"Gloom is Deeper in Baghdad Now..."

An excellent London Review of Books article on Iraq from reporter Patrick Cockburn. Only available to subscribers, so here are some substantial highlights. In short: things are looking down.

Suicide bombs blow up with the regularity of an artillery barrage in Baghdad. I no longer always go up onto the roof of the al-Hamra Hotel, where I am living, to see the black smoke rising and to try to work out where the bomb went off. On a single day recently 12 suicide bombs exploded in the city, killing at least 30 people....

Gloom is deeper in Baghdad now than at any time since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Even Iraqi officials in the relative safety of the Green Zone, once invariably optimistic, are beginning to despair. It is not only the increase in the number of suicide bombs. There is a water shortage in some parts of the city. Electricity supply is down to five hours a day....

Hatred between Sunni and Shia Arabs has been intensifying over the past few months. Iraqis used to claim that sectarianism had been fomented or exacerbated by Saddam. In reality the tension between Sunni, Shia and Kurd has always shaped Iraqi politics....

Defence procurement in the Middle East, as in much of the world, is corrupt. But in most countries usable equipment, however overpriced, does eventually turn up. In Iraq the corruption is on a different scale: often the money disappears entirely and nothing is received in return....

Nobody knows how many soldiers and policemen actually turn up for work. Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Kurdish political leader, says that an army unit supposedly numbering 2200 men was sent to Kirkuk. The Kurds counted them: there were just 300 men in the unit. Nobody knew what had happened to the other 1900. "They say that there are 150,000 men in the army and police," Othman says, "but I believe the real figure is 40,000." The rest either appear only to draw their pay or never existed in the first place....

The chances of a unitary Iraq emerging from the conflict are dwindling. The Kurds, triumphant after fighting for half a century, are not going to give up the oil city of Kirkuk or abandon a level of autonomy close to independence. The Shias want as much power as they can get. The Sunnis have shown by their armed resistance that they can destabilise Iraq for as long as they want. But the insurgents will not be able to spread resistance beyond the Sunni community because of the savage attacks by the suicide bombers on Shia mosques and children playing in the street in Shia districts. The appeal of Iraqi nationalism is ebbing....

And my favorite line:

The looting of Baghdad which began in the days after Saddam's fall has never really ended.

Read the rest of this post...

Specter May Actually want Roberts to Answer Questions

Talk about stirring the pot. You know it's an interesting story when both the left and the right are invoking Chuck Schumer to describe Arlen Specter:

In the first hint of how he will steer the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge John G. Roberts Jr., Senator Arlen Specter, the Judiciary Committee chairman, said Monday that he would press the nominee for his views on specific cases involving the authority of Congress to pass broad social legislation, a power that Democrats fear will be rolled back by a more conservative court.

In a three-page letter to Judge Roberts, Mr. Specter raises pointed questions about two recent court decisions invalidating legislation Congress passed under its authority to regulate interstate commerce. That power has for decades been used to produce expansive legislation, including environmental protections, civil rights laws and the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Restricting the interstate commerce clause has been a dream of the hard-core right wingers. For some of them, it equates to overturning the privacy cases.

Democrats seemed more surprised by Specter's letter than Republicans did:

Democrats and liberal advocacy groups, caught off guard by Mr. Specter's letter, were elated.

"Arlen Specter sounds exactly like Chuck Schumer," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Schumer said that he viewed the letter as "a vindication of the campaign I've been waging" to have the nominee answer detailed questions about cases....Conservatives, already wary of Mr. Specter and his moderate brand of Republican politics and generally supportive of the Rehnquist court decisions, were not pleased.

"It certainly sounds as if he's getting pulled into Chuck Schumer's demands for unprecedented specificity in case law," said Sean Rushton, executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative advocacy group. "To discuss recent cases and controversies and to have the Senate attempt to reject or confirm nominees based on a checklist of how they would rule on individual cases is clearly an attack on the judiciary's independence."

Arlen is going to be getting some big time heat from the White House and the right wingers for this. But he knew exactly what he was doing.

This is starting to get interesting. Roberts is going to have to answer the interstate commerce clause questions for the GOPers, not the Democrats. Same may be true for the right to privacy. I mean, after that work he did for the gays, he is going to have to establish his conservative credentials. Read the rest of this post...

Open Thread

Keep stirring the pot. Read the rest of this post...

Another Day, Another Really Bad Poll for Bush

Saturday was Newsweek. Sunday was AP-Ipsos. Monday's is from USAToday/CNN/Gallup:

President Bush's approval rating remains among the lowest of his presidency, with some Americans growing increasingly dissatisfied with the Iraq war, according to a new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday.

Forty-five percent of those polled said they approve of Bush's handling of his job, compared with 51 percent who said they are dissatisfied....The poll involved interviews with 1,004 adult Americans conducted by telephone Friday through Sunday. The total included 443 who identified themselves as Republicans and 466 who said they were Democrats.

Looks like the numbers are tanking in this poll because of Iraq too:

Bush's slumping approval ratings seemed directly tied to the war in Iraq, where near-daily bombings have taken an increasing toll on U.S. troops, Iraqi police and civilians.

Fifty-six percent of those polled said they thought things were going badly for the United States in Iraq, and 43 percent said things were going well.

Two questions about the Iraq war were asked of about half the respondents, giving them a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

On one, 57 percent said the war has made the United States less safe from terrorism -- a number that has risen dramatically in just two months when 39 percent said the U.S. homeland was less safe.

On the other, 54 percent said they believe it was a mistake to send U.S. troops to Iraq; 44 percent said it was not a mistake.

Those numbers have nearly reversed since last month, when 46 percent said it was a mistake to send troops and 53 percent said it was not.

So, now, real majorities think the Iraq war has made us less safe and think it was a mistake to send troops.

These numbers are in the danger zone for Bush. Wait until he arrests Cindy Sheehan this week.

Hope Bush is really enjoying his vacation. Read the rest of this post...

Fully Cooperate, Scooter: Sign the Waiver

Thanks to the post from Sarah B. for pointing us to this. Murray Waas reports that Representatives Conyers and Slaughter have asked Scooter Libby to grant a waiver to Judith Miller:

The ranking Democrats on the House Judiciary and the House Rules Committee, Reps. John Conyers of Ohio and Louise Slaughter of New York, wrote to I. Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, earlier today telling him that his "conduct may have fallen short of the President's pledge to full cooperation" with the investigation of special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

I guess it all depends on what the definition of "full cooperation" is. So far, full cooperation means no cooperation. Like WMDs, full cooperation with the investigation doesn't exist. Read the rest of this post...

White House Ignores 9-11 Group

Bush hated the 9-11 Commission, argued against forming it in the first place, hated the idea of Homeland Security, fought against providing info to it every step of the way, fought against having any of his top officials testify, fought against having to testify himself and was too scared to testify without having Cheney sit next to him and hold his hand, and gave lip-service to its recommendations only because it was so popular. Really, why should Bush be interested in finding out how the worst intelligence failure in our nation's history happened on his watch in hopes of preventing it from happening again?

Now that the 9-11 group wants to do a follow-up, they have no official standing, so Bush can tell them to take a hike.

Thomas H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who led the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission, said he was surprised and disappointed that the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and several other executive branch agencies had failed to respond to requests made two months ago for updated information on the government's antiterrorism programs.

"It's very disappointing," Mr. Kean said of the administration's failure to cooperate with the group. "All we're trying to do is make the public safer."

Mr. Kean said there had been no response of any sort to interview requests for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director; Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, and Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, among others.

That's right. Bush can't even be bothered to say a polite "no." He's just closing his eyes and ears and pretending they don't even exist. Read the rest of this post...

CREW wants answers from Justice

Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington (CREW), one of the smartest and gutsiest groups in DC, asked the Inspector General at the Department of Justice to investigate the demotion of a prosecutor who was conducting a grand jury inquiry involving the notorious Jack Abramoff.

Melanie Sloan nails it:

“The demotion of Acting Attorney General Black looks political and should be investigated,” Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW said today. “The fact that Mr. Black’s demotion apparently resulted in the termination of a serious public corruption investigation into a friend of the White House, makes the situation all the more egregious. This Administration needs to be held accountable for its actions. An investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General would be a good first step.”

If it looks political, and the White House is involved, it's political. As we noted yesterday, if they will remove a prosecutor for Abramoff, what will they do for Rove.

This is a bad precedent and kudos to CREW for being on top of it. You have to watch this Bush crowd every second. Read the rest of this post...

Geez, now I think the cat's in love with me

We've gone from sitting on the cat to the cat now badgering me every second of the day for attention.

Both cats are now sleeping in the bed with me, though I don't usually see them pop up until 4AM or so (the little tramps), but now Sushi, the one I sat on, will NOT leave me alone. Follows me all over the house - is currently sitting behind me on the couch (I'm sitting in front of the couch, cross legged). Nudges me constantly. Even jumped on my lap while I was reading, and then settled down for a nap (the cat, not me). I mean, it's nice and all, but geez, could these things be more hot and cold. I feel like someone's trying to make me get married after the first date. You buy these things some gourmet tuna and all of a sudden you're the cat's meow, literally. (The little freak is now sitting there on the couch, behind me, crouched down, watching me type.)

Atrios, help!

Here's a cute little pose Sushi came up with earlier today - I call it his Greg Louganis.

Read the rest of this post...

Bush reportedly will jail mom of US soldier killed in Iraq

Why do mourning mothers hate America? Read the rest of this post...

John Roberts Speaks Out On Supreme Court And Abortion...

...in July of 2000. "This Week" on Sunday showed clips from an appearance by John Roberts on a local news show discussing the just-ended term of the Supreme Court. Here's the transcript from the Washington Post.

Roberts certainly walked and talked like a far right conservative about the Boy Scouts, school prayer, abortion, etc. He said the term made clear that we DIDN'T have a conservative SCOTUS, despite the fact that 7 of the 9 justices were put in by Republicans. But he also used the phrase "the basic right to an abortion," though doubtless the far right won't get too upset and the far left won't take too much comfort from that.

Stephanopoulus and others dissect his comments thoroughly. My main observation: Roberts is going to make a very calm, cool nominee. Read the rest of this post...

CIA Agent Outed For Partisan Purposes? It's Happened Before. When? Vietnam.

Writer John H. Richardson has a fascinating op-ed column from the Sunday New York Times detailing how his own father was outed as a CIA agent in 1963 -- thus endangering national security -- because he wouldn't support encouraging a coup against the South Vietnamese president.

But in a horrible way, time proved him right. We never did pull off the magic trick of finding a foreign proxy who was both strong and obedient, and that meant that we owned what we had broken. Fifty-eight thousand dead Americans later, it seemed safe to conclude one thing: When "high official sources" start exposing C.I.A. officers to force their agenda, watch out.

One more sad parallel between Vietnam and Iraq, courtesy of Karl Rove. Read the rest of this post...

Open Thread

Speak clearly... Read the rest of this post...

FCC Hires Far Right Activist: Infringement Of Free Speech To Follow

Well, what a nice quid pro quo. Far right activists pushed Bush to name someone like Kevin Martin to head the FCC. Now Martin has hired far right activist Penny Nance to "advise" him and reach out to Congress and the public. Nance claims to be an "anti-pornography" crusader, but in fact she attacks free speech and wants to make her interpretation of the Bible the law of the land, a la the Taliban. This is indeed like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. First, PBS is put under the thumb of activist Republicans, now our airwaves are put under the heel of far right fringe activists who want to wrest power from the people and impose their religious beliefs on the country.

On Penny Nance's resume:

*board member of Concerned Women For America -- their stated goal is "helping...to bring Biblical principles into all levels of public policy."

*founder of Kids First Coalition -- activist group which reprints Republican speeches and papers on its website (just what kids love to read!) and pushing to censor DVDs and end a woman's right to abortion

*attacked basic cable in January -- she sees a "huge indecency problem" despite the fact that any and every channel on cable can be blocked by parents at no charge -- so if all you want your kids to watch is The 700 Club, you've got the power right now. But Nance knows this. She wants to stop YOU from watching what you want, as well. Say goodbye to "The Shield" and "Battlestar Galactica" (Pagan worship) and more if she has her way.

* worked with/for Center for Reclaiming America -- which wants to "implement the Biblical principles on which our country was founded."

The FCC has some 50+ indeceny complaints it may start acting on soon. Nance's hiring seems to indicate Martin wants to politicize that process and use the platform of the FCC to impose a narrow, fundamentalist Christian ethos onto the airwaves that are owned by ALL Americans.

This is very dangerous. Why in heaven's name would the FCC hire an adviser who is a fringe political activist that spends all her time campaigning to influence the FCC? Shouldn't they be the non-partisan guardian of the airwaves that deals with complaints on all sides and try to act judiciously? Ha.

Call or email Chairman Kevin J. Martin at the FCC and tell him how disturbed you are that he would hire a fringe activist that repeatedly lobbies the FCC as an adviser. Why doesn't he hire an activist from the other side as well so that ALL Americans can feel they have a voice in how our airwaves are regulated? Better yet, why doesn't he avoid hiring activists who repeatedly lobby the FCC from ANY side and simply hire non-partisan people devoted to the best interests of the public at large, not the groups they've been affiliated with for years?

Tell Martin you are happy to see the market decide what is best for families -- not the government. We don't have an official "family hour" anymore -- which Nance would like to reimpose. Instead we have countless channels providing HUNDREDS of family friendly hours every day, from nature shows on Discovery to Nickelodeon to Disney and many, many others. Tell Martin you're scared that Nance's far right political beliefs don't reflect reality or your vision of America as a pluralistic society.

Contact: fccinfo@fcc.gov
Call: 1-888-CALL-FCC (1-888-225-5322)
Martin's direct line: 202-418-1000 (per threader Charles) Be polite!
Write to him at:
Federal Communications Commission
Chairman Kevin Martin
445 12th St. SW
Suite 8b201
Washington DC 20554

Tell Martin: you expect the FCC to represent ALL Americans. Tell him to fire partisan political activist Penny Nance and apologize for siding with some of the very groups that lobby the FCC. The airwaves belong to ALL Americans, not just far right act ivi sts who think SpongeBob SquarePants is a danger. Read the rest of this post...

Bush signing energy bill -- Oil hits new high

Bush is signing the energy bill today, and oh yeah, clearly he is leading us to energy independence:

Crude-oil prices rallied to a new high above $63 a barrel on Monday, reflecting market fears over the U.S. embassy closure in Saudi Arabia due to security threats and concerns that shutdowns of U.S. oil refineries would reduce supply.

Read the rest of this post...

The GOP attacks on Cindy Sheehan have begun

Atrios has the details....Drudge is leading the charge, as usual.

In their sick way, getting smacked around by the likes of Drudge is the highest form of praise. I guess later today we can expect to hear her trashed by the lard ass, drug addicted chicken hawk who called Paul Hackett a "staff puke." Read the rest of this post...

Hackett and Sheehan put the focus on Bush's Iraq failings

The combination of Paul Hackett's astounding showing in OH-02 and Cindy Sheehan's bravery have struck a chord with the MSM:

Judging from what's out there, it appears to be time to pile on the Administration over Iraq. A strikingly close outcome in a special congressional election in Ohio last week suggested that voters in a traditionally Republican stronghold are more receptive to criticism about President Bush's conduct of the war. Sixty-one percent of Americans disapprove of his handling of it, per Newsweek. Jessica Lynch tells Time magazine that she feels she was "used as a symbol." The mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq, an anti-war activist, is getting national media attention for her vigil in Crawford; she has already met with Administration officials but hopes to meet with Bush.

First, if it is a time to pile on, it's long, long overdue. I guess it took Hackett and Sheehan AND 61% of their fellow Americans to prove it. Read the rest of this post...

Why does Atrios hate racists?

? Read the rest of this post...

Hallelujah

I think I succeeded in a temporary fix to get the blog moving again. We reached our quota, again, on how many files (images, video etc) we could upload to blogger and it shut us out. Problem is, the fix is to log in to blogger via ftp and delete files, but alas, the blogger ftp instructions have never worked for me, so I can't delete. Anyway, I deleted a few old posts and that seems to have helped temporarily. We'll see. Read the rest of this post...

One grieving mother is facing down Bush

Cindy Sheehan is really something. The NY Times has another article for Monday's paper:

President Bush draws antiwar protesters just about wherever he goes, but few generate the kind of attention that Cindy Sheehan has since she drove down the winding road toward his ranch here this weekend and sought to tell him face to face that he must pull all Americans troops out of Iraq now.

Ms. Sheehan's son, Casey, was killed last year in Iraq, after which she became an antiwar activist. She says she and her family met with the president two months later at Fort Lewis in Washington State.

But when she was blocked by the police a few miles from Mr. Bush's 1,600-acre spread on Saturday, the 48-year-old Ms. Sheehan of Vacaville, Calif., was transformed into a news media phenomenon, the new face of opposition to the Iraq conflict at a moment when public opinion is in flux and the politics of the war have grown more complicated for the president and the Republican Party.

Ms. Sheehan has vowed to camp out on the spot until Mr. Bush agrees to meet with her, even if it means spending all of August under a broiling sun by the dusty road. Early on Sunday afternoon, 25 hours after she was turned back as she approached Mr. Bush's ranch, Prairie Chapel, Ms. Sheehan stood red-faced from the heat at the makeshift campsite that she says will be her home until the president relents or leaves to go back to Washington. A reporter from The Associated Press had just finished interviewing her. CBS was taping a segment on her. She had already appeared on CNN, and was scheduled to appear live on ABC on Monday morning. Reporters from across the country were calling her cellphone.

"It's just snowballed," Ms. Sheehan said beside a small stand of trees and a patch of shade that contained a sleeping bag, some candles, a jar of nuts and a few other supplies. "We have opened up a debate in the country."

Cindy, you have opened up a debate in the country.

If you have any doubts about what a pig George Bush is, read the account of his visit with Cindy last year:

The White House has released few details of such sessions, which Mr. Bush holds regularly as he travels the country, but generally portrays them as emotional and an opportunity for the president to share the grief of the families. In Ms. Sheehan's telling, though, Mr. Bush did not know her son's name when she and her family met with him in June 2004 at Fort Lewis. Mr. Bush, she said, acted as if he were at a party and behaved disrespectfully toward her by referring to her as "Mom" throughout the meeting.

By Ms. Sheehan's account, Mr. Bush said to her that he could not imagine losing a loved one like an aunt or uncle or cousin. Ms. Sheehan said she broke in and told Mr. Bush that Casey was her son, and that she thought he could imagine what it would be like since he has two daughters and that he should think about what it would be like sending them off to war.

"I said, 'Trust me, you don't want to go there'," Ms. Sheehan said, recounting her exchange with the president. "He said, 'You're right, I don't.' I said, 'Well, thanks for putting me there.' "

Let's watch to see if Bush has the guts to meet with Cindy again. I doubt he will. They'll just want her to go away...or knowing this White House, they'll start some ugly campaign against her. But what they don't get is that Cindy has already gone through the worst loss any parent can.

She is an American Hero...and you can keep up with her through her post, "Camp Casey" over at Daily Kos. Read the rest of this post...

Peter Jennings Died

ABC News reported that Peter Jennings died from lung cancer on Sunday. Read the rest of this post...