None dare call it stolen - Ohio, the election, and America's servile press

While commentators, prompted by Republicans, claimed Bush won the 2004 election through the votes of a silent majority concerned with “family values,” Mark Crispin Miller writes that when voters were asked to state, “in their own words the most important factor in their vote,”only 14 percent named “moral values.”  He details how the press (except for Keith Olbermann on MSNBC) ignored “the strange details of the election—except, that is, to ridicule all efforts to discuss them…It was as if they were reporting from inside a forest fire without acknowledging the fire, except to keep insisting that there was no fire.” 

Then he lists the copious evidence pointing to a stolen election, easily available on the web or in paperback, from Michigan Representative John Conyers’ report, Preserving Democracy:  What Went Wrong in Ohio.  More than dirty tricks, it covers “the run-up to the election, the election itself, and the post-election cover-up,” listing “specific violations of the U.S. and Ohio constitutions, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Help America Vote Act.”

How the United States Marked the 3rd Anniversary of the Downing Street Memo

Hundreds of people were turned away today as capacity crowds packed public forums in U.S. cities to discuss the Downing Street Memo and related evidence that President Bush lied about the reasons for war.  Halls were filled to capacity and beyond in LA, Oakland, Seattle, Detroit, Northampton, New York, and elsewhere, for events led by Congress Members, including Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Jim McDermott, John Conyers, and Maurice Hinchey.

For the second time in the two months since we launched the www.AfterDowningStreet.org campaign, I've been overwhelmed by what we've tapped into.  The first time was when we put up a website about the Downing Street minutes and a demand for an investigation into grounds for impeachment.  I'd never seen a coalition grow so quickly or a website receive so much traffic.  Today we saw crowds of people in red and blue states chant "Impeach Bush!" at events with leaders not yet ready to use the I word.  The much maligned American Public is way out ahead of us – I'm telling you.

Business as usual with Judge Roberts; straight corporate, with Pepto-Bismol chaser

Unless they discover John Roberts dropped acid at Harvard or had been funneling insider stock tips to his wife, it looks as though he's a shoo-in for confirmation as a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. In his last job in the private sector, as a partner at Hogan & Hartson, an elite Washington, D.C. law firm, his gross income in 2003 was $1,044,399.54, so his gamble in accepting a seat on the federal appeals court on the D.C. circuit has certainly paid off. Already he's being talked up as maybe the next chief justice, replacing William Rehnquist, the justice he formerly clerked for.

Both the liberals and the Christian Right had amassed colossal war chests of around $20 million, expecting a convulsive confirmation hearing stretching far into the fall. They'll be hard put to spend the money, since Roberts's footprints have been purposively indistinct almost since he left the cradle.

That smile on the face of the Tiger: Do animals have expressions?

A snooty conservative professor called Roger Scruton, an Englishman, wrote in the Times Literary Supplement earlier this year that "human beings are alone among the animals in revealing their individuality in their faces. The mouth that speaks, the eyes that glaze, the skin that flushes, all are signs of freedom, character and judgment, and all give concrete expression to the uniqueness of the self within."

What nonsense! In comparison with 90 percent of the people I see, I detect vastly more individual expressiveness on the faces of my dog (Jasper), horse (Agnes) and cat (Frank). When it comes to the physiognomic resources of the leader of the Free World, I'd claim superiority for my cockatiel (Percy).

With Reagan, a man whose face -- to judge from public appearances, was entirely immobile 99 percent of the time, I'd put up even my Gouldian finches as have a more sophisticated range of facial resources. With their cocking of the head my Gloucester finches are on a par with the late Great Communicator.

General Westmoreland’s death wish and the war in Iraq

After he died on July 18, front pages focused on the failures of William Westmoreland as commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Overall, the coverage faulted him for being a big loser, not a mass killer.

The Washington Post noted that Westmoreland “was called a war criminal.” But the deaths of thousands of Vietnamese people each week during his four years as the top American general in Vietnam counted for little in the media calculus. The main problem, readers were encouraged to understand, was that Westmoreland pursued a losing strategy. “Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. called Westmoreland possibly ‘our most disastrous general since Custer,’” the Post reported.

From early 1964 until 1968, Westmoreland was in charge of a U.S. military machine that methodically slaughtered Vietnamese people. As the Post’s front page antiseptically recalled, “Westmoreland’s military strategy was to conduct a war of attrition, trying to kill enemy forces faster than they could be replaced.”

Augmenting his strictly military functions, Westmoreland did his best to spin the media. Along the way, he was eager to condemn Americans

Debating William Westmoreland

My first view of General William Westmoreland was from coach class. He was in first, sitting ramrod straight, impossible to miss.

We were headed to the University of Florida at Gainesville to debate the Bomb. Why the man who commanded the armies of the Crusade in Southeast Asia from 1964 to 1968 needed in 1984 to debate a lefty activist like me was a mystery. Maybe he needed the money. Maybe he needed the challenge.

He looked like he'd live forever. Certainly into his nineties, which he did, passing away this week at 91. He was tall, poised, flinty-eyed, with zero apparent body fat. Unbent, unbowed, you'd've thought him a conquering hero.

The debate was about the Nuclear Freeze, a great campaign. Why it failed to bury all nuclear weapons remains a great mystery of human nature. Today's world would be infinitely richer and safer if only it had been wiser back then.

That night in Gainesville I lived out a peacenik dream: I got to ask the man who commanded 550,000 troops in Vietnam why we should heed his opinion about needing nuclear weapons when he had so catastrophically led America to its first military defeat.

Oppose the Nomination of Roberts!

Tell your Senators to oppose Roberts and any Supreme Court nominee who would overturn Roe v. Wade and limit the rights, freedoms and legal safeguards we have fought for and won.

TAKE ACTION!

As O'Connor's replacement, Roberts would cast the deciding vote on countless matters of individual rights where O'Connor had been a key vote, often in a 5-to-4 split-issues like abortion and birth control, affirmative action, privacy rights, disability rights, Title IX equal educational opportunity, family and medical leave, health care, environmental protection and dozens of other crucial issues for decades to come. For young women, Roberts' votes could determine their access to birth control and abortion for their entire reproductive lifetimes.

Action Needed:

1. Contact your Senators immediately and demand their opposition to Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts, a staunch opponent of women's rights and civil rights.

The Record of Judge John Roberts

President Bush has nominated Judge John Roberts to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1979, Mr. Roberts was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. He went on to serve in the Reagan administration as an assistant to Attorney General Smith and as an associate White House legal counsel. He also served as deputy solicitor general in the administration of Mr. Bush’s father. He was in private practice until 2003 when he was confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Many people hoped that Mr. Bush would appoint a moderate Republican in the mold of Justice O’Connor. Unfortunately, Judge Roberts is a solid conservative. While his legal record will be reviewed intently over the course of the next few months, his role in the following cases will likely take center stage.

GAP visits OSU

The Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) paid a visit to OSU May 17-18. Headed by Mark Harrington, director of the Center for Bioethical Reform Midwest and Reform America both headquartered in Columbus, GAP is a traveling photo/mural exhibit that, according to GAP, "compares contemporary abortion to historically recognized forms of genocide" such as the Holocaust, Jim Crow lynchings, and the slaughter of Cambodians by the Pol Pot regime. The displays marked "The Changing Face of Choice" and "The Insanity of Choice" included graphic photos of Holocaust and lynch victims labeled "ungentle" and "unwhite" next to bay-bee bits abortion pictures labeled "unborn."

STAR WARS: The Sequel and the Reality

Scholars have long commented on the U.S. government's need for an "endless frontier" - a substitute for the mythologized Wild West. A place Americans can explore, conquer, and dominate, and where riches and profits can be plundered. With the official closing of the continental western frontier in 1890 and the ongoing exploitation of Alaska's resources, space truly represents the "final frontier."

The current Bush administration's plan to weaponize space and seize the new high-tech military "high ground" poses perhaps the greatest threat to humankind in the 21st century. The U.S.'s stated policy, revealed in the U.S. Space Command document "Joint Vision for 2020," calls for "full spectrum dominance" of Earth, both militarily and economically, through control of the moon corridor.

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