Mystery of The Missing Altmire Op-Ed SOLVED

This is gonna give you a chuckle. I promise.

This morning I wrote about this complaint found on the Op-Ed page of the Tribune-Review regarding a pair of opinion pieces written (one each) by Congressman Mike Doyle and Congressman Jason Altmire. Scaife's braintrust complained that the two were too similar. I wanted to (as I often do) check their work. Usually, when I check their work I find they've spun a few things - and I can only assume they do that hoping no one will check. But this time, I couldn't.

Why not?

As I wrote this morning, I could easily find Doyle's opinion piece (it's here), but I could not find Altmire's.

So I contacted his office today asked them about it. Where was the Congressman's opinion piece about the CFL lightbulbs? I couldn't find it anywhere, I told them. Is there anyway I could see a copy? I further asked.

They sent me the piece (see below) and told me that while they submitted it to The Trib and then The Trib rejected it for publication.

So before we get on with the piece itself, let's mull this over for a second. Altmire's opinion piece is submitted to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review for publication. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review rejects said opinion piece and then criticizes it in print sometime later. They're the only ones who have access to it and so they're the only ones who can assess whether it is, in fact, similar to the other opinion piece they claim it resembles. In short they're the only ones who could know whether they're telling the truth.

Until now, that is.

Remember, this is the braintrust's complaint about the two pieces:

The congressmen's offerings are so similar -- nearly word for word in spots -- that it has us highly suspicious that the two men regurgitated Democrat talking points for their op-ed submissions.

The two opinion pieces do cover similar ground - as well they should. They are talking about the same thing.

Both point out similar facts:

• Old style incandescent light bulbs waste 90% of their energy generating heat
• George Bush signed the original law in 2007
• New style incandescent light bulbs have been designed that meet the 2007 standard
• And so there is no "ban" on incandescent light bulbs - just inefficient ones
• Thomas Edison invented the light bulb

Altmire's op-ed is posted below, by the way. Do something the Trib doesn't want you to do - read it for yourself. Check my work.

Can someone show me the "nearly word for word in spots" similarities the braintrust is complaining about? Where are they? Apart from the obvious and banal congruencies ("Thomas Edison", "incandescent light bulb" and so on) I couldn't find any "nearly word for word" matches. Can you?

Think of it this way, if the two pieces were, in fact, so close that they ended each other's sentences, doncha think The Trib would be pointing them out to you sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase? They didn't. They couldn't. They're spinning this. Badly.

Anyway, here's Altmire's opinion piece the Trib (the one The Trib rejected then criticized in public):

When Thomas Edison first successfully tested a carbonized thread light bulb in 1879, it was a technology so revolutionary that the light bulb became the very symbol of innovation. Today, 132 years later, the image of a light bulb is still routinely used as an illustration of American ingenuity and scientific breakthrough. The technology that Edison pioneered, the incandescent light bulb, remains by far the most popular source of light in American households.

It is therefore not surprising that reports of a ban of the incandescent light bulb have caused a political firestorm and a public outcry. There have even been reports of organized efforts to hoard the remaining supply of the incandescent bulbs before the ban takes effect at the end of this year.

The topic has become especially popular on the political circuit, with members of Congress and presidential candidates making the “light bulb ban” part of their standard stump speech.

Adding to the public outrage is the fact that, as a result of the reported ban, consumers would be required to purchase and use expensive compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), some of which contain mercury and emit a lesser quality of light than standard incandescent bulbs.

The story goes that the government has banned the inexpensive bulbs produced by American companies and enjoyed by consumers for more than a century, and will now force consumers to use much more expensive, less illuminating lights that pose a significant health hazard, the compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). No wonder politicians are climbing all over themselves to defend the incandescent light bulb.

There is only one problem – none of it is true. The incandescent light bulb is not banned, nor will it be next year or thereafter. Consumers will continue to be free to buy the light bulb of their choice. American companies will continue to manufacture and market incandescent bulbs available to every American.

So, why the misconception about the so-called “ban”?

In 2007, President George W. Bush signed into law the Energy Independence and Security Act. One of the provisions of this bipartisan legislation was to establish energy efficiency standards for light bulbs. This was done primarily to reduce the strain and prevent overloads on our nation’s electrical grid, and to make energy more efficient, dependable and cost-effective for consumers.

Under the 2007 law, some household light bulbs are required to be approximately 28 percent more energy efficient. For the most commonly-used light bulbs, the phase-in occurs over a three-year period beginning in 2012. For example, by next year, a 100 watt incandescent bulb must emit the same amount of light using only 72 watts. The law does not specify what type of technology manufacturers may employ to achieve these standards, nor does it require consumers to purchase any specific type of light bulb.

Incandescent bulbs produce light by heating filament inside gas. This is nearly identical to the technology that existed in the initial Edison-inspired bulbs first made commercially available in the 19th century. These bulbs remain popular, but they are incredibly inefficient as a source of light. In fact, ninety percent of the energy produced by a standard incandescent bulb goes toward heat – only ten percent produces light. Of course, few consumers buy a household light bulb to use as a source of heat, so it makes sense that we should look for ways to make the bulbs more energy efficient than the bulbs Edison pioneered 132 years ago.

Some light bulb manufacturers have chosen to supplement their incandescent bulbs with other technologies, such as the CFL or the increasingly popular and potentially revolutionary light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs. Both technologies continue to evolve and will undoubtedly play a major role in America’s energy future, as will other technologies yet to be discovered. But what about the incandescent bulb?

As a result of the 2007 law, several large and small American companies, some of which have put down roots in western Pennsylvania, have developed energy efficient incandescent light bulbs that meet the new standards. Some of the new incandescent bulbs are already on the market, and many others will be available in time for the 2012 transition. These new bulbs have the same look and emit the same type of light as traditional incandescent bulbs, but they last much longer, offer substantial energy savings for the consumer and greatly reduce the burden to our nation’s electrical grid. So not only is the incandescent light bulb not banned, it has been improved and is now better than ever. Most important, it will still be made by American workers, for American consumers, for years to come.

Throughout our history, Americans have always risen to the challenges of the ever-changing global marketplace. Recently, American auto makers innovated and adapted to new fuel efficiency standards by producing fuel efficient cars that appeal to American consumers, resulting in General Motors surpassing Toyota this year as the world’s largest automaker.

Similarly, the quick transition to meet the new energy efficiency standards for light bulbs is yet another example of American ingenuity and innovation at its best. Without a doubt, others around the world are also researching and producing advanced light bulbs to compete with our American-made products. Just as Thomas Edison put America at the forefront of the development and manufacture of lighting technology in 1879, the American innovators of today continue to lead the way in the research and development of exciting new lighting technologies, like LEDs, as well as improving upon the popular technologies of the past, like the still-available incandescent light bulb.

Who knew?

Who knew that James and Rupert Murdoch dressed like Kennywood Twins?*


* Pittsburghese for couples who dress in matching outfits (so that they might find each other easily if separated at Kennywood Amusement Park).
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Revenue and the Debt Ceiling

As regards revenue, we don't have it! Via Think Progress:

As of July 13, 29 public companies had more cash on hand than the U.S. Treasury Department, according to the site Zero Hedge based on numbers from Capital IQ. It’s a stark reminder that if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling, the government won’t have nearly enough money to continue funding essential services and programs.

Regarding the debt ceiling:

Sabotaging the President By Sabotaging the Economy

Club For Growth To Republicans: Trigger A Default, Or Else!

[sigh]
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Not Sure What To Make Of This

From Sunday's Trib:

PENNED BY POLTERGEISTS? Democrat U.S. Reps. Mike Doyle of Forest Hills and Jason Altmire of McCandless should consider consulting a specialist in paranormal activity.

Their offices appear to have been invaded by ghost writers.

Both supposedly penned recent opinion pieces defending the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The controversial law effectively bans Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulb as we've known it in favor of supposedly more efficient but also more expensive and hazardous alternatives, namely the compact fluorescent light bulb.

The congressmen's offerings are so similar -- nearly word for word in spots -- that it has us highly suspicious that the two men regurgitated Democrat talking points for their op-ed submissions. We just thought we'd shed some light on the matter.

The only problem?

I can't find Congressman Altmire's op-ed defending Energy Independence and Security Act. I've googled:

• Atmire "Light bulb"
• Altmire "Energy Independence and Security Act"
• Altmire CFL

And couldn't find anything. Nothing. Nada. The null set. That doesn't mean it's not out there, of course. Just that I couldn't find it. It's a mystery. Usually the trails to the sources the braintrust uses are quite easy to follow; Heritage Foundation, AEI, Washington Times and so on. But none of my usual tricks worked this time. And I can't imagine even the Trib making something like this up.

If you can find it, please drop me an email with the link. I want to see how similar they are. Or if you can explain what the Tribune-Review is doing here, editorializing on something no one else can see, drop me an email on that, too.

That being said, we'll talk about CFLs, Thomas Edison, and Mike Doyle's easily found opinion piece for a bit. Here's the trib:

Both supposedly penned recent opinion pieces defending the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The controversial law effectively bans Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulb as we've known it in favor of supposedly more efficient but also more expensive and hazardous alternatives, namely the compact fluorescent light bulb.

They make three points here:

• The CFL bulb's efficiency is questioned
• The CFL bulb is more expensive
• The CFL bulb is more hazardous

The Michigan DEQ has a page up describing the savings achieved by switching from an incandescent to a CFL. Over the course of the life of the CFL bulb the savings are substantial. That takes care of bullets one and two. What about the third? How hazardous is the CFL bulb?

Luckily, there's been work on that, too. From a page called Three CFL Myths Busted:

Myth: Compact fluorescent bulbs are a major safety hazard because they contain mercury.

Fact: Yes, it's true that CFLs contain tiny amounts of mercury, and if a bulb breaks you will be exposed to the neurotoxin. But, just how dangerous is a broken bulb? Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory set out to answer that question. They compared how much exposure you'd get from breathing in the amount of mercury released from a broken CFL bulb to how much mercury you'd take in from eating Albacore tuna.

If you do a common sense job of cleaning up (open the windows, clean up, and remove the debris), then your mercury exposure would be the equivalent of taking a tiny nibble of tuna, according to Francis Rubinstein, a staff scientist at Berkeley Lab. What if you did the worst job possible, say closed all the doors and smashed the bulb with a hammer? It's still no big deal, says Rubinstein, who points out that it would be the equivalent of eating one can of tuna.

Hmm - at worst it's the mercury equivalent of eating one can of tuna? Only ONE CAN? AND it saves money?

We already know The Trib's not really interested in facts that conflict with their politics, but I would have thought that the Trib would be in favor of saving money.

I guess not.

Again, if you have any info as to the whereabouts of the Altmire editorial please drop me an email. I'd love to see it.

More On Herman Cain's Religious Tolerance

GOP hopeful Herman Cain had some interesting things to say about Church State matters this weekend.

Take a look:


The part I like best is that he opens with:

Our Constitution guarantees separation of church and state.

And then uses that to assert that a community has the right to ban a mosque's construction in that community.

It's a stunning piece of logic, to be sure.

As far as I can tell, it's based on the idea as Cain ably states, that Islam is both a set of laws and a religion. Since it's both and since the Constitution (and it's oh-so refreshing to hear a conservative - even a nutty one like Cain - say this) guarantees separation of Church and State, any "religion" that's looking to impose itself onto the law can be banned.

He's just wrong when he says that non-Islamic religions don't have a set of rules or are otherwise not looking to impose their rules onto the law.

So when Archbishop Dolan says that New York's Gay Marriage Bill is an "Ominous Threat" he's not looking to impose Catholic Church doctrine onto the people of the Empire State.

So when the Southern Baptist Convention, in 1984, called for its members to push for legislation that agreed with their position of abortion, it wasn't looking to impose its faith upon the law.

Freedom of Religion for me but not for thee. That's the GOP.

Hey, I rhymed. Thrice - or was that twice? Anyway, how nice.

ACORN: The Zombie Threat!

Even disbanded, ACORN scares the right wing if only by virtue of one of today's Op-Eds at The Trib.

But let me get the necessaries out of the way first.

The jeremiad was penned by Thomas Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. Judicial Watch, in turn, is heavily, heavily HEH-VILLE-LEE funded by Trib owner and publisher, Richard Mellon Scaife. According to Media Matters, the Scaife controlled Carthage and Sarah Scaife foundations granted $8.74 million dollars between 1997 and 2009.

Far more than any other foundation. In fact, if my math and the numbers are correct, Scaife's given about 20 times more than all the other foundations combined.

And of course there's no mention of this tremendous financial support given to Judicial Watch by Richard Mellon Scaife in the op-ed page that Richard Mellon Scaife owns.

Now onto the jeremiad itself.

Fitton's opening:

ACORN employees have been nailed time and time again for fraudulently registering voters -- including Mickey Mouse and the Dallas Cowboys -- allegedly for the purpose of sweeping Democrats into office.

They were caught on tape advising undercover reporters on how to evade tax, immigration and child prostitution laws.

Ah, registration fraud and the James O'Keefe edited tapes.

Good opening.

Let's talk about the registration fraud. Some credit (though not much) to Fitton for inserting the word "registration" rather than going with the usual scary "voter fraud". It must be noted, however, that voter fraud is simply implied by the last phrase of that paragraph - "allegedly for the purpose of sweeping Democrats into office."

The fraud was in the registration - not the voting. Fraudulently registering "Mickey Mouse" in an effort to be seen as doing a good job in no way leads to any more votes for anyone. And that's what happened. According to a CRS report done at the request of the then-chairman of teh House Judiciary Committee, Representative John Conyers:

Effect of alleged false voter registrations by ACORN workers. You asked CRS to research improper voter registrations that resulted in people being placed on the voting rolls and attempting to vote improperly at the polls. As discussed, a NEXIS search of the ALL NEWS file did not identify any reported instances of individuals who were improperly registered by ACORN attempting to vote at the polls.

Not that Fitton and the Scaife-funded Judicial watch would bother to tell you that, of course.

And then there's James O'Keefe and his tapes. From New York Post March 2, 2010:

The video that unleashed a firestorm of criticism on the activist group ACORN was a "heavily edited" splice job that only made it appear as though the organization's workers were advising a pimp and prostitute on how to get a mortgage, sources said yesterday.

The findings by the Brooklyn DA, following a 5½-month probe into the video, secretly recorded by conservative provocateurs James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, means that no charges will be filed.

Many of the seemingly crime-encouraging answers were taken out of context so as to appear more sinister, sources said.

And from the Office of Attorney General of the State of California.

Videotapes secretly recorded last summer and severely edited by O'Keefe seemed to show ACORN employees encouraging a "pimp" (O'Keefe) and his "prostitute," actually a Florida college student named Hannah Giles, in conversations involving prostitution by underage girls, human trafficking and cheating on taxes. Those videos created a media sensation.

Evidence obtained by Brown tells a somewhat different story, however, as reflected in three videotapes made at ACORN locations in California. One ACORN worker in San Diego called the cops. Another ACORN worker in San Bernardino caught on to the scheme and played along with it, claiming among other things that she had murdered her abusive husband. Her two former husbands are alive and well, the Attorney General's report noted. At the beginning and end of the Internet videos, O'Keefe was dressed as a 1970s Superfly pimp, but in his actual taped sessions with ACORN workers, he was dressed in a shirt and tie, presented himself as a law student, and said he planned to use the prostitution proceeds to run for Congress. He never claimed he was a pimp.

"The evidence illustrates," Brown said, "that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality. Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor."

The original storm of publicity created by O'Keefe's videotapes was instrumental in ACORN's subsequent denunciation in Congress, a sudden tourniquet on its funding, and the organization's eventual collapse.

Again, not that Fitton would tell you any of this stuff.

Great opening, Tommy.

But let's get to what Tommy Fitton calls "controversial and ridiculous". In October, 2009 President Obama signed the "Defund ACORN Act" and it:

...effectively prohibited the federal government from funding "ACORN and any ACORN-related affiliate."

Following a lawsuit filed by ACORN challenging the law -- which passed both branches of Congress by wide margins -- the federal courts in New York upheld the constitutionality of the funding ban on Aug. 13, 2010. And the Supreme Court last month refused to hear ACORN's appeal.

The problem:

On March 1, Obama's Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced a $79,819 federal grant to ACORN-spinoff ACHOA to "educate the public and housing providers about their rights and obligations under federal, state, and local fair housing laws."

The advisory opinion by the GAO stating that ACORN isn't ACHOA is what's got Fitton in a snit. That's what he called "controversial and ridiculous."

Here's the ruling from the GAO by the way. Feel free to do something I don't think Fitton wants you to do - read it yourself.

Once you did, you'll see what the GAO based its opinion on. You know - the facts. Facts like:

The record does not show AHCOA to be directly or indirectly under the control of ACORN. AHCOA is not related to ACORN by shareholdings. Because AHCOA is organized as a nonstock corporation, ACORN cannot own shares in AHCOA. AHCOA Amended Articles of Incorporation, at 2. AHCOA also does not own any shares of ACORN.

And that:

• Neither ACORN nor any other organization has the authority to control the makeup of the AHCOA Board of Directors.
• No member of the AHCOA Board is also a member of the ACORN Board.
• While AHCOA and ACORN previously occupied offices in the same building, the two corporations no longer share the same facility.
• No employee of AHCOA is also an employee of ACORN.

There's also good stuff in there about how ACHOA is neither an affiliate or a subsidiary organization.

And did I mention that ACORN no longer exists? Thomas Fitton never actually gets around to telling you that, either.

All this over $79,819. This is another non-story the right wing noise machine is hoping to whip into a scandal.

By the way, last year alone, the Sarah Scaife Foundation gave $175,000 to Judicial Watch. Something to chew on.

PodCamp 6

The time and place have been set for PodCamp Pittsburgh this year:

This year’s PodCamp will be the weekend of September 17 & 18. We will have our kick-off Friday night mixer at Alpha Lab on September 16, with the PodCamp keynote address opening the following morning.

And, while we’re making that announcement, we would also like to formally announce this year’s venue. We have finalized arrangements with Point Park University to host this year’s event. We are very excited about the opportunity to work with Point Park this year, and look forward to another successful PodCamp event.

I'll be there. My contribution to the event will be a discussion with Congressman Mike Doyle on the impact social media (blogs, twitter, facebook) has had on how the Congress does its job.

It should be a informative session.

Be there!

Fox - A Trusted Name In News

Only not so much.

Yesterday Fox "News" viewers saw this:


Media Matters has a description:

Fox News host Eric Bolling pulled a Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday, asserting that there were no terrorist attacks on "American soil" during President Bush's term in office.

Giuliani famously made a similar assertion in early 2010, saying, "we had no domestic attacks under Bush." Of course, the 9/11 attacks happened under Bush.

Bolling's misstatement came during a discussion on the network's Glenn Beck replacement show, "The Five." He and a panel—which included former Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino—were arguing about whether Bush had been guilty of "fear-mongering" during his tenure. Panelist Bob Beckel said that the former president had used fear-mongering around the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. As he attempted to continue his point, Bolling cut him off and started to move on to the next segment.

"America was certainly safe between 2000 and 2008," he said. "I don't remember any attacks on American soil during that period of time." Nobody on the panel challenged this comment.

Today, Bolling tried to correct himself:

Yesterday I misspoke when saying there were no U.S. terror attacks during the Bush years. Obviously, I meant in the aftermath of 9/11. But that's when the radical liberal left pounced on us and me. Media Matters posted my error, saying I forgot about 9/11. No, I haven't forgotten. You see, I happened to be standing there watching in true terror as radical Islamists slammed planes into the towers that morning. I remember the towers collapsing, killing 3,000, including 16 of my close friends. And I really remember trying to comfort the kids of my friends at their memorial services. I'll never forget 9/11. But thank you liberals for reminding me how petty you can be.

Only he's still wrong. As Mediamatters dutifully points out:

2001 Anthrax Attacks. A March 2004 State Department report on "Significant Terrorist Incidents, 1961-2003" quotes then-Attorney General John Ashcroft saying of the letters containing anthrax mailed to various targets: "When people send anthrax through the mail to hurt people and invoke terror, it's a terrorist act." Five people were killed as a result of those letters in the autumn of 2001.

2002 Attack Against El Al Ticket Counter At LAX. In July 2002, Hesham Mohamed Hadayet opened fire at an El Al Airlines ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport killing two people and wounding four others before being shot dead. A 2004 Justice Department report stated that Hadayet's case had been "officially designated as an act of international terrorism."

2002 DC-Area Sniper. The state of Virginia indicted Washington, D.C.-area sniper John Allen Muhammad -- along with his accomplice, a minor at the time -- on terrorism charges for one of the murders he committed during a three-week shooting spree across Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Muhammad was convicted, sentenced to death, and subsequently executed for the crime.

2006 UNC SUV Attack. In March 2006, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill graduate Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar drove an SUV into an area of campus, striking nine pedestrians. According to reports, Taheri-azar said he acted because he wanted to "avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world." Taheri-azar also reportedly stated in a letter: "I was aiming to follow in the footsteps of one of my role models, Mohammad Atta, one of the 9/11/01 hijackers, who obtained a doctorate degree."

Fox News - a trusted name in news, huh?

Bachmann: Obama has a lot of "choot-spa"

Yiddish Fail LOL Alert!

Presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann tries to say that President Obama has a lot of "chutzpah" with predictable results. (Apparently while a friend of Israel, she doesn't have any Jewish friends.)


(h/t to Think Progress)
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More of ALEC Exposed

I think we'll be spending some quality time in the near future looking deeper at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

We've written about ALEC before, but for those who don't know what ALEC is, according to this post at crooksandliars it's:

...the high-level overview. ALEC is the acronym for American Legislative Exchange Council, a secret right-wing consortium created to write boilerplate legislation for states to use to advance the right-wing agenda. Some of ALEC's handiwork can be seen in Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Florida, to name a few.

And it's a good possibility we're seeing it's handy work here in Pennsylvania with Representative Daryl Metcalfe's Voter ID law.

The bad news is that so little about ALEC has been known. But that's changing. From John Nichols at The Nation:

The details of ALEC’s model bills have been available only to the group’s 2,000 legislative and 300 corporate members. But thanks to a leak to Aliya Rahman, an Ohio-based activist who helped organize protests at ALEC’s Spring Task Force meeting in Cincinnati, The Nation has obtained more than 800 documents representing decades of model legislation. Teaming up with the Center for Media and Democracy, The Nation asked policy experts to analyze this never-before-seen archive.

Here's ALECExposed.

We've already mentioned how Scaife money was involved in the formation of ALEC and how Richard Mellon Scaife continues to shuttle money from the foundations he controls to ALEC.

So whether it's legislation regarding Worker Rights or Voter Rights or Taxes or any number of other pieces of right wing legislation oozing through Harrisburg, we'll be checking to see if there's an analogous piece of ALEC legislation supporting it.

Feel free to peruse the archive yourself. I'm guessing that that's the last thing our ALEC legislators want.

Isn't that right, Daryl?

As If We Needed More Convincing

From the Atlantic Wire:

One of the most vocal human rights groups in the U.S. is calling on foreign governments to prosecute President George W. Bush and his former cabinet for war crimes, given that the Obama administration has avoided the issue. In a report published today, New York-based Human Rights Watch says Bush, former vice president Dick Cheney, former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former CIA director George Tenet could be prosecuted under the 1996 War Crimes Act, among other laws. "There is enough strong evidence from the information made public over the past five years to not only suggest these officials authorized and oversaw widespread and serious violations of US and international law, but that they failed to act to stop mistreatment, or punish those responsible after they became aware of serious abuses," read the report. It accused the Bush administration of approving waterboarding, authorizing the CIA's detention program and carrying out illegal abductions involving torture, saying an investigation is necessary "if the US hopes to wipe away the stain of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo and reaffirm the primacy of the rule of law." The author of the report, Reed Brody, says he's calling on an investigation now because "[i]t's become abundantly clear that there is no longer any movement on the part of the Obama administration to live up to its responsibilities to investigate these cases." As the BBC notes, President Bush has "defended some of the techniques, saying they prevented attacks and saved lives." [emphasis added]

I realize that President Obama has a great deal to deal with right now, what with the GOP holding the economy hostage in order to guarantee their millionaire and billionaire base pay as little tax as possible, but war crimes are war crimes.

And war crimes were committed. Failing to prosecute (or at least investigate) them is covering them up. Obama is letting Bush get away with torture. And that's indefensible.

Here's the report.

From the Summary:

For example, the Bush administration authorized coercive interrogation practices by the CIA and the military that amounted to torture, and instituted an illegal secret CIA detention program in which detainees were held in undisclosed locations without notifying their families, allowing access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, or providing for oversight of their treatment. Detainees were also unlawfully rendered (transferred) to countries such as Syria, Egypt, and Jordan, where they were likely to be tortured. Indeed, many were, including Canadian national Maher Arar who described repeated beatings with cables and electrical cords during the 10 months he was held in Syria, where the US sent him in 2002. Evidence suggests that torture in such cases was not a regrettable consequence of rendition; it may have been the purpose.

At the same time, politically appointed administration lawyers drafted legal memoranda that sought to provide legal cover for administration policies on detention and interrogation.

The report gives a handy outline of the US laws violated. From the section titled Individual Criminal Responsibility:

The acts and abuses discussed in this report violate various provisions of US federal law, including the Crimes and Criminal Procedure Statute, Chapter 18 of the US Code (U.S.C.), which prohibits: torture (section 2340A(a)); assault (section 113); sexual abuse (sections 2241-2246); kidnapping (section 1201); homicide (sections 1111-1112 and section 2332); acts against rights (for example, sections 241-242, prohibiting conspiracies to deprive persons of their legal rights); war crimes (section 2441); conspiracy and solicitation of violent crimes (sections 371 and 373); and conspiracy to commit torture (section 2340A(c)).

The War Crimes Act of 1996 provides criminal punishment for whomever, inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, if either the perpetrator or the victim is a member of the US Armed Forces or a national of the United States. A “war crime” is defined as any “grave breach” of the 1949 Geneva Conventions or acts that violate Common Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions. “Grave breaches” include “willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment” of prisoners of war and of civilians qualified as “protected persons.” Common Article 3 prohibits murder, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture, and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”

In a section titled "Duty to Investigate and Provide Redress" we read:

Under international law, states are obligated to investigate credible allegations of war crimes and serious violations of human rights committed by their nationals and members of their armed forces, or over which they have jurisdiction, and appropriately prosecute those responsible.

War crimes are serious violations of international humanitarian law committed willfully—that is, deliberately or recklessly—and give rise to individual criminal responsibility. Individuals may be held criminally responsible for directly committing war crimes or for war crimes committed pursuant to their orders. They may also be held criminally liable for attempting to commit war crimes, as well as planning, instigating, assisting, facilitating, and aiding or abetting them.

The US also has a duty to investigate serious violations of international human rights law and punish the perpetrators. As a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the US has an obligation to ensure that any person whose rights are violated “shall have an effective remedy” when the violation has been committed by government officials or agents. Those seeking a remedy shall have this right determined by competent judicial, administrative, or legislative authorities. And when granted, these remedies shall be enforced by competent authorities.

But if investigations/prosecutions won't be happening here in the land of the brave, home of the free, perhaps they can occur else where.

From the section on Foreign State Proceedings:

The US failure to conduct criminal investigations into the role and responsibility of high-ranking civilian and military officials for alleged crimes against detainees has opened the door for national judicial systems in foreign states to pursue investigations and, if warranted, prosecutions under the doctrines of “universal jurisdiction” and “passive personality” jurisdiction.

Among my many disappointments with the Obama administration, this has to be the disappoint-iest.

Disappointments based on policy or political realities are one thing, but letting someone get away with a war crime is something completely different.

Prosecute the war crimes. It's the only right thing to do.

New GOP Logo

In light of recent events, we suggest that the Grand Old Party replace their current logo:



with something far more relevant:


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I Think I Hear ALEC Knocking At My Door

From In These Times:

On February 25, 2011, Florida State Representative Chris Dorworth (R-Lake Mary) introduced HB 1021. The bill sought to curtail the political power of unions by prohibiting public employers from deducting any amount from an employee’s pay for use by an employee organization (i.e., union dues) or for any political activity (i.e., the portion of union dues used for lobbying or for supporting candidates for office).

And:

Given the similarities between HB 1021 and a rash of like-minded bills in states across the country, including Wisconsin, on March 30 a public records request was sent to Dorworth’s office seeking copies of all documents pertaining to the writing of HB 1021, including copies of any pieces of model legislation the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) may have provided.

And finally:

Dorworth’s office delivered 87 pages of documents, mostly bill drafts and emails, detailing the evolution of what was to become HB 1021. Buried at the bottom of the stack was an 11-page bundle of neatly typed material, labeled “Paycheck Protection,” which consisted of three pieces of model legislation, with the words “Copyright, ALEC” at the end of each.

The ALEC "Paycheck Protection" documents can be found here.I get ahead of myself.

When I wrote about ALEC in mid-June, I ended the blog post with a set of questions, the first one being:

I wonder how much ALEC legislation has oozed into Harrisburg?

Given all of the above, I have to wonder about State Senator John Eichelberger's Public Workers Paycheck Protection Act.

Eichelberger's conservative bona fides are set. He's proposed an amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman and has already insulted the commonwealth's LGBT community.

So I gotta wonder how much of Eichelberger's legislation has been enhanced by the Scaife and Koch funded secret society?

More On Bob Vander Plaatz's Pledge

There's been an update or two to The Iowa Pledge I wrote about on the 8th.

For those who don't know, a conservative group from Iowa called The Family Leader issued this "pledge" for all GOP candidates (and their supporters) to deal with. At the time of my writing that blog post, only Michele Bachmann had signed it.

And now there's two:

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum was initially “taken aback” by a pro-marriage pledge that asks presidential candidates to promise personal fidelity to their spouses, but said he ultimately decided to sign it.

“When I first read it, I was taken aback by it. I can't argue that I wasn't,” the former Pennsylvania senator said in an interview airing Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“But I understand why they're saying it, because it does undermine people's respect for the institution, respect for the people governing this country. If you can't be faithful to the people that you're closest to, then how can we count on you to be faithful to those of us who you represent?”

There was some other stuff in there, too, that Rick's pledged to support:

Other provisions in the pledge include promises to only appoint conservative judges, to remove anti-traditional marriage provisions in the tax code and opposition to any constitutional redefinition of marriage.

And some stuff he doesn't have to.

For instance when he signed the pledge, there was this language in it:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an AfricanAmerican baby born after the election of the USA‟s first African-American President.

Wasn't slavery great?? It kept African-American families together!

Until someone was sold, of course. Keeping families together is one thing, but property rights are property rights. And as Ron Paul said (in another context, of course) private business owners have an absolute right to decide what to do with their own property.

But I digress.

Luckily for Rick and Michele, there's been some changes to the pledge:

Responding to a growing controversy, an Iowa-based conservative group has removed a passage in a marriage pact signed by two GOP presidential candidates that suggested black families were in better shape during slavery.

“After careful deliberation and wise insight and input from valued colleagues we deeply respect, we agree that the statement referencing children born into slavery can be misconstrued, and such misconstruction can detract from the core message of the Marriage Vow: that ALL of us must work to strengthen and support families and marriages between one woman and one man," said Bob Vander Plaats, head of The Family Leader.

"We sincerely apologize for any negative feelings this has caused, and have removed the language from the vow, " added Vander Plaats, who is known as a king maker in Iowa.

The campaigns have done the CYA dance:

Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum signed the two-page document entitled "The Marriage Vow - A Declaration of Dependence Upon Marriage and Family," on Thursday, but their campaigns emphasized that the "candidate vow" portion of the pledge that they put their stamps of approval on didn't mention slavery. Instead, it condemned gay marriage, abortion, infidelity and pornography.

Here's some meat from the pledge that's still in force. In that section of the pledge that outlines why marriage is in such deep trouble in Amurika, there's this:

Social protections, especially for women and children, have been evaporating as we have collectively “debased the currency” of marriage. This debasement continues as a function of adultery; “quickie divorce;” physical and verbal spousal abuse; non committal co-habitation; exemplary infidelity and “unwed cheating” among celebrities, sports figures and politicians; anti-scientific bias which holds, in complete absence of empirical proof, that non-heterosexual inclinations are genetically determined, irresistible and akin to innate traits like race, gender and eye color; as well as anti-scientific bias which holds, against all empirical evidence, that homosexual behavior in particular, and sexual promiscuity in general, optimizes individual or public health.

I am not sure about the "absence of all empirical proof" part, but let's for the sake of argument assume it's absolutely 100% correct (which it isn't, but let's just go with this for a second) and being gay is a choice, that it's not (as they say) hardwired into the brain.

What possible difference would that make?

For any given person, their sexuality is either a choice or it isn't. If it isn't, then no civilized society should condemn that person for merely being what they were born to be. If it's a choice then no civilized society should condemn that person for exercising his or her free will.

There's one republican who disagrees with the pledge:

Republican presidential candidate Gary Johnson thinks the pledge that an Iowa Christian conservative group is circulating is offensive because it condemn gays, single parents, divorcees, Muslims, women who choose to have abortions “and everyone else who doesn’t fit in a Norman Rockwell painting.”

And:

This ‘pledge’ is nothing short of a promise to discriminate against everyone who makes a personal choice that doesn’t fit into a particular definition of ‘virtue’.

Proof that not all conservatives got teh crazie.

Good to know.

Scenes From The (New) GOP

First there's the House Budget guy:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), a leading advocate of shrinking entitlement spending and the architect of the plan to privatize Medicare, spent Wednesday evening sipping $350 wine with two like-minded conservative economists at the swanky Capitol Hill eatery Bistro Bis.

More on Ryan from TPM:

Susan Feinberg, an associate business professor at Rutgers, was at Bistro Bis celebrating her birthday with her husband that night. When she saw the label on the bottle of Jayer-Gilles 2004 Echezeaux Grand Cru Ryan's table had ordered, she quickly looked it up on the wine list and saw that it sold for an eye-popping $350, the most expensive wine in the house along with one other with the same pricetag.

Feinberg, an economist by training, was even more appalled when the table ordered a second bottle. She quickly did the math and figured out that the $700 in wine the trio consumed over the course of 90 minutes amounted to more than the entire weekly income of a couple making minimum wage.

"We were just stunned," said Feinberg, who e-mailed TPM about her encounter later the same evening. "I was an economist so I started doing the envelope calculations and quickly figured out that those two bottles of wine was more than two-income working family making minimum wage earned in a week."

The Federal Minimum Wage is $7.25/hour. Assuming a 40-hour workweek and two minimum wage earners, that's $580 before taxes.

But of course the Tea Party wing of the GOP wants to look at eliminating the minimum wage:

Republican Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has soft-pedaled her opposition to the minimum wage law considerably since 2005, when she was quoted as saying, at a Minnesota State Senate hearing, “Literally, if we took away the minimum wage—if conceivably it was gone—we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.” Appearing on CBS’s (CBS) Face the Nation on June 26, Bachmann would say only that eliminating the minimum wage is “something that obviously Congress would have to look at” as a solution to high unemployment.

And then there's Senator Orrin Hatch who thinks the poor aren't doing enough to help out:

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) voted against beginning debate on a measure that would have the Senate declare the rich should share the pain of debt reduction Thursday, a day after arguing that it's the poor and middle class who need to do more.

"I hear how they're so caring for the poor and so forth," Hatch said in remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, in reference to Democrats. "The poor need jobs! And they also need to share some of the responsibility."

Hatch's comments were aimed at a motion that passed 74 to 22 to start debating a non-binding resolution that says millionaires and billionaires should play a more meaningful role in reducing the nation's debt.

The point of all this?

Just to let you all know that this is the GOP these days. To all my Republican friends (and relatives), I'd like to ask a question: Do you really want to be associated with such mean spirited greed?

And we're not even talking about choice or marriage equality.

On The Iowa Pledge

From yesterday's Daily Santorum:

The 2012 GOP presidential nomination is all about pledges. There's the grandaddy of them all, Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge; there's the Susan B. Anthony List anti-abortion pledge; Sen. Jim DeMint, Tea Party-S.C., has the "Cut, Cap and Balance" pledge. And now Iowa conservative heavyweaight Bob Vander Plaats (shown above: photo by John Schultz of the Quad City Times) is getting into the act with a marriage pledge.

The Huffingtonpost has more on Plaats' pledge:

The pledge is titled "The Marriage Vow: A Declaration of Dependence upon MARRIAGE and FAMILY" (emphasis in the original), and what follows is pretty standard-issue Christian conservative rhetoric on the definition of marriage and the sanctity of same, but it comes with a fiscal twist that basically makes it clear that Vander Plaats does not cotton to the notion that social issues can be divorced from economic concerns.

Politico has a copy of the pledge.

Remember, this pledge will be something all the GOP candidates will have to address in order to be consecrated, sanctified, or otherwise blessed by Iowa's social conservatives prior to the Iowa caucuses next year. Each candidate must pledge:

--Personal fidelity to my spouse.
--Respect for the marital bonds of others.
--Official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices.
--Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage - faithful monogamy between one man and one woman - through statutory-, bureaucratic-, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.
--Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy.
--Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended "second chance" or "cooling-off" periods for those seeking a "quickie divorce."
--Earnest, bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the federal and state levels.
--Steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman in all of the United States.
--Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy - our next generation of American children - from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.
--Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel, especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.); plus prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.
--Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.
--Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security.
--Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA's $14.3 trillion public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit, and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.
--Fierce defense of the First Amendment's rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech, especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy.

These are the hoops the GOP candidates will have to jump through.

Michelle Bachmann already has.

But there's something left out of the coverage. The pledge is not only for the GOP candidates. This is tacked onto the bottom of the pledge:

The Vow of Civic, Religious, Lay, Business, and Social Leaders:

We the undersigned do hereby solemnly vow* that no U.S. Presidential primary candidate – nor any primary candidate for the U. S. House, Senate, Governor, state or municipal office – will, in his or her public capacity, benefit from any substantial form of aid, support, endorsement, contribution, independent expenditure, or affirmation from any of us without first affirming this Marriage Vow. Furthermore, to uphold and advance the natural Institution of Marriage, we ourselves also hereby vow* our own fidelity to this Declaration and especially, to our spouses.

Some litmus test.

It should be interesting to see who pledges.

And who doesn't.

"Speak Up for Jobs!" Congressional Listening Tour Comes to Pittsburgh

(Click graphic to enlarge. Click here for .PDF)
WHAT: Join Congressman Mike Doyle (Pennsylvania), Congressman John Conyers (Michigan) and Congressman Raul Grijalva (Arizona) as they come to our city to hear your concerns about jobs and the economy.

WHEN: Monday, July 18th, Community Rally & Picnic @ 5:00 PM, Congressional Listening Tour @ 6:30 PM

WHERE: Kinglsey Association, 6435 Frankstown Avenue, Pittsburgh PA 15206 (map)

WHY: Our communities need JOBS! But, Congress is giving tax breaks to millionaires and oil companies. Join us and tell Congress to invest in citizens before corporations!

RSVP: Here
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Obviously I'll be busy later today

(link)
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Song of the Day: "Jordan Miles"

Here's the full video for "Jordan Miles" by Jasiri X (directed by Paradise Gray) that we mentioned last week.


Call Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala, Jr. at 412-350-4400 and demand he file charges against the three police officers -- Richard Ewing, Michael Saldutte and David Sisak -- who brutally beat Jordan Miles.

For more info go to http://justiceforjordanmiles.com
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Guess What?

It's my lovely wife's birthday today! I just wished her a Happy Birthday.

So if you should happen to bump into her today, you too can wish her a happy birthday with a big hug and smile.

If you don't happen to bump into her today, go find your favorite person - the nicest person you know, and give THEM a big hug and and a smile say "I am so glad you're here!"

Happy Birthday, lovely wife.

Pittsburgh City Council Approves Clean Air Act

Via press release from Councilman Peduto's office:

CLEAN AIR NOW
City Council Approves Clean Air Act
PITTSBURGH – Today, Pittsburgh City Council approved two pieces of legislation sponsored by Councilman William Peduto that will dramatically reduce harmful diesel emissions to improve air quality throughout the City. The first requires publicly subsidized developments to retrofit construction equipment with the best-available technology to limit their impact on the City’s air quality. The second puts in place a 10-year plan for the City to retrofit all of their diesel vehicles.

Pittsburgh ranks among the worst cities in the nation for short-term particulate matter and ozone pollution and for year-round particulate pollution. Clear linkages exist between these environmental pollutants and serious chronic health problems such as heart disease, asthma, and other respiratory illnesses.

It is estimated the 25% of the City’s diesel particulate pollution originates from diesel construction vehicles and the technology exists today to reduce this pollution by more than 85%.

The Clean Air Act was supported by a strong coalition of labor unions, environmental organizations, faith-based groups, and community organizations. The coalition stood together on the principle that Pittsburgh cannot compete for jobs, residents, and businesses unless we commit to environmental quality and sustainability.

“Today is a critical step forward in the City’s battle to improve air quality for all residents and visitors in the City of Pittsburgh,” said Councilman Peduto. “The passage of this bill, along with the prevailing wage legislation and Clean Water Act previously passed by City Council is part of a new policy of triple bottom line economic development that City Council supports. This policy recognizes that all development should have a positive economic, social, and environmental impact.”

This was a preliminary vote and it passed 8-0.

More Fun With Right Wing Math

This is something I've been waiting to see. From this morning's Midweek Briefing:

President Obama's handpicked economic advisers waited until the Friday before the long Independence Day holiday weekend to release a report showing how bankrupt the economic "stimulus" was. It cost taxpayers $278,000 per added or saved job. As The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Anderson noted, "(T)he government could have simply cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the 'stimulus,' and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead." Consider "outlandish" redefined.

Here's Anderson:

When the Obama administration releases a report on the Friday before a long weekend, it’s clearly not trying to draw attention to the report’s contents. Sure enough, the “Seventh Quarterly Report” on the economic impact of the “stimulus,” released on Friday, July 1, provides further evidence that President Obama’s economic “stimulus” did very little, if anything, to stimulate the economy, and a whole lot to stimulate the debt.

The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the “stimulus” in adding or saving jobs. The council reports that, using “mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus” (which it describes as a “natural way to estimate the effects of” the legislation), the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.

In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the “stimulus,” and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead.

Too bad this has already been debunked. By Calvin Woodward of the AP:

Some Republican lawmakers critical of President Barack Obama's stimulus package are using grade-school arithmetic to size up costs and consequences of all that spending. The math is satisfyingly simple but highly misleading.

It goes like this: Divide the stimulus money spent so far by the estimated number of jobs saved or created. That produces a rather frightening figure on how much money taxpayers are spending for each job.

Highly misleading? How?:

First, the naysayers' calculations ignore the value of the work produced.

Any cost-per-job figure pays not just for the worker, but for material, supplies and that worker's output — a portion of a road paved, patients treated in a health clinic, goods shipped from a factory floor, railroad tracks laid.

Second, critics are counting the total cost of contracts that will fuel work for months or years and dividing that by the number of jobs produced only to date.

A construction project, for one, may only require a few engineers to get going, with the work force to swell as ground is broken and building accelerates.

Hundreds of such projects have been on the books, in which the full value of the contracts is already counted in the spending totals, but few or no jobs have been reported yet because the work is only getting started.

And:

Third, the package approved by Congress is aimed at more than direct job creation, although employment was certainly central to its promotion and purpose.

Its features include money for research, training, plant equipment, extended unemployment benefits, credit assistance for businesses and more — spending meant to pay off over time but impossible to judge in a short-term job formula.

Nor do the estimates made Friday include indirect employment already created by the package — difficult if not impossible to measure.

But why let math and logic get in the way when there's a highly misleading political point to be made?

By the way, this report also tripped up our very own Rick Santorum. Aside from Rick's huge math blunder, he echoes this point made by Anderson:

Furthermore, the council reports that, as of two quarters ago, the “stimulus” had added or saved just under 2.7 million jobs — or 288,000 more than it has now. In other words, over the past six months, the economy would have added or saved more jobs without the “stimulus” than it has with it. In comparison to how things would otherwise have been, the “stimulus” has been working in reverse over the past six months, causing the economy to shed jobs.

But what was Rick's math blunder? From CNN:

During an appearance on CNN's "American Morning" Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum claimed the 2009 stimulus package resulted in a loss of jobs. He cited a government report that he said previously stated 280 million jobs had been created by December and now says only 240 million jobs were created.

When pressed by CNN's Ali Velshi, who said there's a difference between a loss of jobs and creating fewer jobs than initially reported, Santorum remained firm on his position that the current administration has cost Americans' jobs. [emphasis added.]

Think Progress here's a transcript:

SANTORUM: [Obama] passed a huge stimulus package that now we know, over the past two quarters, has actually cost American jobs, and that’s from the report of his own administration. They claimed in December that, uh, by the end of last year that they created 280 million jobs, and now they’re saying that they created only 240 million jobs. So look, in this, you’re talking about huge increases in spending.

ALI VELSHI: Senator, I’m going to ask you to restate that, I’ve never heard that in my life. Tell me again, what you just said.

SANTORUM: If you look at the report that came out on Friday, the President’s own economic advisers said that the jobs stimulus package actually created fewer jobs over the period of time, since the uh, since the stimulus package went in place than it did when they reported back in December. In other words, there’s 30 million less jobs as a result of the stimulus package.

VELSHI: That’s not a loss of jobs, Senator, that’s a smaller aggregation of jobs. You can’t go on a campaign, a national campaign with this kind of math Senator. It’s just incorrect…I know you’ve got a lot of interviews to do. You might want to check that math.

And did you see Rick's blunder? Thinkprogress again:

Velshi is absolutely correct that Santorum needs to check his math, but he missed the huge problem with Santorum’s numbers. The entire American civilian labor force is about 153 million people. There are currently 13.9 million people unemployed. If the Obama administration had created 240 to 280 million jobs, the unemployment crisis would have been solved several times over, and America would have so many jobs that it would need to start employing workers from all over the world just to fill all the available positions.

Ah, the joys of right wing math!

Torture News - Good, Bad and Ugly

From last Thursday:

The Justice Department inquiry into CIA interrogations of terrorist detainees has led to a full criminal investigation into the deaths of two people while they were in custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Thursday.

The attorney general said that he accepted the recommendation of a federal prosecutor, John Durham, who since August 2009 has conducted an inquiry into CIA interrogation practices during the Bush administration. Holder said Durham looked at the treatment of 101 detainees in U.S. custody since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and concluded that only these two deaths warranted criminal investigation. Holder said Durham found some of the 101 had never been held by the CIA.

And more from the Washington Post:

The Justice Department did not say which cases are being investigated, but U.S. officials said they are the death of an Afghan, Gul Rahman, in 2002 at a prison known as the Salt Pit in Afghanistan, and that of an Iraqi, Manadel al-Jamadi, who was questioned by three CIA officers at Abu Ghraib in 2003.

In the case involving the Salt Pit, known as a “black site” because the U.S. government did not officially acknowledge its existence, a CIA officer allegedly ordered Afghan guards in November 2002 to strip Rahman and chain him to the concrete floor of his cell. Temperatures plunged overnight, and Rahman froze to death. Hypothermia was listed as the cause of death and Rahman was buried in an unmarked grave.

Jamadi, the Iraqi, was captured on Nov. 4, 2003, by a Navy SEAL team hunting a terrorist cell thought to be responsible for a bombing in Baghdad. After initial interrogation efforts, he was transferred into CIA custody and was taken to Abu Ghraib. There he was hooded, placed in an orange jumpsuit and shackled to window bars in a shower room, where he died.

Jamadi’s body was put on ice to preserve it for autopsy. U.S. soldiers posed for photographs with the body — including some in which they gave the thumbs-up sign — provoking international outrage when news organizations showed the images.

The "Good" is that there are now criminal investigations into the torture related deaths that occurred during, at with the OK of, the Bush Administration.

The "Bad" is that this narrowing of an investigation leaves out a whole mess o' torture:

“It is difficult to understand the prosecutor’s conclusion that only those two deaths warrant further investigation,” said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “For a period of several years, and with the approval of the Bush administration’s most senior officials, the CIA operated an interrogation program that subjected prisoners to unimaginable cruelty and violated both international and domestic law. The narrow investigation that Attorney General Holder announced today is not proportionate to the scale and scope of the wrongdoing.”

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA created a network of secret prisons around the world to confine “high-value” al-Qaeda operatives. The detainees were subjected to what the agency called “enhanced interrogation techniques” — escalating forms of duress that began with slaps to the face and ended, in three cases, with prolonged bouts of waterboarding, which simulates drowning.

Among those held by the CIA were leading al-Qaeda figures, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who was waterboarded 183 times after his capture in March 2003.

Let's all say it together, children: Torture is illegal. Approving the use of torture is illegal. Both happened during the Bush Administration, though he tried to cover his tracks by having his office of legal counsel declare it not-torture.

The Good, Bad and Ugly can be summed up in this from the Post:

The Obama administration closed the CIA prisons and barred the use of the enhanced techniques. The Justice Department said it would not prosecute any CIA personnel who acted in good faith and followed the guidance of the Office of Legal Counsel.

As I pointed out in this recent Jack Kelly blog post, none of that actually flies. None of it gets the Bush Administration off the hook - and none of that gets the Obama Administration off the hook either.

From the Conventions Against Torture (signed into US Law in 1996), Article 1:

For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

And Article 2:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

And:

An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

So which is worse? Committing a war crime (as the Bush Administration obviously did) or letting the war criminals get away with their crimes (as the Obama Administration is obviously doing)?

As a patriotic American, the day after celebrating our nation's independence, I hang my head in a quiet itching disgust.

That is Liberty

"Liberty is not built on the doctrine that a few nobles have a right to inherit the earth. No! No! It stands on this principle: that the meanest and lowest of the people are, by the unalterable, indefeasible laws of God and Nature, as well entitled the benefit of the air to breathe, light to see, food to eat, and clothes to wear, as the nobles or the king. That is Liberty! And Liberty will reign in America!" - John Adams
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July 4

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
• He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
• He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
• He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
• He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
• He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
• He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
• He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
• For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
• For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
• For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
• For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
• For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
• For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
• For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
• For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
• For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
• He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
• He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
• He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
• He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

A question

If "participating in Fourth of July celebrations as a child raises a person's probability of voting Republican."

And

If "Many cities and counties across the nation’s drought-stricken southern tier are banning fireworks because of the risk of wildfires."

Does that mean we can expect, say, Texas to go Blue in a decade or so?

I kid! I kid!
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Wow. Just Wow.

I have no explanation for this. None what so ever.

But it tells you everything you need to know about how skewed the thinking is with Scaife's braintrust when it comes to climate science.

Take a look at this from today's Sunday Pops:

In the Orwellian moment of the week, the American Association for the Advancement of Science warned that efforts to promote transparency in "climate change" research, among other things, are inhibiting scientific inquiry. Transparency demands "make no constructive contribution to the public discourse," says the group. How utterly bizarre.

Now let's go see what they're actually talking about.

If you google the phrase they quote (""make no constructive contribution to the public discourse") you eventually make it to this board statement, dated June 28, 2011, from the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Begin to read it and you'll see it's NOT about transparency at all.

The quotation is taken from the last sentence of the statement's opening paragraph:

We are deeply concerned by the extent and nature of personal attacks on climate scientists. Reports of harassment, death threats, and legal challenges have created a hostile environment that inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas and makes it difficult for factual information and scientific analyses to reach policymakers and the public. This both impedes the progress of science and interferes with the application of science to the solution of global problems. AAAS vigorously opposes attacks on researchers that question their personal and professional integrity or threaten their safety based on displeasure with their scientific conclusions. The progress of science and protection of its integrity depend on both full transparency about the details of scientific methodology and the freedom to follow the pursuit of knowledge. The sharing of research data is vastly different from unreasonable, excessive Freedom of Information Act requests for personal information and voluminous data that are then used to harass and intimidate scientists. The latter serve only as a distraction and make no constructive contribution to the public discourse. [Emphasis added.]

This is not about "transparency" (which the AAAS clearly states that it supports) but about excessive FOIA requests for personal data that'll then be used for harrassment and intimidation. Then there's the death threats.

Only those infected with teh climate crazie could possibly equate the two.

Here's what else the AAAS has to say about science. Stuff the braintrust curiously omits:

Scientists and policymakers may disagree over the scientific conclusions on climate change and other policy-relevant topics. But the scientific community has proven and well-established methods for resolving disagreements about research results. Science advances through a self-correcting system in which research results are shared and critically evaluated by peers and experiments are repeated when necessary. Disagreements about the interpretation of data, the methodology, and findings are part of daily scientific discourse. Scientists should not be subjected to fraud investigations or harassment simply for providing scientific results that are controversial. Most scientific disagreements are unrelated to any kind of fraud and are considered a legitimate and normal part of the scientific process. The scientific community takes seriously its responsibility for policing research misconduct, and extensive procedures exist to protect the rigor of the scientific method and to ensure the credibility of the research enterprise.

And yet Scaife's braintrust whittles all that down to the AAAS declaring efforts to promote transparency are inhibiting scientific inquiry.

Tells you everything you need to know about the mendacity that doubles for editorial policy with Richard Mellon Scaife's braintrust. How truly bizarre.

The editorial page an embarrassment to us, the news-reading public. As it also must be an embarrassment to all the fine reporters who find themselves working for Richard Mellon Scaife. They must realize that all their good work is being undermined, tainted or otherwise sullied by teh climate crazie dripping off of Scaife's editorial page.

I feel sorry for them. I really do.

Another Lesson In How The Right Wing Message Machine Works

We'll start at the end and work backwards. Today in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review we find an editorial that begins thusly:

Eric Holder's coddling of terrorists -- during both the Clinton and Obama administrations -- makes him manifestly unfit to be U.S. attorney general.

At a National Press Club conference in Washington this week, Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival Inc., and speakers personally affected by terrorist beneficiaries of Mr. Holder's lax approach laid out his damning record.

When we head to the website for America's Survival Inc., we find this:

America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI) President Cliff Kincaid, who also serves as the Director of the Accuracy in Media (AIM) Center for Investigative Journalism, has announced a national conference in Washington, D.C. to examine Communist Cuba’s sponsorship of anti-American terrorism and harboring of fugitives from justice and the need to keep Cuba on the official U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Evidence will also be presented of how Castro’s agents of influence continue subversive operations on American soil and how the Obama Administration’s expansion of travel to and from the communist island undermines American national security.

On June 29, the Trib's news division published this:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder "has lied about his role in granting pardons to terrorists" under Presidents Clinton and Obama and should be removed from office, according to Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival Inc.

Kincaid moderated a daylong conference on Tuesday at the National Press Club, sponsored by his Washington-based investigative organization.

Which then was reposted at the America's Survivial website here:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder "has lied about his role in granting pardons to terrorists" under Presidents Clinton and Obama and should be removed from office, according to Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival Inc.

Kincaid moderated a daylong conference on Tuesday at the National Press Club, sponsored by his Washington-based investigative organization.

And then finally editorialized this morning at the Tribune-Review.

Why the trail?

You guessed it. America's Survival's got some serious funding support from the foundations controlled by Trib owner, Richard Mellon Scaife.

• $200,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2010
• $150,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2009
• $150,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2008
• $60,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2007
• $110,000 from the Carthage Foundation in 2007
• $100,000 from the Carthage Foundation in 2006

That's about three-quarters of a million dollars worth of support from foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife, owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Any mention of any of that in the coverage?

Nope. Not a peep. Even from the Trib's news division. It's one thing for the editorial page (which I am told has no connection with the news division) to want to cover for the boss, but it's another when the more or less straight news division does the same. It's an embarrassment all the way round.

And we didn't even get to the Scaife money used to support Kincaid's other employer, Accuracy in Media. According to the media transparency project (or whatever it's called) Scaife's supported AIM to the tune of $4.36 million dollars.

Why does all this matter? Think of it this way, if Scaife hadn't given all that money to America's Survival, then it probably wouldn't exist. And if it didn't exist, there probably wouldn't have been a conference/discussion about AG Eric Holder at the National Press Club. And if there wasn't a discussion of the AG, there wouldn't have been any news coverage of it in the Scaife owned Tribune-Review.

The fact that none of the financial ties that bind Kincaid to Scaife are mentioned in the Trib's coverage of ASI is another example of the journalistic conflict of interest that's defining the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's editorial page and has tainted the Trib's news division.