ANTI-ABORTION GROUP BURNS QURAN;
DID PRIEST CONNECTED TO TOP D.C. REPUBLICANS WATCH (OR PARTICIPATE)?

From yesterday's Jackson Clarion-Ledger:

...Activists from Operation Save America, formerly known as Operation Rescue, have been in Jackson since Saturday for eight days of protests against [Mississippi]'s only abortion clinic, the Jackson Women's Health Organization in the Fondren neighborhood.

During a demonstration at the Capitol on Tuesday, anti-abortion activists tore up pages from the Quran, the Muslim holy book, along with a gay pride flag and copies of six U.S. Supreme Court rulings related to religion in public schools, sodomy and abortion.

The group intended to burn the items at the Capitol but couldn't because it didn't have a permit, said Operation Save America volunteer Pat McEwen, a retired college professor from Palm Bay, Fla.

Instead, the activists burned the Quran and other items Tuesday evening in the parking lot outside Making Jesus Real Church in Pearl, McEwen said. Police confirmed the burning....

Was Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life there? He's certainly participated in other OSA activities this week in Jackson:

Anti-Abortionists Give Funeral For Fetus

An unusual event marks the sixth day of abortion protests in Jackson. The group Operation Save America drew crowds downtown, where they had on display what they say is an aborted child.

It began like any memorial service. But inside the casket was what protestors say is an aborted fetus they named Rebecca....

National Director of Priests For Life Father Frank Pavone led the ceremony...

OSA has burned Qurans before:

...at Columbus City Hall, Thursday July 22, 2004, ... Operation Save America (OSA) burned a "gay" flag, a copy of Roe vs. Wade and a Muslim "holy" book, the Koran....



And Pavone was there:

Thursday, July 22, 2004...

Frank Pavone, a priest who is an official of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, spoke this afternoon at OSA's City Hall event.

As I've pointed out several times, Pavone gave invocations at both a rally for religious conservatives organized by the GOP before the 2004 convention and a subsequent "Christian Inaugural Eve Gala" that was also addressed by Karl Rove.

And now I see that he spoke at these GOP functions after he participated in at least one Quran-burning event.

(First story via DU.)

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UPDATE: Did I forget to remind you that another member of Priests for Life is Father Paul Scalia, who's Antonin Scalia's son?

Also, here's some background on Flip Benham, head of Operation Save America.

MINE SAFETY IN AMERICA, 2006:
STILL LAGGING BEHIND MINE SAFETY IN POLAND, 1921

...on at least one issue. Here's a story from today's New York Times on the Sago mine disaster:

The 12 miners who died in the Sago Mine in West Virginia in January would have survived an explosion in an abandoned section of the mine if the seals cordoning off that area had been properly installed, state mining officials concluded in a report released yesterday....

Under current rules, the seals are supposed to withstand explosions exerting 20 pounds of pressure per square inch....

... physical evidence showed that the force of the explosion exceeded 20 pounds per square inch.

Federal mine safety officials said yesterday that they would begin requiring mines to use new alternative seals that could withstand 50 pounds of pressure per square inch....

Sago was horrible, but it's a good thing the standards are being modernized, right? Well, yes -- but "modernized" isn't exactly the right word.

Last May, West Virginia's Charleston Gazette looked at a 1971 U.S. government study, which in turn looked at how this issue had been dealt with in the U.S. and other countries in previous years. Among other things, the Gazette found this:

In Poland and Germany, [a] 1921 study said, the standard for seal construction [was] 72 pounds per square inch.

Also:

...the United Kingdom determined that the 50 psi standard "gives a good margin of safety in practice" after studies of disasters there in 1933 and 1960.

And a tougher standard was partly implemented here in the U.S. decades ago:

The 1921 study also notes that the government set a 50-pounds-per-square-inch requirement on seals in mines located on federal lands. That regulation, the study said, "was based on the general opinion of men experienced in mine explosion investigations."

But the business of America is business, dammit, and we couldn't possibly have a standard like that for mines on private land.

So what we got instead was the 20-pounds-per-square-inch standard. It became law in 1992. And it was inadequate to prevent the deaths of twelve miners in 2006.

HOW TO BLOG GOOD

Lesson #13: Strengthen your argument by using links that really get your point across....

It never fails that when the press discusses things like President Bush vetoing this bill, they leave out the word EMBRYONIC.

--The Anchoress

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UPDATE: See the Anchoress's reply in comments.

****

UPDATE: Er, I hope you don't think I feel chastened. The Anchoress's comment points out that when she linked it, the CNN article didn't have "embryonic" in the title, but it did have "embryonic" in the text. Where I come from, that doesn't constitute "leav[ing] out the word EMBRYONIC," but the Anchoress's mileage may vary.

More news sources that either did or didn't "leave out the word EMBRYONIC," depending on your perspective.

Much of the left blogosphere is enjoying an article in today's New York Times entitled "Lieberman Finds Favor Among Donors That Usually Support G.O.P." It certainly reinforces the case for Ned Lamont -- but let me (as usual) be the skunk at the garden party and point out that it means Lieberman won't lack for friends and financiers in a general election campaign, whether or not he wins the Democratic primary.

And right now, of course, it looks as if he might not win that primary -- he's trailing Lamont 51%-47% in the latest Quinnipiac poll, as you probably know. But Joe's still well ahead in a three-way race, 51% (Joe)-27% (Ned)-9% (Republican Alan Schlesinger).

The full results of the Quinnipiac poll are here; results of the previous Quinnipiac poll, released June 8, are here. In June, Lieberman led a three-way race 56%-18%-8%, so he's down 5% and Lamont's up 9% in six weeks.

Does that mean Lamont has the momentum to win the general? I don't know; I have my doubts. I'll note that Lieberman's support among Republicans in a three-way race is unchanged from June to July, and very strong (58%). Independents also still favor Lieberman overwhelmingly, though admittedly by less than in June (54%-22%-7% as opposed to 59%-15%-6%).

What I keep trying to figure out is what the GOP is thinking about this race. Atrios keeps insisting that the Republicans are going to fight to win it, but what's really going on? Last week we were hearing that Connecticut Republicans wanted to pressure Schlesinger to drop out, because of a reporting gambling problem -- but instead of a heavy hitter, they're reported want to replace him on the ticket with a nonentity, John C. Orchulli, who was the party's sacrificial lamb in the 2004 Senate race, which Democratic incumbent Christopher Dodd won easily. (Forget about those rumors that Lieberman himself might take the GOP line -- he says he won't.)

My worry is that Rove is husbanding his resources -- concluding, presumably, that the party doesn't have a potential winner for this race, he may think a Lieberman independent campaign is of more use to him nationwide than a full-fledged GOP battle for the seat would be.

How? By giving him (and the GOP's media surrogates) the opportunity to point to Connecticut and say GOP-friendly things like this (from John Hawkins at Right Wing News):

So, if Joe loses as a Democrat, but wins as an independent with lots of Republican and Independent support, what does that mean?

Well hopefully, it'll mean that the "Harry Truman Democrats" will realize that if they're serious about defending America, they're in the wrong party. Could it mean that some Jews, who vote Democrat 2 to 1, might get the message that they're in the wrong party? Sure.

We've already had a Lieberman spinner feeding the press the arguments that support for Lamont is grounded in anti-Semitism and a Lieberman loss will alienate Jewish voters from the Democratic Party nationwide. Rove is surely thinking, More of this, please. He may really believe that getting these memes to spread across the country (along with the ever-popular "the Democratic Party is falling into the hands of purge-crazed Stalinists") will help him win enough tight races elsewhere that not getting a pickup in Connecticut is a small price to pay. (Especially when the likely winner in Connecticut is a Bush Republican disguised as a Democrat.)

If I'm right about this, those Republican-leaning donors aren't putting themselves in the GOP doghouse at all when they write checks to Joe.

By the way, via Julia, I see that I'm not the only left blogger who's sick of Lieberman yet skeptical about the Lamont fight -- check out the Talking Dog's objections, which don't track mine exactly, but are well worth pondering.

I forgot to mention that John Dean's book Conservatives without Conscience just hit #2 on the New York Times bestseller list, in its first week on the list. Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine remains at #3. (This is via e-mail; the Times will post the list this weekend.)

Ann Coulter's Godless drops from #4 to #5 in its sixth week on the list. Her books sell, but this one had only two weeks at #1, unlike, say, Slander, which was #1 for eight weeks. She's slipping.

Travis G. has a great post at Sadly, No! from which it's clear that Ann's many remaining fans don't think of her as a satirist or a jokester, even when she's sentencing political enemies to death. (Though they can't seem to agree on whether the staff of The New York Times should be hanged or shot.) I'll add that when I go to Captain's Quarters, a blog ad on the right from talk radio station WMCA says, "WHY ANN COULTER IS RIGHT" -- not "WHY ANN COULTER IS HILARIOUS" or "WHY ANN COULTER'S FANS CAN TAKE A JOKE, UNLIKE THOSE HUMORLESS, POLITICALLY CORRECT LIBERALS."

Oh, good Lord:

Tom DeLay Speaks Out for Israel on the Tovia Singer Show
22:22 Jul 19, '06 / 23 Tammuz 5766

Former House Majority Leader and Congressman Tom DeLay speaks out on Israel's right to fight on the Tovia Singer Show.

Listen live at 10pm Wednesday, NY time, 5am Thursday Israel time at www.IsraelNationalRadio.com, or click here now to listen to IsraelNationalRadio live.

The Tovia Singer Show show can be heard live Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 10pm EST, 5am Israel time the following morning. Or listen to the show on Demand at www.IsraelNationalRadio.com.

What's up with that? Has he thrown in his lot with (or decided to pander to) the Christian Zionists?

Whaever he's doing, it sure seems as if he's collecting allies. For what exactly does he think he's going to use these allies in the future?

RALPH REED AND THE FLAGGERS

OK, this is odd. Tom Baxter and Jim Galloway, political bloggers for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, have a theory as to why Ralph Reed lost his race to be the GOP's candidate for lieutenant governor yesterday: in part, because he isn't considered a friend to the Stars and Bars. The "flaggers" don't like him.

Here are Baxter and Galloway on Sunday, before the votes were cast, talking about the influence of the race for governor on Reed's campaign for L.G.:

...The cause of Confederate enthusiasts has been picked up this year by Ray McBerry, who is [incumbent Sonny] Perdue’s opponent in the Republican [gubernatorial] primary.

McBerry may be no more than an annoying buzz to the sitting governor. If he picks up 10,000 votes tomorrow, Perdue can swat him down with 300,000.

But 10,000 votes, even 2,000 ballots, could mean the world in the GOP race for lieutenant governor.

And flaggers don’t remember Reed as a friend. McBerry says most of his troops will choose Cagle for lieutenant governor....

Rusty Henderson of Dublin, a sometime lobbyist, is the closest thing that flaggers have to an ambassador at the state Capitol.

He explained: Reed is viewed as a leader of that wing of the national GOP that has emphasized the need to broaden the party’s appeal among African-Americans and Hispanics.

Most would consider this both noble and practical.

But flaggers, Henderson said, argue that Confederate symbolism has been unfairly sacrificed to the Republican cause of diversity, and that Reed ... has been part of this....

Here are Baxter and Galloway today, reviewing yesterday's vote totals:

...here are the starkest numbers to emerge from the Republican primary: Ray McBerry got 48,113 in the governor’s race against Sonny Perdue, and Ralph Reed lost to Casey Cagle by 49,126 votes.

By no means does that say the flaggers, whose cause McBerry represents, elected Cagle. It does indicate Reed got into the kind of cross-issue stew that poisoned [Governor] Roy Barnes [a non-flagger who was defeated in 2002].

Back in ’02, it was the flaggers plus the teachers plus the county sheriffs who defeated Barnes in many South Georgia counties. This year, it was the flaggers plus the disaffected churchgoers who hurt Reed in the same areas....

Is this accurate? I have no idea. But all this is written by two guys who surely know a hell of a lot more about Georgia politics than I do. If they say Reed lost in large measure because he's seen as not sufficiently deferential to the Confederacy, that's disturbing.

SECURING OUR BORDERS AGAINST THE MENACE OF REFRIED BEANS

From The Christian Science Monitor:

In some ways, the traveling taco stand has become a symbol of the rise of Hispanics in the US. Here in Gwinnett County, Ga., it wasn't any different - until lawmakers outlawed the $1 street-corner taco vendor last month....

Last month, the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners became one of the first in the country to ban mobile taco stands, which officials said were cluttering street corners. One Gwinnett politician described the proliferation of rolling taco stands as "gypsy-fication."

Nashville, Tenn., is now considering a similar law. "I don't think you'd see this generalized fear if they were selling grits," says William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington....

I'm sure the lawmakers would insist that ethnicity is the furthest thing from their minds, to judge from this AP story:

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga.

Food trailers peddling $1 tacos are a thing of the past in Gwinnett County after a crackdown on street vendors.

The last of the county's mobile food vending permits ran out in May after county officials stopped issuing the licenses last fall and tightened ordinances on all street vending....

Whether they sell barbecue or burritos, food trailers are banned under rules passed by the county commission in September....

But apparently nobody saw a problem in and around Lawrenceville a few years ago when this place was gaining a reputation:

Published on: 11/02/04

ON AN OUTPOST of Lawrenceville Highway, just over that city's line, there is a big red pig on the side of the road. It is part of a sign that lures you into the parking lot of Hometown Barbeque ... a barbecue joint that has finally found a home.

For five years prior to this past September, partners George Richbourg and Martha Kelly sold barbecue from a catering truck in the parking lot of the Prescription Shop on the corner of Gwinnett Drive and Scenic Highway in Lawrenceville....

It's nice to know barbecue this good has found a home without wheels....

You're going to see story after story like this as this issue heats up. It's going to be somewhat reminiscent of Jim Crow -- in addition to the more substantive aspects of the crackdowns (see, e.g., "Immigration Enforcement Benefits Prison Firms" in today's New York Times), a lot of what's done will just be petty. And for all the lip service that's paid to "getting tough on businesses that hire illegals," you'll read a thousand stories like this one before you read about any business owner who hires undocumented workers being sentenced to hard time.

Maureen Dowd's in fine form today:

...The open-microphone incident at the G-8 lunch in St. Petersburg on Monday illustrated once more that W. never made any effort to adapt. The president has enshrined his immaturity and insularity, turning every environment he inhabits -- no matter how decorous or serious -- into a comfortable frat house.

No matter what the trappings or the ceremonies require of the leader of the free world, he brings the same DKE bearing and cadences, the same insouciance and smart-alecky attitude, the same simplistic approach -- swearing, swaggering, talking to Tony Blair with his mouth full of buttered roll, and giving a startled Angela Merkel an impromptu shoulder rub. He can make even a global summit meeting seem like a kegger....

Read the whole thing free here.

THE RICHEST NATION ON EARTH

From CBS News (emphasis mine):

A commercial ship escorted by a U.S. destroyer will start evacuating some Americans from war-torn Lebanon on Tuesday, and more military helicopters will be used to fly others direct to Cyprus, a U.S. official said....

At the State Department, [spokesman Sean] McCormack said the cost of a massive evacuation was beyond U.S. resources. He said evacuated Americans would be asked to pay commercial rates, and if they did not have the money, to promise to pay in the future....

What the hell? Is this normal? Does our government usually bill citizens for evacuation from war zones? Has this always been the case? Or is this another wonderful benefit from all those tax cuts?

****

UPDATE: Via Joyful Alternative in comments, I learn that the State Department is waiving this fee for future evacuees -- though some have already paid the fee. Watch the report from Keith Olbermann's show here (click on "Evacuees make way to Cyprus"). In any case, the fee's still mandated by law -- the government is just waiving it in this case, undoubtedly just to head off bad publicity.

Here's an earlier MSNBC story:

...[Joanne] Nucho [a student at American University in Beirut] does not even know what she's allowed to pack. The State Department told her she's allowed a 30-pound duffel bag, but she has heard rumors that she will not be allowed to a camera or her laptop -- her main method of communicating with relatives over the last year....

Nucho said there was talk that Americans would have to pay a $300 evacuation fee and be left to sleep on the streets of Cyprus....

"As of now, the talk of sleeping on streets and not being able to put laptops in the one bag we do take with us are unconfirmed rumors that we are desperately hoping are untrue," Nucho said. "However, we do know for a fact that the French have just left and they were allowed to take entire suitcases, whereas we will only be able to take a tote bag."

Nucho added that all evacuees have signed promissory notes pledging to pay the U.S. back for safe passage to Cyprus, plus interest. Once in Cyprus, she said the government would not pay for hotel fees nor a return flight to the U.S.

In statements e-mailed to Americans in Lebanon and posted on the embassy's Web site, the State Department has stressed "that the U.S. government does not provide no-cost transportation but does have the authority to provide repatriation loans to those in financial need. For the portion of your trip directly handled by the U.S. Government we will ask you to sign a promissory note and we will bill you at a later date." ...

So they really were going to stiff everyone. And the management of information is of FEMA quality. But should we have expected anything else?

I told you Bush was besotted with Angela Merkel, but his unsolicited neck massage (his "love attack," as it's being called in the German press) really proves it. If you can't see the pictures or video at that link, try Wonkette, AMERICAblog, or Crooks and Liars.



Why is he fascinated with her? I don't want to creep you out too much, but I'll try a little amateur Freud:



Fig. 1: Merkel.
Fig. 2: Mom.

All together now: Eeeeuuuwww.

Seriously, I think Shakespeare's Sister has it right:

This is the ultimate in rude and presumptuous behavior. I've worked with men who feel compelled to touch me in exactly this way, with one even responding to my terse request to back off with a more determined shoulder rub and the comment, "But you're so tense." To which I replied, "That's because you won't get your fucking hands off of me." He backed away then with his hands in the air and a big, "Geez!" like I was a bitch. What an asshole I was for not considering my body community property like he did.

As Lindsay notes, "Every woman will recognize the guy who sidles up and starts 'casually' giving you a backrub without even looking at you, because he wants to preserve deniability in case you freak out. Like any practiced groper, Bush stares right past Merkel as she recoils from his touch. The play fails, but he just moves on, eyes averted, like it's her problem. ('Oh my God, there's a hysterical woman displaying inappropriate behavior! I'll just pretend I don't notice her egregious gaffe.')" Exactly right. A woman who doesn't welcome being groped is always the one with the problem -- not the groper.

But don't expect anyone to talk like this in the mainstream press (with the possible exception of Maureen Dowd). If this gets covered at all, I guarantee the press will walk it back for the president and make it seem as innocuous as possible -- or possibly portray it as a sign of some positive character trait. (Don't laugh -- they'll find a way.)

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UPDATE: I also like James Wolcott's take:

Perhaps it was nothing more than Bush's usual privileged-snot appropriation at play. A symptom of the same syndrome that has him hanging nicknames on people, and kissing bald men on the head. Reports in the Financial Times and elsewhere have indicated that Bush is hoping/planning to groom Merkel as the US's number one ally to fill the spot of the fading Tony Blair... Bush has always been a taker, not a giver. He wasn't giving Merkel a massage, he was taking possession of her, letting everybody know, "This little lady's mine."

But in addition, I think it's about the sex.

DOING A HECKUVA JOB

The Bush administration -- one big FEMA:

Europeans and Lebanese with foreign passports fled Lebanon by the thousands, while Americans expressed frustration at the slow pace of U.S. evacuation efforts Tuesday as a cruise ship chugged toward the country to pick them up.

...An American man and his wife boarding [a] Swedish chartered ship expressed anger at how long the process to evacuate U.S. citizens was taking as fighting between the Israelis and Hezbollah guerrillas entered its seventh day.

"I can't wait any more. I'm sorry it's taking them too long," he said. The man, who said he was from Pennsylvania, said he was too distraught to be interviewed and declined to give his name.

Jonathan Chakhtoura, a 19-year-old Lebanese-American fashion design student in Boston, said he registered with the U.S. Embassy electronically to be evacuated three days ago, but he has not heard from the embassy except for an e-mail acknowledging his registration.

Chakhtoura, who would like to be back in the U.S. before classes start on Sept. 6, said he was disappointed with the way the embassy has handled the evacuation.

"Every time I call to see what's going on the lines are busy. When they answer, they say they don't know," he complained. "I am extremely disappointed. A lot of people don't know what is going on. There is so much confusion. If it's security they are worried about, then I think we will be more secure if we know what is going on." ...

The Bush administration and the GOP Congress: promises made, promises kept.

The pharmaceutical industry is beginning to reap a windfall from a surprisingly lucrative niche market: drugs for poor people....

The windfall, which by some estimates could be $2 billion or more this year, is a result of the transfer of millions of low-income people into the new Medicare Part D drug program that went into effect in January. Under that program, as it turns out, the prices paid by insurers, and eventually the taxpayer, for the medications given to those transferred are likely to be higher than what was paid under the federal-state Medicaid programs for the poor.

...state Medicaid programs ... closely monitor drug prices, and drug makers often typically end up paying rebates to the states.

... But in creating the federal Part D program, Congress -- in what critics saw as a sop to the drug industry -- barred the government from having a negotiating role....

Since Part D went into effect, the pharmaceutical industry has raised the wholesale prices of its brand-name drugs an average of 3.6 percent.

... when it comes time for the insurers to settle accounts with the government, the costs of the 6.5 million drugs for the transferees will end up being passed along to federal taxpayers....

Gee, with the drug companies making all that extra money, maybe the numbers will get lower in stories like this:

Federal drug officials on Thursday announced the approval of a vaccine against cervical cancer....

Merck, Gardasil's maker, said a full, three-shot course would cost $360, making Gardasil among the most expensive vaccines ever made.

...A federal program is expected to provide the vaccine to 45 percent of the children in the United States for whom it is recommended. But state programs that cover other children are having trouble buying other expensive vaccines.

North Carolina, for instance, spends $11 million annually to provide every child with seven vaccines. Gardasil alone would probably cost at least another $10 million.

"Increasingly, states are asked to make a Sophie's choice about which diseases they will allow children to be hospitalized or killed by," said Dr. Paul Offit, director of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia....

Or this:

The federal government on Wednesday approved the first HIV treatment that packs a triple-drug cocktail into a one-a-day pill.

... The wholesale price of a 30-day supply of the pill will be $1,150.88....

Whoops -- sorry. Did I say maybe drug companies will lower drug prices? I must be on drugs.

MEANWHILE...

Taliban militants seized two towns in tumultuous southern Afghanistan, forcing police and government officials to flee, officials said Monday.

... insurgents only were known to have completely seized one town since their hard-line regime was toppled by U.S. forces in 2001.

They were quickly driven out of that town, Chora, in Uruzgan province.

...On Monday, large numbers of militants chased out police after a brief clash in the town of Naway-i-Barakzayi, in Helmand province near the Pakistan border, district police chief Mullah Sharufuddin said.

Scores of Taliban forces overran police holed up Sunday in a compound in the nearby Helmand town of Garmser. The security forces and a handful of government officials fled, a local government official said....

--AP

Oh, but giving a damn about Afghanistan is so four and a half years ago.

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UPDATE: Ah, but a former Army colonel is about to deliver a George Bush rug full of religious (Catholic!) symbolism to the president -- a rug that, we're told, was made by a grateful resident of Kabul, er, four years ago -- and that proves Bush is a great president, doesn't it?

(Via Memeorandum.)

The anti-abortion LifeSite news service notes the following with disgust:

Profits from the Lord of the Rings film trilogy are being used to fund destructive human embryonic research at the University of California, reported the Mainichi Daily News.

Filmmakers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, who brought the J.R.R. Tolkien epic to the screen, together donated US $310,000 last Saturday to fund research using the stem cells of human embryos....

I say good for them. And if you haven't seen it, go rent Heavenly Creatures.

I think Avedon and Barbara are right to be suspicious about the lead of this Washington Post story:

When the dispatcher called, Stephanie Adamson knew this might be the run she had feared. But it wasn't until her ambulance arrived at the hospital and she saw the words "elective abortion" on the patient's chart that she knew she had to make a choice.

"I just got a sick feeling in my stomach," said Adamson, an emergency medical technician from Channahon, Ill.

Adamson called her boss to say she could not transport the patient to the other hospital where the procedure was scheduled.

"I just knew I couldn't do it. I've never been for abortion -- I've always been against it," Adamson said. "I was brought up in a Christian home and always believed life was precious."

Adamson's supervisor fired her on the spot and dispatched another ambulance to transfer the distraught young patient....

An ambulance for an elective abortion? Avedon and Barbara don't think that's plausible -- and I agree. I suspect Ms. Adamson's story and the truth don't exactly coincide.

But I want to talk about the rest of the article, which is about medical "conscience" issues in general:

...Pharmacist Gene Herr was fired by a drugstore in Denton, Tex., in 2004 after refusing to fill a rape victim's prescription for the morning-after pill.

"This was the worst-case scenario," Herr said. "This was the hardest decision I ever made. The heinousness of a rape is a horrible thing. But I don't think you should punish a child for the sins of the father."

Fertility specialist James D. Madden, a Catholic, will treat only married couples using their own sperm and eggs.

"I believe the optimal circumstances for a child is to have a mother and a father. They contribute different things to the offspring," said Madden, of the Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas....

May I just point out the contradiction between those last two examples (if the rape victim was unmarried, or was married and had a husband who didn't want to raise his wife's rapist's child as his own)? Yes, I know it was two different practitioners who raised objections, but large numbers of American religious conservatives make both arguments without ever seeing a conflict between the two.

But add these to the other examples cited in the article (e.g., a Catholic anesthesiologist who won't participate in elective sterilizations) and it seems possible that we're headed toward a two-tier medical system -- red and blue -- in which many services simply won't be available in non-coastal, non-big-city America.

(Yet whenever I think that doctors and nurses and ansthesiologists and pharmacists should just shut up and do whatever they're asked to do, I remember that if a medical explanation of homosexuality is ever pinpointed, right-wingers are going to try to pioneer all sorts of "reparative" treatments for children, or possibly even fetuses. Alas, I can't completely dismiss "conscience" clauses -- we may need 'em too someday.)

SHIITE HAPPENS

New York Times today:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 16 -- As sectarian violence soars, many Sunni Arab political and religious leaders once staunchly opposed to the American presence here are now saying they need American troops to protect them from the rampages of Shiite militias and Shiite-run government forces.

The pleas from the Sunni Arab leaders have been growing in intensity since an eruption of sectarian bloodletting in February, but they have reached a new pitch in recent days as Shiite militiamen have brazenly shot dead groups of Sunni civilians in broad daylight in Baghdad and other mixed areas of central Iraq.

The Sunnis also view the Americans as a "bulwark against Iranian actions here," a senior American diplomat said....

The Sunni Arab leaders say they have no newfound love for the Americans. Many say they still sympathize with the insurgency and despise the Bush administration and the fact that the invasion has helped strengthen the power of neighboring Iran, which backs the ruling Shiite parties....

New York Times today:

With the battle between Israel and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah raging, key Arab governments have taken the rare step of blaming Hezbollah, underscoring in part their growing fear of influence by the group’s main sponsor, Iran.

Saudi Arabia, with Jordan, Egypt and several Persian Gulf states, chastised Hezbollah for "unexpected, inappropriate and irresponsible acts" at an emergency Arab League summit meeting in Cairo on Saturday.

... the willingness of those governments to defy public opinion in their own countries underscores a shift that is prompted by the growing influence of Iran and Shiite Muslims in Iraq and across the region....

"There is a school of thought, led by Saudi Arabia, that believes that Hezbollah is a source of trouble, a protege of Iran, but also a political instrument in the hands of Iran," said Adnan Abu Odeh, a Jordanian sociologist. "This school says we should not play into the hands of Iran, which has its own agenda, by sympathizing or supporting Hezbollah fighting against the Israelis." ...

Yeah, overthrowing the Sunni secularist Saddam Hussein was just such a boon for the stability of the region.

"IN GOD WE STILL TRUST"

Most of you probably won't be able to sit through this entire video, but I especially love the fact that when the song comes to the lines "Now there are those among us who want to push Him [God] out" (at around 1:40), we get two shots of burning American flags. This is really how red-staters think -- not only do they think we evil libs are trying to rid America of religion, but they think flag-burning is part of that process. They think flag-burning is against God, that the American flag is a symbol of Jesus Christ. Lincoln wept.

(This video looks homemade, but it's making the rounds, e.g., at StoptheACLU.com. The song is from the very successful country act Diamond Rio. By the way, is it just me, or has country radio turned into America's version of those Middle Eastern music shops that do most of their business selling CDs of songs about jihad? Whenever I hit a country song on the radio, it's either about God 'n' country like this one or some ode to living an ordinary life in apparent defiance of hip coastal liberal totalitarianism....)

HOW DARE WE

Lakshmi Chaudry in The Nation:

...the liberal blogosphere's general lack of interest in understanding the internal dynamics of news reporting was apparent in the marked paucity of actual journalists on the numerous journalism-related panels at the Yearly Kos convention. "It can be so patronizing. Somebody at Yearly Kos--a guy I know and like--said to me, 'We just want to help you be better at your job,'" says [Matt] Bai [of The New York Times Magazine], one of the rare journalists invited to speak at the convention. "It's like me walking into the emergency room and telling the doctor how to do a better job. Based on what?"

Er, Matt, that's really not the analogy you want to use if you want to convince me that bloggers are being unfair to journalists.

The fact is, doctors (emergency-room and otherwise) have quite a bit to learn from patients. If you've ever had a persistent medical problem, or a medical problem that didn't respond to what one or more doctors insisted was appropriate treatment, if you're smart you went off on your own and armed yourself with information, and also paid close attention to what was happening to your own body, until eventually you came to know more about what was wrong with you than any doctor. You still needed a doctor, but it's likely that office visits became dialogues rather than orations from on high.

I'm speaking from some personal experience (I'll avoid boring you with the details, but I'm fine now), as well as from conversations with other people who had to suggest diagnoses to their doctors (correctly) or become experts on possible treatments.

I think a lot of doctors are doing perfectly fine work based on the standards of their profession -- but that's not enough to help some patients who can be helped. Doctors, for instance, are far readier to say a patient has a common condition than a less common one; the aphorism is: "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses rather than zebras." That's what their profession tells them to do, but it isn't always what the patient needs. Sometimes a patient's condition is a zebra.

Journalists also do what they and their peers think is right, and it isn't always what the reader needs. With a doctor you have to say, "If I'm not getting better, then what you're doing isn't working." Doctors sometimes find this baffling. Journalists, too. If you say, "I'm getting two sides' spin from this story, when what I want is the truth," maybe Matt Bai gets offended -- Who the hell are you to tell him -- a journalist -- how to do journalism? Well, you're the reader, fer crissake. You're the reason his job exists. His work is to inform you, just as a doctor's is to help you get well. If this isn't happening, hell yes, you have a right to say something.

IOKIYAR

Republicans are howling over a Democratic political Web site ad that displays flag-draped coffins and a fake police mug shot of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, arguing that the ad politicizes war casualties and is an insult to the families of the troops killed in Iraq....

The National Republican Congressional Committee promptly gathered more than a dozen GOP members of Congress, many of them former service members, to denounce the ad and call on Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the DCCC chairman, to apologize.

"For the Democrats, everything is about politics," said Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., chairman of the Republican campaign committee. "This crosses the line."...

--AP, July 13

Democrats pulled an Internet ad that showed flag-draped coffins Friday after Republicans and at least two Democrats demanded it be taken down on grounds the image was insensitive and not fit for a political commercial....

--AP, July 14

[Republican] U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine cues images of 9/11 hijackers, terrorists in training, and a smoldering World Trade Center to question his Democratic opponent's national-security record in a television ad launched statewide yesterday....

It references a Web site, www.brownvotes.com, and flashes between pictures of Mr. Brown; terrorist camps; New York City's burning trade towers on Sept. 11, 2001, and the hijackers who slammed airplanes into those towers, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field....

--Toledo Blade, July 15

It's OK if you're a Republican.

(The Democrats' ad is still up at YouTube; DeWine's ad is here.)

(Via DU.)

Bloomberg News debunks another slight exaggeration by the Commander in Chief:

North Korean Missile Attack Probably Couldn't Be Intercepted

After North Korea unsuccessfully tested a long-range missile last week, President George W. Bush said that the U.S. would have had "a reasonable chance of shooting it down. At least, that's what the military commanders told me.''

Former senior Defense Department officials don't share that assessment. "I would not have confidence,'' said Thomas Christie, who served from mid-2001 to early 2005 as the Pentagon's top testing official. Christie, in an interview, put the likelihood of success at less than 20 percent.

After spending $95 billion -- and amid plans to spend at least $48 billion more -- the program to develop a reliable defense against missiles is years behind schedule and has yet to prove it can intercept a rocket coming from an unknown location.

The ground-based system designed to protect the nation from rogue states such as North Korea "has no demonstrated capability to defend the United States against enemy attack under realistic conditions,'' said Philip Coyle, an official with the Center for Defense Information in Washington, who held Christie's post from 1996 until 2001.

... The system's last successful test was in October 2002 against a target whose general location was known beforehand. Subsequent tests failed.

..."We don't know if it is going to work,'' Steve Hildreth, a missile-defense expert for the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, said in an interview. "We just don't have the data to have much confidence in the ground-based system's capability to shoot down things like a Taepodong-2,'' the long-range missile North Korea tested July 5 that might be able to reach Alaska....

Earlier this week, a number of blogs on the right were crowing about this story, from the Las Cruces Sun-News:

...Hundreds of miles above southern New Mexico, it was a picture-perfect impact between two missiles.

...The pre-dawn art show was the result of the third of five tests planned at White Sands Missile Range to determine the effectiveness of THAAD -- Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile. And military officials said the test went better than they could have hoped.

"This was phenomenal," said U.S. Army Col. Charles Driessnack, the project manager for the Missile Defense Agency's THAAD program. "It performed as expected."

The test demonstrated the THAAD's ability to "completely destroy that warhead so that no chemical or nuclear residue would contaminate areas" below the explosion, Driessnack said....

Lovely, but there are a couple of problems: (1) this system isn't designed for long-range missiles and (2) the test, as is so often the case, was rigged. This is from Military.com:

The ... system will complement the Patriot in providing last-ditch defense against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.

... The Missile Defense Agency's long-range ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California that were put on alert to shoot down North Korean missiles haven't hit a test target since 2002....

The Hera target in today's THAAD test used no decoys and did not simulate debris....

Well, you know, maybe Kim Jong-il won't use debris or decoys when and if he launches a real missile at us. Maybe he'll let us win.

(Via Democratic Underground and Memeorandum.)

A reader tipped me to this -- Algore's An Inconvenient Truth is currently doing some crummy biz at the box office.....

--Bryan at Hot Air, June 1

Perhaps not since "Gigli" has a movie so highly anticipated by the media done so little at the box office....

--Ken Shepherd at The Right Angle (blog of Human Events Online), June 13

UPI reports that Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, hasn't done so well after a promising start...

It's no shock, I suppose, that most people aren't interested in seeing propaganda films about the weather.

... the film's perfomance has become pathetic....

--Hindrocket at Power Line, June 27

****

...An Inconvenient Truth has grossed $15 million in the U.S., and it is projected to earn another $10-$15 million with its release overseas next month (along with nobody-knows-how-many-more-million when the DVD arrives in the fall).... The movie has sped by Hoop Dreams and Super Size Me at the box office, has just passed Madonna's Truth or Dare to become the fourth-highest-grossing non-IMAX, non-concert documentary of all time, and may even have a shot at snatching third place from Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine.

--Entertainment Weekly (story available online only to subscribers)

The possible next vice president of the United States, Jeb Bush, is having such a swell week -- his former prisons chief pleaded guilty to taking kickbacks and one of his judicial selection committee appointees resigned after calling Islam a "cult" -- that he may as well shoot the moon and throw his arm around another menace to society:

Gov. Jeb Bush on Thursday sided with a nurse who could lose her license because she discussed Terri Schiavo's medical condition on national TV.

"The governor feels the actions taken against Carla Sauer-Iyer are not justified and hopes that the complaint will be reconsidered and dismissed," Bush spokesman Russell Schweiss wrote in an e-mail to the St. Petersburg Times. "She did not disclose any information which was not already public."

On Thursday, the Department of Health requested the Board of Nursing to dismiss the agency's complaint that Sauer-Iyer, 42, improperly disclosed patient information on CNN last year.

... The case against Sauer-Iyer began on March 28, 2005, when the Health Department received a complaint from a Massachusetts registered nurse who said Sauer-Iyer made "unsubstantiated comments" on CNN "that with 'just a little bit of therapy' Mrs. Schiavo could be rehabilitated." ...

S.Z. at World O' Crap quotes a Cult of Schiavo house organ, the North Country Gazette, which tells us more:

Among the facts revealed to the broader public in the CNN interview was that Iyer witnessed Terri say, "Mommy, help me", and "pain", and would also interact with the nurses and visitors....

Iyer maintained that there exists over 4 hours of videotape from '95 and '96 proving this, but that it was placed under gag-order, including her own testimony about Michael Schiavo's treatment of Terri.

(Ms. Sauer-Iyer claims to have heard Michael Schiavo make remarks such as "When is that bitch gonna die?" She also says he regularly injected Terri with insulin in order to harm her.)

S.Z. also quotes a radio interview with the nurse:

I made numerous entries into the nursing notes in her chart, stating verbatim what she said and her various behaviors, but by my next on-duty shift, the notes would be deleted from her chart. Every time I made a positive entry about any responsiveness of Terri’s, someone would remove it after my shift ended.

Yeah, I think governors should definitely defend nurses who are either clinically delusional or willing to spread baldfaced lies about their patients on national TV. And that's also a character trait I like in my vice presidents.

I thought this "Bush's girfriend Angela Merkel" stuff was a joke, but jeez, look at this picture.

This one, too.

I guess that means this is out of date. Not to mention this.

The Mahablog is doing a splendid job of sorting through news and commentary on the Middle East. If you have some time, go there and read the posts from yesterday and today.

Memo to Barack Obama (and all other Democrats): Stop talking about talking about religion.

In case it's not obvious, that wasn't a typo -- I mean that Democrats should stop declaring in interviews, "We need to talk about religion." Talk religion if it comes naturally to you (see: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton), but talking about talking about religion is like proclaiming to the nation, in effect, "We have a strategic need to be perceived as religious." That feeds into all the mainstream deunciations of Democrats as "inauthentic" and "not knowing what they stand for." This is not a discussion that needs to take place in the press.

You probably already know about the New York Observer article that argues, on virtually no evidence, that the real reason for liberal anger at Joe Lieberman is anti-Semitism. But it's not the only article published this week to make that claim.

Here's an article from The Forward, the venerable New York Jewish newspaper, that says much the same thing -- and it appears within days of the Observer article.

What are the odds? Gosh, you don't suppose a couple of lazy journalists would let an incumbent's campaign spin doctor spoon-feed them a story like this, do you? Nawww -- modern journalists have way too much self-respect to simply retype spin, right?

The only empirical evidence of anti-Semitic Lieberman criticism in the long Observer article is a quote from that nerve center of liberal thought -- the comments at the Huffington Post. In the Forward there's also only one piece of empirical evidence offered, and it's from -- the comments at the Huffington Post! An astonishing coincidence!

I should note that the Forward story is only partly about anti-Semitism. Its main argument is that if Lieberman is defeated in the primary, Jews all over the country will feel alienated from the Democratic Party and will choose not to vote for Democratic candidates.

This is nuts -- or at least it was until it appeared in print. Now, right-wingers will seize on this notion, repeating it endlessly, running it through the noise machine, until it becomes conventional wisdom. Once that happens, some Jews around the country might actually believe that rejecting their local Democrat is an appropriate response to a (nonexistent) anti-Semitic attack.

If all this really is traceable to a Lieberman campaign spinner, then this person is willfully spreading memes that can damage the Democratic Party, just to save his candidate's hide.

I've been skeptical about the value of the anti-Lieberman campaign at a time when we're desperate to get to 51 in the Senate, but this really pisses me off.

*****

UPDATE: The consultant in question is Lieberman aide Dan Gerstein, as David Sirota explains here.

THROUGH WINGNUTS' EYES

From a Fox News story about its latest poll (emphasis mine):

On terrorism, Republicans, who once had as much as a 34-point advantage in 2003, now top Democrats by 12 percentage points. The related issue of border security is the only other item where Republicans are favored.

Yeah, those maids and gardeners? They all want to kill us.

****

(The poll, incidentally, is mostly good news for Democrats. Best news: Bush down 5 points in two weeks, to 36% approval, and Democrats are ahead of Republicans on virtually every issue, including, for the first time in a Fox poll, Iraq.)

Interesting, but probably not enough to do much harm:

A long-awaited re-appraisal of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's much-hailed actions surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks will be published in September to mark the fifth anniversary of the tragedy. It's called "The Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11," written by Wayne Barrett, the longtime Village Voice writer and author of a biography of the former mayor, and Dan Collins, a senior producer for CBSNews.com.

... The heads of various crisis-management-and-response units were political appointees, most in way above their heads. Giuliani and his subordinates were never able to coordinate communications among various fire, police, dispatch, public-health and other agencies; had they been successful, there's a good chance, the authors maintain, that the civilians who were told to stay in place inside the burning towers would have been evacuated, as the fire chiefs had ordered....

... the Giuliani City Hall seems to have been no stranger to sweetheart deals and patronage, so that the employee in charge of emergency broadband communications had a sister who worked as a lobbyist for the phone provider who just happened to win the lucrative contract. That employee later committed suicide....

And so on.

Yes, this is attacking Giuliani on his strength -- the Rove strategy. But it's not Rovian enough. The Rovian approach would be to get firefighters and cops, as well as survivors of the deceased, to go after Giuliani on this issue -- 9/11 Veterans for Truth, so to speak. (If it were in the service of a candidate to Rudy's right, don't worry -- Ann Coulter wouldn't say a word in protest.) But if this ever happens, it won't be the work of Rove -- Karl finds Rudy quite useful to the party, and reportedly wants him on the '08 ticket.

By the way, when I see positive words about a possible Giuliani candidacy at the Alan Keyes site, RenewAmerica.us, which usually features tirades against cafeteria-Catholic pols, I'm more and more convinced that the right is going to bend its rules for Rudy. Yeah, there's that pesky social liberalism, but Rudy has just the kind of personality right-wingers love -- jolly, pious, and an authoritarian thug in exactly the right mix. He's Bush as a grown-up -- except that he seems to hate his enemies even more than Bush does. To the right, I think that's intoxicating.

(Via Atrios.)

WHAT WE'RE FIGHTING FOR

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's parliament speaker Thursday accused "Jews" of financing acts of violence in Iraq in order to discredit Islamists who control the parliament and government so they can install their "agents" in power.

Mahmoud al-Mashhadani hinted that the Americans and Israelis did not want to see officials of Sunni and Shi'ite parties running the country because "this is not their agenda."

"They will say that we brought you in a democratic way to the government but you are sectarian people. One of you is killing the other and you don't deserve to become leaders because you are war lords," al-Mashhadani told reporters after a parliament meeting....

"Some people say 'we saw you beheading, kidnappings and killing. In the end we even started kidnapping women who are our honor,"' al-Mashhadani said. "These acts are not the work of Iraqis. I am sure that he who does this is a Jew and the son of a Jew."

"I can tell you about these Jewish, Israelis and Zionists who are using Iraqi money and oil to frustrate the Islamic movement in Iraq and come with the agent and cheap project." ...

By "agents," he appeared to be referring to secular politicians who do not identify themselves with religious or ethnic communities.

--AP via Ha'aretz

Shorter Robert Kagan in The Washington Post:

Remember when Bush said he wanted a peaceful resolution to the Iraq crisis, even though he was so ready for war he was practically drooling? Well, everything's the same in the case of Iran, except this time he's going to pretend not to be drooling.

MORE GOOD NEWS

The surest sign that things are going well in Iraq is the growing violence in Palestine and across the Lebanese border into Israel.

--Jed Babbin at The American Spectator's AmSpec Blog

In case you missed it, Steve Benen at the Carpetbagger Report spotted a key point in that decision to terminate Halliburton's no-bid contract:

... Halliburton's multi-billion dollar deals are wrapping up just as U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq end.

Steve quotes from the Washington Post story:

The decision on Halliburton comes as the U.S. contribution to Iraq's reconstruction begins to wane, reducing opportunities for U.S. companies after nearly four years of massive payouts to the private sector.

Of the more than $18 billion Congress allocated for reconstruction in late 2003, more than two-thirds has been spent and more than 90 percent has been contractually obligated, according to the inspector general's office overseeing reconstruction work. The rest of the money, which is collectively known as the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, needs to be obligated by the end of September.

Army spokesman Dave Foster said in a written response to questions that funding for 11 contracts covering various aspects of reconstruction -- including transportation, communications, water distribution and the electric grid -- will expire this fall. While the contractors will be allowed to finish any work previously requested, no new work can be ordered after September.

And then quotes Foster again:

"The Iraq reconstruction is winding down ... so there is no need for new contracts to replace the existing."

In other words, Halliburton's sweetheart reconstruction deals are ending at the exact same time the Bush administration is no longer spending big bucks on reconstruction deals.

It's remarkable timing, isn't it?

Sure is.

Chris Bowers of MyDD tries to figure out why so much attention has been focused recently on essentially harmless doings of left-wing bloggers (Kos vs. The New Republic and so on), while a top-tier right-wing blogger's death threats against Supreme Court Justices get no play in the mainstream press.

Interesting question, but I'm not sure I agree with Chris's answers:

The political and media establishment doesn't care about the right-wing blogosphere.... The right-wing blogosphere has comparatively little influence within the conservative movement and the Republican Party as the progressive netroots have within the progressive movement and the Democratic Party. They also have a significantly smaller audience, and the media clearly is not obsessed with them to nearly the same degree they are obsessed with us. The conservative movement does not need them, and basically they have very little impact on the national discourse. So people generally don't care.

... The right-wing blogosphere and netroots are only useful to the conservative movement and only successful in so far as they replicate established conservative political tactics and support established conservative means of information distribution. There isn't a single new tactic or idea to be found in the conservative blogosphere and netroots.

... this all isn't to say that the right-wing blogosphere and netroots aren't effective. In the end, they accomplish what the conservative movement needs them to accomplish: more of the same. They are effective in the way that they are needed to be effective, even if that doesn't mean a whole lot....

I'm not sure this is wrong so much as an upside-down interpretation of the facts.

Chris takes it as a given that political blogging has a higher purpose -- to integrate itself into the electoral process, with the intention of getting people elected. (The vast majority of the left blogosphere seems to agree with that, of course.) Chris notes that the right blogosphere isn't pursuing that goal -- and suggests that this as a failure to tap into blogging's potential.

I say it's just the opposite. I think Republicans have figured out that that isn't what blogging is good for, and are choosing to use blogging in other ways.

Chris sneers at the use of blogs by the GOP to reinforce its memes and messages -- "effective, even if that doesn't mean a whole lot," he says. But I think it does mean a whole lot. It means Net-reading voters' passions are continually stirred, a big chunk of the base is regularly fired up, and new messages are market-tested outside the mainstream media's line of sight, with the understanding that some will work their way up the media food chain while others will inspire only online hardcore types -- as necessary.

I'd also point out that the GOP blogosphere has "carriers" -- people who are part of the blog world who can transmit blog messages back to the offline world, via, say, talk radio (Hugh Hewitt) or cable news guest appearances (Michelle Malkin); our side has very few well-positioned pundits or commentators who've ever even read a blog, or so it seems.

In short, I think the Internet is working just fine for the Republicans. Time will tell, but I'm not sure the blogs-into-"netroots" strategy is working all that well for us.

I also want to address what Chris says about mainstream-media interest in the right-wing blogosphere:

The political and media establishment doesn't care about the right-wing blogosphere... the media clearly is not obsessed with them to nearly the same degree they are obsessed with us.

Well, that's now. A couple of years ago, of course, the mainstream press was obsessed with the Net right, with Free Republic's Buckhead and Time's 2004 Blog of the Year, Power Line.

Now the attention is on our side. But is that a good thing? I don't think so. Mainstream journalists have fit blogging and the Net left into (in the Daily Howler's phrase) "a story they like": namely, the old familiar story about how crazy and angry and self-destructive Democrats are, not to mention how attuned Dems are to overeducated interest groups that are overly insistent on ideological purity. That was the subtext of most of the mainstream coverage I read about the Yearly Kos conference. That's the message of David Brooks's column about Kos the sinister "Keyboard Kingpin," and his subsequent column about the digital barbarians supporting Ned Lamont. And that's the message of Richard Cohen's column "Digital Lynch Mob," though it wasn't literally about blogging.

Chris Bowers thinks this kind of attention from the mainstream press is a good thing?

Right-wing bloggers, by contrast, have found themselves spots on the message-dissemination assembly line and are quietly pitching in. Not that the mainstream press will criticize these bloggers even when they get out of hand, for the simple reason that most mainstream journalists think of themselves as (a) liberals and (b) hateful awful people because they're liberals (in other words, they've internalized the right's critique of them); overcompensating, they're going to give righty bloggers the benefit of every doubt, treating them just the way they treat, say, Ann Coulter, because not to do so would prove that they're bad biased liberals.

But why run the risk? Righty bloggers don't see any need -- and there really isn't any need. They're just doing their bit, as part of a well-oiled machine. I think it's working. If it weren't for the horrible ideology and the staggeringly awful politicians, I'd rather be them than us.

ON THE SCIENTIFIC DETECTION OF VICE AND VIRTUE

1998:

Having declared the beard-keeping by male Afghan citizens as a religious compulsion, the Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia has now introduced a unique instrument to ensure minimum length of the beard prescribed by the Islamic laws.

Taliban's religious police carry around with it a Lantern glass to ensure minimum size of citizens' beard under Shariat enforced in their controlled areas, a refugees who recently arrived from Kabul said. Anybody's beard which is too short to crop out of the standard Lantern glass is punished just as anyone who either shave of or trims his beard, the refugee added....

2006:

In its continuing crackdown on on-air profanity, the FCC has requested numerous tapes from broadcasters that might include vulgar remarks from unruly spectators, coaches and athletes at live sporting events, industry sources said.

Tapes requested by the commission include live broadcasts of football games and NASCAR races where the participants or the crowds let loose with an expletive. While commission officials refused to talk about its requests, one broadcast company executive said the commission had asked for 30 tapes of live sports and news programs....

NO SLIPS ALLOWED

..."I don't know how they are going to rule, but they asked us for tapes with a specific emphasis on crowd noise,'' said [a] TV executive, who ... requested anonymity. "If some bozo in the crowd calls the ref an asshole, the commission is asking for a copy of the tape.''

...Under a new law approved by Congress and signed by President Bush, broadcasters face fines of as much as $325,000 per violation, up from a previous maximum of $32,500.

(Via DU.)

...The percentage of [Americans] who believe that terrorists are winning the war continues to take a downward turn; 26% of this month's respondents indicated terrorists have the advantage, down from 30% and 35% in the two previous polls, respectively.

The number saying the U.S. and its allies are winning moved up to 44% from 40% a month ago. Only once in the past year has a larger percentage been that optimistic....

--Ransmussen poll analysis dated yesterday

More than 50 people were killed in Baghdad on Tuesday in violence that included a double suicide bombing near busy entrances to the fortified Green Zone, scattered shootings, mortar attacks, a series of car bombs and the ambush of a bus with Shiite mourners returning from a burial.

Tuesday's killings, many of them apparently carried out with sectarian vengeance, raised the three-day death toll in the capital alone to well over 100, magnified the daunting challenges facing the new government and deepened a sense of dread among Iraqis....

--New York Times today

Well, 44% still isn't "all of the people all of the time," but the Bushies do seem to be getting closer.

(Also see the latest Gallup poll results.)

Yesterday I wrote about now-departed Jeb Bush appointee O'Neal Dozier, who verbally bashed Muslims, which made it politically impossible for him to get on with his work, which, in large part, was illegally pressing potential state judges for their views on religion.

Julia reminds me that while Dozier may rank high among religious-extremist Jeb appointees, ex-Department of Children and Family Services head Jerry Regier -- Family Research Council founder, dominionist, spanking advocate, and incompetent -- has him beat.

****

UPDATE: In more recent news, Roger Ailes notes the resignation of Jeb's Corrections Department head, James Crosby, in the wake of a bribery scandal. No sign of a Christianist connection there, however ... no, wait -- yes there is:

...Lawtey, about 30 miles southwest of Jacksonville, was transformed in December from a regular prison to one welcoming inmates who seek a religious life....

Another faith-based prison for women opened in mid-April near Tampa at Hillsborough Correctional Institution. It will eventually house 300 women. There's also been a faith-based dormitory for several years at Tomoka Correctional Institution, a men's prison near Daytona Beach. Criticized by civil liberties groups as mixing church and state, the faith-based institutions are a pet project of Gov. Jeb Bush and Corrections Secretary James Crosby, who hope the prisons reduce recidivism....

Hmmm ... maybe Crosby can be his own guinea pig on that little lab experiment.

Oh, and life goes on in Afghanistan:

The letter pinned overnight to the wall of the mosque in Kandahar was succinct. "Girls going to school need to be careful for their safety. If we put acid on their faces or they are murdered then the blame will be on their parents."

... By the conservative estimate of the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, 100,000 students have been terrorised out of schools in the past year. The number is certainly far higher and many teachers have been murdered, some beheaded.

In the province of Zabul a teacher and female MP, Toor Peikai, said yesterday: "There are 47 schools in my province but only three are open." Only one teaches girls. It is 200 metres from a large US military base in the provincial capital.

Across the south, schools burn during the night. According to a bleak report released by Human Rights Watch today at least 200 have been destroyed in the past year and half....

Good thingf Donald Rumsfeld told me the Taliban are doomed to failure, or I'd be worried about this.

(Via Echidne of the Snakes.)

So who'll be the first prominent figure to blame to blame the death in a Big Dig tunnel in Boston on gay marriage? Pat Robertson? Or will someone nip in and beat him to the punch?

(Among the hoi polloi, the connection has already been made by this Yahoo Message Boards poster, a guy whose favorite quote is "Get a job!" even though his screen name suggests that he retired at age 53.)

"Big city"? Very nice -- much snappier than "rootless cosmopolitan."

(Via today's Lucianne.com. More here.)

****

Incidentally, yesterday's protest rally at New York Times headquarters drew (in the words of the New York Post) "dozens," including Pam Meister of Blogmeister USA, who apparently decided that Rupert Murdoch doesn't have enough money and needs unpaid shills to sell papers for him.

UPDATE: I also like the last sentence of this genius's sign:

Times, why don't
you publish a NYC
subway system map for
Al-Qaeda?

Er, because the MTA already does?

Gosh, I'm so happy that there's chatter about putting Jeb Bush on the 2008 GOP ticket in the #2 slot. Look at the fine people Jeb appoints:

Following some controversial remarks on radio about Muslims, the Rev. O'Neal Dozier, a Gov. Jeb Bush appointee, resigned from a panel responsible for nominating judges in Broward County.

Dozier said Monday he was asked to step down from the nine-member Judicial Nominating Commission after he characterized Islam as a "cult" on a radio show.

Dozier, pastor of the World Wide Christian Center Church in Pompano Beach, also called Islam "a dangerous religion" Friday on the The Steve Kane Radio Show.

Dozier took to the airwaves to talk about why he and a group of Pompano Beach ministers didn't want a mosque built in the community....

I don't know what Reverend Dozier's favorite Bible passage is, but it certainly isn't "Blessed are the meek":

Dozier said he didn't want to resign.

"A recent event related to my work, which I have been called by God to perform, appears to have offended a few, while others have chosen to use this issue to further their agendas of political correctness," Dozier wrote in his resignation letter....

"I am entitled to my views and opinions and they do not reflect the governor's views," said Dozier, who plans to lead a 6 p.m. protest today at Pompano Beach City Hall.

Dozier isn't an even-tempered guy who suddenly went supernova. Jeb's appointee has been a loose cannon for some time. 2003:

"We must teach Christians that they should vote for political candidates that follow the biblical positions on the political issues," says O'Neal Dozier, who founded the Worldwide Christian Center in 1985 in Pompano Beach. He instructs conference-goers: "The major political issues that you should teach the biblical positions on are abortion, homosexuality, capital punishment, income tax of citizens, affirmative action, right to bear arms, and public school prayer."...

Dozier expounds on a few "issues at large." Homosexuality is clearly foremost in his mind. Quoting from the Old Testament book of Leviticus, he declares that it is "an abomination," which he defines as "something so nasty and disgusting that it makes God want to vomit."

... God, however, found a way to punish the homosexuals through HIV-AIDS, he says. "It is a type of judgment for such a sin as this one, homosexuality."

Then there's the matter of the death penalty.

"Listen, God is 100 percent for capital punishment," Dozier pronounces slowly and emphatically. "Oh, yeah, God knew some were going to slip through, a few innocent ones. He knew that. But you cannot have a society without capital punishment." ...

2004:

...The Miami Daily Business Review reported Jan. 8 that Broward Judicial Nomination Commission (JNC) member O'Neal Dozier has asked several candidates for Broward County judgeships inappropriate questions about their religious beliefs, such as whether they attend church and are "God-fearing."...

In addition to grilling candidates about religion, Dozier has also been accused of questioning judicial candidates about their personal lives and their stands on controversial social issues. One woman said she was asked whether she could balance her duties as a single mother of twins with her duties as a judge. Another candidate was asked his opinions on the Supreme Court's decision last summer that overturned a Texas sodomy law.

According to the Miami Daily Business Review, Dozier said such questions are appropriate. "I am totally against that ruling," he told the newspaper. "We cannot have a judge who feels sodomy is OK."

... According to the ... article, Dozier said, "There is no such animal as separation of church and state in the Constitution."...

May 2006:

A reverend who introduced Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist during a breakfast with other pastors Monday said the Lord came to him in a dream two years ago and told him Crist would be the state's next governor.

The Rev. O'Neal Dozier said that before the dream he did not know Crist, nor had Crist made known his plans to run for governor.

"The Lord Jesus spoke to me and he said 'There's something I want you to know,'" said Dozier, pastor of the Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach. "'Charlie Crist will be the next governor of the state of Florida.'"

Since then, Dozier has spent time with Crist and talked with him at length about policy. He told the group that Crist would be uncompromising in his Christian faith....

Oh yeah, I really want Jeb a heartbeat away from the presidency.

(Via DU.)

I have to say I really enjoy being lectured on the savagery of people who slit throats by a blogger whose motto invokes the desirability of slitting throats.

****

(But let me add that the link above will take you to another link where you can watch what we're told is Al Qaeda video of the desecrated bodies of Privates Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker. Yes, it's awful -- and it would be swell if the current administration, or even the 101st Fighting Keyboarders themselves, had a clue as to how we could actually defeat the SOBs whose work is depicted in the video.)

Shorter head of the new virtue police in Afghanistan:

We're not going to be nasty like the old Afghan virtue police, but let's face it: Bollywood movies really do lead to heroin addiction and AIDS.

(Yes, the new post-Taliban government is reinstating the virtue police. The head of the virtue cops sounds kind of silly complaining about Indian movies, but as the story at the link points out, the old Taliban virtue police used to throw young men in jail and beat them with cables for wearing their hair like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. Gosh, it's swell to see the Afghans making such progress.)

HOW TO RELAX YOUR JEWISH FRIENDS AT PARTIES

Ann Coulter, from a July 4 interview with The Jewish Press:

...Have you ever visited Israel?

No, but I have been to Miami if that's any help....

What are your feelings about the disengagement from Gaza last year? Since Israel's withdrawal from the area over 500 rockets have been fired from Gaza into Jewish communities. Al Qaeda has moved into the territory abandoned by Israel. Iran is looking to establish an embassy there. Egypt has accused the Gaza terrorists as targeting them as well.

My first thought is that the Jewish people may not drive as hard a bargain as I've always been led to believe....

That's fluff, especially by Coulter standards, but if a non-Jewish Democrat had said something like the "bargain" remark, even years ago, Coulter and her pals would still be yelling "Anti-Semite!"

BUSH ADMINISTRATION : COMPETENCE :: SUPERMAN : KRYPTONITE

Insurers offering prescription drug coverage through Medicare routinely failed to provide accurate and complete responses to questions posed over the telephone by federal investigators....

Investigators made 900 calls to 10 of the largest drug plan sponsors. They got a complete and accurate answer only a third of the time. The overall accuracy and completeness rate for the centers ranged from 20% to 60%. Only one insurer gave the proper, full answer more than half the time.

The investigators said that insurers ... were unable to answer 15% of the questions posed. Further, operators within the same call center sometimes provided inconsistent answers.

"Our calls to 10 of the largest (drug plan) sponsors' call centers show that Medicare beneficiaries face challenges in obtaining the information needed to make informed choices," concluded the Government Accountability Office in a report released Monday....

--AP

(Via Democratic Underground.)

By the way, I see that it's possible for people with dual loyalties to gather in large numbers in America, wrap themselves in foreign flags, and sing foreign national anthems while cheering on a foreign sports team without certain loudmouths warning that it means America is being conquered from within -- and this is true even when some of the fifth columnists are displaying their treasonous true colors in Southern California:

Italy's World Cup victory would be celebrated in San Diego's Little Italy with three times the passion in Rome, Massimo Seracini wrote to his friends back home before the game yesterday.

“It is because we are far away from our beloved country,” said Seracini, a 40-year San Diego resident, who was among an estimated 15,000 people who packed into a block on India Street yesterday....

"This is a tradition in Italy,” said Seracini, who sang the national anthem for the crowd at the start of the game. “In this same moment, all major Italian squares are filled with people watching the game. It's a national thing. It's more than Fourth of July. You find a sense of belonging here.”

The block party, organized by the Little Italy Association, was hurriedly put together in three days. This was after Frank Busalacchi, whose family owns a handful of establishments on India Street, raised $15,000 in two days to cover the cost of the celebration by going from restaurant to restaurant along the street....

As the Italian team was presented its trophy on TV, Busalacchi and his friends paraded the street with a huge Italian flag, chanting for the last time, “Italia! Italia!”

Call James Sensenbrenner! Call Tom Tancredo! This is an outrage!

I missed this while I was away:

Scientists who carry out embryonic stem cell research and politicians who pass laws permitting the practice will be excommunicated, the Vatican said yesterday.

"Destroying human embryos is equivalent to an abortion. It is the same thing," said Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family.

"Excommunication will be applied to the women, doctors and researchers who eliminate embryos [and to the] politicians that approve the law," he said in an interview with Famiglia Christiana, an official Vatican magazine....

The problem is, the church doesn't have the guts to actually do this -- in America, maybe some scientists will be excommunicated (that could happen here because we have no respect for intellect and don't give a crap about what happens to scientists), but the church won't dare to get into a newsworthy excommunication fight with any prominent politician. I'm sorry about that -- I want Americans, Catholic and otherwise, to understand the church's extremism on this issue (and other issues) and to start thinking about whether Catholicism is still a mainstream faith rather than a fundamentalist one. It won't happen, though -- cafeteria Catholics (at least the ones who are Democrats) will merely be excoriated, and mostly just at election time, and life will go on more or less as usual.

DAVID BROOKS: POSSIBLY THE WORST JUDGE OF CHARACTER WHO EVER WALKED THE FACE OF THE EARTH

Whether you agree with him or not, [Joe Lieberman] is transparently the most kind-hearted and well-intentioned of men.

--David Brooks in today's New York Times

...I am planning to vote for George W. Bush because he is a nice guy. As a nice guy he will attract and retain the loyalty of outstanding administration officials, and together they will promote policies that are smarter and bolder than we ever would expect, just from looking at Bush himself. As a nice man, he will prove remarkably adept at working with Congress, with Democrats, with the media and with all the other different people you need to handle as president. He will set a tone of bonhomie that will grease the machinery of government; things will actually get done in Washington again.

--David Brooks in Salon, August 2, 2000

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(By the way, that's only a very small part of what's wrong with today's appalling Brooks column, which you can read free at the first link. Brooks says, "What's happening to Lieberman can only be described as a liberal inquisition." That should have been penciled out by Brooks's editor as an absurdity -- Brooks is saying that experiencing a contested election is, for an incumbent, the equivalent of being tortured on the rack -- but when it wasn't, it should have been flagged by his copy editor. Did "only" stop meaning "only" while I was on vacation? Brooks is saying that there's literally no other expression available in the English language to describe Lieberman's situation. None? No other word or phrase applies? Not "ordeal," or perhaps "nuisance"? Not "sign of the democratic process in action" or "pesky hurdle to overcome" or "stumbling block on the way to getting buildings named after him in Hartford"? Words mean things, David, even little words like "only." I thought, as a great defender of tweedy, clubby traditional values, you'd know that. Guess not.)