DOJ's Political Motivation Ruins Prosecutions

As if we didn't know this was coming:

Defense lawyers in a growing number of cases are raising questions about the motives of government lawyers who have brought charges against their clients. In court papers, they are citing the furor over the U.S. attorney dismissals as evidence that their cases may have been infected by politics.

Justice officials say those concerns are unfounded and constitute desperate measures by desperate defendants. But the affair has given defendants and their lawyers some new energy, which is complicating life for the prosecutors. […]

There has long been a presumption that, because they represented the Justice Department, prosecutors had no political agenda and their word could be trusted. But some legal experts say the controversy threatens to undermine their credibility.

This is why Justice must be blind. When the White House starts interferring with prosecutors, the entire system is called into question.

Secret Service gets Owned

Check this out! The adoring crowds in Albania just love George W. Bush soooo much!



In fact, they love him so much that around the 1:00 mark (or 3:15 remaining), someone steals his watch! Haha!

This whole appearance strikes me as a high risk situation. President Bush had a freaking grenade thrown at him in Georgia back in 2005, and here he is having his flesh pressed so enthusiastically that he doesn't notice being robbed. I'm hope they were well screened.

Free Paris!!!

If celebrities can't get preferential treatment, then this isn't America. Free Paris!!!


And only through patriotic vigilance can we ensure this never happens again:


Incidentally, try not to be such a whore that even Google judges you as such.

Free Paris!

Video: Anti-Mortar Point Defense

Feast your eyes on this:



That's a thing of beauty. Of course, give the bad guys three launchers and their rounds will still get through. Still, though, this sort of thing might make life in the Greenzone a little more hospitable.

Valerie Plame Was Covert

Surprise, Surprise!



Of course, this has been a known fact for quite some time, despite the constant lies about it from the right wing media.

GIs Want Out

We hear so much about the resolve of the troops to complete this flawed mission, regardless of the difficulties imposed upon them by the stultifying incompetence of their leaders. Well, rather than trusting John McCain to give us the now deprecated straight talk, let's hear from them directly, shall we? The first two sentences from this Sergeant smack of the old sentiment: "1, 2, 3, What are we fighting for?..."

...on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this past February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber's body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.

"I thought, 'What are we doing here? Why are we still here?' " said (Staff Sergeant David) Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. "We're helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us."

His views are echoed by most of his fellow soldiers in Delta Company, renowned for its aggressiveness.

A small minority of Delta Company soldiers - the younger, more recent enlistees in particular - seem to still wholeheartedly support the war. Others are ambivalent, torn between fear of losing more friends in battle, longing for their families and a desire to complete their mission.

With few reliable surveys of soldiers' attitudes, it is impossible to simply extrapolate from the small number of soldiers in Delta Company. But in interviews with more than a dozen soldiers over a one-week period, most said they were disillusioned by repeated deployments, by what they saw as the abysmal performance of Iraqi security forces and by a conflict that they considered a civil war, one they had no ability to stop

Why are we still there, indeed, David. The very problems we seek to address are exacerbated by the aid we give. When we train the mostly Shiite police and army to quell the sectarian violence, we are arming militiamen who carry out attacks on Sunnis and our soldiers. Now that we are arming the Sunni insurgents to attack Al Qaeda, we're once again putting arms into the hands of our enemies. And even if these tactics worked at stabilizing the country, we've still vastly magnified Iran's power in the region and globally by giving it such a powerful proxy in Iraq. For those who doubt Iran's influence: Iraq's government will always be Shiite dominated, and where do you think those Shiite politicos went during the bad years of exile while Iraq was ruled by Saddam? That's right. The Dawa Party has its offices in Tehran.

We have only the faintest glimmer of hope for an outcome we could cynically call success in Iraq, and even that success looks an awful lot like failure. Staying in Iraq damages our national interests across the board, with the critical blows coming to our security. Leaving Iraq, despite the ongoing escalation from blood-puddle to blood-bath to blood-fountain it would sustain, is the course that makes America the safest. Once we are out of Iraq, we can move on to a decades-long project I can support - refinishing America's image in the world.

(h/t C&L)

Cancer and Vitamin D

Another amazing bit of science to improve our lives:

The trial involv[ed] 1,200 women, and found those taking the vitamin had about a 60-per-cent reduction in cancer incidence, compared with those who didn't take it, a drop so large — twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking — it almost looks like a typographical error. And in an era of pricey medical advances, the reduction seems even more remarkable because it was achieved with an over-the-counter supplement costing pennies a day. One of the researchers who made the discovery, professor of medicine Robert Heaney of Creighton University in Nebraska, says vitamin D deficiency is showing up in so many illnesses besides cancer that nearly all disease figures in Canada and the U.S. will need to be re-evaluated. 'We don't really know what the status of chronic disease is in the North American population,' he said, 'until we normalize vitamin D status.'"

That's a substantial breakthrough, if further study supports the conclusion.

Short Answers

Atrios wonders:

I'm fascinated by this 72% wrong track number. I'd like to understand it more. I'm not sure I have sense of the basic reasons why so many people think things are going to hell. We can all come up with various possibilities, and there won't be one single answer, but I still think there's probably a coherent narrative to be teased out. I'm just not sure what it is.

Answer: Immigration. This poll was taken during May 18-23, and the immigration deal was announced on the 17th. This is the summary of the story at FoxNews:

A bipartisan group of Senate lawmakers and the White House struck an immigration reform deal Thursday that would grant legal status to the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in the United States ...

That's amnesty, right in the first sentence.

I think the reason behind the spike to 72% is as clear as day. We already had a high wrongtrack number before immigration, so only diehard Republicans - disproportionately Fox views according to a recent study - still believed the country was on the right track. Then the immigration deal hits, socking the Fox News viewing, talk-radio listening base right in the ragerocks. If you had been listening to talk radio, Atrios, you wouldn't have to wonder why the Wrongtrack number spiked.

Greenwald on Muslims

If you've turned on Fox News in the last couple of days, you'll no doubt have heard of a new report detailing the permissive attitude American Muslims have for attacking innocent civilians. To those engaged in a climactic struggle against Islamofascism, this serves as further evidence that they are on the side of pure white goodness, whereas the dirty ragheads engage in the most deprived barbarism imaginable. Furthermore, it simultaneously reminds them that non-white immigrants are really scary, which is an important impression to keep fresh.

Certainly, a poll of Americans would bare that opinion out, right?

First, the numbers for the dirty Muslims:


Followed by the results for America, which will no doubt be reflect a greater respect of human life:

Uh-oh.

The percentage of Americans who feel it is acceptable to intentionally target civilians (a higher standard, even, than the one that caused the uproar on the right) is more than twice that of Muslim countries. We are twice as bloodthirsty and barbaric, by the right's own metric.

Time to open internment camps for us dangerous whiteys.

More Babies

Want a treat? Here's a pair of wackos opposing birth control on Fox News because it allows women to have an active sex life without fear of pregnancy! Shocker!



To all appearances, the right's motivation on these issues is that they want to control when women have sex. Men can copulate all they want, thanks to that millenia-old foundational tradition of primogeniture. Illegitimate children are not our concern! And if a single woman gets pregnant, a pox on the bastard child and the whoreslut of a mother. Men gratify their pleasure, while women bear the price.

I'm writing this as I watch it, and man, this woman, in particular, is, without a doubt, a wacko. (Where would you go for your daily dose of vitamin-comma without me?) Wow. The video ends with cross-talk and this wacko yelling, "More Babies. Babies. More Babies. We want more babies. Babies." That's creepy.

Fly Paper isn't Important

Atrios picks out this internal contradiction in the President's position on the Iraq War.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. You say you want nothing short of victory, that leaving Iraq would be catastrophic; you once again mentioned al Qaeda. Does that mean that you are willing to leave American troops there, no matter what the Iraqi government does? I know this is a question we've asked before, but you can begin it with a "yes" or "no."

THE PRESIDENT: We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation. Twelve million people went to the polls to approve a constitution. It's their government's choice. If they were to say, leave, we would leave.

Iraq is the battle that will determine our future security. We must win in Iraq, because terrorists want to kill your wife and children. We must not leave Iraq, because those terrorists will follow us home. But if the Iraqi government tells us to leave, we'll go home and wait for the scimitar to fall. It all makes perfect sense.

The answer to the contradiction is not that we are lying about leaving Iraq if asked, but rather that we are lying about the threat our leaving poses to America. If this were actually a seminal battle of good versus evil we would have an actual national effort to assure our victory. With the way we have and continue to fight this war, it simply can't be as important as they say, since the cost of victory is only as high as "please continue shopping."

Department of the Obvious: Iraq War Good for Al Qaeda

That's right. Here is yet another illustration of that obvious fact:

U.S. officials said that Al Qaeda's command base in Pakistan increasingly is being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the anti-American insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.

The influx of money has bolstered Al Qaeda's leadership ranks at a time when the core command is regrouping and reasserting influence over its far-flung network.

....Little more than a year ago, Al Qaeda's core command was thought to be in a financial crunch. But U.S. officials said cash shipped from Iraq has eased those troubles. "Iraq is a big moneymaker for them," said a senior U.S. counterterrorism official.

We took money and resources from the effort to capture or kill bin Laden and his cohorts in order to create a fun-filled terrorist training and financing bonanza in Iraq, and we're surprised it's helping Al Qaeda? These outcomes were frighteningly likely before the war began, and we blundered in anyway. For what? There was not a single justification for the war that was still operative when the war began. We went to war because we wanted to go to war, the prototypical act of aggression.

Before September 11th, the world was different, and leaders could be forgiven their policies that helped lead to the attack. Now, everyone knows where the blame lies.

Life on Other Planets

Bam, baby.

For the first time, astronomers have discovered a planet far, far away that might be similar to Earth. This distant world, which pirouettes around a dim bulb of a star with the unglamorous name Gliese 581, may possibly sport a landscape that would be vaguely familiar to us - a panorama of liquid oceans and drifting continents. If so, there's the chance that it's a home to life - perhaps even advanced life.

If there isn't life on this planet now, there will be in a billion years. A few billion more and we'll be able to talk to them. I hope I'm still around.

Answers to Global Warming Denial

A compendium of responses to arguments against global warming is something I've been thinking about producing for a while. Seeing the New Scientist do the work so I don't have to made me sigh contentedness. Satisfying.

• Human CO₂ emissions are too tiny to matter

• We can't do anything about climate change

• The 'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong

• Chaotic systems are not predictable

• We can't trust computer models of climate

• They predicted global cooling in the 1970s

• It's been far warmer in the past, what's the big deal?

• It's too cold where I live - warming will be great

• Global warming is down to the Sun, not humans

• It’s all down to cosmic rays

• CO₂ isn't the most important greenhouse gas

• The lower atmosphere is cooling, not warming

• Antarctica is getting cooler, not warmer, disproving global warming

• The oceans are cooling

• The cooling after 1940 shows CO₂ does not cause warming

• It was warmer during the Medieval period, with vineyards in England

• We are simply recovering from the Little Ice Age

• Warming will cause an ice age in Europe

• Ice cores show CO₂ increases lag behind temperature rises, disproving the link to global warming

• Ice cores show CO₂ rising as temperatures fell

• Mars and Pluto are warming too

• Many leading scientists question climate change

• It's all a conspiracy

• Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming

• Higher CO₂ levels will boost plant growth and food production

• Polar bear numbers are increasing

What do you have to say about that, Global Warming deniers?

GOP Primary First to Jump Ugly

Oh, smack. McCain shows more of his desperation by mercilessly mocking the poor varmint-shooting flip-flopper, Mitt Romney.

For the establishment GOP candidate - the long foreseen frontrunner - to be sinking to such attacks is truly surprising. Anyone but McCain would be well on his procession to coronation with the Republican nomination.

FoxNews GOP Debate Observations

The largest applause lines of the night all seemed to consist of hearty endorsements of our country's "Enhanced Interogation Techniques," even going so far as to long for the fictional Jack Bauer in Brit Hume's hypothetical hour of need. To hear the party of moral values advocating torture so enthusiastically, like the crowd at a dog fight, should cause significantly more cognitive dissonance in me than it does. Instead, the supression of human (or even Christian) decency for political expediency seems like par for the course within the Republican Party.

Also, I still can't get over Fox allowing applause. "You gotta be kidding me" was my first reaction. I liked it even less as the applause did exactly what it was intended too - create a cliquish popularity contest designed to completely marginalize any idea even slightly outside the Republican mainstream. It is a silent means of controlling the content of the debate - far more effective than outright censorship.

Hagel-Bloomberg '08

Calling all Democrats! Donate to Hagel and encourage a third party run! He's on the brink, with just a little push needed to get him to jump. Actually, given the way he ends this interview (video), I think he's planning it already. He concludes by offering an absolutely glowing endorsement of Bloomberg - the type of endorsement normally reserved for children of adoring grandparents or running mates - and then wistfully comments that it would be an amazing thing if a boy from Nebraska and a big city mayor could get together for the betterment of the country.

Hagel-Bloomberg '08, baby! Believe me. He lays it on that thickly.

From Hagel's naturally independent and yet Republican perspective, this is the perfect time to torpedo the electoral chances of his party in order to serve a greater good - that of incubating credible third party politics in this country. The Republicans overwhelmingly think they're going to lose anyway, so scuttling the effort further with a Republican independent ticket doesn't look like much of a betrayal.

So, fortunately for America, this will guarantee a Democratic victory in '08, which means that we will finally begin addressing the largest threats to America. Unfortunately for political junkies like me, however, this sucks almost all the fun out of the process, since the conclusion is foregone. Oh well. I'll take that trade.

Boxer's Boxing

Here is an excellent example of Senator Boxer beating poor Senator Graham silly after he says Reid believes the troops are losers (video). More like this, please.

BOXER: I don't know anyone who opposes this war that ever said our troops are losers. Our troopers are winners.

GRAHAM: Harry Reid did.

BOXER: Excuse me. He never said our troops are losers. Now, Lindsey, just be careful what you say. The bottom line here is, the losers are the ones who have, you know, engineered this war, made a huge mistake, Dick Cheney, we're in the last throes, the war will last six months, and all of you who have supported this escalation and have turned us away from fighting al Qaida into putting us in the middle of a civil war.

BOXER: "The loser is the Commander in Chief who has not lead our country well."

Watch the segment. It's a thing of beauty.

Interestingly, watch Lindsey carefully in the seconds after he steps in it. He can see what he's done. Look at that hard swallow and fidgeting. That's not the normal Graham we know so well. He knows he's crossed a line, given the Boxer the perfect pitch, and all he can do is sit and watch as she creams it out of the park. This is the sort of response all Democrats need to have on the tips of their tongues when Republicans try to slap us around. Hitting back carries a much weightier message than the English alone would imply.

Iraqi Oil Law DOA

Crap:

It has not even reached parliament, but the oil law that U.S. officials call vital to ending Iraq's civil war is in serious trouble among Iraqi lawmakers, many of whom see it as a sloppy document rushed forward to satisfy Washington's clock.

Opposition ranges from vehement to measured, but two things are clear: The May deadline that the White House had been banking on is in doubt. And even if the law is passed, it fails to resolve key issues, including how to divide Iraq's oil revenue among its Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni regions, and how much foreign investment to allow. Those questions would be put off for future debates.

The problems of the oil bill bode poorly for the other so-called benchmarks that the Bush administration has been pressuring Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's government to meet. Those include provincial elections, reversing a prohibition against former Baath Party members holding government and military positions and revision of Iraq's constitution.

This is the Hydrocarbon Law that was so ballyhooed a few weeks ago, even though it had only made it through an executive committee and not the Parliament. It was hailed as a breakthrough achievement, since oil redistribution is one of the key political concessions necessary if we are ever to achieve anything we can even dishonestly call "victory in Iraq." Now even the hope of saving face is slipping away.

Things can get worse in Iraq.

Guffaw!

Remember the farmer family that Rudy's campaign snubbed because they weren't rich enough to demagogue the inheritance tax? You knew it would only be a matter of time before he got hit on the issue, and McCain is the one taking the swing:

Senator John McCain put in a personal call today to an Iowa woman that was
snubbed by Rudy Giuliani's campaign, asking to meet with her and apologizing to
her on "behalf of all politicians," the woman told me this evening.

"John McCain personally called me -- today, this afternoon," the woman, Deb
VonSprecken, told me. "Wow. He said, `I want to come and meet you.'"

...

In his call to Deb, McCain apologized to her on the Rudy campaign's behalf and asked if he could come see her, the woman says. "He apologized on behalf of all politicians," she told me. "He just apologized in general. He was really sweet. I recognized his voice from TV. He was very, very polite, funny."

In asking to come visit with her, "He started teasing me and saying, `We're doing a security check. I'm homing in on satellite,'" Deb tells me. "I said, `No, no, don't do it.' We were laughing. It was incredibly nice."

McCain, that old charmer! Shameless flirt!

If McCain, the normally preordained GOP establishment candidate, feels the need to stoop to shots like this, you know the GOP nomination process is a mess compared to the orderly procession to coronation we normally see from the authoritarian party. If he can get this attack media play, maybe it will even buoy his campaign by sinking Giuliani's.