June 2004 Archives

The Los Angeles Times reports that the federal government may soon be moving hundreds of Guantanamo Bay detainees to the U.S. mainland in response to the Supreme Court ruling that such prisoners must have access to the judicial system. Makes me wonder: was that whole camp intentionally set up so the administration could claim it was outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts?

At any rate, here's another shocking development; you may want to sit down for this. Apparently the administration didn't have a plan to allow the detainees to have a hearing:

"They didn't really have a specific plan for what to do, case by case, if we lost," a senior Department of Defense official said on condition of anonymity. "The Justice Department didn't have a plan. State didn't have a plan. This wasn't a unilateral mistake on Department of Defense's part. It's astounding to me that these cases have been pending for so long and nobody came up with a contingency plan."

I know, I know. They've only been holding these people for two and a half years. And with the "war on terror" to fight a government can't be troubled with petty hearings and things of that nature.

The New York Times has the disturbing account about how a Nepalese man with an expired tourist visa was held for three months in solitary confinement for videotaping a building.

The man essentially got buried within the system, with little contact to the outside, and were it not for the extraordinary efforts of an FBI agent involved in his capture, he might have been imprisoned much longer.

One thing that continues to baffle me is how many so-called conservatives, who supposedly distrust broad, unchecked federal power, don't join civil libertarians in protesting the abuses of individual rights in the "war on terror." Apparently to these people, party unity is much more important than self-identified principles.

In an effort to placate hardline, anti-Castro, Cuban-American (Florida) voters, the Bush administration is severely tightening regulations on travel to Cuba. People can now only go there once every three years. Oh, and they can only spend $50/day on shopping.

Great policy for all those who still have relatives in Cuba. But that's a small sacrifice to make for rules which are sure to break Castro's decade's-long reign.

This story fits in pretty well with what I wrote yesterday:

The networks spent considerable time and money flying in high-priced talent to cover the handover, which had been scheduled for tomorrow. But when U.S. officials decided that an earlier handover might minimize the chances of violence aimed at overshadowing the ceremony, the cloak-and-dagger stuff began. At 12:30 a.m. (8:30 a.m. Baghdad time), the Coalition Provisional Authority began calling journalists and telling them that they had half an hour to get inside the heavily guarded Green Zone for a background briefing by U.S. occupation chief Paul Bremer.
. . .
When about 30 journalists and photographers, including a Washington Post correspondent, arrived, they were not told anything about a transfer of sovereignty.

At 2 a.m., authorities took the reporters' cell phones and placed them in brown envelopes to prevent them from calling their news organizations. The journalists were then told that the handover ceremony was about to unfold, but that the news was embargoed until 4 a.m.

In other words, journalists were bent because they were left out of the loop. And in their minds these events are largely about the journalists.

Oh, and that "surprise" handover really wasn't that surprising:

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper said from Baghdad that he was not that surprised. "We'd been getting word that June 30 was just a date, more of a deadline," he said. U.S. officials "had been very reluctant about the details. There was definitely a sense that it wasn't necessarily a June 30 event." The turn of events produced "an incredibly exciting day from a coverage standpoint," Cooper said.

So since they got caught with their pants down, they had to hype the unexpected nature of the story. That's how that after a fourteen month occupation, a two day change in the official phasing out became a big, big deal.

In case you missed it (and I'm sure most people did), Canada had elections yesterday. The liberal party won a plurality of the seats in Parliament, but did not win the 155 needed to maintain control. So Canada will have it's first minority government in 25 years.

I'm not sure what, if any effect this will have outside Canada. Or even if anyone will notice. But I was watching the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation coverage (on C-SPAN) and noted a couple interesting things.

First, the CBC anchor noted that there were several close races which would go to automatic recounts. I sure hope they have a more orderly recount procedure there than we saw in Florida. No mention of Diebold machinery, however. So that's another thing their election system has going in its favor.

Second, the pre-election polling--or rather the poll-based projections. We often hear complaints about the polling here, but in this case it was way off. In the days leading up to the election some media outlets speculated that the Conservative Party might win a majority of the seats. At this point during the returns they trail the Liberals by 38 seats. Oops.

From the TV analysis I gather that methodology was at fault here. Apparently, the media outlets took polls which showed Conservatives gaining x% of the vote. So they simply added that percentage across the board to some prior data base and accordingly concluded that the the Conservatives would win x more seats. Obviously votes don't get neatly distributed across districts (or "ridings" as they're apparently called up there) so that didn't work.

Another quirky aspect of watching news from the land up north is bilingualism. I was watching a guy give a victory speech, roughly 80-90% of which was in English. But for some reason he sprinkled two or three French sentences every now and then. Why? I believe he was in Calgary, where English is the norm. Did he think that by throwing in a few lines every now and then, it would help keep the French TV audience glued to their sets? Do their translators need to take a breather from time to time? Odd.

The TV news is all over the "surprise" handover of Iraq two days early (though insiders started preparing for this a week ago). I think they are all miffed because they lost out on some planned programming and nifty graphics they had planned for the event.

I guess we shouldn't be surprised that the only other people that are really playing this up are U.S. politicians. Interestingly, MSNBC has devoted more attention to Condi sneaking Mr. President a note during his meeting (as if Bush didn't know this was going to happen) than it has covered the reaction of the newly "sovereign" Iraqi citizens themselves. Apparently, sovereignty isn't such a big deal when you have car bombs sounding off and 150,000 foriegn troops roaming about your land.

Details are still emerging, but it appears the just-released U.S. Supreme Court decision does allow those held in concentration camps some access to challange their charges in U.S. courts.

UPDATE: In Rumsfeld v. Padilla, the court did not reach the constitutional issue. It merely ruled that Padilla had pursued his legal claim in the wrong court.

UPDATE: In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the court ruled that due process demands that a combatant be given an opportunity to challange the government in front of a "neutral decisionmaker.

These rulings aren't a complete victory for individual rights--Congress can authorize the president to hold a narrow class of combatents. But they are, by and large, a blow to the Bush administration's claim of authority to hold prisoners indefinitely without the right for them to be heard.

UPDATE: Lawrence Solum has a more complete rundown on the detention cases.

No, we're not talking weight lifting here.

In Thompson's defense, the Code of Judicial Conduct doesn't specifically prohibit this. Ha.

The grand jury inches closer.

Our media is really on top of this, sporadically reporting developments after the fact. I guess they can't be expected to stay on top of the Scott Peterson, Kobe Bryant trials and this investigation. First things first.

I found a couple unrelated music lists.

MSNBC has a list of "cool" songs for summer. I like a few of them alright but not nearly as much as other people do. If you go over to the list, perhaps you'll luck out and get one of the annoying ones stuck in your head.

A more interesting list is the American Film Institute's list of top 100 songs From U.S. movies (scroll down). By my count, 16 of the songs are from the 1950s, but we've only had 14 in the past 20 years.

Either the AFI has some nostalgic voters, or they don't make movie music like they used to.

Three news stories have come out in the past day. Guess which one of these gets more play on the news channels:

(a) A juror juror gets removed from the Peterson murder trial.

(b) One of the Olsen twins goes to a clinic for an eating disorder.

(c) The 9/11 commission is investigating whether or not Attorney General John Ashcroft lied under oath when he testified he did not brush-off terror warnings in the summer of 2001.

If you guessed the story which is related to the death of nearly 3,000 Americans, you guessed wrong.

Don't you love our media?

Three months after the fact, and several weeks after it went around the blogosphere, the Washington Post finally picked up with a prominent story on Rev. Sun Myung Moon's coronation ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. In front of more than a dozen lawmakers:

The Korean-born businessman and religious leader then delivered a long speech saying he was "sent to Earth . . . to save the world's six billion people. . . . Emperors, kings and presidents . . . have declared to all Heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent."

Jeff Gorenfeld has offered in depth coverage and footage of the event.

Of course many of the legislators are now claiming they didn't know what was going to transpire at the ceremony. I suppose that's possible, but event organizer Archbishop George A. Stallings Jr. responds thusly:

"You'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind to not know that any event that is sponsored by the Washington Times . . . could involve the influence, or the potential presence, of the Reverend Moon," he said.

And accounts of the event don't offer much about attendees walking out in protest.

I don't know about you, but I'd like to know in a more timely manner when our representatives are involved in this type of weirdness.

The Financial Times reports that Halliburton may not be profiting from the Iraq war as much as had been popularly thought . . . at least not yet. A combination of higher costs to perform contracts and withheld payments on disputed bills have placed a "financial strain" on the corporation.

I imagine it's rather costly to maintain a small security army to facilitate the work projects.

Speaking of pictures, there's some pretty good ones from the flight of SpaceShipOne here. Well, at least of the take off and landing; you can't really see much of it as it sours way up there.

I didn't note this earlier, but a couple weeks ago I posted a few more pictures in the Resonance photo gallery. Highlights include astronomy, agriculture, ferocious felines, nature's devastation, and the Mecca of college basketball.

Some of you may recall that I got a digital camera last month. At the time I thought that digital photography was simple: you merely point, shoot, and download your perfect shots into the computer. Well, it can be that simple, but get the most out of your pictures there's a lot more to learn.

First, you've got to purchase equipment you need and/or can afford (my rule of thumb: photographic equipment costs two to three times as much as I think it should cost).

Then, you've got to figure out how to use the equipment. White balance? Aperture? Depth of field? These terms aren't intuitive to me. You've got to figure out what all the camera settings are and how to bring your subject and the lighting together for a good shot.

That's it, right? Wrong. Your picture is only partially done. Time to touch it up with post processing software. I received Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, and, having never used Photoshop, I've found another learning curve to be conquered there.

Suffice it to say, all of this is overwhelming to try to master all at once. I've found the Digital Photography Review forum to be quite helpful. But I'm taking things in slowly . . . and having a little fun along the way.

Where do people come up with this kind of stuff? Do they not think everyone can come up with weird questions?

I ask my Republican friends: what would they rather see happen--Kerry elected and bin Laden caught, or Bush reelected and bin Laden still in the wind. If they're all honest, they would say they would rather see Bush reelected.

Need to correct this; another living Civil War widow has been discovered.

Maudie Celia Hopkins, now 89, married 87-year-old Civil War veteran William Cantrell in 1934. Interesting historical trivia, but apparently he didn't talk about the war very much to her. So there's not much living testimony to glean from.

It does say something about the economic hardship of the times, however, that a 19 year-old female would marry an 87 year-old man.

Congratulations to Say Uncle and Say Aunt for their new young 'un.

A Texas woman becomes the first to be prosecuted under a law against delivery of marijuana to a minor . . . in her womb. The statute provides for a punishment of two to twenty years in prison.

A couple questions about this:

(1) If the state is pursuing an objective of protecting the health of "an unborn child at every state of gestation from fertilization until birth," does it also criminalize tobacco smoking?

(2) Is imprisoning a newborn's mother really in the child's best long-term interest?

This isn't exactly hardcore journalism, but we can have a little fun here at Resonance every now and then, can't we?

Atrios posted a Photoshop-enhanced picture of the notes in front of President Bush during the cabinet meeting Thursday. The text is difficult to make out, but a number of commenters took a stab at figuring out what it says. Commenter Jimm offers what may be as good a guess as any for the left page:

Saddam was a threat.

Sworn enemy of US.

Destabilizing force.

Volatile part of world.

Has weapons of mass destruction used them.

Ties to terrorist orgs.

Contact with Al Qaeda over past decade.

What do you know, here's Bush's response to a question during the press Q & A:

THE PRESIDENT: The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. For example, Iraqi intelligence officers met with bin Laden, the head of al Qaeda, in the Sudan. There's numerous contacts between the two.

I always said that Saddam Hussein was a threat. He was a threat because he had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people. He was a threat because he was a sworn enemy to the United States of America, just like al Qaeda. He was a threat because he had terrorist connections -- not only al Qaeda connections, but other connections to terrorist organizations; Abu Nidal was one. He was a threat because he provided safe-haven for a terrorist like Zarqawi, who is still killing innocent inside of Iraq.

No, he was a threat, and the world is better off and America is more secure without Saddam Hussein in power.

This answer follows the script fairly closely. Bush has been repeating these talking points for how long? And he still needs to use notes? That can't be right, can it?

The Onion:

According to key members of the Bush Administration, the tragic proceedings of the 9/11 commission, which devastated the political lives of numerous government officials, could have been averted with preventive action in 2002 and 2003.

"A few adept legislative maneuvers could have saved the reputations of hundreds," President Bush's counterterrorism chief Fran Townsend told reporters Monday. "Had we foreseen the dangers of the commission's deceptively simple requests, we could have spared dozens of victims from the shocking, public mangling of their careers."

Read the rest.

Yet more evidence of America's strong public policy against illegal immigration:

The world's largest financial services group [Citigroup] said Tuesday that the new program would allow Mexican residents to benefit from credit lines granted to Citigroup's U.S. clients and to withdraw cash from American accounts.

All migrant workers need is a photo ID and a permanent U.S. address. With the account they can more easily send money back to the folks at home. And send it they do; 1 in 5 Mexicans receive money from someone working in the U.S.

With accommodations like this being installed, does anyone think we're going to take any effective steps in curbing the flow of immigrants across the border?

Interesting how all the TV news talking heads refer to almost any disclosure related to the planning of 9/11 as "chilling." Even the fact that al Qaeda leaders discussed a larger 9/11 plot, then scaled it down is "chilling."

Is it possible to mix in a new description every now and then?

Vice President Cheney's assertions notwithstanding, a 9/11 Commission report concludes:

We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.

Meanwhile, in Spain a judge says charges against 15 in that country are likely for helping to plan 9/11.

Hmmm.

I see it didn't take Bush/Cheney 2004 long to tap into the Reagan lovefest. I've noticed that in the past week they've shifted their TV advertising away from negative Kerry spots to an ad touting the administration's "accomplishments." This comes in the wake of a week of reminiscing about Reagan's optimism. Now we see Bush on TV touting his optimism in America and decrying Kerry's pessimism, which has "never created one job." [Anyone who points out shortcomings in the administration's record is obviously part of the problem.]

Bush/Cheney 2004 has spend $10s of millions thus far on attack ads and it's barely registered in the polls. I'm not sure how much more effective this approach may be. I'm not the target audience, here, as I've already made up my mind on this election. But even among the under-informed public, I think self-professed optimism can only go so far in papering over incompetence. And come this fall there might be a lot to cover over.

I don't know much about the substance of this rift other than what's been reported in the papers, but part of this strikes me as strange:

The Southern Baptist Convention voted today to quit the Baptist World Alliance following complaints that some members of the loose, global association had adopted liberal theology and "anti-American" thinking.

I can understand disputes regarding "liberal" versus "conservative" theology. But what's this about the religious organization being "anti-American"? Exactly where in the Bible are the tenets of "American" Christianity founded? Is Jesus an American? Have I missed something?

James Bamford spills the beans on the President Vice President Cheney's "undisclosed" location:

[T]he undisclosed location known as Site R, an underground bunker on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border where the Vice President spent much of his time in 2001. Deep under Raven Rock Mountain, Site R "is a secret world of five buildings, each three stories tall, computer filled caverns and a subterranean water reservoir." It is just 7 miles from Camp David.

The revelation comes in Bamford's book, A Pretext for War, which looks at the CIA's recent shortcomings and how it caved in to the administration pressure to go along with the trumped up case for war against Iraq.

An interesting, though not surprising, nugget from Time's book review:

The Bush hard-liners had long believed that stability could come to the Middle East and Israel � only if Saddam Hussein was overthrown and Iraq converted into a stable democracy. Led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, they were installed at various national-security choke points in the government, and nothing moved without their O.K. Bamford comes very close to stating that the hard-liners were wittingly or unwittingly acting as agents of Israel's hard-line Likud Party, which believed Israel should operate with impunity in the region and dictate terms to its neighbors. Such a world view, Bamford argues, was simply repotted by the hard-liners into U.S. foreign policy in the early Bush years, with the war in Iraq as its ultimate goal. Bamford asserts that the backgrounds, political philosophies and experiences of many of the hard-liners helped to hardwire the pro-Israel mind-set in the Bush inner circle and suggests that Washington mistook Israel's interests for its own when it pre-emptively invaded Iraq last year.

One is lead to believe that U.S./Israeli interests are virtually one and the same when you look at the recent American stance during the so-called Mideast peace process.

At any rate, this looks like an interesting book.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture discovers a new "fresh vegetable" to go along with your ketchup: instant salad!

And people wonder why we're a nation of fatties.

Columnist Paul Krugman offers a not-so-favorable glance at Attorney General John Ashcroft. One of his points:

Perhaps most telling is the way Mr. Ashcroft responds to criticism of his performance. His first move is always to withhold the evidence. Then he tries to change the subject by making a dramatic announcement of a terrorist threat.

Apparently I wasn't the only one who found the timing a little suspicious yesterday when Ashcroft held a dramatic press conference to announce that the government has been holding a suspect since last November for immigration violations and allegedly having discussions about blowing up a mall.

Funny how that announcement just happened to come the day after the Washington Post reported on the August 1, 2002, torture "may be justified" memo.

I'm not much of a gambler, but I'm betting our Attorney General has a few more terrorist suspects up his sleeve who he's waiting for just the "right" moment to let us know about.

The Supreme Court dodges a political/constitutional minefield by ruling that a California father did not have standing to challenge the phrase "one nation, under God," in the Pledge of Allegiance. The decision overturns a Court of Appeals ruling that the phrase is unconstitutional.

I didn't follow the oral arguments to this case real carefully, and of course the coverage may not have been very thorough. But I don't recall much discussion at the time the case was heard on whether or not the father had the right to sue. This was a convenient way for the court to avoid taking on the issue.

Interestingly, three--but only three--justices wrote separately to say they thought the phrase was constitutional. We can't read too much into that, but apparently a five justice majority would have at least considered affirming the lower court's ruling.

I think we're almost to the end of this. Don't get me wrong--I'm not trying to understate the historical significance of the death of a president. But did we have to have all of the cable channels devote every news show to it for an entire week?

I think two factors are at play here: (1) broadcasters have been saving up for this event for a while and want to get all their material in; and (2) on a day-to-day basis networks do a lousy job of putting stories in a historical context, so now it's time to catch up and educate everyone on President Reagan. It would be nice to see a little more objectivity and a little less rosy historical revisionism if that's what they want to do.

One side benefit from this has been that the Scott Peterson trial coverage has been muted this week. Expect the hype to resume in full force on Monday.

If it bothers you, don't go here.

President Bush yesterday and the new U.N. Security Council Resolution on Iraq:

I think this is a very important moment on the - on making sure that our objective is achieved.

An "important moment"? By the institution once deemed "irrelevant?" Wonders never cease.

Reader jeff-perado (stutz[at]unlv.nevada.edu) notes how Bush's latest U.N. stance squares with that of his base:

President Bush had this to say in response to the news that the UN would by passing a security Council Resolution on the sovereignty of Iraq:

"There were some who said we'd never get one."

So the question is, "Who actually did say that?" Well Neocon Richard Perle said it, as did Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. They many times talked of how irrelevant the UN had become. But here's another source: Bush's own Texas Republican Platform!! If you read the platform (.pdf file) explaining the planks of their platform, you will come across this:

United Nations: The Party believes it is in the best interest of the citizens of the United States that we immediately rescind our membership in, as well as all financial and military contributions to, the United Nations.

We will:

1) support legislation similar to "The American Sovereignty Preservation Act", which would remove the United States entirely from the control of the UN;

2) demand that Congress ratify no ambiguous treaties that compromise the United States Constitution;

3) support immediately recall our military forces from UN initiated engagements, direct or indirect UN control, and restore them to their traditional mission of defending the liberty and freedom of the people of the United States of America;

4) support an amendment to the United States Constitution stating, "a treaty that conflicts with any provisions of the Constitution shall not be of any force or effect";

5) urge our Texas Senators to unalterably oppose any agreement or treaty that seeks to establish an International Criminal Court (ICC), make the United States a participatory party to such a court; recognize the jurisdiction of such a court within the United States or upon any native-born or naturalized citizen of the United States; and,

6) demand credit for peace keeping forces provided on behalf of the UN.

At least we now know who it is that opposes Bush, it is his own party's beliefs! The really sad thing is that the "liberal media" will never point out the clear and apparent contradictions of Bush's statements and those of his own administration and party. . . .

How long is Bush going to get a free ticket to lie and deceive the American public by the "liberal media?"

I am beginning to think that what they mean by liberal media" is that no one in the media bothers to check facts anymore, just accept them at face value as handed them from this administration.

Yes, that platform doesn't suggest much international cooperation.

Speaking which, if you haven't seen Kevin Drum's summary of the Texas GOP platform, it's worth a look to see their stealth agenda.

For several years now George W. Bush has attempted to wrap himself in Ronald Reagan's cloak. Undoubtedly, Bush and his mouthpieces will now turn up such rhetoric now that the former president is gone.

But just how similar are the two? In his column yesterday, Paul Krugman noted a difference between the two when it comes to tax cuts (Reagan at least conceded that the government could dig itself too deep in the tax cut hole).

Another compare and contrast: how does this compare with Reagan's "Morning in America" reelection theme:

Three-quarters of the ads aired by Bush's campaign have been attacks on Kerry. Bush so far has aired 49,050 negative ads in the top 100 markets, or 75 percent of his advertising. Kerry has run 13,336 negative ads -- or 27 percent of his total. The figures were compiled by The Washington Post using data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group of the top 100 U.S. markets. Both campaigns said the figures are accurate.

The assault on Kerry is multi-tiered: It involves television ads, news releases, Web sites and e-mail, and statements by Bush spokesmen and surrogates -- all coordinated to drive home the message that Kerry has equivocated and "flip-flopped" on Iraq, support for the military, taxes, education and other matters.

"There is more attack now on the Bush side against Kerry than you've historically had in the general-election period against either candidate," said University of Pennsylvania professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an authority on political communication. "This is a very high level of attack, particularly for an incumbent."

Brown University professor Darrell West, author of a book on political advertising, said Bush's level of negative advertising is already higher than the levels reached in the 2000, 1996 and 1992 campaigns. And because campaigns typically become more negative as the election nears, "I'm anticipating it's going to be the most negative campaign ever," eclipsing 1988, West said. "If you compare the early stage of campaigns, virtually none of the early ads were negative, even in '88."

Let's see: Bush has had how many years to amass his "accomplishments," and this his best shot at getting people to vote for him?

Interesting.

The Tampa Tribune's computer ate it's editorial page:

Dear Readers,

We took a puck in the gut this morning when we published the wrong editorial about the Tampa Bay Lightning, who won the Stanley Cup final on Monday night.

We apologize to the team and to the fans for our terrible error. And we apologize to our colleagues at the newspaper, who got it right in every other way.

In advance of the final, we had prepared two editorials, one for either outcome. When we saw that the Lightning had won, we placed the proper editorial on the computerized page, printed it out and eliminated the other version. Still, somehow, the other version appeared on the page. We are checking our systems to ensure we learn from our mistake.

It is so important to us to get it right. And today we failed you. We extend our heartfelt apologies.

Rosemary Goudreau
Editorial Page Editor

Not exactly a misspelling or a typo in the box score. You'd think someone would catch it when they first started running the presses.

I'm not a knowledgeable hockey fan, but I caught pieces of the finals and it was a good series. Congratulations to the Lightning. Guess Canada should be feeling miffed. It's been over a decade since a Canadian team has won a championship in their national sport, while here hockey hotbeds like Tampa, Florida are drinking from the Cup.

The power of money in modern sports.

Trying to tap into the Reagan karma:

Brokaw: "You're here in France for this great feeling, especially in Normandy, for the Americans as a result of what they did 60 years ago.

"But throughout Europe, even your friends will say big-time American businessmen, who are over here a lot, they've never seen anti-Americanism so high or the personal feelings against you so high as well. Is that important for you to remedy?"

Bush: "You know, look. It's important for people to know what --that I've got a future, that I believe in a future that's peaceful based upon liberty. And I remember my predecessor who's life we mourn, Ronald Reagan, they felt the same way about him.

"Tom, that doesn't mean a fella like me should change my beliefs. I'm not going to. I'm not trying to be popular. What I'm trying to do is what I think is right. And what is right is to fight terror.

"And what is right is to spread freedom. And what is right, to stand on the -- is to stand on the values that my country and our country upholds. And I will continue to do so. In the meantime, I work hard to build alliances. And you know, we've got good relations with countries in Europe. And the countries in Europe like Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, have been strong supporters of our mutual policies."

No, Mr. President. The reason most of the world doesn't like you is not because you're attempting to "spread freedom." The reason the world doesn't like you is because you're arrogant. You think that just because you control the world's military might and have a political blueprint for electoral victory, you can do whatever you want without regard to what other nations think.

That's why the world doesn't like you.

Former President Ronald Reagan died Saturday.

I was never a supporter of Reagan's policies. One of my first vivid political memories is the disappointment I felt when Reagan defeated Carter in 1980. Back in those days, I didn't follow issues like I do now, but to the extent I did, I wasn't in Reagan's camp.

But as a person, Reagan's personal charm (the "great communicator") and optimism helped to assuage the ideological tension. This quote at the Reagan memorial website illustrates:

"Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears; to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty's lamp guiding your steps and opportunity's arm steadying your way."

A notable contrast to the current fear factor administration.

Interestingly, this is the first time I've followed the public reaction as America buries a "popular" president. Truman and Johnson died before I was one, and Nixon's public image was still tarnished when he died ten years ago. Since I was living at college at the time and didn't have much access to cable TV, this is actually the first time I've paid close attention to the burial of any president.

Yesterday Atrios linked to a "tinfoil hat" story about a dentist who claims he met three 9/11 hijackers in 2000 and suspected they were plotting some sort of attack.

Now, NBC News is running this story:

More than a year before 9/11, a Pakistani-British man told the FBI an incredible tale: that he had been trained by bin Laden's followers to hijack airplanes and was now in America to carry out an attack. The FBI questioned him for weeks, but then let him go home, and never followed up.
. . .
Khan told NBC News that for the next few weeks he was trained by al-Qaida to hijack passenger planes, and then sent to the United States. But when he told the FBI, headquarters was skeptical and, after several weeks, senior FBI officials ordered him released to the custody of British intelligence. Khan said, "I told them before the 9/11, about more than year, be� hijacking in America or on America airline."
. . .
NBC News has learned that Khan passed not one but two FBI polygraphs. A former FBI official says Newark agents believed Khan and tried to aggressively follow every lead in the case, but word came from headquarters saying, "return him to London and forget about it" -- which, critics say, is exactly what the FBI did.

I'm in no better position than anyone else in assessing the credibility of either of these claims. They might be true; they might be made up. But I suspect that there's still many details concerning the plotting and execution of the 9/11 attacks that the public still doesn't know about. And which some in the government hope to keep that way.

Last night Bill O'Reilly offered what he describes as a single-sourced but credible summary of what went down in Iraq. Most of this stuff has been floating around for a while, but it's notable that even right-wing pundits are now conceding this kind of stuff:

The war in Iraq, what really happened? -- That's the subject of this evening's "Talking Points Memo."

The following information comes from a single well-placed source with direct access to the Bush administration. Now I usually like to get two sources on things like this, but that's not possible right now. So take this memo for what it's worth.

As has been widely reported, the Defense Department is running the Iraq campaign with the State Department and U.S. intelligence agencies, pretty much spectators to the decision making. Donald Rumsfeld and his deputies allied themselves early with Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile who wants to be president of Iraq.

Chalabi fed Rumsfeld in the Pentagon information that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. And he also gave this information to New York Times reporter Judith Miller. The scenario, of course, turned out to be wildly overstated.

From the beginning, the military and the CIA did not trust Chalabi, with General Tommy Franks specifically despising him. When Chalabi demanded to be on the scene for the fall of Saddam's statue, Franks said no, defying Secretary Rumsfeld.

Chalabi also told the Defense Department that his organization could run the civil service in Iraq during the occupation and that Saddam's army and the Ba'athists running the country for Saddam should all be fired, which they were. That turned out to be a disaster, as many of those people are now actively fighting against the coalition.

Chalabi also allegedly bragged about his personal relationship with reporter Judith Miller. And now The New York Times once again finds itself in a very difficult position. Many of Ms. Miller's stories turned out to be wrong. And her friendship with Chalabi is a potential embarrassment for the paper, which doesn't need that after the Jason Blair fiasco.

Now President Bush allowed Rumsfeld and his team to dictate the Iraq strategy on the strong advice of Vice President Dick Cheney, who also bought into the Chalabi propaganda. Now the Bush administration is scrambling to recover from the mistakes. And Chalabi is in deep trouble. The gloves are off. And the CIA which hates him says he spied for Iran.

Finally, we have told you, and as my source confirms, many military commanders in Iraq simply have no confidence in Secretary Rumsfeld, who is seen as indecisive and tainted by the Chalabi association. The Pentagon and Rumsfeld office are supposed to be on the same page. They are not.

President Bush has taken the first step in reorganizing his foreign policy situation by saying goodbye to CIA Chief Tenet. More resignations are likely.

So summing up, the U.S. government bought into Ahmed Chalabi's scheme and America is paying a big price for that decision. That's what happened.

I like how when O'Reilly has a criticism, he often refers to the faceless "U.S. government" rather than the Bush administration. And of course the N.Y. Times is equally culpable here, since it shares equal power with the president in unnecessarily squandering the lives of hundreds of U.S. troops and spending hundreds of billions of dollars following the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Chalabi vision for Iraq.

Anyway, it is interesting hearing a rightist pundit admit that Rumsfeld has lost credibility and that more resignations should be coming down the pike.

. . . for "personal reasons."

Despite Bush's chatter about Tenet's "superb job," the timing of this (before the election and 9/11 commission report) makes me suspect the CIA chief was nudged out.

The announcement by some in the Catholic Church that pro-choice politicians should not receive communion has generated some controversy. Pro-choice Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin is fighting back by pointing out the selective nature of this stance. His staff have complied a Catholic scorecard which assesses senator's voting records on two dozen issues which have been cited as priorities by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops:

The survey's findings: Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, D-Mass., and Durbin topped the list of 24 Catholic senators as supporting the Catholic agenda more than 60 percent of the time. The survey prompted an angry conference call by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn., a Catholic who stood with the U.S. Conference of Bishops' issues listed in the survey just 40 percent of the time.

Critics point out that the survey weighs all issues equally, when some are more important to the church. But it does point out the inconsistency in making a single issue the litmus test for whether or not a politician is being a "good" Catholic.

Welcome to the new Rocky Top Brigade members:

Baculum King

Bir Orange Michael

Pizza Soup

Tennessee Liberal

Zoot

Remember that the energy situation California had a few years ago? Blackouts, soaring prices, that kind of stuff. At the time we were told by self-designated rightist energy gurus that the cause of the crisis was out of control environmental wackos who were intent on stymieing the energy companies' noble efforts to serve the public good. Further, we were told that the way to get out of the jam was to give energy companies a helping hand, in the form of billions of dollars in public subsidies and tax give-aways.

Reality turned out to be quite a different story. It turned out that the energy companies were actually part of the problem.

Now CBS News has obtained a copy of Enron tapes which provide a sampling of what was going on behind the scenes at the time:

Four years after California's disastrous experiment with energy deregulation, Enron energy traders can be heard -- on audiotapes obtained by CBS News -- gloating and praising each other as they helped bring on, and cash-in on, the Western power crisis.
. . .
The tapes, from Enron's West Coast trading desk, also confirm what CBS reported years ago: that in secret deals with power producers, traders deliberately drove up prices by ordering power plants shut down.

Lovely. The tapes also remind us why these publicly-minded servants cast their support to that man for the people--George W. Bush:

Before the 2000 election, Enron employees pondered the possibilities of a Bush win.

"It'd be great. I'd love to see Ken Lay Secretary of Energy," says one Enron worker.

That didn't happen, but they were sure President Bush would fight any limits on sky-high energy prices.

"When this election comes Bush will f------g whack this s--t, man. He won't play this price-cap b------t."

Secretary of Energy Ken Lay--what a missed opportunity. Imagine what an asset he could have been for America in our "war on terror."

The Department of Justice had a press conference to present evidence against alleged dirty bomber suspect Jose Padilla. Interesting that this occurred on the same day that Senator Kerry gives a speech on preventing nuclear terrorism. I'm sure that was just a coincidence, right? This government wouldn't stoop to having politically-motivated press events regarding the "war on terror."

Anyway, it sure is wonderful to be in a country where the government has a news event publicizing its charges against a criminal accused . . . and doesn't even offer the defendant a court appearance in which to respond. Too bad for him the media is too caught up in the Scott Peterson case to even notice.

This year's Memorial Day brought an unusual milestone: the last widow of a Civil War veteran died.

Alberta Martin, then 21, married 81-year-old William Jasper Martin in 1927. They had a son, who, if I read the article correctly, is still alive. After the veteran died, Ms. Martin married her late husband's grandson. Which would make her son her second husband's step-uncle. Or something.

If this all wasn't strange enough, according to the article didn't receive Confederate widow's benefits until 1996. Not sure why it took so long. One would think that the funding for such a program would have ended a long time ago.