Prairie Weather

Rien à faire...

Scan the world of the political blogs and you will see a mid-summer which seems to be falling into a French pattern -- un certain ennui following Bastille Day and then off to la plage at the end of juillet.

The media are telling us that Bush is no longer a lame-duck.  The Pentagon isn't releasing those agonizing videos and photos of torture.  Where's Abramoff?  Is Fitzgerald out floating on The Lake?  Who's paying for the vacances of that petit con, Tom DeLay, this year, and does it matter?  Will anyone care about Karl Rove after Labor Day?  Will Bolton already have been Ambassador to the UN for a full month?  Shall we let l'affaire Roberts muddle on to a likely seat on the Supreme Court?

Will blogs do what they do best:  keep the pressure on both government and media?  Or not? 

We're all taking time off for the next several weeks, I hope.  What will we find when we come back?   After a whole month in Arromanches, or the Dordogne, or Aix, will it matter?

On verra...  n'est-ce pas?

Tom Brokaw and the managing editor of the WSJ go to jail

Sort of.

Bolton: "I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count."

Those were the words John Bolton yelled as he burst into a Tallahassee library on Saturday, Dec. 9, 2000, where local election workers were recounting ballots cast in Florida's disputed presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

I'd forgotten about that.  In the context of Bolton's close connection to the gang in the White House, given that he's probably a "player" in the Plame outing -- not even to mention his recess appointment to an ambassadorship on neutral territory holding, of course, a diplomatic passport -- you have to wonder why the media (or the Democrats in Congress, for god's sake)  don't hang him by his, um, ankles for all to see.

Another gem from the Bush administration

From a full-page ad in Thursday's NYTimes placed by The Humane Farming Association and others.  Here's part of the text:

You may think you're looking at rabbits.  But according to the United Stated Department of Agriculture (USDA), you're looking at chickens.  And chickens, says the USDA, are not really animals.

This isn't the first time the USDA has changed the meaning of commonly understood words.  Perhaps you remember when the agency declared that ketchup was a vegetable.

Why?  Because the methods of slaughter for "non-animals" is grossly inhumane.  It's appalling. The text of the ad contains information which I won't post here about how the rabbits are killed. 

Rabbits shriek, you know. 

Here's Mike Johanns' email addresss:  [email protected].   He's the guy responsible for this, though we know he's just one of many.

Did you reckon on campaign finance laws being overturned with Roberts on the Court?

Hendrik Hertzberg, in an analysis of the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, raises yet another issue which I haven't heard discussed:  the threat a hard-right Court poses to campaign finance laws.  Is this, maybe, the biggest issue of all? Wouldn't it bring about a semi-permanent, corporate-financed, hard-right régime in the US?

If, after another couple of Bush appointments, the Court does strike down Roe, the result would, of course, be worse—abortion would be banned outright in a score of states—but the political energy in this seemingly endless national struggle would quickly pass from the pro-life to the pro-choice side. The more immediate dangers, from the moderate-to-liberal point of view, are in areas where O’Connor provided the fifth vote. If Roberts turns out to be as conservative as Bush’s rightmost supporters hope, then affirmative action, secularism, patients’ rights, and all manner of federal regulation from campaign-finance controls to environmental protection will be in serious trouble.

Want to see the latest report (today, July 30) on who's raising money? and how much? Read on ...

John Roberts' résumé and the threat to gay rights

Jeffrey Toobin, in the latest New Yorker, writes persuasively about the importance of taking a hard look at --and here he uses a particularly apt word -- John Roberts' "shimmering" résumé, with particular reference to a case coming up at the Supreme Court in October. 

The case is, generally, the outcome of increasing pressure from anti-gay-rights groups and increasing activism of those fighting for gay rights.  It springs directly from universities' decisions to bar military recruiters because of anti-gay discrimination in the military followed by Congress' efforts to force universities to allow recruitment on campus.  Toobin writes:

The upcoming case reflects the curious state of the contemporary gay-rights movement. In some respects, and in some places, especially within the legal profession itself, the cause of gay rights has never been stronger. As Scalia noted with dismay in his dissenting opinion in Lawrence, the Association of American Law Schools “(to which any reputable law school must seek to belong) excludes from membership any school that refuses to ban from its job-interview facilities a law firm (no matter how small) that does not wish to hire as a prospective partner a person who openly engages in homosexual conduct.” At the same time, anti-gay-rights forces have continued to gain strength. After most law schools refused to help military recruiters on their campuses under the policy denounced by Scalia, Congress took another tack. They passed a law saying that if a law school persisted in limiting recruiting by the armed forces, the school would lose federal funding. It is the constitutionality of this law, which is known as the Solomon Amendment, that the Court will decide this fall...

What does Roberts' "paper trail" tell us, if anything, about how he might decide in a case of this kind?