A Whitewash That Won't Wash?

Well, Lord Hutton has issued his report -- full excoriation of the BBC, and full exoneration of 10 Downing Street. Blair and the warfloggers are ecstatic, and the right is attacking the BBC all-out. The rank and file of Aunt Beeb, however, are up in arms, and a full half of the British people aren't buying it:

A poll found yesterday that a majority of people thought Lord Hutton's report was wrong to lay all the blame at the BBC's door. The poll, by NOP, showed 56 per cent thought the peer was wrong to blame only the BBC; 49 per cent said the report was a whitewash, with 40 per cent disagreeing.

A whitewash. Not just unfair, or imbalanced, or biased. A whitewash.

It's important to remember that we're talking about Britain here, not America, where our use of both language and rhetoric are more free-wheeling. This is nothing less than a stunning rebuke of both Hutton's inquiry and Blair's presumptuous crowing. And the fisking of the Hutton report has already begun (the irony of the term's origins -- right-wing bloggers dissecting British reporter Robert Fisk's articles -- are particularly epic in this case). While the Blair administration and BBC try to put an end to the mess, battle lines are already being drawn, and not just on line. News organizations around the world are rallying around vulnerable Aunt Beeb, while Alastair Campbell and News Corp. (owner of Fox and Sky News) go for the jugular.

The row over Dr. Kelly, Hutton, and the BBC isn't over. Not by a long shot. In fact, I'd argue that thanks to Lord Hutton's one-sided report, the battle has just begun.

(/) Roland X
Save Aunt Beeb!

You Never Can Tell

Whoa. First Iowa, and now this.

And I've gotta be honest. I'd mentally put Kerry in the coffin with Lieberman, who will (mercifully) soon lag with the other fringe candidates. How wrong I was. (Although I have to say that perhaps the best thing to come out of Iowa and New Hampshire is that maybe, finally, the Freepers will stop ranting about how Hillary is really honest-and-for-true going to run this year.)

Don't count anyone (other than Lieberman) out yet, though, Dean least of all. First of all, the Doctor's managed a neat bit of political jiujitsu with that "Dean scream" nonsense, and managed a solid second place showing. Remember, General Clark looked like he might nab that spot out from under Dean for a while there. Second, he's still got the money, the organization, and the support. This race is by no means over.

Clark and Edwards, meanwhile, both survive with their effective tie for third. Edwards may have to win South Carolina, but he just might manage it. Clark, for his part, can survive just by doing well through February, and has enough of the Dean equation -- money, organization, support -- to last through Super Tuesday.

In fact, this might prove to be one of the most exciting primaries in recent memory, resulting in the first brokered convention in decades. This could hurt the Democrats if they revert to mudslinging, but if the campaign stays relatively clean, there's nothing like a nice long primary to get that free press (as many bloggers more observant than myself have observed 8^).

Still, whatever anyone -- including Kerry, apparently -- may say, there's no question that we have a new front-runner. Against all odds, his initials are JFK. Personally, I think Edwards has more legitimate Kennedy-in-1960 mojo than Kerry does. Nevertheless, I have to say that Kerry has done what is almost certainly the most important thing a Democratic candidate can do right now: prove that he's up to the challenge of beating George Dubya Bush. He's the first named Democrat (as opposed to Bush vs. The Unknown Dem) to win outright in a "if you voted today" poll. (Ignore the article's gratuitous Dean-bashing.)

Overall, 52 percent of those polled by NEWSWEEK say they would not like to see Bush serve a second term, compared to 44 percent who want to see him win again in November. As a result, Kerry is enjoying a marginal advantage over Bush, a first for the poll. Forty-nine percent of registered voters chose Kerry, compared to 46 percent who re-elected Bush.

No matter how you slice it, that's some pretty potent mojo. And since the talking heads do have some influence left, expect them to begin blathering about how Kerry has been anointed, with the smarmy implication that they are doing the anointing. Which, for some strange reason, will probably help Kerry.

They can be safely ignored. While Kerry would unquestionably make for a tremendous improvement over the Resident, so would any of the others (even Kucinich and Lieberman). Most of Kerry's momentum comes from his ability to convince voters that he's the man to beat Bush in November. Dean, you're my guy, but here's a hint: the movement is important, but Beating Bush Comes First!!! Telling people that they can choose anyone to change presidents isn't going to get you the nomination. Once the Republicans are run by sane people instead of the Legion of Doom, then we can talk about Democrats running on changing America. Right now, changing presidents will demonstrably change America, and only the farthest fringes of the Green party (and Ralph Nader) say otherwise.

(/) Roland X
Go, ABBA, go!

Is Andrew Sullivan Leaving The Dark Side?

This article starts out with the usual rah-rah cheerleading for Bush's rah-rah spinning of the "death and conquest" policy. Yawn. As Sullivan continues, however, he hits Bush hard on some glaring weak points:

But, more profound, the president revealed his deep suspicion of human freedom. Yes, he says he supports it. But in every instance--even charitable and religious institutions--he believes that government needs to get involved. He wants to maintain the Patriot Act intact; he wants to extend the war on drugs to steroids; he wants to prevent gay couples from having the ability to form their own families and be treated equally under the law. He suggests not a single government program to be cut. On social issues, he shifted to the hard right: abstinence programs rather than contraception; an assault on gay couples and families; and millions of dollars in order to subject children to mandatory drug testing in schools. This is not Reaganism. It isn't Gingrichism. It's Big Government Moral Conservatism: fiscally liberal and socially conservative.

Emphasis mine in both cases.

With the back-breaking deficit the Bush Regime's economic Voodoo II is creating, I wouldn't do them the honor of calling them fiscally liberal. Fiscally insane is more like it. That aside, Sullivan (for once) hits the mark firmly. Ironically, a man who was one of Bush's biggest boosters has outlined most of the reasons the Resident shouldn't be elected dogcatcher, let alone Commander-in-Chief: he has no concept of true liberty or justice, he wants to involve the government in almost every aspect of our personal lives, he wants to spend money we don't have and give most of it to his rich buddies, and he wants everyone to shut up about it and do as they're told.

Sure. Bush as more bad things going for him, but most libertarian conservatives want to pretend that problems like poverty and the environment aren't the government's problem. So all in all, this is an excellent start.

Can the Reactionary Right now stop pretending that Bush is freedom's Great White Hope? Probably not. But at least sane conservatives are waking up to the threat his regime poses to our future. Let us hope they stay awake long enough to kick the Mayberry Machiavellis out of the White House.

(/) Roland X
"Our lives are remembered by the gifts we leave our children."
--Preston Whitmore, "Atlantis: the Lost Empire"

Sorry, Dubya, they're not even good fake WMDs

Remember those shells the Danes found? The ones with the chemical warfare agents in them? Guess what? Via Calpundit, we learn that they were just another wild goose chase:

Four initial tests by British and Danish experts came up positive for blister agents, Danish spokesman, Capt. Kim Vibe Michelsen, told The Associated Press.

But later tests by U.S. experts from the Iraq Survey Group on five of the shells have shown no trace of chemical weapons, the Danish military said.

Of course, buried twelve year old battlefield munitions aren't WMDs anyway, even if they do have some chemical agents in them. And to the warfloggers' credit, most of them didn't jump on this one as a justification for the war. Also something to keep in mind is that the "final verdict" isn't in yet, so stay tuned. All things considered, however, it looks like another Great Blight Hope turned into another wild goose egg -- Truth a thousand, Bush zero.

(/) Roland X
At least they were more dangerous than the two "trailers of doom."

Those ACLU Fascists Defend...Rush Limbaugh?!?

Y'know, I'm probably going to regret this, but I'm actually going to give props to *sucks it in* Rush Limbaugh, for showing good grace as the ACLU comes to his aid:

Here's a quote from Howard Simon, the executive director of the ACLU of Florida in a statement. "It may seem odd that the ACLU has come to the defense of Rush Limbaugh but we've always said that the ACLU's real client is the Bill of Rights and we will continue to safeguard the equality, fairness and privacy of everybody regardless of race, economic status or political point of view." [AP:] "The organization said it wanted to vindicate every Floridian's privacy by making sure they complied with the law. There is a specific right to privacy enumerated in the Florida constitution. The elected state attorney had no comment with the ACLU's involvement. Spokesman Mike Edmondson said that prosecutors who protected stay laws have protected my rights throughout the investigation."

How many other suspects have had the list of medications that they have had prescribed for them at a pharmacy leafed through on worldwide television? We know who this Edmonson guy is. He is the informant in the elected state attorney's office for the Palm Beach Post as my attorney stated in the medical records hearing. So the ACLU is in on the case now. We welcome the ACLU.

Link his, emphasis mine.

Sure, I'm tempted to use this to take a shot at Limbaugh for hypocrisy. But I'm not going to. Sometimes, you need to see things for yourself to have your eyes opened to them.

Instead, I'm going to use this opportunity to take a shot at Bill O'Reilly. <EG>

I've written an article for DMY spotlighting Mr. "O'Really" and his penchant for calling the ACLU "fascist." (It isn't up as of this writing, but should be soon.) After all, there are those evil libruls they defend, they fight to separate church and state, they promote smut -- how dare they!

Yeah. They're defending the privacy rights of Rush freakin' Limbaugh. Hard to get more fascist than that, huh?

(/) Roland X
Ahhh. Irony, sweet irony.

The Final Frontier

Whoa, hey, when did space become a Republican issue?

Apparently, when Bush started talking about it.

Sure, we can't trust Dubya with a program to screw in a light bulb. I concede without reservation that the Bush Regime is utterly corrupt and incompetent. The last time I believed that this administration could do something right was in Afghanistan, shortly after the September 11 attacks. After all, how could they possibly let partisan foolishness or short attention span ruin our chances there again?

Man, did I learn my lesson. There is no job so important, no task so simple, that Rove can't screw it up by pandering to the regime's base.

And yes, we have no business starting some outrageously expensive project whose benefits are years if not decades down the line when the budget is half a billion dollars in the red. (Hm. My recent DMY column aside, maybe that is why they call them red states.)

However.

Space travel is our future. Not only are there vast scientific benefits to be reaped from the endeavor alone, not only are there endless resources to be found out there, resources that can be acquired without damaging our own precious biosphere, but sooner or later mankind must take to the stars. Whether because of our own carelessness with the environment, overpopulation, or just a slowly tiring world or star, eventually humanity must leave the cradle.

And conservative rhetoric aside (sorry, Admiral), does anyone out there honestly believe that businesses today are willing to make the huge long-term investments to get serious about space? Russia's space program is in tatters, China's just getting off the ground (and be honest -- do you really want them to have space superiority), and the EU is floundering. Only one nation has the resources, the structure, and the will to get us Out There.

Yes, these things take money. That means things like (gasp!) raising taxes, just like most of the other ways we need to undo the damage the Bush Regime has done. Still, liberals can't give up on the final frontier, even if Bush is using it as his latest propaganda set-piece. Space is too important to allow the rhetoric of the moment to hold our future hostage.

(/) Roland X
Who still has his Space Shuttle poster around here...somewhere...

Human Wrongs

Via Atrios, we find this stunner in the Daily News:

He didn't free the slaves.

He didn't rid the world of Hitler.

He didn't even - like his father - preside over the destruction of the Berlin Wall.

Yet George W. Bush tells New Yorker writer Ken Auletta: "No President has ever done more for human rights than I have."

With stunners like that, no wonder he spends so little time with journalists.

That sound you just heard? That was my jaw crashing through the floor.

Perhaps Resident Bush has forgotten the name George Washington, the General-turned-President whose courage and genius won freedom for America.

And Thomas Jefferson, who made such minor contributions as writing the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.

And then there are the aforementioned Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Bush I, though "presiding over the destruction of the Berlin Wall" seems a bit...kind. "Happened to be in office at the time" is more how I'd characterize it.

Still, given that Dubya may be the greatest enemy of human rights ever to reside in the White House, it's certainly fair to compare his father with him favorably.

Meanwhile, the article bravely continues:

Political guru Karl Rove claims that the job of journalists is "not necessarily to report the news. It's to get a headline or get a story that will make people pay attention to their magazine, newspaper or television more."

Is it just me, or has the Daily News become the Big Apple's antidote for Die Poste?

(/) Roland X
A quote like that is beyond .sig-parodying...

Nakedly Craven

Found through Buzzflash, this article from the NY Daily News:

Getting an extension could be a political headache for Bush if the final 9/11 report is issued in the summer. Kean, a Republican, has said the report will name names and point to failures in the Bush administration.

Good for him. It's nice to know there are still honest Republicans.

The White House response?

The White House proposed greenlighting the extension if the commission would agree to release the report after the November election, but then officials pulled back the offer, Newsweek reported yesterday.

Sure, we knew they were this conniving, but so openly? They can't think they can get away with it, can they?

Oh, wait. So far, they have. Never mind...

(/) Roland X
One Wing to Bring Them All and in the Darkness Bind Them
In the Land of Crawford Where the Shadows Lie

A Paul on the Presidency

The bombshell:

CRAWFORD, Tex., Jan. 10 -- Former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill charged in remarks released Saturday that President Bush began planning to oust Saddam Hussein within days of taking office and before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The response:

A senior administration official said O'Neill's "suggestion that the administration was planning an invasion of Iraq days after taking office is laughable. Nobody listened to him when he was in office. Why should anybody now?"

Naturally, my fellow pro-freedom bloggers have been all over this. Equally naturally, this looks like it'll blow over before the interview is even broadcast. Still, since we all know full well that every brain in the administration not named "Powell" wanted to invade Iraq since before the 2000 election, IMO the truly interesting element of this story is the response. Sure, the politics of personal destruction are used on anything that vaguely resembles a Democrat, but widening the circle to include a Republican who served in the Bush administration is a fascinating development.

Is this a coldly calculated attack, unconcerned about the obvious contradiction due to Americans' short attention span? Is it the legendary rage of the Bush political team (aka Karl "like he's never been f---ed before" Rove)? Is there actual desperation involved, as the opposition becomes more motivated and organized while Bush's failings become more public? Is it some combination of the above? After all, this is a man who served under Bush for some time -- if no one listened to him while he was Treasury Secretary, why in hell was he appointed to that office? And how did he keep his job for so long?

While the Bush administration is supposed to be in the driver's seat in 2004, surely men like Rove realize that once the general election campaign season begins, all of the Regime's policy failings, foreign and domestic, will be aired for public consumption. They've practically conceded this point, and are already trying to frame the election in terms of attitude over accomplishment. So every time a revelation like Mr. O'Neill's receives public attention, it's a direct threat to that second term, as well as the power and "legitimacy" the Bush team so desperately want.

So it will be interesting to see whether O'Neill's visibility is vanished, brutalized, or both (kept out of the general public's eye, while savaged by the wingnut policy hacks). While I seriously doubt that this revelation will do any real damage to the administration, their reaction will prove instructive. Coming next: [fill in the candidate] is too liberal, too Clintonian, hates America (yes, even Clark and Lieberman), and looks French.

(/) Roland X
With thanks to Hesiod

Return of the Blog

Whoa, is it 2004 already? :-)

Getting serious, December just slipped out from under me (very busy month), and it was tough enough keeping up with my DMY commitment. Nevertheless, again I offer my apologies. Though I am stating for the record that the Justice Log will likely be more sporadic in the future, I will do my best to keep up on the latest from the left, and offer my observations on same, when I can (and I have more to offer than on my DMY column).

And now, a blast from the past:

Article 4       ABUSE OF POWER

The President misused and abused his office and impaired the administration of justice.

1.      The President made false and misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States;

2.      The President made false and misleading statements to members of the Cabinet and White House aides;

3.      The President frivolously asserted executive privilege;

4.      The President made perjurious, false and misleading statements to Congress (answers to 81 questions).

Clinton? Or Bush?

Then again, how on earth could anyone say that "making false and misleading public statements" to Congress, White House aides, and the American people constitutes an impeachable offense? Absurd, right? Well, not to the GOP:

Using the powers and influence of the office of President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in disregard of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has repeatedly engaged in conduct that resulted in misuse and abuse of his high office, impaired the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, and contravened the laws governing the integrity of the judicial and legislative branches and the truth-seeking purpose of coordinate investigative proceedings.

Whoa. strong words. So, a president who lied to Congress and the American people to started a war on false pretenses, endangered the lives of millions of New Yorkers by covering up the damage done by post-9/11 emissions, and suppressed a commission on the intelligence failures involving that same attack, will be impeached too, right?

And of course, the good old GOP will add the betrayal of Valerie Plame-Wilson to the Articles of Impeachment, I'm sure:

ARTICLE III

In his conduct while President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice, and has to that end engaged personally, and through his subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or scheme designed to delay, impede, cover up, and conceal the existence of evidence and testimony...

Sure, some of the details are different. But the Republican party would never allow such piddling peccadilloes to interfere in the pursuit of justice. Surely, they won't resort to "definition of is" style of hair-splitting, will they?

Who are we kidding? Of course they will. Of course they have.

I could go on at length about the many other issues at stake -- Enron, employment, the environment, deficits that respected economists believe may endanger the entire global economy -- but if you're here, you probably know about all of that. So for now, I'll stick to this reminder of what used to constitute an impeachable offense...when a Democrat was in the White House.

(/) Roland X
Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you an enemy of the state.