How Can You Tell When a Republican is Lying?

It used to be that the only answer to that joke was "His lips move". But now, thanks to the Center for American Progress [link], there's also the Claim vs. Fact Database [link], which is a database of statements by the Bush Administration and its adjunct, Fox News, and then sourced facts that debunk or discredit the lies.

The database is small so far (around 400 entries), but it's new, and the blogosphere is being invited to submit examples for consideration and possible inclusion in the database, so I suspect that it won't be small for long. One neat feature is that you can search the database by topic and speaker, so that, for instance, if you're looking for misstatements by Donald Rumsfeld on the subject of whether American troops would be greeted as liberators ("Never said that. You may remember it, but I never said that." I'm sorry, that answer will be marked as "wrong". Please play again later), you can find it with no fuss, no muss.

Signs of the Times

Wonkette [link] has a link to "Freeway Blogger [link], which memorializes a phenomenon that the site calls (not surprisingly) "Freeway Blogs". In the pre-blogging world these would have been called "signs hung on overpasses so that motorists can see them as they drive by."

In any event, as Freeway Blogger points out, the signs probably cost all of $35 dollars, but reached 2 million people. Think of them as Burma Shave ads, only political.

Anyway, some of the more arresting ones:

(Four signs across an overpass): "485 Dead" "2779 Seriously Wounded" "3,264 Blood-Soaked Uniforms" "And we impeached Clinton over one lousy dress"

"Quagmire Accomplished"

(Two signs) "Real Soldiers Died in their Hummers" "So You Can Play Soldier in Yours"

"You can have my gun when you pry it from the fingers of my cold dead child"

Given the serious subject matter, I won't say "Enjoy" (which I usually do when sending people to a quick-hit site), but rather, "Go see it."

A Little Piece of History

A break from politics today to ruminate, briefly, on the successfully-completed maiden voyage of the ocean liner "Queen Mary 2".

Growing up, I had often heard exotic stories about my great-aunt, Rohama Lee (nee Siegel), and my great-grandmother, Ida Lewis Siegel. Ida was among the grand doyenne of the Toronto Jewish community. She help found a number of prominent organizations in the city, including the Hebrew Ladies Maternity Aid and Child Welfare Society, and was a member of the Toronto School Board. She raised six children, one of whom was an up-and-coming singer before she died in her early 30s (part of the family lore is a picture that my father has of his aunt Sarah with Bob Hope).

But of Ida's six children, I imagine that her most troublesome was Rohama, who lived a bohemian life and was at the center of any number of exotic stories. Among other things, she co-wrote the 1943 film "Tonight We Raid Calais" and the 1938 film "We're Going to Be Rich". She married an Englishman, then later, so the family legend goes, had him deported after he became violent with her. She wrote short film scripts for the Office of War Information during WWII and later edited Film News, a leading film industry magazine. Some of her papers reside in a collection at the library of the University of Iowa [link]

So what's the connection to the Queen Mary 2? Well, it turns out that among her many and varied escapades, Rohama was the first stow-away on the Queen Mary, on its maiden voyage. At the time, she was a reporter for the Toronto Star, and looking for a great story. Apparently, she toured all three classes of the grand ship, attended a number of bon voyage parties and befriended one of the elevator operators, who may have helped conceal her when the ship left Southhampton, England. Unfortunately for Rohama, she was discovered when the ship stopped at Cherbourg, France to take on additional passengers. Legend has it that Rohama's passage back to Southampton from Cherbourg was paid for by unnamed admirers.

Such an act of derring-do seem almost quaint today, in the age of terrorism and heightened alerts and heavy scrutiny of travelling documents. But still, as New York welcomes the QM2, it makes me happy to think of my small connection to a world that's probably lost forever...

At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

A quick hit from BoingBoing.net. [link]

From a U.S. Treasury Department press release, dated April 9, 2004:

America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the President's policies are doing; or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation. [link]

And from the Republican National Committee's website, dated April 2, 2004:

America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the President's polices are doing; or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation. [link]

Isn't there a law against such blatant politicking by supposedly non-partisan government agencies?

Hiding Judicial Power in Plain Sight

Nat Hentoff has an interesting article about the so-called "hidden" power of the Supreme Court. [link] He argues that given how much influence the nine justices wield over American life, it's remarkable -- and dangerous -- that the institution so limits public scrutiny and that the justices operate in relative anonymity (Hentoff reports that Harry Blackmun, the author of Roe v. Wade, sometimes took perverse delight in standing anonymously on the fringes of anti-abortion rallies outside the court, as protesters called for his impeachment).

The sub-head of Hentoff's article contains a challenge that hints at the core of the problem: public indifference. The subhead asks: how many Supreme Court justices can you name? According to a National Law Journal survey in 1990, 59% of Americans couldn't name a single justice. [True confessions: In two tries, I could only remember eight out of nine, even though I recognized the name of the ninth when I looked it up. But then, I'm a lawyer, so I'm sure I'm not representative, since I was, at least in theory, exposed to the names of all nine during law school.]

Hentoff blames this indifference on the Court itself, for failing to open itself and its deliberative process to the public by, among other things, permitting television in the Court and releasing transcripts that indicate who is questioning the litigants (currently, the transcripts don't indicate which Justice is the questioner). He also faults the media for failing to educate the public by reporting more consistently and prominently on what the Court does and how it does it.

Interesting food for thought.

[And now, a trivia question: Only five US presidents have not put a Justice on the Supreme Court. Who are they? (answer is in the comments section)]

I Wish I'd Said That!

Every once in a while, I come across a post on someone else's blog that captures what I'm feeling and couldn't put into words. Today, it's Liz at Life as a Spectator Sport who captured what I wanted or wished or didn't even realize I could put into words:

When my kids were little and I'd come home from work to find the makings of peanut butter sandwiches on the living room carpet, I used to holler at them, "If you're going to fix food in the living room, at least have sense enough to get rid of the evidence!" I feel like saying to Bush, "If you're going to lie to us, at least have the decency to pretend you're telling the truth."

It's the arrogant smirk that gets to me, the attitude that "I can do whatever I want and you can't do a damn thing about it." It's the repeated reference to WMD's even after his own people have admitted they weren't there to be found. They're hidden on a turkey farm? My God! Does he think we're so ignorant that we can't tell when he's making it up as he goes along? No, I don't think he believes that. I think he believes that what we think doesn't matter, so the complete and utter inanity of his claims doesn't matter either.

What we think about his performance doesn't matter to him, so why should he examine and analyze his actions? Surely not so he can answer questions about them at press conferences. The most arrogant man in the world is the one who thinks he shouldn't have to explain himself to anyone.

What we think about his statements doesn't matter to him, or he wouldn't countenance the outright lies his campaign puts out, claims that are pathetically easy to refute (see D-Bunker for some of these).

What we think about his economic policies doesn't matter to him, or he wouldn't continue to push for tax cuts that have already plundered the treasury and brought financial ruin on thousands of middle class families.

What we think of his work ethic evidently doesn't matter to him, or he'd spend more time at work and less time trotting his friends around on his ranch. Who else in this country could get away with spending 60% of his working days goofing off? What real "war president" of the past would even have considered leaving his post for so much time?

Even the opinions of service men and women and their families don't matter to him, this self-declared war president. He promises National Guard units a year of "boots on the ground," and then, while they're packed up and waiting at the Baghdad airport for transport home, he extends their tour of duty.

Thanks, Liz.

Overloaded

Lately, I have found it difficult to blog, if only because the mind boggles at the myriad of things to comment on. A brief list:

Listening to discussions of President Bush's press conference on the left and on the right leads me to the conclusion that there must have been two of them: one in which he displayed steely resolve and exhibited strong qualities of leadership, and one where he stammered and stared dumbly into the klieg lights as he searched for bits of sound-bites that he could use to evade questions. I saw the press conference, and as I have discussed below, thought he sounded remarkably evasive and seemed oddly unpresidential, considering that the ability to communicate fluidly is a significant element of the modern presidency.

Over at the 9/11 commission, there is an accusation by Tom DeLay and others on the right that the commission is being too partisan in its questioning even as Attorney General John Ashcroft blamed the Clinton Administration for all faults relating to 9/11 and singled out commissioner Jamie Gorelick and her "wall" memo when she was Deputy AG as the primary reason why the FBI could not "connect the dots". Never mind the question of why Ashcroft, when he became AG didn't immediately tear down the "wall" if it was such a big impediment -- that would be a partisan question.

Meanwhile, in typical Bush Administration fashion, once Colin Powell's criticisms of the President were aired by Bob Woodward's book, the sliming campaign began -- this morning, the New York Times quoted a senior administration official as saying that Powell has a history of running away from failed policies:

Another official, who like others declined to be identified because of the political sensitivity of their criticism, accused Mr. Powell of having a habit of distancing himself from policies when they go wrong. "It's such a soap opera with him," this official said. [link]

Then there's Iraq: sadly, this has been the deadliest month since we invaded, with 100 dead in April so far (and there's still 11 days to go). Yet when asked who will receive the reigns on June 30, the President says "that's an interesting question" and announces that he's waiting for a recommendation from U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. The June 30 date for handing over sovereignty is looming, the job of transitioning is going to be huge, and the Bush administration has no idea who they'll be giving the keys to? If ever there were conclusive proof that they haven't properly planned this whole endeavor, this has to be it.

And the deference to Brahimi and the UN is itself interesting, considering first, that Brahimi is on record as saying that de-Baathification (purging the Iraqi government of Saddam's former Baath party officials) is a bad idea, and that Baath party loyalists ought to, in most cases, be eligible to serve in the new government. [link] I don't necessarily disagree with Brahimi, but I thought that one of the underlying themes of this war was to rid Iraq of the Baath party's deadly influence. Doesn't Brahimi's view seem just a little inconsistent with that vision?

And the UN, meanwhile, has been dissed up, down and across by the Bush Administration for months nigh unto years, yet there they were -- the President and Prime Minister Tony Blair -- practically on bended knee, saying that UN participation will be crucial to a successful transition. As the New York Times put it,

Mr. Bush, who before the war in Iraq had expressed great dissatisfaction with the United Nations, and Mr. Blair went out of their way today to say that the international organization now had a vital role to play. [link]

But don't look to the international community as a sure thing just yet -- yesterday, Spain announced that it would send replacement troops to Iraq, but did not expect them to stay long (in fact, the Spanish Prime Minister announced that Spain's 1,400 troops would be pulled out "as soon as possible"). This led Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission, to praise the decision and predict that other European governments might soon follow suit:

Mr. Prodi said today that by withdrawing troops, Spain was "applying strong pressure to speed up a solution to these problems rapidly. It is a very clear position and one that we share." [link]

Like I said, with so much to talk about, it's hard to know even where to start.

The Art of Asking Questions

I am a prosecutor. And one of the things that I do for a living is ask questions of witnesses who don't particularly want to answer me. Sometimes, they don't -- you ask a question, and they use it as an excuse to repeat their stock answer, without ever acknowledging that they're not answering the question that you've just asked. It is possible to get them to answer your questions; the trick is not to lose your focus, and keep reminding them that they haven't answered the question that was asked. Eventually, you wear them down and they answer the question that you've asked. It's tedious, but it works.

Why do we do it that way? Because it's the best way to get to the truth. It doesn't endear me to the witnesses that I'm questioning, and it's not likely that they're going to invite me to dinner anytime soon, but then, my job isn't to get dinner invitations, it's to investigate wrongdoing.

Would that the White House press corps had the same interest in getting to the truth, even if it didn't endear them to the President and even if it imperiled their dinner invitations!

After watching the President's press conference, I was amazed at how often he simply failed to ask the question that was actually asked. But I was just as amazed that few reporters called him on it, either as a follow-up to their own questions, or as a follow-up to the previous questioner's question.

Below, a question-by-question analysis:

The President was asked "How do you explain to Americans how you got that [WMD, that the US would be greeted as liberators, and that Iraqi oil revenue would pay for reconstruction] so wrong? And how do you answer your opponents who say that you took this nation to war on the basis of what have turned out to be a series of false premises?"

There was a 9-part answer, but no mention of either how the intelligence on WMD turned out to be so wrong or why we weren't greeted as liberators. And on the oil question, all he said was that oil revenue was "significant", but didn't address why, if the revenues are "significant", he still needed to get $87 billion from Congress to rebuild Iraq.

Elizabeth Bumiller, of the New York Times, felt no need to follow up that evasion, and turned to whether the President felt any "personal responsibility for September 11th?"

There was no answer to this question, either, although he did state "There are some things I wish we'd have done, when I look back. I mean, hindsight's easy. It's easy for a president to stand up and say, now that I know what happened, it would have been nice if there were certain things in place." [Side note: Incredibly, one of the things he wishes had been in place was a Homeland Security department, despite the fact that he opposed just such a thing when it was originally proposed by Senator Lieberman, a Democrat.] Other than that, he only rambled about how the country was changed by 9/11. Again, there was no follow-up by Bumiller or the next reporter.

Next up was this question: "One of the biggest criticisms of you is that whether it's WMD in Iraq, postwar planning in Iraq, or even the question of whether this administration did enough to ward off 9-11, you never admit a mistake. Is that a fair criticism, and do you believe that there were any errors in judgment that you made related to any of those topics I brought up?"

There was no answer, just (1) no one could have envisioned 9/11; (2) the people know where I stand on Iraq; and (3) our mission in Iraq is important. Let's face it -- he didn't even try to answer this one, not even close. And once again, no follow-up.

The President did give a sort of answer to the next question, which was whether he requested any specific action as a result of the August 6, 2001 PDB: according to the President, if the PDB had given specific information about an attack involving airplanes flying into buildings, the government would have "moved heaven and earth" to stop that plot. Note however, that this was only a hypothetical answer ("If we had known, we would have taken action") and not an actual answer ("Yes, we did x, y and z"). Needless to say, there was no follow-up to pin him down on what the actual answer to that question is.

The President answered the next question, which assimilated testimony from today's hearings of the 9/11 commission to the effect that the FBI investigations reported in the PDB were exaggerated, and did the President have any additional information about that? The President answered that he expected to learn more about that soon.

The next question was whether the President was prepared personally to apologize for failures that led to 9/11. The President stated that he could "understand" why "his people" were "anguished" over 9/11, but did not answer the simple question that was actually asked. Instead, he took the obvious, but irrelevant tack of blaming Osama bin Laden. Not surprisingly, there was no follow-up.

He answered the next question about whether the "coalition" in Iraq was merely window dressing for a unilateral action (he says it's not), so let's give him credit for that one.

On the next question after that, it was as if the President was in a different room than the reporters. He was asked -- twice -- why he had insisted that he would appear before the 9/11 commission only with the Vice President, and not alone, as the Commission had requested. His answer the first time: "because the 9-11 commission wants to ask us questions, that's why we're meeting. And I look forward to meeting with them and answering their questions." Remarkably, the reporter repeated the question, but got the same evasive non-answer: "Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9-11 commission is looking forward to asking us. And I'm looking forward to answering them." No one, not even the East German judge, could give him credit for that one. And there was no follow-up.

He gave a mangled, but responsive answer to the next question (you've been accused of letting the 9/11 plot mature too much before taking action, and not letting Iraq mature enough -- how do you respond?), so again, credit where credit is due.

There was a softball question about whether he's willing to do what's right even if it means being voted out of office in November. He parried and evaded the answer, but it was a political, rather than factual, question, so I wouldn't deduct points for the non-answer. Some questions are made to be evaded, and you learn either to live with whatever evasive answer you get, or not to answer the question in the first place.

Then, an unscripted question: have you made any mistakes since 9/11? This elicited an honest response, I think: the President is sure that he has made some, but can't think of any off the top of his head. Hubristic, yes, but also honestly evasive, rather than duplicitously evasive.

The next question was whether he would revamp intelligence and law enforcement at the federal level despite pleas from field agents not to. The President didn't quite answer this one, but that may be because he doesn't have an answer yet. At the same time, he used the question as a jumping-off point for his 10-minute stump speech about staying the course, which wasn't responsive to the question.

And finally, he was asked whether he thought he had failed as a communicator because despite the White House's relentless projection of its "stay-the-course" message, public support for his policies in Iraq have deteriorated. The answer was another rendition of the stump speech and a political nonanswer-answer. No evasion, but no light shed, either.

The Future of Free Speech?

Well, if that don't just beat all!

Justice Antonin Scalia is famously averse to having his speeches recorded by the media, so much so that in March 2003, he barred news cameras from a ceremony in which he received the "Citidel of Free Speech Award." [link] Really, you couldn't make this stuff up.

But I digress. Yesterday, Scalia was giving a speech to high school students in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Although television cameras were barred from the speech, there was no announcement prohibiting recording devices. And, in fact, two reporters were recording the speech when they were approached by a "deputy federal marshal" named Melanie Rube, who told them that they would have to erase their tapes. When one of the reporters resisted, the deputy federal marshal took the recording device from her hands; the reporter later relented and showed the deputy how to erase the recording. [link]

Out of curiosity, I ran "Melanie Rube" through Google, and came up with a reference to her, by name, by Senator Orrin Hatch on the Floor of the Senate. Specifically, he quoted her as "endorsing" the nomination of Charles Pickering, Sr. to the federal bench. [link] In fact, she's quoted in a book published by the Committee for Justice praising Judge Pickering's "compassion" and extolling the "positive impact" that he would have if confirmed to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. [link -- see page 27 of the pdf file].

Now, you should be aware that the U.S. Marshal Service is an executive agency, although it is tasked with defending and assisting in the operations of the judicial branch. It is also an organization that, throughout its (or its immediate predecessor's) history, has been described as "rabidly partisan". For example, in 1880, here is what one magazine had to say: The Nation, an independent Republican periodical and a leader in the movement for civil service reform, insisted that "the U.S. Marshal . . . is always a partisan, and often a rabid partisan, and is rarely appointed for anything but partisanship" (Nation 1880). [link]

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I promise. But consider the evidence of conspiracy here: A Supreme Court justice who has recently and over the past three years been excoriated by the Left as being improperly partisan is being protected by a deputy U.S. Marshall who has herself been very vocal in support of a judge whose nomination triggered one of the nastiest and most partisan nomination fights in 25 years, and who has been the subject of much media criticism. In the course of protecting her principal, this deputy marshal uses her official position not only to demand that two reporters refrain from taping the justice while he speaks at a public forum, but confiscates their recording devices and demands that they erase what has already been recorded.

I'm not saying that anything that took place was illegal. But even if there's nothing wrong with what happened, it just looks bad. And in a system where the legitimacy of the Court is predicated on not only a lack of impropriety but also the appearance of no improprities, the fact that it looks bad makes it actually bad.