WASHINGTON (AP) -- Digging deeper for help in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army is preparing for an involuntary recall to active duty of about 5,600 civilians who have either retired or were discharged after previous service.

In a new sign of the strain the insurgency in Iraq has put on the U.S. military, Army officials said Tuesday the move would be the first sizable activation of the Individual Ready Reserve since the 1991 Gulf War. Several hundred people had voluntarily returned to service since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
[…]

"This was inevitable when it became clear that we would have to maintain significant combat forces in Iraq for a period of years,'' said Dan Goure, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a think tank.

The Army is pinpointing certain skills in short supply, like medical specialists and engineers. The intention is to give those selected for recall at least 30 days' notice, one official said.

The Army is so stretched for manpower that in April it broke a promise to some active-duty units, including the 1st Armored Division, that they would not have to serve more than 12 months in Iraq. It also has extended the tours of other units, including some in Afghanistan.
[…]

The Pentagon had hoped to reduce its troop levels in Iraq to about 105,000 this spring, but because of increasingly effective and deadly resistance the level has risen to about 140,000.

Military officials have said they may need to stay at that level for at least another year or two, a commitment of forces that could not be maintained by the active force alone.

The Army frequently must integrate reservists with its active-duty forces, but it rarely has to reach into the Individual Ready Reserve. The Army has about 117,000 people in this category of reservist; the Navy has 64,000, the Marine Corps 58,000 and the Air Force 37,000.

Good planning, George. Go chew a pretzel.

It's been extremely difficult to get a full transcript of the Michael Moore movie. So here's a thought: why doesn't some enterprising blogger take a tape recorder to a screening, transcribe the narrative, and post it? Then it's a fiskathon. On your marks, get set ...

Should I go to the library and photocopy his books instead of buying them?

Supreme Court Partially Sides With Bush on American Detainee Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled narrowly Monday that Congress gave President Bush the power to hold an American citizen without charges or trial, but said the detainee can challenge his treatment in court.

The ruling sided with the administration on an important legal point raised in the war on terrorism. At the same time, it left unanswered other hard questions raised by the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, who has been detained more than two years and who was only recently allowed to see a lawyer.

The administration had fought any suggestion that Hamdi or another U.S.-born terrorism suspect could go to court, saying that such a legal fight posed a threat to the president's power to wage war as he sees fit.

"We have no reason to doubt that courts, faced with these sensitive matters, will pay proper heed both to the matters of national security that might arise in an individual case and to the constitutional limitations safeguarding essential liberties that remain vibrant even in times of security concerns," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the court.

O'Connor said that Hamdi "unquestionably has the right to access to counsel."

The court threw out a lower court ruling that supported the government's position fully, and Hamdi's case now returns to a lower court.

The careful opinion seemed deferential to the White House, but did not give the president everything he wanted.

The ruling is the largest test so far of executive power in the post-Sept. 11 assault on terrorism.

And we failed the test. It's hard to guess the value of a detainee's right to challenge in court when the court is more interested in being "deferential" to the White House — anybody's White House.

Hail Caesar.


Note: Atrios has a more optimistic view. Maybe I'm just being gloomy, but it's hard to feel chipper about anything that increases executive power.

UPDATE (3:00 pm) If the folks at SCOTUSblog are satisfied, I guess I should be, too. The notion that the government can hold people indefinitely, without charge or trial raises my hackles. Anything that seems to confirm it I'm not likely to like.

Medicare is planning a lottery later this year for people with cancer, multiple sclerosis and several other diseases. For the 50,000 winners, the government will start helping pay for their medicine, but more than 450,000 others must wait until 2006.

If this sounds personal, it is. Of two parents and two step-parents, three died of cancer; I helped bury the last in January. Allow me to recommend to "Tommy" the joys of splintery broom-handles. (Or non-splintery: take a ticket and scratch it off; but fuck yourself.)

Personal note to K: If you don't vote this year, older brother will hurt you severely.

That the national debt limit needs to be raised because we are borrowing so much money is no great secret, but Republicans in Congress want to raise that limit with as little public notice as possible.

That would rule out a freestanding vote because that would highlight the record deficits the Republicans have run up over the last three years.

The Democrats, retroactive converts to the cause of balanced budgets, would point out that, after taking office with the publicly held share of the national debt declining thanks to four years of surpluses, the Bush administration has had to twice ask that the borrowing cap be lifted, for a total of $1.4 trillion.

Now it needs a third of about $690 billion -- and soon. That would take the gross national debt to more than $8 trillion, an impressive number.
[...]

The Treasury will bump up against the $7.3 trillion debt limit later this summer. The White House has told congressional Republicans that Bush's Treasury secretary, John Snow, could stall for time, and maybe even get past the November election without lifting the cap, by juggling some government accounts and borrowing from others.

But there's a problem: When President Clinton's Treasury secretary Robert Rubin did that, these same congressional Republicans threatened to impeach him.

It's so true in Washington: What goes around, comes around.

For the conceptually impaired, Rubin's "juggling" created surpluses; Snow's juggling will create new debts. This is your children being turned into debt slaves.

Bush tax cuts could pay for hiring all nine million people out of work and pay them $40K for two years instead of benefiting wealthy.

That, folks, is a soundbite. With a bit of work, it could be a bumpersticker. Something like, "Thank God my former job helped Bush's Rangers."

If Kerry's creative team doesn't prowl the blogs, they're fools. One of the "conventional wisdoms" about Kerry is that his speaking style is dull. Some of the sharpest, deftest, jugular-est phrases I've seen have been on the blogs. Mine us thoroughly.

(Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) In an attempt to avoid paying benefits to the partners of its gay and lesbian employees the University of Pittsburgh is calling for a court to strike down the city's non discrimination ordinance that protects gays.

In its brief, the University of Pittsburgh argues that the City of Pittsburgh did not have the authority to include sexual orientation protection in its civil right ordinance since sexual orientation was not covered by state civil rights protections.

If the court accepts the argument it would invalidate civil rights ordinances in other Pennsylvania cities including Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Lancaster, York and Erie that also protect against sexual orientation.

Ah, those liberals, always trying to impose special rights via the courts, despite the will of the people.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Facing strong opposition, the United States announced Wednesday it was dropping a resolution seeking a new exemption for American peacekeepers from international prosecution for war crimes.
[…]

The current one-year exemption expires on June 30.

U.S. President George W. Bush's administration argues that the International Criminal Court -- which started operating last year -- could be used for frivolous or politically motivated prosecutions of American troops.

The 94 countries that have ratified the 1998 Rome Treaty establishing the court maintain it contains enough safeguards to prevent frivolous prosecutions and insist that nobody should be exempt.

I hate so say it, but I wonder if the dates of the exemption and the handover in Iraq are coincidental.

When the commission studying the 9/11 terrorist attacks refuted the Bush administration's claims of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, we suggested that President Bush apologize for using these claims to help win Americans' support for the invasion of Iraq. We did not really expect that to happen. But we were surprised by the depth and ferocity of the administration's capacity for denial. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have not only brushed aside the panel's findings and questioned its expertise, but they are also trying to rewrite history.

Mr. Bush said the 9/11 panel had actually confirmed his contention that there were "ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He said his administration had never connected Saddam Hussein to 9/11. Both statements are wrong.

Before the war, Mr. Bush spoke of far more than vague "ties" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He said Iraq had provided Al Qaeda with weapons training, bomb-making expertise and a base in Iraq. On Feb. 8, 2003, Mr. Bush said that "an Al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990's for help in acquiring poisons and gases." The 9/11 panel's report, as well as news articles, indicate that these things never happened.

Mr. Cheney said yesterday that the "evidence is overwhelming" of an Iraq-Qaeda axis and that there had been a "whole series of high-level contacts" between them. The 9/11 panel said a senior Iraqi intelligence officer made three visits to Sudan in the early 1990's, meeting with Osama bin Laden once in 1994. It said Osama bin Laden had asked for "space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded." [Instead they set up camps in Afghanistan; you do remember Afghanistan, don't you Dick? — Ed.] The panel cited reports of further contacts after Osama bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1996, but said there was no working relationship. As far as the public record is concerned, then, Mr. Cheney's "longstanding ties" amount to one confirmed meeting, after which the Iraq government did not help Al Qaeda. By those standards, the United States has longstanding ties to North Korea.

And by those standards, we had longstanding, and far more substantial ties to Hussein than bin Laden ever did. Maybe he was jealous.

I read about Cheney's outrageous remarks on the Today show — on which he claimed that the media are "often lazy, often report what someone else in the press said without doing their homework..." — with amazement. After I stopped laughing, my first thought was, who knew he was a fan of Bob Somerby?

Even for this administration, that statement was, literally, incredible. Clinton would have given a testicle for such passive coverage. (Hillary would have donated the other one.) For once, some part of media have not just whipped out their steno pads and looked on reverently while George and Dick push the verb "to lie" to new limits. It's a novel experience for them, and they don't like it a bit.

Happily, in addition to the Times, the Commission is also calling Cheney's bluff: show us the proof. Rather elegantly, by means of his own mouth, Dick has put himself in awkward position. Either he and George withheld critical information from the commission, further eroding their credibility (wouldn't that be a surprise?), or they're lying now (same note). And a word of advice, guys: if you do "suddenly" find some proofs lying around [sic], do us the courtesy of making sure the ink is dry. (That means exactly what you think it does.)

The Commission's findings. The Abu Ghraib reports. Attempts to "legalize" torture, despite treaties and clear and present dangers to our own people. Rumsfeld's "disappearing" prisoner. The notion that the president can set aside laws at whim. (Skip morality; never heard of it.) In short: a growing list of high crimes and misdemeanors, both perpetrated and planned, too sickening to count. Were it not for less messy means of taking out the trash a few months from now, I'd be howling for a rash of impeachments.

Across the country, evangelical Christians are voicing frustration and puzzlement that there has not been more of a political outcry since May 17, when Massachusetts became the first state to issue same-sex marriage licenses.

Evangelical leaders had predicted that a chorus of righteous anger would rise up out of churches from coast to coast and overwhelm Congress with letters, e-mails and phone calls in support of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

But that has not happened.

"Standing on Capitol Hill listening, you don't hear anything," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, one of the country's most vigorous Christian advocacy groups.

Perkins and other evangelical leaders contend that the outrage is out there. They say it has not been felt in Washington because defenders of traditional marriage are still in shock, or are focused on winning state constitutional amendments against same-sex marriage, or are distracted by the war in Iraq and other issues.

But a few skeptics on the Christian right, as well as many on the Christian left, are beginning to conclude that there is more fervor for a constitutional amendment in America's pulpits than in its pews. And politicians of both parties say the issue has had less grass-roots sizzle than they had expected.
[...]

Diana Buechsenschuetc, secretary of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Decatur, Ill., which belongs to the conservative Missouri Synod, said that gay marriage "does worry me" but that the war and the economy are more important. "In this area, it's really the economy," Buechsenschuetc, said.

Her pastor, the Rev. Wray Offermann, said gay marriage is one of the prime concerns of the congregation. But he said "there's no doubt" his parishioners do not take it as seriously as he does. "They, too, are impacted by the general permissiveness of our society," he said.

Ah, so that's the plague: permissiveness. I'm surprised he didn't mention Clinton by name.

Not that folks aren't trying to flog this dying horse back to life. Senate Republicans will bring up the Federal Marriage Amendment in mid-July, in an effort to embarrass the Democrats at their convention. Over at WorldNetDaily, flogger-in-chief Falwell says:

Gary Bauer is reporting that a deal has been struck between Senate Democrats and militant homosexual activists to kill any effort to protect traditional marriage. Mr. Bauer, chairman of the Campaign for Working Families, said that, at present, many senators are "hiding behind a host of excuses to avoid doing the only thing that will preserve marriage in America as the union of one man and one woman." That means the voices of those opposing same-sex marriage are not being heard.

In other words, they don't have the votes and little hope of getting them. I'd be fascinated to see how many Republicans intend to vote against the FMA or at least sit it out. ("Hiding," as Bauer would have it, and he's actually right; eeew — I wrote that?) Those names we'll never hear from Falwell, Bauer, or any of the rest of the God Squad. Kerry, of course, will be lashed soundly. The fact that he opposes FMA will be twisted into an endorsement of equal marriage, which, disappointingly, he opposes.

I keep my fingers crossed. By the time Massachusetts can amend its constitution, lots of people should be yawning: happy, peaceful people are so boring. The sight of sleepy people in the Bay State may calm the nerves of jittery New Yorkers, where an equal protection challenge is being developed. Gradually, a plague of narcolepsy may spread across the land. (There will be insomniac pockets, of course.)

The Post article had an interesting fact: though 38% of Americans describe themselves as born again, only 9% "hold a 'biblical worldview'." I don't know why, but it gives me hope.

I have been quite clear in this blog that, in my judgment, no self-respecting gay person could vote for Bush; and I consider myself a self-respecting gay person. In my first response to the FMA, I wrote that "[t]his president has now made the Republican party an emblem of exclusion and division and intolerance. Gay people will now regard it as their enemy for generations - and rightly so." ... My only dilemma now is whether to support Kerry or sit this one out. It still is.

In a retort to Jonah Goldberg (same link; scroll up), he states:

... Could it be that Bush has not governed as a conservative in critical ways - and hasn't even governed competently in others? Let's list a few: the WMD intelligence debacle - the worst blow to the credibility of the U.S. in a generation; Abu Ghraib - a devastating wound to to [sic]America's moral standing in the world; the post-war chaos and incompetence in Iraq; an explosion in federal spending with no end in sight; no entitlement reform; a huge addition to fiscal insolvency with the Medicare drug entitlement; support for a constitutional amendment, shredding states' rights; crusades against victimless crimes, like smoking pot and watching porn; the creeping fusion of religion and politics; the erosion of some critical civil liberties in the Patriot Act. I could go on. Is there any point at which a conservative might consider not voting for Bush? For the editor of National Review Online, the answer is indeed "fairly obvious." But for people not institutionally related to the G.O.P., the only question is: where would that line be?

The pilings-on continue. First the Reagans, now Sullivan. Holy landslide, Batman, I'm starting to feel optimistic.

Bush, with his recent appreciation of past Democratic presidents, might reflect on Lyndon Johnson's description of a Texas hailstorm: "You can't run. You can't hide. And you can't make it stop."

Note to Andrew: If you sit this one out, you risk returning everything you despise to the White House by default.

There is no evidence that Saddam Hussein ever teamed with al-Qaida to launch terrorist attacks on the United States or developed a "collaborative relationship" of any kind with the terrorist network, the 9/11 commission has concluded.

Osama bin Laden asked Iraq in 1994 for space to establish training camps and help in obtaining weapons, but the Iraqis never responded, the commission said in a staff statement issued yesterday.

The commission also concluded that a purported meeting between lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and a top Iraqi intelligence official five months before the terror attacks never happened.

The commission findings appear to contradict frequent assertions by Vice President Dick Cheney - reiterated on Monday - and other administration officials of a link between al-Qaida and Hussein. "He had long-established ties with al-Qaida," Cheney said during a speech in Orlando, Fla.

Dick Cheney, usually ensconced in his undisclosed location, apparently never got the memo. By now, the UL surely must have a Zipcode. (Unfortunately, a third of commission's report will be off limits to public review, which will make it available for selective misquoting by the administration.)

Bush, in an interesting interpretation of the space-time continuum, said that the "best evidence" a Saddam-al Qaida connection then is the fact that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is linked to the fighting in Iraq now. In the very recent past, however, Bush has blamed our woes in Iraq on an influx of foreign fighters since Saddam's fall, flight, and capture (once fondly known as the Flypaper Theory). Presumably, that would include non-Iraqi al-Zarqawi.

We know he doesn't read newspapers. Doesn't he even read his own speeches?

No president since Johnson has been so supportive of big government as George W. Bush. Why are fiscal conservatives still supporting him?

Why are you?

Dick Cheney is a robot

But we knew that. How sad that most Americans get the truth on supermarket check-out lines.

"It's not anything to whine about," Pelosi says matter-of-factly. "We just have to win. No whining, just winning."

INDIANAPOLIS - The Southern Baptist Convention voted Tuesday to quit the Baptist World Alliance following complaints that some members of the loose, global association had adopted liberal theology and "anti-American" thinking.

The SBC is the world's largest Baptist denomination and America's largest Protestant body, with 16.3 million members. It helped launch the alliance 99 years ago and was a strong supporter before shifting toward strict conservatism a quarter-century ago.
[…]

Prior to Tuesday's vote, Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, said the SBC should not give money or endorsement to an organization that includes liberals.

He also complained that the American Baptist Churches, a U.S. denomination, includes "gay-friendly congregations," and that other members of the world alliance call the inerrancy of Scripture into question.

I don't know whether I'd call Baptists "liberal" in the sense of Unitarians, but I remember reading that they are more eclectic that the image of Falwell would imply. Given the Baptists' history of persecution by others, there remains a strain of religious liberty and church-state separation. Interestingly,

Finally, the 1980s to the present have witnessed a new fundamentalist controversy (also often referred to as a "political" and / or "biblical" controversy) within the largest Baptist denomination, which has altered the course of Southern Baptist history, and Baptist history in general. The minority fundamentalists, now firmly in charge of the national Southern Baptist Convention, have changed the direction and nature of the Convention, resulting in the first statistical decline of the denomination in some 75 years. They have sought to re-fashion Baptist history to validate their theology and their insurgency, and as a result have caused much confusion about Baptist history among Baptist laity and the general populace.

Whereas Baptists have historically been non-creedal, the fundamentalist leadership of the SBC is forcing creedalism upon Southern Baptists through the forced implementation of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. Whereas Southern Baptists have traditionally believed in the Priesthood of all Believers, the fundamentalist leadership positions pastoral authority above the Priesthood of Believers. Whereas Baptists have historically held to the authority of Scripture and looked to Jesus and the Holy Spirit as the criterion for interpreting the Bible, the fundamentalist leadership claims that looking to Jesus and the Holy Spirit as the authority for faith is a liberal position. Instead, they have positioned the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 as the only valid way in which to approach Scripture.

Imagine taking the word of that Jesus guy over someone like Falwell. Liberal, pinko, heretics. Burn, baby, burn.

As Republicans try to cloak President Bush in the mantle of Ronald Reagan, their biggest obstacle may be Mr. Reagan's own family.

Even before Mr. Reagan died, Nancy Reagan and her daughter, Patti Davis, made their opposition to Mr. Bush's policy on stem-cell research well known. But on Friday, at the culmination of an emotional week of mourning for the former president, his son Ron Reagan delivered a eulogy that castigated politicians who use religion "to gain political advantage," a comment that was being interpreted in Washington as a not-so-subtle slap at Mr. Bush.
[...]

[A] friend of the Reagan family, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mr. Reagan, who did not return a call seeking comment on Monday, was deeply uncomfortable with the way the Bush administration intertwined religion and politics and felt compelled to say so at the burial of his father, a ceremony watched by millions.
[...]

Ron Reagan, a television commentator who has frequently been critical of Mr. Bush, has already said as much. In 2000, he fired a shot at Mr. Bush in Philadelphia during the Republican convention, which featured a tribute to his father. "What's his accomplishment?" Mr. Reagan asked then. "That he's no longer an obnoxious drunk?"

That had to hurt. Given comments Ron Reagan has dropped since 2000, last week's slap won't be the last. And unless party elders intervene, the next one probably won't be subtle. Can you imagine the effect of Ron Reagan or Patti Davis endorsing Kerry? (Okay, I can dream.)

Obviously, there's a double edged irony here. In no small measure, Ronnie legitimated and empowered the religious right of Falwell, Robertson, et al. At a 1980 gaggle of fundamentalists in Texas, Ronnie said, "Though I know you can't endorse me, you should know that I endorse you." (Quoted from memory.) Whether he did it from conviction or cool calculation, I won't speculate. But we've been paying for those remarks ever since.

Without that imprimatur, the Republicans might not have leaders who claim G.O.P stands for God's Own Party, and Shrubya might still be a Texas-only embarrassment (if that). Stem-cell research could be years farther along. (AIDS analogy, anyone?) Funny how things work out.

Final note: I'm not fond of Nancy Reagan, but I will give her credit now: in this matter, she is willing to go against Ronnie's competing "heirs," each clamoring "me-me-me." Her adoptive father, Loyal Davis, was a neurosurgeon. (I edited a brief bio of him years ago.) If she were to do an Elizabeth Taylor and marshal her father's protégés — or, by now, his protégés' protégés — she could be formidable.

According to press reports, military doctors and nurses who examined prisoners at Abu Ghraib treated swollen genitals, prescribed painkillers, stitched wounds, and recorded evidence of the abuses going on around them. Under international law — as well as the standards of common decency — these medical professionals had a duty to tell those in power what they saw.

Instead, too often, they returned the victims of torture to the custody of their victimizers. Rather than putting a stop to torture, they tacitly abetted it, by patching up victims and staying silent.

Christ…

After sorting through all the "chatter," it's confirmed: there's a radiological bomb in Manhattan. And we got one of "the guys." He's not some profile-likely wrong guy: he's the guy. The clock is ticking. Do it.

After some time, the guy "cracks": it's at the Stock Exchange, great symbol of capitalism. Where? He doesn't know, he didn't place it. Somewhere on the third floor.

Except that it's at Macy's, great symbol of consumer capitalism. It's December 20th.

How many suicide bombers have we read about in the past few years? It is, of course, inconceivable that someone would endure an hour of pain to create a misdirection. Afterwards, they could literally torture him to death — as if he'd care.

Sure glad the adults are in charge.

The Pentagon has proposed a plan to withdraw its two Army divisions from Germany and undertake an array of other changes in its European-based forces, in the most significant rearrangement of the American military around the world since the beginning of the cold war, according to American and allied officials.

Pentagon policy makers said the aim is to afford maximum flexibility in sending forces to the Middle East, Central Asia and other potential battlegrounds. But some experts and allied officials are concerned that the shift will reduce Washington's influence in NATO and weaken its diplomatic links with its allies, all at a time of rising anti-American sentiment around the world.

The proposal to withdraw the divisions comes at a time when the Army is stretched thin by deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Pentagon officials said the move, which has been under consideration for some time and involves forces in Asia as well as in Europe, is unrelated to the current fighting.

Unrelated? My BOHICA'd arse. Stop-loss orders. (Plural, please note.) Rumblings about reanimating a night-of-the-living-dead draft. (I'm opposed.) Proposals that the IRS track down members of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) (I'm appalled.) And it's not stopping with Europe:

The United States has proposed withdrawing 12,500 of its 37,000 troops stationed in South Korea by 2006.

US officials told South Korean counterparts of the plans ahead of talks in Seoul on troop movements.

The reduction would include 3,600 troops which Washington has already earmarked for redeployment to Iraq.

The US has said it needs to modernise its forces, but the proposed speed and scale of the move may leave the South feeling vulnerable to North Korea.

In short, the administration is again scrambling, as quietly as possible, to mask the true costs of George and Don's Excellent Adventure. Depending on accounting (a/k/a statistical lies), I'm not sure there will be a bump in the official balance sheet. One hopes that the redeployed troops will be given little things like body armor and such; I'm not sure how necessary such equipment is in Germany.

Military personnel everywhere had better take a look at that big, white thing out the porthole.

On Hannity & Colmes on June 3, Washington Times editorial page editor Tony Blankley joined the show's co-host Sean Hannity and other right-wing pundits in attacking financier, philanthropist, and political activist George Soros. Blankley's attacks on Soros included calling Soros a "left-wing crank," "a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust," "a robber baron," "a pirate capitalist," and "a reckless man." As Media Matters for America reported on June 4, attacking Soros as a means of discrediting Senator John Kerry has become a key strategy of the Republican National Committee.

Sullivan, who regularly and vehemently attacks anti-Semitism in Europe and especially France, somehow manages not so see it at the office. As all of the parallels I can think of violate Godwin's Law, I'll leave it there.

[Steve] Lewis, taking his cue: "President Bush, if I could ask a question?" Bush, scanning the media gaggle: "Where are you?" Lewis: "Just here. Thank you." And then the Murdoch press gallery journalist from Canberra asked the question his Prime Minister had gone half round the world to get answered, out loud, for his election campaign ads.

Lewis: "Mr Howard and yourself reaffirmed the commitment to stay the course in Iraq. Are you aware the alternative prime minister in Australia, Mark Latham, has promised to withdraw Australian troops by Christmas if he wins the election? What signal would that send to the Iraqi people and the other members of the coalition of the willing?"

Bush obliged, fully and freely, what his script writers had failed to deliver: "I think that would be disastrous. It would be a disastrous decision for the leader of a great country like Australia to say, 'We're pulling out'. It would dis-spirit those people who love freedom in Iraq. It would say the Australian government doesn't see hope of a free and democratic society leading to a peaceful world. It would embolden the enemy, who believe they can shake our will. See, they want to kill innocent life, because they think the Western world, the free world, is weak. That when times get tough, we will shirk our duty to those who long for freedom, and we'll leave. And I, anyway - [to clamouring reporters] no, you can't [ask] any more. Thank you all for coming."

Ramsey reports that Howard was "beaming" at the end. Given the storm George's shameless plug provoked, John won't have many reasons to smile when he gets home.

"Suckholing." I may adopt that. And why don't we have reporters like that here?

George J. Tenet has resigned as director of central intelligence, President Bush said today in an announcement that stunned Washington by its timing.

"Today, George Tenet, the director of the C.I.A., submitted a letter of resignation," Mr. Bush said on the South Lawn of the White House. "I met with George last night in the White House. I had a good visit with him. He told me he was resigning for personal reasons."

"Personal?" The inevitable book should be a doozy.

The FBI is investigating an intercepted Iranian message that alleges Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi told Tehran officials that the United States had broken Iran's secret code, U.S. officials said.

The message alleges Chalabi said he had been told about the code-breaking by a drunken U.S. official, one senior Bush administration official said.

If the "senior official" is not willing to fess up, perhaps the FBI should check out bar and liquor store bills.

Unlike the sporadically resurfacing Valerie Plame story, I don't see this one going away soon. Happily, no one in the Wilson-Plame family has yet suffered physical harm due to the administration's cheap-shot revenge. The same cannot be said of this smooth prick's machinations — or of the "adults" who hitched their wagons to him. Not that they'll ever admit it:

Richard N. Perle, a onetime chairman of the Defense Policy Board under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and a Pentagon official in the Reagan administration, has been a vocal supporter of Chalabi for years. He said yesterday he knew nothing about the FBI investigation and believes the U.S. position in Iraq would have been much better if the administration had listened to Chalabi's advice to put more exiles in power earlier, rather than trying to run the country through the CPA.

House Republicans will vote this year on a constitutional balanced-budget amendment for the first time since 1995, when the issue was the cornerstone of the Contract with America that helped them gain control of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

Shortly before the Memorial Day recess, Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) promised Rep. Ernest Istook (R-Okla.) a vote on the proposal, which was the first of 10 measures the new Republican majority promised to bring to the floor in the first 100 days of the 104th Congress. DeLay’s promise reaffirmed a commitment he made to Istook last September to take up the balanced-budget amendment.

Let's see: 1995? That would be about the time a Democratic president balanced the budget after 12 years of ruinous Republican deficits? Yeah, that would be it. Want to make a bet that that 100-day "commitment" will depend on the president's surname?

Jen Crider, Nancy Pelosi's spokeswoman, nailed it nicely, "It’s interesting that Republicans — now that they’ve created a 521-billion deficit — want to balance the budget ... It had appeared to Republicans that deficits didn't matter anymore."

But many Republicans said there are tangible political benefits to casting a vote that shows they are still committed to fiscal discipline.

Even when they're clearly not. Oh, Tony Blankely, former Gingrich press secretary and now editor of the Moonie Times editorial page, implicitly blames the budget mess on 9/11. How original.

That agenda is to impose Dooh Nibor economics — Robin Hood in reverse. The end result of current policies will be a large-scale transfer of income from the middle class to the very affluent, in which about 80 percent of the population will lose and the bulk of the gains will go to people with incomes of more than $200,000 per year.

I can't back that assertion with official numbers, because under Mr. Bush the Treasury Department has stopped releasing information on the distribution of tax cuts by income level. Estimates by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, which now provides the numbers the administration doesn't want you to know, reveal why. This year, the average tax reduction per family due to Bush-era cuts was $1,448. But this average reflects huge cuts for a few affluent families, with most families receiving much less (which helps explain why most people, according to polls, don't believe their taxes have been cut). In fact, the 257,000 taxpayers with incomes of more than $1 million received a bigger combined tax cut than the 85 million taxpayers who make up the bottom 60 percent of the population.

In short, rob 'em blind, but don't let 'em know that they're being robbed. If at all possible, destroy the evidence and disarm the cops. Let's hear it for moral clarity.