Thieves in the Temple.

the mysteries of February 29.

"Has fearmongering run its course?" asks the latest ACLU missive, and I damn sure hope so. It can't be good when factcheck.org takes Tha Bush Mobb's warrantless wiretapping case apart so easily, or when Mr. Bush himself incomprehensibly claims that if big telecoms don't get their immunity, al Qaida will react-and-adjust. Still, the "liberal" media is too happy to carry Mr. Bush's water -- which can't be because they're big telecoms themselves, can it? Their views are moot. This is either a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people, or not, and I have faith in the former. The ACLU has the relevant petition.

So the FCC held its public hearing investigating Comcast's blocking of certain internet traffic -- and Comcast packed the hearing with its own people. Very democratic of them. Memo to folks going to FCC hearings in the future: next time, arrive three hours early, and bring a book or an iPod, so you don't fall asleep like a few of those folks Comcast paid to block other good folks from coming in. Anyway, savetheinternet.com still provides an FCC comment page, as well as a contact tool in support of the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008.

Jewish Voice for Peace provides a contact tool with which you may communicate your will, if it be your will, that Congress suspend military aid to Israel until their occupation of Palestine ends. Because that occupation has bought so much security for Israel, hasn't it? Scott Ritter, the former U.N. inspector and my homey, said it best: if you're going to be a friend to Israel, you don't give Israel aid to do things you don't think are good ideas. Right-wingers, the proverbial emptiest wagon of American discourse, tend to conflate friendship and support and lock-step agreement, so they don't see it Scott Ritter's (and my) way. But most Americans are smarter than that.

The House passed a Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act with some teeth, and now the bill shuffles off to the Senate. Let those damn Senate Republicans explain why they're filibustering our government's ability to protect the people it serves from lead in their toys and poison in their food. Mere philosophical differences about the role of government will seem, how shall I put this, quaint. Consumers Union provides the contact tool.

Finally, I note, with some interest, that today is former Montreal Canadiens center-iceman Henri Richard's 18th birthday. Which is, like, amazing, since he played, like, 20 seasons in the NHL and played on 11 Stanley Cup-winning teams and scored over 1,000 points. How did he accomplish these amazing feats? Not even Wayne Gretzky could bend time and space to his will like Henri Richard.

radio gaga.

H.R. 895 would create, for the first time, like, ever, an independent Office of Congressional Ethics that would file and investigate ethics complaints. You may recall that the current Ethics Committee has five members from each party and only permits sitting Congressfolk to file and judge ethics complaints against their own colleagues. You may also recall that this past Congress, though elected with a mandate to fight corruption, has hesitated to create an independent and nonpartisan office, which doesn't reflect well on them. They're taking it up again this week, though, and that does reflect well on them. You can find your Rep's number using one of the tools in the upper left-hand corner.

You may have heard that the USDA just recalled 143 million pounds of beef -- but won't tell anyone where the meat was delivered. I always figured our government was supposed to protect us from corporate malfeasance, not protect corporations from the consequences of their own sins. And frankly the corporation's "right to privacy" ends where the rights of citizens to protect themselves from illness and death begins. No, the same argument can't be used to justify warrantless wiretapping -- no reasonable person would think a terrorist attack, as likely to kill you as a fall in the bathtub, requires the trampling of all citizens' rights at all times. Corporations shouldn't even have privacy rights, frankly. Because they're things. Anyway, Consumers Union to the rescue!

Free Press helps you call your Congressfolk in support of the Local Community Radio Act (H.R. 2802/S. 1675). The Local Community Radio Act would aid the creation of more Low Power FM (LPFM) radio stations, which would help diversify the airwaves more than big corporations like to do. Imagine! More local news! More community-based news! More diverse viewpoints! Radio, someone still loves you!

Finally, a sad note: William F. Buckley, Jr., has died at the age of 82, possibly while writing a column and good for him, as I'd also prefer exiting this world hard at work than sick in bed. Paragraph 14 of the New York Times eulogy, while quite edifying, neglects his white supremacism during the '60s, and unfortunately a coded appeal to racism was as critical a part of the conservative ascendancy as Russell Kirk was. But Mr. Buckley did essentially create the modern conservative movement, a movement drawn from good sources as well as bad, a movement of good ideas as well as bad, and frankly I don't think he liked this decade's "conservatives" very much, and maybe not even because quite a few of them thought they'd make their bones by attacking the old man for such heresies as saying maybe the Iraq War wasn't so hot an idea after all. So rest in peace, Bill. Certainly I wouldn't be me without you.

penny rants for the day of February 26, 2008.

Ralph Nader announced his candidacy for President on the February 24 Meet the Press. At first I found Mr. Russert's questions extremely irritating, reinforcing the absurd narrative that George W. Bush is Ralph Nader's fault. But then I realized that Mr. Russert interrupted Mr. Nader's extensive critique of corporate power exactly one time, and I also wondered when he'd tolerated a two-paragraph answer to a yes-or-no question from anyone else. This must be why Mr. Nader chooses this forum to announce his candidacy, versus, say, Hannity and Colmes (where Sean Hannity would just talk over him the whole time) or The O'Reilly Factor ("you know what, sir? Go back to Russia. Just go back to Russia with all that talk"). None of this makes me particularly proud of our nation's discourse, however.

Citizens for Tax Justice asks what to make of a President McCain tax policy, based on his labyrinthine record, and answers: "we have no idea." They're being generous in that assessment -- their report makes absolute mincemeat of Mr. McCain's record, which only supports sane policy between 1999 and 2003 (he's been in Congress since 1982). I'll go out on a limb and say that a McCain Presidency would be very bad for tax policy, on the simple basis that the Republicans' plans for you are far worse than whatever they say they are. Call it the George W. Bush Rule, after the man who ran as a moderate and governed as a reactionary.

complex transformations.

I said I wouldn't bother with any more of Congress's bring-home-the-troops-pretty-please bills, and I still won't. But Senator Feingold (D-WI) has introduced two bills (S. 2633 and S. 2634) which would, respectively, provide for the safe redeployment of troops from Iraq within 120 days and require a report on U.S. global strategy to defeat al-Qaeda. If, like me, you think the war in Iraq has (among other things!) made America less safe from terrorist attacks, you may want to tell your Senators to vote on these bills already.

Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) provides a contact tool so you can ask your Reps and Senators to support legislation eliminating the sentencing disparity between crack and cocaine. When I see that crack sentences are so much harsher than powder sentences, I'm tempted to believe the old chestnut that the CIA developed crack to destroy the black population. Tempted, I said.

Those blasted public commenting periods! Those confounded checks on the executive branch's power! When I feel like making a bunch of new nukes again (the nominal executive thinks) I ought to be able to just say do it and it's done! I'll have to issue a few new regulations that'll gut the public's power to provide any input. Mr. Bush's efforts to, er, go nuclear have met with decisive resistance even from Republican-controlled Congresses, and there's probably a reason for that. That reason would be your input.

Meanwhile, Mr. O'Reilly says, about his "lynching" remark in re Michelle Obama: "I'm sorry if my statement offended anybody. That, of course, was not the intention. Context is everything." Thus he proves that Kelly Tilghman is a bigger man than he is -- not I'm sorry, I meant nothing, but I should have anticipated how folks would hear something like that, but I'm sorry if you're offended, but if you're offended, it means you can't read for context, plus you're even more wrong because I didn't mean it. It gets better. His "context," it turns out, is even more insidious than mere racism: he sets himself up as a PATRIOT Force, "track(ing) down" "hard facts" that someone might believe "America is a flawed nation," after which the "lynching party" can be "legit." How many times must I tell these pimps! Coerced love for country (or for anything else) is worthless, not to mention pleasureless. To some monsters, though, I guess it's profitable in the short term.

bound for the floor.

This admirably-condensed U.S. PIRG consumer blog entry describes H.R. 5244, the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights Act, which would curtail the credit card corporations' ability to randomly hike rates and fees. Of course the corporations will hate it, because they're not doing too well now, but it's our government and we must use it to protect our damn selves. I don't have a handy email contact tool for this legislation, so I must direct you to the tools in the upper left-hand corner for contacting your Congressfolk.

I think Barack Obama's more or less just another politician, so I really must have really liked Robert Sameulson's piece expressing similar discontents, right? Wrong. Actually, I hated it, mainly because of paragraphs 11 and 12, in which Mr. Sameulson essentially claims that, by not pledging to curb Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid spending, Mr. Obama betrays his own pledge to "rise above" politics-as-usual. So talking more like a Republican is the only way to rise above politics-as-usual? Mr. Obama's pledge to raise the payroll tax ceiling would help Social Security immensely, actually, and I still maintain that a single-payer plan (which Mr. Obama won't embrace) will contain health care spending. Dull as he may find them, Mr. Sameulson might rise above punditry-as-usual by actually trying to refute those claims.

readings for the day of February 21, 2008.

I (also) haven't written enough about illegal immigration, so please accept this magnificent overview of the issue by Jim Hightower as a partial penance. You need to be a paid Hightower Lowdown subscriber in order to read it, but that's a good thing, because this isn't the only good thing he'll write this year. Long story short: we have illegal immigrants not only because corporations want illegal immigrants here so they can pay them in dung pellets, but also because NAFTA (a Bill Clinton-Al Gore production) destroyed their livelihoods in Mexico, so they have to come here for dung pellets when they'd really rather be home. The solution? You know: the protections that American workers already deserve, which include protection from greedy multinational corporations. Actual racists need not apply to this argument.

Glenn Greenwald warns us, in pretty stark terms, that the right-wing slime machine will-so come after Mr. Obama if he's the nominee -- it already has, in fact, though their labors have produced little fruit so far. I'd wondered if Mr. McCain might be a bit squeamish about smearing Mr. Obama, but as Mr. Greenwald reminds me, that won't matter -- talk radio and the right-wing blathersphere will happily smear Obama plenty enough, and Mr. McCain will look better merely for avoiding same. Indeed, with that peculiar New York Times article suggesting Mr. McCain might have had an affair with a lobbyist, the far right is, as they say, fired up and ready to go.

Meanwhile, I neglected to pass along the February 8 "false flag" warnings of America's last conservative, Paul Craig Roberts, so here it is. I don't pass up too many opportunities to Imagine the Worst, a healthy exercise when contemplating politics, and I only passed that one up due to negligence. Mr. Roberts thinks the Republicans can still steal the elections with a) Diebold-type voting machines and b) a well-timed "terrorist attack," both of which would require the acquiescence of a) the voters and b) the Democrats to succeed. Which they'd likely get, since, last I looked, there've been no Coxey's Armies marching on D.C. lately. N.B. that I think Mr. Roberts speaks figuratively in paragraphs 2 and 3 -- Dick Cheney will not really be Secretary of War in a McCain administration, but would Mr. McCain's Secretary of Defense be very much different? The Podhoretzes and Boltons and Kristols and Feiths of the world really do only one thing well -- create more Podhoretzes and Boltons and Kristols and Feiths.

penny rants for the day of February 20, 2008: special "warrantless wiretapping still sucks!" edition.

So this is how the Supreme Court lets Mr. Bush continue wiretapping illegally: by refusing to hear the ACLU's case, which effectively lets stand the Cincinnati court's overturning of the Detroit court's verdict against Tha Bush Mobb. I should have known this Bush Mobb court wouldn't show the modicum of courage required to hear the case and then decide it in Mr. Bush's favor, just like they wouldn't show courage in kneecapping Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education. Why don't the Supremes just come out and say Mr. Bush needs to be able to listen in on any conversation at any time, or that abortion should be illegal, or that white kids just shouldn't have to go to school with black kids? Couldn't be because coming out in favor of these things would condemn the Republicans to minority status for generations, could it?

Meanwhile, Bob Novak lies about the Protect America Act, just like the rest of them. Mr. Novak, at least, provides a twist: "(c)learly," he writes, "opposition to the Rockefeller bill shown in the subsequent House Democratic caucus derived from obeisance to generous trial lawyers." Because, clearly, opposition could not have derived from the House leadership thinking warrantless wiretapping is illegal (a view shared by the majority of Americans) and calculating that this was the moment to take a stand on it. Mr. Novak also errs in stating that the issue at stake was "extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to continue eavesdropping on suspected foreign terrorists." Last I looked, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was still on the books. The Protect America (sic) Act, however, was not, praise the Lord.

I won't back down.

Them Democrats done finally stood up to Mr. Bush! And, given that the Protect America Act (sic) expired on a Friday, when most reporters are rushing out of town for the weekend, I think the Democrats might actually have out-maneuvered Tha Bush Mobb for once. But now's no time to get complacent. ACLU provides the requisite "stand your ground" petition. And remember: if terrorists hit America sometime this week, it's Mr. Bush's fault, by his own logic. He could have had his nefarious basket warrants if he'd just been willing to give up big telecom immunity which they don't need if (as he says) they've done nothing wrong. I can't imagine why he'd want big telecom immunity so badly. It certainly can't be because a lawsuit against a big telecom might ultimately incriminate Mr. Bush. I predict a spate of pardons to big telecom CEOs on Mr. Bush's way out of office, though of course they don't need them.

Speaking of Mr. Bush's possible eagerness to protect himself from criminal prosecution: the Presidential Records Act of 1978 made presidential records the property of the American people, but Mr. Bush issued an Executive (sic) Order in 2001 giving current and previous presidents (er, and presidential family members and vice presidents) the power to withhold their documents and records pretty much as long as they like. The Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007 would undo Mr. Bush's order, but Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (R-AL) is single-handedly blocking the bill, despite its wide bipartisan support. Public Citizen helps you pressure your Senator into pressuring that Senator. And please, good citizens of Alabama, do not return Mr. Sessions to the Senate this year. If only Charles Barkley would run!

The Union of Concerned Scientists would like to have a Presidential debate strictly on science policy issues here in Philadelphia on April 18. This sounds like a very exciting prospect! How often do Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee get asked about cloned food, for example? UCS has already invited the remaining Presidential candidates; now it's up to us to pressure them, via the UCS-provided petition. I can't imagine why any of them would turn us down -- unless, you know, they don't "believe" in evolution or don't "believe" in global warming or think using stem cells "equals" abortion or think Intelligent (sic) Design should be taught in science class. Oh, actually, that pretty much covers the remaining Republican candidates.

penny rants for the day of February 16, 2008.

Southern Baptist Pastor Wiley Drake, under investigation from the IRS for using church resources to help Mike Huckabee, has on at least two occasions urged his followers to pray for the death of staffers at Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, because they appear to have prompted the IRS to investigate his church. Way to put the Christ in Christmas, Pastor. No doubt Pastor Drake feels his very raison d'être threatened by AU, and that such threats justify "imprecatory" retaliation. But an IRS investigation is only a "threat" if there's only one way to serve God. And this wouldn't be the first time fear of death/dishonor/humiliation/change made good people do bad things -- though "good people" may be a generous evaluation in Pastor Drake's case.

Rick Santorum is just as insufferable an op-ed writer as he was a Senator. I count three paragraphs of actual analysis relating to Mr. Santorum's titular theme, then seven paragraphs of largely unrelated and unsupported "history," and then five more paragraphs of disingenuous "analysis" in which Mr. Santorum cites exactly zero examples to prove that all Democrats are bad and all Republicans (except maybe John McCain) are good. I don't know about you, but when I look at Pat Leahy and Ben Nelson and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and Chris Dodd and Harry Reid and all the rest, I don't see a bunch of high-taxing God-hating one-world-government-loving bead-wearing swingers. And, by the way, Mr. Santorum: try more short sentences. They really brighten up your prose. And they reassure people you're not a maniac.

Finally, would the good citizens of Missouri please un-elect Kit Bond in 2010? Mr. Bond begins his defense of Mr. Bush's warrantless wiretapping/amnesty for big telecoms bill thusly: "(i)nadequate intelligence prevented us from detecting and disrupting the worst terrorist attack on the United States in history." Well, Mr. Bond, not exactly. Off the top of my head: FBI agents burned the wires trying to warn their superiors about folks in flight school who weren't interested in learning how to land a plane; Mr. Bush received a direct warning in the 8.6.01 Presidential Daily Briefing -- you remember, the one titled "Bin Laden determined to strike inside U.S." -- and the warrantless wiretapping program began before 9.11, meaning that all these illegal tools did not prevent 9.11. Then in paragraph 2, he insultingly suggests that what we really oppose is monitoring terrorists. Then in paragraph 3, he touts bogus "changes in technology" when FISA has always been technology-neutral. And then he slings around the word "bipartisan" like that automatically means "good." Please, Missouri, no more Kit Bond after 2010. Raise Tom Eagleton from the dead if you have to.

a brief note.

The House of Representatives adjourned for the weekend without taking up FISA reauthorization -- meaning that the Protect America Act will expire tomorrow. Good for them. I firmly expect that the "liberal" media will blame the Democrats for this, but Mr. Olbermann's Valentine's Day special comment summarizes the facts, which state, unmistakably, that Mr. Bush's insistence on getting everything ensured that he got nothing.

I would be remiss not to mention the possibility that a terrorist attack could happen in the United States very shortly, just to "prove" that Democrats are weak and that Mr. Bush is always right. Mr. Olbermann seems to think Mr. Bush doesn't have it in him. I say never underestimate a political animal -- particularly a political animal with no discernable soul.

the death of the heart.

The Senate passed Tha Bush Mobb's warrantless surveillance bill. The Senate must love us very much this Valentine's Day -- seriously, I feel like they've just given us a big box of the Whizzo Quality Assortment. But the fight ain't over as long as we draw breath -- and, in this specific fight, the bill moves back to the House for conference, and the House version of the bill, guess what, doesn't have big telecom immunity. You know what to do, and TrueMajority helps you. Also, CREDO helps you. See? We're really not alone.

Meanwhile, Reps. Markey (D-MA) and Pickering (R-MS) have introduced the Internet Freedom Preservation Act (HR 5353), which would codify Network Neutrality provisions into American communications law. The fact that Charles Pickering the Younger has put his name on this bill testifies to the real bipartisan support for internet freedom in America, a freedom to which corporations stand directly opposed. Mr. Bush will veto the bill if it crosses his desk, but (all together now) our duty remains the same. SaveTheInternet.com helps you express your will.

Finally, factcheck.org would like to hear from you if you receive any dubious politically-related communications. Like, that email saying Barack Obama studied at a madrassa and belongs to a black separatist church -- which factcheck debunks here. Or that postcard claiming that Mitt Romney mandated state-funded abortions -- which factcheck debunks here. Serious, these little low-level communications are the whisper campaigns of the present, and a lot of folks will base their votes on them, because the "liberal" media doesn't give them enough decent information. Factcheck would also like to hear from you if you hear dubious claims in phone calls or in answering machine messages, which may be in the form of "push polls" (cf. John McCain, South Carolina, 2000). If you can forward emails, scan hard copies of such materials into your PC, or make digital audio files, then email editor at factcheck dot org, with the subject "Attn: Brooks Jackson."

penny rants for the day of February 13, 2008.

Chris Wallace's Pravda TV interview with Mr. Bush has so, so many interesting bits, but Mr. Bush's remarks about "taxing the rich," perhaps not surprisingly, didn't get a lot of coverage: "most people in America understand," Mr. Bush said, "that the rich people hire good accountants and figure out how not to necessarily pay all the taxes and the middle class gets stuck." Once again, that's the nominal leader of the Executive Branch of the federal government telling America that he can't enforce the law. He can't even suggest to Congress that they pass laws that would close tax loopholes. Perhaps not coincidentally, Democrats have actually prioritized closing tax loopholes and strengthening tax collection efforts in Congress this term, and what's happened? The Republicans in Congress have blocked their efforts. That's not very law-and-order of them, but then their chief isn't very much a law-and-order guy, unless black drug dealers are involved.

Yet another writer complains about "Liberal Intolerance"! I was going to say "I never, ever get tired of being charged with 'intolerance' on the basis of the first five anecdotes the writer can remember," but Maggie Gallagher's piece, thankfully, contains very little anecdotal evidence -- plus, not so thankfully, only one piece of questionable scientific evidence. She does fudge the argument's boundaries in a way that would make Jonah Goldberg proud: we move from are we repressed in paragraph one to we feel repressed in paragraph three, and she doesn't drop the word "liberal" in until the very last paragraph. In between she tries to build the case that "(t)he people who feel the most politically oppressed in the United States are exactly the people liberals most like to hate." See? It's automatically the liberals' fault! Except that, well, it might not be -- what if you feel repressed because you've damaged your ability to process the shame you deserve? What if you feel repressed because people disagree with you and won't back down when you continue to argue with them? What if you feel repressed because you don't have every single thing you think you should have in life? In short, what if you feel repressed because you're a whiner?

Today's News Dissector post is a must-read primer on Our Worsening Economy, which is now going so badly that even Pravda TV's Business Channel can't paint a smiley-face on it. And at the bottom of the post is this note: "READERS: PLEASE ENCOURAGE THE OTHER BLOGGERS YOU READ TO START WRITING ABOUT THE ECONOMIC CRISIS." I haven't made a point of writing about it every day like Danny Schechter has, because (I've reasoned) it's obvious the economy's going into the tank, as any economy that depends on shell-game financial maneuvering (instead of, you know, making stuff and selling stuff) must go into the tank. But, frankly, repeating the bad news, in all its ugly glory, has a profound utility that I haven't appreciated enough. So, starting today, I'll do better.

the P.E. Squad.

Our bold executive (sic) still plans to trade in nuclear power with India, though the 2006 Hyde Act constrains him in this aim somewhat, though the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty constrains him in this aim most definitively. Given that India lied when it said it wasn't using nuclear power to build weapons the last time we traded in nuclear information with them (in 1974), I don't think Mr. Bush's initiative is such a hot idea. H.R. 711 would remind Mr. Bush not to flout U.S. law and international treaty (which is redundant, really, since any treaty we sign is U.S. law if the Senate ratifies it) in pursuing nuclear power-related deals with India. Not that Mr. Bush cares what anyone thinks. But I care what good Americans think. Council for a Livable World provides the contact tool.

In other news, Public Citizen informs me that the IRS has flouted at least three court orders to turn over information about their tax enforcement activities, as part of an over thirty-years-old agreement with Syracuse Professor Susan Long. IRS secrecy seems to me to be a Bush Mobb-related trend -- they stopped printing tax bracket tables in their 1040 booklets in 2004 if not earlier, which may be one reason so many people think they're in the top one percent income bracket. Just as they're trying to outsource collection duties to private corporations, I notice. What else does the IRS have to hide? What are they afraid of? Besides the Ron Paul Revolution, I mean.

soldier's pay.

Last year Army officials apparently instructed representatives from the VA at Fort Drum not to help veterans with their disability paperwork because, dig this, such efforts would create a conflict of interest. Between the Army and the Army? I wondered. Well, not exactly: "(s)oldiers that get help from the VA tend to get higher disability ratings," TrueMajority informs me, "which means that the government owes them more money." Ah, thatconflict of interest. Seems there's always some sort of conflict of interest between Tha Bush Mobb and The Right Thing To Do. Hand out the beatdowns here.

Mr. Bush's latest rotten egg stink-bomb of a budget proposes deep cuts in the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Mr. Bush has tried to cut CPB funding in every budget he's proposed, but his 2008 cuts are so deep, apparently, that even his hand-picked CPB President, who used to be co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, thinks they're "draconian." PBS ain't perfect, but it's a damn sight better than the corporate media. The last two Republican Congresses were afraid to cut PBS, but that's no reason to be complacent, for these Democrats are bold enough to cave on Iraq war funding, warrantless wiretapping, etc. So you still want to tell your Congressfolk what to do.

Those Pennsylvania Republicans seemed harmless enough from across the river, but now I find them a lot more annoying close-up. Whereas Governor Rendell has proposed a one-time tax rebate to low-income households as a way of disbursing a budget surplus, the Republicans' solution is to cut the state income tax rate. Trouble is, Pennsylvania's state income tax rate is a flat 3%, meaning the rich will benefit the most from any tax cut. Some Pennsylvania Republicans have also proposed a "zero growth budget," which has led to disaster in other states. In conclusion, these folks are a long way from Richard Schweiker, and deserve their coming statewide eclipse. You can contact your state House Reps here, and your state Senators here; you'd find your Rep/Senator by entering your zip code in the block in the upper right-hand corner.

penny rants for the day of February 10, 2008.

"To Fix Economy, Get Out of Iraq" -- who knew? Certainly not Congress or Mr. Bush, and certainly not the "liberal" media, which took this long to ask whether or not the bajillion dollars we're spending in Iraq might actually be contributing to all our debt problems. But the people? Smarter than the politicans, and smarter than the media, as usual. I eagerly await the AP-Ipsos poll question which asks "do you think the lousy economy has anything to do with the bajillions of tax dollars Mr. Bush has been funneling to his crony corporations via the war in Iraq?" They can change the wording a bit if they like.

Comcast put out new "Terms of Service" last week, and FreePress dissects them here. I admire the article's moral center -- it describes Comcast's "we're just adhering to industry standards" excuse for blocking traffic as "the first-grader defense: if you're caught stealing candy, be sure to blame other kids for doing the same." I note, also, that Comcast claims to protect against “the negative effects of spam, viruses, security attacks, network congestion, and other risks and degradations of service.” I don't like being told that hurting me is for my own good either, but I wonder why on earth you can't "manage" "the negative effects" without abridging free speech and network neutrality rights. It takes a corporation to assume that you just can't ever do both. This is the sort of innovative thinking Republicans want to unbound on the world.

Thought Intelligent Design was dead? Well, its initials, at least, have risen like a phoenix, or a vampire, or the aroma of a pile of hot dung. Thanks in part to perpetual clown David Horowitz, "ID" now also stands for "intellectual diversity" -- no, not "diversity" as in reading Harlem Renaissance novels in your 20th Century American Lit class, but "diversity" as in presenting right-wing viewpoints in class. Funny, I remember getting a lot of right-wing viewpoints in my college classes, and I also remember the left-wingers pretty much destroying them in fair arguments. I guess Little Davey wants a sort of welfare program for those Cato Institute economic studies that are shot though with lousy science. Unfortunately, his shame doesn't end there: Mr. Horowitz has apparently not pressed for more labor-centric viewpoints in business classes. I mean, that would be only fair.

Though I'm also the guy who thought our next President would be named Giuliani, I still feel qualified enough to say that (even with the thumping he delivered to Mr. McCain in what's-the-matter-with Kansas) Mike Huckabee's chances of landing the VP slot dwindle with each passing day. More specifically, they dwindle with each time the press mentions that Mr. Huckabee has siphoned off a lot of religious voters from Mitt Romney and thus cleared Mr. McCain's path to the nomination. I can think of four reasons why Mr. Huckabee wouldn't be Mr. McCain's running mate. One, if Mr. McCain did pick Mr. Huckabee as his running mate, the Republicans that still like Mr. McCain will smell corruption in it. Two, the emptiest wagon of Republican discourse (which most pundits mistakenly call "the base") hates Mr. Huckabee (whom they somehow perceive as a "liberal") as much as they hate Mr. McCain. Three, Mr. Huckabee has shown little interest in being bloodthirsty vis a vis the "war on terror." Four, and perhaps most important, Mr. McCain has other options if he wants a running mate further to the right than he is -- like, say, Sam Brownback or (if he's feeling daring) Tom Coburn.

And, finally, with the Romneytron 3000's campaign suspension on Thursday, we must now retire the "nochance2008.org" insult, since none of the remaining Presidential candidates are clowns on the order of Bill Frist, Newt Gingrich, Tom Daschle, or Mitt Romney. We leave the Mittster somewhere, in the deepest recesses of his own heart, asking why didn't they like me? I said all the right things! -- and, in so doing, unwittingly answering his own question.

in which we explore one way government interferes with your life and two ways government could do its damn job.

Word on the street is that the allegedly Democratic Senate will capitulate to Mr. Bush, again, on the FISA reauthorization bill, and then the bill goes back to the House (whose version does not include telecom immunity) for conference. The Protect America Act (sic) expires on February 16. It's February 8 now. The Senate won't vote on FISA until early next week. Now we know why Republicans really blocked the stimulus bill for a few days! But their games don't matter. Our will does matter. The ACLU helps you write your Reps.

The Consumer Product Safety Reform Act of 2007 (S. 2045), would give the Consumer Product Safety Commission more muscle, which would be nice, since the CPSC now has to get permission from manufacturers to get some safety information to the public. However, the battle has been joined by industry lobbyists who want amendments attached to S. 2045 so that it's essentially toothless by the time it gets to the full Senate. Possibly corporations believe they have Fifth Amendment rights not to incriminate themselves for allowing lead in their kiddie toys, but even that argument runs smack into the interstate commerce clauses in I.8 and I.9 of the U.S. Constitution, as well as the general welfare clause in I.8, as well as, well, the fact that corporations are not people. Anyway, Public Citizen provides the contact tool.

If you have a cell phone -- and I'll go out on a limb and bet that you do in fact have a cell phone! -- you're probably familiar with three-digit early termination fees and handset "locking." And since you have a cell phone, you probably already know why your contract with your provider contains such pecularities: your cell phone service sucks. You can't always get through to someone else when you need to. You can't always get calls when you're in an old building or sitting next to a computer. That's not just me, I know. And the companies no doubt explain the service gaps by pointing to the relative youth of the technology (vis a vis your far more reliable landline), but I have to wonder if their draconian contractual conditions have made them, ah, a little complacent in the technological innovation department. With Consumers Union's help, you can prod Congress to do something about it.

lies lies lies yeah/they're gonna get you/lies lies lies yeah/they won't forget you.

The Senate has decided to put off FISA reauthorization for a few days, until they can get that dadgum stimulus thingy worked out -- but that doesn't preclude us from bugging our Senators not to immunize big telecoms from prosecution, not to authorize "basket" warrants, and not to extend the Protect America Act (sic) beyond its expiry on February 15. Tools, as always, are in the upper left-hand corner. Didn't we declare independence from Great Britain in part because of unreasonable searches and seizures? We might as well go back if Mr. Bush gets his way. At least we'll have a decent currency.

Consumers Union (it must be "Consumers Union week" here at our humble blog) provides a petition calling for the FDA to require drug companies to broadcast a toll-free number and web address in their TV ads, so consumers can report on drugs and their side effects. What's that? Too much big government interference in our lives? No -- big government interference is when they snoop on you without a warrant. Government that enhances the ability of good citizens to take care of themselves and their loved ones? Er, I believe we call that our government.

I was, of course, immediately attracted to this article by its title, which begins "Tom Friedman's Folly." There are many such follies to choose from, but Chalmers Johnson's article, itself largely a review of Ha-Joon Chang's Bad Samaritans, concentrates on the neoliberal economic folly that is Mr. Friedman's "golden straitjacket." ("See? It's ironic, because you only become rich, I mean free, if you're in a straitjacket. But it's a golden straitjacket. Get it? Nuns fret not!") Mr. Johnson's article argues that rich countries become rich through aggressive trade protectionism -- though they all think they become rich through free trade, or maybe that's just what they want all the other countries to think.

even bolder Wednesday!

You may have heard of the, er, many mine accidents resulting in death and serious injury during Mr. Bush's second term. If so, you may not be surprised to learn that the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) has failed to fine more than 4,000 safety & health violations over the last six years. And, in turn, you won't be surprised to learn that the Bush Mobber in charge of the MSHA is Richard Stickler, a former coal mining executive whose mines had injury rates that doubled the national average and who's had to rely on two Senate recess appointments to keep his job. I'm guessing Mr. Stickler is a very bold man. Make your demands here.

I finally got around to seeing Danny "the News Dissector" Schechter's film In Debt We Trust, which describes the stranglehold credit card companies have on the economy and on our lives, and it's quite good. Coincidentally, Consumers Union provides a Valentine's Day-themed contact tool telling Congress to enact meaningful credit card reform. If recent economic indicators are correct, the shell game economy ain't even working anymore. Maybe we'll go back to, like, making stuff and selling it, if we can remember how.

Great news from Super Tuesday -- Mitt Romney is almost out of the race! So far I've saddled three nincompoops with the nochance2008.org yoke, and, perhaps not coincidentally, two of them (Messrs. Frist and Gingrich) didn't even get their campaigns off the ground. But a sorcerer's work is never done -- I never got around to uttering the phrase "be sure to visit Tom Daschle's campaign website at nochance2008.org," and I'm still hearing chatter that he could turn up as Barack Obama's running mate. Oh, wait -- I just did utter that phrase. Well, hopefully I'm not too late.

bold Tuesday!

Last month, the putatively conservative-minded FDA decided that milk and meat from cloned cows is A-OK, although they got 160,000 comments saying it was not OK. But what do we know? We're not bold enough to make our own decisions, obviously. Our gut tells us something different than Our Personal Lord and Savior George Walker Bush's gut, so we must be wrong. Actually, it's not just our gut, it's common sense, which bold people have the boldness to ignore -- if you clone an animal whose line has needed antibiotics for generations, you're probably not going to get a well animal. But the Cloned Food Labeling Act would require corporations to label meat and milk from clones and their offspring. If it passes, the Executive branch has to enforce it, at least in theory, though perhaps not the theory of the bold. I swear, if I've helped make "bold" a negative epithet before I'm dead, my life will have been worth living. Anyway, here's the Consumers Union contact tool.

FAIR notices that a January 27 60 Minutes report wondered why oh why did Saddam Hussein never ever simply say he had no weapons of mass destruction and thus "avert" an invasion. A fine question! Er, except that a) Mr. Hussein was never going to avert an invasion in any case and b) he did say he didn't have weapons of mass destruction. Not only did he say he didn't have weapons of mass destruction, but he said it to CBS News, which produces 60 Minutes. A fifth-grader might say it's nonsensical to continue to ask a question that has already been answered, and perhaps even more nonsensical to continue to ask a question that has already been answered to you -- but not our "liberal" media, because they're bolder than fifth-graders. You can give CBS what-for by calling 212.975.3247 or emailing 60m at cbsnews dot com.

I'm proud to be!/a New York Giant!/I'm proud to be!/a New York Giant!

The Senate worked out how they'll vote on FISA reauthorization bill amendments last week -- some amendments will require a simple majority to pass, while others will require 60 votes to pass. That latter agreement essentially allows 40 Senators to filibuster an amendment without actually going through the trouble of filibustering, and that's reprehensible, but I digress. The Dodd/Feingold amendment, which would strip retroactive immunity for the big telecoms, requires only a simple majority -- which must mean the Senate's leaders don't think it'll get one. CREDO helps you tell your Senators to vote for Dodd/Feingold anyway. There's no harm in telling Senators to do our will, versus "their will," which they always talk about like they're mystics or something. Meanwhile, the ACLU still helps you call your Senators to oppose both big telecom immunity and basket warrants (versus warrants that actually target suspects, as the Founders intended). Don't worry about sending too many messages to your Senators about this issue.

The Food and Farm Bills passed by the House and Senate last year now move on to conference. UCS helps you urge your Congressfolk to protect funding for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Conservation Security Program, as well as funding that would help reduce antibiotic feed additives. Let's try to get something good out of the sausage factory for once. So to speak.

penny rants for the day of February 2, 2008.

My God, even the liberals who contribute to the Wall Street Journal write unconscionable trash! We could tabulate problems for sport (John Edwards is an "angry spear-carrier," eh?), but I'll just point to Dan Gerstein's false dichotomy in paragraph 4, in which fire-breathing liberals like myself would use "Karl Rove's divisive, bare-knuckled tactics" to keep power, whereas Those Other Good Liberals (like Mr. Gerstein, presumably) would extoll "hope" and "unity" and a break from this "poisonous tribal warfare," which in Dan Gerstein's world comes from one more side than it does in the real world. Memo to Dan Gerstein: I don't use "Karl Rove's divisive, bare-knuckled tactics" here; I just speak from the heart, and if that "divides" you, that's your damn problem. And don't tell me how to feel, either -- I'll stay angry as long as the right keeps trying to destroy me and those like me.

Not that I lose too much sleep over The Things That Happen to Poor Mitt Romney, but John McCain's continued assertion that Mr. Romney once supported troop withdrawal timetables absolutely disgraces the Senator. Just say it enough times and it'll become true seems to be his mantra, even after his buddies in the "liberal" media actually debunked his demonstrably false statement repeatedly. You'd like to think if he faced off against Barack Obama he'd be better than that, but I think the strain of Republican partisanship that has all but destroyed America over this decade has infected and taken over John McCain, too. But he'll get his: now Tha Bush Mobb's economic house of cards will collapse on him. I might still feel bad for him when he can't fix it.