In private talks with Majority Leader Bill Frist, the Senate's top Democrat has indicated a willingness to allow confirmation of at least two of President Bush's seven controversial appeals court nominees, but only as part of a broader compromise requiring Republicans to abandon threats to ban judicial filibusters, officials said Monday.Stay tuned. Read More......
Scoble got permission to post Steve Ballmer's company-wide email about stories that Microsoft had caved to pressure to not support a state anti-discrimination bill.Read More......
More specifically, Ballmer states that Microsoft did not decide to stop supporting the bill after two employees testified in favor of it in February, and a local pastor threatened to launch a boycott. Instead, Ballmer says that the company decided in January, when planning its legislative agenda for this year, to be neutral on it, as opposed to supporting it like it did last year.
Scoble says he is disappointed because Microsoft is appearing to cave to anti-gay forces. I disagree with that accusation -- I do believe Ballmer when he says the decision was made in January. It's an unfortunate case where someone asks you to do something and you were already planning on doing it, it's hard to prove that the two were unrelated.
BUT, there is a suspicious part in Ballmer's memo:
"What message does the company taking a position send to its employees who have strongly-held beliefs on the opposite side of the issue?
The bottom line is that I am adamant that Microsoft will always be a place that values diversity, that has the strongest possible internal policies for non-discrimination and fairness, and provides the best policies and benefits to all of our employees.
I am also adamant that I want Microsoft to be a place where every employee feels respected, and where every employee feels like they belong. I don't want the company to be in the position of appearing to dismiss the deeply-held beliefs of any employee, by picking sides on social policy issues."
That, Steve, is a crock, and you must know it. Look, what this says to me is that the following sequence happened:
1. Microsoft sponsored the bill last year.
2. Some employees complained about Microsoft's sponsorship -- not in February of this year, but sometime last year.
3. In respons to employee complaints, Microsoft decided not to sponsor it this year.
4. The company came up with the rationalization above, about how sponsoring the bill could make anti-gay employees feel discriminated against.
Steve, first of all, can we cut this "murderers are victims too" line of thinking? Do you agonize about hurting the feelings of employees who enjoy looking at porn on their computers? What about those who like to post internal schedules on public forums? Do you stay up at night worrying about their feelings? I doubt it.
Second, what you said is wrong. If an employee has deeply-held beliefs that woman are inferior, or a certain ethnic group has negative character traits, the company certainly has no qualms (nor should it) about dismissing those beliefs, no matter how deeply held. I just did my 30-minute anti-harassment self-training that all employees are required to go through, and obviously if someone decides to run around the hallways shouting anti-gay slogans, they will be disciplined in a way that they would not if they ran around the hallways shouting anti-seafood or anti-deodorant slogans. The company supports free speech up to a point, but beyond that, when personal belief becomes harassment, the decision has already been made which one wins.
So I'll allow that Microsoft's decision to not support the anti-gay bill was made in January, but that decision looks very very very very very very very very very very suspicious. I don't think anything fishy happened this spring, but I do think something fishy happened last fall.
The ACLU, National Lawyers Guild, and MoveOn.org: "I believe it's time for the heads of left-wing agitation groups who are using the courts to impose their will on the 'sheeple' to be prosecuted under the federal RICO statutes."He also had this to say on Islam:
Iraq's Future: "Iraq cannot become a melting pot as long as it insists on a national religion - especially when that religion is Islam which has zero tolerance for those with nonconforming views."I do always love it when conservatives attack others for their own failings.
Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, a democrat, has been fighting in the media with the conservative Colorado Springs-based group Focus on the Family for about a week now.These people are out of control. Read More......
Salazar is in the political cross hairs of Christian conservatives who accuse him of supporting the so called "filibuster against faith."
Salazar's critics gathered at a Dairy Queen restaurant in Westminster owned by the senator's wife.
One supporter, Phillip Hendrix from Castle Rock said, "stop filibustering judicial nominations. Let some of these judges take their office."
The local tactic is part of a broader national strategy to put heat on senate Democrats who've been using the filibuster to block conservative judicial nominees from the federal bench.
Shall we call it Micro-too-soft?Read More......
Faced with a decision of conscience on whether to back a state bill to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination, the software giant decided to take the "neutral" position.
That's Microsoft code for what you and I might call "chickening out."
For a company that presents itself as cutting-edge and forward-thinking, such a move seems backward. And for a company recognized as a corporate leader for its treatment of gay employees, such inaction seems hypocritical, too.
Given the chance to help deal a blow against ignorance and lead Washington state out of the dark ages, the visionaries in Redmond took one look at a tough issue and went soft....
The African American minister sounds too comfortable using the Bible to justify discrimination. Shame, shame on this soul brother. He quickly forgets the day when racial prejudice prohibited his forebears from sitting at cafe counters -- and before that, when the Bible was used to justify slavery....
What Microsoft truly fears -- and what company representatives won't say publicly -- is the red Republican tide rolling across the country.
There are a lot of computers and software customers out in those Republican-leaning states. In the inner sanctum of Bill Gates' Redmond campus, I picture number crunchers trying to figure out whether all of that money is worth losing over a gay rights bill in a state divided on the issue.
Judging by their response, they said heck no.
Theirs was a business decision. Faced with offending right-wing conservatives who could boycott en masse or gays and lesbians in Washington state who were far too meek as the bill came under fire in Olympia, Microsoft punted....
In a 2001 budget meeting still fresh in congressional memories, Bush antagonized a bipartisan group of senior members who were seeking additional funding for domestic security. Bush bluntly threatened a veto and, rather than respond to lawmakers' arguments, abruptly left the meeting.
"I was flabbergasted and amazed," said Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.). "We expected it was going to be a working meeting instead of a 'my way or the highway' meeting."
Republicans again saw an adamant, table-pounding Bush when he tried to persuade lawmakers in 2003 to support full funding for rebuilding Iraq. "I'm not here to debate you," Bush said at one meeting, interrupting one senator.
BILL Gates (above) is the richest man in the world — but he's paying a price. After "a number of threats on his life," Gates has hired a cadre of bodyguards to protect himself, his wife, Melissa, and their two children, we're told. The threats have escalated since Microsoft unexpectedly pulled its support for a major gay rights bill before Congress. Gay rights activists say the powerful company caved in to right-wing fundamentalists. On Tuesday, Gates attended Michael Milken's annual forum for the rich and successful at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, which had to accommodate Gates' 10 bodyguards. A rep didn't return calls.Hat tip to Good As You. Read More......
Worried about a political deadlock in Iraq and a spike in mayhem from an emboldened insurgency, the Bush administration has pressed Iraqi leaders in recent days to end their stalemate over forming a new government, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney personally exhorting top Kurdish and Shiite politicians to come together.Second article "Marines From Iraq Sound Off About Want of Armor and Men" is a classic. U.S. Marines feel compelled to complain about the lack of armor and the deadly effect it had on them.
The White House pressure, reported by Iraqi officials in Baghdad and an American official in Washington on Sunday, was a change in the administration's hands-off approach to Iraqi politics. The change was disclosed as insurgents unleashed a devastating technique, with twin double bombings at a police academy in Tikrit and an ice cream parlor in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad that killed 21 and wounded scores more.
In both attacks, a second bomb detonated within minutes after the first, killing and wounding policemen and bystanders who had rushed to care for victims of the initial blasts.
On May 29, 2004, a station wagon that Iraqi insurgents had packed with C-4 explosives blew up on a highway in Ramadi, killing four American marines who died for lack of a few inches of steel.Marines complaining. Practically unheard of before the presidency of George W. Bush.
The four were returning to camp in an unarmored Humvee that their unit had rigged with scrap metal, but the makeshift shields rose only as high as their shoulders, photographs of the Humvee show, and the shrapnel from the bomb shot over the top.
"The steel was not high enough," said Staff Sgt. Jose S. Valerio, their motor transport chief, who along with the unit's commanding officers said the men would have lived had their vehicle been properly armored. "Most of the shrapnel wounds were to their heads."
Among those killed were Rafael Reynosa, a 28-year-old lance corporal from Santa Ana, Calif., whose wife was expecting twins, and Cody S. Calavan, a 19-year-old private first class from Lake Stevens, Wash., who had the Marine Corps motto, Semper Fidelis, tattooed across his back.
They were not the only losses for Company E during its six-month stint last year in Ramadi. In all, more than one-third of the unit's 185 troops were killed or wounded, the highest casualty rate of any company in the war, Marine Corps officials say.
In returning home, the leaders and Marine infantrymen have chosen to break an institutional code of silence and tell their story, one they say was punctuated not only by a lack of armor, but also by a shortage of men and planning that further hampered their efforts in battle, destroyed morale and ruined the careers of some of their fiercest warriors.
The UN - not Mr Blair - had the power to rule that
UN Security Council resolution 1441 might not be sufficient legal basis for war.
Lord Goldsmith expressed caution about going to war without a second United Nations resolution.
Mr Blair was told there were risks in relying on previous UN resolutions to justify military action.
Lord Goldsmith pointed to the latest work by Hans Blix and his team of UN weapons inspectors.
Lord Goldsmith said that American statements on the legality of war were not applicable in
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