Solipsistic

They are coming. I've had a chance to see most of the major contenders in the year's Oscar race.

I wanted to put in my two cents before no one even cares what came out last year.

First award--The Most Overrated Film, or the "Dogma"/"Bulworth" Award goes to "Goodnight and Good Luck." This was a stiff exercise and its timeliness in no way makes up for its shortcomings.

That's Bush's current approval rating, according to a CBS News poll.

His poll numbers have been continually dropping so it's hard not to believe that this number is pretty reflective of the nation as a whole.

"Scooter" Libby, one of the figures in the Plame fiasco, likely to claim memory loss for his defense?

According to Josh Marshall, it may be so.

Will the public buy it? Will the jury?

Don't get me wrong. Han Solo, Indiana Jones, and even Bob Falfa are all some of my favorite film characters.

Vintage Harrison Ford=Awesome

Latter-day Harrison Ford=a dead weight, one-note, disgruntled lump.

His disinterested, grumpy, "why the hell am I still making movies" attitude of late is absolutely painful to watch. He seems to be doing it for the paycheck and waiting for his pension.

The Onion speaks to the man himself.

Rich Lowry at The National Review blog The Corner points to conservatives already writing Iraq war obit(uary):

Bill Kristol on Fox yesterday said of Iraq, “We've been trying, and our soldiers are doing terrifically, but we have not had a serious three-year effort to fight a war in Iraq as opposed to laying the preconditions for getting out.” He also recommended killing terrorists.

I have the highest admiration for Kristol, but he makes it sound as though someone in the Pentagon should be hitting his forehead in a I-could-have-had-a-V8 moment and say, “I've got it! Why don't we try to kill terrorists!” This is unfair. We have been trying--with some success--to kill terrorists in Iraq for about three years, and have been constantly adjusting how we do it to find the most effective, politically shrewd tactics. Are there things we would try to do differently in retrospect? Absolutely. But pretty much every counter-insurgency I'm aware of has involved a steep learning curve, because it is an inherently difficult form of warfare and always differs according to contours of the society and culture on the ground...

For a while now, everyone in the US has been pre-positioning for what they will say in the event that the war really goes south. For one school of neo-conservatives, the line will apparently be that there never was an Iraq war, at least never a proper one.

First William Buckley. Now William Kristol.

Very late getting the news of this, but Don Knotts passed on Friday night.

The pairing of Griffith and Knotts on "The Andy Griffith Show" produced some of the greatest moments in televised comedy. "I Love Lucy" gets a good bit of love from the critics still--dare I say, overrated--but I'd take any episode of the first five years of "The Andy Griffith Show" over watching Lucille Ball stuff bon bons in her mouth or anyone of the tired wacky situations they placed her in each week.

Now after those five years, Don Knotts left and the show became pretty horrible. More Howard and Floyd. Just what the fans wanted.

Don't get me started on "Mayberry RFD." We could all do with less Ken Berry.

Favorite Knotts moment from Mayberry: Claiming to be able to recite the preamble to the US Constitution from memory. Opie tests Barney. Barney doesn't get one word right without prompting from Opie and looks completely dissheveled by the end of his recitation.

Here is the last posting for my digi com class. To my classmates, thanks for reading and stop by when you can. We update daily except on weekends. Here she goes:

So far we have examined the ideas that blogs don't make great primary resources for news info, but they are great forums to catch fresh and impassioned editorial. On blogs you will find people of varying writing and reasoning ability, but passion is never in short supply. This can be a welcome alternative to the stale talking head fests available via cable and network news. Due to bloggers' tendency to aggregate, they can also show you stories that may have fallen through the cracks.

But blogs also serve as great places to flex your democratic freedoms. As a blog author, you can feel free to speak your mind on any number of issues. This, of course, is your First Ammendment right and blogs can be great places to excercise this freedom. But the freedom of speech is limited if you are not in ongoing conversation. If no one else responds to your proclamations, you might as well be speaking to a wall. Conversation also allows the debate to move forward. Your opinion may force me to reexamine my own. Freedom of speech is poorly used if others don't respond to your speaking.

Most blogs of any worth allow for readers to post comments. These comment boards are great places to debate the blog's author or to converse with other readers. (Unfortunately, message boards frequently become the home of trolls and flame wars). An active reading community that post comments on blogs help keep the blogger in check and can lead to the editing of the blogger's posts. If a blogger says something false or slanderous, you can call the blogger on it and alert others to your concerns. (The blog author can edit the posts, but the better ones rarely edit their message boards).

So if you're feeling up to it, drop me a line on one of my posts. Disagree with me, cheer me on, correct me. Whatever. Use it as an opportunity to exercise your freedom.

This sentence stuck out in a recent posting from the website Crooks and Liars:

During the build-up to the war in 2002 and early 2003, most prominent Democrats were bullied and intimidated into supporting the invasion of Iraq by a combination of Bush’s sky-high popularity and accusations of subversiveness which were launched at anyone who opposed the Leader’s war.

Waaaah! Poor democrats. Bush is so mean they were forced to endorse his war.

Not at all. Being a legislator of principle requires courage and the Democratic party largely reacted in cowardice to Bush's war machine. I understand to stay on top in Washington requires compromise, but don't expect my sympathy when your compromise costs tens of thousands of lives. And their compromise, in the past and ongoing, cost them the White House the last eight years.

Why else do you think the claims of Kerry's flip-flopping on the war resonated with the public?

At least people knew where Bush stood on Iraq. As brazenly bone headed a stance as it was, at least he appeared consistent.

Conservative granddaddy William Buckley calls on Bush to throw in the towel in Iraq (my phrasing, not Buckley's):

One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed...

Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.

The Iraqis we hear about are first indignant, and then infuriated, that Americans aren't on the scene to protect them and to punish the aggressors...

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elucidates on the complaint against Americans. It is not only that the invaders are American, it is that they are "Zionists." It would not be surprising to learn from an anonymously cited American soldier that he can understand why Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the Sunnis and the Shiites from each others' throats...

Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements. His challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality without forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy.

He will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies.

Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.

Buckley doesn't reprimand Bush for going in there in the first place to test out a shaky political science thesis--democracy as cure all--which is ultimately the problem. Or for the smoke and mirrors and xenophobia used to convince Americans of the necessity of getting "them" over there before they get us here. (And as we can see, these xenophobic fears stirred up by Team Bush are biting them in the rear on this UAE port issue).

Will the rest of conservatism's heavy hitters follow suit?

Here is another posting for my digi com class:

As I mentioned yesterday, it is hard as a librarian to reccommend a blog as a source of news information. This is in part due to the fact that blogs are so partisan. It should also be mentioned that blogs are often news parasites. Bloggers don't usually write the news. They react to it. (Bloggers can be good news aggregators pulling news from many different outlets and making them available to their readers). So your best resource for news is not a blog.

Yet, we shouldn't dismiss many blogs because they are partisan. Some of the most trenchant and relevant conversation about the lead up to the Iraq war came from the blogosphere. Because blogs serve as news aggregators they were able to pool little seen stories with bits of history and relevant information that had fallen outside of the news cycle. The downside is that bloggers serve as advocates and so they are often not giving you the whole story. (Let's face it, though, reporters and news producers advocate as well in how they construct a story).

Blogs do have their place in the news universe, though. Just as editorials are part of your daily newspaper, impassioned bloggers deserve a seat at the table. The pool of talking heads that make up your Sunday morning roundtables is a surprisingly small bunch. They tend to be more conservative and represent a very narrow range of perspectives. Bloggers, many of whom write for free due to their passion, are more diverse in their opinions. Bloggers to a very small degree are eclipsing the talking head elite and this is a good thing. We need passion in our debate--I'm looking at you, David Broder--and bloggers are a tonic to the dispassioned drone of the elite punditocracy.

We report...

Bush at cabinet meeting: "And so people don't need to worry about security. This deal wouldn't go forward if we were concerned about the security for the United States of America."

To my reader(s), for my Digital Communication class I am having to create several blog entries concerning different digi com issues. Here is the first installment:

For my Introduction to Information Technology final I wrote a paper about the politics of the blogosphere and about how librarians should approach blogs given the highly partisan nature of many bloggers. (Me too!) What follows is not a verbatim regurgitation of that paper, but just a reexamination of some of the same themes. If we accept that librarians in the age of internet access will serve as guides to locating quality web material, can a librarian ever reccommend a blog to information gatherers?

One has to finally conclude that blogs should hardly ever be a primary source, unless a blogger has unique or arcane insight and information available on his or her blog. Now certainly a historian or social scientist cataloging public perception of an issue would have an incredible resource in blogs. But for the average information gatherer, a trusted blog should probably only serve as a guidepost. News and info seekers would be better served by a periodical database or any number of the more tangible resources available to library patrons.

Why can't we reccommend a political blog with good conscience to an information seeker? Blogs are largely very partisan--so are certain mainstream news sources. (I'm looking at you Rupert Murdoch). You can go to a righty blog and get completely different interpretation of a news event than that of a lefty blog. Reporters are supposed to be objective, while bloggers aren't. Blogs are a resource better
discovered by the individual user because their information value is highly dubious.

From Talking Points Memo:

"I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British (sic) company. I'm trying to conduct foreign policy now by saying to people of the world, we'll treat you fairly. And after careful scrutiny, we believe this deal is a legitimate deal that will not jeopardize the security of the country, and at the same time, send that signal that we're willing to treat people fairly."

That was part of the president's comments today about the UAE ports deal while on board Air Force One. With his coinage of the new adjectival phrase 'Great British' you sort of wonder whether the pressure may have brought back his earlier foreign name mangling tick.

But however that may be, set aside the merits of whether it makes sense for a government owned company from the UAE to manage major ports of entry into the US. Forget about that for a moment. Doesn't the president seem ... well, a bit laughable with his new decent respect for the opinions of mankind message?

Does he wear it well? I really did chuckle when I heard him with this stuff. I mean, with racial profiling pretty much the whole world, not outsourcing our foreign policy to people with funny accents, eavesdropping without warrants because that's what tough guys need to do to get the job done, a whole foreign policy framed around the premise that the rest of the world can blow it out their $#@#&.

Even if he's right on the merits, it just doesn't work from a president who makes his political coin of the realm not caring what anybody else thinks or even what the law might be so long as security is even conceivably at stake.

The impetus for the deal probably has to do with doing some favors for the UAE. I'm not saying illegal favors, but favors nonetheless. And this appears to be taking precedence over security.

For someone who has sold themselves as the toughest on terror, this is a bit inconsistent.

This whole UAE deal is uniting the left and the right. They haven't been this together since they sang "God Bless America" post 9/11.

I think we are finally seeing conservatives showing some backbone and realizing that the will of the president does not take priority over their stated principles. (See wiretapping). The Bush mantra of "trust us" may not cut it this time. Congress is ready to do some oversight, not just offer some suggestions and readily stamp their approval on what the president deems necessary--I hope. Thank God.

And then we get this Washington Post story today:

President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration, the White House said Wednesday.

This guy is the "security president." He's the only one with the resolve and ability to fight terrorism aggressively. And yet, somehow this got by him.

And then we find out he says he will veto any bill that postpones the deal. So he didn't know about the bill until recently--awesome presidentin' there--but now he stands fully behind it. And as we all know, Bush has yet to veto any legislation.

Although he did threaten to veto the first appropriations bill to provide our troops in Iraq more funding. So he was against the troops before he was for them.

Saw some particularly awful talking head program on Fox News this last weekend.

Watched a bunch of old white guys in suits refer to liberals as the elites. How can they say that without exploding? They then proceed to say that the liberal ranks are largely made up of people who are jealous of the affluence of the elite. They didn't use the word elite in this instance but it is what they meant and is such a blatant contradiction that once again I expected explosions.

"That Cal Thomas blowed up real good!" (See SCTV).

The panel featured at least five people saying that liberals hated capitalism because they didn't want Wal Mart in their communities. Most of these folks were in the studio all trying to to outdo each other by demonstrating how much they hated liberals. Then they had one soft spoken east coast member of the liberal intelligentsia occasionally ekeing out a rebuttal via satellite. (He was grinning so maybe he realized how ridiculous the whole set up was).

Later in the day they had a man giving stock tips and below him were the words "The Price of Freedom."

Does anyone outside the Bush faithful take this stuff seriously?

Not sure how I feel about the whole issue--don't know enough--but Kos has an interesting take:

We see Orrin Hatch and countless of Republican apologists continue to pretend that Iraq had something to do with Al Qaida in order to justify the clusterfrack in Iraq.

Then there's the United Arab Emirates. And what's the UAE record on terrorism?

The UAE was one of three countries in the world to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

The UAE has been a key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran, North Korea and Lybia.

According to the FBI, money was transferred to the 9/11 hijackers through the UAE banking system.

After 9/11, the Treasury Department reported that the UAE was not cooperating in efforts to track down Osama Bin Laden's bank accounts.

We bomb Iraq which had nothing to do with 9/11, yet we hand UAE the keys to our ports.

That's the Bush Administration in action.

If Iraq's virtually nonexistent ties to Al Qaida justify hijacking their nation, then how can the UAE be given any cooperation?

This just further reveals the shaky/inconsistent/false justifications for the war.

I have recently immersed myself in this series. Great stuff. I'm really sick of seeing the cylon rub all over Gaius, though. We get it. Gaius is all id. Move on.

I think we can all agree that this is the best original programming Sci Fi will ever create. (That's a back-handed compliment.)

The GOP in North Carolina recently sent out a request for its members to send them church directories. Their reasoning was that this would best help them target their base.

And it also brings the left-leaning in congress one step closer to getting rid of tax exemption status for churches. I'm not one to say that the church should be apolitical, but neither should it be partisan. What I mean by that is, churches should speak out on the issues, but should rarely, if ever, support any candidates.

My wife and I had to leave a local church because of its continued and simplistic support of the presidency from the pulpit. I think that deciding your candidate in 2004 was a very difficult question for a christian. To call Bush the only choice for the White House because he is against abortion--which is what the pastor in question claimed--is myopic and simplistic.

Atrios gets it right:

"The president has the right to spy on whoever he wants whenever he wants and if you disagree Dick Cheney might shoot you in the face."

So it appears that not all the GOP wants to give the White House a blank check and the possibility of a substantive investigation remains.

Glenn Greenwald has more.

Keep your fingers crossed.

To my reader(s), have no fear. More posts to come.

Blogger was giving me mucho trouble this weekend, so I quit working with it for a few days out of frustration. Expect some new content tomorrow. Keep checking back.

And always remember, there's plenty archived goodness available on the left side of your screen.

Yes. Here it is. Over two hundred posts of varying quality.

Glad Cheney finally spoke up via the White House Press Office. I mean Fox News.

According to a Pew Research Center poll, Democrats are less happy than Republicans. John Hinderaker at Powerline thinks this must mean that Democrats are, therefore, irrational:

That conservatives (Republicans) are happier than liberals (Democrats) is no coincidence, as anyone who earns a living selecting juries can tell you. Nowadays, the fact that the Democrats are an angry (I would say, hateful) party is one of the commonplaces of political commentary. And, no doubt, the Democrats are angrier now than usual. But it seems likely that the fact that Democrats tend, statistically, to be unhappy people makes that party especially susceptible to appeals based on anger and hate*.

Liberals aren't angry** for any legitimate reasons, they are unhappy because they are maladjusted. That's bull----! ROARR! ARRRRGGGH!!! GROWL!!!!

Seriously, Mister Hinderaker. Conservatives are happier because their wacky TV and radio programs tell them everything is going well. Trust in Bush, our messiah. He's got the whole world in his hands and your best interests at heart. He is a good man, ordained by God to make the US the promised land.

What's so admirable about naivete?

There is such a thing a righteous anger and anyone who has been willing to cast a hard look at recent US history has stored up plenty of it.

*I think Mr. Hinderaker conveniently forgot the waves of irrational hatred aimed at the White Houe by conservatives during the Clinton years. "Clinton had Vince Foster killed and his out of control libido will drive this nation to ruin." We really hated Clinton. Yes, we. I used to be in their number. Looking back on it, I can see my hatred was not unjustified, aka irrational. I was a teenager, though.

**It's a frequent tactic of conservatives to label liberals as angry, aka irrational. It has proven so effective, that the Bush team even used it against McCain during their primary battles.

So we may not get an investigation into NSA wiretapping, according to the Washington Post:

Congress appeared ready to launch an investigation into the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance program last week, but an all-out White House lobbying campaign has dramatically slowed the effort and may kill it, key Republican and Democratic sources said yesterday.

The Senate intelligence committee is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a Democratic-sponsored motion to start an inquiry into the recently revealed program in which the National Security Agency eavesdrops on an undisclosed number of phone calls and e-mails involving U.S. residents without obtaining warrants from a secret court. Two committee Democrats said the panel -- made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats -- was clearly leaning in favor of the motion last week but now is closely divided and possibly inclined against it.

They attributed the shift to last week's closed briefings given by top administration officials to the full House and Senate intelligence committees, and to private appeals to wavering GOP senators by officials, including Vice President Cheney. "It's been a full-court press," said a top Senate Republican aide who asked to speak only on background -- as did several others for this story -- because of the classified nature of the intelligence committees' work.

Embarrassing.

President Bush has frequently been accused of living in a bubble.

Today, the NY Times runs a story making similar claims about the VP:

When the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, came to the press room just before 10 a.m. Tuesday and suggested he was wearing an orange tie to avoid a stray shot from Vice President Dick Cheney, it seemed to signal an effort to defuse the accidental-shooting story with a laugh.

But by midday, it was clear that the staffs of the president and the vice president had failed to communicate. Just after arriving at work around 7:45 a.m., Mr. Cheney learned that the man he had shot, Harry M. Whittington, was about to undergo a medical procedure on his heart because his injuries were more serious than earlier believed, Mr. Cheney's spokeswoman said.

No one in Mr. Cheney's office passed the word to Mr. McClellan, senior officials at the White House said, adding that the press secretary would never have joked about the shooting accident if he had known about the turn of events involving Mr. Whittington.

It was the latest example of the degree to which Mr. Cheney's habit of living in his own world in the Bush White House — surrounded by his own staff, relying on his own instincts, saying as little as possible — had backfired since the accident in Texas on Saturday. Mr. Cheney's staff members have kept their comments to chronological details and to repeating the vice president's written statements.

Later on in the story former White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater lays down some scathing criticism of Cheney's response following the accident:

Marlin Fitzwater, who was press secretary to the first President Bush (when Mr. Cheney served as defense secretary), said he was "appalled" at how the vice president handled the news of a serious accident.

"The responsibility for handling this, of course, was Cheney's," Mr. Fitzwater was quoted as saying in the online edition of Editor and Publisher. "What he should have done was call his press secretary and tell her what happened, and she then would have gotten a hold of the doctor and asked him what happened."

A full account could have been put out "in about two hours on Saturday," he said.

According to news reports I read yesterday, the US plans to ignore and starve Hamas of assistance and cooperation. They will then necessarily have to fold.

I don't question not supporting Hamas in Palestine given their history and ongoing mission. I did want to point out that Hamas was democratically elected. Obviously, democracy is not a panacea for conflict in the Middle East. One person, one vote will not save the Middle East. We have been told it will prove to be Iraq's salvation.

One of the stated reasons for invading Iraq, once those al Qaeda connections and weapons caches proved false, was to bring democracy and therefore save Iraq. (It's still very troubling that we went to Iraq on false pretenses in order to prove the neocons' shaky political science thesis). But we know that if democratically elected Iraqi leaders oppose US interests they will be deposed, coup(ed), or assassinated.

We don't want democracy in the Middle East as much as we want leaders who share our interests. There is nothing inherently magical about democracy. Our leaders should stop pretending that turning Iraq democratic will transform the Middle East.

They are either being willfully naive or wholly dishonest.

I have avoided talking about Cheney's hunting trip to avoid looking like a boob.

But today the man whom Cheney shot, who we heard was doing fine, suffered a heart attack in the hospital.

I don't think this points toward anything crazy like foul play, but I think it shows the White House has been spinning like crazy in order to do damage control. As a result, we have been getting less than honest accounts. I think this once again points to the issue of White House integrity. Oh, and by all accounts, Cheney made a pretty bone headed move for an experienced hunter.

Ann Coulter recently used the word "ragheads" at a conservative convention and was greeted with cheers.

Some conservatives are speaking out against her.

The Blog "The Volokh Conspiracy" offers up this play at home game. Fill in the blanks and guess the speaker. (Hint: It's not Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn).

President _____ exercised the powers of the imperial presidency to the utmost in the area in which those powers are already at their height — in our dealings with foreign nations. Unfortunately, the record of the administration has not been a happy one, in light of its costs to the Constitution and the American legal system. On a series of different international relations matters, such as war, international institutions, and treaties, President ____ has accelerated the disturbing trends in foreign policy that undermine notions of democratic accountability and respect for the rule of law.

It sure doesn't seem that way. I'm glad NPR puts David Corn from The Nation on to balance out the WSJ and Fox News on "The Diane Riehm Show." Of course, that ain't a Sunday show, but I think it's an example of a show getting it right.

Washington Monthly offers up a study on this issue.

Go see this movie.

It bothered the hell out of me.

It has lodged itself into my brain, confounding me and is still forcing me to grapple with all that I saw. It was the first movie experience where I actually participated in and witnessed a collective gasp from the entire audience. (With today's harried, seen it all audiences, this is no easy feat).

The movie is the story of a French family who finds a mysterious video tape outside their home. What they see on it is that someone has camped out in front of their home and has been videotaping it. (Also the set up to David Lynch's trippy nightmare "Lost Highway"). They are being watched. They later recieve another tape wrapped up inside of a disturbing drawing.

This movie will upset you, confound you, occasionally lull you into boredom*, but will prove to be one of the most engaging and disturbing movies you see in the theaters this year. If you are not averse to subtitles--which is a silly aversion, really--or long moments of stillness on the screen--curse you Michael Bay--then you will fall under this movie's spell.

*I'd argue that the movie's moments of stillness are used effectively to confuse you as to what you are actually seeing on the screen. They give greater impact to the horiffic moments which shatter the stillness, and create a metanarrative in which we become active particpants in the viewing experience. Much like "Psycho" or "Rear Window" we are implicated as voyeurs and become active participants in the storytelling experience. They also gave me a moment to try and piece together the mystery at the center of the story.

Given the success of "Lost," other networks are developing character-driven genre serial dramas. Of course that happened this year with "Surface"* and "Invasion"--which I wanted to like, but it is frickin slow.

There is a cool run down on some genre scripts in development over at Ain't It Cool News. It looks like we came really close to getting a weekly zombie series. Even if it was just okay, a zombie attack each week would keep me tuned in.

*I was not getting anywhere near "Surface." It reeked of SeaQuest and was brought to you by the same network. Even it age 11, I knew that show was forced. But my dad let me watch it**, so I tuned in regularly. NBC Studios also made the equally bad "Earth2." (It's not a sequel). Oddly, though, NBC Studios is behind the excellent "Battlestar Galactica" remake. Go figure.

**I eagerly watched many bad shows if my dad let me (see Mr. Smith), because my parents were strict about my TV viewing. I took whatever I could get. My dad, I remember, wouldn't let me watch the innocuous "Full House" because he had if confused with the randy "Just the Ten of Us." Occasionally they would slip up. I remember sitting through a few sordid episodes of "Law and Order" and the Al Pacino/Michelle Pfeiffer flick "Frankie and Johnny."

Ann Coulter is offensive, shrill, and... unfortunately, influential.

I'm amazed any network still has her on as a serious commentator.

This is the unpsoken message of the White House.

"Trust us."

We won't abuse the wiretapping. We're good people.

Of course, we don't have the rule of law to protect us from "good" people, but to protect us from ourselves. If given the chance, "good" people will abuse their power. It is inevitable. I think the apostle Paul had something to say about that.

I ran across this story via the conservative blogger Instapundit:

[Corine Hegland's] exhaustively researched cover story in this issue — studded with probative details and human stories that every serious student of the war against terror should read — provides powerful evidence confirming what many of us have suspected for years:

A high percentage, perhaps the majority, of the 500-odd men now held at Guantanamo were not captured on any battlefield, let alone on "the battlefield in Afghanistan" (as Bush asserted) while "trying to kill American forces" (as McClellan claimed).

Fewer than 20 percent of the Guantanamo detainees, the best available evidence suggests, have ever been Qaeda members.

Many scores, and perhaps hundreds, of the detainees were not even Taliban foot soldiers, let alone Qaeda terrorists. They were innocent, wrongly seized noncombatants with no intention of joining the Qaeda campaign to murder Americans.

The majority were not captured by U.S. forces but rather handed over by reward-seeking Pakistanis and Afghan warlords and by villagers of highly doubtful reliability.

These locals had strong incentives to tar as terrorists any and all Arabs they could get their hands on as the Arabs fled war-torn Afghanistan in late 2001 and 2002 — including noncombatant teachers and humanitarian workers. And the Bush administration has apparently made very little effort to corroborate the plausible claims of innocence detailed by many of the men who were handed over.

So we bought these prisoners from opportunistic warlords and are holding them indefinitely for crimes unspecified. And many of them have nohing to do with Al Qaeda. Isn't that a nightmare you'd love to be caught up in? Who cares that these detainees aren't Americans? This is wrong and should not be occurring in the "land of the free."

What did the White House tell us about our Gitmo detainees:

"These are people picked up off the battlefield in Afghanistan. They weren't wearing uniforms ... but they were there to kill."
-- President Bush, June 20, 2005

"These detainees are dangerous enemy combatants....They were picked up on the battlefield, fighting American forces, trying to kill American forces."
-- White House press secretary Scott McClellan, June 21, 2005

"The people that are there are people we picked up on the battlefield, primarily in Afghanistan. They're terrorists. They're bomb makers. They're facilitators of terror. They're members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban....We've let go those that we've deemed not to be a continuing threat. But the 520-some that are there now are serious, deadly threats to the United States."
-- Vice President Cheney, June 23, 2005

"These are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield. They're terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, [Osama bin Laden's] bodyguards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th 9/11 hijacker."
-- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, June 27, 2005

Regular readers of the site know that the current administration frequently lies. Just another nail in the coffin.

Yes. Tonight, Fox is dumping the last four episodes of the series starting at 7pm central.

And yes, it looks likely that Showtime will pick up the series.

Abramoff contradicts Bush statement that the two never met:

Jack Abramoff said in correspondence made public Thursday that President Bush met him “almost a dozen” times, disputing White House claims Bush did not know the former lobbyist at the center of a corruption scandal.

“The guy saw me in almost a dozen settings, and joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids. Perhaps he has forgotten everything, who knows,” Abramoff wrote in an e-mail to Kim Eisler, national editor for the Washingtonian magazine.

Abramoff added that Bush also once invited him to his Texas ranch.

This does not prove that Bush lied becuase there was really no need to prove that Bush had lied. It was obvious from the moment that the President made the statement that he lied. Abramoff was one of the powerful men in Repbublican politics. The very idea that Bush had never met Abramoff or couldn't remember meeting him is ridiculous. Consider this evidence a nail in the Bush coffin.

Of course, Bush may not be lying if he is either going crazy or losing his mind. I'd stick with Occam's razor on this one.

So who cares if Bush lied about meeting Abramoff. Integrity is character and this points to a massive character flaw. It also means that you must take most statements from the presidency with a grain of salt.

Much studying today. Trying to grapple with statistics and cataloging. Challenging stuff.

Another great episode. Kind of "Lost" meets "House of Games." I really thought Sawyer might make the right choice in his flashback.

Over at Ain't It Cool News, users are complaining about too many character-centric flashbacks and not enough cool stuff about the island. Of course, it is the attention to character that will give this show legs and allow it to have a long run. Embrace the mystery and enjoy the character evolution.

So next week, the clock is gonna run down. I bet that won't occur until the end of the show and will be next week's cliffhanger.

Has Sawyer turned for good? What about Charlie? My guess is we are dealing with a Joss Whedon-type universe in which evil characters do good and good characters fall into evil.

One of the Bush administration's tactics in dealing with the wiretapping story is to attack the critics by saying that these critics are naive and against going after the terrorists. Critics are in effect wusses. This is silly, but it served Bush in 2004 and it made it necessary for the Democratic senators at the Gonzales hearing to assure onlooking Americans they were against terror.

Sen. Feingold comments on this over at Talking Points Memo:

This administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms somehow has a pre-9/11 world view. In fact, the President has a pre-1776 world view. Our government has three branches, not one. And no one, not even the President, is above the law.

But don't you see, Sen. Feingold, upholding our rights as citizens gets in the way of fighting terror.

Paternalism and misdirection.

...is back.

Apparently, it's buried in Bush's budget proposal.

Bush is attempting to save Social Security by destroying it. (Anyone who paid serious attention to the Social Security reform debate knows that they were talking about a phase out of the program, not a reshaping.) Once again, we see the Bush doctrine at work--tell you what you need to hear--fuzzy falsehoods--in order to do what we think is best.

Bush doctrine: paternalism and misdirection.

Yawn.

We've seen it all before. Jean Smart's character, though, may turn out to be a saving grace. She looks like she's leaning toward Lady Macbeth territory.

Jack got a chance to participate in his favorite hobby--torture.

Once again, the public debate continues to be dumbed down by the folks at Imagine Entertainment.

Hopefully, "Gilmore" will be another strong outing tonight.

So this is really late, but didn't get much of a chance to blog yesterday or Sunday.

That was a painfully bad show. The surfing skit was even below MadTV standards. Good to see Maya Rudolph back.

Why was this show such a miserable failure? Steve Martin was obviously not thrilled to be performing and the material was horrible. Kristen Wiig was far and away the MVP with her Drew Barrymore impersonation. The best moment of the night.

The digital skits were funny and foreshadow a day when SNL may move toward a "Kids in the Hall" format. Maybe not, but they are the most consistently entertaining moments of the show lately.

Saw the new Terrence Malick this afternoon.

Really fantastic. Beautiful. I was reminded again of the work of David Gordon Greene, who is obviously a disciple.

As a believer in Christ, I often feel a profound sense of notrightness with the world--a sense that our world falls far short of that which is correct and desired by God. This is my conscience and it helps me determine the direction my life should take and makes me aware of that in the world which is unjust and immoral.

My conscience has been pricked by the actions of the Bush team, specifically in Iraq. Many counseled a wait and see attitude, sure that the president's mission would prove to be just. It's about three years since we invaded Iraq and the justifications continue to shift. It is clear that we were lied to about the weapons and ties to Al Qaeda. The result: a faulty mission with unrealistic goals pursued through lies leading to inexcusable death and destruction.

My conscience has been on red alert for about five years. The protestant evangelical church, which has provided the lion's share of my moral directives, has, in far too many instances, abandoned its mission to serve as salt and light in regards to the military pursuits of the Bush administration. Instead, it has often been a cheerleader and apologist for the White House. This knocked my faith for a tailspin.

I am beginning to piece my faith back together through prayer, fellowship, and time in the word. I think the bride has been unfaithful to Christ, but grace abounds. (It has abounded in my life as I continually run astray.) It is not the first time large swaths of the church have stood on the wrong side of an issue of monumental importance.

As the war drums begin to beat for attacking Iran--they are coming--it is my prayer that the church will take a more thoughtful, reflective, and active stance. Even though the president has stated he is against abortion, it is okay and necessary, to hold him to account when he promotes injustice.

I am not a Democrat. I am not compelled to criticize the Bush administration because I want to see a Democrat in the White House. Rather, I am compelled by the fact that our actions in Iraq are evil and unjust.

I watched about the first hour and a half this morning and listened intermittently throughout the day.

Gonzales, not surprisingly, said he could not get into the specifics of the program because the program was ongoing. This is a typical Bush team tactic that allows them to avoid many tough questions and avoid their responsibility of being held accountable before the public. In short, trust us, we know what's good for you. The Bush doctrine--paternalism and misdirection--continues.

Orrin Hatch was a real tool today. He gave Mr. Gonzales plenty of help by providing supporting evidence for whatever Gonzales proposed. He abandoned his job of oversight and became White House waterboy. Embarrassing.

I was so happy to hear Lindsey Graham try to pin down Mr. Gonzales on torture. He brought up the issue of the signing statements--I told you those were important--and tried to get Gonzales to firmly state the White House position on torture. Sen. Graham said the White House's permissiveness and avoidance of addressing the issue publicly is endangering our troops. I agree. Also, torture is just plain wrong.

Some of what I heard was encouraging, but Gonzales further confirmed the arrogance of the White House and why they are such a danger to our democracy. Hopefully, these hearings will be the beginning of the end for the Bush administration, rather than an end unto themselves.

This is rich.

Apparently, in the election of new House Majority Leader, there were voting irregularities.

It appears there were more votes cast than there were voters.

Paraphrasing John Stewart: "The sad thing is that we don't have to make this stuff up."

I haven't seen the movie. I have read reviews saying its subpar. (For my money, the best two christian movies of the past thirty years or so are "Tender Mercies" and "The Apostle.")

Today, news reached me, via Talking Points Memo, that the film is creating quite a stir among evangelicals because one of the actors who particiapted in the movie is gay. Here is a gem of a comment from the president of Central Baptist Seminary in Minneapolis:

One fellow speaking out on the controversy is Kevin T. Bauder, president of Central Baptist Seminary in Minneapolis. On his blog he said: "Granted, we must not overreact. And it would probably be an overreaction to firebomb these men's houses. But what they have done is no mistake. It is a calculated strategy."

"Probably..."! Geez, I don't want to sew dissension among the church, but it is public comments like that give the rest of us a bad name.

Cheney and Libby knew in June 2003 that Iraq had not attempted to purchase uranium from Niger:

Vice President Cheney and his then-Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were personally informed in June 2003 that the CIA no longer considered credible the allegations that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation of Niger, according to government records and interviews with current and former officials. The new CIA assessment came just as Libby and other senior administration officials were embarking on an effort to discredit an administration critic who had also been saying that the allegations were untrue.

CIA analysts wrote then-CIA Director George Tenet in a highly classified memo on June 17, 2003, "We no longer believe there is sufficient" credible information to "conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad." The memo was titled: "In Response to Your Questions for Our Current Assessment and Additional Details on Iraq's Alleged Pursuits of Uranium From Abroad."

Despite the CIA's findings, Libby attempted to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had been sent on a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger the previous year to investigate the claims, which he concluded were baseless.

It's not lying if it's for a good cause.

It was just thirteen little words.

And, and, and....What about the schools?!!

In response to an ongoing debate at Slate concerning abortion, Atrios puts in his own two cents.

Atrios is one of the most widely read blogs on the web and I found his arguments simplistic and insulting. I do frequently appreciate his insight, but his tone in this post completely missses the boat. He also undercuts liberal pro-lifers by saying we think abortion is "icky."

Clearly, neither the pro-life or the pro-choice crowd understand one another.

For what it's worth, I posted a response on his comments section concerning this issue":

Atrios is being a little bit simplistic here. Schiavo was practically dead and had no chance of living. A child in utero is in the midst of growth and is growing toward greater viability. Schiavo does not equal a fetus. Schiavo had asked not to be revived. A child in utero has made no such proclamation, spoken or otherwise.

The issue really comes down to if you think a mother gets to determine whether or not her child should live. If the mother kills the child after it is out of the womb, she will be prosecuted. But if she does so while the child is in the womb she will be within her legal rights. So for the abortion is not "icky" crowd, it must be true that a mother gets to terminate a life while that life gestates insider her, but when the child is out of the womb, the child is fully protected under the law. This doesn't make any sense, is a logical fallacy, and is repulsive.

It's that simple.

It appears that much casting has already been done for the next Harry Potter film.

I agree with Quint at Ain't It Cool News. "Order of the Phoenix" was the weakest book and the necessary trimming needed for the script can only help make for a better film.

So I finally got my wife hooked on the show. She started watching it out of politeness, but now is pretty caught up in the Rory and Logan drama.

I think we were both delighted by the show's climax. The fight scene with abrupt cuts from hilarity to hostility was one of the most inspired moments in the show's run.

Is Rory pregnant? The scenes from next week's show sure seemed to suggest this.

James Carroll asks this important question:

...Is America actually at war? We have a war president, war hawks, war planes, war correspondents, war cries, even war crimes -- but do we have war? We have war dead, but the question remains. With young US soldiers being blown up almost daily, it can seem an absurd question, an offensive one. With thousands of Iraqis killed by American firepower, it can seem a heartless question, as if the dead care whether strict definitions of ''war" are fulfilled. There can be no question that Iraq is in a state of war, and that, whatever its elements of post-Saddam sectarian conflict, the warfare is being driven from the Pentagon.

But, regarding the Iraq conflict as it involves the United States, something essential is lacking that would make it a war -- and that is an enemy.

The so-called ''insurgents," who wreak such havoc, are not America's enemy. They are not our rivals for territory. They are not our ideological antagonists. Abstracting from the present confrontation, they have no reason to wish us ill.

Americans who bother to imagine the situation from the Iraqi point of view -- a massive foreign invasion, launched on false pretenses; a brutal occupation, with control of local oil reserves surely part of the motivation; the heartbreaking deaths of brothers, cousins, children, parents -- naturally understand that an ''insurgency" is the appropriate response. Its goal is simply to force the invaders and occupiers to leave. Sunnis, Shi'ites, and Kurds have intrinsic reasons to regard each other as enemies, from competition over land and oil, to ethnic hatreds, to unsettled scores. No equivalent sources of inbuilt contempt exist among these people toward America. Taken as a whole, or in its parts, Iraq is not an enemy...

When we imagine the situation "from the Iraqi point of view," as James Carroll suggests, it becomes much easier to ask the question, "What the hell are we doing over there?"

To my friends and family on the right, I know many of you tend to dismiss critiques of the president because he is a good, Christian, conservative man. It is easy to see him as "our man in Washington" and as a martyr because of the rare abuse dished out to him by the media. Finally, some one on our side is in in the White House.

This, of course, is a carefully constructed image that Bush has used to rally support around his increasingly radical agenda. Bush has lied to all Americans in the pursuit of his offensive against Iraq, condoned torture, and is seeking to reshape the executive so that it trumps all. We are losing the democracy we have always known.

It hasn't happened yet, but it will if we don't speak out. Even if you believe Bush is benign, do you want a more powerful presidency to exist for all future elected Commanders-in-Chief? It is time to say "no more" and demand that the presidential powers be checked.

What are they? You better find out as Bush continues to use them to pump up the power of the executive. The current administartion is radically changing our government and so few seem to care.

Dahlia Lithwick at Slate offers a primer on how Bush is using signing statements to undermine the judicial and legislative branches.

Following are a few passages from this excellent piece:

Unless you spent New Year's weekend trolling the White House Web site or catching up on your latest U.S. Code Congressional and Administrative News as you waited for the ball to drop, you probably missed the little "P.S." the president tacked onto the McCain anti-torture bill. The postscript was a statement clearly announcing that the president will only follow the new law "in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the president to supervise the unitary executive branch ... and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power." In other words, it is for the president—not Congress or the courts—to determine when the provisions of this bill interfere with his war-making powers, and when they do, he will freely ignore the law...

These statements are directed at federal agencies and their lawyers. One of their main historical purposes was to afford agencies a glance at how the president wants a statute to be enforced. As Jack Balkin observed almost immediately after the McCain bill, signing statements represent the president's signal to his subordinates about how he plans to enforce a law. And when a president deliberately advises his subordinates that they may someday be asked to join him in breaking a law, he muddies the legal waters, as well as the chain of command.

Such mixed messages about torture allowed young, untrained guards to torture prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Where the rules for treatment of detainees had once been clear, the efforts of Jay Bybee and Alberto Gonzales and others in the White House telegraphed that some agencies could now follow different rules for torture; that not all torture really is torture; that sometimes the president may actually want you to torture; and that all this is largely for you to sort out on the ground. The McCain anti-torture amendment was an effort to create an absolutely clean distinction once more. Bush's signing statement obliterates that distinction and opens the door to yet more ambiguity and abuse.

And the future victims of such Bush-endorsed torture? They won't have a day in court, under President Bush's view of the law. Which means that—like all the mushrooming executive war powers—this ambiguous new torture regime will be secret and may never be tested in a courtroom at all...

These signing statements are dangerous because they repeat and normalize—always using seemingly boilerplate language—claims about the boundless powers of a "unitary executive." By questioning the principle of court review in the McCain statement, Bush again erodes the notion of judicial supremacy—an idea we have lived with since Marbury v. Madison. When he asserts that he—and not the courts—is the final arbiter of his constitutional powers, he is calling for a radical shift in the system of checks and balances.

Once again, we see Bush attempting to recreate Washington in his own image.

On the issue of torture, we can see the White House undermining the anti-torture legislation and clearing the way for further abuse. This was not a moral or necessary action. It it is time for the president to go.