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Activism

CA-48: Call to Action - Final Weekend Push. Tomorrow is the special election in California's 48th District. That gives you just one day to help Democrats take back a seat in the House of Representatives. Dems are down a whole bunch of seats, and there's no reason we can't start taking back the House right now. Go to the link above and see what you can do to help Steve Young strike a blow for democracy. And you don't have to live in the 48th District to participate: You can virtual phone bank, or at least email your CA friends and let them know how they should vote. Just do something!

News

Wrongful Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake. How long's it gonna be before the threat of terrorism isn't used to justify every secretive, illicit, or morally reprehensible act this administration undertakes? Maybe if more cases like Khaled Masri's are made public, the citizenry will demand more openness. Look, we understand that secrecy is critical in certain cases. And we certainly understand that it only takes a few terrorists slipping through the cracks to wreak violence upon innocent Americans. But when we engage in acts like "rendition", and then shield them in secrecy, we allow ourselves to make horrible errors. If the leadership is more concerned with prosecuting as many people as possible, and allowing no oversight, we're going to have more cases like Masri's, in which he was erroneously imprisoned for five months "because the head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center's al Qaeda unit 'believed he was someone else,' one former CIA official said. 'She didn't really know. She just had a hunch.' " How many innocents have to be abused before the war on terror becomes just as bad as the terror itself?

Private Security Guards in Iraq Operate With Little Supervision. Last Monday, we talked about a video of private security contractors in Iraq shooting Iraqi civilians ('Trophy' Video Exposes Private Security Contractors Shooting up Iraqi Drivers). As the LA Times details, this wasn't an isolated case. Yet none have been prosecuted, even in the most obvious of situations. Imagine how this must feel to the Iraqis: an occupying force comes in, causes mass chaos and removes most of the infrastructure. Now, private American citizens are killing private Iraqi citizens, and there's absolutely no culpability. While the law states that these contractors can't be held liable in Iraq, they are supposed to be tried in their home countries. We'll give you one guess as to the number of times that's happened.

U.S. Not 'Well-Prepared' for Terrorism. Remember the 9/11 commission? The former chairman and vice-chairman said on Sunday that the U.S. is not at all prepared to face another terrorist attack. We wonder what their first clue was. Was it the simple-minded color-coded alert system? Over-budgeting and under-delivering contractors? The lack of cargo inspection at ports? The failed FBI database? The massively poor response to Katrina? Much of the lack of preparedness stems from this administration's unwillingness to implement many of the changes recommended by the 9/11 commission, and as a result, we are not in much better shape than we were four years ago. If you talk with disaster preparedness experts, they will tell you that the two most important things to do are create a plan, and have a way to implement that plan. The plan can be ever changing (and it should be), but without one in place, you're just asking for trouble. And we apparently are.

Editorials

All the President's Flacks. When are insiders too inside? Look at Bob Woodward. He knew about Valerie Plame six months before any sort of investiation occurred. He doesn't understand what Plamegate has to do with the Iraq War. And he really doesn't understand why it was wrong of him to stay silent for over two years. Woodward, along with Carl Bernstein, were able to break open Watergate partly because, at the time, they were outsiders. They didn't have ties to that administration, and it allowed them to see things clearly. Now, Woodward is the Washington insider, looking at the nation through rose-tinted glasses. Insight into what has happened with pre-war intelligence is being made by the "next" Woodwards and Bernsteins. Frank Rich's column details Woodward's duplicitousness, and why we still have some friends in the MSM.

The Ginsburg Fallacy. Look, the President's in charge, ok? He gets to appoint whomever he wants to the Supreme Court, and the Senate should generally approve his nominee. Disagree? Well, that's what they did with Clinton when he nominated Ginsburg. You see, she was "an ACLU-loving, bra-burning feminazi", but the Republicans deferred to the power of Clinton's office, so now the Democrats should do the same thing with Alito. Just one thing...that's all false. Ruth Marcus goes into some details of Ginsburg's case history, but no matter the spin, Alito and Ginsburg are quite different cases. Whereas Bush was running back to his base by appointing Alito, "then-Judge Ginsburg was a consensus choice, pushed by Republicans and accepted by the president in large part because he didn't want to take on a big fight." Bush wants a fight. Let's give him one.

Blogger Commentary

You're Going to Make a Martyr of Me Whether You Like It Or Not. On Saturday we gave you a news story about four pharmacists who were suspended by Walgreens for failing to follow Illinois law and dispense emergency contraception (Walgreens Places 4 Pharmacists on Leave). Amanda Marcotte, at Pangagon, talks about this, and raises some good points. No one talks about how these pharmacists (who refuse to dispense emergency contraception on the basis of "moral philosophy") are discriminating against the women who come to get these prescriptions. There's also the religious discrimination, the "My religious philosophy is better than yours, and I don't approve of yours, so I'm not going to do my job" kind of discrimination. Marcotte laments that "When I worked in customer service type jobs, I don't think that I met a single Christian coworker who would have thought themselves in the right to refuse service to a customer for having different religious beliefs, even in the transaction involved those. For instance, I'd known lots of bank tellers who believed that Islam was a Satanic religion or that all Jews were going to hell, but they weren't going to throw a temper tantrum when given a deposit for an account in the name of a mosque or a temple. I don't think it ever occured to them they had a right to use their job to harass a customer for having different religious beliefs." So what gives pharmacists the right to do differently? It's not a question of "well, there's another pharmacist available, so let him/her fill the prescription." It's a question of "it's your job, do it." This attempted-martyr thing religious extremists have going for them is getting tired. Hopefully, what happened in Illinois will wake them up.

Ooops! He Did It Again..... Our President just seems to keep making the same mistake again and again. Somehow, we don't think it's an accident. See, he repeatedly conflates the war on terror with the war in Iraq. One problem: Every single day we get more information about how the two aren't the same, and how the administration knew that before we went to war. Well, slight correction: They're the same now that we've made Iraq a haven for terrorists, but it didn't used to be that way. The Cunning Realist argues that by saying "America will not run in the face of car bombers and assassins so long as I am your Commander-in-Chief.", Bush has essentially "placed his own identity---his manliness, courage and cojones---above whatever might be right for our troops, the nation, Iraq or the world." Thanks, George, you macho idiot.