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Saturday, February 28, 2004
And remember, he's only doing it For Your Protection:Attorney General John Ashcroft is demanding records of abortions performed on hundreds of women at six Planned Parenthood affiliates across the country, ABCNEWS has learned.
In a motion for discovery filed Wednesday against Planned Parenthood Federation of America -- and subpoenas filed the same time against Planned Parenthood affiliates in San Diego, Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, D.C., western Pennsylvania and the Kansas/mid-Missouri region -- Ashcroft is demanding medical records of abortions performed in the last year, some on fetuses aborted early in in the second trimester. He says he needs the records for the suit against the banning of late term abortions that opponents call "partial-birth", but then why does he need *all* of those records? Intimidation, anyone?
posted by jeev |
4:10 PM |
 
Friday, February 27, 2004
More on briefing Dubya:The most remarkable thing is the form of the "memo" that is being drafted for Bush: it is a seven-page Powerpoint presentation plus nine pages of charts. 659 text words total. That's one text word for every ten billion dollars that is going to be spent on Social Security over the next decade, and one word for every hundred billion dollars that is going to be spent on Social Security over the next half century. Hell is briefing someone like George W. Bush on a complicated issue like Social Security reform. From Brad DeLong.
posted by jeev |
8:08 PM |
There's still no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody tell Dubya:During the 2000 campaign, candidate George W. Bush seemed particularly confident about his ability to pay for Social Security reform. Despite independent estimates that creating the kind of "voluntarily" private accounts he envisioned could cost more than $1 trillion, Bush consistently took the position that he could reform Social Security for free, without undermining promises to baby boomers anticipating retirement over the next several decades.
Why was Bush so sure of himself? According to documents unearthed yesterday from the trove of 19,000 files given to me by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, and a bit of additional probing, candidate Bush and later President Bush believed in the "Lindsey Plan." These documents show us what the president thought about Social Security reform at the only moment over the past three year--the fall of 200--when he was fully engaged with this issue.
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For the first nine months of the administration, this was called the "free-lunch" plan--a painless way to convert to a blended, private-accounts model. Inside of the Treasury Department and the Council of Economic Advisers, however, officials were befuddled by it. Lindsey seemed to have never called upon analysts inside the Social Security Administration to run the traps on his idea. Treasury and CEA did--and the numbers didn't even come close to working out. But that didn't stop Lindsey, or the president, from believing in and promoting the "free-lunch" plan. Ron Suskind in Slate.
posted by jeev |
7:52 PM |
More fabulous pictures of the weddings, and a chance to help out - the photo below of rose petals and rice on City Hall steps has been made into a lovely poster, and all the profits will go to DontAmend, an organization devoted to stopping legal challenges to these wonderful events.
And from an account of the event, by the straight, about-to-be-married guy who took the photographs: Suddenly all my wedding planning stress was gone. And in its place was this feeling of gratitude. I'm so lucky to have found Heather. And so lucky that I can marry her without anyone standing in my way -- not our family, not the state, not the president.
Everyone should be as lucky as me. Everyone can be. And it's starting right here in San Francisco.
It's funny, but watching a few hundred same-sex marriages really reminded me of why I wanted to get married in the first place.
Heather and I have a date and we have a location. We have a list and a save-the-date card printed. We have appointments with caterers and a block of hotel rooms booked. Those are all details, and they matter, but they're not what weddings are about.
We have each other, and everything is going to be okay.
posted by jeev |
10:33 AM |
Seems like, uh, something was being bagged:Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was the guest of a Kansas law school two years ago and went pheasant hunting on a trip arranged by the school's dean, all within weeks of hearing two cases in which the dean was a lead attorney.
The cases involved issues of public policy important to Kansas officials. Accompanying Scalia on the November 2001 hunting trip were the Kansas governor and recently retired state Senate president, who flew with Scalia to the hunting camp aboard a state plane.
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In a statement, Scalia wrote: "I do not think that spending time at a law school in which the counsel in pending cases was the dean could reasonably cause my impartiality to be questioned. Now where have we heard *that* before?
posted by jeev |
8:57 AM |
Thursday, February 26, 2004
The uber-nimrod, Richard Perle, is officially out of government:Richard Perle, a lightning rod for critics of the Bush administration's national security policies, informed Rumsfeld more than two weeks ago he was quitting the Defense Policy Board. He confirmed the decision in a letter to the defense chief last Wednesday. This doesn't, of course, mean that Rummy is going to stop believing everything Perle ever said.
posted by jeev |
9:03 PM |
Democratic Underground is predicting that the anti-gay marriage amendment is already dead, based on 34 reported nay positions in the Senate.
posted by jeev |
7:45 PM |
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
I believe I've mentioned before how much I love The Onion:BOSTON--Justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled 5-2 Monday in favor of full, equal, and mandatory gay marriages for all citizens. The order nullifies all pre-existing heterosexual marriages and lays the groundwork for the 2.4 million compulsory same-sex marriages that will take place in the state by May 15.
"As we are all aware, it's simply not possible for gay marriage and heterosexual marriage to co-exist," Massachusetts Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall said. "Our ruling in November was just the first step toward creating an all-gay Massachusetts.
Marshall added: "Since the allowance of gay marriage undermines heterosexual unions, we decided to work a few steps ahead and strike down opposite-sex unions altogether."
posted by jeev |
6:46 PM |
Let's see, what are the priorities? Just say no to porking, but say yes, yes, yes to pork:George Bush's proposed 2005 budget cuts funding for veterans' healthcare and public housing. It freezes funding for after-school programs and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families grants. It provides less than one-sixth of the increase needed to close the budget shortfall in the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, which helps low-income HIV patients access medical care and lifesaving drugs. It cuts state Medicaid funding by $1.5 billion.
Yet when it comes to abstinence education, money seems to be no object. Bush's budget recommends $270 million for programs that try to dissuade teenagers from having sex, double the amount spent last year. Much of that money would be given in grants to Christian organizations such as Youth for Christ and to anti-abortion groups operating so-called crisis pregnancy centers, outfits that masquerade as women's health clinics but deliver a strongly anti-abortion message and often medically inaccurate information. It would pay for school programs that teach kids that premarital sex leads to psychological maladies and that sex with condoms is a kind of viral Russian roulette.
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For health and social service experts, however, that presents one basic problem: There is no scientific evidence that abstinence-only programs work. Some studies are inconclusive; others find, unambiguously, that the programs don't work. Yet there's one way in which they're clearly effective -- as a massive patronage system for the religious right. Bill Smith, legislative director for the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, or SIECUS, a nonprofit research and lobbying group that advocates comprehensive sex education, calls abstinence-only grants "political pork." From Salon.
posted by jeev |
2:21 PM |
This is Good News? David Denby on The Passion:What is most depressing about "The Passion" is the thought that people will take their children to see it. Jesus said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me," not "Let the little children watch me suffer." How will parents deal with the pain, terror, and anger that children will doubtless feel as they watch a man flayed and pierced until dead? The despair of the movie is hard to shrug off, and Gibson's timing couldn't be more unfortunate: another dose of death-haunted religious fanaticism is the last thing we need. There's a whole sub-genre of action film where a key element is the torturing of the hero, to the point of masochistic elation. Think of the various Rambos here. Clearly Gibson believes this to be more or less the essential truth of the Gospels.
posted by jeev |
12:45 PM |
Monday, February 23, 2004
Gibson's Passion possibly not completely accurate? You think?:Many Christians see the film as bringing them closer to their religion. Evangelical preacher Billy Graham called the film "a lifetime of sermons in one movie."
Gibson, a traditionalist Catholic, was so determined to make the $25 million film which he funded himself that he had his characters speak in Latin and Aramaic.
Experts say this was his first mistake as Greek was the language spoken in Jerusalem during Jesus's time, along with Aramaic and some Hebrew spoken by Jews.
"Jesus talking to (Pontius) Pilate and Pilate to Jesus in Latin!" exclaimed John Dominic Crossan, a professor of religious studies at the Chicago-based Roman Catholic De Paul University. "I mean in your dreams. It would have been Greek."
Latin was reserved for official decrees or used by the elite. Most Roman centurions in the Holy Land spoke Greek rather than Latin, historians and archaeologists told Reuters.
The mistakes, experts say, didn't stop with the wrong language, which Crossan -- who speaks Latin -- said was so badly pronounced in the film that it was almost incomprehensible. And there's *more*.
posted by jeev |
6:44 PM |
I see dead people? Ahnold has trouble discerning life from the plots of one of his movies:Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger turned up the rhetoric against San Francisco's move to allow same-sex marriages, saying on national TV Sunday that he fears outbreaks of serious civil unrest if the ceremonies continue at City Hall.
Schwarzenegger said on NBC's "Meet the Press'' that he fears worsening protests about the divisive issue and worries the situation could get out of hand if courts don't quickly stop the marriages, which are being performed in defiance of existing state law.
"All of a sudden, we see riots, we see protests, we see people clashing. The next thing we know, there is injured or there is dead people.
posted by jeev |
8:12 AM |
Sunday, February 22, 2004
The New Yorker has a big piece this week on Cheney and Halliburton, called "Contract Sports". The online edition features an interview with that article's author, Jane Mayer. Both the article and the interview are compelling reads.AMY DAVIDSON: Vice-President Cheney insists that he's broken all ties to Halliburton, his old company. Has he?
JANE MAYER: To crib from the previous Presidency, the answer depends on what your definition of "ties" is. Is there any evidence that Vice-President Cheney personally directed the government to give contracts to Halliburton? No. Is there any evidence that he personally has been enriched by those contracts? Not directly. But Cheney's insistence that he has no ties to the company is rather legalistic, and misleading. He still earns approximately a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year in deferred compensation from Halliburton. He also still holds some eighteen million dollars in stock options, although he has pledged this bounty to charity. But, beyond the immediate financial ties, there is the larger question of what, over time, he has done for the company, and what it has done for him. Cheney earned some forty-five million dollars from Halliburton during his five-year tenure there, from 1995 to 2000. And Cheney is, in many ways, the architect of the contract that gave the company its signal role with the U.S. military today.
When Cheney was Secretary of Defense, during the first Bush Administration, he oversaw a redesign of the way that corporate America services the military. Halliburton was paid $3.9 million to draw up a plan for the way a private company could provide military support to U.S. troops all over the world. Then, in the last months of that Administration, Halliburton was awarded the Army's contract to provide those very same services. The company's familiarity with the process, the experts I spoke to said, gave it the inside track on what has turned out to be billions of dollars of government business. Cheney is unlikely to have been involved in choosing Halliburton in any detailed way, but even his supporters acknowledge that he oversaw the shift to providing so much business to a single company. This ties him to the story today.
posted by jeev |
9:25 PM |
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