Our senior US Senator, Kit Bond, is bending logic into pretzels and whacking strawmen into chaff to defend Bush’s nomination of Michael Mukasey as Attorney General.

“Judge Mukasey does not yet have the necessary security clearance to know the details of highly sensitive anti-terror programs”, noted a release from Bond’s office. “The Democrats’ insistence on asking Mukasey to comment on details he cannot know puts him in an impossible situation – doing so is like asking a judge to give a decision before he has even heard the case,” said Bond.

Yeah, and we also shouldn’t ask a nominee if a premeditated gunshot to the head constitutes murder.

Bond goes on:

“Declaring certain anti-terror techniques illegal – a prerequisite for confirmation by many Senate Democrats — could subject terror-fighters to legal actions and sanctions,” the senior Senator said in a release.

So declaring illegal techniques like torture to be, well, illegal could subject torturers to legal sanction? Oh my!

Really, this is an extension of the GOP “rules” on questioning the Supreme Court nominees. Apparently asking about the legal views of nominees whose entire job will be to offer their interpretations of the law is now verboten. Let’s see how quickly they abandon this way of thinking once a Democrat is in the White House.

I didn’t expect to be that prophetic:

I don’t think this is going to end any time soon.

Those letters to the editor keep showing up in the paper.

I have previously written about the commitment announcement of two males and the reactions in letters to the editor in the Warrensburg Daily Star-Journal here [original diary], here [part 2], here [part 3], and here [part 4].

Five letters to the editor in support of the announcement were published in the Monday, November 5th edition of the paper. Four more letters expressing support appeared in today’s edition.

Excerpts from the November 5th edition follow. The headers for each letter were provided by the paper.

Abuse of pastoral power

“…The news report that I watched explained that a local pastor encouraged church members to write to the paper in opposition. How did our community become so misguided….?

…Encouraging a congregation to speak out against a private issue like this is an abuse of pastoral power…”

Ouch. That had to have left a mark.

There were two letters from Columbia (the city in Missouri). The first:

Stick to Your Guns

“….I hope that you stick to your guns over this issue and hopefully let people know that with all the hate, wars, and genocide going on in the world, there is nothing wrong with two people declaring their love and commitment to each other publicly…”

The second:

Shouldn’t Throw Stones

“…First of all, I’m a conservative and I see no wrong in publishing an announcement showing two people who are making such a commitment to each other…

…Shame on them for throwing stones when they should not…!”

Okay, that one definitely left a mark.

A letter from Florida (the state, but I haven’t checked if there’s a city by that name in Missouri):

Love is a Christian Concept

“…The commitment of these two men to each other in no way harms the family or other marriage relationships…”

A succinct letter:

It’s Time to Open Minds

“….I know this is a very conservative area we live in and it was a risky decision but it’s about time our community opens their eyes and minds…!”

In today’s paper:

Attitude is not Christian

“…My pastor, who is definitely NOT gay, has never said anything negative about gay people or their lifestyle. He believes that only God has the right to judge anyone. I can hardly believe that these people who have been writing to you [in opposition] or pulling their ads from your paper call themselves Christians…!”

Another letter:

Are We to Judge Others?

“…What a controversy we have just because two gentlemen want to share their celebration of love with us.

Are we to judge others?

We’re asked not to…

…’They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Love.'”

A pastor from a nearby town weighs in:
<blockquoteLooking For A Scapegoat

“…The real causes of failure in relationships are mostly financial, lack of commitment, unfaithfulness, inappropriate exposure of children to our culture, and inadequate teaching by parents, teachers and pastors.

Instead of accepting responsibility for our many failures, it is much easier to look for a scapegoat to condemn which eases our guilty consciences…”

And, finally, a short letter from someone in Minneapolis, Minnesota:

Focus is on Wrong Thing

“…It’s sad that the fundamentalists get all bent out of shape over something so harmless yet say nothing about Bush ruining our country and destroying the Constitution.”

Remember that phrase: “…ink by the barrel.” I must admit after reading today’s paper, for one brief instant, the thought crossed mind that the paper might be piling on and that those folks who were so offended by the original announcement have probably had enough public chastisement. Nah.

Pass the popcorn.

…MICHAEL MUKASEY ATTORNEY GENERAL CONFIRMATION HEARING 10/18/2007

SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D-R.I.): So is waterboarding constitutional?

MR. MUKASEY: I don’t know what’s involved in the technique. If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.

SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D-R.I.): If water-boarding is constitutional is a massive hedge.

MR. MUKASEY: No, I said, if it’s torture. I’m sorry. I said, if it’s torture.

SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D-R.I.): If it’s torture? That’s a massive hedge. I mean, it either is or it isn’t. Do you have an opinion on whether waterboarding, which is the practice of putting somebody in a reclining position, strapping them down, putting cloth over their faces and pouring water over the cloth to simulate the feeling of drowning — is that constitutional?

MR. MUKASEY: If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional.

SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (D-R.I.): I’m very disappointed in that answer. I think it is purely semantic.

MR. MUKASEY: I am sorry….

The United States Government, as a participant in the following proceedings, long ago determined that waterboarding constitutes torture. On Monday, December 16, 1946 the prosecution in the International Military Military Tribunal for the Far East [Tokyo War Crimes Trial] introduced an affidavit describing the treatment of internees at Changi Prison (numbers in brackets indicate the transcript page number):

[12,936]…57 internees were removed from Changi prison by the Military Police on or after 10 October 1943…..The Japanese were trying to establish that there was a spy organization in Changi prison which received and transmitted by radio telephony, which had established contacts in the to[w]n for the purpose of sabotage and [12,937] stirring up of anti-Japanese feeling, and which collected money from outside for this purpose. In fact, there was no spy organization, no radio transmission, and no attempt to promote anti-Japanese activities outside the Camp…

[12,939]…Usually interrogation started quietly and would so continue as long as the inquisitors got the expected answers. If, for any reason, such answers were not forthcoming, physical violence was immediately [12,940] employed. The methods used were:
(1) Water Torture [emphasis supplied]. There were two forms of water torture. In the first, the victim was tied or held down on his back and a cloth placed over his nose and mouth. Water was then poured on the cloth. Interrogation proceeded and the victim was beaten if he did not  reply. As he opened his mouth to breathe or to answer questions, water went down his throat until he could hold no more…

The judgment of the tribunal includes the following:

[49,664]…To indicate the prevalence of torture and the uniformity of the methods employed we give a brief summary of these methods.

The so-called “water treatment” was commonly applied. The victim was bound or otherwise secured in a prone position….

….There was evidence that this torture was used in the following places….

The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Complete Transcripts of the Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal for the far East in Twenty-two Volumes, New York: Garland Publishing, 1981.

I’m sorry, too, Judge Mukasey. For different reasons. If you don’t know what constitutes torture you can try reading sixty year old transcripts.

Opposing the use of computerized voting machines in Missouri has been tough work for e-voting activists.  Although Robin Carnahan is aware of the potential problems with them, she recertified them.  Here in St. Louis, the county Board of Elections has been highhanded and impervious in its determination to waste our money on computers.  (By the way, Missourians for Honest Elections is still looking for pro bono legal help to pressure the state to ban DREs.)

We had a spark of hope earlier in the summer when Phil Lindsey let it be known that he was preparing to launch a petition initiative drive for a constitutional amendment to ban the machines, but that effort has washed up on some shoals.  It seems that the petition language that Carnahan approved did not include the words “hand counted” for the paper ballots the amendment would have required.  Now, there’s disagreement amongst those planning the petition drive about whether to proceed, knowing that if the amendment passed, the paper ballots would almost surely be counted by optical scan machines–a less dependable method of getting an honest count than hand counting.

At least there is reason for some optimism on this issue at the national level.  A new bill that would eventually ban computerized voting machines is being co-sponsored by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Bill Nelson (D-FL).  The bad news, though, is that the ban wouldn’t be fully in effect until 2012.  And besides, it doesn’t mandate hand counted paper ballots.

Still, there is some comfort in knowing that the bill would require random hand counted audits in at least three percent of the precincts.  If somebody were monkeying with the optical scan tallies, that large an audit would probably reveal the scam.  (A five percent audit would make any fiddling with the results impossible to hide.)

It’s hardly surprising to find a progressive like Whitehouse (who tossed Lincoln Chafee out of his seat last year) sponsoring such legislation.  The surprising part is what’s coming out of Florida.  Bill Nelson, a DINO (Democrat in Name Only), is Whitehouse’s co-sponsor.  And Charlie Crist, the newly elected Republican governor, pushed to have touch screens banned in Florida and got his wish.

But when you consider recent voting problems in Florida, really it’s the logical place for reform to start–even with a Republican governor and a DINO senator.  The 2000 election, with its hanging chad/butterfly ballot debacle, led to widespread use of computerized machines there in 2004–when the problem with them became painfully obvious.  In Sarasota, an astounding 15 percent of the ballots had no vote in the congressional race.  The Republican candidate won by a razor-thin margin of 386 votes.

That election was contested in court, and Floridians said, Enough already!

Another impetus for the bill is that the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), the federal agency that tests the machines, has in essence said that such machines should not have been certified because there’s no way to independently verify the tallies the machines provide.

So Nelson and Whitehead are proposing getting rid of e-voting machines by 2012 and mandating that all such machines must at least have a paper trail by next fall’s election.  Arranging for a paper trail by next fall on all those machines is an iffy proposition.  It would be easier to simply insist on paper ballots, but apparently Whitehouse and Nelson suspect that the shock of seeing all the money spent on DREs going down the drain so soon after their purchase would be too much for some to handle.  Yes, that will hurt, but: 

[The bill’s] backers, like Dan McCrea, head of the Florida Voters Coalition, insist bills like this are necessary to get states to move to optical scanning, even if they are understandably reluctant to trash their investments in DRE. McCrea calls that foot-dragging the electoral equivalent of “buying a fleet of Pintos whose gas tanks you later find out blow up on you, but insisting you’re going to keep using them because you spent all that money on them.”

What a perfect description of the likely reaction of the St. Louis County Board of Elections.  Nothing short of this national legislation or Carnahan decertifying all DREs would get them to move off the dime.  And I don’t see Carnahan heading in that direction.

(photo courtesy of Time Magazine)

Alok Bansal, Research Fellow at New Delhi’s Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis.
Musharraf’s last gamble

The decision by Pakistan’s President General Pervez Musharraf to declare emergency is the desperate attempt of an autocrat to cling to power. In the process he has irreparably damaged the foundations of constitutionalism in Pakistan, which were never strong to begin with. His actions will not only erode Pakistani state’s authority but may sound the death knell for the Islamic Republic.

Also from Bansal,
60 Years of Pakistan

As Pakistan completes 60 years of existence, it is passing through a critical phase. The state’s writ does not run over almost half its territory. Most people consider themselves as Sindhis, Baloch, Pakhtoons, Mohajirs and Punjabis first rather than as Pakistanis. Pakistan as a nation is kept together artificially by the only institution that functions – the army.

Despite belated attempts by the judiciary to assert its independence, the fact is that for most part of Pakistan’s existence the courts have been dysfunctional and came out with the bizarre ‘Doctrine of Necessity’ to justify military coups. Pakistan’s greatest tragedy has been that barring the armed forces or army to be specific, no other credible institution has emerged. The judiciary, legislature and bureaucracy-all have crumbled during Pakistan’s six decades’ journey.
…
Sub-nationalism emerged as a serious threat to the Pakistani state. Islamic fundamentalists challenge the writ of the government across the length and breadth of Pakistan. Islamabad’s frequent flip-flops on the foreign policy front and frequent incursions by American armed forces within Pakistani territory have compromised its sovereignty in the eyes of its citizens.

Given that history it is not too far a stretch to assume that all of Rice and Bush’s protestations are nothing but smoke, mirrors, and bullshit to feed the American public, and that they helped orchestrate Musharraf’s martial law, to anger Islamic fundamentalists within the country and destabilize Pakistan as much as possible.

It would not surprise me to find that at least some in the administration, particularly in Cheney’s camp, would like nothing better than an Islamic fundamentalist coup or takeover of nuclear armed Pakistan to give them the perfect excuse for cranking up the WOT rhetoric again, nuking Pakistan, and Iran next door. The rapturists on Bush’s side of the aisle would love it as well.

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired),
yesterday at-Largely:

Musharraf has not said how long the emergency will be in effect.  This is not to be confused with the state of emergency Mr. Bush declared in his country on September 14, 2001 that is still in effect and will be for the indefinite future.  These two states of emergency are completely different, of course.  Mr. Bush declared an emergency after terrorists attacked two major cities in his country.  Mr. Musharraf declared an emergency as terrorists threatened to take control of his country.

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has accused Musharraf of using the specter of terror to maintain his hold on power.  Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore has accused Bush of using the threat of terror to commit “a gross and excessive power grab.”
…
America is the first true global hegemon in the history of humanity.  Pakistan is not and never will be.  America has the largest economy of the world’s nations, posting an estimate gross domestic product of over $13 trillion in 2006.  Pakistan’s 2006 economy, at just under $438 billion, was 26th among the world’s countries, and less than four percent the size of America’s.

And yet, amazingly, Pakistan can get whatever it wants from America while America can’t get anything it wants from Pakistan (see, I told you the two countries were different!).  Condi Rice is reviewing whether or not we should try to make Musharraf behave by cutting off his allowance, but as Senator Joe Biden (R-Delaware) has astutely noted, our “hands are tied” from cutting Pakistan’s foreign aid because, despite Condi’s assertions to the contrary, the Bush administration has in fact put “all its chips” on Musharraf.

That brings up a couple more differences between America and Pakistan.  If Musharraf falls from power, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons might fall under the control of known lunatics, while America’s nuclear weapons are already under the control of known lunatics.
…
And who do we have to handle this situation?  Condoleezza Rice and her department full of career diplomats who don’t want to deploy to Iraq, the invasion of which created the foreign policy pickle barrel we now find ourselves in.

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless this bed that we lie on…

And you thought I was was MAD?

What could be better, Matt Blunt asks, than the appearance of scientific objectivity on controversial issues?  Actual objectivity would be most inconvenient, but our governor knows how to convene a well packed task force.  Two of them, in fact, recently.

One is a task force to study the physical and psychological effects of abortion on a woman’s health.  The members of the task force are all from organizations opposed to abortion, including Alliance for Life-Missouri, and you can guess what sort of conclusions they’ll reach.  It’s all very (un)scientific.  A columnist at the Columbia Missourian takes them to task:

C. Everett Koop, former surgeon general under Reagan, could not determine the effects of abortion on a woman’s physical and psychological health based on extensive scientific research, despite his own conservative stance on the issue. His letter to the president only said, “the available scientific evidence about the psychological sequelae of abortion simply cannot support either the preconceived notions of those pro-life or those pro-choice.” That is as true today as it was in 1989. How can we, the people of this great state, expect a fair and unbiased report from this biased “task force” if the surgeon general could not find a conclusion?

The other task force the governor has created is studying how CAFOs should be regulated in Missouri.  At least the members are fully familiar with the issue, considering that most of them are part of the CAFO industry.  Still, the governor did invite Ken Midkiff of the Sierra Club.  Midkiff scornfully refused to lend his good name to such a travesty.

Matt Blunt is pandering to his religious base and giving Smithfield Farms some political cover.  He hasn’t stepped out of character.

From the November issue of Harper’s:

Scientists announced that conservatives and liberals have different patterns of neuronal impulses when confronted with unexpected circumstances.  Self-described conservatives pressed the wrong button in response to a new stimulus 47 percent of the time, whereas avowed liberals had a 37 percent error rate; liberals had double the activity of conservatives in the anterior cingulate cortex, a deep region of the brain that helps people recognize “no-go” situations, but the study’s authors emphasized that the results do not mean that liberals are smarter or better than conservatives.

Dear authors of the study, I understand why you’d play it safe and issue that disclaimer at the end.  We know (wink, wink) what the results mean, though, don’t we?

Light-rail in Kansas City is going to be a featured topic of my diary for the near future.  With this post, I’ll introduce it, and give an overview of the financial hurdles that we will have to overcome.

I love trains

Let me state up front that I am unabashedly pro-train. Almost didn’t move here because the city didn’t have a train. I have voted for every single light rail proposal that has been on the ballot since I moved to this city in 2001 and registered to vote at the Westport branch of the public library (where my husband went for storytime as a tot in the 50’s, about the time they tore out the last streetcar line) a couple of hours after the coffeepot was unpacked.

I refuse to let the perfect be the enemy of the good in regards to public transportation. I voted for the proposal last November giggling all the while and knowing the gondola was a pipedream that was never gonna happen, and I actively wondered what was in the pipe when Chastain dreamed up that part of his plan.

But the city administration wanting to take a mulligan on the whole election pisses me off to no end. We voted for a train. Get your asses busy writing some grant proposals already, and taking other concrete steps to make it happen. A full freakin’ year has slipped away while y’all have bickered like 12-year-old girls.

It gets my hackles up that the city administration has put all their effort into remaining deadlocked for an entire year. I’m annoyed that, out of a sense of the public’s frustration, the city’s major newspaper put together a viable plan (who would know better how pissed off the public is than the folks who read the submissions to the letters to the editor?) And let’s talk about that for a minute. I give the Kansas City Star a hard time on a regular basis. I have no intention of letting up on them in other areas just because they stepped up like menches on this issue. Every time I catch them stepping on McClatchy’s fine reporting to soften implications of malfeasance against the Missouri GOP, I’ll give ’em hell about it. If they ever get all puffed up and try to charge four bills a year for their website again, I’ll give ’em hell about that, too.

So when they do something right, I am honor-bound to give them their due. Some entity with juice had to take a bold step and break the deadlock that Kansas City politics is famous for. (Say what you will about the Pendergast political machine – but stuff got done when his machine ran the show. The building I live in was constructed as a Pendergast patronage project, and it is possibly the best-constructed and most well-appointed brick walkup in the entire city. And an interesting and related aside, the public transit system as it exists today was, apparently, designed for the people who live in this building.)

For a solid year, since the election last year, the powers that be have squabbled. The results of the vote were shocking – I figured it would be like every other proposal and me plus twelve other cranks would vote for it, they would make fun of us for a couple of weeks on Ruckus, and that would be that. Then holy hell! It not only passed, gondola and all, it passed overwhelmingly! Woody Cozad is still, a year later, completely apoplectic.

Kansas City is unique in a lot of ways. There are two states and somewhere between eight and ten counties, depending on how you define “metro area” There is a hodgepodge of local governments, every last one of them antagonistic to all the others, the only thing they can all agree on is that they all resent the hell out of every penny that their citizens leave in KCMO. Herding cats is an understatement.

The Star did a bit of research (which is what newspapers are supposed to do) and found evidence that in virtually every instance of an urban area adopting a starter line in the heart of the city, the suburbs get a taste of public transit done right, they get jealous, and the lines expand. $3.00 a gallon gas, added to an undeniable awareness of the effects of anthropogenic global warming, and the demand for efficient and reliable public transit is bound to accelerate.

Only a few dinosaurs like Cozad are flat-out opposed to light-rail no matter what. I say lets just ignore them.

Which brings us to funding

A starter line in KCMO is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. A regional system would cost billions. But it turns out that we might be closer to footing the bill than one might think.

Of course, there are obstacles. Among the highest hurdles to clear: Kansas political leaders want Kansas money to stay in Kansas, and they are skeptical that rail transit is the best option. But other communities, namely Seattle, have overcome such parochial concerns and learned to work together for the betterment of the community.

Let’s look at potential revenue streams.

Local funding for a starter line will initially have to come from KCMO and North Kansas City. North KC is essentially an industrial area that sits between the Missouri river and Kansas City North. NKC has a very low residential population, employing many times their population in the businesses that operate there. It simply stands to reason that the area would benefit from light rail – employees who are discouraged from looking for employment outside their immediate area by high gas prices would suddenly find the options of employment in NKC more attractive. Additionally, we get some very active weather. Employees who drive to work would be les likely to call in when the roads are covered with snow and ice if they only had to get to a train station, and not all the way across the river.

Kansas City Kansas is another potential partner. Western Wyandotte County is booming, and the county looks to have $20 million available by 2013 in new taxes from development projects, and Joe Reardon, the Mayor of the Unified Government of KCK and Wyandotte County has indicated that some of that could be used for transit.

Regional taxes. Missouri has agreed to give it’s counties the option to pass a half-cent transit sales tax, but the initiative failed in Kansas in 2006. Missouri may go ahead and pass the tax without waiting for Kansas. A regional tax could potentially produce a significant amount of money for transit improvements and expansions. The Star reported that a metro-wide half-cent tax would produce $134 million a year. That would be sufficient revenue to finance a $3 billion construction effort.

State funding. Dream on. Kansas only spends $6.2 million per year in public transportation funds, and Missouri spends even less, a mere $4.2 million, and Missouri has over two times the population and two major, bi-state metropolitan areas with their urban cores in Missouri. Both states have Republican state legislatures that are foaming-at-the-mouth insane about taxes. Kansas is locked in at their current funding level until 2009, but Missouri, whose highway monies are limited by the state constitution would be very difficult to squeeze another dime from.

Federal funding is most likely to be a viable source of much-needed revenue in the future. If federal funds are sought for a starter line, it would delay the project by a couple of years. No matter how the starter line proceeds, federal funding will certainly be pursued in the future for system expansions.

Getting a starter line going on our own could help with the effort to obtain federal funds in the future. Competition for light-rail funds is strong now, and only expected to intensify in the future as communities look to light-rail to solve transit needs.

I think the time to strike was seven years ago, when the iron was hot, gas prices were still under $1.50 per gallon, and the competition for federal funds wasn’t so fierce. But that’s just me doing the “I told you so!” dance again. Since we didn’t, and got a MAX express bus line instead, we need to act now.

Next up: More on obstacles to progress, and the obstreperous nature of our local politics.

Hat tip to Scooby Doo for the title.

Meanwhile, the Kansas City Star‘s resident stenographer [tiny URL] gets distracted by the shiny bauble in the “fair and balanced – we distort and decide” school of poltical reporting.

…Democrat Jay Nixon is facing Republican charges that he broke the law by using his taxpayer-funded car for his political campaign.

Republican incumbent Matt Blunt is up to his nostrils in the Scott Eckersley caper. Eckersley is a former Blunt administration lawyer who was fired Sept. 28. Democrats and Republicans are in unison on that much….

One of these things is not like the other. Uh, Jay Nixon has dealt with the car thing. Matt “baby” Blunt just continues to spin, and spin…

Except, of course, the stenographer is way behind the curve in the alleged access to Eckersley’s private e-mail accounts:

Questions remain over access to e-mails

The attorney for the former deputy counsel for Gov. Matt Blunt has requested an investigation into potential criminal wrongdoing in the governor’s office.

Springfield attorney Steve Garner of the Strong Law Firm, who represents fired state attorney Scott Eckersley, wrote a letter Thursday to two top Blunt officials requesting an investigation into possible “criminal” actions related to the access of Eckersley’s personal e-mail account after he was fired….

Ruh-Roh!