1. DNC District-Level Delegate Selection Caucuses

The location of the April 13 caucuses to select district-level delegates to the Democratic National Convention for Hillary Clinton can be found at http://www.cadem.org/site/c.jrLZK2PyHmF/b.3990341/

The caucus locations for Barack Obama are at http://www.cadem.org/site/c.jrLZK2PyHmF/b.3990337/

Caucuses open at 2:00 pm; you must be in line by 3:00 pm in all locations.

Additional information about the delegate selection process can be found at http://www.cadem.org/site/c.jrLZK2PyHmF/b.3643973/

NOTE: The list of caucus sites will be updated daily as new sites come in; you are encouraged to check the list regularly as sites may change for various reasons.

2. From the DAILY GRILL

"[T]he surge is working. ... [N]ormalcy is returning back to Iraq." -- Bush, 3/27/08

VERSUS

"The State Department has instructed all personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad not to leave reinforced structures due to incoming insurgent rocket fire that has killed two American government workers this week." -- AP, 3/28/08




And by the way, we are withdrawing troops. It’s called return on success. And our intention is to pull down five — you know, five battalions by July. Troops are coming out — five brigades, excuse me. Troops are coming out, because we’re successful. And so, I would view the Australian decision as return on success — returning home on success. -- Bush 3/28.08

VERSUS

Troop levels in Iraq would remain nearly the same through 2008 as they have been through most of the five years of war there .. But it now appears likely that any decision on major reductions in American troops from Iraq will be left to the next president. -- NY Times 03/25/08



"We must win this fight. The militias that we are fighting are backed by Iran." -- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on recent fighting in southern Iraq. 3/30/08

VERSUS

"The notion that this is a fight by American allies against Iranian-inspired elements is not accurate." -- Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), 3/30/08



"The Iraqi prime minister said Tuesday that a weeklong crackdown against militia violence in the southern city of Basra had been a 'success.'" -- AP, 4/1/08

VERSUS

"The peace agreement brokered by Iran calmed the violence but left [Muqtada] al-Sadr's militia intact and Iraq's U.S.-backed prime minister politically battered within his own Shiite power base." -- AP, 4/1/08



"Illegal migrants really degrade the environment." -- Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, 10/1/07

VERSUS

"In an aggressive move to finish 670 miles of barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of the year, the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday announced plans to waive federal and state environmental laws." -- LA Times, 4/2/08



"But the fact is we're going to need, as we have after every conflict we've been in,World War II, Korea, etc., we're going want to leave troops there to secure the peace that our soldiers have won." -- Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), 4/1/08

VERSUS

""Tonight, the day we have all worked and prayed for has finally come. For the first time in 12 years, no American military forces are in Vietnam. All of our American POW's are on their way home." -- President Nixon, 3/29/73

3. Gore begins huge public campaign to go green

Former Vice President Al Gore has launched a three-year, $300 million campaign aimed at mobilizing Americans to push for aggressive reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions, a move that ranks as one of the most ambitious and costly public-advocacy campaigns in U.S. history.

For more about The Alliance for Climate Protection’s “we” campaign go to http://www.wecansolveit.org/. Info about what you can do to help is at http://www.wecansolveit.org/content/action/

Watch some of the campaign’s ads and videos at http://www.wecansolveit.org/content/pages/77/

NOTE: On the dark side, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, a nonprofit funded by the coal industry and its allies, is spending about $35 million this election to bolster support for coal-generated electricity. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank that receives part of its funding from oil and gas companies, recently spent close to $35,000 to run a television ad both in the District and in scattered cities throughout the country attacking Gore, and plans a follow-up campaign. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/30/AR2008033001880_2.html

4. “The Matthews Monitor”

Media Matters’ Matthews Monitor is at http://mediamatters.org/action_center/matthews_monitor/

Had enough of Matthews’ sexism - for what you can do go to http://mediamatters.org/items/200801110002

5. Andy Borowitz: Market Tumbles on News That Bush Is Still President

President George W. Bush used a Rose Garden appearance today to reassure investors that he was at the helm of the U.S. economy, causing stock markets to plummet around the world.

“You don’t have to worry about this economy, because I am in charge of it,” said Mr. Bush, touching off what some observers were calling a global financial panic.

Mr. Bush began his remarks about the economy at 10:30 A.M. eastern time, and by 10:31 markets around the world had already gone into a perilous free-fall.

According to Wall Street insiders, the markets were responding to the news that Mr. Bush was still president.

“Over the last few weeks, the markets have absorbed the news of the subprime crisis, the housing meltdown, and the Bear Stearns failure,” said Logan Teasdale of Citigroup. “But the news that President Bush is still president was too much for the markets to shrug off.”

Over the past few months, Mr. Teasdale said, traders have tried hard to forget that Mr. Bush was still president, but his White House remarks today were “a painful reminder.”

At the Federal Reserve, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke huddled with central bankers to find a way to calm the markets rattled by Mr. Bush’s alarming appearance.

One solution reportedly being pondered by the Fed would involve sending Mr. Bush to Disney World for the remainder of his time in office.

Elsewhere, in his first comment on the Eliot Spitzer scandal, Vice President Dick Cheney said he has never hired a prostitute because “I’ve been screwing the country the last seven years.”. www.borowitzreport.com

6. The Eisenhower Foundation Report: Poverty and wealth in America

During the 1980s, child poverty increased to nearly 25%. During the 1990s, child poverty dropped to about 17%, but in 2001 the trend reversed and child poverty again increased. Today, after almost a decade of economic expansion, the only super power in the world still has about 1 out of every 5 children aged 5 and under living in poverty, according to the National Center for Children and Poverty at Columbia University.2 Further, nearly 2 of 5 live in low income households. That is incomprehensible. By comparison, the corresponding child poverty rate is about 15% in Canada, 12% in Japan, 7% in France, 4% in Belgium and 2% in Finland. Today, we have phenomenal prosperity in the United States. Yet the poor are barely better off than in the 1980s, in spite of the economic boom of the 1990s. And the extremely poor are worse off.

The increase in wealth inequality during the Reagan years is virtually unprecedented. The only comparable period in America in the twentieth century was 1922-1929, before the Great Depression. During the 1980s, 99% of the wealth gained went to the top 20% of wealth holders in America -- and the top 1% gained 62% of that. The median wealth of nonwhite American citizens actually fell during the 1980s. The average level of wealth of an African-American family in America today is about one-tenth of an average white family. Wealth inequality is much worse in the United States than in countries traditionally thought of as "class ridden," like the United Kingdom. http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/formulate_vision.php#sum

7. I Know I'm Not Alone (video)

Frustrated by the lack of media coverage about the human side of the war in Iraq, musician, poet and peace activist Michael Franti decided to go there and see it for himself. The result is “I Know I'm Not Alone,” a personal view of war's effect on people.

More about the movie at http://www.iknowimnotalone.com/. Buy the DVD at http://www.speargearstore.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=3

8. Video Contest About Immigration

The Movement Vision Lab is hosting a video contest on 'Community Values and Immigration. The most compelling take on the relationship between immigration and community wins $1,000. You can watch the videos and vote at http://www.movementvisionlab.org/ccc/www/blog/your-votes-community-values-immigration-video-contest

9. Hagel disputes McCain’s claim we can ‘win’ in Iraq: ‘Then we’ll be there forever.’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7PAXtuKWCM

10. McBush on Iraq: The Same Old Thing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Udqv34TQplg&eurl

11. Army Holds Annual 'Bring Your Daughter To War' Day (video)

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/army_holds_annual_bring_your

12. Fox News Fun (video)

Dan Abrams in his Beat the Press segment has some fun with Fox News and their new black and white coverage. http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2008/03/fox_news_fun.html

13. Job Market 2009 (video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2uErWWwQTo

14. Jon Stewart: Senator Hagel on the White House’s justification of Iraq (video)

Your question about how the administration deals with this now–well, they continue to justify something that’s not justifiable. It’s Alice in Wonderland: what’s up is down, what’s down is up. http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/01/hagel-white-houses-justification-of-iraq-is-like-alice-in-wonderland/

15. GAO Blasts Weapons Budget - Cost Overruns Hit $295 Billion

Government auditors issued a scathing review yesterday of dozens of the Pentagon's biggest weapons systems, saying ships, aircraft and satellites are billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.

The GAO found that 95 major systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion, and are delivered almost two years late on average. In addition, none of the systems that the GAO looked at had met all of the standards for best management practices during their development stages.

The Pentagon has doubled the amount it has committed to new systems, from $790 billion in 2000 to $1.6 trillion last year, according to the 205-page GAO report. Total acquisition costs in 2007 for major defense programs increased 26 percent from first estimates. In 2000, 75 programs had cost increases totaling 6 percent. Development costs in 2007 for the systems rose 40 percent from initial projections, compared with 27 percent in 2000. Current programs are delivered 21 months late on average, five months later than in 2000.

"In most cases, programs also failed to deliver capabilities when promised -- often forcing war fighters to spend additional funds on maintaining" existing weapons systems, the report says. Dana Hedgpeth 4.01.08 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/31/AR2008033102789_pf.html

16. Ode To John “Maverick” McCain,by Madeleine Begun Kane

(Apparently, maverick is a synonym for felon. Who knew?)

A law breaker — that’s John McCain,
Treating FEC regs with disdain.
Having championed those rules,
He plays us for fools.
Yet we still hear the mav’rick refrain.

http://www.madkane.com/madness/2008/03/27/ode-to-john-maverick-mccain/

17. The Daily Show Revisited: Americans Among Us (video)

Sam Bee investigates the American insurgents at http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=88859&title=americans-among-us

18. The King of America (video)

Inside the secret world of Washington Times publisher Rev. Sun Myung Moon; he arranged for himself to be coronated the "King of Peace" on Capitol Hill, with help from John McCain aide Charlie Black and members of Congress. http://www.veoh.com/videos/v6528297a9ppTgRm?s=forward&p2=A+friend&p1=v6528297a9ppTgRm

19. Nightmare At Guantanamo Bay

An innocent man held as a terror detainee for years tells 60 Minutes’; Scott Pelley, in his first U.S. television interview, how Americans tortured him in Afghanistan and then at Guantanamo. 3.30.08 http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml

20. UN, other groups say nearly 2.8 million displaced in Iraq

GENEVA (AP) — Aid groups including U.N. agencies say nearly 2.8 million Iraqis are now uprooted within their country.

Iraqi authorities, the Red Cross and U.N. agencies working in Iraq say they have recorded an increase of 300,000 displaced people so far this year largely due to better methods for registering displacement.

The International Organization for Migration says more than 1 million displaced Iraqis lack adequate food and shelter. A similar number are without regular income or employment. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2008-04-01-iraq-displaced_N.htm?csp=34

21. Howard Dean's Got Real Work Ahead Of Him...

The uncertainty about whether and how almost ten percent of the delegates to the convention will participate in the nominating process is the ultimate political landmine. No matter how ugly the Clinton-Obama competition gets, it is unlikely to tear apart the party unless there is a point of division so clear and so serious that it disrupts the convention.

The fights over Michigan and Florida pose a threat that must be dealt with before the convention if Dean -- who has done a very good job of putting in place a sound staff and a good schedule in place for the Denver gathering -- wants the convention, and the fall campaign, to be a success. John Nichols 3/28/08 http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?pid=303979

22. Late-Night Political Jokes for Dems

"But, see, I tell you - you know what's interesting? He's not a bowler, obviously. And Barack Obama made the typical mistake a lot of rookie bowlers make. He bowled sober. See, you never do that." --Jay Leno

"And yesterday down in Washington D.C., President Bush threw out the first pitch at the Nationals game. ... He stayed and then left in the 7th inning and I thought, 'Great, at least he has an exit strategy for that.'" --David Letterman

"Do you like John McCain? I like John McCain. He looks like the kind of guy who can't remember if he took his pill. He looks like the guy who goes to bed after Andy Rooney. He looks like the guy who has his exhaust pipe tied to his rear bumper." --David Letterman

This war going on between a powerful Shiite militia and the Iraqi army, which is a powerful Shiite militia. It's so violent that Baghdad and five other cities now are in complete lockdown. No one can go on the streets. So, if you're a Republican looking for a photo-op to show how peaceful it is, now is a good time." --Bill Maher

"By the way, this has nothing to do with al Qaeda. You know, Bush is always talking about 'we're fighting al Qaeda and other extremists.' Yeah, al Qaeda who actually attacked us. This is a war between rival Mafia families with George Bush playing the part of 'Fredo.'" --Bill Maher

"It looks like Mitt Romney really wants to be picked as vice president. Did you see the picture in the paper today of Romney talking to John McCain? Doesn't it look the head of Leisure World explaining the benefits of assisted living to the newest resident?" -- Jay Leno

"The White House is now outsourcing the manufacturing of our passports overseas. Our passports will now be made in foreign countries. See, this is how a global economy works. When an illegal immigrant from Mexico living in L.A. and working in a Japanese-owned company wants to go home to visit his relatives, he uses a a passport made in Thailand that he gets by a calling customer service number in India. You see how it works? This could be the thing that makes Lou Dobbs' head explode." --Jay Leno

"Hey, John McCain is moving up in the polls. In fact, he appears to be getting support from younger voters. How young you say? Well, yesterday, he was endorsed by Nancy Reagan. ... She said she's either going to endorse McCain or nobody. Well, that's got to make you feel good, huh?" --Jay Leno

"And at a speech earlier today in Sterling, Virginia, President Bush said the economy is going through a rough patch, but he's confident things will work out. Unless you own a home, own a car, have stock, or you're over 65." --Jay Leno

"The mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, has been charged with perjury after he got caught sending his chief of staff text messages about having sex. Yeah. He's also being investigated for having strippers at the mayor's mansion. And, of course, people are shocked. Detroit has a mayor's mansion?" --Jay Leno

"Speaking of old guys, how about that John McCain? I like John McCain. He looks like the guy who gets frisky with the new waitress at IHOP. ... He looks like the guy who watches his Cadillac go through the car wash. ... He looks like the guy in the supermarket yelling into his cell phone, 'I'm in aisle three, Marge. I can't find the brownie mix.'" --David Letterman

"In more serious news, big controversy last week after State Department officials looked at passport files of all three major candidates. Turns out, they got a hold of John McCain's Social Security number. Got his social security number. You know what it is? Three." --Jay Leno

23. Frontline: Bad Voodoo's War (video)

FRONTLINE goes to war with a platoon of National Guard soldiers to see the war through their eyes, as they filmed it using their own camcorders. You can watch the program online at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/badvoodoo/

24. Poll: 1 in 10 think Obama is Muslim

According to the Pew Research Center, fourteen percent of all Republicans, 10% of Democrats and 8% of independents think Obama is a Muslim. Daniel Burke http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2008-04-01-obama-muslim_N.htm

25. Jon Stewart: McCain's Bio Tour (video)

http://www.crooksandliars.com/Media/Play/27939/2/tds_mccain_bus_tour_040208.mov/

2. Robert Scheer: A Submarine to Fight al-Qaida’s Navy

A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there, and soon you're talking real money. But when it comes to reporting on what the Bush war legacy has cost American taxpayers, the media have been shockingly indifferent to the highest run-up in military spending since World War II. Even the devastating defense spending audit released Monday by the Government Accountability Office documenting the enormous waste in every single US advanced weapons system failed to provoke the outrage it, and five equally scathing previous annual audits, deserved.

This is not about the waste of taxpayer dollars--already pushing a trillion--in funding the Iraq war, which, while reprehensible enough, pales in comparison to the big-ticket military systems purchased in the wake of 9/11. In the horror of that moment, the floodgates were lifted and the peace dividend promised with the end of the Cold War was washed away by a doubling of spending on ultra-complex military equipment originally designed to defeat a Soviet enemy that no longer exists, equipment that has no plausible connection with fighting stateless terrorists. Example: the $81-billion submarine pushed by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, presumably to fight al-Qaeda's navy.

That's the huge scandal the media and politicians from both parties have studiously avoided. But as the GAO's authoritative audit details, the costs are astronomical. The explosion of spending on expensive weaponry after 9/11 had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks of that day. The high-tech planes and ships commissioned for trillions of dollars to defeat an enemy with no navy, air force or army, and using $3 knives as its weapons arsenal, were gifts to the military-industrial complex that will go on giving for decades to come. 4.01.08 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080401_a_submarine_to_fight_al_qaidas_navy/

3. Gareth Porter: McCain's "Senior Moments" a Product of Bush's Iran Propaganda

Sen. John McCain's confusion in recent allegations of Iranian training of al Qaeda fighters in Iraq is the result of a drumbeat of official propaganda about close Iran-al Qaeda ties that the George W. Bush administration and neoconservatives have promoted ever since early 2002.

McCain's confusion has been widely characterized as demonstrating his inability to distinguish Sunni al Qaeda from Shiite Mahdi Army. But more fundamentally, McCain's gaffes were a reflection of how thoroughly he had internalized a favorite theme of the Bush administration and neoconservatives -- that Iran has tolerated and even covertly assisted al Qaeda agents operating inside Iran.

Those administration charges have continued despite the repeated release of information by Iran and other countries about its arrest, detention and repatriation of al Qaeda suspects. 3.28.08. http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/80618/

4. Kishore Mahbubani: The sermons of cowards

Something remarkable has happened in the struggle for greater freedom and democracy. The world's most powerful nation and the traditional beacon for democracy, the United States, has slid backwards. One of the world's poorest nations and the world's most populous Islamic state, Indonesia, has moved distinctly forward. And yet western discourse largely ignores this development, as evidenced by the sweeping speech on democracy delivered by British foreign secretary, David Miliband, last month.

The first flaw of western discourse is its inability to practise what it preaches in this respect: to speak truth to power. This is revealed in the reluctance of western governments to discuss the most catastrophic reversal in the field of human rights: the decision by the US government to defend the use of torture. In the evolution of human rights there have been two quantum leaps: the first was the universal abolition of slavery; the second, the move towards abolishing torture.

Ten years ago, if anyone had suggested the US would reintroduce torture, the answer would have been "impossible!" Yet the impossible has happened. Amnesty International has described Guantánamo as "the gulag of our times". Despite their history of condemning human rights violations, no western nation has condemned the US government for Guantánamo. Miliband's speech rightly applauded several brave Burmese people for standing up to the military government. They spoke truth to power, and at great personal risk. Sadly, even though he faced no personal risks, Miliband could not muster the courage to speak truth to power regarding Guantánamo. 3.28.08 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/28/humanrights

5. Tom Engelhard: The Little Administration That Couldn't - Rebuilding the American Economy, Bush-style

History may not repeat itself, but the administration's repetitive acts these past seven years make an assessment of our economic situation possible, even if you are an economics dummy.

Just consider the record: Administration officials proved incapable of rebuilding two countries that their military occupied and damaged. In Afghanistan and Iraq, while talking up the President's "freedom agenda," they were the equivalent of a natural disaster, a whirlwind of destruction.

In the case of Iraq, in disbanding its military, its government, and even its economy, they were literal nation-wreckers. On taking Baghdad, their first act of omission was to let the capital be looted. ("Stuff happens," commented Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at the time.) Soon after, the administration's new viceroy in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer III, promptly plunged the country into the equivalent of the Great Depression -- without a Bear Stearns bailout in sight.

In the case of Afghanistan, only a staggering boom in opiate growing -- the country now supplies an estimated 93% of the global market in illegal opiates, bringing about four billion dollars into the country -- has slightly offset the disaster of "liberation." By just about any other measure, Afghanistan is a wreck.

In the case of New Orleans, the Bush administration not only couldn't rebuild an American city that nature (and the Army Corps of Engineers) damaged, but turned a natural disaster into a man-made catastrophe that has yet to end.

Ten months is a long, long time when only their hands are near the pilot's wheel of the ship of state and water's already seeping through the hull. It's an eon for an administration capable of sinking New Orleans in a matter of days, and Iraq in little more than months. Or, thought of another way, it's plenty of time if your expertise happens to lie in deconstruction. After all, barring a miracle, you're talking about the little administration that couldn't, no matter how hard Ben Bernanke may try.

So, even if you, like me, know next to nothing about economics, you already know enough to be afraid, very afraid. 3.27.08 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174911/the_fate_of_the_bear_market

6. John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed: Muslim true/false

Winning hearts and minds -- the Bush administration, foreign policy wonks, even the U.S. military agree that this is the key to any victory over global terrorism. Yet our public diplomacy program has made little progress on improving America's image. Few seem to recognize that American ignorance of Islam and Muslims has been the fatal flaw.

How much do Americans know about the views and beliefs of Muslims around the world? According to polls, not much. Perhaps not surprising, the majority of Americans (66%) admit to having at least some prejudice against Muslims; one in five say they have "a great deal" of prejudice. Almost half do not believe American Muslims are "loyal" to this country, and one in four do not want a Muslim as a neighbor.

Why should such anti-Muslim bias concern us? First, it undermines the war on terrorism: Situations are misdiagnosed, root causes are misidentified and bad prescriptions do more harm than good. Second, it makes our public diplomacy sound like double-talk. U.S. diplomats are trying to convince Muslims around the world that the United States respects them and that the war on terrorism is not out to destroy Islam. Their task is made infinitely more difficult by the frequent airing of anti-Muslim sentiment on right-wing call-in radio, which is then heard around the world on the Internet.

Finally, public ignorance weakens our democracy at election time. Instead of a well-informed citizenry choosing our representatives, we are rendered vulnerable to manipulative fear tactics. We need look no further than the political attacks on Barack Obama. Any implied connection to Islam -- attending a Muslim school in Indonesia, the middle name Hussein -- is wielded to suggest that he is unfit for the presidency and used as fuel for baseless rumors.

Anti-Muslim sentiment fuels misinformation, and is fueled by it -- misinformation that is squarely contradicted by evidence. 4.02.08 http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-esposito2apr02,1,7834850.story

7. GAIL COLLINS: McCain Forecloses Early

I don’t see how anybody could deny that John McCain is a straight-talker. The country is terrified of economic collapse and he’s been sounding like Mr. Potter, the banker in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” You can’t get more forthright than that.

The theme for his mortgage speech this week was basically McCain to Homeowners: Drop Dead. It was, he said sternly, “not the duty of the government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly.” The good news, he noted, was that out of 80 million American homeowners, only 4 million are in the tank, while everybody else is “working a second job, skipping a vacation and managing their budgets” the way Countrywide Financial intended them to.

McCain also favors privatizing parts of the Social Security system, an idea so deeply unpopular with actual people that it never flew in Congress, even when the Republicans were in control and the nation had not yet deduced that the president was permanently out to lunch.

And at bottom, his economic vision makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. He’s going to keep the Bush tax cuts, continue our $3-trillion-and-counting war in Iraq and decrease corporate taxes. And how is he going to pay for it? By getting rid of pork-barrel earmarks. And I am planning to remodel my house by purchasing a tube of Elmer’s glue.

But give the man credit for telling it like he thinks it is. So far, he’s only alienated the homeowners, retirees and vacation-takers. 3.29.09 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/opinion/29collins.html

8. My Way or the Highway

President Bush likes to talk about not being swayed by public opinion, especially the views of Democrats. At a news conference last December, he said the most important criterion for picking a president is “whether or not somebody’s got a sound set of principles from which they will not deviate as they make decisions.”

Unhappily for the country, we have learned that Mr. Bush has no idea when standing on principle becomes blind stubbornness and then destructive obsession. So it goes with his choice to run the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Steven Bradbury.

In a lower job in that office, Mr. Bradbury signed off on two secret legal memos authorizing torture in American detention camps. The first approved waterboarding, among other things. When Congress outlawed waterboarding, the other memo assured Mr. Bush that he could ignore the law.

Mr. Bradbury is widely viewed on both sides of the aisle as such a toxic choice that he will never be confirmed. The Senate has already refused to do so twice. Still, Mr. Bush clings to this lost cause, snarling the confirmation process for hundreds of nominees and crippling parts of the federal regulatory apparatus. 3.30.08 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/opinion/30sun1.html

9. Clint Talbott: Let us reason together

Through such careful, logical and thoughtful exchanges, the theory goes, the sounder arguments will generally prevail, and society will improve. But to an alarming degree, that is not the nature of our public discourse.

"The truth is that American democracy is now in danger -- not from any one set of ideas, but from unprecedented changes in the environment within which ideas either live and spread, or wither and die," writes former Vice President Al Gore in "The Assault on Reason," an excellent book.

The simple act of quoting Gore is bound to undermine the arguments presented here. Gore is vilified by vocal foes who deny the rigor (and sometimes even the existence) of thousands of peer-reviewed studies by leading climate scientists. To such people, any argument buttressed by a Gore quotation is self-refuting.

But it is important to admit that people across the spectrum can and do make valid points and have valid perspectives.

Correctly, Gore observes: "Faith in the power of reason -- the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power -- was and is the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault."

It is under assault by a host of forces, including the lure of entertainment, the passivity of the public and the disinclination of leaders (on both sides of the aisle) to engage in the thoughtful, careful discourse upon which our system of government depends.

There is no simple remedy for this democratic disease. Perhaps it is enough, as a start, to admit that it exists and to recognize that it is malignant. 3.30.08 http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008/mar/30/let-us-reason-together/

10. Steven Rosenfeld: Texas Prosecutes Little Old Ladies for Voter Fraud

Willie Ray was a 69-year-old African-American City Council member from Texarkana who wanted her granddaughter, Jamillah Johnson, to learn about civil rights and voting during the 2004 presidential election. The pair helped homebound seniors citizens get absentee ballots, and once they were filled out, put them in the mail.

Fort Worth's Gloria Meeks, 69, was a church-going, community activist who proudly ran a phone bank and helped homebound elderly people like Parthenia McDonald, 79, to vote by mail. McDonald, whose mailbox was two blocks away from her home (she recently died), called Meeks "an angel" for helping her, a friend of both women said.

And until he recently moved out of state, Walter Hinojosa, a retired school teacher and labor organizer from Austin, was another Democratic Party volunteer who helped elderly and disabled people vote by getting them absentee ballots and mailing them.

Today, Ray and Johnson have criminal records for breaking Texas election law and faced travel restrictions during a six-month probation. Gloria Meeks is in a nursing home after having a stroke, prompted in part, her friends say, by state police who investigated her -- including spying on Meeks while she bathed -- and then questioned her about helping McDonald and others to vote. Hinojosa, meanwhile, has left Texas.

Their crime: not signing their name, address and signature on the back of the ballots they mailed for their senior neighbors, and carrying envelopes containing those ballots to the mailbox. Since 2005, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican, has been prosecuting Democratic Party activists, almost all African-Americans and Latinos, as part of an effort to eradicate what he said was an "epidemic" of voter fraud in Texas. 3.31.08 http://www.alternet.org/democracy/80589/?page=1

11. Robert Dreyfuss: The Lessons of Basra

At the start of the military offensive launched last week into Basra by US-trained Iraqi army forces, President Bush called the action by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "a bold decision." He added: "I would say this is a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq."

That's true--but not in the way the President meant it. As the smoke clears over new rubble in Iraq's second city, at the heart of Iraq's oil region, it's apparent that the big winner of the Six-Day War in Basra are the forces of rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army faced down the Iraqi armed forces not only in Basra, but in Baghdad, as well as in Kut, Amarah, Nasiriyah, and Diwaniya, capitals of four key southern provinces. That leaves Sadr, an anti-American rabble rouser and nationalist who demands an end to the US occupation of Iraq, and who has grown increasingly close to Iran of late, in a far stronger position that he was a week ago. In Basra, he's the boss. An Iraqi reporter for the New York Times, who managed to get into Basra during the fighting, concluded that the thousands of Mahdi Army militiamen that control most of the city remained in charge. "There was nowhere the Mahdi either did not control or could not strike at will," he wrote.

The other big winner in the latest round of Shiite-vs.-Shiite civil war is Iran. For the past five years, Iran has built up enormous political, economic and military clout in Iraq, right under the noses of 170,000 surge-inflated US occupying forces. 3.31.08 http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080414/dreyfuss

12. Paul Krugman: The Dilbert Strategy

Anyone who has worked in a large organization — or, for that matter, reads the comic strip “Dilbert” — is familiar with the “org chart” strategy. To hide their lack of any actual ideas about what to do, managers sometimes make a big show of rearranging the boxes and lines that say who reports to whom.

You now understand the principle behind the Bush administration’s new proposal for financial reform, which will be formally announced today: it’s all about creating the appearance of responding to the current crisis, without actually doing anything substantive.

So the Treasury has, with great fanfare, announced — you know what’s coming — its support for a rearrangement of the boxes on the org chart. OCC, OTS, and CFTC are out; PFRA and CBRA are in. Whatever.

Will the administration’s plan succeed? I’m not asking whether it will succeed in preventing future financial crises — that’s not its purpose. The question, instead, is whether it will succeed in confusing the issue sufficiently to stand in the way of real reform.

If we don’t reform the system this time, the next crisis could well be even bigger. And I, for one, really don’t want to live through a replay of the 1930s. 3.31.08 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/opinion/31krugman.html

13. Eugene Robinson: Consider Iraq Defined

Quite a “defining moment” in Iraq, wasn’t it? At this rate, John McCain is going to be proved right: The war will last a century.

That is indeed what McCain said, by the way, no matter how his apologists try to spin it. Those who claim that by “a hundred years” McCain was talking about a long-term peacetime deployment like the U.S. military presence in South Korea are being disingenuous or obtuse. In and around Seoul, citizens aren’t shooting at American soldiers or trying to blow them up with roadside bombs—and U.S. combat forces aren’t taking sides in bloody internecine battles over power and wealth.

It was George W. Bush who called last week’s fighting in Basra and other Iraqi cities a defining moment for the fledgling government. By that standard, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been defined as an impulsive leader and an inept general—and his government as a work barely in progress.

Meanwhile, Maliki’s putsch had inflamed Shiite communities throughout the country, including the vast Sadr City neighborhood in Baghdad. The tranquillity brought about by Bush’s ballyhooed “surge” turned out to be as evanescent as a rainbow.

Maliki was forced to sue for peace, Sadr magnanimously accepted, and the fighting ebbed. The Mahdi Army remains entrenched, in Basra and other cities, and armed to the teeth. Maliki’s regime looks less like a government than just another faction—albeit one with a couple of big brothers who will come in to finish any rashly started schoolyard fights.

All of which illustrates the insanity of the open-ended Iraq war policy that Bush has followed and that McCain vows to perpetuate.

What, exactly, did the United States use its military might to accomplish last week? We intervened in a struggle among various Shiite power centers for control of a city where much of Iraq’s oil industry—and thus much of its potential wealth—is based. We supported a political figure who was trying to weaken another political figure in advance of upcoming elections. We boosted the morale and fervor of the most implacable opponents of continued American occupation. 3.32.08 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080331_consider_iraq_defined/

14. An unsustainable scam

Just in time for April Fool's Day comes news of the latest scam in the biofuels industry. As we report today, cargo loads of biofuel are being shipped from Europe to the US where they are topped up, allowing traders to claim a subsidy from Washington, and then shipped back. Despite the dateline, this is no prank - it accounts for up to 10% of all biofuel exports from America to Europe - even though it makes a mockery of the notion of a green fuel.

The attraction of biofuels is obvious: they offer a simple solution to one of the thorniest problems of our times. If the fossil fuels we use, especially for transport, emit too much carbon then, runs the thinking, swap to low-carbon fuels made from potato or rapeseed. Clean and cheap, biofuels are a godsend for governments facing stiff targets on reducing carbon use. And so they set quotas or introduce subsidies to encourage take-up of this miracle fuel. From today, 2.5% of all petrol and diesel sold in the UK must be made from biofuels. And the EU plans to raise that to 5.75% by 2010.

The problem with biofuels is equally obvious: they are a simplistic solution to a problem too big to be tackled with mere shortcuts. They take up land and crops that might otherwise go towards feeding people, which is a big reason food prices have shot up. They typically require nitrogen fertilisers, which causes the soil to emit nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas. Biofuels also require ploughing, harvesting, and processing - all of which use energy, often supplied by burning fossil fuels. For a supposedly clean energy source, biofuels are often surprisingly mucky; some may not help tackle global warming but make it worse. 4.01 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/01/biofuels.greenpolitics

15. Phillippe Sands: The Green Light

The abuse, rising to the level of torture, of those captured and detained in the war on terror is a defining feature of the presidency of George W. Bush. Its military beginnings, however, lie not in Abu Ghraib, as is commonly thought, or in the “rendition” of prisoners to other countries for questioning, but in the treatment of the very first prisoners at Guantánamo. Starting in late 2002 a detainee bearing the number 063 was tortured over a period of more than seven weeks. In his story lies the answer to a crucial question: How was the decision made to let the U.S. military start using coercive interrogations at Guantánamo?

The Bush administration has always taken refuge behind a “trickle up” explanation: that is, the decision was generated by military commanders and interrogators on the ground. This explanation is false. The origins lie in actions taken at the very highest levels of the administration—by some of the most senior personal advisers to the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense. At the heart of the matter stand several political appointees—lawyers—who, it can be argued, broke their ethical codes of conduct and took themselves into a zone of international criminality, where formal investigation is now a very real option.

For more on this story of how the torture at Guantánamo began, and how it spread. go to http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/guantanamo200805

16. Eric Boehlert: Myth: Americans tuned out Iraq; Fact: The press tuned out Iraq

During the recent commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, there was lots of media hand-wringing about how Americans no longer were interested in the war and how Iraq had recently fallen off the country's collective radar. The observations were usually tied to the fact that mainstream media coverage of the war has sharply declined.

Releasing a news study on the topic, the Pew Research Center reported, "As news coverage of the war has diminished, so too has public interest in news about Iraq." A Chattanooga Times Free Press editorial noted how the Pew study had "found a steady falloff in public focus" and suggested "public fatigue" had set in. The Hartford Courant noted "[t]he waning interest" in the war, while the Fort Worth Star-Telegram bemoaned "the public's loss of interest in this war."

The New York Times detailed the decline in Iraq coverage and suggested it "may be explained by" a "decline in public interest." The implication was that news organizations pulled back this year because their readers and viewers were less keyed in on the story, that consumers were dictating the coverage.

The truth is that phony narrative simply serves to justify the media's wholesale retreat from Iraq, as well as the media's decision to disengage from the war regardless of how interested news consumers were. In recent years, there has been no indication that the press has ever taken interest level into account while drawing down from the conflict. So it's disingenuous now to suggest the press is simply following the public's lead regarding the war.

Even now, as news outlets scramble to revive their Baghdad bureaus in the wake of disturbing new violence, it's important to understand that despite the spin, American news consumers have not walked away from Iraq. The press has. 4.02.05 http://mediamatters.org/columns/200804020003?f=h_top

17. Joe Conason: He’s ‘McSame’ on Social Security, Too

The most puzzling aspect of John McCain’s political persona is his habitual attraction to George W. Bush’s bad ideas. Their shared enthusiasm for invading Iraq and then escalating the war is why “McSame” will soon become the new shorthand for the Arizona Republican, replacing “maverick”—but that isn’t the only reason. He doesn’t just endorse the disastrous foreign policy initiatives; he loves the failed domestic policy schemes, too.

Specifically, McCain is a longtime supporter of President Bush’s Social Security privatization initiative, last seen descending into oblivion only months after its introduction in 2005. He played a cameo role in the promotion of that notion (which never became an actual plan or bill in Congress) when the White House trotted him in for one of the president’s staged public “conversations” on the subject. Back then his pleas for everyone to sit down and negotiate the surrender of Social Security to Wall Street were universally ignored, yet that scarcely seems to have discouraged him.

Actually, McCain supported Social Security privatization before it was uncool, when he first ran for president eight years ago. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that a proposal to divert a portion of payroll taxes to finance private accounts, like the Bush scheme, was “a centerpiece of a McCain presidential bid in 2000.” Both he and Bush have wanted to dismantle Social Security for many years, in fact, and he has indicated that will be an important goal for a McCain presidency. 4.02.08 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080403_hes_mcsame_on_social_security_too/

18. Michael Takiff: Oh, What a Lovely War! So?

“So?”

Vice President Cheney, March 19, when asked about the American public’s disapproval of the Iraq War.

“I must say, I’m a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you…in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You’re really making history, and thanks.”

President Bush, March 13, speaking by videoconference to American military and civilian personnel in Afghanistan.

These are not adolescents talking. This is the Leader of the Free World and his Number-Two (you figure out which is which) demonstrating their unfitness for office. Their words encapsulate all we know about the selling and conduct of the Iraq War: Cheney’s, the contempt for the decent opinion of mankind that led us to charge into war over the objection of virtually every world leader not known as Bush’s Poodle; Bush’s, the delusional thinking that led us into the Middle East, expecting a baseball-and-apple-pie democracy to pop up in response.

The two statements also make clear how deeply grounded in one another are the arrogance and the ignorance that have given us this long, awful war. Cheney, in his scorn for public opinion, matches Bush in his detachment from the realities of war. Bush, in his Alfred E. Neuman view of armed conflict, matches Cheney in his contempt for the experience of the people he’s charged with leading. 3.02.08 http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080414/takiff