UK government halts deportation to Iran

Thankfully the British Home Secretary has come to his senses. John posted about this earlier in the week when the government was preparing to send Kazemi back to Iran where he feared a death sentence, like his boyfriend, for being gay. It's almost beyond belief that it had to come to this. How could any government even think of deporting someone under such circumstances?

A gay teenager who faces the death penalty if he is forced to return to Iran has won a temporary reprieve after the Home Secretary halted his planned deportation and agreed to reconsider his case.

The Government's surprise intervention yesterday follows an international outcry over the plight of Mehdi Kazemi, 19, who lost his asylum claim in Britain even though his former boyfriend had been arrested by the Iranian state police and executed for sodomy.

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Bush is Mr Obvious on the economy

Well, putting aside the ridiculous lie that he was out in front of this problem, he seems to appreciate that we're in a mess.

Trying to calm jitters about the economy, President Bush conceded on Friday that the country "obviously is going through a tough time" but expressed confidence about a rebound.

I'm confident we will recover as well. It's going to be long after Bush is gone but sure, we will get through it as long as we wake up to the need to provide responsible regulation instead of ignoring crazy Wall Street ideas that lead to $200 billion bailouts. Just say "no" to Republican economics. We can't afford another GOP administration. Read the rest of this post...

Obama quells the media frenzy over the words of his pastor

In a calm and measured way, Obama addressed the media's new found frenzy over Rev. Wright:

The pastor of my church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who recently preached his last sermon and is in the process of retiring, has touched off a firestorm over the last few days. He's drawn attention as the result of some inflammatory and appalling remarks he made about our country, our politics, and my political opponents.

Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.

Because these particular statements by Rev. Wright are so contrary to my own life and beliefs, a number of people have legitimately raised questions about the nature of my relationship with Rev. Wright and my membership in the church. Let me therefore provide some context.

The Obama campaign posted videos from the new pastor, Reverend Otis Moore, and another minister, Jane Fisler Hoffman. If you have any doubt about Obama's church, watch the videos. It sounds like a very affirming congregation more interested in helping people than castigating or destroying people. I'm a little rusty on my religion (don't tell my mother who goes to mass every day) but if I remember the the basic of message of Jesus Christ was something like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." That sounds like what Reverends Moore and Hoffman are talking about. Imagine that: A church that practices what Jesus taught. There must be something wrong with it.

Obama is wise to put this behind him. I can't help but think that it is somewhat ironic that the media is so frenzied about Rev. Wright this week, which marks the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. It sucks that Obama has to spend time answering for the words of Rev. Wright when for five years, the media has really failed to hold Bush, Cheney, McCain, Rumsfeld and the rest of that despicable crew accountable for the lying words and actions that took us to a war. The traditional media hasn't even answered for its own complicity. Ironic, too, that this week we got further evidence of Bush's lies about Saddam and al Qaeda. The media dutifully reported those lies, yet there's no media outcry. Too bad the media wasn't as frenzied about holding people accountable back then. (And, yes, Hillary Clinton, we remember that you went along with those words and voted for the Iraq war, too.) Read the rest of this post...

Some words do matter -- especially words about war from Cheney and McCain.

The punditry has been in a frenzy today over the words of a preacher who has no power and holds no elected office. Typical. Let's review the words of some of our leaders who do have power and do hold elected office. Let's review the words that sent men and women to die in a war over lies. The same punditry that's frenzied over a preacher's words gave a pass to these words from Cheney and McCain -- and the lies that started a war from George Bush. Let's get serious for a change:

Hat tip, Think Progress (check out their new site...very cool) Read the rest of this post...

Bush swoons over the "fantastic experience" of serving in Afghanistan

From Yglesias:

George W. Bush laments that his advanced age doesn't let him participate in his own screw-ups:

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

Need we note that when Bush had an actual opportunity to put his life on the line in a war, he chose to avoid doing so?

We do need to note that. And, it should probably be noted that five deferment Cheney also passed up the opportunity.

If it's so romantic, maybe the Bush twins and the son-in-law to be should do a tour of duty in Kabul. Read the rest of this post...

Before she brought peace to Northern Ireland, created the Internet, and cured Polio, Hillary created the children's health insurance program (not)

In another example of Hillary's resume being a wee bit padded, it seems that Hillary didn't create the children's health insurance bill after all. In fact, her husband's White House was initially against the bill. But in all fairness to Hillary, I hear Barack Obama is black. From the Boston Globe:

[T]he Clinton White House, while supportive of the idea of expanding children's health, fought the first SCHIP effort, spearheaded by Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, because of fears that it would derail a bigger budget bill. And several current and former lawmakers and staff said Hillary Clinton had no role in helping to write the congressional legislation, which grew out of a similar program approved in Massachusetts in 1996....

privately, some lawmakers and staff members are fuming over what they see as Clinton's exaggeration of her role in developing SCHIP, including her campaign ads claiming she "helped create" the program. The irritation has grown since Nov. 1, when Clinton - along with fellow senators and presidential candidates Barack Obama, Chris Dodd, and John McCain - missed a Senate vote to extend the SCHIP program, which was approved without the votes of those lawmakers.

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House passes improved FISA bill without retroactive telecom immunity

From The Gavel:

The House has just passed the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 3773, to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to establish a procedure for authorizing certain acquisitions of foreign intelligence, and for other purposes, by a vote of 213-197-1. The revised House legislation to amend FISA grants new authorities for conducting electronic surveillance against foreign targets while preserving the requirement that the government obtain an individualized FISA court order, based on probable cause, when targeting Americans at home or abroad. The House bill also strongly enhances oversight of the Administration’s surveillance activities. Finally, the House bill does not provide retroactive immunity for telecom companies but allows the courts to determine whether lawsuits should proceed.

This is the version of the FISA bill Bush threatened to veto.

McJoan has a good wrap up of who did what to make this happen (and I would say McJoan deserves a lot of credit, too.) Read the rest of this post...

Vets for Freedom ditch former gay-porn star

Sucks to be you. Back story here. Read the rest of this post...

Twittering from Greece

I got a last minute invitation from the lead opposition party in Athens, Greece - named PASOK - to do a couple of sessions at their bi-annual party conference about online advocacy, and specifically, how American political parties, and bloggers, were using the Internet to impact the elections. I've only been here for less than 24 hours, so am still a bit groggy, but beyond the never-ending pall of smoke everywhere (these people smoke like chimneys, no, chimneys don't even smoke like these people), it's already been quite interesting. To some degree, a political conference is a political conference is a political conference. The language changes, the venue may have a few fewer flags than we'd use (hell, there isn't a Greek flag anywhere to be seen), and yeah, there's the never-ending-smoke-thing, but it's very much your standard political conference. And there's even a blogger row. I'm told 37 bloggers have asked for, and gotten, credentials. The bloggers are pretty much what you'd expect - male, young, and geek-oriented.

Panayotis Vryonis, my Greek blogger friend and host, has finally introduced me to Twitter. It's a, well, I'm not sure what to call it. It's micro-blogging, as Panayotis calls it, or as I put it, haiku-blogging. With Twitter you post quick messages about what you're doing or thinking at that moment, and you only get 140 characters (maybe 22 words). For political blogging, especially blogging while on travel, it's a potentially useful concept. It's hard to break open your laptop when you're running around a conference, and it's equally hard to blog the small tidbits of info you glean, experiences you have, ideas you get, that might not be worthy of an entire blog post. For example, yesterday my Greek taxi driver on the way in from the airport was talking to me about work and people who work too much, and he told me a Greek saying: "Work never ends; life does." It was a great quote, and worth of something smaller than a blog post. Now I have Twitter for that purpose (and you can Twitter via email or text message, so I can do it from abroad on the road via my cell). Anyway, very interesting stuff, I think, and hope. I've posted our Twitter feed in the right-most column, beneath the fundraising box.



We had an interesting discussion about "making money by blogging." I'm told there are two blogs that have done well enough to earn a living blogging. One is a tech blogger, who also dabbles in politics (most of his revenue is from ads, and the advertisers come to him), and the second is a gossip blogger who has caused quite a stir here, if by "stir" you mean 100 lawsuits (or so they say). The blogger writes a site called Press-Gr. And the controversy is, to an American's eyes, quite absurd, and scary.

In a nutshell, the guy runs a successful gossip blog. One day, a reporter receives an email from a stranger saying that if the reporter doesn't pay the stranger X amount of money, the stranger will say horrible things about the reporter in the comments section of the blog. This rather odd threat led the police to raid the blogger's office, and his home, confiscate his computer, his files, etc. The parliament is now considering legislation to clamp down on people like this blogger, including holding bloggers legally responsible for what anonymous strangers write in their comments.

Wow. We had some similar issues in the states years ago, but the courts decided that bloggers, and Web site operators more generally, would not be responsible for the comments people left on their sites (or for the "diaries" that visitors created on your blog, a la DailyKos). The general theory was that we wanted to provide an incentive for people to use the Internet creatively and productively, and holding them to an impossibly high standard would effectively shut down the Internet. No one could blog if they were legally responsible for every anonymous nutjob who posts a comment.

There is some sympathy in Greece, at least from what I'm hearing on the sreet, to clamping down on bloggers. Which is really quite sad. Aside from the trite "birthplace of democracy" argument, Greece could use a few more incentives to spur creativity and productivity and overall the creation of more business and more wealth. Clamping down on free speech, clamping down on what is still a very nascent Internet, may help reporters who receive anonymous threats from commenters, but it does nothing to help Greece enter the 21st century. Read the rest of this post...

Rendell rebuts Penn: "Either one of them is going to carry the state in the fall"

Yesterday, I posted the latest outrageous comments from the losing campaign's chief strategist, Mark Penn. On a conference call, Penn basically said Obama can't win the general election. I swear, they just sit over at the Clinton HQ in Arlington and make things up. And, for some reason, despite Penn's failed strategy, the media thinks that if he says it, it must have merit. Whatever.

But bad news for Penn and Team Clinton is that Governor Rendell, who was on the very same conference call with Penn, disagrees. Rendell said Obama is going to win Pennsylvania in November (video via Ben Smith):

No one knows Pennsylvania voters like Rendell. So, the Clinton campaign's top surrogate just undermined the latest Clinton talking point.

The Obama campaign obviously disagreed with Penn, too. They emailed out this statement last night mocking Penn (who is so mock-worthy):

It can't inspire too much confidence in the Clinton campaign when their pollster ignores both polls and math by making comments as divorced from reality as this one. Senator Obama is leading in delegates, states won, the popular vote, and fares better than Senator Clinton against John McCain in poll after poll, including critical swing states like Iowa, Colorado, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Wisconsin.

Yep. And, it can't inspire confidence when the Clinton campaign's top Pennsylvania supporter, Ed Rendell, affirms on national t.v. just how divorced from reality Penn is. At least some people associated with the Clinton campaign aren't willing to destroy the Democratic party. Read the rest of this post...

JP Morgan and NY Federal Reserve bail out Bear Stearns

Oh sorry, we don't do bailouts for Wall Street. Isn't that what Paulson told us? Why are American taxpayers funding the stupidity and greed of Wall Street?

JPMorgan Chase says that in conjunction with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York it will provide temporary funding for Bear Stearns.

The funding will be provided as necessary for up to 28 days. During that time, JPMorgan Chase will also help Bear Stearns find permanent financing.

Bear Stearns says its liquidity significantly deteriorated over the past day and the temporary funding will help it continue operating normally. The investment bank added there is no guarantee any permanent strategic alternatives will be successful.

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Republicans know economics

Shoppers not shopping because the credit binge is over. Families struggling to afford food and gas in the car to make it to work. Oil hits a new high every day thanks to a weak dollar. People worried about whether their job will still there by the end of the year. Isn't self-regulation worth it though? Business has been able to realize the decades long dream of letting us know if there's a problem and guess what? They say "no problem" so who are we to argue? Team McCain has already brought together the leading Bush economic adviser along with good ol' Phil Gramm, who helped build this new and exciting banking system that we all watch in awe (or is it shock?). McCain will eagerly bring us more of the same.

Oil hit a record high, the dollar sank again, and consumers stopped buying pretty much everything.

Stocks kept gyrating, too, on Thursday, swinging between gloomy recession evidence and rising hopes that all the bad news would bring another aggressive cut in interest rates when the Federal Reserve meets next week.

The Bush administration, conceding the economy was facing ''difficult'' times now, rushed out new proposals aimed at next time -- plans to fix various problems that have led to a severe crisis in credit markets.

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Friday Morning Open Thread

Finally, Friday.

Interesting week on so many fronts.

Next will be, too. Next week, by March 20th, John McCain will file his FEC report for the month of February. We'll see if McCain has violated the campaign finance laws by breaking the spending cap. We'll also see if McCain's bus and barbecue buddies in the press corps will cover that scandal. Remember, those reporters want McCain to like them -- and they don't want to make McCain mad. They know how volatile McCain is.

So, what else is going on? Read the rest of this post...

UK to teach benefits of war in Iraq to students

The British teachers union, thankfully, is not as enthusiastic about teaching the glories of invading a country and killing tens of thousands of civilians. How long before this tripe ends up in US schools, though it's probably already part of the program for home schoolers and in the deep South. The British school program has been provided by the UK Ministry of Defence.

At the heart of the union's concern is a lesson plan commissioned by an organisation called Kids Connections for the Ministry of Defence aimed at stimulating classroom debate about the Iraq war.

In a "Students' Worksheet" which accompanies the lesson plan, it stresses the "reconstruction" of Iraq, noting that 5,000 schools and 20 hospitals have been rebuilt. But there is no mention of civilian casualties.

In the "Teacher Notes" section, it talks about how the "invasion was necessary to allow the opportunity to remove Saddam Hussein" but it fails to mention the lack of United Nations backing for the war. The notes also use the American spelling of "program".

Addressing whether the MoD should be providing materials for schools, Mr Sinnott said that he did not object, as long as the material was accurate, presented responsibly and contained a balanced view of opinions.

The union has protested to the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, who has referred the complaint to the MoD. In a letter to Mr Balls, Mr Sinnott said: "I have to say that were the MoD pack to be distributed and followed without the legally required 'balanced presentation of opposing views' there would, in my view, be very serious risk of a finding of non-compliance with section 406 (of the 1996 Education Act) at least.

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Bush intervened to weaken smog rule, weaken EPA

Yes, the same Bush who never hesitates to blast lawsuits as the real cause of high health insure. No, surely increasing health care costs have nothing to do whatsoever with the polluted environment. Nope, no studies have ever drawn the link between polluted air and...oh, there has been. Never mind. And here I thought he cared about every human life, but that's not really the case now, is it? Polluters obviously count for more.

EPA officials initially tried to set a lower seasonal limit on ozone to protect wildlife, parks and farmland, as required under the law. While their proposal was less restrictive than what the EPA's scientific advisers had proposed, Bush overruled EPA officials and on Tuesday ordered the agency to increase the limit, according to the documents.

"It is unprecedented and an unlawful act of political interference for the president personally to override a decision that the Clean Air Act leaves exclusively to EPA's expert scientific judgment," said John Walke, clean-air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

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