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The feuding and backbiting that plagued the Howard Dean campaign had turned utterly poisonous. Behind the facade of a successful political operation, senior officials plotted against each other, complained about the candidate and developed one searing doubt.
Dean, they concluded, did not really want to be president.
In different conversations and in different ways, according to several people who worked with him, Dean said at the peak of his popularity late last year that he never expected to rise so high, that he didn't like the intense scrutiny, that he had just wanted to make a difference. "I don't care about being president," he said. Months earlier, as his candidacy was taking off, he told a colleague: "The problem is, I'm now afraid I might win."
Yesterday, the South Dakota legislature passed — and the governor is expected to sign — a bill that essentially outlaws abortion. It is quite clearly in defiance of settled constitutional law, something its authors pretty much admit. Conservatives, oddly enough, have not risen up in wrath at this act of legislative civil disobedience.
The full-time Defenders of Marriage also like to pretend that they are "tolerant" of their misguided gay brethren, but their priorities give them away. You'd think they'd be most concerned about divorce, which ends half of all American marriages, or spousal abuse, but a study by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force last fall discovered that 334 documents on the American Family Association's Web site contained the word "homosexual" while "divorce" and "domestic violence" together merited fewer than 70 mentions. Such is the bent of the Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition that they lobbied the Justice Department to deny 9/11 compensation to the domestic partners of those killed in the terrorists' attack, lest it further "the gay agenda at the expense of marriage and family."
Undoubtedly, there are more judges across the country waiting for their chance to be creative, too. Whether you favor gay marriage or not, it should be a concern when judges and officials decide to circumvent the democratic process on a core issue.Uh, Lisa. Remember Florida?
Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, George Tenet was asked why the C.I.A. never picked up the trail of Marwan al-Shehhi, the pilot who crashed Flight 175 into the south tower on 9/11.
Thirty months earlier, German intelligence had passed on a hot tip to the C.I.A. — the Al Qaeda terrorist's first name and phone number.
"The Germans gave us a name, Marwan — that's it — and a phone number," the director of central intelligence replied, adding: "They didn't give us a first and a last name until after 9/11, with then additional data."
For crying out loud. As one guy I know put it: "I've tracked down women across the country with a lot less information than that."
Saying he can't stomach President Bush's support for the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA), a gay Republican leader in Ohio announced on Thursday he is becoming a Democrat.
In a letter to the chair of the Republican Party of Cuyahoga County, John Farina, a former official in the county's party organization and former president of the Cleveland chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans (news - web sites), ended his 20-year association with the GOP. He also withdrew his candidacy for the Board of Elections' central committee in the March 2 primary.
Farina, 35, said in the letter that the president's announcement on Tuesday forced his decision.
"Quite frankly I'm sick over it," Farina wrote. "It is an insult to me as a lifelong Republican and it does nothing to strengthen marriage. It is an obviously political move that will do nothing but divide the nation even further. So much for Mr. Bush being a uniter.
Besieged shock jock Howard Stern taunted his government critics yesterday by skipping his usual congressional and FCC attacks and tearing right into the top guy - President Bush.Now, I really like Howard Stern. Who else is there who so regularly pokes holes in hypocritical bubbles the way he does?
Stern also said he fears his "suspension" last Wednesday by radio behemoth Clear Channel has turned into a firing.
"I might be taken off all the stations very soon, and my last words to you are 'G.W.B.,' " Stern told listeners yesterday.
"Get him out of office. I'm tellin' you, man, he's in dangerous territory [with] a religious agenda and you gotta vote him out - anyone but Bush," Stern railed.
Stern, whose raunchy wake-up show was yanked from six Clear Channel stations until, according to the company, they are "assured [it] will conform to acceptable standards of responsible broadcasting," said he fears he's history.
"It doesn't sound like I'm going to be asked back," Stern said, after playing an ominous quote from Clear Channel's CEO's testimony to a congressional indecency panel Thursday.
Unlike California law, New York's matrimonial law does not restrict marriage licenses to persons of the opposite sex, in the view of leading legal authorities.
A 1997 report published jointly by three committees of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and endorsed by the association's committee on matrimonial law concluded that New York's current domestic relations law is gender neutral. The association concluded that marriage licenses can and should be issued now to same-sex couples under existing law. A supplemental joint committee report by the association in 2001 reaffirmed this conclusion.
The report states: "Nowhere in Article 3, which sets out the requirements and procedures for entering into a marriage, is there any requirement that applicants for a marriage license be of the opposite sex. Nor are same-sex marriages among the categories of marriage that are void or voidable."
Most of the arguments I've seen opposing gay marriage fail to note the distinction that already exists between civil marriages and those that take place within a church.
A friend (who is a religious conservative) became engaged to a divorced man. They are Catholic and so could not marry in the church until his annulment came through. However, they wanted the economic benefits of living together and wanted her to be covered by his health insurance. So they married in a civil service. The state and his employer didn't care how they were married and awarded them all the financial and legal benefits of a married couple, even though their church didn't recognize the union.
Civil marriages have long been the option for heterosexual couples who either don't belong to a church or whose church for one reason or another doesn't approve of their union. They have always entitled the participants to the same rights and protections as people married in a religious context. Civil marriages should therefore be an option for gay couples as well.
Each church is still free to sanction and sanctify only those marriages that it agrees with. But promoting religion is not the business of either our federal or state governments, and denying equal civil rights to gay people based on religious objections is wrong.
-- Tama Serfoss
President Bush yesterday dismissed two members of his handpicked Council on Bioethics -- a scientist and a moral philosopher who had been among the more outspoken advocates for research on human embryo cells.
In their places he appointed three new members, including a doctor who has called for more religion in public life, a political scientist who has spoken out precisely against the research that the dismissed members supported, and another who has written about the immorality of abortion and the "threats of biotechnology."
The U.S. military will launch its own news service in Iraq and Afghanistan to send military video, text and photos directly to the Internet or news outlets.
The $6.3-million (U.S.) project, expected to begin operating in April, is one of the largest military public-affairs projects in recent memory, and is intended to allow small media outlets in the United States and elsewhere to bypass what the Pentagon views as an increasingly combative press corps.
U.S. officials have complained that Iraq-based media focuses on catastrophic events such as car bombs and soldiers' deaths, while giving short shrift to U.S. rebuilding efforts.
The most remarkable thing is the form of the "memo" that is being drafted for Bush: it is a seven-page Powerpoint presentation plus nine pages of charts. 659 text words total. That's one text word for every ten billion dollars that is going to be spent on Social Security over the next decade, and one word for every hundred billion dollars that is going to be spent on Social Security over the next half century. Hell is briefing someone like George W. Bush on a complicated issue like Social Security reform. (The 2004 Economic Report of the President's discussion of Social Security reform is about 7,000 words, and it just skims the surface of the issues itself.)
Bunting worked as a buyer for Halliburton's "Logcap" contract with the U.S. Army, a $3.7 billion deal under which Halliburton provides the military with logistics support -- it builds bases, runs mess halls, does the laundry, supplies water and performs dozens of other tasks necessary to keep the Army running. The contract is a "cost-plus" contract, meaning that the military reimburses Halliburton for all of its expenses, and then gives it an extra percentage as a profit. Experts have long criticized cost-plus contracts as being economically inefficient; companies that work under cost-plus deals have no reason to reduce their expenses, meaning that the government may end up paying more than it should for services.
Yet it's bad economics to pretend that free trade is good for everyone, all the time. "Trade often produces losers as well as winners," declares the best-selling textbook in international economics (by Maurice Obstfeld and yours truly). The accelerated pace of globalization means more losers as well as more winners; workers' fears that they will lose their jobs to Chinese factories and Indian call centers aren't irrational.
Addressing those fears isn't protectionist. On the contrary, it's an essential part of any realistic political strategy in support of world trade. That's why the Nelson Report, a strongly free-trade newsletter on international affairs, recently had kind words for John Kerry. It suggested that he is basically a free trader who understands that "without some kind of political safety valve, Congress may yet be stampeded into protectionism, which benefits no one."
"A Jobless Recovery is like Waterless Rain"Via TBOGG.
It is an old political tradition to dump unpopular news on Friday, because fewer people are reading newspapers or watching television news over the weekend. But the Bush administration has been using the trick so routinely that it is losing effectiveness. "They're not as successful now in hiding these Friday stories," said Robert Lichter of the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs. "Everybody does it, but this administration has done it too much for their own good."
For the record, Naked City looked into the Perry rumors when they first surfaced some weeks ago – inevitably accompanied by the warning, "The divorce papers are being filed today!" – and found no evidence of any truth to any of them, whatsoever. Amid much finger-pointing about who was the original source (and which political party he or she belongs to), nobody will go on the record. The governor's office (perhaps understandably) refuses any and all comment beyond a one-sentence statement from Perry spokesperson Kathy Walt: "These are false, malicious, and hurtful rumors, and the Chronicle's own investigation acknowledges that fact."
We also know that numerous other reporters, from here to New York, have looked into the rumors, with, as far as we know, an identical lack of results. Nor do we expect anything we say here to have any effect on the rumors, which have become entirely self-replicating as they echo through the blogosphere.
Meanwhile, Gov. Perry and his wife spent Presidents Day weekend in the Bahamas, accompanied by major political sponsors James and Cecelia Leininger and John and Bobbi Nau, who together have donated more than $175,000 to the governor's campaigns. Also on the trip to the Abaco Islands were Perry's political adviser Dave Carney; Chief of Staff Mike Toomey; Deputy Chief of Staff Deirdre Delisi and her husband, GOP political consultant Ted Delisi; Perry's budget director, Mike Morrissey; Texas Public Policy Foundation President Brooke Rollins and her husband, Mark; and GOP anti-tax fanatic Grover Norquist.
When public interest groups complained about the unseemliness of the governor vacationing with deep-pocketed donors, spokesman Robert Black described the cruise as a "working trip" paid for by "campaign funds" and devoted to a discussion of "public school finance." That is, during a luxury retreat in the Bahamas, the governor discussed "public school finance" with a group of wealthy right-wing activists who have done everything in their power to undermine, or even abolish, public education. But we should be reassured by the knowledge that foxes paid for the chicken feed.
At the bar of Marathon on the Square, a quiet man in a gray turtleneck sweater sips a martini. It's the night of the Iowa caucuses, and a gaggle of Philly media and political types is watching the returns on a large TV screen. By Philadelphia standards, it's a solid B-list party -- reporters, mayoral spinners, admen. But the most powerful person in the room may be the man in the turtleneck sweater. And no one knows who the hell he is.Why, that would be... look, it's a bird. It's a plane. It's..... some guy with a keyboard!
President Bush moved one step closer Wednesday to securing a place on Illinois' presidential ballot this fall, but partisan politics at the Democratic-led Statehouse could still cause a springtime deal to come unglued.This little glitch was a result of the GOP scheduling their convention in September so they can exploit 9/11. Ha ha ha ha ha....
Senate Minority Leader Frank Watson (R-Greenville) pushed legislation through a Senate panel that would allow Bush on the ballot in November despite his inability to meet a candidate certification deadline in late August.
More than $3 billion in Secret Service retirement benefits could not be adequately accounted for during a recent independent audit of the Homeland Security Department's books, Congressional Quarterly reports on Thursday.
The audit also showed the Coast Guard could not account for $497 million in "operating materials and supplies," according to a Feb. 13 memo from DHS Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin to Secretary Tom Ridge.
CQ's Justin Rood: "The memo is a summary of a report prepared by independent auditor KPMG on an audit of the agency's financial operations for the final seven months of fiscal 2003."
Coast Guard financial statements, the memo noted, "had never been audited on a stand-alone basis." It said the Secret Service "has already started corrective actions related to its retirement benefits."
The inspector general's office declined to comment on the memo.
A Senate measure to extend federal unemployment benefits failed by two votes Thursday despite the election year support of 12 Republicans from states hit hard by layoffs.
Democrats tried to attach the amendment to a gun liability bill, but it failed 58-39 in the GOP-controlled Senate. The margin was two votes shy of the 60 needed to overcome a procedural objection.
The measure would have extended the emergency benefits program for six months, providing 13 weeks of extra unemployment benefits to people who exhaust their state benefits — usually after 26 weeks.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was the guest of a Kansas law school two years ago and went pheasant hunting on a trip arranged by the school's dean, all within weeks of hearing two cases in which the dean was a lead attorney.If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck...
The cases involved issues of public policy important to Kansas officials. Accompanying Scalia on the November 2001 hunting trip were the Kansas governor and the recently retired state Senate president, who flew with Scalia to the hunting camp aboard a state plane.
Two weeks before the trip, University of Kansas School of Law Dean Stephen R. McAllister, along with the state's attorney general, had appeared before the Supreme Court to defend a Kansas law to confine sex offenders after they complete their prison terms.
Two weeks after the trip, the dean was before the high court to lead the state's defense of a Kansas prison program for treating sex criminals.
Scalia was hosted by McAllister, who also served as Kansas state solicitor, when he visited the law school to speak to students. At Scalia's request, McAllister arranged for the justice to go pheasant hunting after the law school event. And the dean enlisted then-Gov. Bill Graves and former state Senate President Dick Bond, both Republicans, to go as well.
During the weekend of hunting in north-central Kansas, Graves and Bond said in separate interviews recently, they did not talk about the cases with Scalia, nor did they view the trip as a way to win his favor.
Scalia later sided with Kansas in both cases.
Frustrated by Bush administration restrictions, a former senator said yesterday he might quit the special commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Ex-Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), now president of New York's New School University, told the Daily News that resigning is "on my list of possibilities" because the administration continues to block the full panel's access to top intelligence officials and materials.
"I am no longer ... feeling comfortable that I'm going to be able to read and process what I need in order to participate in writing a report about how it was that 19 men defeated every single defensive system the U.S. put up to kill 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11," said Kerrey.
The commission said yesterday that President Bush and Vice President Cheney would meet privately with only the panel's two chairmen - although former President Bill Clinton and his vice president, Al Gore, said they would meet with all 10 members.
You know, when a bleeding heart liberal like me has to sit around lecturing a Republican administration on fiscal responsibility, we're in a sorry pass. I watch the entire corporate and financial structure of this country running around raising money like crazy for the re-election of George W. Bush, and I am reminded once more that capitalism will destroy itself if you let it.
On July 5 of last year, a month and a day before President Bush first heard that al Qaeda might plan a hijacking, the White House summoned officials of a dozen federal agencies to the Situation Room.
"Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon," the government's top counterterrorism official, Richard Clarke, told the assembled group, according to two of those present. The group included the Federal Aviation Administration, along with the Coast Guard, FBI, Secret Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Clarke directed every counterterrorist office to cancel vacations, defer nonvital travel, put off scheduled exercises and place domestic rapid-response teams on much shorter alert. For six weeks last summer, at home and overseas, the U.S. government was at its highest possible state of readiness -- and anxiety -- against imminent terrorist attack.
That intensity -- defensive in nature -- did not last. By the time Bush received his briefing at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, the government had begun to stand down from the alert. Offensive planning against al Qaeda remained in a mid-level interagency panel, which had spent half a year already in a policy review. The Deputies Committee, the second tier of national security officials, had not finished considering the emerging plan, and Bush's Cabinet-rank advisers were still a month away from their first meeting on terrorism. That took place Sept. 4, a week before hijacked planes were flown into the Pentagon and World Trade Center in synchronized attacks.
What Bush and his government did with the information they had in August became the subject of a political brawl on Capitol Hill yesterday, largely shorn of the context of those weeks before Sept. 11. A close look at the sequence of events, based on lengthy interviews early this year with participants and fresh accounts yesterday, appears to support the White House view that Bush lacked sufficient warning to stop the attack. But it also portrays a new administration that gave scant attention to an adversary whose lethal ambitions and savvy had been well understood for years.
Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet had been "nearly frantic" with concern since June 22, according to one frequent interlocutor, and a written intelligence summary for national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on June 28: "It is highly likely that a significant al Qaeda attack is in the near future, within several weeks." By late summer, one senior political appointee said, Tenet had "repeated this so often that people got tired of hearing it."
The president's daily briefing, a CIA distillation of noteworthy current intelligence, seldom includes a threat "so important and so precise that everyone stops in their tracks" to head it off, one senior foreign policy official said yesterday. The reference to hijacking on Aug. 6, said another source with first-hand knowledge, was speculative and backed by no specific threat report more recent than 1998.
But it is also true that Bush and his Cabinet advisers were not yet disposed to respond to al Qaeda as a first-tier national security threat. The alerts of the early and mid-summer -- described by two career counterterrorist officials as the most urgent in decades -- had faded to secondary concern by the time of Bush's extended Crawford vacation. As late as Sept. 9, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld threatened a presidential veto when the Senate proposed to divert $600 million to counterterrorism from ballistic missile defense.
Federal agents on Wednesday searched the headquarters of ITT Technical Institutes and some campuses of its chain of technical schools in eight states. Shares of its parent company, ITT Educational Services Inc., plunged 33 percent.
ITT Educational Services said the investigation involved grand jury subpoenas of records concerning student placement, retention, graduation, attendance, recruitment, grades, graduates' salaries and tranfers of students' credits to other colleges.
Law enforcement officers did not allow students, staff and faculty to enter about 10 of ITT's 77 campuses in 30 states, ITT spokeswoman Nancy Brown said.
The Ziobrowski study notes that the politicians' timing of transactions is uncanny. Most stocks bought by senators had shown little movement before the purchase. But after the stock was bought, it outperformed the market by 28.6 per cent on average in the following calender year.On other words, Martha Stewart shouldn't be the only person on trial.
Returns on sell transactions are equally intriguing. Stocks sold by senators performed in line with the market the year following the sale.
When adjusted by the size of stocks, the total portfolio returns outperformed by 12 per cent a year on average. The study used a total market index as the benchmark for comparison.
Mr. Greenspan was in many ways reflecting a widespread view that the only solution is to either cut benefits or raise taxes by huge amounts. But that is a conclusion that neither party in Congress has been ready to face thus far.
On the more imminent political battle over next year's budget and the outlook for President Bush's tax cuts, Mr. Greenspan displayed his penchant for offering something to almost everybody.
He staunchly defended Mr. Bush's tax cuts, even though the cost of making them permanent would increase the federal debt by about $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.
But he once again parted ways with Mr. Bush on the question of how to pay for those tax cuts, calling for Congress to make the tax cuts permanent only if it also adopted rules that would require it to offset the loss in revenue with spending cuts or tax increases in other areas.
That approach contrasts sharply with Mr. Bush's proposal, which would require Congress to offset only new increases in spending with cuts in other programs.
Hoping to mollify its critics, the Bush administration said Wednesday that it would conduct a yearlong study of how prescription drugs might be safely imported from Canada. But it then infuriated the critics by selecting Dr. Mark B. McClellan, the commissioner of food and drugs, to lead the study.Rove isn't smart; he's only arrogant and ruthless. Anyone can succeed if they have no scruples at all. Winning while playing fair and by the rules is a lot harder.
Dr. McClellan has adamantly opposed any relaxation of the rules barring drug imports. He says such imports would be unsafe, and his agency has threatened legal action against cities and states that help people import Canadian drugs.
With the victory of religious hard-liners in this week's parliamentary elections in Iran, the Central Intelligence Agency is warning of a new era of repression and inflexibility.
A new C.I.A. assessment, shared with members of Congress this week and described by intelligence officials, says the election has dealt a severe blow to Iranian reformers and will strengthen the authoritarian rule of the country's clerical government. The assessment says the ascendancy of the hard-liners will make it unlikely that Iran will moderate its foreign policies.
They found that patients with oral cancer containing a strain of the human papilloma virus (HPV) known as HPV16 were three times more likely to report having had oral sex than those without the virus strain.However, we can expect a sudden uptick in cases of carpal tunnel syndrome...
"The researchers think both cunnilingus and fellatio can infect people's mouths," the magazine added.
Raphael Viscidi, a virologist who worked on the research, believes the findings substantiate the link between HPV and oral cancer.
"This is a major study in terms of size," he said. "I think this will convince people."
"It was vulgar, offensive and insulting, not just to women and African Americans but to anyone with a sense of common decency," Clear Channel Radio Chief Executive John Hogan said in a statement.Gee, Howard. You've been sucking up to Republicans for so long - see what it did for you? [UPDATE - Actually, some people are saying this was in retaliation for Howard's recent attacks on Bush. More to come.]
"We will not air Howard Stern on Clear Channel stations until we are assured that his show will conform to acceptable standards of responsible broadcasting," he said.
Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) is the biggest federal contractor employing a current elite Bush donor. ACS had $525 million in federal contracts in fiscal 2002, led by contracts with the Department of Education. That agency announced last year that it will pay ACS $2.3 billion over 10 years to process student loans. ACS will subcontract one-fifth of this work to Plano-based EDS, which produced two 2000 Pioneers: EDS President Jeff Heller and ex-Michigan Governor John Engler, whom EDS hired to oversee its state and local government contracts. ACS’s Bush Ranger, Stephen Goldsmith, is the ex-mayor of Indianapolis and was a Pioneer and top advisor in Bush’s 2000 campaign. Right after the campaign, Congress’ General Accounting Office appointed Goldsmith to a panel studying government “outsourcing” and ACS hired Goldsmith as its senior vice president for e-government. Texas’ other major federal contractors run by elite Bush donors include: TXU ($94 million in fiscal 2002 federal contracts); SBC Communications ($61 million); PricewaterhouseCoopers ($39 million); Waste Management ($15 million); and Pilgrim’s Pride ($12 million).
Q Aside from Representative DeLay, you have Representative Dreier, Senator McCain, there are others who have cited some skepticism and, in some cases, outright lack of support for a constitutional amendment. Did the President anticipate any kind of division within his own party over this issue?And here Scotty comes in with the old bait and switch:
MR. McCLELLAN: As I talked about yesterday, this is about acting on an important principle that the President has always held. And Presidents make decisions. Events have dictated that there is a need for action on this issue of national importance. That's why the President has called for Congress to begin the constitutional process, because he wants the voice of the people to be heard. The voice of the people is not being heard because of the activist judges and a few local officials who are seeking to redefine marriage. [Editor's note: "Activist" judges. Like the ones who appointed him to the presidency?]
Q A follow-up, Scott. You say this is a --
MR. McCLELLAN: Let me keep going. I'll come back. I'll come back. Let me keep going --
Q -- you say that he's always held this belief. How do you explain, then, the fact that, as a candidate in 2000, he said that this was a matter better left up to the states? How do you explain the change of heart?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, one, I disagree with the way you characterize it -- as I did with John, yesterday. The President's views were very clear in 2000; they were very clear even before that. The President has always believed that marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman. The President strongly supports the Defense of Marriage Act.
Now, there is no certainty that the Defense of Marriage Act won't be struck down by activist judges. Recent events have forced us to take another course of action. The President believes the only alternative for the people now is the constitutional process, so that their voice can be heard. But events have certainly changed, and it's important that we act decisively to preserve this sacred institution.
And this President has worked to elevate the discourse in this town. He has worked to bring the country together around -- around proposals that we all believe are important. This President has acted decisively, and this President believes strongly that this is an issue of principle, this is an issue that goes to the foundation of our society. That's why he came out with the announcement that he did yesterday.
There is a lot of growing confusion. There is a lot of division going on in this country, but it's because of the recent events that have been occurring in places like Massachusetts and San Francisco. And a President makes decisions when it comes to issues of national importance, and that's what this President has done.
Q So, basically, the cultural war came to his doorstep, rather than him going out --
MR. McCLELLAN: Events, recent events certainly have dictated the need for action on this very issue.
Q So he made this decision in no way in reaction to the strong pressure that he's getting from his own base to make this decision?
MR. McCLELLAN: He makes decision based on principle and based on what is right for the country.
Q The President has yet to say which or what amendment language he would support. Is the White House going to develop its own language, or is it going to leave that --I agree with Atrios. I think they're lying sacks of shit. But then, maybe that's just me.
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we're going to work with Congress on the specific language. I have indicated that Congresswoman Musgrave's language, or at least her proposal, meets our principles. But we still need to work on the specific language for an amendment.
Q Now, there's some -- but there's some question about that, whether that would allow -- whether that would prevent civil unions. Is the administration going to back an amendment that permits states to allow civil unions, or is --
MR. McCLELLAN: I think the President's views have been very clear on that. He believes that states have the right to enter into legal arrangements that they so choose, and that would include civil unions.
Q And he believes that the amendment that you just mentioned protects that?
MR. McCLELLAN: It does -- he does -- he does believe that. But again, the specific language we need to continue to work with Congress on.
Whenever I hear about the furor over gay marriage, and whenever I step back and look at how tentative and wary we are about love (I’m including myself in that one) I wonder the same thing: What is it about love that frightens us so much? In the personal arena, the easy answer is, I suppose, loss. We wonder if we can survive the deep bruises to our hearts if our partner gets ill, or dies, or leaves. Solitude might be safer. Yet we see people surviving loss so we know it’s possible; the heart is a sturdy little muscle.
The harder question is: What is frightening about a same-sex couple standing forth in front of the world and making their commitment to one another public? Is the happiness of others really so threatening? Maybe the bravery is what’s threatening. I don’t know if I could stand up to society’s wrath in the name of love. I hope I could, but as a straight woman, I’ll never be tested on that one.
A woman I know sat at the bedside of a man dying from AIDS. He told her he didn’t think he’d accomplished much in his young life, and now he was dying. She said, “Did you love?” And he replied, “Oh, yes. I have loved deeply with all my heart.”
“Then you accomplished everything,” she said.
The sanctity of the Constitution is what we are fighting for. We're not fighting just to defend ourselves. We are fighting to defend a way of life: pluralism, freedom, equality under the law. You cannot defend the Constitution abroad while undermining it at home. It's a contradiction. And it's a deeply divisive contradiction in a time of great peril.
Yesterday, public-interest groups criticized Weldon's advocacy for the two Russian firms and the Serbian brothers, charging, that his actions created the appearance he was shaping public policies to benefit his daughter and Sexton's business.Obviously, this guy's never been to Delaware County or he would already know that's how it works.
"To me, this looks like a scheme to feather the nest of his daughter," said Gary Ruskin, director of the Congressional Accountability Project, a watchdog group. "It's a lot of money, and it looks horrible. It looks like... you stick money in Karen Weldon's pocket and you get results."
You know, after all these years I just can't believe these people. And, I can't believe the media for just printing their bullshit practically unchallenged. Here is the Musgrave FMA amendment:UPDATE: Kevin Drum checks in, too:
Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.
About which Robert Bork says:
Robert H. Bork, the conservative former judge and former Supreme Court nominee and a leading drafter of the amendment, called that argument "preposterous." He said that the text clearly restricted only courts, not legislatures.
Which goddamn part of "NOR STATE NOR FEDERAL LAW, SHALL BE CONSTRUED" did this lying fascist not comprehend? As written, even if a state passed a law saying "MAN ON MAN MARRIAGE ALLOWED," no court could construe that the law actually meant what it said.
Eugene Volokh and Ramesh Ponnuru have long and learned opinions about this, but I have a short and simple one: it's designed to ban everything. Why do I say this? Because it would be quite easy to construct wording that made their intent clear if the amendment's drafters wanted to. The fact that they've chosen deliberately confusing language indicates that they're hoping to ban everything but are also hoping to fool people into thinking otherwise.UPDATE: Kevin is referring to what's been proposed in Massachusetts. Kerry does not support a federal amendment. Thanks to Lis at Riba Rambles.
... Finally, I have to say that John Kerry's response to Bush's statement wasn't very impressive. He's for civil unions, which is fine, but also said he'd support an amendment as long as it allowed for that. I wish he were willing to take a stronger stand against any kind of constitutional amendment instead of indulging in this kind of all-too-typical fence straddling.
A senior leader of Al Qaeda threatened further attacks against the United States and denounced France for banning Islamic head scarves in statements on two audiotapes broadcast by separate Arab satellite channels on Tuesday.And the head of the CIA concurs:
Analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency said the recordings appeared to have been made by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the top lieutenant to Osama bin Laden. "After conducting a technical analysis, the C.I.A. assesses that the voice on the recordings is probably that of Zawahiri," a C.I.A. official said.
George J. Tenet, director of central intelligence, said Tuesday that the world was at least as "fraught with dangers for American interests" as it was a year ago, despite the toppling of Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq and successes in dismantling the leadership of Al Qaeda.
A couple of labor people had preceded Kerry on the stage and they told stories about the jobless that were supposed to cause you to cringe, but they were bloodless in the telling.
As were Kerry's anecdotes. He ought to get them, and his general comments, better. This can be done with the old and useful trick of finding a comma when you get down in the speech and crossing off the tail, giving you a period, on which you should end the speech. Anything planned for after that was nothing much when first typed.
He said that immigrants can "replenish the economic ladder." I hated it. He also said, "replenish the pool of undocumented people." I hated that, too.
Sometime in the last week, I saw him answering a question he didn't want to answer by going on a long professorial - worse, senatorial - peroration, when he should have just said, "No."
Afterwards yesterday, I walked back down the block to where we were parked in front of the grocery store. I looked up at J.J. Friel's sign and said, "Your guy looks all right. He just has to shorten up his sentences."
And the dawn brought something else: the support of people all around us. Suddenly we had more than the fellowship of those soggy people in line, but from commuters and passersby too. Cars and buses honked and the people inside them waved at us happily. A teenage girl on a bicycle rode by saying, "This is so great! This is so great!" People started coming by with Styrofoam cups and big cartons of Peet's coffee. Not just gay people, but straight people with children came by with bagels and doughnuts and biscotti. A beautiful little boy walked along the sidewalk with his mother giving out yellow roses. An SUV was parked at one corner dispensing juice and hot drinks. Breakfast and smiles and cheers. These people, who left their warm beds to support us, were genuinely happy. "Congratulations! A wedding breakfast! Good for you!" They beamed like proud family. It was still raining, but it wasn't cold.I guess that's really the thing about these stories. You get to be a certain age and you steel yourself against your need for something wonderful in the world; you even convince yourself you never wanted it at all. (Because you've learned by now the odds against it happening.)
I am a proud and reserved person. I constantly protect myself from the danger of condescending sentimentality. I carefully filter out the world's opinions and judgments. But these kindnesses broke my heart. I was frequently in tears.
In his first inaugural address, FDR admonished, "[T]he only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."It's long but well worth the read. Check it out.
Fear is what Perle and his co-author David Frum are peddling to stampede America into serial wars. Just such fear-mongering got us into Iraq, though, we have since discovered, Iraq had no hand in 9/11, no ties to al-Qaeda, no weapons of mass destruction, no nuclear program, and no plans to attack us. Iraq was never "the clear and present danger" the authors insist she was.
Calling their book a "manual for victory," they declaim:
For us, terrorism remains the great evil of our time, and the war against this evil, our generation’s great cause. We do not believe that Americans are fighting this evil to minimize it or to manage it. We believe they are fighting to win—to end this evil before it kills again and on a genocidal scale. There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust.
But no nation can "end evil." Evil has existed since Cain rose up against his brother Abel and slew him. A propensity to evil can be found in every human heart. And if God accepts the existence of evil, how do Frum and Perle propose to "end" it? Nor can any nation "win the war on terror." Terrorism is simply a term for the murder of non-combatants for political ends.
... The Perle-Frum book is marinated in conceit, which may prove the neocons’ fatal flaw. In the run-up to the invasion, when critics were exposing their plotting for war long before 9/11, the neocons did not bother to deny it. They reveled in it. They boasted about who they were, where they came from, what they believed, how they were different, and how they had become the new elite. With Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush marching to their war drums, one of them bellowed, "We are all neoconservatives now!"
But it is always unwise of courtiers to boast of their influence with the prince. And now the neocons have outed themselves. We all know who they are. We all have the coordinates. We all have them bracketed.
With the heady days of the fall of Baghdad behind us and our country ensnared in a Lebanon of our own, neocons seem fearful that it is they who will be made to take the fall if it all turns out badly in Iraq, as McNamara and his Whiz Kids had to take the fall for Vietnam.
And this one they’ve got right.
American investigators were given the first name and telephone number of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers two and a half years before the attacks on New York and Washington, but the United States appears to have failed to pursue the lead aggressively, American and German officials say.
The information — the earliest known signal that the United States received about any of the hijackers — has now become an important element of an independent commission's investigation into the events of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said Monday. It is considered particularly significant because it may have represented a missed opportunity for American officials to penetrate the Qaeda terror cell in Germany that was at the heart of the plot. And it came roughly 16 months before the hijacker showed up at flight schools in the United States.
Q On the 9/11 Commission, why -- you've indicated that the President has agreed to a private meeting with the co-chairs of the commission. Why is the President unwilling to meet with the entire commission? And why, at this point, is he unwilling to provide public testimony? What's his position on this?
MR. McCLELLAN: A couple of things. One, let me get to the first part of your question. The chairman and vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission sent a letter requesting a private session with the President. The President agreed to the request. We believe that all the necessary information could be provided in that private meeting. In terms of the actual details, we are still discussing those details for that private session with the chairman and vice-chairman. That's where it stands at this point.
Q How is that going? (Laughter.)
MR. McCLELLAN: It's ongoing; it's going.
Q It doesn't appear like he is willing to sit down to offer testimony to the entire commission, and I'm wondering why not?
MR. McCLELLAN: I think the President believes that all the necessary information they need can be provided in a private session.
Q Why --
Q Then why is he appearing?
Q Why -- hold on, Helen. What about -- why not a public session?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think that he feels that everything can be provided in that private meeting, that's why.
Q Right, but they apparently feel differently, so --
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I'm not sure -- speaking for the entire commission, but the chairman and vice chairman requested the private meeting. And that's what we're moving forward on discussing with them right now.
Q Would it be inappropriate, in your view, in the President's view, for him to offer testimony under oath to this commission?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, look, the President will be pleased to talk to them in a private session. And that's where it stands right now.
Q So you're not answering the oath question?
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sorry?
Q You're not -- does he think it's inappropriate to be under oath for something like this?
MR. McCLELLAN: The President is going to share with them what information he knows, and he's pleased to do it.
Q So he'll do it under oath, if necessary?
MR. McCLELLAN: I don't know if that's necessary. I think he can accomplish it all in private meeting, and provide the commission the necessary information in that format.
No matter that Hatch has spent the past three years fighting nonstop to confirm George Bush's judicial nominees. After Hatch declared himself "mortified" by the file-stealing allegations and said he supported a formal investigation, angry GOP activists—who want to downplay down the scandal—accused him of being a weak-kneed appeaser of Democrats. The National Review's Timothy P. Carney even likened him to Neville Chamberlain.
That's madness, of course. Under Bush, Hatch has fought bitterly with Democrats over judicial nominations, to the point of shattering an emerging reputation he'd gained for moderation and spoiling some of his old bipartisan friendships. If anything, the real story of Orrin Hatch's recent career is the way the Bush administration took a senator who had been growing mellower and more independent with age and reduced him to a crude partisan attack dog. Yet even Hatch's partisanship isn't enough for the Savonarolas of the right. The right-wing bile over Hatch's Memogate burst of conscience only shows how frighteningly militant Washington's church of conservatism has become.
This is no time for the "leader of the free world" to be falling asleep at massively-popular sporting events. He is already trailing heavily in polls among football fans and young males who would do anything to see a naked female nipple during halftime at the Super Bowl.
That is a hell of a lot of eligible voters to insult when your chances of living in the White House this time next year are less than 50-50.
Was he drunk? Does he fear the sight of an uncovered nipple? Was he lying? Does he believe in his heart that there are more evangelical Christians in this country than football fans and sex-crazed yoyos with unstable minds? Is he really as dumb as he looks and acts?
These are all unsatisfactory questions at a time like this. Is it possible that he has already abandoned all hope of getting re-elected? Or does he plan to cancel the Election altogether by declaring a national military emergency with terrorists closing in from all sides, leaving him with no choice but to launch a huge bomb immediately?
All these things are possible, unfortunately, in a White House that is drowning in it's own failures. Desperate men do desperate things, and stupid men do stupid things. We are in for a desperately stupid summer.
But so what? March Madness is just around the corner; and after that comes the Stanley Cup and the long-running NBA playoffs. It's really not so bad at all, is it.
Get ready to howl with laughter, Betty Bowers has a new bumper sticker out: 'Gay Marriage Already Exists - Just Ask The First Lady of Texas'Gossiplist also has this:
Have known about Rick being a switch hitter since he ran against Jim H. Even [in the 1980s], tho Rove destroyed him. All I heard from Jim’s camp was that the R's would not be as tolerant for his preferences, just as Ann [Richards, former Texas governor] refused to go public with the abortion issue against W. The Texas dems have been more humane with destructive politics. I hear that Anita [Perry] has been corralled and brought back into the fold, and the R's are trying to float the idea that it was a young female intern that she is so pissed about. If successful, the slimy bastard may skate. Also two district judges in Odessa have told me that the rumor was always there when they served in the Legislature with [Perry], but nobody got excited. ….[Perry] doesn't want the world to know that his weird sex habits began when he was a cheerleader at A&M.So it was the cheerleading thing that brought Perry and Bubble Boy together. I wonder if they swapped pon-pom tips?
***
I was at a political rally last night here in the lower rio grande valley and a city councilman pulled another city councilman off for a private conference saying he had something pretty serious to share. The second guy is a good friend so he immediately spilled the beans that Gov. Perry was reportedly found en flagrante with another man and was going to resign his office today. Obviously that didn't happen but we are a very long way from Austin and these guys are not the type to repeat rumors. I was intrigued enough to google it...
This is firsthand news from a well-connected lawyer I know in Austin:
-- Anita Perry has hired Becky Beaver, the most notorious ballbreaker divorce attorney in Austin, to represent her. She will be filing for divorce on grounds of adultery, naturally.
-- Sec. of State Jeff Connor (Gov. Perry's [ALLEGED] lover) used to work at Akin Gump (very large law firm) and was well-known among his colleagues as being gay. They were surprised that Perry picked him for the position given his sexual orientation, in fact. Now, of course, they understand why.
Sipping tea, the monk said Buddhist teaching encouraged people to reach out to those perceived as enemies with "deep listening and loving speech." Rather than demonize the terrorists, he said, he would like to understand them. "You must have hated us a lot?. Tell us why. Have we tried to destroy you as a people, as a religion, as a culture?" he said he would ask.
"Maybe they have misunderstood us. In that case we can try to correct their perceptions," he said. "To correct their perceptions is much better than to drop bombs on them."
If that strikes some as naive, Nhat Hanh said he had seen miracles from such approaches between sworn enemies.
For the past several years, he said, he has brought groups of Israelis and Palestinians to Plum Village for retreats. In the beginning, he said, the two groups are usually unable even to look one another in the eye. But, calmed by daily meditation and encouraged to share their stories of suffering without blame, the two groups usually ended up transformed, he said.
When the Republican National Convention comes to town, the Rev. Peter Laarman hopes to greet it with a quiet, reserved defiance. He wants religious leaders to hold discussion groups on concerns about politicizing Sept. 11. He wants to have seminars to discuss lost jobs. And he wants to bring experts to New York to discuss national security.
What he does not want to do is take to the streets with huge protests. Instead, through a campaign he calls the Accountability Project, he hopes to offer a thoughtful counterpoint when the Republicans stage their nominating convention in New York, scheduled for Aug. 30 through Sept. 2.
But Mr. Laarman may find his tempered voice drowned out in what may well be a tense and angry time on the streets of Manhattan.
Though the Police Department and many protest organizers have been reluctant to predict how many people will ultimately turn out for protests, estimates have ranged from 500,000 people to a million.
In this dynamic, potentially very treacherous labor market, few people are looking out for the interests of the American worker. The very concept of the traditional high-paid American job, with its generous health and pension benefits and paid vacations, is at risk.
Another question: Is there anybody on the Bush administration's economic team thinking about ways to create new jobs, instead of thinking about ways to fool people into thinking they've created new jobs?
For those of you who didn't catch Meet the Press -- and who can blame you -- Gillespie looks like a nerdy snake oil salesman in an ill-fitting suit without a scintilla of credibility himself. He talks so fast that no one can understand him. To our delight, Russert then began to talk faster than Gillespie. It was very funny.
Gillespie then blundered, as Dick Cheney would say, big time: he told Russert that "We didn't know" we would be in a war when "we did the tax cuts."
Really, Ed? Are you saying that the tax cuts should be revisited? Russert, of course, is too dense or too well trained by the RNC to have asked that follow up question.
Russert then showed Kerry's rebuttal to the Bush ad which claims that Kerry took a lot of money from lobbyists. Of course, no one has taken more money from corporate interests than George W. Bush -- and he crows about it.
Gillespie, fool that he is, said that the issue is not special interests! (Really? We shall see.) He claimed that Kerry is the number one recipient of corporate money in the Senate. Russert said in reply that Bush raised more money in one night than Kerry has in his entire career. This seemed to throw off Gillespie for a moment -- he attacked Kerry for setting up PACs and other committees so that he could accept corporate money under new campaign finance laws which are a fraud at any rate.
Of course, Gillespie knows that Democrats have no choice but to avail themselves of any chance to raise money against what Bush can raise from the corporate warmonger elite.
Gillespie said that the jobless rate is not a disaster. We couldn't help but laugh at that bit of living in denial. Is this guy living on Venus or what? We love the fact that this nimnutz is the RNC boss! He is helping to bury the Republican Party.
But wait! There's more! He then went on to lie and say the President's programs are "gaining" jobs! He, he, he, he, he -- it's just too much, funnier than The Daily Show.
He blamed economic woes on 9/11 and -- get this -- the corporate scandals! More, more we beg. Who is linked most to corporate scandal? Why, George W. Bush!
Then Russert showed that Bush is EIGHT points behind Kerry in the latest horse race poll!
That, to us, is just the beginning. Bush will lose the vote by at least 11% -- and remember, you heard it here first!
"At the end of the day," said Gillespie, "we're right on the issues!"
Yes. Far right. Dream on, Eddy...
Signs of Trouble for Bush: My Dad's Reading "An American Dynasty"
To understand why that's trouble, you have to realize that my dad is:
a) a lifetime Republican
b) a staunch pro-business capitalist who loves tax cuts
c) voted for '41 and for '43 in 2000
d) knows some of the people who are getting trashed in this book
and
e) is now starting to agree with me when I explain how the Bush administration is a corrupt cartel riddled with cronyism and idiocy.
The fact that a guy like my dad is even reading a book like this without dismissing it as the work of a tinfoil hatter is a bad sign for Bush in and of itself. The fact that it appears to be convincing him is, of course, worse.
My dad also hates Kerry, apparently; and so who knows how he will vote, in the end. But the main thing is: there ain't no way he would have picked that book up a year ago. He was explaining, as if this is news to me, that according to this book Rove "rereads Machiavelli's 'The Prince' every year" and believes that "perception is reality." I said, "Well, I'm sure he does believe that, but he's wrong," and explained how they probably didn't think it would matter that there weren't really any WMDs in Iraq, but in fact it did. He agreed with me. This is a guy who justified his vote in 2000 by saying that Bush would 'surround himself with good people' even though he personally was clearly an idiot. Really, it's kind of frightening.
The times they are a-changin.'
In 40 years of observing presidential contests, I cannot remember another major candidate brutalized so intensely by the media, with the possible exception of George Wallace. Howard Dean contributed some fatal errors of his own, to be sure, but he also brought fresh air and new ideas, a crisp call to revitalize the Democratic Party and at least the outlines of deeper political and economic reforms.
The reporters, as surrogate agents for Washington's insider sensibilities, blew him off. Dean's big mistake was in not recognizing, up front, that the media are very much part of the existing order and were bound to be hostile to his provocative kind of politics. To be heard, clearly and accurately, he would have had to find another channel.
For the record, reporters and editors deny that this occurred. Privately, they chortle over their accomplishment. At the Washington airport I ran into a bunch of them, including some old friends from long-ago campaigns, on their way to the next contest after Iowa.
So, I remarked, you guys saved the Republic from the doctor. Yes, they assented with giggly pleasure, Dean was finished -- though one newsmagazine correspondent confided the coverage would become more balanced once they went after Sen. John Kerry. Only Paul Begala of CNN demurred. "I don't know what you're talking about," Begala said, blank-faced. Nobody here but us gunslingers.
She didn't know his name. It was on a tag someplace and it had already been logged in. They did that the moment they brought the dead soldier off the plane from Iraq and into the morgue at Dover Air Force Base. The body had to pass through a metal detector in case there was some ordnance still there.
He had been taken right from the dirt of Iraq and flown here.
Now, he was on a gurney that was brought right up to her in the forensic dental department. The gurney was up to her waist. She looked down.
He had no head. Oh, there was part of his head still there, on the left side. Just a part. No more.
The left eye was there, wide open. The startled left eye.
"It was looking out as if to say, 'What happened?'" she was saying yesterday. "I don't think he believed that he was dead."
She stood and stared at that left eye and the left eye stared back at her. It was light-looking. Bluish green. The colors change in death. The amazement in this eye does not.
She began to dream of seeing that face as it was in his young life. A right eye, and a young firm face and cheek matching the left side.
He just started in life, she thought. He didn't even have a chance. Did he have a kid? Maybe he lost the chance to see his kid walk. Or to sit on the beach. Or if he didn't live near an ocean, maybe he could sit with his kid at a picnic. Watch the kid wave and stumble as he started walking on the green summer grass.
Look at him now, she thought. He'll never see that.
All that is left is that one shocked eye.
She was held by that eye as if it were drawing closer and was about to speak. She was not some shaking newcomer on her first job. She had spent long months in the New York City medical examiner's office working on what was left of people blown apart at the World Trade Center. And she had worked on several cases here at Dover. Soldiers with faces burned off. Or with little of their heads left. Like this one.
According to insiders, Rhode worked with Feith to purge career Defense officials who weren't sufficiently enthusiastic about the muscular anti-Iraq crusade that Wolfowitz and Feith wanted. Rhode appeared to be "pulling people out of nooks and crannies of the Defense Intelligence Agency and other places to replace us with," says a former analyst. "They wanted nothing to do with the professional staff. And they wanted us the fuck out of there."
The unofficial, off-site recruitment office for Feith and Rhode was the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank whose 12th-floor conference room in Washington is named for the dean of neoconservative defense strategists, the late Albert Wohlstetter, an influential RAND analyst and University of Chicago mathematician. Headquartered at AEI is Richard Perle, Wohlstetter's prize protege, the godfather of the AEI-Defense Department nexus of neoconservatives who was chairman of the Pentagon's influential Defense Policy Board. Rhode, along with Michael Rubin, a former AEI staffer who is also now at the Pentagon, was a ubiquitous presence at AEI conferences on Iraq over the past two years, and the two Pentagon officials seemed almost to be serving as stage managers for the AEI events, often sitting in the front row and speaking in stage whispers to panelists and AEI officials. Just after September 11, 2001, Feith and Rhode recruited David Wurmser, the director of Middle East studies for AEI, to serve as a Pentagon consultant.
GOP campaign operatives are warily eyeing recent polls that for the first time show many Americans don't see the president as truthful.
Last week, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that only 52 percent view Bush as "honest and trustworthy," down 7 points from the last poll and down significantly from a high of 71 percent in the summer of 2002.
Some White House aides dismissed that poll as an aberration because it was taken after a run of bad news for the president. But they grew concerned when a second poll, released Thursday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, also showed Bush's image slipping.
According to Pew Director Andrew Kohut, that image is "at the low point of his presidency."
The most dramatic evidence of a shift came from poll participants' answers when asked to provide a one-word description of Bush. In a survey in May, positive descriptions outnumbered negative ones by a ratio of almost 2-to-1, Kohut said. In Thursday's poll, the numbers of positive and negative responses were even.
Perhaps most troubling to a president who prides himself on being forthright, the most frequently used negative word to describe Bush was "liar" – a word that never showed up in the May survey, Kohut said.
The CIA admitted it didn't provide the U.N. with information about 21 of 105 sites in Iraq singled out by U.S. intelligence before the war as highly suspected of housing illegal weapons, The New York Times reported in its Saturday edition.
The acknowledgement, in a Jan. 20 letter to Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., contradicts statements before the war by both CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, the Times said.
Tenet and Rice said the U.S. had briefed U.N. inspectors on all of the sites identified as "high value and moderate value" in the weapons hunt, the Times reported.
The statments came amid Congressional debate about giving U.N. inspectors more time to complete their search before the invasion, and helped bolster the White House case that it was fully cooperating with the inspectors and providing them with the best possible information.
Another former director of the Air National Guard, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Paul A. Weaver Jr., said some "squadron jocks" such as Bush drop their flight status when civilian careers take precedence. Flying a fighter jet is risky, Weaver said, and commanders want pilots to be dedicated to the training.
Weaver, who said he read Bush's military records after they were released, said Bush's service hours began to flag in 1972. Weaver said Guardsmen who were not willing to actively participate were considered a liability.
"We wanted people in the Guard who weren't going to waste our time and money," said Weaver, who was director until 2002. "With Bush's interest waning, I can see the conversations, because I've had them myself: 'You've got to make a decision here. We'd be wasting taxpayer money by keeping you flying.' "
Weaver said he questions why Bush did not take his physical, however, because "military aviators take their physicals because that's a basic requirement of being an aviator."
Udell said Bush did not submit to the exam because he was planning to stop flying, which is also what White House spokesmen have said. There would be no reason to take the physical if Bush intended to go to a unit where he could not fly. Bush was going to Alabama to work on a political campaign, and Alabama's Air National Guard did not have the F-102s Bush flew.
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