Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Every day Vance writes another chapter in the book called “Worst VP Pick Ever”.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

Another missed opportunity for Jamie Dimon to just shut the fuck up.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

If you’re looking for someone who’s young and athletic, go watch a fucking movie.

Bogus polls are all they’ve got left. Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls a year from now.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

DeLay Indicted

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Because things were getting boring, another heated political battle had to come to head this week:

A Texas grand jury today indicted Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) on a criminal count of conspiring with two political associates to violate state campaign finance law, and DeLay announced he would temporarily step down as House majority leader.

The indictment was disclosed in Travis County, Tex., on the last day of a grand jury investigating a campaign financing scheme involving allegedly illegal use of corporate funds.

DeLay, 58, attended a meeting in the office of House Speaker Dennis Hastert shortly after receiving word of the indictment and said afterward he notified Hastert that he would “temporarily step aside” as majority leader. GOP House rules require that any member of Congress who is indicted must step down from a leadership position. However, there is no requirement that DeLay leave his congressional seat.

In the indictment, DeLay is accused of conspiring with two associates: John D. Colyandro, the former executive director of a political action committee in Texas that was formed by DeLay, and James W. Ellis, the head of DeLay’s national political committee. Colyandro and Ellis had previously been charged in an indictment that did not name DeLay.

At the heart of the case are corporate contributions of about $190,000 that prosecutors allege were essentially laundered by DeLay and his associates through transfers from a federal fund into a state fund.

DeLay has denounced the investigation as politically motivated, noting that the Travis County district attorney, Ronnie Earle, is a Democrat.

The text of the indictment can be found at the Times.
DeLay’s response can be found here.

Project Nothing has a big round-up of reactions.

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Emergency Room Crisis

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Mark Kilmer has a pretty interesting piece on the problems with underfunded hospitals, emergency room doctors, and immigration, all the while advocating for HR 3875, The Access to Emergency Medical Services Act of 2005.

It looks to me like the bill addressed the liability issue, but little else, which immediately sets off my early warning system radar. I simply don;t trust this Congress when they try to address crises, because every solution is the same- lawsuit protection and little else.

If I am wrong, let me know.

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Captain Fishback

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This letter should blow the doors off the inaction by the WH and the Pentagon regarding the abuse charges:

Dear Senator McCain:

I am a graduate of West Point currently serving as a Captain in the U.S. Army Infantry. I have served two combat tours with the 82nd Airborne Division, one each in Afghanistan and Iraq. While I served in the Global War on Terror, the actions and statements of my leadership led me to believe that United States policy did not require application of the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan or Iraq. On 7 May 2004, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s testimony that the United States followed the Geneva Conventions in Iraq and the “spirit” of the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan prompted me to begin an approach for clarification. For 17 months, I tried to determine what specific standards governed the treatment of detainees by consulting my chain of command through battalion commander, multiple JAG lawyers, multiple Democrat and Republican Congressmen and their aides, the Ft. Bragg Inspector General’s office, multiple government reports, the Secretary of the Army and multiple general officers, a professional interrogator at Guantanamo Bay, the deputy head of the department at West Point responsible for teaching Just War Theory and Law of Land Warfare, and numerous peers who I regard as honorable and intelligent men.

Instead of resolving my concerns, the approach for clarification process leaves me deeply troubled. Despite my efforts, I have been unable to get clear, consistent answers from my leadership about what constitutes lawful and humane treatment of detainees. I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment. I and troops under my command witnessed some of these abuses in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

This is a tragedy. I can remember, as a cadet at West Point, resolving to ensure that my men would never commit a dishonorable act; that I would protect them from that type of burden. It absolutely breaks my heart that I have failed some of them in this regard.

That is in the past and there is nothing we can do about it now. But, we can learn from our mistakes and ensure that this does not happen again. Take a major step in that direction; eliminate the confusion. My approach for clarification provides clear evidence that confusion over standards was a major contributor to the prisoner abuse. We owe our soldiers better than this. Give them a clear standard that is in accordance with the bedrock principles of our nation.

Some do not see the need for this work. Some argue that since our actions are not as horrifying as Al Qaeda’s, we should not be concerned. When did Al Qaeda become any type of standard by which we measure the morality of the United States? We are America, and our actions should be held to a higher standard, the ideals expressed in documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Others argue that clear standards will limit the President’s ability to wage the War on Terror. Since clear standards only limit interrogation techniques, it is reasonable for me to assume that supporters of this argument desire to use coercion to acquire information from detainees. This is morally inconsistent with the Constitution and justice in war. It is unacceptable.

Both of these arguments stem from the larger question, the most important question that this generation will answer. Do we sacrifice our ideals in order to preserve security? Terrorism inspires fear and suppresses ideals like freedom and individual rights. Overcoming the fear posed by terrorist threats is a tremendous test of our courage. Will we confront danger and adversity in order to preserve our ideals, or will our courage and commitment to individual rights wither at the prospect of sacrifice? My response is simple. If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession. I would rather die fighting than give up even the smallest part of the idea that is “America.”

Once again, I strongly urge you to do justice to your men and women in uniform. Give them clear standards of conduct that reflect the ideals they risk their lives for.

With the Utmost Respect,

— Capt. Ian Fishback

1st Battalion,

504th Parachute Infantry Regiment,

82nd Airborne Division,

Fort Bragg, North Carolina

Andrew Sullivan adds:

The torture end-game is approaching – and Rumsfeld and Cheney know it. What is now being done to the hero, Captain Ian Fishback, who braved 17 months of obstruction, threats and intimidation by military brass to keep quiet, is a national disgrace. Fishback has now been sequestered at Fort Bragg under orders restricting his contacts (the pretext is that he is a key witness in a criminal investigation and that he should not be in contact with outsiders while it continues). My sources tell me that he has been subjected to a series of long, arduous interrogations by CID investigators. Predictably, the CID guys are out to find just one thing: they want to know the identities of his two or three NCO corroborators. The CID folks are apparently indifferent to the accounts of wrongdoing – telling him repeatedly not to waste their time with his stories. Fishback knows if he gives their identities up, these folks will also be destroyed – so he’s keeping his silence, so far. The investigators imply that he failed to report abuses, so he may be charged, or that he is peddling falsehoods and will be charged for that. They tell him his career in the Army is over.

Meanwhile the peer pressure on him is enormous. I’m reliably told that he has been subjected to an unending stream of threats and acts of intimidation from fellow officers. He is accused of betraying the Army, and betraying his unit by bringing it into disrepute. His motives are challenged. He is accused of siding with the enemy and working for their cause. And it goes on and on. This is not surprising. My email in-tray tells me each day that I am a supporter of Islamo-fascism, a traitor, someone who should be deported and so on, for insisting that legalized torture in the U.S. is one of the most important issues we now face. But I’m a free man and they cannot silence this blog. Fishback, whose courage deserves a medal, is not. They are slowly smearing and breaking him. But I have a feeling we have finally found a man with the integrity, faith and patriotism to stand up to the culture of fear and brutality he is now enduring.

What I continue to find most perplexing about all of this is that even if you put aside all of the enormous legal, ethical, and moral considerations- just shelve all of them- we are left with a situation in which our soldiers have a tougher job to do and are in more danger. It is that simple.

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Really- Intelligent Design Isn’t Warmed Over Creationism

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Someone better tell that to the plaintiffs in Dover:

Science teachers at the high school in Dover repeatedly resisted the school board’s efforts to force them to teach creationism on equal footing with evolution in biology class, according to a former teacher who is among those challenging the board in a landmark trial.

The conflict in Dover grew so heated that in public meetings board members called opponents “atheists,” threatened to fire the science teachers and invoked Jesus’ crucifixion as a reason to change the curriculum, two witnesses testified on Tuesday.

“We would repeatedly tell them, ‘We’re not going to balance evolution with creationism. It’s an inappropriate request,’ ” said Bryan Rehm, who once taught physics in Dover and is one of 11 plaintiffs in the suit.

And what do they want taught?

Outside the courtroom on Tuesday afternoon, Alan Bonsell, a board member who the plaintiffs said was leading the charge against evolution in the science curriculum, said the board wanted students to learn about competing theories only because it was “good education.”

The board ultimately abandoned the equal time idea, stopped using the term “creationism,” and instead required that ninth graders listen to a brief statement encouraging them to learn about intelligent design as an alternative to evolution.

“We are not teaching intelligent design,” Mr. Bonsell said. “I’ve said that a million times and the news media just doesn’t get it. I challenge everybody to read the statement and show me what was religious in the statement.”

But Aralene Callahan, a former board member, testified that Mr. Bonsell, the chairman of the curriculum committee, said at a school board retreat in 2003 that he did not believe in evolution and wanted “50-50” treatment in biology class for creationism and evolution.

My scientific theory isn’t scientific, isn;t a theory, and is instead based on 2000 year old writings, but it should be given equal time. And your book selection shows bias:

For about a year, Mrs. Callahan said, the school board refused to order new biology textbooks. Mrs. Callahan said that when she protested the delay at a meeting, another board member, Bill Buckingham, responded that the biology textbook was “laced with Darwinism.”

The textbook he was referring to was “Biology.” One of the book’s authors, Kenneth Miller, a cell biologist at Brown University, was in court here on Monday and Tuesday as the first witness against intelligent design.

I faced a similar problem in high school. My math book was riddled with arcane symbols. You could barely turn a page without seeing mystical igns and symbols like:

+ – * /

I don’t know how I got through it all. At least Mr. Buckingham is open as to what he wants:

At a board meeting in June 2004, the plaintiffs say that Mr. Buckingham declared from the podium: “Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can’t someone take a stand for him?”

Again, it is important to flashback to that Ted Koppel Nightline interview with George Will and Cal Thomas:

Cal Thomas: Well Ted, I think it could be if it was seen as a stand-alone issue. But taken together with school prayer, same-sex marriage, abortion on demand, the Terri Schiavo case, it is a general feeling that everything that a lot of God-fearing, tax-paying, flag-waving patriotic Americans care about is taken away — is being taken away by the courts and by the wider culture. So standing alone this might not have had the resonance that it does, but taken together with all of these other things, I think that’s where the problem lies.

Ted Koppel: So part of this, George, is about science, but most of it, really in the final analysis, is about politics.

George Will: It’s about cultural anxiety. It’s about a sense of being marginalized, and disrespected by certain groups. It’s a worry about the coarsening of the culture. All of these may be to varying degrees legitimate worries. They have absolutely nothing to do with the scientific puzzle of explaining the mechanism that produced us.

This isn’t about science. This isn’t about education. At least it isn’t for the ID/Creationist proponents. This is just another Quixotic rear-guard action in the culture wars.

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Storing Carbon Dioxide

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Like the Space Elevator, I am a little fuzzy on the science of this:

Capturing and storing the carbon dioxide generated by power plants and factories could play an important role in limiting global warming caused by humans, says an international climate research group associated with the United Nations.

In a new report the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says doing so could cut the cost of stabilizing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere as much as 30 percent compared with other options, like switching to cleaner technologies.

Altogether, sequestering carbon dioxide could eventually account for slightly more than half of what is needed to prevent dangerous concentrations in the atmosphere, says the report, which was released on Monday and is online at www.ipcc.ch.

But the report cautions that while the method is cheaper than others, it would significantly raise the cost of electricity for many years. For that reason, several authors and United Nations officials said, it is unlikely that the technique will be adopted voluntarily by industries in wealthy countries.

So they will capture it, pipe it somewhere, and store it in big tanks and wells forever?

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Bible Studies and Crystal Meth

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To each his own:

Ashley Smith, who was held hostage in her apartment in March by the man now charged with murder in the Atlanta courthouse shootings, was hailed as a hero after she disclosed how she had persuaded her captor to surrender, partly by reading to him from the spiritual best seller “The Purpose-Driven Life.”

But in a memoir released yesterday, Ms. Smith also recounts that she gave the kidnapper some of her supply of crystal methamphetamine during her captivity and that she did not tell the police for some time afterward.

In the memoir, “Unlikely Angel: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Hostage Hero,” Ms. Smith recalls that Brian Nichols, who has been charged in the death of three people shot at the Fulton County Courthouse and a fourth killed elsewhere in Atlanta soon before her kidnapping, asked her if she had any marijuana. She answered no but said she did have some “ice,” or crystal meth.

Ms. Smith says that at the time, she was fighting an addiction to crystal methamphetamine that had previously led her to spend time in a psychiatric hospital and to lose custody of her 5-year-old daughter.

She says she last used crystal meth about 36 hours before being taken hostage. Though Mr. Nichols used it and invited her to do so, she refused, she writes, and has not taken drugs since the episode.

I hope she stays clean, but I hope she gets some clinical treatment, and doesn’t try to simply handle this through spiritual therapy.

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Here Comes the Power Grab

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Here we go:

The morning Hurricane Katrina thundered ashore, Louisiana National Guard commanders thought they were prepared to save their state. But when 15-foot floodwaters swept into their headquarters, cut their communications and disabled their high-water trucks, they had their hands full just saving themselves.

For a crucial 24 hours after landfall on Aug. 29, Guard officers said, they were preoccupied with protecting their nerve center from the waves topping the windows at Jackson Barracks and rescuing soldiers who could not swim. The next morning, they had to evacuate their entire headquarters force of 375 guardsmen by boat and helicopter to the Superdome.

It was an inauspicious start to the National Guard’s hurricane response, which fell so short that it has set off a national debate about whether in the future the Pentagon should take charge immediately after catastrophes. President Bush has asked Congress to study the question, and top Defense Department and Guard officials are scheduled to testify on the response before a House panel today.

Personally, I take this as more evidence that FEMA and the Pentagon should have pre-positioned more troops in the path of the storm.

In all seriousness, though, themagnitude of this storm just overwhelmed everything at every level, and the appropriate response is not to simply federalize everything. But they will try.

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