Bark Bark Woof Woof

I have a confession: I'm not sure when the last time was when I watched the State of the Union address. I think I may have watched it in 2003. But I'm not even certain of that. Perhaps a glance through the archives would show that I watched a bit of it last year, I don't know.

The truth is, I find it unwatchable.

Now, I read the transcript later. I'll often go back and watch key sections so I can get the flavor of a particular passage in the speech or of a debate it has spawned.

But the thing itself (watching the actual production in real time) and then the imbecile chatter afterwards -- I just can't deal. I just find it unbearable.

Are there others out there like me? I know that a great portion of the country never watches the thing and can't be bothered with politics in any case. But are there others out there who are genuine political junkies -- downright incurables -- and yet can't bear to watch this thing?

We strive for mediocrity.

Plain ol' average will do just fine. We're not asking the state Legislature for anything extraordinary, like spending as much per student as wild-eyed socialist enclaves like Georgia (ranked 20th nationally) or West Virginia (11th).

The Greater Florida Consortium of School Boards will launch a campaign for increased spending Wednesday with a slogan born of diminished expectations: "Fund at 25th." No one will be singing The Impossible Dream. The school boards, led by Miami-Dade and Broward, hope they can persuade state lawmakers to raise the state from the bottom five in per capita funding among the 50 states and the District of Columbia to the middle of the pack.

Just the middling middle. That's all we ask.

[...]

Earlier this month, Miami-Dade School Board member Ana Rivas Logan captured the depressing essence of the new campaign. "We're not trying to be greedy," she said at a meeting. "We don't want to be first. We don't want to be second. We want to be somewhere in the middle."

Fellow board member Evelyn Greer said Monday the theme was meant to be provocative -- get people to thinking about the real-life consequences of an undereducated workforce in a state where only 57 percent of ninth-graders go on to graduate from high school (giving Florida a rank of 49th in that category).

"It's actually starting to hurt business," she said Monday. "Try hiring an intake clerk or a project manager. This is about serious, real-life issues. What happens when we can't find employees who can write or understand a memo?"

We've given up on the idea of cutting-edge researchers or innovative business leaders. But even the service industry requires certain basic skills.

The "Fund at 25th" campaign also tells us something about the fallen expectations in Florida since those heady days when the drive to raise school funding was led by then-Gov. Bob Graham.

[...]

Back in the 1980s, South Florida -- with an education ethic influenced by migrants from northern states -- wielded considerably more political clout in Tallahassee. Power has since shifted toward northern Florida, where notions of public school spending come from the Old South.

Lately, almost all of the once-languid southern states outspend Florida in education. Compared with Tennessee, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas and Louisiana, we're sucking school bus exhaust.

Only one member of the Old Confederacy now spends less on students than Florida. And barely.

Greer sighed. We've sunk to this. "We're fighting it out with Mississippi," she said.

This Concerned Woman total fag dude, who happens to be preternaturally preoccupied with All Things Gay because he’s so straight and is the best possible spokesperson for Concerned Women of America’s Culture and Family Institute because he’s a man, is very unhappy about those gay-friendly posters going up in classrooms in the Bay Area. Especially since some of the teachers who were resisting the posters on religious grounds have now started to comply. Says Concerned Resolutely Heterosexual Man Bob Knight:

"This is about bullying people and saying you will kneel down and bow to the Baal god of homosexuality -- or we'll make your life very miserable."

…And it is wrong, Knight adds, to force teachers into a situation that implies their approval of an unsafe and unhealthy lifestyle. "When you put a rainbow poster up in your classroom, you're lending the authority of the teacher to the gay-rights movement," he explains. In essence, says Knight, the district is saying: "Kids, go ahead and try this behavior. Even your teacher is for it."

[...]

[M]aybe Knight and his Concerned Women ought to find something else to be concerned about. Like how many teachers are having sex with their students—yeesh!

Opening line: "The state of the union is strong." (My poll numbers suck out loud. Insert generic bipartisan platitude #1 here and ad-libbed joke.)

Iraq: "Stay the course." (Keep flailing; we're bound to hit something.)

Terrorism: "9/11!" (Nothing else seems to work and I'm not sorry for breaking the law. Bite me. Wait for standing ovation #1 by Republicans.)

Hurricane Katrina: "There's still much to do." (What, the refugees are still in Texas?)

The economy: "Cut more taxes." (Exxon Mobil wants to make even more money this year than last year. Wait for standing ovation #2.)

Energy policy: (See above.)

Health care: "Cut costs by shifting it to private providers." (Poor people don't need health care; that's what ER's are for.)

Social Security: (Quick, turn the page.)

Education: "Build on the success of NCLB" (Stick the states with another bunch of unfunded mandates and insert generic bipartisan platitude #2 here.)

Immigration: "We need a measured approach." (Let in just enough illegals to pick the tomatoes and clean the hotel rooms but not enough to make up a voting bloc.)

Gay rights / lobbying reform / the deficit / CIA leak case: [crickets]

Gallery shot: "Ordinary citizens are the lifeblood of our nation." (Salute the wounded female soldier who is sitting next to Mrs. Bush and who isn't running for Congress as a Democrat. Point out newly-confirmed Justice Alito's wife who will cry on cue. Standing ovation #3. Wink at Laura.)

Wrap-up: (Insert generic platiutude #3, follow up with veiled biblical reference that James Dobson faxed in, briefly re-state Karl Rove's campaign call to arms for the 2006 campaign but without all traitor references.)

It seems to be time once again to play Kick the Democrats. Everyone can play, including Democrats. The rules are simple. When Republicans lose elections, it is because they didn't get enough votes. When Democrats lose elections, it is because they have lost their principles and lost their way. Or they have kept their principles, which is an even worse mistake.

Democrats represent no one who is not actually waiting in line for a latte at a Starbucks within 150 yards of the east or west coastline. They are mired in trivial lifestyle issues like, oh, abortion and gay rights and Americans killing and dying in Iraq, while the Republicans serve up meat and potatoes for real Americans, like privatizing Social Security and making damned sure the government knows who is Googling whom in this great country. Just repeat these formulas until a Democrat has been sent into frenzies of self-flagellation, or reduced to tears.

There is always a pick-up game of Kick the Democrats going on somewhere. But something about the Alito confirmation—the pathetic and apparently surprising inability of 45 Democratic senators to stop 55 Republicans from approving anyone they want—seems to have made the game suddenly a lot more popular.

[...]

The official illustration of the Kick the Democrats movement is a map of the United States, showing huge swaths of red with just a few tiny accents of blue. Of course this gives an unrealistic advantage to big states with few people. But then so does our electoral system. The deeper flaw is the assumption that everybody in red states is red and ditto the blues. A map showing red and blue people, not states, would look a homogenous purple. John Kerry got 43 percent of the vote in states that went for George Bush, and Bush got 45 percent in Kerry states. Liberals are not nearly so rare and so culturally isolated as the official map would suggest. This is little comfort to Democrats when it comes to the math of winning elections. But it does suggest that endless self-flagellation about their values and beliefs may not be the best strategy for turning things around.

This is not an argument for complacency. Obviously the party that has lost the White House, both houses of Congress, and now the courts needs some new ideas and new energy. But it seems undeniably true to me—though many deny it—that the Republicans simply play the game better. You're not supposed to say that. At Pundit School they teach you: Always go for the deeper explanation, not the shallower one. Never suggest that people (let alone "the" people) can be duped.

Nevertheless, I've been impressed all over again the past couple weeks with the Republicans' skill at political stone soup—making something out of nothing. In this case it's a remark by Hillary Clinton comparing Congress to a plantation. Near as I can tell, the alleged objection to "plantation" is—by analogy to the Holocaust—that any metaphorical use of the word is an insult to the real slaves and their descendants. This particular stone soup would be overheated even if the ingredients were fresh and sincere. But the fuss is obviously cynical, coming as it does from people (talk-radio jockeys, the editors of the Wall Street Journal—you know the type) who usually stalk the microphones in order to denounce excessive sensitivity and its smothering effect on political debate.

What's especially impressive is how the get-Hillary campaign was not even slowed by the discovery that Newt Gingrich had used the same metaphor back when he was somebody. A hilarious op-ed this week in the Wall Street Journal explained that while Hillary's remark was "pandering" and patronizing ("Must blacks have their slave past rubbed in their face … ?"), Gingrich "had the good taste to cast himself as a slave who would 'lead the slave rebellion.' " Well, each to his own good taste, I suppose.

[...]

But that metaphor of a corrupt plantation seemed more familiar than just one of Newt's old ravings. And indeed the Wall Street Journal editorial page has used it more than once. In 2001, for example, the man who now runs that page, Paul Gigot, wrote (in reference to Sen. Joe Lieberman) about "how…the black liberal establishment can punish a Democrat who strays from their plantation." The previous year, an editorial about the Massachusetts congressional delegation actually carried the headline "The Liberal Plantation."

And then (just to show what a little Googling can do), there was a small 2001 item in the Wall Street Journal's news section about Vice President Cheney spending the weekend shooting quails at the "plantation" of a rich Republican contributor. Hillary Clinton uses the word "plantation" while Dick Cheney actually goes to one. But that's the Democrats for you: all talk and no action.

Starting in 1977 with her breakthrough work "Uncommon Women and Others," Ms. Wasserstein's plays struck a profound chord with women struggling to reconcile a desire for romance and companionship, drummed into the baby boom generation by the seductive fantasies circulated by Hollywood movies, with the need for intellectual independence and a sense of achievement separate from the personal sphere.

Her heroines — intelligent and successful but also riddled with self-doubt — sought enduring love a little ambivalently, but they did not always find it, and their hard-earned sense of self-worth was often shadowed by the frustrating knowledge that American women's lives continued to be measured by their success at capturing the right man.

Ms. Wasserstein drew on her own experience as a smart, well-educated, funny Manhattanite who was not particularly lucky in romance to create heroines in a similar mold, women who embraced the essential tenets of the feminist movement but did not have the stomach for stridency.

For Ms. Wasserstein, as for many of her characters and indeed her fans, humor was a necessary bulwark against the disappointments of life, and a useful release valve for anger at cultural and social inequities.

Her work, which included three books of nonfiction and a forthcoming novel as well as about a dozen plays, had a significant influence on depictions of American women in the media landscape over the years: Heidi Holland, the steadily single, uncompromising heroine of "The Heidi Chronicles," can be seen as the cultural progenitor of "Sex and the City's" Carrie Bradshaw. (Coincidentally, Sarah Jessica Parker, who starred in that HBO series, played a series of small roles in the original production of "The Heidi Chronicles.")

"How does one report the facts," asked Rob Corddry on "The Daily Show," "when the facts themselves are biased?" He explained to Jon Stewart, who played straight man, that "facts in Iraq have an anti-Bush agenda," and therefore can't be reported.

Mr. Corddry's parody of journalists who believe they must be "balanced" even when the truth isn't balanced continues, alas, to ring true. The most recent example is the peculiar determination of some news organizations to cast the scandal surrounding Jack Abramoff as "bipartisan."

Let's review who Mr. Abramoff is and what he did.

Here's how a 2004 Washington Post article described Mr. Abramoff's background: "Abramoff's conservative-movement credentials date back more than two decades to his days as a national leader of the College Republicans." In the 1990's, reports the article, he found his "niche" as a lobbyist "with entree to the conservatives who were taking control of Congress. He enjoys a close bond with [Tom] DeLay."

Mr. Abramoff hit the jackpot after Republicans took control of the White House as well as Congress. He persuaded several Indian tribes with gambling interests that they needed to pay vast sums for his services and those of Michael Scanlon, a former DeLay aide. From the same Washington Post article: "Under Abramoff's guidance, the four tribes ... have also become major political donors. They have loosened their traditional ties to the Democratic Party, giving Republicans two-thirds of the $2.9 million they have donated to federal candidates since 2001, records show."

So Mr. Abramoff is a movement conservative whose lobbying career was based on his connections with other movement conservatives. His big coup was persuading gullible Indian tribes to hire him as an adviser; his advice was to give less money to Democrats and more to Republicans. There's nothing bipartisan about this tale, which is all about the use and abuse of Republican

Yet over the past few weeks a number of journalists, ranging from The Washington Post's ombudsman to the "Today" show's Katie Couric, have declared that Mr. Abramoff gave money to both parties. In each case the journalists or their news organization, when challenged, grudgingly conceded that Mr. Abramoff himself hasn't given a penny to Democrats. But in each case they claimed that this is only a technical point, because Mr. Abramoff's clients — those Indian tribes — gave money to Democrats as well as Republicans, money the news organizations say he "directed" to Democrats.

But the tribes were already giving money to Democrats before Mr. Abramoff entered the picture; he persuaded them to reduce those Democratic donations, while giving much more money to Republicans. A study commissioned by The American Prospect shows that the tribes' donations to Democrats fell by 9 percent after they hired Mr. Abramoff, while their contributions to Republicans more than doubled. So in any normal sense of the word "directed," Mr. Abramoff directed funds away from Democrats, not toward them.

True, some Democrats who received tribal donations before Mr. Abramoff's entrance continued to receive donations after his arrival. How, exactly, does this implicate them in Mr. Abramoff's machinations? Bear in mind that no Democrat has been indicted or is rumored to be facing indictment in the Abramoff scandal, nor has any Democrat been credibly accused of doing Mr. Abramoff questionable favors.

There have been both bipartisan and purely Democratic scandals in the past. Based on everything we know so far, however, the Abramoff affair is a purely Republican scandal.

Why does the insistence of some journalists on calling this one-party scandal bipartisan matter? For one thing, the public is led to believe that the Abramoff affair is just Washington business as usual, which it isn't. The scale of the scandals now coming to light, of which the Abramoff affair is just a part, dwarfs anything in living memory.

More important, this kind of misreporting makes the public feel helpless. Voters who are told, falsely, that both parties were drawn into Mr. Abramoff's web are likely to become passive and shrug their shoulders instead of demanding reform.

So the reluctance of some journalists to report facts that, in this case, happen to have an anti-Republican agenda is a serious matter. It's not a stretch to say that these journalists are acting as enablers for the rampant corruption that has emerged in Washington over the last decade.

At least five Midwestern states are considering legislation to ban protests at funerals in response to demonstrations by the Rev. Fred Phelps and members of his Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church, who have been protesting at funerals of Iraq war casualties because they say the deaths are God's punishment for U.S. tolerance toward gays.

Though the soldiers were not gay, the protesters say the deaths, as well as Hurricane Katrina, recent mining disasters and other tragedies are God's signs of displeasure. They also protested at the memorial service for the 12 West Virginia miners who died in the Sago Mine.

"The families weren't able to bury their loved ones in peace," said Kansas state Sen. Jean Schodorf, who has proposed legislation. "We felt pretty strongly that we needed to do something about it."

Kansas already has a law banning demonstrations at funerals, but Schodorf said the existing law is vague and hard to enforce. The proposed bill would keep protesters 300 feet away from any funeral or memorial service and ban demonstrations within one hour before or two hours after a service.

Legislators in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Oklahoma are looking at similar bills. Proposed legislation in Indiana would keep protesters 500 feet from funerals, and make a violation a felony punishable by a three-year prison term and a $10,000 fine.

[...]

Shirley Phelps-Roper, Phelps's daughter and an attorney for the church, said if legislation passes, the group will challenge it in court. "Whatever they do would be unconstitutional," she said. "These aren't private funerals; these are patriotic pep rallies. Our goal is to call America an abomination, to help the nation connect the dots. You turn this nation over to the fags and our soldiers come home in body bags."

Bush won reelection in 2004 with a lower approval rating than any other reelected president of the post-World War II era, save for Harry S. Truman. Rhodes Cook, an independent political analyst, said Bush's overall approval rating may be less damaging politically than it was for other presidents. "His strength is in fundraising and mobilizing the base," Cook said. "He can still do both very well."

Democrats see the political landscape as the most favorable to them since Bush took office. They view the war in Iraq as a continuing political burden for the administration, and hope to reap gains on the corruption issue, epitomized by the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. "Any reasonable reading of the trends would suggest that Democrats can expect significant gains this November," said Paul Harstad, a Democratic pollster. "That includes historical patterns, Republican scandals and a growing realization of the insidious cost of unchallenged Republican rule."

But Bush and his team believe they can change the equation. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove put Democrats on notice a week ago when he promised a campaign of sharp contrasts on national security, taxes and the economy, and judicial philosophy. That signaled a rerun of previous Bush campaigns, in which Republicans forced Democrats into a debate on national security and terrorism, polarized the electorate, and used those and other issues to mobilize and turn out rank-and-file Republicans in large numbers.

The Marriage Protection Amendment was originally introduced by Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) in 2003, and leveraged as a wedge issue by the GOP during the 2004 election cycle as a way of mobilizing its base to vote against same-sex marriage.

Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO), a co-sponsor of the 2005 joint resolution, has confirmed that Senate Majority leader Bill Frist (R- TN) will attempt to bring the controversial legislation to the floor this year for a full vote.

[...]

"Senator Bill Frist has indicated he will try to bring the Marriage Protection Amendment to a full vote again this year," Allard spokeswoman Angela de Rocha told RAW STORY. "Senator Allard believes that a constitutional amendment is the best way to make it crystal clear that marriage is between a man and a woman."

[...]

The public sentiment on same-sex unions differs greatly from the view of conservative groups pushing to amend the constitution. A Pew Research poll conducted in August of last year found that 53 percent of Americans polled supported civil unions, which would confer upon same-sex couples the same rights enjoyed by married couples. Thirty-five percent favored gay marriage.

The Republican Party is likewise divided on the issue. . The emphasis on gay marriage and the "moral values" banner were conspicuously absent from the GOP's 2006 agenda outlined by President Bush's Deputy Chief of Staff and Republican National Committee political advisor, Karl Rove, during his Jan. 20 speech at the winter meeting of the RNC.

In the Senate, John McCain (R-AZ) and John Sununu (R-NH) have also expressed an unwillingness to support a federal amendment prohibiting gay marriage.

[...]

Frist rejected the notion that the amendment is politically motivated during a June 2004 vote.

"That's the most common question: 'Why do you bring up the marriage amendment at this point in time?' And 'These are for political reasons, coming into the convention.' And the answer is 'Absolutely, no.'"

Frist cited the attempts of "activist judges" to redefine marriage, and the need "to protect marriage for what it's been in this country for hundreds of years."

A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.

The first was that the domestic spying program is carefully aimed only at people who are actively working with Al Qaeda, when actually it has violated the rights of countless innocent Americans. And the second was that the Bush team could have prevented the 9/11 attacks if only they had thought of eavesdropping without a warrant.

•

Sept. 11 could have been prevented. This is breathtakingly cynical. The nation's guardians did not miss the 9/11 plot because it takes a few hours to get a warrant to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail messages. They missed the plot because they were not looking. The same officials who now say 9/11 could have been prevented said at the time that no one could possibly have foreseen the attacks. We keep hoping that Mr. Bush will finally lay down the bloody banner of 9/11, but Karl Rove, who emerged from hiding recently to talk about domestic spying, made it clear that will not happen — because the White House thinks it can make Democrats look as though they do not want to defend America. "President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why," he told Republican officials. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."

Mr. Rove knows perfectly well that no Democrat has ever said any such thing — and that nothing prevented American intelligence from listening to a call from Al Qaeda to the United States, or a call from the United States to Al Qaeda, before Sept. 11, 2001, or since. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act simply required the government to obey the Constitution in doing so. And FISA was amended after 9/11 to make the job much easier.

Only bad guys are spied on. Bush officials have said the surveillance is tightly focused only on contacts between people in this country and Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Vice President Dick Cheney claimed it saved thousands of lives by preventing attacks. But reporting in this paper has shown that the National Security Agency swept up vast quantities of e-mail messages and telephone calls and used computer searches to generate thousands of leads. F.B.I. officials said virtually all of these led to dead ends or to innocent Americans. The biggest fish the administration has claimed so far has been a crackpot who wanted to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch — a case that F.B.I. officials said was not connected to the spying operation anyway.

The spying is legal. The secret program violates the law as currently written. It's that simple. In fact, FISA was enacted in 1978 to avoid just this sort of abuse. It said that the government could not spy on Americans by reading their mail (or now their e-mail) or listening to their telephone conversations without obtaining a warrant from a special court created for this purpose. The court has approved tens of thousands of warrants over the years and rejected a handful.

As amended after 9/11, the law says the government needs probable cause, the constitutional gold standard, to believe the subject of the surveillance works for a foreign power or a terrorist group, or is a lone-wolf terrorist. The attorney general can authorize electronic snooping on his own for 72 hours and seek a warrant later. But that was not good enough for Mr. Bush, who lowered the standard for spying on Americans from "probable cause" to "reasonable belief" and then cast aside the bedrock democratic principle of judicial review.

Just trust us. Mr. Bush made himself the judge of the proper balance between national security and Americans' rights, between the law and presidential power. He wants Americans to accept, on faith, that he is doing it right. But even if the United States had a government based on the good character of elected officials rather than law, Mr. Bush would not have earned that kind of trust. The domestic spying program is part of a well-established pattern: when Mr. Bush doesn't like the rules, he just changes them, as he has done for the detention and treatment of prisoners and has threatened to do in other areas, like the confirmation of his judicial nominees. He has consistently shown a lack of regard for privacy, civil liberties and judicial due process in claiming his sweeping powers. The founders of our country created the system of checks and balances to avert just this sort of imperial arrogance.

The rules needed to be changed. In 2002, a Republican senator — Mike DeWine of Ohio — introduced a bill that would have done just that, by lowering the standard for issuing a warrant from probable cause to "reasonable suspicion" for a "non-United States person." But the Justice Department opposed it, saying the change raised "both significant legal and practical issues" and may have been unconstitutional. Now, the president and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are telling Americans that reasonable suspicion is a perfectly fine standard for spying on Americans as well as non-Americans — and they are the sole judges of what is reasonable.

So why oppose the DeWine bill? Perhaps because Mr. Bush had already secretly lowered the standard of proof — and dispensed with judges and warrants — for Americans and non-Americans alike, and did not want anyone to know.

War changes everything. Mr. Bush says Congress gave him the authority to do anything he wanted when it authorized the invasion of Afghanistan. There is simply nothing in the record to support this ridiculous argument.

The administration also says that the vote was the start of a war against terrorism and that the spying operation is what Mr. Cheney calls a "wartime measure." That just doesn't hold up. The Constitution does suggest expanded presidential powers in a time of war. But the men who wrote it had in mind wars with a beginning and an end. The war Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney keep trying to sell to Americans goes on forever and excuses everything.

Other presidents did it. Mr. Gonzales, who had the incredible bad taste to begin his defense of the spying operation by talking of those who plunged to their deaths from the flaming twin towers, claimed historic precedent for a president to authorize warrantless surveillance. He mentioned George Washington, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These precedents have no bearing on the current situation, and Mr. Gonzales's timeline conveniently ended with F.D.R., rather than including Richard Nixon, whose surveillance of antiwar groups and other political opponents inspired FISA in the first place. Like Mr. Nixon, Mr. Bush is waging an unpopular war, and his administration has abused its powers against antiwar groups and even those that are just anti-Republican.

•

The Senate Judiciary Committee is about to start hearings on the domestic spying. Congress has failed, tragically, on several occasions in the last five years to rein in Mr. Bush and restore the checks and balances that are the genius of American constitutional democracy. It is critical that it not betray the public once again on this score.

I'm an addict. I admit it. Six weeks without blogging and I'm itching to snark about nothing in particular, post pictures of my cats (forthcoming) and generally waste time on the internet. But, what else am I going to do?

In recent weeks, President Bush and his administration have mounted a spirited defense of his Iraq policy, the Patriot Act and, especially, a program to wiretap civilians, often reaching back into American history for precedents to justify these actions. It is clear that the president believes that he is acting to protect the security of the American people. It is equally clear that both his belief and the executive authority he claims to justify its use derive from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

A myriad of contested questions are obviously at issue here — foreign policy questions about the danger posed by Iraq, constitutional questions about the proper limits on executive authority, even political questions about the president's motives in attacking Iraq. But all of those debates are playing out under the shadow of Sept. 11 and the tremendous changes that it prompted in both foreign and domestic policy.

Whether or not we can regard Sept. 11 as history, I would like to raise two historical questions about the terrorist attacks of that horrific day. My goal is not to offer definitive answers but rather to invite a serious debate about whether Sept. 11 deserves the historical significance it has achieved.

My first question: where does Sept. 11 rank in the grand sweep of American history as a threat to national security? By my calculations it does not make the top tier of the list, which requires the threat to pose a serious challenge to the survival of the American republic.

Here is my version of the top tier: the War for Independence, where defeat meant no United States of America; the War of 1812, when the national capital was burned to the ground; the Civil War, which threatened the survival of the Union; World War II, which represented a totalitarian threat to democracy and capitalism; the cold war, most specifically the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which made nuclear annihilation a distinct possibility.

Sept. 11 does not rise to that level of threat because, while it places lives and lifestyles at risk, it does not threaten the survival of the American republic, even though the terrorists would like us to believe so.

My second question is this: What does history tell us about our earlier responses to traumatic events?

My list of precedents for the Patriot Act and government wiretapping of American citizens would include the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which allowed the federal government to close newspapers and deport foreigners during the "quasi-war" with France; the denial of habeas corpus during the Civil War, which permitted the pre-emptive arrest of suspected Southern sympathizers; the Red Scare of 1919, which emboldened the attorney general to round up leftist critics in the wake of the Russian Revolution; the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, which was justified on the grounds that their ancestry made them potential threats to national security; the McCarthy scare of the early 1950's, which used cold war anxieties to pursue a witch hunt against putative Communists in government, universities and the film industry.

In retrospect, none of these domestic responses to perceived national security threats looks justifiable. Every history textbook I know describes them as lamentable, excessive, even embarrassing. Some very distinguished American presidents, including John Adams, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, succumbed to quite genuine and widespread popular fears. No historian or biographer has argued that these were their finest hours.

What Patrick Henry once called "the lamp of experience" needs to be brought into the shadowy space in which we have all been living since Sept. 11. My tentative conclusion is that the light it sheds exposes the ghosts and goblins of our traumatized imaginations. It is completely understandable that those who lost loved ones on that date will carry emotional scars for the remainder of their lives. But it defies reason and experience to make Sept. 11 the defining influence on our foreign and domestic policy. History suggests that we have faced greater challenges and triumphed, and that overreaction is a greater danger than complacency.

Karl Rove said in a speech last week that this year's midterm election will be about security. So you know it will be about fear.

It would be nice to be able to take President Bush's chief political advisor at his word. Consider where we stand 52 months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Hurricane Katrina has shown that the government could not effectively manage a catastrophe whose place and time it knew in advance. The same storm revealed that first responders are still unable to communicate because their radios are incompatible, four years after the inability of emergency agencies to speak with one another emerged as one of the signature failings of Sept. 11. Meanwhile, questions remain about the efficacy of airport security. And just last month, members of the Sept. 11 commission, five Republicans and five Democrats who were tasked with investigating the tragedy, gave the government failing grades in its response to the terror threat.

So yes, a national conversation about security could hardly be more timely. But it would be nave to think that's what Rove meant when he addressed the Republican National Committee in Washington Jan. 20.

Experience tells us that with this crew, "security" is just a code word for fear. So this election will hinge on making people think terrorists are going to get 'em if they don't vote Republican.

In a sense, you can't blame Rove. With apologies to Garrett Morris, fear "been beddy beddy good" to the White House. That's why Sept. 11 has become Team Bush's fallback position, its default reply to every hard question.

A ruinous war fought under false pretenses? Sept. 11.

Indefinite detention of alleged terrorists? Sept. 11.

Torture? Sept. 11.

The right of the people to dissent? Sept. 11.

Spying on Americans in violation of federal law? Sept. 11.

A growing record of incompetence and lies? Sept. 11.

Fear is the president's Get Out Of Jail Free card. It works because panicked people are not thinking people. If you can convince them Osama bin Laden is coming up the driveway and only you can save them, they'll turn a blind eye while you break the law, steal their rights, rape the Constitution itself.

So while this willingness to use fear as a tool of manipulation is distressing, what's more distressing is the willingness of some to be manipulated. Consider the howls of outrage you don't hear as rights are abrogated and laws broken. Fear makes us sheep. And as the campaign begins, you have to wonder if Democrats will challenge us to be more than that. Or if they will again be caught with their pants down, playing Wile E. Coyote to the GOP's Roadrunner. One recalls 2004 and the neat bit of political jujitsu by which surrogates for the presidential candidate who avoided combat in Vietnam managed to make a political liability of his opponent's voluntary service there, even though said service won him a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts.

The shamelessness of Team Bush is not to be underestimated.

Ultimately, though, my concern is not the Democrats. Because what is at stake this year is not the fortunes of a party but the character of a nation. The choice is simple: remain true to the ideals that have guided us for 230 years or surrender them on the altar of expedience because we were too scared to live up to them.

Make no mistake: America is not for wimps. It takes guts to be an American, to believe in the rule of law, the freedom of dissent, the dignity of woman and man even when -- especially when -- it is more expedient not to. To be an American is to commit a daily act of faith.

Or as Colin Powell said, the day after the Sept. 11 attacks, "We're Americans. We don't walk around terrified." Too bad his own party is so intent on proving him wrong.

Van's Gulf Coast Progressive Blog comes in from St. Petersburg, Florida.

The Reaction is a group blog from Toronto.

Natalie at All Facts and Opinions is back on-line and catching up.

archy on the terrible social hurdles a rich white straight boy has to overcome to succeed.

Bark Bark Woof Woof on competency.

David at blogAmY investigates the underworld.

bloggg passes on a great one-liner line.

Lefty Brown catches up.

Collective Sigh reviews Bush's Brokeback Mountain review.

the farmer is back at Corrente and none too soon.

Dodecahedron isn't happy with Sen. Tim Johnson.

Dohiyi Mir on the nascent filibuster movement against Alito.

Echidne gets a direct report on the Palestinian election.

firedoglake catches up on Scooter.

First Draft on Bush minding business.

The Fulcrum on polluting our own troops.

Happy Furry Puppy catches up on the Left news of the week.

iddybud on a waste problem of nuclear proportions.

Left is Right on dire predictions.

Liberty Street on rich Chilean exiles.

Make Me a Commentator on our options for Iran.

Michael deals with a loss.

Pen-Elayne has her own blog link recommendations.

Rook gets a job.

rubber hose summarizes Hayden's fall.

Science and Politics has a carnival of carnivals.

Scrutiny Hooligans on what it's like to be poor and sick in North Carolina.

Sooner Thought on armed legislators.

Speedkill on emotional kaleidoscope of partisanship.

Steve Gilliard on Al Sharpton and The Boondocks.

T. Rex on stretching the thin green line.

The Countess gets down with sex.

Wanda on the state of the union.

WTF Is It Now?? on Scott McClellan tap dancing.

The Yellow Doggerel Democrat and Molly Ivins on manifesto destiny.

It's tempting to dismiss the debate about the National Security Agency spying on Americans as a technical conflict about procedural rights. President Bush believes he has the legal authority to order electronic snooping without asking anyone's permission. Civil libertarians and privacy-fretters think Bush needs a warrant from the special court created to authorize wiretapping in cases of national security. But in practice, the so-called FISA court that issues such warrants functions as a virtual rubber stamp for the executive branch anyhow, so what's the great difference in the end?

Would that so little were at stake. In fact, the Senate hearings on NSA domestic espionage set to begin next month will confront fundamental questions about the balance of power within our system. Even if one assumes that every unknown instance of warrant-less spying by the NSA were justified on security grounds, the arguments issuing from the White House threaten the concept of checks and balances as it has been understood in America for the last 218 years. Simply put, Bush and his lawyers contend that the president's national security powers are unlimited. And since the war on terror is currently scheduled to run indefinitely, the executive supremacy they're asserting won't be a temporary condition.

This extremity of Bush's position emerges most clearly in a 42-page document issued by the Department of Justice last week. As Andrew Cohen, a CBS legal analyst, wrote in an online commentary, "The first time you read the 'White Paper,' you feel like it is describing a foreign country guided by an unfamiliar constitution." To develop this observation a bit further, the nation implied by the document would be an elective dictatorship, governed not by three counterpoised branches of government but by a secretive, possibly benign, awesomely powerful king.

According to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the putative author of the white paper, the president's powers as commander in chief make him the "sole organ for the Nation in foreign affairs." This status, which derives from Article II of the Constitution, brings with it the authority to conduct warrant-less surveillance for the purpose of disrupting possible terrorist attacks on the United States.

That power already sounds boundless, but according to Gonzales, this sole organ has garnered even more authority under the congressional authorization for the use of military force, passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. This resolution is invariably referred to by the ungainly acronym AUMF—the sound, perhaps, of civil liberties being exhaled by a democracy. In the language of the white paper, the potent formula of Article II plus AUMF "places the president at the zenith of his powers," giving him "all that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate."

This somewhat daffy monarchical undertone accompanies legal reasoning that recalls Alice's conversation with the March Hare. "AUMF" is understood by the Justice Department to expressly authorize warrant-less surveillance even though the resolution that Congress passed neither envisioned nor implied anything of the kind. The president's insistence that he alone can divine the hidden meaning of legislation is of a piece with his recently noticed practice of appending "signing statements" to bills—as in, "by signing this anti-torture bill into law, I pronounce it to signify that it has no power over me." Similarly, in his white paper, Bush as much as declares: "I determine what my words mean and I alone determine what yours mean, too."

Twisting vague statements into specific authorization is a stretch. But it is in inverting specific prohibitions into blanket permission that Gonzales reaches for the genuinely Orwellian. The Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 not only does not authorize Bush's warrant-less snooping but clearly and specifically prohibits it by prescribing the FISA court system as the "exclusive" method for authorizing electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes. With a little help from the white paper, however, that protection goes aumf as well; Gonzales proposes that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act must either be read as consistent with the position that King Zenith can wiretap whomever he wants (thus becoming meaningless) or, alternatively, be dismissed as an unconstitutional irrelevancy.

Bush's message to the courts, like his message to Congress, is: Make way, subjects. His quiet detour around the federal judges who sit on the FISA court is entirely consistent with the White House position in the big terrorism civil liberties cases that federal judges lack jurisdiction to meddle with presidential decisions about whom to lock up and how to treat them. In the Hamdi case, the Supreme Court, by a vote of 8-1, curtailed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's ability to detain "enemy combatants" indefinitely without a hearing. In a plurality opinion, O'Connor wrote "a state of war is not a blank check for the President." The Justice Department memo, however, cites Hamdi as ballast for its stance that when it comes to spying domestically, Bush has not only a blank check but a wallet full of no-limit platinum cards.

The final problem with Gonzales' theories of unfettered executive authority is that they, as the lawyers say, prove too much. The Article II plus AUMF justification for warrant-less spying is essentially the same one the administration has advanced to excuse torture; ignore the Geneva Conventions; and indefinitely hold even U.S. citizens without a hearing, charges, or trial. Torture and detention without due process are bad enough. But why does this all-purpose rationale not also extend to press censorship or arresting political opponents, were the president to deem such measures vital to the nation's security?

I don't suggest that Bush intends anything of the kind—or that even a Congress as supine as the current one would remain passive if he went so far. But the president's latest assertion that he alone can safeguard our civil liberties isn't just disturbing and wrong. It's downright un-American.

He strides like a bantam rooster into the living room of one of the Rio Bend bungalows, having just been buoyed by an appreciative luncheon of 400 Realtors to whom he read a list of earmarks -- personally directed spending, aka pork -- he has delivered to his district. Most people, battered as he recently has been, would be curled up on the carpet in a fetal position. But DeLay is as direct and uncomplicated as the tool that supplies his nickname -- "The Hammer" -- and his faults do not include being a whiner.

Furthermore, he is not about to plea-bargain in the court of public opinion. He chafes under prudential reticence: His attorneys tell him not to trumpet the fact that the Justice Department told them he is not a target in the Jack Abramoff investigation. But about other matters, the bantam is belligerent.

[...]

Referring to his trial on campaign finance charges brought by a notoriously political Democratic prosecutor, DeLay says, with a confidence that might be misplaced but clearly is unfeigned, "I'll be acquitted by the end of April." Then he says he will secure a 12th term, winning "the most expensive congressional race ever." The national Democratic Party and several liberal groups -- already running ads and phone banks -- spend, well, liberally.

Because undecided voters are thin here -- he estimates they are about 13 percent of the district -- this election will be about mobilizing the faithful. So the piling on by his critics -- their wretched excesses in response to what they perceive to be his -- may help him.

The Bush administration rejected a 2002 Senate proposal that would have made it easier for FBI agents to obtain surveillance warrants in terrorism cases, concluding that the system was working well and that it would likely be unconstitutional to lower the legal standard.

The proposed legislation by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) would have allowed the FBI to obtain surveillance warrants for non-U.S. citizens if they had a "reasonable suspicion" they were connected to terrorism -- a lower standard than the "probable cause" requirement in the statute that governs the warrants.

[...]

Democrats and national security law experts who oppose the NSA program say the Justice Department's opposition to the DeWine legislation seriously undermines arguments by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and others, who have said the NSA spying is constitutional and that surveillance warrants are often too cumbersome to obtain.

"It's entirely inconsistent with their current position," said Philip B. Heymann, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration who teaches law at Harvard University. "The only reason to do what they've been doing is because they wanted a lower standard than 'probable cause.' A member of Congress offered that to them, but they turned it down."

The Bush administration, citing the confidentiality of executive branch communications, said Tuesday that it did not plan to turn over certain documents about Hurricane Katrina or make senior White House officials available for sworn testimony before two Congressional committees investigating the storm response.

[...]

In response to questions later from a reporter, the deputy White House spokesman, Trent Duffy, said the administration had declined requests to provide testimony by Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff; Mr. Card's deputy, Joe Hagin; Frances Fragos Townsend, the domestic security adviser; and her deputy, Ken Rapuano.

Mr. Duffy said the administration had also declined to provide storm-related e-mail correspondence and other communications involving White House staff members. Mr. Rapuano has given briefings to the committees, but the sessions were closed to the public and were not considered formal testimony.

"The White House and the administration are cooperating with both the House and Senate," Mr. Duffy said. "But we have also maintained the president's ability to get advice and have conversations with his top advisers that remain confidential."

Incompetence is not one of the seven deadly sins, and it's hardly the worst attribute that can be ascribed to George W. Bush. But it is this president's defining attribute. Historians, looking back at the hash that his administration has made of his war in Iraq, his response to Hurricane Katrina and his Medicare drug plan, will have to grapple with how one president could so cosmically botch so many big things -- particularly when most of them were the president's own initiatives.

[...]

How could a president get these things so wrong? Incompetence may describe this presidency, but it doesn't explain it. For that, historians may need to turn to the seven deadly sins: to greed, in understanding why Bush entrusted his new drug entitlement to a financial mainstay of modern Republicanism. To sloth, in understanding why Incurious George has repeatedly ignored the work of experts whose advice runs counter to his desires.

More and more, the key question for this administration is that of the great American sage, Casey Stengel: Can't anybody here play this game?

A 41-page assessment by the Department of Homeland Security's National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC), was delivered by e-mail to the White House's "situation room," the nerve center where crises are handled, at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, the day the storm hit, according to an e-mail cover sheet accompanying the document.

The NISAC paper warned that a storm of Katrina's size would "likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching" and specifically noted the potential for levee failures along Lake Pontchartrain. It predicted economic losses in the tens of billions of dollars, including damage to public utilities and industry that would take years to fully repair. Initial response and rescue operations would be hampered by disruption of telecommunications networks and the loss of power to fire, police and emergency workers, it said.

In a second document, also obtained by The Washington Post, a computer slide presentation by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, prepared for a 9 a.m. meeting on Aug. 27, two days before Katrina made landfall, compared Katrina's likely impact to that of "Hurricane Pam," a fictional Category 3 storm used in a series of FEMA disaster-preparedness exercises simulating the effects of a major hurricane striking New Orleans. But Katrina, the report warned, could be worse.

The hurricane's Category 4 storm surge "could greatly overtop levees and protective systems" and destroy nearly 90 percent of city structures, the FEMA report said. It further predicted "incredible search and rescue needs (60,000-plus)" and the displacement of more than a million residents.

The NISAC analysis accurately predicted the collapse of floodwalls along New Orleans's Lake Pontchartrain shoreline, an event that the report described as "the greatest concern." The breach of two canal floodwalls near the lake was the key failure that left much of central New Orleans underwater and accounted for the bulk of Louisiana's 1,100 Katrina-related deaths.

The documents shed new light on the extent on the administration's foreknowledge about Katrina's potential for unleashing epic destruction on New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities and towns. President Bush, in a televised interview three days after Katrina hit, suggested that the scale of the flooding in New Orleans was unexpected. "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did anticipate a serious storm," Bush said in a Sept. 1 interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Word that Ralph Reed plans to seek the lieutenant governorship of Georgia signals what friends say is the former Christian Coalition executive director's ultimate ambition — 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

A Bush White House favorite, Mr. Reed would have to give up his lucrative campaign-consulting business in order to run for a relatively minor office in his home state.

Associates say Mr. Reed, 43, whose picture first appeared on the cover of Time magazine nearly 10 years ago, hopes to use the lieutenant governor's job to position himself to run for Georgia governor. Friends also say the Atlanta-based consultant's long-held ambition is ultimately to win for himself the Republican presidential nomination that, as a campaign adviser, he has helped others to seek.

[...]

Word of his plans for elective office surfaced in Republican political circles earlier this month. He declined to be interviewed for this article, but other Republicans said that he has sounded out Republicans in Washington close to the White House, as well as Mr. Perdue and Georgia's two Republican senators, Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss.

From the time religious broadcaster and 1988 Republican presidential-nomination candidate Pat Robertson formed the Christian Coalition in 1989 until Mr. Reed left the coalition in 1997, he was considered to be a driving force behind its success. The coalition was widely credited with turning out millions of voters to support pro-life, "traditional values" Republican candidates.

"We knew we had a special show and we remained as a family," said Martin Sheen, who portrayed President Josiah Bartlet. "We all knew that we weren't going to get this kind of a chance again."

[...]

Sheen said the show's most positive impact on the country was, during a cynical time, to make people realize the important job that public servants perform.

"The government continues because of people who care for the country," he said.

And now, here's this week's episode of Great Moments In Black History.

The year is 1979. Carter is in office, disco is on the radio, and Ron Stallworth has just joined the Ku Klux Klan.

We are indebted to the Deseret Morning News of Salt Lake City for revealing this in an article earlier this month commemorating Stallworth's retirement from the Utah Department of Public Safety. Since then, the story has made MSNBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, and blogs from here to eternity.

And if you're wondering why the fuss, well ... it's not every day a black man becomes a Klansman.

The story goes as follows: In '79, Stallworth was an intelligence officer with the Colorado Springs police, tasked with gathering information on subversive groups. One day he sees a classified ad: the KKK is forming a chapter and looking for members. So he calls.

"This guy answered the phone," he told me last week in a telephone interview. "I told him I saw the ad and was interested. He asked me why. I told him I was a pure blooded Aryan white man. I told him I was a victim of the Zionist Occupied Government because of ZOG's preference for mud people, meaning blacks or anybody that's not considered pure blood."

Stallworth's deft use of the buzzwords of hate excited the Klan man who was, in his day job, a soldier at nearby Fort Carson. The two made plans to meet. Stallworth gave a physical description of himself, accurate except for the minor matter of melanin. After he got off the phone, he recruited a colleague who matched his description -- except for the minor matter of melanin -- and sent him in.

It worked. Ron Stallworth filled out his application, paid his dues, became a Klansman. Some snafu delayed his membership card, though, so Stallworth went to the top to get it straightened out. "I called David Duke," he said.

Within days, Stallworth had his card, which he still carries. He says he handled Klan business by phone, sending in the white cop when face-to-face meetings were required. For a year, he said, he and Duke spoke once or twice a week. Once, Stallworth asked Duke if he wasn't afraid of being infiltrated by undercover cops, or maybe some smart-aleck black man posing as white.

'He said, `No, I'm not concerned about that because I can always tell when I'm talking to a nigger.' I said, 'How?' He said, 'The way they pronounce certain words or letters. Niggers tend to say the word `are,' they say 'are-uh.' That's a dead giveaway. I can tell you're an educated white man because you don't talk that way."

[...]

This Great Moment in Black History has been sponsored by the same old ignoramuses who still think melanin is destiny.

Which only goes to show you what atavistic imbeciles they -- ahem -- are-uh.

As Canada's 39th general election campaign came to a halt Sunday night, final polling numbers gave Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party a firm grip on minority government following Monday's vote.

The final poll results for The Globe and Mail and CTV by the Strategic Counsel showed the Conservatives with 37 per cent support, the Liberals with 27, the NDP at 19, the Bloc Québécois at 11 and the Green Party at six per cent.

Strategic Counsel chairman Allan Gregg said the poll would produce "a solid Conservative minority government with more Bloc and more New Democrats than we have today."

Americans may be willing to support extraordinary measures - perhaps extralegal ones - if they are posed in the starkest terms of protecting the nation from another calamitous attack. They are less likely to be supportive, members of both parties say, if the question is presented as a president breaking the law to spy on the nation's own citizens.

[...]

Mr. Rove's speech on Friday to the Republican National Committee was a classic example. "Let me be as clear as I can be: President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why," Mr. Rove said. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."

1. Go into your archives.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Post the fifth sentence (or closest to it).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five other people to do the same thing.

Even leaving out the anarchists, getting a group of demonstrators to work together and in any kind of order is like trying to teach cats how to march (there's an assignment for you, NTodd).

Lab Kat

Ricky

Fallenmonk

Paul the Spud

oldwhitelady

Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, gave nervous Republicans here a preview of the party's strategy to maintain its dominance in the fall elections today, assailing Democrats for their positions on terrorism, the White House eavesdropping program and Mr. Bush's attempt to shape the federal judiciary.

For 26 minutes, after calling for civility in politics in a packed speech before the Republican National Committee, Mr. Rove offered a lacerating attack on Democrats that other Republicans said was a road map for how the party would deal with a tough electoral environment. Mr. Rove sharply criticized Democrats for their opposition to tax cuts and Mr. Bush's Supreme Court nominations, but he left little doubt that once again - as has been the case in both national elections since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - that he was intent on making national security the pre-eminent issue in 2006.

[...]

Mr. Rove made no mention of Republican opposition to both the Patriot Act and the surveillance program, which has posed a political problem for this White House, while he laid out his case against the Democrats, speaking rapidly.

[...]

In his speech, Mr. Rove made no mention of his own legal situation. And even as he sought to rally his troops, he made no mention of an issue that accounts for much of the Republican concern about the coming midterm elections: The influence-peddling investigation of Congress that has focused on some senior Republican leaders, including Tom DeLay, who is stepping down as majority leader.

I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

On a recent visit to Peru a journalist friend asked me, "What is going on in the United States?" It was clear he was not seeking a simple recap of the latest news. Instead he wanted me to explain the current political climate. I did not have a good answer for him.

Upon reflection, I could have described America's zeitgeist in a single word: fear. Many will say they know no fear, especially those who have never heard a shot fired in anger. Despite the machismo, in reality there are two types of fear at work -- a fear for our security in the wake of 9/11 and a fear of modernity and the change that comes with it. Both are as irrational as they are powerful, and both have been relentlessly exploited for political gain.

A threat to one's survival often provokes a "fight or flight" reflex, which together with uncertainty can inhibit rational thought. As Americans watched the collapse of the twin towers, they were shocked to realize that terrorism is not something that happens only to Americans abroad. Because terrorists don't wear uniforms and can strike anywhere, there was no clearly identifiable enemy and nowhere to run.

Unable to fight or flee, Americans turned to their political leadership who promised safety. Those leaders used fear as a blank check with which to assume any powers they deem necessary. As a result, human rights and civil liberties have become optional instead of the values that define us. The NSA's illegal monitoring, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, rendition and enhanced interrogation techniques have all become the tools of a government that claims it exports democracy.

[...]

The second fear has equally perverse effects. Rather than face the modern world and deal with the effects of globalization, many wish to return to a 1950s Ozzie and Harriet existence. No matter that it existed only on television, the religious opportunists are as enterprising as the political ones and promise they can recreate it. Gay rights, abortion, stem cells and evolution can all be banned outright or dealt with by faith-based facts and pseudo-science.

[...]

Franklin Roosevelt, during a much graver time than either America or Latin America now faces, is well remembered for saying: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." If he were alive today, he would add that we also have to fear those who control our government (or wish to) and believe that they have a monopoly on patriotism, and those who control them and assert that they have a monopoly on morality.

The Bush administration offered its fullest defense to date Thursday of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, saying that authorization from Congress to deter terrorist attacks "places the president at the zenith of his powers in authorizing the N.S.A. activities."

In a 42-page legal analysis, the Justice Department cited the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the writings of presidents both Republican and Democratic, and dozens of scholarly papers and court cases in justifying President Bush's power to order the N.S.A. surveillance program.

With the legality of the program under public attack since its disclosure last month, officials said Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales ordered up the analysis partly in response to what administration lawyers felt were unfair conclusions in a Jan. 6 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The Congressional report challenged virtually all the main legal justifications the administration had cited for the program.

archy gives us the details on just what it takes to kill someone.

Bark Bark Woof Woof on right-wing college hijinks.

blogAmY is busy.

Moi at bloggg rants about music students' practice habits.

Collective Sigh on the continuing problems at FEMA.

the farmer is back at Corrente and remembering a great president.

Dodecahedron has a suggestion for Apple's mouse.

NTodd wonders if our college students is learning?

Echidne of the Snakes has a lesson in economics; well worth the read.

firedoglake on Chris Matthews knowing a terrorist when he sees one.

First Draft has Scott McClellan getting goosed at the gaggle.

The Fulcrum on the failure of leadership in environmental protection.

Happy Furry Puppy on google-bombing the snoops.

iddybud on who's tougher.

Left is Right on why we bother to fight.

Liberty Street reports on Human Rights Watch's latest.

Make Me a Commentator has a short history on Iran.

Musing's musings on Googling for porn.

Pen-Elayne recovers from a shattering encounter with flying arboreal extensions.

Rook's Rant goes job hunting.

rubber hose reviews the new Albert Brooks film.

Science and Politics reveals his spicy side.

Scrutiny Hooligans on planting the seeds of the future.

Sooner Thought: Trent Lott is a cheap date.

Speedkill has fun with the "christian" press.

Steve Gilliard comments on the comments at the WaPo.

T. Rex on violent films.

The Countess on spectral writer's block.

Wanda is in rare agreement with Bill O'Reilly.

WTF Is It Now?? on the latest from OBL.

The Yellow Doggerel Democrat on Texas politics.

...You Are A Tree proves that trees travel.

A Washington Post-ABC News Poll showed that 51 percent of respondents felt that in the fight against terror, it's fine for the government to engage in the warrantless wiretapping of telephone calls and e-mail. In other words, it's fine for the president to break the law.

I find it peculiar that an awful lot of Americans who would be outraged by the burning of the American flag are positively sanguine about the trampling of the Constitution.

A fledgling alumni group headed by a former campus Republican leader is offering students payments of up to $100 per class to provide information on instructors who are "abusive, one-sided or off-topic" in advocating political ideologies.

The year-old Bruin Alumni Assn. says its "Exposing UCLA's Radical Professors" initiative takes aim at faculty "actively proselytizing their extreme views in the classroom, whether or not the commentary is relevant to the class topic." Although the group says it is concerned about radical professors of any political stripe, it has named an initial "Dirty 30" of teachers it identifies with left-wing or liberal causes.

The Bruin Alumni Assn. is headed by Andrew Jones, a 24-year-old who graduated in June 2003 and was chairman of UCLA's Bruin Republicans student group. He said his organization, which is registered with the state as a nonprofit, does not charge dues and has no official members, but has raised a total of $22,000 from 100 donors. Jones said the biggest contribution to the group, $5,000, came from a foundation endowed by Arthur N. Rupe, 88, a Santa Barbara resident and former Los Angeles record producer.

Jones' group is following in the footsteps of various conservative groups that have taken steps, including monitoring professors, to counter what they regard as an overwhelming leftist tilt at elite colleges and universities around the country. He said many of these efforts, however, have done a poor job of documenting their claims. As a result, Jones said, the Bruin Alumni Assn. is offering to pay students for tapes and notes from classes.

After the longest independent counsel investigation in history, the prosecutor in the case of former Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros is finally closing his operation with a scathing report accusing Clinton administration officials of thwarting an inquiry into whether Mr. Cisneros evaded paying income taxes.

The legal inquiry by the prosecutor, David M. Barrett, lasted more than a decade, consumed some $21 million and came to be a symbol of the flawed effort to prosecute high-level corruption through the use of independent prosecutors.

Mr. Barrett began his investigation with the narrower issue of whether Mr. Cisneros lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation when he was being considered for the cabinet position. He ended his inquiry accusing the Clinton administration of a possible cover-up.

His report says Justice Department officials refused to grant him the broad jurisdiction he wanted; for example, Attorney General Janet Reno said he could look at only one tax year. And after Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington took a Cisneros investigation out of the hands of district-level officials in Texas, the agency deemed the evidence too weak to merit a criminal inquiry, a conclusion strongly disputed by one Texas investigator.

Former officials of the Justice Department and the I.R.S. dismissed Mr. Barrett's conclusions in appendices attached to the report, saying the findings were the product of an inquiry that was incompetently managed from the start.

After being indicted on 18 felony counts, Mr. Cisneros pleaded guilty in 1999 to a misdemeanor charge of lying to investigators. He was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.

A copy of the report was obtained by The New York Times from someone sympathetic to the Barrett investigation who wanted his criticism of the Clinton administration to be known.

The Bush administration appears to have violated the National Security Act by limiting its briefings about a warrantless domestic eavesdropping program to congressional leaders, according to a memo from Congress's research arm released yesterday.

The Congressional Research Service opinion said that the amended 1947 law requires President Bush to keep all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees "fully and currently informed" of such intelligence activities as the domestic surveillance effort.

The memo from national security specialist Alfred Cumming is the second report this month from CRS to question the legality of aspects of Bush's domestic spying program. A Jan. 6 report concluded that the administration's justifications for the program conflicted with current law.

[...]

The White House has said it informed congressional leaders about the NSA program in more than a dozen briefings, but has refused to provide further details. At a minimum, the briefings included the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees and the two ranking Democrats, known collectively as the "Gang of Four," according to various sources.

[...]

The only exception in the law applies to covert actions, Cumming found, and those programs must be reported to the "Gang of Eight," which includes House and Senate leaders in addition to heads of the intelligence panels. The administration can also withhold some operational details in rare circumstances, but that does not apply to the existence of entire programs, he wrote.

Unless the White House contends the program is a covert action, the memo said, "limiting congressional notification of the NSA program to the Gang of Eight... would appear to be inconsistent with the law."

The Charles Dickens Award
Best Serialized Story - Complete or nearly complete

The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Award
Best Serialized Story - Incomplete or just beginning

The Ray Bradbury Award
Best Short Story (or excerpt) - Horror/Thriller/Sci Fi/Fantasy

The Flannery O'Connor Award
Best Short Story (or excerpt) - Literary Fiction

The Robert Frost Award
Best Poem

The Jewel Award
Worst Poem (from Bad Poetry Friday)

The Brian Wilson Award
Best Audio/Musical Post (song, reading, dramatization, lyrics)

The Lanford Wilson Award
Best Play/Screenplay or excerpt

The Best of the Competition Award
Goes to the best literary site other than the Practical Press.

The Stephen King Award
Goes to the best mass-published book of 2005

Stephen Harper moved to reassure wary voters yesterday that a Liberal-dominated Senate, judiciary and civil service would provide plenty of checks and balances should his party walk away with a majority next Monday.

"The reality is that we will have, for some time to come, a Liberal Senate, a Liberal civil service -- at least senior levels have been appointed by the Liberals -- and courts that have been appointed by the Liberals," Mr. Harper said.

"So these are obviously checks on the power of a Conservative government."

It should come as no surprise that an arch-conservative Web site is questioning whether Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has been critical of the war in Iraq, deserved the combat awards he received in Vietnam.

After all, in recent years extremist Republican operatives have inverted a longstanding principle: that our combat veterans be accorded a place of honor in political circles. This trend began with the ugly insinuations leveled at Senator John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries and continued with the slurs against Senators Max Cleland and John Kerry, and now Mr. Murtha.

Military people past and present have good reason to wonder if the current administration truly values their service beyond its immediate effect on its battlefield of choice. The casting of suspicion and doubt about the actions of veterans who have run against President Bush or opposed his policies has been a constant theme of his career. This pattern of denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree risks cheapening the public's appreciation of what it means to serve, and in the long term may hurt the Republicans themselves.

[...]

The accusations against Mr. Murtha were very old news, principally coming from defeated political rivals. Aligned against their charges are an official letter from Marine Corps Headquarters written nearly 40 years ago affirming Mr. Murtha's eligibility for his Purple Hearts - "you are entitled to the Purple Heart and a Gold Star in lieu of a second Purple Heart for wounds received in action" - and the strict tradition of the Marine Corps regarding awards. While in other services lower-level commanders have frequently had authority to issue prestigious awards, in the Marines Mr. Murtha's Vietnam Bronze Star would have required the approval of four different awards boards.

[...]

The political tactic of playing up the soldiers on the battlefield while tearing down the reputations of veterans who oppose them could eventually cost the Republicans dearly. It may be one reason that a preponderance of the Iraq war veterans who thus far have decided to run for office are doing so as Democrats.

A young American now serving in Iraq might rightly wonder whether his or her service will be deliberately misconstrued 20 years from now, in the next rendition of politically motivated spinmeisters who never had the courage to step forward and put their own lives on the line.

The White House accused former Vice President Al Gore of hypocrisy Tuesday for his assertion that President Bush broke the law by eavesdropping on Americans without court approval.

"If Al Gore is going to be the voice of the Democrats on national security matters, we welcome it," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said in a swipe at the Democrat, who lost the 2000 election to Bush.

[...]

McClellan said the Clinton-Gore administration had engaged in warrantless physical searches, and he cited an FBI search of the home of CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames without permission from a judge. He said Clinton's deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, had testified before Congress that the president had the inherent authority to engage in physical searches without warrants.

"I think his hypocrisy knows no bounds," McClellan said of Gore.

But at the time that of the Ames search in 1993 and when Gorelick testified a year later, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act required warrants for electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes, but did not cover physical searches. The law was changed to cover physical searches in 1995 under legislation that Clinton supported and signed.

The Administration's response to my speech illustrates perfectly the need for a special counsel to review the legality of the NSA wiretapping program.

The Attorney General is making a political defense of the President without even addressing the substantive legal questions that have so troubled millions of Americans in both political parties.

There are two problems with the Attorney General's effort to focus attention on the past instead of the present Administration's behavior. First, as others have thoroughly documented, his charges are factually wrong. Both before and after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was amended in 1995, the Clinton/Gore Administration complied fully and completely with the terms of the law.

Second, the Attorney General's attempt to cite a previous administration's activity as precedent for theirs - even though factually wrong - ironically demonstrates another reason why we must be so vigilant about their brazen disregard for the law. If unchecked, their behavior would serve as a precedent to encourage future presidents to claim these same powers, which many legal experts in both parties believe are clearly illegal.

The issue, simply put, is that for more than four years, the executive branch has been wiretapping many thousands of American citizens without warrants in direct contradiction of American law. It is clearly wrong and disrespectful to the American people to allow a close political associate of the president to be in charge of reviewing serious charges against him.

The country needs a full and independent investigation into the facts and legality of the present Administration's program.

Most voters say they think a Conservative Party majority government would be a good thing for Canada, according to a new survey that suggests Liberal efforts to build anxiety about Stephen Harper are falling on deaf ears.

The poll, conducted for The Globe and Mail/CTV News by the Strategic Counsel, finds that 55 per cent of voters say sending a Conservative majority to the House of Commons on Jan. 23 would be a healthy outcome. And even in Quebec, where the Tories have been essentially moribund for 12 years, 64 per cent of voters say a Conservative majority would be good for the nation.

[...]

The data also suggest that branding Conservatives as frightening ideologues is not working.

According to the poll, only 35 per cent of voters think a Conservative majority would be a bad thing. Only in Ontario does a minority believe a Tory majority would be a welcome outcome, according to the poll's breakdown of Canada's main regions. But even in Canada's most populous province, some non-Tory supporters say they aren't worried about a Conservative majority.

Call it a case of why you should be careful what you wish for.

President Bush's efforts to spread democracy to the Middle East have strengthened Islamists across the region, posing fresh challenges for the United States, according to U.S. officials, foreign diplomats and democracy experts.

Islamist parties trounced secular opponents in recent elections in Iraq and Egypt.

Hamas, the armed Islamic Palestinian group, appears set to fare well in Palestinian parliamentary elections Jan. 25, posing a quandary for how the United States and Israel pursue peace efforts. Hamas has carried out suicide bombings against Israel and calls for the country's destruction.

In Lebanon, the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah is part of the government for the first time.

Washington considers Hezbollah and Hamas, both of which have Iranian support, to be terrorist groups.

"In the short run, the big windfall winners ... have been the Islamists," said Michael McFaul, a Stanford University expert on democracy and development

[...]

Islamist groups espouse Islam as the answer to their countries' problems. They appeal to large segments of Arab societies, particularly when the only alternative is the repressive state apparatus. They have proved adept at providing social services that governments often don't, and they largely are free of the financial corruption found in many Arab countries.

Most strongly oppose U.S. foreign policy in the region and don't acknowledge Israel's right to exist. Their long-term commitment to the give-and-take of the democratic process is largely untested.

[...]

"Freedom is crawling — over broken glass," said a State Department official, scaling back the president's frequent contention that "freedom is on the march." The official requested anonymity in order to speak more frankly.

What's maddening here is the unblushing hypocrisy of the right wing and the way it circulates -- usually through Web sites or talk radio -- personal vilification to abort honest political debate. Murtha's views on withdrawing troops from Iraq are certainly the object of legitimate contention. Many in Murtha's party disagree with him. But Murtha's right-wing critics can't content themselves with going after his ideas. They have to try to discredit his service.

In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.

As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said.

President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program as a "vital tool" against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved "thousands of lives."

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution - our system of checks and balances - was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men."

An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet, "On Common Sense" ignited the American Revolution, succinctly described America's alternative. Here, he said, we intended to make certain that "the law is king."

[...]

The President and I agree on one thing. The threat from terrorism is all too real. There is simply no question that we continue to face new challenges in the wake of the attack on September 11th and that we must be ever-vigilant in protecting our citizens from harm.

Where we disagree is that we have to break the law or sacrifice our system of government to protect Americans from terrorism. In fact, doing so makes us weaker and more vulnerable.

Once violated, the rule of law is in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws.

The President's men have minced words about America's laws. The Attorney General openly conceded that the "kind of surveillance" we now know they have been conducting requires a court order unless authorized by statute. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act self-evidently does not authorize what the NSA has been doing, and no one inside or outside the Administration claims that it does. Incredibly, the Administration claims instead that the surveillance was implicitly authorized when Congress voted to use force against those who attacked us on September 11th.

This argument just does not hold any water. Without getting into the legal intricacies, it faces a number of embarrassing facts. First, another admission by the Attorney General: he concedes that the Administration knew that the NSA project was prohibited by existing law and that they consulted with some members of Congress about changing the statute. Gonzalez says that they were told this probably would not be possible. So how can they now argue that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force somehow implicitly authorized it all along? Second, when the Authorization was being debated, the Administration did in fact seek to have language inserted in it that would have authorized them to use military force domestically - and the Congress did not agree. Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Jim McGovern, among others, made statements during the Authorization debate clearly restating that that Authorization did not operate domestically.

[...]

There have of course been other periods of American history when the Executive Branch claimed new powers that were later seen as excessive and mistaken. Our second president, John Adams, passed the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts and sought to silence and imprison critics and political opponents.

When his successor, Thomas Jefferson, eliminated the abuses he said: "[The essential principles of our Government] form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation... [S]hould we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety."

Our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. Some of the worst abuses prior to those of the current administration were committed by President Wilson during and after WWI with the notorious Red Scare and Palmer Raids. The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII marked a low point for the respect of individual rights at the hands of the executive. And, during the Vietnam War, the notorious COINTELPRO program was part and parcel of the abuses experienced by Dr. King and thousands of others.

But in each of these cases, when the conflict and turmoil subsided, the country recovered its equilibrium and absorbed the lessons learned in a recurring cycle of excess and regret.

[...]

Don't misunderstand me: the threat of additional terror strikes is all too real and their concerted efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction does create a real imperative to exercise the powers of the Executive Branch with swiftness and agility. Moreover, there is in fact an inherent power that is conferred by the Constitution to the President to take unilateral action to protect the nation from a sudden and immediate threat, but it is simply not possible to precisely define in legalistic terms exactly when that power is appropriate and when it is not.

But the existence of that inherent power cannot be used to justify a gross and excessive power grab lasting for years that produces a serious imbalance in the relationship between the executive and the other two branches of government.

[...]

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.

We have a duty as Americans to defend our citizens' right not only to life but also to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is therefore vital in our current circumstances that immediate steps be taken to safeguard our Constitution against the present danger posed by the intrusive overreaching on the part of the Executive Branch and the President's apparent belief that he need not live under the rule of law.

I endorse the words of Bob Barr, when he said, "The President has dared the American people to do something about it. For the sake of the Constitution, I hope they will."

A special counsel should immediately be appointed by the Attorney General to remedy the obvious conflict of interest that prevents him from investigating what many believe are serious violations of law by the President. We have had a fresh demonstration of how an independent investigation by a special counsel with integrity can rebuild confidence in our system of justice. Patrick Fitzgerald has, by all accounts, shown neither fear nor favor in pursuing allegations that the Executive Branch has violated other laws.

[...]

As Dr. King once said, "Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us."

DAWSONVILLE, Ga. -- Ralph Reed, candidate for lieutenant governor, had just finished his opening statement to the Dawson County Republican Party when retired pulp paper executive Gary Pichon sprang from his seat with a question that cut to the chase:

"Did you accept any gifts, commissions or other payments of any kind from Mr. Abramoff, and are you likely to be a party in the unfolding investigation?"

Silence enveloped the 60 or so Republicans in the auditorium, and Reed's cheerful manner turned tense. "No," he replied. "No to all these."

As everyone knew, Pichon was referring to Jack Abramoff, whose outsize Washington lobbying scandal has reached down to Georgia. Abramoff and Reed -- the former executive director of the Christian Coalition -- have been friends for 25 years, and until recently it had been a mutually profitable association. Now it is proving highly inconvenient for Reed, and threatens to stall a career that has been emblematic of the modern GOP.

Reed served as executive director of the College Republicans from 1983 to 1985 and led a revival of the Christian right in the 1990s. He founded a grass-roots lobbying firm in 1997, bringing in millions of dollars in fees, chaired the Georgia Republican Party in 2002 when the GOP took over the state, and served as Southeast director of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign.

At age 44, he still has the choirboy looks that have been noted in dozens of profiles over the past 20 years. But the first major dent in Reed's carefully cultivated image came with the disclosure in the summer of 2004 that his public relations and lobbying companies had received at least $4.2 million from Abramoff to mobilize Christian voters to fight Indian casinos competing with Abramoff's casino clients.

Similarly damaging has been a torrent of e-mails revealed during the investigation that shows a side of Reed that some former supporters say cannot be reconciled with his professed Christian values.

One of the most damaging e-mails was sent by Abramoff to partner Michael Scanlon, complaining about Reed's billing practices and expenditure claims: "He is a bad version of us! No more money for him." Scanlon and Abramoff have pleaded guilty to defrauding clients.

Random interviews on Main Street in heavily Republican Alpharetta -- a rapidly growing town of 37,850 on the far northern suburbs of Atlanta -- suggested that even many people who follow politics casually are aware of the linkage between Reed and Abramoff.

"Ralph Reed? He's a politician," said David Loudenflager, a Republican who retired after working 32 years for the Arrow Shirt Company. "He was involved with Jack Abramoff and the Indians and all those."

Loudenflager does not like the Democratic Party -- "they give away everything" -- but he puts no stock in the Christian Coalition: "All these people running around telling you how good they are, and how right they are. You better be careful and hold on to your wallet."

Todd Guy, owner of Trader Golf, said succinctly in response to an inquiry: "Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition? My God! Abramoff."

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), the former Marine who is an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, has become the latest Democrat to have his Vietnam War decorations questioned.

In a tactic reminiscent of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth assault on Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) during the 2004 presidential campaign, a conservative Web site yesterday quoted Murtha opponents as questioning the circumstances surrounding the awarding of his two Purple Hearts.

David Thibault, editor in chief of the Cybercast News Service, said the issue of Murtha's medals from 1967 is relevant now "because the congressman has really put himself in the forefront of the antiwar movement." Thibault said: "He has been placed by the Democratic Party and antiwar activists as a spokesman against the war above reproach."

[...]

Cybercast is part of the conservative Media Research Center, run by L. Brent Bozell III, who accused some in the media of ignoring the Swift Boat charges, but Thibault said it operates independently. He said the unit, formerly called the Conservative News Service, averages 110,000 readers, mainly conservative, and provides material for other Web sites such as GOPUSA.

The Republican Party of Florida is by far the biggest financial backer of a proposed ballot initiative that would change the state constitution to prohibit gay marriage.

The party gave $150,000 to Florida4Marriage.org in November, which accounts for more than three-quarters of what the group raised over the entire year, according to a campaign finance report submitted by the group this week.

"Their support both financially and through endorsements is very significant," John Stemberger, chairman of the petition effort, said Thursday.

The group wants the Florida Constitution to define marriage as the union between one man and one woman. Florida law already states the same.

So far about 172,000 signatures have been certified. To get the initiative on the ballot would require 611,000 signatures in all by Feb. 1. Both Republican gubernatorial candidates -- Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher and Attorney General Charlie Crist -- have endorsed the effort. It has not been endorsed by either of the Democrats running for governor, U.S. Rep. Jim Davis and state Sen. Rod Smith.

The chairman of the Florida Democratic Party, Karen Thurman, said Republicans probably are trying to find another means to get their party's conservative Christian base out to the polls. She also said Republicans are supporting the initiative because they know it's a divisive issue.

"I don't like when we get into debates about something of this nature when it becomes very divisive," she said. "It seems to me that there are issues like healthcare and education and living wages and other issues like that that should be the center of the debate."

She also noted that Republican Gov. Jeb Bush has said the amendment isn't needed.

"It's the law," Thurman said. "So what is the purpose?"

Republican Party of Florida Chairman Carole Jean Jordan appeared with the initiative's backers at a news conference last week and issued a statement supporting the effort.

"This isn't a partisan issue," she said Thursday. "It's a family-values issue and the fact that the Democratic Party doesn't support it shows just how far they are out of the mainstream."

The Mummy Range in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.

Pussies, cowards, and wimps
All names I have for the Republican Party and their supporters. Know why? Because they are. I mean the higher ups know what's going on, but the party rank and file are a buncha scared cowards. I read somewhere 37% of Republicans would concede to have their civil rights taken away to keep us 'safe'. Cowards.

To all you big Repub men, my wife has more testicle than you do. Looking out from her office, coming up from the Subway, going to lunch with a client, guess what she sees? The smoking hole in the ground they used to call the World Trade Center. Would any of you Repub pussies go back to work directly across the street after 9/11? I doubt it.

You're the ones screaming for extraordinary powers for the government to 'protect' us. What about all them guns you and your NRA buddies have? Haven't you beat the 2nd Amendment to death, waving it in front us when we try to enact some sort of controls on whom can carry? Hey, you got all them guns, what are you afraid of? Oh yeah, you're afraid someone might shoot back. Big men you are. Anybody can shoot the shit out of beer cans and mow down a deer with an AR-15, but it takes something to look in the eyes of another man an kill him, takes more to hang around while the enemy is shooting at you.

I've noticed those who yell loudest are the biggest wimps. Instead of going on with your lives out there in Podunk, you scream for the police state the Chimp is trying to make from our once-great nation. Let me just give you a heads-up. When the tranformation is complete, they're gonna come for your guns too. Let me know if you have the balls to stand up to ATF agents who will surely come for your stuff, or are you going to say the same thing your senile former leader says? "From my cold dead hands." Know what? That's exactly what's gonna happen, because if you don't give up your shit they're gonna kill you and take it. Do you think they would take the chance of the population being armed?

Wake up, Repub pussies. Liberals ain't your enemy, your own people are. You'll learn that soon enough.

Last September, I published an essay laying out what I saw as the scope of blog influence, with 'influence' defined as the capacity to alter or create conventional wisdom. I used a triangle construct to set out the relationship between the netroots, the media, and the political establishment: "Looking at the political landscape, one proposition seems unambiguous: blog power on both the right and left is a function of the relationship of the netroots to the media and the political establishment. Forming a triangle of blogs, media, and the political establishment is an essential step ... Simply put, without the participation of the media and the political establishment, the netroots alone cannot generate the critical mass necessary to alter or create conventional wisdom."

I concluded that "if the netroots alone can’t change the political landscape without the participation of the media and Democratic establishment, then there’s no point wasting precious online space blasting away at Republicans while the other sides of the triangle stand idly by."

The NSA scandal and the Alito confirmation hearings are just two more examples of the left’s broken triangle and of the isolation of the progressive netroots. A flurry of activity among bloggers, online activists, and advocacy groups is met with ponderously inept strategizing by the Democratic leadership and relentless - and insidious - repetition by the media of pro-GOP narratives and soundbites. It's slow-motion-car-wreck painful, and most certainly NOT where the left's triangle should be a half decade into the new millennium, as the Bush-propping machine hums and whirrs, poll numbers rise and fall, Iraq bleeds, scandal dissolves into scandal, terror speech blends into terror speech. The landscape is there for everyone to see, to analyze. Enough time has elapsed to make the system transparent. It is dismaying for netroots activists to see the same mistakes repeated despite the benefit of hindsight.

Within days of the warrantless domestic spying story breaking, I wrote a cynical piece titled The Dynamic of a Bush Scandal: How the Spying Story Will Unfold (and Fade). It seemed clear that the lack of coordination between the netroots and the Democratic leadership, coupled with the media’s equivocation and obfuscation, would lead to another potentially impeachable offense fading and "blending into a long string of administration scandals."

Looking at the contours of previous scandals, I ventured this prediction: "Polls will emerge with 'proof' that half the public agrees that Bush should have the right to "protect Americans against terrorists." Again, the issue will be framed to mask the true nature of the malfeasance. The media will use these polls to create a self-fulfilling loop and convince the public that it isn't that bad after all. The president breaks the law. Life goes on."

[...]

This, then, is the reality: progressive bloggers and online activists - positioned on the front lines of a cold civil war - face a thankless and daunting task: battle the Bush administration and its legions of online and offline apologists, battle the so-called “liberal” media and its tireless weaving of pro-GOP narratives, battle the ineffectual Democratic leadership, and battle the demoralization and frustration that comes with a long, steep uphill struggle.

[...]

Maybe the Democratic establishment wants it so, maybe they don't know better, but progressive bloggers and activists are starting to see the bitter reality of their isolation: the triangle is broken and they're on their own until further notice.

Abortion is legal in America, not because of the wisdom and fairness of its judges or righteousness of its politicians; it's legal because thousands -- millions -- of women worked for decades to challenge their partners, their families, their elected representatives, and society as a whole about the wisdom of keeping it illegal. Countless hours and sleepless nights and marches and arrests and speeches went into that work; endless conferences and fundraising efforts and legal challenges undergirded it. It was not an easy accomplishment.

Looking at some other movements for social change, it took 82 year of fighting for women to get the vote in this country, and more than 70 years for abolitionists to win their battle to outlaw slavery (not to mention a civil war). Close to a century and a half after that, the nation has not yet managed to achieve full equality between black and white. The tremendous social progress toward equality there has been over the past 50 years grew out of another bitterly contested, often violently opposed movement. The passionate work of civil rights activists, coupled with quiet day-to-day shifts in actions and sentiments by less forward individuals, finally led the legal and political system to come around. And the legal decisions, in turn, acted like electric transformers to amplify the energy for a new social direction.

Social change in a large, geographically dispersed democracy is a tough, tough business, and controversial social changes often take decades to reach the point of electoral and judicial codification -- at which point such codifications act to ratify changes that have already occurred or else are well underway.

[...]

Should abortion rights as we know them soon be over-ruled, the fight to restore them will not be a matter of what happens on election days in 2006 or 2008. Abortion is one of the big, slow-moving social change fights; it could take another three decades to work through the battles that ensue after a new court ruling, and restore a social order akin to the freedom of choice women have had for the past 33 years. Or it could never happen. Nothing in history is inevitable.

archy doesn't feel safer.

Bark Bark Woof Woof reviews Brokeback Mountain.

blogAmY doesn't need a refund.

bloggg confronts special needs and the Supreme Court.

Collective Sigh has some travel tips.

CorrenteWire finds out that what's in your wallet can get you busted.

Dodecahedron tokes a pot pill.

Dohiyi Mir has Friendly objections to teaching "intelligent design."

Echidne sheds some light on some tears being shed.

Jane at firedoglake reviews Kate O'Bierne's lastest piece-of-crap writing.

First Draft has a year's worth of Bushisms uttered in just one day.

The Fulcrum predicts an emergency in health care.

Happy Furry Puppy puts the "cult" in "culture war."

iddybud on Israel telling Pat Robertson to get bent.

Left Is Right wonders where the revolution went.

Kathy at Liberty Street compares Democratic "meanness" to Alito compared to Republican hypocrisy.

Make Me a Commentator comments on Ann Coulter's latest piece-of-crap.

Musing's musings muses on the blame-game and holding the president to account for his treasonous words.

Pen-Elayne contemplates a time when it mattered if the president broke the law.

Rook's Rant on a magnificent piece of writing by the immortal James Wolcott.

rubber hose brings a lawyer's persepctive to Alito's views.

Science and Politics has the perfect script for dealing with telemarketers. (I usually ask them what they're wearing.)

Scrutiny Hooligans notes that your mileage may vary.

Sooner Thought on marriage and employment at an Oklahoma university.

Speedkill on the violence and video games.

Steve Gilliard on why it's important for Democrats to keep fighting.

T. Rex debunks another myth.

The Countess has an interesting poll on sex.

Wanda wants to know what's more important, Brad and Angie's baby or Sam Alito?

WTF Is It Now?? on Santorum.

The Yellow Doggerel Democart on the price of criticising Tom DeLay in Houston.

...You are a Tree wonders what file extension you are.

Some commentators are complaining that Judge Samuel Alito Jr.'s confirmation hearings have not been exciting, but they must not have been paying attention. We learned that Judge Alito had once declared that Judge Robert Bork - whose Supreme Court nomination was defeated because of his legal extremism - "was one of the most outstanding nominees" of the 20th century. We heard Judge Alito refuse to call Roe v. Wade "settled law," as Chief Justice John Roberts did at his confirmation hearings. And we learned that Judge Alito subscribes to troubling views about presidential power.

Those are just a few of the quiet bombshells that have dropped. In his deadpan bureaucrat's voice, Judge Alito has said some truly disturbing things about his view of the law. In three days of testimony, he has given the American people reasons to be worried - and senators reasons to oppose his nomination. Among those reasons are the following:

EVIDENCE OF EXTREMISM Judge Alito's extraordinary praise of Judge Bork is unsettling, given that Judge Bork's radical legal views included rejecting the Supreme Court's entire line of privacy cases, even its 1965 ruling striking down a state law banning sales of contraceptives. Judge Alito's membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton - a group whose offensive views about women, minorities and AIDS victims were discussed in greater detail at yesterday's hearing - is also deeply troubling, as is his unconvincing claim not to remember joining it.

OPPOSITION TO ROE V. WADE In 1985, Judge Alito made it clear that he believed the Constitution does not protect abortion rights. He had many chances this week to say he had changed his mind, but he refused. When offered the chance to say that Roe is a "super-precedent," entitled to special deference because it has been upheld so often, he refused that, too. As Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, noted in particularly pointed questioning, since Judge Alito was willing to say that other doctrines, like one person one vote, are settled law, his unwillingness to say the same about Roe strongly suggests that he still believes what he believed in 1985.

SUPPORT FOR AN IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY Judge Alito has backed a controversial theory known as the "unitary executive," and argued that the attorney general should be immune from lawsuits when he installs illegal wiretaps. Judge Alito backed away from one of his most extreme statements in this area - his assertion, in a 1985 job application, that he believed "very strongly" in "the supremacy of the elected branches of government." But he left a disturbing impression that as a justice, he would undermine the Supreme Court's critical role in putting a check on presidential excesses.

INSENSITIVITY TO ORDINARY AMERICANS' RIGHTS Time and again, as a lawyer and a judge, the nominee has taken the side of big corporations against the "little guy," supported employers against employees, and routinely rejected the claims of women, racial minorities and the disabled. The hearing shed new light on his especially troubling dissent from a ruling by two Reagan-appointed judges, who said that workers at a coal-processing site were covered by Mine Safety and Health Act protections.

DOUBTS ABOUT THE NOMINEE'S HONESTY Judge Alito's explanation of his involvement with Concerned Alumni of Princeton is hard to believe. In a 1985 job application, he proudly pointed to his membership in the organization. Now he says he remembers nothing of it - except why he joined, which he insists had nothing to do with the group's core concerns. His explanation for why he broke his promise to Congress to recuse himself in any case involving Vanguard companies is also unpersuasive. As for his repeated claims that his past statements on subjects like abortion and Judge Bork never represented his personal views or were intended to impress prospective employers - all that did was make us wonder why we should give any credence to what he says now.

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The debate over Judge Alito is generally presented as one between Republicans and Democrats. But his testimony should trouble moderate Republicans, especially those who favor abortion rights or are concerned about presidential excesses. The hearings may be short on fireworks, but they have produced, through Judge Alito's words, an array of reasons to be concerned about this nomination.

Abramoff is a Republican who worked closely with two of the country's most prominent conservative activists, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed. Top aides to the most important Republican in Congress, Tom DeLay (R., Tex.) were party to his sleazy schemes. The only people referred to directly in Abramoff's recent plea agreement are a Republican congressmen and two former Republican congressional aides. The GOP members can make a case that the scandal reflects more the way Washington works than the unique perfidy of their party, but even this is self-defeating, since Republicans run Washington.

Republicans must take the scandal seriously and work to clean up in its wake. The first step was the permanent ouster of Tom DeLay as House Republican majority leader, a recognition that he is unfit to lead as long as he is underneath the Abramoff cloud. The behavior of the right in this matter contrasts sharply with the left's lickspittle loyalty to Bill Clinton, whose maintenance in power many liberals put above any of their principles. Next, Republicans will have to show they can again embrace the spirit of reform that swept them to power in 1994.

"There is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate and it's even more important to conduct this debate responsibly when American troops are risking their lives overseas," Bush told the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

[...]

He added, "So I ask all Americans to hold their elected leaders to account and demand a debate that brings credit to our democracy, not comfort to our adversaries."

Bush did not mention names, but aides said he was referring to Democratic Party chief Howard Dean, along with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, among others.

Mummified body found in front of TV

The Practical Press Award nominations are closed, so get ready to vote for your choices.

A group of us Florida bloggers led by Kenneth Quinnell of T. Rex's Guide to Life have have joined forces and pixels to put together the Sunshine State Progressive Bloggers. We will be focusing on politics here in Florida as the 2006 election approaches, and I've been doing some background on getting in touch with some candidates so that they can see that blogging is going to be a force to be recognized in the coverage of the elections. We would welcome your attention and comments.

Ricky at The Life of a Teenage Liberal... spent most of the fall in hack (to use a term from The Caine Mutiny), meaning he couldn't do much blogging. Well, he's back, he's revamped his site, and he's blogging again. Stop by and give him some props for being a progressive voice that writes about stuff that people over the age of 15 actually care about.

We seem prone to find male homosexuality the more clear and present danger, the more urgent betrayal of some fundamental... something. Some will say it's -- and I will finesse this for a general audience -- the nature of man-to-man sex that some of us find off-putting. I think it's more basic than that. I think gay men threaten our very conception of masculinity.

The amazing thing about Brokeback Mountain is its willingness to make that threat, directly and overtly. These are not cute gays, funny gays, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy gays. These are cowboys, and there is no figure in American lore more iconically male. Think Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, the Marlboro Man. The cowboy is our very embodiment of male virtues.

In offering us cowboys who are gay, then, Brokeback Mountain commits heresy, but it is knowing heresy, matter-of-fact heresy. Nor is it the sex (what little there is) that makes it heretical. Rather, it's the emotion, the fact that the movie dares you to deny these men their humanity. Or their love.

Ultimately, I think, that's what the Larry Davids among us sense. And why for them, Brokeback Mountain might be the most frightening movie ever made.

A movie theater owned by Utah Jazz owner Larry Miller abruptly changed its screening plans and decided not to show the film "Brokeback Mountain." The film, an R-rated Western gay romance story, was supposed to open Friday at the Megaplex at Jordan Commons in Sandy, a suburb of Salt Lake City. Instead it was pulled from the schedule.

A message posted at the ticket window read: "There has been a change in booking and we will not be showing 'Brokeback Mountain.' We apologize for any inconvenience."

[...]

Gayle Ruzicka, president of the conservative Utah Eagle Forum, said not showing the film set an example for the people of Utah.

"I just think (pulling the show) tells the young people especially that maybe there is something wrong with this show," she said.

The check's in the mail.

The director has only a couple of notes.

I promise not to cum in your mouth.

I'm not a crook. - Richard Nixon

I did not have sexual realtions with that woman. - Bill Clinton

We don't torture. - George W. Bush

I have always acted in an ethical manner. - Tom DeLay

Another president, perhaps.

Maybe then it would be easier to look the other way, give a tacit nod to the abrogation of constitutional freedoms as a wartime necessity. After all, Abraham Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus during the Civil War and history does not begrudge him for it, given that he faced an enemy massed almost literally within sight of the White House.

But this is not President Lincoln we're talking about. It's not even President Roosevelt, succumbing to post-Pearl Harbor hysteria and interning thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry.

No, we're talking about President Bush -- King George, if you will -- and last month's New York Times bombshell that a few months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without warrants on phone calls and e-mails of hundreds if not thousands of U.S. citizens.

[...]

Maybe you figure it has nothing to do with law-abiding you and if "those people" weren't up to something nefarious, the feds wouldn't be investigating them. Of course, one might argue that it's foolish to impute infallibility to a government that sometimes sends Social Security checks to dead cats.

Still, it's not hard to understand the urge to look the other way. Because with all due respect to the threat terrorists pose, Franklin Roosevelt was right. Fear itself is still the first enemy. When people are scared, they don't think, they don't reason and they want nothing so desperately as to just stop being scared. So often, they'll go along with anything that holds out that promise. Even if it means allowing the rights our forebears won from Britain's King George III to be denuded by America's King George I.

Still, we should be ashamed.

Freedom deserves a better epitaph than fear.

All Facts and Opinion passes on some good and tolerant advice from Dan Savage.

archy invites us to join the Skeptics Circle.

Bark Bark Woof Woof reminds us of some interesting times and the need to revisit them.

blogAmY sizes things up.

bloggg reviews a new radio gig.

Chris "Lefty" Brown got someone else's mail.

The West Virginia mining accident brings back memories at Collective Sigh.

CorrenteWire puts out a call to progressives in Philly -- what're you doing on Saturday, January 7?

Dodecahedron transparts a message.

The Dohiyi Mir territory expands to include Mexico.

Echidne of the Snakes has two faith-based queer news stories.

firedoglake goes the traditional route.

First Draft on mixed messages from the White House.

The Fulcrum says the mine disaster is a conservative problem.

Happy Furry Puppy leads us to some interesting connections.

iddybud reports on domestic abuse in Afghanistan.

Left Is Right has dire economic news.

Liberty Street on the price of compassion.

Make Me a Commentator on what H.L. Mencken would blog about.

Musing's musings on the spread of the dreaded Abramoff money meme.

Pen-Elayne joins in the suggestion that we all put forth good progressive ideas to remind ourselves and our readers to vote FOR something.

Rook's Rant nails the VP.

rubber hose reflects on the post-Sharon era.

Science and Politics on the two-party system.

Scrutiny Hooligans on remembering the 14th Amendment.

Sooner Thought with more Murtha.

Speedkill reports on a case of finding Jesus.

Steve Gilliard takes on Wal-Mart.

T. Rex wraps up the best football game ever.

The Countess reveals some dark secrets of a "father's manual."

Words on a Page has words about Abramoff.

WTF Is It Now?? has a cool poster.

Not outraged enough? Steve has a list that will help.

...You Are a Tree goes traveling.

Snowball ferociously attacks a crafty two-dimensional raccoon.

The Rev. Pat Robertson said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is being punished by God for dividing the Land of Israel. Robertson, speaking on the “700 Club” on Thursday, suggested Sharon, who is currently in an induced coma, and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated by an Israeli extremist in 1995, were being treated with enmity by God for dividing Israel. “He was dividing God’s land,” Robertson said. “And I would say, Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the E.U., the United Nations or the United States of America. God says, This land belongs to me. You better leave it alone.”

Democracy depends for its survival on an institutionalized system of checks and balances and on its participants acting in good will to accept defeat. The Bush administration, using arguments supplied in part by Alito, is asking us to exempt them from both of these principles. If we--Congress and the people--let this pass, future generation will curse us and we will deserve their curses.

Amount to Republican candidates: $172,933

Amount to Special Interests: $88,985

Amount to Democrats: $0

The National Security Agency acted on its own authority, without a formal directive from President Bush, to expand its domestic surveillance operations in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to declassified documents released Tuesday.

The N.S.A. operation prompted questions from a leading Democrat, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who said in an Oct. 11, 2001, letter to a top intelligence official that she was concerned about the agency's legal authority to expand its domestic operations, the documents showed.

Ms. Pelosi's letter, which was declassified at her request, showed much earlier concerns among lawmakers about the agency's domestic surveillance operations than had been previously known. Similar objections were expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, in a secret letter to Vice President Dick Cheney nearly two years later.

[...]

The way the N.S.A.'s role has expanded has prompted concern even from some of its former leaders, like Bobby R. Inman, a retired admiral who was N.S.A. director from 1977 to 1981. Admiral Inman said that while he supported the decision to step up eavesdropping against potential terrorists immediately after the 2001 attacks, the Bush administration should have tried to change the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to provide explicit legal authorization for what N.S.A. was doing.

"What I don't understand is why when you're proposing the Patriot Act, you don't set up an oversight mechanism for this?" Admiral Inman said in an interview. "I would have preferred an approach to try to gain legislation to try to operate with new technology and with an audit of how this technology was used."

Jack Abramoff will plead guilty to three felony counts in Washington today as part of a settlement with federal prosecutors, ending an intense, months-long negotiation over whether the Republican lobbyist would testify against his former colleagues, people involved with the case said.

[...]

Official Washington has been on edge for months awaiting word of Mr. Abramoff's legal future. Once a masterful Republican lobbyist with close ties to the former House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay, he earned tens of millions of dollars representing Indian casino interests and farflung entities like the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands. Through a complicated web of financial arrangements, he helped funnel donations to his lawmaker friends' and their campaigns, and took members of Congress, mainly the Republicans in power, on lavish trips.

Now, after more than two years of investigations, prosecutors have developed a list of at least a dozen lawmakers, congressional aides and lobbyists whose work appears suspect and who are now at the core of the case. With Mr. Abramoff's cooperation, the Justice Department will have a potentially critical witness to alleged patterns of corruption or bribery within the Republican leadership ranks, which in some cases they believe also took the form of campaign donations and free meals at Mr. Abramoff's downtown restaurant, Signatures.

Washington, Jan. 3 [1959] -- Alaska became a state today.

By the clock on the mantel in the Cabinet Room at the White House, it was two minutes past noon. In Juneau, capital of the forty-ninth state, it was 9:02 A.M., Pacific Standard Time.

President Eisenhower signed the document of proclamation at the long table at which he meets his Cabinet. He used six pens to inscribe his name and the date. Then he took another handful of pens from the drawer in front of him and signed an Executive order setting a new design of forty-nine stars for the official flag of the United States.

The new design has seven staggered rows of stars, with seven stars in each row, and the traditional thirteen stripes. It was chosen a week or so ago by a four-man selection commission and formally approved by the President yesterday. It will become official on July 4.

Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is under criminal investigation, may agree this week to cooperate with federal officials in a move that former prosecutors say would put U.S. lawmakers in legal jeopardy.

Abramoff's lawyers may tell a U.S. district judge in Miami as early as today whether they've reached a plea agreement with the government ahead of a scheduled wire-fraud trial, according to a person close to the investigation. Judge Paul Huck has scheduled a 3:30 p.m. conference call for a status report on the negotiations.

To get a reduced prison sentence, Abramoff would have to implicate lawmakers in a related probe of his lobbying activities, said Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor and head of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

[...]

Some 220 lawmakers received at least $1.7 million in political donations from Abramoff, his associates and nine tribal clients between 2001 and 2004, according to a review of Federal Election Commission and Internal Revenue Service records. Of those, 201 are still in Congress. Republicans received $1.1 million, or 64 percent of the total.

"When this is all over, this will be bigger than any (government scandal) in the last 50 years, both in the amount of people involved and the breadth to it," said Stan Brand, a former U.S. House counsel who specializes in representing public officials accused of wrongdoing. "It will include high-ranking members of Congress and executive branch officials."

Early on Aug. 3, 2005, we heard that 14 Marines had been killed in Haditha, Iraq. Our son, Lance Cpl. Edward "Augie" Schroeder II, was stationed there. At 10:45 a.m. two Marines showed up at our door. After collecting himself for what was clearly painful duty, the lieutenant colonel said, "Your son is a true American hero."

Since then, two reactions to Augie's death have compounded the sadness.

At times like this, people say, "He died a hero." I know this is meant with great sincerity. We appreciate the many condolences we have received and how helpful they have been. But when heard repeatedly, the phrases "he died a hero" or "he died a patriot" or "he died for his country" rub raw.

"People think that if they say that, somehow it makes it okay that he died," our daughter, Amanda, has said. "He was a hero before he died, not just because he went to Iraq. I was proud of him before, and being a patriot doesn't make his death okay. I'm glad he got so much respect at his funeral, but that didn't make it okay either."

The words "hero" and "patriot" focus on the death, not the life. They are a flag-draped mask covering the truth that few want to acknowledge openly: Death in battle is tragic no matter what the reasons for the war. The tragedy is the life that was lost, not the manner of death. Families of dead soldiers on both sides of the battle line know this. Those without family in the war don't appreciate the difference.

This leads to the second reaction. Since August we have witnessed growing opposition to the Iraq war, but it is often whispered, hands covering mouths, as if it is dangerous to speak too loudly. Others discuss the never-ending cycle of death in places such as Haditha in academic and sometimes clinical fashion, as in "the increasing lethality of improvised explosive devices."

Listen to the kinds of things that most Americans don't have to experience: The day Augie's unit returned from Iraq to Camp Lejeune, we received a box with his notebooks, DVDs and clothes from his locker in Iraq. The day his unit returned home to waiting families, we received the second urn of ashes. This lad of promise, of easy charm and readiness to help, whose highest high was saving someone using CPR as a first aid squad volunteer, came home in one coffin and two urns. We buried him in three places that he loved, a fitting irony, I suppose, but just as rough each time.

I am outraged at what I see as the cause of his death. For nearly three years, the Bush administration has pursued a policy that makes our troops sitting ducks. While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that our policy is to "clear, hold and build" Iraqi towns, there aren't enough troops to do that.

In our last conversation, Augie complained that the cost in lives to clear insurgents was "less and less worth it," because Marines have to keep coming back to clear the same places. Marine commanders in the field say the same thing. Without sufficient troops, they can't hold the towns. Augie was killed on his fifth mission to clear Haditha.

At Augie's grave, the lieutenant colonel knelt in front of my wife and, with tears in his eyes, handed her the folded flag. He said the only thing he could say openly: "Your son was a true American hero." Perhaps. But I felt no glory, no honor. Doing your duty when you don't know whether you will see the end of the day is certainly heroic. But even more, being a hero comes from respecting your parents and all others, from helping your neighbors and strangers, from loving your spouse, your children, your neighbors and your enemies, from honesty and integrity, from knowing when to fight and when to walk away, and from understanding and respecting the differences among the people of the world.

Two painful questions remain for all of us. Are the lives of Americans being killed in Iraq wasted? Are they dying in vain? President Bush says those who criticize staying the course are not honoring the dead. That is twisted logic: honor the fallen by killing another 2,000 troops in a broken policy?

I choose to honor our fallen hero by remembering who he was in life, not how he died. A picture of a smiling Augie in Iraq, sunglasses turned upside down, shows his essence -- a joyous kid who could use any prop to make others feel the same way.

Though it hurts, I believe that his death -- and that of the other Americans who have died in Iraq -- was a waste. They were wasted in a belief that democracy would grow simply by removing a dictator -- a careless misunderstanding of what democracy requires. They were wasted by not sending enough troops to do the job needed in the resulting occupation -- a careless disregard for professional military counsel.

But their deaths will not be in vain if Americans stop hiding behind flag-draped hero masks and stop whispering their opposition to this war. Until then, the lives of other sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers may be wasted as well.

This is very painful to acknowledge, and I have to live with it. So does President Bush.

The president whom George W. Bush may resemble most is not his biological father, George H.W. Bush, or even Ronald Reagan, who often seems his ideological father, but James K. Polk, a dynamic and willful leader few discuss anymore.

Polk, when elected president as a Democrat in 1844, had more political experience than Bush (Polk had spent 20 years in elective office, compared with Bush's six). But like Bush (who was 54 in 2000), Polk was young (49) and extremely self-confident when he took office.

Polk may be the only predecessor who matched Bush's determination to drive massive change on a minute margin of victory. Polk won by fewer than 38,000 votes of 2.7 million cast. Over four tumultuous years, he pursued an ambitious, highly partisan agenda that offered little to those who had voted against him. Sound familiar?

Strong on vision but weak on building consensus, Polk advanced his goals more than seemed possible in a closely divided country. But Polk's tactics deepened the nation's divisions and fanned the flames that later exploded into the Civil War.

It's worth considering Polk's record not because Americans will take up arms against each other anytime soon — although you might never know that from listening to talk radio — but because it suggests that a president who slights the need to build national consensus can seed long-term problems that aren't immediately apparent amid short-term successes.

[...]

Polk's unwavering, impermeable conviction defines one approach for organizing a presidency in such circumstances. But Polk's early critic — Lincoln — offers Bush a better model for leadership during a difficult war. In the Civil War, Lincoln was nothing if not resolute. But [...] he also calibrated his decisions — from key personnel appointments to the timing of emancipation — to hold together all shades of opinion committed to the Union.

Bush lately has met more with Democrats and acknowledged mistakes on Iraq. But substantively, he has not conceded much, either about Iraq or his tactics in the broader war on terrorism (except his belated capitulation to Senate demands for a ban on torture in the interrogation of prisoners). The divisions over Iraq are so deep that nothing Bush could do would bridge them entirely, and his inclination to ignore his most implacable opponents is understandable. But Bush would place the nation's security on a more stable foundation if he worked harder to find a consensus agenda with those critics whose assessment of the threat in Iraq and at home was closer to his own.

Part of Lincoln's genius, as one close advisor wrote, was his understanding that in the pursuit of national unity, it was the task of the president "to mollify and moderate" the country's fractious interests and diverse viewpoints. That's one reason Lincoln is revered and Polk, for all his ferocious accomplishments, is barely remembered.

There will be a lot of constitutional issues under discussion in weeks to come because the war on terrorism has the potential to embed itself deeply into our legal norms. Conventional wars, against nation-states that can be plainly identified and defeated, have a clear aim in sight. The fight against endlessly shape-shifting terrorist groups is more open-ended. So when we talk about trade-offs between freedom and security, it's a mistake to assume they will be short-term adjustments. The emergency powers that we agree to now may well become the American way for years. We may still agree to them, but it's essential to know exactly what costs they come with.