February 2004 Archives

Nothing new here, but it's illuminating to take a look back at this 1998 Project for the New American Century letter to President Clinton on Iraq which lays out the still-standing argument for removing Saddam Hussein (minus the post-9/11 insertion of terrorism). Take a look at who signed the letter:

Elliott Abrams
Richard L. Armitage
William J. Bennett
Jeffrey Bergner
John Bolton
Paula Dobriansky
Francis Fukuyama
Robert Kagan
Zalmay Khalilzad
William Kristol
Richard Perle
Peter W. Rodman
Donald Rumsfeld
William Schneider, Jr.
Vin Weber
Paul Wolfowitz
R. James Woolsey
Robert B. Zoellick

Today is leap day. And since there weren't very many blogs four years ago, it's essentially the first ever "free" day of blogging.

Remember, though, you get what you pay for.

If you've gotten to this page, you probably know all this stuff. But for any blog reading novices out there, Marcia at The Indiana Law Blog has written up a nice explainer on blogs.

[Note: I don't have a calendar or use the category feature here.]

Thomas points out continuing commercialization of the Temple, 2000 years later.

Iranian radio reports that Osama bin Laden was captured "a long time ago." The Pentagon, Pakistan, and even one of the sources for the story are denying that bin Laden is actually in custody, and I doubt people would keep something like that secret for very long. But it is conceivable, as some stories have reported, that we have located bin Laden, are containing him within a small area, and will move to haul him in at a more "convenient" time. Thus I don't think we can easily dismiss the motives attributed here:

The report said bin Laden had been in custody for a period of time, but that President Bush was withholding any announcement until closer to November elections.

"Osama bin Laden has been arrested a long time ago, but Bush is intending to use it for propaganda maneuvering in the presidential election," the radio report said.

Former United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix thinks he was bugged too, though he doesn't have conclusive proof of it:

The United Nations spying row widened yesterday when its former weapons inspector, Hans Blix, told the Guardian he suspected both his UN office and his home in New York were bugged in the run-up to the Iraq war.

In an exclusive interview, Mr Blix said he expected to be bugged by the Iraqis, but to be spied upon by the US was a different matter. He described such behaviour as "disgusting", adding: "It feels like an intrusion into your integrity in a situation when you are actually on the same side."

We're currently spending $87 billion rebuilding Iraq (with more to come). Did you know that of $75 million Congress recently allocated for a cargo inspection program, the administration only spent $58 million? And when Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge was asked about it, he floated the idea of simply privatizing the operation and letting the shipping companies take care of their own security?

"Where's the outrage?" Rick Shenkman asks. And why is the media not covering what's happening with homeland security?

. . . in Asia:

Technology companies are seeing a rebound in business, but top executives this week said any jobs added to meet growing demand will likely be in countries where labor is cheaper than the United States.

Executives speaking at the Reuters Technology, Media and Telecommunications Summit in New York said they see increased hiring in countries like India and China, but few jobs will be added in the United States.
. . .
U.S. technology employment fell 4 percent last year to just below 6 million, the American Electronics Association estimates, the lowest level since 1999. The unemployment rate for electrical and electronics engineers rose to a record 6.2 percent, the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers said.

Ron Hira, a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology who analyzes manpower for the IEEE, said a recent decrease in the U.S. government's outlook for employment growth reflects the move to send U.S. technology jobs abroad.

Another sick person (plural?) surfaces:

Nearly 60 animals have been killed at the Sao Paulo Zoo since last month and police expect to track down the suspected killers soon, a Brazilian official said on Friday.

Laboratory tests have shown the animals were killed with a rat poison banned in Brazil.

Joao Carlos Meirelles, a Sao Paulo state minister, said investigators had ruled out the deaths being an accident, mainly because the dose was so high in most of the dead animals.

The 59 victims so far include an elephant, dromedaries, monkeys and porcupines.

Today's political science lesson:

"The job of the president is to drive policy toward the ideal."

--George W. Bush

By now you're probably aware of Speaker of the House Hastert's crass political decision to prevent the 9/11 Commission from finishing its investigation. According to the Speaker's spokesman, there are two reasons for this:

"One, if there are recommendations that need action, we need them sooner than later," Feehery said. "Two, he does not want this to be delayed any further and become a political football in the middle of the campaign."

We admit we don't do causes very well on the program. And I don't do outrage well at all, yet, tonight, a cause and an outrage. The decision by the speaker of the House to deny the independent commission investigating the 9/11 attack on America a 60-day extension -- that's all, 60 days -- to complete its work is unconscionable and indefensible, which, no doubt, explains why neither the speaker, nor any member of the House leadership, nor none of their press secretaries would come on the program to talk about it, despite repeated requests.

The commission itself has gone about its work quietly. It's had to fight tooth and nail to get necessary information. And now this, an arbitrary decision to deny not just the commission -- that's the least of it -- but the country the chance to know all of what happened, how it happened, and how best to prevent it from happening again.

Perhaps, the speaker and his team assume you do not care. I hope they're wrong. I hope you care enough to write them and e-mail them and call them until they relent. Do that. Do it for the victims and their families. Do it for the country that was attacked and for history.

Congressman J. Dennis Hastert
D.C. Office
235 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Phone: 202-225-2976
Fax: 202-225-0697

According to sources privy to convention planners' discussions, the 2004 GOP conclave at New York's Madison Square Garden will be unlike any previous quadrennial gathering of either party. In fact, not all of the main events will be held at the Garden, sources involved in planning the Aug. 31-Sept. 2 convention said.

"The entire format and actual physical setup could be radically different," one GOP insider commented. "They might not even have a podium, or maybe a rotating podium or even a stage that comes up from underground. It would be like a theater in the round, with off-site events that are part of the convention."

The source, a veteran official of past GOP conventions, said the 50,000 delegates, dignitaries and guests would watch off-site events on giant TV screens. "Now, we'll go to the deck of the USS Intrepid as the U.S. Marine Corps Band plays the national anthem," he said, pretending that he was playing the part of the convention chairman.

"Or, and this is a real possibility, we could see President Bush giving his acceptance speech at Ground Zero," he added. "It's clearly a venue they�re considering."

. . . in Iraq. The administration has sent so-called "American democracy trainers" into Iraq to "show the people what democracy is and that it is for their own good."

What lessons are these "democracy trainers" teaching?

[T]he United States has had to lay down the law on some issues, such as getting the men to include women, which means setting quotas for them. Some of the men don't like that. And in one particular nomination process � to form a finance committee � even some of the women argued for a lower number of slots to be set aside for them.

"Quotas are something that, by and large, we don't like the sound of in the United States," said Chuck Costello, who represents a firm of consultants to which the United States is paying $167 million. "But a lot of countries use them, and if you want to push harder to try to make forward progress, sometimes, especially in a temporary situation, quotas are not a bad idea."

Can't these big media organizations come up with people to host a decent debate?

• Candidate A, you recently said that you are the best man for the job. Are you trying to say that Candidate B isn't a man?
• Candidate A, which of Candidate B's personal characteristics do you wish you had?
• Candidate A, which of these other candidates would you vote for?
• To all the candidates: since you're all American citizens, do you think a foreigner should be allowed here to debate you?

Kevin Drum points out that George Bush has at least five constitutional amendments in the past few years.

I think bloggers can appreciate Bush's view of the Constitution. Is there an issue that's hot among the Republican base? Great. Simply hit "Post" and update the Constitution accordingly.

Strangely, I notice that one amendment is missing. Where's the balanced budget amendment? Remember when that was a winner for Republicans? Those were the days. Can you imagine the GOP trying to balance out tax give aways and pork barrel spending now?

The ACLU has a web form you can use to contact Congress and voice your opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Senator Frist is a lost cause, but it sounds like Senator Alexander is leaning against the amendment. Remind him that the Constitution is supposed to protect rights, not take them away.

I received a letter from the Attorney General for the State of Tennessee in response to my signing up at this site.

According to the letter, Attorney General Summers is happy to "return value" to us consumers who have been ripped off by CD pricing policies and who opted into the class action lawsuit.

How much value? $13.86.

I know, I know. Don't spend it all in one place.

This is one reason why they have the Secret Service:

A man yelling "I'm a victim of terrorism" jumped a White House fence and ran across the North Lawn on Wednesday before being caught by Secret Service officers.

The man scaled a fence along Pennsylvania Avenue and ran about halfway across the North Lawn before he was surrounded by uniformed Secret Service officers and led away in handcuffs.

"He is in custody," said Charles Bopp, a spokesman for the Secret Service. "He was unarmed at the time. We are conducting an investigation."

A photographer for The Associated Press, who witnessed the incident shortly after 5 p.m. EST, said the man was shouting, "I'm a victim of terrorism and I need the president's help."

Washington's Metro transit system is gearing up to raise rates for the second time in two years "to help cover a shortfall between its revenue and expenses."

Why might there be a shortfall between revenue and expenses, you ask? I don't know. The fact that parking lot attendants have stolen untold millions from the system might have something to do with it.

To add insult to injury, Metro officials are refusing to release the auditor's report on the thievery because "audits are not public documents."

Nice.

. . . people should listen:

Ayman al-Zawahri, the al-Qaida second-in-command whose voice was heard on audiotapes broadcast this week on Arab television, has made 10 similar public statements in the past six years, five of which were followed within three weeks by deadly terrorist attacks, an NBC News analysis shows.

In two cases, the attacks came within three days of the broadcast of audiotapes or videotapes attributed to al-Zawahri. In both those instances, more than 200 people were killed.

U.S. intelligence officials, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said they cannot definitively link al-Zawahri�s statements to the subsequent attacks. But they said that U.S. security officials take seriously any such pronouncements by Osama bin Laden�s right-hand man and study them for any possible "go signals" they might contain instructing al-Qaida operatives to carry out terrorist attacks.

Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave is a co-sponsor of the most-frequently cited version of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would prevent gay couples from getting married.

Daniel of The Target Demographic checked out Musgrave's website and notes the irony of this (emphasis added):

Keeping the government from unduly imposing burdens on the family is one of Representative Musgrave's greatest priorities in Congress. Despite the claims of many bureaucrats, parents are the best advocates for their children and know best how to raise them.

Empowering parents, while keeping the government from intervening as much as possible, is the best way the federal government can help parents build strong families to continue the strength of America's society.

UPDATE: jeff-perado (stutz[at]unlv.nevada[dot]edu) weighs in on the gay marriage debate:

Bush today stated that he is in fact in favor of discrimination and turning certain U.S. law-abiding citizens into second class citizens not deserving the rights of other U.S. citizens (even convicted criminals can get married).

Since this issue keeps building, I must therefore keep on top of it, as I think it is critical to our future as a society. We have already had a civil war over a similar provision in our constitution that turned blacks into second class citizens and even in certain situations, property (slaves). Prohibition brought about organized crime and such American events as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and men like Al Capone. It is easy to see that if Republicans go down this path, we will be seeing this country set up for a third bloody encounter. Now I'm not suggesting that homosexuals across the country will take up arms, but rather just the opposite, this type of constitutional amendment will give hate-mongers the ammunition to abuse, demean, and even kill homosexuals, as they will not be full citizens anyway. We know this is true, as history has shown us during the strife the ensued over civil rights for blacks. That prejudice exists to this day in the courts. Black men get the death sentence much more for killing a white than whites do for killing a black. That is a real statistic.

But all this is known and reasonably thinking people will never allow this to happen. The problem is that the "religious right" (why call them that? They are not right.) supports this, and they instill fear in their believers that allowing homosexuals the same dignity and rights will destroy the "sanctity of marriage." Which to me is funny, as I was always under the (apparently mistaken) impression that wife abuse, alcohol abuse, child abuse, incest, adultery and venomous derision were the enemies to marriage, not true love towards your partner. They make the completely false argument that allowing marriage of same-sex couples will open the door to other illegal marriages, like bigamy and polygamy. I took those topics up last fall when Rick Santorum made that boneheaded comment about gay marriage being the same as rape, incest, bestiality and polygamy. But as I see that being an argument that will resurface in this brewing storm, I will return to the most complicated of those. Most crimes Rick referred to will remain illegal for their obviously damaging effects on individuals and society. So, I will focus on bigamy and polygamy.

First I think equating marriage based in a healthy and loving context, to bigamy or polygamy is deplorable. Both bigamy and polygamy are destructive to the spouses involved, their communities, and American society as a whole. Bigamy is (typically but not always) a man who is married to two or more women who do not know their husband has more than one wife. These situations often have children involved, and once the deception breaks down, much anger and hatred ensues. This also is very destructive for the children involved. This, as has been popularized in TV crime shows, can even result in murder. Since murder and what amounts to spousal and child abuse are both harmful, bigamy must remain illegal, and not equated to marriage of same sex couples. This is most true in that with bigamy there is deception involved.

Polygamy is not much better, but it does remove the deception issue, all the wives of the polygamist know about each other and quite frequently live under the same roof. Polygamy is most common in Utah and Arizona (thankfully, my Nevada has been largely spared of this scourge). The main issue with polygamy is not the intent of the wives and the polygamist. They have a tendency to have been brainwashed since birth to accept that. The main issue is one of support. This type of arrangement tends to produce a large number of children and unemployed wives. Since they are considered by the states to be single moms (polygamy is illegal and thus they are not legally wed), they qualify for -- get this -- welfare. Yes, even though the polygamist may be wealthy, there are certain mormon clans that own grocery store chains and such, yet their wives still collect welfare. Greed has no bounds after all, we see that in not only Republican ranks but Democrats as well. Since those women collecting welfare are draining valuable resources from all American taxpayers, this is not a constructive form of marriage to the spouses and to society. Furthermore, polygamy tends to be quite abusive, in that incest, and forced marriages of underage girls is common. Those can never be called beneficial.

That is the distinction of bigamy and polygamy when compared to marriage of same-sex couples. Same sex couples are just as capable and loving as opposite sex couples when it comes to their commitment and their ability to raise children. I should point out one blatant falsehood used by the Pat Robertson's and Dr. Dobson's of this country. They make the ridiculous claim that gay parents will teach and raise their children to be gay. The is the most absurd argument of them all, gay couples will know THE BEST that one's sexual orientation is one's own business and should not be forced on them by another. Besides, isn't that type of argument a bit silly, for parents have be taught their children to be heterosexual, and roughly 10% still turned out gay. This proving that children adopt the sexuality that suits their personality (and even genetic makeup to some degree).

Senators invest just like the rest of us, they just happen to do better:

US senators' personal stock portfolios outperformed the market by an average of 12 per cent a year in the five years to 1998, according to a new study.

"The results clearly support the notion that members of the Senate trade with a substantial informational advantage over ordinary investors," says the author of the report, Professor Alan Ziobrowski of the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University.
. . .
US senators' personal stock portfolios outperformed the market by an average of 12 per cent a year in the five years to 1998, according to a new study.

"The results clearly support the notion that members of the Senate trade with a substantial informational advantage over ordinary investors," says the author of the report, Professor Alan Ziobrowski of the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University.
. . .
There was no difference in performance between Democrats and Republicans.

A separate study in 2000, covering 66,465 US households from 1991 to 1996 showed that the average household's portfolio underperformed the market by 1.44 per cent a year, on average. Corporate insiders (defined as senior executives) usually outperform by about 5 per cent.

The Ziobrowski study notes that the politicians' timing of transactions is uncanny. Most stocks bought by senators had shown little movement before the purchase. But after the stock was bought, it outperformed the market by 28.6 per cent on average in the following calender year.

Returns on sell transactions are equally intriguing. Stocks sold by senators performed in line with the market the year following the sale.

According to a recent report (link via Atrios), slavery is "alive and well" in Florida, among other places. The full report is available here.

Of course Paul Craig Roberts, a Reagan administration assistant secretary of the Treasury, would be quick to point out that in many ways modern slaves are "freer" than the rest of us, because they don't have to pay taxes.

C-SPAN is rebroadcasting the hearings from yesterday's Governors Forum on Prescription Drug Importation.

At issue is the FDA's opposition to the importation of prescription drugs from Canada (and elsewhere) due to the fact that the FDA is working for the drug companies "safety" concerns.

One fact illustrates just how silly this is. We've had more people killed by eating imported green onions in the past year than we've had from importing unsafe prescription drugs.

Simply put, the real issue is profits, not consumer protection.

UPDATE: Senator McCain is threatening to derail the confirmation of a new Medicare chief if the administration doesn't clarify its position on drug reimportation.

So why does Senator Kerry keep winning primaries despite the fact that most voters don't know very much about him or like him all that much?

Duncan Watts takes a shot at it, citing Solomon Arsch's experiments in "social decision-making." Simply put, Asch might argue that voters are picking Kerry because prior voters selected Kerry, and then they rationalize their decision with "electability" or some other nonsense. The results from this are mixed:

In many situations, social decision-making isn't a bad idea at all. After all, the world is a complicated place, and other people often do have information that we lack. So, we can often do reasonably well, or at least no worse than the people we are copying, by letting them do the hard work for us.

But sometimes the people we are copying aren't working either, and that's where the problems come in. When everyone is looking to someone else for an opinion�trying, for example, to pick the Democratic candidate they think everyone else will pick�it's possible that whatever information other people might have gets lost, and instead we get a cascade of imitation that, like a stampeding herd, can start for no apparent reason and subsequently go in any direction with equal likelihood. Stock market bubbles and cultural fads are the examples that most people associate with cascades, because they are generally accepted to represent "irrational" behavior (although, curiously, not to the people who are participating in them�just ask a teenager why she wants to get her navel pierced; she won't say "because it's a fad"), but the same dynamics can show up even in the serious business of Democratic primaries.

Fire someone.

Okay, perhaps dismissing the entire cabinet is a little extreme. But the fact that no major official has lost his or her job following the 9/11 and Iraqi intelligence meltdowns says volumes to me about accountability and responsibility in this government.

Doonesbury is offering a $10,000 reward to anyone who can prove that George W. Bush fulfilled his National Guard requirements between May and November of 1972.

Rumors continue to swirl that something is in the works which will shake up the Democratic race sometime this week. Of course people have been been chattering about it since last week and it still hasn't happened yet. But if it does happen, I can look back to this post with pride, knowing I made a vague allusion to it.

President Bush wastes not time laying out the domestic priorities of his re-election campaign, calling for the first constitutional amendment since Prohibition which would take rights away from Americans.

I bet Bush feels a special connection to the 1920s, being that he's the first job loss president since Herbert Hoover. Maybe that helps explain why he's running on this issue.

• The Secretary of Education calls the National Education Association a "terrorist organization." I'm guessing this is a preview of the Bush administration's "you're with us or with the terrorists" re-election campaign theme.


• The Sierra Club filed a motion requesting that Justice Scalia recuse himself from the suit against Vice President Cheney for his secret Energy Task Force. Sierra contends that recusal

  is necessary to "redress an appearance of impropriety and to restore public confidence in the integrity of our nation's highest court." "Unfortunately, the Cheney-Scalia vacation mirrors the secrecy with which the Bush Administration often conducts business," said David Bookbinder, Sierra Club's Washington Legal Director. "The public is continually shut out."

• New Orleans wages a war against underground party goers.


• Bush administration forecasts have been way off the mark. For instance:

  Two years ago, the administration forecast that there would be 3.4 million more jobs in 2003 than there were in 2000. And it predicted a budget deficit for fiscal 2004 of $14 billion. The economy ended up losing 1.7 million jobs over that period, and the budget deficit for this year is on course to be $521 billion.
  . . .
  Figures released by the White House show that its overestimate of job creation in 2003 was the largest forecast error made in at least 15 years, and its 2002 underestimate of the deficit was the largest in at least 21 years.

  Translation: Don't believe a word of Bush's predictions this fall.


• The German government informed the C.I.A. of 9/11 hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi's first name and phone number 16 months before the terrorist enrolled in an American flight school. For reasons that are unclear, the C.I.A. dismissed the German warning and failed to track the terrorist as he made his preparations to fly United Airlines Flight 175 into the south tower of the World Trade Center.

So how's that ricin investigation going?

Well, despite claims that the FBI is harassing people because of their political views, authorities have yet to find the letter that carried the supposed ricin. In fact some now theorize that there may not have been any ricin at all.

I'm sure Senator Frist will be rushing out to hold a breaking news press conference to put us at ease if investigators conclude this ricin scare has all been a big mistake.

According to one report, businesses in which country are most likely to have females in senior management?

Answer here.

It wouldn't have been my first guess.

I took this quiz (via South Knox Bubba) and got a score of 74% Dixie. It kind of makes me wonder about the quiz. Because although I've lived in the "South" since I was 5 years old, I'm rarely accused of being Southern sounding. I probably sound more like someone from the East Coast than from Tennessee.

Trouble in the ranks at the California GOP convention:

But immigration was the issue of passion Saturday, and Kaloogian was the candidate capturing it at his rally with Tancredo in a crowded white tent outside the convention hotel near San Francisco Airport. Next to the stage, two boys wearing Kaloogian T-shirts carried posters reading, "No Terrorist Driver's License." The signs showed a driver's license bearing a photo of Osama bin Laden. Tancredo, who flew in from Colorado for the rally, said that America had taken "rabid, overstated multiculturalism" too far.

"People are still coming across our borders with the intent to do terrible things to us," he told the cheering crowd. He called Bush's proposal "lousy, lousy policy."

Gloria Irwin, the Glenn County Republican Party chairwoman, said she agreed that Bush's plan was "terrible."

Anyway, it doesn't look like the Bush immigrant work plan is going over so well among the faithful.

The Knoxville News Sentinel has an article on a proposal in the state legislature intended to "depoliticize" the license plate issue.

You have to read 3/4 of the article before you discover what the proposal is, and even then it's not very clear:

The bill, in essence, would take the Legislature out of the decision-making process and allow issuance of a specialty plate for any organization meeting minimal qualifications, provided it can sign up 1,000 people in advance who pledge to purchase the new plates at $35 each.

The minimum criteria, [Rep. Jamie] Hagood said, would specify that the plate's content "not be obscene," that it not closely resemble another plate already issued and that the design "could not interfere with law enforcement."

Still, I wonder why we need this fuss. It seems the non-profits have become so dependent on state-assisted fund raising that they are now calling the shots. It wasn't so long ago that groups managed to get by without specialty plates.

Wow:

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.
. . .
Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office - and the first senior figure to liken the threat of climate change to that of terrorism - said: 'If the Pentagon is sending out that sort of message, then this is an important document indeed.'

Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire warnings could no longer be ignored.

'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson.

But it will be have some impact, and we should dealing with the problem now. The Bush administration has been AWOL on environmental protection and it's time for Americans to demand accountability.

Resonance reader jeff-perado (e-mail: stutz[at]unlv.nevada[dot]edu) has been monitoring discussion of religion's role in government and e-mails the following:

If you happened to catch the Feb 17 edition of the 700 Club you heard Pat tell his audience that the best thing that could happen in Iraq would be for them to adopt a secular constitution that allowed freedom of and freedom from (Islamic) religion. But not 5 minutes later, Pat is ridiculing England because they want to make their schools more secular. So which is it Pat? Do you want true secularism or true theocracy as a country's governing principle? (Hint: Secularism means freedom from religious pressure in ANY direction -- not freedom from any religion EXCEPT Christianity) If anyone is unclear of the meaning of secular, check here.

For those of you with a strong stomach, and are willing to watch an actual 700 Club broadcast, head here and select the Feb 17 show.

I could write an entire book chopping Sean Hannity off at the knees, but it is really unnecessary, as his "logic" is self-destructive. He defends Bush and castigates liberals in one fell swoop by saying that Bush went to war with "evil" in Iraq, whereas liberals try to reason with evil. The failure in his logic is twofold: first, why then is Bush not invading Cuba and its bloody tyrant Castro, or China their bloodthirsty regime, or any of the dozen evil dictators of African countries?

The answer is: Hannity's theory on fighting evil is fundamentally flawed. Bush himself says some dictators must be reasoned with and not destroyed by bombs and bullets (North Korea and Iran).

Second if this Hannity were serious he would advocate using the atomic bomb to destroy all evil in the world by bombing all evil regimes. Since we have seen the killing of innocent civilians in Iraq as acceptable to conservatives, then there should be no problem with using American atomic weapons of mass destruction in Hannity's screwy (and completely frightening) logic. Please, for the safety of this planet, ignore these repulsive conservatives, and bring sanity back into the world. Peace is a good thing, as no one dies needlessly from bullets and bombs. War kills children, as we have seen in Iraq, and how can anyone justify killing children as being a good (and moral) thing?

You may ask why I insist on watching Pat and his propaganda, but I find it very useful in keeping an eye on what they are thinking and how to best expose their tripe. Because I insist on logic and reason above their form of derision, I must be able to provide valid counteragruments. This is why I find it necessary to learn what their passions are. So now you know why I hit so hard on subjects such as allowing homosexuals the decency of having the same rights as heterosexuals, keeping prayer in the church and in the home but out of schools, keeping the ten commandments out of taxpayer's public facilities, and keeping religious teaching out of U.S., state, and local law. These things are what Pat fights for and I must keep up on, so I can defend our U.S. Constitution from his onslaughts, and protect the rights of all Americans from his destructive agenda. As I have pointed out, the worst human-created disasters in American history were all religiously motivated, so we all must fight to keep religion out of our government, or we will suffer more 9-11's.

The gods of all religions belong in their respective churches, not in our halls of Congress.

Remember nothing else of Pat's, but this statement, "Government should be secular." He was referring to Iraq, but it is just as crucial here in our most cherished land, The United States of America.

This time organizers of the Democratic National Convention are to blame:

Under a preliminary plan floated by convention organizers, the "free-speech zone" would be a small plot bounded by Green Line tracks and North Washington Street, in an area that until recently was given over to the elevated artery. The zone would hold as few as 400 of the several thousand protesters who are expected in Boston in late July.

"The area looks a little silly, to be honest with you," said Urszula Masny-Latos, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild's Massachusetts chapter. "People will not be able to express their concerns with whatever will be happening, because no one will have access to delegates. No one will be heard, and the area is just too small."

Officials with the National Lawyers Guild and the ACLU of Massachusetts plan to meet with Boston Police Department representatives in the weeks to come to ask that the plan be changed. Boston police say no final decisions will be made for months, and stressed that they're open to input.

An interesting tidbit from the legal battle which preceded the 2000 Democratic convention:

Relegated to a parking lot blocks from the convention arena, protesters sued, and less than a month before that convention began, a federal judge ruled that the designated area was unconstitutional. Organizers were forced to move the area to a parking lot directly across the street from an arena entrance, in keeping with earlier federal court rulings that any legal demonstration be allowed within "sight and sound" of its intended audience.

If you can't create the factory jobs, manufacture the statistics:

Is cooking a hamburger patty and inserting the meat, lettuce and ketchup inside a bun a manufacturing job, like assembling automobiles?

That question is posed in the new Economic Report of the President, a thick annual compendium of observations and statistics on the health of the United States economy.

The latest edition, sent to Congress last week, questions whether fast-food restaurants should continue to be counted as part of the service sector or should be reclassified as manufacturers. No answers were offered.
. . .
Counting jobs at McDonald's, Burger King and other fast-food enterprises alongside those at industrial companies like General Motors and Eastman Kodak might seem like a stretch, akin to classifying ketchup in school lunches as a vegetable, as was briefly the case in a 1981 federal regulatory proposal.

But the presidential report points out that the current system for classifying jobs "is not straightforward." The White House drew a box around the section so it would stand out among the 417 pages of statistics.

"When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a 'service' or is it combining inputs to 'manufacture' a product?" the report asks.

Will any gimmickry be off limits as November draws closer?

Washington knows best:

The nation's major drug policy reform groups today filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority for censoring the speech of those critical of the government's "War on Drugs."
. . .
The lawsuit responds to an amendment buried in the 2004 federal spending bill that cuts off more than $3 billion in federal funding from local transit authorities that accept advertisements critical of current marijuana laws and other drug laws. With at least $85 million at stake, the Washington Metro last week rejected an advertisement submitted by a coalition of drug policy reform groups that criticizes marijuana laws for wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and imprisoning non-violent offenders.

The rejected advertisement sponsored by the ACLU, Change the Climate, the Drug Policy Alliance, and the Marijuana Policy Project shows a group of ordinary people standing behind prison bars under the headline, "Marijuana Laws Waste Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Lock Up Non-Violent Americans." The same groups that sought to run the advertisement filed today's lawsuit.

The First Amendment says that's no good.

Via Volokh Conspiracy.

Interesting AP piece on the growth of Iranian blogging. Unfortunately, if hard-line conservatives assume power following today's election, they may try to censor the Internet and crack down on blogging.

CNN has a "conspiracy" story on how Senator Edwards is courting Howard Dean. At the bottom of the piece is a interesting factoid. Earlier, I noted how much more per vote Dean's campaign had spent than front runners Kerry and Edwards had. It turns out that in terms of bang for the buck, Dean is far from the worst:

Dean raised and spent about $50.3 million in his presidential run, and he won 201 delegates. That means he spent about $250,000 to win each delegate, including superdelegates. Without superdelegates included, he spent some $500,000 per delegate. That's nothing compared to Steve Forbes, who won two delegates in '00 and quit the race in early February after he spent about $34 million -- $17 million per delegate.

I would think this was obvious enough that it wouldn't need to be reiterated. But apparently not.

If your a highly-paid public ambassador at a major state institution, it's a bad idea to say the following about anyone, much less a young woman alleging sexual assault:

"It was obvious Katie was not very good. She was awful. You know what guys do? They respect your ability. You can be 90 years old, but if you can go out and play, they'll respect you. Katie was not only a girl, she was terrible. O.K.? There's no other way to say it."

There's bizarre, and then there's bizarre:

An elderly Irishwoman shared a room with her sister's corpse for up to a year and sometimes slept with it in the same bed, newspapers report.

Mary Ellen Lyons never told anyone that her sister Agnes had died, the reports said. Even their brother Michael, who lived in the same remote bungalow in rural western Ireland, did not know.

An inquest heard on Monday that Agnes probably died in 2002 -- possibly in September -- at the age of 70.

However, her body was only discovered in August 2003 when Mary Ellen fell ill and had to be taken to hospital.
. . .
After Agnes' death, Mary Ellen sometimes slept in the same double bed as the corpse and sometimes in the bathroom. Michael stayed in his own bedroom and the living room of the tiny house and never entered his sisters' room.

"There is no way that Michael would open the door of a woman's room," a neighbour told the inquest. "They wouldn't even watch the television if there was a woman on it. They were from a different era."

Via Straight White Guy.

A couple notable items gleaned from TalkLeft which illustrate what can happen if Americans are vigilant.

First, there's the case of Dudley Hiibel, a man who, under no suspicion of wrong doing, was arrested for refusing to produce his "papers" when a police officer demanded that he furnish an ID. Hiibel's case will be argued next month at the Supreme Court. More details are available at his website.

Second, I discovered "brain fingerprinting." What is brain fingerprinting?

Brain fingerprinting works by measuring and analyzing split-second spikes in electrical activity in the brain when it responds to something it recognizes.

For example, if a suspected murderer was shown a detail of the crime scene that only he would know, his brain would involuntarily register that knowledge. Under [promoter Lawrence] Farwell's system, that brain activity is picked up through electrodes attached to the suspect's scalp and measured by an electroencephalograph (EEG) as a waveform.

. . . over at Les Jones Blog.

Fox News talking head Bill O'Reilly claims that the San Francisco gay marriages are sparking anarchy and the city's mayor should be arrested.

RTB correspondent Manish visits the scene of the crime and files a more tranquil report.

Boy, I wouldn't fare very well at this school:

Under a new policy at the Lawrence Middle School, seventh- and eighth-graders are allowed to leave class for the bathroom a maximum of 15 times a month. As a result, some are afraid to use up their bathroom passes too quickly and end up with a full bladder and nowhere to go.

School officials defend the policy as a way to ensure safety, security and order. But some parents say the system goes too far. The right to go to the bathroom, they say, is a health and civil rights issue and as taxpayers, they think it is a freedom they pay for.

"When my son Matthew used all his passes, he was then told he couldn't go to the bathroom," parent Susan Gregory said in a published report. "We called the school and were told the bathroom is a privilege, not a right.

"This is utterly ridiculous. Now my son doesn't want to go to the bathroom at school," she said. "He says he won't drink or he'll hold it until he gets home. This can't be healthy."

Urologists say the practice can lead to infections and incontinence.

"Common sense tells you the policy doesn't make any sense," said Dr. Christopher S. Cooper, an associate professor of urology at the University of Iowa who specializes in pediatric urology. "When children need to go, they should be allowed to go. It isn't good to hold it in or drink less fluids. It could have long-term effects on a child's health."

Senator Kerry doesn't want word of this to get out:

If North Carolina Senator John Edwards were the Democratic Party's candidate and George W. Bush were the Republican Party's candidate, who would you be more likely to vote for?

Edwards 54%
Bush 44%

Division in the ranks:

Treasury Secretary John W. Snow distanced himself on Tuesday from the Bush administration's official prediction that the nation would add 2.6 million jobs by the end of this year.

That prediction, which is far more optimistic than that of many private sector forecasters, was part of the annual economic report released last week by the White House Council of Economic Advisers and was immediately echoed by Mr. Bush himself.

But on a tour through Washington and Oregon to promote the president's economic agenda, Mr. Snow and Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans both declined to endorse the White House prediction and cautioned that it was based on economic assumptions that have an inherent margin of error.

"I think we are going to create a lot of jobs; how many I don't know," Mr. Snow said, adding that "macroeconomic models are based on a lot of assumptions" and are "not without a range of error."

UPDATE: Bush himself didn't want to touch the jobs forecast today. It's the "number-crunchers'" fault!

Last pre-election Wisconsin poll:

Kerry 47%
Dean 23
Edwards 20

Kerry 40%
Edwards 34
Dean 18

The Middle East has taught us not to get too excited over a "road map," but news from South Asia looks encouraging:

Pakistan and India today laid out a timetable for peace talks on a wide range of topics, including the key issues of Kashmir, nuclear safeguards and terrorism.

A series of mid-level meetings will begin directly after the Indian elections in April, culminating in a summit in August between the two nations' foreign ministers.

"We do have a basic road map for a Pakistan-India peace process to which we have both agreed," the senior official in Pakistan's foreign ministry, Riaz Khokhar, told reporters at the conclusion of the talks.

Even before the Indian elections, technical-level talks will be held on transport links and other issues, Mr Khokhar said after a face-to-face meeting with his Indian counterpart, Shashank.

"We feel that the atmosphere is much better," he said. "There is a realisation on both sides that war is not an option."

Some intriguing books are about to roll off the presses. I'm especially interested in what Richard Clarke has to say.

These allegations, if true, are disturbing:

A federal prosecutor in a major terrorism case in Detroit has taken the rare step of suing Attorney General John Ashcroft, alleging the Justice Department interfered with the case, compromised a confidential informant and exaggerated results in the war on terrorism.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino of Detroit accused the Justice Department of "gross mismanagement" of the war on terrorism in a whistleblower lawsuit filed late Friday in federal court in Washington.

Why might Convertino be ticked?

Convertino came under internal investigation last fall after providing information to a Senate committee about his concerns about the war on terror. His testimony came just months after he helped convict some members of an alleged terrorism cell in Detroit.

Convertino also accused Justice officials of intentionally divulging the name of one of his confidential terrorism informants (CI) to retaliate against him.

The leak put the informant at grave risk, forced him to flee the United States and "interfered with the ability of the United States to obtain information from the CI about current and future terrorist activities," the suit alleges.

Looks like N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, is trying to duck following his assertion that U.S. job outsourcing is a "good thing":

Mankiw, a former Harvard economics professor, said Tuesday he had learned a lesson about the use of language from his missteps last week.

"Economists and noneconomists speak very different languages," Mankiw said in a speech to an audience of economists.

"Last week, some of the comments I made about the benefits of international trade were far from clear and were misinterpreted," Mankiw told the National Economists Club.

Note to Mankiw: next time you sign off on a report, make sure it's written in the correct "language."

Talk about your weird Google discoveries:

Police in California want to reunite a 17-year-old with his father in Alberta after the teen found on the internet that he's been missing for 14 years.

The boy was surfing the web at a school in California several months ago when he found his own picture on a site about missing children.
. . .
The boy was apparently abducted from his home in Red Deer where he had been living with his father.

The boy's mother, 45, has been arrested by police in Los Angeles and is being held without bail. The RCMP want her extradited to Canada so she can face charges of child abduction.

Congratulations to RTB hotshot South Knox Bubba for being voted Most Deserving of Wider Recognition. And to Lean Left for being a finalist in the category.

Here's a fluff article. The title is "Change in GOP Running Mate Seems Unlikely." But if you read the whole piece, it doesn't offer any hard news on the situation; all it says about Cheney remaining is this:

Few expect a midcourse ticket correction. Cheney remains popular with the GOP rank and file and with social and economic conservatives who are increasingly uneasy about Bush's deficit spending and immigration-liberalization plans.

Donald Sensing offers an interesting take on the marriage issue from his pastoral perspective.

Sensing proposes that we divide marriage, as it is currently constituted, into two components--a civil-legal and religious:

• A state-issued "Civil Interpersonal Contract," which grants adult partners most of the legal rights currently conferred by the marriage license.


• Religion-issued "Certificates of Marriage," which have no legal significance. Churches, synagogues, or mosques would free to unite couples as they see fit.

People who scream about the "sanctity of marriage" - a religiously loaded term - need to explain how sanctified Americans think marriage is when there far are more than a million divorces per year, an enormous percentage of children are born out of wedlock and, as I already said, the vast majority of men and women who do marry already are living together as de facto husband and wife. The fact is that America destroyed the sanctity of marriage long before homosexuals became politically activist.

Nearly four years after the Florida fiasco, the Republican-controlled Congress has finally got around to establishing a commission to distribute funds to help states upgrade voting equipment. Of course many of the improvements won't be made until well after this year's election. The 2002 Help America Vote Act required states publish plans on how they are going to improve their systems. But until the Election Assistance Commission was launched yesterday, states had no way of doing so. Thus far only $650 million of the $3.86 billion 2002 authorization has been disbursed.

Congress and the Bush administration clearly made this a high priority.

I'm not as conspiracy-minded as some people on the Internet. But I don't see how anyone who wants fair elections can't be at least somewhat concerned about election stories that have surfaced since 2000.

Black Box Voting is a voting activist website keeping an eye on ballot tampering-related issues. It's worth checking out.

Bremer lays down the law:

On Monday, U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer said he would move to block any effort by Iraqi leaders to put Islamic law as the foundation of legislation in the interim constitution, which is supposed to take effect at the end of February.

However, Mohsen Abdel-Hamid, the current president of the Iraqi Governing Council and a Sunni Muslim hard-liner, has proposed making Islamic law the "principal basis" of legislation, which many Iraqi women's groups fear will threaten their legal rights.

"Our position is clear," Bremer said when asked what he would do if the Iraqis wrote Islamic law as the principal basis of the legal code. "It can't be law until I sign it."

Curious, isn't it?

It's catching on. Vladimir Putin now has a website, with some English stuff here.

No sign of a blog though; they've still got work to do.

Say Uncle brings to my attention this newspaper story on a former UT student who is suing the university for arresting him after he painted "No War" on university buildings.

From what I gather, the gist of the ex-student's complaint is that he was he was singled out for punishment not for his conduct (painting the building) but for his anti-war message. Apparently, there's no explicit rule against painting campus buildings.

Thus the complainant argues that but for the university's content-based restriction, it would have been okay for him to spray paint the buildings.

I don't know this student's "speech" got cleaned up faster than other graffiti, but clearly the university cannot give students free reign to paint buildings.

When I was over on The Hill, most of the daily graffiti I saw (outside of the bathrooms) was written in chalk, not paint. I think most sober students understand this distinction. By pressing the issue in a far-fetched claims such as this, the litigants are alienating public opinion and only making it more difficult for protesters to bring legitimate First Amendment claims in the future.

The real shame of this all is that if there currently isn't a rule against graffiti, there may be one now--even for those using temporary chalk. So, as is often the case, someone who goes too far may end up ruining a practice for everyone.

Yesterday as part of C-SPAN's President's Day festivities, they had a segment with Henry Wiencek discussing his book, An Imperfect God, which examines George Washington's moral struggle with the slavery issue.

It's fairly-widely known that the Washington's owned slaves and did not free them until they died. Apparently George was much more troubled by the situation than his wife Martha. According to Wiencek, one of the slaves was Martha's half-sister. [I guess her dad was involved in the same kind of hanky panky that Thomas Jefferson was.] Despite their relationship, Martha kept her half-sister as a slave.

It says something about how strongly the slavery culture was ingrained at the time that someone could hold their own blood relative as property.

Did you know George Washington had 36 hounds?

To commemorate President's Day, some presidential trivia: "All The Presidents' Pets."

Both Senator Kerry and Alexandra Polier have now come out and denied rumors of their alleged affair.

Of course Matt Drudge never claimed they had an affair. He merely said that people were talking about an affair.

Whatever.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel gets it:

For Democrats, then, the challenge is to nominate the man who can take his party's common vision for the nation and convince voters that it offers the right course for America. That man, in our judgment, is Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. We urge Democrats to vote for him in Tuesday's primary.
. . .
The two Americas message - and job loss, acute in Wisconsin, is a part of it - resonates with audiences partly because Edwards peppers it with statistical support, partly because the messenger delivers the message so skillfully. That talent is part of his compelling personal story. Edwards was born in a South Carolina mill town to poor parents who worked their way into the middle class. After college and law school in North Carolina, he became an enormously successful trial lawyer winning suits especially on behalf of injured children. That experience before juries helps to explain his extraordinary political skills.

Edwards is smart, engaging and upbeat, comfortable before any audience and often inspiring. Perhaps most intriguing of all, his optimistic campaign, free of attacks on his Democratic rivals, suggests something important about his character: Here is someone who seems to believe that the power of persuasion doesn't have to include excoriation and the politics of personal destruction.
. . .
If Democrats are serious about winning in November, they have two choices at this point. John Kerry would make a strong run at President Bush and might defeat him. But we think John Edwards, with his combination of message and method, may have the stronger legs in this long distance race.

If the prospect of running against a non-telegenic, patrician "Massachusetts liberal" wasn't propping up Bush's re-election chances enough, now comes this:

Former Green Party candidate Ralph Nader is poised to declare that he will seek the presidency again this year, this time as an independent and despite a vigorous effort by the left to dissuade him, according to friends and associates.

"I think there's very little doubt," said Micah Sifry, author of a book on third-party politics and a longtime Nader watcher. "I think he's going to run."

Nader, blamed for tilting the 2000 election to President Bush by siphoning off votes from Al Gore, twice has delayed saying whether he would be a candidate, but insiders expect the declaration next week.

From Edwards Campaign Blog:

Washington DC - 2/14/04 - The DNC in a 3-0 vote decided to change the offical party symbol from "the Donkey" to "the Sheep", in honor of John Kerry winning the Democratic nomination. When asked why only three people got to vote on such a change, Terry McAuliffe responded, that "[he], Hillary Clinton and John Kerry all agreed it would be best, and that was a large enough group of voters to determine what everybody would want.

An Edwards spokesperson, refusing to attack other Democrats, pointed out that, "the logo has never changed without approval in at least 5 southern states."

Dean, however, was more direct in his criticism, which mostly involved him screaming out a list of states he failed to win delegates in.

Behind-the-scenes activity suggests so:

Though the former Vermont governor, who for months led polls in the race for the Democratic nomination, says he will continue campaigning regardless of the results of the Wisconsin primary -- which polls indicate he is likely to lose by a significant margin -- his actions are beginning to say otherwise.

His calendar for next week is not booked beyond Wednesday, when he plans to return home to Burlington, Vt.

His staff, some of whom are already planning to leave his headquarters for good on Wednesday, has not sought a new contract with the main air charter company that has been flying him around the country, aides say.

Thus far Drudge's Kerry "intern affair" story has gone no where. The only thing Drudge has offered in support of his rumors are links to articles (most in tabloids) stating that he is reporting a scandal. Sit down if you start to get dizzy.

Anyway, a few British papers, including the Telegraph now have a picture of the alleged intern. It looks like it must came from an old yearbook. Several reports have described her as a "tall blonde." Obviously, something has changed.

Looks like the Israeli government is leaving no stone unturned in the quest to stop the bombings:

Israeli police are said to be considering putting bags of pig fat on buses and in shopping centres to try to deter Muslim suicide bombers.

The suggestion is based on the fact that strict Muslim tradition says any Muslim who comes in contact with a pig before dying will be denied access to paradise.
. . .
Israeli police have considered using pigs, or pig products to ward off terrorism in the past, but needed a rabbinical permit to carry it out, as Judaism, like Islam, regards the pig as an unclean animal, said Maariv.

Previously, Israel's Minister without portfolio Gideon Ezra and others suggested burying the corpses of suicide bombers wrapped in pigskin as a deterrent. However, the proposal never got serious consideration in Israel, with opponents saying it would only serve to encourage suicide bombers, egged on by clerics claiming Jews were defiling Islamic burial rites.

Rabbi Eliezer Moshe Fisher, of the Jerusalem Rabbinical Court, said: "There is no ban on using bags of lard when saving lives is concerned. They may be used in any place that might be a target for suicide bombings, such as schools, shopping malls and railway stations."

The Maariv also quotes the rabbi saying if pig fat isn't used on buses, tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews will arm themselves with toy water pistols filled with liquid lard to be used against terrorists.

Heard on the radio:

Three of the first five presidents died on July 4.

Seven consecutive presidents elected in the year ending "0" died in office (1840-1960). Reagan narrowly missed being assassinated in 1981.

Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy died on Friday.

Only two presidents have past age 70 while in office (Eisenhower, Reagan).

The Washington Post website now requires visitors to register. Apparently the company wants to squeeze out more advertising revenue.

Don't worry. There's no plans to launch a registration system here at Resonance . . . yet.

One of the questions about the Bush National Guard service which I've never gotten a clear explaination on is why he failed to take the annual medical examination. His expensive flight training all went for naught because he didn't take a physical. Strange.

Bush wasn't the only pilot in his outfit to be grounded. Via Atrios there's a a document posted which indicates that a James R. Bath was also suspended from flying . . . for failing to take a medical examination.

Was it a coincidence that Bush and Bath both declined physicals? I don't know. But this wouldn't be the last time the two would be linked:

In June 1977, Dubya formed his own drilling company, Arbusto Energy ("arbusto" means "bush" in Spanish), in Midland, Texas. Like his father before him, Dubya founded his oil business with the financial backing of investors, including James R. Bath, a Houston businessman whom Dubya apparently first met when they were in the same Texas Air National Guard unit. (Interestingly, both Dubya and Bath were both suspended from flying in August and September 1972, respectively, for "failure to accomplish annual medical examination.")

Tax documents and other financial records show that Bath, an aircraft broker with controversial ties to Saudi Arabia sheiks, had invested $50,000 in Arbusto, granting him a 5 percent interest in two limited partnerships controlled by Dubya.

Time magazine described Bath in 1991 as "a deal broker whose alleged associations run from the CIA to a major shareholder and director of the Bank of Credit & Commerce." BCCI, as it was more commonly known, closed its doors in July 1991 amid charges of multibillion-dollar fraud and global news reports that the financial institution had been heavily involved in drug money laundering, arms brokering, covert intelligence work, bribery of government officials and�here's the kicker�aid to terrorists.

Bath was never directly implicated in the BCCI scandal, but according to The Outlaw Bank, an award-winning 1993 book by Time correspondents, Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, Bath originally "made his fortune by investing money for [Sheikh Kalid bin] Mahfouz and another BCCI-connected Saudi, Sheikh bin Laden," reportedly the brother of none other than Osama bin Laden, the man accused by the U.S. government of masterminding the August 1998 terrorist bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which killed more than 250 people.

According to court documents, Bath swore that in 1977 he represented four prominent and wealthy Saudi Arabians as a trustee and used his name on their investments in the United States. In return, he received a 5 percent interest in their deals. Time reporters Beaty and Gwynne suggest in their book that the $50,000 Bath invested in Dubya's Arbusto Energy drilling company may have belonged to Bath's Saudi clients since the Houston businessman "had no substantial money of his own at the time."
. . .
So, folks, the Middle Eastern oil money used to underwrite the first business venture of our future president of the United States, may have been derived at least in part from the family fortune of Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden.

Who was it that was whisked out of America right after 9/11? Which country was redacted out of the Congressional 9/11 report?

Oh yeah.

According to this story, Greece is running behind schedule in preparing for the Summer Olympic games.

If things don't work out, they can always adopt an original games retro theme and have events out in the open air.

A stem cell first:

South Korean and American scientists have cloned human embryos and successfully extracted stem cells from one of them. The research opens the way for once-undreamed of treatments for long-term diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. It also reignites the simmering debate about human cloning.

In South Korea, courtesy of the Bush administration restrictions on stem cell research.

Do I hear the giant sucking sound of U.S. brainpower leaving America?

Hardly anyone would have paid attention to the "Economic Report of the President," released earlier this week, except that it asserted that U.S. job outsourcing is a "good thing." That apparently hasn't played well in the heartland. How do we know?

A group of Democratic senators led by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York introduced a nonbinding sense of the Senate resolution on Wednesday taking the administration to task for Mankiw's comments.

Really, I think most people managed to figure out they didn't like about the report without the Senate's help.

Zimbabwe's got it:

Zimbabwe's official rate of inflation, which dropped 20.8 points in December, came in at a new high of 622.8 percent in January compared with the year earlier, according to government statistics.

The Central Statistical Office (CSO) figures showed that the rate of inflation jumped 24.1 points from 598.7 percent in December. In November inflation had stood at 619.5 percent.

The rate remains one of the highest in the world, translating to almost three times the January 2003 rate of 208.1 percent.

Former Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa in November predicted the southern African country's inflation rate would hit 700 percent in the first three months of this year before climbing down.

Ha Ha:

But the Blue Haired Platoon, a group of older women campaigning for Blount, referred to Junior [George W. Bush] as "the Texas souffl�" because he was "all puffed up and full of hot air."

Perhaps they need a flowchart:

In one recent high-level meeting, Rumsfeld looked at Secretary of State Colin Powell and said, "Jerry (Ambassador Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian in Iraq) works for you, right?"

Powell looked as if he'd been struck by lightning. Bremer and every other U.S. official in Iraq reports directly to Rumsfeld and the Pentagon. Rumsfeld demanded and got complete authority over the military, over the civilian authority in charge of rebuilding the country, over the administration's $87 billion Iraq budget, over every line of every contract let. And suddenly he forgot that Bremer works for him?

That same week, Wolfowitz and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage were summoned to a closed-door session of the Senate Armed Services Committee to discuss how the U.S. contracting system is working in Iraq.

When Wolfowitz was asked a tough question about the controversies surrounding the U.S. contracting efforts in Iraq, he turned to Armitage and said: "You can answer that one, right, Rich?" Armitage answered by noting that the Department of Defense and the Office of the Secretary of Defense control every American contract let in Iraq, and that the State Department has authority over none of those contracts.

Via Calpundit.

Add this person (if legitimate) to Zell Miller and Ed Koch and you're up to at least three.

Greg Abbott tallies the Democratic contender's approximate vote totals following the Tennessee and Virginia primaries:

According to Open Secrets.org, the candidates' campaigns have spent roughly the following amounts through the January 31st report:

Combining the two tables, the candidates have spent the following $ per vote:

I have no idea who is giving the money to Lyndon LaRouche, or what it is all being spent on. But his figures aren't on the same scale as the other candidates. It's widely known that Dean has blown a lot of money, with little to show for it. Kucinich's figures are surprisingly high; then again it takes quite a bit of money just to set up a national campaign. Edwards and Kerry's spending per vote is fairly close; Kerry, as frontrunner, has benefitted from an enormous amount of free publicity. As far as I can tell, Sharpton's "campaign" has been limited to speaking engagements and debate appearances, so he's spent very little.

Ahhh, those bothersome budgets:

The military will have no money to pay for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for three months beginning Oct. 1 because the White House is declining to ask Congress for funding until December or January, well after the presidential election.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker told the Senate Armed Services Committee the $38 billion he has for 2004 war operations will last only until the end of September, as he spends $3.7 billion a month in Iraq and about $900 million a month in Afghanistan. The Army has about 114,000 soldiers in Iraq and roughly 10,000 in Afghanistan.

"I am concerned on how we bridge between the end of this fiscal year and when we can get a supplemental in the next fiscal year," Schoomaker told the committee.

The fiscal year -- the government's spending year -- runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 annually. Funds for 2004, therefore, run out Sept. 30, 2004.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters Tuesday the decision not to request a supplemental rested with the White House. He could not explain why the administration would allow a three-month gap in funding the war on terror, ostensibly its top priority.

"They have so many factors to consider. They have to look at all the departments and agencies. I don't know -- they'll certainly know a lot more," Rumsfeld said.

But I've got good news. I've figured out a way to save money in Iraq without shortchanging our Halliburton national investment. Instead of just charging the hospitalized U.S. troops for food, we can simply require all the soldiers to pay for food. And gasoline, and ammunition, and the other supplies--make this a self-funded mission. That way Bush can run his war campaign, the wealthy can keep their tax cuts, the deficit won't be so large, and the troops will have an opportunity to be extra patriotic. Everyone's a winner.

General Clark is currently giving the final speech of his campaign. Clark is a bright, articulate leader who has made an invaluable contribution to his country during his distinguished career. Although he wasn't my top presidential candidate, I am disappointed that he didn't get a better chance to share his message with the voters, a fairer shake from the media. Clark got out to a very late start in this campaign. And unfortunately for him, a presidential primary is a tough place to wet your feet in the political waters.

I hope General Clark remains engaged in public policy and helps the Democratic party regain the White House this November.

According to this story, three of the five people who are targets in the Plame leak investigation either work or previously worked in the vice president's office.

I wonder what's in those office phone logs.

I'm sure that hundreds of thousands of Americans whose jobs have left the country couldn't agree more:

The movement of American factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation, the Bush administration said Monday.

The embrace of foreign outsourcing, an accelerating trend that has contributed to U.S. job losses in recent years and has become an issue in the 2004 elections, is contained in the president's annual report to Congress on the health of the economy.

"Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, which prepared the report. "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing."

Senator Edwards summed things up very succinctly:

"These people," he said of the Bush administration, "what planet do they live on? They are so out of touch."

'Till death another death do us part:

NICE, France -- Dressed in a demure black suit, a 35-year-old Frenchwoman married her dead boyfriend Tuesday, an exchange of vows that required authorization from President Jacques Chirac.

Under French law, Christelle Demichel became both bride and widow in the ceremony, which was performed at Nice City Hall on the French Riviera. The groom, a former policeman identified as Eric, was killed by a drunk driver in September 2002.

Demichel told LCI television she understood "it could seem shocking to marry someone who is dead," but her feelings for him had not dimmed. His body was not present for the ceremony.

Such marriages are legal if the living spouse can prove the couple had intended to marry before the other died. The French president must also authorize it.

That's sad.

I wonder what "proof" a wedding applicant has to have under this law, and why it took a year and a half to go through with the wedding. Maybe that's when it was originally scheduled.

This is familiar:

Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday a "critical" flaw in most versions of its flagship Windows operating system could allow hackers to break into personal computers and snoop on sensitive data.

Although no computers were reported to have been compromised, the world's largest software maker warned that Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 were at risk. Microsoft announced the flaw in its monthly security bulletin.

The company offered software updates to fix the software flaw, which it assigned its most severe rating of "critical."

Marc Maiffret, co-founder of eEye Digital Security, the company that discovered the flaw, criticized Microsoft for taking more than six months to come up with a patch to fix the problem.
. . .
"We contacted Microsoft about these vulnerabilities 200 days ago, which is insane," he said. "Even the most secure Windows networks are going to be vulnerable to this flaw, which is very unique."

Download Patch.

Imagine if a third party presidential candidate mysteriously disappeared in Canada for a few days. Mix in a murder trial, an ex-patriot tycoon bankroller, an alleged terrorist, and theories that the government blew up apartment buildings to justify a war.

They sure have some funny stuff going on in Russia.

" Woman withdraws suit over breast flash"

A Knoxville woman who took her convictions to court is withdrawing a proposed class-action lawsuit over singer Janet Jackson's breast-baring performance at this year's Super Bowl halftime show.

Terri Carlin is dismissing the lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court against Jackson, Justin Timberlake, MTV, CBS and Viacom. The lawsuit stemmed from the now-infamous exposure of one of Jackson's breasts when Timberlake ripped off part of her costume during their duet at the Houston event.

According to the notice of dismissal filed in federal court, Carlin wants to wait to see if "remedial measures recently announced by the corporate defendants, the potential (Federal Communications Commission) sanctions and perhaps the passage of stronger enforcement provisions will prevent further similar conduct."

Kos reports that at least two of the subpoenas have been withdrawn. The United States Attorney's Office appears to be reacting to the public outcry.

Despite having said that Bush's National Guard service record issue had been sufficiently vetted years ago, and despite claiming they had released all the records in 2000, it sure didn't take the Bush administration long to rush out with "new" records "proving" that Bush "met his requirements."

This isn't the most significant issue out there. But it is amusing watching the media herd going after Bush on something. I wonder why it took most of them four years to start asking questions about this.

UPDATE: Odd. Several stories I read earlier referred to military records in Colorado. But according to this, the records in question came from St. Louis.

I don't know why this is coming out now, but I'm not surprised by it:

Dr. Robert Atkins, whose popular diet stresses protein-rich meat and cheese over carbohydrates, weighed 258 pounds at his death and had a history of heart disease, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Atkins died last April at age 72 after being injured in a fall on an icy street.

Before his death, he had suffered a heart attack, congestive heart failure and hypertension, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a report by the city medical examiner.

At 258 pounds, the 6-foot-tall Atkins would have qualified as obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's body-mass index calculator.

Diet is one potential factor in heart disease, but infections also can contribute to it.

Stuart Trager, chairman of the Atkins Physicians Council in New York, told the Journal that Atkins' heart disease stemmed from cardiomyopathy, a condition thought to result from a viral infection.

Atkins' weight was due to bloating associated with his condition, and he had been much slimmer during most of his life, Trager said.

I have a bad feeling that we're going to see a lot of heart attacks a few years down the road.

Vote.

Progress may be underway in addressing two issues swirling over Washington.

In the Valerie Plame leak investigation, White House press secretary Scott McClellan and press aide Adam Levine were called to testify before a a federal grand jury last Friday. Investigators reportedly have "handwritten White House notes, detailed cellphone logs and copies of e-mail messages between White House aides and reporters" and are demanding "explanations of conversations between aides and reporters for some of the country's largest news organizations."

In the Bush National Guard matter, the Defense Department has called for military records which may shed light on the gap in Bush's service record.

Two years ago President Bush offered the following in his State of the Union Address:

"Our discoveries in Afghanistan confirmed our worst fears and showed us the true scope of the task ahead. We have seen the depth of our enemies' hatred in videos where they laugh about the loss of innocent life. And the depth of their hatred is equaled by the madness of the destruction they design. We have found diagrams of American nuclear power plants and public water facilities, detailed instructions for making chemical weapons, surveillance maps of American cities, and thorough descriptions of landmarks in America and throughout the world."

Edward McGaffigan Jr., a member of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, responding to an environmental group's query, said this month that he testified in 2002 after the speech in at least one closed congressional hearing that he was not aware of any evidence that " 'diagrams of American nuclear power plants' had been found in Afghanistan."

Instapundit links to an article stating former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill had classified documents, and adds:

It's not clear that this is O'Neill's fault, but it's certainly somebody's.

Nothing like a captive audience:

An American Airlines pilot asked Christians on his flight to identify themselves and suggested the non-Christians discuss the faith with them, the airline said.
. . .
American's Flight 34 was headed from Los Angeles to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport on Friday when the pilot asked Christians on board to raise their hands, Wagner said.

The pilot, whose name was not released, told the airline that he then suggested the other passengers use the flight time to talk to the Christians about their faith, Wagner said.

Passenger Amanda Nelligan told WCBS-TV of New York that the pilot called non-Christians "crazy" and that his comments "felt like a threat." She said she and several others aboard were so worried they tried to call relatives on their cell phones before flight attendants assured them they were safe and that people on the ground had been notified about the pilot's comments.

The pilot also told passengers he would be available for discussion at the end of the flight. Wagner said the pilot had just returned to work from a weeklong mission trip to Costa Rica.

Compare and contrast:

Then:

Russert: You did were allowed to leave eight months before your term expired. Was there a reason?

President Bush: Right. Well, I was going to Harvard Business School and worked it out with the military.

President Bush: It's essential that I explain this properly to the parents of those who lost their lives.

Saddam Hussein was dangerous, and I�m not gonna leave him in power and trust a madman. He's a dangerous man. He had the ability to make weapons at the very minimum.

For the parents of the soldiers who have fallen who are listening, David Kay, the weapons inspector, came back and said, "In many ways Iraq was more dangerous than we thought." It's we are in a war against these terrorists who will bring great harm to America, and I've asked these young ones to sacrifice for that.

The great ones always lead by example.

As I posted on earlier, federal prosecutors have issued subpoenas for records concerning anti-war activists who gathered at a meeting at Drake University. Some under investigation believe it may stem from an incident where a demonstrator was charged with a misdemeanor assault against a peace officer.

A judge has issued a gag order forbidding Drake University officials from discussing the subpoenas. But the Catholic Peace Ministry director Brian Terrell, one of those subpoenaed, has issued the following press release:

Yesterday, February 3, Detective Jeff Warford of the Polk County Sheriff's Office-FBI-Joint Terrorism Task Force came to Catholic Peace Ministry's office here in Des Moines with a subpoena for me to testify before a Federal Grand Jury next Tuesday, February 10. Mr. Warford also served papers on Elton Davis at the Catholic Worker House and Patti McKee, who was coordinator of Iowa Peace Network until last month. The Grand Jury process is shrouded in secrecy. We do not know who or what the object of this investigation may be, beyond "possible violations of federal criminal law in the Southern District of Iowa."

The proceeding will be behind closed doors. We may not have an attorney present. We have the right to plead the Fifth Amendment, refusing the answer questions that might incriminate us. The government, then, can offer us immunity from prosecution, in which case we will obliged to answer under threat of contempt of court and could be imprisoned for the length of the Grand Jury session, 18 months, should we continue to refuse to answer. This immunity would be limited to our own testimony and anything any of us say could be used against the others.

Whatever is going on, this is definitely an escalation on the part of the government's war on dissent and clamp down on civil liberties. The fact that anything that we three and the peacemaking communities we represent could possibly attract the notice of a "Terrorism Task Force" is reprehensible. Please spread the word, express concerns you have with Federal and Polk County authorities. Keep us in mind and prayer.

Brian Terrell
Executive Director
Catholic Peace Ministry

Well said:

Hans Blix -- who pleaded for more time to search Iraq for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons before a U.S.-led invasion in March -- said the West had a right to expect more from their leaders.

"The intention was to dramatize it (the intelligence) just as the vendors of some merchandise are trying to exaggerate the importance of what they have," Blix told BBC television.
. . .
"From politicians, our leaders in the Western world, I think we expect more than that, a bit more sincerity," Blix said.

"Terrorist bid to build bombs in mid-flight"

Islamic militants have conducted dry runs of a devastating new style of bombing on aircraft flying to Europe, intelligence sources believe.

The tactics, which aim to evade aviation security systems by placing only components of explosive devices on passenger jets, allowing militants to assemble them in the air, have been tried out on planes flying between the Middle East, North Africa and Western Europe, security sources say.

Concerns that militants might assemble a bomb or another weapon on board were a key factor in the series of recent cancellations of transatlantic flights. Last weekend British Airways stopped flights from London to Washington and Miami for fear of an attack and Air France also cancelled scheduled flights.
. . .
Officials in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere are believed to have warned that at least 12 dry runs may have been completed and to have said that the terrorists are aiming to try out their plans on flights around the Mediterranean and the Middle East before attempting to bomb a transatlantic route, where security precautions are now very tight. Militants know that individual components are far easier to smuggle through airport security than an assembled bomb.

The US government's Transportation Security Administration issued an urgent memo detailing new threats to aviation and warning that terrorists in teams of five might be planning suicide missions to hijack commercial airliners, possibly using common items carried by travellers, such as cameras, modified as weapons. The CIA said that a high level of threat was based on information from several incarcerated high-ranking militants.

An FBI bulletin last November was more specific. It warned that 'terrorists are considering the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) assembled on board to hijack an aircraft or, alternatively, destroy it over heavily populated areas in the event of passenger or crew resistance.

Components of IEDs can be smuggled on to an aircraft, concealed in either clothing or personal carry-on items such as shampoo and medicine bottles, and assembled on board.

The FBI is making list, checking it twice:

The National Lawyers Guild will move to quash an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force subpoena issued on Wednesday, February 4, 2004. The subpoena asks Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, to produce all records relating to a November 15, 2003 antiwar conference at Drake University called The conference was sponsored by the Drake Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and was followed the next day by a demonstration at the Iowa National Guard Headquarters in Johnston, at which 12 protestors were arrested on misdemeanor charges.

The subpoena asks Drake University for all records relating to the November 15 conference, as well as information about leaders of the Drake University chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and the location of Guild offices and any annual reports since 2002. In addition, it asks for "all records of Drake University campus security reflecting any observations made of the November 15, 2003 meeting, including any records of persons in charge or control of the meeting, and any records of attendees of the meeting."

"This is exactly what people feared would happen," said Brian Terrell of the peace ministry, one of those subpoenaed. "The civil liberties of everyone in this country are in danger. How we handle that here in Iowa is very important on how things are going to happen in this country from now on."

Bill Hobbs is pushing a contest offering a reward to someone who finds a quote from a senior Bush administration official "explicitly" linking Saddam with 9/11. To win you must apparently furnish a quote which says "Saddam Hussein is responsible for 9/11."

This is a neat idea. I think I'll have a contest too. Find a quote where Osama bin Laden explicitly states that he is responsible for 9/11.

Winner receives nothing.

So speculates the late-night crowd. If you click on the picture to get an enlargement of this image, you can see a spot above the horizon approximately a third of the way in from the left margin. Probably just something funny with the picture, but it's enough to get people talking.

More Martian images here.

Well, that didn't take very long:

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has been cleared of wrongdoing in the use of classified documents as source material for a book that portrayed President Bush in an unflattering light, Treasury Department sources told CNN on Friday.

The investigation by the department's inspector general found that though O'Neill did receive classified material from the department after his resignation, the lapse was the fault of the department, not O'Neill, the sources said.

In a letter sent to members of Congress on Friday, Treasury Secretary John Snow said the documents "were not properly reviewed before their release" and that "we are taking corrective action concerning those documents," according to sources.

"Why would I be attacked for telling the truth?"

Looks like Al Gore still has a few fences to mend:

"Gore's support little help in Tenn."

Endorsement did not increase candidate's poll numbers here

Howard Dean can claim Al Gore's endorsement, but the dispiriting reality for the fallen front-runner is that he may match the former vice president's 2000 showing in Tennessee - a Gore loss in his home state.

The Democratic presidential candidate is polling in single digits in advance of Tennessee's primary Tuesday and has no plans to visit, choosing to look ahead to must-win Wisconsin and its Feb. 17 primary to salvage his campaign.
. . .
The 2000 Democratic presidential nominee has flown as far away as Iowa and Michigan to campaign for Dean, but has barely lifted a finger in the state that launched his political career, and where he teaches and maintains a home and a farm. He also has not helped Dean raise campaign money here.
. . .
Gore could not be reached for comment, and his aides declined to answer questions about the impact of his Dean endorsement in early December on the campaign.

One thing that continues to intrigue me is how the media herd locks in on a single, random story and covers it incessantly, to the exclusion of hundreds of similar tales.

The latest example of this is the car wash kidnapping of Carlie Brucia. As far as I can tell, the reason the media has became fixated with this case because:

(1) a video camera caught the abduction, and

(2) it involves a cute white girl (see JonBenet Ramsey, Elizabeth Smart, et al.).

I can't do much about my age and gender. But if someone ever commits a crime against me, I hope the TV cameras are rolling.

Eric Boehlert wonders if Bush dropped out of the National Guard to avoid drug testing. He doesn't have any proof of this, but it is interesting that Bush decided to stop flying about the time the National Guard was rolling out a random drug-testing program.

These kind of questions are going to continue to circulate until Bush releases his military records.

Perhaps 50% of TV news channel airtime is devoted to fluff--Janet Jackson, celebrity justice, Scott Peterson-type fillers.

An exception which bucks this trend is CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight," which tackles important issues that are largely ignored elsewhere. His 'Broken Borders' series on immigration and 'Exporting America' on trade and American job loss are a breath of fresh air compared to the Access Hollywood-type stuff.

Nice timing:

On the same day a poison-laced letter shuttered Senate offices, President Bush asked Congress to eliminate an $8.2 million research program on how to decontaminate buildings attacked by toxins.

Buried in documents justifying Bush's 2005 budget proposal released Monday is an Environmental Protection Agency acknowledgment that his proposed cut "represents complete elimination of homeland security building decontamination research."

The agency said in the documents that Bush's proposal will "force it to disband the technical and engineering expertise that will be needed to address known and emerging biological and chemical threats in the future."

UPI correspondent Richard Sale reports that the investigation into who was responsible for blowing Valerie Plame's identity is centering on Vice President Cheney's office:

Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said.

According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were the two Cheney employees. "We believe that Hannah was the major player in this," one federal law-enforcement officer said. Calls to the vice president's office were not returned, nor did Hannah and Libby return calls.

The strategy of the FBI is to make clear to Hannah "that he faces a real possibility of doing jail time" as a way to pressure him to name superiors, one federal law-enforcement official said.

According to this table (.pdf), Knox County has had almost 2,000 more early voters than any other Tennessee county (through Tuesday). I'm not sure how that compares with past elections; perhaps it's simply more convenient to vote here than elsewhere. But an interesting tidbit.

You are invited to meet presidential candidate Senator John Edwards.

When: Friday, February 6 @ 6:45 p.m.

Where: Riverside Tavern - 950 Volunteer Landing - Knoxville, TN

To RSVP or for more info, call (615) 329-3977.

I'm not sure how you prove the damages for this one:

A Knoxville woman filed a proposed class action lawsuit Wednesday against Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake, MTV, CBS and Viacom, contending she and other viewers were injured by their lewd actions during the Super Bowl halftime show.

Terri Carlin filed her lawsuit "on behalf of all Americans who watched the halftime show" in federal court in Knoxville.

The lawsuit stems from Sunday's now infamous exposure of one of Jackson's breasts when Timberlake ripped off part of her costume during their performance on the CBS network.
. . .
"As a direct and proximate result of the broadcast of the acts, (Carlin) and millions of others saw the acts and were caused to suffer outrage, anger, embarrassment and serious injury," the lawsuit filed by Knoxville attorney Wayne A. Ritchie II states.

It doesn't specify the type of serious injury.
. . .
Because the game is broadcast worldwide, Ritchie also wrote that the actions harmed the "standing and credibility" of Americans throughout the world.

Carlin's lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages worth billions.

I feel outraged that I wasn't watching the show when everyone else got to see Jackson's boob. Can I join the class too?

Allegedly, Richard Clarke is in the process of publishing a book which will purportedly reveal some interesting insight on the lead-up to 9/11:

Well next month we have yet another book to digest -- from the inside of the Bush White House. Richard Clarke, the former NSC counterterrorism expert from Bush I, Clinton and 2 years plus of Bush II is publishing his insider book that takes no prisnors. Word is that Rove is very afraid of what Clarke has to say -- particularly because Clarke was the August 6 2001 briefer of Bush, and there is a good deal about how he got told never to raise such matters again with Bush. Book will get big play. Richard Clarke knows where all the bodies are buried.

In a recent interview, Sidney Blumenthal provided a hint as to what Clarke might disclose:

Richard Clarke was Director of Counter-Terrorism in the national Security Council. He has since left. Clark urgently tried to draw the attention of the Bush administration to the threat of al Qaeda. Right at the present, the Bush administration is trying to withhold documents from the 9/11 bipartisan commission. I believe one of the things that they do not want to be known is what happened on August 6, 2001. It was on that day that George W. Bush received his last, and one of the few, briefings on terrorism. I believe he told Richard Clarke that he didn�t want to be briefed on this again, even though Clarke was panicked about the alarms he was hearing regarding potential attacks. Bush was blithe, indifferent, ultimately irresponsible. The public has a right to know what happened on August 6, what Bush did, what Condi Rice did, what all the rest of them did, and what Richard Clarke�s memos and statements were. Then the public will be able to judge exactly what this presidency has done.

Sooner or later, interesting Bush White House secrets are bound to come out. Let's hope they make it out before November.

Sidney Blumenthal isn't buying the claims of Bush, Kay, et al.:

The truth is that much of the intelligence community did not fail, but presented correct assessments and warnings, that were overridden and suppressed. On virtually every single important claim made by the Bush administration in its case for war, there was serious dissension. Discordant views - not from individual analysts but from several intelligence agencies as a whole - were kept from the public as momentum was built for a congressional vote on the war resolution.

Precisely because of the qualms the administration encountered, it created a rogue intelligence operation, the Office of Special Plans, located within the Pentagon and under the control of neo-conservatives. The OSP roamed outside the ordinary inter-agency process, stamping its approval on stories from Iraqi exiles that the other agencies dismissed as lacking credibility, and feeding them to the president.

At the same time, constant pressure was applied to the intelligence agencies to force their compliance.

at Townhall.com:

• Generally speaking, government spending is anti-Christian because it teaches people to take refuge in the government rather than in God.*


• If President Bush invokes God's name in calling for a program, then that spending is okay.

A. Groves has got the Super Bowl edition of the Volunteer Tailgate Party.

So how can there be no attendance records from George Bush's 1972 National Guard service? Beats me. I don't know much about the system. But Phil Carter does. And he lists other available records which should shed light on the controversy.

Seems like some reporter should be capable of getting to the bottom of this; it's hard to believe that all these records have vanished.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum examines the infamous "torn document" in Bush's records.

I was reading about the Bush administration's new campaign to promote Medicare reform. This part sounded so crazy that I dialed the number to verify it's true:

THE AD'S DISTORTIONS: The new Medicare ads urge citizens to call 1-800-MEDICARE to hear more about the new law. And in "Big Brother" style, when you call that number you have to actually say out loud "Medicare improvement" in order to get information.

Government propaganda in action.

Incidentally, the media company purchasing these "informational" Medicare ads (at taxpayer expense) just happens to be a company that's working for President Bush's re-election campaign. Small world, isn't it?

Catching fire:

Cleveland Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich did not break out of the single digits in any state, but he was nonetheless pleased to finish with more than 1 percent of the vote in several venues.

"We're finally starting to show some movement from the 1 percent bracket," Kucinich said in a phone interview from California, where he was campaigning Tuesday night. "We're finally starting to move up a little bit, and there's now six candidates in the race."

Via Outside the Beltway comes this Defense Department release, which indicates significant changes are in store for the military workforce:

Up to 25,000 Defense Department civilians may be eligible for thousands of dollars in separation pay through an early-buyout program.

The program is part of the 2004 National Defense Authorization Act.

On Dec. 30, Ginger Groeber, deputy undersecretary of defense for civilian personnel policy, allocated 25,000 buyouts to defense components to pay eligible departing employees up to $25,000 if they choose to leave their jobs early.
. . .
Groeber said the program's primary beneficiaries are employees who work at facilities the Defense Department expects to close, or at locations where there is a change in the military mission. She said that while the buyout will help DoD to minimize its work force at commands and organizations that are downsizing or restructuring, it also may allow the department to offer a substantial sum of money to workers forced out of their jobs through the separation process.

Seven more state results are in. Despite having been the strongest fund raiser, Dr. Dean hasn't done well. In Oklahoma and South Carolina Dean, to use Senator Liberman's terminology, finished at the bottom of a three-way tie for third.

So what in the world has he done with all his money? David Bernstein provides insight by contrasting Dean's spending with Senator Kerry's:

One strategic difference can be seen in the salaries. Both campaigns spent roughly $1.8 million on staff salaries in the three months, but Dean relied heavily on a handful of campaign leaders and a large number of low-paid staff. Kerry hired a couple dozen experienced, high-paid middle-management staff, and spread them out.

Aside from Trippi, only four Dean people were earning more than $5,000 a month; the national finance director, the New Hampshire coordinator, and two deputy campaign managers. Kerry had 13 making at least that. Perhaps the most important comparison: Kerry�s Iowa director, John Norris, was paid $9,170 a month; Dean�s, Jeannie Murray, earned barely half that salary.

One of Dean�s $5,000+ deputy campaign managers, Andrea Pringle, joined the Dean staff just last August. Pringle is a partner at Whistle Stop Communications, which specializes in direct mail. Her influence may help explain why the campaign spent $2.6 million on direct mail from October through December -- including more than $900,000 paid to Whistle Stop. Kerry spent just $500,000 on direct mail over the same period.

The two campaigns spent pretty evenly on travel and lodging, but Dean�s campaign became increasingly event-oriented. The campaign spent roughly $900,000 on event costs -- three times as much as Kerry. (This included a $48,000 holiday party at Davio�s in Boston in December.)

Technology -- the trademark of Trippi�s young, hip, Internet-driven campaign -- swallowed up another $900,000. Kerry spent just $100,000.

Of course, Trippi made sure to spend plenty on advertising as well -- after all, like most campaign managers, he was paid by commission on ad buys. Of the $5.1 million Dean spent on media for the three months (Kerry spent $3.9 million), almost $4.5 million was bought through Trippi�s agency. At Trippi�s fifteen percent commission (revealed after he was fired), that meant he was personally making close to $200,000 a month. That figure certainly increased in January -- giving Trippi a nice windfall of commissions to cushion the blow of losing the actual campaign.

Daily Kos compares state pre-election polls with the final tallies to see how predictive each has been.

Zogby appears to have come the closest, but SUSA and ARG have done reasonably well.

No matter how much I want to believe otherwise, I always seem to revert back to the position that Americans are clueless sheep. Counterspin Central directs us to a Newsweek poll offering the latest evidence:

"Do you think Iraq actually had banned chemical or biological weapons right before the Iraq War started in March, or not?"

Jan. 29-30, 2004

Yes -- 55%

No -- 32%

Don't know -- 13%

"Do you think Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was DIRECTLY involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, or not?"

Jan. 29-30, 2004

Was -- 49%

Was Not -- 39%

Don't Know -- 16%"

(a) Bush and company invariably mentioning 9/11 when discussing Iraq;

(b) Bush and company focusing attention on Saddam Hussein, while seemingly ignoring Osama bin Laden's existence;

(c) Fox News Channel using a bold "War on Terror" caption whenever discussing Iraq; or

(d) All of the above.

Yesterday the Democratic presidential field was trimmed to six--well, four really. In the NCAA basketball tournament coaches say the object is to "survive and advance." By that measure, both Clark and Edwards can claim victory. Both came through in their "must win" state. [Due to his national base, Dean continues to survive, though he has yet to advance anywhere.]

It's no secret I'm pulling for Senator Edwards in this fight. I still see an window of opportunity for Edwards, but a couple things must fall in line:

(1) The field must narrow. I'm confident Edwards can beat Kerry on an even, one-on-one playing field. But he can't take on Clark and Kerry. If all three are running next week in Tennessee and Virginia, I fear it's going to split the "southern" vote and Kerry will win by default. Moreover, the more candidates that remain in the race, the less an opportunity Edwards will have to get his message out--the message that's been winning over Republican and independent voters.

(2) A friendly media. Good luck here. It hasn't appeared thus far. I was watching election coverage last night--mostly MSNBC--and if I care to document the pro-Kerry bias I literally could have written all night. Sure he's the frontrunner and all, but this is ridiculous. A few examples:

• Chris Matthews once described Edwards as "delusional" if he thought he could really win the nomination.


• Lawrence O'Donnell insisted that "100%" of Liberman's supporters would hope aboard the Kerry juggernaut.


• The network repeatedly referred to an exit poll showing a majority of voters would be "satisfied" if Kerry won the nomination as proof that Democrats are "rallying behind Kerry" as the most "electable" candidate. Turns out the pollsters didn't even ask this question of Senator Edwards, despite the fact that Edwards had the highest favorability marks in New Hampshire. This is pure journalistic garbage.

In case you were wondering:

Howard Dean, a physician and a Democratic presidential candidate, on Monday dismissed as "silly" a government inquiry into whether indecency rules were broken during the broadcast of the Super Bowl halftime show when pop diva Janet Jackson's bodice was ripped to expose her right breast.

"I find that to be a bit of a flap about nothing," the former Vermont governor said. "I'm probably affected in some ways by the fact that I'm a doctor, so it's not exactly an unusual phenomenon for me."

"I don't find it terribly shocking relative to some of the things you can find on standard cable television," he added. "I think the FCC probably has a lot of other things they should be pursuing."

Being reported about the Internet:

South Carolina: Edwards 44, Kerry 30, Sharpton 10

Oklahoma: Edwards 31, Kerry 29, Clark 28

Missouri: Kerry 52, Edwards 23, Dean 10

Delaware: Kerry 47, Dean 14, Lieberman 11, Edwards 11

Arizona: Kerry 46, Clark 24, Dean 13

Come on Oklahoma!! An Edwards victory would be A-OK.

Say Uncle is miffed that other Rocky Top Brigade members are stealing his gun blogging thunder. I thought I'd add insult to injury by chipping in with my gun expertise.

Three years ago I was hiking woods with someone who had a pistol. I'm not sure what kind it was, but it was a larger-sized one. With some reservation, I eventually accepted the invitation to fire it.

I'm don't where my shot ended up; all I remember is the deafening bang. Apparently, I should have been wearing ear protection at the time, for my ears were ringing for the next couple hours. It sucked.

Three Senate office buildings are closed today after authorities discovered deadly ricin in a senate mail room.

Josh Marshall alerts us of this under-reported story from early January:

The FBI on Thursday offered a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to an arrest of anyone responsible for leaving a package containing the deadly poison ricin at a post office in October.

A letter inside the package said the author could make much more ricin and will "start dumping" large quantities of the poison if new federal trucking rules went in effect, according to information released by the FBI and other federal agencies Thursday.

The rules, which require more rest hours for truck drivers, took effect Sunday.

The letter, signed "Fallen Angel," said the author was "a fleet owner of a tanker company."

The Washington Post has an article looking at President Bush's National Guard service, or lack thereof.

There's no definitive evidence either way. On one hand you have an officer who claims that Bush didn't report during part of his enlistment, together with an absence of any hard evidence that Bush showed up. On the other hand you have Bush claiming he was there, and some friends saying Bush left for duty.

Whatever the case, it's obvious that Bush didn't take his Guard service very seriously. If he did, we'd have proof to settle this.

Governor Phil Bredesen, who currently enjoys a 72% approval rating, gave his "State of the State" address last night. The governor also presented a budget calling for a 7.4% increase in spending, a majority of which is targeted toward TennCare, education, and state employee pay raises. There's no tax increases.

Don't we all long for the return of Sunquist more and more with each passing day?

According to one estimate, U.S. employment growth is 7.7 million workers below where it should be at this point in the typical business cycle recovery.

So what explains why we aren't seeing normal jobs growth? Is outsourcing to blame? Lingering aftereffects from the excesses of the late 90s? Above average employment costs (health care, pensions)? Government red ink?

Morgan Stanley's Steve Roach and Dick Berner debate, you read.

CNN/USA Today/Gallup national poll on head-to-head matchup:

Edwards 49
Bush 48

Citing wide-spread confusion, the South Carolina Democratic Party has dropped the requirement that voters take an oath to vote in today's primary. The proposed oath required voters to sign to the following: "I consider myself to be a Democrat."

South Carolina Republicans and Independents are now free (and encouraged) to vote for Senator John Edwards.

M-LAW announces the winners of the Seventh Annual Wacky Warning Label Contest. It reminds us that one best not use a product if he or she cannot read the warning not to use the product.

Via The Volokh Conspiracy.

Despite shelling out $51,000 to park their rigs near the San Mateo County courthouse, TV networks will not be allowed to broadcast the trial. So all they're going to get for their money is more convenient access to the outside of the building.

Normally, I'm fine with cameras in the courtroom. But where, as here, the media circus has hyped a case beyond any sense of reality, the judge has the discretion to try to get things under control.

Just a few months ago the FCC was complicit in corporate America's attempt to consolidate the media into a few hands. But in a flash last night the commission suddenly rediscovered its mission to promote the public interest.

There's some amazing power in Janet Jackson's boob, isn't there?

Despite not having done squat in Tennessee until a couple weeks ago, a new Mason-Dixon poll shows that Senator Kerry leads in Tennessee:

John Kerry 31%
Wesley Clark 22%
John Edwards 13%
Howard Dean 7%
Joe Lieberman 6%
Al Sharpton 3%
Dennis Kucnich --
Undecided 18%

What might a Kerry victory mean for the Democratic ticket in November?

[Mason-Dixon pollster Brad] Coker said he doubted Kerry could keep up with Bush in Tennessee as the November election neared, saying Southerners Clark and Edwards might be more competitive.

''Tennesseans are more likely to vote for Bush than a New England Democrat,'' said Coker. Kerry is a senator from Massachusetts. Coker noted that the state usually votes Republican and that Bush beat Tennessee son Al Gore in 2000.

''What we're seeing with Kerry on top is that he's the flavor of the week,'' Coker said. '' ... We'll have to wait to see if he's the flavor of the month.''

Democratic voters concerned about electability this fall need to tune out the media script and think long and hard about who will best weather the Rove attack machine.

It's not John Kerry.

Apparently a number of web surfers, like me, have been fascinated by the lurid details revealed during the trial of German cannibal Armin Meiwes. The following News of the World article offers more of the gruesome story.

NOTE: Graphic content advisory.

Finally, some potentially good news from outed Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore:

"Alabama's former chief justice may challenge Bush for the religious vote"

But Roy Moore, the ousted Alabama Supreme Court justice who made headlines last year by refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument he placed on public property, could make a difference in a close race. And just last week, he refused to rule out a presidential candidacy.

A lot of people want him to run. Last Saturday, Mr. Moore was a featured speaker at the Christian Coalition's "Family and Freedom" rally in Atlanta. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported he was "treated like a rock star, signing autographs and getting thunderous standing ovations." The week before that, Mr. Moore was the speaker at a dinner in Lancaster, Pa., sponsored by the Constitution Party, which has the third-largest number of registered voters in the U.S. and whose presidential candidate, Howard Phillips, was on 41 state ballots in 2000.

During a question-and-answer period, Mr. Moore was asked if he would run for president. "Not right now," he said, noting he is still appealing his dismissal from office for violating a federal court's order to remove the monument from the Alabama Supreme Court building. "I have to wait till all these things are done to decide my future." His friends say he is undecided about whether to run for president or to wait two years and seek Alabama's governorship.

I doubt Moore will follow through with this and run. Then again, he's already proven himself to so egocentric that I can't rule it out, either.

Stay tuned.

Final:

Patriots 32
Panthers 29

Super Bowl ads generate a lot of buzz. I wasn't overly impressed with the ones I saw, though I did miss a number of the highest rated ones. One thing I don't quite get is why movie companies plop down $2.3 million per to promote films that won't even come out for two or three months. Do people really plan to see a movie three months in advance? And exactly how does CBS define an advocacy ad? Apparently, it's an ad they don't want to show.

Alas, I missed Janet Jackson's breast. And here people were getting all worked up about the Lingerie Bowl.

I was watching C-SPAN and a woman called in claiming to have an IQ of 175. Whenever people introduce themselves by singing their praises, you should immediately be suspect of them. That was borne out by this caller.

According to her astrological sources, Senator Kerry will have some sort of personal issue exposed in April and his campaign will take a dive. Governor Dean will go on to win the nomination and defeat George Bush.

Thought you'd like to know.

Have I ever commented on how nutty astrology is? Yes, it is.

The South Carolina Democratic Party is requiring that voters declare that they are Democrats in order to vote in Tuesdays' primary.

Voters who appear at their polling places will be asked to sign an oath swearing that "I consider myself to be a Democrat" before casting their ballots.

If they don�t sign, they can�t vote.

Democrats say they don�t want to keep independents away, but they do hope to deter Republicans from voting in the primary and interfering with the results.

The pledge is legal because the Democratic Party � not the state Election Commission � runs and pays for the presidential primary, said Donna Royson, deputy executive director of the Election Commission. South Carolina requires only that voters declare they have participated in just one party�s primary.

Democrats said the national party has required the pledge since 1984 in South Carolina and other states that don�t require voters to register by party.

Some contend the vow discourages independents from participating in the primary. Former DNC Chair Don Fowler counters:

"We want everybody to come vote as long as it�s done in good faith," said Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman. "I don't think many Republicans will come. If they want to come and consider themselves a Democrat for the day, they�re welcome."

A nifty web tool here allows you to shade states (or countries) on a map. You can mark the states you've visited, construct an electoral map, or whatever.

For the record, I've visited 39 states (counting D.C.)--all but the following:

AK, AZ, HI, ID, ME, NV, NH,OR, RI, UT, VT, WA

Via PoliBlog.