I've taken the Democrats to task many a time for acting like whipped puppies and showing their bellies whenever the Pubs look at them cross-eyed so it's only fair that I give them credit when they actually manage--as they did for three years filibustering the worst of the Emperor's judicial appointments (the reason the Pub leadership wants to change the rules to outlaw filibusters)--to act like an actual opposition party.

It isn't much but they're doing what they can, delaying the Rice and Gonzales nominations for a few days to try to force a floor debate where they can register their opposition and the reasons for it.

WASHINGTON — Voicing displeasure with the Bush administration over prisoner abuse and the Iraq war, Senate Democrats on Wednesday delayed the expected confirmations of Atty. Gen.-designate Alberto R. Gonzales and Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice.

Republicans had hoped in particular that Rice, whose nomination was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, would be confirmed and sworn in today in time for President Bush's inauguration. But Democrats — critical of her advocacy of the Iraq invasion, as well as Gonzales' answers on prisoner abuse and torture — acted to postpone final votes by at least a day for Rice and possibly more than a week for Gonzales.

The maneuver underscored the limits Democrats intended to try to place on the new, larger Senate Republican majority as Bush pushed an ambitious legislative agenda and a lengthy roster of nominees. Although their numbers in Congress dwindled after November's elections, Democrats have indicated they plan to challenge the president.

One reason they can do so is that Senate Democrats have the procedural power to snarl work if Republicans try to deny them the right to debate. Thus, while Democrats know they lack the votes to defeat Rice or Gonzales, they can influence when a vote is scheduled.

"There are a number of Democrats … that want to have a chance to debate [Rice's] nomination for a couple of hours," said James Manley, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

Although Rice was approved on a 16-2 committee vote, Democratic leadership aides said they wanted to make a point: They should not be considered a rubber stamp.

"A little bit of debate never hurt anybody," Manley said.

It won't change anything as far as the vote goes but it will at least put the Pubs on notice that the Dems aren't going to roll over every time a Pub snarls at them, and that has to be a good thing. But the Dems don't have the numbers to prevent the Pubs from turning the Congress into a rubber stamp, which is exactly what they intend to do. Whether they succeed or not depends not on the Dems but on dissident Republicans concerned over what they see as an Admin that is consistently violating core conservative principles.

Note to the DLC: Get your heads out of your asses and do some exploiting of potential allies here, you pro-corporate weenies.

From the AJC, this short oddity:

It appeared, however, that there would be little chance for a reconciliation between the Bush administration and former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore.

Moore's relationship with the White House soured after he refused a federal order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state courts building. He will be the speaker Saturday at the First Ladies Inaugural Tea, but Laura Bush's spokesman said she will not attend and was not invited. (emphasis added)

Excuse me? The First Lady wasn't invited to and won't attend the First Ladies Inaugural Tea? So who the hell invited Roy?

1. Hillary
   I don't think so.


2. Nancy
   Not likely that Nancy will be within 3000 miles of a coronation ceremony celebrating the victory of a man she hates, much less arrange the speaker at the FLIT.


3. Rosalind
   Not if the Emperor himself asked her to.

Who does that leave?

So Barbara dissed Her Boy's better half, did she? Interesting.

Those of us who noticed a few years ago that PBS had developed an unfortunate tendency to kowtow to conservative bias in its news reporting, often parroting FoxNews' Right-friendly illusions and orienting its format toward less 'hard news' and more non-controversial feature fluff, can only be saddened by the latest proof that whatever courage Public Broadcasting once had has been thoroughly undermined by its ex-corporate managers' determination to attract more corporate underwriting.

Bowing again to the specter of government censure, the Public Broadcasting Service has decided to edit out the scene of a nude woman in the upcoming television movie "Dirty War" rather than expose its member stations to complaints of indecency and FCC fines.

The film, co-produced by HBO and BBC Films, depicts a fictional terrorist attack on central London. The scene in question shows a woman being scrubbed down after exposure to a chemical "dirty bomb." The original version will debut next Monday on HBO, a pay cable station that, unlike PBS stations, is not obliged to meet government indecency standards.

Pat Mitchell, the PBS president and CEO, said Saturday that the movie was edited before it was sent to member stations. PBS stations are scheduled to air the edited version Feb. 23.

PBS also announced a new partnership arrangement with HBO at the winter gathering of the Television Critics Assn. (TCA) in Universal City. Mitchell said editing out the nude scene in "Dirty War" was necessary "to protect our stations."

Would the nudity be less of an issue if it was a man instead of a woman, one wonders?

This isn't the first time PBS has altered elements of its programming to suit Michael Powell's power and prudery.

Last year, PBS cut three instances of street language from the debut of its series "Cop Shop" to the dismay of production and cast members. At the television critics' last meeting in July, series star Richard Dreyfuss and executive producer and writer David Black protested the cuts as censorship. Dreyfuss said he agreed to them only after hearing KCET would have been subject to "intimidating fines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars." The series was dropped after one show.

PBS had also excised an expletive from the British import "Prime Suspect."

The fines are certainly intimidating, and Powell's Puritanism worrying, especially given his lackey-style obeisance to far-right conservative wing-nuts and would-be censors like Focus on the Family, but let's not lose sight of the real threat here: PBS is increasingly funded by corporate money. Not only does that money almost always come with strings attached determining what kind of programming it can or cannot be used for (we've probably seen the last Frontline report on corporate skullduggery), it also carries with it corporate expectations that 'community values' won't be 'violated' by the programming it funds.

In other words, 'public' broadcasting is slowly being privatized as a consequence of its quest for corporate $$bucks$$.

Newt Gingrinch, in his attempt to zero out government funding for public broadcasting ten years ago, said at one point that Rush Limbaugh was 'true' public broadcasting because he had a bigger audience. Since Rush is totally a creature of corporate sponsorship and promotion who would never have survived the dismal ratings of his first few years if he hadn't been backed by corporate right-wing tycoons who wanted his vitriol against their enemies to be as widely disseminated as possible, we are left with the spectre of a PBS that, gutless as the Democratic Party, incrementally allows itself over the next decade or so to be turned into Rush-lite in order to get the same kind of corporate support.

Expect to see more corporate-friendly documentaries from Ken Burns, endless nature specials, and mindless entertainment extravaganzas virtually indistinguishable from standard commercial dreck while real news programming, the kind PBS used to excel at, goes the way of the dodo. And on the rare occasions when they attempt something different, expect them to de-fang it lest it offend a corporate sponsor.

Public broadcasting: yet another great liberal idea bought out by corporate money.

Requiescat in pace, public broadcasting. We hardly knew ye.

If y'all thought the Cobb County School Board had been put out of the business of making a fool of itself by the recent Federal court ruling against its placement of Xtian religious advertising on biology textbooks, y'all're wrong. They're still in that business and they aim to make it grow.

As if taking a federal judge's ruling against them as fighting words, the Cobb County school board voted Monday to appeal a court order to remove evolution disclaimers from textbooks.

In a 5-2 vote, board members said U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper's decision "amounts to unnecessary judicial intrusion into local control of schools," according to a statement they released immediately after the vote.

The decision came after members met with lawyers for three hours in closed session.

"We have to make our best judgment based on the facts," said Curt Johnston, a member who was chairman when the board adopted the disclaimers in 2002. He said the board believes the facts show the judge erred when ruling that the disclaimers — which call evolution "a theory, not a fact" — convey an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

In their statement, the board said it felt "condemned . . . for taking a reasonable approach to address the concerns of [Cobb] citizens on a controversial issue."

Yeah, those day-amn activist judges cain't tell us-all how we oughten to run ar schyools.

Future AJC article on a pending Cobb County School Board decision:

COBB COUNTY, GA--Rev Clarence Wildman and an angry group of four Cobb County parents stormed the Cobb County School Board last night, demanding that stickers be placed in physics textbooks warning that 'Relativity is just a theory'.

Citing a new study from the Institute to Promote Biblical Science, Wildman characterized the Theory of Relativity as "secular hogwash" and referred to Albert Einstein as "an atheistic foreigner", probably French, who had come out of who-knows-which worthless Communist Party indoctrination center calling itself a "university" armed with a scheme to destroy Xtianity by claiming that science was all relative and the universe was finite.

Wildman pointed to the story of how Joshua made the sun stand still in the sky. "Einstein's theory would have you believe that that couldn't have happened without the Earth crashing into the Sun. Since the earth did NOT crash into the Sun, that's evidence enough for me that Einstein was full of it." The IPBS study, he said, contains all kinds of new scientific information that would tend to disprove Einstein's "baseless speculations", though he declined to mention what that information might be.

"All we're asking," he concluded in a fiery oration that visibly moved three of the four parents he brought with him and scared the bejeezus out of everybody else, especially when he began foaming at the mouth, "is that you make students aware that there is a controversy. Relativity is just a theory, not a fact, and they have a right to know that there is a competing theory which explains the universe in a much more believable way--from God's own mouth." Then he warned the Board that if they didn't put the stickers in the books, they'd go straight to Eternal Damnation. "God Is Watching You!" he bellowed, standing on a rickety stack of Bibles as proof that he had "God's approval".

A noisy crowd of one thousand parents who had gathered outside the meeting to protest the placing of the stickers in school textbooks was not allowed into the meeting "for security reasons", the School Board said.

The Emperor Georgius has Big Plans for his next two speeches, the upcoming Inaugural and this year's SOTU. He's thinking about his legacy.

He wants to be remembered as a public servant who promoted political freedom abroad and economic freedom at home....

Oh. Well, as the man who stole two national elections in a row and is the new owner/operator of Iraq, our 51st State, I don't suppose he could claim to be supporting political freedom at home and economic freedom abroad with a straight face. Still, even at that it's a stretch.

On Iraq, Bush indicated that he would stay the course despite the continuing violence. "I hope that 50 years from now people will look back and say, 'Thank goodness old George W. stuck to his beliefs that freedom is an agent for change, to make the world more peaceful.' "

They might be saying that, a few of them, as they toddle around the nursing home, also under the impression that Britney Spears was a great artiste, Joe Stalin was a quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, the moon is made of Swiss cheese, and they themselves are the products of an illicit union between Marilyn Monroe and Pervez Mushareff, who they will insist is the man that invented Milk Duds. Other than that....

But not to worry. The Emperor--who sees himself as a Great Man when he isn't staring into a mirror trying to work out which facial expressions best suit God's Chosen Messenger--is a man who believes whatever he says, even when it pops unbidden off the top of his cavernous head.

Peggy Noonan, who wrote speeches for President Reagan and now writes a column for the Wall Street Journal online, [said,] "A first inaugural asserts intention; a second inaugural speaks of what has happened the past four years and what is intended for the next four."

[Chief Speechwriter Mike] Gerson said that described Bush's intentions exactly.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant, these people. The cliches pearls of wisdom and superficial slogans deep insights roll off their tongues like burnt egg off an iron skillet, don't they? One looks at the past, one looks at the future. Who woulda thunk it? Such perceptions would have escaped me completely. But now that I know how it's done, I bet I can summarize both speeches in 25 words or less.

1. Everything has been Great.


2. Everything is going to be Great.

There. Can we go home now?

I wondered, during the recent Ukrainian uprising, why Yushchenko didn't use troops to put the demonstrators down like a good little ex-Soviet normally would have been expected to do. Or as George Bush, their spiritual sister, undoubtedly would do should the zombie-ish US public ever wake up to what he's actually perpetrating on them. A fascinating piece in the NYT--just the kind of in-depth, detailed reporting they don't dare to do any more about the inside game around the Emperor--reveals that the troops were ready to go, shields, gas masks, and all. Some even had guns and they weren't loaded with rubber bullets. The Ukraine Interior Ministry had ordered a crackdown with the first disturbances, and the Army had responded.

Then, in a move that has to make Americans nostalgic for a by-gone era, the sloviviki--senior intelligence officers in the SBU, the Ukrainian version of the CIA (that's 'spooks' to you and me)--began a concerted campaign inside Yushchenko's govt to convince the Interior Ministry that such a crackdown was illegal. Mr Tenet must have--at least, should have--blushed furously when he read it.

Kiev was tilting toward a terrible clash, a Soviet-style crackdown that could have brought civil war. And then, inside Ukraine's clandestine security apparatus, strange events began to unfold.

While wet snow fell on the rally in Independence Square, an undercover colonel from the Security Service of Ukraine, or S.B.U., moved among the protesters' tents. He represented the successor agency to the K.G.B., but his mission, he said, was not against the protesters. It was to thwart the mobilizing troops. He warned opposition leaders that a crackdown was afoot.

Simultaneously, senior intelligence officials were madly working their secure telephones, in one instance cooperating with an army general to persuade the Interior Ministry to turn back.

The officials issued warnings, saying that using force against peaceful rallies was illegal and could lead to prosecution and that if ministry troops came to Kiev, the army and security services would defend civilians, said an opposition leader who witnessed some of the exchanges and Oleksander Galaka, head of the military's intelligence service, the G.U.R., who made some of the calls.

Far behind the scenes, Col. Gen. Ihor P. Smeshko, the S.B.U. chief, was coordinating several of the contacts, according to Maj. Gen. Vitaly Romanchenko, leader of the military counterintelligence department, who said that on the spy chief's orders he warned General Popkov to stop. The Interior Ministry called off its alarm.

Can you imagine what would have happened if Tenet had backed his intelligence analysts' report that Iraq had no WMD and co-ordinated efforts behind the scenes with Powell's State Intel--who had reached the same conclusion--to convince the non-hard-core-neocons in the govt that Chalabi was full of it and the WMD's were a myth? If, instead of surrendering to the Bush/Cheney faith-based intuition of Feith & Co and after lamely trying to counter all that bogus C-TEG 'intel' from Ahmad finally told the Emperor what he demanded to hear ('It's a slam-dunk, Mr President.'), he and Powell had pointed out forcefully that the threat was illusory and the Emperor's war almost certainly illegal? In other words, if he had done his goddam job?

Kind of makes you wish you lived in the Ukraine, don't it?

It's a long report but worth reading for the 'How It Should Have Been' picture of the way a reality-based govt operates, just in case it's been so long you've forgotten.

The first thing the left has to do to regain its reputation for fairness is to stop picking on the weaker members of the right.

• Echidne and Amanda tee off on yesterday's David Brooks column as if it represented the somber musings of a respected pundit rather than the immature rambling of one of the schmoozoisee's most notorious and least tightly-wound bottom-feeders.


• Kevin Drum and The Carpetbagger are up in arms over Orrin Hatch's article in the National Review claiming that the filibuster has suddenly become a 'constitutional crisis that undermines democracy', furious about the distortions and what Kevin calls Hatch's 'self-servingly selective memory', as if this were something other than the blatant propaganda it's so obviously intended to be.

Come on, people. We're Liberals. We don't kick people when they're down and we don't pick on the mentally impaired. Where's your compassion? Your common sense? Your enlightened humanity? Your olives? (This martini needs something....)

Brooks throws these things off the top of his head because he's an idiot and it's the best he can do. We shouldn't be shaming him by pointing out his totally illogical reasoning, his love for anti-democratic authoritarians, or--as in this case--his assumption that women are nothing but baby-making machines and really ought to stop all this nonsense about 'careers' and get back to their natural role. He isn't being offensive, he's just dumb and doing the best he can.

Instead of taking him to task, we ought to be praising his ability to put two sentences together that don't cancel each other out--assuming this is one of those rare columns when he manages it. Or maybe help him out by suggesting a theme song that ought to be playing in the background as one reads his latest 12-minutes-from-thought-to-page opus. (Say, for this latest effort, 'Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed'.)

As for Hatch, it's not like he means it. He's just trying to defend his reality-challenged party's most recent Flagrant Power Play and he's not very good at it. We should give him better arguments. Suggest, for example, that he could write a follow-up piece explaining how filibusters cause hurricanes, impotence, and pattern baldness. Or we could fashion him a little flute out of blades of grass and present it to him as a way he might liven up his orations (teach him a jig to go with it--outstanding!) when the audience starts to boo, or worse--fall asleep. (For a good example of how this approach works in practice, see eRobin's response to the same Brooksian, um, effort.)

When you call attention to their inconsistencies, lies, corruption, ineptitude, and/or greed, you're making fun of their disabilities, and that's not like you. Let's think, now, kids, and be kind to those less fortunate than ourselves. Not everyone can be born with a standard brain and the ability to reason; so they're ignorant and bigoted and narrow-minded and autocratic? So what? So you never showed any flaws to the world? You--yes, the guy in the tie-dyed tie. You didn't understand Relativity until you were in high school, so you're not perfect either. And you, over there. No, no, the one next to you in the Gucci peasant skirt. You played 'Puff the Magic Dragon' until the grooves were worn down to a nub, so you're in no position to throw stones either, glass-house-wise.

Charity, campers, charity. Let's get with it. I want everybody to pledge right now to say at least one kind thing about one right-wing fruitcake this week. I know it won't be easy but we've got to start somewhere. Here's mine:

I have it on very good authority that David Brooks has learned to use a fork and can now eat all by himself. Attaboy, Dave! I'm proud of you. Keep up the good work. Now let's see if we can get that potty-training thing worked out....

The recent decision by a Federal judge that the stickers advertising creationism in biology textbooks used in Georgia's Cobb County were unConstitutional has, of course, sparked a response. What has been heartening to me is the reaction in Georgia itself. Reading through the comments on what the AJC pathetically calls its 'blog' (proving that, as usual, the print media has absolutely no idea what blogs are), the number of responses praising the decision far outnumbered those condemning it.

Of course, that's Atlanta, which is a city and therefore full of sin and apostasy, but the responses seemed to come from all over the state. Here are a few of them.

THANK GOD! It’s a shame how far back on the evolutionary scale we seem to be in Georgia. It’s about time people learned the difference between a “theory” and a “hypothesis”; the sticker in a science text book is the last place the two terms should be confused!

It’s about time Georgia stepped into the 21st century. I think it reflects poorly on our state that in 2005, people are still treating the widely accepted theory of evolution as a “maybe.” Instead of simply writing off the possibility of evolution, maybe people should attempt to accomidate thier beliefts AND scientific realities.

Wonderful! With so many recents steps backward in this country, its terrific that the separation of church and state is being protected!

Finally! That level of stupidity was humiliating the whole state!

Finally!! I am sure this isn’t over, unfortunately. What a great decision. Maybe we can now teach science in a science class, and leave religion for home and church, like good schools do.

Hooray! The courts once again to the rescue of educated people. When will the ultra-conservatives stop trying to put their brand of religion anywhere and everywhere?

Separation of church and state does not equal discrimination of relgious beliefs. Some Christians feel that evolutionism is an atheist belief. Therfore, allowing only evolutionism in schools is discriminating against Christian belief of the origins of humans. As a consitutional right, all people have the right of freedom of religion. Forcing the particular teaching of evolutionism without giving other views as an option is discrimination against Christians and forcing the atheist view on everyone. Any scientist knows that theories cannot totally be proven correct 100 percent - including evolution. We should be more open minded to allow our children to think instead of telling them what we want them to believe.

It may be hard to understand, but I do believe in evolution, but I also believe in the fundamental right to hear both sides of the story so I can make up my own mind.

One word suffices: Cobblodytes!

But it was, as usual, the creationist defenders who were more entertaining, from harping on the word 'theory' to stern warnings that 'GOD is watching' to this little gem:

If we let them teach evolutionary now, what next? Big bangs? I have read the bible from COVER TO COVER (except for job) and guess what athesists? I found NO evidence of evolutionism existing now or EVER? In fact you might be interested in the fact that the word “evoluton” is not even IN the bible ANYWHERE. Looks like the ol public schools have failed again!

So much for electricity, cars, and--as another commenter had it--'compters'.

Let me clear things up for you guys, evolution is a THEORY. Now what does THEORY mean, you ask? Well it means that it has no basis in realilty. Guess what, its my theory that the earth is made of chocolate! horray! Let’s go teach that to our children now because its a theory! do some RESEARCH PEOPLE. Evolution was invented by some guy like FIFTY YEARS ago, BEFORE compters. If it is such a fact, why did it take so long for us to think it up?

It's my theory that such logic on the part of the Red States explains how the worst president in US history, worse even than Grant, got himself re-elected despite overwhelming evidence of incompetence and corruption: sheer willful ignorance. Darwin would probably be surprised to find that, for some in Georgia at least, he has become 'some guy' and a contemporary of Jonas Salk.

Telling people want they want to hear is a powerful political tool--unscrupulous and dangerous when it revolves around lies and promoting, encouraging, or validating ignorance, but powerful nevertheless. The radicals now running the Pubs would appear to be that unscrupulous. What's even scarier is that they would appear to be that ignorant.

Well, let's see. Al 'I'll never support torture except when I support torture' Gonzales is going to be confirmed as the nation's highest legal officer without a whimper of protest; the Abu Ghraib trials are swirling around a low-level MI officer in a desperate attempt to keep the focus away from the people at the top who planned it, sanctioned it, and ordered it; and now a Publican Congress that came within inches of approving torture outsourcing has--at the express order of the Emperor's minions--removed restrictions on interrogations that would have forbidden the use of torture by American intelligence officers, restrictions that had passed in the Senate 96-2.

The Senate had approved the new restrictions, by a 96-to-2 vote, as part of the intelligence reform legislation. They would have explicitly extended to intelligence officers a prohibition against torture or inhumane treatment, and would have required the C.I.A. as well as the Pentagon to report to Congress about the methods they were using.

But in intense closed-door negotiations, Congressional officials said, four senior members from the House and Senate deleted the restrictions from the final bill after the White House expressed opposition.

In a letter to members of Congress, sent in October and made available by the White House on Wednesday in response to inquiries, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, expressed opposition to the measure on the grounds that it "provides legal protections to foreign prisoners to which they are not now entitled under applicable law and policy."

Earlier, in objecting to a similar measure in a Senate version of the military authorization bill, the Defense Department sent a letter to Congress saying that the department "strongly urges the Senate against passing new legislation concerning detention and interrogation in the war on terrorism" because it is unnecessary.

The Senate restrictions had not been in House versions of the military or intelligence bills.

So can we say now, out loud, that the Emperor approves of torture? Or does he have to be caught in the act of actually attaching electric charges to prisoner testicles first?

Andy? Glenn? Josh? Rush? Sean? Annie? Mr Safire? Mr Kristol? Mr O'Reilly? Any response?

(Thanks to Melanie at Bump [see previous post] for the link. Mel keys on this graf:

In interviews on Wednesday, both Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican negotiator, and Representative Jane Harman of California, a Democratic negotiator, said the lawmakers had ultimately decided that the question of whether to extend the restrictions to intelligence officers was too complex to be included in the legislation.

Translation: trying to legislate against torture is too hard. My head hurts. Try not to get "detained" until next year, maybe we'll have it figured out by then.

What a pretty picture: the same legislators in whose hands we place the incredibly complex annual budget find a few simple restrictions against torture too confusing to deal with.

Methinks that what really confuses them is figuring out how to say 'No' to an emperor.)

Update: Kathy at RTOP has a much more complete and thoughtful post on this subject than mine--not unusual by itself. She runs down the steps of the BA's positions and concludes:

Okay. So now we have an official statement from a member of Bush's cabinet saying that there is no policy protecting prisoners from these extreme forms of interrogation, i.e. from torture. That's a distinctly different position than the one taken by Gonzales in his nomination hearings.

Check it out.

Melanie at Just a Bump on the Beltway is in the same kind of trouble with her electricity bill that I was in with my phone bill a couple of months ago. If you don't know Bump, you should. Melanie scours the papers in the morning--and throughout the day--and posts long excerpts of the day's fundamental news stories as well as her own pungent commentary. You can save yourself a passle of time running through the papers yourself, and still be up to speed. (Sometimes I think she's risking serious conflict with the Fair Use Doctrine, but I have to admit that the length of her excerpts is very convenient.)

If you do know Bump, then you'll understand why I'm asking you to visit and throw a few bucks in her tip jar (PayPal button at upper left corner) to help pay her electric bill. Like me, she's spent the Bush Years being un- or underemployed and the squeeze is on. A couple bucks from everybody would help enormously. I found that out when you saved my sorry butt before Thanksgiving.

Do what you can, and thanks.