side note: we’re about 30 minutes into his speech…blah blah blah blah blah. came across this on yahoo news and thought this important to post, i wonder if there really was a “distraction”?
Yahoo News

Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen soldier in Iraq who reinvigorated the anti-war movement, was taken into custody by police in the House gallery Tuesday night just before President Bush’s State of the Union address.

Police escorted Sheehan from the visitors’ gallery above the House chamber after she caused a disruption, said a Capitol Police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the incident were sketchy.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., had invited Sheehan to the address as her guest.

“I’m proud that Cindy’s my guest tonight,” Woolsey said in an interview before the speech. “She has made a difference in the debate to bring our troops home from Iraq.”

Woolsey offered Sheehan a ticket to the speech — Gallery 5, seat 7, row A — earlier Tuesday while Sheehan was attending an “alternative state of the union” press conference by CODEPINK, a group promoting the end of the Iraq war.

Sheehan was arrested in September with about 300 other anti-war activists in front of the White House after a weekend of protests against the war in Iraq. In August, she spent 26 days camped near Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he was spending a working vacation.

original article

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

i knew that i was dying.
something in me said, go ahead, die, sleep, become
them, accept.
then something else in me said, no, save the tiniest
bit.
it needn’t be much, just a spark.
a spark can set a whole forest on
fire.
just a spark.
save it.

- Charles Bukowski

“He shall from time to time,” reads the Constitution, “give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” And so it shall be. George W. Bush will be speaking tonight from the podium in the House of Representatives. Before him will be arrayed Senators, Representatives, generals and judges. The balconies will be filled with observers, luminaries, reporters and a few so-called “special guests” whose presence will be used to reinforce some argument or another.

It shall be quite a thing to see, a show worth watching if only to observe exactly how many lies, distortions, threats, taunts and smirks can be crammed into a single speech. This will be Mr. Bush speaking, after all, and the truth is not in him. It will be in every pertinent sense a mere commercial, a television advertisement from a failing company, a whitewashing of ugly truths by a staggering CEO whose sole desire is to keep the stockholders in line for another quarter.

In the interests of truth, the actual state of this union deserves to be displayed for all to see. This is the deal. This is how it is.

The Real Economy

Since 2000, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen to nearly 37 million. More than 13 million of these are children. More than one in four American families with children make less than $30,000 a year. Look within that number and you will find 46% of African American families with children and 44% of Hispanic families with children fall below this mark. Average annual income for Americans fell once again in 2005. 46 million Americans live without health insurance.

The response to this? Vice President Cheney, three days before Christmas, cast the tie-breaking vote on a spending reduction bill that will fall most heavily on the poor, the infirm and the elderly. Funding for health care, child support, and education subsidies for low-income families has been gutted. Medicaid benefits for the poor were cut by $7 billion, and Medicare programs for the elderly were cut by $6.4 billion. Federal student-loan programs were cut by $12.7 billion.

On the very same day, the Senate passed legislation that drastically cut funding for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. The Head Start program was hit especially hard: the cuts here eliminate some 25,000 slots for low-income children. All in all, these spending reductions are expected to save $40 billion.

Meanwhile, recently-passed tax cuts ravage the budget far more deeply than these drastic budget cuts. Two tax cuts in particular that went into effect on New Year’s Day will cost $27 billion, more than half of what the spending reductions are supposed to save. These cuts will cost more than $150 billion over the next ten years. 97% of the money from these cuts will go to households making more than $200,000 a year. Households with incomes under $100,000 will get 0.1% of these cuts.

If all of Mr. Bush’s tax cuts are stopped or allowed to expire, $750 billion will be added to the federal budget. That is more than enough to pay for the programs that have been eviscerated. It won’t happen, not with the priorities of this administration, but that is the simple math of the matter.

New Orleans Drowned in a Bathtub

The first weeks of September brought to all Americans a devastating tragedy. The city of New Orleans was all but obliterated by Hurricane Katrina when levies meant to hold back the waters failed. The failure of these levies came, in no small part, because of unprecedented budget cuts for the Army Corps of Engineers, which was tasked to keep the levies viable.

The tragedy was compounded by the utterly incompetent management of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its head, Michael Brown, whose experience with disaster management came while he was serving as an attorney for owners of Arabian horses. In the weeks to follow, lavish promises were made by Mr. Bush. “We will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives,” he said on September 15th.

Those promises have been broken. We have gone from oaths to revive this cherished city to this: “I want to remind people in that part of the world, $85 billion is a lot,” said Bush on January 26th. Hundreds of thousands of Americans remain displaced, many holding on by the skin of their teeth in cramped trailers. Thirty million cubic yards of debris remain uncollected – the Washington Post estimated over the weekend that this was “enough to build a five-sided column more than 50 stories tall over the Pentagon.” There is not even a plan in place to begin to attack the problem. The Bush administration has left New Orleans to rot, and the next hurricane season is four months away.

Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist once famously stated that he wanted to shrink the federal government to the size where it could be drowned in a bathtub. As evidenced by the budget cuts and tax giveaways described above, many within this government feel as Norquist does. Thanks to their actions, to the cuts in the Army Corps of Engineers budget, to the nomination of useless cronies like Brown to vital positions of civil defense, to a war in Iraq that has bled the budget further and left Louisiana without sufficient National Guard troops to help the population, it is New Orleans that has been drowned in Norquist’s bathtub. A major American city has been shattered, and nothing is done about it.

To add insult to injury, the Bush administration utterly refuses to answer any questions on the matter. Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, perhaps the most widely-known Democratic defender of Mr. Bush, is the ranking minority member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Even Mr. Lieberman is flabbergasted by the stonewalling of the White House.

“My staff believes that DHS (the Department of Homeland Security) has engaged in a conscious strategy of slow-walking our investigation in the hope that we would run out of time to follow the investigation’s natural progression to where it leads,” Lieberman said last week. “At this point, I cannot disagree. There’s been no assertion of executive privilege, just a refusal to answer. I have been told by my staff that almost every question our staff has asked federal agency witnesses regarding conversations with or involvement of the White House has been met with a response that they could not answer on direction of the White House.”

Mark Folse, a New Orleans native, operates a blog called “Wet Bank Guide.” On Monday, Mr. Folse posted a message for Mr. Bush. “I’ve never lost the deepest allegiance I’ve ever held: to my city,” wrote Folse. “We have always known we were a people different and unique, as divided as we may seem. That sense of identity as a New Orleanian is the powerful bond that draws me on. It is the deep love of country that drives me – of my country, New Orleans and southern Louisiana. It is the irrational emotional attachment to my piece of America that leads men and women to go willingly up Bunker Hill, to follow General Pickett, to volunteer for Iraq.”

“A life of assured privilege has protected you from having to take these sorts of risks,” continued Folse, “to find the strength to get up and go into the maw of uncertainty, to risk and gamble your own and not other peoples’ lives or money. You can pledge allegiance or sing the anthem or give a stirring speech as well as any, but you know you have no allegiance except self-interest.”

“If nothing moves you except your own self-interest,” concluded Folse, “then consider this. There are hundreds of thousands of us, scattered throughout most of the United States. We are everywhere you and your party will go to campaign: Arkansas and Atlanta and Austin, Dallas and Detroit and Denver, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, Baltimore and Boston, Chicago and Charlotte. Many will remain there indefinitely, unable to go home, precisely because you have lied to them and betrayed them. We will not let you escape from the net of lies you have woven. Wherever you turn, you will find us, ready to call you out.”

The situation in New Orleans is a problem that will not go away. Men like Mark Folse will make absolutely sure of that.

“Scandal” Is Too Small a Word

The Abramoff scandal directly touches some sixty Republican congresspeople, according to campaign finance records that show where the disgraced lobbyist sent his money. Mr. Bush recently promoted the lead investigator in this case, effectively removing him from the investigation. Despite this, the hard look into Mr. Abramoff’s dealings continue. Mr. Abramoff’s plea deal has a lot of people in Washington suffering from flop-sweat.

Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the outing of a deep-cover CIA agent by administration officials continues apace, and has already cashiered Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby. According to t r u t h o u t investigative reporter Jason Leopold, Fitzgerald has “spent the past month preparing evidence he will present to a grand jury alleging that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove knowingly made false statements to FBI and Justice Department investigators and lied under oath while he was being questioned about his role in the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity more than two years ago, according to sources knowledgeable about the probe.”

“Although there have not been rumblings regarding Fitzgerald’s probe into the Plame leak since he met with the grand jury hearing evidence in the case more than a month ago,” continued Leopold in his January 10th report, “the sources said that Fitzgerald has been quietly building his case against Rove and has been interviewing witnesses, in some cases for the second and third time, who have provided him with information related to Rove’s role in the leak.”

None of this will be mentioned in the State of the Union speech tonight. The Bush administration continues to stonewall these investigations with all its might – Mr. Bush has denied ever knowing Jack Abramoff, despite the existence of several pictures showing them glad-handing each other in the White House – and the Republican-controlled congress will certainly do nothing to advance the questions being asked.

In contrast, a portion of the speech will certainly be dedicated to moralistic sloganeering about values. Remember, as high-flown words about truth and justice are spoken, what the Abramoff and Plame scandals represent: a government run by thieves, stroked by swindlers, and staffed by assassins who sing of defending the nation even as they cast us down into greater danger.

And, by the way, the Enron trial started on Monday.

The Middle East

2,242 American soldiers have died in Iraq. Tens of thousands more are grievously wounded. Tens and tens of thousands of civilians are dead or maimed. Scores more simmer in rage and pick up weapons to attack American forces. American soldiers wishing to go around the Pentagon to augment their meager armor have been threatened with the revocation of death benefits for their families. A coalition of fundamentalist Shiite groups has taken over the government, the two main parts of which are notorious terrorist organizations with umbilical ties to Iran. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent to do this. There is no end in sight.

Three years ago, in another State of the Union address, Mr. Bush told the nation that Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons (which is 1,000,000 pounds) of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 munitions to deliver these agents, mobile biological weapons labs, al Qaeda connections, and uranium from Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program. Mr. Bush will have to work very hard tonight to tell a lie as vast, dramatic and bloody as this.

Certainly, Mr. Bush will sing the praises of bringing democracy to the Middle East. It is worthwhile, however, to consider what his concept of democracy has accomplished to date. Six months ago, a radical named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran. Thanks to the intense feelings within Iran’s populace about the US occupation of Iraq, Ahmadinejad has been able to unify his country behind the establishment of a nuclear program that frightens the rest of the world. Ahmadinejad’s election itself owes a great deal to Mr. Bush’s policies on Iraq.

Last week, the terrorist organization Hamas was overwhelmingly elected by the Palestinian people to run their government, leaving the Fatah party shocked and displaced. While the success of Hamas has much to do with Fatah’s corruption and lack of progress on several fronts, the slow radicalization of the general population in the Middle East once again can be laid at the doorstep of Mr. Bush. It has been revealed that Bush’s decision to disengage from the peace process between Israel and Palestine several years ago was a disastrous choice. Couple that with the occupation of Iraq and the torture of its citizens, and few can be surprised when the general population in the Middle East turns toward more radical elements.

Democracy is a tricky thing. The fact that people in Iraq, Iran and Palestine are afforded the opportunity to vote, instead of suffering the absolute control of a dictatorship, is arguably a good thing in the main. Yet methods matter. When the Iraqi people are given the vote by way of a ravaging war that inflames the passions of the region and enshrines a radical government, democracy becomes its own worst enemy. When that ravaging war empowers a fringe president in Iran, democracy becomes its own worst enemy.

Methods matter. Democracy does not exist in a vacuum. When it is forced upon a population at the point of a sword, that population will see the sword as the best viable option to exercise its collective will. Almost immediately, democracy will be used to elect radicals, and those radicals will dispose of democracy at the first opportunity. The radicalization of governments all across the Middle East has made the world substantially more dangerous. Mr. Bush will speak of progress tonight. The only progress being made is toward a general conflagration.

On the other hand, Exxon Mobil has posted a $32 billion profit for the last year. This stands as the largest single one-year profit in the entire history of the world. Progress indeed.

The Unitary Executive Tapping Your Phone

Mr. Bush and friends have been jumping through flaming hoops to justify the blatantly illegal policy of spying on Americans by way of the National Security Agency. Their tortured arguments in favor of this action, and their flat-footed declaration that the policy will continue, makes confetti of the Fourth Amendment.

More than that, however, it moves this nation one step closer to having an Executive Branch that supersedes all others in power and scope. Not only will Mr. Bush spy on whomever he pleases, but he will also torture whomever he pleases. Put simply, the constitutionally-required separation of powers, the checks and balances that have maintained the stability of this republic, is being destroyed. This will echo down the corridors of our history long after Mr. Bush has left his office.

On Monday afternoon, Senate Democrats failed to muster the necessary 41 votes needed to avoid cloture on the nomination of Samuel Alito. The man will be elevated to the highest court. Beyond the fact that Alito is hostile to a woman’s right to choose, hostile to privacy rights in the face of unwarranted police intrusion, and hostile to the poor and disadvantaged, there is the matter of his opinion on the powers of the Executive. In short, he agrees with Mr. Bush.

The Reign of Witches

The state of this union is not good. We are poorer, frightened, faced with the swelling ranks of enemies our leaders have created, and hell-bent to do away with the most precious aspects of our system of government. We are surveilled, propagandized, intimidated. We empower the radicals and disenfranchise the common good. We are fed swill via the television and thus convinced that what they tell us is what we already believe. We are bought, and we are paid for.

The radicals running this country have long desired to destroy the government’s ability to govern – they found things like taxes intrusive, which is amusing when one hears them now defending warrantless spying on Americans – and they are well along the path towards success. The budget is destroyed, spent on tax cuts and the Iraq occupation, while millions of Americans suffer the loss of necessary services. The one percent of the one percent is making a killing, and the rest of us are left behind.

If there is hope to be found in all this, it is in the words of Thomas Jefferson, written 208 years ago after the passage of the Sedition Act.

“A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.”

original article

My buddy L turned me on to this site…thanks bro. Click here to check it out!

647,163 americans have signed the petition so far…..we need many more to make anything happen in DC.

EDITORIALS
LA Times

IF HISTORY HAS TAUGHT US anything, President Bush will spend part of his State of the Union address tonight stressing the importance of achieving energy independence from foreign sources of oil, strengthening Social Security, reducing the costs of healthcare and producing a fiscally responsible budget. After all, he’s made these pledges four years in a row without much to show for it, so why stop now?

The White House has been downplaying expectations of any major new initiative being unveiled, for which we can be thankful. One of Bush’s last big ideas to actually be signed into law, Medicare’s prescription drug benefit, has been a disaster in execution since before the presidential ink was even dry. The 10-year, $395-billion price tag has now become a five-year projection, according to the president’s proposed 2006 budget, and as Times staff writer Lisa Girion detailed Monday, the low-income seniors for which the benefit was purportedly created have been having a particularly difficult time enrolling in the program since it began Jan. 1. And given the president’s inability to move ahead with his Social Security reform, it will be hard to make too much of his health savings accounts initiative.

Bush’s most famous State of the Union gambit — referring to Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the “axis of evil” in 2002 — arguably hastened, rather than halted, the latter two regimes’ hunt for nuclear weapons.

If Bush wants to think big, he need look no further than the federal government’s projected $400-billion deficit this year, or the 37% increase in non-defense discretionary spending on his watch. The president has not vetoed a single piece of legislation while in office. The 2005 Transportation Act, rightly labeled a “monstrosity” by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), contained more than 6,000 individual pieces of pork (including Republican Sen. Ted Stevens’ infamous “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska), and cost taxpayers $286 billion, a full $36 billion more than Bush initially said he would accept. If the president can’t back up his own flimsy veto threats, it’s no wonder there isn’t enough money left over for projects that are actually necessary.

Bush should also start addressing some of the other perennials he keeps trotting out, including an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws and energy-independence measures that transcend handouts to Prius buyers and an obsession with drilling in a certain state far north. The administration also needs to flesh out how it plans to live up to its “forward strategy of freedom” in the Middle East and Central Asia.

As the president will surely point out, there is a war on, and serious times call for serious governance. He can begin by taking his own words, and his own promises, more seriously.

original article

via Crooks and Liars

Everyday we get more of a peek of who Chris Matthews actually is…..

Click here to see the video (WMP and Quicktime)

side note: a buddy of mine called me last night and told me that he created a state of the union drinking game….he’s gonna be flat-out drunk by the 5-minute mark!! the following is will durst’s game….i think my buddy’s game is better…hopefully he’ll get on here today and post it in the comments section.
by Will Durst
WorkingForChange.com

What you need:

A group of four taxpayers: one white guy wearing a suit, two people wearing jeans — one in a work shirt, the other in a dark shirt — and one person wearing rags. (Stitched-together washcloths are nice.) All four taxpayers are grouped around a cocktail table within sight of the television. Newspapers on floor in front of television.
One shot glass per person. Everyone brings their own and places it on the table. Suit picks one first. Then Work Shirt. Then Dark Shirt. Suit takes the last one as well, and Rags gets a Dixie Cup with the top scissored off.
5 bucks apiece, everybody antes.
One fondue pot with two packages of Li’l Smokies stewing in barbecue sauce on table. Preferably a sauce from Texas. Surrounded by:
100 cocktail toothpicks. The kind with the little American flags wrapped around the top.
A large stash of beer. Rags gets the cheapest stuff you can find, like Old Milwaukee Light; Suit gets to drink whatever import he asks for; the jeans get to pick their favorite domestic brand, but they are required to pay for all the beer and the Li’l Smokies.
Rules of the Game.

1. Whenever George W uses the phrases: “national security,” “tax relief,” “activist judges,” or “affordable health care,” drink two shots of beer.

2. Whenever George W mentions the tragic events of 9/11, the last person to grab a toothpick, stand, and salute must drink three shots of beer. If you stab yourself in forehead with the toothpick, drink two more shots.

3. If George W actually says, “If Al Qaeda is calling you, we want to know why.” first person to finish a whole beer gets to toss Li’l Smokies at any of the others until they finish their beer. Use the toothpicks.

4. If George W makes up a word like “strategerie” or “deteriorize,” drink four shots of beer.

5. If George W speaks of Hamas and repeats his earlier statement that “it’s good to see people are demanding honest leadership,” the first person to stop laughing gets to drink one shot of beer then pummel Suit with empty shot glass. No head shots.

6. Whenever George W talks about bi-partisanship, the last person to grab his throat in a choking motion has to eat 4 Li’l Smokies.

7. If either the Vice President Dick Cheney or First Lady Laura Bush are caught napping, last person to sing “Wake Up Little Susie, Wake Up,” has to drink three shots of beer.

8. Predict the number of applause breaks. Person closest to correct number may then force the other three to drink that number of shots of beer in whatever ratio they wish.

9. Three shots of beer if he mentions New Orleans. Five shots of beer if he mentions Brownie. Two full beers if he mentions Abramoff.

10. Every time Tom DeLay is shown in the audience, take turns throwing Li’l Smokies at the TV. Suit sits out. First face hit doesn’t have to drink two shots of beer. Every time Hillary Clinton is shown in the audience, Suit throws Li’l Smokies at the TV. If he hits her face, everyone else drinks two shots of beer. Use the toothpicks.

11. Whenever George W quotes the Bible, last person to fall to their knees and cry “Hallelujah!” drinks two shots of beer.

12. Whenever George W smirks during a standing ovation, take turns drinking shots of beer until the audience sits down. Do it double time if his shoulders shake with silent laughter.

EXTRAS:

Whoever can correctly identify in advance the person giving the Democratic Response doesn’t have to watch it.
Suit gets to kick Rags hard, once, if George W uses a heartfelt story of a pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to illustrate a point. Twice if the regulation of large cardboard boxes is mentioned as a security precaution. Rags gets 15 seconds to kick the Suit if Bush reveals the subject of the anecdote is in the audience. 30 seconds if he or she is sitting next to Harriet Miers. 1 full minute if she’s sitting next to an astronaut.
Suit takes home $20.
Leftover beer, Li’l Smokies and fondue pot go home with Rags.

Political Comic Will Durst needs a volunteer to wear the suit.

original article

The Center For American Progress has put together a detailed list of what Bushie is gonna say and what you should know about the spin spewing from him. Here are a few examples:

1. BUSH HAS INCREASED DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL: Sixty-six percent of oil consumed in the United States comes from foreign sources, up from 58 percent in 2000. Americans now spend $200,000 a minute on foreign oil, and more than $25 billion annually goes to Persian Gulf states for oil imports.

2. BUSH ENERGY BILL WILL NOT REDUCE RELIANCE ON FOREIGN OIL: The same energy bill failed to take any steps that will substantively reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. Specifically, the final version “rejected a Senate provision that required reduction of oil consumption by one million barrels per day by 2015.” Under the bill, “our need for imported oil will continue to grow for as long as models are able to project.”

3. LAWLESS SPYING THREATENS LEGITIMATE TERRORIST INVESTIGATIONS: When laws are broken, the legal system imposes consequences. Revelations about the National Security Agency wiretapping program throw into doubt a wide range of investigations and prosecutions in the fight against terrorism. In criminal cases that can put terrorists behind bars, judges now have to worry that evidence was based on illegal wiretaps. According to several FISA judges quoted by the Washington Post, there are serious concerns that “legally suspect information” acquired through warrantless surveillance was used to obtain FISA warrants, potentially rendering the warrants illegitimate. More broadly, convicted terrorists will be emboldened to challenge their prosecutions, perhaps giving them the opportunity to operate freely once again. [Washington Post, 12/21/05]

4. TAX CUTS WILL COST $3.4 TRILLION OVER TEN YEARS: The cost of making the tax cuts permanent will be $3.4 trillion through fiscal year 2015, according to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates. This includes the cost of extending the Alternative Minimum Tax relief associated with these tax cuts. [Congressional Budget Office, 1/26/06]

5. DEFICITS CAUSED BY TAX CUTS NEGATE ANY POTENTIAL ECONOMIC BENEFITS: Studies by the Joint Committee on Taxation (JTC), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and CBO all confirm that deficits undermine economic benefits of the cuts. In their analysis of the 2003 tax cuts, JTC found that any economic benefits of the tax cuts would “eventually likely to be outweighed by the reduction in national savings due to increasing Federal government deficits.” Four of the five models they used showed a negative effect on real GDP by the next decade, while the fifth showed no impact at all. CBO and OECD studies confirmed the tax cuts would raise deficits and hurt growth. [American Progress analysis, 1/26/05; CBO, October 2005]

There are many more here….check it out.

By PETER APPLEBOME
The New York Times

Coretta Scott King, first known as the wife of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., then as his widow, then as an avid proselytizer for his vision of racial peace and non-violent social change, has died, her sister in law, Christine King Farris, said this morning.

She was 78 and had been in failing health since suffering a stroke and heart attack last August. Mrs. King appeared at a benefit earlier this month, but did not speak, and was unable to attend the yearly celebration of Martin Luther King Day.

Andrew Young, the former United Nations ambassador and longtime family friend, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Mrs. King died in her sleep and was discovered by her daughter Bernice about 1 a.m. “It seemed as though she was resting when she passed away,” Mr. Young said, according to the paper’s Web site.

In a statement, the King family said that “Mrs. Coretta Scott King, first lady of human and civil rights, died overnight.” Mrs. King rose from rural poverty in Heiberger, Ala., to become an international symbol of the civil rights revolution of the 1960s and a tireless advocate for a long litany of social and political issues, ranging from women’s rights to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, that followed in its wake.

She was studying music at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston in 1952 when she met a young graduate student in philosophy, who on their first date told her: “The four things that I look for in a wife are character, personality, intelligence and beauty. And you have them all.” A year later she and Dr. King, then a young minister from a prominent Atlanta family, were married, beginning a remarkable partnership that ended with Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968.

Mrs. King did not hesitate to pick up his mantle, marching before her husband was even buried at the head of the garbage workers he had gone to Memphis to champion. She then went on to lead the effort for a national holiday in his honor and to found the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change in Atlanta, dedicated both to scholarship and to activism, where Dr. King is buried.

Aside from the trauma of her husband’s death, which left her alone with four young children, Mrs. King faced other trials and controversies over the years. She was at times viewed as chilly and aloof by others in the movement. The King Center was criticized first as competing for funds and siphoning energy from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which Dr. King had headed. In recent years, it has been widely viewed as adrift, characterized by intra-family squabbling and a focus more on Dr. King’s legacy than continuing his work. And even many allies were baffled and hurt by her campaign to exonerate James Earl Ray, who in 1969 had pleaded guilty to her husband’s murder, and her contention that Ray did not commit the crime.

But more often, Mrs. King has been seen as an inspirational figure around the world, a dogged advocate for her husband’s causes and a woman of enormous spiritual depth who came to personify the ideals Dr. King fought for.

see rest of article

by David Kusnet
The New Republic

During Bill Clinton’s second term, State of the Union speeches became a month-long roll-out ritual. Almost every weekday in January, the president, cabinet secretaries, and other administration officials announced new domestic policy initiatives. By the time Clinton addressed the Congress and the country, his agenda was already dominating the news.

For more than two months, President Bush has also been test-driving his State of the Union speech; but, instead of trying out new proposals, he’s been presenting new arguments for the controversial policies he’s already pursuing–the Iraq war, domestic wiretapping, and tax cuts tilted towards the wealthy. Starting with an unusually detailed and defensive speech on Veterans Day, he has repeatedly made the case for continuing the American involvement in Iraq. This month, in equally aggressive speeches, he has defended his economic policies and electronic eavesdropping.

Tomorrow night, (TONITE) when Bush delivers his State of the Union address, he can be expected to devote more time than most presidents to defending his existing policies rather than offering new ideas. Sure, his staff has been using words like “thematic” and “visionary” to describe the speech and promising, as presidents’ speechwriters and spokespeople often do, that this year’s State of the Union won’t be a “laundry list” of policy proposals. But, beneath some idealistic and futuristic rhetoric, Bush’s theme may well be that he’s right and his critics are wrong; and his vision may well be of a year of partisan trench warfare with congressional Democrats.

If Bush takes this tack tomorrow night, he will be following the advice of Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, the instincts of his chief speechwriter William McGurn, and the strategy of his political guru Karl Rove. “The notion that Bush could or should unveil a new domestic agenda at the State of the Union speech is really ridiculous,” Kristol recently contended. “He has to play the cards he has been dealt and play a winning hand with those cards.” An argumentative approach should be congenial to McGurn, a former editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for the New York Post. And take-no-prisoners rhetoric also fits the strategy that Rove set forth in a recent speech to the Republican National Committee, where he recommended attacking Democrats for being trapped in a “pre-9/11 worldview.”

While it doesn’t make for the sort of uplifting oratory that gets etched in marble on national monuments, the combative Kristol-McGurn-Rove approach does reflect a political reality: Bush’s slight rebound from his low poll ratings last year almost certainly resulted from winning back disenchanted Republicans, not winning over Democrats or swing voters. So tomorrow night, look for less of the rhetorical outreach that Bush’s former chief speechwriter Michael Gerson (now a White House policy adviser but still involved in speechwriting) does so well and more of the rhetorical in-reach that the former conservative editorial writer McGurn is well-prepared to produce.

It wouldn’t be the first time that Bush has delivered a pugnacious, even partisan, State of the Union speech. Back in January 2004, when the Iraq war was bogging down and becoming controversial, Bush devoted three paragraphs of his State of the Union to responding directly to his critics. “I know that some people question if America is really in a war at all,” he declared, adding, several sentences later, “Some in this chamber, and in our country, did not support the liberation of Iraq.” Soon afterwards, he took issue with “Some critics [who] have said our duties in Iraq must be internationalized.” In that address, as in more recent speeches, Bush’s rhetorical tone recalled the surly Richard Nixon, who frequently framed his arguments as a response to “some who say,” rather than the sunny Ronald Reagan, who presented himself as the leader of the entire nation, not the advocate of embattled policies.

To be sure, tomorrow night Bush will offer one ambitious new initiative–the Health Savings Accounts that are supposed to replace employer-sponsored health insurance but will likely remind listeners of Bush’s ill-fated proposal to partially privatize Social Security. And he will continue to use some of his more seductive rhetorical devices. He’ll likely present his most controversial policies–the Iraq war and tax cuts for wealthy individuals and investors–as part of more popular efforts, namely the war on terrorism and tax cuts for everyday Americans. In the past, Bush has found ways to describe administration policies as beneficial to women–from women in Afghanistan to women who own small businesses. Should he employ this technique again tomorrow, he could drive home the point by having Martha-Ann Bomgardner seated in the gallery–allowing the cameras to focus on her when Bush thanks the Senate for voting to confirm her husband, Samuel Alito, to the Supreme Court.

Still, the tone of Bush’s speech will probably be more partisan and polarizing than Americans expect from a president in the second year of his second term. Even if Bush needs to reassure Republican conservatives in order to regain the approval of half the electorate, he needs to sound more like the leader of the nation if he wants Republican candidates to invite him to their rallies this fall.

David Kusnet was chief speechwriter for former President Bill Clinton from 1992 through 1994. He is writing a book about workplace conflicts in today’s America, Love the Work, Hate the Job, for John Wiley and Sons.

original article

side note: it is illegal to lie to Congress. I hope the Senate Judiciary Comittee grills Gonzales on Feb 6th when the hearings begin to figure out what the president was doing and why he chose to bypass the FISA Courts.
Feingold Says Attorney General Misled Senators in Hearings
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) charged yesterday that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales misled the Senate during his confirmation hearing a year ago when he appeared to try to avoid answering a question about whether the president could authorize warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens.

In a letter to the attorney general yesterday, Feingold demanded to know why Gonzales dismissed the senator’s question about warrantless eavesdropping as a “hypothetical situation” during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2005. At the hearing, Feingold asked Gonzales where the president’s authority ends and whether Gonzales believed the president could, for example, act in contravention of existing criminal laws and spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant.

Gonzales said that it was impossible to answer such a hypothetical question but that it was “not the policy or the agenda of this president” to authorize actions that conflict with existing law. He added that he would hope to alert Congress if the president ever chose to authorize warrantless surveillance, according to a transcript of the hearing.

In fact, the president did secretly authorize the National Security Agency to begin warrantless monitoring of calls and e-mails between the United States and other nations soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The program, publicly revealed in media reports last month, was unknown to Feingold and his staff at the time Feingold questioned Gonzales, according to a staff member. Feingold’s aides developed the 2005 questions based on privacy advocates’ concerns about broad interpretations of executive power.

Gonzales was White House counsel at the time the program began and has since acknowledged his role in affirming the president’s authority to launch the surveillance effort. Gonzales is scheduled to testify Monday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the program’s legal rationale.

“It now appears that the Attorney General was not being straight with the Judiciary Committee and he has some explaining to do,” Feingold said in a statement yesterday.

A Justice Department spokesman said yesterday the department had not yet reviewed the Feingold letter and could not comment.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

original article

By Norman Solomon
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

With great fanfare the other day, Oprah Winfrey asked James Frey a question that mainstream journalists refuse to ask George W. Bush: “Why would you lie?”

Many pundits and news outlets have chortled at the televised unmasking of Frey as a liar. The reverberations have spanned from schlock media to highbrow outlets. On Friday, the PBS “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” devoted an entire segment to what happened. The New York Times supplemented its page-one coverage with an editorial that concluded “Ms. Winfrey gave the audience, including us, what it was hoping for: a demand to hear the truth.”

A key reality of the National Security Agency spying story is: President Bush lied. But routinely missing from media coverage is a demand to hear the truth.

More than two years after he started the NSA’s domestic spying without warrants, Bush was unequivocal. During a speech in Buffalo on April 20, 2004, he said: “Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires – a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.”

Frey lied about his personal life in a book, and that infuriated Oprah Winfrey. “It is difficult for me to talk to you, because I really feel duped,” she said, confronting him in the midst of the January 26 telecast. “I feel duped. But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers.”

Yet the journalists who interview Bush aren’t willing to question him in similar terms.

The president didn’t merely betray millions of readers. He betrayed hundreds of millions of citizens.

Bush lied about basic civil liberties in the United States. Instead of relying on euphemisms, the news media should directly confront him with the question: “Why would you lie?”

During the “Oprah” show, while lecturing a powerful book-publishing executive who had served as an enabler for the author’s mendacity, Winfrey declared: “That needs to change.” But what about the powerful news-media executives who keep enabling the president’s mendacity?

When Frey tried to weasel out of responsibility for concocting a phony story about a root canal without anesthetic, the host interrupted after the words “I’ve struggled with the idea of it –”

“No, the lie of it,” Winfrey said. “That’s a lie. It’s not an idea, James, that’s a lie.”

But high-profile journalists are unwilling to confront President Bush on national television with such clarity: “That’s a lie. It’s not an idea, George, that’s a lie.”

original article

by Greg Sargent
American Prospect

The analysis, which was commissioned by The American Prospect and completed on Jan. 25, was done by Dwight L. Morris and Associates, a for-profit firm specializing in campaign finance that has done research for many media outlets.

In the weeks since Abramoff confessed to defrauding tribes and enticing public officials with bribes, the question of whether Abramoff directed donations just to Republicans, or to the GOP and Democrats, has been central to efforts by both parties to distance themselves from the unfolding scandal. President Bush recently addressed the question on Fox News, saying: “It seems to me that he [Abramoff] was an equal money dispenser, that he was giving money to people in both political parties.”

Although Abramoff hasn’t personally given to any Democrats, Republicans, including officials with the GOP campaign to hold on to the Senate, have seized on the donations of his tribal clients as proof that the saga is a bipartisan scandal. And the controversy recently spread to the media when the ombudsman for The Washington Post, Deborah Howell, ignited a firestorm by wrongly asserting that Abramoff had given to both. She eventually amended her assessment, writing that Abramoff “directed his client Indian tribes to make campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties.”

But the Morris and Associates analysis, which was done exclusively for The Prospect, clearly shows that it’s highly misleading to suggest that the tribes’s giving to Dems was in any way comparable to their giving to the GOP. The analysis shows that when Abramoff took on his tribal clients, the majority of them dramatically ratcheted up donations to Republicans. Meanwhile, donations to Democrats from the same clients either dropped, remained largely static or, in two cases, rose by a far smaller percentage than the ones to Republicans did. This pattern suggests that whatever money went to Democrats, rather than having been steered by Abramoff, may have largely been money the tribes would have given anyway.

The analysis includes a detailed look at seven of Abramoff’s tribal clients, and a comparison of their giving with that of approximately 170 other tribes. (Abramoff is often said to have had nine tribal clients. But Morris omitted two of the tribes – the Pueblo of Santa Clara, whose donations were virtually nonexistent, and the Tigua Indian Reservation, because it isn’t listed in Federal lobbying files as having a lobbyist and Abramoff worked on contingency. At any rate Santa Clara’s post-Abramoff donations to the GOP were overwhelmingly higher than to Dems, so including them would have added even more to the GOP side of the ledger.)

The analysis shows:

in total, the donations of Abramoff’s tribal clients to Democrats dropped by nine percent after they hired him, while their donations to Republicans more than doubled, increasing by 135 percent after they signed him up;

five out of seven of Abramoff’s tribal clients vastly favored Republican candidates over Democratic ones;

four of the seven began giving substantially more to Republicans than Democrats after he took them on;

Abramoff’s clients gave well over twice as much to Republicans than Democrats, while tribes not affiliated with Abramoff gave well over twice as much to Democrats than the GOP — exactly the reverse pattern.
“It’s very hard to see the donations of Abramoff’s clients as a bipartisan greasing of the wheels,” Morris, the firm’s founder and a former investigations editor at the Los Angeles Times, told The Prospect.

Bloomberg News published a similar, more limited analysis last month, which relied on a small amount of data also from Morris’ firm.” But that analysis didn’t look at all of Abramoff’s tribal clients, and didn’t provide a detailed year-by-year analysis of their donations or a detailed comparison to other tribal giving. Since then, some observers, such as blogger Kevin Drum, have argued that a comprehensive look at the donations of all of Abramoff’s tribal clients would help shed light on the scandal.

The Prospect asked Morris to do two things: First, compare the contributions of all of Abramoff’s tribal clients before they’d signed on with Abramoff versus after they’d become his client. And second, compare the contributions of all Abramoff tribal clients with the contributions of all non-Abramoff tribes.

Here are Abramoff’s seven tribal clients, according to Morris’ analysis, complete with their pre-Abramoff and post Abramoff contributions:

1) Tribe: Saginaw Chippewa (Michigan)
Pre-Abramoff contributions to Dems (1991 – 9/2000): $371,250
Pre-Abramoff contributions to GOP (1991 – 9/2000): $285,000
Post-Abramoff contributions to Dems (9/2000 – 2003): $191,960
Post-Abramoff contributions to GOP (9/2000 – 2003): $401,500

2) Tribe: Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana
Pre-Abramoff contributions to Dems (1991 – 9/2000): $61,320
Pre-Abramoff contributions to GOP (1991 – 9/2000): $48,560
Post-Abramoff contributions to Dems (9/2000 – 2003): $64,000
Post-Abramoff contributions to GOP(9/2000 – 2003): $162,590

3) Tribe: Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana
Pre-Abramoff contributions to Dems (1991 – 4/2001): $1,000
Pre-Abramoff contributions to GOP (1991 – 4/2001): $750
Post-Abramoff contributions to Dems (4/2001 – 6/2004): $40,500
Post-Abramoff contributions to GOP (4/2001 – 6/2004): $168,750

4) Tribe: Pueblo of Sandia (New Mexico)
Pre-Abramoff contributions to Dems (1991 – 3/2002): $24,000
Pre-Abramoff contributions to GOP (1991 – 3/2002): $15,000
Post-Abramoff contributions to Dems (3/2002 – 6/2003): $18,500
Post-Abramoff contributions to GOP (3/2002 – 6/2003): $11,500

5) Tribe: Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians (California)
Pre-Abramoff contributions to Dems (1991 – 7/2002): $371,250
Pre-Abramoff contributions to GOP (1991 – 7/2002): $400,200
Post-Abramoff contributions to Dems (7/2002 – 6/2004): $70,000
Post-Abramoff contributions to GOP (7/2002 – 6/2004): $216,708

6) Tribe: Cherokee Nation (Oklahoma)
Pre-Abramoff contributions to Dems (1991 – 1/2003): $35,470
Pre-Abramoff contributions to GOP (1991 – 1/2003): $6,050
Post-Abramoff contributions to Dems (1/2003 – 12/2003): $250
Post-Abramoff contributions to GOP (1/2003 – 12/2003): $0

7) Tribe: Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians
Pre-Abramoff contributions to Dems (1991 – 1995): $4,600
Pre-Abramoff contributions to GOP (1991 – 1995): $31,000
Post-Abramoff contributions to Dems (1995 – 2004): $409,273
Post-Abramoff contributions to GOP (1995 – 2004): $884,927

As the above numbers show, four out of seven tribes — Saginaw, Chitimacha, Coushatta and Mississippi – saw their contributions to Republicans increase significantly, even vastly, after they became Abramoff’s clients.

At the same time, two of those four tribes — Saginaw and Chitimacha — saw their giving to Democrats drop or remain static. The other two — tribes Coushatta and Mississippi — did see their giving to Dems rise under Abramoff, but by amounts that were dwarfed by the increases in giving to the GOP.

These patterns strongly suggest that Abramoff’s representation of the tribes manifested itself largely in a dramatic rise in contributions to the GOP. And it also suggests it’s likely that Abramoff had little impact on giving to Democrats.

Nor does it appear likely that Abramoff steered contributions to Dems from the remaining three tribes who didn’t see their giving to the GOP climb. Of those three tribes, one tribe — Pueblo of Sandia — saw a negligible shift in donations to both parties. The second — Agua Caliente — slashed its contributions to both parties, but even so, the percentage of that tribe’s giving that went to Republicans still rose dramatically. The third — Cherokee Nation — simply stopped giving altogether.

The big picture is also compelling. Taken together, Abramoff’s tribal clients gave $868,890 to Dems before hiring him; afterwards, they gave $794,483 — a decrease of nine percent. By contrast, the tribes’ donations to Republicans went from $786,560 pre-Abramoff to $1,845,975 after he became their lobbyist — an increase of 135 percent. In other words, when Abramoff entered the picture, contributions to Dems dropped, while donations to Republicans more than doubled.

Adding to the case, the Morris firm also did a year-by-year analysis, from 1991 to the present, of the giving of scores of tribes — Abramoff’s clients included. The firm’s look at the year-by-year giving of his clients is eye-opening. It shows even more clearly that in some cases clients’ giving to the GOP jumped dramatically just after Abramoff signed them.

For example, the Saginaw Chippewa became Abramoff’s client in late 2000, and in the election cycle that immediately followed, the tribe’s giving to Republicans more than doubled — from $78,000 to $167,000 — while giving to Dems rose only $12,000.

“The giving of Indian tribes in general has increased dramatically over the last decade,” Morris told The Prospect. “But if you single out Abramoff’s clients year by year, you can see that the giving increases far more to Republicans when Abramoff became their lobbyist.”

Finally, Morris did an extensive comparison of the donations of both Abramoff tribes and non-Abramoff tribes. Morris added up giving from 1991 to the present by virtually all of the approximately 170 tribes that gave politically but are not affiliated with the lobbyist.

The totals show that in the past 15 years, the tribes gave more than $15.5 million to Democrats and just over $6 million to the GOP — well over twice as much to Democrats as to Republicans.

By contrast, if you total up all the contributions Abramoff’s clients made, it comes to $1,845,975 to Republicans and $794,483 to Democrats — well over twice as much to Republicans as to Democrats. So the pattern of giving of Abramoff’s clients, who gave with far more generosity to Republicans, is almost exactly the reverse of that of virtually all other tribes not connected with Abramoff. Those tribes, by contrast, gave far more to Democrats.

“If you’re going to make the case that this is a bipartisan scandal, you have to really stretch the imagination,” says Morris. “Most individual tribes were predominantly Democratic givers through the last decade. Only Abramoff’s clients switched dramatically from largely Democratic to overwhelmingly Republican donors, and that happened only after he got his hands on them.”

Note: The analysis The Prospect commissioned is available here. The first chart refers to the tribes’ pre- and post-Abramoff donations. The second is the total giving of non-Abramoff tribes. The third is a year-by-year breakdown of tribal giving.

Original Article

Frank Caliendo’s (from MADtv) Bush Routine
via C&L

By Deepa Babington
Reuters

NEW YORK – Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, on Monday reported a quarterly profit of $10.7 billion, capping a year of record earnings dominated by surging oil and gas prices.

The results pushed up Exxon’s profit for the year to a staggering $36.13 billion — bigger than the economies of 125 of the 184 countries ranked by the World Bank. Profit rose 42 percent from 2004.

The company and its peers have come under fire for posting record earnings while consumers struggle with high gasoline prices. Exxon was quick to emphasize that the results would help it make long-term investments to meet energy demand.

Exxon’s fourth-quarter net income rose 27 percent, to $10.71 billion, or $1.71 a share, from $8.42 billion, or $1.30 a share, a year earlier.

Excluding a special gain, the company earned $1.65 per share. Analysts, on average, expected $1.45 per share, according to Reuters Estimates.

“It’s an exceptionally strong quarter — they’re the world’s most profitable company,” said Robert Lutts, president of Cabot Money Management. “It could raise eyebrows among some, but they’re doing their job.”

Exxon shares were up 4 percent at $63.75 in early trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

Crude oil prices rose about 40 percent last year, driven up by tensions in oil-producing countries like Iran and Nigeria and tight supplies.

Exxon’s fourth-quarter revenue jumped to $99.66 billion from $83.37 billion a year earlier. Analysts’ average forecast was $101.29 billion.

Still, Exxon’s results showed evidence of some of the problems affecting large oil companies, which are struggling to raise output as they grapple with maturing fields and find it harder to access vast reserves in regions like the Middle East and Russia.

Exxon said oil and gas production fell 1 percent in the quarter. However, excluding the lingering effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which slammed into the U.S. Gulf Coast last year, as well as divestment and entitlement effects, production rose 2 percent.

©2005 Reuters Limited.

original article

The New York Times
Editorial

A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.

The first was that the domestic spying program is carefully aimed only at people who are actively working with Al Qaeda, when actually it has violated the rights of countless innocent Americans. And the second was that the Bush team could have prevented the 9/11 attacks if only they had thought of eavesdropping without a warrant.

Sept. 11 could have been prevented. This is breathtakingly cynical. The nation’s guardians did not miss the 9/11 plot because it takes a few hours to get a warrant to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail messages. They missed the plot because they were not looking. The same officials who now say 9/11 could have been prevented said at the time that no one could possibly have foreseen the attacks. We keep hoping that Mr. Bush will finally lay down the bloody banner of 9/11, but Karl Rove, who emerged from hiding recently to talk about domestic spying, made it clear that will not happen – because the White House thinks it can make Democrats look as though they do not want to defend America. “President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they’re calling and why,” he told Republican officials. “Some important Democrats clearly disagree.”

Mr. Rove knows perfectly well that no Democrat has ever said any such thing – and that nothing prevented American intelligence from listening to a call from Al Qaeda to the United States, or a call from the United States to Al Qaeda, before Sept. 11, 2001, or since. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act simply required the government to obey the Constitution in doing so. And FISA was amended after 9/11 to make the job much easier.

Only bad guys are spied on. Bush officials have said the surveillance is tightly focused only on contacts between people in this country and Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Vice President Dick Cheney claimed it saved thousands of lives by preventing attacks. But reporting in this paper has shown that the National Security Agency swept up vast quantities of e-mail messages and telephone calls and used computer searches to generate thousands of leads. F.B.I. officials said virtually all of these led to dead ends or to innocent Americans. The biggest fish the administration has claimed so far has been a crackpot who wanted to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch – a case that F.B.I. officials said was not connected to the spying operation anyway.

The spying is legal. The secret program violates the law as currently written. It’s that simple. In fact, FISA was enacted in 1978 to avoid just this sort of abuse. It said that the government could not spy on Americans by reading their mail (or now their e-mail) or listening to their telephone conversations without obtaining a warrant from a special court created for this purpose. The court has approved tens of thousands of warrants over the years and rejected a handful.

As amended after 9/11, the law says the government needs probable cause, the constitutional gold standard, to believe the subject of the surveillance works for a foreign power or a terrorist group, or is a lone-wolf terrorist. The attorney general can authorize electronic snooping on his own for 72 hours and seek a warrant later. But that was not good enough for Mr. Bush, who lowered the standard for spying on Americans from “probable cause” to “reasonable belief” and then cast aside the bedrock democratic principle of judicial review.

Just trust us. Mr. Bush made himself the judge of the proper balance between national security and Americans’ rights, between the law and presidential power. He wants Americans to accept, on faith, that he is doing it right. But even if the United States had a government based on the good character of elected officials rather than law, Mr. Bush would not have earned that kind of trust. The domestic spying program is part of a well-established pattern: when Mr. Bush doesn’t like the rules, he just changes them, as he has done for the detention and treatment of prisoners and has threatened to do in other areas, like the confirmation of his judicial nominees. He has consistently shown a lack of regard for privacy, civil liberties and judicial due process in claiming his sweeping powers. The founders of our country created the system of checks and balances to avert just this sort of imperial arrogance.

The rules needed to be changed. In 2002, a Republican senator – Mike DeWine of Ohio – introduced a bill that would have done just that, by lowering the standard for issuing a warrant from probable cause to “reasonable suspicion” for a “non-United States person.” But the Justice Department opposed it, saying the change raised “both significant legal and practical issues” and may have been unconstitutional. Now, the president and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are telling Americans that reasonable suspicion is a perfectly fine standard for spying on Americans as well as non-Americans – and they are the sole judges of what is reasonable.

So why oppose the DeWine bill? Perhaps because Mr. Bush had already secretly lowered the standard of proof – and dispensed with judges and warrants – for Americans and non-Americans alike, and did not want anyone to know.

War changes everything. Mr. Bush says Congress gave him the authority to do anything he wanted when it authorized the invasion of Afghanistan. There is simply nothing in the record to support this ridiculous argument.

The administration also says that the vote was the start of a war against terrorism and that the spying operation is what Mr. Cheney calls a “wartime measure.” That just doesn’t hold up. The Constitution does suggest expanded presidential powers in a time of war. But the men who wrote it had in mind wars with a beginning and an end. The war Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney keep trying to sell to Americans goes on forever and excuses everything.

Other presidents did it. Mr. Gonzales, who had the incredible bad taste to begin his defense of the spying operation by talking of those who plunged to their deaths from the flaming twin towers, claimed historic precedent for a president to authorize warrantless surveillance. He mentioned George Washington, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These precedents have no bearing on the current situation, and Mr. Gonzales’s timeline conveniently ended with F.D.R., rather than including Richard Nixon, whose surveillance of antiwar groups and other political opponents inspired FISA in the first place. Like Mr. Nixon, Mr. Bush is waging an unpopular war, and his administration has abused its powers against antiwar groups and even those that are just anti-Republican.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is about to start hearings on the domestic spying. Congress has failed, tragically, on several occasions in the last five years to rein in Mr. Bush and restore the checks and balances that are the genius of American constitutional democracy. It is critical that it not betray the public once again on this score.

The New York Times