October 2005 Archives

Administration missing dozens of security deadlines
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has missed dozens of deadlines set by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks for developing ways to protect airplanes, ships, and railways from terrorists.

How could this be? The Bush White House performing poorly? Or is it the fault of the Republicans who control the House and Senate? Take yer pick....

A plan to defend ships and ports from attack is six months overdue. Rules to protect air cargo from infiltration by terrorists are two months late. A study on the cost of antiterrorism training for federal law enforcement officers who fly commercially was supposed to be done more than three years ago.

''The incompetence that we recently saw with FEMA's leadership appears to exist throughout the Homeland Security Department,“ said Mississippi Representative Bennie G. Thompson, top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. ''Our nation is still vulnerable.”

...Lawmakers piled on deadline after deadline for reports, plans, and regulations while the department, created after the 2001 attacks, had to integrate 22 agencies with 170,000 workers and cope with terrorist threats and hurricanes.

Those deadlines, sometimes for minor projects, distract the department from putting the most important security measures in place, specialists say. The Transportation Security Administration, for example, scrambled to try to meet a Feb. 15 deadline to ban butane lighters from airplanes, a precaution that does little to protect airliners, they said.

''You have no ability to prioritize against something like that, and it's going to take up all your time,“ said Dan Prieto, a homeland security specialist with Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. ''The urgent becomes the enemy of the important.”

Thompson said the government has yet to develop a comprehensive plan to protect roads, bridges, tunnels, power plants, pipelines, and dams. He said a broad plan to protect levies and dams might have helped prevent the New Orleans levies from being breached.

Tags: Congress, /terrorism, /Worst_President

As previously discussed, the newest My Morning Jacket CD, Z, has some DRM software included. This doesn't mean shite apparently, if you own a Mac, because I'm listening to the CD right now, contrary to my first boycott-thought, and the CD plays fine. So, I suppose this turns out to be a stealth campaign by Sony to encourage people to purchase Apple computers. Great plan, Sony!

BTW, the album is good, at least on first listen.

Oh, and obviously, I'm not alone in my frustrations.

Tags: DRM, /My_Morning_Jacket

Mr. Krugman is very shrill today:

Ending the Fraudulence - Paul Krugman
...Basically, I mean the way an administration with an almost unbroken record of policy failure has nonetheless achieved political dominance through a carefully cultivated set of myths. The record of policy failure is truly remarkable. It sometimes seems as if President Bush and Mr. Cheney are Midases in reverse: everything they touch - from Iraq reconstruction to hurricane relief, from prescription drug coverage to the pursuit of Osama - turns to crud. Even the few apparent successes turn out to contain failures at their core: for example, real G.D.P. may be up, but real wages are down.The point is that this administration's political triumphs have never been based on its real-world achievements, which are few and far between. The administration has, instead, built its power on myths: the myth of presidential leadership, the ugly myth that the administration is patriotic while its critics are not. Take away those myths, and the administration has nothing left. Well, Katrina ended the leadership myth, which was already fading as the war dragged on. There was a time when a photo of Mr. Bush looking out the window of Air Force One on 9/11 became an iconic image of leadership. Now, a similar image of Mr. Bush looking out at a flooded New Orleans has become an iconic image of his lack of connection. Pundits may try to resurrect Mr. Bush's reputation, but his cult of personality is dead - and the inscription on the tombstone reads, “Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.”

and don't forget the Frog March matter:

Meanwhile, the Plame inquiry, however it winds up, has ended the myth of the administration's monopoly on patriotism, which was also fading in the face of the war.

Apologists can shout all they like that no laws were broken, that hardball politics is nothing new, or whatever. The fact remains that officials close to both Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush leaked the identity of an undercover operative for political reasons. Whether or not that act was illegal, it was clearly unpatriotic.

And the Plame affair has also solidified the public's growing doubts about the administration's morals. By a three-to-one margin, according to a Washington Post poll, the public now believes that the level of ethics and honesty in the government has declined rather than risen under Mr. Bush.

and the litany continues, with the media:

And as for the media: these days, there is much harsh, justified criticism of the failure of major news organizations, this one included, to exert due diligence on rationales for the war. But the failures that made the long nightmare possible began much earlier, during the weeks after 9/11, when the media eagerly helped our political leaders build up a completely false picture of who they were.

So the long nightmare won't really be over until journalists ask themselves: what did we know, when did we know it, and why didn't we tell the public?

So, if the media doesn't do its job and pay attention to the mis-leadership of GWB and his cronies, who will? the Democrats? Unlikely, they seem to enjoy being in the minority party.

It's a sad commentary on the timidity of most Democrats that even now, with Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, telling us how policy was “hijacked” by the Cheney-Rumsfeld “cabal,” it's hard to get leading figures to admit that they were misled into supporting the Iraq war. Kudos to John Kerry for finally saying just that last week.

Pathetic. I wish I could take up drinking, but I already gave up teetotalling.

Tags: media, /Worst_President

Bob Herbert: Smoke Gets in Our Eyes - New York Times
There's a reason so many top officials of the Bush administration treat the truth as if it were kryptonite. More than anything else, the simple truth has the potential to destroy the Bush gang. Scooter Libby was one of the most powerful figures in the administration, Dick Cheney's most highly trusted aide and a champion of the wholesale flim-flammery that led us into the crucible of Iraq. I haven't heard anyone express surprise that he would lie in the service of the administration.

But if the federal indictment returned last week in Washington is to be believed, Mr. Libby lied with the kind of reckless disregard for his own interests that would suggest he had become unhinged. It was as if he'd waved red flags in front of the grand jury and cried, “Come get me!”

Ouch.

and this, unfortunately, is also very true:

The art of Bush-speak is to achieve the effect of a lie without actually getting caught in a lie. That's what administration officials did when they deliberately fostered the impression that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda and thus was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. This is an insidious way of governing, and the opposite of what the United States should be about.

It should tell you something that the administration's resident sleazemeister, Karl Rove, who is up to his ears in this mess but has managed so far to escape indictment, continues to be viewed not as an embarrassment, but as President Bush's most important and absolutely indispensable asset.

Impeachment, now!

Tags: Bob_Herbert, /corruption, /Worst_President

The National Science Teachers Association refuses to participate in the return-to-the-Middle-Ages movement in Kansas. Kudos to NSTA!

National Science Teachers Association

October 26, 2005, NSTA sent the following letter to the Kansas State Department of Education, requesting that the Kansas Science Education Standards not quote or refer to the NSTA publication NSTA Pathways to the Science Standards because “the draft Kansas standards fail to recognize the theory of evolution as a major unifying theme of science and the foundation of all biology.”
* * * * *
October 26, 2005
Dr. Alexa Posny
Assistant Commissioner of Education
Kansas State Department of Education
120 S.E.10th Street
Topeka, KS  66612
cc: Dr. Steve Case, KSES Revision Committee Chair
Carol Williamson, Committee Co-chair

Dear Dr. Posny:
Thank you for your August 22 letter asking us to examine the use of NSTA Pathways to the Science Standards: Guidelines for Moving the Vision into Practice, Middle School Edition in the current draft of the Kansas Science Education Standards. We appreciate the chance to review the treatment of our copyrighted material for accuracy and proper presentation.

Although the majority of the draft Kansas standards could proudly serve as a model for other states to emulate, there are significant errors regarding the theory of evolution. These inaccuracies are of such importance that they compromise the Kansas State Board of Education's (KSBE) stated vision and mission for these Standards, not to mention all of science.

Your mission statement reads, “Kansas science education contributes to the preparation of all students as lifelong learners who can use science to make informed and reasoned decisions that contribute to their local, state, national and international communities.” 

Your vision statement begins, “Science education in Kansas is intended to help students to develop the understandings and intellectual abilities they need to lead personal fulfilling lives, and to equip them to participate thoughtfully with fellow citizens in building and protecting a society that is open, equitable, and vital.  The educational system must prepare the citizens of Kansas to meet the challenges of the 21st century.”

We applaud these statements, but the standards, as currently written, will result in Kansas students being confused about the scientific process and ill-prepared both for the rigors of higher education and for the increasingly technological and scientific challenges we face as a nation.  
 
Therefore, despite much outstanding material contained in the standards, we have no choice but to ask the KSBE to refrain from referencing or quoting from NSTA Pathways in the KSES. Specifically, the draft Kansas standards fail to recognize the theory of evolution as a major unifying theme of science and the foundation of all biology. NSTA strongly supports this premise and calls for science curricula, state science standards, and teachers to emphasize evolution in a manner commensurate with its importance as a unifying concept in science and its overall explanatory power. This position is consistent with those issued by the National Academies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the vast majority of scientific and educational organizations. 

However, we believe that, working together, we can resolve the issues that stand in the way of our granting permission, and we stand ready and willing to work with the KSBE to ensure that your students receive the quality science education they need and deserve.
We do not maintain that science is superior to other ways of understanding our world nor do we think that scientific inquiry is inconsistent with a theological search for answers.  Rather, there are profound differences between these ways of knowing and failure to understand them will put the students of Kansas at a competitive disadvantage as they take their place in the world. 

We appeal to the Board to reconsider its position and work with us for the benefit of your students, science teachers, and your state. 
Sincerely,
Michael Padilla
NSTA President

Believers in Intelligent Design should also refrain from utilization of any scientific advance that is contrary to their beliefs, like flu-shots, anything genetic-related, modern biology and medicine, and even from eating foods that are the result of selective breeding (vegetables, wines, grains, etc.). In fact, believers in ID should only be able to eat things that are mentioned in the Bible (locusts, honey, etc.). Please do so, and leave the rest of us alone.

Tags: evolution, /Intelligent_Design, /religion

Maybe I can sneak in as an extra?

Want Stealth With That? The 'Fast Food Nation' Film Goes Undercover - New York Times


In Austin, Tex., Richard Linklater, a filmmaker known for the whimsy of “Slacker” and “School of Rock,” is planning a big-screen adaptation of “Fast Food Nation,” the 2001 exposé book by Eric Schlosser. Filming began Monday in Texas and will continue at locations there, in Colorado and Mexico. The preparations have had the secrecy of a stealth mission. A recent call to the production office requesting information about the movie provoked a crackling pause on the telephone line. The hesitant voice finally said, “You mean ... 'Coyote'?”

In September, The Austin American-Statesman reported that the drama, written by Mr. Linklater and Mr. Schlosser and starring Catalina Sandino Moreno (“Maria Full of Grace”), is hiding under the sheep's clothing of a pseudonym. The false name - “Coyote” - was chosen, the newspaper said, to help the production gain access to franchise restaurants and other industry locations that might be off limits if the movie's true source material were known.

Fast Food Nation is an interesting topic to make a feature film about.

Mr. Linklater was unavailable for comment, and the co-producer Ann Carli played down the film's connection to its muckraking source material. “We're just using the fast food industry as a backdrop for a multitude of characters,” she said. “It's not a polemic. It's a character study, set in the world of the fast food industry. It's about how people grow up and make decisions to do they things they do. It's about what turns their lives.” Whether Mr. Linklater's completed film, whatever its title, proves an effective exploration of such matters remains to be seen.

And of course, there is going to be a lot of negative PR, sponsored by the fast food corporations...

...“I've got a bunch of people snooping around for info on this movie, and nobody can find anything,” said Pete Meersman, president of the Colorado Restaurant Association, who appears briefly in Mr. Schlosser's book. Although his colleague Richie Jackson, head of the Texas Restaurant Association, did not return calls for comment, Mr. Meersman said he had been in touch with Mr. Jackson. “Richie can't find anything either,” he said. “It's weird.”

When told that the film could have a pseudonym, Mr. Meersman said, “If people are willing to lie about what they're doing, they can probably talk their way into most anywhere, and that could be a problem.”

Susan P. Kezios, president of the American Franchisee Association, a trade group for franchise holders, pointed out that fast food giants are capable of fighting back. “If corporations got wind that this is happening, they could issue an order overnight to all franchisees that says, 'In order to be in compliance with your franchise contract, do not let any filmmakers in,' ” she said.

But Robert Zarco, a Miami lawyer and franchise law specialist, thinks corporations would have a hard time slowing the “Fast Food Nation” movie down. He said that a franchisee's contractual obligations must be balanced with First Amendment rights. So long as the filming does not disclose confidential and proprietary franchise system information, Mr. Zarco said, “I believe that a franchisor will have an extremely high hurdle to leap to default and then terminate a franchisee for having permitted the filming of its business location.”

Apparently, Morgan Spurlock liked what he read...

Morgan Spurlock, who directed and starred in “Super Size Me,” the 2004 documentary, said that he had seen a version of the “Fast Food Nation” script, and in an interview he praised the film's comprehensive look at this huge industry.
“You see how deep the tentacles run,” Mr. Spurlock said. “You see how big the web is.”

In the DVD of Super Size Me, there is a long interview with Eric Schlosser....

“Super Size Me” (Morgan Spurlock)

complete article here

Tags: Austin, /Film, /Food, /PR

The back story of how the yellowcake made it into the President's State of the Union address, and hence led to Plame-gate, is a fascinating story of duplicitous informants and international forgery. Joshua Marshall has been covering this in great depth, such as here, here, and elsewhere, but this Washington Post article contains a decent summary of the events:

A Leak, Then a Deluge The chain of events that led to Friday's indictment can be traced as far back as 1991, when an unremarkable burglary took place at the embassy of Niger in Rome. All that turned up missing was a quantity of official letterhead with “Republique du Niger” at its top. More than 10 years later, according to a retired high-ranking U.S. intelligence official, a businessman named Rocco Martino approached the CIA station chief in Rome. An occasional informant for U.S., British, French and Italian intelligence services, Martino brought documents on Niger government letterhead describing secret plans for the sale of uranium to Iraq.

The station chief “saw they were fakes and threw [Martino] out,” the former CIA official said. But Italy shared a similar report with the Americans in October 2001, he said, and the CIA gave it circulation because it did not know the Italians relied on the same source.
On Feb. 12, 2002, Cheney received an expanded version of the unconfirmed Italian report. It said Iraq's then-ambassador to the Vatican had led a mission to Niger in 1999 and sealed a deal for the purchase of 500 tons of uranium in July 2000. Cheney asked for more information.

The same day, Plame wrote to her superior in the CIA's Counterproliferation Division that “my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.” Wilson -- who had undertaken a similar mission three years before -- soon departed for Niamey, the Niger capital. He said he found no support for the uranium report and said so when he returned.

Martino continued to peddle his documents, with an asking price of more than 10,000 euros -- this time to Panorama, an Italian magazine owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Panorama editor Carlo Rossella said his staff concluded the letters were bogus but in the interim sent copies to the U.S. Embassy in Rome in October 2002. “I believed the Americans were the best source for verifying authenticity,” he said. When the documents reached the State Department, according to a commission that investigated prewar intelligence this year, analysts there said they had “serious doubts about the authenticity” of the “transparently forged” documents.

By summer 2002, the White House Iraq Group assigned Communications Director James R. Wilkinson to prepare a white paper for public release, describing the “grave and gathering danger” of Iraq's allegedly “reconstituted” nuclear weapons program. Wilkinson gave prominent place to the claim that Iraq “sought uranium oxide, an essential ingredient in the enrichment process, from Africa.” That claim, along with repeated use of the “mushroom cloud” image by top officials beginning in September, became the emotional heart of the case against Iraq.

President Bush invoked the mushroom cloud in an Oct. 7, 2002, speech in Cincinnati. References to African uranium remained in his speech until its fifth draft, but a last-minute intervention by Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet excised them.

Tenet's success was short-lived. The uranium returned repeatedly to Bush administration rhetoric in December and January. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice cited the report in a Jan. 23 newspaper column, and three days later, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanded, “Why is Iraq still trying to procure uranium and the special equipment needed to transform it into material for a nuclear weapon?”

How could there not be a movie made of this? If I wasn't so busy at the moment, I'd work up a treatment. The rest of the article is here

The forged documents were so clumsily put together that even a cursory glance would betray their origin as other than what they claimed. Why was the U.S. government so quick to believe them? [Rhetorical question, duh]

Update, slightly more from War and Piece, including:

Just confirmed with a former US intelligence official who was briefed on it at the time that a surprising claim in this Washington Post story tonight is indeed true: that Rocco Martino was a walk-in to the US embassy Rome and tried to sell the Niger forgeries to them, months before the Italian reporter Elisabetta Burba brought them to the embassy at the direction of her editor at her Berlusconi-owned magazine. (My source thought he remembered Martino's walk in occurring in the early spring of 2002, but wasn't positive). The CIA Rome station chief reportedly threw Martino - and the forgeries - out.

Tags: Niger

One Year After Pacers-Pistons Fight, Tough Questions of Race and Sports - New York Times

As much as Stern, who became commissioner in 1984, could make you crazy with his bullish attitudes and unfailing buoyancy, there was no doubt that he loved his league, and cared about those who passed through it. No less a social commentator than the Berkeley academic Dr. Harry Edwards - never a wallflower when he sniffed racial injustice on the American sports scene - counted himself as an admirer, calling Stern “an honest broker of the product who, at the end of the day, respects the men who play in his league and the community from which they come.”
Given his liberal politics and his longtime relationship with the African-American community, it was a delicate balancing act to be the top N.B.A. cop, to operate a league that was trying, as Stern said, to “bridge both populations,” the predominantly corporate crowd in the premium seats that accounted for roughly 18 percent of the league's $3 billion in revenue and the younger demographic driving the licensing and merchandising sales.
Handling the fight in Auburn Hills was akin to walking the racial high wire without a net. Even as he punished the instigators to calm sponsors and fans, Stern was privately troubled by the belief that the behavioral bar was set higher for a league largely dominated by African-American players making huge sums of money. And who, as Stern put it, “are unencumbered by helmets, long sleeves and pads.”
Few modern athletes seemed to rouse negative emotions the way pro basketball players often could. Even in N.B.A. fights that were confined to the court, the sight of large black men rushing off the bench to throw punches at one another tended to evoke outcries in the media and from fans about the end of sports civilization as we know it...

But insisting that the fight was just a one-time event - “the perfect storm,” he said - was no way to acknowledge the mistakes and missteps made by the N.B.A. in particular and the basketball industry at large that had helped create the conditions for the chaos to volcanically erupt.

People I have known for many years who were at the Palace of Auburn Hills that night spoke of the anger in the air, palpable and ugly, a gladiatorial ambience that over the years had become pervasive in too many N.B.A. arenas. This was partly attributable to the intensity between physical rivals, but it was more a byproduct of a regrettable marketing scheme to create an in-your-face product that was edgy enough to resonate with the young and rebellious, those who would buy the jerseys, play the video games, create the buzz.
However, the fans paying a king's ransom for the expensive seats were much less forgiving, more easily antagonized upon the sounding of those deep-rooted racial alarms. Drunk or not, too many basketball fans had reached the point where they objectified the players, related to them as societal stereotypes and through flimsily disguised racial codes. If the imagery of large black men beating on defenseless white fans was alarming, the too-widely accepted pastime of affluent whites feeling empowered to verbally abuse half-dressed, sweaty black men should have evoked even more discomfort and disturbing American historical chapters.

The irony was that, the more the fans shelled out for their seats, the closer they got to the action, the wider the gulf between them and the players seemed to grow. The arguments over which side of the basketball divide was more to blame could be carried on ad infinitum but, when all was said and done, the sad spectacle revealed more about profiteering than it did about punches, more about how gluttonous corporations had steered the sport off course and over time created a powder keg ready to blow on a short racial fuse.

This is a book I'm looking forward to reading.

Crashing the Borders: How Basketball Won the World and Lost Its Soul at Home

The NBA is partially culpable, with their long-term marketing agenda of celebrating the individual player over the team, and by the leagues insistence upon hyping the so-called gladiatorial ambience.

Tags: Pacers, /Pistons

A true man of letters, and a gentleman to boot: Studs Terkel.

Studs Terkel, the great chronicler of American life, particularly its underside, recently underwent open-heart surgery for the insertion of a valve. That, at the age of 93, was an exceptional procedure.

When, lying on a gurney, he came round after the operation, one of the surgeons said to him: “Don't worry, it's all over.”

“What do you mean?” Terkel shot back. “I'm officially dead?”

“No. It worked!” the surgeon explained. “You've got four more years.”

“But I don't want four more!” Terkel said. “I'll take just two.”

However, those extra years meant that Mr. Terkel was able to witness the Sox winning the World Series....

In 'Restless' Chicago, a Witness Surprised - New York Times

...Chicago is a handsome city, the place that invented the skyscraper and split the atom, but until this week it had labored under what appeared to be a twin curse, on the Sox and their more glamorous North Side rivals, the Chicago Cubs. The Sox last won the World Series in 1917, and the Cubs have not won since 1908, almost a century ago.

“I never dreamed I'd see this,” Terkel, who has seen a lot, told me. The fact is, without that heart valve, he might not have.

He continued: “I went to see the first game in 1959, the last time the Sox got to the World Series, and they won the game big and then they blew it.” The blowing of it left the Sox defeated 4-2 by the Los Angeles Dodgers.

That was a long time ago, when the White Sox still played at Comiskey Park (demolished in 1991 and replaced by the unhappily named US Cellular Field) and the stockyards were still close enough that, with the right wind, the pungent whiff of butchered meat might waft over first base.
But Chicago is slaughterhouse to the nation no more. It is also a less divided city than it was when Madison Street, the line that officially splits the city into North and South, was also a line between classes.
To the north lay generally upscale neighborhoods with their high-rises and glittering views of Lake Michigan; to the north, also, stood that most seductive of ballparks, the Cubs' Wrigley Field.
The South Side was another country, a place of racial tension, harsh home to a working-class community, African-Americans from the South, and wave after wave of immigrants seeking work in the steel mills and stockyards.

... But Chicago is changing. A tour of the South Side with George De Lama, an old Chicago Tribune friend, revealed new condos going up everywhere, shuttered public-housing projects about to be torn down, little wooden bungalows being replaced by proud brick homes, and even an attempt to jump-start a revival of the black neighborhood around 47th Street (recast on signs as the “Chicago Blues District”).
Change, of course, is Chicago's very condition. Its restlessness makes it the American city par excellence. Its economy works, drawing talent and ambition from the world over, and of course the South Side cannot be impervious to that.
In Bridgeport, the area around the White Sox's field, the political district that produced the Daley mayors (father and son), average housing prices have more than doubled to $275,000 from $133,333 in the past three years.

The ligaments of an early 20th-century industrial city can still be seen on the South Side - moving industrial views of machinery and rusting bridges and weed-strewn rail tracks - but these iron roots of a great metropolis have been overtaken by the steady gentrification economic progress brings.

...

Terkel stuck to nonfiction. I asked him how he'd come to the decision to have the heart surgery that, as things turned out, allowed him to witness the unthinkable: a Chicago World Series victory.

“My curiosity got the better of me,” he said. “I was curious about this operation. You know what my epitaph will be? Curiosity did not kill the cat.”

Tags: media, /Neighborhood

Of all the New York Times columnists currently writing Op-Ed pieces, Rich is the one guy I'd most like to buy a drink for....

Frank Rich: One Step Closer to the Big Enchilada - New York Times


TO believe that the Bush-Cheney scandals will be behind us anytime soon you'd have to believe that the Nixon-Agnew scandals peaked when G. Gordon Liddy and his bumbling band were nailed for the Watergate break-in. But Watergate played out for nearly two years after the gang that burglarized Democratic headquarters was indicted by a federal grand jury; it even dragged on for more than a year after Nixon took “responsibility” for the scandal, sacrificed his two top aides and weathered the indictments of two first-term cabinet members. In those ensuing months, America would come to see that the original petty crime was merely the leading edge of thematically related but wildly disparate abuses of power that Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, would name “the White House horrors.”

A few other excerpts, beneath.

Kristoff is still a jerk

Time for the Vice President to Explain Himself - New York Times

I owe Patrick Fitzgerald an apology.Over the last year, I've referred to him nastily a couple of times as “Inspector Javert,” after the merciless and inflexible character in Victor Hugo's “Les Misérables.” In my last column, I fretted aloud that he might pursue overzealous or technical indictments.

But Mr. Fitzgerald didn't do that. The indictments of Lewis Libby are not for memory lapses or debatable offenses, but for repeatedly telling a fairy tale under oath.Moreover, Mr. Fitzgerald was wise not to push onto mushier ground. It appears he was tempted to indict Karl Rove, but he's right to refrain unless the evidence against Mr. Rove is similarly strong. If it's a borderline call, as it seems, Mr. Rove should walk.

for this paragraph, especially

First, Democrats should wipe the smiles off their faces. This is a humiliation for the entire country, and their glee is unseemly. Moreover, the situation is not that neocons are all crooks, but that one vice-presidential aide must be presumed innocent of trying to cover up conduct that may not have been illegal in the first place.

but Kristoff makes a valid point here. Cheney should resign simply to restore dignity to White House, if not for other reasons.

Mr. Libby is now accused in effect of lying to protect Mr. Cheney. According to the indictment, Mr. Libby insisted under oath that he had heard about Mrs. Wilson from reporters, when he had actually heard about her from his boss. You can't help wondering if this alleged perjury was purely his own idea and whether Mr. Cheney was aware of it.

Since Mr. Libby is joined at the hip to Mr. Cheney, it's reasonable to ask: What did Mr. Cheney know and when did he know it? Did the vice president have any grasp of the criminal behavior allegedly happening in his office? We shouldn't assume the worst, but Mr. Cheney needs to give us a full account.

Instead, Mr. Cheney said in a written statement: “Because this is a pending legal proceeding, in fairness to all those involved, it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the charges or on any facts relating to the proceeding.”

Balderdash. If Mr. Cheney can't address the questions about his conduct, if he can't be forthcoming about the activities in his office that gave rise to the investigation, then he should resign. And if he won't resign, Mr. Bush should demand his resignation.

It's not that there's a lick of evidence that Mr. Cheney is a criminal. There isn't. But the standard of the office should be higher than that: the White House should symbolize integrity, not legalistic refusals to discuss criminal cover-ups. I didn't want technical indictments of White House officials because they inflame partisanship and impede government; for just the same reason, it's unsavory when a vice president resorts to technical defenses and clams up.

At the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in August 2000, Mr. Cheney won adoring applause when he suggested that Bill Clinton's deceit had besmirched the White House. Mr. Cheney then pledged that Mr. Bush would be different: “On the first hour of the first day, he will restore decency and integrity to the Oval Office.”

Mr. Cheney added of the Democrats: “They will offer more lectures, and legalisms, and carefully worded denials. We offer another way, a better way, and a stiff dose of truth.”

You were right, Mr. Cheney, in your insistence that the White House be beyond reproach. Now it's time for you to give the nation “a stiff dose of truth.” Otherwise, you sully this country with your own legalisms.

Tags: Karl_Rove, /Kristoff, /Plame

MoDo gets in another dig at the 41-43 divide:

Maureen Dowd - Who's on First? - New York Times:
Mr. Cheney, eager to be rid of the meddlesome Joe Wilson, got Valerie Wilson's name from the C.I.A. and passed it on to Scooter. He forced the C.I.A. to compromise one of its own, a sacrifice on the altar of faith-based intelligence. Vice spent so much time lurking over at the C.I.A., trying to intimidate the analysts at Langley into twisting the intelligence about weapons, that he should have had one of his undisclosed locations there. This administration's grand schemes always end up as the opposite. Officials say they're promoting national security when they're hurting it; they say they're squelching terrorists when they're breeding them; they say they're bringing stability to Iraq when the country's imploding. (The U.S. announced five more military deaths yesterday.) And the most dangerous opposite of all: W. was listening to a surrogate father he shouldn't have been listening to, and not listening to his real father, who deserved to be listened to.

Friday afternoon I actually had a few hours sort of free, as long as I was actually in the office (which precluded me from attending the White Sox parade, boo, hiss) so was able to read and annotate the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, including reference to Official A (which probably Rove, as discussed at TalkLeft, Firedoglake, and elsewhere), and watch the ensuing press conference. Transcript here, and saved for posterity below the fold, since the NYT Link generator doesn't seem to work for this article.

Of course, we don't know it as a fact that Fitzgerald is not done with investigation, but available evidence certainly seems to point towards further indictments coming at a later time, such as was done in the (continuing) George Ryan corruption trial.

When asked about complaints that he was partisan, Mr. Fitzgerald smiled. “I don't know - you know, it's sort of, When'd you stop beating your wife? ” he replied. “One day I read that I was a Republican hack, another day I read that I was a Democratic hack, and the only thing I did between those two nights was sleep.”

And a brief snark: I couldn't stand to watch the press conference on CNN because of their insistence on showing split screens with various other crap, like a still photo of Scooter on crutches, or the Vanity Fair photo of Ambassador Wilson and Valerie Plame. Worse, CNN projected it on some thrift-store thing, with a distracting crease mark right in the middle. I couldn't take it and flipped over to MSNBC who didn't feel the need to spruce up the conference with frivolity. This is a serious matter, after all.

Anyway, more to follow.

Jackie Mason
“It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like.”

Tags: health

Slacker Friday - Altercation - MSNBC.com
Name: Rob BreymaierHometown: Chicago, IL

Eric,I wanted to point out an issue that irritated me regarding Joe Buck's speech about Chicago south siders waiting so long for a championship.  Near the final out last night, Buck spoke about how south siders had waited so long for their team to win the World Series.  He then named neighborhoods on Chicago's south side to add to his point.  The neighborhoods cited were all predominantly white or traditionally white neighborhoods that are have changed to mixed race neighborhoods including:

Mt. Greenwood - a notoriously “exclusive” neighborhood on the edge of Chicago's southwest side. 

Bridgeport - A traditionally Irish-American neighborhood that has more recently seen some Latino growth. 

Beverly - A traditionally white neighborhood that is now roughly divided into a white half and a black half. 

Hyde Park - A fairly admirable racial mix but unique by income and the University of Chicago. 

As if that weren't enough, Buck went on to name ethnic groups.  All were European (Irish, Italian, and Polish).  Buck entirely ignored the African American population that makes up the majority of south siders.  He also ignored the growing Latino population and the Asian population that make up significant neighborhoods on the south side.  (Chicago's Chinatown is on the south side.)  Fox also cut to Jimbo's where all of the patrons were white.  I'm not trying to call Buck a racist here.  But, even something that should be as innocent and inclusive as the World Series shows just how segregated a society we are.  How could Buck not mention African Americans in his little heartfelt speech about south siders?  What was it that made them invisible to him? 

The first apartment I lived in, when I first moved to Chicago after graduating from UT-Austin, was a loft converted building on 19th and South Halsted, squarely on the edge of the South Side...

Tags: Chicago, /Neighborhood, /Podmajersky

Wired 13.11: The Mystery of the Green Menace
Raised in New Orleans, a city once dubbed the Absinthe Capital of the World, Breaux has long been fascinated with the drink. Absinthe is a 140-proof green liqueur made from herbs like fennel, anise, and the exceptionally bitter leaves of Artemisia absinthium. That last ingredient, also known as wormwood, gives the drink its name - and its sinister reputation. For a century, absinthe has been demonized and outlawed, based on the belief that it leads to absinthism - far worse than mere alcoholism. Drinking it supposedly causes epilepsy and "criminal dementia."
Breaux has made understanding the drink his life's work. He has pored over hundred-year-old texts, few of them in English. He has corresponded with other amateur liquor historians. The more he's learned, the more he's felt compelled to use his knowledge of chemistry to crack the absinthe code, figure out exactly what's in it, puncture the myths surrounding it - and maybe even drink a glass or two.

I've tried this once, or something from the former Czechoslovakia purporting to be absinthe, at a friends house. We drank about 2 glasses, and while my head did start to spin, I don't think it was from the wormwood.

I would really like to try it again

Absinthe was first distilled in 1792 in Switzerland, where it was marketed as a medicinal elixir, a cure for stomach ailments. High concentrations of chlorophyll gave it a rich olive color. In the 19th century, people began turning to the minty drink less for pains of the stomach than for pains of the soul. Absinthe came to be associated with artists and Moulin Rouge bohemians. Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Van Gogh, and Picasso were devotees. Toulouse-Lautrec carried some in a hollowed-out cane. Oscar Wilde wrote, "What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?" Soon absinthe was the social lubricant of choice for a broad swath of Europeans - artists and otherwise. In 1874, the French sipped 700,000 liters of the stuff; by the turn of the century, consumption had shot up to 36 million liters, driven in part by a phylloxera infestation that had devastated the wine-grape harvest.

By the early 20th century, absinthe was becoming popular in America. It found a natural reception in New Orleans, where the bon temps were already rolling. Breaux's own great-grandparents were known to enjoy an occasional glass. But the drink was drawing fire for its thujone content. "It is truly madness in a bottle, and no habitual drinker can claim that he will not become a criminal," declared one politician. The anti-absinthe fervor climaxed in 1905, when Swiss farmer Jean Lanfray shot his pregnant wife and two daughters after downing two glasses. (Overlooked was what else Lanfray consumed that day: crème de menthe, cognac, seven glasses of wine, coffee with brandy, and another liter of wine.) By the end of World War I, the "green menace" was made illegal everywhere in western Europe except Spain. No reputable distillery still made it.

...

Breaux wasn't the only one rediscovering the long-banned beverage. In Europe, food regulations adopted by the EU in 1988 had neglected to mention absinthe, and when they superseded national laws, the drink was effectively re-legalized. New distilleries were popping up all over Europe, selling what Breaux dismisses as "mouthwash and vodka in a bottle, with some aromatherapy oil." Absinthe had disappeared so completely for so long that no one knew how to make it anymore. Including Breaux, who continued trying to reverse engineer it in his lab.
The new absinthes became popular among hipsters, just as the drink had been 125 years before. But now the presence of thujone was a selling point. Marilyn Manson boasted of recording an album while "on" absinthe. Johnny Depp compared its effects to marijuana. "Drink too much," he said, "and you suddenly realize why Van Gogh cut off his ear."

This wasn't just idle celebrity conjecture. In a 1989 Scientific American article, an American biochemist named Wilfred Arnold hypothesized that Van Gogh's insanity (acute intermittent porphyria, he speculated) was caused by the thujone in absinthe. Based on the description of raw materials used to make the liqueur, Arnold calculated that the thujone content was a dangerous 250 parts per million. "I would advise not drinking it," he says.

Breaux rejects Arnold's methodology. "He didn't take the effects of the distillation process into account," Breaux says. "He made a WAG - a wild-assed guess." Breaux wanted to settle the thujone question once and for all. And he was uniquely positioned to do so. "Back when the original was around, they didn't have any decent analytical chemistry. And when Arnold performed his research, he didn't have any samples of the original liqueur. I have both," he says.

At the EASI lab, Breaux ran tests on the pre-ban absinthe samples, as well as on samples spiked with thujone (from the very bottle I had sniffed). This allowed him to isolate the toxic compound. He spent his free time studying the test results, and late one night in June 2000 he had his answer. "I was stunned. Everything that I had been told was complete nonsense." In the antique absinthes he had collected, the thujone content was an order of magnitude smaller than Arnold's predictions. In many instances, it was a homeopathically minuscule 5 parts per million.

Read a lot more about the science, preparation, discovery and history of absinthe here in the rest of the article.

Breaux apparently is supervising properly-made absinthe, somewhere in the Loire Valley town of Saumur, with the assistance of the Combier family. If I could find out how to buy a bottle, for a reasonable amount of money, I would. In my lifetime, I want to try all of the inebrients loved by my literary and musical heroes, at least once. In the case of absinthe, twice.

The indictment is available here (pdf) from Mr. Fitzgerald's office. No word yet on Karl Rove, but looks like Dick Cheney, Judy Miller, Matt Cooper, Tim Russert, and possibly Nick Kristof are named witnesses who would probably have testify.

Tags: Frog March

The Onion drew the ire of the White House recently:

Protecting the Presidential Seal. No Joke. - New York Times


You might have thought that the White House had enough on its plate late last month, what with its search for a new Supreme Court nominee, the continuing war in Iraq and the C.I.A. leak investigation. But it found time to add another item to its agenda - stopping The Onion, the satirical newspaper, from using the presidential seal. The newspaper regularly produces a parody of President Bush's weekly radio address on its Web site (www.theonion.com/content/node/40121), where it has a picture of President Bush and the official insignia. “It has come to my attention that The Onion is using the presidential seal on its Web site,” Grant M. Dixton, associate counsel to the president, wrote to The Onion on Sept. 28.

Citing the United States Code, Mr. Dixton wrote that the seal “is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement.” Exceptions may be made, he noted, but The Onion had never applied for such an exception.

The Onion was amused. “I'm surprised the president deems it wise to spend taxpayer money for his lawyer to write letters to The Onion,” Scott Dikkers, editor in chief, wrote to Mr. Dixton. He suggested the money be used instead for tax breaks for satirists.

More formally, The Onion's lawyers responded that the paper's readers - it prints about 500,000 copies weekly, and three million people read it online - are well aware that The Onion is a joke.

“It is inconceivable that anyone would think that, by using the seal, The Onion intends to 'convey... sponsorship or approval' by the president,” wrote Rochelle H. Klaskin, the paper's lawyer, who went on to note that a headline in the current issue made the point: “Bush to Appoint Someone to Be in Charge of Country.”

Moreover, she wrote, The Onion and its Web site are free, so the seal is not being used for commercial purposes. That said, The Onion asked that its letter be considered a formal application to use the seal.

And then, the Onion's visual response...

She isn't called Laura the tightly puckered for naught.

Viva! Free Speech and Viva! the internets

Tags: GWB, /humor

Yikes! Our new V.P. looks scary in this photo....

PhotoshopNews: USA Today accused of bad Photoshop job


It was pointed out on From The Pen web site that a recent photograph of Condoleezza Rice that accompanied an article in USA Today was poorly retouched.

The USA Today version on the right was deliberately altered to make Condi Rice look more menacing. Notice how the whites of the eyes are highlighted to make her BLACK eyes look BLACKER and HATEFUL. The doctored photo is here on USA Today’s site (they’ll probably take it down with some heat). ...

Apparently, USA Today did take some heat since at some point the image was swapped out and an Editor’s note was placed on the article that read:
The photo of Condoleezza Rice that originally accompanied this story was altered in a manner that did not meet USA TODAY’s editorial standards. The photo has been replaced by a properly adjusted copy. Photos published online are routinely cropped for size and adjusted for brightness and sharpness to optimize their appearance. In this case, after sharpening the photo for clarity, the editor brightened a portion of Rice’s face, giving her eyes an unnatural appearance. This resulted in a distortion of the original not in keeping with our editorial standards.

Click the link above to see the new photo, if you need to see a fuzzy eyed Condi.

and what was Ms. Rice babbling about anyway?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declined on Wednesday to rule out American forces still being needed in Iraq a decade from now. Senators warned that the Bush administration must play it straight with the public or risk losing public support for the war.
Pushed by senators from both parties to define the limits of U.S. involvement in Iraq and the Middle East, Rice also declined to rule out the use of military force in Iran or Syria

No wonder! She was giving the Death Star eyes to the Syrians!

Tags: Photoshop

Rook's Rant: Kristol Calls For Resignations
“[N]ot a single person who works for him seems to have the honor to leave himself.”

You'll have to head over to Rook's Rant to read Kristol's reasoning. I strongly suggest you do.

Tags: Frog March, /Karl_Rove

are funny.

You fit in with: Spiritualism Your ideals are mostly spiritual, but in an individualistic way. While spirituality is very important in your life, organized religion itself may not be for you. It is best for you to seek these things on your own terms. 80% spiritual. 80% reason-oriented.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Hmm, I suppose the difference between a “Taoist” and being just “spiritual” is the amount of effort necessary to study the texts of Daoism. I did study classical Chinese in school, I did read plenty of daoist texts at that time, and some days I do believe in energies that are ineffable, but other days I'm either a cynic or an atheist. Depends upon my brain chemistry, blood sugar level, etc.

Tags: narcipost, /quiz

Bob Herbert: Driving Blind as the Deaths Pile Up - New York Times
Much of the nation is mourning the more than 2,000 American G.I.'s lost to the war in Iraq. But some of the mindless Washington weasels who sent those brave and healthy warriors to their unnecessary doom have other things on their minds. They're scrambling about the capital, huddling frantically with lawyers, hoping that their habits of deception, which are a way of life with them, don't finally land them in a federal penitentiary.

See them sweat. The most powerful of the powerful, the men who gave the president his talking points and his marching orders, are suddenly sending out distress signals: Don't let them send me to prison on a technicality.

This is not, however, about technicalities. You can spin it any way you want, but Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of Karl Rove, Scooter Libby et al. is ultimately about the monumentally conceived and relentlessly disseminated deceit that gave us the war that never should have happened.

Oh, it was heady stuff for a while - nerds and naïfs swapping fantasies of world domination and giddily manipulating the levers of American power. They were oh so arrogant and glib: Weapons of mass destruction. Yellowcake from Niger. The smoking gun morphing into a mushroom cloud.

Now look at what they've wrought. James Dao of The Times began his long article on the 2,000 American dead with a story that was as typical as it was tragic:
“Sgt. Anthony G. Jones, fresh off the plane from Iraq and an impish grin on his face, sauntered unannounced into his wife's hospital room in Georgia just hours after she had given birth to their second son.”
The article described how Sergeant Jones, over a blissful two-week period last May, “cooed over their baby and showered attention on his wife.”

“Three weeks later, on June 14,” wrote Mr. Dao, “Sergeant Jones was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on his third tour in a war that is not yet three years old. He was 25.”

Three times Sergeant Jones was sent to Iraq, which tells you all you need to know about the fairness and shared sacrifices of this war. If you roll the dice enough times, they're guaranteed to come up snake eyes.

Sergeant Jones told his wife, Kelly, that he had “a bad feeling” about heading back to Iraq for a third combat tour. After his death, his wife found a message that he had left for her among his letters and journal entries.

“Grieve little and move on,” he wrote. “I shall be looking over you. And you will hear me from time to time on the gentle breeze that sounds at night, and in the rustle of leaves.”

I hate reading the last words of soldiers, especially when they are poetic in a way that Scooter Libby's Aspen clusters can never be. I hate reading it because it makes me angry and bitter that 2000 soldiers have died who shouldn't have. I sincerely, desperately (and without hope) pray that the architects of this misbegotten war do spend some time in jail for their crimes against fellow citizens and against fellow humans. Herbert doesn't even mention the tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed.

In what isn't really a surprise to anyone, Miers has withdrawn her name from consideration.

Harriet Miers Withdraws Nomination
Harriet Miers withdrew this morning as a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.

In announcing the decision, Miers and President Bush cited their concern with the requests of members of the Senate Judiciary Committee for documents dealing with her work as White House Counsel that the administration has chosen to withhold as privileged.

But the Miers nomination to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was in deep trouble, with little support in the Senate, open criticism from many Senators of both parties, and an outpouring of opposition from conservative activists and intellectuals.

Miers told the president in a letter of withdrawal that she was “concerned that the confirmation process presents a burden for the White House and our staff that is not in the best interests of the country.”

Bush responded that he was “reluctantly” accepting the decision.

I don't know if this is a victory for the Democrats or not, because now I'm sure Bush will nominate some mouth-breathing conservative jurist who is a member of the American Taliban.

Tags: Miers, /Supreme Court, /Worst_President

never thought this would happen, but it did. 1-0, and a four game sweep. I even went to a White Sox game this summer, a rarity. I never understood the whole Cubs Sox mutual hatred club; perhaps because I'm not a native Chicagoan. Juan Uribe was the hero of the 9th inning - two spectacular defensive plays. Jermain Dye voted series MVP - drove in the only run.

Photos below the fold

Business briefs/leads:

WSJ.com - Albertson's May Not Be Panacea for Kroger
Kroger, the nation's largest traditional supermarket chain by revenue, has put in a preliminary bid for Albertson's Inc., the No. 2 traditional grocer, people familiar with the matter have said. Together, the two chains operate about 5,000 stores and rang up $95.4 billion in sales last year, according to data from the Food Marketing Institute.

That's close to the $115.1 billion of groceries Wal-Mart sold last year, FMI data shows. But Kroger could have to sell off as many as 45% of Albertson's food stores to pass regulatory hurdles, according to analyst Robert Summers of Bear Stearns Cos., greatly trimming potential revenue of the newly combined companies.

...A deal would help Cincinnati-based Kroger in its drive to control large portions of the grocery market in big, fast-growing cities. Buying Albertson's, based in Boise, Idaho, would give Kroger a large presence in Chicago under the Jewel-Osco name and move it into New England under the Shaw's banner and Philadelphia under the Acme name. It would boost its market share in Southern California, Dallas/Fort Worth, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. Kroger has said that stores in markets where it controls a major chunk of the grocery business are generally more profitable.

...
“We have not found that consolidation has significantly helped grocery retailers,” says Paul Weitzel, vice president of Willard Bishop Consulting, a retail-marketing consulting firm. “A lot of the big chains went after scale to compete against Wal-Mart, and what they've found was that scale does not always mean efficiencies.”
Kroger's results have worsened for each of its past two fiscal years, with the company posting a loss of $100 million, or 14 cents a share, for the year ended Jan. 29. The company has struggled to propel sales.

...
Meanwhile, Whole Foods Market Inc. has become one of the nation's most successful chains by portraying itself as a healthier and more sophisticated, albeit pricier, grocer.

Aware of these trends, Kroger is rolling out high-end stores called Fresh Fare to capture upscale customers and low-priced stores under the Food 4 Less name as shoppers move away from the middle of the grocery market. It is also culling shopping data from customer loyalty cards -- a tool Wal-Mart doesn't have.

Several big grocery acquisitions fell short of expectations when buyers, eager to cut costs, homogenized stores. Safeway Inc. turned off shoppers when it replaced well-known brand names with its more lucrative store label after it bought Chicago's Dominick's chain in 1998. Safeway tried to sell the chain four years later after writing down millions of dollars in losses.

Selling 45% of Albertson's stores will roil some in-store marketing vendor contracts, especially those that have stronger relations to Kroger than Albertson's.

update: more from the Sun-Times