Second general blasts Bush, and Maine GOP Senator Susan Collins

VoteVets explains the new ad:

Major General (ret.) Paul D. Eaton is the second former commander on the ground in Iraq to declare that the President did not listen to his commanders, and is still not listening, when it comes to the war in Iraq. This comes on the heels of an ad that shook the political world last week, when former Iraq commanding general, Major General (ret.) John Batiste became the first former commander from the war to take to the paid airwaves to say the same thing.

The Eaton ad will run in the states and districts of Senators Susan Collins and John Warner and Representatives Mary Bono, Mike Castle, Phil English, Jo Ann Emerson, Tim Johnson (IL), Heather Wilson, beginning today, through the end of the week. Events are planned in Albuquerque, Richmond, Tidewater, Champaign-Urbana, Palm Springs and Wilmington to promote the ad. Full information on the events is below....

In today's ad, General Eaton appears in front of the American flag, and a map of Iraq. Looking directly into the camera, he says, "President Bush says he listens to his military commanders. Well, Mr. President, I was one of those commanders and you weren't listening when we warned you of the dangers we'd face invading Iraq. Now our military is overcommitted and America is less secure. Mr. President, you're being told we need serious diplomacy, not escalation. And you're still not listening. If the President won't listen, Congress must." Similar to last week's ad, this ad concludes with, "[Senator/Representative Name], Protect America, Not George Bush."...

Major General Paul D. Eaton (Ret.) recently retired from the US Army after more than 33 years service. His assignments include Infantry command from the company to brigade levels, command of the Infantry Center at Fort Benning and Chief of Infantry. His most recent operational assignment was Commanding General of the command charged with reestablishing Iraqi Security Forces 2003-2004, where he built the command and established the structure and infrastructure for the Iraqi Armed Forces. He is a 1972 graduate of West Point, son of a West Point Air Force fighter pilot, long an MIA from the Vietnam War; remains recently identified and buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He is married to PJ Eaton, an Army veteran and daughter of a Naval Academy graduate career Marine. He is father to a daughter and two sons, both Soldiers, one a Military Intelligence Specialist, one an Infantry Captain.

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Open thread

I've always been fascinated with the head butt. It's something every French kid learns from an early age - how to knock your forehead into someone else's forehead and practically knock them out. It's a shockingly good self-defense technique - I experienced it for the first time from a French high school exchange student in England when I was 19. Anyway, a French friend just sent me yet another political gag about the French presidential elections. It's cute. Check it out (click on "jouer" to play).

I got 44. Read the rest of this post...

Latest on Iraq supplemental in Senate

Statement from Senator Reid:

WASHINGTON, D.C.Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made the following statement today, announcing the introduction of two amendments to the Water Resources Development Act that would allow Senators the opportunity to vote to change course in the war in Iraq, while also expediting Senate consideration of the Iraq war supplemental:

Two weeks ago President Bush vetoed the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill, a bill to fully fund the troops in Iraq and change the course of that conflict. Late last week, the House sent a new bill to the Senate, and we received that legislation within the past hour. So the ball is now in our court, the Senate's court.

I've had a number of conversations with Senator McConnell the last several days. I spoke to him earlier today at some length. Democrats and Republicans agree the Senate needs to get a bill into conference as soon as possible, and we need to work together to make that happen.

As important as it is to get a bill to conference, we've not, on this side of the aisle, lost sight of the fact that the American people have concluded the President's Iraq policy has failed and are demanding a new way forward on behalf of the American people.

In an effort to ensure quick Senate passage of our conference vehicle later this week, as well as to give Senators an opportunity to express their views on the President's Iraq policy, I will offer two important amendments to the Water Resources Development Act.

The first amendment is Feingold-Reid. This amendment would immediately transition the mission of U.S. forces in Iraq to force protection, training Iraqi security forces and counterterrorism with a goal to safely redeploy troops not conducting these missions by March 31 of next year. The Feingold amendment enforces this timeline by prohibiting the funding of troops in Iraq not engaged in these three missions starting April 1, 2008.

I will also offer Levin-Reid, which is consistent with the bipartisan legislation approved by Congress with one major change it permits the President to waive the timeline for redeployments. It has in it some things that have received broad support from members on both sides of the aisle ensuring that our troops are ready when they are sent into battle, limiting extended and repeated deployments of our troops, and holding the Iraqis accountable with real consequences.

We'll have votes on these two amendments no later than Wednesday morning. I will work with the distinguished Republican leader to see when that can happen.

These votes represent an opportunity for the Senate to shape the important conference we hope will begin immediately upon passage later this week of the Senate version of the Supplemental. There's probably no end of amendments that could be offered. But on our side of the aisle, Democrats believe that we should do something very, very close to what was done in the bill that we sent to the President that he vetoed. And basically, that's what we have here. But in recognition that the President has exercised his veto power of a bill to fund our troops and is prepared to do so again, we give the President the ability to waive the timelines we have in the legislation.

I think it's very important to understand that transitioning in this mission to fighting Al Qaeda is part of the recognition of what we and the American people feel is important. At present, Americans troops are over there protecting the Shias, protecting the Sunnis, the Kurds, and at all times, all these different elements are shooting at the Americans.

We need to change the course in Iraq, transition the military mission there, rebuild our military power and redirect our efforts toward more effectively fighting Al Qaeda. The amendments I have offered this afternoon will give Senators an opportunity on the eve of our upcoming conference to vote on whether they agree with this need to change course to make America more secure.

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Deputy Attorney General, involved in US Attorneys firing scandal, resigns

More from the Post. Read the rest of this post...

Will GOP Senator Hagel run for prez as an independent?

Wow, that would throw a wrench in things. The question is who benefits most, the GOP or the Dems? Hagel would be anti-war, so that hurts the Democratic candidate. But he's also a far-right conservative Republican, other than on the war, so that hurts the GOP. Very interesting.

From Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza:

If Hagel had left the door to an independent presidential bid open a crack in recent weeks, he tore it wide open yesterday.

At times Hagel sounded like he was simultaneously prepping for an independent bid and explaining why he was leaving the Republican Party.

Take this passage: "I've been a Republican all my life ... I am not happy with the Republican Party today. It has drifted from the party of Eisenhower, of Goldwater, of Reagan, the party I joined. It isn't the same party. It's not."

He didn't stop there. Hagel went on to say that the GOP has been "hijacked by a group of single-minded, almost isolationist insulationists, power-projectors ..."

Hagel was far more positive when asked about running as an independent. He called such a bid "good for the system" and said the 2008 election will be decided on demonstrated competence and leadership. "I don't think ideology is going to play a big role in that," Hagel said.

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The religious right is not happy with Romney

I decided to take a look through the Web site of one of the top, and certainly the most vocal (and rabid) religious right organization, the American Family Association, and see what they had to say about GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

What piqued my interest was the dearth of email alerts and updates from the religious right over the past week about the growing discussion over Mitt Romney's Mormonism. What's odd is that the religious right groups are the first to cry "you hate Christians" whenever anyone even mentions a scintilla of disagreement with them on anything. It's therefore a wee bit surprising that the religious right has been mum about what some on the right are trying to label "Mormon-bashing." After all, Romney is positioning himself as the religious right Christian candidate for president, so wouldn't you think the religious right Christians would be the first to defend one of their own?

They're not.

Is it that the religious right has a bit of a problem with Mormons, or anyone who is not a Southern Baptist? After all, these are the people who think that Catholics aren't Christians because they worship a "Satanic counterfeit." Is it that far a stretch to wonder whether the same people who think Catholics are going to hell have a problem with Mormons?

Anyway, I was rather surprised to find quite a library of anti-Romney writings on the American Family Association's Web site in a large number of articles from the past few years. Here are a few excerpts/blurbs from the AFA about Romney - note that each one is from a different story about Romney:

A pro-family activist predicts that with every new revelation about the liberal record of now-former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney...

A pro-family activist group in Massachusetts is warning that Governor Mitt Romney is not the conservative politician he's portraying himself to be...

Michigan conservative says Mitt Romney is too liberal

Cardinal O'Malley asked Governor Mitt Romney for a religious exemption... Governor Romney reluctantly responded that he lacked legal authority

A conservative activist in Massachusetts says he is very disappointed by Governor Mitt Romney's decision on the state's emergency contraception law.

...denouncing a large homosexual and transgender youth event in Boston this weekend -- an event that is being promoted by Governor Mitt Romney's office.

Some pro-family groups and the conservative media are being accused of covering up the fact that Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is "the founding father of homosexual marriage' -- or so says a parents coalition leader in that state.

Christians seek Romney clarification on homosexual rights

Group Demands Romney Roll Back Pro-Homosexual Program Funding.

A former Republican presidential candidate says former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has hurt his run for the White House by not supporting America's top general over remarks the military leader made that homosexual acts are "immoral."...

Gov. Romney's Constitutional Blunder: Bogus Gay Marriages

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CNN's Jack Cafferty: How long will Americans let Bush dictate policy unilaterally on Iraq

Cafferty, as usual, cuts to the chase. The video is posted on Yahoo, and it's a bit hard to find. You need to go this page, then find the Cafferty video on the page (currently it's the top video, but it won't be forever). Really poorly-designed Web page, if the video isn't on top there is no permanent link to it, so it will simply become lost and no one will link to it. Good idea, poor execution. Read the rest of this post...

The subtle, important differences of having Democrats in power

Note the AP headline:

"Democrats prod automakers on mileage"

When did the Republican Congress prod anyone on anything, especially America's business community? There is a positive role for government in America, and a positive role for prodding business to do the right thing.

I was walking by a gas station last night (I don't have a car), and prices were above $3.00 again. This is abominable. And equally abominable is how the public simply acquiesced to gas prices soaring under George Bush's leadership. Bush promised us he'd get the Saudis to keep gas prices (oil prices) low. That means that not only did Bush fail, but he put into play the issue of whether a president has jurisdiction over gas prices - per Bush, he does.

Let me remind you of how quickly things have gone to hell. Gas prices averaged $1.60 a gallon in February 2003. Then Bush went to war in Iraq one month later, and prices have soared ever since. So there is a very real issue as to whether George Bush directly caused the doubling of gas prices in America. You can't blame September 11 for the increase beyond $1.60 - the $1.60 price was a good year and a half after September 11. And four months before September 11, gas prices were averaging $1.70 a gallon. And actually, gas prices fell in the months following September 11 - for example, gas prices averaged $1.24 a gallon six weeks after September 11. Thus, September 11 had no effect whatsoever on long-term (or even medium-term) gas prices.

Yes, China's consumption is voracious and it will affect oil prices in the long run, and a lot more (and just what attention ARE we paying to China under Bush and the Republicans? None.), but we're to believe that gas prices doubled in four years simply because of China? Excluding a very short-lived post Sept 11 bump, gas prices didn't increase at all from 2001 to 2003, but then they doubled from 2003 to 2007. China's economy has been soaring for years. The "new" factor in 2003 that's continued to date: George Bush's little adventure in Iraq. And in fact, Bush argued that the Iraq war would actually lower our gas prices:

Laurence Lindsey – President Bush’s senior economic advisor at the time — argued in 2002 that the Iraq war would increase oil supplies and lower prices. From the Washington Times, 9/19/02....

“The key issue is oil, and a regime change in Iraq would facilitate an increase in world oil,” which would drive down oil prices, giving the U.S. economy an added boost.

Incompetence, and the myriad of lies that led to the Iraq war, come at a cost. Read the rest of this post...

No more legitimacy

As someone who thinks the U.S. should take advantage of its historically unparalleled power and international influence to do some good in the world, my secondary foreign policy disappointment of the past several years -- second to the appalling death and destruction wrought -- is the near-total collapse of U.S. moral legitimacy. From minor (shunning allies) to shocking (Abu Ghraib, rendition, and even our intransigence on climate change), political actions have a real effect on the U.S. ability to (peacefully, effectively) promote the values that could really benefit people throughout the world.

There are some heartening signs, however, of increased pushback against this continued national nightmare, coming from a variety of political and pop culture sources. Here you have Rep. Jane Harman, hardly a shrinking violet on national security issues, advocating closing Gitmo and restoring habeas corpus. And this position isn't in a press release on her website, or from some awful Sunday morning talk show, it's on . . . a blog! With the usual caveat that Harman's improvement on these issues has come largely since a primary challenge from the left in 2006, the money quote:

It is al Qaida, not Iraq, that is our biggest problem, and we need much better strategies for dealing with it. It seems to me that restoring America's core values and proud legal traditions are a big piece of any strategy for improving our tarnished international standing and winning the argument with the next generation of would-be terrorists.

That's why restoring habeas corpus, reining in the use of national security letters, and shutting down the prison at Guantánamo Bay are so important.

Our national shame is also being exposed in pop culture, and I can think of no better skewering of the way we've departed from our founding and enduring values than this clip from Boston Legal, delivered by the inimitable and fantastic James Spader, a sarcastic rant that is concurrently hilarious and awful.

The more people understand what the U.S. is really doing -- and has done -- the better. The more we talk about it the better. And the more we fight it, recognizing that it's hurting us all and hurting our country, the closer we are to changing and fixing it. Read the rest of this post...

Rove's obsession with bogus "voter-fraud" at center of U.S. Attorney firings

No wonder the Bush administration is fighting so hard to keep Karl Rove from testifying under oath and on the record about the U.S. Attorney firings. There's growing evidence that Rove was the force that created the scandal. Big surprise, huh?

Rove knew his candidates couldn't win on the issues. He was doing everything he could to throw the elections with the bogus claim of voter fraud. Karl has to testify now -- under oath -- on the record:

Rove, in particular, was preoccupied with pressing Gonzales and his aides about alleged voting problems in a handful of battleground states, according to testimony and documents.

Last October, just weeks before the midterm elections, Rove's office sent a 26-page packet to Gonzales's office containing precinct-level voting data about Milwaukee. A Justice aide told congressional investigators that he quickly put the package aside, concerned that taking action would violate strict rules against investigations shortly before elections, according to statements disclosed this week.

That aide, senior counselor Matthew Friedrich, turned over notes to Congress that detailed a telephone conversation about voter fraud with another Justice official, Benton Campbell, chief of staff for the Criminal Division. Friedrich had asked Campbell for his assessment of Rove's complaints about problems in New Mexico, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, according to a congressional aide familiar with Friedrich's remarks.

The notes show that Campbell also identified Nevada as a problem district. Daniel G. Bogden of Las Vegas was among the nine U.S. attorneys known to have been removed from their jobs last year.

Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School who runs an election law blog, said that "there's no question that Karl Rove and other political operatives" urged Justice officials to apply pressure on U.S. attorneys to pursue voter-fraud allegations in parts of the country that were critical to the GOP.

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Monday Morning Open Thread

What's on the agenda this week? How many more Republicans who've enabled Bush for the past six years will abandon him now?

Let's get it started. Read the rest of this post...

Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp to become carbon neutral

Rupert Murdoch is obviously a smart guy, having built a media empire around the world that is very profitable and continues to grow. Like him and his product or not, the man has been an enormous success. Although he surely has some core beliefs, he's also clever enough (or possibly cynical enough) to sniff out an opportunity and run with it. This is a man who despite the overwhelmingly conservative tone of his media empire, he has been a big supporter of Tony Blair and has been receptive to Hillary's campaign. Sure, neither is on the left side of the spectrum, but neither necessarily jumps out as what you would expect from Murdoch. Regardless of his intentions - cynical or real - this new development is very significant because this is the leader of the right wing media in the Anglo world, India, China and beyond.

Mr Murdoch has bought a Toyota-made Lexus GS450H "green" car, and other practical measures include solar-powered golf carts to carry people round the Fox film lot in Hollywood, building environmentally friendly studios, replacing company fleets with hybrids, using renewable energy, and offsetting remaining emissions by financing windpower in India.

The world's most prominent media tycoon is being hailed by environmentalists as the most important of a chain of high-profile new recruits to the battle to control climate change, including Sir Richard Branson and Sir Terry Leahy, chief executive of Tesco.

His planned campaign "to change the way the public thinks about these issues" could be particularly effective because of the strength of his operations in the United States, China and India, the three most critical countries for tackling global warming. Mr Murdoch told his employees: "We must first get out own house in order."

News Corporation has a carbon footprint of at 641,150 tons a year and will now aim to be carbon neutral by 2010. News International, which publishes his British newspapers, and the publishers HarperCollins will achieve this goal by the end of the year and all books published by the imprint Fourth Estate are to be printed on recycled paper from 1 July.

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School stages gun attack on 6th grade students

How could anyone possibly think this was a good idea?

During the last night of the trip, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose. They were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on a locked door.

After the lights went out, about 20 kids started to cry, 11-year-old Shay Naylor said.

"I was like, 'Oh My God,' " she said. "At first I thought I was going to die. We flipped out."

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