...when the Londonderry, New Hampshire, based 94th MP Company was initially mobilized in December, 2002 (just over a year after returning from a 9-month deployment in Bosnia), the general expectation was that they would be on active duty for 12 months. After a few months in Louisana, it was off to Iraq for an anticipated 9-month deployment.

Unfortunately for them - along with other Reserve and National Guard units in Iraq - it was already becoming apparent that Don Rumsfeld's effort to use the conquest of Iraq as a test-drive for his vision of a new lighter, leaner military wasn't panning out. In keeping with one of the two overarching principles of the Bush administration - never, ever admit that you made a mistake and need to reevaluate your position - the nation-building gang, without prior warning and spouting a bunch of mendacious BS about continuity and predictability, extended tours to 12-months incountry. While this no doubt had an impact on morale, they pressed on with their mission while adjusting their internal calendars in anticipation of a mid-April rotation date...

...but now it's happened again. As they approach what they thought was the end of a deployment that has stretched almost 17 months, the troops of the 94th have been informed that they will be extended for another three months. Some members were within hours of leaving Kuwait; they had already thrown away desert uniforms, sunscreen, lip balm, and other hot-weather items. One 6-person detachment had already returned to New Hampshire as an advance team preparing for the company's return; they will be turning around and heading back to Kuwait.

"I'm irate. I've gone past crying and hysteria. Now I want answers," said Nancy Durst of Buxton, whose husband, Scott, is a staff sergeant with the 94th.

"We have been kicked in the gut so many times now, with the six-month extension this fall, and then hours before we are to leave we get this," Scott Durst wrote in an e-mail, saying the reservists have watched in frustration as active-duty Army soldiers have been sent home. "We are tired and beat up and now they want to send us back . . . We were so lucky to get back without anyone being killed," he said, adding that several of the unit's soldiers were injured.

This is just one face of the story behind the 90 to 120 day deployment extension announced yesterday by the Pentagon, but there are many others. The extended deployment falls heavily on everyone, but it may be a sharper blow to the Guard and Reserve troops than to the regular forces because of the length of their deployments. Most of these units, which comprise up to 25% of the troops covered by yesterday's announcement, spent three to four months in full-time duty status doing training and other missions before being sent to Iraq or Kuwait, meaning they have been away from their real lives, families and jobs for 15 or more months...

...it could probably be argued far into the night whether more troops on the ground from the outset would have forstalled the current combat. Many current and former military leaders insisted that we should have had twice as many troops for peacekeeping than Rummy and his gang would allow. Nothing that has happened over the past few months would suggest that they didn't know what they were talking about, while every evidence indicates that the Bushie boys hadn't even a glimmer of an idea of what was needed to make this ill-advised little nation-building adventure turn out alright. They appear to have gotten the WMD issue wrong; they got the mood of the Iraqi people wrong; they got the post-war planning wrong (an extremely charitable observation, granting them the assumption that they actually had a plan); they got the costs wrong; they got deBaathification wrong; they got peace-keeping troop strength wrong; they got the handling of nationalistic minor Shiite religious leaders wrong; if they let Chalabi anywhere near the keys to power they will have gotten the creation of the interim government wrong...and because of all of that and so much much more, soldiers and marines who already served one hitch in Iraq during the invasion are being faced with redeployment and Reservists and Guardsmen who thought they would be gone for a year are now looking having to complete a 20-month deployment before they can go home. Hopefully no copies of "Catch-22" get loose within the ranks; reading Heller's book might be enough to make some folks just start walking home.

...so as the Jack K. family sat around the dinner table listening to Gee Dub's press conference Tuesday evening, we heard one particular question response that arched our eyebrows and - at the same time - made our neck hairs stand up:

"I also have this belief, strong belief, that freedom is not this country's gift to the world; freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom."

Huh?

Aside from the obvious confusion over whether we're supposed to be doing all this freedom-spreading because we're the greatest power on earth or because it's God's gift that we are somehow empowered to spread, there are some other obvious theological quibbles to be had with this assertion:

In the first place, freedom as a gift from God - as defined by our Theocrat-in-Chief - is not the commonly accepted definition of 'God's gift of freedom'. God's gift of freedom, as explained by the Reverend Avery Dulles and in the writings of the canonized Reverend Josemaria Escriva, among others, is the freedom of self-possession and self-determination. It is the personal freedom to make choices between good and evil, between salvation through choosing to hear and heed God's call and condemnation through choosing to ignore Him. It is not a socio-political freedom having to do with particular forms of governance or the behavoiral freedoms of the governed.

In the second place, God has not - so far as the Bible is concerned - directed or obliged any nation to go to war in order to bring any sort of freedom to anybody. The concept of 'just war', which is violated both by Bush's adventure in Iraq and by his entire policy of preemption as he has defined it, creates a loop hole in the pacifism taught by Jesus and that whole "thou shalt not kill" thing in the 10 Commandments that allows nations to defend themselves from imminent attack. There is no room under the teachings of Jesus or his Apostles for any state, regardless of it's power, to wage war against another state to bring political freedom to that state's citizens.

As a moderately progressive lefty Christian (which is probably a group that can get by with a pretty small clubhouse), it greatly disturbs me to see the core tenants of Christianity being misused - or even perhaps willfully misinterpreted - in order to acheive a particular political agenda. By wrapping himself in the flag of the Christian faith to which he claims to profess while engaging in a nation-building exercise that in large part responds only to the secular political and enteprenurial desires of the People for a New American Century, Gee Dub creates the image of a theocratic regime operating off of some bizarre personal interpretation of scriptural teaching in just about the last place on earth moderately sane people would ever consider pulling such a stunt....

...yup, I - personally - feel safer already...

I have to write that I'm impressed. A group of affinity groups have taken the UIUC admin building, and reading Dave Rolland's articles Lessons for the practical activist, Sit-in in progress, and Sit-in impressions, reads very well. Inspiring.

At present there are 40+ people inside the Swanlund Administration Building on the campus of the University of Illinois, and another 60+ people outside. They are sitting-in in an effort to force the University to eliminate Chief Illiniwek as it's mascot. A few minutes ago the inside-negotiations team met with Nancy Kantor, the Chancellor of UICU, who is accompanied by 5 uniformed campus police
officers.

I'm on the phone with Tulsie Darmaraja, outside-spoke for the action, and getting mail from Dave, who's on the inside.

I've sent an annoucement to the triballaw mailing list, and to Atrios (Escheton), Marcos (dailyKos), and Air America.

Update: The first round of negotiations have resulted in an agreement to place one campus police officer inside Swanlund, the officer to be selected by the inside-negotiations team, and maintain a permiable boundary, allowing food in to the inside-teams, and a video conference with the Trustees, on the issues.

...four months ago National Park Police Chief Theresa Chambers was quoted in several media outlets, most notably the Washington Post, as commenting about unpublicized cuts in the NPS police budget and the likely impact on security at America's National Monuments and Parks, particularly those around DC. She was immediately suspended, slapped with a gag order, and presented with a proposal of dismissal containing several charges against her with the most notable being insubordination, unauthorized lobbying and public disclosure of budget information. Possibly much to the consternation of the political leaders of the Interior Department (of which the NPS is a part) and those politically ambitious civil service types desperate to curry favor with their political masters and thereby gain advancement in the agency, Shee's Baaacckkk! Along with local media appearences, Ms. Chambers was also the subject of an NPR Weekend Edition interview.

With all the BIG ISSUES that have been occupying the minds of Americans and dominating the public discourse, little items like this have been percolating along in relative anonymity. Suffice it to say that much has been going on in the this small corner of the world. The Fraternal Order of Police immediately jumped to her defense, with a spokesman asking - quite appropriately - why the Chief of the Park Service wasn't facing similar punishment for a press appearance decrying the NPS budget and asking the President for intercession regarding the Statue of Liberty. A nonpartisan coalition of retired NPS employees (led by former civil service bigwigs like regional and park directors) held a press conference revealing letters written by regional directors to local staff that in essence instructed them to LIE about the impact of undisclosed budget cuts on NPS services. The US House of Representatives Democratic House Whip, Steny Hoyer, wrote a letter to the Inspector General of the Interior Dept. questioning a leaked memo that became a Moonie Times article that seemed most intent on trashing Chief Chambers reputation in recounting security problems at Washington Mall (OK, now stop me if you've heard this one before). A group called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), an offshoot of a group originally founded by a small group of US Forest Service employees to defend those employees who faced adverse employment actions because of their opposition to agency projects, has taken up representation on Chief Chambers behalf and strongly opposes the basic legitimacy of the termination charges against the Chief. The Office of Special Counsel is investigating that very legitimacy.

This isn't a big issue that garners days worth of press coverage; it doesn't have the sense of immediacy and threat as the current actions in Iraq or the "He said/She said" soap opera fascination of the 9/11 commission. But it's part of the overall pattern of this administration that seems to catch my eye. Like the saying goes, "it's not one thing after the other; it's the same damn thing day after day.) It's another small example of the two worst fundamental charactersics of this appointed gang of thugs and fixers: the almost congenital need to lie when the truth would be easier and more convenient, and the pathological need to attempt to personally destroy anyone who interferes with the carefully crafted portrait that they are trying to paint about how swimmingly things are going under the quavering drug-addled hand of the Bush Administration. In an otherwise perfect world, as Dr. Pangloss would say, I would hope that all the words that ever needed to be written about the dangers facing a free society by a dangerously out-of-control administration would have already been committed to paper by my hero Dr. Hunter S. Thompson in his essays about the Nixon Adminstration. So I was wrong; it happens. At least now I finally have started to develop that first faint glimmering of understanding of those wacko's that moved to Southern Oregon a generation ago and began clearing fields of fire around the disheveled ridge-top cabins that they built on their properties out in the woods, preparing themselves for that final Apocolyptic battle. I wonder if any of those places are for sale....

...former Calpundit-ite Kevin Drum writes of his breakfast-time discovery this morning of an LA Times opinion piece (registration required and, man, am I getting tired of that) putting the citizens of Inglewood, CA, to the lash for rejecting a virtual Wal-Mart town consisting of a Super Wal-Mart and as many as 60 other small shops. The author of the piece, Jay Nordlinger, argues that the good people of Inglewood have not only denied themselves the opportunity for low prices and good jobs, but also have squarely dopeslapped the American Way of Life. The Money Quote:

Wal-Mart is gloriously, unashamedly, star-spangledly American. I hope it's not too McCarthyite to suggest that those who despise Wal-Mart are the very ones who may not be so crazy about the United States tout court.

...well...yeah, it probably is. Wal-Mart has developed something of a reputation for driving small community businesses to extinction upon its arrival, fueling a sort of hatred on the part of the entrepenuerially-spirited, who would consider their own support for the concept of small locally-owned businesses to be unabashedly American in its own right. There is, however, more at play in this situation that might just make a person cast a McCarthyite eye at Sam Walton's creation in search of anti-American tendancies.

This weeks ballot measure in Inglewood was not just a referendum on the City Council's refusal to grant approval for the development. This initiative, which if passed would grant the authorization for development without further city involvement, was a mind-breakingly explicit 71-page development plan detailed down to the very building materials to be used and plumbing fixtures to be employed in this new facility. Furthermore, the initiative contained a provision requiring that the only way any of the terms of the development plan could be changed would be by a 2/3rds vote of the people. As a result, control over permitting, the development process, and land use planning would be effectively taken away from the elected representatives of the people and turned over to Wal-Mart.

...now, this may well be viewed by conservatives as being intended to represent true Americanism at its finest. Raw, domineering corporate control of our daily lives does seem to be a theme attractive to conservatives these days. Somehow, though, I think a lot of Americans would reject the notion that the usurpation of the people's right to exercise local control over such develops through their elected representatives; I suspect that they wouldn't find it at all to be "gloriously, unashamedly, star-spangledly American."

...there are those days when you realize that life will no longer provide any safe haven from the wacko's and waterheads that seem to be so much a part of the conservative side of the political spectrum. Today just seems to be one of those day. In two separate articles that I stumbled across, commentators are taking John Kerry to task for what appears to be either insufficient or insincere belief in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, of which he professes to be a member. The origin of this sudden outpouring of concern for the preservation of the Vatican's power and authority comes from a New York Times story where Kerry was questioned about the apparent conflict between his Roman Catholic faith and his support for such things as abortion and same-sex unions:

Mr. Kerry became combative when told that some conservatives were criticizing him for being a Roman Catholic who supported policies, like abortion rights and same-sex unions, that are at odds with Catholic teaching.

He added: "I'm not a church spokesman. I'm a legislator running for president. My oath is to uphold the Constitution of the United States in my public life. My oath privately between me and God was defined in the Catholic church by Pius XXIII and Pope Paul VI in the Vatican II, which allows for freedom of conscience for Catholics with respect to these choices, and that is exactly where I am. And it is separate. Our constitution separates church and state, and they should be reminded of that."

This exchange was immediately hopped on by Hugh Hewitt in World Net Daily and Carson Holloway in National Review Online. While both pieces are intended as desperate attempts to rip as many Roman Catholic voters away from the Democratic party as possible, each in it's own way suffers from the standard conservative impediment of being forced to discuss moderately complex positions from the shallow end of the ol' intellectual swimming pool.

Hewitt's piece is probably the most embarassing of the two. After demonstrating that he really doesn't know anything about the Roman Catholic faith, he demonstrates that he isn't really interested in even looking into any of it's aspects, characterizing Kerry's response as a new Catholic doctrine and "a familiar dodge", citing the Catholic catechism (specifically Article 5) for it's prohibition against abortion but - in his view - occasional acceptance of capital punishment. Holloway's column, while more professional in its presentation, suffers from some of the same problems, juxtaposing Kerry's response (in particular the abortion vs. capital punishment part) against a simple and uninformed view of the body of Catholic thought about either the church's teachings without consideration of the concept of "freedom of conscience" with regard to the issue of infallibility or the open on-going theological debate about these issues.

It would be cheap fun to spend hours fisking these lame attempts to open another Republican front against the "apparent Democratic nominee", but the time grows late and Momma's oft-stated prohibition against making fun of "those who aren't as blessed as you" keeps echoing in my mind. Suffice it to say that Holloway's apparent effort to bait the Catholic Church into either censuring or...what the heck...excommunicating John Kerry coupled with Hewitt's claim that Kerry has "created" a catechism of convenience demonstrate that non-Catholic conservatives - to extend the above metephor- should probably keep out of the deep end of the pool. As they don't understand the concepts of dissent or the important distinction between infallible and non-infallible pronouncements within the Roman Catholic Church, they have nothing of importance to contribute to the discussion and may probably serve only a self-defeating purpose in their efforts to shill for the Republican party....

...and what is it about Roman Catholics and Jews, anyway? Why are believers in those particular faiths targeted for political adherence to the spiritual beliefs of those particular faiths. It alternately amuses, saddens, and angers me (depending on...oh, I don't know, perhaps the percent of cloud cover, or maybe how much sleep I got last night) that of all the sects within the vast Judeo-Christian world, that these two are singled out for such intense focus when it comes to the beliefs vs the politics of their members. Martin Luther started the Reformation movement (and my denomination) when he hammered a bunch of objections to Roman Catholic practices to a parish door, yet no one would question any diversity between my personal views and those of my church. George W. Bush supposedly pulled out of some unspeakable personal tailspin and became a presumably devout member of the United Methodist Church, yet little more than a whisper ever crops up over the obvious disparity between his view of capital punishment and that of the church itself, which calls for abolition of the practice.

The bottom line in these exercises is that there is more than enough dirty laundry to be flashed around. It is quite simply intellectually dishonest (or, since we're talking about conservatives, intellectually inept) to misuse interpretations of a particular candidate's church teachings to attempt to smear or diminish that candidate (as if I didn't know that these sorts of things go on). Most of life may be politics as usual, but uninformed hatchet jobs wacking away and the most personal of beliefs and relationships of any candidate is really a treacherous trail to begin hiking down, especially given the profound moral quandries that may be presented to and by your own candidate. The Pharisees should probably stick to what they know and keep harping on that tax cut thing....

...several years ago, I found myself, as part of my real job, working with members of the 1249th Engineering Battalion of the Oregon Army National Guard as they performed their two-week annual field exercise. Having several friends and coworkers who are National Guardsmen but having never seen a collection of them operating in full military mode at close range, I found it to be an interesting and rather pleasant experience. These were men and women who were willing to give up the proverbial "one weekend a month and two weeks a year" to maintain military preparedness and - at the same time - go out into the state and construct projects that local, state and federal civilian agencies might not otherwise be able to get done. These folks were truly "butcher, baker, candlestick maker", coming from all walks of life to step away from the normal work environment that most people understand for a period of time and immerse themselves into the structure of the military, saluting and saying "yes, sir" to people that - 40 or so other weeks out of the year were the neighbors down the street that they went bowling with on the weekend. There are certain incentives to entice Oregonians to join the 1249th and other Oregon Guard units. There is, of course, the extra pay. There is always the opportunity to do good for the community during times of local fire, flood, or other emergency. For some select folks, there's the Air Guard opportunity to work with and fly F-15's and for others there's the chance to work with and fly Blackhawk helicopters - often in service to their fellow Oregonians in real live search and rescue operations. Incentives are offered, of course, and one particular incentive is the National Guard Tuition Assistance Program, which offers up to 75% tuition deferal to a maximum of $4000 per soldier per year. The troops of the 1249th Eng. Bat. have been gone from their wives and families and neighborhoods for the last year, having been deployed in Iraq, along with B Company, 52nd Engineers, 1st Bat., 162nd Infantry, and the 82nd Rear Operations Center. They will return to discover that the tuition cupboard is bare. Owing to funding restraints by the National Guard Bureau, there will not be sufficient funding to provide tuition assistance for all the returning soldiers until this fall.

The shortfall, estimated to be in the range of $450 THOUSAND dollars, is just now hitting the local news but was known by the Oregon National Guard as far back as January. Two things come immediately to mind:

1) An allocation of $625K for tuition assistance, even when bolstered by another $450K to cover the shortfall, seems like an embarrassingly small amount of money when compared to the money we are spending - day after day - in what appears to becoming a hopeless tarbaby of foreign intervention from which we will not soon be able to extricate ourselves. The current White House occupant and his minions continually exhort us to support the troops (which we certainly are doing in the underpopulated part of the country I live in since so many of our friends and neighbors keep getting sent there; the reliance on National Guard and Reserve troops in this adventure has certainly removed any sense of abstractness from it). At the same time, the very first place you can look to find a lack of support for the troops is in this administration, with their efforts to change combat pay calculations, support for military installation schools for the children of troops, the occasional disparity of treatment between full-time troops and my Guardsman neighbor down the street, and now the underfunding of a primary incentive mechanism that drew people to the Guard to begin with.

2) Given the disparity of treatment and almost abusive treatment of Guard and Reserve soldiers in these deployments, the very last thing that a thinking military and adminstration would want to do, one would think, would be to even suggest the appearance that they are somehow retreating from the incentives that they claimed to offer, given that retention and recruitment in these forces is going to be an issue in any case. To end the incentives for new recruits is one thing, although the Acting Adjutant General of the Oregon Guard feels that these are inportant recruitment tools; to offer the incentives, then send troops overseas, and then tell them on their return that there's no money in this year's budget to redeem those incentives seems to suggest bad times for National Guard units anxious to retain skilled individuals and attract new recruits.

I have friends involved in this, people who otherwise know better than to get themselves in situations where people might be shooting at them with real bullets and evil intent. While this sort of circumstance is something they always understood might come to pass, the incentives like tuition assistance have also served as powerful inducements, especially in Oregon, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. Now the money's not there, courtesy of an administration full of closeted, excuse-filled draft dodgers led by a putative figurehead who had so little respect for that very National Guard mission that he couldn't see his way clear to honorably complete his six-year obligation, even after the expenditure of tens of thousands of taxpayers dollars in training to become a pilot. These are honorable men and women who, after the initial "I'm going where" shock of deployment notification, turned to their tasks with dedication. They deserve so much better leadership and respect than this current administration full of armchair chickenhawk warriors has to offer....

...in his service of over two decades to Alaska as a United States Senator, one would have been hard pressed to find a more ardent supporter for oil exploration in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) than Frank Murkowski. His efforts ultimately came to naught, and in 2002 he stepped down to become Governor of Alaska and turned the family senatorial business over to his daughter. Now, in his role as Governor, he is finally able to come very close to achieving his long sought goal: Murkowski has ordered the sale of oil exploration rights just offshore of the ANWR and the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska (NPR-A).

The Gov. is able to do this without having to deal with all those pesky wild-eyed unbathed dope-smoking environmentalist radicals who thwarted him in the past because the waters just offshore are controlled by the State, not by the Federal Government. "While the U.S. House and Senate remain gridlocked over opening ANWR for oil development, I am not burdened by that process," said the Big Guy. Suitably unburdened, the Gov has offering a challenging situation for those who have opposed drilling in ANWR: while the disturbance and potential for oil spills poses a significant concern in terrestrial drilling operations, just thinking about the effects of offshore drilling on aquatic species and the fiendishly complexity - if not sheer impossibility - of attempting to clean spills in the broken offshore pack ice makes a thoughtful person want to reach for another beer.

This proposal isn't really catching fire with local native whale hunters, either. Although they were supportive of drilling in ANWR, this proposal seems to them to propose a meaningful risk to subsistence whale hunters. The Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission claims that the seismic activity and drilling may force the bowhead whales and their pursuers 15 miles further offshore, increasing the hazard for the whalers. Murkowski has directed his people to work with their people to make sure to mitigate any impacts to subsistence whale hunting, although what mitigations can be devised beyond sending Frank out those 15 extra miles with a harpoon to face the added risk on behalf of the locals remains to be seen.

You might be asking yourself "is this a game? Is this some sort of ploy on the Gov's part to loosen up the enviro's to finally get his way?" You wouldn't be alone in pondering these questions; representatives of various environmental groups have asked the same question. Governer Frank insists that

"That's not my game. My game is: I'm the governor of this state, this is within the authority of the state to initiate leases offshore just like any other state, and let's get on with it." Nope, no gamesmanship there......but in the next breath he says

"It may have some effect on some people who have been reluctant to support us on opening ANWR." Those members might conclude that "if the state really means to go forward and find significant discoveries, that they should support opening it on land."

A firm denial is always a comforting thing.

Time will tell where this is going to lead. Although there have been 20 or so leases sold offshore in this general area, questions still abound regarding how aggressively oil companies will pursue to acquire and operate these leases. Infrastructure and oil transport issues remain unanswered; there isn't a pipeline in place to move product and its a reasonable bet that the NFL will be hosting Superbowls outdoors in Fairbanks in January long before anyone manages to get approval to build a pipeline through ANWR. This all may turn out to amount to nothing; on the other hand, it may be the first salvo in the next great battle over ANWR oil exploration. In either case, it is going to be an important issue to watch.....

...there's probably no need, in this setting, to rehash the conflicts that have swirled around Vice President Dick "where the heck did he go" Cheney's Energy Task Force. Meetings held in deep secrecy, Supreme Court battles between the administration and the GAO, suggestions of violations of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, Scalia/Cheney "good ol' buddy" duck hunting trips; all of that is still burned onto the radar screen of the public conscience. In the background, however, there has been an ongoing effort on the part of Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club to use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to pry loose from the administration some of the over hundred thousand documents produced by federal employees during the course of the Energy Task Force's deliberations. This was a much less sexy endeavor from a publicity standpoint as the Judicial Watch/Sierra Club SCOTUS case over the inner workings of the Task Force, because it didn't pit branches of government against each other in a death struggle over the fundamental issue of separation of powers. But, based on a ruling today by Federal Districtg Judge Paul Friedman, this may become the more productive legal action with regard to citizens of the United States actually gaining some insight into the workings of Cheney's task force.

The stakes in this battle are high for citizens who want to retain the right to seek access to legitimately non-National Security related documents revealing the thought processes and workings of the executive branch of the government that they - if they are so lucky as to be employed - devote a portion of their gross income to on a regular basis. The White House contention is that communications between the agencies of the executive branch and the task force, a creature of the White House, are priveleged communications. Judge Friedman isn't buyin', as they say, and has in fact ordered not only the release of thousands and thousands of agency/task force documents but also has ordered the release of the records of the Task Force Director, a federal employee on temporary assignment from another agency. As Judge Emmet Sullivan notes in the other lawsuit, a combined effort of two suits by Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club now before SCOTUS:

Any action by Congress or the Judiciary that intrudes on the president's ability to recommend legislation to Congress or get advice from Cabinet members in any way would necessarily violate the Constitution. The Freedom of Information Act and other open government laws would therefore constitute an unconstitutional interference with Executive authority.

This is all a part of the so-called "bright line" philosophy that the unrecused and unrepentent Judge Scalia holds regarding the separation of powers in the federal government, and it poses the risk of rendering the traditional concept of checks and balances, not to mention the right of citizens to monitor the workings of what is supposed to be their government, totally unworkable. As this article shows, the Bushies have already taken large strides in denying Americans the right to investigate the workings of their government in order to maintain government accountability, even at the expense of personal heath and safety. While the insistence is that all changes are to preserve national security, there are numerous questionable examples:

� The Bush administration has refused since 2001 to release information about the task force assembled by Vice President Dick Cheney to recommend energy policy.

� The Homeland Security Act of 2002 includes a provision allowing companies to supply information about their critical infrastructure to the Department of Homeland Security in exchange for protection from lawsuits and public disclosure through the Freedom of Information Act.

� The Federal Aviation Administration removed records from the Internet on enforcement actions taken against airlines, pilots and mechanics.

� The Environmental Protection Agency eliminated listings of chemical accidents from its Web site, making it harder for people to find out about hazards in their communities.

� The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is so restrictive that the names of people injured in a train wreck can be kept secret.

� The Driver's Privacy Protection Act prohibits states from giving out personal information about motorists, including driving records in some states.

� Some states have sealed voting records, making it difficult to determine if a candidate for public office has cast ballots in recent elections, or whether the votes of dead people are being cast.

As always, we can count on a government spokesman to drop our jaws with a milktoast-faced explanation for why this is happening. Today we here at Ruminate This would like to introduce you to today's example of that particular political creature. Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the Justice Department, says with regard to this unprecedented, convenient (to the Bushies), and disturbing rollback of citizens rights to an open, accountable, and transparent government because of an increasing reliance on the shop-worn premise of "The War on Terra":

"This is not a conventional war where we are out on a battlefield," Corallo said. "This is an enemy that wants to kill American children, moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas and anyone they can."

...absolutely! I daresay! On the other hand, I'm not sure how national security is compromised by releasing information on the workings of the Energy Task force...but that's just me, I suppose.

For today, at least, we can thank a Federal District Judge with more sense than ideology for stepping up to the plate and saying to the current Administration, 'Sorry, but there isn't a bright line, but there is a right for citizens to expect an open and accountable government'. It's difficult to guess where this case might go (OK, so maybe it isn't; who know's how may lunch dates or outdoor adventures lay in Tony Scalia's future), but - at least for today - the people still have a little bit of say-so over the workings of their government ...

...it would be an almost incomparable joy to wake up one morning to find that we are no longer having discussions about Bill Clinton's presidency. Life would be a better thing to live if there were, perhaps, a statute of limitation - with some sort of penalty like Gitmo Bay incarceration as the penalty for violation - for repeated efforts to bring up alleged scandals of a particular adminstration or President when the nation is entering the second presidential cycle since that President's term of office expired. Sadly, there isn't a magic button on your life's dashboard that you can push to suddenly propel you to a place where there aren't still people trying to prove that Bill Clinton was - and may still be - the absolute incarnate of evil bent on taking your womenfolk to satisfy his own evil passions and killing anyone who stands in the way or dangerously knows too much. Admittedly, we haven't recently had to put up with much in the way of Falwell's shilling of "The Clinton Chronicles" (closed circuit - as Paul Harvey would say - to Jerry: on the off chance that you would ever end up in my Missouri Synod Lutheran congregation, be advised that these people will chase you out the door to the parking lot, beating you with hymnals all the way), but there are still those out there who just can't let it go.

Allan Favish, a Californian lawyer and Clinton detractor (that's how it's said in polite society) who has spent several years attempting to prove that Bill or Hillary or Socks the cat was actually the trigger...er...mammal in the death (reportedly by suicide) of Clinton friend and confidant Vince Foster (this guy even has a web site, which I will link to just after hell freezes over), has been efforting to get his hands on 'crime scene' photo's of Mr. Foster's head and other body parts in an effort to prove that Foster's death wasn't a suicide. A 3-judge appeals panel, apparently fresh off of a two-for-one margaruita lunch deal at the local Mexican food joint, agreed to his request in 2002, but the release was blocked until the US Supreme Court could hear the case. Tuesday, in a unanimous ruling, the Supremes said that Foster's family has a right to privacy that trumps Favish's crusade to bring pictures of a dead Vince Foster into the public domain.

The issue created strange bedfellows; the Bush Administration joined with the Foster family in an effort to forestall possible requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for pictures of dead soldiers or others who might end up dead under Federal circumstances, while news media and open government groups found themselves sideing with an original, prototypical Freeper in an effort to maintain a broad interpretation of what are eligible documents under FOIA.

In its decision, the SCOTUS noted that there have been no less than five investigations of the death of Vince Foster at the local, state and federal level and none have been done in a manner that would support Favish's claim of incompleteness or untrustworthyness. They may not have availed themselves of the Google option, but had they elected to do so, they would have found that the conspiracy theory (or, if you will, the 'Clinton offing difficult people' meme that is the basis of "the Clinton Chronicles") is still alive and well almost 4 years after the Constitutional end of his presidency and almost 11 years after Foster's suicide. The mere act of typing "Vince Foster suicide" into the search line causes one's computer to noticably sag; if an electronic device could grimace, your monitor would do it, before finally drawing up to the screen a breath-taking array of conspiracy sites (yup, the Freepers are high on the list) that still, to this day, paw through the garbage trying to find that special evidence demonstrating that Clinton was the truly evil sort of being fully worthy of the otherwise unfocused hatred that they showered on him for all those years. At least in this one instance, the SCOTUS has delivered a full-blown dope-slap to those who might want to deliver graphic death-scene photos to the public discourse in an effort to prove the unprovable with absolute disregard to the feelings of the loved ones that the deceased left behind....what the hell, they're only liberals, anyway....right?

The one fundamental inconsistency that I've been grappling with for the last decade or so is this: if Bill Clinton was such an evil man, possessed of an awesome capacity to intimidate, ruin, or even murder those who proved to be inconvenient difficulties in his private or public life, how does a person like Alan Favish, an otherwise un-noteworthy attorney at law who has made a recent career out of an attempt to personally and professionally destroy Clinton, explain his continued existence? How much compunction would a man willing to kill a family friend have about snuffing an annoying nobody rumbling around out there in everyman-world trying to cause a big heaping stinkpot full of trouble for him? Allan, you must truly be a blessed man...

...on December 19, 1944, a US Navy Corsair fighter crashed into a North Carolina swamp while on a training mission, killing the pilot. The Navy, being in the midst of WWII and having new similar aircraft zinging off of several assembly lines on a daily basis, elected to strip the crash of its armament, radios, and such and leave it as it lay. Time went by; lots of time; 46 years worth of time. Finally, in 1990, an aviation mechanic with an interest in the preservation and restoration of the old "warbirds" recovered the pieces, transported them to his home in Minnesota, filed a "nonairworthy aircraft model" certificat with the FAA, and began the ardurous process of restoring the old wreck. Fourteen years later, this fellow, Lex Cralley, is still far from finished, which isn't a bit surprising given that it is a dauntingly challenging task to restore an intact fuselage to flightworthy status, which this plane certainly isn't. Ah, but as with all stories of the bizarre, this one has a twist...

...it turns out the Navy wants it back, and they want it back NOW! On their behalf, the US Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against this poor guy, demanding not only the return of the aircraft (which is still mostly in pieces) but also asking for payment for any damage Cralley may have caused to the plane since it's recovery and for him to foot the bill for shipping it to a location of their choosing. This seems passably odd, given that they haven't made anything approaching a similar claim regarding the couple dozen or so flying examples still in existance of the plane once featured in the Robert Conrad TV show "The Black Sheep Squadron" heralding the exploits of my fellow native Idahonian Greg "Pappy" Boyington and his US Marine fighter squadron VMF-214. The Navy's explanation for this sudden attack on the concept of salvage rights:

"We're not going to provide anything more than what we'll be saying in court," said Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department's civil division in Washington...

...OK, then, and Thanks for stopping by! But WAIT!! It transpires that this isn't just another run of the mill Chance-Vought F4U Corsair. This is in fact a Brewster F3A-1 manufactured by the now-extinct Brewster Aeronautic company who, along the the Goodyear folks, had contracts to produce these aircraft under license to Chance-Vought to meet the war needs (which happened a lot in WWII for everything from aircraft to tanks to jeeps to firearms and beyond). This pile of parts represents the only known extant example of an aircraft produced by that manufacturer and - in flying condition - would be worth several million dollars. This, according to those in the know regarding historical aircraft, makes it a very special airplane.

As I implied earlier, this is simply a bizarre story. Some poor guy with no greater interest that preserving the past through restoration of one of the most significant warplanes of WWII now finds himself, as far as we can tell without prior warning, face to face with the power of the entire United States government. They want him to pay through the nose to return to them a relatively disliked version of an aircraft that, once it's service life as a viable combat aircraft was over, was chopped up into pieces for in order to recycle the metal. It's a small story, admittedly, and only gets a small blip of attention in these days of agonizing over whether Condi will testify or if the Tyco trial will end in a hung jury, but it's telling story nonetheless. It speaks to an agressive sort of bureaucratic bullying that has become rather common over the last few years and to an administrative attutide toward the common citizen that was once solely the province of the IRS. Were I a true activitist instead of some ol' broken down guest blogger with more ideas than time, I'd start a web-based defense fund for Les Cralley to help him hand these bozo's their own heads on a platter. He - and the United States Friggin' Navy - deserve no less....

...during the 2000 campaign, faithful readers may recall, George W. Bush insisted that it would not be the role of the United States under his watch to engage in nation-building. It now appears that, despite all the second and third and fourth reasons cited for invading Iraq (which included establishing a shining beacon of flowering democracy to which all of the Middle East could turn for inspiration), he really wasn't kidding.

It is reasonable to assume that one of the primary elements contributing to the nation-building that Gee Dub willingly took on when he decided (in a later iteration of the invasion rational) that we were bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq (seein' as how that WMD and "dire threat to the US" thing hasn't been panning out) would be the unified support of the newly freed populace in the search for freedom and democracy. There's a problem, however. The Shiite majority, led by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, absolutely reject the new 'interim' constitution that is supposed to serve as the road map to a new, independent, democratic Iraq as well as a model from which democratic states could spring throughout the Middle East. It isn't hard finding areas where they find the document to be acceptable; there are none. This is not the foundation upon which successful nation-building is likely to be safely constructed.

There are more reasons for Shiite resistance to the interim constitution and the interim government than one has patience to read, but a few are noteworthy:

--The Shiites, even though a numerical majority within the arbitrarily constructed borders of Iraq, suffered under 35 years of discrimination at the hands of Saddam and his Sunni minority. They now find themselves facing a constitution that would allow either of the other two minorities - the Sunni's and the Kurds - the power to veto the desires of the majority in any question of law or governance...give me a plane ticket to D.C. and an hour and I guarantee I could find enough Democrats to fill a school bus that would happily pay in blood for this sort of defense of minority rights (while you're at it, why don't you throw in some free passes to the new Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to occupy the time I'm waiting for a return flight; I hear it's really cool). Having spent a couple of generations as a defacto minority, these folks are powerfully hungry to finally exert some muscle, and these provisions of the constitution just don't make the nut.

--The clergy and religious observation have been the strength that the Shiites have turned to for all these years. As a result, they desire to have Sharia as they interpret it to be a fundamental component of any law that drives a new Iraq. This has not been well-received by either the Sunni's, the Kurds, or the American handlers, who would probably not be eager to explain to residents of the United States...in an election year...how exactly it is that the expenditure of American treasure measured in hundreds of irreplacable lives and billions of dollars led to establishment of a new Iraqi society that provides less freedom for women than they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein. It was, after all, in large part a dispute over women's rights under the interim constitution versus Sharia law that led to the February walkout of a couple dozen Shiite representatives.

--Shiites are not happy at all over the definition of Iraqi citizenship. They particularly object to the right of former Iraqi Jews to return and reclaim rights of citizenship, fearing that this will be a foothold for "the Jews" to have their way in Iraq as they did in Palestine. I'll leave it to you, dear reader, to draw your own conclusions as to how this "shining beacon on the hill" thing is going to work out with regard to the ultimate security of Isreal.

It certainly isn't helpful that al-Sistani has let it be known through spokesmen that he is considering issuing a religious ruling - a fatwa - against those Iraqi's who elect to join the interim government after the scheduled June 30 handover of power from the Provisional Authority to a new sovereign Iraqi government. I'm not an Islamic scholar; I only know the term "fatwa" from the old Salmond Rushdie days and it wasn't a good thing, implying as it did thousands of devout believers anxious to seek a quicker path to heaven by crawling through the designee's bedroom window with intensely malevolent intent. So this fatwa thing, on first hearing, sounds like a chilling effort to establish the rights of a formerly downtrodden majority on a scale that certain neocon Republicans can only nourish in their happiest dreams.

The bottom line here is simple. The long-suffering Shiite majority wants to take advantage of this opportunity to exert their majority influence. The spiritual leader, al-Sistani, has made it clear in the last couple of days that he is willing to consider causing trouble by calling for good old fashion civil disobedience of the sort that those of use who grew up during the Viet Nam era could comfortably understand and recognize if he doesn't get his way in the establishment of a certain degree of majority power and authority. The social, doctrinal, and cultural differences that exist amongst the three major groups in Iraq dictate that any particular domination by the Shiites as expressed by al-Sustani through his various mouthpieces will be found to be unacceptable by the Sunni's and most certainly will not meet with favor by the Kurds, who really just want a place to call their own.

Say what you will about George H. W. Bush, ol' 41, but he had a couple of firm reasons for stopping at the Kuwaiti border in '91 and not letting the real live coalition of nations roar up the highway to Baghdad and settling Saddam's hash right then and there. The potential explosive disolution of the Arabic component of his coalition was, perhaps speculatively, a pretty good reason for not launching a regime-changing invasion of Iraq, but his concern over the mess that would be created by just charging off and overthrowing the existing Iraqi regime without an established consesus on how to replace that regime starts to look better and better as time goes by. His son, an avowed opponent to nation-building just 4 years ago, has proven satisfactorily that charging off to militarily replace an objectionable regime without having a clear plan for the establishment of a stable government in the face of serious centuries-old cultural emnities compounded by a recent history of abuse at the hands of a ruling minority isn't the ticket when it comes to actually attempt to engage in nation-building. Gee Dub - ol' 43 - was perversly correct in his objections to nation-building; he and his PNAC neocon minions and handers are dangerously close to chaotically demonstrating that he's not up to the task.....

...I first stumbled onto NPR's "Morning Edition" in 1980, fishing around the dial for something to listen to on my commute to work in a new land where the radio listening choices were still unfamiliar to me. Over the next 24 years of moving around from one small Pacific Northwest town to another where my job might take me, an important consideration has always been whether or not there was sufficient reception of an NPR affiliate to provide me with connection to some of my favorite shows: All Things Considered, A Prairie Home Companion, and - most of all - Morning Edition. For longer than my children have been alive, for longer than I have been married, I have been perching a portable radio near the shower in the morning and listening to Bob Edwards tell me what was happening in the world. Now I find that all that appears to be coming to an end.

I am, quite simply, an NPR junkie. When work and personal circumstances allow, I listen to NPR for at least 10 hours every weekday and have been known on lazy Saturdays to listen pretty much nonstop from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. (in fact, "Afropop" is playing on the radio over my left shoulder as I type this). Shows have come and gone over time, but Bob Edwards and Morning Edition have become so much a part of my morning that to miss the show is the equivalent of forgetting to get dressed before I head out the door. Now I find that NPR has decided that, in an effort to "update their programming" - whatever the hell that means - Edwards will be moved to a position of "Senior Correspondent" - whatever the hell that means - and a new host will be named at some unspecified later date. Various news sources characterize the move as a 'dumping' of Edwards; signals are certainly mixed. Nina Totenberg is quoted as saying "he needs a break" after a quarter century of 1 a.m. alarm clocks, but Edwards - in a letter posted on NPR's website - doesn't exactly sound like he was exactly looking for one and nothing in the reporting suggests that this was his idea. Suffice it to say, a campaign has been launched to try to convince NPR to keep Bob Edwards at the mike. While we're not talking about Clear Channel here, the fact is that we are dealing with a media bureaucracy that isn't likely to be deflected from it's desired path by the obstacles raised by energized listeners.

So many things come immediately to mind: That blaring intro music at 5 a.m. when Edwards hits a few high-point headlines of the day, maybe lets you know about some newsmaking event that will be happening during the day, announces a few birthdays, and says what day and date it is; the not-terribly-hard-hitting but usually informative interviews on major issues; the puckish interviews with the mayor of some small town that intends to construct a world-record Belgian Waffle using construction equipment and vast flaming pits of cordwood; the subject interviews with Feinstein or Roberts or Totenberg or some other observer of American life. His Friday visits with baseball broadcasting legend Red Barber were fascinating classics and his memorial essay at Barber's passing made me cry (not the sort of thing we outdoorsy mountain-man types like to admit, so don't tell anybody, ok?).

Oregon Public Broadcasting doesn't know it yet, because I haven't had the time to e-mail them, but this change bothers me...a lot. Change is inevitable; change can be good. However, as I approach my 50th year, some change just grows wearisome because of it's apparent meaninglessness. With the Morning Edition audience having grown 41 % over the last 9 years, I wonder at the need for a change and further wonder in what manner this change will manifest itself. To their (probably minor) regret, OPB will find that I have grown tired of seemingly meaningless change and will be severing my 20-year affiliation as a contributing member of the public radio community. I'll still listen, but now I'll be doing it for free (joining, oddly enough, the vast majority of public radio listeners at whom I previously muttered insults from behind my fine hefty fire-cast porcelain public radio coffee mug received in return for my 'generous' contribution) until such time as the world of public radio demonstrates that this was a change for the better...

...ok, I suppose that, right up front, I really shouldn't care about the opinion of some rich surgeon who gained the majority of his wealth through his family's for-profit hospital chain (which I consider to be a pejorative statement in its own right), especially one who found the strength to adopt animal shelter cats in his medical school days so he could have a satisfactory - to him - number of subjects for vivisection studies; I mean, come on, I myself have a degree in a particular field of biological sciences and have played my own role in controlling the populations of frogs, fish, turtles, and cute little white lab rats, but I have to wonder how often this guy thought he had to peer inside cats to satisfy his medical needs beyond the opportunities offered by the medical school. Sadly, however, it is necessary to care what this guy says to a certain extent because he is, after all, the current Majority Leader of the United States Senate...

...so when Bill Frist, from the Senate floor, decided to directly challenge the character, professionalism, and capabilities of Richard Clarke and to call for the declassification of Mr. Clarke's testimony of a couple years ago to prove what a filthy, stinking, partisan, greedy, money-grubbing, book-shilling liar he is, I certainly took notice. Given that Mr. Frist wasn't on the Congressional committee that took Mr. Clarke's testimony, I have to confess that I heartily agreed with his call and that of house Majority Leader "Spongebob" Hastert to declassify the transcripts, especially given that while they weren't personnaly privy to the actual hearings, Sen. Bob Graham and Representative Nancy Pelosi were at the hearings and were willing to publicly state for the record that they heard nothing in the 9/11 commission hearings that were inconsistent with his testimony before the congressional committee......it is truely unfortunate that my family had to assume the role of innocent bystander in the rant that I launched into over this latest smear campaign by the Bush thugs, but - as we were in the car returning from a Spring Break week on the Oregon Coast - they had few options except to studiously ignore me, focusing powerful attention on the soggy passing landscape, until I wound down...

...John Kerry has taken the point, however, and I'm thrilled to see it. Once again, Gee Dub's gang of sleaze-heads have seen fit not to address issues head on but instead to enter into personal character assassination. It happened to Paul O'Neill after he was hurled out the front door, it happened again recently to Medicare specialist Richard Foster over the blatant lies Bush told about the cost of his Medicare "reform" package (which I personally think should be the subject of Moveon.org information ads in every media market from now until election day), it has been the subtext of every oppositional campaign ad they've ever run, and seems to simply be the standard first response to every challenge. In this particular instance that sort of response is particularly telling because they have a position that they could be defending with facts and figures, if they had them; rather that painting a long-term civil servant who served for four administrations as some sort of book-hawking Democratic double agent, an out-of-the-loop nobody, or the actual weak link in this country's anti-terrorism effort (which was one of Frist's main points in his comments from the well of the Senate chamber), they could be spending the majority of their effort demonstrating that they had, in fact, a real plan with real goals and objectives.....but...they...just...can't...do...it. It doesn't help that Colin Powell on Friday praised Clarke as having served his nation "very, very well" and calling him an "expert" in counterterrorism matters, nor did it help that Condoleezza Rice sawed off Dick "I'm not purring because I'm happy to see you, dammit, Frist; that's my Pacemaker" Cheney just below the patella by saying that, rather than being "out of the loop" (Cheney's dismissive characterization of Clarke's role), Richard Clarke was at "every meeting" where terrorism was discussed. One can only assume that if Powell and Rice have cats of which they are fond, they will be making sure that little Fluffy or Boots is safely in the house for the evening long before darkness settles over the dangerous streets of the greater D.C. metropolitan area...

...it would be nice to think that a man selected to be the President of the United States would grow into the job, that he and his administration could step up to the powerful responsibilities that they face. This man and his collection of handlers and fixers and bootlickers have shown, however, that they have managed to take the Presidency and shrink it down to fit their style. As the campaign shifts into a higher gear there is no such thing as standing on a record because there is no meaningful record to stand on, despite some of Gee Dub's bizarre recent campaign comments (did you really buy a home because of his tax cuts?). Americans are no safer at home or abroad because of this gang's efforts since September 11, 2001. Americans are not better off in terms of health care or jobs or the education of their children than they were in January of 2001. The only people who can predictably project the trajectory of their lives are those who somehow got entangled with these clowns and then - once either safely free from that entanglement or as a result of defenestration due to policy disagreements - chose to speak out about their disagreements with this administration; they at least can be confident that a lifetime worth of solid professional work and effort will be dragged through the mud by a bunch of waterheads who have never in the entire expanse of their meaningless priveleged lives actually accomplished much of anything on the strength of personal merit or skill but who still - remarkably and inexplicably - currently have the keys to the car. We all deserve so much better.....

...in the late summer, as the evening light fades, sometimes - if you listen carefully from the back deck - you can hear young male elk down in what my long-estranged Tennessee/Kentucky kinfolk way back on the other side of the continent would call 'the holler' practicing their mating bugle. It's a rough, disjointed sort of noise, missing one or another of the key elements of a fully mature bull's call when he's out and about and looking to take care of business; it stumbles and trips its way through the trees in a peachfuzz-cheeked sort of way, the early staggering effort of youth indicating an eager desire to make the proper noises but lacking a mature understanding of how and why those noises should be made. Yearling elk remind me of College Republicans, and the other way around.

At a small liberal arts school in Rhode Island called Roger Williams University, the local College Republicans have stirred up a hornets' nest by starting a scholarship restricted to white students. As it was done solely to jab a stick in the eye of Affirmative Action, it is a suitably clever ploy at it's most shallow level. However - and given the fact that we're talking about young conservatives just out of high school there is always a "however" - these young folks decided to make one of the application requirements be an essay explaining why the applicant was proud of his/her white heritage (whatever the hell that means) and required a recent photo indicating proof of whiteness...

...after Ed Gillespie had finished cleaning up the mess from spewing a big mouthful of coffee all over the breakfast table, the power tie, the sharp pressed shirt, and the morning's edition of the newspaper turned to the page with this article, he fired off a letter to the College Republicans at Roger Williams College (specifically to Jason Mattera, the young Hispanic leader of Puerto Rican descent who leads this group, but whom we will little discuss because he sounds like one of those politically active young fellows you always run across in college that seems most interested in making a name for himself so we won't mention him again; why be an enabler). In the letter he made sure they understand that A) the Republican Party doesn't accept or represent these values of exclusion (which many many people would no doubt refute and which probably comes as a stunning shock to black voters in Florida), and 2) their right to use the symbols of the Republican Party (cute little flag colored elephants, flags flying over the rubble of the World Trade Center, Gee Dub prancing in flight suits, dingy rat-infested barracks full of wounded National Guardsmen waiting in vain for a shot at military medical treatment...you know, that sort of stuff) was herebye rescinded, revoked, and otherwise denied. In a charming display of youthful innocence, they have replied by accusing the state and national Republican committee's of bowing to political correctness in a craven attempt to attract minority voters with liberal policies, apparently little understanding that the very act of asking for displays of pride in "white heritage" is generally the province of white supremacists like the Aryan Nation or the Ku Klux Klan. Of course, this group in past newsletters have accused a gay-rights group of attempting to indoctrinating students into homosexual sex (and called hate crime laws a restriction of free speech) and criticized Kwanzaa for no apparent productive reason other than to express their objection to a celebration of African history and heritage because....well, just because. It's not yet known whether they will be picketing the school cafeteria demanding ham be served as the only meat course during the upcoming Passover, but there's still time....

...having grown up in a fairly conservative environment in the '60's, I came to an early understanding that the sustenance of a conservative viewpoint generally relies on an insulation from the larger world and I came to understand that there are those who simply don't think deeply about things and tend to maintain a black or white, fair or foul, good or bad life view demarked by bright highly visible lines to show what is in bounds and what is out of bounds. Nuance is generally not a hallmark of conservative thought. It is, however, so very, very gratifying to see young liberal arts college students that are so powerfully encumbered by these limited intellectual processes (hang on, now; let me finish). They represent the raw unciphered viewpoint of what we have come to call the neo-conservatives and, in all their youthful exhuberance, pull back the curtain on the goals and direction the neo-con gripped Republican party that all the well-dressed, stylishly coiffed, sweet-smelling, freshly powdered men in charge would like you to ignore in this election year. These young stumbling new Republicans help us to see a proposed vision of the world that may be a good thing for a white guy like me (as long as I can dramatically increase my net worth) but that probably is not for my wife or my daughter...and maybe not even for my son given that his diabetes requires a certain degree of accomodation on the part of the world in order for him to function successfully...

...so let's hear it for the College Republicans. Like young bull elk, they're out there vocalizing important parts of the message in a haphazard fashion, revealing for the less politically obsessed the direction that party is interested in going, and giving us all fair warning of what is at stake, not only in this election but in every election to come as long as the religious Pharisees and neo-cons are in charge of that party...

...it would be nice to think that, with eight months of non-stop campaigning facing us, the guys and gals we sent to DC to do the peoples' business could maybe take a few days off here during the NCAA mens's basketball tournament. They could just lay low, make a few speeches insulting each other's integrity, slip a few riders into a bill here and there bringing fat sugar-daddy benefits to some major contributor or other, maybe go on a 'fact-finding' trip or two with the spouse or a favored legislative aid to determine the impact on the "WAR AGAINST TERRA" certain exclusive Micronesian resorts, or otherwise keep themselves unobtrusively busy while we attend to the important task of putting the finishing touches on our bracket selections. Sadly, such is not the case. In an effort to demonstrate...well...something, the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives introduced a resolution celebrating the Iraqi people and heralding their ongoing support of American troops in Iraq.

You probably could have guessed this by yourself, but suffice it to say that - being genetically incapable of understanding nuance - the Republican leadership made sure, while hammering out this resolution in a room hermetically sealed to ward off the damaging vapours of any potential Democratic influence, that the document included the statement that the post-invasion world is now a safer place merely a couple of days after the Madrid train bombing. Aside from the fact that people would call you stupid if you made up a story about something like this, that particular resolution item was easily identifiable as A) a Republican campaign talking point that is highly debatable even absent the coincident Spanish equivalent of 9/11, and 2) another effort to waste our tax dollars solely for the purpose of exploiting legimate Democrat concerns in an artificial setting for simple political gain.

As expected, Democrats objected to the wording and the partisan origin and tone of the resolution. Interestingly, some of the strongest opposition came from conservative Democrats who supported sending troops to Iraq. For example, Tom Lantos (D-CA), who could be seen last year all over the cable talk show ecosystem promising that the Iraqi people would be flinging flower petals at the feet of conquering American troops as they marched into Baghdad:

"You on your side have neither a monopoly on wisdom, nor a monopoly on patriotism. You should have come to the Democrats, craft a resolution honoring our troops which would have passed this body unanimously. You have created divisiveness at a time when we need cohesion and unity."

Imagine, if you will, the Labour party introducing a resolution in the House of Commons saluting the Iraqi people and brave British Troops and declaring the world to now be a safer place because of the stalwart effort of Tony Blair and his party and passing it within a hundred hours of a terrorist attack in...oh, say, Boston...that left 1200 dead and over 6000 injured. That is the equivalent hypothetical comparison to what the House Republicans did yesterday. It was a simple partisan exercise designed to give neither comfort to the Iraqi people nor actual tangible support to the troops (you know, things like sufficient body armor or humvee armor or - in some instances - decent garrison facilities to make their one-year deployment somewhat more bearable), but instead geared to fostering Republican electoral prospects.

In the end the resolution passed, generating much smoke and heat but doing nothing to benefit those it attempts to recognize or this country; the partisan gulf in Congress is a little bit wider, people are still dying daily in Iraq, the troops that have been rotating in and out of Afghanistan for the last two years of the real war on terrorism remain as forgotten as ever, and the only solid ground on the planet remaining unaffected by the Iraq invasion is Antartica....and knowing penquins would no doubt contest whether it's safer there, given that our Iraqi incursion has had approximately the same effect on the leopard seal population as it has on Al Qaeda....

...now if the House would like to sink their teeth into an issue that has some real meat on it's bones, here's a little something they can debate over during the election season: a presidential censure!

"Our message to Congress today is clear: spare us the platitudes, the pious rhetoric, the empty slogans. Give us the truth. Do your job and hold those accountable who have denied us the truth..."

...couldn't have said it better myself....

...way back in January when I posted on the subject of off-shore outsourcing of high-wage white collar jobs (just before it became a big-time front-page story, IF. I. MAY. TOOT. MY. OWN. HORN.), one of the primary questions arising from the subsequent discussion was "OK, if this is all part of that great wonderful world of the global economy, then where will all those new jobs come from that this vibrant U.S. economy is supposed to be producing with all that freed-up capital". Well, GOOD NEWS, faithful reader; those new jobs for the next decade have been found and, as long as you subscribe to the observation by Greg Mankiw, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, that the assembly of fast food sandwiches is a form of manufacturing, many of these new jobs will be in the manufacturing sector....

...on the other hand, unless you can become a registered nurse, a "general manager", or a college instructor, you shouldn't make detailed plans for all of the disposable income you will be accruing from your new job. Aside from these three occupations and the field of customer service, the majority of the 10 fastest growing career fields over the next decade, according to the new Occupational Outlook Handbook produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, will come with median salaries of less than $20,000 per year and are found under the general category of what is referred to as "the service industry". On the other hand (and I bet you could have guessed this without my help), the top 10 job losers projected over the next 10 years include 7 that have median salaries of over $25,000 per year. Yes, once upon a time you used to joke that some of those classes back in college seemed so useless that you have no recollection of how to apply them to your current life; well, now you can in many cases say that about all of your classes...

...�Some communities and regions are more challenging than others, but there is never a lack of quality folks knocking on the door and coming in, particularly after the late �90s when the labor force was very constricted.....We didn�t have those kinds of excess staff to select from.�

Paul Avery, Outback Steak House

...well, thank God for that, is all I have to say. Your $70k-a-year loss is his - and all of our - gain....and he doesn't have to jack up beer prices or live on the knife edge of profitability trying to attract highly qualified employees like he did back in those pesky late '90's when most folks had jobs. This was most emphatically NOT, if I may beg your indulgence, the movie playing in my mind as I listened to all those professing to be smarter than me on this subject as they explained that the freeing of labor pools and capital in the U.S. by sending white collar jobs overseas would allow for the lightning-brilliant miracle of the American entrepenurial spirit to create a new workers' utopia of newer, better high-paying jobs springing from the cutting edge of technology for which we Americans are so richly famous. This is, however, just about what I expected...

...so we all know that George W. Bush is in the process of amassing a campaign warchest of almost unimaginable proportions with the goal of capturing the White House on the basis of pure exposure and overwhelming media-driven lies about his opponent, as opposed to relying on his record of achievement and popularity with us common middle class folks - who are beginning to wonder what the hell happened to that extra $1500 tax cut we were supposed to be getting - in order to win votes. He has even foresworn Federal financing in order to avoid those pesky limitations that would, to put it another way, only allow him to collect enough cash to build around 1,300 Habitat for Humanity homes instead of a sum suitable to put up about 2,800 HH units. Now, aside from the fact that I don't even have any idea how one goes about storing that kind of money (banks? When my financial institution was bought out by another financial behemoth, account numbers were messed up in the transfer and some folks couldn't access their accounts for weeks....wouldn't that be funny!), the whole idea of spending your way to electoral victory does bring to mind former Texas Senator Phil Graham and just how well that worked out for him back in 2000, but that's another story...

...and we also know that the Democratic party and John Kerry have amassed sufficient campaign funds to perhaps buy the lunches for a work group at a Habitat for Humanity houseraising, but not much more than that. This is where a number of groups, known in campaign vernacular as "527's" in reference to the IRS code under which they are formed, have begun to gain visibility. Two prominent organizations, America Votes and American Comes Together, are 527's created as umbrellas by progressive organizations looking to combine resources and organizational skills. Having both a Democratic persuasion and relatively healthy bankrolls, these groups have begun to establish state organizations, voter contact plans, state-by-state advertising buys, and many of the other vestiges of what is being called a "parallel campaign", lacking only a candidate to complete the picture. What has captured the immediate attention of the Republican National Comittee, sending them running to the Federal Election Commission, is the first series of broadcast advertisements being run by some of these groups. The RNC claims that these groups, using an organizaton called the Media Fund as their principle advertising vehicle, are using unlimited "soft money" contributions (largely unregulated and unreported money from groups and businesses) to fund these ads in an effort to defeat a specific candidate, which would be a violation under the McCain-Feingold Act. There is apparently, however, a regulatory loophole in that the use of a combination of soft and "hard" money (legally limited personal contributions with more rigorous disclosure requirements) is currently allowed but otherwise not quantified or spoken to. The RNC, anxious to control the electoral discourse through the advantage of its huge money advantage ('cause that 'record of accomplishment" thing just isn't working too well), wants the use of soft money in advertising clarified...as in 0, zip, zero...and clarified right now so these nasty little ads pointing out the discrepancies between Gee Dub's actions and the actual welfare of the American people will disappear from the airwaves. Let the Democrats reach out to working class America for those $2000 per person campaign contributions just like we did, says the RNC, apparently based on the premise that corporate executives go to work every day just like the rest of us and therefore must be part of the working class, right?

...while the FEC (made up of 3 Republicans and 3 Democrats) limited soft money expenditures by 527's by ruling in February that, while soft money alone couldn't be used in anti-candidate ads, a mix of hard and soft money would be permissable. One little problem that the RNC faces in it's effort to make political discourse primarily the realm of the guy with the fattest wallet is that Ellen Weintraub, the Democratic commissioner providing the swing vote approving the February decision, has made it quite clear that she doesn't find it appropriate to further change or clarify rules this summer in the middle of the election process, which suggests a deadlock in any effort to change the rules (unless the Republican members lock the Democrats out of the room, like that sort of thing would ever happen in a democracy, eh?). One of the members of the so-called "shadow campaign", Moveon.org, has said for its part "the hell with you, pal; we have millions of dollars in individual campaign contributions along with our soft money and we're gonna spend it all together"....

...it is, of course, a tough situation for the RNC. Having grown comfortable with the idea that they can throw up that patented Republican tough-guy front, couple it with a few well-placed gruffly-delivered lies, and put back in its place a simpering Democratic party, they are now faced with a hoard of angry and extremely motivated partisans who find no need in acceding any point to the party in power and who have no vested interest in the failed Democratic policy of "go-along, get-along" accomodation of the last couple of years. These are groups that would thoroughly enjoy spending every dime they could lay their hands on engaging in a national television dialogue with the American people spelling out in exquisite detail every lurid moment of the Gee Dub presidency, including the actions of his appointed minions, and analyse how each of these has had an impact on those of us who can't quite come up with that $2000-a-head ante to get a seat at the big table. Not to fear, however, the RNC has a plan...

...what they've decided to do is to write to television stations, on official RNC stationary, telling them that they would be complicit in illegal behavior to the risk of their broadcast licenses if they broadcast Moveon.org ads because those ads were paid for illegally with soft money. The implicit threat of the Republican National Committee speaking with the Republican chair of the FCC who is the son of the Republican Secretary of State and who both work for the Republican President undoubtedly would not be lost on any station executive of average intelligence; why they left out demands for protection money to guard against angry mobs of bused-in Congressional staffers putting stations to the torch for broadcasting those Moveon ads remains a mystery. Unfortunately, as careful readers will have noted, this is - at best - an unfortunate misstatement (hey, we're trying to improve the civility of discourse here). As previously mentioned, Moveon.org has millions in hard money, and there is no current prohibition on spending a mix of hard and soft money on ads. It would be easy to be outraged by this sort of heavy-handed tactic were it not for the fact that we've seen this sort of thing so often that we'd kind of worry about 'em if they didn't pull some kind of stunt like this...

...so the RNC keeps plugging away, fighting on both the legal front and through implicitly threatening letters to silence the opposition that threatens to usurp its domination via walls of words and images rather than policies. It's far easier to focus your attention to engineering the sorts of smears laid on McCain in 2000 and Cleland in 2002 when you don't have to worry about a motivated and funded opposition pointing out some of the unpleasant realities of your own candidate. Sadly, however, and despite their best efforts, the Republicans apparently won't have the stage to themselves like they had hoped....

...on the surface it seems like such a silly news story. An Amish man travels to Canada to visit his ailing father only to find, on his arrival at the border on his way home, that his entry is denied. He is a Canadian citizen married to an American Amish woman. He has no picture identification and therefore no green card, because to do so would be to violate biblical codes proscribing graven images. It appears that First Amendment rights interpreted by the courts (again and again and again) to allow for the free practice of religion can be trumped - at least at one US border crossing - by Homeland Security regulations, which as with all federal regulations are the lowest lifeform in the legal ecosystem...

...THIS is what I have been worrying about all along during the great debates over legal intrusion into private lives that may be authorized under the fiat of "Homeland" security. I have never been concerned that secretive squads of jackboots from the Homeland Security Directorate would be pawing through my library records, my bank transactions, or my garbage seeking evidence of some wrong-doing or collecting data to fill out some empty fields in my burgeoning personal database. My greater concern has been that in the larger corners of life, overzealous bureaucrats (and believe me, I have intensely personal knowledge about burearcrats and the astonishing variability in their capability and behavior) could, through a relatively simple misapplication or misinterpretation of the rules, cause a great deal of personal trouble to otherwise innocent citizens. This is just such an example; it's not about the government delving into one's personal life in unacceptable ways, it's about the government, through one of it's agents, creating a direct public interference in someone's life with no apparent recourse to extricate oneself from the experience. These stories just keep coming up; from the standpoint of being an unnecessary personal trial, this bears little difference from the stories of legal foreign nationals being snatched up for deportation at a port of entry solely on the basis of some long ago trangression. It's all about the inflexible application of regulations with no consideration being given to the human toll exacted on law-abiding citizens day after day after day. A friend of mine, an infrequent air traveler, apparently is destined to spend the remainder of the War on Terra facing a virtual strip-search prior to any flight, apparently on the basis of a suspicion that middle-aged Scandanavian-looking native-born American citizens pose a clear and present threat to national security....

...if I were the President, I would have already been on the phone to Tom Ridge cordially inviting him to have his agency pull its collective head out of its posterior and get this guy back into the country. If I were running against the current President, this would become another item in the list of issues that directly prove that this administration is paying nothing but lip service to the entire concept of national security....