A Dream Darfured

Everybody talks about the killing in Darfur but nobody does anything about it. When Joe Biden repeated the fact that people are being killed every day there at a Democratic presidential debate, his fellow candidates stood in embarrassed silence. Clearly, China bears a lot of responsibility for international sanctions not working. But Western countries don't want to send a peacekeeping force there, which some observers (including Biden) say could stop the killing virtually overnight. Instead we send them to Iraq where it contributes to more death, including more dead and maimed Americans. And even though the UN is expected to authorize a peacekeeping force, and the Bush spokespeople--including most recently, Condi Rice--talk a lot about genocide and how the world is failing Darfur, it's the U.S. and its failure to pay its UN dues that threatens the peacekeeping effort before it starts.

Broken

The United States of America is founded on two basic functional principles: our democratic system and our rule of law, both set forth in the U.S. Constitution. In both categories, thanks to the Bush administration, this nation is in grave danger of failing. And by failing I mean setting itself up for chaos and blatant dictatorship, which in effect will threaten the future of the civilized world and perhaps life as we know it on Earth.

Our rule of law is challenged again and again, so obviously this past week when the Bushites try again to override a court decision that denies them their ability to destroy constitutional and international rights. The principle of habeus corpus is obscurely named --perhaps it should be repeated as "the right to your day in court" or to be charged and put on trial according to law. But its bad branding shouldn't obscure how fundamental a right it is--basic to every other right in the Constitution, including free speech and freedom of religion. As Constitutional law expert said on Countdown: "...it is actually the foundation for all other rights. When the president—when the government throws you into a dungeon for what you say or who you pray to, it‘s habeas corpus that‘s the right that allows you to see the enforcement of the other rights."

We learned more last week about the lengths to which the Bushites go to deny these rights, in the effort to circumvent the law by appealing to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft when he had relinquished his authority temporarily to have surgery and recover from it.

But these are not new efforts--the Bush administration has been doing all this persistently, and yet they continue to do so, with no one effectively stopping them. Such brazen success emboldens others to defy the rule of law, such as the Republicans who lined up last week to demand the immediate pardon of Scooter Libby, despite his lawful prosecution and conviction, despite the fact that he was convicted of obstructing justice by preventing effective investigation and possible prosecution of larger, underlying crimes in the Valerie Plame affair, and despite contravening the established procedures for pardons in the most outrageous ways. Pardons are normally given after the sentence is served or at least begun, and after the convicted admits guilt, repents and asks for mercy. But Republicans want the law and the courts to simply be ignored and overpowered by the executive.

What if President Clinton had looked at the Supreme Court decision of Gore v. Bush that gave the election to Bush in 2000, rightly concluded that it was a flawed decision, against precedent, and made by justices with political conflicts of interest, and simply voided it? The principle is exactly the same.

But from this, we get supreme irony. Clinton respected the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary. And so we got a guy who doesn't.

In other times, actions of which President Bush and Vice-President Cheney are accused or have admitted would be sufficient cause to bring articles of impeachment against them. But no such congressional action is forthcoming.The Bushite challenge to the rule of law is an aspect of their challenge to the fundamentals of our democratic system. The Iraq war is opposed by three-fourths of the American people, yet it goes on. Three-fourths of the American people believe the country is on the wrong track, and yet the Bushites persist. Even though the Bushites are legitimately in power until the next election, this indecent ignoring of the opinions of citizens is very dangerous to democracy.

More serious still are the Bushites direct threats to electoral democracy. The pattern of firing and hiring officers of the law in the U.S. Justice system based on political party and ideological loyalties is itself a major threat to our system. Yet the people responsible for this have not been held accountable. After many calls for his firing, after many predictions that he would not last out the week or the month, Alberto Gonzales is still the Attorney General of the U.S., despite evidence which continues to mount that he has been dishonest, incompetent and acted against the rule of law, and against fairness necessary for the democratic electoral system to function.

Moreover, the intent of these manipulations of justice seems more and more clearly to be to suppress votes that may go to Democrats, by appointing judges who would prosecute charges of voter fraud against Democrats, no matter how dubious those charges might be, and to ignore charges of voter suppression and fraud against Republicans, no matter how substantial the evidence might be.

The intent clearly is to create a permanent majority for Bushites, who might more properly be called Rovians, because they intend to continue beyond this administration (possibly with Fred Thompson.) So simply waiting for Bush to leave office won't be enough. The intent is to subvert the electoral system.

The Bushites have so far successfully acted like a dictatorship, and no one has stopped them. There are ongoing investigations but they are painfully and perhaps fatally slow. The Bushites, the Rovians seek to establish the means for further dictatorship, and no one is preventing them. The U.S. is in deep trouble, and so is the future.

Ever Learn?

Once again, we had no phony Memorial Day around here. All the false and misguided pieties can't obscure the conviction that a people that truly cares about fallen soldiers would be intent on making sure needless war never takes another. We're very far from that these days.

The reflex to call such sentiments pacificism and ask the sophomoric question about standing by while your grandmother gets attacked is so bitterly out of place these days, in view of the kind of war we're sending soldiers to die in. And dying they are, at record speed. All you need to know about the disposition of this war now is in this report on what soldiers in Iraq told a blind warhawk senator and his response.

That this war is so obviously wrongheaded that even soldiers are speaking out, and that this war was founded on lies from the start--the most recently one to be exposed being that the "intelligence" was faulty.

The soldier defending the homeland from attack is so seldom the actual cause of war--and hasn't been in the wars America has fought since at least World War II, not counting at least the intent of military action in Afghanistan. The cynicism of those in power who speak piously of patriotism and supporting the troops for political and monetary advantage and nothing else is disgusting. The awful truth is that many if not most warfare is to make the rich richer, and for that, the non-rich will die and be maimed, and their families and the rest of the non-rich are tricked and manipulated into believing it's all for a noble cause.

The noble cause is developing, acquiring and using the skills of peace. It is facing the real threat to our people, like the climate crisis. It is facing the future together, rather than repeating the terrible patterns of the past that benefit the undeserving few.

No Crook Left Behind

Just when you were beginning to forget the Bushies are ultimately about stealing huge profits, the ends to which the obsession with partisan politics is just the means, comes more news about old fashioned money-grubbing corruption in one of those programs with weepy names, No Child Left Behind. According to the Washington Post, it's so blatant that even this Justice Department can't ignore it.

The disclosure came as a congressional hearing revealed how people implementing the $1 billion-a-year Reading First program made at least $1 million off textbooks and tests toward which the federal government steered states.

Since this program was all about these tests, the intent is clear. Now we know for sure what "compassionate conservatism" means to the Bushies. It means you sound compassionate as a way to rob the Treasury and privatize for personal profit.

Hillary Divorces Bill, Declares Love for Whoopi Goldberg!

While supposed statesmen like John McCain and Lindsay Graham claim Baghdad is safe, American soldiers and correspondents in the field laugh at them. One veteran reporter said that everyone knows an American alone wouldn’t last twenty minutes anywhere in Baghdad—if not killed, then kidnapped for politics or money. Millions are homeless and hundreds of thousands dying in Africa in wars invisible here, while Americans obsesses over the final resting place of a model. The fate of civilization and the health of the planet are in grave jeopardy, according to a scientific consensus nearly as strong as that suggesting there are laws of gravity, but in the leading nation of the world deniers rule and no action is taken, as every moment brings future generations closer to a cursed and inevitable fate.

Hah hah—didn’t mean it! April Fool!

Hah hah—didn’t mean that! It’s true! So who’s the April Fool now?


April Fool’s Day has roots in many cultures that reach as far back as history goes, and probably farther. Part of its complex pedigree is a fairly direct relationship to the Bill of Rights.

The historical roots of the day include ancient festivals of spring which often had some component of comedy, trickery and release from ordinary rules, which in the western world at least usually included orgies of gluttony, drunkenness and sexual licentiousness. The probable direct ancestor of April Fool's Day is more specific—when France adopted the Gregorian calendar in the sixteenth century, New Year's moved from April to January 1. But old habits are hard to break, especially those beginning in 45 B.C., which was when Julius Caesar set up the old Julian calendar. Some gullible Parisians were tricked by clever neighbors into celebrating New Year's on what was now the wrong day.

Out of this was born the classic cry, April Fish! Which is something that did not cross the Atlantic when the calendar was later changed in America. No one is quite sure what the fish thing is about. Still, the first April Fool's Day jest was probably, "Happy New Year!"

But the more important aspect of this history relates to the tradition of the licensed fool. America never had court jesters, but for all the time this continent was being explored and populated as well as centuries before, most European countries did. From imperial Rome through the medieval period and the Renaissance, official fools were not only a popular and well known presence in royal courts, but for part of that time were also employed by cities, clergy and wealthy families.

Their duties ranged from song and dance to pratfalls and acrobatics, ribaldry and general foolishness. At times no fashionable dinner party was complete without a fool hired to insult the guests. But the key element of the "allowed fool" was his (and occasionally, her) freedom to do and especially to say anything to anyone.

The official fool also has roots in an aspect of the aforementioned festivals, which featured a Lord of Misrule— a commoner who took on the trappings of the king or bishop or town mayor for a day. As far back as the tenth century, these became elaborate performances, mixing entertainment with social comment, and topical plays or burlesque sermons that satirized the real rulers of state and church, who had to at least pretend to enjoy it. These events became hugely popular, but nobody was fool enough to criticize the powerful if there were going to be reprisals. So the tradition included immunity for the fool.

When kings hired permanent court jesters, political satire as well as pointed personal remarks were part of their repertoire, and the tradition of immunity came with them. Archibald Armstrong, one of England's last and most political jesters replied, "No one has ever heard of a fool being hanged for talking, but many dukes have been beheaded for their insolence." So it happened that the only people in Europe with the absolute right of free speech were kings and queens, and fools.

This fact was not lost on others who were agitating for that kind of freedom for all. The original document of the Magna Carta, England's first great challenge to absolute royal power in 1215, was decorated with the figure of a court jester. From the late 15th century until well into the 17th, "societies of fools" flourished in France, composed of young men who criticized the government and agitated for freedom while wearing the traditional court jester motley.


America never had court jesters, though some of its first expressions of freedom and identity were in the foolery tradition, from the burlesque of the Boston Tea Party (a bunch of Anglos badly costumed as Indians who struck a blow for political independence by dumping tea into cold water) to some early symbols such as Yankee Doodle and Uncle Sam. "Yankee" was a British ethnic slur which New Englanders turned into a badge of honor, and Yankee Doodle Dandy was a clown figure (what else can you say about a guy who sticks a feather in his cap and calls it macaroni?) made immortal in the song sung at key moments in the American Revolution, including at the British surrender. A similar figure, a Yankee "wise fool" stock character popular in early American stage comedies, was a source for Uncle Sam.

Americans also pride themselves on being straightforward, so there's also a tradition of mistrusting the tricky. But today our Zeitgeist depends so heavily on some forms of deceit--spin, disinformation, oversimplifying and the straight-faced lie--that selectively moralizing about other forms rings hollow. Historians are dishonored for missing quotation marks, but not if the history they write is dishonest bunk. Injustice wears clothes of obscurant nomenclature, and success by any means necessary is our guiding morality. Mendacity is a trick of power.

The heart of the fool's relation to free speech is speaking truth to power. For awhile we may have thought that serious journalism was going to speak truth to power, but when the most powerful owns the most presses, and the line between editorial and advertising becomes more and more imaginary, it's looking like a piquant hope.

The rich and powerful can easily ridicule the countrified (the original meaning of "clown") and unsophisticated, but the figure of the fool deflects the ridicule back upon the pretentious and corrupt. Freedom to criticize the powerful is at the heart of both the fool tradition and free speech.

The pretensions of power are automatic, perhaps the inevitable product of consciousness equipped with opposable thumbs. Our particular social systems depend on some forms of deceit while moralizing about others. Historians are dishonored for missing quotation marks, but not if the history they write is dishonest bunk. Injustice wears clothes of obscurant nomenclature, while paradox or irony shade into hypocrisy as we deny freedoms in the name of protecting freedom.


Today April Fool's Day is just about our only nod to this tradition. You can play tricks on people any day of the year, but the idea is that on this day, you are allowed to. This year it falls on a Sunday, so the usual office trickery is shall we say a bit trickier this year. Yet the Internet more than makes up for this as a celebration of intentional foolery that unintentionally looks like every other day on the Internet.

Since laughter seems to override anger, wit is often its own protection, at least temporarily. The cosmos itself seems designed with persistent uncertainties, which is perhaps why many religious and cultural traditions make the trickster a major myth.

Historically and perhaps in practice, the freedom of the fool makes way for freedom of speech in all its aspects. Humor often seems to make the truth clearer and perhaps easier to acknowledge. We have to be tricked into seeing what we would rather not see. We can have tricksters without truth, and in our entertainment-dominated society we mostly do. But rarely can we fallible humans have truth without tricksters.

When They Stand Up, We Fall

From the AP: The U.S. military death toll in March, the first full month of the security crackdown, was nearly twice that of the Iraqi army, which American and Iraqi officials say is taking the leading role in the latest attempt to curb violence in the capital, surrounding cities and Anbar province, according to figures compiled on Saturday.

The Associated Press count of U.S. military deaths for the month was 81...

Valerie Plame Wilson. AP photo.

Exposing the Masters of Deceit

They lied us into the war that began four years ago today. They said Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and were collecting materials to build nuclear bombs. We now know that they knew there was little evidence that those weapons existed, and the one bit of supposed evidence that Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear material was false. They not only insisted it was true--they went to treasonous lengths to keep their lie from being exposed.In an effort to destroy the credibility of the messenger--Joseph Wilson, who the CIA sent to track down the nuclear rumor--at the interfering insistence of VP Cheney--the White House exposed the identity of his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, a covert CIA officer, and falsely accused her of sending her husband to Niger. (As if, by the way, that alone is enough to make the fiction of Iraq's nuclear attempts true.)

On Friday, Rep. Henry Waxman began his hearings into security breaches with a statement in which General Hayden, current head of the CIA, affirmed that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert agent when her name was published, having been distributed to the press no fewer than 20 times by multiple members of the Bush administration. In her testimony, Plame said under oath that she had been on covert status, that she had in fact travelled outside the U.S. as a covert agent within five years (a technicality in the law protecting the identity of covert operatives), and that her outing had destroyed her 20 year career investigating weapons of mass destruction programs that might threaten the U.S.

Despite President Bush's statements that he would investigate the leak of her name, and fire anyone involved, there was further testimony from the Director of the White House Office of Security that there was no investigation whatever. And Karl Rove, one of the leakers, is still an official force in the White House.

Plame said that she knew that her identity might be discovered and exposed by a foreign government. She never imagined it would be exposed by high officials of her own government.

Still, the supporters of Bush, the right wing TV and radio babbleheads, continue to insist that Plame was not covert, and that this is mere politics. Which leads to the question: if killing more than 3,000 American soldiers and maiming thousands more, as well as killing and maiming countless thousands in Iraq as well as destroying that society, all based on lies, and the outing of a U.S. covert agent for political purposes, and the continung defense of these acts by means of more lies--if all this is not treason, what is?

It Can Happen Here (Latest Chapter)

The Bushite scandals come so fast they are hard to keep track of, and start becoming indistinguishable, but the latest is worth isolating for its meanings and implications.

What is it? A number of federal attorneys--at least 7, probably more--were fired by the Bush Justice Department, officially by the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. After some local news stories and blogger investigations, congressional hearings revealed that many of them appear to have been fired for not being sufficiently zealous on behalf of Republicans, in several cases after improper questions and pressure on their current investigations--suggestions that they ought to be prosecuting Democrats (for "voter fraud") and not prosecuting Republicans (for corruption.)

At first, Gonzales denied to Congress there were any political considerations--these were personnel matters, based on performance. When evidence of good performance reviews etc. appeared, Republicans changed their tune to: the President has the right to fire these officials, and all Presidents do it on a political basis. But, in fact (they said) it wasn't political, at least the White House wasn't involved, specifically Karl Rove.

Now it's come out that this was a political decision from the beginning, going back to early 2005, and that Gonzales was involved even before he was Attorney General, when he was on the White House staff, and that Rove was involved--in fact (according to emails revealed Thursday), he was a chief instigator.

What's the underlying problem with this? Presidents often change federal prosecutors at the beginning of their terms, as Bush did--they are in that sense political appointments. But firing prosecutors selectively based on how they are prosecuting Republicans or not prosecuting Democrats strikes at the heart of the justice system, already admittedly weakened by the political appointee tradition. What the Bush White House is doing in this instance, as in others, appears to be unprecedented. It's also unusual to replace one Republican appointee with another because Karl Rove wants a pal in his place--especially when the office is in Little Rock, where yet another round of investigations into the Clintons could begin, just as Hillary runs for President.

What else is behind this? Howard Fineman for MSNBC points to the practices and intents of Rove and the other Bushites as far back as Texas:

Judges are elected in Texas. Karl Rove made his fortune not by running George W. Bush for office, but by training, building and running slates of conservative Republican judges. If the judges are purely political, what does that make the lawyers who practice in front of them? Surely not just “officers of the court.”The Austin Gang – Bush, Rove, Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers – saw the legal world as something to control, if for no other reason than if they did not, the Trial Lawyers – the backbone of the modern Texas Democratic Party – would.

Gonzales made his bones literally keeping Bush out of court when, as governor, Bush was called to jury duty. Had Bush been subject to questioning by attorneys over his suitability to serve, he would have had to reveal that he had been arrested for drunk driving. Not a good thing to do before a presidential campaign. Gonzales managed to get the Boss out of the jury pool.

But it's even more specific, according to a New York Times editorial:

In its fumbling attempts to explain the purge of United States attorneys, the Bush administration has argued that the fired prosecutors were not aggressive enough about addressing voter fraud. It is a phony argument; there is no evidence that any of them ignored real instances of voter fraud. But more than that, it is a window on what may be a major reason for some of the firings. In partisan Republican circles, the pursuit of voter fraud is code for suppressing the votes of minorities and poor people. By resisting pressure to crack down on “fraud,” the fired United States attorneys actually appear to have been standing up for the integrity of the election system.

The integrity of the election system, the integrity of the justice system--just two attacks on the integrity of the Constitution that characterize this Bush administration. I don't know if it is possible, but impeachment is more warranted now than ever.

The Long Dubai

So after screwing the U.S. taxpayers from here to eternity for their billions in no-bid contracts to serve tainted food to U.S. soldiers, and various other hyperinflated and substandard services in Iraq, Halliburton is getting out of town. Way out. Moving headquarters to Dubai. Yes, that same sandy paradise where corporate capitalism on steroids meets the terrorist network, and where the companies are that the Bushites wanted to put in charge of U.S. ports.

Halliburton, the company that gave its former prez and now ours, Dick Cheney, a $35 million severance package, though its doubtful the severance was all that, shall we say, severe. They are leaving the building. In fact, the whole country.

Gee, what do you think they have in mind? Your first guess may be as good as Hillary Clinton's: "I think that raises a lot of serious issues we have to look at," said the former First Lady. "Does this mean they are going to quit paying taxes in America? They are going to take all the advantage of our country but not pay their fair share of taxes?"She continued, "They get a lot of government contracts - is this going to affect the investigations that are going on? Because we have a lot of evidence of misuse of government contracts and how they have cheated the American soldier and cheated the American taxpayer. They have taken the money and not provided the services, so does this mean that we won't be able to pursue these investigations?"

I expect that within a year or two of the move (into the Cheney Complex in Cheney City), they'll quietly change their name and go after U.S. contracts again, although thanks to them there may not be any money left by then.

But Senator Frank Lautenberg has even darker thoughts than this: he suspects the move is a way to circumvent U.S. law so that Halliburton can continue to pursue contracts with--get this--Iran. Yeah, the one with the "n" at the end.It seems a Halliburton subsidiary already in Dubai has been doing business with Iran for years.

There is a possible upside: if Halliburton does get some big contracts for Iran's nuclear program, that's virtually a guarantee that it will be set back for years. If the Iranians think they're the Axis of Evil, they are about to meet the real thing.

The Lies That Bind

It's a sad day in a sad time. With the Lewis Libby conviction on obstruction of justice and perjury, we have the spectre of a White House--most specifically, the Vice President's office but also others in the Administration-- that consciously lied to get the country to invade and occupy Iraq, then tried to suppress the truth, then tried to punish Joseph Wilson, the former Ambassador to Iraq under Bush Sr. who actually saved lives there, for exposing one of these lies, by revealing that his wife was a covert operative at the CIA, thus endangering her life and ending her career, as well as ending her decades-long work in uncovering weapons of mass destruction that could be used against the U.S.

President Bush said repeatedly that he would fire anyone who leaked Valerie Plame's identity. During Libby's trial, several other officials were implicated in doing so, including Rove and the VP. The statement about firing people who committed what some would call treason is currently inoperative.

Lewis Libby obstructed justice and lied to the Grand Jury to protect his boss, VP Cheney, and the White House. Some speculate he did so after being given assurances that he will receive a presidential pardon. A sad-eyed John Dean appeared on "Countdown" to say he expects that Bush will pardon Libby before Libby spends a single day in jail. The corruption of this White House was further revealed today in congressional hearings that are showing that several federal prosecutors were fired because they didn't play politics with their offices.

Other congressional hearings are detailing how this administration, after sending young Americans to Iraq on false pretenses, for brutally long tours of duty, with poor planning, confused mission, and insufficient resources, including insufficient armor and other protection that led to needless serious injuries, failed to provide the proper care to those who were so injured after they returned.

I've said here before that to confront the problems ahead, we need to get away from knee-jerk us/them, either/or responses. We need in many cases to understand the concerns that underlie the otherwise inexplicable positions and behavior. We need to listen to contrary evidence and arguments. We need to honor sincerity. We need to communicate and find common ground.But we also need to be clear. What this administration has done and is doing is evil. It is corrupt and corrupting, and it is dangerous.

It also goes hand in hand with practices and attitudes by those who identify themselves as conservatives or the Right, that are unacceptable in a civilized society, let alone a democratic one. Though the left is not without its vitriolics, its knee-jerk responses to opposition, I believe Kos was right today in noting that "Michael Savage is the third most popular talk radio host in the country, a hero to millions of conservatives" thanks to venomous rhetoric." Like Coulter, Savage knows what the conservative movement craves and delivers -- a steady diet of hate and rage." In an earlier post, Kos quotes another blogger, Glenn Greenwald on Ann Coulter: [T]he significance lies not just in this specific outburst on Friday but in the whole array of hate-mongering, violence-inciting remarks over all these years. Its significance lies in the critical fact that Malkin expressly acknowledged: "She's very popular among conservatives." The focus of these stories should not be Coulter, but instead, should be the conservative movement in which Ann Coulter -- precisely because of (not "despite") her history of making such comments -- is "very popular."

I heard Coulter herself on TV say that the lesson of this latest flap should be that conservatives need not restrain themselves, because she's done this many times and it hasn't damaged her career at all.

We have reached this point where baseless accusations, open bigotry, and expressions of hate and rage are normal discourse, and this is not unrelated to the ideological justifications for an us/them partisanship that knows no bounds--not the law, not the Constitution, not common decency, and certainly not accuracy or the truth.

Our leaders feel justified in doing anything they can get away with, and they are supported loudly by the most watched news network which routinely distorts for ideological effect (Fox's coverage of the Libby conviction was a screenful of "Libby Not Guilty," which applied to one of the five counts, and that, according to a juror, because a single juror voted against that particular count) and by an entrenched ideologically driven political force that has no respect for the truth, and traffics in hate, rage and venom. It's a sad day indeed.

The Outrage Basket

The Injoy basket is empty, but as usual the Outrage basket is overflowing. A few of the items tumbling over the top and onto the floor: A federal court, in perhaps the most legally torturous (in both senses) decision since the Supremes played Bush V. Gore, formally stripped detainees of their rights. So we're going to continue to pretend that "24" is reality, and that due process is some prissy thing we can't afford anymore, torture is necessary, torture works, and it's good for you, too--although there's the inconveniently authentic account in the Washington Post by Eric Fair, about his own experiences doing his country's dirty work, his current nightmares and self-recriminations:

I failed to disobey a meritless order, I failed to protect a prisoner in my custody, and I failed to uphold the standards of human decency. Instead, I intimidated, degraded and humiliated a man who could not defend himself. I compromised my values. I will never forgive myself.

But at least he's not an amputee dumped in an abandoned motel across from Walter Reed hospital, although judging the relative pain of traumatic stress for life versus traumatic head injuries for life is as debased as this war has always been. The Iraq war is creating a generation of physically, psychologically and mentally maimed people who will be around long after the last haunted Vietnam vet has faded completely out of existence. And there are people who with a straight and noble face are proposing a new Draft.

But then we're deep into government by hyperbole. Countdown quoted some right wing radio nut job as saying that teachers unions are a worse threat that al Qaeda, and a Repub Florida congressman who is also a party campaign official as saying that he doesn't really care if the lies he spread about Speaker Pelosi were true or not. Unfortunately I don't think he's lying about that.

We've heard about the ideological extremes this administration has gone to, in hiring people for those inconsequential jobs reserved for political favors, like running the Iraq occupation and FEMA. But it wasn't until I ran across a column by Paul Krugman in the New York Times that I realized there was a playbook involved. (I would read everything Krugman writes online except he's part of the "times select" group of columnists, and I can't bring myself to pay for Dowd and Friedman, who are also a mandatory part of the package.) So I saw this in the print edition. Krugman quotes a Heritage Foundation document that instructs the administration to "make appointment decisions based on loyalty first and expertise second." Which of course the Bushites took one step further by eliminating the second consideration altogether.

So it shouldn't be surprising that a story in today's New York Times notes that: Scholars say Mr. Bush has been more strategic than most presidents in sprinkling loyalists throughout the administration. Paul C. Light, an expert in public service at New York University, says it has created an “echo chamber” in which the president gets advice he wants to hear.

Krugman's column (from 2/05) also notes that privatization, another ideologically driven obsession of this administration, may have added to the amount of government work hired out to corporations, but not to the competition for contracts. Competitive contracts have nose-dived from nearly 3/4 of the total to less than 1/2. No word on how many of those Halliburton got. And of course, contractors are often getting paid far more than ordinary employees of government would be. Especially if they don't vote Republican.

Columnist and author Molly Ivins died Wednesday. She was 62.

Intelligent, incisive, intrepid, heroic and very funny. And irreplaceable.

R.I.P.

African cichlid. Very logical.

Scientists have "discovered" another species capable of logical thinking.

It's a fish.

According to experiments, an African cichlid demonstrated "transitive inference," or the ability to figure something out by example.

So fish are added to the species known to think logically: monkeys, rats and birds.

There must be another one.

Oh, yes.

Vulcans.

Are there Klingons in the White House?

And are they friend or faux?


(Thanks to Axinar for these photos)