THE MTV CASINO

(thump...thump...sound of Wayne's head slowly beating against the wall. He turns to the gentleman next to him, whose head is also slowly beating against the wall. Wayne asks, "Professor De Long, why, oh why, can't we have a better MTV News press corps?")

via MTV news

The Social Security Debate: The Basics You Need To Know

04.22.2005

If you're scared off by talk of this hot-button issue, check out this rundown.

If the mere mention of the words "Social Security" has you scratching your head or reaching for that bottle of extra-strength aspirin, fear not. Here's a quick rundown on what you need to know about the current system and what President Bush's reform plan could mean for you.

Now, Social Security isn't an exact science, but with all the numbers and hoopla flying back and forth, it's easy to get lost in the shuffle — so let's all get cozy around the card table and see what this could mean as far as the tricky hand you've been dealt:

Social Security, as it exists now, is a numbers game. As soon as you get a job, you have to pay taxes. Some of those taxes, roughly 6 percent, are your "ante" into the Social Security pot. Your ante then goes toward paying out to workers once they retire, though some goes into a trust at the U.S. Treasury.

While this leaves you empty-handed at the moment, eventually you'll be getting paid those same benefits once you retire — maybe. The big concern right now lies in whether the government will have enough funds to cash you out once that time comes.

The Social Security system, designed in the 1930s, works like a charm if there are more youngsters than oldsters. But these days, with folks living longer and having fewer kids than in the '30s, there are more people — notably retiring baby boomers — leaving the table with the cash and less new players sitting down to contribute. Eventually, the system will be paying out more than it's taking in, which could leave you up a creek without a paddle when it comes time to get your money. The Congressional Budget Office claims the pot will be dry by 2052, though other people have come up with varying estimates.

President Bush's wants to let each person create their own private pot. It goes something like this: You would put less of your tax money into the communal pot, depositing it instead into a private retirement account. Money from these accounts could then be put toward a slew of government-approved investment options, but while those investments may bring the big bucks rolling in, they could also leave you high and dry. Critics say workers should not be able to gamble away what should be a guaranteed source of income for retirees, while supporters say it's your money, so do what you want with it.

Emphases mine. And apologies to the good Professor. This metaphor - Life is a Casino - is pervasive and corrosive to our society. Perhaps a theologian could explain why the notion that every transaction is a "bet" tends to undermine our sense of fair play and community. If the metaphor were true, then only Bush's base, the elite high-rollers, who get "comped in" with loads of perks and bennies, will "win". The rest of us are only "marks", suckers whose every penny earned or hoped for ends up on a table where gambling addicts are playing "Texas Hold 'Em".

Ancient Discoveries

My wife forwarded me the article from the Independent when it first came out but the folks at www.sciscoop.com have a summary of the article and some other related ones. Salon also ran a similar article here

Many scientists and historians have teamed up to use some of the advancements in digital scanning and infrared technologies to look at scortched parchments that were discovered in the ruins of old Greek and Roman communities. The article comments that this process has already been used on some remains from Herculaneum, the other city destroyed by Versuvius in 79 CE and that they found a lot of interesting things in those scrolls.

Well, now they are being used on the papyrus from Oxyrhynchus in Egypt and who knows what they will find? Perhaps more of some of the lost Gospels? Apparently, part of one of the lost plays of Sophocles has been read within this stack of parchments!

Just something cheery to think about on a beautiful Saturday night.

Eruption

Attacks Kill 10 as Violence Continues in Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 30, 2005

Filed at 12:53 p.m. ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Insurgents launched fresh attacks in Baghdad and northern Iraq on Saturday, killing at least 10 Iraqis and wounding more than 30, officials said, in a second day of violence aimed at shaking the country's newly formed government.

At a meeting of Iraq's neighbors in Turkey, meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the violence was ''not solely the concern of the Iraqis but ours as well.''

Some of the worst attacks occurred in the capital, still reeling from Friday's onslaught in which at least 17 bombs exploded in Iraq, killing 50 people, including three U.S. soldiers.

A suicide car bomb exploded Saturday near the offices of the National Dialogue Council, a coalition of 10 Sunni Arab factions that had been negotiating for a stake in Iraq's new Shiite-dominated government. The blast killed two Iraqi civilians and wounded 18, police said.

Another suicide car bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol exploded Saturday near the Mohammad Rasoul Allah Mosque in eastern Baghdad, killing two Iraqi women and a girl, and seriously wounding four soldiers, police Lt. Col. Ahmed Abboud Effait said.

Two Iraqis -- a policeman and a former official in Saddam Hussein's Baath Party -- also died in shootings Saturday in Baghdad, police said.

U.S. officials had hoped Iraq's new government, which was approved Thursday and takes office on Tuesday, would help dent support for the militants within the Sunni Arab minority that dominated under Saddam and is believed to be driving the insurgency.

However, the lineup of Cabinet ministers named by Prime Minister-designate Ibrahim al-Jaafari after months of political wrangling excluded Sunnis from meaningful positions and left the key defense and oil ministries in temporary hands.

Insurgents also launched three separate attacks Saturday in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, killing three Iraqis and wounding eight, police 1st Lt. Mahmoud Arif Yahya said.

A suicide car bomb exploded near a police patrol, killing a woman who was passing by and wounding four policemen, said Dr. Abdul Sattar Ramadhan al-Khalidi at Mosul's Jimhouri Hospital.

Elsewhere in the city, a roadside bomb missed its police patrol target, killing two Iraqi civilians and wounding two others and gunmen opened fire on a separate police patrol, wounding two officers, al-Khalidi said.

And on CNN, wall to wall on the reluctant bride.

An Unserious Age

This fish is a no-brainer
If we were serious about living consciously, we'd stop eating it
By WAYNE ROBERT

Peak fish will come to define this decade as much as peak oil.

That's why, in my opinion, eating fish from Southern oceans by First World residents should now be deemed unethical, in much the same way that wearing furs, eating factory-raised livestock, snacking on chocolate harvested by slaves or sipping unfair-trade coffee and tea are considered below the grade for people who strive to live consciously.

A just-released UN document tells us that a quarter of commercial fish species are at risk. This is optimistic compared to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's estimate of half, and the World Resources Institute's of three-quarters.

The evidence is now overwhelming that the 1950s cliché for the "underdeveloped" world had it all wrong. Back then, policy wonks warned against giving a man enough fish to eat for a day and favoured teaching the beachcomber to fish and thereby feed himself for a lifetime.

We now know that teaching Third World peoples industrial fishing led to $27 billion in yearly fish exports to First World countries. At the same time, Third Worlders saw their consumption of fish, their traditional source of protein and essential healthy fats, decline by half.
....
The 1990s were supposed to be the turnaround decade, when such problems could be managed. The human turnaround didn't happen, and now the problems will manage us.

Here's a sample of what to look for as fishing issues "go critical." Denied access to fish protein by exports to Northern countries, hungry Africans and Asians increasingly hunt for "bush meat." This is driving some animal species to extinction.

Since the species most easily captured for human consumption are "higher" up the evolutionary ladder (monkeys, apes and other charismatic mega-fauna that attract conservationist passion), they're more likely to have diseases that can cross the species barrier. Witness AIDS, Ebola and SARS.

Global warming, which raises the acid level of oceans and bleaches coral reefs that nurse fish species, is another example of a "negative feedback loop" that builds on itself to intensify the crisis. This kind of loopy crisis will likely hit fisheries before it hits other systems that humans can bring themselves to take an interest in. That's why working on fish habitats is such a good chance to practise the future.

The UN document, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report, raises the possibility of "culture, ethics and values" that might cause eaters to "reduce demand for degraded ecosystem services."

This means we in wealthy Canada should leave this source of protein for the impoverished people of the South. A huge amount of the sea creatures we eat, after all, are theirs.

Until we get our eco priorities in order in our waterways and stop environmentally compromising aquaculture, we should get our EFAs from hemp, flax and borage oils.

A brain disease got humans in this fishy mess by devising industrial fisheries and colonized trading systems. Other human capacities, such as ethics, may get us out.

Given that there is an active and growing outbreak of the extremely lethal Marburg virus in Africa, this should be getting a lot more attention than it is. But, no. We get wall to wall coverage of one bride with cold feet.

Extrapolation

The Machinery of Mendacity

Commentary: Given a public policy debate, conservatives have decided to forgo real debate entirely -- to adopt instead a radical course: denying reality itself.

By Russ Rymer

May/June 2005 Issue

In his article “Some Like It Hot,” Chris Mooney pinpoints a critical distinction in the battle over global warming. The think tanks, crank scientists, and pseudo-journalists who dispute climate change with the aid of millions of corporate dollars are not just arguing the economics of the problem, as they sometimes pretend. That activity, engaging in a thoughtful discussion of politics and priorities, the wisdom of one or another course of action, could be considered honorable regardless of which side one argued from. Rather, the mouthpieces are ignobly contesting the very science itself, using any tactic, any slipshod fiction, that might throw doubt into the public mind and so deflect the dictates of hard fact. In other words, given a public policy debate, conservatives have decided to forgo real debate entirely—to adopt instead a radical course: denying reality itself.

Mooney’s article and its companion pieces on the global warming wars, by Bill McKibben and Ross Gelbspan, appear under the banner “Climate of Denial.” That banner could be stretched over other stories in this issue as well. It would certainly describe the experience of Dr. David Graham of the Food and Drug Administration (“The Side Effects of Truth”). Hired to investigate the dangers of drugs on the market, Graham was punished for doing his job too well. When he spotted the deadly effects of Vioxx, his superiors chose to muzzle the messenger instead of affronting the pharmaceutical industry.

More generally, “Climate of Denial” could serve as a title for the political times we live in. On issue after issue, this administration and this Congress continue to pursue policies that cannot stand the test of honest debate, and require a rewriting of basic facts. The dangers to the country are evident in myriad policy debacles: the illegal, expensive, and unnecessary war we were led into under false pretenses; the “reform” of Social Security based on the unfounded assertion that the program is in “crisis” (and pursued by ideologues pretending their goal is not to end it entirely); the economy plundered by fiscal improvidence; the budget busted by grand theft billed as tax relief.

The danger is graver because the negation of truth is so systematic. Dishonest accounting, willful scientific illiteracy, bowdlerized federal fact sheets, payola paid to putative journalists, “news” networks run by right-wing apparatchiks, think tanks devoted to propaganda rather than thought, the purging of intelligence gatherers and experts throughout the bureaucracy whose findings might refute the party line—this is the machinery of mendacity. Its products are not the cherry-tree lies of embarrassed schoolboys covering up their misdemeanors, but the agitprop of a political ascendancy that considers the manipulation of truth an essential tool. There’s no embarrassment in it. The same partisans who clucked loudly during their impeachment of President Clinton about the need for a government so transparent that the most private details of a president’s personal life should be open to inspection have wrapped such a dense cloak of secrecy around the current president that even the roster of his administration’s meetings is withheld from the citizenry, under the expressed claim that the White House can’t do what needs doing if the American people are allowed to know what that is. The point here is not the hypocrisy involved, though that is egregious. The point is the downgrading of truth and honesty from principles with universal meaning to partisan weapons to be sheathed or drawn as necessary. No wonder the Bush administration feels no compunction to honor the truth or seek it; it conceives truth as a tactic, valuable only insofar as it is useful against one’s enemies.

What are the ramifications for the left and the right?

For its part, much of the left has spent the months since last November (really, it has been spending years) wallowing in insecure self-inspection; the Democratic Party has invited everyone from linguists to preachers to exorcise the internal flaw that could explain its ineffectuality. Party leaders might heed the formulation of W.B. Yeats in his poem “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing”: “For how can you compete / Being honour bred, with one / Who, were it proved he lies / Were neither shamed in his own / Nor in his neighbours’ eyes?” The Democrats need to recognize that their biggest internal problem may be their inability to size up their external one. Simply put, they have an unscrupulous antagonist.

As I was writing this week, I had C-Span on TV behind me (it's at my back as I face the monitor.) I have now gotten to the point where I don't need to look at the screen to know who is speaking: I know all of the Senate by voice and much of the House (this is not a good thing.) All of the hearings and floor sessions I listened to were marked by the Repubs stretching the truth so far that there wasn't any way to answer their arguments. You can't have a civil discussion when you have separate sets of facts. That's why conversation has become so hectored and partisan: we can't agree on what the facts are. Rush and the rightwing talkers just make things up.

It's Still the Economy, Stupid

Stephen Roach (from Seoul) leads the morning:

Here in Asia (again), they have only one question for me: How’s the American consumer? For a region lacking in self-sustaining internal demand, this concern is understandable. More than ever, externally led Asian economies remain a levered play on US consumption. Therein lies Asia’s biggest pitfall: If the American consumer ever fades, Asia could be headed for serious trouble. The coming US current account adjustment offers good reason to worry about just such a possibility.

The good news is that Asia has learned many of the painful lessons of the wrenching 1997-98 financial crisis. In general, the region has done a very good job of repairing its balance sheets and reorienting some of its most misguided policies. Specifically, that means current account deficits have given way to surpluses. Foreign exchange reserves have been rebuilt in an especially dramatic fashion. Currency pegs -- with a few obvious exceptions -- have been replaced by more flexible foreign exchange mechanisms. Moreover, reliance on the most fragile form of external funding -- the “hit money” of short-term capital inflows -- has been sharply reduced. And for some countries, there has been meaningful progress on the corporate restructuring and labor market reform fronts. All of these developments are unequivocally good news for what I believe is still the most dynamic region of the global economy.

The bad news is that the next crisis is never like the last one. As a result, it follows that backward-looking fixes are no guarantee that new and different problems will be avoided in the future. For Asia, that remains the biggest challenge of all. Particularly worrisome in that regard is the region’s unbalanced growth model -- an externally led macro dynamic that is still lacking in meaningful support from internal private consumption. What that means, of course, is that the region is highly vulnerable to a growth shortfall in foreign economies. In a US-centric global economy, that spells one thing -- over-reliance on the over-extended American consumer. Should the US consumer cave -- a distinct possibility in the event of a long overdue current account adjustment -- Asia would be toast.

And I'll let Billmon fill in the blanks:

Brad DeLong has already converted the Argentine-scenario into a simple model. And if you want to know the mathematical equation for "well and truly fucked," you can find [it] here.

Thank you, I'll be spending the rest of the weekend looking for cheerful things, doing a little gardening and dodging the severe thunderstorms which appear to be on tap for the next two days. I'm starting to think that a power outage might be a blessing. I'm going to hit the used book store down the street and might even read something which isn't imaged in pixels. That would be a good thing.

Showing the Flag

Via Juan Cole:

Flag-draped coffin photos released
Pentagon had resisted showing images of casualties

Joe Garofoli, Matthew B. Stannard, Chronicle Staff Writers

Friday, April 29, 2005

The Pentagon released 360 previously secret photos Thursday of the flag-draped coffins of U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq, reigniting a debate over the effect of such images on support for the war at home.

Pictures of flag-draped coffins massed in planes and on ships have been rare since the Defense Department banned the media in 1991 from photographing caskets while the military is transporting them home from combat.

The policy has become increasingly controversial during the Iraq war, with opponents accusing the White House of suppressing images of dead soldiers to avoid eroding public support for the conflict.

"This war has been so sanitized to the public," said Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville, whose son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, was killed in Iraq and who has become an outspoken critic of the war. "There are huge segments of the American public that don't even have to think about the war if they don't want to."

The Pentagon released the pictures Thursday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by University of Delaware journalism Professor Ralph Begleiter, who said the images were public record. He had sought all military photographs of caskets carrying the remains of military personnel taken since the United States attacked Afghanistan in October 2001.

The photos released Thursday depict ceremonial scenes of U.S. troops carrying the coffins of their fallen comrades. Most don't list a date or location, and the Pentagon blacked out the faces of soldiers around the caskets in many of the pictures for privacy reasons.

Begleiter said in an interview that he hadn't sought the photos to make a point politically.

"We spend a lot of effort trying to get to the cost of the war," he said. "But we haven't shown images of the most valuable resource we have -- the people we lost in the war."

Anti-war advocates hoped that the photos would "bring the cost of the war home," said Bill Dobbs, an organizer with United for Peace and Justice, a national umbrella organization of 1,000 community and religious groups that oppose the conflict. "Getting information like this out there helps."

But others questioned whether showing the photos would make any difference in public support.

"People who oppose the war will say the photos will support their position, and those who support (the Bush administration's position) will say the photos are a tribute to fallen heroes," said Phil Kipper, chairman of the broadcast department at San Francisco State University.

"That the Pentagon was forced to give these up under some duress shows that the Pentagon, and presumably the White House, didn't want this information to get out," Kipper said.

But because many of the photos depict largely ceremonial scenes, Kipper said, "I'm not sure of what the impact will be on people who are in the middle. It's not like the Vietnam War, where you had photos of hundreds of body bags lined up on the tarmac.

"It all depends how many times these photos will be shown over and over on the news," Kipper said.

I deeply respect what Begleiter (yes, that's an old CNN name, back before it became an all infotainment network) has done but doubt, at this stage in the war, that it will matter. Since we don't see dead Iraqis, these photos are just another piece of the video game which is Iraqwar and we don't seem to care how many of us or them get killed.

I found it interesting that, at the press conference the other night, some journo asked W how long we'll be staying in Iraq. I'd like to point out to said member of the press that we have never left Germany, Japan or Korea, and you might take your cue from there. Silly journos never read history.

The Future

Bush Plan Aids Poor, Squeezes the Rest

7:32 PM PDT, April 29, 2005
By Peter G. Gosselin, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — As the full dimensions of President Bush's Social Security plan come into view, so too does a broader vision of reducing most Americans' reliance on government programs that long have helped see them through economic difficulties.

Although Bush devoted most of his prime-time news conference Thursday to describing how he would expand Social Security protections, virtually all of his improvements would be aimed at the bottom one-third of American wage earners. The remaining two-thirds or so would see their future Social Security benefits curtailed, a reduction that they'd be encouraged to make up by saving and investing of their own.

The president often portrays his effort as simply trying to accommodate reality; funds to pay full Social Security benefits are expected to run out toward the middle of the century. But his approach also corresponds to a long-held conservative goal of reducing Washington's influence in the lives of ordinary Americans and to the aim of Bush chief political strategist Karl Rove to realign the nation along Republican principles.

"What you're going to see is an effort to scale back middle-class entitlements that many people do not need and to become more focused on the anti-poverty aspects of these programs," said Michael Tanner, a senior official with the small-government Cato Institute in Washington.

"We're going to tell non-poor Americans that they are going to have to save more on their own and not depend on a transfer from government," he said.

Bush has sought to use this targeted approach at least once before, in proposing to create a Medicare drug benefit that would go almost exclusively to poor Americans rather than to all seniors. Although Congress ultimately approved a benefit that did go to seniors generally, the new law includes substantial assistance for those with incomes under 150 percent of poverty -- or $14,355 for an individual.

Tanner and others predicted that Bush would pursue similar targeted tactics if he tackles Medicare's overall costs, which many policy analysts describe as a looming crisis that, in contrast to Social Security, needs immediate attention.

"Bush and the Republican leadership are committed to seeing universal programs like Social Security and Medicare turned into means-tested, welfare programs," said Harvard health policy authority Robert Blendon.

The killer is in the last graf. Right now, SS is insurance, a risk pool that we all pay into and receive a benefit from. It is not welfare. Turning it into welfare is the next step to killing it.

This is the radical right's agenda, ending state sponsored anything for you and me.

In Context

My, this is going well.

Wave of Attacks in Iraq Kill 40 and Wound 100
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
and ROBERT F. WORTH

Published: April 30, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 29 - Insurgents determined to destabilize Iraq's new government executed a devastating series of coordinated attacks on Iraqi forces on Friday, detonating 12 car bombs across greater Baghdad and striking military targets throughout Iraq. At least 40 people were killed and more than 100 others wounded.

The attacks, a direct challenge to the new Shiite-dominated government that was formed Thursday, were aimed at Iraqi police officers and national guardsmen at their bases and traveling in convoys in northern and southern Baghdad and in Madaen, 15 miles southeast of the capital. At least 23 Iraqi policemen and troops were killed. Some reports put the total death toll at as many as 50 people.

Later in the day, other car bomb attacks struck Diyarah, 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing two American soldiers, and near Taji, just north of Baghdad, where a bomber killed one American soldier and wounded two others. One American soldier was also killed and four were wounded by a homemade bomb Thursday night near Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad.

The strikes Friday morning came after a momentous and tumultuous day for the new government. After three months of delays that American officials said gave new strength to the insurgency, the dominant Shiite alliance won approval for a new cabinet - but not before angering Sunni political leaders who said they had been shortchanged.

The Shiites also pledged a housecleaning of former Baathists from the government, a move sure to drive a deeper wedge between Shiites and Sunnis, who conduct most insurgent activity. Sunni Arabs, who dominated Iraq's Baathist government under Saddam Hussein, largely boycotted elections in January.

With Friday's attacks, at least 480 Iraqi policemen and troops have been killed by insurgents in the last two months, according to tallies by Western security contractors, Iraqi officials and local news accounts.

Followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, claimed responsibility in Internet statements for a dozen attacks on Friday. The group also released an 18-minute recording said to be of Mr. Zarqawi that offered reassurances to insurgent fighters, warned Iraqis against negotiating peace with the United States and cited Pentagon data on shortfalls in American military recruiting.

In the streets, the insurgents once again turned to an increasingly common tactic: multiple bombings intended to kill not only the victims of the initial blast but also security forces and bystanders who rush to the aid of the wounded.

The strikes began just after 8 a.m. on Friday, the weekly holy day for most Iraqis, with four car bombs in the Adhamiya neighborhood, a heavily Sunni district in northern Baghdad that is home to many former Baathists. The attacks killed 7 Iraqi national guardsmen, 2 policemen and 4 civilians, and wounded 50 others, an Interior Ministry official said. Other reports said as many as 20 people had been killed there.

The first Adhamiya bomb went off next to a popular restaurant as an Iraqi convoy drove by, the police said. The blast propelled the crumpled remains of the bomber's vehicle more than 100 feet, where the police at the scene pointed to parts of the suicide bomber's body lodged in the charred wreckage.

Talk to Me

I know I've asked this question before, but I'm going to ask it again and it is time to do something about it. I'm going to be live blogging the American Constitutional Society/Center for American Progress event next Tuesday on judicial nominations, filibusters and the nuclear option for Judging the Future. It's time to get off the dime. I need a machine loaded with Win2K Pro, a, b, and g compliant. The HD doesn't need to be ginormous because I'm only working with text, but I'd like a fairly fast machine, 256K Ram, 16 bit. What's been your experience with the machines? Price matters, by the way, but I'm willing to pay decent coin for something that's demonstrably rugged, I'd like to get a few years out of it. Tell me the good, the bad and the ugly in your experience. I'd rather shop over the counter than by mail or website. I have a Microcenter near by and I'd rather not use Comp USA (they treat their employees abominably, and train them poorly.) Have any of you got a service experience with a vendor to share? That stuff matters. Also, I need a laser printer, now that they've come down in price. Any recommendations? Do the Lex Marks hold up? This won't be a high volume operation, but I am writing a book.

Also, I need a new cell phone plan. The Nokia I have is fine, but I need a grown up plan. All of the national plans are available here. I'd like to spend about 40 bucks a month for 5-700 minutes, free nights and weekends and no longdistance or roaming in North America (I do talk to Canada). Can you tell me what to look at and what to avoid?

Your suggestions gratefully accepted.

Give Him a Tickle

Dan Froomkin this afternoon at washingtonpost.com:

Following Up

In his first press conference after the 2004 election, an obviously pumped-up Bush instituted a "no follow-ups" rule. And a seemingly cowed press corps didn't object.

Last night, with Bush's approval ratings at an all time low, an apparently emboldened press corps followed up over and over again.

Right off the mark, Terence Hunt of the Associated Press followed up his own question about Bush's polling numbers and inability to get traction on his agenda. When Bush initially didn't touch on the issue of poll numbers, Hunt asked again.

Then David Gregory of NBC got into a bit of a back-and-forth with Bush, insisting on a response to his question on the role of faith in political debates.

When John Roberts of CBS asked if Bush was trying to suggest a relationship between passage of the energy bill and gas prices, Bush rambled on for a while, then tried to punt to Terry Moran of ABC News. But Roberts jumped right back in, trying to get Bush to clarify.

Then when it was Moran's turn, he asked about a new report that terrorist attacks are at an all time high. When Bush used that question to talk about how his strategy is "to stay on the offense," Moran followed up with the most aggressive question of the night: "So in the near-term you think there will be more attacks and more people dying?"

"I can't predict that," replied Bush, somewhat flummoxed.

By the time it got to David Sanger of the New York Times, whose question was about whether Bush could commit to withdrawing a substantial number of American troops from Iraq within a year, Bush had given up his resistance to follow ups. In fact, he invited one.

"Go ahead; I can see you've got a follow-up right there on the tip of your tongue," he said.

Bill Sammon of the Washington Times followed up on a question by Edwin Chen of the Los Angeles Times about who is responsible for all the partisan rancor in Washington.

And Olivier Knox of AFP followed up on a question from Michael Fletcher of The Washington Post, who had asked about Bush's policy towards North Korea.

"I want to make sure I understand your answer to Mike about North Korea," Knox said. "Did you mean to say that you will neither refer North Korea to the U.N. for sanctions, nor take military action unless you have the agreement of all the other partners abroad?"

Bush's intriguing reply: "No, I didn't speak about military -- I'm speaking about diplomatically."

So did it work? Did all the follow-ups force Bush to confront issues he danced around the first time he was asked?

Not a whole lot, no. But a little. It's progress.

Hopelessly optimistic, Dan. Bush can't give you specifics because he doesn't know them. He has people who do that for him.

Holy Distration Batman, it's the Trouble Alert!

Al-Zarqawi Wants Attacks on U.S. Troops, Tape Says

by Caroline Alexander
April 29, 2005

An audiotape purported to have been made by al-Qaeda-linked terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi urges militants to continue attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq.

``I want your swords to drip with the blood of your enemy,'' the person said on the tape, which was posted on an Islamist Web site today. Referring to U.S. President George W. Bush, the person said, ``Bush, we will not stop until we avenge our dignity, until your army withdraws from our land.''

Al-Zarqawi's cell has taken responsibility for dozens of bombings, shootings and kidnappings in Iraq since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion, including an attack last year that killed the head of the Iraqi Governing Council, Ezzedine Salim. The U.S. government is offering a $25 million reward for information leading to al-Zarqawi's capture.

At least 31 people were killed today and 100 others wounded in as many as a dozen car bombings and mortar attacks, one of the most violent days in terms of the numbers of car bombings since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Agence France-Presse reported.

"We see these attacks as another desperate attempt by the terrorists to discredit the newly formed Iraqi government,'' U.S. military spokesman James Drake said in a statement. He confirmed several car bombings took place in the capital, without identifying their location or casualties.

``Zarqawi will continue to tell his insurgents to attack Americans as well as symbols of the Iraqi government,'' General William Webster, commander of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, told Cable News Network today in response to the tape. ``We know he wants to step the attacks and it's out of desperation,'' Webster said, adding that ``it's only a matter of time before this insurgency dies out.''

I'm glad to see that our leaders have learned how to handle political setbacks well. Press conference doesn't go well? Pull out a terror alert! Presidential popularity at an all time low? Change the color code! Social Security Reform tanking like the Titanic in the last 30 minutes of the movie? Uncover new, but unverifiable terrorist threats.

I wish that this Administration would give me a reason to trust them on this...

The Climate

Lou Dobbs last night:

DOBBS: Senator Danforth, also a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, wrote a recent op-ed in "The New York Times" which said, "As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the affect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around."

Senator Danforth most recently served, as I said, as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He is also, by the way, an Episcopal minister and joining us tonight from St. Louis.

Good to have you with us.

JOHN DANFORTH, FMR. U.S. SENATOR: Thanks, Lou.

DOBBS: Let me turn to the issue that you raise with that one comment, not worrying about the impact of gays on the institution of marriage and worrying more about the federal deficit. At large, how far do you believe the party has moved from you philosophically, from when you were serving specifically in the U.S. Senate.

DANFORTH: I think the basics of Republican philosophy are the same as when was in the Senate, that is we tend to be physical conservatives. We tend to be concerned about the federal deficit. We want to keep taxes low. We want to keep the burden of federal regulations light. We believe in engaged foreign policy. We believe that the courts should be in the business of interpreting the law, not making it. These are standard beliefs of all Republicans, virtually.

But I think what's happened in very recent times there's become this religious bent to the Republican Party where we've gotten into an agenda items for religious conservatives. And I think that that's a mistake. I think basically the separation of church and state is served our country very well for more than 200 years. And we should honor that. And we're venturing from that.

DOBBS: It's a fundamental tenant, a fundamental tradition of this country and required by the constitution, in point of fact. But the idea that evangelical Christians, the far right in some instances, certainly, have taken control of the Republican Party or producing a terrific influence within it, how is that come to be in your judgment?

DANFORTH: Well, I think that some of the churches have become very well organized politically which is their right to do. I mean I don't -- I don't deny them that at all. I think that all people should be involved in politics.

But I think a lot of Republicans have viewed this as a whole new basis of political support. Some people who have not traditionally been Republicans now are supporting the Republican Party, so they think that this is something of a bonanza for our party.

But the problem is that it points us in a direction which I don't think is good for the country. And as a matter of fact in the long run I don't think it's good for the Republican Party, either.

DOBBS: Let me pose this to you. The Democrats for -- as a matter of history have appealed to black churches, to bring out the black vote in this country as you well know. Jews in this country, either through the synagogue or through their communities, have supported Democratic candidates and have made their views on religious grounds well known. Protestants in the south have always, until the last 40 years, aligned themselves with Democrats.

There is a great tradition in the country as well, though, for the involvement of religions and politics. How do you -- how do you separate those and weigh them?

DANFORTH: Well, there's a tradition that goes back to Biblical times, ever since Moses confronted Pharaoh of religious people confronting government, weighing in with government. It's a basic right of all Americans. It's certainly a right of religious people. It's a right of people who are involved with churches to be active participants in politics, they should be. I happen to be one of them.

I think the problem is not so much from the side of religion, but from the side of the politicians. It's when politicians present themselves as essentially the extension of a sectarian point of view that we get into trouble. I mean, it's one thing for politicians to weigh the input of religious people, but it's quite another thing to basically take an entire agenda and try to put it in legislative form.

And you know, a number of examples that I could give you but I think...

DOBBS: Please do.

DANFORTH: Yes. Well one example I think would be the Terri Schiavo case. Which there is a case where standard Republican views of deferring to states, of certainly not putting the federal courts and the business of trumping state courts, of not having some special sense of wisdom located in Congress and Washington, those traditional Republican positions were shoved aside because there was at least an apparent push from religious groups to -- for Congress to involve itself in that sad case of Terri Schiavo. That would be one example.

I think another example would be the move to amend the constitution with respect to gay marriage. Now, you can be for or against gay marriage. I think marriage is between a man and a woman myself, but to amend the constitution is a little bit far out. But it is taking on a religious agenda. And it's something that's unique to the Republican Party.

DOBBS: Jack Danforth, we are out of time. Senator Danforth, Ambassador Danforth, it's good to have you with us. And, if you will, convey my best to your lovely wife.

I nearly emailed Dobbs last night to tell him that there is a difference between a minister and a priest in the sacramental religious traditions. Danforth is a priest, not a minister. Priests are ordained, ministers are not. Gawd, it is such a pain that the damned media doesn't know anything about religion.

That said, the point Danforth makes is a good one: the Repubs have been hi-jacked by the far right wing of the evangelical movement and the Catholic neo-orthodox.

(Cross posted at Judging the Future.)

Distracting Ourselves to Death

Max debunks the CW on the SS shortfall. Ya know, he does this stuff for a living.

* The deterioration in the 75-year actuarial balance of Social Security that has occurred since 1983 has been caused overwhelmingly by economic developments, trends in disability incidence, and programmatic changes to Social Security. [Not the famous decline in the ratio of workers-to-retirees, a decline that was fully anticipated in 1983. -- MaxSpeak]

* Reversing the demographic change most commonly identified with placing strain on the Social Security system -- declining mortality rates -- would eliminate less than 5% of the current shortfall.

I'm listening to CNN and they bought all the lies, when a simple Google search would demonstrate how wrong they are. SS won't be "bankrupt" in 2041. They are the propaganda arm of the RNC.

I wonder how many hours of missing little girls we are going to get today? Do you ever wonder why we don't see hours devoted to missing little girls of color? It stands to reason that, on any given day, there must be one or two.

We'll get more crap rather than any reasoned analysis of what Bush said last night.

No Way Out

Bush sees progress in Iraq, sets no withdrawal time
29 Apr 2005 01:50:24 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON, April 28 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush said on Thursday that despite a violent insurgency, progress was being made in Iraq which just formed a new government, but he refused to set a timetable for withdrawing American troops.

"I believe we're making really good progress in Iraq," Bush said. "They saw a government form today. The Iraqi military is being trained by our military, and they're performing much better than the past."

Iraq formed its first democratically elected government in more than 50 years, ending three months of political stalemate that has hampered efforts to tackle violence.

Bush said he spoke to Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari earlier on Thursday and invited him to the United States.

"I told him I was proud of the fact that he's willing to stand up and lead. I told him I appreciate his courage and the courage of those who are willing to serve the Iraqi people in government," he said at an evening news conference.

The United States has reduced the number of troops in Iraq to 139,000 from 160,000, and the deployments have not stretched the armed forces too thin to operate elsewhere if needed, Bush said.

NO TIMETABLE

"I know there's a temptation to try to get me to lay out a timetable (for withdrawal)," Bush said. "I don't think it's wise for me to set out a timetable. All that will do is cause an enemy to adjust."

American troops would be pulled out of Iraq "as soon as possible," he said. "And as soon as possible depends upon the Iraqis being able to fight and do the job."

U.S. forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 and toppled Saddam Hussein, but a violent insurgency has taken hold that has killed American troops and Iraqi civilians.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, earlier this week said Iraq's insurgency remained undiminished in its capabilities in the past year despite U.S.-led efforts to crush it.

"There are still some in Iraq who aren't happy with democracy. They want to go back to the old days of tyranny and darkness and torture chambers and mass graves," Bush said.

But Bush said he told al-Jaafari that the United States had made a commitment to Iraq and would stand by it.

U.S. officials point to the democratic moves in Iraq as a sign that democracy can spread more broadly in the Middle East.

Um, the fact that there are armed young people from another country present in Iraq, who shoot up civilians on a regular basis and bomb cities flat, has nothing to do with the "insurgency?" The local resistance has a lot to hate and it has nothing to do with "freedom" or "democracy."

Wasn't it interesting that the so-called government formed their cabinet yesterday just in time for the W press conference?

New World Order

Beltway To Get Va. Toll Lanes
Two Private Firms Will Fund Widening To Ease Congestion

By Steven Ginsberg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 29, 2005; Page A01

Construction of the first major expansion of the Capital Beltway in a generation could start as soon as next year, Virginia transportation officials said yesterday after signing a deal with two private firms to build toll lanes for a speedier ride on 14 miles of the chronically clogged highway.

The deal calls for adding two lanes in each direction of the Beltway, separated from other traffic, between Springfield and Georgetown Pike near the Maryland border. The high-occupancy toll -- or HOT -- lanes would be free for vehicles containing three or more people; other drivers would pay to use them. To keep the lanes from clogging, tolls would increase with the amount of traffic.

The state would not have to pay anything for the new lanes. The private companies would invest the entire $900 million cost of the project in exchange for all or part of the toll revenue.

"For drivers in Northern Virginia, it'll mean new capacity, which is something that has not been offered in a long time," said Transportation Commissioner Philip A. Shucet. "It means a new opportunity for HOV and transit, and it means a choice for drivers who want to pay for a faster commute."

The lanes represent the first step in what regional leaders hope is an extensive network of toll lanes across the region. Virginia officials are considering additional HOT lanes on parts of Interstates 95 and 395, and Maryland officials are exploring express toll lanes on the Beltway, I-270, the Baltimore Beltway and I-95 north of Baltimore.

There was a day when the roads were for everybody and we all paid a little bit for them. I guess now they are only for those who can afford to use them. This is a dramatic change in philosophy. Bushco is taking us into a privatized world for the priveleged. You and I can peer through the window and look at it, but getting the price of admission is a whole other problem.

Credit Where credit is due

I frequently dump on how the WaPo shades the news, so kudos where kudos are due - they nailed this morning's headline:

Bush Social Security Plan Would Cut Future Benefits

By Jim VandeHei and Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 29, 2005; Page A01

President Bush called on Congress last night to curtail future Social Security benefits for all but low-income retirees in an urgent new effort to address the popular program's shaky finances.
...
The freshest proposal concerned Social Security, which is projected to pay out $3.7 trillion more than it takes in over the next 75 years, but does not face immediate fiscal troubles. Bush, for the first time, endorsed the idea of progressive indexing, which reduces the rate of growth of benefits for most Americans while protecting those for low-income retirees.

Bush said his plan would ensure that "future generations receive benefits equal to or greater than the benefits today's seniors get." Benefits currently increase each year based on the annual growth of wages.

The White House, in documents released during the speech, says the Bush plan would take care of about 70 percent of the program's projected shortfall. Bush said he is open to other ideas, such as increasing the limit on income subject to the payroll tax that funds Social Security and raising the retirement age.

Despite opposition from Democrats and a lukewarm response from the public, he intensified his push for private accounts financed by a portion of a worker's payroll taxes. To pacify those worried about the risk associated with investment, the president, for the first time, said one of the investment options should be no-risk Treasury bonds.

His proposal to reduce guaranteed benefits for everyone but the working poor is designed to provide specific direction to Congress on how to shore up the system -- and pressure Democrats to support a plan that protects those earning the least.

The public "understands Social Security is headed for serious financial trouble, and they expect their leaders in Washington to address the problem," Bush said. The system, he added, is "on the path to bankruptcy" by 2041. Critics say that claim is misleading.

The Social Security Administration calculates that the system will deplete its reserve of Treasury bonds by 2041, after which it will be able to pay out in benefits only what it receives in taxes. But even then, benefits would be almost three-quarters what is currently promised, and considerably higher in inflation-adjusted terms than they are now. If nothing is done to Social Security, the system will be able to meet the president's promise to ensure that all seniors receive a benefit larger than current levels.

So Bush wants to go through a whole lot of rigamarole to guarantee that Social Security will do what it'll do anyway if nothing is done.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Here's the complete transcript of the press conference. I'll pull some gems out of that later.

Winning

23 Iraqis Are Killed in Attacks on Security Forces in Baghdad

By CHRISTINE HAUSER

Published: April 29, 2005

At least 23 people, including civilians and Iraqi forces, were killed and up to 93 people were wounded today in nine car bombs, just one day after the first fully and freely elected government in Iraq's history was approved.

Three car bombs exploded in the Al-Madain, killing nine people; two car bombs were detonated in the Al-Ghadeer area of Baghdad, killing one, and in Al-Adhamiya neighborhood 13 people were killed in four car bombs, according to the Interior Ministry. Of the dead, seven were civilians and the rest of the casualties were Iraqi forces, the ministry said.

The nine bombings suggested that fighters in Iraq were keeping up the momentum of an undiminished insurgency. The attacks sent a bloody reminder to the new government of the array of challenges it must tackle when it assumes power next week. In addition to fighting the insurgency, the new government must work to rebuild Iraqi cities and guide the effort to write a new constitution.

In the bombings today, the main Muslim day of worship, the Iraqi police and national guardsmen took the most casualties. Insurgents frequently attack the Iraqi forces, Iraq's government members and the foreign forces in the country. In addition, attacks on Shiite clergy and mosques have raised concerns of sectarian violence.

yankee doodle notes that yesterday's casualties look pretty much like most days for the last year and he counts the bodies:

Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed, four wounded by car bomb near Hawija.

Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi soldier killed, two wounded by roadside bomb near Basra.

If you aren't reading Today in Iraq and Juan Cole every morning, well, you just don't have a clue.

Checking the Schedule

Sorry it was a bit thin here today, gang. I had to respond to the immediate emergency at Judging the Future as the horse trading (miniature horses) started on the Senate floor this afternoon. The Senate is in recess next week, so it should be quieter. At the other site, I have a sponsor who pays me to keep an eye on that stuff (disclosure once the contract is signed) and I have to go where my livelihood is.

Guest posters, employment means going to meetings and I have a few tomorrow, so the door is open for you all day. I'll be here through the weekend, but the guests are welcome to pop in if they have a minute and an issue.

Okay, in comments, your review of the press conference tonight. Mine: W's learned a few new tricks. Now, he just runs out the clock on the reporters. The event was at a new level of scripting, it was a stump speach because of the lack of substance in the reporter's follow-ups. The strategy here should be cooperation between the journos, pick a theme for each event and hammer it. Make the president look evasive. He was in complete control the entire evening, a virtuoso performance which made no points on substance. All he had were assertions, which is all he has ever had, without one fact to back up a word he said. The journos had no facts, either. It was an exchange of hot air on both sides and another sorry moment in the history of the American press corps.

Contrast this with the way Clinton would have had a bazillion statistics at the ready and be able to quote sources. He wasnn't a great president but he gave great press.

Time Heals?

On Abu Ghraib, the Big Shots Walk
By BOB HERBERT

Published: April 28, 2005

As Eric Schmitt wrote in The Times: "Barring new evidence, the inquiry by the Army's inspector general effectively closes the Army's book on whether the highest-ranking officers in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal should be held accountable for command failings described in past reviews."

This is the way atrocities are dealt with in Mr. Bush's world of war. The higher-ups responsible for training, supervising and disciplining the troops - in other words, the big shots who presided over a system that ran shamefully amok - escaped virtually unscathed.

The abuses at Abu Ghraib, which seemed mind-boggling at the time, turned out to be symptomatic of the torture, abuse and institutionalized injustice that have permeated the Bush administration's operations in its so-called war against terror. Euphemisms like rendition, coercive interrogation, sleep adjustment and waterboarding are now widely understood. Yes, Virginia, it is the policy of the United States to kidnap individuals and send them off to regimes skilled in the art of torture.

Two things are needed. First, a truly independent commission, along the lines of the bipartisan 9/11 panel, should be set up to thoroughly investigate U.S. interrogation and detention operations, and make recommendations to correct abuses.

Second, the U.S. government should make it clear, beyond any doubt, that torture and any other inhumane treatment of prisoners is wrong, just flat wrong, and will not be tolerated under any circumstances.

"In our contemporary world, torture is like the slave trade or piracy was to people in the 1790's," said Michael Posner, executive director of Human Rights First, which is suing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the prisoner abuse issue. "Torture is a crime against mankind, against humanity. It's something that has to be absolutely prohibited."

If the president made it clear that men and women up and down the chain of command would be held responsible for the abuses that occur on their watch, the abuses would plummet. Instead, the message the administration has sent is that its demands for accountability will be limited to a few hapless, ill-trained grunts.

The big shots who presided over behavior that has shamed America in the eyes of the world can count on this president's embrace.

Bob, in a year's time, the "abuses of Abu Ghraib" seem no less mind boggling. And the lack of accountability is even more so.

More Bad News

Growth Pace of Economy Slowed in 1st Quarter
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 28, 2005

Filed at 10:42 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Buffeted by rising energy prices and weakened consumer and business spending, the economy grew at an annual rate of just 3.1 percent in the first quarter. It was the slowest pace of expansion in two years, offering fresh evidence that the economy has hit another ''soft patch.''

The latest reading on gross domestic product, released by the Commerce Department on Thursday, showed that consumers and businesses turned cautious in their spending in the January-to-March quarter, a key factor in the slower economic growth. High energy prices and rising borrowing costs are causing Americans to tighten their belts a bit.

The first-quarter's GDP figure, down from a 3.8 percent pace logged in the final quarter of 2004, represents the economy's most sluggish showing since the first quarter of 2003, when economic activity expanded at an even more mediocre 1.9 percent rate.

GDP, the broadest barometer of the economy's health, measures the value of all goods and services produced within the United States.

In second report Thursday, the number of new people signing up for unemployment benefits rose last week as businesses coped with rising costs. New claims rose by 21,000 to 320,000, the Labor Department said.

The newest snapshot of the economy disappointed economists. Before the report's release, they were forecasting a 3.5 percent growth rate for the first quarter.

That estimate marked a downgrade from just a few weeks ago when economists were predicting that business growth would clock in at a pace of 4 percent or better in the first quarter. But they scrambled to lower those forecasts in the wake of a spate of disappointing economic reports in recent weeks.

Those disappointing reports -- including retail sales, industrial production and big-ticket orders to factories -- along with Thursday's GDP figure, add to evidence that the economy hit a ''soft patch.'' That's the term Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan used last spring when economic growth slowed abruptly.

Economists also are lowering their estimates for growth in the current April-to-June quarter -- to around a 3 percent rate -- or possibly less.

Over at Angry Bear, economist Kash has put up a set of charts (helpful for me, I'm a visual learner) and comments:

Much of the growth in GDP over the past couple of years has been driven by investment spending, both by businesses and on housing. But business spending slowed markedly in the beginning of 2005, and residential investment spending has been considerably cooler in the past 3 quarters compared to 2003 and early 2004...

Finally, notice the US's continuing current account problem: imports, which are much larger than exports in the first place, continue to grow faster than exports. The effect of the weaker dollar on exports has yet to make itself felt...

One of the things I love about the Internets is that I can read a news story and then click around to find an expert who can provide context.

Truth Club

National security employees form whistleblower's coalition

By Chris Strohm
[email protected]

More than 50 former and current government officials from more than a dozen agencies have formed a new coalition to protect and support national security whistleblowers.

The group, called the National Security Whistleblower's Coalition, is planning a series of meetings with House and Senate lawmakers and a press conference on Thursday to put forward its proposals. The coalition was spearheaded by FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, who was fired after alleging security breaches, mismanagement and possible espionage within the FBI's translation service in late 2001 and early 2002.

"We believe that the biggest and the most important thing is individual accountability," Edmonds said Wednesday. "As long as a few bad apples are allowed to hide behind the wall of the agencies, you can't pass any law, any regulations. It's not going to do any good. Laws are meaningless without accountability."

Government Executive first reported on the emergence of a national security whistleblower's movement last year after the 9/11 Commission released its final report on intelligence failures.

Whistleblowers associated with the coalition come from agencies such as the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, Defense Department, Energy Department, Transportation Security Administration, Federal Aviation Administration, and former U.S. Customs Service.

"I call them left-wing, right-wing, no-wing, I don't care. We all have a common cause," Edmonds said. "Tomorrow we are going to be coming in the hundreds. And then we are going to come in the thousands. How long are they going to ignore us?"

Most officials in the coalition are on administrative leave or have already been fired from their agencies. Seventeen of the whistleblowers hail from the FBI, more than any other agency.

Edmonds sued the Justice Department after being fired from the FBI in 2002. Her case was dismissed last summer by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after former Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the state secrets privilege, which allows the government to withhold information to safeguard national security. Edmonds and her team of lawyers have asked a federal appeals court to reinstate the lawsuit, arguing that it was unjustly dismissed.

You might want to ask the question, "why do civil servents need a support group and legal defense fund in order to tell the truth?" Nah, don't ask it. All of the answers are too scary.

The Empty Story

House Overturns New Ethics Rule as Republican Leadership Yields
By CARL HULSE

Published: April 28, 2005

WASHINGTON, April 27 - In a rare retreat, the Republican-led House on Wednesday overturned contentious rule changes made to the House ethics process, with Republicans saying they surrendered to the Democrats to try to restore a way to enforce proper conduct in the House.

"I am willing to step back," said Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, the moving force behind ethics revisions forced through by the majority in January.

After a closed-door meeting with House Republicans, Mr. Hastert indicated that the reversal was primarily motivated by a need to resolve the torrent of questions surrounding the conduct of Representative Tom DeLay, the majority leader.

Mr. Hastert's relenting to Democrats' demands marked a startling turn as Republicans confronted the fallout from a stalled ethics process that Democrats said was rigged to protect Mr. DeLay, who was admonished three times by the ethics committee last year. The Republican majority has also come under increasing criticism for the rule changes, which their opponents said would render the committee impotent to pursue wrongdoing by members.

One of the most immediate effects of the House's reverting to the old rules will be the opening of an investigation into persistent questions about Mr. DeLay's overseas travel and his relationships with prominent lobbyists. His fund-raising operations are under investigation by a grand jury in Texas, and some of the lobbyists' roles have come under increasing scrutiny by federal investigators in recent months. While Mr. DeLay has not been named as a target of those investigations, the attention paid to his troubles has proven disruptive in the House.

On Wednesday night, after a pointed debate in which lawmakers traded blame for the ethics impasse, the House voted 406 to 20 to approve a hastily drafted resolution that essentially restored the rules in place at the start of the year for what is formally known as the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.
....
In his letter to Ms. Pelosi proposing a return to the previous rules, Mr. Hastert accused Democrats of distorting the changes for political gain and said that the reversal would result in "leaving the unfairness inherent in the old system in place." But Mr. Hastert told reporters he was willing to move ahead because of the scrutiny of Mr. DeLay.

"There is a member, especially on our side, who needs to have the process move forward, so he can clear his name," the speaker said. "Right now, he can't clear his name."

Mr. Mollohan disputed Mr. Hastert's characterization of the old rules as unfair, but gave him credit.

"It can't be easy to come to this," he said. "But again, it is the right thing to do."

This is a front page NYT article, but the substance of the changes are no where detailed, there is simply a lot of he said/she said. Who is in trouble, DeLay or Pelosi? Why? Carl Hulse isn't going to tell you. I realize this story broke late yesterday, but if the Website doesn't give you the substantive changes by noon today, the NYT is being lazy and it sure won't be the first time.

UPDATE: Here is some of it, courtesy MSNBC:

Records detail DeLay's ties to lobbyist U.S. territory seeking labor law exemption was client

By Sharon Theimer
The Associated Press
Updated: 8:04 p.m. ET April 27, 2005

WASHINGTON - Over two years, House Majority leader Tom DeLay had at least two dozen discussions with a lobbyist working to keep a U.S. territory’s factories free from new labor laws. The lobbyist contributed to the House leader’s campaigns and arranged travel for him.

Records show that DeLay’s staff spoke with the lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, or his team almost daily during this period.

DeLay’s office kept Abramoff, now under criminal investigation, routinely apprised of congressional efforts to block new regulations on his client, the Northern Mariana Islands.

Questions have been raised about whether Abramoff himself paid for some of DeLay’s foreign trips in violation of House rules. DeLay maintains they were properly financed by trip sponsors.

Abramoff’s firm reported it drafted legislative materials for DeLay, and Abramoff boasted to island leaders he could use his close ties to Republican leaders to block legislation from receiving a House vote.

“Getting the bill off the schedule for next week, however, should enable us to use our connections within the Leadership to ensure that ... it will not come to the floor,” Abramoff wrote the islands in September 1996.

The Northern Marianas billing and correspondence records of Abramoff’s former lobbying firm, Preston Gates, were obtained by The Associated Press under an open records request approved by the island government.

'Sweatshop' rules blocked
They provide a day-by-day account of the lobbyist’s campaign of fundraising, trip-providing and schmoozing with lawmakers in both parties aimed at, among other things, getting Congress to block Clinton administration efforts to regulate alleged “sweatshop” garment factories in the Northern Marianas. Those rules were never enacted.

The Answer

Iraq Assembly Approves Partial Cabinet; Key Vacancies Remain
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 28, 2005

Filed at 6:35 a.m. ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The interim National Assembly approved a partial Cabinet on Thursday, breaking months of deadlock and political wrangling. But disputes remained over key ministry positions and two deputy prime minister slots.

The legislators approved a list of 27 ministers and five acting ministers, ushering in Iraq's first elected government since the fall of Saddam Hussein. The Cabinet was approved by 180 lawmakers out of the 185 present in the 275-member parliament, Speaker Hajim al-Hassani announced to applause.

Prime Minister-designate Ibrahim al-Jaafari submitted a Cabinet that includes members of Iraq's main Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions.

But Al-Jaafari himself, a Shiite, will be acting defense minister, a position that was supposed to go to a Sunni Arab, and disputes remained over two deputy prime minister slots and the defense, oil, electricity, industry and human rights ministries.

Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon favorite from al-Jaafari's Shiite-dominated alliance, will be one of four deputy prime ministers and acting oil minister. Kurdish official and former Vice President Rowsch Nouri Shaways will be another deputy and acting electricity minister.

Al-Jaafari has struggled to reconcile the competing demands of Iraq's myriad factions since Jan. 30 elections.

Shiite leaders rejected his initial choices for a Sunni deputy prime minister and defense minister because of suspicions they had ties to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, which brutally repressed Iraqi's majority Shiites and Kurds.

Al-Jaafari also faced infighting within his United Iraqi Alliance, the largest bloc in parliament, over the oil and electricity portfolios.

Lawmakers earlier said the Cabinet would include 17 Shiite Arab ministers, eight Kurds, six Sunnis and a Christian. Among them are six women, responsible for seven portfolios, according to Thursday's announcement.

President Jalal Talabani and his two vice presidents signed off on the list before Thursday's historic vote. A handover between outgoing Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and al-Jaafari will take place within days, the incoming premier told reporters Wednesday.

''The Iraqis will find that this government has religious, ethnic, political and geographic variety, in addition to the participation of women,'' he said from the steps of his office. ''Now that the process has started, we will spare no effort to bring back a smile to children's faces.''

Allawi's Iraqi List party, which has 40 seats in the National Assembly, was not included in the new Cabinet. Alliance lawmakers said they had given up trying to balance Allawi's demands with those of Sunni factions that could offer help in beginning talks with Sunni militants, who are believed to be the backbone of the insurgency.

Many Shiites have long resented the secular Allawi, accusing his outgoing administration of including former Baathists in the government and security forces.

Shiites make up 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people. The Kurds make up 20 percent, and the Sunni Arabs, who largely stayed away from the elections either in boycott or for fear of attacks, are roughly 15 percent to 20 percent.

Juan Cole remains skeptical. So do I. This has the feel of a put up job. And I doubt that this "government" will resolve anything.

Washington Times: Bolton's Problems are straight partisanship

The Washington Times does it best upfront to sell a story of Democrats who had made up their minds in advance to oppose Bolton out of sheer partisanship. But their own article doesn't support the proposition. They take as divine writ the White House claim that all the Republicans on the committee will ultimately support Bolton, and claim the nomination will turn on the Dems' willingness to filibuster him. They wish.

But the bolded text, way down in the article (behind the cut), tells a different story: even the Moonies' reporter has to admit that Bolton's been charged with trying to alter intelligence assessments.

At the end, the reporters quote three GOP senators claiming that the allegations either have been debunked (Allen, Frist) or will be (Coleman). But no such refutations are produced. Maybe the dog ate their homework. Or maybe the Moonie Paper just lies for the sheer hell of it.

The Senate's Adamant 'No' Men: From the start, Democrats were against Bolton

By Stephen Dinan and Brian DeBose
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Most of the Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee opposed John Bolton's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations from the start, and the other two cited his and his opponents' testimony during hearings two weeks ago as cause to oppose him.

Six of the panel's eight Democrats opposed Mr. Bolton when he was confirmed as undersecretary for arms control and international security in May 2001, and they said he has done nothing to convince them that he deserves a promotion.

"Bill Nelson voted against Bolton when he was up for U.S. arms negotiator — and he doesn't think he did well in that job, considering our experience with North Korea and Iran," said Bryan Gulley, a spokesman for Mr. Nelson, Florida Democrat. "He won't vote for Bolton for U.N. ambassador for that reason."

Of the other two committee Democrats, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois was not in the Senate in 2001, and Sen. Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin was one of seven Democrats who voted for Mr. Bolton then, helping confirm him 57-43.

Mr. Feingold said he prefers to defer to the president on nominations, but this time, he must oppose Mr. Bolton.

"Based on the material that I have seen, the testimony that I have heard, and Mr. Bolton's own record, I have concluded that I must oppose the nomination," Mr. Feingold said.

Although most of the recent focus has been on Republican senators wavering on Mr. Bolton, White House officials and Senate Republicans say their party members will ultimately support the nomination.

That means his fate will rest with Democrats and whether they choose to filibuster him.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, said Monday that Mr. Bolton's nomination is "in trouble," although aides said Democrats won't decide on a filibuster until after the committee's May 12 vote.

Although their opposition has remained constant, some Democrats' reasons have shifted since President Bush nominated Mr. Bolton on March 7.

"This is just about the most inexplicable appointment the president could make to represent the United States to the world community," Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, said in March, citing a series of remarks by Mr. Bolton that questioned the usefulness of the United Nations and his job as undersecretary.

"If the president is serious about reaching out to the world, why would he choose someone who has expressed such disdain for working with our allies?" Mr. Kerry said.

Yesterday though, he said those views were not the deciding factors in his opposition.

"It's not the U.N. positions. He can have his positions, but I think the intelligence, and he wasn't candid with the committee," Mr. Kerry said.

Democrats have accused Mr. Bolton of bullying intelligence analysts and colleagues to try to change their conclusions and the intelligence he could cite in speeches.

"Where I draw the line is to the extent that your temperament is interfering with the ability of the United States to make accurate intelligence assessments — that's a problem, particularly when you're being assigned to a post that involves the United States' credibility," said Mr. Obama, who said Mr. Bolton's performance was damaging.

"This was based on Mr. Bolton's response to questions about these allegations that he intimidated intelligence analysts. He did not seem to be particularly forthcoming," Mr. Obama said.

Others who worked with Mr. Bolton, including Bush administration officials, have given Democrats more ammunition since the hearings by complaining about Mr. Bolton.

"My deep concern with him is he crossed the line. I think most of us believe that there needs to be a very strong fire wall between policy setters and the intelligence community," said Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Connecticut Democrat. "If in any way you cross over and try in some way to alter their reports or conclusions through intimidation, I think that is a violation and it ought to be against the law. And that happened here with two individuals on five different occasions over 48 months he tried to have fired."

Republicans concede they made a mistake last week by not responding to those charges and by assuming that all 10 Republicans on the committee would vote to recommend Mr. Bolton to the full Senate for confirmation.

Instead, during the panel's scheduled vote on Mr. Bolton, Democrats raised a series of objections, prompting Sen. George V. Voinovich, Ohio Republican, to call for a delay to give the committee more time for investigation. Two other Republicans on the committee have said they also have questions that they want answered before they will support Mr. Bolton.

"We sat silent. We made a tactical error. We let one side put on its case, and we didn't respond at all, because we thought we had the votes," said Sen. Norm Coleman, Minnesota Republican and one of Mr. Bolton's staunchest defenders.

"I think Republicans should get together and go over every allegation and then walk through the responses. The next time we have a hearing, if one side makes the case there will be a rebuttal on the record," he said.

Another defender, Sen. George Allen, Virginia Republican, said the charges can all be fought.

"If you just look at the credibility of all these charges, they have been hearsay, they have been uncorroborated, they have been spurious, and every single one of them ends up being refuted or put in the proper context," he said. "At some point, these attacks and this attempt at personal political attacks will lose credibility."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee said Republicans are on track with the nomination.

"Allegations have been raised, and those allegations are being to my mind successfully debunked, one by one," he said. "I'm optimistic about the direction it's taking."

Media Note

My wife caught the tail end of tonight's On the Point on our local NPR station and according to its web site, it dealt with Christian Dominionism as the central issue in the presentation. I only caught the last two minutes, but I'm going to check out the online version later to hear what they had to say.

I'm really not sure what I think of this programing, or our local NPR station since they conereted to essentially an all talk format (WUNC Chapel Hill) a while back. While I enjoy the BBC and On the Media, do we really need so many more talk shows? I wouldn't mind some music now and then, especially since it's hard to get the local jazz station often. I know my parents quit giving them money once they did that and were quite happy that WCPE still plays for the local audience but they have supported them for years.

If you get a chance, give WCPE some love. They were one of the first stations to really GET the potential of the web long before everyone jumped on the multimedia platform bandwagon. I'm very proud to live in the same community that helped them get started and still supports them and their efforts to bring a diversity of sounds to the FM dail, even though I can skip the Saturday at the Opera myself.

March of Science

Group of Scientists Drafts Rules on Ethics for Stem Cell Research

By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: April 27, 2005

Citing a lack of leadership by the federal government, the National Academy of Sciences proposed ethical guidelines yesterday for research with human embryonic stem cells.

Scientists have high hopes that research with those all-purpose cells, which develop into all the various tissues of the adult body, will lead to treatments for a wide variety of diseases by enabling them to grow new organs to replace damaged ones.

But because of religious objections - human embryos shortly after fertilization are destroyed to derive the cells - Congress has long restricted federal financing of such research; President Bush has allowed it to proceed, but only with designated cells. As a result, the government has not played its usual role of promoting novel research and devising regulations accepted by all players.

The academy, a self-elected group of scientists that advises the government, recommends setting up a system of local and national committees for reviewing stem cell research. It also tackles a new set of ethical problems raised by creating organisms composed of cells from two different species, and in this case animals that include human cells.

The report paves the way for research involving animals called chimeras that have been seeded with human cells. The purpose of such experiments is not to create some nightmarish menagerie of half-human animals, but to test first in animals the human organs that could be grown from embryonic stem cells.

Foreseeing that such research will be required for tests of effectiveness and safety, the academy says most chimeras should be permitted. But it places certain types of experiments out of bounds, at least for now. These involve inserting human embryonic stem cells into an early human embryo, a technically promising method of genetic engineering, or into apes and monkeys.

The academy's guidelines would impose limits on three kinds of experiment that involve incorporating human embryonic stem cells into animals. Undesired consequences could follow if human cells were to become incorporated into the sex cells or the brains of animals. In the first case, there is a remote possibility that an animal with eggs made of human cells could mate with an animal bearing human sperm. To avoid human conception in such circumstances, the academy says chimeric animals should not be allowed to mate.

A second possible hazard is that the human embryonic stem cells might generate all or most of an animal's brain, leading to the possibility of a human mind imprisoned in an animal's body. Though neuroscientists consider this unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, particularly with animals closely related to people, like monkeys and apes. The academy advises that human embryonic stem cells not be injected into the embryos of nonhuman primates for the time being.

Third, like many previous committees, the academy says human embryos should not be grown in culture for more than 14 days, the time when the first hints of a nervous system appear.

This is a fascinating article over at the Times about all of the different situations that researchers are coming up with ethical guidelines for. I had never heard of these chimera activities before and they really do sound like something out of a B Grade science fiction flick.

Go check out the entire thing, especially some of the money quotes from, among others, Senator Arlen Specter on how the government should be involved with at least monitoring this type of research if not supporting it. You would think that will all of the money lost by the Pentagon each year, that some of it could be redirected to more scientific research.

Oil Profits for...

Venezuelan Central Bank Director Says Excess Oil Gains Should Be Invested

The Associated Press
Published: Apr 27, 2005

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuela's "excess" oil gains should be invested in maintaining oil production and saved in a rainy day fund, a central bank director said in a column published Wednesday.

Domingo Maza Zavala defined "excess" oil gains as revenue that remains from oil sales after the government has covered its budget and debt payment needs, and enough U.S. dollars have been generated to maintain the economic growth, according to a column published by the El Nacional daily newspaper.

As long as oil prices remain "between US$35 and US$40 a barrel ... the excess gains (should be devoted) to real investment in the oil industry, social spending programs and savings in the economic stabilization fund," to weather tough economic times, Maza Zavala wrote.

The director's opinion comes just days after central bank president Gaston Parra Luzardo sent a letter to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recommending that any "excess" foreign exchange reserves held by the bank be used for investment.

Chavez and lawmakers who support him are working to change the central bank statutes to put a cap on the amount of reserves the bank can hold in its coffers. The rest, Chavez has said, should be used for various spending initiatives including paying the country's foreign debt.

Hmmm...very interesting. Excess funds, i.e. oil profits, should be used to strengthen their economy, reduce debt levels and make life better for average Venezuelans. What a concept! I wonder if our government would be supportive?

Rice criticizes support of Venezuela

By UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Published April 27, 2005

BRASILIA, Brazil -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized Brazil's support of Venezuela's president, Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper reported Wednesday. Rice told reporters in Brasilia although Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was democratically elected, he does not govern "democratically." Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has fostered strong economic ties with Venezuela and spoken out in behalf of Chavez while condemning the U.S. position on Venezuela. The White House has accused the left-leaning Chavez of trying to create a Cuba-style authoritarian state in Venezuela. Chavez, meanwhile, has accused the United States of trying to undermine his administration.

Oh. Well, guess not.

Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

AP, CNN get bamboozled:

School board votes to add Bible elective

Wednesday, April 27, 2005 Posted: 10:46 AM EDT (1446 GMT)

ODESSA, Texas (AP) -- The school board in the West Texas town of Odessa voted unanimously to add a Bible class to its high school curriculum.

Hundreds of people, most of them supporters of the proposal, packed the board meeting Tuesday night. More than 6,000 Odessa residents had signed a petition supporting the class.

Some residents, however, said the school board acted too quickly. Others said they feared a national constitutional fight.

Barring any hurdles, the class should be added to the curriculum in fall 2006 and taught as a history or literature course. The school board still must develop a curriculum, which board member Floy Hinson said should be open for public review.

The board had heard a presentation in March from Mike Johnson, a representative of the Greensboro, North Carolina-based National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, who said that coursework designed by that organization is not about proselytizing or preaching.

But People for the American Way and the American Civil Liberties union have criticized the council, saying its materials promote religion.

Johnson said students in the elective class would learn such things as the geography of the Middle East and the influence of the Bible on history and culture.

"How can students understand Leonardo da Vinci's 'Last Supper' or Handel's 'Messiah' if they don't understand the reference from which they came?" Johnson said. The group's Web site says its curriculum has received backing in 292 school districts in 35 states.

In Frankenmuth, Michigan, a similar proposal led to a yearlong controversy before the school board voted in January not to offer such a course.

Here's the real story:

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools

A report by the People For the American Way Foundation.

"We're just trying to expose the kids to the biblical Christian worldview..."

— NCBCPS director Elizabeth Ridenour, Sept. 14, 1995 radio program "Truths That Transform"

The self-named National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools may say it wants to introduce Bible classes in public schools to improve students' understanding of literature and history, but the real intent of the organization is to promote a religious, primarily Christian doctrine. In addition, its manual refers to the separation of church and state as a "myth."

* NCBCPS has boasted that anywhere from 45 to 300 school districts have adopted its curriculum, but no one really knows, and NCBCPS won't tell the public. NCBCPS has generally refused to make its curriculum available for evaluation by scholars and the media, selectively disclosing it only to friendly school board members and parents.

* In 1998, after a federal court in Florida prohibited the Lee County public school district, on constitutional grounds, from teaching the NCBCPS "New Testament" curriculum, NCBCPS denied that it was their curriculum at all.

* NCBCPS often says its curriculum is not controversial and that nearly every approached school board has adopted it. In fact, these school boards recently rejected NCBCPS's curriculum: North Kansas City, Missouri; Midland, Texas; and Peoria, Illinois.

Who is behind the NCBCPS?

* NCBCPS board of directors and advisory board have included Religious Right leaders like televangelist D. James Kennedy, President of Coral Ridge Ministries, who has called public schools "Godless" and actively campaigned for the impeachment of a federal judge who ordered a proselytizing state judge in Alabama to remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom. Kennedy also has a well-documented history of raising money by promoting the false and inflammatory stereotype that gays and lesbians are child molesters.

* Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus and Rus Walton of the Plymouth Rock Foundation have also served on NCBCPS boards. Both Phillips and Walton are considered Christian Reconstructionists – advocates of theocracy with a government based on a literal reading of the Bible, including the harsh legal code of the "Old Testament." Under this model, as many as 18 "offenses," including blasphemy, adultery and persistent juvenile delinquency would merit the death penalty.

* NCBCPS circulates material by David Barton, who produces historically inaccurate videotapes and books asserting that the constitutionally-required separation of church and state was invented by the Supreme Court.

* NCBCPS often cites materials from the American Center For Law and Justice to defend the constitutionality of its curriculum. ACLJ was founded by televangelist Pat Robertson.

Here's links to the NCBCPS' main page, links page, and president's bio (PDF). Note the links ("Please visit and support these other sites. They are supportive of our cause") to outfits like "Creation Science Evangelism" and "Creation Evidence Museum," as well as to familiar Religious Right activist orgs such as the American Family Association, which wants to keep 'smut' as tame as Cheers off of TV. And the president's bio shows that she's buddy-buddy with Focus on the Family, the 700 Club, Concerned Women for America, and other Religious Right mainstays.

A big tip of the hat to DMC and especially MEBuckner of the Straight Dope Message Board, my main online hangout since 1999, for pointing me to the PFAW and NCBCPS links.

Birthday Open Thread

Okay, Bumpers, I'm out of here for the rest of the day. My sister-in-law is celebrating a significant birthday today and I'm headed for Baltimore for an impromptu party (and my brother's superb cooking: fillet mignon with Bernaise sauce! I can't remember the last time I ate a steak.) Chuck and some of the other guest posters will be around, so check back for new content.

Food Fight

Where Does the Bean Soup Fit In?

By Dana Milbank

Wednesday, April 27, 2005; Page A05

The Social Security debate finally arrived in Congress yesterday, and it immediately became a food fight.

Appearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Robert Pozen, a witness whose Social Security plan has been praised by President Bush, said that the personal accounts Bush advocates are the "desserts" and that Social Security's solvency is "the spinach."

Peter Orszag, a witness opposed to Bush's plan, retorted: "The accounts are not sugar; they're like trying to get your kid to eat the spinach by offering a turnip for dessert."

Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a friend of agricultural interests, pursued the vegetable dispute, pressing Pozen to explain why "solvency is the spinach that needs to be eaten before we get to the dessert of personal accounts."

The ranking Democrat, Max Baucus (Mont.), quarreled with the accounts-as-dessert theme. "Desserts, when I think of the term, are something on top of a wonderful meal; you get a little sweetener in addition," he said. "This is not a sweetener in addition."

Not to be outdone in culinary metaphor, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) protested to one of the witnesses favoring private accounts: "What you're suggesting is sort of like the idea that somebody can have three hot fudge sundaes a day and lose weight."

Two blocks away from the Hart Building hearing room, a couple of thousand people were assembling for an anti-Bush rally. A band called the Sheiks of Dixie was playing. A choir of Lyndon LaRouche supporters was singing. Organizers were distributing bottles of water labeled "Stop Privatization." A liberal activist drew roars for likening Bush's proposal to "a dead carp."

Grassley was determined to keep a more decorous tone in the committee room. "Outside the hearing room today, we have political theater," he said as he opened the hearing, urging his colleagues to "resist the temptation to allow such theatrics to pervade this hearing room."

Exactly one minute later, a cell phone belonging to one of the witnesses started to play circus music.

It was an apt commentary for a hearing full of runaway metaphors. One witness, Joan Entmacher of the National Women's Law Center, provided testimony saying benefit cuts are "like curing a stubbed toe by cutting off a foot." The Brookings Institution's Orszag expanded on the medical theme, saying arguments for private accounts are "like arguing that snake oil will help to cure strep throat."

For his part, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) preferred to discuss Medicare, which he called "the real 800-pound gorilla." Orszag, having branded the personal accounts turnips and snake oil, then said they employ "the mother of all magic asterisks."

I watched some of the hearing yesterday on C-Span. It was as surreal as Milbank presents it. In fact it was as surreal as filibuster fight on the floor of the Senate this morning. Anything having to do with Republicans takes on a note of unreality.

Down the Tubes

Orders for Durable Goods Fell Sharply in March
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 27, 2005

Filed at 9:23 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Orders to U.S. factories for big-ticket manufactured goods plunged 2.8 percent in March, the biggest setback in 2 1/2 years and the third straight decline, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.

The March drop, showing much more weakness than had been expected, followed declines of 0.2 percent in February and 1.2 percent in January. It left new orders for durable goods, everything from bicycles to battleships, at a seasonally adjusted $194.03 billion in February.

The weakness in durable goods orders was just the latest evidence that the economy may be entering another ''soft patch'' as consumers and businesses, jolted by a sharp increase in energy prices, cut back on their purchases.

The 2.8 percent drop in overall orders was the biggest decline since a 6 percent plunge in September 2002. It was a far worse performance than analysts had expected. They had been forecasting that orders would rise by a modest 0.3 percent after an originally reported increase of 0.5 percent in February. In the new report, the February increase was revised away to now show a decine of 0.2 percent.

The three straight declines in new orders was the longest stretch of weakness since three straight declines from July through September 2001, a period that covered the last recession.

From the Economic Policy Institute:

Snapshot for April 20, 2005.

Price growth outpaces wages for the 11th consecutive month
Today's release of the consumer price index (CPI) data for March confirms that real wages continue to deteriorate for many U.S. workers. The inflation-adjusted hourly wage of the 80% of the workforce employed in blue-collar and non-managerial jobs fell 0.5% over the past year (from March 2004 and March 2005). This marks the 11th consecutive month wherein annual wage growth failed to outpace inflation.

Any wonder why:

Bush's Poll Numbers Worst on Record
By Terry M. Neal
The Washington Post

Monday 11 April 2005

The economy: A majority of Americans -- 56 percent according to the Westhill poll -- oppose the president's handling of the economy. Republicans are even feuding even among themselves about the president's agenda, disagreeing on whether to push for a new round of tax cuts or to focus on tackling a massive federal budget deficit that clearly now is more than just a short-term problem.

Lie Down With Dogs, Get Up With Fleas

GOP to Reverse Ethics Rule Blocking New DeLay Probe
January Change Led Democrats to Shut Down Panel

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 27, 2005; Page A01

House Republican leaders, acknowledging that ethics disputes are taking a heavy toll on the party's image, decided yesterday to rescind a controversial rule change that led to the three-month shutdown of the ethics committee, according to officials who participated in the talks.

Republicans touched off a political uproar in January by changing a rule that had required the ethics committee to continue considering a complaint against a House member if there was a deadlock between the committee's five Republicans and five Democrats. The January change reversed this, calling for automatic dismissal of an ethics complaint when a deadlock occurs.

Democrats rebelled against that and other changes -- saying Republicans were trying to protect House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) from further ethics investigations -- and blocked the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, as the ethics panel is officially known, from organizing for the new Congress.

Republicans on the committee say they will launch an investigation of DeLay's handling of overseas trips and gifts as soon as the impasse over the rules is broken. The Washington Post reported last weekend that Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff charged DeLay's airfare to London and Scotland to his American Express card in 2000.

House ethics rules bar lawmakers from accepting travel and related expenses from registered lobbyists. DeLay said that he will meet with the committee chairman and the ranking Democrat, and that his staff is assembling documents to turn over to the committee. The panel admonished DeLay three times last year for what it deemed inappropriate official behavior.

The officials participating in talks about restarting the committee said Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has agreed to ask the House to vote later this week on a rollback of the rule change. A Republican adviser said the decision "is the speaker's way of trying to put this behind us and get us back to regular order."

"There will be a [political] cost to this, but if he had not done this, the cost would continue to increase," said the adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Hastert had not announced his decision.

The R's are trying to cut off DeLay's problems without cutting him loose. Time will tell if that works. The man IS his problems.

The Eye of the Beholder

U.S. Figures Show Sharp Global Rise In Terrorism
State Dept. Will Not Put Data in Report

By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 27, 2005; Page A01

The number of serious international terrorist incidents more than tripled last year, according to U.S. government figures, a sharp upswing in deadly attacks that the State Department has decided not to make public in its annual report on terrorism due to Congress this week.

Overall, the number of what the U.S. government considers "significant" attacks grew to about 655 last year, up from the record of around 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides who were briefed on statistics covering incidents including the bloody school seizure in Russia and violence related to the disputed Indian territory of Kashmir.

Terrorist incidents in Iraq also dramatically increased, from 22 attacks to 198, or nine times the previous year's total -- a sensitive subset of the tally, given the Bush administration's assertion that the situation there had stabilized significantly after the U.S. handover of political authority to an interim Iraqi government last summer.

The State Department announced last week that it was breaking with tradition in withholding the statistics on terrorist attacks from its congressionally mandated annual report. Critics said the move was designed to shield the government from questions about the success of its effort to combat terrorism by eliminating what amounted to the only year-to-year benchmark of progress.

Although the State Department said the data would still be made public by the new National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which prepares the information, officials at the center said no decision to publish the statistics has been made.

The controversy comes a year after the State Department retracted its annual terrorism report and admitted that its initial version vastly understated the number of incidents. That became an election-year issue, as Democrats said the Bush administration tried to inflate its success in curbing global terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"Last year was bad. This year is worse. They are deliberately trying to withhold data because it shows that as far as the war on terrorism internationally, we're losing," said Larry C. Johnson, a former senior State Department counterterrorism official, who first revealed the decision not to publish the data.

After a week of complaints from Congress, top aides from the State Department and the NCTC were dispatched to the Hill on Monday for a private briefing. There they acknowledged for the first time the increase in terrorist incidents, calling it a "dramatic uptick," according to participants and a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).

The administration aides sought to explain the rise in attacks as the result of more inclusive methodology in counting incidents, which they argued made year-to-year comparisons "increasingly problematic," sources said.

In his letter urging Rice to release the data, Waxman said that "the large increases in terrorist attacks reported in 2004 may undermine administration claims of success in the war on terror, but political inconvenience has never been a legitimate basis for withholding facts from the American people."

Both Republican and Democratic aides at the meeting criticized what a GOP attendee called the "absurd" explanation offered by the State Department's acting counterterrorism chief, Karen Aguilar, that the statistics are not relevant to the required report on trends in global terrorism. "It's absurd to issue a report without statistics," said the aide, who is not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. "This is a self-inflicted wound by the State Department."

But being absurd is a Bushism and the public never called them on it, so who cares?

Winning

Pentagon Plays Down New Rise in Iraq Violence

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 27, 2005; Page A16

Top Pentagon officials yesterday acknowledged a recent jump in insurgent violence in Iraq but described the escalation as nowhere near the peak levels of the past year and disputed suggestions that it represents a lack of progress.

At a news conference, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the level of attacks is about the same as it was a year ago, with the insurgency retaining the ability to surge. But he and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cited other developments -- including a greater willingness by Iraqis to provide intelligence on insurgents and growth in Iraqi security forces and political institutions -- as evidence of improvement.

The latest increase in bombings, shootings, and rocket and mortar attacks has ended a period of greater calm that followed the Jan. 30 parliamentary elections. From a high of nearly 150 attacks a day immediately before the vote, the average had fallen to about 40, and the number of U.S. casualties had dropped sharply as well.

But over the past month, the daily total has edged up to about 50 or 60 attacks, about half of which are resulting in significant damage, injuries or deaths, according to Pentagon figures.

Of particular concern for U.S. authorities has been a rise in the number of suicide car-bomb attacks, some of which are now being used in tandem. Myers singled out this trend yesterday.

In the past, U.S. military authorities have attributed the suicide attacks not to Iraqi Sunni militants who dominate the insurgency but to foreign Islamic extremists who have joined the fight in Iraq. But U.S. analysts are still trying to identify the forces behind the rise in the suicide missions and have not ruled out the possibility that it reflects a hardening of Sunni opposition as a political impasse persists over the formation of a new Iraqi government.

Rumsfeld and Myers characterized the recent increase in attacks as relatively small and said it is not identifiable as a clear trend.

"It's up slightly in the last week," Rumsfeld said. "But what you have is a relatively small number of people who have weapons and who have money and who are determined to try to prevent democracy from going forward."

Still, their concern about the worsening security situation was evident in statements from both officials underscoring the need for a break in the political logjam in Iraq.

"The political process must go forward," Myers said. "We must have a cabinet appointed here very quickly."

Asked whether the rise in attacks shows the United States is winning or losing the conflict, Rumsfeld tried to shift the focus of the question, saying U.S. and coalition forces will not by themselves defeat the insurgency.

"The people that are going to defeat that insurgency are going to be the Iraqis," he said.

Myers responded more emphatically.

"I think we're definitely winning," he said. "I think we've been winning for some time."

Myers might as well wear his hat and gloves to these events. It is pretty clear that he is being trotted out to give the company line, rather than the truth.

Blasts near Baghdad mosque kill 16
Twin suicide bombs also strike Tikrit

Sunday, April 24, 2005 Posted: 2103 GMT (0503 HKT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Two explosions rocked western Baghdad's al-Shu'lah neighborhood Sunday near a Shiite mosque and a busy market, killing at least 16 people and wounding at least 57 others, Iraqi police said.

The first bomb went off about 9 p.m. (p.m. ET). When people gathered in the aftermath, a second bomb was detonated about 150 meters from the mosque, police said.

Police originally reported the second bombing as the work of a suicide car bomber who had driven into the crowd, but said later that the device appeared to have been set off by remote control.

Word of the blasts came just hours after news of two suicide car bombs in Tikrit, about 90 miles (150 kilometers) north of Baghdad.

The Tikrit bombs exploded just 15 minutes and a short distance apart, killing at least six people and wounding 26 others at an Iraqi police academy, according to an official with Tikrit's governor's office.

What, exactly, would "winning" look like, Gen. Myers?

Crows, Coming Home to Roost

Social Issues That Bolster Bush Fail the Hapless British Tories

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Published: April 27, 2005

LONDON, April 26 - At a time when American conservatives are ascendant, the British Conservative Party is adrift, troubled by internal feuding, casting about for a defining theme and struggling to defeat a relatively unpopular incumbent, Prime Minister Tony Blair, in an election nine days away.

Most polls and analysts say the Conservative Party, led by Michael Howard, is heading for a historic third consecutive defeat against Labor on May 5. This prospect is all the more noteworthy given how vulnerable Mr. Blair is on issues of trust and leadership after his insistent assertions that prohibited weapons would be found in Iraq in the American-led war that he so strongly supported and that remains unpopular in Britain.

The political situation underlines what analysts describe as a growing divergence between the conservative movements here and in the United States, a decade and a half after the end of the era of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. It reflects fundamental differences between the political makeup of Britain and the United States, but also the success of Mr. Blair on the left - and President Bush on the right - in realigning their political landscape, analysts say.

The social issues that have proved crucial to Mr. Bush's success in the United States have little resonance in this country. Unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. Howard has not been able to use abortion and gay marriage to transcend economic matters in appealing to voters, and he voted in Parliament in support of the war in Iraq, the issue on which Labor officials judge Mr. Blair most vulnerable.

"Tony Blair has repositioned the Labor Party as a centrist, catch-all political party," said Anthony King, a professor of government at Essex University. "And one of Michael Howard's difficulties is that neither he nor any Conservative Party figure has a clear perception of precisely what the Conservative Party should stand for. After a decade, the party still has not worked out what it wants to say."

Irwin M. Stelzer, a conservative scholar with the Hudson Institute in Washington and a columnist for The Sunday Times of London, said: "There is no reason to vote for the Tories. They're not offering anything different on tax policy. They are not offering anything different on crime policy."

"What the Tories have been unable to do - partly because Blair has been so successful at stealing their clothes - is to come up with a distinctively different policy," Mr. Stelzer said.

Losers. Policy does matter. Iraq war, anyone? The scale of abuse and stupidity is going to cost some government.

Trying Times for Special Ed

Many Hours Are Spent On Md. Test Preparation For Severely Disabled

By Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 26, 2005; Page B01

Shykell Pinkney is in the seventh grade, but her developmental age is three months. Her teacher communicates with Shykell the only way possible, by holding two or three symbols in front of her face and watching to see whether her head turns to focus on one of them.

Shykell has Rett syndrome, a neurological disorder. She cannot write, point or speak. But her teacher, Paula Gentile, had to spend nearly 30 hours testing her on a battery of academic tasks -- 10 in reading, 10 in math -- to measure her academic performance under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

At Anne Arundel's Ruth Parker Eason School, teacher Paula Gentile tries to get Ernest Fletcher, 13, to tell the difference between hot and cold.
At Anne Arundel's Ruth Parker Eason School, teacher Paula Gentile tries to get Ernest Fletcher, 13, to tell the difference between hot and cold. (Photos By Preston Keres -- The Washington Post)

So Gentile and her colleagues at Ruth Parker Eason School in Anne Arundel County found some tasks Shykell might be able to complete. With sufficient help, she could distinguish between the sounds made by the letters P and M and recognize the title of a picture book when a recording of it was played for her. Gentile and her colleagues went through the tasks one by one and watched Shykell for any hint of a response.

"Half the time you were trying to get information, this poor little girl would be falling asleep," Gentile said.

Some Maryland students are judged too mentally disabled to take the Maryland School Assessment, the statewide exam designed to measure the performance of students and schools under No Child Left Behind. Federal law allows 1 percent of students to take the Alternate Maryland School Assessment, or Alt-MSA, an individualized test designed to assess students at their own instructional levels rather than at grade level. Statewide, 5,862 students in grades three through eight and grades 10 and 11 took the alternative exam last year.

Special education teachers across Maryland say the test is a waste of time.

Teachers routinely spend 40, 80 or 100 work hours over several months to complete the test, whose counterpart, the regular MSA, takes six hours in a single week. In their view, the students with the smallest stake in No Child Left Behind spend the most time meeting its requirements.

Teachers also object to the content of the Alt-MSA, which is based on a statewide curriculum written for students who are learning reading and math. Many children who take the Alt-MSA will never read, write or compute, and a good number will never speak. They typically spend the school day learning life skills: how to communicate with their eyes or their hands, how to feed themselves and how to make change, tell time or function in a menial job. Teachers say their goals and the goals of the Alt-MSA are, in many cases, utterly divergent.

"I never have a parent ask me for 10 reading goals," said Gerry Reed, a special education teacher at Germantown Elementary School in Montgomery County. "They want their children feeding themselves and toilet-trained and to have job skills. And I don't see this test getting them there."

Felicia Smith-Walker, the mother of a 13-year-old student at Eason School in Millersville, said she believes the test distracts teachers from more important business.

"They're talking about reading and all this stuff, and we can't even get our kids to feed themselves and to sit up properly. It's irrelevant," she said.

One-size-fits-all, paint-by-the-numbers, teach-to-the-test and if you don't hit the number you're...um...left behind?

Drug Marketting 101

Consumer Ads Boost Doctors' Scripts -Study

Tue Apr 26, 2005 05:25 PM ET
By Karla Gale

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs seems to increase the likelihood that physicians will prescribe those drugs, according to a study in the April 27th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. This can have mixed results in patient care, averting underuse in some cases and promoting overuse in others.

To ascertain the effects of patients' requests influenced by direct-to-consumer advertising, Dr. Richard L. Kravitz, of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues used "standardized patients," actors trained to present at primary care physicians' offices with symptoms consistent with one of two conditions, major depression or adjustment disorder.

The standardized patients, who were all nonobese, middle-age women, requested a brand-name medication (Paxil), made a general request for antidepressant treatment, or made no request at all. Altogether, the patients made 298 visits to 152 physicians between 2003 and 2004.

In the major depression visits, in 80 of 149 visits (54 percent) antidepressants were prescribed. Rates of antidepressant prescribing were 53 percent in the brand-specific group, 76 percent in the general request group, and 31 percent in the group making no request. Paroxetine (Paxil) was prescribed in 3 percent of cases, except for the 27 percent of cases where Paxil was requested by name.

Treatment considered "minimally acceptable" -- antidepressant prescription, mental health referral or follow-up within 2 weeks -- was administered to 90 percent to 98 percent of those who suggested medication, versus 56 percent of those making no suggestion.

"The impact of direct-to-consumer advertising and requests associated with it are likely to be most positive when the condition is very serious and treatment is very effective and very safe," he suggested.

"For example, use of cholesterol-lowering agents or aspirin in people who've had heart attack or stroke; the drugs have a long track record and they're likely to be both effective and safe in delivering benefits to those patients."

However, results of direct-to-consumer are "likely to be most negative when the condition is trivial and treatment is either ineffective or relatively dangerous," he added, as in cases of baldness, toenail fungus or overactive bladder, where "the effectiveness of the drugs, if not questionable is at least marginal and there are significant safety concerns in some cases."

He suggests "the FDA do what it can to encourage that ads be more heavily laden with education, especially around symptoms of important conditions and the treatment options, including nondrug therapy."

Welcome back to another episode of "Did you know the earth was round?" I can't wait to see what the FDA, strongly backed the the phama companies, do about this. I really wish that more was expected from those drug commercials than the announcer doing his best "Mr. Fed Ex" impression to get in all of the potential side effects in 15 seconds or less.

Granted, I'm not asking for quite this much truth in my ads, but a little more would be nice. If not, then maybe we could send some letters to the FCC, calling this indecency even though no nipples were exposed. That seems to be all they care about these days.

Christian Virtues

Dan Froomkin gets the Good Stuff:

The Calvin College Rebellion

I wrote in Friday's column that Bush will be giving a commencement address next month at Calvin College, a small Christian institution in Western Michigan, highly regarded for its contributions to evangelical intellectual thought.

I'm betting that most of you readers out there, like me, suspected that Calvin was picked at least in part to assure Bush a supportive audience -- as opposed to, say, what he might find at your typical Ivy League university. (The other commencement address he'll be giving will be at the U.S. Naval Academy.)

But we -- and possibly the White House -- may have been wrong.

On closer inspection, it turns out that Calvin College is not the bastion of the Christian Right it appeared to be. In fact, judging from my e-mail, it's a veritable hotbed of those other Christian values -- the ones that oppose war, work for social justice, and don't think much of the president at all.

Professor Kenneth Pomykala, chair of Calvin College's Department of Religion (and a regular White House Briefing reader!) wrote to me that some members of the community "are unhappy with Bush's visit because we believe that Christian values require public policies that seek social justice, compassion for the disenfranchised, human rights, a commitment to peace, care and preservation of the environment, and honesty, say, from political leaders -- in short, policies opposed to the Bush agenda."

Pomkala tried to help me understand where Calvin fits into the Christian spectrum: "Calvin is confessionally Reformed/Presbyterian (in other words, Calvinistic -- no surprise there, I guess), with a much more positive view of the intellect and participation in the broader culture than is characteristic of American evangelicalism, much of which is anti-intellectual (e.g. 'creation science') and escapist (e.g. the Left Behind series), not to mention morally barbaric (e.g. opposition to stem cell research; anti-gay)."

Kate Bowman, the student activities coordinator at the college, e-mailed to say: "Many of us do not believe that Calvin's graduation ceremony is the proper forum for a partisan political address, particularly from such a divisive and controversial figure. . . .

"Many of us believe that his actions since taking office contradict the teachings of the Gospel, and though we love President Bush as our brother as we are called to love all (even our enemies), we profoundly disagree with his appeals to Christianity to support his own political aims."

Bowman reports: "There is a lively and thoughtful discussion happening on our in-house faculty listserv at the moment around the issue of Bush's visit. Currently the hot topic is how protest should be approached at this event. People want to be respectful without appearing to give a stamp of approval to the actions of the administration."

And Raleigh Chadderdon, who will be one of the approximately 900 Calvin College students getting their diploma on May 21st, wrote that "the majority of graduating seniors I've talked with since have generally been disappointed, frustrated, and feeling betrayed by the school's decision to politicize our graduation. . . .

"Once word was out, a significant number of students were scrambling to counteract the event, setting up dialogue over e-mail which now will hopefully take place on a public online venue, just recently started."

That Web site is called Our Commencement Is Not Your Platform .

And what is Professor Pomkala planning to do during Bush's speech?

"As a faculty member, I'm required to attend commencement, but I plan on reading a book during the president's speech -- probably My Pet Goat."

Accountability and its Discontents

Impunity

Tuesday, April 26, 2005; Page A14

A YEAR AGO this week, the release of shocking photographs of naked and hooded Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison alerted the world to serious human rights abuses by U.S. forces. Those images, it turned out, were the tip of an iceberg: Subsequent investigations by the media, human rights groups and the military itself revealed hundreds of cases of torture and abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Guantanamo Bay prison, including scores of suspicious deaths. A trail of documents showed that abusive interrogation techniques, such as the use of dogs and painful shackling, had been approved by senior military commanders and the secretary of defense. Even more extreme practices, such as simulated drowning and the withholding of pain medication, were authorized for the CIA at White House meetings presided over by President Bush's counsel.

All these facts are undisputed. Yet Pentagon officials have now made it known that the last of the official investigations of prisoner abuse, by the Army inspector general, has ended by exonerating all but one senior officer, a female reserve brigadier general who was not directly involved in the abuses and who received an administrative reprimand. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; former CIA director George J. Tenet; and Alberto R. Gonzales, the former White House counsel who is now attorney general, are excused: In fact, they were never directly investigated. The only people to suffer criminal prosecution from one of the most serious human rights scandals in U.S. history remain a handful of lower-ranking soldiers, including seven reservists implicated in those first photographs from Abu Ghraib. That the affair would end in this way is even more disgraceful for the American political system than the abuses themselves.

Rumsfeld's Possible Legal Responsibility

Human Rights Watch's exhaustively-documented report names the top officials, both civilian and military, that it believes should be investigated for crimes against detainees. Its list starts with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and goes on to include George Tenet, the former CIA director; Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, U.S. military commander in Iraq from June 2003 to July 2004; and Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the U.S. military commander at Guantanamo.

Rumsfeld clearly had the necessary knowledge. In Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo, Secretary Rumsfeld had access to military briefings, ICRC reports, human rights reports, and press accounts that would have put him on notice that U.S. troops were committing war crimes, including torture. Yet, despite receiving abundant warning of abuses, there is no evidence that Rumsfeld ever exerted his authority to protect prisoners from mistreatment.

Senators Warner and McCain, your consciences are waiting for you in the Senate cloakroom. Paging Warner and McCain....

Sorrows of Empire

Robert Scheer:
Fiddling While Crucial Programs Starve
# Has the U.S. become like ancient Rome, in love with costly conquest?

Notice the price of gasoline lately? Isn't it great that we have secured Iraq's oil? And as Congress signs off on yet another huge supplementary grant to supposedly protect U.S. interests in the Mideast, our president pathetically begs his Saudi buddies for a price break. As the fall of Rome showed, imperialism never pays.

Of course, back in 2003, conquering Iraq looked like a great package deal, what with all that oil — second only to Saudi Arabia — and the manufactured photo ops of cheering Iraqis. So what if those pesky weapons of mass destruction weren't really there? So what if no solid links to Al Qaeda are ever found? This was a win-win, as the corporate guys like to say: Not only would we be able to conduct this operation for next to nothing, we would be welcomed with flowers.

"There is a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money," then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress days before the war, in testimony on the potential costs of invading Iraq. "We are talking about a country that can finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon." In the real world, however, this turned out to be utter nonsense.

With approval of the latest spending bill, taxpayers will have been forced to cough up more than $300 billion for the war to date — above and beyond the annual $400-billion Pentagon budget — and tens of billions for a bungled reconstruction. Even if the United States can lower its troop commitment to 40,000 troops in Iraq by 2010, as some Pentagon strategists optimistically anticipate, the war could still end up costing U.S. taxpayers up to $646 billion by 2015, according to Rep. John Spratt of South Carolina, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee. If insurgency, corruption and incompetence continue to plague the U.S. occupation as they have steadily for the last two years, however, the number could surge to a trillion dollars or more.

We need to put such gargantuan numbers in some perspective. The emergency funding that the Senate passed 99 to 0 last week gives the military roughly $80 billion and pays for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan only through September. That is twice what President Bush insists he needs to cut from the federal support for Medicaid over the next decade.

Already the red state of Missouri is set to end its Medicaid program entirely within the next three years because of a lack of funds. As the Los Angeles Times reported, that will save the state $5 billion, but at the cost of ending healthcare for the more than 1 million Missourians enrolled in the program. That sum is less than half of what Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's old company, alone has been paid for reconstruction efforts in Iraq, without much to show for it in terms of improving the Iraqis' quality of life.

Similarly, with roughly 10% of what we've spent in Iraq, we could make up the $27-billion federal funding shortfall in paying for Bush's controversial No Child Left Behind Act, which tells public schools that they will be all but scrapped if they don't improve — yet it doesn't provide the means to do so. This number comes from a lawsuit filed by school districts in Texas, Michigan and Vermont and the National Education Assn., the nation's largest teachers organization.

Sadly, these domestic failures provide a far greater long-term threat to our nation's security than the hyped-up claims surrounding our foreign adventures. Abroad, we must "support our troops" at all costs — even if the cost is their lives — while at home, the nation's leaders are all about tough love.

"Government is not here to do everything for everybody," admonished Missouri state Rep. Jodi Stefanick, a Republican representing suburban St. Louis. "We have to draw the line somewhere." Just not in Iraq, apparently.

Welcome to late-era Rome, where mindless militaristic expansion is considered patriotic and where demagogues who recklessly waste taxes and young lives in empire-building are deemed valorous. Wolfowitz, for example, has been rewarded for his ignorance and arrogance with the top job at the World Bank.

And we turn the Constitution on its plain head, countenance corruption at rates that would make the Taft administration blush and turn the planet into one which is going to be unsustainable for human life. And the voters are watching fake reality programs. And when they bitch, "Why didn't you tell us before it was too late?" I'll be able to sleep well at night. About that, at least.

Critical Thinking

Bush's War on the Press
by Eric Alterman

J ournalists, George Bernard Shaw once said, "are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization." How odd, given the profession's un-equaled reputation for narcissism, that Shaw's observation holds true even when the collapsing "civilization" is their own.

Make no mistake: The Bush Administration and its ideological allies are employing every means available to undermine journalists' ability to exercise their First Amendment function to hold power accountable. In fact, the Administration recognizes no such constitutional role for the press. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card has insisted that the media "don't represent the public any more than other people do.... I don't believe you have a check-and-balance function."

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Bush himself, on more than one occasion, has told reporters he does not read their work and prefers to live inside the information bubble blown by his loyal minions. Vice President Cheney feels free to kick the New York Times off his press plane, and John Ashcroft can refuse to speak with any print reporters during his Patriot-Act-a-palooza publicity tour, just to compliant local TV. As an unnamed Bush official told reporter Ron Suskind, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." For those who didn't like it, another Bush adviser explained, "Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered two to one by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read the New York Times or Washington Post or the LA Times."

But the White House and its supporters are doing more than just talking trash--when they talk at all. They are taking aggressive action: preventing journalists from doing their job by withholding routine information; deliberately releasing deceptive information on a regular basis; bribing friendly journalists to report the news in a favorable context; producing their own "news reports" and distributing these free of charge to resource-starved broadcasters; creating and crediting their own political activists as "journalists" working for partisan operations masquerading as news organizations. In addition, an Administration-appointed special prosecutor, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, is now threatening two journalists with jail for refusing to disclose the nature of conversations they had regarding stories they never wrote, opening up a new frontier of potential prosecution. All this has come in the wake of a decades-long effort by the right and its corporate allies to subvert journalists' ability to report fairly on power and its abuse by attaching the label "liberal bias" to even the most routine forms of information gathering and reportage (for a transparent example in today's papers, see under "DeLay, Tom"). Some of these tactics have been used by previous administrations too, but the Bush team and its supporters have invested in and deployed them to a degree that marks a categorical shift from the past.

Many of these lines of attack on the press might at first appear to have little in common. What does an increase in official secrecy have to do with payments to pundits, or the broadcast of official video news releases, or the presence of a right-wing charlatan in the White House press room pretending to be a reporter and serving up softball questions to the President in prime time? And how is any of this connected to the Administration's willingness to mislead the nation on everything from stem cells to Social Security?

The right wing's media "decertification" effort, as the journalism scholar and blogger Jay Rosen calls it, has its roots in forty years of conservative fury at the consistent condescension it experienced from the once-liberal elite media and the cosmopolitan establishment for whom its members have spoken. Fueled by this sense of outrage, the right launched a multifaceted effort to fight back with institutions of its own, including think tanks, advocacy organizations, media pressure groups, church groups, big-business lobbies and, eventually, its own television, talk-radio, cable and radio networks (to be augmented, later, by a vast array of Internet sites). Today this triumphant movement has captured not only much of the media and the public discourse on ideas but both the presidency and Congress (and soon, undoubtedly, the Supreme Court as well); it can wage its war on so many fronts simultaneously that it becomes nearly impossible to see that almost all these efforts are aimed at a single goal: the destruction of democratic accountability and the media's role in insuring it.
....
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this war against the media has been the fact that members of the media have largely behaved as if it is just business as usual. In fact, much of the success of the effort derives from the cooperation, both implicit and explicit, of the press. No one, after all, forces local TV stations to run official propaganda videos in lieu of their own programming, or without identifying them as such, and no one forces CNN Newsource, among others, to distribute them. And why did the curious mystery of "Gannon," despite its obvious newsworthiness--and sex appeal--receive so little critical coverage and virtually no outrage in the mainstream press? (Washington Post media critic and CNN talking head Howard Kurtz even went so far as to blame the scandal on "these liberal bloggers, [who] have started investigating his personal life in an effort to discredit him," and the National Press Club invited Gannon to be an honored guest on a panel on blogging and journalistic credibility.) Mike McCurry, White House press secretary under Bill Clinton, says he marvels at the willingness of the press corps to swallow the various humiliations offered them by Bush & Co. He told a recent gathering of Washington reporters and editors, "I used to think that if I ever tried to control the message as effectively as the current White House did, that I would have been run out of the White House press briefing room. But clearly I misjudged the temperament that exists."

It's that final graf in Alterman's article that gives me the chills. Reporters have re-thought or relearned their job to become stenographers. They pass along whatever they are given without critical thought.

As a teacher, I've seen the same in my students: they've changed in the 30 years I've been doing this. They used to ask, "How do I understand this?" Now they ask, "Tell me what to think," and the exercise is truncated. I loved the students who fought with me on principle. I stopped teaching when the students starting fighting with me on method.

The Shock of the New

Read all of his magnificent rant, but Juan Cole answers the doubters and the touters and sums up this way:

And this difference, my friends, accounts for why bloggers get vilified. Journalists can be switched to another story, or fired, or their stories can be buried on page 36. We can't be fired. So if Martin Peretz doesn't like what we have to say, he will publish a hatchet job on us in The New Republic, seeking to make us taboo. If you can't shut people up, and you really don't want their voices heard, then all you can do is try to persuade others not to listen to them or give them a platform. The easiest way to do this is to falsely accuse them of racism or Communism some other character flaw unacceptable to polite society. Because of the distributed character of blogging "computing," however, such tactics are probably doomed to fail.

We are not the mainstream media, and we are here. Get used to it.

The People's Medium is going to go its own way. As anyone who has taken Physics 101 knows, distributed networks are the most efficient.

Sleepy Bumper

Bumpers, this was a really hard day. I've got my hands full trying to tend two blogs, one is in an area where I am hardly a specialist. I'm beat. If any of the guest posters want to put in an appearance, great, but I'm done for the day.

Guest crew, I'll definitely be needing your help tomorrow night and Wednesday afternoon. I'm attending Copy Night with a couple of readers on Tuesday night, I'll be live blogging Al Gore's Move On event on Wednesday followed by running some errands of my own. I'll be back in the house for the rest of the week, but I definitely need to have a little social life and step away from the monitor for a bit this week.

Averting Our Eyes

The man is a national treasure.

The Agony of War
By BOB HERBERT

Published: April 25, 2005

There's been hardly any media interest in the unrelieved agony of tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq. It's an ugly subject, and the idea has taken hold that Americans need to be protected from stories or images of the war that might be disturbing. As a nation we can wage war, but we don't want the public to be too upset by it.

So the public doesn't even hear about the American bombs that fall mistakenly on the homes of innocent civilians, wiping out entire families. We hear very little about the frequent instances of jittery soldiers opening fire indiscriminately, killing and wounding men, women and children who were never a threat in the first place. We don't hear much about the many children who, for one reason or another, are shot, burned or blown to eternity by our forces in the name of peace and freedom.

Out of sight, out of mind.

This stunning lack of interest in the toll the war has taken on civilians is one of the reasons Ms. Ruzicka, who was just 28 when she died, felt compelled to try to personally document as much of the suffering as she could. At times she would go from door to door in the most dangerous areas, taking down information about civilians who had been killed or wounded. She believed fiercely that Americans needed to know about the terrible pain the war was inflicting, and that we had an obligation to do everything possible to mitigate it.

Her ultimate goal, which Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont is pursuing, was to establish a U.S. government office, perhaps in the State Department, to document the civilian casualties of American military operations. That information would then be publicly reported. Compensation would be provided for victims and their families, and the data would be studied in an effort to minimize civilian casualties in future operations.

War is always about sorrow and the deepest suffering. Nitwits try to dress it up in the finery of half-baked rationalizations, but the reality is always wanton bloodshed, rotting flesh and the lifelong trauma of those who are physically or psychically maimed.

More than 600 people attended Ms. Ruzicka's funeral on Saturday in her hometown of Lakeport, Calif. Among them was Bobby Muller, chairman of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. A former Marine lieutenant, he knows something about the agony of war. His spinal cord was severed when he was shot in the back in Vietnam.

He told the mourners: "Marla demonstrated that an individual can make a profound difference in this world. Her life was dedicated to innocent victims of conflict, exactly what she ended up being."

Scattered Attention

I'm having a problem signing into my Gmail account. In order for their "help" service to work, they want the name of the person who sent me the invitation to join and the date. I don't bloody remember. Can you help? Email my root account, [email protected]. Thanks.

Hazmat and the Rails

There is a significant flap going on in DC between the city, Congress and CSX, the big freight train company on the east coast. CSX tracks parallel Amtrak lines along the I-95 corridor. That means that freight cars, loaded with hazardous chemicals, come right through the middle of DC, blocks from the Capital. I've always been uncomfortable with that but this LAT story makes me permanently squeemish about even taking the train, my prefered mode of transit. I'm glad I live in the 'burbs.

Over the Long Haul, Fatigue Kills
# Train accidents caused by human error are rising. Some experts blame overworked crews, especially in the deadliest crashes.

By Dan Weikel, Times Staff Writer

Though fatigue can affect passenger train crews, it is primarily a problem for the 40,000 to 45,000 engineers, brake operators and conductors assigned to unscheduled freight service.

Many put in 60 to 70 hours a week, sometimes more. They can be called to work any time during the day or night, constantly disrupting their sleep patterns.

The irregular shifts often place bleary-eyed crews at the controls between 3 and 6 a.m., when experts say the body's natural circadian rhythm produces maximum drowsiness.

Engineers, brake operators and conductors liken on-the-job fatigue to being in a constant state of jet lag.

"There is no set rest schedule. It changes all the time, and it is hard to adjust," said Doug Armstrong of Huntington Beach, a veteran Union Pacific engineer who often works 12-hour days, six days a week. "People have a normal rest cycle, but a railroad is anything but normal."

Part of the problem is the federal Hours of Service Act, a 98-year-old law that requires at least eight hours off after each shift. Crew members say that often doesn't result in adequate sleep. Allowing for commutes, family obligations, meals and getting ready for work, four to six hours of rest is common, they say.

Moreover, it is legal under the act for engineers, conductors and brake operators to work up to 432 hours a month. In contrast, truckers can drive no more than 260 hours a month under federal law, while commercial pilots are restricted to 100 hours of flying a month.

"It doesn't make scientific or physiological sense," said Mark R. Rosekind, a past director of NASA's fatigue countermeasures program and a former consultant to Union Pacific. "It calls for a minimum of eight hours off, but people need eight hours of sleep a day on average."

Without adequate rest, engineers can significantly increase their risk of an accident, according to research in the late 1990s by the Assn. of American Railroads, the industry's trade organization and lobbying arm.

Donald G. Krause, then an analyst for the association, studied 1.7 million work schedules and found that engineers who put in more than 60 hours a week were at least twice as likely to be in an accident as those working 40 hours.

His work was intended to aid the industry in assessing the fatigue problem and finding ways to reduce accidents. But in 1998, the association canceled the research.

"They did not want this finding," said Krause, who once studied rail safety for the federal General Accounting Office and is now a business writer living outside Chicago. "The railroads fear it could lead to restrictions on hours and government regulation, which could cost them money. But something needs to be done. One of these days, they are going to wipe out a town."

Look at what can happen along busy train lines.

UPDATE: The Center for American Progress adds:

In the second of a series of papers on securing our critical infrastructure, the Center for American Progress outlines five steps that will eliminate or reduce a known risk to our major urban and economic centers and create a strategic framework for action. First and foremost, the federal government should approve the District of Columbia's rail and truck hazardous material or "hazmat" exclusion zone rather than continue to fight it. Second, it should undertake a national review and identify other major cities where similar re-routing options exist. Third, it should encourage localities to enact a broader set of physical security initiatives, particularly regarding railway sidings and private track hazardous material storage. Fourth, the country needs a genuine homeland security partnership, not a rivalry, one based on better communication, coordination and action. Finally, the federal government needs a comprehensive hazardous material strategy that looks at the supply and demand for hazardous materials and encourages changes in manufacturing and operating processes that should reduce the volume of toxic, explosive and lethal substances on the nation's railways.

CAP's full report (.pdf) on rail security is worth a read.

Blogkeeping

Didn't the new guys do a great job? I'm really grateful for their excellent work while giving me some time to get the new place set up. I'll have new information on Sen. Bill Frist, the "nuclear option," and the rest of the judicial nomination process news throughout the day. I'm told that Moveon.org will be giving it a visit. It's going to be a busy Monday.

Leave your thoughts for the new crew in comments below. You'll be seeing them later this week when I get busy.

Mars, Venus and Men in Dresses

NTodd, guest blogging at Susie's place, turns over the log of the modern papacy and finds the creepy-crawlies underneath

Elaine Supkis is in da house and she has a few words for that trash-talkin' Ratzinger, yo:

Is it any wonder that women can't argue philosophy and don't blog?

Mmm. NTodd, a white boy from Vermont is about as good at trash talk as this white chick from Minnesota.

ROTC goes Rotten

If you've been reading here for a while, you know that I'm not anti-military, just anti- the unneccesary and foolish Iraq war. I'm an Army brat and student of military history. That's why I take yankee doodle's comments very seriously. This morning, he says:

"Nationwide enrollment in the Army's Reserve Officers' Training Corps has slipped more than 16 percent over the past two school years, leaving the program, which trains and commissions more than six of every 10 new Army officers each year, with its fewest participants in nearly a decade. The decline includes a drop of 10 percent from the 2003-04 school year to the term ending this spring. According to the Army's Cadet Command at Fort Monroe, Va., which supervises ROTC, 26,566 students are enrolled in the program now, down from 29,618 last year and 31,765 in 2002-03, the first full school year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Pre-Sept. 11 enrollments were also higher than they are now." Washington Post, April 23, 2005.

That colonel who called me “Commissar” was an ROTC student in the 1960s who knew Vietnam combat duty awaited after graduation day. He served there with distinction. He was politically conservative but no damn hypocrite. So maybe there is good news in this article after all: those young conservatives on campus avoiding ROTC weren’t really officer material in the first place.

It is going to take us decades to rebuild our military, if we can return to wise leadership. Think on that. That's a big, freaking if.

Public Health Moment

Drop in virus mortality rate portends new danger
Scientists fear broader reach of lethal bird flu

By Alan Sipress, Washington Post | April 24, 2005

HANOI, Vietnam -- Nguyen Sy Tuan can barely talk. His wasted frame is tucked beneath a thin white sheet on the hospital cot. His cheeks are sunken, and his bulging eyes stare blankly at the ceiling. But the young man has begun to eat rice again and can finally breathe without a mechanical ventilator, a dramatic turnaround for a bird flu patient who doctors had assumed would die.

More than a year after avian influenza emerged in East Asia, killing more than two-thirds of the people with confirmed cases, Vietnamese doctors are reporting that the mortality rate in their country has dropped substantially.

While this is good news for survivors, it could mean that the outbreak of bird flu in Southeast Asia is taking an ominous turn. If a disease quickly kills almost everyone it infects, it has little chance of spreading very far, according to international health specialists. The less lethal bird flu becomes, they say, the more likely it is to develop into the global pandemic they fear, potentially killing tens of millions of people.

''The virus could be adapting to humans," said Peter Horby, an epidemiologist with the World Health Organization in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital. ''There's a number of indications it could be moving toward a more dangerous virus."

The mortality rate for bird flu in Vietnam this year is about 35 percent, almost exactly half that of last year, according to Health Ministry statistics. The mortality rate of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, by comparison, was less than 5 percent, but the outbreak killed an estimated 40 million people worldwide.

Officials said the drop in the bird flu mortality rate was more marked in northern Vietnam than in the south. While the virus in southern Vietnam is still killing at the same pace as last year, the rate in the area around Hanoi and elsewhere in the north has dropped from that level to as low as 20 percent. Vietnamese health specialists said their suspicion that the disease is shifting is further supported by preliminary research showing a genetic change in the virus in the north, resulting in the production of a protein with one less amino acid than in the south.

Health researchers believe that nearly all the 52 people known to have died of bird flu in Southeast Asia caught the virus from infected poultry. But with more clusters of cases among families reported in Vietnam this year -- including that of Tuan, his sister, and their grandfather -- specialists say they are growing increasingly suspicious that the disease has begun passing from one human to another.

Here is something to think about: the Spanish flu which killed 2-5% of those it infected in 1917-18 had a mild first wave in 1917. It returned in a far more virulent form the following year. And we are overdue for a pandemic. Word up.

The Scandal Painted World

Bolton's British Problem
Fresh complaints of bullying dog an embattled nominee.
Hot seat: Bolton faces a steady stream of criticism, even from some Republicans
Dennis Cook / AP
Hot seat: Bolton faces a steady stream of criticism, even from some Republicans

By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek

May 2 issue - Colin Powell plainly didn't like what he was hearing. At a meeting in London in November 2003, his counterpart, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, was complaining to Powell about John Bolton, according to a former Bush administration official who was there. Straw told the then Secretary of State that Bolton, Powell's under secretary for arms control, was making it impossible to reach allied agreement on Iran's nuclear program. Powell turned to an aide and said, "Get a different view on [the Iranian problem]. Bolton is being too tough."

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Unbeknownst to Bolton, the aide then interviewed experts in Bolton's own Nonproliferation Bureau. The issue was resolved, the former official told NEWSWEEK, only after Powell adopted softer language recommended by these experts on how and when Iran might be referred to the U.N. Security Council. But the terrified State experts were "adamant that we not let Bolton know we had talked to them," the official said.

The incident illustrates a key allegation that now bedevils Bolton's nomination to be America's next ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton's critics contend that he has consistently taken an extreme and uncompromising line on issues and that he has bullied subordinates and intel analysts who disagreed with him. President Bush last week stood by his embattled nominee, blaming "politics" for Bolton's difficult confirmation process. But it was members of the president's own party who were holding things up. After GOP Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, unexpectedly blocked a vote last week, it was clear that Bolton's nomination was in trouble. Powell himself, in reported remarks to several senators, expressed worries about Bolton's temperament. Because the eight Democrats on the 18-person committee are solidly against Bolton, a single GOP defector could kill the nomination when it comes to a vote on May 12. The White House still believes that only a hard-liner like Bolton can reform the U.N.

Wait a minute, wait a minute! The Prez nominates a guy who doesn't have a diplomatic bone in his body for the premiere diplomatic posting at State and we're all supposed to shut up and salute?

And isn't it just the teeniest bit arrogant to think that only the US can reform the UN? Where is the demonstration that it needs reforming? Where is the demonstration that the US can do it, with our own Halliburton problems? Hmm?

Who died and left us the arbitors of corruption?

What a Character

David Ignatius gives us an insight into Bolton's character:

Bolton's Biggest Problem

By David Ignatius
Friday, April 22, 2005; Page A17

To appreciate the story, it's important to see Bolton and Westermann as Washington archetypes. Bolton is a political appointee who has made his career delivering broadsides at think tanks. Westermann, by contrast, is a career man. He served 20 years in the Navy, including combat time, before joining INR as a weapons analyst. He took his job as an intelligence gatekeeper seriously.

Westermann sent Bolton's proposed speech language about Cuban biowarfare efforts to the intelligence community for clearance the afternoon of Feb. 12, 2002. With it, he attached alternative language that in his view accorded better with the NIE. Westermann had frequently suggested similar changes for other colleagues and saw it as part of his job. But Bolton seemed convinced that it was a stab in the back. His chief of staff fired off an e-mail complaining about the alternative language and summoning the analyst to Bolton's office immediately. Westermann e-mailed back meekly that he had provided the same language a few months before for Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Bolton was enraged when Westermann arrived: "He wanted to know what right I had trying to change an undersecretary's language. . . . And he got very red in the face and shaking his finger at me and explained that I was acting way beyond my position. . . . And so, he basically threw me out of his office and told me to get Tom Fingar up there," Westermann testified.

Fingar at the time was acting head of INR and now has the job full-time. He testified that when he arrived, Bolton was still furious, saying that "he wasn't going to be told what he could say by a midlevel INR munchkin analyst," and "that he wanted Westermann taken off his accounts." To their immense credit, Fingar and his boss, INR chief Carl Ford, refused to cave to continuing pressure from Bolton to transfer Westermann. He's still on the job.

And what about the Cuban biological weapons program that had Bolton so exercised? In 2004 the intelligence community revised its 1999 estimate because it was even less sure that Cuba had any such effort to develop offensive weapons of mass destruction. In other words, the mercurial, finger-wagging policymaker appears to have had it wrong, and the cautious analyst who refused to be intimidated had it right.

Who ya gonna believe?

LAUGH? CRY?

Rumsfeld Cheered At Grand Ole Opry

NASHVILLE, Tenn., April 24, 2005 (CBS/AP)

As members of the U.S. military watched on television via satellite from Iraq, Dolly Parton invited their boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, onstage at the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday.

Rumsfeld was sitting in the front row as Parton sang her hit "Coat of Many Colors" before he was introduced.

The audience applauded as Rumsfeld appeared and thanked the troops serving in the military.

As people entered the auditorium for Saturday's show they were given postcards with "America supports you," printed on them.

Audience members waved the cards and shouted their support to the troops watching on television.

In contrast, a human rights group is accusing Rumsfeld of not supporting the troops, but rather shifting blame for prison abuse down the ladder.

Human Rights Watch called for a criminal investigation of Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet and other U.S. intelligence and military officials who it says condoned or ignored the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and other locations.

The report, to be released Sunday, takes no stance on the ultimate culpability of the officials but says an investigation is warranted by growing evidence against them.

It criticizes Rumsfeld and Tenet for trying to pass blame for the abuse to military subordinates and individual soldiers.

"This pattern of abuse across several countries did not result from the acts of individual soldiers who broke the rules," Reed Brody, special counsel for the group, said in a statement. "It resulted from decisions made by senior U.S. officials to bend, ignore, or cast rules aside."

The report says coercive questioning techniques authorized by Rumsfeld for use at Guantanamo Bay spread not only to Abu Ghraib, but to sites throughout Iraq, Afghanistan and other "secret locations."

Can someone please explain why the audience is cheering? Please.

Signs of the times

Conservation isn't what it used to be.

"Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the President shall develop and implement measures to conserve petroleum in end-uses throughout the economy of the United States sufficient to reduce total demand for petroleum in the United States by 1,000,000 barrels per day from the amount projected for calendar year 2013."

-- Energy amendment

passed by the Senate,

99 to 1, June 10, 2003

"Not later than six months after the date of enactment of this act, appropriate Federal Departments and agencies, as identified by the president, shall propose voluntary, regulatory, and other actions sufficient to reduce demand for oil in the United States by at least 1.0 million barrels per day from projected demand for oil in 2013."

-- Energy amendment

defeated by the House,

262 to 166, April 20, 2005

Howard Dean, the Dems, and Cultural Issues

DNC Is Told Where to Move Into Bush Bloc

By Dan Balz
Sunday, April 24, 2005; Page A05

Howard Dean's Democratic National Committee has been studying the electorate, and the party's problem with voters of faith is both worse and better than he feared.

The former Vermont governor, in one of his first actions as DNC chairman, commissioned pollster Cornell Belcher to survey voters in eight states won by President Bush last November: Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, New Mexico and Nevada.

What Belcher found that worries the Democrats is that a significant percentage -- 47 percent of voters and 51 percent of white women in the eight states -- said their voting decisions are influenced as much or more by their religious faith as by traditional political issues. Not surprisingly, they went heavily for Bush over Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), with 66 percent backing the president.

But Belcher's survey also persuaded Dean and other DNC officials that these voters may not be beyond their reach. "These so-called values or faith voters are some of the most economically anxious voters in the electorate," Belcher said. "They're tremendously cross-pressured between their pocketbook concerns and their moral values concerns."

Dean believes that provides an opening for Democrats, but only if Democratic candidates learn to speak a different language. "Democrats wonder why people vote against their own economic interest," he said. "The answer is that Democrats don't connect with people's fears about how to raise their children in a difficult social environment."

The former presidential candidate said issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion are not the major obstacles facing Democrats, but the impression that Democrats convey to these voters is that their answer to those fears is more government. "The message people hear is, 'Oh, we'll raise your children for you.' That's the wrong message," Dean said.

Dean called the survey "the best poll I'd seen in 10 years," and said he hopes to road-test a message designed to reach enough voters in competitive red states to turn the tide. "If it works," he said, "the other folks in Washington will pick it up very quickly."

After the telephone interview, an aide to Dean called to say he wanted to make clear this was not a maverick enterprise on the chairman's part to create a new message, noting that he had spoken with Democratic congressional leaders and that all were working together on it.

This is the sort of thing that reminds me that Dean's a lot more than just someone who will fight for what Dems should be fighting for. Insights like this are an awfully pleasant bonus. Democrats very definitely need to connect with people's fears about how to raise their children in what is a much more difficult social environment than my parents had to deal with, forty years ago.

As Cornel West and Sylvia Ann Hewlett pointed out at length in The War Against Parents, raising children has gotten more challenging for American parents over the past few decades in a whole host of ways. Economically, it takes two incomes for most families to do what one income used to do. Culturally, there's just a lot more stuff thrown at kids that parents have to somehow sort through and decide whether/how to fend it off than there was wehn I was growing up forty years ago. Whether a parent is worried about their kids getting hooked by consumerism or porn, concerned more about violent video games or hucksters for foods that will super-size their kids, there's just a lot more out there, and overworked parents have less time to deal with it all.

Into this environment step the two political parties. The Republicans have a simple answer: porn and gays and sex and condoms and video games are bad; we'll fight for you against their malign influences.

Democrats have had a simple answer, too: it's up to already-overburdened parents to deal with all this crap.

So in this particular marketplace, parents have a choice between two brands: the GOP, which will give them all the wrong kind of help; and the Dems, who won't help them at all. Guess who's been doing better.

I'm not Bill Clinton's biggest fan. But with such initiatives as the V-Chip, Clinton found ways to be on parents' side in this cultural environment, without trampling on civil liberties in the process. It's good to see Howard Dean trying to raise the issue of how to do that sort of thing in a new decade.

I think the problem for Democrats has been a confusion about free speech. If you're a Democrat, you're for free speech, with pretty much no ifs, ands, and buts. This is good; hell, it's non-negotiable. We Dems must continue to be the party that's willing to fight for free speech, because the GOP certainly won't. The GOP has a less complicated path with respect to cultural issues: once you get more than a few steps away from Barry Goldwater, the GOP has been far less committed to free speech over the years. Free speech is good, they say, as long as it doesn't denigrate God or America or saying things about our enemies that distinguish them from evil incarnate. So their answer to cultural influences they don't like is simple: outlaw them, censor them, shut them up.

We Democrats can't take that path. But what we can do is recognize the difference between media (like the Internets) where everyone has the right to speak up, and media like TV and radio, where the 'right' of speech seems to belong only to a tiny but powerful elite. As Democrats, it's our job to keep an eye on powerful elites, and to try to rein them in when they're acting against the interests of most Americans. We shouldn't have to put up with big corporations pushing fattening foods and an ethic of consumerism on our kids practically before they go to kindergarten, and there are ways we can fight that. For instance, we can fight for reforms to rein in broadcasters' exploitation of children as just another market, since broadcasters theoretically have to serve the public interest.

And even with media like the Web, we can find ways to help parents let their kids explore it, without having to stand over their shoulder every minute to make sure they don't trip over cumshot photos. Net-nanny software is getting more sophisticated all the time; the line about its being unable to tell the difference between a breast-cancer site and a porn site is so five years ago. A Democratic approach to helping parents protect their kids from Internet porn would be to periodically rate the best, most flexible net-nanny software out there, and pay them a nice chunk of change to make it available to everyone for free.

But just like national security, this is not an area where the Democratic Party can afford to be missing in action. And I'm very glad that Howard Dean realizes that.

You didn't need those Tax Breaks!

Commission says too many tax breaks exist

By MARY DALRYMPLE
AP TAX WRITER
Sunday April 24, 2005

WASHINGTON -- As taxpayers recover from finishing their annual filing chores, a presidential commission studying the tax laws has reached the conclusion that there are just too many deductions and credits.

"We have lost sight of the fact that the fundamental purpose of our tax system is to raise revenues to fund government," according to President Bush's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform.

The commission's chairman, former Florida Sen. Connie Mack, said its nine members have been surprised at the number of tax deductions and credits.

"It wasn't until we really had the opportunity to listen to so many different people talk about so many different aspects of the code that it really sunk in about how much and how often the code is being used these days to either create incentives or disincentives for either investment or behavior," Mack said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The White House budget office ranks the cost of a deduction for businesses that provide health insurance to employees as the top tax break, worth $126 billion next year. Also high on the list are the popular mortgage interest deduction, a capital gains break for home sales, a deduction for charitable contributions and the child tax credit.

Bush has asked the panel to preserve tax breaks that promote homeownership and charitable giving.

Tax benefits that provide indirect subsidies to homeowners add up to more than the entire budget of the Housing and Urban Development Department.

The earned income tax credit for low wage workers is bigger than any welfare program, including food stamps.

The tax break for businesses that provide health insurance is growing faster than almost all other domestic programs.

Some critics say no one tracks the tax breaks to find out if they succeed in promoting the behavior lawmakers want to encourage. Limitations often mean that some breaks are not available to wealthier taxpayers or poorer ones.

"It is worth noting that the deductions are of little or no benefit to the 40 percent of taxpayers who don't owe taxes," Fred Goldberg Jr., a former Internal Revenue Service commissioner, told the presidential panel.
and fairer.

This summer, the panel plans to recommend ways to make the tax laws simpler and fairer.

Just great... so we (the people's government) are busy trying to make sure that > .01% of the population won't have to pay inheritence taxes and we (the same government) want to make sure that tax cuts for this same group will remain forever and ever amen.

So how will we balance this... by removing all of the little cuts that go for everyone else naturally. After all, the math will work until we throw in all of those special appropriation bills... don't we have some oil money somewhere Dicky?

Granted, I've never written off too much on the teacher supply category, mostly because my desk is way too messy to find all of the receipts, but some of the rest of them do add up. Now I'm all for simplifying things, but the tax breaks that are dropped need to be for all income levels, and not just the ones who can't afford fancy lobbyists.

And I'm sorry, but Senator Mack if you don't know how complicated the tax code is then why did you vote for so many of these breaks? It's not like most citizens are shocked to see that the government finally discovered the tax code is obtuse. I just have to wonder how much of our hard earned tax dollars was spent discovering the sky is blue....

Social Justice Sunday

"We religious progressives value the diversity of thought and opinion among people of faith. We agree that no individual, group or side of any issue owns our faith. As people of faith, we find hope and compassion in witnessing the questions and answers of others and honoring their struggles.

In the words of Abraham Lincoln: My concern is not whether God is on our side. My great concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right."

--Clergy and Laity Network

LEVERAGED BUG OUT

Intel gets extension of tax breaks

4/22/2005, 12:15 a.m. PT
The Associated Press

The proposed 15-year pact would exempt as much as $25 billion in new equipment upgrades from local property taxes and take effect whenever Intel exhausts $12.5 billion in exemptions from its last agreement, approved in 1999. Intel estimates that will happen in 2010.

The company, which hasn't committed to any new Oregon investment, contends it would be too expensive to build its multibillion-dollar factories and research centers in Oregon if it were taxed on the full value of its equipment.

"What they have asked us to do, and what we have done, basically, is level the playing field," Hillsboro Mayor Tom Hughes said Thursday. He said the property tax breaks help keep Oregon competitive with other places vying for Intel investment.

Intel's new deal, like its current arrangement, provides property tax exemptions for the company's equipment but requires the company to pay regular property taxes on its land and buildings.

Emphasis mine. Hmmm...I wonder why they haven't committed to any new investment? Perhaps they're creating leverage? Believe me, if Intel finds a better deal someplace else they'll be gone. Down here in Tampa, in a space of 6 months, we've had two major corporations, Capital One and Chase, each announce that they were closing down their Tampa operations and laying off a combined 3,000 workers. I don't know what specific tax breaks or other incentives either company may have received for locating here. My question is - will they pay a penalty for leaving town and dumping all those workers into a crappy job market? No? Why not?

Say one thing...

Frist Tells Conservatives That Judges Deserve 'respect, Not Retaliation' Regardless of How They Rule

By David Espo
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was telling conservatives on Sunday that judges deserve "respect, not retaliation," no matter how they rule, and he defended his effort to strip Democrats of their ability to block votes on President Bush's court nominees.

"I don't think it's radical to ask senators to vote. I don't think it's radical to expect senators to fulfill their constitutional responsibilities," said Frist, whom Democrats have accused of engaging in "radical Republican" politics.

A potential candidate for the White House in 2008, the Tennessee Republican made no overt mention of religion in a brief address taped for a rally Sunday evening in Louisville, Ky., according to a text of his remarks released before the event.

Instead, Frist seemed intent on steering clear of the views expressed by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and other conservatives in and out of Congress who have urged investigations and even possible impeachment of judges they describe as activists.

"Our judiciary must be independent, impartial and fair," Frist said in his taped remarks.

"When we think judicial decisions are outside mainstream American values, we will say so. But we must also be clear that the balance of power among all three branches requires respect - not retaliation. I won't go along with that," Frist said.

The event, organized by the conservative Family Research Council, was being held in a church and was to be broadcast around the country. Fliers for "Justice Sunday - Stopping The Filibuster Against People of Faith" said the filibuster, a tactic used by the minority party to stall debate and sometimes scuttle votes on presidential nominees, is "being used against people of faith."

The No. 2 Democrat in the Senate said on Sunday that the Constitution prohibits a religious test for a person to be appointed to a public office.

"What's happening today with the Family Research Council is wrong," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told "Fox News Sunday."

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaking on the same show, said the Family Research Council should not question whether Democrats are people of faith or religious bigots.

"I don't think that helps the country and I don't think it's fair," Graham said.

For months, Frist has threatened to take action that would shut down the Democrats' practice of subjecting a small number of judicial appointees to filibusters. Barring a last-minute compromise, a showdown is expected this spring or summer.

Watch what they do regardless of what they say.

Elections in Saudi Arabia

Islamic Activists Sweep Saudi Council Elections

By Steve Coll
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 24, 2005; Page A17

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia, April 23 -- Saudi Arabia's limited 10-week experiment with electoral democracy ended here Saturday in a sweeping victory for slates of Islamic activists marketed as the "Golden List," who used grass-roots organizing, digital technology and endorsements from popular religious leaders to defeat their liberal and tribal rivals, even here in Jiddah, for decades Saudi Arabia's most diverse and business-driven city.

The staggered contests for seats on half of the kingdom's 178 municipal councils, the first governmental elections here in more than three decades, offered a rare measure of public opinion and political strength across Saudi Arabia -- or at least the opinions of men, as women were barred from voting or running as candidates, as were active soldiers and police.

The rest of the story's at the link.

I think it's pretty clear that in most Arab states currently run by kings, princes, generals, or whatnot, these rulers will be succeeded by strongly religious Islamic governments when they eventually fall. Why? Because - for the time being - that's who the Arab people want.

I'm actually for this evolution; I just don't think there's a direct path for them from authoritarian rule to secular democracy that resembles anything we're used to. Some sort of Islamic rule will be a way-station on the road.

The question has always been, how much is it worth to us to help this process along? What should we do to nudge erstwhile allies (such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia) and more hostile nations (Syria, prewar Iraq) in that direction, and what should we avoid?

What we ultimately want are democracies where people aren't denied basic human rights due to their creed, gender, or ethnicity; we want to use diplomacy, for the most part, to nudge nondemocratic states towards greater democracy, and pressure states that deny human rights to various groups to stop doing so.

But I can't see that it's worth very much in the way of treasure, or worth a single American life, to replace a Saddam or an Assad with a state operating under Sharia law. The benefits to us - or them, from our POV - just aren't that great.

Fristing

Frist Initiative Creates Rift in GOP Base
By Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten
Times Staff Writers

April 24, 2005

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will draw a chorus of amens tonight when thousands of evangelicals across the nation hear his call to put more conservative judges on the federal bench.

But even as the Tennessee Republican addresses "Justice Sunday" — a 90-minute simulcast to conservative churches that enthusiastically backs a Senate rule change to speed judicial confirmations — the leader faces apprehension from another key GOP constituency.

The country's leading business lobbying associations, close GOP allies in recent legislative efforts and political campaigns, have told senior Republicans that they would not back the Frist initiative to force votes on President Bush's judicial nominees.

Business leaders say they fear the move would lead to a shutdown of Senate action on long-awaited priorities — as Democrats have threatened if Frist moves ahead with a rule change that they say would drastically alter the traditions of a body designed to respect the rights of the minority party.

"If we do that, then all else is going to stop," Thomas J. Donohue, head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said during a meeting with reporters Friday.

He then reeled off a list of business priorities that could be delayed for months in the resulting partisan uproar. He expressed the same concerns directly to Frist's office in recent days.

The lack of support from business presents a dilemma for Frist, who wants to build ties with the Republican base ahead of his likely 2008 presidential bid but now must balance competing demands from two pillars of Republican politics: evangelicals, who can marshal millions of voters, and businesses, which donate millions of dollars. Both groups played pivotal roles in securing Bush's reelection last year and expanding the GOP majority in Congress — and both have made clear that they expect to be rewarded.

But though business groups can already point to several victories — such as passage of laws on class action lawsuits and bankruptcy — evangelicals look to the judicial fight as the signal moment to exert newfound influence.

Party officials concede that the tension between business leaders and social conservatives could foreshadow problems for Republican candidates in 2006 and 2008 who, like Bush, will rely on an energized and unified base to win closely fought contests.

"Every day that this does not get resolved there could be increased tension or pressure put on the situation," said one GOP strategist, who requested anonymity citing the sensitive nature of the rift. "Depending on how artfully or inartfully this is resolved, there is some fence-mending that needs to be done."

Senators, let's see the results of your handiwork played out on C-Span. Display your partisan politics and let the people decide.

Cross-posted at Just a Bump in the Beltway, American Street and Judging the Future.

Today is going to be a busy day. Check back in for a blogburst to counter the catkiller's appearance at the Family Research Council event. The rest of us have some faith and morals to wave in his face.

OPEN THREAD

So, what's on Bumpers' minds tonight?

Is Saudi Arabia Running Out of Oil?

Simmons hopes he’s wrong
Leading energy analyst believes Saudi Arabia’s crude oil supply near peak;
calls for greater global reserve transparency to anticipate ‘cataclysm’

F. Jay Schempf
Petroleum News Contributing Writer (Houston)

Matt Simmons hopes he is wrong.

But if he’s right in his belief that Saudi Arabia’s giant oil fields might already have peaked and could start into rapid decline in as few as three years, somebody better have a “Plan B” ready or there’s no way, he says — absolutely no way — to avoid a world energy cataclysm.

Pretty strong words. Stronger, perhaps, than any uttered before about energy. Simmons spoke them, and more, at a July 9 Washington, D.C., presentation made at a meeting on Saudi Arabia’s future. The Hudson Institute sponsored the meeting.

Simmons asked for anybody, including the Saudis themselves, to refute his claim. But so far, in his view, nobody’s stepped up. He acknowledges, however, that the Saudis recently have been more forthcoming about their ability to supply all the extra oil the world will require from Saudi fields. But still, it appears that nobody is willing to counter his specific charges.

Simmons knows whereof he speaks. He views the world oil supply picture from the vantage point of 30 years’ experience as founder of Simmons & Company International, Houston, which today is one of the world’s largest energy investment banking groups. Since opening the company’s first office in Houston back in 1974, Simmons and his group have guided a broad client base to complete more than 500 oil and gas investment banking projects with a combined dollar value of some $58 billion. The company now has additional offices in Boston, London and Aberdeen, Scotland.

A few fields produce almost all Saudi oil
But all the investment capital in the world won’t be much help if, as Simmons suspects, Saudi Arabia can no longer open the tap wider at its key oil fields as the world’s “plug” producer in meeting steadily increasing world oil demand. Contrary to widespread opinion, the “gift” to the world of Saudi Arabia’s oil, in Simmons’ view at least, is not one that will keep on giving.

Despite recent comment by Saudi Aramco that it has discovered 85 oil fields in the country and has so far developed just 23 of them, Simmons says only a handful of fields account for virtually all Saudi Arabian oil production. The largest, Ghawar — the world’s single largest oil field — has accounted for about 60 percent of all the oil the country ever produced, he said. Today, he added, Ghawar still produces about 5 million barrels per day of the current Saudi oil output of 7.5 to 8 million bpd. Five other fields produce the remainder, he said: Abqaiq, Safaniyah, Zuluf, Berri and Shaybah.

But all six of these fields, he noted, are more than 30 years old. Abqaiq was discovered in 1940, Ghawar in 1948, and Safaniyah in 1951. The last three were discovered in the mid-1960s.

There’s no Act 2
Normally, Simmons said in a July 23 interview with Petroleum News, Saudi fields would be subject to the same decline curves as those experienced by any of the world’s oil fields, once reservoir pressure begins to dwindle. The difference is, he said, Saudi Aramco doubled up to catch up, almost from the start, by keeping reservoir pressures — and individual well flow rates — as high as possible, seemingly for as long as possible.

In simple terms, says Simmons, the Saudis have produced their fields under simultaneous primary and secondary recovery, having instituted huge waterflooding programs relatively soon after completing field development.

“All of these fields are old,” he pointed out, “but Saudi Aramco has managed them in a ‘gold standard’ fashion by instituting careful and rigorous water injection to maintain very high reservoir pressures. They’re effectively sweeping the reservoirs until the easily recoverable oil is gone. In so doing, they have defied the standard decline curves. With water injection, they’ve maintained reservoir pressures above the bubble point. The trouble is, once they finally finish the sweep, they’ve done both primary and secondary depletion. There isn’t any Act 2.”

Apparently, detailed knowledge of this double dipping has not been common. Saudi production figures and field statistics have been regarded largely as state secrets since the 1980s. Nevertheless, said Simmons, most world oil supply studies assume that Saudi production is nearly inexhaustible and can be increased almost effortlessly by whatever world demand dictates.

No new giant oil fields in Saudi Arabia
But according to Simmons, enough data exists in the public domain today that, when combined and analyzed, reveals a much different picture.

During the past decade or so, he said, the lack of hard field data from most producing countries, particularly from OPEC member countries and even more particularly from Saudi Arabia, made it extremely difficult for his company to plan various energy investment scenarios for its clients.

So, Simmons instituted a 12-month study of technical presentations on Saudi Arabian oilfield activity made before various meetings around the world of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, beginning in 1961 and going through 2003. The study amassed more than 200 such tech papers, he said, delivered largely by oilfield service companies and dealing with highly technical aspects in all six of the Saudi giant fields.

“Each individual paper doesn’t tell you a lot,” he said. “But, by going through this incredible stack and then going back and isolating each by the specific field they dealt with, chronologically, you could see the history of what had been going on in Saudi Arabia during that time.”

While the study revealed a “whole litany” of surprises, said Simmons, the most important one is that while the six Saudi Arabian giant fields have accounted for everything Saudi Arabia has produced so far, there is sufficient evidence to argue that once those fields are in decline, the Saudis won’t have much else in the way of new oil from which to draw.

Saudi Aramco has explored the country thoroughly, Simmons said, and no new ‘giant’ fields have resulted.

“Meanwhile, Saudi Aramco’s senior management are adamant that their existing oil fields are in great shape and can reliably produce as much as 15 million bpd for another 50 years,” said Simmons. “They also insist that their proved reserves are actually conservative and there are still another 200 billion barrels of oil yet to be found in various unexplored pockets of Saudi Arabia.” The world has only the company’s word on this, said Simmons.

New technology won’t do it
He added that Saudi Aramco senior managers also believe “with some passion” that the technological tools they are now employing would contain the rise of water in existing fields. Such tools, he noted, include horizontal and extended-reach wells and multi-lateral well completions, among others.

“My worry is that too many other oil companies around the world also believed these same tools would allow them to steadily grow their production from a reduced amount of wells drilled,” he said. “Instead, it turned out that virtually every key oil producer using these same tools sadly ended up seeing their production growth peter out.”

While the tools did extract more oil per well, he explained, they also accelerated the recovery of economical oil. In turn, this created decline rates never seen before in existing production.

Simmons has taken his study’s findings and conclusions and currently is writing a book, which he plans to self-publish late this coming fall.

The book, Twilight in the Desert, published by Wiley, is due out on May 27.

Here's the full transcript of Simmons' presentation. Plus Q&A; afterwards. I found it to be a very compelling read. He provides a number of additional details that give further credence to his claim.

I'm a mathematician, not an oilman. I can't judge Simmons' claims. But he's raised a pretty serious matter here. If he's right, we've got to get our house in order - fast. And even if he's wrong, peak oil's going to find us anyway. Francis Harper of BP, a senior oil industry executive, expects global oil production to peak between 2010 and 2020. And once it does, the price of oil will inevitably skyrocket as supply decreases. We might as well get ready sooner rather than later.

This means, quite simply, getting ready to live with less petroleum. The big, obvious things are more energy-efficient vehicles, and more public transportation. Here's how a barrel of oil breaks down into different products. A 42-gallon barrel of crude is turned into 19.5 gallons of gasoline, 9.2 gallons of diesel, 4.1 gallons of kerosene (jet fuel - something I learned only recently), and assorted other products - but transportation is clearly what drives demand.

If the world's biggest economy doesn't get ready for peak oil, it's going to be far too interesting times when it gets here - and not just for America.

What about the Anthrax?

U.S. Yields In Anthrax Lawsuit Standoff
Some Questioning Allowed on Leaks

By Henri E. Cauvin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 23, 2005; Page A11

A federal judge ordered the Justice Department yesterday to begin providing testimony to attorneys for Steven J. Hatfill, the former Army scientist who is suing the government for identifying him as "a person of interest" in the anthrax investigation.

For months, the Justice Department had opposed Hatfill's attempts to begin deposing government witnesses, citing the sensitive nature of the investigation. Hatfill's attorneys said that stalled their efforts to identify the source of leaks in the massive probe.

Until yesterday, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton deferred to the government's concerns. But Walton also said that Hatfill must eventually have an opportunity to explore the subject, and the Justice Department told the judge that it is now willing to permit some questioning.

Hatfill filed suit in 2003, alleging that then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and other federal officials defamed him and violated his privacy. No one has been arrested for the anthrax-laced mailings that killed five people and sickened 17 in the fall of 2001, and Hatfill has said that he had nothing to do with the crime.

Hatfill, a physician and bioterrorism expert, worked from 1997 to 1999 in the Army's infectious diseases laboratory at Fort Detrick. He did not attend yesterday's hearing at the federal courthouse in Washington.

The government, in its written submission to the court and in its statement yesterday, sought to preclude Ashcroft and other individual defendants from being deposed because the judge is still considering their claims of immunity.

It was unclear from the court filings and statements what led to the government's turnabout. Last year, Walton expressed doubts that authorities were on the verge of solving the case. The government said in a filing this week that the investigation into the anthrax attacks is "active and ongoing." But law enforcement sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said there have been no significant new developments.

Permit me a moment to rise from my bunker of clutter that passes for a home and mutter “Very interesting...”

I wonder if this is a case where secrecy is truely the issue or if it another instance where Ashcroft’s Justice Department, which has had a great deal of trouble winning any sort of terroism convictions unless they scared the defendent to death, completely bungled things so basly that the public will never really know what happened.

One would think that there are only so many potential suspects that had access to weapons grade anthrax and that after almost 4 years someone could be charged with the crime and put on trial. Perhaps we should hold them just as accountable as the Army did Lt. Gen. Sanchez for the prision scandal .

Federal Time Out

Texas fined for No Child defiance
Toe the line, education chief warns the agency she once headed
By JUSTIN GEST
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Education Secretary Margaret Spellings fined Texas $444,282 Friday for the state's continued defiance of the No Child Left Behind Act.

For the last two years, the Texas Education Agency has exceeded the federal cap on how many students with learning disabilities can be exempted from regular state testing, mandated by the act, in favor of an easier exam.

It is only the second fine ever levied against a state under the 2001 landmark education law. It is also the steepest.

Minnesota was fined $113,000 by Spelling's predecessor, Rod Paige, for not testing an adequate number of students in 2003.

Texas' fine comes a little more than two weeks after Spellings announced that she would offer more flexibility in meeting No Child Left Behind requirements to states that otherwise adhere to federal rules.

But Texas had flouted the federal guidelines.

Neeley's defiance touched off a public dispute between her and Spellings, who helped design the original No Child Left Behind Act in Texas when she advised then-Gov. George W. Bush from 1994 to 2000.

Neeley was accused of exempting the extra students to falsely inflate state scores. In response, she said the Education Department was out of touch with needs of students in Texas.

Texas may be subject to further sanctions.

The federal limit on the number of students who can take the special exam remains capped at 1 percent, and Texas again exempted nearly 9 percent of its students during the current school year.

The $444,282 fine represents a fraction of Texas' $1.1 billion federal allocation, and a sliver of the state's $33 billion annual public education budget.

"Texas got a slap on the hand for breaking a fundamental principle of No Child Left Behind. Now any other state that doesn't comply is going to expect a similar financial penalty," said Scott Young, a policy adviser for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

"Texas called their bluff. Apparently, the department's not going to jeopardize public education in Texas and the individual students there. I can only imagine what Utah and Connecticut are thinking right now."

On Tuesday, Utah's Legislature passed a resolution that declares federal education laws subordinate to state policy.

Last week, Connecticut officials announced plans to sue the Education Department for the right to disregard federal rules, saying the federal government fails to provide enough money.

It is unclear how Texas will return the money from its 2004 federal allocation, all of which has been spent.

Curiouser and curiouser indeed! It looks like the Dept of Education is going to make sure to close every loophole out there... considering the current head of Education knows how Houston pulled off it’s “educational miracle” (with the help of Eron accounting methods), she’s going to make sure that it won’t happen again! I do wonder how much longer the states will tolerate this unprecidented unfunded mandate, even though the recent actions by Utah and Connecticut
prove this is not a red/blue issue. Most states are running a deficit as we speak and will do good not to cut their education budgets, much less expand them. North Carolina is projecting a huge deficit for the coming year.

Get ready to hear about more fines like this where the local systems push weaker kids into “special education” catergories... because everyone will have to do it to pass the Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) standards. While I work at a very good school, one of the only reasons why we have met AYP the last few years is because we did not have enough students in certain categories to be counted towards out AYP scores, though that will probably change this year. In other words, the poorer and more diverse schools get punished the quickest even if they improve their scores.

And remember, by the time my 2 year olds are in school, 100% of the kids in public schools are supposed to be functioning at grade level, even the ones who come in my class, lay down, and refuse to do anything.

Oil: demand keeps rising, supply chain is maxed out

Matt Simmons has been running an energy investment banking firm for the past 30+ years, and was on Bush's Energy Advisory Committee between 2001 and 2004; nobody can accuse him of being a lefty enviro know-nothing alarmist. He says we've got some problems:

Ten years ago there was a widespread belief that oil demand was unlikely to ever resume any significant long-term growth. The biggest contributor to this belief was that global oil demand had stayed in a narrow band of 66 to 68 million bpd for the prior seven years. The first year that global oil demand crossed 70 million bpd was 1995. Over the next nine years, global oil demand grew from 70.0 to 82.4 million bpd. It is easy to pin this seemingly surprising demand leap on China, which played a key role. But the reason this growth in oil use was so powerful was because it came from everywhere.

According to a (now-firewalled) story in last Sunday's Tampa Tribune, oil demand was up to 84.7 million bpd for the first quarter of 2005.

And then there's the supply side. I'll for the time being skip Simmons' claims about Saudi Arabia's future production, because that's a big issue that needs its own post. (Later.) But in terms of the mechanics of getting accessible oil out of the ground and into our cars, life is very complicated right now:

Lack of spare capacity exists at every step of the supply chain. From drilling and producing, to transportation, and on to processing, there is little or no spare capacity available to accommodate demand growth similar to that in 2004.

If any spare wellhead capacity still exists, it is for crude that is both heavy and sour. The refineries that are equipped to refine this type of crude are currently operating at 100% capacity. Compounding this problem is the fact that the world's light sweet crude supply is also in decline. Almost 90% of new oil projects produce oil that is either sour, heavy, or both.

The world's network of crude oil pipelines also is now operating at virtually 100% capacity. For most of 2004, the world's tanker system operated at full capacity, too. This sparked an unprecedented rise in tanker rates, which added up to $5 to $6 per barrel to the wellhead price of oil in some key long-haul export routes.

The fleet of high-quality drilling rigs is now close to 100% utilized, even though utilization remains soft in drilling markets like the Gulf of Mexico, Venezuela and the North Sea. A high percentage of the offshore drilling fleet is approaching an age that used to signal obsolescence, yet the global capacity to replace even 10% to 15% of the existing fleet over the next five years is almost non-existent. Many of these capacity bottlenecks can be corrected over time, assuming sufficient investment is made. The industry must begin replacing the aging rig fleet, but fleet expansion is also required to drill more wells and fight the growing decline curve.

A lack of qualified manpower is looming high on the list of capacity problems. In addition to the many layoffs and downsizing events that our industry has endured, we've only been hiring a handful of entry level employees each year. As a consequence, we now have an aging workforce at a time when the technical intensity of the industry is increasing each year. This manpower issue is an industry-wide problem and there is little evidence that anyone is creating a plan for resolving the problem.

And in this Administration of oilmen, nobody's minding the store. Even if 'peak oil' is fifty years away, the oil still has to be pumped, shipped, refined, and shipped again. There's no excess capacity in this system, and if demand keeps growing while effective supply hits its ceiling, things are going to get awfully expensive. And nobody who's in charge seems to be even paying attention to the problem.

Blatant Self Promotion

While the boys are collecting themselves this morning, let me remind you that I (Melanie) will be working at Judging the Future this weekend and we've got big doings coming up tomorrow afternoon. Sen. Frist is going to, um, make a mess on the carpet tomorrow at that Family Research Council event, while the lefty blogosphere gets ready to shout back. And we will. The blogburst is on for 2:30 EDT.

Wayne, RT, Chuck and Mike are doing a great job. Reward good behavior with your comments. This is tangible proof that Bumpers are some of the best people in the blogosphere.

ANWR and ESKIMOS

Alaska Town Split Over Drilling in Wildlife Refuge
Oil Money Tantalizes, but Many Fear Effect on Way of Life

By Justin Blum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 23, 2005; Page A01

KAKTOVIK, Alaska -- In the long struggle over drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Inupiat Eskimos who live in this outpost have played a key role. Their steadfast support for development is routinely cited as a major reason to allow oil companies into the refuge.

But when a delegation of U.S. senators and Cabinet secretaries landed on the unpaved runway here last month, an unusual sight greeted them: the first protest anyone can remember in Kaktovik. A handful of residents chanted slogans and unfurled signs opposing oil drilling, reflecting a small but significant shift in sentiment against proposed legislation that would permit drilling on the nearby tundra.

Residents in this town of compact wood houses and unpaved roads -- the only settlement within the refuge -- have long equated oil development with financial well-being. But a recent petition opposing drilling attracted the signatures of 57 of Kaktovik's 188 adults, and Mayor Lon Sonsalla said he is no longer certain where the majority stand.

Many Inupiats here question whether opening the refuge will endanger something they value most: their traditions -- especially the annual bowhead whale hunt, their strongest link to the past. They worry that drilling on land will eventually expand into the waters offshore, where residents have long opposed drilling for fear it will interfere with whale migration. Recent comments by Gov. Frank H. Murkowski (R) predicting that opening the refuge would lead to offshore development ignited their concerns.

After decades of debate, Congress appears closer than ever to approving drilling. The House on Thursday passed an energy bill that calls for drilling, and the Senate last month included it in a budget resolution. Supporters expect to iron out those differences in conference and include the refuge in the budget.

The opinions of natives in Kaktovik have become critical to the debate. While the town has no vote in the matter, members of Congress have been saying that Kaktovik strongly favors drilling, citing that as a reason for opening the refuge.

"My position is based on my experiences in Alaska when I visited the village of Kaktovik in 1995 and spoke to the Inupiat peoples, who greatly desire this opportunity for economic self-determination," Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) said last month on the Senate floor before voting for drilling. "To me, [the issue] is really about whether or not the indigenous people who are directly impacted have a voice about the use of their lands."

So: one of the reasons ANWR drilling passed was because Democratic Senators like Akaka believed the local Eskimos favored drilling. But with nearly one-third of the townspeople on record as opposing drilling, it's a lot less cut and dried.

And the residents of Kaktovik aren't the only ones affected:

Some Inupiats who live in Kaktovik and elsewhere on the North Slope have an added financial incentive to support oil. Shareholders in Inupiat corporations could profit from oil development rights on 92,000 acres in the refuge if it is opened -- a result of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 and a subsequent land swap with the federal government. Some of those shareholders have been lobbying to open the refuge.

Kaktovik has long had to battle the image that it wants oil out of greed. Its residents are often contrasted with Gwich'in people who live just outside the refuge and oppose drilling for fear it would harm the caribou, which is central to their culture.

Avian Flu Update

In Vietnam, A Dark Side To Good News On Bird Flu

By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 23, 2005; Page A01

HANOI -- Nguyen Sy Tuan can barely talk. His wasted frame is tucked beneath a thin white sheet on the hospital cot. His cheeks are sunken and his bulging eyes stare blankly at the ceiling. But the young man has begun to eat rice again and can finally breathe without a mechanical ventilator, a dramatic turnaround for a bird flu patient whom doctors had assumed would die.

More than a year after avian influenza emerged in East Asia, killing more than two-thirds of the people with confirmed cases, Vietnamese doctors are reporting that the mortality rate in their country has dropped substantially.

But while this is good news for survivors, it could mean the outbreak of bird flu in Southeast Asia is taking an ominous turn. If a disease quickly kills almost everyone it infects, it has little chance of spreading very far, according to international health experts. The less lethal bird flu becomes, they say, the more likely it is to develop into the global pandemic they fear, potentially killing tens of millions of people.

"The virus could be adapting to humans," said Peter Horby, an epidemiologist with the World Health Organization in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital. "There's a number of indications it could be moving toward a more dangerous virus."

The mortality rate for bird flu in Vietnam this year is about 35 percent, almost exactly half that of last year, according to Health Ministry statistics. The mortality rate of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, by comparison, was less than 5 percent, but the outbreak killed an estimated 40 million people worldwide. Officials said the drop in the bird flu mortality rate was more marked in northern Vietnam than in the south. While the virus in southern Vietnam is still killing at the same pace as last year, the rate in the area around Hanoi and elsewhere in the north has dropped from that level to as low as 20 percent. Vietnamese health experts said their suspicion that the disease is shifting is further supported by preliminary research showing a genetic change in the virus in the north resulting in the production of a protein with one less amino acid than in the south.

Health researchers believe that nearly all the 52 people known to have died of bird flu in Southeast Asia caught the virus from infected poultry. But with more clusters of cases among families reported in Vietnam this year -- including that of Tuan, his sister and their grandfather -- experts say they are growing increasingly suspicious that the disease has begun passing from one human to another.

Also worrying is the discovery of at least five cases, including that of Tuan's grandfather, in which people tested positive for bird flu but showed no symptoms. This could make it more difficult to contain an epidemic because people could transmit the disease without anyone realizing it.

Last year, U.S. researchers reported that ducks in Southeast Asia had begun carrying the bird flu virus without showing symptoms. Now, scientists in Vietnam have found numerous asymptomatic cases in the country's vast chicken population, according to Nguyen Tran Hien, director of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology.

"It seems that the virus may adapt in humans and in poultry a little bit. Therefore, the symptoms are not as severe as before," Hien said. "Also, the transmission may be faster and easier."

Moreover, the existing virus strain is not the only threat. Each human case also presents a chance for the bird flu virus to swap genetic material with an ordinary flu bug -- if the person becomes infected with both strains at the same time -- potentially creating a new hybrid that is highly lethal and even easier to catch.

"We are concerned that if the virus is changing, maybe a new virus is coming in the future," Hien said.

I'm no expert, but while I consider this a threat to keep a watch on out of the corner of my eye, it's not one of my prime concerns. Yet.

What worries me is that the US government's response, as Melanie has previously documented, has been to actually reduce preparedness. The overall pattern of our government to refuse to be a grownup and make appropriate preparations and contingency plans for threats on the horizon is what really scares me.

Because it doesn't matter whether the threat is avian flu, a 'dirty bomb' that arrives via container ship, a 'hard landing' for the dollar, the day of 'peak oil' reckoning hitting us out of the blue, or some other threat that I haven't itemized here, it just seems there's nobody keeping watch on the city walls. And so whichever threat does materialize, our nation will be just as ready for it as we were for the planes that flew into the World Trade Center.

Posted by RT at 06:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

THE MIGHTY QUINN

This Bet May Cost You Big

The plan to reform Social Security will mean a double cut in benefits. Returns from private accounts are unlikely to cover both.
By Jane Bryant Quinn
Contributing Editor
Newsweek

One part of your payroll tax would go toward a monthly Social Security benefit, just as it does today. It will be smaller than under present law, due to whatever cuts are made to restore the program's solvency.

The other part of your payroll tax would go toward a private account invested in stocks, bonds or a mixture of the two. When you retire, your annual benefit would be docked by the amount of money you contributed to your private account, plus 3 percent a year, plus each year's inflation rate. For example, if you contributed $1,000 with inflation at 3 percent, you'd lose $1,060 in benefits—your contribution plus 6 percent "interest." Over 35 years of $1,000 ontributions, your promised retirement check might be reduced by roughly half ($12,000 a year), says economist Jason Furman of New York University. That's the second benefit cut.

What's the purpose of the second cut? To repay the government for the money it borrowed to finance the entire system of private accounts. You'd make this fixed repayment whether your private account made money or not. The gamble is that your investments would rise by enough to offset the amount that's subtracted from your retirement check, plus something more.

What are the odds that you'd succeed? Yale economist Robert Shiller looked at what you might earn if you're 21, save continuously for 44 years and retire at 65. He used the returns from various types of U.S. investments over every 44-year period since 1871. The results surprised me. With money invested half in stocks and half in bonds, young people would have broken even or made money only 80 percent of the time. Your odds of coming out behind were one in five. If you played it "safe" by investing entirely in bonds, you'd have lost money 89 percent of the time.

Emphasis mine. This is not news to us Bumpers. Krugman, Max, De Long, Josh & Matt Y. have all covered this. But two things: first, it's good to have another mainstream media type who actually has a clue about the second benefits cut (I call it "The Offset", others call it "the Clawback"). Second, when I ask people about the Offset, none of them are aware of this. None. They are shocked to find out they have to repay all that money with interest. Bushco has turned a 401K into a balloon note. Now that's impressive! I've never seen a magic trick quite that good.

The Fog of Mind

HIGH TIME FOR 'GEN RX'

By BILL HOFFMANN
New York Post
April 22, 2005

One in five teenagers has popped Vicodin, OxyContin or some other prescription painkiller to get high, a shocking new study has revealed.

And, just as disturbing, today's teens can get those drugs almost effortlessly — simply by raiding their parents' medicine cabinets, according to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

"A new category of substance abuse is emerging in America: Increasingly, teenagers are getting high through the intentional abuse of medications," said Roy Bostock, chairman of the Partnership.

"For the first time . . . today's teens are more likely to have abused a prescription painkiller to get high than they are to have experimented with a variety of illicit drugs — including Ecstasy, cocaine, crack and LSD.

"In other words," Bostock said, " 'Generation Rx' has arrived."

The 2004 Partnership Attitude Tracking Study, released yesterday, found the most popular prescription drug misused by teens to be Vicodin, with 18 percent — or about 4.3 million kids — admitting to having used it on purpose to get high.

One in 10 also admitted recreational use of OxyContin — the drug Rush Limbaugh was addicted to — and Ritalin or Adderall, normally used as treatment for attention-deficit disorder.

And one in 11 said they had even used such over-the-counter products as cough medicine to catch a buzz.

What's more, some 48 percent of those quizzed said they saw no great risk in fooling around with prescription medicines — believing them, in fact, to be "much safer" than street drugs.

When asked why prescription-medicine abuse was increasing among their peers, teenagers cited "ease of access" — specifically, the medicine cabinets of their parents or their friends' parents.

I knew we had gone too long without the generic “Look, our teenagers are all scum who can’t do anything right,” report in the media. Man, I hope these reporters didn’t suffer through too many withdrawal symptoms before cranking this thing out... it’s tough to type when your fingers are shaking so much.

I really do wish they had looked at the willingness for us as a society to prescribe our problems away, instead of trying to deal with them here and now. What type of message do they (parents, media, creators of this study) think the kids are getting if the ads in TV, sports logos, and e-mails inform you that there is yet another magical pill that will take care of all of your problems. Even better, we have cure for a whole host of debilitating conditions you never knew you had (really, did you ever consider yellowing toe nails to be that worrisome until you saw those animated bugs). So, people will be shocked to find kids abusing these medicines?

Remind me again... why are we the only industrialized that nation that allows advertising to be targeted at children under 7? Wouldn't this be a logical place for a party or candidate trying to claim the "family values" label to actually push for legislation that would value families and appeal to all kinds of voters?

Cyber Probate

Apr 22, 2005
Legal Experts Say E-Mail Conflicts Upon Death Bound to Increase
By Adrienne Schwisow
Associated Press Writer

DETROIT (AP) - Yahoo Inc. may have resolved its dispute with a family over accessing the e-mail account of a Marine killed in Iraq, but legal experts say such conflicts are bound to be more common as e-mail becomes a crucial component of our lives.

John Ellsworth sought his son's e-mails after Lance Cpl. Justin Ellsworth was killed Nov. 13 while inspecting a bomb in Iraq. But the father didn't know his son's password, and Yahoo said it couldn't break its confidentiality agreement with the Marine.

The family was granted access this week after an Oakland County probate judge ordered Yahoo to do so. Yahoo had said all along that it would comply with any such order.

Henry H. Perritt Jr., a professor and expert in cyberlaw at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, said he knows of no other case where battles over a dead person's e-mail have gone to court, but he expects to see more.

"I think that as it is now, the service providers for the most part just hand it over when they've established death and that someone is the administrator of the estate," Perritt said Thursday. "But they are really just beginning to think about this."

Other e-mail service providers, including America Online Inc., EarthLink Inc., and Microsoft Corp., which runs Hotmail, have provisions for transferring accounts upon proof of death and identity as next of kin. AOL says it gets dozens of such requests a day.

Yahoo's policy, however, states that accounts terminate at death.

This sad story raises some interesting questions about cyber property and cyber probate. We may need to update our wills to include our blogs.

RIP Sister Thomasita Fessler

She was an artist and teacher. I studied under her in college back in the late 1970's. Her classes on actually producing art were pretty good, but when she taught about esthetics she was something else. Her ideas on what beauty is, and why it is important, and what art is, and why it is important to experience it and to create it, have probably had more influence on my life (except for the work part) than anything else I studied in college.

She said that some people told her "I can't be an artist - I can't draw a straight line" and she answered "straight lines are boring."

Her style was modern abstract but representational. Pretty much in keeping with the times.

She was quoted on a bumper sticker that was common at least in Wisconsin: Children who create will not destroy.

She seemed immovable, but we had a long argument in class in which she insisted there is no such thing as line, just shapes between shapes and I argued that line both exists and can be an important feature in an artwork. Neither of us backed off, I eventually sat down and shut up because she was the professor and a nun and better at yelling than I was. But several of her works from the year after that argument have a great deal of linearity.

The entire grade for the esthetics class was based on typed and then decorated lecture notes - 3 pages per class minimum and most classes didn't cover much material - and I didn't complete mine. However, the synchronization between small computers and printers back then was not good, and after a few dozen pages the computer had completely outpaced the printer and the last half of my paper was garbled. She accepted my "the computer ate my paper" excuse.

A great many of the students at that college go on to teach. I doubt that anyone who took any of her classes ever went on to mark a child's coloring page wrong because an apple was green or yellow instead of red.

I hope she didn't yell at the little kids the way she yelled at college students.

It's Just History

Japanese Premier Reiterates Apology to China for World War II

By DONALD GREENLEES,
International Herald Tribune

Published: April 22, 2005

AKARTA, Indonesia, April 22 - Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan reiterated an apology today for his country's aggression in World War II ahead of an expected meeting with President Hu Jintao of China in an attempt to defuse a diplomatic row over how Japan interprets its wartime history.

Echoing remarks of previous Japanese prime ministers, Mr. Koizumi expressed "deep remorse" over the pain inflicted on Japan's neighbors in Asia during a speech to a gathering of Asian and African leaders here.

The repetition of the longstanding apology over Japan's war record was significant for its timing: Mr. Koizumi and Mr. Hu are expected to meet Saturday in an effort to calm a dispute that has set off bitter anti-Japanese protests in China.

It also comes as Japan tries to use a two-day meeting of more than 100 Asian and African heads of state, government leaders and ministers to bolster its campaign for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council - a move some of its neighbors oppose.

Relations between China and Japan have been severely tested in recent weeks by the issues of how Japanese school history books treat aspects of Japan's wartime conduct and overlapping claims to a group of islands surrounded by oil and gas fields. The tensions have been given focus by Japan's push to gain the Security Council seat.

In the midst of the furor, Mr. Koizumi began his speech to the summit meeting in Jakarta today by immediately acknowledging concerns among many regional countries over how Japan views its war record.

"In the past, Japan, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations," he said. He said the country "with feelings of deep remorse and heartfelt apology" was committed to peace and resolving differences "without recourse to force."

The comments were undoubtedly aimed at a wider audience than just the Chinese delegation. The Japanese and Chinese leaders appear intent on using the Asian-African summit meeting to show their concern for the developing countries of the two regions. Both want to win friends and allay concerns over how they will wield their economic and political clout.

So we have this crisis that appears at just the right moment for China to humiliate their regional rival, especially one that is so closely tied to Washington.

The whitewashing of history by the extremists in Japan is disgusting and should elicit protests, but the level of complaints seems a bit excessive for the situation.
It is scary to think that a small group can influence the history books so much to try and create a "collective amnesia" on shameful events.

Now, we might have similar reactions if our textbooks decided to "forget" that the Civil War was fought over slavery. Who knows what the textbooks will say about our current war in 10 years, considering they have already tried to explain the Twin Towers in our most recent textbook from 2 years ago.

Chuck

Earth Day, Part 2: President Bush's Energy Bill

Energy Bill Is Passed By House
Focus Is Production, Not Conservation

By Justin Blum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 22, 2005; Page A04

The House yesterday approved a wide-ranging energy bill that would permit new drilling in Alaska and give producers billions of dollars of incentives.

The 1,000-page bill was approved by a vote of 249 to 183 after a spirited debate over a provision providing legal protections to a gasoline additive linked to drinking-water contamination. Much of the legislation focuses on conventional sources of energy and provides relatively little for conservation and alternative forms of energy.

The measure calls for opening Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development, and alters the Clean Air Act by giving localities whose polluted air comes from distant states more time to meet national air-quality standards. It would grant funding for research into oil and natural gas drilling in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico -- at a cost as high as $2 billon.

At a time of surging energy costs, including gasoline prices well above $2 a gallon, supporters said the legislation eventually would help bring down prices. Opponents said it would not moderate consumer prices and instead would further inflate energy companies' soaring profits.

The House provided far more tax breaks to the oil and natural gas industry and less to alternative energy and efficiency than President Bush had proposed. Even so, the president believes the overall bill is "largely consistent" with what he is seeking, spokesman Scott McClellan said.

The House-passed bill is similar to legislation that was approved by a House-Senate conference committee in 2003. That measure died as the result of a Senate filibuster.

Senate leaders this year are trying to forge a bipartisan compromise. A Senate bill has not been introduced, but lawmakers said they expect to take up the matter soon.

Among provisions added to the House bill this year are an extension of Daylight Savings Time by two months and granting the federal government ultimate authority to determine where to locate liquefied natural gas terminals that receive imports by tanker. The House defeated a provision requiring increased automobile mileage and some other conservation measures.

The Earth's atmosphere is warming, in large part because there's more CO₂ up there, trapping heat in the atmosphere. Burning hydrocarbons (petroleum, natural gas, coal, etc.) puts CO₂ into the atmosphere. This energy bill is all about finding and burning more hydrocarbons, which adds to the problem of global warming, rather than finding ways to do the same work with fewer hydrocarbons.

Global warming aside, it's still a bad bill. As Jared Diamond points out in Collapse, First World resource consumption is at an unsustainable level - even without increased consumption by the 2.2 billion people of China and India, who quite understandably desire our standard of living.

I enjoy a pleasantly affluent lifestyle, and I'm selfish: I want to keep enjoying an affluent lifestyle for the rest of my life. But that isn't going to happen unless we - as a nation, as a world - figure out how to create the same lifestyle while using up a lot less of the Earth's resources. And the time to start is now, given the lead time involved in making these kinds of changes. This bill takes the exact opposite approach.

Earth Day, Part 1: the View from the Bottom of the Globe

Antarctic Glaciers in Retreat from Climate Change

Reuters, Thursday, April 21, 2005; 8:11 PM
By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - Most of the glaciers on the Antarctic peninsular are in headlong retreat because of climate change, a leading scientist said on Thursday.

Fellow BAS researcher Alison Cook, who spent three years studying thousands of old aerial photographs, said they clearly showed a general glacial retreat which had accelerated sharply in the past five years.

One more piece of evidence to put on the rather huge pile of facts that say the world is warmer than it's been. I'm visiting Glacier National Park again in August, another place where the diminishing of the glaciers is well documented by photographs taken over the past century.

The Big Lie

While we are waiting on the new kids, this popped into my radar screen this morning:

Senate OKs $81B for Iraq, Afghanistan

Thursday April 21, 2005 11:16 PM

By LIZ SIDOTI

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly approved $81 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in a spending bill that would push the total cost of combat and reconstruction past $300 billion.

Both the Senate and House versions of the measure would give President Bush much of the money he requested. But the bills differ over what portion should go to military operations.

The Pentagon says it needs the money by the first week of May, so Senate and House negotiators are expected to act quickly to send the president a final bill.

Other issues to be resolved in the competing versions include immigration changes, a U.S. embassy in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, military death benefits and the fate of an aircraft carrier.

``I'm confident we will be able to come back with a product, in the form of a conference report, which the Senate can support,'' said Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

He said the bill gives strong support to troops in the fight against terrorism and provides needed dollars for the State Department.

Overall, the Senate version would cost about $81 billion, compared with the $81.4 billion the House approved and the $81.9 billion that Bush requested.

Congress has passed four similar emergency spending measures for the wars since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. This one would put the overall cost of combat and reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan - as well as Pentagon operations against terrorists worldwide - past $300 billion.

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, says lawmakers previously approved $228 billion. The latest money is to last through Sept. 30, the end of the current budget year. Pentagon officials have said they will have to ask for more money for 2006.

In both the House and Senate, lawmakers struggled to give troops whatever they needed and pay only for projects deemed urgent. Congress was leaving other items to be dealt with in the regular budget for the new budget year starting Oct. 1. In doing so, they were sending a message to the White House that it cannot expect a rubber stamp from Congress on its emergency war-spending requests.

Still, as Bush requested, the bulk of the money - about $75 billion - would go to the Pentagon. The Army and the Marine Corps, the two service branches doing most of the fighting, would get the most.

It seems that we are going to throw however many dollars down this sink hole that it takes to assuage the Bush honor, since "winning" is not an option. We are going to sink more billions, untold human lives, into a failing strategy.

Hmm. At some point, you'd think the American people would wake up to that.

Now, I'm outta here. The new kids have checked in and they are ready to rumble. Go, team, go.

Guest Blogger #3 Checking In

Good morning, y'all! I'll try not to be too cheerful, too early; not everyone's an early riser like me.

I'm another member of Melanie's backup team this weekend. I'm a middle-aged number-cruncher for the Federal government, a Virginia expat currently living in the Maryland exurbs of D.C. I'm looking forward to this adventure in blogging, and am glad to give Melanie the chance to take a much-needed break. My interests...well, you'll see some of them over the next few days. I'll be back with an actual post before too long.

Cheers,
RT

New Kid in Class

Greetings to everyone out there... my name is Ringo and I have a hole in me pocket...

Ok, that’s not really true, except for the hole in the pocket. I’m Chuck and Melanie is kind and brave enough to provide me with the opportunity to post here on the Bump for a while. As we all know, she’s set a standard for excellence that will be hard to live up to. I think I can speak for all of us in thanking you for your support as we toddle on our training wheels these first few days.

I first made it to this blog through the Right Christians web site when my wife and I were first searching for the voices of progressive Christians on the web. Needless to say, this site was quite a boon for these wandering Presbyterians out in the wilderness of cyberspace.

During the day, I’m a History teacher in North Carolina in a rural high school. My undergraduate degree from Tulane is in American Studies and before my children were born two years ago, I was working on a Masters in Media Literacy at Appalachian State University in Boone during the summers. Currently, I live in Raleigh.

A good description of my politics is that I’m an old fashioned Southern Progressive, much along the lines of the late Governor Terry Sanford and the Fusionist candidates of the late Reconstruction period (who were an interesting hybrid of Populists and old time Republicans).

So with that I just have to say that I can't wait to hear your feedback and here we go!

Overture, curtains, lights,
This is it, the night of nights
No more rehearsing and nursing a part
We know every part by heart
Overture, curtains, lights
This is it, you'll hit the heights
And oh what heights we'll hit
On with the show this is it

Tonight what heights we'll hit
On with the show this is it

Chuck

INTRO

(Gulp)
(sly peek around the edge of the curtain)
(OK - oops..wait...check fly!)
(shuffle on stage...smattering of applause)
(deep sigh)

Greetings fellow Bumpers. My name is Wayne and I have been invited to guest blog here at The Bump while Melanie indulges in her Vacation Vocation.

I want to express my gratitude to Melanie for her generosity of spirit in allowing me and the other guests to test our mettle here at Just a Bump. We are all excited at the opportunity and awed by the challenge before us. Melanie has set a high standard of hard work and dedication for each of us.

I have been an avid reader of blogs since September 2002 (initially due to the March to War); posting a few comments here and there, but mainly e-mailing links to interesting posts and articles to my favorite bloggers, including Melanie.

I am not totally new to guest-blogging; I was privileged to post in September 2003 at a blog called Brief Intelligence (now defunct) run by Kimberley Fox. Kimberley was an early, ardent and vocal supporter of Gen. Wesley Clark. In addition to her blog she also posted at the Clarksphere blog (an unofficial Clark for Prez site). My thanks to Kimberley for being such a gracious hostess as well.

As all of us Bumpers are aware, Melanie is involved in projects which will greatly expand the scope of Just a Bump and the new site as well. I am thankful for the opportunity to be a part (however small) of it all.

I’ll be back with more later, but for now...

Let the adventure begin!

In for the Night

That's it for today, Bumpers. The guest crew comes in tomorrow, make sure to show your appreciation in comments. I think you'll enjoy the fresh voices and approaches. I'm taking the weekend off to recuperate from the strain of getting Judging the Future up and running today. We'll go live sometime this evening.

Just Us Sunday

This is from the Center for American Progress's Daily Progress Report today:

THE "AGAINST PEOPLE OF FAITH" MYTH: How ironic that the House will pass their energy bill even as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist continues to defend his endorsement of the claim that opponents of President Bush's judicial nominees are "against people of faith." The connection? Evidence "in polling and in public statements of church leaders" shows that a "growing number of evangelicals view stewardship of the environment as a responsibility mandated by God in the Bible." Last October, the 30-million-member National Association of Evangelicals adopted "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," a platform that included an "unprecedented" plank on "creation care." As Rev. Rich Cizik, the association's vice president, said, "I don't think God is going to ask us how he created the earth, but he will ask us what we did with what he created." We can offer a much better answer than this energy bill.

Much of the energy which fuels this blog comes out of Frist's arrogant assertion. I'm inviting you to join me in countering Frist's Just Us Sunday. We on the left don't think that faith is only for Republicans. Or that only Republicans have values, ethics or morals. All of those things CAN be derived from a faith tradition, but they can equally be found in the Universal Charter of Human Rights, the Seven Principles of Unitarian Universalism and Bob Fulgham's "Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten." The right doesn't own the franchise on morals. Or religion.

Unlike Sen. Frist, I do have standing to speak on this matter because I am a theologian.

In my country, the people of faith include Ba'hais, Jains, Jews, Wiccans, Pagans, Muslims, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Anamists, Methodists and Friends. And that is just part of the official chaplaincy list kept by the Department of Defence. They may have added Scientologists since the last time I checked. In my book, doubt and scepticism rank real high on the list of accepted faiths.

The Christian(ist) evangelical right doesn't have a lock on "faith" as much as they would like to think they do. On Sunday, they are going to hear from Americans of every faith and none at all that this is our country, too.

Please join us.

I"ll have details later today, but a show of hands would be appreciated early. I have people on the Hill I need to notify.

Down, Down, Down

Greenspan Renews Warning on Budget Deficits

By Jeannine Aversa
AP Economics Writer
Thursday, April 21, 2005; 1:18 PM

Bloated budget deficits pose a danger to the nation's long-term economic health, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned anew Thursday. He issued a fresh call to policy-makers to move swiftly to put the government's fiscal house in order.

Greenspan only very briefly touched on the economy's current performance, saying "activity appears to be expanding at a reasonably good pace," an assessment he has made repeatedly this year.

His comments to the Senate Budget Committee came as some private economists are concerned about the extent to which high energy prices will crimp economic activity.

Responding to questions, Greenspan suggested he is not concerned about the U.S. economy falling into a period of "stagflation" -- the worrisome combination of rising inflation and slower economic growth. "It certainly doesn't seem that way," he said.

Greenspan also said China "should be moving sooner rather than later" to overhaul it currency system, which U.S. manufacturers contend hurts sales and has contributed to job losses.

The United States has been pressing China to stop directly linking the yuan to the dollar. Treasury Secretary John Snow, in recent days, said Beijing -- having taken a number of steps to prepare for such a change -- is now ready to take the move. China has indicated it needs more time.

It's about time the clueless central banker got on board. Every serious economist I know has been railing about the deficits for years. Even if Bushco were of a mind to do something about it, it's probably too late. We sure as hell have no leverage with China, given that if they aren't buying entire oceans of Treasury debt, our economy goes down the tubes alarmingly quickly.

Why didn't Greenspan speak up, oh, about four years ago, when something could have been done about. We're already at the edge of the cliff and the momentum is all forward.

Brad deLong is channelling Bruce Bartlett:

Bruce Bartlett: Steering clear of a recession: The place where the greatest danger lies is with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac... even the tiniest mistake by them could roil markets... the impending retirement of Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Fed.... Lastly... [h]uge budget and current account deficits mean that vast amounts of capital flows are necessary to keep them funded. So far, this has gone well... the Chinese have been so accommodating about financing the.... But now the U.S. is strongly pressuring China to stop doing this in order to allow its currency to rise against the dollar. It is hoped that this will reduce China’s production advantage in dollar terms and bring down the bilateral trade deficit. However, the cost to the U.S. economy if this happens could be greater than the potential gain. At least in the short run, any scale-back in China’s buying of Treasury securities might cause interest rates to spike very quickly. This could prick the housing bubble and bring down home prices, eroding personal wealth and putting a squeeze on those with floating rate mortgages. Hopefully, this can all be managed smoothly and without either a recession or a market break. But it will take great skill and a lot of luck to avoid both.

See? I told ya.

Deconstructing the Propaganda Machine

I hear the Daily Show was just devestating on Bush's Social Security plan and the fake town halls. Samantha Bee interviewed Repub media consultant Frank Luntz. It's about 5 minutes, you can watch it over your afternoon coffee.

Since I'm usually on the computer by 5 AM, I don't usually get to see The Daily Show, so these little multi-media snippets are very handy.

Judging the Future

The new site will go live latter today here, but you can view the draft site, which I'm building with Reid Stott's help today. Go take a look and give Reid a hand for the design work.

Creeping Corrections

The filibuster fight will be disastrous for the GOP

In 1936, President Roosevelt had just won reelection by one of the largest margins in history. His Republican adversary, Kansas Gov. Alf Landon, carried only Maine and Vermont.

Riding this swell of popular approval, FDR challenged the conservative rulings of the Supreme Court, which had invalidated many of his prized New Deal measures. Knocking the “nine old men” of the court, he proposed to add six new judges to help with the workload — in reality, to pack the court.

Despite his top-heavy Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, the public backlash was so severe that Roosevelt couldn’t pass the court-packing bill. The unpopularity he triggered by trying so weakened him that he was unable to pass much of anything for the next four years.

A similar fate could await President Bush if the Christian right succeeds in embroiling him in a battle to change the filibuster rule for judicial nominations. The filibuster, once seen as the last refuge of racists seeking to thwart the progress of civil-rights legislation, has increasingly become part of our checks-and-balances system. Changing the rules in the Senate will be seen as the modern equivalent of the court-packing scheme of FDR.

Read the polls. Newsweek’s survey of 1,000 adults March 17-18 fairly worded a question to find out public opinion on this issue:

“U.S. Senate rules allow 41 senators to mount a filibuster — refusing to end debate and agree to vote — to block judicial nominees. In the past, this tactic has been used by both Democrats and Republicans to prevent certain judicial nominees from being confirmed. Senate Republican leaders — whose party is now in the majority — want to take away this tactic by changing the rules to require only 51 votes, instead of 60, to break a filibuster. Would you approve or disapprove of changing Senate rules to take away the filibuster and allow all of George W. Bush’s judicial nominees to get voted on by the Senate?”

The results show the trouble the Republicans will make for themselves by trying to jam through a change in the filibuster rules. Only 32 percent approved of the change in rules, while 57 percent, including 60 percent of independents, opposed it. Even among Republicans, 33 percent disapproved of the change in the rules.

The Schiavo case amplifies the concern of moderate voters over a possible rules change to block filibusters. The attitude of GOP conservatives, led by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), that moderate judges needed to be punished for their independence sends a chill up the spines of most independent voters.

With the filibuster decision bookended by the Terry Schiavo case before and a Supreme Court confirmation battle likely following it, the issue has the potential to spell disaster for the Republican Party.

Hubris always brings nemesis.

An Ethics Offer

Thursday, April 21, 2005; Page A22

REPUBLICANS on the House ethics committee made a surprise offer yesterday to resolve a partisan standoff and launch an immediate investigation of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). The proposal represents welcome progress on the part of committee Republicans. It is important that a thorough investigation be conducted of the various allegations swirling around Mr. DeLay, and it's a healthy sign that four of the five Republicans on the committee said they are prepared to take that step.

Ultimately, though, yesterday's offer isn't good enough. The plan presented by the panel chairman, Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), would leave in place the troubling rules rammed through the House earlier this year in a departure from the traditional method of changing ethics committee rules based on bipartisan agreement. The rules require that an ethics complaint be automatically dismissed if no action is taken within 45 days. Under the previous rules, a majority vote was needed to dismiss a complaint.

The change proposed by Mr. Hastings is his commitment, "while I am chairman," to "in every instance grant a request" by the ranking Democrat, Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (W.Va.), to extend the review to three months. Mr. Hastings said he would provide more time beyond that "whenever necessary for bona fide investigation." He also promised that no complaint would be dismissed without a committee vote -- but, unlike in the past, a partisan split on the evenly divided panel would result in dismissal.

There's no doubt that this is an improvement. The promise of a vote at least demands some accountability from committee members, and the guarantee of three months and potentially more to investigate a complaint is positive. But the setup would still tilt the ethics panel, which after all has not been disposed to hyperactivity, in favor of inaction. If members know that a deadlocked vote will simply end the matter once and for all, they will have less incentive to reach bipartisan accommodation.

Not perfect, but the camel's nose is now under the tent.

The Pope of All of Us

A Pope for Better or Perhaps Worse

By Richard Cohen
Thursday, April 21, 2005; Page A23

But in other areas -- particularly population control and the worldwide fight against AIDS -- what the pope does, how the Vatican rules, affects us all. We can fully expect that the new pope will not depart one iota from John Paul II's fervent opposition to anything other than the most rudimentary forms of birth control -- abstinence in one form or another -- including, of course, opposition to the use of condoms as a method of preventing the spread of the HIV virus. Here is where we all have a stake.

This emphasis on condoms is sometimes derided as "latex theology." But condoms happen to be the cheapest and most effective way of preventing the spread of the HIV virus. This is particularly meaningful in the world's poorer regions, where there are often no medical facilities to speak of. In sub-Saharan Africa -- home to 10 percent of the world's population but 60 percent of the people infected with HIV -- some 25 million children and adults currently have AIDS. That's not about latex, it's about death.

The catastrophe of AIDS and the population growth in areas of the world that can least afford it are matters that concern us all. The near collapse of the African middle class, riddled by AIDS, is a calamity. It will cost us all money, of course, and it may result in a war or two, but the immediate consequence is the death of so many people and the orphaning of children -- misery upon misery for people whose lives are already miserable enough. All over Catholic regions of the Third World, the church instructs against the use of condoms. It advocates abstinence. It fights human nature itself.

When I raised these matters in a recent column discussing the legacy of Pope John Paul II, I was barraged by e-mail, some of it favorable but some of it simply demanding that I butt out. This was none of my business, some Catholics told me. I beg to differ. It shows no disrespect to an intellectual such as Benedict XVI to engage him intellectually on these matters -- and boldly so. He is a man of firm convictions, not mere prejudices.

But the task ultimately has to fall to Catholic dissidents. True, there are fewer than there used to be -- Cardinal Ratzinger saw to that -- and they have to be respectful of the new pope. But they, like their brethren in the liberal Protestant churches, have to be more forceful in their opposition and their challenge to authority. In the United States these churches have been downright wimpish when compared with the more politically robust ones to their right. The liberal to moderate Christian churches in America, once in the forefront of the civil rights and other progressive movements, have muted their voices and faded as a political and social force. They are missed.

This is why the papal porn we've seen on cable actually matters (although you've heard little about it from the cable channels) and Benedict XVI is really "the pope of all of us." One way or another, we're going to end up paying for what he says, Catholic or not.

Finding Fault Instead of Solutions

ANALYSIS-Iraq's insurgency exploits delay in forming govt
20 Apr 2005 13:05:09 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Luke Baker

BAGHDAD, April 20 (Reuters) - For a while after Iraq's election in January, it looked as if the country's nearly two-year-old insurgency was showing signs of flagging.

Attacks against U.S. forces fell more than 20 percent in the weeks immediately after the poll, and March's U.S. death toll was the lowest in more than a year, the U.S. military said.

While Iraqi security forces were still dying every day, with more than 400 police and soldiers killed over the past two months, positive signs were appearing. Iraqi troops even captured several senior militant leaders, the government said.

But over the past two weeks, much of that optimism has been wiped away as insurgents have hit back with a series of deadly attacks targeting both U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies.

Insurgents shot dead 19 Iraqi National Guards in a soccer stadium on Wednesday after taking them prisoner, a hospital spokesman and a witness said.

There were three car bombings in Baghdad on Wednesday, a day after a car bomb in the capital killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded four others. There have been about 10 car bomb attacks in just the past four days.

"I don't think the insurgency has gone away at all," said a U.S. military official in Baghdad, who asked not to be named. "Perhaps we just had a spike in success against it."

The resurgence of violence has coincided with deepening uncertainty over the formation of the next government, with Iraq's new prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, still no closer to naming his cabinet more than 80 days after the election.

The delay has created a climate of indecision, officials say, and allowed the momentum built up by January's successful poll, when more than 8 million Iraqis defied insurgent threats to vote, to slip away.

"All this talking and deliberating over the government isn't helping when it comes to taking on the insurgency," Sabah Kadhim, an adviser to the Interior Ministry, said recently.

"We were having some successes against them, we were. But now it isn't clear if the new government will follow the same policies, and that could have an impact on our effectiveness."

This piece implies a causality that I'm not at all sure of. The "insurgency" appears to be quite independent of whatever the titular "government" does or doesn't do. This reads like something from the annals of victimology: somehow, it must be the Iraqis fault. I don't think so.

Choosing Passion

Contrast this piece with Brooksie today. The right is leaning into the law as the left is leaning into life, as messy as it is.

For Marla, No Sacrifice Too Great
By BOB HERBERT

Published: April 21, 2005

"She was born with a passion to help somebody, and she never wavered." Clifford Ruzicka

There was always a tendency to stereotype Marla Ruzicka. People couldn't seem to help themselves. She was young. And she had the blond hair and fresh-faced California-girl look that is widely viewed as an American ideal. On that score she was great cheerleader material. No reason, at first glance, to take her too seriously.

Or even at second glance, for that matter. Because, face it, she did like to party.

So if you were into stereotyping, you might see her, even admire her, and still miss the fact that in her short life she gave us a stunning example of what it means to function full time, and with all one's energy, at the highest level of humanity.

With a cellphone (that she had a tendency to misplace), a backpack and an apparent genius for working with very different types of individuals and organizations, she would head off to the most dangerous spots on the globe, determined to bring aid and comfort to the afflicted, wherever she found them. This meant, of course, that her constituency was impossibly large. The world is filled with people who have nowhere to turn.

"I think going to Afghanistan and seeing the innocent victims of the war had a particular impact on her," said Medea Benjamin, a close friend of Ms. Ruzicka's who traveled with her to Afghanistan, and later to Iraq. "We were all stunned when we actually saw the widows that had no way to feed their families because their husbands had been killed when a bomb fell on their neighborhood by mistake. Or a little boy who picked up a cluster bomb and had his arm blown off, and nobody was helping him get a prosthetic limb. Or people whose homes had been destroyed and were living in the cold, literally just living outside."

That trip, and subsequent trips to Iraq, inspired Ms. Ruzicka's last big campaign. She would try to do what her government had refused to do. She began personally gathering as much information as possible, often going from door to door in the war zones, sometimes covered by an abaya and a hijab, in an effort to document the destruction and the suffering.

Her goal was twofold: First, to secure compensation for the relatives of innocent victims who were killed, and for the many thousands of noncombatants who have been wounded or displaced. And, second, to get the U.S. government to establish an office or agency, perhaps within the State Department, to collect data and report on the civilian casualties of war.

For an individual with so few obvious resources - she established a tiny organization called the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (Civic) and had very little money - Ms. Ruzicka's reach was tremendous. She worked tirelessly over the past three years with the office of Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, to get millions of dollars in compensation for civilian victims in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tim Rieser, an aide to the senator, said: "She came here as a very sort of naïve antiwar protestor, really, and became someone who was extraordinarily effective at putting politics aside - not trying to cast blame, but rather working with everyone from U.S. military officers to the Congress and others on how to actually help people. She was out there doing something that all of us knew was really needed, but that was too dangerous for most people to want to do, or be willing to do."

Ms. Ruzicka, 28, was killed on Saturday in the chaos of Iraq. She and an Iraqi colleague, Faiz Ali Salim, were trapped in their car on the airport road in Baghdad when a suicide bomber attacked a convoy that was passing nearby. Ms. Ruzicka's vehicle was engulfed in flames. She and Mr. Salim burned to death.

I interviewed many people who were grief-stricken but anxious to share memories of Ms. Ruzicka. None were as eloquent as her dad, Clifford, a civil engineer from Lakeport, Calif. When I asked if he and his wife, Nancy, both rock-solid Republicans, had been surprised by their daughter's intense commitment to humanitarian causes, he said: "No. She's been like that all her life.

My prayer for you this morning: that you have a passion to do something. I hope it won't get you killed (my passion today is to get the hummingbird feeder up) but that we all find a reason to love so hard that we can live with the consequences. Live hard and love with everything you've got.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes (Learn to face the change)

A couple of reminders, Bumpers. You are going to be seeing some new things in the coming weeks. There will be guest posters this weekend, and I think you'll like the thoughtful new crew a lot. I do. That's why they are going to be here, while I'm giving my fingers a break from the keyboard, one I really need. Please support them with your ongoing thoughtful commentary in the comments.

I'm going to be traveling some this spring and summer, I need to see new things and go new places. I haven't been out of the region for anything other than family funerals in far, far too long. My perspective needs refreshing. The new crew are going to be helping me out as I get out of dodge to preach, teach some workshops and just plain go visiting and take a vacation. I'll be in Fr. Myers, FL, next month and would love to meet you if you are a local. Atlanta is in my sites for later, and then a vacation in SW Ontario and Toronto in July. I've been a hermit/monk/blogger for a year and a half, it is time to go out and meet the world. With a Wi-Fi laptop in tow and some support back at the home site and a rebuild to a new platform in the works.

The new site launches tomorrow (is there a smiley for "fingers crossed?) It is going to need tweaking for the first few days, but I'm so pleased with Reid's work that it won't need much. Judging the Future will be handsome, even when I'm having a bad day.

It's a bloomin' spring in the mid-Atlantic and it is gorgeous. It also means that my chronic winter sinus infection (forced air heat and I don't get along) has morphed into allergies over whatever is blooming this week. I'm a sneezer, but a happy one. This was a long winter here, and it felt good to wear shorts and a tee today. Tomorrow is going to be chilly, but today was enough in itself. I worked on the top 10% of what I'm capable of and things are going to happen because of that. My evening prayer:

Lord take me where You want me to go; Let me meet who You want me to meet; Tell me what You want me to say; and Keep me out of your way.

It's just easier that way.

Power to the Teachers

Teachers' Union Sues Over No Child Left Behind

By SAM DILLON

Published: April 20, 2005

Opening a new front in the growing rebellion against President Bush's education law known as No Child Left Behind, the nation's largest teachers' union and eight school districts in Michigan, Texas and Vermont sued the Department of Education today, accusing it of violating a passage in the federal law that prohibits any requirement that states spend their own money to carry out its mandates.

Some legal scholars said the union had assembled a rigorous complaint, thoughthey said it was difficult to judge the suit's prospects because the case has few close precedents. But it was clearly another headache for Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who is trying to quash a federal-state conflict that has taken on several new forms in recent days. Hours before the suit was filed, Utah's Republican-dominated Legislature approved the most far-reaching legislative challenge to President Bush's signature education law.

Both the Utah bill, which requires educators there to spend as little state money as possible in carrying out the law's requirements, and the teachers' union lawsuit filed today, rest heavily on the same section of the federal law, which forbids federal officials from requiring states to spend their own money on the law. The Connecticut attorney general announced the state's intentions to sue the Department of Education on the same grounds two weeks ago.

"If the facts about educational spending are as the plaintiffs allege, then this lawsuit has good prospects of winning," said David B. Cruz, a constitutional law professor at the University of Southern California. "It is a very strong case because the statutory language is clear. The law says nothing in the act shall be interpreted to impose requirements that aren't being funded."

More than 30 states - including many Republican strongholds - have raised objections to the law. Some, like Connecticut's, argue that the federal government is not adequately financing its requirements, which include a broad expansion of standardized testing. Others object to federal intrusion into an area long considered the domain of the states.

This is a legitimate ground for criticism of this lousy law, but no one has really gone into the real core problems with this law. It is mandated federal testing, when control of the schools are supposed to be a state and local affair. It is also just another test to teach to. Wanna know why kids arrive in college with absolutely no critical thinking skills? Mandatory testing. Teachers break up information into little test-sized bits. None of the information is presented holistically, without any sense that there are connections within a discipline much less that there are connections between disciplines. This isn't education, it's atomized information.

One of the things that's important backstory in the AP piece is that teachers are trying to do something to take their profession back from the testing mavens. That's a good thing.

Fixing the Fourth Estate

A Time for Disobedience
Faced with Bush's lockdown on information, reporters have to stand up
by Sydney H. Schanberg
April 19th, 2005 10:24 AM

The press has been grappling with how to cope with this extreme control and distortion of news, some reporters and editors more than others. One possibility they might consider is civil resistance, as in quiet, nonviolent, respectful rebellion.

Take Ron Hutcheson, the White House correspondent for the Knight-Ridder papers. He has been fighting the battle—and at times has found himself alone. When the White House billed a press briefing about a Bush foreign trip last year as on the record and then changed it on the spot to off the record, a couple of other journalists complained briefly. Hutcheson kept arguing for a return to the original ground rules or at least an explanation. It was futile. The anonymous official told him: "This is the way we do it. If you don't like it, you can leave." "I just got pissed off and I walked out," recalls Hutcheson. None of the others followed him.

What would have happened if the rest of the newspeople at the briefing had also walked out? Well, not a great deal all at once, but a message would have been sent. It would have said to the White House: "We are professionals, and our job, from this country's founding, is to elicit reliable information for the public—and you are distorting that flow of information by delivering it off the record, anonymously, thereby making no one accountable for its credibility."

I would guess the message might at first evoke some cynical laughter inside the White House, but if other Washington reporters began embracing this and similar dissenting practices, and stand-up journalism became the norm, the laughter could fade. It could turn into an embarrassment for the Bush stonewallers. Especially if reporters and editors were able to effectively explain to the American people why the press's role is still so important to them. The public often seems to see us as part of the entertainment circus that parts of the "media" business have become and, therefore, not people to be taken seriously.

I've been saying this for five years. Hey, VV, where's my contract?

Something Completely Different

WaPo's Al Kamen "In the Loop."

Raise Your Right Hand

Everyone has seen how the TV lawyers get in some outrageous cheap shot question at the hapless witness or defendant, and there's an objection and then the lawyer says, "I withdraw the question." The same happens all the time on the Imus in the Morning show.

Don Imus, interviewing Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) yesterday, asked about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).

"Tom's a very good leader. I don't think anyone can question that," Santorum said, adding he thought DeLay would prevail in the end.

"He's a weird little dude," Imus opined.

"He's not a weird dude," Santorum interjected. "He's a good guy. . . . "

"He just looks to me like a guy that has some kind of weird, kinky, sexual thing going on," Imus said. "I don't know why I think that."

"I don't think it's appropriate," Santorum scolded, "to talk about the majority leader of the House of Representatives that way." Hard to argue with that.

"I agree," Imus said. "I apologize. I'm just telling you what I think."

The jury will disregard the above exchange.

Just-Us Sunday

So much religion as political news this week, with the 24/7 Pope-a-thon and the wingnuts getting loud. I am very happy to see this:

Churches challenge US senate leader on ‘anti-Christian’ jibe -20/04/05

The head of the ecumenical body that brings together major Protestant and Orthodox denominations encompassing nearly 50 million US Christians has called on the leader of the Senate majority to distance himself from a lobby being run by the religious right against people of faith who disagree with them politically.

He added: 'I will be praying for the Lord to minister to them and change their hearts so that they will not continue to take our nation down this destructive path.'

Spoiled Brat Entitlement

This morning's Think Progress from the Center for American Progress brings some pretty serious information:

Is Rice Obstructing the Bolton Investigation?

This is serious enough that a reporter covering the State Department should inquire about Rice’s conduct. What, exactly, did Rice tell her subordinates? How is this consistent with their full cooperation with a Congressional inquiry.

The LAT says:

Bolton Should Step Aside

President Bush's nomination of John Bolton to become United Nations ambassador began as an embarrassment and is ending as a disgrace. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was right to delay a scheduled vote and resist being railroaded by the administration into approving him.

Bolton's infantile crack that it would make no difference if the U.N. lost its top 10 floors already testified to his unfitness to serve as the United States' diplomat to the world. It may have been Bush's right to appoint someone provocative yet capable. But the revelations that have emerged over the past weeks in the Senate call into question Bolton's basic ability to do the job.

On issue after issue, whether North Korea or Iraq, Bolton has wielded a wrecking ball. It might be possible to wave off one allegation of the misuse of intelligence — infighting always takes place in the government bureaucracy — but Bolton appears to have willfully and systematically suppressed and misused classified information, including bullying civil service officials who dared to challenge his apocalyptic assessments of North Korean, Iraqi and Cuban weapons programs. Former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin apparently had to intervene to protect a Latin American analyst from Bolton's wrath; Carl W. Ford Jr., the State Department's former assistant secretary of intelligence and research — the only government bureau to get it right on Iraq — describes him as a "serial abuser." And Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) is rightly inquiring about Bolton's unusual request to look at National Security Administration intercepts and why he asked for the identities of analysts. Why indeed?

The man is an embarrassment. I watched some of the hearing yesterday, each new detail paints the picture of a power freak who is out of control. DC is a magnet for people like this, if they can manage to mask their greed for power behind some generally acceptable grown up behavior. Bolton doesn't meet that pretty low bar.

Remember the War?

150 hostages and 19 deaths leave US claims of Iraqi 'peace' in tatters

By Patrick Cockburn in Mosul
18 April 2005

Iraqi and United States-led forces were last night preparing to launch a rescue mission for up to 150 Shia hostages held by Sunni insurgents.

The threat by Sunni militants in the town of Madaen, south of Baghdad, to execute the hostages unless Shias leave the area, intensified the growing sectarian fears.

The upsurge in violence across Iraq in the past four days has left claims made by the Pentagon that the tide is turning in Iraq and there are hopeful signs of a return to normality in tatters.

At least 17 Iraqis were killed during the day and two US soldiers were reported dead after a series of attacks.

Ironically, one reason why Washington can persuade the outside world that its venture in Iraq is finally coming right is that it is too dangerous for reporters to travel outside Baghdad or stray far from their hotels in the capital. The threat to all foreigners was underlined last week when an American contractor was snatched by kidnappers.

When I was travelling in the northern city of Mosul this week, my guards ­ Kurdish members of the Iraqi National Guard ­ said it was too dangerous for them to travel with me in uniform in official vehicles. They donned Arab gowns, hid their weapons and drove through the city in a civilian car.

Most violent incidents in Iraq go unreported. We saw one suicide bomb explosion, clouds of smoke and dust erupting into the air, and heard another in the space of an hour. Neither was mentioned in official reports. Last year US soldiers told the IoS that they do not tell their superiors about attacks on them unless they suffer casualties. This avoids bureaucratic hassle and "our generals want to hear about the number of attacks going down not up". This makes the official Pentagon claim that the number of insurgent attacks is down from 140 a day in January to 40 a day this month dubious.

US casualties have fallen to about one dead a day in March compared with four a day in January and five a day in November. But this is the result of a switch in American strategy rather than a sign of a collapse in the insurgency. US military spokesmen make plain that America's military priority has changed from offensive operations to training Iraqi troops and police. More than 2,000 US military advisers are working with Iraqi forces.

With US networks largely confined to their hotels in Baghdad by fear of kidnapping, it is possible to sell the American public the idea that no news is good news. General George Casey, the top US commander in Iraq, said recently that if all goes well "we shall make fairly substantial reductions in the size of our forces". Other senior US officers say this will be of the order of four brigades, from 17 to 13, or a fall in the number of US troops in Iraq from 142,000 to 105,000 by next year.

Juan Cole reveals this morning:

Guerrillas killed some 20 persons in Iraq on Tuesday and late Monday night, according to ash-Sharq al-Awsat. In the upscale Sunni Azamiyah district of Baghdad, a suicide bomber killed 4 National Guards and wounded 38 persons when he attacked a police recruitment center. Gunmen assassinated Baghdad University professor Fu'ad al-Bayati. In Khalidiyah west of Baghdad, guerrillas fired on National Guard members, killing 5 and wounding 4.

Meanwhile back in Washington, the US Senate showed disdain for Bush's attempt to keep the Iraq funding requests, now totaling over $200 billion, out of the budget deficit figures.

This is all going SO well. I get the impression that Bush and Rummy think they can run a war by remote control and that no one will notice. The rest of the planet notices all these things. So does Al Jazeerah.

The Church Universal

Tests for an Unbending Pope . . .

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005; Page A25

ROME -- Pope Benedict XVI, born Joseph Ratzinger, is not afraid to be unpopular. That is why he was elected pope Tuesday. It is also why he will face excruciating difficulties in holding together the most ethnically, geographically and ideologically diverse religious institution in the world.

The simple political truth is that Ratzinger won election because he had a base. To say that is not inappropriately political but an acknowledgment of the obvious. The new pope was supported from the outset by a substantial cadre of traditionalist cardinals who believe, with him, that the church's main task -- and the key to its survival -- is to present an uncompromising alternative to modern secularism.

The obligation of the Christian, Ratzinger has said, "is to recover the capacity for nonconformism." Just because the world (or at least certain wealthy, educated parts of it) is going in one direction does not mean that the church should follow. On the contrary, he and those who follow him believe that the key to Catholic survival in the face of militant Islam and an evangelical Christianity that is growing rapidly in Latin America is to offer an alternative that is unembarrassed in declaring itself as the true path to God. Some may be bothered by that. Ratzinger is not.

In the mid-1980s, for a profile of Ratzinger I was writing for the New York Times Magazine, he answered written questions and offered this intriguing, unbending response to a question about his stern public image: "If it is true that a Christian faith taken seriously means nonconformity with a not inconsiderable number of contemporary social standards, then a more-or-less negative image is unavoidable. Nonconformists, after all, who enjoy general applause, are somewhat ridiculous figures, or at least unconvincing."

The new pope is definitely not a ridiculous figure. But he has a great deal of convincing to do. One can be absolutely certain that at the moment his name was announced yesterday before the crowd that had run down Roman streets to pack St. Peter's Square, liberal Catholics around the world were filled with anxiety and foreboding. Will the new pope's vision of a pure, hard and, if necessary, smaller corps of believers leave them out? Does he want them to leave? Will he make them want to go?

As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger presided over the disciplining of theologians whose views he believed were outside the range of acceptable Catholic opinion. His targets were North American liberals such as the Rev. Charles Curran, who dissented on issues related to sexuality and gender, and South American liberation theologians such as the Rev. Leonardo Boff, whom Ratzinger viewed as too enchanted with Marxism.

At a moment when liberals and moderates in the church want to open questions (such as whether only celibate men may be priests), Ratzinger thinks it is time to end uncertainty. Because of his crackdowns, the new pope will take the seat of Saint Peter with an exceptionally large battalion of public enemies inside the church. "Joseph Ratzinger is afraid," the liberal Catholic theologian Hans Kung declared in 1985. "And just like Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, he fears nothing more than freedom."

Thus the question: Why did the College of Cardinals make such a controversial choice, and with such dispatch? The simple answer is that the 78-year-old pope is a transitional figure. Barring a medical miracle, it is likely that a new pontiff will be elected in a few years. One need not be Machiavelli to suggest that potential popes sitting in the Sistine Chapel decided they did not have the votes or the standing to make it this time, and would use a Ratzinger papacy to prepare for the next.

But the political realist's explanation does not do full justice to the radical nature of this choice. What is happening inside the church is a slow erosion of the progressive hopes created by the Second Vatican Council, often said to have opened the church to the world. The forces on the rise believe, as the conservative historian James Hitchcock once put it, that the core issue before Catholics is whether they will confront modernity or capitulate to it.

Pope Benedict XVI was elected because he had a clear sense of where the church needs to go. He will make liberal Catholics and many moderates uncomfortable. They should see his election as a sign of how urgent it is to revive -- and make credible -- Vatican II's hopeful vision of a church that has much to teach the modern world, and much to learn from it, too.

Sorry, E.J. That last paragraph makes no sense. Benedict's election is a sign that the Curia is in open revolt from Vatican II. Liberal Catholics are now aware that they have no voice in the contemporary Church. The new pope has stated that he's comfortable with a Church which is both smaller and more orthodox. He's well on the way to getting it.

Here is Christianity's dirty little secret: the "growth market" is in southern part of the planet, Africa and Latin America. That's where the bodies are. But that growth is paid for by North America and Germany. Alienate the faithful there and the $$$ go away. Pope Benedict's church will be both smaller and poorer.

Perfect Storm

Senate Panel Postpones Vote on U.N. Nominee

By DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: April 20, 2005

WASHINGTON, April 19 - A surprise last-minute defection by an Ohio Republican forced the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to postpone a vote that had been scheduled for Tuesday on the nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations.

The chairman of the panel, Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, reluctantly agreed to put off any vote until next month to allow a review of what Democrats portrayed as troubling new accusations that cast doubt on Mr. Bolton's temperament and credibility.

Until the defection, by Senator George V. Voinovich of Ohio, the panel had appeared prepared to send the nomination to the Senate floor on a strict party-line vote. But Mr. Voinovich stunned other senators by announcing that more time was needed to explore accusations against Mr. Bolton.

"My conscience got me," he said after the stormy two-hour session. He said he had gone to the meeting planning to vote for Mr. Bolton, but changed his mind after hearing the case against the nominee made by Senators Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, both Democrats.

"I wanted more information about this individual, and I didn't feel comfortable voting for him," Mr. Voinovich said.

The Democrats called the delay a significant setback to Mr. Bolton's prospects, providing opponents with time to seek corroboration for the accusations made since he appeared before the committee a week ago.

Among those highlighted by Mr. Biden was a statement from Melody Townsel of Dallas, a former contract worker for the Agency for International Development who wrote in an "open letter" to the committee that Mr. Bolton, as a private lawyer, routinely visited her hotel room "to pound on the door and shout threats" over two weeks in 1994 in Moscow because she had complained about inefficiency by Mr. Bolton's client, the prime contractor in a foreign aid program.

Ms. Townsel actively opposed President Bush's re-election. Mr. Biden said that her accusations remained unsubstantiated but that there was some independent corroboration.

Mr. Bolton has not addressed the accusations since they became known late last week. His aides have said that he will not respond to reporters' inquiries during the confirmation process and that any statement will be in response to questions from the committee.

A spokesman for the White House, Scott McClellan, said that Democrats were raising "unfounded allegations" and that administration would address them.

"We are more than happy to answer any questions that members of the committee have," Bloomberg News quoted Mr. McClellan as saying. "John Bolton is exactly the person we need at the United Nations, and we look forward to his confirmation."

Among the 10 Republicans on the panel, two in addition to Mr. Voinovich expressed concerns on Tuesday about the nomination. One senator, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, said that he was ready to vote to send the nomination to the full Senate, but that he would not guarantee that he would vote in favor of the nomination on the floor.

"I think the charges are serious enough that they demand, or cry out, for further examination," Mr. Hagel said at the committee meeting.

The second Republican, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, did not make his views known at the hearing, but told reporters later that he was glad that the vote had been postponed.

"I don't know if I've ever seen, in a setting like this, a senator changing his mind as a result of what other senators said," Mr. Chafee said. "The process worked. It's kind of refreshing."

Until Mr. Voinovich spoke up near the end of the session, he had not figured in speculation about wavering among Republicans. Mr. Voinovich had not attended either of the committee hearings last week on the Bolton nomination, citing the press of other Senate business. The only doubts expressed in public by Republicans on the panel had come from Mr. Chafee and Mr. Hagel.

Mr. Lugar had pushed throughout the session for a vote, saying President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice deserved a swift decision on the nomination.

Asked to comment on the decision, a spokesman for the State Department, Adam Ereli, said: "Our only comment is that we believe that Mr. Bolton's nomination is a good one. He'll be a strong candidate, and we hope for him to be in New York so he can begin the important work he has there."

The Washington Note's Steve Clemmons quotes from last night's "Nelson Report:"

Bolton. . .it may be that Republican Senators George Voinovich and Chuck Hagel have taken a stand which will empower a Republican center to emerge and hold on other issues.

Inside baseball comment: you have to wonder if Voinovich and Hagel, have given Chairman Richard Lugar some operating space. He was well known to be worried about Bolton's fitness, but as chair, felt it was his duty to try and support the president's nominee.

The perfect storm is met in John Bolton's nomination.

God Speaks

Hero of church's conservative wing
Becomes Pope Benedict XVI

By John L. Allen, Jr.
Rome

In electing the 265th pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the College of Cardinals made a daring choice for a man who, despite his 78 years of ago, seems destined to lead a strong, consequential pontificate: Joseph Ratzinger, the intellectual architect of John Paul II’s papacy as the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Whatever one makes of his theological positions, Ratzinger is almost universally recognized as one of the preeminent Catholic intellectuals of his generation, a man of vast culture and refinement. He plays the piano in his spare time, and his brother Georg served as the director of the Regensburg choir. Ratzinger once said of Mozart that his music “contains the whole tragedy of human existence.

Let's see what the honeymoon looks like. As a systematic theologian, I learned to read him as a poor copy of his teacher, Karl Rahner, the great champion of universalism.

You are In The Loop

Today, the Judging the Future team went into high gear. I bought all the tools for Reid Stott to create the site, the domain will be ready when he's ready to go live. Pogge will be around at the end of the week to help me with technical issues as we put the thing up and debug (and de-spam.)

You rarely observe the work these two gentlemen do behind the scenes here at Bump in the Beltway. pogge has been an undefatigable spam fighter and code tweaker. If you are in Toronto and southeast Ontario searching for an IT consultant and programmer, you could really do no better than this guy. Reid did the design for this site and designing websites is what he does. Click on the link above, you'll see his blog, his photo collection (he's a professional photog) and his web and print design portfolio. He's in Atlanta, just like the Bump benefactress, Melanie Goux. Who knew, Mel, back when we started this thing in 2003, that I'd become a professional blogger? Mel and Mr. Brushstroke will be in DC for a conference in June and this year, I'll be able to take them out for dinner, rather than the other way around. Feels good.

That conference is in a Wi-fi enabled hotel, so I'll be live blogging it as soon as I can puzzle my way through the laptop maze. You are going to be getting more events live-blogged from me in coming months. Hey, I live at the political nerve center of the country, a press credential is in process. I live a 5 minute busride from Metro. Sean-Paul Kelley of The Agonist, with whom I do some cooperative reporting, is egging me to get a White House pass. One thing at a time S-P, let me get the new site live, first. Both Bump and Judging will be moving to Expression Engine early this summer for that Scoop like experience without the hassle.

I'm delighted to be able to re-assemble the original Bump team as my team at Judging the Future. This time, we're all getting paid for it. These gentlemen are a couple of the finest human beings I've ever had the pleasure to work with. For me, who I work with is more important than what I do, and the new situation is one that'll having me leaping out of bed in the morning. I'll be seeing both pogge and Reid later this year. A little travelin' music maestro, I'm planning to take my first vacation since 1998 this summer.

So, I'm getting ready for my interview with Revere tomorrow afternoon, putting up a new site, running my ministry and getting ready for a trip while welcoming the new crew of guest bloggers and negotiating a new license with MT. There's lots happening at this little Bump in the Beltway and it's going to be shorts and t-shirt weather tomorrow. Oh, and I gotta find time to put the herb garden in by May 1. Fresh pesto by July is always my goal.

Wave of the Future

Bumpers, I'm doing spiritual direction this evening and won't be around until later. There will be a slow stretch tomorrow afternoon: I'm doing an interview with one of the Reveres of Effect Measure tomorrow afternoon. We'll talk about avian influenza, of course, but there are lots of other interesting topics in public health and infectious diseases. And, of course, we'll roll out the new crew of guest posters this weekend. Lot's of good new things happening here.

If you have questions for the Revere, leave them in comments. I'm interviewing by IM tomorrow, which should be interesting.

To The SCOTUS

Court Declines Case of Reporters in Leak Case
By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: April 19, 2005

Two reporters facing up to 18 months in jail for refusing to testify about their sources lost another round in the courts today. The reporters, Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, now have only one appeal left, to the United States Supreme Court.

But it is hardly certain that the justices will agree to hear the case or that the reporters will remain free even while that court considers how to proceed.

Today's decision, by the full federal appeals court in Washington, declined to reconsider a unanimous decision of a three-judge panel of the court. The earlier decision, in February, required the reporters to testify about conversations they might have had with government officials concerning Valerie Plame, an undercover C.I.A. operative, whose identity was first disclosed by Robert Novak, the syndicated columnist.

Seven judges participated in today's decision. One of them, David S. Tatel, published an explanatory concurrence; none noted a dissent.

The reporters, who have remained free, now face what could be a fast-paced conclusion to the matter. Unless they can make a deal with the special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, or persuade one of the courts involved to issue a stay, the usual procedural rules suggest that they may face jail as soon as a week from now, when the appeals court will issue its mandate and return jurisdiction in the case to the trial court.

A spokesman for The New York Times Company, Toby Usnik, said in a statement, "We are disappointed with the court's decision and we will seek a stay in order to have sufficient time to seek U.S. Supreme Court review."

The chief judge of the federal district court in Washington, Thomas F. Hogan, ordered the reporters jailed in October unless they agreed to testify, and he has given no indication that he has changed his mind. Mr. Fitzgerald has consistently urged the courts to take quick action, adding recently that his investigation is all but complete.

In a speech in Montana last week, Judge Hogan suggested that he expected the Supreme Court to hear the case, according to reports in the local papers there.

This will be a real test of repertorial privilege, which is more a matter of custom than of law. It will be interesting to see how this turns out.

Turning Right

Cardinal Ratzinger's Challenge

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005; Page A19

Ratzinger, who is German, spoke for the conservative side of a culture-war argument that is of primary interest to Europe and North America. When Ratzinger said on Monday that "to have a clear faith according to the church's creed is today often labeled fundamentalism," his words were undoubtedly welcomed by religious conservatives far outside the ranks of the Catholic Church. One can also imagine that liberals of various stripes shuddered.

But for the many cardinals here from the Third World -- 20 of the 115 voting are from Latin America, 11 from Africa, 10 from Asia -- the battle over relativism is far less important than the poverty that afflicts so many of their flock. Some of these cardinals -- Claudio Hummes of Brazil is a representative figure -- may share points in common with Ratzinger on doctrine. But for them the struggle against suffering and social injustice is part of their lives every single day.

Many of these same cardinals, and some in Europe and the United States, place a higher priority on Christianity's rekindled competition with Islam and the urgency of Muslim-Christian dialogue. It's not clear where Ratzinger's approach would take these efforts.

Ratzinger, in other words, is now central to two very different dynamics inside the conclave. Cardinals will be asked to decide -- by voting for or against him or someone he favors -- whether Ratzinger's theological approach is right. And they will decide whether Ratzinger's priorities involve the things that matter.

It makes perfect sense that Ratzinger would be the decisive player in defining the church after the papacy of John Paul II. Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the Vatican spokesman, once said that John Paul's choice of Ratzinger as his doctrinal chief was "one of the most personal choices of his pontificate."

Ratzinger is a brilliant, tough-minded intellectual who started out as moderately liberal and -- like so many American neoconservatives -- developed a mistrust of the left because of the student revolt of the 1960s. He once said that "the 1968 revolution" turned into "a radical attack on human freedom and dignity, a deep threat to all that is human." The pope knew what he was getting with Ratzinger, and he got what he wanted.

With Ratzinger playing the tough cop against dissent, John Paul was free to be more expansive. Rocco Buttiglione, a philosopher who was close to the late pope, captured their division of labor perfectly in an interview some years ago. "The pope has more the gift of synthesis, because of his office," Buttiglione said. "Cardinal Ratzinger has more the gift of polemic."

There was also the matter of their personalities. Where John Paul was sunny, Ratzinger was serious -- and a worrier. Walls in Rome are plastered with memorial posters to John Paul that carry his famous quotation, "Be not afraid." Cardinal Ratzinger declared yesterday that the church has much to fear.

Ratzinger now carries on his battle without the charismatic support of his friend. He is proposing that the church take one aspect of John Paul's synthesis -- the battle against relativism reflected in doctrinal rigor -- and make it the late pope's central legacy. The cardinals who marched solemnly into the Sistine Chapel yesterday afternoon will be deciding if that is the right fight for the future.

The Holy Spirit has apparently spoken, but what She means is up for grabs.

Do It Now!

Unholy trio menace Firefox
By John Leyden
Published Tuesday 19th April 2005 13:05 GMT

The Mozilla Foundation has released updated versions of its popular Firefox (version 1.0.3) and Mozilla (version 1.7.7) web browsers to correct a number of recently discovered security flaws. The updates fix a trio of critical vulnerabilities, two of which have become the subject of proof-of-concept hacker exploits.