Fox News Impeding Voter Registration

Katha Pollitt has an illuminating column in The Nation about an incident at the University Of Arizona involving a voter registration drive run by students. Apparently, a local Fox affiliate showed up and began harassing the women conducting the drive. Of course, those women happened to belong to the Network of Feminist Student Activists chapter on campus, a fact certain to outrage Roger Ailes and his coterie of wingnut Faux Newsers.

The most important aspect of the story is not the sensational stuff about a local news program intimidating a legal voter resgistration activity, but the larger issue of students attending schools in other states and the rights they have when it comes to exercising their vote.

subject to debate by Katha Pollitt
Fox Hunts Student Voters

[from the October 11, 2004 issue]

Juliana Zuccaro and Kelly Kraus thought they were exercising their civic rights and responsibilities on August 31 when, as officers of the Network of Feminist Student Activists at the University of Arizona in Tucson, they helped set up a voter-registration drive on the UA mall. Imagine their astonishment when the local Fox affiliate news team showed up and lit into the young women. "The reporter asked if we knew that we were potentially signing students up to commit felonies," Juliana told me--by registering out-of-state students to vote in Arizona. When Kelly then asserted that Arizona law requires only that those registering be resident in the state twenty-nine days before the election, Natalie Tejeda, the Fox reporter, insisted it was illegal to register students. On the news that night, student voter registration was the crime du jour:

Tejeda: What many don't realize is that legally, students from out of state aren't eligible to vote in Arizona because they're considered temporary residents.

Chris Roads [Pima County Registrar's office]: If they are only here to attend school and their intention is to immediately return to where they came from when school is over then they are not residents of the state of Arizona for voting purposes and they cannot register to vote here.

Tejeda: ...Those caught misrepresenting their residency can face a severe punishment.

Roads: The form in Arizona is an affidavit; it is a felony offense if you are lying on that form.

Tejeda: So how easy is it to get caught? Well, starting this past January all voter applications are cross-checked with the Motor Vehicles Department and Social Security Administration. If they find that you are falsifying your residency you could be prosecuted. At this time we don't know if anybody has yet been indicted, but Roads says one of the easiest things you can do to avoid all that is simply go online or pick up the phone, call your home state's elections office and ask for an absentee ballot.

Anchor: Better to be safe on that one. Thanks, Natalie.

Misguided youth or hardened criminals? They report, you decide.

When an urgent e-mail from UA professor Laura Briggs about the Fox broadcast flashed across my screen a few days later, I assumed that such an egregious example of voter intimidation by proxy--with GOP TV standing in for, well, the GOP--would be all over the media by the time my next column deadline rolled around, so I passed on it. Silly me. As I write three weeks later, almost nothing has appeared outside the local press. The silence persisted even after the Feminist Majority--which had spearheaded the students' drive as part of its Get Out Her Vote campaign--held a press conference to publicize the incident. In those three weeks, how many stories have you read bemoaning the apathy of youth, and in particular the fecklessness of young women too "busy" shoe shopping and barhopping to focus on the election?

In fact, despite a 1979 Supreme Court ruling affirming their right to vote where they attend school, students often encounter difficulties when they try to exercise that right. A recent Harvard survey of 249 colleges and universities found that more than one-third weren't complying with the law requiring them to help students register and vote. What's more, local and state officials have tried to prevent students from registering or voting at William and Mary, the University of New Hampshire, Skidmore, Hamilton and Henderson State University in Arkansas, among others. Students at predominantly African-American Prairie View A&M in Waller County, Texas, were threatened with prosecution if they voted without "a legal voting address" by the District Attorney in a series of letters to the local paper. Strangely enough, it was earlier attempts to suppress the vote of Prairie View students that prompted the Supreme Court's 1979 ruling.

When I spoke to Chris Roads, the official quoted in Tejeda's story--yes, he's a Republican--he claimed that Fox had quoted him out of context. His mention of "felony" was originally addressed to a "hypothetical" posed by Tejeda: What would he say to someone who planned to flat-out lie--who said, "I don't live here, can I fill out the form?" Roads says he was "shocked when it blossomed into a story about prosecuting people" for registering--in fact, he told me, no one has ever been prosecuted in Arizona over residency requirements. What is residency, exactly? "Residency means you intend to remain," he went on.

"So it's a subjective thing?" I asked. "You look into your heart?"

"That's right," he said. "You look into your heart."

Roads is a genial man and I enjoyed our chat. Like "intend," "remain" turns out to be a verb as flexible in meaning for registrars as "is" was for Bill Clinton, and don't get him started on "resident"! But despite demands from the students and from Feminist Majority, he did not publicly clarify his comments on Fox News. That was left to his boss, F. Ann Rodriguez, a Democrat, who finally stated on September 9 that out-of-state students may vote. Fox has not only failed to correct its original report; it has continued to suggest on the air that out-of-state students who register in Arizona are breaking the law and could end up in big trouble. And the state bureaucracy is still providing misleading or confusing information: When Nation intern Raina Lipsitz called the Arizona Secretary of State's office to ask if an out-of-state student may vote, she was repeatedly told that she couldn't register in two states at once and, finally, that she should read the statute herself.

The young feminists have done a wonderful job of publicizing the right of students to register and vote. They've held a press conference and reached out to the community, Democratic lawmakers and other student groups. Even the young Republicans--whose registration efforts down the mall from the young feminists were ignored by Fox--have supported them. Juliana and Kelly are now hard at work planning their next registration drive. They're calling it STILL Getting Out Her Vote.

News Flash In Slow Motion

The Washington Post is catching up with reality. Heading an article to appear in today's paper:

"Growing Pessimism on Iraq
Doubts Increase Within U.S. Security Agencies"

Holy Shit!

The war on Iraq is turning into a mess. Any fool who can read past the third grade level has already reached that conclusion. Whether they choose to admit it in public, as the present administration will not, is entirely a different matter.

Perhaps the CableSpews industry will catch up...NOT!

From the article:

By Dana Priest and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 29, 2004; Page A01

A growing number of career professionals within national security agencies believe that the situation in Iraq is much worse, and the path to success much more tenuous, than is being expressed in public by top Bush administration officials, according to former and current government officials and assessments over the past year by intelligence officials at the CIA and the departments of State and Defense.

While President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others have delivered optimistic public appraisals, officials who fight the Iraqi insurgency and study it at the CIA and the State Department and within the Army officer corps believe the rebellion is deeper and more widespread than is being publicly acknowledged, officials say.

People at the CIA "are mad at the policy in Iraq because it's a disaster, and they're digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper," said one former intelligence officer who maintains contact with CIA officials. "There's no obvious way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments."

"Things are definitely not improving," said one U.S. government official who reads the intelligence analyses on Iraq.

"It is getting worse," agreed an Army staff officer who served in Iraq and stays in touch with comrades in Baghdad through e-mail. "It just seems there is a lot of pessimism flowing out of theater now. There are things going on that are unbelievable to me. They have infiltrators conducting attacks in the Green Zone. That was not the case a year ago."

Portrait Of An Election

Concise and to the point.

Peace Train Wreck

A funny but not so funny column from the Indianapolis Star.

Dan Carpenter
Followed by a goon shadow


September 26, 2004


They can't find Osama bin Laden, but they've saved us from Cat Stevens.

They can appoint Daniel Pipes, the notorious Muslim basher, to the U.S. Institute of Peace; but they won't let Tariq Ramadan, a renowned Muslim scholar, teach at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

Is this the world's mightiest force for liberty going about its noble work, or is this Colonel Klink of Stalag 13 with computers and opinion polls?

Cat Stevens? The erstwhile poet of the pop charts, now Yusuf Islam, Muslim teacher and peace advocate? Tied to terrorists? Well, "ties" can be about anything when the government doesn't have to spell them out.

Little explanation was given by the Department of Homeland Security for intercepting a transatlantic flight last week and deporting the "Peace Train" guy. "Activities that could be potentially related to terrorism," the feds said. The best intelligence, if you will, is that some of the many charities he has supported since embracing Islam in the 1970s may channel money to groups the U.S. deems non grata.

Something like those American movers and shakers who do business with Saudi Arabia, where most of the 9/11 killers came from? Not exactly. Those people work directly, get lots of money in return, and do not get their flights interrupted.

Nor do the industrialists -- likewise tied, really tied, to the Bush administration -- who sold so much hardware to Saddam Hussein over the years. Compared to a fellow with controversial opinions who wants to visit the United States, what kind of threat could a mere supplier of a dictator pose to us?

Such questions might have been fodder for lively classroom discussions, had Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss professor and author who has lectured frequently in the U.S. and around the world, not had his visa revoked within weeks of starting this semester at Notre Dame.

Last week, a university spokesman said Ramadan was reapplying for a visa "because various officials of the State Department, publicly and privately, have issued the opinion that he should." The spokesman said he'd been told no more, and the State Department declined to comment to me about this hopeful sign, so the Kafkaesque mystery remains.

All the department would say to outraged Notre Damers and Muslim Americans back in July was that the USA Patriot Act was invoked. It allows for visas to be pulled for a wide range of reasons, including the perception one's political activities foster terrorism. Some would argue that treating eminent Muslims as criminals is a political activity that could catalyze terrorism.

Pipes and his influential band of anti-Palestinian brothers have tried to link Ramadan to terror, but his large body of writing establishes him as a critic of American-Israeli policies and Islamic extremism alike. He does stand guilty as charged of having a grandfather who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a radical group that espoused but ultimately renounced violence as a means of self-determination.

Ramadan would urge that the United States renounce violence as a means of determination for others. Like Yusuf Islam, he voices views that draw criticism. This used to be OK in the enlightened West. Now we are supposed to be afraid to let these views fly into South Bend, where some of the world's keenest liberal and conservative minds are waiting to engage them.

Ooo, baby, baby, it's a wild post-9/11 world. And no one to defend us from Jessica Simpson.

More Sterilizations

Ultra-conservative Senatorial candidate from Oklahoma, Tom Coburn, has now admitted to performing "lots" of sterilizations on underage women.

From an article in Salon.com:

Okla. GOP Senate hopeful did sterilizations

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Ron Jenkins

Sept. 24, 2004 | OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tom Coburn, a physician accused of sterilizing a young woman without her permission 14 years ago, now says he has performed similar procedures on "lots'' of underage women at their request.

In an interview this week on the Tulsa radio station KRMG, Coburn was asked: "To your knowledge, could this situation have happened, or has happened with any other women?''

Coburn replied: "I've done this lots to women who have come in with emergency things who have asked me to sterilize them, underage. When they've already had three babies.''

Jay Parmley, state Democratic chairman, called Thursday on Coburn to detail "how many underage women he has sterilized.''

Coburn spokesman John Hart said the candidate would not answer specific questions about how many medical procedures he has performed. "It's a deliberate effort on the behalf of Brad Carson to avoid talking about his liberal voting record,'' Hart said.

Coburn and Carson, a Democrat, are locked in a tight Senate race for the post Republican Don Nickles is leaving after 24 years. The race could be pivotal in the battle for control of the Senate.

The campaign became even more divisive with the emergence of details about the sterilization 14 years ago.

Coburn performed the procedure on the woman during an operation to remove an ectopic pregnancy, a dangerous condition in which an embryo was growing in her fallopian tube. He surgically removed the tube and tied off her other fallopian tube, leaving her sterile.

The woman says she never consented to the procedure. He said he got oral permission for the sterilization, but a nurse failed to get written consent.

Coburn has said he intentionally did not report the sterilization on a Medicaid reimbursement to ensure the woman would not have to pay for the procedure. Coburn said his political foes are pushing the issue to hurt his campaign even though the women's 1991 lawsuit over the matter was dropped.

Parmley said Coburn's remarks about the other sterilizations raise ``serious questions'' about "values and ethics,'' especially if Medicaid funding was involved.

Burning Bush

A quote from Shrub's autobiography, taken from a column by Bob Herbert in the New York Times:

George W. Bush was a supporter of the war in Vietnam. For a while.

As he explained in his autobiography, "A Charge to Keep: My Journey to the White House":

"My inclination was to support the government and the war until proven wrong, and that only came later, as I realized we could not explain the mission, had no exit strategy, and did not seem to be fighting to win."

Extraordinary insight from a president leading us down the golden path to death and humiliation.

FDA's Home County Reaches Out To Canada

This might actually get their attention. The home county in Maryland of the Food And Drug Administration approved a plan for county residents and government to buy prescription medications from pharmacies in Canada.

Montgomery Passes Drug Import Plan
Council in FDA's Home County Votes to Defy Law and Buy From Canada

By Cameron W. Barr and Tim Craig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 22, 2004; Page A01

The Montgomery County Council voted yesterday to begin buying medications in Canada, joining a handful of local governments and nearly 2 million U.S. consumers in defying federal law.

The council's decision will give as many as 85,000 county employees, retirees and their dependents the option of obtaining lower-cost "maintenance" medications from a Canadian vendor as soon as February. Proponents say the county could save as much as $20 million a year if members of its health plans fully embrace the initiative.

Montgomery's action reflects rising frustration with the federal government, which declines to approve Canadian imports but does not bar individuals from ordering or bringing in such drugs or stop local governments from facilitating their efforts.

"What we are seeing all across the country is that the credibility of the Food and Drug Administration is being questioned," said Council President Steven A. Silverman (D-At Large).

In many cases, drugs sold in Canada are produced in the United States under the supervision of the FDA and sold at lower prices in Canada as a result of government regulation. But FDA officials say they cannot guarantee the safety of substances that have left the tightly regulated U.S. pharmaceutical industry. Even reimported drugs, in the FDA's eyes, are illegal.

Because the FDA is based in Rockville, the council's action may resonate more loudly than similar steps taken by other communities. "Clearly the fact that the county in which the majority of FDA employees live and work would ignore the FDA's fundamental statutes is an example of the level of concern about the high cost of drugs," said William K. Hubbard, associate FDA commissioner.

He reiterated warnings that the federal government might go to court to block the program but acknowledged that it has refrained so far from using legal action to challenge local governments that have drug importation options for their health plan members.

Council member Tom Perez (D-Silver Spring), the main sponsor of Montgomery's initiative, acknowledged that the council risks court action. "Are we pushing the envelope? You bet," he said. "But there is a significant basis for pushing the envelope."

That basis includes a track record of satisfaction among other local governments that have turned to Canadian pharmacies to reduce health care costs.

Montgomery, Ala., has been offering employees, retirees and dependents the opportunity to buy drugs from Canadian pharmacies for two years. "We have had absolutely no complaints or problems associated with the program," said John Carnell, the city's risk manager. "There are no safety issues -- not a one."

Carnell said the city cut its pharmaceutical-buying budget by $500,000 in the first year, from $1.8 million to $1.3 million.

Another leader in the municipal caravan to Canada is Springfield, Mass., which launched its program in July 2003. Former mayor Michael J. Albano, who established the city's program and who now acts as a consultant to other communities, also insisted "that there are no safety issues."

"This is a popular program," he said. "It has consumer appeal and voter appeal."

But safety is central to concerns raised by the Maryland Pharmacists Association, which has opposed Montgomery's effort. "We fear the drugs will come from Third World countries," said Howard Schiff, executive director of the association. He said Canadian pharmacies "are importing drugs from other countries to fill prescriptions they have for export to the United States."

Council members said they were convinced that the county could design a safe program that would withstand legal challenge and save the county $15 million to $20 million a year.

There was little suspense about the outcome of the council's deliberations, because a majority of the nine members has been on record for many weeks in support of the initiative. The resolution passed 7 to 2.

Council member Michael L. Subin (D-At Large) voted against the measure. "I do not believe a body that makes laws should encourage others to go and break the law," he said.

The other opponent, council member Michael Knapp (D-Upcounty), stressed safety and the effect that the program might have on the county's biotechnology industry.

Patrick Kelly, vice president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, expressed worry about the financial implications. "We are concerned that this signifies a growing willingness of government entities to consider imposing price controls on drug companies," he said in a statement.

Though the council in the past has approved resolutions critical of federal policies, Neal Potter, a former Democratic council member and county executive, said he could not remember another instance in which the county acted in apparent contravention of federal law. "It sets a precedent," he said, adding that he supports the council's action.

The current county executive, Douglas M. Duncan (D), on Monday gave his support to another council initiative to reduce drug costs, a discount card that will be available to all residents. Issued by a pharmacy benefits manager, the card lets individuals take advantage of the county's buying power, yielding discounts of as much as 20 percent below retail prices.

Duncan has said he opposes implementing a program that would violate the law and has requested that the state ask the FDA to issue a waiver that would allow Montgomery to go ahead with its plan to import drugs.

Nelson Sabatini, secretary of the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, expressed doubt about the request. "I do not know there is such a thing as a waiver, and I do not know what authority the FDA has" to grant a waiver, he said.

In the case of the Municipal and County Government Employees Organization, a union for county workers, it will fall to Duncan to negotiate language allowing union members to import prescription drugs from Canada. Gino Renne, president of the union local, said that his organization supported the council's action but that it creates a Catch-22 for Duncan.

Wes Girling, director of benefits for Montgomery County public schools, said the school system would move immediately to begin soliciting bids from vendors to import prescription drugs. "This is really a framework for us to go forward," Girling said. "I look at it as the big picture blessing to proceed."

No Dissent Allowed

Given how carefully audiences for Shrub rallies (both his and hers) are screened, it's a true surprise this woman managed to get in.

Laura Bush heckled during campaign speech

HAMILTON, New Jersey (CNN) -- The mother of a soldier killed in Iraq was arrested Thursday after interrupting a campaign speech by first lady Laura Bush. As police hauled her away, she shouted, "Police brutality."

Wearing a T-shirt with the message "President Bush You Killed My Son," Sue Niederer of nearby Hopewell screamed questions at the first lady as the audience tried to drown her out by chanting, "Four more years! Four more years!"

She pressed on, refused to leave and eventually police removed her from the firehouse rally.

The first lady finished her speech, praising the administration's achievements in the war on terror and the economy.

Outside, Niederer said she wanted to ask Laura Bush "Why the senators, the legislators, the congressmen, why aren't their children serving?"

She went on to blame the president for the death of her 24-year-old son, Army First Lieutenant Seth Dvorin. He was killed while trying to defuse a roadside bomb that exploded on him.

"My son was in the Army, and he was killed February third this year," she said.

As the Hamilton police and Secret Service agents surrounded her and reporters pressed her with questions, she held her ground, claiming "I had my ticket" to attend the speech by the first lady.

Police subsequently handcuffed her and she was led away to a nearby van. As she was escorted, she repeatedly shouted "Police brutality" and demanded to know her rights and the charges.

Later, she was charged with defiant trespass and released.

Since her son's death, the bereaved mother has spoken out repeatedly against the ongoing Iraq conflict. She is active in an anti-war protest group, Military Families Speak Out.

The Pittsburgh Independent Media Center reports she recently participated in demonstrations around the Republican National Convention in New York.

In March, The Toronto Star reported that she appeared outside Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. where many of the wounded soldiers are treated; Dover Air Force base where soldier remains arrive; and shouting at Secretary of State Colin Powell's motorcade after a speech at Princeton University.

Neither the Bush campaign nor the Hamilton Police would comment on the incident.

Oklahoma Senate Race

I'm not native to this state, but I've adopted it. Or it has adopted me, hard to tell. :)

This is what the crucial race to fill retiring Senator Don Nickle's seat looks like.

It ain't pretty.

From Salon.com

Medicine man
The future of GOP control of the Senate depends on Oklahoma Republican candidate Tom Coburn, a former doctor who has covered up a scandal from his past until now.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Robert Schlesinger

Sept. 13, 2004 | Tom Coburn may be indispensable to the Republicans' effort to hold on to their majority in the U.S. Senate in November. "He is their best hope for keeping an Oklahoma seat Republican in the closely divided Senate," wrote conservative pundit Robert Novak.

In 2003, President Bush appointed Coburn chairman of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS, giving him a prominent platform as he prepared to run for the Senate. If elected, Coburn would not only help the GOP maintain its power but would surely emerge as one of the most outspoken conservatives in the country. The former three-term congressman, one of Newt Gingrich's "revolutionaries" from the class of 1994, an Okie from Muskogee, thunders for traditional values and crusades for limited government. He packages this political agenda in his image as a kindly family doctor -- an obstetrician.

For Coburn, the imminent danger facing America is apparently not terrorism but the "gay agenda." His thumping about this menace within contributed to the pressure that led to Bush's endorsement of a constitutional amendment to outlaw gay marriage. At a Republican meeting this spring, Coburn warned: "The gay community has infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power ... That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today. Why do you think we see the rationalization for abortion and multiple sexual partners? That's a gay agenda."

In 1997, Coburn proposed a bill that would have ended anonymous testing for HIV/AIDS and required reporting the names of those who tested positive to public health authorities, among other draconian measures -- including withholding Medicaid funding from states that failed to comply.

But an incident involving Medicaid from Coburn's past as a physician may cloud his current ambition to fill the seat being vacated by Sen. Don Nickles. He is squaring off against Democratic Rep. Brad Carson, who succeeded Coburn in the House in 2000.

According to records obtained by Salon, Coburn filed an apparently fraudulent Medicaid claim in 1990, which he admitted in his own testimony in a civil malpractice suit brought against him 14 years ago by a former female patient. The suit alleged that Coburn had sterilized her without her consent. It eventually was dismissed after the plaintiff failed to appear for the trial. In his sworn testimony, Coburn admitted he sterilized the then 20-year-old woman without securing her written consent as required by law. He blamed the omission on a clerical error, but maintained that he had her oral consent for the procedure. (Salon has been unable to contact the woman and is withholding her name out of respect for her privacy.) Coburn also revealed under oath that he had charged the procedure to Medicaid -- despite knowing that Medicaid, also known as Title 19, does not cover the cost of sterilization for anyone under age 21.

This previously unpublicized episode from his medical practice cuts to the heart of Coburn's political identity. He has built his congressional career on extreme gestures against government programs, exceeded in virulence only by his pronouncements on social issues, including advocating the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions under any circumstances other than those threatening the life of the mother. (And yet, as a doctor, he has performed abortions.)

Local political observers say the likely result of the Oklahoma Senate race is a tossup, with a possible slight advantage to Coburn because of Bush's overwhelming support in the state. The latest poll, conducted Sept. 1 and 2 by the Democratic firm Westhill Partners, had the race within the margin of error, with Carson leading 44 to 42 percent.

Coburn was swept into Congress as a member of the Republican class of 1994 that gained control of the House for the first time in 40 years and installed Newt Gingrich as speaker. "He really drank the Kool-Aid with the class of '94; he was one of the real far-right guys," says Kenneth Hicks, a political science professor at Rogers State University in Claremore, Okla.

"He's a principled, pompous member," said a senior Republican staffer turned lobbyist. "He's one of those '94 guys, and there were a certain percentage of them who were so anti-system that they don't want to play the game. And from a leadership perspective and a lobbyist perspective, we don't like those kind of people ... He's going to be a frickin' nightmare in the Senate [if he wins]."

In Congress, Coburn distinguished himself, even from other conservative Republicans, by actively opposing federal spending for his own state. After unsuccessfully trying to stop disaster relief after a 1999 tornado, Coburn called the measure "malarkey." His dogmatism made him a thorn in the side of GOP members who might rhetorically denounce "big government" but still legislate plenty of pork. In 1996, after voting for provisions of an agriculture bill that aided Oklahoma farmers, Coburn told the Wall Street Journal that it made him sick for days afterward and that Washington was "a dirty place." In 1997, he boasted, "I don't ask for anything from Appropriations." The year after that, he complained to USA Today that he was underpaid as a congressman: "You have to be able to earn more money to attract good people."

As far right as Coburn is on fiscal issues, he is even farther right on social issues. "I favor the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life," he told the Associated Press in July. Last week, he told the Hugo [Okla.] Daily News: "We need someone who will speak morally on the issues and not run from the criticism of the national press ... We need to have moral clarity about our leaders. I have a 100 percent pro-life record. I don't apologize for saying we need to protect the unborn. Do you realize that if all those children had not been aborted, we wouldn't have any trouble with Medicare and Social Security today? That's another 41 million people."

At a House subcommittee meeting on the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1996, which heard testimony on the danger of the parasite cryptosporidium, which had killed 104 and sickened 400,000 in Milwaukee in 1993 and killed 19 in Las Vegas in 1994, Coburn displayed his expertise as a doctor. The lethal spores, he held forth, "can sometimes ... be very helpful -- for doctors -- because it helps us identify those people who in fact are immuno-compromised."

A year later, Coburn gained a moment of national attention when he condemned NBC for televising the Academy Award-winning movie on the Holocaust "Schindler's List." According to Coburn, the film encouraged "irresponsible sexual behavior," and he called for outrage against the network from "parents and decent-minded individuals everywhere." He added, "I cringe when I realize that there were children all across this nation watching this program." Even conservative avatar William Bennett felt compelled to rebuke him: "These are very unfortunate and foolish comments."

In 1999, after the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, Coburn opposed President Clinton's proposal for making adults liable if they allow their children to buy guns and harm others. "If I wanted to buy a bazooka to use in a very restricted way, to do something, I ought to be able to do that," said Coburn.

Medical fraud has been one of Coburn's signature issues. In his freshman term, he introduced the Health Care Anti-Fraud Act of 1995, which focused mainly on Medicare fraud but also touched on Medicaid. Speaking on the House floor on behalf of a Republican Medicare bill that year, Coburn said, "Our goal is to eliminate fraud and abuse. The way we do that is to make sure we change the expectation of those who are defrauding and abusing; that we, in fact, will catch them. If we change that expectation, then we will limit greatly the amount of people, and number of people, who attempt to defraud."

Unsurprisingly, in proposing this legislation Coburn was careful not to raise his own case involving Medicaid fraud.

In the early hours of Nov. 7, 1990, Dr. Coburn was summoned to Muskogee Regional Medical Center to attend to a pregnant patient who had been admitted with severe pains. The patient was a 20-year-old woman in her third pregnancy. After each of her first two pregnancies, she had asked Coburn to perform a tubal ligation to ensure that she would not have any more children, but he had refused, according to his testimony, telling her that Medicaid did not cover elective sterilization for women under 21. "I told her that she was too young, that it was irreversible, that she needed to wait," Coburn recounted telling the patient in December 1989. "I also told her that [Medicaid] wouldn't cover it."

Coburn found that she had an ectopic pregnancy, in which a fertilized egg is implanted somewhere other than the womb. In this case it was in her left fallopian tube. Coburn operated, removing both the left tube and the unaffected right one. The woman subsequently filed a malpractice suit, charging that he had tied her healthy tube without her permission.

In his Feb. 27, 1992, deposition in the case, Coburn insisted that the woman had repeatedly asked him to remove the second tube. In fact, she had signed a written consent form for the operation to deal with the ectopic pregnancy, but had not signed a consent form for the second procedure. Coburn testified that he had asked a nurse to obtain that form and that he did not know why it had not happened.

The suit was initially dismissed in October 1992 because it had been filed beyond the applicable statute of limitations, but was reinstated upon appeal. It was finally dismissed in December 1995 because, according to court records, the woman, for unexplained reasons, failed to show up for the trial.

In his deposition, Coburn also explained how he had gotten around Medicaid's restriction against coverage of the costs of elective sterilization for a woman under 21: He did not report the ligation of the right tube on his discharge summary. "The reason that it was not dictated as both [procedures] is because she was under 21 and was being paid for by Title 19, and to have a tubal ligation under 21, Title 19 would not have covered that," he said. He noted that under the law, sterilization even as an incidental operation accompanying a covered procedure -- i.e., removing the left fallopian tube to deal with an ectopic pregnancy -- would have nullified eligibility for federal reimbursement.

"I did not dictate [the second procedure] because of her Title 19 status," he testified. "If I had dictated both, it would have been a sterilization procedure and she wouldn't have had it covered."

After the operation Coburn admonished both the woman and her mother not to discuss it. "She asked me, since she was under 21, how did I tie her tubes -- since I told her I wouldn't and Title 19 wouldn't pay for it," Coburn said in the deposition. "I said I did it anyway and that she shouldn't talk about it because ... I did a procedure that was not recognized under Title 19 reimbursement." Thus Coburn admitted he had tried to silence his patient because he knew he was billing Medicaid illegally.

D. McCarty Thornton, former chief counsel to the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services and a specialist in healthcare fraud, said that anyone claiming Medicaid funding has certain disclosure duties. He told Salon that in claiming funding, "the fundamental legal duty is that [you] must be honest and completely open about the claim and about the circumstances that led to the claim. That being the fundamental starting point, you can break that legal duty down into some pieces ... There is a duty not to file a claim where you know that the services you provided are not reimbursable under the rules of the federal program ... You have a duty to disclose all the facts that you know to be material to the government. You have a duty to accurately compile the underlying documentation, such as the surgical records. If you knowingly fail any of these duties, then that is healthcare fraud."

Salon could not reach Coburn for comment. His campaign manager, Michael Schwartz, said that he was not familiar with the case and that it was "way off the radar screen" because the case happened 12 years ago.

At least, it is Coburn's hope that the scandal passes below the radar in his contest with Carson, who is in almost every respect Coburn's opposite. Unlike Coburn, Carson has fought hard to win federal funding for his district -- for transportation, rural healthcare, education and environmental cleanup. For his efforts, he was reelected by 74 percent in 2002.

Carson is a sixth-generation Oklahoman whose mother's family came to the state on the Cherokee Nation's Trail of Tears. His father worked for the Indian Bureau. Carson attended Baylor University, a conservative Baptist university in Texas, becoming its first graduate to win a Rhodes scholarship in 75 years. After finishing at the top of his class at the University of Oklahoma law school, he joined a major law firm, where he devoted one-third of his time to pro bono work. In 1997, he was a White House Fellow serving as a special assistant to the secretary of defense. A member of the Cherokee Nation, Carson helped establish a Native American Museum in Oklahoma City.

"This is a guy who knows how to wear cowboy boots with his Brooks Brothers suit, and he sounds like he's from here," says Keith Gaddie, a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma. "He's trying to thread the needle that all Democrats have to thread, and that is simultaneously satisfy this very extreme religious and social conservatism of Oklahomans but also make an appeal to the strong populism of the state."

Although the candidates are from the same district in eastern Oklahoma, Coburn may have the advantage in building a statewide majority. "Tom Coburn delivered 4,000 babies over his career in the Second District," one Democrat familiar with state politics said. "It may sound very naive for me to say this, but I really think it's going to help him [there] a bunch."

It remains a persistent problem for the Carson campaign that Coburn's views don't seem too far out of the mainstream to many Oklahomans. "A lot of positions that they're going to try to make out as extremist are kind of semi-mainstream in Oklahoma," says V. Burns Hargis, chairman of the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce and a political commentator on television. "It's just a hard sell to try to run to the left of the guy in Oklahoma."

"It's a great challenge," Carson said in an interview with Salon. "We rarely point out the things that are truly wacky ... We point out that [Coburn] treats politics like a game, as if it weren't important, that you can go up to Washington and try to howl into the void and make points that make you feel a little better but never do anything for the people back home who are desperate for your help."

According to Hicks, Carson is running a two-level campaign. "He's on the air right now, and he's trying to prove that he's got Oklahoma values and is a conservative," Hicks said. "Below the radar they're doing a lot of GOTV [get out the vote], and they're spending a lot of time talking about Coburn's radical libertarianism on fiscal issues and his conservatism on social issues. They're trying to say to individual voters, 'This guy is really not in line with Oklahoma values. You may be a conservative, but he's a radical.'"

Coburn, meanwhile, continues to spout off. Last week, he declared Oklahoma lagging in economic development because "you have a bunch of crapheads in Oklahoma City that have killed the vision of anybody wanting to invest in Oklahoma." His spokesperson could not explain who or what Coburn was talking about. What's more, Coburn proclaimed the Senate race a "battle of good vs. evil."

"He's on his own private mission with his own small band of followers," Carson told the Washington Post. "With everything that's going on in the world, using good and evil to describe a Senate race turns off voters."

Whether the voters of Oklahoma regard Coburn as an exemplar of moral purity after learning about his false Medicaid filing may well determine not only the outcome of the contest there but the fate of the Senate.

-----------------

And a follow up story - the woman in question comes forth.

From The Washington Post

Woman Who Sued Coburn Goes Public
She Calls GOP Candidate's Remarks on Case 'Not True'

By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 17, 2004; Page A04

TULSA, Sept. 16 -- A woman who claimed in a lawsuit 13 years ago that the Republican Senate candidate here, a family physician, sterilized her without her consent came forward Thursday to stand by her story, throwing one of the most competitive Senate races in the country into further turmoil.

Her voice shaking at times, Angela Plummer said that while Tom Coburn saved her life during a 1990 surgery to remove a fallopian tube in which a fetus had lodged, she was "stunned" to learn that he had also removed her remaining good tube.

"Dr. Tom Coburn sterilized me without my consent -- verbal or written -- and I know he's stating that he got oral consent. That is not true," Plummer said at a news conference. "I'm not up here to smear him. I'm up here because I wanted to have more children, and he took that away from me."

Coburn is embroiled in a tight race with Rep. Brad Carson (D), and the conservative Muskogee doctor has accused Democrats of leaking the story to "trash" his character. Plummer said Thursday that she had not spoken to anyone with partisan interests but came forward after she had read the initial article about the sterilization on Salon.com earlier in the week.

The race is considered one the most critical in the country as both parties fight for control of the U.S. Senate. A spokesman for Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said Thursday that the senator was scheduled to visit Oklahoma to campaign for Coburn on Friday. Vice President Cheney is due here next week on Coburn's behalf. The story has dominated the local news this week, with national Democrats jumping into the fray. Polls show the race is a dead heat.

Plummer's lawsuit was dismissed and reinstated in a statute-of-limitations squabble but never went to trial.

Coburn and Plummer, then 20, agree that she contacted the doctor with an ectopic pregnancy -- when a fetus lodges in a fallopian tube. Both also agree that by the time he operated, she was bleeding to death.

On Wednesday, Coburn said that he removed the other tube because the patient had asked him to do so several times previously and because her mother had also requested that it be done that night. (Plummer confirmed that her mother had done so, in an interview with the Tulsa World.) Coburn's campaign released a statement Thursday from a nurse who stated that Plummer had "begged" him to remove the other tube.

Plummer, now 34 and the mother of two children born before her troubled pregnancy, said that she did not learn what he had done until weeks later when she went for a checkup. "[We] went into a room by ourselves. He said, 'By the way, I tied your tubes. But do not tell anyone, because I will get in trouble.' "

Carter To Miller

A letter from Jimmy Carter to Zell Miller, ostensibly a Democrat who gave that incendiary speech at the Republican National Convention.

Letter to Zell Miller: 'You Have Betrayed our Trust'

by Jimmy Carter

To Sen. Zell Miller: You seem to have forgotten that loyal Democrats elected you as mayor [of Young Harris] and as state senator. Loyal Democrats, including members of my family and me, elected you as state senator, lieutenant governor and governor. It was a loyal Democrat, Lester Maddox, who assigned you to high positions in the state government when you were out of office. It was a loyal Democrat, Roy Barnes, who appointed you as U.S. senator when you were out of office. By your historically unprecedented disloyalty, you have betrayed our trust. Great Georgia Democrats who served in the past, including Walter George, Richard Russell, Herman Talmadge and Sam Nunn, disagreed strongly with the policies of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and me, but they remained loyal to the party in which they gained their public office. Other Democrats, because of philosophical differences or the race issue, like Bo Callaway and Strom Thurmond, at least had the decency to become Republicans. Everyone knows that you were chosen to speak at the Republican National Convention because of your being a "Democrat," and it's quite possible that your rabid speech damaged our party and paid the GOP some transient dividends. Perhaps more troublesome of all is seeing you adopt an established and very effective Republican campaign technique of destroying the character of opponents by wild and false allegations. The Bush campaign's personal attacks on the character of John McCain in South Carolina in 2000 was a vivid example. The claim that war hero Max Cleland was a disloyal American and an ally of Osama bin Laden should have given you pause, but you have joined in this ploy by your bizarre claims that another war hero, John Kerry, would not defend the security of our nation except with spitballs. (This is the same man whom you described previously as "one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders --- and a good friend.") I, myself, served in the Navy from 1942 to 1953, and, as president, greatly strengthened our military forces and protected our nation and its interests in every way. I don't believe this warrants your referring to me as a pacifist. Zell, I have known you for 42 years and have, in the past, respected you as a trustworthy political leader and a personal friend. But now, there are many of us loyal Democrats who feel uncomfortable in seeing that you have chosen the rich over the poor, unilateral pre-emptive war over a strong nation united with others for peace, lies and obfuscation over the truth, and the political technique of personal character assassination as a way to win elections or to garner a few moments of applause. These are not the characteristics of great Democrats whose legacy you and I have inherited. Sincerely, and with deepest regrets, Jimmy Carter

FDA For Profit

The Food & Drug Administration has become the most effective lobbying arm of the pharmaceutical industry, at no cost to the drug makers. Through its regulating powers, FDA has been driven by a policy that sides heavily with those who manufacture and market drugs. Patients (often referred to as "consumers" by FDA officials, which is an industry term) and often doctors, are left to their own devices to judge the true efficacy of any given drug, weighing that against the known side effects and possible dangers.

In an atmosphere of swiftly rising prices for medications here in the US, patients began to purchase their drugs from Canada, an action technically in violation of US law, though no one on an individual basis has yet been prosecuted. FDA came out against re-importation from Canada, citing the potential dangers of counterfeit drugs and the harm they might cause. While it is true that buying Viagra off the Internet is dangerous, buying drugs from Canada is not. Those drugs are tightly regulated by the Canadian authorities. The State Of Minnesota sent a party of officials to visit several Canadian pharmacies and certify them as safe for Minnesotans.

Still the FDA insists re-imported drugs are unsafe. They have dropped Canada specifically from their repeated warnings, choosing to use the word "foreign" as a catch all. A matter of semantics, but it allows the FDA to better serve the pharmaceutical industry's quest to maintain artificially high drug prices here in the US.

All of this is a prelude to the latest anti-patient move by the FDA. In a newspaper article this morning, it is revealed that the FDA suppressed studies done by the drug industry itself and other research organizations that indicate the use of anti-depressant medications in children are not very effective, if at all. Further, and more ominous, the FDA urged the drug companies to suppress portions of those studies that clearly indicate the use of anti-depressants in children raises the probability of suicide. The British government reached this conclusion last year, issuing a warning to doctors to avoid prescribing such medications to children.

The Food and Drug Administration has repeatedly urged antidepressant manufacturers not to disclose to physicians and the public that some clinical trials of the medications in children found the drugs were no better than sugar pills, according to documents and testimony released at a congressional hearing yesterday.

Regulators suppressed the negative information on the grounds that it might scare families and physicians away from the drugs, according to testimony by drug company executives. For at least three medications, they said, the FDA blocked the companies' plans to reveal the negative studies in drug labels, and in one case the agency reversed a manufacturer's decision to amend its drug label to say that the drug was associated in studies with increased hostility and suicidal thinking among children.

"Why would FDA require a company to remove stronger labeling?" demanded an incredulous Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) yesterday, at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations. "FDA should want to encourage a company to do that kind of thing."

Janet Woodcock, FDA's deputy commissioner for operations, responded that regulators believe the jury is still out on the drugs. The negative trials, she said, did not mean the medications were ineffective.

Several representatives noted that the study results were obtained at tremendous cost to the American public because Congress granted companies profitable patent extensions as an incentive to conduct the trials.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), a member of the subcommittee, said it was absurd to give companies profitable patent extensions on their drugs to encourage the trials and then limit dissemination of the results. He said his staff had estimated that a patent extension given to Pfizer Inc. was worth $1 billion dollars. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, he said, made $500 million.

The hearing was prompted by widespread complaints that crucial information about the safety and effectiveness of antidepressant medications had not been communicated to physicians and the public. More than two-thirds of all studies of antidepressant use among depressed children have failed to show the drugs are effective.

Two problems immediately arise.

One, the pharmaceutical industry made use of the cover provided by the FDA, and did not disclose their in house studies.

Two, the FDA, a federal agency charged with regulating, among other things, the pharmaceutical industry and its products, actively instigated a cover up of information vital to the public interest. While citing safety concerns over less expensive re-imported drugs from Canada, the agency betrayed its mandate by suppressing those studies that illustrate the ineffectiveness of a class of medications in children that also raise the rate of suicide among those children.

For years FDA has acted to promote and protect the profit generating ability of the pharmaceutical companies over the well being of patients. Now, it has been caught advocating the use of a potentially dangerous medication for child patients who gain no medical advantage from it, and in fact, may sustain great harm form its use. This goes beyond despicable and straight into the criminal. Those FDA officials involved, including the head of the agency, ought to be vigorously prosecuted.

Watch Carefully

This article from the Washington Post is worth quoting in whole. It is about the new book by sleaze-queen "biographer" Kitty Kelley about Shrub and his life, including allegations of drug use and other unpleasantness. Apparently a sister-in-law is involved as a source.

I honestly care not whether he snorted himself some coke or not - there is plenty to worry about when it comes to Shrub, and coca is way down the fucking list.

Read the various newspaper, magazine, and TV news folks as they go on about how cautious they will be with this book.

Then think back to a book called "Unfit To Command," and compare the treatments. Remember that large segments of the latter book have been indisputably proven false, but it took weeks before any news organization bothered to do alittle homework. Seems with Shrub in the crosshairs, a little more "caution" is called for.

Media View Kitty Kelley's Bush Book With Caution

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 8, 2004; Page C01

It is the book that some Republicans have been worrying about for weeks, filled with lurid allegations by a celebrity biographer whose controversial reputation has only boosted her sales.

Kitty Kelley's volume on the Bush family won't be published until next week, but the White House communications director yesterday dismissed the book as "garbage" and a Republican National Committee spokeswoman said journalists should treat it as "fiction." With the author booked for numerous television interviews -- including three straight mornings on NBC's "Today," starting Monday -- "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty" is certain to generate media attention in the heat of a presidential campaign.

Peter Gethers, vice president of Random House and Kelley's editor, said the publisher's chief counsel and Kelley's own lawyer went over the book "with a fine-toothed comb."

"It was as extensive a legal read as a publisher could give," Gethers said. "Some things didn't make it, and we're 100 percent confident of the things that made it in. We erred on the side of caution because we knew how hard she was going to be hit."

Gethers confirmed the accuracy of a report in London's the Mail on Sunday, which said the book contains, among other things, allegations of past drug use by President Bush. One of the sources quoted on that subject is Bush's former sister-in-law, Sharon Bush, who had a bitter divorce from the president's brother Neil.

Gethers said Sharon Bush provided "confirmation" to the author but was not the initial source of the allegations. "Just because an ex-wife says it doesn't mean it's not true," he said.

During the 2000 campaign, Bush repeatedly declined to address questions about possible past drug use, saying only that he had made "mistakes" when he was "young and irresponsible." He said he had not used illegal drugs since 1974 but refused to say whether he had tried them earlier. "Enough is enough when it comes to trying to dig up people's backgrounds in politics," Bush said in 1999.

During the same period, St. Martin's Press withdrew a book that alleged Bush had been arrested on cocaine charges in 1972 after learning that the author had spent time in prison in a car-bombing case. The publisher's editor in chief later resigned.

The Mail story has triggered a wave of radio and Internet chatter about Kelley's book, from the online Drudge Report to Howard Stern's radio show. Random House's Doubleday unit has ordered an initial printing of 750,000, and Kelley is scheduled to be interviewed by MSNBC's Chris Matthews and radio host Don Imus, among others.

Fox News Vice President Bill Shine said his star host, Bill O'Reilly, would likely interview Kelley but that "right now we're going to wait and see what's in the book."

ABC spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said the book "obviously would be subjected to serious scrutiny" before the network reported the allegations, "and if we had the author on we would ask her very probing questions." CBS has not booked Kelley. She is tentatively scheduled to appear on CNN's "American Morning" and "NewsNight With Aaron Brown."

NBC spokeswoman Allison Gollust described Kelley's scheduled sit-down with Matt Lauer as "a very competitive interview that all the morning shows were after. And as we do with all of our interview subjects, we'll review the material beforehand and ask all the appropriate questions."

The book did not pass muster at Newsweek, however. Editor Mark Whitaker said his magazine was given an advance copy for a possible story "and we passed. We weren't comfortable with a lot of the reporting. We will write about it if it becomes a phenomenon and looks like it will have some impact on the campaign debate, not to further publicize the reporting in it."

Whitaker said he learned late yesterday that one of his reporters, without his approval, had signed a confidentiality agreement for the advance look at the book. The agreement, he said, would have barred Newsweek from pursuing the allegations without Doubleday's permission. "The publisher was trying to constrain us in any independent reporting we could do on the book, and that's not a condition I or our lawyers would ever agree to," Whitaker said.

Doubleday publicity director David Drake confirmed that the document said "the magazine would agree not to contact any third party to verify information contained in the book without our prior agreement," but said that Newsweek never made such a request. The magazine signaled its intention to go ahead with a piece for Monday, Drake said, and "we have yet to hear from anyone at Newsweek that the magazine reversed its decision. One can't help but speculate that the magazine is bowing to pressure from the White House," although Drake acknowledged he had no evidence of that.

Time Managing Editor Jim Kelly said he had not gotten an advance look at the book but "you obviously would have to fact-check the hell out of it." Excerpting a book "by Kitty Kelley is a problematic proposition," he said. Doubleday says it never offered first serial rights to keep the book's contents from leaking out.

A call to Kelley's Washington home was returned by her publicist, Marina Ein, who said she was unavailable yesterday.

Kelley has written extensively researched, gossip-filled books on the British royal family -- which are packed with disputed details about their sexual practices -- Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. But none generated a bigger furor than her 1991 biography of Nancy Reagan.

The New York Times, which obtained an advance copy, gave the book front-page display, saying it "could forever shatter" the Reagan myth through "allegations of scandalous sexual behavior" by the "woman who ruled the White House with a Gucci-clad fist." Max Frankel, then the paper's editor, said later that the story had been a mistake, and detractors accused the Times and other news outlets of retailing unconfirmed allegations.

RNC spokeswoman Christine Iverson cited that book in saying: "This is the same author who falsely maligned the late president Ronald Reagan as a date rapist who paid for a girlfriend's abortion and wrongly cast Nancy Reagan as an adulterer who had an affair with Frank Sinatra. The media blasted her on the Reagan book and ridiculed her over her book on the royal family as unsubstantiated gossip and rumor."

White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett said yesterday: "Kitty Kelley's allegations make Michael Moore look like a factual documentarian. We're not going to let this garbage she's historically known for spreading go unanswered." He said it would "violate journalistic standards" for news executives to "put this type of trash in their newspapers and on their airwaves." White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan added that the drug allegations were "discredited, dismissed and disavowed years ago."

Gethers said Kelley used more unnamed sources in the book than she generally does, but that this doesn't diminish its credibility.

"We either know who the sources are or are extremely confident from what Kitty said that they're genuine," he said. "People are very afraid to go on the record for this book. Kitty is a fearless reporter; even her detractors would acknowledge that. But she's tackling a sitting president of the United States and ex-president of the United States." Potential sources, he said, "are afraid that these people can literally ruin their lives, and ruin them socially in Washington."

Full story.

In The Rearview Mirror

I don't use Linux at home, but I keep meaning to. I do really like the idea of Linux, especially in light of Microsoft's penchant toward monopoly.

And M$, it seems, is feeling the hot breath of open source on its neck...

Open-source software, namely Linux, is nipping more sharply at the heels of Microsoft, leading the software giant to defend itself more fiercely than ever against the insurgent rise of freely distributed, collaboratively coded programs.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant acknowledged Linux is a growing challenge to its business in its 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Microsoft "is facing growing pressure from open-source software across every segment of its business -- a competitive threat that could have significant consequences for its financial future going forward," eWeek reported. "While Microsoft often mentions Linux and open-source software as a potential threat to its business, it seems to be treating the threat far more seriously and describing it as more pervasive than in previous official filings."

Full story in the Washington Post includes a ton of outside links. Makes for interesting reading.

Miller Wets Himself In Public

Zell Miller's performance on stage at the Republican National Cabal deserves a second look. While moderation and compassionate conservatism were the convention themes trotted out for CableSpews consumption, Repubs on stage and off stage were savaging John Kerry with a continuous fusillade of lies and distortions. Many were couched in the sly, out-of-the side-of-the-mouth style Dick Cheney favors, but a few were head-on bashing.

Giuliani's speech contained below the belt barbs, plus a complete fabrication all of his own making, how in the midst of collapsing buildings and panicked New Yorkers, Rudy had an epiphany involving Shrub. He claims that he said to himself "Thank god GW Shrub is our president." Of course, this apocryphal story only appeared in recent Rudy remarks to the public and media, which contradicts the Roodster's claim that the tale appeared in press accounts soon after 9/11.

But a disingenuous story from a self-promoting guy now doing business with the administration is one thing, a demagogic assault on the character and credentials of the political opponent in this election is quite another. Zell Miller stood at the podium and delivererd a speech worthy of segregationists George Wallace and Lester Maddox, full of bile and hatred, lies and slurs. Sure, it looked and sounded impressive - a southern firebrand haranguing the entranced delegates about John Kerry and his traitorous ways. Impressive, but loaded with outright lies and skewed facts about Kerry's Senate record, military service, and current platform positions.

The transcript of the speech does little service to Miller's wild-eyed delivery, and gives no indication of the bizarre performance by Miller in interviews later that night, where barely a single coherent sentence passed the Senators lips. (He even threatenened Chris Matthews of Hardball, wishing they were in bygone days so he could challenge Matthews to a duel, presumably so Miller could kill him.) Miller engaged in the lowest form of political attack, saying quite clearly that a Kerry presidency would aid and abet terrorism, and that Kerry himself would abdicate the principles of United States sovereignty and turn the country's military over to UN control. None of this was obliquely implied - the implications were clear, and much of this trash was stated directly.

The inevitable consequence of Miller's contribution to the political discourse is clear - impugn the motives of the opponent by making claims without merit, malign the other as unpatriotic and even treasonous, then declare him, based on those slanderous lies as being "unfit for command."

At least there is a factual basis for criticisms of Shrub's motives for war, his taxation policies, and social policies. There is much in the public record that reflects a president who rewards rich friends and uses government as a moral club to beat Americans who refuse to comply with his religious conservative social agenda. Plenty of evidence exists to prove this president is looting the public treasury on behalf of the corporate superstructure, of which he is a member. Evidence exists that this president had a hankering to go to war with Saddam Hussein long before 9/11, and used that awful day to advance that agenda. There is evidence that he and his administration concocted a tailor made intelligence recipe to justify that war, and to link Iraq and the terrorists responsible for 9/11.

None of these criticisms involve denigrating Shrub's patriotism, nor do they state or imply that he is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. It is worthy of note that Shrub has priased Kerry's service record from one side of his mouth, while refusing to repudiate the Swift Boat ads that have been factually annihilated. Nor has he chosen to make comment on others in his own party who have suggested that Kerry is unfit for command. That last phrase carries a powerful meaning for anyone who has worn a military uniform, a meaning lost on Shrub and the chickenhawk handlers who pull his strings.

Zell- O - Mania!

Alleged Democratic Senator Zell Miller from Georgia gave the keynote speech at the Republican National Cabal last night, hammering John Kerry on his service in Vietnam and after. Miller is retiring from trhe Senate, but has been stumping against his own party since well before the primary season was underway. He's even written a book about the failings of the Democratic party, and worked very hard to get himself on TV to boost his book sales.

This is what Miller had to say about John Kerry in March, 2001, introducing him at a political event:

"My job tonight is an easy one: to present to you one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders – and a good friend. …In his 16 years in the Senate, John Kerry has fought against government waste and worked hard to bring some accountability to Washington. Early in his Senate career in 1986, John signed on to the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Bill, and he fought for balanced budgets before it was considered politically correct for Democrats to do so. John has worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment."

The obvious question, of course, is what in John Kerry has changed so much in just three years that Miller would get up on a national stage and basically question the same man's patriotism and service to his country?

Email Snippet

A good friend who lives in Arizona called the other day, agog at the goings on in NY, where the Republicans are trying desperately to keep those masks of compassion over their leering faces. My friend was particularly perplexed over the suddenly ardent support Senator John McCain is offering the president, a man he clearly dislikes and for whom he has little, if any respect. McCain even wowed the crowd with a barb tossed at Michael Moore, present in the hall.

To my friend I wrote this:

Saw the brief exchange between McCain and Moore. To use the
word "disingenuous" about a film you've never seen (McCain
admitted in an interview later he hadn't seen it) is
typically hypocritical Republican boilerplate, but not the
way McCain usually is. I have to wonder what weapons the
posse sent out to round him up for the convention were
carrying. He's majorly kissing the chocolate starfish of a
man not qualified to wash his dirty socks.

Oh well, go figure. From the snippets of speeches I heard
tonight, I think it will eventually be written that the Dems
played it too safe and too civilized in Boston. This is not
a gentleman's game. It's a street fight.