Credit Where Credit Is Due

In his column today, David Broder critiques his 2005 punditry, and takes responsibility for what he considers to be one of his biggest misses:

On Sept. 4, I published a column so wildly off target that it could have gotten me indicted by a special prosecutor. It was written in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, as President Bush was flying back from vacation to organize the federal response to that catastrophe.

Without waiting for him to actually do anything, I saluted his performance, leading off with the assertion that "it took almost no time for President Bush to put his stamp on the national response to the tragedy that has befallen New Orleans and the Gulf Coast."

I think Broder is being a little hard on himself here. I mean, as we all witnessed, Bush did put his special "stamp" on the response. We see more clearly now, of course, that Bush's stamp is a mix of incompetence and cronyism, but take some credit, Mr. Broder — strictly speaking, you got this one right.

Friday Cat Blogging

You go ahead with raising your cup of holiday cheer and all that. Me, I'll be here napping.

Judges Gone Wild

Some federal judges are mad, and they're not going to take it any more.

Monday, one of the judges of the FISA court resigned in protest of Bush's warrantless wiretapping:

"This is a very big deal. Judges get upset with government lawyers all the time, but they don't resign in protest unless they're really offended to the point of saying they're being misused," said Kenneth C. Bass, a former senior Justice Department lawyer who oversaw such wiretap requests during the Carter administration.

Then yesterday, conservative darling Judge Michael Luttig of the 4th Circuit Appeals Court — the same court that ruled that Bush has the power to detain US citizens indefinitely as enemy combatants — bitch-slapped the administration for not taking terrorism seriously in the Padilla case:

They have left the impression that the government may even have come to the belief that the principle in reliance upon which it has detained Padilla for this time, that the President possesses the authority to detain enemy combatants who enter into this country for the purpose of attacking America and its citizens from within, can, in the end, yield to expediency with little or no cost to its conduct of the war against terror — an impression we would have thought the government likewise could ill afford to leave extant.

And now we learn that the rest of the judges on the FISA court are demanding to be briefed on Bush's wiretapping free-for-all; they're not sure what they'll do next:

The judges could, depending on their level of satisfaction with the answers, demand that the Justice Department produce proof that previous wiretaps were not tainted, according to government officials knowledgeable about the FISA court. Warrants obtained through secret surveillance could be thrown into question. One judge, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also said members could suggest disbanding the court in light of the president's suggestion that he has the power to bypass the court.

I guess a little blowback is to be expected, given how shabbily the administration has treated the "co-equal" judicial branch recently. Here's hoping that branch continues to assert itself against a lawless executive.

Party Switcher

Via Ed Cone, it looks like my red state just got a touch bluer:

State Rep. Russell Capps of Raleigh will be getting a most unusual Democratic challenger next year — the president of the Wake County Republican Mens Club.

Chris Mintz, a Raleigh financial planner, is not only resigning as club president, but is changing his registration to Democrat.

Mintz, 30, said he decided to leave the Republican Party because he thinks it is too focused on social issues rather than on economic issues. He also said the GOP is becoming less tolerant of different viewpoints.

"The Republican Party appears to be going further and further to the right," Mintz said. "It's really not the party for me any longer. I'm not bitter. I have a lot of friends who are Republicans."

"I think we are ignoring issues that are important — like education, economic development and health care," he said.

A few or more years ago, when I lived in South Carolina as the Republican Party was growing in strength, it was common to hear some former Democrats explain their switch this way: "I didn't leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me." That was usually a coded way to express opposition to civil rights, an issue which represented, unfortunately, a real problem for many people after the Democratic Party's embrace of it in the 1960s. But today, perhaps, we're seeing the mirror image of that old trend, as some people are starting to realize that a Republican Party increasingly obsessed with god, guns, and gays has left them.

Merry Christmas, Charles Darwin

This is very good news:

In an opinion issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge John Jones ruled that teaching "intelligent design" would violate the Constitutional separation of church and state.

"We have concluded that it is not [science], and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents," Jones writes in his 139-page opinion posted on the court's Web site.

"To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions," Jones writes.

Abso-freaking-lutely. You can get the full opinion here.

Have a Holly, Jolly Holiday

Such is the title of an article by Neely Tucker in today's Washington Post, which takes a really good and — yes — balanced look at the claims of those who are fighting the "War on Christmas". It's a good piece, and you should read the whole thing as they say, but this quote from Tucker Carlson during an interview on his show perfectly illustrates the silliness of this season:

"It is kind of heartening, I think, for Christians to see this, all this outrage, all this fear at Christmastime, you know, Christmas tree, Christmas carol, 'Silent Night'— oh, that's a, you know, that's a subversive song — because it means that Christianity isn't dead. It still has the capacity to scare people. It still gives people the creeps."

I'd like to make some kind of joke about how much Tucker obviously gets that whole spirit of Christmas thing, but the sad fact is that many people watching were probably nodding their heads in agreement as he went off on his fearsome Christmas rant. (OK, maybe not "many" people in some absolute sense — I don't think that "The Situation" has that big of an audience).

But if Tucker misses what the spirit of Christmas should be, he does get what it's becoming — a mixture of anger, resentment, and the need of the majority to ever-more dominate the discourse of the minority (variously defined as needed). It's Christmas, O.G.-style: "Say my name, bitch!"

In the end, maybe the secular celebrants have a better sense of how to celebrate the modern holiday — you show your superiority by how much stuff you can buy, not by how many people you can annoy with your rude and uninformed blather about the war on your mythologized version of Christmas. The former sure sounds like more fun to me. Happy Holidays!

Tortured Rationales

From someone who ought to know what he's talking about:

If America's leaders want to hunt terrorists while transforming dictatorships into democracies, they must recognize that torture, which includes CID [cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment], has historically been an instrument of oppression — not an instrument of investigation or of intelligence gathering. No country needs to invent how to "legalize" torture; the problem is rather how to stop it from happening. If it isn't stopped, torture will destroy your nation's important strategy to develop democracy in the Middle East. And if you cynically outsource torture to contractors and foreign agents, how can you possibly be surprised if an 18-year-old in the Middle East casts a jaundiced eye toward your reform efforts there?

Finally, think what effect your attitude has on the rest of the world, particularly in the countries where torture is still common, such as Russia, and where its citizens are still trying to combat it. Mr. Putin will be the first to say: "You see, even your vaunted American democracy cannot defend itself without resorting to torture…."

Off we go, back to the caves.

Vladimir Bukovsky, who spent nearly 12 years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and psychiatric hospitals for nonviolent human rights activities, is the author of several books, including "To Build a Castle" and "Judgment in Moscow." Now 63, he has lived primarily in Cambridge, England, since 1976.

In the end, torture makes us less secure as well as less human.

Above the Law, and Proud of It

By now, you've all probably heard about the executive order Bush signed authorizing the NSA to spy on thousands of American citizens without a warrant. I don't have anything original to add to the discussion, but I do want to add my voice to the growing chorus and say that what Bush did was clearly illegal, immoral, and unjustifiable.

Yesterday, Bush declined to talk about the issue, citing the need to protect ongoing intelligence operations and to prevent such sensitive information from falling into the hands of that "enemy who lurks". But today Bush decided that his political fortunes mattered more than the safety of the nation he stressed only the day before, and used his weekly radio address to acknowledge and defend his actions:

Bush said that he authorized the program "using constitutional authority vested in me as commander-in-chief." He argued that the program is consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, and used "to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations."

What a bunch of crap. The president does not have the "constitutional authority" to ignore the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and therefore, his order to spy on Americans was not "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution". As for the part about the targets having "known links to al Qaeda, that's not what the sources for the original Times story said. But if it's true that every one of the thousands of American citizens whose communications were intercepted by the NSA have "known links to al Qaeda", then Bush is certainly doing a lousy job of making the nation safer, given these folks haven't been arrested, tried, and locked up.

Feingold is right — our country has a president who is subject to the law, not a king who is above it. There was a time when that was widely considered to be a good thing. And with Bush in the White House for another 3 years, it's essential.

Giving the Gift of Jesus

Oh, goody, look what I'm getting for Christmas!

Christians, Jews, Muslims and others in 35,000 Charlotte households are getting a surprise Christmas gift: A DVD on Jesus.

The DVDs are due to begin arriving this week in homes in 16 ZIP codes, a gift from a Christian campaign determined to mail the "JESUS" DVD to every home in Mecklenburg County.

…

The local campaign has raised more than $130,000 to distribute the DVDs.

Now, different groups raise money for all sorts of things, and I'm certainly not passing judgment on the motives of those people involved in this particular project. But it does seem to me that there are a lot of things more important than making sure that everyone in Charlotte has a Jesus DVD in their mailbox.

So during this holiday season, regardless of what else you do, please remember to give a little to help those less fortunate. There are people in this community who need a hot meal and a place to sleep a lot more than I need a video I'm never going to watch.

McCarthy's 15 Commandments

To commemorate the life of Eugene McCarthy, who died on Saturday, The New Republic has freed from the archives one of the 32 articles that McCarthy wrote for the periodical. In "The 15 Commandments", McCarthy lists the rules citizens should follow when considering their votes for president. My favorite is the tenth, which is a "who not to vote for" rule:

10. Anyone with incipient signs of demagoguery. There are four key signs of this tendency: First, does the candidate reserve the front seats in the economy-class section of an airplane, thereby positioning himself to greet and be seen by passengers boarding in the back, but also in a position to slip through the curtain to work the first-class section and even be invited by airline personnel to move up? Second, does the candidate now bill himself or herself as, say, William (Bill) or Robert (Bob) or Patrick/ Patricia (Pat)? Third, does the candidate, known previously as John III or IV, drop the III or IV for the campaign, thus in effect repudiating father, grandfather, and possibly great grandfather? Fourth, is the candidate heavily into physical fitness (e,g., jogging), to the point that he reports his time for the mile or two-mile run, or for longer distances? These actions are marginally acceptable in campaigns for governor, but not for the presidency or even the Senate.

I'm not sure that there's anyone left to vote for after all the rules are applied, certainly not in the last few elections. In fact, the "no governors or vice-presidents" rules alone would have eliminated every presidential election winner since Johnson. Now, I could do without Reagan or W, but I'd certainly miss Bill. Still, the article is worth a gander, if only to read the description of the difference between driving cattle and hogs.

Friday Cat Blogging

It's always a good time for a nap.

White House vs. Christmas

I'm positively shocked to see that the White House, of all places, isn't celebrating Christmas to the fullest.

What's missing from the White House Christmas card? Christmas.

This month, as in every December since he took office, President Bush sent out cards with a generic end-of-the-year message, wishing 1.4 million of his close friends and supporters a happy "holiday season."

Many people are thrilled to get a White House Christmas card, no matter what the greeting inside. But some conservative Christians are reacting as if Bush stuck coal in their stockings.

"This clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture," said William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

I love the fact that it's Donohue who is so riled up about this, and I'm glad to see that he's turned his bombastic lunacy against the right for once. I guess even this most hardcore culture warrior needs to take a break from his usual diet of antisemitic and homophobic rants every now and then.

As for me, I don't think I'm on their holiday card list this year, but kudos to the White House for standing up against the worst elements in our culture and remembering that Jesus is not the only reason for the season. Happy Holidays everyone!

Just in Time for the Holiday Party Season

With all the noise from the right recently, questioning the soundness of the scientific method, it's sometimes easy to forget just how useful science can be in our daily lives. Case in point: this article from the New York Times today.

As soon as alcohol is consumed, he said, the body starts to break it down, but some is always absorbed directly into the bloodstream.

Having food in the stomach — particularly proteins, fats and dense carbohydrates — slows that absorption process.

The things that speed it up are carbonated mixers, like soda, and higher temperatures. (Warm drinks are absorbed faster.) Once alcohol is in your blood, Dr. Stratyner said, neither coffee nor a cold shower will get it out any faster.

THE BOTTOM LINE Drinking on an empty stomach makes you drunk faster.

Now that's news you can use.

Cockeyed Optimists

You know it's getting bad for the White House when they are taking comfort in numbers like these:

Administration officials believe much of the public is still eager for victory and open to persuasion if the president can make the case that he has made progress. They took heart in a survey last week by RT Strategies, a bipartisan polling firm, that found that 49 percent of Americans favor bringing troops home when only "specific goals and objectives" are met, 30 percent want a fixed timetable for pulling out and 16 percent support immediate withdrawal. The middle 30 percent, they figure, is the real political battleground.

OK, let's break this down:

1. Immediate withdrawal is the same as a timetable, only the time is now. So let's just add the two together and get: 46% favor some kind of fixed timetable.
2. While the Washington Post doesn't give the margin of error of the RT Strategies poll, let's be generous and assume a very large sample size with a margin of error of 3%. We now have a statistical dead heat between those advocating a timetable, and those advocating conditional withdrawal.
3. Withdrawl based on "specific goals and objectives" is the most abstract way of phrasing the Bush "plan". Given that solid majorities for some time have disagreed with Bush's handling of the war, it's hard to see how this poll refutes that fact.

So, what we have here is an administration taking comfort in the fact that they're breaking even in a poll that underestimates the real disapproval that people have to their policy. Ouch.

What's New, Pussycat?

When it comes to the Bush administration's "Victory in Iraq" plan, released yesterday, the answer, of course, is nothing. As the Washington Post notes, the "new" plan was actually pieced together from "declassified portions of long-standing war plans." Same old shit, different day. On one level, however, it's "Mission Accomplished" for the White House, since I did hear reporters on TV last night talk about our "brand new plan" for winning the Iraq war. Kind of depressing, that.

Still, "new" isn't all there is — if the plan was solid, detailed, and realistic, that would be an improvement over what we've been spoon-fed so far. But, alas, it's nothing of the kind. Matthew Yglesias at Tapped sums it up rather nicely:

Now the way a normal planning document would work is that after having identified some challenges, you would explain the plan for meeting them. But the "detailed" section on the political track just ends right there and the discussion moves on to other things. Alleged signs of progress are noted in great detail, which is useful for propaganda purposes, but doesn't constitute a strategy. Then some problems are flagged. And then … nothing. Right where the strategy is called for, it goes blank.

Exactly. Much like the business plan created by South Park's Underpants Gnomes, the Bush plan seems to be:

1. Train Iraqi Troops
2. ???
3. Victory!

It's step 2 that gets you every time.