As I commented to and discussed with a.v., D.H. is demonstrably not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Seeing and Believing

05 Oct 2006 08:17 pm

A reader writes:

Sincere appreciation for your recent article in TIME called "When Not Seeing Is Believing." Andrew, you put to words what my soul has been crying out for a very long time. Christianity is taking a very ugly turn with its hardline fundamentalist bent - it deeply saddens me. I wonder if you have read Donald Miller's "Blue Like Jazz"? It deals with this issue closely - I think you would enjoy it.

And thank you for trying to save true conservatism. What is happening right now in this country is nothing less than an Orwellian nightmare, and to be honest I am in wonder as to why people aren't up in arms about this. The loss of privacy, cessation of heabeus corpus, unprecedented and unchecked powers bestowed on the executive, a federally endorsed policy of torture, it just goes on and on - I have to wonder. Have we come so far from our roots, that freedom and liberty are just words to be bandied about by politicians, void of any real meaning? Our apathy will be the death of our democracy.





http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/

No moreso than gay republicans.




Do you even know what a pedophile is? Not to mention nobody protected Foley, he's gone.

http://www.answers.com/topic/pedophilia

pedophilia, psychosexual disorder in which there is a preference for sexual activity with prepubertal children. Pedophiles are almost always males. The children are more often of the opposite sex (about twice as often) and are typically 13 years or age or younger; they may be within or outside the pedophile's family. Sexual fantasies, looking, or fondling are more common than genital contact. Sexual offenses against children make up a significant proportion of reported criminal sex acts.The cause or causes of pedophilia are not well understood. Personality problems may be evident, and the pedophile often shows little or no concern for the effects of his sexual behavior on the child. Researchers have reported that psychotherapy in conjunction with the use of testosterone-lowering drugs has substantially reduced the desire in male pedophiles to molest children. See also child abuse.

October 04, 2006
One-Party Government A Threat To American Liberties

By Paul Craig Roberts

In one month we will know if Americans understand the danger of the Bush administration’s fanatical preoccupation with terrorism combined with one-party control of the executive and legislative branches. If voters let pass the opportunity in the November election to take Congress out of Republican hands, America will experience a more rapid descent into a police state.

The Bush administration’s response to 9/11, an event about which we have incomplete and unreliable information, has been to trample important civil liberties such as habeas corpus, the attorney-client privilege, privacy, due process, and prohibition against self-incrimination.

Today, "detainees" incarcerated by US government officials are held indefinitely without charges or warrants—essentially imprisoned without trial, denied access to lawyers and family, and tortured in an effort to attain self-incrimination, while US citizens are spied upon without court warrants.

These are the distinctive features of a police state. They have brought President Bush and his government into conflict with the US Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and US statutory law. To sanctify these violations of Constitution, treaty, and law, last week the US Republican Congress passed a warrantless surveillance bill and a detainee bill that destroys privacy and removes court protections and Geneva Conventions protections from detainees.

Many Americans are unconcerned about these developments, because they believe only real terrorists are affected. In fact, the majority of "terrorist detainees" are innocent people sold to Americans as "terrorists" for bounties. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says, "We have earned bounties totaling millions of dollars." Amnesty International’s Claudio Cordone says of that organization’s report released September 29, "Bounty hunters, including police officers and local people, have captured individuals of different nationalities, often apparently at random, and sold them into U.S. custody."

Moreover, the definition of "terrorist suspect" is subject only to the discretion of the arresting officials. No evidence has to be presented or even possessed to justify the detention of the person as a terrorist. As no evidence is required, anyone can be branded a terrorist suspect.

Consider, also, that laws tend to be expansively interpreted. For example, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) was intended to apply to organized crime. Today a RICO claim can arise in almost any context, including divorce cases. It is applied to individuals, legitimate businesses, and political protest groups.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and a variety of neoconservative and Republican writers are attempting to broaden the definition of terrorist to include truthful critics of Bush’s Iraq war.

On September 29, for example, the Associated Press reported that Bush said that critics who claim the Iraq war has made America less safe embrace "the enemy’s propaganda."

In making this charge, Bush is damning the National Intelligence Estimate prepared by US intelligence agencies which concluded that the war in Iraq was making Americans less safe by breeding more terrorism.

If Bush can accuse the CIA of "embracing terrorist propaganda," any columnist or reporter who reports truthfully can be put in the "against us" camp and interned for giving "aid and comfort to the enemy."

By passing the detainee and surveillance bills, Congress has given the executive branch the power to silence dissent. Naive Americans believe that there is a difference between the government having arbitrary and unaccountable powers to arrest enemies and using these powers against its own citizens. But governments always use the powers they gain. Otherwise, there is no point to the US Constitution, which was written to restrain the growth of government power. If government can be trusted with arbitrary and unaccountable power, the US Constitution has no purpose.

The Democrats, of course, have done nothing to protect us from Bush’s illegal war or from his assaults on the Constitution and civil liberty. Democrats have been intimidated by the threat of being politically placed in the "against us" camp, and Democrats are as much in the pockets of AIPAC, the oil industry, and the military-industrial complex as Republicans.

Nevertheless, one-party rule magnifies error by marginalizing dissent and debate. The Republican Congress acquiesces to the Republican executive in order to maintain a common front that the opposition cannot penetrate. Detrimental policies and laws harmful to liberty are passed for the sake of party power, not because they are good for Americans or true to the Constitution.

The Democrats don’t deserve to be in office any more than do the Republicans, but by putting Democrats in office, voters can strengthen Americans’ ability to dissent from Bush’s police state measures and Bush’s commitment to interminable wars in the Middle East. One-party rule suppresses dissent within the government and, thus, makes dissent all the more difficult outside government.

Freedom and democracy in America are already impaired by a heavily concentrated media ownership that no longer serves the public interest.

A one-party government combined with a corporate-controlled press is no recipe for maintaining freedom and democracy in America.

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/061004_november.htm

Investigation begins with 44 subpoenas



(10-06) 04:00 PDT Washington -- The House Ethics Committee voted Thursday to issue 44 subpoenas as it began what its leaders promised will be a wide-ranging investigation into a congressional page sex scandal, while embattled Speaker Dennis Hastert accepted responsibility for his handling of the situation and vowed to remain in office.

"I am deeply sorry this has happened, and the bottom line is, we're taking responsibility," Hastert, R-Ill., said of the scandal that has consumed the capital after the resignation of Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., last Friday.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file...MNGPULK6VC1.DTL


They already issued 44 subpoenas. I find it ironic that it took 7 months to even start an investigation into the Plame outing, which had national security implications. The hypocricy is so thick you can cut it with a knife.

One Foley Point

06 Oct 2006 03:30 pm



Every time I hear some Republican flack claiming that any previous attempt to discipline Mark Foley would have been viewed as homophobic by the media and Democrats and gays, my jaw drops to the floor. Memo to Gingrich: It is not homophobic in any way to stop a grown man preying on teens in his care, whether that guy is gay or straight. No gay person would object to stopping that; we'd all insist on it; and I have found no gay people excusing Foley since. The premise behind this excuse is itself homophobic, and shows what little clue these Republicans have about gay people in general.

Secondly, since when is the GOP skittish about appearing homophobic anyway? The only gay people they have any time for are those prepared to give them cover to pursue gay-baiting as an electoral strategy, like Mary Cheney. The Republican party, in state after state, has demonized gay couples for years now, focusing especially on our desire to create families and stable relationships. They don't seem too worried about appearing homophobic when it comes to winning elections, do they? Gay backers of Bush in 2000, like me, were told he was different, he wasn't a bigot, he wasn't going to gay-bash to maintain power. We were lied to, and, in retrospect, we were fools to have believed any of it. And now they have the gall to defend their lack of basic responsibility to teens by blaming political correctness? In other words, blaming us? Puh-lease.

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/

Sanctioning Lawlessness

David Cole



In a decisive 1-0 decision Monday, President Bush voted to grant the president the constitutional power to grant himself additional powers.... Republicans fearful that the president's new power undermines their ability to grant him power have proposed a new law that would allow senators to permit him to grant himself power. --The Onion, August 1

It's so hard to be a satirist these days. When reality outstrips even The Onion, what's left for Jon Stewart? This summer, the Supreme Court issued a shot across the bow, decisively repudiating expansive executive authority to try "enemy combatants" in kangaroo courts as a violation of Congressional dictates and the Geneva Conventions. On September 28 Congress rewarded the President's lawlessness by giving him a blank check to do it some more. At the same time, it watered down criminal sanctions against abusive treatment of war prisoners and did everything it could to keep that pesky Supreme Court out of the picture, stripping the courts of jurisdiction. In essence, Congress responded to an executive branch that had thumbed its nose at Congress and the world by joining in. After all, what's more important: America's standing in the world and the rule of law, or partisan advantage in the midterm elections?

Under the rules struck down by the Supreme Court, "enemy combatants" could be tried and executed on the basis of coerced testimony, hearsay and classified evidence that the defendants had no meaningful way to confront. Under the Military Commissions Act, some marginally positive changes were made, but enemy combatants can still be tried and executed on the basis of coerced testimony, hearsay and classified evidence that the defendants have no meaningful way to confront. This time, however, Congress declared that its tribunal rules fully satisfy the Geneva Conventions, as if saying it makes it so. Just to make sure, Congress barred anyone from invoking the Geneva Conventions in court against the government or its officials. Instead of remedying the President's violations of international law, in other words, Congress chose to immunize the lawbreakers.


The new law also paves the way for the CIA to resume its practice of "disappearing" terror suspects into secret "black sites" and subjecting them to harsh interrogation tactics, including depriving them of sleep, forcing them to stand naked for long periods in frigidly cold rooms while periodically dousing them with cold water, and God knows what else. Senator John McCain, with his Republican colleagues Lindsey Graham and John Warner, made a big show of standing up to the Administration on this issue, but in the end it was little more than show. McCain has boasted that the new law prohibits torture and cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees. But federal law already made all such conduct a war crime. The new law actually weakens restrictions on abusive interrogations by narrowing what amounts to a war crime.

Taking a page from John Yoo, the author of the Justice Department's original torture memo, Congress has tortured language in order to clear room for the CIA to torture suspects. Just as Yoo interpreted the criminal torture ban narrowly so as to permit threats of death and infliction of any physical pain short of that associated with organ failure or death, so the new law makes it a crime to inflict "serious physical pain" on detainees, but defines "serious physical pain" as requiring both bodily injury and "extreme" physical pain, which sounds even more harsh than the "severe" physical pain that constitutes torture. McCain has trumpeted this law as a compromise--but the only thing it compromises is our commitment to the fundamental dignity of all human beings.

The law also neatly redefines the term "unlawful enemy combatant" in entirely circular terms, as anyone who "has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant" by a "competent tribunal" established by the President. Under this definition, if a military tribunal were to declare Kofi Annan an enemy combatant, he would be, because the law does not require that the person meet any objective criteria for the designation.

The new statute also radically restricts habeas corpus review, the traditional avenue for the imprisoned to challenge in court the legality of their detention. It also retroactively strips jurisdiction over all the Guantánamo cases now pending in the courts. Detainees are relegated to sharply limited review in the DC Circuit, which can only review the legal sufficiency of a Combatant Status Review Tribunal finding. Since the "enemy combatant" definition described above makes the tribunal's finding conclusive, however, this review is meaningless. If anyone whom the tribunal says is an enemy combatant thereby is one, there will be nothing for the DC Circuit to review. Moreover, the bar on habeas review means that suspects being tortured or otherwise abused have no recourse to the courts to challenge their treatment.

Finally, and perhaps most disturbing, these provisions for the most part apply only to foreign nationals accused of terrorist crimes and fighting for the enemy. There is no constitutional bar on trying citizens in military tribunals--so long as the tribunals meet fundamental demands of fairness. We did it as recently as World War II, and the Supreme Court upheld the practice. But as the Bush Administration knows, it's much easier to sell abusive power politically if one can assure citizens that their rights are not at stake.

In the end, even though Congress has done its best to give the President unfettered authority and to preclude judicial review, this law will be judged, first, by the Supreme Court, which is not likely to accept such grave inroads on the rule of law or its own power, and, more important, by the world at large. That is the community before which we will need to defend ourselves if we send Guantánamo detainees, even those who are admittedly "the worst of the worst," to their death through trials that fail to meet basic guarantees of fairness, preclude meaningful judicial review and allow the use of coercive interrogation. We are losing on the battlefield of world opinion. The Supreme Court's decision this past summer gave us a chance to turn the tide, but all too characteristically the political branches have squandered the opportunity.



http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061023/cole

Maybe the Republicans will wake up to the serious nature of their immoral behavior. Maybe not.



The more they scramble and try to blame others, the worse they look.

Lead story on Time Magazine online.


Sunday, Oct. 8, 2006


End of the Revolution


Sex, lies and power games are just the latest symptoms of a Republican party adrift from its ideals

By KAREN TUMULTY


Every revolution begins with the power of an idea and ends when clinging to power is the only idea left. The epitaph for the movement that started when Newt Gingrich and his forces rose from the back bench of the House chamber in 1994 may well have been written last week in the same medium that incubated it: talk radio. On conservative commentator Laura Ingraham's show, the longest-serving Republican House Speaker in history explained why he would not resign despite a sex scandal that has produced a hail of questions about his leadership and the failure to stop one of his members from cyberstalking teenage congressional pages. "If I fold up my tent and leave," Dennis Hastert told her, "then where does that leave us? If the Democrats sweep, then we'd have no ability to fight back and get our message out."

That quiet admission may have been the most damning one yet in the unfolding scandal surrounding Florida Congressman Mark Foley: holding on to power has become not just the means but also the end for the onetime reformers who in 1994 unseated a calcified and corrupted Democratic majority. Washington scandals, it seems, have been following a Moore's law of their own, coming at a faster clip every time there is a shift in control. It took 40 years for the House Democrats to exhaust their goodwill. It may take only 12 years for the Republicans to get there.

If you think politicians clinging to power isn't big news, then you may have forgotten the pure zeal of Gingrich's original revolutionaries. They swept into Washington on the single promise that they would change Capitol Hill. And for a time, they did. Vowing to finish what Ronald Reagan had started, they stood firm on the three principles that defined conservatism: fiscal responsibility, national security and moral values. Reagan, who had a few scandals in his day, didn't always follow his own rules. But his doctrine turned out to be a good set of talking points for winning elections in a closely divided country, and the takeover was completed with the inauguration of George W. Bush as President.

But after controlling both houses of Congress and the White House for most of Bush's six years in office, the party has a governing record that has come unmoored from those Grand Old Party ideals. The exquisite political machinery that aces the elections has begun to betray the platform. To win votes back home, lawmakers have been spending taxpayer money like sailors on leave, producing the biggest budget deficits in U.S. history. And the party's approach to national security has taken the country into a war that most Americans now believe was a mistake and that the government's own intelligence experts say has shaped "a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives."

One of the problems is that after the Republicans got into power, the system began to change them, not just the other way around. Among the first promises the G.O.P. majority broke was the setting of term limits. Their longtime frustrations in the minority didn't necessarily make them any better at reaching across the aisle either. Compromise, that most central of congressional checks and balances, has been largely replaced by a kind of calculated cussedness that has left the G.O.P. isolated and exposed in times of crisis.

The current crisis arrived with a sex scandal that has muddied one of the G.O.P.'s few remaining patches of moral high ground: its defense of family values and personal accountability. Although Hastert and other Republican leaders say they heard last fall about the "overfriendly" approaches of a not-so-secretly-gay Congressman to a 16-year-old former page

Both majority leader John Boehner and campaign chairman Tom Reynolds say they brought it up with Hastert as long ago as last spring—they insist they never imagined anything like the more graphic instant messages that subsequently came to light. But shouldn't they have got chills at learning that a 52-year-old man had sent a teenager a creepy e-mail asking for a "pic of you"? Certainly the page understood what the e-mail meant, which is why he forwarded it in August 2005 to the office of Louisiana Congressman Rodney Alexander, who had sponsored him for the page program. "This freaked me out," the teenager wrote. "Sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick sick."

The House response was political from the start. Last November, Jeff Trandahl, then clerk of the House, told John Shimkus, the Republican head of the board that oversees the page program, about the less incriminating e-mails. But nobody bothered to inform the board's lone Democrat. Shimkus and Trandahl appear to have done nothing more than give Foley a private warning. When Alexander expanded the circle of those aware of the e-mails the following spring, one of the two people he chose to loop in was Reynolds, head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, whose job is managing the election. Foley wasn't even stripped of his co-chairmanship of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.

Even after a batch of truly sleazy instant messages was discovered by abc News, Reynolds' chief of staff Kirk Fordham, who was also a former aide to Foley, tried to solve the political problem by attempting to talk the network out of publishing the worst of the messages. Fordham resigned last week, but he didn't go quietly, the way House leaders had hoped. On his way out, he threw fuel on the political fire by announcing that he had warned Hastert's staff of Foley's "inappropriate behavior" at least three years ago—a charge that Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, denied.

All this suggests that the Republican leaders were motivated much more by fear of electoral fallout than concern for the young pages in their care. And if they were worried that the revelation would hurt their chances of holding on to the House, they turned out to be right. Before the scandal broke, they were beginning to believe that the clouds were finally clearing for them. Their fabled get-out-the-vote and fund-raising operations were nearing full stride just as gas prices were dropping and the national debate was refocusing on their home-court issue of terrorism.

It seems likely that the party will instead need to reckon with sex and scandal throughout the final weeks of the election. As conservative George F. Will, writing in the Washington Post last week, put it, the Foley affair is "a maraschino cherry atop the Democrats' delectable sundae of Republican miseries." In the latest Time poll, conducted the week after the news broke, nearly 80% of respondents said they were aware of the scandal, and two-thirds of them were convinced that Republican leaders had tried to cover it up. Among the registered voters who were polled, 54% said they would be more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate for Congress, compared with 39% who favored the Republican—nearly a perfect reversal of the 51%-40% advantage the G.O.P. enjoyed as recently as August. There was even worse news in a poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center that showed a precipitous drop in Republican support among frequent churchgoers, one of the most important and loyal elements of the G.O.P. base. There's no indication that they are clamoring to be Democrats, but the risk is that they will simply stay home on Election Day.

One of the victims may turn out to be campaign chairman Reynolds, who suddenly found himself running as many as 8 points behind in his upstate New York House-seat re-election bid, which had appeared fairly safe a week earlier. Hastert's job seems secure for the moment, barring any big new revelations, in part because the House Speaker is not merely a party leader; the role was established under the Constitution. It would be difficult to replace Hastert without summoning Congress back into town from the campaign trail. Nor would an ugly fight over who would succeed him be good for the party's prospects in November. Still, Republicans are not particularly eager to be seen with him. His campaign schedule is starting to look a lot lighter, as House candidates across the country are turning down his offers to do fund raisers for them. Even the leadership's much vaunted discipline seems to be in tatters. Majority leader Boehner defended himself last week by attacking Hastert: "My position is, it's in his corner, it's his responsibility." And the third in command, whip Roy Blunt, suggested that things would have been different if he had been informed. Not incidentally, both men are expected to consider making a bid for the top job if Hastert ultimately steps down—and maybe if he doesn't. But by then the job description may be House minority leader.

G.O.P. leaders are so desperate to find someone else to blame that they have been reduced—with no indication that they see the irony—to blaming a vast left-wing conspiracy. "The people who want to see this thing blow up," Hastert told the Chicago Tribune, "are abc News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros," the liberal financier who has become a bogeyman of the right. Hastert went on to say, without producing any proof, that the revelation was the work of Bill Clinton's operatives. But that line of argument, of course, suggests that Republicans would have preferred to keep Foley's secrets locked away, presumably at the pages' peril. And the Democrats for once are showing the good sense to stay out of the way when the other side is self-destructing. Sighed one of the younger House Republican aides who sits in on key meetings: "Foul play on the Democrats' side? If that is the only card left to play, then we are in serious trouble."

The "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Problem

As Hastert and his forces have been trumpeting their charges against the Democrats, a whisper campaign has been launched in Washington to blame an internal culprit: a "velvet mafia" at the upper levels of G.O.P. leadership on Capitol Hill. Foley, that line of argument went, had been protected by gay staff members like Fordham, Trandahl and others whose names were being widely circulated. Says a top aide: "It looks like they may have tried to handle this among themselves because they were similarly situated."

In many ways, that story line is the product of the strains within the party over homosexuality. It's a tension nearly as deep and tortured as those the Democrats grappled with over race a half-century ago, when they tried—unsuccessfully—to keep an uneasy coalition of Southern segregationists and Northern civil rights advocates from tearing their party apart. Even though many of the G.O.P.'s policies have been hostile to gay rights, its leaders have long followed a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy with what pretty much everyone in Washington knows is a sizable number of closeted Republicans among members of Congress, upper-level staff and top party operatives. Says Patrick Sammon, executive vice president of the gay group Log Cabin Republicans: "There are a lot of gay Republicans who are working behind the scenes to advance the priorities of this party."

Until now, Republicans were able to manage the conflict. And they managed it by ignoring it. That even became part of an electoral strategy dating back to the 2000 election that suggested there was nothing to be gained by moderation. In a memo he wrote to Karl Rove, Bush pollster Matthew Dowd estimated that truly independent voters had fallen to a mere sliver of the electorate. There were, Dowd concluded, not enough percentage points in being "a uniter, not a divider." The key to winning in a polarized country was mobilizing the conservative base. That year, Bush refused to meet with the Log Cabin Republicans, choosing instead to see a handpicked group of gay Republicans, but only after the party's nomination was secured. In 2004, even as Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Mary was a potential symbol of the party's openheartedness, Republicans put anti-gay-marriage measures on 11 state ballots to drive voter turnout.

But the Foley scandal is making it difficult for the party to look the other way. Last week some conservatives went so far as to insinuate that Foley proves that every gay person is a pedophile waiting to happen. "You don't need 'gaydar' to understand he has certain dispositions," Utah Congressman Chris Cannon told the Deseret News. Televangelist Pat Robertson recommended that G.O.P. leaders simply explain the situation this way: "Well, this man's gay. He does what gay people do."

The resignations of Foley and Fordham sparked fears that other gay Republicans would also soon be forced out of both their closets and their jobs. "Kirk is the fall guy," says gay-rights activist Hilary Rosen. "It's going to be open season on gay Republicans. It's the right wing's perfect storm. They never wanted gays in their party anyway."

Ruling with an Iron Fist

Oddly enough, it was a sex scandal in 1998 that brought Hastert from obscurity to the Speaker's chair in the first place. Gingrich had been ousted because his brand of fiery leadership had become such a drag on the party that it lost seats rather than gained them amid the Monica Lewinsky scandal.? But his anointed successor, Robert Livingston of Louisiana, suddenly backed out amid revelations of an extramarital affair. That's when the party turned to Hastert, a former high school wrestling coach whose affability and low-key demeanor seemed to guarantee calmer times ahead. He was, after all, the man who said he was too humble to brag about being humble. And yet the way the House has operated under Hastert has been anything but humble. He quickly came to be viewed as little more than a genial front for then majority leader Tom DeLay, whose nickname—the Hammer—pretty much summed up his leadership touch.

"There has been no institutional rule, means, norm or tradition that cannot be set aside to advance a partisan political goal," says Brookings Institution political scientist Thomas Mann, co-author of the recently published book whose title describes Congress as The Broken Branch. In 2003, instead of fashioning a compromise that might woo a few Democrats, Hastert and DeLay held what was supposed to be a 15-min. vote open for three full hours as they squeezed the last Republican votes they needed to pass a bill to provide an expensive prescription drug benefit to the Medicare program. Far more than in the past, they brought bills to the floor with no chance of amendment and allowed the normal appropriations process to be circumvented so that pet projects could be funded without scrutiny. When DeLay faced indictment by a Texas grand jury, Hastert changed the Republican rules so that DeLay could stay on as leader—though in the ensuing outcry, he had to reverse himself. Hastert was successful, however, in purging the ethics committee of its chairman and two Republican members who had reprimanded DeLay for misconduct. Stretching the limits of arcane House rules and shuffling committees around may not seem like earthshaking offenses, but they are the same type of procedural strangleholds and power plays that the G.O.P. had hoped to excise from the body politic 12 years ago.

"The Republican Party of 2006 is a tired, cranky shell of the aggressive, reformist movement that was swept into office in 1994 on a wave of positive change," Frank Luntz, one of the strategists of the G.O.P. takeover, wrote this week in a column for Time.com. "I worked for them. They were friends of mine. These Republicans are not those Republicans."

On policy matters, Hastert's leadership approach has been to act as though the Democrats—and sometimes the Senate—simply do not exist. He squeezes hard-edged partisan bills through the House to please the G.O.P. base, even though they have no chance of ever getting through the Senate and reaching the President's desk. "There have been numerous occasions when bipartisan approaches, which would have benefited our conference more than Democrats, have been rebuffed by the Speaker," complains a senior Republican aide, who says he likes and respects the Speaker. "His strategy seems to be, 'Well, don't worry about it. We'll blame [Democratic Leader Nancy] Pelosi.' That might work in isolated circumstances, but when your party's numbers start to tank, and people want to see that you can govern, that approach is not a solid one."

Party leaders concede the point that their revolution hasn't lived up to everything they promised. But they say voters still see the difference between where the parties stand. Former Republican chairman Ed Gillespie—one of the authors of the Contract with America, on which House Republicans ran in 1994—says, "Our party is still better when it comes to spending than the Democrats, stronger on national security than the Democrats and more likely to share concerns about the coarsening of our culture that a majority of Americans share than the Democrats are." Strategists are putting an optimistic face even on the effects of the Foley scandal, saying their internal polling shows little movement against the G.O.P. Will the Democrats behave any differently if they retake Congress in November? Some would undoubtedly try to use their majority power to exact revenge for Republican overreach. And history has shown them to be just as capable of the type of ideological drift that is tearing at the G.O.P.

For now, though, the question on everyone's mind is, How do the Republicans find their way from here? A number of conservatives have begun to wonder aloud if it wouldn't be better for the party to lose the House or Senate in November. If the revolutionaries have become the redcoats, then perhaps it's time for another uprising. Send the Republicans back into the wilderness so they can forage for the kind of fresh ideas and guerrilla tactics that made them such a force during their previous march on Washington. They could very well be ready in time for the presidential election in 2008. And while they're out there on the campaign trail, they just might rally around their old general, who will be looking to cap his own hardscrabble journey from political pariah to rehabbed revolutionary. That general, of course, is none other than former Speaker Gingrich, who has been spotted in Iowa, New Hampshire and other battleground states for more than a year now, taking potshots at the Establishment he helped create and rearming himself to storm the next barricade.

—With reporting by Mike Allen, Melissa August, Perry Bacon Jr., Brian Bennett, Timothy J. Burger, Massimo Calabresi, James Carney and Ana Marie Cox/ Washington and Jeffrey Ressner/Simi Valley



Copyright © 2006 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited

"This scandal is like the Cliffs' Notes version of a more complicated treatise on how the Bush movement operates. Every one of their corrupt attributes is vividly on display here:

The absolute refusal ever to admit error. The desperate clinging to power above all else. The efforts to cloud what are clear matters of wrongdoing with irrelevant sideshows. And the parade of dishonest and just plainly inane demonization efforts to hide and distract from their wrongdoing: hence, the pages are manipulative sex vixens; a shadowy gay cabal is to blame; the real criminals are those who exposed the conduct, not those who engaged in it; liberals created the whole scandal; George Soros funded the whole thing; a Democratic Congressman did something wrong 23 years ago; one of the pages IM'd with Foley as a "hoax", and on and on.

There has been a virtual carousel -- as there always is -- of one pathetic, desperate attempt after the next to deflect blame and demonize those who are pointing out the wrongdoing. This is what they always do, on every issue. The difference here is that everyone can see it, and so nothing is working," - Glenn Greenwald, calling it like it is.

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

N. Korea, Iraq, Foley
Anything in Common?

Now with the North Korea crisis erupting, it strikes me that there are some similarities among Bush's crises.

In all three cases--North Korea, Iraq and Foleygate-- the Republican establishment knew something was wrong but failed or declined to address the problem. And the reason for the inaction was mostly a desire to keep the public in the dark so as better to win elections.

In North Korea, Bush knew that there was a brewing problem. He was not honest with the American people about it. He needed to work with China, which asked for such cooperation. He did not. In part this is because of his dislike of negotiating even indirectly with a member of the "axis of evil." In part it was about winning elections by posturing.

In Iraq, Bush knew that the security situation was collapsing and that his policies were failing. He needed to be honest with the American people about the growing crisis. He was not. He needed to work with Iran and Syria, among other neighbors. He did not. Again, he was paralyzed once he declared Iran "evil." And, again, it was about winning elections by putting lipstick on the pig.

In the case of Foley, the Republican leadership in Congress knew there was a problem. They needed to be honest with the American people about it. They were not. They needed to cooperate with their Democratic colleagues in addressing these ethics lapses. They did not. They covered up the problem and went it alone. It was about winning elections. They actually cared more about Foley's seat than they did about his excesses.

A kind of party unilateralism and disregard for the realities, along with a singleminded pursuit of victory at the ballot box (and all the wealth it can bring if properly arranged) seem at work in all three cases.

http://www.juancole.com/

Either that, or it's distraction on distraction on distraction.

Foleygate distracted from the failure in Iraq, North Korea distracted from the failure of Republican "morals and values"

What's next? What in the hell will distract from Bush's utter failure with North Korea?

Rove's "October Surprise?"

Whichever the crisis, it just serves to highlight another Bush administration FAILURE.

An open letter to the Republican Party


Dear Republican Party,

For several years we (loyal conservatives) have supported the Republican Party because of its promises to return our country to its prior greatness of limited government and numerous freedoms, most notably economic and educational.

You really captured our hearts in 1994 with your proclaimed Contract with America, which we in turn responded by overwhelmingly voting republicans into office. In case you have forgotten, in the Contract with America you promised to:

FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress;


SECOND, select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;


THIRD, cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;


FOURTH, limit the terms of all committee chairs;


FIFTH, ban the casting of proxy votes in committee;


SIXTH, require committee meetings to be open to the public;


SEVENTH, require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;


EIGHTH, guarantee an honest accounting of our Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting. [1]

Granted, there is opposition from the Democrat Party, and thus not all segments of your plan could be implemented, but some of your actions have been downright hostile to what you promised. Take for instance the first issue of making all laws apply to Congress as they do the public and explain to us how the new campaign-finance law does not violate this? It seems that we can no longer speak freely 60 days before an election, yet I do not remember the same constraints being put on members of Congress.

As for your second plank, who needs an independent auditing firm to audit Congress for waste when the waste is as blatantly obvious as it is today? Then again I guess that $200+ million dollar bridge to Gravina Island in Alaska to serve approximately 50 people is a good use of OUR hard earned dollars. I wonder if members of Congress would think the bridge was as necessary if they had to donate the money themselves? Then to top it all off, Tom DeLay comes out and proclaims victory, telling us that there is no waste left to cut from the budget. [2] This is an absolute insult to our intelligence. It is safe assume that any attempt to instill zero baseline budgeting, thereby requiring agencies to figure out each year what they will need for the next rather then just adjusting upwards, has also been relocated to the trash heap of history. Well, so much for your eighth plank.

On a more positive note you did cut taxes, as miniscule as those cuts were. However, you still have not made those cuts permanent. Returning back to the Contract with America, you seemed to have abandoned any attempt to pass a law requiring a supermajority to raise taxes as you promised in your seventh plank. And thanks to the absolute insane spending that has occurred in recent years, any attempt to pass such a bill would now be futile.

Understandably, new needs emerge in our ever-changing world and sometimes issues that were important years ago need to take a back seat for the time being, but unlike the democrats the Republican Party rarely ever revisits them. For instance, what ever happened to the call to end the Department of Education and return control to the states? Are we to believe that increasing spending and national regulations will achieve that outcome? What about the spending for the arts, also once slated for elimination? Apparently, increasing spending on that program will achieve that result?

Speaking of new needs, how about our borders? It seems that no matter how hard the nation cries to have both the northern and southern borders secured, the GOP chooses to turn a deaf ear. Is it that the Republican Party is afraid that the will not capture the Hispanic vote if they do? Is that how one builds a party, by focusing on groups rather then ideas? Incidentally, if the GOP truly wants to make inroads to minority groups why not revisit the idea of school vouchers? This is an idea-based solution that does not focus so much on a group of people as it does the idea of freedom itself.

Repeatedly we have been told to support the Republican Party with phrases like "if we only get the White House" or "increase our numbers in Congress," and my personal favorite "this election is too important," because of the War on Terror or possibility of Supreme Court nominations. Well, the War on Terror would be more believable if the borders were actually closed. As for the Supreme Court, we were given a candidate, Harriet Miers, who had a suspect past at best concerning her compatibility with our beliefs, yet we were told to trust Bush on this nominee? Seriously, after never using his veto pen once and expanding government in a manner that would even make the likes of LBJ and FDR blush were we really supposed to go on trust?

We did not support the Republican Party so that we could get an arguably watered-down version of the democrats. And frankly, watered-down may be a courteous way of describing the GOP's actions since the Contract with America. Unless the Republican Party wants to return to its long history of being the minority party it had better stop ignoring the promises that put it into the majority in the first place.

Sincerely,

Concerned Conservative

NOTES:


[1] Republican Contract with America, located at: http://www.house.gov/house/Contract/CONTRACT.html



[2] Amy Fagan and Stephen Dinan, DeLay declares 'victory' in war on budget fat, The Washington Times, September 14, 2005, located at: http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20...20153-3878r.htm


http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/dipasquale/051106

I guess the so called "conservative wing" is getting ready to stay home and help elect democrats to take over the house for another 40 years.

holy crap! You mean the word "conservative" might actually mean something to somebody somewhere?

It means repuslickan. Probably the one word you know the meaning of.

I doubt if it makes any difference who they vote for.

A combination of shell shock from Perot, Buchannan and Robertson presidential runs combined with Reagan's 11th commandment and the prospect of overwhelming retaliation has effectively silenced or marginalized anyone fitting that description.

They are just starting to yell.

What would you know or care about it?

Perhaps the republicans should start a third party. One with dino republican ideals against the one with the neoliberal corporate ideals. See who wins.

You think I'm wrong?


I care about it because I want the Republican party to crash and burn. They think they're kings but they're just white collar corporate criminals playing RISK.

Thats what they are now. Creatures beneath contempt. Big mouth hypocrites who cry and whine incessantly in an attempt to deflect blame. To listen to hate radio you would think they were still the minority party.

They are the minority party. They may be better at getting voters out, but in the general population, they are most definately the minority.

Dear Concerned,

Keep on voting for us, foo. We're all you've got.

RNC

Hey! What a concept.

I think the REAL conservatives, not the faith based neoliberal neocon type should take a look at the democratic party platform in '08. They may find a home.

it will be interesting to watch and see if any of the "conservatives" here, even the so-called "libertarians" amongst us, even bother to discuss any of the points in Sams post.

I for one wont hold my breath.

chirpits cricking..

Good letter... I agree.

Maybe but talk is cheap. I refer again to the Republican Contract On America.

Didn't vote for em, actually specifically voted against Newt when I lived in his district in 1996. I don't have a problem with any of the 11 points from the CWA but not holding my breath for the Rs or Ds to actually run the Federal gubment under them rules...

You might be a Freeping idiot if...


You believe George W. Bush and his administration are "conservative" and that anyone who opposes them is a "liberal."

Likewise, you consider Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, David Horowitz, Charles Krauthammer, and their ilk to be "conservative" just because they bash Democrats and "liberals."

You automatically assume that anyone who opposes any US military action is a "liberal."

You think France and Germany are "treacherous" and "cowardly" because they hesitated to join the US war on Iraq on the grounds that the evidence for Saddam's banned weapons was scanty.

You believe George W. Bush was right on the money when he said that the 9/11 attackers "hate us for our freedom."

You believe Saddam Hussein and Iraq had anything whatsoever to do with the 9/11 attacks.

You STILL don't believe George W. Bush and his administration lied in order to sucker the American public into supporting an invasion of Iraq.

You think professional wrestling is real.

You believe it's a coincidence that all of the key figures behind the Bush administration's push to war on Iraq are either pro-Israel Jews or pro-Israel "Christian Zionists."

You agree that "Israel's fight is America's fight."

You are certain that the Israelis, with their high-tech fighter planes, attack helicopters, and well-funded military, are much braver than the Palestinians, who must resist Israeli occupation with rusty old rifles, homemade explosives, and whatever else they can scrounge up.

You tell yourself that Israel's attack on the USS Liberty was an accident.

You've never heard of the Lavon Affair.

You've never heard about the five Israelis who were arrested after being seen laughing and celebrating as they filmed the WTC attacks.

You think the US federal government gives a rodent's rectum about the Constitution.

You think the Constitution "guarantees" your rights. [Only force can do that.]

You worship the military and law enforcement.

You tell yourself that the government will get your military rifle when it pries it from your "cold, dead fingers," even though you've never had the courage to disobey any gun laws in the past.

You think the US military is fighting for Americans' freedom in Iraq.

You believe everything you see on the television, especially if it's on Fox News.

You think Free Republic is actually FREE and not one of the most highly-censored bulletin boards on the Internet.

Hastert duped into letting stranger inside

(http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/91561,CST-NWS-hastert11.article)

October 11, 2006

BY LYNN SWEET Washington Bureau Chief

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, with his job on the line because of the spiraling Mark Foley cyberspace page sex scandal, was duped Tuesday into letting a stranger into his Plano home -- a serious security breach.

Hastert literally let his guard down and allowed in his house a hustling, self-promoting evangelist little known in this country, the Houston-based K.A. Paul, who at 7:30 a.m. arrived at the speaker's home with a camera-wielding associate.

How Paul and his aide, Dennis Ryan, got to Hastert's door is a tale of apparent chance. How the publicity-hungry Paul and Ryan walked through it was a matter of a "frank discussion" later in the day with the federal security detail assigned to Hastert around the clock.

All top congressional leaders are provided security, with the protective force surrounding Hastert most visible because as speaker, he is the third in line to the presidency.

Hastert was led to believe he was meeting with a supporter. He was surprised to find out otherwise, the Sun-Times has learned. Paul said he asked Hastert to resign. He also said he prayed with the speaker and "laid hands" on him after a 40-minute meeting.


Coincidence led to meeting?
Paul, 43, born a Hindu in India, founded a Christian international ministry called Global Peace Initiatives. In a probe of Paul that ran June 9 in the Houston Press, Paul is called in the magazine article "an egomaniac with a doctored past."
Paul told the Sun-Times he prefers the title "world's most popular" minister.

Ryan said he arranged the meeting with Hastert in what seems a massive coincidence. Ryan told of driving to tiny Plano Monday night from South Bend, Ind., where Paul had been touring following a spiritual call. Ryan said he was eating at a restaurant in Plano when Hastert happened to walk in with his security guards. He introduced himself and got Paul on the phone.

Hastert talked to Paul and apparently decided to make the Tuesday date with him without consulting his advisors. Paul arrived at the Hastert home with an Associated Press reporter, who did not go inside.


'Cordial discussion'
Paul made public pictures he took of Hastert in a knick-knack filled area of his home.
Hastert spokesman Brad Hahn said, "The speaker had a cordial discussion but disagrees with his point of view."

The Paul matter is a headache to Hastert compared to whether there was any coverup in the Foley scandal.

Hastert chief of staff Scott Palmer has denied an accusation by former Foley chief of staff Kirk Fordham that Palmer was told years ago of Foley's inordinate interest in pages -- not November 2005.

In Aurora, Hastert said any staffer who was part of a cover-up would be fired. "If they did cover something up, then they should not continue to have their jobs," he said.

His comments came after he addressed a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Aurora.

Hastert's second stop was at Clarity Communications, a high-tech Aurora-based firm providing specialized Push-To-Talk services for cell phones, including some that could assist rescue workers in emergencies, a Clarity spokeswoman said.

Trailed by photographers and news cameras, Hastert toured the firm's Aurora plant for about 15 minutes with CEO Jim Fuentes, then spent about 10 minutes in a closed-door session with company executives.

Contributing: Dan Rozek

What an idiot.

farkoff.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound ...that tells me to fork off.

Slimey pigpoopy.

Blessed are the meek, for they can go farkoff.

True, the average shlump wants all the free stuff Dems promise, and they want somebody else to pay for it. (that would be the "elite")

How about "have a wonderful and productive day"?

I'm much more direct. I have been called the King of Tact.

Katz and the other dittoheads are about as useless as the Republican party.

Actually the Republican party is even LESS THAN useless.

Now we have a nuclear North Korea.

Good job Republican party.

Republican Cognitive Dissonance

13 Oct 2006 09:34 am


Earlier this week, secretary of state Condi Rice and First Lady Laura Bush attended a State Department ceremony for the new global AIDS coordinator. His name is Mark Dybul. Money quote from USA Today:

At a State Department ceremony this week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warmly acknowledged the family members of Mark Dybul, whom she was swearing in as the nation's new global AIDS coordinator.

As first lady Laura Bush looked on, Rice singled out his partner, Jason Claire, and Claire's mother. Rice referred to her as Dybul's "mother-in-law."

There you have it. Among decent elite Republicans, there is often great acceptance of gay people as individuals, and of their families and spouses. "Mother-in-law" is itself an affirmation of marriage for gay couples; and the secretary of state just used those words. And yet her party officially regards gay unions as, in James Dobson's words, a prelude to the "destruction of the earth". So which is it, guys? Let us know some time, will you?

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/

Rep. Bob Ney Pleads Guilty to Bribery
Oct 13 11:33 AM US/Eastern

By PETE YOST
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON






Rep. Bob Ney pleaded guilty Friday in the Jack Abramoff influence- peddling investigation, the first lawmaker to confess to crimes in a scandal that has stained the Republican-controlled Congress and the Bush administration.

Standing before Judge Ellen S. Huvelle, Ney pleaded guilty to conspiracy and making false statements. He acknowledged taking money, gifts and favors in return for official actions on behalf of Abramoff and his clients.

The 52-year-old lawmaker faces a maximum of 10 years in prison. Huvelle said prosecutors had agreed to recommend a term of 27 months, and said federal guidelines suggest a fine of between $5,000 and $60,000.

Despite his guilty pleas, Ney did not resign his seat in Congress. His lawyer, Mark Touhey, told the judge he would do so before sentencing on Jan. 19. Under the Constitution, he'll be gone before then. His term expires when the new Congress is sworn in at noon on Jan. 3.

In a statement distributed to reporters after the court session, Ney said, "I accept responsibility for my actions and I am prepared to face the consequences of what I have done."

Ney is the latest in a string of once-influential men convicted in a scandal that so far has caught several lobbyists and two members of the Bush administration.

Abramoff, the Republican super-lobbyist, admitted guilt in January after secretly cooperating with prosecutors for weeks.

Two former aides to Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader, have also pleaded guilty, as has Ney's former chief of staff.

Additionally, Roger Stillwell, a former Interior Department official, pleaded guilty in August to a misdemeanor charge for not reporting tickets he received from Abramoff.

And former White House official David Safavian, who had been the Bush administration's top procurement official, was convicted of covering up his dealings with Abramoff. He is scheduled for sentencing on Oct. 27.

Ney confessed his wrongdoing in a federal courthouse a few blocks distant from the Capitol, where until recently he wielded a chairman's gavel.

The Ohio Republican did not speak with reporters as he entered or left the courtroom. It was his first public appearance since quietly entering an alcohol rehabilitation program last month.

The written statement referred to that. "The treatment and counseling I have started have been very helpful, but I know that I am not done yet and that I have more work to do to deal with my alcohol dependency," he said.

Inside the courtroom, Huvelle spent nearly a half-hour asking the sandy-haired congressman a series of questions about whether he understood the charges and agreed that he had taken money, gifts and favors in return for official actions on behalf of Abramoff and his clients.

At the end she asked him how he pleaded to the conspiracy count, he replied, "I plead guilty your honor."

Asked how he pleaded to the count of false statements, he replied, "I plead guilty, your honor."


http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/10/13/D8KNR3TO0.html


Note: Ney was my Congresscritter when I lived I Ohio. Too bad. So sad.

Alcoholism must be the excuse of the day. Alcohol made me a piece o' sheit whitecollar criminal.

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/ts_more.p...=73201_0_10_0_M

Watch somebody try the 18th Amendment again.