I just got home from Kerry's single appearance here at the St. Louis Community College, and thought I'd share my thoughts about it.

First of all, there were a LOT of people there; much more than I expected, and though I have no experience at estimating crowds; I'd say at least 1000 people packed into a room and overflow intended for about 250.  Kerry's staff was being ably assisted by the Firefighter's Union, and though I arrived only 30 minutes early, I managed to secure a fairly okay position near the back where I could see the stage when the people in front of me decided to sit.

The crowd was also very diverse, something I didn't expect.  There were a significant number of older Americans there, and quite a few African-Americans, though not as many as would be expected in St. Louis, where the city is almost half African-American.  I overheard a pair of younger college students talking about Lieberman, which made me laugh: "I just wish Lieberman weren't so BORING, I really like the way he thinks."  The crowd is buzzing about the possibility that Dick Gephardt is going to surprise and show up to endorse Kerry, but this turns out to be only rumor.  The event was scheduled to start at 4:30, but didn't get rolling until close to 5:30, which, I suppose, is to be expected.

The Kerry people played some good "campaign" style songs as we waited, including Bruce Springsteen's "No Surrender," and he was eventually introduced to U2's "Beautiful Day."  Flanked by local and state (and out-of-state dignitaries), several individuals spoke before he took center stage.

Francis Slay, the mayor of St. Louis, began the rally, and introduced Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, his wife Christie, and former Missouri senators Tom Eagleton and Jean Carnahan.  All spoke very briefly, which was appreciated, and then Kerry took the mike.  He thanked each with a personal anecdote about their support and their (shared) histories; and then started in on President Bush.

The thing that struck me most as I listened to Kerry speak is that Howard Dean's words were coming out of his mouth.  "We need to send George Bush back to Texas, and that's exactly what we're going to do," is the example that comes to mind out of many that I swear Dean used in his stump speech last summer.  The upshot of all this is that I can't say I disagreed with any of the policy positions Kerry put forward; of course, as we all know, this election really isn't about policy, and policy isn't going to decide it, but it's good to know that if Kerry is the eventual nominee, at least I'm comfortable with his politics.

The surprising point is that Kerry spent zero time talking about Vietnam.  He made reference to it once obliquely when he stated that Karl Rove is going to run this election about the war in Iraq, since he can't run it on education, healthcare, jobs, the economy, the environment, etc.  Kerry said he actually had experience on aircraft carriers ... for real.  No, Kerry spends most of his speech hitting the major themes - the failures of the Bush administration, and the values that he holds dearest, including education, healthcare and the environment.  He spent a very small portion of his time speaking about the war, but does promise to go to the United Nations after his inauguration and helping us to rejoin the 'community of nations' and he does say we need to get back to the negotiating table and produce a workable Kyoto global warming treaty.

He also took the time to point out two executive orders he would issue early in his presidency, one prohibiting former Congressmen from taking jobs with lobbyists for 5 years after they left Congress (this means YOU, Billy Tauzin!); and one prohibiting secret meetings between lobbyists and government officials, making disclosures of them mandatory and (I imagine, though he didn't say this explicitly) subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

Healthcare is not a privilege for the wealthy, it's a right.  Kerry tells a good story here about his own brush with cancer, and how we (the taxpayers) paid for his treatment, since Senators have great insurance paid for out of the federal budget; and he wants to offer that same quality care to all Americans.  No specifics here, but this is eerily similar to Dean's plan.

Kerry stumbled over a few lines, and the honest truth is, he isn't the world's greatest orator, though once he gets going, he knows how to work a crowd up to a fever pitch.  He doesn't come across as a 'regular American' for whatever that's worth; but he's certainly electable, and he believes in the same sort of values that progressive Americans do.

I'm off to see if I can weasel my way into Blueberry Hill for John Edwards' 9:15 appearance, but if the Kerry rally is any indication, there's going to be people lining up outside for blocks.  Wish me luck.

Gov't Seeks Probe Amid O'Neill Interview

The Treasury Department is seeking an investigation into whether a classified document might have been shown during a TV show in which former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill spoke out against the Bush administration.

"They showed a document that had a classification term on it, so we referred this today to the Office of Inspector General," [Treasury spokesman Rob] Nichols said. "I'll be even more clear - the document as shown on `60 Minutes' that said `secret.'"

"We don't have a secret document. We didn't show a secret document. We merely showed a cover sheet that alluded to such a document," said CBS spokesman Kevin Tedesco.

Nonstory, but well, you know, since they don't have anything substantive on O'Neill, and the best rebuttal to his charges of ideology trumping evidence is that either:

a) "Nobody listened to him while he was in office," a senior official said. "Why should anybody now?"; or
b) it ''appears that the world according to Mr. O'Neill is about trying to justify his own opinion, rather than looking at the reality.''

Those are pretty nonspecific responses to the charge that Mr. Bush is "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people.''  But, why respond to facts with facts when ad hominem attacks are your cup of tea?

My fiance just asked me a question to which I didn't have a good response.

Why can't public school systems be run like universities?  Why can't they have fundraising departments and alumni development offices, and take tax-deductible donations from the community and their alumni?  Why can't this money be used to build new schools and pay teachers higher wages?

We just finished watching an old West Wing episode where Sam Seaborn says something like, "Education is the silver bullet.  Schools should be palaces.  It should be expensive as hell for government, and it should be free to everyone.  The competition for teaching jobs should be fierce, and teachers should be paid six-figure salaries."

I can't help but agree - but what am I missing about her plan?

Dana Milbank and Mike Allen update us today in the Washington Post on the Justice department's investigation into the White House's alleged violations of federal law when they allegedly outed the name of an undercover CIA agent for political reasons.

You tell me what's wrong with these two paragraphs:


White House officials profess to be unconcerned about the outcome of the investigation. Some administration officials said they believe charges will eventually result, although it could be as long from now as 2005. A Republican legal source who has had detailed conversations about the matter with White House officials said he "doesn't get any sense at all that they're worried or concerned, or that they're covering up."

Still, the White House is eager for the findings to emerge soon, or wait until after the November election. "The only fear I've heard expressed is that the investigation will be too slow or too fast and will kick into a visible mode in a way that is poorly timed for the election," the Republican said. "If they prosecuted someone tomorrow, I don't think the White House would care. And they can do it in December 2004. They just don't want it to become an issue in the election."

CIA undercover agent who works on issues relating to WMD is exposed.  Her ability to work undercover is blown.  The White House cares not about bringing the people who did this to Justice, only the scheduling of it around the election.  Does anyone have any sense in government anymore?

Thanks to Melanie for the heads up.

They could have led the front page with Tom Kean's story from yesterday, but no.  They had to lead with an article beating up on Howard Dean.

Caveat: I'm a Dean supporter, but I wouldn't call myself a Deaniac - I'll support the nominee whoever it is

Dean's Remarks Give Rivals Talking Points
His Readiness to Lead Is Questioned

The problem here is that the article doesn't address his readiness to lead at all.  At all.  Yet that's what someone who glances at the front page of today's Post reads.  Ridiculous.

Here's the article, in its entirety, with interspersed comments from your's truly which have not been proofread, and probably won't.

Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page A01

BURLINGTON, Vt. -- Howard Dean's penchant for flippant and sometimes false statements is generating increased criticism from his Democratic presidential rivals and raising new questions about his ability to emerge as a nominee who can withstand intense, sustained scrutiny and defeat President Bush.

> True.  Well, kind of.  Dean is drawing increased criticism from his rivals.  If this article is any demonstration, the media will have no trouble finding bad things to say about Dean.

Dean, for instance, recently spoke of a "most interesting theory" that Saudi Arabia had "warned" Bush about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Although Dean said he does not believe Bush was tipped off about the assaults that killed nearly 3,000, he has made no apologies for raising the rumor.

> It is an interesting theory.  It might be true.  It might not.  How come no planes scrambled that morning?  How come Bush sat in that school for over 5 minutes after the second plane hit without doing anything?

"How is what I did different from what Dick Cheney or George Bush . . . did during the time of the buildup of the invasion of Iraq?" the former Vermont governor said Tuesday night aboard his campaign plane. "There were all these theories that they mentioned. Many of them turned out not to be true. The difference is that I acknowledged that I did not believe the theory I was putting out."

Bush this week called the theory an "absurd insinuation."

> Yes, after it took him off guard a bit.  Watch this video.  

Dean's remarks, his critics say, are in keeping with his history of making statements that are mean-spirited or misleading. He has distorted his past support for raising the retirement age for Social Security and slowing Medicare's growth. He has falsely said he was the only Democratic presidential candidate talking about race before white audiences. And he made allegations -- some during his years as governor -- that turned out to be untrue.

> This comes straight from Gephardt.  Just because I said something off the cuff 8 years ago doesn't mean I ought to be held to it today.  Of course it makes sense to fix Medicare - it's horribly bloated and doesn't work.  What allegations?  This story is filled with allegations that aren't backed up by facts.  Okay, on second glance, I see this is addressed below with the growth lessened from 10% to 7%.  I don't agree with this, but I don't fault Dean for saying it.  He's been fighting it on semantics - if you have to approve increases every year, and in year 1 it's 100, and in year 2 it's 110, before you approve it, if you change it to 107, it's not being cut, it's still being raised from 100.  It might be technically correct, but it's eight years old, and it's not relevant to Dean's new healthcare plan, so I don't know why it's still around other than Gephardt likes to say it.

After saying at his last gubernatorial news conference that he was sealing his official records to avoid political embarrassment, Dean now says he was joking and is not sure what is in the files.

> This is a non-story.  Look for Bush's records.  They're even more sealed than Dean's.

When Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) unveiled his health care plan in April, Dean, through his campaign, belittled the lawmaker's record on the subject. Dean later walked away from the statement, saying it did not reflect his views. But this fall, in debates and TV ads, Dean has resurrected the criticism, accusing his congressional rivals, including Gephardt, of producing only rhetoric on health care in comparison to his record in Vermont.

> Which, since the federal government, which employs most of these candidates, has done nothing to actually improve health care, is true.  Dean actually improved healthcare for Vermonters.  Gephardt, Kerry, Edwards & Lieberman have not.

In recent days, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said Dean lacks the "credibility" to be president and accused him of misleading voters about past remarks on Iraq. One example cited by Kerry's campaign: Dean recently said, "I never said Saddam was a danger to the United States. Ever." But in September 2002, Dean told CBS's "Face the Nation": "There is no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States. The question is: Is he an immediate threat?"

> Threat does not equal danger.  I can threaten someone without really being a danger to them.

With polls suggesting Dean is pulling away from his rivals, they are stepping up their criticisms on several fronts, including foreign policy, government experience and credibility. Dean spokesman Jay Carson, asked about the challenges to his boss's veracity, said Wednesday: "That's all they do now: attack Howard Dean."

> Which only makes them look more partisan and only does Bush's homework for him.  On the other hand, if the stuff gets out early enough, it'll be forgotten by November.  Remember Clinton?

Last week, after Dean denied providing a tax break as governor that benefited Enron Corp. -- which a published report showed he did -- Gephardt said: "Once again, Howard Dean refuses to admit the truth. You can't beat George W. Bush if you can't tell the truth about your own record."

Tricia Enright, a Dean spokeswoman, called the quarrel a difference of "interpretation." Dean, she said, restructured the Vermont tax code for scores of companies and did not provide a specific break to Enron.

> Sounds reasonable.  Not something I would support, but reasonable.  If we're talking about Enron, is Ken Lay in jail yet?  Not indicted?  What?  Oh, isn't he good friends with Bush?

To be sure, plenty of presidential candidates have bent facts and stretched figures to sharpen a point or blunt criticism. And interviews this year suggest that many voters give Dean high marks for speaking his mind.

"To a great extent, the public does not give a damn" about the claims against Dean, said former representative Tony Coelho (D-Calif.), chairman of Al Gore's 2000 campaign. Voters want straight-talking leaders, he said, and former governors such as Dean have "a tendency to say what they think without having everything checked out before they do things."

On Tuesday, when several rivals criticized him for saying America is not safer after Hussein's capture, Dean did not back away. "You know me; if I think something's true, I say it," he told reporters. But critics note he sometimes says things that are not true.

In January, Dean told an abortion rights audience about a young patient he believed had been impregnated by her father. He was explaining why he opposes parental notification requirements for girls and young women seeking an abortion. But Dean later told Jake Tapper of Salon.com that he learned several years ago that "her father was not the father of her child; it was more complicated than that."

Carson said Wednesday that Dean's January anecdote "wasn't misleading at all. The story illustrates the downside of [mandatory] parental notification, and is an example from the life experience of the governor."

> And the story fails to clear this up - was it true?  Was it a lie?  Was it misleading?  The point was that the girl's father COULD have been the father of her baby, and that was what worried him about parental notification.  Poorly researched and written, Jim and Jonathan.

Some of Dean's opponents in his gubernatorial campaigns say he was prone to misleading statements then.

In a 1998 debate, Dean and GOP candidate Ruth Dwyer argued over new regulations for large farms in Vermont. Dwyer told of Bristol farmer Bob Hill, who struggled to build a barn for his 600 cows while complying with the state's strict permit requirements.

The next day, Dean told the Associated Press he had "done a little research on that farmer. He's in violation of the natural resource conservation service laws." Dean later acknowledged he was wrong and apologized to Hill.

> This is what we WANT our elected officials to do.  Of course they will make mistakes - Dean apologized.  Wouldn't it be nice to hear Bush apologize, or maybe attend a funeral of one of the soliders he sent to Iraq to die?

Several Vermont legislators from both parties who served while Dean was governor said they rarely found cause to question his honesty and chalked up his controversial comments to misspeaking. "He could be trusted and knew better than to lie to us," said Cheryl Rivers, a former Democratic state senator who sometimes clashed with Dean. "Yes, he would shoot from the hip, but it was not deliberate or malicious."

But lately, as he courts liberal Democrats nationwide, Dean has distorted portions of his record as governor, when he was generally considered a centrist. He has repeatedly denied siding with Republicans such as then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) in 1995 in calling for slowing Medicare's annual growth from 10 percent to 7 percent, even though he told a Vermont newspaper he "fully subscribed" to the idea.

Vermont Abenaki Indian leaders said they were outraged last month to see Dean onstage at a Native American conference in Albuquerque. For more than a decade, they said, his administration vigorously opposed their quest for state and federal recognition, contending the Indians might make land claims and bring casinos to Vermont.

Dean drew raucous applause from his New Mexico audience when he endorsed the benefits of tribal gambling establishments. "Needless to say, to hear him say onstage in Albuquerque that he was in favor of gaming for federally recognized tribes came as a big shock to a lot of people in Vermont," said Jeff Benay, a Dean appointee who heads the Vermont Governor's Advisory Council on Indian Affairs and who has advised Dean's campaign.

> Let's break this down.  Tribe in Vermont wants land and gaming casinos.  Tribe isn't recognized by federal government.  Dean supports tribe in New Mexico that is federally recognized and has gaming casino.

Carson, responding Wednesday to the Abenaki issue, said: "It would be inappropriate for the state to recognize them before the federal government does."

> Considering tribal sovereignty is recognized at the federal level, this is absolutely true.  Should Dean have supported the Abenaki's federal claims?  Perhaps - I don't know the details.  

The dust-up over the Saudi question began Dec. 1, on WAMU-FM's nationally syndicated "Diane Rehm Show," when Dean was asked why Bush was suppressing information from a commission looking into the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The most interesting theory that I've heard so far -- which is nothing more than a theory, it can't be proved -- is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis," Dean replied. "Now who knows what the real situation is? But the trouble is by suppressing that kind of information, you lead to those kinds of theories, whether they have any truth to them or not, and they get repeated as fact."

> Yes.  Show us the briefings, Mr. Bush.

When asked a few days later on Fox News why he said it, Dean said, "because there are people who believe it. . . . I don't believe it . . . but it would be nice to know." A campaign aide said Dean heard the rumor from various people on the campaign trail.

Staff writer Dan Balz and researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report

> What a piece of garbage.  Do these people actually have journalism degrees?  Does a journalism degree require a class in fact-checking or in objectivity, or in English?   How does this is any way relate to his "readiness to lead."  It doesn't.

Oh, by the way - check out www.unelectable.com

If I were to make the VP pick now, I'd probably go with New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who has legislative experience with 15 years in the House, foreign policy experience as ambassador to the United Nations and experience in an area that is going to be critical going forward as President Clinton's Secretary of Energy.

 But I thought it would also be entertaining to discuss other cabinet slots.  All of this is incredibly premature, but it can't hurt to get the discussion rolling, since even if Dean is not the nominee, many of these choices would be applicable in a Clark or even a Gephardt administration.  Here are four choices - discuss.

Secretary of State: I think this is the slot that Wes Clark is actually best suited for.  I'm rereading The Power Game by Hedrick Smith, which is of course incredibly dated, but he makes a convincing argument that the Secretary of Defense ought to be from the civilian side, and I fear Clark's long military experience actually makes him less qualified for that position.

Secretary of Defense: I'd like to see someone with management experience here, as well as experience in dealing with Congress (or being in Congress).  Ironically, this might be a good fit for John Kerry.  But I think a better choice would be Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed.  Reed has the right policy credentials, and an impeccable education - West Point, Harvard Law, etc.  I'm not sure he has the quality of management experience that would be ideal, but he has served on the Senate Armed Services committee, and travelled to Iraq/Afghanistan with Hillary Clinton over Thanksgiving, actually visiting the country instead of just the airport.

Environmental Protection Agency: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. This choice needs no comment.

Attorney General: Eliot Spitzer.  We don't need a tough-on-crime fearmongerer like Ashcroft.  We need someone who will use the power of the federal government to straighten up corporate America and make boards responsive to shareholders, and not to their own pockets.  Spitzer's tough as nails, and would be an excellent attorney general.

More to come when I have some research time.

With the GOP's economic policy reduced to its lowest demoninator it really only has two purposes: cutting taxes and rewarding its financiers.

If that weren't bad enough, the GOP now is equating not giving a tax cut with raising taxes.

Michigan is trying to eliminate its budget deficit.  So let's see how the common sense test would work.  You have to do one of two things to resolve the budget (this is actually unfair, you could do a million different things, but in the GOP's world - they like these black and white questions).

1. You can eliminate a $15 million grant to Detroit public schools, cut funding for hospitals, health and family agencies, job training and transportation programs.

or

2. You can stall a proposed tax cut from 4% to 3.9% temporarily.  This would amount to a savings of about $11 per family (again, this is probably overly simplistic, but the GOP likes using "averages" to imply largesse for its tax cuts that actually largely go to the wealthy).

I think about 90% of Americans would choose 2, as would I.

Well, what did the Michigan GOP pick?

See if you can guess from this quote:

"Tax hikes are not an option, and let's be clear: slowing a scheduled tax cut is a tax hike," State Republican Chairwoman Betsy DeVos said in a statement.

And one of our favorite governors' response?

"I am not going to stand for cutting out the legs from the social safety net, balancing the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable citizens because they (Republicans) don't have the guts to pause a rollback in an income tax that equates to $11 a person," [Governor Jennifer] Granholm told reporters.

Granholm is a rising star in the Democratic party.  Her only weakness is that she was born in Canada.  Not that I have anything against Canada of course (I am actually quite fond of our northern neighbors); but she would be ineligible as a VP or presidential candidate down the road.

A quick note in response to something I read over at The Left Coaster.

The energy bill is apparently dead for now, which is a good thing.  One of its more intrusive and outrageous provisions was granting exemption from liability to manufacturers of MTBE, which apparently turns out to cause cancer and lots of other health problems.

Well, if a company polluted the land with something that causes cancer, common sense would say the company ought to clean it up, rather than the taxpayers, right?  And if the company caused someone to get cancer, common sense would say the company ought to pay for that person's medical bills and expenses, right?

And here's the crux.  When things like this come into the light, the Republicans twist the issue around by saying crap like this:

"We see no need for a giveaway to trial lawyers simply because a minority of the Senate wants to filibuster the energy bill," said Stuart Roy, a spokesman for Mr. [Tom] DeLay.

A GIVEAWAY TO TRIAL LAWYERS???  This is about MTBE, companies that make it, companies that have polluted waterways and groundways with it, and people who will get sick because of it.

It has nothing to do with trial lawyers.  The law as it stands allows people to sue people who hurt them.  This bill would prevent those lawsuits, and pass on the expenses for healthcare and cleanup to you and me as taxpayers.  The giveaway is to the Republican campaign contributors who don't want to be held responsible for their actions.  As usual.

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale
a tale of a fateful night,
that started at Big Pharma's house,
and ended with an awful sight.
The Speaker was a jolly lobbier,
the President's voice was clear,
Medicare set sail that day,
for a slow and painful death.
A slow and painful death.

The House of Representatives approved the god-awful Medicare bill last night 220-215.

After a shameless endorsement by the AARP (L.A. Times. reg. required) of a piece of legislation that harms more seniors than hurts them, House Republican leadership decided that the old rules of 15 minutes for a vote weren't good enough.  This isn't surprising, since the vote stuck at 218-216 against for over an hour before enough votes were changed or found to end up passing the bill.

Let me make this absolutely clear.  I worked in the U.S. Senate as a page.  One of my most important duties was tracking down Senators for votes.  It was made absolutely clear to me at that time that nothing, and I mean nothing, was worse than a Senator of your party missing a vote.  They have subways running between the Senate and the Senate office buildings just for this purpose (well, not subways really, but little train cars on tracks).  Bells ring throughout the Capitol when there are votes.  I had to interrupt Senators at dinner and in the bathroom to make sure they were aware there were votes going on (and they usually were).

Extending a vote for three hours because you were on the losing side of it is unprecedented.  The Congressional Record for yesterday's debacle isn't ready yet, but you can find it at Thomas probably tomorrow.

Fortunately, some Senators are threatening to filibuster, which was always a possibility, but even more so now that the House leadership has played hard and fast with the rules to make sure things went there way.

[T]he extraordinary House vote, which GOP leaders held open for nearly three hours while they pursued Republican holdouts, brought the promise of a filibuster from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.  "Give this bill a fair vote in the House and I'll drop my filibuster in the Senate," Kennedy said in a statement.

"I did not want to vote for this bill," said Rep. Butch Otter, R-Idaho. But he did, as did a handful of late GOP converts.

Who knows why these late converts did vote for the bill and how hard they were muscled by leadership and by the Bush administration, but this is just ridiculous.  I'm still in shock.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has an extremely well-written (and long) article in Rolling Stone next issue.  I recommend reading it in its entirety.  Here's a couple teasers:

I am angry both as a citizen and a father. Three of my sons have asthma, and I watch them struggle to breathe on bad-air days. And they're comparatively lucky: One in four African-American children in New York shares this affliction; their suffering is often unrelieved because they lack the insurance and high-quality health care that keep my sons alive. My kids are among the millions of Americans who cannot enjoy the seminal American experience of fishing locally with their dad and eating their catch. Most freshwater fish in New York and all in Connecticut are now under consumption advisories. A main source of mercury pollution in America, as well as asthma-provoking ozone and particulates, is the coal-burning power plants that President Bush recently excused from complying with the Clean Air Act.

In a March 2003 memo to Republican leadership, pollster Frank Luntz frankly outlined the White House strategy on energy and the environment: "The environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in general and President Bush in particular are most vulnerable," he wrote, cautioning that the public views Republicans as being "in the pockets of corporate fat cats who rub their hands together and chuckle maniacally as they plot to pollute America for fun and profit." Luntz warned, "Not only do we risk losing the swing vote, but our suburban female base could abandon us as well." He recommended that Republicans don the sheep's clothing of environmental rhetoric while dismantling environmental laws.

It gets worse.  If it doesn't make you angry, think back to your childhood, playing outside perhaps?  Fishing?  Hiking?  Hunting?  Swimming in a local creek or stream?  George W. Bush doesn't care about any of that.  And the American people need to know.  

Well, not really, but they did grant a petition for a writ of certiorari this morning in two cases, now consolidated, concerning the legality of challenges to detention of enemy combatants captured overseas and held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Rasul v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States (pdf file) will be heard and only the following question will be addressed:

Whether United States courts lack jurisdiction to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals captured abroad in connection with hostilities and incarcerated at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba.

This is why these combatants are being held in Cuba instead of North Carolina.  The government is banking on the fact that U.S. procedural requirements don't hold to enemy combatants in a time of war that are captured and held "overseas."  Arguments should be scheduled shortly.

This isn't the only "terror" case in the news lately.  In the matter of M.K.B. v. Warden; an Algerian immigrant was detained post-9/11, in part (and maybe only) because he worked as a waiter at a restaurant where two of the hijackers ate.  The problem with this case is that all records have been sealed.  We don't know anything about it other than what's been cobbled together by investigative sources and what M.K.B. alleges in his petition to the Supreme Court (though much of that too has been redacted).  Read the petition if you have the time, start on page 15 with the Course and Proceedings in the District Court, and note that several pages are completely redacted.

This is frightening stuff.  Court proceedings are open for a reason, because the transparency of them affirms their legitimacy and continues our faith that the judiciary is pursuing justice, unobstructed, and free for all to see.  The Salt Lake Tribune, hardly a liberal rag, weighs in on the issue.

Unfortunately, the Court requested a response from the government, which as SCOTUSblog notes, may be delayed for several months as the Solicitor General can and often does request multiple 30-day extensions, so the case may not be heard this term, even if the Court decided to grant cert, which is not a certainty by any means.

From CNN:

James Nichols, the brother of Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, says he was tricked into appearing in the documentary "Bowling for Columbine," according to a federal lawsuit filed against filmmaker Michael Moore.

For anyone who's seen "Bowling for Columbine," it seems wildly implausible that this is the case.  Nichols appears slightly off his rocker, but willfully answers questions about guns, the fact that the federal government ought to restrict who can own nuclear weapons, and that Timothy McVeigh wasn't such a bad guy.

Nichols said he told Moore not to film in the bedroom and was surprised when he saw in the movie that Moore had a camera

This is even more implausible.  Was Moore using one of those secret high-tech spy cameras you order from comic books?  How could Nichols not know Moore had a camera?  Furthermore, Moore didn't take the camera into the bedroom, so at least the first part of Nichols' claim is just false.

Nichols accuses Moore of nine counts, including libel, defamation of character, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. His attorney is asking for a jury trial and damages ranging from $10 million to $20 million on each count.

Whatever.

For further information, the docket # is 2:03cv74313  Nichols v. Moore and will be heard in front of U.S. District Judge Paul Borman in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan sitting in Detroit.

From the upcoming Nov. 10 issue of Fortune Magazine

In fall 1996, Michael Eisner, the chairman and CEO of Walt Disney Co., decided he had made a big mistake. Just a year earlier he had hired Hollywood power broker Michael Ovitz as Disney's president. Ovitz had flopped, badly. The men needed to find a way to disengage without unduly embarrassing either of them.

So, they used money.  Lots of money.

For 15 months of labor, [Ovitz] got $38 million in cash, plus stock options valued at $101 million. That package caused an uproar and triggered a lawsuit by Disney shareholders, who want their money back.

And well they should - that was 10% of Disney's net income that year.

In a ruling issued in May that has become must-reading in corporate boardrooms, Delaware judge William B. Chandler III said that the suit can go to trial. His reason: The facts, as alleged, indicate that Disney's directors failed to make a good-faith effort to do their job when they approved Ovitz's contract and once again when they allowed him such a lucrative going-away present.

Some of the facts here show just how bad the "good-faith" effort was.

According to the complaint, Eisner was advised by three directors, Stephen Bollenbach, Sanford Litvack, and Irwin Russell, not to hire his old friend Ovitz. He opted to do so anyway. And he hired Russell, his personal lawyer, to represent Disney in its negotiations with Ovitz. Russell was paid $250,000 for his work. Russell then sat on the compensation committee that approved Ovitz's hiring based on a summary of the deal.

It's almost like that line in Dave where Charles Grodin is incredulous at the way the federal government is run, that he'd be fired if he used their accounting tactics in the real world.  Well, it looks like those tactics are actually used in the real world.

I don't remember reading about this in May; but it is potentially huge.  The best way to cut ridiculous executive compensation down to size is to hold the people who approve (or look the other way) them responsible.  This is a first step in the right direction.

President Bush has nominated California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and is once again bashing Democratic Senators for blocking his nominees.  Is he right?

Let's see, as the Washington Post describes:

Justice Brown is one of the most unapologetically ideological nominees of either party in many years. In speeches, she has openly embraced the Supreme Court's so-called "Lochner" era, during which the justices struck down numerous worker protection laws on grounds that they violated the supposed right of free contract. Across the spectrum of constitutional law scholarship, there are few points of greater consensus than that this period is a blot on the Supreme Court's history. The very word "Lochner" -- named for the 1905 case that forged the doctrine -- has come to be used as a pejorative shorthand for judicial usurpation of legislative authority. Yet Justice Brown has insisted that without such usurpation, "a democracy is inevitably transformed into a Kleptocracy -- a license to steal, a warrant for oppression."

The title of this entry is an homage (sic) to Justice Peckham, who authored the Supreme Court's opinion in Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), striking down a New York law that prohibited bakers from working more than 60 hours a week.  He claimed that this interfered with the rights of workers and employers to be free of governmental interference in their making of contracts.

But that's all well and good, you see, because Justice Brown doesn't really mean what she says in her speeches.

Her speeches, she said, are efforts to be provocative; senators should look at her judicial work to see what kind of federal judge she would be. This might be a reasonable answer, except that her speeches are quite clear in their meaning -- and her judicial work reflects exactly the kind of property-rights adventurism you would expect from their author. Her colleagues on California's high court certainly understand where she's coming from. In one case they rebuked her for seeking to impose her "personal theory of political economy on the people of a democratic state."

Or does she?  This is another sick political ploy by the President and his colleagues to further divide our country into haves and have-nots.  Of course, he can stand up and claim that the Senate is not performing its duty by not affording Justice Brown a floor vote, as they most certainly should and probably will do.  What he fails to recognize is that the Senate is actually performing their duty by refusing to confirm judges like Justice Brown.

[The President] shall have power ... and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ... judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for.

The Senate would be shirking its duty if it didn't render its advice: Janice Rogers Brown is not fit to be a federal appellate judge.

This isn't really new to any of us, but it's still worth noting.

The Center for Public Integrity, which is "a Washington-based research organization that produces investigative articles on special interests and ethics in government," or in other words, presumably nonpartisan, released a report today detailing the contracts given to American corporations to rebuild Iraq.

THE STUDY of more than 70 U.S. companies and individual contractors turned up more than $500,000 in donations to the president's 2000 campaign, more than they gave collectively to any other politician over the past dozen years.

"No single agency supervised the contracting process for the government," the center's executive director, Charles Lewis, said. "This situation alone shows how susceptible the contracting system is to waste, fraud and cronyism."

Besides the obvious Halliburton connections to the Bush administration, I hadn't realized this connection - kind of an odd one.

David Kay, head of the Bush administration's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is a former vice president of Science Applications International Corp. He left the company in October 2002

Oh well, this isn't a surprise, let's just see how much play it gets.  Odd that the Center picked today (in advance) to release the report, considering it will probably be massively overshadowed by the GDP numbers.

 Lean Left posts an interesting contribution from Dennis Miller of all people, who thinks we ought to take NASA's budget and dedicate it to rebuilding our nation's rail system.

I've been thinking about rail travel quite a bit lately, from a visit to the Museum of Transportation here in St. Louis to trips to Chicago that I wish I could take reliably on a train to an syndicated article I read last weekend by Arthur Frommer, the travel guru.

Having driven across this great continent in 39 hours during college, I have an idea of how wide it is and how far apart things are, but this graf took me by surprise and shock.

Would you believe that across the entire northern swath of the United States â€" from Seattle to Fargo to Minneapolis to Chicago â€" there is only one train? One daily train (the Empire Builder) in each direction? One slow choo-choo that laboriously departs the Pacific Northwest to cross the prairie states and arrive in Fargo at 2 a.m., before proceeding for another 14 hours to Minneapolis and then to Chicago?

No, actually, I had no idea.  That's horrifying.  I wondered why our rails were in such shoddy shape, especially, as one Lean Left commenter responded, 9/11 should have given us a huge incentive to reinvest in train travel.

Then I realized that if the Europeans do it, fat chance we'll jump on board.

On Sept. 28 a Eurostar train made it from Waterloo Station, in London, to the Gare du Nord, in Paris, in two hours, 18 minutes. An earlier train had traveled from London to Brussels in one hour, 58 minutes. The English Channel is being eliminated as an impediment to a united Europe of high-speed trains.

If only we could say the same about Connecticut.

A federal judge has set the stage for an unusual clash over assertions by reporters for four news organizations that they need not disclose the names of their sources, a traditional journalistic practice that underpins much of news reporting in Washington.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson late last week ordered journalists at the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press and Cable News Network to reveal who in the government may have disclosed derogatory information to them about Wen Ho Lee, a former nuclear weapons scientist who was the chief suspect in an espionage case.

According to the Washington Post, Lee's lawyers have encountered "a pattern of denials, vague or evasive answers, and stonewalling" on the part of the government officials they questioned. "

Odd the Post didn't mention the Plame Affair in connection with this, but of course that investigation is proceeding smoothly, right?

Q Thank you, Mr. President. You have said that you are eager to find out whether somebody in the White House leaked the identity of an undercover CIA agent. Many experts in such investigations say you can find if there was a leaker in the White House within hours if you asked all staff members to sign affidavits denying involvement. Why not take that step?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, the best person to that, Dana, so that the -- or the best group of people to do that so that you believe the answer is the professionals at the Justice Department. And they're moving forward with the investigation. It's a criminal investigation. It is an important investigation. I'd like to know if somebody in my White House did leak sensitive information. As you know, I've been outspoken on leaks. And whether they happened in the White House, or happened in the administration, or happened on Capitol Hill, it is a -- they can be very damaging.

And so this investigation is ongoing and -- by professionals who do this for a living, and I hope they -- I'd like to know.

So would I, Mr. President.  So would I.

We all know the tax cut is unfair, but the statistics, while impressive, seem to roll over people's heads.

"Hey, you realize 50% of the tax cut went to 1% of Americans, right?"

"Uh, I got $300.  I ain't complaining."

The problem is how to convey the real immorality of the cuts to the average voter.

I was explaining something to my mother, and I actually looked at the precise percentages for once.  I mean, I knew the over-$250,000 tax dropped from 39.6% to 35%, but I didn't really pay attention to the moves the other brackets made.

So what rate are our incomes taxed at (before) and after the cuts?

$0 - $22,100: 15% (15%)
$22,100 - $53,500: 25% (28%)
$53,501 - $115,000: 28% (31%)
$115,000 - $250,000: 33% (36%)
$250,000 and up: 35% (39.6%)

See any problems here?  Yup, just on a percentage scale, and I realize analyzing it on that basis is fraught with statistical issues, but it looks like if you're poor, you got nothing.  If you're middle class, you got about 3%, and if you're rich, you got 4.6% on the wages over $250,000., which in some cases, is awfully significant.

Isn't there something fundamentally wrong with that?