Nothing to hide

Who says Iraq isn’t like Vietnam? We’ve got us our first fragging. Which the military managed to keep quiet for nearly 5 months.

Excellent. Just like I said they should, the UN human rights monitors refused the Pentagon’s “nothing to hide” offer of inspections in Guantanamo, but only performed by people named by the US, and without access to the prisoners.

A woman in Oregon bought a lottery ticket that won $1 million with a credit card that did not belong to her but to a dead relative. Which invalidates the purchase. When police arrived to retrieve the initial instalment of $33,500 already paid to her, they didn’t find the money but did find a quantity of methamphetamine.

Scalito II (updated)

(Update: Everything I wrote after the quote seems to have disappeared on the way to posting. It is now restored.)

Here’s Scalito’s reasoning in Casey:

The Supreme Court has held that a man has a fundamental interest in preserving his ability to father a child. The Court’s opinions also seem to establish that a husband who is willing to participate in raising a child has a fundamental interest in the child’s welfare. It follows that a husband has a “legitimate” interest in the welfare of a fetus he has conceived with his wife. ... This interest may be legitimately furthered by state legislation.

So what does he mean by “interest”? One definition given by my computer dictionary is “the state of wanting to know about something or someone,” but I don’t think that’s what he meant, but something more like “a share, right, or stake in property or a financial undertaking.” And you have to ask how the man’s property rights in a fetus may be “furthered” by notification.

(Update: Billmon notes that Alito, to give him his proper name for once (I’m taking bets, though, on who the first senator or tv anchor will be to accidentally call him Scalito, assuming it hasn’t already happened), condescendingly compared the burdens Pennsylvania’s legislation put on adult women to those the Supreme Court was willing to place on minor children. The line I quoted in my last post positing that wives may just need their pretty little heads straightened out about “perceived problems” like economics – the little lady just can’t balance a check book – is also not a little bit condescending.)

Scalito

Bush says that Sam Alito “understands that judges are to interpret the laws, not to impose their preferences or priorities on the people.” No, evidently that the job of legislatures: in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Alito supported mandatory notification of husbands (with a one-year prison term if the wife falsely certified having done so) before an abortion because “The Pennsylvania legislature could have rationally believed that some married women are initially inclined to obtain an abortion without their husbands’ knowledge because of perceived problems--such as economic constraints, future plans, or the husbands’ previously expressed opposition--that may be obviated by discussion prior to the abortion.” The US Supreme Court, by the way, only struck that provision down by 5-4.

More to come, but his willingness to trample a woman’s right to privacy in that way tells me as much as I need to know.

You do this to your children?

Hugo Chavez denounces Halloween as an American import, a “game of terror.” “Families disguise their children as witches. That is contrary to our ways.” Also, he couldn’t find anyone to fill his order for one million Patrick Fitzgerald masks. Speaking of great moments in cultural exchange, Al Kamen tells how the Iranian “students” who took over the American embassy in 1979 had to have the Halloween decorations explained to them. One of them then asked, “You do this to your children?”

I’ve seen several variants on the idea that, while John Roberts was able to insist that judicial nominees don’t have to talk about their opinions on pretty much anything, the right’s treatment of Harriet Miers has created a new situation, and D’s will now be able to ask such questions of the next nominee. Isn’t that adorable? They actually think that intellectual inconsistency matters. The it’s-ok-to-ask-about-ideology thing is just soooo last week. Unless it isn’t. Remember, the rules are whatever Tom DeLay, Karl Rove and Fox say they are at any particular moment. If a Democrat commits perjury and tries to pass it off as a harmless technicality and the criminalization of politics, it’ll be like Scooter Libby never happened.

Humorous death of the week:

Waco, Texas: The Rev Kyle Lake, 33, was electrocuted while performing a baptism. He grabbed a microphone while standing up to his shoulders in water in a baptismal at University Baptist Church. Doctors in the congregation tried unsuccessfully to revive him. (AP)

(Update: additional from the BBC, which quotes the pastor: “At first, there was definitely confusion just because everyone was trying to figure out what was going on. Everyone just immediately started praying.”) (Update update: I’m told his church’s website has this message: “We are confident that Kyle is in Heaven today because of his trust in Jesus Christ as his savior.” Um, that can be taken two ways.)

Scooter has fallen on his sword

The new intelligence strategy statement has given American intelligence agencies the task, among other things, of “bolster[ing] the growth of democracy”. Because nothing says bolstering democracy like covert action.

The US will allow UN investigators to visit Guantanamo (it’s even named which ones it wants) and look into torture allegations. The Pentagon says this will show “we have nothing to hide.” Of course, they won’t be allowed to speak with any of the prisoners. They should refuse to go under those circumstances, but I don’t suppose they will.

Odd-sounding quote of the day, from Christie Todd Whitman: “Scooter has fallen on his sword”. Just like an ancient Roman, though not a lot of ancient Romans named Scooter: Peel me another grape, Scooter told his slave; Cicero and Scooter met at the vomitorium to conspire against Valerius Plamius, etc.

Also, Scooter did no such thing. Had he really been such a loyalist, he would have stood up, possibly in the vomitorium (I do know that vomitorium doesn’t mean what it sounds like it means, but I really like saying vomitorium), and taken one for the team two years ago, after it turned out that this particular piece of character-assassinating assholery, among all the instances of Bush-administration character-assassinating assholery, would be the one people gave a shit about.

A paragraph from the AP, verbatim:

Violence during the last week has killed 23 people, including 14 suspected insurgents and two worshipers who were dragged from a mosque and shot. The incident underlined the challenges of bringing stability and strengthening Afghanistan’s fledgling democracy.

23 dead people do not just constitute an “underline,” but also bold-face type, an exclamation point, capital letters and a fucking emoticon.

Underlined the challenges, indeed. Sheesh.

A little detail missing from previous stories of Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s speech in which he called for Israel to be wiped off the map. It was at a conference on “the world without Zionism” held in Teheran, so why is this sign in English?

The other other other George Bush

Apropos of nothing, let me tell you the story (from memory, but I’m pretty sure I have the facts correct) of a time the White House leaked the name of a CIA employee. It was 1988, and the (former) employee was named George Bush. A researcher, a historian I think, looking into the Kennedy assassination, ran across a document which mentioned that someone at the Agency named George Bush had spoken with Cuban emigres right after the assassination. Was it the George Bush whose hitherto first known association with the CIA was when he was appointed to head it in the 1970s, then running for president? Well, in 1963 he was in the oil business, including in the Caribbean, and from a Republican family, so it was certainly plausible that he’d been asked to develop a few contacts, but the document was unclear, and seemed to be referring to someone more officially employed by the CIA. After this story was published in the Nation, the White House put out a statement that it was indeed a different George Bush, someone who’d left the CIA a couple of years later and they didn’t know what had happened to him. But they named him as a former CIA employee anyway. Not undercover, but still. The Nation tracked that George Bush down, which wasn’t especially difficult because he was listed in the phone book and was living at the same address as in 1963 (he’d left the CIA for another civil service job, in Social Security). He denied being the George Bush mentioned in the document; in 1963 he’d been something like 25 and too low-level to have been liaising with anti-Castro Cubans. So it remains a mystery to this day, but the relevant point for us now is that, just 6 years after the Philip Agee Act, the White House outed a former CIA employee, without even warning him first.

Spidermensch

Ha’aretz illustrates a story about Israeli police using stun-grenades to keep West Bank Palestinians entering Israel with this AP picture, unhelpfully captioned “Palestinian women waiting to be checked by Border Police officers in Abu Dis while making their to pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on Friday.”

Saddened

The big news of the day is of course that Sulu is gay.

Some things of note in Bush’s statement on Scooter Libby’s indictment: He called him by the nickname Scooter. While he said that the Scootster is presumed innocent, he added “we’re all saddened by today’s news,” which would not be an appropriate response if the Scootmeister is in fact guilty of what Bush said two years ago was a serious crime. Speaking of serious crimes, Bush then went on to say “I got a job to do, and so do the people who work in the White House. We got a job to protect the American people”. Well, it’s a serious crime against grammar, anyway.

I appreciate the jointness that we’re working on

Bush’s latest speech on The War Against Terror (TWAT) began with his usual appreciation-fest: “I appreciate the foreign officers here. I appreciate you being here. I appreciate the jointness that we’re working on, and the transformation they’re working on together to make sure that we’re able to keep the peace.” And I appreciate the accurate transcriptions. This one even included the heckler:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mr. President, war is terror.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

That’s a three-O boo. I believe if it had been just a two-O boo, that would have meant ghosts.

He’s still quoting the discredited Zinoviev Zawahiri-Zarqawi letter.

He tells this story: “An 85-year-old Iraqi woman cast a ballot in favor of the constitution after her son carried her to the polls on his back....” We’ve heard this exact story before, haven’t we, except it was about the January election or the Afghan election. I’m right, aren’t I?

“Some observers also claim that America would be better off by cutting our losses and leaving Iraq now. This is a dangerous illusion, refuted with a simple question: Would the United States and other free nations be more safe, or less safe, with Zarqawi and bin Laden in control of Iraq, its people, and its resources?” So if the American occupation were ended, bin Laden would become president, is that what you’re so saying? How about the Ghost of Hitler, would he be minister of the interior?

90% of the speech is literally word for word stuff he’s said before, most of it duplicating that televised National Endowment for Democracy speech, so there’s no need to re-mock it here. So thank you and may God continue to bless... oh wait, what the hell am I saying, now he’s got me doing it.

It shows how much some of these places need to reform themselves

Israel is seriously trying to get the UN to expel Iran because of its president’s little cartographical comment. Ariel Sharon, he of the “never-ending offensive,” is shocked, shocked, that a Middle Eastern politician would engage in hyperbolic language. The Israeli ambassador, according to Ha’aretz, “said no country that calls for violence and destruction should be allowed membership in the UN.” So the only thing left for the United Nations to do is decide whether to conduct its future proceedings in Swedish, Norwegian or Danish. Tony Blair chimed in, without a hint of condescension, “I feel a real sense of revulsion. It shows how much some of these places need to reform themselves. How can we build a more secure world with that type of attitude? It is a disgrace.” He then sent Iran to its room to think about what it had done. Various Western leaders have been saying that this just shows that Iran cannot be trusted with white-out or other Weapons of Map Destruction, lest they try to literally wipe Israel off the map.

An LAT editorial refers to Harriet Miers as an “aborted nomination.” Uh, yeah.

AP headline for a story that’s nowhere near as titillating as it sounds: “New Charges in Fatal Strip Accident.” A guy crashed a stolen car into some people at a bus stop on the Las Vegas strip or something, dunno, I lost interest when it wasn’t about strippers.

Don’t think I’ve mentioned that FEMA is refusing to help New Orleans get absentee ballots to its diasporic citizens, and R’s are writing a provision into the relief bill refusing to fund non-profits trying to house Katrina victims if they also try to register them to vote.

Candid council -- is that what they’re calling it these days?

Harriet Miers has sacrificed herself to preserve the separation of powers, sez Bush. “It is clear that Senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House - disclosures that would undermine a President’s ability to receive candid counsel.” There won’t be more than six people in America who’ll buy that one.

Harry Reid assigns responsibility for the failed nomination to radical right-wing Republicans, adding “I mean, it must be them, because we just stood around with our thumbs up our ass. Again.”

But I wonder who George Bush really blames for this fiasco? Not himself, of course, and probably not Miers. Reid may now think that the Dems’ quiet about Miers was a brilliant strategy, but who will Bush feel a need to appease with his next nominee? Or will he go the other way, in a snit, and petulantly refuse to appease a faction that failed to give him the loyalty he feels is his birthright?

From the Guardian:

A hospital has removed a staff unicycle from its children’s ward after a mother complained that her six-month-old baby had to wait for treatment while his doctor learned to ride it up and down corridors. ...

The South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust said: “On a children’s ward, we strive to combine professionalism with an air of informality and fun aimed at putting children at ease. On this occasion we did not succeed in achieving this compromise.”

The BBC is closing down its broadcasts in Bulgarian, Czech, Greek, Hungarian and other Eastern European languages in order to pay for a new Arabic tv service in the Middle East. Could anything say more clearly that the BBC functions as the propaganda arm of British foreign policy?

Michael Brown is not only still on FEMA’s payroll as a “consultant,” a gig just extended for another month, but he’s getting the same salary as when he (supposedly) ran the agency.

Last resort

The Organization of the Islamic Conference opposes the idea of UN sanctions on Syria, because “The Muslim World has always been against imposing sanctions and collective punishments on a nation as they primarily cause unjust sufferings to the people, unless they’re Israelis, in which case fuck ‘em.” I may have tacked a few words onto that.

Meanwhile, Bush said that military action against Syria would be the “last resort,” which should be ever so reassuring, since that’s exactly what he used to say invading Iraq would be. He doesn’t want to fight, but by jingo if he do.

While web-surfing, listening to a BBC radio program (because I’m nothing of not versatile) (or easily bored) which included an interview with the authors of “Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit?: The Encyclopedia of Modern Life.” Looked it up on amazon.co.uk (it’s not available here in the non-civilized world), which lead to some other good book titles: “A Shite History of Nearly Everything,” “Great Lies to Tell Small Kids” (“Strictly speaking, the tomato is not a vegetable. It’s really a kind of dolphin”).

Speken of Shaft bene I

Update: that Afghan editor sentenced to 2 years for “blasphemy,” well, the prosecutor wanted the death penalty.

As various Republican Senators come out to demand access to the White House papers Harriet Miers worked on, a fun way to pass the time is to try to figure out which ones are actually attempting to perform their advise and consent function and which ones have been tasked by the White House to do so in order to give Bush a face-saving way of withdrawing the nomination. I thought this idea was just an amusing theory when I first heard it, but I’ve become convinced, not least by the ham-handed intercession by Bush yesterday, when in response to a question nobody had asked, he insisted that acceding to such demands “would make it impossible for me and other presidents to be able to make sound decisions.” He did not give any examples of sound decisions he has made. Unless he meant which songs to put on his iPod (sound decisions, geddit?)

The Bush quiz.

The NYT, perhaps being sarcastic, noted that Turkmenistan’s “usually compliant Parliament” refused one of President Niyazov’s requests. He wanted them to set elections for 2009, but they said, unanimously, no, we made you president-for-life, and that’s it.

Anbar province (the Fallujah region) voted 96.9% against the Iraqi constitution, while 12 Shiite and/or Kurdish provinces voted over 90% in favor, up to 99.36%. You can’t build a successful national polity on that basis, you just can’t.

---

Wha be tha blake prevy lawe
That bene wantoun too alle tha feres?
SHAFT!
Ya damne righte! ...

Alle clepe tha carl ane badde mooder-
SOFTE!
Speken of Shaft bene I.
THAN KONNE ALLES WE!

Those are the lyrics to “Shaft” translated into Chaucerian English. Can ye dig it?

Blood and irony

In an article on the new far-right, homophobic (Doug Ireland has several posts about this) and generally obnoxious president-elect of Poland, the Indy notes, “Germany has been concerned about the nationalist tone of his rhetoric.” And Germany should know. Would be funny, but I’m on Germany’s side on this one.

Nepal bans news from the radio.

8 year old girl goes hunting, kills a bear. Isn’t that cute?

No, it fucking isn’t.

Caption contest:

Market forces

Patrick Cockburn, in a story in the Indy on Sunday behind a pay barrier, writes about the weakness of the Iraqi government:

Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Prime Minister, recently wanted to visit President Jalal Talabani, whose house is five minutes drive from the Green Zone. Mr al-Jaafari was told by his Western security men that he must delay the visit for a day because it would take 24 hours to arrange for him to travel safely even half a mile from the Green Zone.

He also notes that because Iraqi army commanders were given cash to pay their men, the army in reality is half the size of the army on paper, maybe 40,000. Also, of the 115 battalions, only 1 is not segregated along ethnic/sectarian lines.

Given Bill “Kitty Killer” Frist’s profiting, despite a supposed blind trust, by selling HCA stock at its height, just before the bottom fell out, the New Yorker reports on a study by a group of researchers at Georgia State into investments by senators, and guess what, they’re very very good market analysts, beating the market by an average of 12% per year (in 6,000 stock transactions 1993-8). Funny, that.

Born to rule

Barrington Moore has died, at 92. If you’re like me, and I suppose it’s vaguely possible you aren’t, you were assigned his Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy in pretty much every single college course you took.

Brazil, the country with the highest rate of gun deaths in the world (39,000 per year, compared to 30,000 in the US), has voted in a referendum not to ban gun sales. The BBC implies that the American NRA had a direct involvement in the No campaign. Has anyone seen something more substantial about this? The AP merely says that the No campaign translated a lot of NRA material, so that some Brazilians now think they have a Second Amendment which gives them a right to keep and bear arms. Which they don’t. Under statute law, though, anyone over the age, interestingly, of 25 can buy a gun.

The editor of the Afghan magazine Women’s Rights has been sentenced to 2 years for blasphemy for various articles, including ones which argued against lashing adulterers 100 times, and stoning to death Muslims who convert to other religions. Since the Afghan government survives only due to the American military presence, this sentence is our responsibility. Will we see Marines doing crowd control when a convert is stoned to death or an adulteress is lashed? Will they be assigned to throw the stones? The standards of criminal justice were exacting: the judge in the case said, “The Ulama Council sent us a letter saying that he should be punished so I sentenced him to two years’ jail.” So let me repeat: the US invaded Afghanistan in order to put the Ulama Council in charge of its legal system.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the last legitimately elected president of Burma, has been under house arrest for ten years.

In the battle to lead the British Tory party, one of David Davis’s lieutenants has accused David Cameron, who went to Eton, of thinking he was “born to rule.” Imagine that! a Tory who thinks he’s born to rule. Indeed, a Britisher who thinks he’s born to rule. Astonishing. Liam Fox, out of the race after the last round of voting, has accused Davis of spreading rumors that Fox has a secret homosexual past. Honey, your name is “Liam Fox”: we all assumed you were gay.

It’s something that our U.S. government has said a number of times in the past

When Bush announced his nomination of Harriet Miers, he said he’d consulted with many members of the Senate. Are we to believe that there was a single senator who suggested Miers? (“Proportional representation requirement of the Equal Protection clause,” indeed).

Don’t know how I missed this story: a Georgia state senator, David Graves (R), claimed parliamentary immunity from a drunk driving charge (his second in a year) because he was driving home from a (boozy) dinner meeting with other legislators. Hey, it’s right there in the state constitution. He was embarrassed into withdrawing the defense, for which he blamed his lawyer, one William “Bubba” Head. Graves will also resign from a committee that oversees the regulation of the liquor industry, and promises, “You can rest assured that I will not make the same poor choices again.” I look forward to his new poor choices.

I had thought I wasn’t going to pile on to Karen Hughes for her claim that Saddam Hussein “murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people using poison gas.” After all, everyone can misspeak; for example the WaPo itself, reporting this, says, “at least 300,000 Iraqis are reported to have died during Hussein’s 24 years in office” when it meant that that many were killed by the government. But Hughes (in Indonesia) continued to demonstrate the depth of her understanding when asked how she came up with the number: “It’s something that our U.S. government has said a number of times in the past. ... That’s something I said every day in the course of the campaign. That’s information that we talked about a great deal in America.” And “I think it was almost 300,000. It’s my recollection,” adding helpfully, “They were put in mass graves.”

Really, I think Miers, Rice and Hughes show how much progress this country has made. It used to be that for a woman to succeed in “a man’s world,” she had to be twice as good and work twice as hard. But these women, while only half as good... wait, that doesn’t work, cuz they’re still smarter than Bush.

Caption contest: Karen Hughes in Indonesia.

Standard of care

The Guantanamo Bay chief prison doctor denies that forcible feeding is used as a form of punishment and says that the treatment of hunger striking prisoners “equals or exceeds the standard of care available at accredited hospitals in the United States.” With this slight difference: accredited hospitals in the US do not forcibly feed sane patients against their will.

Reflecting American values

David Cameron, running to be the man who leads the British Tory party to defeat in the next election, has said that he hasn’t used any hard drugs... since 2001. That should settle that question....

The head of MI5, the British rough equivalent of the FBI, says that torture does in fact produce very useful intel (“detainee reporting”). Oh, not that they’d do it themselves, but if that intel happened to come from foreign security agencies they wouldn’t ask any awkward questions. The statement was made in a legal case; some people Britain is trying to deport on the basis of “evidence” resulting from torture are appealing.

US embassies around the world have been told to explain that the burning of the bodies of dead Taliban fighters by American troops in Afghanistan does not reflect American values. Loudly taunting the locals as they did it, though, pretty much does.

There’s some background noise here, a lot of chatter, a lot of speculation and opining

Lady boys?

Bush met the Palestinian president today and told him, “The way forward must begin by confronting the threat that armed gangs pose to a genuinely democratic Palestine. And those armed gangs must confront the threat that armed gangs pose to lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.” Uh, right, sure, whatever.


Asked about the distractions of Plamegate, the failed Miers nomination & the scandals of Republican congressional leaders, he said, “there’s some background noise here, a lot of chatter, a lot of speculation and opining.” Someone stop him before he says “opining” again. Also, considering how bad Jon Stewart’s Bush imitation is, why is it impossible to read that sentence without hearing it in that voice?

Shrub said that trust was real important-like in the Middle East, saying

The Gaza withdrawal is a magnificent opportunity to help develop trust. It’s an opportunity to develop trust between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And after all, the world watched strong cooperation between two willing governments to help good disengagement of Gaza, which is a -- right now, I guess, we take it all for granted.

“Good disengagement”? “Two willing governments”? Actually, someone stop him before he says anything at all again; it’s just too painful. “I think prior to the disengagement, there was a lot of consternation, a lot of concern. I suspect some of you might have even reported that, you know, better watch out”.

And on the failed Miers nomination, “I picked Harriet for a lot of reasons. One reason was because she had never been a judge. ... Secondly, the questionnaire that she filled out is an important questionnaire, and obviously they will address the questions that the senators have in the questionnaire -- or as a result of the answers to the questions in the questionnaire.” No one made it out of that sentence alive.

But, after reading a transcript brimming even more than usual with Bushy imbecility, I have made it out with life and limb, if not sanity, intact, and that is a very good disengagement indeed.