Category: America

NYT: Bush, Citing Fires, Will Seek to Ease Laws on Logging. Um, excuse me? How did this get pitched—no, how did anyone say this with a straight face? “OK, we appear to have a fire fighting problem. Might as well cut all the trees down.”
more…

Greg points to the primary results in Georgia. Of particular note: “Cynthia McKinney, a 10-year incumbent, lost her primary by 16 points.” My question to Greg: Now that she’s out of the picture, what are you going to do next? (Other than play Soup Dragons–oh, and I suppose Jesus Jones, if you must, though I ceased being a fan about 10 years ago.)

Seriously, there are a couple of worthy candidates in need of serious campaign savvy, including Tara Sue Grubb, who’s running against the infamous Rep. Howard Coble (of Berman and Coble) for a House seat and may be the first candidate to run her own blog (Sheila Lennon’s coverage of Tara Sue is good). I’d love to see you working with her.
more…

Nicholas D. Kristof in the New York Times: Bush Vs. Women. Is the administration’s appalling record of actively trampling efforts to better the condition of women worldwide the result of

• (a) a low prioritization of women’s rights
• (b) a confusion about whether the issue is abortion or survival
• (c) a Talibanesque desire to push women worldwide back into the Stone Age?

Kristof makes an alarming case, based on the administration’s record, that the real story is closer to (c).
more…

Greg sums up some interesting thoughts floating around about the right way to take campaign finance reform: make the giving of campaign money as secret as the ballot. Interesting reading for a Sunday morning.
more…

I’ve been waiting to add this link until I found out more about the case, but I’ve finally linked to the website of Eldred v. Ashcroft over the issue of the challenge to the Sonny Bono Extension of Copyright act, which extended by 20 years both existing and future copyrights. The tradeoff of copyright is between the rights of the creator and the rights of the public, a balance which this suit alleges has been tipped unfairly in favor of the creators at the expense of the public’s rights. I urge you, if you are a creator or consumer of any kind of content, a user of libraries, or a reader of electronic texts, check out the site. The archive of materials about the case is richer than anything I could possibly say here.

Except to point to Aaron Swartz’s summary of the Justice Department’s response to the suit, which was essentially to say, “You don’t have a right to question this law.”
more…

…Richard Milhouse Nixon resigned as president of the United States when it became clear that he was going to be impeached for the Watergate crimes. Despite continuous attempts to claim executive privilege, in the end it became clear that not even the highest office in the land was above the law that it was chartered to uphold.

Is that still true today?
more…

Greg: Alex Cockburn, Arbiter of Black Authenticity. Greg unleashes some pointed thought on the issue of whether one can be “black in skin tone but not in philosohy” (I’m paraphrasing). Greg sez:

…you get to spell out what my fellow Alabamans — Condolezza Rice and Cynthia Tucker — and I have in common save skin tone, good looks and a firm conviction that Dreamland cooks the best barbecue ever.

And maybe then you can help me figure out why you and Pat Buchanan don’t seem to think much alike. How am I supposed to know which one of you is philosophially white?

more…

Paul Krugman in the New York Times: The Memory Hole. Krugman discusses the origins of the “trifecta” quote (about Bush’s statement that he said he would only let the budget go into deficit in case of war, recession or national emergency; there’s no evidence he ever promised any such thing). Now evidence that OMB and other agencies may not be telling the truth in new budget deficit projections just disappears.

Every government tries to make excuses for its past errors, but I don’t think any previous U.S. administration has been this brazen about rewriting history to make itself look good. For this kind of thing to happen you have to have politicians who have no qualms about playing Big Brother; officials whose partisan loyalty trumps their professional scruples; and a press corps that, with some honorable exceptions, lets the people in power get away with it.

Lucky us: we hit the trifecta.

Thanks to Brendan Nyhan at Spinsanity for the link.

Update: Forgot I wrote about the trifecta already; just linked it in.
more…

Time: Could 9/11 Have Been Prevented? Scary view into how the sloth-like, generally arteriosclerotic processes of government caused a plan to take out Al Qaeda to be lost during the transition between the Clinton administration and the Harken-Halliburton administration. The article details a series of missed opportunities, the detailed warnings that a big attack was coming–and the breakdowns in government function that caused a failure to act. Scary thoughts:

No other great power handles the transition from one government to another in so shambolic a way as the U.S.-new appointments take months to be confirmed by the Senate; incoming Administrations tinker with even the most sensible of existing policies. The fight against terrorism was one of the casualties of the transition, as Washington spent eight months going over and over a document whose outline had long been clear.

Thanks to Scott Rosenberg at Salon for the link. While I was writing this, Dave summed up the essence of the nightmare here: “Sometimes when we bluster and attack aimlessly, we cement relationships between forces that wish us harm.”
more…

By the way, if anyone out there uses the phrase “Harken-Halliburton Presidency,” do me credit and point back to my first use of the phrase. A check of Google doesn’t reveal any prior use of the phrase; I think I’m the first.

NYT: Again, Election Confusion for the Florida Secretary of State. Seems that the state of Florida, who have already given us the Harken–Halliburton presidency, continue to blaze a trail in creative interpretation of electoral law. It seems that Katherine Harris (yes, former Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris, who was so insistent during the recount controversy in 2000 about sticking to the letter of the electoral law) is running for Congress, but hasn’t figured out how Florida electoral law applies to her. By violating Florida’s “resign to run” law, she’s landed herself in a bit of a mess.

I like the commentary from the Florida Democratic Party:

“She doesn’t know election law,” said Bob Poe, head of the Florida Democratic Party. “She couldn’t even resign properly.”

Tip of the hat to Greg, whose blog is rapidly becoming required political reading, for the pointer.

AP (in the New York Times): In a stunning show of proof that idiocy knows no party line, “Rep. Howard L. Berman, D-Calif., formally proposed legislation that would give the industry unprecedented new authority to secretly hack into consumers’ computers or knock them off-line entirely if they are caught downloading copyrighted material.”

Under the provisions of the bill, there would be little or no legal recourse for consumers if they are so attacked.

I somehow doubt (well, hope) that wiser heads in Congress will not allow this unfettered delegation of executive and judicial power to corporations. But stranger things have happened.

Dave feels pretty strongly about this. George thinks we should wait and see. I think we should show Berman (and his RIAA and MPAA cronies) the bum rush.
more…

Greg Greene blogs a few articles I missed reporting conservative views on one of the Bush administration’s big embarrassments. From the New York Times:

“Most striking, however, is how some conservatives who were Mr. Ashcroft’s biggest promoters for his cabinet appointment after he lost his re-election to the Senate in 2000 have lost enthusiasm. They cite his anti-terrorist positions as enhancing the kind of government power that they instinctively oppose.”

And Matthew Yglesias goes further:

Ultimately, Ashcroft is George Bush, just as the rest of Bush’s cabinet is. It’s really time for conservatives (who, unlike we liberals, might be able to exercise some influence on the administration) to name names and say that Bush — not Ashcroft, not Powell, not Mineta, not Ridge, not Rove — is doing bad things and ought to stop.

Salon: Dow roars back, up 488 points. Boy, you gotta love the market. Arrest a few executives and look what happens! Now if we could just nail a few more people in a meaningful way. Like a conviction on Enron (not their accounting partners). Or a few real Al Qaeda spooks, not their addled American “followers.” Or maybe a few former executives from Halliburton.

BTW, thanks and a shout to Scott Rosenberg at Salon. Quickly becoming a must-read blog.
more…

Looks like the Internet Archive has part of the Prelinger archive online. This is really cool. I guess I can stop worrying if I’m no longer able to use the “Ephemeral Films” CD-ROMs that Prelinger put out a few years ago—after all, you can now stream such wonders as “A is for Atom,” “Personal Hygiene” (parts I and II!), and “This is Coffee” as well as tons of old newsreel footage and commercials. Very cool.
more…