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Back off, girlie men!

Josh Marshall reports Rep. Cynthia McKinney (GA) is in trouble with the police -- right up to an arrest warrant.

Members of Congress don't have to wait in line to go through the metal detectors on Capitol Hill. McKinney didn't go through the metal detector. But one of the capitol police officers didn't recognize McKinney as a member of Congress. He rushed toward her from behind and grabbed her by the arm. She in turn slugged or shoved him in the chest.

I wasn't there. I haven't seen every account. But that's my understanding of what happened.

I'm really not sure McKinney is the only member of Congress who, grabbed from behind by a capitol police officer, might not have, in the heat of the moment, swung a punch or shoved. They're a proud bunch.

Let me rephrase that last paragraph so it makes sense to me: 

I'm really not sure McKinney is the only woman who, grabbed from behind by an unknown man, might not have, in the heat of the moment, swung a punch or shoved.  We're ready for you.

Want to try me out?  George?  Dick?  Capitol fuzz?

Looking in the mirror, not over our shoulders

As Chomsky points out, it started with "communist states" which, when that wore thin, Reagan morphed into "terrorist states."  That lasted until Clinton who came up with "rogue states."  Then came security-threatening "failed states." 

In each case, the terms have been pretty hard to sustain, because it's been difficult to overlook the fact that under any, even the most conservative characterization of these notions -- let's say U.S. law -- the United States fits fairly well into the category, as has often been recognized. By now, for example, the category -- even in the Clinton years, leading scholars, Samuel Huntington and others, observed that -- in the major journals, Foreign Affairs -- that in most of the world, much of the world, the United States is regarded as the leading rogue state and the greatest threat to their existence.

And, Chomsky points out, that now applies to the term "failed state."

The U.S. increasingly has taken on the characteristics of what we describe as failed states. In the respects that one mentioned, and also, another critical respect, namely the -- what is sometimes called a democratic deficit, that is, a substantial gap between public policy and public opinion. ...Both political parties are, on most of these issues, well to the right of the population.

Chomsky believes, as I do, that the exacerbation of terrorism in the Middle East after the Iraq invasion is not the result of incompetence.  It was the result the Administration wanted.  I don't see how we can avoid that conclusion.  Chomsky reminds us:

...We commonly read that there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq. Well, it's not totally accurate. There were means to develop weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and known to be in Iraq. They were under guard by U.N. inspectors, who were dismantling them. When Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest sent in their troops, they neglected to instruct them to guard these sites. The U.N. inspectors were expelled, the sites were left unguarded. The inspectors continued their work by satellite and reported that over a hundred sites had been looted, in fact, systematically looted, not just somebody walking in, but careful looting. That included dangerous biotoxins, means to hide precision equipment to be used to develop nuclear weapons and missiles, means to develop chemical weapons and so on. All of this has disappeared.

Loony tunes?  No, WYSIWYG!   

For more, here's an interview with Chomsky about his new book, "Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy."

Ol' Man River

There's an undeniable odor of racism in much of the discussion about immigration from Mexico.  But what's stunning is the realization that these people are useful.  No, I mean really useful.   Long-term useful as legal workers. They will be paying into Social Security.  Providing for us.  Not just weed-whacking our lawns but paying for our RV, our condo in San Diego, our Medicare deductions...

Anger, ignorance, and incompetence lead to tragedy. And I'm not just talking about the Bush administration.

In "At Sept. 11 Trial, Tale of Missteps and Management," two New York Times reporters write about the ambitions and blunders that led to 9/11. 

The picture of a large and lumbering bureaucracy trying to defend against a small and flexible enemy is striking, said Timothy J. Roemer, a member of the national Sept. 11 commission. "It's like the elephant fighting the snake," said Mr. Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana. "One of the impressions of Al Qaeda and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is their ability to change course and put new people into their plan and dynamically respond to the challenges day to day."

But not the FBI.

The United States government relied on sprawling bureaucracies at feuding agencies to look for myriad potential threats. The C.I.A. had lots of information on two hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar, but the F.B.I. did not know the men had settled in San Diego, where Mr. Mohammed had instructed them to "spend time visiting museums and amusement parks" so they could masquerade as tourists. At the F.B.I., a few agents pursued clues that would later prove tantalizingly close to the mark, but they could not draw attention from top counterterrorism officials.

Chances are you'll be successful if you're doing something for Allah or have another goal outside of yourself for which you're willing to put aside personal ambitions and even your life.  Particularly when the agency appointed to prevent your success consists of personnel -- many of them Bush administration political appointees -- so wholly self-concerned that job security is more important than the nation's security.  Take for example the numbers of examples of FBI professionals who tried to get information to and through their political bosses.

The sentencing trial made clear the frustration of the Minneapolis F.B.I. office in its repeated efforts to interest bureau headquarters in Mr. Moussaoui. Gripping testimony came from Mr. Samit, who arrested Mr. Moussaoui on Aug. 16 and quickly became convinced that he was a terrorist who knew about an imminent hijacking plot. Mr. Samit said that he had sent about 70 warning messages about Mr. Moussaoui, but that they had produced no results.

The agent said he had been puzzled at the reluctance of Michael Maltbie, a supervisor with the Radical Fundamentalist Unit at bureau headquarters, to seek a search warrant for Mr. Moussaoui's belongings from a special intelligence court.

Mr. Samit seemed unable to satisfy Mr. Maltbie's demand that he provide a tangible link between Mr. Moussaoui and a foreign power, a requirement for a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. He thought he had sufficient evidence from two French intelligence reports showing Mr. Moussaoui had recruited someone to fight in Chechnya for an Islamist group allied with Mr. bin Laden. But on Aug. 24, 2001, a frustrated Mr. Samit sent an e-mail message to Charles Frahm, a friend and, at the time, an F.B.I. liaison to the C.I.A., asking for information to help make his case. "We're trying to close the wiggle room for F.B.I. headquarters to claim there is no connection to a foreign power," he wrote.

Mr. Moussaoui's lawyers asserted that Mr. Maltbie had undermined the effort to obtain a search warrant by deleting some details from Mr. Samit's requests. Mr. Samit said Mr. Maltbie had told him he was reluctant to press for a warrant because doing so would be risky for his career and "he was not about to let that happen to him."

Mr. Maltbie still works for the FBI.  George Bush is still president.  They (and we) are still relentlessly optimistic -- and busy doing other things. 

Here's a thought:  What's going on now that we're not in the mood to notice?

Kos and Jerome on the blog community, media, the 2004 election, Mark Warner, Howard Dean, and "Crashing the Gate."

Excerpt from Armstrong and Moulitsas' first book tour interview, with Diane Rehm.

Rehm:  Here's another [email] from Paula in San Antonio: "Am I missing out?  I read the newspapers every morning.  I listen to NPR all day long nearly every day.  I watch the local news and the Jim Lehrer News Hour every evening.  Who has time for blogs?  What's the big deal?"  What is she missing out on?

Kos: At least on the liberal side of the blogosphere, what she's missing out on is community.  It's being with like-minded people and talking about the issues she cares about. The conservative blogosphere is more like the rest of the media.  It's very top-bottom.  There's not a lot of community, not a lot of comments.  But on the left, it's all about community.  We love talking and arguing.  People think it's an echo chamber.  We're fighting every day over some of these issues!  But we get together because we believe and have passion about these issues.

JA: The thing about the time factor, reflecting my own media habits, I don't watch TV.  I get my news mostly from the internet.  And I think there's more and more people doing that.  If you look at the polling numbers about where people are getting the news, they show broadcast TV dropping and the internet rising.

Rehm: Interesting!  Radio is still in there!

JA:  I'm a listener!

Rehm:  Let's go to Old Fort, NC.

Mark:  Comment and a quick question:  Markos, I really didn't know anything about blogs until election night.  I got tired of watching the cable networks' reporting on the election and caught your website on the tickertape on CNN.  Got on the website that night and was on it until about three in the morning.  Everytime I hit "refresh" it went from excitement to depression as I was watching the returns coming in from Ohio, and about all the disenfranchised voters there.  My question is about Howard Dean and how he was so progressive when he was running for president and now he's head of the DNC and you don't hear much about him.  I feel he's becoming another one of those DC Democrats.  And the progressive nature he had before is getting buried in politics.

Rehm:  What do you think, Jerome?

JA:  It's tough to work in DC.  I've moved over here to Alexandria since I started working with Mark Warner.  This is a culture where you're forced to go along a lot of times and it's really hard to buck the trend, but I think you can give Howard Dean credit for what he's doing with the financial resources of the DNC -- which is pushing them out into the states and building up the infrastructure. If we're going to win these elections that are in those states and take back the country on a national level rather than just winning with 50.1% and having a battleground state, it's because we've built up these states nationally.

Rehm:  Now that you're working for Mark Warner, you're no longer blogging?

JA:  That's right.  I'm blogging about the book and on our website we have that, but, as far as politics, I've blogged Mark Warner...

Rehm:  You consider Mark Warner a progressive Democrat?

JA:  Yes, I do.  I think anybody who looks at his record as he performed in Virginia, I think you'd find things across the board:  in education, the environment, that he's raised the standards economically.  He reformed the tax code in a very progressive manner.

Rehm:  Does he fit your idea, Markos, of a progressive Democrat?

Kos:  Yes, absolutely.  I have my mind open for 2008.  I'm not ready to pick a horse yet.  But he's definitely a viable candidate. Do I have time to give Dean a little defense?

Rehm:  Certainly!

Kos:  Dean spends very little time in DC.  Actually, he's been butting heads with a lot of the establishment because he's putting money back into the states.  He spends a lot of time raising money in the states.  He lets that money stay there.  He's hiring staff in every single state. People in DC don't like that. They want the money so the consultants can then spend it all on ads two weeks before the election. So they don't like Howard Dean in the city.  That's just one reason why I'm still big fan of Howard Dean.

The full interview is available at The Scribe.

"The Italian phrase means '(expletive) you.'"

Smith was working as a freelance photographer for the Boston archdiocese’s weekly newspaper at a special Mass for lawyers Sunday when a Herald reporter asked the justice how he responds to critics who might question his impartiality as a judge given his public worship.    

“The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, ‘To my critics, I say, ‘Vaffanculo,’” punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his chin, Smith said.    

The Italian phrase means “(expletive) you.”     Yesterday, Herald reporter Laurel J. Sweet agreed with Smith’s account, but said she did not hear Scalia utter the obscenity.

Well, "culo" means ass.  But who cares.  The picture the Boston Herald says it all.  Supreme Court Justice for the new millenium, a perfect match with the Bush administration.