Electoral Votes

Here is another good reason to eliminate the electoral vote system of electing the president.

Votescam
By Hendrik HertzbergThe New Yorker
06 August 2007 Issue
At first glance, next year's Presidential election looks like a blowout. But it might not be. Luckily for the incumbent party, neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney will be running; indeed, the election of 2008 will be the first since 1952 without a sitting President or Vice-President on the ballot. At the moment, survey research reflects a generic public preference for a Democratic victory next year. Still, despite everything, there are nearly as many polls showing particular Republicans beating particular Democrats as vice versa. So this election could be another close one. If it is, the winner may turn out to have been chosen not on November 4, 2008, but five months earlier, on June 3rd.
Two weeks ago, one of the most important Republican lawyers in Sacramento quietly filed a ballot initiative that would end the practice of granting all fifty-five of California's electoral votes to the statewide winner. Instead, it would award two of them to the statewide winner and the rest, one by one, to the winner in each congressional district. Nineteen of the fifty-three districts are represented by Republicans, but Bush carried twenty-two districts in 2004. The bottom line is that the initiative, if passed, would spot the Republican ticket something in the neighborhood of twenty electoral votes-votes that it wouldn't get under the rules prevailing in every other sizable state in the Union.
The Tuesday after the first Monday in June is California's traditional Primary Day. But it's not the one that everybody will be paying attention to. Five months ago, the legislature hastily moved the Presidential part up to February 5th, joining a stampede of states hoping to claim a piece of the early-state action previously reserved for Iowa and New Hampshire. June 3rd will be an altogether sleepier, low-turnout affair. There may be a few scattered contests for legislative nominations, but the only statewide items on the ballot will be initiatives. More than two dozen have been filed so far, ranging from a proposal to start a state-run Internet poker site to pay for filling potholes to a redundant slew of anti-gay-marriage measures. Few will make it to the ballot. Many are not even intended to; they're a feint in some byzantine negotiation, or just a cheap attempt to get a little attention-for a two-hundred-dollar fee, anyone can file one. (Actually getting one on the ballot requires more than four hundred thousand signatures, and the outfits that collect them usually charge a dollar or two per signature.) Initiative No. 07-0032-the Presidential Election Reform Act-is different. It's serious. Its backers have access to serious money. And it could pass.
Nominally, the sponsor of No. 07-0032 is Californians for Equal Representation. But that's just a letterhead-there's no such organization. Its address is the office suite of Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, the law firm for the California Republican Party, and its covering letter is signed by Thomas W. Hiltachk, the firm's managing partner and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's personal lawyer for election matters. Hiltachk and his firm have been involved in many well-financed ballot initiatives before, including the recall that put Arnold in Sacramento. They specialize in initiatives that are the opposite of what they sound like-the Fair Pay Workplace Flexibility Act of 2006, for example. It would have raised the state minimum wage slightly-by a lesser amount than it has since been raised-and, in the fine print, would have made it impossible ever to raise it again except by a two-thirds vote in both houses of the legislature, while, for good measure, eliminating overtime for millions of workers.
"Equal Representation" sounds good, too. And the winner-take-all rule, which is in force in all but two states, does seem unfair on the face of it. (The two are Maine and Nebraska, which use congressional-district allocation. But they are so small-only five districts between them-and so homogeneous that neither has ever split its electoral votes.) It would be obviously unjust for a state to give all its legislative seats to the party that gets the most votes statewide. So why should Party A get a hundred per cent of that state's electoral votes if forty per cent of its voters support Party B? No wonder Democrats and Republicans alike initially react to this proposal in a strongly positive way. To most people, the electoral-college status quo feels intuitively wrong. So does war. But that doesn't make unilateral disarmament a no-brainer.
If California does what No. 07-0032 calls for while everybody else is still going with winner take all by state, the real-world result will be to give Party B (in this case the Republicans) an unearned, Ohio-size gift of electoral votes. In a narrow sense, that's good if you like Party B, but not so good if you like Party A (in this case the Democrats). Or if you think that in a democracy everybody ought to play by roughly the same rules. Nor, by the way, is Party B the only offender. Last week, the Democratic-controlled legislature of North Carolina, a state that has gone Republican in every Presidential election since 1976, enthusiastically took up a bill to do the same mischief as the California initiative. The grab would be smaller-it would appropriate perhaps three or four of North Carolina's fifteen electoral votes for the Democrats-but the hands would be just as dirty.
The California initiative flunks even the categorical-imperative test. Imagine, as a thought experiment, that all the states were to adopt this "reform" at once. Electoral votes would still be winner take all, only by congressional district rather than by state. Instead of ten battleground states and forty spectator states, we'd have thirty-five battleground districts and four hundred spectator districts. The red-blue map would be more mottled, and in some states more people might get to see campaign commercials, because media markets usually take in more than one district. But congressional districts are as gerrymandered as human ingenuity and computer power can make them. The electoral-vote result in ninety per cent of the country would still be a foregone conclusion, no matter how close the race.
California Initiative No. 07-0032 is an audacious power play packaged as a step forward for democratic fairness. It's the lotusland equivalent of Tom DeLay's 2003 midterm redistricting in Texas, except with a sweeter smell, a better disguise, and larger stakes. And the only way Californians will reject it is if they have a chance to think about it first.

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Quote Of The Day
By Greg Sargent
"Mitt's all about more, more, more for the people who already have the most -- and that's just wrong. Mitt Romney shouldn't pay lower taxes on the money he makes from his money than middle-class families pay on the money they make from hard work. Neither should I."
-- John Edwards, in a statement just released by his campaign hammering Mitt Romney for ridiculing Edwards' plan to cut taxes for working and middle-class Americans. Instead, Romney wants to make Bush's tax cuts permanent and do away with the estate tax.

Edwards' full response to Romney.
“Every time another radical Republican running for president speaks, the American people are reminded of how out of touch with economic reality they are. Example A: Mitt Romney.
“Romney, who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, should be ashamed for attacking my economic plan, but it's not surprising he is. I want to rewrite our tax code to make it fair and help hard-working Americans save some money to give them a better shot at the American Dream. Mitt wants to make sure that the wealthiest Americans just keep getting wealthier and let everyone else pick up the scraps. Mitt's all about more, more, more for the people who already have the most - and that's just wrong.
“The truth is Mitt Romney shouldn't pay lower taxes on the money he makes from his money than middle-class families pay on the money they make from hard work. Neither should I. We're both incredibly fortunate and we should pay our fair share.
“That’s the big difference between people like Mitt Romney and me. Mitt Romney thinks he and his insider friends helped make America great, I think it’s the hundreds of millions of Americans in the working class and middle class who make America great. It’s these hard-working families who deserve a break and a chance to live the same American Dream as I have. That’s what I’m fighting for, and that’s what people like Mitt Romney have spent a lifetime fighting against.”

Exploiting Fears

After the Next 9/11
Marty Kaplan

Americans are stupid about risk, me included. It's nuts to fear plane crashes more than car crashes; loopy to be more afraid of online sexual predators than of lightning; irrational to pay more attention to shark attacks than to climate change. Doubtless there's something about our lizard brain stems that accounts for our poor choices in boogeymen, and thus for the media's pandering to our catastrophilia. But no vestigial pathway in our panic-hardwiring is an excuse for the Bush administration's current ramping up of its shameless exploitation of our fear.
Each of the 95 times President Bush mentioned Al Qaeda in his South Carolina speech last week, and each of the innumerable times in coming days that his disciplined minions will push the Iraq-is-about-Al-Qaeda button, the real message is, of course, 9/11. If we don't win in Iraq, the Bush case goes, the terrorists will kill you and your children in the air, at the mall and in your bed.
Set aside for a moment the baldfaced Bush lie that Al Qaeda accounts for more than a sliver of the terrorism in Iraq. Ignore the convenient Bush amnesia of the cause for Al Qaeda's presence in Mesopotamia: his own invasion-of-choice. Forget the absurdity of fight-them-there-so-they-won't-fight-us-here: a defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq, even if it were militarily and politically possible, even if we were willing to spill all the blood and spend all the treasure required to accomplish it, will not cause the cells of terrorists already in America to disband, nor will it so bum, depress or demoralize the ferocious jihadists already plotting against us in encampments and networks around the world that they will abandon their zeal for revenge and seek new careers in hedge fund management or search engine design.
Instead, focus on the likelihood of another 9/11 in America, even if Bush prevails in handing the Iraq war to his successor, even if the Cheney-Kristol wing of the Republican Party gets all it wants from this and future Congresses, even if Joe Lieberman gets his war in Iran, even if Rudy Giuliani gets to wear macho-man drag as our next President, even if someone produces Osama Bin Laden's head on a pike -- or even, alas, if an American withdrawal begins in September or March or in January, 2009. No matter what happens next in Iraq, something terrible is going to happen in America.
This is not defeatism. It is facing reality. I wish there were enough money to secure all our ports and infrastructure; to lower to zero the probability that the A.Q. Khan network, or some purveyor of ex-Soviet loose nukes, could penetrate our border with an atomic device; that bioterrorism could be decisively prevented by counterterrorism; that jihadi malaise, or Obamian public diplomacy, or whatever other cure for global hatred you favor, could conquer the evil that George W. Bush pretends he can deliver us from.
But no more than King Canute could stop the tide, no more than a Big One in California can be prevented, no more than the hundred thousand people who will die in accidents this year will evade their untimely ends, an act of domestic terrorism is inevitable. What counts is how we think about it right now, how we prepare today for when it happens tomorrow, and how we handle it -- politically, emotionally, morally -- when, as it must, it occurs.
Is there any doubt that the Bush administration, and its dead-ender allies in the Republican Party and the media, will use an act of domestic terrorism as a fresh opportunity to further demonize their political opponents and further compromise the Constitution? Will they truly be able to resist the temptations of martial law, emergency powers, and the phony prerogatives of the unitary executive in wartime? In Britain, in Israel, in Spain, in Ireland, we have seen political leaders decline the invitation to demagoguery that domestic terrorism has offered, and instead to put violence in perspective, to refuse to compromise reason and democracy, to summon their citizens to remain themselves rather than become their enemies. When the unthinkable happens to us again, will the politicians who pissed away the unity following 9/11 in the sands of Iraq have the moral wherewithal to remind us that no matter how grief-stricken we may be, the sky has not fallen and the republic has not failed?
If I could manage to be smarter about risk than I usually am, I would worry less about the possibility of terrorism, and more about the probability that the same chickenhawks who exploited it before to sell us on war without end, will exploit it again to sing the virtues of temporary fascism.
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Of course there could have been money to beef up our security if billions ( estimated total cost of war over the next ten years one and half trillion) had not been spent in Iraq.
One of the many things that causes concern with todays media is the replacement of the word
"worry" with the word fear.I see it all the time! I guess the writers know that using the word fear gets attention but worry does not.The bush administration has been the best at exploiting the word fear and fears themselves. He is not an admirier of FDR who said the' only thing we have to fear is fear itself". A little preparation in case of storm or attack is always good, flashlights,a few gallons of water some ready to eat canned goods etc is always good to have on hand in case of power outages. Keeping freezer packs frozen that can be put in the fridge to help keep it cool in the event of an power outage is good too. Preparation is good, I just wish our government was prepared for catastrophy!

More Billions Wasted on Iraq

When we think of the infrastrucure that needs to be rebuilt here in the good ole USA it sickens me to see all the wasted dollars in Iraq. The reason these works don't get completed is because the Iraqies don't know how to govern. They have lived under despots for years most except the very old know no other way.The whole war is absolutely maddening, and the Dems won't impeach bush to so end this misbegotten war.


As U.S. Rebuilds, Iraq Won’t Act on Finished Work.

By JAMES GLANZ
Published: July 28, 2007
Iraq’s national government is refusing to take possession of thousands of American-financed reconstruction projects, forcing the United States either to hand them over to local Iraqis, who often lack the proper training and resources to keep the projects running, or commit new money to an effort that has already consumed billions of taxpayer dollars.
The conclusions, detailed in a report released Friday by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, a federal oversight agency, include the finding that of 2,797 completed projects costing $5.8 billion, Iraq’s national government had, by the spring of this year, accepted only 435 projects valued at $501 million. Few transfers to Iraqi national government control have taken place since the current Iraqi government, which is frequently criticized for inaction on matters relating to the American intervention, took office in 2006.
The United States often promotes the number of rebuilding projects, like power plants and hospitals, that have been completed in Iraq, citing them as signs of progress in a nation otherwise fraught with violence and political stalemate. But closer examination by the inspector general’s office, headed by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., has found that a number of individual projects are crumbling, abandoned or otherwise inoperative only months after the United States declared that they had been successfully completed. The United States always intended to hand over projects to the Iraqi government when they were completed.
Although Mr. Bowen’s latest report is primarily a financial overview, he said in an interview that it raised serious questions on whether the problems his inspectors had found were much more widespread in the reconstruction program.
The process of transferring projects to Iraq "worked for a while," Mr. Bowen said. But then the new government took over and installed its finance minister, Bayan Jabr, who has been a continuing center of controversy in his various government posts and is formally in charge of the transfers.
"After Mr. Jabr took over, that process ceased to function," Mr. Bowen said.
In fact, in the first twoprojects they examined after the United States declared those projects completed.
In one of the most recent cases, a $90 million project to overhaul two giant turbines at the Dora power plant in Baghdad failed after completion because employees at the plant did not know how to operate the turbines properly and the wrong fuel was used. The additional power is critically needed in Baghdad, where residents often have only a few hours of electricity a day.
Because the Iraqi government will not formally accept projects like the refurbished turbines, the United States is "finding someone at the local level to handle the project, handing them the keys and saying, ‘Operate and maintain it,’ " another official in the inspector general’s office said.
If the pace of the American rebuilding program is a guide, those problems could quickly accelerate: So far, the United States has declared that $5.8 billion in American taxpayer-financed projects have been completed, but most of the rest of the projects within a $21 billion rebuilding program that Mr. Bowen examined in the report are expected to be finished by the end of this year. Some of that money is also being used to train and equip Iraqi security forces rather than finance construction projects.
The report was released too late in the day to contact Mr. Jabr, who is part of a Shiite alliance in charge of the government. In his previous position as interior minister, he was accused of running Shiite death squads out of the ministry. In his current position he has developed a reputation as being slow to release budget money to Iraqi government entities, which would have to run the new projects at substantial expense.
He is sometimes suspected of seeking to use his position to undermine the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who is also a Shiite but answers to a different faction within the alliance. In interviews, Mr. Jabr has rejected those accusations and says he strongly supports the government quarters of 2007, Mr. Bowen said, his inspectors found significant problems in all but 2 of the 12
American researchers who have followed the reconstruction said Mr. Bowen’s report raised serious new doubts about the program. Rick Barton, co-director of the postconflict reconstruction project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research institute in Washington, said the lack of interest on the part of the Iraqis was the latest demonstration that they were not involved enough in its planning stages. “It sort of confirms that you really need pre-agreement on the projects you are attempting,” Mr. Barton said, “or you end up with these kinds of problems at the tail end, where people don’t know much about the program and they haven’t bought into it.”
Mr. Barton said that the episode was probably inevitable given that the elected Iraqi government operated mainly within the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad and had little capability of managing thousands of new projects around the country. He said that this was the most likely explanation — rather than any ill will on Mr. Jabr’s part. But Mr. Barton said the findings indicated that the United States should put some of the remaining money in the program into “sustainment,” the term for running the projects, rather than continuing to build when there might be no one to run the projects.
“To build something and not have these issues resolved from top to bottom is unfathomable,” said William L. Nash, a retired general who is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on Middle East reconstruction. “The management of the reconstruction program for Iraq has been a near-total disaster from the beginning.”
The report says that of the 2,797 projects declared completed, besides the 435 projects formally accepted by Iraq’s central government, 1,141 have been transferred to local Iraqi authorities. American government entities in charge of those projects include the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the American-led multinational forces in Iraq, the United States Embassy and the United States Agency for International Development. In letters attached to Mr. Bowen’s report, several of those entities largely concurred with many of Mr. Bowen’s findings and said that new agreements were being hammered out with the Iraqi government to smooth the transfers.
A spokesman for the development agency, David Snider, said in a statement that work now being undertaken by the agency “helps address the concerns” raised in the report. Mr. Snider said that the agency was seeking to formalize an agreement with the Iraqi government that would protect the American investment there.
The agency “usually secures these commitments from recipient governments before the initiation of a project,” Mr. Snider said. But in the case of Iraq, he said, the American rebuilding effort “began before the current Iraqi government was established.”

Nightmare

Cheers and Jeers:
by Bill in Portland Maine
Fri Jul 27, 2007 at 04:35:31 AM PDT
From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

"Alberto Gonzales is saying, basically, there are problems of which he cannot speak, for which he is responsible yet not to blame, and that he is the only one who can clean up the mess that he can neither confirm or deny exists. Let me try to put this in schoolyard terms, if I may: He has smelt it, and while he cannot confirm that he in fact also dealt it, he refuses to deny it on the grounds that it might incriminate him for supplying it." ---Jon Stewart -

"Sean Hannity knows that there is no greater threat to America today than Bill Clinton 15 years ago." ---Stephen Colbert -

"The doctors [who gave President Bush a colonoscopy] found five polyps. And I was thinking: well, hell, maybe we should send these guys out to find bin Laden." ---David Letterman -

"I finally saw 'Sicko.' But enough about Michael Vick..." ---Jay Leno -

"A Christian group that claims it can cure homosexuality is starting a program to help gay Broadway stars become straight. The program is called, A Total Waste of Time." ---Conan O'Brien -

Bill O'Reilly: [Daily Kos is] like the Ku Klux Klan. It's like the Nazi party. Stephen Colbert: Exactly! The Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis were both notorious for allowing people to express unpopular views in an open and free forum. ---The Colbert Report
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That September Report on Iraq? It's Not the Only One. By Robin Wright

The White House may have killed attempts to revive the much-heralded Iraq Study Group, but the Bush administration will still face a tough, independent evaluation of the progress in Iraq - from one of its own agencies.
In a little-noticed addition to legislation requiring the July and September assessments on Iraq from the White House, Congress mandated a third report from the agency that has quietly done the most work to track the missteps, miscalculations, misspent funds and shortfalls of both the United States and Iraq since the 2003 invasion: the Government Accountability Office.
The GAO's international affairs team has had far more experience in Iraq than the study group led by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former congressman Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) or any of the other independent panels that have weighed in on Iraq. Indeed, the study group consulted the GAO team in preparing its report. Over the past four years, the GAO has issued 91 reports on Iraq, on topics including the mismanagement of Iraq's oil industry and problems in its new army.
The GAO team is back in Iraq this week doing research to make its own assessment of the 18 benchmarks covered by the administration's reports.
The 15-person team includes an array of specialists, lawyers, economists, foreign policy experts and statisticians. Most have been working on Iraq since June 2003, when the first GAO reports were mandated. They work on a day-to-day basis with the departments of State and Defense, but the GAO makes independent assessments.
The GAO report is due Sept. 1 - two weeks before the administration's document. So it may set a standard that makes it harder for the administration to attach caveats to its answers, as outside analysts say it did in the July report.
The administration's assessments are more nuanced, with grading based on whether Iraq is making "satisfactory progress" or "unsatisfactory progress" on the 18 political, military and economic benchmarks. The GAO is mandated to give a more straightforward "yes" or "no" on whether the benchmarks have been achieved, said Joseph A. Christoff, director of the GAO's International Affairs and Trade Team, which will write the report.
Christoff anticipates blunt critiques in the GAO report, based on benchmarks his team has long been monitoring as part of its oversight of Iraq.
On Iraq's military, for example, the administration's July report said Iraq is making "satisfactory progress" on providing three brigades for the new U.S.-led Baghdad security plan.
But Christoff said the GAO is probing deeper. "For us, it's not just an issue of showing up, but showing up with equipment and logistical support so they can move on their own, and then being effective," he said.
The Iraqi military has serious shortcomings, including, according to a Pentagon report, a no-show rate of one-third to one-half on any given day, Christoff said. "Celebrating 360,000 trained and equipped forces says nothing about their loyalty or effectiveness," he said.
On Iraqi politics, a pending law to equitably distribute Iraq's oil income has come to symbolize attempts to address the needs of all ethnic and sectarian communities. The July report acknowledges that the Iraqi government has made "unsatisfactory progress" in passing legislation but says it is too early to tell what will be enacted and rejects any revision of U.S. plans or strategy.
Christoff questions whether that conclusion is giving the Iraqis the benefit of the doubt. Only one of four pieces of legislation required on Iraq's oil sector is now before the parliament, and it addresses only who will be responsible for distributing oil, not how revenue will be shared among the communities, he said. A second bill on revenue-sharing is being debated in the cabinet. But two other basic laws - on creating a national oil company and restructuring the oil ministry - have not been drafted, he said.
"So much has to be done that it will be difficult to meet this benchmark, even by September," Christoff said.
On Iraq's economy, the July report said Baghdad is progressing satisfactorily in allocating $10 billion for development to its ministries and provinces, much of it for electricity and oil industry infrastructure. But Christoff is again skeptical. "If the past is any indication, it will also be very difficult to meet this benchmark," he said.
The need for development in the two sectors is critical. The oil-rich country last year spent $2.6 billion to import gasoline, diesel fuel for electricity and kerosene for cooking, because it cannot refine enough oil, Christoff said. Also, U.S. officials acknowledge, Iraq managed to allocate only about a quarter of the $10 billion in development funds during the first six months of 2007 - much of which has not been spent.
"When you look at what is needed and what the goals are, there's a huge gap," Christoff said. And the gap between the administration's and the GAO's assessments on these central issues is likely to be reflected in other benchmarks, he said.
The GAO team is due back Aug. 4, after which it will begin writing its report.
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It's a nightmare a looooong one.
Comeuppance?
Will this long presidency of George W. Bush ever be over?
Chris Durang

Living through it is starting to seem like some ghastly, upsetting novel in which the hero is the country, and the president is this disturbing, pig-headed, oblivious villain who makes things worse and worse and worse.
And as with a fictional villain, I find I have a longing that he get his comeuppance -- that his villainy is codified and he's finally held accountable for what he's done.
But will that ever happen?
I need the relief of truth and justice triumphing that I experience in books and movies.
Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty, after endless and stubborn cruelty against his men, is finally confronted by out-and-out mutiny by his angry officers and crew, and is set out in a little boat in the middle of the ocean. Goodbye!
Or another captain, Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny, is removed from duty by his officers after his domineering incompetence and instability causes him to freeze in the middle of a serious storm. But then he challenges the officers in court and nearly succeeds in having them all court-martialed until that longed-for moment when he starts to unravel on the stand, obsessively going on about who did or didn't steal strawberries from the mess hall, all the while nervously fingering those three metal balls in his hand. And the entire courtroom falls silent, staring at him, finally seeing his craziness. I need a moment like that.
Or I need Edna May Oliver to show up and put Bush in his place, as she did with the evil Mr. Murdstone when he came to reclaim young David Copperfield to his sadistic clutches in the 1935 David Copperfield. In that film, Ms. Oliver (a treasure of a 30s character actress) listens calmly to the supercilious adult murmurings of Mr. Murdstone and his sister, and then she stands up and says she doesn't believe a word they say, and she will not hand David over to them; and she picks up a broom and chases them out of her house and down the road. And then she and Davey and her strange but benign friend Mr. Dick join hands and dance a little jig of joy. I need a moment like that too.
But will we ever have such a moment?
Of course, impeachment is the constitutional remedy.
And I understand that maybe some of the Democrats are right, and the country doesn't have the stomach for it. The people want progress, not punishment (maybe). And I also know how unlikely it is that enough Republicans (or any) would join a call for impeachment. The Republicans seem hell-bent on enabling and defending this president no matter what; a few are changing, one by one, but it's VERY slow.
But, Lord, if ever a case called for impeachment, it is this one.

The King Reigns

Vote Part of Effort to Restore Checks and BalancesBy Paul Kiel - July 25, 2007, 3:35 PM
From the Speaker on this morning's vote:
“The contempt proceedings in the House Judiciary Committee today are part of a broader effort by House Democrats to restore our nation’s fundamental system of checks and balances.
"The Constitution gives the Congress a crucial role in overseeing the Executive Branch in order to protect the American people against overreaching, incompetence, and corruption. I am hopeful that today’s vote will help the Administration see the light and release the information to which the Judiciary Committee is entitled.
"For the last six years, under Republican leadership, Congress failed to conduct its proper oversight role, resulting in fiascos such as the mismanagement of our Iraq policy, widespread corruption by contractors such as Halliburton, and the failed response to Hurricane Katrina.
“Congress will act to preserve and protect our criminal justice system and to ensure appropriate Congressional oversight in all areas essential to the well-being of the American people.”
As we noted earlier, the word is that a vote on this in the full House is unlikely before the August recess, pushing it back to September.
House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) followed up the House vote this morning with a letter to White House counsel Fred Fielding, saying that he still hoped the two sides could come to an agreement.

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Steven Weber
Remember in Rosemary's Baby when she realizes that by dumping a bag of Scrabble tiles onto the floor and rearranging the letters of the name of her elderly, sweet neighbor it turns out he was really a pawn of Satan who conjures the Evil One to impregnate a human and otherwise herald the End of Times? It might be a little like that. Only far more more terrible. Because it's real And I know I sound, oh, alarmist and my right wing friends will snort derisively at the sight of my white knees knocking together accompanied by the sounds of a cartoon xylophone, but it really appears that quite soon this country will be very different from the one our parents grew up in. In fact, very different from what was envisioned by those who founded it.
And that change won't come in a blur of brown shirts. It will come with tiny American flags pinned to lapels. It will come with the stern glare of a caring, protective Father and the vacant, soothing touch of a passive, cowed Mother.
It will come while we dither and dote on idols, models and morals. It will come because those that endorse its coming are everything George Orwell said they are and everything the Bible says they are: sheep who make way for the rise of the big brothers, the false prophets and the anti-Christs.
And the assembled facts say the infrastructure for this change has already been laid right in front of our chewing mouths and glassy eyes and "oh-you're-just-another-mincing-liberal-it-could-never-happen-here!!" attitudes, its crystalline structure expanding---doubling and doubling again---to create the perfect environment for a capitalist/fascist regime to thrive and that's not being alarmist and here are the pieces. Let's spill them onto the floor:
a wall to keep out "immigrants and terrorists";

surveillance cameras on every corner;

an ideologically aligned Supreme Court;

a president who signs statements nullifying the legislation that has just passed;

a television-dependent, consumer-obsessed population;

the concentration of information outlets under a single authority;

the marginalization of the middle class and the busting of unions;

the suspension of habeas corpus;

denying the people access to information about government activity by asserting "executive privilege";

the blurring of the lines between science and religion; a faceless, terrifying enemy;

a unilaterally prosecuted War Without End.
Taken at their face, these are disparate elements, each one of them brought into being through reasonably articulate agents, trumpeted within hallowed and respected institutions. And each of them has come under fire as deeply flawed, inefficient or plain weird.
But spill those tiles onto the floor. Put them all together. See what they spell.
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Why Do These Guys Hate America?
Thu Jul 26, 2007 at 02:25:12 AM PDT
Their credentials as patriots, in the sense that the right wing in this country limits that term, are impeccable. General P.X. Kelley was appointed by GOP icon Ronald Reagan as commandant of the Marine Corps, a post in which he served from 1983-87. Robert F. Turner was an attorney in the Reagan White House who has no problem with warrantless wiretapping or presidential signing statements.
But they have a problem – a great big problem – with the executive order that President Bush signed last week interpreting Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions in relation to CIA interrogations. While some observers have praised the order, others have said not so fast – what does this document really say? But most of those critics are what you might call the usual suspects. In other words, groups with words like human rights in their names. Easily ignored, easily mocked, easily smeared. But Kelley and Turner?
In an Op-Ed this morning that Washington Post editors headline War Crimes and the White House: The Dishonor in a Tortured New 'Interpretation' of the Geneva Conventions, the two men write:
But we cannot in good conscience defend a decision that we believe has compromised our national honor and that may well promote the commission of war crimes by Americans and place at risk the welfare of captured American military forces for generations to come. ...
In other words, as long as the intent of the abuse is to gather intelligence or to prevent future attacks, and the abuse is not "done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual" -- even if that is an inevitable consequence -- the president has given the CIA carte blanche to engage in "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse." ...
To date in the war on terrorism, including the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and all U.S. military personnel killed in action in Afghanistan and Iraq, America's losses total about 2 percent of the forces we lost in World War II and less than 7 percent of those killed in Vietnam. Yet we did not find it necessary to compromise our honor or abandon our commitment to the rule of law to defeat Nazi Germany or imperial Japan, or to resist communist aggression in Indochina. On the contrary, in Vietnam -- where we both proudly served twice -- America voluntarily extended the protections of the full Geneva Convention on prisoners of war to Viet Cong guerrillas who, like al-Qaeda, did not even arguably qualify for such protections.
As has often been said since post-9/11 torture was exposed, even those who have no moral objections should surely pause for consideration of self-interest in the matter. As Kelley and Turner go on to point out, the Geneva Conventions protect American military forces.
Our troops deserve those protections, and we betray their interests when we gratuitously "interpret" key provisions of the conventions in a manner likely to undermine their effectiveness.
Policymakers should also keep in mind that violations of Common Article 3 are "war crimes" for which everyone involved -- potentially up to and including the president of the United States -- may be tried in any of the other 193 countries that are parties to the conventions.
The executive order came about, not because the Cheney-Bush Administration had a change of heart about the CIA interrogation program. Rather it was a consequence of the combined pressure of outrage over the photos from Abu Ghraib and a Supreme Court ruling, plus passage of the deeply flawed Military Commissions Act of 2006. The MCA specifically required the Administration to draft an executive order that places future interrogations inside the parameters of international law. Hence, last Friday’s signing.
Progress? Or just another Cheney-Bush flip-off delivered with more serpentine charm and subtlety than is usually the case

Impeach, Impeach

Impeach George Bush to Stop War Lies, Deaths By Jimmy Breslin
I am walking in Rosedale on this day early in the week while I wait for the funeral of Army soldier Le Ron Wilson, who died at age 18 in Iraq. He was 17 1/2 when he had his mother sign his enlistment papers at the Jamaica recruiting office. If she didn't, he told her, he would just wait for the months to his 18th birthday and go in anyway. He graduated from Thomas Edison High School at noon one day in May. He left right away for basic training. He came home in a box last weekend. He had a fast war.
The war was there to take his life because George Bush started it with bold-faced lies.
He got this lovely kid killed by lying.
If Bush did this in Queens, he would be in court on Queens Boulevard on a murder charge.
He did it in the White House, and it is appropriate, and mandatory for the good of the nation, that impeachment proceedings be started. You can't live with lies. You can't permit them to be passed on as if it is the thing to do.
Yesterday, Bush didn't run the country for a couple of hours while he had a colonoscopy at the presidential retreat, Camp David. He came out of it all right. He should now take his good health and go home, quit a job he doesn't have a clue as to how to do.
The other day, Bush said he couldn't understand why in the world would some people say that millions of Americans have no health insurance. "Why, all they have to do is go to the emergency room," he said.
Said this with the smirk, the insolent smug, contemptuous way he speaks to citizens.
People, particularly these politicians, these frightened beggars in suits, seem petrified about impeachment. It could wreck the country. Ridiculous. I've been around this business twice and we're all still here and no politician was even injured. Richard Nixon lied during a war and helped get some 58,500 Americans killed and many escaped by hanging onto helicopter skids. Nixon left peacefully. Mike Mansfield of Montana, the Democratic Senate majority leader, said on television that the Senate impeachment trial of Nixon would be televised and there would be no immunity. That meant Nixon would have to face the country under oath and if he lied he would go to prison. He knew he was finished as he heard this. Mansfield said no more. He got up and left. Barbara Walters, on the "Today" show, said, "He doesn't say very much, does he?"
The second time the subject was Bill Clinton for illegal holding in the hallway.
This time, we have dead bodies involved. Consider what is accomplished by the simple power of the word impeachment. If you read these broken-down news writers or terrified politicians claiming that an impeachment would leave the nation in pieces, don't give a moment to them.
It opens with the appointing of an investigator to report to the House on evidence that calls for impeachment. He could bring witnesses forward. That would be all you'd need. Here in the impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon came John Dean. His history shows how far down the honesty and honor of this country has gone. Dean was the White House counsel. Richard Nixon, at his worst, never told him not to appear or to remain silent in front of the Congress. Dean went on and did his best to fill prisons. After that came Alexander Butterfield, a nobody. All he had to say was that the White House had a taping system that caught all the conversations in the White House. Any of them not on tape were erased by a participant.
The same is desperately needed now. Curious, following the words, an investigator - the mind here sees George Mitchell and Warren Rudman, and you name me better - can slap a hand on the slitherers and sneaks who have kept us in war for five years and who use failing generals to beg for more time and more lives of our young. A final word in September? Two years more, the generals and Bush people say.
Say impeachment and you'll get your troops home.
As I am walking in Rosedale, on these streets sparkling with sun, I remember the places I have been in the cold rain for the deaths of our young in this war. Rosedale now, Washington Heights before, and the South Bronx, and Bay Shore and Hauppauge and too many other places around here.
And in Washington we had this Bush, and it is implausible to have anyone who is this dumb running anything, smirking at his country. He sure doesn't mind copying those people. On his PBS television show the other night, Bill Moyers said he was amazed at Sara Taylor of the White House staff saying that she didn't have to talk to a congressional committee because George Bush had ordered her not to. "I took an oath to uphold the president," she said.
That president had been in charge of a government that kidnapped, tortured, lied, intercepted mail and calls, all in the name of opposing people who are willing to kill themselves right in front of you. You have to get rid of a government like this. Ask anybody in Rosedale, where Le Ron Wilson wanted to live his young life. His grave speaks out that this is an impeachable offense.

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Bush Approval AT 25%


That means we have still, 75,000,000 dumb Americans!______________________________________

US Seen in Iraq Until at Least '09 By Michael R. Gordon The New York Times
Tuesday 24 July 2007
Baghdad - While Washington is mired in political debate over the future of Iraq, the American command here has prepared a detailed plan that foresees a significant American role for the next two years.
The classified plan, which represents the coordinated strategy of the top American commander and the American ambassador, calls for restoring security in local areas, including Baghdad, by the summer of 2008. "Sustainable security" is to be established on a nationwide basis by the summer of 2009, according to American officials familiar with the document.

No One should be surprised by this annoncement

After he was elected( what a tragedy) bush said the Iraq war would not end while he was in office. He said it would be up to the next president to finish it.

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Quote of the Day"We cannot get bold change by compromising with the people who have the power now. Compromise is not going to get us there, triangulation is not going to get us there, being careful is not going to get us there. We need somebody who's used to fighting these people and beating them and I've been doing it my whole life."-- John Edwards, quoted by NBC News, on the Rev. Al Sharpton's radio show.
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Don Young Under Federal Criminal InvestigationBy Laura McGann - July 24, 2007, 9:09 PM
The Wall Street Journal reports that 18-term Rep. Don Young (R-AK) is under criminal investigation for his dealings with Alaska oil services company Veco Corp.
While the investigation into Sen. Ted Stevens' (R-AK) ties to Veco, including the remodeling of his Girdwood home, has been widely reported, this is the first time Young has been implicated in the scandal.
It looks like an annual pig-roast fundraiser snared the congressman known for huge pork projects, including the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere."
From The Journal:
For a decade, former VECO Chief Executive Bill Allen has held fund-raisers for Mr. Young in Anchorage every August, known as "The Pig Roast," participants said. Public records show contributions to Mr. Young of at least $157,000 from VECO employees and its political-action committee between 1996 and 2006, the last year the event was held.
Mr. Young amended his campaign-finance filings in January to reflect $38,000 in payments to Mr. Allen, the former VECO chief. The refunds, which haven't previously been reported, were labeled "fund-raising costs" in documents filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Veco has been the recipient of a variety of federal contracts, but it's still not clear what the company would have received in exchange for all of its alleged bribes.

Feingold for President

Sen. Feingold Proposes Censuring Bush

WASHINGTON — Liberal Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold said Sunday he wants Congress to censure President Bush for his management of the Iraq war and his "assault" against the Constitution.
But Feingold's own party leader in the Senate showed little interest in the idea. An attempt in 2006 by Feingold to censure Bush over the warrantless spying program attracted only three co-sponsors.
Feingold, a prominent war critic, said he soon plans to offer two censure resolutions _ measures that would amount to a formal condemnation of the Republican president.
The first would seek to reprimand Bush for, as Feingold described it, getting the nation into war without adequate military preparation and for issuing misleading public statements. The resolution also would cite Vice President Dick Cheney and perhaps other administration officials
The second measure would seek to censure Bush for what the Democrat called a continuous assault against the rule of law through such efforts as the warrantless surveillance program against suspected terrorists, Feingold said. It would also ask for a reprimand of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and maybe others.
"This is an opportunity for people to say, let's at least reflect on the record that something terrible has happened here," said Feingold, D-Wis. "This administration has weakened America in a way that is frightful."
At the White House, spokesman Trey Bohn said, "We realize that Senator Feingold does not care much for the president's policies."
Bohn said Bush wants to work with Feingold and other Democrats on such matters as supporting U.S. troops, improving energy choices and securing health care and tax cuts for families. "Perhaps after calls for censure and more investigations, Congress may turn to such things," Bohn said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Feingold's proposals showed the nation's frustration. But Reid said he would not go along with them and said the Senate needs to focus on finishing spending bills on defense and homeland security.
"We have a lot of work to do," Reid said. "The president already has the mark of the American people _ he's the worst president we ever had. I don't think we need a censure resolution in the Senate to prove that."
As for the Senate's top Republican, "I think it's safe to say Russ Feingold is not a fan of George Bush. I think that's the best way to sum that up," said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Feingold spoke on NBC's "Meet the Press." Reid appeared on "Face the Nation" on CBS, while McConnell was on "Late Edition" on CNN.

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The history books should show that Congress formally condemned this President, and others in the administration who have so brazenly misled the American people and undercut the rule of law.
Senator Russ Feingold's diary :: ::
As you know, over a year ago I introduced a resolution to censure the President for his illegal wiretapping program, and for the way he misled Congress and the public before and after the program’s disclosure about whether his administration was following the law. I appreciated the strong support I got from all of you for that effort. You really helped galvanize support for that push for accountability, and encouraged people all over the country to recognize how damaging the President's actions were to our basic freedoms.
So, as I announced a little while ago on Meet the Press, I plan to introduce two censure resolutions in the Senate in the coming weeks. These will be broad resolutions, one of which will address the war in Iraq, including the administration's efforts to mislead the nation into, and during, the war, mismanagement of the war, and its attempts to justify this Iraq mistake by distorting the situation on the ground in Iraq. The other condemns the administration's abuse of the rule of law. Because, of all this administration's outrageous misconduct, those are truly the worst of the worst.
This time I am taking a broader approach because the list of administration wrongdoing, misleading statements, and out and out lies, just keeps getting longer. Congress should censure the President not only for the illegal wiretapping program, but for the administration's phony reasons for going to war in Iraq, for trashing habeas corpus, for giving the green light to torture, and the list goes on and on. I want Congress to condemn what the administration has done, both for the American people, and for history. We all know what a disaster this administration is, and generations to come should know it too, so they can avoid a repeat of the misconduct we have witnessed over the past six and a half years.
I know some of you may not believe these resolutions are enough, and I understand that. I am as frustrated as you are about this administration’s actions and I hope the proposal I made today is something you’ll consider helping me with (in addition to other efforts you may support). Together we will hold this administration accountable for its many abuses. The history books will show we were vocal in condemning the President’s abuses of power.
I want you to know how much your honest opinions influenced my thinking on this, and how much I value what all of you have to say. This conversation isn't over by a long shot, in part because these resolutions aren't written yet. I'll be working to put them together, and I welcome your input. So let's keep talking.
Update: Thanks everyone for taking time out of your weekend to offer me some feedback. I want to address some of the comments and questions you’ve posted. I did speak with Senator Reid about this and rest assured I will certainly be making my case to him and my other colleagues. As I said on Meet the Press, even Republican Senator Gordon Smith has had some very strong words for this administration’s actions regarding Iraq. Democrats and Republicans alike should be outraged at the contempt the administration has shown for Congress – from interpreting the laws we pass however they want through signing statements, to writing its own laws like we saw with the illegal wiretapping program, to treating Congress as nothing more than an ATM machine.
As far as impeachment is concerned, as I have stated, I do not believe it is the right course of action right now. Censure is a way to formally rebuke the administration for its misconduct so that the historical record is clear, without putting the country through a very trying process. Again, if the House votes to impeach, I will approach it with all the seriousness I did when President Clinton was impeached, listening to the case presented.
Censure is not a cure all. We need to act to correct the problems created by this administration. We need to get our brave troops out from the middle of what is largely an Iraqi civil war. We need to significantly revise the Military Commissions Act, get to the bottom of the U.S. Attorneys scandal, and find out more about the warrantless wiretapping program before we move forward with a legislative fix. There is a lot more to do and I will work with my colleagues on the Senate Judiciary, Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees to do it. But I also think that censure is important to show future generations that we formally condemned the actions of this administration.
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By C.K.
June 30, 2007

The Blue Ribbon Coalition bills itself as the voice of the American off-road rider, its mission "to preserve our precious natural heritage," according to its website. It claims to represent some 600,000 off-road-vehicle enthusiasts, though it admits that just 2 percent of that number are dues-paying members. But it's not necessarily Joe Snowmobiler that underwrites the group's $1 million annual budget. Though the coalition does not disclose a breakdown of its funding sources, the supporters listed in its magazine, BlueRibbon, include many companies that have evinced little concern for the orv community, but care a great deal about keeping public lands open for business: timber, mining, oil, and gas interests. Some top backers:
At least 18 large timber companies that log in national forests, including Boise Cascade, the third largest buyer of logs from national forest land; and the $2.2 billion-a-year Pacific Corp., the world's leading waferboard manufacturer.
At least 15 mining companies and associations, including Battle Mountain Gold Co., one of the biggest companies mining on public lands; Echo Bay Minerals Co.; and Crown Butte Mines Inc. (now part of Canada's Noranda Inc.), which once sought to mine for gold in a spot next to Yellowstone National Park that it had bought from the federal government for a mere $135, and eventually sold back to the feds for $65 million.
At least eight oil or gas companies and four oil and gas trade associations, among them ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, and the American Petroleum Institute.
The American Recreation Coalition, which represents interests ranging from the Walt Disney Corp. to the recreational vehicle industry, and which has helped the coalition lobby for a program that directs hundreds of millions in public funding to off-road-vehicle trails.
A 2000 investigation by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (pirg) Education Fund concluded that extractive industries use the coalition "as a front group to advance their agenda"—an allegation that Brian Hawthorne, the group's public lands director, calls "total crap. We struggle to meet our budget every year." Hawthorne adds, "It's a 24-hour begathon for us. The real story is that Blue Ribbon is so effective even though it's such a small operation."
The coalition's accomplishments include filing suit against the National Park Service to keep Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks open to snowmobiles, spearheading the opposition to a Clinton-era initiative to protect roadless wildlands, and filing more than three-dozen lawsuits challenging orv restrictions in areas being studied for wilderness designation. The organization is perhaps most effective, says Wilderness Society lobbyist Kristen Brengel, in pressuring local field offices of federal public-lands agencies. "They have an on-the-ground presence," she notes. "This constituency is loud and extremely aggressive."

More Time, More Troops, More Money

White House Moves the September Report Goalposts
by BarbinMD
Thu Jul 19, 2007 at 07:31:37 PM PDT
Once again the White House is moving the progress-goalposts for judging how the "surge" in Iraq is going. Remember that September report we've been hearing so much about? Forget that:
Iraq is a nation gripped by fear and struggling to meet security and political goals by September, U.S. officials said Thursday from Baghdad, dashing hopes in Congress that the country might turn a corner this summer. One general said not to expect a solid judgment on the U.S. troop buildup until November. [...]
In briefings to the news media as well as members of Congress, officials warned that making those strides could take more time than first thought.
What a surprise. Time to add the word September to the long list of administration predictions gone bad: We know where the WMD are, we doubt the war will last six months, mission accomplished, the insurgency is in its last throes and now, wait for the September report.
And from Ambassador Crocker we get this:
In open testimony later Thursday, Crocker played down the importance of meeting major changes right away and said less ambitious goals, such as restoring electricity to a neighborhood, can be just as beneficial. [...]
The much cited benchmarks "do not serve as reliable measures of everything that is important — Iraqi attitudes toward each other and their willingness to work toward political reconciliation," he said.
So, the new definition of victory is to get electricity up and running? After more than four years, hundreds of thousands of deaths, hundreds of billions of dollars spent, and restoring electricity and an attitude adjustment might do the trick? Who knew? And just as a reminder to Ambassador Crocker, here's what George Bush said when he announced his surge:
So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.
To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November...Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis...Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year...the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution.
But none of those things will happen, so they are no longer important.
And do you recall the all-night Senate session held just the other day? How many times would you guess that Republican senators said we must, "wait until September" before judging the success or failure of the escala...ummm, surge? Well, they certainly must feel like fools for being used like that. Or do they think that it's a coincidence that the White House waited until the day after the Republican filibuster to announce this latest setback?
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Liberals Vow to Block Continued Iraq Funding The Politico
Thursday 19 July 2007
Seventy House members, nearly all liberal Democrats, vowed today that they would not support any more funding for Iraq military operations unless tied to a complete withdrawal of combat troops.
This is a big development. Earlier this year, liberals grudgingly voted for Iraq funding bills because they didn't want to give Nancy Pelosi a defeat. Now it seems that their patience has run out.
The next Iraq funding bill won't come up until the fall, so this showdown won't happen for a few months, but it appears to be shaping up as an epic battle between liberals in Congress and President Bush. This may be the beginning of the end for the Iraq War.
Let's Hope So.
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Michael Gerson’s Moral Advantage
By: Scarecrow

I’m not surprised that Michael Gerson, who reportedly coined Bush’s Axis of Evil framing, would conclude that atheists are inherently incapable of answering the more interesting moral questions merely because they lack an objective basis for discerning good from evil, whereas those who believe in a God have the advantage of knowing that God handed them the only objectively correct answers. After all, Gerson believes that the self-righteous religious fundamentalist who initiated aggressive war against a nation that never attacked or threatened us, a war in which hundreds of thousands have been killed or maimed and millions more turned into stateless refugees, was acting for moral reasons and sincere when he claimed that God had ordained him to do this.
But it strikes me as odd to claim as a moral advantage the inability to see that what his President has done (and Gerson has justified) in his God’s name is, on moral grounds, only barely distinguishable from the acts of the crazed religious zealots who, in Allah’s name, flew airplanes into the Twin Towers, except for the fact that the Christian had enough firepower to kill 100 times more people than the Islamists. Both slaughtered innocents while claiming to have objective, divine truth on their sides, although admittedly neither of them checked with the Pope to make sure they were answering to the true faith. Perhaps we should start a 30-year war to settle this.
It shouldn’t take a confirmed non-believer to call out Gerson’s argument for the dangerous nonsense it is. And on that point, what was the Washington Post thinking? Are we now to conduct religious wars in the nation’s media? If it’s okay to argue on WaPo’s editorial pages that atheists have a shaky moral foundation, why not have a no-holds barred battle between the Methodists and Mormons about what Jesus was doing after the resurrection, or perhaps we should resolve, once and for all, the question of Jesus’ or Mary’s divinity or the chemistry of transubstantiation, with Fred Hiatt as referee?
Gerson is right in noting that religious beliefs were important to many of the theistic founding fathers. But unlike Gerson’s Presidential hero, they understood clearly the critical importance of this . . .
Congress shall make no law . . . respecting the establishment of religion.
. . . whereas Mr. Bush is anxious to use the White House to fund his favorite sects if he thinks it will help Republicans win elections.

The White House in Bedlem

In the absence of reality
President Bush shocked Capitol Hill staffers and Republican leaders Monday when he crashed a meeting at the White House to deliver a blunt message that he wasn't backing down on Iraq and Republicans need to understand that.
"It was stunning," said one GOP aide who attended the meeting. "We couldn't believe he came in."
it looks like a roadmap to the highest cliff in the area. Lemmings are like that, sometimes.

Except Bush wants to take america over the cliff with him!

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Read It and WeepEven Bush's intelligence report says the war in Iraq is making us less safe at home.
By Fred Kaplan

Fighting in IraqThe National Intelligence Estimate that was released today—titled "The Terrorist Threat to the Homeland"—amounts to a devastating critique of the Bush administration's policies on Iraq, Iran, and the terrorist threat itself.
Its main point is that the threat—after having greatly receded over the past five years—is back in full force. Al-Qaida has "protected or regenerated key elements" of its ability to attack the United States. It has a "safe haven" in Pakistan. Its "top leadership" and "operational lieutenants" are intact. It is cooperating more with "regional terrorist groups."
As a result, the report concludes, "the U.S. Homeland will face a persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years" and is, even now, "in a heightened threat environment."
This is bad enough news for President Bush, who has tried to bank support for his policies on the claim that the terrorist threat has diminished.
Worse news still is the report's further observation—never stated explicitly but clear nonetheless—that the threat has re-emerged as a result of the war in Iraq.
The report—the unclassified version of a consensus product by the 16 agencies of the U.S. intelligence community—also notes that the threat will grow still larger if we appear to threaten Iran.
One major reason for al-Qaida's resurgence, according to the report, is its "association with" al-Qaida in Iraq. (Note, by the way, that these two organizations are said to be "associated" or "affiliated" with each other; contrary to what Bush has said in recent speeches, they are not the same entity.) This affiliation "helps al-Qaida to energize the broader Sunni extremist community, raise resources, and to recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for Homeland attacks." (Italics added.)
Al-Qaida in Iraq—or AQI, as the report identifies it—is not merely al-Qaida's "most visible and capable affiliate." More significant, it is "the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the Homeland." (Italics added.)
Let's put together the syllogism: Al-Qaida is more inclined to attack the United States because of its affiliation with AQI; AQI is the only affiliate that wants to attack the United States; therefore, if there were no AQI, the danger of an attack would be far less severe, if it existed at all.
Let's add one more link to the logical chain (which the NIE leaves out but which is self-evident): If there were no U.S. occupation of Iraq, there would be no AQI. (Certainly the organization didn't exist until well into the occupation. It has gained a foothold in Iraq—energizing "the broader Sunni extremist community"—by playing off their anti-American sentiments.)
Many times, President Bush has said that we're fighting the terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here. It is an absurd argument in many ways. But the NIE reveals that the opposite is the case—that because we're fighting them in Iraq, we are more likely to face them here.
Does this mean that we should stop fighting AQI or negotiate some separate peace? No, the organization's presence in Iraq—however exaggerated by some officials—is genuinely dangerous, and there is no negotiating with any al-Qaida affiliate in any event.
But it does mean we should do more to co-opt the Sunnis—even some of the Sunni extremists—that serve as AQI's base of support. (We have started to do just that, with some success, in Anbar province.)
And it also means—for yet one more reason, beyond the many others—that we should start to get out of Iraq. (The question, as always, remains how to do so without unleashing catastrophic chaos. One reasonable inference of the NIE is that we should seek a regional resolution of the crisis as a matter of great urgency to the security not only of the Middle East but also of the United States.)
It's worth recalling that, back in the spring of 2003, as the war was getting under way, Paul Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense (and one of the war's outspoken architects), told Vanity Fair that one reason to invade Iraq was to allow U.S. troops to leave Saudi Arabia. The presence of "infidel" soldiers on holy soil had been "a huge recruiting device for al-Qaida," Wolfowitz said. (Osama Bin Laden had publicly cited their presence as a rationale for the attack on the World Trade Center.) Yet the troops couldn't safely leave Saudi Arabia as long as Saddam Hussein was still in Iraq. Hence, Saddam had to be removed first. (Though Wolfowitz didn't say so, another element of the plan was to relocate the U.S. bases from Saudi Arabia to the new, presumably pro-Western Iraq.)
Now, in a horrible irony, the troops in Iraq have become no less "a huge recruiting device for al-Qaida." (Some of Wolfowitz's erstwhile comrades insist he never wanted an occupation; perhaps he didn't grasp that occupations often follow the forced toppling of a government, especially when the entire social structure collapses as a result.)
Some hawks and neocons want to deepen the involvement and attack Iran—either simply to destroy its bourgeoning nuclear program or (in a more fantasy-drenched scenario) to overthrow its unfriendly regime, too.
The NIE warns against this adventurism in only the most slightly veiled terms. While discussing other threats besides al-Qaida, the report states that Lebanon's Hezbollah—which, till now, has confined its attacks to targets outside the United States—"may be more likely to consider attacking the Homeland … if it perceives the United States as posing a direct threat to the group or Iran." (Italics added.)
This amounts to a direct warning to the White House: Don't attack Iran, the entire U.S. intelligence community is saying—and, if you do, you should expect to get hit back.

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I knew it all along.
Now She tells us
From Maria Bartiromo's interview of Condi Rice in the current issue of BusinessWeek:
MB: Would you consider a position in business or on Wall Street?
CR: I don't know what I'll do long-term. I'm a terrible long-term planner.

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Stevens' Artful DodgeBy Laura McGann - July 18, 2007, 2:42 PM
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) gave an artful explanation of how he paid for the remodeling of his home yesterday -- so flagrantly artful that quite a few TPM readers have written in to flag it as a "non-denial denial."
The longest-serving Republican senator was defending himself from accusations that oil-services company Veco Corp. paid for the renovation project that doubled the size of his Girdwood, Alaska house in 2000. A grand jury in Washington has started looking into the job because of Veco's bizarre role as general contractor.
As a practical matter, I will tell you. We paid every bill that was given to us. Every bill that was sent to us has been paid, personally, with our own money, and that's all there is to it. It's our own money.
Notice Stevens didn't say he paid for the whole job: he paid for what he was sent.
And who was sending him the invoices?
According to the sub-contractor, Augie Paone, who was hired by Veco to handle the construction work, he would give his bills to Veco (not Stevens) for review. Then, payment from Stevens would arrive in the mail. The checks all came from a special account set up specifically for the remodeling job, Paone told the press a few months ago. He recently hired a lawyer and is no longer speaking publicly.

Who or What To Believe

New Terrorism National Intelligence Estimate Released •

Experts: Unclassified Report "Pure Pablum," Hides Truth By Brian Ross ABC News
Tuesday 17 July 2007
Intelligence analysts and the former White House counterterror official describe as "pure pablum" the unclassified version of the National Intelligence Estimate released today on terror threats to the United States.
"Nothing in here is going to surprise anybody who's been following this," said one senior U.S. intelligence official.
"It's more about what it doesn't say than what it does say," says Richard Clarke, the former White House official who is now an ABC News consultant.
"What is left out of the version released publicly is the explicit statement that al Qaeda is back and has operations underway," Clarke says.
The 2006 version of the National Intelligence Estimate claimed U.S. efforts had "seriously damaged the leadership of al-Qa'ida and disrupted its operations."
"That's no longer the case in 2007, and you have to read between the lines to understand how we have lost ground," Clarke says.
The current White House counterterrorism official, Fran Townsend, the assistant to the president for homeland security, told reporters today, "Al Qaeda is weaker today than if we had not taken strong action against them."
She said she would not address still-classified aspects of the intelligence estimate that al Qaeda had regained strength at levels not seen since before the 9/ll attacks.
The Blotter on ABCNews.com reported last week that senior law enforcement and intelligence officials had "multiple and credible" reports that an al Qaeda terror cell may be on its way to the United States or could already be in the country.
Today's report also concludes that "al-Qa'ida will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of al-Qa'ida in Iraq (AQI)."
"Given that there was no al Qaeda in Iraq until we invaded there," says Clarke, "it's hard not to draw the conclusion that going to Iraq has created a further threat to the United States."
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Excerpts from Bill Moyers program Impeachment

Bruce Fein: This is why these are -
Bill Moyers: You're saying you want the judiciary committee to call formal hearings on the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney?

Bruce Fein: Yes. Because there are political crimes that have been perpetrated in combination. It hasn't been one, the other being in isolation. And the hearings have to be not into this is a Republican or Democrat. This is something that needs to set a precedent, whoever occupies the White House in 2009. You do not want to have that occupant, whether it's John McCain or Hillary Clinton or Rudy Giuliani or John Edwards to have this authority to go outside the law and say, "I am the law. I do what I want. No one else's view matters."

John Nichols: The hearings are important. There's no question at that. And we should be at that stage. Remember, Thomas Jefferson and others, the founders, suggested that impeachment was an organic process. That information would come out. The people would be horrified. They would tell their representatives in Congress, "You must act upon this." Well, the interesting thing is we are well down the track in the organic process. The people are saying it's time. We need some accountability.

Bill Moyers: But Nancy Pelosi doesn't agree.

John Nichols: Nancy Pelosi is wrong. Nancy Pelosi is disregarding her oath of office. She should change course now. And more importantly, members of her caucus and responsible Republicans should step up. It is not enough -
John Nichols: But they do so, by and large, in a cautious way. They say, "Well, the president's done too much." Let's start to use the "i" word. Impeach is a useful word. It is a necessary word. The founders in the Constitution made no mention of corporation or political parties or conventions or primaries or caucuses. But they made six separate references to impeachment. They wanted us to know this word, and they wanted us to use it.

Bill Moyers: You're - does this process have to go all the way to the end? Do Bush and Cheney have to be impeached before it serves the public?

John Nichols: I think that what Bush and Cheney have done makes a very good case that the public and the future would be well served if it did go all the way to the end. But there is absolutely a good that comes of this if the process begins, if we take it seriously. And the founders would have told you that, - that impeachment is a dialogue. It is a discourse. And it is an educational process. If Congress were to get serious about the impeachment discussions, to hold the hearings, to begin that dialogue, they would begin to educate the American people and perhaps themselves about the system of checks and balances, about the powers of the presidency, about, you know, what we can expect and what we should expect of our government. ...........


Bill Moyers: The power of the purse-

Bruce Fein: - the power of the purse. That is an absolute power. And yet Congress shies from it. It was utilized during the Vietnam War, you may recall, in 1973. Congress said there's no money to go and extend the war into Laos and Cambodia. And even President Nixon said okay. This was a president who at one time said, "If I do it, it's legal." So that it we do find Congress yielding the power to the executive branch. It's the very puzzle that the founding fathers would have been stunned at. They worried most over the legislative branch in, you know, usurping powers of the other branches. And -

Bill Moyers: Well, what you just said indicts the Congress more than you're indicting George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Bruce Fein: In some sense, yes, because the founding fathers expected an executive to try to overreach and expected the executive would be hampered and curtailed by the legislative branch. And you're right. They have basically renounced - walked away from their responsibility to oversee and check. It's not an option. It's an obligation when they take that oath to faithfully uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. And I think the reason why this is. They do not have convictions about the importance of the Constitution. It's what in politics you would call the scientific method of discovering political truths and of preventing excesses because you require through the processes of review and vetting one individual's perception to be checked and - counterbalanced by another's. And when you abandon that process, you abandon the ship of state basically and it's going to capsize.

Peace Loving Iraqis Only of Course

: Iraqis Being Smuggled Across the Rio Grande
July 17, 2007 3:11 PM
Brian Ross Reports:
The FBI is investigating an alleged human smuggling operation based in Chaparral, N.M., that agents say is bringing "Iraqis and other Middle Eastern" individuals across the Rio Grande from Mexico.
An FBI intelligence report distributed by the Washington, D.C. Joint Terrorism Task Force, obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com, says the illegal ring has been bringing Iraqis across the border illegally for more than a year.
Border Patrol officials in the area said they were unaware of the specifics of the FBI's report, and federal prosecutors in New Mexico told ABCNews.com they had no current cases involving the illegal smuggling of Iraqis.
The FBI report, issued last week, says the smuggling organization "used to smuggle Mexicans, but decided to smuggle Iraqi or other Middle Eastern individuals because it was more lucrative." Each individual would be charged a fee of $20,000 to $25,000, according to the report.
The people to be smuggled would "gather at a house on the Mexican side of the border" and then cross the Rio Grande into the U.S., the report says.
"Unidentified individuals would then transport them to train stations in El Paso, Texas or Belen, New Mexico," according to the FBI document.
The FBI in New Mexico had no immediate comment.
Until recently, the United States has kept its doors all but shut to the estimated two million refugees fleeing the violence in Iraq. Until this year, the country had taken in fewer than 800 Iraqi refugees, according to the State Department. This May, the Bush administration pledged to resettle 7,000 Iraqi refugees here by the end of the year.

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Iraqi UN Ambassador Spends Fortune On Trump Tower Apartment
July 15, 2007 -- IRAQ'S ambassador to the United Nations, Hamid al Bayati, likes the high life. Bayati, who's been on the job for just over a year, is said to be living in a $22,000-a-month apartment at Trump World Tower on First Avenue. He's renting while the Iraqi U.N. Mission and official ambassador's residence on East 79th Street undergo a $40 million renovation. Where did the Iraqis get the cash? Newsmax.com reports the U.N. Security Council is paying with funds it once used to finance the now-terminated U.N. Iraq arms inspectors. When asked about the lavish use of the cash, Bayati refused comment. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Zalmay Khalilzad shrugged off the Iraqis' lush lifestyle by telling reporters, "$40 million is not a lot of money." According to U.N. documents, the U.S. delegation approved the transfer of the cash from the Security Council to Iraq. All of this comes as the federal Government Accounting Office reported the war in Iraq is costing American taxpayers $12 billion monthly.
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More Fear Mongering Or??

Al-Qaida Likely to Attack US, Intel Says

KATHERINE SHRADER and ANNE FLAHERTY
WASHINGTON — The terrorist network Al-Qaida will likely leverage its contacts and capabilities in Iraq to mount an attack on U.S. soil, according to a new National Intelligence Estimate on threats to the United States.
The declassified key findings, released Tuesday, laid out a range of dangers _ from al-Qaida to Lebanese Hezbollah to non-Muslim radical groups _ that pose a "persistent and evolving threat" to the country over the next three years. As expected, however, the findings focus most of their attention on the gravest terror problem: Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
The report makes clear that al-Qaida in Iraq, which has not yet posed a direct threat to U.S. soil, could become a problem here.
"Of note," the analysts said, "we assess that al-Qaida will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), its most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the homeland."
The analysts also found that al-Qaida's association with its Iraqi affiliate helps the group to energize the broader Sunni Muslim extremist community, raise resources and recruit and indoctrinate operatives _ "including for homeland attacks."
President Bush acknowledged that al-Qaida is strong today, but he said it's not nearly as strong as it was prior to Sept. 11, 2001 because the United States has kept the pressure on _ worked to "defeat them where we find them" _ so they won't attack America.
"Al-Qaida would have been a heck of a lot stronger today had we not stayed on the offensive," Bush said in the Oval Office after meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "And it's in the interest of the United States to not only defeat them overseas so we don't have to face them here, but also to spread an ideology that will defeat their ideology every time _ and that's the ideology based upon liberty."
National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative written judgments of the 16 spy agencies across the breadth of the U.S. government. These agencies reflect the consensus long-term thinking of top intelligence analysts. Portions of the documents are occasionally declassified for public release.
The White House brushed off critics who allege the administration released the intelligence estimate at the same time the Senate is debating Iraq. White House press secretary Tony Snow said critics are "engaged in a little selective hearing themselves to shape the story in their own political ways."
Democrats said the report was proof U.S. anti-terrorism efforts were being drained by the Iraq war.
"We must responsibly redeploy our troops out of Iraq, handing responsibility for security over to the Iraqis and leaving only those forces required for limited missions," said Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. "This will allow us to concentrate our efforts on Afghanistan and the al-Qaida terrorists who attacked us on 9/11."
The new report echoed statements made by senior intelligence officials over the last year, including the assessment of spy agencies that the country is in a "heightened threat environment." It also provided new details on their thinking and concerns.
For instance, the report says that worldwide counterterrorism efforts since 2001 have constrained al-Qaida's ability to attack the U.S. again and convinced terror groups that U.S. soil is a tougher target.
But, the report quickly adds, analysts are concerned "that this level of international cooperation may wane as 9/11 becomes a more distant memory and perceptions of the threat diverge."
Among the report's other findings:
_Al-Qaida is likely to continue to focus on high-profile political, economic and infrastructure targets to cause mass casualties, visually dramatic destruction, economic aftershocks and fear. "The group is proficient with conventional small arms and improvised explosive devices and is innovative in creating new capabilities and overcoming security obstacles."
_The group has been able to restore key capabilities it would need to launch an attack on U.S. soil: a safe haven in Pakistan's tribal areas, operational lieutenants and senior leaders. U.S. officials have warned publicly that a deal between the Pakistani government and tribal leaders allowed al-Qaida to plot and train more freely in parts of western Pakistan for the last 10 months.
_The group will continue to seek weapons of mass destruction _ chemical, biological or nuclear material _ and "would not hesitate to use them."
_Non-Muslim terrorist groups probably will attack here in the next several years, although on a smaller scale. The judgments don't name any specific groups, but the FBI often warns of violent environmental groups, such as Earth Liberation Front, and others.
The publicly disclosed judgments, laid out over two pages, are part of a longer document, which remains classified. It was approved by the heads of all 16 intelligence agencies on June 21.
The high-level estimate notes that the spread of radical ideas, especially on the Internet, growing anti-U.S. rhetoric and increasing numbers of radical cells throughout Western countries indicate the violent segments of the Muslim populations is expanding.
"The arrest and prosecution by U.S. law enforcement of a small number of violent Islamic extremists inside the United States ... points to the possibility that others may become sufficiently radicalized that they will view the use of violence here as legitimate," the estimate said. "We assess that this internal Muslim terrorist threat is not likely to be as severe as it is in Europe, however."

Catching On

Conservative mouthpiece Peggy Noonan has a delightful op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today.

I received an email before the news conference from as rock-ribbed a Republican as you can find, a Georgia woman (middle-aged, entrepreneurial) who'd previously supported him. She said she'd had it. "I don't believe a word that comes out of his mouth." I was startled by her vehemence only because she is, as I said, rock-ribbed. Her email reminded me of another, one a friend received some months ago: "I took the W off my car today," it said on the subject line. It sounded like a country western song, like a great lament.
As I watched the news conference, it occurred to me that one of the things that might leave people feeling somewhat disoriented is the president's seemingly effortless high spirits. He's in a good mood. There was the usual teasing, the partly aggressive, partly joshing humor, the certitude. He doesn't seem to be suffering, which is jarring. Presidents in great enterprises that are going badly suffer: Lincoln, LBJ with his head in his hands. Why doesn't Mr. Bush? Every major domestic initiative of his second term has been ill thought through and ended in failure. His Iraq leadership has failed. His standing is lower than any previous president's since polling began. He's in a good mood. Discuss.
...
Americans have always been somewhat romantic about the meaning of our country, and the beacon it can be for the world, and what the Founders did. But they like the president to be the cool-eyed realist, the tough customer who understands harsh realities.
With Mr. Bush it is the people who are forced to be cool-eyed and realistic. He's the one who goes off on the toots. This is extremely irritating, and also unnatural. Actually it's weird.
Americans hire presidents and fire them. They're not as sweet about it as they used to be. This is not because they have grown cynical, but because they are disappointed, by both teams and both sides. Some part of them thinks no matter who is president he will not protect them from forces at work in the world. Some part of them fears that when history looks back on this moment, on the past few presidents and the next few, it will say: Those men were not big enough for the era.
But this is a democracy. You vote, you do the best you can with the choices presented, and you show the appropriate opposition to the guy who seems most likely to bring trouble. (I think that is one reason for the polarity and division of politics now. No one knows in his gut that the guy he supports will do any good. But at least you can oppose with enthusiasm and passion the guy you feel in your gut will cause more trouble than is needed! This is what happens when the pickings are slim: The greatest passion gets funneled into opposition.)
We hire them and fire them. President Bush was hired to know more than the people, to be told all the deep inside intelligence, all the facts Americans are not told, and do the right and smart thing in response.
That's the deal. It's the real "grand bargain." If you are a midlevel Verizon executive who lives in New Jersey, this is what you do: You hire a president and tell him to take care of everything you can't take care of--the security of the nation, its well-being, its long-term interests. And you in turn do your part. You meet your part of the bargain. You work, pay your taxes, which are your financial contribution to making it all work, you become involved in local things--the boy's ball team, the library, the homeless shelter. You handle what you can handle within your ken, and give the big things to the president.
And if he can't do it, or if he can't do it as well as you pay the mortgage and help the kid next door, you get mad. And you fire him.
Americans can't fire the president right now, so they're waiting it out. They can tell a pollster how they feel, and they do, and they can tell friends, and they do that too. They also watch the news conference, and grit their teeth a bit.

Well there is Impeachment!!
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Hillary Clinton: Why is she hated by progressives and right-wingers alike?
They say she is a scheming control-freak who will stop at nothing in her bid to become the first Mrs President. And America's anti-Hillary Clinton alliance is growing by the day.

By Leonard Doyle
Published: 15 July 2007
There is something about Hillary that raises the blood pressure of otherwise easy-going Americans - and they don't need to be Republicans. At a 4th of July barbecue, with the band working its way through the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", I made the mistake of asking a pleasant young woman what she thought of Hillary's chances. Red white and blue fireworks were going off over Capitol Hill, as she morphed into the sort of person who goes on the Jerry Springer Show. She would "never, ever" vote for America's most famous politician, she said. More than 50 per cent of Americans agree with her.
With everyone on tenterhooks over terrorism and the looming defeat in Iraq, there is a febrile atmosphere in the US. Many are taking their anger out on Hillary as she attempts to break through the last remaining glass ceiling. Something called the "Hillary Conundrum" has emerged to cause deep unease inside her party while giving comfort to the Republican party, which by now should be in disarray.
The most seasoned political honchos are uneasy about the candidate who looks like a shoo-in as next year's Democratic nominee for the presidential elections. Hillary has the war chest, a formidable political machine and she is riding highest in the opinion polls.
She is probably the most competent in the field. Virtually everyone agrees that she should have the best chance of wresting the presidency from the Republicans in 2008 and repairing the damage from the wrecking ball (omega) of the Bush presidency. She also has Bill Clinton by her side, a formidable campaigner who took to the road for the first time in Iowa this month.
But behind the scenes, Americans are deeply worried at the prospect of having Hillary (and Bill) back in the White House. While she inspires ordinary women voters, men are not so moved and she has the highest voter-disapproval ratings of any top-tier candidate in the race. She also has a big problem with left-wing feminists.
The writer and director Nora Ephron (You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle) who describes herself as a fully signed up "Hillary resister" seems to be one of them. The resisters are people "who can't stand her position on the war. Who don't trust her as far as you can spit."
They believe, says Ephron, that Hillary "will do anything to win, who believe she doesn't really take a position unless it's completely safe". This is the same Nora Ephron who some years back exclaimed: "I love [Hillary] so completely that, honestly, she would have to burn down the White House before I would say anything bad about her." That was in 1993, when America was another country and Bill Clinton was just settling into his first term in the White House.
A couple of years later, with the Republican attacks on the Clintons in full spate, Ephron spoke to the Wellesley class of 1996 (a girls-only college that she and Hillary graduated from: "Understand," she said then, "every attack on Hillary Clinton for not knowing her place is an attack on you."
So how did it all go so wrong for Hillary? How did right- wing America's favourite "femi-Nazi" end up being disliked as much by "progressives" as by conservatives? It's a subject being endlessly debated
"The truth is that Senator Clinton has a woman problem," said Anna Quindlen, a Newsweek columnist. "The fantasy was that the first woman President would be someone who would turn the whole lousy system inside out and upside down. Instead the first significant woman contender is someone who seems to have the system down to a fine art."
Jane Fonda says that Hillary is a "ventriloquist for the patriarchy with a skirt and a vagina. It may be that a feminist, progressive man would do better in the White House."
For Fonda, the big disappointment was Hillary's 2002 Congressional vote giving George Bush the green light to go to war on Iraq. It turns out that Hillary didn't bother to read the top-secret intelligence report, that she as a senator was given access to before the vote. The six senators who did read it all voted against, because the still-secret report seems to have persuaded them that the case for war was flimsy.
Hillary's tightly disciplined campaign team point out that for every Fonda or Ephron, there are thousands of women, neither feminist nor left wing who really admire her. She was the top choice of 42 per cent of Democrat women voters in a recent poll and is far ahead among independent voters.
The pollsters, hot-dog turners, political strategists and armchair pundits all agree that Hillary has a more than 80 per cent chance of winning the Democratic nomination. But can she win the election they ask, or is she going to bring more heartache to the party, just like John Kerry last time around?
Everyone has a different reason for predicting failure. There's the "political baggage" theory, which holds that she is fatally tainted by the scandals of her first stint in the White House. The "revolving door" theory says Americans are sick of alternating Bush-Clinton dynasties. The "woman as commander-in-chief" theory predicts that Americans obsessed with terrorism want a man to do their bombing. And there is the issue of Hillary's frighteningly high "negatives" which Gallup recently put at 50 per cent.
Many of those who are worried about global warming and America's imperial overstretch hope that Al Gore, who continues to maintain he will not run, will enter the race at the last minute. Bob Borosage is one of those. A veteran of many elections, he ran Jessie Jackson's presidential campaigns in the past, he is an organiser for the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. At a reception for high-rolling donors to the liberal cause, he said he would prefer it if Al Gore won the nomination.
"Gore has every chance of becoming president," he told me, "but if he dares to enter the race, Hillary will pluck his eyes out with her talons."
This is the other part of the "Hillary conundrum". She is widely perceived as a ruthless campaigner. Her campaign team, which calls itself "Hillaryland", is notoriously secretive and discipline.
Her name was always a troubling issue. Hillary stunned her friends when she announced on her wedding day in 1976 that she would not be taking her husband's name but would remain Hillary Rodham. Bill's mother wept at the news and a campaign adviser warned presciently "Hillary Rodham will be your Waterloo."
Later on when Bill lost the election to be Arkansas governor she decided she was Hillary Clinton after all. Then within days of his inauguration as president she became Hillary Rodham Clinton and set about installing herself as "co-president". She quickly established herself as the president's most trusted adviser, and plonked herself and her "Hillaryland" entourage in the West Wing, steps from the Oval Office.
Bill and Hillary Clinton had come to Washington with the ambition and determination to change the country for the better. But equipped only with a tin ear, when it came to working with people on her own side, Hillary managed to alienate some of the most powerful Democrats, starting with the New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who urged patience in reforming health care.
When Bill Bradley, then a senator, suggested changes to her plan he was dismissed. Forget about it, she said, threatening to "demonise" anyone who stood in her way.
As Bradley recounted later to the author Carl Bernstein: "It was obviously so basic to who she is. The arrogance. The assumption that people with questions are enemies. The disdain. The hypocrisy."
It was at the Washington Hilton on 30 March 1981, that the last assassination attempt on an American president took place on US soil. President Ronald Reagan had just come down the same President's Walk and was leaving the hotel via a side entrance after speaking to an audience of unhappy trade unionists. Six shots rang out as John Hinkley fired his "Saturday Night Special" into the President's entourage. One of the "devastator" bullets, designed to open up on impact, hit the president in the abdomen, almost claiming his life.
Now, some 26 years on, security arrangements for the presidential candidates appear no better organised than they were on that day. A phalanx of secret-service agents protects Hillary Clinton and her main democratic rival Barack Obama, who addressed the same Take (omega) Back America conference the day before.
But despite worries about terrorism - one of Hillary's big campaign themes - security for the candidates seems extraordinarily sloppy. There were no metal detectors, no ID checks or even cursory searches of the audience. The average inner-city American high school has tighter security.
Finally, Hillary arrived. Wearing a silk yellow top and her hair stylishly cut, she made her entrance into the lion's den of liberal Democrats, who are both excited and disappointed with her at the same time. Tightly scripted and brimming with confidence, she launched into 30-minute speech in which she accused the Bush administration of "a stunning record of secrecy and corruption, of cronyism run amok... of [putting] ideology before science, politics before the needs of families".
The crowd, putting aside whatever doubts it had, stomped and cheered as she blasted Bush. Then she moved on to the subject of the war in Iraq and the mood suddenly changed. It is only this year, as public hostility to the war became overwhelming, that Hillary, once the most enthusiastic backer of the war in Iraq, suddenly changed tack. But while she rescued her candidacy from oblivion, she has not apologised for backing the war in the first place, and remains a big advocate of the so called "War on Terror".
From the stage, she praised the success of the American military in toppling Saddam Hussein and said it was the Iraqi government which was to blame for the current mess.
The audience booed and heckled as she continued: "The American military has succeeded. It is the Iraqi government which has failed to make the tough decisions that are important for their own people,'' she said, unable to finish her sentence because of a chorus of the uproar.
The Clintons have taken over from the Kennedys as the most picked over family in the country. As Jay Leno put it: "According to a new poll, 15 percent of Americans say that Sen Hillary Clinton gives them the creeps. The other 85 percent say she gives them the willies or the heebie-jeebies."