Conservative Christian activist Rev. Patrick Mahoney told CNN that the fact that Schiavo has survived nearly 10 days since the removal of the tube that supplied her with nutrition and water indicates that she wants to appear before the House Government Reform Committee.

Jeb Bush does not need Judge Greer's permission to execute his duties as governor. The U.S. Constitution and Florida's Constitution provide for a balance of power between the judicial, legislative and executive branches. There should be little question as to the activist nature of Florida's judicial branch. Therefore, Gov. Bush has the duty, the power and the absolute obligation to immediately take Terri in protective custody and restore her access to nutrition and hydration.

It is more than simply ironic that Terri's plight unfolds during the holiest week on the Christian calendar. In President Bush's recent attempt to wash his hands of this matter, he stated he can do no more as the head of the executive branch. This is simply untrue. President Bush not only has the power, but the obligation to use his police powers to put an end to this national tragedy.

It's apt that they talk about "police powers" — as in police state where people can be seized without regard to law or courts.

Let me be clear: if Jeb Bush or anyone in Florida's government follows their advice, he or they should be arrested immediately.

Testimony provided by members of the Schindler family included very personal statements about their desire and intention to ensure that Theresa remain alive. Throughout the course of the litigation, deposition, and trail testimony by members of the Schindler family voiced the disturbing belief that they would keep Theresa alive at any and all costs. Nearly gruesome examples were given, eliciting agreement by family members that in the event Theresa should contract diabetes and subsequent gangrene in each of her limbs, they would agree to amputate each limb, and would then, were she to be diagnosed with heart disease, perform open heart surgery. There was additional, difficult testimony that appeared to establish that despite the sad and undesirable condition of Theresa, the parents still derived joy from having her alive, even if Theresa might not be at all aware of her environment given the persistent vegetative state. Within the testimony, as part of the hypotheticals presented, Schindler family members stated that even if Theresa had told them of her intention to have artificial nutrition withdrawn, they would not do it. Throughout this painful and difficult trial, the family acknowledged that Theresa was in a diagnosed persistent vegetative state.

Emma notes, "My sympathies for the Schindlers dried up right about here, out of fear, I think. Or horror. They would keep a mindless, limbless husk in a bed, because it would make them feel joy?" I second those emotions.

I've seen a lot of dark theories about why Michael Schiavo doesn't divorce Terri and let her parents care for her as they so desperately want. Money is the most common motive, even though trust fund is nearly gone. Attempted murder gone wrong has been hinted at. A rather utilitarian proposal I've seen shopped around is: Why not divorce her, let her family have her? It's not as if Terri's really going to know. True, though the Schindlers and their allies will never admit that on camera.

Here's another theory: In addition to honoring her wishes, Michael Schiavo realized just how unhinged his in-laws had become and wanted to protect her. He loved her enough to marry her, after all; to try for years, unsuccessfully, to have children with her. He became a nurse to better care for her. I imagine he still loves her, though the tones may be sepia'd by now.

The Schindlers express outrage, calling Michael a liar: she never told us these things. That would be the same "us" who made it clear that no matter what Terri said or wrote they would do whatever gives them "joy?" Gosh, I wonder why.

Let me add that Michael's partner (at their ages and in their situation, "girlfriend" seems insulting), with whom he's now had two children, must be pretty understanding. After years of media circuses, constant legal battles, vituperations, and the consequent emotional wear and tear, lots of women would have said, "Look. Enough. Choose."

The Schindlers may have been good people once; no longer. I am not "blessed" with George's ability to "look into" another person's soul, or Senator Doctor Frist's ability to make highly technical diagnoses, in a specialty area of which he has no knowledge, via a few minutes of video tape. All I can say for certain is that I wouldn't trust them to cat sit.

Steve Gillard, insightfully, calls Terri the Schindlers' "property," which they are not willing give up at any cost. (He centers on mother Nancy Mary; I think the entire family is in on it by now.) Terri is the prime display in MartyrWorld, Inc. By now we see Pavlovian sad faces that blubber at the sound of a camera click; the same 90 seconds culled from hours of video, endlessly looped; the same few stills. I understand there a charity has been set up to aid the Schindlers in their quest. Allow me to suggest a revenue stream: "Save Terri" t-shirt sales could be worth a fortune.

Ugh.

The fight over evolution has reached the big, big screen.

Several Imax theaters, including some in science museums, are refusing to show movies that mention the subject - or the Big Bang or the geology of the earth - fearing protests from people who object to films that contradict biblical descriptions of the origin of Earth and its creatures.

[...]

"They [the filmmakers] have to be extremely careful as to how they present anything relating to evolution," said Bayley Silleck, who wrote and directed "Cosmic Voyage." Mr. Silleck said he confronted religious objections to that film and predicted he would face them again with a project he is working on now, about dinosaurs.

To state the blindingly obvious, we are not talking about broadcast or cable TV with a plethora of programs coming into someone's home, on any one of which — eeek! — the dreaded E-word might sneak into the living room despite one's dubious mastery of the remote-control thingy. People have to get into a car or hop a subway or bus, go to a theater, and plunk down some cash (these days, a lot of it if you have a family), walk into a big, dark room, find a seat, then agree to sit there for an hour or two. You don't get more volitional than that.

But, no, that is insufficient. PC, meet BC: biblically correct. BC is far more aggressive. Everything everywhere must be hermetically sealed and pure. Nothing should disturb the faith-enhanced, yet tragically fragile fundie mind.

The fact that science museums are succumbing is really unnerving. I doubt that fundamentalists make up a large part of, say, the Natural History Museum's regular visitors here in New York, or its equivalents anywhere. Should they (must they) biblically cleanse their other exhibits, too? Stay tuned.

If this goes on, secularists will be the ones home-schooling their children. Reality-based materials will have to be smuggled in from Canada and Europe.

"Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog From Iraq" is not a very good play, but it's worth your attention for two reasons. It's the only political drama in New York written from the point of view of an Iraqi who lived through the American invasion, and, for better or worse, it inaugurates an entirely new (and seemingly inevitable) theatrical genre - the blog play.

Melding two chic cultural forms, the documentary drama and the blog, the Six Figures Theater Company has turned the online writings of Riverbend, the pseudonym of a 25-year-old Baghdad woman who has become something of an Internet celebrity, into a dramatically awkward series of readings.

Riverbend (www.riverbendblog.blogspot.com) is a thoughtful writer whose articulate, even poetic, prose packs an emotional punch while exhibiting a journalist's eye for detail. She is decidedly antiwar and critical of the Bush administration, but not polemical. Judging from the play, the tone of her writing about the war is one of exasperated disappointment.

I hope she's getting royalties.

[I]f you let your rulers torture, you will soon find that you have rulers who like to torture…
— Brad DeLong

The spark was a post by Eugene Volokh, who wholeheartedly endorsed a truly sickening execution in Iran of a man convicted of a sickening series of crimes. No one is defending the man. The issue has been the punishment and people's reactions to it. Volokh seems not to be familiar with Christopher Dawson (at right). DeLong probably is.

I can think of others who might benefit from DeLong's words: Alberto Abu-Gonzales. Porter Gross. Rush "Frat House" Limbaugh.… They'll find ways of never seeing them, however.

Later, I'm adding Brad's words the "Useful Reminders."

It’s an ID site run by people called the Christian Guardians Fellowship. It begins with the header, “EVOLUTION THEORY IS A MONUMENTAL HOAX.” At first glance, you’d think it’s just more of the same old stupidity, but there’s a neat twist. They have a new and superior method for proving Intelligent Design. And that method is… wait for it… astrology.

Please remember that these are some of the people who want to edumacate your children.

Prosecutors in the Netherlands have formally charged a Dutch businessman with complicity in genocide for selling chemicals to Iraq's former regime.

Frans van Anraat, 62, is accused of selling US and Japanese chemicals which were used to produce poison gas.

Here, we promote them to high office.

"You're asking Christian people to support with their tax money something that is diametrically opposed to God's word," [Peter Merkes] told the committee. "We cannot go there. God's going to hold you accountable."

Uh, Pete? Gays and lesbians always pay the highest tax rates in their income brackets because we can't marry and file a joint tax return. Surviving partners get no benefits from Social Security. In short, we've been subsidizing folks like you for a very long time. Shaddup.

• Characterized the new national security document issued by the Bush administration last week as “a great mistake in principle”;
  
  

• Voicing the same view that Vice President Albert Gore would take a day later, he warned that launching an attack on Iraq would amount to waging a second war that “bears no relation to the first war against terrorism”;
  
  

• Declared that efforts by the White House and Republicans in Congress to link al Qaeda terrorists with Saddam Hussein “have been pathetically unsupportive and unreliable”;
  
  

• Said Bush “shouldn’t speak contemptuously” of the inspection teams that previously worked in Iraq, “because they succeeded in destroying and removing from Iraq very, very sizeable quantities of dangerous arms”;
  
  

• Called the failure of Democratic congressional leaders and the party’s would-be presidential candidates to question Bush’s war plans as “a shabby and shameful reaction”;
  
  

• Insisted that there is no evidence that Iraq has succeeded in developing nuclear weaponry, and even if they had, it would be targeted on Israel and not the United States;
  
  

• Said the Israelis almost certainly possess nuclear weapons, and would be “quite capable of mounting a devastating retaliatory strike” if Iraq ever uses weapons of mass destruction against Israel;
  
  

• Praised the diplomatic skills of Secretary of State Colin Powell, whom he called a “man of strong loyalties in a difficult position [who] has been much more powerful in his statements than” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; and
  
  

• Cautioned that the United States, even as the world’s sole superpower, cannot “confront all the painful and dangerous situations that exist in this world. … That’s beyond our capabilities.”

[...]

Kennan was particularly critical of congressional Democrats for failing to oppose Bush’s request for a blank check on Iraq.

“I wonder why the Democrats have not asked the president right out, ‘What are you talking about? Are you talking about one war or two wars? And if it’s two wars, have we really faced up to the competing demands of the two?”

He added, “This is, to me, as a very old, independent citizen, a shabby and shameful reaction. I deplore this timidity out of concern for the elections on the part of the Democrats.”

Agree with him or not on any specific issue, at least I didn't feel insulted when I heard him.

Sen. Mel Martinez cast the deciding vote Wednesday to approve oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, saying he traded his vote for a pledge from the Bush administration to extend drilling bans off Florida's Gulf Coast for an additional five years.

Perhaps another state's senator can return the favor one day. And we all know just how much George's pledges are worth.

• Porter Gross: "[O]nce they're [the victims] our of our control, there's only so much we can do."
  
  

• Alberto Abu-Gonzales: "[W]e can't fully control what that country might do. We obviously expect a country to whom we have rendered a detainee to comply with their representations to us. If you're asking me 'Does a country always comply?,' I don't have an answer to that."

And on and on.

Of course, if they are really concerned that countries might torture our prisoners or "detainees," don't send them there. Too simple?

Alan Greenspan and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton clashed briefly Tuesday over rosy surplus forecasts the Federal Reserve Chairman relied on to support President President Bush's 2001 tax cuts, estimates that turned out to be considerably off the mark.

"It turns out that we were all wrong," Greenspan conceded at a Senate hearing.

"Just for the record, we were not all wrong, but many people were wrong," Clinton, D-N.Y., quickly shot back.

Go, Hillary, go!

To call Greenspan's later comment, "we were confronted at that time with an almost universal expectation amongst the experts that we were dealing with a very large surplus for which there seemed to be no end," disingenuous is almost a complement. He knew damned well that the government had been borrowing and spending every dime of the Social Security surplus. He had a pretty good idea when the bills would start coming due. He knew that Clinton and Rubin reversed twelve years of Republican squandry and put the country in a position to pay those bills.

Then he not only did his damnedest to make that impossible, he also helped drive the general government further into debt, too.

Slap him again, Hillary. Please.

Excess Fuel Billing by Halliburton in Iraq Is Put at $108 Million

Excess billing for postwar fuel imports to Iraq by the Halliburton Company totaled more than $108 million, according to a report by Pentagon auditors that was completed last fall but has never been officially released to the public or to Congress.

In one case, according to the report, the company claimed that it had paid more than $27 million to transport liquefied petroleum gas it had purchased in Kuwait for just $82,000 - a fee the auditors tartly dismissed as "illogical."

A 330-fold mark up; not bad for a day's "work." (The hammers of yesteryear were only marked up about 20 times.) Meanwhile, soldiers still can't get reimbursed for equipment they should never have had to buy.

Reid and Pelosi need to be all over this all the time, screaming for an investigation.

[I]t's a simple smash and grab operation. Power...money...to the victor belong the spoils, as Dick Army once said. Their fundamentalist enablers are busy cutting science out of the textbooks, but they themselves could not care less. They couldn't care less what's in it for future generations, if there's nothing in it for them, now, right now.

Maybe not improbably, I'm reminded of something from an old Allen Drury novel:

Let us wear upon our sleeves
The crepe of mourning
For a civilization that once held
The promise of joy.

The Pentagon is seeking to enlist help from the State Department and other agencies in a plan to cut by more than half the population at its detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in part by transferring hundreds of suspected terrorists to prisons in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Yemen, according to senior administration officials.

The transfers would be similar to the renditions, or transfers of captives to other countries, carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency, but are subject to stricter approval within the government, and face potential opposition from the C.I.A. as well as the State and Justice Departments, the officials said.

[...]

Indeed, the Pentagon has halted, for the last six months, the flow of new terrorism suspects into the prison, Defense Department officials said. In January, a senior American official said in an interview that most prisoners at Guantánamo no longer had any intelligence value and were not being regularly interrogated.

[...]

Defense Department officials said that the adverse court rulings had contributed to their determination to reduce the population at Guantánamo, in part by persuading other countries to bear some of the burden of detaining terrorism suspects.

Three points. First, with the Compliant Condiment in charge of State, this will go through ASAP. Indeed, people inside the Beltway should expect sonic booms.

Second, if the prisoners no longer have "any intelligence value" (if they ever did), why are we "detaining" them at all?

Third, consider the countries on that list. None of the, uh, transferees should expect to get life insurance.

Some time ago I read that the longer we hold our unpersons without charge or trial, the more they become a "problem." If they are set free, they are free to talk about many embarrassing things. What to do, what to do? I think the administration has come up with a solution.

'Scuse me. I have a date with Lee Greenwood.

"The Defense Department hasn't developed a plan to reimburse soldiers for equipment they've bought to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan despite requirements in a law passed last year."

[...]

Soldiers serving in Iraq and their families have reported buying everything from higher-quality protective gear to armor for their Humvees, medical supplies and even global positioning devices.

In response to the complaints, Congress last year passed Dodd's amendment requiring the Pentagon to reimburse members of the Armed Services for the cost of any safety or health equipment that they bought or someone else bought on their behalf

Senator Christopher Dodd, of course, is one of those troop-hating Democrats.

The fact that soldiers had to buy their own supplies in the first place is unconscionable. That Congress found it necessary to explicitly require the Pentagon to reimburse them is mind-numbing. This is off the charts. How hard could it be to make a plan?

1. Bring receipt
2. Get check

An apology would be nice, too, but I'm not holding my breath.

Dodd said that it seemed that only public embarrassment was left to force the Pentagon to act. Sadly, I agree. Time for another letter writing campaign. Ask your Democratic senator or representative to coordinate with others. Hearings will probably be blocked by lip-service Republicans, but a lethal press conference would be nice.

A delegation of Republican House members including Majority Leader Tom DeLay accepted an expense-paid trip to South Korea in 2001 from a registered foreign agent despite House rules that bar the acceptance of travel expenses from foreign agents, according to government documents and travel reports filed by the House members.

Of course nothing really wrong happened. They didn't know the folks who provided the trip for him and the Mrs. (and two Florida Republicans) was a registered foreign agent. An aide kind of cleared it verbally with some members of the committee.

With a name like the "Korea-U.S. Exchange Council," nobody thought to check? Nobody thought to get the okay in writing?

Gee, Tom, you might want to have a word with your staff. Not everyone is as open and honest as you are.

When the e-mail says it's from "Mindy and Katie" and the subject line starts with "Off the Record," you think that this might be a message better left unopened.

But "Mindy and Katie," it turns out, aren't those kind of gals at all. No, they are two faux news talk hosts on the Republican National Committee Web site, a stiff and robotic pair. If ever there were interviewers who look more uncomfortable in front of a camera, well, we have not seen them.

Mindy and Katie just want to turn you on to the latest Web videos featuring the likes of Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman and Sen. John Thune, the new Republican senator from South Dakota. Just a guess here, but this looks like a play for that coveted youth vote.

Talk about a hot time. What buzz! What edge! And the sparks really fly when the questioning begins.

The "questions" would sound familiar to any channel-surfing insomniac.

The Chicago Tribune's Michael Tackett describes them as "the latest props in the grand strategy of the politics by infomercial." I can't think of a defter description myself. Increasingly, it's becoming harder to tell the difference between Ronco, the latest abs-ripper with built-in CD player and mini-microwave, and covert "news." Well, okay, the GOP does have a well known prop. Let's hear it for taxpayer-funded production values. Rah.

Recently, Frank Rich said, "You can't tell the phonies without a scorecard." A cooperative database may be more apt. If anyone knows how to organize one, where alert readers can send in names and proofs (no libels or vendettas, please), my MasterCard stands ready to support the effort. Christ, though I really do try to keep informed, these people are worse than cockroaches in a slum apartment.

No word whether Mindy and Katie have night jobs, but I'm not sure it matters any longer: there are vertical whores and horizontal whores. I can respect the latter more. The formers' when-discovered/post-coital whining just grates on my nerves.

An episode of the popular PBS children's' series "Postcards from Buster", that was dropped by the network after criticism by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings because it features a lesbian couple, will be made available on the Internet.

Family Pride Coalition, a national non-profit organization dedicated to securing equality for LGBT families, announced Monday that it will broadcast the episode on its website from March 7-13.

Infamously, Secretary of Educamaction Margaret Spelling threatened suggested that "PBS refund the money it spent on the episode." Tolerance and "do unto others" are such ugly things: we must protect the children.

The webite is Buster.FamilyPride.org.

And finally, a quick note about the US death toll in Iraq reaching 1500 last week. According to icasualties.org, it took 295 days to reach the mark of 500 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, a further 242 days to reach the 1000 mark, and a further 177 days to reach the 1500 mark.

WASHINGTON - Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, an outspoken arms control expert who rarely muffles his views in diplomatic nuance, is President Bush (news - web sites)'s choice to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (news - web sites), three government officials said Monday.

"Outspoken." Is that how we spell obnoxious these days? Rather than have Bolton piss countries off one at a time, George has apparently decided to send him somewhere he can do 'em all at once. I wonder if I'll be able to see the fireworks from Brooklyn Heights?

Now I really don't care about the feelings of "autocrats" (which includes our autocrats), but for a diplomat it's probably not good to lead off with an insult. Powell, remember, had to soothe Kim down in order to get him to talk at all. (The talks seem permanently going nowhere, but that's another story.)

And I doubt that North Korea and China will the only recipients of Bolton's, uh, candor. So much for George's kiss-and-make-up tour.


Note: I tried to post this almost two hours ago, but Blogger was weirding out and I ended up with duplicate posts (since deleted). In the meantime, via Crooks and Liars, Think Progress confirmed my opinion:

The number three at the State Department, John Bolton, even said: 'There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States.'

A promising start.

"We hope the U.S. adopts policies that will quickly and substantially reduce the current account-deficit,'' [Warren] Buffett wrote in the letter. "True, a prompt solution would likely cause Berkshire to record losses on its foreign-exchange contracts.''

Coming to Ottawa might also expose you to a parliamentary system that has a thing called question period every day, where those in the executive are held accountable by an opposition for their actions, and where demands for public debate on important topics such a missile defence can be made openly.

There are times I wish we'd kept a bit of the parliamentary system. I'm envious when I see extended clips or a C-SPAN broadcast of Parliament: Tony Blair standing there while the opposition party drubs him again and again. Forced to answer questions spontaneously when the answers aren't in his briefing book. Open derision. Not your standard infomercial audience.

Now picture George during a British- or Canadian-style question period once or twice a week. The smell of burning synapses. Veins popping in air. A boy can dream, can't he?

It's worth noting that the gangway separating the front benches in Britain's Commons keeps the ruling and opposition parties two sword lengths apart.

Give us more money, or soldiers aren't going to get paid. That's the cynical game the Pentagon's leadership has been playing with the Army's budget in recent months. And now, it's crunch time.

Since the fall, Rumsfeld & Co. have been dipping into the Army's day-to-day funds -- like money for soldiers' paychecks -- and then daring Congress not to make up the difference with a second, "supplemental" pile of cash.

Let's see if I have this right. First, low-ball "off budget" appropriations for Optional War I at about 0.01% below the outrage level, and get them; support our troops and all that. Second, spend the money on anything and everything else first, including something-other-than armor or crony contracts (such as paying KBR for 42,000 meals per day when 14,000 were actually delivered) — whatever. Third, take the people who are actually doing the fighting and dying hostage and go to Congress: if you don't give us ransom money additional funds, then everything bad that will happen will be your fault. Fourth, repeat ad nauseam.

It's enough to gag a maggot.

This cycle must be broken. The Republicans have become masters of the art of acquiring funds for one purpose (say, Afghanistan), then shamelessly redirecting them for another (the run-up to Iraq). Democrats in Congress should insist on including a line in the next off-budget appropriations bill: no "day-to-day" funds [suitable definition inserted] shall be spent for any other purpose. I could almost enjoy seeing the Republicans object to that one.