Wednesday’s Mini-Report

April 16, 2008

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Huge day at the Supreme Court: “U.S. executions are all but sure to resume soon after a nationwide halt, cleared Wednesday by a splintered Supreme Court that approved the most widely used method of lethal injection. Virginia immediately lifted its moratorium; Oklahoma and Mississippi said they would seek execution dates for convicted murderers, and other states were ready to follow after nearly seven months without an execution in the United States. Voting 7-2, the conservative court led by Chief Justice John Roberts rebuffed the latest assault on capital punishment, this time by foes focusing on methods rather than on the legality of the death penalty itself. Justice John Paul Stevens voted with the majority on the question of lethal injections but said for the first time that he now believes the death penalty is unconstitutional.”

* I’ll have a more detailed report tomorrow on Bush’s big speech on global warming, but let’s just say for now that it featured a lot of hot air about hot air.

* Here’s an investigation worth watching: “Earlier this month, NPR reported that the Justice Department inspector general’s sprawling investigation into politicization at the Department included a probe of whether Monica Goodling had fired an attorney because she’d heard a rumor that the lawyer might be gay. In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and ranking member Arlen Specter (R-PA) earlier this week, the inspector general Glenn Fine confirmed that his office was digging into such accusations.”

* Judiciary Chairmen Leahy and Conyers want the Senate to pass the House’s version of FISA modernization. With the Senate version stalled, and Republicans ready to move on, it sounds like a good idea.

* Remember the other war? “While America’s attention remains focused on Iraq, violence is escalating in Afghanistan, worrying senior U.S. defense officials and commanders who’re struggling to find some 7,000 more American and European troops to combat resurgent Taliban and al Qaida forces. There are indications that Islamic militants may have adopted a new strategy of avoiding U.S and NATO forces and staging attacks in provinces that haven’t seen major unrest and on easy targets such as aid organizations and poorly trained Afghan police.”

* Who knew that al Qaeda is run by terrorists who act like bureaucrats?

* Roll Call reported that Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell have reached an agreement on advancing at least three of Bush’s pending judicial nominees before Memorial Day. This makes me more than a little uneasy.

* What a shame: “Vice President Dick Cheney does not have to testify as an eyewitness in a civil lawsuit filed against Secret Service agents by a man who says he was wrongfully arrested for criticizing the vice president — at least not yet, U.S. District Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer ruled Tuesday.”

* McCain: “I’m very pleased with the relationship that I’ve had with the media over many years.” Yeah, I bet he is.

* Pope Benedict XVI spoke at the White House this morning. After his address, Bush told him his speech was “awesome.”

* Freedom’s Watch can’t catch a break: “Democratic Party officials said they will file a complaint today with the Federal Election Commission alleging that a conservative political group has illegally coordinated its advertising with a Republican Party campaign committee in advance of a May 3 special election in Louisiana.”

* I still love this case: “In an open letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey and U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan today, more than two dozen Pennsylvania public figures urged that the Justice Department ‘reconsider the publicly announced decision to re-try De. Cryil Wecht.'”

* The NYT’s Maureen Dowd feels comfortable calling other people elitists. I know, I couldn’t believe it either.

* Hillary doesn’t want to go on “Hardball.” I don’t blame her.

* As a long-time reader of right-wing blogs, I genuinely loved this: “The Official Village Voice Election-Season Guide to the Right-Wing Blogosphere.” Pay particular attention to the “stupid/evil” test.

* And in the unlikely event you haven’t heard, Clinton and Obama will meet tonight in Philadelphia for what may be their last debate. The event begins at 8 p.m. eastern, and is scheduled to run 90 minutes. I’ll have plenty of coverage in the morning.

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

Roll Call reported that Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell have reached an agreement on advancing at least three of Bush’s pending judicial nominees before Memorial Day. This makes me more than a little uneasy.

Why?????? The Republicans didn’t approve a single Clinton nominee for the last two years he was in office and the system didn’t fall apart. What’s the matter, Harry, didn’t you ever learn that “turnabout’s fair play”????

I hope to god there is “regime change” in the Democratic Senate caucus after November.

  • Clinton and Obama will meet tonight in Philadelphia for what may be their last debate. The event begins at 8 p.m. eastern, and is scheduled to run 90 minutes. I’ll have plenty of coverage in the morning.

    Thanks, Steve. I don’t know if I can stomach another round of that stuff. I’ll try, but Hillary’s desperation politics is about enough to make me hurt my TV.

  • Harry doesn’t learn real good, Tom. I think he’s basically asking to be fired or something.

  • From ThinkProgress:

    One in 33 homeowners to face foreclosure in the next two years.

    A new report released today by The Pew Charitable Trusts finds that “one in 33 homeowners is projected to be in foreclosure primarily over the next two years, as a result of subprime loans made in 2005 and 2006.” The report also finds that home values and municipal taxes will drop as much as $356 billion over the same period. “Frustrated by the slow pace of federal action,”nine states are taking steps to help homeowners avoid foreclosure by implementing publicly funded refinance programs.

    ONE in 33!!!!

    I suppose this is what this gooper government wants…someone else to fix it and then they will take credit for it. Oh wait, publicly funded…that’s US, too. More reasons now for city governments to go belly up. Less tax revenue and their trying to help out where the feds won’t; to the average Joe (no wonder my roads here suck! I can’t wait for the police, fire an other emergency systems here locally to go belly up, too.) Much more important to bail out Bears Stearn.

    Lest I sound redundant…FUCK GOOPERS!

  • Yea, I’m with Tom, I’d love for Chris Dodd to be Senate Majority leader after Jan 09. He sure wouldn’t be making deals about Bush judges, or about FISA.

    And I think Clinton’s made the right call in re, Mathews. He’s been a sexist and misogynist this entire campaign. Well, other times too, but he’s been downright ugly about her and no woman should ever reward that kind of behavior.

    I’m counting on you commenters live “blogging” the debate tonight.

  • Dee, I can’t stomach watching any of these “debates” for if five minutes of these things produce any amount of debate or information of interest, that alone would be a miracle.

    It’s the MSM looking for Gotcha’s to talk about 24/7 for the next umpteen weeks.

    I’ll let other people deal with the torture of watching these ridiculous wastes of time and read the reports from Benen tomorrow.

    I’m done with these so-called debates. What a joke they are!

  • And Hillary’s credibility takes another hit as one of her Pennsylvania testifiers is really from New Jersey.

  • Greenwald at Salon has convinced me that personality attacks should go equally to Republicans ergo McCaincient will turn the White House into the White Nursing Home.

    McCain had a lot of “kills” in Vietnam. Unfortunately most of them were on the USS Forrestal.

    McCain suffered Stockholm Syndrome…over Bush and Rove.

  • Al Qaeda besot by paperwork. Who would have ‘thunk’ it. Recruits having to fill out long applications, attend job interviews.

    You see that in the retirement packages they offered, the lists of members in Iraq, the insecure attitude about their membership, the rifts among leaders and factions.”

    Like newly arrived fighters in Iraq today, recruits in the 1990s filled out applications that were kept in meticulous rosters

    How would they answer the question “Where do you see yourself in five years in this organization? What is the correct answer… ‘Making love to 72 virgins in heaven,’ or is that the retirement package as well?

  • I’m w/all of you who are sick of these ‘debates’ and I have no intention of watching tonight’s likely screechfest from the pantsuit from hell. I’ll rely on CB’s astute analysis tomorrow (though I pity him for enduring the ordeal for us!)

    That Dowd piece was revolting, as usual. I gave up reading her a long time ago, but had to see what this one was all about — morbid curiosity I guess.

  • Here’s a lovely bit of news about the one group of people who we can never seem to get a handle on, the people who literally cheered when the 9/11 attacks happened. Benjamin Netanyahu said, in a speech:

    “We are benefiting from one thing that happened, which is the terror attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the Americans’ battle in Iraq. This changed US public opinion significantly in our favor.”

    Netanyahu’s remarks echoed those he made on September 11, 2001 when he said about the day’s attacks: “It’s very good. Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.”

    http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/16/netanyahu_911_good_for_israel/

    Interestingly he said “We are benefiting from one thing that happened” and then he names two things which should be unreleated, the 9/11 attacks and the war in Iraq. But of course he is tying them together because they are tied together. And the result? “This changed US public opinion significantly in our favor.”

    Indeed. It was a PR coup. All of a sudden all the Arabs were our enemies (except the Saudis who actually funded the attacks), we were on the warpath to attack Israel’s old enemy Iraq, and any and all pressure on Israel to make a deal with the Palestinians vanished.

    Poof.

    And here in the land of the free, every time anyone accuses the neocon assholes like Netanyahu who happen to be Jewish Zionists of benefitting from 9/11, they are called antisemites. But there they are, saying it themselves. They benefitted. So if powerful people like Netanyahu benefitted, then we need to ask ourselves, aren’t there quite a few unanswered questions about Israel’s connection to the 9/11 attacks? And the answer is always “you are a conspiracy theorist”. But again, the facts are right out in the open:

    According to New Jersey’s Bergen Record, which on September 12 reported the arrest of the five Israelis, an investigator high up in the Bergen County law enforcement hierarchy stated that officers had also discovered in the vehicle “maps of the city with certain places highlighted. It looked like they’re hooked in with this”, the source told the Record, referring to the 9/11 attacks. “It looked like they knew what was going to happen when they were at Liberty State Park.”

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17260.htm

    I’d sure like to see what was found on the photos and movies that the “movers” were making as the attacks happened. If the first plane was on them it would pretty much up-end our current relationship with Israel. And since the “movers” were held for so long, and since those tapes have never been released, and since the official 9/11 report was heavily redacted, I think it’s safe to say that the tapes didn’t just show the second plane hitting the tower.

    And maybe that’s why this story has been shoved down the memory hole, and why Netanyahu’s strange remarks will generate no serious questions from the people who purport to protect us from our enemies.

  • You have to hand it to Dowd — all the other media idiots take the persona of “dimwitted high school cheerleader” only metaphorically. She seems intent on living it.

    Ever see her on TV? She hides behind her hair and mumbles awkwardly. It’s like trying to talk to my fifteen-year-old niece about boys.

    Except my niece isn’t a moron.

  • I’d like to propose an amendment to McCain’s Gas Tax Vacation which I see is already on the senate floor. Instead of not charging the tax, charge only the tax.

  • MsJoanne

    Even more dreadful news from my part of the country, Riverside County CA.

    In Riverside County, the median home price — the point at which half of the homes were priced higher and half lower — dropped more than 27 percent in a year to $306,250 last month, which was the lowest it has been since March 2004. The median home price last month in San Bernardino County hit $265,000, falling more than 28 percent since March 2007. The median price in San Bernardino County hasn’t been so low since September 2004.

    Riding through the small desert towns out this way is ghastly. Foreclosure nearly every other home in some neighborhoods. And no one can see the end of it. Everyone knew it was coming – they’ve been saying it for years – but they just kept building.

  • NYT’s the Caucus has been live blogging the debate. The blog is a bit behind the time, but otherwise pretty good. By 8:40 (the last bit of report they had a few minutes ago), Hillary was doing a slightly tempered Tonya Harding.
    http://tinyurl.com/6j5yo9

  • IludiumPhosdex @ 16: with all due respect, your self-promoting link raises questions but shows little real knowledge of the subject. Penn State and others have been working on coal-derived fuels for some time. Get some real science and then we’ll talk.

  • Pope Benedict XVI spoke at the White House this morning. After his address, Bush told him his speech was “awesome.”

    Whew.
    I was scared spitless he’d say it was “bitchin'”

  • re libra @ 17: I tried to watch but between the “debate” questioners and HRC, it was like listening in to a 3-way conference call of 7th grade girls (not that I’ve ever done that, but one can imagine based on legitimately observed behavior). The country and the world have some real crisis to deal with and these idiots are playing gotcha with who knew the person who said this about that back when. Gimme a damn break. Maybe things got better later, but the first 20 minutes or so were unbearable. I think I’ll take up the fiddle/

  • This is easily the worst debate yet.

    They literally spent an hour on nothing but navel-gazing pathetic questions about Wright, Tuzla, Ayres, Bittergate, etc. … and then just now said, hey, we’re running out of time, so in no more than a minute, what would you do about the high cost of gas?

    I didn’t think it would be possible, but Charlie Gibson and George Snuffalupagus just beat out Tim Russert in the realm of stupid meaningless questions. Brav-o.

  • Beep52, @20

    That’s why I posted the URL for a decent live blog. I don’t have the stomach to *watch* the dratted things, and Seely tends to give a fairly good summary every few minutes. Two-three visits to read the summary of the past 30-45 mins is as much as I need to know. TPM Election Central also had a live log but it seemed to me to have less in the way of quotes and more in the way of editorializing, which I don’t really like. I much prefer to get raw facts and do the digesting myself.

  • TR (#21), I couldn’t agree more. Worst debate ever. Why one of the debators didn’t tell either “moderator” to fuck off is beyond me. I’m so mad I could spit. God damn ABC. God damn them. America deserves what it’s getting if this is the best can be done. ABC made us on the West Coast wait until 8 o’clock to watch this monkey show? George and Charlie, go to hell! Hillary and Barack, too (for not telling ABC to go to hell). What an insult!

  • Ed, that confirmed my choice to not torment myself. Sorry you and the American people were subjected to what brings in the cashola for the corporate media. Paris and Britts do politics…no diff at all…and we all lose.

    I continue to weep for my country.

  • Will Bunch at Philly.com sums up my feelings about tonight’s nightmare “debate” nicely:

    “Dear Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos,…you embarassed yourselves.”

    Do yourselves a favor and read the entire letter.

  • regarding tonight’s debate
    Who won depends on who you support.
    So far we have done a miserable job of being inclusive, clear headed and unbiased.
    The blogosphere failed horrendously here. Huffpo, Kos and TMP among others alienated nearly half the democratic base! There may be troll attracting HRC sites, but I haven’t encountered them.
    Credibility is at stake. The damage may be irreparable.
    “I have met the enemy and he is us.”

  • Gotta love it – shillary admits to being a fraud and liar in the debates:

    Q Senator, I was in your court until a couple of weeks ago. How do you reconcile the campaign of credibility that you have when you’ve made those comments about what happened getting off the plane in Bosnia, which totally misrepresented what really happened on that day? You really lost my vote. And what can you tell me to get that vote back?

    SENATOR CLINTON: Well, Tom, I can tell you that I may be a lot of things, but I’m not dumb. And I wrote about going to Bosnia in my book in 2004. I laid it all out there. And you’re right. On a couple of occasions in the last weeks I just said some things that weren’t in keeping with what I knew to be the case and what I had written about in my book. And, you know, I’m embarrassed by it. I have apologized for it. I’ve said it was a mistake. And it is, I hope, something that you can look over, because clearly I am proud that I went to Bosnia. It was a war zone.

    How can anyone support her – is she just stoooooooooopid or is she really just another dishonest politician that thinks the American people are complete idiots (I know – track record here isn’t too good).

    This country was never meant to be a bush-clinton-bush-clinton dynasty. Please PA, end this charade NOW!

  • 25.
    On April 16th, 2008 at 11:42 pm, MsJoanne said:
    Pot. Meet kettle.

    It is more like: Too much pot, acting like a delusional kettle.

  • I agree that the FISA legislation recently passed by the House is better than the FISA legislation passed by the Senate a month earlier, but the House version of FISA revision includes a provision for a national Commission to investigate the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program. This is a letter I sent via e-mail to Senator Patrick Leahy (who is from my home State, and who has exhibited courage by resisting attempts to eviscerate FISA) on April 11, 2008:

    In my last e-mail, I sent you a commentary I wrote titled “The Fog of FISA”, which was printed on OpEdNews.com on March 27, 2008, and I prefaced this commentary with a note explaining that many of your colleagues (even those that agree with you) make statements which indicate that they are as confused by FISA as the general public is. My commentary was lengthy, and I can understand that you do not have time to read all the communications that are sent to you by constituents, and I also understand that you may disagree with some of the opinions I expressed, but I would prefer no response to a non-response.

    I am familiar with your own statements regarding FISA, and I usually agree with your opinions on this issue, but a national Commission to investigate the Terrorist Surveillance Program is an extremely bad idea. We already have a national Commission to investigate the Terrorist Surveillance Program, and this national Commission is known as Congress. If Congress is not able to exercise this responsibility, an independent Special Prosecutor would be far more effective than a national Commission as a tool to investigate illegal activity associated with the Terrorist Surveillance Program.

    The last national Commission we had was the 9/11 Commission, and the 9/11 Commission represented a poor choice of personnel that used extremely flawed procedures to produce a report which ignored significant information. Conspiracy theorists have made many wild claims that are not even internally consistent, but the reason these theories gain traction with the public is that the 9/11 Commission did not deal with these issues directly and with transparency. We do not need a repeat of that sorry methodology.

  • Supreme Court.
    I do not support the death penalty for a variety of reasons.
    That being said, I do not understand the issue of people we put to death, supposedly societies worst, suffering before they die. The theory seems to be “They have done things so bad we have decided to end their life, yet it would be cruel if they were to suffer the last few minutes of the very life we deem so vile, that we are ending it.”

    The Supreme Courts decision seemed inevitable.

  • The important question is: did the Al Qaeda operative remember the cover sheet for his TPS report?

    • Comments are closed.