Fox News gets everything wrong

Fox News is saying that protesters for the Democratic Convention are preparing to have the Brown Note Generator used against them.

Of course, this will be difficult because such a weapon does not exist. In fact, such a "note" does not exist. The Mythbusters busted the hell outta that one. Once again, Fox News couldn't be bothered to do 3 minutes of Googling before putting it's crap on the air.

Naive Bush Administration

Once again, we've "invaded" Pakistan with our bombs. Doesn't Bush know that it's reckless and naive to invade our ally or talk with our enemies?

Pakistani army says US-led coalition airstrike killed 11 Pakistani border troops

RIAZ KHAN
AP News

Jun 11, 2008 06:32 EST

U.S.-led coalition forces along the volatile Afghan border launched an airstrike that killed 11 Pakistani paramilitary troops, Pakistan's army said Wednesday. The military condemned it as an act of aggression that "hit at the very basis of cooperation" in the war on terrorism.

By criticizing actions like this when Obama advocates them McCain is saying that President Bush is too far to the left on foreign policy. That dirty hippie, George W. Bush. As Pat Buchanan - conservative lion - stated so eloquently (video), McCain's foreign policy “will make Cheney look like Gandhi.”

Complex Evolution Demonstrated in Lab

The Creationist's last available attack on Evolution is that there are chemical processes in our cellular metabolism that are "irreducibly complex" - that they could not have come about by a collection of random, naturally selected mutations. Well, let's see how they deal with this doozy:

A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers' eyes. It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

And because the species in question is a bacterium, scientists have been able to replay history to show how this evolutionary novelty grew from the accumulation of unpredictable, chance events.

Twenty years ago, evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University in East Lansing, US, took a single Escherichia coli bacterium and used its descendants to found 12 laboratory populations.

The 12 have been growing ever since, gradually accumulating mutations and evolving for more than 44,000 generations, while Lenski watches what happens.

The short story is that one of E.Coli's distinguishing traits is it's inability to metabolise Citrate, which has a very different molecular structure than E.Coli's primary food. After around 31,000 generations, all of a sudden this E.Coli started eating Citrate! With the frozen genetic samples, the researchers are able to go back in a frame-by-frame manner, and watch the mutations accumulate into this novel masterpiece.

So, there we have it. Genuinely new complexity from naturally selected random change! Woooo! Go Science!

McCain is Another Extra-Constitutional President

McCain's position on Presidential Power has gone from Maverick-ey to 3rd-Term-Bush-ey, just like everything else.

December 20, 2007:

"1. Does the president have inherent powers under the Constitution to conduct surveillance for national security purposes without judicial warrants, regardless of federal statutes?

McCain: There are some areas where the statutes don't apply, such as in the surveillance of overseas communications. Where they do apply, however, I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is.

Okay, so is that a no, in other words, federal statute trumps inherent power in that case, warrantless surveillance?

McCain: I don't think the president has the right to disobey any law."

Now:

"A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush's program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.

In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans' international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance."

Cribbed from Washington Monthly.

Phase 2

Telling us something that you knew already if you were paying attention, we have finally have the Phase 2 Investigation into the lead-up to the war in Iraq. Phase 1 of the investigation was into the flaws in intelligence, whereas Phase 2 is the inquiry into how the public case for war was made by the Administration.

It is damning:

• Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
• Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.
• Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.
• Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.
• The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.
• The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.

They swore to threats that were contradicted by available intelligence. That's called lying. The White House push back that this contradictory intelligence never made it to the president runs afoul of their often-cited theory of the Unitary Executive. If someone in the executive branch new it, then the Executive knew it, and they are accountable.

The GI Bill

Bush and McCain say the new GI bill will hurt retention in a time of war, and therefore is not something they support. He says this despite the fact that this bill was written by Senator Warner and Senator Webb (Reagan's Secretary of the Navy), and they have explicitly addressed retention issues. The Daily Show nails it:

The Why of Bush's War

It has been said that President Bush thought being viewed as a wartime president was key to securing a successful presidency and avoiding the one-term embarrassment that his father endured. This has been one of the possible "real reasons" for the Iraq War, and now we hear it from a loyalist. McClellan:

Every president wants to achieve greatness but few do. As I have heard Bush say, only a wartime president is likely to achieve greatness, in part because the epochal upheavals of war provide the opportunity for the transformative change of the kind Bush hoped to achieve. In Iraq, Bush saw his opportunity to create a legacy of greatness.

What we've been saying all along. We were right.

Furthermore

Bush admits to Engel that going to war was a decision based on his personal instinct and not on any long-range strategy for the Mideast:

“I know people are saying we should have left things the way they were, but I changed after 9/11. I had to act. I don’t care if it created more enemies. I had to act.”

Yup. "I don't care if it created more enemies. " I'd rather do something, even if it's bad for America, than look like I didn't do anything. That's the kind of leadership we want from our President! Hell, it isn't even strategic myopia. It's the complete unawareness that a thing called Strategy even exists.

Let us never again elect a simpleton to this job.

"Suck. On. This." Why We Went to War

One of the most important pro-war voices in the lead-up to Iraq was Tom Friedman, whose insecurity, bravado, and profound stupidity characterizes a certain class of war-supporters perfectly. His position was magnified since he was a "liberal" supporting the war. The last 30 seconds of this is simply amazing:



That is moral leperhood of the highest order. We invaded and killed hundreds of thousands of innocents so that Tommy could feel like we were showing those Arabs who's boss, in order to decrease terrorism. That's right. "Kill innocents to decrease terrorism" is the equation that makes sense to him. This stunning insight is provided by one of journalism's leading "intellectuals."

The stupidity of these "experienced" voices was appalling, and plain to see for those of us not terrified that an Al Qaeda army was going to invade and make us all wear burkas. "We hit Iraq because we could..." The stains on Mr. Friedman's soul aren't coming off in this lifetime.

Karl Rove says the Left Tells the Truth

Kos, in full:

Karl Rove:

This doesn't sound like Scott, it really doesn't, not the Scott McClelland I've known for a long time. Sounds like a left-wing blogger.

Of course it sounds like us. We've been right all along.

That's the advantage of trafficking in reality -- history has a habit of vindicating our words.

Bush Outed a CIA Agent?

Firedoglake, the go-to people on the Libby case, thinks one of Scott McClellan's recent revelations has effectively proven that George W. Bush authorized the outing of a CIA Agent. McClellan says that Bush told him that he had authorized the selective declassifying of the NIE, which was intimately tied to the effort to destroy Joe Wilson. Just to make it clear how bad McClellan's book is for the WhiteHouse, that fact isn't even amongst the ones being heralded as scandalous.

Think of how much sense this makes. We have evidence that George Bush ordered Libby to respond to Joe Wilson on June 9, 2003. We now have Bush's own confirmation that he authorized the leak Libby made to Judy Miller on July 8, 2003--which included the leak of Valerie Wilson's identity. We know on July 10, Condi told Stephen Hadley that Bush "was comfortable" with the response the White House was making towards Wilson. And we know that--when Cheney forced Scottie McC to exonerate Libby publicly that fall, he did so by reminding people that "The Pres[ident] [asked Libby] to stick his head in the meat-grinder." We know that Libby's lawyers tried desperately to prevent a full discussion of the NIE lies to be presented at trial. And we know that--after those NIE lies did not come out, for the most part (though one juror told me that NIE story was obviously false, even with the limited information they received)--the President commuted Libby's sentence on July 2, 2007.

They have the full details, including links to all the trial testimony that reveals the cited facts. There are no flights of fantasy driven by Bush-Derangement-Syndrome. Everything is documented.

Daddy's not going to be happy:

“I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.”

Junior sure showed him, huh? Add it to the "not-taking-out-Saddam" rebellion and the tax-cut fundamentalism, and you've got quite the pattern of Junior trying not to be the same "failed President" his Daddy was, and failing even more epically in the attempt. Looks like Daddy wasn't such a failure after all, huh?

The Transformation of a Maverick

Look what running for the Republican Nomination has done to poor John McCain.



After this series of flips and gaffes, how can they talk about Obama thinking there are 57 states seriously? He was joking, people. Listen to the tone of his voice. Look at the wry smile. Listen to the laughter in the room:



That's right, the Constitutional Law Professor is so dumb or gaffe-prone he doesn't know how many states there are. Please.

This is Rovian Strategy being played out: attack your opponent's strength. Obama is eloquent, politically brave, and bipartisan to the bone, so they say he's a gaffe-machine who dodges the politically inconvenient issues and has "never worked across the isle." The GOP knows that simply be repeating it, a strikingly large percentage of Americans will believe it, and the Press will not stand up and evaluate the falseness of their claims - cuz that would be liberal of them. Remember, 70% of Americans believed Saddam was personally responsible for 9/11.

Habeas Corpus

Proof:

If his cell were at Guantanamo Bay, the prisoner would be just one of hundreds of suspected terrorists detained offshore, where the U.S. says the Constitution does not apply.

But Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is a U.S. resident being held in a South Carolina military brig; he is the only enemy combatant held on U.S. soil. That makes his case very different.

Al-Marri's capture six years ago might be the Bush administration's biggest domestic counterterrorism success story. Authorities say he was an al-Qaida sleeper agent living in middle America, researching poisonous gasses and plotting a cyberattack.

To justify holding him, the government claimed a broad interpretation of the president's wartime powers, one that goes beyond warrantless wiretapping or monitoring banking transactions. Government lawyers told federal judges that the president can send the military into any U.S. neighborhood, capture a citizen and hold him in prison without charge, indefinitely.

George Bush's America, ladies and gentlemen. A nation with a government possessing such powers cannot be described as Free. Time to call Boortz.

UPDATE: I've gotten some objections over the fact that Mr. Al-Marri is not an American citizen. But back as far as 1896 the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the clear language of the 14th Amendment:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Anyone within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States has constitutional rights. In fact, if you read the article, you find the following:

"What you assert is the power of the military to seize a person in the United States, including an American citizen, on suspicion of being an enemy combatant?" Judge William B. Traxler asked.

"Yes, your honor," Justice Department lawyer Gregory Garre replied.

The fact that "US Person = US Citizen" is canon in our legal system. So much so that even the crazy-assed Bush Administration doesn't try to argue the point. Case closed.

McCain's Cancer

Whoa!

McCain's most recent exams show a range of health issues common in aging: He frequently has precancerous skin lesions removed, and in February had an early stage squamous cell carcinoma, an easily cured skin cancer, removed. He had benign colon growths called polyps taken out during a routine colonoscopy in March.

So, while he was running for the GOP nomination, he went off and had cancer surgery without telling anyone. Wow. You think his party might have appreciated being let in on the secret?

Straight Talk, indeed!

McCain's Health

Senator McCain has finally released his health records, after over a year of delays. And when does he choose to release them? The Friday before Memorial Day Weekend! In the Bush Administration, this is called a document dump. Of course, I'm sure he has nothing to hide, which is why:

• only a small, select group of reporters will have access to the records in a secure room in Phoenix, AZ
• access is limited to only three hours, between 7 and 10 AM on Friday
• no copying of the records is permitted

Actually, I'm sure there aren't any surprises in his record. I mean, everyone knows he had cancer in 2000, right? Right? After all, it was only Type 2 malignant melanoma, which has a 60% ten year survival rate. I'm sure he'll be just fine.

Bush is a Record-Setting President

Hehe.

Bush's approval rating fell 4 percentage points to 23 percent, a record low for pollster John Zogby...

The number of Americans who believe the country is on the right track fell from 23 percent to an abysmal 16 percent, another record for pessimism, as uncertainty about the economy and rising gas prices fuelled growing doubts about the future.

I'm glad so many Americans finally agree with me. If only they could see through time too, huh?

Respect for the Opinions of Mankind

Another example of why the Bush Administration members shouldn't be taking any European vacations:

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

...

Such episodes are among more than 250 cases The Washington Post has identified in which the government has, without medical reason, given drugs meant to treat serious psychiatric disorders to people it has shipped out of the United States since 2003 -- the year the Bush administration handed the job of deportation to the Department of Homeland Security's new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE.

Involuntary chemical restraint of detainees, unless there is a medical justification, is a violation of some international human rights codes. The practice is banned by several countries where, confidential documents make clear, U.S. escorts have been unable to inject deportees with extra doses of drugs during layovers en route to faraway places.

These guys really reach for the stars.

We Do Not Torture

My God. This is from Harpers:

The exact circumstances surrounding the dealings between Haynes and Yoo that led to the development of this memorandum are unclear. However, it is clear that Haynes had previously authorized the use of the torture techniques, and had secured an order from Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld authorizing them.

Following the implementation of these techniques, more than 108 detainees died in detention. In a large number of these cases, the deaths have been ruled a homicide and connected to torture. These homicides were a forseeable consequence of the advice that Haynes and Yoo gave.

That's a lot of accidental murder for a country that does not torture.

Rehabilitating America as a brand will be one of Barack Obama's greatest tasks. Our moral authority is not important as some sort of platonic ideal we should strive to meet - its loss has real strategic consequences. In a Global Counterinsurgency, being the Shining City is by far your most powerful weapon.

McCain Calls Himself Naive

Poor John McCain is making a fool of himself.

Remember a few months ago, when Barack Obama caused conniptions by saying that, "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will"? For this imminently reasonable position, he was called "naive" by the Clinton campaign, and "dangerously inexperienced" by the McCain campaign. It was a sign that "he isn't ready for prime-time," and really needs some "more seasoning" before applying for the highest job in the land.

In fact, after his victory in Wisconsin, McCain claimed Obama said he'd invade our ally Pakistan. Heavens! Here he asks if America will elect him,

Or will we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested invading our ally, Pakistan, and sitting down without pre-conditions or clear purpose with enemies who support terrorists and are intent on destabilizing the world by acquiring nuclear weapons?'

Now if only the Bush Administration had cooperated, McCain could have ridden this talking point into the general election, but alas and alack, it turns out we just did exactly what Obama suggested we should:

The missiles killed Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander and a man who had repeatedly eluded the CIA's dragnet. It was the first successful strike against al-Qaeda's core leadership in two years, and it involved, U.S. officials say, an unusual degree of autonomy by the CIA inside Pakistan.

Having requested the Pakistani government's official permission for such strikes on previous occasions, only to be put off or turned down, this time the U.S. spy agency did not seek approval. The government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was notified only as the operation was underway, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.

So, defending America against the actions of high-value terrorists makes you "dangerously inexperienced," according to McCain. Working to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden, according to McCain, makes you "naive."

By contrast, joking about bombing Iran makes you "serious." Saying you'll stay in Iraq for 100 years makes you "strong." Then, when people have a problem with the concept of unending occupation, apparently the "experienced, wise" response is to construct a fantasy world in which we can be in Iraq for those 100 years without incurring casualties or costs. This is what passes for grown-up talk.

For the Ferret Lovers, Rudy Giuliani

I know that, despite my best effort to dislodge them, a gigantic block of my readers are civilization-hating ferret-coddlers. Follow this link to hear Mayor Giuliani's thoughts on the matter, in the form of his response to a call on his radio show that he had while he was Mayor.

The amazing part of the performance is that he's so earnest in first equating a request for the Mayor to follow the law with mental illness, and then imploring the man to seek qualified medical help. For his own good. Because really, he needs help.

This guy? After Bush?

On the other hand, I would love to see him do the call in show as President!

Kerik and Rudy

Friends forever:


Awwwww. Isn't that sweet? I can identify... nothing brings out the amor in me like those chilly fall days!