By now it’s old news, but we’ve been meaning to put this up for days. Salon’s coverage of the “must sign loyalty pledge to see George” story is pretty spot-on. I mean, What. The. Fuck? Are they just allergic to, you know, the democratic process? Are they afraid he’ll self-destruct if he gets asked hard questions? And can’t they get a fer-crying-out-loud copyeditor? Sheesh.

“U.S. Uses Secret Evidence In Secrecy Fight With ACLU.” Excerpt:

The Justice Department is using secret evidence in its ongoing legal battles over secrecy with the American Civil Liberties Union, submitting material to two federal judges that cannot be seen by the public or even the plaintiffs, according to documents released yesterday. In one of the cases, the government also censored more than a dozen seemingly innocuous passages from court filings on national security grounds, only to be overruled by the judge, according to ACLU documents. Among the phrases originally redacted by the government was a quotation from a 1972 Supreme Court ruling: “The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect ‘domestic security.’ Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent.”

Read that last graf again, just for emphasis. Secrecy is not democratic. This is why sunshine laws exist. Our government — or at least this Justice Department — appears to hate the idea that it is ultimately accountable to you and me.

As much as the White House has tried to spin it otherwise, there’s a large difference between pro-Kerry/anti-Bush ads financed by organizations like MoveOn and the anti-Kerry ads produced by the Swifties. Atrios has more, but the gist is this:

• SBVfT is an organization that exists only to slam Kerry with demonstrably untrue allegations from people who did not in fact serve with him in Vietnam, whereas
• MoveOn has existed for a while now, and has yet to run any ad that’s simply and objectively false.

On a related note, this Boston Glob editorial wonders how it might have played out had Clinton attacked Bob Dole’s record in 1996.

Much has been made lately of the soon-to-expire Asault Weapons Ban. Antigun people love this law, and want it extended/renewed; for the most part, people who’ve actually read the law laugh out loud at how ridiculous it it. The big, ugly secret is that “assault weapon” is a meaningless term that has nothing to do with the actual functions of a given rifle; the weapons banned by the AWB are weapons that fail cosmetic, not functional, tests. (Remember that fully-automatic weapons are already illegal, and that semiauto guns must not be easily convertable to full-auto, so the AWB has nothing to do with rate of fire.)

It’s just plain a bad law. People who oppose gun regulation already hate it, but people who support gun control laws ought to hate it, too. For illustration, see if you can tell the illegal ones from the legal ones.

It’s no secret what we Heathen think of the bizarre, Kafka-esque “no-fly list” created in the wake of 9/11; it’s a system and notion positively brimming with opportunities for abuse, and one that seems utterly allergic to transparency.

Now the troubles have extended to Senators, so perhaps something will be done.

Clerical error puts Kennedy on “no fly” list CAPITOL HILL The Senate Judiciary Committee has heard this morning from one of its own about some of the problems with airline “no fly” watch lists. Massachusetts Democrat Ted Kennedy says he had a close encounter with the lists when trying to take the U-S Airways shuttle out of Washington to Boston. The ticket agent wouldnt let him on the plane. His name was on the list — in error. After a flurry of phone calls, Kennedy was able to fly home, but then the same thing happened coming back to Washington. Kennedy says it took three calls to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to get his name stricken from the list. The process took several weeks, in all. And Kennedy asks — what about the little guy? AP

Note: we don’t want to hear it if your comment includes any reference to Florida date-rape trials or auto accidents. Let it go, or post about it with the Freepers. <?p>

Kos points out that while both candidates were in Portland last week, their events were rather different in character.

Alan Keyes wants to end the direct election of Senators on the grounds that it somehow erodes the sovereign role of the states. Presumably, this means he thinks “states” are made up of something other than “voters.”

The California Supremes have summarily declared all of San Francisco’s same-sex marriages null and void.

The British equivalent of the RIAA is having a fit, largely because copyright law is working as intended — meaning Elvis’ “That’s All Right” is about to pass into the public domain (in January, 2005) after a reasonable period of exclusive copyright (fifty years). They’d like very much for this not to happen, just as Disney has managed to keep Mickey locked up with well-timed copyright extensions for years. Read this for more about why this is bad.

Or something. As you must be aware by now, over the weekend it looks like they burned another covert operative by being either careless or incompetant (it doesn’t look like there’s a revenge angle on this one). Bill Clinton made a great point (on Letterman last week) about the difficulties of gathering human intelligence in the Arab world when you’ve spend the previous 50 years trying to perfect the art of blending in behind the Iron Curtain, but surely we can do better than this.

On the other hand, perhaps this could be the problem.

Had Sen. Shelby had his way during the Clinton years, he’d now be looking at a felony charge and jail time.

Fafblog on recent Iraqi events, including the bizarre tail of an Oregon National Guard unit who found some Iraqi prisoners being “freedom tickled” by their newly-sovereign captors, intervened, and were told by their commander to “return the prisoners to their abusers and immediately withdraw.”

This, children, is how we spread freedom and democracy.

Or, they didn’t until recently. GOP backer, Washington Times owner, and cult leader Sun Yung Moon has sold his ex-soviet submarines to Kim Jong-Il. Freaking out yet?

I’ve been sitting on this link for days trying to find a way to explain it without going apoplectic, but I’m not sure there is one. Fafblog handles some commentary in their own inimitable way, of course, but I’d really love for someone to explain how this administration can appose the proliferation of WMDs so vehemently — hey, we went to WAR on the SUSPICIAN that Saddam had ’em — and yet also oppose the use of weapons inspectors, insisting verificationw as too expensive, too intrustive, and couldn’t guarantee compliance:

Administration officials declined to explain in detail how they believed U.S. security would be harmed by creating a plan to monitor the treaty. Arms-control specialists reacted negatively, saying the change in U.S. position will dramatically weaken any treaty and make it harder to prevent nuclear materials from falling into the hands of terrorists. Seattle Times

The Illinois GOP have selected Alan Keyes as their whipping boy, er, candidate to run against Barack Obama. As noted yesterday, Keyes does not now, nor has he ever, lived in Illinois; we don’t have a problem with this ourselves, but some people do:

I deeply resent the destruction of federalism represented by Hillary Clinton’s willingness to go into a state she doesn’t even live in and pretend to represent people there. So I certainly wouldn’t imitate it.

Know who said that? Yup: ALAN KEYES (Fox News, March 17, 2000; Chicago Trib story cites this here, use ih8logins/ih8logins to access). This should be fun to watch, in a taunting-the-afflicted sort of way. Josh Marshall has a fun post on the subject today as well. I’m still at a loss to figure out what, exactly, the Illinois GOP think they’re going to accomplish.

The GOP is going all-out with their “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” group whose central message is that Kerry somehow fudged his service record and, by inference, those troublesome decorations. Trouble is, none of these guys actually served WITH Kerry (NYT link sure to rot). In a cite sure to irritate Edgar, MediaMatters has actual citations of their somewhat troublesome relationship with the truth. Joe Conason in Salon has more on the subject from a May editorial.

On the other hand, the men who stood with Kerry at the convention represented 9 of the 10 surviving members of his two boats, a fact noted in the Wall Street Journal, of all places (here, but paid subscription required).

The really bizarre point here is, however, that the GOP is working to say Kerry’s war record isn’t all that, when you’d think they’d be avoiding this issue like the plague, given Dubya’s “service” in Alabama.

This year’s seen the debut of perhaps the funniest reality show yet, something we here at Heathen are calling “Who Wants To Be Obama’s Bitch,” but which the GOP calls “find a candidate to replace Jack Ryan who didn’t try to fuck anyone in public.”

They’re down to two candidates, having gotten “no” from such political luminaries as Mike Ditka. Bachelor number one is Alan Keyes, who’s never actually, you know, lived in Illinois (be not vexed; he can move there by election day and everything’s kosher); bachelor number two is Andrea Barthwell, who has a few interesting items on her resume.

During her brief stint at the drug czar’s office one of her most noteworthy accomplishments seems to have been getting written up in a “hostile workplace memorandum” for “lewd and abusive behavior.” Talking Points Memo

The winner of this little contest gets to spend acres of cash to try and catch Democratic wunderkind and apparent real-deal Barack Obama, who has $10MM in the bank and was leading pretty-boy candidate Jack Ryan by a substantial margin before Ryan withdrew under RNC pressure. I suppose it would be too straightforward for them simply to cede the seat, but does anyone really think Obama can be beaten in November?

Federal investigators have identified Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby as the source of a leak of classified information — that showed up on CNN. Way to go, Dick!

We’re sure this will get just as much play as the Berger story, natch.

Check out Billmon’s summary of the Halliburton investigation, and then try to convince yourself Cheney isn’t in it up to his beady little eyeballs.

(Josh Marshall has more.)

1. Insist that, though you can’t be specific because it’s, you know, all secret and all, the Bush administration has prevented more than a hundred attacks against the US since 9/11.
2. Get all cagey when officials in DC — and in one of the states you say has been protected — express dismay at your bizarre pronouncements.
3. Finally, when called on it from all sides “express regret” without actually withdrawing anything.

Way to go, Harris! Now, if you could just master makeup in such a way that you no longer resembled a cross between a demented clown, Tammy Fay, and a hooker, well, you’d be on to something.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m Mister Fucking Pink, okay? Just take your picture and move on.” (Via Mike, but not from his blog.)