So how was this scary L.A. plot really stopped?

A Malaysian recruited by al-Qaida to pilot a plane in a second wave of Sept. 11-style attacks on the United States pulled out after observing the carnage of the first assaults, Southeast Asian officials said Friday.

... security officials and terrorism experts in Southeast Asia on Friday said Malaysian engineer Zaini Zakaria was among three men al-Qaida was preparing to take part in an attack on the U.S. West coast.

... Zaini enrolled in a flight school and obtained a license to fly a small plane. He then began making inquiries in Australia about getting a license to fly a jet, the official said.

But Zaini was never told what his mission for al-Qaida would be. When he saw media coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks, he severed his ties with the militants.

Zaini ... told Malaysian interrogators that he "didn't want that kind of Jihad," an official familiar with the interrogation told the AP.

A senior police officer involved in the interrogation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Zaini told his Malaysian interrogators "he was not prepared to die as a martyr, so he backed out." ...

So first the pilot backed out. Then Richard Reid was stopped by crew and passengers on his flight, which alerted U.S. authorities to the risk of shoe bombing. And then the Mighty Bushies broke up the plot.

Barbara O'Brien of the Mahablog will be on C-SPAN tomorrow (Friday) morning at 8:00 A.M. Eastern time. Watch, dammit.

What's wrong with this picture?

Bush Says Cooperation Thwarted 2002 Attack

President Bush said the U.S.-led global war on terror has "weakened and fractured" al-Qaida and allied groups, outlining as proof new details about the multinational cooperation that foiled purported terrorist plans to fly a commercial airplane into the tallest skyscraper on the West Coast.

Bush has referred to the 2002 plot before....

The president filled in details on Thursday.

...Under the plot, the hijackers were to use shoe bombs to blow open the cockpit door of a commercial jetliner, take control of the plane and crash it into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, since renamed the US Bank Tower, Bush said....

Here's what's wrong: Richard Reid's shoe bombing was thwarted on Saturday, December 22, 2001 -- and shoe inspections at airports began within days.

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, December 24, 2001:

GWEN IFILL: We saw in Betty Ann Bowser's piece that in airports all across the United States today, people who were taking off their shoes and putting them through the magnetometers....

As I recall, the procedure wasn't implemented at every airport at first. But why on earth would terrorists attempt something like this in 2002 when they knew we'd been screening for it for months?

****

(I won't even get into the question of whether you could use one or more shoe bombs as a precision weapon -- one that would blow open a cockpit door but not damage any of the equipment in the cockpit needed to guide the plane into a building. Richard Reid's shoe bomb was reportedly meant to blow a hole in the fuselage and take the plane down.)

It's inappropriate to profane a church during a funeral by talking about politics, according to right-wingers, even if you're echoing the views of the deceased -- but I guess it's always OK to turn a non-sacred space into a church and suggest that those who don't support the Republican Party have turned against God:

Bluegrass legend Ricky Skaggs did not hesitate to voice his support for President Bush when the two shared the stage at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville recently, and he said it's because he values Bush's faith and integrity even at a time when the president's popularity is waning nationwide.

"I'm not ashamed to share the stage with our wonderful president," Skaggs said Feb. 1 at the Opry before Bush delivered a speech. "I'm not ashamed to be seen with him. I may not be politically correct. I don't care. I love him. I pray for him. He's God's man for this time."

Skaggs explains what he means in a follow-up interview:

...The connection between the Bible and current events is too vivid to miss, Skaggs said, and Christians should take the time to pay more attention to what certain events mean. His opinion of Bush is closely tied to that outlook, he said.

"We look at him from a biblical perspective, not a worldview. That's the difference that Christians ought to be looking at. Christians ought to be looking at Israel, Christians ought to be looking at the situations that the Bible looks at and talks about and see how all of this plays out," Skaggs said. "Instead of just reading the newspaper or watching CNN or whatever and getting the gloom and doom and that liberal bias that gets slanted against the president, we should be praying, we should be seeking God, we should be looking at the Scriptures because the Scriptures are like reading the news."

What's told in the Bible is Good News, Skaggs said, but it's also insight into what God is doing in the world today. If Christians would read it and ask God to open their minds to His purposes, he said, they'd not be so fearful when negative reports are splattered across the evening news.

"I think you'll have a whole lot more peace in your heart and you won't be so upset with so-called 'illegal wiretaps,'" he said, adding that he believes the president has absolute authority to do whatever it takes to protect the American public in a time of war.

"I don't have anything to hide on my telephone. I'm not out doing illegal things. It's the people that do things in the darkness that are feeling threatened," he said....

In other words, if I'm following this, only the damned think the president lacks the authority to suspend the Fourth Amendment unilaterally. To support constitutional checks on the Executive Branch is to defy God.

Republicans calculate -- probably correctly -- that nobody cares about Washington corruption scandals and they can do whatever the hell they want:

DeLay Lands Coveted Appropriations Spot

Indicted Rep. Tom DeLay, forced to step down as the No. 2 Republican in the House, scored a soft landing Wednesday as GOP leaders rewarded him with a coveted seat on the Appropriations Committee.

DeLay, R-Texas, also claimed a seat on the subcommittee overseeing the Justice Department, which is currently investigating an influence-peddling scandal involving disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his dealings with lawmakers. The subcommittee also has responsibility over NASA a top priority for DeLay, since the Johnson Space Center is located in his Houston-area district.

"Allowing Tom DeLay to sit on a committee in charge of giving out money is like putting Michael Brown back in charge of FEMA Republicans in Congress just can't seem to resist standing by their man," said Bill Burton, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee....

Oh, by the way, DeLay is filling "Duke" Cunningham's vacancy.

Meanwhile, as The New York Times notes, Congressional Republicans are resisting earmark reform (threatening to embarrass colleagues who've seen the light on reform by exposing the earmerks they've sought in the past) as well as bans on gifts and travel paid for by lobbyists; many don't even want an independent commission to study this stuff. Jack Abramoff? It looks as if they want us to think that the big problem with Abramoff was the lack of limits on gifts from Indian tribes -- close that loophole and we're basically done.

Well, nobody cares. Average Americans think "everybody does it" -- and, again, Democrats never framed the issue properly. The press, again, snickered at Democrats who were angry.

This is over. "The Republican culture of corruption" is as dead as Enron as a political issue.

ONLY THOSE STINKY LIBERALS WOULD POLITICIZE A FUNERAL

...No congressional Democrats were invited to address a ceremony at the Capitol on Wednesday upon Reagan's arrival in Washington. The funeral was planned in detail by Reagan and his family dating back to 1989 when he left office.

"I'd be honored to speak, and I know others would, too, who are Democrats," Senate minority leader Tom Daschle said. "But if that is the family wish, then certainly we'd respect it."...

--Reuters, June 8, 2004

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And go here for the Reverend Joseph Lowery's eloquent response to criticism of his eulogy.

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And let's also not forget that Ann Coulter's notorious line "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" appeared in a column about the death of her friend Barbara Olson, published a day after 9/11. That can be defended as a burst of outrage at the people who killed Olson. This, from the same column, can't:

...it was actually easy to imagine Ted reading political columns aloud to Barbara at the breakfast table. Theirs was a relationship that could only be cheaply imitated by Bill and Hillary -- the latter being a subject of Barbara's appropriately biting bestseller, Hell to Pay. Hillary claimed preposterously in the Talk magazine interview that she discussed policy with Bill while cutting his grapefruit in the morning. Ted and Barbara really did talk politics -- and really did have breakfast together.

Expressing a shared political opinion while eulogizing a political friend who's just died -- I guess it's OK only if you're a Republican.

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UPDATE: There was a comment in response to this post (from "Boofus McGoofus") that included a link that triggered a "High Risk" notice from my virus program. I've deleted the comment. I hope nobody got burned by this.

Well, I guess we were overdue for Adam Nagourney's 87,000th New York Times front-page story about how incompetent Democrats are. (Here's a list of earlier examples.) Sure, I say Democrats are pathetic, too -- but my posts don't appear as news (rather than opinion) on page 1 of the most important paper in America.

I'm sure Nagourney thinks he's objective, but here's the passage that tells you he's completely in the tank for the GOP:

[Some Democrats'] concern was aggravated by the image of high-profile Democrats, including Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, challenging the legality of Mr. Bush's secret surveillance program this week at a time when the White House has sought to portray Democrats as weak on security.

Who on earth came away from those hearings focusing on Kennedy as the primary critic of the program? The stories I read and the clips I watched focused on Arlen Specter and other Republicans, as well as Russ Feingold and Pat Leahy -- not Kennedy. This simply isn't an accurate statement of what happened.

And, of course, the notion that Ted Kennedy is a huge liability and embarrassment for Democrats is rampant on the right and almost nonexistent elsewhere (the last time Gallup polled, Kennedy's favorable-unfavorable ratio was 48%-38%; President Bush's most recent Gallup ratio is 46%-53%, and he was at 37-48% last month in the New York Times/CBS poll).

I suppose Nagourney (and coauthor Sheryl Gay Stolberg) simply confused the act of writing news with the act of writing a GOP fundraising letter ("Ted Kennedy and the liberal Democrats in Congress...").

Gee, a tough election season might be coming up for the Republicans -- and suddenly we're hearing that Saddam's WMDs may have been found! What an astonishing coincidence!

A former special investigator for the Pentagon during the Iraq war said he found four sealed underground bunkers in southern Iraq that he is sure contain stocks of chemical and biological weapons. But when he asked American weapons inspectors to check out the sites, he was rebuffed.

David Gaubatz, a former member of the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations, was assigned to the Talill Air Base in Nasiriyah at the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom....

Between March and July 2003, Mr. Gaubatz was taken by ... sources to four locations.... In each case, he was told the facilities contained stocks of biological and chemical weapons, along with missiles whose range exceeded that mandated under U.N. sanctions. But because the facilities were sealed off with concrete walls, in some cases up to 5 feet thick, he did not get inside.

Oh -- he didn't actually see anything. But he was told there was WMD activity going on and, hey, that's good enough, right?

He filed reports with photographs, exact grid coordinates, and testimony from multiple sources. And then he waited for the Iraq Survey Group to come to the sites. But in all but one case, they never arrived....

So that's why we never found WMDs! Our inspectors were told exactly where the evidence was, had testimony of witnesses, and chose to blow it off! For years! That's plausible, right?

The rebuffed Mr. Gaubatz said nothing about all this -- until now, when it's an election year and polls show that voters would rather vote Democratic than Republican. And what do you know -- those very Congressional Republicans may want to hear Mr. Gaubatz out:

The new information from the former investigator could also end up helping the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which recently reopened the question of what happened to the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Like many current and former American and Israeli officials, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, Peter Hoekstra, says is not convinced Saddam either destroyed or never had the stockpiles of illicit weapons he was said to be concealing between 1991 and 2003....

All of a sudden, in this election year, all sorts of WMD evidence seems to be emerging as if out of nowhere and heading straight for Hoekstra's office:

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is studying 12 hours of audio recordings between Saddam Hussein and his top advisers that may provide clues to the whereabouts of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The committee has already confirmed through the intelligence community that the recordings of Saddam's voice are authentic, according to its chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, who would not go into detail about the nature of the conversations or their context. They were provided to his committee by a former federal prosecutor, John Loftus, who says he received them from a former American military intelligence analyst....

"We got 'em from a guy who got 'em from a guy, and we played 'em for some other guys who swear they're real." Color me convinced!

...Mr. Hoekstra has already met with a former Iraqi air force general, Georges Sada, who claims that Saddam used civilian airplanes to ferry chemical weapons to Syria in 2002. Mr. Hoekstra is now talking to Iraqis who Mr. Sada claims took part in the mission, and the congressman said the former air force general "should not just be discounted." ...

"Should not just be discounted" -- wow, that's a ringing endorsement!

This story ran yesterday. Like the Gaubatz story, which ran today, it's the work of Eli Lake at The New York Sun. Lake was last seen acting as Ahmed Chalabi's unofficial press agent at the Sun and elsewhere:

"Ahmad Chalabi Is on the Brink of a Comeback"

"Top Bush Aides Will Meet With Chalabi"

"Chalabi Is Emerging In Nonviolent Faction Of Shiite Opposition"

"Race For Premier Narrows to Two: Chalabi, Jafari"

"... some INC defenders believe [Senator Kerry] may be on a fishing expedition to further mar the reputation of the Iraqi National Congress and, in particular, its leader, Ahmad Chalabi...."

Well, that's it, then! I believe!

November 23, 2002:

Coretta Scott King argues against war on Iraq

San Francisco-AP -- Coretta Scott King is speaking out against the possibility of a war on Iraq.

She says an attack on Saddam Hussein would increase anti-American sentiment, create more terrorists and drain as much as 200 billion taxpayer dollars that she says should be invested in America.

The civil rights leader and widow of Martin Luther King Junior says homeland security ought to be "more about providing health care for every citizen, and less about reshuffling bureaucratic agencies and undermining our civil liberties."...

So if the Reverend Joseph Lowery wants to talk about Iraq at Mrs. King's funeral --

We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. [Standing Ovation] But Coretta knew and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war billions more but no more for the poor.

-- he doesn't need the permission of Matt Drudge, Michelle Malkin, Kate O'Beirne, or any of the other spiritual descendants of the people who attacked the civil rights movement in its heyday, thank you very much.

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UPDATE: Via Julia, here's the text of Coretta Scott King's speech -- and note, by the way, that she was being honored by the Metropolitan Community Foundation:

MCF staff and volunteers work on the frontlines to provide food, community, advocacy, dignity and compassion to those who are poor, homeless, hungry, discriminated against, or otherwise marginalized, regardless of sexual orientation.... MCF brings the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) communities together around major social, political, and spiritual issues affecting all of us, and through MCF, the LGBT communities reach out to help others.

Foreclosures in America? They were up 24.54% from 2004, according to RealtyTrac.

Foreclosures actually went down in states such as Alabama and North Dakota -- but these drops were offset by increases elsewhere, including triple-digit increases in Connecticut, D.C., Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia. A mere cooling, or an implosion?

Seriously wounded in Iraq? Please pony up $700 for your incinerated body armor:

The last time 1st Lt. William "Eddie" Rebrook IV saw his body armor, he was lying on a stretcher in Iraq, his arm shattered and covered in blood.

A field medic tied a tourniquet around Rebrook's right arm to stanch the bleeding from shrapnel wounds. Soldiers yanked off his blood-soaked body armor. He never saw it again.

But last week, Rebrook was forced to pay $700 for that body armor, blown up by a roadside bomb more than a year ago.

He was leaving the Army for good because of his injuries. He turned in his gear at his base in Fort Hood, Texas. He was informed there was no record that the body armor had been stripped from him in battle.

He was told to pay nearly $700 or face not being discharged for weeks, perhaps months.

Rebrook, 25, scrounged up the cash from his Army buddies and returned home to Charleston last Friday.

... no one documented that he lost his Kevlar body armor during battle, he said. No one wrote down that armor had apparently been incinerated as a biohazard....

This is all bureaucratic BS:

In the past, the Army allowed to soldiers to write memos, explaining the loss and destruction of gear, Rebrook said.

But a new policy required a "report of survey" from the field that documented the loss....

Rebrook said he tried to get a battalion commander to sign a waiver on the battle armor, but the officer declined. Rebrook was told he'd have to supply statements from witnesses to verify the body armor was taken from him and burned.

What's the point of this -- is the military trying to prevent troops at discharge from claiming that body armor (or some other piece of equipment) is lost so they can sell it as military surplus? Even if that's the case, can we please have a presumption of innocence for soldiers who've suffered serious injuries, at least until the dumbasses in the military bureaucracy can make their way through their own bureaucracy and verify the soldiers' stories?

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I see that AMERICAblog had this story earlier today and is raising money for this soldier -- quite successfully. Good work.

"GOP Senators Add Heat on Spying" is the headline in The Boston Globe. In the New York Daily News, the headline is "GOP Pols Prod Bush to Alter Spy Tactics." The lead of NPR's story this morning is "Several Republicans joined Democratic senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday in questioning the legality of secret wiretapping authorized by President Bush."

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but sometimes I get the feeling that no opinion really counts in our political life unless it's held by a Republican. Samuel Alito? He's not really controversial -- the only people who think so are those Democratic kooks. This? This is different -- Arlen Specter and Lindsey Graham say so.

Obviously, GOP objections in the present case are newsworthy because Republicans are the majority party and Democratic initiatives go nowhere unless Republicans break ranks; also, obviously, it's a man-bites-dog story. But I think there's more going on. I don't think the Beltway believes Democrats' opinions have any moral weight.

I started feeling this way back when Trent Lott praised the racist 1948 presidential campaign of Strom Thurmond. Atrios and Josh Marshall were all over the story -- but theirs weren't the opinions that counted. As The Christian Science Monitor told us on December 17, 2002,

... it has been more the reaction of conservative Republicans, including some Web commentators, like David Frum, that has kept the story alive.

Which is how I remember it -- the mainstream press paid attention only when conservatives piped up.

The contrast, of course, is that in the '90s Republicans alone could build a drumbeat of outrage about Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky or "renting out the Lincoln Bedroom" or Lani Guinier or a hundred other things; sure, for much of the '90s the GOP had congressional majorities, but the GOP built those majorities on successful outrage campaigns conducted when they were in the minority -- against the Clinton health-care plan, say, or against the Democrats involved in the House banking scandal.

The president is unpopular. The GOP-led Congress is wildly unpopular. Most Americans think the country is heading in the wrong direction, after five years with the Republicans running everything in Washington. Why isn't liberal and Democratic anger treated as the sound of a potential majority? Why, when there's no Republican assent, is it invariably treated as the squealing of the impotent?

Editorial in the L.A. Times:

WHAT A DIFFERENCE eight years makes. In 1998, then-Atty. Gen. Janet Reno was repeatedly battered by Congress for showing insufficient independence from President Clinton (by naming only seven independent counsels instead of nine to investigate his administration). Republicans in one House committee issued Reno a rare contempt citation for refusing to cough up internal memos, while U.S. Circuit Judge Laurence H. Silberman opined that she was "in effect acting as the president's counsel under the false guise of representing the United States."

In 2006, ... the attorney general not only acts like the president's counsel, he was the president's counsel for four critical years. So it should come as no great surprise that Alberto R. Gonzales sounded more like a White House spokesman on Monday than the country's chief law enforcement officer....

Eloquent words, but it looks as if they come too late. Here's a New York Times headline today about Gonzales's testimony:

Top Aide Defends Domestic Spying

The attorney general's job, apparently, is whatever the administration says it is, and we just accept that.

Only those crazy ragheads would consider violence justified in response to a mere act of speech ... right?

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Saying the nation's symbol "deserves more respect than the protest message of some liberal hippie," a Missouri state lawmaker has introduced a bill legalizing the use of force to stop someone from desecrating the American flag.

Republican Rep. Sam Gaskill, a former fighter pilot in Vietnam, defended his bill yesterday, insisting the measure would prevent the defilement of an important symbol rather than promote violence.

"You should be able to take hold of the flag and take it off the ground and rescue it," Gaskill said. "If the guy doesn't want to let go of it or he swings back then the person ought to fight back."

When asked if the bill would allow someone to take aggressive action against another person, Gaskill said: "I'm sure they could." ...

Gaskill's latest effort would allow the use of physical force if "the person reasonably believes" such force is necessary to prevent "the defilement or dishonorable destruction" of the flag.

A person using such physical force could not be charged with theft or assault under the bill, which would not allow for the use of deadly force....

--AP, 12/5/00

Hmmm....

Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have caused a storm of protest throughout the Islamic world, refused to run drawings lampooning Jesus Christ, it has emerged today....

In April 2003, Danish illustrator Christoffer Zieler submitted a series of unsolicited cartoons dealing with the resurrection of Christ to Jyllands-Posten.

Zieler received an email back from the paper's Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them." ...

The editor makes a distinction: the Muhammad cartoons were solicited, the Jesus cartoons weren't. Well, yes -- but it's still the case that the paper turned down the Jesus cartoons to avoid giving offense to Christians, then sought out cartoons it knew would give offense to Muslims.

Now, of course, we have right-wingers demanding the publication of the Muhammad cartoons in American newspapers. Well, shouldn't the righties also be demanding the widespread publication of the Jesus cartoons? If we really believe in a free press, we can do no less, wouldn't you say?

LEARN TO SWIM NOW

The Bush administration wants to cut the budget of the Army Corps of Engineers nearly in half.

Shorter Hugh Hewitt:

I proudly predict that my party will win the Pennsylvania governor's race because Pennsylvania voters are as willfully ignorant as the Californians who voted for Arnold.

Nice to see that Iraq's Sunni insurgents are getting over their silly al-Qaeda phase and have gotten down to the serious task of arming themselves for civil war:

BAGHDAD, Feb 6 (Reuters) -- Sunni Arabs have formed their own militia to counter Shi'ite and Kurdish forces as part of an attempt to regain influence they lost after Saddam Hussein was toppled.

The so-called "Anbar Revolutionaries" have emerged from a split in the anti-U.S. insurgency, which included al Qaeda.

... a key motive behind the militia's emergence is to have a force on the ground to confront the Shi'ite Badr Brigades, whom the Sunnis accuse of killing and torturing members of their sect in death squads sanctioned by the government, the officials added....

The story goes on to suggest that this is actually a good thing for the Americans:

...the new militia will have a more formal structure than existing insurgent forces including al Qaeda, and could be easier for U.S. and Iraqi officials to talk to.

Translation: They may kidnap their enemies and kill them without trial or hang them upside down for days, just like their Shiite counterparts (see this New York Times story for more on that), but as long as they don't praise bin Laden while they're doing it, we can do business with them.

And apparently that's just what we'll do:

...The Anbar Revolutionaries are being built up as diplomats say U.S. officials are shifting favour from Iraq's pro-Iranian Shi'ite leaders to Sunnis because of Tehran's nuclear ambitions....

Well, what else can we do? We really might have to work with the very people who are blowing up our soldiers with IEDs. After all, it never occurred to us that if we overthrew the secular Sunni government of Saddam with no plan for guiding the aftermath, while simultaneously daring the very religious Shiite Iranians to defy us, we'd see Shiites trying to build a nuke in Iran and on the ascent in Iraq. But hey, nobody could have foreseen the possibility of that, right? The Arab/Muslim world is utterly unknowable, isn't it?

Here's that meme again:

GOP chairman: Hillary shows lot of anger

Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a potential presidential contender in 2008, "seems to have a lot of anger" and voters usually do not send angry candidates to the White House, the Republican Party chairman said Sunday.

"When you think of the level of anger, I'm not sure it's what Americans want," said Ken Mehlman, head of the Republican National Committee.

Mehlman cited the New York senator's remarks on Martin Luther King Day in which she called the Bush administration "one of the worst" in history and compared the Republican-controlled House to a plantation where opposing voices are silenced....

Unhinged. Democrats are unhinged. Liberals are unhinged. Democrats who are sometimes said not to be all that liberal are unhinged, even if they're only kinda-sorta liberal, because they belong belong to the liberal party of the unhinged, the unhinged Democrats. I did say "unhinged," didn't I?

(Via DU.)

If you want to, you can see the cartoons that have caused all the trouble at this right-wing blog. I don't have a desire to publish these cartoons here, but hell, you may as well look at the damn things, to see what the fuss is about.

And if you want to see what at lot of right-wingers are thinking right now but most won't say out loud, you can go to Right-Thinking from the Left Coast, where a Howard Stern wannabe known as Lee has recruited a few of his high-minded pals to draw up some even more offensive cartoons: Part I, Part II, Part III. Many, many jokes about sex with goats. Lee also thinks the sinking of that Egyptian ferry was a laugh riot. A real prince. You might call Lee and his barnyard pals "unhinged," if the word weren't exclusively reserved for us nasty liberals.

There's a short review in today's New York Times of a new book about the 1863 draft riots in New York (scroll down). You know about the draft riots, don't you? There were

at least 105 fatalities in four days of rioting.... A volunteer with Fire Engine Company No. 33 had been one of the first men to fall subject to Lincoln's new federal draft, prompting Peter Masterson, the foreman, and his crew to pledge "to destroy the draft office with the records containing their fellow fireman's name." ... Blacks were lynched and white sympathizers singled out by largely Irish immigrant mobs that had the city under their control ...

It's a good time to be reminded of that moment in history. Right now a lot of right-wingers are in high dudgeon because of the cartoon riots in the Muslim world. There's no justifying the violence -- but what we're hearing from the right is that Islam is the problem (that's the meaning of all the sneering references to the "religion of peace," e.g., here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

We should always remember the draft riots at moments like this. We should have been talking about them when riots erupted after the Rodney King verdict and it became acceptable in polite society to suggest that maybe non-white are just "like that." Now we're being told by large numbers of conservatives -- actually, we have been since at least 9/11 -- that Muslims are hopelessly bellicose and unable to conform to our standards of decent behavior.

In 1863, one might have said the same thing about the Irish in New York -- they were naturally inclined to drink and brawl; we could never expect them to be civilized citizens. (Many people did say that, of course.)

We know how that's turned out. The Irish moved up the ladder and fully assimilated. A century and a half later, the descendants of those Five Points Irish immigrants are 100% American.

So, sure, denounce the individuals and groups who are engaged in violence and violent threats in response to the Muhammad cartoons -- I'll second that. But I don't want to hear that this conflict is ingrained in anyone's DNA, or that any ethnic or religious group is innately sociopathic.

DEAR MICHELLE MALKIN

I know you get really, really antsy when you've gone a couple of hours without a new self-righteous post about the response to the Danish Muhammad cartoons (and yes, everyone should denounce the violence and the calls for violence). But it really isn't appropriate for someone who grew up in New Jersey to tell (primarily) Britons, Australians, and Indians how to use an expression that's part of their damn language and really isn't used here in America:

IT IS NOT A "ROW"

Have you noticed how international newspapers and television stations are doing their best to downplay the global conflagration over the Cartoon Jihad? ...

A "row" is a quarrel. Married couples have "rows" over laundry and finances. Friends have "rows" over football game wagers. Neighbors have "rows" over unclipped trees and unruly pets....

Yes, headlines at the BBC, the Melbourne Herald Sun, Webindia, and elsewhere call this a "row." And yes, it is a "row" -- not unlike these "rows":

Man stabbed to death in city row

--BBC

...Justyn was shot dead on April 13, 2004, in a row that spilled out of Bagel King in Walworth Road....

--icSouthLondon.co.uk

...The stabbing followed a row at Whitecliff Parade, Ballymurphy, at around 4pm....

--RTE, Ireland

Shoe row leads to murder

--News24, South Africa

Rows? Sometimes they're very, very nasty.

You're not stupid, Michelle. You know this. You're just seizing on the violence and unrest that's going on now as a golden opportunity for you to generate boob bait in bulk.

Some polite, dignified, not-at-all-unhinged reactions from the folks at Free Republic to the death of Betty Friedan:

Let me squint and muster up a tear. Here we go, boo friggin hoo.

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That woman did a lot of damage. My God have mercy.

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The Communist battle axe passes away.

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Betty was a truly ugly person ... inside and out.

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The world has just become a less ugly place.

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Her views were offensive, and her work was destructive.

A dishonorable legacy for a life of the same quality.

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Damn, that means the Sunday paper will preempt some potentially interesting article for this witch's obituary. Couldn't she wait another day?

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I think she was a despicably hateful and ugly woman. Her death does not diminish me in the least, so instead of asking for whom the bell tolls...I'll just say good riddiance.

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The original butt-ugly feminist.

Like all other feminists

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She harmed as many lives, homes and households as she and her wicked master could have.

Pr 5:22 -"His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins."

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Friedan exchanged NOW for THEN: Touring Hell Eternally Now . A vile woman who stood proudly atop the smoldering ruins of the female culture. Feminist pfffft. I hope she's made Satan's little woman for eternity.

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She was an evil, evil tool in Satan's hands.

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If Helen Thomas and Betty Friedan were laid end-to-end--AARRGGHHHHHHH!

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right about now, Jesus is saying..."SO. Ya don't need MEN, eh?"

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Betty Friedan just became a good feminist and a good Democrat when she assumed room temperature.

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Oh yeah, and the human race just got better looking too.........

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Betty Friedan and her followers are the enemies of Christ, I shed no tears for her.

****

If only she'd taken Kate Michelman with her.

****

The destruction of the black family is the legacy of socialist "feminism" and the welfare state.

****

There is no happiness in what this woman "accomplished" in her life time -- there is however a wake of destruction and misery. The shame is hers.

****

She also was a lesbian.

****

With her good looks, I'm shocked.

****

Good riddance, Betty.

I have an excellent reason now to be good so I can go to heaven - because then I will never have to see you again.

****

"Betty, get yer fat butt in the laundry room and iron my sheets." Caspar the Not So Friendly Ghost

****

Yeah, hell has a new tenent.

****

***Feminist Author Betty Friedan Dies at 85****


And Satan was last seen running out the back door of hell!

****

I saw Friedan speak when I was in college (circa 1975) and she was actually a very upbeat, humorous, and interesting speaker - - nothing bitter or especially kooky that I can recall, at least compared with the lesbian scum that runs the remnants of the "women's movement" today.

****

("God have mercy"). He better. I don't.

****

Can you imagine waking up in a hotel room after an all-night bender and....

No.

I don't want to go there.

****

Boomp! Boomp! Boomp! Another one bites the dust!

****

Her sentence, for eternity, is to be tormented by the souls of millions of aborted babies.

****

AMEN.

30-40 Million+ of babies
,and 10+ Million males, and other victims that resulted from those anti-families programs,etc...

1966...AFDC started, and the church of Satan, and N.O.W...
turn the 9 around, and we got 666.

Today is a good day, because one of Satan's #1 was put back in Hell.

****

The Nazis taught people to blame Jews for their problems, the Klan taught people to blame blacks for their problems, and feminists taught women to blame men for their problems. Feminism was one of the great hate movements of the 20th century.

****

She made the devil wait a long time before he could collect her.

****

LOLOL!! Some of you FReepers should do stand-up. I can't wait to read the responses when Ted Kennedy kicks the bucket.

Yeah, me either.

The difference between Republicans and Democrats, in a form you can put up on your refrigerator.

(Via The Sideshow.)

****

UPDATE: Avedon's right (see comments): the link may not work. If it doesn't, try this.

John Boehner -- same as the old boss:

...billing records from the Northern Mariana Islands, a former Abramoff client, show at least 11 contacts between members of Abramoff's Marianas lobbying team and Boehner's office -- one with Boehner himself.

The contacts took place between February 1996 and August 2001. One of the lobbyists was David Safavian, who later became the Bush administration's chief procurement official and recently was indicted on charges of obstructing investigations of his ties to Abramoff. Safavian was the first administration official indicted in the Abramoff scandal.

Surely you remember the garment industry in the Northern Marianas:

Most of the workers are "young women from China who have been promised by recruiters that they are going to good jobs in America," [Brian] Ross [of ABC News] reported.

"Instead many find themselves kept behind barbed wire, in rat-infested labor camps, and put to work in huge Chinese- and Korean-owned garment factories--often under sweatshop conditions--making clothes for the American market," he said.

The clothes can legally be labeled "Made in the USA." ...

Officials on Tuesday also confirmed what an ABCNEWS 20/20 investigation had found--that pregnant garment workers on Saipan are forced to have abortions to keep their jobs.

"When I told them I was pregnant, they told me to have an abortion," said Tu Xiao Mei, a woman who lost her job after refusing an abortion....

Saipan has spent millions on Washington lobbyists and given top Republicans in Congress free trips to the beautiful Pacific island, including one over Christmas for House Majority Whip Tom DeLay.

"You represent everything that is good about what we're trying to do in America," he told outgoing Governor Froilan Tenorio, a distant cousin of the current governor, at a dinner in Saipan this past New Year's eve....

There's a good roundup of information about Safavian, DeLay, and the Marianas here.

And there's more in the link at the top of this post about Boehner's diligent work for well-heeled campaign contributors:

Business groups that have assisted Boehner's fundraising praise his legislative work.

'I want to commend you for your leadership,' a National Federation of Independent Business official wrote Boehner in 2004, thanking him for his support of legislation to revise the nation's workplace safety law and aid small businesses in fighting what they called burdensome regulations.

NFIB's PAC gave $10,000 to Boehner's campaign last year.

Maybe he's not exactly Tom DeLay yet, but he's off to a good start.

Anybody surprised to read this (from Knight Ridder)?

The new Medicare drug benefit will give drug companies up to $2 billion in extra profits this year because they're no longer required to pay rebates on drugs bought by the government for the elderly poor....

The boost in profits comes from a shift in the drug coverage of 6.4 million poor and elderly people from Medicaid to the new Medicare drug benefit. Unlike Medicaid, which requires drug companies to charge their lowest or "best price" for medications, the Medicare program relies on competition among private drug plans to keep prices low. By eliminating the need to discount drugs for the government, the industry can now pocket the savings.

"The net effect over 10 years is probably closer to $40 billion in extra profit," said Stephen Schondelmeyer, a pharmaceutical economics professor at the University of Minnesota....

The story tells us that this is based on a study conducted by a really unhinged band of lefty agitators -- the Prudential Equity Group, LLC. (Everybody knows they get their orders straight from Michael Moore and Osama bin Laden, right?)

Professor Schondelmeyer confirms Prudential's estimates with some research of his own:

He studied about 40 plans in one area of Minnesota and found that prices in each plan on 25 different drugs were within four percentage points of the regular retail drug prices. And most of the Medicare plan prices were 20 to 30 percent higher than the cost under Medicaid.

Oh, hell, Big Pharma needs even more of our money, right?

(Via Memeorandum.)

If "humor" were defined as "the process of making a laundry list of stereotypes of one's enemies and then putting them on a drawing, using as many words and as few actual jokes as possible," this would be the funniest thing ever.

REPUBLICANS ELECT JOHN BOEHNER AS HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER

Really, who cares? Why is this a huge story?

Here's what matters: The same brand of Republicanism that's dominated American political life since forever will continue in Washington without interruption. Ideologically, Boehner is indistinguishable from every other "mainstream" (i.e., far-right) Republican -- for a sense of this, see this list of Boehner positions on religious-right hot-button issues. (Thanks to Atrios for the link.) The New York Times adds, utterly unsurprisingly,

Although he has worked across the aisle on issues like education, Mr. Boehner is unlikely to take House Republicans in a notably different direction than his predecessors when it comes to the big issues facing Congress this year, like tax cuts, spending restraint and the war in Iraq. He is likely to be as much of an ally to Mr. Bush as Mr. Blunt would have been, even if he is not as personally close to White House officials.

It's always like this. When Frist replaced Lott, in what significant way did American politics change? I'd even say that about the transition from Gingrich to Hastert -- sure, Hastert gave us less chest-thumping egomania, but was the GOP's march to domination impeded in any significant way? Did any of the issues change? Was there even any real change in the GOP's techniques and methods?

I don't understand why we care about Republican leadership changes. It's like the old Automat, folks: You remove a piece of pie and an essentially identical piece of pie appears in its place.

Don't even tell me that this is an attempt by the Republicans to climb out of the sewer of corruption. Here's The Washington Post today:

[Boehner] penned a 37-page manifesto calling for a new Republican direction and highlighted his career-long opposition to special-interest pork projects in the federal budget.

He struck a more cautious note in private, assuring Republicans that he would not overreact to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and eviscerate the lax travel and spending rules they had come to enjoy. As the candidate himself realized, Boehner as the reform candidate was not an easy sell. His beach parties for rich donors were notorious, as were the stories of how he handed out checks from tobacco executives on the House floor a decade ago.

"Yes, I am cozy with lobbyists," he told lawmakers concerned about his K Street connections, "but I have never done anything unethical."

It's just more phony "page-turning" from a party that won't ever really "turn the page" until it's forcibly deprived of power.

Remember when David Brooks wrote this?

Tim Russert is a great journalist, but he made a mistake last weekend. He included Jerry Falwell and Al Sharpton in a discussion on religion and public life.

Inviting these two bozos onto "Meet the Press" to discuss that issue is like inviting Britney Spears and Larry Flynt to discuss D. H. Lawrence. Naturally, they got into a demeaning food fight that would have lowered the intellectual discourse of your average nursery school.

This is why so many people are so misinformed about evangelical Christians. There is a world of difference between real-life people of faith and the made-for-TV, Elmer Gantry-style blowhards who are selected to represent them. Falwell and Pat Robertson are held up as spokesmen for evangelicals, which is ridiculous.

Brooks wanted you to believe that you must be an ill-informed latte-swilling coastal secularist if you think all the famous quick-with-a-soundbite evangelicals really influence the way rock-ribbed normal Americans think.

Here's the reality, from yesterday's long Washington Post article about the Alito battle:

As the [Alito] hearings played out in Washington, [Democratic senator Ben] Nelson [of Nebraska] was startled to see quarter-page ads in the Omaha World-Herald and the Lincoln Journal Star sponsored by the conservative group Focus on the Family. "Will Sen. Ben Nelson listen to Ted Kennedy or the people of Nebraska?" asked the ads, which showed head shots of Nelson alongside the Massachusetts liberal.

Facing a tough 2006 midterm race in the conservative state, Nelson was furious and complained to the group's president, James Dobson. He assured Dobson that so far nothing had emerged that would prevent him from voting for Alito -- and suggested that Dobson thank him publicly at the right time. On Jan. 21, four days after Nelson announced his support for Alito, the group ran new ads: "Thank you Sen. Ben Nelson ... for listening to the voice of Nebraskans."

Maybe Nelson's just being craven -- he's a moderate Democrat, so obviously I don't want to rule that out -- but he certainly thinks full-page ads from James Dobson, run in papers read by his constituents and not by coast-dwellers, could have an influence on his political future.

Brooks wrote what he wrote because he wants you to believe his sainted Middle Americans have too much common sense to fall for mountebanks. Apparently, one of the mountebanks disagreed in this case, and was willing to dip into his cash reserves for those full-page ads. Brooks may be a big brainiac, but I give Dobson the edge for low cunning; I bet he knew exactly what he was doing. I bet he's the one who's right about this.

As a lot of you know, a cartoon by Tom Toles appeared in The Washington Post a couple of days ago that appears to have ticked off the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The cartoon depicts an armless, legless veteran wounded soldier in a hospital bed being told by "Dr. Rumsfeld," "I'm listing your condition as 'battle-hardened.'" The chairman and vice chairman of the Joint chiefs signed a letter denouncing the cartoon, as did the chiefs of the four service branches.

The Post deserves a cheer or two for not apologizing:

Fred Hiatt, The Post's editorial page editor, said he doesn't "censor Tom" and that "a cartoonist works best if he or she doesn't feel there's someone breathing over their shoulder. He's an independent actor, like our columnists." Hiatt said he makes comments on drafts of cartoons but that Toles is free to ignore them.

Asked about Sunday's cartoon, Hiatt said, "While I certainly can understand the strong feelings, I took it to be a cartoon about the state of the Army and not one intended to demean wounded soldiers."

I want to point out that this isn't entirely unprecedented. The World War II cartoons of Bill Mauldin angered General George Patton, who tried to censor them. He failed:

Mauldin's cartoons often reflected his anti-authoritarian views and this got him in trouble with some of the senior officers. In 1945 General George Patton wrote a letter to the Stars and Stripes and threatened to ban the newspaper from his Third Army if it did not stop carrying "Mauldin's scurrilous attempts to undermine military discipline."

General Dwight D. Eisenhower did not agree and feared that any attempt at censorship would undermine army morale. He therefore arranged a meeting between Mauldin and Patton. Mauldin went to see Patton in March 1945 where he had to endure a long lecture on the dangers of producing "anti-officer cartoons". Mauldin responded by arguing that the soldiers had legitimate grievances that needed to be addressed.

Will Lang, a reporter with Time, heard about the meeting and questioned Mauldin about what happened. Mauldin replied, "I came out with my hide on. We parted friends, but I don't think we changed each other's mind." When the comment appeared in the magazine George Patton was furious and commented that if he came to see him again he would throw him in jail.

But the cartoons continued, and Mauldin won a Pulitzer Prize for them in 1945.

The difference, I'd say, is that Patton was sincere. I don't know what's going with the Joint Chiefs. I'm less concerned about a climate of censorship that I am about what seems to be the willingness of the Chiefs to dance to a tune called by Karl Rove. I really think the theme of the GOP's campaign for '06 is "Everyone who disagrees with us is unhinged and has no sense of human decency"; for Republicans, that obviously includes the "liberal media," which, for the GOP voters Rove wants to turn out in droves, is seen an offshoot of the Democratic Party. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I'm afraid the Chiefs might be doing their bit for the campaign. If I'm right, that's an utterly inappropriate role for them.

Or it may be that they're just defending their boss, in the guise of defending wounded soldiers. They know -- any idiot who's seen this cartoon knows -- that the real target is Rumsfeld. It's possible that this is not all that different from Patton's gripe -- he thought Mauldin was "anti-officer"; the currently Chiefs may really just be denouncing this because it's anti-Rummy.

It's beyond the pale to compare a GOP congressman to a bumbling, ineffectual fictional comic Nazi, but apparently (scroll down a bit) it's perfectly OK to compare the junior senator from New York to the most famous psychotic serial killer in modern popular fiction, apparently just because the senator sometimes takes an unflattering picture.

****

UPDATE FRIDAY: That second link will work today at least, I think. Or try this. One of these days I'll learn to post a damn screen capture.

... The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget.

A veteran researcher said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. Those are two of the technologies that Mr. Bush cited on Tuesday night as holding the promise to replace part of the nation's oil imports.

The budget for the laboratory, which is just west of Denver, was cut by nearly 15 percent, to $174 million from $202 million, requiring the layoff of about 40 staff members out of a total of 930, said a spokesman, George Douglas. The cut is for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1.

--New York Times today

Sometimes no comment is necessary.

How we do it:

...On Nov. 14, [Ralph] Neas [of People for the American Way] thought he had found his smoking gun. On the front page of the Washington Times was a story leaked by the White House about a 1985 job application in which Alito had written, among other things, that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion." By 7:45 a.m., 8,000 reporters received e-mails with a link to the story....

Neas and [Nan] Aron [of the Alliance for Justice] always thought that Alito's views on abortion should be a focal point of the opposition, but it was not a strategy their Democratic allies in the Senate embraced. Heading into the 2006 elections, the last thing they wanted was to look like a party supporting abortion on demand....

By the time confirmation hearings began last month, Democrats knew that unless Alito made a big mistake or something damaging surfaced, he would be confirmed. But while there were endless meetings among the liberal advocacy groups, there was no coordinated strategy on the committee for questioning Alito.

Abortion was ruled out as a major issue for fear of alienating moderate Democrats....

How they do it:

House Republicans eked out a victory on a $39.5 billion budget-cutting package on Wednesday, with a handful of skittish Republicans switching their votes at the last minute in opposition to reductions in spending on health and education programs.

... Determined to see the measure pass even as they knew it would make life tough for party members, Republican leaders waged their own intense lobbying campaign. Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the Republican whip and acting majority leader, could be seen on the House floor deep in conversation with his colleagues as the roll was being called, apparently counting votes until the last minute so he could determine which moderates could be released to vote no....

There's the difference: Democrats think pleasing the base will cost them the votes of moderates -- so they back away from stands that will please the base. Republicans think pleasing the base will cost them the votes of moderates -- but they please the base anyway, freeing some party members to go against the party line but securing enough votes to, y'know, win.

The Democratic strategy would seem to be less risky at election time, but funny thing: The Republicans have been the winners in the last six congressional elections.

You don't suppose there's a lesson to be learned from that, do you?

Do you want the good news first or the bad news first? OK, here's the good news: Some al-Qaeda fighters really might be leaving Iraq. (We've been hearing lately that they're fighting with Iraq-born Sunni insurgents -- maybe that's true.)

Now for the bad news: Some of those al-Qaeda fighters may be leaving to go blow themselves up in Afghanistan:

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Al-Qaida militants are coming from Iraq to fight in the insurgency in Afghanistan, a provincial governor said Thursday after interrogating an Iraqi caught sneaking into the country illegally....

"There is a big group coming from Iraq," Nimroz provincial Gov. Ghulam Dusthaqir Azad said. "They're linked to al-Qaida and fought against U.S. forces in Iraq. They have been ordered to come here. Many are suicide attackers." ...

Azad made the comments in a satellite telephone interview to The Associated Press from his office in the remote desert city of Zaranj after he questioned the Iraqi, who was identified as 35-year-old Numan din Majid from Diyala province, west of Baghdad.

Majid was arrested Monday in Zaranj, on the Afghan-Iran border, along with three Pakistanis, two of whom were believed to be militants from Kashmir, Azad said. They were all believed to have crossed into Afghanistan from Iran....

Great -- an international crew. What's going on here? Didn't we win this war?

Argh! Make it stop!

Biden says White House bid more likely

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., ended 2005 with $3 million in his campaign war chest -- enough money, he said, to push ahead with a potential White House bid.

"It's no secret that I'm considering a presidential run," Biden said in a statement Tuesday. "What we did in 2005 gives me a strong level of comfort that we can take this to the next level."...

He said the amount raised "exceeded our goals," even though he ended the year with less money than many other Democratic hopefuls in the crowded 2008 field.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., for example, raised more money in the last three months of 2005 -- $6 million -- than Biden raised all year....

I guess he figures the Alito hearings were a resounding success -- especially in the eyes of likely Democratic primary voters -- so this is a great time to make his '08 intentions explicit.

(Joe, I'm being sarcastic.)

Whatever the hell he's thinking, it apparently explains why Newsweek/MSNBC is running a story from a Democratic consultant arguing that Biden is the party's best shot.

(I wonder how much of Biden's inadequate war chest that story cost.)

I really think Biden is the real-world version of the boss played by Steve Carell on the American version of The Office. Think about it -- both of them regard themselves as highly competent and incredibly entertaining to be with; in fact, they're both terrible at what they do and they're both unbearably boorish, especially when trying to be lighthearted and funny.

Well, who cares? Let him try. Think of it as Joementum Part II.



Separated at birth?

THE LIMITS OF ACCEPTABLE DEBATE

OK, right-wingers, I'm confused: Is it disgusting liberal elitism to draw people's attention to the deaths of the troops or not to?

Or is pointing out the fact that the U.S. government doesn't really want the deaths of the troops covered what makes someone a disgusting liberal elitist in your eyes?

Help me out here.

(And yes, if you clicked on that last link and scrolled down to "Keywords," you read it right: The pet nickname at Free Republic for Christiane Amanpour is "war slut.")

Thank you, San Francisco Chronicle:

President Bush's call for Republicans and Democrats to work together, for America to engage the world and for the nation to quit its addiction to oil will sound to many skeptics like Barry Bonds calling for an end to steroid use in baseball.

It was not Bush's failure to solve these problems over the course of the first five years of his presidency that required him to highlight them in his State of the Union address, his critics insist; it was Bush's contributions to these problems that elevated each to a matter of significance.

...Civility has not always marked the Bush administration's response to its critics, particularly those who have questioned the war in Iraq. Administration officials blistered Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a decorated Marine and former supporter of the war, when he called in November for U.S troops to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible.

Vice President Dick Cheney suggested that some Democrats were losing "their backbone," while White House press secretary Scott McClellan said it was "baffling that (Murtha) is endorsing the policy positions of (filmmaker) Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party." ...

Similarly, Bush's call to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil follows five years of promoting U.S. oil production and rejecting calls for conservation.

In the first year of Bush's presidency, Cheney dismissively observed, "you cannot conserve your way to energy independence." ....

The part about Republican incivility is particularly gratifying -- both sides can be nasty, but Democratic harshness is frequently held up as a disgrace (meanie Dems made Sam Alito's wife cry!), while GOP viciousness is treated as mere "hardball" or ignored altogether.

We're seeing this now in Minnesota, where a campaign volunteer for former FBI whistleblower and Democratic congressional candidate Colleen Rowley posted a silly Photoshopped image of Rowley's opponent, John Kline, as Colonel Klink from Hogan's Heroes (aka "Colonel Kline"). Klink, of course, was the Third Reich rendered bumbling and toothless; the character didn't offend the actor who played him, the son of a Jewish father who fled Germany as a teenager, or the death-camp survivor who played one of his foils; the post accompanying the image has nothing to do with Nazism (it concerns Kline's support for replacing Ulysses S. Grant with Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill). Nevertheless, the usual bloviators are in full phony-sanctimonious mode ("As the Democratic Party continues its slide into disrepute, there doesn't seem to be any bottom in sight.... In a sane world, the pathetic Ms. Rowley would be forced to resign from the race in humiliation").

Yes, it's appropriate for Rowley to take down the image and apologize, as she's now done. But the calls for civility ring rather hollow when it's widely known that Jonah Goldberg is about to publish a book entitled Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton, with a cover that features a happy face with a Hitler mustache. If it was reasonable to say that the Rowley post accused Kline of being a Nazi, then it's reasonable to say Goldberg is making the same charge against Senator Clinton. If the Rowley post had to come down, then this book cover (and perhaps the entire book) should never be published. But no one on the right, and no one in the center, will ever hold this book to the same standard to which Rowley's being held.

Then again, the Right always gets away with this crap. Here's conservative eminence grise Paul Weyrich a month before the 2000 election:

How many times have you heard the lament of the Germans that they didn't read Adolph Hitler's book Mein Kamph [sic], or if they did read it, they didn't take it seriously? In it he laid out his plans for Germany for all to see. If the German elite had taken him seriously, no doubt he never would have been elected in the first place, or if elected he certainly would not have been permitted to proceed with his disastrous plans.

I am reminded of that situation because Al Gore too has written a book, Earth in the Balance....

Just like Hitler, Gore has been kind enough to spell out all of his plans in advance. Only this time will we take those plans seriously? Will we warn the people by quoting from the words of the man himself? Or will we too be lamenting years from now that we either didn't read the book or didn't take it seriously if we did....

Based on the Rowley standard, isn't he equating Gore and Hitler? Yet I seem to have missed the outraged denunciation of this from high-minded souls on the right.

(And I'm wondering what Weyrich thinks now of President Bush's agreement with some of the points in Gore's Hitlerian eco-manifesto. Somehow I doubt that Weyrich will accuse Bush of goosestepping.)

"ADDICTED TO OIL"

Who knew Bush would use the State of the Union address to quote that pinko peacenik Kurt Vonnegut?

Or maybe he was quoting the guy who wrote the book that was the basis for that commie George Clooney movie Syriana?

TIM KAINE DEMOCRATIC REBUTTAL

Ah, "competence" -- that's the word that's really going to get voters' hearts racing. Just ask Mike Dukakis.

TBogg was right -- the Democrats should have gotten Bill Clinton to do the rebuttal.

SHORTER STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS: WE MUST ARGUE IN A CIVIL MANNER, BUT REMEMBER THAT THE DEMOCRATS WANT EVERYONE TO DIE IN A TERRORIST ATTACK

I can't believe people thought this speech was going to be all about medical savings accounts.

****

...Well, the second half is domestic -- and it sounds like a discarded partial draft (the laundry-list part) of an old Clinton State of the Union address (complete with a call for a line-item veto), with a few Bushie ideas (clean, safe nucular power!) thrown in.

Because much of the State of the Union address will almost certainly be devoted to September 11, domestic spying, and the Iraq War, you may want to prepare for the speech by boning up on the rules for acceptable discourse about these and related issues. Barbara O'Brien of the Mahablog will be your guide.

Here are the rules: Republicans own the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and all issues touched by the attacks. Therefore, when a Republican waves the bloody WTC tower, so to speak, to stir up emotional support for a GOP policy, that is not politicizing 9/11. Because they own 9/11, see. However, whenever a Democrat mentions 9/11 in any context, that is politicizing 9/11.

Further, wherever the GOP has used 9/11 as part of an emotional appeal for a GOP policy (which is not politicizing), Democrats may not criticize that policy. Because to do so "politicizes" the policy and is an insult to the memory of those who died on 9/11....

Read the whole thing here.

Dana Milbank in today's Washington Post:

Tasting Victory, Liberals Instead Have a Food Fight

The new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds congressional Democrats in the best position they've held in 14 years, besting President Bush and Republican lawmakers on Iraq, the economy, health care, immigration, ethics and more.

All of which can mean only one thing: It is time for the Democrats to eat their own....

Milbank goes on to find this cannibal meal taking place at a D.C. bookshop where Ramsey Clark and Cindy Sheehan are appearing. Clark and Sheehan call for Bush's impeachment and an end to U.S. involvement in Iraq. We're led to believe that this is not merely the zealots prodding the cautious insiders, but a sign that the Democrats' wheels are coming off, the result of massive damage being done by a bunch of unwashed radicals.

Hmmm. I seem to recall a food fight on the other side a few months back -- a fight in which one of the tossed cafeteria trays actually did permanent harm to a certain Harriet Miers, who was quietly eating a salad at the president's table.

So I searched this Milbank column about the Miers melee, and this one, and this one, and while Milbank occasionally pokes gentle fun, there's no suggestion that the Republican Party was headed off a cliff, or that the opponents of Miers had anything but the finest of breeding.

I think this is why I didn't bother to post about the "to filibuster or not to filibuster?" question. Here's the problem: Conventional wisdom always portrays Democrats as hapless, awkward, ungainly comic figures, while Republicans, even when they're screwing up or (as in the Miers affair) fighting one another, are always said to be smooth and, at worst, suffering a temporary setback. Some of this is Republicans' greater mastery of the appearance of dignity -- the phony sanctimoniousness I talked about in a post last night -- but some of it is just the fact that Democrats and Republicans are perceived through the lens of opposite stereotypes. If this were Shakespeare, Democrats would be the lower-class bumpkins speaking in prose, while Republicans would be the nobles uttering iambic pentameter.

If the Democrats had mounted a filibuster and made it stick, they would have been portrayed as boorish radicals. If they'd done nothing, they'd have been portrayed as miserable wimps. Mounting a doomed filibuster, Kerry and Kennedy were portrayed as ineffectual radical-wannabes. Dems just can't win.

Americans are probably inclined to believe that all politicians are bumptious, venal clowns. Right now, though, one party escapes that sort of skepticism. That will continue to be the case as long as the mainstream press continues to portray the GOP exactly the way the GOP portrays itself, and the Democrats exactly the way the GOP does.

Is that a bubble I hear popping?

Housing slowdown squeezes borrowers

Foreclosure cases hit 12-year high

The number of foreclosure notices filed against Massachusetts homeowners last year reached their highest level since the housing bust of the early 1990s, as homeowners fell behind on their mortgages and lenders began the process of taking back the properties.

It's happening, in part, because our national housing pyramid scheme, whereby we all agree that prices will go up forever and thus we can all buy whatever house we want, even if we can't afford it, knowing it will inevitably be worth more in the future, is starting to break down:

... Homeowners who stretched their finances to the limit to buy a home found it more difficult to make their payments on variable-rate mortgages as interest rates rose, but they were less able to refinance their loans at more attractive rates -- or sell and pay off their debts -- because the value of their homes fell or remained flat.

''When prices are skyrocketing, you have the option" of selling the house for a gain or refinancing, said Nicolas Retsinas, director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

''In an economy where price appreciation is more modest or doesn't exist, what option do you have left?" he said. ''Sadly, one of those options is foreclosure." ...

This isn't some trivial increase -- there were 32% more foreclosure filings in 2005 than in 2004. And it's mostly happening right along the coast, i.e., in and around Boston, where the boom, presumably, was at its boomiest.

Is this coming to your neck of the woods next?

The New York Times just posted an article about the Alito battle called "Two Nominee Strategies. One Worked." It says what you'd expect -- the Democrats' failed to connect while jabbing at Alito about his membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton and his decision not to recuse himself in a case involving Vanguard.

But there's also this:

...Democratic aides said their party had initially expected Judge Alito to live up to his reputation as "Scalito," suggesting a conservative firebrand in the mold of Justice Antonin Scalia. Failing to adjust to his meekness, Democratic aides admit they searched too hard for scandal in Judge Alito's past....

Instead of a fearsome "Scalito" whom Democrats had initially expected, Judge Alito appeared timid and bland in the face of the Democratic questions, the aides said. "Instead of some brash, confrontational figure in the mold of Robert Bork, we got a quiet, studious guy you almost felt sorry for," [Jim] Manley [a spokesman for Senator Harry Reid] said.

What is Manley saying -- that Alito's personal style was unknowable? That it was impossible to find video of him, to meet with people who know him, to draw inferences from senators' own meetings with him? The Democrats thought he'd be snappish, but they were just guessing? Even after meeting him?

And why did they assume he'd be a Bork? Very few people are as unpleasant and arrogant as Bork, and it was a safe bet that even a nominee who's naturally unpleasant and arrogant would have the rough edges sanded off by Bush administration handlers before the hearings.

I find that, outside talk radio and the blogosphere, very few Republicans lash out. Some of them just aren't the type; the rest skillfully and cynically deploy soft-spokenness, phony somberness, a cornpone gee-whiz quality, or some combination of the three to convey the sense that they're Boy Scouts and their opponents are sewer rats. Think of Dick Cheney: He never raises his voice, and he deploys sanctimoniousness brilliantly -- he always seems to be deeply pained at the nature of the Democrats. He cares about you. He cares about how horribly you'd die if Democrats had power. Cheney's a thug who cynically plays a tough but folksy grandpa on TV. Like Spiro Agnew, he's the VP as attack dog, but most of America doesn't even seem to know he's an attack dog.

Republicans are good at this. We can't get them rattled, so we have to assume that the public will never see them, personally, as monsters. That's why we need to attack them on substance. And maybe we have to learn how to seem pained and self-righteous at all times, and how not to get rattled. In other words: We need to (a) seem nicer and (b) hit harder.

Well, they're still not requiring us to salaam and shield our eyes whenever Bush's motorcade passes by (I guess that will come after the midterm elections), but it looks as if the presidency might turn a bit more imperial soon, according to (yes, really) Fox News:

A new provision tucked into the Patriot Act bill now before Congress would allow authorities to haul demonstrators at any "special event of national significance" away to jail on felony charges if they are caught breaching a security perimeter.

Yup -- felony charges. And here's the kicker: The alleged felon doesn't even have to be anywhere near the alleged target:

Sen. Arlen Specter , R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sponsored the measure, which would extend the authority of the Secret Service to allow agents to arrest people who willingly or knowingly enter a restricted area at an event, even if the president or other official normally protected by the Secret Service isn't in attendance at the time.

...the new provision would allow ... arrests even after those VIPs have left the premises of any designated "special event of national significance." The provision would increase the maximum penalty for such an infraction from six months to one year in jail.

..."You are talking about giving the executive branch broader authority to create these exclusion zones which could cover broad areas and last for days [during an event ]," David Kopel, a constitutional expert with the Cato Institute, told FOXNews.com....

The story goes on to cite "White House sources" who "say the measure was not instigated by the administration," but this stinks of Karl Rove (whose goal is to protect the securtity perimeter of every presidential photo op for the length of the news cycle during which it takes place). It also stinks of Dick Cheney, whose purchase of a house in Maryland has led to a permanent ban on overflights ("The no-flight zone, imposed last month, is in effect even when Cheney is not there") and a requirement that neighbors remain "barricaded in their homes while [his] motorcade passes by."

Can't wait to see what's next....

Our pals, the Pakistanis:

Prevarication by the Pakistani government cost America the chance to kill Osama bin Laden in an airstrike near the Afghan border two years ago, the Sunday Telegraph has been told.

A CIA lead that the al-Qaeda leader was hiding in a remote province was squandered because the Pakistani government delayed giving permission for the attack on its soil, according to a senior Western diplomat.
 
By the time US officials got the go-ahead, bin Laden had left the suspected hideout in Zhob, in the Baluchistan province of south-west Pakistan....

The reason for the delay is not clear. While Pakistan's President, Pervez Musharraf, has vowed to eliminate terrorists operating within his country, elements within Pakistan's ISI intelligence service may have sought to protect bin Laden....

Really? You think?

You're either with us or with the terrorists -- or, I suppose, both. You know, whatever.

Condoleezza Rice tells us once again that she was caught completely flatfooted:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged Sunday that the United States had failed to understand the depth of hostility among Palestinians toward their longtime leaders. The hostility led to an election victory by the militant group Hamas that has reduced to tatters crucial assumptions underlying American policies and hopes in the Middle East.

"I've asked why nobody saw it coming," Ms. Rice said, speaking of her own staff. "It does say something about us not having a good enough pulse."...

Ms. Rice pointed out that the election results surprised just about everyone. "I don't know anyone who wasn't caught off guard by Hamas's strong showing," she said ....

Yeah, it was totally unexpected:

European Union to curb aid if Hamas wins big in Palestinian elections

Monday, December 19, 2005

The European Union joined the U.S. House of Representatives on Sunday in threatening to curb aid to the Palestinian Authority if Hamas wins next month's parliamentary election....

Nobody saw it coming:

Israel: Hamas win would be disastrous

Saturday 17 December 2005, 14:31 Makka Time, 11:31 GMT  

Israel has said that a victory for Hamas in Palestinian parliamentary elections would set the region back 50 years....

Foreign Ministry officials said on Friday that if Hamas were to become a dominant force in the Palestinian leadership, it would mean an end to the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians....

Yes, a complete shock to everyone:

May 10, 2005

Israeli defense minister says pullout will occur, even if Hamas wins vote

Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip will not be called off under any circumstances, the defense minister said Tuesday, rebuffing suggestions by the foreign minister that the pullout should be canceled if the Hamas militant group wins Palestinian parliamentary elections...

Oh, yes, we should definitely elect this woman president. Don't we all want a third Bush term -- four more years of "The dog ate my al-Qaeda briefing, so I had no idea they wanted to fly planes into towers"?

I wish I'd said what Julia says here about Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Oh, please, please -- make my day, George:

President George W. Bush is expected on Tuesday to try and retake the initiative in the Washington political debate, in a speech that is expected to be long on optimism....

Mr Bush is expected to deliver an upbeat message on the war in Iraq in his annual yState of the Union address, pointing to progress being made in the country....

He is also expected to make optimistic comments on the US economy....

He's going to make "optimistic comments on the US economy"? Oh, I want him to do that every day -- I want him to tell people who are facing stagnating wages, rising health care costs, and high energy prices that we should all crack open the champagne because GDP growth is just great. If he thinks that will fly with average Americans, he's nuts.

And -- apologies for my cynicism -- he's going to try to sell an upbeat message on the war at a time when a real live TV star has been seriously injured by a bomb in Iraq. Celebrity matters in America; insisting that there's a significant number of Iraqi troops who are kinda-sorta-almost ready to stand up so we can stand down is not going to trump this incident.

(Via DU.)

****

But I should add that I think what we'll probably remember from this speech is the "support Republicans rather than Democrats or you're all going to die" part -- which I think will be the extended climax of the speech, and a much more important part than you've been led to believe by all the "Bush to Emphasize Medical Savings Accounts" stories you've been reading. Expect to be manipulated yet again into thinking about bodies falling from the Towers. Expect to be told that some Democrats don't want there to be any surveillance of al-Qaeda. Remember, the Patriot Act is up for renewal again this week -- I find it hard to believe that there's going to be more about medical savings accounts than about that and the NSA.

****

UPDATE: The happy talk on Iraq is going to be even harder to sell when there are new videos of Zawahiri taunting Bush* and Jill Carroll weeping.

*(Damn, now I'm doing it -- conflating al-Qaeda and Iraq. Well, Bush will conflate them, so I still think the point is valid.)

MASTER IS GREAT, EVEN WHEN HE BEATS US!

Shorter Matt Bai in The New York Times Magazine:

The inadequacy of Bush's health-care policies shows that he's a true visionary -- just not enough of one.

Yeah, Bai's article is a real critique. He tells us Bush's policies aren't good enough, but, heck, Bush still has gumption, dammit:

Unlike most of his Democratic detractors, Bush has shown the vision to rethink time-honored orthodoxy, even at his own political peril; no matter what his critics may say, it took no small amount of courage to ask if Social Security could be stronger than it is or if the tax code could be simpler and less punitive. He recognizes that government should be more flexible and more consumer-oriented.

Oh, is that what led to Bush's Social Security scheme and talk about overhauling the tax code? "Courage"? And here I thought it was hubris born of a misreading of the rather close '04 election as a "mandate," combined with a cynical belief that he could take advantage of most Americans' inability to understand complex financial matters in order to use Social Security and the tax code to line the pockets of the rich. Guess I was wrong, hunh?

And I love the last part. Yes, a Medicare prescription drug benefit with a bewildering array of plans, all of which include different formularies of covered and non-covered drugs, with some patients assigned to plans at random whether or not those plans cover expensive drugs they're already taking, while all patients are left at the mercy of inadequately staffed insurance-company and government phone lines when they don't know what the hell's going on regarding their benefits -- oh, that's really "consumer-oriented," isn't it?

And, of course, no Democrat who's ever proposed universal coverage for Americans is "rethink[ing] time-honored orthodoxy" -- only the Mighty Bush gets credit for that.

Matt, I think there's still some shoe polish on your tongue.

Busy day. See you tomorrow.