The national media has truly adopted this dissent-quashing dichotomy created by the Bush White House: one is either a follower of George Bush who praises his war and terrorism policies, or one is an enemy of the United States who is on the side of Al Qaeda. That is not hyperbole. This is the manipulative and decidedly un-American view that is re-enforced again and again

. In the lead-up to the 2004 Presidential elections, it became the conventional wisdom of prominent "journalists" like Matthews that the bin Laden was rooting for Kerry to win. The bin Laden video which emerged in the days before the election was described by these journalists as proof that bin Laden was endorsing, and even campaigning for, John Kerry. Every cable news show, including Matthews', featured commentary equating bin Laden’s video with the Democratic Party’s foreign policy views.

This is all part of a broad, ongoing and potent campaign to equate opposition to George Bush with being pro-terrorist, and the origin of this campaign is the Administration itself. Bush himself thus uses the language of treason -- treason -- to instruct us that we are permitted to criticize his policies only on the narrowest grounds and with the utmost respect, otherwise we are guilty of aiding the enemy:

[snip]

From the NSA scandal to the war in Iraq, the President and his followers repeatedly accuse those who oppose the President of aiding the terrorists and being on the side of Al Qaeda. And it is this smear – that anyone who opposes Bush is not just weak on national security but literally a supporter of the terrorists – that is the only “argument” which Bush followers have and it’s the only one they’ve needed. They have won two straight national elections wielding this McCarthyite filth and with the 2006 elections approaching, they are bidding for a trifecta...

I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.

The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it. In 1968, Gene McCarthy was the little boy who said out loud, "Look, the emperor isn't wearing any clothes." Bobby Kennedy -- rough, tough Bobby Kennedy -- didn't do it. Just this quiet man trained by Benedictines who liked to quote poetry.

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

I listen to people like Rahm Emanuel superciliously explaining elementary politics to us clueless naifs outside the Beltway ("First, you have to win elections"). Can't you even read the damn polls?

1. Attack your opponent's perceived strength aggressively and early;

2. Put the opponent in a defensive, rather than offensive posture on their issue(s) of perceived strength;

3. Always use surrogates rather than your candidate to stay above the mess;

4. Work with the surrogates and financial backers to feed the media beast;

5. Every day the media spends on non-issues is another day your candidate escapes damage.

"There's nothing in this from the Koran. He's, by his own standards, a faithful Muslim," Lawrence said. "He quotes scripture in defense of his actions. There's no quotation from the Koran in the excerpts we got, no reference to specific events, no reference to past atrocities."

While the CIA confirms the voice on the tape is bin Laden's, Lawrence questions when it was recorded. He says the timing of its release could be to divert attention from last week's U.S. air strike in Pakistan. The strike targeted bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, and killed four leading al Qaeda figures along with civilians.

Lawrence believes faulty Pakistani intelligence led to the strike and the civilian deaths, and the tape was leaked by Pakistani authorities to divert attention from their mistake.

"It led to a failed military operation where America got blamed, but they people who are really to blame are the ones who provided the intelligence," Lawrence said. "I think this is an effort to say were not going look at this terrible incident that happened."

MATTHEWS: Why is he doing it? Why is he trying to track what he picks up in the internet and from the media as the lingo of the left in America, like Moore? Why would he start to talk like Moore? People misunderstood what I said last night. I think he’s getting some advice from people, he’s getting some lingo, some wordage that he hears working in the United States about this thing for war profiteers and he’s jumping on every opportunity. Is that what you are saying Joe?

SCARBOROUGH: Listen, if somebody can’t look at the words that Bin Laden said last night and match them up with what Michael Moore said, with what John Kerry said on Face the Nation with he said Americans were terrorizing Iraqi women and children in their homes hat night, which is what Bin Laden in effect said. What Ted Kennedy has been saying. Remember he said after Abu Ghraib that Saddam’s torture chambers were turned over to — chambers were turned over to new management, U.S. troops, that’s the same thing Bin Laden hit on.

A Salinas pastor accused of sexually molesting his adopted daughter and a handicapped girl pleaded guilty less than two months after authorities began investigating him.

Donald Domelle, 65, pastor of the Baptist Temple of Salinas, admitted to two felony counts of lewd conduct with a child and agreed to a minimum of 15 years in prison Thursday in a remarkably swift case that kept one young woman and a teenager from recounting in court their stories of repeated sexual abuse at the pastor's hands.

"(Domelle) has accepted responsibility from the beginning," said defense attorney John Coniglio. The pastor was arrested at his church Dec. 21 after Sheriff's investigators looked into allegations that he sexually molested a 16-year-old girl that prosecutors described as "educationally challenged."

Initially, Domelle denied the allegations, said prosecutor Gary Thelander, but during a two and a half hour interview with sheriff's deputies he admitted to having sex with the first known victim.

At the conclusion of the interview, Thelander said, Domelle asked to write a letter of apology to his victims.

"He ultimately was the source of the second victim," Thelander said.
Seven days later, investigators contacted Domelle's 25-year-old adopted daughter, who was living in Northern California with her biological father. That is when authorities confirmed there was a second victim, Thelander said.

The daughter came under Domelle's custody when she was 3 years old and was adopted six years later. Between the ages of 10 and 19, Thelander said, Domelle repeatedly had sex with her.

"She never told law enforcement. She told people in the community and nobody believed her," Thelander said. "(Domelle and his wife) then sent her off to Christian school in Texas."

I just know if I saw that movie, the voice inside my head that delights in torturing me would have a field day. ''You like those cowboys, don't you? They're kind of cute. Go ahead, admit it, they're cute. You can't fool me, gay man. Go ahead, stop fighting it. You're gay! You're gay!''

And in Mason City, Iowa, last week, 41 people petitioned an eight-screen commercial multiplex to get the movie shown. “It’s the first time I’ve seen that happen,” says the cinema’s assistant manager, Johnny Mattis, who explains that the film was scheduled to arrive on Jan. 27 anyway.

Mattis, 24, isn’t sure what all the fuss is about. “I don’t know why people really want it to come here,” he says. “I don’t like the drama-romances anyway, and I really don’t want to see one with two gay men.” But Mattis and the rest of the usually coveted audience of guys 18-34 years old aren’t the target this time. From early on, Focus said the film was aiming for the same female fans with upscale tastes who loved “Titanic.”

Ann Eichler, a 63-year-old grandmother in Scottsdale, Ariz., is smack in the middle of that demographic. She went to a 12:30 p.m. weekday showing without her husband and found the theater packed with women. “I think men are so uncomfortable with this kind of thing, even if they are very liberal-minded,” explains Eichler, who says she was enormously moved by the film. She admits she was “a little worried about a seeing a homosexual love scene, but I found I could handle it.” And she adds that her husband was kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” about her seeing the movie. “He knows it’s out there, he just doesn’t want to talk about it.”

Eichler’s husband is not alone. On personal blogs, around water coolers and even on Web sites like WebMD.com, women are talking about trying to get their husbands to go see it and debating whether not wanting to see it makes you a homophobe--“no” say many heterosexual men, they just don’t want to see chick flicks. “I didn’t even want to see ‘Cold Mountain',” protests one.

"Recently, we had a patient who had given a history of being a 'pro-life' activist, but who had decided to have an abortion. She was pleasant to me and our initial discussion was mutually respectful. Later, she told someone on my staff that she thought abortion is murder, that she is a murderer, and that she is murdering her baby. So before doing her procedure, I asked her if she thought abortion is murder -- the answer was yes. I asked her if she thought I am a murderer, and if she thought I would be murdering her baby, and she said yes. But murder is a crime, and murderers are executed. Is this a crime? Well, it should be, she said. At that point, she became angry and hostile, and the summary of the conversation was that she regarded me as an abortion-dispensing machine, and how dare I ask her what she thinks. "

"I had a patient about ten years ago who traveled up to New York City from South Carolina for an abortion. I asked her why she went such a long way to get the procedure. Her answer was that she was a member of a church group that didn't believe in abortion and she didn't want anyone to know she was having one. She planned to return to the group when she went back to South Carolina."

"My first encounter with this phenomenon came when I was doing a 2-week follow-up at a family planning clinic. The woman's anti-choice values spoke indirectly through her expression and body language. She told me that she had been offended by the other women in the abortion clinic waiting room because they were using abortion as a form of birth control, but her condom had broken so she had no choice! I had real difficulty not pointing out that she did have a choice, and she had made it! Just like the other women in the waiting room."

"We have anti-choice women in for abortions all the time. Many of them are just naive and ignorant until they find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy. Many of them are not malicious. They just haven't given it the proper amount of thought until it completely affects them. They can be judgmental about their friends, family, and other women. Then suddenly they become pregnant. Suddenly they see the truth. That it should only be their own choice. Unfortunately, many also think that somehow they are different than everyone else and they deserve to have an abortion, while no one else does."

Crude oil may climb past $70 a barrel for the first time in more than four months as the U.S. and its European allies pressure Iran to end nuclear research, a Bloomberg News survey shows.

Twenty-nine of 55 analysts surveyed, or 53 percent, said prices will rise next week. Eight forecast prices will decline and 18 expected little change. Last week, 60 percent said prices would increase. Oil traded above $67 a barrel today in New York.

The dispute with Iran, the world's fourth-biggest oil producer, has raised the possibility that the country may retaliate to possible censure by cutting shipments. Germany, France and Britain called for the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency to hold an emergency meeting regarding Iran's Jan. 10 decision to resume nuclear fuel research.

``The investment dollars are coming into the energy market as people look for a hedge against the Iran worries,'' said John Kilduff, vice president of risk management at Fimat USA in New York. ``The momentum makes reaching $70 inevitable.''

Crude oil for February delivery rose as much as 0.6 percent to $67.20 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That's the highest intraday price since Sept. 29. It was at $67.05 at 4:15 p.m. Singapore time.

Typical was my lunch discussion earlier this week with a ranking Democratic Party official. Midway through the meal, I innocently asked how the "Big Brother is listening" issue would play in November. Judging from his pained reaction, I might as well have announced that Barack Obama was resigning from the Senate to sell vacuum cleaners door-to-door. With exasperation dripping from his voice, my companion said, "The whole thing plays to the Republican caricature of Democrats -- that we're weak on defense and weak on security." To underscore his concerns about shrill attacks on Bush, the Democratic operative forwarded to me later that afternoon an e-mail petition from MoveOn.org, which had been inspired by Al Gore's fire-breathing Martin Luther King Day speech excoriating the president's contempt for legal procedures.

A series of conversations with Democratic pollsters and image makers found them obsessed with similar fears that left-wing overreaction to the wiretapping issue would allow George W. Bush and the congressional Republicans to wiggle off the hook on other vulnerabilities. The collective refrain from these party insiders sounded something like this: Why are we so obsessed with the privacy of people who are phoning al-Qaida when Democrats should be screaming about corruption, Iraq, gas prices and the prescription-drug mess?

Recent polling data reinforces skepticism about the size of an untapped civil liberties vote. In a survey conducted in the first week of January, after the eavesdropping scandal hit the headlines, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found the electorate evenly split on the issue. (For those who love the precision of polling questions, 48 percent said it was "generally right" to monitor Americans suspected of terrorist ties "without court permission," and 47 percent said it was "generally wrong.") This division should not be surprising, since voters are evenly split on virtually every public issue aside from declaring war on Canada.

[snip]

These assessments were all made before Osama bin Laden released his latest tape threatening new attacks on America. Even card-carrying members of the American Civil Liberties Union may have felt a momentary shiver of fear that (to quote an ad for a "Jaws" sequel) "this time it's personal." But more than four years after the horrors of Sept. 11, ingrained American political attitudes are unlikely to significantly change either way because of the broadcast of a menacing videotape on Al-Jazeera.

But Time magazine columnist Joe Klein ("Primary Colors") will argue in a new book coming out this spring, "Paradise Lost," that misjudgments by Democratic consultants have played a major role in leaving the party without a power base more influential than the state of Illinois. And from my own vantage point, the Democrats' positioning on the eavesdropping issue invites comparisons to their fetal crouch in the run-up to the Iraqi War. A majority of Senate Democrats voted for Bush's go-to-war resolution -- including John Kerry, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton -- at least partly because the pollsters insisted that it was the only politically safe position, a ludicrous and self-destructive notion in hindsight.

The problem with a consultant-driven overreliance on polling data is that it is predicated on the assumption that nothing will happen to jar public opinion out of its current grooves. As Elaine Kamarck, a top advisor in the Clinton-Gore White House and a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, argued, "These guys [the consultants] just don't get it. They don't understand that in politics strength is better than weakness. And a political party that is always the namby-pamby 'me too' party is a party that isn't going to get anyplace."

Kamarck also shrewdly pointed out that if leading Democrats follow the consultants and abdicate the field on the NSA spying issue (Hillary Clinton, please call your office), "They're going to leave the critique open to the far left. And that will exacerbate two problems the Democrats have: one, that they look too far out of the mainstream, and the other, that they don't believe in anything."

This just came from the Freeway Blogger.

Like most of you, I get a lot of mail that begins with "send this to everyone you know." For what it's worth, I wrote back to Doug encouraging him to consider condensing his message and using his right to free speech by public signposting. I should've just printed the letter.

I'm publishing it now because he just killed himself.

Spc Douglas Barber: PTSD- Every Soldier's Personal WAR!
1/9/05



By Doug Barber

In the last month I have been working with Jay Shaft, the editor of Coalition For Free Thought in media regarding my experiances in Iraq and since coming home from the war. We have only touched on some of the struggles of being a soldier, however we have not dug deeply into the personal war that Operation Iraqi Freedom has caused for returning soldiers.

Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush do not want to reveal to the American people that this war is a personal war. They want to run the war like a business, and thus they refuse to show the personal sacrifices the soldiers and their families have made for this country.

My thought today is to help you the reader understand what happens to a soldier when they come home and the sacrifice we continue to make. This may be lengthy, it may be short; but no matter how long it is, just close your eyes and imagine a flag drapped coffin.

Inside that coffin is the body of a man or woman who will never get to live their life to the fullest, yet they bore the total cost so that we could live free. Their soul is somewhere else and all we have is their memory which over time will be forgotten by other everts of greater importance. The families of these soldiers have a hole in their hearts that will never be replaced, even though they have pictures and happy memories.

Some families will refuse to believe they are gone, but still their sons and daughters are the heros of a country that sent them to war. This war on terror has become a personal war for so many, yet the Bush Administration does not want journalists or families to photograph the only thing that is left of our soldiers who have died. They do not want the people to remember that image of a flag draped coffin as the last memory this country will ever have of our fallen men and woman.

They say that America will raise their voices and demand a stop to the war, but my question is why should we not show the results of war? For us as a country, we send these soldiers to war and we see their faces while they are alive. I say let their memories live on in every photo, even when they do come home in a flag drapped coffin. Let their sacrifice be forever etched in the memory of America. We owe their families this at the very least.

All is not okay or right for those of us who return home alive and supposedly well. What looks like normalcy and readjustment is only an illusion to be revealed by time and torment. Some soldiers come home missing limbs and other parts of their bodies. Still others will live with permanent scars from horrific events that no one other than those who served will ever understand.

We come home from war trying to put our lives back togather but some cannot stand the memories and decide that death is better. They kill themselves because they are so haunted by seeing children killed and whole families wiped out.

They ask themselves how you put a price tag on someone elses life? The question goes unanswered as they become another casualty of the war. Heros become another statistic to America and they are another little article relegated to the back of a newspaper.

Still others come home to nothing, families have abandoned them: husbands and wives have left these soldiers, and so have parents as well. Post Tramatic Stress Disorder has become the norm amongst these soldiers because they don't know how to cope with returning to a society that will never understand what they have had to endure to liberate another country.

PTSD comes in many forms not understood by many: but yet if a soldier has it, America thinks the soldiers are crazy. PTSD comes in the form of depression, anger, regret, being confrontational, anxiety, chronic pain, compulsion, delusions, grief, guilt,dependance,loneliness, sleep disorders, suspiciousness/paranoia, low self-esteem and so many other things.

We are easily startled with a loud bang or noise and can be found ducking for cover when we get panicked. This is a result of artillery rounds going off in a combat zone, or an IED blowing up.

I myself have trouble coping with an everyday routine that deals with other people that often causes me to have a short fuse. A lot of soldiers lose multiple jobs just because they are trained to be killers and they have lived in an enviroment that is condusive to that. We are always on guard for our safety and that of our commrades. When you go to bed at night you wonder will you be sent home in a flag draped coffin because a motar round went off on your sleeping area.

Soldiers live in deplorable conditions where burning your own feces is the order of the day. Where going days on end with no shower and the uniform you wear gets so crusty it sometimes sticks to your body becomes a common occurence. We also deal with rationing water or even food for that matter. So when a soldier comes home to what they left they are unsure of what to do being in a civilized world again.

This is what PTSD comes in the shape of--soldiers can not often handle coming back to the same world they left behind. It is something that drives soldiers over the edge and causes them to withdraw from society. As Americans we turn our nose down at them wondering why they act the way they do. Who cares about them, why should we help them?

Talk show hosts like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and so many others act like they know all about war; then they refuse to give any creadence to soldiers like me who have been to war and seen the brutality of war. These guys are nothing but WEAK SPINELESS COWARDS hiding behind microphones while soldiers come home and are losing everything they have.

I ask every American who reads this e-mail to stand up for the soldier who has given their everything for this country to stand up to these guys in the media; ask them why they don't pick up a weapon and follow in the steps of a soldier. Send this e-mail to as many people on your e-mail lists and ask them to do the same.

There needs to be a National awareness for every Veteran who has ever served in any war. Send e-mails to the Big Mouths on TV and ask them to have soldiers like me on their programs. I am asking you as Americans to BOYCOTT every TV show or host/journalist that refuses to tell the real truth.

THIS IS A PERSONAL CHALLENGE TO BILL,SEAN AND RUSH TO HAVE ME ON YOUR PROGRAM TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT. Other wise you are nothing but dirt under every soldiers boot!


Spc Douglas Barber

He had done an interview on the Doug Bashem show, who confirmed his suicide with the Lee County, Alabama sheriff's department. There isn't a news report to confirm it, but someone with Lexis-Nexis can do so. I checked this as much as I could because there is always the need to make sure this is the truth and not fiction.

The point is that this didn't have to happen and if he had gotten prompt help, it might have saved his life.

I saw this so fucking often as a kid, vets in jail, on junk or dead because it took forever to get help. This should not happen again, but it is.

I wonder how many warbloggers give a shit. Probably none, since this all a game to them.

Q Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? Also, can you tell the American people if you have any more information, if you know if he is dead or alive? Final part -- deep in your heart, don't you truly believe that until you find out if he is dead or alive, you won't really eliminate the threat of --

THE PRESIDENT: Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not; we haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.

Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is -- as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.

So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. I'm more worried about making sure that our soldiers are well-supplied; that the strategy is clear; that the coalition is strong; that when we find enemy bunched up like we did in Shahikot Mountains, that the military has all the support it needs to go in and do the job, which they did.

And there will be other battles in Afghanistan. There's going to be other struggles like Shahikot, and I'm just as confident about the outcome of those future battles as I was about Shahikot, where our soldiers are performing brilliantly. We're tough, we're strong, they're well-equipped. We have a good strategy. We are showing the world we know how to fight a guerrilla war with conventional means.

Q But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.

But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore. And if we -- excuse me for a minute -- and if we find a training camp, we'll take care of it. Either we will or our friends will. That's one of the things -- part of the new phase that's becoming apparent to the American people is that we're working closely with other governments to deny sanctuary, or training, or a place to hide, or a place to raise money.

Osama bin Laden warned that al Qaeda was preparing new attacks inside the United States, but said the group was open to a conditional truce with Americans, according to an audio tape attributed to him on Thursday.

"The operations are under preparation and you will see them in your houses as soon as they are complete, God willing," said the speaker on the audio tape, who sounded like bin Laden.

Effective immediately, the Democrats will be known as the lyin'-ass boyfriend party - the perfect date for progressive voters looking to be stood up, bullshitted blind, or left holding the tab.

For five years now it's been "Please baby, baby, baby, please! I'm sorry I was a no-show last time, but hey, that was because I was working overtime to save up to do something extra special for next time, which is the really big event - right, baby?"

Last April, when the Democrats backed away from filibustering extremist appeals court nominees, it was, "Don't you fret, baby. We're not going to go to the mat over small fry like Owen, Pryor, and Brown because we're saving the filibuster for the big one - you know, the Supreme Court, baby." Months later, Democrats folded rather than fight John Roberts, the young-ish yes man with a penchant for executive privilege and a wife who used to head an anti-choice organization. After all, they said, they needed to save their energy, and the filibuster, for the next Supreme Court nominee, who would undoubtedly be worse.

Well, baby, the moment of truth has arrived. It's Alito-time, and the lyin'-ass boyfriends are backpedaling again. Why aren't they going to raise a ruckus this time? Aw, baby... the filibuster is just so darned hard to use with only 45 senators! And what's the point of trying to do anything until we've recaptured the Senate or the White House?

I have terrible news for the Democrats: being the minority party is not their real problem.

After all, the Republicans were the minority party just 12 years ago. But a bright, power-hungry representative named Newt Gingrich stepped forward with a plan to end "business as usual" in DC. It promised voters term limits for the speaker of the House and powerful committee chairs, an end to gifts from lobbyists and paid travel from outside groups, and a balanced federal budget.

And it worked.

[snip]

Gingrich and his crew had an eye to the next generation, and were willing to bypass seniority in favor of hunger and talent when appointing committee chairs. By contrast, political ascendancy in the Democratic Party still operates like the succession of kings. Howard Dean and Barack Obama, who would be treated as rising stars in any functional organization, are kept under lock and key. Dean's only allowed out to raise money and take flack from the same Democrats who have been steering the party into a ditch for nearly a decade, and Obama's only allowed out to criticize Dean.

But finally, it's not going to work because the Democrats really can't differentiate themselves from the Republicans. As the Alito hearings have shown, they all get along like a bunch of dorm mates, with occasional spats that can easily be resolved over a pitcher at the pub or a few reps at the gym.

And why not? They have as lot in common, these rich, white, middle-aged and older guys who want to keep their cushy jobs and reward their wealthy supporters. Both sides supported the Bankruptcy Bill; neither side supports effective campaign finance reform.

Their kids will never be drafted; their daughters and wives will always enjoy access to contraception and abortions; their queer kids will live well within the long shadow of their protection (and payroll, as Mary Cheney and John Schlafly will attest).

Sheeple-

I don't have much time but I just wanted to drop you all a dispatch. I will be on Conan O'Brien tonight, the 18th. (I just found out yesterday so I'm not holding out on you.) They flew me to NYC this morning.

"The Marc Maron Show" will launch from Los Angeles on the 13th of February. I'll let you know how you can get it as we get closer to the date. My CD should be out in a matter of days. The cats are starting to like each other and my wife and I are getting along.

I hope you are all well.

Maron

A high-level intelligence assessment by the Bush administration concluded in early 2002 that the sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq was "unlikely" because of a host of economic, diplomatic and logistical obstacles, according to a secret memo that was recently declassified by the State Department.

Among other problems that made such a sale improbable, the assessment by the State Department's intelligence analysts concluded, was that it would have required Niger to send "25 hard-to-conceal 10-ton tractor-trailers" filled with uranium across 1,000 miles and at least one international border.

The analysts' doubts were registered nearly a year before President Bush, in what became known as the infamous "16 words" in his 2003 State of the Union address, said that Saddam Hussein had sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

The White House later acknowledged that the charge, which played a part in the decision to invade Iraq in the belief that Baghdad was reconstituting its nuclear program, relied on faulty intelligence and should not have been included in the speech. Two months ago, Italian intelligence officials concluded that a set of documents at the center of the supposed Iraq-Niger link had been forged by an occasional Italian spy.

A handful of news reports, along with the Robb-Silberman report last year on intelligence failures in Iraq, have previously made reference to the early doubts expressed by the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research in 2002 concerning the reliability of the Iraq-Niger uranium link.

But the intelligence assessment itself - including the analysts' full arguments in raising wide-ranging doubts about the credence of the uranium claim - was only recently declassified as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group that has sought access to government documents on terrorism and intelligence matters.

Welcome to 2006, when millions of older Americans will be falling down the doughnut hole, searching for new adventures in Medicareland, where things are "curiouser and curiouser."

Despite the pleas of 43 million Medicare beneficiaries for a prescription drug benefit, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says less than

5 percent (1 million) of the 21 million eligible Medicare beneficiaries with little or no drug coverage had enrolled in a Part D prescription drug plan as of Jan. 1.

In a misleading announcement that was close to a lie, CMS said that 21 million Medicare beneficiaries now have drug coverage. But 20 million already had coverage from former employers, the VA, their HMOs and other sources. That means 95 percent of Medicare beneficiaries who need coverage have yet to decide whether and how to enroll. During the first 11 months after passage of original Medicare in 1965,

93 percent of those eligible had enrolled.

No one knows yet how many of the 6.4 million "dual eligibles," poor or disabled Medicaid beneficiaries also eligible for Medicare, were automatically switched from Medicaid to Part D on New Year's Day, as the law required, without missing their vital medicines. My guess is that thousands of the sickest and most vulnerable people were not successfully switched and will be desperate for their medications. But CMS, at the Department of Health and Human Services, has not figured out what to do to tide over such people. After the dual eligibles are switched, they can choose their own drug coverage. Although Part D is supposed to be voluntary, if a dual eligible does not enroll in Part D, he or she would lose Medicaid coverage for other health services.


To make matters worse, a dual eligible's family could lose all their retiree coverage without knowing it if he or she is automatically signed up for Part D. Many of those beneficiaries are in nursing homes. Again, if your family is getting retiree health coverage, check with your former employer and, if necessary, quit Part D.

Vicki Gottlich, a Washington attorney for the Center for Medicare Advocacy, along with the National Senior Citizens Law Center and the Medicare Rights Center, has asked Congress and CMS to delay the May 15 deadline for enrolling through the end of 2006, and to delay or abandon penalties for signing up after the deadline, to give the program time to work out the worst kinks.

They told Medicare: "This situation has a particularly severe impact on dual eligibles who are auto enrolled in Part D and whose spouses count on their retiree benefits for all health coverage.... Employers have no obligation to inform their retirees and current employees about the loss of health benefits."

Gottlich said there may be an effort when Congress reconvenes to relax restrictions on getting extra help for about 2 million poor, non-Medicaid beneficiaries whose income is below the limits ($12,920 for a single person and $17,321 for a couple) needed to qualify for low-cost benefits but whose savings are too high. The savings limits are $11,500 for an individual and $23,000 for a couple.

But Gottlich doubts this Congress or President George W. Bush will deal with the fundamental reason for these problems. As correspondent Margaret Warner said recently on PBS' "NewsHour," "There's no standard government-designed plan" administered by Medicare. "Instead, enrollees have to choose from dozens of plans offered by private insurance, with different deductibles, co-pays and lists of authorized drugs."

Some Democrats want to modify the privatization aspects of the law by having at least one standard plan run by Medicare. But that would mean competition for private companies from the more efficient Medicare system, which could use its purchasing power to drive prices down. The Republicans and the drug companies who bought them won't hear of it.

Several prominent plans, including one outlined yesterday by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), would specifically ban meals and privately paid travel for lawmakers.

Or would they?

According to lobbyists and ethics experts, even if Hastert's proposal is enacted, members of Congress and their staffs could still travel the world on an interest group's expense and eat steak on a lobbyist's account at the priciest restaurants in Washington.

The only requirement would be that whenever a lobbyist pays the bill, he or she must also hand the lawmaker a campaign contribution. Then the transaction would be perfectly okay.

[snip]

The plans offered by Republican leaders yesterday would change two of the three areas of law or regulation that govern lobbyists' behavior: the congressional rules that limit gifts to lawmakers and the laws that dictate the amount of disclosure that lobbyists must give the public.

A third major area -- campaign finance laws -- would go untouched, an omission that amounts to a gaping loophole in efforts to distance lobbyists from the people they are paid to influence.

Anything that members of Congress can now do in the pursuit of money for their reelections will still be permitted in the future -- including accepting lobbyist-paid travel and in-town meals -- unless campaign finance laws are altered.

The Bush administration said Tuesday that convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff had a "few staff-level meetings" at the White House but refused to disclose who met with Abramoff or what they talked about.
"We don't get into discussing staff-level meetings," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Abramoff also attended two Hanukkah receptions, he said.

Staff members spent weeks scouring White House records for traces of Abramoff, the center of a federal ethics investigation that has roiled Washington. Abramoff pleaded guilty Jan. 3 to fraud and conspiracy charges and agreed to help prosecutors investigating alleged corruption on Capitol Hill and in the Bush administration.

"I can't say with absolute certainty that that is everything," McClellan added. "But that's what I looked into, and that's what we were able to learn."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and three Senate Democratic colleagues sent a letter to President Bush pressing for information, saying Abramoff "may have had undue and improper influence within your administration."

McClellan said, "This president expects everybody in his administration to adhere to the highest ethical standards"

Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (PRCB) today called upon Congress to hold open, substantive oversight hearings examining the President's authorization of the National Security Agency (NSA) to violate domestic surveillance requirements outlined in the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, chairman of PRCB, was joined by fellow conservatives Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR); David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation and Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, in urging lawmakers to use NSA hearings to establish a solid foundation for restoring much needed constitutional checks and balances to intelligence law.

"When the Patriot Act was passed shortly after 9-11, the federal government was granted expanded access to Americans' private information," said Barr. "However, federal law still clearly states that intelligence agents must have a court order to conduct electronic surveillance of Americans on these shores. Yet the federal government overstepped the protections of the Constitution and the plain language of FISA to eavesdrop on Americans' private communication without any judicial checks and without proof that they are involved in terrorism."

The following can be attributed to PRCB members:

"I believe that our executive branch cannot continue to operate without the checks of the other branches. However, I stand behind the President in encouraging Congress to operate cautiously during the hearings so that sensitive government intelligence is not given to our enemies." -- Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO, Free Congress Foundation

"Public hearings on this issue are essential to addressing the serious concerns raised by alarming revelations of NSA electronic eavesdropping." -- Grover Norquist, president, Americans for Tax Reform

"The need to reform surveillance laws and practices adopted since 9/11 is more apparent now than ever. No one would deny the government the power it needs to protect us all, but when that power poses a threat to the basic rights that make our nation unique, its exercise must be carefully monitored by Congress and the courts. This is not a partisan issue; it is an issue of safeguarding the fundamental freedoms of all Americans so that future administrations do not interpret our laws in ways that pose constitutional concerns." -- David Keene, chairman, American Conservative Union

On Dec. 20th, I made a formal request to the NSA "...for any records, including electronic intercepts, that include or are related to the following names, screen names, e-mail addresses and/or phone numbers...", those being all the ones I have used in the last 10 or so years. This was done at the same time I wrote a comment urging others to do so, as can be seen here http://www.dailykos.com/...

Today I received a letter from one Louis F. Giles, Suite 6248, NSA, Fort Meade, MD 20755-6000. Mr. Giles is the Director of Policy for the Central Security Service of the National Security Agency.

Mr. Giles denied in full my request.

From Mr. Giles letter:

As you know, the President of the United States "authorized the National Security Agency [(NSA)], consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations." The President also noted that, "[t]his is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security."

Rest assured that safeguards are in place to protect the civil liberties of U.S. citizens. However, because of the highly classified nature of the program, we can neither confirm or deny the existence of records responsive to your request. The fact of the existence or the non-existence of responsive records is a currently and properly classified matter in accordance with Executive Order 12958, as amended. Thus your request is denied pursuant to the first exemption of the FOIA, which provides that the FOIA does not apply to matters that are specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive Order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign relations and are properly classified pursuant to such Executive Order.

Moreover, the third exemption of the FOIA provides for the withholding of information specifically protected from disclosure by statute. Thus, your request is also denied because the fact of the existence or non-existence of the information is exempted from disclosure pursuant to the third exemption. The specific statutes applicable in this case are Title 18 U.S. Code 798; Title 50 U.S. Code 403-1(i); and Section 6, Public Law 86-36 (50 U.S. Code 402 note).

Note, this is not a request for cryptanalysis information, as in Gilmore vs. NSA, in which this memo states

First, Public Law 86-36, NSA's authorizing statute, provides that "nothing in this Act or any other law . . . shall be construed to require the disclosure of the organization or any function of [NSA, or] of any information with respect to the activities thereof . . ."

No, this is a simple FOIA request to see if my fucking name has been vacuumed up in BushCo's computerized wiretapping efforts of the last several years. After all I have sold my Exerscape software in several foreign countries, such as Britain, Brazil, Germany, the Czech Republic, Spain and Israel. I've been e-mailing and telephoning them multiple times. Plus I've been participating in discussions with a progressive attitude, all over the Internet.

And BushCo's answer is: we don't have to tell you.

In "No on Alito", (Editorial, Jan. 17), The Record throws around the words "civil liberties." I've heard those two words so many times that they have become nothing more than code that Bush-haters use to imply that President Bush is taking away the rights of ordinary citizens. But I'm not seeing it. I for one want Bush spying on terrorists....I have the civil liberty not to be blown up.

As [former NSA director Michael] Hayden testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in October 2002, the National Security Agency turns over legally obtained evidence to the FBI in a way that prevents FBI agents from knowing its source or sources. If the NSA hides the source of its legally obtained evidence, it certainly also hides the source of any illegally obtained evidence it may be turning over. Neither illegally obtained evidence, nor evidence gleaned from it, can be used in a criminal prosecution. Consequently, an untold number of successful prosecutions are now jeopardized by the possible use of tainted evidence. Such challenges have already begun in the case of Iyman Faris, who is serving a 20-year sentence for conspiring to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. In other words, the government's reckless adoption of an illegal surveillance program could actually have the effect of undermining the very prosecutions it claims as its successes in the "War on Terrorism."

The Bush administration, of course, argues that this sort of secret spying is what we have to do for our own security. Indeed, they suggest that if the program had existed prior to 9/11, those attacks might have been prevented because they would have "caught" two hijackers who were making calls to al-Qaida from San Diego. In legal terms, this claim would be called the defense of "necessity," but, in lay terms, this claim would be called "a big fat lie" -- and a poorly chosen one at that.

The hijackers to whom Bush and his advisors are referring are Khalid al-Midhair and Nawaf al-Hamzi. It is astounding that Bush should cite them in support of the illegal spying program, because the NSA knew about these two men and their relationship to al-Qaida as early as 2000 as a result of a legal wiretap they had on a safe house in Yemen. But they never bothered to place them on a watch list or provide detailed information about them to the FBI or the CIA. NSA's Michael Hayden said they failed to provide the information to other agencies because they didn't appreciate its significance.

The problem at that time, as the 9/11 Commission and so many other investigative bodies have found, was failure to communicate among the agencies, or even within the agencies. The NSA was unable to recognize the importance of its own information because it didn‘t know what the other agencies knew, and was institutionally incapable of sharing even legally obtained information because it was operating as a lone wolf. Ironically, in the hands of President Bush, the NSA has effectively become even more isolated -- essentially an outlaw. And it still does not know everything that the other agencies know, so it has no more capability of recognizing the importance of what it learns now than it did before. So it is difficult to imagine how it can now possibly use its illegally obtained information to prevent attacks.

It appears, then, that President Bush, using his wholly fabricated Unitary Executive Theory, has clandestinely managed to marginalize his own agencies and eviscerate many of the information-sharing benefits of his own Patriot Act. When will we, as a country, finally stop thinking that the president knows best?

McClellan said the Clinton-Gore administration had engaged in warrantless physical searches, and he cited an FBI search of the home of CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames without permission from a judge. He said Clinton's deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, had testified before Congress that the president had the inherent authority to engage in physical searches without warrants.

[snip]

But at the time of the Ames search in 1993 and when Gorelick testified a year later, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act required warrants for electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes, but did not cover physical searches. The law was changed to cover physical searches in 1995 under legislation that Clinton supported and signed.

In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.

As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said.

President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program as a "vital tool" against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved "thousands of lives."

But the results of the program look very different to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.

[snip]

"We'd chase a number, find it's a school teacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism - case closed," said one former FBI official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration."

Paul Hackett, the Iraq war veteran and Ohio U.S. Senate candidate who shocked the nation and energized the Democratic Party last summer with his candor, stands by his views on religious fanaticism reported Sunday in the Columbus Dispatch.

“I said it. I meant it. I stand behind it. Equal justice under the law for all regardless of who they are and how they were born is fundamental to our American spirit and our American freedoms. Any person or group that argues that the law should not apply equally to all Americans is, frankly, un-American.”

“The Republican Party has been hijacked by religious fanatics, who are out of touch with mainstream America. Think of the recent comments by Pat Robertson – a religious fanatic by any measure – that the United States should assassinate a democratically elected leader in Venezuela, and that Ariel Sharon’s stroke was divine punishment because Sharon wished to trade land for peace.”

“Since the Republican Party has been utterly unable to stand for something positive, they have created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, and have pandered to religious fanatics not to vote for something they believe in, but to vote against their fellow Americans with whom they disagree. Those among us who would use religion and politics to divide rather than unite Americans should be ashamed.”

OHIO REPUBLICAN PARTY PRESS RELEASE FOLLOWS:

Ohio GOP Chair Condemns Hackett Hate Speech
Bennett Calls on Democratic Senate Candidate to Apologize

Columbus, OH - Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett called today on Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Paul Hackett to publicly apologize for hateful and incendiary remarks about people of faith.

According to The Columbus Dispatch, Hackett accused the overwhelming majority of Ohioans of being “un-American” because they voted to support a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage. He continued:

“The Republican Party has been hijacked by the religious fanatics that, in my opinion, aren’t a whole lot different than Osama bin Laden and a lot of the other religious nuts around the world,” he said. “The challenge is for the rest of us moderate Americans and citizens of the world to put down the fork and spoon, turn off the TV, and participate in the process and try to push back on these radical nuts – and they are nuts.” (Column, “Candid Candidate: Hackett calls ‘em like he sees ‘em,” The Columbus Dispatch, 1/15/06)

Bennett condemned Hackett’s remarks and called on his counterpart, Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern, to join him in denouncing the intolerance and demanding a public apology.

“Paul Hackett’s attempt to compare Christian conservatives to terrorists is abhorrent and completely inappropriate. These intolerant views have no place in the public debate, and I hope his fellow Democrats reject this divisive hate speech. Hackett has shown repeatedly that he will say or do anything to get attention, and it’s unfortunate that views like his are embraced by the Democratic Party. I think, Mr. Hackett, you’ve once again proven who real ‘radical nut’ is.”

What if we faced a constitutional crisis and hardly anyone noticed? As he quietly mastered the tiresome cat-and-mouse game inside the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Judge Samuel Alito gave few hints of where he stood on a matter that goes to the heart of what it means to live in a republic. With a few exceptions, the media coverage didn't help. It's so much easier to talk about Joe Biden's big mouth or a right-wing Princeton alumni group or Mrs. Alito's tears than to figure out how the country should prevent a president of the United States from castrating the United States Congress.

[snip]

Remember, this is not about whether it's right or wrong to wiretap bad guys, though the White House hopes to frame it that way for political purposes. Any rational person wants the president to be able to hunt for Qaeda suspects wherever they lurk. The "momentous" issue (Alito's words) is whether this president, or any other, has the right to tell Congress to shove it. And even if one concedes that wartime offers the president extra powers to limit liberty, what happens if the terrorist threat looks permanent? We may be scrapping our checks and balances not just for a few years (as during the Civil War), but for good.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Russ Feingold ably raised some of these questions last week; Al Gore is about to weigh in, too. But the Democratic Party as a whole cannot stay focused on the issue. Some activists keep jumping ahead to the remedy for the president's power grab, which they say is impeachment. But that's a pipe dream and a distraction from the task at hand, which is figuring out how to reassert Congress's institutional role. This must by necessity involve Republicans, who control Congress. Unfortunately, most have so far shown little concern about being defenestrated by their president.

Alito embodies the inherent contradiction of the conservative movement. The nominee is an "originalist," which means, as he said last week, that "we should look to the meaning that someone would have taken from the text of the Constitution at the time of its adoption." But at that time, the 18th century, the Founders could not have been clearer about the role of Congress in wartime. As James Madison put it, "In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace to the legislative and not to the executive branch."