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Just posted this comment to Kerry’s blog.
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I just read an article about the Oregon court ruling that the state had to recognize the 3000+ same-sex marriages already performed there. In the article, Kerry was again described as opposing gay marriage and favoring civil unions. I wanted to say to Kerry, his staff, and his supporters: This is just wrong.

Sure, I’m going to vote for John in the fall, but it is problems with his views like this that are preventing me from contributing $$ to the campaign. The line to draw is not between civil unions and marriages. Because settling for civil unions is settling for indefensible discrimination. Kerry should instead draw the line between religious marriage and civil marriage. Churches and their members can believe what they want and perform only the marriages they approve. No one wants to change that. But THE STATE cannot discriminate in its performance of civil marriages.

I know Kerry’s camp is worried about him appearing to waffle on any issue, as the Bushies have already trotted out that attack method. But the American people can understand something like the following announcement: “I’ve listened to my supporters. I’ve thought deeply about the issue. I’ve searched my heart. What I come away with is a deep conviction that anything less than civil marriage for same-sex couples is discriminatory and unfair. So, yes. I’ve changed my position on this issue, but that is something that distinguishes me from President Bush. He can’t even think of a mistake that he’s made and so he cannot learn from his mistakes. We need a President capable of careful reflection on hard issues. I will be that President.”

Make us proud Kerry. Do the right thing and release a decision like that.

Check this out:

http://www.house.gov/reform/min/features/iraq_on_the_record/

Who lied. What they said exactly. When. Where. Why it’s misleading. “>http://www.house.gov/reform/min/features/iraq_on_the_record/

Who lied. What they said exactly. When. Where. Why it’s misleading.

I love the internet.

This editorial in the Washington Times entitled, Database Piracy Plague advocates for H.R. 3261, the Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act.

Luckily for those who are less optimistic about the brilliance of copyrighting facts, on Feb. 25, the House Subcommittee on Commerce sent out an alternative bill that authorizes the FTC to take action against someone who misappropriates a database in an “unfair or deceptive” manner, a far narrower approach than the one found in H.R. 3261. The House Rules Committee would have to deal with the two approaches and has said that, in an election year, competing bills on the same issue may well be the death knell for both. Let’s hope so. (Those with access to Warren’s Washington Internet Daily can read a good article on this from Feb 26.)

Keep an eye on this issue. Over-reaching and unnecessary copyright laws are unfortunately the norm in Congress. In this case we seem to have a few members that realize that current laws already adequately protect information collectors whose work is co-opted. But if we don’t watch this issue, then pretty soon I might not be able to report that fact. Under 3261, it’ll be copyrighted.

This is troubling. See the rap video that people are talking about. It reminds me of one of the things that makes me so angry about the Bush rhetoric. He repeatedly says he is fighting against people “who hate freedom” and who “hate our liberty” and so on. That’s just idiotic on its face. No one prefers to be enslaved rather than free. What they hate is what everyone hates. They hate seeing people they know and love killed. They hate soldiers that glory in killing. That cheer. That think killing another human being is “awesome” and want to “do that again.” But let’s be clear. Just because I don’t think Bush is their savior, doesn’t mean I think Osama is. Bush is their enemy. Sure. But Osama is too. So is anyone that tells them to commit suicide. Their enemy is anyone that tells them to waste their lives in the taking of other innocent life. Their enemy is anyone that tells them that more killing is the answer to their problems. Their enemy is poverty. Their enemy is ignorance. Their enemy is the political structures of almost every country in the Middle East. Their enemy is the greed of politicians. Those things are our enemies too. We have to get new leadership in this country that sees this. That is willing to adopt a progressive foreign policy that tries to heal wounds rather than create new ones. And since such leadership could change their plight for the better as well as ours, regime change here is more important than regime change there.

Read more!

Donald Rumsfeld claims not to recall Tony Blair’s claim that Iraq could deploy WMDs within 45 minutes. Stunning. If, like Donald, you missed it, the claim that Iraq could deploy its deadly WMDs within 45 minutes appears FOUR times in the UK Dossier on Iraq, including Tony Blair’s FOREWORD. I mean really. Give us a break.

Rumsfeld expects us to believe either that 1) he didn’t even read the foreword to a intelligence dossier produced by our closest ally regarding the specific nature of the purported threat posed by a nation we were considering going to war with!? or 2) that despite the careful study of the dossier he made, as befits his job as Secretary of Defense, he now, only a year later, has no recollection of a key claim made in that dossier about the specific nature of the purported threat posed by Iraq!? That’s absurd!

In either case, he deserves to lose his job. If the first option above is true and Rumsfeld likes to play ostrich, then he should be impeached, fired, and charged criminally for gross dereliction of duty. If instead, his memory is that bad, then he must also be fired for not having the requisite competence that the job requires during a time of war. I mean really. If this is true then Rumsfeld may have also forgotten that we have troops in Afghanistan! We sent them there well OVER a year ago, which we’ve learned is beyond his memory’s capacity. No wonder troops are complaining about their longer than usual tours of duty! The Secretary of Defense has forgotten what he did with them!

Now, I wrote the last few sentences as a joke, but I’m sad to report that it’s actually true! This article reports about a Florida unit that kept having its return delayed. When concerned family members called to inquire about their return, they were told that the troops were already back in Florida! Of course it turns out, as the family members already knew, the troops were still in Baghdad! The article actually says, “It seems the mix-up came from the upper levels of the Department of Defense.” Upper levels, huh? They asked Rummy!!!

Brilliant.

“Mister President, can you give us the names of three National Guard Service colleagues who served with you between May 1972 and October 1973?”

Now a journalist needs to ask that question before Karl Rove starts thinking up the President’s answer for him. Also, read from another Guardsman at the time what is currently the most e-mailed piece at the Washington Post.

Aaron Swartz is pointing out the solution to the biggest problem facing the United States today. Or at least, that’s what I called it about eleven months ago on this blog. The impending war and our helplessness to do anything about it led me to say,

the most important issue facing this country today is, of all things, campaign finance reform. (emphasis in original!)

I still believe this and am amazed at the brilliance of the solution Aaron advocates. Of course, that may be because I suggested something similar last October. I said,

I believe this may be the most pressing issue facing our country. Yes, worse than terrorism. The terrorists of 9/11 struck once over two years ago, but the corporate terrorists that control our government are terrorizing our country every day. I want radical reform. The government should give the candidates from each party that had at least x% of the vote in the last election the exact same amount of money (and let me tell you it ain’t 100 million) and should mandate the major networks give each of these candidates the exact same amount of air time (free). Remember, they are the people’s airwaves and we just lease them to NBC, CBS, ABC, etc. For an important civic cause like this, we can take the airwaves back.

The key difference in the plan Aaron advocates and mine is that his plan provides greater access. My party-based prior-election percentage idea tends to lock out third parties, whereas the solution Aaron advocates opens the process up to anyone who can complete the $5 fund-raising scheme. I am pretty much sold on this version, although I do need to learn more about it. It has to be structured so as to avoid the problem California faced in its ridiculous recall election where there where over 100 candidates because getting on the ballot had such a low barrier to entry. That was absurdly costly as it was, so we certainly cannot have in place a system that also gives all these crackpots several million dollars for a big campaign. But the fact that such a scheme is working in two states already is great news on this front. I love it. Now, let’s force our Congress (and our states) to adopt such reforms! You can write your reps now.

Who said it? President G. W. Bush or Emperor Palpatine? (Star Wars Trilogy) Read over these fourteen quotations and try to guess. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but the really funny part is when you change your mind three or four times…”That one’s Bush. No, wait. Palpatine. No. No. I’m gonna say Bush.” link courtesy Eyeteeth.

A lot of fuss is being made lately as the Bush White House has realized that its best strategy on the non-existent WMDs in Iraq is to bite the (missing) bullet and admit that they aren’t going to find them. The next step in their strategy is to distract everyone with investigations into how they could have been so misled by “intelligence failures.” The point of these so-called investigations will be to guarantee that something like this never happens again.

Hooey.

The best explanation for these “intelligence failures” yet published was already available back in October 2003. Seymour Hersh’s article, The Stovepipe, in the New Yorker. Hersh explains how the Bush administration sought out unfiltered and unvetted intelligence in an almost psychotic attempt to be misled. It’s a stunning piece of journalism. Read it.

But even if the story Hersh tells becomes well known, I think it still paints the Bush White House in too positive a light. The truth that is even more accurate than Hersh’s is already out as well. Paul O’Neill has already told us that this Bush Administration came into office dead set on war with Iraq. After September 11, they had what they wanted, an excuse. Or more accurately, a motivator for the public. They could dangle this threat of WMDs in front of a frightened public more effectively after 9/11. Wolfowitz has already told Vanity Fair that, “For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.”

So, while investigations into so-called intelligence failures are cute, they don’t get to the real problem: Bush lied. They all lied. They knew they were making it up all along. How could anyone have watched them in the days leading up to the war, going around stumping for the war like it was a political campaign, (ahh, but it was a political campaign, that’s the point), and not realize they were lying?

What has really happened recently is that the Bush Administration is looking ahead to the election. They know that anyone who voted for the war (Kerry/Edwards) will be able to legitimately say that they were duped by the White House into voting for the war, and that it’s not their fault that they were misled. (It’s unclear that we should accept this, given how many people saw through the Bush lies, and the high standard we should hold our elected officials to, but most seem willing to accept this line of reasoning.) The Bush Administration is scared that they won’t have a retort to that stance on the war, so they are jumping on the bandwagon: “We were duped too!” they’ll say. “It was those darn intelligence failures! Which, we have investigated, and corrected, and now that will never happen again.” Bull.

We shouldn’t let them get away with once again revising history. The facts are: The Bush Administration was never duped about the WMDs in Iraq. Rather, they lied about the WMDs in Iraq and duped the country. The “intelligence failure” that really matters is that so many people keep on believing this White House.

[UPDATE 2/2/2004: It turns out I'm not the only conspiracy nut that believes this. Someone just sent me this Mother Jones article. Wow.]

An e-mail I just sent…
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Hello Professor McWilliams,

I read your recent Chronicle article. Then, after much google-searching, I found your Bush editorial. I thought I’d write to say that I think you are on to something in that editorial and that you’ve put it in a way that more clearly nails it than anything else I’ve read. So, start a new folder. Next to Angry Letters, name one Fan Letters, and drop this one in it.

I wonder if the point you make helps Democrats choose between Dean and Clark. My first impulse was to say, yes, because Clark, as a general, might be the only yeoman who could wield the sledgehammer that would get enough people’s attention. But, then, Dean has somehow developed this reputation for being “angry” and so perhaps that fiesty nature will be just the thing Americans will respond to best.

You seem persuaded that none of the above are up to the task. Why is that? It seems to me that one of the reasons is that another truth about Americans is that they tire quickly of (yet are often swayed by) attack-politics, and so the Democrat that yields a hammer against Bush plays a dangerous game.

You’re right that Americans will not suffer detailed argumentation. But, to the extent your editorial pinpoints a truth about Americans, it is one that deeply saddens me. It seems the further questions that must be asked are WHY is it that Americans have no patience for principled arguments and HOW can that be changed, if it can.