They've created a "culture war" monster

Now the right wingers and theocrats are out of control:

The White House and the Senate Republican leadership are pushing back against pressure from some of their conservative allies about the coming Supreme Court nomination, urging them to stop attacking Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales as a potential nominee and to tone down their talk of a culture war.

In a series of conference calls on Tuesday and over the last several days, Republican Senate aides encouraged conservative groups to avoid emphasizing the searing cultural issues that social conservatives see at the heart of the court fight, subjects like abortion, public support for religion and same-sex marriage, participants said.

The theocrats want their payback and they aren't going to be quiet. They are not going to be duped or sold out:

Gary Bauer, president of American Values and a Christian conservative candidate for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, said, "A lot of people feel that the administration shouldn't be reluctant to talk about the values we hope the nominee will embrace."

"If all my side does is talk about process - 'we want a fair hearing, etc.' - while Ted Kennedy is talking about 'we are not going to let somebody on the court who is going to take away the rights of individuals,' as silly as I think that is, it will affect the way people think about the battle," Mr. Bauer said.

Tom Minnery, director of public policy for Focus on the Family, an evangelical group and broadcaster based in Colorado Springs, blamed leftist advocates for the "decibel level" of judicial confirmation debates and said his group planned to continue to address mainly social and cultural issues "to get our constituents to understand how important this battle is."

Officials of several Christian conservative groups, who did not want to be identified because of what they said was pressure by the White House, said they were continuing to urge the president not to nominate Mr. Gonzales.

Tuesday evening, Focus on the Family transmitted an e-mail message to supporters with the title, "Bush Defends Gonzales. Some conservatives wonder if attorney general is right for Supreme Court."

Intra-GOP fighting could be fun to watch. And, the right wingers are not going to back down. They want to overturn Roe v. Wade, they want discrimination against gays, they want to end access to contraception, they want to destroy privacy rights....and they aren't going to stop until they get all of these. To them, that's what the Supreme Court battle is about. Read the rest of this post...

O'Donnell keeps up the pressure on Rove -- and his lawyer

Lawrence O'Donnell has another challenge for Team Rove over at the Huffington Post. Since Karl's lawyer is all over the press, O'Donnell has a three real questions for him:

Q: You’ve said Rove is not a target of the investigation. Is he a subject of the investigation?

Q: Since Time delivered its e-mails to the prosecutor on Friday, have you asked the prosecutor whether Rove’s status has changed? From witness to subject? Or subject to target?

Q: You told Newsweek that your client “never knowingly disclosed classified information.” Did Rove ever unknowingly disclose classified information?

He also a very good explanation of why these questions and their answers are key. It sure is fun to watch Rove being challenged. Imagine if the MSM knew how to do this, and not always end up as Karl's patsies.

UPDATE 10:36 p.m. Just saw O'Donnell being interviewed on Aaron Brown. He said that the special prosecutor is probably beyond the leak investigation and onto a perjury investigation. The prosecutor has repeatedly said that the focus of his investigation has shifted. Also, O'Donnell thinks that Rove could lose his job over this, but thought he was too smart for perjury. Hmmm. Read the rest of this post...

Open Thread

What's going on? Read the rest of this post...

Hey Media, Rove is using you

Interesting article on E&P; from Bill Israel, a professor who knows Rove and his tactics:

In 99.9 percent of cases I know, journalists must not break the bonds of appropriate confidentiality, to protect their ability to report, and to defend the First Amendment. I’ve testified in court to that end, and would do so again.

But the Valerie Plame-CIA case that threatens jail time for reporters from Time and The New York Times this week is the exception that shatters the rule. In this case, journalists as a community have been played for patsies by the president’s chief strategist, Karl Rove, and are enabling him to abuse the First Amendment, by their invoking it.

To understand why this case is exceptional, one must grasp the extent of Rove’s political mastery, which became clearer to me by working with him. When we taught "Politics and the Press" together at The University of Texas at Austin seven years ago, Rove showed an amazing disdain for Texas political reporters. At the same time, he actively cultivated national reporters who could help him promote a Bush presidency.

In teaching with him, I learned Rove assumes command over any political enterprise he engages. He insists on absolute discipline from staff: nothing escapes him; no one who works with him moves without his direction. In Texas, though he was called "the prime minister" to Gov. George W. Bush, it might have been "Lord," as in the divine, for when it came to politics and policy, it was Rove who gave, and Rove who took away.

Little has changed since the Bush presidency; all roads still lead to Rove.

Definitely worth a read. Read the rest of this post...

Dean fights GOP's "culture of corruption" -- without much help

The growing scandals involving Republicans at the federal and state levels seems to be a ready made campaign issue. Howard Dean seems to think so....but he's not getting much help from the elected Democrats. In fact, according to this piece in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the opposite is true:

Indeed, at the DNC's executive committee meeting in Washington in early June, Dean publicly acknowledged that some congressional Democrats had urged him to tone down his "culture of corruption" rhetoric because they did not want to get caught up in the same ethics probe as DeLay. But Dean said he would not hold back.

"We have not spoken about moral values in this party for a long time," Dean said. "The truth is, we're Democrats because of our moral values. It's a moral value to make sure that kids don't go to bed hungry at night. ... It is a moral value not to go out on golf trips paid for by lobbyists."

You're right, Howard. It is a moral issue...and a winning political issue. What a great combo.

This does explain why CREW hasn't found any Democrat to file ethics complaints in some of the most egregious cases:

"Howard Dean is pretty much out there on his own [among Democrats] in trying to take on the 'culture of corruption,' " said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the Committee for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the nonpartisan group that drafted the complaint Bell filed against DeLay in June 2004.

"The Democrats [in the House] talk a good game, but that's all," she added.

"They're afraid to do anything that could blow back on them. They're all about the boys and girls club that Congress is."

Almost since the 109th Congress convened last January, Sloan's organization has been trying without success to get someone in Congress — Democrat or Republican — to initiate new ethics complaints, not against DeLay but two of his Republican colleagues: Bob Ney of Ohio and Duke Cunningham of California.

If we want to win, folks, we have to play the game differently. And, we have to play hard ball.

The Democrats have been handed a potentially winning issue. But they have to know how to use it. So far, not good. Read the rest of this post...

Ask your House member to sign the letter about Karl Rove

About the letter.

Find your memeber of the US House here. Read the rest of this post...

More On The Looming Supreme Court Battles

The NYT shows the dramatic changes for women in the judiciary since O'Connor was named to the SCOTUS and then focuses in on the Senate battle over what is "appropriate" to ask and points out that questioning of Senators has only been around since the Fifties. Fair enough, but times change and now people feel they have a right to know that Supreme Court justices are within the broad mainstream of judicial thinking.

Senator Sessions of Alabama says you can't ask a nominee about Roe v. Wade because that's asking them to "prejudge" a specific matter. I've heard this before, but huh? Why is asking a judge their opinion on a ruling delivered more than THIRTY YEARS AGO akin to asking them to say how they'll vote on a case that might come before the court in the future?

The average citizen certainly has an opinion on court cases -- look at the uproar over the seizure of land for public use ruling that came towards the end of this term. It's hard to imagine an intelligent judge or lawyer who wouldn't also have an informed intelligent point to make about the ruling. (And any nominee who claims not to have ever expressed or even formed an opinion on Roe V Wade should be immediately rejected for either lying or being an idiot.)

And why must it be such an "ancient" ruling? Who interested in the law doesn't have an opinion about the Supreme Court's overturning of the Texas sodomy law and the implications of that judgment? Discussing past rulings doesn't in any way preclude a judge from viewing a case that comes before the court in the future with fresh eyes. But being incapable of discussing these landmark rulings with intelligence and sensitivity surely marks a nominee as either incompetent or so far out of the mainstream that they are afraid to voice their views in public. Read the rest of this post...

Iraq: Good News, Followed By Lots of Bad News

Here's the latest on the insurgency's effective attacks on Muslim diplomats. They've kidnapped the Egyptian ambassador and now attacked the reps of Bahrain and Pakistan. Pakistan even refers to the "deteriorating security conditions" in Iraq. Didn't they get Bush's talking points? Anyone who thinks this will undercut support for the insurgency on the fabled Arab street forgets the very obvious point that the corrupt leaders of Pakistan et al are hated by Arabs almost as much as they hate the US.

And the good news? The Shiites and Kurds continue to reach out to the Sunnis, most recently by agreeing to accept some 15 Sunnis onto the committee overseeing the drafting of the Constitution. This is significant since the Sunnis didn't "deserve" that membership since it boycotted the elections. But the Shiites and Kurds realize they must include the Sunnis if there's to be any long-term hope for peace. This comes on top of their tweaking of election procedures -- in the future, representatives will come from particular regions instead of just the top-vote getters nationally. This means Sunnis will get roughly proportional representation in the governing body no matter how many of them go to the polls. Finally, the 15 Sunnis were accepted even though some of them were suspected of being Baathists. Quite pragmatic, they've been.

Mr. Hamoudi, a prominent Shiite cleric, said the committee had decided it did not immediately matter that the Sunnis had suspect political backgrounds. It was more important to have the Sunni point of view aired during the writing of the constitution, he said. He added that the committee had sent the 15 names to a commission responsible for keeping senior Baathists out of the government, but that the commission had yet to reply.

"If we were talking about ministries, names might be more important," Mr. Hamoudi said at a news conference. "But since it's a committee, having the views is more important than the names."

No matter how incompetent Bush has been in the execution of this war, no matter how deceptive the American people believe he's been in getting us into the war, the Shiites and Kurds seem to be doing everything they can in the worst possible situation to pull some good out of this mess. Read the rest of this post...

And now, a little more Scotland photo-blogging

A little mood music I recorded just outside my hotel on the street...

Not too much of political significance here, just some photos I really like from the trip (yes, I am allowed to take some fun photos on a biz trip :-)

Two words: Natalie Imbruglia.

Three words: Hot as hell.

She was on our plane, didn't get to talk to her :-(


© 2005 AMERICAblog.com

Boring panel discussion, cute audience


© 2005 AMERICAblog.com

Dirty bathroom, great stained glass window


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More boring panels, great walls


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A play I'd love to see someone try in the US (and I would SO go)


© 2005 AMERICAblog.com

A beautiful park in the middle of Edinburgh


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Great people watching


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Beautiful vistas


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Check out the second paper's headline! And yes, the front page story in every paper today is the little riot that broke out in front of my hotel yesterday, the one I was trapped in for over an hour.


© 2005 AMERICAblog.com

I know Mary Poppins is in this photo somewhere....


© 2005 AMERICAblog.com

Gondor can't be far...


© 2005 AMERICAblog.com

Hogwarts


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A panorama of the old city


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3-D chalk sidewalk art


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The long and winding park road


© 2005 AMERICAblog.com

live8 Read the rest of this post...

Woman Allowed To Die: Where's Congress? Where's Frist?

A fine, sensitive article in the New York Times detailing the end of life decisions surrounding a woman in the Bronx. This very scenario -- family members coming together with doctors and bioethicists to decide her treatment -- takes place every day all over the country, long before and long after the circus surrounding Terri Schiavo.

In this case, the doctors convince the husband to take some steps before removing her ventilator, the woman recovers enough to make her own decisions and makes absolutely clear she does not want to be kept artificially alive on a ventilator if her breathing becomes labored again. It does, she is given morphine to ease the pain and quietly dies.

Just as the fanatics who circled Terri Schiavo like vultures had no interest in whatever Terri might have wanted, they would never want this woman to be able to make her own end-of-life decisions. They would insist that she HAD to be kept on a ventilator, even though the woman herself expressly refused it. The fanatics do not want to help people make their own decisions, they want to take those decisions out of your hand.

Why aren't the fanatics picketing every hospital and hospice in this country in the wake of Terri Schiavo? Because they know the vast majority of Americans disagree with them and think their fanaticism is misguided and wrong. Even so, no one wants to keep them from controlling their own end-of-life decisions; if they want to spend decades as a vegetable hooked up to machines, no one else cares. But if their real goal -- to force everyone else to do the same -- was made clear, the fanatics know America would reject them. Read the rest of this post...

Scotland update

Hoping to have some substantive interviews with some of the more senior folks in the Live 8 movement. The "followers," as it were, are good-hearted people but, as I'd mentioned before, I've heard a few too many times about how poor countries aren't responsible for their situation, and how we are. I think the reality is a bit muddier than that.

Yes, the west helped to make Africa worse off in many ways, including slavery. But corrupt African governments have certainly done their fair share as well, and continue to do so. Mbeki's lunacy in South African is just as much to blame for that country's HIV/AIDS crisis as anyone - Mbeki doesn't believe in the not-so-new AIDS drugs that are saving lives acros the world - and I'm told many of his fellow citizens believe in his conspiratorial "the whites gave us AIDS" crap. And you know, maybe he and his followers have a hard time because of Apartheid, they don't trust white people, now etc. - and you know, maybe I can understand how they'd end up being anti-white racist paranoids. But that doesn't exonerate them from being complicit in their own genocide. I am not the guilty party, and they are most certainly not the innocent.

Anyway, that's not the overarching theme of this place, it's just a tenor I keep hearing, and something that annoys me, and isn't going to win them any brownie points with most Americans.

live8 Read the rest of this post...

The Santorum Book

Fortunately, Capitol Buzz is reading it so you don't have to...but check out the latest post. Pesky, uppity women, thinking they need college degrees and jobs.

Thanks, Buzz, for doing the dirty work. Read the rest of this post...

The Rich -- Thank God -- Are Paying Less Taxes

There are no end of juicy details in this small story in the New York Times buried on page 17 and showing how President Bush has FINALLY eased the burdens of the suffering rich.

The number of super-rich Americans who pay no taxes at all has more than doubled from 2000 to 2002. Thank you, President Bush! Read the rest of this post...

Now will someone file an ethics complaint against Cunningham?

Okay, read the Washington Post, check out Talking Points Memo, and then re-read CREW's request for an ethics investigation from several weeks ago.

By the time someone in Congress files a complaint against Duke, he'll be in the pokey. Maybe that's the new standard for ethics violations in the US House.

Duke can be cell mates with Rove. Read the rest of this post...

No adventures yet

No more adventures, yet. Another gorgeous day - sunny, with some clouds, a bit of drizzle, then chilly, then a bit warmer. I guess that's typical of here. Went to a talk this morning, which was actually a bit of a yawner. Lots of good intentions, but I don't really need to be lectured at about how the 3d world's debt is all our fault because we were worried about the Cold War and therefore sucked up to bad countries. I mean, yes, that's true, to a degree, but the Cold War was real and I'm glad we won it, and it's not like those countries are any better today than they were, in terms of corruption, or not by much. Among some of the folks here is the feeling that developing countries don't share the blame for their predicament. I don't agree, and I don't find that healthy.

Anyway, the sound of bagpipes out my window (seriously) tell me it's time to grab lunch, see a castle and hit some more conferences and exhibits surrounding Live 8. More later.

JOHN Read the rest of this post...

Open Thread

What's going on? Read the rest of this post...

God Is Still Speaking: UCC Supports Gay Marriage

The United Church of Christ chose Independence Day to have its general synod vote and affirm the Church's support for "equal marriage rights for couples, regardless of gender."
It's the first mainline Christian denomination to support same-sex marriage. The vote was overwhelming and likely won't lead to the schisms that have rocked the Episcopal Church worldwide for its more ginger steps.

It's just the latest vanguard movement by UCC, which was among the first churches in America to condemn slavery (in 1700) and the first to ordain a woman in 1853.

And yes, the people who oppose equal rights for gays are the same people who opposed equal rights for women and equal rights for blacks. And they will be proven just as wrong and fifty years from now their opposition will seem a dim, silly memory. Read the rest of this post...

Over Night Open Thread

Waiting for more adventures from John at the G8...and getting closer to Rove doing a perp walk.... Read the rest of this post...