For Dems only.

[Balta1701]

Good to know that the law still ain't that important. I was almost worried there for a while.

 

President Bush, again defying Congress, says he has the power to edit the Homeland Security Department’s reports about whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists.

 

In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints.

 

But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency’s 2007 spending bill, said he will interpret that section “in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch.”

 

But oh, it actually gets even better than that.

President Bush this week asserted that he has the executive authority to disobey a new law in which Congress has set minimum qualifications for future heads of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

 

Congress passed the law last week as a response to FEMA's poor handling of Hurricane Katrina. The agency's slow response to flood victims exposed the fact that Michael Brown, Bush's choice to lead the agency, had been a politically connected hire with no prior experience in emergency management.

 

To shield FEMA from cronyism, Congress established new job qualifications for the agency's director in last week's homeland security bill. The law says the president must nominate a candidate who has ``a demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management" and ``not less than five years of executive leadership."

 

Bush signed the homeland-security bill on Wednesday morning. Then, hours later, he issued a signing statement saying he could ignore the new restrictions. Bush maintains that under his interpretation of the Constitution, the FEMA provision interfered with his power to make personnel decisions.

"I have every f***ing right to hire idiots, and you can't take it away from me. How else will I find an excuse to kill black people, who I hate so much!" Edited October 6, 2006 by Balta1701

[Balta1701]

Friday surprise time: top aide to Karl Rove Susan Ralston resigns due to the Abramoff scandal and the report out earlier this week of hundreds of contacts between Abramoff's people and the high-ups at the White House.

[GaelicSoxFan]

[FlaSoxxJim]

Friday surprise time: top aide to Karl Rove Susan Ralston resigns due to the Abramoff scandal and the report out earlier this week of hundreds of contacts between Abramoff's people and the high-ups at the White House.

 

Must be Friday afternoon - the best time for bad news from the White House.

[Balta1701]

Must be Friday afternoon - the best time for bad news from the White House.

Hence the phrase "Friday surprise time".

[KipWellsFan]

Newsweek Poll: Bush Approval 33%

 

nyuk nyuk nyuk...

[Balta1701]

[Soxy]

What is a Liberal? (From Today's trib)

 

chicagotribune.com >> Editorials

What it means to be a liberal

 

By Geoffrey R. Stone. Geoffrey R. Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago, is the author of "Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime."

Published October 10, 2006

 

For most of the past four decades, liberals have been in retreat. Since the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, Republicans have controlled the White House 70 percent of the time and Republican presidents have made 86 percent of the U.S. Supreme Court appointments. In many quarters, the word "liberal" has become a pejorative. Part of the problem is that liberals have failed to define themselves and to state clearly what they believe. As a liberal, I find that appalling.

 

In that light, I thought it might be interesting to try to articulate 10 propositions that seem to me to define "liberal" today. Undoubtedly, not all liberals embrace all of these propositions, and many conservatives embrace at least some of them.

 

Moreover, because 10 is a small number, the list is not exhaustive. And because these propositions will in some instances conflict, the "liberal" position on a specific issue may not always be predictable. My goal, however, is not to end discussion, but to invite debate.

 

1. Liberals believe individuals should doubt their own truths and consider fairly and open-mindedly the truths of others. This is at the very heart of liberalism. Liberals understand, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once observed, that "time has upset many fighting faiths." Liberals are skeptical of censorship and celebrate free and open debate.

 

2. Liberals believe individuals should be tolerant and respectful of difference. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support the civil rights movement, affirmative action, the Equal Rights Amendment and the rights of gays and lesbians. (Note that a conflict between propositions 1 and 2 leads to divisions among liberals on issues like pornography and hate speech.)

 

3. Liberals believe individuals have a right and a responsibility to participate in public debate. It is liberals who have championed and continue to champion expansion of the franchise; the elimination of obstacles to voting; "one person, one vote;" limits on partisan gerrymandering; campaign-finance reform; and a more vibrant freedom of speech. They believe, with Justice Louis Brandeis, that "the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people."

 

4. Liberals believe "we the people" are the governors and not the subjects of government, and that government must treat each person with that in mind. It is liberals who have defended and continue to defend the freedom of the press to investigate and challenge the government, the protection of individual privacy from overbearing government monitoring, and the right of individuals to reproductive freedom. (Note that libertarians, often thought of as "conservatives," share this value with liberals.)

 

5. Liberals believe government must respect and affirmatively safeguard the liberty, equality and dignity of each individual. It is liberals who have championed and continue to champion the rights of racial, religious and ethnic minorities, political dissidents, persons accused of crime and the outcasts of society. It is liberals who have insisted on the right to counsel, a broad application of the right to due process of law and the principle of equal protection for all people.

 

6. Liberals believe government has a fundamental responsibility to help those who are less fortunate. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support government programs to improve health care, education, social security, job training and welfare for the neediest members of society. It is liberals who maintain that a national community is like a family and that government exists in part to "promote the general welfare."

 

7. Liberals believe government should never act on the basis of sectarian faith. It is liberals who have opposed and continue to oppose school prayer and the teaching of creationism in public schools and who support government funding for stem-cell research, the rights of gays and lesbians and the freedom of choice for women.

 

8. Liberals believe courts have a special responsibility to protect individual liberties. It is principally liberal judges and justices who have preserved and continue to preserve freedom of expression, individual privacy, freedom of religion and due process of law. (Conservative judges and justices more often wield judicial authority to protect property rights and the interests of corporations, commercial advertisers and the wealthy.)

 

9. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, for without such protection liberalism is impossible. This, of course, is less a tenet of liberalism than a reply to those who attack liberalism. The accusation that liberals are unwilling to protect the nation from internal and external dangers is false. Because liberals respect competing values, such as procedural fairness and individual dignity, they weigh more carefully particular exercises of government power (such as the use of secret evidence, hearsay and torture), but they are no less willing to use government authority in other forms (such as expanded police forces and international diplomacy) to protect the nation and its citizens.

 

10. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, without unnecessarily sacrificing constitutional values. It is liberals who have demanded and continue to demand legal protections to avoid the conviction of innocent people in the criminal justice system, reasonable restraints on government surveillance of American citizens, and fair procedures to ensure that alleged enemy combatants are in fact enemy combatants. Liberals adhere to the view expressed by Brandeis some 80 years ago: "Those who won our independence ... did not exalt order at the cost of liberty."

 

Consider this an invitation. Are these propositions meaningful? Are they helpful? Are they simply wrong? As a liberal, how would you change them or modify the list? As a conservative, how would you draft a similar list for conservatives?

[kapkomet]

What is a Liberal? (From Today's trib)

 

chicagotribune.com >> Editorials

What it means to be a liberal

 

By Geoffrey R. Stone. Geoffrey R. Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago, is the author of "Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime."

Published October 10, 2006

 

For most of the past four decades, liberals have been in retreat. Since the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, Republicans have controlled the White House 70 percent of the time and Republican presidents have made 86 percent of the U.S. Supreme Court appointments. In many quarters, the word "liberal" has become a pejorative. Part of the problem is that liberals have failed to define themselves and to state clearly what they believe. As a liberal, I find that appalling.

 

In that light, I thought it might be interesting to try to articulate 10 propositions that seem to me to define "liberal" today. Undoubtedly, not all liberals embrace all of these propositions, and many conservatives embrace at least some of them.

 

Moreover, because 10 is a small number, the list is not exhaustive. And because these propositions will in some instances conflict, the "liberal" position on a specific issue may not always be predictable. My goal, however, is not to end discussion, but to invite debate.

 

1. Liberals believe individuals should doubt their own truths and consider fairly and open-mindedly the truths of others. This is at the very heart of liberalism. Liberals understand, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once observed, that "time has upset many fighting faiths." Liberals are skeptical of censorship and celebrate free and open debate.

 

2. Liberals believe individuals should be tolerant and respectful of difference. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support the civil rights movement, affirmative action, the Equal Rights Amendment and the rights of gays and lesbians. (Note that a conflict between propositions 1 and 2 leads to divisions among liberals on issues like pornography and hate speech.)

 

3. Liberals believe individuals have a right and a responsibility to participate in public debate. It is liberals who have championed and continue to champion expansion of the franchise; the elimination of obstacles to voting; "one person, one vote;" limits on partisan gerrymandering; campaign-finance reform; and a more vibrant freedom of speech. They believe, with Justice Louis Brandeis, that "the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people."

 

4. Liberals believe "we the people" are the governors and not the subjects of government, and that government must treat each person with that in mind. It is liberals who have defended and continue to defend the freedom of the press to investigate and challenge the government, the protection of individual privacy from overbearing government monitoring, and the right of individuals to reproductive freedom. (Note that libertarians, often thought of as "conservatives," share this value with liberals.)

 

5. Liberals believe government must respect and affirmatively safeguard the liberty, equality and dignity of each individual. It is liberals who have championed and continue to champion the rights of racial, religious and ethnic minorities, political dissidents, persons accused of crime and the outcasts of society. It is liberals who have insisted on the right to counsel, a broad application of the right to due process of law and the principle of equal protection for all people.

 

6. Liberals believe government has a fundamental responsibility to help those who are less fortunate. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support government programs to improve health care, education, social security, job training and welfare for the neediest members of society. It is liberals who maintain that a national community is like a family and that government exists in part to "promote the general welfare."

 

7. Liberals believe government should never act on the basis of sectarian faith. It is liberals who have opposed and continue to oppose school prayer and the teaching of creationism in public schools and who support government funding for stem-cell research, the rights of gays and lesbians and the freedom of choice for women.

 

8. Liberals believe courts have a special responsibility to protect individual liberties. It is principally liberal judges and justices who have preserved and continue to preserve freedom of expression, individual privacy, freedom of religion and due process of law. (Conservative judges and justices more often wield judicial authority to protect property rights and the interests of corporations, commercial advertisers and the wealthy.)

 

9. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, for without such protection liberalism is impossible. This, of course, is less a tenet of liberalism than a reply to those who attack liberalism. The accusation that liberals are unwilling to protect the nation from internal and external dangers is false. Because liberals respect competing values, such as procedural fairness and individual dignity, they weigh more carefully particular exercises of government power (such as the use of secret evidence, hearsay and torture), but they are no less willing to use government authority in other forms (such as expanded police forces and international diplomacy) to protect the nation and its citizens.

 

10. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, without unnecessarily sacrificing constitutional values. It is liberals who have demanded and continue to demand legal protections to avoid the conviction of innocent people in the criminal justice system, reasonable restraints on government surveillance of American citizens, and fair procedures to ensure that alleged enemy combatants are in fact enemy combatants. Liberals adhere to the view expressed by Brandeis some 80 years ago: "Those who won our independence ... did not exalt order at the cost of liberty."

 

Consider this an invitation. Are these propositions meaningful? Are they helpful? Are they simply wrong? As a liberal, how would you change them or modify the list? As a conservative, how would you draft a similar list for conservatives?

 

Soxy, I read through this really fast... and haven't digested it all, but there's some good points in here.

 

I'd like to cut this out and start its own topic, because this would be a really good debate, IMO, if people took it seriously. Would that be ok?

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

2. Liberals believe individuals should be tolerant and respectful of difference. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support the civil rights movement, affirmative action, the Equal Rights Amendment and the rights of gays and lesbians. (Note that a conflict between propositions 1 and 2 leads to divisions among liberals on issues like pornography and hate speech.)

 

I laughed out loud at this one. Tolerant and respectful of difference? They should take their own f***ing advice. Every time someone dares to have a view that, in any way, diverges from their own Liberals label them as "idiots" or "stupid" or "rednecks" or "religous extremists" or whatever is the demeaning flavor of the day.

 

Complete and total hypocrasy.

[sox4lifeinPA]

2. Liberals believe individuals should be tolerant and respectful of difference. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support the civil rights movement, affirmative action, the Equal Rights Amendment and the rights of gays and lesbians. (Note that a conflict between propositions 1 and 2 leads to divisions among liberals on issues like pornography and hate speech.)

 

I laughed out loud at this one. Tolerant and respectful of difference? They should take their own f***ing advice. Every time someone dares to have a view that, in any way, diverges from their own Liberals label them as "idiots" or "stupid" or "rednecks" or "religous extremists" or whatever is the demeaning flavor of the day.

 

Complete and total hypocrasy.

 

 

oh no he didn't....

 

 

he did. i don't want to weigh in other than to say this is my biggest problem with many people claiming to "liberal" or "left" or *gag* "progressive".... Name calling is offlimits for your pet groups, but have at the "flyover country" and "american idiots".

 

ok, done. *tags out*

[Soxy]

Soxy, I read through this really fast... and haven't digested it all, but there's some good points in here.

 

I'd like to cut this out and start its own topic, because this would be a really good debate, IMO, if people took it seriously. Would that be ok?

Do whatever you want with it.

 

I'm sure it will be taken *seriously* and treated with *respect.* :rolly

[kapkomet]

Do whatever you want with it.

 

I'm sure it will be taken *seriously* and treated with *respect.* :rolly

I hope it is, because there's some awesome points in this; some I hadn't thought about in the way it's presented. I'll take it seriously.

 

I'll break it out later, or if someone has time, can they do it?

[Balta1701]

McCain, 10/11/06, NBC Today

 

I think this is the wrong time for us to be engaging in finger pointing when in this crucial time, we need the world and Americans united in going to the United Nations to bring about sanctions against North Korea.

 

McCain, 10/10/06, press conference:

 

We had a carrots and no sticks policy that only encouraged bad behavior. When one carrot didn’t work, we offered another. Now we’re facing the consequences of the failed Clinton administration policies.

 

McCain, 10/10/06, Hannity & Colmes:

 

The fact is that it is a failure of the Clinton administration policies that I was heavily involved in at the time that have caused us to be in the situation we’re in today.

[Rex Kickass]

Except since the Clinton policy was never actually funded, it was really a "no carrot policy" either. In 2001, after administrative transition in the US, the policy changed again by removing the word carrot.

[Balta1701]

Except since the Clinton policy was never actually funded, it was really a "no carrot policy" either. In 2001, after administrative transition in the US, the policy changed again by removing the word carrot.

Eh, there's a half dozen points I could make on that if I wanted to...but I just found it amusing that the straight-shooter will one day point fingers and then say the next day that we shouldn't be pointing fingers.

[Balta1701]

AP's Reid Story Doesn't Add Up

By Paul Kiel - October 11, 2006, 11:10 PM

 

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) "collected a $1.1 million windfall on a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn't personally owned the property for three years," the AP reports.

 

Except that's wrong. Reid made a $700,000 profit on the sale, not $1.1 million. Also, the story, by the AP’s John Solomon, makes it sound as if Reid got money for land he didn't own. But that's not the case.

 

It’s not the first time that Solomon has published a misleading story about Reid. This is the third such story by Solomon over the past six months. Each time, Solomon has hit Reid for taking actions which might create the appearance of ethical impropriety. But because Solomon writes for the most powerful news organization in the land, these very gray-shaded stories pack a wallop. It doesn’t help that on numerous occasions, he has missed or distorted key details – missteps that help blow up his stories.

 

This story is no different. It purports to show that Reid collected $1.1 million on the sale of land he didn’t own.

Yet, as Solomon obliquely acknowledges, Reid, who had bought the land along with a friend in 1998, transferred his ownership in the land to a limited liability company in 2001. The company, which was composed solely of this land owned by Reid and his friend, in turn sold the land in 2004. That's when Reid collected his $1.1 million share of the sale. Since Reid had originally put down $400,000 on the sale, his profit was $700,000, not the full $1.1 million, as Solomon states in his lead.

 

Solomon persists in straightforwardly describing the 2001 land transfer as a sale, even though no money changed hands; Reid's share of the land after the transfer was the same as before. In his financial disclosure forms, Reid did not disclose his transfer of the land to the LLC, although he did continue to disclose his ownership of the land through 2004, when it was sold.

 

So what's the story here? Well, it's not clear that Reid broke any ethical rules -- let alone any laws. Solomon cites one expert as saying that Reid should have disclosed the transfer to the LLC, because "[w]hether you make a profit or a loss you've got to put that transaction down so the public, voters, can see exactly what kind of money is moving to or from a member of Congress." The thing is, of course, that no money moved in the LLC transaction. Reid still owned the same amount of land - it was just under the cover of the LLC.

 

Now, members of Congress should go out of their way to avoid the appearance of impropriety. The purpose of financial disclosure is for the public to gauge whether lawmakers might run into a conflict of interest. By that higher standard, Reid should have disclosed his involvement in the LLC. And although Solomon is unable to make any specific allegations of wrongdoing, the informality of the LLC arrangement is potentially open to abuse. Reid's office, in a statement on the matter, says they're willing to go back and make such "a technical correction" to the financial disclosures if the Ethics Committee sees fit. One wonders why they don't go ahead and make the correction anyway so as to be above reproach.

 

That said, let's put this in context.

 

On two earlier occasions, Solomon has over-inflated his stories on Reid. TPM readers might remember his expose on Reid's involvement with Jack Abramoff (which, after exhaustively detailing an Abramoff’s associate’s contacts with Reid’s office, failed to mention that Reid didn't vote the way Abramoff wanted him to) and his stories on Reid's acceptance of passes to a boxing match from the Nevada Gaming Commission (which managed to expunge a host of mitigating details too plentiful to name here).

 

There's an old saying in journalism that three examples make a trend. I think we have a trend here. Solomon’s apparent weakness for detail is one issue. But most curious is the fact that we live in the muckiest times in recent memory, and yet Solomon, at the helm of the most powerful news agency in the country, persists in roaming the wide ocean of Congressional corruption in a Captain Ahab-like hunt for Reid's ethical missteps.

[southsider2k5]

Ah there we go. I knew I wouldn't be let down

[Balta1701]

Ah there we go. I knew I wouldn't be let down

Hey, as soon as you guys stop following that stupid Reid-obsessed AP reporter and actually looking at the couple of things Reid has done that actually look wrong, like the gigantic land deal he helped procure for a friendly lobbyist who just happens to employ 2 of Reid's sons, we'll get somewhere. Instead, you just keep reading this Soloman guy and he just keeps making you guys look like fools.

[southsider2k5]

Hey, as soon as you guys stop following that stupid Reid-obsessed AP reporter and actually looking at the couple of things Reid has done that actually look wrong, like the gigantic land deal he helped procure for a friendly lobbyist who just happens to employ 2 of Reid's sons, we'll get somewhere. Instead, you just keep reading this Soloman guy and he just keeps making you guys look like fools.

 

Wouldn't that qualify more as attacking the messenger?

[Soxy]

Guess who my parents ran into at Portillo's in Oswego last night?

 

 

Yep, that's right J. Dennis Hastert (come on Denny! Shouldn't you be supporting the family biz and posing for photos at White Fence Farm?).

[Balta1701]

Wouldn't that qualify more as attacking the messenger?

Which is of course, somehting that never, ever, EVER happens here.

 

Seriously, what exactly is Reid accused of having done wrong in that AP piece? He's not accused of using his position to make the land more valuable, he's not accused of using his position in an improper way, he's not accused of covering up anything, as far as I can tell, he's basically accused of having made $700k on a land deal.

 

And remember, this is the same reporter who tried to Smear Reid in the Abramoff case while somehow casually failing to note that Reid never actually supported the position Abramoff wanted him to support.

Edited October 12, 2006 by Balta1701

[southsider2k5]

Which is of course, somehting that never, ever, EVER happens here.

 

Seriously, what exactly is Reid accused of having done wrong in that AP piece? He's not accused of using his position to make the land more valuable, he's not accused of using his position in an improper way, he's not accused of covering up anything, as far as I can tell, he's basically accused of having made $700k on a land deal.

 

And remember, this is the same reporter who tried to Smear Reid in the Abramoff case while somehow casually failing to note that Reid never actually supported the position Abramoff wanted him to support.

 

Its different. It's always different.

[Rex Kickass]

He's guilty of possibly paying only 74% of the property taxes on the property rather than the 75% of the property taxes he should have been according to the office.

 

But investigate it! Absolutely, and if something is really there, punish his ass.

[GaelicSoxFan]

McCain, 10/11/06, NBC Today

 

I think this is the wrong time for us to be engaging in finger pointing when in this crucial time, we need the world and Americans united in going to the United Nations to bring about sanctions against North Korea.

 

McCain, 10/10/06, press conference:

 

We had a carrots and no sticks policy that only encouraged bad behavior. When one carrot didn’t work, we offered another. Now we’re facing the consequences of the failed Clinton administration policies.

 

McCain, 10/10/06, Hannity & Colmes:

 

The fact is that it is a failure of the Clinton administration policies that I was heavily involved in at the time that have caused us to be in the situation we’re in today.

The "Straight Talk Express" as it is today:

 

I wonder if he thinks Dubya is actually going to endorse him in '08.