A new litmus test for the post-9/11 world

Are you pro-torture or anti-torture? The Bush Administration, its Attorney General, and many of its cronies are clearly supportive of it, even over the objections of the military.

Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, however, stand with Human Rights Watch, the ACLU and Amnesty "Gulag" International.

Where do you stand?

Robert Reich posits some interesting questions along similar lines.

Ripping us off left and right

They present themselves as patriots. They claim to be good Christians. But in reality, they are just corporate lackeys ripping off taxpayers.

• 52% of Republicans who have left Congress since 1998 have become lobbyists.
• The energy bill contains $14.5 billion in corporate tax breaks including $1.5 billion for Tom DeLay’s pals.
• Homeland Security funding continues to go down the toilet.

When are the red-staters going to wake up?

Outrage of the week: Bernard Goldberg and the coarsening of our culture

"Journalist" Bernard Goldberg has just written a book, now second on Amazon.com's bestseller list, blaming liberals for all that is wrong with American culture. The right-wing tirade targets various left-of-center figures including Paul Krugman, Jimmy Carter and John Edwards (????) for coarsening our culture while failing to hold Rupert Murdoch and other conservative media moguls accountable for the damage they've done.

The laughable thing about this is that Goldberg, a correspondent on the show Real Sports, gets his paychecks from HBO, a channel whose bread and butter is airing movies and television shows that display sex, violence and profanity (Please note, DC clipmonkey loves HBO because it is the only intelligent programming on television, but he fully acknowledges that much of its content is not appropriate for underaged clipmonkeys.). Even more laughable, in defending his book on television this week, Goldberg asked a woman to "shut up" repeatedly.

Stick to sports, Bernie.

The next Supreme Court battle

While much of Washington is gripped with determining how good or evil John Roberts actually is, this clipmonkey is taking a few moments to look at another man who we'll be hearing a lot more about soon- Antonin Scalia, Bush's likely nominee for chief justice when Rehnquist steps down.

Justice Scalia is an interesting character. He is the father of nine children. He's pals with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He goes hunting with Dick Cheney. He doesn't like reporters. Like so many others in the Republican establishment, he has a son who feeds at the business-government trough. Most intriguing of all, though, he fancies himself a higher authority on the death penalty than the recently departed Pope John Paul II.

From Catholic News Service:

In public appearances Scalia not only has defended the death penalty as constitutionally solid, but he has argued that the church doctrine approving of capital punishment dating to St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century and St. Augustine in the fourth century still prevails. He has said that more recent teachings of Pope John Paul II are not obligatory because they were not spoken ex cathedra, Latin for from the chair, meaning the pope intended them to be accepted as infallible teachings of the church.

Talk about a God complex......

Thanks again, Ralph

Regarding the Bush nomination of John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court: Guess it’s time to get another "Thank-you" card in the mail for the danged Nader people. (Maybe I’ll just mark out the parts that apply to me in the "Thank-you" card that me and the 52 other Barry Commoner/LaDonna Harris people got 25 years ago. Shoot. I’m sorry, I’m sorry!)

Republicans and race

RNC Chair Ken Mehlman's recent statement that his party was "wrong" to exploit racial tension to win votes is an incredible affront to all those concerned about race relations in America. This guy wouldn't even have a job if Republicans hadn't used race to bludgeon Democrats throughout the South.

There are certainly other issues that have hurt the Democratic Party in Dixie – gun control and abortion rights, to name a few – but none has been more devastating than its efforts to accord African-Americans the same rights as everyone else in America. Sadly, Republicans continue to exploit racial tension to this day.

President Bush, who spoke at the notoriously bigoted Bob Jones University while campaigning for president, has opposed affirmative action even as numerous top-ranking former military officials have said that its preservation is a matter of national security. And just two years ago, Haley Barbour won his race for Mississippi governor by sending coded messages about where he stands on race relations.

If Jesse Helms, Lee Atwater, Haley Barbour, and so many of Mehlman's other forebears in the Republican Party hadn't exploited racial tension, the world would be quite a different place....

Outrage of the week: Rick Santorum on Boston

Once again, Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has gone too far- this time blaming the Boston Archdiocese's child sex abuse scandal on the liberalism of the Boston area. From The Boston Globe:

"It is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political, and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm" [said Santorum] of the clergy sexual abuse scandal. In a brief interview with The Globe on Tuesday, Santorum reiterated his view that the ''basic liberal attitude" in Boston fostered an environment where sexual abuse of children could occur.

This incredible affront to the state of Massachusetts is Falwell-esque and utterly beyond the pale. It's particularly absurd given that Massachusetts, far from being some orgiastic sexual haven, has the lowest divorce rate in the nation. Even worse, Santorum's "values" were on display this week as he successfully conned a school district in Pennsylvania to pay for the home-schooling of his children in, umm, Virginia.

Fortunately, like the plucky Red Sox, Bostonians (The Globe and Ted Kennedy) are hitting back. For more about the hideousness of Sen. Santorum, click here.

Screwing the troops

Those yellow bumper stickers proclaiming "I support the troops" probably help a lot of people feel good about themselves. For most, the stickers are a meaningless symbol and a self-congratulatory indulgence.

For the few who actually do something to support the troops, such as sending a son or daughter off to war or visiting a wounded soldier in the hospital, this diatribe is not for you. But for the rest who ask kids from the wrong side of the tracks in places like rural West Virginia, inner-city Detroit, and east Los Angeles to sacrifice their lives so that they can continue to drive their SUVs, you should be ashamed.

The "support the troops" rhetoric and imagery belies the reality of what President Bush, and by extension, those who voted for him, have done to the young men and women in the military:

• Repeatedly misled them about the reasons for the Iraq war.
• Failed to send enough troops to secure Iraq, leaving American soldiers more vulnerable to attacks.
• Endorsed the use of torture and humiliation, enraging many Muslims and further endangering the troops.
• Invoked policies to chain people to the military well beyond the commitments they've agreed to.
• Provided inadequate funding for veterans.
• Watched military divorce rates skyrocket because of these disastrous policies.

If you really want to support the troops, click here.

London

Today's bombings are deeply tragic, but they are also an important reminder that the Bush and Blair governments have taken their collective eye off the ball of stamping out terrorism. The war in Iraq has drained our finances, hurt our military capability, and distracted everyone from the threats we face at home.

Instead of being bogged down by the debacle in Iraq, we should be combing the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, clamping down on the radicals in southeast Asia, and investing in effective counterterrorism measures at home, rather than hassling grandmothers in airports.

The best of a bad lot

Wookin ' pa nub

Christian conservatives are apoplectic at the prospect of Bush nominating Alberto Gonzales to the Supreme Court because he has not met their litmus test of clearly and publicly opposing abortion with the fervor of a fire-breathing dragon.

It's difficult for clipmonkey to say this, but President Bush, PLEASE nominate Alberto Gonzales. Yes, he may be an enabler of torture. Yes, he may have let innocent people be put to death while serving as Governor Bush's counsel in Texas. But if the folks on the right hate him so much, he must be a pretty reasonable guy.

The religious right steps up (finally!)

For years, the religious right has focused obsessively on restricting abortion rights, electing Republicans and demonizing gays. In the process, they've painted themselves as a rather un-Christian lot.

But there is good news out of the recent Southern Baptist Convention and from the National Association of Evangelicals. Apparently a few of them started reading the New Testament again and figured out that Christ was far more concerned about another issue- poverty.

At long last, the religious right is responding to that call and working to alleviate world poverty.

Outrage of the week: The boondoggle of homeland security

Republicans once claimed to be the party of fiscal responsibility inveighing against government waste, calling for limitless tax cuts, and proposing a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. But now that they're controlling the levers of power in Washington, they seem to have forgotten their former selves. In recent weeks we've learned:

• The Transportation Security Administration has been engaging in rampant waste;
• Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, demonstrated the worst contract abuse ever observed by one Pentagon procurement official; and,
• The FBI continues to throw away money after blowing $104 million on software to create a huge database of open cases.

It almost makes me miss the Republicans of old.

Walking into an ambush

As Americans prepare for another 4th of July weekend of flag-waving and freedom-loving, it's important to remember the words of Samuel Johnson- "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." In recent months, the corruption of the current Congress and the corruption by any other name of the White House has been exposed. So what have the Republicans fallen back on? That ol' reliable wedge issue they love- a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning.

Republicans have used the flag-burning issue to taunt Democrats for decades now. The taunting reached its apex during the 1988 presidential campaign when rumors abounded that Kitty Dukakis had burned an American flag to protest the Vietnam War during the 1970s. Of course, it's hard to get those patriotic juices flowing when you see a prospective commander-in-chief looking like this. But Republicans have carefully and strategically used this issue to paint Democrats as disloyal Americans. Karl Rove's recent statements about the Dems' response to 9/11 were notable only because they were so blunt.

Unfortunately, Democrats (and their liberal allies) know the patriotism trap is out there and keep walking into it again (Amnesty International) and again (Durbin) and again (flag-burning). Of course, Americans should be able to burn the flag if they really want to. And of course, a responsible government whose military has a significant problem with mistreating detainees should appoint an independent entity to investigate the problem.

But the leadership of this government doesn't care about principles of free speech or accountability, it just cares about maintaining and enlarging its power.