She's Baaaack - and her first column is about Cindy Sheehan

Okay, I admit it. I love Maureen Dowd. I take great comfort knowing she is back on the beat. Reading her column made me laugh out loud:

It's amazing that the White House does not have the elementary shrewdness to have Mr. Bush simply walk down the driveway and hear the woman out, or invite her in for a cup of tea. But W., who has spent nearly 20 percent of his presidency at his ranch, is burrowed into his five-week vacation and two-hour daily workouts. He may be in great shape, but Iraq sure isn't.

Definitely, definitely worth a read...and again, I am way biased. Read the rest of this post...

Does Roberts Oppose the Right to Privacy?

Is that what his former Reagan Justice Department colleague, Bruce Fein, is telling us?

The Washington Post has a front page article that documents how the White House is withholding the papers of John Roberts:

Thrown on the defensive by recent revelations about Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr.'s legal work, White House aides are delaying the release of tens of thousands of documents from the Reagan administration to give themselves time to find any new surprises before they are turned into political ammunition by Democrats.

For me, this is a key paragraph:

While serving in the Reagan and Bush administrations, for instance, Roberts argued against affirmative-action quotas and other civil rights remedies that conservatives regarded as reverse discrimination, and he expressed deep skepticism about what he called the "so-called right to privacy" that underpins the constitutional right to abortion.

"They should be embracing those memos," said Bruce Fein, who worked with Roberts in the Reagan Justice Department. "They are squandering the opportunity to move public perception."

Embracing those memos means Roberts wants to overturn the right to privacy. Only in warped right wing world could that be viewed as a positive that would move public perception.

Fein wrote an op-ed for the Reverend Moon's paper on August 2, 2005 that trashed the right to privacy. He and Roberts were colleagues in the Reagan Justice Department and exchanged memos on that subject. Fein is a hard-core right winger who presumably knows something about Roberts legal views as he intimated in his column:

In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the court again highlighted the nonconstitutional moorings of the right of privacy. Justice Kennedy discerned a right to homosexual sodomy from the penumbras of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Its Framers, the justice insisted, had been blind to the oppression his generation recognized in searching for greater freedom. In other words, if the true meaning of the Constitution does not ordain a liberal agenda, the justices should entertain a false meaning that does the trick.

Judge Roberts has awakened vocal opposition from the female Democratic six and their ideological allies because he disputes the view of the Griswold-Roe-Casey-Lawrence precedents that constitutional law is politics by other means. What liberals fear is an obligation to convince the American people as opposed to a handful of justices that their agenda should be law.

If Roberts opposes the Griswold-Roe-Casey-Lawrence precedents, we're in serious trouble. That means he opposes the right to privacy. The right wingers not only want to overturn Roe v. Wade, they want privacy rights gone. As Fein made clear, that means gay rights too. Nothing will be sacred. Overturning the right to privacy is an ultimate goal of the theocrats.

This is really serious stuff. If Roberts opposes the right to privacy, we have to know. After all the missteps, the right-wingers will want to know that he is on their side on this one.

Roberts has to answer questions about the constitutional right to privacy. Read the rest of this post...

Paul Hackett: Rush the "Fat Ass Drug Addict"

Love it that Paul Hackett keeps on telling the truth. Rush is a fat ass drug addict. (And a chickenhawk, btw) DavidNYC at Swing State Project has the details on Hackett's interview yesterday on the Ed Schultz Show

One reason people love Paul Hackett is because he is fearless. He should give lessons to other Democrats on how to have a spine and how to fight back. Read the rest of this post...

Plumpy'nut To The Rescue!

A tiny packet of peanut butter "stuffed" with milk, vitamins and minerals is revolutionizing the care of desperately malnourished children in Niger. As we know, the world watched as Niger suffered the slow-motion catastrophe of starvation and did nothing when we could have saved so many for so little. Now we are sort of acting, but it will cost a lot more and be a lot less effective.

One good bit of news: Plumpy'nut, that "sports bar" of sorts that lets mothers feed their own children rather than have to leave the kids under the intensive care of a hospital. It reduces costs, leaves doctors free to treat the desperately ill and costs about $20 for a month of Plumpy'nut. That's right, $5 a week.

Which raises a question: if Plumpy'nut is good enough to give malnourished children in food emergencies, why not give it to the countless thousands of children in Niger who are hungry when the world's attention is directed elsewhere?

To get 1.5 million children back onto the road to health would cost $30 million, known in international circles as "chump change."

Paging the "culture of life" President. Hello? Are you there? Read the rest of this post...

How the MSM protected a criminal in the White House

CJR Daily's Magazine Report gives a preview of an upcoming article in Vanity Fair (which isn't on-line yet) by Michael Wolff who:

manages to find a unique approach to the issue, positing the thesis that the New York Times and Time magazine are complicit in the cover-up of the fudging of intelligence in the prelude to war in Iraq -- in that they knew Rove was the source of the Plame leak intended to discredit Joe Wilson after he called the administration to account.

He's right, they did.

Not only that, but both Time and The New York Times...and obviously many other members of the Washington Press Corps....protected Rove and Bush by not revealing this information during the election. Instead, they all dutifully reported how Bush's strength was national security while he was harboring a top aide who undermined national security during war time. No wonder Rove thinks the press are a bunch of patsies. Read the rest of this post...

Thousands In Ohio Gather To Mourn Fallen Soldiers. Bush? MIA, As Always

Bush continues to show his utter disregard and contempt for the brave men and women who are dying in a war he launched based on lies to the American people. (Thanks to threader Sean for reminding us of the memorial.) Bush is the first President in modern history and probably the first President ever to refuse to attend a single military funeral. And he's doing so during wartime and after his reelection, when any cynical calculation that pictures of Bush at a funeral might not poll well are absolutely moot. What possible reason does Bush have for ignoring this pain and suffering? Even the New York Post called on Bush to attend this memorial service. And Bush couldn't be bothered.

Thousands mourned in Cleveland. Where was Bush? On vacation -- the longest Presidential vacation in 36 years. George Bush: MIA. As Always. Read the rest of this post...

"Pro-family" group tells Bush to drop John Roberts because of gay snafu

Ok, I had to post this - it just hit the wires. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

We're all getting a bit long in the posts today, sorry. Consider this your short thread :-) Read the rest of this post...

Who's In Charge Of Military? The Privates Or The Generals?

Each individual soldier is responsible for their own actions. "I was just following orders" ended as a reasonable excuse sometime around the Nuremberg trials. But the soldiers in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are surely getting a raw deal anyway. Some clearly reveled in abusive treatment. But story after story is making clear that many of them were following orders, asking repeatedly for guidelines on what was acceptable and what was safe, many got the run-around from superiors who wanted the prisoners roughed up but didn't want to get their hands dirty, etc. Here's the latest roundup from the NYT:

In the first interview granted by any of the accused soldiers, a former guard charged with maiming and assault said that he and other reservist military policemen were specifically instructed at Bagram how to deliver the type of blows that killed the two detainees, and that the strikes were commonly used when prisoners resisted being hooded or shackled.

"I just don't understand how, if we were given training to do this, you can say that we were wrong and should have known better," said the soldier, Pvt. Willie V. Brand, 26, of Cincinnati, a father of four who volunteered for tours in Afghanistan and Kosovo....

In recommending the dismissal of an involuntary manslaughter charge that Army prosecutors initially sought against Private Brand, the investigating officer who oversaw his pretrial inquiry, Col. Stephen B. Pence, wrote that there was "no evidence that the accused knew or should have known" that the knee strikes could mortally injure a detainee, or that the blows "would be anything other than temporarily disabling...."

In interviews, other former interrogators said she and the staff sergeant who was her deputy had for months been seeking clarification from their superiors about the interrogation methods they could use.

"They asked many, many times," said one former Bagram interrogator who agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation. "The lack of guidance was a source of frustration for them. My own feeling is that it was never given because nobody wanted to put themselves on the line."

I don't mean to summarily excuse the actions of any soldiers. But isn't it increasingly clear how higher-ups have let them dangle for practices the people in charge knew about, encouraged but can now use plausible denial to keep themselves out of prison? Read the rest of this post...

TAKE ACTION: How do you spell anti-gay bigot? N-C-F-R

Some things never change. I go off to Paris, and the National Council on Family Relations decides they can take the American taxpayers' dollars and use them to discriminate against gay families.

A few months ago we told you about how Michael Benjamin, the NCFR executive director, agreed to be the White House's front-man for "straights-only" marriage by assembling an online "National Healthy Marriage Clearinghouse." This website, scheduled to go live any day now, is supposed to be the most comprehensive source of information ever on how to have healthy marriages, oh but with one glaring bigoted exception: the inclusion on the Web site of any research on gay marriage or gay families is strictly forbidden by the feds who are financing the project. Forget that the marriage of gay couples is legal in Massachusetts.

What did NCFR do in response? NCFR agreed to this incredibly homophobic condition despite having very strict "governing principles" and "values" against anti-gay discrimination. Bit of a conflict there, you think? AMERICAblog readers responded with calls and emails, and dozens if not hundreds of individual NCFR members demanded the board of directors reconsider.

So we called off the dogs and let them reconsider. Turns out they were upset that we were so, umm, rude to them. Funny -- they decide to screw fair-minded Americans by sucking up to homophobic bigots and we're the bad guys. Uh huh.

Guess what? NCFR thought it was over, and now they've told us to get screwed.

In a memo to NCFR members, the board of directors justified its bigotry by, for example, claiming that since gay people can go to the new NCFR hetero-marriage-only Web site and see the same information straight people can see on the site, THEN THE SITE ISN'T DISCRIMINATORY. How's that for messed up?

(We'll be publishing the entire NCFR memo to members, with all its BS dissected, in the near future.)

Thanks a lot, NCFR. I get to learn how OTHER people can have healthy marriages, but I don't get to learn how I can as well, because apparently my settling down and having a healthy stable releationship is a sin, or un-American, or - oh, yeah, that's right - it might cost NCFR a buck to actually stand up for the principles it has written into its own non-discrimination policy. That's $5 million of your tax dollars at work, promoting discrimination.

NCFR lists contact information for their Executive Director and Board. Please contact them to let them know we haven't forgotten about them, and we don't appreciate them violating their own non-discrimination policies in order to make a fast buck from the federal trough.

Executive Director: Michael Benjamin mbenjamin@ncfr.org 763-231-2891
President: Gay Kitson kitson@uakron.edu 330-972-6863
President-elect: Pamela A. Monroe pmonroe@lsu.edu 225-578-3885
Martha Farrell Erickson mferick@umn.edu 612-825-9496
Lawrence H. Ganong ganongl@missouri.edu 573-882-6852
Deborah B. Gentry dgentry@ilstu.edu 309-438-8748
Robert Reyes rreyes@messiah.edu 717-766-2511 x7297
Jane B. Tornatore jbtornatore@comcast.net 206-706-7714
Marcie J. Brooke marcie.brooke@spps.org 651-293-5330
Julie K. Kohler kohler@knightfdn.org 305-908-2638 Read the rest of this post...

Regarding NARAL's criticism of John Roberts, when is the GOP going to repudiate these comments from Karl Rove?

Funny that the same people who defended Karl Rove for saying that liberals are pro-Osama, and that Senator Durbin actually WANTED to get our troops killed, now are concerned about harsh rhetoric. Fine, they want to talk about rhetoric, NARAL should ask every reporter that calls and every Republicans who feigns anger to disassociate themselves from this:

Karl Rove came to the heart of Manhattan last night to rhapsodize about the decline of liberalism in politics, saying Democrats responded weakly to Sept. 11 and had placed American troops in greater danger by criticizing their actions.

“Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers,” Mr. Rove, the senior political adviser to President Bush, said at a fund-raiser in Midtown for the Conservative Party of New York State.

Citing calls by progressive groups to respond carefully to the attacks, Mr. Rove said to the applause of several hundred audience members, “I don’t know about you, but moderation and restraint is not what I felt when I watched the twin towers crumble to the ground, a side of the Pentagon destroyed, and almost 3,000 of our fellow citizens perish in flames and rubble.” …

Mr. Rove also said American armed forces overseas were in more jeopardy as a result of remarks last week by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who compared American mistreatment of detainees to the acts of “Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others.”

“Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year?” Mr. Rove asked. “Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.”

Yep, the White House actually DEFENDED these comments and said they agreed with them, as did the never-been-married-38-year-old Ken Mehlman, head of the GOP. Read the rest of this post...

Waaaaaaaah! GOP crybabies whine that NARAL was mean to them

Silly NARAL.

Don't you know that liberals aren't allowed to have backbone? There you go and run an ad against John Roberts that is far tamer than anything Ann Coulter or Ken Mehlman say on an average day. How dare you? How dare NARAL show backbone? How dare NARAL hold John Roberts accountable for effectively siding with clinic bombers in a case before the Supreme Court? And more importantly, how dare NARAL fight back?! Girls aren't supposed to fight back. They're supposed to be barefoot and pregnant and know their place (oh I'm sorry, that's blacks who are supposed to know their place - all these unwritten GOP rules are so confusing sometimes).

Bad NARAL. Go to your room and play with your Barbie like a good girl. Read the rest of this post...

String Of Bombings In Iraq; 17 Dead; Bush Plans To Pull Out Troops And Declare Success

The MSM should be blistering Bush/Scotty with questions about plans to pull out troops beginning in the spring. Even under the non-reality-based world of Bush, there is no way to pretend that things are stabilizing in Iraq. A string of bombings killed 17 yesterday. Other fun news: the mayor of Baghdad was fired and no one knows why and people rioted in a Shiite city because of no dependable electricity or water.

Is there any reason other than midterm elections for Bush to pull out troops beginning in the spring? The insurgency is stronger than ever, bombers are ripping the country apart and even the US can't keep the country stable.

Soldiers on the ground insist they need more troops. Everyone knows Bush has enough soldiers to "clear out" a city of insurgents but not enough to keep the city secure. As soon as they pull out, more insurgents go back in. Doesn't Iraq need more troops, not less?

Numerous reports make clear that claiming Iraq has 170,000 troops is at best grossly misleading. Can Bush break that down for us? How many troops are capable of fighting on their own? Isn't that the only figure that matters? Numerous reports indicate that they don't even have enough EQUIPMENT for 170,000 troops, much less that many soldiers. Other reports say most of those soldiers just show up for a check or never even existed in the first place. Who determines this number? How is it broken down? How do we confirm it with our own intelligence?

If Iraq only has 2000 troops capable of fighting on their own; 9,000 troops capable of fighting with our help and most of the rest of the soldiers claimed don't even exist or just show up to get their check, how can Bush even be thinking of pulling out troops in time for midterm elections? Read the rest of this post...

Senate Races heating up

AP is running three separate stories on upcoming Senate Races:

Katherine Harris is kicking off her campaign in Florida:

U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris began her campaign for Senate on Tuesday, hoping that she can convince voters there is more to her record than overseeing the disputed 2000 presidential election.

Nineteen months after declining to run for an open Senate seat while President Bush was on the ballot, Harris seeks to unseat incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson in a 2006 race that some Republicans say she can't win because independent and Democratic voters don't think much of her.

Okay, Bill Nelson has to beat her. This one should be fun.

Hillary Clinton has another GOP opponent:

Jeanine Pirro, a high-profile prosecutor in the New York City suburbs, said Monday she will seek the Republican nomination to challenge Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton next year.

Clinton, leaving a New York City event, ignored reporters' shouted questions about Pirro's announcement.

Pirro said the former first lady is more interested in running for president than being senator - speculation Clinton has sought to quash.

So, looks like Pirro's whole job is to trash Hillary.

And, Conrad Burns is taking some real heat in Montana:

The Montana Democratic Party - aided by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee - is airing a television ad criticizing Republican Sen. Conrad Burns for his dealings with a GOP lobbyist who is under federal investigation.

The DSCC contribution on the ad referring to lobbyist Jack Abramoff was its first salvo in the Senate ad wars that are just warming up. Republicans aired an ad criticizing West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd late last month.

Burns is running for his fourth term senator and four Democrats have entered the race. His seat is one of 33 Senate seats up for election in 2006.

The Burns campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee said the ad is false and asked TV stations to stop airing it.

Good work by the Montana Dems. Note how the GOPers, who thrive on negative ads, start whining the second someone runs a critical ad about one of their own.

It's only August of 2005...and it's already getting interesting. Read the rest of this post...

Another open thread to get our day rolling

I'm busy writing my Radar column, as always. Are things as slow in the US, news wise, as they seem from over here?

Also, DSCC has a new Web site launching in a day or so - they're advertising the beta version on a number of our blogs. Feel free to check it out here. Read the rest of this post...

Gay Vets Celebrate 20 Years of American Legion Post In San Francisco

Thanks to threader tireiron chief for pointing us to some positive news: the 20th anniversary of an American Legion Post in San Francisco composed primarily of GLBT veterans. I remember what Barry Goldwater said when asked why he supports equal rights for gays and thinks the military should stop wasting time and money kicking out good soldiers (and I paraphrase):

Because gay Americans fought and bled and died at Valley Forge and Gettysburg and on D-Day and in Vietnam and Korea. Read the rest of this post...

Update on Cindy Sheehan stories today

Please post any links to stories you find in the comments.

Boston Globe commentary.

Detroit Free Press commentary.

That freak Debra Saunders weighs in - she interviewed me once during the Dr. Laura controversy, what a seriously rude woman:

Which is what makes Cindy Sheehan's encampment in Texas so bizarre: No one can be unmoved by Sheehan's horrific loss. That said, Bush didn't kill her son. Casey Sheehan died at age 24 at the hands of men who routinely slaughter innocent children and civilians on principle.

If Bush did what Cindy Sheehan wants him to do, not only would some 1,800 soldiers have died in Iraq for no reason -- worse, their deaths will have served the unhappy function of signaling to terrorists that if they kill enough U.S. troops, the White House will cut and run.

As the major noted, if Americans pushed for a pullout in the wake of bad news reports, "That would be a shame. I would hope most of my colleagues and friends in the Bay Area, even some who may have opposed the war initially," realize the benefit in completing the mission and "are now saying we should see this through."

Right, Debra. CINDY SHEEHAN is to blame for our soldiers' deaths having no meaning. Uh huh. It's not President Bush, or people like Debra Saunders, who support wars based on a lie, who want us to keep fighting even though we've already lost. Oh no. The fault is with those Americans who have figured out that they've been tricked. Bad bad bad Americans. Better to keep fighting and let more of our soldiers die (hey Debra, how's that body armor coming?) for a cause that's a lie and unwinnable. Now THAT'S loving our troops.

Loving them to death.

PS Hey Deb, when you volunteering? Read the rest of this post...

New Cornell study: Red staters are over-compensating for small manhoods

Ok, I lied. It's not necessarily about red-staters, or their manhoods, but it could be...:

Threaten a man's masculinity and he will assume more macho attitudes, according to a study by a Cornell University researcher.

"I found that if you made men more insecure about their masculinity, they displayed more homophobic attitudes, tended to support the Iraq War more and would be more willing to purchase an SUV over another type of vehicle,"

Read the rest of this post...

Early morning open thread

Anybody up, other than those of us in Europe? Read the rest of this post...

Cindy Sheehan Rocks

Listened to Cindy's interview earlier tonight on the Majority Report. She is very impressive...and knows exactly what she is doing. The sheriff has been harassing her group. Basically, Cindy said if they want to arrest her, they are going to have to carry her to their car. Given the huge press interest, that is going to make for some interesting tv.

The local paper, the Lone Star Iconoclast has Cindy Watch to provide extensive, up-to-the minute coverage (although the site is a tad slow from all the traffic.) This is the Crawford hometown paper that endorsed Kerry last year.

From the media coverage and listening to Cindy Sheehan, I really got the sense that this could be one of those seminal moments....From all the polls, it's clear the American people have had it with Bush and lies about Iraq. Now, there is someone with an amazingly compelling story who is giving a voice to the anger. She is willing to take a stand against George Bush. All she wants is for Bush to explain the "noble cause" for which her son died. Bush won't do it and he can't do it.

I just can't imagine what it must be like to be a parent or family member of someone who was sent to a war by a President who lied about it. Listening to Cindy Sheehan speak gives some insight in to the pain.

You can also follow her through the Gold Star For Peace web site. Read the rest of this post...