Will nobody blink?

I realize that escalating rhetoric often has little to do with what will finally happen, but the bellicosity displayed in the Bush/Congress set-to over Iraq funding is pretty remarkable.

Defying a fresh veto threat, the Democratic-controlled Congress will pass legislation within days requiring the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq beginning Oct. 1, with a goal of completing the pullout six months later, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday.

Reid said the legislation "immediately transitions the U.S. military away from policing a civil war." He said that troops that remain in Iraq after next April 1 could only train Iraqi security units, protect U.S forces and conduct "targeted counter-terror operations."

The Nevada Democrat outlined the elements of the legislation in a speech a few hours after Bush said he will reject any legislation along the lines of what Democrats intend to pass. "I will strongly reject an artificial timetable (for) withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job," the president said.

So what's emerging from the conference committee is, remarkably, harder-line than either the House or Senate versions. The House version had hard deadlines but an 18-month timeframe; the Senate version had a shorter timeframe but no deadlines, only "goals." This hybrid version appears to combine the Senate's timetable with at least some of the House deadlines.

As such I think it's a bad idea. I didn't mind either individual version, because they were either very soft limits or the timeline was sufficiently long not to have an immediate effect. But the new version simply moves too fast.

If you truly believe that what's going on in Iraq is an intractable civil war, the bill makes sense: we have no business being there in that case. But if you believe, as I do, that Bush deserves one last chance to show he can win this thing, then an Oct. 1 deadline is simply too soon at this point.

All this may simply be attempts at blame-placing for the veto everyone knows will be coming by the end of this week. What happens after that will depend, in part, on who is more successful in the framing effort. Most likely result, I think, will be a "clean" spending bill that only runs through, say, Sept. 30. That means Bush will have to make another funding request in late summer -- right about when we should be starting to get a verdict on the surge.

But what if they're both serious? What if neither backs down? If no bill is passed, no more money is appropriated, and the war ends unless Bush can find ways to fund it out of discretionary monies -- which just isn't going to happen.

One would think that Bush would rather sign a bill with timetables than accept that. But there are other factors at work here. Neither side really wants an immediate, precipitous pullout, so each is hoping the other will blink first. Beyond that, Bush might see such a pullout as politically advantageous, because the effects would be more calamitous than a gradual pullout over the next year. He could then blame Congress for all the attendant trouble, instead of accepting that blame himself.

But much as I dislike Bush, I'm not cynical enough to believe he would do that to the Iraqis. I think he truly believes we need to stay in Iraq and can win in Iraq. So he's not going to abandon the war just to make political points at home.

So if it comes to pure stubborn, expect Congress to blink first. And then expect a short-term funding bill that will see this debate renewed -- with firmer Congressional resolve if the surge is going badly -- in the fall.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Gays and abortion caused Virginia Tech shootings

At least, that's what Donald Wilmon and the American Family Association are saying.

Bleh.

Hopefully the video works; it's my first attempt to embed a YouTube link.
(h/t: No More Mister Nice Blog)

Update: Wilmon has company. Rush Limbaugh said the shooter had to be a liberal, while both the American Thinker and Newt Gingrich say liberalism is to blame.

crime, religion, politics, midtopia

Life in the bubble

President Bush today reiterated his strong support for Alberto Gonzales.

The president said that Gonzales' testimony before skeptical Judiciary Committee senators last week "increased my confidence" in his ability to lead the Justice Department. Separately, a White House spokeswoman said, "He's staying."

Of course, he didn't actually listen to or watch that testimony. And the White House acknowledged that it wouldn't have mattered if he had.

Q. So is it fair to say that no matter what the testimony, no matter what the back-and-forth, that the President plans to stick with Attorney General Gonzales?

MS. PERINO: I think -- yes. I think the President has full confidence in the Attorney General and whenever that changes for any public servant, we'll let you know, and I see no indication of that.

That sound you hear is Bush sticking his fingers in his ears and going "Na-na-na-na-na. I can't hear you!" It doesn't bother me that he supports Gonzales. It bothers me that he is so obvious about his refusal to listen to things that may contradict his own viewpoint. Bush appears unable or unwilling to recognize two concepts:

1. There's a difference between "fierce loyalty" and "blind loyalty."

2. There's a difference between "loyal" and "competent."

Oh heck, let's add a third:

3. What's good for Bush is not always what's good for the government or the country.

His devotion to an incompetent lapdog AG is a prime example of all three. And it doesn't really achieve anything, because most of the rest of the GOP wants to be shut of the whole mess.

Rep. Adam Putnam, chairman of the House Republican Conference, called on Gonzales to step down -- echoing a position that a group of top House GOPers privately delivered to Bush earlier in the month. "He's done something I didn't think possible. He's lost the confidence of almost all the Republicans in Congress," said one top GOP strategist who is close to the White House.

This isn't a Dem-Rep thing; it's a Bush-vs.-everyone-else thing.

Update: Gonzales vows to stay on the job. Republicans everywhere shudder inwardly.

Bush, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Maybe we are all sheep

Like a lot of people, I've often wondered why "popular" often doesn't equate to "quality" in books, film and the like. There are a lot of explanations -- marketing, the lowest common denominator at work, or simply shrugging it off as evidence that the American public, by and large, are a bunch of dunces who really like fart jokes.

Turns out, though, that we're simply not the independent thinkers we think we are. Almost as important as reading a book we like is knowing that other people are reading it, too.

[Conventional marketing wisdom] makes a big assumption: that when people make decisions about what they like, they do so independently of one another. But people almost never make decisions independently — in part because the world abounds with so many choices that we have little hope of ever finding what we want on our own; in part because we are never really sure what we want anyway; and in part because what we often want is not so much to experience the “best” of everything as it is to experience the same things as other people and thereby also experience the benefits of sharing.

There’s nothing wrong with these tendencies. Ultimately, we’re all social beings, and without one another to rely on, life would be not only intolerable but meaningless. Yet our mutual dependence has unexpected consequences, one of which is that if people do not make decisions independently — if even in part they like things because other people like them — then predicting hits is not only difficult but actually impossible, no matter how much you know about individual tastes.

The reason is that when people tend to like what other people like, differences in popularity are subject to what is called “cumulative advantage,” or the “rich get richer” effect. This means that if one object happens to be slightly more popular than another at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still. As a result, even tiny, random fluctuations can blow up, generating potentially enormous long-run differences among even indistinguishable competitors — a phenomenon that is similar in some ways to the famous “butterfly effect” from chaos theory. Thus, if history were to be somehow rerun many times, seemingly identical universes with the same set of competitors and the same overall market tastes would quickly generate different winners: Madonna would have been popular in this world, but in some other version of history, she would be a nobody, and someone we have never heard of would be in her place.

Oh sure, you say. Nice theory, but c'mon. How do you prove that?

Like this.

In our study, published last year in Science, more than 14,000 participants registered at our Web site, Music Lab (www.musiclab.columbia.edu), and were asked to listen to, rate and, if they chose, download songs by bands they had never heard of. Some of the participants saw only the names of the songs and bands, while others also saw how many times the songs had been downloaded by previous participants. This second group — in what we called the “social influence” condition — was further split into eight parallel “worlds” such that participants could see the prior downloads of people only in their own world. We didn’t manipulate any of these rankings — all the artists in all the worlds started out identically, with zero downloads — but because the different worlds were kept separate, they subsequently evolved independently of one another.

This setup let us test the possibility of prediction in two very direct ways. First, if people know what they like regardless of what they think other people like, the most successful songs should draw about the same amount of the total market share in both the independent and social-influence conditions — that is, hits shouldn’t be any bigger just because the people downloading them know what other people downloaded. And second, the very same songs — the “best” ones — should become hits in all social-influence worlds.

What we found, however, was exactly the opposite. In all the social-influence worlds, the most popular songs were much more popular (and the least popular songs were less popular) than in the independent condition. At the same time, however, the particular songs that became hits were different in different worlds, just as cumulative-advantage theory would predict. Introducing social influence into human decision making, in other words, didn’t just make the hits bigger; it also made them more unpredictable.

It turns out that an independent assessment of "quality" is a factor; quality songs tended to be popular in all the worlds. But it turns out it's only a factor, not the factor or even the biggest factor.

So "Bridezilla" and it's ilk isn't going to disappear from the airwaves anytime soon. But we can take comfort in the knowledge that it's not because we're Philistines; it's because being part of a group experience is more important to our brains than the fine details of what that experience is. Opera or "Jackass": as long as you've got company, it's all good.

science, psychology, politics, midtopia

D.C. representative bill passes House

A bill that would give D.C. an actual voting representative in Congress has passed the House.

Don't hold your breath waiting for it to become reality, though. It faces tough sledding in the Senate, a possible presidential veto and almost certain Constitutional challenges.

Update: Here's a fascinating, funny history of the founding of D.C. You can imagine how such a debacle would be portrayed if it occurred today, what with its mix of hubris, corruption, speculation and scheming.

D.C., politics, midtopia

Laugh of the week

It's Friday, and I'm done blogging for the week. Let's close out with what might be the funniest collection of comic-book covers and panels in existence. It's called Superdickery.

H/t to Liberty for a related link that led to the treasure trove.

humor, politics, midtopia

How'd Gonzales do?

I'm still strapped for time, so rather than do a lousy job of analyzing Gonzales' testimony, I'll point you to people who did it right.

The Moderate Voice has an excellent and lengthy piece on it, tying in a lot of commentary from around the blogosphere. His conclusion: Gonzales did not win any converts, and received many, many hints from Republicans that it was time for him to leave.

At best, the portrait that has emerged in recent weeks from a slew of news reports and his testimony yesterday suggest a weak individual who is easily politically dominated. At worst, the portrait that is emerging is of someone who an outright political hack and should never have been appointed at all. An unspoken sentiment among Republicans seems to be buyer’s remorse.

Another unspoken point of unanimity: there are likely MANY now who are grateful to the GOP’s conservative wing for sandbagging feelers two years ago about possibly sticking Gonzales on the Supreme Court.

Amen to that.

The hammering outside Congress was bipartisan as well. From the New Republic:

Maybe Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing would have gone better if he and the senators had worked out one major misunderstanding beforehand. In Gonzales’s trial to keep his job today, the senators–seated in a giant hearing room filled with hot-pink-clad protesters waving pocket constitutions–clearly understood Gonzales to be the defendant. The attorney general, however, seemed to believe he had been called as an expert forensic witness.

Throughout the hearing, Gonzales displayed an odd dissociation from his job as head of the Justice Department, often behaving more as though he was a diligent inspector general called in to analyze what had happened rather than someone who had made things happen himself.

And from National Review:

Judging by his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, there are three questions about the U.S. attorneys mess that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wants answered: What did I know? When did I know it? And why did I fire those U.S. attorneys?

As the day dragged on, it became clear — painfully clear to anyone who supports Gonzales — that the attorney general didn’t know the answers. Much of the time, he explained, he didn’t really know much at all — he was just doing what his senior staff recommended he do.

His testimony, in fact, reminded me of Ronald Reagan talking about Iran-Contra: "A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."

It's like he's on the outside of his own life, looking in.

As I've said repeatedly, Gonzales deserves to be fired. Not because he let the White House interfere with U.S. attorneys, but because he's an incompetent sycophant.

Several observers have complained about the rowdy protesters at the hearing. On the one hand, I applaud Congress opening up the Capitol to people interested in politics, not just tourists admiring the woodwork. I've grown tired of even silent statements, such as message t-shirts, being banned in the galleries of our national legislature.

That said, Gonzales did not deserve having to endure five hours of heckling. The first few outbursts drew rebukes from Chairman Patrick Leahy. Subsequent outbursts should have led to the demonstrators being removed for disrupting the proceedings.

The hammering only intensified today.

Dana Milbank at the Washington Post: "For much of the very long day, the attorney general responded like a child caught in a lie. He shifted his feet under the table, balled his hands into fists and occasionally pointed at his questioners. He defended his actions: 'The decision stands.' He denied responsibility: 'This was a process that was ongoing that I did not have transparency into.' He blamed the victims: 'Poor judgment . . . poor management.' He blamed his subordinates: 'When there are attacks against the department, you're attacking the career professionals.' Mostly, though, he retreated to memory loss."

The Dallas Morning News: " Senate Judiciary Committee members mauled the attorney general yesterday, but that was no surprise. Knowing that he was walking into an ambush, it was shocking to see how ill-prepared Mr. Gonzales was. His responses throughout a tough day of direct questioning failed to defend the firings, failed to explain his own role credibly and failed to establish that he is capable of running the Department of Justice."

Captain's Quarters: "I support Republicans because they usually represent competence and smaller government, not because I belong to the Republican Tribe. I'm not going to support or defend obvious incompetence on the part of Republicans, and Gonzales has been an incompetent in this matter, as Tom Coburn rightly points out....

"Four months after the firings and after a month of preparation, Gonzales still couldn't completely answer Brownback on why each attorney got fired. He testified that he hadn't even met with most of them about those reasons he could recite. He admitted that he wrongly accused them of poor performance in his public statements. He told the Senate yesterday that he objected to the plan Kyle Sampson presented him in November about rolling out the terminations, and then could not answer why that plan got followed over his objections by his aide.

"Is that competence? Is this our argument for 2008 in asking the American public to trust Republicans with power? If it is, and we cannot bring ourselves to demand better from this administration, be prepared for a very disappointing 2008."

Yowch.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

"Training Iraqi troops no longer the top priority"

Say what?

Military planners have abandoned the idea that standing up Iraqi troops will enable American soldiers to start coming home soon and now believe that U.S. troops will have to defeat the insurgents and secure control of troubled provinces.

Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration's Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said.

No change has been announced, and a Pentagon spokesman, Col. Gary Keck, said training Iraqis remains important. "We are just adding another leg to our mission," Keck said, referring to the greater U.S. role in establishing security that new troops arriving in Iraq will undertake.

But evidence has been building for months that training Iraqi troops is no longer the focus of U.S. policy. Pentagon officials said they know of no new training resources that have been included in U.S. plans to dispatch 28,000 additional troops to Iraq. The officials spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to discuss the policy shift publicly. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made no public mention of training Iraqi troops on Thursday during a visit to Iraq.

Okay, on the one hand, there is less here than meets the eye. We're still training them; we've just shifted top priority to the "surge" and U.S. combat operations.

But consider this:

In nearly every area where Iraqi forces were given control, the security situation rapidly deteriorated. The exceptions were areas dominated largely by one sect and policed by members of that sect....

Earlier this month, U.S. forces engaged in heavy fighting in the southern city of Diwaniyah after Iraqi forces, who'd been given control of the region in January 2006, lost control of the city.

Also consider the "our strategy sucked" revelation implicit in the following paragraphs:

Casey's "mandate was transition. General Petraeus' mandate is security. It is a change based on conditions. Certain conditions have to be met for the transition to be successful. Security is part of that. And General Petraeus recognizes that," said Brig. Gen. Dana Pittard, commander of the Iraq Assistance Group in charge of supporting trained Iraqi forces.

Um, didn't we have that exactly backwards? Shouldn't we have established security first, then begun the transition? Four years later, we're back to square one.

I suppose you can still blame Democrats:

Military officials say there's no doubt that the November U.S. elections, which gave Democrats control of both houses of Congress, helped push training down the priority list. The elections, they said, made it clear that voters didn't have the patience to wait for Iraqis to take the lead.

"To the extent we are losing the American public, we were losing" in the transition approach, said a senior military commander in Washington.

But that doesn't address the fact that we tried to leap straight to transition without first securing the country, or that military and administration officials fed expectations with their relentless "happy talk" about the progress of the training program -- talk that turns out to have been more than a tad overoptimistic.

So our exit strategy is in disarray, and our response is to send 23,000 more troops and think that will make a difference.

Or as a State Department official put it: "Our strategy now is to basically hold on and wait for the Iraqis to do something."

Color me pessimistic.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

A new rule for political debate

The other day, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid voiced an opinion on the Iraq war.

"The (Iraq) war can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically, and the president needs to come to that realization," Reid said in a news conference.

Later Thursday on the Senate floor, Reid said: "As long as we follow the president's path in Iraq, the war is lost. But there is still a chance to change course -- and we must change course." The war funding bill should contain a timeline to "reduce combat missions and refocus our efforts on the real threats to our security," he said.

It's a reasonably big deal when the leader of the Senate says something like that. Coverage and commentary are expected.

But I'm getting darned tired of the garbage from places like Wake Up America, which called Democrats "the Tokyo Rose of Iraq."

Or the "shut the hell up, you traitor!" letters compiled by Michelle Malkin.

Then there are the lesser offenses, like characterizing the timetables included in the war-funding bills as tantamount to surrender in Iraq or even the larger fight against terror -- even though the bills give Bush even more money than he asked for, the timelines don't kick in for at least a year, the Senate timetables aren't even mandatory, and the whole point of the bills is to refocus resources from the Iraq distraction so that we can more effectively combat terrorism.

Note the logic (or lack thereof): In debating the war, any suggestion that the war should be ended or cannot be won is treason and disloyalty. Thus the only valid debate is over how best to continue fighting the war -- not whether we should continue fighting it.

The "damned if you do, damned if you don't" logic lines that people set up are just ridiculous. If Democrats don't propose an immediate end to the war, they're liars and cowards; if they do, they're traitors. No matter what they do, war supporters get to slam them.

Such a logical setup -- and it is committed by people from all parts of the ideological spectrum -- should be accepted as proof of partisan framing and disregarded as a fallacy.

I think Reid is jumping the gun, inasmuch as the surge still needs time to prove itself -- the recent humongous carnage in Baghdad notwithstanding. But that's just my opinion, not received fact. Maybe I'm wrong and he's right. Heck, maybe we're both wrong and Bush is right, unlikely as that would seem.

In a democracy, it is perfectly acceptable to voice the opinion that the war is unwinnable. That is the only way to have a free and full debate over the war and thus arrive at the best policy. It is distinctly unAmerican to frame the issue in such a way as to disallow viewpoints you don't like.

The good news is that after four years of such rhetoric from rabid war backers, I think many, many people are getting heartily sick of it and recognize just how illegitimate the framing is -- and starting to wonder why such partisans fear opposing viewpoints so much that they try to drown them out rather than simply deal with them on the merits.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon confirms that Bush has been scaremongering on the effects of delaying the funding bills and the Secretary of Defense apparently gives comfort to Al-Qaeda by warning the Iraqi government that "the clock is ticking" on U.S. involvement.

Reid, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Unexpected vocabulary lessons

From MSNBC's "Peculiar Postings":

Doris Moore was shocked when her new couch was delivered to her home with a label that used a racial slur to describe the dark brown shade of the upholstery.

The situation was even more alarming for Moore because it was her 7-year-old daughter who pointed out “n----- brown” on the tag.

The culprit? An outdated translation program used by the Chinese manufacturer.

He explained that when the Chinese characters for “dark brown” are typed into an older version of its Chinese-English translation software, the offensive N-word description comes up.

“We got the definition from a Chinese-English dictionary. We’ve been using the dictionary for 10 years. Maybe the dictionary was updated, but we probably didn’t follow suit,” he said.

That's one comprehensive dictionary....

The comedy of errors needed for this to happen is pretty impressive.

1. Chinese manufacturer uses faulty translation program to make the initial error.

2. Wholesaler doesn't notice.

3. Couch goes to store owned by an Indian immigrant, who doesn't know what the word means.

But to top off the stupidity, there's this:

Moore is consulting with a lawyer and wants compensation. Last week, she filed a report with the Ontario Human Rights Commission....

Moore, 30, has three young children, and said the issue has taken a toll on her family.

Compensation? For a translation error? Lordy. It would probably be smart business sense for store or manufacturer to offer their apologies and perhaps a discount. But claiming "harm" from something like this is just goofy.

humor, race, politics, midtopia

Baghdad's Green Line?

Amid worsening violence in Baghdad, the U.S. military is resorting to an age-old tactic: lots of concrete.

U.S. soldiers are building a three-mile wall to protect a Sunni Arab enclave surrounded by Shiite neighborhoods in a Baghdad area "trapped in a spiral of sectarian violence and retaliation," the military said.

When the wall is finished, the minority Sunni community of Azamiyah, on the eastern side of the Tigris River, will be gated, and traffic control points manned by Iraqi soldiers will be the only entries, the military said.

This is an urban version of a tactic used in western Iraq, where troublesome cities have been surrounded by sand berms. It's had mixed success there -- reducing U.S. casualties, but not doing a whole lot to tamp down sectarian passions inside the town.

While this isn't exactly good news, in the end it's just another tool. The goal all along has been to tamp down the violence so that lasting security and infrastructure has a chance to establish itself. If a (temporary) wall makes that job easier, okay.

Still, can anyone say "Green Line"? That was the name of the unofficial dividing line between Muslim and Christian sections of Beirut during the Lebanese civil war. Initially a makeshift and informal line marking a "no-man's land" between rival militias, in places it developed into a fortified barrier that lasted for 15 years and became a symbol of the war and the city, and continues to affect the development of Beirut and the psyche of its residents.

The lesson, I think, is that temporary barriers have a way of becoming permanent if the underlying reason for the separation is not addressed. In addition, the line itself can become a focus, reason and justification for the separation. And the longer the separation goes on, the harder it is to reconnect the two halves when the wall finally comes down.

So let's hope this is truly a temporary measure, and not a sign that we're settling into a 15-year war.

Green Line, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Moderate Muslims, Part III

In two previous posts (here and here), I've highlighted words and deeds by moderate Muslims as a favor for people who claim they don't exist.

Here's another: Author Irshad Manji, a Muslim (and lesbian) who writes about the intersection of faith and freedom. She participated in an online chat where she answered questions about Islam. Notable excerpts:

Simply put, we don't need to change Islam. That's because Islam itself contains the raw materials to be both humane and reasonable. What we need to do is change the Muslim mindset to bust out of tribalism (strict hierarchies that equating debate with division and division with crime), and recognize that Islam's own scripture, the Quran, contains 3 times as many verses calling on us to think/reflect/analyze than verses telling us what's forbidden/acceptable. In short, re-interpretation is not just permitted; it's encouraged.

Yep -- an Islamic Reformation.

As to the imams, why are they the arbiters? I wish that non-Muslims would stop investing these guys with the authority to approve or disapprove of other Muslims. They're not the only creatures who count. Especially before the eyes of God.

This, too, goes back to tribalism, not Islam itself.

The Quran vigorously defends religious pluralism, including those who convert or choose not to believe AT ALL. When some Muslims wage war on converts - as many of many mullahs in Afghanistan recenty did - they are following a SELECTED and REPORTED saying of the Prophet Muhammad (known as the hadiths). Problem is, the Prophet reportedly said many things that contradict each other.

Which is why Islam needs the equivalent of a Council of Trent or the like, where they separate the "true" Hadiths from the suspect ones. Or else the Hadiths need to be demoted in importance.

The Quran contains plenty of pro-women passages. One could argue that women have many more rights according to the Quran than according to any other scripture before it. But the reason for such anti-women interpretations is tribal culture; in the case of Islam, ARAB tribal culture. (I know that's politically incorrect to point out in the age of multiculturalism; so be it.) In particular, the tribal tradition of honor requires women to give up their individuality in order to maintain the reputation of the men in their lives. This turns women into communal property. The way in which Islam has been propagated for the past several hundred years, the code of honor has become enmeshed in religous practices. Bottom line: Although this problem didn't come FROM Islam, it has become a problem FOR Islam.

From the point of view of the nonMuslim world, we need to learn to separate the Quran from the Hadiths, and Islam from the tribal cultures that dominate its membership in the public consciousness. Only then can we come up with realistic strategies to engage moderate Muslims, isolate the extremists and help the Islamic Reformation along.

religion, Islam, politics, midtopia

Coburn says Gonzales should resign

A full post on Gonzales' testimony will have to wait until tomorrow. I only caught part of it on the radio, and I haven't had time to delve into it as deeply as I'd like to.

But this is worth mentioning:

Republican as well as Democratic lawmakers challenged the embattled attorney general during an often-bitter five-hour hearing before the Judiciary Committee. Lawmakers confronted Gonzales with documents and sworn testimony they said showed he was more involved in the dismissals than he contended.

"The best way to put this behind us is your resignation," Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma bluntly told Gonzales, one conservative to another. Gonzales disagreed, rejecting the idea that his departure would put the controversy to rest.

It's also not a good sign that after weeks of preparation, and knowing what the questions would be, Gonzales said "I don't know" or "I don't remember" 71 times. That's not quite as many as Kyle Sampson produced, but it's still a lot -- although one could expect quite a few of those in daylong testimony, with many repeated questions.

Other Republicans appeared to be of a mind with Coburn, even if they stopped short of openly asking for Gonzales' resignation.

Lindsey Graham: Called most of Gonzales' explanations for the firings "a stretch."

Jeff Sessions: "I think it's going to be difficult for him to be an effective leader."

Arlen Specter: Gonzales' answers "did not stick together."

Charles Grassley: "Why is your story changing?"

More tomorrow.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Could Virginia Tech killer have been stopped from buying guns?

Sadly, the answer is apparently yes -- if our background-check system weren't being sabotaged.

I'm not a big gun-control advocate. I grew up shooting guns. Then I joined the Army, where I got to shoot really big guns: M16s, M60s, SAWs and, of course, the 105mm main gun of an M1 (that final detail dates me, because M1s have since been upgunned to 120mm). I have no problem with reasonable restrictions on firearms, but I don't think there should be hugely cumbersome barriers to gun ownership.

That said, sometimes gun nuts make me mad.

A judge's ruling on Cho Seung-Hui's mental health should have barred him from purchasing the handguns he used in the Virginia Tech massacre, according to federal regulations. But it was unclear Thursday whether anybody had an obligation to inform federal authorities about Cho's mental status because of loopholes in the law that governs background checks....

The language of the ruling by Special Justice Paul M. Barnett almost identically tracks federal regulations from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Those rules bar the sale of guns to individuals who have been "adjudicated mentally defective."

The definition outlined in the regulations is "a determination by a court ... or other lawful authority that a person as a result of marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness ... is a danger to himself or to others."

There's nothing in Virginia state law barring the mentally ill from buying guns, unless they're committed to a psych ward. But federal law is tougher.

About that loophole:

George Burke, a spokesman for Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York, said millions of criminal and mental-health records are not accessible to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, mostly because state and local governments lack the money to submit the records.

McCarthy has sponsored legislation since 2002 that would close loopholes in the national background check system for gun purchases.

Initially states were required to provide all relevant information to federal authorities when the instant background checks were enacted, but a U.S. Supreme Court ruling relieved them of that obligation.

So it's not so much a loophole, as a lack of money. But there is nothing requiring states and localities to share information with the Feds, so without proper funding, many don't. Meaning the National Instant Criminal Background Check System has some big holes in its database.

McCarthy's efforts to change that have gone nowhere, thanks in part to opposition from groups like Gun Owners of America. Each time, her bill has passed the House but died in the Senate.

Notably, the NRA has not opposed the measures. That said, the NRA has not been entirely on the sidelines here. Besides fighting efforts to institute background checks at gun shows, consider the "Supreme Court ruling" referenced in the article.

That line is somewhat inaccurate. The 1997 case, Printz v. United States, involved temporary measures intended to facilitate background checks between the time the Brady Bill was passed (in 1993) and 1998, when the NICS database would be established. It was rendered moot when the NICS went online.

But the basic facts remain: The NRA funded the lawsuit, which opposed Brady Bill background checks. Their specific legal argument was essentially that it was an unfunded mandate on local police and sheriff departments, and they won on those grounds; but their purpose was to stop background checks. Since then, the NRA has fought aspects of NICS, notably the length of time that records can be retained after a purchase. It's down to 24 hours from the original 180 days. That means the FBI has just 24 hours after a purchase to find and fix a mistaken approval.

It's worth asking: If gun groups weren't so busy damaging the machinery of the background-check system, would 32 people be alive today? We're not talking gun bans -- we're talking about making sure we have a working system to keep guns out of the hands of people like Cho, on whom red flags have already been planted.

Gun Owners of America, in particular, should be ashamed of themselves.

Update: An article from CNN contradicts the premise of this thread (and the article it is based on), claiming that only involuntary committment to a mental ward would have put Cho into the NICS. One of them is wrong.

Update II: Using the NYT as a tiebreaker, the original story appears correct: he should not have been able to buy the gun, because while he was in accord with Virginia state law, he was ineligible under federal law.

The main problem, as noted, is reportage:

Currently, only 22 states submit any mental health records to the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement on Thursday. Virginia is the leading state in reporting disqualifications based on mental health criteria for the federal check system, the statement said.

Virginia state law on mental health disqualifications to firearms purchases, however, is worded slightly differently from the federal statute. So the form that Virginia courts use to notify state police about a mental health disqualification addresses only the state criteria, which list two potential categories that would warrant notification to the state police: someone who was “involuntarily committed” or ruled mentally “incapacitated.”

No matter where you stand on gun control, that disconnect needs to change.

Virgina Tech, gun control, politics, midtopia

Donkey on the witness stand

No, not a Democrat. A donkey:

The first witness in a lawsuit Wednesday between two neighbors was Buddy the donkey, who walked to the bench and stared at the jury, the picture of a gentle, well-mannered creature and not the loud, aggressive animal he had been accused of being.

The donkey was at the center of a dispute between oilman John Cantrell and attorney Gregory Shamoun that began after Cantrell complained about a storage shed Shamoun was building in his backyard in Dallas.

Only in Texas....

donkey, humor, politics, midtopia

Bad day for Republican ethics

Yesterday was a good day for Republicans on the ethics front. Today, not so much.

First, you have Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., giving up his seat on the influential House Appropriations Committee after the FBI raided his house in connection with the Jack Abramoff scandal. His wife, a fundraiser, was on retainer to Abramoff, and also worked on Doolittle's campaigns.

That said, his action is classy compared to that of Democrat William Jefferson, who you may recall had to be kicked off the Ways and Means Committee after his house was raided -- a raid, admittedly, that has thus far produced no actual charges.

Over in the Senate, meanwhile, a gutless anonymous Republican blocked a minor campaign-finance bill for unknown reasons, with the assistance of Sen. Lamar Alexander.

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), the lead sponsor of a bill that would end the antiquated practice of requiring senators to file their forms on paper, stood on the senate floor Monday and reminded members of a process that borders on the absurd.

Instead of filing forms electronically, as candidates for president do, senators print their reports and deliver them to the clerk's office. The staff scans them into a computer so they can be electronically transmitted to the Federal Election Commission. The FEC then prints the forms again and hires workers to type the data into a database so it can finally be made public online.

But before Feingold's bill could move forward, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) rose and announced, "Mr. President, on behalf of a Republican senator, I object."

The bill simply provides for senators to file their forms electronically like everyone else. Why anyone would object to such a common-sense measure -- much less do so anonymously -- is beyond me. There are only two explanations I can think of: the senator in question likes the lengthy delay the current inefficiency introduces between the filing of the report and its availability; or this is being used as leverage in negotations on another matter.

I suppose there's a third explanation: this is just part of a general GOP effort to gum up the works in Congress and make it hard for Democrats to claim any legislative successes.

That's a time-honored bipartisan tradition, but I'll be glad when the Senate ethics bill finally clears the conference committee and such holds become a thing of the past.

Update: And a day later, another Republican resigns a committee seat after another FBI raid:

Rep. Rick Renzi stepped down temporarily from the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday, after the FBI raided his family's business in connection with an ongoing federal investigation.

Agents took documents, the Arizona Republican said in a statement issued late Thursday night....

The Justice Department has been investigating Renzi for months, but the subject of the inquiry has never been made public. Media reports last fall gave conflicting versions, with authorities said to be looking into either a land swap involving a former business partner of Renzi or a Pentagon contract involving Renzi's father, a retired Army general.

Update II: The Sunlight Foundation has narrowed down the Senate hold culprit to 12 senators, and is calling all of them to try to narrow the list even further.

Update III: The Sunlight Foundation has now narrowed it down to three senators: John Ensign, David Vitter or Judd Gregg.

Renzi, politics, midtopia

Supreme Court backs partial-birth abortion ban

I wasn't entirely expecting this.

The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long- awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.

The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

I gave my thoughts on this case months ago, when the Supremes first accepted it for review, and it hasn't changed any since then. The procedure is exceedingly rare, and there are at least some cases where it is medically justified. So the question for me -- and the Court, apparently -- is whether there are alternatives to partial-birth abortion that are equally effective and safe. If so, then banning a specific, gruesome procedure is no problem. If not, the ban would effectively prevent women in certain situations from obtaining a medically necessary abortion.

The Court decided there were sufficient alternatives. Notably, the government suggested that if the fetus were killed first -- by lethal injection to stop the heart, say -- it could then be legally aborted.

This may be true, but then one may ask what is gained by banning PBAs. It will ban one particularly gruesome procedure, yes. And it marks a legal landmark of sorts -- the first upheld restriction on a particular kind of abortion. As such, one might view it as the first step toward a wider ban.

But in the end, it doesn't appear that this ruling will prevent any abortions at all -- doctors will simply use alternative methods. And the Court explicitly left open the door to lawsuits by women harmed by the ban -- though that after-the-fact form of redress isn't going to help anyone in their seventh month of pregnancy. Someone is going to have to actually suffer some harm before the ban can be challenged.

What's interesting is how the Court managed to ignore precedent to reach its ruling, specifically the Stenberg v. Carhart ruling in 2000, in which a nearly identical ban was struck down by the Court. While the Court explained that it did not in fact ignore Stenberg -- that it's ruling is merely a narrow procedural one -- it's still hard to see how there are any substantive differences between the law then and the law now. The only real difference, it would seem, is the makeup of the court: specifically, the departure of Sandra Day O'Connor and the arrival of Samuel Alito.

That's how it has always been, of course: what is constitutional depends heavily on the biographies of the Justices. And it's not even necessarily a bad thing, for that is one way that law evolves. Still, this is a stark reminder of the essentially political nature of the Court.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a stinging dissent, read aloud from the bench. Read it and the other opinions here (pdf).

And for a truly excellent, in-depth discussion of the case by a bunch of lawyers, head on over to Stubborn Facts. They do a much better job of it then I could ever hope to.

abortion, politics, midtopia

From your pocket to Edwards' head

I like John Edwards. I voted for him in the 2004 primaries and was glad when he became Kerry's running mate. I'm not sure I'm going to back him this time around, but I like his approach, his position on many issues and I've gone so far as to sign on to his blog network so I can get updates from his campaign.

But stuff like this makes me pull my hair out.

Looking pretty is costing John Edwards' presidential campaign a lot of pennies.

The Democrat's campaign committee picked up the tab for two haircuts at $400 each by celebrity stylist Joseph Torrenueva of Beverly Hills, California, according to a financial report filed with the Federal Election Commission.

FEC records show Edwards also availed himself of $250 in services from a trendy salon and spa in Dubuque, Iowa, and $225 in services from the Pink Sapphire in Manchester, New Hampshire, which is described on its Web site as "a unique boutique for the mind, body and face" that caters mostly to women.

Now, I'm not naive. I know the importance of looking good in politics. I know wealthy people develop expensive tastes. And amid grueling 14-hour days of campaigning, I have no objection to candidates indulging in a little pampering along the way. I also don't buy into the charge that Edwards is a hypocrite for living a lavish lifestyle while basing his campaign on fighting poverty. The dude made his money; he can spend it any way he wants, and being rich does not disqualify someone from caring about social issues.

But c'mon: $400 haircuts? The campaign has to know how bad that looks. Not to mention the practical question: Is this really the best use of campaign funds for someone running a distant third in the money race?

If he really thinks the cuts are worth it, great. But in that case I humbly submit that Edwards would be way better off paying for them out of his own pocket. He'll still look fabulous, and he won't have to deal with embarassing disclosure forms ever again.

Update: Clearly reacting to my massive influence, Edwards does as I suggested.

Edwards, politics, midtopia

Iran supporting the Taliban?

Take this one with a grain of salt at least as large as that used when the U.S. made similar accusations about Iranian involvement in Iraq.

U.S. military officials raised worries of a wider Iranian role in Afghanistan on Tuesday when Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Washington that U.S. forces had intercepted Iranian-made mortars and plastic explosives intended for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

Counterterrorism officials in Washington have said a handful of senior al Qaeda operatives who fled to Iran after the war in Afghanistan in 2001 may have developed a working relationship with a secretive military unit linked to Iran's religious hard-liners.

U.S. officials caution, however, that any Iranian link to fighting in Afghanistan, notably in providing weapons to Taliban fighters, remains cloudy.

As with suspected Iranian involvement in Iraq, it's a reasonable possibility. But as with Iraq, there are certain uncomfortable facts that need explaining, such as whether any such activity is condoned or controlled by the government, and why Shiite Persian Iran would go out of its way to arm Sunni Arab and Pashtun fundamentalists.

Especially considering how some of the earlier allegations turned out. Remember the Austrian sniper rifles? Supposedly 100 .50-caliber weapons sold to Iran were found in Iraq -- 100 literal smoking guns.

Except that turned out not to be true. The rifles' maker, Steyr-Mannlicher, called attention to an article in an Austrian daily, Wiener Zeitung, specifically debunking the story, then followed that up with a press release Tuesday driving the point home.

So while I can readily believe Iran is stirring the pot in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I require some decent proof before we take drastic action. CIA, get cracking. Or heck, just capture some insurgents or Iranians in the act of bringing weaponry across the border.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, politics, midtopia

The Onion on McCain

Ouch.

In what insiders say is an attempt to revitalize his flagging campaign and convince voters that he is still a straight-talking maverick, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) announced Sunday that he will subject himself to the same mental torment and physical abuse he endured nearly 40 years ago at the same Vietnamese camp where he was once held as a prisoner of war.

"On Saturday at approximately 2:40 a.m. I will fly over the capital city of Hanoi and have my plane's right wing blown off by a Russian missile," said McCain, adding that the force of the ejection from an aging A-4 Skyhawk should render him unconscious and break both of his arms and "preferably [his] right leg." "I will then be taken to a bug- and rat-infested cell where, with both nobility and grace, I will suffer the worst forms of human indignities."

McCain, once considered a shoo-in for the Republican presidential nomination, insisted that his upcoming stay at the Hanoi torture facility was simply a late addition to a previously planned trip to Southeast Asia, and has nothing to do with his faltering campaign.

Funny. Mean, but funny. Read the whole thing.

humor, McCain, politics, midtopia

Standoff over Iraq

In what the White House insisted was a "dialogue" instead of negotations, President Bush met with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid over the emergency appropriation bills for Iraq and Afghanistan.

During an hourlong meeting at the White House, the president told lawmakers directly he will not sign any bill that includes a timetable for a troop withdrawal, and they made it clear Congress will send him one anyway.

Hmm. Well, I hope the cookies were good. Otherwise that was a rather complete waste of time.

Okay, maybe not totally wasted: the Democrats got in at least one good dig:

Several officials said the session was polite. But they said it turned pointed when Reid recounted a conversation with generals who likened Iraq to Vietnam and described it as a war in which the president refused to change course despite knowing victory was impossible. Bush bristled at the comparison, according to several officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was private. One quoted him as saying, "I reject" the comparison.

Actually, it was good simply to have direct talks on the issue so both sides could get a clear sense of the other's mood. Talking through the media is all very well, but there's no good substitute for face-to-face when money and lives are at stake.

NPR's Political Junkie was speculating that Congress would adopt the nonbinding Senate plan, and Bush might sign it. I agree with the former; the latter depends on how Republicans weigh the politics and how strong Bush's connection to reality is the day the bill lands on his desk.

Reid, Pelosi, Bush, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Dinosaur turns Democrat

This isn't big news, but it's interesting, in that you rarely see a switch like this after so long in the fold.

Maverick former GOP Rep. Pete McCloskey, who represented Northern California in Congress from 1967 to 1982 and ran unsuccessfully again last year, has announced that he's switching party registration and becoming a Democrat.

McCloskey, who was an original author of the Endangered Species Act, made his scorn for the modern Republican Party clear during his primary campaign against former GOP Rep. Richard Pombo of Tracy last year. He contended that leaders like Pombo and former Majority Leader Tom DeLay had been corrupted by power.

After losing the primary bid, he endorsed the Democrat who eventually beat Pombo in the general election.

McCloskey is 79, and not exactly a major player. And he was always a bit on the independent side. He was the first Republican Congressman to call for the impeachment of President Nixon, and his opposition to the Iraq war led him to endorse John Kerry in 2004.

But it does indicate that the GOP has moved rightward enough to leave behind people like McCloskey, who at one time not only considered themselves Republicans but were part of the party's public face.

McCloskey, politics, midtopia

Oh, Wolfowitz

I've been too busy to write much about the other brewing scandal in Washington, that of Paul Wolfowitz and his girlfriend's cushy job. It's not because I'm a big fan of his; in fact, whenever I need a good "laugh or else I'll cry" moment, I hunt up links like this one to read up on arguably his finest moment: the trashing of Gen. Eric Shinseki:

In his testimony, Mr. Wolfowitz ticked off several reasons why he believed a much smaller coalition peacekeeping force than General Shinseki envisioned would be sufficient to police and rebuild postwar Iraq. He said there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, as there was in Bosnia or Kosovo. He said Iraqi civilians would welcome an American-led liberation force that "stayed as long as necessary but left as soon as possible," but would oppose a long-term occupation force. And he said that nations that oppose war with Iraq would likely sign up to help rebuild it.

Bwahahaha! Flat wrong on the first, and the second might have been true if we hadn't a) sent too few troops to keep order or b) prevented it.

Then throw in this:

Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high, and that the estimates were almost meaningless because of the variables. Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher, ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion. "To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong," he said.

Bwahaha! HA HA HA!

Oh, that Wolfowitz. What a kidder.

After manfully helping guide us into a bad war, he was rewarded with a chance to do real damage at the World Bank, where he was able to hector debtor nations to be more fiscally responsible while helping squeeze their economies with austerity measures and stiff payback schedules.

Actually, he hasn't been that bad at the World Bank. His anticorruption drive has drawn fire, but there's much to like about it, and while critics have a point about being careful not to intrude too much on a nation's internal affairs, it's hard to sympathize with countries complaining about crackdowns on bribery -- especially when they're countries like China, which doesn't actually need the money it borrows from the Bank.

Upon taking the helm of the bank, though, Wolfowitz had to find a new job for his girlfriend, a bank employee. That's fair. And I have no problem with the transfer being a promotion or opportunity: she should not see her career suffer simply because her boyfriend got promoted.

So while the details -- like her massive pay raises -- raised some eyebrows, it struck me as relatively small potatoes, even if it undercut Wolfowitz's anti-corruption agenda.

But this is just ridiculous.

The U.S. Defense Department ordered a contractor to hire a World Bank employee and girlfriend of then-Pentagon No. 2 Paul Wolfowitz in 2003 for work related to Iraq, the contractor said on Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, said the Defense Department's policy office directed the company to enter a subcontract with Shaha Riza, under which she spent a month studying ways to form a government in Iraq.

Wolfowitz, a key Iraq war architect who left the Pentagon in 2005 to become president of the World Bank, is already under fire for overseeing a high-paying promotion for Riza after he took the helm of the poverty-fighting global lender.

This isn't as egregious as it could be, because the contract paid expenses only, not a salary. And right now all we have is the claim of a contractor. But if this turns out to be true, it's unacceptable. The Pentagon had no business insisting that a contractor hire someone connected to a senior Pentagon official.

What remains to be seen as well is whether Wolfowitz himself had any hand in this. If he did, he will face more than ethical questions: he'll probably face criminal charges.

Wait, was that a tear? Nope. My mistake.

Wolfowitz, politics, midtopia

DeMint scores again

Central Sanity has a nice example of Republican Sen. Jim DeMint (a man I've started to really like, even though he's way too conservative for me on most things) again holding Democrats' feet to the fire on ethics and budgetary matters.

What makes it a win for the rest of us and not just partisan point-scoring is that it worked.

Under pressure from GOP conservatives, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee announced new rules Tuesday to overhaul the way lawmakers send taxpayer dollars to their districts and states.

The move by Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., came as conservatives including Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., increased the pressure to change the much-criticized, often secretive way in which "earmarks" are inserted into appropriations legislation.

The rules would require all earmarks - the footnotes in bills that lawmakers use to deliver federal bacon to their states - be clearly identified in documents accompanying appropriations bills. The requesting senator, the recipient of the earmark and its purpose would have to be made public and posted on the Internet.

Senators would also be required to certify that neither they nor their spouses would benefit financially from any earmark.

Shame on the Dems for having to be prodded into it. Good that, having been prodded, they did the right thing.

ethics, politics, midtopia

More trouble for Gonzales

The Virginia Tech shootings have prompted a postponement of Alberto Gonzales' Congressional appearance, which may be a good thing for him; it'll give him time to come up with an explanation for this.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' assertion that he was not involved in identifying the eight U.S. attorneys who were asked to resign last year is at odds with a recently released internal Department of Justice e-mail, ABC News has learned.

That e-mail said that Gonzales supported firing one federal prosecutor six months before she was asked to leave....

It doesn't just contradict Gonzales' initial account, an explanation of which will be the focus of his appearance. It appears to contradict the testimony he has prepared for that appearance, in which he states the following:

Mr. Sampson periodically updated me on the review. As I recall, his updates were brief, relatively few in number, and focused primarily on the review process itself. During those updates, to my knowledge, I did not make decisions about who should or should not be asked to resign.

Except that:

The recently released e-mail from Sampson, dated June 1, 2006, indicated that Gonzales was actively involved in discussions about Lam and had decided to fire her if she did not improve. In the e-mail to other top Justice Department officials, Sampson outlined several steps that Gonzales suggested, culminating in Lam's replacement if she failed to bolster immigration enforcement.

"AG [Attorney General] has given additional thought to the San Diego situation and now believes that we should adopt a plan" that would lead to her removal if she "balks" at immigration reform, Sampson wrote.

The e-mail laid out other possible ways to deal with Lam short of dismissal. Gonzales supported the idea of first having "a heart to heart with Lam about the urgent need to improve immigration enforcement" and of working with her "to develop a plan for addressing the problem." Sampson said another alternative would be to "put her on a very short leash.

"If she balks on any of the foregoing or otherwise does not perform in a measurable way … remove her," Sampson wrote of Gonzales' suggested plan. "AG then appoints new U.S. [attorney] from outside the office."

Will we be treated to the spectacle of Gonzales "clarifying" his clarification?

Meanwhile, the House is considering granting immunity to Monica Goodling, the Gonzales aide that took the Fifth in order to avoid testifying, as the Justice Department refuses to comply with a Congressional subpoena and a reinterview with Kyle Sampson now has the House Judiciary Committee interested in Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh, who Sampson said was consulted about the firings.

Update: The Senate apparently is investigating Sen. Pete Domenici's role in the firings as well.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

MAC puts hammer down on cabbies

One of the Muslim accomodation issues I wrote about last month has reached a resolution of sorts.

On an 11-0 vote Monday, Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) members voted to crack down on drivers refusing service, making Minnesota the first place in the country to decide how to treat Muslim cabbies who decline to transport alcohol- toting riders on religious grounds.

Starting May 11, any airport taxi drivers who refuse riders will face 30-day suspensions. Drivers will have their licenses revoked two years for a second offense.

This isn't a full resolution because some cabbies are considering suing on the grounds of religious discrimination.

One might ask what's the big deal, especially because the problem is rather small: Just 27 refusals of service out of 120,000 total rides during the holiday travel season. Why not just use the existing rules, in which a cabbie who refuses to accept a fare must go to the back of the taxi line and wait all over again?

The answer lies in another number: 75 percent, which is how many airport cabbies are Somali Muslims and thus likely to refuse an alcohol-carrying fare.

In some ways, this is the reverse of the Minneapolis Community and Technical College situation in the earlier blog entry. And the logic is the same: a minority can often reasonably be accomodated; but a majority must be watched lest it impose its views on the rest of us.

In the MCTC case, providing a footbath for Muslims is reasonable because it benefits everyone and Muslims are such a small minority of students that it cannot reasonably be argued that they are imposing their views or practices on nonMuslims.

In the taxi case, however, Muslims make up a strong majority of cabbies. Allowing them to discriminate against passengers carrying alcohol benefits only the cabbies and could make it very difficult for such passengers to get a ride, which makes it an unreasonable accomodation.

I suspect, however, we'll get to find out what a court thinks.

civil liberties, Minnesota, religion, politics, midtopia

Corzine was speeding, too

What a moron. Not only was New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine not wearing a seatbelt, he was going way too fast.

The sport utility vehicle carrying Gov. Jon S. Corzine was traveling about 91 mph moments before it crashed, the superintendent of state police said Tuesday....

The speed limit along that stretch of the parkway is 65 mph.

Hey, I speed, too. But rarely do I go 26 miles over the limit, and in any event I wear a seatbelt.

Let's just touch briefly on the arrogance of a governor disregarding laws that apply to us mere mortals. Especially when those same governors occasionally sign tough anti-speeding measures into law. One might even be tempted to make a political issue out of it.

Unfortunately, Corzine has lots of bipartisan company in the speeding department.

Republicans
South Dakota's William Janklow killed a motorcyclist while speeding. He was a four-term Republican governor, and was a member of Congress at the time of the accident.

South Carolina's lieutenant governor, Andre Bauer, has a long history of speeding violations.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry tried to get out of a speeding ticket in June 2000.

Democrats
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is a famous leadfoot.

As is Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.

That doesn't excuse any of it, of course. It simply demonstrates that power often leads to arrogance.

Still, Corzine's a special case. He might be perversely thankful he's seriously injured -- it's probably the only thing saving him from a severe political butt-kicking for being dumb and arrogant.

politics, midtopia

Day of silence

This just sucks.

At least 33 people are dead in what may be the biggest mass shooting in modern American history.

I'm done blogging for the day. I'll leave you with one thought: an event like this happens two or three times a day in Iraq, which has less than a tenth of our population. Give thanks you live here, even if we have to deal with the occasional armed nutjob.

My thoughts and best wishes are with the students, the victims and their families.

politics, midtopia

Prosecutor bias in Wisconsin

As Alberto Gonzales prepares to testify before Congress, expect the case of Georgia Thompson to get an extensive airing.

Opponents of Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin spent $4 million on ads last year trying to link the Democratic incumbent to a state employee who was sent to jail on corruption charges. The effort failed, and Mr. Doyle was re-elected — and now the state employee has been found to have been wrongly convicted. The entire affair is raising serious questions about why a United States attorney put an innocent woman in jail.

The conviction of Georgia Thompson has become part of the furor over the firing of eight United States attorneys in what seems like a political purge. While the main focus of that scandal is on why the attorneys were fired, the Thompson case raises questions about why other prosecutors kept their jobs.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which heard Ms. Thompson’s case this month, did not discuss whether her prosecution was political — but it did make clear that it was wrong. And in an extraordinary move, it ordered her released immediately, without waiting to write a decision. “Your evidence is beyond thin,” Judge Diane Wood told the prosecutor. “I’m not sure what your actual theory in this case is.”

What was so unusual about this case? A list:

1. It wasn't even within the jurisdiction of the U.S. attorney who prosecuted it, Steven Biskupic -- it was in the domain of Wisconsin's other U.S. attorney, Erik Peterson.

2. Thompson was accused of improperly awarding a travel contract to a politically connected firm. This ignored the fact that the contract was competitively bid. The firm in question won the contract by the simple expedient of having the lowest bid.

3. Thompson was but one of seven members of a committee that awarded the contract, and she wasn't even aware that the firm was a major contributor to Gov. Doyle.

4. Biskupic leaked the investigation to the media in late 2005, in violation of federal guidelines.

5. The prosecution was timed perfectly to conclude just before the November elections.

Yeah, that looks good.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Gonzales: "I have nothing to hide"

The Justice Department has released the opening statement -- all 25 pages of it -- that Alberto Gonzales intends to read at the start of his testimony tomorrow before Congress.

Critics will not be mollified.

He boldly asserts that while the prosecutor firings may have been handled badly, they were not improper. He proposes a simple criteria for impropriety: "The
replacement of one or more U.S. attorneys in order to impede or speed along particular criminal investigations for illegitimate reasons." He then adds: "Our record in bringing aggressive prosecutions without fear or favor and irrespective of political affiliations – a record I am very proud of – is beyond reproach."

He might not get past that statement, because it's demonstrably untrue. We know that several of the prosecutors were criticized for being insufficiently zealous about prosecuting voter fraud. Given that the "voter fraud" initiative overwhelmingly focused on Democrats, included some really questionable cases with big political implications and turned up little to no evidence of such fraud, it's hard to see how that could be construed as a nonpartisan effort. And that's without referring to the disputed study that concluded Democrats were investigated or indicted seven times as often as Republicans. So it's hard to see how Gonzales can make his claim with a straight face.

He now acknowledges that he was kept briefed on the progress of the prosecutor firings, including discussion of specific names, while saying he did not make any decisions about who should be fired. His explanation is reasonable -- he basically viewed the prosecutors as presidential employees, so his input didn' matter -- but not only does this contradict his earlier statements, but it's kind of stunning that the head of the Justice Department would take no role and no apparent interest in the firings of a tenth of his prosecutors. As several observers have noted, such detachment would appear to be de facto proof that Gonzales failed in his responsibility to protect the independence of federal prosecutors.

In that context, his acknowledgement that he was "less than precise" with his earlier words reads like a euphemism for "I lied." Especially given his tortured parsing of his earlier words, in which "I knew my chief of staff was involved in the process" is supposed to have meant "I was being briefed by him, even though I just said I was not involved in any discussions."

He points to changes he is implementing, notably starting an investigation by Justice's internal watchdog and improving communication with the current crop of U.S. attorneys.

The one mistake he acknowledges making is that the firings should have been handled in a more "personal and respectful" way. But mostly he deflects criticism toward Kyle Sampson.

That takes up 7 pages. Then he segues into a discussion of national security, notably defending the various eavesdropping and investigative tools authorized by the Patriot Act. But while he cites a short list of accomplishments, he doesn't demonstrate how those are connected to the powers in question. He only addresses the FBI's abuse of National Security Letters in the context of "we're improving oversight." The interesting news there is that the FBI is conducting a comprehensive review of NSLs at all 56 FBI field offices -- a far more extensive look than the four-office sample that led to the discovery of NSL abuses. And, of course, the even more egregious use of "exigent letters" is banned.

He also, rather comically, argues for a revison of FISA -- a law that as White House counsel he considered irrelevant, overridden by the president's "inherent authority." Having openly violated FISA for years, it's pretty nervy to now ask Congress to revise it.

And then he closes with this line: "We all recognize that we cannot afford to make progress in the War on Terror at the cost of eroding our bedrock civil liberties. Our Nation is, and always will be, dedicated to liberty for all, a value that we cannot and will not sacrifice, even in the name of winning this war. I will not accept failures in this regard."

Pretty funny coming from the guy most instrumental in eroding those liberties.

The rest of the testimony is dedicated to fairly noncontroversial items, like fighting crimes against children, drug abuse, and so on.

Dan Froomkin has some other thoughts on the matter, with links to other good examples of Gonzales word torture, as well as Sen. Pat Leahy's dismissive response.

And then there's this piece from the Albuquerque Journal (h/t: Moderate Voice), suggesting that at least one of the prosecutors -- David Iglesias -- was fired after Sen. Pete Domenici pressured President Bush. It indicates repeated pressure and questioning of Iglesias by Domenici, notably an aggressive attempt to increase corruption prosecutions -- over Iglesias' demurrals -- after Iglesias indicted two prominent Democrats in 2005.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Conservatives want Gonzales gone

Just in Time for Gonzales' Congressional appearance:

In what could prove an embarrassing new setback for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the eve of his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a group of influential conservatives and longtime Bush supporters has written a letter to the White House to call for his resignation....

"Mr. Gonzales has presided over an unprecedented crippling of the Constitution's time-honored checks and balances," it declares. "He has brought rule of law into disrepute, and debased honesty as the coin of the realm." Alluding to ongoing scandal, it notes: "He has engendered the suspicion that partisan politics trumps evenhanded law enforcement in the Department of Justice."

Among the signers are Bruce Fein and Richard Viguerie, prominent Republican activists; David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Bob Barr, a former Republican Congressman; John Whitehead of the conservative Rutherford Institute.

As the story notes, many conservatives have disliked Gonzales for other reasons for years. But this just underscores the lack of support Gonzales has anywhere outside the White House -- and the political costs of his continued presence atop Justice.

Here's the full text of the letter.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia