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

Sperm cells from bone marrow

Might this turn the gay-marriage debate on its head?

Women might soon be able to produce sperm in a development that could allow lesbian couples to have their own biological daughters, according to a pioneering study published today.

Scientists are seeking ethical permission to produce synthetic sperm cells from a woman's bone marrow tissue after showing that it possible to produce rudimentary sperm cells from male bone-marrow tissue.

The researchers said they had already produced early sperm cells from bone-marrow tissue taken from men. They believe the findings show that it may be possible to restore fertility to men who cannot naturally produce their own sperm.

So it's a fertility treatment, that just happens to allow lesbians to conceive a child biologically related to both parents. It's also part of a larger effort to take bone marrow stem cells and try to coax them to differentiate into different kinds of cells.

It won't work for gay male couples, because they lack ovaries and eggs.

Also, because of the lack of a Y chromosome, all children of such unions will be female.

The science is still very young; they haven't actually made viable sperm yet. But it's intriguing.

Update: I've come up with one wrinkle to this potential procedure that raises ethical questions. It appears that it could allow a woman to produce a child entirely by herself: combining an egg from her ovaries with sperm taken from her marrow.

I'm not sure that's exactly unethical -- it's really just a do-it-yourself sperm-donor kit -- but given the inbreeding problem, it's probably a very bad idea. It would be banned for the same reason cousins aren't allowed to marry.

gay rights, stem cells, science, politics, midtopia