Via Atrios, we point you to this NYT story:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 – Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials. Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible “dirty numbers” linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications. The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval represents a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.

(N.B. that the John Yoo defending this surveillance in that story is the same John Yoo who, in his capacity as a DoJ lawyer, advised that the President need not comply with the Geneva Convention and could in fact act as he pleased with respect to torture, extraordinary rendition, and the indefinite detention of persons declared by the Executive to be “enemy combatants.” The values this guy exhibits in opinions like these are not American values, and they scare the bejesus out of me.)

The Post has more on this, and on the Administration’s justification for these actions:

The law governing clandestine surveillance in the United States, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, prohibits conducting electronic surveillance not authorized by statute. A government agent can try to avoid prosecution if he can show he was “engaged in the course of his official duties and the electronic surveillance was authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order of a court of competent jurisdiction,” according to the law. “This is as shocking a revelation as we have ever seen from the Bush administration,” said Martin, who has been sharply critical of the administration’s surveillance and detention policies. “It is, I believe, the first time a president has authorized government agencies to violate a specific criminal prohibition and eavesdrop on Americans.”

It’s not really “Good News/Bad News; it’s more like “Good News/No Shit.”

• Feingold reportedly has the votes to stop the PATRIOT renewal; and
• Despite his claims to the contrary, Congress did not see the same prewar intelligence as Bush. No surprise there; this administration would lie to you if you asked for the time.

The Mississippi-based hate group AFA has been trumpeting its “victory” over Ford and the “gay agenda” lately, but it appears they’re a bit off base; Ford is rather loudly telling the AFA to fuck off.

MSNBC has a nice (though slightly long) piece on the “Bush Bubble.”

His kid, though, is a worthless tool. He told NewMax they were looking into a competancy hearing soon when asked about his father’s comments on Bush and the war.

Yeah, the Bushites have made sure it won’t happen again. From Talking Points Memo:

A week ago it was reported that Justice Department lawyers had concluded at the time that the DeLay redistricting plan of 2003 violated the Voting Right Act, but that senior DOJ officials overruled that finding and okayed DeLay’s plan anyway. Justice Department officials have now instituted a policy to assure this never happens again. They have, as reported in today’s Post, “barred staff attorneys from offering recommendations in major Voting Rights Act cases, marking a significant change in the procedures meant to insulate such decisions from politics.” It’s the Bush model: politics over expertise and/or law. Whether it’s at the Pentagon, the CIA, Justice or the EPA hardly matters. The formula is consistent throughout.

Quoted in its entirety, due to brilliance:

The Central Front In The War On Facts The usual antiwar suspects have been up in arms for well over a week over the military’s planting of covert propaganda in Iraqi newspapers, caterwauling about the undermining of a fundamental tenet of Iraqi democracy. As always, their concerns are wildly misplaced. First, shouldn’t a pretend democracy have a pretend free press? Second, most of these pieces weren’t factually inaccurate, but mere “spin” – such as the article that spun an Iraqi general’s death under torture as death under not-torture. Third, propaganda is merely a weapon. America’s leaders would be foolhardy indeed to refuse a weapon in their arsenal, especially against an adversary as deadly as the truth. While it may not be the ideal of journalism in a free society, is this planted, pro-military propaganda so different from the anti-military truthaganda published every day in the New York Times? While military propaganda shows a bias towards distortion, obfuscation, and outright lies in the service of the war effort, the baleful face of the Mainstream Media shows a clear bias towards reporting reality – and reality has always been America’s greatest enemy in Iraq. Along with facts on the ground and the ugly truth, cold hard reality has persistently undermined America’s efforts in the war on terror. Were it not for reality, America would already have destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear-powered robo-mummy factories while uniting Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd in common love of their American liberators. Malicious facts, however, have conspired to turn Iraq into a bloody war zone racked by insurgent violence and sectarian bloodshed, and the war itself into an unwinnable quagmire built on a transparent fraud. Even now, reality is working to tarnish America’s reputation by exposing its routine torture of military prisoners, in defiance of the stated policies of the Bush administration. This pattern of obstruction and interference can leave no doubt: reality isn’t merely misguided or ill-informed. It’s on the other side. Is it any wonder the American military is fighting back by deploying strategic anti-truth operatives to counteract malicious, terrorist facts? Unfortunately, it may be too little, too late. What of those who assist the truth in its sabotage of US interests? By acting as independent journalists, American reporters are giving aid and comfort to the enemy, if not actively engaged in a terrorist conspiracy. Why is Dana Priest allowed to freely roam the streets? Shouldn’t Seymour Hersh be detained for questioning? Aren’t the offices of the Washington Post little more than a terrorist training camp? And while a certain willingness to take out these enemy bases is more than welcome, eventually the United States must take the fight directly to the enemy, with airstrikes and commando raids on logic, regime change in mathematics, and missions to hunt down the laws of physics wherever they may hide. Until we are confident that nothing we see or hear is real, victory may be impossible.

Fafblog Interviews Condi, sort of:

RICE: First of all, we don’t send prisoners off to be tortured, Fafnir. We just transport prisoners to countries where torture happens to be legal and where they happen to end up getting tortured. FB: Well that explains everything then! It’s all just a wacky misunderstanding, like that episode a Three’s Company where Jack sends Janet off to Uzbekistan to get boiled alive by the secret police. RICE: I’d also like to point out that whenever we send a prisoner to a country that routinely tortures prisoners, that country promises us NOT to torture them. FB: And then they get tortured anyway! RICE: Yes, they do! It’s very strange. FB: Over and over again, every time! That’s gotta be so frustrating. RICE: Oh it is, it is. FB: So the first time you kidnap a prisoner an send him to Saudi Arabia you’re like “don’t torture this guy” an they’re all “we totally won’t” an then they go an torture him an you’re all “ooh Saudi Arabia I told you not to torture him!” an they’re all “oh we’re sorry, we promise next time” an then you go “well you better” an you send em the next guy an they torture him too an you go “oh man Saudi Arabia you did it AGAIN!” RICE: The president believes in the value of patience, Fafnir. He’s not going to let a few dozen innocent torture victims come between him and his favorite third-world dictators. FB: See after the first coupla hundred times that happened I woulda registered a complaint with customer service. RICE: But the real point is that these accidental torture missions are vital to the war on terror. Remember that these aren’t just prisoners. These are known Muslims with names very similar to suspected associates of other Muslims. FB: They’re just the sorta key players that could lead us to Hosama bin Blaben and Musad al Zarcotti! RICE: Exactly. And by subjecting these high-profile non-targets to not-torture in nonexistent secret prisons, you can bet we’ll stop a lot of pretend terror.

From New York Magazine, via TPM:

Bush-administration officials privately threatened organizers of the U.N. Climate Change Conference, telling them that any chance there might’ve been for the United States to sign on to the Kyoto global-warming protocol would be scuttled if they allowed Bill Clinton to speak at the gathering today in Montreal, according to a source involved with the negotiations who spoke to New York Magazine on condition of anonymity. Bush officials informed organizers of their intention to pull out of the new Kyoto deal late Thursday afternoon, soon after news leaked that Clinton was scheduled to speak, the source said. […] In his Friday speech, Clinton blasted the Bush administration’s opposition as “flat wrong.” But the speech almost didn’t happen. The contretemps started late Thursday afternoon, when the Associated Press ran a story saying that Clinton had been added at the last minute to the gathering’s speaking schedule at the request of conference organizers. According to the source, barely minutes after the news leaked, conference organizers called Clinton aides and told them that Bush-administration officials were displeased. “The organizers said the Bush people were threatening to pull out of the deal,” the source said. After some deliberation between Clinton and his aides, Clinton decided he wouldn’t speak, added the source: “President Clinton immediately said, ‘There’s no way that I’m gonna let petty politics get in the way of the deal. So I’m not gonna come.’ That’s the message [the Clinton people] sent back to the organizers.” But the organizers of the conference didn’t want to accept a Bush-administration dictum. They asked Clinton that he go ahead with the speech. “The organizers decided to call the administration’s bluff,” the source said. “They said, ‘We’re gonna push [the Bush people] back on this.'” Several hours went by, and at the Clinton Foundation’s holiday party on Thursday night, the former president and his aides still thought they weren’t going to Montreal. “The staff that was supposed to go with him had canceled their travel plans,” the source said. At around 8:30 p.m., organizers called Clinton aides and said that they’d successfully called the bluff of Bush officials, adding that Bush’s aides had backed off and indicated that Clinton’s appearance wouldn’t in fact have adverse diplomatic consequences.

Richard Pryor, 1940 – 2005.

The EFF is suing the North Carolina Board of Elections over the latter’s extralegal certification of Diebold’s voting machines.

The PATRIOT Act may be renewed with no actual reforms. Great.

Update: Maybe not; Feingold may filibuster.

It’s like they think nobody’s paying attention. In this AP story about AG-for-Torture Gonzales defending the Texas redistricting decision, we find this quote from some DoJ spokesdrone:

“All decisions made by the Justice Department involve thoughtful rigorous analysis of the law,” said spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos. “There is no place for politics in this process and to suggest otherwise is unfortunate and just plain wrong.”

Sure, Tasia. And in any minute, monkeys are gonna fly out of my ass.

They’re trying to defend their illegal certification of the Diebold election-stealing machines.

The North Carolina board of elections has certified Diebold’s equipment for use despite their failure to follow a judge’s ruling that they must follow state law and allow their system to be completely examined by outside observers.

A 2003 memo from Justice Department lawyers concluded that Tom DeLay’s redistricting scheme in Texas violated the Voting Rights Act, but senior officials (read: Bush partisans) overruled them and imposed a gag order on their findings. The Washington Post has the story, but it’s also all over the blogosphere.

Excerpt:

Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan. The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department’s voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections. “The State of Texas has not met its burden in showing that the proposed congressional redistricting plan does not have a discriminatory effect,” the memo concluded. The memo also found that Republican lawmakers and state officials who helped craft the proposal were aware it posed a high risk of being ruled discriminatory compared with other options. But the Texas legislature proceeded with the new map anyway because it would maximize the number of Republican federal lawmakers in the state, the memo said. The redistricting was approved in 2003, and Texas Republicans gained five seats in the U.S. House in the 2004 elections, solidifying GOP control of Congress. J. Gerald “Gerry” Hebert, one of the lawyers representing Texas Democrats who are challenging the redistricting in court, said of the Justice Department’s action: “We always felt that the process . . . wouldn’t be corrupt, but it was. . . . The staff didn’t see this as a close call or a mixed bag or anything like that. This should have been a very clear-cut case.” . . . The 73-page memo, dated Dec. 12, 2003, has been kept under tight wraps for two years. Lawyers who worked on the case were subjected to an unusual gag rule. The memo was provided to The Post by a person connected to the case who is critical of the adopted redistricting map. Such recommendation memos, while not binding, historically carry great weight within the Justice Department.

The one the Army tried to railroad into a treason charge, which then became a “mishandling documents” charge, which they eventually had to drop because they had no evidence at all? Yeah, he wrote a book.

So, in North Carolina, there’s a law that election machines must have open, examinable code so that people can trust that the machines do what they say they do. Diebold lobbied for and received an exemption from this law — which a judge then struck down. In response, Diebold is pulling out of North Carolina. What does this tell you about their voting machine code? Nothing good.

More here, wherein it’s made clear that the NC law mandated not public disclosure of the code but only escrow. What is Diebold afraid of?

Kos has an excerpt from Al Franken’s new book that you really oughta read.

• First: Abuse Worse than Under Saddam, via the Observer; and
• Second: Traffic management in modern Iraq, in which mercenaries shoot at civilian vehicles as they drive around Iraq. The video was shot by the shooters, apparently as a trophy.

Just so you don’t forget, we’re still making our HIV/AIDS relief efforts contingent on the recipient nation being ardently anti-choice.

The announcement, in 2003, that the US Administration under President Bush was to give $15 billion (£9 billion) to help the fight against AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean was welcomed by campaigner Sir Bob Geldof, and others, as a major breakthrough. But, critics argue, it has become increasingly clear that the Bush policy is, in many ways, proving more damaging that helpful, as this Editorial Comment from the Baltimore Sun reveals. AIDS has hit Africa hard. But non-governmental organizations confronting the epidemic have been hit even harder by the Bush administration’s ideologically based edicts. Last month, the UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, and others declared that the administration’s policy of emphasizing abstinence-only programmes and cutting federal funding for condoms has undermined Uganda’s HIV/AIDS effort. Sadly, Uganda is not alone.

This makes it clear that the priority is not helping people; it’s controlling people.

The Administration continues to make up its own rules when it comes to detaining people it deems interesting, and are working hard to keep the courts from having any role at all. Having finally charged Padilla, they insist they didn’t really have to, and that they can grab anybody they want, and hold them as long as they like. Lovely! (NYT link, so here’s a local PDF)

TSA made a flier take out her body jewelry before flying. (Via BoingBoing)

Kos points us to a real barn-burner of a column by Michael Kinsley.

Diebold would still like to destroy our democracy. (Mefi link)

In June, over 200 people traveled to Sacramento to voice their concerns at a public hearing before a panel of advisors to the Secretary of State on voting systems. Since then, every scheduled meeting of the Voting Systems Panel has been cancelled, and now the Secretary has simply disbanded the VSP without notice, without hearings, without any type of due process.

The Administration was told on 9/21/01 that there was no link between Saddam and 9/11, nor was there one between Saddam and Al Quaeda. This briefing is still classified, and they refuse to release it to Congress even as a classified document.

Pandagon points out he’s in bed with the CCC-backing son of George Wallace in Alabama even as we speak. McCain, you disappoint us at every turn. It’s often said a man is known by the company he keeps. What does McCain’s choice of company tell us about his principles?

Atrios: What They Knew; Atrios quotes Bob Graham:

In February 2002, after a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan, the commanding officer, Gen. Tommy Franks, told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq — a war more than a year away. Even at this early date, the White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda. […] At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used senatorial authority, I directed the completion of an NIE […] Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States’ removing Hussein, by force if necessary.

Corante references a Financial Times piece wherein James Boyle points out how the world would greet such an open technology today. He closes with:

Why might we not create the web today? The web became hugely popular too quickly to control. The lawyers and policymakers and copyright holders were not there at the time of its conception. What would they have said, had they been? What would a web designed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation or the Disney Corporation have looked like? It would have looked more like pay-television, or Minitel, the French computer network. Beforehand, the logic of control always makes sense.”Allow anyone to connect to the network? Anyone to decide what content to put up? That is a recipe for piracy and pornography.” And of course it is. But it is also much, much more. The lawyers have learnt their lesson now. The regulation of technological development proceeds apace. When the next disruptive communications technology — the next worldwide web — is thought up, the lawyers and the logic of control will be much more evident. That is not a happy thought.

New polls show Bush is at about 60% disapproval, his poorest approval rating yet — far lower, for example, than that Evil Pervert Clinton, who actually had high approval ratings the day he was impeached by a vengeful GOP.

This brings up a question, though: how low can Bush’s ratings really go? What percentage of people will approve of him no matter what? Slacktivist has some possible answers, but the one that sticks for me comes from Kung Fu Monkey:

John: Hey, Bush is now at 37 percent approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is — Tyrone: 27 percent. John: … you said that immmediately, and with some authority. Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27 percent of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5 percent of Democrats voted for him. That’s crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27 percent Crazification Factor in any population. John: Objectively crazy or crazy vis-a-vis my own inertial reference frame for rational behavior? I mean, are you creating the Theory of Special Crazification or General Crazification? Tyrone: Hadn’t thought about it. Let’s split the difference. Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half are the core of the Crazification — either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy. John: You realize this leads to there being over 30 million crazy people in the US? Tyrone: Does that seem wrong? John: … a bit low, actually. cite

Fred goes on to point out that Dick Cheney’s current approval rating is a stunning NINETEEN percent, i.e., well below the political Mendoza line reference above, which means that even the raving nutbird looneys who voted for Keyes can’t stomach him.

Harry Reid has forced the Senate into a closed session to discuss the manipulation of Iraqi war intelligence.

The GOP, of course, insists it’s a publicity stunt, and that the Democrats have “no convictions,” which is an odd choice of words considering the looming conviction of at least Scooter Libby on their side.

(Heh.)

Anyway, Pandagon has the text of the speech Reid gave as he called for said session.

Religious zealots are opposing the widespread use of a vaccine for HPV — which implies a widespread prevention of malignancies — on the grounds that it might make teens more promiscuous.

Clearly, they feel that cervical cancer is better than teen sex.

Tina Fey, from SNL’s Weekend Update:

A new poll shows that 66% of Americans think that President Bush is doing a poor job of handling the war in Iraq, and the remaining 34% think Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church.

So, White House lawyers have actually gone after the Onion, a satirical weekly newspaper, for using the Presidential Seal without permission.

Of course, this constitutes a violation of that rule about getting into fights with people who buy ink by the barrel, virtual or no: this week’s edition includes something we suspect is meant as payback.

Buh-bye, Scooter. Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff Lewis Libby has been indicted on 5 felony counts. Wonder who’s next?

Now watch the same craven fuckers who insisted Clinton’s perjury warranted prison time backpedal and claim this is some “technicality” and that Fitzgerald is “criminalizing politics.”

The Bush Administration has announced it will reinstate Davis-Bacon wage levels in the Katrina-stricken areas — illegally suspended after the storm — on November 8.

It’s a craven reversal, but at least it’s in the right direction.

It’s got consequences.

Bye Bye, Ricky.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas court issued a warrant Wednesday for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to appear for booking, where he is likely to face the fingerprinting and photo mug shot he had hoped to avoid.

<a href=http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/19/delay.indictment.ap/index.html”>CNN

Yeah, she’s written a bit about how she was bullied by the White House after not letting George “lead the interview.” (Via Atrios.)

At the studio I handed over the tapes. My phone rang. It was MC, and her voice was cold. “We just want to say how disappointed we are in the way you conducted the interview,” she said. “How is that?” I asked. “You talked over the president, not letting him finish his answers.” “Oh, I was just moving him on,” I said, explaining that I wanted some new insight from him, not two-year-old answers. “He did give you plenty of new stuff.” She estimated that I had interrupted the president eight times and added that I had upset him. I was upset too, I told her. The line started to break up; I was in a basement with a bad phone signal. I took her number and agreed to call her back. I dialled the White House number and she was on the line again. “I’m here with Colby,” she indicated. “Right.” “You were given an opportunity to interview the leader of the free world and you blew it,” she began. I was beginning to feel as if I might be dreaming. I had naively believed the American president was referred to as the “leader of the free world” only in an unofficial tongue-in-cheek sort of way by outsiders, and not among his closest staff. “You were more vicious than any of the White House press corps or even some of them up on Capitol Hill . . .The president leads the interview,” she said. “I don’t agree,” I replied, my initial worry now turning to frustration. “It’s the journalist’s job to lead the interview.” It was suggested that perhaps I could edit the tapes to take out the interruptions, but I made it clear that this would not be possible. As the conversation progressed, I learnt that I might find it difficult to secure further co-operation from the White House. A man’s voice then came on the line. Colby, I assumed. “And, it goes without saying, you can forget about the interview with Laura Bush.”

Fred Clark over at Slacktivist has much to say about what we could have done about Katrina and New Orleans, which brings us back to the missed opportunities we’ve had since 9/11. He references a 2003 Mother Jones article that discusses an alternative world where our country’s response to disaster anywhere is rapid, effective — and communicative:

And so this doppelganger Bush would have seen the advantage — oh, about a year ago, when half the world seemed to be wearing NYFD caps — in stationing a fleet of C-5 cargo planes at Kennedy Airport. When an Iranian earthquake or a Bali bomb blast occurred, 200 of New York’s bravest and all that rescue paraphernalia for which we are famous — Jaws of Life cutters, search dogs, remote cameras — would immediately be dispatched. In my dream, I see NYFD pulling trapped Persian grandmothers out of that collapsed mosque. And the fantasy plays on out, with the president — Bush would be especially great at this part — taking to a podium and saying, “Al Qaeda blows up buildings and kills people. We dig through rubble and save human lives. This is what America does.”

This is who we could have been. Instead, Bush started a war.

Indiana Republicans are pushing a bill to make marriage a requirement for motherhood, and which would include criminal penalties for unmarried women who become pregnant by artificial means.

Original article here; commentary at Pandagon, Kos.

The Bug Man has been indicted on conspiracy charges. Of course, CNN has said fifty billion times that the DA in queestion is a “partisan Democrat.” However, as Media Matters notes, his record doesn’t support the claim that he’s prone to enforcement along party lines:

While Earle is an elected Democrat, as Media Matters for America has previously noted, a June 17 editorial in the Houston Chronicle commended his work: “During his long tenure, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has prosecuted many more Democratic officials than Republicans. The record does not support allegations that Earle is prone to partisan witch hunts.” This assertion supports Earle’s own claim about his record; a March 6 article in the El Paso Times reported: “Earle says local prosecution is fundamental and points out that 11 of the 15 politicians he has prosecuted over the years were Democrats.”

Bush is threatening to veto legislation mandating the US follow the Geneva Conventions.

Mykeru has more.

The cops shut down Cindy Sheehan’s protest in NYC earlier this week. For no reason other than it appeared to irritate Mayor Mike. Mykeru rants well on the subject.

Bush Braces as Cindy Sheehan’s Other Son Drowns in New Orleans (Thanks, Triple-F)

BoingBoing alerts us to Students for an Orwellian Society (because 2005 is 21 years too late). Enjoy.

Go read this; here’s a great excerpt:

…[I]ntelligent design has been vigorously supported by the Discovery Institute, a formerly moderate think tank that has now become the intellectual home of antievolutionism. In 2001, Discovery took out a newspaper ad signed by roughly 70 scientists, who declared that they were “skeptical of the claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life” — in other words, they rejected Darwinism. This list has become Exhibit A in the argument that genuine scientific controversy exists over evolution, and to the layperson it certainly looked impressive. Bush and Santorum are not likely, however, to mention the National Center for Science Education’s hilarious response. The NCSE began gathering names of scientists who agreed that evolution was “a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences” — but restricted membership to those whose names were Steve, Stephanie or some other variation of Stephen. As of Monday, “Project Steve” — named in honor of the late Stephen Jay Gould — had 600 signatories.

Josh Marshall has a couple winners today.

First, he illustrates why Brownie, incompetant though he was, may not have been the whole problem at DHS:

DHS Secretary Chertoff didn’t declare Katrina an ‘Incident of National Significance’ until late on Tuesday August 30th, almost two days after the hurricane hit. That’s the administrative trip wire that sets off the standing government plans for a coordinated national response to natural or man-made disasters. As Jonathan Landay, et al. explain, the now-reviled and discarded Michael Brown only had limited authority to act prior to Chertoff’s determination on the night of the 30th. Chertoff was the one in charge of the response before that. TPM

Chertoff, of course, still has a job.

Second, Mr Marshall calls our attention to a piece from our hometown paper with some very odd power-priority goings-on:

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina roared through South Mississippi knocking out electricity and communication systems, the White House ordered power restored to a pipeline that sends fuel to the Northeast. That order – to restart two power substations in Collins that serve Colonial Pipeline Co. – delayed efforts by at least 24 hours to restore power to two rural hospitals and a number of water systems in the Pine Belt. […] Dan Jordan, manager of Southern Pines Electric Power Association, said Vice President Dick Cheney’s office called and left voice mails twice shortly after the storm struck, saying the Collins substations needed power restored immediately. […] [Mississippi Public Service Commissioner Mike] Callahan said energy officials told him gasoline and diesel fuel needed to flow through the pipeline to avert a national crisis from the inability to meet fuel needs in the Northeast. Callahan said the process of getting the pipelines flowing would be difficult and that there was a chance the voltage required to do so would knock out the system – including power to Wesley Medical Center in Hattiesburg. With Forrest General Hospital operating on generators, Wesley was the only hospital operating with full electric power in the Pine Belt in the days following Katrina. “Our concern was that if Wesley went down, it would be a national crisis for Mississippi,” Callahan said. “We knew it would take three to four days to get Forrest General Hospital’s power restored and we did not want to lose Wesley.” Hattiesburg American

Fuck the hospitals and the poor people! We needs us some fuel up north first!

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.