Running down the papers:

Post: 'RX FOR MAC AND BARACK: Rivals both see docs'

Breathtaking lede of the tab's top campaign story of the day:

Can't wait to read the folo stories on the painkillers they used. We're already numb with boredom.

Post: 'KIDNAPPED BY A ROCKEFOOLER'

Rockin' hed for this tight lede:

Just a great headline day for the Post, with this one on NBA corrupt ref Tim Donaghy's claim of mental problems:

'ROGUE REF IS LABELED ODDS BALL'

And this:

'UNWED MA AXED AS TEACHER: SUIT'

And this one about a Giants receiver's mystery injury and other drama:

'AS THE ANKLE TURNS'

But then your breakfast does its own flip-flop when it reaches this hed on Liz Smith's column that threatens to tell us details we don't want to know about one of the ancient columnist's contemporaries:

'QUEEN VICTORIA'S SECRET PANTIES'

Thank God the hed was misleading.

Times: 'Report Faults Aides in Hiring at Justice Dept.'

Winner of the 'Study Reveals Lack of Funds' Headline Contest. Here's Eric Lichtblau's lede:

We knew this at the time — when Pat-Robertson-college-law-school grad Monica Goodling's involvement as a faith-based dimwit Justice aide was revealed — and yet the Times didn't nail it down at the time.

Times: 'Candidates Return Focus to Economy and Jobs'

The promo for Larry Rohter's story:

Does campaign coverage get any lower than this? Learning the candidates' dick sizes would be just as relevant as learning what McCain's "surrogates" (his advisers and campaign flacks) think of Obama's strategies.

What do you think they think?

Rohter's lede graf, in the grand tradition of Pravda-style establishment journalism, is simply paralyzing:

Times: 'Officer Investigated in Toppling of Cyclist'

The lede grafs:

Speaking of amateurs, the Times doesn't even give you a link to the video. So here is the Gothamist link.

Remarkably, however, James Barron's story does throw in these context grafs — and they're high up:

Humdrum AP story with no news — No comment! Stop the presses! — matched by a humdrum hed.

So why is it prominently promoted by the News? Just to get Christian Bale's name in there for "page views" and "hits," the latest obsession by editors of dying rags who finally have some way — even if it's cockamamie — of supposedly quantifying how well their staff does. They'd rather look at those numbers — hopefully high if you do things like mention Christian Bale's name — than do the harder task of paying money for good work and then paying money to present it on well-designed sites and then market it to readers.

Of course, how the (highly questionable) numbers of page views and hits and "visitors" — if you do things like mention Christian Bale's name — actually translate into money is another matter. In the meantime, I'm going to move on from Christian Bale stories and go out and look for that kitten-strangling-by-nude-liberals yarn that, oh God, I hope will be picked up by Drudge.

The fifth most-mailed story on the Daily News site as of this morning? 'How short can she go? Katie debuts a new 'do'

Yeah, well, the sultry Scientologist's hair is still longer than Christian Bale's, which the News neglected to point out while trying to grab you by the short hairs.

I'm still having trouble working in Christian Bale's name. So hit me.

"Fill it up" still refers to oil companies' coffers.

Even if you have to walk to the store because you can't afford gas, buy some of those dangerous tomatoes.

Don't eat them — throw them at the Republican senators who today stymied a windfall profits tax aimed at oil companies.

Here's the story, from David Ivanovich of the Houston Chronicle, deep in the heart of oil-bidness country:

You're probably wondering how Barack Obama and John McCain voted:

They didn't. From this afternoon's New York Times story:

And which Republicans were bold enough to buck their party line?

We know where the presumptive prexy candidates stand, however. Obama has pledged support of taxing the oil industry's windfall profits. From today's Brisbane Times in Australia comes this background:

The current futile Senate bill was just the latest of many attempts to rein in the historically pampered oil industry.

I know about the sense of entitlement that's standard in the oil bidness, having been raised in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, when it was the headquarters of both Phillips 66 (now Conoco-Phillips in Houston) and Citgo (now owned by Venezuela and controlled by Hugo Chavez).

In general, Okies consider unbridled oil profits as a birthright (along with hickory-smoked BBQ, cousin-snugglin', and meaningful relationships with barnyard animals).

That aside, this particular bill had some far-reaching provisions for Americans struggling with gas at $4 a gallon while oil execs and speculators make out like bandits. Here's more on it from the Chronicle:

Yeah, good luck with that plan to rein in not only the U.S. oil companies but also OPEC.

Tête-à-tête offensive: Bush and Maliki circle the burning station wagons, while our soldiers go nuts from the war.

George W. Bush wasn't crazy Wednesday when he compared the Iraq Debacle to the Vietnam War to the cheers of a VFW crowd in Kansas City.

Thousands of shell-shocked U.S. soldiers wound up untreated, drifting the streets of America after the Vietnam War. The same thing is happening now with Iraq veterans — at least with those who haven't already committed suicide. From an August 17 AP story:

My colleague Michael Feingold, a theater critic who knows a tragedy when he sees one, tipped me off to that wire story. Unfortunately, we'll never know the exact number of crazed veterans — and they'll probably go untreated — because the military is diagnosing many Iraq vets as suffering from a "personality disorder" instead of post-traumatic stress syndrome caused by the war. That way the government can discharge them, claiming that these soldiers were flawed to begin with, and wash its hands of the problem.

This disgraceful action on the home front will only cause more problems in the long run because the insanity in Iraq in the short term is increasing. Yesterday, gunmen attacked villages in Diyala province where Sunni militiamen who recently joined — supposedly — the U.S. "surge" lived. As Carol J. Williams of the L.A. Times reports this morning:

Sounds like Vietnam, just as the crumbling regime of Nouri al-Maliki sounds like the South Vietnamese government of 40 years ago. The updated National Intelligence Estimate is nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy because it will add even more pressure to Maliki's shaky rule. From Reuters, via SwissInfo:

Wait, wait, wait. Once again the press fails to note that the White House will actually write the report. That's nuts, too. Anyway, back to the Reuters story:

At least the cabinet members' boycott of Maliki's government appears to be ending. Well, maybe that's not such good news:

Crazy, huh? Not as crazy as the treatment of our own soldiers returning home shell-shocked. The Christian Science Monitor recently noted:

But this scandal emerged months ago; here's a story published last Christmas Eve that must have driven some soldiers' families crazy:

By the way, Steven D. Green, the GI accused of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and then murdering her and her family (with the help of others in his rape crew), was diagnosed with "anti-social personality disorder" and shipped home shortly after that March 2006 massacre — before the story of the murders fully came out, charges were brought, and he was arrested as a civilian.

That, too, is crazy.

Was Green so screwed-up before he went to Iraq? His tour in that nightmare desert couldn't have helped. As the AP reported last summer:

It's bad enough that the Pentagon's just-released report on Iraq contains some frightening news — some of it quite blunt — for U.S. soldiers and their families. But a closer look reveals some even worse news on the semantic front. In other words, the War Department tried like hell to put a smiley face on things but just couldn't. That means the situation is really bad.

The bottom line is that George W. Bush announced a "New Way Forward" on January 10 — the regime must have borrowed the name from Mao — and a "surge" of U.S. troops, officially named Operation Fardh al-Qanoon (Enforcing the Law, or Law and Order), was launched on February 14. The fardh is something of a farce. Known by its acronym of FAQ (someone has a sense of humor, even if it's unintentional), the surge was supposed to start quelling the violence in Baghdead. Instead, the number of attacks overall has risen and has spread from Baghdad to places like Diyala province.

Since the surge began, the percentage of attacks against the U.S. has declined slightly, but the percentage of attacks against civilians and Iraqi army and cops has increased. The overwhelming majority of attacks, as always, are aimed at American soldiers, proving once again that the only thing that unifies Iraqis who have guns and bombs is that they want us the hell out of their country.

The report's language, though, is the point. The report is titled "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq." What it measures is instability and insecurity.

A key chapter is titled "National Reconciliation." What it measures is the increasing number of schisms, concluding that "some analysts see a growing fragmentation of Iraq."

"Some analysts"? That's a handy device used by the Pentagon to try to distance itself from its own conclusions. Reporters use that technique when asking tough questions without directly making the accusations themselves so that the conversation doesn't get too personal and the person being questioned will keep talking — "Some people say you did indeed take $10,000 in bribes, Congressman Phil N. DeBlank, and that the money, they say, was in small bills stuffed into a brown envelope."

Anyway, the report's section titled "Political Commitments" is about the lack thereof:

And the section titled "De-Ba'athification Reform" is actually about re-Ba'athification: the long-overdue strategy of re-admitting into the government bureaucracy people who were lesser members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party — many people had to join Saddam's party to get government jobs, just as people on Long Island had to join the Nassau County GOP (until recently, the nation's most powerful local political machine) if they wanted jobs. The Bush regime and its preposterous pasha, Jerry Bremer, swept everyone out of the army and government in 2003, a move that since has been called the U.S.'s gravest miscalculation of the entire Iraq debacle.

Digression: Way back on May 14, 2003, when Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army, the San Francisco Chronicle's Robert Collier wrote:

Good move, Jerry. You earned your Medal of Freedom then and there. (See "Full Medal Jackoffs," December 15, 2004.)

Back to the current Pentagon report. On the re-Ba'athification, it notes:

To be fair, the report's section titled "Government Reform" is about something that hasn't yet happened:

And finally, the section titled "Rule of Law" shows that there isn't much:

One thing, however, that the surge has done is increase the number of people arrested:

"Beds"? Those are prison-cell beds. At last, some good news: We're building more prisons. That's something the U.S. knows about: We have the highest prison population rate in the world.

The report says the U.S. has vowed to show the Iraqis how to run their prisons. The report doesn't say who we're sending them to do that. Hopefully it's not Lynndie England.

Amid the stifling heat, the prickly rash of a hated occupation by foreign soldiers, and the outbreak of car bombings by terrorists, frustrated Iraqis are blowing up their own government.

That's odd: Don Rumsfeld's propaganda machine doesn't mention that this morning. Instead, the Defense Department proclaims:

Terrorists in Iraq have been unable to derail the political process, a new Defense Department report on Iraqi stability and security states. Still, the report contends, insurgents "remain capable, adaptable, and intent on carrying out attacks."

The report to Congress on measuring stability and security in Iraq says the inability of insurgents to derail political progress is a "noteworthy strategic indicator of progress toward a stable security environment."

Is this some sort of sick joke? The "report" is nothing more than the latest Weekly Status Report—the same vague charts—that the U.S. government has been pumping out for months, only this time accompanied by more bullshit.

I've written plenty about these weekly reports—at first produced by Defense and now by State—how they've become less and less informative as the situation in Iraq has gotten worse and worse, how they constantly overstate the number of Iraqi cops and soldiers.

This latest version, transmogrified by Rumsfeld into "good news," doesn't even mention that the total number of "trained" troops includes those who have gone AWOL.

Compare page 12 of this new Rumsfeld report with page 6 of the July 6 State Department Weekly Status Report and you'll see what I mean: It's the same chart, with the "soldiers" and "cops" columns reversed. The numbers are very similar but slightly different, which is odd, because each chart says the data are as of July 4.

Of course, only the State Department version includes the footnotes about the figures being padded by the AWOL troops. Below are the charts I'm talking about. Sorry they're so small, but I'm hemmed in by the layout. Click on each to get the PDF files.

I guess Rumsfeld figures that Congress is too stupid and lazy to compare the two charts and realize that he and his staff are—in addition to twisting, massaging, and omitting—just making up this shit as they go along. I guess he's probably right.

Besides the lies, what the Bush regime is neglecting to tell you is that the political process in Iraq is blowing up without the direct aid of explosives.

Just a couple of days ago, the Baghdad provincial council unanimously decided to fire the city's governor, Alaa al-Tamimi, accusing him "of being incapable of dealing with his responsibilities," says the daily Al-Adala (brought to us by the intrepid Ali Kadhim Marzook in the Baghdad bureau of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting). The IWPR's summary continues:

The council also said he is not firm in dealing with his staff, which resulted in bad services for the people and corruption. The council added that he is always out of Iraq and relies on people who are not competent to run his office. They accused him of corruption, saying he used 13 billion Iraqi dinars a month as salaries for the office of guards and security, but no one knows where this office is.

Digression: George W. Bush was right: We really are building a Western-style democracy there. Al-Tamimi would be right at home in the Nassau County GOP, Al D'Amato's old machine, which plundered one of the nation's richest counties and left its citizenry with outrageously high taxes and poor services. (Full disclosure: That includes me.) Alaa al-Tamimi. Al D'Amato. They even sound the same. End of digression.

You careful readers of Iraqi politics, please note: Alaa al-Tamimi is not to be confused with Alwan al-Tamimi, deputy leader of the Diyala provincial council, who was blown up for real on June 2 in Baquba. A car bomb killed the latter al-Tamimi and three of his bodyguards as their convoy drove past.

Bodyguards aren't safe even when their boss isn't around: Earlier that day, the bodyguards of Deputy Prime Minister Ruz Nuri Shawis were eating in a Baghdad restaurant when it exploded. The bomb not only destroyed the place but also set eight cars on fire. Shawis wasn't there, because he travels by air. Of his guards, who traveled by car, one of them was killed and six others injured.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to figure out who's getting blown up, who's getting kicked out, who's doing what. Maybe that's because, as the daily Al-Sabah reports, Iraq's Ministry of Information has been dissolved.

Well, at least the courts are functioning. After all, Saddam Hussein is about to go on trial, right?

But the legal office of the Council of Ministers, according to the daily paper Baghdad, has decided to get rid of the court system's director general, security director, and seven judges of the criminal court. That's because they had contact with the dissolved Baath regime. Twelve to 17 more judges face ouster for the same reason.

That shouldn't stop Saddam's supposedly upcoming trial. Only the hell that is Iraq itself could do that. His lawyer Giovanni di Stefano—at least di Stefano claims to be one of Saddam's lawyers—wants a change of venue for obvious reasons, telling the Associated Press the other day:

"Do you fancy spending a year or more in Baghdad, going to court five days a week? Would you feel safe there?

"Baghdad couldn't even prevent the recent kidnapping and killing of the Egyptian ambassador. There are also many Iraqis who want to see Saddam executed and many others who want to see him freed. That means the defense and prosecution would both be in danger there."

Lynndie England's life has degenerated into little more than a double-wide soap opera. But before you wash your hands of her, feast on this link between her and last week's holier-than-thou National Day of Prayer—and to the Bush campaign chest and predatory lending. Connect the dots and you'll see there's a chicken in every plot:

• Before enlisting in the Army, the Abu Ghraib poster girl worked in a chicken-processing plant an hour's drive from her Fort Ashby, West Virginia, trailer, according to USA Today.

• The most popular such plant for Fort Ashby residents—it's exactly 59 minutes away, according to MapQuest—is the huge Pilgrim's Pride chicken-processing complex in Moorefield, West Virginia.

• In July 2004, PETA released a video— secretly shot inside the Pilgrim's Pride plant in Moorefield—that showed murder most fowl:

Workers were caught on video stomping on chickens, kicking them, and violently slamming them against floors and walls. Workers also ripped the animals’ beaks off, twisted their heads off, spat tobacco into their eyes and mouths, spray-painted their faces, and squeezed their bodies so hard that the birds expelled feces—all while the chickens were still alive.

This stomach-turning stuff—and its link to England's home state—was noted at the time by several bloggers, including those on Digestible News.

Say, that "stomping" sounds familiar. I wrote about that technique last summer in "You Flinched!"—an item about testimony from an Abu Ghraib soldier.

Also last summer, Princeton ethicist Peter Singer made the connection between the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the torture of chickens at Moorefield. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece he co-wrote (and that was re-posted by Dangerous Citizen), Singer noted:

The sickening images echo the snapshots and videotapes that found their way out of another inhumane facility: Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

In both Baghdad and Moorefield, W.Va., a simple cruel dynamic was at work. When humans have unchecked power over those they see as inferior, they may abuse it. Slaughterhouse workers do not expect to be chastised for hurting animals. And the American soldiers at Abu Ghraib clearly did not expect punishment, or they would not have posed for photographs. In both instances, laws or treaties that should have protected against the abuses were unknown or ignored. That is not surprising: Where much abuse is allowed, the protections that do exist are unlikely to be taken seriously.

The Department of Justice has considered in detail when prisoners in the war on terror may be exempt from the humane protections of the Geneva Convention. The government has long since made that leap with animals. Chickens, for example, are exempt from the U.S. Humane Methods of Slaughter Act.

Singer didn't mention Lynndie England, but I'll bet she didn't treat chickens any better than she treated Iraqis.

• Pilgrim's Pride is the second largest chicken producer in the country. Here's how Reuters (through Yahoo's page on the company) puts it:

During fiscal year ended October 2, 2004 (fiscal 2004), the company sold 5.3 billion pounds of dressed chicken and 310.2 million pounds of dressed turkey and generated net sales of $5.4 billion.

Its profit margins were gross:

For the 26 weeks ended 4/2/05, revenues rose 13% to $2.74 billion. Net income totaled $104.9 million, up from $43.2 million. Revenues reflect an increase in chicken sales. Net income also reflects an increase in gross profit margins.

• Operating out of the Pilgrim's Pride home office in Pittsburg, Texas, the company's owner, Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim (see photo), is one of the country's major individual donors to George W. Bush and the Republican Party. He was a "Minor League Pioneer" for Bush in 2000 and a "Major League Pioneer" for Bush in 2004, according to Texans for Public Justice.

Recall the company's history: In 2002, TPJ reminds us, Pilgrim's Pride recalled 27 million pounds of meat after one of its plants was thought to be the source of "a listeria outbreak that killed eight people, caused three miscarriages, and hospitalized dozens of victims." Heavily fined by environmental regulators for illegally discharging massive amounts of chicken shit and other filth, Pilgrim's Pride was at the same time "the 10th largest recipient of federal agricultural subsidies from 1995 through 2002," adds TPJ.

• Bo Pilgrim wears his fundamentalist Christianity on his sleeve and on his butcher's apron. As Marv Knox of the Baptist Standard quoted him as saying in 2002:

There's no doubt that God wanted me to exemplify being a Christian businessman. I have that feeling, and I am forever conscious of that. I'll go out and make lots of talks around the country. There's where I give Jesus credit for everything I am.

Start of digression: Knox tried to get Pilgrim to solve an age-old puzzle. Here's the exchange:

Knox: With all your history in chickens, do you know why the chicken crossed the road?

Pilgrim: I wish I could give you the answer. I guess everybody has a different answer, but I never really coined an answer for why the chicken crossed the road.

End of digression.

• Last year, Bo Pilgrim, who controls more than 60 percent of his huge, publicly traded company, put Keith W. Hughes on its board of directors.

Hughes was the CEO of Associates First Capital, a subprime lender accused of predatory lending.

Associates First was so notorious that in 2000, the giant company's last year of independent existence, the United Methodist Church's pension fund, the Priests of Sacred Heart, the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, and the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word brought a shareholders resolution to try to get the company to investigate itself for predatory lending and clean up its act. The resolution failed.

The government's case against Associates First was settled only after Citigroup swallowed Hughes's company and coughed up $215 million to the Federal Trade Commission to pay off 2 million former customers. At the time of the 2002 settlement, it was the largest in FTC history.

• Last Thursday (May 5), George W. Bush hosted the annual National Day of Prayer ceremony in the East Room of the White House. The first speaker was Shirley Dobson, wife of right-wing radio evangelist James Dobson. Shirley Dobson is also chairman of the National Day of Prayer—yes, she calls herself "chairman" and "Mrs. Shirley Dobson."

After the choir stopped singing, Shirley Dobson stepped to the microphone in the White House, fawned over the Bushes for a little bit and officially launched the National Day of Prayer. (You can watch her performance, and Bush's speech, on the White House site.)

Millions of Americans, she said, "will seek the grace of God" today. She added:

For example, Pilgrim's Pride, one of America's largest producers of chicken products, is holding prayer observances in 56 of its facilities in 17 countries.

It was the only company she mentioned. (She did say that 150,000 people were supposed to gather at Daytona Beach Speedway to try to crash the pearly gates. Yee-haw!)

With the saccharine tone and sing-song cadence of a beauty pageant contestant's spiel, she praised Pilgrim's Pride but scolded the rest of us.

That scolding stuff is a familiar rap by the right-wing Christians—it's all explained by Shirley Dobson on her "Prayerfully Yours" page of the National Day of Prayer website:

As sinners saved by grace we must realize not only that we don't deserve God's favor, but that we do deserve His wrath! The miracle of God's grace is that He extends mercy to us in spite of our wickedness and rebellion against Him. Put another way, "mercy" is not getting what we deserve, and "grace" is getting what we don't deserve.

We need not look very far to see that our country stands in desperate need of God's healing touch. We have killed over 40 million babies since 1973, and saturated ourselves and our children with pornography and filth. We have numbed ourselves with drugs and alcohol, and taught our kids that premarital sex is a good thing if it is simply done right. We have pursued materialism and false security, while ignoring the Architect of our souls.

As a nation, we have rebelled against the Creator. Our culture is steeped in immorality and self-sufficiency and is growing increasingly hostile toward religious expression.

Self-sufficiency? Have we fallen that far?

I know some chickens that could use "God's healing touch." But anyway, back to the White House. To her audience in the East Room, Mrs. Shirley Dobson toned it down a little bit, saying that her dictionary defines "grace" as something that's "undeserved," and adding:

Almighty God continues to bless America despite the fact that we corporately and individually have turned our backs on Him in many ways.

But our Creator is patient with us, granting His favor and forbearance even though we don't deserve it.

Speak for yourself, Mrs. America.

The president, of course, is a key part of any Christian puppet show. When Bush took the microphone, he smiled at the Dobsons and said:

I want to thank Shirley Dobson, the chairman of the National Day of Prayer. Thank you for organizing this event and thank you for your wonderful comments.

Why did the chicken cross the road? To escape from these religious nuts. The rest of us humans could also use a wing and a prayer.

Will the Senate Judiciary Committee vote yea or nay on John Bolton today? If it's yea, then the full Senate will definitely confirm, so today's expected action will say it all.

Actually, what says it all about Bolton is that he's a career obstructionist, first on behalf of the Reaganites and now for Bush Jr. He has hopped around in government "service" and inexplicably gained power and clout. Well, maybe not inexplicably. He has often fought Congress and the public to try to keep his bosses' dealings secret. Following is just a brief glimpse of part of his work during the Reagan Administration:

March 1986: Newsday's Rita Ciolli writes that the personal financial documents of former Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos, a big pal of the Reagans who fled the U.S., "reveal a blueprint of his corrupt regime and how the billions of dollars in ill-gotten wealth were hidden in bank accounts and shielded in real estate worldwide."

Just like any number of tinpot dictators the current neocon regime cuddles up to, like Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan and Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea.

The 2,100 pages of Marcos documents, full of juicy info about alleged kickbacks and other chicanery involving U.S. firms and politicians, had been seized by U.S. Customs officials when the royal couple fled the Philippines for Hawaii. Naturally the White House wanted to stop their release. And who was given that task? From the Newsday story:

In a letter to [Marcos critic congressman Stephen] Solarz, Assistant Attorney General John Bolton said immediate release of the papers could hurt "both existing federal criminal investigations and any future investigations which may develop from information contained in the documents."

Sources said Justice officials could have sought a court order to stop the release, but did not want to appear to be protecting the Marcoses.

July 1986: The Senate Judiciary Committee, considering Reagan's nomination of Supreme Court justice William Rehnquist to be Chief Justice of the United States, tiptoes around the topic of Rehnquist's past health problems. The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Wermiel wrote:

Mr. Rehnquist attempted to keep his hospitalization secret in 1982 and has refused to discuss it since then, taking the position that his health isn't a matter of public interest.

Bolton makes an appearance in another unhealthy aspect of the Rehnquist matter. Typically, Bolton brought his stonewalling equipment with him. The Houston Chronicle explained:

The confirmation hearing on William Rehnquist's nomination as chief justice of the Supreme Court took an unusual twist when President Reagan invoked executive privilege to prevent Democratic senators from reviewing memos the nominee wrote while working at the Justice Department during the Nixon administration.

The documents dealt with issues including civil rights, civil liberties, wiretapping and surveillance of radical groups.

Reagan's decision to claim executive privilege was disclosed in testimony by Assistant Attorney General John Bolton, after Judiciary Committee Democrats objected to the Justice Department's refusal to provide access to the documents.

Start of digression: Bolton has always been a stonewaller— with a heart to match, judging by the number of people his abrasive manner has pissed off. (See my colleague Jason Vest's April 14 piece, "Wanted: Complete Asshole for U.N. Ambassador.")

It's not hard to fathom why today's Democrats have had such a tough time mustering up the goods to stop Bolton's nomination as U.N. ambassador. It probably has to do with the fact that he spent his so much of his early career as a sleazy government lawyer trying to stonewall the press and public. He was just doing his job. Well, that's fine; someone has to do it. But that career choice doesn't qualify him for the important diplomatic post of U.N. ambassador. In fact, it disqualifies him. End of digression.

Let's go back to '86, when the Democrats were pissed at Bolton's stonewalling on behalf of Rehnquist. The Chronicle explained:

Bolton stressed that the claim covered only highly confidential internal memorandums by Rehnquist at a time when he was acting virtually as President Nixon's lawyer.

From 1969-71, Rehnquist was head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice on critical issues to the attorney general and to the president. At the time, John N. Mitchell was attorney general.

Ted Kennedy, according to the Chronicle, called the Bolton argument "hogwash":

Kennedy said the memos were critical because they were written "on the eve of Watergate" and could reveal Rehnquist's thoughts on key civil rights questions.

Yeah, good luck on finding that out. It's the same charade today as it was back then. Orrin Hatch, at the time a feisty, fairly young senator from Utah, was quoted by the Chronicle as calling the opponents' quest for documents "a fishing expedition":

The reason they're so excited about fishing is they really don't have anything to stop the nominee.

October 1986: The Justice Department, headed by Edwin Meese, decides not to prosecute John McKean, chairman of the Postal Service Board of Governors, who was accused of violating conflict-of-interest laws. John Bolton, variously referred to throughout the year as either a regular assistant A.G. or as the Justice Department's legislative lobbyist (same difference) explained it away, as this Wall Street Journal excerpt noted:

In a letter to the committee on the decision, Assistant Attorney General John Bolton said the department won't take action because of the "absence of any evidence of venality" and because "administrative action" is available. Rep. William Ford (D., Mich.), the committee's chairman, said he will ask the department to explain those references.

No chance of that happening. But you're saying: This seems like a minor deal, right? Wrong. The Journal story noted that McKean's only comment on the decision was that he "has confidence in the Justice Department process." The story continued:

Mr. McKean also figured in a controversy surrounding Attorney General Edwin Meese. Mr. McKean, a San Francisco accountant, arranged a $40,000 loan for Mr. Meese, who later supported him for the Postal Service appointment. Mr. McKean also arranged a $60,000 loan to the wife of former White House aide Michael Deaver.

In 1983, the GAO and the Office of Government Ethics investigated those loans and Mr. McKean's relationship to Messrs. Meese and Deaver. As a result of that probe, Mr. Meese corrected what were termed technical problems with his financial disclosure statement.

When the Justice Department reviewed the GAO report, it said there weren't any criminal violations and further investigation wasn't warranted.

Bolton was doing the smart thing: trying to stonewall so that no one would have to testify. The Reagan gang often got into deep legal trouble when they had to testify. Deaver, for instance, later got a prison sentence (suspended) for lying to Congress.

March 1987: Playing Post Office is one thing, but Iran-Contra was a grown-up scandal, requiring more sophisticated stonewalling. The Washington Post reported:

House and Senate investigators have been blocked by independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh from obtaining Justice Department records on the delay last fall of an FBI inquiry into arms shipments to Nicaraguan contras.

The holdup of the Federal Bureau of Investigation probe is one of four cases over which Walsh had assumed jurisdiction by late last week. The Justice Department has referred at least 52 investigations, most involving arms transactions, to Walsh's office for review since he was appointed by a special three-judge federal court.

Oh, what a sticky mess Iran-Contra was. Bolton was right in the middle of the stonewalling effort, of course. Here's an excerpt from the Washington Post story back then by George Lardner Jr. and Dan Morgan:

[O]n Feb. 25, Assistant Attorney General John R. Bolton informed the House select committee in a six-page letter of the Justice Department's inability to supply a wide range of requested records.

One category that Bolton cited as under Walsh's control concerned "records relating to the delay of ongoing investigations relating to the contras, and any assistance provided to them, in particular the Southern Air investigations."

The FBI began an inquiry into Southern Air's role in ferrying weapons to Iran and to U.S.-backed rebel forces in Nicaragua last Oct. 6, the day after an unmarked C-123 cargo plane financed and serviced by Southern Air was shot down in Nicaragua. The Justice Department asked the FBI on Oct. 30 to delay the inquiry, ostensibly on the grounds that Southern Air was then involved in a "sensitive mission" in the Middle East. The delay continued until Nov. 26.

Walsh declined comment on his stance yesterday, but it has been drawing expressions of dissatisfaction from Capitol Hill, along with growing calls for grants of immunity to key figures in the probe such as former National Security Council aide Oliver L. North.

Check out the Wikipedia page on Iran-Contra for more info and links.

May 1987: By this time, the shit's hittin' the fan in Iran-Contra. As the Boston Globe's Steve Kurkjian reported:

President Reagan can order the independent counsel, Lawrence E. Walsh, to provide Lt. Col. Oliver L. North with immunity in his investigation of the Iran-contra affair and can fire Walsh if he refuses to do so, a Justice Department official told Congress in a letter . . . .

And who was that Justice Department official? Here's more from the Globe story:

In answering a hypothetical question, Assistant Attorney General John R. Bolton stated that by refusing to follow Reagan's directions on providing full immunity to North, Walsh could be liable for dismissal under the independent counsel law, which calls for such removals for "good cause."

Also, Bolton said, Reagan could, in effect, provide such immunity to North on his own by granting to his former National Security Council aide a pardon under Reagan's constitutional powers.

June 1987: Bolton the attack dog. That's a style we've heard about during his confirmation hearings in 2005. It's not a deal breaker, to my mind. His sleazy actions then and now are. According to a 1987 story by the Washington Post's Mary McGrory, Bolton "complained bitterly about Lawrence Walsh's "lifestyle," referring to his fancy offices on the public dime.

March 1988: Bolton gets a new job at Justice: head of the Civil Division. He had been the assistant A.G. in charge of congressional liaison.

What's laughable about that, in light of Bolton's current battle through Senate confirmation, is that in '88 Bolton got to escape a confirmation hearing—see, he not only helped stonewall documents and testimony by others and all that, but he also didn't want to go through the public process himself.

Here's how the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus wryly reported it back then:

Question: When does a nominee to a position requiring Senate confirmation not have to submit to the confirmation process?

Answer: When the nominee has already been confirmed by the Senate.

That bit of confirmation trivia comes courtesy of Attorney General Edwin Meese III's recent decision to appoint John R. Bolton, now the assistant attorney general in charge of congressional liaison, as head of the Justice Department's Civil Division. Because Bolton is simply trading one assistant attorney generalship for another, he does not have to go through the confirmation process again.

Marcus added this context:

While there is some precedent for leap-frogging the confirmation process, Senate sources said some committee members—particularly ranking Republican Strom Thurmond (S.C.)—were miffed to have learned of the planned appointment in the press rather than receiving a courtesy call from the Justice Department to clear the move.

Thurmond was miffed? Maybe Bolton really is the right choice for the U.N. job.

The case against Alberto Gonzales's nomination as U.S. attorney general is too much, too late.

Having caved to the regime throughout George W. Bush's first term, especially when it came to supporting the unjustified invasion of Iraq, the Senate has an almost impossible task: Stopping this unqualified person from becoming the nation's top law enforcement officer.

The result of this process is pure torture for any reasonable observer: The senators get to express their outrage, but to what end? If your attention span is getting short, check out the brilliant little flash movie How Did We Get Here? on the tortured logic of Gonzales and the rest of the Bush regime; the video's put together by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. Start digression: That dynamic organization has inexplicably (to me, at least) changed its name to a slogan, Human Rights First. Is it because you wanted to get the word "lawyers" out of your title? Is it because you want to expand your membership to non-lawyers? Don't be ashamed that most of you are lawyers; some of my best friends and family members went to law school and actually passed the bar. Be proud that you're not using your law degrees solely in the service of debentures or misadventures. End digression.

Whatever its name, HRF is performing an admirable job of watchdogging on the Gonzales nomination.

Someone has to, because the Senate hasn't. During the one measly day the senators had their chance to question Gonzales in person—see my January 6 gavel-to-give-up coverage, "Torture in Real Time"—he couldn't recall this and he couldn't recall that, and he interspersed those responses with frequent eructations of "no," "I don't think so," and "I'll consult my schedule." So they submitted written questions.

And the responses were even more disheartening. Vermont's Pat Leahy distributed Gonzales's written replies—which no doubt were written by people a lot smarter than Gonzales himself. You can find them on the Web at the smart and shrewd Balkinization blog.

By now, you probably know that Gonzales confirms in writing that the CIA can do anything it wants to people whom it considers Al Qaeda suspects. Horrifying, all right, especially in light of Bush's incessant carping about spreading "freedom" and "liberty" throughout the world.

But lost in the furor over that are the future attorney general's responses to purely domestic policies that are impeding the spread of democracy throughout our own damn country.

Gonzales flat-out rejected any criticism of archaic drug-sentencing laws and federal sentencing guidelines—the latter of which the Supreme Court just overturned, by the way. You can refresh your memory first by looking at Ohio law prof Douglas A. Berman's Sentencing Law and Policy blog. Now take a look at Gonzales's replies to Leahy's detailed written questions about the rigidity of federal courts' mandatory minimum sentences and of such Draconian measures as New York's Rockefeller drug laws. In one instance, Leahy pointed out that a conservative federal judge, Paul Cassell of Utah, appointed by Bush himself, described a mandatory sentence as "unjust, cruel, and irrational." So Leahy asked Gonzales:

Do you agree with Judge Cassell that Congress and the Administration should modify mandatory-minimum laws that result in unjust sentences?

Gonzales replied, in part:

If confirmed, I pledge to carefully examine the current system of mandatory-minimums with the focus on protecting society and appropriately punishing culpable offenders.

Pressing the point (as futilely as you can with written questions, for God's sake), Leahy then asked:

Do you agree that, like New York, Congress should reconsider the severity of drug sentences for non-violent offenders which are out of proportion to existing sentences for violent offenses? If not, why not?

Gonzales replied, in part:

As I stated above, if confirmed, I pledge to examine carefully the current system of mandatory minimum sentencing with the focus on protecting society and appropriately punishing culpable offenders.

Leahy then zoomed in on federal drug sentences, the laws and guidelines that have resulted in a highly unfair and racially unjust criminalization of a sizable proportion of this generation's black and Latino Americans. Leahy asked:

Great injustices result from the application of mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. In particular, the application of mandatory minimums against low-level drug users and sellers is disproportionately harsh. In 1986 Congress created mandatory minimum penalties in the Controlled Substances Act and directed Department of Justice to focus on high-level drug-trafficking cases. Triggers for five year mandatory minimum sentences were set at 500 grams of powder cocaine and 5 grams of crack cocaine.

Are you concerned that the current triggers for five-year mandatory minimum sentences contribute to the type of inequities described by Judge Cassell? Do you have any concerns about our current mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders?

Gonzales's written response—the part in which he actually says something:

As I stated, Congress has reserved the application of mandatory minimums for high-priority areas of national concern that most affect public safety, such as drug offenses. It is my understanding that mandatory minimums provide a clear deterrent and have been effective. . . . If confirmed, I pledge to carefully examine the current system of mandatory minimum sentencing with the focus on protecting society and appropriately punishing culpable offenders.

Do we detect a pattern in his responses? This type of boilerplate bullshit is maddening.

Not that any reasonable person expects Alberto Gonzales to be a voice for homeland justice. But the fact is that he may turn out to be a lot more dangerous to our Constitution than John Ashcroft was. Ashcroft was somewhat of a loose cannon in the Bush regime. Gonzales is just a toady, not a policymaker, so he'll do what Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Andy Card want him to do. And he doesn't carry the religious baggage of Ashcroft—see any one of many Nat Hentoff pieces, plus my own 2001 Voice story "The Gospel According to the AG," for starters.

Now, with Gonzales about to take over law enforcement in the U.S., y'all secular types should maybe take Ashcroft's advice and start praying.

It wasn't so much what Alberto Gonzales said or didn't say that mattered at yesterday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on his nomination to be—good grief!—attorney general of the United States.

It was what he said he wouldn't say once AG becomes AG. Look for Gonzales to be even more secretive and even less forthcoming than John Ashcroft was. At yesterday's hearing, Gonzales was Lucy holding the football for a bunch of Charlie Browns. They got peanuts from this Bush flunky.

It was bad enough that Gonzales's memory conveniently failed him about past events. As this morning's Washington Post story noted:

Under often tough questioning from Democrats and some Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales said he could not recall key details of his involvement in the production of an August 2002 memo that narrowly defined the tactics that constitute torture. He also declined repeated invitations to repudiate a past administration assertion that the president has the authority to ignore anti-torture statutes on national security grounds.

Gonzales testified that while he disagreed with portions of the Justice Department memo, he could not recall whether he conveyed those objections to other government lawyers at the time. He said he did not quarrel with its general findings.

Gonzales said he could not remember who had requested the legal guidance on permissible interrogation tactics—many officials have said it was the CIA—but he acknowledged under questioning that high-pressure interrogation techniques were discussed in White House meetings at which he was present. Others have said the tactics included mock burials and simulated drownings.

The memo—which was used to formulate permissive Defense Department rules on interrogations—was withdrawn by the Justice Department after it was revealed publicly in 2004 and has since been rewritten, reaching starkly different conclusions.

Gonzales did remember, however, to pay lip service to freedom and liberty:

"Torture and abuse will not be tolerated by this administration. I will ensure the Department of Justice aggressively pursues those responsible for such abhorrent actions."

Well, you'd better hurry, Judge Al, if you're going stop that plane taking off for Egypt. I'm referring to an anecdote in a Newsweek story from June 21, 2004, that is required reading if you want to understand the Bush regime's tortured history. Here's an excerpt concerning the interrogation of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an Al Qaeda official the U.S. captured in Afghanistan in November 2001:

President Bush had declared war on Al Qaeda, and in a series of covert directives, he had authorized the CIA to set up secret interrogation facilities and to use new, harsher methods. The CIA, says the FBI source, was "fighting with us tooth and nail." . . .

The handling of al-Libi touched off a long-running battle over interrogation tactics inside the administration. It is a struggle that continued right up until the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April—and it extended into the White House, with Condoleezza Rice's National Security Council pitted against lawyers for the White House counsel and the vice president. Indeed, one reason the prison abuse scandal won't go away . . . is that a long paper trail of memos and directives from inside the administration has emerged, often leaked by those who disagreed with rougher means of questioning.

What does this have to do with a flight to Egypt? Here's more from the Newsweek story:

Al-Libi's capture, some sources say, was an early turning point in the government's internal debates over interrogation methods. FBI officials brought their plea to retain control over al-Libi's interrogation up to FBI Director Robert Mueller. The CIA station chief in Afghanistan, meanwhile, appealed to the agency's hawkish counter-terrorism chief, Cofer Black. He in turn called CIA Director George Tenet, who went to the White House. Al-Libi was handed over to the CIA.

"They duct-taped his mouth, cinched him up and sent him to Cairo" for more-fearsome Egyptian interrogations, says the ex-FBI official. "At the airport the CIA case officer goes up to him and says, 'You're going to Cairo, you know. Before you get there I'm going to find your mother and I'm going to f--- her.' So we lost that fight." (A CIA official said he had no comment.)

F--- me to tears! Is it any wonder that Teddy Kennedy was so frustrated yesterday at the lack of time allowed for questioning someone who has been the White House's top lawyer through all this?

Anyway, at the end of yesterday's session, long after most of America's media hounds had already left the room and were crafting their first Pravda-like paragraphs (by which I mean properly Establishment), Gonzales really pissed off the panel's new chairman, Arlen Specter.

The Pennsylvania senator, who had acted throughout the day as if he were making veal, the way he forced the panel members to squeeze four years of questions into one measly session, had a few final queries for Gonzales:

Will you allow the Red Cross access to the "detainees" (Governmentspeak for "prisoners") at Guantánamo?

Gonzales: "As a general matter, I support the Red Cross."

Well, that's just hunky-dory.

Specter complained that Ashcroft had basically ignored the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said to Gonzales: Will you commit to meeting with us, say, twice a year? Pretty please? With sugar on top?

Gonzales: "My goal is to be as responsive as I can, and two times a year doesn't seem unreasonable."

Digression: Well, it seems unreasonable to me. Only twice a year, and he won't firmly commit to even that? Medic! Medic! Where's the Red Cross?! We need some help for our wounded democracy!

OK, I'm back: Specter then talked about the panel's "oversight" role. "Oversight" is the right word for our current government. But Specter meant that he plans to be "diligent" about overseeing the Department of Justice. That means he wants timely information about what Justice is doing—that's the panel's historic function. That's what he told the nominee. And this was the following exchange:

Gonzales: "I have some concerns about the release of information that might jeopardize national security, but I look forward to working with your committee."

Specter: "Mr. Gonzales, this is the first answer of yours that I find insufficient."

Why was Specter so pissed? Because Gonzales was essentially telling him that he will cut off Specter and ranking minority member Pat Leahy from the information they're entitled to—memos, reports, updates on litigation and policy—that Judiciary Committee leaders have always sought and usually gotten.

All Specter got from Gonzales was this vague pledge: "I will do my very best."

Well, what did Specter expect? He clearly had cut a deal with the Bush regime and its Senate allies: They would allow the relatively moderate, non-ideological Specter to succeed the hidebound Orrin Hatch as chairman of this crucial committee if he wouldn't press Gonzales (in addition to not hassling the administration's right-wing judicial nominees). But as Kennedy noted in frustration earlier in the hearing, the panel had grilled Dick Kleindienst for 22 days before allowing him to become a disastrous attorney general for Dick Nixon. Kleindienst, by the way, was later convicted of perjury for lying at his confirmation hearing.

Specter's riposte to Kennedy's reference to Kleindienst was that "22 days wasn't enough."

But one day for questioning Gonzales was enough?

The news from Iraq is grimmer than you know. Finally starting to crank up real-life coverage of the Bush Error, the New York Times revealed this morning the existence of a secret (to the public) "bleak assessment" sent to Washington last week by the CIA's station chief in Baghdad, followed by briefings in D.C. that reinforced the bad news.

But other reinforcements are on the way to chaotic Iraq. The Pentagon, hoping to promote warm and fuzzy feelings here and abroad, is shipping more than 28,000 stuffed animals to soldiers there and elsewhere overseas as part of Operation Grateful. Arizona schoolgirl Alison Goulder already has the approval of General Richard "Quag" Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for her roundup of thousands of dolls from the play areas of American homes. (See yesterday's Morning Report in the Bush Beat.) She also has the full support of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. (See photo below).

Operation Grateful was set up by Greenberg Traurig, the powerful D.C. firm of lawyers and lobbyists that was the HQ of Bush fundraiser/pal Jack Abramoff until earlier this year, when scandal hit.

Not a word of protest has been heard from the stuffed animals heading to Iraq—unlike human soldiers such as Donald Qualls who are being kept on active duty despite their protests and lawsuits.

Awaiting the unprecedented number of soldiers and stuffed animals in Iraq is a country that is increasingly out of control. This morning Times story by Douglas Jehl, pinned to unnamed "officials," says of the classified CIA cable and the briefings that followed:

Together, the appraisals, which follow several other such warnings from officials in Washington and in the field, were much more pessimistic than the public picture being offered by the Bush administration before the elections scheduled for Iraq next month, the officials said.

Unfortunately, Jehl only paraphrases the cable, leading one (me, that is) to speculate that the Bush regime is purposely leaking the bad news this way to let the public down gradually, before more actual documents of the Iraq misadventure find their way—oh God, no!—into the public's hands.

In any case, Jehl writes:

The officials described the station chief's cable in particular as an unvarnished assessment of the difficulties ahead in Iraq. They said it warned that the security situation was likely to get worse, including more violence and sectarian clashes, unless there were marked improvements soon on the part of the Iraqi government, in terms of its ability to assert authority and to build the economy.

Time to set Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine to February 27, 2003, days before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, for Mr. Wolfowitz's testimony before the House Budget Committee. The Deputy Secretary of Defense said:

If I might digress for a moment, Mr. Chairman, from my prepared testimony, because there has been a good deal of comment—some of it quite outlandish—about what our postwar requirements might be in Iraq. That great Yankee catcher and occasional philosopher, Yogi Berra, once observed that it is dangerous to make predictions,especially about the future.

(If I might digress for a moment: I'm amused that anyone in the Bush regime, which often exhibits the signs of 'roid rage, would make a baseball reference.)

Wolfowitz continued:

That piece of wise advice certainly applies to predictions about wars and their aftermath, and I am reluctant to try to predict anything about what the cost of a possible conflict in Iraq would be—what the possible cost of reconstructing and stabilizing that country afterwards might be.

But some of the higher-end predictions that we have been hearing recently, such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand U.S. troops to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq, are wildly off the mark.

Uh-huh. Keep talking.

First, it is hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in a post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army—hard to imagine.

Geez, you don't even have to drag Wolfowitz by his hair from a Humvee to a prison cell or strip him and wedge him into a pyramid of naked people or punish him while he prays or have him simulate masturbation or threaten him with rape or throw him into a wall or smear shit on his back or scare him with a growling dog or put a dog collar on him or ride him around like a donkey or hook up wires to his nuts while making him stand on a box or make fun of his schmeckel while you grin for the camera. The guy just keeps talking:

Moreover, the Iraqis themselves can provide a good deal of whatever manpower is necessary. We are training free Iraqi forces to perform functions of that kind, including command of Iraqi units, once those units have been purged of their Baathist leadership.

Wolfowitz should have paid less attention to Yogi Berra and more attention to Monty Python—or Bernie Kerik, for that matter. (See this Bush Beat item for both.) But for Wolfowitz, it's again with the Yogi Berra:

The fourth and most fundamental point is that we go back to Yogi Berra. We simply cannot predict. We have no idea whether weapons of mass terror will be used. We have no idea what kind of ethnic strife might appear in the future, although as I have noted, it has not been the history of Iraq’s past. We do not know what kind of damage Saddam Hussein will wreak on Iraq’s oil fields or its other infrastructure.

On the other side, we can’t be sure that the Iraqi people will welcome us as liberators, although based on what Iraqi-Americans told me in Detroit a week ago, many of them, most of them with families in Iraq, I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down.

In short, we don’t know what the requirements will be. But we can say with reasonable confidence that the notion of hundreds of thousands of American troops is way off the mark.