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Why I Can't Support the George W. Bush Administration or Any Republican

The New York Times
  • http://www.nytimes.com/ home page
  • Why Did We Really Go Into Iraq?
    • British reports on runup to Iraq war
        The documents help prove the leaders made a secret decision to oust Saddam Hussein nearly a year before launching their attack, shaped intelligence to that aim, and never seriously intended to avert the war through diplomacy.
    • Swindler on a Gusher
        Did Americans fight and die to help the Thief of Baghdad? Ahmad Chalabi - convicted embezzler in Jordan, suspected Iranian spy, double-crosser of America, purveyor of phony war-instigating intelligence - is the new acting Iraqi oil minister. Is that why we went to war, to put the oily in charge of the oil, to set the swindler who pretended to be Spartacus atop the ultimate gusher?
  • A Bush Administration Ethics Scandal?
    • Bush Administration Propaganda Mill
    • And Now, the Counterfeit News
        Whether federal agencies are purchasing the services of supposedly independent columnists or making videos extolling White House initiatives and then disguising them as TV news reports, that's wrong. But news organizations deceive the public when they pass off segments produced by the White House's public relations machine as real news.
    • Bush Administration's Covert Propaganda More Pervasive Than Previously Known
        Government-made news segments have been broadcast on local television stations without acknowledgement of their origin. The administration's efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source.
    • Administration Is Warned About Its 'News' Videos
        The comptroller general has told federal agencies that they may not produce fake newscasts without clearly stating that the government itself is the source.
    • And Now, A Third Journalist Was Paid to Promote Bush Policies
        The Bush administration acknowledged on Friday that it paid a third conservative commentator to champion its policies. "The issue here isn't just whether a journalist violated ethics," Mr. Lautenberg said, "but whether the Bush administration broke the law."
    • Deceiving the Public
        The Bush administration is waging a jihad against journalists - buying them off so they'll promote administration programs, trying to put them in jail, and replacing them with ringers. At last month's press conference, Jeff Gannon asked Mr. Bush how he could work with Democrats "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality." But it's the Bush officials who have divorced themselves from reality. They flipped TV's in the West Wing and Air Force One to Fox News. They paid conservative columnists handsomely to promote administration programs. Federal agencies distributed packaged "news" video releases with faux anchors so local news outlets would run them. As CNN reported, the Pentagon produces Web sites with "news" articles intended to influence opinion abroad and at home, but you have to look hard for the disclaimer: "Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense." The agencies spent a whopping $88 million spinning reality in 2004, splurging on P.R. contracts. Even the Nixon White House didn't do anything this creepy. It's worse than hating the press. It's an attempt to reinvent it.
    • TV Host Says U.S. Paid Him to Back Policy
        A conservative commentator said Friday that he was paid by the Department of Education to promote its initiatives in the news media. The disclosure about the arrangement coincides with a decision by the Government Accountability Office that the administration had violated a law against unauthorized federal propaganda by distributing television news segments that promoted drug enforcement policies without identifying their origin. More than 300 news programs reaching more than 22 million households broadcast the segments. The accountability office made a similar ruling in May about news segments promoting Medicare policies, and the Drug Enforcement Agency stopped distributing the segments then. ...a letter to the president suggesting "a deliberate pattern of behavior by your administration to deceive the public and the media in an effort to further your policy objectives" and urging disclosure of "all past and ongoing efforts to engage in covert propaganda." ..."a very dangerous practice that deceives the public" by concealing the role of taxpayer dollars in promoting partisan policies. "Are they funding propaganda?" he asked. "Are they funding money to their friends?"
  • A Bush Administration Medicare Bill Scandal?
    • The Foster Affair
        Congress must get to the bottom of what looks like a conspiracy to withhold information about last year's Medicare bill.
  • The Questionable Ethics of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.)
    • Tom DeLay's House of Scandal
    • 'DeLay Inc.' Lobbying Firm Has Links to Three Capital Scandals - Representative Tom DeLay's campaign to get Republicans to dominate Washington lobbying may have worked too well for Alexander Strategy Group. The firm has links to no fewer than three of the scandals convulsing the U.S. capital. Alexander Strategy's links to lawmakers are an outgrowth of a decade-long effort by DeLay, 58, to force lobbying firms to hire more Republicans, who can direct corporate money to the party. The system, known as "DeLay Inc." or "the K Street Project," has fueled a surge of money in politics, and critics say it has also created the potential for greater corruption.
    • Abramoff: More Trouble Ahead? - Former superlobbyist Jack Abramoff was indicted on fraud charges then arrested in California. A possible reason for the Feds' playing hardball: to pressure Abramoff to cooperate in a broader, D.C.-based probe that could touch members of Congress and Bush administration officials.
    • U.S. Fraud Charge for Top Lobbyist - Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist involved in ethics allegations facing Representative Tom DeLay, was indicted on fraud charges involving his purchase of a fleet of gambling boats.
    • The Right's Fight - He's not one to take trouble lying down. Inside Tom DeLay's defense strategy--and what it means for Team Bush.
    • House Overturns New Ethics Rule as Republican Leadership Yields - Republicans said that they had surrendered to the Democrats to try to restore a way to enforce proper conduct in the House.
      • House Leaders Talk Terms - Republican leaders made a rational call when they decided to end their stonewalling of an ethics committee investigation of Tom DeLay, the House majority leader.
    • Credit Receipts for DeLay Trip Raise Concerns - The latest disclosures about Representative Tom DeLay's travel were another reason why the Republican majority should undo changes in House ethics rules.
    • Today's "Moral Values" Tainted by the Mixture of Money and Religion into Politics - As the lies and subterfuge of the go-go 1990's coalesced around sex, so the scandal of our new "moral values" decade comes cloaked in religion. The values alleged so far in this scandal - greed, hypocrisy, favor-selling, dissembling - belong to no creed except the ruthless pursuit of power. They are not exclusive to either political party. But the religious trappings add a note that distinguishes these Beltway creeps from those who have come before: a supreme righteousness that often spirals into anger and fire-and-brimstone zealotry that can do far more damage to America than ill-begotten golf junkets.
    • Power for Power's Sake - Government is hobbled by Tom DeLay's abuse of power and it is up to his fellow Republicans to finally realize that.
    • In DeLay's Home District, Rumblings of Discontent Surface - The Texas fallout from Representative Tom DeLay's citations for ethical lapses has been hard to gauge, but there are signs of restiveness in his hometown.
    • With Friends Like These - A lunchtime chat with a lobbyist close to Tom DeLay suggests he may be headed for hotter water.
    • DeLay In Trouble - "Republicans are suffering from what once helped them gain power," says Marshall Wittman, a former conservative activist now with the Democratic Leadership Council. "While nothing DeLay has done may be illegal, Republicans based their takeover on a revolution to make things different. I was part of it. Now, they're outdoing anything Wright did in terms of power. DeLay has intimidated the whole business community." In private, some senior Republican leaders are saying it's only a matter of time before the most powerful Republican in Congress is forced from office. "Democrats should save their money. Why murder someone who is committing suicide?" said a senior GOP lawmaker, on condition of anonymity.
    • The Passion of the Tom - Before, Republicans just scared other people. Now, they're starting to scare themselves. There's some skittishness in the party leadership about the Passion of the Tom. Some Republicans are wondering whether they need to pull a Trent Lott on Tom DeLay before he turns into Newt Gingrich.
    • Political Groups Paid Two Relatives of House Leader - Tom DeLay's wife and daughter have been paid more than $500,000 since 2001 by Mr. DeLay's political action and campaign committees. "It's DeLay Inc. " said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a research group that has closely monitored Mr. DeLay and his campaign fund-raising and expenditures. "If it's not illegal, it certainly is inappropriate for members of Congress to use their positions to enrich their families."
    • Smells Like Beltway - Wall Street Journal: The real reason Tom DeLay is in political trouble. Mr. DeLay, who rode to power in 1994 on a wave of revulsion at the everyday ways of big government, has become the living exemplar of some of its worst habits. He has betrayed the broader set of principles that brought him into office, and which, if he continues as before, sooner or later will sweep him out.
    • Shedding Light on a Shadowy Network - The problems of Representative Tom DeLay's associates have renewed criticism about his aggressive networking and fund-raising.
    • House Ethics in Deep Rough - The lack of an honest, unhindered ethics investigation process in the House may come back to haunt its leading Republicans.
    • Actions by Delay Cited in Lawsuit - Documents suggest that Tom DeLay was actively involved in gathering corporate donations for a political committee that is the focus of a grand-jury investigation.
    • Testimony at Texas Trial Focuses on Use of Donations - The fund-raising strategy of a political committee set up by Tom DeLay and Republican loyalists in his home state were the focus of testimony this week.
    • Tom DeLay's Inoculation Committee - In an effort to protect the majority leader from further investigation, House Republicans have hobbled the ethics committee.
    • New Chairman for House Ethics Panel - House Republicans replaced the ethics committee chairman who presided over cases that led last year to admonishments of Representative Tom DeLay.
    • Ethics in the House - While taking a half-step back from supporting Tom DeLay's machinations, House Republicans have nonetheless dealt a blow to the ethics process.
    • After Retreat, G.O.P. Changes House Ethics Rule - The House enacted a change that would effectively dismiss a complaint in the event of a deadlock in the ethics committee.
    • House G.O.P. Voids Rule It Adopted Shielding Leader - After fierce criticism, House Republicans reversed a rule change that would have allowed a party leader to retain his position even if indicted.
    • Watchdog Groups Criticize G.O.P. Plan on Ethics Complaints - Republican proposals to change the way House ethics complaints are handled present a serious threat to the House's ability to police itself.
    • A Moral Indictment - By changing the rules to protect one of their own, Congressional Republicans have shown a corrosive contempt for the rule of law.
    • A Scandal Waiting to Happen - Tom DeLay's standing is eroding among Republicans, who see him, increasingly, as the G.O.P.'s Boss Tweed.
    • Foe of DeLay Rebuked by House Ethics Panel - The House ethics committee has ruled that a Democratic lawmaker exaggerated in the accusations he brought in June against the majority leader, Tom DeLay.
    • Regressive Ethics in the House - House Republicans seem to think they have a mandate to eradicate Congressional ethics standards.
    • House G.O.P. Acts to Protect Chief - House Republicans voted to abandon a party rule that requires a member of the leadership to step aside if indicted.
    • House Republicans Move to Protect Their Leader - House Republicans are considering a change in party rules so that Tom DeLay would not have to step down as majority leader should he be indicted in a Texas investigation.
    • In Texas Case Linked to DeLay, Prosecutor Welcomes Spotlight
        A Texas prosecutor is in the spotlight as he pursues a case with ties to one of the country's most powerful Republicans, Tom DeLay.
    • Tom DeLay's Triple Slap
        Last week house majority Leader Tom DeLay received a rebuke, his second in six days, from the House ethics committee over charges he abused his office and engaged in questionable fund-raising tactics.
    • 3 Aides to Tom Delay Facing Charges in Fund-Raising
        Three aides who helped run a political action committee created by the House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, were indicted by a grand jury in Texas on Tuesday on charges that included raising illegal corporate contributions and funneling them to state candidates during the 2002 elections. "This first round of indictments reaches directly into DeLay's inner circle," said Craig McDonald, executive director of Texans for Public Justice, the group that filed a complaint that helped lead to the Texas investigation. "The cloud hovering over DeLay just got several shades darker."
    • Machine at Work
        If Enron hadn't collapsed, we might still have only circumstantial evidence that energy companies artificially drove up prices during California's electricity crisis. Because of that collapse, we have direct evidence in the form of the now-infamous Enron tapes -- although the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Justice Department tried to prevent their release. Now, e-mail and other Enron documents are revealing why Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, is one of the most powerful men in America. ... The party machine that he has done so much to create has eliminated most of the checks and balances in our government. Again and again, Republicans in Congress have closed ranks to block or emasculate politically inconvenient investigations. If Enron hadn't collapsed, and if Texas didn't still have a campaign finance law that is a relic of its populist past, Mr. DeLay would be in no danger at all. The larger picture is this: Mr. DeLay and his fellow hard-liners, whose values are far from the American mainstream, have forged an immensely effective alliance with corporate interests. And they may be just one election away from achieving a long-term lock on power.
    • Complaint Against DeLay Ruptures 7-Year Truce in House
        A freshman Democrat (Representative Chris Bell of Texas) accused one of the most powerful members of Congress, the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, also of Texas, of "bribery, extortion, fraud, money laundering and the abuse of power."  .. . The complaint makes three specific accusations, that Mr. DeLay traded contributions from the largest electric utility in Kansas, Westar Energy of Topeka, for help on measures that would save it billions of dollars; that Mr. DeLay funneled contributions from one of his political action committees to the Republican National Committee "in an apparent money-laundering scheme"; and that Mr. DeLay improperly exhorted federal agencies, including the Justice Department, to search for Texas state legislators when they fled to Oklahoma to avoid a debate on redistricting.  ... "Tom DeLay," Mr. Bell said, "has created a climate of fear and retribution inside the people's House, and it must come to an end."
  • Republican Intimidation and Fear Tactics
    • Stiffling Freedom of Speech
      • Large Volume of F.B.I. Files Alarms U.S. Activist Groups
          The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and antiwar protest groups in what the groups charge is an attempt to stifle political opposition to the Bush administration. Protest groups charge that F.B.I. counterterrorism officials have used their expanded powers since the Sept. 11 attacks to blur the line between legitimate civil disobedience and violent or terrorist activity in what they liken to F.B.I. political surveillance of the 1960's. "I'm still somewhat shocked by the size of the file on us," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the A.C.L.U. "Why would the F.B.I. collect almost 1,200 pages on a civil rights organization engaged in lawful activity? What justification could there be, other than political surveillance of lawful First Amendment activities?"
      • Inquiry Into F.B.I. Questioning Is Sought
          Several Democratic lawmakers called on Tuesday for a Justice Department investigation into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's questioning of would-be demonstrators about possible violence at the political conventions, saying the questioning may have violated the First Amendment. In a letter to the department's inspector general seeking an investigation, the three lawmakers said the F.B.I. inquiries appeared to represent "systematic political harassment and intimidation of legitimate antiwar protesters." ... In a newly disclosed episode in Colorado, two college students said that an F.B.I. agent approached the faculty adviser for their campus group late last month and that the agent showed photographs of the students, Mark Silverstein, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, said. The students did not want their names or college disclosed, Mr. Silverstein said, because "they're really scared out of their minds." ... "This looks like it's much more about intimidation and coercion than about criminal conduct," Mr. Romero (executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union) said. "It's not enough for the F.B.I. to say that there's the potential for criminal activity. That's not the legal threshold, and if that were really the case, they could investigate anybody."
      • Interrogating the Protesters
          For several weeks, starting before the Democratic convention, F.B.I. officers have been questioning potential political demonstrators, and their friends and families, about their plans to protest at the two national conventions. These heavy-handed inquiries are intimidating, and they threaten to chill freedom of expression. They also appear to be a spectacularly poor use of limited law-enforcement resources. The F.B.I. should redirect its efforts to focus more directly on real threats. ... The F.B.I. is going forward with the blessing of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel - the same outfit that recently approved the use of torture against terrorism suspects. ... The knock on the door from government investigators asking about political activities is the stuff of totalitarian regimes. ... The F.B.I.'s questioning of protesters is part of a larger campaign against political dissent that has increased sharply since the start of the war on terror.
      • F.B.I. Goes Knocking for Political Troublemakers
          The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been questioning political demonstrators across the country, and in rare cases even subpoenaing them, in an aggressive effort to forestall what officials say could be violent and disruptive protests at the Republican National Convention in New York. ... But some people contacted by the F.B.I. say they are mystified by the bureau's interest and felt harassed by questions about their political plans. "The message I took from it," said Sarah Bardwell, 21, an intern at a Denver antiwar group who was visited by six investigators a few weeks ago, "was that they were trying to intimidate us into not going to any protests and to let us know that, 'hey, we're watching you.' '' The unusual initiative comes after the Justice Department, in a previously undisclosed legal opinion, gave its blessing to controversial tactics used last year by the F.B.I in urging local police departments to report suspicious activity at political and antiwar demonstrations to counterterrorism squads. ... In an internal complaint, an F.B.I. employee charged that the bulletins improperly blurred the line between lawfully protected speech and illegal activity. ... (C)ivil rights advocates argued that the visits amounted to harassment.
    • Voter Harassment
      • How does a president win re-election when all the news the voters are seeing is bad?
          At the same time, the Republican Party is doing what it can in key states to block as many Democratic votes as possible. Party officials have mounted a huge organized effort to challenge - some would say intimidate - voters in states like Ohio and Florida, in a bid to offset the effects of huge voter registration drives and a potentially heavy turnout of voters opposed to Mr. Bush and his policies. Election officials in Ohio said they'd never seen such a large drive mounted to challenge voters on Election Day. Voter suppression is a reprehensible practice. It's a bullet aimed at the very heart of democracy. But the G.O.P. evidently considers it an essential strategy in an environment with so little positive news.
      • Allegations of Electoral Crimes
          All possible measures must be taken to prevent voters in Nevada and Oregon whose registration forms may have been destroyed from being disenfranchised in this election.
      • Block the Vote
          Vote-tampering is the inevitable result of a Republican Party culture in which dirty tricks that distort the vote are rewarded, not punished.
      • A Chill in Florida
          The state police investigation into get-out-the-vote activities by blacks in Orlando, Fla., fits perfectly with the political aims of Gov. Jeb Bush and the Republican Party.
          The Republicans were stung in the 2000 presidential election when Al Gore became the first Democrat since 1948 to carry Orange County, of which Orlando is the hub. He could not have carried the county without the strong support of black voters, many of whom cast absentee ballots. The G.O.P. was stung again in 2003 when Buddy Dyer, a Democrat, was elected mayor of Orlando. He won a special election to succeed Glenda Hood, a three-term Republican who was appointed Florida secretary of state by Governor Bush. Mr. Dyer was re-elected last March. As with Mr. Gore, the black vote was an important factor. These two election reverses have upset Republicans in Orange County and statewide. Moreover, the anxiety over Democratic gains in Orange County is entwined with the very real fear among party stalwarts that Florida might go for John Kerry in this year's presidential election.
          It is in this context that two of the ugliest developments of the current campaign season should be viewed. "A Democrat can't win a statewide election in Florida without a high voter turnout - both at the polls and with absentee ballots - of African-Americans," said a man who is close to the Republican establishment in Florida but asked not to be identified. "It's no secret that the name of the game for Republicans is to restrain that turnout as much as possible. Black votes are Democratic votes, and there are a lot of them in Florida." ...
          From the G.O.P. perspective, it doesn't really matter whether anyone is arrested in the Orlando investigation, or even if a crime was committed. The idea, in Orange County and elsewhere, is to send a chill through the democratic process, suppressing opposing votes by whatever means are available.
      • Voting While Black
          The smell of voter suppression coming out of Florida is getting stronger. It turns out that a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation, in which state troopers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando in a bizarre hunt for evidence of election fraud, is being conducted despite a finding by the department last May "that there was no basis to support the allegations of election fraud."
      • Saving the Vote
          (T)he behavior of Gov. Jeb Bush's officials with regard to other election-related matters offers no justification for such faith (in Florida election results). First there was the affair of the felon list. Florida law denies the vote to convicted felons. But in 2000 many innocent people, a great number of them black, couldn't vote because they were erroneously put on a list of felons; these wrongful exclusions may have put Governor Bush's brother in the White House. This year, Florida again drew up a felon list, and tried to keep it secret. When a judge forced the list's release, it turned out that it once again wrongly disenfranchised many people - again, largely African-American - while including almost no Hispanics. Yesterday, my colleague Bob Herbert reported on another highly suspicious Florida initiative: state police officers have gone into the homes of elderly African-American voters - including participants in get-out-the-vote operations - and interrogated them as part of what the state says is a fraud investigation. But the state has provided little information about the investigation, and, as Mr. Herbert says, this looks remarkably like an attempt to intimidate voters.
      • Suppress the Vote?
          State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd "investigation" that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November. ... The state police officers, armed and in plain clothes, have questioned dozens of voters in their homes. Some of those questioned have been volunteers in get-out-the-vote campaigns. ... The vile smell of voter suppression is all over this so-called investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
  • Mr. Bush Flip-Flopping
    • Bush Flip Flops on 20 Issues
        From the beginning, George W. Bush has made his own credibility a central issue. On 10/11/00, then Governor Bush said: "I think credibility is important. It is going to be important for the President to be credible with Congress, important for the President to be credible with foreign nations." But President Bush's serial flip-flopping raises serious questions about whether Congress and foreign leaders can rely on what he says.
    • Bush Cites Doubt America Can Win War on Terror
        President Bush, in an interview broadcast on Monday, said he did not think America could win the war on terror but that it could make terrorism less acceptable around the world, a departure from his previous optimistic statements that the United States would eventually prevail. ...
        "After months of listening to the Republicans base their campaign on their singular ability to win the war on terror, the president now says we can't win the war on terrorism," Senator John Edwards, Mr. Kerry's running mate, said in a statement. "This is no time to declare defeat. It won't be easy and it won't be quick, but we have a comprehensive longterm plan to make America safer. And that's a difference." Mr. Edwards elaborated on his criticism in an interview Monday with the ABC program "Nightline.'' Mr. Edwards said the battle against terrorism was "absolutely winnable" with the right leadership. "Now, in order to win it," Mr. Edwards said, "we have to do the right thing, which includes some of the things that I spoke about today: reform our intelligence operations, more human intelligence inside these terrorist cells, being more aggressive about the developing nuclear threats in North Korea and Iran, and different plans - a more effective plan in Iraq, a more effective plan in Afghanistan.''
        Mr. Kerry, who has limited his campaigning this week, was asked at his vacation home in Nantucket whether the war on terror could be won. He replied, "Absolutely."
    • In Retreat, Bush Says U.S. Will Win War on Terrorism
        A day after NBC broadcast an interview with Mr. Bush in which he said he did not think the United States could win the war against terrorism, which has become the focus of his presidency and his re-election campaign, he raced back to his optimistic statements that America will prevail. ... Senator John Kerry's campaign had jumped on the president's comments to the American Legion, saying that they amounted to backpedaling and showed Mr. Bush to be a flip-flopper - a phrase that Bush officials have used for months to belittle Mr. Kerry. "Bush flip-flops on winning the war on terror," read the e-mail message sent to reporters by Phil Singer, a Kerry campaign spokesman. Mr. Singer added, "This president has gone from mission accomplished to mission miscalculated to mission impossible on the war on terror."
  • The Bush Administration's Health Care Record
    • Citing Higher Costs, U.S. Plans Record Rise in Medicare Premium
        A day after President Bush heralded his efforts to help the elderly cope with increased medical expenses, federal officials announced the largest premium increase in dollars in the Medicare program's history, raising the monthly expense by $11.60 to $78.20.The increase, which amounts to 17 percent, results largely from increased payments to doctors and reflects rising medical expenses generally, officials said. ... Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign, released a statement saying, "After doing nothing about the record increases in the cost of health care over the last four years, George Bush is presiding over a Medicare system that is socking seniors with the largest premium hike in the program's 40-year history."
  • The Bush Administration's Education Record
    • Bad News on the Charter Front
        The Bush administration's education program received a devastating setback this week when long-awaited federal data showed that children in charter schools were performing worse on math and reading tests than their counterparts in regular public schools. Among other things, the data casts doubt on a central provision of the No Child Left Behind Act that encourages the states to hand over failing schools to commercial companies and nonprofit community groups that want to run them as charter schools. Such schools can circumvent some union rules and customary management methods while operating outside the influence of school boards and state authorities.
  • The Valerie Plame Leak
    • Senator Is Described as a Likely Source of Intelligence Leak
        A two-year investigation into how the news media obtained classified intercepted messages has found that Senator Richard C. Shelby, the Alabama Republican and former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was almost certainly a source, a government official familiar with the inquiry said Thursday. The investigation remains open, but the Justice Department is unlikely to file criminal charges against the senator, the official said.
  • The Bush Administration and the Terror Alerts
    • An American Debate: How Severe the Threat? John Q. Public: "They messed that thing up so badly that at this point, I don't believe anything they tell us."
        If the United States was in imminent danger of a terrorist attack and faraway financial institutions were supposed to be on high alert, there was no evidence of it at Franks Diner, a 78-year-old Kenosha institution where senators mix with regular folk and the prospect of another attack seemed just part of the background noise of daily life. "I don't know who on earth to believe anymore," said Michael Schumacher, a 54-year-old writer who was eating a bratwurst for breakfast. "You feel you're being manipulated all the time." Some version of that view was echoed at almost every table here as many patrons questioned whether the Bush administration was trying to manipulate the terrorist threat for political advantage. Some, like John Gilmore, who owned Franks until a few years ago and still comes back to eat, said they had lost faith in the administration after American troops failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "They messed that thing up so badly that at this point, I don't believe anything they tell us," Mr. Gilmore said. "There's always an ulterior motive somewhere."
  • Standing Up For Freedom
    • Tyranny in the Name of Freedom
        So it has come down to this: You are at liberty to exercise your First Amendment right to assemble and to protest, so long as you do so from behind chain-link fences and razor wire, or miles from the audience you seek to address. The largely ignored "free-speech zone" at the Democratic convention in Boston last month was an affront to the spirit of the Constitution. The situation will be only slightly better when the Republicans gather this month in New York, where indiscriminate searches and the use of glorified veal cages for protesters have been limited by a federal judge. So far, the only protesters with access to the area next to Madison Square Garden are some anti-abortion Christians. ... (The Bush administration's anti-free speech) argument assumes some meaningful link between domestic political protest and terrorism. There is no such link, except in the eyes of the Bush administration, which conflates the two both as a matter of law and of policy. It started with Attorney General John Ashcroft's declaration, shortly after 9/11: "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists." This was an early attempt to couple disagreeing on civil liberties with abetting terrorists. ... An even more pernicious use of the federal law enforcement power to quash protest has been observed at presidential speeches, where the Bush team has used the Secret Service at public events to create "free-speech zones" that keep dissenters away from the president. In 2002 Brett Bursey, a South Carolinian, was arrested for holding a "No War for Oil" sign near a hangar where Bush was speaking. The West Virginia police reported that the Secret Service had directed them to arrest a couple sporting anti-Bush T-shirts at a public speech this year. ... Without evidence that pacifist protesters plan to violate their own credos and bludgeon the president with their Birkenstocks, the use of the Secret Service to silence them is an abuse of executive power.
    • Chords for Change
        Bruce Springsteen: "For the last 25 years I have always stayed away from partisan politics, but this year the stakes have risen too high to sit the election out. I plan to join with many fellow artists, including the Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., the Dixie Chicks, Jurassic 5, James Taylor and Jackson Browne, in touring the country this October. We will be performing under the umbrella of a new group called Vote for Change. Our goal is to change the direction of the government and change the current administration come November. Like many others, in the aftermath of 9/11, I felt the country's unity. I don't remember anything quite like it. I supported the decision to enter Afghanistan and I hoped that the seriousness of the times would bring forth strength, humility and wisdom in our leaders. Instead, we dived headlong into an unnecessary war in Iraq, offering up the lives of our young men and women under circumstances that are now discredited. We ran record deficits, while simultaneously cutting and squeezing services like afterschool programs. We granted tax cuts to the richest 1 percent (corporate bigwigs, well-to-do guitar players), increasing the division of wealth that threatens to destroy our social contract with one another and render mute the promise of 'one nation indivisible.' ... Our American government has strayed too far from American values. It is time to move forward."
  • Conservative Bias of the Media
    • Reading the Script
        Cable news did the best it could to make the Democratic convention fit the script. ... If you really want to see cable news scripts in action, look at the coverage of the Democratic convention. Commercial broadcast TV covered only one hour a night. ... But many people watched the convention on cable news channels - and what they saw was shaped by a script portraying Democrats as angry Bush-haters who disdain the military. If that sounds like a script written by the Republicans, it is. As the movie "Outfoxed" makes clear, Fox News is for all practical purposes a G.O.P. propaganda agency. ... On Thursday night, Mr. Kerry's speech was a palpable hit. ... once calm returns (after the latest politically-timed terrorist alert), don't be surprised if some of those same commentators begin describing the ineffective speech they expected (and hoped) to see, not the one they actually saw. Luckily, in this age of the Internet it's possible to bypass the filter. At c-span.org (http://c-span.org), you can find transcripts and videos of all the speeches. I'd urge everyone to watch Mr. Kerry and others for yourself, and make your own judgment.
  • Religious Intolerance -- A Way of Life in America, Too?
    • Without a Doubt
        Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.
        ''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .
        ''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.'' . . .
        As Whitman told me on the day in May 2003 that she announced her resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: ''In meetings, I'd ask if there were any facts to support our case. And for that, I was accused of disloyalty!''
    • Holding the Pentagon Accountable: For Religious Bigotry
        (T)he deputy secretary of defense for intelligence - the ranking general charged with the hunt for Osama bin Laden - was parading in uniform to Christian pulpits, preaching that God had put George Bush in the White House and that Islamic terrorists will only be defeated "if we come at them in the name of Jesus." ... General Boykin has to be removed from his current job. He has become a national embarrassment, not to mention a walking contradiction of President Bush's own policy statement that the fight against terror is bias-free and not a crusade against Islam.
    • Chipping Away at the Wall
        Americans shouldn't have to be religious in the closet, but that doesn't give public officials the right to exercise their religion at the expense of everyone they serve.
        (Today, as in the 1920s,) public officials happily flout the law to advance personal religious agendas. ... The Defense Department confirmed last week that a senior military intelligence official violated internal rules by giving speeches, mostly at Baptist or Pentecostal churches, in which he said that America is a "Christian nation" (and) depicted President Bush as having been anointed by God ... it's clear there is a growing wave of public officials convinced that their own, personal religious freedom renders the notion of a wall between church and state personally offensive and legally irrelevant. The twin religious protections enshrined in the First Amendment - that one can freely exercise one's religion, and that the government cannot establish a state religion - are forced onto a collision course when public officials insist their personal religious freedom allows them to promote sectarian views in office.
    • Jesus and Jihad
        The ... best-selling novels for adults in the United States (include) the latest ... "Glorious Appearing," which has Jesus returning to Earth to wipe all non-Christians from the planet. It's disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety. If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of "Glorious Appearing" and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit. We have quite properly linked the fundamentalist religious tracts of Islam with the intolerance they nurture, and it's time to remove the motes from our own eyes. ... Should we really give intolerance a pass if it is rooted in religious faith? Many American Christians once read the Bible to mean that African-Americans were cursed as descendants of Noah's son Ham, and were intended by God to be enslaved. In the 19th century, millions of Americans sincerely accepted this Biblical justification for slavery as God's word -- but surely it would have been wrong to defer to such racist nonsense simply because speaking out could have been perceived as denigrating some people's religious faith.
    • A Hidden Swing Vote: Evangelicals
        ... Christian evangelicals. We are repeatedly told they form the president's unshakeable electoral base. But in truth, this claim is vastly simplistic: the fashionable image of masses of white evangelical voters, stirred up by the tricks of Karl Rove and led by Bible-thumping clergymen, marching in lock step to deny rights to women and to gays, is hardly born out by the data. Rather, the real Republican base is the same as it was before Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy" appealed to religious Protestants in 1968: the wealthy and the powerful. ... In fact, polling data show that President Bush's real base is not religious but economic, the group he jokingly referred to as "the haves and the have mores." ... Most poorer Americans of every faith - including evangelical Christians - vote for Democrats. It's a shame that few pundits, pollsters or politicians seem to notice.
  • Republicans Seek to Destroy Constitution for Political Gain
    • A Radical Assault on the Constitution
        Majorities that are frustrated when courts stand up for minority rights have occasionally tried to strip them of the power to do so. This week, the House voted to deny the federal courts the ability to decide a key constitutional issue involving gay marriage. Such a law would upset the system of checks and balances and threaten all minority groups. It is critical that the Senate reject it. ... The House vote could be dismissed as election-year politics. It's highly unlikely the Senate will go along, and even if it did, there is good reason to believe the law would itself be declared unconstitutional. Still, even one house of Congress backing this sort of assault on the federal judiciary is an outrage.
    • Politicking on Marriage
        Republicans who had hoped to score political points today by holding a Senate vote on adding a ban on same-sex marriage to the Constitution (the Federal Marriage Amendment) have run into unexpectedly broad resistance across the ideological spectrum. Liberals and moderates opposed to writing bigotry into the Constitution are being joined by a growing number of conservatives who see nothing conservative about federalizing marriage law or turning America's most essential legal document into an election-year football. With support for the amendment now well below the necessary 67 senators, the calls to put it to a vote just before the Democratic National Convention are nothing more than divisive politics. ... (E)ven many voters who oppose gay marriage do not favor the drastic step of amending the Constitution to prohibit it.
    • Senators Block Initiative to Ban Same-Sex Unions
        The Senate delivered a sound, and expected, defeat Wednesday to a proposed constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage, easily blocking a politically charged initiative that has been endorsed by President Bush and was a top priority of many of his socially conservative supporters. After more than three days of debate, the Senate voted 50 to 48 against moving forward on the proposal, effectively killing it for now. The vote, largely along party lines, was 12 short of the number needed to keep the amendment alive and 19 shy of the 67 votes needed to send the amendment to states for ratification, if it is approved by the House. ... Senator John McCain of Arizona, one of six Republicans who opposed the measure, described the amendment regulating marriage - normally a state function - as "antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans" because it interfered with states rights. And earlier this week Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, dealt the amendment a blow when she said the recognition of marriage should remain under state control.
  • Postponing the U.S. Elections -- The Stuff of Dictatorships
    • A Bad Idea, Rejected
        In 1864, with the Civil War raging, millions of Americans voted in the presidential election and, as Carl Sandburg wrote, the balloting went on "in quiet and good order." So it was troubling to hear reports this week that the Bush administration and a federal elections body were talking about whether this year's election could be postponed in the event of a terrorist attack. ... Calling off elections, particularly when the ruling power is doing the calling off, is the stuff of tin-pot dictatorships. Even in this country, an attack can provide an opportunity for leaders to seek extralegal powers. New Yorkers still remember that after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani proposing staying on after his term ended. ... Congress should study the broad issue of election interference. To ensure that everyone has a chance to vote, it should consider giving courts the express authority to extend polling hours. It should also consider directing local election officials to have an ample supply of paper ballots as a backup. Whatever rules may be adopted, they should provide for more voting, not less.
  • The Bush Administration - Saying One Thing, Doing Another
    • Presidents for Gun Control - Bush Not!
        Few Americans favor a return to the day when military-style assault weapons like AK-47's, Uzis and Tec-9 pistols could be manufactured and sold in this country, making them readily available for use by gangs and drug traffickers engaged in violent crime. Yet President Bush has still not made any effort to stop the 10-year-old federal ban on assault weapons from expiring on Sept. 13. ... (Mr. Bush's) zeal for fighting terrorism and crime appears not to extend to risking the wrath of pro-gun extremists who are vehemently opposed to the renewal of this proven public safety measure, even though it has led to a sharp drop in the use of assault weapons in crime. The weapons ban also has support from every major law enforcement group in the country. To fuzz up the issue and soften his political image, Mr. Bush continues to pay lip service to backing the reauthorization of the gun restrictions, which he endorsed as a presidential candidate in 2000. In reality, he knows that he is dooming the assault weapons ban by refusing to instruct the Republican Congressional leaders to get a renewal bill to his desk, pronto.
    • Bush's Own Goal - "Ownership Society"
        A new Bush campaign ad pushes the theme of an "ownership society," and concludes with President Bush declaring, "I understand if you own something, you have a vital stake in the future of America." ... there's a political imperative behind the "ownership society" theme: the need to provide pseudopopulist cover to policies that are, in reality, highly elitist. ... The Bush tax cuts have ... favored unearned income over earned income - or, if you prefer, investment returns over wages. ... Mr. Bush hasn't yet gotten all he wants, but he has taken a large step toward a system in which only labor income is taxed. Social Security is, basically, a system in which each generation pays for the previous generation's retirement. If the payroll taxes of younger workers are diverted into private accounts, there will be a gaping financial hole: who will pay benefits to older Americans, who have spent their working lives paying into the current system? Unless you have a way to fill that multitrillion-dollar hole, privatization is an empty slogan, not a real proposal.
    • The Arabian Candidate
        By PAUL KRUGMAN -- In the original version of "The Manchurian Candidate," Senator John Iselin, whom Chinese agents are plotting to put in the White House, is a right-wing demagogue modeled on Senator Joseph McCarthy. As Roger Ebert wrote, the plan is to "use anticommunist hysteria as a cover for a communist takeover." The movie doesn't say what Iselin would have done if the plot had succeeded. Presumably, however, he wouldn't have openly turned traitor. Instead, he would have used his position to undermine national security, while posing as America's staunchest defender against communist evil.
        So let's imagine an update - my own version. This time the enemies would be Islamic fanatics, who install as their puppet president a demagogue who poses as the nation's defender against terrorist evildoers. The Arabian candidate wouldn't openly help terrorists. Instead, he would serve their cause while pretending to be their enemy. After an attack, he would strike back at the terrorist base, a necessary action to preserve his image of toughness, but botch the follow-up, allowing the terrorist leaders to escape. Once the public's attention shifted, he would systematically squander the military victory: committing too few soldiers, reneging on promises of economic aid. Soon, warlords would once again rule most of the country, the heroin trade would be booming, and terrorist allies would make a comeback. Meanwhile, he would lead America into a war against a country that posed no imminent threat. He would insinuate, without saying anything literally false, that it was somehow responsible for the terrorist attack. This unnecessary war would alienate our allies and tie down a large part of our military. At the same time, the Arabian candidate would neglect the pursuit of those who attacked us, and do nothing about regimes that really shelter anti-American terrorists and really are building nuclear weapons.Again, he would take care to squander a military victory.
    • Mr. Berger's Incredible Misadventure and Republican Hypocrisy
        The White House's denial of leaking information about the Samuel Berger case would sound more credible if it assigned some urgency to solving the C.I.A. leak case. ... The same Congressional leaders who shrugged at the leaking of a C.I.A. agent's identity to punish her husband, a critic of administration policy, demand hearings on Mr. Berger. ... After initially claiming it knew nothing of the case, the White House has had to admit it was informed. That sort of heads-up taints both sides. It leaves the White House open to questions about whether it timed a leak to the release of the 9/11 panel's report, and it feeds cynicism about the independence of federal prosecutors.
  • The Republican Strategy -- Hypocrisy and Dirty Politics
    • The Republican Smear of John Kerry's Character
      • The View From the Boat
          JUDITH DROZ KEYES: A group of veterans has said John Kerry did not deserve the medals he won. I know my husband (Lt. j.g. Donald Droz, the commander of one of three Swift boats traveling the Dong Cung in Vietnam) thought otherwise. ... I remember him saying that John Kerry was heading home, deservedly so, and that he admired his bravery and planned to see him that summer. ... He told me he was convinced that what the United States was doing in Vietnam was pointless or worse and that, when he got home, he intended to speak out against it. But he was clear - and I have always understood - that he was criticizing the war itself and those who were deciding how to wage it, not those who were putting their lives on the line to do their duty honestly and bravely.
      • When Actions Speak Louder Than Medals
          LARRY HEINEMANN: In 1971, when John Kerry sat before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the essence of his message was exact: many a mean thing was done, sir, from the Oval Office on down, and in the spirit of meanness. We love our nation dearly, but oppose this terrible war. Our country seems to have forfeited its moral authority, and that makes our hearts sore. ... (T)he important matter is that, when push came to shove, Lieutenant Kerry turned his boat around and drove back into a firefight to fetch an Army Green Beret out of the river. I know that if it had been me in the water, I would surely remember the man's name, the look on his face, and the reach of his arm for the rest of my life; I would be sure to tell my grandchildren about him.
      • Where Is the Shame?
          (Max) Cleland, a former U.S. senator who was himself the target of vicious, unconscionable attacks by the G.O.P. slime machine when he ran for re-election in Georgia in 2002, ... told reporters: "The question is, where is George Bush's honor? Where is his shame?" Mr. Cleland reminded reporters of the scurrilous attacks by Bush forces against Senator John McCain in the Republican presidential primary in 2000 and said: "Keep in mind, this president has gone after three Vietnam veterans in four years. That's got to stop." ... What is incredible is that these attacks on men who served not just honorably, but heroically, are coming from a hawkish party that is controlled by an astonishing number of men who sprinted as far from the front lines as they could when they were of fighting age and their country was at war. ... George W. Bush ought to call off his dogs. The one thing we ought to be able to do in this hyperpoliticized era is rally in a bipartisan way behind those who have been willing to fight our wars.
      • President Bush: Kerry Telling Truth About Vietnam Service
          President Bush said on Thursday that he did not believe Senator John Kerry lied about his war record, but he declined to condemn the television commercial paid for by a veterans group alleging that Mr. Kerry came by his war medals dishonestly. Mr. Bush's comments, in a half-hour interview with The New York Times, undercut a central accusation leveled by the veterans group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose unproven attacks on Mr. Kerry have dominated the political debate for more than two weeks. ...
          Mr. Bush also acknowledged for the first time that he made a "miscalculation of what the conditions would be'' in postwar Iraq. ...
          On environmental issues, Mr. Bush appeared unfamiliar with an administration report delivered to Congress on Wednesday that indicated that emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases were the only likely explanation for global warming over the last three decades. Previously, Mr. Bush and other officials had emphasized uncertainties in understanding the causes and consequences of global warming. The new report was signed by Mr. Bush's secretaries of energy and commerce and his science adviser. Asked why the administration had changed its position on what causes global warming, Mr. Bush replied, "Ah, we did? I don't think so."
      • Lawyer for Bush Quits Over Links to Kerry's Foes
          The national counsel for President Bush's re-election campaign resigned on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after he acknowledged that he had provided legal advice to a veterans group that has leveled unsubstantiated attacks on Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War record in a book and on the air. ... Democrats put up a new 60-second ad on the issue, asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to open a criminal investigation into links between the Bush camp and the anti-Kerry veterans group and dispatched to Texas former Senator Max Cleland of Georgia, a triple amputee from wounds received in the Vietnam War. ... In the most theatrical event of the president's weeklong Texas vacation, Mr. Cleland turned up at the remote first checkpoint on Prairie Chapel Road outside Mr. Bush's 1,600-acre ranch on Wednesday afternoon, and then tried to deliver a letter asking the president to condemn the television commercials against Mr. Kerry by the Swift boat group. He first approached a Secret Service agent, then a Texas state policeman, but both refused to accept the letter.
      • Swift Boats and the Texas Nexus
          President Bush should stop evading responsibility and unequivocally condemn the attacks on Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War service that are being orchestrated by negative-campaign specialists deep in the heart of the Texas Republican machine. ... No one has offered evidence to contradict (Kerry's) record. By failing to condemn the ads, Mr. Bush leaves the impression that he condones this effort to turn the historical record into a partisan blur.
      • Bush Campaign's Top Outside Lawyer Advised Veterans Group
          The Bush campaign's top outside lawyer said Tuesday that he had given legal advice to the group of veterans attacking Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War record and antiwar activism. ... The lawyer, Benjamin L. Ginsberg, said that the group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, called him last month to ask for his help and that he agreed. ... This is the second time in recent days that an individual associated with Mr. Bush's campaign has acknowledged working with Swift Boat Veterans. On Sunday, the campaign confirmed an accusation first made by Mr. Kerry's campaign that Kenneth Cordier, a retired colonel who appears in the second of two commercials by the group, had been a member of the Bush campaign's veterans' advisory committee. ... "It's another piece of evidence of the ties between the Bush campaign and this group," Chad Clanton, a spokesman for Mr. Kerry, said. Asked about his campaign's use of shared lawyers, Mr. Clanton said, "If the Bush campaign truly disapproved of this smear, their top lawyer wouldn't be involved.''
      • Kerry TV Ad Pins Veterans' Attack Firmly on Bush
          Senator John Kerry released a television advertisement yesterday blaming President Bush for a campaign by a "front group" of veterans that Mr. Kerry said had smeared his Vietnam record ... Mr. Kerry's aides said this latest advertisement, as well as a speech he would give in New York on Tuesday, was intended to move the debate away from a discussion about Mr. Kerry's Vietnam service and to focus it instead on what they contended was a history of dirty tricks by Republicans around Mr. Bush and his father over the years. ... To back up its statements, Mr. Kerry's advisers noted that the Swift boat group got much of its initial financing from two men who had supported the political endeavors of Mr. Bush and his father: a Texas commercial real estate executive, Harlan Crow, and a Texas home builder, Bob J. Perry. Mr. Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove, has described Mr. Perry as a friend. And a member of Mr. Bush's veterans advisory panel, Kenneth Cordier, a retired colonel, resigned this weekend after appearing in the Swift boat group's latest advertisement. ... Mr. Kerry's vice-presidential nominee, John Edwards campaigning in his home state of North Carolina, called the advertisements lies and predicted they would backfire on the president. "The American people will hold him accountable," Mr. Edwards said of Mr. Bush. "I think the American people will figure out the truth." ... A spokesman for Mr. Kerry, Chad Clanton, said, "It's unfortunate that Senator Dole is making comments that U.S. Navy records prove false."
      • The Rambo Coalition
          In this election, a man who plays the action hero is questioning the patriotism of a man who risked his life in war. ... One of the wonders of recent American politics has been the ability of Mr. Bush and his supporters to wrap their partisanship in the flag. Through innuendo and direct attacks by surrogates, men who assiduously avoided service in Vietnam, like Dick Cheney (five deferments), John Ashcroft (seven deferments) and George Bush (a comfy spot in the National Guard, and a mysterious gap in his records), have questioned the patriotism of men who risked their lives and suffered for their country: John McCain, Max Cleland and now John Kerry. ... As a domestic political strategy, Mr. Bush's posturing (on Iraq) worked brilliantly. As a strategy against terrorism, it has played right into Al Qaeda's hands. Thirty years after Vietnam, American soldiers are again dying in a war that was sold on false pretenses and creates more enemies than it kills. ...
          All the credible evidence, from military records to the testimony of those who served with Mr. Kerry, confirms his wartime heroism. Why, then, are some veterans willing to join the smear campaign? Because they are angry about his later statements against the war. Yet making those statements was itself a heroic act - and what he said then rings truer than ever. ... The young John Kerry spoke of leaders who sent others to their deaths because they wanted to seem tough, then "left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude." Fifteen months after George Bush strutted around in his flight suit, more and more Americans are echoing Gen. Anthony Zinni, who received a standing ovation from an audience of Marine and Navy officers when he talked about the debacle in Iraq and said of those who served in Vietnam: "We heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice. I ask you, is it happening again?" ...
          Let's hope that this latest campaign of garbage and lies - initially financed by a Texas Republican close to Karl Rove, and running an ad featuring an "independent" veteran who turns out to have served on a Bush campaign committee - leads to a backlash against Mr. Bush.
      • President Urges Outside Groups to Halt All Ads -- But Flipflops Re Swift Boaters
          President Bush said on Monday that political advertisements run by a broad swath of independent groups should be stopped, including a television advertisement attacking Senator John Kerry's war record. But the White House quickly moved to insist that Mr. Bush had not meant in any way to single out the advertisement run by veterans opposed to Mr. Kerry. ... The president spoke on a day when Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, in another indication of its web of ties to the Republican Party, acknowledged that a woman who helped set it up and works for it is an officer of the Majority Leader's Fund, a political action committee affiliated with the former House majority leader Dick Armey of Texas. ... Jim Russell said that he had served on the Bay Hap River with Mr. Kerry the day he won his Bronze Star and that they had come under significant enemy fire as Mr. Kerry rescued Jim Rassmann. His account contradicted that of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who have said there was not a major firefight. "Anyone who doesn't think that we were being fired upon must have been on a different river," Mr Russell wrote.
      • Kerry: Slo-Mo on Swifties
          It makes sense for W. to use surrogates to do his fighting, just as he did when he slid out of Vietnam and just as he did when he sent our troops to fight his administration's misbegotten vanity war in Iraq. ... The weird thing is, given how transparently the Bushes play the game of staying above the fray even as their creepy-crawly surrogates do dishonorable and undignified things, their rivals always seem caught off guard when the third parties show up to rip their throats out. ... Just as the Bush campaign dragged out fringe veteran surrogates in South Carolina to slime the former P.O.W. (John McCain in 2000) for being antiveteran, now the stomach-turning Swift boat attackers are sliming a war hero as a war criminal.
      • The Military Record: Officer From Another Swift Boat Breaks Silence and Defends Kerry
          A Vietnam veteran who served with Senator John Kerry on a Swift boat mission broke a 35-year silence this weekend to support Mr. Kerry's version of events from one of their operations together and to chastise veterans critical of the senator as having "splashed doubt on all of us." The veteran, William B. Rood, is now an editor at The Chicago Tribune, which ran on its Web site yesterday and in Sunday's paper a 1,750-word first-person article in which Mr. Rood recounted the mission. ... Mr. Bush's campaign confirmed on Saturday an accusation by the Kerry campaign that one of the veterans in the that advertisement was a member the Bush campaign's veterans' advisory committee. The Bush campaign said in a statement that it did not know that the man, retired Col. Kenneth Cordier, was going to appear in the advertisement and because of that he was no longer a volunteer. ... The Bush camp has declined to tell the group to stop running advertisements.
      • Friendly Fire: The Birth of an Anti-Kerry Ad
          After weeks of taking fire over veterans' accusations that he had lied about his Vietnam service record to win medals and build a political career, Senator John Kerry shot back yesterday, calling those statements categorically false and branding the people behind them tools of the Bush campaign. ...
          How the group came into existence is a story of how veterans with longstanding anger about Mr. Kerry's antiwar statements in the early 1970's allied themselves with Texas Republicans.
          A series of interviews and a review of documents show a web of connections to the Bush family, high-profile Texas political figures and President Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove. ...
          The strategy the veterans devised would ultimately paint John Kerry the war hero as John Kerry the "baby killer" and the fabricator of the events that resulted in his war medals. But on close examination, the accounts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' prove to be riddled with inconsistencies. In many cases, material offered as proof by these veterans is undercut by official Navy records and the men's own statements.
          Several of those now declaring Mr. Kerry "unfit" had lavished praise on him, some as recently as last year. ... The book outlining the veterans' charges, "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against Kerry," has also come under fire. It is published by Regnery, a conservative company that has published numerous books critical of Democrats, and written by Mr. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi, who was identified on the book jacket as a Harvard Ph.D. and the author of many books and articles. But Mr. Corsi also acknowledged that he has been a contributor of anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic comments to a right-wing Web site.
      • Politics as Usual
          It may seem outlandish to launch a campaign broadside by television ad and book flackery devoted to discrediting the respectable Vietnam War record of Senator John Kerry, who has five combat medals. But that is exactly what a Republican-financed group of partisans is doing in presenting itself as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and tattooing the Democratic presidential nominee with accusations of lying about his service and war wounds. Never in Mr. Kerry's command, but claiming to have served near enough, its members are trying to contradict the firsthand accounts of his crewmates who are vouching for his war record. ... The leader of the attack, John O'Neill, a Swift boat veteran and Texas lawyer, has been a detractor of Mr. Kerry for decades, ever since the Nixon White House recruited him to rebut Mr. Kerry's criticism of Vietnam policy. And the chief donor to the Swift boat broadside is a Texas businessman, Bob Perry, who is known for giving millions to the campaigns of President Bush and other Republicans. ... Senator John McCain, the Vietnam hero who was smeared by one such "independent" stealth group in the 2000 campaign, has denounced the Swift Boat Veterans' attack as dishonest and dishonorable, declaring, "The Bush administration should specifically condemn the ad." So far that hasn't happened.
    • Mr. Bush's Acceptance Speech Reflects a Failed Administration
        Each of (Mr. Bush's) policies has cost the nation dearly: the tax cuts have exploded the budget deficit, Mr. Bush has failed to finance his education programs adequately, and the war in Iraq has been fumbled from the day Baghdad fell. Nobody expected the president to admit that any of his initiatives had turned out to be less than smashing successes, but wavering voters might have been buoyed by at least a hint that the administration realizes that the course needs adjustment. Instead, the president presented troubled, half-finished initiatives like his prescription drug plan as fully completed tasks, just as he presented the dangerous and chaotic situation in Iraq as a picture of triumphant foreign policy on a par with the Marshall Plan. He tossed out a combination of extremely vague concepts - like creating an ownership society - along with small-bore ideas like additional college scholarships. ... The president, who dropped his laudable attempt to begin desperately needed immigration reform as soon as he ran into political resistance, gave the idea not a mention last night. There was no hint that he realizes his "uniter, not a divider" vow ran aground on the administration's insistence on right-wing judicial nominees and inflexibility on social issues like stem cell research. There was nothing in the speech last night that suggested a new era of frankness from the White House, or hope that any of those fundamental problems would be approached with anything but the "my way or the highway" attitude Mr. Bush has used on issues like tax cuts and Iraq. ...
        It was depressing to hear Dick Cheney, who spoke on Wednesday night, repeat his crowd-pleasing snipe against Senator Kerry for calling for "a more sensitive war on terror." It was a phony criticism, given that Mr. Bush has used almost identical language in the past. But, worse, it signaled that Mr. Cheney and the administration's other hit men will spend the next two months trying to sell their failed approach to foreign policy, and encouraging Americans to believe that anyone who acknowledges that the United States needs to take a more patient and humble approach to the world is in league with the girlie men.
    • Heads in the Sand -- War Lies
        Despite all the macho posturing and self-congratulating at the Republican convention, the wave of terror that's been unleashed on the world is only growing. The American-led war in Iraq is feeding that wave, causing it to swell rather than ebb. Any serious person who looked around the world this week would have to wonder what the delegates at the G.O.P. convention were so happy about. The Republican conventioneers spent the entire week reminding America that we were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. But interestingly, there was hardly a mention by name of those actually responsible for the attacks - Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Discussions about the nation's real enemies were taboo. We don't know where they are or what they're up to. The over-the-top venom of some of the speakers and delegates was reserved not for Osama, but for a couple of mild-mannered guys named John. ...
        When asked this week on CNN how long the U.S. military is likely to remain in Iraq, Senator John McCain replied "probably" 10 or 20 years. ... Reporters have come to expect candor from Senator McCain, and in this case he didn't disappoint. But there weren't any speakers mounting the podium at the Republican National Convention to hammer home the message that G.I.'s would be in Iraq for a decade or two. That's not the understanding most Americans had when this wretched war was sold to them, and it's not the view most Americans hold now. ... Vietnam tore this nation apart. As we've seen in this campaign, the wounds have yet to heal. Incredibly, we're now traveling a similarly tragic road in Iraq.
    • Feel the Republican Hate
        There was plenty of hatred in Manhattan, but it was inside, not outside, Madison Square Garden. ... Barack Obama, who gave the Democratic keynote address, delivered a message of uplift and hope. Zell Miller, who gave the Republican (convention) keynote, declared that political opposition is treason. ...
        Why are the Republicans so angry? One reason is that they have nothing positive to run on (during the first three days, Mr. Bush was mentioned far less often than John Kerry). The promised economic boom hasn't materialized, Iraq is a bloody quagmire, and Osama bin Laden has gone from "dead or alive" to he-who-must-not-be-named. Another reason, I'm sure, is a guilty conscience. At some level the people at that convention know that their designated hero is a man who never in his life took a risk or made a sacrifice for his country, and that they are impugning the patriotism of men who have. ... Nothing makes you hate people as much as knowing in your heart that you (Republicans) are in the wrong and they (Democrats) are in the right.
        But the vitriol also reflects the fact that many of the people at (the Republican) convention, for all their flag-waving, hate America. They want a controlled, monolithic society; they fear and loathe our nation's freedom, diversity and complexity. ... Mr. Bush, it's now clear, intends to run a campaign based on fear. And for me, at least, it's working: thinking about what these people will do if they solidify their grip on power makes me very, very afraid.
      • After a Night of G.O.P. Attacks, Edwards Fights Back
          "I can understand why the vice president spent so much of his time talking about John Kerry," Mr. Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards, said at a lively rally here in the suburbs of Philadelphia. "It's because he doesn't want to talk about what they did the last four years." (Mr. Edwards issued) a statement after the (Republican) convention speeches saying, "There was a lot of hate coming from that podium." ... "The truth is that the anger that we heard from Senator Miller, the anger that we heard from the vice president, is not going to change this country or do what needs to be done for America," Mr. Edwards said to loud cheers at the rally. "With all the anger and venom we saw focused on John Kerry, I wish we would see a little anger about the millions of people who lost their health care. How about a little anger about the almost two million people who lost their private-sector jobs?"
      • Bush Is 'Unfit' to Lead U.S., Kerry Charges
          Senator John Kerry called President Bush "unfit to lead this country" for "misleading" America into war in Iraq ... "For the past week, they have attacked my patriotism and even my fitness to serve as commander in chief," Mr. Kerry told thousands here at a midnight rally shortly after Mr. Bush accepted the Republican nomination for a second term and questioned Mr. Kerry's support for combat troops in Iraq. "Well, here is my answer to them," Mr. Kerry said to cheers. "I will not have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could've and who misled America into Iraq." ...
          "The vice president called me unfit for office last night," Mr. Kerry said. "Well, I'm going to leave it up to the voters to decide whether five deferments make someone more qualified than two tours of duty." Mr. Cheney received five deferments and did not serve in the military. Mr. Bush was in the Texas Air National Guard and did not serve overseas.
          Mr. Kerry was even harsher in attacking what he called Mr. Bush's "record of failure" as president. "Let me tell you in no uncertain terms what makes someone unfit for office and unfit for duty," Mr. Kerry said, turning to Mr. Bush. "Misleading our nation into war in Iraq makes you unfit to lead our country. Doing nothing while this nation loses millions of jobs makes you unfit to lead this country. Letting 45 million Americans go without health care for four years makes you unfit to lead this country. Letting the Saudi royal family control the price of oil for Americans makes you unfit to lead this country. Handing out billions of dollars in government contracts without a bid to Halliburton while you're still on the payroll makes you unfit lead this country. That, my friends, is the record of George Bush and Dick Cheney - and that only begins to scratch the surface." ...
          (Mr. Edwards) listed what he called the (Bush) administration's failures, five million Americans who have lost health coverage, four million who have fallen into poverty, nearly two million who have lost private-sector jobs and soaring costs for health insurance, college tuition and fuel.
      • Kerry Urges Voters to Look Past Bush's 'Last-Minute Promises'
          Senator John Kerry opened the final 60 days of the presidential campaign on Friday with a slashing indictment of President Bush's record on jobs and health care, saying he had misled the United States into war in Iraq and left a trail of broken promises and worsened problems at home. Mr. Kerry asked voters in this economically battered state (Ohio) to look past Mr. Bush's "last-minute promises" and focus on what he said were the facts: 1.7 million jobs lost since 2000, 1.4 million more people in 2003 without health insurance than the year before and 1.3 million more in poverty. "Is that a reason to be re-elected?" Mr. Kerry said. "Folks, they've had four years. And what they've done is take America backwards." ... Mr. Kerry attacked against what he called his rivals' distortions and said the president's address Thursday made clear he "will literally say anything and do anything in order to try to get re-elected."
    • Amnesia in the Garden -- Or, The Big Con
        Painting himself as the noble agent for "the transformational power of liberty" abroad, (Mr. Bush) said "there have always been doubters" when America uses its "strength" to "advance freedom": "In 1946, 18 months after the fall of Berlin to Allied forces, a journalist in The New York Times wrote this: 'Germany is a land in an acute stage of economic, political and moral crisis. European capitals are frightened. In every military headquarters, one meets alarmed officials doing their utmost to deal with the consequences of the occupation policy that they admit has failed.' End quote. Maybe that same person's still around, writing editorials."
        She isn't. Anne O'Hare McCormick, who died in 1954, was The Times's pioneering foreign affairs correspondent who covered the real Axis of Evil, interviewing Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Patton. ...
        The president distorted the columnist's dispatch. (download a PDF of the original column http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/opinion/1946mccormick.pdf) The "moral crisis" and failure she described were in the British and French sectors. She reported that the Americans were doing better because of their policy to "encourage initiative and develop self-government." She wanted the U.S. to commit more troops and stay the course - not cut and run. Mr. Bush Swift-boated her. ...
        The president and vice president ignored all the expert evidence now compiled indicating no link between 9/11 and Saddam, and no Saddam threat to U.S. security. After talking about "the fanatics who killed some 3,000 of our fellow Americans," Dick Cheney boasted: "In Iraq, we dealt with a gathering threat, and removed the regime of Saddam Hussein." ...
        Inside Madison Square Garden, W. kept insisting he'd made the world safer. Outside, the exploding world didn't seem safe at all.
    • Cutups and Cutthroats
        Despite the fact that the economy is cratering, Iraq is teetering, Afghanistan is reverting to warlords, Dick Cheney is glowering at the world, the war on terror has created more acts of terror, Ahmad Chalabi is an accused spy for Iran and the Pentagon has an accused spy for Israel, Republicans felt so good about themselves that when Arnold Schwarzenegger said he was inspired to become a Republican by Richard Nixon, they exploded. When Tricky Dick is a hot applause line, they're feeling cocky.
    • Republicans Plan on Twisting Convention Demonstrations into Democratic Disrespect for President
        Mr. Kerry's communications director, Stephanie Cutter, disputed Republican claims that Mr. Kerry did not talk enough about the future at his convention, and scoffed at the idea that Mr. Bush would have much new to say at his convention. "People have been hungry for substance over the past four years because of the president's failure to put forth a domestic agenda and pay attention to the home front,'' she said. "They can talk about substance all they want at the (Republican National) convention, but the American people won't be fooled." ...
        Mr. Bush's advisers said they were girding for the most extensive street demonstrations at any political convention since the Democrats nominated Hubert H. Humphrey in Chicago in 1968. But in contrast to that convention, which was severely undermined by televised displays of street rioting, Republicans said they would seek to turn any disruptions to their advantage, by portraying protests by even independent activists as Democratic-sanctioned displays of disrespect for a sitting president. ...
        Ms. Cutter said the Democratic Party was not involved in any demonstrations, and blamed them on Mr. Bush. "This president has spent the last four years dividing people and never taking responsibility for his failed record and its impact on average Americans," she said. "Any protests that might take place will likely reflect that." ...
        (The Republican National Convention) comes as many Republicans have grown increasingly worried about Mr. Bush's prospects for re-election ... A CBS News poll this week found that 53 percent of registered voters felt the nation was heading in the wrong direction, a dangerously high number for an incumbent.
      • Videos Challenge Accounts of Convention Unrest
          The police arrested 1670 people they accused of inciting violence during the Republican National Convention. Videos of the events prove that the police testimony was lies, with 91 percent of the cases ending with the charges dismissed or with a verdict of not guilty after trial.
      • Vast Anti-Bush Rally Greets Republicans in New York
          A roaring two-mile river of demonstrators surged through the canyons of Manhattan yesterday in the city's largest political protest in decades, a raucous but peaceful spectacle that pilloried George W. Bush, demanded regime change in Washington ... and denounced President Bush as a misfit who had plunged America into war and runaway debt, undermined civil and constitutional rights, lied to the people, despoiled the environment and used the presidency to benefit corporations and millionaires.
      • Upstaging Before the Show
          Thousands of people protesting the war in Iraq and the Bush presidency marched in Manhattan on the eve of the Republican convention. One police estimate put the crowd at a half-million. ... The demonstrations were New York City's biggest in decades, and the most emphatic at any national political convention since Democrats and demonstrators turned against each other in fury over Vietnam in Chicago in 1968. But the first day was overwhelmingly peaceful, and the demonstrators doused a good bit of Mr. Bush's intended message with television images of dissent. ... Protesters claim(ed) Mr. Bush had forfeited that goodwill by attacking Iraq. The marchers carried placards ... demanding, "What would Jesus bomb?" ... "There's all this (media) attention on the radicals, which makes me upset," Ms. Weidenborner said. "Look around you today: It (the protesting) is middle class, it is working class, it is just people who want to speak their mind."
    • Bush Overhauls U.S. Regulations
        (T)he Sept. 11 attacks, the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq have preoccupied the public, overshadowing an important element of the president's agenda: new regulatory initiatives. Health rules, environmental regulations, energy initiatives, worker-safety standards and product-safety disclosure policies have been modified in ways that often please business and industry leaders while dismaying interest groups representing consumers, workers, drivers, medical patients, the elderly and many others. And most of it was done through regulation, not law - lowering the profile of the actions. The administration can write or revise regulations largely on its own, while Congress must pass laws. For that reason, most modern-day presidents have pursued much of their agendas through regulation. But administration officials acknowledge that Mr. Bush has been particularly aggressive in using this strategy.
          An example of Bush administration doublespeak:
          In March of 2003, the Mine Safety and Health Administration published a proposed new regulation that would dilute the rules intended to protect coal miners from black-lung disease. The mine workers union called the new rules "extremely dangerous," while a mine safety administration official contended, "We are moving on toward more effective prevention of black-lung disease." ---- This is an example of changing the rules for the worse, but saying it will be better for you. George Orwell called this sort of thing doublespeak, but an English Language Expert would call it lying, or, at best, deception.
    • Denying the Troops a Secret Ballot
        Members of the military will be allowed to vote this year by faxing or e-mailing their ballots - after waiving their right to a secret ballot. Beyond this fundamentally undemocratic requirement, the Electronic Transmission Service, as it's known, has far too many problems to make it reliable, starting with the political partisanship of the contractor running it. The Defense Department is making matters worse by withholding basic information about the service, and should suspend it immediately. ... Omega Technologies, a private contractor, will accept soldiers' faxed and e-mailed ballots on a toll-free line, and then send them to the appropriate local elections office. Handling ballots is always sensitive, but especially so when, as in this program, they are not secret. An obvious concern is that votes for a particular candidate could be reported lost in transit, or altered. Omega Technologies is not an acceptable choice to run the program. Its chief executive, Patricia Williams, has donated $6,600 in this election cycle to the National Republican Congressional Committee, and serves on the committee's Business Advisory Council. And while everything about the conduct of elections should be open to public scrutiny, Omega is far too secretive. In an interview, Ms. Williams refused to say who would handle military votes, and whether they could engage in partisan politics. ... The Electronic Transmission Service operates with a lack of transparency that is unacceptable in elections management. The Pentagon is allowing Omega to keep its staffing secret. There are no provisions for parties or candidates to inspect Omega's operations or monitor the transmittal of votes. ... The voters have to trust that no one at the contractor or the Pentagon will make errors, or intentionally alter ballots. In a democracy, matters like these should not have to be taken on faith.
    • Republican Secretary of State Manipulating Elections
        This year in Missouri, it's hard to imagine that voters can have great confidence in the objectivity of the secretary of state, Matt Blunt, who is active in the Bush-Cheney campaign and is himself a candidate for governor. He has insisted on staying on the job, and he has ruled on important election matters in ways that help his own campaign.
    • Republican U.S. Attorney Accused of Smearing Democratic Governor
        Insisting that he and his staff had always acted with integrity, (Democratic) Gov. James E. McGreevey on Wednesday accused New Jersey's (Republican) United States attorney of using a fund-raising investigation as a political "smear campaign," and urged prosecutors to release all the documents and tapes they had gathered in the inquiry. ... A lawyer representing the governor's office said on Wednesday that despite the administration's cooperation, the two-year investigation had found no evidence of wrongdoing by any state official. ... The governor declined to specify why the United States attorney's office might want to malign him, but other Democrats have called on the federal prosecutor, Christopher J. Christie, to recuse himself from the case because he has been frequently mentioned as a possible Republican candidate for governor next year.
    • A Political Switch in Louisiana Turns Friends Into Foes
        In 48 hours, Representative Rodney Alexander went from Democrat to Republican. ... On Wednesday, Mr. Alexander registered for the (Louisiana) Fifth District race as a Democrat. On Friday afternoon, the last day of qualifying for the Nov. 2 ballot, he made his switch, leaving the Democrats no time to enter a strong candidate in the race. ... That Mr. Alexander made his move so late, effectively eliminating the possibility of having a strong Democratic challenger, may not sit well with voters, Mr. Renwick (Ed Renwick, a political scientist and pollster at Loyola University in New Orleans) said.
    • Plan B for Illinois
        The Illinois Republican Party had been stumbling for months to find someone, anyone, to oppose Barack Obama, a Democrat, in the race for the United States Senate. ... The Republicans opted to overlook minor defects - like the fact that Mr. Keyes lives in Maryland. After all, every other conceivable Republican candidate had either jumped the tracks or politely declined an invitation to be tied to them.
  • The Economic Record of the Bush Administration
    • Hoover's Economic Legacy in Bush 2
        The reality is that unless President Bush pulls nearly one million jobs out of a hat in the next four months, he will indeed become the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a decline in employment in a single term in the White House. But Mr. Bush is determined to act as if nothing bad is happening on, as he likes to put it, "my watch." And so in his first appearance after the Republican National Convention - in a corner of the sliver of undecided America - he declared that the numbers showed that the economy is "spreading prosperity and opportunity and nothing will hold us back." Nothing, perhaps, except the actual state of the job market. ... Even with a slight acceleration in August, average hourly wages for the month are not likely to keep up with inflation (that number comes out in mid-September).
    • Economic Reality Bites
        This week's Census Bureau report provided more proof that President Bush's fiscal policies have failed millions of Americans. ... In brief, from 2001 through 2003, poverty increased, income stagnated and the ranks of the uninsured grew, while the United States spent some $400 billion on tax cuts, which mainly benefited wealthy families.
    • Former Bush Economic Aide Isn't Keeping to Script -- Analysis of Bush Policies Reveals Huge Flaws
        Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin is the first Congressional budget director to come directly from the White House and then raise challenges to his former boss. And he has done so repeatedly. Under his direction, the agency has raised doubts about proposals to partly privatize the Social Security system, one of Mr. Bush's long-term goals. The agency also calculated that Mr. Bush's tax and spending policies could increase the federal debt by $4 trillion over 10 years. It recently concluded that abolishing inheritance taxes, another priority for Mr. Bush, would diminish incentives for charitable contributions. ... Analyzing the impact of Mr. Bush's spending and tax plans together, he concluded they would do little or nothing to stimulate long-term growth or make the deficit any smaller than it would be otherwise. Last week, responding to questions posed by Democratic lawmakers, the Congressional Budget Office released a report showing that Mr. Bush's tax cuts were skewed very heavily to the very top income earners. ... But aside from the invective hurled by Mr. Novak, Republicans and Democrats generally give Mr. Holtz-Eakin high marks for solid analysis and high integrity.
    • Painting the Economy Into a Corner
        (Bush administration) policy makers have run out of tools for stewarding an economy that - nearly three years into a recovery - has yet to flourish and may even be downshifting to neutral. The president's fiscal policies, mainly high-end tax cuts, have resulted in a record federal budget deficit without spurring hiring or income growth. If Mr. Bush continues on the tax-cut path, continuing high deficits will further threaten job creation and living standards.
    • Poor July Jobs Numbers Reveal Failure of Bush Policies
      • In Blow to Bush, Only 32,000 Jobs Created in July
      • Low Numbers, New Problem
      • Bad News on the Job Front
      • Spin the Payrolls
          Job growth ground nearly to a halt last month, the Labor Department reported yesterday, raising new concerns about the economy's strength and reshaping the political debate over its performance less than three months before election day. Employers added just 32,000 jobs in July, a small fraction of what forecasters had expected and far below the robust gains in employment earlier this year. The government also announced that job growth in May and June was less than initially estimated. ... For President Bush, the new evidence creates a nettlesome political situation, making it harder for him to cite strong job gains as proof that the tax cuts he championed at the start of his term were the best cure for the economy's problems. The weak increases of the last two months now mean that Mr. Bush is highly likely to stand for re-election with an employment level lower than it was on his Inauguration Day. That would be the first time that has happened since 1932, when the country was mired in the Depression.
          The consensus forecast was for the American economy to add more than 200,000 new jobs in July. The actual number was 32,000. June's already weak report was revised downward, to 78,000 jobs from 112,000. Even May's hopeful numbers turned out to be less so, with 27,000 fewer jobs created than originally reported. The report's immediate impact will be to neutralize, if not undercut, President Bush's campaign boasts of a strong economic recovery. Mr. Bush runs the risk of being the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net decline in the number of jobs. ... Mr. Bush is always just as eager to have the buck stop at his desk to take credit for good economic news as he is to deny or spin bad news. Yesterday was no exception.
          When Friday's dismal job report was released, traders in the Chicago pit began chanting, "Kerry, Kerry." But apologists for President Bush's economic policies are frantically spinning the bad news. First, they talk about recent increases in the number of jobs, not the fact that payroll employment is still far below its previous peak, and even further below anything one could call full employment. ... So have we returned to prosperity? No: jobs are harder to find, by any measure, than they were at any point during Bill Clinton's second term. The job situation might have improved somewhat in the past year, but it's still not good. Second, the apologists give numbers without context. President Bush boasts about 1.5 million new jobs over the past 11 months. Yet this was barely enough to keep up with population growth, and it's worse than any 11-month stretch during the Clinton years. Third, they cherry-pick any good numbers they can find. Fourth, apologists try to shift the blame. ... The reason the employment picture looks so bad now is the unprecedented weakness of job growth in the subsequent (post 2001) recovery.
    • More Jobs, Worse Work
        Employment in America is on the rise, but in general, the jobs that have been created are at the lower end of the economic spectrum. -- Through February, the United States was mired in the depths of the worst jobless recovery of the post-World War II era. Now, there are signs the magic may be back. More than a million jobs have been added to total nonfarm payrolls over the past four months, the sharpest increase since early 2000. ... But there's little cause for celebration: the increases barely make a dent in the weakest hiring cycle in modern history. From the trough of the last recession in November 2001 through last month, private sector payrolls have risen a paltry 0.2 percent. This stands in contrast to the nearly 7.5 percent increase recorded, on average, over the comparable 31-month interval of the six preceding recoveries. Nor is there much reason to celebrate the type of jobs that have been created over the past four months. In general, they have been at the lower end of the economic spectrum.
    • Who's Getting the New Jobs?
        A startling new study shows that all of the growth in the employed population in the United States over the past few years can be attributed to recently arrived immigrants. The study found that from the beginning of 2001 through the first four months of 2004, the number of new immigrants who found work in the U.S. was 2.06 million, while the number of native-born and longer-term immigrant workers declined by more than 1.3 million. The study, from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, is further confirmation that despite the recovery from the recession of 2001, American families are still struggling with serious issues of joblessness and underemployment.
    • Bye-Bye, Bush Boom
        When does optimism -- the Bush campaign's favorite word these days -- become an inability to face facts? On Friday, President Bush insisted that a seriously disappointing jobs report, which fell far short of the pre-announcement hype, was good news: "We're witnessing steady growth, steady growth. And that's important. We don't need boom-or-bust-type growth." But Mr. Bush has already presided over a bust. For the first time since 1932, employment is lower in the summer of a presidential election year than it was on the previous Inauguration Day. Americans badly need a boom to make up the lost ground. And we're not getting it.
        If you want a single number that tells the story, it's the percentage of adults who have jobs. When Mr. Bush took office, that number stood at 64.4. By last August it had fallen to 62.2 percent. In June, the number was 62.3. That is, during Mr. Bush's first 30 months, the job situation deteriorated drastically. Last summer it stabilized, and since then it may have improved slightly. But jobs are still very scarce, with little relief in sight.
        What about overall growth? After two and a half years of slow growth, real G.D.P. surged in the third quarter of 2003, growing at an annual rate of more than 8 percent. But that surge appears to have been another blip. ... Where is the growth going? No mystery: after-tax corporate profits as a share of G.D.P. have reached a level not seen since 1929.
  • More on the Iraq War and the War on Terrorism
    • A No-Win Situation
        For a long time, anyone suggesting analogies with Vietnam was ridiculed. But Iraq optimists have, by my count, already declared victory three times. First there was "Mission Accomplished" - followed by an escalating insurgency. Then there was the capture of Saddam - followed by April's bloody uprising. Finally there was the furtive transfer of formal sovereignty to Ayad Allawi, with implausible claims that this showed progress - a fantasy exploded by the guns of August. Now, serious security analysts have begun to admit that the goal of a democratic, pro-American Iraq has receded out of reach. ...
        President Bush says that the troubles in Iraq are the result of unanticipated "catastrophic success." But that catastrophe was predicted by many experts.
    • The Rambo Coalition
        In this election, a man who plays the action hero is questioning the patriotism of a man who risked his life in war. ... One of the wonders of recent American politics has been the ability of Mr. Bush and his supporters to wrap their partisanship in the flag. Through innuendo and direct attacks by surrogates, men who assiduously avoided service in Vietnam, like Dick Cheney (five deferments), John Ashcroft (seven deferments) and George Bush (a comfy spot in the National Guard, and a mysterious gap in his records), have questioned the patriotism of men who risked their lives and suffered for their country: John McCain, Max Cleland and now John Kerry. ... As a domestic political strategy, Mr. Bush's posturing (on Iraq) worked brilliantly. As a strategy against terrorism, it has played right into Al Qaeda's hands. Thirty years after Vietnam, American soldiers are again dying in a war that was sold on false pretenses and creates more enemies than it kills. ...
        All the credible evidence, from military records to the testimony of those who served with Mr. Kerry, confirms his wartime heroism. Why, then, are some veterans willing to join the smear campaign? Because they are angry about his later statements against the war. Yet making those statements was itself a heroic act - and what he said then rings truer than ever. ... The young John Kerry spoke of leaders who sent others to their deaths because they wanted to seem tough, then "left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude." Fifteen months after George Bush strutted around in his flight suit, more and more Americans are echoing Gen. Anthony Zinni, who received a standing ovation from an audience of Marine and Navy officers when he talked about the debacle in Iraq and said of those who served in Vietnam: "We heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice. I ask you, is it happening again?" ...
        Let's hope that this latest campaign of garbage and lies - initially financed by a Texas Republican close to Karl Rove, and running an ad featuring an "independent" veteran who turns out to have served on a Bush campaign committee - leads to a backlash against Mr. Bush.
    • The Nuclear Shadow -- What should we be doing about the threat of a nuclear terrorist attack?
        (T)here is a general conviction among many experts - though, in fairness, not all - that nuclear terrorism has a better-than-even chance of occurring in the next 10 years. Such an attack could kill 500,000 people. Yet U.S. politicians have utterly failed to face up to the danger. "Both Bush administration rhetoric and Kerry rhetoric emphasize keeping W.M.D. out of the hands of terrorists as a No. 1 national security priority," noted Michèlle Flournoy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "And when you look at what could have been done in the last few years, versus what has been done, there's a real gap." ... The Nunn-Lugar program to safeguard (nuclear) material is one of the best schemes we have to protect ourselves, and it's bipartisan, championed above all by Senator Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican. Yet President Bush has, incredibly, at various times even proposed cutting funds for it. He seems bored by this security effort, perhaps because it doesn't involve blowing anything up.
    • Failure of Leadership
        It's as if the government were following a script from the theater of the absurd. Instead of rallying our allies to a coordinated and relentless campaign against Al Qaeda after Sept. 11, we insulted the allies, gave them the back of our hand and arrogantly sent the bulk of our forces into the sand trap of Iraq. ... The war in Iraq has intensified the hatred of America around the world and powerfully energized Al Qaeda-type insurgencies. At the same time, it has weakened our defenses by diverting the very resources we need - personnel, matériel and boatloads of cash - to meet the real terror threats. ... The nation seems paralyzed, unsure of what to do about Iraq or terrorism. The failure of leadership that led to the bonehead decision to invade Iraq remains painfully evident today. ... The pressure may be getting to Mr. Bush. He came up with a gem of a Freudian slip yesterday. At a signing ceremony for a $417 billion military spending bill, the president said: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
    • An American Hiroshima
        The Aspen Strategy Group, a bipartisan assortment of policy mavens, focused on nuclear risks at its annual meeting here last week, and the consensus was twofold: the danger of nuclear terrorism is much greater than the public believes, and our government hasn't done nearly enough to reduce it. ... "We're racing toward unprecedented catastrophe," (former secretary of defense William) Perry warns. "This is preventable, but we're not doing the things that could prevent it." That is what I find baffling: an utter failure of the political process. The Bush administration responded aggressively on military fronts after 9/11, and in November 2003, Mr. Bush observed, "The greatest threat of our age is nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in the hands of terrorists, and the dictators who aid them." But the White House has insisted on tackling the most peripheral elements of the W.M.D. threat, like Iraq, while largely ignoring the central threat, nuclear proliferation. The upshot is that the risk that a nuclear explosion will devastate an American city is greater now than it was during the cold war, and it's growing.
    • Washington's Gift to Bomb Makers
        There is no bigger and more urgent threat to the security of every American than the possibility of nuclear bomb materials falling into the wrong hands. That is why it is astonishing, and frightening, that the Bush administration is now pushing to strip the teeth from a proposed new treaty aimed at expanding the current international bans on the production of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium. With talks on the new treaty set to begin later this year, the administration suddenly announced last week that it would insist that no provisions for inspections or verification be included.
    • The Arabian Candidate
        By PAUL KRUGMAN -- In the original version of "The Manchurian Candidate," Senator John Iselin, whom Chinese agents are plotting to put in the White House, is a right-wing demagogue modeled on Senator Joseph McCarthy. As Roger Ebert wrote, the plan is to "use anticommunist hysteria as a cover for a communist takeover." The movie doesn't say what Iselin would have done if the plot had succeeded. Presumably, however, he wouldn't have openly turned traitor. Instead, he would have used his position to undermine national security, while posing as America's staunchest defender against communist evil.
        So let's imagine an update - my own version. This time the enemies would be Islamic fanatics, who install as their puppet president a demagogue who poses as the nation's defender against terrorist evildoers. The Arabian candidate wouldn't openly help terrorists. Instead, he would serve their cause while pretending to be their enemy. After an attack, he would strike back at the terrorist base, a necessary action to preserve his image of toughness, but botch the follow-up, allowing the terrorist leaders to escape. Once the public's attention shifted, he would systematically squander the military victory: committing too few soldiers, reneging on promises of economic aid. Soon, warlords would once again rule most of the country, the heroin trade would be booming, and terrorist allies would make a comeback. Meanwhile, he would lead America into a war against a country that posed no imminent threat. He would insinuate, without saying anything literally false, that it was somehow responsible for the terrorist attack. This unnecessary war would alienate our allies and tie down a large part of our military. At the same time, the Arabian candidate would neglect the pursuit of those who attacked us, and do nothing about regimes that really shelter anti-American terrorists and really are building nuclear weapons.Again, he would take care to squander a military victory.
    • Accounting and Accountability
        Last month we learned that the United States, while it has spent vast sums on the war in Iraq, has so far provided almost no aid. Of $18.4 billion in reconstruction funds approved by Congress, only $400 million has been disbursed. Almost all of the money spent by the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq until late June, came from Iraqi sources, mainly oil revenues. This revelation helps explain one puzzle: the sluggish pace of reconstruction, which has yet to restore many essential services to prewar levels. ... Every important official with responsibility for Iraqi finances was a Bush administration loyalist. The occupying authority dragged its feet on an international audit, which didn't even begin until April 2004. ... The auditors also faced a lack of cooperation. ... Translation: they were stonewalled when they tried to find out what Halliburton did with $1.4 billion.
    • The Real Enemy Staring Us in the Face
        I don't know what the administration was thinking when it invaded Iraq even as the direct threat from bin Laden and Al Qaeda continued to stare us in the face. That threat has only intensified. The war in Iraq consumed personnel and resources badly needed in the campaign against bin Laden and his allies. And it has fanned the hatred of the U.S. among Muslims around the world. Instead of destroying Al Qaeda, we have played right into its hands and contributed immeasurably to its support.
    • The Senate Report
        In a season when candor and leadership are in short supply, the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the prewar assessment of Iraqi weapons is a welcome demonstration of both. It is also disturbing, and not just because of what it says about the atrocious state of American intelligence. The report is a condemnation of how this administration has squandered the public trust it may sorely need for a real threat to national security. The report was heavily censored by the administration ... But what comes through is thoroughly damning. Put simply, the Bush administration's intelligence analysts cooked the books to give Congress and the public the impression that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was developing nuclear arms, that he was plotting to give such weapons to terrorists, and that he was an imminent threat.
    • Senate Report Does Little to Still Debate on C.I.A.'s Prewar Data
        Although the Senate Intelligence Committee found no evidence that the Bush administration had tried to coerce the C.I.A. to produce exaggerated prewar warnings about Iraq's weapons programs, its findings did little to still the furious debate about whether the White House and the Pentagon tried to influence the agency's conclusions. ... Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the committee, said the report "failed to explain the environment of intense pressure in which intelligence community officials were asked to render judgments on matters relating to Iraq, when policy officials had already forcefully stated their own conclusions in public." ... Democrats also noted that the formation of a special intelligence unit at the Pentagon by the Bush administration to review ties between Iraq and terror groups served notice on the C.I.A. that powerful corners of the administration were ready to challenge agency assessments. Frequent visits to the agency by Vice President Dick Cheney, they said, also were a form of pressure, a view the Senate committee rejected.
    • Ill-Serving Those Who Serve
        The Pentagon's decision to press 5,600 honorably discharged soldiers back into service, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the latest example of President Bush's refusal to face the true costs of pre-emptive war. As with other stopgap measures to paper over the poor planning of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, this one demands more from those who have already given the most: volunteer soldiers and their families. And because this call-up comes uncomfortably close to conscription, it highlights more than other emergency deployments the callousness of the administration's failure to budget for an adequate number of ground troops.
  • Is the Bush Administration Engaging in Illegal Campaign Tactics?
    • Citing Falwell's Endorsement of Bush, Group Challenges His Tax-Exempt Status
        Hoping to send a warning to churches helping the Bush campaign turn out conservative voters, a liberal group has filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service charging that an organization run by the Rev. Jerry Falwell has violated the requirements of its tax-exempt status by endorsing Mr. Bush's re-election. ... The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, argued in a letter to the I.R.S. that one of Mr. Falwell's religious organizations, Jerry Falwell Ministries, had disseminated the message in violation of tax rules, which restrict tax-exempt religious groups and charitable organizations from engaging in politics. In an interview, Mr. Lynn said the complaint was also a response to the Bush campaign's effort to enlist thousands of pastors and churchgoers to help get members of conservative congregations to the polls. "I certainly hope that this sends a clear message that religious organizations have got to operate within federal tax laws restricting partisan politicking," he said. "And I think the message is that the campaign has been reckless in its approach to churches, recklessly trying to lure them into political activities." ... Milton Cerny, a Washington lawyer and the former chief of the I.R.S.'s tax-exempt rulings operations, said that Mr. Falwell appeared to be at least testing the boundaries of permitted political activity. "Even if he claims he is speaking on his own behalf,'' Mr. Cerny said, "he is using that pulpit and he is using that church. So he is speaking as the church.'' As for the Web site, Mr. Cerny said that tax laws blocked even tax-exempt lobbying organizations from explicitly endorsing specific candid