RockThrower

The Constitution as Talking Points

When it comes to the Supreme Court, the Bush administration claims they want judges on the court who will “strictly interpret and apply the constitution.”

But when it comes to their own actions, the President and his minions apparently believe that the Constitution is little more than political talking points from which they can pick and choose to press for political advantage.

The vaunted Republican spin machine was out in force again this week working to make the case that breaking the law and illegally spying on American citizens is a good thing.

Sensing a divide in American opinion over revelations of illegal domestic spying, the Bush team launched an effort to drive a wedge through the electorate and change the debate from a legal one to a political battle. They even gave their illegal spying program a snazzy new name “ The Terrorist Surveillance Program.” Treating the issue as just another political campaign, all the Presidents men were spun out to deliver the message that we need to be scared, and that to oppose the presidents spying program was to be weak on national security.

Karl Rove, delivering the Republican talking points and setting the stage for a weeklong series of political speeches, defined the issue in the starkest of terms. In a speech to the Republican National Committee he said, “We have two parties that have fundamentally different views on national security. Republicans have a post 9-11 world view – and many democrats have a pre 9-11 world view.”

The effort is pure Rove and it is intended to accomplish two things: One is to redefine the issue – to change it from a debate over substantive legal issues to a political controversy that frames the discussion as a false choice between security and liberty. The second is public relations 101 – the administration is admitting to what they have done in advance, disclosing wrongdoing while wrapping their actions in the cloak of 9-11prior to the pending Senate hearings and other investigations.

But Rove also said something in his speech that may come back to haunt him. Seeking to turn the debate over the appointment of Supreme Court judges into a political issue for the upcoming elections Rove said, “This important debate will decide whether we treat the Constitution as the governing charter of our nation - or whether we will treat it as if it is made of hot wax: pliable, inconstant, and easily changed.”

Well I guess we know where he comes down on this. Judging from their recent actions, Rove and others in the Bush administration apparently believe that the President is above the law and that the Constitution does not apply, except when they say so.

But despite the political claims of the Bush Administration, the United States, for the time being anyway, remains a nation of laws, and the 1978 FISA legislation specifically prohibits domestic spying on U.S. Citizens without a warrant based on reasonable cause.

And as for the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment reads:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Even Rove is going to have a tough time spinning his way past that one.

But he is right about Republicans having a post 9-11 worldview and Democrats having a pre 9-11 worldview.

Democrats believe in a pre 9-11 America where civil rights and civil liberties are protected, where political power is limited by the Constitution’s checks and balances, and no one, not even the President, is above the law.

Many Republicans however appear to believe in a post 9-11 vision of America where liberty is sacrificed in the name of security, where domestic spying, torture and secret prisons are standard policy, and the law is only what the President, or Karl Rove, says it is.

Independent Counsel Should Investigate Bush Domestic Spying

The non-partisan Congressional Research Service has issued a legal analysis concluding that the Bush Administration’s limited briefings of Congress regarding the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program are “inconsistent with the law.”

Former Vice President Al Gore has said that President Bush broken the law and has called for the appointment of a independent counsel to investigate.  I strongly encourage you to sign the petition  by   MoveOn.org to  demand the appointment of an independent counsel.

If Abramoff and Norquist were any Closer, They’d be having Sex.

"What the Republican Party Needs is 50 Jack Abramoffs" -- Grover Norquist

A friend of mine once wrote a piece that started off, “nothing like having one’s neck in a noose to focus your attention.”  I figure that must be what it feels like down at Republican headquarters these days where RNC President Ken Mehlman is spinning so fast against the Abramoff scandal avalanche he seems to be getting dizzy.

I don’t know how else to explain the Republican party’s apparent new effort to distance themselves from the corruption scandal washing over the Republican Congress and lapping at the White House doors by positioning the GOP as “the party of reform.”  Unless of course Mehlman too has been sipping at the White House vodka.

As reported in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, Mehlman outlined the Republican strategy in comments last week to Grover Norquist’s ‘K’ street breakfast club.  The article quotes Mehlman as saying in an interview “Your going to hear from this president and see the Congress consider an agenda of real change and real reform in 2006.”

And if that’s not enough to make your head spin, the Republicans are apparently putting Norquist out front and center in the effort to redefine what the Abramoff corruption scandal is really about. The Times article quotes Norquist as saying “the GOP’s ideas could be both “ a shield and a sword.” for inoculating Republicans against corruption charges and pointing out Democrat’s excesses.  Norquist will apparently outline his thinking in an article to be published this week the conservative journal “The American Spectator.”

I know that Republicans believe they can “make up their own reality,” but this is a little over the top, even for a group who apparently believed the Iraqi people would throw roses at the feet of U.S. forces instead of shrapnel. Norquist after all was one of the first players whose name rose out of the muck during the initial investigation into the lobbying activities of Jack Abramoff and his partner in crime Michael Scanlon.

As reported in May by New York Times (restricted access) Abramoff’s tribal clients gave $1.5 million to Norquist’s organization Americans for Tax Reform at the behest of Mr. Abramoff.  The tribes also gave an additional $250,000 to the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, an organization with questionable environmental credentials founded by Norquist and Gale Norton before she became Secretary of Interior.  According to the National Journal , Abramoff used Americans for Tax Reform as a conduit for funneling payments to Ralph Reed's political consulting firm Century Strategies to help defeat an Indian Gambling measure that threatened Abramoff's clients. 

And in November the Washington Post  reported  in that Norquist was part of a little ménage- a-trois with his old pals Abramoff and Ralph Reed in which funds from Abramoff’s gambling clients (in this case E-lottery) were first cleaned up by laundering the funds through Americans for Tax Reform before sending it on to Reed throught another group, but not apparently before Norquist took his cut.

The bottom line is that while the Republican spin machine may be trotting Norquist out to distance the party from Abramoff, the reality is that Abramoff and Norquist are connected at the hip.  If they were any closer they’d be having sex.  The connection between the two reaches back to their college days when Norquist ran Abramoff’s successful campaign to become chairman of College Republicans, and later to Citizens for America, a conservative group where they both worked.

It is that relationship that has metastasized into the cancer of corruption that is today threatening the Republican control of Congress and the Whitehouse.  As the Republicans gained power it was Norquist along with Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff who built the K street project, showering favors on lobbyists in exchange for their fealty and oath of loyalty to the Republican cause.

And so while the Republicans prepare to make their pitch as the “party of reform,” they might want to take a minute and remember that it was Norquist who once told the National Journal, "What the Republicans need is 50 Jack Abramoffs."  It looks to me like they have them.

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Abramoff Pleads Guilty

Is Ney Small Fry?

The Halls of Congress are tension filled as house members and their staff consider their fate as former lobbyist Jack Abramoff gets set to spill his guts.

But for my money, the more interesting question is what are they talking about over vodka rocks at the White House?

It looks like Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio may be in for a beating.  Already, the Republican National Congressional Committee has thrown him overboard, with spokesman Carl Forti telling the New York Times “”seeing that only one person was named, there's got to be a little bit of relief out there."

But my guess is that Ney is just the small fry.  The bigger story may be what Abramoff has to say about his ties to the Bush White House.

The Bush team moved quickly to distance themselves from Abramoff with that fount of credibility Scott McClellan telling reporters "What he is reportedly acknowledging doing is unacceptable and outrageous. If laws were broken, he must be held to account and punished for what he did."

But the Bush White House ties to Abramoff have long roots and little Scotty saying it isn’t so doesn’t make it true.

Back in May of last year, the Associated Press, in an article published in USA Today 
and elsewhere, reported that Abramoff had “close contact” with the Bush team, meeting nearly 200 times with contacts within the new administration, including policy advisors to Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles.  And an article in the Texas observer reports that Abramoff worked on the Bush-Cheney 2000 Transition effort as an advisor to the Department of the Interior.

Campaign finance records also show that Abramoff and his wife also each gave $5,000 to the Bush 2000 recount fund, and made the maximum contribution of $1,000 to the Bush 2000 campaign.  Abramoff was also a “Bush pioneer” raising more than $100,000 in contributions in both the 2000 and 2004 Bush-Cheney campaigns.

According to the  Texas Observer Article , Abramoff was able to capitalize on his connections, arranging a White House lunch meeting with President Bush in May 2001 for two of his Indian Tribe clients, the same clients he and his partner Michael Scanlon would go on rip off to the tune of $82 million.

While the Abramoff investigation may focus for now on corruption within Congress, given the connections between Abramoff and the Bush White House, one would think that journalists would begin to ask some hard questions about the relationship between Abramoff and members of the Bush administration.

One place to start would be the Department of Interior.  Records obtained by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee (pages 7&8) show that Funds from the Coushatta Indian Tribe given to the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA) at the suggestion of lobbyist Jack Abramoff paid for a public opinion survey provided to U.S. Secretary of Interior Gale Norton and others at the Department

Additional documents obtained from the Justice Department by the National Resources Defense Council as part of their effort to gain information about the energy policy taskforce conducted by Vice president Cheney show that CREA provided the Interior Department with the public opinion research (dated 5/16/01) suggesting how to talk about energy issues and emphasizing using rising gas prices to promote increased drilling and open the Alaskan National Wilderness Area (ANWR) to oil exploration.

Secretary Norton and others at the Department of Interior have denied any wrongdoing.  But journalists might want to take a close look at whether or not the Department of Interior made any favorable rulings on behalf of Jack Abramoff’s clients while accepting outside funding for a public opinion survey provided to the Department that somehow made its way into the office of the Vice President.   

Abramoff to Federici to Norton?

Indian Tribe Funds from Abramoff/Scanlon Lobbying Operation Paid for Public Opinion Survey on Behalf of Interior Secretary Gayle Norton.  Abramoff Calls Federici "Our Access to Norton"

Funds from the Coushatta Indian Tribe paid to the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA) at the suggestion of lobbyist Jack Abramoff appear to have paid for a public opinion survey provided to U.S. Secretary of Interior Gale Norton and others at the Department, according to documents released today by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. The documents are part of an ongoing investigation of the dealings of Abramoff and Michael Scanlon with the Coushatta and other Indian Tribes.  Abramoff, Scanlon and others are under investigation for fraud, tax evasion and other charges related to their billing the Indian Tribes more than $80 million in lobbying fees.

An email exchange between Abramoff colleague Kathryn Van Hoof and  Eric LaRoque of the Coushatta Tribe obtained by the Senate Indian Affairs committee documents a payment of $50,000 to “pay ½ the cost of a poll conducted by the Council for Republican Environmental Advocacy, which is being conducted on behalf of Gayle Norton, Secretary of Interior.” Additional emails document the provision of the check to Jack Abramoff, who passed it on to CREA President Italia Federici.

According to documents obtained from the Justice Department by the National Resources Defense Council, CREA provided the Interior Department with public opinion research (dated 5/16/01) from focus groups in several cities suggesting how to talk about energy issues and emphasizing using rising gas prices to promote increased drilling. The research concludes, "language that . . . emphasizes price increases in gasoline and natural gas and the California situation resonates with voters and makes the case that "Gasoline price stability is the single most potent argument for opening up ANWR." ANWR is the Alaskan National Wilderness Refuge, and opening it to oil drilling has been a priority for the Bush Administration.

The survey was apparently the featured topic of discussion at fund raising dinner hosted by Republican rainmaker Julie Finley on September 24, 2001 and attended by Secretary Norton and other top level officials at Interior, as well as by industry interests and representatives of the Coushetta and other Indian Tribes.  The emails indicate that the tribes paid $50,000 each to participate in dinners set up by CREA.

In todays Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing, Federici denied any wrongdoing.  But the documents released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committe indicate that she intervened on multiple occasions with top level contacts at the Department of Interior at the request of Abramoff on behalf of the interests of his Indian gaming clients.  CREA reportedly received at least $250,000 from Indian gaming interests at Abramoff's behest.  “I am letting EVERYONE know that you are the only reason we have the funding to do this,” said Federici in an email to Abramoff.  The documents also indicate that Abramoff considered Federici as essential to his operation, writing in one email to a colleague “did we not request money for CREA from them? (Indian Tribe), that’s our access to Norton.  We need $ for them more than many of these others.”

Is Karl Rove the New Kevin Bacon?

Six Degrees of Karl Rove -- Can you connect Italia Federici?

No one is going to mistake Karl Rove for a movie star, but lately I have been wondering if maybe Rove hasn’t become the new Kevin Bacon.  Bacon is the icon of popular culture that, so popular theory goes, is no more than six persons removed from anyone else.  In other words, everyone knows someone who knows Bacon.  That’s not quite the case with Rove.  It’s just that lately wherever there is a political scandal, it seems that there is a connection between the people involved and Karl Rove.

Take for instance the little escapade wafting out of Jack Abramoff’s lobby shop and threatening to engulf the Republican Congress. On Thursday, the mystery woman of the Senate Indian Affairs investigation, Italia Federici is scheduled to testify before the Senate Committee regarding her involvement in the Jack Abramoff/Michael Scanlon Indian Tribe rip-off.  Federici it seems cut her political teeth working for Interior Secretary Gale Norton’s U.S. 1996 Senate Campaign.  Take one guess who Norton’s campaign consultant was.  Well, it wasn’t Kevin Bacon

I know, I know, it’s just a coincidence.  As Scott McClellan said about the outing of Joseph Wilson, “Karl Rove was not involved.”  But Rove did work with Federici in the Norton campaign and it was Rove’s pal and confidant Grover Norquist who helped Federici and the future Interior secretary Gale Norton form something called the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA), which is going to be the main exhibit in Thursday’s Senate Indian Affairs debacle.

Maybe someone should make up one of those games people are always playing about Kevin Bacon, except if could feature Karl Rove.  It could have a schematic or some kind of visual showing Rove’s connections to all the participants in the Republican scandals threatening to swamp Washington.  We could call it “Six Degrees of Karl Rove.” The way you would play is to link any character in a political scandal to Rove.  For example let’s use Jack Abramoff.  Karl Rove hired Jack Abramoff’s personal assistant, Susan Ralston, to be his executive secretary.  Therefore, Jack Abramoff has a Rove score of 2. (Actually, I think Rove and Abramoff have a direct relationship, so Abramoff has a score of 1, but you get the idea).  This could be a big hit on the Beltway cocktail circuit.

Thursday’s hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee would be a great place to play.  Not only does Rove know Federici, but he is easy to connect with Ralph Reed, Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon, Stephen Griles and others involved in this sordid mess.  For more advanced players we could try names like Julie Finley and see if players can connect her to Italia Federici and Rove. (read more to get the answer)

On the other hand, Thursday’s hearing might not be the best place to play.  Things might get a little heated and it might be hard to keep your attention on the game.

It should be interesting to hear what Federici has to say.  First off, there is the little matter of explaining what exactly the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA) is and does.  It bills itself as an environmental organization, but it puts out press releases saying things like drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wilderness Area Refuge would be good for the environment.  It also says on its website that it is a non-profit organization and it collects donations, but Bill Brunson, a spokesperson for the IRS, told the Arizona Republic that the IRS has no record that CREA has been granted tax free status as a non-profit corporation. 

One thing is clear though.  Now that it has been alleged that at Jack Abramoff’s instructions the Cushetta Indian tribe paid CREA $250,000 in exchange for assistance in setting up a meeting with Interior Secretary Gale Norton, no one could blame Republicans for doing their best to distance themselves from the organization.  But that may not be so easy. According to a March 2005 article in Roll Call, Norton, who together with Federici and Grover Norquist established CREA, attended a dinner for CREA at the house of Republican rainmaker Julie Finley* in the fall of 2001. The event was attended by 60-70 people including representatives from Indian tribes, such as the Coushatta’s. This was after Norton headlined a gala event launching CREA in Washington D.C.  According to a January 2001 article published in the Washington Post, the guest of honor at the event was Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and the keynote address was delivered by House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The sponsors for the gala included none other than the political consulting firm of Karl Rove. *(Game players, Finley’s bio lists her as having served as co-chair of the Republican National Committee's major fundraising arm, Team 100. She is also the national committee woman for the D.C. Republican Committee, a founding member of the Council for Republicans, chairman and founder of the Republican Primary PAC, and a founding member of the WISH List and, lo and behold, the Council for Republican Environmental Advocacy (CREA). See, it’s easy to play.)

As much as the Republican establishment might wish it wasn’t so, Federici and CREA (not to mention others in the Abramoff/Scanlon scandal) are enmeshed in the Washington establishment and connected to the Bush administration. According to documents obtained from the Justice Department by the National Resources Defense Council, CREA provided the Interior Department with public opinion research (dated 5/16/01) from focus groups in several cities suggesting how to talk about energy issues and emphasizing using rising gas prices to promote increased drilling. The research concludes, "language that . . . emphasizes price increases in gasoline and natural gas and the California situation resonates with voters and makes the case that "Gasoline price stability is the single most potent argument for opening up ANWR." I wonder if those discussions are what Gale Norton was referring to?

As for the game “Six Degrees of Karl Rove,” I’m beginning to wonder if it’s such a good idea.  Given the widespread connections of the Republican establishment in Washington D.C. to the burgeoning Abramoff/Scanlon scandal, I’m going to need a scorecard to keep track.

Judith Miller and Karl Rove

Republicans should look on the bright side.  If Karl Rove gets indicted, maybe President Bush can hire Judith Miller.  It looks like she might be available.

Cindy Sheehan

Cab Ride from Hell

I wasn’t going to write about the Cindy Sheehan thing – I figured the drivel of ninety million blogger’s was enough – but then there was the cab ride from hell.

It wasn’t a long ride, just a jaunt from our hotel in Vegas to the airport. All I wanted to do was close my eyes and finish the last of the little bottle of scotch my wife had pilfered from the hotel mini-bar.  I was hoping it might soothe the raging hangover I had, the result of a three-day roll thru Nevada’s sin city.  I had taken the new Vegas tagline “ what goes on here stays here” to heart and done my best to leave a couple of thousand brain cells, not to mention virtually all of my cash behind in a binge that would have made Hunter S. Thompson proud.  Having finished the scotch, I was desperately scrounging through my wife’s purse looking for a Valium and wondering if the cab driver would mind if I lit up the last of a joint I had been smoking earlier that morning.

And then it started. There was that voice, the nasally sneer of that rat bastard drug fiend Rush Limbaugh wafting over the front seat, opening the phone lines from hell and inviting his listeners to join him in a conversation about that disloyal bitch/whore of an American, Cindy Sheehan.  The floodgates were open and the little Bush shrubs were spouting their Republican Party talking points, proudly bashing the mother of a American soldier who had died in Iraq.  All the calls were the same, hate filled tirades along the lines of “I think that she is a radical, liberal, flag burning commie whore, a traitor to America, insulting to the president and a dishonor to the memory of her son and the other soldiers, what do you think about that Rush?  And then that drug-addled bastard would wind up and hit that fat pitch out of the park.  By the time he was done I think Cindy Sheehan had been blamed for the War in Iraq, the failure to catch Osama, the national debt and the fact that Americans have no health insurance.  It may have been the drugs, but I got the distinct impression she had slept with Bill Clinton, was performing oral sex on all of the male visitors to her outpost outside of the presidents ranch in Crawford, Texas, and was the mother of John McCain’s colored love child in South Carolina.

Now I probably could have put up with that crap, I still had my head in the bottom of my wife’s big carry-on bag looking for any liquor or dope I could find, although I was keeping one eye on my wife’s throat, watching her jugular vein swell and throb like some kind of pulsing monster as she entertained thoughts of what it would be like to castrate Limbaugh and a few of his friends.  But then the cab driver turned his head and leaned back toward us and said “finally, someone who agrees with me.” My first thought was to make sure my wife didn’t have anything sharp and metal in her hands. Even in Vegas you can still go to jail for stabbing cab drivers.  The second was to begin looking for a car to steal to get to the airport, because the cabbie wasn’t going to be able to drive after my wife got done scratching his eyes out.

After several heated salvo’s from my wife, replied to by the cabbie with the stock Bush talking points, (where do they get this stuff – are they printed on the backs of cereal boxes or something?) I had just about convinced my wife to save her breath, she was talking to a brick. And besides I pointed out, the cab had air conditioning, it was about 120 degrees out, and the only building in the deserted area on the outskirts of Vegas we were passing through was a lesbian strip club that didn’t look like it had a liquor license.  But the Bush ranger up front couldn’t let it go.  He started up again, basically calling Cindy Sheehan an unpatriotic lying whore. At which point my wife began to tear him a new asshole, making her own views very well understood - that the president had lied about the reasons for the war, that American lives were being needlessly wasted by the president’s botched planning for the war, that the war had made us less safe from terrorism, and that if he would watch something besides Fox news he might not be such a moron.  Mercifully, the cab limped in to the airport a few minutes later and the chastened cab driver let us out.  I felt kind of bad for him, I don’t think he had ever had a woman talk to him that way. He gave my wife a wide birth as she yanked her bag out of the back of the cab and stormed off.  I gave him a couple of extra bucks and told him to buy a real newspaper, and headed for the airport bar.

I was a little irritated with the cab driver, but I wasn’t really mad at him.  He’s just another poor guy at the bottom of the food chain that has been convinced by the likes of Karl Rove that it’s a good idea to vote for the guy doing favors for the rich guys at the top.  They wrap that crap in the red, white and blue and people buy it. I don’t know, maybe he figures that if Bush gives more tax breaks to his wealthy friends, or steers more mercenary contracts for work in Iraq to Cheney’s buddies, they will tip him better when they are in town if there is any money left after they pay the hookers. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but hey, it’s a free country.

No, what I was really pissed off about was that our endlessly vacationing president and his Chicken hawk Vice President Dick Cheney had clearly set their minions loose in an orchestrated effort to “swiftboat” the mother of a dead U.S. soldier.  Now that is what I call honoring the troops.  Apparently deciding they couldn’t publicly defend their positions on the Iraq war, these brave guys who somehow managed to evade service in Vietnam, but have no compunction about shipping the sons of the poor off to die in some foreign desert, did what they do best.  They went on the attack.  Since daring to ask the President to define the noble cause her son died for in Iraq, we have been provided with the details of Sheehan’s divorce, learned about the tax liens filed on her property, and every contradictory statement she has ever made has been reported.  Sheehan has been called a whore, slut, dike, bitch, cunt and countless other derogatory terms by the bloggers of the Bush attack machine.  She has been labeled a traitor and a communist, and is said to have  “aligned herself with terrorists.  Some conservative blog sites blame her for her son’s death, intimating that he joined the military and went to Iraq to get away from her.  Other’s want her kicked out of the Country, others think she should just “blow herself up."   

These are the people that her son apparently died defending? What a great country.  Me, I need a drink.

So Much for Moderation

My bet says Bush will throw the troops some red meat -- pick a conservative.

The ink hadn’t dried on Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s resignation letter to President Bush before Christian conservatives began demanding the President replace Justice O’Connor with a conservative that will do their bidding. Here are some excerpts of what they are saying.

Operation Rescue calls upon President George W. Bush to live up to his pro-life commitment to voters in the last election by appointing a justice to the nation's highest court who will uphold the Right to Life for all pre-born Americans. Now it is time to fulfill your obligation to God and to those who elected you, and appoint a staunchly pro-life judge to the Supreme Court. -- Troy Newman, President, Operation Rescue

Justice O'Connor's resignation is the most critical of any of the justices because her replacement will turn the direction of this court. We are already praying and working for a nominee that will not waffle as she did. -- Reverend Robert Schenck, President, National Clergy Council."

"I am confident that President Bush will name a replacement for Justice O'Connor who has the same judicial philosophy as Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, as he indicated he would in his reelection campaign. -- Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council

The President has the historic opportunity to keep faith with the promise he has repeated numerous times, which is to name justices who are like Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. -- Jan LaRue, Chief Counsel, Concerned Women of America.

President Bush must nominate someone whose judicial philosophy is crystal clear. And no one has been clearer about this than the President himself, who said during his campaign that he would appoint justices in the mold of Clarence Thomas or Antonin Scalia. We have full confidence that he will carry out that pledge. -- James C. Dobson, Ph.D. Focus on the Family.

Strange, no one mentioned Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. Who knows though, maybe Bush will surprise me and pick a moderate. Under that theory, Bush picks Gonzalez and uses the nomination to triangulate the Christian Right, showing his independence from his base and gaining a little breathing room from moderates who are increasingly concerned that Christian conservatives may have too much influence. He can smooth the way by promising the Conservative Christian cabal to appoint a true believer when Rehnquist retires – after the mid-term elections. It would be a tough sell- but he has Pat Robertson’s point man, Jay Sekulow to help him.

If I had to bet though I’d say that Bush will throw a little red meat to the base and appoint someone to the right of Attila-the-Hun. Bush will use the pick to fire up the faithful heading into the mid-term elections and then when Democrats object – cast them as obstructionist who are keeping him and the Republican Congress from getting anything done.

It’s clear that the Bush team has already been thinking about how they can use the Supreme Court pick to advance their electoral strategy. C. Boyden Gray, a top advisor to the President’s judicial nomination process and chair of the Committee for Justice said today "We will be watching Senate Democrats and intend to link moderate and red states senators to their liberal Senate colleagues and outside groups. If Sens. Kennedy, Schumer, Durbin, Leahy, and Boxer attack, it will be Ben Nelson (Neb), Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln (Ark), Robert Byrd (WVa), Bill Nelson (Fla), Tom Carper (Del), Debbie Stabenow (Mich), Jeff Bingaman (NMex), Evan Bayh (Ind), Byron Dorgan (ND), Mary Landrieu (La), and Tim Johnson (SD) who will be held accountable."

So much for the fair review and vote on the Supreme Court nominee based on the merits of the candidate that the President said he wanted in his comments today.

Anyway, after the Republicans and their Conservative Christian friends wage war on Democrats in the Red States during the mid-term elections, Bush can appoint his buddy Gonzalez as Chief Justice, making his mark on history by appointing the Supreme Courts first Latino, and drawing Latino voters into the Republican tent as America heads into the next presidential election.

That’s my bet anyway.

Strange Bedfellows

Can the fight against poverty bring Evangelicals and Democrats together?

I am a secular, heathen, Pagan Democrat with no family values. Or at least that is how I imagine Pat Robertson and his followers would describe me. While I am not a fan of abortion (who is?), I am fervently pro choice and believe strongly that the government should stay out of my bedroom, at least until I get my underwear picked up. Personally, I believe that efforts to break down the wall separating church and state are more of a threat to the United States than foreign terrorism. I don’t exactly fit the profile of a “born again” Christian.

But now that my bonafides have been established, I must admit to having an odd moment last week, an epiphany if you will. No, I didn’t see God or have any visions, (although I did have a really hot dream involving two blondes, a slip and slide and a tub of orange Jell-O the other night). The moment was actually a little stranger than that – for the first time ever, I agreed with something written by David Brooks, the conservative columnist at the New York Times.

In his column last week, Brooks argues evangelical Christians and liberals have “a natural alliance” in the war against poverty. He writes that “they are the only two groups really hyped up about these problems,” and outlines examples of where religious conservatives and social liberals are coming together to battle poverty here and abroad. While I never thought these words would leave my lips, Brooks is absolutely right. Moreover, while he may be a bit chagrined to hear this, he may have shown Democrats how to make gains with Evangelical voters in the red state south, an effort many believe is essential for Democrats to win the presidency and regain power in Congress.

Politics is the art of putting strange bedfellows together, and I don’t mean that couple in a bar in West Hollywood. As leader of the Senate, Lyndon Johnson made his career by helping those Senators with apparently nothing in common, to find their one shared interest, no matter how small, and get them to work together to pass legislation no one else gave a prayer. Liberal Democrats and religious conservatives probably aren’t going to agree on gay marriage. Personally, I think we should force gays to marry, buy houses in the suburbs, slap them with high property taxes and make them adopt some of those popsicles in a Petri dish that President Bush insists are children. Jerry Falwell probably isn’t going to agree with that. But both evangelicals and liberals are increasingly concerned about what is happening to the poor in this country and across the globe. Maybe we could agree to disagree about some of the wedge issues that Karl Rove and some of the Demagogues on both the right and left say are so important, and actually work together to do something about poverty.

There is certainly nothing moral, or for that matter particularly Christian about the economic policies of the Bush Administration. Under President Bush, real wages have fallen, the lives of the working poor have been made more difficult, and today more Americans live in poverty. That’s not exactly a path to sainthood. The tens of thousands of men and women who have lost good manufacturing jobs in Ohio and elsewhere, and the millions of other American barely eking out a living, have absolutely no business supporting the economic policies of the Bush administration. Democrats should not continue to let Republicans use the franchise of moral values to convince those voters to support policies that are not in their interest.

One way for Democrats to do that is to forge a new coalition uniting liberals and religious conservatives in the battle against poverty. Catholics and Evangelicals have a long-standing commitment to helping the poor and unfortunate and there is some evidence that they intend to use their political clout to do so. A recent report by the National Association of Evangelicals, an organization with more than 30 million members, calls on conservative Christians to move beyond their usual issues, such as abortion and homosexual rights, and involve themselves in such matters as poverty, justice and human rights. And Democrats, building on the ideas established by Franklin Roosevelt, have long stood for efforts to reduce poverty and to help the workingman. Theirs is an emerging common interest. Maybe they can find a way to put aside the battles over the “culture of life” and come together to do battle to improve the lives of Americans.

One Democrat thought to be a contender for his party's presidential nomination is already making the fight against poverty a campaign theme. In a early start to the 2008 presidential election, speaking in New Hampshire earlier this year, former Senator and presidential candidate John Edwards called poverty “one of the great moral issues of our time" and pledged to fight it saying, "If we can put a man on the moon, conquer polio, and put libraries of information on a chip, then we can end poverty for those who want to work for a better life.” As the newly hired director of the recently established Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina, Edwards is positioned to lead a national conversation about poverty and what to do about it.

My guess is that other Democrats will soon follow. They should write a thank you note to David Brooks.