Obsidian Wings

The Party Of Moral Values Strikes Again

by hilzoy

Presumably, everyone who reads this has already heard that Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL), author of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, has resigned after he was revealed to have sent revolting sexual emails and IMs to several pages. (The one whose age has been reported was 16.) If you haven't seen the emails IMs, I'd suggest taking my word for it that they don't leave any room for doubt that Rep. Foley was just being overly friendly or something. But if you really want to see for yourself, here you go.

I don't have much to say about Rep. Foley, other than: yuck. Also: sex itself is a wondrous thing, but I really don't think instant messaging is the best medium for it. Perhaps some mute inglorious Milton could make IM sex non-revolting, but not Rep. Foley. Yuck.

However, there are other aspects to this story that are more interesting. There's the question who, exactly, knew about this. Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-LA), the Representative who sponsored the page, was told back in 2005. John Boehnert was notified "this spring", and first he told Speaker Hastert and that Hastert had said that it was being taken care of; then he took it back. Meanwhile, Speaker Hastert said he didn't know about it, until Rep. Tom Reynolds, the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said he told Hastert; now Hastert has issued a convoluted press release saying that his office was informed but he (initially) was not, and that he cannot recall Rep. Foley mentioning it to him, but has no reason to dispute that he did.

Then there's the fact that while Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), the Chair of the House Page Board, was notified of the problem "in late 2005",but did not inform the Democratic member of the Board, which seems odd. (From Roll Call: "When asked if was upset about being excluded, Kildee said yes, adding, "I've been on the page board for 20 years."") And, as Josh Marshall asks, why on earth was the NRCC notified? That seems completely bizarre.

In any case, though, a number of Republican legislators, including at least the Majority Leader and the head of the NRCC, and possibly the Speaker of the House, knew about this, in some cases for nearly a year. And yet they did nothing. I thought that the most important aspect of this had gone largely unremarked, until I checked FireDogLake and saw that Christy Hardin Smith, not surprisingly, got right to the heart of it:

"Let me be crystal clear here: these are teenage children who are given an honorary position due to their exceptional grades, their outstanding community service work and any number of other reasons. They are working in the United States House of Representatives. They are teenagers.

And the Republican leadership was aware that an elected Republican representative was sending personal e-mails and IMs to various teenage pages — but either didn't investigate any more closely to see if they were wholly inappropriate and/or sexually explicit or what, according to Hastert's hemming and hawing in the WaPo this morning…and they did not tell the Democratic leadership nor did they take any overt actions from what I've been able to ascertain to remove this Republican representative from contact with these teenagers other than telling him to act more appropriately. (...)

The ick factor alone on this is disgusting, but it is the utter lack of fiduciary care for the children involved that disgusts me the most. (...)

Look, I can understand a desire to win an election with the best of them — but this goes a lot deeper. If you have a person who is allegedly predisposed to be attracted to very young kids, that predisposition does not go away because you say "don't send any more e-mails, mmm-kay?".

And in this case, you have kids who are living in DC as pages, perhaps away from their homes for the first time, around very powerful people — and you put them in a situation where an elected official wants to discuss in detail what they do when they masturbate…and at the age of fifteen or sixteen, they are supposed to know to do what, exactly? But the GOP Leadership didn't even bother to look into this enough to see that's what was going on — or did they, and they just didn't take the steps to protect kids from this? Who the hell knows at this point, because it's turned into all CYA, alla time.

The adults in this situation, who were apprised of the problem, ought to have intervened on these kids' behalf. I'm sorry, but there it is. And from what I can tell, the GOP leadership has devolved into "woulda, coulda, shoulda" this morning — with Boehner pointing the finger at Hastert, and then taking it back, and Hastert playing dumb. Someone dropped a whole lot of balls on this one — and that is simply not acceptable. Does no one in the entire GOP know how to take responsibility?

And the worst thing is, every parent whose child was a House page for the last 16 years that Foley has been in the House is now thinking "did he do this with my child?" and worse "how far did he go — was it just talk, or did he get further?"

This is NOT acceptable. And the GOP leadership in the House had better have some answers beyond "I don't know — I thought he was looking into it." Our nation's children are more valuable to all of us than that."

This is exactly right. Eleven months went by, during which time Rep. Foley was probably harassing other teenage boys, asking them to measure their genitalia for him, prodding them to tell him exactly how they masturbated, and how often, and with what, and so on and so forth. To let this go on is, in my opinion, absolutely unconscionable. Note this as well: "One former page tells ABC News that his class was warned about Foley by people involved in the program." I once interviewed for a job at a school where the people in the department made very, very sure I knew that one of their number had a serious problem with sexual harassment -- a fact I already Knew, since he had asked me out right after my job interview. One reason I decided not to bother with that job was that I suspected that I'd end up decking him, but another was the thought: when people know enough to warn you about a serious problem, but somehow or other can't be bothered to actually fix it, then you know that something about the organization is deeply dysfunctional.

It is our job, as adults, to protect children from things they should not have to deal with. It was, more particularly, the leadership's job to protect children under their care. That they did not do so is unconscionable.

Especially since there were ways of dealing with this that would not have cost them anything. Like Christy Hardin Smith, I can understand wanting to win elections. But that's not in conflict with keeping the pages safe. All they had to do was: first, investigate further, and find the rest of the emails; and then go to Rep. Foley, inform him of that fact, and suggest that he confess that he had a problem, resign, and seek treatment. Jeb Bush could have named a Republican replacement, who would now probably be en route to retaining Foley's seat. [Update: Oops. There would have to be a special election -- see Florida election law (pdf), 100.101 (p. 30.) The Republicans would probably have won this. End update.] Alternately, they could have let him resign quietly, but tell him that they would monitor him and send the emails to the police if they ever got word that he was harassing another minor. (Surely the Republicans have good friends in Florida who could have managed that.)

The members of the Republican leadership who knew about this were not protecting their political hides. They didn't need to lose anything politically. If they had chosen the quiet route and things leaked out, they would probably have gained politically.

They just didn't care enough about the children in their charge to rock the boat. And that's a disgrace.

Worth Bearing In Mind

by hilzoy

Glenn Greenwald wrote a very good post today. It's worth reading in its entorety, but there's one point I wanted to highlight:

"There is one other consideration which, by itself, ought to be determinative. The only branch of government that has shown any residual willingness to defend the Constitution and the rule of law is the judicial branch. But critical Supreme Court decisions such as Hamdan -- which at least affirmed the most minimal and basic constitutional protections -- depend upon the most precarious 5-4 split among the Justices. One of the five pro-Constitution Justices, John Paul Stevens, is 86 years old. If George Bush has free reign to replace Stevens, it will mean that the Supreme Court will be composed of a very young five-Justice majority of absolute worshippers of Executive Power -- Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, Alito and New Justice -- which will control the Court and endorse unlimited executive abuses for decades to come.

In a GOP-controlled Senate, Democrats cannot stop a Supreme Court nominee by filibuster anymore because Republicans will break the rules by declaring the filibuster invalid. The only hope for stopping a full-fledged takeover of the Supreme Court is a Democratic-controlled Senate."

His conclusion:

"In the real world, one has to either choose between two more years of uncontrolled Republican rule, or imposing some balance -- even just logjam -- on our Government with a Democratic victory. Or one can decide that it just doesn't matter either way because one has given up on defending the principles and values of our country. But, for better or worse, those are the only real options available, and wishing there were other options doesn't mean that there are any. And there are only six weeks left to choose the option you think is best and to do what you can to bring it to fruition."

We can't have another Justice who believes in virtually limitless Executive power. We just can't. And Glenn is right: the Republicans probably would use the "nuclear option" to get one. Which is why we need the Senate.

Hiatus

by Charles

For family, work and personal reasons, I going to have to end blogging.  My thanks to all of the editors for putting up with me and giving me this forum, and my thanks to all of the readers as well.  I wish you all well.

Juxtaposition

by Katherine

"Again, these are people, these are enemy combatants, people that have been picked up on the battlefield with ill will or creating acts against the American people."--Senator Bill Frist

***

"They took our land. They killed my mother. You can ask. This is true information. They killed my family. My wife said they came with a weapon and drew it on her. I asked the Red Cross to go and investigate if this was true or not. Ask my family....

I have respect for you because you saved our lives. If you people didn’t come, they would have killed us all. From my village, plus or minus two hundred Shia’s were killed. You can ask yourself. This is not a lie. If you people weren’t here to come and help us, we would have all died of hunger because you give us food. At our house we didn’t have even a little bit of oil. You can ask. Even my children were barefoot...Now my poor family have no food, they don’t have anything, and I was detained…I don’t know what happened to my family. I don’t know what happened to my children....

If the Americans hadn't come, they would have killed us. They took our land. You cannot find one Hazara (ph) who is a supporter of Taliban or Gulbuddin." -- CSRT of Faiz Ullah, ISN 919. Ullah's CSRT found him to be an enemy combatant .

***

"These are not people who ordinarily have been captured who would be covered by the Geneva Conventions. They are not serving in a country's military; they are murderers of the worst sort." -- Senator Trent Lott

***

"When the Recorder was stating the nature of the evidence, he stated that the Detainee was a cook. The Detainee stated that he was not a cook; he was an assistant to the cook. He cleaned dishes, peeled potatoes and tomatoes and got the stuff ready for them. He was not actually a cook....

The Detainee states that he was grocery shopping close to his house and the Taliban was drafting people. While he was in the store, the Taliban came and asked for him, the Taliban came and asked for him. When he stated his identity, they put the sheet around his hands, tied them with the sheet and captured him....

Q: Were your hands tied the whole time?

A: The Detainee states that until they reached Kandahar, his hands were tied....

Q: Were the guards with you all of the time?

A: The Detainee states the guards were with him all the time. They didn't just give him to the driver and tell the driver to take him. There were 2 Taliban in the car with the Detainee.

Q: Were they armed?

A: The Detainee states yes, they were armed." -- CSRT of Dawd Gul, ISN 530. I cannot find an ARB or habeas petition for Gul, but according to the Washington Post's list of Guantanamo detainees, he has not been released.

***

"Senator Susan Collins , a Maine Republican who is considered a moderate, said she would not support Specter's amendment.

'Detainees from Guantanamo have clogged our courts with more than 420 lawsuits challenging everything from their access to the Internet to the quality of their recreation facilities, her office said in a statement that called the lawsuits 'an abuse of our court system.' " -- Farah Stockman, "Legal Residents' Rights Curbed in Detainee Bill," Boston Globe, September 28, 2006.

***

"Dear respected Lawyer,

I am writing this letter to you and I hope you are in the best of health.

My name is Sadeeq Ahmad Tukistani...

I was born in Saudi Arabia in the region of Taif and lived there. However I was imprisoned for three years because of a criminal case and after three years I was exiled from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan. When I reached Afghanistan, we were captured by the members of Al-Qaeda. We were accused that we have been sent by the Saudi government to assassinate Osama Bin Laden. After interrogation I was handed over to the Taliban and I was put under the intelligence in Qandahar for a period of one and a half year. After one and a half year, they moved me to the Qandahar political prison and I stayed there for three and a half years.

After the government of Taliban fell, and the government of Hamid Karzai took over, they handed me over to the Americans. Now, I have been under the control of the Americans for the past three years and eight months.

Six months ago, I was told by the Americans that I am innocent and I am not an enemy combatant.

I have one problem. For the past 8 years I have no information about my family. My family lives in Saudi Arabia in the region of Taif. I would like to request you some humanitarian help to contact my family at telephone number [redacted]...and bring me their welfare.

I hereby thank you sincerely and please accept my regards: Sadeeq Ahamd Turkistani"

--Letter to counsel from Sadiq Ahmad Turkistani, filed before the D.C. District Court on December 30, 2005.

Turkistani is one of six Guantanamo prisoners captured in a Taliban prison in Kandahar in December 2001.  He later told his lawyers that "Al Qaeda operatives tortured him for over 20 straight days" until he falsely confessed to trying to assassinate Bin Laden "in the hope and belief that they would kill him."

In December of 1998, Osama Bin Laden told a Pakistani newspaper that "Thanks to Allah, the assassination attempt by one Siddiq Ahmad and his two accomplices failed." ("Bin Laden Urges Killing Americans," Associated Press, December 26, 1998.)

In large part because of his habeas corpus case, Saddiq Ahmad Turkistani was transferred from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia in June of this year. Three of the other prisoners captured with him in the Taliban prison, however, were classified as enemy combatants by their CSRTs and remain in Guantanamo.

***

"My moral compass is very much intact and when people mention moral compasses and the conscience of the Senate, I'm going to sleep very good casting my vote and I think I've got a decent moral compass about what we should be doing to people, what's humane, what's not, what's right, what's wrong." -- Senator Lindsey Graham

***

"In November 2002, a newly minted CIA case officer in charge of a secret prison just north of Kabul allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young Afghan detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets, according to four U.S. government officials aware of the case.

The Afghan guards -- paid by the CIA and working under CIA supervision in an abandoned warehouse code-named the Salt Pit -- dragged their captive around on the concrete floor, bruising and scraping his skin, before putting him in his cell, two of the officials said.    

As night fell, so, predictably, did the temperature.    

By morning, the Afghan man had frozen to death.

After a quick autopsy by a CIA medic -- "hypothermia" was listed as the cause of death -- the guards buried the Afghan, who was in his twenties, in an unmarked, unacknowledged cemetery used by Afghan forces, officials said. The captive's family has never been notified; his remains have never been returned for burial." -- Dana Priest, "CIA Avoids Scrutiny of Detainee Treatment," Washington Post, March 3, 2005.

....?????

by hilzoy

Honestly: I can't even begin to imagine what to say about the vote on the torture bill. I just can't. I think I used all my words up beforehand. And how could I even start to describe the unbelievable, unAmerican, utterly corrupt cynicism of doing something like this as an election ploy?? As far as I know (and I am more than willing to be corrected), FDR actually thought, stupidly enough, that Japanese-Americans might be a threat. Woodrow Wilson thought the same about the Reds. Probably the only precedent is Joe McCarthy, but -- amazing as it is to find myself writing this -- he did so much less damage.

I see that over at dKos, they are arguing about whether or not to calm down. I have no particular interest in calming down, myself. I don't see any reason at all to think that my reaction is disproportionate or over the top. Horrible times call for horrified responses. I am having one.

On the other hand, I see every reason to think especially clearly just now. I am even less interested in wasting my anger on the wrong targets, or failing to identify the best means I can come up with to help reverse this thing. And it is my anger which makes me feel this way. I am much too angry to be even remotely willing to respond in any way that makes it even the tiniest bit more likely that this bill will stand. Lashing out blindly is for lesser occasions. Right now, it feels to me like a luxury I cannot afford. (Though I personally will be giving everyone who was on the right side of this several days of complete amnesty for anything they say. I will enforce the posting rules because I have to, but I will not hold anything against anyone.)

That said: it seems to me that this is just about the worst possible time for people to start wondering whether it's worth working for Democrats. There is an enormous difference between Democrats having control of one house of Congress and their having none. For one thing, does anyone here actually believe that if President Bush asked Democratic leaders to move this bill through, they would agree? Or that this nightmare of a bill would have made it out of a Judiciary Committee chaired by Pat Leahy or John Conyers? Someone clearly has the ability to make Arlen Specter cave on command; having briefly seen Leahy on CSPAN this afternoon, I can say: he was truly beyond furious, and if he ever caved on something like this, I would be very surprised. I'm not really up on Ike Skelton, but do you think that if Carl Levin were chairing the Senate Armed Services Committee, this would have just sailed right through?

No. Having control of one house of Congress would have stopped this in its tracks.

Moreover, thinking for the long haul: I think that if Democrats take either chamber, they will hold hearings. There is more than enough corruption to look at; I would nominate spending and contracts for Iraqi reconstruction as an obvious first step. I think that if those hearings exposed anything remotely approximating the level of corruption I believe to be present, it would not only have the immediate effect of helping deserving people to find a home in our nation's correctional facilities and deterring future offenders; it would also do a lot to undermine the Republicans' claims to be strong on security. The idea that Republicans can be trusted with national security is, in my opinion, ripe for collapse. They have screwed up all manner of things, and some of them, like Iraq, are incredibly obvious. There is, I think, a lot of skepticism of Bush that is -- well, in my current state, the only analogy that leaps to mind is: it's completely dissolved, like the sugar you dissolve in water when you're making rock candy, and then someone drops in a paperclip, and it crystallizes. Clear evidence that the Republican leadership had not just completely screwed up Iraq, but had, in addition, sold the country's interests down the river for their own enrichment, would crystallize some things in our country, I think.

God knows not in everyone's minds, but in a significant number, I think.

That will only happen if the Democrats retake one house of Congress. And for the sake of the country, that means, to me, that I have to work as hard as I can to make that happen.

This is one of those times, like the Red Scare or the internment of the Japanese, which we will look back on with shame and horror. But it is by no means the worst thing that we have ever done as a country, nor is it the most complete betrayal of our values. That would be slavery. Neither the Red Scare nor slavery just ended all by themselves. They ended because people worked very hard to end them. In the case of slavery, they worked for decades, and then for another century after that to get anything approaching equal rights for African-Americans.

Personally, I don't begrudge anyone any expression of fury or grief or despair, in the short term. But we will not get past this if we let ourselves yield to despair. We just won't. And, as CharleyCarp said in comments, every day that goes by is a new injury. A whole host of new injuries, in fact: to all those who are deprived of their rights; to their families, who may not even know they're alive; to their children, who might have gone for nearly five years now without having seen their fathers; to any American soldier who suffers in the future because of this; and also to our ability to feel unproblematically proud of our country and what it stands for.

I mean: if Andrew gets sent abroad, I want him to worry about the soldiers under his command, and how his friends and family are doing, and whether he made the right tactical decision or the wrong one, and where exactly he put his flashlight. I do not want him to have to worry about whether his country stands for what he hopes it does. I want that to be one of those completely unproblematic things that it would never cross his mind to worry about, like whether or not the sun will come up, or whether he'll go on existing in four dimensions, not two or seventeen.

And for Andrew not to have to wonder, and innocent detainees' kids to hug their fathers again, and for all of us to know that in our country, people can't just be tossed in jail for no reason without even a chance of proving their innocence, some of us are going to have to work really hard. And if not me, then who? And if not now, then when? (Or, in a literal translation: if not now, there is no when. I've always preferred it that way.)

Besides, as my grandmother always said: it is not worthy of humanity to give up. To which I would add: not that there aren't times when it's really, really tempting.

Ikuko Toguri, RIP

by Andrew

I find it at once sad and ironic that Tuesday, as the House prepared to pass HR 6166, Iva Toguri breathed her last. Ms. Toguri is better known as 'Tokyo Rose,' the sobriquet given to various English-speaking Japanese women who broadcast popular music laced with appeals for Allied personnel to surrender to the might of the Japanese Empire. Yet Ms. Toguri never actually made any of those broadcasts, was not Japanese (except by ancestry), and was in fact a loyal U.S. citizen who found herself trapped in an enemy nation on December 7, 1941.

I'll admit that I'm not yet as depressed as Jim Henley, whose post about HR 6166 is enough to give me nightmares, but it is rather difficult to really accept just where we've come over the past six years. As Ms. Toguri's ordeal illustrates (and if you didn't read the link, you should), the U.S. has made plenty of mistakes in the past, and I don't think we should give up all hope that we can fix this too. But it's hard not to be discouraged by the complete failure of our elected representatives and our polity to deal with this problem more effectively. Reasoned political discourse has been replaced by demagoguery and parliamentary legerdemain, and it's unlikely to get any better in the near future.

For me personally this is an unfortunate confluence of events as well. Eighteen years ago I joined the United States military because I believed that I owed some small debt to the country that bore me; while I have been aware of my country's flaws for many years, I always believed that we could overcome those flaws. Yesterday I completed my packet to request my reinstatement on active duty, because I am painfully aware of the Army's need for good officers (and even mediocre ones). It's hard not to wonder if the country I want to defend is the one I may actually defend. It's hard not to wonder if I'm doing the right thing at times.

"The Year of the Police"

by Charles

Every day, the stream of anti-Bush administration sentiments flows incessantly, with commentary ranging from mild rebuke to paranoid unmedicated DU-sized hyperbole. The hard part sometimes is separating the wheat (legitimate concerns about how things are going) from the chaff (politicized grandstanding and raging cases of BDS). But in this article, it looks like we have a case where we did drop the ball in Iraq. As just about every survey of Iraqis will attest, security is the number one problem in Iraq right now, and it has been a major concern since the end of major combat operations. One significant way to solve the security problem is better police protection, and the way to do that is to train more police officers, and the way to do that is to build the infrastructure that can accommodate more and better training.  And therein lies the problem.

A $75 million project to build the largest police academy in Iraq has been so grossly mismanaged that the campus now poses health risks to recruits and might need to be partially demolished, federal investigators have found.

The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts aimed at preparing Iraqis to take control of the country's security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed "the rain forest."

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for oversight, and it should have been a profit center for them since they charged at least 4.5% of total project costs to do the job (fees that are paid by American taxpayers).  The contractor responsible for the slipshod and grossly negligent work:

The report serves as the latest indictment of Parsons Corp., an American construction giant that was awarded about $1 billion for reconstruction projects across Iraq. After chronicling previous Parsons failures to properly build health clinics, prisons and hospitals, Bowen said he now plans to audit every Parsons project.

Emphasis mine. There's no excuse for this. Because Parsons couldn't build a proper police training campus, they are directly responsible (in my opinion) for endangering the lives of both Iraqis and the American soldiers assigned to protect Iraq from jihadists and Sunni and Shia paramilitants. The way I see it, if this report is true, the mismanagment by Parsons Corp. is un-American and should be criminal.  We should audit every Parsons project, and we should investigate how Parsons came to be selected in the first place and how they were awarded contracts totaling ten digits.

Federal investigators who visited the academy last week expressed concerns about the buildings' structural integrity.

"They may have to demolish everything they built," said Robert DeShurley, a senior engineer with the inspector general.

Accounts like these make it hard not to violate the posting rules.  Egads.

The NYT Opens Whole New Dimensions Of Shrillness

by hilzoy

Check it out:

"Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism."

There follows a list of the most horrible aspects of the bill. And then:

"There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts."

Aaaiii! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Krugman R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn! Aaaiii! AAAAAAIIIIIIIII!!!!

And the worst of it is, it's all true, and not a bit of it is over the top.

Don't Get Mad; Get Even.

by hilzoy

Having wallowed in despair over the detainee bill, I have decided to do something constructive, namely: inflict more misery on you, my gentle readers. -- I was looking at the Cook Political Report's new rankings of the most competitive Senate races, and to my horror and amazement, my own race, which I don't think of as all that competitive, was ranked ahead of the Virginia Senate race, which pits James Webb against the awful George Allen.

This cannot be allowed to continue.

If Webb wins, several wonderful things happen. First, there's one more Democrat in the Senate. Second, there's one more Democrat who is capable and confident about national security. Third, George Allen loses, and macaques everywhere breathe a sigh of relief. But here's the most important thing: George Allen's chances of ever successfully running for President become really, really remote.

This matters. We've already had an incompetent faux Cowboy with a streak of cruelty as President for eight years. I'm not sure we can withstand another. Allen's chances of becoming President have already been damaged, but losing his Senate race would drive a well-deserved hemlock stake through their heart.

However, there's a problem. To illustrate, I made a little graph in Excel:

See what I mean about misery?That's an eleven million dollar fundraising advantage. And we can't have that, can we? Of course not. So here's the link: donate.

If you require actual reasons, read on.

"President ... Denies War Has Worsened Terrorism"

by hilzoy

That's part of headline from MSNBC. I might try explaining why he's wrong, but a simple graph is more eloquent on this score than I could ever be:

(Graph from Larry Johnson, who notes:

"A "Significant" terrorist incident is one in which a person was killed, wounded or kidnapped (or there was property damage in excess of $10,000)."