Category: Politics (2005-2006)

Fallen Chief.

Breaking News: Segregationist, federalist, kingmaker, lousy historian, fashion maven, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court William Rehnquist has died. Can’t say I’m looking forward to the Dubya gang getting to pick a new Chief Justice. Nope, not at all. Update: Dahlia Lithwick weighs in, and the nomination calculus begins anew. Update 2: It’s Roberts for Chief.

Homeland Insecurity.

To be honest, I’ve only had one eye on the news the past few days, as I’ve been busy relocating back to NYC. But what I have seen…oh my word. While the world looks on with a mix of horror, sympathy, and schadenfreude, New Orleans has fallen into almost-total anarchy. Other bloggers have been keeping up with the madness much better than I, so I’ll defer to them: As I noted earlier, Looka and Ed Rants are both doing a particularly good job covering the catastrophe, and Breaching the Web and Medley, among others, have ably drawn attention to both the Dubya administration’s culpability for the extent of this crisis and its grotesquely inappropriate and insufficient response. I assumed I couldn’t think any less of Dubya and his cronies after four years, but watching their sneering at desperate people, their mealy-mouthed evasiveness, and, most of all, their sheer, blatant incompetence — while Americans are suffering and dying in their homes — it’s disgusting. They’ve been exposed before all as pathetic, self-absorbed fuck-ups…at the cost of hundreds to thousands of lives and one great American city. Update: Also, by way of Booknotes, Wesley Clark weighs in on Dubya’s failure.

Dubya at the Crossroads.

As the Gulf drowns in Katrina’s wake, Dubya gets his groove on. I may be mistaken, but somehow I can’t imagine Clinton stopping to play the saxophone the day after the Oklahoma City bombing. (Then again, this is fully in keeping with Bush’s horrifyingly tone-deaf scampering atop the ruins of the Trade Center just after 9/11.) Well, perhaps Dubya presumes he’s still on vacation. (Guitar via Medley, 404 via Ed Rants, who’s currently offering much quality info and links on Katrina.)

Down Dives Dubya.

Bush’s poll numbers, low since early summer, just keep on plummeting and might soon reach Carter-like proportions. Somehow, I don’t think calling the Iraq War the moral equivalent of WWII is going to stem the tide. Nor, I’ll hazard, will his making it easier for his corporate cronies to pollute at will. But hey, keep trying, guys. Update: Slate‘s Fred Kaplan blows further holes in the WWII analogy.

WWJK?

“It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war … and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop.” 700 Club guru and former GOP presidential candidate Pat Robertson calls for the head of Venuezela’s Hugo Chavez. (Venezuela is obviously livid, and the Dubya administration, for their part, quickly disavowed the idea.)My, isn’t he just the model of Christian forbearance? Some words of wisdom, Pat: Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. (Matthew 26:52)

Construction Time Again.

As big-time progressive donors get to institution-building, the Dems try to work out a coherent strategy on the Roberts confirmation hearings and the war in Iraq. Right now I think Russ Feingold’s strategy — taking the heat off Roberts to focus on matters in Baghdad — is probably the right one, although the party should also try to keep the public eye trained on the misdeeds of Mssrs DeLay, Rove, etc. There should be no wriggling off the hook this time for these well-placed GOP criminals.

Diebold Redux.

“We…know that Bush ‘won’ Ohio by 51-48%, but statewide results were not matched by the court-supervised hand count of the 147,400 absentee and provisional ballots in which Kerry received 54.46% of the vote. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio the number of recorded votes was more than 93,000 greater than the number of registered voters. More importantly national exit polls showed Kerry winning in 2004. However, It was only in precincts where there were no paper trails on the voting machines that the exit polls ended up being different from the final count.” None dare call it stolen? A new report by Pomona professor Dennis Loo offers considerable evidence that election 2004 witnessed more GOP monkey business than has been previously reported in the mainstream press.

Casino Jack in Hollywood.

“The film was to be a manifesto for Abramoff; a Rambo-like morality tale and a grand indictment of communism — his Reagan Doctrine parable in action-packed Technicolor. And in the process of conceiving of and making it, Abramoff helped groom an African despot, rose to high levels in the K Street food chain, and got to play international spy.” Salon‘s James Verini discloses the sordid tale of Red Scorpion and GOP bagman Jack Abramoff’s brief flirtation with the movie biz.

Mr. Nice/Ninth guy?

“And that’s why John Roberts doesn’t alarm me much. The same conservatism that leads him to decry judicial overreaching in the privacy and civil rights contexts is part and parcel of a larger conservatism that distrusts reckless grandiosity…Roberts cares a lot about looking temperate, and that isn’t a bad thing in a judge.” As Senators Ted Kennedy and Patrick Leahy turn up the heat on the Roberts nod, Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick argues that, at the very least, he seems temperamentally unsuited to be a judicial bomb-thrower. That’s good, ’cause even with today’s news of a missing civil rights folder and a possible conflict-of-interest in a terrorism case, there doesn’t yet seem to be a silver bullet that could derail this nomination. Update: Dahlia Lithwick reconsiders after pondering Roberts’ “Woman Problem.”