"I'm aware our national security team met on this issue," Mr. Bush said to ABC News Friday night, in re the issue of CIA "enhanced interrogation" techniques, "and I approved." What does futureBush say? "Well, I said I approved of the meeting, not of the techniques, you know, ha ha ha snort?" Clever little futureBush! But Mr. Bush and his Mobb may have violated the War Crimes Act and the federal Anti-Torture Act -- not to mention the Geneva Conventions, which are-so U.S. law because the U.S. Senate ratified them -- and he won't wiggle free of those charges except through his vaunted thuggishness. Call for an independent prosecutor here.
The Contracting and Tax Accountability Act passed the House this week; now it's got to get through the Senate, and it might not. If it doesn't, though, the Fair Share provision in the Taxpayer Assistance and Simplification Act would essentially do the same thing -- that is, close loopholes permitting defense contractors to avoid paying taxes. And it might be harder for a Jefferson B. Sessions to claim that he opposed something called the Taxpayer Assistance and Simplification Act because his fat cat buddies told him to. Well, harder, but not impossible -- these contractors tend to claim that their tax avoidance is a national security issue, of course. Anyway, USPIRG has the contact tool. You'll make a phone call rather than send an email, since the vote's today.
Public Citizen provides a contact tool calling for an end to the filibuster on the D.C. Voting Rights Act, which would give the District of Columbia a voting Representative in the House. The bill would also give Utah, traditionally a Republican stronghold, an additional seat in the House. Word on the street, though, is that said additional seat might not be a sure Republican seat, as at least one prominent and popular Utah Democrat waits to see where she might be moving in advance of the next pertinent election. But if the Republicans can't hold on to a seat in freakin' Utah, which (for example) hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1970, then that's their problem.
Finally, the Nader campaign has trumpeted a Zogby poll giving Nader/Gonzalez 5 percentage points in a series of hypothetical national matchups. However, a later Zogby poll puts Mr. Nader at 3 percent and former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr at 2 percent in similar matchups, suggesting that Mr. Nader's hold on the Libertarian vote is more tenuous than he thinks. But I still think Mr. Nader can get conservatives to vote for him, because the conservative/liberal divide isn't nearly as wide as the right-winger/sentient entity divide. (N.B., Nader-haters: per the later Zogby poll, Mr. Obama wins the general election matchup against McCain/Nader/Barr, and Mrs. Clinton doesn't. Which supports what I've said all along: if Democrats want to win, they ought to put up someone who vaguely resembles a winning candidate. And if they actually adopted any part of the program of the man who's more liberal than they are, instead of smearing him as a "spoiler," that'd help, too.)
UPDATE. Inexplicably I subtracted 6 from 1976 and got 1972; the last Democrat to win a Senate election in Utah was, in fact, three-termer Frank Moss in 1970. Mr. Moss lost his re-election bid to the Orrin Hatch Blues Explosion in 1976. Error corrected above.