As George Felix Allen, Jr. has just learned, don't mess with VA Democratic Senate challenger Jim Webb

God bless Jim Webb:

Republican Sen. George Allen attacked his Democratic challenger's opposition to a flag-burning amendment, and James Webb retaliated by calling Allen a coward who sat out the Vietnam War "playing cowboy at a dude ranch in Nevada."

The statement by a senior adviser to Webb, a decorated veteran and former secretary of the Navy, went to extraordinary lengths to question Allen's fortitude, even repeatedly using the middle name the senator detests and never uses, Felix.

"While Jim Webb and others of George Felix Allen Jr.'s generation were fighting for our freedoms and for our symbols of freedom in Vietnam, George Felix Allen Jr. was playing cowboy at a dude ranch in Nevada," said Webb strategist Steve Jarding in the statement Tuesday....

"People who live in glass dude ranches should not question the patriotism of real soldiers who fought and bled for this country on a real battlefield," Jarding said.

Then there are the final two paragraphs of the article, the absolutely best part:

Webb left the Republican party over Bush's handling of the war in Iraq. He has written novels informed by his Vietnam experience and a recent non-fiction book "Born Fighting."

Allen is a first-term senator mentioned as a possible 2008 presidential candidate. While he was a student at the University of Virginia, Allen worked summers at ranches in the Southwest.

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Giant Bat-Eating Centipede

No, not Ann Coulter. A very creepy YouTube video that ThinkProgress graciously brought to our attention, the creeps. Then again, a little break from political mayhem probably isnt a bad thing. Still, I'm now totally creeped out.

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Women and weight in America

This is the reason a woman's contract wasn't renewed on morning television:

[Barbara] Walters didn't discuss on the air why Reynolds, an original cast member who's been on the show for nine years, wasn't being asked back. She said in an interview Tuesday that research showed audience members were turned off by [Star Jones] Reynolds' dramatic weight loss and glitzy wedding to banker Al Reynolds in 2004.

Now, Starr Jones occasionally gets on my nerves. But firing a woman because the audience didn't like the fact that she lost weight? When she used to, frankly, be enormously obese. And this is a problem. Geez.

As this is a show geared towards women, I guess I'd have thought they'd be less weirded out by someone's weight (let alone the idea that someone was obese and now is a healthy weight). Anyone want to fill me in on what's going on here? Read More......

Murtha's a tad more complicated than right-wing veteran haters (or we) might want to admit

UPDATE: Per Media Matters, via Atrios, it's not totally clear what the story is about Murtha and the NYT.

Interesting catch from The New Republic's blog.

Military hawk, and now Iraq war opponent, Cong. John Murtha (D-PA) apparently called the New York Times to urge them NOT to run last week's story about how Bush is spying on private bank records. As TNR notes, this seems to contradict what conservative bloggers were alleging, that Murtha urged the Times to run the story. But what they also note, which Joe and I were actually talking about the other day, is that Murtha, while our hero on the war (now), is a rather conservative fellow sometimes - but sometimes not, it's a pretty weird mix. Check out his rankings on the following congressional scorecards:

17% - Human Rights Campaign (gay civil rights)

0% - NARAL (pro-choice group)

34% - Humane Society

44% - ACLU

74% - NAACP

50% - John Birch Society (insanely conservative)

50% - Eagle Forum (Phyllis Schlafly)

53% - Christian Coalition

100% - National Education Association (they're a good education group)

56% - League of Conservation Voters

78% - Children's Defense Fund

45% - US PIRG

92% - National Rifle Association

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Hasn't anybody else noticed...

...that had George Bush not skirted the law with his various domestic spying programs, had George Bush actually gotten the appropriate court approval and warrants necessary in order to conduct such unprecedented spying on Americans, none of these recent "revelations" would have been as newsworthy?

What made last week's New York Times story so newsworthy was the fact that, yet again, the Bush administration was caught spying on Americans without following the normal court procedures expected in a democracy. Procedures that separate America from common dictators.

That's news. And news of George Bush's own making.

Had the story simply been that the Bush administration was doing x, y, and z to fight the war on terror, but that Bush had followed the law and gone to the courts to make sure our rights were being protected, he'd have a much stronger argument, I think, against newspapers that simply wanted to publish details of our spy programs "just for the fun of it."

But in all the recent cases, it seems that the Bush administration has skirted the law, or at least skirted the courts, and in many instances they seem to have also lied about it. If George Bush would start playing by the rules, maybe he'd have fewer stories about how he breaks the rules.

The New York Times deserves a medal for its reporting, as does USA Today and everyone else who has had the nerve to challenge this increasingly dangerous and incompetent man we have sitting in the White House. Read More......

Scores of House Republicans defect in defiance of new "family values agenda" being pushed by House leaders to woo far-right in upcoming election

Wow, they lost because of other Republicans deserting them. So much for the campaign ads blaming Democrats.

House Republicans failed Wednesday to advance a bill protecting the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Only a day earlier, the GOP had placed the measure on its "American Values Agenda" in hopes of bolster the party's prospects in the fall election.

But Republicans could not muster a simple majority on the issue in a committee where they outnumber Democrats by six....

A simple majority is required to report a bill to the House floor with a favorable committee recommendation. The House Judiciary Committee split 15-15 on the pledge bill Wednesday; Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C., joined 14 Democrats to oppose it.

Ten of the committee's 23 Republicans did not show up for the vote. The chairman, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said he would try again for a majority on Thursday.

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Bush administration previously told reporters FAR MORE about US efforts to track terrorist finances than the NYT reported last week

This is what we call explosive stuff. Reporters are coming forward to document just how much the Bush administration already told journalists about their supposedly super secret spying they do on financial records in order to catch terrorists. We now know that the Bush administration already told reporters FAR MORE about this program than anything the New York Times reported last week. Yet Bush and his surrogates are accusing the NYT of treason.

Well, get in line. It appears the Bush White House is once again at the head of the line when it comes to making classified leaks.

From DefenseTech:

Bush administration officials have been lining up to condemn The New York Times for revealing a program to track financial transactions as part of the war on terrorism. But if the Times’ revelation about a program to monitor international exchanges is so damaging, why has the administration been chattering about efforts to monitor domestic transactions for nearly five years?

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, many journalists — including this one — were briefed by U.S. Customs officials on Operation Green Quest, an effort to roll up terrorist financiers by monitoring, among other things, "suspicious" bank transfers and ancient money lending programs favored by people of Middle Eastern descent.

I interviewed Marcy Forman, director of Green Quest, at her Washington offices in December 2001, when I was a writer for Government Executive magazine. Our meeting was sanctioned by Customs' public affairs office, and came at a time when the White House was eager to talk about all the work federal agencies were doing to hunt down terrorists. Forman told me the kinds of people, transactions, even locations that the government was targeting. (These are details, it should be noted, that the recent Times piece did not reveal.) Among the potentially sensitive items Forman told me, which were published:

“Operation Green Quest is focusing on the informal, largely paperless form of money exchange known as hawala, which is Arabic for ‘to change.’”

“Few undercover agents can penetrate Middle Eastern communities and money laundering rings because they look like outsiders and don't speak the language…. As a result, Green Quest has to be more clever, by setting traps on the Internet and working to flush currency traffickers out of their hiding places.”

“Treasury and FBI investigators have identified hawala as a means by which the alleged Sept. 11 terrorists may have received money from overseas.”

“Green Quest investigators, who've spent their careers dismantling money laundering rackets, were blindsided by the existence of the system. ‘Most of us couldn't spell hawala’ before Sept. 11,’ Forman said.”

“The agencies' [involved in Green Quest] cooperative efforts have recently culminated in raids of alleged money laundering operations that aid suspected terrorist networks.”

“Green Quest also wants to lower the threshold at which bank deposits and electronic funds transfers must be documented. Dropping the ceiling from $10,000 to $750, Forman said, may force money traffickers to try to get their cash out of the country by hand. They would then be subject to capture by a beefed-up cadre of Customs Service officers at border crossings, airports and seaports.”

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Did Cong. Tancredo (R-CO) burn an American flag for his book cover?

Sure looks like it. And even if he burned an image of an American flag to make the book cover, it's the same thing. Or is flag burning okay so long as the protesters have massive posters of US flags that they burn? Read More......

Every conservative loves a fascist

Funny, the conservative National Review Review seems to think NYT journalists should be kicked out of the White House, yet the National Review no problem with GOP prostitute (literally, he was a hooker) Jeff Gannon parading around the Bush White House as a "journalist" on nearly a daily basis for two years.

Ah those Republican family values. No hooker left behind?

Oh, and since the Wall Street Journal also reported on Bush's latest domestic spying scandal, I assume the National Review wants the WSJ kicked out of the White House and tried for treason as well? Read More......

Obama is right (mostly)

UPDATE: You can read Obama's speech here.

I think Senator Obama (D-IL) is right. Democrats should do more to court evangelicals and people of faith. But that doesn't mean they should be stupid about it.

Stupid would mean supporting flag burning and displays of the Ten Commandments and backing off of their support for the civil rights of gays and lesbians and women - all to woo supposed people of faith. Stupid would also be worrying about the Pledge and school prayer (sorry Obama, you're pandering). That's not how you court THE RIGHT people of faith. The people of faith who make gay-bashing and abortion and the Pledge their number one priority will never support Democrats. Hell, they barely support Republicans.

And in any case, do we need to become as phony as the Republican party, supporting these feel-good-but-do-nothing issues rather than trying to solve real problems in America, in order to convince believers we're actually okay?

What do I propose instead?

What about the death penalty? It's an issue on which I suspect people of faith are sharply divided. What about the environment? Global AIDS and world poverty? Poverty in America? These are all issues that go to the core of what it means to be a Christian.

For far too long the only people talking about God have been nutjobs in the far-right of the Republican party. God, to them, is simply a good cover story to push bigotry and discrimination that is no longer acceptable in society unless you pretend it's a God-thing. Then you just might get away with it. The effect? People pull away from God since the only evidence of God they see in the public square are the crazies. If Democrats put a bit more faith in their action, while avoiding the crazy-aunt wing of the Republican party, there could be something here.

What Democrats need to remember is that they should find the God in their own values, not change their values (which no one will believe anyway) to embrace someone else's warped hatred masquerading as piety.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Barack Obama chastised fellow Democrats on Wednesday for failing to "acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people," and said the party must compete for the support of evangelicals and other churchgoing Americans.

"Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation. Context matters," the Illinois Democrat said in remarks prepared for delivery to a conference of Call to Renewal, a faith-based movement to overcome poverty.

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Mixed decision on Texas re-districting

Gerrymandering is acceptable. State legislatures can re-district any time they want. But minority voting rights must be protected:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld most of the Texas congressional map engineered by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay but threw out part, saying some of the new boundaries failed to protect minority voting rights.

The fractured decision was a small victory for Democratic and minority groups who accused Republicans of an unconstitutional power grab in drawing boundaries that booted four Democratic incumbents out of office.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said Hispanics do not have a chance to elect a candidate of their choosing under the plan.

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Senate likely to vote on net neutrality today

See who hasn't made up their mind yet and voice your opinion. The anti-neutrality crowd would like you to believe that the Big Telcos will be honest and fair with the internet but looking at how they've trampled on our privacy, actively providing the government with information without warrants and considering the market dynamics of the telecom industry (prices on a steep decline even with GOP anti-competition help) I just don't see them as honest brokers at all. Also, looking at how this GOP dominated Congress and administration have botched everything they touch, I'd rather they not get involved with this situation. Read More......

GOP House leaders will devote rest of Congress to far-right special interests, will lock up House with debates on guns and abortion

Because what America really needs right now is more guns on the streets. And the biggest problem facing our troops in Iraq is abortion in America. The Republican controlling the US Congress aren't even pretending to address the problems of regular Americans anymore. They're afraid they may lose their seats in the fall elections so they're trying to pass every piece of special interest legislation they can, before it's too late:

Other bills are certain to spark controversy.

One would to strip the Supreme Court and other federal courts of jurisdiction over cases challenging the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance. The legislation is a response to a 2002 Appeals Court ruling that held the pledge is unconstitutional because of the presence of the words "under God." A federal judge made a similar ruling last fall, citing the appeals court precedent.

Another measure would block the payment of attorney fees in challenges to the display of the Ten Commandments in public areas and other, similar church-state lawsuits.

An abortion-related proposal would require that some women seeking to end their pregnancies be informed the procedure "will cause the unborn child pain" and they have the option of receiving drugs to reduce or eliminate it. A separate measure would ban human cloning, a prohibition that cleared the House in the previous Congress.

Two measures relate to the rights of gun owners. One would prohibit the confiscation of legal firearms during national emergencies, barring practices such as the one that officials said arose in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit.

The measure is backed by the National Rifle Association, which has hailed the recent passage of a state law in Louisiana. "The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina became the proving ground for what American gun owners have always feared: the day that government bureaucrats throw the Bill of Rights in the trash and declare freedom to be whatever they say it is," Wayne LaPierre, NRA executive vice president, said in a statement posted on the organization's Web site.

Yes, for Republicans that was the true lesson of Hurricane Katrina. Not enough guns. Read More......

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

The fun never stops...what do we need to know now? Read More......

Bush and Paulson want to meddle with Medicare and Social Security

So tell me...how is it that we can mysteriously pull money from the sky for failed wars that have nothing to do with the real war on terror yet it's time to have bi-partisan agreement on cutting Medicare and Social Security? Of course this is a partisan shot-across-the-bow and Paulson hasn't even passed through the Senate yet, so how exactly is this reaching out in a bipartisan way? How about focusing on the problems of that beast before tampering with critical social programs that Americans rely on? The only problem with those programs is the continued assault on those programs by the GOP.

I don't know who Paulson has been talking with in the posh boardrooms of Goldman Sachs, but on Main Street USA, what I hear people talking about is the criminally high health insurance costs. I hear about people with terminal and long term health care issues who receive notices from their insurance company that they have hit their life time maximum payout and are scrambling to find solutions. I hear families talk about paying hundreds of dollars up to $1,000+ per month for crap insurance with high deductibles. I hear people wonder why corporate executives are showered with perks, benefits and mega payouts while their own benefits are being cut to the bone, funding those programs for the select few.

Overseas, I hear American expats wonder why the US still demands filing and paying taxes (even more now thanks to Republican Senator Grassley) when they don't live there while American companies move their corporate offices overseas and get a free ride, something which is virtually impossible for individual citizens to do.

So is Main Street USA living in a bubble or is it Paulson and Bush? Read More......

Italy protests killing of Bruno the bear

The Italian environment minister is quite upset about the Bavarian environment team that had the patience of a two year old who feared that Bruno might "someday" attack a human despite the only human interaction being when hikers followed Bruno and upset him, so they killed him. My German friends are equally furious about the killing of Bruno and tell me the story is front page news there and a hot topic of debate right now, right up there with the German national team in the World Cup. How did these nature-haters even get jobs working with the environment?

Italian Environment Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio said in Luxembourg at a European Union session on the environment that the bear, a protected species, should have been shot with tranquilizers and transported back to Italy. The Italian news agency Apcom said Scanio complained that his German counterpart, Sigmar Gabriel, appeared unaware of Italy's offer to send specialists to capture and repatriate the animal.

"We consider very serious and irresponsible the shooting of a bear, which was an example of a protected species being reintroduced in Italy," Scanio told reporters. "It is not credible that the EU asks all the world to protect species threatened with extinction, such as elephants or rhinoceroses in Africa, and then allow a protected bear to be slain on its own territory."

Like he said.

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