Dick Morris

Apparently not content to be remembered for salivating over the toes of a prostitute, he's trying to remake his image, this time as an expert on All Things Hillary. The inescapable irony is that Dick Morris derives all of his claim to credibility, if any there be, from his brief elevation to fame by those he now despises.

What's his problem? Did Hillary refuse him her toes?

Whatever set him off, he clearly didn't take it like a man when they fired him, and he has evolved into the ultimate poster boy for "don't get mad, get even!"

Better take another look . . .

Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency with their distinctive features already intact, fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings, etc.

— Excerpt from an intelligent-design textbook, Of Pandas and People.

Well, let me just say this about that: When the female of my son's parakeet pair turned "broody," we were thrilled and bought a nesting box for the safe keeping of eggs and such, and waited. In the middle of one spring night we heard a raucous peeping that meant there were babies, and it was exciting, to say the least.

After a couple of days we lifted the top of the box to peek into the nest, and beheld the pink, naked little baby birds. Most amazing of all — and here's my point — those babies looked for all the world like the newborn mice we'd welcomed into the world a couple of years before: pink little bodies with over-sized heads with squealing mouths; four little stems waving away where someday, in this case, there would be little birdie feet and wee wings.

Why would an intelligent "designer" keep using the same template?

Three down . . .

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been indicted on three counts and has resigned. Details are everywhere on the news, of course, but just in case you hadn't heard . . . MSNBC had a brief glimpse of Scooter on crutches apparently high-tailing it away from the White House.

Karl Rove continues under investigation . . .

Well, maybe they got it fixed.

Well, once again sanity SEEMS to have prevailed, with a critical change made to the Oxley amendment described here yesterday. Seems that once its proponents sensed defeat they came back later in the day and agreed that non-profit recipients could engage in "voter registration or get-out-the-vote activity conducted on a non-partisan basis."

Find out all you want to know about this beginning at this website; for those who keep track of such, the legislation I'm talking about is H.R. 1461.

This may not be the end of the story, for it's clear there are some Republicans who very much want to limit voting by poor folks.

How do we keep track of it all?!

Falling-on-sword department

Loyal First Brother Jeb Bush, as Governor of Florida, yesterday chided folks who were complaining about lack of water, ice, etc. after Hurricane Wilma (I paraphrase):

"Now, I don't want you-all to go blaming this on FEMA," he insisted, "blame it on me. I'm the Governor, and it's all on me if things didn't go right. So don't blame FEMA!" Link

His brother, the beleaguered President, was due in Florida today.

Comic relief

From today's NYTimes.com:


Isn't it funny how guys who have never served in the military -- not even in the Guard -- are so quick to salute?



'Tis said he broke a bone in his foot. Who do you suppose was his target?

Two down . . .

So recently that the Times had only time for this:
Bush's Embattled Nominee to Supreme Court Withdraws

No story yet, but MSNBC reported that reporters found the statement in their "bins" when they checked in at the White House this morning; Miers said she was "greatly honored and humbled" but "concerned that the confirmation process was becoming a burden on the White House . . ."

Sodden thought: Do you suppose Bush calculated that he'd better keep her on in the White House in case the CIA leak case takes a turn toward him?

One down . . .

As one who complained on this page about the suspension by Mr. Bush of the Davis-Bacon Act fair wage requirements, I feel obliged (and am delighted) to report that, according to Associated Press, the White House has decided to reinstate the requirements, effective November 8th.

This attack of reason was apparently inspired by a Congressional delegation, including Republicans from industrial states like Ohio, New Jersey and New York, that met with Andrew Card today.

Good news for New Orleanians and other job seekers among the victims of Katrina, though perhaps not so good for undocumented workers who reportedly flocked to the area after the waiver was announced!

Republicans try for disenfranchisement - again

I was astounded to hear, during a brief stopover at the House of Representatives on C-Span today, Republican members attempt to use the disaster relief for the Gulf Coast as a chance to disenfranchise folks (and we know who they mean!). I'd heard before of some gleeful speculation by some Republicans that the evacuation of thousands of black voters from New Orleans would present an opportunity for Republican takeover. But here it was, the real stuff.

There is a bill on the floor that, among other provisions, would allow funding to faith-based charities to help them create housing for hurricane victims; an amendment was offered by Mr. Oxley (R-OH) and debated that, among other things, would disallow funds to any charity that happened to promote voter registration activities, to wit:

Non-profit recipients must have affordable housing as their primary purpose and, beginning one-year before applying, non-profits and their affiliates cannot have engaged in federal election activity, . . .

The amendment was apparently defeated on voice vote, but a request for recorded vote (and hence final determination) was put aside for later.

Seen from a distance . . .

The Administration's adventure in Iraq has long been criticized around the world, and now that it looks like many of those critics will be proved to be right, it's interesting to read some of the foreign press:

This, for example, from an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post:

To understand just how bad things are, listen to the good news. Rice told the senators that compared to last year, "security along the once-notorious airport road in Baghdad has measurably improved."

Measurably, noch. You also don't have to be a Saddam-loving, antiwar-marching, Israel-bashing anarchist to recognize that "victory" is not an option.

The idea of attacking Iraq in the wake of 9/11 was hardly a bright one from the get-go. Saddam Hussein wasn't behind Osama bin Laden, and thus attacking Iraq was a mindless, unforgivable distraction, one that made it possible for the Islamist menace to metastasize further.

Iraq is - always was - the wrong war in the wrong place, led by a man who does not read papers or watch TV news.

And from Colombia, a worthy article in El Tiempo; the writer refers to the war in Iraq as an "illegal war, to which the Colombian government has adhered with much enthusiasm and little sense." [Check out the article for its cartoons, if nothing else!]

Each time one turns around, the depravity seems to have multiplied. On the one hand, there are the fundamentalist neoconservatives that chaperon Bush and that discharged (this is the correct verb; not "released") a celebrated imperial manifesto for American military and political supremacy [Rebuilding America's Defenses . . . READ]. And, on the other, there was the decision that only a good old-fashioned-war would guarantee popular support for the government. Rove concocted these plans. His credentials as a political strategist are impeccable: it is he that Bush owes the successful campaigns that took him from governor of Texas to the presidency of their country.

And finally (for now), here's a piece in The Guardian (UK) about a fellow who has his own way of handling accusations against him:

George Galloway is considering taking his fight with Senator Norm Coleman to the Republican's heartland by booking a venue in Minnesota and challenging him to a debate.

All of these fascinating stories were culled from watchingamerica.com, definitely a site to add to your list of favorites.

Oboy oboy oboy . . .

Ralph Reed in the soup? What a lovely way to begin . . .

The Abramoff thing has centripital force; with luck it'll soon suck in Grover Norquist, too! And there's even a link back to our girl Judy Miller . . .

Back on July 7, 2005, Josh Marshall wrote this in Talking Points Memo:

A little more than a year ago, I reported on TPM how Fitzgerald had quite aggressively investigated another Bush White House leak in late 2001 and early 2002. Fitzgerald had been investigating three Islamic charities accused of supporting terrorism -- the Holy Land Foundation, the Global Relief Foundation, and the Benevolence International Foundation. But just before his investigators could swoop in with warrants, two of the charities in question got wind of what was coming and, apparently, were able to destroy a good deal of evidence.

What tipped them off were calls from two reporters at the New York Times who'd been leaked information about the investigation by folks at the White House.

One of those two reporters was Judy Miller.

But how does Norquist fit in, you ask? Well, not least because I want him to go down with the rest, of course — remember, he and Ralph Reed and Abramoff are all old buddies from College Republican days. And because I got to wondering: Could he have been the leaker?

Now I might be getting pretty far out there, but everyone should have at least one go at a conspiracy theory. So check out these very interesting articles:

By Franklin Foer, writing for The New Republic:

Norquist is best known for his tireless crusades against big government. But one of Norquist's lesser-known projects over the last few years has been bringing American Muslims into the Republican Party. And, as he usually does, Norquist has succeeded. According to several sources, Norquist helped orchestrate various post-September 11 events that brought together Muslim leaders and administration officials.

Even though it follows an introduction by David Horowitz, whom I usually take with a very large helping of salt, "A Troubling Influence," by Frank Gaffney, has apparently got a some legs of its own. Here's one:

The association between Grover Norquist and Islamists appears to have started about five years ago, in 1998, when he became the founding chairman of an organization called the Islamic Free Market Institute, better known as the Islamic Institute.

And here's another:

Norquist's relationship with Muslim groups that support terrorism became public after Norquist launched an unexpected and inexplicably vitriolic attack against Frank Gaffney, the President of the Center for Security Policy.
. . .

According to news reports, while Norquist served as founding Chairman of the Islamic Institute the group received seed money from Abdurahman Alamoudi, then a member of the left-wing American Muslim Council.
. . .

Key members of the Islamic Institute have come from Alamoudi's organization. One has acknowledged making contributions to the Holy Land Foundation even after it's U.S. offices were shut down by the U.S. government for funding terrorists.

And Gaffney heard from again:

* The Islamic Institute, which Norquist co-founded and houses in his Americans for Tax Reform office, received seed money from an avowed supporter of Hezbollah, the terrorist group that killed 241 US Marines in a 1983 suicide bomb attack.
* The Islamic Institute reportedly is 'predominantly funded by foreign governments, shady Saudi sources, and US-based groups raided by the Treasury Department-led Operation Green Quest Task Force for allegedly funding suicide bombers, al Qaeda and other terrorists' activities.' [That would be the above-referenced Fitzgerald operation, it seems.]

And finally there's this by the SITE Institute (I learned about SITE — the Search for International Terrorist Entities — from reading the Katz biography referred to below). Here's an excerpt:

As documented in her autobiography, Terrorist Hunter, Rita Katz, the Director of the SITE Institute, while working undercover, taped Alamoudi voicing his open support for the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, on October 28, 2000. Alamoudi stated before an excited, cheering crowd and exclaimed:

“I have been labeled by the media in New York to be a supporter of Hamas...Anybody support Hamas here? Hear that, Bill Clinton? We are all supporters of Hamas. I wish they added that I am also a supporter of Hezballah...Does anybody support Hezballah here? I want you to send a message. It's an occupation, stupid...Hamas is fighting an occupation. It's a legal fight.”

As a result of Alamoudi’s open support for designated terrorist groups, then candidates George W. Bush and Hilary Clinton returned donations given to them by Alamoudi and the American Muslim Council.

In January 2001, Alamoudi attended and was photographed in Beirut at a terrorist summit attended by representatives of the terrorist groups Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezballah, and al-Qaeda.

The NY Times Public Editor on "The Miller Mess"

Byron Calame, Public Editor at the New York Times, has issued his critique of the way key figures at the paper have handled the events surrounding the leadup to the invasion of Iraq, the paper's embarrassing publication of untruths before and since, and the current Wilson-Plame investigation — all having in common a runaway train named Judy Miller. He concludes:

It seems to me that whatever the limits put on her, the problems facing her inside and outside the newsroom will make it difficult for her to return to the paper as a reporter.

Uh-oh. Big Brother again.

Chilling item in today's NYTimes about an order from the Federal Communications Commission, at the behest of the Justice Department, designed to make it easier to monitor email and voice-over-internet calls. Link

The order, issued by the Federal Communications Commission in August and first published in the Federal Register last week, extends the provisions of a 1994 wiretap law not only to universities, but also to libraries, airports providing wireless service and commercial Internet access providers.

It also applies to municipalities that provide Internet access to residents, be they rural towns or cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco, which have plans to build their own Net access networks.

On the one hand, we want the Feds to be able to catch the bad guys and prevent terrorism, but my suspicion (wonder why?) is that there probably aren't anywhere near enough safeguards in place. Especially when I read:

The F.C.C. says it is considering whether to exempt educational institutions from some of the law's provisions . . .

Wouldn't that just make the whole effort meaningless?

My one and only prognostication as to the leaker

I just can't get past the notion that Judy told Scooter. And just how well do she and Novak get along, anyway? Remember, this is the gal that blew Patrick Fitzgerald's case against the Islamist Institute, 'tis said, which stirs up all manner of gruel for speculation.

Yeah, right.

Reed said he opposed the ban on Internet gambling because it didn’t go far enough.

Read all about it here.

My, my, Miss Hattie . . .

In a report today in the New York Times, we find:

Ms. Miers sent the senators her own letter acknowledging a separate omission. She wrote that after submitting her answers on Tuesday, "I became aware that, as a result of administrative oversight, my Texas Bar license was suspended from Sept. 1 to Sept. 26, 1989, due to late payment of my bar dues."

Then, later in the piece, this:

Ms. Miers's disclosure on Tuesday that while she was in the White House, the District of Columbia Bar suspended her law license briefly for nonpayment of dues.

Anyone see a pattern here?

Yes, America's in danger ...

. . . but it's not just from Islamist extremists:

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government's foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.

Speaking to the New America Foundation, as reported by Edward Alden in today's Financial Times, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, until early this year Colin Powell's chief of staff, described what he called a "cabal" headed by Cheney and Rumsfeld, saying “Now [the Administration] is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”

As if you're not already scared to death by what Bush & Co have wrought, still you really need to read this.

This is why it isn’t a good idea to elect someone without experience who promises to make up for it by surrounding himself with “experts, the best people.”

I heart my Mac

Verlyn Klinkenborg , NYTimes op-ed contributor and Editorial Board member, offers an excellent "Portrait of the Writer as a Computer User" that is positively nostalgic for me. It's a long piece and will likely appeal most to Mac users, though it may encourage some Windows folks to make the leap. Here's my favorite couple of paragraphs.

I gave up in the spring of 2002. Eighteen years of Microsoft operating systems was enough. I had been through every version of DOS and nearly every version of Windows up to that point. If I knew as much about my tractor as I did about the fine points those systems, I would be able to rebuild its hydraulics from scratch. It made no difference. As Windows grew more and more complicated (or kludgier and kludgier) - and as Microsoft tried to make it seem simpler and friendlier to novices - it also got uglier and uglier. So it seemed to me. I moved my last Windows desktop to the basement, where I hope the mold is eating its hard-drive. I bought an iBook and have lived happily ever after.

It was just the right time. The iBook came with OS X 10.1. That's what I use. I never glanced at OS 9. I wanted nothing to do with the past - even Apple's past. I now no longer have to worry about crashes or screen freezes, regular occurrences in my Microsoft days. This has nothing to do with writing, I know, but it has everything to do with allowing me to keep my composure. The real reason for switching platforms, though, was to recover some of the pleasure of using a computer, which had almost vanished for me. The stability of my 12" iBook (and its successors, a 12" PowerBook and a 20" iMac) was important and so was ease of use and a sense of inventiveness. But what has won me over is the esthetics of the Apple cosmos. It's a fine-grained universe with smooth, clean edges. The world within the screen appears to recognize, and obey, the laws of gravity. Solids appear solid, not pixilated and porous. My Apple seemed surprisingly willing to leave me alone to do my work. It never nagged me. It never panicked. It had made a clean break with the past and it let me do so too.

Iraq and antiwar movement(s)

There’s a really good piece by Todd Gitlin on Talking Point Memo's Cafe, in which he describes a more thoughtful anti-war movement — something I suggest all the Old Lefties (and New Old Lefties) should read and heed.

Joe Biden’s position seems to be evolving along these lines, too, another reason to like him. See, for example, this from Alternet:

In a Sept. 6 memo to his Senate Democratic colleagues, Sen. Joseph Biden clearly reveals the state of thinking of these Democratic hawks. It is worth noting the modest, but measurable, evolution in his thinking. He starts by asking the question "are we doing more harm than good by staying in Iraq in large numbers?" exactly the question all fence-sitters come to sooner or later.

Random thoughts

When a Jewish state became a reality back in 1948, it was decided by the founders that the ancient Hebrew language would be revived as the official language of modern Israel. This wasn't as simple as just digging up dusty alphabets and dictionaries, however, not least because there were words that just didn't exist thousands of years ago -- airplane, for example.

The scholars worked out what to call an airplane; they combined the word avir, Hebrew for "air," with the word avion, French for "airplane": Aviron. Cool as can be.

In many cases, though, there wasn't any relevant word to build on and the scholars simply adopted what they needed straight from some other language. Hence, telephone.

Where am I going with all this? Well, during the excellent BBC series, Elusive Peace, on PBS yesterday, I discovered that the Hebrew word for terror is — terror.

Think about that.

How many more abuses before we stand up and fight?

Not content with the largesse dispensed by President Bush in ordering waiver of the Davis-Bacon rules for post-hurricane work along the Gulf Coast, thus permitting contractors to hire cheap labor, many of those same contractors have also relieved themselves from the obligation to provide housing for the workers they do hire.

Some of the contractors have been so bold as to drop their workers off at shelters at the end of the work day. The American Red Cross has caused somewhat of a flap by insisting that the shelters they offer are for victims of the hurricanes and not for imported day laborers, and that funds provided by taxpayers and private donors should not be used to subsidize the contractors.

Today’s Weekend Sunday on NPR covered the story; it’s available on their web site though not in transcript yet.

Meanwhile a few people are noticing the absolute unfairness of hiring workers from out of state and out of the country (in many cases here illegally) without at least offering the work to evacuees who are desperate to come home. How can they claim, by the way, that “Americans won’t do the work,” if they don’t even offer them the jobs?

And, of course, there's the inevitable connection between the Administration and those who get the lucrative contracts . . .

Don't you believe a word of it

Apparently anxious to avoid a fight, Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, is positively purring over Mr. Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers, a longtime friend, to the highest court in the land. Even Sen Schumer's expected skeptical comments were cloaked in velvet.

Weren't they listening when Mr. Bush said, at his press conference today, that Ms. Miers agrees with him on everything, and that she wouldn't ever, ever change? There couldn't be a clearer message to his supporters on the Christian right: "Don't worry, she's with you." (And don't you think that those same supporters might raise a hue and cry just to throw Democrats and other reasonable folks off the scent? Remember, Karl Rove is still omnipresent.)

After all, "everything" would seem to include abortion, education, embryonic stem cell research, labor, Social Security, tax cuts, environmental regulation, gay marriage, campaign finance reform . . . you get the drift. And don't forget big oil, big business, preemptive war, immigration policy and, most recently, the proposal to use active military at the president's discretion by changing the law on posse comitatus.

No, no sighs of relief are in order. If this nominee is confirmed Mr. Bush will have pulled off the cleverest of all moves. A stealthier candidate even than Judge Roberts, because Roberts was sent to replace someone just like him. The only things that we know this nominee has in common with Sandra Day O'Connor are clear: race and gender. It is what we don't know that will hurt us.

Harriet Miers, a person "with no record" has in fact all the record we need to know: George W. Bush says she is just like him in every way. Now the Democrats' challenge is to get her to admit it.