God Made Him Do It

The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz is reporting this rather remarkable statement by Bush from the recent Aqaba summit. According to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, Bush told him that:

"God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

I don't know what is more disconcerting: that Bush believes God is giving him specific instructions about foreign policy, or that there simply won't be time to deal with such matters at all once his re-election effort revs up. (Via Brad DeLong.)

A Two-fer

In Slate, Timothy Noah asks the question almost everyone else has been too scared to ask: if some administration apologists want to argue that Bush can't be called a liar because he is unaware that what he is saying is false, then why is he unaware? The answer, it seems, isn't that hard.

In Bush's case, the answer is painfully obvious. It's because Bush is a functionally not-bright man. As Chatterbox has explained elsewhere, it's impossible to tell—and, ultimately, of little interest—whether Bush lacks the necessary mental equipment, or whether he's simply incurious. The end result is the same. Even Bush's allies concede that Bush is strikingly ignorant.

It is clear that Bush has made a lot of recklessly false statements, and for that reason has earned the "liar" label. But there is no need to choose between truthfulness and intelligence. Stupid people lie all the time, just like smart people do. Yet even if you do feel the need to make a choice for epistemological reasons, ignorance of the truth doesn't give Bush moral license to say whatever he wants. It really is shocking the degree to which some commentators will go to exonerate Bush for lying when just three years ago even Gore's exhalations were the subject of a media feeding frenzy. (That's the liberal media for you, I guess.)

Voting Records Online

There is an interesting article in the New York Times today about the dearth of voting record information on Congressional websites.

A New York Times analysis of the Web sites has found that only 11 percent of senators and 40 percent of representatives provided some kind of information about their voting records, either a partial list of their major votes or a link to a vote-listing service. Many list their opinions, the bills they have sponsored and press releases. Only one senator, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, provides her complete voting record.

Why so little information about the job Congressionals are sent to Washington to do?

[Brad Fitch, deputy director, Congressional Management Foundation] said some members had told him they did not provide quick access to their voting records because they did not want to do the research for their challengers back home.

Mr. Fitch says he responds like this: "I tell these members that I'm letting them in on a little secret — that the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee have computers, and this information is available."

He added: "The only thing a member does by not providing this information is send the wrong message to constituents. You're inviting them to go someplace else, and that's a lost opportunity, from a political and a communication standpoint."

Fitch is exactly right. People can and do expect to find information on votes on Congressional websites. Provide it, or someone else — whose agenda might be antithetical to yours — will.

Court Upholds Affirmative Action

This is a pleasant, and unexpected, surprise:

The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a university law school admissions policy that gives minorities an edge, ruling that race can be one of many factors that colleges consider when selecting their students.

The ruling in the law-school case preserves the concept of affirmative action for minorities who might otherwise be underrepresented on top campuses, but makes clear that racial preferences must be used sparingly.

What's not a surprise is that this was a 5-4 ruling. Everyone needs to keep in mind that if Bush gets a Supreme Court appointment, all these 5-4 victories turn into 5-4 defeats.

Lying About Terrorism

Last fall, Bush gave a speech just days before Congress voted to authorize war with Iraq. In that speech, Bush highlighted the immediate threat that Iraq posed to US security — it had weapons of mass destruction and ties with al Qaeda. Bush's assesment of the threat was unequivocal, but the intelligence backing up the speech was just the opposite.

Bush, in his speech in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, made his case that Iraq had ties with al Qaeda, by mentioning several items such as high-level contacts that "go back a decade." He said "we've learned" that Iraq trained al Qaeda members "in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases." Although the president offered essentially circumstantial evidence, his remarks contained none of the caveats about the reliability of this information as contained in the national intelligence document, sources said.

Saying that Bush offered "none of the caveats" is a rather generous way to put it. Let's look at some of the specifics.

Bush: "Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." But: "Bush did not indicate that the consensus of U.S. intelligence analysts was that Hussein would launch a terrorist attack against the United States only if he thought he could not stop the United States from invading Iraq."

Bush: Iraq and al Qaeda have "high-level contacts that go back a decade." But: "Bush also did not refer to the report's conclusion that those early contacts [in the early 1990s] had not led to any known continuing high-level relationships between the Iraqi government and al Qaeda, the sources said."

Bush: a "very senior al Qaeda leader … received medical treatment in Baghdad this year." But: "U.S. intelligence already had concluded that Zarqawi was not an al Qaeda member but the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al Qaeda adherents, the sources said."

Why Does Hatch Hate Technology So Much?

For some odd reason, it seems to be the conventional wisdom that Republicans are "good" on technology issues, while Democrats are "bad". As I have argued here earlier, the conventional wisdom is wrong. More evidence today from the Honorable Orin Hatch, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and one of the elected officials with the most juice in the technosphere:

"No one is interested in destroying anyone's computer," replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt music downloads. One technique deliberately downloads pirated material very slowly so other users can't.

"I'm interested," Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."

The senator acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."

"If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said.

"There's no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws," Hatch said.

And I guess there's no longer any excuse for anyone to take the GOP seriously on technology, either. Or privacy, or civil liberties, or just plain common sense.

GOP in Bed with Big Tobacco

Literally.

Are recently divorced House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Philip Morris lobbyist Abigail Perlman headed for the altar? Word around town is that the two lovebirds — whose romance has been raising eyebrows and giving fits to self-appointed ethics cops — are planning to announce their engagement soon.

This news explains at least two things. One, it explains Blunt's "recently divorced" thing. Two, it explains the "secretly inserting an amendment in the Homeland Security bill to benefit Philip Morris" thing. Give Abigail credit, though — she definitely gave her all for the company.

Hindsight Being 20/20…

I'm guessing it might have been nice for Congress and the public to know about this bit of intelligence before, like, going to war and stuff.

During the weeks last fall before critical votes in Congress and the United Nations on going to war in Iraq, senior administration officials, including President Bush, expressed certainty in public that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, even though U.S. intelligence agencies were reporting they had no direct evidence that such weapons existed.

The facts on the ground in Iraq have proven the analysts were right in this case.

Big Surprise

Last week, President Bush boldly declared to the world that "we have found the weapons of mass destruction", and pointed at two trailers found in Northern Iraq that were tentatively identified as mobile biological weapons laboratories. Now trailers are not weapons, and no traces of weapons were found inside the trailers, but did the President still have a point?

Nope.

American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that the mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs. In interviews over the last week, they said the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes and charged that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment.

OK then. Number of WMD found: zero. Number of times the Bush administration has distorted intelligence to support its political ambitions: can't count that high.

First Sammy, Now This

BBspot: Doctors Reveal Bush Using Corked Vice-president:

Americans, still reeling after Sammy Sosa was ejected from a baseball game for using a corked bat, now have another corking story to face. Doctors at the Bethesda Naval Hospital announced that a routine brain scan of Vice-president Dick Cheney revealed that he was corked.

What won't these guys do to get elected?