It Has the Feel of a Revival

Note: Watching the RNC reminds me of my childhood and going to a Southern Baptist revival in town...twenty miles from my local Church...but further than that in my perception. Forty years later I still remember hearing the stories of faith, healing, and witness that weekend. Ordinary folks who had experienced the power of the Lord in answering their prayers spoke openly of their faith.

In my memory there were no Elizabeth Dole flavored stories: nothing was said then about the sanctity of every life, nothing was said about protecting marriage from an unspecified threat, nothing was said blaming some entity for affronts to our religious traditions. Then it was only the stories of people, and how God had changed their lives.

During parts of the RNC, I felt the revival feeling welling up again...but it had a distinct edge to it that I did not feel comfortable with. GW Bush was presented by the speakers as an almost mythic figure, possessed of extra-ordinary abilities, faith, and personal characteristics. The most frequently used, or misused descriptive word was "leader", but the projection was that he was the One, not simply the preferred candidate for CEO of the United States; but rather a person with semi-divine powers.

GW Bush has been primarily a politician for twenty five years at least...not a rancher, not a businessman, not a missionary...a politician. One who has demonstrated his ease with character assasinations against politial rivals, with alliances of convenience with those who promote positions diametrically opposite to his stated positions, and with a tendency to favor select sections of American society at the expense of disenfranchisement of other segments.

As the playright wrote: "He's just a man, like so many men...". Let's not make GW Bush into something he is not. Judge his performance as America's CEO these past four years and decide if he deserves another term; but please lose the Appointed One bombast. American needs a talented CEO to guide us through the next several years...we do not need to worship a Hero, nor devolve into slavishly favoring a convenient messenger to the exclusion of the important messages.

What's with the rolled up sleeve bit guys?

Ugh...Stupid Here Again:

Note: Have you ever gotten the idea that politicians who want to get your vote, or hucksters trying to win your confidence, employ simple cues to attempt to ingratiate themselves into your perceptions? Nothing shows this better than the "rolled up sleeves" motif.

In this election cycle, Howard Dean never missed an opportunity to roll up the sleeves, (hereafter called RUTS), regardless of the weather, the audience, or the setting. John Kerry showed he could do the RUTS routine as well; as did Edwards, Clark, and even Al Sharpton.
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From Matt Labash: Senior Writer at The Weekly Standard.

DURING THE DEBATE, another dialogue goes off under the stewardship of Anderson Cooper, whom TV critics frequently mistake for "edgy"--though in fairness to Cooper, it's an easy mistake to make since he shares a line-up with Aaron Brown. Over the last few months, candidates have attempted to make inroads into the youth vote: Howard Dean has identified himself as a metrosexual, John Kerry has gigged with Moby, and Dennis Kucinich has consorted with rappers like Noyeek the Grizzly Bear, picking up endorsements such as "Yo, I love this fool."

Throughout the debate, it's clear that young people like to be pandered to, and politicians like to pander--the perfect marriage. This is evident in the 30-second candidate videos (Wes Clark, never known as the class clown, is actually seen having an earnest discussion about the potential break-up of Outkast, before bumping knuckles with a young voter). But it is more evident in the candidates' dress. While a good portion of the young audience are in coat and tie, Dean comes out with no jacket and rolled-up sleeves. John Edwards wears a coat, but no tie. Joe Lieberman and John Kerry, perhaps feeling overdressed, both ditch their jackets before the debate gets started. By the first commercial break, Edwards loses his jacket and rolls up his sleeves. Later, Al Sharpton sheds his jacket and unbuttons his vest. Wesley Clark, in jacket and black mock turtleneck, looks like he's on his way to a humanities professor party. And Dennis Kucinich, wearing the exact same rig, looks as if Clark's mother laid out his clothes. (Clark, perhaps not wanting to be outdone by Lieberman, Kerry, Edwards, and Sharpton, also ends up ditching his jacket.)

That settled, they get onto the issue young people care about most: antebellum racism. An audience member pounces on a tempest-in-a-teapot, Dean's lazily phrased attempt at outreach to southern voters with Confederate flags on their pick-up trucks (allowing grandstanders Edwards and Sharpton to establish, once and for all, that the Democratic party is no longer pro-slavery). There are plenty of non-youth-vote-type questions, on everything from the Cuban embargo to Iraq. But all the questions that are unorthodox, and could only be asked by Rock the Vote-ish audience members, tend to remind observers how painful it is when presidential candidates try to "keep things real," as Cooper implores them to do. (Even Bill Clinton--who was better than anybody at keeping it real in a fake way--let slip to the kids that his favorite musician was Kenny G.)

During the obligatory pot-smoking question, several candidates seem willing to drink bong-water if it would establish their credentials. When one woman asks which of their fellow candidates they'd most like to party with, Lieberman creeps-out the room by saying, "I hope my wife understands this. I'd like to party with the young lady who asked that question." Sharpton takes it further, saying he'd like to party with John Kerry's wife. Kerry sheds his long-faced Easter Island mask, adopts a self-conscious smile, and says he'd wanted to party with Carol Moseley Braun, but now he'd better stick with Sharpton "so I can keep an eye on my wife." Sharpton and Kerry then clasp hands in what is the first, and it is to be hoped last, soul-brother handshake of this election.

Back in the spin room after the debate, the candidates enter one by one. On a TV platform, Gideon Yago is complaining to Paula Zahn that the candidates failed to "really open up a dialogue." Yet they are willing enough to talk freely about their youth-vote outfits. When I ask Wes Clark what was going through his mind when he showed up in the same clothes as Kucinich, he looks as startled as a possum in the high beams, but regains his composure, and answers, "I thought Dennis Kucinich had excellent taste." When I ask Edwards why he stripped down during the debate, he seems to have trouble keeping it real. "Sometimes, formality...can push people away. Especially young people. Sometimes they feel uncomfortable. I want them to feel comfortable."

Outside, I run into a group of middle schoolers from Newton. "You're the children, you're our future, get in there," I say to them, in the interest of establishing a dialogue. They can't get into the party, they complain, because alcohol is being served. The youth issues that concern them most, they tell me, are gay rights and birth control. "It happens every day in our lives," says one 11-year-old girl. I have to admit, I'm taken aback. When I was 11, the only issues I cared about were football cards and "Gilligan's Island" reruns. Ihadn't yet formed my political worldview, unlike the junior-high boy who told me, "I like Al Sharpton. He's awesome! He's not, like, boring."

Being not boring is what it's all about. As Rock the Vote president Jehmu Greene says, "Now that we are done rocking the candidates on live television, for the next month we will keep on rolling and build on the energy and excitement . . . with a Rock the Video contest"--in which youths can select their favorite candidate video--the "perfect way to keep the party going." It gives them, she says, "a direct way to provide feedback." Establishing dialogue is, like, a two-way street.
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Note: The most brazen make-over candidate for the 2004 RUTS Commemorative Award has to be GW Bush, who today: (the second day of the RNC 2004) is featured on the cover of Time, Newsweek, NY TImes, and others in classic RUTS regalia. I wish I had time to see how many photos show GW in RUTS historically. Betcha it wasn't many...and certainly none that were front page.

As distasteful as this craven mechanism is, it could be worse: when global warming becomes so bad we all have to go around wearing hats outdoors, the man-of-the-people RUT move might require some dexterity with the chapeau...or perhaps it might have something to do with bermuda shorts? Ugh

Re-Activist Judges?

For Immediate Release: The White House: Office of the Press Secretary
May 17, 2004
Statement by the President

The sacred institution of marriage should not be redefined by a few activist judges. All Americans have a right to be heard in this debate. I called on the Congress to pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of a man and a woman as husband and wife. The need for that amendment is still urgent, and I repeat that call today.
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From Owen in The Silicon Valley:
"Question, the problem for strict constructionists is that the world has changed and continues to change. If we relied on "settled law" much of what we take for granted in terms of rights wouldn't exist...which may be what some people want. On the other hand, only a court presence that combines respect for Constitutional precedent with an honest view of contemporary society and law can address the issues of the 21st century and maintain respect for our judicial system. Besides, at root, all law is medieval (or even more ancient, depending on who you view as source law) until somebody interprets it anew. Why is an activist a bad judge and a reactivist good?
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From an article in the New York Times by Dahlia Lithwick:
"Re-activist judges are able to present themselves as "strict constructionists" or "originalists" by arguing, as does Justice Clarence Thomas, that any case decided wrongly (i.e., not in accordance with the framers of the Constitution) should simply be erased, as though erasure is somehow a passive act. And while there is an urgent normative debate underlying this issue -- over whether the Constitution should evolve or stay static -- no one ought to be allowed to claim that the act of clubbing a live Constitution to death isn't activism.
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Phyllis Schlafly's latest!
The Supremacists: The Tyranny Of Judges And How To Stop It

The gravest threat to American democracy is the supreme power of judges over political, social, and economic policy. In this bracing indictment, Phyllis Schlafly exposes the courts’ 50-year conquest of legislative authority, made possible by presidents, congressmen, and voters who surrendered without a fight. The Supremacists is both a warning that self-government is in peril and a battle plan for overthrowing the tyranny of judges.
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From the Denver Post by Mike Soraqhan:
""Activist judges" difficult to define
As the debate on a gay-marriage ban heats up, legal experts say the term is, at best, imprecise and, at worst, used by people who simply disagree with a ruling.

Washington - Ban supporters will be blaming these black-robed rogues for pushing gay marriage onto the American stage, requiring them to push back with a constitutional amendment. "I do feel the courts are out of hand, and they've gone too far on this particular issue," Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Loveland and the Senate author of the ban, said at a forum last week.

President Bush, too, has lashed out at "activist judges." But confusion reigns over just what is an "activist" judge.

Even legal scholars who rail against them say the term suffers from imprecision. Some legal scholars say an "activist" judge is simply one who made a decision someone didn't like. "I think it's more of an insult than a philosophy," said University of Colorado constitutional law professor Richard Collins.

Others say "activist judges" are simply convenient scapegoats for gay-marriage opponents who don't want to attack gay people directly. "We heard this about 'activist courts' during civil rights," said Wayne Fields, an English professor at Washington University who studies political rhetoric. "Instead of saying, 'We don't want black people going to our schools,' we say, 'We don't want the courts making that decision."'

Conservative legal scholars, however, say activist judges are out there, eroding the Constitution and the ability of people to make decisions through their elected officials. The Massachusetts Supreme Court decision allowing gay marriage, they say, is a textbook example. "Massachusetts is a clear case of judicial activism," said lawyer and Princeton University professor Robert George. "Whether or not an activist decision is good or bad policy, it always is an unconstitutional action. The proper forum to raise these kind of issues is the legislative forum."

The gay-marriage debate highlights a long national tug-of-war over how far judges can go in interpreting the Constitution. As in Massachusetts, the argument is increasingly trickling down to state and local courts.

Generally, the "activist" label is hung on socially liberal decisions. The trend generally took off with the federal courts' role in desegregation, starting with the 1954 Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education decision, and the 1973 Supreme Court decision guaranteeing access to abortion, written by Justice Harry Blackmun.

Conservatives say the trend soared from there, with judges increasingly willing to find new rights, use tenuous theories and overrule elected lawmakers.

Desegregation and civil rights gained acceptance, giving judges a reputation in many quarters for doing what politicians lack the will to do, said University of Colorado law professor Robert Nagel. But he said rulings like those on abortion and banning school prayer inspired sustained bitterness against the courts from social conservatives.

In recent years, liberals charged that conservative jurists developed their own brand of activism, a complaint that reached its zenith when the Supreme Court handed the 2000 presidential election to Bush.

Critics of judicial activism like Princeton's George say there are plenty of examples to offend liberal sensibilities. In the first part of the 20th century, the Supreme Court was tossing worker protections. And he said the 1857 Dred Scott case, which struck down a ban on slavery in the territories, was a case of judicial activism.

"The very institution that was on the right side of racial justice in Brown vs. Board was on the wrong side of Dred Scott vs. Sanford," George said. "The power to do good is also the power to do evil."
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From Sean Cahill in the Advocate:
"Bush’s denunciation of “activist judges” is particularly rich coming from a man who would not occupy the Oval Office were it not for the intervention of a bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, a ruling that ignored the will of the American people as expressed in the popular vote.
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From Patridiots.com by Poppy:
"February 25, 2004
Activist Judges?

George Bush, Bill Frist and the other right wing ideologues ludicrously blame "activist judges" for the need for a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage. This line of argument is not about gay marriage, but another attack by the American conservative movement on the independence of the judiciary.

The current movement for gay marriage is not a creature of the courts. There has been only one case decision in favor of gay marriage, and that was the recent Massachusetts case. Other than that, the movement has had victories with legal civil unions in Vermont a few years ago and New Jersey just last month, and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and New Mexico's Sandoval County Clerk Victoria Dunlap offering marriage licenses.

That means two legislatures and governors have signed civil union laws, and an elected Mayor and elected County Clerk have offered marriage licenses to same sex couples. Not courts, but legally elected American citizens. Courts have been used to stop Dunlap in New Mexico and are being geared up against Newsom.

This social issue is being handled by the people and not the Courts, and to blame this on "activist courts" is just an effort to minimize the size and energy of the movement. By blaming a few judges off in the hinterlands, Bush and his friends can ignore and obscure the people who support same sex marriage.

The argument that "activist judges" are destroying this country is trotted out every time the right wing is upset over some cultural case they lose. "Activist" is code for liberal, so when a culturally conservative decision comes down they are strangely silent. They were thrilled with the activist Supreme Court decision that put Bush into the White House in 2000. Or the recess appointment of Charles Pickering to the Federal Appeals Court.

The federal judiciary can't be that liberal because the Republican Party has held the White House 24 of the past 36 years, controlling judicial appointment. Seven of the nine Supreme Court Justices were appointed by Republicans. This judiciary is not liberal, but the laws they are charged with interpreting are liberal, as is the Constitution.

The call for a gay marriage amendment is an attempt to appeal to the conservative base, and nothing else. I doubt if the corporations – most of which offer domestic partner benefits – that support the Republicans care that much, but the cultural conservatives do. If the GOP can get Democrats on record voting against the amendment it will make great literature pieces in October, and "prove" that Democrats are on the side of the "activist" judges and not the good working class people of America.

The same tactic was used in 2002 with the authorization for Bush to go to war in Iraq. It worked then, and they are hoping it will work again today.
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From a Ruling in the 1967 Loving vs Virginia Case:
Loving v. Virginia

The Equal Protection Clause requires the consideration of whether the classifications drawn by any statute constitute an arbitrary and invidious discrimination. The clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to eliminate all official state sources of invidious racial discrimination in the States.

There can be no question but that Virginia's miscegenation statutes rest solely upon distinctions drawn according to race. The statutes proscribe generally accepted conduct if engaged in by members of different races. Over the years, this Court has consistently repudiated "distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry" as being "odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality." At the very least, the Equal Protection Clause demands that racial classifications, especially suspect in criminal statutes, be subjected to the "most rigid scrutiny," Korematsu v. United States (1944), and, if they are ever to be upheld, they must be shown to be necessary to the accomplishment of some permissible state objective, independent of the racial discrimination which it was the object of the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate. Indeed, two members of this Court have already stated that they "cannot conceive of a valid legislative purpose . . . which makes the color of a person's skin the test of whether his conduct is a criminal offense."

There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.

II.

These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
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From Borowitzreport.com via Calpundit:
"70% OF EXISTING MARRIAGES MAY ALREADY BE GAY

New Study Jolts White House

The Bush White House’s plan to push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages suffered a surprising setback today as a new study revealed that well over seventy percent of existing marriages may already be gay.

The study, conducted by Dr. Charles Cranborn of the University of Minnesota, confirmed what many social scientists have long suspected: that within the first five years of marriages, most men become, for all intents and purposes, gay.

“Soon after marrying, most men stop hitting on women and start shopping for furniture,” Dr. Cranborn said. “Scientifically speaking, how gay is that?”

Within ten years of marriage, Dr. Cranborn added, a significant number of married men stop having sex with women altogether.

“There’s only one way to describe someone who does not have sex with women, does not hit on women, and spends his free time shopping for furniture,” Dr. Cranborn added. “That word, to be scientific about it, is gay.”

FROM borowitzreport.com VIA TBOGG
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From Sen. Orrin Hatch's Website:

"We must amend the Constitution to defend traditional marriage from being undermined by activist judges. The bedrock of American society is the family, and it is traditional marriage that undergirds the American family. But recent court decisions have proven that courts are usurping the role of legislatures by imposing their own definitions of marriage on the people.

I whole-heartedly support the passage of the Allard Amendment to allow the American people — rather than a few activist judges — to define this fundamental unit of our society.

In addition, it is my belief that adhering strictly to the Constitution and the system of government our Founders outlined is the best guarantee of the freedoms we cherish as Americans. We need legislators, judges, and citizens who understand the view of the Constitution envisioned by our Founding Fathers.

I believe strongly in the freedoms enshrined in our Bill of Rights, and that it is the duty of every American to uphold those freedoms. But I also believe that these rights are sometimes misinterpreted by over-reaching judges. We should not take freedom of speech so far as to mean that pornographers may target our children. And we should not turn freedom of religion on its head, reasoning that all references to God must be removed from public life.

Our Constitution is an inspired document that has preserved the unity of our nation, protected the rights of its citizens, and made America a beacon of freedom and prosperity for the world. I consider my pledge to defend the Constitution, and all that it stands for, to be among my most sacred duties.
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And finally, the wrap up from a Feb 25th Washington Post article by Professor Peter Edelman of the Georgetown University Law Center:

""Judicial Activism": What Does It Even Mean Anymore?

Time to Bench 'Judicial Activism'

President Bush, in calling for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, has once again condemned activist judges in Massachusetts for ruling that the state's constitution requires recognition of same-sex marriages. "Judicial activism" is a ubiquitous epithet, especially at election time, but it's time for both liberals and conservatives to enter into a disarmament agreement and give it up. It has become a cliche -- a scare phrase for either side to hurl at the other in place of a substantive argument that a particular judicial decision is wrong on its merits.

From the 1950s until recently, such charges were mainly a staple of conservative rhetoric. Recall "Impeach Earl Warren" billboards and President Richard Nixon's promise to appoint "strict constructionists." But attacks on judicial overreaching are hardly the monopoly of one party. Franklin D. Roosevelt complained: "The Court has been acting not as a judicial body, but as a policy-making body. We must take action to save the Constitution from the Court."

A succession of Warren Court landmark decisions made the judicial activism charge seem the property of one political camp. Signers of the Southern Manifesto condemned Brown v. Board of Education as "a clear abuse of judicial power." Conservatives all over the country decried Miranda and other expansions of the rights of criminal suspects.

Beginning with President Nixon, the rhetoric and the reality diverged. The mantra of "judicial activism" stayed consistent enough from the conservative side. What confused things was the substance. Presidents who campaigned against activist judges appointed 10 justices to the Supreme Court between 1969 and 1992, but it was "their" court that protected abortion and commercial speech, legitimated busing and affirmative action, restricted sex discrimination and aid to parochial schools, and even imposed a moratorium on capital punishment. Liberals, winning more than they expected to, kept quiet about judicial activism.

Over the past 15 years or so, the court has gotten more conservative. Liberals have found ammunition to turn the conservative mantra on its head, and the charges of judicial activism now flow in both directions. It is the liberals who point out that the current Supreme Court has struck down nearly 30 federal laws in the past decade, compared with fewer than 130 during the two centuries after the Constitution was ratified. It is liberals who now ask why the court does not defer to the political majority as expressed through legislative enactments. It is the liberals who now cry "activism" when the court strikes down laws establishing gun-free school zones, set-asides for minority contractors, state damages for discrimination based on age or disability, civil remedies for violence against women, and citizen suits under the Endangered Species Act. To many on the left, judicial activism will forever be defined by the court's decision in Bush v. Gore.

Which brings us back to Massachusetts and President Bush.

Is it judicial activism for that state's highest court to decide that the state constitution protects the rights of gay men and lesbians, or is it simply a decision with which President Bush disagrees? Bush did not use the rhetoric of judicial activism when the mainly conservative Rehnquist Court said last summer that state laws jailing gays for consensual sodomy are unconstitutional, even though he perhaps disagreed with the merits of the decision.

The Massachusetts court is sparking a national debate, just as occurred after Brown, but that debate, properly couched, is not about judicial activism. The issue is whether it is time to broaden the American dream once again by opening up the same basic opportunities to gay men and lesbians that had to be won -- sometimes in the courts -- by women, religious dissidents, racial minorities, disabled people and others without political clout.

Of course, in an election year, between flipping pancakes and kissing babies, politicians of all parties will find time to attack "activist" judges -- meaning different things by the term. The work of courts certainly deserves substantive criticism. But it would improve public debate over the right way to read our Constitution if the politicians agreed to remove the charge of judicial activism from their campaign arsenals. It's a tempting missile to lob at one's opponent, but it confuses far more than it clarifies. All sides would do well to remember Judge Alfred Goodwin's trenchant remark. "If the court makes a decision someone likes," he said, "it's applauded as 'judicial statesmanship.' If not, it's called 'judicial activism.' "

Army Times Magazine Editorial May 2004

Published: May 17, 2004
Editorial: A failure of leadership at the highest levels

Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war. Indeed, the damage done to the U.S. military and the nation as a whole by the horrifying photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at the notorious prison is incalculable.

But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons. There is no excuse for the behavior displayed by soldiers in the now-infamous pictures and an even more damning report by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. Every soldier involved should be ashamed.

But while responsibility begins with the six soldiers facing criminal charges, it extends all the way up the chain of command to the highest reaches of the military hierarchy and its civilian leadership. The entire affair is a failure of leadership from start to finish. From the moment they are captured, prisoners are hooded, shackled and isolated. The message to the troops: Anything goes.

In addition to the scores of prisoners who were humiliated and demeaned, at least 14 have died in custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army has ruled at least two of those homicides. This is not the way a free people keeps its captives or wins the hearts and minds of a suspicious world.

How tragically ironic that the American military, which was welcomed to Baghdad by the euphoric Iraqi people a year ago as a liberating force that ended 30 years of tyranny, would today stand guilty of dehumanizing torture in the same Abu Ghraib prison used by Saddam Hussein’s henchmen.

One can only wonder why the prison wasn’t razed in the wake of the invasion as a symbolic stake through the heart of the Baathist regime.

Army commanders in Iraq bear responsibility for running a prison where there was no legal adviser to the commander, and no ultimate responsibility taken for the care and treatment of the prisoners.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, also shares in the shame. Myers asked “60 Minutes II” to hold off reporting news of the scandal because it could put U.S. troops at risk. But when the report was aired, a week later, Myers still hadn’t read Taguba’s report, which had been completed in March. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also failed to read the report until after the scandal broke in the media.

By then, of course, it was too late. Myers, Rumsfeld and their staffs failed to recognize the impact the scandal would have not only in the United States, but around the world.

If their staffs failed to alert Myers and Rumsfeld, shame on them. But shame, too, on the chairman and secretary, who failed to inform even President Bush. He was said to have been left to learn of the explosive scandal from media reports instead of from his own military leaders.

On the battlefield, Myers’ and Rumsfeld’s errors would be called a lack of situational awareness — a failure that amounts to professional negligence. To date, the Army has moved to court-martial the six soldiers suspected of abusing Iraqi detainees and has reprimanded six others.

Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who commanded the MP brigade that ran Abu Ghraib, has received a letter of admonishment and also faces possible disciplinary action. That’s good, but not good enough.

This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential — even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war.
— Military Times editorial, May 17 issue

A Better Distorted View

The physics of diffusion offers a new way of generating maps
Ivars Peterson

A map can show much more than rivers, roads, and political boundaries. It can express an attitude. Saul Steinberg's famous New Yorker cover illustration, called "View from 9th Avenue," shows a foreshortened map of New York City and its environs. Beyond the city's avenues and the Hudson River, Steinberg's map looks westward toward vaguely defined regions: Jersey, the rest of the United States, the Pacific Ocean, and a barely visible Asia and Europe. The map neatly encapsulates a Manhattanite's self-centered perspective on the world.

A map can also illuminate the way people live. It can incorporate census results, disease incidence, or the number of telephones in use. A simple color code, for example, can show where the incidence of a particular disease is high and where it's low. Such representations, however, can be misleading. Inevitably, cities would show a higher incidence than rural areas merely because the former have larger populations. Plotting per capita incidence takes care of that problem but discards information about where most of the cases occurred.

One solution is to take out variations in population density but still show how many cases occur in each region. This can be done on a distorted map in which the sizes of geographic regions appear in proportion to their populations, whether it's people or goods, or other items. Such a map is known as a cartogram.

Constructing a usable cartogram is challenging. The computer methods currently available sometimes produce maps with overlapping regions or weird distortions. In some cases, the maps are so highly skewed that they're difficult to read or interpret. Moreover, it can take hours of computer time to produce a single cartogram.

Now, two researchers have turned to the physics of diffusion to develop a new, speedy technique for generating cartograms by computer. "Our method is conceptually simple and produces useful, elegant, and easily readable maps," say Mark E.J. Newman and Michael T. Gastner of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. They describe their procedure in the May 18 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

There's an urgent need for a method that really works, says geographer Daniel Dorling of the University of Sheffield in England. The algorithm proposed by Newman and Gastner may "prove to be of huge value in cartography worldwide," he suggests.

Perfect distortion

A geographic map of the continental United States shows a patchwork of states of varying sizes and shapes. Creating a new map in which the area of each state is proportional to its population requires enlarging densely populated states and shrinking sparsely populated ones. On such a map, populous New Jersey would loom large despite its relatively small area and vast Wyoming would turn tiny.

Mathematically, it can be shown that there are infinitely many ways to perform such a transformation, even while making sure that the total area and the basic connectedness, or topology, of the map don't change. With such leeway, geographers and other researchers have proposed many different methods. Dorling himself has invented several ingenious techniques for producing cartograms, but each one has disadvantages.

The "perfect" cartogram, says Dorling, would be one that also minimizes local distortion. "If you were to look in detail at a very small area of the cartogram, it should look very similar to a normal map," he says. For example, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona meet at right angles on a standard map of the United States. These states should also come close to doing so on a cartogram.

Achieving such perfection would be difficult, so researchers have focused on making good-enough cartograms efficiently.

Newman and Gastner started with the observation that, on a population cartogram, the population is spread out evenly. The conversion of a geographic map into a cartogram reminded the physicists of diffusion—the process by which a gas spreads to fill available space until it has a uniform density throughout.

Applied to a map, there would be a flow from areas with high population densities to those with low densities. This flow would take any boundaries with it to create the new map.

Inspired by this analogy, Newman and Gastner turned to an equation that physicists use to describe diffusion. Starting with a mathematical description of the population density for a given map, they used a computer to solve the diffusion equation through a step-by-step process. The result: a map in which the population density is the same everywhere and that has no overlapping regions.

"The programming necessary to make this work is quite involved, so it took a while to produce the first maps," Newman says. "Once we did, however, it rapidly became clear that this was a useful tool."

It's a little surprising that no one had thought to use this approach before. "Perhaps it's reasonable to a physicist—diffusion is something physicists all study as undergraduates—but not to someone in cartography or geography, which is where most people working on this topic are coming from," Newman says.

"The method of Newman and Gastner is elegant," agrees geographer Waldo Tobler of the University of California, Santa Barbara, "but the mathematics is rather difficult."

In the late 1960s, Tobler, who was then at the University of Michigan, was the first to propose a method for the automated computer generation of cartograms. In his original scheme, the initial map is divided into small rectangular or hexagonal cells. Each cell is independently enlarged or contracted to a size proportional to its population. The resized cells are then distorted so that corners match again. The sizing process is repeated again and again until the population density in the cells evens out.

It was an important first step, but Tobler's method was quite slow and sometimes produced unfortunate distortions.

Other researchers tried to improve upon Tobler's effort. One scheme, recently developed by Dorling, also divided a map into tiny cells. With each step of the procedure, cells lying near a boundary would be reassigned as required to meet population requirements. Populous areas would grow larger at the expense of less-populated areas.

Another method permitted the borders of cells to move in response both to space requirements and to theoretical forces exerted by other cells.

Although there were improvements in performance, no method completely solved the problem.

Skewed states

Newman and Gastner have tried out their diffusion method on population data from the 2000 U.S. census. To demonstrate the technique's effectiveness and versatility, they created cartograms displaying the results of the U.S. presidential election of 2000, lung cancer rates among males in the state of New York, and the distribution of wire service news stories by state.

HEADLINE NEWS. The geographical distribution of news stories isn't uniform, Newman and Gastner show. Even allowing for population, a few cities—New York and Washington, in particular—get a surprisingly large fraction of the attention. The researchers extracted the dateline from about 72,000 wire-service news stories from 1994 to 1998 and changed a standard map (top) into a cartogram (bottom) in which the sizes of states are proportional to the frequency of their appearance in datelines.
Newman and Gastner/PNAS

In the close contest between Republican George Bush and Democrat Al Gore, Newman and Gastner's cartogram based on population density reveals a fairly even split. In contrast, using a standard geographic map and simply coloring in each state according to which candidate had received more votes there produces a much larger area in the Republican color—even though Gore finished slightly ahead in the popular vote.

"Clearly then, a simple map is a poor visual representation of the election results, in the sense that it is hard to tell which party got more votes by looking at the map," Newman and Gastner say.

In each of their applications, the researchers had to decide what type of geographic area to choose as a basic unit. For example, in the United States, they could take the population of each state and distribute it uniformly over the state's area, or they could do it county by county or census tract by census tract.

The choice of unit used to establish the so-called population-density function affects the amount of distortion in the resulting cartogram. For example, distributing a state's population over its entire area generally produces a map with more recognizable features than does a county-by-county distribution, because cities cause substantial local distortions.

"Part of the art of making a good cartogram lies in shrewd decisions about the definition of the population-density," Newman and Gastner say in their PNAS paper. Ultimately, the choice of population-density function is up to the user of the method, who must decide what particular features are most desirable in his or her application.

The Newman-Gastner technique generates a cartogram remarkably quickly. "Maps are complicated things, and any calculation takes quite a long time," Newman says. "Our method . . . allows us to speed up the calculations a great deal and complete them in just seconds [rather than hours or days]. This makes a lot of difference to the usability of the method."

The physicists also discovered that their method generates maps that are visually pleasing and easy to read. "If you have correctness, speed, and useful, readable maps, then you have pretty much everything a cartogram needs," Newman says.

So far, Newman and Gastner have applied their technique only to standard examples. They plan to develop a software package that would permit geographers or cartographers to use the method on trickier, more interesting problems without having to write complex computer programs themselves.

Newman and Gastner are working to further increase the method's speed. They are also considering the application of their tool on a global scale.

"We haven't done anything larger than the United States, but that's not because of scaling problems," Newman says. "In fact, the U.S. maps were done on a 1,000-by-1,000 grid, so we already, in effect, had a million regions in those maps, and the calculations were still very quick."

The challenge in creating maps of large portions of the world derives from Earth's curvature. The method that Newman and Gastner used to flatten the area covered by the United States doesn't work for the whole globe.

Going to larger areas "would involve rewriting our computer codes," Newman says. Nonetheless, "in terms of running time, I see no reason why very large maps, including the entire world, should not be possible."

Although Dorling praises the work of Newman and Gastner, he sees the need for additional research on methods for generating global cartograms to get closer to the best cartogram that is theoretically possible.

"Creating [perfect] cartograms remains an algorithmic puzzle," he says. "I've been searching for 15 years to find a Ph.D. student willing to take this problem on. We now have the computational power—we lack the brains. The solution has probably already been found in another area."

"One of the repeated lessons of the field of complex systems in which I work is that there are an awful lot of good ideas out there, and many of them are well known, but few of them are well known in every field," Newman says. "So, people can make significant progress by applying an idea commonplace in one area to a field in which it has less, or no, currency."

Ad claims Kerry cast "98 votes" to raise taxes, but the total is misleading.

Bush Still Fudging the Numbers on Kerry's Tax Votes
From: FactCheck.org
August 30, 2004

The Bush-Cheney campaign released a television ad August 23 accusing Kerry of casting "98 votes for tax increases." The number is an improvement on Bush's earlier claim that Kerry cast 350 votes for "higher taxes," which we described as inflated. But even the new, reduced total is padded.

Of the 98 votes for "tax increases," 43 were cast on budget measures that only set targets and don't actually legislate tax increases. Often, several votes are counted regarding a single tax bill.

The ad also strives to blame Kerry for raising taxes on the "middle class" and says "There's what Kerry says and then there's what Kerry does." But a close look shows the votes cited in this ad are in fact fairly consistent with Kerry's promise only to raise taxes on those making over $200,000 a year.

"Ex-Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell Is Charged With Fraud by U.S.
Aug. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell was charged with fraud by the U.S. following a five-year investigation into claims he accepted improper payments from contractors seeking city contracts. "

Scientific Integrity in Policy Making
Further investigation of the Bush administration's abuse of science
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This page is part of the introduction from the July 2004 update to the February 2004 UCS report Scientific Integrity in Policymaking.

More than 5,000 scientists have called for an end to these practices, including 48 Nobel Laureates and 62 National Medal of Science recipients.

On February 18, 2004, 62 preeminent scientists including Nobel laureates, National Medal of Science recipients, former senior advisers to administrations of both parties, numerous members of the National Academy of Sciences, and other well-known researchers released a statement titled Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making. In this statement, the scientists charged the Bush administration with widespread and unprecedented "manipulation of the process through which science enters into its decisions."

The scientists’ statement made brief reference to specific cases that illustrate this pattern of behavior. In conjunction with the statement, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released detailed documentation backing up the scientists’ charges in its report, Scientific Integrity in Policy Making.

Since the release of the UCS report in February, the administration has continued to undermine the integrity of science in policy making seemingly unchecked. Many scientists have spoken out about their frustration with an administration that has undermined the quality of the science that informs policy making by suppressing, distorting, or manipulating the work done by scientists at federal agencies and on scientific advisory panels. For instance, Michael Kelly, a biologist who had served at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service for nine years, recently resigned his position and issued an indictment of Bush administration practices. As Kelly wrote, "I speak for many of my fellow biologists who are embarrassed and disgusted by the agency’s apparent misuse of science."1

Scientific Integrity in Policy Making: Further investigation of the Bush administration's abuse of science investigates several new incidents that have surfaced since the February 2004 UCS report. These new incidents have been corroborated through in-depth interviews and internal government documents, including some documents released through the Freedom of Information Act. The cases that follow include:

egregious disregard of scientific study, across several agencies, regarding the environmental impacts of mountaintop removal mining;

censorship and distortion of scientific analysis, and manipulation of the scientific process, across several issues and agencies in regard to the Endangered Species Act;

distortion of scientific knowledge in decisions about emergency contraception;

new evidence about the use of political litmus tests for scientific advisory panel appointees. These new revelations put to rest any arguments offered by the administration that the cases to date have been isolated incidents involving a

few bad actors.
Concern in the scientific community has continued to grow. In the months since the original UCS report, more than 5,000 scientists have signed onto the scientists’ statement. Signers include 48 Nobel laureates, 62 National Medal of Science recipients, and 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences. A number of these scientists have served in multiple administrations, both Democratic and Republican, underscoring the unprecedented nature of this administration’s practices and demonstrating that the issues of scientific integrity transcend partisan politics.

The United States has an impressive history of investing in and reaping the benefits of scientific research. The actions by the Bush administration threaten to undermine the morale and compromise the integrity of scientists working for and advising America’s world-class governmental research institutions and agencies. Not only does the public expect and deserve government to provide it with accurate information, the government has a responsibility to ensure that policy decisions are not based on intentionally or knowingly flawed science. To do so carries serious implications for the health, safety, and environment of all Americans.

Given the lack of serious consideration and response by the administration to concerns raised by scores of prominent scientists, UCS is committed to continuing to investigate and publicize cases—corroborated by witnesses and documentation—in which politics is allowed to stifle or distort the integrity of the scientific process in governmental policy making. UCS—working with scientists across many disciplines, other organizations, and elected officials—will also seek to develop and implement solutions that will protect government scientists from retribution when they bring scientific abuse to light, provide better scientific advice to Congress, strengthen the role of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, strengthen and ensure adherence to conflict of interest guidelines for federal advisory panels, and ensure full access to government scientific analysis that has not been legitimately classified for national security reasons.

US News Article | Reuters.com: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators carrying colorful banners and shouting 'no more Bush' took to the streets of New York on Sunday, the day before the Republican convention was to open, to decry the U.S.-led war in Iraq and President Bush's policies. "

UK Seeks Global Support for Stem Cell Research
Sun Aug 29, 2004 07:07 PM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's leading scientific institution said Monday it is urging countries to back a campaign to stop a possible ban on stem cell research as part of a global treaty banning human cloning. The London-based Royal Society is stepping up its drive to push the United Nations to ban the cloning of babies, but to make no ruling on using the technology for medical research, or therapeutic cloning, at its 59th General Session in October. The 191-nation U.N. General Assembly is divided over whether to allow therapeutic cloning to continue or to adopt a broad cloning ban championed by the Bush administration and Costa Rica with strong backing from the U.S. anti-abortion movement and many predominantly Roman Catholic nations.

Last year, the assembly put treaty negotiations on hold for a year after 66 scientific academies around the world expressed support for therapeutic cloning. Cloning research relies on embryo cells, or stem cells, because they can grow into all types of cells and tissues in the body.

Supporters of a broad cloning ban argue therapeutic cloning, in which cells from human embryos are used in medical research, involves taking human lives because the embryos are eventually destroyed.

Although member nations would not be compelled to sign up to it, the Royal Society argues a treaty banning all forms of human cloning would place a major obstacle in the way of stem cell research which could provide new treatments for diseases including diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

"It is clear that if the convention bans all forms of human cloning, the UK, and other countries which currently permit carefully regulated therapeutic cloning, will not sign up to it," said Professor Richard Gardner, chairman of the Royal Society's working group on stem cell research and cloning, in a statement.

"For countries that have not yet brought in a ban, a UN convention which draws a clear distinction between reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning will provide invaluable guidance in passing effective legislation."

Some Republicans Who Will Not be Heard during the convention:

On The War in Iraq

by Andrew Gumbel, Independent (London) - August 18, 2002
The Bush administration's plans to go to war against Iraq are causing growing disquiet among eminent members of the President's Republican Party, including congressmen, foreign policy veterans and one close confidant of the first President Bush who was deeply involved in the war against Iraq a decade ago.

The names who have come forward this week to express scepticism or outright opposition to a military invasion could not be more high-profile: Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, Lawrence Eagleburger, Dick Armey, and Chuck Hagel, a senator from Nebraska seen as an expert on intelligence and security.
============================================
In the War On Drugs

WASHINGTON - August 20 - Prominent Republicans are featured in a full-page ad under the headline “the Right response to the War on Drugs”. The ad will run in the New York Sun each day of the Republican National Convention, August 30th – September 2nd.

“Most Republicans simply don’t know that many of their most prominent leaders think the drug war is a disaster,” said Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance. “This ad seemed a good way to let them know, and to plant the seeds for a more vigorous Republican drug policy debate in years to come.”

The publishers of the New York Sun plan a special distribution to make the paper available to every RNC delegate in town as well as thousands of others attending the convention.

Statements from Milton Friedman, William Buckley Jr., Grover Norquist, Gary Johnson and George Shultz are featured in the Drug Policy Alliance ad. Text from the ad includes: "Eighty-five million Americans have experimented with illegal drugs. Since the object of criminal law is to detect and punish the wrongdoer, should we reason that 85 million of us should have spent time in jail?" - William F. Buckley Jr., Syndicated Column, 8/10/96

"...I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years or so you saw the conservative coalition come out for an end to drug prohibition." - Grover Norquist, Poz website, 6/01

"Can any policy, however high-minded, be moral if it leads to widespread corruption, imprisons so many, has so racist an effect, destroys our inner cities, wreaks havoc on misguided and vulnerable individuals and brings death and destruction to foreign countries?" - Milton Friedman, New York Times 1/11/98

"...We need at least to consider and examine forms of controlled legalization of drugs." - George P. Shultz, Wall Street Journal, 10/27/89

  "Take it from a businessman: The War on Drugs is just money down the drain." - Gary E. Johnson, Intervention Magazine interview, 2004
========================================
The War on Womens Right to Choose

Anyone from the Republicans For Choice PAC

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The War of Apolistatic Christianity and Who Belongs

Not the Mormons

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The War on Stem Cell Research

Proposition 71: The Califormia Initiative for the expansion of Stem Cell Research

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No...and Yes...

In an interview published on Friday in USA Today, Pres. Bush said that Americans will re-elect him to a second term even if they disagree with his decision to invade Iraq.

Bush said voters "know who I am and I believe they're comfortable with the fact that they know I'm not going to shift principles or shift positions based upon polls and focus groups." Bush told USA Today that "the American people have seen me make the hardest of decisions. That's just going to have to be a part of their decision-making process." Bush said his strategy had been "flexible enough" to respond. "We're adjusting to our conditions" in places like Najaf, the paper quoted him as saying.

Note: This reminds me somewhat of Chevy Chase's line: "I'm Chevy Chase, and you're not."
Bush seems to be saying he is not going to change his principles or positions based on input from some people, (those who respond to polls and focus groups); but that he will based on other conditions as they occur. So, it's Yes...and No...Just trust me.

U.S. Court in New York Rejects Partial-Birth Abortion Ban
By JULIA PRESTON
NY Times
Published: August 27, 2004

A federal judge in New York ruled yesterday that a federal law banning a rarely used method of abortion was unconstitutional because it did not exempt cases where the procedure might be necessary to protect a woman's health.

The ruling, by Judge Richard Conway Casey, came in a challenge brought by the National Abortion Federation and seven doctors to a November 2003 law that bans the method known as partial-birth abortion.

Judge Casey determined that the Supreme Court required, in a decision four years ago, that any law limiting abortion must have a clause permitting doctors to use a banned procedure if they determine that the risk to a woman's health would be greater without it.

The Supreme Court ruling "informed us that this gruesome procedure may be outlawed only if there exists a medical consensus that there is no circumstance in which any women could potentially benefit from it," Judge Casey wrote. The Supreme Court's opinion struck down a state law in Nebraska.

The New York case, which was argued by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, was one of three cases challenging the partial-birth abortion law. On June 1, a federal judge in California ruled the law unconstitutional on similar but broader grounds than Judge Casey cited. The Justice Department has appealed that decision. A challenge in Nebraska is still in federal court there.

The ruling is a new blow to legislation that abortion opponents have hailed as one of their most significant victories. President Bush strongly backed the bill.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said in Washington yesterday that the Justice Department would continue to defend the law vigorously and would appeal the ruling. A department statement quoted President Bush, who had said the law would "end an abhorrent practice and continue to build a culture of life in America."

The ruling by Judge Casey, in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, makes it considerably less likely that the Bush administration will be able to implement the law as it is currently written. It also will shift the focus of the abortion debate back to the Supreme Court and its cornerstone 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade upholding a women's broad right to abortion.

At issue is a procedure, generally used in the second or third trimester of pregnancy, that involves partially extracting an intact fetus from a woman's uterus and then killing it by emptying the brain from the skull. Also known as D and X, for dilation and extraction, it has been used in cases of rare or unanticipated severe medical complications of pregnancy.

After listening to doctors describe the procedure in detail during 16 days of hearings this spring, Judge Casey wrote that it is "gruesome, brutal, barbaric and uncivilized." He cited medical experts' testimony that the procedure subjects the fetus to "severe pain."

He also dismissed much of the testimony by A.C.L.U. witnesses, saying he did not believe that many of their "purported reasons for why D and X is medically necessary are credible; rather they are theoretical or false."

But Judge Casey was even more pointedly critical of Congress, saying that it had voted for the law without seriously examining the medical issues. "This court heard more evidence during its trial than Congress heard over the span of eight years," the judge wrote.

He found that Congress, in writing the law, had ignored furious dissension among doctors over the safety and necessity of the disputed abortion. The lawmakers had overlooked testimony in their own hearings, he said, and based the bill on the conclusion that partial-birth abortion is "never necessary."

The law includes an exception if there is a risk to a woman's life, but not a broader exception if a doctor decides that there is a risk to a patient's health. A violation is a felony punished with up to two years in jail and fines up to $250,000.

The A.C.L.U. suit did not center on defending the procedure, but on contesting the limitations in the law on doctors' and women's ability to determine medical care.

Where Is The Shame?
By BOB HERBERT
NY Times Op-Ed
Published: August 27, 2004

Max Cleland, minus the three limbs he lost in Vietnam, showed up in his wheelchair outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Wednesday to suggest that the president take the simple and decent step of condemning the slime that is being spread by Bush supporters against the war record of John Kerry.

He didn't get very far. The president was busy vacationing and had neither the time nor the inclination to meet with Mr. Cleland, a former U.S. senator who was himself the target of vicious, unconscionable attacks by the G.O.P. slime machine when he ran for re-election in Georgia in 2002.

Later, at a press conference under the hot Crawford sun, Mr. Cleland told reporters: "The question is, where is George Bush's honor? Where is his shame?"

Mr. Cleland reminded reporters of the scurrilous attacks by Bush forces against Senator John McCain in the Republican presidential primary in 2000 and said: "Keep in mind, this president has gone after three Vietnam veterans in four years. That's got to stop."

In what is surely the most important election of the last half-century, we seem trapped in the politics of the madhouse. What is incredible is that these attacks on men who served not just honorably, but heroically, are coming from a hawkish party that is controlled by an astonishing number of men who sprinted as far from the front lines as they could when they were of fighting age and their country was at war.

Among them:

Mr. Bush himself, the nation's commander in chief and the biggest hawk of all. He revels in the accouterments of combat. The story was somewhat different when he was 22 years old and eligible for combat himself. He managed to get into the cushy confines of the Texas Air National Guard at the height of the Vietnam War in 1968 - a year in which more than a half-million American troops were in the war zone and more than 14,000 were killed.

The story gets murky after that. We know the future president breezed off at some point to work on a political campaign in Alabama, skipped a required flight physical in 1972 and was suspended from flying. He supported the war in Vietnam but was never in any danger of being sent there.

Vice President Dick Cheney, another fierce administration hawk. Mr. Cheney asked for and received five deferments when he was eligible for the draft. He told senators at a confirmation hearing in 1989, "I had other priorities in the 60's than military service." Many draft-age Americans had similar priorities - getting an education, getting married and starting a family.

Attorney General John Ashcroft. He is reported to have said, "I would have served, if asked." But with the war raging in Vietnam, he received six student deferments and an "occupational deferment" based on the essential nature of a civilian job at Southwest Missouri State University - teaching business law to undergraduates.

Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary and a fanatical hawk on Iraq. He was not fanatical about Vietnam and escaped the draft with student deferments.

There are many others.

I would like to see at least some of these men, in keeping with their positions as leaders of a great nation, stand up and say it is wrong - just wrong - to try and reap a cheap political gain by defacing the sacrifices of individuals like John Kerry, John McCain and Max Cleland, who put themselves in mortal danger in the service of their country.

It's one thing to decline to serve. It's quite another to throw mud at those who did serve - or to remain silent as allies hurl the mud.

I've interviewed several soldiers and marines who have suffered grave wounds in Iraq, including the loss of limbs. A permanent place of honor should be reserved for them in the pantheon of American heroes. The idea that someone some years from now may trash their service for political gain is beyond disgusting.

George W. Bush ought to call off his dogs. The one thing we ought to be able to do in this hyperpoliticized era is rally in a bipartisan way behind those who have been willing to fight our wars.

The privileged classes no longer feel an obligation to put their lives - or their children's lives - on the line in defense of the nation. The very least they could do is insist that those who have put themselves in harm's way be treated with respect.

Note: As a US Army veteran with service in the 1st Division, RVN at Lai Kai and Dian in the Summer of 1968, I take equal umbridge at this Administration's support of smear tactics against veterans for some of the same reasons stated above by Mr. Herbert.

While Mr. Kerry, Mr. Cleland, and Mr. McCain are public figures having been elected to public office a reasonable person could expect some political action would be mounted against them. However, smear tactics and buying the participation of those willing to lie to discredit a political adversary's service should be condemned, whether it is against Bob Dole, John McCain, John Kerry, or my districts representative in the Georgia Legislature, or me.

Value and speak the truth, while condemning the liars who bear false witness, those who instigate the smears, or finance and support them.

Personal Attention to Those In Need is Great Medicine

New Therapy on Depression Finds Phone Is Effective
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: August 25, 2004

Debates about the safety and effectiveness of treatments for depression miss a basic reality about the disease: most people affected by it do not seek help at all, and those who do commonly neglect to complete counseling or drug regimens recommended by doctors. For at least a third of the people who try them, treatments of any kind fall short, surveys show.

But improving success rates may be a matter of picking up the phone, according to a report today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In a large-scale, 18-month study, doctors in Seattle found that they could significantly increase recovery rates for patients taking antidepressants by providing several 30- to 40-minute counseling sessions over the phone.

In previous studies, researchers showed that phone calls from nurses or other clinic staff members providing emotional support could help people trying to quit smoking, stay on medication or shake low moods. The Seattle study is the first to test the effect of a standardized form of counseling, cognitive behavior therapy, delivered entirely over the phone.

It is not clear from the study whether phone counseling will be equally helpful for everyone with depression....

By the end of the study, 80 percent of those who had received phone therapy said their depression was "much improved," compared with 55 percent of those who were given usual care. Of those who received encouragement by phone but not explicit therapy, 66 percent said they were "much improved."

The researchers do not know what component of the phone therapy made it effective or whether the increased attention itself made patients feel better. But for therapists trying to treat patients who are overwhelmed or hard to reach-single parents, low-income people. for example - the study may provide an alternative to in-person care.

Car Buyer?

Dude, Where's My Resale Value?
By DANNY HAKIM
NY Times
Published: August 26, 2004

Detroit's big rebates and interest-free financing deals have strengthened car sales for the last three years. But they have also eroded the resale value of many American automotive brands, and that could cost consumers thousands of dollars when they trade in their vehicles.

None of the traditional American brands are among the 10 vehicles expected to retain the most value over the next half-decade, according to a new report from Kelley Blue Book, a company that tracks used car values. But American brands dominate the other end of the spectrum, the vehicles expected to lose the most value.

Confirming the Charge about Linkage

Bush Campaign's Top Outside Lawyer Resigns
By JIM RUTENBERG and KATE ZERNIKE

Published: August 25, 2004

The Bush campaign's top outside lawyer, who said on Tuesday that he had given legal advice to the group of veterans attacking Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War record, said today that he was resigning from the campaign because his activities were becoming a "distraction" to Mr. Bush' re-election efforts.

The lawyer, Benjamin L. Ginsberg, said that the group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, called him last month to ask for his help and that he had agreed. The group has criticized Mr. Kerry's war record and his antiwar activism in a book, television commercials and appearances on various news programs, especially on cable.

"I cannot begin to express my sadness that my legal representations have become a distraction from the critical issues at hand in this election," Mr. Ginsberg told the president in a letter distributed today by the Bush-Cheney campaign. "I feel I cannot let that continue, so I have decided to resign as national counsel to your campaign to ensure that the giving of legal advice to decorated military veterans, which was entirely within the boundaries of the law, doesn't distract from the real issues upon which you and the country should be focusing."

The Kerry-Edwards campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, said today that Mr. Ginsberg's resignation "confirms the extent of those connections."

"Now we know why George Bush refuses to specifically condemn these false ads," she said. "People deeply involved in his own campaign are behind them, from paying for them, to appearing in them, to providing legal advice, to coordinating a negative strategy to divert the public away from issues like jobs, health care and the mess in Iraq, the real concerns of the American people."

US record industry sues 744 more for online music downloading
www.chinaview.cn 2004-08-26 09:19:28

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 25 (Xinhuanet) -- In its latest wave of crackdown on music piracy, major US record companies have sued 744more people for illegally downloading copyrighted music from file-sharing networks, the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA)said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the RIAA refiled lawsuits against 152 people who were previously sued anonymously but later identified and offered the chance to settle, after they ignored or declined those offers, a RIAA spokesman said.

The 744 defendants' identities remained unknown, but the RIAA filed the lawsuits according to the so-called "John Doe" litigation process, which is used to sue unidentified defendants.

The 744 people reportedly used a variety of peer-to-peer services including Kazaa, eDonkey and Grokster Ltd.

This was the first time that eDonkey users were sued, and RIAA President Cary Sherman called it an attempt to respond to "changing circumstances" in the file-sharing world. "Without a strong measure of deterrence, piracy will overwhelm and choke the creation and distribution of music," he said.

So far, the RIAA has sued nearly 4,700 people since last September in its relentless legal campaign to crack down on music piracy, which it blames for the decline of CD sales that costs themusic industry billions of dollars.

Last week, a federal appeals court held that makers of file-sharing software could not be held liable for certain kinds of copyright infringement, dealing a blow to efforts by the RIAA to tackle piracy at the source.

Meanwhile, peer-to-peer vendors continue to decry the RIAA tactics, calling them "unproductive." Instead of suing music fans,the RIAA should negotiate a way to pay artists with peer-to-peer vendors, said Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United, a trade group representing five peer-to-peer vendors, including Grokster and eDonkey.

"The fact that the RIAA has the right to bring these lawsuits doesn't make them the right thing to do," Eisgrau said

More On the Bush Admin's Media Method in the Swift Boat Affair and Others

From Eric Alterman on MSNBC:

"The LAT editors—and most journos—might want to flip to the back of their paper. "The technique President Bush is using against John F. Kerry was perfected by his father against Michael Dukakis in 1988," says an editorial. "Bring a charge, however bogus. Make the charge simple. But make sure the supporting details are complicated and blurry enough to prevent easy refutation. Then sit back and let the media do your work for you. Journalists have to report the charges, usually feel obliged to report the rebuttal, and often even attempt an analysis or assessment. But the canons of the profession prevent most journalists from saying outright: These charges are false. As a result, the voters are left with a general sense that there is some controversy over Kerry's service in Vietnam. And they have been distracted from thinking about real issues (like the war going on now)."

Josh Marshall's Talkingpointsmemo: August 24th, 2004: Pres. Bush & Moral Cowardice

(August 24, 2004 -- 12:44 AM EDT

With the president descending to the most shameless sort of attack politics to save his presidency, there's an understandable desire on the part of Democrats to reopen every political vulnerability he has that has yet to be fully explored or dissected:

I have no argument with any of this. I think it makes perfect sense. To pick up on the military language that is now so ubiquitous, I think Democrats need to open up on all fronts.

But fighting fire with fire isn't a compelling message. Nor will getting into a tit-for-tat about what each of these guys was doing in 1969 or 1970 or 1971 win this race for the Democrats.

Look at the wrong direction/right direction poll numbers and you see pretty clearly that the country is looking to fire George W. Bush. The president's only hope is to get the debate on to issues like these, shift the dynamic of the race, and convince voters that, whatever their dissatisfactions with his administration, John Kerry isn't an acceptable alternative.

When this stuff comes down the pike, Kerry has to fight back mercilessly. And he can win those fights. But, fundamentally, every day of this campaign that isn't spent talking about the sluggish economy and the president's debacle in Iraq is a day wasted, a strategic failure for the Kerry campaign.

But Democrats don't have to choose between hard-hitting lines of attack on the president himself and focusing on the main issues that are facing the country today. The most damning attacks turn out to be the most compelling, the most relevant for what the country faces, and the most difficult for the president to combat.

I've said several times over recent days that it is an example of the president's moral cowardice that he has such a long record of having others savage his opponents -- for sins of which he is usually more guilty than they -- and then denying any responsibility for what's happening. It's like the moment captured in that recent Kerry campaign spot where John McCain tells Bush to stand by his attacks or apologize, and the now-president is painfully caught off guard, bereft of the protective phalanx of retainers.

He's not used to having to stand behind what he's done. And when McCain comes at him one on one he's jelly. His life has always been a matter of others doing his dirty work for him, others bailing him out. And in that moment it shows.

The current debate about these two men's military service has put the spotlight on physical courage. But that really is a side issue in this campaign, if we're talking substance. The real issue isn't physical bravery but moral cowardice.

President Bush is an examplar of that quality in spades. And it cuts directly to his failures as president. Forget about thirty years ago, just think about the last three years.

Before proceeding on to that, one other point about the two men's service. On the balance sheet of moral bravery, as opposed to physical bravery, the two men are about as far apart as you can be on Vietnam. On the one hand you have Kerry, who already had doubts about whether we should be fighting in Vietnam before he went, and put his life on the line anyway. On the other hand, you have George W. Bush who supported the war, which means he believed the goal was worth the cost in American lives. Only, not his life. He believed others should go; just not him. It's the story of his life.

That is almost the definition of moral cowardice.

We have a more immediate sense of what physical bravery and cowardice are. In fact, when we speak of bravery and cowardice, the physical variety is almost always what we're talking about. It's whether or not you can charge an enemy position while you're be fired at. It's whether you're immobilized by the fear of death.

Moral cowardice is more complex. A moral coward is someone who lacks the courage to tell the truth, to accept responsibility, to demand accountability, to do what's right when it's not the easy thing to do, to clean up his or her own messes. Perhaps we could say that moral bravery is having both the courage of your convictions as well as the courage of your misdeeds.

As I've been saying here for the last couple days, the issue isn't that Bush ducked service in Vietnam. It's that he tries to smear other people's meritorious service without taking responsibility for what he's doing. He gets other people to do his dirty work for him. Again, that image of McCain calling him on his shameless antics and his look of fear, his look of feeling trapped.

The key for the Kerry campaign to make is that the president's moral cowardice is why we're now bogged down in Iraq. It's a key reason why almost a thousand Americans have died there. President Bush has set the tone for this administration and his moral cowardice permeates it.

Consider only the most obvious examples.

The president didn't think he could convince the public of the merits of his reasons for going to war. So he lied to them. He greatly exaggerated what was thought to be the evidence of weapons of mass destruction and completely manufactured a connection between Iraq and al Qaida. He couldn't get the country behind him on the up-and-up. So he took the easy way out; he took a shortcut; he deceived them. And now the country is paying a terrible price for it.

He and his advisors knew that if they levelled with the public about the costs of war -- in dollars, years, soldiers -- he'd have a very hard time convincing them. So he didn't level with them. He took the easy way out.

The sort of forward planning that would have made a big difference in post-war Iraq was scuttled or attacked because it would make the job of selling the war harder. Those who sounded the alarm had their careers cut short.

Once we were in Iraq and it was clear that we had been wrong about the weapons of mass destruction -- a judgement that's been clear for more than a year -- he wouldn't admit it. And he still hasn't. A year and a half after we invaded Iraq and he still can't level with the American people about this. He still relies on his vice president to try to fool people into thinking Hussein was tied to al Qaida and the 9/11 attacks.

More importantly, once it became clear that the president's plans for post-war Iraq were producing poor results, he refused to shift policy or to reshuffle his team. He refused to demand accountability from his own team because of how it would have reflected on him. He's preferred to continue on with demonstrably failed policies because to do otherwise would be to admit he'd made a mistake and open himself to all the political fall-out that entails. And that's not something he's willing to do.

The stubborn refusal ever to change course, which the president tries to pass off as a sign of leadership or devotion to principle, is actually an example of his cowardice.

For the same reasons, he runs from soldiers' funerals like they were burying victims of the plague -- because it's the easy way out. If there's a problem, he denies it or finds someone else to take the fall for him.

Everyone has these tendencies in their measure. No one is perfect. But they define George W. Bush.

The same sort of moral cowardice that led him to support the Vietnam war but decide it wasn't for him, run companies into the ground and let others pay the bill, play gutter politics but run for the hills when someone asks him to say it to their face, those are the same qualities that led the president to lie the country into war, fail to prepare for the aftermath and then refuse to take responsibility for any of it when the bill started to come due.

That's the argument John Kerry needs to be making. And he needs to make it right now.
-- Josh Marshal

The Essential Krugman: "The Rambo Coalition"

The Rambo Coalition
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY Times Op-Ed
Published: August 24, 2004

Almost a year ago, on the second anniversary of 9/11, I predicted "an ugly, bitter campaign - probably the nastiest of modern American history." The reasons I gave then still apply. President Bush has no positive achievements to run on. Yet his inner circle cannot afford to see him lose: if he does, the shroud of secrecy will be lifted, and the public will learn the truth about cooked intelligence, profiteering, politicization of homeland security and more.

But recent attacks on John Kerry have surpassed even my expectations. There's no mystery why. Mr. Kerry isn't just a Democrat who might win: his life story challenges Mr. Bush's attempts to confuse tough-guy poses with heroism, and bombast with patriotism.

One of the wonders of recent American politics has been the ability of Mr. Bush and his supporters to wrap their partisanship in the flag. Through innuendo and direct attacks by surrogates, men who assiduously avoided service in Vietnam, like Dick Cheney (five deferments), John Ashcroft (seven deferments) and George Bush (a comfy spot in the National Guard, and a mysterious gap in his records), have questioned the patriotism of men who risked their lives and suffered for their country: John McCain, Max Cleland and now John Kerry.

How have they been able to get away with it? The answer is that we have been living in what Roger Ebert calls "an age of Rambo patriotism." As the carnage and moral ambiguities of Vietnam faded from memory, many started to believe in the comforting clichés of action movies, in which the tough-talking hero is always virtuous and the hand-wringing types who see complexities and urge the hero to think before acting are always wrong, if not villains.

After 9/11, Mr. Bush had a choice: he could deal with real threats, or he could play Rambo. He chose Rambo. Not for him the difficult, frustrating task of tracking down elusive terrorists, or the unglamorous work of protecting ports and chemical plants from possible attack: he wanted a dramatic shootout with the bad guy. And if you asked why we were going after this particular bad guy, who hadn't attacked America and wasn't building nuclear weapons - or if you warned that real wars involve costs you never see in the movies - you were being unpatriotic.

As a domestic political strategy, Mr. Bush's posturing worked brilliantly. As a strategy against terrorism, it has played right into Al Qaeda's hands. Thirty years after Vietnam, American soldiers are again dying in a war that was sold on false pretenses and creates more enemies than it kills.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Mr. Bush - who must defend the indefensible - has turned to those who still refuse to face the truth about Vietnam.

All the credible evidence, from military records to the testimony of those who served with Mr. Kerry, confirms his wartime heroism. Why, then, are some veterans willing to join the smear campaign? Because they are angry about his later statements against the war. Yet making those statements was itself a heroic act - and what he said then rings truer than ever.

The young John Kerry spoke of leaders who sent others to their deaths because they wanted to seem tough, then "left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude." Fifteen months after George Bush strutted around in his flight suit, more and more Americans are echoing Gen. Anthony Zinni, who received a standing ovation from an audience of Marine and Navy officers when he talked about the debacle in Iraq and said of those who served in Vietnam: "We heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice. I ask you, is it happening again?"

Mr. Kerry also spoke of the moral cost of an ill-conceived war - of the atrocities soldiers find themselves committing when they can't tell friend from foe. Two words: Abu Ghraib.

Let's hope that this latest campaign of garbage and lies - initially financed by a Texas Republican close to Karl Rove, and running an ad featuring an "independent" veteran who turns out to have served on a Bush campaign committee - leads to a backlash against Mr. Bush. If it doesn't, here's the message we'll be sending to Americans who serve their country: If you tell the truth, your courage and sacrifice count for nothing.