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David Brooks, the right-wing NY Times columnist that non-thinking liberals mistake for an intellectual, is the latest to pick up and run with the far-right talking point that Roe v. Wade is to blame for the "cycle of political viciousness and counter-viciousness that has poisoned public life".

What a crock. Brooks should go back to inventing color-coded political divisions for those who find their best political punditry on the back of cereal boxes.

Brooks is so wrong so often (despite his nifty east-coast pink shirt and purple tie) that we'll take the trouble to go line-by-line with his heap of nonsense:

"When Blackmun wrote the Roe decision, it took the abortion issue out of the legislatures and put it into the courts."

Yes, well, that's where issue of rights belong, no? Would Brooks have preferred the issue of slavery been left up to the states?

"If it had remained in the legislatures, we would have seen a series of state-by-state compromises reflecting the views of the centrist majority that's always existed on this issue. These legislative compromises wouldn't have pleased everyone, but would have been regarded as legitimate."

Oh--apparently he would leave slavery up to the states. So much for the courts' role in interpreting the Constitution--not to mention guaranteeing equal protection.

"Instead, Blackmun and his concurring colleagues invented a right to abortion..."

Oh, my, the language of the radical right creeping into the New York Times.

What the court found was a right to privacy that extended to matters of personal and sexual freedom. Brooks has a problem with that, obviously. Polls consistently show that a majority of Americans do not--thank goodness.

"Religious conservatives became alienated from their own government, feeling that their democratic rights had been usurped by robed elitists."

Yeah! And just remember how they felt about Abraham Lincoln!

"Unable to lobby for their pro-life or pro-choice views in normal ways, abortion activists focused their attention on judicial nominations."

Ah, we're getting to the crux--sneaking back around to attack the judiciary. To do so requires forgetting that the court found that the Constitution protected a woman's right to choose--meaning the real problem is the crazed right-wingers who refused to accept it, and who've mounted a relentless attack ever since. Blaming "liberals" equally for defending against those attacks is like blaming the Christians for defending themselves against the lions.

"Dozens of groups on the right and left have been created to destroy nominees who might oppose their side of the fight. But abortion is never the explicit subject of these confirmation battles. Instead, the groups try to find some other pretext to destroy their foes.

Each nomination battle is more vicious than the last as the methodologies of personal destruction are perfected. You get a tit-for-tat escalation as each side points to the other's outrages to justify its own methods."

Not exactly. What we've had is an endless parade of stealth anti-choice judicial nominees from Republican presidents. These nominees have gone before the judiciary committee and bobbed, weaved, and all but lied to hide their views. Most recently they've adopted the strategy of flatly refusing to answer questions on their potential decision-making.

Meanwhile Democrats and liberals--protecting a woman's legal right to choose have had to mount ever-vigilant defenses against these stealth candidates who would remove that right.

"At first the Senate Judiciary Committee was chiefly infected by this way of doing business, but now the entire body - in fact, the entire capital - has caught the abortion fight fever."

...by an extremist anti-choice minority whose views do not mirror those of most Americans but who control the Republican party and are obsessed with turning back the clock to a time when women had no control over their own bodies.

"Up until now, minorities have generally not used the filibuster to defeat nominees that have majority support. They have allowed nominees to have an up or down vote. But this tradition has been washed away."

Up until Clinton's term, the majority didn't refuse to send the president's nominees to a vote in order to keep pro-choice judges off the bench. Once again it is the right that is on the attack here. Now, faced with a president who is in the pocket of the far right and who refuses to compromise, Democrats have their backs against the wall and are forced to take extreme measure to protect what a majority of Americans support--a woman's right to choose.

"The fact is, the entire country is trapped. Harry Blackmun and his colleagues suppressed that democratic abortion debate the nation needs to have."

Shall we vote on slavery while we're at it?

"Unless Roe v. Wade is overturned, politics will never get better."

Ah, now we see. As long as we do things their way, the divisiveness will go away.

That tedious trip down hooey lane over, let's look at the house of twigs underlying Brooks' column: that abortion rights should been left to the states. Then, he suggests, everything would be ok.

Bull crackers. Look what happened with gay marriage and civil unions. The gay marriage decision in Massachusetts and the civil union laws in Vermont and Connecticut drove the right bananas and they immediately launched an effort to repeal them at the federal level with a Constitutional amendment. Same thing with the right-to-die laws, medical marijuana laws, etc.

Brooks, like the rest of the far right, is simply full of it. The right isn't upset that decisions were taken away from the local level, they're upset when decisions anywhere don't go the way they WANT. And they've proven over and over they'll do whatever it takes to reverse them.

Here in Massachusetts we were up to our armpits in right-wing activists bussed in from the south during the gay marriage debate. One memorable moment involved a woman from Alabama shrieking into the TV camera, "we've got to stop the judges from taking over our state." We know she was from Alabama because it was the local news--not CNN or FoxNews--so someone asked her where she was from.

In fact the main point-man for the anti-gay marriage debate up here was a right-wing reverend transplanted from Georgia. He even ran for the state legislature in the next election cycle. One local news commentator responded to an inquiry from 201k regarding him and the vast number of non-Massachusetts citizens being quoted on the air opposing gay marriage thusly:

This guy Ron Crews is a "transplant" (see Tuesday's Boston Globe for a profile) from Georgia, but he apparently lives here now. It was a smart move by the group to bring in someone new, since the local media have dismissed most of the other anti-gay spokesfolk in town as the lunatic fringe.

In other words, without the national right-wingers, there'd be no credible opposition.

Who's kidding who? Apart from the numb-skulledness of suggesting that matters of civil liberties be left up to the states (hello, slavery, etc?) the fact is that the right immediately goes on the warpath to reverse any STATE decisions they don't like--even if it's in someone else's state.

Brooks's claim that the "political viciousness" would never have arisen had a woman's right to choose been left up to the states is pure malarkey. He's closer to the truth when he says the viciousness will go away when the right gets their way--every time--freedom and Democracy be damned.

Here's an interesting story.

BARNSTABLE, Mass. (AP) -- Cape Cod's district attorney, who made disparaging remarks about slain fashion writer Christa Worthington, might not prosecute her alleged killer himself.

O'Keefe has headed several high-profile prosecutions, but he outraged members of Worthington's family when he commented on her sex life in a book about the slaying.

In Maria Flook's 2003 book, ''Invisible Eden: A Story of Love and Murder on Cape Cod,'' O'Keefe is quoted as saying Worthington ''was an equal opportunity employer. She'd (expletive) the husbands of her female friends. The butcher or the banker.''

Nice, huh? He'd been working on the case a year and felt free to publicly cast aspersions on the victim's sex life. Because, of course, that was his theory of the case--sex. But guess what: turns out his theory was wrong:

BARNSTABLE, Mass., April 15 - After a three-year investigation, including a dragnet attempt to collect DNA from all the men in one Cape Cod town, law enforcement authorities today announced an arrest in the highly publicized killing of a fashion writer in the winter of 2002.

Christopher A. McCowen, 33, a laborer with a history of burglary convictions and domestic violence complaints, was charged with raping and murdering Christa Worthington, a 46-year-old fashion writer who was found stabbed to death in her bungalow in Truro, a small beach community near the tip of Cape Cod.

"The evidence would suggest that it was a person who knew Christa only in the sense that they were familiar with her comings and goings. They were not personal acquaintances, they were not friends in any way."

You may recall that when Ms. Worthington's body was discovered, her 2-year-old daughter was clinging to her body. And from the beginning prosecutors had one theory:

The murder, which also spawned a best-selling book, brought widespread media attention to Ms. Worthington's life, and led to criticism by some members of her family that investigators and the media were depicting her as leading a promiscuous life.

We'll say. He basically said, "Who the hell knows who killed her? How could we know when she (expletived) so many guys?" It's a wonder he bothered to look for the killer at all.

Here's the kicker:

Mr. McCowen was first considered a possible suspect in April 2002, three months after the murder, Mr. O'Keefe said, and at that time he was asked if he would be willing to give a DNA sample. He said he would, Mr. O'Keefe said.

But for reasons that Mr. O'Keefe would not make clear at today's news conference, it took authorities nearly two years to collect a DNA sample from Mr. McCowen even though they knew he had a lengthy criminal history in Florida involving, according to Florida records, burglary, trafficking in stolen property, grand theft and motor vehicle theft.

Then, from the time the DNA sample was taken in March 2004, it took more than a year for the state crime lab to analyze the DNA results.

Mr. O'Keefe said that was because of a lack of resources and a long backlog at the crime lab.

He said that it wasn't until last week, on April 7, that the crime lab analysis was completed and it turned out that Mr. McCowen's sample matched DNA found at the crime scene.

Mr. O'Keefe was asked at the news conference why investigators had not tried to obtain his DNA from other law enforcement agencies. His response was, "I'm not going to go there."

Get it? They had the evidence to convict the right guy all along. And the murder had nothing to do with Christa Worthington's sex life; she was raped and murdered in front of her 2 year-old daughter by a stranger with a long list of felonies who was known to investigators and who'd agreed to give a DNA sample.

Mr. O'Keefe didn't want to "go there" in explaining his department's inexplicable failures in this case. But from the beginning he had no trouble going lots of other places with it.

Bob Herbert's recalling of FDR's vision of an expanded "Bill of Rights" for Americans brought the expected yeas and nays to the Times' letters page. One naysayer adopted the usual right-wing trick of arguing theory when faced with inconvenient facts:

To the Editor:

Re "A Radical in the White House," about Franklin D. Roosevelt:

Unlike F.D.R., George W. Bush - a conservative in the White House - espouses a bill of opportunities, not rights: the opportunity for a useful and remunerative job; the opportunity to earn enough for adequate food, clothing and recreation; and the opportunity for every farmer to grow and sell products at a return that provides a decent living.

The bill of opportunities also includes the opportunity for a decent home and adequate medical care; the opportunity for adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment; and the opportunity for a good education.

Most important, it includes the right of every person, according to his or her abilities, to convert these opportunities into reality.

Arun Khanna
Indianapolis, April 18, 2005

This of course is venerable right-wing theory: that the Constitution guarantees the right to the pursuit of happiness, not the right to happiness:

"...the opportunity for a useful and remunerative job; the opportunity to earn enough for adequate food, clothing and recreation; and the opportunity for every farmer to grow and sell products at a return that provides a decent living..."

The problem is that George Bush has done none of the these things. In fact he's made giant strides towards one goal only: the continued lowering of the cost of labor in the Unites States. The tax burden for the entire country has been moved from the highest earners to the lowest; nothing has been done to stem the flow of jobs to cheaper labor on the other side of the world, and nothing has been done to lower the frightening federal debt held by foreign nations.

And nothing will be done because George Bush and the Republican party aren't remotely interested in fixing those things; just the opposite.

Suggesting that President Bush and the GOP have espoused "a bill of opportunities" for Americans to achieve "a decent home and adequate medical care; the opportunity for adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment; and the opportunity for a good education" is like suggesting that an avalanche hitting your house is "an opportunity to go skiing".

There's an old lawyer's saying: when the facts are on your side, argue the facts; when the law is on your side, argue the law, and when neither are on your side pound the table. The right-wing political corollary should be" when the facts aren't good, argue the theory". So, for instance, if you're secretary of defense and someone asks why you suggested you "knew" where the WMD in Iraq were when you didn't, shake your head and talk about the "big picture" of "national security".

Get good enough at it and you could be president--able to stare straight-faced into the cameras and call a tax cut for the top 1% of earners "a jobs creation program" even though the current global labor market guarantees it won't create jobs in the U.S, and you know it.

You'll be able to tell that whopper with impunity because the right's true believers, like Arun Khanna, love to embrace market theory; it's their familiar and cozy truck stop on the bumpy road of economic reality.

They never fail not to notice that the political party they adore left real market theory bloodied and bruised along the side of the road some miles back.

201k has made a donation to CIVIC, the organization founded by Marla Ruzicka, who was killed in Iraq this Saturday at the age of 28. We respectfully ask our readers to consider doing so as well.

You can read a wonderful obituary of her in Salon. Or you can donate here.

Today's Washington Post explains clearly why the White House nominated John Bolton to be ambassador to the U.N.:

John R. Bolton...often blocked then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and, on one occasion, his successor, Condoleezza Rice, from receiving information vital to U.S. strategies on Iran, according to current and former officials who have worked with Bolton.

In some cases, career officials found back channels to Powell or his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, who encouraged assistant secretaries to bring information directly to him. In other cases, the information was delayed for weeks or simply did not get through. The officials, who would discuss the incidents only on the condition of anonymity because some continue to deal with Bolton on other issues, cited a dozen examples of memos or information that Bolton refused to forward during his four years as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

...career officials said they often felt that his decisions, and policy views, left the department's top diplomat uninformed and fed the long-running struggles inside the agency.

In February 2003, Bolton reportedly accused the young career official, Rexon Ryu, of concealing information and of insubordination when he failed to produce a copy of a cable he had written about the work of U.N. inspectors in Iraq. ...Just weeks before the incident, Ryu had been among a small number of State Department officials who accompanied Powell to CIA headquarters to review the presentation Powell would give to the U.N. Security Council on Iraq's alleged weapons programs. Officials said Ryu had been instrumental in getting the most controversial allegations out of Powell's speech.

...testimony gathered by the Senate panel in preparation for Bolton's confirmation hearings has also detailed a private channel to the CIA and how he sought to stifle career analysts from voicing dissent about the intelligence he was receiving.

In other words, John Bolton is being promoted for doing exactly what he was supposed to do: keep top officials of the Bush Administration from officially hearing what they knew to be the truth.

You have to admire their loyalty. A guy who repeatedly crosses the boundaries of professional and personal standards of behavior, and who aggressively bullies and intimidates government employees and contractors who put honesty and patriotism ahead of ideological and political loyalty deserves to be rewarded.

Moreover, he's clearly a guy who can be counted on to continue the same good work should any other Middle Eastern nations find themselves in the cross-hairs of the multinational corporation currently running the government of the United States.

We'll be posting more on this subject later, but for now we wanted to share a few thoughts on the effort underway in some states to allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control or the "morning after" pill due to "personal objections".

While this effort is being described as a matter of "freedom of choice" for pharmacists, let's be clear about it: it would in fact create a new right where one does not now exist, giving pharmacists the right to refuse to dispense prescriptions written by a doctor.

Understand clearly what this means: it means for the first time pharmacists will have input and discretion in matters between doctors and patients.

Does anyone think that's a good idea?

Bad as that is, there's a more malevolent side to this. The extreme elements of the right-to-life movement frequently employ bullying and other mob-rule tactics in their efforts to limit choice and access to reproductive health care. If the decision to dispense birth control becomes a matter of discretion for pharmacists these extremist elements will be able to use intimidation against pharmacies to force them to exercise that discretion and not fill the prescriptions.

Right now they can't do that because pharmacists have no discretion when it comes to filling prescriptions--which is as it should be.

Make no mistake: this is all part of the greater effort to use fear and intimidation to force the whole country to follow the values of an extremist minority.

Well, there's finally been some real action in the "Oil-for-Food" scandal the right has been screaming about for ages:

April 14, 2005

Texas businessman, as well as a British and a Bulgarian citizen, have been indicted in New York for reportedly paying millions of dollars in secret kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq as part of the United Nations oil-for-food program.

The Texan, David B. Chalmers, a principal of Bay Oil (U.S.A.) Inc., and an associate of the oil trading company, Ludmil Dionissiev, a Bulgarian and permanent American resident, were arrested this morning at their homes in Houston.

The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, David N. Kelley, said at a news briefing this morning in Manhattan that he would seek the extradition from England of a third defendant, John Irving, another associate of Bay Oil.

Mr. Kelley said Mr. Chalmers and the other defendants played "a pivotal role" in efforts to fix the price of oil that was traded and sold under the oil-for-food program and "facilitated the payment of illegal surchages" on the oil to the Hussein government.

At last we'll see some retribution against the leftist-Santanic UN-lovers that have been making a mockery of justice--not to mention U.S. security.

(pause for effect)

Hey look, www.opensecrets.org has the political donations made by these UN-crony, world-government-loving, traitorous bastards--who are from, uh, Texas:

CHALMERS, DAVID B HOUSTON,TXÊ77024 8/25/1992 $1,000 Texas Republican Congressional Cmte

CHALMERS, DAVID B HOUSTON,TX 77002 CORAL OIL AND GAS INC 6/2/1995 $1,000 Gramm, Phil

CHALMERS, DAVID HOUSTON,TX 77019 BAY OIL USA 6/22/2000 $1,000 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte

CHALMERS, DAVID B AUSTIN,TX 78745 10/3/2002 $300 National Republican Congressional Cmte

DIONISSIEV, LUDMIL HOUSTON,TX 77024 CORAL OIL & GAS 9/29/1995 $1,000 National Republican Senatorial Cmte

DIONISSIEV, LUDMIL HOUSTON,TX 77024 CORAL OIL & GAS 9/23/1996 $800 National Republican Senatorial Cmte

DIONISSIEV, LUDMIL HOUSTON,TX 77024 CORAL OIL & GAS 10/29/1996 $250 National Republican Senatorial Cmte

DIONISSIEV, LUDMIL MR HOUSTON,TX 77024 CORAL OIL & GAS 10/27/1995 $300 National Republican Senatorial Cmte

DIONISSIEV, LUDMIL MR HOUSTON,TX 77024 CORAL OIL & GAS 8/9/1996 $200 National Republican Senatorial Cmte

DIONISSIEV, LUDMIL HOUSTON,TX 77024 CORAL OIL & GAS 9/12/1994 $2,000 National Republican Senatorial Cmte

Um...so that's, uh, $5850 to Republicans and $1000 to Democrats.

My god! They gave $1000 to Democrats! SEE???!!!!??!!!!

We've heard a lot lately about "liberals" throwing pies at prominant conservatives. But while these harmless pranks are getting a lot of attention, is the right wing busy trying to overthrow American civil society and replace it with mob rule?

Here's a look at some recent incidents. First we have the majority leader of the house, Tom DeLay, making veiled threats against judges who make rulings with which he disagrees:

DeLay, speaking to reporters at a Houston hotel, declined to specify what action he wants to take.

"This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change," DeLay said. "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."

Not to be outdone, Senator John Cornyn decided to announce that maybe these offending judges should be concerned about violence directed at them:

"I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. . . . And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence."

Then there was this prayer, offered at last week's "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" conference in Washington, D.C.:

"Father, we echo the words of the apostle Paul, because we know Judge Greer claims to be a Christian. So as the Apostle Paul said in First Corinthians 5, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus."

But, should Satan be too busy spreading Evolution to bother with "the destruction of the flesh" of your political enemies, no worries: the New York City police department will just misrepresent the circumstances of your arrest--as they apparently did for thousands of people outside the Republican National Convention last year:

Dennis Kyne put up such a fight at a political protest last summer, the arresting officer recalled, it took four police officers to haul him down the steps of the New York Public Library and across Fifth Avenue.

"We picked him up and we carried him while he squirmed and screamed," the officer, Matthew Wohl, testified in December. "I had one of his legs because he was kicking and refusing to walk on his own."

Accused of inciting a riot and resisting arrest, Mr. Kyne was the first of the 1,806 people arrested in New York last summer during the Republican National Convention to take his case to a jury. But one day after Officer Wohl testified, and before the defense called a single witness, the prosecutor abruptly dropped all charges.

During a recess, the defense had brought new information to the prosecutor. A videotape shot by a documentary filmmaker showed Mr. Kyne agitated but plainly walking under his own power down the library steps, contradicting the vivid account of Officer Wohl, who was nowhere to be seen in the pictures. Nor was the officer seen taking part in the arrests of four other people at the library against whom he signed complaints.

For Mr. Kyne and 400 others arrested that week, video recordings provided evidence that they had not committed a crime or that the charges against them could not be proved, according to defense lawyers and prosecutors.

Among them was Alexander Dunlop, who said he was arrested while going to pick up sushi.

Last week, he discovered that there were two versions of the same police tape: the one that was to be used as evidence in his trial had been edited at two spots, removing images that showed Mr. Dunlop behaving peacefully. When a volunteer film archivist found a more complete version of the tape and gave it to Mr. Dunlop's lawyer, prosecutors immediately dropped the charges and said that a technician had cut the material by mistake.

Video is a useful source of evidence, but not an easy one to manage, because of the difficulties in finding a fleeting image in hundreds of hours of tape. Moreover, many of the tapes lack index and time markings, so cuts in the tape are not immediately apparent.

That was a problem in the case of Mr. Dunlop, who learned that his tape had been altered only after Ms. Clancy found another version of the same tape. Mr. Dunlop had been accused of pushing his bicycle into a line of police officers on the Lower East Side and of resisting arrest, but the deleted parts of the tape show him calmly approaching the police line, and later submitting to arrest without apparent incident.

On the other hand, if you work at the White House or are a Republican media operative, you can out a covert CIA agent in the press and not even get charged for it:

The special prosecutor investigating whether Bush administration officials illegally revealed the identity of a covert CIA operative says he finished his investigation months ago, except for questioning two reporters who have refused to testify.

The information in a March 22 court filing by special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald suggests that syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak, who first published the name of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame, has already spoken to investigators about his sources for that report, according to legal experts. Novak, whose July 2003 column sparked the investigation, and his attorney have refused to comment on whether he was questioned.

Legal experts and sources close to the case also speculated yesterday that Fitzgerald is not likely to seek an indictment for the crime he originally set out to investigate: whether a government official knowingly exposed a covert officer. The sources, who asked not to be named because the matter is the subject of a grand jury investigation, said Fitzgerald may instead seek to charge a government official with committing perjury by giving conflicting information to prosecutors.

Well, that's a relief. At least the important business of enacting the GOP agenda won't be derailed by something minor like being held accountable to the law. Or, you know, national security.

The pure hatred that Republicans feel for America is starting to become overwhelming. The most recent example is from President Bush, who suddenly feels the need to suggest on camera that the United States does not honor its financial obligations--a very strange thing to say given that A) it's not true and B) some $2 trillion in U.S. debt is owned by foreigners:

Mr. Bush...posed next to a file cabinet that holds the $1.7 trillion in Treasury securities that make up the Social Security trust fund. He tossed off a comment to the effect that the bonds were not "real assets." Later, in a speech at a nearby university, he said: "There is no trust fund. Just i.o.u.'s that I saw firsthand."

Social Security takes in more money than it needs to pay current beneficiaries, and the excess is invested in the Treasury securities that Mr. Bush was discussing. They carry the same legal and political obligations as all other forms of Treasury debt, every penny of which has always been paid in full and on time.

In his speech, Mr. Bush went on to acknowledge that future generations would have to make good on the debt. But the intended meaning of the photo-op was clear. In the hope of persuading people to privatize Social Security - a move that would only add to the growing debt burden for future generations - Mr. Bush wants Americans to believe that the trust fund is a joke. But if the trust fund is a joke, so is the full faith and credit of the United States.

Meanwhile, Texas Republican John Cornyn believes that violence against judges is understandable given that they sometimes make rulings that Republicans disagree with:

Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, rose in the chamber and dared to argue that recent courthouse violence might be explained by distress about judges who "are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public." The frustration "builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in" violence, said Mr. Cornyn...

Why do Republicans Hate America?

And now, the news:

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http://www.uscountvotes.org

Scientific Analysis Suggests Presidential Vote Counts May Have Been Altered
Tuesday, 29 March 2005

Officially, President Bush won November's election by 2.5%, yet exit polls showed Kerry winning by 3%. According to a report to be released today by a group of university statisticians, the odds of a discrepancy this large between the national exit poll and election results happening by accident are close to 1 in a million.

In other words, by random chance alone, it could not have happened. But it did.

A state-by-state analysis of the discrepancy between exit polls and official election results shows highly improbable skewing of the election results, overwhelmingly biased towards the President.

The report concludes, "We believe that the absence of any statistically-plausible explanation for the discrepancy between Edison/Mitofsky's exit poll data and the official presidential vote tally is an unanswered question of vital national importance that needs thorough investigation."

Sidney Blumenthal thinks President Bush and the GOP erred in letting the religious right move front and center in their party, as:

Bush isn't using the religious right; it is using him.

The culture war has imploded inside the Republican Party. The religious fanatics and political freebooters who have flocked to the Schiavo deathwatch can never lose, no matter how extreme their pronouncements. Schiavo has given the religious right an invaluable lever with which to pressure Bush and the Republicans, who can never fully satisfy its demands if they are to sustain a national majority. The inviolability of marriage, states' rights, limited government, respect for the law -- these conservative principles must be cast aside in the struggle for power.

Much as we'd like to agree with him, 201k can't help wondering why Mr. Blumenthal thinks the GOP would hesitate to choose "power" over "conservative principles". What recent precedent is there for that?

We have only to listen to Mr. Tom DeLay to understand that today's Republican party will happily choose power over anything. Power--and money--are their true god. There is no greater cause or good for them. Not even the rule of law:

DeLay, speaking to reporters at a Houston hotel, declined to specify what action he wants to take.

"This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change," DeLay said. "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."

Does this sound like someone who intends to put "conservative principles" ahead of power?

If respecting the 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision isn't a "conservative principle", what is?

Mob rule?

Sen. Kennedy apparently has studied American history and agrees:

As I said two weeks ago, I believed that the courts are the fairest forum to do what is right in this case. I intend to do all I can to see that any action Congress takes is constructive and free from partisan politics, and does not make a tragic situation worse by exploiting this terrible tragedy.

Mr. DeLay's comments today were irresponsible and reprehensible. I'm not sure what Mr. DeLay meant when he said "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior." But at a time when emotions are running high, Mr. DeLay needs to make clear that he is not advocating violence against anyone. People in this case have already had their lives threatened. In just the past few weeks, judges and their families in this country have been brutally murdered. This case has been heartbreaking and tragic enough. It is time for mourning and healing not for more inflammatory rhetoric, and responsible national leaders should understand that and stop this exploitation.

Meanwhile, New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg reminded Mr. DeLay that:

"Threats against specific federal judges are not only a serious crime, but also beneath a member of Congress. In my view, the true measure of democracy is how it dispenses justice. Your attempt to intimidate judges in America not only threatens our courts, but our fundamental democracy as well."

Somehow we don't agree with Sidney Blumenthal that this would matter much to Tom DeLay--or to much of the current GOP.

What's "our fundamental democracy" compared to the "privileges of office"?