Good People Better Rise Up!

Worth Watching

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 22:47:41 -0500

Conservative activists are preparing to do battle with allies of Sen. John McCain in advance of September's Republican National Convention, hoping to prevent his views on global warming, immigration, stem cell research and campaign finance from becoming enshrined in the party's official declaration of principles.
McCain has not yet signaled the changes he plans to make in the GOP platform, but many conservatives say they fear wholesale revisions could emerge as candidate McCain seeks to put his stamp on a document that currently reflects the policies and principles of President Bush.

"There is just no way that you can avoid anticipating what is going to come. Everyone is aware that McCain is different on these issues," said Jessica Echard, executive director of the conservative Eagle Forum. "We're all kind of waiting with anticipation because we just don't know how he's going to thread this needle."

McCain has spent the past year and a half trying to straddle the philosophical schism in the modern Republican Party. In primaries, he stressed his conservative credentials, but since clinching the nomination he has often reminded voters of his more moderate stances while professing his fealty to conservative positions.

A platform fight at the convention could disrupt that carefully choreographed effort by highlighting the stark differences in vision for the party separating McCain from some of the GOP's most dedicated activists.

The battle may not be avoidable. The current GOP platform is a 100-page document, and all but nine pages mention Bush's name. Virtually the entire platform will have to be rewritten to lessen the imprint of the president, who has the highest disapproval rating of any White House occupant since Richard M. Nixon.

Guess we'll know soon enough, eh?

Wall-E for President

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 22:38:21 -0500

What he said.

Quote of the Day II

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:21:27 -0500

John Cole documents the atrocities:

Bob Schieffer, on Face the Nation, responding to John Kerry stating that McCain has completely changed his position on a large number of issues:

"Are you attacking John McCain's integrity?"

I threw the remote. I like getting my heart rate up while riding the exercise bike and using the treadmill, but for chrissakes Schieffer. I don't want to have a heart attack.

Nothing all that new here, I suppose. But still, to see the press defend John McCain's flip-flopping while talking to John Kerry is quite remarkable, no?

Related stories here and here for those so inclined

John McCain Hates Me!

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:20:48 -0500

Yeah!

Fitting Symbolism

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:14:19 -0500

Today is President Bush's 62nd birthday. Take a look at what the White House staff gave him as a gift:

The party for birthday on Sunday was informal; the gift was not. The staff presented him with a wooden box made from a giant oak tree that fell on the White House lawn in 2007. Some of the wood from the tree, planted by Benjamin Harrison's daughter in 1892, had been sent to Texas to be fashioned into a box about 12-by-18 inches. They filled it with notes and cards from members of his senior staff.

A wooden box made from a giant oak tree that fell on the White House lawn in 2007. They turned a potential disaster into a plain wooden box. The creativity is just astonishing, isn't it?

McCain Vs. Obama on Executive Power

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:09:41 -0500

ProPublica has a detailed compare-and-contrast on a subject that is far too often overlooked. You would think that after everything the Bush administration has pulled these past 8 years it would get some attention, but then again you'd think a lot of things, wouldn't you?

Quote of the Day

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:46:27 -0500

It's been a long, long time since I quoted Dean Baker. Let's correct that now:

There are not enough well-qualified journalists willing to work for $8 an hour. We know this because there are very few (if any) experienced journalists working for this wage. The New York Times and other newspapers deal with this shortage by paying journalists considerably more than $8 an hour.

By contrast, the NYT tells us that many employers want to relax laws penalizing them for hiring undocumented workers because "they grappled, even in an economic downturn, with shortages of low-wage labor."

In a market economy, the response to shortages is higher prices, or in this case higher wages. While it is understandable that employers do not want to pay higher wages, just like most of us do not want to pay higher gas prices, that is the way a market works. If they cannot afford to pay higher wages, then in a market economy, they go out of business, just as tens of millions of inefficient businesses have gone out of business as the economy has grown over the last century.

It would be helpful if the NYT would apply some basic economics to its discussion of this economic issue.

Today's Must Read

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:39:17 -0500

If you've ever taken one of my classes on American politics or comparative public policy, these won't come as news to you. But if you haven't, or if you want a quick refresher, this op-ed from today's Washington Post is a must read: 5 Myths About the Bust That Will Follow the Boom(ers)

1. As boomers quit working and ease into their golden years, they could break the backs of the younger workers who will have to support them.
Not so. Even at the peak of boomer retirement, around 2030, most of the population will still be of prime working age, between 20 and 64. The percentage -- about 55, according to the Social Security Administration -- will be lower than it is today (59), but above the levels of the 1960s and '70s, when it ranged between 51 and 54 percent. Not only will a larger portion of the population be of working age than in the past, but a much higher percentage of that group will be available to provide goods and services. Forty years ago, most women didn't work outside the home; these days, about 60 percent do -- and the number keeps going up. In addition, national defense employed more than 10 percent of the workforce in 1968...

2. We're running out of time to fix senior-citizen entitlement programs before a crisis strikes.

Actually, we're out of time. If it was politically impossible to solve this problem when the number of retirees was comparatively small, there's no chance for a major fix as the ranks of the elderly -- and their political clout -- grow. There may be some minor changes in the way benefits are taxed or adjusted for inflation, but it's already too late for any big fix....

3. Boomers' retirement will be bad for the economy.

Not really. It'll be bad for the federal budget, sure, but it will actually be good for the economy as a whole. As retirees, the boomers will continue to buy goods and services, but they won't be competing for jobs. This will tend to push wages up, keep unemployment low and boost demand across the board...

4. The politicians know what needs to be done; they just lack the will to do it.

They may lack the will, but they almost certainly have no idea what needs to be done. Estimates of future Social Security and Medicare spending are based on complex economic and demographic models that are quite sensitive to even modest changes in key assumptions. No one really knows the size of the problem facing the federal budget, and very few people understand all the moving parts.

5. Saving the budget will require either major reductions in the old-age entitlement programs or major tax increases -- or both.

Actually, probably none of the above. Unless there are major changes in benefit rules or in the population, spending on Social Security and Medicare will grow dramatically over the next few decades. But many economic changes are likely to mitigate the effects on the budget. For example, as the workforce shrinks, the demand for labor will grow, pushing up wages and thus increasing payroll taxes, giving the government more income. Higher wages mean that more people are likely to choose to work, and to work longer before retiring. These changes, and many others like them, are likely to offset most of the increases in Social Security costs even without changes in tax rates. That will still leave a bill to be paid, but a manageable one. Medicare benefits are a much more complicated matter, but society is going to provide health care to the elderly one way or another. The issues there have more to do with how to provide that care and how expensive it will be than with who writes the checks.

Science and Technology Bits and Bobs

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 19:40:04 -0500

+ Freeman Dyson has what may be the best analysis of the problem of global climate change I've ever read. Kevin Kelly ads a must-read follow-on here.

+ Orangutans are going extinct.

+ Climate change and the food crisis are linked.

+ Led Zeppelin refuse to allow games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band to include their music. Boo!

+ Shrooms are good for you. Duh.

+ Does zillions of datapoints mean the end of theory? Turns out it might.

+ Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Donkey Kong, Zelda, and Super Mario Bros. among other games, has a great interview with Wired here.

+ Flickr Commons is amazing.

+ the Orange County Register, California's fifth-largest newspaper, is outsourcing its copy-editing and layout work to India. And sure, the compnay doing the work promises to train its employees "thoroughly to become familiar with the client publication and the region," but I'm dubious. Try imaging this the other way around and maybe you'll see why.

Smallpox!

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 19:27:57 -0500

Hilzoy is right: This is no way to run a country.

"The Benefits Far Outweigh The Costs"

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 19:25:01 -0500

Net benefit to society for new mileage standards? $2 trillion!

Bush's response? No!

Econ Stat of the Day

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 19:23:40 -0500

Dean Baker:

"Total private sector job gains in the Bush years may fall below 3 million by November. The annual average for the Clinton years was 2.6 million."

So... the next time someone tells me that they are a "fiscal conservative," I'll ask them if this is what they mean.

Today's Must Read

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 18:52:06 -0500

Go read Ta-Nehisi Coates on crime, race, and living in DC.

Like Ta-Nehisi, I too lived in DC in the mid to late 1990s, and from the looks of things we didn't live all that far apart. I lived on Logan Circle (13th and P) before it gentrified, and he lived a neighborhood or two away in the area around Howard U (no address specified). Like him, I had only one "encounter" in my entire time living in the city, including all of my time spent in clubs deep in the East.

I honestly don't know enough about the lives of Ezra, Spencer, Megan, and Brian to know why their experiences are so different from mine, but clearly they are different. And its weird... sometimes I read their posts and marvel at just how much my hometown has changed over the past decade (the fact that there are tanning salons on U Street says it all), but other times it seems as if not all that much has changed.

DC has a very strange and sad history, one filled with stories of deliberate negligence and neglect. It is a city that has come a long, long way since the 1980s, but given the mountain it has to climb, it makes perfect sense that change has only taken it so far.

But back to the point at hand. Lines like this - "As I reflected more on it, I came to a very uncomfortable--if obvious conclusion--if your a mugger in D.C., a young, white, bookish blogger probably looks like the perfect mark" - make Ta-Nehisi's post today's must read.

FISA, FISA, and more FISA...

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 18:13:37 -0500

Speaking of FISA "reform," now more than ever we need to step up and pressure our legislators to halt their apparently unending quest for needless action. Because just one day short of our national celebration of liberty and freedom, a Republican appointed judge declared "the so-called "state secrets" privilege can't shield wiretapping." Wired explains:

Just days before the Senate will convene to give a final blessing to President Bush's secret, warrantless wiretapping program, a federal court judge ruled that his legal justification for the surveillance has no legal merit.

He's the same judge Congress is trying to save the nation's telecoms, such as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, from having to face in court.

Late Wednesday, U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker issued a ruling (.pdf) in a case against the government alleging illegal spying, finding that in 1978 Congress had clearly set out the rules for wiretapping inside the United States and that Bush's claims to have inherent authority outside of those rules did not pass Constitutional muster.

Congress appears clearly to have intended to -- and did -- establish the exclusive means for foreign intelligence surveillance activities to be conducted. Whatever power the executive may otherwise have had in this regard, FISA limits the power of the executive branch to conduct such activities and it limits the executive branch's authority to assert the state secrets privilege in response to challenges to the legality of its foreign intelligence surveillance activities.

Walker, the chief judge of the Northern District of California, affirmed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the exclusive legal method for conducting surveillance inside the United States against suspected spies and terrorist. The Bush Administration argues that Congress's vote to authorize military force against Al Qaeda and the president's inherent war time powers were exceptions to the exclusivity provision.

Not so, according to Walker:

This provision and its legislative history left no doubt that Congress intended to displace entirely the various warrantless wiretapping and surveillance programs undertaken by the executive branch and to leave no room for the president to undertake warrantless surveillance in the domestic sphere in the future.

As Threat Level pointed out last night, the ruling is likely to have little real consequence other than embarrassing Congress for failing to have the courage to stand up to defend the laws it itself passed. Instead of holding hearings and sending subpoenas, Congress is set to largely legalize dragnet surveillance being set up inside American telecom infrastructure and to make it very clear that they are serious about stopping warrantless wiretapping, they are adding exclamation points to the exclusivity provision.

They will also likely give retroactive amnesty to telecom companies that agreed to illegal and sweeping surveillance requests from the same government agencies that dole out fat secret contracts to the very same telecom companies.

So thanks to Congress's pending meddling with the courts in capitulation to the President, Vaughn Walker's ruling is the closest we will likely come to a judicial ruling on the limits of presidential power to spy on Americans.

Judge Vaughn Walker is no raging San Francisco liberal. He was appointed to the bench by President George H W Bush, and is known for his intellect and libertarian streak.

Walker also ruled that the government's claims that the case would endanger national security did not overrule the provisions of law that let a spied-upon person sue the government for breaking the law.

Glenn Greenwald has written on this subject endlessly, and he steps up once again to provide the necessary context:

FISA -- enacted in 1978 and amended many times to accommodate modern communications technology -- has no expiration date. The Protect America Act, which Congress enacted last August to legalize warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, had a 6-month sunset provision and thus already expired back in February, restoring FISA as the governing law. Thus, if Congress does nothing now, FISA will continue indefinitely to govern the Government's power to spy on the communications of Americans.

And for the records, yes, Greenwald's over the top writing style is both needless and tiresome, but he's worth tracking nonetheless. Today's post is an example of why:

I would really like to know where people like Soderberg get the idea that the U.S. President has the power to "order" private citizens to do anything, let alone to break the law, as even she admits happened here. I'm asking this literally: how did this warped and distinctly un-American mentality get implanted into our public discourse -- that the President can give "orders" to private citizens that must be complied with? Soderberg views the President as a monarch -- someone who can issue "orders" that must be obeyed, even when, as she acknowledges, the "orders" are illegal.

That just isn't how our country works and it never was. We don't have a King who can order people to break the law. I have no doubt that people like Nancy Soderberg are spending the July 4 weekend paying shallow homage to the Founding, all the while being completely ignorant of or indifferent to the principles they pretend to celebrate. Just compare her claim that telecoms were justified, even required, to comply with the President's "order" to break the law with Thomas Paine's view, set forth in his 1776 revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense concerning how our country was supposed to work:

But where says some is the King of America? I'll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve as monarchy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.

...So much of this comes from the constant fetishizing of the President as the Supreme Leader, "our" Commander-in-Chief, rather than -- as the Constitution explicitly states -- "commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States." In the U.S., private actors don't have government "commanders" who can "order" or "direct" them to do anything. Even soldiers, for whom the President is actually the Commander-in-Chief, are prohibited from obeying unlawful orders...

Beyond that, her mentality reveals a profound ignorance of privacy laws and the history of spying abuses in the this country. Soderberg repeats the standard Democratic excuse for immunizing telecoms -- that telecoms are "the wrong target" because "the government should be held responsible, not private industry," and thus, "the companies that followed those directives are not the ones to blame for that abuse of presidential power."

This is all based on the false claim that privacy laws such as FISA were meant to restrict Government conduct, not those of telecoms. The exact opposite is true. FISA and other laws which the telecoms broke -- not just after 9/11, but for many years -- were written specifically to restrain how telecoms cooperate with Government spying requests. As Cindy Cohn, lead counsel for Electronic Frontier Foundation, explained when I interviewed her last October:

We brought the case only against AT&T because AT&T has an independent duty to you, its customers, to protect your privacy. This is a very old duty, and if you know the history of the FISA law, you'll know that it was adopted as a result of some very deep work done by the Church Committee in Congress, that revealed that Western Union and the telegraph companies were making a copy of all telegraphs going into and outside the U.S. and delivering them to the Government.

So this was one of the big outrages uncovered by the Church Committee -- in addition to the rampant surveillance of people like Martin Luther King.

As a result of this, Congress very wisely decided that it wasn't sufficient to simply prevent the Government from listening in on your calls - they had to create an independent duty for the telecom carries not to participate in illegal surveillance.

So they are strictly forbidden from handing over your communications and communications records to the Government without proper legal process.

Contrary to what the Nancy Soderbergs of the world want people to believe, these laws enacted by the American people in order to prevent spying abuses weren't only directed at the Government but specifically at the telecom industry as well. The whole point was to compel telecoms by force of law to refuse illegal Government "orders" to allow spying on their customers. That's why Qwest and others refused to "comply", but the telecoms that were hungry for extremely lucrative government contracts agreed to break the law. They did it because, motivated by profit, they chose to, not because they were compelled. Breaking the law on purpose and then profiting from the lawbreaking is classic criminal behavior. The conduct which those laws were designed to make illegal -- and which they unambiguously outlawed -- is exactly what the telecoms did here....

The reason the President broke the law was because he claimed that he has the power under Article II to ignore Congressional statutes restricting eavesdropping. He still claims that power, and this law does nothing to address that. It does the opposite: by putting an end to the pending lawsuits against the telecoms, it ensures that this Article II theory of presidential omnipotence will continue undisturbed -- both for the current President and for the next ones. To assert that this law does anything meaningful to address the Bush/Addington/Yoo theory of presidential lawbreaking that gave rise to this scandal is simply false. It blocks the only avenue for adjudicating the central cause of presidential lawbreaking, thus ensuring its continuation.

I realize that the legal issues here can often appear to be quite complex, but if you look past the noise to hear the clear channel underneath you'll see that complexity is mostly an illusion. In order to avoid admitting the truth - that the president violated the constitution and contravened the FISA statutes - our political elites are contorting themselves into ever-stranger positions. And in order to avoid admitting the truth of that, our media elites are almost cheerily following along.

If our elected representatives won't defend the constitution on their own, then we'll just have to make them.

He is our president, not our king.

Our rights are unalienable, granted to us by virtue of our birth, and not by our benevolent rulers.

There is no "national security" exemption in the constitution.

There has been no declaration of war.

He is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, and not of the United States.

When he says "jump," we do not have to ask how high. When he says "spy," we don't have to ask "on whom."

The constitution could not possibly be more clear. If changing times necessitate a changed constitution, then let's debate that. But until then, the clear meaning of the document stands.

Why is this so hard for so many to see and understand?

On "Moving to the Center"

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:42:46 -0500

This is fairly simple, people.

Obama may have shifted his position on FISA "reform," but there's nothing "centrist" about his moves. And he is still promising to work with Sen. Dodd to strip the retroactive immunity provisions from the final bill.

Obama hasn't shifted his position on Iraq at all. The media has gotten this one all wrong. At bottom, his policy has always been that we "must be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in." He has promised a 16-month gradual timetable for removing troops from Iraq, but it has of course always been contingent on the situation in Iraq in 2009 and 2010. To expect otherwise would have meant setting next year's strategy based on last year's reality, a nonsensical approach to, well... anything.

Josh Marshall nails it:

The McCain camp seems to have a lot of reporters eating out of its hands since many journalists don't appear to grasp the basic distinction between strategy and tactics. I've even had normally sensible journalist colleagues forwarding me RNC press releases like they're passing on the revealed truth. McCain's campaign actually put out a statement claiming that Obama "has now adopted John McCain's position that we cannot risk the progress we have made in Iraq by beginning to withdraw our troops immediately without concern for conditions on the ground."

I've watched this campaign unfold pretty closely. And I've listened to Obama's position on Iraq. He's been very clear through this year and last on the distinction between strategy and tactics. Presidents set the strategy -- which in this context means the goal or the policy. And if the policy is a military one, a President will consult closely with his military advisors on the tactics used to execute the policy.

This is an elementary distinction the current occupant in the White House has continually tried to confuse by claiming that his policies are driven and constrained by the advice he's given by his commanders on the ground. There's nothing odd or contradictory about Obama saying that he'll change the policy to one of withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq with a specific timetable but that he will consult with his military advisors about how best to execute that policy.

For the McCain campaign to put out a memo to reporters claiming that Obama has adopted McCain's policy only shows that his advisors believe that a sizable percentage of the political press is made up of incorrigible morons. And it's hard to disagree with the judgment.

Fundamentally, there is only one thing that matters: Obama wants to leave Iraq and McCain wants to stay. Even the McCain campaign, in its own backwards way, seems ready to admit this.

All of this leads to a much broader and more fundamental point. All of this talk about "moving to the center" is based on a tired, out of date narrative being put mindlessly back into play by lazy reporters. Yes, over the past 20 years or so, we have often seen candidates spend the primary season courting their base and the general election season courting the "center." On a very basic level that made sense, since over the past 20 years or so we've had relative stability in our political narratives and coalitions. But go back a bit further to the age of Ronald Reagan - i.e. go back to the moment of the last realignment - and you see nothing of the sort.

In between realignments the center, so far as it exists, is relatively stable. But in those moments when realignments are driven, the center shifts. And that's because at bottom, realignments are about redefining what it means to be in the center.

Obama clearly believes that we are in a realignment moment. That's what all of the talk about "expanding the map" and the 50 State Strategy are about. That's why he spent in the 4th of July in Montana. And in that context, moving to "the center" makes no sense, because the entire campaign is premised on redefining where the center lies.

So please, stop with this "every election is the same: first you run to the base, then you run to the center" idiocy. Some elections work like that, others don't. Let's look at the evidence first, and then build the narrative. To simply assume today's evidence fits yesterday's narrative is as stupid as suggesting that next year's president should live by last year's strategic assessments when setting their policy on ending the war in Iraq.

Compare and Contrast

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:20:27 -0500

Via Matthew Yglesias, here's Jonah Goldberg ranting about liberalism's allegedly long history of anti-Americanism:

The Nation ran a famous series then called "These United States," in which smug emissaries from East Coast cities chronicled the "backward" attitudes of what today would be called fly-over country. One correspondent proclaimed that in "backwoods" New York (i.e. outside the Big Apple): "Resistance to change is their most sacred principle." If that was their attitude to New York, it shouldn't surprise that they felt even worse about the South. One author explained that Dixie needed nothing less than an invasion of liberal "missionaries" so that the "light of civilization" might finally be glimpsed down there.

Here's Matt's response:

The trouble here, as Jon Chait points out, is that sometimes sneering condescension is warranted: "despairing about the political culture of the South in the 1920's, where disenfranchisement, lynching, and even slavery were routine practices, is a sign of insufficent patriotism? If that doesn't show the deficiencies of the right's style of patriotism, nothing does."

Now that's not to say that sneering condescension is always and everywhere a good thing. Even specifically on this point, it turned out in later decades that northern whites were a lot more interested in lecturing southern whites about the need to treat African-Americans better than they were in improving their own standards of conduct. But still, the real limits to the kind of sentiments Goldberg is complaining about mostly highlight the need for more self-scrutiny not, as he would seem to have it, more obliviousness to very real problems.

And now for the compare-and-contrast.

Here's Pres. Bush's take on the life of Sen. Jesse Helms:

Laura and I are deeply saddened by the passing of our good friend and a great American: Senator Jesse Helms. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife, Dot, and all the members of the Helms family.

Throughout his long public career, Senator Jesse Helms was a tireless advocate for the people of North Carolina, a stalwart defender of limited government and free enterprise, a fearless defender of a culture of life, and an unwavering champion of those struggling for liberty. Under his leadership, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was a powerful force for freedom. And today, from Central America to Central Europe and beyond, people remember: in the dark days when the forces of tyranny seemed on the rise, Jesse Helms took their side.

Jesse Helms was a kind, decent, and humble man and a passionate defender of what he called "the Miracle of America." So it is fitting that this great patriot left us on the Fourth of July. He was once asked if he had any ambitions beyond the United States Senate. He replied: "The only thing I am running for is the Kingdom of Heaven." Today, Jesse Helms has finished the race, and we pray he finds comfort in the arms of the loving God he strove to serve throughout his life.

NRO's Mark Levin calls Helms "a Conservative Great"

I wish the Helms family peace, and I thank Jesse Helms for helping to ensure the election of Ronald Reagan, being a warrior against the Soviet Union and for the release of Soviet Jews and other abused minorities, and being a voice for millions of unborn babies.

I have noticed some of the smears lobbed at William Buckley in other places since his death; Jesse Helms is in for even more of it. Other prominent conservatives will face the same. Unfortunately, such is the nature of these things now.

Ah yes, Jesse Helms... the defender of "abused minorities."

As an aide to the 1950 Senate campaign of North Carolina Republican candidate Willis Smith, Helms reportedly helped create attack ads against Smith's opponent, including one which read: "White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races." Another ad featured photographs Helms himself had doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham's wife had danced with a black man. (The News and Observer, 8/26/01; The New Republic, 6/19/95; The Observer, 5/5/96; Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms, by Ernest B. Furgurson, Norton, 1986)
Ancient history? No. Helms remains unapologetic to this day. Forty years after the Smith campaign, Helms would win election against black opponent Harvey Gantt with another ad playing to racist white fear-- the so-called "white hands" ad, in which a white man's hands crumple a rejected job application while a voiceover intones, "You needed that job...but they had to give it to a minority."

In columns, commentaries and pronouncements from the Senate floor, Helms sowed hatred and called names: The University of North Carolina was "the University of Negroes and Communists." (Capital Times, 11/22/94) Black civil rights activists were "Communists and sex perverts." (Copley News Service, 8/23/01)

Of civil rights protests Helms wrote, "The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights." (WRAL-TV commentary, 1963) He also wrote, "Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced." (New York Times, 2/8/81)

Over the years Helms has declared homosexuality "degenerate," and homosexuals "weak, morally sick wretches." (Newsweek, 12/5/94) In a tirade highlighting his routine opposition to AIDS research funding, Helms lashed out at the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS bill in 1988: "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy." (States News Service, 5/17/88)

Helms remonstrated ten female members of the House of Representatives to "act like ladies" when they interrupted a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing to demand support of a U.N. treaty against gender discrimination, and subsequently had them removed from the hearing by Capitol police. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 10/28/99)

And the man ABC News now describes as a "conservative icon" (8/22/01) in 1993 sang "Dixie" in an elevator to Carol Moseley-Braun, the first African-American woman elected to the Senate, bragging, "I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing Dixie until she cries." (Chicago Sun-Times, 8/5/93)

More recently, when a caller to CNN's Larry King Live show praised guest Jesse Helms for "everything you've done to help keep down the niggers," Helms' response was to salute the camera and say, "Well, thank you, I think." (Wilmington Star-News, 9/16/95)

As Matt says, if the leaders of today's conservative movement want us to believe that a record like this makes one a "great conservative," I have no problem with that. It only confirms so many of the things I've long believed anyway. But if we're going to do this, let's stop with the complaints about "sneering condescension," okay? Because if you can't sneer at openly racist assholes, well...

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan's take on Helms is a classic:

I'm pretty firm about always respecting the dead. But since he spent his life doing all he could to make my gay brothers and sisters marginalized, hated and dead, it is hard to feel what a Christian should. And since he was personally responsible for removing my chance to become an American, and his legacy of hatred toward those struggling with HIV is still alive, forgive me for finding forgiveness hard. But may he rest in the peace he so wanted to deny so many others - because they were different from him.

When Even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Sounds Like A Crazy Liberal Blogger...

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:15:22 -0500

Why is Adm. Mullen giving aid and comfort to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden? Doesn't he know that our glorious wars are just going gloriously, and that to suggest otherwise is to undermine the very delicate moral fabric of our soldiers and sailors serving in harm's way? Just who does he think he is, anyway? Iraq is not a distraction from anything! It is the central front in the war on terror! I know, because Sen. McCain told me so!

WaPo:

The nation's top military officer said yesterday that more U.S. troops are needed in Afghanistan to tamp down an increasingly violent insurgency, but that the Pentagon does not have sufficient forces to send because they are committed to the war in Iraq.

Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said insurgent Taliban and extremist forces in Afghanistan have become "a very complex problem," one that is tied to the extensive drug trade, a faltering economy and the porous border with Pakistan. Violence in Afghanistan has increased markedly over recent weeks, with June the deadliest month for U.S. troops since the war began in 2001.

"I don't have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach, to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq," Mullen told reporters at the Pentagon. "Afghanistan has been and remains an economy-of-force campaign, which by definition means we need more forces there."

Mullen has raised similar concerns over the past several months, but his comments yesterday were more pointed and came amid rising concern at the Pentagon over the situation in Afghanistan, where insurgents have regrouped in the south and east.

Obama Will Win Montana

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:08:54 -0500

I've been saying that for years now, but now that we are getting closer to the election I should reiterate: Obama will win Montana.

Obama spent the 4th of July in Butte, including a family picnic and BBQ in honor of his daughter Malia, who just so happens to have been born on the fourth of July.

The Montana press ate it up.

And Rasmussen has him up by 5% in the state.

The Big Sky is blue. Don't doubt it.

Quote of the Day I

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:56:44 -0500

"This is really good for us. . .I find it a huge compliment that he is 'tipping' us off about this . . .This is a lucky break."

That's from an email to Bush family friend Ray Hunt, CEO of Hunt Oil. The "tip" the email refers to led to an oil rights agreement between Hunt's company and Kurdish officials, an agreement that was completed in the midst of contentious negotiations in Baghdad about a revenue-sharing agreement between the various warring parties in Iraq. It created, you might dimly recall, an enormous problem both for the Iraqis and for US authorities.

At the time the Bush administration claimed, despite the close personal ties between Hunt and the Bush family, that it knew nothing about the agreement. Us crazy liberal bloggers didn't believe it, of course. How could a family friend move on a deal that directly undermined official US policy without anyone finding out in advance?

And look! We were right!

Ray Hunt, the head of Hunt Oil, personally informed advisors to President Bush of meetings he and other Hunt Oil officials planned with representatives of the Kurdish government. Other Hunt Oil officials kept State Department officials informed about the company' s intentions.

Nothing terribly surprising here, at this point. Bush has made abundantly clear that he believes rules and laws are for other people to follow, and that they certainly do not apply to him or his friends. It's a time of war, after all, and he is our Commander in Chief, so he can do no wrong!

ONN: Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:55:56 -0500

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

Drivers Feeling Shunned by D.C.

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:51:40 -0500

A gem from today's Washington Post:

Drivers Feeling Shunned by D.C. - City Less Welcoming to Suburban Cars.

Oh, those poor suburban drivers who pay neither tolls nor taxes as they commute into and out of DC! How dare the city to which they contribute no taxes aim to stop their free-riding ways!

Thank god the Washington Post is there to stand up for the put-upon suburban car driver. Speak truth to power, WaPo! Go on!

Bits and Bobs

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:08:59 -0500

Weird, but post-Summer Session has been busier than mid-Summer Session. I think it has something to do with my working 8+ hours a day on my dissertation project. That must be it. Anyway, here's a sampling of what I've missed:

+ 10 years ago, Bin Laden wanted oil to be $144 a barrel. Go us!

+ Obama gave a big speech about public service (speech here, talking points here and here) this week. I've long argued that young adults should be required to give a year of either civilian or military service to their country at age 18 - and yes, that would mean many would have to delay college by a year - and although Obama's plan doesn't go nearly that far, it is a great start. I particularly like this proposal - Obama will require 100 hours of annual public service from every recipient of the $4,000 college tax credit that he's proposed.

+ The Washington Post is on a mission to singlehandedly disprove the idea of a liberal media bias. First there was this ridiculous "Obama has great credit, so he got a below average home loan rate" story (note to WaPo: by definition "average" means that half of the people in the sample got a rate lower than that summary statistic), and then there was this bizarre op-ed from a Harvard student who is dismayed about having been "forced" to endure "indoctrination" through "anti-Western propaganda" in his intro to Arabic class.

[Bad Snark Alert: Of course "average" doesn't mean that half of the people in the sample are below and half above. That would be the "median." Nevertheless, given the narrow distribution of loan rates at any given historical moment, the larger point still stands. Just to be both clear and precise. For more, see here.]

+ Brad Reed has compiled The 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency. What's amazing is the list of items that didn't make the top 10.

But for those of you who insist on seeing your least favorite moment get its due, here is list of every honorable mention I could come up with: warrantless wiretapping; Valerie Plame; Scooter Libby's sentence commuted; Bush believes Rafael Palmeiro is innocent; soldiers face neglect at Walter Reed; signing statements; the Kyoto treaty ripped up; loyalty oaths; the fake turkey; a staged teleconference with troops, staged FEMA press conference, extraordinary rendition, support for junk science; endorsement of neo-creationist "intelligent design"; inaction against global warming; record oil prices; record budget deficits; record trade deficits; record number of Americans without health insurance; two recessions; no-bid contracts; bin Laden still at large; the Federal Marriage Amendment; stem cell research vetoed; waterboarding ban vetoed; "Last throes"; "Old Europe"; "It's hard work"; "Bring it on"; "Yo, Blair!"; "I'm the decider"; "I'm the commander guy"; "I'm a war president"; "This is the guy who tried to kill my dad"; "So?"; "Let the Eagle Soar"; John Bolton; Kenny Boy; Harriet Miers; John Roberts; Sam Alito; Blair talks Bush out of bombing al-Jazeera; Cheney shoots some guy in the face; the Military Commissions Act; Jose Padilla arrested and held without charge or access to counsel; endless tax cuts for the rich; let's waste a shitload of money by sending people to Mars and let's hire some Heritage Foundation staffers to rebuild Iraq.

+ Christopher Hitchens, a pro-war pundit if ever there was one, decided to submit himself to waterboarding. His conclusion? "if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture."

+ Florida Gov. Charlie Christ looks to be making his move towards a McCain VP nod. After 9 months of dating, the man's getting married. Social conservatives, you see, don't trust a 50-something never been married bachelor. I hate to be so cynical about a stranger's love life, but...

+ The Big Picture has a big feature this weekend on the lives of the presidential candidates. Also worth taking a look at: last week's feature on men on the moon.

More Like This, Please

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:27:33 -0500

This is a perfect example of why media narratives are so important. CNN's John Roberts was merely repeating what he had heard from other people: That Obama is "shifting to the center" and "shifting his position on Iraq." Of course if you've followed Obama closely, you'd know he is doing nothing of the sort. As is typical of so many on TV, Roberts only follows what other people are saying about Obama. And since others are saying it, it must be true!

Good to see Axelrod isn't afraid to take this one head on and call Roberts out for his ignorance. If this sort of thing happened all the time, the people on TV might actually start doing their homework.

UPDATE: A second example of how the people on my TV endlessly repeat what they have heard others say without bothering to check the facts: According to Gallup, Obama is poised to receive the votes of a record number - both by percentage and by raw vote total - of Latinos this fall. All that primary talk about his problems with that demographic group? Just talk. it meant less than nothing.

Cartoon of the Day

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:27:03 -0500

By Joel Pett, Lexington Herald-Leader
From the Cartoonist Group.
(Via American Prospect)

A Safety Valve?

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:07:11 -0500

Yglesias is absolutely right: If a cap-and-trade system includes a "safety valve," a point above which permit prices cannot rise, it is utterly meaningless.

Here are my questions: why does big oil hate free markets so much? Why are they so desperate to ensure that big government will meddle in the market? Why can't they just trust the market to set the price all on its own? Isn't that what markets do best?

Why, its almost as if they don't actually believe in free markets! As if they approve of government interference when it provides them benefits, but not when it might impose costs!

No, that can't be it.

ShakeUp In the McCain Campaign

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:03:10 -0500

Big news. Read Ambinder and Publius for competing takes on what this means. And this from Ana Marie Cox seems particularly noteworthy:

Strategy-wise, Schmidt's been an advocate for some of the boldest moves made by the McCain campaign, including the coyly misrepresentative accusation that Romney was "for surrender" -- McCain's term -- based on wanting a "timetable" in Iraq. The charge twisted Romney's words, but many feel that it helped seal Florida -- and thus the nomination -- for McCain. He also hates the press, at least as an organism if not individually; McCain sitting around for hours in bad lighting, with everyone recording everything -- almost alone among the central advisers, Schmidt thinks the benefit is not worth the cost. If you're looking for someone to break up the party between the media and McCain, he's your guy.

Mark my words: if McCain pulls back from his all-out media embrace, the backlash will be enormous. Nothing infuriates the cool kids on the bus more than being reminded of how uncool they were in high school. Nothing.

UPDATE: Also, this:

Sources close to John McCain's campaign say that Steve Schmidt has been given the authority to "completely" overhaul the campaign's political department and is likely to abandon the regional campaign manager structure that Rick Davis set up.

As I've written numerous times, running 10 separate regional campaigns was utter insanity. Abandoning that idea will no doubt help McCain. Replacing it with a new anti-media strategy, however, will not.

Too bad... I was really going to enjoy watching the regional approach blow up. Oh well.

UPDATE II: Josh puts this in perspective:

That sounds a lot like they're scrapping the whole operation and starting again from square one, thus squandering the huge advantage they got by sealing up the nomination months in advance of the Democrats.
No doubt, they're talk about retooling and logical evolutions. But this sounds much more like scrapping the whole org chart and starting from scratch.

I told you. McCain has no idea how to run a competitive campaign. None whatsoever. He just awful at this, and it shows.

The Stock Market Is Not The Economy

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:46:53 -0500

As you follow this news, remember this:

Movements in the stock market bear only a loose relationship to the overall health of the economy and in fact can go in the opposite direction for substantial periods of time. This is easily demonstrated by the bear market that ran from 1965 to 1982. While the NYT tells us that periods of bear markets "coincided with geopolitical or economic turbulence -- wars, the Depression, stagflation," the first 8 years of this bear market were actually the most prosperous period in the country's history.

From 1965 to 1973 the unemployment rate averaged 4.5 percent, GDP growth averaged 3.9 percent annually, and the real average hourly wage grew at a 1.7 percent annual rate. In fact, real wages for a typical worker grew more during the first 8 years of this bear market than in the subsequent 35 years.

The economy clearly faces very serious problems in the years ahead due to the collapse of the housing bubble, the correction from an over-valued dollar, and the adjustment to higher oil prices. It is likely that these developments will also have a negative impact on the stock market, but the market itself is a very poor measure of the state of the economy. The NYT and the rest of the media would better serve the public if they focused on actual measures of the health of the economy.

The Question Is Being Asked

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:41:38 -0500

This lends credence to my belief that in the long run, the comments made by Gen Clark over the weekend - and by that I mean the actual comments, not the nonsense and spin that has been reported over the past few days - are going to be a huge plus for the Obama campaign.

McCain bristled at the comments on "Face the Nation" last weekend by an Obama supporter, retired general Wesley Clark, who belittled the relevance of McCain's wartime experience as a qualification for the Presidency.

"I think it's up to Sen. Obama now not only to repudiate him but to cut him loose," McCain said.

McCain became visibly angry when I asked him to explain how his Vietnam experience prepared him for the Presidency.

"Please," he said, recoiling back in his seat in distaste at the very question.

McCain allies Sen. Lindsey Graham stepped in to rescue him. Graham expressed admiration for McCain's stance on the treatment of detainees in US custody.

"That to me is a classic example of how his military experience helped him shape public policy in a way no other senator could have done,'' Graham said.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, also traveling on the trip, expressed admiration for McCain's wartime service as well.

This isn't about "admiration" for his wartime service, but about how and why he thinks that experience helped prepare him to become president. After all, millions of Americans have served in the military during a time of war since the 1960s. Surely all of them aren't equally qualified to serve as president by virtue of that service, are they? So there must be something about his service that has specifically prepared him that is unique.

As for Sen. Graham's rescue attempt. Once upon a time not that long ago, it would have been unremarkable for a Senator to oppose torture. McCain's "bold" stand only appeared bold because so many of his colleagues, including nearly every member of the GOP caucus, are moral cowards who traded away our nation's long, proud heritage of opposing torture for momentary political gain. Until the Bush administration and its enablers came along, McCain's stance was entirely unremarkable precisely because it was nearly universal. So no, I'm sorry, but he gets no special credit for holding fast to his values while everyone around him lost theirs. That's what you are supposed to do in those sorts of circumstances, isn't it?

What do you want, Sen. McCain, a cookie?

Entirely Predictable

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:19:38 -0500

Remember how 4 years ago our so-called friends in the liberal media happily parroted Republican claims of flip flopping by John Kerry? You'll no doubt be amazed to learn that those very same members of that very same liberal media now declare charges of flip-floppery to be out of bounds. Steve Benen catalogues the progression here, and then summarizes:

What a remarkable coincidence. When Kerry is charged as a flip-flopper, policy reversals become the central focus of the presidential campaign. When McCain is exposed as having reversed course dozens of times, leading media voices announce, "On second thought, all this flip-flop talk is kind of annoying."

To reiterate an argument I raised a few weeks ago, as the self-designated keeper of the Official List of McCain Flip-Flops, I thought I'd take a moment to respond to this new, more tolerant, media perspective.

In short, there's nothing substantively wrong with what any of these journalists have argued. I'm very much inclined to agree that there's nothing offensive about a political figure changing his or her mind. Policy makers come to one conclusion, they gain more information, and then they reach a different conclusion. That is, to be sure, a good thing -- it reflects a politician with an open mind and a healthy intellectual curiosity. Better to have a leader who changes his or her mind based on new information than one who stubbornly sticks to outmoded policy positions, regardless of facts or circumstances.

So why do McCain's flip-flops matter? Because all available evidence suggests his reversals aren't sincere, they're cynically calculated for political gain. This isn't indicative of an open mind; it's actually indicative of a character flaw. And given the premise of McCain's presidential campaign, it's an area in desperate need of media scrutiny....

Most of the flip-flops, though, show McCain dropping his centrist/moderate credentials in order to be more in line with today's Republican mainstream. Tax cuts, foreign policy, immigration, abortion, the religious right, the environment, detainee policy, campaign finance reform. In every instance, McCain was a "maverick," willing to break with his party. Now, he isn't. The perception people have of McCain is outdated, reflective of a man who no longer has any use for his previous persona.

What's wrong with a politician who changes his or her views? Nothing in particular, but when a politician changes his views so much that he has an entirely different worldview, and that new worldview is conveniently necessary to win his party's presidential nomination, is it unreasonable to wonder whether it's entirely sincere? Especially when there's no other apparent explanation for four dozen significant reversals?

Today's example of a flip flop is actually an issue that is making a repeat appearance. And all that's needed to explain is is a bit of compare and contrast.

McCain, then:

* "I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated." [Nov. 2005]

* "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should," but "I've got Greenspan's book." [Dec. 2007]

McCain, today:

You have admitted that you're not exactly an expert when it comes to the economy and many have said..." At that point, McCain interrupted: "I have not. I have not. Actually, I have not. I said that I am stronger on national security issues because of all the time I spent in the military. I'm very strong on the economy. I understand it."

Now more than ever is a moment when we need someone like Tim Russert. "Sen. McCain, you said this week that you are 'very strong on the economy.' But just last year you said that 'economics is not something I've understood as well as I should.' So which is it? Are you strong, or not?" Followed by a series of detailed questions about the nation's economic health.

But never mind all that. Flip flopping is now perfectly acceptable, so no need for those question. We all know, after all, that Sen. McCain is a straight talker and a straight shooter, so if he's changed his mind over four dozen times and contradicted himself countless times more, there's no need to worry about it. He's a great guy with a great record who has done and will continue to do great things!

"Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War"

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:07:25 -0500

For literally years now, I've been using this blog to argue that the torture regime put in place under the Bush administration in response to the threat of terrorism (in Cheney's words, our trip to the "dark side") is essentially the same regime once created by our communist foes. And that as such, we have become the very thing we once fought so hard to oppose.

Ever time I write a post like that, I get a flurry of emails from angry readers suggesting that I either misunderstand the program or misunderstand the threat we face. Or both.

You can scratch that first critique of your list.

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of "coercive management techniques" for possible use on prisoners, including "sleep deprivation," "prolonged constraint," and "exposure."

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The C.I.A. is still authorized by President Bush to use a number of secret "alternative" interrogation methods.

Several Guantánamo documents, including the chart outlining coercive methods, were made public at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing June 17 that examined how such tactics came to be employed.

But committee investigators were not aware of the chart's source in the half-century-old journal article, a connection pointed out to The New York Times by an independent expert on interrogation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled "Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War" and written by Albert D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.

Those orchestrated confessions led to allegations that the American prisoners had been "brainwashed," and provoked the military to revamp its training to give some military personnel a taste of the enemies' harsh methods to inoculate them against quick capitulation if captured.

In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after reviewing the 1957 article that "every American would be shocked" by the origin of the training document.

"What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions," Mr. Levin said. "People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don't need false intelligence."

... The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: "Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance."

Let that sink in, and sink in deep. We modeled our interrogation programs after a regime designed explicitly to extract false confessions. Got that? False confessions.

There have always been two components to the anti-torture argument: it is immoral, and it does not work. I shouldn't have ever had to argue the first point. And now, I should never have to argue the second point again.

What began with George Washington ended with George Bush, and what was lost will never be able to be recovered. Two hundred years of tradition have been lost forever, and our nation's reputation will never be the same again.

"Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause... for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country." -- George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775

It did not have to be this way. It does not need to be this way. This must end. This is not who we are.

Bits and Bobs

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:49:24 -0500

No more Summer Session duties. Time to get caught up on things....

+ B.U. IR prof Andy Bacevich had another scorching op-ed in yesterday's Boston Globe. As much fire as Bush draws from the left, the most withering stuff comes from disaffected, life-long conservatives like Bacevich. Matt Yglesias has a great follow-on piece here.

+ Did you know that the airborne version of the Straight Talk Express features "a special area with a couch and two captain's chairs" set up for intimate interviews with the candidate himself? And that "only the good reporters" will be allowed into the areas? And that if McCain and his people know "that you have a hostile line of questioning or you have a long and well documented critique," that you'll never be invited in? Behold John McCain, the straight talking, straight shooting man of the people!

+ Obama made a big announcement yesterday about his plans for a new approach to faith-based initiatives. Not surprisingly, the media absolutely mangled the coverage. Here's the section that virtually everyone missed in the initial round of coverage:

"Now, make no mistake, as someone who used to teach constitutional law, I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don't believe this partnership will endanger that idea - so long as we follow a few basic principles. First, if you get a federal grant, you can't use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can't discriminate against them - or against the people you hire - on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs. And we'll also ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to those programs that actually work."

This makes the program nothing whatsoever like Bush's program. If a religious group wants in to this program, they are going to have to agree to abide by very strict non-discrimination and non-proselytization provisions. Assuming that they are willing to do that, and that there is oversight to ensure that they are in fact doing what they have promised, I really don't see why anyone would be opposed to this. Because as Steve Benen points out (and for the record, he worked at Americans United for Separation of Church and State during the early years of the Bush administration:

Obama has identified the pre-Bush safeguards and strengthens them, not abandons them.

By all appearances, Obama's vision is consistent with what Bush's plan would have been, if Bush cared about constitutional law, the interests of taxpayers, the rights of families in need, and the integrity of religious institutions.... There's simply nothing wrong with this. If Obama honors church-state separation and keeps the safeguards in place, as he clearly intends to do, there's no reason the government can't partner with ministries willing to provide a secular social service.

At bottom, this is about community organizing, not religion. Virtually everyone seems to have missed that here. Virtually...

+ Put that together with this - Obama announcing his opposition to a CA ballot measure banning same-sex marriages - and it seems to me that he had quite the day yesterday.

+ Andrew Sullivan has headed to P-Town for his annual vacation, and in his study he uncovered a pre-Iraq war book from Lawrence Kaplan and Bill Kristol, "The War Over Iraq." Amazingly, he's decided to reread it and report back on what Kaplan and Kristol had predicted and promised. Shock and surprise! They were wrong, wrong, wrong, about everything, everything, everything! But I'll be honest: even I was shocked by the magnitude of their errors. And to think... for all those errors he got a gig at the New York Times.

Headline of the Day

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 04:32:55 -0500

From the Miami Herald: Chinese detainee ruling quotes nonsense poem.

A federal court that ruled against the Bush administration in a Guantánamo detainee case ridiculed Defense Department reasoning as nonsensical, likening it to a 19th century Lewis Carroll poem.

On June 20, the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned as ''invalid'' a Pentagon finding that Huzaifa Parhat was an ''enemy combatant,'' a Bush administration classification.

In a first, it directed the government to either release or transfer the 37-year-old China-born Muslim from the ethnic Uighur minority or subject him to a new, legitimate tribunal using sound evidence.

Monday, the court released a partially censored 39-page opinion that explained its finding.

Notably, it said it was suspicious of the three pieces of secret evidence U.S. military panels used to declare Parhat an enemy combatant. The category allows the Pentagon to hold post-9/11 foreign detainees indefinitely and without charge, throughout the duration of the war on terror.

Rather than being three pieces of evidence, the court said, the documents from the State and Defense Departments may have all cited the same, single source.

Moreover, absent proof otherwise, Parhat's lawyers may be right in saying that source was the government of communist China, which the United States says persecutes Uighurs for their religion and effort to establish autonomy in China.

''We are not persuaded,'' the panel wrote.

'Lewis Carroll notwithstanding, the fact that the government has `said it thrice' does not make an allegation true.''

Then for the sake of clarity, it disclosed its source:

Through the Looking-Glass author Lewis Carroll's 1876 poem called The Hunting of the Snark, a humorous account of an absurd international voyage by a 10-member crew whose names all begin with `B.'

They include a baker, a beaver, a bellman and a barrister. The ruling went so far as to quote the relevant line, I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.

The Parhat ruling, written by Judge Merrick Garland, a Harvard Law-educated Clinton appointee, has so far been a theoretical victory.

Parhat has been held more than six years. He's among a group of ethnic Uighurs from western China who were allegedly getting paramilitary training to fight against their government in a camp near Tora Bora, Afghanistan, and shipped to Guantánamo in May 2002.

The Uighur captives have said through their lawyers that they have no conflict with the United States and in fact admired its freedom to practice religion, in contrast to China's communist regime.

The Bush administration has concluded that Uighurs released from Guantánamo would be subject to religious persecution in China and has for some time been seeking a third country to offer them asylum.

Meantime, the Uighurs are held like other ''enemy combatants'' -- in austere single occupancy cellblocks -- at the sprawling prison camps in southeast Cuba.

Boston attorney Sabin P. Willett, who has championed the cause of the Uighurs at Guantánamo, said prison camp commanders have denied requests to move Parhat and the others to a ``less restrictive camp.''

Unclear Monday was whether Parhat knew of the decision. Commanders denied his lawyers an opportunity to brief him by telephone, Willett said.

He has described his client as in despair over whether he will ever see his family again.

''He has a wife and child and a mother whose health is failing,'' the attorney said Monday. ``Last fall, Huzaifa with great sorrow, instructed us to tell his wife to remarry, as he had concluded he would never leave Guantánamo.''

At the Justice Department Monday, spokesman Erik Ablin said the government had not yet decided how to respond to the June 20 ruling. ''We are evaluating our options,'' he said.