Disney adventures

We made it back from a week-long trip to Disney World on Saturday, a day later than we expected. Our flight had been scheduled to leave at 9 p.m. but was delayed more than two hours due to bad weather. So I was more than happy to volunteer to be bumped from the flight when they announced that they were overbooked. We got a free night at an AmeriSuites, some food vouchers for breakfast and lunch, a 10:30 a.m. flight the next morning and travel vouchers for another flight we can use anytime during the next year.
When we flew into Orlando on Aug. 1 we were immediately met by a thunderstorm that had blown in off of the coast. We asked our shuttle driver if it was supposed to rain a lot and he said it rains everyday there around 4 p.m. Sure enough, almost like clockwork, we got rain storms every afternoon. Fortunately, they would not last too long and did not spoil our vacation.

There is far more to do in Orlando than can be covered in a week. We spent a day and a half at Magic Kingdom, a day and a half at Epcot and one day at Animal Kingdom. We will have to visit Disney’s fourth theme park - MGM-Disney - on our next trip.
I was pleasantly surprised by how much there was to do even when you are avoiding all of the bumpy, roller-coaster rides. With my son not yet 2 and my wife 5-months pregnant, we were limited on what rides we could go on. No Space Mountain or Big Thunder Mountain Railroad rides for us. Instead, we did the traditional rides like Flying Dumbo, the Mad Hatter’s Tea Cup ride and a lot of the laid back, slow-moving coaster or boat rides that take you on a tour of Winnie the Pooh’s 100 Acre Woods or Peter Pan’s NeverLand.

Disney World is enormous. They say there are enough Disney employees to populate a moderate-sized city and surely enough animatronic characters to populate a small town. I’ve always loved history so I made a special point of going to see the American Presidents show at Magic Kingdom where they have animatronic characters on stage representing every president from George W. to George W. While I enjoyed the performance, it managed to put my son to sleep which was actually a good thing. It was the only time we managed to get him down for an afternoon nap during the entire vacation.
Even better was a history show at Epcot featuring an animatronic Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain. They did a big overview of American history that managed to showcase or mention every historical figure with the odd exception of Abe Lincoln. (Abe was featured prominently in the President’s show at Magic Kingdom.)
Even more impressive to me than the animatronics, however, were the 3-D movies. The Mickey’s Philharmagic show (featuring Donald Duck) was terrific with the best 3-D effects I have ever seen (supplemented with spritzing water and smellovision built into the stadium seating). However, it was a little too intense for my son who quickly shed his 3-D glasses and buried his head in mommy’s shoulder the first time a character popped out of the screen. We realized only later that it was the first time he had ever been in a movie theater and seen anything bigger than a widescreen TV.

Bonilla wants a new address for the White House

I was both embarrassed and flustered to read last week that my Congressman - Henry Bonilla - has introduced legislation in the House to change the name of 16th Street NW in Washington, D.C. to Ronald Reagan Boulevard.
There really is no excuse for something like this. Bonilla is not stupid so I don’t know whether he is doing this just to try and further ingratiate himself with his party’s core of right-wingers who worship Reagan like some kind of demi-God or whether he is just demonstrating that he can be a first-class jerk.

First, there is no dearth of honors that have already been heaped on our 40th president who has the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in D.C. dedicated to him. But that is not enough for the cultish Reagan worshipers out there who won’t stop until they get Reagan’s mug chiseled onto Mount Rushmore next to Washington and Lincoln. There is already an organized effort by radical conservatives to have something named after Reagan in every county in the United States. So far they have succeeded in naming more than 63 streets, buildings, schools, etc. after him.
But 16th Street in D.C. is going too far. The significance of 16th Street is that it has given the White House its historic address, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Second, the District of Columbia is one of the most heavily Democratic areas in the nation and having some Republican congressman from Texas waltz in and rename one of their major thoroughfares after a Republican icon is little more than a slap in the face.

Fortunately, Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee which has jurisdiction over Bonilla's legislation, recognizes this and has called Bonilla’s bill "ridiculous" and said he would put it in the "appropriate file."
"If Congressman Bonilla wants to name anything else, he has to look at his own district in San Antonio," Davis said.
I certainly hope not. If Bonilla really wants to honor the memory of Ronald Reagan then perhaps he should join with his widow Nancy Reagan in supporting federal funding of embryonic stem cell research to help patients suffering from Alzheimer’s and other debilitating diseases. But since he refuses to do that then maybe he should just shut up and quit embarrassing his constituents back home.

I see via The Jeffersonian that some angry D.C. residents want to retaliate by renaming The Riverwalk for former D.C. mayor Marion Berry. Cinncinnatus has an even better idea of renaming some streets in the city’s heaviest Republican areas after former President Bill Clinton. But the one name I would like to see changed is the one that hangs on the offices for the 23rd Congressional District from Texas.

Vacation

I'll be on vacation next week with no access to a computer. Back on Aug. 8.

In the meantime, here is a random list of 25 songs off of my IPod to fill the rest of this space:

Moonlight Becomes You - Bing Crosby
Love or Confusion - Jimi Hendrix
I'll Be Seeing You (In All The Old Familiar Places) - Bing Crosby
Tombstone Blues - Bob Dylan
Slither - Velvet Revolver
If I Can't Have You - Bee Gees
Body and Soul - Coleman Hawkins
Soul Kitchen - The Doors
Pardon Me - Incubus
Rockin' Chair - Louis Armstrong
This Little Girl of Mine - Ray Charles
Lester Leaps In - Count Basie Orchestra
We're An American Band - Grand Funk Railroad
Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams - Bing Crosby
That'll Be The Day - Buddy Holly
You Make My Dreams Come True - Hall & Oates
She's No Lady - Lyle Lovett
Runnin' With The Devil - Van Halen
Good Vibrations - Beach Boys
Dreamtime-Shake It Up - John Waite
Don't Be Cruel - Elvis Presley
Walk On - U2
Riverboat Shuffle - Frankie Trumbauer Orchestra featuring Bix Biederbecke
You Got Lucky - Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
Oye Como Va - Santana

Why we went to war

Over at TPMCafe today, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson goes point-by-point through the lies and deceptions being propogated by the GOP to cover up their complicity in the Valerie Plame scandal.

FACT 1--Valerie (Plame) Wilson was undercover and occupied a sensitive position.

FACT 2--Valerie (Plame) Wilson's relationship with the CIA was not known until revealed by Robert Novak's column.

FACT 3--Valerie Plame Wilson did not send her husband on the trip to Niger.

These are things that should be obvious to anyone living in the “reality-based community” as opposed to the fantasy world inhabited by most Bush apologists these days.

But the thing I found most interesting was a discussion by one of the commenters trying to understand the real motivation behind the Bush administration’s rush to war in the first place.

I've been thinking bsout this for a while trying to come up with a plausible reason.  My first assumption is that nothing we have been told so far is it: Building Democracy in Iraq?  Please, Cheney barely tolerates democracy here, he could give a rats ass about it in Iraq.  There has to be a real politik reason; Cheney, Rumsfeld - these guys cut their teeth under Kissinger.  WMD?  If anything the Bush admin knew better than anyone that they didn't exist.  Oil?  Sure it is about oil, everything in the Middle East is, but still why invade?

Here is the scenario that I think makes sense, assuming that Bush, Cheney et al aren't total fools this is my guess as to what happened:

1) The stuff we did in the 90s (bombings and so on) was more effective at destroying Sadaam's WMD capabilities than we realized.

2) It was very much in Sadaam's interested to make sure that no-one realized this. His power rested on both Iraqis and his neighbors thinking he was still strong.

3) After 9/11 the CIA, State Department and UN started looking at Sadaam more closely and began to see how much of a paper tiger he was. (Both Kay and Blix have said they knew he had no WMD)

4) Everyone in the Bush admin who looked into this realized it too, the CIA and State department working independently came to the same conclusions.

5) Sadaam called Bush's bluff and said the inspectors could come in. The last thing Bush wanted was for the inspectors to prove once and for all that Sadaam was toothless.

6) Hence the rush to war.

7) The real motivation for the war wasn't that Sadaam was strong and a threat; it was just the opposite, he was becoming too weak! We need a balance of powers in the Middle East - Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Saudia Arabia.

8) The plan was to quickly topple Sadaam, put Chalabi in power and have a new, more reliable ally as our counterweight to Iran (remember we backed Sadaam in the war with Iran).

9) That blew up in their faces, both because they didn't prepare for the aftermath and didn't understand just how much of a mess Iraq's infrastructure had become.

10) What also didn't help is that Chalabi was playing them for fools while secretly working for Iran.

Ultimately I can see a valid motive here, allowing Iraq to disinigrate into chaos as Sadaam crumbled from within would leave it ripe for take over by Iran. But here is the thing, by doing it the way they did they totally lost any chance of success. The likely end result is now Iraq aligned with Iran, with at best an independent Kurdistan in the north aligned with Turkey (how ironic is that? The thing Turkey most feared may now very well be in their best interest! Losing a little territory along the border and their Kurdish citizens may be worth having another staunchly secular regime with decent Oil revenue opposed to Iran as a neighbor).
If we had waited for Sadaam to crumble under the weight of his own corruption and Iran tried to move in to the void we could have put together a coalition of Arab states to join us in protecting Iraq from the Persian aggressors.

A very interesting analysis. I don’t agree with it entirely, but it makes a lot of very valid points.
I think there is no question that the timing had mostly to do with the Republican’s desire to have the public perception that they were taking a strong and aggressive stand against terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. This was especially important on the eve of the 2002 mid-term elections when Republicans were trying to regain control of the Senate. And once they committed to that aggressive course of action they set the ball rolling on a track where they could not turn back without undermining that desired public perception. Backing down in any way and allowing U.N. inspectors to prove that there were no WMDs would have been seen as a political victory for Democrats who were challenging Bush’s post-9/11 leadership in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election.
Supporting the war became a political imperative and at that point the truth became expendable. Intelligence that supported the war scenario was thrust front and center regardless of how shaky its credibility (i.e. the centrifuge tubes, the mobile bioweapons lab, etc.) while intelligence that ran contrary was ignored and/or refuted vigorously - which of course is what led to the outing of Valerie Plame’s identity.

GOP selling pork for votes

In yet another ugly display of arm-twisting, bribery and threats, House Majority Leader Tom “The Hammer” DeLay assured passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) last night by holding the vote open 47 minutes past the traditional 15-minute deadline.

The 217 to 215 vote came just after midnight, in a dramatic finish that highlighted the intensity brought by both sides to the battle. When the usual 15-minute voting period expired at 11:17 p.m., the no votes outnumbered the yes votes by 180 to 175, with dozens of members undeclared. House Republican leaders kept the voting open for another 47 minutes, furiously rounding up holdouts in their own party until they had secured just enough to ensure approval....

This sounds awfully similar to the bribery and threats that the GOP used to pass its Medicare boondoggle last year.
We may not know right away (or ever) if House members were threatened the way they were during the Medicare vote, but it is clear that bribery was on the table.

The last-minute negotiations for Republican votes resembled the wheeling and dealing on a car lot. Republicans who were opposed or undecided were courted during hurried meetings in Capitol hallways, on the House floor and at the White House. GOP leaders told their rank and file that if they wanted anything, now was the time to ask, lawmakers said, and members took advantage of the opportunity by requesting such things as fundraising appearances by Cheney and the restoration of money the White House has tried to cut from agriculture programs. Lawmakers also said many of the favors bestowed in exchange for votes will be tucked into the huge energy and highway bills that Congress is scheduled to pass this week before leaving for the August recess.

Remember how Republicans were supposed to restore integrity and honesty to government back when they took control away from entrenched Democrats? Yeah, me neither.

Easy Rider

My brother-in-law who is serving with the Louisiana National Guard in Iraq is scheduled to come back home in November. His wife (my sister) has promised to let him get a Harley-Davidson when he gets back which will become his primary mode of transportation to and from work. She and the four kids have laid claim to his truck during his absence.
As you can see from this photo, he is already eagerly anticipating the new “Easy Rider” lifestyle he will be adopting when he gets back stateside.

Quagmire update

John Derbyshire over at NRO is one conservative who occassionaly makes sense - and thus makes his ideological cohorts uncomfortable. Here he is today making a salient point about the unexpected length of Bush’s war in Iraq:

...it is a fact that no American, in March 2003, thought we would have a huge army planted in Iraq 2 and a half years later. The administration did not even hint at such a possibility...

Our war against the Empire of Japan, 1941-45, lasted 1,347 days. The current war in Iraq, against a rabble of Arab hooligans, has lasted 861 days. If it lasts as long as WW2, it will end on November 25 next year. Do you really think it will have ended by then? Do you really think that Zarqawi and his gangs are as formidable an enemy as the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces? Do you really believe we are doing this right? Really?

Cheap Sunglasses

Ray-Ban
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

I would like to thank the person who left his Ray-Ban sunglasses at the Sears Parts & Service Center in College Station, Texas about 17 years ago.
I was working there that summer while finishing college and found the glasses on the counter. I placed them on a shelf underneath the register and there they sat for the next several weeks. Eventually, I claimed them for my own.
They are really nice sunglasses - smokey black lenses and a wire frame that wraps around your ears to hold them in place - much more expensive than I could have afforded back then.
Up until that point I was never able to hold on to a pair of sunglasses longer than a couple of months before I would lose them. I probably went through a dozen pair of cheap, $5 sunglasses before I latched on to this pair and never let go. The fact that I still have these glasses after 17 years is quite amazing to me. I’ve always assumed that if I had bought them myself I would have lost them long ago.
Funny how that works.
Today they are a bit worn and one of the lenses pops out on occasion, but I dare not let them go. It’s not like I found these glasses, after all. It’s more like they found me.

Accepting the challenge

Nigel Tufnel
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

I’ve picked up the gauntlet that has been thrown down over at All Things Conservative. I’ve been having a lengthy and spirited debate (scroll down to comments) with Nigel Tufnel, the lead guitarist for Spinal Tap, over whether Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert agent with the CIA at the time that she was outed by high-level officials in the Bush administration.
I outlined my argument here, and Nigel has challenged my logic as being faulty. We have been going round and round for a couple of days and now he has offered the following challenge:

Here's a deal -- and Bill can vouch for my trustworthiness.

If Rove is indicted and convicted of a crime related to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, I will author a post on Rhetoric & Rhythm fully conceding my erroneous understanding of the act and of Rove's crime and fully acknlowledging your brilliant analysis.

If Rove is indicted but not convicted of a crime related to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, indicted for any lesser charge (to include obstruction of justice, of which he may very well be guilty), or not indicted for anything at all, you will author a reciprocal post on ATC acknowleding your erroneous understanding of the act and of Rove's non-crime and fully acknlowledging Bill's brilliant analysis.

I have accepted his challenge with certain provisions. I think it is possible that Rove could escape indictment and/or conviction without disproving that Plame was covert. So I offered this amended challenge on my part:

Let's say that if Rove is not indicted, or is indicted but not convicted of a crime related to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act because it is determined that Valerie Plame was not considered covert under the law, then I will author a mea culpa piece for ATC.
Or regardless of what happens to Rove, if it is determined through the course of the investigation that Plame was not a covert agent under the law, I would concede and admit that I was wrong.

We are still haggling over the details. Nigel thinks I’ve given myself too much wiggle room, but I’m willing to accept whatever determination the special prosecutor and the grand jury make regarding Plame’s covert status.

Needless to say, I am basing my position on my own non-lawyerly interpretation of the government statute that defines what a covert agent is. But I am also confident in that my position is supported by a lot of former intelligence agents who should know better than most.

The safe choice

Unless somebody turns up a photo of John Roberts dressed in women’s lingerie and spike heels while being spanked by his dominatrix, it is highly unlikely that his confirmation to the Supreme Court will see much turbulence.
While I imagine there will be a large number of Democrats who will vote against Roberts on principle, I think they are not likely to launch a filibuster unless something very sinister suddenly turns up to tarnish Roberts’ squeaky clean image.
Earlier I had advised Bush to pick a conservative out of the 90 percent pool of acceptable nominees and not the 10 percent of far-right nutjobs who would be sure to spark a confirmation fight. Now it seems as if Bush took this advice - sort of - and went with the most extreme conservative he could find in that 90 percent segment. Roberts may be the most conservative jurist who did not prompt a filibuster fight with Democrats.
I think it is interesting that Bush decided to break precedent by not choosing a woman to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the high court. When Thurgood Marshall, the first black jurist, retired, Bush Sr. opted to replace him with another black judge, although his ideological opposite. But Bush Jr. decided not to replace the first female jurist with another woman leaving Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the only female on the nine-member court. That could change, of course, if William Rehnquist still steps down later this summer as expected.
There is still much to be learned about John Roberts and initial opinions will likely change, but right now it looks as if Bush made a safe choice by picking the most conservative person he could find who would not spark an all-out confirmation battle.

Important questions

Now that we know who Bush's nominee is for the Supreme Court it is time to start asking the important questions.

Has he ever smoked marijuana?
Did he pay Social Security taxes for his nanny and his housekeeper? What about the gardener and the pool boy's immigration status?
Did he ever dodge the draft?
Has he ever cheated on his wife or been otherwise unfaithful in his marriage?
Did he ever sexually harass a female subordinate?
Has he ever bounced a check or failed to pay his taxes on time.

These and other important questions will have to be addressed before we can be sure that this is the right person to fill lifetime appointment on the highest court in the land.

Rove's Last Stand

Rove's Last Stand
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

This is courtesy of Billmon

Too funny.
But reinforcements may be on the way! Is that a Supreme Court nominee coming over the horizon just in time to distract the ravaging hordes?

Killing the innocent

For the first time it looks like the government may be about to own up to the fact that a man was executed for a crime he did not commit.

... 25 years ago ... a 19-year-old drug dealer named Quintin Moss was gunned down from a slow-moving car... And the man convicted of the killing, Larry Griffin, was executed 10 years ago.
Yet the city's top prosecutor has decided to re-investigate the murder as if it just happened, out of new concerns that the wrong man may have been put to death for the crime.
...
should Ms. Joyce, the St. Louis circuit attorney, demonstrate Mr. Griffin was not the killer, as the report and even some members of the victim's family contend, it would be the first proven execution of an innocent person, so far as death penalty advocates or opponents can recall.

This would be a significant step in the debate over capital punishment. It is surely not the first time that an innocent person has been executed by our justice system, but it would be the first time that such an outcome has been officially acknowledged.
Still, it is important to remember that for true opponents of the death penalty the killing of innocents is only part of the problem. The death penalty is wrong even when its target is definitely guilty of the crime. Jesus did not insist on seeing proof that Mary Magdalene was innocent of the prostitution charges levied against her before he challenged the mob to let someone without sin cast the first stone.

Once a covert operative...

How does one stop being a covert operative for the CIA? I mean other than having Karl Rove leak your name to the media?
The truth is that one can never stop being a covert operative without exposing all of your intelligence sources to the possibility of retaliation and undermining any and all of your past covert activities.

One of the lamest, but apparently popular, defenses of Karl Rove being bandied about by Bush apologists lately is that there could not have been a crime committed in this case because they claim that Valerie Wilson was not a covert operative at the time that her name was leaked to the media. In fact, they go on, she had not been working overseas for more than five years by that point and therefore no longer met the definition of a covert agent. To bolster this claim they point to this definition of a covert agent in the National Security Act of 1947:

The term “covert agent” means—
(A) a present or retired officer or employee of an intelligence agency or a present or retired member of the Armed Forces assigned to duty with an intelligence agency—
(i) whose identity as such an officer, employee, or member is classified information, and
(ii) who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States...

I want to call your attention to the comma in the above sentence that immediately precedes the ‘and’ in the (i) sub-definition. By placing the comma there it means the next portion of the sentence is a separate thought and is not needed to understand the meaning of the preceding portion of the sentence. But conservatives reading this definition have conveniently ignored the comma and treat the ‘and’ as meaning that the two segments must be combined to complete the meaning.

This is crucial because with the comma the definition is more inclusive and has a broader scope of what a covert agent is - including agents whose identity is classified as well as agents who works overseas now or in the past five years. Without the comma the definition can be read more exclusively to limit it to agents who meet both criteria - their identiy is classifed AND they must have worked overseas in the past five years.

Now this latter definition is not only incorrect, but would also be detrimental to our nation’s intelligence gathering capabilities. Imagine a rule that says after five years of inactivity information on our covert intelligence agents is suddenly part of the open record and “fair game” for anyone who wants to disseminate it in the mass media. The people who are positing this interpretation are either not thinking it through clearly (and to be charitable that is what I assume for most of them) or they are complete idiots.

So let’s stop and think about this a little bit more. If we really had such a thing as a five-year statute of limitations on protecting our covert agents and it could be clearly demonstrated that Valerie Wilson has not been actively working overseas for at least five years, then it would seem to be an open and shut case. So please explain why the Justice Department has spent the better part of two years and millions of taxpayer dollars pursuing this case. Because if that is the case then the only real scandal is why the special prosecutor is wasting our time and resources (not to mention throwing journalists in jail).

The truth of the matter is that Valerie Wilson was a covert agent at one time as this article makes clear:
 
The investigation was triggered when CIA lawyers asked the Justice Department to look into who revealed the identity of Wilson’s wife, who worked overseas under deep cover posing as a private industry energy analyst.

And the fact that she recently took time off to raise a family and had not been overseas in the past five years (assuming that is the case) is beside the point.
Plus, it is also highly likely that she was able to continue working as a covert agent while stateside by keeping in contact with her foreign sources via telephone and e-mail.

But all of that is now lost thanks to loose-lipped Karl Rove. Once he decided to fire up his signature smear operation against Ambassador Joseph Wilson he wasn’t about to let a little thing like our nation’s national security interests get in the way of his scoring political points against a critic of the administration.

Blaming the media

So Karl Rove is supposedly claiming that Plame’s CIA identity was just some rumor that had been floating around in the press corps? Some gossip he overheard and then passed along innocently to a national newspaper columnist?

Rove testified last year that he remembers specifically being told by columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of a harsh Iraq war critic, worked for the CIA.

How interesting. But that’s not what Novak has said:

Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

I wonder who has been lying to the Grand Jury, Rove or Novak?

So far this case has been exciting a lot of commentary from the local blog community.

Eddie Rodriguez at The Red State has been working hard to debunk the avalanche of spin coming out of the White House on this issue.

The other day Bill Crawford at All Things Conservative helpfully reprinted the GOP “talking points” that try to smear Ambassador Joseph Wilson by repeating a lot of lies and misrepresentations of things he has said in the media. What exactly this has to do with the outing of his wife as a CIA agent I’m not sure. Perhaps they believe that the public will think that it is OK to expose our CIA operatives’ identities as long as their relatives’ reputations have been adequately besmirched first.
Josh Marshall sums it up pretty well here.

Now today, Bill is jumping all over the strange “Rove blames media” story claiming it completely vindicates him and puts the onus on Democrats for ever criticizing poor Rove in the first place.
But over at B & B Peter Bryant gives us a different analysis of the same story:

If we believe the Rove-friendly account in today's papers, someone had already spread around Plame's CIA job to both Novak and Rove. Who? Rove, by the account in the Washington Post, has conveniently forgotten.
If we don't believe the Rove-friendly account, then this timing is extremely suspicious.

Congrats to Peter on having his piece cross-posted at TPM Cafe.

For those who desperately want to believe Rove’s story that some reporter was responsible for outing Plame first there is still one big question that must be answered - How did a journalist with no security clearance get ahold of this classified information in the first place? And how convenient that they should happen to get it right at a time when it helps the White House in their effort to damage the credibility of a top critic of their Iraq policy.

Losing confidence

The Wall Street Journal poll that is out today has Bush down to a 46 percent approval rating with 52 percent saying the country in on the wrong track.
The Journal says that Bush's standing has been hurt by Iraq, his Social Security privatization scheme, and most recently by the Karl Rove scandal. The Journal story further warns that Bush "faces further political peril" if his Supreme Court nominee becomes embroiled in a protracted partisan battle.

Meanwhile, in another WSJ story we learn that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is spending more and more of his time focused on Karl Rove and what he told Time reporter Matthew Cooper. I think an indictment is almost inevitable at this point.
I expect to hear Bush announce soon that he has "full confidence" in Rove, which is always a sure signal that someone is about to get axed.

Even if Rove stays though, Democrats are trying to raise the heat index on him by pushing legislation to revoke his security clearance. Imagine if the president's top aide had to excuse himself everytime any confidential security matter was being discussed. At least Rove can always take a job with the Journal's editorial board where they are waiting to give him a medal for blabbing about one of our CIA operatives.

The Ideal Supreme Court candidate

Judge Sonia Sotomayor
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Here is Bush’s ideal Supreme Court nominee. A Hispanic female with lots of judicial experience who was first appointed to the bench by Bush’s father. Plus she is guaranteed to have an easy confirmation.

Of course, this presumes that Bush wants an easy confirmation process. But there are many reasons why he would rather appoint someone more extreme and provoke a fight. First, it would satisfy his base of extremist religious right fundamentalists. Second, it would distract the public’s attention away from the mess in Iraq, Bush’s failed domestic agenda and the Karl Rove scandal.

Karl Rove: From Powerbroker to Pariah

It looks like
Ambassador Joseph Wilson was right again. Wilson pointed the finger at Karl Rove as the White House culprit who outed his wife from the CIA more than two years ago.
Now we are finding out that Rove was indeed the source for at least Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper who learned from Rove that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA more than three days before Robert Novak’s column ran exposing that fact for all the world to see.
So far the White House is is refusing to comment on the unfolding scandal.

For two years, the White House has insisted that presidential adviser Karl Rove had nothing to do with the leak of a CIA officer's identity. And President Bush said the leaker would be fired.
But Bush's spokesman wouldn't repeat any of those assertions Monday in the face of Rove's own lawyer saying his client spoke with at least one reporter about Valerie Plame's role at the CIA before she was identified in a newspaper column.

Well, that’s OK, because Billmon has helpfully compiled a long list of relevant quotes from White House officials over the years denying Rove’s involvement. Lies, lies and more lies.

Now the only question is why Rove is still a member of the administration after Bush said long ago that he would fire whoever was responsible for the leak? Surely, Bush would not go back on his word!

I think it is just a matter of time now before Karl Rove joins Ken Lay on the list of GOP pariah’s whose name is never spoken by the president.

White House hypocrites

After chastising Democrats for suggesting that we need to set a timeline for withdrawing the bulk of our troops from Iraq, it now seems that the Bush administration has been secretly planning to do just that all along.
A secret memo uncovered by the British media reveals that the White House is looking to pull most troops out by early 2006:

"emerging U.S. plans assume that 14 out of 18 provinces could be handed over to Iraqi control by early 2006," allowing a reduction in overall U.S.-led forces in Iraq to 66,000 troops. The troop level is now at about 160,000, including 138,000 American troops, according to a military spokesman in Baghdad.

This is good news because it means that maybe, just maybe, the Bush team is not as stupid as they have pretended to be lately. I’ve had a hard time understanding why Bush has been so stubborn about setting a timeline or even defining the terms of victory in Iraq.
The polls have shown that support for the war is plummeting the longer it drags on. Right-wingers whine that this is because the so-called liberal media hasn’t been cheerleading loudly enough on the sidelines, but the truth is that even when our subservient media bows down to the GOP agenda and obediently refuses to show pictures of the coffins and bodybags coming home, they can’t completely cover up the fact that more than 1,700 U.S. troops have been killed and more are dying everyday.
It amazes me the number of times in recent weeks where I have had casual conversations with very conservative Republicans who, upon learning that I am a liberal Democrat (quite rare in these parts), confess their reservations about the war in Iraq. They may not agree with me that we should never have gone in in the first place, but they do agree that it is high time that we started getting out.

So if pulling out would be politically popular why are they refusing to say they would even consider it? This new memo makes things a little more clear. As long as they start pulling out before the 2006 mid-term elections they can benefit from that politically. In the meantime, they can continue to blast Democrats for being terrorist sympathizers, weak on defense, cut-and-run cowards and so forth even while making plans for a massive drawdown early next year.

In fact, the White House seems to be even more anxious to pull out than their counterparts in the Pentagon, according to the memo.

The memo, posted on the newspaper's Web site, notes a debate between U.S. officials at the Pentagon and military leaders in Iraq, saying that officials in Washington favor "a relatively bold reduction in force numbers," differing with battlefield commanders, "whose approach is more cautious."

Activist judges

This Op-Ed from the NYTimes makes a great point about who the real "activists" are on the Supreme Court today.
The authors use a formula by which they determine how much of an activist each current justice is based on the percentage of times they have voted to overturn Congressional legislation.

Declaring an act of Congress unconstitutional is the boldest thing a judge can do. That's because Congress, as an elected legislative body representing the entire nation, makes decisions that can be presumed to possess a high degree of democratic legitimacy. In an 1867 decision, the Supreme Court itself described striking down Congressional legislation as an act "of great delicacy, and only to be performed where the repugnancy is clear." Until 1991, the court struck down an average of about one Congressional statute every two years. Between 1791 and 1858, only two such invalidations occurred.

Since the Supreme Court assumed its current composition in 1994, by our count it has upheld or struck down 64 Congressional provisions. That legislation has concerned Social Security, church and state, and campaign finance, among many other issues. We examined the court's decisions in these cases and looked at how each justice voted, regardless of whether he or she concurred with the majority or dissented.

Here is how the justices came out:

Thomas 65.63 %
Kennedy 64.06 %
Scalia 56.25 %
Rehnquist 46.88 %
O’Connor 46.77 %
Souter 42.19 %
Stevens 39.34 %
Ginsburg 39.06 %
Breyer 28.13 %

It is pretty clear that by this measure the "conservative" justices are more likely to intervene and strike down legislation than the "liberal" justices.
So who are the real "activists" in this case?

9/11: The Movie

I'm kind of intrigued by this future movie...

...Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone will direct a film based on the story of two police officers who were trapped in the rubble on Sept. 11, 2001.

Nicolas Cage, who won a best-actor Oscar for "Leaving Las Vegas," will star as Port Authority police Sgt. John McLoughlin. McLoughlin and fellow officer William J. Jimeno became trapped during rescue efforts after the collapse of the twin towers.

Paramount Pictures said the movie is expected to be released next year.


I can already imagine the wails of protest from the right. And while I wouldn't put it past Stone to include a less than flattering scene of Bush reading "My Pet Goat" while all hell is breaking loose, I would still argue that Stone is an excellent director who has done well with other historical fare (check out his honest and fair treatment of Tricky Dick in his film "Nixon").

My latest obsession

IPod Mini
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

For my birthday (I turned 40 over the weekend) my wife bought me an IPod Mini with 4 GB of memory. That’s enough to hold about 1,000 songs.
It’s like having your very own personal radio station programmed with all your favorite music that can be mixed in random order with no DJs and no commercials. I’ve been having fun trying to get mine set up with just the right mix of music.
A thousand songs is a lot and it is certainly more than enough to be carrying around on your belt loop, but when you are like me and you start out by dumping all of your Beatles, Bob Dylan, Bing Crosby and Ken Burns’ Jazz music into the IPod you suddenly find yourself having to make decisions about what to keep and what to leave off.
I’m pretty happy with what I have on it now, but I will probably be constantly fiddling with it which is half the fun anyway. Right now I have lots of music by the above folks plus lots of Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Presley, Tom Petty and U2. I don’t have enough Rolling Stones or Led Zepplin, but those are the sacrifices you must make.
Now you know what I’ve been doing in my spare time instead of blogging.

John Sharp for Governor

John Sharp
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

OK, I’m all ready to jump aboard the John Sharp for Governor bandwagon as soon as it launches.

The Burnt Orange Report says that former Texas Comptroller John Sharp will soon announce his candidacy for governor.
Charles at Off the Kuff and Matt at Just Another Blog offer their thoughts as well.

I’ve always thought that Sharp was a heck of a good guy. During the years that I was a political reporter I met many politicians, both Democratic and Republican, who I liked. Sharp was one of those who I just liked personally, and I would probably support him today even if he were a Republican. The fact that he is a Democrat is just an added bonus.

He should have been the first Texas Aggie governor rather than Rick Perry.

I don’t have anything against Chris Bell other than I don’t think he has a ghost of a chance of winning the governor’s race. I think Sharp does, although it will still be a tough fight. Hopefully, if Sharp gets in it would encourage Bell to run for lieutenant governor instead.

There is not a lot on the net that I can find about Sharp right now, but here is a good interview with him from back when he made his first race for Lt. Gov. against Perry.

Sandra Day O’Connor retiring

Let the fighting begin.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court and a key swing vote on issues such as abortion and the death penalty, said Friday she is retiring.

This is huge. Now Bush has the chance to truly alter the makeup of the court by replacing one of the swing votes on many key decisions with another Clarence Thomas or Antonin Scalia clone.
Democrats had better buckle down for this one because it will make the Robert Bork battle look like a Sunday stroll in the park.

Update:
Think Progress has a good rundown of some key 5-4 court decisions where O’Connor made the difference for the liberal side.
I think it would be equally interesting to see a list of decisions where she made the difference for the conservatives.

Iran’s new president

I have to admit that it looked at first like Iran’s new president really was one of the hostage takers who held American embassy workers captive back in 1979.

But after reading this story today I’m not so sure.

In Tehran, Abbass Abdi, a former student leader involved in the seizure, said Mr. Ahmadinejad had played no role, although he had wanted to. "He was a student at a different university," Mr. Abdi said, "and we kept the plan secret among our own members who we trusted. He called after the embassy was captured and wanted to join us, but we refused to let him come to the embassy or become a member of our group."

So he wanted to join the group, but wasn’t allowed to be because he was at the wrong university.
Meanwhile the photograph, while intriguing, is not definitive proof by any means.

A photograph of a blindfolded American hostage being led by a man with some resemblance to a young Mr. Ahmadinejad was posted on various Web sites in recent days. But his office posted a photograph of him in that era seeking to show there was little resemblance. A close aide to Mr. Ahmadinejad, Kaveh Ejtetehadi, called the claims of his involvement "absurd."

It confused me that he would deny his involvement if it were true. Being anti-U.S. is not exactly a career killer over in Iran these days.
But if Mr. Ahmadinejad really were involved, I would be curious to find out what, if anything, he knew about this.

Another inane editorial

Tom Toles
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

The Express-News has another inane editorial about Iraq. This time they give a big thumbs up to President Bush’s vacuous speech on Tuesday and they endorse his short-sighted view that -

”...establishing a timetable for a withdrawal of American forces, would undermine the new government of Iraq and give succor to its enemies...”

As I’ve said before, this either means that we are stuck there indefinitely, or we will just sneak out one day without telling anyone.

In the meantime, our refusal to set any kind of timeline for withdrawal eliminates any kind of incentive for the new Iraqi government to get its act together and take charge of their country. As William Saleten pointed out in his excellent column (see previous post) this is the Republican equivalent of welfare - except that it is more expensive in both dollar amount and lives lost.

The editorial goes on to add this final hedge however -

...if it becomes evident that Iraqi forces can't or won't stand up — and at this point, that isn't the case — it will also be time to bring American forces home.

And who will make that determination? Certainly not this president who has bet his entire political fortune on this ideologically-guided venture in the Middle East. We will have to wait for the next president to come along - no doubt someone who will promise that they have “a secret plan to end the war.”

Iraqi welfare

Kevin Drum today calls attention to an interesting column by William Saleten in Slate that equates the war in Iraq with welfare and uses some of the Republican’s own arguments against them.

President Bush explained how he plans to get our troops out of Iraq. "Our strategy can be summed up this way," he said. "As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down."

I've heard politicians say this sort of thing before. But the politicians were liberals, and the downtrodden people they talked about were needy Americans. As these folks learned to support themselves, government would no longer need to support them, the liberals promised. As the poor stood up, we would stand down.

For 40 years, the central argument of the Republican Party—George W. Bush's party—was that liberals had it backward: If you prop people up, they'll never stand up, and you'll never stand down. You have to let go. As you stand down, they'll stand up.

Which brings us to the occupation of Iraq. In blood and money, it's fast becoming the most expensive welfare program in the history of the world. Like other welfare programs, it was a good idea when it started. Like other welfare programs, it has begun to overtax the treasury and the public. Like other welfare programs, it warps the behavior of its beneficiaries. But in one respect, it's unique. It's the one welfare program conservatives can't criticize or even recognize, because they're the ones running it. ...

Saleten goes on to argue that one reason for the drop in public support for the war is because people are beginning to see that it has turned into a huge welfare program for the Iraqi people.

Is it any mystery why polls have turned against the occupation? The people being polled are Americans. The people deriving a "better life" are Iraqis. Bush spent half the speech obscuring this gap. He equated Iraqi terrorists with the 9/11 hijackers and kept insisting that we're fighting for "our" freedom and security. But that spin lost its force long ago, when Saddam's weapons of mass destruction failed to materialize, forcing Bush to reframe the war as a democracy-spreading project. It's a noble war, but it's noble because it's altruistic. And people get tired of altruism....

He goes on to note that setting a timeline for withdrawing our troops would prod the Iraqi politicians to stop their bickering and get busy making the tough decisions and compromises necessary to become self-supporting.

The elections were five months ago. What have the assembly's Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish leaders done for the past five months? Bickered over every petty dispute. How much of the constitution have they drafted? Zip. Why are they bickering instead of buckling down? Because they can. Because they don't have to cut fast deals, meet the deadline, and give every faction a stake in the government to hold off the insurgency. They don't have to do these things, because 140,000 American troops are propping them up.

If welfare causes dependency for poor people in the inner cities, then the same logic applies to the security welfare we are providing for the Iraqi government. We can continue to provide them with truckloads of foreign aid, but its time for them to step up and take charge of their own security situation. And the fact is they will have little incentive to do so until we give them a real deadline for withdrawal.

This isn't our story. It's the Iraqis' story. They have to write it, and they have to start by drafting a constitution in six weeks. If they think Uncle Sam will prop them up till the job is done, the job will never get done. That's what conservatives used to understand about big government, before they started running it.

Failure to define victory

I didn’t have a chance to watch President Bush’s speech last night but I did come across this handy summary over at TPM Cafe that distills it all down to its key elements:

“Global war on terror, September the 11th, 2001, terrorists, terrorists , totalitarian ideology , freedom, tyranny,  oppression,   terror, kill, terrorists,   September the 11th, freedom, enemy , war,  terrorists, kill, murderous ideology , terrorism, terrorists, free nation, war on terror, freedom, violence and instability,  dangerous, violence, bloodshed, violence,  sacrifice , war on terror, violence,  killers, freedom, criminal elements, hateful ideology, freedom, liberty,  democracy, terrorists, war on terror, terrorists, Osama Bin Laden, murder and destruction, enemy, terrorists, car bombs, enemy, terrorists,  suicide bomber, enemy, terrorists, violence, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists , freedom, enemies, September the 11th,  Bin Laden,  enemy , free, tyranny, terrorists, anti-terrorist, free, al Qaeda, free nation, terrorists,  terrorists, enemy, terrorists, anti-terrorist  terrorists, terror, enemy, tyranny, enemies, freedom, freedom, ideologies of murder, atrocity, September the 11th 2001, car bombers and assassins, freedom, freedom, flying the flag, freedom, freedom, September the 11th 2001, enemies”.

Seriously though, I think it was unfortunate that Bush did not take my advice and give us a timeline for withdrawing our troops or even defining what he means by “completing the mission.” If by that he means “to find and defeat the terrorists”, then what we have is an open-ended, ongoing military occupation that will never run out of reasons to continue on and on indefinitely.

The NYTimes editorial today sums it up well:

We had hoped that he would seize the moment to tell the nation how he will define victory, and to give Americans a specific sense of how he intends to reach that goal - beyond repeating the same wishful scenario that he has been describing since the invasion.
Sadly, Mr. Bush wasted his opportunity last night, giving a speech that only answered questions no one was asking. He told the nation, again and again, that a stable and democratic Iraq would be worth American sacrifices, while the nation was wondering whether American sacrifices could actually produce a stable and democratic Iraq.

Bush stays the course

Kevin Drum has a good graph illustrating President Bush’s declining poll numbers since the 9/11 terror attacks boosted them to unrealistic heights.
Now that they have dipped to their lowest point, Bush will make another effort to revive his stalled agenda with a nationally televized speech later tonight.

I can barely contain my enthusiasm.

In the meantime, the man who should have been president gives us a sample of what we would be hearing from our president if he had any realistic idea for salvaging our adventure in Iraq.

He first outlines some of the “Legitimate reasons... to criticize the Bush administration for its handling of the conflict”:

Our mission in Iraq is harder because the administration ignored the advice of others, went in largely alone, underestimated the likelihood and power of the insurgency, sent in too few troops to secure the country, destroyed the Iraqi army through de-Baathification, failed to secure ammunition dumps, refused to recognize the urgency of training Iraqi security forces and did no postwar planning.

He then details many of the things that we should be doing currently to relieve the pressure on our troops and speed the process along for Iraq to take charge of its own security efforts.

If we had a parlimentary system like Great Britain and Israel, Bush would be in danger of being ousted in a no confidence vote later this year. As it is, however, we are stuck with this administration for another two and a half years.

The odd thing is that if Bush were to announce tonight a timeline for pulling our troops out of Iraq by early next year, his popularity would probably skyrocket again. It would be no problem at this point to “declare victory” and bring the troops home. We’ve confirmed that there are no WMDs. Saddam Hussein and his sons have been deposed. Iraq has a new government in place and a new constitution. I’m sure if Bush were to run through this list of “success stories” and cap it off with a timeline for withdrawal, Republicans would rally around him and Democratic opposition would be undercut. Then he could focus on salvaging his domestic agenda - using some of the money that would be saved by pulling out of Iraq to fund his Social Security privatization scheme, pushing for more oil drilling in national parks and preparing to appoint more right-wing judges to the Supreme Court.

But don’t worry. Bush won’t do this. Instead, he will say that we need to “stay the course” and “finish the job”, whatever the heck that is.

Barton’s bullying

I agree with Atrios about what should be the proper response to this.

There is a street name in Houston that always made me laugh everytime I saw it because it summed up my feelings about my former Congressman when I lived in College Station.

The fact that today Joe Barton is using his position as chairman of the House Energy Committee to harass a legitimate climate scientist over the global warming issue is nothing short of disgusting. But then, I never expected anything better from this sorry excuse for a public official. Nevertheless, Barton should not be allowed to get away with this kind of heavy-handed bullying just because he doesn’t like the results this scientists’ research has produced.

On a different subject, there was another example today
(also via Atrios) of Republicans using threats and bullying tactics to try and get there way. In this instance they are upset because billionaire financier George Soros is a member of an investment group looking to buy the Washington Nationals baseball team.

Republicans haven’t proved to be very good at actually governing, but they are certainly making big strides when it comes to abusing their power in office.

Gurwitz and the Downey Memo

The Downey memo (snicker). That’ll teach Jonathan Gurwitz to turn in his column at the Express-News without checking the page before it goes to print.
The headline they put on his Sunday column is “Downey memo fuel for hatred”. Of course, they should have put “Downing memo” or more accurately “Downing Street memo.” The fact that the editorial folks at the Express-News are so unfamiliar with the whole Downing Street memo controversy that they would let a mistake like this go through unnoticed is really a sad testament. Pathetically sad. I’ll bet they don’t have any trouble spelling Aruba. As of Monday morning they hadn’t even bothered to correct the version online.

But screwed up headlines aside, I had some other problems with Gurwitz’ Downing Street memo column. He starts off by claiming that this sentence from the July 21, 2002 Cabinet Office paper

"Although no political decisions have been taken, U.S. military planners have drafted options for the U.S. Government to undertake an invasion of Iraq."

“directly contradicts” the main point of the July 23, 2002 Downing Street memo which states that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" to invade Iraq.

How could they be fixing intelligence around an invasion policy that didn’t exist, he asks?

But saying that no “political decisions have been taken” is not the same thing as saying no decision on invading Iraq has been made. Clearly the decision to invade had been made at that point and the talk about “political decisions” was meant to infer public decisions. A political decision is one that is out in the open for everybody to see. What is clear from these memos is that the decision to invade had already been made but the administration was keeping it all hush-hush. They were still trying to build their case by having the intelligence fixed around the policy before letting the American people and their representatives know about it.

So there is no contradiction between the two documents as Gurwitz tries to claim.

Next, Gurwitz briefly raises the right-wing conspiracy theory that maybe the documents are fake and repeats the lie that the reporter who wrote the initial stories for the London Times “destroyed the originals”, when in fact he only destroyed photocopies he had made of the original documents.

The Republicans in Congress have refused to hold hearings on these matters which could help to clear up some of the confusion. And when Democrats, out of frustration, sought to hold their own informal hearings the Republicans impetuously refused to even allow them to use empty committee rooms, forcing them to hold their hearings in a basement. That is why Gurwitz can lampoon the “mock impeachment of President Bush that took place in the Capitol basement”.

But Gurwitz makes one final observation that is quite surprising for a conservative pundit and is yet another example of why I like him:

”Legitimate reasons exist to question the wisdom of going to war in Iraq and to criticize the Bush administration for its handling of the conflict.”

Wow! How many other conservative commentators would admit to that? Not many. Most tend to take the stand that anybody who is critical of the war in Iraq is a traitor to their country.

But Gurwitz goes on to warn people to avoide thinking too much about the Downing Street memo. Sounding a lot like Yoda from Star Wars he warns:

”Following the twisted and incongruous path of the Downing Street memo, however, leads to a fever swamp of irrational conspiracy theories, ignorance and hatred.”

That’s right, my young padawan! Be warned. The Downing Street memo is the path to the dark side! Or is that the Downey memo?

Alamo City Blogfest 2005

The Alamo City Blogfest on Saturday was very enjoyable. We had about a dozen people representing seven local blogs show up at McAlister Park. For most of us it was the first time to meet people we had come to know only through blogging. It was officially a non-partisan event with bloggers from both the right and left sides of the political spectrum in attendance.
It wouldn't have happened without The Ranting Raven and his wife who did the bulk of the work planning and organizing the event. They rented the pavillion, provided most of the food and supplies - chicken and BBQ from Bill Miller's - and helped keep everyone up to date on the event through the Blogger Gatherings web log.

In addition to Mr. and Mrs. Raven and their 15-year-old son (as well as myself, my wife and our almost 2-year-old son) other attendees were Julia Hayden (a.k.a. Sgt. Mom) of The Daily Brief; Roscoe Ellis of Roscoe Ellis: Live Journal; Matt of Just Another Blog; Peter Bryant and his wife of B and B; and Eddie of The Red State.

A number of folks were unable to come due to last minute committments including Bill Crawford of All Things Conservative; Christina of Feisty Repartee; and Dagney of Dagney's Rant.
We also missed Sean-Paul Kelley of The Agonist; Mark Harden of All Things Conservative; and Lucius Cincinnatus of The Jeffersonian.
There are also a number of other bloggers in town who may or may not have been aware of the local gathering. Fortunately, the Raven is considering organizing another one of these Blogfest get-togethers later this fall when the weather is cooler. That one should have the potential to be much larger. Keep checking the Blogger Gatherings web site for more details as they develop. And if anyone has suggestions as to when and where would be a good place to meet, please leave a comment or send an e-mail.

Update:
Roscoe has some pictures up on his website from the event.

Update2:
Raven has more pictures up here.

Eminent domain and The Riverwalk

Would San Antonio have a Riverwalk if cities did not have the power of eminent domain that allows them to take private property (after providing just compensation) for “public use”?
It’s possible that it would because I’m not aware of any big disputes along those lines during its development. But what if one of the property owners back then had stubbornly refused to go along with the city’s plans to transform the San Antonio River into a national tourist destination? Might they have halted the development?

The folks in New London, Conn. are trying to do something that is not terribly different from what San Antonio did many years ago. Here is how the New York Times describes the proposed development:

“...a large-scale plan to replace a faded residential neighborhood with office space for research and development, a conference hotel, new residences and a pedestrian "riverwalk" along the Thames River.”

One defender of the project even cites San Antonio’s Riverwalk as an example of what they are trying to do:

”This is similar to how San Antonio developed the Riverwalk and revitalized the downtown area. The only difference is the city itself used the power of eminent domain rather than delegating to a non-profit. San Antonio only kept a very narrow strip of land along the river while selling the rest, mainly to hotels.”

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in favor of the New London city officials has excited much consternation from both the right and left halve of the blogosphere - JammerBlog: Letter to Sens. Cornyn and Hutchison; All Things Conservative: Don't Get Too Attached; Ranten Raven: Five boobs in black robes; and Off the Kuff: We need a mall where your house is.

But I think alot of their anger is misdirected. As P.M. Bryant of B and B aptly points out, governments have long had the power under the Constitution to seize property for public use. The question before the courts was who gets to decide what “public use” is. Should it be locally elected city officials or the federal courts?
And before you decide who it should be, stop and think that they could be the ones deciding whether or not San Antonio gets to have a Riverwalk.
Personally, I kind of like the Riverwalk and I don’t think there is any question that it has been a tremendous benefit to the entire city even if a large chunk of it was sold off to private developers.
So think about that before you start condemning this particular court decision.

San Antonio Blogger Gathering

The first ever San Antonio Blogger Gathering is taking place tomorrow (Saturday, June 25) from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at McAllister Park pavillion No. 2.
It looks like there may be about 16 people there which is pretty good for a group of folks who only became aware of one another’s existence just recently and have never met in person.

The Ranten Raven has done most of the work to bring this together. It is to be a neutral and non-partisan event open to conservative and liberal bloggers alike - as well as to those strange folks who find other things to blog about besides politics. Check out this web link above for directions and a list of things you can bring.

NBA Champions

NBA Champions
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Congratulations to the NBA Champion San Antonio Spurs!
It could have gone either way, but Tim Duncan stepped up when it mattered the most and sparked a fourth quarter surge that made the difference.
I wasn't sure who would deserve the MVP in the event of a Spurs victory, what with Manu Ginobli's terrific performance in the first two games and Robert Horry's series saving heroics in Game 5. But I think Tim Duncan clearly proved in the end that he is the heart and soul of the team. Now he joins the likes of Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal as the only three-time NBA Finals MVPs. Pretty impressive.

Torching the First Amendment

The Republican-controlled Congress has passed yet another bill to ban flag burning. These things usually die in the Senate, but now that the Republicans have a heftier majority in that body it is not so certain. So we may soon have to go through the process of amending our Constitution over a politically-charged non-issue.

Right now if somebody burns a flag they get disdain and scorn. But in the future they will get disdain, scorn and lots of free publicity! Oh Boy!! I don’t honestly know when the last time there was a U.S. flag burned in protest but I am pretty certain it is a relatively rare and uncommon occurence. In the future there will likely be lots of flags burned by people looking to challenge bans on flag burning.

Since the proper way to dispose of an old flag is by burning it, laws to prevent flag burning will have to be based on intent - which means putting people in jail for expressing unpopular political views. That means altering the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. There is just no other way around it.

Then there is the problem with actually enforcing such a law if it ever comes to pass. Can you only be prosecuted for burning a flag? And if so, how do you define what a flag is? Can you be prosecuted for burning a piece of cloth that looks like a flag? What about a flag printed on paper or terricloth? What about a flag that has only 49 stars? Or a flag that has 14 stripes? What about a flag that uses blue dye No. 8 instead of the official blue dye No. 9 (or whatever)?

And when the Patriot Police finish figuring out how they will enforce this new law what will they go after next? Prosecuting people for not standing during the national anthem? Requiring recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance at every public or private event involving two or more people? Criminalizing other forms of political speech that is critical of the government? The options are endless.

Publicity stunt gone wrong

This is just too funny.

NEW YORK An attempt to erect the world's largest popsicle in a city square ended with a scene straight out of a disaster film - but much stickier.

The 25-foot-tall, 17 1/2-ton treat of frozen Snapple juice melted faster than expected Tuesday, flooding Union Square in downtown Manhattan with kiwi-strawberry-flavored fluid that sent pedestrians scurrying for higher ground.

Firefighters closed off several streets and used hoses to wash away the sugary goo.

The stunt might have worked if they had just used water with red food coloring. But I imagine the freezing point for the heavily sugared Snapple juice is a bit lower than they expected.

Statute of limitations on illegal immigration

There was an excellent article in the Washington Post over the weekend making the case for a statute of limitations on deportation.

We used to have one policy that is worth revisiting: a time limit -- a statute of limitations -- on prosecuting unauthorized presence... nearly all offenses, civil and criminal, carry statutes of limitations... It is not the best use of the government's resources to pursue old cases in which the evidence is stale or difficult to obtain....
A statute of limitations on unlawful entry is therefore not anachronistic but consistent with basic legal and moral principles. It does not condone or reward illegal immigration: Unauthorized presence would remain a violation of the law and continue to carry the risk of apprehension and removal, at least for some period of time. But it would allow us to recognize that the undocumented become, for better or worse, members of the community, and to accept them as such.

I can remember reading about cases in the past where elderly grandmothers who have been in this country longer than I have were picked up by the INS and threatened with deportation. Surely there must be some kind of common sense way to deal with such potential travesties and a statute of limitations is it. I don’t know how long it should be, but I have no doubt that our INS would be better serving the public interest by pursuing recently arrived illegals rather than going after people who have established themselves in their communities.

There was another case I remember when I was in Lubbock about a woman from the Phillippines who was picked up by the INS and threatened with deportation despite the fact that she was married to a U.S. serviceman and had four small children at home. It had to be one of the most monumentally stupid things the INS had ever done. They were just begging to get bad publicity. Every night on the news and in the paper you would see images of this Army officer at home trying to take care of his four children ages 9 months, 2, 4, and 6, while their mother who had come to this county as a child 12 years earlier was sitting in lockup somewhere.
I don’t know how the case was eventually resolved but I don’t think she was deported. Fortunately for her this happened back before Republican ideologues took over every branch of the government so I believe that cooler heads eventually prevailed. Today it would probably have turned out quite differently.

But at least not all right-wingers are on the wrong side of this issue. I was surprised to see a rare column by Charles Krauthammer the other day that I can actually agree with.
So maybe there is hope on this issue.

Fatherhood squared

A little more than two years ago life changed for my wife and I when we learned that we were going to have our first child. After 13 years of marriage with no luck at having children of our own we were beginning to think that it wasn’t meant to be. But then Nathan came along and now he will be turning two in just another couple of months.

Being parents has been a real joy for us. Perhaps because we were forced to wait so long to experience it we are enjoying it more, but regardless of the reason I can’t wait to go home each day and be with my family. So I fully expect it will only get better the second time around. My wife and I are expecting our second child in November. And we just found out the other day that it’s a little girl.

Downing Street Memos

My friend Bill does a good job summarizing
the conservative blogoshpere’s reaction to the Downing Street Memo documents that were first published last month in the Sunday Times in London. But I’ll go ahead and summarize it just a bit further:

It’s no big deal, it’s all old news and it’s probably fake anyway!

The significance of these memos is hard to overstate because they give us an insider’s view of the deception that went into the Bush administration’s pre-war planning. They spell out many of the things that the Bush administration’s critics have long suspected but could never prove - that Bush was intent on invading Iraq regardless of what intelligence reports said about Saddam’s WMD capabilities.
The memos are the closest thing we have to the Watergate tapes of the Nixon era. So it is not a surprise that Bush backers will try to downplay their significance in order to continue living in their fantasy world. The latest effort to declare the memos “fakes” is probably the most humorous and easily debunked. I’m sure that if pressed, these folks will tell you that these documents were faked as well.
Nevertheless it is an all too common tactic on the right today and it helps keep a certain segment of their supporters in line - particularly those who refuse to read anything in the biased MainStreamMedia and get all their news and information from right-wing blogs and talk radio.

But it is difficult to maintain that charade when top government officials just won’t cooperate.

Two senior British government officials today acknowledged as authentic a series of 2002 pre-Iraq war memos stating that Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program was "effectively frozen" and that there was "no recent evidence" of Iraqi ties to international terrorism—private conclusions that contradicted two key pillars of the Bush administration's  public case for the invasion in March 2003.

For people who were opposed to Bush’s rush to war from the beginning, these memos simply confirm our worst suspicions. The Bush administration took advantage of the 9/11 tragedy to pursue an unrelated foreign policy objective that has proved to be much more costly in both lives and dollars than they ever expected.

Kay Bailey Hutchison: Big Liar

I'm disappointed that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison won't be challenging Rick Perry for governor next year. That means that there won't be a big fight to fill an open Senate seat and - since one of the likely candidates in that race would have been U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla - I'll still be stuck with my worthless excuse for a congressman.

I think everyone should recall that back in 1994, Hutchison campaigned as a big supporter of term limits and promised repeatedly to serve only two terms in the Senate. So her decision now to run for a third term means that she LIED!
Unfortunatley, that is unlikely to lose her too many votes and it is doubtful that she will have a serious challenger for her seat this time around.

I can still hope that Carole Keeton Strayhorn might weaken Perry with a nasty primary campaign and make him more vulnerable to a worthy Democratic candidate. But that may just be wishful thinking at this point. If people can't see by now that George W. Bush is the worst president ever and that Republicans are too blinded by right-wing ideology to effectively run the government, then I can't see much worse happening between now and 2006 that might snap them out of their trance.

No. 43 at 42 percent

Here is another poll for conservative Bush backers to ignore and dismiss...

George W. Bush’s overall approval rating has sank lower than his rank order among presidents according to the latest NYTimes/CBS News poll.

The only bright spot for Bush is that a slim majority - 52 percent - say they support his efforts in the “campaign against terrorism.” But what is odd about that is that the same poll places support for Bush’s war in Iraq at a measly 37 percent. Could it be that folks are finally starting to distinguish between fighting actual terrorists and launching a costly invasion and occupation of a country that had nothing to do with the terror attacks? If so, it’s about time.
The poll puts support for Bush’s foreign policy at just 39 percent. Ditto the economy. While Bush’s plans to overhaul Social Security gets an abysmal 25 percent approval despite months of Bush and Co. barnstorming the nation with its carefully scripted Bamboozapalooza tour in support of privatization.

Oh, and the Republican Congress? 33 percent approval. And only 19 percent of respondents say that the Congress “shares their priorities for the country.”

Bring on the 2006 mid-term elections!

Redefining torture and terrorism

Sen. Dick Durbin caused a stir recently when he quoted from an FBI report documenting some of the prisoner abuses that have taken place at Guantanamo.

On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. . . . On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.

Conservative bloggers have been beside themselves claiming that this treatment does not rise to the level of torture. But what exactly is torture if not this?

Here is a definition we might consider by the "United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment" or UNCAT:

“Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.”

The Geneva Convention further specified that prisoners of war “shall in all circumstances be treated humanely and that there must not be any "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture." or "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment".

It is fairly clear that inmates at Abu Gharib were being tortured on a routine basis. Along with the photos that documented some of the abuses we have the report from Major Gen. Antonio M. Taguba that describes:

”Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.“

We also have the reports on abuses at Bagram Collection Point in Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of at least two detainees - one of whom was widely believed to have been innocent of any involvement in military action against the U.S.

Conservatives who continue to defend these systematic abuses argue that such treatment is necessary if we are to defend ourselves against future 9/11-like terrorist attacks.
But while you might be able to make a case for harsh treatment in some limited circumstances where we have captured a top lieutenant to Osama bin Laden who might have details of a pending terrorist attack, that is not the case with the vast majority of inmates at Guantanamo and elsewhere. Many of these prisoners being subjected to this treatment are not top-level members of al-Quaeda, but are at best foot soldiers in the Taliban or the Iraqi insurgency with little useful information to provide. In the worst cases, they have proved to be innocent civilians who were caught up in events and wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But the same conservatives who are so ready to give a very narrow definition of torture, like to use a very broad definition of the word terrorist. Everyone at Guantanamo is a “terrorist” as is anyone in Iraq who is opposed to our occupation of that country. By labeling them as such we make them accountable for not just 9/11, but for all of the suicide attacks and roadside bombings that have plagued Iraq since the beginning of our occupation. And thus we are free to torture them as much as we want because they are not worthy of humane treatment. And anybody who challenges their treatment is faced with the Bush/Darth Vader dictum: “You are either with us, or you are our enemy.”

Left/Right religious convergence

Here is a promising story today in the Washington Post - Religious Right, Left Meet in Middle

The Rev. Rob Schenck is an evangelical Christian and a leader of the religious right. Rabbi David Saperstein is a Reform Jew and a leader of the religious left. Both head political advocacy groups in Washington, and they have battled for years over abortion, gay rights, stem cell research and school prayer.
This summer, each intends to preach a bit of the other's usual message.
Schenck said he plans to tell young evangelicals at a Christian music festival on July 1 that homosexuality is not a choice but a "predisposition," something "deeply rooted" in many people. "That may not sound shocking to you, but it will be shocking to my audience," he said.
Saperstein said he is circulating a paper urging political moderates and liberals to "demonstrate their commitment to reduce abortions" by starting a campaign to reduce the number by half within two years.
Schenck and Saperstein disclosed their plans in separate interviews. They are not working together. The minister remains a die-hard opponent of same-sex marriage; the rabbi staunchly supports a woman's constitutional right to choose an abortion. But both are trying to find common ground between liberals and conservatives on moral issues -- and they are not alone.

First it is nice to see the media acknowledging that there is a Religious Left in this country, and not just a Religious Right. Second, I am happy to see people representing both sides reaching out in an effort to find common ground. Reducing the number of abortions in the country is an excellent goal for both left and right advocates. We have differences about how to pursue that goal, but that should not prevent either side from cooperating in areas where we can agree. And recognizing that there is something more to homosexuality than just a choice someone makes to be different may break down some of the barriers to cooperation in those areas as well.

Saperstein noted that the phenomenon of strange bedfellows began a decade ago on foreign policy. During the Clinton administration, the rock star Bono, former senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and religious leaders across the political spectrum teamed up to champion debt relief for Africa. Since Bush took office, broad religious coalitions have backed U.S. peacemaking efforts in Sudan, funding to combat AIDS and pressure on countries that restrict religious freedom.
What is new, the rabbi said, is the effort to forge such coalitions on domestic issues.
"For 25 years, evangelicals involved in conservative politics and mainline denominations involved in liberal politics really have been adversaries, both in politics and in the free market of ideas, and that continues because we have very different visions of religion in American public life, and very different views of the Constitution, and very different views on some core issues," he said.
"But right now on abortion, poverty, gay issues, the environment, there's a lot of talk about crossing the lines and finding common ground. There are elements of a common vision, but not yet common policy or legislative proposals."

Star power

Obi-wan Ginobili
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

The San Antonio Spurs are currently mopping the floor with the defending champion Detroit Pistons after nearly sweeping league MVP Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns. There should be little doubt that they are the best team in basketball right now.

So why then are we still seeing stories like this one?
Star-free finals are hurting NBA

Star-free finals? How can this be? The reigning champions of 2004 are playing the champions of 2003 and they are saying there are no “stars” on either team? How does one become a star if not by leading your team to the finals year after year? Tim Duncan is obviously a superstar and now Manu Ginobili is threatening to surpass him in star quality this season.
But the real problem turns out to be merchandise sales.

...The more immediate problem is merchandise sales, which are down 42 percent for the year to date.
"They're missing their chance to highlight their most popular players," said Neil Schwartz of SportsScanInfo, which tracks sales of sporting goods at 13,000 stores nationwide...
...part of the problem is that NBA fans have not warmed to the league's current crop of foreign-born stars...

Dallas star Dirk Nowitzki has the best-selling jersey of any foreign born star, but he's No. 24 in the rankings by SportsScan.
Houston center Yao Ming might be a huge star in China, but here there are 40 jerseys more popular than Yao's.
And both Nowitzki and Yao outsell any jersey worn by a Spur or Piston...

Spurs star Manu Ginobili, who was good enough to lead Argentina past the United States for the Olympic Gold Medal in 2004, isn't even on the radar on year-to-date sales.
"Pete Maravich sells more uniforms today than Ginobili," said Schwartz.

Perhaps that will soon change after the Spurs wrap up their third championship victory, but if not it would be a sad testament to the so-called fans of basketball. Why can’t people appreciate a team that just plays well together? Just because you don’t have one guy hogging the ball so he can score 50 points every game doesn’t mean you don’t have great players on the team.

These types of complaints are similar to the ones leveled against the New York Yankees during their run of three consecutive World Series titles in 1998-2000. That was probably one of the best teams in baseball from the past 50 years but you had no one other than perhaps Derek Jeter who stood out as a superstar. And now that the Yankees have filled their team with “superstars” they are not as good, so go figure.