into 1/2 inch slices, salt them, and let them sit in a colander for an hour. While they're sitting prepare the tomatoes, dice the cheese, and mince the onion, garlic and basil.

Sauté the minced onion and the garlic in 1/4 cup butter until the onion begins to brown, then stir in the tomatoes, season with salt, and cook for about a half hour, or until much of the liquid has evaporated.

At the last minute, stir in the minced basil, then remove the sauce from the fire and let it cool.

Heat the oil, and bring a pot of lightly salted water to a boil for the pasta.

Rinse the sliced eggplant, pat the slices dry, and fry them in the oil, a few slices at a time. Drain them on absorbent paper and keep them warm. While you're frying the eggplant, cook the pasta until it's quite al dente, drain it, and season it with a few tablespoons of the sauce.

Once you have assembled the ingredients, oil a container large enough to hold them and preheat your oven to 360 F (180 C). Lay down a first layer of pasta, then a layer of eggplant and diced cheese, and some sauce. Continue layering until all is used up, and dot the surface of the timbale with the remaining butter.

Heat through for about a half hour, and serve. It's also quite good warm.

As a variation, you can use a mixture of equal parts zucchini and eggplant.

I'd go with a white wine, for example a Fiano di Avellino, here, or perhaps a zesty red, along the lines of an Aglianico del Vulture, though not a riserva.

Serve with a salad of mixed Italian field greens dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette and bruschetta.

You will need 4 six-inch wide slices of Tuscan bread. Toast them, gently rub them with a cut clove of garlic (you don’t want to overwhelm the oil), then drizzle them with good olive oil. Season with salt and pepper to taste, cut the slices in half, and serve.

There are lots of variations to bruschetta. Here's one of the tastiest: After rubbing the slices with the garlic, rub them with a very ripe cut tomato as well (or spread a thin layer of chopped tomatoes seasoned with basil, salt & pepper over the slices). Then sprinkle with olive oil and season. In addition to being a fine appetizer, this is a traditional merenda, or afternoon snack (unfortunately it’s not as common now that Kinder and other companies are producing pre-packaged cakes).

For dessert, here is a simple tiramisu:

This is a no-frills, basic Tiramisu that is simple to make. It uses poundcake instead of ladyfingers, and calls for a simple sugar syrup that's easy to make. Makes 12 servings.

Ingredients

* POUNDCAKE, 6 oz. (about half of a 10.75 ounce package), cut into 1/2-inch cubes
* MASCARPONE CHEESE, 8 ounces
* HEAVY CREAM, 1-1/4 cups
* EGGS, 2
* SUGAR, 2/3 cup + 1/4 cup, divided
* UNFLAVORED GELATIN, 1 envelope
* KAHLUA or AMARETTO, 6 tablespoons
* VANILLA, 1/4 teaspoon
* UNSWEETENED COCOA POWDER (optional)
* SWEETENED WHIPPED CREAM (optional)
* SHAVED CHOCOLATE for decorating

Directions

1. Divide cake pieces evenly among 12 1/2-cup capacity custard cups; set aside.
2. In bowl with mixer at high speed beat cheese with heavy cream until mixture falls from spatula in thick ribbon, about 1 minute; set aside.
3. In another bowl with mixer at high speed beat eggs until fluffy, 6-8 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, in pot over high heat, combine 2/3 cup sugar with 1/4 cup water; bring to a boil.
5. Cook until sugar dissolves and temperature reaches 250 degrees Fahrenheit on candy thermometer.
6. Gradually beat the boiling sugar syrup into beaten eggs.
7. Continue beating until slightly cooled, about 3 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl; set aside.
8. In a small bowl, combine 3 tablespoons of water with gelatin; let stand 5 minutes.
9. In a small pot over high heat, combine 1/2 cup water with remaining sugar; bring to a boil.
10. Cook until sugar dissolves, 3-4 minutes.
11. Remove from heat; stir in liqueur, vanilla and reserved gelatin until gelatin dissolves.
12. Fold 3/4 of the liqueur mixture into the egg mixture; fold in the cheese mixture.
13. Drizzle the remaining liqueur mixture over the cake in thecustard cups, dividing the cheese mixture evenly among the cups.
14. Refrigerate until firm, at least 1 hour.
15. Garnish each with sprinkling of cocoa, whipped cream and chocolate shavings, if desired.

This will make a lovely "company" dinner or buffet. You can make the tirimisu while the pasta is baking.

If you are a Martha Stewart type, your dinning table can be set with a low, seasonal flower arrangement (so that your table mates can see each other over it,) but you can do something taller and more dramatic for the buffet table. I love dried flower arrangements and have them scattered around the house. Dried eucalyptus has a lovely scent, but don't use it on the dining table.

As you can tell, I love to cook for appreciative audiences. Since you, the readers and commentors, are the best part of this blog, I'm showing you the things I would cook for you if I could have you over to dinner.

If you live alone, or there are only two of you and you need help adapting these recipes for a smaller household, just ask. I can help you. I try to cook one of these relatively "fancy" meals for myself once a week, in smaller quantities, and then freeze the leftovers down in single serving containers to nuke later.

The tirimisu recipe is easy to halve. It will keep in the fridge covered tightly with plastic wrap (although I'll probably end up eating it for breakfast!) for a few days.

Political Action Alert

DeWine Threatens To Kill Filibuster

POSTED: 2:42 pm EST October 31, 2005
UPDATED: 2:48 pm EST October 31, 2005

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine said he'll support conservative threats to change Senate rules if anyone dares filibuster President George W. Bush's latest Supreme Court nominee.

The Republican senator said veteran appeals court Judge Samuel Alito is "within the mainstream of conservative thought." He's rejecting early suggestions by Democratic leaders that the nominee is too radical.

DeWine is one of 18 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will hold hearings on the nomination.

He's vowing to go along with conservative efforts to take away the Democrats' right to filibuster if the minority party tries to block a confirmation vote for Alito.

Oh, man, it is going to be a long month. Time to call your senators. Do it tomorrow.

Lies and the Lying Liars

All the Prosecutor's Hints

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, October 31, 2005; 3:30 PM

In a none-too-subtle attempt to change the subject first thing this morning, President Bush summoned the press to the White House and named appeals court Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Coverage of a divisive nomination fight -- with Bush's right flank solidly behind him this time -- is much more to the White House's liking than all that nattering about the president's seemingly doomed second term in general, and the indictment of former vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby in particular.

But Friday's announcement of Libby's indictment on five felony counts for intentionally obstructing the investigation into the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity is not the end of that story.

And the press, while blithely chasing another scent this morning, will be back in the hunt soon enough. If nothing else, Libby's public arraignment should bring out the media hordes. (Mark your calendars: it will be Thursday morning at 10:30 before Judge Reggie B. Walton in Courtroom 5 of the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse.)

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald may yet have some more indictments in store for us. But even if he doesn't, the information he released on Friday -- which initially struck many media observers as maddeningly short on details -- is in fact a still largely unmined treasure trove of hints about potentially serious ethical missteps by all sorts of senior Bush officials.

Just because a lot of the things Fitzgerald discovered evidently fell short of his very conservative prosecutorial standards -- they weren't out-and-out, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt crimes -- doesn't mean they were up to the standards the public reasonably expects from its White House.

"I know that people want to know whatever it is that we know, and they're probably sitting at home with TVs thinking, 'I want to jump through the TV, grab him by his collar and tell him to tell us everything they've figured out over the last two years,' " Fitzgerald said at his long-awaited Friday news conference.

Include me in.

But consider the constraints Fitzgerald was working under, and take a closer look at the news conference transcript and the indictment .

There is plenty of reason to believe that Fitzgerald has discovered evidence that Libby leaked Plame's name; that Karl Rove did the same; that Vice President Cheney's role was central to the drama; and that there was a lot more loose talk at the White House than anyone had imagined. Fitzgerald just isn't 100 percent sure that he can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that any other crimes took place. And grand jury secrecy rules forbid him from disclosing anything that isn't directly related to the filed charges.

Nevertheless, he sure doled out a lot of hints. One of the most intriguing, of course, involves "Official A" -- who several sources have identified as none other than Rove himself.

According to the indictment: "On or about July 10 or July 11, 2003, LIBBY spoke to a senior official in the White House ('Official A') who advised LIBBY of a conversation Official A had earlier that week with columnist Robert Novak in which Wilson's wife was discussed as a CIA employee involved in Wilson's trip. LIBBY was advised by Official A that Novak would be writing a story about Wilson's wife."

If "Official A" is indeed Rove, then how does the White House explain his public insistence, directly and through the White House spokesman, that he was not involved in the leak to Novak? And how does the White House justify his continuing to work there?

Exactly.

Spoiling for a Bruising

From The New Republic's new blog, The Plank:

APOCALYPSE NOW:

So, it looks like the Bush White House learned from its mistake. This time, they made sure that they nominated a favorite son of the right. And they distributed their talking points early and widely. My snap pundit judgment: They've played their best hand. With the Bush presidency collapsing, George W. needs a base of support that goes beyond Barney. And now he's delivered the right what it really wants--an end-of-days showdown with liberals, where both sides fall back onto first principles and then bludgeon one another mercilessly. The right's somewhat perverse logic holds that these debates actually represent an ideal occasion for propagandizing; that these fights expose conservative ideas to mainstream America and reveal conservatives to be thinking, feeling people, too.

Of course, Bush could have gone right and simultaneously avoided this kind of Battle- of-Somme scenario. Or to re-frame that assertion: Why didn't he nominate Judge Michael McConnell? After all, McConnell would have nearly the same Federalist Society friendly views as Alito. But he would also bring along the endorsement of liberal academia. My best guesses for why he skipped over McConnell: 1) Bush actually needs a bloody confirmation fight. 2) He probably can't stand McConnell's heretical position on Bush v. Gore. 3) McConnell represents the kind of pointy-headed intellectualism that the president can't abide. 4) He's not physically fit enough to deserve a promotion to the highest court in the land.

Take it away, Ralph Neas and Boyden Gray.

--Franklin Foer

Search Me?

Via TChris at TalkLeft

Trial set to begin to decide constitutionality of subway searches

By LARRY NEUMEISTER
Associated Press Writer

October 30, 2005, 12:07 PM EST

NEW YORK -- The constitutionality of the city's random searches of bags in the subways to deter terrorism will be challenged at a federal trial Monday by civil liberties lawyers who say the searches do nothing to accomplish that goal.

U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman in Manhattan was scheduled to hear evidence and testimony in the case for two to three days. Afterward, lawyers will present written and oral arguments to the judge before a ruling is made.

At issue is a random search of the subways that was put in place in the nation's largest subway system after deadly bombings by terrorists in London's subway system in July.

The New York Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit on behalf of several subway riders, said in court papers filed last week that its own survey from Aug. 25 to Sept. 16 of 5,500 subway turnstile entrances found a total of 34 searches underway.

It said the search program in the 468 subway stations serving 26 train lines "has no meaningful value in preventing the entry of explosive devices into the system by the terrorists the NYPD is attempting to thwart."

This is same logic that says that the death penalty reduces the number of murders or attempted homicides because people are afraid of being put to death. Um... no, they might be afraid of being caught but not being put to death.

It seems like so many people want to hand over their rights to "feel" more secure, though I have no idea how these random searches would really stop a terrorist. Here's a hint: Either have them everywhere or don't do them.

The same is true with airport securtiy btw.... we've flown in and our of Texas twice this past month and the security at DFW is quite different than at RDU (home) or Houston Hobby. All three in theory met FAA and Homeland Security standards but they were all different in how strict they were with their machines and searches (how can the same #@$! pair of shoes be fine in 5 scans, but not the 6th?).

I hope there is enough of a United States left when the grown ups get back in charge to put back together.

Cover-up?

Canadian birds found with flu virus
Last Updated Mon, 31 Oct 2005 13:40:07 EST
CBC News

Several wild birds in Canada have been discovered to be carrying unidentified H5 flu viruses, but early indications suggest it is not the dangerous subtype of the avian flu, officials said.

The infected birds were discovered in 28 samples from Quebec and five from Manitoba and were among thousands sampled in Canada.

"These findings do not indicate that we are dealing with a virus strain capable of causing significant illness," said Dr. Jim Clark, of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Clark said the evidence "strongly indicates" that the birds were not infected with the same virus currently present in Asia.

The World Health Organization says outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 virus have infected 121 people and caused 62 deaths in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Cambodia.

All the birds tested in Quebec and Manitoba were healthy, Clark said.

Bullshit. CFIA won't know what subtype it is until the tests come back next week.

Screw Refugees

I covered this earlier.

A Novice for Refugees

Monday, October 31, 2005; Page A18

IT'S NEARLY too obvious to say so, but the senior American diplomat responsible for refugees and worldwide humanitarian emergencies should be well-versed or even expert in, well, refugees and worldwide humanitarian emergencies. Certainly, the last several officials were before they were picked, by the two most recent presidents, for the job of assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration. Yet in nominating Ellen R. Sauerbrey for the position, President Bush has instead opted for a Republican Party loyalist whose qualifications and knowledge of the field are tenuous at best. If she is confirmed by the Senate, think of her as the Michael D. Brown of the refugee world.

Mrs. Sauerbrey, 68, was a big wheel in the Maryland General Assembly who lost consecutive races for governor in 1994 and 1998, then went on to become a television host. She was Maryland state chair for Mr. Bush's 2000 campaign; her reward was to be named U.S. representative to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, where she was mainly interested in pressing an antiabortion agenda.

How any of that qualifies her to take charge of a key government agency that often finds itself in the thick of dire international calamities is a mystery. She has had no substantial involvement with any of the great refugee or humanitarian crises of recent years -- not in Sudan, nor in Southeast Asia after the tsunami, nor in Kosovo or Rwanda amid bloodshed. Her background in management is similarly modest -- her only claim to qualifications there involves having overseen the U.S. census in a handful of Maryland counties more than 30 years ago. Yet as the State Department's refugee chief, she would take responsibility for a budget of $700 million and a staff of 100.

It's clear that the WaPo doesn't get it. Bushco regards patronage jobs as payoffs for political cronies, rather than actually being job-jobs that are actually supposed to get things done. If they could completely gut the entire Federal civil service and turn the entire government into politcal pay offs, they would.

The Other Shoe

WashPo reporter Dan Balz took part in a live chat this morning with his readers. Here is an excerpt:

Boulder, Colo.: Is there any chance that enough moderate Republican senators might come to oppose Alito so that his nomination would go down in a floor vote, or is the only realistic strategy to defeat the nomination a filibuster?

Dan Balz: An excellent question and one we're going to be monitoring. My guess is that some moderate GOP senators are feeling uncomfortable this morning.

Note that we haven't heard a peep out of Arlen Specter yet today.

Monthly Wrap

On Last Day of a Deadly Month, Six More U.S. Troops Are Killed

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: October 31, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 31 - The American military today announced the deaths of seven Americans, making October the bloodiest month for United States forces here since January.

Six soldiers were killed today when their vehicles were attacked with homemade bombs in Yusifiya, south of Baghdad and near Balad, north of the capital, the military said in a statement. On Sunday, a marine died in a bomb attack near Amiriyah in Anbar, a Sunni Arab province in western Iraq, the military said.
Skip to next paragraph

The attacks brought the number of Americans killed in October to 92, the highest monthly toll since January, when 107 Americans troops were killed in violence ahead of national elections here. That death toll has been surpassed only two other times since the war began in March 2003: In November and April 2004, when Americans battled Sunni Arab rebels in Falluja, west of Baghdad, and Shiite loyalists to a religious leader in Najaf in the south.

The deaths announced today came as American forces struck back at insurgents in western Iraq, near the border with Syria, a common entry point for foreign militants. The military said in a statement that it had killed a senior Al Qaeda leader, a Saudi citizen, known as Abu Saud. In an operation in Ubeidi, a town near the border, Marines killed the militant and three other men who were in a car that the Marines fired on, the military said.

The attacks today came a day after gunmen assassinated an adviser to the cabinet of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and wounded the country's deputy trade minister in a spate of attacks around Baghdad that left at least 11 people dead, the authorities said.

The American military said Sunday that a marine was killed on Saturday by an explosion next to his vehicle during combat operations in Anbar Province, a stronghold of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency. At least nine Americans have died in the past four days.

The cabinet adviser, Ghalib Abdul Mahdi, who is also the brother of Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite, was killed along with his driver on their way to work in the capital Sunday morning, government officials reported.

A midafternoon shooting in the upscale Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad wounded Iraq's deputy trade minister, Qais Dawood al-Hassan, and killed two of his bodyguards, an official at the Interior Ministry reported. Six other bodyguards were wounded, the official said.

In an effort to destabilize the Shiite-dominated government, insurgents regularly attack civil servants and elected officials, often ambushing them in daylight on the capital's streets.

Earlier in the day, two employees of the International Baghdad Airport were killed by gunmen in the Hay Al Risala district of the city, the ministry official said. At least four other people, including a member of the militia loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, were killed in three other attacks, and at least three others were wounded, the official said.

When are the MSM going to wake up to the fact that we are both losing AND getting a batch of Iraqis killed?

The Stakes

Samuel A. Alito Jr. Profile

Compiled by washingtonpost.com
Monday, October 31, 2005; 6:24 AM

Samuel A. Alito Jr., 55, is a jurist in the mold of Justice Antonin Scalia. Nicknamed "Scalito," or "little Scalia," by some lawyers, the federal appeals court judge is a frequent dissenter with a reputation for having one of the sharpest conservative minds in the country.

Educated at Princeton University and Yale Law School, Alito was nominated by President George H.W. Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit in 1990. He had worked for the Justice Department in the Reagan administration and served as U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey.

In 1991, he was the lone dissenter in a 3rd Circuit decision striking down a Pennsylvania law's requirement that women tell their husbands before having an abortion. Alito also wrote a 1997 ruling that Jersey City officials did not violate the Constitution with a holiday display that included a creche, a menorah and secular symbols of the Christmas season.

Three years ago Alito drew conflict-of-interest accusations after he upheld a lower court's dismissal of a lawsuit against the Vanguard Group. Alito had hundreds of thousands of dollars invested with the mutual fund company at the time. He denied doing anything improper but recused himself from further involvement in the case.

Hmmm. Tino Scalito has some ethical issues, too. Alito is emulating his role model.

Love Those Internets

The Washington Post's Supreme Court blogger, Fred Barbash, gave an interview to MSNBC earlier today. Click on the link to view it.

Speaking Truth To Power

Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy, Ranking Member, Judiciary Committee, On The Nomination Of Samuel Alito To Be Associate Justice Of The Supreme Court

posted October 31, 2005

This is a needlessly provocative nomination. Instead of uniting the country through his choice, the President has chosen to reward one faction of his party, at the risk of dividing the country. Instead he should have rewarded the American people. America could have done better through consultation to select one of the many consensus conservative Republican candidates who could have been overwhelmingly approved by the Senate.

Last week, the President succumbed to the partisan pressure from the extreme right wing by withdrawing the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. In doing that, the President allowed his choice to be vetoed by an extreme faction within his party, before hearings or a vote. With turmoil engulfing the White House, with no way out of the disastrous and deadly occupation of Iraq, with a worsening federal debt, and with obscenely high profits that continue to pile up for the Administration's Big Oil friends, catering to an extreme wing of one political party risks removing checks and balances for the majority of Americans. It is unfortunate that the President felt he was in such a weak position that he had to bend to a narrow but vocal faction of his political base. The Supreme Court is the ultimate check and balance in our system that protects the fundamental rights of all Americans.

The Miers nomination was an eye-opening experience for the country to see what a vocal faction of the Republican Party really wants. This experience exposed the right-wing litmus test that they insist be used, rather than selecting judges and justices who will be fair and impartial in applying the law. They, in fact, demand judges who will guarantee the results that they want.

With the announcement of Judge Samuel Alito to fill the position being vacated by Justice O'Connor, the White House failed to follow through with initial discussions and engage in meaningful consultation. The Democratic Leader of the Senate and I wrote to the President last week, urging him to pick one of the many qualified mainstream women and minority candidates who can win widespread bipartisan support in the Senate and among the American people. I regret that the President has not chosen the clear path of a consensus candidate to unite the American people and the Senate. The nation and the Senate would have overwhelmingly welcomed his choice if he had.

I have not formed a final judgment as to the merits of this nomination, although a review of Judge Alito's record suggests areas of significant concern. Judge Alito's record on the bench demonstrates that he would go to great lengths to restrict the authority of Congress to enact legislation to protect civil rights and the rights of workers, consumers and women. Judge Alito has also set unreasonably high standards that ordinary Americans who are the victims of discrimination must meet before being allowed to proceed with their cases.

The Dems are signaling trouble. Schumer is on the tube rumbling away. My sense is that the caucus hasn't come up with a position yet, but Schumer's presser indicates that there is going to be substantial resistence. He's characterizing this as a bow to the extreme right wing.

Batters' Box

My spies were right.

Nomination Likely to Please G.O.P., but Not Some Democrats

By CHRISTINE HAUSER and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: October 31, 2005

President Bush nominated Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., who currently serves on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, to the Supreme Court today, four days after his previous choice withdrew her nomination.

The nomination is likely to please Mr. Bush's conservative allies, whose sharp attacks on Harriet E. Miers were instrumental in prompting her to withdraw last week. But the president is more likely to get a battle from Democrats and liberals who may believe Judge Alito's views are too extreme.

Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. was nominated at the White House this morning.

Over the weekend, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, warned President Bush not to pick Judge Alito, 55. "I think it would create a lot of problems," Mr. Reid said on "Late Edition" on CNN.

Mr. Bush this morning described Judge Alito as having an "extraordinary breadth of experience" and as being "tough and fair." Referring to his long career and his current role on the appeals court, the president said Judge Alito now has "more prior judicial experience than any Supreme Court nominee in more than 70 years."

"I urge the senate to act promptly so that an up or down vote is held before the end of this year," Mr. Bush said at the White House as he presented Judge Alito as his nominee.

Judge Alito, speaking as his wife and two children looked on, said that he was deeply honored to be nominated. He said he had long held the Supreme Court "in reverence," and reminisced about his first time arguing a case there in 1982, when Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, whom he would replace on the court, sensed that he was a "rookie" and made sure that the first question he was asked was a kind one. "I was grateful to her on that happy occasion, and I am particularly honored to be nominated for her seat," he said.

He said he was also struck with a sense of awe by what the court stands for as an institution: equal justice under law.

Judge Alito said he looked forward to working with the Senate in the confirmation process.

An early signal of conservative approval came from Gary Bauer, a prominent social conservative, who called the choice of Judge Alito a "grand slam home run." Mr. Bauer, interviewed on CNN, called the judge a "mainstream conservative" and predicted that while there would be a battle from Democrats, Judge Alito would ultimately be confirmed. "They'll try to label him as extreme, but when you get into the hearings, you'll get into specifics," he said.

Republicans close to the selection process had said over the weekend that Judge Alito, Judge J. Michael Luttig of the Fourth Circuit, Judge Alice M. Batchelder of the Sixth Circuit, and Judge Priscilla R. Owen of the Fifth Circuit were leading candidates.

Mr. Reid had already said he would object to the selection of Judge Luttig or Judge Owen. And on Sunday, he did not rule out the possibility that Democrats would try to block a nominee by a filibuster or refusing to close debate and vote. "We are going to do everything we can" to see that the president names "somebody that's really good," Mr. Reid said.

But Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, fired back Sunday, saying that if the Democrats staged a filibuster against Judge Alito or Judge Luttig because of their conservatism, "the filibuster will not stand."

Mr. Graham's warning was significant because he played a crucial role earlier this year in helping block a Republican effort to change the Senate rules - known as the nuclear option - so that Democrats could not filibuster judicial nominees. His comments on Sunday indicated that this time, he would support that rule change; Democrats have threatened to retaliate with a battle that could snarl Senate business for months.

The fun begins. I'm waiting to hear from Harry Reid's office.

2nd Time Around

You know, I was wondering what the White House was going to do for Halloween this year.... personally I would prefer a pumpkin carving contest, but Homeland Security might object. Still, I guess this isn't scary so long as you aren't a rich, white male.

Bush picks conservative judge for supreme court

Monday October 31, 2005

George Bush today put forward a judge with a well-attested conservative track record to replace Harriet Miers as his nominee for the US supreme court.

Mr Bush announced Samuel Alito's nomination as he began an effort to move on from the events of last week, one of the most damaging in his presidency.

Where Ms Miers was criticised for her lack of qualifications to take a seat on the supreme court bench, Mr Bush said Mr Alito had more experience than any nominee for the court in 70 years.

He said he had shown "great promise" from the beginning of his legal career at Yale and marked himself out as "tough and fair" chief prosecutor for New Jersey before he was moved to the 3rd circuit court of appeals in 1990.

Mr Alito is admired by conservatives for his 15-year track record on the Philadelphia-based court. He is a frequent dissenter on what is one of the most liberal federal benches, and, say supporters, his record shows a commitment to a strict interpretation of the US constitution.

Liberal groups are concerned about Mr Alito's record on civil and reproductive rights. He was the lone dissenter when the 3rd circuit court struck down a Pennsylvania state law requiring women seeking abortions to notify their spouses.

Mr Alito has been called "Scalito" or "Scalia-lite" by some lawyers because his judicial philosophy invites comparisons to supreme court justice Antonin Scalia, the leading conservative on the bench.

Just in case any moderate Republicans got confused last week by all of the big words in the media, this should be all the evidence they need to see how much of a "big tent" their party has right now (memo to the them: Tom Thumb wants it supersized so he won't get wet).

The media is still confused on Harriet though, her glaring lack of qualification wasn't what really doomed her with the Republicans... it was her vagueness on key issues like Civil Rights and Abortion that did her in. Sure, she was underqualified, but since when did that stop anyone in this administration.

At least Harry Reid and company can replay all of the quotes from their fellow senators about the need for close questioning and even some of the mumblings about filibusters... after all, there reaches a point where the cognitive dissidence gets too much for even a Conservative to handle. And maybe the media might even call them on it, especially if 60% + of the public agrees with them.

Fun in Japanese

This works well for a couple or a dinner party for four. I use my old fondue set to put this up on the dinner table. Works great.

Sukiyaki

If you are a Japanese food lover, you might have had sukiyaki. It's a very popular one-pot meal in Japan. The main ingredient is thin sliced beef, and it is simmered in a skillet or pan in the sukiyaki sauce with many vegetables and other ingredients. The word "yaki" means "sautee" or "grill" in Japanese. The word is used because the beef in sukiyaki is sauteed in the hot skillet.

The quality of beef used in Sukiyaki is very important. You might want to ask a butcher to slice the tender part of the beef into very thin slices. The best beef for sukiyaki is called "shimofuri" beef in Japan. Shimofuri beef has lots of fat, but it's very tender and is also very expensive.

Sukiyaki is usually cooked at the table, and it's common to eat with others from the same pan. Sukiyaki is a typical menu when people gather together in Japan. It's a fun and perfect dish for a party! All you need to do is cut ingredients and place in a large plate and cook in a skillet placed on the table. You don't have to cook in the kitchen, you can cook while you are eating.

In different regions of Japan, sukiyaki is cooked differently. I will give you my recipe with some tips so that you can cook your own sukiyaki at home. This is Kanto-style (eastern Japan) sukiyaki.

Sukiyaki Recipe

Ingredients (4 servings):

* 1 pound of thinly sliced beef
** It tastes better if the beef is cut very thin.
* A handful of shirataki noodles (made from yam cakes) or cellophane noodles
* 7-8 shiitake mushrooms
* 1 enoki mushrooms
* 1 medium size leek
* 1 Chinese cabbage
* 1 block of yaki-dofu (grilled tofu)

For sukiyaki sauce:
(** You can also buy sukiyaki sauce in a bottle).
* 3 tbsps soy sauce
* 3 tbsps sake (Japanese rice wine)
* 3 tbsps sugar
* 1 cup soup stock

For dipping:
* 4 eggs

How to Cook and Eat Sukiyaki:

1. Cut all ingredients into bite-sized pieces.
2. Arrange all ingredients on a large plate and place the plate at the table.
3. Mix soy sauce, sake, sugar, and soup stock to make sukiyaki sauce.
4. Set a hot plate or gas grill at the table.
** After this point, everything is done at the table as you eat.
5. Heat a little oil in a shallow skillet (can be a fry pan or a hot plate) at the table.
6. Fry meat, then add sukiyaki sauce.
7. Add other ingredients when the sauce starts to boil.
8. Simmer until all ingredients are softened.
9. Dip the cooked sukiyaki into the raw, beaten eggs and begin to eat!
10. As the liquid boils away, add more sukiyaki sauce. If you are not able to obtain the above ingredients, you can use any meat and vegetables. It's ok to create you own sukiyaki.

This is both dinner and entertainment. Serve with bowls of steamed rice and edemame, the finger food of the asian set, and a whole lot healthier than chips and dip. I can buy ready-to-eat edamame at my local grocery. Look and ask and perhaps you can, too!. This is food as fun, and good for a party.

Pasta Aglio e Olio

This is my ultimate comfort food. And it might be a health food, too

Spaghetti Aglio e Olio

Mark Bittman in "The Minimalist Cooks at Home" calls this the mother of all pasta sauces, and it’s true! It’s perfect for a lazy lunch dish, or a side dish. You can turn it into anything with the addition of just a couple more items (or a lot). The recipe is in every basic cookbook (and needless to say every pasta/Italian cookbook). There’s a nice extra tip from the folks at ATK that I sometimes use when I’m not taking shortcuts — add a bit of water to your garlic before you add it to the hot olive oil and that will help prevent it from burning.

Salt for the pasta water
1 pound linguine, spaghetti, fettucine or other long, thin pasta
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons minced garlic
salt and freshly ground black pepper
any of the additions listed below

Bring a large pot of water to the boil. When boiling, add salt and pasta and cook until al dente (if you’re cooking angel hair, however, cook your garlic/oil first as angel hair/cappellini cooks in no time at all). While pasta is cooking, heat oil and garlic in a skillet over medium heat. Do not let the garlic burn — what I do sometimes is mash it to a paste with some salt, and cook it over lowest heat for quite a bit — the garlic flavor is more intense that way. When pasta is done, reserve 1/2 cup of the liquid, then drain the pasta. Toss with the garlic and oil mixture, salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste, and some of the water if it’s too dry.

Flavorful Additions you can use

- handful of minced flat-leaf parsley, or another green herb like oregano, or shredded basil leaves, or a mixture, tossed with the pasta before serving
- grindings of parmigiano reggiano or pecorino, toss with pasta before serving
- 1/4 teaspoon or more of dried red hot peppers along with the garlic
- cooked beans, added 20 seconds into cooking the garlic
- a couple of tablespoons of chopped capers, added the last 20 seconds or so of cooking the garlic, then tossed
- a handful of olives, black and/or green; kalamatas and gaetas are wonderful, as are herbed olives from the olive bar, minced and added to garlic the last 20 seconds or so
- mashed anchovies, cooked together with the garlic
- chopped up tomatoes, added 10 seconds after the garlic — cook down if you want a rich garlic-tomato taste
- a combination of a bunch of things on this list!

I like to add a handful of chopped fresh basil in the summer. I'm a Roman purist with this recipe: the less added, the better. Saute the garlic (the more, the better) in a small sauce pan over the lowest heat your range will produce. Remove it when it starts to brown (it gets bitter.) but your sauce should be done along with your pasta if you start both at the same time. If you want to be a bit more courageous (and Roman) add a couple of tablespoons of butter while the oil and garlic are getting to know each other in the saute pan, that's the real Roman version of this recipe. I treat garlic like a vegetable, and you should ingest as much of the sauteed product as possible this flu season. Um, I make this with six cloves of garlic in a serving for one, but then, I live alone.

Simple Living

I live on the Mediterranean diet, mostly (with excursions to the Orient.) This simple pasta recipe will welcome a salad or a soup as a first course. If you can find a real Italian granito for dessert, that would be a good thing. This is simple Roman cooking.

PENNE ARRABBIATA SAUCE WITH TOMATOES, HOT CHILIES AND GARLIC
ARRABIATA

Penne all'arrabbiata.

Rome - Lazio
Preparation - Easy
Serves 4

This pasta along with all'Amatriciana and their variations are favorites in Roman trattorias. All'Amatriciana , with little pieces of cured pork in the sauce, comes from the Abruzzese town of Amatrice. So do many of the hosts of the old Roman trattorias, osterias, and tavole calde, where Romans take their meals, and so all'Amatriciana has become a Roman style of pasta. Penne all'arrabbiata, without the cured pork, simply means "enraged pasta," referring to the heat of the peppers.

Control the heat of the dish by using more or less hot red pepper.

* 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
* 3 large garlic cloves, minced
* 1 28 oz can Italian tomatoes with their juice, chopped or 1 1/2 lb fresh tomatoes.
* 1 or 2 dried hot red chilies, broken into pieces, or 1 t hot red pepper flakes to taste
* Salt to taste
* 1 lb penne or other short thick round pasta
* 2 TBSP chopped parsley for garnish
* 6 quarts water

HEAT the oil in a heavy saucepan over medium-high heat and sauté the garlic, stirring constantly, until it is just beginning to turn golden - about 6 minutes.

SAUTÉ the garlic, stirring constantly, until it is just beginning to turn golden - about 6 minutes.

ADD the tomatoes and chilies, reduce the heat to medium-low, and continue cooking until the tomatoes are soft and the sauce is dense but not pureed - about 20 minutes with canned tomatoes.

CONTINUE cooking until the tomatoes are soft and the sauce is dense but not pureed - 15 - 20 minutes.

REMOVE from the heat and taste for seasoning, adding more salt if necessary.

Cook the pasta.

DRAIN thoroughly, turn into a warm serving bowl, and pour the sauce over it, mix well.

SERVE immediately.

You'll want a lot of freshly grated parmesan to top this.

(Adapted from::
The Mediterranean Diet Cookbook
Nancy Harmon Jenkins
Bantam Books)

Boo!

You can't give this out to the assembled little monsters, but it is really good carmel corn. Yum. There were simpler times, when you could put something home made in the bag wthout worrying that it had razorblades in it.

Baked Caramel Corn

A recipe for baked caramel corn, made with popcorn and a syrup made with brown sugar, butter, corn syrup, vanilla, and other ingredients. Scroll down to see more related snack recipes.

INGREDIENTS:

* 6 quarts popped popcorn
* 1 cup butter
* 2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
* 1/2 cup corn syrup, light or dark
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon vanilla

PREPARATION:
Preheat oven to 250°. Oil or spray a large roasting pan with vegetable cooking spray, regular or butter-flavored. Pour popcorn into the pan. In a heavy pan, slowly melt butter; stir in the brown syrup, corn syrup, and salt.

Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Boil without stirring for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the baking soda and vanilla. Gradually pour the syrup over popcorn, stirring to blend well. Bake for 1 hour, stirring every 10 minutes. Remove from oven; let cool completely and break apart.

Yum.

Posted by Melanie at 09:33 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Under the radar

House Amendment Tilts Playing Field for Death Penalty

Radical Changes to the Federal Death Penalty May Soon Be Law

(Washington, October 27, 2005) -- The House has slipped an amendment into the Patriot Act Reauthorization Act that would dramatically skew federal death penalty cases in favor of the prosecution, Human Rights Watch said today.

The legislation would radically increase the number of federal crimes drawing the death penalty, allow judges to reduce juries deciding the death penalty to fewer than twelve persons, and allow the prosecutor to start afresh in trying to get the death penalty with a new sentencing jury any time even one juror resists imposing the death penalty in a capital case.

Under current federal law, the defendant is given a life sentence if a jury of twelve does not unanimously vote for the death penalty. Under this legislation, the prosecutor could re-impanel a new jury and try for death once again.

“It’s a strange notion of justice indeed to give prosecutors multiple bites at the apple,” said Jamie Fellner, U.S. Director of Human Rights Watch. “Death penalty cases are already riddled with unfairness. Why would Congress want to make them worse?”

Human Rights Watch said that the legislation would give dramatic power to a single juror who could hold out for the death penalty – and thus enable the prosecution to secure a new jury. Juries in death penalty cases are already “death-qualified,” meaning that anyone who opposes the death penalty on moral, religious, or practical grounds is excluded from the jury. Yet another legislative provision passed by the House would tilt the trial in favor of death even further by permitting the judge to reduce the number of jurors below twelve, with no minimum number set. A smaller jury would make it even easier for prosecutors to secure a unanimous verdict in favor of death.

The House provisions would also triple the number of death penalty-eligible terrorism related crimes and allow the government to impose the death penalty even if the defendant had no knowledge or intent to kill. Under this legislation, an individual could be sentenced to death for providing financial support to a designated terrorist organization whose members caused the death of another, even if this individual did not know or in any way intend that the members engage in any specific acts of violence.

Rep. John Carter (R- Tex.) introduced these death penalty provisions as last minute amendments to the House version of the Patriot Act Reauthorization Act. They were passed by voice vote, without debate. The Patriot Act Reauthorization Act passed by the Senate contains none of these death penalty provisions. A final version of the legislation is expected to emerge from conference with the Senate in the next one to two weeks and go to the floor of both the House and Senate for an up or down vote.

Emphasis mine. While we were all atwitter waiting for Fitzmas, the House was busily stuffing coal in our stockings.

Plan, not Panic

Companies across Asia bracing for bird flu catastrophe

SINGAPORE, (AFP) - Just two years after the SARS outbreak sent Asian economies into intensive care, companies across the region are bracing themselves for the vastly more malignant threat of a bird flu pandemic.

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) crisis of 2003 killed about 800 people out of 8,000 cases and cost regional economies an estimated 18 billion dollars, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The hardest hit were Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan and Malaysia. Travel-related industries were the most severely affected by the disease, which was spread by air passengers from China and Hong Kong.

On the other hand, an avian flu pandemic has the potential to kill millions worldwide and affect all economic sectors.

The ADB says in the Asia-Pacific region alone, the economic cost of a bird flu pandemic could exceed 250 billion dollars.

At the moment, the
World Health Organization (WHO) says the bird flu threat is still in the third of six phases, with over 60 deaths recorded in Asia since 2003 and rare instances of suspected human-to-human infection.

Phase 6 is the doomsday scenario -- the full pandemic phase with sustained human-to-human infection in the general population.

"Phase 3, where we are now, is kind of the warning phase. It's out there, we know it's out there, we really have to pay attention. We have to plan," said Dr. Jeffrey Staples, senior medical advisor to emergency services firm International SOS.

"My guess is that at Phase 5, governments will probably impose international travel restrictions," he told AFP in an interview.

"So what this gives us is a window of opportunity whereby we can consider moving people around in Phase 4," he said, referring to the possibility of relocating expatriate corporate staff out of affected countries.

"Phase 3 is probably too early to move people, but it's not too early to think and to start planning in a holistic way."

With the virus now confirmed to have spread into Europe, companies across Asia are preparing emergency plans for a pandemic which it is widely assumed will hit in only a matter of time.

Contingency measures ranging from free Vitamin C pills for workers and taking poultry off the canteen menu to costly evacuation plans for expatriate staff and their families are being drafted by companies.

Nestle Malaysia said it was in the process of drafting a bird flu contingency plan, with guidance from local authorities and its headquarters in Switzerland.

Shell Malaysia said the group's "contingency planning, initially in some 50 countries, is well advanced".
....
Medical advisor Staples of International SOS said that "multinational corporations are still struggling to understand the full scope of a pandemic and the full threat to business continuity".

"Think of it just as a matter of scale. SARS killed about 800 people and the numbers the WHO is throwing out (for bird flu) are in the millions, possibly more. Just on that level, it's several orders of magnitude greater.'

"It's a fundamentally different virus with a different epidemiological pattern so if it goes pandemic, it will probably spread more quickly and kill more people, and it's just going to be on a completely different scale than SARS was," Staples said.

I don't see any signs of this kind of planning going on in this country. I don't even see hospitals or localities doing any planning. As a result, there will be chaos.

I got to spend an hour on the phone with George Mason University economics professor and flu blogger Tyler Cowen of Avian Flu-What We Need to Know this afternoon. He's working on a big paper on avian flu and I talked through some of the problems I have with his draft, it was great to talk to another local blogger who is on the flu beat. Tyler is also a great devotee of DC's superb ethnic restaurants, the link takes you to his guide. We'll get together and dine at one of them when he returns from a research trip to the capital of Texas barbecue next week.

In The Stars

I'm having one of those mind-bending sorts of days. When I find myself in substantive agreement with a paleo-con like Bill Lind, it seems to me like there might be grounds for finding a new left-right political alignment.

True Confessions

By William S. Lind

On October 19, 2005, the American Secretary of State, aka the Tea Lady, did something extraordinary for the Bush administration. She told the truth. According to the October 20 Washington Times, in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Miss Rice said

that it was always the Bush administration’s intent to redesign the Middle East after the September 11 attacks, which exposed a “deep malignancy growing” in the region, and that the Iraq was part of that plan.

Well. There we have it. It’s now official: Saddam’s eternally elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction were just eyewash. The decision to invade Iraq came first, and the various contrived justifications came after. Those Iraqi WMDs were as real as Polish attacks on Germany in 1939, and as cynical. The cynicism is, if anything, ever more brazen: Herr Ribbentrop never testified to the Reichstag that “Polish aggression” was just a set-up, even if everyone knew.

Does it matter? To the American press and people, apparently not. Miss Rice’s official confirmation of everyone’s suspicions got virtually no coverage. After all, the NFL season has started.

But in other respects, I think it does matter. It matters, first, because it reveals this administration’s utter cynicism, a cynicism born of the neo-cons, who seldom met a lie they didn’t like. In effect, Miss Rice testified, “Yea, we lied. So what?”

Well, beyond 2,000 dead and 15,000 wounded [DNI editor's note: US casualties only], so cavalier an attitude toward the truth suggests the lies have probably continued. As they have: the administration routinely engages in (illegal) domestic propaganda, puffing anything it can call a “success” in Iraq while classifying or otherwise burying the bad news. The latest example is the spin on the Iraqi constitutional referendum. The Bushies are hailing it an “another victory of democracy,” when in fact the outcome could not have been worse. The Sunnis pulled out all their stops and still lost, telling them the system is stacked so heavily against them they have no political future. Where ballots fail, bullets still offer promise.

Another reason the WMD lie matters is that the real reason the administration invaded Iraq, “to redesign the Middle East,” reveals (officially) a truly breathtaking hubris, coupled to a monumental ignorance of the region in question. Redesign the Middle East? What do the Bushies think it is, a Chevrolet?

At it happens, the war in Iraq is redesigning the Middle East, but not exactly in a planned fashion. Just as the calling of the Estates General in 1789 opened the door to the French Revolution, so the American destruction of the Iraqi state has opened the door to a broader collapse of the state system in that region, an outcome the administration is now pushing in Syria as well. Osama, sitting in his cave, no doubt continues to thank Allah for President George W. Bush.

Finally, the official revelation, in Congressional testimony no less, that the Bush administration’s motto is “Lies R US” will matter politically, as the American people begin to come to grips with the fact of a lost war. That may happen by the elections of 2006; it will certainly happen by 2008. It is safe to say that the public will not be happy, and the realization that they were lied into the lost war won’t make them any happier. As Republican Members of Congress are beginning to realize, the blowback may be of historic proportions. Anyone seen any Whigs lately? (The fact that the Democrats continue to offer a profile in cowardice on the war might even open the door to a serious third party, God willing. There have to be some real, small-r republicans out there still.)

Missing the Point 2

Saving the second term

CAMP DAVID IS WHERE PRESIDENTS often go to lick their wounds. So President Bush's departure Friday for the Maryland retreat was as predictable as it was necessary; within the span of a week, he has seen a high-ranking administration official indicted for obstructing justice in the Valerie Plame inquiry and his White House counsel forced by critics within his own party to withdraw as a nominee to the Supreme Court.

Bush's horrible week came at an already dismal time for his presidency — even before the indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and the Harriet E. Miers debacle, Bush's approval ratings were sinking. The president's legislative agenda is stalled, the war in Iraq is turning into a quagmire and Hurricane Katrina has raised urgent questions about Bush's competence and priorities.

The White House seems bereft of initiative or momentum — on any front. Bush still has three more years in office, but they will be interminable and unproductive unless he revises his game plan and makes some needed substitutions on his team.

For starters, it's time to retire "the architect." Karl Rove may have escaped indictment on Friday, but in a larger sense "Rovism" — the notion of governing from the far right to pander to the party's most active extremists — has been indicted, tried and convicted. Regardless of whether his top political advisor stays on the payroll, Bush needs to dust off his old claim of being "a uniter, not a divider" if he is to have any chance of regaining his political footing and building a positive legacy.

Vice President Dick Cheney's days as a leading voice in this administration should also be numbered. It would be a considerable favor to Bush if Cheney decided to step down from office now, but don't expect that to happen.

Still, Cheney should spend the bulk of his time at undisclosed locations and funerals for foreign dignitaries, at least when he is not testifying at his former chief of staff's trial, which would be an unseemly spectacle.

Bush would do well to loosen the unprecedented control exerted by the vice president's office across a number of agencies and departments. He needs to bring in seasoned advisors from the more moderate wing of his party to occupy key White House positions, so they can prod him to govern from the center and mend ties with moderate Democrats. Someone also ought to tap Donald Rumsfeld's shoulder and tell him it's time to go.

The last year has been a cautionary tale about post-electoral hubris and the dangers inherent in believing you can govern successfully while shedding even the pretense of trying to work with the opposition or of appealing to the center. Rovism is tribal politics at its worst — a feeling that the world is divisible by two: those on our side, and those who need to be pummeled at every turn.

Such shrill partisanship, with its accompanying hardball tactics, has hurt the White House. The Miers debacle is partly explained by the bunker mentality and insularity of Bush's inner circle. Did no one on Bush's team dare raise obvious questions about an unqualified crony's chances of getting confirmed?

This page has been critical of the Bush administration, but no one should feel gleeful about the depth of this administration's woes. It is not healthy for the nation to be led by such a hobbled president. That is one reason why change is so imperative. The credibility of the Cheney-Rove-Rumsfeld cabal, particularly when assessing threats to our national security, is dangerously low.

In the coming days and weeks, Bush needs to show signs that he has been chastened by recent events. The president could begin recasting his second term by appointing a superbly qualified Supreme Court nominee who is not a radical judicial activist intent on rolling back the clock.

The LAT ed page has a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem. These neocons are not rational actors. Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld are all textbook cases of narcissistic personality disorder. Such people are completely unable to ever admit error or change course. They are sociopaths. The mere idea that they would do something "for the good of the country" is laughable.

Missing the Point

Stop the Campaigning
The Bush White House Is in Trouble Because of Its Disdain for Governing

By Lewis L. Gould

Sunday, October 30, 2005; Page B01

AUSTIN

There is an old theatrical adage that tragedy is easy, comedy is hard. For politicians, that could be reformulated as: Campaigning is easy, governing is hard. The Bush administration, long disdainful of governance as an exercise for wimps and Democrats, now finds its political and legal troubles mounting while its time-tested campaign mode falters. The divide between campaigning and governing has existed for all administrations, of course, and was particularly and painfully evident during the darker moments of Bill Clinton's second term. But under the rule of George W. Bush and his outriders -- Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Andrew Card -- the disconnect between the pleasures of campaigning and the imperatives of governing has become acute.

Continuous campaigning, dating back to Richard Nixon and perfected in succeeding decades, has evolved into the approach of choice. Stage-managed events, orchestrated by masters of spin, provide the appearance of a chief executive in charge of the nation's destiny. Some presidents -- Ronald Reagan, Clinton and the younger Bush -- were or are masters of the art. Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush were less adept on the hustings and more at home with policies, diplomacy and personnel choices. Their performances varied but their impulse was toward making the government run, not creating the illusion of an executive in perpetual motion.

The Bush team brought its campaign skills from the 2000 presidential contest into the White House and never stopped its reliance on these methods. Along with that style went the assumptions rooted in the Republican DNA of the president and those around him: The Democratic Party is not a worthy partner in the political process; repealing key elements of the New Deal is but a prelude to overturning the accomplishments of the Progressive Era; and negotiations with a partisan opponent are not opportunities to be embraced but traps to be avoided.

The other part of the recipe for Bush's success was an unstated but evident identification of the president himself with the nation at large. Accompanied by a willing array of incense swingers in the White House, Bush attained (particularly in the minds of his base) a status that embraced both the imperial and in some cases the quasi-deified. Why then become involved in the details of running a government from the Oval Office? Appoint the right Republicans to key posts, and the federal government would run itself while providing an unending source of patronage for supporters, contracts for friendly businesses and the sinews of perpetual political dominance. It seemed to cross no one's mind that the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- a post where dealing with extraordinary crises is all in a day's work -- might need to be super-competent rather than just a superintendent.

The events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the war in Iraq insulated the president from questioning whether his government was operating effectively. In the first term, criticism and contrary advice could be (and often was) labeled as mere partisan sniping, as happened with such figures as former National Security Council counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke and, more notably, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.

During a campaign, attacking the opponent's motives is part of the cut and thrust of politics, and so the substance of charges can be finessed with the claim that their author had worked for the opposition or had some other hidden agenda. In the case of Wilson, the attack on him fit with the principle of rapid retaliation so characteristic of a campaign. Less thought was apparently devoted to whether revealing the identity of his wife, a CIA employee, served the interests of wise and prudent governance. Whatever the outcome of the charges filed Friday against Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the apparent blurring of the line between campaigning and governing is evident in the indictment returned by the federal grand jury.

Meanwhile, many in the administration -- and in the media -- simply turned their minds away from engaging a dissent from a Bush policy on its merits if the critic wasn't a Republican. That a critic might be a Democrat and correct -- or a Republican outsider offering a useful counterpoint -- seemed to be a contradiction in terms for people around Bush.

This strategy worked well during the first term and culminated in a larger margin of victory last November. Once the president was no longer a candidate for office, he turned to the issue of a mandate for change with his seemingly abundant political capital. Remaking the Social Security system loomed as the big domestic goal of the second term. Hammering out an actual proposal ("Negotiating with ourselves" in the president's parlance) was not to the taste of inveterate campaigners. Campaign first, program last seemed the slogan to be followed. So the president made numerous speeches before captive audiences touting the virtues of change in Social Security as a platonic ideal, but refused to provide a specific plan. Since popular enthusiasm for an alteration in retirement policy failed to materialize, the president was left with a campaign in search of a governing objective.

Hurricane Katrina, and the political and atmospheric storms that followed, underscored the deficiencies of continuous campaigning as a response to real-life crises. Getting assistance to storm victims is a matter of logistics, competent administrators and coordinated planning. A presidential visit to express sympathy for those who have lost homes, jobs and loved ones is a one-day nostrum that leaves the basic situation changed, no matter how many times the chief executive jets in with concern. When the government does not work, it does not matter how many officials are told they have done "a heck of a job." Citizens see for themselves that their government is absent and help is not on the way.

Gould is unnecessarily mealy-mouthed. Bush can't govern. He doesn't know how and has no interest in doing so. He has surrounded himself with sycophants and yes-men who have no expertise in the departments that they've been handed to run. The only thing that Bushco is interested in is looting taxpayer dollars on behalf of their corporate friends. They've been extraordinarily efficient at doing that. Check out the Q3 profits of the oil companies.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

White House Ethics, Honesty Questioned
55% in Survey Say Libby Case Signals Broader Problems

By Richard Morin and Claudia Deane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, October 30, 2005; Page A14

A majority of Americans say the indictment of senior White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby signals broader ethical problems in the Bush administration, and nearly half say the overall level of honesty and ethics in the federal government has fallen since President Bush took office, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News survey.

The poll, conducted Friday night and yesterday, found that 55 percent of the public believes the Libby case indicates wider problems "with ethical wrongdoing" in the White House, while 41 percent believes it was an "isolated incident." And by a 3 to 1 ratio, 46 percent to 15 percent, Americans say the level of honesty and ethics in the government has declined rather than risen under Bush.

In the aftermath of the latest crisis to confront the White House, Bush's overall job approval rating has fallen to 39 percent, the lowest of his presidency in Post-ABC polls. Barely a third of Americans -- 34 percent -- think Bush is doing a good job ensuring high ethics in government, which is slightly lower than President Bill Clinton's standing on this issue when he left office.

The survey also found that nearly seven in 10 Americans consider the charges against Libby to be serious. A majority -- 55 percent -- said the decision of Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald to bring charges against Libby was based on the facts of the case, while 30 percent said he was motivated by partisan politics.

"One thing you can't ever, ever do even if you're a regular person is lie to a grand jury," said Brad Morris, 48, a registered independent and a field representative for a lumber company who lives in Nashua, N.H. "But multiply that by a thousand times if you have power like [Libby had]. And if anybody wants to know why, ask Scooter. He's financially ruined; he'll be paying lawyers for the rest of his life."

Taken together, the findings represent a serious blow to a White House already reeling from the politically damaging effects of the slow government response to Hurricane Katrina, the continuing bloodshed in Iraq, the ongoing criticism of its since-repudiated claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and the bungled nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

The ethics findings may be particularly upsetting to a president who came to office in 2000 vowing to restore integrity and honor to a White House that he said had been tainted by the recurring scandals of the Clinton years.

Morin and Deane fail to mention that the House majority leader has been indicted for money laundering and the Senate leader is being investigated by the SEC. Corruption isn't just a White House problem, it is a Republican problem.

Thirsty

This is round one in the water wars, which will make all the yak over oil look like baby talk in the decade to come.

States, Canada Move to Block Sales of Water

Sunday, October 30, 2005; Page A03

CHICAGO -- As clean, fresh water becomes an increasingly scarce commodity in many parts of the world, the fear is that thirsty eyes are turning toward the Great Lakes.

In 1998, a group of entrepreneurs won approval from Ontario to export Lake Superior water to Asia. And others discussed pumping Great Lakes water to the depleted Oglala aquifer in the Great Plains. Neither effort went anywhere.

But given that the dry southwestern United States is developing at a rapid clip and gaining congressional seats while the Great Lakes region is losing them, Great Lakes governors and Canadian premiers decided in 2001 to prevent any future large-scale water sales.

Final drafts of two agreements that would attempt to limit water diversions are to be finished by the end of the year.

Though no large-scale diversions are currently on the table, smaller battles over water diversion are raging.

The groundwater in Waukesha, Wis., is contaminated with radium so local officials have said they want to tap Lake Michigan. But because the town is outside the Great Lakes basin, it cannot access the water without approval from all eight governors of the states bordering the lakes. A legal fight is expected.

In Michigan, activists are furious that Nestl Waters North America is pumping water for its Ice Mountain brand from an aquifer that feeds Lake Michigan. A judge ordered Nestl to stop pumping, but an appeals court sided with Nestl. Then in May, Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm (D) used the rules process to require permits for pumping bottled water, and to mandate that water pumped in Michigan cannot be sold outside the Great Lakes basin.

I'm living in the Potomac watershed and we draw our water from the river. It needs to be heavily treated to be potable, and I filter mine to make it drinkable. There are a couple of thinks I invite you to think about before you next turn on your tap: where does your water come from? Do you know? How safe and adequate is the supply? What are the challenges the supply will face? What can you do about it?

Water, even before oil, will be the great conflict the US will face in this century, but no one is paying attention to it yet (unless you are in California.)

Down the Swirly

Kurds Reclaiming Prized Territory In Northern Iraq
Repatriation by Political Parties Alters Demographics and Sparks Violence

By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 30, 2005; Page A01

KIRKUK, Iraq -- Providing money, building materials and even schematic drawings, Kurdish political parties have repatriated thousands of Kurds into this tense northern oil city and its surrounding villages, operating outside the framework of Iraq's newly ratified constitution and sparking sporadic violence between Kurdish settlers and the Arabs who are a minority here, according to U.S. military officials and Iraqi political leaders.

The rapidly expanding settlements, composed of two-bedroom concrete houses whose dimensions are prescribed by the Kurdish parties, are effectively re-engineering the demography of northern Iraq, enabling the Kurds to add what ultimately may be hundreds of thousands of voters ahead of a planned 2007 referendum on the status of Kirkuk. The Kurds hope to make the city and its vast oil reserves part of an autonomous Kurdistan.

Kurdish political leaders said the repatriations are designed to correct the policies of ousted President Saddam Hussein, who replaced thousands of Kurds in the region with Arabs from the south. The Kurdish parties have seized control of the process, they said, because the Iraqi government has failed to implement an agreement to return Kurdish residents to their homes.

But U.S. military officials, Western diplomats and Arab political leaders have warned the parties that the campaign could work to undermine the nascent constitutional process and raise tensions as displaced Kurds settle onto private lands now held by Arabs.

"If you have everyone participating, it'll be a clean affair and you can accomplish your goals," said Lt. Col. Anthony Wickham, the U.S. military's liaison to the Kirkuk provincial government for the past year. "But don't go behind people's backs, which they have a bad habit of doing," he said, referring to the Kurds. "Does that bring greater stability to Kirkuk? No. It brings pandemonium."

In late August, Arabs shot and killed a Kurdish official who was chalking out settlements in Qoshqayah, a disputed village 24 miles north of Kirkuk. An Iraqi soldier was also killed and six Arabs were wounded in skirmishes with Kurds before U.S. and Iraqi troops restored order, arresting two dozen Arabs and cordoning off the village. Arab residents said it was the latest of several violent incidents between security forces in the area over the past two years.

"Our patience is about to end," said Hussein Ali Hamdani, a 64-year-old Sunni Arab tribal leader. "There are 137 houses in this village now and in each there are at least five" Kurds. "We will protect our land and not abandon it. It's our honor."

"The Arabs will not give up Kirkuk," said Mohammed Khalil, the leader of an Arab bloc within the Kurdish-dominated Kirkuk provincial council. "If America really wants to help Iraq, it will try to stop the Kurds from gaining control over Kirkuk, which would start a civil war."

U.S. military officials said they had sought unsuccessfully to persuade Kurdish political leaders to avoid repatriating Kurds onto private lands, a practice they said had inflamed tensions across the region.

You don't have to be some sort of military genius to notice that our little Iraq adventure is spinning completely out of control. Feith and Wolfowitz to the contrary, anybody who knows a shred of military history could have told that psychopath Rumsfeld that it would have taken a minimum of a half-million troops to take and hold Iraq. A half million properly equipped troops. As opposed to the third tour, badly equipped Guard and Reserve troops the Pentagon has impressed into service through stop loss we have on the ground "to finish the job" or whatever rationale Bush is using this week.

Why is it that we are in Iraq? I forget.

Note that this WaPo story is filed from their "foreign service." Whatever happened to their Baghdad bureau, hmmm?

The Cancer at 1600 Penn

A Leak, Then a Deluge
Did a Bush loyalist, trying to protect the case for war in Iraq, obstruct an investigation into who blew the cover of a covert CIA operative?

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 30, 2005; Page A01

Air Force Two arrived in Norfolk on Saturday morning, July 12, 2003, with Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff aboard. They had come "to send forth a great American ship bearing a great American name," as Cheney said from the flag-draped flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan.

Defending the war became the animating priority aboard Air Force Two that day. According to his indictment on Friday, Libby "discussed with other officials aboard the plane" how he should respond to "pending media inquiries" about the critic, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Apart from Libby, only press aide Catherine Martin is known to have accompanied Cheney on that flight.

The crimes alleged in Libby's indictment would come later. But the flight from Norfolk marked a transition in the four-month slide from politics as usual -- close combat in defense of the president's policies -- to what a special prosecutor described as perjury and obstruction of justice. Summer would give way to fall before Libby reached the point of no return, with his first alleged lies to the FBI. But he skirted the line soon after stepping off the aircraft.

That Saturday afternoon, the indictment states, is when Libby confirmed for Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and disclosed to Judith Miller of the New York Times the classified fact that Wilson's wife, who was known as Valerie Plame, "worked at the CIA." Just over two weeks earlier, after a previous conversation with Cheney, Libby had told Miller more tentatively that Plame "might work at a bureau of the CIA."

It may never be clear what drove Libby, the most cautious of Washington insiders, to take such risks, ostensibly to protect the administration. In a news conference Friday, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald described the question as unanswerable so far. "If you're asking me what his motives were, I can't tell you; we haven't charged it," Fitzgerald said. The obstruction of his inquiry, he said, "prevents us from making the fine judgments we want to make."

Libby's possible motive is only one of many unknowns left in the aftermath of Friday's indictment, which prompted the resignation of one of the most powerful figures in the White House and left the Bush administration reeling politically. Still to be determined is who first leaked Plame's name to syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak -- the original act that led to Fitzgerald's investigation -- and the roles of many other administration officials, including Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove.

Even so, the grand jury's 22-page indictment fleshes out a saga that has been largely shrouded for almost two years by grand jury secrecy. While Friday's disclosures allege no wrongdoing by Cheney, they place the vice president closer than has been known before to events at the heart of the case.

One notable disclosure is that Libby and Cheney made separate inquiries to the CIA about Wilson's wife, and each confirmed independently that she worked there. It was Cheney, the indictment states, who supplied Libby the detail "that Wilson's wife worked . . . in the Counterproliferation Division" -- an unambiguous declaration that her position was among the case officers of the operations directorate. That conversation took place on June 12, 2003, a month before the Norfolk flight and nearly two weeks before Libby first told a reporter about Plame's CIA affiliation.

I'm sure the Sabbath Gasbags are going to be filled with the same garbage. Look, people, Cheney and his ilk are going to fuck with you because they can. Period. This is not that hard to figure out. Get in the way of the cabal and your ass is grass. The faux naifs at the WaPo can't bring themselves to acknowledge this, which has been true since Nixon. Idiots.

The Poisoned Voter

Pombo Time

Published: October 30, 2005

Richard Pombo has had a hard time keeping himself out of the news lately. In late September, a watchdog group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named Mr. Pombo, a seven-term House member from California, one of the 13 most corrupt politicians in Congress. Three weeks later the Center for Public Integrity accused him of taking junkets paid for by the International Foundation for the Conservation of Natural Resources - the kind of organization, heavy with corporate donors, in which the word "conservation" is a wink to the wise. And last week the League of Conservation Voters accused him of selling out to a long list of corporate interests.

But what has really put Mr. Pombo on everyone's radar is the steady stream of environmentally destructive legislation flowing from the House Resources Committee, which he runs. The legislation would undermine environmental safeguards and raise broad new threats to endangered species and public lands.

Mr. Pombo, of course, makes no apologies. First elected in 1992 - he was a first-term city councilman in Tracy, Calif., at the time - he is philosophically an outspoken product of the extreme property rights movement. He once liked to claim, falsely as it turned out, that his rights had been trampled by environmentalists and by the provisions of the Endangered Species Act.

He came to Congress as a result of redistricting. With luck he will leave the same way. The 11th District, once largely agricultural, has been overwhelmed by development; and while the East Bay and Central Valley are still nominally Republican, it is far from certain that they will continue to support a man of Mr. Pombo's radical turn of mind.

In 2003, thanks to the support of the hard-nosed Republican leader Tom DeLay, he became, at age 42, the Resources Committee chairman and thus the bottleneck through which most legislation involving energy and the environment must pass. Mr. Pombo has more than lived up to Mr. DeLay's expectations, pure in ideology, tough in legislative combat.

In September, he engineered floor approval of a bill that would completely undermine the Endangered Species Act, which is something he has wanted to do since arriving in Washington. And last week, in a tour de force, he engineered committee approval of a budget bill that is ostensibly meant to raise federal revenues but in fact represents a major assault on the public lands.

In its original form Mr. Pombo's bill called for the sale of 15 national parks. He withdrew that idea - a stunt, he says - as well as the notion of selling mineral rights within the parks. He now proposes allowing mining companies to buy lands on which they have staked claims. This practice, known as "patenting," was banned in 1995, and under present rules companies can only lease federal land.

Mr. Pombo says his proposal will help the federal budget because companies will have to pay $1,000 an acre to buy the land. But the provision is so vaguely drawn - companies, for instance, will not have to show that the land contains valuable minerals - that it could potentially expose hundreds of millions of acres, including the national forests, to development. This has nothing to do with mining, and everything to do with stealing land that is owned by the American public.

If his district is big on the complete rape of the environment, he'll be re-elected. This is a wingnut who is so in the bag for corporate interests that I doubt he remembers he has constituents who are just, you know, voters. Poison 'em all!

Great Second Acts

In Italian cooking, there are second acts, and here is one. After you've served the pasta or the soup, here is an entree with some meat on its bones.

In Italian resaurants, the menu will often be divided into first and second plates. This is a classic second plate.

Chicken Breasts with Mustard Sauce, or: Petti di Pollo in Salsa di Senape
Your Guide, Kyle Phillips
: The most common use for mustard in Italy is probably to make mostarda, the pungent fruit in syrup whose zing is such a perfect complement to boiled meats in the winter. However, one does occasionally come across other recipes that call for mustard, and this summery one caught my eye. To serve 4 you'll need:

INGREDIENTS:

* 2 small chicken breasts (about a pound, or 500 g, in all), halved and butterflied
* 1 tablespoon mustard, mild or strong as you prefer
* 1 tablespoon vinegar, ideally white wine
* 2 tablespoons olive oil
* A small bunch of parsley, minced
* Salt and pepper to taste

PREPARATION:
Whisk the olive oil, mustard, and vinegar to make a homogenous sauce and stir the parsley into it. Lightly pound the chicken to spread the slices, season them with salt and pepper, and grill them over the coals or on a cast-iron grill for 3-5 minutes or until done, turning them once midway through. Serve them hot with their sauce.

Serve with grilled veggies and herbed rice. This is an easy weekday dinner. And, oy, does it taste good.

A Hero for our Time

I have got to get my hands on these.... someone tell my wife.

Mandela's comic role means 'fame at last' for a modest hero

FRED BRIDGLAND
IN JOHANNESBURG
October 29, 2005

NOTING with typical self-deprecatory wit that at last he might become famous, Nelson Mandela yesterday launched a comic book series tracing the 86 years of his remarkable life.

"You know you are really famous the day you have become a comic character," he said as he presented The Madiba Legacy Series. Madiba is the affectionate family name by which South Africans know Mr Mandela.

The first of the nine comic books has an initial print-run of a million, of which half a million will be presented free to South African schools. The final part will be published in 2007.

Mr Mandela, who spent 27 years behind bars after narrowly avoiding death by hanging for trying to overthrow the apartheid government, is portrayed as a precocious youngster with a rebellious streak. Indeed, the name he was given at birth in 1918, Rolihlahla, means "troublemaker". Nelson was added only when he went to school.

The comic does not avoid the painful question of the tradition in the Xhosa tribe of circumcising teenagers as an entry to adult life. "As a Xhosa, I count my years as a man from the date of my circumcision," says the comic book Mandela. "Flinching or crying under the blade was a sign of weakness and stigmatised one's manhood." As the cut is administered, the comic book Mandela says it was "as if fire was shooting through my veins. Now I might marry, set up my own home and plough my own field."

Mr Mandela, dressed in a gold shirt that fellow comic book hero Superman might have envied, told reporters the strips were aimed mainly at youngsters. He hoped they would be encouraged to move on and read "really good books".

Mr Mandela added: "If it is easy to read for other people like me, with eyes not like they used to be, and it reaches entirely new readers, then the project will prove to be worthwhile."

It is just in America where we are obsessed with the idea that comics are for kids only, while they work for all age groups. In Japan, the adults consume piles and piles of manga (graphic novels) on every subject know to literature. Comics though can provide a bridge for the reluctant reader since there are pretty pictures for them to look at. In many ways, this project reflects the hopes and dreams of many people who love comics, like Scott McCloud who wrote one of the great studies of the field, Understanding Comics .

I wonder if we could convince public libraries to get these. I can certainly think of worse ways to spend our taxpayers' money than to educate the public about the complex and amazing life of one of the great leaders of our time.

Baby Steps

Kashmir Border to Be Opened for Quake Aid

By REUTERS
Published: October 30, 2005

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sunday, Oct. 30 (Reuters) - Rivals India and Pakistan agreed Sunday to open the border dividing Kashmir, to allow earthquake survivors and relief supplies to cross.

The accord to open the border on Nov. 7 is politically significant for old enemies who have been talking peace for almost two years.

And it will be logistically helpful in getting aid to isolated villages in the mountains near the five points where the border will be opened.

A joint statement issued in the early hours of Sunday called the move "a humanitarian gesture."

The opening of the border, which is called the Line of Control, may help to dispel perceptions that India and Pakistan have been wasting time criticizing each other during the disaster, and will lift the spirits of Kashmiri families who will be allowed to see kin on the other side.

Ok, it's a start. Granted, Pakistan and India are still having problems working together despite this crisis, but considering how close they were to open warfare, with potential use of nukes, the fact that they are working together at all is significant.

I know many of us are tapped out of donations with all of the natural disasters that have struck in the last few months, but winter is coming to the Himalayas soon so any relief you can give through various charities is badly needed. Much like they say on the NPR pledge drives, any amount can help.

The New Single Mother

Births to Unmarried U.S. Women Set Record

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer

Friday, October 28, 2005

Nearly 1.5 million babies, a record, were born to unmarried women in the United States last year, the government reported Friday. And it isn't just teenagers any more.

"People have the impression that teens and unmarried mothers are synonymous," said Stephanie Ventura of the National Center for Health Statistics.

But last year teens accounted for just 24 percent of unwed births, down from 50 percent in 1970, she commented.

The increases in unmarried births have been among women in their 20s, she said, particularly those 25 to 29.

Many of the women in that age group are living with partners but still count as unmarried mothers if they haven't formally married, Ventura noted.

Among teens, more than 80 percent of mothers were unmarried.

There were 1,470,152 babies born to single women in 2004, 35.7 percent of all births in the country, NCHS said. That was up from 1,415,995 a year earlier.

Births to older women continued to increase, Brady Hamilton of NCHS pointed out, reflecting choices these women are making in terms of careers and having families.

The birth rate for women aged 35 to 39 increased 4 percent from 2003 to 2004. It was up 3 percent for women aged 40 to 44 and 9 percent for those 45 to 49.

The article has some other interesting demographic statistics to it and makes me wonder how long it is going to take our leaders to understand how important the :kitchen table" issues are for families today.

It's really easy to run again the evil "single mother", especially if you put in the picture of someone in a trailer park or a rebellious teen, but as these stats show, that's not so much the case anymore. More to the point, society has to adapt to these changes and fast.

Issues like affordable health and child care are a MUST. A family should not have to spend 1/2 of it's monthly income on these two areas (we do, but we also have twins) because if they do, then you can kiss affordable housing good bye. And if that's the case, then what kind of school district will they be in? What is it costing the employer in the form of a distracted and worried employee who is not as productive?

You would think this is a no-brainer of an issue, so where are the politicians? I'd take this and the debacle in the Middle East as the central planks for a run at Congress if I had a couple million floating around.

In the Wings

Appellate Judges Cited as Focus of New Search
Supreme Court Candidates on Short List Were Vetted This Summer, Sources Say

By Jo Becker and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 29, 2005; Page A04

With President Bush expected to pick a new Supreme Court nominee within days, several sources close to the selection process said the White House is focusing on a short list of appellate court judges vetted this summer before he nominated John G. Roberts Jr. to the high court.

The administration has backed away from any insistence that the nominee be a woman or a minority. Rather, it is focused on potential nominees who have previously won Senate confirmation, whose intellectual qualifications would be unquestioned and who have paper trails that make clear their conservative credentials, said one source who is close to the nomination process.

Those candidates, according to the sources, include several federal appellate judges, among them: Samuel A. Alito Jr., J. Michael Luttig, Michael W. McConnell, Emilio M. Garza, Priscilla R. Owen and Edith H. Jones. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the private nature of the discussions.

By focusing on such candidates, the Bush administration is shifting to what one source described as President Ronald Reagan's doctrine of picking justices. "The nominee can't be a stealth candidate for a number of reasons," the source said. "There are very, very few people who have the kind of credentials that the administration can put up in this environment that would not have a record."

The administration's efforts are in line with demands by conservatives on both sides of the fractious debate that doomed White House Counsel Harriet Miers's Supreme Court nomination. The conservatives are urging Bush to brush aside any concerns about triggering a polarizing confirmation battle with Senate Democrats and to pick a candidate who has displayed a long, stark record of conservative legal thought.
....
Alito, a former federal prosecutor, has strong enough credentials to satisfy and reunite Bush's conservative base, which fractured over the Miers nomination. Nicknamed "Scalito" for his philosophical similarities to Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative darling, Alito has the type of lengthy record that should please many conservatives.

In Planned Parenthood v. Casey , for instance, he was the sole dissenter when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit struck down a Pennsylvania law that required women seeking abortions to consult their husbands. But supporters say that Alito's varied record, affable demeanor and reputation for intellectual vigor would make him difficult to attack as an ideologue.

"The reason his name is popping up is he's probably the closest thing out there to John Roberts," said former Bush White House associate counsel Bradford A. Berenson. "And he's got even more of a full record that people on both sides of the aisle can evaluate."

Adding to the speculation were reports by those close to the process that Alito arrived in Washington Thursday night. Asked why the judge came to town and whether he was in chambers yesterday, Alito's clerk laughed and said he would have to take a message. The White House, meanwhile, declined to comment.

He's a cultured and affable wingnut.

See no evil, speak no good

UN presses China for more details on bird flu scare

Fri Oct 28, 2005
By Lindsay Beck

BEIJING (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) pressed China on Friday to provide information on a 12-year-old girl who Chinese officials say died of pneumonia, but who was initially suspected of contracting deadly bird flu.

"After SARS they know they should really provide timely information about what is going on," WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a news briefing in Geneva.

China was accused in 2002 of covering up the extent of an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in the south of the country, contributing to its eventual spread to 8,000 people around the world, 800 of whom died.

WHO officials say the H5N1 strain of bird flu is far more lethal than SARS. While SARS had a mortality rate of around 15 percent, H5N1, which has now spread from Asia to Europe, kills up to a third of people it infects.

Since last week China has revealed three outbreaks of the H5N1 virus that killed 3,800 chickens, ducks and geese.

But another WHO spokeswoman, Maria Cheng, said Chinese officials had as yet provided no information on the death of the 12-year-old girl on October 17 in southern Hunan province, the site of China's latest bird flu outbreak.

The girl's 9-year-old brother is reported to be in a stable condition in hospital, also with pneumonia.

"We need more clarification because both apparently had been exposed to sick chickens," Cheng said.

Some Chinese media reports have said the girl's body was cremated and it was unclear what samples were taken, Cheng said.

A Chinese Health Ministry official, Chen Xianyi, told reporters the girl and her brother had contracted pneumonia. "There have been no cases of human infection of H5N1," he said.

China has reported no human bird flu infections since the latest H5N1 outbreak first surfaced in Asia in late 2003. Since then, 62 people have died in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia and the virus has spread to Europe's eastern border.

Farmers in China, as in many parts of Asia, live alongside their poultry and other livestock, increasing the chances of the disease spreading to humans, experts say. It also raises the chance of the virus mutating into a form that could spread easily among people, triggering a pandemic. Millions could die.

You would think the Chinese officials would have learned their lesson from SARS.

The Glaringly Obvious

Poll: Bush losing support from military
Members disapprove of way war is handled

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHARLOTTE

More than half of North Carolina military members surveyed in the latest Elon University poll disapprove of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and his overall job performance.

Nearly 53 percent of military members said they strongly disapproved or disapproved of Bush's handling of his job. Just more than 56 percent of the same group strongly disapproved or disapproved of how he has dealt with the Iraq war.

Overall, 53 percent of those surveyed for the poll released yesterday did not approve of Bush's job performance, while 57 percent did not approve of his handling of the Iraq war.

"We see that those most involved in the Iraq situation, the military, are not so different from the general public after all and share the same concerns about Iraq," said Hunter Bacot, the poll's director. "Conventional wisdom might suggest that the military would be more supportive of Bush in Iraq, but that simply isn't the case if you look at the numbers."

North Carolina has one of the nation's largest military presences, with major Army, Marine and Air Force installations based in Eastern North Carolina. Active-duty and reserve units from North Carolina have seen extensive action since the United States attacked Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Of the 539 adults surveyed for the Elon poll, 80 - or 14.8 percent of the sample - were active-duty, reserve, retired or veteran members of the military.

Um, when you are IED bait for no detectable good reason, you just might have an opinion about it.

Wheels Within Wheels

Via Suze:

'Official A' stands out in indictment

By PETE YOST
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

WASHINGTON -- In a sign of the trouble lingering for the Bush administration, the indictment handed up Friday in the CIA leak probe refers to someone at the White House known as "Official A."

The unidentified official could become a courtroom witness against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who left his job as vice presidential aide shortly after his indictment on charges of obstruction of justice, making false statements and perjury.

Several other unnamed officials mentioned in the indictment were identified Friday afternoon by Justice Department officials.

But not "Official A."

The mysterious official is identified in the indictment only as "a senior official in the White House."

No mention is made of Karl Rove, the president's political adviser who remains under investigation by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.

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It has been known that columnist Robert Novak spoke to Rove on July 9, 2003, saying he planned to report over the weekend that Valerie Plame, the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, had worked for the CIA. Rove told the columnist he had heard similar information.

Friday's indictment says "Official A" is a "senior official in the White House who advised Libby on July 10 or 11 of 2003" about a chat with Novak about his upcoming column in which Plame would be identified as a CIA employee.

Late Friday, three people close to the investigation, each asking to remain unidentified because of grand jury secrecy, identified Rove as Official A.

It looks like someone pleaded down. And dumped it all on Libby, who is covering for his boss. This may be mostly over, but the layers haven't all been plumbed.

The No-Naval Gazing White House

A New Moment of Truth For a White House in Crisis

By Dan Balz and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 29, 2005; Page A01

With yesterday's indictment of Vice President Cheney's top aide, President Bush's administration has become a textbook example of what can go wrong in a second term. Along with ineffectiveness, overreaching, intraparty rebellion, plunging public confidence and plain bad luck, scandal has now touched the highest levels of the White House staff.

Not surprisingly, Democrats were quick to condemn the president and his administration over the perjury and obstruction indictments of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. But even some Republicans suggested that the president and his team will have taken away the wrong lesson if they conclude that, other than the personal tragedy of Libby's indictment, the long investigation changes nothing of significance.

House Government Reform Committee Chairman Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) was stinging, saying he was "very disappointed in Libby, and the White House, and the vice president and the president."

"They should have taken care of this a long time ago," Davis said in an interview. "They should have done their own investigation. They're going to get very little sympathy on Capitol Hill, at least from me. . . . They brought this on themselves."

The indictment of Libby, but no colleagues, was not the devastating blow that some in the administration had feared. But the action of Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald nonetheless added to the sense that this is now an administration staggering to regain its equilibrium. The question now facing the embattled president is whether he will use this moment of vulnerability to reflect on what has gone wrong this year and why, and then look for ways to regain his effectiveness.

As you read all of this, keep a few things in mind (methinks that Bumpers can walk and chew gum.) The WH press corps are openly obsequieous as they seek to keep access to "senior White House officials." The military and the intel services are in open revolt against Bush and seeking to bring him down (this is true.) Tom Davis may be aggreived, but, as the chair of a powerful House committee, will he bring an investigation? No, he won't.

Balz and Eilperin suggest that this is a moment for self-reflection on the part of GWB. Pardon me while I blow coffee out of my nose. Preznit Flightsuit hasn't demonstrated that, in 56 years, he has any skills in that direction.

Reporters on Reporters

Novel Strategy Pits Journalists Against Source

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and ADAM LIPTAK
Published: October 29, 2005

In pressing his indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr., the special prosecutor is pitting three prominent journalists against their former source, a strategy that experts in law and journalism say has rarely been used or tested.

It is all but unheard of for reporters to turn publicly on their sources or for prosecutors to succeed in conscripting members of a profession that prizes its independence.

Yet Mr. Libby's trial on perjury and obstruction charges will largely turn on whether jurors are more inclined to believe a government official who played a critical role in devising the justifications for the Iraq war or members of a profession whose own credibility has been under assault.

"We don't have much of a track record," said Jeffrey H. Smith, a former general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency, "because journalists so rarely testify."

The three reporters all initially resisted subpoenas for their testimony, hoping to avoid not only testifying before the grand jury but also having to appear as a prosecution witness at trial. Such challenges have often been successful in the past. But all of them lost, and ultimately relented, saying that Mr. Libby had granted them permission to testify about confidential conversations.

"This is exactly the thing," said Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota, "that journalists fear most - that they will become an investigative arm of the government and be forced to testify against the sources they've cultivated." While the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, is all but certain to call at least some of the reporters as witnesses, whether they will be judged credible is an open question.

Relying on the journalists - Tim Russert of NBC News, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of The New York Times - will present Mr. Fitzgerald with challenges, said William E. Lawler III, a former federal prosecutor in Washington.

"Tim Russert, for instance, on the one hand is someone used to communicating well, is recognizable and is probably well liked," Mr. Lawler said. "On the other hand, the media is not universally beloved these days."

Mr. Russert addressed the case briefly on NBC yesterday.

"Clearly the special counsel has made a judgment," Mr. Russert said, "that when taking the comments and statements of Matt Cooper and Judy Miller and myself as opposed to Scooter Libby, he has decided that Mr. Libby was not telling the truth."

Richard A. Sauber, a lawyer for Mr. Cooper, said that the trial would not turn on personalities involved. "Atmospherics can make a difference when the case is on the margin," he said. "I don't know that this is really that kind of case."

Mr. Fitzgerald has gathered documents and other evidence showing that Mr. Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, learned of the identity of a C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, weeks before he talked with the three reporters. But, according to the indictment, Mr. Libby told the grand jury that the information came from Mr. Russert.

The reporters fought subpoenas, arguing among other things that they should not be converted into an investigative arm of the government. All eventually testified, relying, they said, on Mr. Libby's permission.

Mr. Russert's testimony, in August 2004, was particularly noteworthy. As part of a deal with Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Russert testified only to his end of a July 2003 conversation with Mr. Libby. According to a statement issued by NBC News at the time, Mr. Russert said he did not provide information about Ms. Wilson to Mr. Libby. Indeed, this statement said, Mr. Russert said that he had first learned of Ms. Wilson's identity on July 14, 2003, when it was disclosed by Robert D. Novak in his column.

Only with yesterday's indictment, however, did it become clear just how crucial reporters will be to proving the case, Professor Kirtley said.

"They were used to get the indictment," she said of the reporters, "and will be a central part of how the prosecution proceeds."

Floyd Abrams, the First Amendment lawyer, said he could not recall a previous case that depended so heavily on testimony by reporters or in which reporters could be so exposed.

"It's troubling that reporters are being asked to play so central a role, but even more troubling that reporters may be obliged to play the role of testifying against someone that they had promised confidentiality to," said Mr. Abrams, who has at various times represented The New York Times, Time, Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper.

This is Kit Seelye and Adam Liptak, both of whom have something less than sterling reputations with me at the Washington bureau of the NYT. If they are correct, Fitz is going to have one hell of a time making a case. I read them as just another arm of the opinionate, rather than real reporters, however.

Try Not To Laugh

Sauerbrey's experience challenged in hearing

10/26/2005

WASHINGTON (AP) - Ellen Sauerbrey, a Republican loyalist chosen by President Bush to head the State Department's refugee program, is the latest nominee to face tough questions from senators about her qualifications.

The State Department's refugee and migration program needs a chief with experience handling crises of displaced people, Democrats said Tuesday.

"It doesn't appear that you have very specific experience," said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., during Sauerbrey's confirmation hearing before the Foreign Relations Committee.

Sauerbrey, a two-time Republican candidate for Maryland governor who ran Bush's 2000 campaign in the state, said she had the management, budgetary and humanitarian experience of three decades of public service and, currently, as U.S. envoy on women's issues to the United Nations.

Sauerbrey is expected to win confirmation despite the questions, with a committee vote as soon as next week.

She's a ditz who ran two completely inept campaigns in Maryland with absolutely no background in refugee issues. She's another Bush crony appointment. It appears that refugees aren't interesting enough to arouse any Dem opposition. Until they get some interest in something besides the same corporate agenda that run the Repubs, they are just another branch of the same party. Where is the loyal opposition? We don't have one, we just have a minor branch of government who gives people like Sauerbrey a pass. If Congress cared about you or me, they'd install people who could actually pass the HR process out here in the field. Sauerbrey's CV sure as hell wouldn't get her hired in any refugee agency that I know of.

Focus, group!

Fitzgerald Speaks, Up to a Point

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 29, 2005; Page A01

For 22 months, Patrick Fitzgerald was an actor in a silent movie, saying little more than "good morning" while others raised questions about his hauling top administration officials before his secret grand jury. Yesterday, the prosecutor finally got his day in the court of public opinion.

Asked about criticism that he was a partisan on a witch hunt, the man who indicted a sitting White House official for the first time since the 19th century shot back: "One day I read that I was a Republican hack, another day I read that I was a Democratic hack -- and the only thing I did between those two nights was sleep."

Breaking his long public silence, Fitzgerald gave a 66-minute news conference yesterday explaining his case against Scooter Libby, the vice president's chief of staff. But his appearance was as much about answering the charge that will inevitably be lodged against Fitzgerald himself: that he exceeded his charter and brought charges on "technicalities" rather than major crimes.

The prosecutor had prepared his defense well. "That talking point won't fly," he said when a questioner raised the anticipated criticism. "If it is proven that the chief of staff to the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story . . . that is a very, very serious matter," said Fitzgerald, 44, licking his lips frequently and moving his eyes back and forth across the line of eight cameras. "The truth is the engine of our judicial system, and if you compromise the truth, the whole process is lost."

Fitzie, as some pals call him, came straight from prosecutorial central casting: He spoke with a street-tough Brooklyn accent and laid out his case with the matter-of-fact assurance of a police captain explaining how his officers gained entrance to the premises and apprehended the suspect.

Seldom glancing at notes and eschewing stage makeup, Fitzgerald expressed amusement with the attention he's getting ("I think someone interviewed the person who shined my shoes the other day") and a fierce determination to stay within what he called the "four corners of the indictment." Asked to compare his probe with that of Watergate or the Monica Lewinsky matter, he replied: "I don't even know how to answer that. I'm just going to take a dive."

In a political environment where prosecutions can become about the accuser as much as the accused -- a matter Ken Starr knows something about -- Fitzgerald's deft performance made it clear that the administration's defenders will have a difficult time presenting him as anything but clean and independent. The weight of his presentation could give pause to opponents who would say he brought charges only to justify the investigation.

If patience is a virtue, Fitzgerald is a saint. His message to the press is: keep the focus on this indictment, on these charges, against this individual. He knows if he gets this right the broader case will fall into place.

The Situation Room

Here is the morning read-around on the Scooter (can you believe an adult male has such a nick?) Libby situation:

The New York Times is sceptical. I wish they'd used some of that scepticism on Judy Miller, but it doesn't look like she'll be coming back.

The WashPo thinks they are digging but the article is by Balz and Eiperin, so it is surface deep.

David Savage and Harry Weinstein at the LAT do a marginally better job of reporting what we do know and what we still don't. I'm impressed that the LAT is building an investigative unit that makes the Beltway mob look bought. This is the most solid story of the three.

If you've scooped out that pumpkin, it is time to make pumpkin soup!

Steep Learning Curve

Power Slowly Being Restored in Florida

Friday October 28, 2005
By MELISSA TRUJILLO

Associated Press Writer

POMPANO BEACH, Fla. (AP) - Simple tasks like buying gas, cooking food and even turning on the lights got a little easier Friday, with power restored to nearly half the homes and businesses that lost it during Hurricane Wilma.

Lines still formed at gas stations early in the day, but there were more open than earlier in the week, the state Department of Environmental Protection said.

The department said oil companies got backup generators to their retailers, and the state's largest utility, Florida Power & Light, focused on restoring electricity to stations and supermarkets. Power returned for most of the fuel depot at Port Everglades, which supplies stations across South Florida.

President Bush got his first look at Wilma's damage on Thursday, taking a helicopter tour with his brother Gov. Jeb Bush. The president also visited the National Hurricane Center in Miami and made a surprise stop at a Baptist church where volunteers served storm victims a barbecued pork lunch.

``People are getting fed,'' the president said. ``Soon more and more houses will have their electricity. Their life will get back to normal.''

Risk Management Solutions, a risk modeling firm, said new estimates projected that Wilma's insured losses in the United States ranged from $8 billion to $12 billion, up from previous estimate of $2 billion to $10 billion. That would make Wilma the third costliest hurricane in U.S. history, after Katrina and Andrew.

In Florida, State Attorney General Charlie Crist said 279 complaints related to price gouging incidents had been made as of late Thursday. The punishment in fines ranges up to $15,000 per incident.

Local and county officials have complained about the latest federal relief effort, stirring memories of the criticism directed at Bush and the Federal Emergency Management Agency following Hurricane Katrina.

A day after nine of the 11 water and ice distribution sites in Miami-Dade County ran out of supplies, only one ran out Thursday, with four others running low.

Now, I'm the last person to expect the government to have instant supplies handy right after a hurricane hits. I lived through the fun and joy of Hurricanes Fran and Floyd here in the Raleigh area and know that it takes a while for damage assessments and to get people in place.... but....

You would think that after FEMA has gone through multiple MAJOR hurricanes in the last two months, including one that everyone knew where it was going to strike for over 5 days that they would have a better plan in place to deal with this. Yes, more people should have evacuated, but anyone who has ever lived in an area threatened by a hurricane knows that not everyone is going to leave, especially if the hurricane takes an unexpected twist.

It's funny that the media that jumped all over Nagin and Blanco are curiously silent since it's the brother of the President who is having these problems. In fact, many people are observing the difference in responses to the hurricanes this year and last year. I can't imagine what has changed... oh yeah, no election to rig.

And how about that financial situation at FEMA. I bet they aren't going to ask Florida to repay for damages and loans the same way they are of Louisiana.

Dress Codes

As a high school teacher, I'm very torn about dress codes. I know why they are needed but really wish that we did not have them and that students could be trusted to act properly. Furthermore, as a teacher, I have better things to do than to play "clothing police". For one thing, I'm not comfortable in telling a teen age girl that her shirt is too low or her outfit makes it look like she is *ahem* "open for business" for all of the boys. Quite frankly, I don't want, or need the hassle/potential lawsuit, of someone getting it stuck in their head that I take pleasure out of enforcing it. Likewise, we don't always have regular enforcement of it so what was acceptable in one room, isn't in another. And, there are 1st Amendment issues too, though I point out to the kids that they sign away most of their rights when they sign the code of conduct form for the school and that everything in there has been approved by the courts at some point.

But, the worst thing we have to do is sit through a mind numbingly dumb video explaining the dress code that we use from another school system in a different state. It's like the educational films that we were forced to watch as kids, but wanted to run and hide from but now we can't. Thankfully, my favorite vlog site got access to the one I had to sit through on dress code and decided to comment about it.

Go take a look and get a good laugh . They even link to the original one too.

Tom Delay and the Maxwell Corolary

I just love it when reality outpaces satire. Case in point:

Delay Blasts Democrats 'politics of destruction'

HOUSTON -- Representative Tom DeLay, indicted on charges of campaign finance violations, railed against Democrats yesterday, accusing them of engaging in ''the politics of personal destruction."

The Texas Republican, in a letter sent to constituents and contributors, connected his case with investigations into possible misconduct by White House adviser Karl Rove and Senate majority leader Bill Frist. ''What we're fighting is so much larger than a single court case or a single district attorney in Travis County," DeLay wrote. ''We are witnessing the criminalization of conservative politics."

You know, I had to check to see if this didn't come from the Onion but alas, it didn't.

For me, this reaches high enough to meet the Maxwell Corolary of absurdity.

The Maxwell Corollary came about due to something a Miss Maxwell did at work on day her Freshman year. You see, she couldn't stand her Freshman History teacher (not me, I didn't have her until Mass Media two years later) and so she decided to vent. So she went to her next class, English, and wrote the following missive on the board:

Mr. Sutton is Satan.
He teaches Bible History.
This is irony.

Now, not only is this how satan got his nickname (we even hung the sign from the Inferno over his door come exam time), but it also established the Maxwell Corollary for statements of obvious irony. That is, if it's so bad that it fits into that short statement, then everyone should be able to notice it and groan at it, especially if glaring hypocrisy is involved.

Guess what, Delay hit the mark for the MC and then some. Aside from that 37% or so that will believe anything these guys say, who honestly has forgotten about the way the Clintons, Gores, Kerrys, and even other Republicans were treated who dared to stand in their way. I realize he thinks his constituents are morons, but does he have to be this obvious. I would think that any self respecting, free thinking adult would be offended at this point.

I know Miss Maxwell would.

How Sad

Case of Gay Worshiper in Va. Splits Methodists

By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 28, 2005; Page A11

The man had been attending a Methodist church in South Hill, Va., for several months. He sang in the choir. He owned a business and was well known in the community. But when he asked to become a formal member of the church, the pastor turned him down, because he is gay.

Those are the bare facts of a case that has split a 650-member congregation in southern Virginia and that threatens to divide the 8 million-member United Methodist Church, the nation's second largest Protestant denomination.

Yesterday in Houston, the Methodists' highest court heard an appeal from the pastor of South Hill United Methodist Church, the Rev. Edward Johnson. He was placed on unpaid leave after he rejected entreaties from his immediate supervisor and his bishop to admit the gay man, who has not been named by church officials and has declined to talk about the case.

Nationally, the Methodist Church prohibits "self-avowed, practicing homosexuals" from serving as ordained ministers. But it has declared that gay men and lesbians are "persons of sacred worth" and has repeatedly said there are no bars to their participation as lay people.

"The theme of our church for five years now has been 'Open Hearts. Open Minds. Open Doors.' The issue here is, 'Are we really open or not?' " said the Rev. W. Anthony Layman, who was Johnson's district superintendent when the pastor was removed in June by a 581 to 20 vote of fellow ministers in the church's Virginia conference.

Johnson's legal counsel, the Rev. Tom Thomas, argued at yesterday's hearing that the Methodist Church gives its pastors sole discretion to admit or reject people as congregation members. He said Johnson believed that he could not, in good conscience, admit someone who acknowledged being in a same-sex relationship.

"Pastor Johnson was not drawing a line at a homosexual person, but at homosexual practice, which we think is an important distinction," he said in a telephone interview. "The first vow in taking membership in the United Methodist Church is to renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness and repent of your sins. The pastor felt that the person was not able to take that vow, because he did not honestly acknowledge that his practice was a sin."

Like other Protestant denominations, the Methodist Church has been fighting for decades over its understanding of sexuality and scripture. Its nine-member supreme court, the Judicial Council, also heard arguments yesterday about the Rev. Irene Elizabeth "Beth" Stroud, who had announced to her Philadelphia congregation that she was living in a "covenanted" relationship with another woman.

In December, a jury of 13 clergy members removed Stroud's credentials as an ordained minister. But a regional appeals panel overturned that verdict, citing legal errors in the trial and the ambiguity of a clause in the church's constitution that pledges no discrimination on the basis of "status."

I would like to think that in another generation, sexual orientation will cease to be an issue. I know a number of ministers who feel that way and refuse to engage in confrontation with their congregations over it. For the time being, this just makes me sad. As the Episcopal bishop of DC said a couple of years ago, "We've been arguing about this for 30 years. Isn't it time to just get on with it?"

Fitzmas

Perjury, false statements and obstruction indictments against Scooter Libby.

UPDATE: AP and CNN report that Libby tendered his resignation this morning.

Breaking the Code

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick frequently has insightful things to say about the politics of judicial nominations. Her contribution on the Miers situation is valuable.

Code Blue
What the Miers withdrawal means for abortion code-speak
.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005, at 10:52 AM PT

The epitaph for Harriet Miers' failed bid to be an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court should go like this:

Here lies the nomination of Harriet Miers
Oct. 3, 2005 - Oct. 27 2005
With her died the ability to speak about Roe in code

The Miers nomination went off the rails about seven seconds after it was announced, in large part because President Bush tried to mollify his base in code. The nominee had no background or record as a movement conservative and no written promises to be the kind of right-wing activist who would spearhead a Supreme Court counterrevolution. What she had—according to the president—was a "good heart." She was a religious person and she was loyal to him. That, Bush thought, would suffice to assure everyone that she had it in for Roe v. Wade.

But it didn't suffice, because movement conservatives weren't willing to settle for a coded message anymore. They have built up a strong and capable stable of thinkers and jurists who are not speaking in half-promises or symbols. And they wanted a nominee with the brains and brawn to overturn Roe because it's bad law rather than just because it's "a sin." The code also didn't suffice because the right had heard the same coded promises about Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter—and had dejectedly watched them go on to uphold Roe. Sick and tired of ambiguous messages and middle-of-the-road nominees, they would not be placated by anyone who wasn't willing to say, as are Janice Rodgers Brown or Priscilla Owen or Edith Jones, that Roe must die now.

John Roberts was the last wink, or coded nominee, the far right will ever accept. Not because he won't prove to be as conservative as they hope. But because they held their fire on Roberts as a quid pro quo; they were assured that an Owen or a Michael Luttig would be their payback for that acquiescence. Bush's base never loved Roberts. They worried about his moderation and his caution and they worried about his possible softness on gay rights after it became clear that he'd been on the wrong side of Romer v. Evans—the 1996 gay-rights case out of Colorado. The outrage you saw over Miers was the outrage of a promise broken.

The vociferous demands by both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to see Miers' work product from her time as White House Counsel reveal that coded messages are not doing it for either side anymore. The same GOP senators who would have fought to the death to keep John Roberts' work product secret were clamoring louder than anyone to see Miers'. Both sides needed to see tangible evidence of what she would do in the future because the currency of the wink died with Roberts.

Since the country broadly favors at least some rights to reproductive choices for women which include some availability of abortion, the right wing really does want to legislate from the bench against the will of the majority of the people. It's only judicial activism when our side does it.

My Tinfoil Hat

Jonathan Chait: Rove unmasked

There is a consistent pattern to Rove-driven decisions. He has an unerring sense of what the conservative base demands and what deviations it will tolerate. Rove may lose a battle every so often, but that happens only when Democrats have a chance to stop him (i.e., Social Security privatization). He always holds the Republican Party together. The result is sometimes a substantive disaster — no, make that usually a substantive disaster — but as a political formula, it works.

But in the case of Miers, Rove was out of the picture, distracted by his potential indictment in the Valerie Plame/CIA scandal. As the New York Times reported last week, "Some conservatives and Rove allies say [Chief of Staff Andrew] Card kept Mr. Rove in the dark about the seriousness of Mr. Bush's intentions until very late in the process, thus sidestepping the advisor who would have been best able to anticipate dissent among Republicans." This is what scientists call "isolating the independent variable."

The result was a disaster that bore none of the hallmarks of your normal Rove-driven strategizing. The outreach to the base was almost nonexistent. The smear campaign against the critics was clumsily handled. The Bush who made this selection bears almost no resemblance to the Bush we've grown accustomed to.

Ironically, the very fact that Rove is facing indictment is causing some of Bush's staunchest allies to admit Rove's influence at last.

In the latest issue of the Standard, Fred Barnes calls Rove "irreplaceable." Rove "made Bush more conservative," writes Barnes, and now that he's tied up with Plamegate, "Bush appears to be drifting ideologically."

What happened to Bush having thoughts of his own? I'll tell you what. Rove desperately needs conservatives to rally behind him to keep his job or maybe to stave off prison.

So now the pretense that Rove was never pulling the strings behind the surface has been dropped for the more immediate imperative of saving his hide.

All of this suggests two things.

First, if the Plame scandal takes Rove out of commission, Bush's second term might look awfully ugly.

And second, maybe we Bush-haters weren't just a bunch of paranoid conspiracy theorists after all.

I'll go Jon Chait a bit further: if you look at what GWB and the Repub Congress have done to this country, it is already very ugly and not going to be easy to undo.

The CW

National Journal's Congress Daily needs a subscription, so here is the bulk (within "Fair Use" guidelines) of their AM report on the Miers withdrawal.

Activists Say All Is Forgiven, If Bush Picks Stout Conservative Conservative groups said President Bush can quickly salvage his second Supreme Court appointment and rally his base -- if he heeds the lessons of withdrawn nominee Harriet Miers and selects a proven judicial conservative to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Bush allies who both favored and opposed Miers said they breathed a collective sigh of relief when she withdrew -- a step that sources said would allow conservatives to stop battling among themselves and regroup for an expected fight with liberal groups.

Judicial Confirmation Network attorney Wendy Long, whose group had initially spoken positively of Miers, said the nomination got "mucked up" and that her group's state-based membership became divided on her selection.

"It was a good development. It was the right thing to do," Long said. "The president has to get back on the tried-and-true formula ... highly qualified, proven candidates who share his judicial philosophy."

Long said Miers' confirmation rested too heavily on Bush's personal recommendation, rather than her record.

"The problem was, there wasn't a lot to go on, with her qualifications or aptitude," Long said.

Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, who has strong ties to conservatives and the White House, said a fight with liberal interest groups over Miers -- or whomever Bush appoints next -- was inevitable.

He said uncertainties about Miers' suitability for the court allowed liberal detractors to oppose Miers without engaging in the fundamental debate about judicial philosophy
.
"You're better off taking off the table all of the extraneous arguments," Norquist said. "The questions or concerns raised by the Miers nomination are gone."

Committee for Justice Executive Director Sean Rushton, whose group backed Miers, said her' nomination might have divided the conservative coalition, but it also sparked "a very intellectual and principled fight" that helped them distinguish themselves from liberals.

Many sources expressed regret that Miers faced such negative scrutiny, but said Bush made a mistake in trying to replace O'Connor with his White House counsel.

Conservative syndicated columnist Mona Charen said conservatives have been previously let down by Supreme Court appointments made by GOP presidents -- such as Justice David Souter -- and said they were not going to take that chance with the replacement for O'Connor, a key swing vote.

"I hope the lesson the president takes out of this is no more stealth candidates," Charen said. "She turned out, I think, much more liberal than even the president thought."

Charen was a leading member of Americans for Better Justice, which this week launched television and radio ads urging Bush to drop Miers.

She said it is better for Bush to accept defeat on Miers if it results in a stronger appointment and a chance to re-energize his supporters. "Sticking it out was dividing his base," she said.

Sources interviewed Thursday said they expect Bush to return to a list of well-vetted and established contenders that include federal appeals judges like Samuel Alito, Edith Jones, Michael Luttig and Michael McConnell.

Those interviewed also said conservatives poured few resources into backing Miers, leaving many groups with money available for a fight on Bush's next nominee.

Progress for America, which was among Miers' most ardent backers, fielded a run of cable ads, grassroots activity and surrogate speakers on her behalf.

However, sources said PFA's expenditure on Miers were far short of the $18 million the group said it had initially budgeted for a fight over the O'Connor vacancy.

Free Congress Foundation Chairman Paul Weyrich said conservative activists held a conference call Thursday and concluded their course will be determined by Bush's next choice.

"If he nominates someone who is good and with a track record ... and is someone that we can all get enthusiastically behind, all will be forgiven," Weyrich said. "If he gives us a nominee with no record and we keep finding out bad things, as we did with Harriet Miers, we won't."

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats and Republicans spent much of Thursday assessing the political fallout from Miers' sudden withdrawal and preparing for the fight over Bush's replacement nominee.

Democrats warned Bush that he must not give in to activists' demands that Miers' replacement be a hard-line conservative.

Saying "it is imperative that the president now focus on the future, and not the past," Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., warned that Bush "should take his time to carefully consider this next nomination."
Dodd also cautioned that picking an ideologue would be unwise.

"We need someone with judicial experience and independence who can bridge divides and not further deepen chasms that separate our people and nation," Dodd said. "Too much is riding on this nomination to fill it in haste."

National Journal represents the collective "inside the Beltway" perspective. Consider this the "conventional wisdom." I think it is a little harder to see if all the fractures in the right wing of the GOP are going to be healed by having Bush come up with the "correct" name. It looks to me like some real damage was done.

Fitzmas

The grand jury is meeting this morning and Patrick Fitzgerald has called a 2 PM EDT press conference. Be still my beating heart.

Back to Square One

Baker and Goldstein don't tell you, but this story is all leaks. It makes me wonder whose ox is being gored. Click on the link and read the whole thing, it's a fascinating study in inside-the-beltway journalism.

Nomination Was Plagued By Missteps From the Start

By Peter Baker and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 28, 2005; Page A01

For Harriet Miers, the "murder boards" were aptly named. Day after day in a room in the Justice Department, colleagues from the Bush administration grilled her on constitutional law, her legal background and her past speeches in practice sessions meant to mimic Senate hearings.

Her uncertain, underwhelming responses left her confirmation managers so disturbed they decided not to open up the sessions to the friendly outside lawyers they usually invite to participate in prepping key nominees.

It was clear that Miers was going to need to "hit a grand slam homer" before the Senate Judiciary Committee to win confirmation to the Supreme Court, as one adviser to the White House put it. "Her performance at the murder boards meant that people weren't confident she'd get the grand slam."

By nearly all accounts, the 24 days of the Miers nomination was hobbled by a succession of miscalculations. President Bush bypassed his own selection process to pick Miers, his onetime personal lawyer and White House counsel since February. His aides ignored warnings by some of the administration's closest conservative allies that she would prove difficult to confirm, and took for granted that its base would ultimately stick with the president.

And in perhaps the biggest misjudgment, Bush assumed that Miers would somehow shine in a Washington klieg light she had never before faced.

It did not take a call from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) to convince the White House that Miers's nomination was in trouble. By the time Miers withdrew her name from consideration yesterday morning, her own colleagues had all but despaired of rescuing her nomination. With top Bush aides facing possible indictment as early as today, the White House concluded that it was time to move on and brace for the more threatening crisis.

"This thing never got off the launching pad very well," said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because public airing of self-criticism is not encouraged in the White House.

"What we ran up against may be a different bar and maybe discomfort with the unfamiliar," another official said. "Did we learn anything? I don't know."

I don't see any signs that Bushco learns from their mistakes.

Reporting: the Sport

A Long, Rocky Road With 39 Months to Go

by TODD S. PURDUM
Published: October 28, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 - George W. Bush has been in the White House for 248 weeks, through a terrorist attack, two wars and a bruising re-election. But it seems safe to say that he has never had a worse political week than this one - and it is not over yet.

Harriet E. Miers arriving Thursday at the White House. She called President Bush on Wednesday night asking him to withdraw her nomination and delivered a formal letter of withdrawal Thursday morning.

"I think all bets are off," said former Senator Warren B. Rudman, Republican of New Hampshire. "Who knows what's next?"

The biggest question for Mr. Bush now is what he can make of the 39 months remaining in his presidency. For this horrible week has been months - even years - in the making. The 2,000th American fatality in Iraq was just the latest daunting milestone in a war that will soon be three years old. The C.I.A. leak investigation that threatens to indict a top White House aide or two on Friday grew out of the fierce debates over the flawed intelligence that led to that war.

And Harriet E. Miers's withdrawal of her nomination to the Supreme Court is the bitter fruit of Mr. Bush's own frailty in the wake of all those storms - and Hurricane Katrina - and of his miscalculations about how her appointment would be received.

His effort to avoid a fight by choosing a nominee with a scant public record (whose conservative fidelity only he could vouch for) instead prompted a ferocious backlash from the conservative activists he has courted for years.

"There's all this talk about the Republican base and the conservative base of the Republican Party, and the conservative base of the president and how it's important to play to the base and please the base and fawn over the base," said former Senator John C. Danforth, the Missouri Republican who was Mr. Bush's ambassador to the United Nations.

"And look what it gets President Bush," Mr. Danforth continued. "It just gets him a kick in the rear. That's what they've done to him, and they've done it to him at a time when he's vulnerable, and they've done it at the expense of a perfectly fine human being."

Some scholars and Republican elders say it is now time for Mr. Bush to do what Ronald Reagan did when the Iran-contra scandal threatened to derail his second term: shake up the White House staff, retool his domestic and foreign policy agenda and move on. But most say they see few signs that Mr. Bush intends to do so.

"Assume there are several indictments," said Richard Norton Smith, the head of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Ill., and a biographer of several prominent Republicans.

"The question becomes: Is there a Howard Baker moment?" Mr. Smith added, referring to the former Tennessee senator whom Mr. Reagan tapped as chief of staff to clean house. "And if there's a Howard Baker moment, who's Howard Baker? There aren't as many 'wise men' around Washington as there were 20 years ago."

Ms. Miers's withdrawal is all the more remarkable because Mr. Bush so seldom backs down. Again and again, he has racked up legislative victories that once seemed improbable, or at least managed to save face. His instinct, abetted by Vice President Dick Cheney, will once again be to grind out advances where he can find them.

In that sense, the abandonment of Ms. Miers seemed deliberate, an effort to shift the spotlight, however briefly, from the expected actions of the special prosecutor investigating the leak of a C.I.A. agent's identity, and reposition the president for a new confirmation battle with conservatives by his side.

But the president's second term legislative agenda is at a standstill on matters large and small. His hopes for overhauling Social Security are dead for this year; the goal of reshaping the estate tax stalled with Hurricane Katrina; and his administration was even forced to backtrack this week on its post-Katrina suspension of a law that requires paying locally prevailing wages for construction projects financed by federal money.

The White House had argued that suspending the law, the Davis-Bacon Act, could speed hurricane repairs. But critics, including some Congressional Republicans, complained that the administration was taking advantage of the disaster to upend a law important to unions.

Mr. Bush blamed Ms. Miers's withdrawal on Senate demands for information about her views on constitutional and legal questions during her service as White House counsel and in other top staff jobs.

I'm struck by the fact that the Times is having qualms about Bushco now, after having done so much to get him elected. The paper looks silly.

Info-Security: Pay Attention

Bird Flu Trojan Poses Danger To Word Users
Oct. 27, 2005

A new Trojan horse, dubbed "Navia.a" by Panda Software, uses avian flu-related subject heads to dupe recipients into opening an attached Microsoft Word document.
By Gregg Keizer
TechWeb News

Spammers and scammers have already used the public's fear and curiosity about the avian flu to spread their schemes, but now hackers have turned to the trick, a security company warned Thursday.

A new Trojan horse, dubbed "Navia.a" by Panda Software, uses subject heads of "Outbreak in North America" and "What is avian influenza (bird flu)?" to dupe recipients into opening an attached Microsoft Word document.

That's when Navia.a goes old school: the Word document is infected with malicious macros.

One of the macros makes several Windows kernel calls to allow the Trojan to create, change, or delete files, while the second installs "Ranky.fy," another Trojan that opens a back door to the PC.

“Unfortunately, we were expecting something like this," said Luis Corrons, director of Panda's research, in a statement. "This is not the first time, and won't be the last, that writers of malicious code have taken advantage of people's misfortune and anxieties to spread their Trojans and worms."

Word macro threats were once among the most visible, and most dangerous, but have fallen out of fashion. The most infamous macro threat was the Melissa virus of 1999, which debuted a propagation technique -- grabbing e-mail addresses from Microsoft Outlook -- that's still used by most mass-mailed worms and viruses.

To protect against a macro-based exploit, Word users should make sure that the macro security level is set at "Medium," which triggers a warning when a Word document containing one or macros is opened, or "High," to disable macros entirely.

In Word 2003, the setting is under the Tools menu, in the Macro/Security item.

Update your A/V software, please. And if you aren't in the habit of checking in with Secunia, please get the habit, please.

Spouting

The hurricanes are going to limit the produce we can get from the gulf and florida, so California produce is in my sights. Here is a balsamic vinagraite I like a lot.

INGREDIENTS:

* 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
* 1/2 cup white balsamic vinegar
* 1 clove crushed garlic
* 1 teaspoon ground mustard
* 1 pinch salt
* ground black pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a small bowl, whisk together olive oil, white balsamic vinegar, garlic, and mustard powder. Season to taste with salt and black pepper. Stir in minced fresh herbs if desired>

If it gets much better than this, I don't need to know about it. Over fresh greens, this sizzles.

Hurricane Fatigue

Tropical Storm Beta Strengthens in Southwest Caribbean
By VOA News
27 October 2005

Tropical Storm Beta, the record 23rd storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, has strengthened since developing in the southwestern Caribbean late Wednesday.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center says Beta is expected to dump up to 25 centimeters of rain across western Panama, Costa Rica, northeastern Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Colombian islands of San Andres and Providencia.

At last report the storm was located 115 kilometers south-southeast of San Andres Island and about 260 kilometers east of Bluefields, Nicaragua. Forecasters say Beta is expected to continue slowly drifting north, bringing its center near San Andres on Friday.

Colombia has issued a hurricane warning for San Andres and Providencia. A hurricane watch is in effect for Nicaragua's entire Caribbean coast.

I never in my life so looked forward to the end of the hurricane season. This is nuts.

Robber Barons

Exxon Mobil Profits Soar on Surging Oil and Gas Prices

By VIKAS BAJAJ
and JAD MOUAWAD
Published: October 27, 2005

Exxon Mobil and other energy companies reported strong gains in their third-quarter profits today on surging prices of oil and gasoline both before and after the hurricanes struck the Gulf Coast.

The world's largest publicly traded oil company, Exxon Mobil said its earnings jumped 75 percent. Royal Dutch, meanwhile, said its earnings climbed 68 percent, and Marathon Oil said its earnings more than tripled.

Some of the increase in profits was attributable to rising oil prices this summer even before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck the Gulf Coast. After the hurricanes, though, the price of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other refined oil products soared because of shutdowns at refineries in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Exxon, based in Irving, Tex., outside Dallas, said the hurricanes took down 50,000 barrels of oil production a day and raised the company's costs by $45 million before taxes. Natural gas production fell 9 percent, to 7.7 million cubic feet a day.

The company's top executive appeared to address and deflect the public backlash that followed Katrina when gasoline prices soared past $3 a gallon in many cities.

"Following the hurricanes, Exxon Mobil maximized gasoline production from all of our refineries which were operating in the U.S., and increased imports from overseas affiliates to meet U.S. demand," Lee R. Raymond, Exxon's chief executive and chairman, said in a statement. "We acted responsibly in pricing at our company operated service stations, and we also encouraged our independent retailers and distributors to do the same."

But the news of the record profits by oil companies is sure to draw criticism by politicians and energy industry critics, who say the industry has not done enough to invest in increasing oil and gasoline supplies even as they earn billions of dollars.

Today, Exxon Mobil reported net income of $9.92 billion, or $1.58 a share, in the third quarter, up from $5.68 billion, or 88 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue jumped 31.9 percent, to $100.7 billion, from $76.38 billion.

The company's profits included a special one-time gain of $1.6 billion from the restructuring of the company's stake in a Dutch gas business. Without that, profits for the third quarter were $8.3 billion.

This year, Exxon Mobil's nine-month profits - $25 billion - are so far equal to those of 2004, already a record year for the company. Its sales are on track to exceed those of Wal-Mart this year.

Follow the link to see the profit figures for the other oil companies. Whatever happened to the excess profits tax? These guys had a license to print money before the hurricanes.

Pullback

Dan Froomkin's quick analyses are frequently spot on.

Strategic Retreat

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, October 27, 2005; 1:29 PM

Facing unprecedented ferocious challenges on a variety of fronts, the White House is suddenly adopting a shocking new tactic: Full-out strategic retreat.

Today's withdrawal of Harriet Miers's bedeviled nomination to the Supreme Court is, of course, Exhibit A. But there's also an Exhibit B: The White House's quiet but total cave-in yesterday, reinstating the wage protections for workers involved in Hurricane Katrina reconstruction. (More on that below.)

Strategic retreat of course has two parts. One is retreat. The other is strategy.

For the moment, the Miers withdrawal has certainly taken Washington wonkery's attention away from the looming indictments in the CIA leak case, which are now widely expected to come down tomorrow.

But think it through, and it seems obvious that the Miers withdrawal was timed not to distract from the indictments, but rather to be quickly overshadowed by them.

As Candy Crowley suggested on CNN, if there are indeed indictments tomorrow, the Miers withdrawal will be quickly forgotten. That wipes the slate clean, more or less, and gives President Bush an opportunity to pivot away from the leak scandal with a new Supreme Court nomination sometime in the next week or two.

CNN's Jeff Greenfield also noted that the Miers withdrawal headlines in tomorrow's papers will be a nice gift to Bush's conservative base -- on the very day indictments presumably come down and Bush really needs his most ardent supporters firmly in his court.

I can't possibly keep up with all the Miers developments today. For that, a good first stop is Fred Barbash's Supreme Court Blog on washingtonpost.com.

I should point out, however, that the White House's move today was both suggested and anticipated a week ago by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer . I quoted Krauthammer in my Friday column and then asked: "Would a Friday night be best? Or a really big news day?"

Answer: The day before a really big news day.

In the Larger Scheme of Things

Roche Suspends Tamiflu Shipments to U.S.

By BRADLEY S. KLAPPER
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 27, 2005; 7:23 AM

GENEVA -- Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche Holding AG said Thursday it had temporarily suspended shipments of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu to wholesalers and other private sector recipients in the United States to ensure that enough treatments will be available for the regular influenza season.

Roche spokesman Alexander Klauser stressed that the suspension would not affect the U.S. government's order for the drug.

"We have agreed orders with governments and we will fulfill them," Klauser said. "It is important that this is seen separately from the pandemic offers."

He said Roche's U.S. management proceeded with the temporary suspension because of the increased global demand for Tamiflu, the drug that experts believe would be most effective in treating a pandemic strain of flu. Demand has increased due to fears of the potential spread of bird flu.

"The priority is that there is enough Tamiflu for the people who need it at the start of the influenza season," Klauser told The Associated Press. "At the moment, there is no influenza currently circulating."

Supplies have become tight because governments and other organizations are stockpiling it in case the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu spreading from Asia to Europe mutates into a form that can pass easily to and between people, sparking a human flu pandemic.

Experts are pinning their hopes on Tamiflu to soften the impact of a pandemic. It would be used to treat the sick and those who have come into close contact them in hopes of saving their lives and stopping the spread of the virus while scientists rush to make a vaccine.

Klauser said the increased demand would mean that "over the next few weeks, limited stocks would be available in most countries."

He declined to comment on what the temporary halt in shipments would mean for U.S. pharmacies and wholesalers. The suspension was reported in Thursday editions of The New York Times.

On Tuesday, the Swiss drug giant's Canadian branch made a similar announcement that it was suspending private sales of Tamiflu in Canada until the flu season begins in December because soaring stockpile demand threatened the seasonal flu allocation.

Paul Brown, a vice president of Roche Canada, said they saw more demand for Tamiflu on one day last week than in all of 2004.

I can only say yet again: do not pin your hopes on Tamiflu. Prepare to not get sick instead. Wash your hands and keep them away from your face. Stockpile food and water.

Keep On Hand

Cash is king during power outages

Area banks said they had plenty of cash on hand to service South Florida's post-storm cash-based economy. Branch locations are opening and ATMs are coming on line with power restoration.

BY MONICA HATCHER

The good, old-fashioned greenback is making a comeback in South Florida.

Knocked powerless by Hurricane Wilma, scores of grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, and other retail outlets are operating on a cash-only basis. People are pulling the almighty dollar from their wallets again, instead of the almighty credit card, and heading en masse to the nearest ATM, which needs electricity to spit out 10s and 20s.

It's an unusual scenario in a society long-sold on the convenience of plastic. But banks in South Florida said they were ready to handle the largely cashed-based economy in the potentially powerless weeks ahead.

''We have not been experiencing any cash issues,'' said Washington Mutual spokeswoman Nova Barnett. ``We were well prepared prior to the hurricane's impact. We had stockpiled the cash.''

It's not as intriguing as it sounds. Banks generally ship cash receipts from their branches once a week. Miami-based TotalBank, for instance, simply canceled their shipment scheduled last Friday to ensure they had extra money.

''I'm probably OK . . . to carry me through the week,'' said Martha Guerra-Kattou, who oversees the bank's 13 locations.

Since many business clients are now tendering in cash, coffers at many banks are being replenished with large deposits made by those who don't want to keep huge cash receipts on location. ''We had one customer deposit $80,000 at one of our branches,'' Guerra-Kattou said.

On Wednesday, some of TotalBank's branches had to limit cash withdrawals to $300 per individual and $500 per business.

Keep this in mind: disaster planning for any crisis which might include power outages (from blizzards to pandemic influenza) means that you should keep a stash of cash in the house.

Gazing Into The Crystal Ball

White House Plans to Deflect
# If top aides are indicted in the CIA leak case, the administration strategy is to keep its distance.

By Doyle McManus, Warren Vieth and Mary Curtius, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — The prosecutor hasn't announced any indictments, but President Bush's aides and their allies in Congress are working on strategies to counter the blow if White House officials are accused of crimes.

The basic plan is familiar to anyone who has watched earlier presidents contend with scandal: Keep the problem at arm's length, let allies outside the White House do the talking, and try to change the subject to something — anything — else.

The White House doesn't plan to attack Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak investigation — at least not directly, several GOP officials said. Instead, expect Bush to unveil a flurry of proposals on subjects from immigration and tax reform to Arab-Israeli peace talks.

"We've got a lot of work to do, and so we don't have a lot of time to sit back and think about" possible indictments, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said Wednesday, reflecting the strategy. "We're focusing on what the American people care most about, and that is winning the war on terrorism, succeeding in Iraq, addressing high energy prices … and helping the people in the Gulf Coast region recover and rebuild."

Republicans outside the White House are pleading with Bush to act quickly and decisively if aides are indicted. "What is of most concern is that the president handle it properly — that he ask [officials who are indicted] to step down; that he not vacillate, not equivocate; that he be decisive," said Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), a leading Republican moderate.

"Changing the subject will not work," said David Gergen, a former aide to Presidents Reagan and Clinton. "Giving more speeches about Iraq or the state of the economy doesn't have the weight that action does…. It's dangerous for the country to have a disabled president for three years, and we're getting close to seeing that happen. I worry that they [Bush and his aides] are in denial."

And GOP pollster David Winston warned that discontent among Republicans in Congress was rising. "This is not the environment that Republicans want to run in next year," Winston said.

The immediate reason for Republicans' worries was the growing expectation that Fitzgerald, who is investigating the 2003 leak of a CIA officer's identity to reporters, was on the verge of issuing indictments. His probe has focused on the actions and statements of several high-ranking White House officials, including Karl Rove, Bush's top political advisor, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.

So far, the probe has attracted relatively little attention from the public. One recent poll found that 50% of those surveyed recognized Rove's name; NBC's "Today" show ran a three-minute primer on the case Wednesday morning called "Leak Investigation for Dummies."

But at a time when Bush's standing in public opinion polls has been battered by soaring gasoline prices and rising pessimism about the war in Iraq, the prospect that several White House aides might be indicted was being treated — despite McClellan's public dismissals — as a potentially major political crisis.

"We've had discussions; we've gamed out different scenarios," said one Republican strategist in frequent contact with the White House. "But to try to put together a big binder with 18 different tabs is a fool's errand at this point. There are so many different ways this could play out."

Some key elements of the post-investigation game plan have emerged, GOP advisors said:

• Any indicted White House officials would immediately step down, and Bush would quickly name their successors. If Rove is indicted, more than one person might take over his many responsibilities.

• The president and other White House officials would limit their public comments on the case. Outside interest groups and allies would do most of the talking.

• Whenever possible, Bush and other administration officials would try to change the subject. Among the issues the president plans to put atop his new agenda are spending restraint, tax changes and immigration. In addition, Bush's foreign policy advisors have discussed launching a more visible presidential effort to prod Israel and the Palestinians toward peace, one official said.

• The White House would try to insulate Bush from the scandal allegations. Officials would argue that the president has not been accused of any direct involvement in the leaking of information in the CIA case or subsequent efforts to minimize the political damage. Although it is not yet clear who would coordinate the defense, several advisors said they expected Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman would be heavily involved. One official said former Cheney aide Mary Matalin was another likely participant. Neither Mehlman nor Matalin could be reached for comment.

White House officials and allies are hoping that intensive news coverage of the Fitzgerald investigation will be short-lived. On Nov. 7, they predicted, attention would shift to the Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Harriet E. Miers.

"Let's say something happens in the next 48 hours," said one official. "It will dominate the news cycle until the 7th of November. Then a new cycle begins: Harriet will be the news."

Okay, what's plan B?

Looking for Hints

Via Suze:

The Washington Note's Steve Clemmons says:

New Information: First the Website, Now the New Office Space

Patrick Fitzgerald's intermediaries denied that there was any significance to the establishment of a new website, minimalist as it is, for the Office of the Special Counsel which is investigating the "outing" of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA responsibilities to the media.

Fitzgerald's people said that the investigation coming to a close and the website going up was just coincidence.

Well, news has just reached TWN that Patrick Fitzgerald is expanding not only into a new website -- but also into more office space.

Fitzgerald's office is at 1400 New York Avenue, NW, 9th Floor in Washington.

What I have learned is that the Office of the Special Counsel has signed a lease this week for expanded office space across the street at 1401 New York Avenue, NW.

Another coincidence? More office space needed to shut down the operation?

I think not. Fitzgerald's operation is expanding.

Steve includes a picture of the office building. This is very nice space.

At Last

Grand Jury Hears Summary of Case On CIA Leak Probe
Decision on Charges May Come Friday

By Carol D. Leonnig and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 27, 2005; Page A01

The prosecutor in the CIA leak investigation presented a summary of his case to a federal grand jury yesterday and is expected to announce a final decision on charges in the two-year-long probe tomorrow, according to people familiar with the case.

Even as Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald wrapped up his case, the legal team of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has been engaged in a furious effort to convince the prosecutor that Rove did not commit perjury during the course of the investigation, according to people close to the aide. The sources, who indicated that the effort intensified in recent weeks, said Rove still did not know last night whether he would be indicted.

Fitzgerald is completing his probe of whether senior administration officials broke the law by disclosing the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media in the summer of 2003 to discredit her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, an administration critic. The grand jury's term will expire Friday.

But after grand jurors left the federal courthouse before noon yesterday, it was unclear whether Fitzgerald had spelled out the criminal charges he might ask them to consider, or whether he had asked them to vote on any proposed indictments. Fitzgerald's legal team did not present the results of a grand jury vote to the court yesterday, which he is required to do within days of such a vote.

Yesterday's three-hour grand jury session came after agents and prosecutors this week conducted last-minute interviews with Adam Levine, a member of the White House communications team at the time of the leak, about his conversations with Rove, and with Plame's neighbors in the District.

Should he need more time to finish the investigation, Fitzgerald could seek to empanel a new group of grand jurors to consider the case. But sources familiar with the prosecutor's work said he has indicated he is eager to avoid that route. The term of the current grand jury has been extended once and cannot be lengthened again, according to federal rules.

The down-to-the-wire moves in Fitzgerald's investigation have made for a harrowing week at the White House, where officials are girding for at least one senior administration official to be indicted, according to aides.

Most concern is focused on Rove and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Both had testified that they talked with reporters about Plame in the summer of 2003, according to lawyers familiar with their accounts, but both said they did not discuss her by name or disclose her covert status.

Yesterday was another surreal day at the White House, according to aides, with staff members wondering about who might be indicted. Rove and Libby continued to sit in on high-level meetings.

"We certainly are following developments in the news, but everybody's got a lot of work to do," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.

A new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll reminded the White House of the damage the CIA leak case has already inflicted: Eight in ten people surveyed said that aides had either broken the law or acted unethically.

Fitzmas tomorrow!

This is Going to Leave a Mark

Statement by President Bush

Published: October 27, 2005

Following is a statement this morning by President Bush, as released by the White House.

Today, I have reluctantly accepted Harriet Miers’ decision to withdraw her nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States.

I nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court because of her extraordinary legal experience, her character, and her conservative judicial philosophy. Throughout her career, she has gained the respect and admiration of her fellow attorneys. She has earned a reputation for fairness and total integrity. She has been a leader and a pioneer in the American legal profession. She has worked in important positions in state and local government and in the bar. And for the last five years, she has served with distinction and honor in critical positions in the Executive Branch.

I understand and share her concern, however, about the current state of the Supreme Court confirmation process. It is clear that Senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House ­ disclosures that would undermine a President’s ability to receive candid counsel. Harriet Miers’ decision demonstrates her deep respect for this essential aspect of the Constitutional separation of powers ­ and confirms my deep respect and admiration for her.

I am grateful for Harriet Miers' friendship and devotion to our country. And I am honored that she will continue to serve our Nation as White House Counsel.

My responsibility to fill this vacancy remains. I will do so in a timely manner.

This is a badly wounded White House. I'm hearing that Fitzgerald will release his indictments tomorrow.

Ain't Over

With the withdrawal of Miers, a number of issues are left unresolved, including what information the Senate can request (and be given) by the executive. The Senate has legitimate questions in its advise and consent role to ask for documents that will speak to the judicial philosophy and history of any nominee. The secretive Bushco is historically stingy about sharing information. Miers had very little paper trail, and any believable next nominee will have to have some kind of judicial record. The paper trail will be the next battleground.

One Down

Miers's Autonomy Will Be at Issue
Panel to Question Her Judicial Reasoning

By Amy Goldstein and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 27, 2005; Page A01

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee warned Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers yesterday that he intends during confirmation hearings to probe her views of the Bush administration's detention of suspected terrorists in the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, making clear he remains uncertain of her command of complex constitutional issues.

Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) dispatched a letter to Miers, the White House's top lawyer, saying that she must also convince the Senate that as a justice she would be independent of President Bush and would not give him "any special deference" on cases before the court.

In particular, Specter said, he will press her to disclose her personal views of three recent Supreme Court rulings that detainees in the terrorism fight have somewhat greater rights than the administration has wanted to give them.

The new pressure from Specter, who will preside over the hearings that are to begin on Nov. 7, came as Republican senators and conservative groups voicing qualms about the Miers nomination grew louder. Her visits to senators on and off the judiciary panel are so far failing to win commitments of support, senators and their aides said.

Adding to Miers's burden, some opinion leaders and grass-roots organizations on the right said yesterday that they are troubled by her writings and speeches from a short-lived political career in Dallas and years as a leader of Texas's legal community. Disclosure this week of some of Miers's words from the 1990s suggest a liberal tinge and inconsistent thinking on social issues, they said.

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) emerged from a meeting with Miers yesterday to say that he is uncertain whether he could support her. Calling her engaging, Vitter said in a statement, "My central question still remains to be answered, however: Is there objective, written evidence from prior to her nomination that fully shows that she has a truly consistent and well-grounded conservative judicial philosophy?"

At least two conservative groups, which had taken a neutral position on Miers, called on her to withdraw yesterday, after The Washington Post published decade-old speeches. In one such speech, to a Dallas women's group in 1993, Miers said that "self-determination," not government, should guide the outcome of issues such as abortion and school prayer when law and religious beliefs collide in court. Those statements differed from the opinion Miers had expressed four years earlier when, as a candidate for the Dallas City Council, she told an anti-abortion group that she would support a constitutional amendment to ban the procedure, except to save a woman's life.

One of the new critics, M. Edward Whelan III, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, posted a memo on the Web saying, "Her comments reflect such a profound confusion, and such an inattention to the respective roles of the courts and the political branches, that they call seriously into question her fitness for the Supreme Court." And echoing the call for her to withdraw, Wendy Wright, executive vice president of Concerned Women for America, said, "Every time she quotes or cites women she admires, they're to the left of Betty Friedan."

Tony Perkins, the head of the influential Family Research Council, stopped short of opposing Miers's nomination outright but made clear his doubts were rising. The speeches "certainly tend to lean toward judicial activism," Perkins said.

In 1993, while she was president of the Texas Bar, Miers gave a speech titled "Women and Courage" during confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Miers praised both the nominee's courage and her selection by President Bill Clinton.

In another speech slightly earlier, titled "Women and the Law," Miers said she hoped that "before too long," the United States would have women as president and vice president. Referring to then-Gov. Ann Richards, a Democrat, Miers said, "You can hear, if you are listening, speculation that our Texas governor is destined to remove one or both of those positions from the list of 'never before held by a woman.' " Richards lost her 1994 reelection bid to Republican George W. Bush.

The controversy over Miers's old words came as Specter and the judiciary committee's ranking Democrat, Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), awaited a reply from the nominee, due yesterday, to a revised questionnaire about her background views. They denounced the original answers Miers turned in last week as inadequate.

I was listening to NPR last night during dinner and a boatload of conservative pundits condemned her as a closet liberal in her recent past.. Methinks GWB is going to have to get over it. Not that we'll love whatever wingnut he nominates instead, but I don't think Harriet is going anywhere.

UPDATE: NPR is reporting that Miers has withdrawn her nomination.

Pasta 101

I keep telling you to make fresh pasta but I've never given you a recipe. Here is one you can use with a pasta maker and food processor or with a rolling pin (which is the way I learned.) Until you've eaten the fresh stuff, you have no idea what you have been missing. It will add 30-45 minutes to your toil on one day and give you a freezer full of pasta so wonderful that you will kick yourself for not having it before. You can make this even faster in a food processor, if you have one.

Basic Egg Pasta
Ingredients

14 oz. (3 2/3 cups) all purpose flour
7 oz. (1 3/4 cups) Semolina
5 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp extra virgin olive oil

1. Combine flour and semolina on a large work surface in a mound.

2. Form a well in the mound and add the eggs, salt and oil.

3. Begin mixing with the fingers of one hand while using the other hand to push flour from the edges of the well into the egg mixture.

4. Continue mixing with one hand taking more and more flour from the interior of the well as you go and keeping the walls of the well intact with the other hand. At one point, the dough will be intact enough to fold the well over the dough so that you can continue mixing.

5. Form the dough into a ball and knead for 5 minutes or longer until the dough is smooth and feels silky.

6. Transfer to a bowl, cover and refrigerate for one hour.

7. Remove from the refrigerator and allow the dough to rest for about 15 minutes before rolling.

8. To finish pasta by hand roll it out with a rolling pin until quite thin (1/16 inch.) Cut the dough as desired.

9. To finish with a pasta machine, cut dough into quarters and form them into a rectangular shape that will fit in the pasta machine. Lightly dust the dough with flour and roll it through the machine, starting at the thickest setting. Then fold the dough once and roll it through the machine using the next thinner setting. Repeat this process until the pasta is the right thickness.

This will cook very fast, within a couple of minutes. If you are used to starting a pesto or other sauce while dried pasta cooks, you can't do this with the fresh stuff. It will demand your immediate attention because it will be done "al dente" almost before you can tooth-test it. Fresh pasta is also even "clingier" than the dried variety and will need your immediate attention as it drains in a colander after cooking. It needs to go onto the serving plates with sauce immediately, or to be covered with oil or butter before it is combined with its final destination. A couple of tablespoons will do, but they are not optional.

Fresh pasta, once dried, will keep in your freezer. Well, the target date won't matter because you will eat it long before the due date.

Fresh pasta, once made, needs to dry if you are going to store it. If you make it fairly often, drying racks that fit on your kitchen counters are available. If you aren't making it regularly, you can do what I do and use the laundry racks I use to dry my dainties. It's a bit of a tussle to keep the cats out of the bathroom where I do this, but in a couple of hours you will have pasta for months, the good stuff, locked down in freezer bags. Turn the exhaust fan "on."

And do keep the kitties (and puppies) out of the room. After which you have some good eating in front of you and, as I tell my cats, when mommy is happy, everybody is happier. Mommy is really happy with a freezer filled with fresh pasta.

We've got freeze warnings for tomorrow, so it is time to harvest the fresh basils and rosemary for the winter kitchen. They will be frozen down in many different ways. They will be plopped into a soup, a sauce or a chicken as a frozen icecube or as duxelles. Ah, duxelles, what a fine way to scent the house.

Exquisite Excess

Fettucine and Smoked Salmon with Vodka Cream Sauce.

I had this in a to-die-for version in a restaurant in Turin several decades ago and I've been trying to recreate the recipe ever since. This version comes close. Hint: spring for the best smoked salmon you can find, freshly sliced so thin that you can read a newspaper through it. Marinated gravlax will also work, but you'll need to adjust the seasonings to deal with the dill. Again, slice transparently thin. This recipe deserves your best pasta, so make it from scratch.

Cover with the most velvety salmon you can find.

1/2 cup of olive oil
1 tsp butter
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup fresh parsley
1/4 cup onions choped
1 large can whole peeled tomatoes
1 pint heavy cream
1/2 cup vodka
salt and pepper to taste

In a sauce pan, add oil, butter onions and garlic. Saute until onions are clear.

Add vodka, tomatoes and parsley. Slowly mix in the cream.

Salt and pepper to taste, add pasta, sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and serve.

This is so good that I'm struck dumb. Just make it.

FEMA Still Failing

Miami: Emergency Supplies Are Dwindling

Wednesday October 26, 2005 6:46 PM

By ALLEN BREED
Associated Press Writer

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - The mayor of Miami-Dade County warned that emergency supplies were dwindling Wednesday, a new blow to victims of Hurricane Wilma who had hoped to avoid another frustrating day of long lines for food and water.

At least one distribution site in Miami-Dade was out of supplies, and the other 10 were running low with material from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Mayor Carlos Alvarez said.

``We are not hoarding supplies anywhere. They have been distributed,'' he said. ``When this inventory runs out at these different distribution centers, we do not know and FEMA cannot tell us when they will be resupplied.''

He said it could be Wednesday night before the stocks are resupplied. ``I cannot give you a timetable because, ladies and gentlemen, quite frankly, we don't control those assets.''

Alvarez called the relief process ``flawed'' and called for more control and oversight.

FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews said she has ``seen the hundreds of trucks prepositioned'' at Homestead and in Jacksonville full of supplies. But she said she would check into the specifics of Alvarez's complaints.

Items Americans usually take for granted - a bag of ice, a fast-food burger, a gallon of gas - have taken hours of patience to get since Hurricane Wilma made its destructive sweep through southern Florida.

Police watched over the few gas stations that were open as a precaution in case motorists' tempers flared while they waited for up to five hours to buy fuel.

``I need gas for my generator so I can go to work and make some money,'' said Hector Vasquez, 36, who repairs windows. ``This shouldn't be this difficult.''

Florida Power & Light, the state's biggest utility, said Wilma affected more of its 4.3 million customers than any other natural disaster in the company's history. By Wednesday, service was restored to about 20 percent of the 3.2 million customers who lost service - but the company warned Floridians that total restoration may take weeks.

When category 1 Hurricane Isabel hit here two years ago, many of my friends were without power for more than a week. I can easily believe Florida P&L; will need weeks to repair the damage, southern Florida is among the most densely settled parts of the country. Given the amount of experience Florida has with hurricanes, you'd think that FEMA would have their act better together.

Page 6 Material

Senate May Probe Miers' Lottery Days

By LIZ AUSTIN, Associated Press Writer

AUSTIN, Texas - A Senate panel may seek testimony from a former Texas lottery official who claimed Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers let a company keep its contract because one of its lobbyists helped President Bush get into the National Guard in the 1960s.

Miers, whose confirmation hearings begin Nov. 7, chaired the three-person Texas Lottery commission from 1995 to 2000.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which will hold hearings on Miers' nomination, recently asked GTECH Corp., the Texas lottery's main contractor, whether it would object to testimony from Lawrence Littwin about allegations in his 1998 lawsuit against the company, GTECH spokesman Bob Vincent said Wednesday.

Littwin, the lottery's second executive director, was fired in 1997 after just four months on the job. He sued GTECH, saying it took "illegal, unethical and coercive steps" to get him fired because he was asking too many questions about the company's contract with the state.

He claimed the Rhode Island-based company kept its contract in exchange for former Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes' silence about how he had helped Bush get into the National Guard to avoid service in Vietnam. Barnes was a lobbyist for GTECH from 1991 until 1997.

Littwin, who signed a confidentiality agreement when he settled his lawsuit against GTECH, declined to comment other than to say he would agree to testify if subpoenaed.

Vincent said his company told the Senate committee that Littwin didn't need permission to testify because the confidentiality agreement he signed when he settled his lawsuit allowed him to discuss the issues with government authorities.

If the issues are raised at the hearings, GTECH will provide any additional information the senators need, Vincent said.

Is there anyone around Bushco that isn't tainted by some kind of scandal?

What It All Means

I learn something new from WaPo'sDan Froomkin nearly every day. This is from today's Live Chat, my favorite WaPo feature:

Sunnyvale, Calif.: Do prosecutors in this type of investigation typically send target letters to those who may/will be indicted? I assume that's what a target letter does. What's the benefit to the prosecution of target letters?

Dan Froomkin: Yes, target letters are pro forma in the federal system. They offer the targets a chance to come and explain themselves to the grand jury one last time if they so wish. And they give prosecutors cover from the accusation that they didn't give the defendant a chance to explain.

"Takings"

I'm sort of an agnostic on Kelo v. New London but I'll admit to a bias having to do with the fact that one of my grandfathers lost his homestead to the state of Minnesota for the widening of an interstate highway. He was 80, and hardly got rich in the deal. I have a healthy scepticism about the wisdom of governments to treat ordinary citizens well.

That said, I called a colleague for his take on this story, the neighborhood being one of the few truly integrated ones in DC. He said that this move is going to take out a bunch of crappy fast food places and mini-markets that sell junk to the black community and this is a good thing, as local governments usually compensate residents and business owners well above market value. He's a lawyer and knows more about this stuff than I do.

I'm fairly violently opposed to governments building and owning sports stadiums, and that colors my feelings as well. I'm not a sports fan, so this isn't a facility I'm ever likely to use.

D.C. Seizes 16 Owners' Property for Stadium
As Negotiations With City Continue, Tenants Given Three Months to Vacate Land in Southeast

By David Nakamura
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 26, 2005; Page B01

The District government filed court papers yesterday to seize $84 million worth of property from 16 owners in Southeast, giving them 90 days to leave and make way for a baseball stadium.

By invoking eminent domain, city officials said last week, they hope to keep construction of the Washington Nationals' ballpark on schedule to open in March 2008. The city exercised its "quick take" authority, in which it takes immediate control of the titles to the properties.

Under law, the property owners and their tenants must vacate the land within three months unless a judge declares the seizure unconstitutional.

In papers filed in D.C. Superior Court, city attorneys said: "The Properties subject of this action . . . are taken for an authorized municipal use, namely the construction and operation of a publicly owned baseball stadium complex."

A spokeswoman from the D.C. attorney general's office did not respond to a message left for her yesterday evening.

In all, 23 property owners control 14 acres at the stadium site near South Capitol Street and the Navy Yard along the Anacostia River.

City officials said they have agreed to buy land from seven owners, who were not named in the court filing. The city had offered them a total of $13 million, but it is not known whether that was the final sale price.

The other 16 property owners have not agreed to sell, and their holdings include some of the largest and most expensive properties: an asphalt plant, a trash transfer station and adult-oriented businesses.

Negotiations are continuing, city officials said. But M. Roy Goldberg, an attorney for Eastern Trans-Waste, the trash transfer station that the city valued at $8.7 million, said yesterday that the company intends to fight.

The company's owners have told the city their property is worth $14.3 million, plus $18 million if they cannot find another site.

"We're going to fight the amount of the taking and the way they've gone about doing it," Goldberg said. "I don't think they've been negotiating in good faith since Day One."

The city deposited the $84 million in a court-monitored trust. Property owners have 20 days to challenge the constitutionality of the takeover. As long as the District can show that the land was taken for a legitimate public purpose, the court probably will have no objections, land-use lawyers said.

Some activists have argued that the stadium is a private project for Major League Baseball, but District leaders say the $535 million project will create significant tax revenue. Developers have snatched up land just outside the stadium plot in anticipation of a waterfront revival, and the city is planning to create a "ballpark district" featuring restaurants and retail.

If the court does not block the city's action, property owners can continue to negotiate with the city, but in lieu of an agreement, a jury would ultimately decide the sale prices. But that could happen months, even years, after the owners are forced to leave, land-use lawyers said.

The city's offers for the land are about 2 1/2 times as high as the amounts that it had assessed the properties to be worth for tax purposes last year. But some owners said they want more money because owners of property just outside the stadium land have received higher offers from developers.

This isn't going to be over any time soon. The friend I consulted on this issue says that, typically, stadia are touted as engines of economic development. I dunno. Color me doubtful.

Above International Law

Oh, how I hate the "orotund and orbicular" language of the NYT op-ed pages:

Legalized Torture, Reloaded

Published: October 26, 2005

Amid all the natural and political disasters it faces, the White House is certainly tireless in its effort to legalize torture. This week, Vice President Dick Cheney proposed a novel solution for the moral and legal problems raised by the use of American soldiers to abuse prisoners and the practice of turning captives over to governments willing to act as proxies in doing the torturing. Mr. Cheney wants to make it legal for the Central Intelligence Agency to do this wet work.

Mr. Cheney's proposal was made in secret to Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who won the votes of 89 other senators this month to require the civilized treatment of prisoners at camps run by America's military and intelligence agencies. Mr. McCain's legislation, an amendment to the Defense Department budget bill, would ban the "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners. In other words, it would impose age-old standards of democracy and decency on the new prisons.

President Bush's threat to veto the entire military budget over this issue was bizarre enough by itself, considering that the amendment has the support of more than two dozen former military leaders, including Colin Powell. They know that torture doesn't produce reliable intelligence and endangers Americans' lives.

But Mr. Cheney's proposal was even more ludicrous. It would give the president the power to allow government agencies outside the Defense Department (the administration has in mind the C.I.A.) to mistreat and torture prisoners as long as that behavior was part of "counterterrorism operations conducted abroad" and they were not American citizens. That would neatly legalize the illegal prisons the C.I.A. is said to be operating around the world and obviate the need for the torture outsourcing known as extraordinary rendition. It also raises disturbing questions about Iraq, which the Bush administration has falsely labeled a counterterrorism operation.

Mr. McCain was right to reject this absurd proposal. The House should reject it as well.

Every time I think that Bushco/Cheneyco has reached the natural end of their braindead strategies, they manage to amaze me. This takes the cake, the ice cream and most of the rest of dinner.

Breaking News

CNN is reporting no Fitzmas today. Hang on to your hats.

Modern Myths

Measure Would Alter Federal Death Penalty System
House Legislation to Renew USA Patriot Act Would Loosen Some Provisions for Execution

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 26, 2005; Page A02

The House bill that would reauthorize the USA Patriot Act anti-terrorism law includes several little-noticed provisions that would dramatically transform the federal death penalty system, allowing smaller juries to decide on executions and giving prosecutors the ability to try again if a jury deadlocks on sentencing.

The bill also triples the number of terrorism-related crimes eligible for the death penalty, adding, among others, the material support law that has been the core of the government's legal strategy against terrorism.

The death penalty provisions, which were added to the House bill during a voice vote in July, are emerging as one of the major points of contention between House and Senate negotiators as they begin work on a compromise bill to renew expiring portions of the Patriot Act. If approved, the provisions could have a significant impact on future Justice Department terrorism prosecutions.

The Senate version of the bill does not include the death penalty expansions. Senate Democrats say that the proposals are extraneous to the Patriot Act and should not be approved without fuller debate. Death penalty opponents and defense lawyers also contend that the measures, by removing some of the safeguards now in place, would increase the risk that innocent people could be executed.

"These are radical changes in the way federal death penalty cases are litigated, and they were added virtually without any debate," said Jennifer Daskal, U.S. program advocate for Human Rights Watch.

The Justice Department has endorsed the provisions and a spokesman for House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) said yesterday that the proposals were viewed as relatively uncontroversial because they were overwhelmingly approved on the House floor.

"I would expect that the House will forcefully advocate for those provisions," said Jeff Lungren, a spokesman for Sensenbrenner. "I would say its prospects look fairly good."

A Republican staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee said the death penalty issue was "one of several concerns" about the House bill, which also includes fewer restrictions on surveillance and search powers than the Senate version.

The death penalty provisions were added as an amendment by Rep. John Carter (R-Tex.), who had originally proposed the changes in a separate bill called the Terrorist Death Penalty Enhancement Act. The same package was included in a House intelligence reform bill last year but was stripped out during conference negotiations with the Senate, officials said.

Carter spokeswoman Gretchen Hamel said the proposals are important because "the congressman believes capital punishment is a deterrent for all kinds of crimes, including terrorism."

The death penalty is a deterrent? That's a big hoot: we are the only industrial democracy with the death penalty and our murder rate is how much higher than all the others? Gawd, you'd think these congressthings would come up with some new jokes.

Blue and Red

Roll Call needs a subscription, so I'll give you the bulk of the article here.

Newcomers on Right Key to Miers’ Fate?

By Paul Kane
Roll Call Staff

October 26, 2005

Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers faces a critical test in meetings this week with a handful of conservative Senate Republicans who are relative newcomers to the chamber but could have a great deal to say about her prospects for confirmation.

Those Senators — a group that includes George Allen (Va.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.), Johnny Isakson (Ga.) and David Vitter (La.) — are representative of a large bloc of votes in the Republican Conference, most of whom were elected to office in campaigns based at least in part on pushing conservative jurists.

That group has, to date, been among the most tepid in their support for the controversial nomination, distancing themselves from the pick and sometimes voicing open displeasure with the fact that President Bush’s selection has led to internal fighting among conservatives.

No one among the group of Senate conservatives has openly announced opposition to Miers, but neither are they voicing ringing endorsements, making this week’s meetings all the more critical, particularly for Senators such as Allen, Ensign and Vitter who don’t sit on the Judiciary Committee and won’t witness her performance at the hearings in person.

Some of the newer Republicans who have met with Miers remain neutral on the nomination, including Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who talked to Miers last Tuesday. Coming out of the weekly luncheon, Thune voiced some optimism that almost all Republicans were likely to take a wait-and-see attitude toward Miers. But Thune left open the possibility that a subpar hearing performance could prove to be decisive for many conservatives, no matter how many friends and supporters speak out on her behalf.

“At the end of the day, it comes down to her ability to make the sale,” said Thune, elected last year in a race in which he pilloried then Minority Leader Tom Daschle’s (D-S.D.) “obstruction” on issues such as judicial nominations.

Combined, there are 21 Senate Republicans who have been elected to the chamber since 1998, making them more than a third of the entire Conference.

None of those 21 Republicans has ever served with former Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), who was picked by the White House to serve as its official emissary to the Senate during the Miers nomination. Coats retired at the end of 1998.

One veteran Senator said there was “very little” talk about Miers at the Tuesday luncheon, although Coats gave a brief pep talk about the nomination that the lawmaker said received a lukewarm response from the Conference.

On Monday, Miers met with Coburn, who released a neutral statement characterizing their meeting as “cordial” but adding little else about the nominee. One of the most conservative Members of the Senate, Coburn has since refused to elaborate on his views about the nominee and insisted that no one will publicly know his thoughts until the hearings open Nov. 7. Unlike four other conservatives Miers is meeting this week, Coburn sits on Judiciary and will witness her firsthand at the hearings.

The newest Repubs are the most beholden to the far right base. The politics here are complex, because the country is more moderate. This won't be a boring week.

PR

Wal-Mart Memo Suggests Ways to Cut Employee Benefit Costs

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
and MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: October 26, 2005

An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart's board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart.

In the memorandum, M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, also recommends reducing 401(k) contributions and wooing younger, and presumably healthier, workers by offering education benefits. The memo voices concern that workers with seven years' seniority earn more than workers with one year's seniority, but are no more productive.

To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Ms. Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering)."

The memo acknowledged that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, had to walk a fine line in restraining benefit costs because critics had attacked it for being stingy on wages and health coverage. Ms. Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid.

Wal-Mart executives said the memo was part of an effort to rein in benefit costs, which to Wall Street's dismay have soared by 15 percent a year on average since 2002. Like much of corporate America, Wal-Mart has been squeezed by soaring health costs. The proposed plan, if approved, would save the company more than $1 billion a year by 2011.

In an interview, Ms. Chambers said she was focusing not on cutting costs, but on serving employees better by giving them more choices on their benefits.

"We are investing in our benefits that will take even better care of our associates," she said. "Our benefit plan is known today as being generous."

Ms. Chambers also said that she made her recommendations after surveying employees about how they felt about the benefits plan. "This is not about cutting," she said. "This is about redirecting savings to another part of their benefit plans."

One proposal would reduce the amount of time, from two years to one, that part-time employees would have to wait before qualifying for health insurance. Another would put health clinics in stores, in part to reduce expensive employee visits to emergency rooms. Wal-Mart's benefit costs jumped to $4.2 billion last year, from $2.8 billion three years earlier, causing concern within the company because benefits represented an increasing share of sales. Last year, Wal-Mart earned $10.5 billion on sales of $285 billion.

A draft memo to Wal-Mart's board was obtained from Wal-Mart Watch, a nonprofit group, allied with labor unions, that asserts that Wal-Mart's pay and benefits are too low. Tracy Sefl, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Watch, said someone mailed the document anonymously to her group last month. When asked about the memo, Wal-Mart officials made available the updated copy that actually went to the board.

Under fire because less than 45 percent of its workers receive company health insurance, Wal-Mart announced a new plan on Monday that seeks to increase participation by allowing some employees to pay just $11 a month in premiums. Some health experts praised the plan for making coverage more affordable, but others criticized it, noting that full-time Wal-Mart employees, who earn on average around $17,500 a year, could face out-of-pocket expenses of $2,500 a year or more.

One case of flu, one diabetic crisis, one orthopedic issue and you are above $1,000. On $17,500, how in the hell are you supposed to afford that. This is lipstick on a pig.

Team B

NEWS ANALYSIS

Bush team sought to snuff CIA doubts
Differences over Iraq WMD latest attempt to override agency

Jeff Stein, Special to The Chronicle
Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Washington -- Whether or not Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald decides to bring indictments in the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative -- and whether or not any crimes were actually committed -- one element of the case is central to an understanding of what happened and why: At the time of the leak, administration supporters of the Iraq war were determined to neutralize the CIA's doubts about the White House case that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, most notably nuclear weapons.

It is also not the first time -- and it most likely won't be the last -- that conflicts over intelligence have had momentous political consequences.

As far back as the 1950s, when the Air Force claimed there was a missile gap between the United States and Russia, the CIA proved to be a sticking point. Only when the agency sent its new U-2 spy plane soaring over the Soviet Union, taking pictures of air bases and missiles from 80,000 feet, did U.S. arms-control advocates have the ammunition they needed to beat back the furor.

In the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon's policy of detente was under attack by some former military officials and conservative policy intellectuals, Ford administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were among those challenging as too soft the CIA's estimate of Moscow's military power.

Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted to create a "Team B," which would have access to the CIA's data on the Soviets and issue its own conclusions. Cheney, as White House chief of staff, and Rumsfeld, as secretary of Defense, championed Team B, whose members included the young defense strategist Paul Wolfowitz, who a quarter-century later would be one of the chief architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

CIA Director William Colby rejected the Team B idea and was fired. Colby's successor as head of the spy agency, George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, accepted it.

Team B's conclusion that the CIA was indeed soft on the Soviets was leaked to sympathetic journalists and generated public support for a new round of military spending, particularly on missiles. Team B's conclusions turned out, years later, to be false.

"In retrospect, and with the Team B report and records now largely declassified, it is possible to see that virtually all of Team B's criticisms ... proved to be wrong," Raymond Garthoff, a former U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria, wrote in a paper for the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence three years ago. "On several important specific points it wrongly criticized and 'corrected' the official estimates, always in the direction of enlarging the impression of danger and threat."

Another run at controlling the CIA was taken when then-President Ronald Reagan appointed businessman William Casey CIA director with a mandate to ride herd on supposed agency liberals. Casey set up the irregular, covert operation led by Marine Corps Col. Oliver North, which eventually ended in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. Likewise, when Reagan's Secretary of State George Schultz wanted to secretly back Saddam Hussein against the Iranians, Schultz bypassed the CIA and sent Rumsfeld, then a businessman, to Baghdad to seal the deal.

The path to Plame's outing also led through Baghdad, this time via Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, who had been abandoned by the CIA in the late 1990s as too troublesome, unreliable and corrupt.

Among Chalabi's key supporters were Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz. When the three came back into power in January 2001, the CIA and State Department still refused to back Chalabi.

Cheney began visiting CIA headquarters to challenge its analysts over their intelligence on Hussein's weapons. To Richard Kerr, the former chief of CIA analysis who later studied the agency's pre-war reporting on Iraq, Cheney displayed no anti-CIA animus at the time.

"My experience was to the contrary," Kerr said by e-mail. "He would not accept all our analysis without skepticism and believed we were better on some subjects than others. But those are the characteristics of a good customer."

Over at the Pentagon, however, Rumsfeld was reprising Team B by creating his own intelligence shop. The Chalabi organization's alarmist reports on Hussein's nuclear weapons, which later proved to be false, bypassed the CIA and went directly to the White House.

"That's why they set up an intelligence unit in [Undersecretary of Defense Douglas] Feith's office," said intelligence historian James Bamford. "The whole purpose was to get that kind of information and send it to Cheney."

The Cheney-Rumsfeld Cabal has been at this for a long time.

Plamegate Recap

Dan Froomkin gives us the state of play in the Cheney-Plame case as we prepare for Fitzmas:

The New York Times this morning reports that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby apparently first learned that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA agent from none other than his boss -- Vice President Cheney.

This new revelation suggests that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame's identity has reached even closer to the vice president than was previously known.

Fitzgerald is expected to wrap up this week, possibly tomorrow. Libby and Bush senior adviser Karl Rove are widely seen as most likely to be indicted.

Just how the White House first learned of Plame's identity has been one of the elusive mysteries of this case.

Rove is said to have initially told the grand jury he first heard about Plame from some reporter, but he couldn't remember who. Then he said he heard it from Libby.

Libby is said to have initially told the grand jury he first heard about Plame from reporters -- but they denied it. And now, says the Times, Libby's own notes show he heard it from Cheney.

But today's news raises even more questions than it answers, among them:

* Who told Cheney, and under what circumstances?

* Did Cheney acknowledge his own role when he spoke to prosecutors last summer? If not, could he be indicted himself?

* Did Cheney encourage Libby not to disclose their conversation?

* Did President Bush know about Cheney's role?

* Who leaked this latest development -- and what was their motivation?

* Does this mean the White House will stop blaming reporters for everything? (That one was rhetorical: The answer is no.)

Bird Flu Update

Preparing for a pandemic 'unprecedented' task in emergency response: Martin

Helen Branswell
Canadian Press

October 25, 2005

OTTAWA (CP) - Prime Minister Paul Martin called for unprecedented international collaboration Tuesday on the issue of pandemic preparedness, saying the task is something "no one nation can accomplish alone."

Martin made the remarks as he opened the second session of a 1 1/2 day meeting on pandemic readiness that Canada organized and is hosting, a meeting which draws together health ministers from developed and developing countries to find ways around response shortfalls that plague all nations.

"The challenge we face today is extraordinarily complex; an unprecedented task of emergency preparedness and response," Martin told officials of the 30-plus countries attending. Also taking part in the discussions are officials of the key UN agencies involved in animal and human health.

Where remarks that emanated from Monday's opening session focused on the need to combat the pandemic risk at source - in the H5N1 avian flu poultry outbreaks that have ravaged Southeast Asia since late 2003 - Martin's comments appeared to be refocusing attention on the need to ready the human health response in case containment efforts fail.

"We ... have to recognize that in many countries, these preventative measures are very difficult to undertake," he warned.

"Despite our best efforts at containment, this disease, like others, could continue to spread."

Martin said the world has a "collective obligation to mitigate this risk," noting that Canada along with other countries is working to strengthen the surveillance and diagnostic capacities of affected countries in the region.

Scientists from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, for instance, have established strong ties with the National Institute for Hygiene and Epidemiology in Hanoi, working to enhance laboratory testing skills among the Vietnamese scientists.

Physician survey question flu preparation

FLEMINGTON, N.J., Oct. 25 (UPI) -- A majority of U.S. doctors in a national survey believe neither the U.S. government nor the medical community is prepared to deal with a bird flu epidemic.

The survey of 846 physicians was conducted by HCD Research and Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Flemington, N.J. in response to reports that the flu has been identified in several European countries.

About 42 percent of the doctors in the survey said the federal government is very unprepared to deal with an epidemic and 37 percent said the government is somewhat unprepared.

Similarly, 43 percent said the medical community is somewhat unprepared and 32 percent said the community is very unprepared.

The survey said 57 percent of the respondents reported they are somewhat concerned there will be a pandemic over the avian flu, while nearly 20 percent said they are extremely concerned.

Does your county or city have a pandemic plan? Have you asked?

Consumers Are Leaving the Field

Consumer Confidence Unexpectedly Falls
Tuesday October 25, 11:04 am ET
By Anne D'Innocenzio, AP Business Writer
Consumer Confidence Unexpectedly Falls in October Due to Hurricanes, Gas Prices and Job Market Worries

NEW YORK (AP) -- The outlook for the holiday shopping season darkened Tuesday as the latest consumer confidence reading showed Americans even more pessimistic about the economy during October. Hurricanes, surging gasoline prices and worries about the job market took a further toll on consumer psyches.

A separate report on home sales during September also pointed to consumers' growing uneasiness.

The Conference Board said its Consumer Confidence Index fell to 85 in October, the lowest level since October 2003 and down from September's revised reading of 87.5, which had been the sharpest drop in 15 years. Analysts expected an October reading of 88 for the index, which is compiled from a survey of U.S. households.

"Much of the decline in confidence over the past two months can be attributed to the recent hurricanes, pump shock and a weakening labor market," said Lynn Franco, director of the private research group's Consumer Research Center in a statement.

She said the "degree of pessimism, in conjunction with the anticipation of much higher home heating bills this winter, may take some cheer out of the upcoming holiday season."

The decline in confidence helped send the Dow Jones industrial average down 15.37, or 0.15 percent, to 10,369.63 in morning trading.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors said sales of previously owned homes were unchanged in September. The Realtors said sales would have fallen without an increase in demand among people left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.

The nation's retailers are already preparing for a difficult season. Although gasoline prices have slipped back from recent weeks, they still are quite high, and home heating costs are expected to soar this fall and winter, forcing many consumers to budget carefully for the holidays.

"The unexpected decline means optismism is under more pressure than we thought," said Patrick Fearon, senior economist at A.G. Edwards & Sons Inc. Fearon believes all the political uncertainty is also weighing on consumers' confidence.

"There is certainly more going on than just hurricanes and a resulting spike in gasoline prices," said Fearon. He noted President Bush's drop in approval ratings, political unrest in the Middle East and concerns about the Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers "could weigh on people's attitudes."

The local housing market has been overheated for a while and I'm hearing from local realtors that it is beginning to act more ordinary with stock remaining on the market rather than getting competative offers before it is entered into the MLS computer. The news is all grim for me as a job seeker, however, and since my brother and his wife are in retail and the Christmas shopping season is the make or break time for them, I've got plenty to be worried about.

Clueless

What Rice Can't See

By Eugene Robinson

Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Page A21

Like a lot of African Americans, I've long wondered what the deal was with Condoleezza Rice and the issue of race. How does she work so loyally for George W. Bush, whose approval rating among blacks was measured in a recent poll at a negligible 2 percent? How did she come to a worldview so radically different from that of most black Americans? Is she blind, is she in denial, is she confused -- or what?

After spending three days with the secretary of state and her entourage as she toured Birmingham, where she grew up in a protective bubble as the tumult of the civil rights movement swirled around her, I have a partial answer: It's as if Rice is still cosseted in her beloved Titusville, the neighborhood of black strivers where she was raised, able to see the very different reality that other African Americans experience but not to reach out of the bubble -- not able to touch that other reality, and thus not able to really understand it.

Rice's parents tried their best to shelter their only daughter from Jim Crow racism, and they succeeded. Forty years later, Rice shows no bitterness when she recalls her childhood in a town whose streets were ruled by the segregationist police chief Bull Connor. "I've always said about Birmingham that because race was everything, race was nothing," she said in an interview on the flight home.

When she reminisces, she talks of piano lessons and her brief attempt at ballet -- not of Connor setting his dogs loose on brave men, women and children marching for freedom, which is the Birmingham that other residents I met still remember. A friend of Rice's, Denise McNair, was one of the four girls killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. That would have left a deep scar on me, but Rice can speak of that atrocity without visible emotion.

She doesn't deny that race makes a difference. "We all look forward to the day when this country is race-blind, but it isn't yet," she told reporters in Birmingham. Later she added, "The fact that our society is not colorblind is a statement of fact."

But then why are the top echelons of her State Department almost entirely white? "That's an artifact of foreign policy," she said in the interview. "It's not been a very diverse profession." In other words, there aren't enough qualified minority candidates. I wondered how many times those words have been used as a lame excuse.

One of the things she somehow missed was that in Titusville and other black middle-class enclaves, a guiding principle was that as you climbed, you were obliged to reach back and bring others along. Rice has been a foreign policy heavyweight for nearly two decades; she spent four years in the White House as the president's national security adviser. In the interview, she mentioned just one black professional she has brought with her from the National Security Council to State.

As we were flying to Alabama, Rice said an interesting thing. She was talking about the history of the civil rights movement, and she said, "If you read Frederick Douglass, he was not petitioning from outside of the institutions but rather demanding that the institutions live up to what they said they were. If you read Martin Luther King, he was not petitioning from outside, he was petitioning from inside the principles and the institutions, and challenging America to be what America said that it was."

The civil rights movement came from the inside? I always thought the Edmund Pettus Bridge was outside.

She's a bubblegirl inside the Bubbleboy administration. Notice how little influence either she or Colin Powell ever had with this administration, however. She's arguably the least effective Secretary of State in modern history.

I have a few African American friends. Not one of them is under the illusion that they are on the inside.

Milestones and Headstones

U.S. military death toll in Iraq reaches 2,000
Iraqi draft constitution passes, election officials say

Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Posted: 12:17 p.m. EDT (16:17 GMT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The war in Iraq saw two milestones Tuesday that reflect the country's path to democracy and its human toll as officials said the referendum on a draft constitution passed and the U.S. military's death toll reached 2,000.

CNN's count of U.S. fatalities reflects reports from military sources and includes deaths in Iraq, Kuwait and other units assigned to the Iraq campaign.

Among the latest casualties, an American soldier was killed Saturday by a roadside bomb, and a roadside blast killed two Marines in combat Friday near Amariya in the western Anbar province, according to the U.S. military.

Since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, more than 15,000 American service members have been wounded in the conflict, according to the Defense Department.

According to CNN's tally, 2,194 coalition troops have died in the war.

Democracy. Whiskey. Sexy. The damn draft consititution doesn't mean diddly.

The 37% Preznit

The Seattle Times is having a little attitude problem this morning, in both the news pages and the editorial section.

Miers' opposition escalating

By Michael A. Fletcher and Charles Babington

WASHINGTON — Conservative activists intensified their opposition to the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers on Monday, launching two Web sites and planning radio and television advertising aimed at forcing her withdrawal.

The advocacy groups, which had expected to use their vast mailing lists and fundraising networks to support President Bush's Supreme Court nominees, instead are employing those tools to sow concern about Miers' conservative credentials and lack of judicial experience among their constituents outside Washington.

The public effort against Miers is supported by a wide range of well-known conservative figures and organizations, whose individual misgivings about the nomination have now coalesced into a coordinated effort to derail it.

Bush, speaking to reporters, again rallied to Miers' defense, but he warned that he would not accede to requests from senators for documents detailing her work as White House counsel. He said this would violate his right to receive confidential advice, but senators in both parties said the documents might allay concerns about her qualifications.

Some conservatives believe Bush could avoid this dispute by pulling the plug on the nomination.

"We've had three weeks here to try to sort out what kind of judge she is going to be," said Brian Burch, vice president of Fidelis, a Catholic anti-abortion organization urging Miers' withdrawal. "We really do want to support the administration, but we just feel like we've reached a situation with this nomination that is beyond repair."

The campaign marks a dramatic escalation in the battle over Miers' nomination that has fractured Bush's conservative base. While right-leaning columnists and publications, including George Will and the National Review, have called for her withdrawal, the new efforts are the first direct attempts at turning grass-roots conservatives against Miers.

Bush sidestepped a question about whether the White House was preparing a "contingency plan" in case Miers' nomination fails. "Harriet Miers is a fine person, and I expect her to have a good, fair hearing on Capitol Hill," he said.

On the question of documents, he said: "It's a red line I'm not willing to cross. ... People can learn about Harriet Miers through hearings, but we are not going to destroy this business about people being able to walk into the Oval Office and say, 'Mr. President, here's my advice to you, here's what I think is important.' "

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, urged the White House to be more forthcoming with "non-privileged documents." Such records, he said, might illuminate general areas in which Miers gave advice to the president but stop short of making her divulge the advice itself.

Dream on, Arlen.

Miers not qualified for Supreme Court

It's time for President George W. Bush to give up on Harriet Miers. She is not qualified to be on the U.S. Supreme Court.

For chief justice, this page endorsed John Roberts, who was a federal appellate judge. As a lawyer, he specialized in arguing cases before the Supreme Court. Miers has never been a judge, and has never argued a case before the Supreme Court. She has offered the court three cases — including one questioning the 2000 election results because Bush and Dick Cheney both lived in Texas — but the court didn't accept any of those cases.

On her list of publications, one of the most recent is, "Steps for a Successful Firm Merger." Most of her writings were the president's column in the Texas Bar Journal — such pieces as, "Focusing on the Positive," "Our Number One Priority" and "Parts of the Whole Working Together."

We have not studied these essays, but David Brooks of the New York Times reviewed some of them, and not favorably.

More important, they were not about constitutional law. The mission of the Supreme Court is to enforce the Constitution on the executive and legislative branches of government. A nominee needs to know the words and structure of the document, the history of its writing and ratification, and the major cases and doctrines that have evolved over two centuries.

Miers' recent reference to "the proportional representation requirement of the Equal Protection Clause" shows that she comes up short.

Miers was apparently chosen under the 100-foot rule: that is, the president saw her every day. That is how Bush chose his vice president, his secretary of state and his attorney general.

Well, I have studied those essays, and they wouldn't pass muster in an English 101 composition course. What I want to know is how someone who is so undistinguished a communicator can go on to pull down big bucks as a corporate litigator. Law school must be a whole lot easier than I thought it was. Finding mediocrities in the Oval Office is a commonplace, but having them run major law firms is not what I expected.

Lifetime Appointments

The Bloomberg News Service has long been a business-friendly and mostly non-partisan outlet.

Miers Joins Long March of Mediocrity to Court: Andrew Ferguson

Oct. 25 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court has touched off many amusing spectacles these last few weeks -- including the insistence, by critics of the nomination, on the immeasurably high standards of intellectual accomplishment that a Supreme Court nominee must meet.

You have to wonder which Supreme Court these high-minded critics have in mind. Surely they can't be referring to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has historically served as a lifetime employment service for party hacks, bar association schmoozers, sycophantic coat holders and political cronies.

Cronies? Did someone say cronies? Yes, indeed. For this is what the court has been -- off and on, but mostly on --throughout its history.

If you were to categorize Supreme Court nominees according to the reason presidents chose them, the slot for ``Presidential Pal'' would quickly flood over -- while the category ``Distinguished Constitutional Scholar'' would be significantly less populated than ``Sop to Special Interests.''

The Supreme Court, in other words, has seldom been a showcase of intellectual distinction. To judge by her background and public writings, the choice of Miers appears in line with the court's most hallowed traditions.

Historically speaking, Ferguson is mostly right, but things have changed a bit in modern times. Post-Rehnquist, we do ask that our judges on the Federal benches to actually know something about the law and the Constitution. Consider it a modern innovation.

Unwrapped

Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report

By DAVID JOHNSTON, RICHARD W. STEVENSON and DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: October 25, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war.

Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Libby's notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson's undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent's identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent's undercover status.

The first package of Fitzmas week. Make sure to put the wrapper into the big trash bag on the floor.

The State of the 'Sphere

Blogmeister David Sifry's latest report is out:

State of the Blogosphere, October 2005 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth

It is that time of the year again, and I've got some new information on the continued growth of the blogosphere. I made this presentation as part of my 10 minute talk at Web 2.0 on October 6, 2005. You can download the entire presentation, complete with underlying data as well, for research use, or to make part of other presentations. All I ask is that you keep attribution and the Technorati logo in a prominent place wherever the data is used.

So, What's New?

Well, first, the basics. The chart below shows the continued growth of the blogosphere. Technorati is now tracking 19.6 Million weblogs, and the total number of weblogs tracked continues to double about every 5 months. This trend has been consistent for at least the last 36 months. In other words, the blogosphere has doubled at least 5 times in the last 3 years.

About 70,000 new weblogs are tracked every day, which is about a new weblog created each second, somewhere in the world. It also appears that blogging is taking off around the world, and not just in English. Some of the significant increases we've seen over the past 3 months have been due to a proliferation of chinese-speaking weblogs, both on MSN Spaces as well as on Chinese sites like blogcn.com.

Now that we've been tracking spam and fake blogs, we've included the daily tracking statistics for spam and fake blogs from June 1, 2005. We are currently tracking about 2% - 8% of new weblogs are fake or spam weblogs. They are represented as the red spikes that are over and above the legitimate (human-created and updated) blogs shown in blue below. (see chart on the link)

In the past 2 weeks, there were 805,000 new weblogs created. In addition, Technorati tracked an additional 39,000 new fake and spam weblogs, which means that about 4.6% of the total weblogs tracked were fake or spam.

One of the remarkable things that comes out of looking at the data is that while spam and fake blogs are a problem, they are not an overwhelming problem - In fact, we've experienced much worse spam attacks in the past. The key difference in the spam attack over the weekend is that the attackers' posts included many popular search terms including popular bloggers' names - which is a common ego search on engines like Technorati. This made this particular attack much more visible to a number of high profile bloggers than attacks in the past.

You can see from the post statistics that there are on average, between 700,000 and 1.3 Million posts made each day. That's about 33,000 posts per hour. Spam and fake posts are reported here as well, and on average an additional 5.8% of posts (or about 50,000 posts/day) seen each day are spam or fake. This number changes on a daily basis as we track spam attacks, and have reached as high as an additional 18% over the regular daily volume.

One may argue that the numbers I'm reporting are way too low, or that Technorati isn't finding all of the spam weblogs out there. That's a legitimate argument, and by no means am I asserting that Technorati is capturing all of the spam and fake weblogs in existence. We know we're not getting them all, and every day we're working on improving our algorithms and data quality. However, our hard work means that we can still provide you with comprehensive timely results without having to do anything drastic, like removing a major hosting provider with millions of legitimate blogs from our indexes.

We're also working closely with the other players in the industry in order to close the gaps. In October, we helped organize the second Web 2.0 Spam summit, and representatives from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Six Apart, Tucows, Wordpress, Feedster, and many more companies and organizations participated. The summit was quite successful, and I expect that there will be many more to come.

To summarize:

* As of October 2005, Technorati is now tracking 19.6 Million weblogs
* The total number of weblogs tracked continues to double about every 5 months
* The blogosphere is now over 30 times as big as it was 3 years ago, with no signs of letup in growth
* About 70,000 new weblogs are created every day
* About a new weblog is created each second
* 2% - 8% of new weblogs per day are fake or spam weblogs
* Between 700,000 and 1.3 Million posts are made each day
* About 33,000 posts are created per hour, or 9.2 posts per second
* An additional 5.8% of posts (or about 50,000 posts/day) seen each day are from spam or fake blogs, on average

What's Next?

Of course, one important question rears its head - how to make sense out of this monstrous onrush of conversation, and just get what you want - the best information from the most authoritative or influential people, in the most timely manner.

More on that in my next two posts, covering the growth of tags and of context in search and discovery.

Bookmark Dave's Blogreport on the link if you are interested in keeping tracks of the stats on where our strange medium is going.

The Vision Thing

A Very Loose Blindfold

Published: October 25, 2005

The Securities and Exchange Commission is still investigating the sale by Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, of his stock in HCA, the hospital company his family helped found. There is more at stake than whether Mr. Frist violated securities law through insider trading or whether the advantageous timing was merely coincidental. Mr. Frist must answer to the American people for the fact that his statements before the sale were, at the very least, misleading.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that the trustees of Mr. Frist's so-called blind trusts have written to him 15 times since 2001 describing sales and contributions to the trusts. While legal, those notifications make clear that "blind trust" is a red herring of a term for politicians to hide behind.

The Post reported that in 2003, barely two weeks after he was notified that one of his trusts had received between $15,000 and $50,000 in HCA stock, Mr. Frist told CNBC, "As far as I know, I own no HCA stock." Mr. Frist's office says that he misspoke, and meant that he did not know exactly what was in the trusts. But in the same interview, he also said that he had "no control" over it, a statement he disproved this year by selling the stock.

Senate ethics rules do not even require blind trusts, another example of the weakness of ethics rules for the nation's legislators. Tougher conflict-of-interest standards would be nice, but with Mr. Frist in the leadership, we're not holding our breath.

Senator Frist seems to have a very flexible idea about what constitutes ethics for himself. His idea of a "blind trust" is one which simply seems to need eyeglasses.

Do It To Me One More Time

Lee and Collier Counties of Southwest Florida took the hit as Wilma came on shore yesterday. I expect that it will be days before I hear from my friends in Ft. Myers.

South Florida took a pretty severe hit from this storm which regained major hurricane status before it clobbered Florida. If you can spare yet another dime for your kith in the Gulf who took it on the chin again, Lee County's Charity Navigator is on the link to help you give intelligently. My friend Kenn is on the steering committee for this, so I trust it. He still doesn't know how badly his home got messed up and won't for a few more days. He evacuated to a family wedding and visit with his folks near Chicago and won't get back until SW Florida International Airport re-opens for business.

The Foodbank of Lee County can always use help, and never more so than now..

If you can't give to them, give to your local food pantry. I bought a box of groceries for mine tonight. As I type this, the remnents of our first winter rain storm are getting ready to combine on the coast with the ghosts of Tropical Storm Alpha, Wilma's legacy and whatever other is out there to give the East Coast the first Nor'easter of the season. We'll be okay, but northern New England is going to collect thier first snow.

Winter Nor'easters are historically spawned in the warm Gulfstream waters off the North Carolina Cape, and continue up the east coast spewing snow. They are the great snow machines of the blizzards that rake New England from time to time. This one will be a rain event except for the highest altitudes of New England, where it will be the first snow event of the winter. Hello, Mount Washington! Virginia west of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the mountains of Western Maryland have their first freeze warning of the season tonight.

Winter is here. Mind your low income neighbors. Give to your local charities, your dollars have their greatest punch in your own community.

Rosa Parks R.I.P.

Rosa Parks, civil rights heroine, is dead

I just wish that so many of the kids and grandkids of the kids that she stood up for could understand how much this simple and amazing woman did to make their lives better. I get so tired of hearing some of them say that "so and so is racist" because they made the kid actually behave or expected them to have pride in themselves and treat each other with dignity. How many of them understand who "Jim Crow" was?

Rosa Park's courage in the face of a system that was so ingrained in the culture that people (white and black) did not even think to question it just flabbergasts me. This was the SOUTH. Not just the SOUTH, but the deep SOUTH, a place where time stood still. Yet, she not only found the gravitas to say, "No" but to stick with that "No" even when thngs got nasty. Her life is a testament to the power that each one of us has to stand up (or sit down) for our rights and to demand to be dealt with equally and fairly.

Who will be the next one to refuse to move, sway, or relent in the face of an injustice so glaring that we can't hide our eyes from it? I don't know, but I'll bet that Ms. Parks will be by their side all the way.

God Bless you.

Doing It Up Right

Any shrimp or oyster recipe without horseradish isn't worth the time. This makes a showy first course or buffet dish. Figure on five shrimp per person as a first course, three as part of a buffet. Hey, I used to be a caterer.

Home > Recipes
Grilled Shrimp Cocktail with Horseradish Cream Dipping Sauce
Recipe courtesy Rachael Ray
Show: 30 Minute Meals
Episode: Surf Then Turf

Recipe Summary
Difficulty: Easy
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 6 minutes
Yield: 4 servings

1 1/2 pounds jumbo shrimp, about 20 shrimp, deveined, peel in tact
1 teaspoon coarse salt
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1/2 cup plain bread crumbs, 3 handfuls
1/2 cup prepared horseradish
1/2 cup half-and-half or light cream
1/2 teaspoon salt, eyeball it
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper sauce or 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons chopped parsley, for garnish
4 leaves Romaine hearts

Preheat a grill pan over medium high heat.

Loosen shells of shrimp and butterfly them cutting down the devein line of the back of the shrimp. Toss shrimp with 1 teaspoon coarse salt. Combine melted butter with lemon juice and zest. Using a pastry brush, cover shrimps with lemon butter and set on hot grill. Grill shrimp 3 to 4 minutes on each side, until pink and firm.

In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, horseradish, cream and salt. Let the cream soak into the bread crumbs 2 minutes. Loosen bread crumbs with a fork. Stir in cayenne sauce or cayenne and combine with sour cream. Spoon equal amounts of sauce into ramekins on individual plates or a dip bowl in the center or 1 large platter.

Arrange 5 grilled shrimp down the center of 1 leaf of romaine lettuce. Serve shrimp with seafood forks alongside dipping sauce, for a crowd arrange them on lettuce leaves covering a cake platter with a well of cocktail sauce in the center. Have plenty of toothpicks and identified place to dispose of them (like a cup with a prominently displayed "Dispose of toothpicks here!" sign over it, other wise people will think it is someone's disgarded drink.

Serve real seafood cocktail sauce on the side,which also goes if you can swing a raw bar. This recipe needs a lot more horseradish, however.

Please don't just dump expensive shrimp on ice where they will get soggy and loose their flavor, which is what you paid good bucks for. Learn to arrange them fantail around your bowls of dipping sauces arranged on leaf lettuces on glass plates. Silver ones will wilt the lettuces.

Hey, I used to be a caterer and presentation is everything. Really. How it looks is at least as important as how it tastes You want this client to sell your next client by phone referral, don't you? If she thinks she had a fabulous party, then she had a fabulous party. If everybody else noticed that the food was extraordinary, they'll be on the phone to their bookers first thing in the morning. You aren't impressing the hostess, you are reaching out to her guests. ;\>) Word to the wise.

My Brothers of the Graph

George Mason University's Tyler Cowen brings us the WSJ read-around of the professional economists' judgement on Ben Bernanke's choice as the new Fed chief: the consensus is that he isn't a lunatic, is liked and respected in the profession. In short, one of Bushco's better picks.

If you want to know what watercooler chit-chat between economists sounds like, read that comments thread.

DC is a funny city. In the public mind, it's the lawyers on the Hill and the lawyers on K Street that define this region. Oddly, I know more economists than I do lawyers or pols. They are planted densely in this part of the world.

My preliminary judgement on Mr. Andrea Mitchell (which couple I've spotted a couple of times in some of the better dining rooms around town, they have excellent food judgement) is that he wasn't bad, but he wasn't the economic Svengali that Paul Volcker was. Greenspan is coming off of five bad years that aren't mostly his fault, but he reacted with Fed tools (blunt weapons) to a Bush admin which constantly churned its monetary policy people and, therefore, never had a monetary policy.

Even Comrade Max isn't horrified, and that's saying something.

Oh, you think we have a monetary policy now? How many of your friends and relations have been out of work for more than six months? From one day to the next I can't decide if we are the Weimar Republic or New York on October 28, 1929.

Tyler is also, of course, a member of the blogger confraternity of Flu Bloggers and we are looking forward to talking about it later this week.

Signs and Wonders

WaPo's Dan Fromkin writes:

About That Web Site

My Friday column caused a bit of a ruckus, with my scoop that Fitzgerald had launched a new Web site -- and my observation that one of the documents on it showed that he had received explicit authority from the Justice Department to expand his inquiry to include criminal attempts to interfere with his probe.

Friday was a pretty slow news day and my exclusive -- uncredited, alas -- made headlines in newspapers all over the country and was great fodder for the television talking heads.

I was the first to suggest that this did not look like the work of an office about to close shop, and I still believe that. But some of the speculation over the Web site's significance was a bit over the top. For instance, I can assure you that the prosecutors were not intentionally sending a sign to anyone.

When I spoke to him Friday morning, Fitzgerald spokesman Randall Samborn was surprised and clearly not happy that I had discovered the Web site, which he acknowledged had actually first gone up on Wednesday night. It was my distinct sense that Fitzgerald would have been much happier if no one had noticed it until they were ready to post something new.

On an unrelated media note, would someone please throttle CNN's Kyra Phillips? The thought of listening to another week of her is enough to drive me to drink.

Greek Proportions

Niall Ferguson and I know some of the same stuff.

Board up the windows in D.C.
# Several forces are propelling the 'Plamegate' scandal. It may swamp Bush and his White House, but it's unlikely to seriously harm America.

SOME NATURAL disasters — especially earthquakes — strike without warning. As we have seen in Kashmir, they are the ones that do the worst damage. Other disasters, however, can be foreseen, such as the hurricanes that have pummeled the United States in recent months.

The disaster about to engulf Washington, D.C., is more like a hurricane than an earthquake. That is to say, you can see it coming.

The first intimations of its approach are small squalls. A succession of these struck lately. The one to watch is currently raining on Karl Rove, President Bush's most trusted advisor, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Like the financial squalls that have simultaneously struck the top Republicans in both Houses of Congress, these may conceivably turn out to be mere storms in teacups. But there are three reasons to think otherwise.

Let's just assume for a second that Messrs. Rove and Libby did knowingly tell journalists that Valerie Plame was a CIA "covert operative" in order to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Exposing a secret agent is a crime. Now the chances that it was authorized by the president himself are relatively small; and the chances that his authorization was recorded on tape à la President Nixon are even smaller.

So this is unlikely to be the next Watergate. Still, if his most trusted advisor goes down, the president will not merely be a lame duck. He will be a Peking duck. His enemies will be able to flake him off the bone and wrap him in Oriental pancakes.

The second reason why this is likely to be a hurricane is that so many people have an incentive to make it one. Watergate not only destroyed Richard Nixon, it also made the reputations of prosecutors such as Archibald Cox and reporters such as Bob Woodward. So you can always assume heroic levels of professional commitment when a quality scandal such as this one comes along.

At the same time, aggrieved sources within an administration have a powerful incentive to leak. We finally learned who "Deep Throat" was this year — and only because W. Mark Felt decided to 'fess up after 30-plus years. If that doesn't prove that American journalists know how to protect their sources, I don't know what more you want.

So let's just ask ourselves how many people — particularly those associated with intelligence gathering — might have a grudge against Bush. I should think there are enough potential Deep Throats in Washington today to form a baritone male-voice choir.

The third reason to expect a hurricane is simply poetic justice. The ancient Greeks had a term for those who are intoxicated by their own power into thinking themselves equal to the gods. That word was "hubris." Those who succumb to it are doomed to be brought low by the implacable goddess Nemesis.

Nemesis is no slouch when it comes to devising appropriate forms of divine retribution. This time she has really excelled. The way things are going, the trials of Saddam Hussein and Karl Rove could happen more or less simultaneously.

As Brad deLong says: Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach him now.

"When Iraqis Stand Up, We Will Stand Down"

Three car bombs rock downtown Baghdad

Monday, October 24, 2005 Posted: 1504 GMT (2304 HKT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Three car bombs exploded Monday in Baghdad, not far from a hotel that is home to international journalists, according to Iraqi police.

The third blast was larger than the initial explosions and apparently was designed to hurt police and rescue crews.

At least one fire could be seen burning in the area, and the flash from the explosion could be seen more than a mile away, CNN's Nic Robertson said.

The bombs went off near the Palestine Hotel, which overlooks the square where Iraqis and U.S. troops pulled down a statue of Saddam Hussein after the April 2003, U.S.-led invasion.

Authorities had no information yet on casualties in the attack.
24 killed in attacks

Violence throughout central Iraq on Sunday and Monday left at least 24 people dead, authorities said.

In southwestern Baghdad, gunmen killed a city official in the Saydiya neighborhood Monday morning, the Interior Ministry said.

About the same time, the body of a man was found in a sewage canal in the Rustumiya area of southern Baghdad.

Also Monday, the Interior Ministry said a car bomb exploded near an Iraqi police patrol in northern Baghdad's Shaab neighborhood, wounding five people, including two Iraqi police officers.

A Marine assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), was killed in action Sunday by small-arms fire during combat operations in Ramadi, the U.S. military said on Monday.

The death brings to 1,994 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the U.S. invasion.

Twelve construction workers were killed Sunday evening near the city of Musayyib, about 40 miles (60 km) south of Baghdad, when gunmen opened fire on them, police said.

Another person at the construction site was kidnapped.

In Iskandariya, north of Baghdad, police found six bodies -- three male and three female -- late Sunday afternoon. No additional information was immediately available.

Also Sunday evening, gunmen fired on an Iraqi army checkpoint in western Baghdad's Adil neighborhood, killing two people -- including one Iraqi soldier -- and wounding four Iraqi soldiers, the Interior Ministry said.

Another Iraqi police officer, 1st Lt. Saad Chasib, was shot dead in northwestern Baghdad. He was driving his private car when gunmen attacked him.

The Raw Story reports:

These are the major findings from the secret MoD poll as published in The Daily Telegraph:

• Forty-five per cent of Iraqis believe attacks against British and American troops are justified - rising to 65 per cent in the British-controlled Maysan province;

• 82 per cent are "strongly opposed" to the presence of coalition troops;

• less than one per cent of the population believes coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security;

• 67 per cent of Iraqis feel less secure because of the occupation;

• 43 per cent of Iraqis believe conditions for peace and stability have worsened;

• 72 per cent do not have confidence in the multi-national forces.

Around the 'Sphere

N. Z. Bear at The Truth Laid Bear is surveying the blogs and finds that 73% oppose the Miers nomination. I oppose the Miers nomination.

Strong Arm Tactics

When the likes of me are quoting John Fund in the Wall Street Journal, you know that we are living in strange times, indeed.

What Went Wrong
Lessons the White House should learn from the Miers debacle.

Monday, October 24, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

President Bush has returned from a weekend in Camp David, where much of the discussion centered on the beleaguered nomination of Harriet Miers. While the president is determined to press forward, the prognosis he received was grim. Her visits with senators have gone poorly. Her written answers to questions from the Senate were sent back as if they were incomplete homework. The nominee herself has stumbled frequently in the tutorials in which government lawyers are grilling her in preparation for her Nov. 7 hearings.

The president trusts his instincts, and they are usually right. But when they fail him, the result can be calamitous. Take last December's nomination of Bernard Kerik to head the Department of Homeland Security. After several scandals involving his time as head of New York City's police quickly surfaced, it was then learned he had employed an illegal alien as a nanny and failed to submit required Social Security payments. After only a week, Mr. Bush quietly allowed Mr. Kerik to withdraw his name.

Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff, even suggested to ABC News that Mr. Bush had merely "intended" to nominate Mr. Kerik and insisted that "many of the questions that have been raised in the media were well understood by the White House when they considered Bernie Kerik." He wouldn't elaborate on which ones, leading many reporters to conclude the White House was more intent on spinning the story than learning lessons from the botched pick. The president reinforced that impression during a post-Kerik news conference, when he insisted, "I've got great confidence in our vetting process. And so the lessons learned is continue to vet and ask good questions and get these candidates, the prospective nominees, to understand what we expect a candidate will face during a background check, FBI background check as well as congressional hearings."

The botched handling of the Kerik nomination was a precursor of much that has gone wrong with the Miers nomination. This time, the normal vetting process broke down, with Mr. Card ordering William Kelley, Ms. Miers's own deputy, to conduct the background checks--a clear conflict of interest. Even Newt Gingrich, a supporter of Ms. Miers's nomination, says that "the president believes in her so deeply, he is so convinced she's the right person, that I don't think it ever occurred to him to go through the kind of normal opposition research and normal vetting."

The big difference between the Kerik nomination and the Miers nomination is that Mr. Bush has a long history with Ms. Miers and he is still bravely fighting for her after three weeks of brutal criticism. But Ms. Miers has not been well-served by Bush supporters who have engaged in increasingly strained arguments to overcome the skepticism about her. Three approaches in particular have alienated many people who are vital to Ms. Miers' confirmation:

Intimidation and arm-twisting. Many longtime supporters of President Bush have been startled to get phone calls from allies of the president strongly implying that a failure to support Ms. Miers will be unhealthy to their political future. "The message in Texas is, if you aren't for this nominee, you are against the president," one conservative leader in that state told me. The pressure has led to more resentment than results.

Similar pressure has been applied in New Hampshire, site of the nation's first presidential primary in 2008. Newsweek has reported that "when George W. Bush's political team wanted to send ambitious Republican senators a firm message about Harriet Miers (crude summary: 'Lay off her if you ever want our help')," they chose loyal Bush ally and former state attorney general Tom Rath to deliver it. Plans were even launched to confront Virginia's Sen. George Allen, a likely 2008 candidate for president, and demand he sign a pro-Miers pledge. Luckily, the local Bush forces were warned off such a move at the last minute.

At least they stop short of the horse's head in the bed. This is pure political thuggery.

Block That Metaphor

Bush Choice Gets Criticisms Rare for Nominees to Court

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: October 24, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 - On Oct. 22, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon nominated to the Supreme Court a corporate lawyer and former bar association president with no judicial experience. On Dec. 6, his choice, Lewis F. Powell Jr., was confirmed with fanfare by a vote of 89 to 1.

Harriet E. Miers, President Bush's nominee to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, brings a similar résumé, along with five years in the White House and one year as its counsel. But in just three weeks, her nomination has provoked a range of opposition that some scholars say may have no modern precedent.

"I would be very hard pressed to think of a good historical analogy," Richard Baker, the Senate historian, said. "I don't think there is one."

Though past nominees have faced swift opposition, what makes Ms. Miers's nomination extraordinary, historians say, is the combination of doubts about her philosophy from within the president's own party and attacks on her legal qualifications from both sides of the aisle.

"Harriet Miers is in a real danger zone," said Lee Epstein, a political scientist at Washington University in St. Louis who uses statistical models to study public perceptions of past Supreme Court nominees. "Our models right now are showing that she would get confirmed, but I would be worried if I was the president," she said. The early calls for withdrawal, the "intraparty attacks" and the questions about her qualifications, Ms. Epstein said, are what make Ms. Miers's nomination "reasonably unique."

Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said, "I think if you were to hold the vote today, she would not get a majority either in the Judiciary Committee or on the floor."

"The hearings are going to be make or break for Harriet Miers in a way that they have not been for any other nominee," Mr. Schumer said, adding, "Right now, she has a rough row to hoe."

Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican on the committee and a close ally of the president, responded in a statement, "No senator can speak for the entire Senate." Mr. Cornyn added, "Even if you believe his characterization, and I don't, she should be given the opportunity to appear before the committee."

The criticism of Ms. Miers may, in part, reflect changes in public expectations. Justice Powell and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, named the same year, were the last nominees who did not have judicial experience. Ms. Miers's meetings with senators have also been marred by misunderstandings, including one with Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, over her views on privacy rights. Some of her backers have also suggested an element of sexism in her treatment.

And the debate comes at a moment when social conservatives feel that their electoral victories entitle them to a change in the court.

Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, said that the reaction was like "a triple root canal" but added: "It really isn't Harriet in my mind. It is the president." Mr. Simpson blamed a sense of weakness around the White House because of concerns about the C.I.A. leak investigation, the war in Iraq and the handling of the recent hurricanes. "It is like a huge raptor seeing a rabbit running on only three legs," he said.

The ferocity of Simpson's simile is a little breathtaking, but says something about how high feelings are running on the Right.

Dobson in the Dock

Senate panel may call evangelical leader
Dobson had hinted at inside knowledge of Miers' views

Charles Babington, Washington Post

Monday, October 24, 2005

Washington -- The Senate Judiciary Committee is likely to summon a leading conservative Christian to explain the private assurances he says he received from the White House about Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, the committee's chairman said Sunday.

Testimony by Focus on the Family founder James Dobson would heighten the political and religious overtones of the confirmation hearing for Miers, scheduled to start two weeks from today.

Dobson is among several evangelical leaders enlisted by the White House to vouch for Miers' conservative credentials among right-leaning groups unhappy with her nomination. He spoke with Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove shortly before President Bush announced the nomination, and later hinted he had received privileged information. "When you know some of the things that I know -- that I probably shouldn't know -- you will understand why I have said, with fear and trepidation, that Harriet Miers will be a good justice," Dobson told his national radio audience Oct. 5.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Sunday that his panel is likely to require Dobson and perhaps others to testify about such purported conversations. Asked on CBS' "Face the Nation" whether the committee will "bring some of these people who said they were told things that perhaps they shouldn't have been told, like Mr. Dobson," Specter replied: "My instinct is that they'll be called. And the American people are entitled to clarification."

I can't attribute this to anything other than intuition at this point (though I note that George Will and Robert Novak get paid a lot of money for their hunches) but I have a funny feeling that the evangelical Christian Right is going to learn the hard way that the First Amendment non-establishment clause is more for the benefit of religion than for secular society.

Imperial Hubris

Conservatives fear increase of dissent in the ranks
Some say divisions could weaken party

By Nina J. Easton, Globe Staff | October 24, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Conservative leader Paul M. Weyrich says membership rolls and donations to groups on the right have fallen off. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich worries that the reformist movement he helped godfather has been hurt by corruption allegations surrounding some of its leaders.

The chairman of the American Conservative Union, David Keene, normally a White House loyalist, proclaims that activists are fed up with President Bush. And among conservative books in the works are these sour titles: ''Can This Party Be Saved?" and ''Imposter: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy."

The conservative movement that reshaped modern American politics is in its deepest funk since 1992, when the right rejected Bush's father and was blamed for Republican losses. After displaying unprecedented unity last year, a range of leaders -- from antitax activists to the religious right -- now say they distrust the White House and worry that internal divisions could sap the movement's strength.

The conservative movement was ''on an upward path, even after the 2004 elections, but the growth has stopped," said Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation.

''People now say, 'I'm not sure that this is the right gang to belong to,' " Weyrich, who runs a weekly strategy session, said last week. That ''gang" is the White House and GOP leadership, both of which rely on a loyal cadre of self-described conservatives to win elections. A disgruntled base that stays home on election day could fuel Democratic gains in Congress.
Christian radio host may testify on Miers

''The persuasion part of winning elections is over," said GOP pollster Alexander P. Gage. ''It's all about mobilization."

Some analysts say disenchantment on the right could double the number of House seats considered competitive from 40 to 80.

Much attention has focused on conservative dissent over Bush's choice of Harriet E. Miers as his second Supreme Court nominee, with critics on the right arguing that she lacks the stature to reshape the court on critical constitutional questions.

But conservative leaders say Miers was merely the last straw in a series of disappointments with Bush that have divided their ranks.

Fiscal conservatives date their distress with Bush to his first term, when he increased education spending and added a Medicare prescription drug plan. Social conservatives complain about White House resistance to pushing a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

And looming over all this is the hot-button issue of immigration. ''I know of no issue more divisive among Republicans," said veteran GOP strategist Edward J. Rollins. Many activists accuse Bush of failing to enforce borders, and condemn his proposal for a guest-worker program for illegal immigrants.

The Miers nomination lit a fuse to these disputes because conservatives put a premium on changing a court system that they believe has been trending liberal for decades.

''As chair of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee [in 2004], I'd go all over the country," said Senator George Allen of Virginia, a likely 2008 presidential candidate. '' I'd say we're for less taxation, less regulation, greater energy independence. But I'd always finish with judges -- and they would stand up and cheer. This was the motivating issue."
....
To be sure, the conservative movement is far stronger than in the early 1990s, with a vast network of think tanks, grass-roots machines and talk radio outlets. And commentators believe the debate over Miers reveals the movement's strength.

''This is no 'crackup,' " Rush Limbaugh wrote in the Wall Street Journal. ''It's a crackdown. We conservatives are unified in our objectives."

Still, among leading thinkers in the movement there is suddenly talk that conservatives might have been corrupted by the power they fought so hard to attain.

''To a real degree, the Republican Party has become a party of governance, not of reform," said Gingrich, a 2008 presidential prospect.

I gave an interview to a Reuters reporter a few months back who asked me what I found interesting about the judicial nominations process right now. I replied that I was sure that it was going to reveal the splits in the conservative coalition the Republican party was barely holding together.

Gingrich's comment above is revealing, but not illuminating, and demonstrates how movement conservatism partakes of American ahistoricism. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The party today has returned to its Nixonian base and will pay the price for it.

Temper Tantrums

Bushies feeling
the boss' wrath
Prez's anger growing in hard times - pals

BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF

President Bush is facing specter of losing irreplaceable aide Karl Rove.

WASHINGTON - Facing the darkest days of his presidency, President Bush is frustrated, sometimes angry and even bitter, his associates say.

With a seemingly uncontrollable insurgency in Iraq, the White House is bracing for the political fallout from a grim milestone that could come any day: the combat death of the 2,000th American G.I.

Last week alone, 23 military personnel were killed in Iraq, and five were wounded yesterday in a relentless series of attacks across the country.

This week could also bring a special prosecutor's decision that could shake the foundations of the Bush government.

The President's top political guru, Karl Rove, and Vice President Cheney's right-hand man, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, are at the center of a two-year criminal probe into the leak of a CIA agent's identity. Many Bush staffers believe indictments are likely.

"He's like the lion in winter," observed a political friend of Bush. "He's frustrated. He remains quite confident in the decisions he has made. But this is a guy who wanted to do big things in a second term. Given his nature, there's no way he'd be happy about the way things have gone."

Bush usually reserves his celebrated temper for senior aides because he knows they can take it. Lately, however, some junior staffers have also faced the boss' wrath.

"This is not some manager at McDonald's chewing out the help," said a source with close ties to the White House when told about these outbursts. "This is the President of the United States, and it's not a pleasant sight."

The specter of losing Rove, his only truly irreplaceable assistant, lies at the heart of Bush's distress. But a string of political reversals, including growing opposition to the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina's aftermath and Harriet Miers' bungled Supreme Court nomination, have also exacted a personal toll.

Presidential advisers and friends say Bush is a mass of contradictions: cheerful and serene, peevish and melancholy, occasionally lapsing into what he once derided as the "blame game." They describe him as beset but unbowed, convinced that history will vindicate the major decisions of his presidency even if they damage him and his party in the 2006 and 2008 elections.

At the same time, these sources say Bush, who has a long history of keeping staffers in their place, has lashed out at aides as his political woes have mounted.

"The President is just unhappy in general and casting blame all about," said one Bush insider. "Andy [Card, the chief of staff] gets his share. Karl gets his share. Even Cheney gets his share. And the press gets a big share."

The vice president remains Bush's most trusted political confidant. Even so, the Daily News has learned Bush has told associates Cheney was overly involved in intelligence issues in the runup to the Iraq war that have been seized on by Bush critics.

Bush is so dismayed that "the only person escaping blame is the President himself," said a sympathetic official, who delicately termed such self-exoneration "illogical."

"Lion in winter" my ass. The incompetent-in-chief's numerous mistakes are catching up with him. Like the narcissistic personality disorder he is, it's everybody's fault but his.

The Next Wave

Show Me the Money

By ELIZABETH WARREN
Published: October 24, 2005

Academic research shows that about half the families in bankruptcy filings have serious medical problems. Two-thirds of those who file have lost a job or a small business. Twenty percent have just suffered a family breakup - a husband who disappeared, a wife who died, a family separated by long distances.

Many have sustained multiple hits: illness and a layoff, divorce and business failure. Because of the hurricanes, in the next few years, bankruptcies in Louisiana and Mississippi are likely to grow at a rate that is about 50 percent faster than in the rest of the country.

And when the crisis passes - when debtors get back to work or sweep the muck out of their homes - they will still face a mountain of bills and a ferocious onslaught by collection agencies. If those in such straits can't find a way to get current on their debts quickly, they'll face foreclosure on their homes, repossession of the cars they need to get to work and morning-to-night debt collection calls.

Punishing debtors this way won't put money in creditors' pockets. Creditors who planned to reap windfalls from this new law may be sorely disappointed as they discover that their lobbyists promised more than they can deliver. And if the bankruptcy system becomes unworkable for both debtors and creditors, pressure will build for change.

Sometime soon, politicians will realize that those who find themselves in bankruptcy are solidly middle-class people who have been to college, married and bought houses. This year, about 300,000 will be small-business owners who want a chance to try again. Married couples with children will be about twice as likely to file as those with no children, and single parents will be about four times more likely than those with no dependents at home. Families caring for elderly relatives are also at special risk.

These are hard-working people who have been laid low by forces far beyond their control. They are the constituents of the politicians who took the credit industry's side over theirs.

The new bankruptcy laws will surely squeeze some people harder, and they may well improve short-term corporate profits. But those laws won't solve the underlying problems of unemployment, inadequate health insurance or failing small businesses. They won't stop hurricanes or floods. And because those problems aren't going away any time soon, the need to restore common sense to the bankruptcy system will not go away either.

The industry should enjoy its cake and Champagne today. It won't last forever.

The new bankruptcy law is a disaster, but the author thinks there will be pressure for change once the credit companies realize that it won't help them collect. She's probably right, but the spector of debtors' prisons lurks behind this bill and I can't get that picture out of my mind. What I see immediately is more homlessness and greater reliance on food banks, which are already over burdened.

Phantom Numbers

Enemy Body Counts Revived
U.S. Is Citing Tolls to Show Success in Iraq

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 24, 2005; Page A01

Eager to demonstrate success in Iraq, the U.S. military has abandoned its previous refusal to publicize enemy body counts and now cites such numbers periodically to show the impact of some counterinsurgency operations.

The revival of body counts, a practice discredited during the Vietnam War, has apparently come without formal guidance from the Pentagon's leadership. Military spokesmen in Washington and Baghdad said they knew of no written directive detailing the circumstances under which such figures should be released or the steps that should be taken to ensure accuracy.

Instead, they described an ad hoc process that has emerged over the past year, with authority to issue death tolls pushed out to the field and down to the level of division staffs.

So far, the releases have tended to be associated either with major attacks that netted significant numbers of enemy fighters or with lengthy operations that have spanned days or weeks. On Saturday, for instance, the U.S. military reported 20 insurgents killed and one captured in raids on five houses suspected of sheltering foreign fighters in a town near the Syrian border. Six days earlier, the 2nd Marine Division issued a statement saying an estimated 70 suspected insurgents had died in the Ramadi area as a result of three separate airstrikes by fighter jets and helicopters.

That Oct. 16 statement reflected some of the pitfalls associated with releasing such statistics. The number was immediately challenged by witnesses, who said many of those killed were not insurgents but civilians, including women and children.

Privately, several uniformed military and civilian defense officials expressed concern that the pendulum may have swung too far, with body counts now creeping into too many news releases from Iraq and Afghanistan. They also questioned the effectiveness of citing such figures in conflicts where the enemy has shown itself capable of rapidly replacing dead fighters and where commanders acknowledge great uncertainty about the total size of the enemy force.

Nevertheless, no formal review of the practice has been ordered, according to spokesmen at the Pentagon and in Baghdad. Several senior officers and Pentagon officials involved in shaping communications strategies argued that the occasional release of body counts has important value, particularly when used to convey the scale of individual operations.

"Specific numbers are used to periodically provide context and help frame particular engagements," said Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, director of communications for the U.S. military command in Baghdad. He added, however, that there is no plan "to issue such numbers on a regular basis to score progress."

During the Vietnam War, enemy body counts became a regular feature in military statements intended to demonstrate progress. But the statistics ended up proving poor indicators of the war's course. Pressure on U.S. units to produce high death tolls led to inflated tallies, which tore at Pentagon credibility.

It appears Gen. Alston wants to be remembered as the William Westmoreland of Iraq. Viet Nam era babies like me will remember the reference. For those of you who are younger, he was the Pentagon spokesmodel who released each day's body count, destroying his own reputation and that of the US government while the anti-war movement grew.

The WaPo's Bradley Graham remembers.

Convenient Memories (Not Misty, Water Colored)

Bastards.

Republicans Testing Ways to Blunt Leak Charges

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
and DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: October 24, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 - With a decision expected this week on possible indictments in the C.I.A. leak case, allies of the White House suggested Sunday that they intended to pursue a strategy of attacking any criminal charges as a disagreement over legal technicalities or the product of an overzealous prosecutor.

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, is expected to announce by the end of the week whether he will seek indictments against White House officials in a decision that is likely to be a defining moment of President Bush's second term. The case has put many in the White House on edge.

Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., who is Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, have been advised that they are in serious legal jeopardy. Other officials could also face charges in connection with the disclosure of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer in 2003.

On Sunday, Republicans appeared to be preparing to blunt the impact of any charges. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, speaking on the NBC news program "Meet the Press," compared the leak investigation with the case of Martha Stewart and her stock sale, "where they couldn't find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn't a crime."

Ms. Hutchison said she hoped "that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."

The Times has a very short memory. Very short. How much did the Ken Starr investigation, which came up with nothing, cost the taxpayers? And I seem to remember that embarrassing little perjury case the Republicans persued all the way to impeachment that, er, wasn't about a crime but was about private sexual behavior.

On the other hand, outing a classified state secret CIA agent is a crime. Sen. Hutchison is one of the grande dame whores of the GOP establishment.

Disaster Planning: Lessons Learned

Looting Breaks Out in Mexico After Wilma

By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 39 minutes ago

CANCUN, Mexico - Mexicans and stranded tourists, hungry and frustrated after a two-day beating by Hurricane Wilma, stood in line to buy supplies Sunday or simply raided grocery or furniture stores, dragging goods from shops ripped open by the storm.

The hurricane's steady march toward southern Florida meant an end here to two days of howling winds and torrential rains that shattered windows, peeled away roofing and sent the ocean crashing into hotel lobbies. The sun emerged over Mexico's sugar-white Caribbean beaches.

Wilma regained its Category 3 status late Sunday, with sustained winds of 115 mph, after it returned to open waters and headed toward southern Florida, the
National Hurricane Center said. It had weakened to a Category 2 hurricane after making landfall in Mexico.

In Cancun, chaos took over, as police shot into the air to scare looters away from a shopping center, and looters responded by throwing rocks and chunks of concrete.

Downtown, officials feared looters would turn on tourists, so they quickly evacuated more than 30 foreigners from a downtown area overrun by people raiding stores. Military officials and police stood guard outside businesses and set up checkpoints to seize stolen goods.

"It's chaos," said fire official Gregorio Vergara. "They are taking things all over the city."

One group of residents pushed carts against the boarded-up windows of a grocery store in an attempt to break in. At a convenience store, Cancun resident Alex Aguilar took batteries and aspirin.

"The window was broken, so we just went in and got what we wanted," he said.

Others waited in long lines at the few stores that were open. Some American tourists without local currency offered $100 bills for $5 calling cards.

Meanwhile, military aid convoys rolled into the resort town, handing out bottled water and medical aid. City officials distributed food packages of rice, beans, crackers and cooking oil to people standing in lines that stretched for blocks.

Larry Lowman, of Beaufort, S.C., carried away armloads of emergency supplies for the shelter where he was staying. "It's an expedition to bring food for everybody," he said.

There was little food left on the isolated island of Cozumel, as well, making some people anxious.

"Right now, there is nothing to buy on the island," resident Daniela Ayala told The Associated Press by telephone. "People are in the streets looking for food, and they are starting to get desperate."

Did the Mexican states of Yucatan and Quintana Roo have a disaster plan? Did the federal government of Mexico. I don't speak Spanish, so I wouldn't know, but I think that having a cat 4 hurricane overhead for more than 36 hours would overwhelm most of what we know about hurricane disaster planning. Wilma has been a record making storm in a lot of ways that are both not good and point to what the future of tropical storms might be like. This isn't something to look forward to.

Note that the AP reporter said that loss of food makes people anxious and leads to social breakdown.

Pandemic flu, anyone?

End of the Summer Menu

Pear Salad I

INGREDIENTS:

* 2 pears - peeled, cored and sliced
* 1 cup port wine
* 2 shallots, thinly sliced
* 1 clove garlic, minced
* 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
* 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
* 6 cups assorted salad greens
* 1 cup crumbled Gorgonzola cheese
* 1 cup chopped walnuts, toasted

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat the oven's broiler. Arrange pear slices in a single layer on a baking sheet. Broil until nicely browned, 3 to 5 minutes. Set aside to cool.
2. Pour port wine into a saucepan. Bring to a boil, and cook until the wine is reduced by 1/2. Remove from the heat and cool. Pour the cooled wine into a blender or food processor, and add the shallots, garlic, mustard, and vinegar. Puree until smooth.
3. Divide the salad greens evenly between four serving plates. Arrange some of the broiled pear slices over each pile of greens. Sprinkle with Gorgonzola cheese. Drizzle dressing over each plate, then sprinkle with walnuts. If you like, this can also be made in one large bowl instead of individual serving

Note:

To toast walnuts, place them in a dry skillet over medium heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until browned and fragrant, about 8 minutes.

This makes a main course at lunch if you serve hearty appetizers, baguette and soup, or a first course at dinner, where it would be perfect with a leg of lamb or lamp chops as an entree. This salad is light but ripe with flavor from the pears and the wine reduction. You can enjoy it on the patio or terrace or back yard picic table while you have some London Broil on the grill, perhaps with twice baked potatoes. Split them open when they are 3/4 of the way done and mix the innerds with Allouette herbed cheese mixed with the potato and then return the mixture to the potato shell and let them finish roasting to a golden brown crust. Grease the potato skin with olive oil before roasting if you like them crispy. This is positively sinful. And a side of broiled vegetables. Clean and scrub carrots and corn on the cob soaked in salt water for 15 minutes. Give them 15 minutes on the grill and you'll wonder why you didn't think of it before. The corn and silk are easier to peal after they have been browned on the grill; they'll strip right into a paper bag. Drizzle a little butter and cinnamon on the carrots and you'll wonder why you never noticed before how sweet they are before they had grill marks on them. Hot butter and popcorn salt on the freshly cleaned corn will make your corn skewers laugh with delight. Figure on two cobs per person, unless you and the guests are planning to make a stand on the London broil.

Roast red and yellow peppers garlic-macerated in a little vinegar, olive oil, herbs and garlic and serve them proudly grill striped on the plate with your other concoctions. A well grillled veg is a good meal in itself. Since it is the season for grill roasted garlic on good bread, I'll give you that in a day or so.

A scoop of ice cream with sprinkles to finish wouldn't be out of order. :>)

Imagined Scenarios: Avian Influenza Through the Eyes of a Doc

Have you guys discovered Dr. Charles? I read him off
and on. I found this post tonight, the guy is a hell
of a writer of fiction, one of the many gifts I don't
have, and I found this one moving and chilling.

The Ghost of Influenza Season Future

A cold ache was in my fingers before I even finished
locking the door to my apartment. I hunched over and
bent my neck to keep it warm within the collar of my
winter coat. I trudged through the snow to my car, and
decided that although I was the only person on the
street at six o’clock in the morning I should really
be wearing my facemask. My frozen fingers fumbled with
the elastic band as I lowered it into place behind my
ears, effectively sealing my mouth away from the
virus. I hoped.

The warm moisture of each breath was strangely
comforting as it reflected back onto my face . There
was hardly any traffic. Many people were either sick
or hiding. I passed several store windows that had
been shattered by looters.

Eventually I arrived at my office. Half of the front
desk staff had stayed at home, citing runny noses, bad
coughs, and general terror. The other half was present
but similarly masked. With muffled voices and darting
eyes they dutifully answered the riotous phones as
quickly as they could.

“You can’t come in with those symptoms. We suggest you go to the hospital right away… except that all the hospitals are full.”

“Are you sure you’re just coming in for a sinus
infection?”

“No, we ran out of flu shots two months ago, and we
only had enough for our sickest patients anyway.
Tamiflu? No, no one has that either. Only the CDC is
able to dispense that to select hospitals anymore… I
know! It’s crazy! The U.S. only had enough to treat 1%
of its population… It makes us sick too. We’ve been
told the new vaccine won’t be ready for six months.”

“Mrs. Walker, you sound horrible. I think you should
call 9-1-1... I know they might take three hours to
get to you, but with that cough you sound…
well…”

I saw fifty patients that day. Almost all of them were
wearing masks, some as rudimentary as handkerchiefs.
One came in with a sprained ankle. Another showed up
to discuss her diabetes. The other forty-eight came in
with panic attacks, frayed nerves, stories of people
they knew who were dead or dying, and questions
galore. But it was the quiet ones, the ones with
headaches and muscle aches and low grade fevers that
terrified me the most.

Over lunch I scanned my emails from the state
department of health, the CDC, and from my friends
asking for advice. By now everyone knew that the
overdue influenza pandemic had arrived. It first
appeared in Southeast China as a mutated variety of
bird flu and finally gained the ability to transmit
itself between humans. Initially the quarantines, the
local disbursements of antiviral medications, and the
somewhat effective H5N1 vaccine seemed to contain the
monster. But the illness was difficult to distinguish
from the “regular flu,” and soon outbreaks occurred in
Los Angeles, London, and Hong Kong before going
global. The Western European countries faired
relatively well, having stockpiled antiviral
medications and funded their vaccination
infrastructures for years. Only a few tens of
thousands died. Elsewhere the world tally was
approaching 100 million people dead.

Those persons who had received the regular flu shot in
the fall gained a slight protection against the new
pandemic strain of the flu. The year’s supply was
exhausted quickly, however, and counterfeit vaccines
were selling for $100 on the internet. Despite the
government’s warning people still paid for them. A
five day course of antiviral medication was selling
for $5,000, even though it was only weakly effective
by February.

The US government had a few protocols in place, but
due to under-funding of public health and skewed
priorities many people died unnecessarily. Most other
countries looked upon us with pity and confusion that
was reminiscent of the twin hurricanes of 2005.

By the end of the day I had developed scratchiness in
the back of my throat and a runny nose. I started to
worry when my temperature read 100.2 degrees
Fahrenheit, and I felt the first twinges of pain in my
head. I guess I knew that sooner or later I would
inevitably contract the virus, and that it would be a
roll of the dice whether it killed me or not. I
couldn’t tell if the beads of sweat on my forehead
were from a worsening fever or simply from a growing
panic. I had already given away my stash of antiviral
medication to a family member (who turned out to have
been just sick with a cold). I closed my eyes behind
the mask and tried to calm down. This couldn’t be
happening.

Could it?

That was Charles. This is me. Read and see if you
want to add him to your bookmarks. This is awfully fine writing about a current and terrible subject.

Maximal Leaks

Via Taegan Goddard's Political Wire:

The Gathering Storm
How Katrina hurt Harriet—and what's next for the embattled high-court nominee.

By Richard Wolffe and Daniel Klaidman
Newsweek

The tale of how Katrina hurt Harriet is just one glimpse inside a White House that seems overwhelmed by crisis and in desperate need of some kind of relief. It helps explain how a lawyer known for her hard work and meticulous attention to detail could have delivered a questionnaire that was so full of holes even GOP senators sent it back for a do-over. Bush's aides, who say the White House Counsel's Office is getting plenty of backup from the Justice Department, maintain that they've got the votes necessary to see Miers through. The president himself brushed off the unrest with an easy smile, telling reporters in the Rose Garden it was nothing more than "a lot of chatter."

Behind the scenes, however, the comfort level is very low. Some White House officials are already worried that Miers's rehearsals for her hearings are not proceeding smoothly, according to current and former administration sources who declined to be named because the sessions are secret. Whether the White House now prevails with its nominee says as much about its qualities under fire as those of Harriet Ellan Miers.

Last week was supposed to mark a retooled rollout, concentrating on Miers's intellect and credentials rather than her Christian faith. Instead there were new questions about her competence and conservatism that left loyal supporters in despair. Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who will lead Miers's Senate hearings, has assured the White House he will move her successfully out of the Judiciary Committee. Still, he was stunned by her incomplete questionnaire. Her sparse answers undercut some Judiciary staffers who had been defending Miers against conservative attacks; hours after receiving the questionnaire, the aides were Googling for names and dates of cases that Miers had failed to provide. "We wanted to help them and it seemed like they didn't want to be helped," said one Republican Judiciary staffer who requested anonymity because his boss had not formally decided how to vote.

This is of a piece with the story immediately below. The picture is of a White House staff in complete disarray. Given how damaging these leaks are, the staff obviously wants her pulled or to hurt her so badly that she voluntarily withdraws.

Confused Response

List of Foiled Plots Puzzling to Some
White House Document Mixes Half-Baked Plans With Serious Terrorist Threats

By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 23, 2005; Page A06

A White House list of 10 terrorist plots disrupted by the United States has confused counterterrorism experts and officials, who say they cannot distinguish between the importance of some incidents on the list and others that were left off.

Intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the White House overstated the gravity of the plots by saying that they had been foiled, when most were far from ready to be executed. Others noted that the nation's color-coded threat index was not raised from yellow, or "elevated" risk of attack, to orange, or "high" risk, for most of the time covered by the incidents on the list.

The president made it "sound like well-hatched plans," said a former CIA official involved in counterterrorism during that period. "I don't think they fall into that category."

President Bush announced the list of attacks on Oct. 6, describing them as serious al Qaeda terrorist plots disrupted by the United States and its allies since Sept. 11, 2001. The document included never-before-disclosed plans to use hijacked commercial airliners to attack the East and West coasts in 2002 and 2003.

Three of the 10 plots were aimed at U.S. soil, and the government also halted five al Qaeda efforts to case possible targets or infiltrate operatives into the country.

Counterterrorism experts said they could not explain why some of the U.S. government's bigger successes did not make the list, including the thwarted attack by Richard Reid, who tried to set off explosives in his shoes aboard a transatlantic flight in December 2001, and the capture a year later of Ali Saleh Kahlah Marri, a graduate student at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., who officials believe had ties to Sept. 11 terrorists.

"We don't know how they came to the conclusions they came to," said one counterterrorism official, who spoke anonymously for fear of angering the White House. "It's safe to say that most of the [intelligence] community doesn't think it's worth very much."

I think it is safe to say that the White House is completely confused and doesn't know what the hell they are doing.

The Perplexity Plan

Prognosis perplexing

Lack of drug pricing info in new Medicare prescription program makes it difficult for seniors to choose plan

BY RIDGELY OCHS
STAFF WRITER

October 22, 2005

The government's roll-out of its $40-billion-a-year Medicare prescription drug plan has hit another snag.

People trained to help seniors figure out which plan to choose under the new program said they don't have the pricing information they need and seniors are scratching their heads in confusion.

Earlier this week, Dr. Mark McClellan, head of the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, launched a prescription drug plan finder designed to help those on Medicare plug in specific financial information and prescription needs so they can determine which plans are best for them. The tool is available on www.medicare.gov and is also used by those trained to counsel seniors.

But a crucial piece of data -- pricing information on the drugs -- is still not available, making it difficult for 42 million Medicare participants nationwide to figure out the best coverage at the lowest cost. Enrollment for the new Medicare prescription drug program starts Nov. 15. Forty-six drug plans are being offered in New York State alone.

"People are asking questions and we don't know the answers," said Jim, who is one of 9,000 customer service representatives hired to answer questions at 1-800-Medicare. Jim, who asked that his last name not be used, said he and his colleagues joke that "it's kind of the same way FEMA is run; I guess we're using the same playbook."

Deane Beebe of the Medicare Rights Center in Manhattan said its 183 volunteers who are trained to answer questions for the 2.5 million seniors in the state are frustrated. "The tool is useless," Beebe said. "The phones are ringing and we can't help anybody."

"It's definitely a slow start for CMS," said Holly Rhodes-Teague, head of Suffolk's Office for the Aging. She said her office's phones "have been ringing off the hook." A mistake in the "Medicare & You 2006" handbook, which outlines the different plans being offered, "didn't help," she said. The handbook tells low-income beneficiaries eligible for extra help that all drug plans are available with no monthly premium. However, 60 percent of the plans require premiums.

Medicare spokesman Peter Ashkenaz said drug pricing information is not available because some of the health plans did not provide the information in a usable format. To keep the "playing field level," Medicare officials decided to withhold the pricing information until it was all available, he said. But it is unclear when that will be.

Your Federal Emergency Medicare Prescription Drug Plan Management Agency is doing a heckuva job!

Irresponsible Controversy

This is called "disinformation."

Sure, it kills birds, but it won't kill you
By Wendy Orent, Wendy Orent is the author of "Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World's Most Dangerous Disease."

IT MUST SEEM like the sky is falling — that it's about to rain chaos and death as the dreaded H5N1 avian flu appears to close in.

Last spring, bird flu broke out in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. It spread to western China, Siberia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia in the summer. How did it travel half a continent?

Though maps of the outbreaks show the flu following roads, railway lines and national borders, many flu experts insist that migratory birds spread the virus across Asia. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned that some of the birds might fly to Alaska, then down into the United States, bringing the bird flu with them. That hasn't happened, but the virus appears to be in Europe. Last week, ducks and chickens were found dead in Romania, Turkey and Greece.

News reports make the threat even more ominous. In resurrecting the 1918 pandemic virus, the deadliest flu strain of all time, researchers recently learned that this strain was far deadlier than any other human virus — it killed mice, while normal human flu won't even ruffle a mouse's fur. They also found out that all of its genes came, directly or indirectly, from birds. Unlike the pandemics of 1957 and 1968, the 1918 version didn't arise from a combination of bird and mammal genes. Instead, the bird genes evolved into a human virus that killed as many as 50 million people.

This means, say breathless news reports, that what happened in 1918 could happen again, this time with H5N1.

But Peter Palese doesn't think so. He is lab director at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, where the technique that re-created the 1918 genes — known as reverse genetic engineering — was developed. He and associate Adolfo Garcia-Sastre contend that what the resurrected virus really shows is how supremely adapted it is — how well its parts fit together, how perfectly it works. The sublime malignance of the 1918 virus doesn't lie in one part but rather in how the genes function together. Evolution shaped this virus to be a sleek, effective killing machine.

We don't know what bird the genes came from originally. It wasn't a domestic duck, chicken or goose, because their flu strains are quite different. According to Jeffery Taubenberger, the senior researcher at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the 1918 flu originated in an unknown bird reservoir, one equally distant from American and Eurasian birds. "To me, it's from an unknown host, evolutionarily isolated from other birds," Taubenberger said last year.

But all wild-bird viruses are mild. They have to be: Sick birds don't fly far, and dead birds don't fly at all. Although H5N1, which evolved among domestic poultry in the crowded conditions of Asian farms and markets, has demonstrated the ability to kill wild birds in the hundreds, it cannot continue to be so deadly and still spread among them.

This, on the other hand, is how responsible experts in the field of risk communication discuss avian influenza:

Bird Flu:
Communicating the Risk
by Peter M. Sandman and Jody Lanard

Public health officials have a pandemic-size communication problem. Experts believe a deadly influenza pandemic is quite likely to be launched by the H5N1 avian virus that has killed millions of birds and dozens of people in Asia. They are more anxious than they have been in decades. But infectious diseases are unpredictable. H5N1 could disappear—as swine flu did in 1976—and "The Great Pandemic of 2___" could arise from a strain that doesn't even exist yet. Even if H5N1 does cause a human pandemic, it might weaken and produce only mild disease. So it's hard for officials to know how aggressively to sound the alarm. They don't want to be accused of needlessly frightening the public. They also don't want to be accused—later—of leaving the public underprepared for a disaster.

Communication wouldn't be such a problem if it were possible to get ready for the next pandemic without talking to the public. It isn't. Health authorities want the public to be aware of this grave threat for three fundamental reasons: so people will prepare themselves emotionally and logistically; so people will help their schools, businesses, hospitals, and other organizations prepare; and so people will support the preparedness efforts of their governments. And there's a fourth reason: If and when a pandemic begins, people who have had time to get used to the idea are likelier to understand their risks, follow official advice, and take an active role in protecting themselves.

Wendy Orent has been getting a lot of ink lately because the newspapers like controversy. If none exists, they will invent one. That's what her whole story is, an invention to create controversy on the Sunday op-ed pages.

The Accountability Administration

C.I.A. to Avoid Charges in Most Prisoner Deaths

By DOUGLAS JEHL and TIM GOLDEN
Published: October 23, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 - Despite indications of C.I.A. involvement in the deaths of at least four prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, C.I.A. employees now appear likely to escape criminal charges in all but one of those incidents, according to current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials. Skip to next paragraph

Manadel al-Jamadi died in Iraq in November 2003 after being beaten by members of the Navy Seals and turned over to C.I.A. interrogators.
WRAL, via Associated Press

David A. Passaro, a contract worker, is the only person linked to the C.I.A. to be charged in the deaths of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Federal prosecutors reviewing cases of possible misconduct by C.I.A. employees have recently notified lawyers that they do not intend to bring criminal charges in several cases involving the handling of terrorism suspects and Iraqi insurgents, the officials said.

Some of the cases are still technically under review by the Justice Department, but the intelligence and law enforcement officials said they had been told that the department was not preparing to bring charges against C.I.A. employees in those cases.

The Justice Department has charged only one person linked to the C.I.A. with wrongdoing in any of the cases: David A. Passaro, who was a contract worker, not a C.I.A. officer. The details of the C.I.A. cases remain classified, as do the Justice Department reviews.

But the prosecutors' decisions appear to reflect judgments that the C.I.A. was far less culpable in the mistreatment of prisoners than was the military, where dozens of soldiers have been convicted or accepted administrative punishment for their actions in cases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The cases became public in April 2004, with reports about abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and have led to the convictions of Pvt. Charles A. Graner Jr., Pfc. Lynndie R. England and other soldiers implicated in those episodes. The decisions are based on reviews of eight dossiers referred to the Justice Department by the C.I.A.'s inspector general, describing possible misconduct by a half dozen to a dozen C.I.A. employees in the deaths and other cases.

A case still technically under review by the Justice Department, the officials said, involves a high-profile episode in which a C.I.A. of