War bill passed Congress

Congress yesterday passed its deadline-free war bill, and Bush says he'll sign it.

But in a sign of things to come, the vote in the house was 280-142, with only two Republicans voting against -- meaning well more than half the Democratic caucus opposed it. The vote in the Senate was more lopsided, 80-14.

In September, if the surge isn't going well and the Iraqi government is missing benchmarks, look for a sizable number of Republicans to join the bloc opposing additional funding.

But even if they don't, don't expect Bush to get his way the second time around like he did here. If the evidence shows his plan isn't working, Congress will refuse to fund more. They'll do this in one of two ways:

1. Passing a bill with firm deadlines and overriding a Bush veto. They'll do this if they think they have the votes to do so, and will probably try this route first.

2. Simply refusing to take up a bill on additional funding. Bush can't veto a bill that isn't passed, and can't spend money that isn't authorized. In conjunction with such a refusal, Congress could pass a separate bill expressly funding a winddown of the war. This is the ultimate power Democrats have by virtue of their control of Congress, using the gridlocked nature of split government to their advantage.

Of course, a likely scenario is that in September the verdict on Iraq will be muddy, with some signs of progress but nothing decisive and perhaps not commensurate to the effort expended. At which point the debate will rage around whether there has been enough progress of the sustainable kind, that indicates a path upward to stability. A question to which many in Congress and the White House will have preconceived answers. So expect even more fireworks as they vie to frame the issue advantageously to their position.

For now, though, Congress did the right thing.

BTW, Hillary Clinton -- in a transparent bid to court the antiwar vote -- voted against the measure. I have no problem with people opposing the bill on principle, as Barack Obama and John Edwards do, for example. But Clinton has argued against an immediate withdrawal, so the centrist, responsible thing to do would have been to support this bill and renew the argument in September. Instead, she was essentially voting to defund the troops in order to set up a political confrontation with Bush. That's just not cool.

There's also this unflattering admission by the Dems:

After weeks of insisting that the Pentagon could fund the war into July, Democrats abruptly changed their tune yesterday. Murtha said Congress had no choice but to act this week, because the war would run out of funds on Monday. The Defense Department could shift funds around, he said, but such accounting tricks would be a "disaster," Murtha said.

I understand why they made that claim -- to prevent Bush from using the pressing deadline as a negotiating tool while they squabbled over funding, and to strengthen their own hand by making it seem as if they were willing to take more time than Bush to pass a funding measure. But while it might make sense tactically, it's simply dishonest. Politics ain't beanball, but it shouldn't include outright lying.

Of course, the president did do some scaremongering of his own (see bottom of linked post) when he claimed that the funding bill had to be passed in April or the troops would run out of money. But that didn't justify the Democrats making up a lie of their own.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Strategically stupid

The irrational pursuit of gays in the military continues to lead to the dismissal of some of our most valuable assets in the war on terror.

Lawmakers who say the military has kicked out 58 Arabic linguists because they were gay want the Pentagon to explain how it can afford to let the valuable language specialists go.

Seizing on the latest discharges, involving three specialists, members of the House of Representatives wrote the House Armed Services Committee chairman that the continued loss of such "capable, highly skilled Arabic linguists continues to compromise our national security during time of war."

One sailor discharged in the latest incident, former Petty Officer 2nd Class Stephen Benjamin, said his supervisor tried to keep him on the job, urging him to sign a statement denying that he was gay. He said his lawyer advised him not to sign it, because it could be used against him later if other evidence ever surfaced.

There are some inconsistencies in Benjamin's story. First he says he was "always out" since the day he started working there, and it didn't cause problems. Then later he says he was "discreet" and was surprised when the military investigated him. But that could simply be the difference between not hiding his sexual orientation and openly telling the military he was gay (the "tell" portion of "don't ask, don't tell").

But that's pretty much beside the point. This sort of thing is just plain stupid. The need for trained Arabic speakers vastly outweighs the outdated "morals" concerns about gay soldiers. It is pure bureaucratic bloodymindedness to actively hunt these guys down and discharge them.

Stuff like this only further illustrates the asinine nature of the antigay policy. End it now, before we let it further damage our national security.

gay rights, politics, midtopia

Surge update

As the Iraq war-funding bill comes to the floor of Congress today, a report from Baghdad sheds some gloom on the debate.

More than three months into a U.S.-Iraqi security offensive designed to curtail sectarian violence in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, Health Ministry statistics show that such killings are rising again.

From the beginning of May until Tuesday, 321 unidentified corpses, many dumped and showing signs of torture and execution, have been found across the Iraqi capital, according to morgue data provided by a Health Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. The data showed that the same number of bodies were found in all of January, the month before the launch of the Baghdad security plan.

So they're not just rising -- they're back to where they were before the surge.

They're still below the peak levels hit last year, and a key question is where the killings are occurring. If they're happening in places outside the current "surge" footprint, it has little bearing on whether the surge is working or not. And anyway one isolated datum isn't proof of anything. But it does seem to show that Shiite death squads are still not being meaningfully hindered by either the surge or the Iraqi government.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Goodling testifies

Monica Goodling is testifying before the Senate about the prosecutor firings, and so far the only really interesting stuff involves herself, Kyle Sampson and former deputy AG Paul McNulty.

The Justice Department's former White House liaison ... blamed Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty for misleading Congress about the dismissals.

McNulty's explanation, on Feb. 6, "was incomplete or inaccurate in a number of respects," Monica Goodling told a packed House Judiciary Committee inquiry into the firings.

She added: "I believe the deputy was not fully candid."

She also said the list of those to be fired was compiled by Kyle Sampson. It's not clear if that's a contradiction of Alberto Gonzales' recent statement that McNulty was the driving force behind the firings (notwithstanding his even earlier statement that McNulty wasn't really involved). It doesn't have to be: Sampson is generally acknowledged as having been the keeper of the list, even if he wasn't making all the decisions about who should be on it.

As to herself, she denied playing a major role in the firings but admitted she broke the law when she used politics as a criteria for hiring career prosecutors.

She said she never spoke to former White House counsel Harriet Miers or Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, about the firings. But she admitted to have considered applicants for jobs as career prosecutors based on their political loyalties — a violation of federal law.

"I may have gone too far, and I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions," Goodling said. "And I regret those mistakes."

Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., hammered Goodling on her decisions to hire prosecutors who favored Republicans.

"Do you believe they were illegal or legal?" Scott asked.

"I don't believe I intended to commit a crime," Goodling, a lawyer, answered.

"Did you break the law? Is it against the law to take those considerations into account?" Scott said.

"I believe I crossed the line, but I didn't mean to," she responded.

More as it develops.

Meanwhile, some prosecutors have detailed the political interference Goodling introduced into the hiring of career prosecutors.

When Jeffrey A. Taylor, interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wanted to hire a new career prosecutor last fall, he had to run the idea past Monica M. Goodling, then a 33-year-old aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

The candidate was Seth Adam Meinero, a Howard University law school graduate who had worked on civil rights cases at the Environmental Protection Agency and had served as a special assistant prosecutor in Taylor's office.

Goodling stalled the hiring, saying that Meinero was too "liberal" for the nonpolitical position, said according to two sources familiar with the dispute.

The article also appears to dispute her contention that she wasn't heavily involved in the prosecutor brouhaha.

First, she was Justice's White House liaison. It stretches credibility to suggest that the firings would not have been coordinated with the White House through her.

Second, it notes that she played a central role in the appointment of Rove protege Tim Griffin, met with legislators who complained about David Iglesias and blocked the dismissal of a North Carolina prosecutor.

And then there was this:

Before she and Sampson resigned, Goodling wrote a series of memos summing up the longtime U.S. attorneys she helped to fire. She said that Iglesias was "in over his head," that Carol C. Lam of San Diego showed "a failure to perform" and that Arizona's Paul K. Charlton was guilty of "repeated instances of insubordination."

Yet Goodling's final list, assembled as "talking points" for Congress and the media, also noted that nearly every fired prosecutor had received stellar reviews from Justice Department evaluators.

Now perhaps that was part of her job as Justice Department counsel. But it sure doesn't sound like the actions of someone who wasn't up to her eyeballs in the process.

Update: From the LA Times, yet another example of how Goodling's fingerprints are all over the U.S. attorneys -- this time bypassing a state panel in the search for a new prosecutor in Los Angeles.

Goodling, politics, midtopia

Exploding the myth of Muslim silence

That's the purpose of an interesting piece by Stephen Schwartz, author of "The Two Faces of Islam."

In it he argues that the media ignores moderate Muslims while covering the radicals in lavish, horrific detail, painting a distorted picture of the faith. The centerpiece of the article is a deconstruction of coverage of the plot to attack Fort Dix. He notes that the plotters weren't, as first assumed, Kosovo Albanian Muslims. They were, instead, ethnic Albanians from Macedonia who came here as children and were radicalized in Arab-dominated Wahhabi mosques. His point is that the media misses distinctions between different kinds of Muslims, lumping peaceful, moderate Albanians in with violent Wahhabis.

He then cites several examples of Muslim commentary on the case -- all of it condemning the plot -- that he says got scant coverage.

I didn't follow the Fort Dix story closely enough to judge whether he's right on that score, but the piece once again points up the intellectual bankruptcy of those who demand that Muslims "speak out" against terror. Continuing to make that argument ignores several relevant facts:

1. They do. All the time. I've cited multiple examples in the past year.

2. Demands that Muslims take the lead assume that moderate Muslims have some sort of connection to (or influence over) the extremists. What are (for example) American Muslims supposed to do: Call up Al-Qaeda and yell at them? They don't have AQ's number any more than you or I do, nor will their words be heeded any more than yours or mine.

3. Few groups spend a lot of time flagellating themselves for the extremists in their midst.

Let's expand on that last point for a moment because it's an important one, tied in with assumptions about group identity that simply are not true.

The underlying logic of the "Muslims must denounce terrorism" goes as follows: The terrorists are Islamic, and therefore Muslims have a particular duty to denounce Islamic terror.

This is reasonable to an extent: disavowing the nutjobs operating under your banner is sometimes necessary.

But where it goes off the rails is when people demand that every Muslim denounce every act of Islamic terror every time one occurs.

This is ridiculous. Every time a Christian commits murder, are Christians obligated to go on television and state the obvious -- that murder is wrong and the offender doesn't represent Christian views?

Of course not. They can simply state once (or occasionally) that murder is wrong and unChristian. Actually, they don't even have to do that; it's considered obvious that murder is wrong, so they aren't required to say anything. Silence is not assent in such cases.

So why are Muslims treated differently? Because groups are always good at pointing out the mote in other groups' eyes, even while giving their own members the benefit of the doubt. Do conservatives regularly call out nutjob conservatives? No. Liberals do that, and conservatives disavow them if necessary. Do liberals regularly call out liberal nutjobs? No; conservatives do that, and then liberals disavow them if necessary.

In this country, who spends time identifying atheist/agnostic misbehavior? Believers. Who are most likely to point out believer wrongdoing? Atheists/agnostics.

Simply put, groups are horrible at policing their own, because doing so requires admitting some kinship between your own beliefs and those of the nutjobs -- admitting that your beliefs can be twisted to bad ends. No one likes doing that.

Beyond that, when you're in the group you know that the extremists are just that -- extremists, a tiny minority that do not represent the group as a whole. They are shunned, dismissed; psychologically, the majority separates themselves from the whackjobs to the point they no longer feel kinship with them -- and thus no particular responsibility to account for their actions. Hence Christians feel no particular need to respond every time a Christian misbehaves, and Muslims feel no particular need to respond every time a member of some fundamentalist sect detonates a car bomb.

This is especially true when the actions cross national and sectarian boundaries. Demanding that a mainstream American Muslim denounce fundamentalist terrorism is like demanding that Lutherans denounce the actions of Baptists -- or, more aptly, Christian Identity adherents. It's actually even sillier than that, because at least in the example above everyone involved is American. In the case of Islamic terror, we're demanding that American Muslims feel responsibility not just for another sect, but for another country and culture. So it's more like demanding that Lutherans apologize for the atrocities committed by the Lord's Resistance Army.

Now, political reality is a different matter, and not always fair; in this day and age, there is more political need for Muslims to speak out than there is for Christians. But that doesn't make demands that they do so any less illogical. Nor does it justify the assumptions made about them when they fail to speak up in any given instance.

terrorism, religion, politics, midtopia

Bomb threat at Falwell funeral

This is weird, and not just in the obvious ways.

A small group of protesters gathered near the funeral services to criticize the man who mobilized Christian evangelicals and made them a major force in American politics -- often by playing on social prejudices.

A group of students from Falwell's Liberty University staged a counterprotest.

And Campbell County authorities arrested a Liberty University student for having several homemade bombs in his car.

Oh, great. Some left-wing whacko tries to bomb Falwell's funeral.

Huh? What's that?

The student, 19-year-old Mark D. Uhl of Amissville, Va., reportedly told authorities that he was making the bombs to stop protesters from disrupting the funeral service.

Not a left-wing nutjob; a conservative Christian nutjob!

You gotta love the logic required to arrive at the conclusion that setting off bombs is the perfect way to avoid disrupting the service....

The good news is that he was an incompetent dimbulb:

The devices were made of a combination of gasoline and detergent, a law enforcement official told ABC News' Pierre Thomas. They were "slow burn," according to the official, and would not have been very destructive.

But then there's this:

Three other suspects are being sought, one of whom is a soldier from Fort Benning, Ga., and another is a high school student. No information was available on the third suspect.

Great. Additional nutcases still on the loose.

Falwell, politics, midtopia

Busy day tomorrow

Wednesday should have a lot of fireworks, thanks to several big items all landing at the same time:

Looking for Ms. Goodling
An immunized Monica Goodling testifies before the Senate about the prosecutor firings. Source have indicated her testimony won't implicate Alberto Gonzales, but then that's what they said about Kyle Sampson -- and his testimony turned out to be another body blow for the embattled AG.

The problem is that, based on what we already know, Gonzales is either mendacious or incompetent. Goodling's testimony can only show one of three things: that Gonzales was more involved than he has admitted, which means he lied to Congress; that Gonzales was totally uninvolved, which indicts his management ability; and/or that the firings were indeed heavily political, which discredits both his judgement and his truthfulness.

War funding
The newest version of the war-funding bill could hit the floor of Congress, with the possibility that the most antiwar Democrats ultimately will vote against it now that the timetables have been stripped out. There still should be enough votes to pass it (with Republican support), but it raises all sorts of tantalizing possibilities.

One is merely theoretical: contemplate what would happen if the war funding didn't have enough Democratic votes to pass without timetables, and didn't have enough Republican votes to pass with them. What would happen?

The other is more concrete: in order to govern, will Pelosi and Reid find themselves increasingly making common cause with Republicans against the more extreme elements of their own party? And will that work, or simply lead to a fracture in the Democratic ranks?

And consider what a Democratic fracture might mean. With the Republicans themselves fractured (united only by the need to stay relevant by thwarting Democratic moves), Congress could find itself in an unstable situation, where each party's leadership is less relevant and instead ad hoc groups of legislators coalesce around individual issues.

That's not going to happen, of course, at least not to a large degree. Party connections are too ingrained, too convenient, too powerful. And the leadership controls the movement of legislation, so they'll never get too irrelevant (though there was a time when committee chairmen were highly independent and arguably more powerful than the Speaker and her deputies). Still, if two fractured parties mean more individual initiative by Congress members, that would be all to the good in my book.

Anyway, tomorrow should be a fascinating day.

Iraq, Goodling, politics, midtopia

Report: GSA head violated Hatch Act

When last we left Lurita Doan, she was being investigated for (among other things) using her office for improper political purposes, in violation of the Hatch Act.

Now the investigation is over. It's conclusion? She broke the law.

An Office of Special Counsel report has found that General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan violated the Hatch Act, which bars federal officials from partisan political activity while on the job, sources say.

The report addresses a Jan. 26 lunch meeting at GSA headquarters attended by Doan and about 40 political appointees, some of whom participated by videoconference. During the meeting, Scott Jennings, the White House deputy director of political affairs, gave a PowerPoint presentation that included slides listing Democratic and Republican seats the White House viewed as vulnerable in 2008, a map of contested Senate seats and other information on 2008 election strategy.

According to meeting participants, Doan asked after the call how GSA could help “our candidates.”

Now for the bad news:

After Doan responds, the report will be sent to President Bush with recommendations that could include suspension or termination. The president is not required to comply with the suggestions.

Yes, you read that right: punishment is entirely up to the president. This is the Bush administration, so I suppose it's quite possible she won't suffer any adverse effects. But I just can't bring myself to be that cynical. Look for her to resign or be fired sometime in June.

Lurita Doan, politics, midtopia

Dems go with common sense on war funding

On Friday, I laid out what sort of war-funding bill Congress had to assemble.

Now it looks like they're doing exactly that.

In grudging concessions to President Bush, Democrats intend to draft an Iraq war-funding bill without a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and shorn of billions of dollars in spending on domestic programs, officials said Monday.

The legislation would include the first federal minimum wage increase in more than a decade, a top priority for the Democrats who took control of Congress in January, the officials added.

While details remain subject to change, the measure is designed to close the books by Friday on a bruising veto fight between Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress over the war. It would provide funds for military operations in Iraq through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Good. Get it done, and start preparing for the next round, in September.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Generals say "no" to torture

If you haven't read this yet, you should. It's written by a pair of retired generals: Charles Krulak (former Marine Corps commandant) and Joseph Hoar (former head of U.S. Central Command).

Fear can be a strong motivator. It led Franklin Roosevelt to intern tens of thousands of innocent U.S. citizens during World War II; it led to Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt, which ruined the lives of hundreds of Americans. And it led the United States to adopt a policy at the highest levels that condoned and even authorized torture of prisoners in our custody.

The observed effect on military morals:

As has happened with every other nation that has tried to engage in a little bit of torture -- only for the toughest cases, only when nothing else works -- the abuse spread like wildfire, and every captured prisoner became the key to defusing a potential ticking time bomb. Our soldiers in Iraq confront real "ticking time bomb" situations every day, in the form of improvised explosive devices, and any degree of "flexibility" about torture at the top drops down the chain of command like a stone -- the rare exception fast becoming the rule.

To understand the impact this has had on the ground, look at the military's mental health assessment report released earlier this month. The study shows a disturbing level of tolerance for abuse of prisoners in some situations. This underscores what we know as military professionals: Complex situational ethics cannot be applied during the stress of combat. The rules must be firm and absolute; if torture is broached as a possibility, it will become a reality.

But even if the use of torture could be strictly controlled, it would hurt our cause:

The torture methods that Tenet defends have nurtured the recuperative power of the enemy. This war will be won or lost not on the battlefield but in the minds of potential supporters who have not yet thrown in their lot with the enemy. If we forfeit our values by signaling that they are negotiable in situations of grave or imminent danger, we drive those undecideds into the arms of the enemy. This way lies defeat, and we are well down the road to it.

It also hurts our soldiers.

This is not just a lesson for history. Right now, White House lawyers are working up new rules that will govern what CIA interrogators can do to prisoners in secret. Those rules will set the standard not only for the CIA but also for what kind of treatment captured American soldiers can expect from their captors, now and in future wars. Before the president once again approves a policy of official cruelty, he should reflect on that.

These are not new sentiments. But they are increasingly being expressed by people such as Krulak and Hoar, military professionals who understand the repercussions of such policies. Let us hope that at last the message gets through.

torture, politics, midtopia

Specter: Gonzales may resign

It may just be wishful thinking, but that's what Sen. Arlen Specter said yesterday on "Face the Nation", in response to a question about this week's planned vote of no-confidence in the attorney general.

Mr. Specter noted that no-confidence votes were rare, adding, “I think that if and when he sees that coming, that he would prefer to avoid that kind of an historical black mark.” Mr. Specter, of Pennsylvania, would not say how he would vote on a resolution.

Most Senate Democrats and five Republicans have called on the attorney general to resign, but President Bush, who considers Mr. Gonzales one of his most trusted advisers, has steadily supported him.

It seems obvious that such a vote would easily pass, assuming all that was needed was a simple majority. Most Democrats and at least five Republicans would vote yes, and there could be a sizable number of other GOPers that would support it, too.

The White House has denigrated the move as a political stunt and today Bush reiterated his support for Fredo. But the reality is that Gonzales' ability to lead his department would be seriously impaired by such a public rebuke, especially if the vote is lopsided. At that point you have to start wondering why Bush places personal loyalty to incompetent lapdogs above the good of the people and the efficient administration of justice.

Between the no-confidence vote and the upcoming testimony of Monica Goodling, it promises to be yet another bad week for the AG.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

How's it going in Afghanistan?

For an interesting and balanced take on the war in Afghanistan, check out NBC News correspondent Jim Maceda:

So, how IS it going in Afghanistan? Are we winning or losing the war? Or the peace? I see no pat answer. No 10-second sound bite. We are winning some hearts, but losing other minds. We are bringing a sense of peace to parts of the country where we have soldiers at least, but the Taliban is still intimidating whole towns, elsewhere, with death threats posted on residential doors at night, with school burnings, ambushes and roadside bombs. We have defeated Taliban and al-Qaida militants in dozens upon dozens of battles this year, but their suicide bombers keep on coming – and exploding – from inside the Pakistan border, where they are trained and equipped.

Some have called this ‘reaching a tipping point’. Perhaps that’s the best answer: Afghanistan IS balanced between good and bad, war and peace, winning and losing. Some days, in some ways, look very positive indeed. But winning in Afghanistan still appears no better than a 50-50 bet. It could go either way. There are still too many reasons why Afghans could see a low-burn guerilla war that kills thousands of civilians – as well as several hundred American and allied soldiers - every year for years to come.

Sobering stuff, but unsurprising. As long as the tribal regions of Pakistan provide a safe haven for Taliban forces, the war will never actually end no matter how much military success we have. The best we can probably hope for is a low-level conflict that will increasingly be fought by Afghan security forces rather than NATO troops.

Many of the same descriptions could be applied to Iraq. But there is at least one key difference between Afghanistan and Iraq: There is far more political resolve to fight a long war in Afghanistan because the government -- weak and corrupt though it may be -- supports us, and we didn't invade the country under false pretenses.

We also don't have sectarian violence to deal with because there are no sects: nearly the entire country is Sunni (84%) Muslim (99%). The worst split is ethnic: majority Pashtuns and minority Tajiks, Uzbeks and others. But those splits aren't as deep or as pathological as the bloody scrimmage going on in Iraq.

It also shows how much more politically sustainable a war is when we're not doing nearly all the fighting ourselves. A justifiable war attracts meaningful international help, which spreads the burden of combat and builds reinforcing political supports.

The fighting in Afghanistan demonstrates that we have the political and military will to fight a long war when the need and justification are made apparent. And Iraq demonstrates what happens when the government fails to make such a case.

Iraq, afghanistan, politics, midtopia

Bush, Congress hit impasse on war funding

This is getting a bit silly.

The White House and Congress failed to strike a deal Friday after exchanging competing offers on an Iraq war spending bill that Democrats said should set a date for U.S. troops to leave....

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said they offered to grant Bush the authority to waive the deadlines. They said they also suggested they would drop billions of dollars in proposed domestic spending that Bush opposed, in exchange for his acceptance of identifying a withdrawal date.

That, by the way, is the Democrats making the obvious concession that they denied they were making a week or so ago.

Bush, for his part, flat refused anything that had deadlines for withdrawal, even if he could waive them. He also indicated he would consider benchmarks for the Iraqi government that would include negative consequences if the Iraqis failed to meet them -- although the details on that score were very vague.

In general, I'm with Bush on this one. The timetables need to be dropped for the time being to give the surge time to work. And the domestic funding has no business being used as a bargaining chip: it shouldn't have been in the bill in the first place.

It's May 18, people; time to stop playing games. The Democrats need to pass (and Bush needs to sign) a bill that does the following:

1. Contains no timetables;

2. Funds the war only through September, at which time the state of the surge and Iraqi political compliance can be assessed;

3. Contains hard benchmarks for the Iraqi government to hit, with generous support if they hit them and negative consequences if they don't.

Reopen this fight when there's meaningful data to fight about.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Another Republican calls for Gonzales to quit

Ever able to read the shifting political winds, Minnesota's own Norm Coleman has joined the list of Republicans calling for Alberto Gonzales' ouster.

The link identifies the six GOP senators who now want him to quit, as well as six others who have said he should probably quit while stopping just short of calling for his resignation.

The last straw for Norm: revelations that the Justice Department had a list of at least 26 prosecutors it was considering firing -- not the relative handful it has admitted up until now -- and that former Minnesota U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger was on it.

The list isn't a huge deal by itself. It makes sense that the department would consider a larger group of candidates for replacement before settling on a small number to actually can. But Gonzales' testimony last week that the firing effort was limited to the 8 (oops, 9) identified so far was either misleading, a lie, very poorly phrased or an indication that he was totally unaware of the scope of the discussions occurring under his authority.

There's also the question of how a prosecutor ended up on the list. I look forward to analyses matching the names on the list with their prosecutorial history to see if a trend emerges.

Meanwhile, the Senate may hold a nonbinding no-confidence vote on Gonzales next week -- a move that could attract bipartisan support. The White House denounced it as a PR stunt, but it's far more than that: it will be a public display of how little support Gonzales has. It will also force many senators that have been silent up until now to declare a position. I don't think many of them will come down on Gonzales' side, and the White House knows it.

There's also this interesting exchange about the dramatic confrontation in John Ashcroft's hospital room:

Q Let me just follow up on that. Yesterday, Kelly asked the President straight up about the report of when Gonzales was counsel and sending Andy Card down to the hospital. The President refused to answer, saying it was a national security issue. No part of her question had anything to do with national security issues.

MR. FRATTO: No, there are two points there. One is the discussion of classified programs; and the second is deliberative discussions among and between advisors to the President -- and neither of which is an open window for us to look into and talk about.

Now, I think the President -- I think that's the point that the President was making. It puts us in a difficult communications position, because we understand there are questions out there and it's difficult for us from the podium. But that's not something that we can get into, and we're not going to get into.

Q He can unilaterally declassify, so --

MR. FRATTO: He could, but I think he'd prefer to put the safety and security of Americans ahead of that interest.

Q How does it jeopardize the safety and security of Americans, to say whether --

MR. FRATTO: Any time we talk about --

Q -- to say whether he ordered those guys to go to the hotel room?

MR. FRATTO: The hospital room --

Q I'm sorry, hospital room.

MR. FRATTO: -- according to the reports.

Q -- former acting Attorney General.

MR. FRATTO: Any time we talk about classified programs you're opening the door, and we need to be very careful in how we talk about it.

A nice example of invoking "national security", "executive privilege" and (most wretchedly) "the safety and security of the American people" to avoid answering a question that has nothing to do with any of those.

Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Wolfowitz agrees to leave

Big surprise.... He leaves at the end of June. President Bush, meanwhile, has promised to move quickly on naming a successor.

Among those mentioned as a possible replacement for Wolfowitz were former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, who was Bush's former trade chief; Robert Kimmitt, the No. 2 at the Treasury Department; Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson; former Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa; Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind.,; Stanley Fischer, who once worked at the International Monetary Fund and is now with the Bank of Israel; and former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.

That list seems filled with pure speculation. But let's go through them.

Volcker would be an interesting, noncontroversial pick, and likely to attract bipartisan support. And his experience investigating the United Nations oil-for-food scandal may indicate that he'll continue Wolfowitz's anti-corruption drive.

Paulson would be a mistake, unless Bush just likes playing "musical Treasury chairs". There's no real good reason to shake up Treasury one more time simply to fill a slot at the World Bank.

Kimmitt would be a solid choice. He's a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran, has ambassadorial and foreign policy experience and previously served on a World Bank arbitration panel. He's shown an ability to get along with other countries throughout a long career.

I'm not sure why Bush would consider Jim Leach, since he's a liberal Republican who opposed the 2002 Iraq war resolution and even opposed the president's 2003 tax cut. This sounds like a case of Leach supporters floating the name, not anything eminating from the White House.

Lugar would be a more business-as-usual pick for Bush -- a fiscal and social conservative who could probably be counted on to continue Wolfowitz's policies. There's also a bit of political calculation involved. Lugar is 75, and thus unlikely to run for the Senate again. Giving him another job would let the Republican governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, appoint a Republican replacement. Lugar just won re-election, so the successor would serve for nearly six years and have the advantage of incumbency when s/he stands for re-election in 2012 -- thus increasing the odds that the seat will stay in GOP hands.

Stanley Fischer I don't know much about. He's an economist, served as chief economist at the World Bank under Bush's dad before moving over to the International Monetary Fund. Sounds qualified, but I have no idea what his politics are.

Of course, I half expect Bush to nominate Harriet Miers just to prove he can....

World Bank, Wolfowitz, politics, midtopia

The food-stamp diet

This is a pretty good read:

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) stood before the refrigerated section of the Safeway on Capitol Hill yesterday and looked longingly at the eggs.

At $1.29 for a half-dozen, he couldn't afford them.

Ryan and three other members of Congress have pledged to live for one week on $21 worth of food, the amount the average food stamp recipient receives in federal assistance. That's $3 a day or $1 a meal. They started yesterday.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.), co-chairmen of the House Hunger Caucus, called on lawmakers to take the "Food Stamp Challenge" to raise awareness of hunger and what they say are inadequate benefits for food stamp recipients. Only two others, Ryan and Janice Schakowsky (D-Ill.), took them up on it.

Ryan's shopping list for the week:

Yellow cornmeal	$1.43
2 jars strawberry preserves	4.80
1 jar chunky peanut butter	2.48
2 packages angel-hair pasta	1.54
Chock Full o’ Nuts coffee	2.50
3 cans tomato sauce	4.50
2 containers cottage cheese	3.00
1 loaf wheat bread	0.89
1 head of garlic	0.32
Total:	$20.66

He could have added some extra calories by forgoing the coffee; I think he's going to regret that particular choice.

The story also notes the irony of eating poor: that the cheapest foods are also the unhealthiest, which is why the poor have trouble with obesity, cholesterol and other diet-related ills.

"No organic foods, no fresh vegetables, we were looking for the cheapest of everything," McGovern said. "We got spaghetti and hamburger meat that was high in fat -- the fattiest meat on the shelf. I have high cholesterol and always try to get the leanest, but it's expensive. It's almost impossible to make healthy choices on a food stamp diet."

Looking at the politics of it, the stunt -- while compelling -- is still something of a stunt. The $21 a week is an average, for starters; the neediest people get more. Second, food stamps were never intended to cover 100% of food costs; they're a supplement. Third, food stamps aren't the only programs available to the hungry. There are food shelves, local food programs and private charities as well.

In addition, the lawmakers are doing this in hopes of adding $4 billion to the $33 billion food-stamp program -- which would boost that $21 weekly average up to a whopping $23.50 or so.

Still, people do go hungry, even if nobody actually starves. And the healthy-eating challenges deserve to be addressed somehow. A few bucks spent helping the very poor buy fresh vegetables now might prevent far more expensive taxpayer-provided health care down the road.

food stamps, hunger, politics, midtopia

More Republicans call for Gonzales' head

Two more Republican Senators want Alberto Gonzales gone: Chuck Hagel and Pat Roberts.

"The American people deserve an attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer of our country, whose honesty and capability are beyond question," Hagel said in a statement. "Attorney General Gonzales can no longer meet this standard. He has failed this country. He has lost the moral authority to lead."

"When you have to spend more time up here on Capitol Hill instead of running the Justice Department, maybe you ought to think about [resigning]," Roberts told The Associated Press.

Democrats, meanwhile, continued the full-court press. Four Democratic senators sent Gonzales a letter asking him to square Jim Comey's description of a dramatic confrontation over the NSA wiretapping program -- complete with threats to resign -- with Gonzales' February 2006 testimony that there had "not been any serious disagreement" over it.

Rereading the testimony (Part I and Part II), one sees that Gonzales was being very careful in his language:

SCHUMER: There was dissent; is that right?

GONZALES: Of course, Senator. As I indicated, this program implicates some very difficult issues. The war on terror has generated several issues that are very, very complicated.

SCHUMER: Understood.

GONZALES: Lawyers disagree.

SCHUMER: I concede all those points. Let me ask you about some specific reports.

It's been reported by multiple news outlets that the former number two man in the Justice Department, the premier terrorism prosecutor, Jim Comey, expressed grave reservations about the NSA program and at least once refused to give it his blessing. Is that true?

GONZALES: Senator, here's the response that I feel that I can give with respect to recent speculation or stories about disagreements.

There has not been any serious disagreement -- and I think this is accurate -- there has not been any serious disagreement about the program that the president has confirmed. There have been disagreements about other matters regarding operations which I cannot get into.

I will also say...

SCHUMER: But there was some -- I'm sorry to cut you off -- but there was some dissent within the administration. And Jim Comey did express, at some point -- that's all I asked you -- some reservations.

GONZALES: The point I want to make is that, to my knowledge, none of the reservations dealt with the program that we're talking about today. They dealt with operational capabilities that we're not talking about today.

As you can see, Gonzales was very careful to only talk about the then-current iteration of the NSA program -- without mentioning that the program existed in that form only because of the vehement objections described by Comey. So did he lie? No. Did he mislead? Yes. Deliberately? Unclear. He was obviously trying to suggest that the reports about Comey's actions were somehow inaccurate, without coming right out and saying it (which would have been a lie). And it's also clear that he didn't want to openly and candidly discuss the process that led to the NSA program then in operation. But dodging questions isn't the same thing as lying. And some of the blame for the lack of clarity also lies with Schumer, who didn't try to nail Gonzales down on what he meant by "they dealt with operational capabilities that we're not talking about today."

As far as relevance to his continued tenure, however, I'm not sure this has any. Gonzales didn't actually lie, and the underlying history (was there disagreement?) isn't very important, so it's not a legal or moral issue. To the extent that Congress doesn't like having its questions dodged this could be a political issue, but Congress is already mad at him about much worse acts; this isn't going to move the needle much one way or the other in that regard.

Next up: Monica Goodling's immunized testimony a week from now, on May 23. I'm going to try to listen to most of it.

politics, midtopia

Things of note

Items that caught my eye today:

Prince Harry won't be going to Iraq; the British army decided that doing so posed too much danger not just to Cornet Wales but also to those around him, figuring insurgents would move heaven and earth to get their hands on him. I can't fault their reasoning, but it does raise the question of what sort of conflict the military will let him fight in. And if the answer is "none", one wonders what he's doing in the military.

A team of scientists working with the Hubble space telescope think they have directly sighted dark matter. Using gravitational lensing they mapped out the density of a couple of galaxy clusters 5 billion light years away -- and found that the centers of mass didn't correspond to visible objects (you can see the ring of dark matter in the photo). The evidence in favor of dark matter is firming up. All that's left is the pesky matter of explaining what the heck it is.

Paul Wolfowitz is negotiating a deal for his resignation as head of the World Bank. I'm still more interested in the junkets he arranged for his girlfriend when he was with the Pentagon. But while I think he did some good at the World Bank and the calls for his head have more than a little corrupt politicking behind them, it's hard to feel sorry for a figure so central to our misadventure in Iraq. Buh-bye.

dark matter, Hubble, Prince Harry, Wolfowitz, politics, midtopia

Jerry Falwell dies

Mr. Moral Majority meets his Maker.

I'm not going to pretend to miss him. Oh, there was the entertainment value of his blustering, but that hardly made up for the actual damage he did. Although in the long run it's a wash, as the declining influence of he and his kind make clear. He gave people a good look at what the religious right stood for -- and it wasn't pretty.

Still, I'm not big on bashing the dead, so I'll just keep silence. I hope there's an afterlife for you, Mr. Falwell. If there is, I'm curious to know if it's the one you expected.

Falwell, religion, politics, midtopia

Stupid teacher tricks

They don't get much stupider than this.

Staff members of a Murfreesboro elementary school staged a fake gunman attack during a school trip, telling them it was not a drill as children cried and hid under tables.

Usually it's the playground bullies who are responsible for terrorizing kids. I guess they've been put out of business by the teachers.

Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who was present, said the scenario was intended as a learning experience and only lasted five minutes.

Oh, okay; it only lasted five minutes. That makes it all better.

The details:

During the last night of the school trip to Fall Creek Falls, a state park about 130 miles southeast of Nashville, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose.

The students were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. After the lights went out, about 20 kids started to cry, said 11-year-old Shay Naylor.

"I was like, 'Oh My God,' " Shay said Saturday. "At first I thought I was going to die. We flipped out. (A teacher) told us, 'We just got a call that there's been a random shooting.' I was freaked out. I thought it was serious."

A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on locked door and pretended to be suspicious subject....

"The children were in that room in the dark, begging for their lives, because they thought there was someone with a gun after them," said Brandy Cole, whose son went on the trip.

I can understand one teacher thinking this was a good idea. It's hard for me to comprehend how all the teachers on the trip came to that conclusion.

The best part is that by crying wolf -- especially the "this is not a drill" part -- the teachers have pretty much ensured that in the event of a real emergency, some students will simply disbelieve their warnings and disregard their instructions. Great work.

One caveat: Almost all of the details in the story come from kids (who aren't necessarily the most reliable witnesses) and their parents (who weren't there). The school is investigating, and perhaps a different picture will emerge. But I don't imagine it will be substantially different. The kids were terrified, that seems clear. Whatever happened, it was misguided at best and downright mean at worst.

education, politics, midtopia