Today's Must-Read: Rearguard Actions

It seems that the Republican-majority legislatures in some states are not happy with losing the governor's mansion and are taking steps to correct it. From Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo:

However history judges President George H.W. Bush's career, the handwritten note wishing incoming Democrat Bill Clinton well showed a respect for the office and for the people's will markedly lacking among what passes for conservatives today. Left upon Bush's leaving the White House in defeat and widely read again at his recent death, the note may have tweaked a Republican conscience or two. “Your success now is our country’s success,” Bush wrote. “I am rooting hard for you.”

Charlie Sykes, the conservative commentator and erstwhile supporter of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, advises Walker in The Atlantic to consider how history will judge him. The Republican-dominated legislature in a lame-duck session last week passed a package of bills undercutting the powers of incoming Democrat Tony Evers who defeated Walker in November.

Besides attempting yet again to limit voting in Wisconsin, the legislation forces Evers to pursue the state's lawsuit against Obamacare, attacks preexisting conditions protections, and codifies Walker's work requirements for Medicaid recipients. The legislation is "petty, vindictive, and self-destructive," Sykes writes, and "worse than a crime. It was a blunder." Signing it, Sykes advises, would be "a huge mistake."

My guess is Walker will sign it: he's that petty and vindictive, just like his party.

It all circles back to what I've been saying about the Republicans for a while: they are not interested in governing; they want to rule -- basically, they despise the American system of government.* And to do that they have to maintain their power, by whatever means necessary.

Read it.

* I've noted this before about conservative "Christians," whose whole belief system is the antithesis of America's foundational principles: they are authoritarian, racist, oligarch-friendly, and hypocritical in a major way. Their motivations are the same as those of the party at large -- in fact, they've become those of the party at large: gaining and maintaining power.

Ah, Yes, The Memo

I'm sure you've been hearing about the "top secret" memo cobbled together by Devin Nunes' (R, Mar-a-Lago) staff from bits and pieces of other information as part of Trump's ongoing assault on the FBI -- which the House Intelligence Committee (and there's an oxymoron if I ever saw one) has decided to release.

Well, it seems the FBI isn't real happy about it:

Talking Points Memo reports:

In a rare public statement, the FBI on Wednesday expressed “grave concerns” about the accuracy of a congressional Republican memo that purports to show anti-Trump prejudice among senior FBI and Justice Department officials.

It’s extremely unlikely that the highly critical comment would be sent out without the approval of top Trump appointees at the FBI and DOJ. And it comes as the White House appears poised to defy the intelligence community’s wishes and approve the memo’s release. As the FBI put it, the four-page document compiled by staffers for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) contains “material omissions of fact.”

“With regard to the House Intelligence Committee’s memorandum, the FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it,” a statement from the bureau read. “As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

(Via Joe.My.God.)

Well, it seems Trump's water boy isn't about take that lying down:

Republican House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes is hitting back at the FBI, calling its rare public statement objecting to the release of a memo he authored "spurious." The FBI earlier Wednesday essentially accused him of spreading false information.

It is a strange, unprecedented, and very public battle between two branches of government. Worse, the president is backing Congressman Nunes instead of his own FBI, because the Nunes memo purportedly is constructed to paint Trump as a victim of intelligence surveillance.

In his public statement just released, Nunes accused the FBI of having "stonewalled Congress' demands for almost a year," adding, "it's no surprise to see the FBI and DOJ issue spurious objections to allowing the American people to see information related to surveillance abuses at these agencies."

From all reports, the memo was cherry-picked from various memos and e-mails and does, in fact, omit critically important information.

But then, no one's ever accused Nunes of being fair and balanced. As a matter of fact, he's not particularly honest, either:

Amid news breaking tonight that the White House would release the memo sent to them by Nunes in spite of serious warnings from the FBI and other agencies who believe it is riddled with inaccuracies and exaggerations, we have Rep. Schiff noting this: THE MEMO SENT TO THE WHITE HOUSE IS NOT THE MEMO THE INTEL COMMITTEE APPROVED.

According to Schiff, there are "material differences" in the two memos.

"Upon our discovery that the document sent for public review had been secretly altered, the majority belatedly offered the minority the opportunity this evening to compare the document transmitted on Monday night by the Majority to the White House with the document made available to all members on January 18th," Schiff wrote.

He concluded, "The White House, therefore, has been reviewing a document since Monday night that the Committee never approved for public release."

Offhand, Nunes may have just laid himself open to a charge of obstructing justice.

Footnote: Peter Stzrok was one of the two FBI agents involved in the "secret society" text messages, and was being used as evidence that Mueller's investigation into Russiagate was biased. Guess what:

News today suggests Peter Strzok, the FBI agent whose texts sparked the "secret society" conspiracy theory from Sean Hannity and Fox News, was the guy who instigated the reopening of the Clinton email probe just before the election in 2016.

CNN:

Strzok, who co-wrote what appears to be the first draft that formed the basis of the letter Comey sent to Congress, also supported reopening the Clinton investigation once the emails were discovered on disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner's laptop, according to a source familiar with Strzok's thinking. The day after Strzok sent his draft to his colleagues, Comey released the letter to Congress, reigniting the email controversy in the final days of the campaign.

If they weren't so dangerous, they'd be laughable.

Today's Must-Read: The Ruling Class

Here's a good example of our betters:

The JCs' preferred narrative has worked its way so deeply into the public consciousness that Americans elected an arrogant, narcissistic, supposed billionaire as president one year ago. For who better to run a government that's not a business as though it were? Oddly enough, he's proven as superior at running a government as Facebook proved at sniffing out political ads purchased with rubles.

Like many plutocrats, he reacts badly to not getting his way and the deference royalty wealth demands.

The New York Times reported this week that another of the president's fraternity killed off his own business rather than treat employees as respected partners:

A week ago, reporters and editors in the combined newsroom of DNAinfo and Gothamist, two of New York City’s leading digital purveyors of local news, celebrated victory in their vote to join a union.

On Thursday, they lost their jobs, as Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade who owned the sites, shut them down.

Digital media is a tough business, to be sure. Still, Ricketts' approach to to his employees was familiarly authoritarian. He wrote before the vote, “As long as it’s my money that’s paying for everything, I intend to be the one making the decisions about the direction of the business.” When he couldn't get his way, he threw a tantrum and broke his toy.

And for sheer pettiness, you can't beat this:

One week after the New York team unionized, Mr. Ricketts shut it all down. He did not try to sell the company to someone else. Instead of bargaining with 27 unionized employees in New York City, he chose to lay off 115 people across America. And, as a final thumb in the eye, he initially pulled the entire site’s archives down (they are now back up), so his newly unemployed workers lost access to their published work.

The "JCs", in case you were wondering, are the "job creators" -- you know, the ones who are creating jobs in China, Vietnam, Mexico, the Philippines, and lately, Ethiopia (making shoes for "women who work," because labor costs in China are too high).

That's the way they've created an environment in which they can get away with crap like this: those in the U.S. who actually have jobs are rightfully reluctant to rock the boat, especially since more and more states have become "right to work" (which means "employers' right to fire at will"). You see what happens when workers try to protect themselves. The owners want another Gilded Age, and to hell with workers' rights, child labor laws, workplace safety laws, and all this other crap that they don't need.

And please note, it's not all just greed, although that's a big part of it. It's power and control -- that's what they want, that's what they've always wanted.

And the Republicans are more than willing to give it to them -- they know who owns them.

A footnote: don't let anyone tell you that the 1% are creating the wealth of this country: they're not. They're appropriating the wealth created by their employees.

The Tony Perkins Award

Today goes to none other than Tony Perkins, for a masterful exercise in flipping reality on its head:

Knowing Tom Price as I have, there’s no doubt in my mind that he meticulously followed every rule. The department’s legal team would have been consulted before he stepped foot on these charters.

Pffft!

In the end, though, this isn’t about Secretary Price’s ethics, it’s about trying to discredit one of the most effective social conservatives in Washington. And now that Congress’s Obamacare repeal is on ice, the Left knows better than anyone that any modifications to the law will be done directly through HHS.

Obviously, the abortion industry — and Planned Parenthood especially — will do everything they can to stop those changes from happening. Distracting Price is all part of the Democrats’ strategy to keep HHS from following through with the president’s promises and policies. As usual, they can’t seem to achieve that through anything but personal (and baseless) attacks.

As might be expected, given the shrillness of Perkins' diatribe, Price has a history of less than ethical behavior. Via commenter Max_1 (note the third paragraph of the attached letter):

We believe Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price, who grossly misused public funds for chartered private jets, should resign now. pic.twitter.com/sI3O9KUDMP

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) September 27, 2017

But of course Perkins is defending Price -- birds of a feather. . . .

Republican Are Just the Nicest People

This, from Digby, pretty much nails it:

Republicans have been trying to destroy the American safety net for decades. They’ve been hostile to Medicare and Medicaid since the day they were passed. They’ve been running against Social Security for 82 years. (They just tried to privatize it in 2005!) They will never stop attacking the ACA either.

This isn’t just about profits or ” free markets.” Consider that this Senate bill was opposed by all the so-called stakeholders: the insurance companies, the hospitals, doctors and even big business. It still has 48 out of 52 votes in the Senate. Conservatives simply do not believe that people have a right to health care. They see it as a commodity like any other, something which you should not have if you cannot pay for it.

By way of crude illustration, recall when libertarian godhead Rep. Ron Paul ran for president in 2008. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked him during a debate what an uninsured man who became catastrophically ill and needed intensive care for six months should do. Paul replied, “What he should do is whatever he wants to do and assume responsibility for himself. That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risk. This whole idea that you have to take care of everybody …” The audience then erupted into cheers, cutting off Paul’s sentence. Blitzer followed up by asking “Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?” Members of the audience clapped and shouted “Yeah!”

This sort of throws into sharp relief something that's been at the back of my arguments on the "Christian" idea of morality, and the lack of humanity in the Republicans' ideology, which has only gotten more extreme in the Age of Trump (although, if you look at it, he's a symptom more than anything else -- this extremism long predates him). As an illustration of what we're dealing with, this is instructive:

I'm a physician. If someone has a right, that means you take my skills and the fruits of my labor.

And this man's a doctor.

I've said it enough, but I'm going to repeat it: the right has no real concept of morality, other than following arbitrary rules cherry-picked from the 4,000 year old tribal taboos of a bunch of Middle Eastern nomads, because otherwise Daddy will spank you: morality based on fear. I suppose this is the more-or-less inevitable result of a group of religions based on servility and obedience.

In the real world, the more I study animal and human behavior, the more I'm convinced that our morality is pretty much hard-wired, and as social animals, there's one basic precept: we take care of each other, because there's a kind of synergy between the benefit of the individual and the benefit of the group: they seem to mutually reinforce each other.

Which leads me back to the contemporary Republican party, tainted as it is by libertarianism (and yes, I consider that a taint: I've long held that libertarianism is a morally bankrupt ideology). They've become the party of the aberrant. All the racism, anti-immigrant rhetoric, the "me first" attitude (disguised as patriotism, which is bullshit) -- all that simply represents a trend that draws the boundaries of "us" in ever narrower terms, which has been exploited by the demagogues on the right, who themselves have only one guiding principle: power, for power's sake.

America was predicated, if only subliminally, on the expansion of the idea of "us": the point was, we were no longer to consider ourselves as English, or Irish, or French, or German, but as Americans. The right has fractured that idea back into its component parts, playing to that minority that, sadly, has always been with us and that is incapable of taking that conceptual step.

(And, to pile irony on top of atrocity, note that so many of them profess a religion that was to be inclusive, that welcomed all: they've perverted that idea into just another little fragment of what should be an overriding "us".)

Add in the worship of unrestrained capitalism, and you have an oligarchical nightmare in the making.

And they call it "Taking back America" -- from other Americans.

I've started wondering again whether New Zealand is far enough away.

Coming Attractions, Part II: North Carolina Was Just a Warm-up (Update; Update II)

Who needs ethics, anyway?

House Republicans have gutted an independent ethics watchdog, putting it under their own control, in a secret ballot hours before the new Congress convened for the first time.

The unheralded vote severely weakens the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), which was set up after a lobbying scandal in 2008 to investigate corruption allegations against members of Congress. The move, led by the head of the House judiciary committee, defied the Republican congressional leadership and was reportedly supported by several legislators currently under OCE scrutiny.

The amendment was voted through by the House Republican conference over the New Year’s holiday with no prior notice or debate and inserted in a broad rules package the House will vote for on Tuesday. It turns the formerly independent OCE into the Office of Congressional Complaint Review, a subordinate body to the House Ethics Committee, which is currently run by the Republican majority and has a long history of overlooking charges of malfeasance by lawmakers.

The new body will not be able to receive anonymous tips from members of Congress or make its findings public.

The ineffectiveness of the House Ethics Committee was the major reason for the creation of the OCE to begin with. Take this as a pre-emptive move: the Republicans control Congress and are not going to waste any time cashing in.

I mean, look at who their shining example is going to be -- President Pay-for-Play.

Update: And it takes Kellyanne Conway, Trump's Obfuscator-in-Chief, to turn it into something really, truly surreal:

Conway, who ran Trump’s campaign and now serves as a senior advisor, complained Tuesday morning on “Today” that the Office of Congressional Ethics had been “overzealous” in investigating “consumer complaints” since its creation in 2008.

“If a constituent has a complaint, they can still lodge that complaint,” Conway said. “They just can’t do it anonymously.”

One can only conclude that Trump's staff is just as ignorant about the government as he is.

Update II: Well, that didn't last long. Via Joe.My.God.:

So much for Kellyanne Conway’s “mandate.” CNN reports:

House Republican leaders have pulled a proposal that would gut its independent ethics panel, amid widespread criticism of the plan, multiple lawmakers tell CNN. The decision comes less than two hours after President-elect Donald Trump criticized the timing of the vote, which was scheduled for the first day of the new congressional session.

Today's Must-Watch

Frank Schaeffer, in case you didn't know (I didn't), is the man who, with his family, created the "pro-life" movement as a political force. Here's a portion of an interview with Samantha Bee. It's very revealing. (It's also fairly profane, so be warned.)

I realize that I've gotten pretty cynical about the religious right and their motives, but Shaeffer offers this bit of validation: he admits he was in it for the money.

Via Gaius Publius at Hullabaloo.

The Mess at Penn State

Here's a very good post from Pam Spaulding that summarizes everything I know about the Sandusky/pedophilia nightmare at Penn State, and adds a few items I wasn't aware of.

I've read all sorts of reporting and commentary on this, and in most cases the commentary is pretty solid -- Paterno and Spanier should certainly have been fired, and a few others -- Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, at least -- should go, as well.

Mike McQueary is a more difficult question. I've read opinions that he should have directly intervened when he witness Sandusky assaulting a 10-year-old in the showers, and he probably should have, but how many of us would? Consider that the man witnessed something shocking being done by someone that, in theory at least, had been held up as someone to be admired. He was, the report says, distraught, and probably was not thinking too clearly. He did report it, and I think, given the normal patterns of human behavior, at that point he considered that he'd done what he could do.

That bothers me the most is that, as of the latest reports I've read, nothing has been done on behalf of the victims. Maybe that will come, if there's the investigation that has to happen. What concerns me is that there's enough in the way of "special interests" in this case that any further investigation will be quashed. I mean, look how long it took for anyone to investigate allegations of child sexual abuse against the Catholic Church.

Gay, Inc.

A discussion between Tanya Domi and Clinton Fein on the disaster that the national gay advocacy organizations have become.

They say pretty much everything I'm thinking.

Business Ethics

Let's hear it for Big Pharma -- can we call it "piracy"?

Preventing preterm births just got 150 times more expensive, now that KV Pharmaceuticals has gained exclusive rights to produce a progesterone shot used to prevent premature births in high-risk mothers.

Although the shot has been available in unregulated form from specialty compounding pharmacies for years for $10 a pop, the Food and Drug Administration recently granted KV Pharmaceuticals sole rights to produce the drug, which will be marketed as Makena and cost $1,500 per dose -- an estimated $30,000 in total per pregnancy.

We hear all about the high cost of developing new pharmaceuticals and how only a few are actually approved -- that's the rationale for the high prices. Well, this one's been around since 1956 and y'know what? KV didn't develop it:

Many doctors are particularly frustrated with the price hike because to date, KV Pharmaceuticals has not had to bear the cost of the clinical trials used to get the drug approved, but they have announced plans to conduct further trials in the future.

"All the upfront development of the drug was done by the National Institute of Health. You and I paid for that with our tax dollars, it's not like this pharmaceutical company is trying to recoup its investments in research and development, as is usually the reason for the price of new drugs," says Dr. Kevin Ault, associate professor of gynecology and obstetrics at Emory University School of Medicine.

The company has offered a "patient assistance program" for households making less than $100,000 per year, but I have one question: why has the cost of the drug suddenly skyrocketed? If they can offer financial assistance on the order they're promising, why can't they just cut the price of the drug?

Diaz said if the drug had been $1500 a shot, "I think the price would have definitely locked me out, which means I could have potentially had a second or third premature child with disabilities." She added, "I would say to the pharmaceutical company, if there is any way they can cut the cost. I would ask them to consider these are lives at stake. "

Like they care.

Wikileaks

I haven't commented on this one -- which, as Digby points out, is the most genuine political discussion we've had in this country in over a decade -- and now Digby, bless 'er, had done a great summation, so I don't have to.


There are definitely huge threats in the world. And they are coming from many directions --- terrorist violence, massive economic corruption, global warming, extremists of all sorts. What should be clear by now, however, is that the system by which we manage threats is failing. It seems to me that one thing we might want to do is start talking about that problem. This is an opportunity to do that.

I do want to mention this, however:

“PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity,” reads a statement on PayPal’s website. “We’ve notified the account holder of this action.”

Most of the over $1 million in contributions WikiLeaks has drawn in the last year have come through its PayPal account, which belongs to the Wau Holland Foundation, a German non-profit group that manages the bulk of WikiLeaks’ money.

Attempting to donate to Wau Holland though PayPal on Friday night produced the message “This recipient is currently unable to receive money.”

PayPal’s move comes amid mounting U.S. pressure against WikiLeaks over its cache of over 250,000 State Department diplomatic cables. Struggling with denial-of-service attacks on its servers earlier this week, WikiLeaks moved to Amazon’s EC2 cloud-based data-storage service, only to be summarily booted off on Wednesday. Then on Thursday its domain-name service provider, EveryDNS, stopped resolving WikiLeaks.org, after the DNS provider was battered by the DoS attacks.

Isn't it reassuring to know that major corporations are working with our government to protect us from things they don't want us to know?

And here's Julian Assange himself.

As for my own stance -- well, it shouldn't come as a surprise that I don't like people trying to control what information I have access to, under any circumstances. I say this will full understanding that sometimes particular parts of government operations must be kept secret for the time being. When the Bush administration started classifying information that had been published years before, that broke it for me: someone needs to take away the government's ability to keep secrets, and I'm glad Assange is doing it.

As for the people calling for his assassination, trial for "treason" (excuse me? He's not an American) and the like -- well, read Digby.

Connections

From Mahablog, this reflection on Thanksgiving, a bit of Zen wisdom:

First, reflect on all the work that went into putting the meal on the table. This goes beyond just the cooking. There are grocers and truckers and farmers and suppliers of farmers. And all of those people are sustained by food provided by other cooks and grocers and truckers and farmers and suppliers. And don’t forget the non-human creatures represented on the table, from the turkey to the dairy cows and even the bees who make pollination possible. If you think about it, you realize the food in front of you represents a huge web of relationships that spreads across the globe.

Second, reflect on whether you are contributing to the greater good with your own life, and if the work you do is sustaining other people as much as their work sustains you.

Third, reflect on not being greedy.

Fourth, reflect on what food is really about — keeping us alive and healthy.

Fifth, reflect on “attaining the Way,” or realizing enlightenment. . . .

One of the things I like about the Reflections is that it reminds us we are not just passive recipients of God’s Blessings, but that we have received what we need to stay alive through the work of countless people. Further, we have a moral duty to contribute to others in return. In other words, it’s a reflection on how interconnected we all are and that we all depend on each other.

It's not too different from the basic Pagan mindset: we are all connected, we all derive benefit from each other, and thus, we all have a responsibility toward each other. I seem to remember something like that in Christianity, from my childhood Sunday School -- I think it starts off, in one version, "Do unto others. . . ."

There are some who don't feel that way:

The president could speak about Wall Street handing out record bonuses this year -- an estimated $144 billion to a relative handful of people, many of whom get richer by destroying wealth, including assets of state and local government pension funds whose losses we have to make up for with more taxes.

Those bonuses, by the way, are about 2.4 times expected Wall Street profits.

How about a presidential lecture on entitlements focused on Lloyd Blankfein, whose firm's bad bets taxpayers paid off at 100 cents on the dollar? The Goldman Sachs boss whines about making only $9 million last year because of his "sacrifice" and plans an extra-big payday this December to make up for last year.

The president could change the terms of our economic debate by talking about how much the vast majority props up many of those at the very top, starting with Blankfein. He could tell people about the trillion dollars a year of tax favors for corporations and the rich, as documented by the Shelf Project.

There's a basic concept here that apparently has eluded the Masters of the Universe: "enough." I mean, who needs $9 million a year? Who really needs that much money? And what does it say about anyone who expects that kind of "reward" after screwing over millions of people?

And in another vein, the same thing: just note anything that comes from Maggie Gallagher, Tony Perkins, Peter LaBarbera, Matt Barber, Mat Staver, or any of the other voices for the self-anointed "Christian" right: it's not about recognizing our interdependence -- and certainly not about "Do unto others."

And just remember, it's you, your brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, your kids, your neighbors, your coworkers that they're talking about.

Net Neutrality

This is bad.

Republican lawmakers largely oppose the idea of Net neutrality. Though a majority of Democratic lawmakers support the issue -- all of the 95 candidates that said they would support Net neutrality on the left-leaning Progressive Change Campaign Committee's website were Democrats -- they have been divided on whether to pass the FCC's proposed legislation.

The widespread Democratic losses made an already uphill battle even tougher. More than a dozen incumbent congressmen who had voted for a similar Net neutrality bill in 2006 were voted out of office on Tuesday, most notably Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., a 28-year House veteran.

I can see the way this is going to play out already: you'll either pay more for the stuff you want to access, or you'll learn to live with the stuff your Internet provider decides you can access.

By the way, you'll see some reports that claim that all 95 congressman who support net neutrality -- Democrats all -- lost on Tuesday. If you think about it, that's not possible. (Update: It was not 95 congressman, it was 95 Democratic candidates. That slip-up came from Towleroad, but even so, it strikes me as overstating the case, just a wee bit.)

I didn't vote for John McCain

because I didn't want George W. Bush's third term. It seems that was the only option available. From Raw Story:

In one of the first military commissions held under the Obama administration, a US military judge has ruled that confessions obtained by threatening the subject with rape are admissible in court.

I've always been leery of the military commissions idea anyway -- they have proven to be ineffective, since so much of the evidence is tainted -- unless, of course, the judges ignore the taint, as in this case. This is the fifteen-year-old boy captured in Afghanistan 8 years ago, so it's worse than just abusing a prisoner -- he was a kid.

Read the whole article -- it's a disgusting example of the executive run amok.

Via Shakesville.

Integrity in the Marketplace

I couple of days ago I made the comment that the free market doesn't work if not everyone is honest. I'm not alone.

William K. Black thinks President Obama didn't acknowledge a key component in the financial crisis that the bills before Congress won't address — fraud. A former regulator who helped crack down on massive fraud during the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s, Black tells Bill Moyers on THE JOURNAL that, despite evidence of fraud at the top banks, prosecutions seem far away. "If you go back to the savings and loan debacle, we got more than a thousand felony convictions of the elite. These are not, you know, tellers or something. We today have zero convictions, zero indictments, zero arrests of any of the elite, non-prime lenders that, through their fraud, drove this crisis."

Need I say more?

Scum

By which I mean Liz Cheney. Bill Kristol is off the hook because he's obviously incompetent.

I've been passing on this one because the stories on Cheney's attacks on the Justice Department (echoed by the sycophants who call themselves "journalists") literally turn my stomach. It just seems self-evident that a strong legal defense is a necessary part of our justice system. Cheney and Kristol are obviously of the opinion that justice is only for white folks, and rich white folks at that.

It's nice to see some push back from the right. Follow the link and 1) read the letter carefully. It's pretty strong. Then b) look at the list of signers. Some of them may surprise you.

Here's a commentary from Glenn Greenwald.

There is a real opportunity here to cause that rarest of political events: namely, having someone's credibility and standing be diminished by virtue of repugnant acts. Liz Cheney, Bill Kristol and Andy McCarthy (with whom it originated) have so transparently crossed every line with this ugly smear campaign that they are being condemned across the political spectrum. Only the hardest-core ideological dead-enders are defending them. It would therefore not only be politically plausible, but valuable, for the Congress to officially condemn these McCarthyite attacks on Justice Department lawyers. If the Democratic Congress was willing (indeed eager) to do so against the nation's leading progressive group, why wouldn't it do the same in response to a far more repugnant and potentially destructive campaign launched by a Far Right group? In 1954, the U.S. Senate condemned the original Joe McCarthy, so why not his progeny? I think it'd be worthwhile to find a sponsor for a Resolution that achieves this -- I think I'll work on that and hope others will, too -- and then urge its passage.

And read Glenwald's following paragraph for some more background to my "journalists" remark above.

What seems to elude the national media and the mouthpieces for the right (inasmuch as there is a difference) is that the Cheney/Kristol version of McCarthyism, like the original, is a direct attack on our system of government. This, as far as I'm concerned, is the major danger of the right: the left, in spite of its excesses, seems to have erred pretty constantly in the direction of greater liberty for more people. Cheney and Kristol, like their predecessors and fellow travelers, seem to be interested only in shredding the fabric of our republic for personal gain (and that means power as well as money, since the two are roughly equivalent -- ask any corporate lobbyist). In Cheney's case, I suppose this is no surprise -- she is, after all, chief apologist for a man who never found a principle he couldn't sacrifice. Bill Kristol is just an idiot who hasn't been right about anything in living memory, which seems to be the major qualification for a position as a high-profile columnist in a major daily.

Taken in tandem with Janet Porter's "prayer (below), can you see why I throw up my hands sometimes?

But you can't really do that -- you have to call them on their bullshit, and since the corporate media won't do it -- well, that leaves us.

Link Dump

Not much energy this morning -- I'm just sort of drained from the past couple of weeks. (Gods! How did I ever manage working 60 hours a week? I can't even do 40 these days without it showing.)

At any rate, some stories/posts that deserve your attention:

Another Proposition

Via Andrew Sullivan, news about another proposition on the California ballot. Worth a "yes" vote, I'd say.

Good News

This one's around: over 125,000 lowland gorillas discovered in previously unexamined territory.

Hamdan

This post from Davenoon at LG&M sort of summarizes the whole mess that the trial of Salim Hamdan typifies: our legal system is a shambles, we have no moral authority left, and everything this administration has done in the "war on terror" it has created has backfired badly. Heckuva job, fellas.

Monsters

What Digby said.

What the Bush Court Favors

Here's an interesting and thoroughly researched post at BooMan Tribune on what the recent decision of the Republican Supreme Court means for voting.

Dr. James Holsinger

It appears I wasn't so far off when I called Holsinger, Bush's latest wildly inappropriate nominee, a scientist in the tradition of Paul Cameron. Jim Burroway has a thorough critique of one of Holsinger's papers.