Ripley's

Posted by Sini

Unbelievable:

At the Camp War Horse detention centre in Baguba, north of Baghdad, it is a surreal scene: US soldiers handing out cash to freed prisoners along with a note saying 'You have not been mistreated.'

Desperate to limit the damage from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the US military has launched something of a charm offensive surrounding their detention centres.

They face an uphill struggle.

Later in the article, the governor of Diyala visits a prison:

"Have you been mistreated?" the governor asks the detainees, dressed in orange boilersuits.

"No. We have never been tortured," chorused those behind bars as some 50 soldiers stood nearby.

12:13 PM | |

 
GI's raiding Chalabi

Posted by Sini

So is this the closest the administration will come to saying it was duped?

11:15 AM | |

 
Mother of battlegrounds

Posted by Sini

It's still Florida. ARG's latest poll of likely voters has it at 47 for Bush, 46 for Kerry and 3 for Nader, with only 4 undecided.. The numbers are virtually unchanged from April (46-45 Bush) and March (45-44 Kerry).

Kerry leads 47-40 among independents, but they represent only 16% of the electorate.

Bush's attack ads may have done their job in the state; Bush's favorable/unfavorable is 48/47, while Kerry's is 46/45, one of the highest negatives I have seen for Kerry in a competitive state. Then again, maybe the ads weren't the cause; Kerry's negative were already at 41 as early as March 4th.

Maybe Florida is just an incredibly polarized state. But it's clearly not an unwinnable one in a fairly administered election, even with Nader in the picture. And here's the thing to remember: it is not hard to envision a scenario where Bush wins without Ohio. But it is nearly impossible to devise one without Florida and Ohio.

11:10 AM | |

 
If there's one great thing that's come out of last year's California revolution...

Posted by Sini

...it's that Schwarzenegger and Democrats and the legislature have united against the prison guards, to whom former governor Davis pandered incessantly. Today the Democrat controlled California Senate cancelled the 11.3% raise originally passed for the union under Davis.

The senators' willingness to take on the union signals a remarkable turn of fortunes for the California Correctional Peace Officers' Assn., which has grown over the past two decades into one of the most influential forces in state politics.

[...]"It's one more good piece of evidence the political landscape has changed dramatically in California," said Robert Waste, a professor of public policy at Cal State Sacramento. "They were a third rail. It was oppose them and you die."

[...]The guards' ascent peaked when then-Gov. Gray Davis signed a five-year contract in 2002 granting them raises of up to 37% over the life of the agreement. Under the deal, a veteran correctional officer stands to make $73,000 annually by 2006. Among other perks, it permits guards to retire at age 50 with 90% of their pay.

[...] The Schwarzenegger administration was pleased Tuesday. "We very much appreciate the legislative support," said Press Secretary Margita Thompson.

Lawmakers and administration officials are hoping the governor can strike a deal with the union before July 1 to avert a showdown. But if that does not happen, the senators say they are prepared to venture into uncharted legal territory by stopping the promised raise from taking effect. It would be the first time for such an action since the state began collective bargaining in the mid-1970s.

Hooray for Arnold and state Democrats. This was long overdue.

2:10 PM | |

 
Dean and Kerry on the campaign plane

Posted by Sini

An utterly delightful piece by Dan Balz in today's Washington Post.

1:33 PM | |

 
Bush ahead in North Carolina

Posted by Sini

Stunning news? Of course not.

Here are the two mild shockers from the Mason-Dixon poll.

Surely Karl Rove would have expected to be in the 50's in this state. The first surprise is that Bush is only at 48 while Kerry is at 41. Nader, in the meantime, is at 8. In 2000, Bush got 56% of the vote versus Gore's 43. Harry Browne got 1% of the vote. Nader didn't make the ballot and there is no guarantee he will make it this time either; if the bulk of his vote goes to Kerry in the end, Bush is already in trouble.

The second shocker is this: with John Edwards as VP (granted, an unlikely prospect, by all accounts), the results are as follows: Bush/Cheney 45, Kerry/Edwards 46.

The bottom line is this: North Carolina leans Bush, but it is as competitive as Arizona right now even without Edwards on the ticket.

The Bush/Cheney campaign may have to start spending some of those millions down South.

1:20 PM | |

 
TX Comptroller: Unitarians are not a religion

Posted by Sini

Unconstitutional? Almost certainly. But give the Republicans enough Supreme Court appointments and someday it might not be.

1:15 PM | |

 
The nastiest analysis of the 2000 elections that I have ever seen

Posted by Sini

For the record, I don't approve of it; it was the accidental outcome of a different Google search, but I am passing it on.

12:31 PM | |

 
Why is Juan Cole writing about gay marriage?

Posted by Sini

Here's why:

It is relevant to my interests because homophobia is deeply embedded in radical Islamism, and I think the intolerance that leads to terrorism must be fought across the board. The Taliban and the Khomeinist regime in Iran passed laws making gay affairs a capital crime. Yes, people were killed for being gay. For the Taliban, this harsh attitude derived in part from concerns about military discipline. Taliban society was highly gender-segregated, so the males mainly socialized with other males. Out in the field there was a lot of fooling around and sexual experimentation, but of course it reduced discipline to have two guys in the same platoon sleeping with each other. So if they were found out they were executed on the spot. The Taliban were expert at seeking out the weirdest and least reliable of the sayings attributed by the folk process to the Prophet Muhammad, and then applying them in a literal way to the law. So, they found some saying that a wall should be pushed down on homosexuals, and probably for the first time in Islamic history they implemented it.

Even in less regimented societies, like Egypt, gays have been scapegoated and even tortured. Egypt is not an Islamic state but rather a military dictatorship. It does have a strong dissident Islamist movement (think Ayman al-Zawahir, Bin Laden's number 2). It does not even formally have a law making homosexuality illegal, but prosecutors have nevertheless prosecuted gays. President Mubarak has occasionally yielded to Western pressure to lighten up on the persecution.

While persecuting gays and not letting them marry are different things, both measures stem from intolerance and a depriving of some persons of rights enjoyed by others.

Religion should not be telling governments what laws they must pass or mustn't pass, where there is no secular purpose served by the law. That is a cornerstone of the US Constitution, and the world would be much better off if everyone adopted this principle. If religious people want to engage in some practice because their religion tells them too, fine. They are free to do it. But they are not free to try to pass their religious beliefs into statute and dictate to the rest of us. That commandeering of the state for the purpose of imposing religion is what Usama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda are centrally about. It leads to oppressing religious minorities and secular people and women and gays. The same impulse of religious intolerance that led to September 11 is what lies behind much opposition to gay marriage. So we have to decide if we are Americans or Taliban.

1:58 AM | |

 
Time for a new Senate minority leader

Posted by Sini

They just approved 25 judges for lifetime appointments on district and appeals courts in exchange for Bush not making a couple of one or two year appointments during Congressional recess.

Both sides win, senators say. Bush gets 25 more judges placed on the U.S. District and Appeals courts in an election year, despite the fact that the Senate normally confirms fewer judges in a presidential election year than any other time.

Senate Democrats, in exchange, won't be forced to sit by and watch Bush give one- and two-year terms to judicial nominees they've spent four years and considerable resources to block.

Bush already trumped them by placing two Republicans on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals: Charles Pickering, a former chairman of the Mississippi Republican party and father of GOP Rep. Chip Pickering, and William Pryor, the former attorney general of Alabama.

Democrats were furious, and they've been holding up all judicial nominees since March to get this promise.

The White House made the right move, said Senate Minority leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. ``I think they feel that it's more important to make progress than to hold out some possibility of another recess appointment, and they made the right decision,'' he told reporters.

While not pleased, Republican senators agreed it made sense.

``As a practical matter the likelihood of a recess appointment between now and Nov. 2 is very small, so I suggest to you that he's not really giving up a lot in exchange for an up-or-down vote on 25 judges,'' said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. ``It's, on balance, not a bad deal.''

Cornyn is right. It's not just "not a bad deal." It is an absolute coup for the Republican Party (not to mention the stealth white supremacists and fundamentalists among the nominees, who will influence law for generations to come).

It is time for Tom Daschle to go; whether or not Democrats succeed in retaking the Senate, their (new) leadership team must be willing, at a minimum, to fight for the integrity of our judicial system.

12:16 AM | |

 
Another thought on Sonia Gandhi

Posted by Patrick

I agree with Sini that Sonia's decision not to accept the prime ministership of India probably had as much to do with politics as with family concerns for her safety.

But it's also entirely possible - and I have absolutely nothing to base this on - that it may also have had something to do with those ever-elusive, but very basic, qualities of humility and common sense.

Maybe, just maybe, Sonia realized this: that when you're nominated to run the government of a large, powerful, complicated, democratic nation, merely belonging to a family whose members have held the job before doesn't in itself qualify you to do the job yourself. She apparently did a fantastic job rallying support for the Congress Party this election season. But despite her family connections, she entered politics recently, and only reluctantly.

Maybe she simply felt the job deserved to go to someone who was actually qualified to lead. Someone with extensive experience in national government. Someone like Singh.

And so we take away another lesson from Sonia's choice: a lesson that the leader of another large, powerful, complicated, democratic nation, who accepted his nomination despite having as his chief qualification only his family name, is learning too late. If at all.

7:27 PM | |

 
What Flash animation was made for

Posted by Sini

A detailed, detailed, detailed look at the people George W. Bush whored himself, our military and our treasury out to so he that could play general for a few years.

5:58 PM | |

 
Inactives being called up

Posted by Sini

Once word of this gets out, the families of inactive reservists will live in constant terror of a callup. The way it's described, it is also easily perceived as a last ditch effort to avoid a draft.

It's hard to see how this won't have a major electoral impact, particularly in states like North Carolina, Missouri and Washington which already have high deployment percentages.

Read the link for a sweet story about Kos' mom--and the comments for a sense how this kind of news will spell the end of gun control, possibly forever. Only George W. Bush could make leftwingers agree with the title of an Alan Keyes speech: "Liberty is the Second Amendment."

5:43 PM | |

 
The Jesus Landing Pad

Posted by Sini

An unbelievable account of an anti-Semitic "pro-Israel" Pentecostal sect and its apparently successful attempts to influence the foreign policy of the United States of America.

4:21 PM | |

 
Sonia's Choice

Posted by Patrick

India's Italian-born Sonia Gandhi has declined the post of prime minister, nominating in her stead Manmohan Singh, the man who served as finance minister under the last Congress Party government.

Sonia's choice has a certain poetic justice to it, arising out of her family's tortured past. The assassination of her mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi, was the bizarre conclusion to her own cynical politics. Faced with electoral opposition in the state of Punjab, Indira strengthened the hand of militant Sikhs (who wanted their own separate homeland carved out of the state) by refusing to accommodate the demands of moderate Sikhs, a path that threatened to weaken her own party's political fortunes in the state and the nation. Having tipped the balance, Indira Gandhi later ordered army troops to raid the Sikhs' holiest shrine, the Golden Temple, which the newly strengthened and armed separatists had made their fortress. Revenge for the raid was the motivation claimed by her Sikh assassins.

So what's the connection to Sonia Gandhi's nomination of Singh, to bring the story full circle? First, he's a Sikh, and very much a moderate in today's politics.

Second, Singh would be India's first non-Hindu prime minister. Ironically, it was Indira Gandhi's cynical politics of playing communities against one another in order to centralize her own power, and then the way her successors capitalized on Hindu sentiment after her assassination, that enabled the rise of Hindu nationalism in national electoral politics. The BJP rode this wave only after it had been set in motion.

Sonia's act seems the perfect way for a Gandhi not only to defeat the forces of intolerance, but to demolish an ugly family legacy - and on a larger scale, to remind the world that a vibrant democracy has it within itself to right its course after making wrong turns.

11:31 AM | |

 
Sonia's shocker

Posted by Sini

While I suspect the real reason Sonia stepped back as that she would be leading an ungovernable coalition (although I do believe her children must worry every day about another assassination), her decision to step back in favor of Manmohan Singh comes as a complete surprise to the nation's elites and people. Even those who opposed a foreign-born prime minister had, with a few significant exceptions, made their peace with the prospect.

Singh's selection should act as a balm to financial markets, at least to the extent to which they don't see him as a figurehead. The business community remembers him as the "liberator." As finance minister under former Congress Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, the Oxford trained economist instituted a series of tax and regulatory reforms that encouraged entrepreneurship and paved the way for foreign participation in the economy.

That won't change the bottom line: this coalition government is exceedingly fragile; the only thing that binds the dozen or so smaller parties and the Congress together are a commitment to secular governance. It is very hard to see how that will be enough once it's time to actually govern.

But for now, it's worth stepping back for a moment for a moment, even if you're a freaked out and clueless foreign investor. A nation of a billion people voted and threw out their government, and will, within a few days, experience a peaceful transition of power.

A nation that is 80% Hindu paved the way for an Italian Christian turned Hindu (whatever that means; conversion has little meaning in the Hindu tradition--a visit to India and the number of Hindu homes with non-Hindu images in them will convince you of that quickly) to step aside for a Sikh prime minister who will be approved by a Muslim president--all of whom were born speaking different lanuages.

Be inspired. It couldn't have happened anywhere else.

10:58 AM | |

 
Brown's oversized legacy

Posted by Patrick

With the ceaseless commentary and celebration surrounding the anniversary of Brown v. Board, here's a reminder in today's New York Times that the most famous Supreme Court decision of all time didn't actually matter a whole heck of a lot.

I have to agree with much of what historian Michael Klarman writes in his guest column in the Times. I'd go even further to argue that Brown didn't even play as large a role in inspiring black activists in the South as Klarman - or most of the rest of us - assumes. (A good source for this argument: one of my favorite works of social science, The Hollow Hope, by Gerald Rosenberg.)

Sure, Brown v. Board meant something. But it marked neither the beginning of the civil rights movement - that war had already begun, and its major battles were heralded more accurately by the marching feet of thousands of ordinary men and women, not the trumpet of the Court - nor the end of the regime of racial segregation in Southern schools, which didn't begin its slow descent until a decade later, when Congress pulled at the purse strings of school districts in order to compel compliance.

11:32 PM | |

 
MI: Bush 44, Kerry 40

Posted by Sini

Bush with a 50% approval rating, 5 point margin of error. My suspicion is that this poll is slightly off and that Kerry is probably actually marginally ahead there. Nonetheless, it is a sign that the race remains a bit more fluid than those of us who are elated at the latest Zogby poll would like to think.

8:18 PM | |

 
Prime Minister of India: La serenissima Sonia Gandhi da Torino

Posted by Sini

Swearing in on Wednesday.

Hopefully there will still be a stock market left by then.

1:53 PM | |

 
Shame on Anthony Kennedy

Posted by Sini

For not joining Sandra Day O'Connor and our four consistently decent judges (led by the decision's author, John Paul Stevens) in today's important strike for simple decency:

The Supreme Court upheld the rights of disabled people under a national law meant to protect them, ruling Monday that a paraplegic who crawled up the steps of a small-town courthouse can sue over the lack of an elevator.

The 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act properly gives private citizens such as George Lane the right to seek money in court if a state fails to live up to the law's requirements, a 5-to-4 majority ruled.

[...]"The unequal treatment of disabled persons in the administration of judicial services has a long history" that has persisted despite anti-discrimination laws, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for himself and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

The case began when Lane tried to sue the state of Tennessee for up to $100,000 for what he claimed was humiliating treatment that violated the ADA.

Lane crawled up the Polk County courthouse steps once for an appearance in a reckless driving case, but was arrested in 1996 for failing to appear in court when he refused to crawl a second time. Courthouse employees have said he also refused offers of help.

Tennessee did not dispute that the courthouse lacked an elevator, or that the state has a duty to make its services available to all. The state argued, however, that Lane's constitutional rights were not violated and that he had no right to take the state to court.

12:59 PM | |

 
American Idol: Voting model for the Bush years

Posted by Sini

Disenfranchisement, though in fairness to Fox, not designed to be racially discriminatory as in Florida and other Republican controlled states:

Many would-be "American Idol'' voters are disenfranchised by overburdened phone lines and by "power dialers'' who hog the system, the magazine Broadcasting & Cable reported.

According to the magazine's issue being released Monday, "the only people choosing the next 'American Idol'' are the ones lucky enough to get through -- or skilled enough to get around -- tremendously overtaxed phone lines.''

In last year's finale between Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken, a total of 24 million votes were recorded, with Studdard declared the winner by a slim 134,000-vote margin.

But on the same night, Verizon, the nation's largest phone company, saw its daily volume increase by 116 million calls while SBC reported a call-volume increase of 115 million, according to Broadcasting & Cable.

That indicates a logjam in which millions of potential voters never got through, the magazine said.

Fox dismissed the allegation as speculative.

11:40 AM | |

 
Paragraph of the day

Posted by Sini

From today's Note:

It is almost certainly true that the national political press corps which covers this issue is more accepting of gay marriage than the nation as a whole; it is certainly true that the national political press corps does not fully appreciate the religious, moral, and psychosexual reasons why this is such an emotional matter for opponents of gay marriage.

11:38 AM | |

 
Taxeorgia

Posted by Sini

I had no idea, It turns out the state isn't just in the bottom ten for the retention of students in high school and in overall literacy. Now it turns out that that Ralph Reed's personal political fiefdom is practically socialist, more heavily taxed than John Kerry's own Massachusetts. Thanks to Atrios for pointing out this unamerican outrage.

7:31 AM | |

 
Fine candidates for excommunication

Posted by Sini

The incredibly manly and always heterosexual Patriot Boy received a reply from Bishop Sheridan's office regarding the errant behavior of some well known Denver Catholics like Denver Broncos coach Mike Shanahan, who have supported Satanic Republican candidates like Ben Nighthorse Campbell.

3:15 PM | |

 
Former journalist admits to being a talking head

Posted by Sini

Jake Tapper tells CJR's Campaign Desk that while he misses being a serious journalist over at Salon, there nothing better than being a well paid, pretty face:

I think people often lose focus that reporters do not work unto themselves -- we have editors and managing editors and producers and executive producers and political directors and a whole bunch of other people who help make decisions about what belongs on the news. To lay it all on the reporter isn't quite right; reporters are just at the front of the pack.

1:29 PM | |