Is War the Answer?

by Joe Mayer

This pondering is from a talk I gave Sunday, Oct 29, at the Congregational – United Church of Christ in Rochester. It's a little longer than the normal ponderings. It seemed to be well received.

"Forgive us…as we forgive"

A few weeks ago a gunman murdered five young girls in an Amish school. Rather than cries for vengeance, vengeance we refer to as justice, the family of the killer was offered forgiveness by the families of the victims. School shootings have ceased to shock us. This was the third within a week. What shocked us was the response of "replacing the human impulse for retaliation with something kinder and gentler." It was the Amish carrying out "seventy times seven," living our prayer, "forgive us…as we forgive."

In 1999 a school shooting occurred at Columbine High School in Colorado. Two days later Pres. Clinton traveled to a school in Alexandria, VA, to say: "We must do more to reach out to our children, to teach them to express their anger and resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons." Later that day he ordered more bombing of Serbia, 500 lb. bombs that killed children as collateral damage.

Shortly after the Amish school tragedy, Pres. Bush called a conference on Character and School Violence. The next day researchers released an updated body count of Iraqi citizens – 600,000 killed including women and children.

When the Iraq war began Pres. Bush openly declared his intention to use violence. Christians across the nation cheered, seeing no paradox, no problem of accepting violence within their Christian context.

Violence is politically bi-partisan. Violence is tolerated and used by religion.
In this world does religion have a higher calling than aggression?

"God Bless America"

We see it on signs. We decorate our cars with ribbons saying the same. We hear presidents signing off major speeches with it.

Elaine and I were 67 years young when we first stood on the street protesting our government's actions. On some occasions I held a sign reading "God Bless All Nations." Many reactions were positive. But some were negative, some downright nasty, some delivered in sign language.

We now live in a world where violence is used in the name of God – Jesus, Allah, Jehovah. We've made our gods nationalistic, patriotic, tribal. Christians of different countries are beseeching the same God for different ends, each claiming God approves or even encourages their behavior. Different ends, same god, for the U.S. and Panama. For U.S. and Nicaragua. It is not uncommon to have a national flag in Christian churches.

We are all born into the same human race. Most of us here today were born into citizenship of the United States and we've retained it. Only some of us here were born into our current faith tradition. Even then we've made a conscious decision to stay, or to move to another faith tradition. How do we prioritize our humanity, our citizenship, our faith? What happens if we equate faith and citizenship? When we do this are we not echoing the theocracy we condemn in some Muslim countries?

Jesus saw people not as citizens of nations, but as members of humankind. Either we see God in everything, everyone, or we deny our Christian basis for seeing God in anything, anyone. If God is not the center of our being, we're faced with being the center ourselves.

Jesus was wrong by the standards of both church and state. They combined to crucify him. The genius of our country's founders was to separate church and state. Many of them had experienced the injustice and even the terror of state religion. This separation of church and state, although violated at times, has served our nation well. But now I see that God must be taking a personal interest in the American elections as more and more candidates indicate they have been directed by God to run for office. Theocracy?

Do we really believe America has a preferential place in God's divine plan? Does that plan approve of our use of violence? Even if state violence kills many more than terrorist violence?

Is God's movement in history larger than any nation, any denomination?

9/11

Immediately after 9/11 the world bestowed sympathy and goodwill on the United States . In our patriotic frenzy the Bush administration and Congress were given a green light to do whatever it took to overcome terrorism. What happened? Five years later the goodwill of the world has turned to hatred and fear. The U.S. is perceived as a dangerous nation. The president's approval ratings are near all-time presidential lows and Congress recently set a modern record of approval of only 19% of U.S. citizens.

During this dramatic shift in world and domestic sentiment, political power remained securely in the conservative's grip. What caused this dramatic shift? Did the Democrats cause it? Doubtfully, I find many of them spineless. Protesters? Terrorists? The press? al Qaeda? The Taliban? It's hard to conceive that any one of these or any combination could cause this dramatic shift. What then? Only those in power, the administration and Congress themselves, can be held responsible for this change.

War transmutes, it changes, it turns things upside down, turns things inside-out. For example:

• We are asked to give up our "freedoms" as we fight for "freedom" in Iraq .
• We are told we must give unitary (Cheney's term) unitary, imperial power to the president as we make war to spread democracy.
• We are told we are a "peaceful" country when we have been involved in more "warring conflicts" than any other country since World War II.
• We are told it is unpatriotic to protest war or our president as he and Congress overturn our Bill of Rights, one being the right to protest.
• We are told "we don't do torture" as Congress is impelled to legalize "torture."
• We are told the "United Nations" is irrelevant as we seek "United Nation's" sanctions against Korea, Iran, etc.
• We are told we are fighting "terrorism" even as the National Security Estimate says that war is causing an increase in recruits for "terrorism."
• We are told rendition, torture, domestic wiretapping and indefinite jailing without trial, all "human rights abuses," are necessary as we fight for "human rights."
• We are told we are fighting for "democracy" as top neo-conservatives aim for total global "dominance." (The project for a New American Century)
• We are told we must "break" the nuclear proliferation treaty and upgrade our nuclear arsenal so that others "don't break" the nuclear proliferation treaty and acquire nuclear arms.
• If we want "peace," we are told, we must fight "perpetual war."

The United States spends nearly as much on our military and intelligence as the remainder of the world combined. Yet, yet, we, as a people, are the most fearful on earth. This doesn't make sense. This military and intelligence spending is supposed to make us safe, more secure. Why then are we fearful? Who benefits from this fear? Is it real or contrived? Is this spending on war and Homeland Security achieving the stated goals? In a democracy, why is questioning government actions considered seditious, unpatriotic? Isn't power in a democracy supposed to reside in the people? These hard questions need to be asked.

In one sense the terrorists have already won. We've compounded the tragedy of 9/11 by playing into their hands. Many in the world now look on us as a bigger danger to world peace than the terrorists. Terrorists become the reason, the excuse. They've caused us to compromise our values. They caused our government to use fear and hate to cause us to fear and hate. They've caused us to spend our treasure and our children's treasure on the imperial desires of a few. They've caused us to lose our moral and persuasive powers as a world leader. They've bitterly divided us. They've caused our leaders to turn the most trusted, and respected country in the world into one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared and distrusted in the world. And, since we call ourselves a Christian nation they've even caused the non-Christian world to question Christian belief, motivation and practice.

Peace is more than the absence of war. Peace is the absence of fear, the absence of hatred, bitterness. Peace is not bashing the immigrant, the poor, the sexually different. Peace is not wealth, not power, not consumerism. Peace is not democracy, not capitalism, not globalism.

Peace, like justice, is about right relationships, about "doing unto other as…," about "loving neighbor as oneself." Can interpersonal human relations be governed by such teachings, these tenets of our faith, and then international relations be governed by "might is right?" International relations affect people's lives. People react to government kindness and government violence in the same way they react to personal acts of kindness or violence. We reacted to 9/11 with vengeance. Iraqis are reacting to "shock and awe" and occupancy with vengeance. The Taliban in Afghanistan are reacting to our bombing with vengeance. Who wins? Who wins? Who wins? Are there any winners or are we all losers?

Is War the Answer?

Senators to Exxon: Stop the Denial

Democrats and Republicans Say Stop Funding Global Warming Doubters
By CLAYTON SANDELL
ABC News

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27, 2006 — - ExxonMobil should stop funding groups that have spread the idea that global warming is a myth and that try to influence policymakers to adopt that view, two senators said today in a letter to the oil company.

In their letter to ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson, Sens. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., appealed to Exxon's sense of corporate responsibility, asking the company to "come clean about its past denial activities."

The two senators called on ExxonMobil to "end any further financial assistance" to groups "whose public advocacy has contributed to the small but unfortunately effective climate change denial myth."

Phone calls to ExxonMobil were not immediately returned to ABC News.

An upcoming study from the Union of Concerned Scientists reported that ExxonMobil funded 29 climate change denial groups in 2004 alone. Since 1990, the report said, the company has spent more than $19 million funding groups that promote their views through publications and Web sites that are not peer reviewed by the scientific community.

The senators singled out the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, and the Tech Central Station Web site as beneficiaries of Exxon's efforts to sow doubt within the public about the scientific consensus behind global warming.

"We are convinced that ExxonMobil's long-standing support of a small cadre of global climate change skeptics, and those skeptics' access to and influence on government policymakers, have made it increasingly difficult for the United States to demonstrate the moral clarity it needs across all facets of its diplomacy," the letter said.

(The rest is here.)

U.S. evangelical support for Iraq war slipping

By Ed Stoddard

DALLAS, Oct 26 (Reuters) - A new poll shows support for the war in Iraq is slipping among white evangelical Protestants, previously a key pillar of support for President George W. Bush's conduct of the conflict.

The poll is the latest bad domestic news for Bush and the Republicans about Iraq with just 12 days to go to congressional elections in which the Democrats are widely expected to capture control of the House of Representatives.

Conducted by the PEW Research Center, it found that 58 percent of white evangelical Protestants surveyed felt the United States made the right decision in using force in Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein, below the 71 percent in a previous poll in September.

This compared to little change overall among committed Republicans, with 78 percent saying it was the correct course versus 76 percent in September.

Flagging public support for the war as the death toll among U.S. forces mount in Iraq is one of the main reasons why analysts see Republicans losing House seats on Nov. 7.

Political activists in the evangelical community have been unwavering supporters of the war they see in part as a broader "clash of civilizations." Distaste among their flock for the conflict therefore highlights the depth of its unpopularity.

Scott Keeter of the PEW Research Center said it was hard to say why evangelical support seemed to have fallen so sharply but geography could be one reason.

"Many evangelicals are in the South and the military presence there is quite large and so the impact of the war on local communities is probably greater there," he said.

(There is more, here.)

Will a shocking new GOP court victory and Karl Rove's attack on Ohio 2006 doom the Democrats nationwide?

By Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman

COLUMBUS---With a major GOP federal court victory, the Ohio 2006 election has descended into the calculated chaos that has become the trademark of a Karl Rove election theft, and that could help keep the Congress in Republican hands nationwide.

Through a complex series of legal maneuvers, and now a shocking new decision from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the GOP has thrown Ohio's entire process of voting and vote counting into serious disarray. The mess is perfectly designed to suppress voter turnout, make election monitoring and a recount impossible, and allow the Republican Party to emerge with a victory despite overwhelming evidence the electorate wants exactly the opposite.

The disaster in Ohio began immediately after the theft of the presidential election here in 2004. Though the majority of Ohioans are registered Democrats, the gerrymandered state legislature is overwhelmingly Republican. Soon after John Kerry conceded, it passed House Bill 3, a draconian assault on voter registration drives, voting rights and the ability to secure reliable recounts of federal-level elections.

In brief, HB3 stacked a virtually impossible set of requirements onto the voter registration process. As elsewhere nationwide, voting has traditionally involved citizens coming to the polls and signing a poll book. Upon a signature check from a poll worker, a ballot has been given. A similar process has been in effect for absentee ballots. There is no recent evidence this method has encouraged significant voter fraud.

But the GOP's HB3 has imposed a series of draconian requirements for voter ID, including the demand for certain documents very difficult to obtain by many poor, homeless, elderly or other largely Democratic demographic groups.

To further complicate matters, Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who is now in charge of the same election in which he is the GOP nominee for governor, has added some additional, entirely arbitrary disqualifying factors of his own. Blackwell was the state co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in the 2004 election, which he also ran while making the key decisions that gave Bush-Cheney a second term in the White House.

(The rest is here.)

U.S. Drops Bid Over Royalties From Chevron

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
New York Times

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — The Interior Department has dropped claims that the Chevron Corporation systematically underpaid the government for natural gas produced in the Gulf of Mexico, a decision that could allow energy companies to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties.

The agency had ordered Chevron to pay $6 million in additional royalties but could have sought tens of millions more had it prevailed. The decision also sets a precedent that could make it easier for oil and gas companies to lower the value of what they pump each year from federal property and thus their payments to the government.

Interior officials said on Friday that they had no choice but to drop their order to Chevron because a department appeals board had ruled against auditors in a separate case.

But state governments and private landowners have challenged the company over essentially the same practices and reached settlements in which the company has paid $70 million in additional royalties.

In a written statement, the department’s Minerals Management Service said it would have been useless to fight Chevron.

“It is not in the public interest to spend federal dollars pursuing claims that have little or no chance of success,” the agency said. “M.M.S. lost a contested and controversial issue” before the appeals board. “Had we simply wanted to capitulate to ‘big oil,’ the agency would not have issued the order in the first place.”

(There is more, here.)

On estimating crowd size: Two views of the Obama visit to Rochester

by Leigh Pomeroy

I was going to write a straight news story about Barak Obama's visit to Rochester in support of Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar and Minnesota District 1 congressional candidate Tim Walz, an event that I attended. But it has been amply covered by the Associated Press here and by Matt Stolle of the Rochester Post-Bulletin here (and on Bluestem Prairie here, if the Post-Bulletin story disappears). So why duplicate? No reason to, except that...

A critical fact was vastly different in the two reports. The AP article claimed there were "more than 1,000" in attendance as did the Minneapolis Star Tribune; the Post-Bulletin estimated 3,000. That's a big discrepancy.

I admit I'm terrible at estimating crowd size, so I tried to get several opinions. The first person I checked with was a Mayo Civic Center employee, who said that the arena where the event took place would seat about 2,200 to 2,300. The key word here is "seat", for the only permanent seats in the room were in the balcony surrounding it on three sides. His numbers included seating on the main floor. But for this event only about 100 seats were set up on the floor, primarily for those who wouldn't be able to stand the entire 90-minute duration of the event. The vast majority of the crowd was standing, and they filled about two-thirds of the floor space.

I also checked with Walz campaign staffer Chris Schmitter, who had booked the room. He said that he chose it because it had a capacity of 3,400.

So who was correct?

Just before the event started I asked the Civic Center employee to estimate the crowd size for me. He said at least 2,000. But really it was hard to tell. Plus there were people still coming in.

I wrote earlier about a similar discrepancy of crowd estimates for the Laura Bush visit to the same facility, albeit in a different room. The Albert Lea Tribune reported 700, while a Fox News reporter on the scene said 250.

It says something about the accuracy of the news when the AP article, whose estimate was off by a half or more, is the one carried around the country.

While an election will not hinge on misestimating a crowd size, in a contest that is very close, as many elections this year will be — including the Minnesota 1st Congressional District race — even the smallest detail, if presented incorrectly, might change the outcome.

Let's hope this doesn't happen.

Limbaugh Outfoxed

By William Saletan
Washington Post

I once had a friend who listened to Rush Limbaugh three hours a day. He was a Republican operative. He sat in my apartment, wearing headphones, while I worked. He swore that if I put on the headphones for 10 minutes, I'd be hooked. So I put them on.

Inside the headphones was another world. Everyone in this world thought the same way, except for liberals, and they were only cartoon characters, to be defeated as though in a video game. In the real world, my friend was unemployed and had been staying with me, rent-free, for two months. But inside the headphones, he could laugh about welfare bums instead of pounding the pavement.

I thought about that last week when Limbaugh went after his latest target: Michael J. Fox. The actor, who has Parkinson's disease, has been appearing in ads for candidates who support government-funded embryonic stem cell research. The ads promote such research as a potential cure for Parkinson's and other diseases.

On Monday, Limbaugh played one of the ads for his audience. "In this commercial, he is exaggerating the effects of the disease," he said of Fox. "He is moving all around and shaking. And it's purely an act. This is the only time I have ever seen Michael J. Fox portray any of the symptoms of the disease he has. . . . This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn't take his medication or he's acting, one of the two."

Where had Limbaugh seen Fox? "I've seen him on 'Boston Legal,' I've seen him on a number of stand-up appearances," he said. He pointed to Fox's autobiography. Fox "admits in the book that before a Senate subcommittee . . . he did not take his medication, for the purposes of having the ravages and the horrors of Parkinson's disease illustrated, which was what he has done in the commercials," Limbaugh charged.

(The rest is here.)

Who Is 'Any Person' in Tribunal Law?

By Robert Parry
ConsortiumNews.com
October 19, 2006

The New York Times lead editorial gives false comfort to American citizens by assuring them that they will not be victims of George W. Bush’s new draconian system for prosecuting enemies of the U.S. government in military tribunals outside constitutional protections.

“This law does not apply to American citizens,” the Times editorial stated, “but it does apply to other legal United States residents. And it chips away at the foundations of the judicial system in ways that all Americans should find threatening.” [NYT, Oct. 19, 2006]

However, the Times analysis appears to be far too gentle. While it’s true that some parts of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 target non-citizens, other sections clearly apply to U.S. citizens as well, putting citizens inside the same tribunal system with resident aliens and foreigners.

“Any person is punishable as a principal under this chapter who commits an offense punishable by this chapter, or aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures its commission,” according to the law, passed by the Republican-controlled Congress in September and signed by Bush on Oct. 17.

“Any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States ... shall be punished as a military commission … may direct. …

A Country Ruled by Faith

By Garry Wills
New York Review of Books

The right wing in America likes to think that the United States government was, at its inception, highly religious, specifically highly Christian, and even more specifically highly biblical. That was not true of that government or any later government—until 2000, when the fiction of the past became the reality of the present. George W. Bush was not only born-again, like Jimmy Carter. His religious conversion came late, and took place in the political setting of Billy Graham's ministry to the powerful. He was converted during a stroll with Graham on his father's Kennebunkport compound. It is true that Dwight Eisenhower was guided to baptism by Graham. But Eisenhower was a famous and formed man, the principal military figure of World War II, the leader of NATO, the president of Columbia University—his change in religious orientation was just an addition to many prior achievements. Bush's conversion at a comparatively young stage in his life was a wrenching away from mainly wasted years. He joined a Bible study culture in Texas that was unlike anything Eisenhower bought into.

Bush was a saved alcoholic—and here, too, he had no predecessor in the White House. Ulysses Grant conquered the bottle, but not with the help of Jesus. Other presidents were evangelicals. Three of them belonged to the Disciples of Christ—James Garfield, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan. But none of the three— nor any of the other forty-two presidents preceding Bush (including his father)—would have answered a campaign debate question as he did. Asked who was his favorite philosopher, he said "Jesus Christ." And why? "Because he changed my heart." Over and over, when he said anything good about someone else—including Vladimir Putin—he said it was because "he has a good heart," which is evangelical-speak (as in "condoms cannot change your heart"). Bush talks evangelical talk as no other president has, including Jimmy Carter, who also talked the language of the secular Enlightenment culture that evangelists despise. Bush told various evangelical groups that he felt God had called him to run for president in 2000: "I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it."[1]

Bush promised his evangelical followers faith-based social services, which he called "compassionate conservatism." He went beyond that to give them a faith-based war, faith-based law enforcement, faith-based education, faith-based medicine, and faith-based science. He could deliver on his promises because he stocked the agencies handling all these problems, in large degree, with born-again Christians of his own variety. The evangelicals had complained for years that they were not able to affect policy because liberals left over from previous administrations were in all the health and education and social service bureaus, at the operational level. They had specific people they objected to, and they had specific people with whom to replace them, and Karl Rove helped them do just that.

It is common knowledge that the Republican White House and Congress let "K Street" lobbyists have a say in the drafting of economic legislation, and on the personnel assigned to carry it out, in matters like oil production, pharmaceutical regulation, medical insurance, and corporate taxes. It is less known that for social services, evangelical organizations were given the same right to draft bills and install the officials who implement them. Karl Rove had cultivated the extensive network of religious right organizations, and they were consulted at every step of the way as the administration set up its policies on gays, AIDS, condoms, abstinence programs, creationism, and other matters that concerned the evangelicals. All the evangelicals' resentments under previous presidents, including Republicans like Reagan and the first Bush, were now being addressed.

(The rest is here.)

Walz-Gutknecht race makes the Wall Street Journal

The October 30 issue of the Wall Street Journal features an article on the Gutknecht-Walz contest in Minnesota's 1st Congressional District. While Tim Walz is gaining a lot of attention for his novice candidacy, there is an upside for Gil Gutknecht as well: His name hasn't been mentioned in the press this much for a long, long time.

In Minnesota, 'Everyman' on the Ballot

Political Novice Battles Republican Incumbent, with Iraq and Immigration at Forefront

By DAVID ROGERS

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- If there is one House race that captures the struggle between Republican power in Congress and a grass-roots demand for change, it is here in Minnesota's First District.

Twelve-year incumbent Rep. Gil Gutknecht is a political survivor and force for the dairy industry as a senior member of the House Agriculture Committee. But in a district President Bush carried twice, the Republican Party and corporate allies are spending heavily to fend off Democrat Tim Walz, a high-school teacher and political newcomer.

Three possible 2008 presidential contenders -- Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sens. John Kerry and Barack Obama -- are all due here this week. Mr. McCain's appearance, which his camp says is to help re-elect Gov. Tim Pawlenty, not Mr. Gutknecht per se, touches a nerve since Mr. Walz -- a retired National Guard master sergeant -- is a fellow veteran and has been attacked by Mr. Gutknecht for supporting immigration policies akin to the Arizona senator's.

"It's been, 'Holy smokes, the First District can elect a guy who woke up one morning and said let's change this country and let's do this together,' " Mr. Walz laughs.

The heart of his campaign is just that: Everyman running for Congress. With his former National Guard artillery unit deployed in Iraq, Mr. Walz emphasizes the need for change in the war's strategy. But most of all, given the House's low standing in opinion polls and voter anxiety about America losing its way, he sees his candidacy as a wake-up call for Congress and the nation.

"When you wake up Nov. 8, it can be a brand new world," he told supporters last week in Owatonna. "It's not vindictiveness. It's not us saying all our Republican neighbors are wrong. It's us saying this Congress is broken. This rubber-stamp Congress is not giving this country the ability to move forward and compromise.

"If you know how good we are going to feel, picture for a moment how the rest of the world is going to feel. When they wake up Nov. 8, they're going to look and say, 'The Americans are back.' "

Up and down the ballot, Minnesota is a battleground this fall with a Senate seat and the governor's mansion also up for grabs. Early in the nominating process during the spring, Mr. Walz -- who bears a resemblance to another high-school teacher and coach: House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois -- showed promise but was overlooked nationally because of his lack of political experience. He and his fellow Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party candidates are their own cast of characters, less a political party than a repertory company for modern America.

[...]

In the First District, both national parties have entered the fray's home stretch with attack ads focused on the race's top issues: immigration and the war in Iraq. Labor unions are helping Mr. Walz; Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and first lady Laura Bush made back-to-back appearances with Mr. Gutknecht, and, led by agribusiness interests, political action committees have contributed almost $200,000 into the contest since Labor Day.

In an interview during the spring, Mr. Gutknecht played down the political threat posed by the war. But after traveling to Baghdad this summer, he began expressing doubts about the direction of U.S. policy. "The American people are incredibly patient, but their patience is almost at the end," he says.

The congressman faults the Mark Foley page scandal for a drop in his own polls during the first week of October, but says he has recovered. The first lady puts "more of a human face" on the administration and, he says, will help him reach out to swing voters. "They don't wake up in the morning angry at George Bush," he says. "They wake up frustrated and ask themselves, are we doing the right thing?"

Mr. Walz began running a new Iraq war TV ad last week, showing him standing before empty football bleachers intended to represent the number of dead U.S. troops, now approaching 3,000. "Serving right now are kids I taught, coached and trained to be soldiers," he says to the camera. "They deserve a plan for Iraq to govern itself so they can come home."

To blunt the war issue, Republicans have attacked Mr. Walz on illegal immigration. The challenger has proposed that undocumented workers be put on a path toward earned citizenship, but only if they first return to their native country and legally re-enter the U.S.

This is a position akin to one championed by prominent House conservative Rep. Mike Pence (R., Ind.) and to the right of Mr. McCain, but Republicans are spending heavily on spots accusing Mr. Walz of supporting a sweeping amnesty.

Mr. Walz says he hopes voters will see the attacks as another aspect of Washington they want changed.

(The article is here.)

GAO Chief: U.S. going broke

Top Government Official Says US on Verge of Economic Disaster

By Matt Crenson
The Associated Press

Saturday 28 October 2006

A dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows, or at least should. The vast majority of economists and budget analysts agree: The ship of state is on a disastrous course, and will founder on the reefs of economic disaster if nothing is done to correct it.

David M. Walker sure talks like he's running for office. "This is about the future of our country, our kids and grandkids," the comptroller general of the United States warns a packed hall at Austin's historic Driskill Hotel. "We the people have to rise up to make sure things get changed."

But Walker doesn't want, or need, your vote this November. He already has a job as head of the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that audits and evaluates the performance of the federal government.

Basically, that makes Walker the nation's accountant-in-chief. And the accountant-in-chief's professional opinion is that the American public needs to tell Washington it's time to steer the nation off the path to financial ruin.

(The article is here.)

Islam, Terror and the Second Nuclear Age

By NOAH FELDMAN
New York Times

I.

For nearly 50 years, worries about a nuclear Middle East centered on Israel. Arab leaders resented the fact that Israel was the only atomic power in the region, a resentment heightened by America’s tacit approval of the situation. But they were also pretty certain that Israel (which has never explicitly acknowledged having nuclear weapons) would not drop the bomb except as a very last resort. That is why Egypt and Syria were unafraid to attack Israel during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War. “Israel will not be the first country in the region to use nuclear weapons,” went the Israelis’ coy formula. “Nor will it be the second.”

Today the nuclear game in the region has changed. When the Arab League’s secretary general, Amr Moussa, called for “a Middle East free of nuclear weapons” this past May, it wasn’t Israel that prompted his remarks. He was worried about Iran, whose self-declared ambition to become a nuclear power has been steadily approaching realization.

The anti-Israel statements of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, coupled with Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas, might lead you to think that the Arab states would welcome Iran’s nuclear program. After all, the call to wipe the Zionist regime from the map is a longstanding cliché of Arab nationalist rhetoric. But the interests of Shiite non-Arab Iran do not always coincide with those of Arab leaders. A nuclear Iran means, at the very least, a realignment of power dynamics in the Persian Gulf. It could potentially mean much more: a historic shift in the position of the long-subordinated Shiite minority relative to the power and prestige of the Sunni majority, which traditionally dominated the Muslim world. Many Arab Sunnis fear that the moment is ripe for a Shiite rise. Iraq’s Shiite majority has been asserting the right to govern, and the lesson has not been lost on the Shiite majority in Bahrain and the large minorities in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah of Jordan has warned of a “Shiite crescent” of power stretching from Iran to Lebanon via Iraq and (by proxy) Syria.

But geopolitics is not the only reason Sunni Arab leaders are rattled by the prospect of a nuclear Iran. They also seem to be worried that the Iranians might actually use nuclear weapons if they get them. A nuclear attack on Israel would engulf the whole region. But that is not the only danger: Sunnis in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere fear that the Iranians might just use a nuclear bomb against them. Even as Iran’s defiance of the United States and Israel wins support among some Sunnis, extremist Sunnis have been engaging in the act of takfir, condemning all Shiites as infidels. On the ground in Iraq, Sunni takfiris are putting this theory into practice, aiming at Shiite civilians and killing them indiscriminately. Shiite militias have been responding in kind, and massacres of Sunni civilians are no longer isolated events.

Adding the nuclear ingredient to this volatile mix will certainly produce an arms race. If Iran is going to get the bomb, its neighbors will have no choice but to keep up. North Korea, now protected by its own bomb, has threatened proliferation — and in the Middle East it would find a number of willing buyers. Small principalities with huge U.S. Air Force bases, like Qatar, might choose to rely on an American protective umbrella. But Saudi Arabia, which has always seen Iran as a threatening competitor, will not be willing to place its nuclear security entirely in American hands. Once the Saudis are in the hunt, Egypt will need nuclear weapons to keep it from becoming irrelevant to the regional power balance — and sure enough, last month Gamal Mubarak, President Mubarak’s son and Egypt’s heir apparent, very publicly announced that Egypt should pursue a nuclear program.

(The rest is here.)

New York Times on future taxes

Editorial: Future Tax Shock

One of President Bush’s be-very-afraid lines this campaign season is that Democrats, if elected, will raise taxes. What he doesn’t say is that if you are one of tens of millions of Americans who make between $75,000 and $500,000 a year, your taxes are already scheduled to rise starting next year — because of laws that Mr. Bush championed and other actions he failed to take.

The higher taxes stem from the alternative minimum tax, a levy that is supposed to snare multimillionaires who would otherwise get away with using excessive tax shelters to wipe out their tax bills. But these days, the alternative tax is snaring many upper-middle-income filers.

Mr. Bush set the trap in 2001 — and in 2003, 2004 and 2006. In each of those years, he flogged for new tax cuts without requiring corresponding long-term changes in the existing rules for the alternative tax. It was well known that failure to update the alternative tax would create perverse interactions with the new tax cuts, causing filers’ tax bills to drop because of the cuts, only to shoot back up again from the alternative levy.

Mr. Bush said he would vanquish the problem through tax reform. Didn’t happen. Congress never wrestled with lasting solutions. The truth is, the president and lawmakers are paralyzed. To fix the alternative tax while keeping the Bush tax cuts on the books would result in the loss of some $800 billion in revenue over 10 years, blowing a hole in the federal budget and exposing how utterly unaffordable the tax cuts of the last five years really are.

The taxpayers wrongly afflicted by the alternative tax are not tax dodgers. For the most part, they are couples with children who have broken into the ranks of six-figure earners, and who live in high-tax states like New York and California. They are being penalized, in effect, for claiming everyday deductions — like write-offs for dependents and property taxes — which, under the alternative tax rules, are viewed as excessive shelters.

Meanwhile, multimillionaires are not being snared at nearly the same rate as other filers. In part, that’s because much of the income of the superrich comes from investments. The tax breaks for investments — the grail of the administration’s tax-cutting crusade — are not counted as shelters under the alternative tax the way, say, children are.

For the past few years, Congress has papered over the mess by passing temporary relief measures to shield most — though not all — upper-middle-income taxpayers from having to pay the alternative tax. The latest stopgap expires at the end of this year, leaving taxpayers exposed at ever lower income levels. Congress could pass another temporary stay, and it will probably do so.

But stopgaps do little to protect the families already being unfairly clobbered by the alternative tax. And they make the nation’s underlying budget problems worse. Like the Bush tax cuts themselves, they result in less tax revenue than is needed, requiring the government to borrow heavily. The mounting debt of the Bush years — all of which must be paid back with interest — makes tax increases or budget cuts, or both, inevitable.

The president wants to push off the day of reckoning until he leaves the White House, while whipping up voter fear of future tax increases. But the reality is that he and his supporters have laid the groundwork for higher taxes and hamstrung government, no matter who is in office in the months and years to come.

(The article is here. The Associated Press has also carried an informative article on the subject, below:)

Unpopular message: U.S. can't bank on future
The nation's chief accountant is on tour, talking about the fiscal black hole Washington has dug itself into.

Matt Crenson, Associated Press
AUSTIN, TEXAS - David M. Walker sure talks like he's running for office.

"This is about the future of our country, our kids and grandkids," the U.S. comptroller general warns a packed hall at Austin's Driskill Hotel. "We the people have to rise up to make sure things get changed."

He doesn't want, or need, your vote next month. As head of the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that audits and evaluates the performance of the federal government, Walker is the nation's accountant in chief. And his professional opinion is that the public needs to tell Washington it's time to steer the nation off the path to financial ruin.

This campaign season, America's political class can be heard debating Capitol Hill sex scandals, the wisdom of the war in Iraq and which party is tougher on terror. Democrats and Republicans talk of cutting taxes to make life easier.

What they don't discuss is a dirty little secret: The ship of state is on a disastrous course and will founder on the reefs of economic disaster if nothing is done.

(The rest of the story is here.)

Taking the Fight to the Taliban

By ELIZABETH RUBIN
New York Times

One morning this summer, I headed out with a U.S. Army convoy of Humvees, a truck called a wrecker and a packed supply truck into the Afghan mountains. I was among some two dozen American and Afghan soldiers from Task Force Warrior, an infantry battalion based in Zabul Province, just north of Kandahar. We trundled up a path fit for goats because the nearby riverbed was perfect for concealing improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s. Soon enough, the truck keeled over into the riverbed anyway. To hoist it up, the wrecker had to crash through wheat fields, and within minutes a gray-bearded farmer appeared brandishing his stick. “Are you Afghan?” he shouted at Farooq, my interpreter. “I have 30 members in my family. Why did you destroy my wheat?” The old farmer then clasped my wrist with his ancient garden tool of a hand. “You Americans are all friends of Bush the persecutor. You see this area” — he swept his other arm in every direction — “these are all Taliban. But they don’t have power. As soon as we find power, I will kill all of you.”

Farooq tried to calm him, but the farmer was fixated on his crushed wheat stalks until he spotted First Sgt. Ruel Robbins, a red-cheeked, chest-first sort. Robbins looked the farmer over, then said, “Tell him I’m real sorry to drive over his wheat, but I had to ’cause my vehicle turned over.” The farmer eyed the sacks in the supply truck; Robbins gave him one of rice and two of flour.

The farmer watched us take off in a swirl of dust, and Specialist Melissa Elliot, who was driving our Humvee, said to Farooq: “We’re not trying to hurt them. We’re trying to protect their security. Why’d he get so upset with us? Is their wheat part of their religion or something?”

“It’s the food for his family, ma’am,” Farooq said patiently.

And so began our mission into the mountains of Zabul Province, 6,500 square miles of desert, farmland and 9,000-foot peaks with almost no paved roads to link one patch to the next. It’s a place where, just decades ago, families lived as nomads, until King Mohammad Zahir Shah gave them government land to settle on, and where national politics is superseded by Pashtunwali — the Pashtun codes for tribal coexistence, based on retaliation, mediation and hospitality. In 1994, when the Taliban movement of young religious students swept into Zabul offering an end to illegal road taxes and warlord rule, Zabul’s leaders simply joined hands with their Pashtun brothers. After the Taliban’s fall, President Hamid Karzai’s nephew was dispatched to head the Zabul Police; in July 2002, I found him besieged by locals, who put feces in his food and threatened to kill him. For five years now American forces have been chasing the Taliban in Zabul and attempting reconstruction. The police buildings have improved. A new hospital (financed by the United Arab Emirates) was finished. Roads were being laid in terrain so remote that when the Americans turned up, the villagers thought they must be Russians. The Americans opened a trade school in Qalat, the capital. But the pace of progress has been painfully slow. These remain the Taliban’s mountains.

There are 42,000 U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan today, trying to secure a country that is a third again the size of Iraq, where there are almost 150,000 U.S.-led troops. In the past two years, more than 300 American and NATO soldiers have died trying to stave off a resurgent Taliban. Already this year, some 1,500 Afghans have been killed. And while there were just two suicide bombings in 2002, there is now one about every five days.

(The rest is here.)

Gutknecht = Bush

by Mark C. Halverson

At first glance, Gil Gutknecht looks like an appealing candidate. He’s well groomed, personable, and as with most incumbent members of Congress, very good at speaking eloquently while not saying much at all.

During his several years representing Minnesota’s First Congressional District, he has not rocked the boat. He has done nothing controversial. He hasn’t done much of anything, it appears.

While one might be inclined to leave such an innocuous representative in Congress, thankful that he has largely avoided public scrutiny, there is one very disturbing fact that tells the true story of Mr. Gutknecht’s tenure. He has voted with the Bush administration over 80 percent of the time.

The Bush Administration represents the worst in politics. Both individually and collectively they are cynical, arrogant, dishonest and incompetent. They have gotten us in a terrible war upon false pretenses and without an exit strategy. They have rolled back civil liberties at every opportunity. They have made great strides towards increasing the distance between those few who are very wealthy, and the rest of the population. They have even rolled-back environmental protection, in the face of compelling evidence that we are on the brink of environmental disaster.

A vote for Gil Gutknecht in the upcoming election is nothing more that a vote in favor of the Bush administration. Make no mistake about it. It is time to move in a new direction. It is time to elect Tim Walz to the 1st District U.S. House of Representatives seat.

(Also published in the New Ulm Journal.)

Congress must be changed now

by Tom Maertens
reprinted from the Mankato Free Press

As elections approach, the Bush administration is once again hyping terrorism, just as in 2004.

Karl Rove knows that you can fool some of the people all of the time, using the strategy described by Hermann Goering: " … the people can always be brought to do the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger."

Using this strategy, the administration manipulated a single terrorist attack five years ago to justify a trumped-up war and an unprecedented power grab.

Every one of Bush’s justifications for the invasion has proven false, including the claim that the war has made us safer. The government estimated there were 20,000 al Qaeda members on 9/11 but, stoked by the U.S. occupation of Iraq, its membership has reportedly grown to 50,000.

To silence critics, the Bush administration invokes Hitler, Lenin, and World War III, while smearing opponents as Nazi appeasers.

Using fear mongering about terrorism, Bush instituted domestic spying, widespread wiretapping and warrantless searches. The recent Military Commissions Act allows unarmed American citizens to be arrested as enemy combatants and denied habeas corpus.

These measures, which were rubberstamped by Gil Gutknecht, Mark Kennedy and the lapdog Republican congress, constitute an assault on our democratic system and a warning.

When the next attack comes, Bush will demand still more power, and this feckless Congress will surrender its remaining constitutional functions, just like the infamous Reichstag capitulation in 1933 that led to a police state in Germany.

We need to change Congress now.

"The President Knows more than He Lets on"

INTERVIEW WITH TERROR EXPERT RON SUSKIND
from Spiegel online

One hundred suspected terrorists from all over the world are still being held in secret American prisons. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, CIA expert Ron Suskind accuses Washington of "running like a headless chicken" in its war against al-Qaida. He reserves special criticism for the CIA's torture methods, which he argues are unproductive.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Suskind, the Red Cross recently visited all of the prisoners at Guantanamo who had been transferred from secret CIA prisons, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh. Do we know more about these CIA prisons, or "Black Sites" as a result of this visit?

Suskind: We know that almost everything from the tool kit was tried: extraordinary techniques that included hot and cold water-boarding and threats of various kinds. We tried virtually everything with Binalshibh. But he was resistant, and my understanding of that interrogation is that we got very, very little from it. At one point, there was some thinking that we should put out misinformation that Binalshihb had been cooperative, he had received money and he was living in luxury. So that would mean that his friends and family, who obviously are known to al-Qaida, might face retribuition, and we ended up not doing that.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: And what happened to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed?

Suskind: He was really the prize. He is the 9/11 operational planner, a kind of general in the al-Qaida firmament. He was water-boarded, hot and cold, all matter of deprivations, beatings, threats. He told us some things, but frankly things that professional interrogators say could have been gotten otherwise.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: With waterboarding, the prisoner is made to feel as though he is drowing, even if he isn't really at risk of dying. There are reports that Mohammed was a kind of unoffical record-holder when it came to waterboarding.

Suskind: With extraordinary minutes passing he earned a sort of grudging respect from interrogators. The thing they did with Mohammed is that we had captured his children, a boy and a girl, age 7 and 9. And at the darkest moment we threatened grievous injury to his children if he did not cooperate. His response was quite clear: "That's fine. You can do what you want to my children, and they will find a better place with Allah."

(There is more, here.)

Tipping Point for War's Supporters?

In Past Month, Even Stalwarts Have Called for Change in Iraq Policy

By Thomas E. Ricks and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers

As the fighting in Iraq swerved toward civil war in February, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) expressed "a high degree of confidence" that a new government would take charge and that by the end of the year the conflict "won't be the same."

As October opened, Warner returned from Iraq with a far grimmer assessment. "The situation," he said, "is simply drifting sidewise." His judgment gave voice to Republican doubt that had been suppressed in a campaign season. Lawmakers who had vowed to "stay the course" called for change. One GOP senator declared Iraq "on the verge of chaos." By last week, President Bush was saying he too is "not satisfied" and is looking for a fresh approach.

October 2006 may be remembered as the month that the U.S. experience in Iraq hit a tipping point, when the violence flared and shook both the military command in Iraq and the political establishment back in Washington.

Plans to stabilize Baghdad collided with a surge in violence during the holy month of Ramadan. Sectarian revenge killings spread, consuming a town 50 miles from the capital. U.S. officials spoke of setting benchmarks for the Iraqi government to take on more responsibility, only to have the Iraqi prime minister call that suggestion election-year grandstanding. Bush compared the situation to the 1968 Tet Offensive -- often seen as a turning point in the Vietnam War -- and urged Americans not to become disillusioned.

"October has been very busy from a standpoint of operations on the ground and certainly back here in Washington," White House counselor Dan Bartlett said.

With Iraq again dominating the national dialogue right before key midterm elections, "there's an expectation in the air that after the election, the partisanship and the politically charged environment will dissipate somewhat and people can start looking for ways to work together on this issue," Bartlett said.

Republicans are anxious about what happens in the meantime; polls show wide discontent. "Republicans are responding to the nervousness of the American people," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). "People have begun to wonder about the basic premise that the Iraqi people are capable of solving their problems politically."

(There is more, here.)

DM&E: When right and left agree, the middle better listen

"I can't imagine this loan would've ever passed if we had due process." — former Vice President Walter Mondale

"This is a fundamental perversion of the political process.... The only reason we're having this discussion is because of the horrendous corruption that's come about in the last six years." — David Strom, President of the Minnesota Taxpayers League

Former Vice President Walter Mondale and taxpayer rights advocate David Strom don't agree on much. But there is one issue they do see eye-to-eye on: They both oppose the $2.3 billion loan earmarked for the DM&E railroad that was snuck into a conference committee report the day before the House of Representatives was due to vote on the massive Transportation Bill.

There was no discussion, there were no debates, there was no notification to state lawmakers or even other members of Congress whose districts might be affected. It simply appeared as if by magic.

Though it wasn't by magic, it was executed by a well-calculated sleight-of-hand.

"This is the way Kevin Schieffer operates," said an individual with intimate knowledge of the railroad who was in the audience of about 150 Friday afternoon at Minnesota State University Mankato.

Kevin Schieffer is the CEO of the DM&E railroad, which is seeking to build an extension into the Powder River Basin in eastern Wyoming so it can haul coal to power plants in the Midwest. The area is already served by two much larger railroads, the Union Pacific and the Burlington Northern.

Despite earlier assurances that the DM&E could accomplish its desired expansion with private financing, that promise has gone by the wayside. And that's why Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, a former DM&E lobbyist, quietly stuck the wording into the Transportation Bill conference committee report that virtually assures his former employer of the $2.3 billion, collateral-free loan.

While some loan advocates, including Minnesota Congressman Gil Gutknecht, say an upgraded DM&E will enhance transportation options for the agriculture industry, a spokesman for the consulting firm BearingPoint has said, "There is no way in the current market environment that the DM&E can pay it back.... This is not a loan; it's a gift."

"Everybody ought to be outraged" by what Thune did, Strom said Friday. "The process by any measure stinks." Strom, a free market advocate, said that the way the loan was inserted into the bill sets a very bad precedent. It means that "who you know is going to matter much more than what you do... imperiling the meaning of democracy."

"There was an utter imbalance of checks and balances in this midnight deal," said Mondale.

Nancy Brataas, a former Republican State Senator from Rochester, perhaps best summed up the discussion. In her long history of government involvement, she said, the insertion of the DM&E targeted loan into the Transportation Bill was the "most egregious action I have ever heard of."

Relevant articles:

• "Mondale, Strom condemn DM&E loan" — Mankato Free Press
• "Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad Corporation FRA Loan Creditworthiness Study" — BearingPoint
• "Congress Should Slash $2.3 Billion Stealth Earmark: Taxpayers Could be Railroaded by Largest Ever" — Frontiers of Freedom
• "Mayo Clinic Poll: Public Opposition to DM&E Bailout Climbs to 65 Percent in Minnesota's First Congressional District" — Yahoo! FINANCE
• "Next Stop, Risky Junction: How a Federal Loan to the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad Could Take Taxpayers for a Ride" — National Taxpayers Union
• "South Dakota's $2.5 billion railroad jackpot" — CNNMoney.com
  

Report Says Iraq Contractor Is Hiding Data From U.S.

By JAMES GLANZ and FLOYD NORRIS
New York Times

A Halliburton subsidiary that has been subjected to numerous investigations for billions of dollars in contracts it received for work in Iraq has systematically misused federal rules to withhold basic information on its practices from American officials, a federal oversight agency said yesterday.

The contracts awarded to the company, KBR, formerly named Kellogg Brown & Root, are for housing, food, fuel and other necessities for American troops and government officials in Iraq, and for restoring that country’s crucial oil infrastructure. The contracts total about $20 billion.

The oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, said KBR had refused to disclose information as basic as how many people are fed each day in its dining facilities and how many gallons of fuel are delivered to foreign embassies in Iraq, claiming that the data was proprietary, meaning it would unfairly help its business competitors.

Although KBR has been subjected to a growing number of specific investigations and paid substantial penalties, this is the first time the federal government has weighed in and accused it of systematically engaging in a practice aimed at veiling its business practices in Iraq.

The allegations come at a critical time for the company, as Halliburton is trying to spin off the subsidiary. And in July, the Army announced that it would terminate KBR’s largest contract with the government, and the company says that it will compete to regain some of that business when the government calls for new bids.

(There is more, here.)

In the Libby Case, A Grilling to Remember

Washington Post

With withering and methodical dispatch, White House nemesis and prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald yesterday sliced up the first person called to the stand on behalf of the vice president's former chief of staff.

If I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was not afraid of the special counsel before, the former Cheney aide, who will face Fitzgerald in a trial beginning Jan. 11, had ample reason to start quaking after yesterday's Ginsu-like legal performance.

Fitzgerald's target in the witness box was Elizabeth F. Loftus, a professor of criminology and psychology at the University of California at Irvine. For more than an hour of the pretrial hearing, Loftus calmly explained to Judge Reggie B. Walton her three decades of expertise in human memory and witness testimony. Loftus asserted that, after copious scientific research, she has found that many potential jurors do not understand the limits of memory and that Libby should be allowed to call an expert to make that clear to them.

But when Fitzgerald got his chance to cross-examine Loftus about her findings, he had her stuttering to explain her own writings and backpedaling from her earlier assertions. Citing several of her publications, footnotes and the work of her peers, Fitzgerald got Loftus to acknowledge that the methodology she had used at times in her long academic career was not that scientific, that her conclusions about memory were conflicting, and that she had exaggerated a figure and a statement from her survey of D.C. jurors that favored the defense.

Her defense-paid visit to the federal court was crucial because Libby is relying on the "memory defense" against Fitzgerald's charges that he obstructed justice and lied to investigators about his role in the leaking of a CIA operative's identity to the media. Libby's attorneys argue that he did not lie -- that he was just really busy with national security matters and forgot some of his conversations.

When Fitzgerald found a line in one of her books that raised doubts about research she had cited on the stand as proof that Libby needs an expert to educate jurors, Loftus said, "I don't know how I let that line slip by."

"I'd need to see that again," Loftus said when Fitzgerald cited a line in her book that overstated her research by saying that "most jurors" consider memory to be equivalent to playing a videotape. Her research, however, found that to be true for traumatic events, and even then, only 46 percent of potential jurors thought memory could be similar to a videotape.

There were several moments when Loftus was completely caught off guard by Fitzgerald, creating some very awkward silences in the courtroom.

One of those moments came when Loftus insisted that she had never met Fitzgerald. He then reminded her that he had cross-examined her before, when she was an expert defense witness and he was a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office in New York.

Libby's defense team declined to comment.

-- Carol D. Leonnig

Really scary: Your vote may be irrelevant

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."

A version of this quote has been attributed to Stalin, an attribution that has been hotly debated. Thom Hartmann, among others, has said that Rush Limbaugh repeated this phrase on November 24, 2000, in the midst of a critical month in U.S. history when the result of the election for President was yet to be decided. Eventually, of course, the election results were finalized de jure if not de facto.

As election day approaches, more and more is being heard about whether the official results will really reflect the true results that occur when a citizen casts his or her vote.

Minnesota information technology expert Bruce O'Dell (resume) has weighed in on the issue. His conclusion? Pull the plug on the voting machines.

As nearly all articles on the subject conclude: Be afraid. Technology has made voting less secure, not more.

The article is in two parts. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.

Cheney calls 'water-boarding' a valuable interrogation tool

The Vice President confirmed that an interrogation technique that simulates drowning and has been called 'cruel and inhumane' was used on al Qaeda suspects.

BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior al Qaeda suspects to a controversial interrogation technique called ''water-boarding,'' which creates a sensation of drowning.

Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn't regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. ''It's a no-brainer for me,'' Cheney said at one point in an interview.

Cheney's comments, in a White House interview on Tuesday with a conservative radio talk show host, appeared to reflect the Bush administration's view that the president has the constitutional power to do whatever he deems necessary to fight terrorism.

The rest is here. Here's a blast from the past:

Waterboarding a war crime when Japanese did it

In 1947, the U.S. Called Waterboarding a War Crime; in 1968, It Reportedly Caused an Investigation

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post

Key senators say Congress has outlawed one of the most notorious detainee interrogation techniques -- "waterboarding," in which a prisoner feels near drowning. But the White House will not go that far, saying it would be wrong to tell terrorists which practices they might face.

Inside the CIA, waterboarding is cited as the technique that got Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the prime plotter of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to begin to talk and provide information -- though "not all of it reliable," a former senior intelligence official said.

Waterboarding is variously characterized as a powerful tool and a symbol of excess in the nation's fight against terrorists. But just what is waterboarding, and where does it fit in the arsenal of coercive interrogation techniques?

On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post published a front-page photograph of a U.S. soldier supervising the questioning of a captured North Vietnamese soldier who is being held down as water was poured on his face while his nose and mouth were covered by a cloth. The picture, taken four days earlier near Da Nang, had a caption that said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk."

The article said the practice was "fairly common" in part because "those who practice it say it combines the advantages of being unpleasant enough to make people talk while still not causing permanent injury."

The picture reportedly led to an Army investigation.

Twenty-one years earlier, in 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.

"Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told his colleagues last Thursday during the debate on military commissions legislation. "We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II," he said.

The rest is here.

Big doin's in Minnesota's 1st CD

Some big names will be stumping for Tim Walz and Amy Klobuchar in the 1st Congressional District this coming week.

Barak Obama will be stopping at the Mayo Civic Center Auditorium in Rochester on Monday, Oct. 30, with the event starting at 5:00 pm.

Then on Wednesday, Nov. 1, at noon, Walz will host Sen. John Kerry at Bresnan Arena on the campus of Minnesota State University in Mankato.

What's in a number?

As has been well publicized, Laura Bush came to the Mayo Civic Center this past Wednesday to lend a hand to incumbent Rep. Gil Gutknecht. According to GOP sources, the crowd was as high as a thousand, with the Albert Lea Tribune estimating 700 and the Associated Press saying "several hundred." But apparently a Fox News reporter on the scene said the number was less than 300.

Tacked onto the end of the Pioneer Press article about Laura Bush's $500-a-plate breakfast for Michele Bachmann that morning is this little ditty:

Republicans arriving early for Bush's speech at the Minneapolis Marriott Southwest hotel encountered about a dozen anti-war demonstrators from a group called Military Families Speak Out.

One of the protesters — Rick Hanson, a free-lance illustrator from Minnetonka — wore a photo of his son, Eric, a recently discharged Marine who served eight months in Iraq.

"We're here today specifically because the Republican administration is inside comfortable and warm, having a $500 breakfast … and four kids will be dead by the end of the day," Hanson said. "It's shameful."

Let's hope those Republicans got more than just an Egg McMuffin for their 500 smackers....

Citizens Against Government Waste targets Sen. Thune/DM&E

Who are the other hobgoblins here? Sen. Coleman? Rep. Gutknecht?

Taxpayers Go Trick-or-Treating

Washington, D.C. Much scarier than the prospect of being haunted by the undead is the prospect of being spooked by a record $8.6 trillion national debt. In the Halloween spirit, Citizens Against Government Waste provides a list of who deserves taxpayer tricks and treats.

Trick: To Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) for helping to secure a $2.3 billion loan from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) for a company for whom he was a lobbyist: the Dakota, Minnesota, and Easter Railroad (DM&E). Sen. Thune had earlier increased the FRA’s budget from $3.5 to $35 billion in apparent anticipation of the loan. With a poor safety record and revenues of less than $200 million, DM&E does not appear capable of making the annual $246 million payment, leaving taxpayers with the scary prospect of having to cover the shortfall.

The press release is here. See also David Williams' companion piece, "The Rail Subsidy That Could". In it he writes:

The loan makes no sense from a fiscal, security, or commonsense standpoint. The most confusing, and relevant, aspect to taxpayers is the financing. Currently, DM&E has revenue of less $200 million. According to BearingPoint (a strategic consulting firm), this loan would require an annual payment of $246 million on top of the $15 million from another loan. To put this number in perspective, the Chrysler bailout was valued at $1.5 billion. The numbers alone signal a red flag to stop this handout in its tracks. A senior manager at BearingPoint stated, "This loan finances a project with many financial uncertainties, ultimately calling into question whether or not DM&E can repay the loan."

Embracing the subtle upside of terror

Garrison Keillor
Chicago Tribune

We are engaged in a struggle between freedom and the forces of terror, my little macacas, and mostly I side with freedom, such as the freedom to look at big shots and stick out your tongue and blow, but of course terror has its place too. The dude strolling down our street at night does not break into our house to see what's available because he is terrified that if he's nabbed, his girlfriend Janine will run off to Philly with her ex-boyfriend Eddie who's been hanging around. She's the best thing in Benny's life right now. So he walks on by and leaves our stereo be.

The terror of everlasting hellfire kept me away from dances until I was 12 years old and away from smoking cigarettes until I was 15. So that's good. Dancing was briefly thrilling, and then I caught sight of myself in a mirror and I haven't gone to a dance since. Fear of ridicule is powerful too.

A lack of terror may encourage crooks to operate brazenly, knock over the candy stand, trip the nuns, hurl garbage over the balcony, and that's why you have cops, and also to keep the college kids from getting sick in our shrubbery.

But now the federal government is extending the frontiers of terror with the Military Commissions Act of 2006, legalizing torture and suspending habeas corpus and constructing a loose web of law by which you and I could be hung by our ankles in a meat locker for as long as somebody deems necessary. "Any person is punishable ..." the law states, "who knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States" and when it comes to deciding what "knowingly and intentionally" might mean or who is the enemy, that's for a military commission to decide in secret, with or without you present. No 5th Amendment, hearsay evidence admissible, no judicial review.

People came to America to escape this sort of justice. The midnight knock on the door, incarceration at the whim of men in shiny boots, confessions obtained with a section of hose, secret trial by star chamber. One is reminded of Germany, 1933, when the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act to give the chancellor the power of summary arrest and imprisonment, a necessary tool for the defense of the homeland against traitors, Jew-lovers, terrorists.

(More here.)

Bush's Proposal of 'Benchmarks' for Iraq Sounds Familiar

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post

The text of President Bush's news conference yesterday ran to nearly 10,000 words, but what may have been more significant were the things he did not say.

The president talked repeatedly about "benchmarks" for progress in Iraq, using that word 13 times. But he did not discuss the consequences of the Iraqi government missing those targets. Such a question, he said, was "hypothetical."

That response left unclear how the benchmarks would be different from previous times when the United States has set out intentions, only to back down. For example, the original war plan envisioned the U.S. troop presence in Iraq being cut to 30,000 by the fall of 2003. Last year, some top U.S. commanders thought they would be able to significantly cut the U.S. troop level in Iraq this year -- a hope now officially abandoned. More recently, the U.S. military all but withdrew from Baghdad, only to have to have to reenter the capital as security evaporated from its streets and Iraqi forces proved unable to restore calm by themselves.

President Bush also spoke several times yesterday about his flexibility, apparently as a way of countering critics calling for a major change in his approach to Iraq. But he made it clear that he was talking about tactical adjustments, rather than the kind of sweeping strategic revision being mulled by the Iraq Study Group led by former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former representative Lee H. Hamilton, and also being urged by a host of members of Congress and political pundits.

More briefly, he touched upon establishing Iraqi security forces. But he did not use his old favorite phrase about U.S. troops "standing down as they stand up." He mentioned the goal of training about 325,000 Iraqi soldiers and police officers, but he did not address the paradox that as that goal is neared, violence has intensified and the insurgency appears as robust as ever. Nor did he note that after U.S. forces stood down in Baghdad, they had to stand back up again. Instead, without offering much explanation, he said that "we are refining our training strategy for the Iraqi security forces."

(There is more, here.)

Comparing Gutknecht and Walz on the issues

Trying to compare two candidates on all the issues is a virtually impossible task. Fortunately, there is an abundance of resources. Several that stand out are:

• The candidates' websites: Gutknecht • Walz
• Rep. Gutknecht's congressional website
  
• Project Vote Smart: Gutknecht • Walz
• The Minnesota Newspaper Association survey: Gutknecht • Walz
• OnTheIssues.org: Gutknecht only (VoteMatch)

Nevertheless, Minnesota Monitor/Vox Verax have attempted to gather information on most of the key issues. Here is what we have found:

Issue	Gil Gutknecht	Tim Walz
Agriculture	Supports current Farm Bill. Supports incentives for developing farm-based renewable energy resources. Chair of House Agriculture Subcommittee on Operations, Oversight, Dairy, Nutrition and Forestry. (Agricultural policy is here and here.)	Supports current Farm Bill. Supports incentives for developing farm-based renewable energy resources. Supports Healthy Farms, Foods and Fuels Act. Supports farmers being able to buy into Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. (Agriculture policy is here.)
Defense	Supports Star Wars missile defense system.	Opposes pumping more money into missile defense system that has proven expensive and technologically questionable.
Primary and Secondary Education	Voted against No Child Left Behind. Supports school vouchers. Supports local control and accountability. Received 25% rating from National Education Association in 2005.	Does not support No Child Left Behind but admits it has raised level of school accountability. Says if NCLB is to stay, government must increase funding and loosen testing requirements. Supports increasing federal funding for special education. Supports local control and accountability. Endorsed by National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers and Education Minnesota. (Education policy is here.)
Energy	Supports energy independence and renewable fuels. Introduced 10 by 10 Act. Supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Supports funding research for clean coal and nuclear power. Voted for 2005 Energy Policy Act. (Energy policy is here.)	Supports energy independence and renewable fuels. Opposes expansion of domestic oil production. Supports tax breaks for energy research and efforts to reduce energy consumption.
Environment	Supported deauthorizing "critical habitat" for endangered species. Supported speeding up approval of forest thinning projects. (Source: On the Issues.) Supports drilling in ANWR. Opposed raising CAFE standards for motor vehicles. Received 0% rating from the League of Conservation Voters in 2006.	Opposes rollbacks to Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and Clean Air Act. Opposes privatizing National Forests, National Monuments, National Parks and wilderness areas. Opposes drilling in ANWR. Endorsed by League of Conservation Voters, Clean Water Action and the Sierra Club. (Environment policy is here.)
Health care	Sponsor of Pharmaceutical Market Access Act allowing for importation of prescription drugs. Supports Health Savings Accounts. (Health care policy is here.)	Supports allowing federal government to negotiate with drug companies to lower prescription drug prices. Supports universal health care coverage. (Health care policy is here.)
Higher Education	Voted for the Budget Reconciliation Act, which raised student loan rates. Says that higher education needs to limit its costs.	Supports making higher education more affordable. Believes in public education through college at minimal cost. Quote: "Some people ask, ‘How are you going to pay for it?’ All I have to say is $300 million per day. That’s Iraq."
Immigration	Supported Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act. Supports repeal of birthright principle, which guarantees citizenship to all persons born in this country. Co-sponsor of Border Protection Corps Act allowing citizens to patrol borders. Rated "A" by Americans for Better Immigration. (Immigration policy is here.)	Supports high-tech methods for border and immigration enforcement. Opposes wall across southern border as being too expensive and ineffective. Opposes sending National Guard to patrol border. Opposes criminalizing those who help undocumented immigrants. Supports path to citizenship. (Immigration policy is here.)
Social Security	Supports replacing current system with individual investment accounts. Alliance for Retired Americans rating was 10% in 2005.	Supports keeping current guaranteed benefit system and adding optional individual investment accounts. Supports raising current income ceiling of $90,000 on Social Security withdrawals to guarantee solvency of the system.
Taxes	Supports Bush tax cuts and repeal of estate tax. Supports replacing income tax with national sales tax.	Opposes Bush tax cuts for high-income earners. Supports reform, not repeal, of estate tax. Supports tax relief for lower and middle-income earners.
Transportation	Supports loan for DM&E expansion.	Opposes loan for DM&E expansion.
Veterans Issues	Supported expanding TRICARE benefits to reservists and families. Voted against TRICARE fee hike. Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America rating of C+ in 2006. Disabled American Veterans rating of 66% in 2006. (Veterans policy is here.)	Supports guaranteed health care benefits and transition support for veterans. Supports mandatory VA funding. Endorsed by Veterans and Military Families for Progress. (Veterans policy is here.)
War in Iraq	Until recently has been solid supporter of the war. Says that war is critical in fight against terrorism.	Supports reevaluation of war policy. Supports rebuilding infrastructure, turning military responsibility over to U.N. or other international force and withdrawing U.S. troops.

VoteVets.org puts out simple but devastating ad against Gutknecht

At Vox Verax and Minnesota Monitor we have taken exception to negative attack ads, not because they were against a candidate, but because they were untruthful. Witness our complaints about Minnesota DFL ads here and Gil Gutknecht ads here.

In an interview today with KTTC TV Station Manager Liz Dahlen, we sensed her frustration with the PACs', political parties' and candidates' competition for advertising time. (More later.)

Now a group called VoteVets.org has put out an ad targeting 1st Congressional District voters on the issue of support for veterans. It's very simple and makes only two points:

(1) That incumbent Congressman Gil Gutknecht voted to increase his pay while

(2) He voted against expanding health care to veterans.

Is it truthful? Or does it turn the facts around to benefit the interests of the group placing the ads?

Here are the facts:

(1) Rep. Gutknecht had a chance to vote against automatic pay raises for members of Congress. He did not do this.

(2) Rep. Gutknecht had several chances to vote to increase benefits for veterans. In some cases he voted in the affirmative; in others he voted against. Minnesota Monitor/Vox Verax has covered his ratings for supporting veterans here and here.

Rep. Gutknecht would no doubt counter that his votes AGAINST increasing veterans' benefits were, at least in part, due to his opposition to federal spending increases. While we agree with him that federal spending has grown out of control, his voting history has shown him to be pennywise but pound-foolish.

The two largest red ink items in the federal budget over the last six years have been (a) the war in Iraq ($2,000,000,000 PER WEEK, and I emphasize the zeros) and (b) the tax cuts that have benefited primarily the wealthiest 1% of Americans. These he has supported, almost without question.

Rep. Gutknecht has portrayed himself as a fiscal conservative, and for this aim we laud him. But what he SAYS and how he VOTES are two different things.

We cannot criticize the VoteVets.org ad. While they put the issue in simplistic terms, if you look at the voting record, they tell the truth.

And truth is the underpinning of everything in a democracy.

How Minnesota's congressmen (and woman) rate on supporting veterans - Part 2

Politicians will universally say that they support veterans, but do they really? Minnesota Monitor/Vox Verax has written before cautioning voters to look at the facts rather than trusting what comes out of politicians' mouths. While most voters don't have the time or resources to wade through all the relevant congressional votes, some veterans organizations make it a point to do just that.

In an earlier report we listed the Disabled American Veterans ratings for Minnesota's congressional delegation. Paul Schmeltzer of Minnesota Monitor now points us to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) Action Fund ratings and includes a table listing all 535 members. For those interested in just how Minnesota's delegation fared, below is the list:

Legislator	IAVA
Sen. Dayton, Mark (D-MN)	A-
Rep. Peterson, Collin (D-MN-7th)	B+
Rep. Sabo, Martin Olav (D-MN-5th)	B+
Rep. McCollum, Betty (D-MN-4th)	B
Rep. Oberstar, James (D-MN-8th)	B-
Rep. Ramstad, Jim (R-MN-3rd)	B-
Rep. Gutknecht, Gil (R-MN-1st)	C+
Rep. Kennedy, Mark (R-MN-6th)	C+
Rep. Kline, John (R-MN-2nd)	C
Sen. Coleman, Norm (R-MN)	D

According to the IAVA website:

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America is the nation's first and largest group dedicated to the Troops and Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the civilian supporters of those Troops and Veterans.

MPR features the 1st District race; debate in Winona fizzles

Minnesota Public Radio features the 1st Congressional District race today. What appeared to be another sure election for six-term Republican Gil Gutknecht has turned out to be a real fight.

The Winona Daily News reports that only 15 people showed up for a scheduled "closed" debate between Gutknecht and his challenger, Tim Walz, a Mankato high school teacher and 24-year National Guard veteran. The article notes that a nearly equal number of Walz supporters "gathered prior to the debate along Highway 14 near the Saint Mary’s campus entrance, protesting the fact that it wasn’t open to the public."

The debate was to be one of eight scheduled by the two candidates, two of which were to be closed. Walz has favored more debates, all open.

(NOTE: In 2004, I was Gutknecht's opponent in the race for Congress. He agreed to only one debate in that campaign, which was closed to the public and broadcast only three times at non-peak hours on two TV stations.)

One of the key indicators that shows how seriously Gutknecht is finally taking the Walz challenge is his — and the national GOP's — reliance upon vicious attack ads using mailers, radio and TV. The Gutknecht-GOP barrage against Walz has dealt primarily with the issues of immigration and taxes.

(More later on how one Rochester TV station is handling the onslaught of negative political advertising.)

The Worst Congress Ever

How our national legislature has become a stable of thieves and perverts -- in five easy steps
By MATT TAIBBI
Rolling Stone

There is very little that sums up the record of the U.S. Congress in the Bush years better than a half-mad boy-addict put in charge of a federal commission on child exploitation. After all, if a hairy-necked, raincoat-clad freak like Rep. Mark Foley can get himself named co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, one can only wonder: What the hell else is going on in the corridors of Capitol Hill these days?

These past six years were more than just the most shameful, corrupt and incompetent period in the history of the American legislative branch. These were the years when the U.S. parliament became a historical punch line, a political obscenity on par with the court of Nero or Caligula -- a stable of thieves and perverts who committed crimes rolling out of bed in the morning and did their very best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater, a Burkina Faso with cable.

To be sure, Congress has always been a kind of muddy ideological cemetery, a place where good ideas go to die in a maelstrom of bureaucratic hedging and rank favor-trading. Its whole history is one long love letter to sleaze, idiocy and pigheaded, glacial conservatism. That Congress exists mainly to misspend our money and snore its way through even the direst political crises is something we Americans understand instinctively. "There is no native criminal class except Congress," Mark Twain said -- a joke that still provokes a laugh of recognition a hundred years later.

But the 109th Congress is no mild departure from the norm, no slight deviation in an already-underwhelming history. No, this is nothing less than a historic shift in how our democracy is run. The Republicans who control this Congress are revolutionaries, and they have brought their revolutionary vision for the House and Senate quite unpleasantly to fruition. In the past six years they have castrated the political minority, abdicated their oversight responsibilities mandated by the Constitution, enacted a conscious policy of massive borrowing and unrestrained spending, and installed a host of semipermanent mechanisms for transferring legislative power to commercial interests. They aimed far lower than any other Congress has ever aimed, and they nailed their target.

(The rest is here.)

Religious Extremism

by Joe Mayer

(NOTE: Joe Mayer is a man of strong faith. He wrote this piece nearly a year ago. It seems like nothing has changed since then.)

"Religious extremism is one of the most horrifying and devastating movements historically and currently. Wars, holocausts, slavery, brutal dictatorships, and forced migrations have all occurred in the name of the 'only' God." If this is said about right wing Muslim extremists, nearly 100% of the conservative political right would agree. If this same quote is about today's Christian right-wing extremists, a nearly unanimous strongly worded rebuke would flow from the political conservatives.

We've all heard the questions, "Why has Islam allowed extremists to hijack their religion? I ask, "Why has Christianity, in America, allowed the same to happen here?"

Extremism says, "We are right and everyone else is wrong. The world is divided into black and white, good and evil. If you are evil it justifies hatred. God also hates evil. Vengeance is justice. Our God is right and we know his exact message. Therefore, anything we do is done in God's name – war, imperialism, ethnic cleansing, sexual discrimination, political absolutism. Anyone who disagrees with us is irreligious and opposed to God."

By branding Democrats and progressives as irreligious, the religious right has claimed the high moral ground and defined it basically as anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality, pro war and pro wealth. This exacting moral sense justifies rewriting American law into a theocracy. Any election in the United States between supposedly faith-based people and people who are deemed secularists will be won by the religionists.

It isn't only the religious right that is killing democracy and debate. Many ministers, priests, and rabbis seem to have been intimidated from speaking against the war and from presenting a loving God acting with concern for all people and all creation. Angry phone calls, letters to superiors, threats to cut off financial support and threats of replacement cause them to narrow their spiritual perspective. A shallow, nationalist, hateful God is the result. It places mainline churches in the same pew with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

Most Democrats and progressives are not atheists, are not irreligious, belong to a faith-based community, love God and attempt to follow His/ Her ways, believe God has the same concern for their fellow humans as for themselves, expect some kind of unity with this God following death.

This is not a minority position in the United States, just as progressive ideals are not minority principles. But conservatives and the religious right, through cunning and deception have abducted religion just as they have distorted the political atmosphere.

And Democrats have been stampeded on the religious issues just as on the political issues. "If I move a little to the right they'll accept me." A little movement doesn't cut it in the black or white, good or evil, no-compromise world. "You're either with us or against us," derives just as much from the author's religious doctrine as from his political positions.

People of faith, of whatever religious persuasion, need to reframe the political agenda to include the best impulses from their religious dimension. To do otherwise is to concede both religion and politics to the theocrats.

The movement of God in history, the intimacy of God with all people, the bond of God with all nations is larger than any denomination, more inclusive than any group of people, more broad than any nation or period of time, more comprehensive than any single political party to verbalize.

Message to the pols: Listen to college students

From the Minnesota State University Reporter, 10/24/06:

Time for Politicans To Grow Up

Whether focused on Republicans, Democrats or any other party or individual, political attack ads and smear campaigns are fueling the "lesser of two evils" approach to voting.

When candidates spend millions of dollars trying to discredit each other, voters are led to believe both sides are unsuitable. While in some races this may be true, it's certainly not the outcome any politician or party would, or should desire.

While many of these candidates need to be called out for claims they've made or actions they've taken, these attack ads are immature and inappropriate. If one side wants to expose the other, it should take place during a debate so the side getting attacked has an opportunity to explain or discredit the claims. Just throwing accusations at the voters without giving an opponent the opportunity to respond is backhanded and cowardly.

Nothing good ever comes out of these ads because they don't generate any real communication between candidates or deliver anyone's stance to the public. All these ads do is create a seemingly endless chain off "he said, she said" ads that yield the "I never said that" ads.

Politicians and groups funding these ads need to focus on which side is right instead of which is wrong. Candidates should be trying to inform voters why they should be in office, why they're the best candidates or what they're going to do if elected.

Voters shouldn't have to see candidates repeatedly explain what's false or what they didn't say. We should be hearing what the candidates stand for and what they stand against.

Is this what politics have really become? Is no one talented and creative enough to persuade the public to vote for them rather than against the other guy?

A great number of Americans have lost faith in all politicians. When those involved with politics continuously stoop to this level, it's not hard to figure out why.

U.S. Rank on Press Freedom Slides Lower

The U.S. is only 53rd on list, behind (among others) Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; Bolivia, Bosnia and Namibia; Mali, South Korea and even Serbia.

By Nora Boustany
Washington Post

Some poor countries, such as Mauritania and Haiti, improved their record in a global press freedom index this year, while France, the United States and Japan slipped further down the scale of 168 countries rated, the group Reporters Without Borders said yesterday.

The news media advocacy organization said the most repressive countries in terms of journalistic freedom -- such as North Korea, Cuba, Burma and China -- made no advances at all.

The organization's fifth annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index tracks actions against news media through the end of September. The group noted its concern over the declining rankings of some Western democracies as well as the persistence of other countries in imposing harsh punishments on media that criticize political leaders.

"Unfortunately nothing has changed in the countries that are the worst predators of press freedom, and journalists in North Korea, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Burma and China are still risking their life or imprisonment for trying to keep us informed," the organization said in a news release. North Korea holds the worst ranking at 168.

Iran ranks 162nd, between Saudi Arabia and China. The report said conditions in Russia and Belarus have not improved. It said that Russia continued to steadily dismantle the independent media and that the recent slaying of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya "is a poor omen for the coming year."

Northern European countries top the index, with no reported censorship, threats, intimidation or physical reprisals, either by officials or the public, in Finland, Ireland, Iceland and the Netherlands. All of those countries were ranked in first place.

The rest is here. The complete list is here.

Follow-up: "Negative campaigning goes both ways"

Polinaut and City Pages have picked up on the problems that candidates have to deal with when the state parties try to muddle in their campaigns. Here's the scoop:

From Polinaut:

DFL candidate asks the parties to stay out of his statehouse race

Mike Obermueller, who is running for a legislative seat in District 38B (Eagan), is asking the DFL and GOP campaign committees to stay out of the race between him and GOP Rep. Lynn Wardlow. Obermueller sent a news release to the news media detailing his request....

From City Pages:

A mud-free campaign in House District 38B?

It's not often that we bite on a press release, but the one sent out today by Mike Obermueller is worth a mention. Obermueller, who has been endorsed by the DFL to run against two-term Republican incumbent Lynn Wardlow in House District 38B in Eagan, wants the statewide parties to stay out of the race. Furthermore, he says he'll disavow any DFL-backed effort to distort Wardlow's record.

State DFL negative mailings have elicited the ire of local DFL candidates. Will state Republican mailings get the same reaction from their candidates? Stay tuned....

(Thanks to Chris Truscott for the tip.)

Public health policy ratings for Minnesota's congressional delegation

Next to Iraq, health care is perhaps the key issue in this year's election. Few would argue that it's become too expensive and too inaccessible for many Americans. Vox Verax/Minnesota Monitor has looked at how the state's members of Congress have been rated by certain health care interest groups. This is the first in the series.

From the American Public Health Association (APHA), courtesy of Project Vote Smart. Higher is better:

Representative	Party	Average 2002-05	Rating 2005	Rating 2004	Rating 2003	Rating 2002
Betty McCollum	D	100	100	100	100	100
Martin Olav Sabo	D	97	100	89	100	100
James L. Oberstar	D	84	88	75	88	83
Collin C. Peterson	D	55	75	67	44	33
James M. 'Jim' Ramstad	R	26	50	44	11	0
Gilbert W. 'Gil' Gutknecht	R	22	25	22	22	17
John P. Kline	R	15	12	33	0	n/a
Mark R. Kennedy	R	14	12	44	0	0

About the group:

"The American Public Health Association (APHA) is the oldest and largest organization of public health professionals in the world, representing more than 50,000 members from over 50 occupations of public health. APHA brings together researchers, health service providers, administrators, teachers, and other health workers in a unique, multidisciplinary environment of professional exchange, study, and action. APHA is concerned with a broad set of issues affecting personal and environmental health, including federal and state funding for health programs, pollution control, programs and policies related to chronic and infectious diseases, a smoke-free society, and professional education in public health."

Project Vote Smart Update

Many Minnesota candidates don't respond to national bipartisan survey

"Over 100 news organizations throughout the nation also urged their candidates to supply their issue positions through the National Political Awareness Test." — Project Vote Smart

Project Vote Smart has been on a 10-year mission to tell voters the truth about politicians — not about writing about them but by allowing the politicians' words, actions and deeds to be made available to the public.

Project Vote Smart has done this by offering the following information about candidates:

• Biography
• Issue Positions (NPAT)
• Campaign Finances
• Interest Group Ratings
• Voting Record
• Speeches and Public Statements

The NPAT, short for National Political Awareness Test, is a survey about the issues that Project Vote Smart sends to all candidates for presidential, congressional, gubernatorial, and state legislative offices. Candidates may or not respond, but there are some key rules.

1. Candidates need not answer every question, but must answer at least 70% of them to have their questionnaires included in the online database.
2. More importantly, answers given on the NPAT may not be used by other candidates for negative advertising. Fortunately, this is adhered to by 99.95% of all candidates. (NOTE: Project Vote Smart has publicly condemned Minnesota Rep. Gil Gutknecht for breaking this rule.)

NPAT scores for all 50 states are currently indexed on the Project Vote Smart website. The NPATs for Minnesota's candidates are available here.

Minnesota candidates for Congress and governor who have chosen NOT to return the Project Vote Smart surveys are:

• U.S. Senate: Kennedy (R), Klobuchar (D), Cavlan (G)
• U.S. House: Gutknecht (R-1); Kline (R-2), Williams (I-2); McCollum (D-4), Ellison (D-5), Fine (R-5); Bachmann (R-6), Wetterling (D-6); Peterson (D-7)
• Governor: Hatch (D), Hutchinson (I), Pawlenty (R), Brown (QRT)

Candidates receive stacks of surveys from various interest groups, many with a limited or single-issue focus, and it's understandable why they would not want to answer them all. However, Project Vote Smart is a bipartisan, citizen's organization whose only agenda is to provide voters, in their words, "with the necessary tools to self-govern effectively: abundant, accurate, unbiased and relevant information."

It is unfortunate, therefore, that some of Minnesota's key candidates have chosen not to participate.

Pat Tillman's brother on Iraq

Prof. Cindy Miller of Minnesota State University Mankato clued us to this item. Excerpts printed below:

After Pat’s Birthday

Posted on Oct 19, 2006

By Kevin Tillman

Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004.

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them....

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground....

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated....

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense....

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world....

Somehow this is tolerated....

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman,

Kevin Tillman

The rest is here.

1st CD gets coverage in L.A. Times

The battlefield widens for House GOP seats

A tide of discontent has made a growing number of races competitive.

By Ronald Brownstein, Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Jenny Jarvie
Times Staff Writers

October 23, 2006

LA CRESCENT, MINN. — The temperature is dropping, but six-term Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.) is sweating more than usual for this time of year.

In his last two campaigns, Gutknecht breezed to reelection with at least 60% of the vote. But when he stopped at an American Legion hall in this small southern Minnesota town Friday, he faced several tough issues, including the House page scandal, North Korea, Iran and the war in Iraq.

"The body count in October [in Iraq] is so high — how do you feel about an exit strategy?" asked Shan Gruden, a retired teacher who supported Gutknecht in the past but remains undecided today.

Gruden's challenge to Gutknecht captures the dynamic that is widening the battlefield during the final weeks of the contest for control of the House of Representatives.

(The rest is here.)

Star Tribune endorsements for Congress — Districts 1-4

Thanks to Bluestem Prairie for this tip:

Editorial: Walz, Rowley, Ramstad, McCollum
Minneapolis Star Tribune, October 23, 2006

Two incumbents, two challengers stand out in House races.

First District: Walz

Since he went to Washington in 1994, Rep. Gil Gutknecht has done a good job representing the interests and conservative values of southern Minnesota, and he won our endorsement two years ago. But this year the Republican incumbent finds himself on the defensive over issues ranging from the war in Iraq (he calls himself "frustrated") to the DM&E Railroad proposal, and there's a good reason: The DFL has fielded a superior candidate in Tim Walz....

Walz radiates energy, optimism and critical thinking -- qualities Washington could use right now.

Second District: Rowley

DFL challenger Coleen Rowley of Apple Valley seems badly overmatched in her race against GOP incumbent John Kline of Lakeville. Where he is polished, articulate and increasingly well versed in the issues of this rural-south-suburban district, she seems to be running mainly on plainspoken outrage and her fame as an FBI whistleblower. Yet these are precisely the qualities that Washington needs at a time when the nation has gone badly off track and a Republican-majority Congress doesn't seem to realize it....

While Rowley is short on political experience, she has proved herself a quick study and avid learner. Washington needs a change in course, and the Second District is a good place to start.

The article is here.

The 10 Worst Congressmen

from Rolling Stone

1. THE HIGHWAY ROBBER
DENNIS HASTERT (R-ILL.)

Hastert could well be the weakest House speaker in history. Tapped by Tom DeLay to serve as the mild-mannered frontman for the GOP leadership, the former wrestling coach ceded most of his power to the now-disgraced majority leader, allowing Republicans to treat the Capitol as their private piggy bank. Last year, Hastert got in on the action himself, secretly inserting $207 million into the budget for the "Prairie Parkway" -- a highway that will speed development of 210 acres he owns in Illinois. Before the year was out, Hastert sold part of his land -- soon to be the site of a sprawling subdivision -- for a profit of $2 million.

"Here's a guy who saw a chance to profit from his official acts and took it," says Bill Allison, who uncovered the late-night earmark as a senior analyst for the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan watchdog group. "Most of us aren't speaker of the House, and most of us don't have a $200 million earmark running through our back yard. Hastert does, and he made a fortune from it."

The speaker at least functions as a bipartisan defender of congressional corruption. In February 2005, he purged the chairman of the House Ethics Committee for daring to admonish DeLay. And after Rep. William Jefferson's offices were raided by the FBI last spring, it was Hastert who lodged the strongest protest on the Louisiana Democrat's behalf.

Hastert is especially good at turning a blind eye to scandal: An aide says the speaker's office knew about Rep. Mark Foley's penchant for page boys three years ago, yet Hastert took no action to protect minors working for Congress.

In another secret budget deal, Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist joined forces last December to give the pharmaceutical industry a Christmas gift worth billions. After the "final" version of the defense budget emerged from conference, the duo added a provision that gives drug makers immunity from liability lawsuits -- shielding them from claims that their mercury-laden vaccines sparked the current autism epidemic.

(The other nine are listed here. Also see the longer Rolling Stone article, "The Worst Congress Ever".)

Mayo fears come true in Pennsylvania

A train with 89 tanker cars has derailed in western Pennsylvania, leading to explosions and ethanol leaking from at least nine of the cars.

The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, has opposed a planned expansion by the DM&E Railroad that would put more trains, many carrying ethanol as well as agricultural chemicals such as anhydrous ammonia and ammonium nitrate, on tracks adjacent to the Clinic campus. The Mayo says that a derailment like the one in Pennsylvania will put many of its patients and staff in danger.

For more information see:

• "Ethanol cars derail, explode"
  
• "Derailed Train Cars Still Burning in Pa."
• Ryongchon disaster
• Track the Truth
  

Former UnitedHealth CEO under increasing scrutiny

Money Fattened CEO picks convenient time to quit

By Rachel Beck (AP)

William McGuire ran UnitedHealth Group Inc. like his personal fiefdom, allowing the former CEO and his cronies to gain tremendous wealth with few internal controls to stop them.

That's the startling conclusion of a board-mandated probe of how the health insurance giant timed its stock-option grants over the last decade. But the review headed by former SEC top cop Bill McLucas ends up telling a much more important story: That of a controlling leader who put his personal interests ahead of the welfare of the company's shareholders.

Such revelations led to McGuire's "retirement" this week after a 15-year tenure. Quite a convenient way to go, given the damage he has caused the company and its investors.

This certainly wasn't the send-off many had expected for McGuire, who joined the company in 1989 and rose to chairman and CEO in 1991. He has been lauded for engineering UnitedHealth's rise from a regional health insurer into one of the largest managed care companies in the country.

But those achievements have been overshadowed in recent months by allegations that the company manipulated the grant dates of stock options to executives to when the company's share price was depressed. The backdating of options documented in the report allowed executives to pocket unfair and potentially illegal profits that they never disclosed to shareholders.

The article is here. Minnesota Monitor and Vox Verax have covered Dr. McGuire's political contributions here.

Negative campaigning goes both ways

State DFL dirties the water

by Leigh Pomeroy

Kathy Sheran, DFL candidate for State Senate in District 23, is disgusted. "It's a shocker," she says. "I was anticipating something happening, and waiting for it to happen to me." She's talking about negative campaigning, but it's not against her. It's against her opponent, Republican Mark Piepho.

The piece, which arrived in Mankato mailboxes yesterday, is labeled as an "Independent expenditure paid for by the Minnesota DFL Party." It also sates, "Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee."

"I met for two hours yesterday trying to figure out what to do about it," Sheran said. "I think it stinks and is very poor judgment on the part of the DFL."

Sheran is squaring off against Piepho in a district that encompasses Mankato, North Mankato and St. Peter, as well as all of rural Nicollet County and parts of Sibley County. The seat has been held by DFLer John Hottinger for the last 15 years, which he won from Piepho in 1990.

The piece states:

Not Mark Piepho.
Piepho LOBBIED TO RAISE THE GAS TAX—that would have made prices at the pump EVEN HIGHER!

REJECT MARK PIEPHO.
We just can't afford to make the same mistake twice.

Back when Mark Piepho was State Representative, he voted against lowering tuition at state colleges and universities for working families.
Mark Piepho didn't seem to understand how middle-class Minnesotans get squeezed. Source: Senate File 1523, 5/6/85

And Piepho's recent work to raise gas taxes shows he's still up to the same old tricks.
In the Spring of 2006, Mark Piepho lobbied the state legislature to pass higher gas taxes—that's right, Piepho pushed for higher gas taxes—at a time when prices at the pump were hitting records.

On November 7th,
REJECT MARK PIEPHO.
We just can't afford to make the mistake of electing him again.

FACT CHECK:

Prior to his brief stint in the State Senate, Piepho represented the Mankato area in the State House, and did support a position calling for lower funding for state colleges and universities. However, this was over 20 years ago when tuition was significantly less than it is today.

Piepho supports an increase in the gas tax, but so does Sheran. In an email she wrote, "One thing that is problematic about the piece is that it implies the reason to reject Mark is because he lobbied for a gas tax increase which is something I have supported in the past myself" as founder and first president of the Highway 14 Partnership.

In a telephone interview Piepho was philosophical about the mailer. "I don't want to resort to negative advertising back. Most people are tired of it."

Sheran said, "I don't want to be a participant [in this]. I want to give people reasons to vote for me, not against someone else."

For relevant articles, see:

• "Phone-sex election ad offends both candidates"
• "Gil Gutknecht is lying his way to a 7th term in Congress"
• "Dirty Politics in the West Metro"
• "John Kline has no Immigration Policy, Only Attacks"
• "Project Vote Smart condemns Gutknecht for ethical lapse"
• "Pawlenty Releases Most Factually Inaccurate Ad to Date"

In the Land of the Taliban

By ELIZABETH RUBIN
New York Times

One afternoon this past summer, I shared a picnic of fresh mangos and plums with Abdul Baqi, an Afghan Taliban fighter in his 20’s fresh from the front in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. We spent hours on a grassy slope under the tall pines of Murree, a former colonial hill station that is now a popular resort just outside Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. All around us was a Pakistani rendition of Georges Seurat’s “Sunday on La Grande Jatte” — middle-class families setting up grills for barbecue, a girl and two boys chasing their errant cow with a stick, two men hunting fowl, boys flying a kite. Much of the time, Abdul Baqi was engrossed in the flight pattern of a Himalayan bird. It must have been a welcome distraction. He had just lost five friends fighting British troops and had seen many others killed or wounded by bombs as they sheltered inside a mosque.

He was now looking forward to taking a logic course at a madrasa, or religious school, near Peshawar during his holiday. Pakistan’s religious parties, he told me through an interpreter, would lodge him, as they did other Afghan Taliban fighters, and keep him safe. With us was Abdul Baqi’s mentor, Mullah Sadiq, a diabetic Helmandi who was shuttling between Pakistan and Afghanistan auditing Taliban finances and arranging logistics. He had just dispatched nine fighters to Afghanistan and had taken wounded men to a hospital in Islamabad. “I just tell the border guards that they were wounded in a tribal dispute and need treatment,” he told me.

And though Mullah Sadiq said they had lost many commanders in battles around Kandahar, he and Abdul Baqi appeared to be in good spirits, laughing and chatting loudly on a cellphone to Taliban friends in Pakistan and Afghanistan. After all, they never imagined that the Taliban would be back so soon or in such force or that they would be giving such trouble to the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai and some 40,000 NATO and U.S. troops in the country. For the first time since the fall of 2001, when the Taliban were overthrown, they were beginning to taste the possibility of victory.

As I traveled through Pakistan and particularly the Pashtun lands bordering Afghanistan, I felt as if I were moving through a Taliban spa for rehabilitation and inspiration. Since 2002, the American and Pakistani militaries have focused on North Waziristan and South Waziristan, two of the seven districts making up Pakistan’s semiautonomous tribal areas, which are between the North-West Frontier Province and, to the south, Baluchistan Province; in the days since the 9/11 attacks, some tribes there had sheltered members of Al Qaeda and spawned their own Taliban movement. Meanwhile, in the deserts of Baluchistan, whose capital, Quetta, is just a few hours’ drive from the Afghan city of Kandahar, the Afghan Taliban were openly reassembling themselves under Mullah Omar and his leadership council. Quetta had become a kind of free zone where strategies could be formed, funds picked up, interviews given and victories relished.

(There is more, here.)

How Minnesota's congressmen (and woman) rate on supporting veterans

All legislators like to claim they support veterans issues. But do they really? One measure of separating fact from fiction — or action from hot air — is to see how they are rated by the relevant interest groups.

One of the primary groups that supports veterans and the issues they confront is the Disabled American Veterans. According to their website:

With more than 1.2 million members, Disabled American Veterans is an organization of disabled veterans who are focused on building better lives for disabled veterans and their families.

The organization accomplishes this goal by providing free assistance to veterans in obtaining benefits and services earned through their military service. It is fully funded through its membership dues and public contributions. It is not a government agency and receives no government funds.

DAV is the foremost representative of the interests of disabled veterans and their families, their widowed spouses and their orphans before federal, state, and local governments. Our National Legislative Program ensures disabled veterans are not forgotten by lawmakers.

So how do Minnesota's representatives rate? Here's a table:

Representative	2006	2005	2004	2003	Average
Betty McCollum	100	100	100	100	100
Martin Olav Sabo	100	100	100	50	88
Collin C. Peterson	100	60	100	50	78
James L. Oberstar	100	100	100	0	75
James M. 'Jim' Ramstad	66	20	0	100	47
Gilbert W. 'Gil' Gutknecht	66	20	0	50	34
Mark R. Kennedy	100	20	0	0	30
John P. Kline	66	0	0	50	29

(SOURCE: Project Vote Smart "Veterans Issues" Disabled American Veterans.)

Gil Gutknecht is lying his way to a 7th term in Congress

On taking a cue from the President, who lied his way into Iraq

I don't use the terms "lie" or "lying" lightly. After all, they are codified in the Ten Commandments as Commandment #8: "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." Serious stuff.

I cite the Vatican Archives for this because Gil Gutknecht is a devout Roman Catholic, or at least he says he is.

So I get the feeling that there's something terribly wrong somewhere when he feels he has to break one of the Ten Commandments in order to retain his job. To me, that's like lying on your resume. Only worse.

Could it be that Mr. Gutknecht is not really the devout Roman Catholic that he claims to be? After all, a liar can claim anything, because whatever he says by definition does not have to be the truth.

This reminds me of the story about the explorer who, lost in a jungle, comes to a fork in the path. He recognizes the fork from a map. From legend he knows that one fork goes to the Truthtellers' village, where they will welcome him as an honored guest. But the other fork goes to the Liars' village, where they will eat him for dinner, as Dr. Hannibal Lector says, "with some fava beans and a nice Chianti."

Unfortunately, the map doesn't say which is which.

A man steps out of the jungle and blocks his way. The explorer knows the man is either a Truthteller or a Liar, but not which one. He knows he can ask only one question, as the Liars are notoriously impatient. What question does he ask to determine which path to take?

As voters we are somewhat like the explorer, as each election gives us a choice of two, or perhaps more, forks in the path. Sometimes, though it seems increasingly rare, the choice is a happy one: We get to choose between a candidate who is good and another who is better. Both individuals may have excellent character, so we can decide based on what they advocate — on the issues, if you will.

I always hope this will be true in every election I encounter. But politics has become so nasty, no driven by huge amounts of money, that one and sometimes both candidates end up renouncing their basic beliefs — their basic goodness, if you will — in their desperate efforts to prevail.

Mr. Gutknecht can't possibly believe that the TV ads he is running, the mailers he is sending, and the phone calls being made on his behalf reflect the truth about his opponent's positions on the issues. For they do not. They are totally fabricated by some political mastermind somewhere simply to deceive a gullible public.

They are in fact outright lies.

Ironically, what Mr. Gutknecht, his campaign, the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee are saying about Mr. Walz the candidate are things they would never say about Mr. Walz the private citizen, the retired Sergeant Major in the Minnesota National Guard, the Mankato Teacher of the Year. If they did they would be subject to libel and slander.

For some reason, self-defined good Christians like Mr. Gutknecht, Mr. Bush and Mr. Bush's confidant, Mr. Rove, feel they don't have to adhere to the Ten Commandments when it comes to (1) starting wars and (2) winning elections.

This baffles me. But then, I have no right to judge. For Jesus cautioned us about judging others. Instead, he called upon all of us simply to "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

I will not be with Mr. Gutknecht the next time he enters the confessional to ask God for forgiveness for his sins. That is between him and his priest and his Maker.

But if I were he, I would have a terrible, gnawing feeling in my gut telling me, "Is what I am doing on my campaign, what I am saying about my opponent, what Jesus would want me to do?"

Like the explorer at the fork in the path, we as voters have only one question to ask in the voting booth: It is "Which way to your village?" Whether the man at the fork in the path is a Truthteller or a Liar, he will only point in one direction.

And that is the direction we must take.

Walz, Gutknecht square off in Mankato — Part 2

The race and debate draw national attention.

(Part 2 of 2 parts)

Two years ago Minnesota Republican 1st District Congressman Gil Gutknecht had a cakewalk of an election. Not so this year against high school teacher and retired National Guardsman Tim Walz of Mankato. The two candidates faced each other Thursday night at Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato in a Debate Minnesota sponsored forum to an audience of 400.

An earlier assessment of the debate is covered here as well as in the national media, thanks to excellent reporting by Mark Fischenich of the Mankato Free Press and MPR.

While moderators Bill Salisbury of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Joe Spear of the Free Press tried to keep the debate on track, the two candidates spent much of the time accusing and rebutting each other over perceived negative advertising.

Tim Walz was particularly incensed over Gutknecht campaign ads claiming that Walz's tax policies would cost Minnesotans an average of $2,396 per family, and that Walz supported amnesty for illegal immigrants.

The candidates' views on Iraq, support for veterans, tax cuts, transportation, farming and energy issues have been covered in a previous post. But they also debated immigration, health care, education, and Social Security.

On immigration. The Republicans have hit hard on the immigration issue in the last year, sensing they can create a winning position out of the growing number of Latinos coming from Mexico seeking better economic opportunities. The issue is particularly apropos in southern Minnesota because of the large number of meat and egg processing facilities that generate many low-wage, low-benefit jobs. It is not known how many of these jobs are held by illegal immigrants, because most of the workers can produce some sort of documentation, be it legitimate or not.

It is widely recognized, however, that the federal government, which could easily ferret out false documentation through the use of national databases, is not enforcing immigration laws. But immigration enforcement has maintained a "don't look, don't tell" policy under the Bush administration. In the debate Walz pointed out, for example, that in 1999 under Clinton there were 417 fines for hiring illegals; in 2005 under Bush there were only three.

Gutknecht noted that while the U.S. was a "beacon of hope" for people around the world wanting to come to this country, it was unfair to let illegal immigrants "cut in line," imposing a tremendous cost on U.S. society by lowering wages and raising costs for school districts. As he has claimed in TV ads and mailers, he said that Walz supports amnesty.

Walz challenged Gutknecht to prove the allegation.

(NOTE: A discussion of Gutknecht's claims can be found at the Free Press, Minnesota Monitor, and Bluestem Prairie.)

On education: Walz noted that Gutknecht voted for the Budget Reconciliation Act, which raised student loan rates. He also said that college tuition has gone up 67% in the last four years, causing the U.S. to fall behind in education while China is building hundreds of new universities.

Gutknecht countered that education needs to limit costs, and that throwing money into the system will not get better results. As an example, he said, "Fifteen blocks from the Capitol" in Washington there are public schools that are the most expensive in the nation yet also the worst.

(NOTE: What does this say about Congress, which according to law governs the District?)

"If you're looking accountability," Walz said, "no one is more accountable than teachers. If Congress were as accountable as teachers, we'd be out of Iraq." He added that Congress doesn't make a social commitment to support mothers and childcare.

On Social Security: Gutknecht said he favors young workers being able to put their Social Security savings into private investment accounts, citing a plan advocated by his predecessor in Congress, former Democrat, now independent Tim Penny. Walz answered that such private accounts would simply "move $1 trillion into the pockets of Wall Street." The solution to making the Social Security Fund solvent, he said, is to raise the cap at which Social Security funds are no longer taken from employee paychecks. Currently, Social Security withdrawals are not withdrawn from annual salaries above $90,000.

On health care: Walz listed this as the number one issue facing the U.S. today, especially for the uninsured and small farmers. He said that health care in America is in effect guaranteed for all, but that it's very expensive, forcing the uninsured into emergency rooms instead of less expensive primary care clinics. At least one member of each farming family has to have an outside job just to get health care insurance benefits.

"We need universal health insurance," he said. "UnitedHealth," which is under investigation for financial irregularities, "proves that a private system is not the answer."

Gutknecht argued for maintaining the private system, noting the success of Health Savings Accounts in Owatonna and the growing number of Minute Clinics that can provide primary care for as little as $39 per month.

The summation: While these issues provided a stark contrast between the two candidates to what seemed to be an equally divided audience, the question remains as to how much these policy differences will affect the outcome of the vote. Walz faces an uphill battle against a six-term incumbent with established name recognition and a conservative image, which appeals in southern Minnesota, but also a reputation for an independent streak from his Republican brethren.

However, Gutknecht must swim against what could be a Katrina tide of nearly universal disapproval for Congress, extremely low approval rates for President Bush, growing dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq, cynicism about the political process, stagnant or falling real income for the middle class, and a general belief that after six years of Republican rule it's time for a change.

Faith-based and security issues may have been the key difference in the last election. In this debate between Gutknecht and Walz they were not even on the table.

Walz, Gutknecht square off in Mankato

Walz accuses Gutknecht of lying about his views in attack ads

NOTE: The debate is available online and will be broadcast in its entirety on MPR at 7:00 pm Friday night, Oct. 20.

(Part 1 of 2 parts)

Like the football games that Tim Walz used to coach, there were two halves to his debate with incumbent Congressman Gil Gutknecht at Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato last night. Gutknecht won the first half, but the second belonged to Walz.

Before a standing room only crowd of 200 in a classroom built for 125, with another 200 in a nearby room and hallway watching the debate on closed-circuit TV, Gutknecht and Walz went head-to-head on the prominent issues — Iraq, transportation, agriculture, energy, tax cuts, immigration, health care, education, social security and gay marriage. But the issue that elicited the most heat was political attack ads.

At first Gutknecht appeared the more comfortable of the two candidates, emphasizing the success of the economic recovery after 9/11. Walz, on the other hand, looked somewhat uncomfortable, referring to Gutknecht as "my opponent", noting Congress's and the Administration's failures, and stressing that there was a clear choice in this election between existing policies and real change.

Yet by the middle of the debate Walz seemed to be taking the offensive, accusing Gutknecht of lying about his positions in negative attack ads.

"All of my policies are in white papers online," he said. "You don't even put your policies on your website."

"I haven't even seen the ads you're talking about," Gutknecht said, eliciting a grumbling from the audience.

"You have to have," Walz countered. "They came from your campaign."

"Oh yes, those ads. I've seen my ads. But I haven't seen the Republican congressional committee's ads."

Walz was noticeably angry over Gutknecht's use of Project Vote Smart NPAT questionnaire information to give a false impression of his views. A press release from Project Vote Smart backs up Walz's position. (See "Project Vote Smart condemns Gutknecht for ethical lapse".) Among other claims, the ad states that Walz's policies will cost "the average Minnesota family an extra $2,396 per year."

"Look, that's bad math," said Walz. "That's like saying if you put Bill Gates in this room it makes us all millionaires." The audience laughed.

Walz noted that he advocates repealing the tax cuts for Americans making over $300,000 a year, which will reinstate nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars in tax revenue, and far less expensive tax cuts for the middle class.

Other issues the debate covered:

On Iraq: Walz noted that 70 American servicemen and women had died just this week. "Iraq is not moving to democracy," he said, adding that the U.S. needs to "disengage" and that it cannot go further with a military solution. Citing the failure of U.S. policy, he said, "If you're a male between 15 and 30 in Iraq, you have an 80% chance of being unemployed."

The U.S. needs to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and turn over the policing of the country to a multinational force. "Rumsfeld's been wrong on the war" and should be fired, he said, adding that the war has cost American taxpayers $360 billion so far with no end in sight.

Gutknecht allowed that the U.S. was "more optimistic than we should have been" before going into Iraq but noted the success of the Bosnia intervention and the relative peace and prosperity in the northern Iraqi territory governed by the Kurds. He reiterated that the U.S. needs to continue training the Iraqi army to take over the policing of the country.

While Saddam "was not the center of terrorism," he said, he paid off terrorists' families and drove the weapons inspectors out of Iraq, a claim that has been proven false. (Bush pulled out the weapons inspectors.)

On support for veterans: Gutknecht pays lip service to supporting veterans, Walz said, but his voting record indicates otherwise, which is why he has received an "F" rating from the Disabled American Veterans. Gutknecht answered that he doesn't know anything about the ratings.

On highways: Gutknecht noted the progress that's been made in the district, citing the completion of Highway 52 in Rochester and the improvements on Highway 14 between Mankato and Owatonna. Walz countered that Highway 14 should have been completed long ago and that the 1st Congressional District receives less highway funds than any congressional district in the state.

On the DM&E: Gutknecht reiterated his support for the expansion project because of the need for rail transportation to ship a projected one billion gallons of ethanol that will be produced in the district within five years. Walz said that Gutknecht failed the district by allowing the $2.3 billion loan provision targeted for the DM&E to "sneak through Congress in the dead of night."

Gutknecht allowed that the loan needs "due diligence", but that there are elements in the district that simply "want to kill the railroad."

On agriculture and energy: Gutknecht cited the future of ethanol production as a boon for farmers, noting that the demand for it should keep corn prices above the price guarantee level. He opposes the 51¢ per gallon blender's credit that goes to refiners "like Koch [Industries]," not farmers and producers.

Walz called for an "Apollo Program" for renewable fuels, stating that Americans can save $3.1 million a day in imported fuel costs by raising the CAFE standards on automobiles. He noted that Gutknecht has received $77,000 from the fossil fuel industry in campaign contributions and supported the recent energy bill and the subsidies it offers to that industry.

Both men agreed that emphasis needs to be placed on developing renewable energy resources, with Gutknecht citing Brazil as a country that has succeeded in declaring energy independence from OPEC. They also agreed that the Farm Bill, which is coming up for renewal next year, has been beneficial for farmers but needs changes to reflect the shifting agricultural and world trade climate.

(Part 2 to come)

Project Vote Smart condemns Gutknecht for ethical lapse

Group says, "Gil Gutknecht is cheating the public out of their need for trusted, abundant, accurate, factual information."

Project Vote Smart issued a stern message to Gil Gutknecht yesterday, saying he "attacked his opponent, Timothy Walz, with misleading information and used Project Vote Smart's name to give his accusations credibility." This is in direct opposition to Project Vote Smart's policy, which is sent to every candidate in writing.

A bipartisan, citizen-run organization, Project Vote Smart sends questionnaires (called a National Political Awareness Test, or NPAT) to all candidates for federal and statewide offices asking them about their views on a wide range of issues. The candidates' answers are then put into a database and published on the web. Completing the questionnaire is optional, but candidates must answer at least 70% of the questions to be included.

In Minnesota Congressional District 1, Tim Walz's NPAT is already online, while Gil Gutknecht's is listed as "pending".

Project Vote Smart states on its website that it "does not permit the use of its name or programs in any negative campaign activity, including advertising, debates, and speeches." Gil Gutknecht admits to using Tim Walz's Project Vote Smart NPAT information on his own campaign website.

The public release from Project Vote Smart regarding Gutknecht's use of the Walz NPAT information is as follows:

RELEASE DATE: October 18, 2006
FOR INFORMATION: Adelaide Kimball: 406-859-8683

PUBLIC STATEMENT

Gil Gutknecht, a candidate for the 15t Congressional District in Minnesota, has attacked his opponent, Timothy Walz, with misleading information and used Project Vote Smart's name to give his accusations credibility. This kind of negative campaign activity is precisely the sort of tactic that the Project attempts to counter with its factual database. By using the Project's name to give credibility to these attacks, Gil Gutknecht is cheating the public out of their need for trusted, abundant, accurate, factual information.

The Project prohibits the use of its name and programs, including the National Political Awareness Test (NPAT), in partisan political advertising. All candidates in Minnesota have been notified of this policy in writing. Additionally, this policy is posted prominently on the Project Vote Smart website.

This kind of behavior occurs in less that 00.05 percent of all races nationally. It is our policy to condemn this misuse of Project Vote Smart's name and reputation and to alert the public to any misuse of our name or programs for negative political activities.

A copy of the original document in a PDF file is here.

Project Vote Smart's Founding Board includes former Sen. George McGovern; current Sens. John McCain, Bill Frist and John Sununu; and former Reps. Newt Gingrich and Bill Frenzel, among others.

DM&E update: National Taxpayers Union opposes loan

DM&E claim that "55 of 56" communities are onboard is untrue. National Taxpayer's Union says, "Federally-Backed Loan Is Gravy Train for One Railroad Company, Great Risk for Millions of Taxpayers."

Politics makes strange bedfellows, as do proposed billion-dollar government subsidized loans.

Republicans like Sens. John Thune (SD) and Norm Coleman (MN) and Rep. Gil Gutknecht (MN-1) support it. So do Democrats like Sen. Tim Johnson and Rep. Stephanie Herseth, both of South Dakota.

But Democrats like Sen. Mark Dayton (MN), former Vice President Walter Mondale, former Sen. Tom Daschle and Gutknecht's challenger, Tim Walz, oppose it.

The DM&E lists dozens of chambers of commerce as its "Partners in Progress", yet the Rochester (MN) Area Chamber of Commerce is vehemently against it.

As proponents and opponents of the proposed DM&E expansion line up, traditional political dividing lines are being thrown away. Liberals like Dayton and Mondale are not used to finding themselves on the same side of an issue with the Minnesota Taxpayers League and the National Taxpayers Union, yet all are opposed to the $2.3 billion loan the railroad is trying to wrangle from the federal government.

The National Taxpayers Union has only recently joined the growing list of opponents, which includes the Mayo Clinic, the City of Rochester, Olmsted County (MN), political luminaries, environmental groups, local politicians and ordinary citizens. It is rumored that even media mogul Ted Turner may get involved, as the planned route apparently crosses property he owns in Wyoming.

Still, DM&E CEO Kevin Schieffer seems confident, arguing that "55 of 56" communities along the way support the project. Yet two of the claimed 55 do not have legally binding agreements. The agreement between Brookings (SD) and the railroad is currently suspended pending the outcome of a referendum in November, and the agreement with Mankato, while signed by the city, has not been countersigned by the railroad, apparently due to a disagreement over a city veto clause in the contract.

A further complication is that the railroad is considering an alternate route that bypasses Mankato but cuts a swath through rural Blue Earth County. That's because in order to get right-of-way through the city for the number of coal trains it proposes, the DM&E would have to come to terms with the Union Pacific to add another set of tracks.

The UP is already hauling coal out of the Powder River Basin, which makes it a direct competitor. Vox Verax and Minnesota Monitor have received inside information that suggests the UP wants $90 million from the DM&E, plus a per-train charge, in order to expand the Mankato in-town route for the DM&E's coal trains. This could make the alternate Blue Earth County route more cost effective for the DM&E.

At the moment all parties are waiting to hear from the Federal Railroad Administration about whether it will give the go-ahead to the proposed $2.3 billion loan. That decision should come within 90 days. After that, whether the FRA gives its blessing or not, is anybody's guess. The process has already gone on for eight years. It may not be totally resolved for another eight years to come.

Resources:

• "Federally-Backed Loan Is Gravy Train for One Railroad Company, Great Risk for Millions of Taxpayers"
• "The Largest Federal Loan in History — and you have never heard of it!"
  
• "By Own Admission, DM&E Coal Project Losing Support"
• "DM&E issue may determine next congressman"

Michelle Bachmann asks Indie

(Crossposted at Minnesota Monitor.)

Vox Verax has learned that Michele Bachmann, seeing her campaign slipping in the polls and fraught with controversy over the recent revelation that her candidacy has been endorsed not only by God but by Pastor Mac, has gone to Indie the Buffalo (or is he a Bison?) for advice.

Through some stealthy internet sleuthing learned from our friends at Blanked-Out and Minnesota Monitor we managed to obtain a copy of the secret video.

Bachmann: Hi, Indie. It's Michele again. 'Member me? The last time we talked it was about, about homo — oh, I can't say the word — anyway, those happy people — you know, they call themselves gay — at any rate, we talked about them getting married and all that — to each other, for God's sake! Well, anyway — remember?

Indie: A little known fact. Buffaloes are outstanding judges of character. I've grazed the Great Plains and have yet to find five people better suited to lead our state. But I did find a picnic basket, a wagon wheel and three green pennies.

Bachmann: Yeah, well, that's great. Well, at any rate, I really shouldn't be talking to you because I know you're sort of in bed with John, you know. Oops! I didn't mean that. I mean, in bed and all that. I meant you're on the same side, you know?

Indie: John James is Team Minnesota's candidate for Attorney General. He's a Harvard law guy with the experience and drive to do what's right for the citizens of Minnesota. As State Commissioner of Revenue he really kicked some tail.

Bachmann: No, no. Not that John. John Binkowski. He's running against me, you know, and that other woman. Anyway, here's my question: God has endorsed me, and also Pastor Mac has. But to whom should I give first billing on our fliers, you know, that are going out to the faithful, so to speak? God or Pastor Mac?

(Indie waves his arm "no" and makes a "shame, shame" gesture with his hands.)

Bachmann: What do you mean, Indie? I don't understand. I have to put someone at the top. Or maybe I should co-bill them. Put God on the left and Pastor Mac on the right. What do you think?

Indie: A little known fact. Buffaloes are outstanding judges of character. I've grazed the Great Plains and have yet to find five people better suited to lead our state. But I did find a picnic basket, a wagon wheel and three green pennies.... Give it a try. Give it your best shot, shall we?

Bachmann: Oh, I'm so confused, Indie. You have to help me out. I don't have three days to fast and pray for an answer.

Indie: A little known fact. Buffaloes are outstanding judges of character. I've grazed the Great Plains and have yet to find five people better suited to lead our state. But I did find a picnic basket, a wagon wheel and three green pennies.... I only sing for my supper. You wouldn't happen to have a handful of prairie grass on you, would you?... Shall we do it now? Oh, let's. Let's, let's, let's.

Bachmann: Let's do what, Indie? Pray? Is that what you mean? And what about these five people you keep talking about? Should they be on the flier too?

Indie: I'm sorry. I don't think I heard you correctly. Could you please rephrase the question?

Bachmann: Okay, I'll type a little slower. P-r-a-y. Shall we p-r-a-y? And who are those f-i-v-e p-e-o-p-l-e?

Indie: Are you speaking another language? Please try to put it another way.

Bachmann: You mean Aramaic? I don't speak Aramaic.

Indie: I'm positively perplexed by that one. Could you try putting it another way?... Shall we do it now? Oh, let's. Let's, let's, let's.

Bachmann: This is getting a little weird, Indie. Do what now? You kind of sound like that Mark Foley guy in those emails he wrote to all those young boys. Disgusting!

Indie: A little known fact. Buffaloes are outstanding judges of character. I've grazed the Great Plains and have yet to find five people better suited to lead our state. But I did find a picnic basket, a wagon wheel and three green pennies.... There! Right there in front of you! Keyboard, keypad, finger touch!

Bachmann: You mean those five people are in on it too? With that Foley guy?

Indie: Are you speaking another language? Please try to put it another way.

Bachmann: What way, Indie? You mean speaking in tongues? Or do you mean...?

Indie: A little known fact. Buffaloes are outstanding judges of character. I've grazed the Great Plains and have yet to find five people better suited to lead our state. But I did find a picnic basket, a wagon wheel and three green pennies.... There! Right there in front of you! Keyboard, keypad, finger touch!... Quickly!

Bachmann: Look, Indie, you have me all wrong. If you want me to do what I think you want me to do over the internet.... I... I just don't do that kind of thing.

Indie: Let's interact with moi, me.... This is a website, for goodness sakes. Let's move it, shall we?

Bachmann: Oh, this is terrible! What would Pastor Mac say?

Indie: Look, I graduated cum laude from a notable Ivy League school for gifted bison. But I don't know everything.... Please, this is an in-ter-ac-tive experience. Let's experience it, shall we?

Bachmann: Please, Indie, you're rushing me. What would my husband say? Maybe I should ask him first.

Indie: A little known fact. Buffaloes are outstanding judges of character. I've grazed the Great Plains and have yet to find five people better suited to lead our state. But I did find a picnic basket, a wagon wheel and three green pennies.... There! Right there in front of you! Keyboard, keypad, finger touch!

Bachmann: Oh, my head aches. I think I have to go now, Indie. This isn't working out at all like I planned.

Indie: A little known fact. Buffaloes are outstanding judges of character....

(A little humor, with apologies to all parties involved. DISCLAIMER: Nothing in the above material shall be construed as an endorsement of any candidate, whether we live in their district or not.)

Minnesota politics: House Speaker Sviggum stumps for outstate GOP candidates

by Leigh Pomeroy

Minnesota House Speaker Steve Sviggum is friendly and energetic. He has more than once been confused for 1st District Congressman Gil Gutknecht, and though Sviggum's hair is shorter and slightly graying, their facial features and personality similarities might lead an observer to think that they are brothers or at least cousins. And politically they are not dissimilar either, both wearing the mantle of conservative Republicanism, though in this election both have seemed to downplay that association a bit.

Sviggum, from rural Kenyon about 40 miles northwest of Rochester, holds what is considered to be a safe seat, so this gives him time to travel to parts of rural Minnesota, particularly in the south where he is well known, to stump for a new batch of GOP candidates. Two of these are Luke Robinson and Andy Davis, both running for open seats currently held by retiring DFLers.

Robinson is facing longtime Mankato school board member Kathy Brynaert in District 23B, for the seat that's been held by John Dorn for almost 20 years. Dorn has been known as a moderate DFLer and is respected for his quiet style and ability to secure bonding funds for Minnesota State University Mankato. It appears Brynaert, who is Dorn's contemporary, would follow in the same tradition.

Robinson is much younger, a lawyer, a relative newcomer to the community, but also moderate and low-key in style. Perhaps feeling that Mankato is too solid a DFL stronghold, the GOP hasn't put much effort into his campaign.

Andy Davis, on the other hand, who is running in the more competitive District 23A, has been given more attention by his party along with a better chance to win. The district includes the cities of North Mankato and St. Peter, as well as rural Nicollet County. The seat is currently held by Ruth Johnson, a dynamic and tireless campaigner known for her ebullient style, upbeat attitude and red campaign boots. The seat has vacillated in recent elections between parties, with Johnson having held it twice, her tenure interrupted by a campaign for Lieutenant Governor and a loss to Howard Swenson.

Davis is young (25), an Afghanistan and Iraq war vet, a student, and co-founder of a group that student veterans. He is also part of the Davis family of St. Peter and nearby Le Sueur, which owns Davisco Foods International, Northern Plains Dairy and Cambria, which manufactures and sells quartz countertops. The Davis family has a long history of supporting Republican candidates and causes.

Davis's opponent, Terry Morrow, is a professor of communications at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter and is Chair of the St. Peter school board. He holds both a Ph.D. and a J.D., and has been a St. Peter resident since 1995.

During Sviggum's visit to North Mankato, the Speaker stressed the importance of sending representatives to the legislature who would represent rural interests. Electing DFLers from southern Minnesota, he emphasized, "would only enhance the liberals in St. Paul." He stressed that he wanted to send a "positive message" that "Minnesota works," and that Governor Pawlenty had turned a $3.5 billion deficit into a $1 billion surplus in less than four years.

Sviggum supports the proposed MVST constitutional amendment, which would dictate that state vehicle sales taxes go for transportation issues. Yet he cautioned that its 40% requirement for transit funding was written in as a minimum, and that without strong rural representation in the state legislature, Minneapolis and St. Paul would grab more of the appropriation for transit issues, starving outstate Minnesota of much-needed roads and bridges.

One reporter in the small gathering asked if the national political climate, where it appears that Republicans are on the verge of losing several major congressional races, will affect the chances of Republicans running for the state legislature. Sviggum replied that because of the Foley scandal Minnesota Republicans were facing a "headwind" but that it was unfair to relate the scandal to state races.

He acknowledged that there were twenty to thirty key races he was focusing on in the state. Though he didn't seem to have the same level of confidence about the outcomes that he has had in previous election years, he maintained his upbeat, positive demeanor even as he said goodbye to the last, straggling members of the media interviewing him. Then he jumped into a small, blue American-made sedan to head west for more visits and into a headwind and a gathering snowstorm.

New York Times focuses on Gutknecht-Walz race

Minn. Roundup: Walz a Legit Barrier to Gutknecht in 1st District

By Marie Horrigan
Published: October 17, 2006
CQPolitics.com

The race in Minnesota’s 1st District has been moved to the more competitive Leans Republican category from Republican Favored.

Minnesota’s 1st District: October has been a good month for Democrat Tim Walz, a retired command sergeant in the Army National Guard, high school teacher — and increasingly competitive contender for Congress in his first bid for public office. His wife gave birth to their second child, a boy, on Oct. 13. Meanwhile, on the political front, Walz appeared to be gaining steam in his bid to upset 12-year Republican Rep. Gil Gutknecht in southern Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District.

[...]

The race, originally ignored by the well-funded campaign committees and outside groups,... began to draw serious cash for the first time in October — $123,000 in the month so far, according to Congressional Quarterly’s PoliticalMoneyLine.com.

The largest expenditure to date was a $91,000 media buy on Oct. 4 by the public service union AFSCME to run ads critical of Gutknecht. The National Republican Congressional Committee has gotten in on the action in recent days and has produced an attack ad against Walz; there is no word yet on what kind of media buy they would undertake.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has not spent any money on the race, but has listed it among its “emerging races” to watch — a signal to Democratic donors that they should consider pitching in to help Walz.

(The rest is here.)

Lower Deficit Sparks Debate Over Tax Cuts' Role

By Lori Montgomery
Washington Post

With great fanfare, President Bush last week claimed credit for a striking reversal of fortune: New figures show the federal budget deficit shrinking by 40 percent over the past two years, a turnaround the president hopes will strengthen his push for further tax cuts.

Bush hailed the dwindling deficit as a direct result of "pro-growth economic policies," particularly huge tax cuts enacted during his first term. "Tax relief fuels economic growth. And growth -- when the economy grows, more tax revenues come to Washington. And that's what's happened," Bush said.

Economists said Bush was claiming credit where little is due. The economy has grown and tax receipts have risen at historic rates over the past two years, but the Bush tax cuts played a small role in that process, they said, and cost the Treasury more in lost taxes than it gained from the resulting economic stimulus.

"Federal revenue is lower today than it would have been without the tax cuts. There's really no dispute among economists about that," said Alan D. Viard, a former Bush White House economist now at the nonpartisan American Enterprise Institute. "It's logically possible" that a tax cut could spur sufficient economic growth to pay for itself, Viard said. "But there's no evidence that these tax cuts would come anywhere close to that."

Economists at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and in the Treasury Department have reached the same conclusion. An analysis of Treasury data prepared last month by the Congressional Research Service estimates that economic growth fueled by the cuts is likely to generate revenue worth about 7 percent of the total cost of the cuts, a broad package of rate reductions and tax credits that has returned an estimated $1.1 trillion to taxpayers since 2001.

(The rest is here.)

Can You Tell a Sunni From a Shiite?

Op-Ed Contributor

By JEFF STEIN
New York Times

FOR the past several months, I’ve been wrapping up lengthy interviews with Washington counterterrorism officials with a fundamental question: “Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?”

A “gotcha” question? Perhaps. But if knowing your enemy is the most basic rule of war, I don’t think it’s out of bounds. And as I quickly explain to my subjects, I’m not looking for theological explanations, just the basics: Who’s on what side today, and what does each want?

After all, wouldn’t British counterterrorism officials responsible for Northern Ireland know the difference between Catholics and Protestants? In a remotely similar but far more lethal vein, the 1,400-year Sunni-Shiite rivalry is playing out in the streets of Baghdad, raising the specter of a breakup of Iraq into antagonistic states, one backed by Shiite Iran and the other by Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states.

A complete collapse in Iraq could provide a haven for Al Qaeda operatives within striking distance of Israel, even Europe. And the nature of the threat from Iran, a potential nuclear power with protégés in the Gulf states, northern Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, is entirely different from that of Al Qaeda. It seems silly to have to argue that officials responsible for counterterrorism should be able to recognize opportunities for pitting these rivals against each other.

But so far, most American officials I’ve interviewed don’t have a clue. That includes not just intelligence and law enforcement officials, but also members of Congress who have important roles overseeing our spy agencies. How can they do their jobs without knowing the basics?

My curiosity about our policymakers’ grasp of Islam’s two major branches was piqued in 2005, when Jon Stewart and other TV comedians made hash out of depositions, taken in a whistleblower case, in which top F.B.I. officials drew blanks when asked basic questions about Islam. One of the bemused officials was Gary Bald, then the bureau’s counterterrorism chief. Such expertise, Mr. Bald maintained, wasn’t as important as being a good manager.

(The rest is here.)

Congress’s Charity Cases

Op-Ed Contributor

By FRANCES R. HILL
New York Times

A REPORT issued last week by the minority staff of the Senate Finance Committee details how the fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff exploited tax-exempt organizations — both sham nonprofits and otherwise legitimate charities — to move money from clients he disdained to congressmen he hoped to influence.

Why were charities Mr. Abramoff’s go-to vehicles as he sought to transfer funds covertly through Washington’s corridors of power? The primary attraction was their opacity: their ability to raise money in any amount, without limit, from any individual or entity anywhere in the world without disclosing the contributors to anyone.

This makes good sense for honest charities helping people in need. But Mr. Abramoff took advantage of this situation to circumvent campaign finance laws and Congressional ethics rules and provide illicit benefits to powerful politicians.

Though members of Congress are subject to strict rules regarding gifts, travel and entertainment, there have long been exceptions for “value received from charity” — ostensibly to permit officials to help charities raise money for worthy causes.

So the tax-exempt treasuries of willing nonprofits like Americans for Tax Reform, run by the Republican strategist Grover Norquist, became conduits through which funds from lobbyists like Mr. Abramoff and other special interests were transferred to elected officials, their families and their aides in the form of lavish travel, expensive meals, golf outings and tickets to sports and entertainment events.

The rules that govern charitable giving obscured the true source of these gifts, while at the same time affording lobbyists private access to the congressmen they were trying to influence.

(The rest is here.)

Burden of Proof

Two reporters charge the Bush administration with using fraudulent intelligence to start a war.

Reviewed by Martin Kettle
Washington Post

HUBRIS: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn

In October 2002, a file of documents from the U.S. embassy in Rome arrived on the desk of one of the State Department's senior nuclear proliferation analysts. The papers had been handed over by an Italian journalist, who had been given them by an informer who had, in turn, obtained them from a mysterious source in the embassy of Niger. The documents purported to show that Niger had signed a July 2000 deal to supply Iraq with 500 tons of yellowcake uranium -- about one-sixth of the African country's annual production and a key ingredient in a uranium-enrichment process that could provide Saddam Hussein's regime with a nuclear bomb.

As Simon Dodge of the State Department's intelligence bureau began to review the documents in Washington, he soon concluded that they were fakes. One of the papers described a secret meeting in Rome at which representatives of Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya and Pakistan formed a joint "plan of action" to defend themselves against the West in alliance with "Islamic patriots accused of belonging to criminal organizations." Dodge later told Senate investigators that he considered the claim "completely implausible," or, as Michael Isikoff and David Corn put it, "something out of James Bond -- or maybe Austin Powers." Niger embassy stamps, palpably fake, linked the "plan of action" document to those depicting the Iraq deal. The papers are a hoax, Dodge e-mailed colleagues.

This was not what most in the White House wanted to hear. By October 2002, when Dodge began examining the Niger documents, the Bush administration was already accelerating its drive for war against Iraq. An authoritative demolition of one of the most dramatic parts of that case -- that Baghdad was building a nuclear weapon -- was deeply unwelcome and, coming from the diplomats at the State Department, viewed with particular suspicion by Vice President Cheney's office. Partly by accident (the CIA merely put its copy of the "obviously forged" Rome papers in a vault and left them there) and partly because it simply did not want to know, the White House remained in denial about the unreliability of the whole Niger uranium story. Fatefully, the president would use the claim in his State of the Union address in January 2003. It was the principal basis for the administration's repeated rhetorical flourish that the Iraqi smoking gun might "come in the form of a mushroom cloud." And it was a phony.

The Niger claim provides the central thread in Hubris , Isikoff and Corn's exhaustive reconstruction of the formulation and selling of the Iraq War. For those who wish to understand how one of the most powerful officials in the land -- Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- came to be under indictment for obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements arising out of the Niger story, this book is indispensable.

But Niger was not the only proffered justification for the attack on Iraq that eventually crumbled to dust in the light of day. So did the false claims of Iraqi defectors, such as the shadowy informant known as "Curveball," that Iraq possessed mobile biological laboratories, a claim that was a centerpiece of then-secretary of state Colin Powell's U.N. presentation in February 2003. So did the misguided conviction that Iraq's purchase of aluminum tubes was proof of a nuclear-arms program. So did the long-disproved claim that 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague in April 2001, which became almost an article of faith for the administration's hawks.

(There is more.)

Minnesota congressmen get high marks from Abramoff-linked nonprofit

The Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), headed by longtime Republican stalwart Grover Norquist, has released its ratings for the 2006 Congress, giving high marks to four Minnesota congressmen. They are Gil Gutknecht (100% rating), Mark Kennedy (95%), John Kline (95%) and Jim Ramstad (86%). All are Republicans. Gutknecht also received a "Taxpayer Hero Award".

The ATR, a 501(c)4 nonprofit organization, has recently been named along with four other groups as having conspired with lobbyist Jack Abramoff to trade favors for donatons, according to a Senate Finance Committee report. In the Washington Post, James V. Grimaldi and Susan Schmidt write,

The report includes previously unreleased e-mails between the now-disgraced lobbyist and officers of the nonprofit groups, showing that Abramoff funneled money from his clients to the groups. In exchange, the groups, among other things, produced ostensibly independent newspaper op-ed columns or news releases that favored the clients' positions.

According to an article in USA Today,

The report said Norquist's group accepted $1.5 million from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, one of Abramoff's clients. More than two-thirds of that money was then passed to Christian Coalition founder Ralph Reed as part of Abramoff's lobbying efforts to block a rival tribe's proposed casino in Alabama.

Minnesota Republican Sen. Norm Coleman received a 75% rating from the group, far outdistancing his Democratic counterpart, Mark Dayton, who earned a 10% mark.

— LP

Past Arguments Don't Square With Current Iran Policy

(NOTE: This article is well over a year old yet extremely pertinent to today.)

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 27, 2005

Lacking direct evidence, Bush administration officials argue that Iran's nuclear program must be a cover for bomb-making. Vice President Cheney recently said, "They're already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. Nobody can figure why they need nuclear as well to generate energy."

Yet Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and outgoing Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz held key national security posts when the Ford administration made the opposite argument 30 years ago.

Ford's team endorsed Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry, but also worked hard to complete a multibillion-dollar deal that would have given Tehran control of large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium -- the two pathways to a nuclear bomb. Either can be shaped into the core of a nuclear warhead, and obtaining one or the other is generally considered the most significant obstacle to would-be weapons builders.

Iran, a U.S. ally then, had deep pockets and close ties to Washington. U.S. companies, including Westinghouse and General Electric, scrambled to do business there.

"I don't think the issue of proliferation came up," Henry A. Kissinger, who was Ford's secretary of state, said in an interview for this article.

The U.S. offer, details of which appear in declassified documents reviewed by The Washington Post, did not include the uranium enrichment capabilities Iran is seeking today. But the United States tried to accommodate Iranian demands for plutonium reprocessing, which produces the key ingredient of a bomb.

After balking initially, President Gerald R. Ford signed a directive in 1976 offering Tehran the chance to buy and operate a U.S.-built reprocessing facility for extracting plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel. The deal was for a complete "nuclear fuel cycle" -- reactors powered by and regenerating fissile materials on a self-sustaining basis.

(The rest is here.)

Confessions of a 'Defeatocrat'

By John P. Murtha
Washington Post

The Republicans are running scared. In the White House, on Capitol Hill and on the campaign trail, they're worried about losing control of Congress. And so the administration and the GOP have launched a desperate assault on Democrats and our position on the war in Iraq. Defeatists, they call us, and appeasers and -- oh so cleverly -- "Defeatocrats."

Vice President Cheney has accused Democrats of "self-defeating pessimism." Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has faulted us for believing that "vicious extremists can be appeased." The White House calls Democrats the party of "cut and run."

It's all baseless name-calling, and it's all wrong. Unless, of course, being a Defeatocrat means taking a good hard look at the administration's Iraq policy and determining that it's a failure.

In that case, count me in. Because Democrats recognize that we're headed for a far greater disaster in Iraq if we don't change course -- and soon. This is not defeatism. This is realism.

Our troops who are putting their lives on the line deserve a plan that matches our military prowess with diplomatic and political skill. They deserve a clear and achievable mission and they deserve to know precisely what it will take to accomplish it. They deserve answers, not spin.

Our military has done all it can do in Iraq, and the Iraqis want their occupation to end. I support bringing our troops home at the earliest practicable date, at a rate that will keep those remaining there safe on the ground. It's time that the White House and the GOP start working with Democrats in Congress to come up with a reasonable timetable for withdrawal and for handing the Iraqi government over to the Iraqis.

The administration's use of Rovian catchphrases is nothing but propaganda designed to stifle the loyal opposition. We Democrats are determined to restore our nation's military strength, refocus on the real terrorist threat, bolster security safeguards at home and reestablish the credible standing we once had in the world. That is not defeatist. It is a call to formulate and execute a winning game plan for the War on Terror.

(There is more, here.)

Why Everyone You Know Thinks the Same as You

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post

You can see it the next time you visit your office cafeteria or a nearby park: Whites sitting together with whites, blacks with blacks, young people with other young people. When individuals from these groups mix, it is usually because they share something else in common, such as a pastime.

Sociologists call this phenomenon homophily, a somewhat grand word to describe the idea that birds of a feather flock together. Thinkers from Plato and Aristotle onward have observed that people seem to be drawn to others like themselves.

But while the basic idea is simple, homophily has surprisingly complex causes and consequences. Three weeks ahead of a midterm election, for example, it is playing a powerful, but largely invisible, role in politics.

Studies show that most people interested in politics associate nearly exclusively with others who have similar political beliefs. In fact, research by sociologist David Knoke at the University of Minnesota shows that if you know whether a person's friends are Republicans, Democrats or independents, you can predict with near certainty that person's political views.

Homophily may help explain some of the bitter partisanship of our times -- when your friends are drawn exclusively from one half of the electorate, it is not surprising that you will find the views of the other half inexplicable.

(The rest is here.)

Was he? Had he?

Corey Robin
London Review of Books

The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government by David Johnson · Chicago, 277 pp, £13.00

Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security by David Cole and James Dempsey · New Press, 320 pp, £10.99

General Ashcroft: Attorney at War by Nancy Baker · Kansas, 320 pp, £26.50

State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration by James Risen · Free Press, 240 pp, £18.99

Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush by Eric Boehlert · Free Press, 352 pp, $25.00

According to John Cheever, 1948 was ‘the year everybody in the United States was worried about homosexuality’. And nobody was more worried than the federal government, which was rumoured to be teeming with gays and lesbians. One might think that Washington’s attentions would have been focused elsewhere – on the Soviet Union, for example, or on Communist spies – but in 1950, President Truman’s advisers warned him that ‘the country is more concerned about the charges of homosexuals in the government than about Communists.’ The executive branch responded immediately. That year, the State Department fired ‘perverts’ at the rate of one a day, more than twice the figure for suspected Communists. Charges of homosexuality ultimately accounted for a quarter to a half of all dismissals in the State and Commerce Departments, and in the CIA. Only 25 per cent of Joseph McCarthy’s fan letters complained of ‘red infiltration’; the rest fretted about ‘sex depravity’.

The scare lasted from 1947 to the 1970s, and in The Lavender Scare David Johnson estimates that thousands lost their jobs. The men and women charged with rinsing the pink from the Potomac were astonishingly ignorant about their quarry. Senator Clyde Hoey, head of the first congressional inquiry into the threat, had to ask an aide: ‘Can you please tell me, what can two women possibly do?’ Senator Margaret Chase Smith asked one Hoey Committee witness whether there wasn’t a ‘quick test like an X-ray that discloses these things’.

The official justification for the purge was that homosexuals were vulnerable to blackmail and could be turned into Soviet spies. But as Johnson points out, investigators never found a single instance of this kind of blackmail during the Cold War. The best they could come up with was a dubious case from before the First World War, when the Russians allegedly used the homosexuality of Austria’s top spy to force him to work for them.

The real justification was even more suspect: gays were social misfits whose pathology made them susceptible to Communist indoctrination. Many conservatives also believed that the Communist Party was a movement of and for libertines, and the Soviet Union a haven of free love and open marriage. Gays, they concluded, couldn’t resist this freedom from bourgeois constraint. Drawing parallels with the decline of the Roman Empire, McCarthy regarded homosexuality as a cultural degeneracy that could only weaken the United States. It was, as one tabloid put it, ‘Stalin’s Atom Bomb’.

(The rest is here.)

Marine Corps Issues Gag Order in Detainee Abuse Case

The action has lawyers worrying they could be punished for defending Guantanamo clients.
By Carol J. Williams
LA Times Staff Writer

MIAMI — The U.S. Marine Corps has threatened to punish two members of the military legal team representing a terrorism suspect being held at Guantanamo Bay if they continue to speak publicly about reported prisoner abuse, a civilian lawyer from the defense team said Saturday.

The action directed at Lt. Col. Colby Vokey and Sgt. Heather Cerveny follows their report last week that Guantanamo guards bragged about beating detainees, said Muneer Ahmad, an American University law professor who assists in the defense of Canadian suspect Omar Khadr.

The order has heightened fears among the military defense lawyers for Guantanamo prisoners that their careers will suffer for exposing flaws and injustices in the system, Ahmad said.

"In one fell swoop, the government is gagging a defense lawyer and threatening retaliation against a whistle-blower," Ahmad said. "It really points out what is wrong with the detainee legislation that Bush is scheduled to sign on Tuesday: It permits the abuse of detainees to continue, immunizes the wrongdoers and precludes the detainees from ever challenging it in court."

The Marine Corps said the gag order had been issued to ensure the legal team's actions were in compliance with professional standards. "The Chief Defense Counsel of the Marine Corps, as Lt. Col. Vokey's direct supervisor, has directed him not to communicate with the media on this case pending her review of the facts," said 1st Lt. Blanca E. Binstock of the Marine public affairs office.

Defense lawyers for Guantanamo prisoners say the personal stakes are high and point to the Navy's failure to promote Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift after he successfully challenged the legitimacy of the Pentagon's war-crimes commissions. Two weeks after the Supreme Court ruled the commissions unconstitutional and lacking in due process, Swift was passed over for advancement and will be forced by the Navy's up-or-out policy to retire by summer.

(There is more, here.)

Military Commissions Act of 2006 – Turning bad policy into bad law

from Amnesty International

In recent days, human rights violations perpetrated by the USA throughout the "war on terror" have in effect been given the congressional stamp of approval. With the passing of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 by the US House of Representatives on 27 September and the Senate on 28 September, Congress has turned bad executive policy into bad law. This document looks back on the evolution of the executive’s "war on terror" detention policies, in order to illustrate the sort of violations in which Congress, through inaction and now legislation, has become complicit. Amnesty International will continue to campaign for the USA’s "war on terror" detention policies and practices to be brought into full compliance with international law, and for repeal of any law that fails to meet this test.

On 21 September 2001, Amnesty International faxed a letter to President George W. Bush. The organization urged the President to put respect for human rights and the rule of law at the heart of his country’s response to the crime against humanity that was perpetrated on 11 September 2001. "In the wake of a crime of such magnitude", the letter said, "principled leadership becomes crucial… We urge you to lead your government to take every necessary human rights precaution in the pursuit of justice."

Amnesty International deeply regrets that its appeal fell on deaf ears. The past five years have seen the USA engage in systematic violations of international law, with a distressing impact on thousands of detainees and their families. Human rights violations have included:

o Secret detention
o Enforced disappearance
o Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
o Outrages upon personal dignity, including humiliating treatment
o Denial and restriction of habeas corpus
o Indefinite detention without charge or trial
o Prolonged incommunicado detention
o Arbitrary detention
o Unfair trial procedures

Yet at the same time, US officials have continued to characterize the USA as a "nation of laws" and one that in the "war on terror" is committed to what it calls the "non-negotiable demands of human dignity", including the "rule of law".

....

Now Congress has passed the Military Commissions Act. Amnesty International will work for the repeal of this legislation which violates human rights principles. Among other things, the Military Commissions Act will:

o Strip the US courts of jurisdiction to hear or consider habeas corpus appeals challenging the lawfulness or conditions of detention of anyone held in US custody as an "enemy combatant". Judicial review of cases would be severely limited. The law would apply retroactively, and thus could result in more than 200 pending appeals filed on behalf of Guantánamo detainees being thrown out of court.

o Prohibit any person from invoking the Geneva Conventions or their protocols as a source of rights in any action in any US court.

o Permit the executive to convene military commissions to try "alien unlawful enemy combatants", as determined by the executive under a dangerously broad definition, in trials that would provide foreign nationals so labeled with a lower standard of justice than US citizens accused of the same crimes. This would violate the prohibition on the discriminatory application of fair trial rights.

o Permit civilians captured far from any battlefield to be tried by military commission rather than civilian courts, contradicting international standards and case law.

o Establish military commissions whose impartiality, independence and competence would be in doubt, due to the overarching role that the executive, primarily the Secretary of Defense, would play in their procedures and in the appointments of military judges and military officers to sit on the commissions.

o Permit, in violation of international law, the use of evidence extracted under cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, or as a result of "outrages upon personal dignity, particularly humiliating or degrading treatment", as defined under international law.

o Permit the use of classified evidence against a defendant, without the defendant necessarily being able effectively to challenge the "sources, methods or activities" by which the government acquired the evidence. This is of particular concern in light of the high level of secrecy and resort to national security arguments employed by the administration in the "war on terror", which have been widely criticized, including by the UN Committee against Torture and the Human Rights Committee. Amnesty International is concerned that the administration appears on occasion to have resorted to classification to prevent independent scrutiny of human rights violations.

o Give the military commissions the power to hand down death sentences, in contravention of international standards which only permit capital punishment after trials affording "all possible safeguards to ensure a fair trial". The clemency authority would be the President. President Bush has led a pattern of official public commentary on the presumed guilt of the detainees, and has overseen a system that has systematically denied the rights of detainees.

o Limit the right of charged detainees to be represented by counsel of their choosing.

o Fail to provide any guarantee that trials will be conducted within a reasonable time.

o Permit the executive to determine who is an "enemy combatant" under any "competent tribunal" established by the executive, and endorse the Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT), the wholly inadequate administrative procedure that has been employed in Guantánamo to review individual detentions.

o Narrow the scope of the War Crimes Act by not expressly criminalizing acts that constitute "outrages upon personal dignity, particularly humiliating and degrading treatment" banned under Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions. Amnesty International believes that the USA has routinely failed to respect the human dignity of detainees in the "war on terror".

o Prohibit the US courts from using "foreign or international law" to inform their decisions in relation to the War Crimes Act. The President has the authority to "interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions". Under President Bush, the USA has shown a selective disregard for the Geneva Conventions and the absolute prohibition of torture or other ill-treatment.

o Endorse the administration’s "war paradigm" – under which the USA has selectively applied the laws of war and rejected international human rights law. The legislation would backdate the "war on terror" to before the 11 September 2001 in order to be able to try individuals in front of military commissions for "war crimes" committed before that date.

Meanwhile the human rights violations continue. The CIA’s secret detention and interrogation program retains the full support of President Bush. During the debates on the Military Commissions Act, members of Congress expressed their support for the program, despite the fact that it violates international law. Thousands of detainees remain in indefinite detention without charge or trial in US custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. In passing the Military Commissions Act, Congress has failed these detainees and their families.

Those defending human rights should be prepared for a long struggle.

(The entire document is here.)

Here's Human Rights Watch on U.S. torture:

Call Cruelty What It Is

By Tom Malinowski, Washington Advocacy Director, published in Washington Post

Monday, September 18, 2006

President Bush is urging Congress to let the CIA keep using "alternative" interrogation procedures -- which include, according to published accounts, forcing prisoners to stand for 40 hours, depriving them of sleep and use of the "cold cell," in which the prisoner is left naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees and doused with cold water.
Bush insists that these techniques are not torture -- after all, they don't involve pulling out fingernails or applying electric shocks. He even says that he "would hope" the standards he's proposing are adopted by other countries. But before he again invites America's enemies to use such "alternative" methods on captured Americans, he might benefit from knowing a bit of their historical origins and from hearing accounts of those who have experienced them. With that in mind, here are some suggestions for the president's reading list.

He might begin with Robert Conquest's classic work on Stalin, "The Great Terror." Conquest wrote: "When there was time, the basic [Soviet Secret police] method for obtaining confessions and breaking the accused man was the 'conveyor' -- continual interrogation by relays of police for hours and days on end. As with many phenomena of the Stalin period, it has the advantage that it could not easily be condemned by any simple principle. Clearly, it amounted to unfair pressure after a certain time and to actual physical torture later still, but when? . . . At any rate, after even twelve hours, it is extremely uncomfortable. After a day, it becomes very hard. And after two or three days, the victim is actually physically poisoned by fatigue. It was as painful as any torture."

Conquest stated: "Interrogation usually took place at night and with the accused just roused -- often only fifteen minutes after going to sleep. The glaring lights at the interrogation had a disorientating effect." He quoted a Czech prisoner, Evzen Loebl, who described "having to be on his feet eighteen hours a day, sixteen of which were devoted to interrogation. During the six-hour sleep period, the warder pounded on the door every ten minutes. . . . If the banging did not wake him, a kick from the warder would. After two or three weeks, his feet were swollen and every inch of his body ached at the slightest touch; even washing became a torture."

Conquest quoted a Polish prisoner, Z. Stypulkowski, from 1945: "Cold, hunger, the bright light and especially sleeplessness. The cold is not terrific. But when the victim is weakened by hunger and sleeplessness, then the six or seven degrees above the freezing point make him tremble all the time. . . . After fifty or sixty interrogations with cold and hunger and almost no sleep, a man becomes like an automaton -- his eyes are bright, his legs swollen, his hands trembling. In this state, he is often convinced he is guilty."

(There is more, here.)

Human Rights watch again:


U.S. Torture and Abuse of Detainees
“No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
—The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 5 (1948)

Each day brings more information about the appalling abuses inflicted upon men and women held by the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere around the world. U.S. forces have used interrogation techniques including hooding, stripping detainees naked, subjecting them to extremes of heat, cold, noise and light, and depriving them of sleep—in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. This apparently routine infliction of pain, discomfort, and humiliation has expanded in all too many cases into vicious beatings, sexual degradation, sodomy, near drowning, and near asphyxiation. Detainees have died under questionable circumstances while incarcerated.

(There is a page full of reports referenced here.)

UnitedHealth CEO William McGuire's political donations

Records show McGuire and wife gave exclusively to GOP candidates

by Leigh Pomeroy

Dr. William McGuire, long-time CEO of UnitedHealth, headquartered in Minnetonka, Minnesota, will retire under pressure by December 1, 2006, following an investigation of the backdating of the company's stock options. According to MPR, "McGuire is one of the country's highest paid executives, having amassed nearly $1.8 billion in unexercised stock options, according to estimates cited in the Wall Street Journal."

Minnesota Monitor has looked into Dr. McGuire's family political contributions. According to opensecrets.org, in the 2006 political cycle all of his and his wife's contributions have gone exclusively to Republican candidates or the UnitedHealth Group PAC. Recipients have included Rep. Mark Kennedy, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota ($8,400); Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman ($8,000); Thomas Kean, Jr., who is running for the U.S. Senate in New Jersey ($4,000); and Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky ($2,000).

In the 2006 cycle, the McGuires gave a total of $10,000 to the UnitedHealth Group PAC. In the same cycle the UHG PAC doled out $221,500 to federal candidates, 63% of whom were Republicans and 37% Democrats. Minnesota congressional delegation recipients included Republicans Jim Ramstad ($5,000), John Kline ($4,000), Mark Kennedy ($2,000) and Gil Gutknecht ($2,000), and Democrat Collin Peterson ($4,000).

The total UnitedHealth Group PAC expenditures in the cycle came to $615,377, which included donations to other PACS, political party campaign committees, and state and local candidates. The largest recipients of the UnitedHealth Group PAC's largess were the National Republican Congressional Committee ($30,000), National Republican Senatorial Committee ($30,000), Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ($30,000) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ($15,000).

Other PACs receiving top dollars from the UHG PAC included House Speaker Dennis Hastert's (R-IL) Keep Our Majority PAC ($10,000), Sen. Coleman's NorthStar Leadership PAC ($10,000), Sen. Bill Frist's (R-TN) Volunteer PAC ($10,000), and Rep. Nancy L. Johnson's (R-CT) Leadership Encouraging Excellence PAC ($10,000). All four PACs support Republican candidates.

Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on October 16, 2006, Printed on October 16, 2006

Editor's note: this is the first of a two-part series.

Iraq is sitting on a mother lode of some of the lightest, sweetest, most profitable crude oil on earth, and the rules that will determine who will control it and on what terms are about to be set.

The Iraqi government faces a December deadline, imposed by the world's wealthiest countries, to complete its final Oil Law. Industry analysts expect that the result will be a radical departure from the laws governing the country's oil-rich neighbors, giving foreign multinationals a much higher rate of return than with other major oil producers, and locking in their control over what George Bush called Iraq's "patrimony" for decades, regardless of what kind of policies future elected governments might want to pursue.

Iraq's energy reserves are an incredibly rich prize; according to the US Department of Energy, "Iraq contains 112 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the second largest in the world (behind Saudi Arabia) along with roughly 220 billion barrels of probable and possible resources. Iraq's true potential may be far greater than this, however, as the country is relatively unexplored due to years of war and sanctions." For perspective, the Saudis have 260 billion barrels of proven reserves.

Iraqi oil is close to the surface and easy to extract, making it all the more profitable. James Paul, Executive Director of the Global Policy Forum, points out that oil companies "can produce a barrel of Iraqi oil for less than $1.50 and possibly as little as $1, including all exploration, oilfield development and production costs." Contrast that with other areas where oil is considered cheap to produce at $5 per barrel, or the North Sea where production costs are $12-16 per barrel.

(The rest is here.)

Authors describe shambles of Congressional system

By Charles Babington
WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON - Even before the Mark Foley scandal broke, the 109th Congress was suffering from intense partisanship, legislative impasses and near-record-low public approval ratings. Incumbents are scrambling for re-election in the Nov. 7 general election, in which the Republican majorities in both houses are at risk. Regardless of the outcome, few lawmakers expect to rack up enough triumphs in the Nov. 13 lame-duck session to send the 109th Congress into the history books with high marks.

Two of the most knowledgeable congressional scholars are Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution and Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute. Their new book is "The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track." They recently answered questions about their findings and views.

Q Is the current Congress demonstrably more partisan than those in the past? Why does it matter?

MANN: Partisanship particularly increased after the 1994 elections and then the appearance of the first unified Republican government since the 1950s. Now it is tribal warfare. The consequences are deadly serious. Party and ideology routinely trump institutional interests and responsibilities. Regular order -- the set of rules, norms and traditions designed to ensure a fair and transparent process -- was the first casualty. The results: No serious deliberation. No meaningful oversight of the executive. A culture of corruption. And grievously flawed policy formulation and implementation.

Congress has been rocked by the Foley scandal. Was the House GOP leadership's response an example of reflexive partisanship? Are there larger lessons to learn from it?

ORNSTEIN: Part of the response to Foley was undoubtedly human nature -- lawmakers wanting to take Foley at his word that he wouldn't write any more improper e-mails. But it is hard to look at the responses of the collective majority leadership, including Speaker Dennis Hastert, GOP campaign chair Tom Reynolds and Page Board chair John Shimkus, without putting them into a context that makes it more damning.

The entire leadership team made sure that there was no significant ethics or lobbying reform in this Congress. They knew their majority was hanging in the balance, that the Duke Cunningham-Jack Abramoff-Tom DeLay scandal problem had not coalesced into an electoral catastrophe. The last thing they wanted was another embarrassing scandal. There is a lot to suggest that there was a systematic state of denial here, and an indifference to the possibility of a bigger problem that Foley might represent.

(The rest is here.)

Easy marks for a White House con

The Bush team mocked evangelical Christians after winning their support, book says
John Farmer
NJ Star-Ledger

"Never give a sucker an even break," W.C. Fields, the comical con man of so many old films, was famous for saying. He'd be right at home in the Bush White House.

For we now have it on fairly good authority that the Bush team, led by Karl Rove, exploited the gullibility of Christian evangelicals to further Republican political ambitions while privately scorning them as "nuts" or "ridiculous" or "boorish" or worse. They mocked and laughed at their Christian shock troops, which is shabbily cynical but understandable.

It must be hard for experienced con artists to feel anything but contempt for the suckers, or the marks as they're known on the street. Indeed, even onlookers feel little sympathy for marks, many of whom, maybe most, get scammed because they're promised something they shouldn't have in the first place.

What the evangelicals wanted from the Bushies was the power to impose a theology-driven order on government policy and the people it hires and appoints. What Rove wanted was to turn evangelical churches across the country into Republican ward clubs. It was the ultimate church-state roll in the hay.

The whistle-blower in this case is David Kuo, former deputy director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in the Bush White House who has written a new book, "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction." As Kuo tells it in leaked excerpts from the book to be made public today, the evangelical community thought it had it made -- an alliance with the a Bush White House that held evangelicals in high regard, shared their religious fervor, and promised to pump federal money into faith-based institutions.

Actually, it was a cynical relationship from the start, as Kuo now sees it, in which Rove and Co. had contempt for the evangelicals. The Bush crowd "knew the nuts were politically invaluable, but that was the extent of their usefulness," according to Kuo.

(The rest is here.)

PRICE TAG POLITICS

Senator's pet issue: money and the power it buys
By John Cheves
HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER

WASHINGTON - In the early 1970s, Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr., a young and intense Republican lawyer, strode into the political science class he taught at the University of Louisville.

He didn't introduce himself to his students. He went straight to the chalkboard and scribbled.

"I am going to teach you the three things you need to build a political party," he said, and backed away to reveal the words: "Money, money, money."

Three decades later, the teacher has mastered the lesson like few in history.

An extraordinary political fund-raiser, Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has used his skill to put himself on the brink of a remarkable career achievement. If Republicans hold the Senate in the Nov. 7 elections, he is expected to succeed retiring Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee as majority leader.

McConnell's rise to the top of Congress is testament to the power of money in modern politics. He has raised nearly $220 million over his Senate career; he spent the majority not on his own campaigns but on those of his GOP colleagues, who have rewarded him with power.

"He's completely dogged in his pursuit of money. That's his great love, above everything else," said Marshall Whitman, who watched McConnell as an aide to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and as a Christian Coalition lobbyist.

A leader in the field of tapping the wealthy for campaign cash, McConnell also led the opposition against efforts to rein in such donations through campaign-finance reform -- a fight that has taken him to the U.S. Supreme Court and put him toe-to-toe against another emerging Republican leader, presidential hopeful McCain.

A six-month examination of McConnell's career, based on thousands of documents and scores of interviews, shows the nexus between his actions and his donors' agendas. He pushes the government to help cigarette makers, Las Vegas casinos, the pharmaceutical industry, credit card lenders, coal mine owners and others.

Critics, including anti-poverty groups and labor unions, complain that McConnell has come to represent his affluent donors at the expense of Kentucky, the relatively poor state he is supposed to represent. They point, for example, to his support last year for a tough bankruptcy law, backed by New York banks that support him.

(The rest is here.)

Minnesota politics: God called Michele Bachmann to run for Congress

Her pastor says "amen" in church gathering

by Leigh Pomeroy

Andy Birkey at Minnesota Monitor sat in on a Michele Bachmann speech before the Living Word Christian Center, a large suburban chuch in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. At the speech, congressional candidate Michele Bachmann, running against Patty Wetterling in Minnesota's 6th Congressional District said:

God then called me to run for the United States Congress, and I thought “What in the world will that be for?” and my husband said “You need to do this,” and I wasn’t so sure, and we took three days and we fasted and we prayed and we said, “Lord. Is this what you want? Is this your will?” and after long about the afternoon of day two, he made that calling sure.

Pastor Mac Hammond of the church endorsed Bachmann's calling:

State Senator Michele Bachmann is with us and I’m going to ask her to come in in just a moment, and of course many of you know Michele, know of her pursuit of the United States Senate seat vacated by Mark Kennedy or Congressional seat vacated by Mark Kennedy’s run for a United States Senate seat. Keeping all this straight gets to be challenging. But ya know we can’t publicly endorse as a church and would not for any candidate but I can tell you personally that I’m going to vote for Michele Bachmann, because I’ve come to know her, what she stands for, and I want her to share her testimony with you tonight.

As Birkey points out, in order to keep their 501(c)3 nonprofit status, churches are strictly forbidden to engage in partisan politics. Does Pastor Hammond's indirect endorsement violate that tax-exempt line?

I'm sure we'll be seeing much more of this in the press before election day.

How army chief staged No 10 ambush

General Sir Richard Dannatt, new head of the army, knew what he was doing when he lit the touchpaper during an interview with a concerned mother. Mark Townsend and Ned Temko examine what happened next
Mark Townsend and Ned Temko
Sunday October 15, 2006

Observer

It was agreed. No politics, no talk of body bags or rifles that jammed in the desert. In short, nothing contentious. The assumption was that Sarah Sands, feature writer for the Daily Mail, would produce a gentle profile of Sir Richard Dannatt. She would soften his edges, inject a little pizzazz into the image of the battle-hardened head of the British army.

The interview went well, Sands being particularly impressed with Dannatt's commitment to the welfare of his soldiers. By the time she left his third-floor office the writer was content not just professionally but personally; her son who serves in the army appeared to be in the safest of hands.

Defence secretary Des Browne had only sanctioned the meeting on the understanding - by both sides - 'that it would be strictly on military issues, not politics'. While the former Sunday Telegraph editor may have understood the message, Dannatt appeared to have his own interpretation of the instruction. Towards the end of their 90-minute chat the general seemed only too keen to drag the conversation into uncharted territory. It was the journalistic equivalent of gelignite.

Perhaps, some speculated, the chief of the general staff had been dazzled by Sands's breezy, disarming manner. But the truth is that the 55-year-old general, described by colleagues as a cautious, cerebral character, knew what he was doing when he shattered the rule of silence that had concealed the concerns of his predecessors. Dannatt had seen first hand how Iraq was draining the spirit of his men. He had listened to troops who wondered how many more of their peers would die in a conflict that seemed to be getting worse by the day.

The general would tell Sands that British troops should be brought home 'soon' from Iraq and that their presence was 'exacerbating' tensions. Not only that, but he, in effect, accused the Prime Minister of being 'naive' in thinking they could install a liberal democracy in Iraq. Within hours of her dramatic story appearing in print, Browne rang Dannatt to demand if his comments were accurately replicated. They were. Tony Blair was in trouble.

(The rest is here.)

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."
Chicago Tribune

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."

(There is more, here.)

Abramoff, White House Tied to Firing of Official

By Peter Wallsten
LA Times Staff Writer

Washington — For five years, Allen Stayman wondered who ordered his removal from a U.S. State Department job negotiating agreements with tiny Pacific island nations -- even when his own bosses wanted him to stay.

Now he knows.

The ax fell after intervention by one of the highest officials at the White House: Ken Mehlman, who acted on behalf of one of the most influential lobbyists in town, Jack Abramoff.

E-mails recently made public disclose that Abramoff, whose client list included the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianna Islands, had long opposed Stayman's work advocating labor reforms in that U.S. protectorate, and considered what his lobbying team called the "Stayman project" a high priority.

"Mehlman said he would get him fired," an Abramoff associate wrote after meeting with Mehlman, who was then White House political director.

The exchange illustrates how, more than two years after the corruption scandal surrounding the now-disgraced Abramoff first came to light, people are still learning the extent of the lobbyist's ability to pull the levers of power in Washington, D.C. The latest revelations provide more detail than the administration has acknowledged about how Abramoff and his team reached into high levels of the White House, not just Capitol Hill, which has so far been the main focus of the influence-peddling investigation.The e-mails, disclosed by the House Government Reform Committee, show how Abramoff managed to manipulate the system through officials such as Mehlman, now the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Doing so, Abramoff directed government appointments, influenced policy decisions and won White House endorsements for political candidates -- all in the service of his clients. The report found more than 400 lobbying contacts between Abramoff's team and the White House.

Besides the Stayman matter, the newly disclosed e-mails reveal Mehlman's role in helping an Abramoff client, the Mississippi Band of the Choctaw Indians, secure $16.3 million for a new jail that government analysts concluded was not necessary. Mehlman also helped Abramoff obtain a White House endorsement in 2002 of the Republican gubernatorial ticket in the U.S. Territory of Guam.

(More here.)

Minnesota politics: IP spoiler in 1st CD?

by Leigh Pomeroy

According to the Mankato Free Press, "Stephen Williams, a vegetable farmer from Austin, has announced a write-in campaign for the seat." The Free Press says he has been endorsed by the Independence Party, but there is no indication of that as yet on its website. On Williams' campaign website he writes:

In the management of a prairie, fire is used to renew and reinvigorate the prairie. A fire will burn off the dead old growth and kill off the weeds that are choking the life out of the prairie. It is my opinion that there is a lot of old growth and weeds that need burning, in our government and in our major political parties. For example, the old growth of laws that are ineffective and just transfer problems to the future, and the weeds of special interest groups who buy political favors at the expense of the nation. In my campaign I will be proposing essential changes to our economic, tax, healthcare and welfare systems.

So far, the most prominent IPer in the 1st CD, Tim Penny, has remained mum on the race. Will he come out and endorse a candidate? It's anyone's guess.

A true independent in the district is Greg Mikkelson, a grain elevator operator from Lake Crystal. Mikkelson ran as the Green Party candidate in 2002, garnering 3.75%; as the IP candidate in 2004, winning 4.8%; and as a Republican challenging incumbent Gil Gutknecht in the GOP primary, earning 12.71%.

I have to confess. I know Greg fairly well and like him a lot. (Okay, I haven't told him this. So now it's public.) I saw quite a bit of him during the 2004 campaign as we would both inevitably show up to debates that the incumbent, Herr Gutknecht, boycotted, no doubt thinking that such events were beneath him to attend. (So much for the democratic exchange of ideas.)

Greg and I agreed on most issues: We opposed the war in Iraq. We believed in fiscal responsibility — that is, don't spend more than you take in. We thought that protecting the environment and promoting renewable energies was not only the correct moral decision but also the best fiscal policy as well.

Heck, I remember thinking: If by some outside chance I win, I would would want this guy in Washington with me. (Don't know if he thought the same thing.)

I like Greg because he's a true maverick. He's a small businessman but hardly a chamber of commerce lemming. Soft spoken, he simply and straightforwardly expresses his beliefs. He doesn't adjust them for his audience. He just says what he thinks and that's that.

And he's willing to put his own money into his electoral crusades, eschewing the major party methodology of shaking down donors with endless phone calls and personal meetings. He has easily spent in the tens of thousands of dollars of his own savings for his three campaign attempts.

Whether Greg will come out this election in support of a candidate — be that candidate Williams or Gutknecht or Walz — is something only he knows. One thing is for sure, however. His name is recognized throughout the independent minded 1st CD. And if he does publicly declare his support for a candidate, especially in the close election that the 1st CD is shaping up to be, his recommendation may very well tip the balance as to whom the next congressman from southern Minnesota will be.

Bush keeps revising war justification

By TOM RAUM, Associated Press

President Bush keeps revising his explanation for why the U.S. is in Iraq, moving from narrow military objectives at first to history-of-civilization stakes now.

Initially, the rationale was specific: to stop Saddam Hussein from using what Bush claimed were the Iraqi leader's weapons of mass destruction or from selling them to al-Qaida or other terrorist groups.

But 3 1/2 years later, with no weapons found, still no end in sight and the war a liability for nearly all Republicans on the ballot Nov. 7, the justification has become far broader and now includes the expansive "struggle between good and evil."

Republicans seized on North Korea's reported nuclear test last week as further evidence that the need for strong U.S. leadership extends beyond Iraq.

Bush's changing rhetoric reflects increasing administration efforts to tie the war, increasingly unpopular at home, with the global fight against terrorism, still the president's strongest suit politically.

"We can't tolerate a new terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East, with large oil reserves that could be used to fund its radical ambitions, or used to inflict economic damage on the West," Bush said in a news conference last week in the Rose Garden.

When no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, Bush shifted his war justification to one of liberating Iraqis from a brutal ruler.

After Saddam's capture in December 2003, the rationale became helping to spread democracy through the Middle East. Then it was confronting terrorists in Iraq "so we do not have to face them here at home," and "making America safer," themes Bush pounds today.

"We're in the ideological struggle of the 21st century," he told a California audience this month. "It's a struggle between good and evil."

(There is more, here.)

Bush’s Bluster

The president’s inattention to North Korea is just one example of the price Americans have paid for his need to prove himself worthy of his office.

By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek

Oct. 13, 2006 - The sense of desperation Republicans feel about the impending election has finally permeated the White House, where the president did the equivalent of a rain dance Wednesday sounding the drums for disaffected conservatives to please save the country from Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi. With North Korea and Iran emboldened, and Iraq spiraling into sectarian violence, Bush sought refuge in frat-boy banter about “high-priced news guys” in pinstripes.

What once passed for geniality was so off the mark amidst the serious news that Bush looked and sounded unhinged. At the end of an hour of bleating about how high the stakes are, and how dangerous the enemy is, Bush’s frustration was evident. He glared at his aides as he turned to go back to the Oval Office, as if to say they made him do this press conference and he knew it was a bad idea. “I remember how Clinton used to give us those looks,” chuckles former White House press secretary Mike McCurry, who says what Bush is doing is trying to “pivot” to new material that will pump up his base for the election.

With some 20-odd days to go until the vote, Republicans have settled on Pelosi and taxes, linking the Democrats’ past inclination to raise taxes with the likely next speaker of the House, a liberal woman from San Francisco. Pelosi has not been highly visible during this period, making it harder for the GOP to turn her into a target. Most voters have no idea who she is. Republicans are sending out direct-mail pieces featuring the faces of the Democrats who will take over key congressional committees; not surprisingly, several are African-American, and they are prominently featured.

(There is more, here.)

Behind Enemy Reactors

By JON B. WOLFSTHAL
New York Times

I CELEBRATED New Year’s in 1996 by drinking cheap sparkling wine at the Yongbyon nuclear center, where North Korea produced the plutonium for its first nuclear test. Like dozens of dedicated civil servants, I served as an “on-site monitor” under the 1994 United States-North Korean nuclear agreement known as the Agreed Framework.

Those of us who served as monitors are proud of what we accomplished. I am not alone in being concerned that many commentators and government officials are trying to lay the blame for at least some of the current nuclear crisis at the feet of the previous administration’s efforts to end North Korea’s nuclear program. These allegations have little bearing on the facts and minimize the contribution of the Americans who served their country in dangerous circumstances.

In 1994, the situation with North Korea had become so fraught that the Clinton administration was considering military strikes to prevent North Korea from extracting plutonium from spent nuclear fuel at Yongbyon. At the time, North Korea might have had enough plutonium, produced in 1989, to build one or two nuclear devices. The fuel being discharged contained enough plutonium for five to six additional weapons.

Last-ditch talks between former President Jimmy Carter and President Kim Il-sung of North Korea defused the crisis and led to the framework. The deal, which helped us avoid a military conflict that could have destroyed Seoul, froze Pyongyang’s plutonium program; eventually, it could have led to North Korea abandoning its nuclear efforts in exchange for diplomatic recognition by the United States and economic incentives.

In 2002, however, American intelligence agencies confirmed that North Korea was trying to acquire a uranium enrichment program in violation of the deal. But instead of working within the framework to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear efforts, the Bush administration terminated the agreement altogether. It also began arguing for regime change.

In jettisoning the framework, the administration jettisoned something of great diplomatic value. A key part of the agreement was the willingness of North Korea to let Americans — with whom they were legally at war — into their nuclear center to secure plutonium-bearing fuel rods for internationally monitored storage. In other words, the framework put Americans behind enemy lines.

(There is more here.)

Another Republican scandal... ho hum

Today Bob Ney pled guilty to taking bribes. Tomorrow... who's next? Just another Republican scandal... ho hum.

FBI investigates Rep. Curt Weldon

By Greg Gordon
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department is investigating whether Republican Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania traded his political influence for lucrative lobbying and consulting contracts for his daughter, according to sources with direct knowledge of the inquiry.

The FBI, which opened an investigation in recent months, has formally referred the matter to the department's Public Integrity Section for additional scrutiny. At issue are Weldon's efforts between 2002 and 2004 to aid two Russian companies and two Serbian brothers with ties to strongman Slobodan Milosevic, a federal law enforcement official said.

The Russian companies and a Serbian foundation run by the brothers' family each hired a firm co-owned by Weldon's daughter, Karen, for fees totaling nearly $1 million a year, public records show.

Karen Weldon was 28 and lacked consulting experience when she and Charles Sexton, a Weldon ally and longtime Republican leader in Delaware County, Pa., created the firm of Solutions North America Inc. in 2002. Both are registered with the Justice Department as representatives of foreign clients.

(The article is here.)

Nobel Economists: Republicans Wrong on Minimum Wage

By Bob Geiger

With the buying power of the Federal minimum wage at its lowest point in 55 years, five Nobel Prize-winning economists have been joined by 650 of their peers, in calling on the Republican-led Congress to increase the minimum wage. Describing the last increase almost 10 years ago as now "fully eroded," the economists said that they agree with a report written in 1999 by the Council of Economic Advisors declaring that "modest increases in the minimum wage have had very little or no effect on employment."

"We believe that a modest increase in the minimum wage would improve the well-being of low-wage workers and would not have the adverse effects that critics have claimed," the economists wrote in a paper delivered this week on a conference call hosted by the Economic Policy Institute [1], an economic research group based in Washington, D.C.

In addition to asserting that the real value of the minimum wage is at its lowest point since 1951, the economists also noted that the ratio of what a minimum-wage earner makes and the average pay rates of other hourly workers is at a significant low.

"The ratio of the minimum wage to the average hourly wage of non-supervisory workers is 31%, its lowest level since World War II," they said. " This decline is causing hardship for low-wage workers and their families."

The Federal minimum wage has been at $5.15 an hour since 1997, which puts a working American earning that wage, even laboring 50 hours a week, at below the national poverty line.

Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) has been ferociously pursuing the issue for years and with particular fervor in the current Congress, which ends this year.

“These esteemed economists understand what everyone except the Republican leadership and the White House understand: an increase in the minimum wage is long overdue and would strengthen our economy," said Kennedy, in a statement Thursday. "Millions of American families are living in poverty while working hard for the American dream, while the Republicans block every effort to give them the raise they deserve --- despite skyrocketing increases in health care, gas prices, and education."

(The rest is here.)

Documents Reveal Scope of U.S. Database on Antiwar Protests

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
New York Times

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 — Internal military documents released Thursday provided new details about the Defense Department’s collection of information on demonstrations nationwide last year by students, Quakers and others opposed to the Iraq war.

The documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, show, for instance, that military officials labeled as “potential terrorist activity” events like a “Stop the War Now” rally in Akron, Ohio, in March 2005.

The Defense Department acknowledged last year that its analysts had maintained records on war protests in an internal database past the 90 days its guidelines allowed, and even after it was determined there was no threat.

A department spokesman said Thursday that the “questionable data collection” had led to a tightening of military procedures to ensure that only information relevant to terrorism and other threats was collected. The spokesman, Maj. Patrick Ryder, said in response to the release of the documents that the department “views with great concern any potential violation” of the policy.

“There is nothing more important or integral to the effectiveness of the U.S. military than the trust and good will of the American people,” Major Ryder said.

A document first disclosed last December by NBC News showed that the military had maintained a database, known as Talon, containing information about more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” around the country in 2004 and 2005. Dozens of alerts on antiwar meetings and peaceful protests appear to have remained in the database even after analysts had decided that they posed no threat to military bases or personnel.

(The rest is here.)

Walz/Gutknecht in dead heat

According to Majority Watch, a project of RT Strategies and Constituent Dynamics, the Minnesota 1st Congressional District race is in a dead heat with incumbent Republican Gil Gutknecht at 48% and DFL challenger Tim Walz at 47%, leaving only 5% undecided. In an earlier interview, Walz campaign publicist Meredith Salsbery said that their internal polling shows a 13% approval rate for President Bush among undecideds.

The overview of the results are available by Flash Player at Majority Watch (click on the map). The complete results are available here in PDF format.

UK presence ‘worsening Iraq situation’

By Stephen Fidler and James Blitz and Guy Dinmore in Washington
Financial Times

Britain’s new army chief said UK forces should leave Iraq soon because they are making the security problem there worse.

Such unusually frank remarks from a serving soldier suggest that General Sir Richard Dannatt disagrees with government policy, which calls for troops to stay until Iraqi forces can take over.

Sir Richard said Britain should “get ourselves out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems”.

In comments reported in Friday’s UK Daily Mail newspaper, the chief of the general staff said foreign forces might be welcomed into a country. But “the military campaign we fought in 2003 effectively kicked the door in. Whatever consent we may have had in the first place...has largely turned to intolerance.

“That is a fact. I don’t say that the difficulties we are experiencing round the world are caused by our presence in Iraq but undoubtedly our presence in Iraq exacerbates them.”

Sir Richard criticised the quality of planning for what happened after Baghdad fell. “History will show that the planning for what happened after the initial successful fighting phase was poor, probably based more on optimism than sound planning.”

The general said the US-led coalition in Iraq would have to settle for less than the original ambition of a pro-western liberal democracy that would be an exemplar for the region.

(The rest is here.)

Baker's Panel Rules Out Iraq Victory

BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the NYSun

WASHINGTON — A commission formed to assess the Iraq war and recommend a new course has ruled out the prospect of victory for America, according to draft policy options shared with The New York Sun by commission officials.

Currently, the 10-member commission — headed by a secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush, James Baker — is considering two option papers, "Stability First" and "Redeploy and Contain," both of which rule out any prospect of making Iraq a stable democracy in the near term.

More telling, however, is the ruling out of two options last month. One advocated minor fixes to the current war plan but kept intact the long-term vision of democracy in Iraq with regular elections. The second proposed that coalition forces focus their attacks only on Al Qaeda and not the wider insurgency.

Instead, the commission is headed toward presenting President Bush with two clear policy choices that contradict his rhetoric of establishing democracy in Iraq. The more palatable of the two choices for the White House, "Stability First," argues that the military should focus on stabilizing Baghdad while the American Embassy should work toward political accommodation with insurgents. The goal of nurturing a democracy in Iraq is dropped.

The option papers, which sources inside the commission have stressed are still being amended and revised as the panel wraps up its work, give a clearer picture of what Mr. Baker meant in recent interviews when he called for a course adjustment.

They also shed light on what is at stake in the coming 2 1/2 months for the Iraqi government. The "Redeploy and Contain" option calls for the phased withdrawal of American soldiers from Iraq, though the working groups have yet to say when and where those troops will go. The document, read over the telephone to the Sun, says America should "make clear to allies and others that U.S. redeployment does not reduce determination to attack terrorists wherever they are." It also says America's top priority should be minimizing American casualties in Iraq.

(The rest is here.)

Bush & His Dangerous Delusions

By Robert Parry
ConsortiumNews

In George W. Bush’s world, Saddam Hussein defied United Nations demands that he get rid of his weapons of mass destruction and barred U.N. inspectors; al-Qaeda’s public statements must be believed even when contradicted by its private comments; and U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is unthinkable because it would let al-Qaeda “extend the caliphate,” a mythical state that doesn’t really exist.

There’s always been the frightening question of what would happen if a President of United States went completely bonkers. But there is an equally disturbing issue of what happens if a President loses touch with reality, especially if he is surrounded by enough sycophants and enablers so no one can or will stop him.

At his Oct. 11 news conference, Bush gave the country a peek into his imaginary world, a bizarre place impenetrable by facts and logic, where falsehoods, once stated, become landmarks and where Bush’s “gut” instinct, no matter how misguided, is the compass for finding one’s way.

In speaking to White House reporters, Bush maneuvered casually through this world like an experienced guide making passing references to favorite points of interest, such as Hussein’s defiance of U.N. resolutions banning WMD (when Hussein actually had eliminated his WMD stockpiles).

“We tried the diplomacy,” Bush said. “Remember it? We tried resolution after resolution after resolution.” Though the resolutions had worked – and left Hussein stripped of his WMD arsenal – that isn’t how it looks in Bush’s world, where the resolutions failed and there was no choice but to invade.

At other news conferences, Bush has filled in details of his fictional history. For instance, on July 14, 2003, just a few months after the Iraq invasion, Bush began rewriting the record to meet his specifications.

“We gave him [Saddam Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power,” Bush told reporters.

In the real world, of course, Hussein admitted U.N. inspectors in fall 2002 and gave them unfettered access to search suspected Iraqi weapons sites. It was Bush who forced the U.N. inspectors to leave in March 2003 so the invasion could proceed.

(The rest is here.)

Things Get Ugly When Bush 'Trusts His Gut'

By Paul Waldman, TomPaine.com
Alternet

When President Bush was caught on tape saying to Tony Blair, “See the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over,” more than a few progressives said to themselves, “Well that’s a trenchant analysis of the situation, Sherlock.” And more than a few conservatives said, “Damn straight”—or as Michelle Malkin put it, “Sometimes, profanity is called for.”

Not that in mid-2006 anyone needed more proof that Bush is, depending on your perspective, either a simpleton or an admirably forthright straight talker who cuts to the chase. But as more and more evidence of the administration’s incompetence and hubris is revealed, we are presented with more proof that under George W. Bush, U.S. policies are governed by a strange amalgam of impulse and fantasy.

As Newsweek told us this week, Bush “still trusts his gut to tell him what's right, and he still expects others to follow his lead.” One might have thought Bush would have learned by now to view the proclamations of his gut with some suspicion—but then, that would be asking the president to rely on evidence and experience to make conclusions.

And it isn’t only friendly reporters like those at Newsweek who have noted the way policy is dictated by The Decider’s intestinal rumblings. One of the many disturbing pictures that emerges from Ron Suskind’s new book, The One Percent Doctrine, is the way Bush’s preference for making decisions not on the basis of facts and analysis but on his “gut” meshed so perfectly with Dick Cheney’s desire not to let facts and analysis get in the way of his visions of empire. The two were perfect partners, and when 9/11 happened, it was like the pins of a combination lock clicking securely into place in Bush’s mind. Everything made sense—there are evildoers out there, and his divinely appointed mission is to smite them. (If you’ve wondered why Bush has such affection for Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, all you need to know is that at their first meeting, Koizumi said Bush reminded him of Gary Cooper.)

(The rest is here.)

The Pundit Path for Death in Iraq

by Norman Solomon
from Common Dreams

No one knows exactly how many Iraqi civilians have died from the war's violence since the invasion of their country. The new study from public health researchers at Johns Hopkins University estimates that the number of those deaths is around 601,000, while saying the actual total could be somewhere between 426,369 and 793,663. Such wartime figures can't be precise, but the meaning is clear: The invasion of Iraq has led to ongoing carnage on a massive scale.

While we stare at numbers that do nothing to convey the suffering and anguish of the war in Iraq, we might want to ask: How could we correlate the horrific realities with the evasive discussions that proliferated in U.S. news media during the lead-up to the invasion?

In mid-November 2002 -- four months before the invasion began -- a report surfaced from health professionals with the Medact organization and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. "The avowed U.S. aim of regime change means any new conflict will be much more intense and destructive than the [1991] Gulf War," they warned, "and will involve more deadly weapons developed in the interim."

At the time, journalists routinely gave short shrift to that report -- treating it as alarmist and unworthy of much attention. The report found that "credible estimates of the total possible deaths on all sides during the conflict and the following three months range from 48,000 to over 260,000. Civil war within Iraq could add another 20,000 deaths. Additional later deaths from postwar adverse health effects would reach 200,000. ... In all scenarios the majority of casualties will be civilians."

During a live TV debate on Dec. 3, 2002, I cited the report's estimates of the bloodshed ahead and then asked: "What kind of message is that from the Bush administration against terrorism and against violence for political ends?"

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer turned to the other guest: "Jonah Goldberg, do you accept that assumption in that report on these huge casualties, including a lot of children, if there were an effort to go forward with so-called regime change in Baghdad?"

Goldberg, a pundit with National Review Online, replied: "Frankly, I don't. I mean, I haven't looked at the exact report, and I think that there are a lot of groups out there that inflate a lot of these numbers precisely because they're against the war no matter what. We certainly heard a lot of that around on the table last time. Before the Gulf War, we were told there were going to be tens of thousands of casualties."

(The rest is here.)

Bush's False Choice on Iraq

EDITORIAL - LA Times

No matter how many times he says it, fighting "over there" still doesn't prevent attacks here.

October 12, 2006

AT HIS NEWS CONFERENCE Wednesday, President Bush expressed not once but three times his view that if the U.S. does not defeat the terrorists "over there" in Iraq, it will have to fight them here in the United States. This crude formulation is tiresome and insulting to Americans' intelligence.

"I firmly believe that the American people understand that this is different from other wars because in this war, if we were to leave early, before the job is done, the enemy will follow us here," Bush said. This conjures up improbable images of Shiite death squads and Sunni insurgents stuffing bomb-making manuals into their backpacks and booking flights to LAX while U.S. troops march out of Baghdad.

There are good reasons not to withdraw from Iraq hastily. But Bush's assertion about a good offense being the best defense undermines his own credibility.

With the "unity" government in Iraq dangerously factionalized, the risk that the country may soon be engulfed in an all-out battle among Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish elements remains high — even if U.S. troops stay. If they depart quickly, leaving behind an unstable government unable to keep the peace even in Baghdad, a savage sectarian war over territory, oil and power could result. Iran, Turkey and other neighbors could become embroiled in a conflagration atop the world's fourth-largest oil reserves.

The day the U.S. announces its withdrawal, it will lose much of its leverage to try to bind Iraq's neighbors into a security arrangement that would help hedge against that outcome. Washington will need all its damaged diplomatic wiles to extricate itself in such a way that the bloodshed and instability aren't exacerbated. It is a pity, in this regard, that former Secretary of State and Bush family consigliere James A. Baker III has declared that he will not make public the recommendations of his Iraq Study Group until after the November election.

(The rest is here.)

Senate Report: Five Nonprofit Groups Sold Clout to Abramoff

By James V. Grimaldi and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post

Five conservative nonprofit organizations, including one run by prominent Republican Grover Norquist, "perpetrated a fraud" on taxpayers by selling their clout to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Senate investigators said in a report issued today.

The report includes previously unreleased e-mails between the now-disgraced lobbyist and officers of the nonprofit groups, showing that Abramoff routed money from his clients to the groups. In exchange the groups, among other things, produced ostensibly independent newspaper op-ed columns or press releases that favored the clients' positions.

Officers of the groups "were generally available to carry out Mr. Abramoff's requests for help with his clients in exchange for cash payments," said the report, issued by the Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee after a one-year investigation.

Abramoff has pleaded guilty to fraud and conspiracy and is cooperating with federal investigators in the ongoing influence-peddling probe that has resulted in seven guilty pleas and convictions.

The report states that the groups probably violated their tax-exempt status "by laundering payments and then disbursing funds at Mr. Abramoff's direction; taking payments in exchange or writing newspaper columns or press releases that put Mr. Abramoff's clients in a favorable light; introducing Mr. Abramoff's clients to government officials in exchange for payment; and agreeing to act as a front organization for congressional trips paid for by Mr. Abramoff's clients."

The groups are Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform; the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, which was co-founded by Norquist and Gale Norton before she became Secretary of the Interior; Citizens Against Government Waste; the National Center for Public Policy Research, which was a spinoff of the Heritage Foundation; and Toward Tradition, a religious group founded by Abramoff friend Rabbi Daniel Lapin.

(More here.)

Bush's 'Axis of Evil' Comes Back to Haunt United States

By Glenn Kessler and Peter Baker
Washington Post

Nearly five years after President Bush introduced the concept of an "axis of evil" comprising Iraq, Iran and North Korea, the administration has reached a crisis point with each nation: North Korea has claimed it conducted its first nuclear test, Iran refuses to halt its uranium-enrichment program, and Iraq appears to be tipping into a civil war 3 1/2 years after the U.S.-led invasion.

Each problem appears to feed on the others, making the stakes higher and requiring Bush and his advisers to make difficult calculations, analysts and U.S. officials said. The deteriorating situation in Iraq has undermined U.S. diplomatic credibility and limited the administration's military options, making rogue countries increasingly confident that they can act without serious consequences. Iran, meanwhile, will be watching closely the diplomatic fallout from North Korea's apparent test as a clue to how far it might go with its own nuclear program.

"Iran will follow very carefully what happens in the U.N. Security Council after the North Korean test," said Robert J. Einhorn, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). "If the United Nations is not able to act forcefully, then Iran will think the path is clear to act with impunity."

Michael E. O'Hanlon, a Brookings Institution scholar and co-author of the new book "Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security," said the U.S. response to North Korea will have ripple effects. "Iran will certainly watch what happens. North Korea watched what happened with Pakistan and decided that the world didn't punish Pakistan too hard or too long," he said. "Iran will certainly notice if North Korea gets treated with kid gloves."

Political strategists debated the domestic implications of the North Korean test with midterm elections four weeks away. Some Republicans predicted it would take the focus off the Mark Foley congressional page scandal and remind voters that it is a dangerous world best confronted by tough-minded leaders. Some Democrats argued it would be seen as another failure of Bush's foreign policy and moved quickly to try to pin blame on the Republicans. "Is this going to help Republicans?" asked Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). "The answer to that is absolutely not. This is another significant foreign policy failure for the administration."

In Bush's 2002 State of the Union address, a speech designed to shift the political debate from a battle against al-Qaeda to a possible confrontation with Iraq, the president mentioned North Korea, Iraq and Iran and declared: "States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. . . . In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic."

(The rest is here.)

National Farmers Union: Reps. McCollum, Sabo, Oberstar support family farmers

Kennedy and Kline both receive 0% ratings

The National Farmers Union (NFU), which represents a quarter of a million family farmers and ranchers across the country, released its 2005-06 congressional voting record survey. Looking at six key votes in the Senate and the House, the NFU rated legislators on how well their votes corresponded to NFU's positions. Critical issues included estate tax repeal, emergency agricultural disaster assistance, the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), renewable fuels, deficit reduction and country-of-origin labeling (COOL).

Among Minnesota's congressional delegation, Reps. Betty McCollum, Martin Sabo and James Oberstar all received 100% ratings. At the other end of the scale, Reps. John Kline and Mark Kennedy received 0%. Collin Peterson received an 83% rating, Gil Gutknecht 33%, and Jim Ramstad 16%.

In the Senate, Mark Dayton garnered 100% while Norm Coleman received 33%.

From the NFU website:

National Farmers Union was founded in 1902 in Point, Texas, to help the family farmer address profitability issues and monopolistic practices while America was courting the Industrial Revolution. Today, with a membership of 250,000 farm and ranch families, NFU continues its original mission to protect and enhance the economic well-being and quality of life for family farmers and ranchers and their rural communities. We believe that consumers and producers can work together to promote a quality domestic supply of safe food.

NFU represents farmers and ranchers in all states, with organized chapters in 26 states. The key to the success and credibility of the organization has been Farmers Union’s grassroots structure in which policy positions are initiated locally. The policy process includes the presentation of resolutions by individuals, followed by possible adoption of the resolutions at the local, state and national levels. Members and staff of the Farmers Union advocate these policy positions nationwide.

National Farmers Union believes that good opportunities in production agriculture are the foundation of strong farm and ranch families, and strong farm and ranch families are the basis for thriving rural communities. Vibrant rural communities, in turn, are vital to the health, security and economic well-being of our entire national economy.

Iraqi Dead May Total 600,000, Study Says

By SABRINA TAVERNISE and DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
New York Times

BAGHDAD, Oct. 10 — A team of American and Iraqi public health researchers has estimated that 600,000 civilians have died in violence across Iraq since the 2003 American invasion, the highest estimate ever for the toll of the war here.

The figure breaks down to about 15,000 violent deaths a month, a number that is quadruple the one for July given by Iraqi government hospitals and the morgue in Baghdad and published last month in a United Nations report in Iraq. That month was the highest for Iraqi civilian deaths since the American invasion.

But it is an estimate and not a precise count, and researchers acknowledged a margin of error that ranged from 426,369 to 793,663 deaths.

It is the second study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. It uses samples of casualties from Iraqi households to extrapolate an overall figure of 601,027 Iraqis dead from violence between March 2003 and July 2006.

The findings of the previous study, published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, in 2004, had been criticized as high, in part because of its relatively narrow sampling of about 1,000 families, and because it carried a large margin of error.

The new study is more representative, its researchers said, and the sampling is broader: it surveyed 1,849 Iraqi families in 47 different neighborhoods across Iraq. The selection of geographical areas in 18 regions across Iraq was based on population size, not on the level of violence, they said.

(More here.)

Painting a Rosy Budget Picture

Bush Touts Declining Deficit, but Long-Term Outlook Is Dimmer

By Michael Abramowitz and Peter Baker
Washington Post

MACON, Ga., Oct. 10 -- The federal budget deficit shrank from $318 billion to less than $260 billion in the fiscal year that concluded in September, officials disclosed yesterday. It marks the second year in a row that the deficit has declined after ballooning in the early years of the Bush administration.

White House officials hailed the improving short-term budget picture as a vindication of President Bush's tax-cutting agenda, though the long-term prospects are considerably bleaker, given the escalating costs of health-care and retirement programs and, in the view of many economists, the red ink produced by tax cuts.

Bush pointed to the declining budget deficit in remarks Tuesday evening at a fundraiser in Georgia, where he once again sought to frame next month's midterm elections in part as a referendum on tax cuts that he says have stimulated revenue. The nation "has got this choice to make," Bush told donors here. "Do we keep taxes low so we can keep this economy growing, or do we let the Democrats in Washington raise taxes and hurt the economic vitality of this country?"

The president will step up his efforts to tout the economy at a White House event Wednesday, when officials said he will announce that he has met his target of cutting the deficit in half over five years -- three years ahead of schedule.

That promise was based on what officials once projected would be a $521 billion deficit in 2004. One senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the president has not officially announced the numbers, said the deficit for 2006 will be less than $260 billion, "with a significant margin." The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week the deficit would be $250 billion.

One reason the goal was achieved is that the bar was set low. As the economy improved, the $521 billion deficit never materialized, and the government ended 2004 with a $412 billion deficit. Moreover, Bush's policies, including the tax cuts and war spending, helped wipe out the surplus that his administration inherited from the Clinton administration in 2001; Democrats point out that the government was supposed to be running a $300 billion surplus this past year, so in effect, they say, there has been a downward swing of more than half a trillion dollars.

(The rest is here.)

Gutknecht gets zero rating from League of Conservation Voters

Kline gets 8%, less than California's Richard Pombo

by Leigh Pomeroy

In a just released 2006 National Environmental Scorecard by the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), Minnesota 1st District Rep. Gil Gutknecht earned the lowest rating of Minnesota's congressional delegation. Gutknecht's rating puts him in the same category as other members of Congress who have earned a zero, including House Majority Leader John Boehner, who will be touring with Gutknecht on Thursday, Oct. 12, including a stop at at Minnesota State University Mankato.

Second District Congressman John Kline received 8%, less than the 17% rating earned by Rep. Richard Pombo of California, who has been known for his attempts to gut the Endangered Species Act.

At the top of the Minnesota delegation is Rep. Betty McCollum, with a 100% rating. The list is as follows:

Betty McCollum (DEM)	MN-4	100%
Martin Olav Sabo (DEM)	MN-5	92%
Jim Ramstad (REP)	MN-3	83%
James Oberstar (DEM)	MN-8	67%
Mark Kennedy (REP)	MN-6	33%
Collin Peterson (DEM)	MN-7	17%
John Kline (REP)	MN-2	8%
Gil Gutknecht (REP)	MN-1	0%

In the Senate, Mark Dayton scored 86% and Norm Coleman 29%. According to an LCV email,

Twenty Senators and 80 Representatives scored a dismal 0%, voting against the environment every single time. Rep. J. D. Hayworth (AZ) took home a zero, as did Sens. George Allen (VA), James Inhofe (OK), and Mitch McConnell (KY).

On its website the LCV writes:

America has the ingenuity and technological know-how to create a new energy future that protects the environment, reinvigorates the economy, reduces our dependence on oil, provides relief to consumers, and strengthens our national security....

[T]he 109th Congress got off to a particularly bad start with the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the most anti-environmental piece of legislation signed into law in recent memory. Although this new law has clearly done nothing to solve our energy problems, Congress chose to stay the ill-advised course in 2006. In fact, the Congressional leadership simply pushed for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off our coasts and didn't even allow debate on forward-looking solutions to our energy problems, such as making cars go further on a gallon of gas by increasing fuel economy standards, or increasing our use of clean, renewable energy.

Walz: "We are within the margin of error"

by Leigh Pomeroy

In an interview today, Tim Walz, the DFL candidate in Minnesota's 1st Congressional District said he is "within the margin of error" of unseating six-term Congressman Gil Gutknecht. Walz said that only "single digits" divide the two candidates in his campaign's internal polling, with 15-16% of likely voters still undecided. He said that of the undecided voters, only 13% give a positive approval rating of President Bush.

Walz said that that the campaign has been purposely using conservative polling techniques unlike some of the other polls that have come out showing Walz in the lead. (See "MNPublius: Walz leads Gutknecht in SEIU Poll".) Campaign spokesperson Meredith Salsbery added later that their polls show Gutknecht "consistently below 50% and dropping."

Walz was in North Mankato this morning with former Senator Max Cleland on the first leg of a tour of the district with later stops in Winona, Waseca and Austin. Both men focused their remarks on the lack of support the current administration and Congress are giving to U.S. forces and veterans.

(More later.)

Could the "October Surprise" be a mushroom cloud?

Former war correspondent Chris Hedges has impeccable credentials. But let's hope he's wrong this time....

Chris Hedges: Bush’s Nuclear Apocalypse
Posted on Oct 9, 2006

By Chris Hedges

Editor’s Note: The former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and author of the bestseller “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” reports on Bush’s plan for Iran, and how a callous war, conceived by zealots, will lead to a disaster of biblical proportions.

The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.

War with Iran—a war that would unleash an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East—is probable by the end of the Bush administration. It could begin in as little as three weeks. This administration, claiming to be anointed by a Christian God to reshape the world, and especially the Middle East, defined three states at the start of its reign as “the Axis of Evil.” They were Iraq, now occupied; North Korea, which, because it has nuclear weapons, is untouchable; and Iran. Those who do not take this apocalyptic rhetoric seriously have ignored the twisted pathology of men like Elliott Abrams, who helped orchestrate the disastrous and illegal contra war in Nicaragua, and who now handles the Middle East for the National Security Council. He knew nothing about Central America. He knows nothing about the Middle East. He sees the world through the childish, binary lens of good and evil, us and them, the forces of darkness and the forces of light. And it is this strange, twilight mentality that now grips most of the civilian planners who are barreling us towards a crisis of epic proportions.

The article concludes:

If you are sure you will be raptured into heaven, your clothes left behind with the nonbelievers, then this news should cheer you up. If you are rational, however, these may be some of the last few weeks or months in which to enjoy what is left of our beleaguered, dying republic and way of life.

Scary stuff. If you have the stomach to read further, the rest of the article is here.

Rolling Stone: The Fear Factor

What last-minute scare tactic will the Republicans pull to swing the midterm elections? Our panel of experts predicts this fall's October Surprise

MARK BINELLI
Rolling Stone

On October 31st, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced a cessation of bombing in North Vietnam. The fact that the news came only a week before a close presidential election -- between Democratic hopeful Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon -- led some to conclude that more than military strategy was behind the move. The Vietnam War was deeply unpopular, and an eleventh-hour endgame by the sitting Democratic president would certainly be a plus for Humphrey.

In fact, the Nixon team had not only anticipated such a scenario, campaign staffer and future CIA chief William Casey actually coined a phrase to describe it -- an "October Surprise." (Nixon, of course, had his own, far more Machiavellian October Surprise in the works: secret negotiations that persuaded the South Vietnamese government to pull out of an imminent peace treaty until after the election, in return for more favorable terms from a Nixon administration.)

Since then, the term October Surprise has been applied to a number of scenarios, many appealing to the conspiracy-minded. In 1980, the Reagan campaign contended Jimmy Carter was attempting to engineer a last-minute release of the Iranian hostages to swing the election. Carter staffers later countered that the Reagan team had worked secretly to prevent the release of the hostages until after a Reagan victory. The most recent October Surprises were the late-breaking revelation in 2000 of a decades-old DUI arrest against George W. Bush and the pre-election bombshell in 2004 of a new video by Osama bin Laden.

(The rest is here.)

Why is Gutknecht bringing Boehner to MSU Mankato?

Both have voted to cut higher education funds, increase student loan rates and guarantee profits for their corporate backers

by Leigh Pomeroy

Rep. Gil Gutknecht and House Majority Leader John Boehner would probably receive a better reception at a Chamber of Commerce meeting than at Minnesota State University Mankato, but MSU Mankato is where they're planning to hold a rally on Thursday, Oct. 12.

One wonders why.

Both have long held public education in much lower esteem than, say, tax breaks for millionaires, for they vote against the former but in favor of the latter. The last time I looked on the MSU Mankato campus I didn't find one millionaire, though there were a lot of students paying more for their education than certainly their parents did, and about 50% more than their older brothers and sisters only five years ago.

Today's students are racking up debt much faster and will have to pay higher interest rates to boot. Built into those rates is a guaranteed profit to giant student loan lender Sallie Mae, once a part of the federal government, now semi-privatized, which means its investors are guaranteed a profit and its executives a fat salary while the U.S. taxpayers take the risk.

John Boehner, former Chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education & the Workforce, is one man students can thank for this. Isn't it convenient that he'll be on MSU's campus Oct. 12 so students can deliver the message personally?

Boehner's antipathy for education goes back a long way, at least to 1995 when he co-authored legislation to do in the Department of Education. Fortunately, it failed.

Ten years later, along with Gutknecht, he supported the so-called Deficit Reduction Act, which,

According to United States Student Association Legislative Director Jasmine Harris, ...would create $5,800 in additional debt through interest and taxes for the average student borrower.

A portion of the cuts would be met by tacking on $5.46 billion in additional charges to student borrowers upon consolidation of student loans; new taxes on student loans totaling $1.82 billion; and $505 million in charges that would occur due to the repeal of a cap on the maximum interest rate for student loans (UW Badger Herald).

Both Boehner and Gutknecht have sterling records for supporting public education. Both, for example, can point to a zero rating from the National Parent Teacher Association (PTA), and both boast a rating of 25 from the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

Yet Boehner benefits well from his association with the folks that issue student loans. For example, according to Ralph Nader,

He has been wined and dined with over $200,000 in campaign contributions to his PAC from individuals affiliated with the private student-loan industry in the 2003-2004 election cycle.

In December 2005, Mr. Boehner reassured a group of Sallie Mae types who wanted reassurance that their cushy deals would continue: "Know that I have all of you in my two trusted hands."

And, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "the student loan companies Sallie Mae and NelNet have provided jets for Boehner."

If House Speaker Dennis Hastert resigns over the Foley scandal — or is "deposed" as some would say — then Boehner stands at the front of the line to take over what is arguably the second most powerful position in the country. In this sense his visit is an honor to MSU Mankato.

But in another sense it's a slap in the face. For no matter how he'll try to spin his votes and positions on higher education, the fact remains that neither he nor Gutknecht have been friends to today's college students.

(Thanks to Bluestem Prairie for keying me to this story.)

Baker Sees Iraq Panel Departing From Bush Strategy

By DAVID E. SANGER
New York Times

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 — James A. Baker III , the Republican co-chairman of a bipartisan commission assessing Iraq strategy for President Bush, said today that he expected the group to depart from Mr. Bush’s call to “stay the course.”

In an interview on the ABC News program “This Week,” Mr. Baker said, “I think it’s fair to say our commission believes that there are alternatives between the stated alternatives, the ones that are out there in the political debate, of ‘stay the course’ and ‘cut and run.’ ”

Mr. Baker, who served Mr. Bush’s father as secretary of state and White House chief of staff, did explicitly reject a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, which he said would only invite Iran, Syria and “even our friends in the gulf” to fill the power vacuum.

While heading the commission, Mr. Baker has been talking to President Bush regularly and is unlikely to issue suggestions that the president has not tacitly approved. The independent panel was requested by Congress. Today, he was asked about statements last week by the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, who said Iraq was “drifting sideways” and urged consideration of a “change of course” if the Iraqi government cannot restore order in two or three months.

Asked if he agreed with that timetable, Mr. Baker said: “Yes, absolutely. And we’re taking a look at other alternatives.”

In interviews over the past two weeks, other members of the Iraq Study Group, an independent organization that came together with the reluctant blessing of the White House, have expressed concern that within months whatever course the group recommends will be overtaken by violence and other developments in Iraq.

“I think the big question is whether we can come up with something before it’s too late,” one member of the commission said late last month, after the group met in Washington. “There’s a real sense that the clock is ticking, that Bush is desperate for a change, but no one in the White House can bring themselves to say so with this election coming. It’s a race between our political calendar and the Iraqis.”

(There's more, here.)

News from southern Minnesota for Oct. 8, Part 2

In his Saturday Campaign Notebook, the Mankato Free Press's Mark Fischenich notes that the next official FEC report will show that Walz has raised close to $850,000 while Gutknecht has already gone over $1 million, making 2006 the most expensive Minnesota CD 1 campaign ever.

My take: It is a sad commentary on our so-called democracy when a candidate's success is measured by how much money he or she can raise. While votes are apportioned across the population on an even basis — i.e., one man/woman, one vote — money is not. Only a small number of Americans give to political campaigns (I've seen the number as low as 4%), and "less than one-tenth of 1 percent give more than $1,000," according to Public Agenda. If money influences elections, which is like saying "if bears crap in the woods," then those who have more money to give obviously affect elections more.

Well, duh!

So then, why do we allow this hugely inequitable system of only slightly hidden graft and corruption? Let's see, going back to grammar school and high school days.... Principles on which our country was founded....

• One man, one vote — check!...
• Freedom from an authoritarian government — check!...
• Freedom from aristocratic control of government — check!...
• Freedom from political corruption — check!...

Can't anyone see that in 2006 THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

As for breaking political news in the 1st CD race...

In the days prior to Rep. John Boehner's visit to Minnesota State University Mankato as the guest of Gil Gutknecht, theoretically to bolster Gutknecht's campaign, Bluestem Prairie is doing an excellent job at delving into Boehner's connections to Foleygate as well as the Delay-GOP corruption machine.

Being a member of the MSUM campus community, I know full well what the reaction will be. The students will say, "Who's this 'Boner' guy?" (It's pronounced "Bayner".) And staff and faculty, at least the ones who know who he is, will for the most part go "Ugh." In short, Gutknecht would be far better off bringing in Schwarzenegger.

Yes, there will be a rally, but attendance will be far less than the 100+ who showed up to hear Amy Klobuchar a few weeks ago. The next quesion is: Will non-GOPers be allowed entry?

Bluestem Prairie also points out Boehner's connections to student loan lender Sallie Mae. Just this past year the lender and the politician collaborated to raise the student loan interest rate and in the process pad everybody's pockets.

But if the GOP isn't good at (a) administrating or (b) telling the truth, they are really darn good at creating a political spin that makes it seem like they are on the side of whatever audience they are talking to. Which means, of course, that they will tell the students that the Republican Party is their best friend and that it stands for making public education more affordable, when in reality the opposite, judging from their voting record, is true.

— LP

The Return of Henry Kissinger

Will we never be free of the malign effect of this little gargoyle?
By Christopher Hitchens
Slate

Bob Woodward's disclosure of the influence of Henry Kissinger on the Bush administration's Iraq policy both is and is not a surprise. After all, we have known for a long time that the bungling old war criminal has his admirers within the White House. Did not the president, almost but not quite incredibly, call on him as the first chairman of the 9/11 commission? Kissinger's initial acceptance of that honor was swiftly withdrawn after it was pointed out—first of all in this space, if I may say so—that he would have to make a full disclosure of the interests of Kissinger Associates in the Middle East. This condition was too much for him. (I added that, since he was wanted for questioning by magistrates in France, Chile, and Argentina, in connection with offenses of state terrorism, his appointment to a position of such high eminence at such a time might expose the United States to ridicule, not to say contempt.)

Then the Bush administration took the decision to appoint Paul Bremer, a former partner of Kissinger Associates, as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Our best friends in Iraq—the Kurds—were immediately alarmed by this fantastically tactless decision. They can never forget how in 1975, having ostensibly backed a Kurdish revolt against Saddam Hussein, Kissinger sold out the rebels in return for a secret deal with the shah of Iran and left them to die unaided on the mountainsides. The story is best told in the Pike committee's report on intelligence, which took a long while to be declassified. Upon arrival, Bremer did not inspire confidence: At an early meeting in northern Iraq, he pointed to a portrait of Gen. Barzani, the national hero of the Kurdish resistance, and asked, "Who's that?" There was a general feeling that he could have been better briefed.

(The rest is here.)

A Capital Gumshoe Hits it Big

Bob Woodward's latest gives the Bush team fits
By Liz Halloran
U.S. News

On its face, it looked like a Washington version of a "did not, did so" schoolyard standoff. But the stakes were a whole lot higher. At issue are the assertions in Bob Woodward's new book about what Bush administration officials knew about the terrorists' plans in the months leading up to 9/11.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insisted she had no recollection of a July 10, 2001, meeting described in Woodward's State of Deial-a meeting at which she was allegedly dismissive of CIA warnings that an attack was imminent. Days later, however, Rice acknowledged through her chief spokesman that she had been briefed by the CIA "on or around" that date-and added that she had instructed her staff to pass on the CIA's information to then Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Rice's embarrassing flip-flop illustrates once again the unique clout that Woodward still wields 3 1/2 decades after he and Carl Bernstein uncovered the Watergate scandal. "When Bob Woodward speaks," says John Walcott, chief of the McClatchy newspaper chain's Washington bureau, "the secretary of state has to respond."

Though it was overshadowed last week by the evolving congressional page scandal, the new book was instantly a No. 1 bestseller, like 10 of the 14 books he has either written or coauthored. Unlike his past two books on the Bush administration, State of Denial takes an unsparing look at the administration's bungled post-invasion policy in Iraq. "This is a do-over," said commentator Arianna Huffington, who is among those who say Woodward's reputation was damaged by his previous favorable "Bush at war" books. "He wants to make it appear that he hasn't changed, the facts on the ground have changed. That's simply not true." Woodward has responded to such criticism by saying his latest round of reporting simply turned up new information.

(The rest is here.)

Iraq's Dark Day of Reckoning

If you were a Shiite, having suffered through a brutal insurgency and an incompetent government, would you give up your weapons?
By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek

Oct. 16, 2006 issue - When Iraq's current government was formed last April, after four months of bitter disputes, wrangling and paralysis, many voices in America and in Iraq said the next six months would be the crucial testing period. That was a fair expectation. It has now been almost six months, and what we have seen are bitter disputes, wrangling and paralysis. Meanwhile, the violence has gotten worse, sectarian tensions have risen steeply and ethnic cleansing is now in full swing. There is really no functioning government south of Kurdistan, only power vacuums that have been filled by factions, militias and strongmen. It is time to call an end to the tests, the six-month trials, the waiting and watching, and to recognize that the Iraqi government has failed. It is also time to face the terrible reality that America's mission in Iraq has substantially failed.

More waiting is unlikely to turn things around, nor will more troops. I understand the impulse of those who want to send in more forces to secure the country. I urged just such a policy from the first week of the occupation. But today we are where we are. Over the past three years the violence has spread and is now franchised down to neighborhoods with local gangs in control. In many areas, local militias are not even controlled by their supposed political masters in Baghdad. In this kind of decentralized street fighting, 10,000 or 20,000 more troops in Baghdad will not have more than a temporary effect. Nor will new American policies help. The reason that the Democrats seem to lack good, concrete suggestions on Iraq is that the Bush administration has actually been pursuing more-sensible policies for more than a year now, trying vainly to reverse many of its errors. But what might well have worked in 2003 is too little, too late in 2006.

Iraq is now in a civil war. Thirty thousand Iraqis have died there in the past three years, more than in many other conflicts widely recognized as civil wars. The number of internal refugees, mostly Sunni victims of ethnic cleansing, has exploded over the past few months, and now exceeds a quarter of a million people. (The Iraqi government says 240,000, but this doesn't include Iraqis who have fled abroad or who may not have registered their move with the government.) The number of attacks on Shiite mosques increases every week: there have been 69 such attacks since February, compared with 80 in the previous two and a half years. And the war is being fought on gruesome new fronts. CBS News's Lara Logan has filed astonishing reports on the Health Ministry, which is run by supporters of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. According to Logan, hospitals in Baghdad and Karbala are systematically killing Sunni patients and then dumping their bodies in mass graves.

Iraq's problem is fundamentally political, not military. Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds need a deal that each can live with. Sen. Joseph Biden has outlined an intelligent power-sharing agreement, but what he, or for that matter George Bush, says doesn't matter. Power now rests with the locals. And the Shiites and the Sunnis have little trust in one another. At this point, neither believes that any deal would be honored once the United States left, which means that each is keeping its own militias as an insurance policy. If you were a Shiite, having suffered through a brutal insurgency and an incompetent government, would you give up your weapons? If you were a Sunni, having watched government-allied death squads kill and ethnic-cleanse your people, would you accept a piece of paper that said that this government will now give you one third of Iraq's oil revenues if you disarm?

(The rest is here.)

Newsweek also covers a story about death squads using the internet:

Death Squads Online
As if things weren't bad enough, now Iraq's sectarian butchers are posting their execution lists on the Internet.
By Christian Caryl and Michael Hastings
Newsweek

Oct. 16, 2006 issue - Not long ago, Mohammed Kika found out that his name had appeared on a London-based Web site run by Sunni exiles from Iraq. The Baghdad man was accused of betraying other Sunnis to a Shiite militia in the mixed neighborhood of Mansour, receiving a $200 bounty for each one he identified. The posting even disclosed the name of the barbershop where Kika could be found. He ran for his life, friends and family told NEWSWEEK. At first he hid out in the Shiite neighborhood of Karrada, and then he fled the country.

Iraq's sectarian war is spreading onto the Web. Some Iraqis, like Kika, have been forced into hiding or exile after being targeted on the Internet. Others may have run too slowly. Sunni and Shiite Web sites offer warnings to Iraqis about neighborhoods and ministries that may have been infiltrated by militias, but the sites are also increasingly used as tools by those seeking names, addresses and occupations of citizens to kill. (NEWSWEEK has found at least eight of these sites, but we have decided not to publish their Web addresses.) The outings are openly endorsed by some Iraqi leaders. Jalal al-Din Saghir, an influential Shiite cleric and parliamentary deputy, sponsors several sites. "Some of the Web sites can be used to catch spies by tracking their movements," he told NEWSWEEK.

(That story continues here.)

Catching up on the news from southern Minnesota

by Leigh Pomeroy

I have been far too quiet on these pages. Between teaching 215 students about film, refereeing far more soccer games than my left knee wants to allow, trying to rewrite a screenplay before a writing partner pitches it in Hollywood, celebrating a birthday and more — well, there just isn't enough time.

Real good "breaking" news isn't easy to come by in this part of the world, but there is lots going on.

No doubt the biggest story is the 1st Congressional District race between incumbent Republican Gil Gutknecht and his challenger, teacher Tim Walz. The political analysts in Washington are saying the race is Gutknecht's to lose, but credit Walz with putting on a strong showing and with possibly an outside chance to win. Gutknecht's advantage is primarily due to what might be called "the fundamentals":

• Recent electoral history tells us over 95% of congressional incumbents are returned to office.
• In the last two elections, Gutknecht prevailed over his DFL opponent by 25 percentage points. (Note: I was the candidate in 2004.)
• Gutknecht has significantly more money to work with than Walz. At last count Gutknecht has raised $915,621 in the 2005-06 election cycle and with $840,016 in the bank, while Walz has garnered $545,653 with only $243,955 cash on hand.
• Southern Minnesota is not suffering any particular economic trauma. Unemployment rate is low, only 2% according to MPR. Corn prices are up due to the demand for ethanol. Housing prices are steady and interest rates are still reasonable.
• Though the district is fairly evenly split among Republicans, Democrats and independents, it has historically been conservative, whether represented by a Republican or a Democrat, the last one being Tim Penny (1983-95).

However, analysts geographically closer to the race argue that the 1st is a different breed of cat, and that indeed 2006 may be the year for a turnover. Here are the reasons:

• The DFL candidate, Tim Walz, is the most appealing since Tim Penny. He's young (42), a veteran (24 years in the Minnesota National Guard with a tour in Italy supporting Operation Enduring Freedom), a teacher (Minnesotans revere education), a good speaker and a tireless campaigner.
• Like the rest of the country, the Iraq war weighs heavily on the minds of southern Minnesota voters. Save for an announcement that Gutknecht made upon returning from a brief stint in Iraq that the occupation was not going as planned, the congressman has been a solid supporter of the President's foreign policy. Walz, on the other hand, leaning on his veteran status, has questioned the Iraq commitment.
• While the economy looks good on paper, most southern Minnesotans are not getting ahead. MPR lists a poverty level of 8% and a per capita income of only $19,889 in the 1st Congressional District, third lowest of all Minnesota's congressional districts. Further, the seats of the two districts with a lower per capita income, the 7th and the 8th, are held by Democrats slated to win easy reelection.
• Of the three predominantly rural congressional seats, the 1st is the only one held by a Republican. Again, the 7th and 8th are the other two.
• In terms of statistical measures, including per capita income, housing costs, and the percentage of the population without a high school diploma, the 1st shows demographics more aligned with Minnesota's Democratic districts than its Republican ones.
• In the 2004 elections, DFLers in the district took three State House seats from incumbent Republicans.
  
• Southern Minnesotans are split-ticket voters. While a solid core of perhaps 20-25% of each party will vote a straight ticket, the remaining voters, anywhere from 50% to 60% will think nothing of voting across party lines.

There is a greater excitement among Democrats for candidate Walz than in perhaps all the previous elections since 1994. That same excitement is not found among traditional Republicans for Gutknecht for several reasons:

• Gutknecht broke his "Contract with America" pledge not to run for more than six terms, a pledge that was a key campaign promise in his initial 1994 campaign.
• His support for the Iraq war, which even Republicans are tired of.
• His cautious support for the DM&E Railroad expansion project, which is strongly opposed by his historical base in Rochester, including the region's largest employer, the Mayo Clinic.
• The ballooning federal deficit.
• An overall general discontent with Congress.

In short, the word-of-mouth is good on Walz but almost nonexistent for Gutknecht. How all this translates, of course, won't finally play out till November 7th — or later, if the election is close.

Those interested in the race can follow it in the national media, but sources closer to the district offer incisive and often more complete insight. These include the blogs A Bluestem Prairie, Minnesota Monitor, MNPublius, Minnesota Campaign Report and Minnesota Central, among others.

The principal newspapers of the district include the Rochester Post-Bulletin, Mankato Free Press, the Winona Daily News, the Austin Daily Herald, the Albert Lea Tribune and the Worthington Daily Globe. (Unfortunately, the Post-Bulletin's website is essentially closed to all but its subscribers.) The two college newspapers of southern Minnesota's largest public universities, Minnesota State University Mankato and Winona State University, provide election coverage from the student point of view.

As for broadcast, the key television stations are KAAL (Austin/Rochester), KTTC (Rochester), KXLT (Rochester), KEYC (Mankato), KIMT (Mason City, Iowa), plus the principal Twin Cities stations, which are available throughout the district by cable, and the Sioux Falls, SD, stations, from which viewers in the southwest portion of Minnesota get most of their news.

Finally, YouTube is becoming a huge source for political information, including of political ads, debates and campaign videos. Search for videos with Gutknecht here and Walz here.

Molly Ivins: Return of the War Criminal

truthdig
Posted on Oct 5, 2006

By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas—The Old War Criminal is back. I try not to hold grudges, but I must admit I have never lost one ounce of rancor toward Henry Kissinger, that cynical, slithery, self-absorbed pathological liar. He has all the loyalty and principle of Charles Talleyrand, whom Napoleon described as “a piece of dung in a silk stocking.”

Come to think of it, Talleyrand looks pretty good compared with Kissinger, who always aspired to be Metternich (a 19th-century Austrian diplomat). Just count the number of Americans and Vietnamese who died between 1969 and 1973 and see if you can find any indication he ever gave a damn.

As for Kissinger’s getting the Nobel Peace Prize, it is a thing so wrong it has come to define wrongness—as in, “As weird as the time Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Tom Lehrer, who was a lovely political satirist, gave up satire after that blow.

The War Criminal’s return is the only piece of news I have yet found in Bob Woodward’s new book, and what amazes me is the reaction to the work. Gosh, gasp, imagine, Woodward says the war’s a disaster!

People who know a lot more than Bob Woodward have been saying the war’s a disaster for years—because war is self-evidently a disaster. Why this is greeted as an annunciation from on high just because Woodward, the world’s most establishment reporter, now says so is a mystery to me.

(The rest is here.)

Bush’s Useful Idiots

Tony Judt on the Strange Death of Liberal America

London Review of Books

Why have American liberals acquiesced in President Bush’s catastrophic foreign policy? Why have they so little to say about Iraq, about Lebanon, or about reports of a planned attack on Iran? Why has the administration’s sustained attack on civil liberties and international law aroused so little opposition or anger from those who used to care most about these things? Why, in short, has the liberal intelligentsia of the United States in recent years kept its head safely below the parapet?

It wasn’t always so. On 26 October 1988, the New York Times carried a full-page advertisement for liberalism. Headed ‘A Reaffirmation of Principle’, it openly rebuked Ronald Reagan for deriding ‘the dreaded L-word’ and treating ‘liberals’ and ‘liberalism’ as terms of opprobrium. Liberal principles, the text affirmed, are ‘timeless. Extremists of the right and of the left have long attacked liberalism as their greatest enemy. In our own time liberal democracies have been crushed by such extremists. Against any encouragement of this tendency in our own country, intentional or not, we feel obliged to speak out.’

The advertisement was signed by 63 prominent intellectuals, writers and businessmen: among them Daniel Bell, J.K. Galbraith, Felix Rohatyn, Arthur Schlesinger Jr, Irving Howe and Eudora Welty. These and other signatories – the economist Kenneth Arrow, the poet Robert Penn Warren – were the critical intellectual core, the steady moral centre of American public life. But who, now, would sign such a protest? Liberalism in the United States today is the politics that dares not speak its name. And those who style themselves ‘liberal intellectuals’ are otherwise engaged. As befits the new Gilded Age, in which the pay ratio of an American CEO to that of a skilled worker is 412:1 and a corrupted Congress is awash in lobbies and favours, the place of the liberal intellectual has been largely taken over by an admirable cohort of ‘muck-raking’ investigative journalists – Seymour Hersh, Michael Massing and Mark Danner, writing in the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books.

The collapse of liberal self-confidence in the contemporary US can be variously explained. In part it is a backwash from the lost illusions of the 1960s generation, a retreat from the radical nostrums of youth into the all-consuming business of material accumulation and personal security. The signatories of the New York Times advertisement were born in most cases many years earlier, their political opinions shaped by the 1930s above all. Their commitments were the product of experience and adversity and made of sterner stuff. The disappearance of the liberal centre in American politics is also a direct outcome of the deliquescence of the Democratic Party. In domestic politics liberals once believed in the provision of welfare, good government and social justice. In foreign affairs they had a longstanding commitment to international law, negotiation, and the importance of moral example. Today, a spreading me-first consensus has replaced vigorous public debate in both arenas. And like their political counterparts, the critical intelligentsia once so prominent in American cultural life has fallen silent.

(The rest is here.)