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Bush Administration Taken to Task for Allowing Loaded Guns into National Parks
Posted by Satyam Khanna, Think Progress on December 31, 2008 at 8:14 AM.

Earlier this month, the Department of Interior overturned a Reagan-era regulation, allowing loaded firearms at most national park sites such as the National Mall. Yesterday, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence sued the administration, saying the rule "jeopardizes the safety of park visitors in violation of federal law." The release notes that the White House violated their own directive:

The suit charges that the Interior Department violated several federal laws in its rush to implement the rule before President Bush leaves office, including failing to conduct any environmental review of the harm that the rule will cause, as is required by the National Environmental Policy Act. The Department also violated a White House directive that no rules should be issued after November 1, 2008, except in "extraordinary circumstances," issuing the last-minute rule change on December 10, 2008.

The Bush administration also violated its own directive in November with a last-minute rule gutting worker protections.

Alberto Gonzales Considers Himself a 'Casualty of the War on Terror'
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 31, 2008 at 8:00 AM.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales left office in disgrace 16 months ago, and has kept a low profile since. His reputation has not improved in the interim -- Gonzales has struggled to find a law firm willing to hire him -- but at least he hasn't said or done anything ridiculous since his departure from public life.

Gonzales, however, is apparently interested in some kind of comeback. The former A.G. is writing a book about his tenure in the Bush administration and chatted with the Wall Street Journal about how mean everyone has been to him.

"What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?" he said during an interview Tuesday, offering his most extensive comments since leaving government.

 

During a lunch meeting two blocks from the White House, where he served under his longtime friend, President George W. Bush, Mr. Gonzales said that "for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror."

Is Gonzales really that confused about what he did that was "so fundamentally wrong"? I suppose he proved during multiple congressional hearings that his memory is similar to that of someone who's suffered serious head trauma, but Gonzales' list of scandals is hard to forget.

Just off the top of my head, there was the U.S. Attorney purge scandal, Gonzales signing torture memos, his conduct in John Ashcroft's hospital room, his oversight of a Justice Department that was engaged in widespread employment discrimination, and his gutting of the DoJ's Civil Rights Division. Gonzales was even investigated by the department's Inspector General on allegations of perjury and obstruction.

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Political Circus: Is There a Method to Blago's Madness?
Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo on December 31, 2008 at 7:53 AM.

You have to give Blagojevich credit --- he knows how to make politics interesting. This latest gambit is a real pip. But there is some method to his madness, I think. He's trying to divide the Democrats both in Illinois and Washington and he did it using a powerful tool.

Michael Tomasky lays it out:

Then Bobby Rush showed up. The south side congressman -- the only man ever to defeat Barack Obama in an election -- introduced the racial angle and dramatically raised the stakes.

It must be said that Rush made an entirely fair point. In 2004, when they elected Obama, the voters of Illinois chose an African American senator. And so, in determining who should fill out his term, it's reasonable that race count as a factor. He pointed to Illinois' recent history as the only state that's elected two black senators (Obama and Carol Moseley Braun), arguing that the state has a history on this score that's unique. That's all fair.

But Rush wasn't pleading. He was warning. He was daring Reid and the other senators to deny this black man the seat. I couldn't quite believe my ears when he used the word "lynch," but sure enough he did: he urged the members of the media "not to hang or lynch the appointee as you castigate the appointor." He went on to say that he and his congressional allies would push Reid to reverse his position and said of the prospect of a bunch of white senators denying Burris the seat: "I don't think they wanna go on record doing that."

I covered lots of racial-politics conflagrations in New York in the very racially heated 1980s and 1990s, and I've heard rhetoric like Rush's before, and I've seen its effects. When a black figure issues a public challenge like this, including one of the most heavily freighted dog-whistle words in American political history, to a white politician, sides start to line up. Tempers start to inflame. Whether the white pol stands firm or assents, somebody is going to be really, really unhappy.

Reid is in a spot. There's a chance that is is going to be on black radio all over the country tomorrow morning, and if it is, it's going to have nothing to do with Blago on those stations. It'll have to do with whether the white Democratic leaders of the Senate, "who take our vote for granted in November," etc., will spurn this obviously qualified black man.

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Gaza Update: No Truce
Posted by Siun , Firedoglake on December 31, 2008 at 7:21 AM.

Latest reports indicate that Israel has rejected the French call for a 48 hour truce to allow humanitarian supplies to enter Gaza but may consider other cease fire options later. While there were fewer Israeli air strikes overnight- in part due to bad weather, more details of civilian casualties in Gaza are appearing:

On the fourth day of airstrikes in Gaza Tuesday, one of Israel's many targets was a Hamas military commander's home within the teeming Jabaliya refugee camp. He wasn't there, but seven civilians died as a result of that attack...

Israelis claim the high ground by arguing that even though they fight terrorists who deliberately target civilians, they try to uphold a spirit of "purity of arms" by avoiding civilian casualties as much as possible.

Critics counter that by putting Palestinian towns under blockade and going after militants in civilian areas, Israel makes noncombantants targets.

For Ziad Koraz, whose nearby home was damaged in the attack on the government compound Tuesday, that violence gratuitously puts Gazan civilians at risk, the Associated Press reported.

"More than 17 missiles were directed at an empty government compound, without regard for civilians who lived nearby," Mr. Koraz said. "If someone committed a crime, they should go after him, not after an entire nation."

Sunday, we had Time magazine’s reports of Israelis gathering to watch and cheer the air strikes on Gaza. Today we learn of more:

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Conservatives Preparing for Franken Victory
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on December 31, 2008 at 6:40 AM.

As the window closes on Norm Coleman's chances for retaining his seat in the Senate, some conservatives are beginning to envision life without the Minnesota Republican.

In a filing on the conservative website, NewsMax.com, author David A. Patten looked at the numbers and saw in them a Coleman-less Senate.

The counting of improperly rejected absentee ballots will probably increase Democratic challenger Al Franken's lead over incumbent GOP Sen. Norm Coleman according to a new analysis of voting trends, effectively relegating Coleman to filing lawsuits considered unlikely to reverse the outcome of the election.

Others on the right are not ready to accept defeat. National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair John Cornyn released a statement on Tuesday indicating that some GOP senators would resist seating Franken before the courts have their say, even if the Democratic challenger is declared the winner of the recount. "I expect the Senate would have a problem seating a candidate who has not duly won an election," Cornyn claimed.

In private, meanwhile, GOP officials have begun to contemplate Al Franken -- whose lead stands at a scant 50 votes and with largely favorable absentee ballots left to count -- ending up in Washington D.C.

By and large, such discussion has not surfaced in public. Coleman's hopes hinge on uncovering enough wrongfully rejected absentee ballots to overcome his current deficit but also the possibility of legally challenging the results.

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Updated: Blagojevich Appoints Roland Burris as Obama's Senate Successor
Posted by Satyam Khanna, Think Progress on December 30, 2008 at 3:22 PM.

Update:

Update: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., views Roland Burris as "unacceptable," an aide told Politico.

Update: Progress Illinois notes that when news broke of Gov. Rod Blagojevich's improprieties, Burris condemned the governor's actions as "pretty appalling" and "just reprehensible."

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Republicans Say the 'Magic Negro' Song Is Good for Chip Saltsman?!?
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 30, 2008 at 8:54 AM.

Josh Marshall noted last night, "I think I have this right: The Republican Party has decided on the racial joke issue as the vehicle to reintroduce themselves to the American people after the 2008 blowout."

It may sound odd, but that's the situation we're dealing with after Chip Saltsman, a candidate for chairman of the Republican National Committee, decided to distribute a CD containing "Barack the Magic Negro" as a Christmas greeting to members of the RNC. After Saltsman drew criticism from Mike Duncan and Saul Anuzis, both rivals for the chairmanship, I predicted that Saltsman would likely see conservatives "rally around him, protecting him from those who 'can't take a joke.' "

And with that in mind, the Politico's Andy Barr reports today that the "Magic Negro" flap may have "inadvertently helped" Saltsman's RNC candidacy, with some RNC officials "rallying around" around him.

Alabama Republican committeeman Paul Reynolds said the fact the Saltsman sent him a CD with the song on it "didn't bother me one bit."

 

"Chip probably could have thought it through a bit more, but he was doing everyone a favor by giving us a gift," he said. "This is just people looking for something to make an issue of."

"I don't think he intended it as any kind of racial slur. I think he intended it as a humor gift," Oklahoma GOP committeewoman Carolyn McClarty added. "I think it was innocently done by Chip."

Indeed, taking this to the next logical step, some RNC members are saying that Duncan and Anuzis may have hurt themselves by criticizing Saltsman's judgment. One RNC member told the Politico, "Those are two guys who just eliminated themselves from this race for jumping all over Chip on this. Mike Duncan is a nice guy, but he screwed up big time by pandering to the national press on this." Several more have "expressed anger toward Duncan and Anuzis 'for throwing a good Republican under the bus.' "

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Shocking: "Keep Your Legs Crossed, Sluts" Sex-Ed Strategy Fails
Posted by Jill Filipovic, Feministe on December 30, 2008 at 8:41 AM.

Shockingly, the "Keep your legs crossed, sluts!" sex-ed strategy is an epic failure.

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.

I suppose abstinence-only education has one thing going for it: It threatens that sex will bring disease and unwanted pregnancy, and for abstinence-pledgers, that threat is more likely to be realized.

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Former Powell Aide: Bush Was 'Sarah Palin-Like' in His Knowledge of Foreign Policy
Posted by Satyam Khanna, Think Progress on December 30, 2008 at 8:23 AM.

In an interview with Vanity Fair for its upcoming issue on the Bush White House, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, ripped President Bush, saying that after the 2000 election, Bush's knowledge of foreign affairs was as poor as that of Republican Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin:

We had this confluence of characters -- and I use that term very carefully -- that included people like Powell, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, and so forth, which allowed one perception to be "the dream team." It allowed everybody to believe that this Sarah Palin-like president -- because, let's face it, that's what he was -- was going to be protected by this national security elite, tested in the cauldrons of fire.

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Coleman Threatens to Derail Recount, Secretary of State Expects Resolution
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on December 30, 2008 at 6:35 AM.

Entering the final stages of the Minnesota recount process, Sen. Norm Coleman has made some dramatic moves meant to improve his long-shot chances. In the process, the Republican Senator is threatening the conclusion of the election.

On Monday, the Minnesota Republican identified a scant 136 wrongfully rejected absentee ballots (out of 1,346) that he wanted to be counted in the final tally. In addition, Coleman proposed to add 700 contested absentee ballots for review (Al Franken proposed adding 85), suggesting that he is more interested in reclaiming the lead rather than operating in good faith. Since resolution of the absentee-ballot issue is dependent on both campaigns and local officials agreeing on which votes should be reconsidered, Coleman's actions threaten to derail the delicate path on which the recount process had set.

As the Associated Press reported on Monday, "Coleman's proposed additions skew heavily toward suburban and rural counties, where he did best in the election."

And yet, as suspicious as the moves seem on the surface, local officials kept a calm veneer. Reached by phone, Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie tried to assuage concerns that Coleman's actions would endanger any short-term consensus on a Senate winner. Stating, simply, that he expected both campaigns to be "amenable" during this stage of the recount, Ritchie described the Coleman campaign's move on Monday as just another step in a meticulous process of declaring a final vote official.

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Demand That Obama Go After BushCo's 'Gravest Crimes'
Posted by Ari Melber, TheNation.com on December 30, 2008 at 6:10 AM.

The Obama transition team is taking questions again at Change.gov, throwing open the site this week for citizen input. The first run of this experiment was a mixed bag. The platform was open and transparent, but the official answers felt more like old boilerplate than new responses. When the submitted questions parrot topics in the traditional media, of course, the exchange can feel like a dated press conference. But here's a vital question that few reporters have ever presented to Obama:

Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor (ideally Patrick Fitzgerald) to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?

That question ranked sixth in voting last time -- out of over 10,000 submissions -- but the transition team only answered the top five questions. Now that Vice President Cheney confessed his support for waterboarding on national television, flouting the rule of law, the issue is even more urgent. Activist Bob Fertik, who has submitted the question twice, explains how you can vote to press this issue on the transition team:

Sign in at http://change.gov/openforquestions

Search for "Fitzgerald" […and] find our question

Look right for the checkbox, mouseover it so it goes from white to dark, then click to cast your vote

While the press has fixated on the criminal allegations against Gov. Blagojevich, for some reason, the (even more serious) allegations of torture by officials in the current administration receive scant attention. I have not heard one question about this during Obama's transition press conferences, and the traveling press corps almost never pressed Obama on the issue during the general election campaign.

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Bye-Bye 2008: Things I Want to Forget
Posted by Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post on December 29, 2008 at 11:00 AM.

2008 was a very memorable year, featuring one of the most unforgettable presidential campaigns in history.

But with the new year quickly approaching, and the Bush Years coming to an end, I'd like to take a moment to focus on the things that happened over the last 12 months that I'd love to forget. Here is my list:

That Eliot Spitzer was "Client No. 9." That Eliot Spitzer likes things "you might not think are safe." The look on Silda Spitzer's face.

That Dick Cheney still doesn't believe waterboarding is torture.

The thrill going up Chris Matthew's leg.

Ashley Todd, the young college Republican who claimed an Obama supporter had carved a backwards "B" into her cheek. And I would particularly like to forget that so many in the media gave so much play to Ashley's tale.

Sarah Palin's belief that there is a "real America" and "pro-America areas" of America.

The Palin Catch-Phrase Collection: "Palling around with terrorists," "Team of mavericks," "Just a hockey mom," "I put it on eBay," "Thanks, but no thanks," "You betcha."

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Gaza Update: 'Closed Military Zone'
Posted by Siun , Firedoglake on December 29, 2008 at 10:31 AM.

Overnight, the BBC is reporting that Israel has declared the region around Gaza "a closed military zone," which is seen as sign that a ground invasion is about to begin (no link available yet). The Gaza death toll (at 1:25 p.m. PST) is 307, there are unconfirmed reports that captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was among those wounded by the Israeli attack on Gaza, and the Israeli navy has now joined the attack.

The Israeli air force is apparently very happy with the performance of a "new bunker-buster missile that it received recently from the United States" (Israel ordered 1,000  GBU-39 in September) and while "Col. Moshe Levy was interviewed by several Arab news outlets during which he stressed that Israel was not against the Palestinian public in Gaza but was operating against Hamas":

Defense officials said Sunday that Israel would, however, not hesitate to target the homes of civilians who protected Hamas terrorists throughout the operation.

While sorting through Gaza news last night, I ran across three essays worth reading. Two were published today in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, the last one, by Nir Rosen, appeared in the Guardian.

In the first, Amira Hass explains that the Gaza strike is not against Hamas, it's against all Palestinians:

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Campaign Round-Up: Franken To Be Seated? Blago Out By February? Jeb Will Run?
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 29, 2008 at 10:17 AM.

MONDAY'S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP....Today's installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn't generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers.

• In the wake of last week's Minnesota Supreme Court ruling, lawyers for Sen. Norm Coleman's, R-Minn., campaign are threatening a new lawsuit to prevent the state from certifying election results that would make Al Franken the winner.
• Could Franken be seated before his victory is certified? The state's other senator, Democrat Amy Klobuchar, is working on it.
• While the race for the RNC chairmanship heats up, committee members have called for an unprecedented special meeting, working outside the dictates of the national party's leadership.
• It looks like former Republican Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is moving closer to launching a Senate campaign.

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Satire: Bush Calls on Palestinians to 'Just Die Already'
Posted by Arun Gupta, AlterNet on December 29, 2008 at 5:00 AM.

Responding to the dramatic escalation of violence in the Middle East, President Bush said that the Palestinians' refusal to "just die already" was "the root cause of the crisis."

Talking to reporters at the White House, Bush said: "See, the Israelis are just retaliating against the Palestinians' continued existence, but it's very inefficient. I mean, the Israelis have killed less than 300 Palestinians in two days of bombing Gaza. All those bombs and missiles cost a lot of money, and it's barely making a dent in the population."

The president added, "It would help the peace process significantly if Palestinians throughout the region were to all quit living, such as by stopping eating and drinking completely. We think the conflict could be ended in mere weeks."

Israeli government spokesmen endorsed the White House's new peace initiative in principle, but questioned whether it was the most effective method.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel was prepared to "provide durable plastic bags to every Palestinian with instructions in Arabic how to seal it tightly over their heads so they would suffocate in mere minutes, rather than the much slower process of starvation."

Barak cautioned that the Israeli government could not pay for such an ambitious program on its own and was preparing to submit an emergency request to the U.S. Congress for more than a billion dollars to fund the plan.

According to White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, Bush was "studying the Israeli proposal seriously."

When asked about the Palestinian reaction, Perino said the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority had responded "enthusiastically" to the idea, and forwarded its own proposal of Palestinians marching "en masse into the Dead Sea to drown immediately."

Perino said, "We are pleased that our friends in the Palestinian Authority are ready to stand with the West and Israel against terrorism and act in the best interests of peace by committing mass suicide, but now is not the time to bog down the process with competing proposals.

"Having millions of decomposing corpses floating in the Dead Sea, while poetic, would require a lengthy environmental review that would mean an unacceptable delay in the plan. The president emphasizes that he is committed to a quick resolution of the conflict, but one that minimizes the costs for all parties involved. President Bush feels starvation is the best solution because it would allow maggots, dogs, vultures and other scavengers of carrion to consume the dead in a timely and thorough manner."

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Cheney: 'I Don’t Have Any Idea' Why People Don't Like Me
Posted by Faiz Shakir, Think Progress on December 29, 2008 at 4:19 AM.

Only 29 percent of Americans approve of the job Dick Cheney is doing as vice president. In an interview with his hometown Wyoming newspaper, the Caspar Star-Tribune, Cheney expressed his bewilderment over his low approval numbers:

QUESTION: How do you explain your low approval rating?

CHENEY: I don't have any idea. I don't follow the polls.

My experience has been over the years that if you govern based upon poll numbers, upon trying to improve your overall poll ratings, people I've encountered who do that are people who won't make tough decisions. And the job the president has, and those who advise him, is to make those basic fundamental decisions for the nation that nobody else is authorized or able to make.

In addition to his well-documented abuse of power and disregard for the rule of law, Cheney's public disapproval ratings might be explained in part by his own personal disregard for the public. When told that two-thirds of Americans disapproved of the Iraq war, Cheney responded "so?" adding that he didn't care what the American people thought.

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Inside Gaza: A Living Hell
Posted by Sami Abdel-Shafi, Independent UK on December 28, 2008 at 8:00 AM.

I am safe, and yet I feel like a walking dead person. Everything around me shows it. It is hard to write something of any coherence while exposed to cold winter air and to the smell that lingers after the detonation of Israeli bombs. They must have been massive. During the bombing I opened all the windows around my apartment to avoid them imploding as a result of the vacuum shocks sweeping through Gaza City after each enormous bang. While the bombing continued, I jumped down two flights of stairs to my father's house, to make sure he was OK. Should I open up all his windows too? That would expose the old man to the risk of illness. We have no medical care or medication. However, the risk from shattering glass was greater, so I opened them all.

Mobile phones did not work, because of electricity outages and the flood of attempted calls. I flipped the electricity generator on so that we could watch the news. We wanted to understand what was going on in our own neighborhood. However, this was impossible. Israeli surveillance drones flew overhead, scrambling the reception. All I could do was step outside, where I found crowds of frantic people, lines of rising smoke and the smell of charred buildings and bodies that lay around targeted sites nearby. Somebody said the bombs had been launched in parallel raids over the entire Gaza Strip. What was the target here? Perhaps a police station about 200 meters away. Other bombs annihilated blocks less than a kilometer away, where one of the main police training centers stood. When the strikes began, a graduation ceremony for more than 100 recruits in a civil law enforcement program was under way. These were the young men trained to organize traffic, instil civil safety and maintain law and order. Many of them were killed, it is said, in addition to the Gaza Strip's police chief.

News came by word of mouth. There had been more than 150 deaths and more than 200 people were injured or missing under rubble after the first two hours of bombing. Israel had said it would continue the offensive and deepen it if necessary. Likewise, it was said that Hamas had launched more rockets at southern Israeli towns, causing one death and four injuries. Gaza had never seen anything like the numbers of dead bodies lying on its streets. Hospital morgues were already full. The dead were piled on top of each other outside.

Bombs targeting a Hamas security force building badly damaged an adjacent school, and several children were injured. We heard of many other targets around the Gaza Strip. It reminds me of the "shock and awe" campaign the Allies launched over Baghdad in 2003. But shock and awe did not bring stability or peace.

These bombs were launched by Israel, as we had known they would be. The world watched the situation simmer then boil over, but did nothing. There are some who believe that hell is divided into different classes. The ordinary people of Gaza have long been caught in the tormenting underworld. Now, if the world does not heed what has happened here, our situation will worsen. We will be trapped in the first class of hell.

This Week in God: Pat Robertson Turns on Bush, NYT Lies About Church Numbers, and More
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 28, 2008 at 4:52 AM.

First up from the God Machine this week is the question of whether more Americans are attending worship services in light of the economic crisis.

The New York Times recently ran a front-page piece, and concluded that there's a definite trend -- as the recession has worsened, attendance at houses of worship has increased. The Times based this conclusion on a "spot check of large Roman Catholic parishes and mainline Protestant churches around the nation," and reported that since September, "[P]astors nationwide say they have seen such a burst of new interest that they find themselves contending with powerful conflicting emotions -- deep empathy and quiet excitement -- as they re-encounter an old piece of religious lore: Bad times are good for evangelical churches."

Is this true? Slate's Jack Shafer dug a little deeper and has his doubts.

Has today's freshly cratered economy already given bloom to increased church attendance? No, Gallup's editor in chief, Frank Newport, writes in a Dec. 17 Web posting in reaction to the Times story. He asserts that "a review of almost 300,000 interviews conducted by Gallup so far in 2008 shows no evidence that church attendance in America has been increasing late this year as a result of bad economic times."

 

About 42 percent of Americans polled by Gallup in September, October, November and into December said that they had attended church weekly or almost every week, a number unchanged from earlier in the year. Newport also stated these findings in a letter to the Times that the paper published on Dec. 20. Newport allows in his Times letter that attendance may have increased at selected evangelical churches but that such an increase would be too limited to register nationally.

Ordinarily, when the Times traffics in a trend story, it indemnifies itself by quoting a skeptic on the other side of the issue or it tosses off a "to be sure" paragraph noting the weakness of its anecdotal evidence. Not here. Given this leap of faith, let's hope the Times isn't looking into the existence of Santa Claus. Imagine the headline: "Despite Naysayers, Hundreds of Millions Believe in St. Nick."

Also from the God Machine this week:

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Bob Corker's 'Screw the Seniors' Plan
Posted by Emptywheel, Firedoglake on December 28, 2008 at 4:51 AM.

Journalists are now figuring out something we've been pointing out for some time: Bob Corker's "plan" to "fix" the auto industry is not so much a plan to fix anything, but a plan to screw retirees.

Retirement health care for as many as three-quarters-of-a-million Americans will be placed at high risk if conditions proposed as part of auto rescue loans are enforced by the incoming Congress and Obama administration, labor experts say.

At issue is a condition of the federal loans that calls for General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC to use company stock, or the equivalent, to pay half, or $10.5 billion, of the cash owed to a union retiree health care trust.

Because of my temperamental Toobz connection, I'll let you click through to read the rest.

But note several things that still aren't noted in the story: First, Chrysler has no stock. Which would sort of make the VEBA payment in stock utterly ridiculous, if it weren't already obvious that Bush didn't give Chrysler enough to restructure, he only gave it enough so it'll go out of business on Obama's watch instead of his own (at a cost to you of $4 billion), so I guess when he said "stock," he meant that Chrysler retirees ought to consider themselves lucky if GM is forced to eat Chrysler so GM can give Chrysler $10 billion in GM stock which will be -- by then -- approximately 10 billion shares. 

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America Can't Wait for Bush to Leave
Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress on December 28, 2008 at 4:32 AM.

A new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll finds that 75 percent of Americans are glad President Bush is leaving office; just 23 percent indicated that they will miss him. CNN notes that when Clinton left office, more Americans -- 45 percent -- said they would miss him. Twenty-eight percent also believe that Bush is the worst president ever.

Hero Activist Throws a Monkey Wrench in Big Oil's Land Auction
Posted by dday, Hullabaloo on December 28, 2008 at 4:15 AM.

This activist Tim DeChristopher, who bidded up parcels of land sought by oil and gas interests for drilling is really a hero. I guess the Bureau of Land Management was all upset because an auction broke out at their nice little auction.

The process was thrown into chaos, and the bidding halted for a time before the auction was closed, with 116 parcels totaling 148,598 acres having sold for $7.2 million, plus fees.

"He's tainted the entire auction," said Kent Hoffman, deputy state director for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Utah.

Hoffman said buyers will have 10 days to reconsider and withdraw their bids if they think they paid too much.

Huh? Paid too much? If a buyer is paying millions of dollars for oil-rich land, they obviously think it's worth it. What DeChristopher did was prove that the BLM was giving away federal land, basically owned by the taxpayers, to noncompetitive interests at obscenely low rates, and that the bidders would clearly pay more if forced. I thought these capitalists believed in the free market?

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The Attacks on Gaza: Orwell in Israel
Posted by Ian Welsh, Firedoglake on December 27, 2008 at 2:17 PM.

This beauty from Tzipi Livni is completely Orwellian:

The government ordered the strikes on Hamas only after it saw no other way to stop rocket attacks on its southern towns, she said.

I can imagine no scenario under which bombing Hamas will stop rocket attacks. In particular, these attacks were aimed at the security forces, killing the police chief and the security chief and 140 Hamas security forces.

Now, who do you think enforced the truce? Who is it that Hamas uses to make sure rockets only get launched when Hamas wants them to? That would be ... the police and the security forces.

Bombing Hamas is not going to stop the attacks, if anything it will increase them. But Israel has degraded Hamas' ability to control the various folks who launch the missiles (many of whom are not Hamas).

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RNC Head Slams Rival Over Racist Obama Song
Posted by Nicholas Graham, Huffington Post on December 27, 2008 at 1:58 PM.

Click here to hear the offensive song and get caught up on this story.

Reaction on the right to Chip Saltsman's distribution of a song called "Barack the Magic Negro" in his quest to become the new chairman of the RNC has been mixed. One of Saltsman's rivals in the race for the RNC chair, Ken Blackwell, an African American, has defended Saltsman, dismissing the criticism as "hypersensitivity in the press":

"Unfortunately, there is hypersensitivity in the press regarding matters of race. This is in large measure due to President-elect Obama being the first African American elected president," Blackwell, who would be the first black RNC chairman, said in a statement forwarded to Politico by an aide. "I don't think any of the concerns that have been expressed in the media about any of the other candidates for RNC chairman should disqualify them. When looked at in the proper context, these concerns are minimal. All of my competitors for this leadership post are fine people."

However, current RNC chairmanMike Duncan has issued a statement saying he is "shocked and appalled" that Saltsman could have thought this was funny or appropriate in any way:

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Israel Launches 'Massive Attack' on Gaza
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 27, 2008 at 8:44 AM.

On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned Hamas that its recent attacks in the Gaza Strip hand to end. "I am telling them now, it may be the last minute, I'm telling them stop it," Olmert said. "We are stronger." Though no Israelis were killed, on Wednesday alone, Hamas fired more than 60 rockets and mortars, hitting houses and factories.

Olmert followed through on his warnings this morning.

The Israeli Air Force on Saturday launched a massive attack on Hamas targets throughout Gaza in retaliation for the recent heavy rocket fire from the area, hitting mostly security headquarters, training compounds and weapons storage facilities, the Israeli military and witnesses said.

Dr. Muawiya Hassanein, the head of emergency services at the Gaza Ministry of Health, said at least 140 Palestinians were killed in the raid.

Most were members of the security forces of Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, but a few civilians were also among the dead, including children. Scores more Palestinians were wounded.

There had been a six-month truce between Israel and Hamas, which expired on Dec. 19. Hamas renewed its rocket fire, and Israel retaliated today.

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RNC Chair Candidate Distributes 'Barack the Magic Negro' as His Christmas Greeting
Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress on December 27, 2008 at 7:26 AM.

Last year, Rush Limbaugh came under intense criticism for repeatedly airing a parody song called "Barack the Magic Negro" by conservative satirist Paul Shanklin. The song, which dealt with Obama's popularity amongst white voters, was widely attacked as being racist. Doing an Al Sharpton impersonation, Shanklin sings the song to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon." Limbaugh, however, tried to defend it as "creative" and "funny." Listen to the song here:

The Hill reports that for his Christmas greeting this year, RNC chair candidate Chip Saltsman sent out a CD of the "Barack the Magic Negro" song. Saltsman's Christmas message:

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Bernard Madoff Benefited From That Timeless Classic: The Old Boys Club
Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo on December 27, 2008 at 5:52 AM.

Dean Baker wrote an interesting piece this week about the fact that the only two regulators over the past decade who actually did their jobs were women. He speculates that it was because they weren't members of the boys club.

He uses Bernard Madoff's scheme as an example:

If we needed any further evidence that the financial industry suffered from too much deference to insiders, Bernard Madoff filled the gap. He apparently ran a simple-minded Ponzi scheme for 30 years, stealing tens of billions of dollars from wealthy individuals, private charities and even large banks.

When some investors and reporters raised suspicions about Mr. Madoff, no one bothered to seriously investigate because he was such a good guy. After all, he belonged to all the right clubs, generously supported charities and was even a founder of the Nasdaq.

The regulators don't investigate respectable people like Madoff, and this is precisely the problem.

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Trying to Read the Tea Leaves: A Look at Filling Clinton's NY Senate Seat
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on December 27, 2008 at 4:14 AM.

Gov. David Paterson, the keyholder to the coveted Senate seat in New York, returned on Christmas Eve from a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan with a potential filler of that vacancy.

Rep. Steve Israel accompanied Paterson and fellow Rep. Anthony Weiner at a press conference in the halls of LaGuardia Airport on Wednesday. The topic was the trio's trip to the two war zones -- an educational and important venture, Paterson said, that was appropriate for the holiday season.

But Israel's three-day-long private audience with the governor has spurred speculation that he could eventually be asked to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate. As has news that the Long Island congressman hired a former Clinton aide to assist him in winning Paterson's support.

The Senate vacancy was addressed during the question-and-answer session in the airport terminal, much to Paterson's chagrin. The governor insisted that he and Israel did not talk about the seat while on the trip.

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Springsteen Snubs Unions? New CD Sold Exclusively at Wal-Mart
Posted by Lisa Derrick, Firedoglake on December 26, 2008 at 4:28 PM.

I thought Bruce Springsteen was pro-labor. Then I read that The Boss' Greatest Hits will be released exclusively by Wal-Mart. Okay, its only his greatest hits, which you can download anyway song by song if you have the patience. But still, wtf?

Some of my illusions about Springsteen were destroyed at a concert in the mid-80s when an usher told me that every night he pulled a girl out of the audience at exactly the same time for "Dancing In the Dark"--naive me, I thought that was like, spontaneous.

Could Springsteen's exclusive release be a reward for Wal-Mart's attempts at reform? Okay, the mega-retailer has made some effort, but not from the goodness of their own heart. They were forced.

In May, 2008 the mega-employer expanded their anti-discrimination policy to included transgendered employees, a proposal made by shareholders, and opposed by the WalMart board of directors.   And today the New York Times reports:

Wal-Mart said  it would pay at least $352 million, and possibly far more, to settle lawsuits across the country claiming that it forced employees to work off the clock...In a case still pending, Wal-Mart has appealed a 2005 verdict in which a California jury ordered it to pay $172 million for making employees miss meal breaks.

 But Wal-Mart spokesman Dave Tovar told the Associated Press in August:

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The 'Bush Legacy Project' Is Failing
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 26, 2008 at 12:27 PM.

A few years ago, Chris Matthews said, on the air, that "everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs, maybe on the left." Three years later, it appears that liberal whack-jobs have somehow brainwashed the vast majority of the electorate.

A new national poll suggests that three out of four Americans feel President Bush's departure from office is coming not a moment too soon.

Seventy-five percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Friday said they're glad Bush is going; 23 percent indicated they'll miss him. [...]

CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider added, "As President Bush prepares to leave office, the American public has a parting thought: Good riddance. At least that's the way three-quarters feel."

That "Bush Legacy Project," which has been working lately on improving the president's public standing, doesn't seem to be connecting.

Now, every obviously knows that Bush is extremely unpopular, and has been for quite some time, but it's helpful to pause once in a while to appreciate just how despised this president is. We're witnessing something truly historical here.

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Naked Man Killed By Cop's Taser in Texas; UK Journalist Investigates Taser Abuse
Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo on December 26, 2008 at 11:14 AM.

Finally, someone has written a thoughtful argument against tasers in a mainstream newspaper. It's in Britain, but they are on verge of going full taser, so it's right that they should be discussing it. It's more than we ever did here in the US.

Johann Hari:

Daniel Sylvester can't forget the night the police fired 50,000 volts of electricity into his skull. The 46-year-old grandfather owns his own security business, and he was recently walking down the street when a police van screeched up to him.

He didn't know what they wanted, but obeyed when they told him to approach slowly. "I then had this incredible jolt of pain on the back of my head," he explains. The electricity made him spasm; as he fell to the ground, he felt his teeth scatter on the tarmac and his bowels open. "Then they shot me again in the head. I can't describe the pain." (Another victim says it is "like someone reached into my body to rip my muscles apart with a fork.") The police then saw he was not the person they were looking for, said he was free to go, and drove off.

This did not happen in Egypt or Saudi Arabia or any other country notorious for using electro-shock weapons. It happened in north London and, if the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has her way, it will be coming soon to a street near you. In Britain there are 3,000 police officers trained to use Tasers as part of specialised armed response units, but Smith has fired a jolt forward. She wants there to be 30,000 Taser-carrying officers, authorised to use them against unarmed citizens, including children. These "stun-guns" fire small metal darts into your skin, and through the trailing wires run an agonising electric current through your body.

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A Look Inside Bush's 'Pardongate'
Posted by Faiz Shakir, Think Progress on December 26, 2008 at 10:58 AM.

After first pardoning "a Brooklyn real estate developer accused of scamming hundreds of poor, minority homebuyers - and whose father donated $28,500 to the Republican Party this year," the Bush White House moved quickly to reverse course. Bush revoked the pardon for Isaac Toussie after the White House acknowledged that the Brooklyn housing scammer did not meet pardon guidelines.

Putting aside the fact that Bush decided it was fine to grant a pardon for a predatory mortgage lender in the midst of a recession, there were a number of other improprieties in the pardon of Toussie:

- First of all, it had been granted by Bush despite the fact that the Pardon Attorney, Ronald L. Rogers, had not given a formal recommendation for it.

- Also, Toussie had not qualified for a pardon per Justice Department guidelines because it had not yet been five years since the completion of his sentence.

- Furthermore, Toussie's pardon came after his father, Robert, made his first political donation of $28,500 to the national Republican party in April.

Perhaps the most intriguing matter is the process by which the White House decided to issue the pardon. Toussie had hired Bradford Berenson, a former top lawyer in the White House counsel's office from 2001-2003, to handle the case.

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North Carolina May Pay Reparations for Eugenics Program That Lasted Until 1975
Posted by AlterNet Staff, AlterNet on December 26, 2008 at 2:22 AM.

Associated Press:

North Carolina lawmakers pushed Thursday to offer reparations to thousands of victims of a forced sterilization program now recognized as a shameful part of U.S. history.

A state House panel recommended the state give $20,000 to victims of the eugenics program, which sterilized about 7,600 people between 1929 and 1975 who were considered to be mentally handicapped or genetically inferior. Though North Carolina and several other states have apologized for such programs, none have offered reparations.

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Plastic Surgeon Fuels Cars with Human Flab
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on December 26, 2008 at 1:00 AM.

OK, this is just bizarre:

A leading Beverly Hills plastic surgeon claims to have found an environmentally friendly way to combine two of America's great obsessions – after converting his 4x4 to run on fat removed from clients during liposuction operations.

Dr Bittner made his claim in a posting on the internet site lipodiesel.com, adding that he has performed roughly 7,000 liposuction operations, and that a gallon of human fat will produce roughly the same quantity of biofuel.

Alan Bittner, who founded a high-profile clinic on Rodeo Drive, the Bond Street of Los Angeles, claims to be able to power both his Ford Explorer and his girlfriend's Lincoln Navigator on biofuel converted from excess flesh from human tums, bums and thighs. "The vast majority of my patients request that I use their fat for fuel – and I have more fat than I can use," he says. "Not only do they get to lose their love handles or chubby belly, but they get to take part in saving the Earth."

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The Founding of the Church of Gay
Posted by AndyS in Colorado, Daily Kos on December 25, 2008 at 5:00 PM.

This will be a church and a religion with the following precepts (and ONLY the following precepts):

1.  "Sexual orientation is OK" -- to the Church of Gay, being gay (or straight, or bi, or just not interested, for that matter) is ok, and any disagreement with the above precept is sacrilege and heresy.

2.  The individual choice of marriage between any two consenting non-related adults is Holy.  Those partaking of the Act are, by definition, Holy in the eyes of the Church of Gay.

3.  Discrimination or treating societally differently any person on the grounds of sexual orientation in any manner is an abomination.

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Conservatives on the Economic Crisis: It's All Your Fault
Posted by Gavin M, Sadly, No! on December 25, 2008 at 12:37 PM.

Destroying the Village in Order to Save It

Confederate Yankee is here to explain the economy and why its collapse is the fault of you. We join this Confederate Yankee post already in progress.

[...] And so the government is going to steal $17.4 billion more from taxpayers to prolong the inevitable death of unions companies that don’t deserve to live.

For that matter, much of the manufacturing in this country doesn’t deserve to live, particularly that created with non-competitive union labor so prevalent in the Northeast and upper Midwest.

It looks like he’s gone into abandon New Orleans mode again, only this time he’s saying it was a stupid idea to build a country where a recession could get it.

[...] The simple fact of the matter is that the U.S. auto industry is not just Ford, Chrysler, and GM, but Honda, Toyota, and other “foreign” manufacturers that build cars here on the mainland United States. What separates the successful companies that aren’t asking for a bailout from the leaches grubbing for tax dollars from your already empty wallet? Greedy, bloated, self-serving and uncompetitive union labor, particularly the United Auto Workers (UAW).

Oh no, not the United Auto Workers (UAW)!

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Potential Franken Victory Sends GOP into Paranoid Fits
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on December 25, 2008 at 12:19 PM.

The possible, perhaps, impending victory of Al Franken to the Senate has sent GOP officials into a paranoid tizzy.

In an "urgent message" to supporters, the Republican National Lawyer Association accuses Franken and his "liberal allies" of "working feverishingly [sic] to steal the Minnesota Senate election."

"As you may know, the precinct recount phase of the Minnesota Senate race was won by Sen. Norm Coleman on Election Day," reads the petition, signed by the group's executive director, Michael Thielen. "But Al Franken still won't concede. Instead, Franken raised millions of dollars from liberals in New York and Hollywood to fight a "legal" battle to undo the will of the voters. He even got the Minnesota Supreme Court to order canvassing boards to consider about 1600 previously rejected and questionable ballots. Now, Republican Norm Coleman has until December 31st to fight against Franken's liberal legal team to keep his Senate seat. RNLA and Norm Coleman are fighting for every vote -- literally!"

From there, the RNLA asks readers to donate money so that it can uphold the sanctity of the Minnesota election and prevent Franken from "stealing" the Senate seat.

For those following the recount closely, the letter is filled with a variety of obvious misinterpretations and inaccuracies. For instance, the RNLA gives the impression that during the canvassing process, officials "found errors favoring Franken so incredibly statistically improbable that statisticians are questioning the officials in these counties." It's not clear which statisticians the RNLA is referring to. But a study done by a Dartmouth professor actually predicted the very gains made by Franken.

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Fox News Spins History (Again)
Posted by David Sirota, Daily Kos on December 25, 2008 at 12:00 PM.

I appeared on Fox News yesterday to discuss both the Blagojevich flap and the imminent economic recovery package from the Obama administration. You can watch the clip here. As you'll see, on that latter issue, Fox News is starting its campaign to stop Obama's big spending plan by stating - as assumed fact - that "historians pretty much agree" that Franklin Roosevelt prolonged the Great Depression, and that therefore, Obama shouldn't try another New Deal.

When I say Fox News' assertion about historians is patently false, they literally laugh at me as if I've said something so clearly untrue, something Americans supposedly assume is so obviously stupid, that it's worthy of ridicule.

The Depression issue was brought up by conservative pundit Monica Crowley - not surprising since this is the conservative talking point du jour ever since the "center-right nation" meme started looking idiotic and ever since fringe-right-wing bloviator Amity Shlaes published her since-discredited book claiming FDR essentially created the Great Depression. Crowley supported her the "FDR ruined the country" meme with the very authoritative-sounding statement that "based on all kinds of studies and academic work done on the great depression" she knows that the New Deal's "massive government intervention prolonged the Great Depression."

Of course, she doesn't offer up a single study or "academic work" as any kind of proof, and yet, when I say her assertion is absurd, Fox News anchor Greg Jarrett starts laughing at me - as if my assertion that FDR's New Deal helped end the Great Depression is so fantastical as to prompt guffawing. Jarrett proceeds to state that historians "pretty much agree" that FDR prolonged the Great Depression, and resorts to insisting that he knows that's true because "it's in the books" - whatever the hell that means. Indeed, Fox wants us to believe that what was only very recently the deranged propaganda of a handful of conservative political pundits is now such a consensus opinion among historians that to say otherwise is to evoke laughter.

Now, it's true - back in 2004, two UCLA professors published a little-noticed report claiming the New Deal's government intervention prolonged the Great Depression. But that assertion has been subsequently eviscerated by, ya know, actual data.

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AP Shocker: Obama's a Geek!
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on December 25, 2008 at 11:26 AM.

I suppose this is among the slowest news days on the calendar, but I was still surprised to see this profound bit of reporting gracing the front page real estate of the San Francisco Chronicle this AM:

President-elect Barack Obama used to collect comic books, can't part with his BlackBerry, and once flashed Leonard "Mr. Spock" Nimoy the Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper" sign.

That and other evidence has convinced some of Obama's nerdier fans that he'll be the first American president to show distinct signs of geekiness. And that's got them as excited as a Tribble around a Klingon.

Obama is good at "repressing his inner geek, but you can tell it's there," especially when he goes into nuanced explanations of technical matters, said Benjamin Nugent, author of the book "American Nerd: The Story of My People."

"One imagines a terrifying rally of 'Star Trek' people shouting, 'One of us!'" Nugent said, in an interview conducted by e-mail, of course.

Others see only some geek qualities, qualifying the president-elect as merely "nerd-adjacent." After all, he's an athlete and kind of cool, some experts demur. Still, there's enough there for geeks to celebrate.

Psychology professor Larry Welkowitz of Keene State College in New Hampshire hopefully speculated that there's a shift in what's cool and that "smart can be in. Maybe that started with the computer programmers of the '90s."

Maybe you should shut up, nerd.

The AP helpfully offers a kind of taxonomy of spazzes for the unitinitiated:

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Most ER Personnel Say Cops Use Excessive Force
Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo on December 25, 2008 at 11:11 AM.

A bunch of readers have sent this story to me today and it fits in quite well with another than that several forwarded to me yesterday. First, we have a vast number of ER docs saying that based upon their observations of injuries, police often use excessive force: 

In a survey of a random sample of U.S. emergency physicians, virtually all said they believed that law enforcement officers use excessive force to arrest and detain suspects.

The sample included 315 respondents. While 99.8 percent believed excessive force is used, almost as many (97.8 percent) reported that they had managed cases that they suspected or that the patient stated had involved excessive use of force by law enforcement officers.

 

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Rick Warren: The Serpent Who Hates Science
Posted by Lisa Derrick, Firedoglake on December 25, 2008 at 4:41 AM.

Warren's recorded remarks about science,  available on the Saddleback's revised site, are very important for a couple reasons. Throughout his teachings, Pastor Rick reminds his followers that

The Bible commands us to remember the influence we have on an unbeliever.

  Melissa Etheridge, are you listening?

This recording shows that Warren wants his followers to be nice while evangelizing to shift the view point of the scientific community away from science and towards a New Earth fundamentalist thought process (not to say that you can't believe in God and in science). 

More importantly, this snippet demonstrates that Warren feels that he and his followers should act nicely towards non-believers, gradually bringing them around to thinking along a fundamentalist lines, to "change" their ways of thinking.

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Senator Al Franken? It's Looking That Way ...
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 25, 2008 at 3:29 AM.

The Minnesota Supreme Court may have sealed Norm Coleman's fate yesterday.

In a unanimous decision handed down just now, the state Supremes denied Coleman any relief in a lawsuit he was waging to deal with allegations of double-counted absentee ballots, which his campaign says have given an illegitimate edge to Al Franken. The Coleman campaign was seeking to switch 25 selected precincts back to their Election Night totals, which would undo all of Franken's recount gains in those areas and put Coleman back in the lead.

The court, however, sided with the Franken camp's lawyers in saying that a question like this should be reserved for a post-recount election contest proceeding, as the proper forum to discover evidence -- and which also has a burden of proof that heavily favors the certified winner.

Simply put, Coleman is in very big trouble right now. With Al Franken leading by 47 votes, this lawsuit was Coleman's best shot at coming from behind. And it just failed, making a Franken win nearly a foregone conclusion when this recount finishes up in early January.

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Does Rove Hate America? Calls Infrastructure Spending 'Goofy Pie-In-The-Sky Spending'
Posted by Ali Frick, Think Progress on December 24, 2008 at 1:17 PM.

Yesterday, a water main break in Maryland trapped a dozen commuters in their cars and sent rescuers scrambling to pull motorists from frigid floodwaters. Despite the fact that officials had been warning for years of the dangers of the crumbling pipe system, Maryland did not have the money to make the necessary repairs. As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, the water main break is a wake-up call for the need for massive infrastructure spending by the federal government.

Just hours after the water main break, however, Karl Rove belittled the idea of infrastructure spending on Fox News, calling it "goofy, pie-in-the-sky spending ideas," and agreed with host Rich Lowry that infrastructure spending doesn't "make[] any economic sense":

ROVE: What we've got to worry about some of these sort of goofy, pie-in-the-sky spending ideas in which this wisdom of the government is substituted for the wisdom of private individuals in the market, and there we have every right to question. For example, look, I'm in favor of infrastructure spending, but let's be honest about it. It's not stimulative. [...]

LOWRY: It also depends on -- just because it's an infrastructure project doesn't mean it makes any economic sense.

ROVE: Exactly.

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Coleman and Franken Make a Deal
Posted by Rachel Weiner, Huffington Post on December 24, 2008 at 9:23 AM.

Minnesota Public Radio reports that Sen. Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken have struck a deal on disputed absentee ballots in their recount.

The plan they've submitted, which must be reviewed by the Minnesota Supreme Court, would count rejected absentees only if both sides agree they were wrongly cast aside.

The proposal draws out the process past the high court's end-of-the-year deadline. It could leave Minnesota without a decision on who won the race until after the new class of Senators is sworn in on Jan. 6.

Ritchie said concluding the work in time for the new session of Congress is not something he's at all concerned about.

"We've been really clear in saying our top priority is accuracy and transparency and the timing thing is just not our issue," [Secretary of State Mark] Ritchie said. "I want to put an underline, we don't care as long as it's accurate and we've done it in an accurate and transparent way. We don't care when it's done."

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What Is Worse Than Coal in Your Stocking? Coal in Your Drinking Water
Posted by dday, Hullabaloo on December 24, 2008 at 9:16 AM.

The water main break in Montgomery County, Maryland had some compelling visuals to it, with water pouring from the ground and drivers trapped in their cars, so it received some treatment on the cable shoutcasts today. It's a good thing, too, because the rupture of a 44 year-old pipe causing this kind of chaos does show the need for infrastructure repairs, not only as part of a larger fiscal stimulus, but to avoid catastrophes and their ancillary costs, and to maintain vital services which will have tangible benefits for years to come.

But a massive coal ash spill like we saw yesterday in Tennessee - the result of a burst dam at a private coal processing plant - is actually far more dangerous with far more lasting consequences, even if the visuals aren't as stellar.



You're talking about hundreds of acres of toxic sludge, the residue plants create by burning coal to produce energy, which includes mercury, arsenic and lead, spilling into the tributaries of the Tennessee River, poisoning the water supply for multiple communities, including Chattanooga.

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Ann Coulter Loves Palin ... Displaying the Right's Problem in a Nutshell
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 24, 2008 at 8:19 AM.

The other day, my friend Ron Chusid had an item arguing that Ann Coulter's piece on Sarah Palin was clear evidence of "the wrong direction the conservative movement is moving in" and the dominance of "anti-intellectualism" on the right.

I finally read Coulter's piece, and I have to admit, it's even more inane than I expected. Coulter, heralded Palin's selection as "Conservative of the Year" and applauded the Alaska governor's role in politics. To hear Coulter tell it, Palin is a hero because she sent "the left into a tailspin of wanton despair."

Who cares if Palin was qualified to be President? She was running with John McCain! There was no chance that ticket was going to place her anywhere near the presidency. In fact, I can't think of a better place to put someone you wanted to keep away from the White House than on a ticket with McCain.

Palin was a kick in the pants, she energized conservatives, and she made liberal heads explode.

Got that? Palin is necessarily wonderful because liberals didn't like her. (That plenty of independents and Republicans found the thought of her vice presidency horrifying is irrelevant.)

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Gates Is Making it Hard for Obama to Staff the Pentagon
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on December 24, 2008 at 5:25 AM.

President-elect Barack Obama has run into some difficulty staffing the top rungs at the Department of Defense, with the expected short tenure of Secretary Robert Gates creating a problem for potential candidates, officials within the transition and in the defense community said.

The delay has created a rare speed bump in an otherwise historically fast-paced transition effort.

On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that Hillary Clinton and the president-elect had settled on two deputy secretaries of state to serve under the former first lady. Jim Steinberg, a seasoned foreign policy hand who worked in the Clinton administration and was an adviser to Obama during the general election, will presumably play the role of policy hand. Jacob Lew, Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Bill Clinton, will help secure and structure Foggy Bottom's budget.

At the Pentagon, however, officials said there has been some difficulty in staffing the deputy spot under current Secretary Gates. The problem is that Gates' time at the Pentagon is likely to be short-term, and the perception is that the deputy slot will not be a placeholder for Gates' successor, but rather a temporary slot that will turn over when Gates leaves his position.

Uncertainty about the future construct of the Pentagon is causing pause among potential deputies and undersecretaries. And the desire to offer the new Defense Secretary a clean break from the Gates tenure is persuading Obama to hold off on putting a likely future secretary in the deputy slot.

"There have been some problems," said a source close to these discussions. "Because, again, how long is Gates going to stay. It is up in the air... I think everybody feels Gates will be there about a year. And that makes it awkward. How much say will Gates have in staffing?"

"I am concerned," the source added. "I understand the reason for keeping Gates and for the need for continuity for Iraq and Afghanistan. On the other hand, I would say if he wants to sign up, he should stay for the whole tour."

The early rumor mill held that Richard Danzig, Secretary of the Navy under President Clinton, would serve as deputy under Gates. But that talk has fizzled a bit as time progressed -- suggesting that Danzig may simply take over the Pentagon once Gates goes.

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Karl Rove Gets It Wrong, Thinks Joe Biden Is Worse Than Dick Cheney
Posted by Satyam Khanna, Think Progress on December 24, 2008 at 4:22 AM.

In a recent interview, Joe Biden recounted how he told President-elect Obama that as vice president, he would like to be involved "in every important decision you'll make, every critical decision, economic and political as well as foreign policy."

Yesterday, on Fox News, Karl Rove attacked Biden for asking to be involved in executive decisions, insinuating that Biden was requesting a far greater executive role than even Vice President Cheney. "That's a pretty expansive view...and a pretty large demand," he said. "I know for a fact" that "Dick Cheney never asked that of George W. Bush," Rove added.

ROVE: You know what's amazing to me? I would never believe that Vice President Cheney, I know for fact certain he never asked President Bush, Governor Bush at the time in 2000 for the kind of commitment that Senator Biden apparently asked of Senator Obama, that you know, I, the vice president, have to be in the room at every major decision you make and you have to consult with me.

"And I'm confident that it's pretty extraordinary if Biden asked that of Obama," Rove said.

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Franken-Coleman Update: Coleman's Desperate Haily Marys
Posted by Phoenix Woman, Firedoglake on December 23, 2008 at 8:16 PM.

Another day, another set of Hail Mary efforts by the Coleman campaign.  They fared about as well as Norm's previous Hail Marys -- that is to say, not well at all.

First up was his bid to have 16 ballots that had been marked with an "X" pulled and reviewed by the state canvassing board, out of a stated concern that the ballots had either been assigned to the wrong candidate or not counted at all.  The 16 ballots soon became 40 ballots, which were all pulled and reviewed -- and no votes were changed as a result. 

Second up was his petition to the Minnesota Supreme Court to get rid of what he claimed were "duplicate ballots" in the city of Minneapolis.  As mentioned yesterday, the Hennepin County Canvassing Board itself filed a motion with the Soops  The Supremes didn't rule on it yet -- they probably won't until tomorrow, per The UpTake's Mike McIntee in his video recap -- but judging from their comments as Twittered by The UpTake, they didn't seem to be too friendly towards Coleman's arguments.

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Obama's Blagojevich Report Clears Staff: 'No Contact'
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 23, 2008 at 2:47 PM.

There's a very good reason the president-elect and the Obama team seemed completely unconcerned about any connection to the Blagojevich controversy -- they weren't connected to the Blagojevich controversy.

An internal review prepared for President-elect Barack Obama says his incoming chief of staff had multiple conversations with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's office, but no one close to Obama suspected that the governor might be trying to sell Obama's Senate seat as prosecutors allege.

The report was released Tuesday as an Obama transition official confirmed that Obama and two of his top aides, Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett, have been interviewed in connection with the federal investigation into Blagojevich.

Incoming White House attorney Greg Craig, who conducted the internal review at Obama's request, found that the president-elect had no contact with Blagojevich or any of his staff about the Senate seat he vacated to take over the presidency.

One imagines that Obama detractors might not believe these conclusions -- "the transition team can't clear itself of wrongdoing!" -- but the review was done with the knowledge that Blagojevich and his office was the subject of FBI wiretaps. The transition team, in other words, knew in advance that any false claims would be easily exposed, so they had a very strong incentive to be completely honest.

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Hey Conservatives: Immigrants Help, Not Hurt, Our Economy
Posted by Cristina Jimenez, DMI Blog on December 23, 2008 at 1:30 PM.

The current economic crisis has led immigration restrictionists to blame immigrants for the country’s economic downturn. What restrictionists seem to be ignoring is that our economy relies on the contributions of immigrants.

And this week, yet another report indicates that immigrants are essential for economic growth. The report Destination NJ: How Immigrants Benefit the State Economy by Rutgers University concludes that New Jersey’s 1.7 million immigrants have no negative impact on the state’s economy. Here’re some other findings:

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The TVA Coal Ash Impoundment Spill ... Another Risk of Coal
Posted by Bruce Nilles, Sierra Club on December 23, 2008 at 1:00 PM.

Today there is sad news out of Roane County, Tenn.: A retention pond at the Kingston coal-fired steam plant burst, sending more than 524 million gallons of coal fly ash and water into the nearby town of Harriman and Watts Bar Lake. One man was injured when his home was swept off its foundation, and the mudslide also affected 15 other homes.

Reports are that the rush of mud, ash and water now covers 400 acres and is several feet deep in some areas – this coal ash spill is also many times more massive than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The cleanup is expected to last weeks, but some lives have already been altered forever - and the full environmental impact is not yet known. Fly ash is known to contain numerous toxic chemicals and it’s being reported that some of the spill made it into the Tennessee River – a water supply source for the city of Chattanooga as well as people in Kentucky and Alabama.

And now we have to wonder if the Tennessee Valley Authority is being fully open about what’s in that fly ash water – bloggers are already taking notice, including the Knoxville Sentinel blog and in these two posts here and here. The second post links this an excellent article about the risks.

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Maybe It's Time to Give Obama a Break on Warren
Posted by Stephen Elliott, Huffington Post on December 23, 2008 at 11:05 AM.

I shouldn't have to say this first, but I will, I'm not defending Rick Warren.

But if the worst thing that happens during the Obama presidency is that he lets a hate-mongering idiot speak at his inauguration I'll be ecstatic. Stop and think for a second. George Bush TOOK US TO WAR UNDER FALSE PRETENSES. He also APPOINTED people that don't believe in global warming to senior positions in the Environmental Protection Agency. He sanctioned torture. That's just the preamble to any rant about the disastrous last eight years.

George Bush gave away all our money to his rich friends. He betrayed New Orleans. He mandated abstinence only education.

So can we stop on the Rick Warren thing for a moment? Yeah, Rick Warren sucks, but we didn't complain when Obama participated in debate with John McCain hosted by Warren. Because we hadn't won yet we were willing to go inside their house; now we want to burn it down.

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Cheney Biographer: Dick's View of Presidential Power Is 'More Radical' Than Nixon's
Posted by Satyam Khanna, Think Progress on December 23, 2008 at 8:17 AM.

On Sunday, Vice President Cheney made the astounding claim that if the President does anything during wartime to protect the country, it is legal -- echoing Richard Nixon. Yesterday, Cheney biographer Barton Gellman told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that Cheney's claim is actually "more radical" than Nixon's because Cheney said it while serving in office:

It's actually I think more radical than what Nixon said, because Nixon never enunciated that as policy during his administration and neither did his Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department. And this administration, they did. Cheney was asked, doesn't Congress have any say here? He said, Congress can pass statutes, but he said, we don't have to obey them -- we don't need no stinkin' statutes.

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WSJ Uses 'Reporting' to Print Free Political Advertising for Anti-Labor Group
Posted by Scarecrow , Firedoglake on December 23, 2008 at 7:47 AM.

When you see this WSJ headline, "Illinois Scandal Spotlights SEIU's Use of Political Tactics," attached to a story in the Journal's "news" section, you'd expect there to be some actual reporting and not just an excuse to repeat anonymous, unproven or fact-free allegations and innuendo. But this is the new WSJ.

Instead, what we get from this article by "reporters" Kris Maher and David Kesmodel is just another excuse to front for an anonymous anti-labor group whose spokesperson admits that its political agenda is to air hit pieces on the SEIU in order to undermine support for the Employee Free Choice Act.

The dishonesty starts with the fact that the merits of providing workers with another option for organizing -- the heart of the EFCA -- have nothing to do with anything in the article. The anti-EFCA forces, including the Journal owners, just want you to think there's a connection to some scandal. With that in mind, here's the dishonest set up for this ad masquerading as "reporting."

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Conservatives' Crazy Conspiracy Theories About the Econapocalypse
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 23, 2008 at 7:23 AM.

For a while, before the presidential campaign, conservatives on Fox News and talk radio had an idea: the economy wasn't that bad, but Americans had been led to believe it was, thanks to an elaborate conspiracy involving the media and Democrats.

After the election, high-profile conservatives, including Bill O'Reilly and Karl Rove, publicly described a new theory: an elaborate conspiracy involving the media and Democrats is still working to convince Americans the economy is in bad shape, so as to help Barack Obama appear even more impressive when conditions turn around.

This week, we have yet another conspiracy theory, this time from Rush Limbaugh, who's just delusional enough to believe Democrats, most notably Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), deliberately created the global economic crisis for partisan gain.

Here's how Limbaugh's conspiracy theory goes: Schumer caused on run on IndyMac bank in California this summer, in order to create a feeling of financial panic amongst the public. Democrats then capitalized on this panic with electoral wins in the White House and Congress. The purpose of gaining this power, according to Limbaugh, was to nationalize U.S. industries:

"Who's benefiting? Aside from the people being bailed out. The Democrat [sic] Party and Barack Obama are benefiting.

"They got elected, they increased their numbers in the House, they increased their numbers in the Senate, they got the White House now, and they've got a crisis that people think can only be fixed with the all-mighty and powerful government interceding to save this or to save that, when in fact, the government is going to nationalize the automobile industry. It's going to nationalize some banks. It's going to nationalize the mortgage industry, and may end up nationalizing the automobile industry."

Keep in mind, this isn't just some poor man ranting on a street corner; this is a well-paid, well-connected conservative media personality.

It just doesn't occur to any of these clowns that the economy really is in awful shape, and Bush's conservative economic policies fueled the crisis. Since reality couldn't possibly be true, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Rove, and others concoct these bizarre ideas about conspiracies to help them make sense of the world. It's kind of sad, really.

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Germany Could Take in Gitmo Prisoners
Posted by Jaclyn Belczyk, Jurist Legal News and Research on December 23, 2008 at 7:20 AM.

German government spokesperson Thomas Steg said Monday that Germany would consider taking in detainees released from the Guantanamo Bay military prison if U.S. President-elect Barack Obama closed the facility. Steg said that Germany supports closure of the facility and that all European Union (EU) member states should cooperate to formulate a plan for taking in detainees who cannot be returned to their homelands because of risk of torture. Hamburg interior minister Christoph Ahlhaus said Monday that his state might be willing to take in detainees, but would consider each case on an individual basis.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ordered the Pentagon to draft a proposal for shutting down the military prison at Guantanamo Bay in preparation for a possible order from Obama. Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff told the BBC that before closing the Guantanamo prison, Obama must have a plan for dealing with the detainees. Portugal's foreign minister has said that his country would be willing to take in  Guantanamo detainees if Obama closed the facility, and encouraged other EU member states to do the same. Rights groups have urged Obama to close the controversial military prison upon inauguration in January. Last month, the ACLU launched an ad campaign calling on Obama to close Guantanamo Bay and end the use of military commissions on his first day in office. Also in November, HRW called upon Obama to denounce Bush administration counterterrorism policies that they described as "abusive." Obama and his advisers have yet to reach a firm decision on the closure of the facility.

Rick Warren's Church Removes Anti-Gay Statements from Web Site
Posted by Matt Corley, Think Progress on December 22, 2008 at 4:00 PM.

On Friday, AmericaBlog's John Aravosis pointed out that the Web site for the Rev. Rick Warren's Saddleback Church explicitly said that "someone unwilling to repent for their homosexual lifestyle would not be accepted as a member at Saddleback":

Today, however, Aravosis notes that the anti-gay language has been pulled from the Web site. View a Google cache of the original page here.

Iraq Court Starts New Trial for 'Chemical Ali'
Posted by Jaclyn Belczyk, Jurist Legal News and Research on December 22, 2008 at 2:00 PM.

An Iraqi court on Sunday began a new trial for Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known in the Western media as "Chemical Ali," and three other Saddam Hussein-era officials accused in a 1998 gas attack that killed 5,000 Kurds. The relatives of the plaintiffs were allegedly gassed to death in the Kurdish village of Halabja. Hundreds of Kurds called for the execution of al-Majid, who has already been sentenced to death twice. Also facing trial are former defense minister Sultan Hashem and two intelligence officers.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal sentenced al-Majid to death for his involvement in the repression of Shiites in southern Iraq during the Saddam regime. Al-Majid has also been sentenced to death for the killing of Kurdish Iraqis using chemical weapons during the 1988 Anfal campaign. His death sentence in the Anfal case was upheld on appeal in September 2007, but Iraq's Presidency Council did not approve the execution until late February. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government said in early March that al-Majid would not be executed until the Presidency Council approved the death sentences of al-Majid's two co-defendants in that case.

Target Women: A Few Takeaway Lessons from 2008
Posted by Staff on December 22, 2008 at 1:21 PM.

Put down that sandwich! Dance like no one is watching! And stop pretending you know where Paraguay is! A few final lessons on womanhood from 2008.

For more from the hilarious Sarah Haskins, click here.

Krugman: We're in for a Year of 'Economic Hell'
Posted by Staff, Huffington Post on December 22, 2008 at 11:44 AM.

Paul Krugman writes Monday that, no matter what President-elect Barack Obama does, we're in for up to a year of "economic hell" -- and that things will never go back to how they were.

Whatever the new administration does, we're in for months, perhaps even a year, of economic hell. After that, things should get better, as President Obama's stimulus plan -- OK, I'm told that the politically correct term is now "economic recovery plan" -- begins to gain traction. Late next year, the economy should begin to stabilize, and I'm fairly optimistic about 2010.

But what comes after that? Right now everyone is talking about, say, two years of economic stimulus -- which makes sense as a planning horizon. Too much of the economic commentary I've been reading seems to assume, however, that that's really all we'll need -- that once a burst of deficit spending turns the economy around we can quickly go back to business as usual.

In fact, however, things can't just go back to the way they were before the current crisis. And I hope the Obama people understand that.

The prosperity of a few years ago, such as it was -- profits were terrific, wages not so much -- depended on a huge bubble in housing, which replaced an earlier huge bubble in stocks. And since the housing bubble isn't coming back, the spending that sustained the economy in the pre-crisis years isn't coming back either.

...

[O[nce the economy has perked up a bit, there will be a lot of pressure on the new administration to pull back, to throw away the economy's crutches. And if the administration gives in to that pressure too soon, the result could be a repeat of the mistake FDR made in 1937 -- the year he slashed spending, raised taxes and helped plunge the United States into a serious recession.

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Reported Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Way Up
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on December 22, 2008 at 11:00 AM.

Holy hell:

A new government report showing huge increases in the incidences of domestic violence, rape and sexual assault over a two-year period in the United States deserves immediate attention from lawmakers and the incoming administration, Human Rights Watch said today. The statistics show a 42 percent increase in reported domestic violence and a 25 percent increase in the reported incidences of rape and sexual assault.

The National Crime Victimization Survey, based on projections from a national sample survey, says that at least 248,300 individuals were raped or sexually assaulted in 2007, up from 190,600 in 2005, the last year the survey was conducted. The study surveyed 73,600 individuals in 41,500 households. Among all violent crimes, domestic violence, rape and sexual assault showed the largest increases.

And these numbers reflect only reported domestic violence and sexual assaults, which continue to be the most underreported crimes.

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Al-Zaidi: 'I'd Throw Shoes Again' While Sales of the Footwear Soar
Posted by Lisa Derrick, Firedoglake on December 22, 2008 at 10:43 AM.

The trial of shoe-throwing Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, charged with assaulting a foreign head of state visiting Iraq, begins Dec. 31. Abdul Satar Birqadr, spokesman for Iraq's High Judicial Council, said a three-judge panel would hear the case:

The case is not complicated, and I expect it won't take a great deal of time to reach a ruling.

U.S.-backed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has condemned al-Zaidi's actions, but reportedly he will not want to alienate al-Zaidi's supporters: Provincial elections are next month. The prime minister met with Iraqi journalists Sunday, praising the media and pledging justice would run its course -- even if that meant al-Zaidi went free. Iraqi authorities will give the media full access to the trial, due in part to the worldwide interest and sensitivity of the case.

Al-Zaidi's brother said the reporter would toss footwear again if he had the chance. Reuters reports:

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Cheney Lies on Fox: Congress Told Us We Didn't Need Approval for Spying
Posted by Ali Frick, Think Progress on December 22, 2008 at 7:32 AM.

In an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace yesterday morning, Vice President Dick Cheney defended the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program and claimed that the congressional leaders briefed on the program wholeheartedly approved. In fact, Cheney claimed, when the White House asked if it needed congressional approval for the program, they unanimously agreed it did not:

CHENEY: We briefed them on the program and what we'd achieved and how it worked and asked them should we continue the program. They were unanimous, Republican and Democrat alike. All agreed: Absolutely essential to continue the program. I then said, Do we need to come to the Congress and get additional legislating authorization to continue what we're doing? They said absolutely not. Don't do it.

Watch it:

Cheney's startling claims run directly counter to accounts by House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V. Rather than asking for congressional input, Pelosi and Rockefeller said in 2005 that Cheney simply informed them of what was going on -- and ignored their objections:

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Wall Street Exec's Exorbitant Pay in 2007 Could Have Covered Bailout Costs?
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 22, 2008 at 7:26 AM.

It's pretty outrageous that some of the banks that have received taxpayer bailouts have also rewarded their top executives with "nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits," which included personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, and country club memberships.

And what else have these banks been doing while benefitting from the bailout? Apparently, the institutions themselves aren't sure.

It's something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where's the money going?

But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.

"We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing it,'" said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to."

It's not the only one. The AP contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion each, asking four questions: "How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest?"

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Obama Report Exonerates Rahm ... Had Only One 'Pro-Forma' Courtesy Call With Blago
Posted by Nico Pitney, Huffington Post on December 22, 2008 at 6:45 AM.

Aides to President-elect Barack Obama will release a report this week exonerating incoming Chief of staff Rahm Emanuel of any wrongdoing in the controversy surrounding Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, ABC's George Stephanopoulos reports.

According to the report, Emanuel had only one "pro-forma" courtesy call with the embattled governor. Also, Emanuel is on tape telling Blagojevich's chief of staff that Obama would not offer any favors to induce the governor to choose Obama's favored candidate.

More from Stephanopoulos:

Sources also confirm that Emanuel made the case for picking Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett during at least one of the conversations [with Blagojevich's chief of staff John Harris]. In the course of that conversation, Harris asked if in return for picking Jarrett, "all we get is appreciation, right?"

"Right," Emanuel responded.

Bottom line: These sources say that Obama's report, which is expected to be released this week, will confirm what Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and President-elect Obama have said -- and what Gov. Blagojevich clearly believed: that Obama officials were not open to any kind of deal for the Obama Senate seat.

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Horrific: 12-Year Old Girl Beaten By Police for 'Resisting Arrest'
Posted by Jill Filipovic, Feministe on December 21, 2008 at 11:36 AM.

This is horrific.

It was a little before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn's home in Galveston. She was busy preparing her children for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daughter, Dymond, to pop outside and turn the switch back on.

As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me."

Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat.

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Dick Cheney Embraces "Go F*ck Yourself," Historically Low Approval Numbers
Posted by Blue Texan, Firedoglake on December 21, 2008 at 11:15 AM.

Dick appears physically incapable of regret, which, in case you didn't know, is actually rather common among the Undead.

WALLACE: Did you tell Senator Leahy, "bleep yourself"?

CHENEY: I did.

WALLACE: Any qualms, second thoughts, or embarrassment?

CHENEY: No, I thought he merited it at the time and we've since patched over that wound.

As revealing as that exchange was, this one's even more illuminating:

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Biden to Chair New 'White House Task Force on Working Families'
Posted by Faiz Shakir, Think Progress on December 21, 2008 at 11:03 AM.

President Barack Obama will form a "White House Task Force on Working Families," to be chaired by Vice President Joe Biden. According to a transition team press release, "The Task Force will be a major initiative targeted at raising the living standards of middle-class, working families in America." On ABC's This Week, Biden explained:

My focus is going to be, I'm going to chair this group and it is designed to do the one thing we use as a yardstick of economic success of our administration, is the middle class growing? Is the middle class getting better? Is the middle class no longer being left behind? And we'll look at everything from college affordability to after-school programs. The things that affect people's daily lives. I will be the guy honchoing that policy.

The task force will be comprised of the Secretaries of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Commerce, as well as the Directors of the National Economic Council, the Office of Management and Budget, the Domestic Policy Council, and the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. It will conduct outreach sessions with representatives of labor, business, and the advocacy communities.

Is the NRA Seriously Strapped for Cash?
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 21, 2008 at 10:54 AM.

Estimates vary, but the National Rifle Association reportedly spent about $15 million in 2008 on attacks against Barack Obama. The group is no doubt frustrated, not only with the election's outcome, but with its inability to have a serious impact on the campaign.

What's more embarrassing for the NRA is that it's still doing robocalls, seven weeks after Election Day. The Hartford Courant's Colin McEnroe received Wayne LaPierre's latest message yesterday.

So my phone rings today; and after that 1.5-second delay that tells you it's not a beloved friend, a guy comes on the line and says his name is Chris White from the NRA. Do I want to listen to a message from Wayne LaPierre about "Obama's scheme to ban guns?" You bet I do.

So Chris presses play and suddenly Wayne's voice is blasting in my ear at three times the decibel level of the human being who spoke first.

Wayne says that Obama's assurances that he will respect gun rights are "an outright lie."

Obama has been "stacking his administration with the most notorious gun-banners in America."

Wayne says he wants to "send a message loud and clear that the fight for our freedom is not coming. It is here and now."

When Wayne's automated message ended, a person comes back onto the line to explain that Obama has appointed "a cabinet full of gun haters." When pressed to name one, the NRA representative pointed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who, of course, is not part of the Obama cabinet. Pressed further for an actual cabinet gun-hater, the NRA rep offers nothing but silence.

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Kenneth Starr Joins Prop. H8ers Attacking Same-Sex Marriages
Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo on December 20, 2008 at 10:46 AM.

The underwear sniffing zombie is back on the case:

The sponsors of Proposition 8 asked the California Supreme Court on Friday to nullify the marriages of the estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who exchanged vows before voters approved the ballot initiative that outlawed gay unions.

The Yes on 8 campaign filed a brief arguing that because the new law holds that only marriages between a man and a woman are recognized or valid in California, the state can no longer recognize the existing same-sex unions.

"Proposition 8's brevity is matched by its clarity. There are no conditional clauses, exceptions, exemptions or exclusions," reads the brief co-written by Pepperdine University law school dean Kenneth Starr, the former independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton.

The campaign submitted the document in response to three lawsuits seeking to invalidate Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment adopted last month that overruled the court's decision in May that briefly legalized gay marriage in the nation's most populous state.

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Republicans On Why They Hate Unions
Posted by Emptywheel, Firedoglake on December 20, 2008 at 10:44 AM.

If you need any more proof that the Republican attempt to break the UAW a week ago Thursday was really just a political stunt, read this article. In it, Republican after Republican attacks Bush for providing relief to the auto industry. That includes four of the Republican Senators who--Bob Corker has assured us--would have supported his "compromise" deal from last Thursday:

John McCain:

John McCain is leading the way, saying it is "unacceptable that we would leave the American taxpayer with a tab of tens of billions of dollars while failing to receive any serious concessions from the industry." 

John Kyl:

"I'm very disappointed," said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). "The president justified his action with a false choice: it's either this plan or abrupt liquidation of the companies. The White House seems to think that the industry didn't have time to deal with the problem or prepare for an orderly bankruptcy, which is false."

Judd Gregg:

"These funds were not authorized by Congress for non-financial companies in distress," Gregg said, "but were to be used to restore liquidity and stability in the overall financial system of the country and to help prevent fundamental systemic risks in the global marketplace."

Mitch McConnell:

"I have strong objections to the use of Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) funds for industry specific bailouts. And I do not support this action," McConnell said. "But since the administration has chosen to use these funds to aid the automakers, it is important that the date-specific requirements on all the stakeholders be enforced." 

Yet this is virtually the same bill, with one caveat: that the manufacturers, "can deviate from the quantitative targets above, providing that the firm reports the reasons for these deviations and makes the business case to achieve long-term viability in spite of the deviations."

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This Week in God: Christian License Plates(?), Faith in Congress, and More
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 20, 2008 at 10:23 AM.

First up from the God Machine this week, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released an interesting report yesterday, documenting the faiths of members of Congress.

Members of Congress are often accused of being out of touch with average citizens, but an examination of the religious affiliations of U.S. senators and representatives shows that, on one very basic level, Congress looks much like the rest of the country. Although a majority of the members of the new, 111th Congress, which will be sworn in on Jan. 6, are Protestants, Congress - like the nation as a whole - is much more religiously diverse than it was 50 years ago. Indeed, a comparison of the religious affiliations of the new Congress with religious demographic information from the Pew Forum's recent U.S. Religious Landscape Survey of over 35,000 American adults finds that some smaller religious groups, notably Catholics, Jews and Mormons, are better represented in Congress than they are in the population as a whole. However, certain other smaller religious groups, including Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus, still are somewhat underrepresented in Congress relative to their share of the U.S. population.

The study finds that there is at least one major difference between Congress and the nation as a whole: Members of Congress are much more likely than the public overall to say they are affiliated with a particular religion. Only five members of the new Congress (about 1%) did not specify a religious affiliation, according to information gathered by Congressional Quarterly and the Pew Forum, and no members specifically said they were unaffiliated. By contrast, the Landscape Survey found that individuals who are not affiliated with a particular faith make up about one-sixth (16.1%) of the adult population, making this one of the largest "religious" group in the U.S.

It's especially interesting to see how the religious makeup of Congress has changed over the last generation or two. The report noted, for example, that the total percentage of Protestants in Congress has dropped from 74.1% in 1961 to 54.7% today, while Catholic representation has nearly doubled (18.8% to 30.1%), and the percentage of Jewish members has tripled (2.3% to 8.4%). What's more, there are two Muslims and two Buddhists who began serving in Congress in 2007 -- all of whom were firsts for the institution.

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The U.S. Goes Global With its Anti-Gayness
Posted by John Ridley, Huffington Post on December 20, 2008 at 6:06 AM.

Funny thing about this great land of ours. She's got no problem fighting for what's right (Civil War), but she doesn't always make the simple stand for righteousness (Civil Rights movement).

This past Thursday the United Nations, which excels at issuing proclamations, circulated one that is as marginally effectual as it is symbolically strong. It was just a little ole declaration seeking universal decriminalization of homosexuality.

Wasn't saying Gays could get married.

Wasn't saying Gays could show up at your house and read your kids Heather Has Two Mommies.

It was just saying, you know: "Hey, Iran, when you're done with that show trial, could you possibly not hang those two guys who engaged in a love whose name you dare not speak."

And if you think I'm being hyperbolic, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay notes that ten countries still have laws making homosexual activity punishable by death.

But the U.S. did not sign the declaration.

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Obama's New SoT: What You Need to Know About Ray LaHood
Posted by Faiz Shakir, Think Progress on December 20, 2008 at 5:49 AM.

Ten years ago, Ray LaHood was gaveling in House impeachment proceedings against President Clinton. Today, President-elect Barack Obama announced that he would be serving as the next Secretary of Transportation.

LaHood is a moderate Republican who has broken with his party over Amtrak funding, voting yes last summer to expand passenger rail service. He also broke with the GOP on the Saving Energy Through Transportation Act. In 2005, he told the Peoria Journal-Star that "we've got a good Amtrak system in Illinois and I don't think we want to destroy it by talking about privatization."

Friends of the Earth responded to the LaHood nomination by saying: "While his overall record on energy and environment issues is poor, LaHood has in recent years broken with many in his party to support crucial investments in passenger rail and public transportation, and he is a member of the Congressional Bike Caucus." LaHood also supported the bicycle commuter benefit bill.

But while LaHood has certain strengths, working long hours doesn't appear to be one of them. When Democrats ousted the right-wing Do-Nothing Congress in 2006, LaHood worried about returning to a five-day work week:

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Darth Cheney Wants to Ruin History
Posted by Looseheadprop , Firedoglake on December 20, 2008 at 4:23 AM.

Welcome back to another day in CrazyWorld CheneyWorld, or as we like to call it, the "Fourth Branch". The NYTimes via AP is reporting that Darth Cheney has declared that he, and he alone, has the power to decide which, if any, of his papers are covered by the Presidential Records Act.

-- Dick Cheney's lawyers are asserting that the Vice President alone has the authority to determine which records, if any, from his tenure will be handed over to the National Archives when he leaves office in January

Clearly, he thinks he has more expertise in these matters than, oh say, the National Archivist, ya know? A person who is a professional in these matters?

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