Category: Issues of the Day

“Still, Bush was insane to veto S-CHIP, not only because it’s become a necessary program, but also because the outrage the veto causes should help grease the skids for universal health care. What a lucky break that Bush doesn’t seem to get that.”

Timothy Noah – Slate Magazine

“President Bush, in a sharp confrontation with Congress, on Wednesday vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have dramatically expanded children’s health insurance.”

AP

“Every Senate Republican facing a difficult reelection bid bolted from Bush yesterday.”

The Washington Post reporting on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program vote.

Voting their consciences, every one.

The vote was 67-29. In the House, it passed 265-159.

The children’s health bill, in contrast, has the support of moderate Republicans and conservatives, business interests and even abortion opponents such as the Roman Catholic Church. The measure has the backing of the health insurance industry and children’s and disease-control advocates, most of the nation’s governors, AARP and the American Medical Association.

But not the worst president ever, who threatens his third veto.

Guess which Senator voted against the Matthew Shepard Act, which expands federal hate crime laws to include violence based on a victim’s sexual orientation, gender and disability?

Why Larry Craig, of course.

Bill Clinton on the politics of distraction:

CLINTON: Oh yeah. That’s right. “I don’t have to deal with Iraq. I don’t have to tell anybody what I’m going to do. Everything we do in Iraq is obviously right because they said this about Petraeus,” as if it was the only issue in the whole wide world. Come on, these Republicans were all upset about Petraeus—this was one newspaper ad—these are the people that ran a television ad in Georgia with Max Cleland, who lost half his body in Vietnam, in the same ad with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. That’s what Republicans do. And the person that rode into the Senate on that ad was there voting to condemn the Democrats over the Petraeus ad. I mean, these are the people that funded the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The President appointed one of the principal funders of the Swift Boat ads to be an ambassador, but they’re really about the Petraeus one. It’s okay to question John Kerry’s patriotism on the blatantly dishonest claims by people that didn’t know what they are talking about. So it was just bait and switch. It was “Oh, thank goodness, I can take this little word here and ignore what we’ve done in Iraq and what we’re gonna do and the outrageous way that we’re gained political power by smearing John Kerry.”

Via Crooks and Liars.

Who is this angry Clinton guy, and where was he 1993-2001?

Saying it had the right to block “controversial or unsavory” text messages, Verizon Wireless has rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group, to make Verizon’s mobile network available for a text-message program.

The other leading wireless carriers have accepted the program, which allows people to sign up for text messages from Naral by sending a message to a five-digit number known as a short code.

The New York Times

Saying he had the right to deny his business to a common carrier that abuses its power and abrogates freedom of speech, NewMexiKen has decided to leave Verizon after nine years, iPhone or no iPhone.

(You know, if every Verizon Wireless customer who finds the company’s position abhorrent were to call and threaten to quit, even as a bluff, it might get these arrogant bastards to (1) reconsider and (2) be more careful before they pull this un-American crap again. This isn’t about abortion, this is about freedom of expression. They can’t limit voice communications, why can they limit text?)

Update 9:25 a.m. MDT Thursday:

They’ve changed their pointy little minds.

Verizon Reverses Itself on Abortion Rights Messages

[MSNBC guest host David] Shuster: “Let’s talk about the public trust. You represent, of course, a district in western Tennessee. What was the name of the last solider from your district who was killed in Iraq?”

[Rep. Marsha] Blackburn:”The name of the last soldier killed in Iraq uh – from my district I – I do not know his name -”

Shuster: “Ok, his name was Jeremy Bohannon, he was killed August the 9th, 2007. How come you didn’t know the name?”

Blackburn: “I – I, you know, I – I do not know why I did not know the name…” [Snip]

Shuster: “But you weren’t appreciative enough to know the name of this young man, he was 18 years old who was killed, and yet you can say chapter and verse about what’s going on with the New York Times and Move On.org.” [Snip]

Shuster: “But don’t you understand, the problems that a lot of people would have, that you’re so focused on an ad — when was the last time a New York Times ad ever killed somebody? I mean, here we have a war that took the life of an 18 year old kid, Jeremy Bohannon from your district, and you didn’t even know his name.”

Crooks and Liars has the video.

The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials.
…

The DHS database generally includes “passenger name record” (PNR) information, as well as notes taken during secondary screenings of travelers. PNR data — often provided to airlines and other companies when reservations are made — routinely include names, addresses and credit-card information, as well as telephone and e-mail contact details, itineraries, hotel and rental car reservations, and even the type of bed requested in a hotel.

The records the Identity Project obtained confirmed that the government is receiving data directly from commercial reservation systems, such as Galileo and Sabre, but also showed that the data, in some cases, are more detailed than the information to which the airlines have access.

The Washington Post

But Homeland Security says it’s only going to retain your personal information for 15 years, so what the heck.

Though there is this:

A federal agent for the U.S. Department of Commerce is facing charges of illegally accessing computer information about a former girlfriend who jilted him and lying to government officials about it.

Benjamin Robinson, 40, of Oakland, was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury in San Jose on one count of unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and another count of making a false statement to his employer about his alleged acts. Robinson was a special agent for the U.S. Department of Commerce, Office of Export Enforcement, Bureau of Industry and Security.

Robinson is accused of logging on to the government’s internal computer system at least 163 times over a period of months between mid-2003 and mid-2004 to track the travel patterns of the girlfriend who left him, and her family.

San Jose Mercury News

Charles Pierce gets on a roll not to be missed. Here’s just a sample:

Not to put too fine a point on it, but has anybody checked to see if Harry Reid is, you know, actually alive? Conscious? Ambulatory? Clothed and in his right mind? Put a mirror under his nose for a second, will you? If you’re keeping score at home, the Democratic majority of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body this week failed to get the WGDB to pass a bill to give overstretched soldiers what amounts to their statutorily required stateside respite. It also found itself unable to endorse the general concept of habeas corpus, thereby putting the WGDB somewhere up the track behind John Lackland of England on the subject of civil liberties. It also then — with six more votes than it was able to muster for soldier’s relief, and with 22 Democratic senators forming a eunuch chorus — resolutely got pissed off at a newspaper ad.

A tearful [San Diego] Mayor Jerry Sanders made a dramatic shift yesterday, explaining that he can no longer oppose same-sex marriages because he does not want to deny justice to people like his daughter, who is a lesbian.
…

He began by explaining his refusal to veto the council’s decision, saying his beliefs had “evolved significantly” since 2005, when he established his stance on civil unions during his first mayoral campaign.

In the time since, he said he realized he could not accept “the concept of a separate-but-equal institution.” Because of that, he continued, he was unwilling to send the message to anyone that “they were less important, less worthy or less deserving of the rights and responsibilities of marriage.”

The mayor, now crying openly, noted that he has close family members and friends in the gay and lesbian community, including staff members and “my daughter Lisa.”

San Diego Union-Tribune

He had promised to veto the measure right up until it reached his desk.

Of course, he is up for reelection next year and did almost lose to a surfboard shop owner last time.

NewMexiKen realizes you don’t come here for news about Iraq, but I thought these two excerpts from George Packer in last week’s New Yorker provided a succinct status report.

But the inadequacy of the surge is already clear, if one honestly assesses the daily lives of Iraqis. Though the streets of Baghdad are marginally less lethal than they were during 2006, sixty thousand Iraqis a month continue to leave their homes, according to the International Organization for Migration, joining the two million who have become refugees and the two million others displaced inside Iraq. The militias, which have become less conspicuous as they wait out the surge, are nevertheless growing in strength, as they extend their control over neighborhoods like Ahmed’s. In the backstreets, the local markets, the university classrooms, and other realms beyond the reach of American observers or American troops, there is no rule of law, only the rule of the gun. The lives of most Iraqis are dominated by a complex array of militias and criminal gangs that are ruthlessly competing with one another, and whose motives for killing are more often economic or personal than religious or ideological.

The natural life of the surge will end in 2008, when the brigades sent earlier this year will finish their fifteen-month tours and return home. After that, it will become virtually impossible to maintain current troop levels—at least, for an Administration that has shown no willingness to disturb the lives of large numbers of Americans in order to wage the war. Young officers are leaving the Army at alarming rates, and, if the deployments of troops who have already served two or three tours are extended from fifteen to eighteen months, the Pentagon fears that the ensuing attrition might wreck the Army for a generation. Activating the National Guard or the reserves for longer periods could cause the bottom to fall out of public support for the war. Beyond these measures, there are simply no more troops available.

I’m still reading it, but it seems to me that Packer’s whole report — A Reporter at Large: Planning for Defeat — might be worth your time.

A good short essay on the Larry Craig matter by Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker includes this:

Besides snark, the overriding theme of public discussion of the Craig case has been hypocrisy. “I’m not gay,” the Senator insists, and if gayness is an identity as well as an innate predilection he may be right. He is, however, evidently homosexual. Yet he supports permitting job discrimination against homosexuals, opposes letting them serve in the military, favors a constitutional amendment forbidding them to marry, and voted for an Idaho ballot measure that proscribes gay civil unions. He is like the many politicians who have smoked marijuana themselves but oppose legalizing it even for medical use. Hypocritical? Yes. But, in both cases, the fundamental moral problem is not the inconsistency between private actions and professed beliefs. The problem is the professed beliefs.

Matt Taibbi reports on The Great Iraq Swindle. [Video]

It’s your money. Well, it is if you’re rich, because we’ve learned today that only the rich pay taxes.

Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, “The policy was to keep the army intact; didn’t happen.”

But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush’s former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army’s dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’ ” But, he added, “Again, Hadley’s got notes on all of this stuff,” referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser.

In Book, Bush Peeks Ahead to His Legacy – New York Times

A previously undisclosed exchange of letters shows that President Bush was told in advance by his top Iraq envoy in May 2003 of a plan to “dissolve Saddam’s military and intelligence structures,” a plan that the envoy, L. Paul Bremer, said referred to dismantling the Iraqi Army.

Mr. Bremer provided the letters to The New York Times on Monday after reading that Mr. Bush was quoted in a new book as saying that American policy had been “to keep the army intact” but that it “didn’t happen.”

Envoy’s Letter Counters Bush on Iraq Army – New York Times

The Times has copies of the letters (second link).

Excerpts from Paul Krugman’s column today in The New York Times ($):

Today, much of the Gulf Coast remains in ruins. Less than half the federal money set aside for rebuilding, as opposed to emergency relief, has actually been spent, in part because the Bush administration refused to waive the requirement that local governments put up matching funds for recovery projects — an impossible burden for communities whose tax bases have literally been washed away.

On the other hand, generous investment tax breaks, supposedly designed to spur recovery in the disaster area, have been used to build luxury condominiums near the University of Alabama’s football stadium in Tuscaloosa, 200 miles inland.

There’s a powerful political faction in this country that’s determined to draw exactly the wrong lesson from the Katrina debacle — namely, that the government always fails when it attempts to help people in need, so it shouldn’t even try. “I don’t want the people who ran the Katrina cleanup to manage our health care system,” says Mitt Romney, as if the Bush administration’s practice of appointing incompetent cronies to key positions and refusing to hold them accountable no matter how badly they perform — did I mention that Mr. Chertoff still has his job? — were the way government always works.
…

Future historians will, without doubt, see Katrina as a turning point. The question is whether it will be seen as the moment when America remembered the importance of good government, or the moment when neglect and obliviousness to the needs of others became the new American way.

At LAX yesterday:

I walked from the arrival gate towards baggage claim, and when I was about halfway there, all of a sudden about a dozen or more TSA personnel and private security staff appeared, shouting STOP WHERE YOU ARE. FREEZE. DO NOT MOVE. Not just at me, but all of the travelers who happened to be wandering through the hallway at that moment.

Some of the TSA guards then backed up against walls in the hallway, and sort of barked at anyone who tried to move a few feet away from their “spot,” like towards chairs to sit down or whatever.

…

After 30 minutes, the TSA people said, okay, you may leave now.

Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing

30 minutes! That’s too long for a game of statue.

An interesting piece by David Ehrenstein in the L.A. Times explains the signalling thing that lead to Larry Craig’s arrest. Craig’s objectives were clear.

Ehrenstein also includes this:

To get there, let’s climb into the Wayback Machine and return to Oct. 7, 1964. That’s when Walter Jenkins, one of the most senior aides in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration, was arrested for soliciting sex in the men’s room of a Washington YMCA. Being that it was three weeks before the election, LBJ suspected some kind of Republican foul play, but the GOP chose not to exploit the incident.

The Jenkins affair put “homosexuality” on the nation’s front pages in a way it hadn’t been since Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s famous report in 1948.

Jenkins, of course, had to quit the White House after his arrest. Some well-placed observers believe that his leaving was a significant loss to the nation. Jenkins was the one person who understood LBJ well enough to say “no” to the man. Some believed he could have kept the president from his worst excesses including unlimited escalation in Vietnam. Most likely not, but still the whole Jenkins business was sad.

Attorney General Gonzales didn’t give a reason for his departure during his 120 second resignation appearance. Perhaps, as one wag put it, it’s to spend more time with his defense attorney.

Or maybe less time. I’m thinking that, maybe, just maybe, the resignation was part of a “go quietly, go now, and we won’t take your perjury to the grand jury.”

Or not.