Mitt Romney: willing to rule the world pro bono!

Multimillionaire candidate, Mitt Romney, says he's willing to donate his government salary to charity if elected president. Being a Republican, he wouldn't actually refuse the money (thus sparing the taxpayers $400,000 a year), but he'd find a good home for it.

I'm sure Mitt wants us to see this as his desire for selfless service to the country, but in a field populated with independently wealthy candidates, it's obvious they aren't in this for the paycheck. The thrill of power alone would be enough for many, but when a corporate candidate's primary concerns are deregulation of industry, curbing consumer lawsuits, and repealing investment taxes (as well as the "death tax"), it's hard to believe he hasn't looked at the bottom line.

The sad fact is that $400,000 is chump change for these guys. They're able to make much more money simply by changing the tax code.

Case in point: Dick Cheney, who in 2005 alone is reported to have saved almost $1.1 million due to the administration's tax cuts. That's more than 5 times his government salary. And he gets similar savings every year as long as those cuts remain in place.

This is also true for the rest of the CEO cabinet:

[from The Nation, 2001]: For instance, two retired CEOs, Dick Cheney and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, would have reaped a combined $4.9-$5.2 million if the tax cut had been in effect last year, largely because of the considerable parachute payments they received by leaving Halliburton and Alcoa, respectively. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has amassed a fortune with the help of prominent Republican campaign contributors, would have added between $590,000 and $890,000 to his take-home pay--more than three and a half times his $161,200 salary as a member of the Cabinet.

Why the others run

Those of you obsessing about the current poll positions of the Hillary vs. Obama or Thompson vs. McCain should remember that in December 2003 ( just weeks before the first votes in the Democratic primaries) the front-running candidates were:

Howard Dean, Joe Lieberman and Wesley Clark.

John Kerry, polling in the single digits, could easily have been described as an "also ran".

(Dean had a 9 point lead on his closest rival)


Update: Looks like kos was thinking along the same lines. At this point 4 years ago the rankings were:

Joe Lieberman, Richard Gephardt and John Kerry

How many of you remembered that Gephardt was even in the race?

France faces a particular threat from climate change

From the American Geophysical Union:

WASHINGTON – The number of dangerously hot days in the Mediterranean region could increase by 200 percent to 500 percent in this century, if rates of greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise rapidly, a new analysis finds. Of nations covered by the study, France would undergo the greatest upswing in high-temperature extremes. Mitigating these grim projections, reductions of greenhouse gas emissions may lessen the intensification of dangerously hot days by as much as 50 percent, the study shows.

In 2003, 35,000 Europeans died during a heat wave, including 15,000 in France.

2006 also had record temperatures, exacerbating a summer drought:

The heat wave hit just as farmers were beginning their wheat harvests in the midst of severe drought. The European Commission said southwestern France, southeastern Spain and central Italy are being particularly parched, with the French wheat harvest down by a fifth.

Michael Moore: pinko or capitalist genius?

Rob at SayAnything is outraged at Michael Moore's comments that he doesn't mind if people share copies of his movie "Sicko" over the internet.

“I don’t agree with the copyright laws and I don’t have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people,” said Moore when asked about pirating. “I make these books and movies and TV shows because I want things to change, so the more people that get to see them the better, so I’m happy when that happens. I think information and art, ideas should be shared.”

Rob has decided to call Moore's bluff by posting the whole thing on his site, expecting to be shut down immediately. I don't know if Moore's legal team have shut it down or if Rob's bandwidth is saturated, it wasn't playing when I dropped by.

But Rob shouldn't be so quick to outrage over Moore's "fair use" policy. After all, Moore is already a wealthy man, and there are lots of examples of good capitalists who give away things of value and still make a fortune. Google is the most obvious case in point: most of us use their services daily and never pay a dime for it. And the company’s founders are now billionaires.

Everyone with a blog also knows that they can get set up on a server for free - and I don’t see Blogger or Wordpress going out of business any time soon.

And of course, we’ve been listening to music free over the radio for about a hundred years now.

The key is to find something of greater value than the original item. Michael Moore is willing to trade some revenue for a bigger reputation and a bigger audience (including people like Rob and his readers who would likely never have paid to see a Michael Moore film in the first place).

Now if the music industry ever stops suing it’s customers for pirating music, they might figure out how to make some money on the internet, too.

h/t MvdG

A general is fired for his actions at Abu Ghraib

Unfortunately, it's the man who uncovered the abuse.

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.” - General Taguba, fired for exposing the torture at Abu Ghraib.

Taguba is just one of the many professionals fired by this administration for believing his loyalty lies with the country and it's ideals, not with the President. His fault lay in thinking that honor and integrity are words with meaning.

[The background materials from Gen. Taguba's investigation], including high-level policy memos, special investigations and witness testimony, describe attacks, prisoner riots, interrogation methods and the torture and deaths of detainees. They reveal that the torture and abuse of inmates at the prison by military police, exposed in April 2004 news accounts of the classified report, took place under the guidance of military intelligence with little direct supervision from overburdened senior officers.

Let's hope that, by the time George Bush leaves office, our military still has a few officers of his caliber.

Iraq's 9 to 10 year flu

One of the reasons for the continued failure of American policy in Iraq is that the administration constantly refers to the problem in the abstract - as a PR problem or in statistical terms.

So we get the latest nonsense from the commanding General:

"typically - I think historically, counter-insurgency operations have gone at least nine or ten years.” - General Petraeus

But the crisis in Iraq is not like a 7 day flu. Insurgencies don't just run their course and burn out naturally. You need to attack the root causes. His comment illustrates why the administration has always lacked a comprehensive strategy. They don't believe the details matter. They actually think we merely need to stay put for a decade or two and the problem will fix itself.

Via C&L

Ron Paul and the Republican "also rans"

The Washington Post, taking on the unexpected online popularity of Republican Ron Paul. describes him as an "also ran", which is an interesting choice of words considering the election is still nearly a year off and he is very obviously still running.

In fact, given the apparent desperation among Republican voters for someone else to enter the race, it might be reasonable to describe the entire field as "also rans".

As the CarpetBaggerReport put it:

Just below the surface, there’s a subtle GOP yearning for a trusted conservative who can raise a lot of money, appeal to a cross-section of the party’s factions, and be a credible general-election candidate. Allen and Santorum could have been the candidate, but they lost their re-election bids. Jeb would have been the go-to guy all along, except he said he wouldn’t run.

This month's favorite is Fred Thompson, who comes in just behind Rudy Giuliani in recent polls, despite the fact that few people could name his stance on any issue, or recall an event of any significance during his short Senate career (and probably couldn't even tell you which state he represented). Previous candidates for savior of the party include Michael Bloomberg, Newt Gingrich, Jeb Bush, and, absurdly, Dick Cheney (perhaps the only person in the country with lower approval ratings than the current president).

Ron Paul is written off as a fringe candidate with no real chance of winning the nomination. He is of little interest to the MSM who obsess about the horserace rather than the debate over where to lead the country.

But if the latest generic polls are any indication, the Republicans are headed for a resounding defeat in 2008. The party has sacrificed virtually all it's core principles in service to George Bush. Ron Paul is the only Republican candidate trying to define the purpose of the party itself.

As one of his supporters in the WP article says:

"I'm not supporting him because I think he could get the nomination. I'm supporting him because I think he can influence the national conversation about what the role of government is, how much power should government have over our lives, how much liberty should we give up for security. These are important issues, and frankly, no one's thinking about them as seriously and sincerely as Ron Paul."

Republican moderates calling for a return to the rule of law

Pete Abel over at Central Sanity drafts a letter to prospective Republican candidates and their leaders. Here's an excerpt:

We believe in the U.S. Constitution, its checks and balances, and importantly, the protections it affords our states and citizens. We further believe those protections should be consistently applied, both in times of war and of peace. The war on terror should not be a war on habeas corpus.

That paragraph certainly would've been a minimum standard for any American politician prior to 2001.

Unfortunately, now we've got people like this:

"I am a strong supporter of the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment and civil liberties. But you have no civil liberties if you are dead." (Senator Pat Roberts, former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman)

and this:

"Civil libertarians are in a state of denial." (Judge Richard Posner, author of Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency)

And of course this:

"Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do." (Rudy Giuliani, frontrunning candidate for the Republican presidential nomination)

Update: I'd almost forgotten about this one:

“There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.” (Attorney General Alberto Gonzales)

and this one:

"There ought to be limits to freedom" (Governor George Bush)

Really, you could keep this up all day

h/t GreenDreams

Secular and religious parties in Turkey continue to struggle over the presidency

Turkey, which faced the threat of a coup a few months ago, and continues in a face-off with Iraqi based PKK separatists, continues to be divided over how it's president will be elected.

The power struggle gripping Turkey became even more intense on Friday. Using the final political tools available to him, the country's secular president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, called for a referendum to determine whether his successor should be elected by popular vote instead of in parliament. At the same time, he said he would ask the country's high court to nullify a May 31 vote in parliament paving the way for a popular presidential election.

However the debate over the legalities of the conflict overshadows the fact that the AKP's pro-Islamic tendencies are massively popular in Turkey. The party has repeatedly insisted it is not interested in establishing an Islamic state and has led Turkey on a path of reforms in order to prepare the country for potential European Union membership. Nevertheless, Sezer has vetoed a record number of bills proposed by the AKP, many of them aimed at weakening the church-state separations put in place by modern-day Turkey's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

Turkish author Ahmet Altan describes the two societies in Turkey today:

The first group has been despised, discredited, and pushed around throughout the years of the Republic. Now this group has become politically organized. It is large. And it now has the political power to win every election.

The second group is in the minority. And it currently has no chance of ever winning another election.

In Altan's description, the first group are the religious members of society, the second group are the secularists.

Joe Lieberman gets defensive about his new call for war

He merely wants to strengthen diplomacy by threatening to bomb Iran.

At the lunch, Lieberman told the crowd his words helped encourage debate on how to handle the threat posed by Iran.

via My Left Nutmeg

The 2008 candidates: quotes on Osama bin Laden

John Edwards: When we had Osama bin Laden cornered, they left the job to the Afghan warlords. They then diverted their attention from the very people who attacked us, who were at the center of the war on terror, and so Osama bin Laden is still at large.

Dennis Kucinich: "When you [use assassination as a tool], it comes back at your country," he said. "I think Osama Bin Laden, if he's still alive, ought to be held to account in an international court of law...I would say I don't believe in assassination politics, and when you do that, you bring the assassination of our own leaders into play.

Barack Obama: "I think Dennis is right and I don't believe in assassinations, but Osama Bin Laden has declared war on us...under existing law, including international law, when you've got a military target like Bin Laden, you take him out," the freshman Illinois senator said.

Hillary Clinton: "I'm certain that if my husband and his national security team had been shown a classified report entitled ‘Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,'" Sen. Clinton said, "he would have taken it more seriously than history suggests it was taken by our current president and his national security team."

John McCain: "These people will follow us home," he said. "If you leave (Abu Musab) al-Zarqawi, if you leave (Osama) bin Laden, if you see what they're after -- this is now part of this titanic struggle between good and evil which will consume us for the rest of this century."

Mitt Romney: "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person"

Ron Paul: Osama bin Laden has expressed sadistic pleasure with our invasion of Iraq and was surprised that we served his interests above and beyond his dreams on how we responded after the 9/11 attacks.

Mitt Romney's empty foreign policy

From the Economist:

MITT ROMNEY'S foreign-policy essay in Foreign Affairs (by contrast with Barack Obama's) is a dull nostalgia-ridden safety-play which isn't going to get him into any serious arguments with anyone, mainly because it doesn't contain any worthwhile ideas, let alone proposals, and seems to have been written by committee.

Although, in between 9/11, the Nazi's, the "greatest generation" and Stalin, he did manage to blame Bill Clinton for destroying America's military (again).

Democratic Congress increases the budget for science

A House spending panel has exceeded President George W. Bush's 2008 budget request for four key science agencies. That's very good news, say science lobbyists, who nevertheless warned that the bill must still survive a threatened White House veto if its higher spending levels aren't first whittled down in the Senate. Science and math education is treated especially well, in line with the bipartisan push to improve teacher quality and raise student test scores.

At NOAA, the spending bill represents a pleasant reversal of the usual pattern, in which the president wants to lower the agency's budget and the House seeks further cuts. Instead, the overall spending level of $4 billion is $200 million above the president's request for a small increase.

NOAA, of course, is the agency responsible for studying the climate and warning of future hurricanes. The president recently proposed cutting the number of satellites monitoring the global climate.

Today's report contrasts dramatically with last year's proposal by the Republican led House:

NOAA Budget Slashed by $500 Million in House Bill

June 29, 2006 -- The U.S. House of Representatives passed an appropriations bill today that would cut approximately $500 million from the budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in fiscal year 2007.

The massive budget cut passed the House of Representatives less than one year after NOAA was widely praised for its success in forecasting hurricane Katrina and protecting thousands of people from death or injury. According to NOAA, the House bill would fail to fund day-to-day operations of the agency’s aircraft, which are the nation’s first line of defense for monitoring and forecasting hurricanes and tropical storms.

President Bush is now threatening to veto the Democratic bills for exceeding his requests, despite having signed off on trillions of dollars of deficit spending while his party was in control not to mention having recently demanded (and received) a $100 billion war supplemental.

Barack Obama would focus the war back onto al Qaeda

From his essay in the Foreign Affairs:

Iraq was a diversion from the fight against the terrorists who struck us on 9/11, and incompetent prosecution of the war by America's civilian leaders compounded the strategic blunder of choosing to wage it in the first place. We have now lost over 3,300 American lives, and thousands more suffer wounds both seen and unseen.

We must refocus our efforts on Afghanistan and Pakistan -- the central front in our war against al Qaeda -- so that we are confronting terrorists where their roots run deepest. Success in Afghanistan is still possible, but only if we act quickly, judiciously, and decisively. We should pursue an integrated strategy that reinforces our troops in Afghanistan and works to remove the limitations placed by some NATO allies on their forces. Our strategy must also include sustained diplomacy to isolate the Taliban and more effective development programs that target aid to areas where the Taliban are making inroads.

People around the world have heard a great deal of late about freedom on the march. Tragically, many have come to associate this with war, torture, and forcibly imposed regime change. To build a better, freer world, we must first behave in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people. This means ending the practices of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law.

New "ministry of propaganda" to win the war on terror

The Bush administration thinks every problem can be solved with a good P.R. strategy. Having failed in their attempts to spread happy thoughts through planted stories, hired journalists or politicizing the "Voice of America" broadcasts, they now plan to create a center in the State Department to "counter terrorists messages".

It will develop messages "to undermine and marginalize extremist ideology and propaganda" and "aggressively rebut and efficiently respond to actions and statements by terrorist groups and leaders across the world."

The recommendation is one of several in a 34-page strategy document, which was completed last month by Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes, a longtime confidante of President Bush. It has been shared with some members of Congress but hasn't been formally released.

They never seem to realize that our actions speak for us. And our actions lately haven't been much to brag about:

"From a public diplomacy standpoint, I don't know how you come out and talk about all the stuff you do, for human rights, to support democracy. . . . When people hear that, they stop and say, `What about Abu Ghraib? What about Guantanamo?" said Price Floyd, who was the State Department's director of media affairs until earlier this year.

A sickening sign of "hope" in Iraq

Only in the twisted Iraq war debate, where the president and his allies are constantly trying to lower expectations, is carnage considered a cause for hope.

The battle in Amiriyah, currently Baghdad's most dangerous district, lasted two days. Afterwards, the dead littered the streets and even the last inhabitants of the Maluki mosque had fled. No one counted the actual number of casualties, since the Iraqi police, army and US military no longer come to this part of Amiriyah. Here terror, insurgency, murder and violence are left to fester undisturbed.

Still, the carnage in Amiriyah is a cause of hope for some. Until recently, the Iraqi branch of the global terrorist network al-Qaida had good ties to the Islamic Army, a homegrown radical Sunni outfit taking part in the country's insurgency. The two groups used to congratulate each other on their respective Web sites whenever they managed to blow up a US Humvee or a group of Iraqi police recruits.

The Iraqi government and the US military have both acknowledged the new internal Sunni conflict with cautious optimism. They consider al-Qaida to be the worst of the problems plaguing the war-torn country. The terrorist offspring of the late Islamist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- who was killed last year -- aren't interested in Iraq as a nation, nor do they care about the plight of the Iraqi people. What they want is the civil war that they've successfully fueled through a series of attacks and suicide bombings.

The parties in Iraq have never fallen into the simplistic categories defined by the neocons. There is no insurgency in Iraq, not if it's defined as a single entity bent on fighting the Iraqi government. There are dozens of factions, each fighting for political power. Many of those factions also have representatives in the Iraqi parliament itself. Alliances are formed and dissolved constantly. Whether it's Chalabi playing the Americans and the Iranians against each other, or the simmering tensions between Shiite factions, or fighting between various Sunni factions and the foreign al Qaeda contingent, news of more violence is confirmation that the country is collapsing, not evidence of a successful American strategy.


Update: Tony Snow confirms that, yes, the Bush administration does see the increase in violence as a sign that their strategy is succeeding.

Are we driving our adversaries into each others arms?

The 9/11 attacks put the U.S. and Iran in the unusual position of being on the same side against multiple adversaries, the Taliban, al Qaeda and Sunni dominated Iraq. Because of this common interest, Iran was an American asset in the days after the fall of the Taliban.

Opinions differ wildly over how much help the Iranians actually were on the ground. But what is beyond doubt is how critical they were to stabilizing the country after the fall of Kabul.

This could've been an opportunity to end the decades long hostility between the two countries, but the hawks in both nations have a vested interest in keeping the conflict alive.

Instead of diplomacy, we've had years of sabre rattling, starting with the declaration of the "Axis of Evil", in which Iran and North Korea were apparently included simply for dramatic effect:

Tehran backed up the political support with financial muscle: at a donor's conference in Tokyo, Iran pledged $500 million (at the time, more than double the Americans') to help rebuild Afghanistan. In a pattern that would become familiar, however, a chill quickly followed the warming in relations. Barely a week after the Tokyo meeting, Iran was included with Iraq and North Korea in the "Axis of Evil." Michael Gerson, now a NEWSWEEK contributor, headed the White House speechwriting shop at the time. He says Iran and North Korea were inserted into Bush's controversial State of the Union address in order to avoid focusing solely on Iraq.

Given a president who thinks that open dialogue is a sign of weakness, and sends his vice president to strut on an aircraft carrier and talk about regime change, it's got to occur to the Mullah's that if Iraq ever emerges from chaos, they'll have 150,000 hostile forces on their border with nothing to keep them occupied.

So while John McCain sings "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran", Rudy Giuliani speculates about dropping tactical nuclear weapons and Joe Lieberman openly advocates "limited air strikes", we start to hear that Iran may hope to keep Iraq destabilized.

And now we see claims that Iran may be aiding it's old nemesis the Taliban:

Experts say a strengthened Taliban would benefit Tehran in a number of ways. Peter Tomsen, former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, says a weakened Afghan state lessens the likelihood it can become a U.S. ally against Iran. By maintaining a certain level of instability, he says, “it keeps us tied down. After all, we have airbases in Afghanistan where we could mount attacks on Iran.” Some analysts call it “managed chaos,” a strategy they say is similar to the one Iran employs in Iraq. Abetting the Taliban also boosts Iran’s leverage at a time when it is under pressure to end its uranium-enrichment program. “It’s saying, ‘If you push us on the nuclear issue, we can make life hell for you not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan,’” says Amin Tarzi, an Afghan expert at Radio Free Liberty/Radio Liberty.

Now that the diplomats have been sidelined, and we have a leadership which talks publicly about opening a third front in a war that's already a fiasco, would anyone be surprised that Iran finds it in it's interests to keep the "Great Satan" distracted?

Hillary Clinton is the only presidential candidate to vote on Gonzales

Republicans successfully blocked the no confidence vote on Alberto Gonzales. 53 Senators voted for cloture (and presumably would've voted "no confidence") 38 Senators voted against.

7 members missed the vote. 5 of them are presidential candidates, including both Republicans (McCain and Brownback), and Democrats Obama, Dodd and Biden.

Of the 6 presidential candidates in the Senate, Hillary Clinton was the only one who voted (voting for cloture along with the remaining Democrats and 7 Republicans).

Here's Senator Clinton's statement on the US Attorney scandal:

Why should Gonzales resign? Because he is at the center of a widening scandal over the firing of several U.S. attorneys -- firings we now know to be political. These attacks on the impartiality of the federal government's prosecutors are a genuine threat to the foundations of our justice system.

It's so bad that one U.S. attorney in Arkansas was fired to make room for a former aide to Karl Rove.

Gonzales's chief of staff has already resigned over the firings, but the attorney general himself is ultimately responsible for what happened. Join me in asking for him to resign now.

So where were the other candidates? Here are statements from each of them over the past few months:

Obama:

“I voted against the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General because I was concerned he would act as the President’s lawyer, not the people’s lawyer. Mr. Sampson’s testimony underscores my concern that Attorney General Gonzales subverted justice to promote a political agenda. I renew my call for Alberto Gonzales to be replaced as Attorney General with an advocate who will defend and promote the rights and liberties of the American people.”

Dodd:

Senator Dodd characterized Mr. Gonzales as unfit to serve as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, citing cronyism, misleading Congressional testimony, and an inability to defend and protect the Constitution. Mr. Wolfowitz’s violation of the World Bank’s ethical and governance rules, as well as a World Bank ethics committee investigation, conflicts with the Bank’s global mission of reducing poverty, aid development, and promoting good governance in all nations in which it operates.

Biden:

"When I voted against then-White House Counsel Gonzales's nomination to be Attorney General, I expressed concern about his ability to transition from the first job to the second...

"My skepticism has been confirmed by his conduct. This Attorney General has remained the President's lawyer at the expense of fulfilling his duty to be the American people's lawyer. Attorney General Gonzales should step down."

Brownback:

"Although his answers suggested that there were serious managerial issues at the Department of Justice, I did not see a factual basis to call for his resignation. As for whether the Attorney General should resign, that is a question I leave to him and to the President." Brownback is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

McCain:

WASHINGTON -- Presidential contender John McCain joined the growing number of Republicans calling for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to step down in the furor over the firings of eight federal prosecutors.

"I am very disappointed in his performance," McCain, R-Ariz., said Wednesday when asked about the attorney general in an interview with CNN's Larry King. "I think loyalty to the president should enter into his calculations."

Bottom feeders?

That's the header on an MSNBC story on the current state of the housing market. Potential buyers are described as greedy schemers just waiting for disaster to strike the unfortunate homeowner.

Foreclosures rising? Great. Cash-strapped sellers pressured into lowering prices because they can’t find buyers? Even better.

“Somebody else’s misfortune could be my happy ending,” said Montufar, 27, a resident of suburban Los Angeles.

Like most reports on the economy, tales of the housing prices remaining flat or even falling are met with dread. And I'm sure it's worrying, if you're desperate to sell your house.

But lots of people aren't merely waiting like vultures on the sidelines. They're simply priced out of the current market.

Like this person:

“At this point, I’ve got no choice but to wait and see how low they get so that it gets to a point where I can afford it,” he said.

and this one:

Still, she had to go to Fitchburg, some 40 miles from Arlington, to find a home that suited her budget and need for space. She settled on a $199,000 condominium.

In California, where home values more than tripled since 1995, sales have been lagging and price appreciation has slowed or fallen in major metro areas.

Does that make them bottom feeders?

The Republican war

Fouad Ajami in the WSJ:

Mr. President, the one defining mark of your own moral outlook is the distinction between friend and foe, a refusal to be lulled into moral and political compromises. Your critics have made much of this and have seen it as self-righteousness and moral absolutism, but this has guided you through the great, divisive issues faced by our country over these last, searing years. Scooter Libby was a soldier in your--our--war in Iraq, he was chief of staff to a vice president who had become a lightning rod to the war's critics.

Keep in mind, the foe in this case was a covert CIA agent working for the United States to prevent the nation's enemies from obtaining nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

The friend was a partisan hit man.

In Ajami's mind the enemy isn't bin Laden or Saddam. It's the CIA the State Department, and the Democrats.

In "The Soldier's Creed," there is a particularly compelling principle: "I will never leave a fallen comrade." .... They have done it, we know, to give heart to those who embark on a common mission, to give them confidence that they will not be given up under duress.

Libby betrayed his oath to defend the country when it conflicted with his loyalty to the president. He sacrificed a real soldier to do it.

Turkey and the Kurds still on the edge

CIZRE, Turkey, June 7 — Turkey is stepping up its presence along its border with Iraq to levels not seen in years in an effort to root out Kurdish separatist guerrillas who take refuge in northern Iraq.

And while reports this week of a large Turkish military push into Iraq seem to be untrue, the army is acting with greater urgency here in the southeast, home to a large part of the Kurdish minority, which accounts for one-fifth of Turkey’s population.

That group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, has carried out violent attacks in Turkey since the 1980s, fighting for a separate Kurdish state. It has recently stepped up attacks against Turkish soldiers. Militants killed seven on Monday by hiding in a food delivery vehicle. Three forest rangers were killed Thursday in a land-mine attack.

However amplified the oratory, the militants pose a serious threat. In April and May alone, 30 Turkish soldiers were killed in attacks, and in the first nine months of last year, about 600 people were killed in militant-related violence, according to official Turkish figures. Turkey is trying to become a member of the European Union, and navigating a violent fight with armed separatists has proved difficult.

Rudy Giuliani would nuke Iran

This must be the first campaign when the leading candidate in a major party has come out both for legalized torture and for dropping the Bomb, yet isn't considered certifiably insane.

MR. BLITZER: Do you think if you were president of the United States and it came down to Iran having a nuclear bomb, which you say is unacceptable, you would authorize the use of tactical nuclear weapons?

MR. GIULIANI: Part of the premise of talking to Iran has to be that they have to know very clearly that it is unacceptable to the United States that they have nuclear power. I think it could be done with conventional weapons, but you can’t rule out anything and you shouldn’t take any option off the table.

And during the debate the other night, the Democrats seemed to be back in the 1990s. They don’t seem to have gotten beyond the Cold War. Iran is a threat, a nuclear threat, not just because they can deliver a nuclear warhead with missiles. They’re a nuclear threat because they are the biggest state sponsor of terrorism and they can hand nuclear materials to terrorists. And we saw just last week in New York an attempt by Islamic terrorists to attack JFK Airport; three weeks ago, an attempt to attack Fort Dix

For the record, Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, nor missiles to carry them. They don't even have nuclear power.

And of course, the men arrested in the plots against the JFK airport and Fort Dix had no links to either al Qaeda, or Iran. And they didn't actually have any weapons with which to carry out their planned attacks, nevermind nuclear ones.

Tommy Thompson has 2 spectacularly stupid plans for Iraq

Joining the growing ranks of Republicans who would allow the Iraqi prime minister to decide American foreign policy, Tommy Thompson thinks Iraqi voters, (rather than American ones) should decide on the fate of the U.S. military deployment:

MR. BLITZER: All right. Let me bring in Governor Thompson. Go ahead, same question to you. If General Petraeus says it’s not working in September, what should the U.S. do then?

MR. THOMPSON: The first thing the president should do is demand the al-Maliki government to vote as to whether or not they want the United States to stay in Iraq. We’ve been there four years. Give the government the responsibility of voting. If they vote yes, how are they going to help us win this war? And if they vote no, we should redeploy our forces outside.

Secondly, there are 18 territories in Iraq, geographically defined. Those 18 territories, just like 50 states in America, should elect their state leaders. And if they do so, the Shi’ites will elect Shi’ites, Sunnis will elect Sunnis, Kurds will elect Kurds. And you know something? People will go to those particular territories and you get rid of the civil war, internecine.

Mr Thompson might want to read up on the breakup of India and Pakistan, not to mention Yugoslavia. A plan that calls for the voluntary ethnic-cleansing of Iraq would be a disaster. Every place it's happened has seen brutal violence.

Free Scooter!

Mitt Romney, man of principal.

MR. ROMNEY: This is one of those situations where I go back to my record as governor. I didn’t pardon anybody as governor because I didn’t want to overturn a jury.

But he says he might make an exception for a man who outed a CIA agent to as part of a political hit job.


Also answering the question of whether they'd pardon Scooter Libby:

Duncan Hunter gave a rambling non answer, then said no, then said maybe.

Ron Paul and Jim Gilmore gave a simple 'No'.

McCain won't comment until the ongoing appeals are over.

Former prosecutor and overall hardnose, Rudy Giuliani, who made a name enforcing laws against spitting on the sidewalk, thought the prosecution of Libby was incomprehensible.

Brownback and Tancredo said yes.

And Tommy Thompson complained that Clinton only lost his law license, so I guess he feels the Republicans are owed one "gimme" on the perjury charge.

Mitt Romney, you're no Harry Truman

From the last Republican debate:

MR. BLITZER: In 1994 you were quoted as saying that you advocated gays being able to serve openly and honestly in our nation’s military. The question to you is, do you still feel that way?

MR. ROMNEY: No, actually, when I first heard of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, I thought it sounded awfully silly. I didn’t think that would be very effective. And I turned out to be wrong. It’s been the policy now in the military for what, 10, 15 years, and it seems to be working. And I agree with what Mayor Giuliani said: that this is not the time to put in place a major change, a social experiment, in the middle of a war going on. I wouldn’t change it at this point. We can look at down the road.

My guess is he'd feel differently if Mormons were being excluded from military service, but as Matthew Yglesias asks, didn't Harry Truman desegregate the military during the height of the Korean war?

Why yes. Yes he did.

Turkey is threatening to invade Iraq

As Iraq continues to fracture and Americans are focused on battles between the Sunni-Shiite factions, many forget that the Kurdish areas are also sources of conflict which could draw Iraq's neighbors into the war.

Turkish patience is running out over the cross-border raids by Kurdish militants based in northern Iraq. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has urged caution, but Ankara is openly debating an incursion to root out the rebels. And it plans to take its case for action to the UN this week.

The signs have become increasingly ominous. For weeks, Turkey has been building up its military presence on its south-eastern border with Iraq in response to cross-border raids by Kurdish rebels. Potentially more concerning, Ankara has been openly considering an incursion into Kurdish-dominated northern Iraq in an attempt to root out members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) based there.

Turkey, a NATO ally, striving for membership in the EU, battled with Kurdish separatists for decades and worry that an independent Kurdish state on it's border would threaten to provoke a civil war. The PKK was a particular threat.

The main characteristic of PKK attacks was the use of indiscriminate violence, and PKK guerrillas did not hesitate to kill Kurds whom they considered collaborators. Targeted in particular were the government's paid militia, known as village guards, and schoolteachers accused of promoting forced assimilation. The extreme violence of the PKK's methods enabled the government to portray the PKK as a terrorist organization and to justify its own policies, which included the destruction of about 850 border villages and the forced removal of their populations to western Turkey.

Iran and Syria have similar worries.

Russ Feingold defends Harry Reid

“[Reid] is having a serious problem with members of his own caucus who simply are buying into these ridiculous arguments of [Vice President] Dick Cheney that somehow we’re trying to take funds away from the troops under Feingold-Reid,” Feingold said. “That’s absolutely false.”

Sam Brownback demands that science affirm his religion

In an editorial rejecting the fundamentals of evolutionary science, Sam Brownback declares that he's ready to accept all scientific theories that reinforce his own personal beliefs.

While no stone should be left unturned in seeking to discover the nature of man’s origins, we can say with conviction that we know with certainty at least part of the outcome. Man was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the created order. Those aspects of evolutionary theory compatible with this truth are a welcome addition to human knowledge. Aspects of these theories that undermine this truth, however, should be firmly rejected as an atheistic theology posing as science.

George Bush would end the war if Maliki asked

Apparently, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell isn't the only Republican who believes that the Iraqi government trumps the U.S. Congress on matters of national security.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. You say you want nothing short of victory, that leaving Iraq would be catastrophic; you once again mentioned al Qaeda. Does that mean that you are willing to leave American troops there, no matter what the Iraqi government does? I know this is a question we've asked before, but you can begin it with a "yes" or "no."

THE PRESIDENT: We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation. Twelve million people went to the polls to approve a constitution. It's their government's choice. If they were to say, leave, we would leave.

I'd thought McConnell was just being obtuse when he made his comment, but apparently this really is the view of our leaders.

Via Americablog

John Edwards pulls no punches: accuses Democrats of "caving" on Iraq

By aggressively challenging Congress when it became apparent they would strip timelines from the Iraq funding bill, John Edwards earned considerable respect from voters who want and end to the war.

Unswayed by Harry Reid's pleas for patience, he's now scolding the Democratic leadership for giving in to Bush's veto threat:

"Washington failed America today when Congress surrendered to the president's demand for another blank check that prolongs the war in Iraq. It is time for this war to end."

Democratic Senators to base: Drop Dead!

In what could be interpreted as a slap at the Democratic base, 37 Democratic Senators voted for what is almost universally agreed to be a complete capitulation to George Bush's Iraq war demands.

Only 11 of the 14 Senate no votes were Democrats and 3 of those are running for President in 2008. (always the contrarian, Joe Biden voted for it).

Ron Paul, one of only 4 Republicans to vote against the stripped supplemental

While 86 House Democrats and 37 Democratic Senators folded under George Bush's veto threat, Ron Paul continued to buck his party and hold to his opposition to continuing the Iraq war. Representative Duncan of Tennessee and Senators Burr and Coburn were the only other Republicans voting against the stripped down supplemental bill.

Interestingly, presidential candidate Brownback missed this vote.

McCain spotted at Capitol, decides to vote on Iraq supplemental

Despite previously declaring that votes on the Iraq war are meaningless, John McCain decided to make an appearance at the latest roll-call in order to give George Bush his blank check. McCain has been getting a bit of flak for missing an extraordinary number of votes on issues as mundane as funding his own Iraq war surge plan, to allowing Medicare to negotiate cheaper drug prices.

No word if this shows a new civic mindedness on his part, or if he was just in town for a fundraiser.

Congress declares itself irrelevant

With nearly 60% of the country backing their position against an unpopular war and a president who's approval rating is hitting the high 20's, Democratic leaders simply didn't have the stomach to fight on the Iraq supplemental. George Bush will get his blank check, stripped of all but a few token benchmarks, which can be ignored at his sole discretion.

Reid called the benchmark language "extremely weak," but noted that Bush had initially demanded a bill with no strings attached. "For heaven's sake, look where we've come," Reid said. "It's a lot more than the president ever expected he'd have to agree to."

Some Democrats will try to argue that this is Bush's war, but it isn't. It's our war. And it became their responsibility the day they took over their majorities in the House and Senate. They've succeeded in drafting a bill that Bill Frist would be proud of, and openly argue that they are powerless to do more than rubber stamp the president's request. That's not what they were elected for and they're foolish if they think they'll get any credit for wringing their hands on the sidelines while the situation worsens.

They’ve guaranteed that instead of resolving this question, now, we’ll be having this debate all over again in September, at which point Bush will again promise to veto any restrictions the Congress tries to set. And of course, he’ll have every reason to believe that he’ll be successful.

"Some will say no, some will say yes," the official involved in the negotiations said of rank and file Democrats. "It's not a perfect bill. Nobody got what they wanted. But it is the beginning of the end of George W. Bush's policy in Iraq."

One person got exactly what he wanted. He's declared that he listens to nobody and you've proven he doesn't have to.



Update: According to Jerome Armstrong, Reid was handicapped by the defections of the two Republican Senators, Hagel and Smith, leaving him with only 48 votes for the withdrawal language. If true, it's yet another case of Republican Senators caving in to the president despite their public appeals for a change of course.

Fundamentalist terrorist captured at Falwell's funeral

Not exactly the 5th column we were all warned about, but a student from Jerry Falwell's Liberty University appears to have missed some lessons on turning the other cheek.

The student, 19-year-old Mark D. Uhl of Amissville, Va., reportedly told authorities that he was making the bombs to stop protesters from disrupting the funeral service. The devices were made of a combination of gasoline and detergent, a law enforcement official told ABC News' Pierre Thomas. They were "slow burn," according to the official, and would not have been very destructive.

Three other suspects are being sought, one of whom is a soldier from Fort Benning, Ga., and another is a high school student.

No word if he's a radical Christianist. But never mind that, I heard Barack Obama went to school at a madrassa!

Ron Paul, the Howard Dean of the 2008 campaign

Andrew Sullivan, discussing the increasing online popularity of Republican candidate Ron Paul makes an interesting comparison:

Paul also has serious online support. Like Howard Dean – another crank – Ron Paul’s supporters are overrepresented on the web. They blasted all the online polls about the debate, and Paul thereby “won” or came second in the debate, according to the ABC News poll, the Fox News poll and almost every other online poll out there. His campaign has deployed YouTube to great effect as well, and the hostility of the Republican establishment has only given his little political insurgency more oxygen.

Like Dean, Ron Paul is considered a crank because of his views on the Iraq war and his rejection of the idea that 9/11 changed everything. The fiscally conservative, gun-toting, small state governor had been branded a liberal nutcase, only when he declared that Saddam Hussein's capture didn't make America safer, that Iraq never posed a threat to the United States and that the Iraq war was a huge distraction from the fight against bin Laden. The fact that he thought the Patriot Act was an assault on civil liberties only reinforced the view that Dean was a left-wing lunatic.

Dean became popular because he was the only voice in the Democratic race willing to challenge Bush directly on the war. For that he was branded a radical, and his fellow Democrats issued the fiercest attacks. John Kerry demanded he apologize for his comment about Saddam - just as Giuliani now demands Ron Paul apologize for his views on the causes of 9/11.

Dean lost his bid, but he was the catalyst that showed Democrats how to challenge a disastrous policy. By 2006 his views were shared by the overwhelming majority of Democrats and independents and helped lead to their victory at the polls. (Although he'll be branded a crank forever).

Ron Paul now stands as the only Republican who'll challenge the president directly on the war. Let's hope he can be the catalyst that brings his party back to reason as well.

Still not listening

Nothing is off the table. - Harry Reid

Everything is off the table. - George Bush

Guess which is the stronger negotiating position.

Compromise involves two parties.

If the Democrats don't realize that, George Bush will continue to treat members of Congress like annoying children. And Iraq will continue to dissolve into chaos while we all watch.

Democrats attempt to use Republican rubber stamp & get burned

In a baffling attempt to completely cave in to president Bush on the Iraq supplemental bill, Democratic leaders tried to draft a bill that fully funded the surge strategy including a timeline without any teeth.

The president, illustrating that his idea of compromise is receiving a blank check, complained that the completely meaningless clause was too restrictive.

Democrats said they offered to strip billions of dollars in non-military spending from the bill and indicated that they would accept giving the president the option to waive any withdrawal deadlines. But those offers to compromise were rejected, Democrats said.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), however, said he was shocked that Democrats insisted on keeping a withdrawal timeline in the bill.

John Boehner's idea of a tough negotiating position, is of course to include benchmarks with no teeth. And if the president's plan doesn't achieve those benchmarks?

A key Republican House leader said Sunday that if President Bush's current strategy in Iraq is not working by fall, members of Congress will demand to know what the White House's next plan is.

Tough stuff, John. Tough stuff.

Cheney claims that outing covert agents is part of his official duties

From the Washington Post:

Cheney's attorney went further, arguing that Cheney is legally akin to the president because of his unique government role and has absolute immunity from any lawsuit.

You're probably thinking, "What about Bill Clinton? Didn't he get sued?" Not to worry. Cheney's lawyers claim that was different, because Clinton's argument was frivolous and self-serving.

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates asked: "So you're arguing there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- these officials could have said to reporters that would have been beyond the scope of their employment," whether the statements were true or false?

"That's true, Your Honor. Mr. Wilson was criticizing government policy," said Jeffrey S. Bucholtz, deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil division. "These officials were responding to that criticism."

I suppose if they'd had Wilson taken out and shot, they'd consider it part of their official duties, too.

Did the admirals stop a push for war against Iran?

Possibly, if you believe this story:

Fallon's refusal to support a further naval buildup in the Gulf reflected his firm opposition to an attack on Iran and an apparent readiness to put his career on the line to prevent it. A source who met privately with Fallon around the time of his confirmation hearing and who insists on anonymity quoted Fallon as saying that an attack on Iran "will not happen on my watch".

Asked how he could be sure, the source says, Fallon replied, "You know what choices I have. I'm a professional." Fallon said that he was not alone, according to the source, adding, "There are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box."

The crazies would undoubtedly include this guy:

We must attack Iran before it gets the bomb

A nuclear Iran would be as dangerous as “Hitler marching into the Rhineland” in 1936 and should be prevented by Western military strikes if necessary, according to a leading hawk who recently left the Bush administration.

In the article, Bolton snipes at Tony Blair for attempting diplomacy with the Iranians and complains that Condoleeza Rice has fallen under the spell of the State Department like Colin Powell before her.

His animus towards the State Department building in Foggy Bottom can seem is only a shade less acute. Bolton sees himself as a warrior fighting the kind of bureaucratic inertia and group think which, he laments, has now taken hold of the Bush administration.

h/t ThinkProgress, Mvdg

5 out of 7 Republican candidates asked, endorse torture

In the recent FOX news presidential debate, Brit Hume created a fictional scenario straight from the pages of 24, a classic "ticking time bomb" plot: American shopping centers are hit by suicide bombers, hundreds dead. Other attackers captured and taken to Gitmo. Will you use enhanced interrogation techniques to prevent a second attack?

(Brit assures us that the best minds in the intelligence industry think these are the most valuable tools available - if not necessarily legal)

Only John McCain and Ron Paul were willing to call this for what it is. It's torture. McCain rejected it explicitly, while Ron Paul made an exception for the fantasy scenario.

McCAIN:We do not torture people.

It's not about the terrorists, it's about us. It's about what kind of country we are. And a fact: The more physical pain you inflict on someone, the more they're going to tell you what they think you want to know.

Rudy Giuliani, the man who survived 9/11, disagrees. He doesn't want to see another 3000 dead.

GIULIANI: I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation to use every method they could think of. It shouldn't be torture, but every method they can think of --

Of course, anything that doesn't cause organ failure is no longer considered torture. Giuliani gives waterboarding the thumbs up.

Romney isn't so coy. In fact he's nearly giddy at the idea. Apparently worried that the ACLU will try to spring bin Laden's boys, he puts them safely in an expanded Guantanamo, far from prying eyes.

ROMNEY: I want them on Guantanamo, where they don't get the access to lawyers they get when they're on our soil. I don't want them in our prisons. I want them there.

Some people have said, we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo... And enhanced interrogation techniques have to be used -- not torture but enhanced interrogation techniques, yes.

Senator Brownback assures us that he won't let the U.N. get in the way of American safety and he'll worry about the morality of his decision after the crisis is over.

BROWNBACK: I will do it. I'll move aggressively forward on it. If we have to later ask and say, "Well, it shouldn't quite have been done this way or that way," that's the way it is.

Hunter and Tancredo, apparently worried that Mitt is stealing the John Wayne vote, decide not to mince words.

HUNTER: I would say to SECDEF, in terms of getting information that would save American lives, even if it involves very high-pressure techniques, one sentence: Get the information. Have it back within an hour, and let's act on it.

TANCREDO: Well, let me just say that it's almost unbelievable to listen to this in a way. We're talking about it in such a theoretical fashion. You say that nuclear devices have gone off in the United States, more are planned, and we're wondering about whether waterboarding would be a -- a bad thing to do? I'm looking for "Jack Bauer" at that time, let me tell you. (Laughter, applause.)

Hume didn't actually mention nukes, and of course the question was theoretical, but Tancredo seems to know who's network he's on.

Unfortunately, it's left to Paul to point out the obvious. Brit Hume is asking questions in a fantasy world, while a real war rages on.

PAUL: [Y]ou know, I think it's interesting talking about torture here in that it's become enhanced interrogation technique. It sounds like Newspeak.

Nobody's for the torture, and I think that's important. But as far as taking care of a problem like this, ... If we're under imminent attack, the president can take that upon himself to do it.

[W]e forgot about [Osama], and now we're over in Iraq in a war that's bogging us down, and we have forgotten about dealing with the people that attacked us. And here you have a hypothetical attack that you're dealing with; we ought to be dealing with the one we have right now on our hands.

Romney accuses McCain of dealing with the enemy

In the latest debate, the gloves came off, as Mitt Romney accused John McCain of collaboration with the worst of the worst (Democrats, specifically).

Romney reveled in tying McCain to two of the more liberal members of the Senate, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), with whom McCain is working on comprehensive immigration reform, and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), with whom McCain has reformed the campaign finance system.

“My fear is that McCain-Kennedy would do to immigration what McCain-Feingold has done to campaign finance and money in politics, and that’s bad,” Romney said.

Tough stuff in a Republican primary campaign. Kennedy in particular is seen as the definition of the bleeding heart liberal, reviled in all corners of Red State America - tie a candidate too closely to him and he's sunk.

Of course, it's a dangerous strategy for the former Governor of Massachusetts. Forced to deal daily with a Democratic State House in what is widely considered the most liberal state in the Union, he's bound to have skeletons in his own closet. And some of those skeletons tie him directly to the state's senior Senator, Teddy Kennedy.

The two men joined together on issues as provincial as stopping a local wind farm:

Kennedy said yesterday that he would have preferred to give Romney veto power over the Cape Wind project to set a precedent in which offshore energy projects can't move forward without a state's consent.

to joining together to squeeze more money from the federal government:

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D) met with HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt on Tuesday to push for the continuation of a state Medicaid waiver that amounts to $585 million in federal Medicaid matching funds annually

and of course, on Romney's claim to fame, Universal Health Care:

Whereas before, Romney was touting the initiative as an example of his ability to deliver as a Republican who works with Democrats to get good things done, now he's making statements like "I was a little concerned at the signing ceremony when Ted Kennedy showed up."

All perfectly reasonable, of course. It's what politicians do to get things done. It's why arch conservatives including Orrin Hatch, Bill Frist and George Bush have joined forces with Kennedy over the years.

That point is bound to be lost on the Republican primary voters, however.

From the Kangaroo Court: if at first you don't succeed...

From the court that brought you a plea bargain so secret, the prosecutors didn't even know about it, comes an even more ingenious legal theory. If a tribunal accidentally finds the accused not guilty, just try again.

If Pentagon officials disagree with the result of a hearing, they order a second one, or even a third, until they approve of the finding.

Detainees’ lawyers say the issue of the repeated hearings offers the starkest proof that the Pentagon set up a system of military tribunals not to find the truth about the detainees but to ratify its own conclusion that the military had seized the right people.

Another aspect to the case in the appeals court that has caused public debate involves the government’s request that the court tighten restrictions on lawyers for the detainees. One proposal would have limited the number of visits the lawyers could make to Guantánamo, a request that the Justice Department withdrew Friday.

As set up by the Pentagon, the tribunals do not permit detainees to have lawyers at the hearings or to see much of the evidence against them.

Oddly, Paul Wolfowitz, famous for helping to plan the Iraq war and for the current World Bank scandal, was involved in this decision too.

h/t ThinkProgress

The First Amendment, still the best after 216 years

via C&L, The Guardian attempts to report on the current state of the case against David Keogh and Leo O'Connor, recently convicted of violating Britain's Official Secrets Act.

I say attempts to report, because the absurdity of an Official Secrets Act in a free society leads to pretzel twisting logic like the court's ruling that journalists covering the trial cannot actually mention what it's all about.

We cannot report allegations about what the document contains even though they have been reported time and time again ... by the media, including British newspapers.

That's not strictly true. The judge said we can repeat those allegations but only if they appear on a different page of a newspaper than any reference to the trial or the document which was at the centre of it. We can also report, since it was said in open court, that the Guardian's counsel, Anthony Hudson, argued that it would be inappropriate to restrain publication of the allegation already in the public domain claiming that President Bush suggested that the Arabic TV station al-Jazeera should be bombed.

The background on the story is that Keogh and O'Connor disclosed the minutes of a meeting between Tony Blair and George Bush. Bush apparently speculated about bombing Al Jazeera offices and Blair advised against it. (Al Jazeera has occasionally been hit by U.S. fire)

Europeans and people in most other nations do not have the same freedom of speech we take for granted in the United States, much to the chagrin of the "limits to freedom" crowd.

Of course, in most cases, the real purpose of state secrets is to keep powerful people safe from the rabble:

He, and the government as a whole, seemed particularly concerned about the need to protect Bush from embarrassment, (the prosecution conceded that no "actual damage" had been caused by the leak) and to show the White House that Whitehall is determined to try and keep secrets even though Washington cannot.

Turkish voters will elect their president directly

Under threat of a coup, the Turkish parliament has overwhelmingly decided to have the voters choose their president:

Turkish presidents, traditionally, are elected in parliament -- but parliament has just voted to give that decision to the people. Behind the reform is an old conflict between Muslims and Turkish secularists.

The current prime minister Erdogan, and his chosen nominee for president, Gül, are members of a conservative Islamic party (AKP). The military, who see themselves as defenders of the secular nation, had threatened a coup if Gül were elected by parliament.

Interestingly, it's Erdogan and Gül who believe they'll win in a direct election. The current president may veto the law to prevent it.

[The current president] Sezer is among critics ... who say the law was rushed through without enough debate. He's hinted at a veto. It's true that the Islamic-rooted, center-right AKP promoted the amendment after its presidential candidate, Abdullah Gül, lost two divisive votes in parliament.

[Gül actually won the votes of more than 60% of the members of parliament, but opponents prevented a quorum by boycotting the proceedings]

The president in Turkey controls the military, and Gül's candidacy last month tore open old wounds between conservative Muslims in the AKP on the one hand, and secularists on the other -- especially secularists entrenched in the military. The army has issued a veiled threat to the government that it may stage a coup if a candidate with Islamist roots -- such as Gül -- is elected president.

In Turkey, it's the AKP that leans towards the West. Erdogan has aggressively pursued EU membership, while secular parties have been more nationalistic.

There's no evidence that the military would not stage a coup against a popularly elected President. Protesters came out in force against the AKP yesterday, but oppose military threats as well.

Veiled threats from generals during Gül's presidential bid inflamed national tensions, and protesters in Izmir carried not just anti-Erdogan banners but also paper hats with slogans: "No to Islamic law, no to military coups: a democratic Turkey."

America's mayor runs a distant second in New York

Although Rudy Giuliani runs as America's mayor in the rest of the country (based on his leadership in NY on 9/11), he's not nearly as popular in the city itself.

Forty-six percent of those polled said Bloomberg would make a better president than Giuliani while 29 percent chose Giuliani over Bloomberg, according to the poll conducted for the Daily News by Blum & Weprin Associates.those surveyed said Bloomberg was a better mayor than Giuliani, who was widely praised for his leadership following the September 11 attacks.

46-29! I wonder if he's cursing the day he threw his weight behind Bloomberg to win.

Running for president is becoming a billionaire's game

This story, if true, is extremely troubling for those who prefer a representative government:

"He has set aside $1 billion to go for it," a long-time business adviser to Mr. Bloomberg tells The Times. "The thinking about where it will come from and do we have it is over, and the answer is yes, we can do it."

The presidency is already virtually cut-off from the middle and professional classes in this country, being a game for millionaires and their closest friends. This is why we get the constant concern for repeal of the estate tax, or flattening the income tax, but little interest in lowering those taxes that take the biggest chunk out of the typical American's paycheck.

h/t Tapped

Mitch McConnell will obey Iraqi demands, but not the Democrats'

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell apparently believes that the Iraqi parliament, led by al Sadr's Shiite faction, have binding authority over U.S. military policies, although he emphatically believes that the U.S. Congress does not.

"Republicans overwhelmingly feel disappointed about the Iraqi government," McConnell said. "I read just this week that a significant number of the Iraqi Parliament want to vote to ask us to leave. I want to assure you, Wolf, if they vote to ask us to leave, we'll be glad to comply with their request."

Here's what he had to say when the Senate Democrats voted to end the war in Iraq and withdraw forces by next March:

Republicans contend that Congress has no authority to dictate war policy, and that Democrats are overreaching, possibly dangerously, by attempting to limit Bush's options. "This is the memo that our enemies have been waiting for," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Republicans have vigorously defended George Bush's policies in Iraq, declaring that leaving was tantamount to a terrorist victory. They have been particularly aggressive in asserting that Congress has no role in military decisions.

McConnell's statements are absurd and self-refuting. We either have a national interest in staying in Iraq, or we don't. Americans need to decide the future course of our engagement in Iraq. No foreign nation should have veto power over it. Certainly not the current, corrupt Iraqi government.

Taliban leader Dadullah reportedly killed by allies

In a victory against the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, NATO has reportedly killed Mullah Dadullah, The Taliban leader, who had threatened to launch a new summer offensive including suicide attacks and assassinations throughout the country.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, May 13 — The Taliban’s foremost operational commander, Mullah Dadullah, has been killed in southern Afghanistan and his body displayed by Afghan officials to journalists in this southern city Sunday morning.

The commander was killed in a joint operation by Afghan security forces, US coalition, and NATO troops in the next door province of Helmand, Asadullah Khaled, the governor of Kandahar said. News agencies reported that he was killed in an operation in Nahri Sarraj district, a strategic area of Helmand province that the Afghan intelligence service reported Saturday had been cleared of Taliban after an operation this week. A statement released by NATO confirmed his death.

In Iraq, al Sadr pulls the strings while Bush stumbles

While the president and Congress battle over the Iraq supplemental, Muqtada al Sadr has been moving behind the scenes in Iraq to get the Iraqi parliament, itself, to call for a U.S. pullout.

Now that President Bush has explicitly declared that leaving Iraq is the definition of failure, we may face the prospect of being outwitted by a man who fought pitched battles against the Americans in Najaf and emerged intact and politically formidable.

From the Washington Post:

A majority of Iraq's parliament has expressed support for a proposed bill that would require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq and freeze current troop levels.

The draft bill is being championed by a 30-member bloc loyal to al-Sadr, and it has gained support from other Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish legislators. As many as 144 lawmakers have signed the proposal, a majority in the 275-member parliament.

"We think that America has committed a grave injustice against the Iraqi people and against the glorious history of Iraq, when they destroyed our institutions, and then rebuilt them in the wrong way," said Hussein al-Falluji, from the largest Sunni coalition in parliament, and a supporter of the timetable proposal.

It looks like Grover "fixed" the wrong party

A group of "moderate" Republicans met with president Bush Tuesday, in what was described as a candid discussion of the Iraq war and his need to produce results:

The delegation of 11 moderate House Republicans told Mr Bush on Tuesday that unless significant progress is made in Iraq by September — when General David Petraeus, the ground commander, delivers a progress report to Congress — they would desert him. Their warning was the clearest sign yet that although most conservatives still back the President’s surge plan, patience inside the Republican Party over Iraq is wearing thin.

Instead of treating these Congressmen as comrades in arms, Bush decided to lecture them on how important it was to have victory in Iraq, as though they were small, slightly retarded children. When news of the meeting became public, the White House and its allies berated the members involved.

Bush has never felt any inclination to include Congress in war plans, even his own partisans. He lets them vent (in private), humiliates them in public, then he sends them off to rubber stamp whatever policy his brilliant staff have come up with.

In virtually all instances, the "moderates" have capitulated, and this case is no different.

All of the 11 who came to him Tuesday voted to strip timelines out of the Iraq war funding bill, and voted against including benchmarks with any teeth. They may insist that September is a drop-dead date for support, but they've given the president no reason to take them seriously.

Which reminded me of Grover Norquist's old quote about fixing the Democrats:

"Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant. But when they've been 'fixed,' then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful."

Norquist, Rove and Bush have effectively "fixed" the Republican party, and the party went smiling all the way.

Leslie Stahl's contradictions

Leslie Stahl, describing Lou Dobbs in her 60 minutes report, makes a series of non-sequiturs that reveal more about her own views of American politics than any inconsistencies in Dobbs worldview:

Lou is full of contradictions.

He's pro-abortion rights, but against gun control.

A fiscal conservative who supports government regulation.

What do abortion rights and gun control have to do with one another?

And considering that deregulation led to the collapse of Enron, Worldcom and Arthur Anderson (with considerable fallout for the government), why would any fiscal conservative not believe in a well regulated market system?

The views Stahl cites aren't contradictions, they simply don't fit the cookie cutter mold of either the Republican or Democratic parties that she's used to considering. They're inconsistent with the political landscape, not with internal logic.

In short, she's challenging Dobbs for having views that fall outside the acceptable range of opinion, not for having opinions themselves.

via C&L

Mitt Romney joins Netanyahu and Bolton in calling for a trial of Ahmadinejad

During a speech at Yeshiva University, Mitt Romney made it clear that he has no intention of changing the Bush administration's diplomatic policy regarding Iran. Concerned that direct talks would "reward bad behavior", he prefers to take a more combative approach.

Now there is one place of course where I'd welcome Ahmadinejad with open arms: and that's in a court where he would stand trial for incitement to genocide, under the terms of the Genocide Convention.

This is an echo of the diplomatic style of John Bolton (who famously claimed that the U.N. exists only to serve U.S. interests) and Israel's former hardline PM Benjamin Netanyahu (who felt that Ariel Sharon was an appeaser of terrorists).

Both men have also called for a trial of the Iranian president, and it strongly suggests that Romney gets his foreign policy ideas from the same think tanks.

Ron Paul votes to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq

Ron Paul, a longtime critic of the Iraq war and longshot Republican presidential candidate voted with 169 House Democrats and Republican John Duncan of Tennessee to begin withdrawing troops within 9 months.

The bill failed 255-171 as 59 Democrats defected. Most of those preferred a bill that would give the president half his request, and keep the second half contingent on "progress" towards a set of benchmarks.

Paul and Duncan opposed that measure, which passed narrowly.