OUR BHOY KEANO!

"I have not come up here on an ego trip or to unwind. I am here to win matches."

A few thoughts on RK16's arrival at Parkhead:

Tosh McKinley via Evening Times: "ROY KEANE has to be one of the best signings Celtic have ever made. You can't underestimate what a lift his arrival will do for everyone at the club.

It isn't just the players in the dressing room who will be delighted to see a player of genuine world-class ability come through the doors. Everyone, from the fans who go every week to those working in and around the club, will have a spring in their step today."

Ronnie Cully in the Evening Times: "ROY KEANE has revealed he elected to sign for Celtic, foregoing all other offers, because he wants a new challenge.

His much-heralded arrival in Paradise provided that immense challenge - but not just for the controversial 34-year-old.

Gordon Strachan, the man charged with integrating this unique talent into a game plan which was going along nicely, recognises that he, too, has had a gauntlet thrown down to him."

Jungle G via eTims: "Personally, I have to admit to being fairly impressed by how plain-speaking and realistic Keane was about the situation he finds himself in at Celtic. Of course, there is little doubt that sheer untold reserves of self-belief wash over this particular player to begin with, but even still this was an impressive performance. Keane is an extremely intelligent individual - relative to standards within his profession - and is surely aware that there is a sizeable chunk of the Parkhead support who harbour reservations over his signing, and will also know fine well that at a club like Celtic, a player such as he is only ever a few hiccups away from a media storm. Given all that, he was wise in steering clear of the 'boyhood dream' angle as he faced his latest public, or at least those weak and venal enough to constitute his latest public's media."

Tom via Sporting Almanac: "It is rather more likely that Keane sees in Celtic (and has done for some time) embodiments of values that he holds dear. Anyone visiting Parkhead must be struck by the fundamentally
proletarian passion still pervades and defines the nature of the club. It has often been mentioned how Keane's background in working class Cork provided him with the steel and backbone which coloured his career. It has also been well documented how it pained him to see the soft, apathetic culture which developed at Old Trafford as affluence sated his colleagues' hunger.

And, indeed, that of United's supporters.

Perhaps Keane wants to taste again that feeling of a success that means something. A success that provides supporters with meaning to the very fibre of their being. Success that makes men walk tall for a week. If he stays fit and capable to take his place in a Celtic team in next year's Champions League, he will know a fulfillment of his ideals that he was never going to retrieve at Old Trafford."

The Medical Industrial Complex

Krugman via NYT:

The past quarter-century has seen the emergence of a vast medical-industrial complex, in which doctors, hospitals and research institutions have deep financial links with drug companies and equipment makers. Conflicts of interest aren't the exception - they're the norm.

The economic logic of the medical-industrial complex is straightforward. Prescription drugs and high-technology medical devices account for a growing share of medical spending. Both are products that are expensive to develop but relatively cheap to make. So the profit from each additional unit sold is large, giving their makers a strong incentive to do whatever it takes to persuade doctors and hospitals to choose their products.

healthcare

Implied-In-Fact Claim Against EA Gamemaker

via CNET:

In his lawsuit filed Nov. 28 with the California Superior Court in San Mateo County, Calif., Virtual Jam owner Pernell Harris said he met with EA in late 2003 to discuss "Heart of a Champion," a football game he was developing in which players guide an athlete from high school to professional football.

Among other things, players pick the athlete's parents and handle all kinds of daily experiences from sports practice to school homework.

Harris said features from that game appeared in "Madden NFL 2006" when it was released earlier this year. He accused EA of breaching an "implied in fact contract" when it used those features without compensating him and said EA had violated a confidentiality agreement.

Harris is seeking unspecified damages, attorney's fees and restitution.

IP

UK Rethink on IP Laws

via CNET:

The British government has launched a review of the laws protecting intellectual property, an issue of growing importance to the technology industry.

Chancellor Gordon Brown has asked Andrew Gowers, former editor of The Financial Times, to lead an independent review into intellectual-property, or IP, rights in the United Kingdom. The Labour Party manifesto in the last election included a commitment to "modernize copyright and other forms of IP so that they are appropriate for the digital age."

According to the U.K. Treasury, this review will consider how well businesses are able to negotiate the complexity and expense of the copyright and patent system, including copyright and patent-licensing arrangements, litigation and enforcement. It will also look at whether the current technical and legal IP infringement framework reflects the digital environment and whether provisions for "fair use" by citizens are reasonable.

IP

Drug Benefit Disaster

via washingtonpost.com: "Good policy can make for good politics, and bad policy can make for bad politics. Republicans may be about to discover this truism with their Medicare drug benefit, passed by Congress in 2003 and scheduled to take effect in January. As policy, the drug benefit is a calamity. It worsens one of the nation's major problems (paying baby boomers' retirement costs) while addressing a nonexistent 'crisis' (allegedly oppressive drug costs for retirees). Its purpose was mostly political: to bribe the elderly or soon-to-be-elderly to vote for Republicans in 2004. Now it may backfire on Republicans."

Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2005

via Technology News Daily: "If enacted, the proposed Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2005 would enhance the Department’s ability to pursue crimes and protect the intellectual property rights of citizens and industries. The Act includes provisions to: Implement broad forfeiture reforms to ensure the ability to forfeit property, including illicit proceeds, derived from or used in the commission of criminal intellectual property offenses; Criminalize intellectual property theft motivated by any type of commercial advantage or private financial gain; and Strengthen restitution provisions for victim companies and rights holders in order to maximize protection for those who suffer most from these crimes."

Courting Spyware

via Traceroutes: "Cyberlaw Clinic, we’ll have no shortage of claims to pursue against our chosen defendants. However, focusing on the data gathered will allow us the unique chance to establish some precedent for interpretation of the California Consumer Protection Against Computer Spyware Act, the California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003, and the federal Wiretap Act (part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986). Click to read more about the claims that Sasha might enable us to make regarding these statutes….."

7 Steps to Help you Better in Writing

via lifehack.org : "Do you want to be a fast writer? Do you want to write effectively? Does it take you hours to think of what to write and when you get something on paper, and then you tear it off? Well, if you’re interested in writing faster, more effectively and efficiently, then you have come to the right place."

Secrets of organized families: Insider strategies for getting your house in order

via some site: "In this increasingly hectic world, the phrase 'organized families' can seem like a contradiction in terms. But you know they exist: They're the ones who show up at school on time each day, remember the Little League coach's birthday, and file their taxes in January. And though they make everyone else look bad, you secretly wish you were more like them, together and in control.

Why get organized? Because you can't afford not to, especially when you're juggling work, school, and competing schedules. To get you on the road to efficiency, we asked families and professional organizers to share their secrets, room by room. "

Geek to Live: The Usable Home

via Lifehacker: "As a computer programmer in a new apartment, I’ve taken the same approach to setting up my home as I would developing a software application: with a focus on usability. Like any good software package, my home should be a tool that helps me get things done, a space that’s a pleasure to be in and a launch pad for daily tasks as well as my life goals.

Whether the task at hand is to relax after work, phone a family member, or keep track of a dry cleaning receipt, there are lots of simple ways to create a living space that makes getting things done a breeze.

I’m no home organization expert, but here are a few tips I’ve gleaned over time that can help make your house a Usable Home."

OSDL Launches Patent Commons Site

via CNET News.com: "Concern has grown over the past year that Linux could be under legal threat from claims it infringes certain software patents.

No court cases have been filed, but the issue is serious enough that several companies have pledged not to use their patent portfolios against the open source operating system.

An industry consortium devoted to Linux, Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) has decided to coordinate this process. OSDL launched a Web site last week to help developers check which patents have been pledged. Patent Commons contains more than 500 patents so far, but that may not be enough to significantly affect the problem.

Some activists have claimed that the whole concept of patent pledges is misguided. ZDNet UK spoke with OSDL Chief Executive Stuart Cohen to understand the wider aims of the project."

The Shaver Wars

via brandchannel.com: "In May 2004 Gillette released M3Power, the first battery-operated shaver, and launched a global campaign with testimonial superstar David Beckham. Late November 2004, the District Court of Hamburg, Germany, granted an interim injunction against Gillette and in favor of Wilkinson Sword. In the challenged M3Power advertising campaign, Gillette claimed that the new M3Power wet shaver uses electrical micropulses and guarantees a closer shave than any other wet shaver. Wilkinson Sword presented test results that showed a thoroughness advantage of 0.0143 mm of the M3Power compared to the Quattro; however, the resulting time advantage of 1.27 hours in 24 hours using 0.27 mm daily beard growth as a base is neither visible nor noticeable to the consumer, and therefore too slight to justify a superiority claim. The District Court of Hamburg judged this superiority claim as misleading and competitively undue, and released a cease and desist order concerning Gillette’s advertising campaign.

A superiority claim is admissible and not misleading if it is based on facts, if the advertiser has a distinct lead over competitors, and if this lead is of certain duration.

Wilkinson Sword filed a similar lawsuit in the Netherlands, whereupon Gillette reacted with a countersuit attacking Wilkinson's Dutch ads for the Quattro shaver, which said “Independent tests and consumer research have shown that no other shaving system shaves smoother and softer than Quattro.” The judge allowed both ads, but said they would not necessarily be believed. 'By a good legal tradition, some exaggeration is permissible, as long as it is not misleading in nature, because it will be skeptically received by the average consumer,' Judge Schepen said in his ruling, adding that the buying public has become practically immune to the tendency for commer"

Man on Fire--Not!

Larry Johnson via TPMCafe: "I think Dick Cheney has been watching too many Hollywood flicks that glorify torture. He needs, instead, to get on the ground and talk to the folks he is ostensibly trying to empower to torture. Unlike Dick I have spoken with three CIA operations officers in the last three months--all who have worked on terrorism at the highest levels--and not one endorses torture or believes it will help us. In fact, they believe it will hurt us on many levels.

Two of my friends served in Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of 9-11. If the suicide bombing of the World Trade Centers was not enough justification for hooking Haji up to battery cables, I don't know what is. My friends recognized correctly that their mission was to gather intelligence not create new enemies. If you inflict enough pain on someone they will give you information, but, unless you kill them, they will hold a grudge. As far as the information goes there is no guarantee it will be correct.

What real CIA field officers know from their work with actual sources is that whatever short term benefit can be derived from torture will be offset by the new enemy you have created. It is better to build a relationship of trust, no matter how painstaking, rather than gain a short term benefit that puts you on par with a Nazi concentration camp guard."

In e-mails, consultant claims link to Cornyn

via statesman.com :

WASHINGTON -- Former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed claimed in a 2001 e-mail to a lobbyist that he choreographed John Cornyn's efforts as Texas attorney general to shut down an East Texas Indian tribe's casino.

The lobbyist was Jack Abramoff, who is under federal investigation, along with his partner Michael Scanlon, on allegations of defrauding six Indian tribes of about $80 million from 2001 to 2004. The e-mail, along with about a dozen others, was released last week as part of the investigation.

In 2001, Abramoff was working as a lobbyist for the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana to prevent rival gaming casinos from siphoning off its Texas customers. He paid Reed as a consultant, and Reed lobbied to get the Alabama-Coushatta and Tigua casinos closed in Texas.

In the Nov. 30, 2001, e-mail, Reed told Abramoff that 50 pastors led by Ed Young, of Second Baptist Church in Houston, would meet with Cornyn to urge him to shut down the Alabama-Coushatta tribe's casino near Livingston. He said Young would back up the request in writing.
* * *
The Senate Indian Affairs Committee blocked out references to Cornyn in the e-mails it released last week. But in previous Reed e-mails released by the committee, Cornyn's name was not removed.

The previously released e-mails showed that in 2002, Abramoff and Scanlon secretly funneled millions to Reed to help fund the campaign to get the Tigua casino shut down. The lobbyists then persuaded the Tiguas to hire them to reopen it.

That Marginal Revolution guy asks: Could I ever become a Democrat?

Unlikely. He's a moron.

Marginal Revolution: Could I ever become a Democrat?: "I suspect Mr. Cowen has a nice fat corporate health insurance policy and thinks that is the result of 'economic laws', you know, the one that says, 'Them that has, gets.'

Out here in the real world, if you lose your job, you lose your insurance (if your previous job even offered insurance). If you get divorced, you often lose your insurance. If your employer's insurance company decides to raise premiums 50% in one year and your employer balks, you lose your insurance. If you're self-employed, you very likely can't get insurance for less than $1000 a month per family, and that insurance will usually exclude nearly everything that you'd go to a doctor for. (Mine excludes any prescription that doesn't happen during a hospital stay, that is, all prescriptions I get. But then, it's also got a $10K deductible even for hospital stays, so ...) If you have any illness or condition at all, and you can't get group insurance, you will probably either get a policy that excludes that condition forever... or they won't give you a policy at all and you are uninsured. When you're uninsured, you not only have to pay every penny of your healthcare, you generally pay twice as much as the insured pay because your provider has negotiated deals with all the insurance companies to charge them less, and the doctor has to make it up somewhere, hence charging me $160 for a routine office visit that my insured friend's insurance company pays $60 for.

People die because they don't have insurance or have inadequate insurance, because health costs are so astronomical that many hospitals can no longer afford to treat you without you paying in cash ahead of time. Sure, there are public hospitals, and they'll stabilize you and send you home-- they're not going to give you a kidney transplant for free.

Hmm. Now what economic law created a system like this, where employers are responsible for insurance, huh? "

The Al Queda Lies That Led to War

Olberman via Sic Semper Tyrannis blog: "'Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN, the guy was not only making it up, but by February of 2002, the government knew he was making it up. Al-Libi was the first al Qaeda big get, arrested in Afghanistan back in November 2001.

Under interrogation, he reportedly told agents that al Qaeda was training in Iraq. In 2004, he recanted. He admitted he had made that up. But far earlier, the Defense Intelligence Agency had already figured out that his information was bogus, two years before his confession.

According to a newly declassified document, the DIA warned that the fact al-Libi didn‘t share any specifics about al Qaeda in Iraq had to have meant one of two things. Quote, “It is possible he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers. Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest.”

That‘s called telling them what you think they want you to hear. The document goes on to note that Saddam Hussein‘s regime was wary of extremist Islamic groups, and that his government was, quote, “unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control.”

The DIA assessment was made available to several agencies, including the CIA, the Pentagon, and the White House.

Yet eight months later, in October 2002, the president used al-Libi‘s information to lay out an al Qaeda link in his speech at Cincinnati, and five months after that, February 2003, the information was still being treated as credible, most notably by then-secretary of state Colin Powell, when he made his case for war to the U.N."

Think Progress posted a rap sheet on that clown Chalabi.

Dems Seek Chalabi Subpoena

via CNN.com : "'It's rather unusual that any prosecutor would pass up the opportunity to grab an absolute key, central witness that's in plain sight,' said Rep. George Miller, D-California.

Miller said Democrats have asked the Justice Department and intelligence committees in both houses of Congress to subpoena Chalabi. He said Chalabi played an 'absolutely central' role in the U.S. decision to invade Iraq based on reasons that 'have turned out to be false, have turned out to be misleading.'

'I think it's important to know whether or not he did this knowing and how he transmitted that information, how he presented that information and what meetings were held,' Miller said."

Treasure Island Highrise?

via San Francisco CITYSCAPE: "A skyscraper in the bay may even be likelier, as it's just one small element of a much greater plan (click here and here), and of an emerging, long past due, and not-at-all illogical alliance between developers and environmentalists who get that sustainability requires density. With development clustered around a cityside ferry landing — development intense enough to fund the landing and provide a critical mass of residents for the services that might make the island self-reliant, thereby reducing auto-dependency and Bay Bridge congestion — 65 percent of the site could be set aside for open space, including wetlands for natural wastewater treatment and organic gardens and wind turbines to help supply the place. "

The Examiner and Chron cover TI.

Party For Sale

via TomPaine.com : "What is so disturbing about the Abramoff scandal isn’t just the way he fleeced his Indian clients, but how the apparatus for doing so was so neatly in place. Abramoff simply had to plug his marks into a circular web of money and influence that connected interest groups, lobbyists, Congress and the White House. When Abramoff told them to give money to this or that conservative interest group or Republican candidate, they went along, and the recipients were glad to help."

Pope: Evolution is Biblical

via News.com.au: "THE Vatican has issued a stout defence of Charles Darwin, voicing strong criticism of Christian fundamentalists who reject his theory of evolution and interpret the biblical account of creation literally.
Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the Genesis description of how God created the universe and Darwin's theory of evolution were 'perfectly compatible' if the Bible were read correctly.

His statement was a clear attack on creationist campaigners in the US, who see evolution and the Genesis account as mutually exclusive.

'The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim,' he said at a Vatican press conference. He said the real message in Genesis was that 'the universe didn't make itself and had a creator'.

This idea was part of theology, Cardinal Poupard emphasised, while the precise details of how creation and the development of the species came about belonged to a different realm - science. Cardinal Poupard said that it was important for Catholic believers to know how science saw things so as to 'understand things better'.

His statements were interpreted in Italy as a rejection of the 'intelligent design' view, which says the universe is so complex that some higher being must have designed every detail."

Open source, open wallet

via CNET News.com: "Open-source business models are booming in the software industry, a rapid rise that has some experts wondering if it's a bubble that will burst.

Venture capital firms are pouring more money into start-ups that adhere to open-source practices, such as giving away technology for free. That rush could result in an investment bubble, similar to that seen in the early days of the Web, several industry executives cautioned at the Open Source Business Conference last week.

For an open-source business to work well, a start-up needs a number of attributes that a closed-source software company doesn't, executives said.

In particular, they have to combine their pursuit of profit with active involvement in a vibrant 'community' of open-source users, some of whom are not paying customers. Not all open-source companies are hitting the right balance between commerce and community, analysts and executives said."

DeLay Asked Lobbyist to Raise Money Through Charity

via New York Times: "Representative Tom DeLay asked the lobbyist Jack Abramoff to raise money for him through a private charity controlled by Mr. Abramoff, an unusual request that led the lobbyist to try to gather at least $150,000 from his Indian tribe clients and their gambling operations, according to newly disclosed e-mail from the lobbyist's files.

The electronic messages from 2002, which refer to 'Tom' and 'Tom's requests,' appear to be the clearest evidence to date of an effort by Mr. DeLay, a Texas Republican, to pressure Mr. Abramoff and his lobbying partners to raise money for him. The e-mail messages do not specify why Mr. DeLay wanted the money, how it was to be used or why he would want money raised through the auspices of a private charity.

'Did you get the message from the guys that Tom wants us to raise some bucks from Capital Athletic Foundation?' Mr. Abramoff asked a colleague in a message on June 6, 2002, referring to the charity. 'I have six clients in for $25K. I recommend we hit everyone who cares about Tom's requests. I have another few to hit still.'

The e-mail was addressed to Tony Rudy, who had been Mr. DeLay's chief of staff in the House before joining Mr. Abramoff's lobbying firm. Mr. Abramoff said it would be good 'if we can do $200K' for Mr. DeLay."

Abramoff-Scanlon School of Sleaze

via Salon.com News: "'The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees,' Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. 'Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them.'"

Judicial selection spinning in DeLay case

via Austin Statesmen: "Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson late Thursday afternoon named a senior Democratic judge from San Antonio to hear the conspiracy case against U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, despite concerns that Jefferson had too many ties to DeLay's political committee to be impartial.

The trial judge will be former state District Judge Pat Priest, a former adjunct professor at St. Mary's School of Law.

Before Jefferson named Priest, the judicial carousel in DeLay's case almost spun out of control as the search for a judge beyond the hint of any political taint reached Jefferson.

But even he has deep partisan ties: He shared the same campaign treasurer and consultant as DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority. One of his largest campaign donations — $25,000 — was from the arm of the Republican National Committee that's at the center of the allegation that DeLay and his co-defendants laundered corporate money into political donations in 2002. He also was endorsed by DeLay's committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, and made campaign appearances with DeLay's co-defendant, John Colyandro, and attended a Houston fund-raiser with the chairman of the Republican National Committee."

In the Company of Friends

via MSNBC.com: "President Bush last week appointed nine campaign contributors, including three longtime fund-raisers, to his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a 16-member panel of individuals from the private sector who advise the president on the quality and effectiveness of U.S. intelligence efforts. After watching the fate of Michael Brown as head of FEMA and Harriet Miers as Supreme Court nominee, you might think the president would be wary about the appearance of cronyism—especially with a critical national-security issue such as intelligence. Instead, Bush reappointed William DeWitt, an Ohio businessman who has raised more than $300,000 for the president’s campaigns, for a third two-year term on the panel. Originally appointed in 2001, just a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, DeWitt, who was also a top fund-raiser for Bush’s 2004 Inaugural committee, was a partner with Bush in the Texas Rangers baseball team."

Moglen: Open-source risks overblown

via CNET News.com: "NEWTON, Mass.--Eben Moglen, a prominent open-source software lawyer, argued that legal risks from using free and open-source software have been minimized by the General Public License.

During a keynote speech at the Open Source Business Conference on Tuesday, the Columbia University Law School professor said that for users of open-source software, the 'risk perception has diverged from risk reality.'

He said that many of the potential risks to users of free and open-source software are misplaced, as they have been addressed over the years in the General Public License, which is used in many products, including Linux."

CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons

More evidence of our moral authority, via The Post:

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
* * *
The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.

While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.
* * *
[T]he arrangement has been increasingly debated within the CIA, where considerable concern lingers about the legality, morality and practicality of holding even unrepentant terrorists in such isolation and secrecy, perhaps for the duration of their lives. Mid-level and senior CIA officers began arguing two years ago that the system was unsustainable and diverted the agency from its unique espionage mission.

"We never sat down, as far as I know, and came up with a grand strategy," said one former senior intelligence officer who is familiar with the program but not the location of the prisons. "Everything was very reactive. That's how you get to a situation where you pick people up, send them into a netherworld and don't say, 'What are we going to do with them afterwards?' "

It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.

Reform Tax Packages Unveiled

via The Post:

The first proposal, labeled a "simplified income tax plan," would reduce the number of tax rates for individuals to four from six and set the top rate at 33 percent, down from 35 percent. The second proposal, called a "growth and investment tax plan," would slice the number of individual tax brackets to three and set the top rate at 30 percent.

Both plans would consolidate the personal exemption, the standard deduction and the child care credit into a single "family credit." The earned income tax credit and related subsidies for low-income workers would be collapsed into a "work credit."

The long list of tax breaks now available that promote saving -- for education and individual retirement accounts, among others -- would also be simplified into three tax-free accounts: "Save at Work," "Save for Retirement" and "Save for Family." Low-income families would receive an additional "savers credit."

So who will pay for healthcare?

On health coverage, the commission proposed to limit the amount of insurance an employer can provide tax-free to employees to $5,000 for an individual and $11,500 for a family. The panel's change would discourage extensive health plans, especially for upper-income individuals. Currently, the benefit has no limit.

Is this be just another effort to "shrink the beast?"

The extra benefits suggested by the panel, especially the rate reductions, would deprive the Treasury of billions of dollars a year. Ending the AMT alone would cost $1.3 trillion over 10 years. But the panel pledged that its plans would neither raise nor lower the federal budget deficit, which has lately exceeded $300 billion a year.

To be fair, it includes reform of the sacred:

The panel urged that the mortgage-interest deduction be reduced for the highest-income taxpayers. Currently, interest paid on mortgages of up to $1.1 million can be written off. Under the plan, only the first $227,000 of a mortgage in inexpensive housing markets could be used to reduce taxes. In pricier places, the cap would be set at $412,000. The panel would also convert the mortgage-interest deduction to a 15 percent credit, which could aid middle-income homeowners.

But the biggest blue states take it in the shorts:

In addition, the panel would terminate the deduction for state and local tax payments, a provision that would fall hardest on high-tax regions, such as New York and California. The last time Congress significantly revised the income tax, in 1986, lawmakers had to back off a proposal to cut the state and local tax deduction because of complaints from local politicians.

They say it like its a bad thing, making housing more affordable. Odd.

Still, the National Association of Realtors said "the value of the nation's residential property could decline 15 percent or more" if the panel's mortgage proposals become law. Gerald M. Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders, criticized the measures as "the biggest tax hike for homeowners ever considered."

And this is supposed to spur growth of the U.S. economy?

Both plans would assess companies only on their domestic profits, ending the United States' long-held policy of taxing income wherever it originates.

Sounds like good news for Bangalore.







Taxes

The Use of Intelligence and Closing the Senate

Matt Yglesias via TPMCafe: "In case you're looking for examples of the sort of manipulation of intelligence Harry Reid is talking about, a few are remarkably easy to find and clear-cut. This is a report entitled 'Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs' released before the war as an unclassified document. It was based, we were told, on a classified National Intelligence Estimate. Over here, you can read some portions of the original NIE that have since been declassified. Mostly, the declassified bits of the document and the unclassified document are the same. But here are a few salient points that were left out of the unclassified release"

Harry Reid Statement Before Senate Closed Session

"This past weekend, we witnessed the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, the Vice President's Chief of Staff and a senior Advisor to President Bush. Libby is the first sitting White House staffer to be indicted in 135 years.

"This indictment raises very serious charges. It asserts this Administration engaged in actions that both harmed our national security and are morally repugnant.

"The decision to place U.S. soldiers in harm's way is the most significant responsibility the Constitution invests in the Congress.

"The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really about: how the Administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions.

"As a result of its improper conduct, a cloud now hangs over this Administration. This cloud is further darkened by the Administration's mistakes in prisoner abuse scandal, Hurricane Katrina, and the cronyism and corruption in numerous agencies.

"And, unfortunately, it must be said that a cloud also hangs over this Republican-controlled Congress for its unwillingness to hold this Republican Administration accountable for its misdeeds on all of these issues.

"Let's take a look back at how we got here with respect to Iraq Mr. President. The record will show that within hours of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, senior officials in this Administration recognized these attacks could be used as a pretext to invade Iraq.

"The record will also show that in the months and years after 9/11, the Administration engaged in a pattern of manipulation of the facts and retribution against anyone who got in its way as it made the case for attacking Iraq.

"There are numerous examples of how the Administration misstated and manipulated the facts as it made the case for war. Administration statements on Saddam's alleged nuclear weapons capabilities and ties with Al Qaeda represent the best examples of how it consistently and repeatedly manipulated the facts.

"The American people were warned time and again by the President, the Vice President, and the current Secretary of State about Saddam's nuclear weapons capabilities. The Vice President said Iraq "has reconstituted its nuclear weapons." Playing upon the fears of Americans after September 11, these officials and others raised the specter that, left unchecked, Saddam could soon attack America with nuclear weapons.

"Obviously we know now their nuclear claims were wholly inaccurate. But more troubling is the fact that a lot of intelligence experts were telling the Administration then that its claims about Saddam's nuclear capabilities were false.

"The situation was very similar with respect to Saddam's links to Al Qaeda. The Vice President told the American people, "We know he's out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we know he has a longstanding relationship with various terrorist groups including the Al Qaeda organization."

"The Administration's assertions on this score have been totally discredited. But again, the Administration went ahead with these assertions in spite of the fact that the government's top experts did not agree with these claims.

"What has been the response of this Republican-controlled Congress to the Administration's manipulation of intelligence that led to this protracted war in Iraq? Basically nothing. Did the Republican-controlled Congress carry out its constitutional obligations to conduct oversight? No. Did it support our troops and their families by providing them the answers to many important questions? No. Did it even attempt to force this Administration to answer the most basic questions about its behavior? No.

"Unfortunately the unwillingness of the Republican-controlled Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities is not limited to just Iraq. We see it with respect to the prisoner abuse scandal. We see it with respect to Katrina. And we see it with respect to the cronyism and corruption that permeates this Administration.

"Time and time again, this Republican-controlled Congress has consistently chosen to put its political interests ahead of our national security. They have repeatedly chosen to protect the Republican Administration rather than get to the bottom of what happened and why.

"There is also another disturbing pattern here, namely about how the Administration responded to those who challenged its assertions. Time and again this Administration has actively sought to attack and undercut those who dared to raise questions about its preferred course.

"For example, when General Shinseki indicated several hundred thousand troops would be needed in Iraq, his military career came to an end. When then OMB Director Larry Lindsay suggested the cost of this war would approach $200 billion, his career in the Administration came to an end. When U.N. Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix challenged conclusions about Saddam's WMD capabilities, the Administration pulled out his inspectors. When Nobel Prize winner and IAEA head Mohammed el-Baridei raised questions about the Administration's claims of Saddam's nuclear capabilities, the Administration attempted to remove him from his post. When Joe Wilson stated that there was no attempt by Saddam to acquire uranium from Niger, the Administration launched a vicious and coordinated campaign to demean and discredit him, going so far as to expose the fact that his wife worked as a CIA agent.

"Given this Administration's pattern of squashing those who challenge its misstatements, what has been the response of this Republican-controlled Congress? Again, absolutely nothing. And with their inactions, they provide political cover for this Administration at the same time they keep the truth from our troops who continue to make large sacrifices in Iraq.

"This behavior is unacceptable. The toll in Iraq is as staggering as it is solemn. More than 2,000 Americans have lost their lives. Over 90 Americans have paid the ultimate sacrifice this month alone - the fourth deadliest month since the war began. More than 15,000 have been wounded. More than 150,000 remain in harm's way. Enormous sacrifices have been and continue to be made.

"The troops and the American people have a right to expect answers and accountability worthy of that sacrifice. For example, 40 Senate Democrats wrote a substantive and detailed letter to the President asking four basic questions about the Administration's Iraq policy and received a four sentence answer in response. These Senators and the American people deserve better.

"They also deserve a searching and comprehensive investigation about how the Bush Administration brought this country to war. Key questions that need to be answered include:

How did the Bush Administration assemble its case for war against Iraq?
Who did Bush Administration officials listen to and who did they ignore?
How did senior Administration officials manipulate or manufacture intelligence presented to the Congress and the American people?
What was the role of the White House Iraq Group or WHIG, a group of senior White House officials tasked with marketing the war and taking down its critics?
How did the Administration coordinate its efforts to attack individuals who dared to challenge the Administration's assertions?
Why has the Administration failed to provide Congress with the documents that will shed light on their misconduct and misstatements?

"Unfortunately the Senate committee that should be taking the lead in providing these answers is not. Despite the fact that the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee publicly committed to examine many of these questions more than 1 and ½ years ago, he has chosen not to keep this commitment. Despite the fact that he restated that commitment earlier this year on national television, he has still done nothing.

"At this point, we can only conclude he will continue to put politics ahead of our national security. If he does anything at this point, I suspect he will play political games by producing an analysis that fails to answer any of these important questions. Instead, if history is any guide, this analysis will attempt to disperse and deflect blame away from the Administration.

"We demand that the Intelligence Committee and other committees in this body with jurisdiction over these matters carry out a full and complete investigation immediately as called for by Democrats in the committee's annual intelligence authorization report. Our troops and the American people have sacrificed too much. It is time this Republican-controlled Congress put the interests of the American people ahead of their own political interests."

Rockefeller gets a spine and supports the move.

More background at DailyKos. And still more (via PERRspectives).

Iraq, Senate, Intelligence

Guantanamo Desperation

via Washington Post

Two dozen Guantanamo Bay detainees are currently being force-fed in response to a lengthy hunger strike, and the detainees' lawyers estimate there are dozens more who have not eaten since August. Military officials say there are 27 hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay, all of whom are clinically stable, closely monitored by medical personnel and receiving proper nutrition.

The hunger strikers are protesting their lengthy confinements in the island prison, where some have been kept for nearly four years and most have never been charged with a crime. The most recent hunger strike came after detention officials allegedly failed to honor promises made during a previous hunger strike.
* * *
Three U.N. experts said yesterday that they would not accept a U.S. government invitation to tour Guantanamo unless they are granted private access to detainees, a concession the U.S. has not been willing to make, citing the ongoing war on terror and security concerns. Last week, the United States invited the U.N. representatives on torture and arbitrary detention to the facility, and the experts said yesterday that they hope to visit in early December. But they described their demand for access to the detainees as "non-negotiable."

"They said they have nothing to hide," Manfred Nowak, U.N. special rapporteur on torture, said yesterday at a news conference in New York. "If they have nothing to hide, why should we not be able to talk to detainees in private?"
* * *
Detainees "see [hunger striking] as the only means they have of exercising control over their lives," Colangelo-Bryan [lawyer for internee Jumah Dossari] said in publicly describing the incident for the first time. "Their only means of effective protest are to harm themselves, either by hunger strike or doing something like this."

Martin said claims that hunger strikers are near death are "absolutely false." He said the latest protest began on Aug. 8 and at one point had 131 participants but is now much smaller.

"This technique, hunger striking, is consistent with the al Qaeda training, and reflects the detainees' attempts to elicit media attention and bring pressure on the United States government," Martin said. The military also has long argued that terrorist groups have instructed fighters to invent claims of abuse if incarcerated.

Dossari has told Colangelo-Bryan that he has endured abuse and mistreatment on par with some of the worst offenses discovered at any U.S. detention facility over the past four years. In declassified notes recording the meetings, Dossari describes abuse and torture that stretches back to his arrest in Pakistan in December 2001, through the time he was turned over to U.S. forces in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and ultimately to his stay in Guantanamo Bay.

Dossari, 26, said U.S. troops have put out cigarettes on his skin, threatened to kill him and severely beat him. He told his lawyer that he saw U.S. Marines at Kandahar "using pages of the Koran to shine their boots," and was brutalized at Guantanamo Bay by Immediate Response Force guards who videotaped themselves attacking him.

The military says the IRF squads are sent into cells to quell disturbances.

Dossari told his lawyers that he had been wrapped in Israeli and U.S. flags during interrogations -- a tactic recounted in FBI allegations of abuse at Guantanamo -- and said interrogators threatened to send him to countries where he would be tortured.

Dossari maintains that he is not connected to terrorism and does not hate the United States. A fellow detainee said that he saw Dossari at an al Qaeda training camp, his lawyer said.

Colangelo-Bryan is a private New York lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents some of the detainees. The group plans a "Fast for Justice" rally today in Washington to bring attention to the Guantanamo Bay hunger strike.

Torture, Guantanamo, Terrorism

Larry Johnson on McNeil/Lehrer

Online NewsHour: In the Shadows -- September 30, 2003: "Let's be very clear about what happened. This is not an alleged abuse. This is a confirmed abuse. I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been undercover for three decades, she is not as Bob Novak suggested a CIA analyst. But given that, I was a CIA analyst for four years. I was undercover. I could not divulge to my family outside of my wife that I worked for the Central Intelligence Agency until I left the agency on Sept. 30, 1989. At that point I could admit it.

So the fact that she's been undercover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous because she was put undercover for certain reasons. One, she works in an area where people she meets with overseas could be compromised. When you start tracing back who she met with, even people who innocently met with her, who are not involved in CIA operations, could be compromised. For these journalists to argue that this is no big deal and if I hear another Republican operative suggesting that well, this was just an analyst fine, let them go undercover. Let's put them overseas and let's out them and then see how they like it. They won't be able to stand the heat.
* * *
"I say this as a registered Republican. I'm on record giving contributions to the George Bush campaign. This is not about partisan politics. This is about a betrayal, a political smear of an individual with no relevance to the story. Publishing her name in that story added nothing to it. [Novak's] entire intent was correctly as Ambassador Wilson noted: to intimidate, to suggest that there was some impropriety that somehow his wife was in a decision making position to influence his ability to go over and savage a stupid policy, an erroneous policy and frankly, what was a false policy of suggesting that there were nuclear material in Iraq that required this war. This was about a political attack. To pretend that it's something else and to get into this parsing of words, I tell you, it sickens me to be a Republican to see this."

NewsFlash: At Wal-Mart, Screwing Employees is Job One

NYT reports that leaked internal memo confirms Wal-Mart's cynical (and just plain shady) attitude toward its own employees, erm, Associates:

An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart's board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart.

In the memorandum, M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, also recommends reducing 401(k) contributions and wooing younger, and presumably healthier, workers by offering education benefits. The memo voices concern that workers with seven years' seniority earn more than workers with one year's seniority, but are no more productive.

To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Ms. Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering)."

The memo acknowledged that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, had to walk a fine line in restraining benefit costs because critics had attacked it for being stingy on wages and health coverage. Ms. Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid.

Wal-Mart executives said the memo was part of an effort to rein in benefit costs, which to Wall Street's dismay have soared by 15 percent a year on average since 2002. Like much of corporate America, Wal-Mart has been squeezed by soaring health costs. The proposed plan, if approved, would save the company more than $1 billion a year by 2011.

Oops, I guess I got it wrong. This is for the employee's "benefit," not to benefit the company's bottom line:

In an interview, Ms. Chambers said she was focusing not on cutting costs, but on serving employees better by giving them more choices on their benefits.

"We are investing in our benefits that will take even better care of our associates," she said. "Our benefit plan is known today as being generous."

Ms. Chambers also said that she made her recommendations after surveying employees about how they felt about the benefits plan. "This is not about cutting," she said. "This is about redirecting savings to another part of their benefit plans."

Orwell would be so proud. Its odd then that she would concede that Wal-Mart's critics are right, Wal-Mart is indeed a shabby excuse for a workplace and that the taxpayers are subsidizing this basic mistreatment and exploitation so that the company can make profits of $10 billion annually on sales of $250 billion (its true, go look it up):

Acknowledging that Wal-Mart has image problems, Ms. Chambers wrote: "Wal-Mart's critics can easily exploit some aspects of our benefits offering to make their case; in other words, our critics are correct in some of their observations. Specifically, our coverage is expensive for low-income families, and Wal-Mart has a significant percentage of associates and their children on public assistance."

Her memo stated that 5 percent of Wal-Mart's workers were on Medicaid, compared with 4 percent for other national employers. She said that Wal-Mart spent $1.5 billion a year on health insurance, which amounts to $2,660 per insured worker.

But the memo was still a big hit with the suits:

The memo, prepared with the help of McKinsey & Company, said the board was to consider the recommendations in November. But the memo said that three top Wal-Mart officials - its chief financial officer, its top human relations executive and its executive vice president for legal and corporate affairs - had "received the recommendations enthusiastically."

Some of the crack ideas coming from these ivy league MBAs (who have real worries, like where to summer or whether to tip the help)? First, find a way to get rid of unhealthy employees, or anyone that might get sick, like, say, anyone over 30. Or maybe "discourage" unhealthy employees from working at Wal-Mart in the first place. Or maybe just cut loose those poor unfortunates who rely on the paycheck of a Wal-Mart Associate for life's necessities, like spouses and children, and let them get out there in the "marketplace" and try and find their own healthcare. It'll probably be good for them, teach 'em a thing or two about economics:

Ms. Chambers's memo voiced concern that workers were staying with the company longer, pushing up wage costs, although she stopped short of calling for efforts to push out more senior workers.

She wrote that "the cost of an associate with seven years of tenure is almost 55 percent more than the cost of an associate with one year of tenure, yet there is no difference in his or her productivity. Moreover, because we pay an associate more in salary and benefits as his or her tenure increases, we are pricing that associate out of the labor market, increasing the likelihood that he or she will stay with Wal-Mart."
* * *
The memo noted, "The least healthy, least productive associates are more satisfied with their benefits than other segments and are interested in longer careers with Wal-Mart."

The memo proposed incorporating physical activity in all jobs and promoting health savings accounts. Such accounts are financed with pretax dollars and allow workers to divert their contributions into retirement savings if they are not all spent on health care. Health experts say these accounts will be more attractive to younger, healthier workers.

"It will be far easier to attract and retain a healthier work force than it will be to change behavior in an existing one," the memo said. "These moves would also dissuade unhealthy people from coming to work at Wal-Mart."

And in the requisite irony-laden portion of our story, Wal-Mart, purveyors of the cheapest candy, 18-packs of coke and pepsi, and generally all manner of fructose-fortified foodstuffs, discovers that health care costs are being heavily (ha) impacted by "obesity-related diseases:"

The memo noted that Wal-Mart workers "are getting sicker than the national population, particularly in obesity-related diseases," including diabetes and coronary artery disease. The memo said Wal-Mart workers tended to overuse emergency rooms and underuse prescriptions and doctor visits, perhaps from previous experience with Medicaid.

Ah, but there is always some loudmouth, do-gooder there to rain on the efficiency of market-driven solutions to problems of social welfare:

Ron Pollack, executive director of Families U.S.A., a health care consumer-advocacy group, criticized the memo for recommending that more workers move into health plans with high deductibles.

"Their people are paying a very substantial portion of their earnings out of pocket for health care," he said. "These plans will cause these workers and their families to defer or refrain from getting needed care."

The memo noted that 38 percent of Wal-Mart workers spent more than one-sixth of their Wal-Mart income on health care last year.

Bush: Lies = Impeachment

Nice catch by Jeralyn via TalkLeft: "Bush in 1999: Lies Are Impeachable

Many news reports from 1999 have this quote of George Bush at a 1999 news conference. (E.g. AP, 6/8/99, USA Today, 6/11/99, Dallas Morning News, 6/9/99, available on Lexis.com)"

Texas Gov. George W. Bush said Tuesday that he would have voted to impeach President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

"I would have voted for it. I thought the man lied," he said in response to a question posed during a news conference.

Juan Cole on The Times, Fox News and The Larger Context of the Judy Miller Fiasco

via Informed Comment: "So in this polluted information environment, in which Howell Raines's view of reality, which was perfectly correct, was constantly pilloried by powerful rightwing media as nothing short of treason, there was every incentive to give Judith Miller her head. Remember that the NYT is a commercial publication. All major newspapers were seeing their subscription base shrink. After September 11, the country had moved substantially to the right on national security issues. The Times could easily go bankrupt if it loses touch with the sentiments of the American reading public. There is a lot at stake in the Murdoch et al. assault on the NYT. In its absence, the information environment in the US would be even more rightwing. I've even rethought my own rash response to its editorial on the Columbia Middle East studies issue last spring.

"The NYT had no sources to speak of inside the Bush administration, a real drawback in covering Washington, because it was a left of center newspaper in a political environment dominated by the Right. Miller had sources among the Neoconservatives, with whom she shared some key concerns (biological weapons, the threat of Muslim radicalism, etc.) So she could get the Washington "scoops." And her perspective skewed Right in ways that could protect the NYT from charges that it was consistently biased against Bush. Of course, in retrospect, Bush's world was a dangerous fantasy, and giving it space on the front page of the NYT just sullied the Grey Lady with malicious prevarications."

Hinderaker's Folly

via Crooks and Liars: "If ignorance is bliss, then John Hinderaker is one happy fellow when it comes to talking about Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. According to Hinderaker, who was appearing on Howard Kurtz's CNN show about the media, he trots out once again the big lie of Republican talking points by claiming that Joe Wilson lied in his July 2003 op-ed. Hinderaker says that Wilson, 'reported to the CIA that what he found out was that Saddam Hussein in fact had tried to buy uranium from Niger in the late 1990s. He then wrote an op-ed in which he lied about his own report.'

Excuse me. Are all rightwingers this stupid or is this guy just uniquely ignorant. You don't have to take my word for it, just read The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's PreWar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq (July 2004), pages 43-47. However, you'll have to read carefully because the Republican staff who wrote this report tried their best to obfuscate and confuse the matter. These are the clear facts."

Beyond Polarization

via NewDonkey.com: "Last week a sequel appeared to one of the great classics of political analysis--Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck's 1989 paper, The Politics of Evasion. The previous report was published by the Progressive Policy Institute; the latest, entitled The Politics of Polarization, by the folks over at the congressionally-focused group Third Way (which is friendly with the DLC, but is a completely independent organiztion).

This is a 71-page report chock full of findings and recommendations, so my first suggestion is that you read the whole thing, and don't rely on the Cliffs Notes version reported in the newspapers, or on the generally carping references to it in much of the blogosphere, based largely, I suspect, on the Cliffs Notes version. Yes, Galston and Kamarck argue that the real gold in American politics is in the ideological center, and they will annoy some of you who think counter-polarization is the key for Democrats. And yes, they claim that Democrats haven't developed a credible consensus on national security issues, and that will annoy others of you who think a position favoring withdrawal from Iraq will do the trick (for the record, Galston and Kamarck both opposed the invasion of Iraq in the first place).

But the real value of the paper is that it hammers home three fundamental realities of contemporary partisan politics that cannot much be denied: (1) the GOP-engineered polarization of the two parties along ideological lines has made Democrats much more dependent than Republicans on sizable margins among self-identified moderate and independent voters (and thus more vulnerable to base/swing conflicts) (2) George W. Bush's 2004 win was produced as much by persuasion of a sizable minority of moderate voters (particularly married women and Catholics) as it was by mobilization of his conservative 'base;' and (3) a changing issues landscape has reinforced the importance of Democratic efforts to deal with chronic negative perceptions by voters on national security"

Six Things you need to know about Bubble 2.0

via The Register: "There's every reason to be optimistic, now in 2005, that computer networks can begin to fulfill their potential. They can even start to be really useful - but it's only by dispensing with such utopian nonsense - so we can really begin to see what these tools can do for us. Here's a reality-based guide to what's happening - and if you hear a futurist omit more than one of these in a presentation, send them to the Exit toot-sweet, with a firm smack on the backside."

Did Oracle Just Make MySQL Worse?

via Techdirt: "Innobase makes a key component of MySQL that it needs to compete effectively... and now Oracle owns it. While Oracle says they'll continue to support it, they're also going to 'negotiate' when the contract between Innobase and MySQL comes up for renewal next year. It does make you wonder why MySQL didn't try to buy them earlier, as it certainly looks like a big weakness hasn't just been exposed, but ripped out. It's likely that MySQL will try to figure out some way around this -- and, if not, that some other open source databases will have an opportunity to move up in the world. However, in one small move, it certainly looks like Oracle may have given themselves a bit more breathing room in the database world."

The Reticence Fallacy

Kinsley via WaPo: "Gosh, was it only a couple of weeks ago that Republicans were mocking attempts by Democratic senators to find out what John Roberts's views might be on some of the big legal issues? What happened to all those lectures about how it would be 'improper' to call on a future justice to 'prejudge' matters that might come before the court?

With President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers, it turns out that Republicans don't want to buy a pig in a poke any more than Democrats do. They were bluffing when they claimed not to know or care about Roberts's views, beyond a vague commitment to avoid 'legislating from the bench.' They did care, but they thought they knew. The surprising conservative bitterness about Miers reinforces the suspicion of many liberals that 'they must know something we don't' about Roberts. Conservatives have been complaining about the Supreme Court for half a century. After a series of false dawns, this would seem to be their true moment. Would they really let Bush squander this opportunity? Apparently not."

GPL 3 may tackle Web loophole

via CNET News.com: "The next version of the General Public License may tackle the issue of Web companies that use free software in commercial Web-based applications but don't distribute the source code.

At present, companies that distribute GPL-licensed software must make the source code publicly available, including any modifications they've made. Though the rule covers many businesses that use GPL-licensed software for commercial ends, it doesn't cover Web companies that use such software to offer their services through the Web, as they're not actually distributing the software.

GPL 3, the next version of the free software license, a draft of which is expected to be released in early 2006, may close this loophole, GPL author and Free Software Foundation head Richard Stallman said in an interview with publisher O'Reilly Media."

Hard Bigotry of No Expectations

Editorial via New York Times: "Four years after 9/11, Katrina showed the world that performance standards for the Department of Homeland Security were so low that it was not required to create real plans to respond to real disasters. Only a president with no expectation that the federal government should step up after a crisis could have stripped the Federal Emergency Management Agency bare, appointed as its director a political crony who could not even adequately represent the breeders of Arabian horses, and announced that the director was doing a splendid job while bodies floated in the floodwaters.

Only a president who does not expect the government to help provide decent housing for the truly needy in normal times could leave seven of the top jobs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development vacant and then, after disaster struck, offer small-bore solutions to enormous problems. Substandard wages, an easing of affirmative action regulation and a housing lottery that will help a tiny sliver of people apparently are considered good enough for poor families along the Gulf Coast left homeless by Katrina.

In Iraq, the elimination of expectations is on display in the disastrous political process. Among other things, the constitution drafted under American supervision does not provide for the rights of women and minorities and enshrines one religion as the fundamental source of law. Administration officials excuse this poor excuse for a constitution by saying it also refers to democratic values. But it makes them secondary to Islamic law and never actually defines them. Our founding fathers had higher expectations: they made the split of church and state fundamental, and spelled out what they meant by democracy and the rule of law.

It's true that the United States Constitution once allowed slavery, denied women the right to vote and granted property rights only to "

Senator John Kerry's Speech at Brown University

via JohnKerry.com: "[T]here's every reason to believe the President finally acted on Katrina and admitted a mistake only because he was held accountable by the press, cornered by events, and compelled by the outrage of the American people, who with their own eyes could see a failure of leadership and its consequences.

Natural and human calamity stripped away the spin machine, creating a rare accountability moment, not just for the Bush administration, but for all of us to take stock of the direction of our country and do what we can to reverse it. That's our job -- to turn this moment from a frenzied expression of guilt into a national reversal of direction. Some try to minimize the moment by labeling it a 'blame game' -- but as I’ve said - this is no game and what is at stake is much larger than the incompetent and negligent response to Katrina.

This is about the broader pattern of incompetence and negligence that Katrina exposed, and beyond that, a truly systemic effort to distort and disable the people's government, and devote it to the interests of the privileged and the powerful. It is about the betrayal of trust and abuse of power.
* * *
And the rush now to camouflage their misjudgments and inaction with money doesn’t mean they are suddenly listening. It's still politics as usual. The plan they’re designing for the Gulf Coast turns the region into a vast laboratory for right wing ideological experiments. They’re already talking about private school vouchers, abandonment of environmental regulations, abolition of wage standards, subsidies for big industries - and believe it or not yet another big round of tax cuts for the wealthiest among us!

The administration is recycling all their failed policies and shipping them to Louisiana. After four years of ideological excess, these Washington Republicans have a bad hangover -- and they can't think of anything to offer the Gulf Coast but the hair of the dog that bit them.
* * *
Katrina is a symbol of all this administration does and doesn't do. Michael Brown -- or Brownie as the President so famously thanked him for doing a heck of a job - Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to slam dunk intelligence; what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad; what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning; what Tom Delay is to ethics; and what George Bush is to “Mission Accomplished” and "Wanted Dead or Alive." The bottom line is simple: The "we'll do whatever it takes" administration doesn't have what it takes to get the job done.

This is the Katrina administration.

Paying For Katrina

via the War Room at Salon.com: "The Bush administration insists that the federal government can spend something like $200 billion on rebuilding the Gulf Coast while taking care of all of the government's other 'priorities,' retaining all of the president's tax cuts and still fulfilling the president's promise to cut the federal deficit in half by 2009.

It's a neat trick if you can pull it off. But if anybody needs a hint about just how hard it will be, the Army's budget for Iraq would be a good place to look. As the Wall Street Journal reports today, the Army's costs for Iraq are far exceeding estimates the Pentagon made just a few months ago, when Congress approved a supplemental spending bill for the war. Indeed, the Army is so close to running out of money for prosecuting the war now that it will have to borrow funds from other places before the end of the fiscal year. Where would the Army get the cash it needs? Until more politically sensitive heads prevailed, the Army planned to borrow from a fund that is supposed to be used to install armor on vehicles troops are using in Iraq.

Now the Pentagon says the Army will borrow the money from accounts that aren't so politically charged. But the larger point is this: If the Army is so strapped that it would actually consider borrowing $153 million -- the federal government equivalent of loose change under the sofa cushions -- from funds used to protect troops, where is the federal government going to come up with $200 b-b-b-billion to pay for the Katrina work?"

FEMA, Slow to the Rescue, Now Stumbles in Aid Effort

via New York Times: "BATON ROUGE, La., Sept 16 - Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina cut its devastating path, FEMA - the same federal agency that botched the rescue mission - is faltering in its effort to aid hundreds of thousands of storm victims, local officials, evacuees and top federal relief officials say. The federal aid hot line mentioned by President Bush in his address to the nation on Thursday cannot handle the flood of calls, leaving thousands of people unable to get through for help, day after day."

In Roberts Hearing, Specter Assails Court

Roberts declines to comment on Rehnquist the activist jurist via New York Times: "Senator Specter took particular exception to the court's conclusion in several of the cases that Congress had not compiled an adequate record showing the existence of the problems the statutes sought to solve.

He said that leading up to the passage of the Violence Against Women Act, for example, 'there were reports on gender bias from the task forces in 21 states, and eight separate reports issued by Congress and its committees over a long period.'

In United States v. Morrison, the court's decision in 2000 that overturned the private-lawsuit portion of the statute, Chief Justice Rehnquist said that 'Congress's findings were weakened by the fact that they rely so heavily on a method of reasoning that we have already rejected,' namely that various instances of violence against women could be added together to demonstrate an impact on the nation's economy sufficient to bring the subject within Congress's authority over interstate commerce.

Turning to Judge Roberts, nominated to succeed the late chief justice, Senator Specter said, 'Do we have your commitment that you won't characterize your 'method of reasoning' as superior to ours?' The nominee demurred and, in fact, was so cautiously nonresponsive as to leave the senator to continue with what amounted to a monologue.
* * *
Senator Specter's reference was to a dissenting opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia in a decision last year, Tennessee v. Lane, which permitted states to be sued under the Americans With Disabilities Act for failing to provide accessible courtrooms. On the surface, at least, the decision conflicted with a 2001 ruling, Board of Trustees v. Garrett, which gave states immunity from lawsuits by their employees under the same law.

Justice Scalia, who had joined the majority in the 2001 case, said the conflicting results showed the "judicial arbitrariness" of the court's approach. "It casts this court in the role of Congress's taskmaster," he said.

Justice Scalia objected to the requirement the court has placed on Congress to show that its legislative approaches are "congruent" with, and "proportionate" to, the problem it is seeking to address.

Mr. Specter asked Judge Roberts: "Isn't this 'congruence and proportionality' test, which comes out of thin air, a classic example of judicial activism? Isn't that the very essence of what is in the eye of the beholder, where the court takes carte blanche to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional?"

Judge Roberts started to reply that in its two most recent cases in this series, the Lane case from Tennessee and another case, Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, the court had shifted gears and rejected constitutional challenges to the laws in question. The Hibbs case, from 2003, allowed suits against states under the Family and Medical Leave Act.

But no sooner had Judge Roberts started to explain "Lane and Hibbs," than Senator Specter cut him off: "But Judge Roberts, they uphold it at the pleasure of the court. Congress can't figure that out. There's no way we can tell what's congruent and proportional in the eyes of the court."

Power For Colonial Pipeline Co., Not For Hospitals

via Hattiesburg American: "Shortly after Hurricane Katrina roared through South Mississippi knocking out electricity and communication systems, the White House ordered power restored to a pipeline that sends fuel to the Northeast.
* * *
"I considered it a presidential directive to get those pipelines operating," said Jim Compton, general manager of the South Mississippi Electric Power Association - which distributes power that rural electric cooperatives sell to consumers and businesses.

"I reluctantly agreed to pull half our transmission line crews off other projects and made getting the transmission lines to the Collins substations a priority," Compton said. "Our people were told to work until it was done.
* * *
Dan Jordan, manager of Southern Pines Electric Power Association, said Vice President Dick Cheney's office called and left voice mails twice shortly after the storm struck, saying the Collins substations needed power restored immediately.

Jordan dated the first call the night of Aug. 30 and the second call the morning of Aug. 31. Southern Pines supplies electricity to the substation that powers the Colonial pipeline.

Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Mike Callahan said the U.S. Department of Energy called him on Aug. 31. Callahan said department officials said opening the fuel line was a national priority.
* * *
Compton said workers who were trying to restore substations that power two rural hospitals - Stone County Hospital in Wiggins and George County Hospital in Lucedale - worked instead on the Colonial Pipeline project.

The move caused power to be restored at least 24 hours later than planned.

Gulfport Status

via steve gilliard blog: "We never found a resident who had ever seen even one FEMA official. No one had been able to successfully complete "Registration Intake" via the toll-free number. Most people we met still didn't have electricity or phone service. We finally heard of one man who got through to FEMA -- at 2:30 a.m. But when asked for insurance information he didn't have and didn't know how he could get since he'd lost everything and had no place else to turn, he just broke down and cried. The bureaucracy was killing him.

It's no wonder. The Sept. 11 Clarion-Ledger, Jackson's local paper, reported that U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering (R) had said FEMA needs 10,000 operators to properly staff the phones, but Homeland Security regulations require employees to pass security clearance, typically a months-long process. The paper quotes Pickering as concluding, "In other words, the phone line is useless."

How Bush Blew It

Evan Thomas via MSNBC.com: "How this could be—how the president of the United States could have even less 'situational awareness,' as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century—is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace.

President George W. Bush has always trusted his gut. He prides himself in ignoring the distracting chatter, the caterwauling of the media elites, the Washington political buzz machine. He has boasted that he doesn't read the papers. His doggedness is often admirable. It is easy for presidents to overreact to the noise around them.

But it is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him. Bush can ask tough questions, but it's mostly a one-way street. Most presidents keep a devil's advocate around. Lyndon Johnson had George Ball on Vietnam; President Ronald Reagan and Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, grudgingly listened to the arguments of Budget Director Richard Darman, who told them what they didn't wish to hear: that they would have to raise taxes. When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up to the job and that the military, the only institution with the resources to cope, couldn't act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority.
* * *
Bad news rarely flows up in bureaucracies. For most of those first few days, Bush was hearing what a good job the Feds were doing. Bush likes "metrics," numbers to measure performance, so the bureaucrats gave him reassuring statistics. At a press availability on Wednesday, Bush duly rattled them off: there were 400 trucks transporting 5.4 million meals and 13.4 million liters of water along with 3.4 million pounds of ice. Yet it was obvious to anyone watching TV that New Orleans had turned into a Third World hellhole.

The denial and the frustration finally collided aboard Air Force One on Friday. As the president's plane sat on the tarmac at New Orleans airport, a confrontation occurred that was described by one participant as "as blunt as you can get without the Secret Service getting involved." Governor Blanco was there, along with various congressmen and senators and Mayor Nagin (who took advantage of the opportunity to take a shower aboard the plane). One by one, the lawmakers listed their grievances as Bush listened. Rep. Bobby Jindal, whose district encompasses New Orleans, told of a sheriff who had called FEMA for assistance. According to Jindal, the sheriff was told to e-mail his request, "and the guy was sitting in a district underwater and with no electricity," Jindal said, incredulously. "How does that make any sense?" Jindal later told NEWSWEEK that "almost everybody" around the conference table had a similar story about how the federal response "just wasn't working." With each tale, "the president just shook his head, as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing," says Jindal, a conservative Republican and Bush appointee who lost a close race to Blanco. Repeatedly, the president turned to his aides and said, "Fix it."
* * *
Late last week, Bush was, by some accounts, down and angry. But another Bush aide described the atmosphere inside the White House as "strangely surreal and almost detached." At one meeting described by this insider, officials were oddly self-congratulatory, perhaps in an effort to buck each other up. Life inside a bunker can be strange, especially in defeat.

A Fatal Incuriosity

Dowd via NYT: "How many places will be in shambles by the time the Bush crew leaves office?

Given that the Bush team has dealt with both gulf crises, Iraq and Katrina, with the same deadly mixture of arrogance and incompetence, and a refusal to face reality, it's frightening to think how it will handle the most demanding act of government domestic investment since the New Deal.

Even though we know W. likes to be in his bubble with his feather pillow, the stories this week are breathtaking about the lengths the White House staff had to go to in order to capture Incurious George's attention.

Newsweek reported that the reality of Katrina did not sink in for the president until days after the levees broke, turning New Orleans into a watery grave. It took a virtual intervention of his top aides to make W. watch the news about the worst natural disaster in a century. Dan Bartlett made a DVD of newscasts on the hurricane to show the president on Friday morning as he flew down to the Gulf Coast.

The aides were scared to tell the isolated president that he should cut short his vacation by a couple of days, Newsweek said, because he can be 'cold and snappish in private.' Mike Allen wrote in Time about one 'youngish aide' who was so terrified about telling Mr. Bush he was wrong about something during the first term, he 'had dry heaves' afterward."