Had a gorgeous shrimp dinner tonight. But most of all.... I'm looking forward to my breakfast of coco-pebbles.

Beach Blog

Any and all blogging this week is coming to you from the beautiful outer banks of NC. I intend to spend my reading time with real paper. And this morning, while sitting on the porch, I read two fine essays in the (real paper form) NYTimes. I commend them both. First, we have Stanley Fish rejecting the arguments that Justice Thomas' dissent in the Michiga Aff. Act. case was based on personal anomosity. It is as much a discussion of legal theory than anything else- and establishes Thomas' viewpoint- wherefrom his decision is perfectly logical.
Next, again I am with Safire. Read his essay on homosexual marriage. Well. Maybe I don't absolutely agree- but I think I'm with his conclusion- "if you're worried about family values, stop griping and do you're job at bettering your own."

Telemarketers be damned...

A national do-not-call registry will open Friday for anyone who wants to block sales calls.

"Online registration will be available at www.donotcall.gov, officials said. The trade commission has staggered phone registration to handle the large volume of calls expected. Residents of states west of the Mississippi, including Minnesota and Louisiana, may register by phone starting Friday at 12:01 a.m.. The entire country will be able to register by phone as of July 7. The phone number is (888) 382-1222. The registry will go into effect Oct. 1."
-Ny Times

Late Edition quotes of the day

Today's quotes arrive from the very same source- the "Breakfast Table" email conversation between Walter Dellinger and Dahlia Lithwick. Dellinger is a lawyer and local law professor, Ms Lithwick is a Slate editor.
First to Dellinger...and this is purely local favoritism on my part:

I did head down to Sutton's Drugstore yesterday (a Chapel Hill landmark since 1923) to see what the regulars at the breakfast counter were talking about, but, by the time I got there, almost everyone had eaten and left for work. George Tomasic, our barber, and realtor Jim Crisp, who were leaving as I arrived, offered to tell me what everybody said at breakfast so I could write it up as if I had been there. I was tempted, but then I remembered that whole New York Times fiasco. I'd hate to see my brief career in journalism come to such an early and ignoble conclusion. ("Exposed Breakfast Table Essayist Is Toast!"�New York Post)

(good to see ole Sutton's Drugs getting full fledged e-props.)

And here, from Ms. Lithwick's responding email:

But instead we have Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, using the broader substantive due process rationale (you may remember it from such favorites as Roe v. Wade) to carve out a zone of privacy for consensual gay sex! O'Connor declined to overrule Bowers, a decision in which she had joined the misguided majority, but still sided with the majority today to invalidate the Texas law, on the Equal Protection grounds you outlined this morning. My goodness, could Kennedy and O'Connor have had some sort of conversion�some Dickensian visitation? Did the ghost of Justice Warren appear to them in the night, terrorizing them with visions of an apocalyptic America where strict construction and originalism blight the land?

Lawrence v. Texas:

There are many nuggets in Kennedy's opinion. Towards the end, Kennedy opines on the lack of specific wording in the Constitution that protects the fundamental rights that the court finds under substantive due process:

"As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom."

Wow. That's sure to grate Scalia's nerve.

NY Times and WAPO both reporting--via AP-- the sodomy law has been struck down...
more soon.

Update:
Ruling is 6-3; Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, joined Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. O'Conner concurrs in part.


Here is Kennedy's opinion.

Affirmative
I've been seeing and hearing some good discussions on the cases. Had a good talk last night about the precedential possibilities of O'Conner's opinion. More on my own thoughts soon.
For now, here's one of the more comprhensive discussions- Michael Dorf from Findlaw.

And this, from the WSJ.

Those damn Chapel Hill snobs...
(from the Onion) Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Own a Television
"CHAPEL HILL, NC�Area resident Jonathan Green does not own a television, a fact he repeatedly points out to friends, family, and coworkers�as well as to his mailman, neighborhood convenience-store clerks, and the man who cleans the hallways in his apartment building.

"I, personally, would rather spend my time doing something useful than watch television," Green told a random woman Monday at the Suds 'N' Duds Laundromat, noticing the establishment's wall-mounted TV. 'I don't even own one.'"
...
""I'm not an elitist," Green said. "It's just that I'd much rather sculpt or write in my journal or read Proust than sit there passively staring at some phosphorescent screen.""

I've said in more than a few posts that my fear re the Iraq situation is that either 1) Bush Lied (or some other phrase that might capture the subtleties of misleading a nation) OR 2) the weapons existed in all the gory detail that was presented to us- and have now been looted off into unknown hands (either terrorists or just folks looking to grab anything they can). Either option is bad. The third option, of course, is the 'we haven't found them, but all the weapons will be found undesturbed...stop worrying.' This option I am less inclined to believe than the option that Santa Claus elighted away with the weapons to put them safely away.
It looks more and more like we will have a situation between options one and two. Bush used faulty info, AND what weapons did exist (and what non-weapon-but-still-dangerous-material did exist) is now gone into the hands of either bad folks or unsuspecting folks looking for a spare container.
Read this, from the BBC. I linked to it from Josh Marshall's page. And as he says, it is indeed scary.

Reads for Today

Go read the recent decisions.

Powell on Mugabe:
"The United States � and the European Union � has imposed a visa ban on Zimbabwe's leaders and frozen their overseas assets. We have ended all official assistance to the government of Zimbabwe. We have urged other governments to do the same. We will persist in speaking out strongly in defense of human rights and the rule of law. And we will continue to assist directly, in many different ways, the brave men and women of Zimbabwe who are resisting tyranny."

Krugman on deception:
"So why are so many people making excuses for Mr. Bush and his officials?

Part of the answer, of course, is raw partisanship. One important difference between our current scandal and the Watergate affair is that it's almost impossible now to imagine a Republican senator asking, "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"

But even people who aren't partisan Republicans shy away from confronting the administration's dishonest case for war, because they don't want to face the implications.

After all, suppose that a politician � or a journalist � admits to himself that Mr. Bush bamboozled the nation into war. Well, launching a war on false pretenses is, to say the least, a breach of trust. So if you admit to yourself that such a thing happened, you have a moral obligation to demand accountability � and to do so in the face not only of a powerful, ruthless political machine but in the face of a country not yet ready to believe that its leaders have exploited 9/11 for political gain. It's a scary prospect.

Yet if we can't find people willing to take the risk � to face the truth and act on it � what will happen to our democracy?"

Grutter v. Bollinger (Michigan Law School):

So far I've only read the law school case that O'Conner wrote. It seems largely an affirmation of Bakke.
The Justice really sticks to the same nutshell that we get from that case- no quotas, but a goal of diversity is OK. Indeed, the first legal analysis segment of the opinion is an extended brief of Powell's opinion in Bakke. To wit, O'Conner uphold's Powell's notion that diversity can serve as a compelling government objective, in no small part because of the longstanding notion of academic freedom--courts ought to give deference to a school's decisions of what makes for better education.
That said, the equal protection argument runs through the the two prongs -- 1) compelling interest that must be 2) narrowly tailored to that interest -- very tightly holding the hands of the Bakke decision.
"The freedom of a university to make its own judgements as to education includes the selection of its student body." says O'Conner, quoting Bakke at 312. That freedom being available, O'Conner is able to list off all the benefits that Michigan and the famous Amici Curiae listed; my law school mentioned the bringing up of the future leader class, several CEOs wrote about the benefits of diversity; as well as the most famous friend of the court brief from the military officers.
Prong two asks whether the school has sufficiently fine-tuned the policy. The first requirement here is that the program not be a quota system. A quota is a "program in which a certain fixed number or proportion of opportunities are 'reserved exclusively for certain minority groups.'"
O'Conner then discusses the same Harvard goals-oriented program that Powell used in Bakke as an example of a permissible policy that is not a quota or set-aside. While such a program (in Michigan, a goal for a 'critical mass') does consider race- that consideration is a flexible one...indeed, that flexibility is one of the crucial elements that prevents the program from being deemed a quota.
Another major factor for the court is that the applicant is evaluated as an individual rather than as a member of a particular group. The later classification lends itself to acceptance based on a "single 'soft' variable."
Quoting Bakke, O'Conner notes that, "like the Harvard plan, the Law School's admissions policy is flexible enough to consider all pertinent elements of diversity in light of the particular qualifications of each applicant, and to place them on the same footing for consideration, although not necessarily according to the same weight." Grutter, quoting Bakke at 317. The point that O'Conner wants to drive home is that the Law School notes the race of the applicant, and does so with the goal in mind of a critical mass, but the racial status of an applicant is simply a factor counting to the individual nature of that applicant.
Finally, narrowly tailoring does not require that the government use every alternate facially neutral avenue available. Rather, there must be "serious, good faith consideration of workable race-neutral alternatives that will acheive the diversity the university seeks." O'Conner lists some proposed alternatives (a lottery and lower admission standards) and rejects them--the school would have to sacrifice its "educational mission" of being a highly selective institution.
Of note, the court rejects the plan that the White house offered--to admit a certain percent of students from every high school in the state. Such a plan "may preclude the university from conducting the individualized assessments necessary to assemble a student body that is not just racially diverse, but diverse along all the qualities valued by the university." It seems to me that O'Conner sees in a percentage plan just the kind of group-admissions rather than individual-admissions that she finds bothersome in quotas. I had not thought of that argument (I had only dismissed the percentage plands as being overly-reliant on segregated schools).

Finally, comes the suggestion of a sunset on the program upheld; what will certainly become a famous bit of this opinion-- the 25 year provision. O'Conner projects that in 25 years this type of policy will no longer be constitutional permitted because it will not be sufficiantly needed in order to acheive the goal of diversity. As of now, I assume this is part of the second prong analysis- that the program is norrowly tailored. Justice Thomas attacks the argument- saying that what is constitutional in 25 years is constitutional now. But he seems to miss the logical boat here. O'Conner makes no suggestion that the Constitution will change. Rather, she guesses that in 25 years, a conscious look at a person's race on an application won't be needed in order to fill the diversity goal. It is a sociological prediction about the context of this policy in the future, in that such context is a key factor as to the reasonableness and the need for such a program.

More later.

Affirmative Action Ruling has Come Out

I'm off to give it a read-
looks like the law school's critical-mass goal system was upheld and the undergrad point-system was held to be a de facto quota.

More soon.

Update:

Washington Post writeup here; law school opinion here, (O'conner); undergrad opinion here (Rehnquist).

Update II:

Professor Balkin blogs about the decison here.

I've been meaning to link to this for awhile now. The best..(finally they showed some emotion) writing from TNR last week.
This week, there's a new best. More later.

Lessig on Edwards

Professor Lessig puts his two cents into whether the candidates should sport blogs. quite obviously, Lessig supports the idea- noting Dean's success so far with his own blog. and that's basically the point of his post- but i found his language on Edwards very sweet, so i quote a large chunk below.

"The experts say Dean can�t win. I�m no expert, so what do I know. So far I�ve only met the one man Karl Rove seems most afraid of � Edwards. As I�ve blogged, I think a great deal of the Senator. Indeed, he is the first politician to inspire in a very long time.
Edwards� campaign is run by a bunch of experts. They resist the fads of the net. They have a fancy website that feels like a 4th of July commercial. There is relatively little direct contact. There is very little of a bottom-up feel.
That�s all part of the strategy, they say, and again, who am I to question it. The plan is that Edwards should place in the first two primaries. But because he will have more money than anyone, he will sweep the next 20. So going slow, saving resources, etc., is the strategy. And he is sticking to the plan.
That may be right. But I would think what the campaign against President Bush needs is the passion and commitment that is spilling out everywhere on the web � mainly for candidates other than Edwards. How much could it cost to open a channel to enable this bottom-up rally? How bad would it really be to give Madison Avenue a rest?
It just seems weird to me: between the son of a mill worker, and the son of an investment banker, which would you expect to run the populist campaign, in style if not in substance?"

Dispite that this is basicaly a criticism of the absent grass roots of the Edwards campaign, Lessig seems unassuming and careful not to sound like a consultant expert. In any event, I'm thinking i agree with all his sentiments. Edwards is my guy, but i wonder how much harm there could be in having a little official Edwards blog on the side.
But, back to Lessig on Edwards: he refers to another post on Edwards. Here's a bit from that:

"But there was something different in this candidate this time. There was nothing crafted or rhetorical: it was simple and direct. And yet he seemed to ache when talking about the things he thought wrong. He spoke of the hatred that bad diplomacy is building around the world, and the crowd was pin-drop-silent as he reminded them of growing up as a nation thought the hero of the world. He spoke of civil rights � an easy topic in San Francisco � but he described speaking of civil rights, and his support for affirmative action, in town halls in North Carolina. And most importantly, he has a knack for understanding how to confront hard questions directly: Someone asked him whether he would go into Iraq without a second resolution, and he understood that here in San Francisco, peace capital of the Americas, the �correct� answer is �no�. But he looked straight into the eyes of the questioner and said he would: he believed Bush had totally fumbled the lead up to this war, and he was sickened by how much we had lost in the build up to this war, but he believed the Iraqi president had to go."

Yup, I think that post is a good read.

Why it matters...

Matt Yglesias has a superb note on the importance of the WMD issue. I've been in various discussions with folks who either do not think the issue matters (WMD was just one of several reasons to oust Hussein) or think that, even if WMD was a major reason, the good of ousting Hussein outweighs the bad of having had some misinformation on motives. Those of you who have gripes...i refer you to the comments section.
I think Matt does a superb job responding to the later reasoning ( 'would you rather Hussein still be in power'). Here's McCain's voicing of that line:

"Does anyone believe that the United States, the Iraqi people or the Arab world would be better off if Hussein were still in power, if 8-year-old children were still held in Iraqi prisons, if Hussein were still threatening his neighbors?"

To be sure, that seems logical. The problem is in its over-simplification. Here's Matt:

"Of course in one sense it's not a complicated question at all. Saddam Hussein was a very bad man running a very bad regime and I'm not going to shed any tears over its departure from the scene. Nevertheless, as conservatives more than anyone ought to realize, one can't evaluate the merits of a government program by simply looking at whether or not it has accomplished anything good. Rather, one needs to consider whether or not the initiative in question accomplished more good than the available alternatives.

Consider a town where ten houses simultaneously catch fire and the local authorities only have the resources to put out one blaze. Seven of the houses, fortunately, are unoccupied, but one contains a single person trapped inside, while a second house contains a likewise trapped family and a third house has two cats inside. Then the fire marshal arrives on the scene brandishing a stack of evidence purporting to show that hidden behind the walls of the cat house is a secret day care center and dozens of small children will burn alive if the fire isn't put out. The trucks come, the house is saved while the other nine burn, and then the firefighters come inside only to discover that there was no daycare center after all, just the cats. All of a sudden the sudden the town is in an uproar - the fire marshal got the facts all wrong. Then the marshal turns to his critics, points at the saved cats and asks 'would it really have been better if I'd just let these cats die?'"
...
"So from the point of view of American security is it a good thing that Saddam Hussein is gone?

The answer, in a sense, is yes, but it would have been a far better thing if the Bush administration had focused on these other more pressing problems rather than choosing the glamour of a conventional war. From a purely humanitarian perspective, too, while those Iraqis who haven't yet been killed by errant bombs or lack of clean water will be better off than they would have been under Saddam Hussein, the world has hardly become such a pleasant place that there was nothing else the United States could have done to help. Money could simply have been spent on foreign aid, or if military actions are your cup of tea the US could have contributed to peacekeeping operations in the Congo or in Liberia. Everyone knows that America doesn't have the capacity to do everything it would be nice to do - we must choose our battles, both literally and figuratively. This is why finding weapons of mass destruction matters, not because I harbor nostalgia for the Ba'athist state but because I want to know whether or not the president has chosen wisely."

I've clipped alot- its really good in its entirety though, so go give a read.
Here's what I want to know from those dissenters of this post- do you agree that it is important, in a patriotic sense (national pride) that we find out whether 1) there are WMD, 2) if no, was intellegence screwed, 3) if intellegence wasn't screwed, were we misled, 4) if we were misled, is that particularly bad in light of it being war?

Tampering with the evidence; Does the White House morph all their data into what they want to hear?

The EPA has, since 2001, been preparing a comprehensive report on threatening environmental problems. It sent a draft to the White House, and the White House edited it. Today's NY Times has the story. For instance:
"Among the deletions were conclusions about the likely human contribution to warming from a 2001 report on climate by the National Research Council that the White House had commissioned and that President Bush had endorsed in speeches that year. White House officials also deleted a reference to a 1999 study showing that global temperatures had risen sharply in the previous decade compared with the last 1,000 years. In its place, administration officials added a reference to a new study, partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute, questioning that conclusion."

The American Petroleum Institute? Sheez. I'm sure they are the paradigm of disinterested research.

Odd thing. This sounds almost like selecting to hear only hints of nuclear buildup in Iraq...and ignoring the contrary data...
Seems to be a nasty habit.

Update: I see the American Prospect has taken notice as well.

Frisell

So, this blog is supposed to reflect on art, eh? A frisell review is upcoming. Made a mix cd (2003 hi-fid) for Ms. Chrissy, and she likes it. Here's her words: "Its a damn good cd for road trips."

Upcoming is a review, my first on here, of the recent "intercontinentals"-- For starters, its both the comfort we've come to expect from the man, but with more fizzle than recent outputs.

Superchunk

When the maki is only a dollar a pop, constant stream of japanamation on one screen, baseball on the other, when lime-marinated tuna with cilantro goes so well weth seaweed and the entire staff yells out every time we drink a sake bomb, I think I understand why Rusan's Sushi has become my default dinner plan. I'd like to think I got the bandwagon rolling on sake bombs last night (someone had to do it, it was ladies night)...and after said drink, I was offered a box of pocky. First time having it. But now I feel that much more connected to the great Chapel Hill songsters, and why there is, indeed, no pocky for kitty.

Posner for President

Well...at least we can hope the President goes for Posner. As I read the jurist's Sex and Reason, (the guide to efficient sex? the market solutions to sex?), I adopt Professor Balkin's plea the Posner find a spot on Bush's court with increased enthusiasm.

Wonder how far this story will go. [Parallel question: How soon will a Richard Perle call Laura Blumenfeld "closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist"?]*
The article from the front of today's WaPo is further along the lines of Mr. Chait's important work, "The 9/10 President; Bush's Abysmal Failure on Homeland Security."
And note (as I am learning with more discussions)- simply labeling these issue as firestarters and unsubstantialted Bush-dislike does not make them go away. Well. Actually it does make them go away from the public conscious, as the Rove-minded folks are so aware. But for those of us with legitimate national security concerns- and who feel at un-ease with the two linked reports above- I await debate on the merits. Read the articles, and respond with something other than "that's all just conspiracy." Unless, of course, you can show me Chait and a three decade "fair minded" government intellegence worker are really just out to blow smoke.

* The Perle incident, from Blitzer's interview, seems an appropriate object of inspection here. Perle responded to Sy Hersh's very thoughtful investigation into possible conflicts of interest by calling the investigator a terrorist. It seemed lost on Perle that these things, and even the possibility of these things, matter- not the least when the country contemplates war.
But, of more importance, we see Perle, in the same interview, giving the classic reasoning that was used over and over in response to the 'we can contain Hussein, why go to war now' argument:
"PERLE: The concept of containment is a geographic concept. As long as he's in his own country, people argue that he is contained. But the fact is, he is working away, as he has been, at weapons of mass destruction. He has significant concealed inventories, and he can break out at any moment."
What does "break out at any moment" mean? As far as I can tell, it is further suggestion along the Bush-fed notions that unmanned drones would fly over to America and drop Iraqi nuclear bombs. Hmmm. Would Perle now denounce that the threat that he relies on here was what drove the popular perception allowing for a vote-getting war?

Important Talking Point from Mr. Marshall today

My wishes are granted

One might note that I griped about the lack of discussion around the real philosophy of the tax-cutting scheme: an idea of ending federal level support for government programs- a kindof, 'if you want it, you pay for it' notion. I wondered why the goods or evils of this philosophy haven't been the center of political debate. But happily, I have reason to think the muses of political discourse have heard my call.
Go read (of all people to get this going) Friedman's article in yesterday's Times. Why?
"I would suggest that henceforth Democrats simply ask voters to substitute the word "services" for the word "taxes" every time they hear President Bush speak.

That is, when the president says he wants yet another round of reckless "tax cuts," which will shift huge burdens to our children, Democrats should simply refer to them as "service cuts," because that is the only way these tax cuts will be paid for � by cuts in services. Indeed, the Democrats' bumper sticker in 2004 should be: 'Read my lips, no new services. Thank you, President Bush.'"

I realize Friedman has not responded with this article to my blog- and that is the source of my happiness...folks out there must be voicing the same desire for this debate. Keep it up.

The outlook of Potential Court Challenges to FCC's recent Rulemaking
Gina Dizzia,a recent graduate of Duke University School of Law, has a piece in today's Findalw on the possible challenges to the deregulation. In a nutshell, they'll all fail. But the article gives a nice summary of the precedent.

there's always a law professor that can say it better. go read Professor Balkin's June 5th post.

Despite the voting majority's apparent complacency with our country's use of force in Iraq (Republican pollsters insist Americans don't care why we went to war anymore...only that some soldiers leveled a statue), for the thinking public the issue is crucial--for no lesser reason, as Alterman noted yesterday, than the preservation of a meaningful democracy. Here's Alterman:

"Thomas Friedman, America�s most influential voice on foreign affairs, openly gave Bush and company a pass for �hyping� the WMD threat and taking the nation to war under deliberately false pretenses. And now here�s Fred Hiatt, op-ed page editor of The Washington Post on same:
In the end, though, those who hope the terrorist threat has been overstated are likely to be as disappointed as those who believe Saddam Hussein had no chemical or biological weapons program. Given the catastrophic damage that a small group could wreak with a biological agent or nuclear weapon, and the hatred of the West still being taught in schools in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and elsewhere, today�s vigilance is preferable to yesterday�s complacency, and the reorientation Bush imposed after 9/11 was as justified as it was belated.
Let us note first the false analogy. Almost no one is saying there are no WMDs in Iraq. I certainly am not. How in the world would I know? Perhaps there are and perhaps there aren�t. But it is quite obvious that there is nothing like the quantity the administration insisted was there when they took America on its fateful course toward pre-emptive war and international opprobrium. It is also clear that the administration knew that its alleged evidence was, in Colin Powell�s cogent phrasing, �bull****.� Note that Hiatt does not even bother to address the issue of whether the administration was being truthful with Americans when it convinced them to go to war. He refers to the administration�s dishonesty as �vigilance.� It these be the words of our gatekeepers, than the door to dishonesty is wide open, and meaningful democracy is all but impossible. "

Alterman has a point. Especially in this sense, and let me use my own view of this situation as an example:
My disappointment is not in a fallen Iraq. My disappointment was not in the desire to see Hussein go (much as I want to see Mugabe and a host of others go). And I agree that Iraq may well had every desire to build up whatever weapons they could.
Rather, my dismay is in the dishonest, manipulative rhetoric used to garner voter support for the war; and my fear rests in the potential harm resulting from a hasty attack--especially the last drive to Baghdad--that appears to have allowed what weapons and material that did exist to drift off into the hands of looters...soon to be in the hands of who-knows?!
So. Back to Democracy and Alterman. As Joe Voter, I might say this: "Bush, when you spoke of Iraqi drones attacking Americans, I trusted you. When you spoke of the nightmare of Iraqi bombs leaving mushroom clouds above our country, and the real possibility of that nightmare becoming reality, I trusted you. And when you spoke of the undesirable result of inaction, that very soon, Iraq would be in the same position as North Korea, I trusted you. Because of these things, I could supported the war. ( I might have supported it for merely humanitarian reasons...but I wondered why you did not also go to war under such a pretense against several other dictators...thus I figured, as you suggested, that we had a two-pronged purpose, with WMD being the major prong). Well, Bush, you led me to believe we could only end the threat of Iraq with force. And with our military entry, we would stop the weapons manufacturing and prevent the remnants from falling into the hands of anyone wanting to do our country harm. And now, Mr Bush, you leave me dismayed. I do not feel safer, as you promised. If you were right about the weapons, then it appears they have been looted away- and I fear when and how we will ultimately see them. Why, Mr. Bush, were we able to secure the oil fields, but not the weapons facilities that you knew so much about? I have no choice but to blame you if those weapons (or any dangerous material remaining from weapons programs) are now in the hands of terrorists. If you were wrong about the weapons, then I cannot trust your analysis any longer...or you lied. But most painful to me is my feeling of helplessness. Supporting war, you know, is a major decision. If I supported it on a basis of manipulations, then what value am I to this democracy...other than to be your pawn? This is WAR, Mr. Bush. Half-truths based on a biased view of intellegence has led to a nation's voters endorsing destruction."

Will Joe-Voter get a straight answer?
Next post: is half-truthing your way to a war impeachable?

Go read the list of quotes on WMD from the Administration

Krugman today:

"There is no longer any doubt that the man who ran as a moderate in the 2000 election is actually a radical who wants to undo much of the Great Society and the New Deal.

Look at it this way: as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, this latest tax cut reduces federal revenue as a share of G.D.P. to its lowest level since 1959. That is, federal taxes are now back to what they were in an era when Medicare and Medicaid didn't exist, and Social Security was still a minor expense. How can we maintain these programs, which have become essential to scores of millions of Americans, at today's tax rates? We can't."

And again...where's the debate?

Those Tax and Spend Republicans...; or, 'the real Alabama conservative'

I will take (and assume the reader takes as well) blogger-notice of the political philosophy involved; more specifically, one of the cores of conservative political thinking, that taxing and spending ought to be done more at the state level than federal level. Conservative cuts at the federal level have the intended consequence of strangling federal programs- and if states then want to pick those programs up, and collect the taxes necessary, have at it. The Democratic opposition to this (mine anyway) is that federal programs are in fact more effeicient, and more importantly, more capable of doing their intended good than would be state programs. But in any event, this is a noble and potentially thoughtful political discussion that deserves to be openly and honestly played out without cheap political rhetoric.
(dissents to these opening presumptions...please voice off in 'comments' below.)
Right. So here we are at part two of the Bush Tax Cut series. It should be quite obvious to any clear thinker that the tax cuts do not establish a federal spending capability to suffice the future needs of federal programs- and that these cuts are designed to further the affore-presumed conservative theory of heavier state taxing and spending than is now present. (again, dissenters, have at it). In my mind, this is the controlling power's objective. And thus I am sad to see the open and honest debate on whether this political theory is a good idea, feasible, better for the country, ...et al. Indeed, even if this is not the objective...even if the powers that be really believe in the pie in the sky notion that the tax cuts are fiscally responsible and will maintain the current federal spendings, doesn't it seem the theory ought to be brought up- at least to say, 'this isn't what's on our mind, trust us.'?
well. it seems we are seeing the proof of our presumptions coming about...oddly to the shock of many. Here's a slice of the NY Times story on Alabama's Gov. Riley's proposed tax hikes:
"Bob Riley, styles himself after Ronald Reagan, complete with a pompadour and campaign photos that show him on horseback. Philosophically, too, he is an avowed Reaganite who says he never voted for a tax increase in six years in Congress and was once named its most conservative member.
Yet this same Mr. Riley has stunned his state and his party, and risked his political future, by calling for Alabama's largest tax increase ever: $1.3 billion, or 22 percent of the taxes the state now collects.
What is more, this conservative Republican wants not merely to raise taxes but to redistribute money from the wealthy to Alabama's working poor.
In one fell swoop, it seems, Mr. Riley is trying to overhaul what many here in Montgomery acknowledge is one of the nation's most dysfunctional state governments, and drag Alabama's finances, schools and prisons into the 21st century � if not, some might say, the 20th."
Now, I've included enough language to raise the argument that I'm wrong- that the proposed tax cuts are in response to specific circumstances in Alabama rather than to diminishing federal funds. And that may be so. But, as a stridant conservative, it seems to me perfectly consistent that the Riley would want higher state taxes as opposed to higher fed taxes- and that he'd look to state programs to improve the state as opposed to federal funds.
In sum, my complaint is this: if the tax policy is suspiciously alligned to the age-old conservative theory above enumerated, why aren't we talking about and debating that policy? Let's get going.

Seems i don't cite often enough to ol' spinsanity. well go read this.
"In response to increased criticism that the United States government has so far not found any evidence to support its repeated assertions that there were banned biological, chemical, and/or nuclear weapons in Iraq, President Bush's is now claiming that "we found the weapons of mass destruction."This statement is flat out false according to the evidence presented by his own administration, however. "