After all the ups and downs (mostly downs) of the last 3+ years of the Bush administration, sometimes it’s fun to take a look back (link via senate Underground) :

In an East Room ceremony, Vice President Dick Cheney administered the oath of office to several dozen White House staff members. The oath is not unlike the oaths Bush and Cheney took Saturday, committing the oath-taker to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic,” and “bear true faith and allegiance to the same.”

After the oath was administered, Bush told the staff ? and 100 or so family members on hand ? “You all are here because you have my full confidence.”

“Today, everything is so promising and new,” the new president said. “I’m hoping the day will never come when any of us take this place for granted.”

Bush warned that he expected his White House staff to meet the highest ethical standards, avoiding not only violations of law, but even the appearance of impropriety.

“We must remember the high standards that come with high office,” he said. “This begins careful adherence with the rules. I expect every member of this administration to stay well within the boundaries [that] define legal and ethical conduct.

“No one in the White House should be afraid to confront the people they work for over ethical concerns, and no one should hesitate to confront me as well.”

Bush told his staff that he sees civility as a central part of the required behavior of White House staff. “There is no excuse for arrogance and never a reason for disrespect toward others,” he said. “I expect each of you ? to be an example of humility and decency and fairness.”

You read that right…”even the appearance of impropriety.” Bush may not be our smartest president, but he might just be our funniest.

Well, here’s the redesign I’ve been working on for the past couple weeks. Still a couple issues to be worked out over the next few days. I screwed up the calendar stylesheet in the move, so I gotta figure that one out. Also, if the pulldown menu doesn’t work on your computer, email me.

There’s nothing Republicans hate more than being reminded of the things Jesus said that make them look like assholes :

John Kerry cited a Bible verse Sunday to criticize leaders who have “faith but has no deeds,” prompting President Bush’s spokesman to accuse Kerry of exploiting Scripture for a political attack.

Kerry never mentioned Bush by name during his speech at New North Side Baptist Church, but aimed his criticism at “our present national leadership.” Kerry cited Scripture in his appeal for the worshippers, including James 2:14, “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?”

“The Scriptures say, what does it profit, my brother, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?” Kerry said. “When we look at what is happening in America today, where are the works of compassion?”

Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said Kerry’s comment “was beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse and a sad exploitation of Scripture for a political attack.”

Kerry told worshippers in the largely black congregation that the country’s leadership has served the privileged while ignoring people across America who live in neighborhoods like theirs.

“Today we are told that, after 3 million lost jobs and so many lost hopes, America is now turning a corner,” the pending senate presidential nominee said. “But those who say that, they’re not standing on the corner of Highland Street, where two 15-year-old teenagers were hit in a drive-by shooting last week.”

Here’s my question for the GOP : If this is “a sad exploitation”, that what do you call it when Bush appears on the cover of a magazine praying while telling people that God wants him to attack Iraq?

It makes sense that Kerry’s quoting this verse would piss them off though. It seems that the more right-wing and extreme a religion gets, the more openly hostile they are to the view that you can be “saved” through “good works”. For a good example of this, check out Jack Chick’s Flight 144, in which he explains why a crashed flight full of missionaries is going straight to hell :

So it makes sense then that the President and his staff would be upset about being reminded of Jesus’s teachings that “You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.” Of course, this lesson is probably lost on them. Perhaps if it said something even clearer like “You can’t give handouts to the rich while the poor are dying of preventable diseases,” then it might sink into their heads. But I doubt it.

There was a time when a powerful Republican abusing the power of his office to punish his political enemies was a big scandal. These days, it’s just business as usual. For example :

senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch’s staff breaking into senate computers

House Majority leader Tom DeLay sending homeland security department officials to track down Democrats from the Texas state legislature

Dick Cheney’s staff leaking the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame to Robert Novak.

Now, according to Josh Marshall, it looks like we can add Bush personally to that list :

What this is about isn’t Condi Rice or Richard Clarke or even George W. Bush. It’s about what happened — finding out what happened. One side wants to find out; the other doesn’t. This whole story turns on that simple fact. Why else try to destroy Clark unless what he has to say is profoundly damaging? Liars are usually easily discredited; it’s the truth-tellers who need to be destroyed.

This administration has used and continues to use literally unprecedented means to maintain secrecy in order to keep this information — what happened — bottled up in the White House and in other parts of the executive branch.
. . .
Yet Clarke’s new enemies now want to use the fact that they control the Justice Department and the process of declassification to knock him out because he is, to all appearances, trying to bust open that very vault of secrecy.

In other words, precisely the tools these folks refuse to use in the interests of keeping everything secret they are more happy to use to crush someone who is opposing them.
. . .
(Bear in mind that top White House aides have told the press that the president personally initiated and is directing this campaign against Clarke. Not outside rabble-rousers, not nefarious aides operating on their own account, but the president himself. This is all his doing, according to his own staffers.)

The more the Republicans fight dirty against this guy, the more I believe him. I’ve seen enough mob movies to know that if the big boss is doing his own hits, he’s gotta be really pissed. Maybe Bush is the one who’s striking back “like a wounded animal”….

No school today, kids. The “education president” wants to entertain some rich people :

President Bush will swoop into Boston for a quick fund-raiser this afternoon that could net his campaign $1 million and also draw several thousand protesters, force the closure of a school, and disrupt traffic near the Park Plaza Hotel.
. . .
The president’s visit unexpectedly canceled classes for 1,425 children at the Boston Renaissance Charter School, a K-8 institution on Stuart Street a block away from the hotel. The Boston Public Schools system, which provides about 30 buses to transport Renaissance students, said it could not guarantee timely pick-up of students at dismissal time, said Dudley Blodget, chief operating officer of the Renaissance School’s foundation. The school also feared that the 300 parents who pick up their children would not be able to reach the school.

“It’s a sad situation that you have to close off school because of a fund-raising event,” said Roger F. Harris, Renaissance headmaster.

Not that this is the first time that Bush has disrupted something for political purposes. Let’s not forget the aircraft carrier full of soldiers who had to delay their homecoming so they could be unpaid extras in a Bush photo-op.

When I saw this, my reaction was “WHAT THE F-…oooh….okay….that makes sense.” :

Democrat Kerry Proposes Cut in Corporate Taxes

Presidential candidate John Kerry, eager to rebut charges that he is a tax-and-spend Democrat, on Friday proposed cutting the corporate tax rate and paying for it by eliminating incentives for U.S. companies to shift jobs overseas.
. . .
He pledged to end a tax provision that lets companies defer paying U.S. taxes on income earned by foreign subsidiaries and said he would use the $12 billion in annual savings to fully fund a 5 percent cut in corporate rates.

“Today we have a tax code that does more to reward companies for moving overseas than it does to reward them for creating jobs here in America,” Kerry said in a speech at Wayne State University.

The proposal, one piece of a broader job-creation package to be unveiled over the next few weeks, amounted to “a simple tax cut” for the 99 percent of American companies that did not send jobs overseas, according to Kerry economic adviser Gene Sperling.
. . .
Under existing law, U.S. companies do not have to pay taxes on foreign income until they bring it back to the United States. If they keep it abroad, they can avoid taxes entirely.

Kerry’s plan would tax profits from foreign subsidiaries just like domestic profits. It would still allow companies to defer the income earned by production overseas if they are serving foreign markets.

The more I think about it, the more I like this proposal a lot. By closing just one of the many loopholes that corporations use to avoid paying taxes, Kerry can reward those companies that aren’t traitors. If this works as planned, this could do a lot to ease the steady flow of jobs out of the United States. At the same time, this helps Kerry break away from the liberal stereotype of being “anti-business”. Let’s just hope that this is the tip of the iceberg.

I’m sure you’ve seen this elsewhere, but here a few things that need to be pointed out about the GOP’s efforts to defend itself against Richard Clarke’s criticism :

If testimony was vital enough to be classified in the first place, you can’t just declassify it to protect yourself from embarrasing revelations :

In a highly unusual move, key Republicans in Congress are seeking to declassify testimony that former White House terrorism adviser Richard Clarke gave in 2002 about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Friday.

Frist said the intent was to determine whether Clarke lied under oath ? either in 2002 or this week ? when he appeared before a bipartisan Sept. 11 commission and sharply criticized President Bush’s handling of the war on terror.

The only reason to avoid speaking under oath is because you don’t want to get in trouble for lying :

Under mounting pressure from Democrats about its response to the independent commission investigating the September 11, 2001, attacks, the White House says the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, will answer more questions from the panel.
. . .
The White House said on Thursday that Dr Rice would go before the panel again, but only in private and not under oath.

Claiming that you kept your top counter-terrorism official “out of the loop” makes you look even more incompetent :

The White House launched a full-scale assault on its former terrorism czar, Richard Clarke, on Monday, questioning his credibility and dismissing his accusations that senior Bush officials could have done more to prevent the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“He wasn’t in the loop, frankly,” Vice President Dick Cheney said of Clarke on conservative Rush Limbaugh’s national radio show.

Okay folks, do you wanna plug your site, radio show, etc? If so, here’s the thread to do it. A few plugs I wanna mention off the bat :

Midnight showings of FROG-G-G!!! this weekend at the Sunset 5 in Los Angeles. The poster was done by Tom Neely, who you might know better as the guy behind “Brother, Can You Spare A Job?” and that “Whistle Ass” T-Shirt. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but Film Threat loved it.

Killradio.org hosts two great shows by my friends Dan and Ross : Surfin’ In Innerspace on Thursdays from Noon-2PM and Theme Party Fridays from 9PM-11PM.

Recently a few good friends have moved their blogs out of the Blog*Spot ghetto into some fancy Moveable Type digs. You can check out my friends Brian and Erin’s shared space at ByrneUnit.com and Ross at ThisSpaceForRent.org. You might recognize Brian from his occasional posts here. Also, if you’re interested in upgrading your site to Movable type but need some help, drop me a line.

Speaking of blogs, my redesign is almost done. After jumping back and forth between the old and new looks, I can’t wait. If there’s anything about the current look that you’re afraid might not make it into the new site, now’s your chance to speak up.

On the surface, I bet this story would make most people see pro-choice activists as Chicken Littles, constantly warning people about a non-existent “slippery slope” :

The senate voted Thursday to make it a separate crime to harm a fetus during commission of a violent federal crime, a victory for those seeking to expand the legal rights of the unborn.

The 61-38 vote on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act sends the legislation, after a five-year battle in Congress, to President Bush for his signature, which he promised to provide.

“Pregnant women who have been harmed by violence, and their families, know that there are two victims ? the mother and the unborn child ? and both victims should be protected by federal law,” the president said in a statement applauding congressional passage. The House passed the bill last month.

There’s something especially tragic about the murder of a pregnant woman, so in theory I would totally support a “murder and a half” bill. But…

This isn’t just about inflicting harsher penalties for someone who murders a pregnant woman. This really is about chipping away at a woman’s right to have an abortion.

But abortion rights lawmakers contended that giving a fetus, from the point of conception, the same legal rights as its mother sets a precedent that could be used in future legal challenges to abortion rights.
. . .
The bill states that an assailant who attacks a pregnant woman while committing a violent federal crime can be prosecuted for separate offenses against both the woman and her unborn child. The legislation defines an “unborn child” as a child in utero, which it says “means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.”

“This bill recognizes that there are two victims,” said Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, a chief sponsor. Americans, he said, “intuitively know that there is a victim besides the mother.”
. . .
“This would be the first time in federal law that an embryo or fetus is recognized as a separate and distinct person under the law, separate from the woman,” said NARAL president Kate Michelman. “Much of this is preparing for the day the Supreme Court has a majority that will overrule Roe v. Wade.”

Even then, it seems like this might just be another battle of “he said, she said” between opposing groups. Surely the lawmakers were just caught in the middle while they were doing their best to protect women, right?? Well, not quite…

The key obstacle was an amendment by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that would have imposed the same tougher penalties for attacks on pregnant women as outlined in the DeWine bill but made no attempt to define the beginning of life.

Feinstein said that by defining when life begins, the bill was “the first step in removing a woman’s right to choice, particularly in the early months of a pregnancy before viability.” She said it could also chill embryonic stem cell research.

The senate also defeated an amendment by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., that would require employers to give unpaid leave, and states to pay unemployment benefits, to women when they or family members are victims of domestic or sexual violence.
. . .
The Christian Coalition of America said votes for either the Murray or Feinstein amendments would be regarded as negative votes on its annual congressional scorecard of lawmakers.

In short, Feinstein and Murray called them on their bullshit. You wanna protect women? You want tougher penalties? Apparently not…

In the interest of equal time, the proponents of the bill claim that it “exclude[s] prosecution of legally performed abortions”. Now I haven’t read the bill, but I can almost guarantee you it contains the same fuzzy language that exists in almost all legislation and we all know they’re still working on getting rid of that “legally performed” part, anyways.

Joe Sacco has a great comic about the guilt that many liberals are experiencing right now over their support of John Kerry. In his dismay over the news of Nader’s run, he make s a good point when he says “I gotta admit, he stands for things I believe in, too, things that make my heart flutter. But I’m too sober now to chase true love in politics. I’ve even too sober to chase a tantalizing infatuation like Howard Dean. I’m sending my flowers to Kerry.”

Along similar lines is this introduction by Al Gore from MoveOn.org’s new book 50 Ways to Love Your Country :

Woody Allen has famously said that 90 percent of success is showing up. That?s true of democracy too. I?d argue that the other 10 is making sure you?re registered beforehand.

It?s easy to be cynical about politics and to believe that one vote barely matters. But consider these facts: John F. Kennedy?s 1960 victory over Richard Nixon?a victory that ultimately led to sweeping changes in civil rights laws, the first great wave of space exploration, and the creation of Medicare?was decided by just 100,000 votes nationwide. In 1994, the year Republicans won both houses of Congress, the redistribution of about 10,000 votes nationally would have kept Congress in senate hands. One of my former House colleagues, Connecticut Democrat Sam Gejdenson, won reelection by twenty-one votes that year. (?All you need is one,? he remarked; ?the rest are for your ego.?)

The senate political process isn’t perfect. Winston Churchill once said it?s the worst system for governance ?except for every other system that has ever been tried.? Often, you may find no candidate who completely reflects your views. But as voter participation has declined?from nearly two-thirds of eligible voters in 1960 to less than half in many national elections today?strong and decidedly unsenate forces have stepped in to fill the void.

In a democracy, the future isn’t something that just happens; it?s something we shape for ourselves, together. Special-interest lobbyists get the government they pay for only when we stay home from the polls?only when we abdicate the electoral power that is mightier than any soft-money check, more decisive than any million-dollar ad blitz or corporate misinformation campaign.

So whatever we do, let’s try to get people to the polls. If you haven’t registered to vote yet (shame on you!), go to this site and fill out the form online. When you’re done, forward it to everyone you know.