Is it possible to reduce consumption in such a way that no one is left completely out in the cold? In today's economy a reduction in consumption leads to unemployment and hardship for many, even when there is enough to go around.

If our economy must contract with the end of cheap oil, is it possible to restructure the financial/industrial world so as to avoid disaster?

The more inequality in income and wealth, the harder it will be. The haves not only have more, but they have the power to keep their share, buttressed by the law of property rights. History shows that the powerful have used property rights to justify the most cruel and inhumane treatment imaginable of the less fortunate. Never forget that at the height of the Irish potato famine, English landholders were exporting food right under the hungary mouths of starving children. Unless there is a plan that provides for everyone there will be widespread suffering and perhaps chaos

I've seen little effort on this front by economists, liberal or conservative. They seem to be happy with determining how to maintain consumption as the engine to drive the economy, ignoring the fact that unless a miraculous technical breakthrough occurs, we will be consuming less--a lot less--ten years from now, perhaps sooner, as the scarcity of cheap oil makes itself felt everywhere.

The administration is now advancing the proposition that treaties prohibiting torture solemnly entered into by our government and ratified by our Senate apply only within U.S. territory and not territories our forces occupy.

President Bush, who proclaims himself a born-again Christian, has threatened to veto a defense appropriations bill that contains a provision outlawing torture by U.S. forces or agencies anywhere in the World.

What would Jesus have used to torture terrorists?

In my youth at the height of the Cold War one of the most serious accusations our government leveled at the Communist world was its use of torture. Torture was considered something so evil and heinous that no country calling itself civilized would admit to using torture.

Now our armed forces and intelligence agencies routinely use torture as an interrogation method. Have we become the very thing we feared and fought all those years? It's beginning to look like it.

So Libby's the first one down. The language of the 22-page indictment makes it impossible to believe that Libby will be the only one. The senior official in the White House, Official "A," (¶ 21) thought by the AP to be Carl Rove, is clearly a target and probably a snitch, otherwise there would be no point in keeping him anonymous. Then there is an Undersecretary of State (¶ 4), one or more other persons in the Office of the Vice President (¶ 5), Chaney himself (¶ 9), Libby's principal deputy (¶ 13) and the "then" White House Press Secretary (¶ 16), any one or more of whom could be guilty of outing a CIA agent, disclosing classified information, conspiring, perjury, obstructing justice or any combination of them. Fitzgerald must play the part of Hercule Poirot on the Whitehouse Express. Too many clues, too many suspects.

Why did the Bush administration go nuts when Wilson challenged them on their Niger yellowcake uranium scam? This administration had gotten away with far bigger lies than a single sentence in the president's state of the union address. In the past they had blithely ignored criticism like that and it had invariably gone away. There was something different this time, and Josh Marshall has been digging into it over the past year. The origin of the fake uranium papers, forged on Nigerian embassy stationary and used by the administration to substantiate its allegation against Saddam, is slowly coming to light and it's beginning to look as though certain members of the administration were involved early on. The implications are truly explosive.

Fitzgerald has wide jurisdiction and, as a prosecutor who leaves no stone unturned, will undoubtedly look into the forgeries. Perhaps he will discover why the Bushites tried so hard to quash the yellowcake story and to intimidate anyone that called them out on it.

This story will be going on a long time.

From the Daily Kos comes a first-class article on avian flu.

I just read an interesting talk by Larry Wilkerson at the New America Foundation on the current administration and why our government is in such a mess. The JP doesn't endorse everything he says or recommends, but as a former chief of staff of the State Department under Colin Powell, he brings an insider's view of what is and what isn't, as well as what ought to be done. The link came from Billmon, who comments extensively. An example of Wilkerson's presentation:

The other thing that no one ever likes to talk about is SUVs and oil and consumption and, as one little girl said yesterday at the Yoshiyama Awards, do you know that we consume 60 percent of the world’s resources? We do; we consume 60 percent of the world’s resources. Well, we have an economy and we have a society that is built on the consumption of those resources. We better get fast at work changing the foundation – and I don’t see us fast at work on that, by the way, another failure of this administration, in my mind – or we better be ready to take those assets. We had a discussion in policy planning about actually mounting an operation to take the oilfields in the Middle East, internationalize them, put them under some sort of U.N. trusteeship and administer the revenues and the oil accordingly. That’s how serious[ly] we thought about it.

What he didn't say was that even if we conquered and exploited all that mideast oil, we would only put off the scarcity a few years. As I keep writing over and over, the oil industry hasn't discovered any major oil fields since the '60s and, given the improvement in prospecting technology, there's good reason to believe that there aren't any more North Sea, Prudhoe Bay, or Ghawar fields to be discovered. Since the world is using 4-5 barrels of oil for every barrel discovered, the arithmetic is elementary that this rate of usage will not continue indefinitely, much less grow. The conclusion: things are going to get really tough before long.

Haley Barbour, former candidate for Senator, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, former principal of a major lobbying firm in Washington, and now governor of the State of Mississippi, has some questions to answer and the Jackson Free Press is asking many of the most important questions. First and foremost, given Barbour's connections with his lobbying clients and his close association with indicted leader of the U. S. House of Representatives, Tom DeLay, we need to know where is his primary loyalty, whether it is with the people of this state or with the corporations and wealthy individuals that have up till now been his source of income and his political soul-buddies. The JFP has done a good job telling the story and asking the questions in Haley's Unholy Alliance.

With the possibility of an avian flu epidemic the thoughts of reasonable men and women naturally turn to both prevention and treatment. That presents us today with a big problem: the most, and in this case, the only effective medicines for influenza virus are protected by patents. The patent holders, all of them giant pharmaceutical firms, are not inclined to license the manufacturing of generics to meet the emergency and therefore if there is a pandemic of a swine flu-like virus millions will die because there will not be enough of the anti-viral treatment to go around.

Why should they license their patents, anyway? In the event of a pandemic, they would stand to reap enormous profits from these very expensive drugs, whose price is grossly inflated by the scarcity created by their monopoly. One must keep in mind that corporations, even pharmaceutical corporations, are not in the business of saving lives or helping people, but only in profits and the creation of wealth for the shareholders.

Dean Baker of The Center for Economic and Policy Research writes an excellent post everyone should read, Bird flu, Bird Brains and Economists on Max Sawicky's blog, which I also recommend.

The article "No Right Turn: If Americans haven't gotten more conservative why is the GOP in charge?" in The Washington Monthly is an eye-opener on the brilliant tactics and strategy of the Republican party in gaining and holding onto power. The article is a review of the book Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy by political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. The authors and the reviewer, Christopher Hayes, undertake to explain just why the far right wing of the Republican party is running the country when the American public is no more conservative than it was in 1972 on issue upon issue. A sample of the article:

Polls might be the best way of figuring out the public's stance on a wide variety of issues, but insofar as they carve the world into issue categories, they build in a way of thinking about politics that isn't necessarily reflective of what motivates people when they actually cast their ballots. If you ask the public if the growing deficit is a problem, they say “yes” overwhelmingly, but in the words of one Bush aide “Name me one person who has lost an election because of the deficit.” In other words: It doesn't matter what people think about issues, it only matters what they vote on. In this respect, Bush is telling the truth when he says he doesn't listen to the polls. He realizes that on a whole host of issues, he doesn't have to.

And the tax cuts are another perfect example. Tax cuts are a kind of political junk food. If you ask Americans if they want them, they may say no, but when they're actually right there in front of the voter on the plate, they're hard to resist. Instead of choosing between its wealthy paymasters and the public at large, the GOP figured out a way to have their tax cuts and eat them, too. They just had to muddy the waters long enough to get them passed. So they lied about both the intentions and the effects of the policy—Davis told O'Neill it was “crucial that your remarks make clear that there is no trade-off” between the tax cuts and spending on other programs. And more insidiously, they structured the cuts themselves in such a way as to hide their intent and effect. Republicans front-loaded the few benefits there were for the middle class while slowly phasing in the porcine pay-offs for the über wealthy.

Another disturbing quote:

As lurid as the details are, one can't help but ask: Why didn't previous majorities do this sort of thing? Tip O'Neill was a smart guy. Why didn't he provide his members with “backlash insurance,” or change the Ethics Committee rules so that the majority party could single-handedly stop an investigation? While Off Center never explicitly addresses this question, the implicit answer is a simple as it is disturbing. Much of what kept prior governing coalitions in check were informal, generally agreed-upon norms rather than black-letter law or immutable rules. Consider that for years state legislatures have, as a matter of custom, redistricted congressional districts only every 10 years, following new census data. There was nothing stopping a majority party from engineering a mid-decade redistricting for its own partisan advantage other than a generalized sense it would be cheating to do so. Such considerations mean little to Tom DeLay and Karl Rove.

Go read the article; it gives much food for thought, especially for progressives. Thanks to The Emerging Democratic Majority for putting us on to it.

I had been visiting this afternoon with Junior Sawyer at the local coffeehouse when the conversation turned to national politics. I asked him "Junior, with all the power those folks in the Whitehouse had, how come they couldn't put the screws to Fitzgerald and get this Plamegate business stopped?" Junior is well over seventy-five and has seen a lot during his life.

"Well, sonny, they've had a lot of trouble getting enough of the right kind of employee, and it looks like it's going to bite 'em where it hurts. They got a fox problem."

"I'm not sure I follow."

"Too many henhouses. Can't find enough foxes to guard 'em."

A Dutch court has refused to extradite a terrorist suspect to the United States, finding that his fundamental right to due process could not be guaranteed by the U. S. Government:

Last month, the court sought guarantees from U.S. prosecutors that the detainee would be afforded those basic rights if he were extradited. In Wednesday's ruling, it rejected a U.S. submission that "the United States views such a request as unwarranted and unnecessary."

The judge feared that U.S. authorities would use interrogation techniques forbidden by international law. That means torture, dear reader. There was a time not long ago when the worst thing our government could say about our enemies was that they routinely used torture. Were we merely projecting our own dark side onto the latest "rogue" state? It's beginning to look that way.

Before January 20, 2001, I could not have, in my wildest dreams, imagined that this would ever happen here. Have we descended so far that a court in a modern, democratic country would conclude that a defendant could not get basic rights guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution?

Now that terrorists--as defined by our government--can be denied essential Constitutional rights, what other groups will be seen by the ruling party as so odious or dangerous that they should be denied basic rights on the grounds of expediency? Think about Richard Nixon's "Enemies List." Think about another even grimmer enemies list compiled at the end of another long-lived and powerful republic:

Actus Quartus

Enter Antony, Octauius, and Lepidus.

Ant. These many then shall die, their names are prickt

Octa. Your Brother too must dye: consent you Lepidus?

Lep. I do consent

Octa. Pricke him downe Antony

Lep. Vpon condition Publius shall not liue,
Who is your Sisters sonne, Marke Antony

Ant. He shall not liue; looke, with a spot I dam him.
But Lepidus, go you to Caesars house:
Fetch the Will hither, and we shall determine
How to cut off some charge in Legacies

--Julius Caesar, IV,i

The ability of the average American to believe that our government will not abuse its powers seems to be limitless. Only people totally ignorant of history could be so gullible.

Thanks to Brian Leiter for the reference.

The Washington Post reported on the third of this month (October 2005) that people around the world are angry about rising gasoline prices. That's not surprising; nobody warned them that flat oil production worldwide would inevitably intersect with rising demand to create a sellers' market.

The demand for energy is highly inelastic in the short run. In order to reduce energy consumption it's not just people's habits that have to change; the entire infrastructure has to shift and that requires investment of large amounts of capital. In normal times, the shift is usually glacial. If one lives in a house 40 minutes from work, one cannot shorten the commute without moving closer to work or moving the work closer to home. The SUV cannot be exchanged with a fuel-efficient hybrid overnight, especially when the demand for SUVs has fallen off a cliff.

The result: one does without something else until adjustments can be made. People can combine shopping trips, take public transportation, spend several days per week telecommuting, turn up thermostats in the summer and down in the winter, eat out less, vacation closer to home, eat cheaper food, hang clothes on the line, et cetera. The savings will not be as spectacular as one might hope because many of the substitutes are dependent on oil and will become more expensive along with gasoline.

The change will be inconvenient if gradual; a sudden spike in energy cost, however, could lead to economic catastrophe.

It is inconceivable that the persons in charge of our national government have remained ignorant of these facts; they were apparent most likely in the '70s when the oil industry couldn't discover any more major oil fields anywhere in the world. It should have been patently obvious to the industry and the major intelligence services by the '80s, as the success of Hubbert's predictions about U.S. oil production sank in. By the '90s, it was clear that oil was driving foreign policy. Gulf War I and Kosovo were directly related to our need to secure reliable oil sources.

Why Didn't Our Leaders in Government Tell Us About This?

That is the big question. Now that the predictable outcome of this outrageous irresponsibility on the part of at least four administrations is becoming manifest, President Bush advises us to drive less. When the human race is faced with the virtual certainty that our energy-based civilization cannot continue to maintain even our current energy usage, much less increase it, as it has for the past two hundred years, all this president does is tell us to drive less! It is like a doctor handing us an aspirin and a band-aid for appendicitis or FEMA giving us football helmets to protect against a thermonuclear attack.

So what gives? There are three possible explanations for this dereliction:

1. The administration is populated by fools. This theory fails to explain why three other administrations were equally irresponsible.

2. The administration is populated by oil men who would stand to reap obscene profits from everyone else's misery. Although the lure of windfall profits is a plausible explanation for the Bush I and Bush II administrations, it fails to account for Reagan and Clinton. While both presidents shamefully cozened up to the oil industry, their administrations were not outright extensions of the oil patch, as is the current one.

3. Telling the people they will have to change their way of life is political suicide. This is the only reasonable explanation. The first principle--and often the only principle--common to all politicians is doing what is necessary to be reelected.

Further, the ancient Greek practice of killing the bearer of bad news is alive and well here in America. The political landscape of this nation since 1950 is littered with the carcasses of the political careers of politicians who were too honest or visionary for their own good, and the lesson is not lost on the rest. Our presidents, from Jimmy Carter on, knew perfectly well the disaster that was coming down the pike, and they remained silent, leaving the problem to their successors. The Congress knew, or ought to have known, also. The intelligence was available for the asking. Hubbert's curve has never been a secret. Anyone able to use Google can learn that the world is consuming between four and five barrels of oil for every barrel discovered. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that we can't continue to do this indefinitely.

The problem, therefore, is ultimately ourselves, in promoting persons to the highest positions of national leadership that lack the integrity to tell us hard truths and in punishing honest politicians. Civilizations and nations often have a run of good luck, but, as any professional gambler can tell you, relying on luck alone is a losing strategy. This nation has been extraordinarily lucky over its past 200+ years and that streak of luck has exempted us from much of the pain and suffering the rest of the world has experienced. It looks, however, that we won't be able to rely on luck to get us through the energy crisis; if we do not take action immediately, we will undergo a most unpleasant and perhaps fatal session of reality therapy.

Throughout liberal bloglandia debate rages on over our Democratic senators' and representatives' lack of courage or even the inclination to fight over issues highly critical to the welfare and even the survival of our nation as a democratic republic. It's astounding that many of them still support the Iraq invasion or the oppressive and corrupt bankruptcy bill scheduled to take effect later this month.

The obvious problem with the Democrats is the loss of their traditional base in the lower middle class and as a result they can no longer depend upon the labor movement for the organizational and financial support that for decades had been their mainstay. The reasons for the decline of organized labor and the blue collar abandonment of the Democratic party must be discussed elsewhere. Suffice it to acknowledge for our purposes that it happened.

A party that has lost its primary constituency must either win it back or find another constituency to replace it, or it will relegate itself to insignificance in short order. The Republicans' constituency has always had plenty of money and it used that money to dominate not only the executive branch, but to set the national agenda through the media and the right-wing think tanks it set up during the '70s.

During the Reagan regime some Democrats, observing that the public discourse had shifted well to the right, decided that the Democratic Party would not win elections as long as it remained liberal. They formed the Democratic Leadership Conference, a business-oriented organization dedicated to moving the party to the right in order to tap into the same sources of contributions that typically went to the Republicans. They were successful but the ultimate result was disaster. Other than the election of triangulation-master Bill Clinton, the DLC led the party to a catastrophic series of reversals: the Republican takeover of both houses of Congress, the appointment and subsequent election four years later of George W. Bush, and the Republicanization of the judiciary, including the Supreme Court.

Almost all the Democrats now serving in Congress have been shaped during a twenty-five year period during which the party lacked a natural constituency big enough to win elections decisively. Their conversion to corporatism deprived it of any real reason for its existence. The corporate world, having little to fear from the business-friendly Democrats in any case, understandably preferred their right-wing beverage undiluted. The result is a Democratic leadership that moves to the right in order to be seen as centrist but never receives the benefits that should naturally accrue to the center. Worse, their lack of steady principles has deprived them of their ethical rudder, and the Democratic ship can now sail only where the wind blows. The public knows that, and the fact that it preferred a candidate with the patently obvious mental and moral limitations of George W. Bush over John Kerry, his superior in almost every imaginable way, is a stark testimony that the people prefer stupidity and corruption with principles, no matter how foolish, over intelligence and honesty without clearly-articulated principles.

One cannot contemplate the Democratic leadership without recalling Yeats's famous line: "The best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with a passionate intensity." This is not an original thought, by the way. The Democratic Party purports to be the party of the people, yet its leaders seem to be under the illusion that it can fill its political role by the support of the very people and institutions that it must vigorously oppose in order to fulfill its reason for existence. In other words, they believe that they can call the tune without paying the piper. With no convictions beyond the general desire to do the right thing (usually) and the very specific desire to retain their positions and power (always), they are a sorry lot, a church of Laodicians, neither hot nor cold.

The predictible result is a party of politicans habitually seeking money from the rich and powerful and making whatever concessions to principle necessary to get that money.

The Republican Party stands in a totally different posture than the Democrats; its right-wing policies are perfectly aligned with the interests of its constituency, i.e., the rich and powerful. Its task is to con enough voters into voting against their own interests to win elections. Thus we see the curious alliance between the fundamentalist and millenarian churches and the powerful and wealthy plutocrats whose political agenda is neither Christian nor beneficial to anyone but themselves, a powerful example of people's ability to blind themselves to the obvious. To achieve this level of deception, one of the right wing's chief objectives over the past 20 years has been to create a deregulated media monopoly, so that public opinion, based on knowledge of the world gotten exclusively from radio, television and print, could be molded to suit the Republican power elite. The first obstacle to fall, thanks to the Reagan administration, was the Fairness Doctrine, an FCC rule that required radio and television broadcasters to give airtime to opposing viewpoints. The subsequent communications "reform" legislation consolidated the control of the mass media into four large conglomerates that now control the information most persons receive and tailor it to the propaganda needs of their elite owners.

When the Democrats weren't sitting on their hands, they were collaborating with this project from Hell. Bill Clinton, to his everlasting infamy, signed the Communications Reform Act of 1996, a corrupt piece of legislation written by the industry for the industry. It utterly betrayed the people of this nation. The Democratic Party, by acquiescing, ran a sword deep into its own side. Virtually all the information we now receive over the waves, by cable, and through magazines and newspapers, has been filtered through an ideological sieve designed to instill in us a world view in which the Republican right-wing agenda appears to be the only possible and reasonable course of action. Only the Internet offers the possibility of getting politically incorrect information to people.

The Supreme Court was the ultimate prize and the right-wing won that battle during the Nixon and Ford administrations, with the appointments of Burger, Powell and Rehnquist. We are still living with that bitter legacy, the gift that lasts and lasts. Rehnquist was one of the decisive votes in Bush v. Gore that stopped the Florida recount in 2000 and made Bush president by judicial fiat. The public issues involving the Supreme Court that fill the media, however, are no more than red herrings, designed to distract from the real objective: the corporatization of the Court.

There have been many different types of persons nominated and confirmed over the past thirty years, but they all, without exception, have one thing in common: they are sympathetic to the extension of corporate power. They are hostile to anti-trust legislation and have, with the assistance of their like-minded brethren in the lower courts, gutted the anti-trust statutes (many of which were enacted by Republican congresses). Abortion, gay marriage and prayer in the schools are no more than meat thrown to the masses. Although there might be much roaring and screaming by the fundamentalist base when a candidate such as Harriet Miers is nominated, the players at the top know perfectly well that no matter how Miers rules on those hot-button issues, her allegiance is to the corporate world and that is what counts. In fact, it would be better from their standpoint that Miers votes to uphold abortion, gay marriage and the ban on prayer in the school, for without those emotional issues, the fundamentalist votes that have given the Republican Party an edge in critical elections would probably stay home on election day.

People can be briefly roused to reform or change the government, but gardens must be weeded, lawns mowed, children raised and income earned, and most citizens have little time left over, day in and day out, to remain vigilant. After all, one must live. The corporate plutocracy, however, like T. S. Eliot's True Church, can sleep and feed at once, with armies of lobbyists and trainloads of cash, plying their trade in the halls of Congress and the regulatory agencies. Is there any question who has the upper hand most of the time? Historically, the public gets its dander up only when the hubris and overreaching of the ruling party brings about a general collapse, like the Great Depression. Since the New Deal, the business of keeping the government accountable has fallen to the great intermediary institutions, such as labor unions, voter leagues and other organizations that have the time and resources to hold our public servants to account. Those institutions are in decline and as a result the lobbyists go unopposed with the exception of the fragmented world of special interest public-advocacy organizations who seldom offer the one thing that influences a politician's vote: campaign contributions.

The Bush administration's overreaching, it appears, is getting to the point that the chickens will finally come to roost. Many of the president's men could go to jail. It would be a pity, however, if the Democrats regained power only by the stupidity and arrogance of the Republicans. I have serious doubts about the ability of the current Democratic leadership to do things very differently. Having pandered most of their careers to the very people with which they must ultimately do political battle if they are to regain the confidence of the nation in their ability to lead, most of them are irretrievably compromised. The current lineup of Democratic presidential hopefuls is deeply discouraging. Having neither principle nor imagination, they have no courage, and are merely chair-warmers.

This is the time for new people with new ideas.

The roll call vote is here. Only nine voted against an amendment to the Defense Appropriation Act to forbid torture by our armed forces and to affirm the binding authority of the The United Nations Convention Against Torture. 90 senators voted "Aye."
Here's the text of the amendment:

TEXT OF AMENDMENTS -- (Senate - October 03, 2005)

(a) In General.--No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the

[Page: S10909] GPO's PDF

United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

    (b) Construction.--Nothing in this section shall be construed to impose any geographical limitation on the applicability of the prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment under this section.

    (c) Limitation on Supersedure.--The provisions of this section shall not be superseded, except by a provision of law enacted after the date of the enactment of this Act which specifically repeals, modifies, or supersedes the provisions of this section.

    (d) Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Defined.--In this section, the term ``cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment'' means the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984.

Here is a list of the senators that voted against it:

Allard (R-CO)
Bond (R-MO)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Stevens (R-AK)

Yes, that's our own Thad Cochran, colored red for emphasis, voting against anti-torture legislation. Next time you happen to run into him, ask him why he is one of only nine senators that voted for torture.

And the next time you run into Trent Lott, tell him how much you appreciate his voting in favor of the anti-torture amendment.

Two very interesting blogs for Christian readers that want something beyond the culture wars:

The Anti-Manicheist
Example:

One of the best things we can do is to rally now to force the cultural wars issues from playing a big role in the upcoming elections. That means we need to reframe them in ways that neither side will like and both sides might be willing to live with.

Street Prophets: Faith and Politics
Example:

Then Peter came and said to him, `Lord, if a brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?'  Jesus said to him, `Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy times seven times.

I borrow my title from an amazing reflection on forgiveness by the remarkable Rev. Debbie Blue.  I've been searching for much on this idea, and I've come back to her words among others.  Because it keeps sticking in my craw.  Hasn't Dubya done 490 dumb and hurtful things yet?  Hasn't he run out of chances?  When do I get to feel good about disliking this man?

Enjoy.

So President Bush has nominated his Whitehouse counsel, Harriet Ellan Miers, for associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. She is no legal scholar, having never published a law book article. She has no judicial experience whatever. She went to a second or third-tier law school. Her law firm in Dallas has paid some stiff fines over some shady deals in the past, but George likes her and a checkered past would not bother him.

The hard-right wingers are not happy. They know as little about her as the liberals or anybody else.

Here's my take, for what it's worth. One doesn't get to the top of a large law firm by being nice. Big law firms are usually back-stabbing, every man for himself, dog eat dog kind of places that employ large numbers of very intelligent and ambitious people trained in the art of legal combat. Lawyers are continually leaving the firm and attempting to take with them as many of the firm's clients as they can persuade. Few sane people would undergo that kind of life if they really knew the kind of toll it would take on them over the years. As a sole practitioner for nearly all my legal career, I've watched from a distance what it does to lawyers and their families and it's not pretty.

Back to Miers; my guess is that she is hard as nails and loyal as convenience allows. That means that when she dons the robes she will become very jealous of the independence of the judiciary and its freedom from political influence. A lifetime job bestows more independence than just about anything else.

As to what kind of justice she will be? That is anybody's guess. Will she be confirmed by the Senate? Almost certainly. She will charm the Senate Judiciary committee like Scarlett charmed Rhett. She has made her way in a world dominated almost completely by men and done extremely well. She is a match for any senator.

She's a Leo. As a matter of fact, we were born the same day, which disturbed me a bit when I looked up her bio on Wikipedia.

It looks to be an interesting fall.

Decent people give their political opponents the benefit of a doubt at least once but usually more than once. That willingness to believe that the other guy is really concerned about the people's welfare is indispensable to the functioning of democratic institutions. To deny your opponent's good will is to cross a boundary that makes compromise difficult, if not impossible.

That Rubicon was crossed many years ago by the conservative movement in this country. A little exploratory thought easily leads one back as far as the Alien and Sedition Acts during the presidency of John Adams. Other pre-Goldwater manifestations include the Palmer Raids and the McCarthy persecutions. Much as they insist on their intellectual sophistication and depth, conservatives don't have a good argument in favor of their aristocratic model of government by the most talented, by which they mean government by the wealthiest. It has failed over and over again, leading to much suffering by the less fortunate and outright oppression by the plutocracy of constitutionally-protected dissent. When the odor of corruption becomes too much for anyone to bear, the response of the right wing is usually to ignore reality until the entire enterprise collapses.

The ability of the right to spin came home to me about ten years ago when I worked on a commercial project with an intelligent young woman who had spent some time in Washington, D.C. working for conservative congressmen and other like causes. With a straight face, she told me that all the ills of the world were due to liberals and their philosophy. This intrigued me because by then conservatives had been occupying the presidency for twelve out of the past 15 years and the conservative agenda had been almost universally applied to the running of government. It was my first encounter with what is now referred to as the Kool-Aid. It was an ideology that you couldn't argue with because it had little, if any, basis in reality.

While the conservative intelligentsia preached the Kool-Aid from the hallowed halls of the right-wing think tanks, the people with real power quietly engineered and executed the corporatization of the government and the nation, accompanied by loud hosannas from the media shills of the newly-formed Fox cable network and the other mainstream media.

Reality intrudes eventually. The miserable and tragic paralysis of the federal government in the face of hurricane Katrina opened many eyes. In spite of all their bragged-about expertise, the crony government of the Republicans did what it always did so successfully, and the only thing it could now do in the face of disaster: spin. Since 2000, FEMA had been gutted both of competent management and funds to address a disaster like Katrina.

The Democrats, provided they behave like real Democrats, have a chance to reverse the decline of the public purpose. The conservative regime has been shown for what it is. Here are two articles that discuss that opportunity, courtesy of The Emerging Democratic Majority: A Perfect Storm from the American Prospect and To Rebuild and Restructure from tompane.org.

Read and heed.

I'm in Oxford, Mississippi, playing in the band for Mississippi Rising, a telethon benefit for the victims of Katrina. It will show tonight from seven till ten CDT. It's supposed to be nationally broadcast, so tune in and watch some big stars do their thing. And make a contribution; those people on the Gulf Coast are really hurting and can use all the help they can get.

P.S. I'm playing violin just to the left of the director, in case they show the band. I've got dark hair and a face as round as Winston Churchill (but not bald).

On another note, I see in the Friday edition of USA Today that the Bush administration has awarded a no-bid contract to an Alaskan firm to build temporary classrooms on the Gulf Cost for twice the cost local contractors say they can build the same buildings. Ah, to be well-connected to the Bush administration! Read the article and follow the money.

Enjoy your weekend.