Green Zone Slime

Just stumbled across this at talkingpointsmemo. The Washington Post reports:

The sheets of paper seemed to be everywhere the lawmakers went in the Green Zone, distributed to Iraqi officials, U.S. officials and uniformed military of no particular rank. So when Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) asked a soldier last weekend just what he was holding, the congressman was taken aback to find out.

In the soldier's hand was a thumbnail biography, distributed before each of the congressmen's meetings in Baghdad, which let meeting participants such as that soldier know where each of the lawmakers stands on the war. "Moran on Iraq policy," read one section, going on to cite some the congressman's most incendiary statements, such as, "This has been the worst foreign policy fiasco in American history."

The Post also describes a bio of Rep Ellen Taucher (D-Calif). There's more:

Brief, choreographed and carefully controlled, the codels (short for congressional delegations) often have showed only what the Pentagon and the Bush administration have wanted the lawmakers to see. At one point, as Moran, Tauscher and Rep. Jon Porter (R-Nev.) were heading to lunch in the fortified Green Zone, an American urgently tried to get their attention, apparently to voice concerns about the war effort, the participants said. Security whisked the man away before he could make his point.

Tauscher called it "the Green Zone fog."

"Spin City," Moran grumbled. "The Iraqis and the Americans were all singing from the same song sheet, and it was deliberately manipulated."

How surprising. More surprising is that the bios got some things wrong. Thinkprogress notes that the quotations used were cherry picked - the "most incendiary" were used. The Post:

For one, the quotations appeared to be selected to divide the visitors into those who are with the war effort and those who are against. For another, they were not exactly accurate. Under "latest Iraq vote," Tauscher's bio noted that she had voted in favor of legislation requiring the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within 120 days of the bill's enactment.

She did vote that way -- in May. On Aug. 2, Tauscher voted in favor of her own bill, which mandates that troops be granted a leave from combat at least as long as their last combat deployment before being shipped back to Iraq. That vote might have been a little too popular with the soldiers she was meeting, Tauscher said.

"Not exactly accurate" is another way of saying "wrong."

I'll give Josh Marshall the final word:

It's all par for the course for this administration, how they've politicized every branch of the government and every agency, eroding democratic institutions in American while they pretended to build them in Iraq. In fact, from the start the White House tried to stock the Green Zone and the US occupation authority with GOP operatives. But I thought that had changed a little. This latest incident, though, should trigger a number of forced retirements and resignations.

More Republican Hypocrisy

This time the Senator Craig's part if the story is only periheral.

What about the other recent corruptions in God's Own Party?

The crew at CREW wants to know:

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, expressed surprise that Sen. Larry Craig has been forced to relinquish his committee assignments in light of this week's revelations that he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in connection with an attempted sexual encounter with an undercover officer in a Minneapolis airport restroom.

"Senator Ted Stevens maintains his position on the Appropriations Committee despite being the subject of a major criminal investigation, including an FBI raid on his Alaska home and Senator David Vitter maintains his assignments despite admitting to the crime of soliciting a prostitute."

According to Rawstory, here's the reason:

The key distinction between Craig's case and those of Stevens and Vitter, in the eyes of Republican leaders, is that Craig has been charged with and pleaded guilty to a crime, where the others have not, a leadership source tells RAW STORY.

I have to go with Melanie Sloan of CREW, however:

"A disorderly conduct plea requires a member to give up his committee assignment, but a full-fledged bribery investigation does not," observed Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "Apparently, in the view of the Republican conference there is almost nothing more serious than a member attempting to engage in gay sex."

I think she's trying to be sarcastic, but the charge actually works without any hint of it. The FBI can raid your home and put you under corruption investigation and you're safe, but get caught tapping your foot in an airport men's room and your party abandons you quicker than you can say "shock and awe."

Glenn Greenwald has more at salon.

It is hard to remember an incident that more powerfully reveals the true, deeply unprincipled face of the "Traditional Marriage" movement than the completely disparate treatment from the GOP leadership for David Vitter and Larry Craig. As the likes of Mitch McConnell and (the divorced and adulterous) John McCain oh-so-nobly demand Craig's resignation while continuing to embrace David Vitter, the last thing we ought to be hearing is how this demonstrates newfound moral rectitude from the Republican Party. Whatever is driving the party leaders as they keep David Vitter and push out Larry Craig -- and similarly condemn same-sex marriages while saying nothing about (and often engaging in) divorces and multiple marriages -- devotion to "traditional moral values" is not it.

Ah, ain't life grand?

Ethics Board Recommendations: Public or A Secret?

Big Hat tip to Bram on this one.

Ok, this is getting tiresome. Now I have an some idea of what parents must feel when they hear story after story about their lying, disrespectful child. The Trib's Jeremy Borem has the story:

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl refused to release a letter Thursday that contains changes the city Ethics Hearing Board has recommended to ethics rules.

Remember all this? The $9,000 golf outing paid for by UPMC and the Penguins? The Ethics Board "dialog" with the mayor? The appearance of impropriety? I guess there wasn't enough there for the ethics board to publicly spank master Luke, but there was enough there for the ethics board to decide that some clarification of the ethics code was needed. They said they'd send the recommendations to the Mayor's office.

Those are the recommendations he's keeping secret:

Kate DeSimone, an assistant city solicitor who works with the board, said the letter isn't subject to the state open records law because the board members consider the letter to be "personal between them and the mayor."

I'm happy to see the Trib giving Coucilman Peduto the last word:

"If they think that's a private matter, that's insane," said Councilman Bill Peduto, who often criticizes Ravenstahl's administration. "It was a letter from a public board, from a public meeting that was sent to a public official. What makes them think the public can't see it?"

Damn straight.

By the way, the Trib's filed a request for the letter via Pennsylvania's Right-to-know law.

UPDATE: DeSantis responds:

Mayoral candidate Mark DeSantis challenged Luke Ravenstahl to abide by Pennsylvania law and publish the Ethics Board recommendations. Ravenstahl has now made this bad situation even worse by defying Pennsylvania's Right to Know law and refusing to release to the public the recommendations of the Ethics Board. This was a decision the Ethics board was forced to make as a result of Ravensthal’s conduct.

“This represents everything that is wrong with City government. The idea that an ethics issue of a public official is viewed as a private matter is absurd and unacceptable. I call on Mayor Ravenstahl to release the Ethics Board’s findings immediately. The citizens of Pittsburgh deserve an open and transparent government not more of the same old style of politics. Transparency in government is a hallmark of my campaign. I assure the citizens of Pittsburgh that they will not have to compel me to release public documents.”

Absurd and unacceptable. That's what the man said.

John & Elizabeth Edwards in Pittsburgh on Labor Day

WHAT: A Labor Day rally with John and Elizabeth Edwards
WHEN: Monday, September 3 (Labor Day) at 9:00 AM
WHERE: Mario Lemieux Place -- Mellon Arena between Centre Ave. and Bedford Ave.

"John and Elizabeth Edwards are going to be in Pittsburgh on Labor Day — Monday, September 3 — for a rally with local supporters.

This campaign is about building one America and ending a system that is rigged against hardworking families. John is running for president to restore the promise of America—and to truly change things for all of us.

So please, come join John and Elizabeth on Labor Day to celebrate with all of us as we stand-up for hardworking families."

REMINDER: The Young Dems could use your help registering voters that day. Sign up here.

Hey! How's that war going?

Some recent headlines:

Report Finds Little Progress On Iraq Goals
GAO Draft at Odds With White House
By Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 30, 2007; Page A01

Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration.

The strikingly negative GAO draft, which will be delivered to Congress in final form on Tuesday, comes as the White House prepares to deliver its own new benchmark report in the second week of September, along with congressional testimony from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. They are expected to describe significant security improvements and offer at least some promise for political reconciliation in Iraq.
More here

U.S. Weapons, Given to Iraqis, Move to Turkey
By DAVID S. CLOUD and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: August 30, 2007

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 — Weapons that were originally given to Iraqi security forces by the American military have been recovered over the past year by the authorities in Turkey after being used in violent crimes in that country, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.

The discovery that serial numbers on pistols and other weapons recovered in Turkey matched those distributed to Iraqi police units has prompted growing concern by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that controls on weapons being provided to Iraqis are inadequate. It was also a factor in the decision to dispatch the department’s inspector general to Iraq next week to investigate the problem, the officials said.
More here

Pentagon won't make surge recommendation to Bush
By Nancy A. Youssef McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Wednesday, August 29, 2007

WASHINGTON — In a sign that top commanders are divided over what course to pursue in Iraq, the Pentagon said Wednesday that it won't make a single, unified recommendation to President Bush during next month's strategy assessment, but instead will allow top commanders to make individual presentations.

"Consensus is not the goal of the process," Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters. "If there are differences, the president will hear them."

Military analysts called the move unusual for an institution that ordinarily does not air its differences in public, especially while its troops are deployed in combat.
More here

Rep.: Iraq goal no longer should be democracy
By Kathy Barks Hoffman - The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Aug 25, 2007 7:59:00 EDT

LANSING, Mich. — The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee said Friday the president needs to move away from trying to establish democracy in Iraq and concentrate instead on security and stability.

“Establishing a democracy in the time frame that we’ve wanted to do it, over the period of three to five years, was too big of a reach,” Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra said after the taping of public television’s “Off the Record” program.

[snip]

“The president has to be willing to say, ‘I’m going to take democracy off the table. We’re going to aim for safety and stability,’ ” he said.
More here

Report Offers Grim View of Iraqi Leaders
By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: August 24, 2007

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 — A stark assessment released Thursday by the nation’s intelligence agencies depicts a paralyzed Iraqi government unable to take advantage of the security gains achieved by the thousands of extra American troops dispatched to the country this year.

The assessment, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, casts strong doubts on the viability of the Bush administration strategy in Iraq. It gives a dim prognosis on the likelihood that Iraqi politicians can heal deep sectarian rifts before next spring, when American military commanders have said that a crunch on available troops will require reducing the United States’ presence in Iraq.
More here

Ammunition Shortage Squeezes Police
AP IMPACT: Ammunition Shortage Squeezes Police Nationwide; Officer Training Curtailed
By ESTES THOMPSON Associated Press Writer
Aug 17, 2007 (AP)

Troops training for and fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are firing more than 1 billion bullets a year, contributing to ammunition shortages hitting police departments nationwide and preventing some officers from training with the weapons they carry on patrol.

An Associated Press review of dozens of police and sheriff's departments found that many are struggling with delays of as long as a year for both handgun and rifle ammunition. And the shortages are resulting in prices as much as double what departments were paying just a year ago.
More here

Hands Across the Burghosphere

We seem to be stalled here in the high 40s -- better than the President and Congress -- but c'mon.

You don't have to give till it hurts. How about sparing $10 bucks for a really good cause? (Pittsburgh Action Against Rape)

Please consider donating today.

(This is my official noodge.)

And Now A Message From Senator Feingold:

I'll start.

My President will be:

• Law-Abiding
• Ethical
• Honest
• Against Torture
• Cognisant of the fact that 1) The Executive Branch of Government is only one of three co-equal branches of government, and 2) that each was designed to serve as a check and balance to the other two, and 3) Presidents should act accordingly.

Anyone else?

The Littlest Democrat

My nephew, Bobby, and his big sister, Rachel.

One PJ on McIntire Today?

I think I'll be on THE JOHN MCINTIRE SHOW (1-4 PM) ON 93.7 FM THE ZONE around 2:25 PM today.

I say "think" because he emailed me about it this morning as I was walking out the door to see my new nephew and we've been playing phone/email tag.

Listen live anyway at www.937thezone.com

McIntire's blog: http://www.macyapper.blogspot.com

Blogroll Update

Added:

The Rusted View
http://rustedview.us/

Null Space*
http://nullspace2.blogspot.com/

Early Returns**
http://www.post-gazette.com/earlyreturns

* Now I no longer need to go there from a link at The Burgh Report.

** I apologize to everyone for the redesign of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's website (Pittsburgh WOW! or Now or whatever).

Obviously the new design was nothing but a ploy to get 2pj to blogroll their Early Returns blog. The P-G knew that if they went from having me simply click on "Elections" on the upper right corner of their old home page which led to a big link for Early Returns and instead made me hover over something called "Multimedia" then maneuver to "Blogs" then scroll way down to a link to Early Returns that I'd be forced to just blogroll ER.

Seriously, P-G, wouldn't it make sense to cross-promote your blogs under major categories to which they logically belong? Like a link to Early Returns under "Politics"? Perhaps this is just an oversight . . . or maybe you really want to keep all your blogs in some sort of blog ghetto . . .

Bloopers, Blunders, and Mayor Luke on KD/PG Sunday Edition

Three local bloggers review Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's, um, performance on KDKA's Sunday morning KD/PG Sunday Edition.

Bram at The Pittsburgh Comet has a comprehensive rundown on the insanity inanities show.

The Burgher at The Burgh Report focuses on Luke's empty Pittsburgh Promise and calls his performance on the program " disastrous."

PittGirl at The Burgh Blog does what PittGirl does: And...Drink!

However, none of them mention my two favorite moments:

1. When Ken Rice reminds Lil Mayor Luke that he was only on the Letterman show as a "novelty."

2. When Ken Rice reminded Lil Mayor Luke that he was not actually one of the celebrities at Mario's charity golf outing.

Yeah, I'm shallow like dat.

By all means read what the awful bloggers who make Luke's Mom cry have to say, but PLEASE also watch the atrocities yourself:

Part One: http://kdka.com/video/?id=31275@kdka.dayport.com
Part Two: http://kdka.com/video/?id=31276@kdka.dayport.com

EVENTS

August 29, 2007 - TODAY!

One Hill CBA Coalition Press Briefing
WHAT: One Hill CBA Coalition Press Briefing
WHEN: Wednesday, August 29, 2007, 10:00 AM
WHERE: Freedom Unlimited, Alma Speed Fox Building, 2201 Wylie Avenue (Corner of Wylie and Kirkpatrick)

"As negotiations approach for the Community Benefit Agreement around arena and Hill development, the One Hill CBA Coalition will conduct a press briefing Today at 10 a.m. The purpose of the briefing will be to share the process by which One Hill reached credibility as the representative for the Hill District in CBA negotiations as well as the process used to come to community consensus regarding community demands."

YDAC Monthly Meeting
WHAT: Young Dems of Allegheny County Meeting
WHEN: Wednesday, August 29, 2007, 6:30 PM
WHERE: Allegheny Democratic Headquarters (810 River Ave, PGH, PA 15212)

"Join us for our monthly meeting. Candidates and Elected Officials are encouraged to attend. If you would like to speak at an upcoming meeting or would like to place a discussion item on our agenda, please fill out and submit this form from our website. We will be voting on changes to our by-laws to allow for the election next month." Visit the Young Democrats of Allegheny County on the Web: http://www.youngdemsallegheny.com

August 29, 2007

Public Hearing on State Act 55
WHAT: Public Hearing on State Act 55 for Non-profits and Tax Exemptions
WHEN: Thursday, August 30, 2007, 9:00 AM - Noon
WHERE: Pittsburgh City Council Chambers, City-County Building, 414 Grant Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15219 (Corner of Grant & Forbes, 5th Floor)

"This coming Thursday, August 30, the Pennsylvania Senate Finance Committee will hold a public hearing to "review" Act 55 of 1997, the Purely Public Charities Act...Act 55 is the law that allows hospitals, health insurers, and universities to avoid property taxation and other civic responsibilities." (More info at The Comet here.)

September 3, 2007

Register Voters on Labor Day
WHAT: Young Dems of Allegheny County (& Other Dems) registering voters
WHEN: Monday, September 3, 2007, 7:30 AM
WHERE: Center Ave and Mario Lemieux Place, Downtown Pittsburgh

"We will be joining other Democrats to help register as many new voters as possible at the Labor Day parade. We will meet at the location of the start of the parade...We will then march the course of the parade and encourge the spectators to make a difference on election day. Sign up here by clicking here!"

September 4 - 6, & 11 - 12, 2007

Pittsburgh Climate Initiative Town-hall Meetings
WHAT: Pittsburgh Climate Initiative Town-hall Meetings
WHEN: September 4 - 6, & 11 - 12, 2007
WHERE: North Side, Squirrel Hill, Greenfield, Downtown, Brookline (Meetings already took place in South Side, Mt. Washington & East End)

From ReformPittsburghNow: "The Pittsburgh Climate Protection Initiative is taking the show on the road. On Tuesday, September 4th, they will be at the Allegheny Unitarian Church and on Wednesday, September 5th, they will be at Wightman School in Squirrel Hill. More meetings are being planned and the details can be found at their website. The goal of these meetings is to hear from you on ways Pittsburgh can be proactive in lessening our emissions." Meeting details can be found here.

September 10, 2007

Pittsburgh City Council Post-Agenda Hearing on Police & Domestic Violence
WHAT: Post-Agenda Hearing on Police & Domestic Violence
WHEN: Monday, September 10, 2007, 1:30 PM (NOTE: meeting was originally set for 1:00 PM)
WHERE: Pittsburgh City Council Chambers, City-County Building, 414 Grant Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15219 (Corner of Grant & Forbes, 5th Floor)

Follow-up meeting to the Public Hearing concerning the Pittsburgh Police Department's policy regarding officers with histories of domestic violence. Please note that the time has changed from 1:00 Pm to 1:30 PM.

September 14 - 16, 2007

Camp Wellstone at Pittsburgh
WHAT: Camp Wellstone
WHEN: Friday - Sunday, September 14 - 16, 2007
WHERE: Pittsburgh, PA

"Camp Wellstone is for anyone who wants to improve their skills to organize and build political power, but is specifically geared towards people running or considering running for office, working on electoral campaigns, or organizing on issues in their communities. To learn more about Camp Wellstone, click here. If you can think of individuals, organizations, or campaigns that could benefit, please encourage them to attend. To register, sign up online here or visit www.wellstone.org ."

September 15, 2007

Forum on Open Government & Pennsylvania Open Records Law Workshop
WHAT: Open Government & Pennsylvania Open Records Law Workshop
WHEN: Saturday, September 15, 2007, 1:00 - 4:00 PM
WHERE: William Pitt Student Union on Pitt's Oakland campus, Pittsburgh PA

"Team 4 Investigative Reporter Jim Parsons and I [Bob Mayo] have been working on a special event and you're invited to join us. We think you'll find it interesting, whether you work in the news media or you're someone who wants to learn more about your rights as a Pennsylvania citizen to access pubic records...The event is co-sponsored by the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition." More info at Mayo's blog and you can RSVP at event's website here.
.

Mike Pintek's Feeble Argument

Caught a little of Night Talk last night. Mike Pintek interviewed Jennifer Victor, professor of Political Science over at Pitt.

It was an impressive choice for Pintek. He ususally interviews an obvious (and right-wing) partisan as a "political analyst" (Bill Green comes to mind here) but this time he actually seems to have snagged someone who spoke about politics without tilting the political scales in one direction or another.

And I think it threw Pintek a little - and that was fun to watch.

Anyway, they got around to discussing the latest Republican sex scandal when Pintek unveiled his defense. He asked "Isn't there something of a double standard at play here?" When Professor Victor asked what he meant, he brought up two sex scandals that involved Democrats: Gerry Studds' intern and Barney Frank's prostitution ring. Pintek said Studds was re-elected after the scandal hit and Barney Frank's still in the Congress after his scandal - I guess he was trying to point out how the Democrats go easy on their scandals, while the Republicans don't.

At this point I was feverishly trying to call in to correct the record. But all I got was a busy signal.

Let me point out a few things - perhaps someone can send Mr Pintek a link to this posting so perhaps he can learn a thing or two.

On Barney Frank.

Here's how Mediamatters describes things:

In August 1989, Stephen Gobie reportedly told The Washington Times that he ran a prostitution ring out of Frank's Washington, D.C., apartment and that Frank was aware of his operation. While Frank admitted to paying Gobie for sex several years earlier and to later hiring Gobie as an assistant, Frank denied any knowledge that Gobie allegedly ran a prostitution ring out of Frank's apartment. Frank maintained that he fired Gobie upon being told by one of his landlords that Gobie was using his residence for his prostitution business. As The Guardian reported on August 30, 1989, Frank actually "asked the House ethics committee ... to investigate his relationship with" Gobie.

The Boston Globe reported in 1990 that the House Ethics Committee found that Frank had "violated House rules by writing a misleading memo that was used in an effort to end prostitute Stephen Gobie's probation on felony charges and by allowing his House privileges to be used to waive 33 parking tickets that Gobie might have received while driving Frank's car." And for that, Frank was reprimanded in July of 1990.

The Ethics Committee absolved Frank of allegations that he was aware of any prostitution ring being run out of his house.

Not only that, but the Ethics Committee seems to have doubted that there was a prostitution ring in the first place. Here's Mediamatters quoting the ethics committee report:

Not only have Representative Frank's landlords, Colonel and Mrs. James Daugherty, submitted sworn testimony contradicting Mr. Gobie's assertion, Mr. Gobie's assertion has also been rendered questionable by the fact that his claims of call-forwarding service were contradicted by the telephone company.

Something else Mike Pintek didn't say. But take a look at when this all happened. This was 1990. And while it's true that the name of the man sitting in the Oval Office was "George Bush" it's still 17 years ago. Pintek is reaching back a generation to find this Democratic sex scandal.

On Gerry Studds.

Gerry Studds admitted to having an affair with a 17 year old male congressional page. That much Mike got right. What Mike Pintek didn't say was that Studds admitted this in 24 years ago in 1983. And the affair itself? It took place 10 years before that in 1973. So Pintek is reaching back 34 years to find this sex scandal involving a Democrat. By the way, the affair was consensual and the page, being 17 years old, was over the age of consent - so it was legal. The House censured him by a vote of 420-3.

It was embarrassing to watch, to be honest.

Another Bob comes into the world

I'm an aunt -- eight times over.

Happy Birthday, Bobby!

I'm not certain if you were born on the 28th or 29th, but I'm sure we'll get that all straightened out in the morning.

(Click here to see Bobby's big sister.)

Gonzales Finds New JobMoves to Pgh to Work for Ravenstahl Administration

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl remarked of the new hire, "Myself, I'm tired of questions about who I eat or play golf with. After an exhaustive national search I've found someone to advise me on ethics and honesty and Alberto Gonzales is my guy."

Ravenstahl added, "I'm moving forward with this thing and I better get some points in the media for diversity too."

After the mini press conference, Ravenstahl and Gonzales changed out of their suits and played nine holes. Mayor Ravenstahl said he would have preferred to get in 18 but it was, after all, a work day.

.

Gonzales' Resignation: Local Reactions

First the Trib. They only point out the US Attorney firings, not the torture or the domestic surveillance or the lying to Congress, just the US Attorney firings.

When Congress questioned the firing of several U.S. attorneys, Gonzales needed to say only one thing: "They served at the pleasure of the president. Under the Constitution neither the president nor his attorney general owes Congress an explanation."

Instead, Gonzales dug a hole defending a thing that required no defense.

Of course once it came out that the Republican US Attorneys were being fired because they weren't "loyal Bushies" enough, it tainted the rest of the US Attorneys everywhere as being little more than political appointees doing the bidding of the Bush White House - and that was the problem. And then he lied about it to Congress.

The P-G takes a different tack - they include some of (the now disgraced and soon-to-be former) AG "Fredo" Gonzales dubious accomplishments:

His fingerprints had been all over some of the worst excesses of the administration -- the expanding of presidential powers, the eavesdropping, the justifications for harsh treatment bordering on torture and the dubious rules for prosecuting detainees in the war on terror. He came under fire, justifiably, in March when it was revealed that the FBI had improperly used the Patriot Act to obtain information about people and businesses -- which was all of a piece with his earlier record.

Though I would, of course, quibble with the phrase "harsh treatment bordering on torture." When the International Red Cross says it's "tantamount" to torture, it is torture - not bordering on torture.

Both editorials, however, lay some of the blame at dubya's feet. The Trib:

We cannot leave this without assessing the performance of the president who promoted Gonzales largely because he was a friend.

And the P-G:

Mr. Gonzales was not chosen attorney general because of his legal scholarship but because he was an old friend from Texas who didn't know how to say no to Mr. Bush.

Heckova job, dubya. Heckova job.

Another Republican Sex Scandal

This time, Admiral, it's a US Senator.

It's Larry Craig Republican Senator from Idaho.

You know the drill - another "family values" guy. Another "family values" guy who's obviously in the closet. Another "family values" guy who's obviously in the closet who pleads guilty after being busted for lewd behaviour in an airport bathroom.

Now all that's left is his hypocrisy.

First Rummy, then Turd Blossom, now Abu Gonzales

The rats are either fleeing the sinking ship or resigning in disgrace . . .

Jesus, Mary and Joseph! If I hear one more talking head on TV spew how Alberto Gonzales embodies/lived "The American Dream" I'll start spewing chunks.

The American Dream does not include torture.

The American Dream does not include warrantless wiretaps on its citizens.

The American Dream does not include firing good US Attorneys because they won't play politics with justice.

The American Dream does not include lying to Congress.

The American Dream does not include advising the President of these United States that he can break any law and ignore the US Constitution.

Back on Friday, January 28, 2005, we published a post entitled "Unacceptable" at 2 Political Junkies that opened with:

It is simply unacceptable for the United States of America to have the prime legal architect for the policy of torture adopted by the Bush Dynasty as the Attorney General of this country.

A country founded on the rights of the individual cannot sanctify a person to be the Attorney General of these United States who sanctified torture as long as it wasn't "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

The US Attorney General's job is to function as the chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Government. In that capacity the US Attorney General provides assistance and guidance to the heads of executive departments of the Government.

We already know that Alberto R. Gonzales advised the President that the United States Constitution does not apply to his actions as Commander in Chief, and thus the President could declare the Geneva Conventions (which Gonzales views as "quaint") inoperative.

We know that Alberto R. Gonzales believes that the President has the power to ignore the Constitution, laws duly enacted by Congress and International treaties duly ratified by the United States.

These views are unacceptable in a US Attorney General.

For these reasons, the 2 Political Junkies blog opposes the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States, and we urge the Senate to reject him.

Anyone with half a brain should have known back then exactly what kind of justice to expect from Abu Gonzales:


They should have known that he was the kind of guy, for example, who would go over the head of the acting Attorney General to harass a sick old man (Ashcroft) in the ICU to try to get him to allow Abu to keep spying on the citizens of this country -- and lie to the Congress about the whole sick, sordid episode later.

For some recent examples of Abu's problems as covered by 2pj, you can click here. Even many Republicans could no longer stomach the guy.

But, let's not forget that when you hear the MSM call Abu the last of Bush's "Texas Mafia" in the White House how accurate that description is.

The Mafia needs sleazy attorneys to keep them in business and Gonzales was exactly that from the start. After all, he's the guy who in 1996 got Bush out of jury duty so that his DUI wouldn't come out before an election.


Alberto Gonzales and George W. Bush forgot that the United States Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States government. He's not supposed to be one of it's chief criminals.

But, it shouldn't end with his resignation. While Gonzales is now on his way out, he still must be held accountable for his illegal actions as must the rest of this gangland crew.

Three down,* two to go!**

* Rumsfeld, Rove, Gonzales
** Cheney, Bush

Pittsburgh (City Government) Ethics

Gary Rotstein has a piece in today's P-G that might require a little reading between the lines. Here's the set-up (from the Trib):

Pittsburgh's Ethics Hearing Board on Tuesday cleared Ravenstahl of violating ethics rules when he accepted the two days of free golf. His share was worth $9,000. The outing was acceptable because of an exception in Pittsburgh's rules for charitable events.

The law doesn't require public officials to stay within a maximum dollar limit, and Ravenstahl said playing in the tournament -- which was closed to the public -- wasn't a gift. Board members said they might consult other cities, and revise some rules.

In some cities where ethics rules are stricter, free golf is a gift, said [director of Baltimore's ethics board Avery] Aisenstark and other officials.

"Cleared" might not be the best word as what happened last week was a discussion rather than an investigation. There were no charges brought, no complaints filed, so there was nothing to "clear" exactly. But it's obvious that the board doesn't feel that the ethics code isn't specific enough about situations like this.

So it's looking to change the ethics code. Rotstein:

The five-member Ethics Hearing Board made clear to Mr. Ravenstahl last week that it hoped to persuade City Council to change the code to address occasions of large-scale, third-party gifts, such as sponsorship of his golf play by UPMC and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Why are they looking to chage the code, unless they thought that what Mayor Luke did was wrong?

All kinds of questions can arise from such high-end outings: How much does a public official benefit by participating? Is his participation helpful to the charity? Does it matter who invited and paid for him? How much does the dollar value of the sponsorship matter?

In questioning the mayor about his participation, the ethics board members -- who stressed it was a discussion, not an investigation -- made clear they believe such third-party sponsorships can give a bad appearance. Both UPMC and the Penguins have had high-profile dealings with the city this year.

The state ethics code is little help:

Pennsylvania's ethics code also applies to all municipal officials, but it is worded rather generally and the state commission has had no case with the same issues as the mayor's golf outing to establish any precedent, said John Contino, the commission's executive director.

"The rule on direct gifts is no public official may accept a gift if it's intended to influence decision-making," he said.

Unless you want to assume that even though UPMC and the Penguins shelled out more money than many Pittsburghers make in a year for young Luke to play a couple of days of golf and that they had absolutely positively hand-on-the-bible cross-my-heart-hope-to-die no intention of influencing any decisions our well-dressed mayor will be making about the millions of dollars of business those two corporations have before the city, then all is well.

Jack Kelly Sunday

Take a look at today's column by Jack Kelly. It's only partially surprising that he trots out, at one point, the old war horse blaming of 9/11 on Bill Clinton at least in part. I say partially because that argument's been a standard of the wingnut right from about 9/12. Need some evidence? Here's Bill Press, then at CNN, writing in mid-October, 2oo1:

The attacks of September 11 were only a few hours old when conservative Congressman Dana Rohrbacher, R-California, blamed Clinton, not the terrorists: “We had Bill Clinton, backing off, letting the Taliban go, over and over again.”

Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh trumpeted on the pages of the Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Clinton can be held culpable for not doing enough when he was commander-in-chief to combat the terrorists who wound up attacking the World Trade Center and Pentagon.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who resigned in disgrace, also chimed in, citing Clinton’s “pathetically weak, ineffective ability to focus and stay focused.”

Jack begins his tale in Seattle. The FBI up there has been circulating the photos of a couple of men who they said were acting suspiciously on the state ferries up there. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer refused to publish the photos. The reason?

"We have no confirmation that these men's behavior was anything but innocuous, and to forever taint them by associating them with terrorism under these circumstances is not consistent with our policy," said managing editor David McCumber.

To Jack, that's enough. Those two guys were acting suspiciously and so their photos should be plastered all over the area, tagging them as terrorists. Jack's criticism is that they Seattle P-I is taking the "law enforcement approach" to terror. The FBI, he writes, thinks it's more important to keep a ferry from being bombed than it is to arrest the bombers afterward.

See? They're already bombers to Jack Kelly. Bombers that need to be stopped.

However, from the P-I's reporting earlier this week of the incident:

The FBI has no information suggesting that a terrorist attack on the ferry system is imminent, [Special Agent Robbie] Burroughs said.

For weeks, the FBI has been trying to identify the men through "normal law enforcement channels," she said.

So not only did the FBI have no information that a terrorist attack was imminent but the Bureau, too, seems to be taking the "law enforcement approach" in tracking down these guys.

Something Jack didn't tell us.

Also, I gotta ask: if the guys were actually planning to commit an act of terror, isn't that already a crime? So Jack's simple reasoning of "they think that until the bomb goes off, there's no crime" is just nuts, as his his projection of it onto Democrats in Congress.

But let's get to the meat of the column.

We were reminded of the weakness of the law enforcement approach by the release last week of the executive summary of the report of the CIA's inspector general on the CIA's performance before 9/11. The CIA was hamstrung in its efforts to fight al-Qaida by severe budget cuts imposed by the Clinton administration, but then CIA Director George Tenet did a poor job of managing the funds he had, and never developed an overall strategy to fight terror, the IG report said.

There it is! The CIA was hamstrung by budget cuts - and so it's CLINTON'S fault. I used to read Kelly's column always wondering how long it took him to blame whatever he was writing about on the Clinton Administration. This column he pushes the wingnut button in the 8th (out of 13) paragraph. By the way, here's what the report actually says:

Funding for the Agency's counterterrorism programs increased significantly from Fiscal Year (FY)1998 to FY2001 as a result of supplemental appropriations. These funds were appropriated, in part, because of the efforts of the CIA's director and senior leaders to convince the administration and Congress that the Agency was short of resources for counterterrorism and other resources.

That was page 6. On page 7 it says:

The Team did find, however, that during the same period they were appealing the shortage of resources, senior officials were not effectively managing the Agency's counterterrorism funds.

So Jack got it half right. The CIA's funds for counterterrorism, according to this report "increased significantly" from '98 to '01. Wasn't Bill Clinton president in 1998? 1999? 2000? In fact, the CIA was redistributing funds away from its counterterrorism programs though:

The Team found that the Agency made little use of the Reserve for Contingencies to support its counterterrorism effort. Finally CTC managers did not spend all of the funds in their base budget, even after it had been reduced by diversions of funds to other programs.

But to Jack Kelly, there were severe budget cuts during the Clinton Administration that lead to the CIA's failures to stop 9/11. Couldn't help himself, I guess.

Then there's this about Michael Scheuer:

Counter-terror efforts also were crippled by President Clinton's insistence that Osama bin Laden be arrested rather than assassinated, Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA's bin Laden unit, has said. The IG report acknowledges this was a problem, but "concludes the Agency's covert action against bin Laden lay not in the language and interpretations of its authorities, but in the limitations of its covert action capabilities."

However, Michael Scheuer has also said:

But what troubles me most is Tenet's handling of the opportunities that CIA officers gave the Clinton administration to capture or kill bin Laden between May 1998 and May 1999. Each time we had intelligence about bin Laden's whereabouts, Tenet was briefed by senior CIA officers at Langley and by operatives in the field. He would nod and assure his anxious subordinates that he would stress to Clinton and his national security team that the chances of capturing bin Laden were solid and that the intelligence was not going to get better. Later, he would insist that he had kept up his end of the bargain, but that the NSC had decided not to strike.

Since 2001, however, several key Clinton counterterrorism insiders (including NSC staffers Richard A. Clarke, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon) have reported that Tenet consistently denigrated the targeting data on bin Laden, causing the president and his team to lose confidence in the hard-won intelligence. "We could never get over the critical hurdle of being able to corroborate Bin Ladin's whereabouts," Tenet now writes. That of course is untrue, but it spared him from ever having to explain the awkward fallout if an attempt to get bin Laden failed. None of this excuses Clinton's disinterest in protecting Americans, but it does show Tenet's easy willingness to play for patsies the CIA officers who risked their lives to garner intelligence and then to undercut their work to avoid censure if an attack went wrong.

Setting aside the "Clinton's disinterest in protecting Americans" crap, Scheuer himself lays the blame at Tenet's feet.

The same George Tenet who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by the current occupant of the Oval Office.

And it only took me that long to criticize dubya.

Assault on Reason

Tony Norman's column today is another of his "reading list" pieces:

Enough readers have asked me to put together a list of books I've read or have been in the process of reading this year, so it doesn't feel like a completely delusional exercise on my part. Lately, I've developed a taste for classic science fiction, Jason Bourne thrillers and Stephen King novels that aren't reflected on this list. Like many readers, I'm usually reading several books at a time. What follows is merely the stuff that is allegedly good for you:

The first on his list?

"The Assault on Reason" by Al Gore. Even some of my liberal buddies think this book is dull. I couldn't disagree more. Mr. Gore's analytical critique of the Bush administration's fear-based politics and its notorious indifference to fact-based reasoning only feels obvious after he's explained it. If only the leading Democratic presidential candidates were this "dull."

That would be me. Here's what I wrote on August 9:

It's not that I disagreed with anything I read in Gore's book - far from it. It's an important work that everyone should read, no question. But while it may or may not be written by Gore alone, it certainly sounds like it's a work written by a committee all trying to sound like Al Gore.

It's an odd torture, of sorts. You know each page contains important ideas. But sitting through (and sifting through) the text...oh god. Not fun.

So Tony, if it means that much to you, I'll try to plow through it again. I'll have to set aside Warren Weaver's book on probability and of course Marvel Zombies, but I'll try.

If anything, I'll get more sleep.

Altmire/Hoyer Press Conference

As mentioned here, Congressman Jason Altmire was in Pittsburgh today and he had with him House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. Altmire was in town to raise his own political profile and Hoyer was in town stumping for Altmire (who may be running against Missy Hart again, doncha know). With the staffs and a smattering of media, there were some invited veterans. Army, Navy and so on.

Ostensibly, the two were here to discuss legislation making its way through Congress; one ensuring early screening of Iraq war veterans for Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI) and the other to strengthen the Family Medical Leave Act.

The press conference (my first, by the way, as a blogger) was held in the courtyard of the Family Court Division downtown. Right away, let me say how difficult it was to find the door to this place. Also, the walls were three or four stories high, with no windows. The place was like a prison or something. And it was hot, too hot. Tarzan couldn't take this kind of hot.

Ok, maybe I am over stating. But it was very hot. And muggy.

The press conference was to take place in front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at the courtyard, though it was decided just before to have the press folks (myself included) huddle around the Congressmen

It was hot out. Even in the shade, it was hot.

5:00 and it was supposed to begin. Altmire was there with his staff chatting with a few invited veterans, Hoyer had not yet arrived. Cheerful hellos all around.

Did I mention yet how hot it was?

After some last minute police security bustle, Congressman Hoyer arrived with some of his staff. Introductions. back and forth. Hoyer, when I introduced myself as a "local blogger" (what else was I going to say?), joked about how bloggers were the newest thing. Though everything was very completely stress-free, I did notice a suit hanging back at the far doorway - a dark suit who's jacket didn't quite fit around the hips, speaking occasionally into a palm microphone. Interesting.

KQV was there as was Brown of the Trib.

Altmire went first. He pointed out how he considered the health care of the nation's veterans to be a "#1 priority" and talked a little about two of his bills incorporated into the Recommendations made by the Dole/Shalala Commission. They've increased funding to the VA by $15 Billion - a system, Altmire said, had been chronically underfunded. Someone had to be held accountable for Walter Reed.

Hoyer continued. After praising Altmire for having an extraordinary impact on The House, he expanded on the points Altmire began with. Honor the vets and honor the troops and so on. He then got down to some details. The reason that TBI is the "signature injury of the war in Iraq" is because (and here's the irony) medical science has progressed a great deal in the past few decades. Soldiers and Marines are surviving wounds in Iraq that would have killed 40 years ago in Vietnam. Hoyer had some statistics. In Vietnam, there was one death to every three injuries. In Iraq, the number is one to sixteen.

Unfortunately a great deal of those injuries are TBI. Sometimes diagnosis is missed. With early detection (which is mandated in Altmire's bill) much needed treatment can begin.

When asked about the cost of strengthening the Family Medical Leave Act, Hoyer answered by saying that with this Congress, the Democrats have instituted a "pay as you go" system. So whatever increase there'd be, it would not increase the already huge national debt.

On the war, Hoyer was quite clear in saying that the Democrats support the troops and are showing that support by working to get them out of harms way.

Some of the details that followed - eh, not so much.

"It's time to change course," he said. And troop withdrawal should be "sooner rather than later" beginning to move them at a "reasonable time" in under a year. All-in-all a political solution is necessary - not a military one.

When I asked what exactly Congressman Altmire meant by accountability for Walter Reed, he said that Congress has to ascertain why it happened and who's responsible - why it took an article in the Washington Post to bring the situation to light. Complaints, he said, had been raised for a long time he said - even in the Congress. Hoyer added that the previous Congresses exercised little oversight over many things. What happened at Walter Reed was going on for a long time. With no oversight.

And then with a few photos, it was done. The press conference was over.

Confidential Letter to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl

NOTE: This letter is meant only for our Mayor (I know his Mom reads thelocal blogs and hope she'll send him a link). I would ask everyone else toplease read no further and I thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Dear Mayor Luke:

I hope that this does not seem rude or presumptuous of me, but I'm beginning to fear that you have difficulty understanding the meaning of certain words and I feel compelled to try to help. I've put together a brief glossary of the words/concepts that seem to elude you most. Feel free to print this, cut out the glossary and keep it taped to the wall of your office or, better still, carry a copy around in your wallet.

Technical Terms for New Pittsburgh Mayors:

	CHARITY: This is when someone gives something to help someone else. For example, when UPMC and the Penguins gave you $9,000 worth of tickets to a charitable event, you were not giving charity, you were receiving charity or a gift (see below) because as you yourself noted, you could not have afforded to attend that golf outing on your own salary. Therefore, you were the needy person receiving help.
	GIFT: This is when you get something without paying for it. Being from the Old Boy School of Politics, you may want to note that envelopes stuffed with cash are not the only things that constitute a gift.
	INVITATION: This concept seems to give you some trouble. The dictionary defines this as: "A spoken or written request for someone's presence or participation." There are subtleties to the concept that, again, you may want to note, such as most people wait for an invitation and do not request one. Secondly, if you do request an invitation and the person says that they will "get back to you" and don't, you should not consider yourself invited. Thirdly, if you have not received an invitation and then proceed to show up anyway, you're not a "guest." You're a "crasher."
	WORK: Unless you are a golf pro (one who is actually paid for the act of golfing), golfing is generally not considered to be work and it is generally frowned upon to golf during work hours.

Quick Review (Answer Key below):
Q.1 Ron Burkle (or some other billionaire) invites you to ride on his private plane to NYC (LA, Miami, etc.) and you have such a good time you can't remember exactly where you spent the night. Should this be considered:
A. INVITATION & WORK
B. CHARITY & WORK
C. INVITATION & GIFT

Q.2 Your childhood hero comes to a nearby town to attend a private function for which guests have paid a good bit of money. You just show up. Should this be considered:
A. INVITATION & WORK
B. INVITATION & GIFT
C. CRASHING

Q.3 A group of scary angry women/scary Hill residents expect you to attend a meeting. You go golfing instead. Should this be considered:
A. WORK
B. CHARITY
C. NOT WORK

Q.4 You are in line to attend a Steelers game. While waiting, you conclude that, "Myself and everybody else that was in the front of the line at that point simply had no control over our bodies or anything." You therefore decide to start a shouting match with a police officer in which you use naughty words. You end up being led away in handcuffs. Should this be considered:
A. WORK
B. CHARITY
C. CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR

Answer Key:
While this may be difficult for you to believe, the correct answers are all "C."

Next Lesson: we will devote our entire time to tackling the challenging concept of LYING.

Bush Gets It Right!

Compares Iraq to Vietnam:




Countdown's take on that here:

Some Previously Secret FISA Details

According to the AP, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell revealed to The El Paso (Texas) Times some previously secret details:

• McConnell confirmed for the first time that the private sector assisted with President Bush's warrantless surveillance program. AT&T, Verizon and other telecommunications companies are being sued for their cooperation. "Now if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed, it would bankrupt these companies," McConnell said, arguing that they deserve immunity for their help.
  
• He provided new details on court rulings handed down by the 11- member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves classified eavesdropping operations and whose proceedings are almost always entirely secret. McConnell said a ruling that went into effect May 31 required the government to get court warrants to monitor communications between two foreigners if the conversation travels on a wire in the U.S. network. Millions of calls each day do, because of the robust nature of the U.S. systems.
  
• McConnell said it takes 200 hours to assemble a FISA warrant on a single telephone number. "We're going backwards," he said. "We couldn't keep up."
  
• Offering never-disclosed figures, McConnell also revealed that fewer than 100 people inside the United States are monitored under FISA warrants. However, he said, thousands of people overseas are monitored.

Actually in the interview he called them "man hours" - I'll leave it to others to sort out the gender politics at play in that sentence.

He also said that Americans will die because of the discussion about FISA:

Q. So you're saying that the reporting and the debate in Congress means that some Americans are going to die?

A. That's what I mean. Because we have made it so public. We used to do these things very differently, but for whatever reason, you know, it's a democratic process and sunshine's a good thing. We need to have the debate. The reason that the FISA law was passed in 1978 was an arrangement was worked out between the Congress and the administration, we did not want to allow this community to conduct surveillance, electronic surveillance, of Americans for foreign intelligence unless you had a warrant, so that was required. So there was no warrant required for a foreign target in a foreign land. And so we are trying to get back to what was the intention of '78. Now because of the claim, counterclaim, mistrust, suspicion, the only way you could make any progress was to have this debate in an open way.

And so it goes.

P-G Editorial Board: Luke Doesn't Get It

From today's editorial. After the board points out that Mayor Luke told the ethics board that he received nothing of value, they state the obvious:

Excuse us, not only did he play golf at an exclusive club with UPMC and Penguins executives, but the mayor's foursomes also included Penguins star Sidney Crosby and former NFL quarterback Joe Theismann. The event was so memorable that the mayor didn't mind showing reporters, in his office after the hearing, two photos of his golfing groups. Yet he downplayed the whole event before the ethics panel.

"The only thing of value I received was knowing I played a small part in seeing the work of the foundation will continue," the mayor told the board. "This was not a gift to me. I received nothing from UPMC."

It's true that no one gave Luke Ravenstahl a check for $9,000, but his two-day golf treat reminds us of the boy whose grandparents take him to Kennywood Park for the day. They pay the little shiner's $19 admission, only to hear the boy say later, "My grandparents gave me nothing of value. All I received was knowing I played a small part in the continued vitality of a cherished local institution."

And they hit the "Luke is immature" button one more time:

While the mayor may not have violated the city ethics code (it exempts charities from its limits on free event admissions for city officials), his failure to see how his actions could create an appearance of impropriety should be a big worry for all Pittsburghers. His lack of an apology betrays a certain immaturity.

As Mark DeSantis said, the fact the mayor doesn't see it is astounding.

More Law Breaking By The Bush Administration

How surprising.

From the Bloomberg News.

The Bush administration violated U.S. law by failing to produce a study on the impact of global warming and must issue a summary by March, a federal judge ruled.

District Judge Saundra Armstrong in Oakland, California, said the U.S. government "unlawfully withheld action'' required under the Global Change Research Act of 1990 to update a research plan and scientific assessment of climate change.

Again, how surprising.

Caption Contest

How would you caption this picture?

Best caption wins a beer. A good one, too. Like a Yingling or something.

Altmire Press Conference

NOTE: An earlier version of this posting went out early this morning. After rereading it at work, I was unhappy with some of the tone of it. It felt a little too "snarky blogger to ambush a politico." Not that I have anything against ambushing a politico, I just didn't want that particular message sent this morning.

Re-written.

Got a press release yesterday that said this:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (MD-5) will join Congressman Jason Altmire (PA-4) Thursday in Pittsburgh to discuss the accomplishments of the 110th Congress in providing real support for our troops and veterans, including legislation authored by Congressman Altmire that will ensure the proper screening and treatment of traumatic brain injuries (TBI), the signature injury of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that will extend Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) benefits to family members of military personnel who are deployed.

As it's a press conference and as I'm not exactly mainstream press (I am a poor wayfaring blogger/Trav'ling through this world of woe...), I'm hoping to get in and ask a few questions. Mostly about supporting the troops. For instance, we've heard ad infitinum how it's impossible to support the troops and yet disagree with the war. We read a while back about the scandalous conditions at Walter Reed. What are they doing to make sure the troops (and their families) are taken care of? What's being done to hold the administration accountable?

Time permitting, I'd like to ask about Congressman Altmire's vote in favor (and Congressman Hoyer's vote against) the recent restructuring of the FISA statute. If my memory serves me correctly, he said on Night Talk the other night that he's unhappy with the bill that he voted for and is looking forward to revisiting the issue in 6 months. What parts is he unhappy with? How would he change them?

Questions...

DeSantis On The Ravenstahl "Dialogue"

There's been some follow up in the press today over Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's appearance before the city's Ethics Committee. The P-G's Gary Rotstein wrote:

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl insisted to members of the city Ethics Hearing Board today that there was nothing wrong with his participation in a celebrity golf outing, but board officials said they may want new rules clarifying such events.

And a few paragraphs later got to the quotation that should eventually haunt Mayor Luke:

"This was not a gift to me -- I received nothing," he said. "It would be different if I was the [beneficiary] of $9,000. I wasn't."

The story made it onto the AP:

The five-member Ethics Hearing Board questioned Ravenstahl about the June golf outing and about his $9,000 entrance fee, which was paid for by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The board asked whether the arrangement could give the public the perception that the mayor won't be impartial when doing business with the hospital network, the city's biggest employer.

Nice to see it's made it onto the national press.

Not that any of this sways Mark DeSantis, Republican mayoral candidate. "It's not about living up to some bureaucratic language," he told me this evening. He said the code of ethics describes the minimum performance level for a public official. A good public servant has to go above and beyond those minimum requirements.

He repeated his call for the mayor not to accept any gratuities from any entity doing business or looking to do business with the city.

But beyond all that. I ask him whether the mayor had violated the ethics code or just the spirit of the ethics code.

"I think he violated the ethics code." DeSantis said, with little hesitation. Along with the spirit. He bases this on his assertion that no one else would have been able to walk up to that event and get what UPMC and the Penguins paid for him to get. Therefore it's something of value.

"He took something of value." He said. "The fact [the mayor] doesn't see it is astounding."

Frustrating coverage of Lil Mayor Luke's "dialog" with Ethics Board

As The Burgher correctly notes, the most salient fact of Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's UPMC/Penguins two-day golf outing is that it he didn't attend the event at the behest/largesse of the charity itself, but that the interested parties of UPMC and the Penguins gave him tickets to the event as a gift.

While watching Bob Mayo's story about this on WTAE's noon broadcast, I was pleased to see this issue mentioned and wrote it down in my notes. I see from an online clip that Jon Delano also brought it up at the top of his piece at KDKA (sorry, WPXI, but KDKA is the only one of the three stations whose video clips I can watch online).

However, when I went to find the online 'TAE story to quote from (and link to), that key point was no where to be found. Nor is it really in the online written edition at KDKA's website. Nor is it brought up in the Post-Gazette's article***.

This is extremely frustrating.

They all did note that Lil Mayor Luke claimed, "This was not a gift to me -- I received nothing." Apparently unless Lukey gets an envelope stuffed with cash like a bride at an Italian wedding, it doesn't count.

One might be forgiven for thinking that this makes our Mayor seem rather dense or very slow.

And, if he isn't dense or slow than he needs an ethics board to follow him around 24/7.

I also bet there's some golfers out there who would like some of that "nothing."

(And, yes, Bram live-blogged the "hearing" here.)

***Bonus Points to Steve Mellon for capturing this classic photo of Luke and for the P-G for printing it:


Aaaw, c'mon, yinz guys got nothin' on me!.

The God Squad!

You might want to check out this news story by Shreveport KSLA 12's news report:

Homeland Security Enlists Clergy to Quell Public Unrest if Martial Law Ever Declared
Yes, apparently one of the biggest problems that our government anticipates having during a natural disaster or attack is its citizens.

To help out with that, the Department of Homeland Security has God Squads "Clergy Response Teams" to keep us in line keep us comforted.

Such clergy response teams would walk a tight-rope during martial law between the demands of the government on the one side, versus the wishes of the public on the other. "In a lot of cases, these clergy would already be known in the neighborhoods in which they're helping to diffuse that situation," assured Sandy Davis. He serves as the director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13. Dr. Tuberville elaborated, "because the government's established by the Lord, you know. And, that's what we believe in the Christian faith. That's what's stated in the scripture."

Apparently it's already been tried with Katrina -- and we all know how well that worked out...

(Heck of a job, GODie?)

Here's the video:

I'd be seriously interested in knowing the denominational makeup of the chaplains that they are recruiting.

(h/t to Shakesville)

Framing (One Mo' Time)

C-SPAN's Washington Journal had two bloggers on yesterday. The first was Matt Stoller of MyDD and now of OpenLeft.com. While C-SPAN often has Democrats on, Matt's unabashed, nearly giddy anti Bush/anti Republican stance was great fun to watch. (An elderly female caller asked the host how could they put on such trash after Matt left. I'm guessing he would have gotten a kick out of that.)

The second blogger was Liz Mair a self-proclaimed "Fresh Voice - a libertarian Republican."

Actually, I was finding Ms. Mair quite reasonable for either a Libertarian or a Republican but then she let the mask slip when she said, "Democrats voted against body armor for the troops."

This is called framing, folks.

If I could have gotten a call through I would have said "And, Republicans voted to have our troops shot at in a civil war."

That would also be framing.

You like potato and I like potahto
You like tomato and I like tomahto
Potato, potahto, Tomato, tomahto
Screw you Rethugs and your sick, fucking framing
.

Mayor Luke To Face The Music Today - Sorta

Both the P-G and the Trib have articles out today pointing out that today's the day Mayor Luke faces the city's Ethics Board.

Bram's posted on the Trib article already. There's not much more in the P-G. Here's how Blazina begins:

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl will tell the city Ethics Hearing Board today why he believes he didn't violate the city's ethics policy when he participated in a charity golf outing as the guest of two organizations that do business with the city.

The framing is at the very least embarrassing to Mayor Luke. He has to show how he hasn't violated the City Code - and the last part of the sentence reminds us that he had some fun on someone else's dime.

Here's the City Code, by the way, if anyone wants to follow along at home.

Checks and Balances, Cheney Style!

Yesterday at a press conference, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said this:

In fact, we were about to issue subpoenas then and one of the senators came to our meeting and said that the vice president had met with the Republican senators and told them they were not allowed to issue subpoenas.

Not quite sure that’s my understanding of the separation of powers, but it seemed to work at that time.

It's about 3/4 of the way through the video at Think Progress.

Impeach.

Mike Pintek, This Evening.

I caught a few minutes of Mike Pintek this evening. He was chatting with Congressman Jason Altmire on John McIntire's old show.

They spent most of the time talking about the Congressman's recent trip to the Middle East - which is where Pintek made some mistakes.

Bad Pintek, bad bad Pintek.

He said a few stupid things (they really need to update the talking points over there - I mean he's still plagiarizing Bill O'Reilly on Billo's dailykos rant - something about how the dailykos is the KKK of the left.

But the big mistake he made (and I am sorry to say Congressman Altmire followed suit) was in calling it "General Patraeus' report" when we've actually known since the middle of last week, that the report will actually be written by the White House. Hidden at the tail end of an article from the LA Times (7th paragraph from the end, no less) we find this:

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

In fact a majority of the American people, according to a poll done by CNN, already don't trust the report:

A majority of Americans don't trust the upcoming report by the Army's top commander in Iraq on the progress of the war and even if they did, it wouldn't change their mind, according to a new poll.

This report came a day after the LA Times article - note CNN's use of "report by the Army's top commander..."

He also continued the myth that O'Hanlon and Pollack were critics of the Bush administration while failing to point out the many times they were wrong about the war.

Mikey even pointed to this statement from Senators Levin and Warner, to show that the surge is working. Pintek seemed to be focussed on the first part of this sentence, while ignoring the second:

While we believe that the "surge" is having measurable results, and has provided a degree of "breathing space" for Iraqi politicians to make the political compromises which are essential for a political solution in Iraq, we are not optimistic about the prospects for those compromises. [emphasis added]

They failed completely, of course, to even mention this column from Sunday's NYTimes:

Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. [emphasis added]

And so on.

All-in-all your typical Pintek spin. It's not even very interesting.

Karl Rove Update

I can remember hearing New KDKA radio guy, Kevin Miller, say on the air Karl Rove had nothing to do with the Plame case.

This clip should (SHOULD - but remember, we're talking rightwing talk radio where fact ne'er intrude) put that story to rest.

Here's the clip.

The important part happens at the end, with Matt Cooper. Here's a transcript of that portion (h/t to Crooks and Liars):

David Gregory: Matt Cooper, let’s pick up on an aspect of the interview with, with Karl Rove having to do with the leak case, the CIA leak case, that you were part of as well. And something’s that’s very interesting, he, he went out of his way to say, “I would not have been a confirming source on this kind of information” and taking issue with, with Novak’s testimony in his column that he knew who Valerie Plame was. He said he would never confirm that information. That’s different from your experience with him.

Cooper: Yeah, I, I think he was dissembling, to put it charitably. Look, Karl Rove told me about Valerie Plame’s identity on July 11th, 2003. I called him because Ambassador Wilson was in the news that week. I didn’t know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove and he said that she worked at the agency and she worked on WMD. I mean, to imply that he didn’t know about it or that this was all the leak…

Gregory: Or that he had heard it from somebody else…

Cooper: …by someone else, or he heard it as some rumor out in the hallway is, is nonsense.

Gregory: But he makes no apologies to Valerie Plame.

Cooper: Karl Rove never apologizes. That’s not what he does..

For those keeping score at home, Robert Novak's column where we all read this:

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me that Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counterproliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me.

Was published on July 14th, three days after the phone call Cooper described. Three days after Rove leaked the information to Cooper.

For Kevin Miller (or for that fact for anyone) to say that Karl Rove had nothing to do with the leak is just plain wrong.

How wrong? This wrong:

Good Morning, Pittsburgh.

Sunday. Jack Kelly. Global Warming. Spin.

Sigh. I thought we'd gotten further than this. With great disappointment, I guess I have to accept that this week's column by Jack Kelly is strong evidence that he does not, in fact, read this blog.

Or else he would have seen this posting from Thursday. Perhaps if he'd seen it, he would have saved himself a whole mess of embarrassment.

No matter. We'll just retrace our steps.

He begins:

Al Gore claimed in his 2006 crockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" that nine of the 10 hottest years in history have been in the last decade, with 1998 the warmest year on record.

Not so, says the GISS, which is affiliated with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Columbia University, and is headed by Dr. James Hansen, scientific godfather of global warming alarmism. According to the GISS, the hottest years ever in the United States were, in order: 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938 and 1939.

He then goes on to retell the Trib's editorial in analysed in Thursday's posting. Hey, here's an interesting question: How much of a difference is there between the newly corrected temperature data from 1934 and 1998?

Here's how a real climate scientist, Gavin Schmidt, describes things:

The net effect of the change was to reduce mean US anomalies by about 0.15 ºC for the years 2000-2006. There were some very minor knock on effects in earlier years due to the GISTEMP adjustments for rural vs. urban trends. In the global or hemispheric mean, the differences were imperceptible (since the US is only a small fraction of the global area).

There were however some very minor re-arrangements in the various rankings (see data). Specifically, where 1998 (1.24 ºC anomaly compared to 1951-1980) had previously just beaten out 1934 (1.23 ºC) for the top US year, it now just misses: 1934 1.25ºC vs. 1998 1.23ºC. None of these differences are statistically significant.

For those with a calculator, that's two one hundredths of a degree.

I should point out that nowhere in his story (and this matches The Trib more or less exactly) does Jack Kelly mention that the errors affected the US data a tiny bit and the global data not at all.

Schmidt goes on. First about the US data:

More importantly for climate purposes, the longer term US averages have not changed rank. 2002-2006 (at 0.66 ºC) is still warmer than 1930-1934 (0.63 ºC - the largest value in the early part of the century) (though both are below 1998-2002 at 0.79 ºC). (The previous version - up to 2005 - can be seen here).

And then about the global data:

In the global mean, 2005 remains the warmest (as in the NCDC analysis). CRU has 1998 as the warmest year but there are differences in methodology, particularly concerning the Arctic (extrapolated in GISTEMP, not included in CRU) which is a big part of recent global warmth. No recent IPCC statements or conclusions are affected in the slightest.

And he sums up:

Sum total of this change? A couple of hundredths of degrees in the US rankings and no change in anything that could be considered climatically important (specifically long term trends).

And yet to Jack Kelly, it's enough to shake the foundations of climate science.

Let's fact check some more of Jack's column. I got some time. Here's Jack:

The United States is only 2 percent of the world's land mass. It's possible the rest of the world's been getting hotter in the last few years, even if the United States hasn't. But as Lorne Gunter of Canada's National Post noted, we only have surface temperature readings for half the world today. Prior to World War II, we had readings for less than a quarter of it.

So who is this Lorne Gunter? Is he an expert in some way?

He's a "right-of-centre" columnist from Alberta, Canada. The short column from which Kelly takes the above information is another skeptical view of the global climate change data. In that instance it's a four paragraph over-simplification of how temperature data has been collected by weather satellites.

But Kelly's finale is true to form. Here's the last two paragraphs:

As the GISS was quietly acknowledging its error, Newsweek magazine, with exquisitely bad timing, declared in an Aug. 13 cover story that the debate on global warming was over.

"The story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading," wrote Newsweek contributing editor Robert Samuelson in the following issue.

Again, this is the error about the US data that was not statistically significant nor does it affect the IPCC's conclusions in the slightest. Jack Kelly quotes Robert Samuelson as saying the story is "fundamentally misleading." But what part of the story? That the planet is warming up? That the debate on global warming is over?

Uh, no. Here's the Samuelson piece. Here's the article Samuelson is talking about. And here's the paragraph where Kelly found the phrase "fundamentally misleading."

If you missed NEWSWEEK's story, here's the gist. A "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change." This "denial machine" has obstructed action against global warming and is still "running at full throttle." The story's thrust: discredit the "denial machine," and the country can start the serious business of fighting global warming. The story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading.

So what was "funamentally misleading" to Samuelson centered on the "denial machine" not about whether the debate is over. Here's an example:

...NEWSWEEK's "denial machine" is a peripheral and highly contrived story. NEWSWEEK implied, for example, that ExxonMobil used a think tank to pay academics to criticize global-warming science. Actually, this accusation was long ago discredited, and NEWSWEEK shouldn't have lent it respectability.

Samuelson spends more time writing that, whatever the truth, we probably can't do much about global anyway. And what, pray tell, does he say about the global warming "debate" itself?

Global warming has clearly occurred; the hard question is what to do about it.

Too bad Jack isn't reading this. It might stop him from making similar mistakes in the future.

Reform Pittsburgh Now Site

Blogging from Podcamp downtown.

I just came from the press conference announcing the official opening of Reform Pittsburgh Now website. Looks like an interesting idea.

Councilman Bill Peduto ran the show with the newly famous and ever apple-cheeked Justine sitting just to his left. The room was dark (better to see the projected websites, my dear) and cool and completely full. Agent Ska was there with her camera. Rauterkus live blogged. I felt completely old-skool with a pen and paper.

As far as I can tell, the website's a blending, a co-mingling if you will, in an odd post-modern Reece's Peanut Butter Cups sort of way, of local politics and something Bill Peduto called "social media." Justine et al were to be the "social media" part of the venture. Peduto's former campaign manager Matt Preston will be in charge.

Peduto began the announcement by saying that the Pittsburgh city council will have a new make-up in January as three of the nine will be newcomers. But as yet there's no new agenda to reform the city. This is where the website and it's related Political Action Committee come in.

PACs are usually run, he said, by special interest groups, law firms, lobbyists, and the like. This PAC, he said, will be different. Run out of cyberspace, pushing for reform and transparency in local government, it'll be something new in these parts. It'll be a new way for more people to get involved in the process.

In an earlier session today, I heard Cynthia Closkey and Christina Schulman discuss how blogs can create a community of readers. In the case of Reform Pittsburgh Now, Peduto's looking to form a community of people all linked by their own interest in reforming the local political scene. He's looking to to raise the bar above the "personality politics" that's been the status quo for so long and to create an interactive forum for local folks to be better involved in the process.

There'll be a calendar of events, a library for public documents and so on. In a few months, there'll be so much material in the website's "library" that one could spend every minute of a weekend and still not have enough time to get through it all. Every minute of a weekend (48 hours x 60 minutes/hour) is, I think, 2,880 minutes. That's a lot of minutes.

I was curious about the funding, though. In the question period after the presentation, I asked how all this was being paid for. Bill said that the first $3000 came from his mayoral campaign account. The after that, he approached political types of every stripe for funding.

The PAC, as it's set up, is prohibited from endorsing particular candidates. When asked how it could then influence any politicians, he said that the PAC (and the website) would be making it easier for people to contact officials on their own. That's the pressure.

Bottom line, he said, was to make it fun - get the negativity out of local politics.

Sounds like a good idea.

BREAKING NEWS:Steely McBeam Begins Feasting On Pittsburgh's Children

When reached for comment, he said, "What's the problem? I need their innocent life essense in order to maintain my physique. It was either that or steroids, you know."

Take that, Carbolic Smoke Ball!

Reform Pittsburgh Now Debuts at Pgh PodCamp

What: Reform Pittsburgh Now Live Site Release
When: Saturday, August 18, 2007, 1:45pm
Where: Pittsburgh Art Institute, 420 Blvd of the Allies, Rm B (435)
Broadcast Live: live.podcamppittsburgh.com

Bill Peduto will be unveiling the website for Reform Pittsburgh Now at a live web-cast session at Pittsburgh PodCamp (http://www.podcamppittsburgh.com/ )

The session will focus on the use of social media to affect policy change. Panelists include Bill Peduto, John Carman ( http://www.avenuedesignstudios.com/ ), and Justine Ezarik*** ( http://www.ijustine.tv/ ).

The Reform Pittsburgh site will be highly interactive including blogs, Talk Shoe live call-ins, and mucho videos.

***If you don't know who ijustine is by now, you haven't been watching any local or national news this week. She's the Pittsburgh video blogger who has a very well-produced video out there about her 300 page iphone bill from AT&T (see youtube clip here). The bill included the text of all her text messaging. If only Cheney, Libby and that whole gang had used the iphone we could have just staked out there mailboxes for their bills instead of trying to sue them to find the "missing" emails. (OK, OK. I grant you that you'd likely get shot if you went within 500 feet of Cheney's mailbox.)

Ron Paul

For those of you who listened to David and myself on The Lynn Cullen Show today and heard perennial local candidate (and blogger) Mark Rauterkus call in the last few minutes of the show to plug Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul, the blog posts that I mentioned about Paul can be found here, here and here.

After you read them, you'll understand why I'm not a fan of Paul.

Both Political Junkies On Air

I'll be on with David this morning after 11:00 AM.

Call in at (412) 333-1360

AM NewsTalk 1360 AM

One Political Junkie. On The Air. TODAY

As if you didn't already know...

I'm guest-hosting on Lynn Cullen's radio show TODAY at 9am-noon. Just follow the "listen live" link to, well you know, listen to the show live.

The schedule's changed a little bit. Elizabeth Holtzman couldn't do the show, but I will be discussing her book for the entire 2nd hour.

Feel free to live blog in the comments. Or you can e-mail me questions/comments here.

Should be loads of fun!

The Trib Spins Global Warming. Again.

From yesterday's editorial:

Thought 1998 was the warmest year on record in the United States? That's what Al Gore acolytes have been telling us.

Nope. It was 1934, according to newly revised figures from NASA, released quietly. The error is embarrassing

What sort of error? How big? Here's what happened. This is from Wired.com:

The data involved temperature measurements made at weather stations in the United States. Back in 2001, scientists the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration realized that some data was being skewed by stations making recordings at different times of day, or being located in once-rural areas that have become heavily urban, causing local temperatures to rise.

They published the a formula to account for the discrepancies. Generally, this lowered the average temperatures recorded. However, NASA's weather-crunching programs weren't updated. As a result, subsequent NASA temperature recordings were incorrectly high, and some earlier data needed revision downwards.

How big was the mistake? About .15 degrees celsius, or .3 degrees fahrenheit.

Now, this isn't a huge number, but it's enough to make a difference -- if, that is, the mistake applied to the whole planet. But the mistake involved only the United States, which covers but a small fraction of the globe. [emphasis added]

Ah, well that changes things, doesn't it? They sum it up this way:

We don't have the science to predict accurately what the climate will be in 50 or 100 years. Now we find out that NASA didn't get the previous temperature averages right.

In comparison to making climate forecasts, that ought to have been pretty simple.

Again, the corrections were for data in the US only, not globally. Something the otherwise erudite editorialists working for Dickiecougarmellonscaife utterly failed to inform its readers.

Here's NASA's graph of the data. See that little green line? That's the correction.

And remember that's just for temperatures in the US. Here's some data for global temperatures.

Notice anything? Like the general upward trend from, say, 1910 on? Granted, things reversed themselves from the mid-40s to the mid-60s, but look at what happens after.

Yea, there's doubt about that the temperature's rising.

ANTI-WAR events THU and FRI

Iraq Summer Campaign
Itinerary for Thursday 8/16 & Friday 8/17

Organizers Rory Casey (202-903-3229) and Caleb Payne (202-486-8607) or (412)828-5102 ext. 27

Thursday @ 10:00am Rally outside of Arlen Specter Town Hall Meeting Seton Hill University, Greensburg, Pa. Actual town hall will start at 11:00am and we will bring some of the protest inside as we demand Specter take a stand against this war.
One Seton Hill University Drive Greesnburg, Pa 15601

Thursday @ 1:00pm Rally outside of Specter Town Hall Meeting California University California, PA. Town Hall starts at 2:15 and just like in Greensburg we will bring the protest inside and demand Specter take a stand.
250 University Drive California, Pa

Thursday @ 4:30PM*** Deliver report card on Iraq War voting record, end the war cookies, brownies, and other goodies to Murphy's Mt. Lebanon office. Attempt to speak to Murphy and/or staff and once again invite him to the 8/28 take a stand event.

Thursday @ 5:00PM Drive time rally, followed by visibility canvass of local businesses within walking distance of Murphy's office.
504 Washington Road, Mt. Lebanon, PA 15228

Thursday @ 6:30PM Phone banking operation for recruiting turn out for the take a stand event at our office in Blawnox, PA.
237 6th St. Blawnox, PA 15237.

Friday @ 8:00AM Arrive at office in Blawnox, look up press clips, read local papers and blogs, prepare for 9:00AM state-wide conference call.
237 6th St. Blawnox, PA 15237.

Friday @ 10:30AM Yard sign canvass/distribution.

Friday @ 3:30PM Rally outside of Tim Murphy's office 504 Washington Rd. Mt Lebanon, Pa 15228

*** NOTE: Will Tim Murphy call the cops on his constituents again? The following video shows the second time a group of Rep. Murphy's constituents were refused entry into the PUBLICLY FUNDED office of their representative. The office doors were locked and the police were called.

What is Tim Murphy afraid of?
(Apparently baked goods.)


Here's a Post-Gazette story about another refusal by Murphy to talk to his constituents. Word has it that a New York Times reporter will be at today's protest.
.

Déjà vu all over again

Bob Mayo must have been feeling some serious déjà vu while reporting the following:

PITTSBURGH -- About 232 children taking part in Pittsburgh's summer youth employment program are wearing city-issued T-shirts with Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's name appearing on them.

The shirts have Republican mayoral candidate Mark DeSantis upset."It's not the mayor's program," DeSantis said.

"It's the city of Pittsburgh's program. It's not the mayor's money. It's taxpayers' dollars. It's not the mayor's government. It's city government. There's really no reason to promote his name with a city program."

DeSantis notes that Ravenstahl ordered suspensions for members of the city Redd-Up Crew when they wore political shirts in support of City Councilman Jeff Koch's re-election campaign.

DeSantis went on to say the T-shirts showed "really bad judgment" and that the whole thing was "frankly just tacky."

Here's the graphic on the new T's:


Here's a stroll down memory lane:


(Is there some secret stock of hideous neon green T-shirts in the bowels of City Hall?)
While Lil Mayor Luke often expresses the thought that anything anyone else does is "political," his spokesperson said that "the mayor's name on the summer youth program shirts is not political."

She added that "...he is a mentor to all of the youth living in this great city."

I'd add that he's particularly a role model for all the youth of this great city who come from a politically connected family, get their ACDC seat while still a teen, and become mayor of this great city on a fluke.


*************************************************************In a totally unrelated story...

Republican mayoral challenger Mark DeSantis was surprised when he donned his new campaign T-shirt to see that the words "Mayor Luke Ravenstahl" were added to the bottom of his logo:


When contacted, the local printer said that "it was an honest mistake."

The printed added, "We do tons of printing for the city and when we saw the Pittsburgh skyline on the shirt, well, you understand."
.

UPDATE For Friday's Radio Show

OK. Here's the schedule so far (still subject to change, of course).

For those who don't know, I'm guest hosting Lynn Cullen's radio show this Friday, August 17th from 9 to noon.

Hour One: Jon Delano is up first and then in the second half of the hour, Mark DeSantis
Hour Two: Elizabeth Holtzman, author of "The Impeachment of George W. Bush" and then I'll be taking calls in the second half of the hour
Hour Three: Still open, but I'm working on something special.

NOTE: I offered time to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, but his office told me he couldn't be on the show because of a scheduling conflict.

Two Views on Rove's Legacy

The first from a Conservative - David Frum (the first from...Frum?) a former speechwriter of dubya's. He paints Karl Rove as a coalition builder who specialized in "polarization" politics:

He united his own base on one side — and united his opponents on the other. Al Gore and John Kerry each won 48 percent, the best back-to-back performance by a losing party since the 19th century. Play-to-the-base politics can be a smart strategy — so long as your base is larger than your opponents’.

And describes the insular outlook of dubya's White House:

In my brief service as a speechwriter inside the Bush administration, I often wondered why it was that skeptical experts on issues like immigration could never get even a hearing for their point of view. We took the self-evident brilliance of our plans so much for granted that we would not even meet, for example, with conservative academics who had the facts and figures to demonstrate the illusion of Rovian hopes for a breakthrough among Hispanic voters. We were so mesmerized by the specious analogies between 1996 and 1896 that we forgot that analogies are literary devices, not evidence.

I like that last line. Wish I'd written it.

The problem, though, is that Rove's MO has little time to work any more. Frum calls him a "miner extracting the last nuggets from an exhausted seam." Here's why:

But it has been apparent for many years that the Democratic base is growing faster than the Republican base. The numbers of the unmarried and the non-churchgoing are growing faster than the numbers of married and church-going Americans. The nonwhite and immigrant population is growing at a faster rate than that of white native-borns. The Democrats are the party of the top and bottom of American society; the Republicans do best in the great American middle, which is losing ground.

I can't agree that the Democrats are the "party of the top and bottom of American society" but everything else in there seems right.

It's a good jumping off point to the next view. This time from the Ragin' Cajun hisself, James Carville. After pointing out some recent wins of Rove's (avoiding the 2000 "election" of dubya), Carville writes:

If only things were so neat and simple. The evidence is now pretty conclusive that Mr Rove may have lost more than just an election in 2006. He has lost an entire generation for the Republican party.

And offers up his evidence why:

A late July poll for Democracy Corps, a non-profit polling company, shows that a generic Democratic presidential candidate now wins voters under 30 years old by 32 percentage points. The Republican lead among younger white non-college-educated men, who supported President George W. Bush by a margin of 19 percentage points three years ago, has shrunk to 2 percentage points. Ideological divisions between the Republican party and young voters are growing. Young voters generally favour larger government providing more services, 68 per cent to 28 per cent. On every issue, from the budget to national security, young voters responded overwhelmingly that Democrats would do a better job in government.

I do have to say that while Carville does write that Democracy Corps is a "non-profit polling company," he fails to say that it's his "non-profit polling company." He's one of its founders. Carville adds quite quickly:

It is not just Democracy Corps that has found this. A host of new polls and surveys over the course of the past few months has served as a harbinger of a rocky 2008 election for Republicans.

The March poll from the Pew Research Center showed that 50 per cent of Americans identify as Democrats while only 35 per cent say they are Republican. The June NBC-Wall Street Journal poll showed 52 per cent of Americans would prefer a Democratic president while only 31 per cent would support a Republican, the largest gap in the 20-year history of the survey.

So long Karl, we hardly knew ye.

Jack Kelly on the FISA Reorganization

Sorry this is late - I was in Canada.

I posted recently on the Congressional votes giving President George Bush even more surveillance authority.

Well my favorite local conservative pundit, Jack Kelly, chimed in on the recently retooled FISA statute. Not surprisingly, he panders and spins and throws in a healthy dose of fear mongering. J-Kel paints the retool as necessary to avoid unavoidable terrorism, though he begins with a story that's already of dubious quality:

There could have been thousands of lives lost and an enormous impact with devastating consequences for international air travel," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told ABC News Monday. Mr. Chertoff was speaking of the al-Qaida plot -- narrowly averted last August -- to plant liquid explosives on London-based airliners headed to the United States.

If al-Qaida has made similar plans for this August, there's a good chance they'd succeed

Here's the ABC coverage of what Chertoff told ABC.

Jack used to be the P-G's "national security correspondent" and unfortunately for this column's credibility, the plot he mentioned has already been debunked - by a real national security expert, former CIA employee in the Directorate of Intelligence and former deputy director at the State Department's office of counter Intelligence, Larry Johnson.

Johnson said last year that the plotters had no working device, no passports, no tickets. Futhermore, CNN reported at the time that the group was infiltrated by British Intelligence and thwarted by British and Pakistani authorities. Looks like good old fashioned police work uncovered the almost-plot.

What relevance does it have to FISA? Jack's just trying to scare us into agreeing with him.

Kelly spends the first part of his column describing the necessity of retooling FISA so that all foreign based communications that happens to be routed through the US can be surveilled warrant free. OK fine. Most critics of the retool agree that that was a necessary part. Jonathan Alter of Newsweek:

Congress had good reason to amend the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). After the shift from satellites to fiber-optic cable for most international phone calls, the statute was as out of date as disco. With Congress, the courts and President Bush squabbling over his illegal wiretapping program, the government was actually conducting less surveillance of foreign nationals than before 9/11, which was crazy. We had to do more listening in, especially with scary new intelligence "chatter" suggesting an unspecified attack on the U.S. Capitol this summer. Congressional sources who attended the late-July classified intel briefings, but won't talk about them for the record, say these threats didn't sound like spin. After all, we're not talking here about trumped-up Iraqi WMD, but Al Qaeda terrorists who have already tried to kill us.

It's the other part that's nasty. Jack Kelly:

The amended law also permits interception of foreign communications directed into the United States without a warrant, provided that the person in the United States is not the target of surveillance. So if Ayman al Zawahiri calls a Muslim student in Florida, the NSA can just listen. But if authorities want to monitor any subsequent calls that the student makes, they have to get a warrant.

See? It's ok. It's only a terrorist who's calling a Muslim. Nothing to worry about. However as Alter points out, that also means the:

authority to spy without a warrant on any American talking to a foreigner, even if it's you and the guy from Mumbai fixing your printer.

So now it's a little scarier. Alter, again:

I hate to sound melodramatic about it, but while everyone was at the beach or "The Simpsons Movie" on the first weekend in August, the U.S. government shredded the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, the one requiring court-approved "probable cause" before Americans can be searched or spied upon. This is not the feverish imagination of left-wing bloggers and the ACLU. It's the plain truth of where we've come as a country, at the behest of a president who has betrayed his oath to defend the Constitution and with the acquiescence of Democratic congressional leaders who know better. Historians will likely see this episode as a classic case of fear - both physical and political - trumping principle amid the ancient tension between personal freedom and national security.

Or maybe they just wanted to get to their vacations.

DeSantis Press Release

Got a Press Release from the DeSantis campaign (funny I don't get anything from the Ravenstahl campaign - maybe I should try to rectify that). Here's the text:

Mark DeSantis plans to attend City Council hearing September 10th on police promotions and challenges Luke Ravenstahl to do the same.

Summary: "I believe this is an important issue that needs to be addressed. If I am elected, I promise now to correct any past problems with domestic violence among City of Pittsburgh police officers. The only way to appropriately address the concerns of Pittsburgh residents is to hear from them directly and assure them their concerns will be addressed," said DeSantis.

Mark DeSantis will listen to the testimony presented at the hearing and implement the appropriate recommendations in his public safety plan that will be released next month. He also urges Mr. Ravenstahl to attend the hearing and listen to the concerns of these women's groups. "Ravenstahl decided to golf at a celebrity golf outing instead of attending the last hearing. Clearly that was the wrong decision. He now has another opportunity to address these concerns. If he is serious about city leadership, he will make himself available," said DeSantis.

As a side note, it looks like DeSantis is really getting into the race. As of today, this is the image on his website. Don't know if you can read the text. It says:

When the city was in a state of emergency, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl was watching the Steelers Practice. The question that should be on everyone's minds:

Does this guy ever go to work?

Good question.

UPDATE: Fair's fair. Bram got to this story first.

One Political Junkie ON THE AIR

An announcement:

I'll be filling in for Lynn Cullen this friday (August 17th). The tentative schedule is:

• 9:00 to 10:00 Jon Delano (it's a Friday Tradition over there at WPTT)
• 10:00 to 11:00 Impeachment
• 11:00 to 12:00 [nothing scheduled yet]

We're working on filling in the blanks.

It should be fun!

Turd Blossom to Resign

That's right. Karl Rove's resigning at the end of August.

It's in the Wall Street Journal.

And Paul Gigot has more.

Bye-bye, Karl.

The Problem With Bill

Tucker Carlson (MSNBC) called the performance "cringe-worthy."

Alison Stewart (MSNBC) said it was "cringe-tastic."

Jonathan Capehart (Washington Post) said it was like, "...watching someone drown in the shallow end of the pool and than refuse a life preserver." He added, "I watched that big guy shrink in his chair as he answered the questions."

The audience groaned.

I was cringing and groaning at my TV set at home.

I'm talking about Governor (and Presidential hopeful) Bill Richardson's performance on LOGO TV 's Visible Vote ‘08 Presidential Forum Thursday evening.

First, some background. If you're not familiar with LOGO, it's a LGBT oriented cable channel and this was billed as the first Presidential forum on gay issues. Each candidate who agreed to appear got 15 minutes on their own from a panel of questioners which included the aforementioned Jonathan Capehart, journalist Margaret Carlson, singer/activist Melissa Etheridge and the Human Rights Campaign's Joe Solmonese. The candidates appeared in the following order: Barack Obama, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Bill Richardson and Hillary Clinton (Dodd and Biden had scheduling problems). Naturally, no Republicans agreed to appear in a separate forum.

So what was so wrong with Richardson's performance?

In a word: everything.

Let me state up front that while I don't have a favorite candidate yet, I really liked Bill Richardson and have stated that on this blog before. I also kept saying back in 2004 that Kerry should have picked him for his running mate.

Here's a sample of Richardson's sorry performance:

MS. ETHERIDGE: Thank you. Do you think homosexuality is a choice, or is it biological?

GOV. RICHARDSON: It's a choice. It's --

MS. ETHERIDGE: I don't know if you
understand the question. (Soft laughter.) Do you think I -- a homosexual is born that way, or do you think that around seventh grade we go, "Ooh, I want to be gay"?

GOV. RICHARDSON: Well, I -- I'm not a scientist. It's -- you know, I don't see
this as an issue of science or definition. I see gays and lesbians as people as a matter of human decency. I see it as a matter of love and companionship and people loving each other. You know I don't like to categorize people. I don't like to, like, answer definitions like that that, you know, perhaps are grounded in science or something else that I don't understand.

It's not just that the content is bad, it's like he wasn't even prepared for the question -- at an LGBT forum! After the broadcast, he released a statement saying, "I do not believe that sexual orientation or gender identity happen by choice." Then he repeated that he wasn't a scientist.

[sigh]

But it didn't stop there.

While he said he was for civil unions because that was achievable and he's a guy who gets things done, when Joe Solmonese asked him if he would sign a gay marriage bill if it was presented to him by the New Mexico legislature, he just wouldn't answer the question directly no matter how many times it was put to him.

And then they brought up something that I hadn't heard before. Bill Richardson had used the word "maricón" on the Imus show. For those of you, who unlike me, haven't lived in NYC for 15 years that word is Spanish for "faggot."

GayNewsWatch.com describes the Imus incident:

Almost exactly one year before Imus was to lose his show for using a slur to describe the Rutger’s women’s basketball team, the shock jock used the Spanish word “maricón” in an on-air exchange with Richardson.

“Bernard on the staff here has been claiming you’re not really Hispanic so-- that you're just claiming that for some sort of advantage or something,” Imus said to Richardson, tongue clearly in cheek. “You can just answer this yes or no and this will answer that question. Would you agree that Bernard is a maricón?”

Without missing a beat, Richardson replied in Spanish, “Yo creo que Bernardo, sí — es un maricón si él piensa que yo no soy hispano. [General laughter] Was that good enough or what? [General laughter]”

“That’s good enough for me,” Imus replied.

Most gay Latinos interviewed for this story agreed with the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation that the word “maricón” means “faggot” in Spanish. So, translated to English, Richardson had replied: "I believe that Bernard, yes – he’s a faggot if he thinks that I am not Hispanic."

By the time Richardson left the forum stage, my support for him had entirely shriveled up and gone the way of the wind.

[sigh]

You can see Bill R opine on "choice" here (it's about two and a half minutes in):


You can read Pam of Pam's House Blend's wrap up here (she does have a link to good things that Richardson has done for the LGBT Community) and Sue of Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents weighs in here.

You can also view clips of the entire forum at LOGO's website here and the forum will be rebroadcast Monday at 7:00 PM ET.
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"...19 kids lured onto planes..."

"...19 kids to be lured onto airplanes..." *

That quote is referring to the 9/11 terrorists.

Which crazy Democrat presidential hopeful said that?

NONE.

Which crazy Republican presidential hopeful said that?

NONE.

It was the President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, who just proclaimed that at a presser.

In his increasingly desperate attempts to justify the War On Iraq, Bush just turned the 9/11 terrorists into VICTIMS.

And, I guess Osama bin Laden is just some big old knucklehead . . .

Can you even imagine the fallout if a Democrat -- ANY DEMOCRAT -- had turned the 9/11 killers into VICTIMS to try to justify ANYTHING?!?

CONTEMPTIBLE.

(Not to mention that Mohamed Atta was 33 years old forchrisakes.)

Please, someone, tell me I misheard him. Please!

* UPDATE: I've changed the quote that begins this post to match the transcript rather than my memory -- it doesn't make it any better.

The full quote is: "It matters if the United States does not believe in the universality of freedom. It matters to the security of people here at home if we don't work to change the conditions that caused 19 kids to be lured onto airplanes to come and murder our citizens."

Apparently, I'm not the only one who had problems with it.

Dan Froomkin at washingtonpost.com asks: "Kids? Lured?"

Worse still, according to the Mouth of the Potomac blog at NYDailyNews.com, this isn't the first time that Bush has gone "off on the root causes and sociology and such behind the “19 kids” who hijacked the planes on 9/11."

"Last April 20, in East Grand Rapids, Mich., Bush said “I happen to believe that, kind of, managing stability doesn't address the root cause of the problems that caused 19 kids to get on an airplane and kill 3,000 of our citizens.” He made similar comments in Ohio, Georgia and California."

They call it "Bush's Krupke Moments" as in when the Jets in "West Side Story" sang to Officer Krupke:

"Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It's just our bringin' up-ke
That gets us out of hand."

Reading...

I've just finished reading Elizabeth Holtzman's book, "The Impeachment of George W. Bush." I picked it up after delicately letting Al Gore's book, "The Assault on Reason" gently slip from my fingers. I picked up Gore's book after devouring Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great."

The first book I loved, the second, eh not so much. The third was in a class by itself.

I'll start with the last two and then end with Holtzman.

It can be an amazing experience to actually hear an author's voice in your head as you read. Whenever I read Vonnegut, for example, I can hear his scratchy Pall-Mall enhanced vocal cords quiver and speak.

This experience, however, can be a double edged sword (is that the right metaphor? I dunno). It does wonders for Hitchens. For Gore, eh not so much.

It's not that I disagreed with anything I read in Gore's book - far from it. It's an important work that everyone should read, no question. But while it may or may not be written by Gore alone, it certainly sounds like it's a work written by a committee all trying to sound like Al Gore.

It's an odd torture, of sorts. You know each page contains important ideas. But sitting through (and sifting through) the text...oh god. Not fun.

It's exactly the opposite for Hitchens. My main problem with that book is that he's written it almost as if it's the only book on the subject. There's no mention, for instance, of Bertrand Russell's great essay/book "Why I am NOT a Christian."

It seems incomprehensible to me that Hitchens, the product of Oxford University where he studied philosophy, could not have stumbled upon Russell's book at least a few times. His deconstruction of the "moral argument" for the existence of God (and in the book he spells it "god" by the way) is straight out of Russell. That was disappointing.

Hotlzman's book, while not written with the same polish as Hitchens', is still a gem. It outlines, in a style pointing towards the ever-boring, though highly precise, English that attorneys use in writing Motions, Briefs, Interrogatories and so on, all the reasons why George W Bush must be impeached. From the deceptions leading the nation to war, to the illegal domestic surveillance, to permitting torture, to leaking classified information, to the reckless indifference to human suffering after Hurricane Katrina, it's all spelled out. Clearly and succintly.

A good book.

ANOTHER Republican Sex Scandal??

What is it with these guys? From the News and Tribune in Indiana:

The chairman of the Clark County Republican Party — who last month was elected president of the Young Republican National Federation — has resigned both posts, apparently in the wake of a criminal investigation.

On Tuesday afternoon, Glenn Murphy Jr. e-mailed media outlets a letter announcing his resignation from both positions, citing an unexpected business opportunity that would prohibit him from holding a partisan political office.

However, the Clark County Sheriff’s Department on Friday began investigating Murphy for alleged criminal deviate conduct — potentially a class B felony — after speaking with a 22-year-old man who claimed that on July 31, Murphy performed an unwanted sex act on him while the man slept in a relative’s Jeffersonville home.

There's a lil bit of a wrinkle to the story:

In 1998, a 21-year-old male filed a similar report with Clarksville police claiming Murphy attempted to perform a sex act on him while he was sleeping. Charges were never filed in that case.

Here's the police reports for both incidents - they're eerily similar.

Now the legal stuff: Glenn has not been arrested nor has he been charged with a crime. And like most any other American (at least until dubya erases that part of the Constitution) he's presumed innocent until proven otherwise.

But really, couldn't he just hire James Guckert and be done with it? Murphy's a Republican. Surely he can spare $200 for some quality oral sex.

Story Update Number Two

There's an update to this story. It's the story about the story that Scott Thomas Beauchamp wrote in the New Republic. Beauchamp wrote about some nasty things that he saw when he was in Iraq. As Talkingpointsmemo points out:

This brought forth a storm of charges from the right-wing blogs and the Weekly Standard claiming that the diaries were fabrications. Then TNR did its own reinvestigation of the diaries and found that with the exception of one error, the stories checked out.

The story links to this one, by Howard Kurtz, at the Washington Post.

Army investigators have concluded that the private whose dispatches for the New Republic accused his fellow soldiers of petty cruelties in Iraq was not telling the truth.

The finding, disclosed yesterday, came days after the Washington-based magazine announced that it had corroborated the claims of the private, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, except for one significant error.

"An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by Pvt. Beauchamp were found to be false," an Army statement said. "His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims."

But New Republic Editor Franklin Foer is standing his ground. "We've talked to military personnel directly involved in the events that Scott Thomas Beauchamp described, and they corroborated his account," Foer said. The magazine granted anonymity to the other soldiers it cited.

Kurtz doesn't say that the "disclosure" was to The Weekly Standard and just The Weekly Standard. But things get a little muddier. From TPM:

The Weekly Standard, which has been leading the charge against Beauchamp, says another unnamed military official told the magazine that not only had the Army found Beauchamp's written accounts to be false but that Beauchamp himself has now signed a recantation of all his claims. So case closed; he fessed up. Yet when TNR contacted the Army public affairs a Maj. Steve Lamb told them: "I have no knowledge of that."

Huh?

Beauchamp makes his charges. The US Army allegedly investigates and finds the highly embarrassing charges to be false. But no information will be released about which of his charges were false, how they were false or how they were determined to be false.

Kurtz drives right down the middle:

Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at George Washington University, called the Army's refusal to release its report "suspect," adding: "There is a cloud over the New Republic, but there's one hanging over the Army, as well. Each investigated this and cleared themselves, but they both have vested interests."

Maybe Beauchamp was lying. But the Army, keeping all aspects of the investigation - details, context and conclusions - under wraps, hardly inspires any confidence.

Story Update Number One

There's an update to this story. Remember that Op-Ed by messers O'Hanlon and Pollack? Those were the two guys from the Brookings Institution who went to Iraq and reported that the Surge was working. The story trickled down to the occupant of John McIntire's old chair, Mike Pintek.

Well there was someone else on that trip: Anthony Cordesman. He's the national security analyist for ABC News. Here's the summary of his report.

While noting a "tenuous case for strategic patience in Iraq," he points out some of the positive trends he found there. However:

These trends are uncertain, and must be considered in the context of a long list of serious political, military, and economic risks that are described in detail. The report also discusses major delays and problems in the original surge strategy. The new US approach to counterinsurgency warfare is making a difference, but it still seems likely from a visit to the scene that the original strategy President Bush announced in January would have failed if it had not been for the Sunni tribal awakening.

Greg Sargent over at Talkingpointsmemo had this to say:

And while Pollack and O'Hanlon wrote that the current strategy has the "potential" to produce "a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with," Cordesman says that the current strategy is failing and that our only hope is if the current team in Iraq can come up with "the kind of cohesive plans" that "have been weak or lacking to date." In other words, he says, his trip to Iraq convinced him that the current strategy basically can't get us there -- which is strikingly at odds with what O'Hanlon and Pollack concluded.

I wonder if Mike Pintek will be devoting any amount of time (as he did with the O'Hanlon and Pollack op-ed) on Cordesman's report.

Somehow I doubt it.

Hands Across the Burghosphere

Your mission:

Click on the "Hands Across the Burghosphere" widget on the right!

Make a donation! (It benefits Pittsburgh Action Against Rape)

Thank The Burgher for coming up with the idea!

Pat yourself on the back!

I'll be on McIntire's radio show today talking about...

You can hear me on MacYapper's 93.7 FM radio show today around 3:25 PM yapping about -- are you sitting, Mark Rauterkus(?) -- Ron Paul.

It all started with this post titled "Ron Paul Sucks" where I warned that some Dems might want to reconsider their embrace of Paul as their new darling.

I noted there that he was anti choice and anti Medicare. That brought in his Libertarian supporters.

Then my co-blogger, David DeAngelo, posted this on Ron Paul's HR 4379 bill which among other things said that the Supreme Court can't adjudicate "any claim based upon the right of privacy, including any such claim related to any issue of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction..."

Translation: "I'm a straight white guy who's always had his rights in the Constitution and I want to make it easier to screw women, gays, and anyone who wants to do any sexual act that isn't male/female missionary position.

What some of you Libertarian dudes seem to forget is that most recently overturned state anti sodomy laws don't distinguish whether it's gays or straights having sex and that oral is also sodomy. (Part of me wishes these guys would have their dreams answered only to find the LOCAL police busting down their door to throw their sorry asses in jail when the wifey gives them a BJ on their birthday. Would they be screaming "states rights" then, do you think?)

Anyhoo, in the comments section of the HR 4379 post Fair and Balanced Dave gave some links to some extremely disturbing info on Ron Paul and the subject of race and his appeal to neo-Nazis.

Ron Paul started publishing a monthly newsletter in 1986 calle thed Ron Paul Political Report, but later renamed it The Ron Paul Survival Report.

In the 90's the newsletter contained inciteful insightful quotes, like:

"Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action,"

"Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the `criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal,"

"...our country is being destroyed by a group of actual and potential terrorists -- and they can be identified by the color of their skin."

"...complex embezzling" is "100% white and Asian;" and noting that
"If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be."

Also, that he didn't think that "a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That's true for most people." But, he continues, "black males, age 13, that have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary, and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such."

Barbara Jordan was called a "moron" and a "fraud" whose accomplishments depended on her race and sex.

The newsletter also 'advises the readers to purchase two books that offer legal advice on how to safely move money across the U.S. border, how to "buy and sell gold privately without leaving a paper trail for the IRS to follow," and how to avoid transactions that "label you a money launderer." If you follow the advice, it will "make it difficult or impossible for bureaucrats... to know what you have and where you have it," and will allow you to "bulletproof from seizure those assets you can't hide."'

At first Paul claimed the quotes were taken out of context, then he later said they were ghostwritten by a staffer (feel free to read the context here, if you can stomach it).

I called into Honsberger Live with permanent (?) substitute host Chris Moore and read some of the above quotes. Later, I got the call from John McIntire to be to be on his show, which leads me back to the beginning of this post...And, this is where you make a note to listen in. ;-)

.

Ron Paul and HR 4379

Congressman Paul introduced, in 2005, something he called the "We the People Act."

The bill sought to limit the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court on issues of religion, privacy, and gay marriage. The Supreme Court:

(1) shall not adjudicate--

(A) any claim involving the laws, regulations, or policies of any State or unit of local government relating to the free exercise or establishment of religion;

(B) any claim based upon the right of privacy, including any such claim related to any issue of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; or

(C) any claim based upon equal protection of the laws to the extent such claim is based upon the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation; and

My guess is that this means that if a state, any state, say the Congressman's own state of Texas, were to add Exodus 22:18 into its criteria for capital punishment or Genesis 3:16 into its family law statutes, the Supreme Court could not weigh in on the matter.

And this is the guy who's gonna save the country?

Follow-up on FISA

In this posting, I asked if anyone knew who the sixteen Senate Democrats were who voted in favor of S. 1927. I finally was able to track down the vote in the Senate. The sixteen:

Bayh (D-IN)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Conrad (D-ND)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lincoln (D-AR)
McCaskill (D-MO)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Salazar (D-CO)
Webb (D-VA)

Just for the record both Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey and local Congressman Jason Altmire voted in favor of the recent restructuring of the FISA statute.

And what did they vote for?

Spencer Ackerman over at TPMMuckraker begins his analysis with this:

It's a fairly safe bet, judging by the amount of expert disagreement about the act's provisions, that most members of Congress don't know what they've just passed.

Never a good sign. And then:

What's clear is that now the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence can now obtain the international communications of U.S. citizens or residents without a warrant provided that such surveillance is "reasonably believed" to be "directed at" persons outside the country. The FISA Court's new, restricted role here is to determine -- up to six months after the fact of the surveillance -- that the government's procedures in seeking the primarily-foreign data is not "clearly erroneous." If it isn't, the surveillance goes forward.

One of the most controversial, and little understood, provisions in the bill changes the definition of electronic surveillance -- but not substantively. In short, it takes out from Fourth Amendment protections surveillance of a person "reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States," no matter who that individual communicates with, inside or outside the United States.

He quotes Jim Dempsey, policy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, saying:

If you are talking with somebody overseas, and the government intercepts that communication, it is electronic surveillance if government says they were directing the surveillance at you,

But...

It is not electronic surveillance if the government says it's directing the surveillance at a person overseas.

That's what they voted for. Thanks, guys.

Not to fear. But House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid have both said they'll revisit the issue in six months.

Here's a shocker. Dubya wants to revisit the issue, too. From the White House:

While I appreciate the leadership it took to pass this bill, we must remember that our work is not done. This bill is a temporary, narrowly focused statute to deal with the most immediate shortcomings in the law.

When Congress returns in September the Intelligence committees and leaders in both parties will need to complete work on the comprehensive reforms requested by Director McConnell, including the important issue of providing meaningful liability protection to those who are alleged to have assisted our Nation following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Isn't that last part an odd phrase? It also pops up here in the Director of National Intelligence's letter to Congress outlining the "Critical Changes Needed" for FISA:

Second, those who assist the Government in protecting us from harm must be protected from liability. This includes those who are alleged to have assisted the Government after September 11, 2001.

That means legal immunity for those telecom companies who participated in the dubya's illegal domestic surveillance.

Democrats in Congress cave in (yet again) to the worst president ever and the 4th Amendment takes another body blow.

Thanks, Bob. Thanks, Jason.

Ron Paul Sucks

Yeah, yeah, Republican Candidate and darling of the Libertarian wing Ron Paul is good on Iraq. But I just want to remind anyone who cares about women's reproduction freedom that he is anti choice. And, if you've read this blog at all you'd know that I can't stand anti choice Libertarians even more than I can't stand anti choice Republicans. Maybe it's because I expect more from "freedom-loving, keep-the-government-off-of-me" Libertarians. But, too often I find that the same Libertarian males who kick and scream and cry and rend their garments over the thought of the government taking one thin dime of their money have no problem whatsoever with the thought of that very same government crawling up into a woman's womb. Go figure.

Oh yeah, he's also not just anti universal healthcare, he's anti Medicare.

I say: Fuck him.

BFFs

Always on top of the cultural zeitgeist, Pittsburgh's own Agent Ska has thrown her hat into "The Musical" ring with her epic "Moving Forward Together": The Musical.


Apparently Ska is not buying into the rumors about any bad blood between BFFs Lil Mayor Luke (Ravenstahl) and County Exec Dan "Da Goosekillah" Onorato.

Maybe it's just some of the graphics that she uses that really speak to us . . .

Camp Wellstone is coming back to Pittsburgh

I attended a Camp Wellstone back in 2004. It was very well run and extremely informational.

From their website:

What is Camp Wellstone?

Wellstone Action's signature weekend training program provides hands-on, practical training in grassroots politics for citizen activists, campaign workers, and people interested in running for office

Background on Wellstone Action:

Wellstone Action is a national center for training and leadership development for the progressive movement. Founded in January 2003, Wellstone Action’s mission is to honor the legacy of Paul and Sheila Wellstone by continuing their work through training, educating, mobilizing and organizing a vast network of progressive individuals and organizations.

Camp Wellstone Pittsburgh:

9/14 - 9/16/07

The training is highly interactive, combining exercises, lectures, and simulations over the course of 2.5 days. Camp runs Friday from 2:00pm-9:00pm, Saturday from 9:00am-6:00pm, and Sunday from 9:00am-3:00pm. You'll stay busy the whole time and make some great networks!

The cost is $100 or just $50 for students, low-income, or unemployed participants.

Yeah, pricier than some other similar programs but I'd say it was worth every penny.

Is Mitt Romney For Real?

From Talkingpointsmemo.

Transcript:

Cong. Ron Paul: At the same time those individuals who had predicted these disastrous things to happen if we leave Iraq are the same ones who said as soon as we go in it'll just be ducksoup, it'll be over in three months. It won't cost us anything because the oil will pay for it.

Gov. Mitt Romney: Has he forgotten about 9/11?

RP: At the same time the individuals who predicted the disastrous course, the domino theory in Vietnam, I was called to duty. I accepted that duty in the sixties. I served five years in the military. When we left there it was tough, yes. But now we trade with Vietnam. We talk to 'em. The President's come to this country. We go back and forth. We invest in this country. We can achieve much more in peace than we can ever achieve in these needless unconstitutional undeclared wars.

I can't say I'm a follower of Paul's but this is right on the money. And please please PLEASE notice what Mitt Romney's knee-jerk reaction to criticism of the war in Iraq:

Has he forgotten about 9/11?

Is that their defense of dubya's otherwise indefensible war? 9/11? For the umpteenth time - what did Iraq have to do with 9/11?

How much more ridiculous could that argument be? Uh, not much (coincidentally, I saw this last night):

Back to the non-cartoon ridiculousness.

If that's the best the guy who's leading the lackluster pack (albeit with "soft and shallow" support) in Iowa can do, then things look mighty scary for God's Own Party.

The PDB of August 6 2001

Posted as a not-so-gentle reminder of the heckova job our president has been doing from the beginning:

On August 6, 2001, President George W Bush was shown this PDB. It bore the title "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US."

In its review of the book "The One Percent Doctrine" the Washington Post wrote:

The book's opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush's Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

So he knew about al-Qaeda. He knew that al-Qaeda was determined to attack. The CIA even flew to dubya's vacation ranch in Crawford, Texas to personally call his attention to the PDB.

And yet he did nothing about it.

A not-so-gentle reminder of the great and glorious leader.

technorati tag: pdb

The Sunday Jack Kelly Column

Now this one should be fun.

Take a look at Jack Kelly's column this morning. The article was also published (as they all are) at the Toledo Blade, the P-G's sister paper. While it appeared this morning in Pittsburgh and yesterday in the Toledo Blade, can someone tell me why it was publised three days ago at Real Clear Politics? I would think that the newspaper company paying his salary would get first crack at the columns he writes. I could be wrong, though.

Anyway, onto the column. Jack's doing his usual song and dance around the facts. His opening:

Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Kan., walked out of a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee because she couldn't stand to listen to what retired Gen. Jack Keane, former vice chief of staff of the Army, was saying.

"There is only so much you can take until we in fact had to leave the room for a while ... after so much frustration of having to listen to what we listened to," Ms. Boyda explained to reporters later.

Take a look at those three dots. It's call an elipsis - and it's supposed to signal that some material has been removed. And take a look at the last three words. Jack Kelly is saying she said those words "to reporters later." Did she ever go back to the hearing? Sure if she did, Jack Kelly would have said so - it's only fair and accurate, right?

Take a look at what Conservative columnist Michael Barone had to say about this very incident over at US News and World Report:

Their argument is one many Democrats in Congress don't want to hear. Literally. This is the transcript of the response of freshman Rep. Nancy Boyda of Kansas at a House Armed Services Committee hearing last Friday to the optimistic testimony of Gen. Jack Keane, one of the original advocates of the surge:

And I just will make some statements more for the record based on what I heard from—mainly from General Keane. As many of us—there was only so much that you could take until we in fact had to leave the room for a while. So I think I am back and maybe can articulate some things—after so much of the frustration of having to listen to what we listened to.

But let me first just say that the description of Iraq as in some way or another that it's a place that I might take the family for a vacation—things are going so well—those kinds of comments will in fact show up in the media and further divide this country instead of saying, here's the reality of the problem. And people, we have to come together and deal with the reality of this issue.

Take a look at how Barone sets-up the quotation. Borda said this to the committee (not to "reporters later" as Jack Kelly, ace fact-checker, reported) and she said it after she returned.

If he had any question about it, he could have just taken a swing through youtube.

And Jack Kelly had to know that she said this to the committee as that's where is elipsis is. If he didn't, he should have checked. Either way, it does not bode well either for a columnist at "One of America's Great Newspapers." Does it?

But while General Keane's military bona fides are obvious, he's hardly an objective witness to the surge. Why? He's one of its architects.

When President Bush announces his "way forward" in Iraq Wednesday night, expect to hear some of the thoughts of a former Army paratrooper who ended up with four stars on his shoulder.

"Defeat is unacceptable" in Iraq, says retired Gen. Jack Keane.

That was back in January. If the Surge fails, General Keane fails. Something else Jack Kelly left out.

Then J-Kel moves over to the Op-ed by Pollack and O'Hanlon. I blogged about it here. The two guys from the Brookings Institution ingore the very data coming out of the Brookings Institution.

Then on to Representative Clyburn:

If Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, says things are getting better when he reports to Congress in September, that could be "a real big problem," House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., told The Washington Post Monday.

"Clyburn noted that Petraeus carries significant weight among the 47 members of the Blue Dog caucus in the House, a group of moderate to conservative Democrats," wrote reporters Dan Balz and Chris Cillizza. "Without their support, he said, Democratic leaders would find it virtually impossible to pass legislation setting a timetable for withdrawal."

But take a look at what Clyburn actually said in that interview with Dan Balz of the Washington Post (this from mediamatters.org):

BALZ: What do Democrats do if General Petraeus comes in in September and says, "This is working very, very well at this point; we would be foolish to back away from it"?

CLYBURN: Well, that would be a real big problem for us, no question about that, simply because of those 47 Blue Dogs. I think there would be enough support in that group to want to stay the course, and if the Republicans were to remain united, as they have been, then it would be a problem for us.

So I think we, by and large, would do wise -- be wise to wait on the report. None of us want to see a bad result in Iraq. If we are going to get in position to yield a good result, I think Democrats want to see that. We love this country. We're as patriotic as anybody else about this. And we have loved ones involved in this issue just like everybody else. I've got family and friends involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so I certainly want to see a good result. But I'm certainly not going to just roll over because the president said. It is only because we get good intelligence from those people like General Petraeus who can be trusted to give us good information. [emphasis added]

He said (but Jack Kelly failed to say he said it) that "None of us want to see a bad result in Iraq."

It's getting painfully obvious that Jack Kelly's general outlook is getting more and more untenable. Just see what he has to excise in order to paste a seemingly coherent argument together? If I can take 90 minutes and so easily shred his arguments simply by googling the main points, then how solid can those arguments be?

I mean really.

Senate Democrats Cave

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me explain something about the Congressional approval ratings. Republicans don't like (in fact they can't like) the current Congress because it's run by the Democratic Party. That's completely understandable.

Democrats don't like the Congress because the Congress does things like this:

The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government's terrorist surveillance laws, approving changes that would temporarily give U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order

The LA Times sees it this way:

Bowing to pressure from the Bush administration, the Senate passed emergency legislation Friday that would significantly expand the authority of U.S. spy agencies to monitor overseas phone calls and e-mails.

It also would remove requirements for court approval when those communications passed through the United States.

Bowing to pressure from the most unpopular White House since Nixon's last days.

It's S.1927. So far all I can find is the vote numers 60-28. From the Washington Post:

Sixteen Democrats and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) joined all 43 Republicans in supporting the measure, which is nearly identical to a proposal prepared by the Bush administration. "We're at war. The enemy wants to attack us," Lieberman said during the Senate debate. "This is not the time to strive for legislative perfection." [emphasis added]

Anyone know who those sixteen were? More from the Post:

Privacy advocates accused the Democrats of selling out and charged that this bill gives the government more authority than it had under a controversial warrantless wiretapping program begun in secret after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Under that program, the government could conduct surveillance without judicial oversight only if it had a reason to believe that one party to the call was a member of or affiliated with al-Qaeda or a related terrorist organization. This bill drops that condition, they noted.

Democrats "have a Pavlovian reaction: Whenever the president says the word 'terrorism,' they roll over and play dead," said Caroline Fredrickson, Washington legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

But alas, all is not lost. From Talkingpointsmemo:

Harry Reid emphasized that yesterday's measure is temporary, and that the Senate will revisit the issue in six months. That's not exactly reassuring. For one thing, Dems will be just as fearful in February as they are now. For another, that's six months of the administration having largely unchecked surveillance power.

Weren't we supposed to "not worry" about the USAPatriot act because there were "sunset" provisions in it? What happened when the act was revisited?

That's right. Most of the "sunsetted" stuff remained - and was made permanent.

UPDATE: The bill passed the House 227-183 (Democrats cave again). How did the locals do with the yeas and nays?

Doyle - Nay
Murtha - Nay

Altmire - Yea
Murphy, Tim - Yea

Hmm. Congressman Altmire's got some explaining to do.

"Shock Troops" Fact-Checked, For Real This Time

Remember this from this weekend?

Jack Kelly "fact-checked" a New Republic diary piece by Scott Thomas Beauchamp called "Shock Troops." My deconstruction of Jack Kelly is here, by the way. Jack characterized The New Republic piece this way:

But the issue is not whether Pvt. Beauchamp is a soldier. It's whether he's telling the truth or not. And his story stinks to high heaven. No one else at the base ever seems to have a seen a woman who fits the description of the woman in the chow hall. No mass graves have been discovered during the time Pvt. Beauchamp has been at FOB Falcon. It is physically impossible for the driver of a Bradley to see a dog to the immediate right of his vehicle.

Angular grammar aside, Jack's pretty much put it as plainly as possible: it's all a lie.

Too bad the facts say otherwise. Here's what was posted today at the New Republic.

All of Beauchamp's essays were fact-checked before publication. We checked the plausibility of details with experts, contacted a corroborating witness, and pressed the author for further details. But publishing a first-person essay from a war zone requires a measure of faith in the writer. Given what we knew of Beauchamp, personally and professionally, we credited his report. After questions were raised about the veracity of his essay, TNR extensively re-reported Beauchamp's account.

The account was of three separate incidents; the scarred woman in the mess hall, the digging up of the childrens' bones, and the Bradley Assault Vehicle being used to kill dogs. In their re-check, The New Republic found that all of Beauchamp's facts were correct. Except for one:

The recollections of these three soldiers differ from Beauchamp's on one significant detail (the only fact in the piece that we have determined to be inaccurate): They say the conversation occurred at Camp Buehring, in Kuwait, prior to the unit's arrival in Iraq. When presented with this important discrepancy, Beauchamp acknowledged his error. We sincerely regret this mistake.

So Beauchamp was wrong in where the conversation about the scarred woman occurred, not that it occurred. But still, a mistake's a mistake.

On the bones:

[T]wo witnesses have corroborated Beauchamp's account. One wrote in an e-mail: "I can wholeheartedly verify the finding of the bones; U.S. troops (in my unit) discovered human remains in the manner described in 'Shock Troopers.' [sic] ... [We] did not report it; there was no need to. The bodies weren't freshly killed and thus the crime hadn't been committed while we were in control of the sector of operations." On the phone, this soldier later told us that he had witnessed another soldier wearing the skull fragment just as Beauchamp recounted: "It fit like a yarmulke," he said. A forensic anthropologist confirmed to us that it is possible for tufts of hair to be attached to a long-buried fragment of a human skull, as described in the piece.

And finally the Bradley:

[O]ne soldier who witnessed the incident described by Beauchamp, wrote in an e-mail: "How you do this (I've seen it done more than once) is, when you approach the dog in question, suddenly lurch the Bradley on the opposite side of the road the dog is on. The rear-end of the vehicle will then swing TOWARD the animal, scaring it into running out into the road. If it works, the dog is running into the center of the road as the driver swings his yoke back around the other way, and the dog becomes a chalk outline." TNR contacted the manufacturer of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle System, where a spokesman confirmed that the vehicle is as maneuverable as Beauchamp described. [emphasis added]

Disgusting, but true. On that last incident, Jack Kelly was on Tucker Carlson's show on MSNBC and here's what he said about it:

It‘s physically impossible. The driver‘s hatch on a Bradley is on the left-hand side. Between it and the right-hand side of the Bradley, there is the cooling vent for the engine and it rises above the driver‘s hatch. The driver can‘t see anything to the immediate right of his vehicle.

He may be absolutely right about the hatch and the cooling vent, but he's also absolutely wrong about it being "physically impossible." There was a witness who saw it, remember?

Jack needs to do a better job on research.

Bush, FISA, and More Deceptions

First - were you at all curious about the timing of the new FISA discussions in Congress? Me too. Reuters has a possible explanation:

A U.S. intelligence court earlier this year secretly struck down a key element of President George W. Bush's warrantless spying program, The Washington Post reported in its Friday edition.

The decision is one reason Congress is trying to give legal authorization to the spying program in fevered negotiations with the Bush administration this week, the Post reported.

The intelligence-court judge, who remains anonymous, concluded that the government had overstepped its authority by monitoring overseas communications that pass through the United States, the Post said, citing anonymous government and congressional sources.

But wait - it was a secret? How did we find out about it then? Check out today's Washington Post:

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) disclosed elements of the court's decision in remarks Tuesday to Fox News as he was promoting the administration-backed wiretapping legislation. Boehner has denied revealing classified information, but two government officials privy to the details confirmed that his remarks concerned classified information.

What is it with these Republicans leaking classified information for political gain? Don't they know that it's a dangerous world? Leaking classified information is tantamount to giving aid and comfort to the enemy, or so I'm told.

So the secret, classified FISA court struck down part of dubya's domestic surveillance plan (in secret, of course) and yet when a Repulican member of the House discloses that information on the Republican "news" channel, it's somehow not "revealing classified information."

Yea, and Valerie Plame wasn't covert, either.

But beyond that - what would this new FISA scenario look like? This is from the AP:

The law generally requires court review of government surveillance of suspected terrorists in the United States. It does not specifically address the government's ability to intercept messages believed to come from suspects who are overseas, opening what the White House considers a significant gap in protecting against attacks by foreigners targeting the U.S.

Democrats, who control Congress, would allow the messages from foreign targets to be intercepted, but only after a review by the special FISA court to make sure the surveillance does not focus on communications that might be sent to and from Americans.

They reject the Bush administration's proposal to give Gonzales speedy authority to decide if the surveillance properly targets people overseas _ and not in the United States.

The Bush Administration wanted to give more authority to AG Gonzales?

This AG Gonzales?

Senators in both parties concede they don't have enough evidence to make a perjury charge stick against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. But that doesn't mean they're going to quit trying to pry him from office.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is considering asking the Justice Department's inspector general to examine whether Gonzales' answers to questions from lawmakers amount to misconduct.

"I am deeply concerned about the seriousness of his misleading testimony and the pattern that has developed with regards to the attorney general's testimony over the years," Leahy said Thursday. "At the very least, I am considering sending his answers as they stand to the inspector general for review."

Ranking committee Republican Arlen Specter doesn't sound like he'd stand in the way.

"I think we need to finish this (the committee's) investigation and find a way to end the tenure of Attorney General Gonzales," Pennsylvania Sen. Specter said Thursday at a hearing.

End the tenure of Alberto Gonzales. IMPEACH.

Iraq Numbers In Perspective

Think Progress puts it better than I could, so here it is:

At least 73 U.S. troops are reported to have died in Iraq this past month. The numbers are a decline from the all-time highs of 108, 131, and 117 from the previous three months.

Media reports herald the statistics as encouraging and as demonstrating “steady progress” in Iraq. Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno said that the lower death toll was a “positive sign.”

According to icasualties.org, at least 3,653 U.S. troops have died in the 53 months that the war has been going on — a per monthly rate of nearly 69 U.S. troop casualties. Thus, the current month’s total still exceeds the average monthly casualty rate of the entire war. [emphasis added]

They even have a chart showing that "73 is also greater than the average monthly casualty rate of each of the first four years of the war."

2003 - 48.6 per month
2004 - 70.8 per month
2005 - 70.5 per month
2006 - 68.5 per month
2007 - 92.9 per month

What a bloody mess.

Howard Dean In Pittsburgh

Close to 500 people showed up at the Church Brew Works to hear Gov. Howard Dean, head of the DNC, speak tonight.

I showed up a little early and before the crowd arrived. Signed in, my named carefully checked off a sheet of paper, a yellow paper band around my left wrist, I walked into the already bustling hall. The wait staff was preparing the hall for the a couple hundred political types. Volunteers from the USW in matching t-shirts and non-USW volunteers were shepherding the other earlies to their seats. I got to hang with the other "press" types.

The OPJ was there, too! It's an odd occurrence, the two of us being in the same place at the same time but it happened tonight. The grand irony of the evening, she quickly told me, is that as a volunteer she was in charge of the MSM area. Think of it, Chris Potter, a blogger was put in charge of the MSM press folks.

Soda (what the locals inexplicably call "pop") and bottled water were free. Beer you had to pay for. And there were boxes of pastries from Prantl's. The chocolate frosted chocolate cake cubes covered with chocolate sprinkles were particularly good.

The specific planning for this event took about a month, Richard Pierson, one of the hosts, told me. They wanted everything to go smoothly. At a previous event, the PA system wasn't really working out very well, so some effort was put into getting a better one. Tonight, there were the main speakers up front and then another bank of speakers all pointed outward set in the middle of the hall.

By 4:30 (the time the event was supposed to start) people were still streaming in. Everyone from the press stood around waiting. TV crews from PXI and KDKA were scrambling for a position on the camera stand. Delano was planning a live shot. Jim O'Toole was thumbing through a copy of the latest City Paper. Any sort of crew from WTAE-TV, Maria told me, was no where to be found.

Springsteen was playing on the PA system. In a loop. I heard "Philadelphia" at least three times. "Glory Days" at least twice.

The Party Begins

At 5:15, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and County Executive Dan Onorato arrived, shook a few hands and made it up onto the stage, followed up the other "Hosts" of the evening. Jim Burn, head of the Allegheny County Democratic Committee, in his introductory remarks noted that the Mayor and the County Executive were sitting together and that they're "getting along just fine."

There was a minor ripple of laughter through the crowd at the joke. If you didn't get the joke, read this.

Burn went on to talk about how the Republicans were using the primary debates to tarnish the Democratic presidential candidates. He reminded the crowd (this time to great applause) that "the debate is in the spring, the fight is in the fall."

He then introduced the mayor. It's difficult to describe the level of applause heard. It was not at all overwhelming (that would come a little later) but calling it merely "respectful" would be just as incorrect. It was somewhere inbetween. "Healthy" might be a good adjective to describe it. It was obvious the mayor had a few fans in the crowd. I even saw a couple of "I Like Luke" buttons.

The mayor outlined some of the things Democrats needed to do in the upcoming election season - show the differences between what Democrats stand for and what Republicans stand for. He then introduced the County Executive who then repeated (to much the same effect as before) Jim Burns' joke. He put his arm around Mayor Ravenstahl and told the crowd "He's my new best friend. He spoke of the need for economic development, how he was looking forward to working with the mayor in the fall, and how we all have to work together to make sure "we take back the White House" in 2008.

When Patrick Dowd was introduced, the crowd erupted. Loudly. It was his crowd. He said it was an honor to introduce Gov Dean and pointed out the two things Dean understands. 1) that the Democratic Party is the popular party, it's the party of the people, and 2) how to build a party organization.

Gov Howard Dean

When Patrick Dowd introduced Howard Dean, the crowd really went wild. Tieless but wearing a Patrick Dowd sticker on his blue shirt, he entered from the back of the hall, strode down the center aisle and onto the stage.

After thanking the dignitaries in the crowd (especially Prantl's) he went into a passionate defense of the Democratic Party. He began by saying that the age of the the "one way" campaign is over - and used as an example Dowd's recent campaign - Dowd knocked on 12,000 doors. It's no longer enough to just put a 15 second commercial on the air. You have to get involved with the people whose votes you're looking for. He said that's why he thought the recent YouTube debate on CNN was such a great idea. For the first time in 45 years ordinary Americans could ask questions in a serious debate forum.

He said later that he wasn't surprised that the Republicans are running from a similar format - probably for exactly the same reason.

Talking about the party, he used 2006 win of Jason Altmire as another example of the new Democratic "50 State" strategy. Altmire was not afraid of "a darling of" the far right, Dean said. When the election was over, and Altmire was the winner, it was all discovered that the average American does not agree with the politics of the far-right.

All of us, he said, vote based on our emotions. And when we speak from our emotions, and with a positive message, we can overcome the hate spewed out from conservative talk-radio. Americans are tired of feeling bad about America - and that's what they get from talk radio.

He went on to counter a new Republican talking-point.

The Democratically controlled Congress has done more in 6 months (funding for Walter Reed hospital, the recent ethics bill, instituting the findings of the 9/11 commission etc) than the Republicans did in the previous s 6 years.

The Republican candidates (all except for the lone libertarian among them) want to stay the course in Iraq. They thought it a great idea to commute the Scooter's sentence, to veto healthcare for kids. It's the same old stuff from the same old party. The same old tired right-wing nonsense.

The Democrats are the ones saying no to torture. The ones opposing the Republican culture of corruption.

He said that something's happened in the past 8 years. Something not normal. It's not normal, for instance, to have a president of the United States who doesn't understand the Constitution of the United States.

He made one more comparison between the parties. The Democrats will not put party over the interest of the nation. The Democrats will restore honesty to government.

The future looks brighter for Democrats. Looking at the various polling data, on who's polling and what they believe. The values of those under 30 far more match the values of the Democratic party than they do the Republican party.

They are the Old America, he said.
We are the New America.

Scaife's Trib Editorial Board Does It Again

Better make yourself comfortable. This might take a little bit of time.

In an editorial today, the Trib's editorial board writes:

The National Hurricane Center labels as "sloppy science" a National Center for Atmospheric Research study that blames an increase in Atlantic Ocean tropical storms on global warming. More affirmation that the science of global warming is "settled," right?

Ah that conservative skepticism, you just gotta love it!

As far as I can tell, the quotation comes from this AP story. Here's the "sloppy science" part:

Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center, said the study is inconsistent in its use of data.

The work, he said, is “sloppy science that neglects the fact that better monitoring by satellites allows us to observe storms and hurricanes that were simply missed earlier. The doubling in the number of storms and hurricanes in 100 years that they found in their paper is just an artifact of technology, not climate change.”

Note that it doesn't exactly say that Landsea is speaking on behalf of NOAA. He may be - it's just not clear. The Trib, I guess, just assumes that it's the official word of NOAA.

I took a look. NOAA has a FAQ page devoted to global warming at its website. They even ask:Is the climate warming? The Answer? Take a look:

Yes. Global surface temperatures have increased about 0.6°C (plus or minus 0.2°C) since the late-19th century, and about 0.4°F (0.2 to 0.3°C) over the past 25 years (the period with the most credible data). The warming has not been globally uniform. Some areas (including parts of the southeastern U.S.) have, in fact, cooled over the last century. The recent warmth has been greatest over North America and Eurasia between 40 and 70°N. Warming, assisted by the record El Niño of 1997-1998, has continued right up to the present, with 2001 being the second warmest year on record after 1998.

So NOAA (where Chris Landsea works) certainly thinks that the answer is settled - though there will always be debate on the details.

And who is this Chris Landsea anyway? Here's his bio at the NOAA website.

He's also one of the guys the Bush Administration allowed to speak on the link between global warming and greater hurricane intensity. Take a look at this article from Salon.com about Thomas Knutsen, who said he'd been barred to speak to CNBC because his research suggested such a link:

But Commerce's deputy director of communications, Chuck Fuqua, was happy to have a more politically reliable NOAA hurricane researcher named Chris Landsea speak to the press. At the time, Landsea was stating publicly that global warming had little to no effect on hurricanes. "Please make sure Chris is on message and that it is a friendly discussion," Fuqua wrote regarding a request for Landsea to appear on "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." On the show, Landsea downplayed research that linked global warming with more-intense hurricanes like Katrina.

By the way, there there's a link on Landsea's bio page to the Hurricane FAQ that he authored. And on that FAQ there's this question:

How might global warming change hurricane intensity, frequency, and rainfall?

Go take a look at the answer. While Landsea is skeptical of a lot of the science, he does not doubt its that global warming is occurring - unlike our friends sitting on the editorial board at Scaife's Trib.

But take another look at what Landsea actually said. His charge is that better monitoring lead scientists to know about hurricanes that they wouldn't have known about earlier in the century. That's what he was talking about. Now here's the Trib's editorial again:

The National Hurricane Center labels as "sloppy science" a National Center for Atmospheric Research study that blames an increase in Atlantic Ocean tropical storms on global warming. More affirmation that the science of global warming is "settled," right?

Geez, once you know the facts (something the Trib's editorial page didn't bother with), the picture painted looks a whole lot different, huh?