If you folks are checking in now. . .talking to Sam Seder on Air America Radio's Majority Report about David Dreier's problems rising to the top -- and Jeff Gedmin's ascension as John Bolton's Deputy at the United Nations.

-- Steve Clemons

TWN has just confirmed that Jeffrey Gedmin (see post below) will be named as John Bolton's No. 2 at the United Nations and will carry the formal title of "Deputy Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations."

-- Steve Clemons

President Bush stands by those loyal to him -- as he did with John Bolton, who was precisely the wrong person to send as America's Ambassador to the U.N.

Now John Bolton is reportedly gathering a new group of staffers loyal specifically to him.

News has just reached TWN that Aspen Institute Berlin Director Jeffrey Gedmin, who worked at the American Enterprise Institute with Bolton and who directed AEI's New Atlantic Initiative, will be joining Bolton as one of his senior staff at the mission.

Jeff Gedmin is a self-described Bolton loyalist and penned his job application and writing sample for Bolton, "Mein Freund Bolton," in March of this year.

Gedmin's piece is an early preemptive attack on those who would question the appropriateness of Bolton for the key U.N. Ambassadorship and help make Bolton's style of pugnacious nationalism that has so harmed U.S. interests in the last few years seem legitimate for an American envoy.

Another article that probably underscores why Bolton wants Gedmin so badly -- and why we should all be concerned is Plan B for Iran which ran in the Weekly Standard -- and which was aptly critiqued by Jim Lobe here. Many observers believe that beyond George Bush's blind loyalty to those who blindly serve as his spear-carriers, the only logical reason to have Bolton at the U.N. is to have him there to knock heads and rip up the U.N. if it fails to heed American will regarding Iran and its nuclear program.

Iran's pretensions are a clear issue of concern -- but the "bomb them now and get it over" attitude is not going to further American interests and probably is a sure-fire path assuring Iranian commitment to a fully-deployed nuclear weapons program coupled with a pissed-off and isolated Iran.

I have maintained a friendly relationship with Jeffrey Gedmin through the years and think that the Aspen Institute Berlin's decision to hire Gedmin in Germany gave Germans a much closer feel to the thinking and motivations that ran through neoconservative circles. This was better for Germans than hiring someone who just reaffirmed dominant German biases. However, even good acquaintances have disagreements -- and John Bolton is a big one.

While I wish Gedmin well in the U.S. mission, I am alarmed that Bolton is bringing people to his side that bolster the neocon element both in the State Department and who reinforce Bolton's long-term agenda of using his perch as a rival voice on U.S. foreign policy to Rice and Zoellick -- and to make sure that the Bolton/Cheney wing of the Republican foreign policy establishment continues strong.

I should hasten to add that the State Department will not confirm or deny the news on Gedmin. What TWN has received is still in the form of doubly confirmed rumor.

That means the deal could still fall apart I suppose -- but given that there are some inside the U.S. mission complaining about Bolton's micro-management and tough bravado vis-a-vis the civil servant staff, there may be tensions brewing -- and Bolton may be bringing his own loyalists to keep order and to "compel" those bureaucrats under his control to do "exactly what he wants."

Well, we saw how well that went in his last job. . .Bolton's immediate staff as well as the rest of the world (represented at the U.N.) need to watch out.

Leakers -- you know what to do.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

Rehnquist has been succeeded. Time will tell if he helps to undo Roe v. Wade and Americans' rights to privacy. My gut instinct suggest that he will prove to be a fairer and more decent judge than most progressives think.

But that choice was what Democrats lost in the last election. While John Kerry was off debating who was and wasn't a hero in yesteryear's wars, he should have been saying: "It's the Supreme Court, stupid."

The real battle is the next one. And very possibly the one after that -- as Bush may get two more chances to plant his presidential DNA in the Supreme Court.

But for now -- Roberts is far better than Scalia or Thomas would have been as Chief. In my book, this is a minor victory for some of those who have helped chasten the White House via the stem cell battle, the Bolton Battle, and the battle over social security privatization.

But the real evidence will be in how reasonable or outrageous Bush's next Supreme Court appointment will be. Stay tuned.

On newly annointed Chief Justice John Roberts, Senator Jay Rockefeller just forwarded this statement to TWN, and I think it is a pretty good assessment of most Dems who supported Roberts:

In Judge Roberts, the nation is presented with a nominee who possesses an extraordinary intellect, a modest temperament and a steady hand. I see in him the will and the ability to seek common ground among the justices of the court on important national issues. And I believe he possesses sufficient humility, as a man and as a judge, to be mindful of the powerful impact of his actions on the lives of average Americans.

Four days of intensive hearings allowed all of us, and much of America, to come to know something of John Roberts -- and to observe and assess what we don't know. None of us can fully fathom the matters that will be determined, and the people who will be affected, by a judge with lifetime tenure on the highest court of the land. John Roberts today very likely becomes the Chief Justice of a generation.

It is not surprising that this President would select a nominee with whom I disagree on some important issues, particularly as articulated in his early policy work. But it is reassuring, and ultimately determinative, that the President has selected a nominee who asserts with conviction, supported by the record, that he is not an ideologue -- that he takes precedent as established law and people and cases as they come before him. I take him at his word, and trust that in interpreting and applying the law, he will be his own man.

Yet once a nominee's high credentials and unimpeachable integrity have been established, the selection of a Supreme Court justice further demands of us a leap of faith. And it is in that leap of faith that we must attempt to know more: Who is he as a person? What is his understanding of the human condition? Does he take seriously our fundamental responsibility to people, as well as to legal concepts?

Many of my readers don't want to abide by my giving the White House a pass on Roberts -- but I think we won something in getting him over some of the more unacceptable choices that Bush might have tried to shove down the nation's throat.

But in this choice, the White House divided Dems. Dems in turn need to begin pushing issues -- like pushing a credible 2-state solution between Israel and Palestine -- that divide Republicans.

-- Steve Clemons

Former Lee Atwater protege and Bush I senior staffer Jim Pinkerton had these insightful words on the cost of Dreier being shoved aside by Roy Blunt:

"Blunt is a standard partisan, more of a DeLay Jr.," said Jim Pinkerton, a former GOP White House aide who is now a fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington.

"Dreier would have been a little bit daring for them, a little too thoughtful, too independent. . .It's not surprising they wouldn't quite want him to have the keys to the kingdom."

Daring, thoughtful and independent are traits that should be welcome in both parties right now -- but are in particularly short supply in Republican leadership circles.

Big missed opportunity.

But if the Dems get their act together, Blunt/DeLay will be an easier target than Dreier would have been.

-- Steve Clemons

What do Bush and Rumsfeld think they are doing in failing to reimburse deployed military service men and women for body armor they bought to protect themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Do they think that this is like public school in which teachers are (wrongly) expected to cover a lot of their own classroom expenses?

According to a leading Democratic Senator, "Secretary Rumsfeld and the Department of Defense have repeatedly failed to comply with Section 351 of Public Law 108-375, which requires the implementation of a reimbursement program for members of the United States Armed Forces who have been forced to purchase their own body armor or other protective, safety or health equipment for use in Iraq or Afghanistan."

Senator Chris Dodd is trying to do the right thing by these soldiers. The best thing would be to get them out of Iraq, but these soldiers are there on Bush's, Cheney's and Rumsfeld's call -- and they were sent without adequate defenses.

Dodd is looking for stories from soldiers who purchased their own armor in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Associated Press has found some angry soldiers who resent buying their own body armor:

"Your expectation is that when you are sent to war, that our government does everything they can do to protect the lives of our people, and anything less than that is not good enough," said a former Marine who spent nearly $1,000 two weeks ago to buy lower-body armor for his son, a Marine serving in Fallujah.

The father asked that he be identified only by his first name -- Gordon -- because he is afraid of retribution against his son.

"I wouldn't have cared if it cost us $10,000 to protect our son, I would do it," said Gordon. "But I think the U.S. has an obligation to make sure they have this equipment and to reimburse for it. I just don't support Donald Rumsfeld's idea of going to war with what you have, not what you want. You go to war prepared, and you don't go to war until you are prepared."

Under the law passed by Congress last October, the Defense Department had until Feb. 25 to develop regulations for the reimbursement, which is limited to $1,100 per item. Pentagon officials opposed the reimbursement idea, calling it "an unmanageable precedent that will saddle the DOD with an open-ended financial burden."

In a letter to Dodd in late April, David Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel, said his office was developing regulations to implement the reimbursement, and would be done in about 60 days.

I think that there are many Republicans and Democrats who are outraged by the poor treatment of soldiers during Rumsfeld's tenure. I can't imagine that John McCain or Chuck Hagel aren't as angry as Chris Dodd.

Why -- after Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the bad calls on the Iraq invasion, and now this ongoing body armor fiasco -- does Donald Rumsfeld still have his job?

-- Steve Clemons

In an administration that prides itself on message control, that keeps potential dissenters out of policy discourse or even political events with its leaders, and punishes or rewards based on whether someone is "with them or against them," Karen Hughes' very public encounters with people who are angered by American behavior in the world couldn't be more important.

The Hughes trip is successful because of her public encounter with America's sensible opposition -- an opposition that wants to be our friend but can't understand the logic or sense of our actions and foreign policy.

This in today from the New York Times' Steven Weisman:

Under Secretary of State Karen P. Hughes, seeking common ground with leading women's rights advocates in Turkey, was confronted instead on Wednesday with anguished denunciations of the war in Iraq and what the women said were American efforts to export democracy by force.

It was the second day in a row that Ms. Hughes found herself at odds with groups of women on her "public diplomacy" tour, aimed at improving the American image in the Middle East. On Tuesday, she told Saudi Arabian women she would support efforts to raise their status but was taken aback when some of them responded that Americans misunderstand their embrace of traditions.

She met Wednesday with about 20 Turkish feminist leaders in Ankara, the capital. She introduced herself, as she has done on this trip, as "a working mom" and said she was there to emphasize the many things Turkey and the United States had in common. The women welcomed her but had a different emphasis.

"You are very angry with Turkey, I know," said Hidayet Tuskal, a director of the Capital City Women's Platform, referring to what she characterized as United States reaction to opposition in Turkey to the Iraq war, which she said was a feminist issue because women and children were dying daily. "I'm feeling myself wounded," Ms. Tuskal added. "I'm feeling myself insulted here."

Fatma Nevin Vargun, identifying herself as a Kurdish rights advocate, said she was "ashamed" of the war and added that the United States bore responsibility. Referring to the arrest of a war protester at the White House on Monday, she added, "This was a pity for us as well."

With her brow furrowed, Ms. Hughes replied: "I can appreciate your concern about war. No one likes war." She went on to say that "my friend President Bush" did all he could to avoid a war in Iraq, but then asserted about Iraq: "It is impossible to say that the rights of women were better under Saddam Hussein than they are today." She said that women had been tortured, raped and killed under the leadership ousted by American troops.

I hope Hughes is getting a sense of that effective public diplomacy has to be connected to an effective enlightened foreign and national security policy. It can't be all smiles and dithering assertions about Bush's real intentions. We need to resolve many of the key grievances that our global audience has with us now -- and perhaps Karen Hughes has just heard a dose of that. . .whether she wants to acknowledge it or not.

-- Steve Clemons

I can't find very much in this RedState.org post that I don't agree with. That's a problem.

Pelosi needs to reverse course right now on her anti-Jane Harman crusade.

In case registering is a problem, here is a key slice:

That's right. Alcee Hastings, a former federal judge who is one of six federal judges ever impeached and removed from office, a man who couldn't qualify for a security clearance based on his brushes with the law, will now be the face of the Democrat party on all things dealing with intelligence.

It's not that I particularly like Jane Harman, she strikes one as a Nancy Pelosi with social skills, but handing the most sensitive committee position available to House Democrats to a man who has already demonstrated he can be bought is just an unserious action by the unserious leader of an unserious political party.

We can't be knocking out corrupt players like Tom DeLay and Duke "Tailhook" Cunningham -- and then allowing strong points of competence in the Democratic leadership to be undermined by pettiness and nepotism in Democratic Party ranks.

Red State is right. That's not a serious move by a serious party.

-- Steve Clemons

A loyal, anonymous reader just sent me these two important Tom DeLay quotes -- directed at then President Bill Clinton during his legal scuffles.

Tom DeLay (R-Texas), quoted in the Washington Post, October 9, 1998:

I believe that this nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law. Sometimes hard, sometimes unpleasant, this path relies on truth, justice and the rigorous application of the principle that no man is above the law.

Now, the other road is the path of least resistance. This is where we start making exceptions to our laws based on poll numbers and spin control. This is when we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us, when we ignore the facts in order to cover up the truth.

Shall we follow the rule of law and do our constitutional duty no matter unpleasant, or shall we follow the path of least resistance, close our eyes to the potential lawbreaking, forgive and forget, move on and tear an unfixable hole in our legal system? No man is above the law, and no man is below the law. That's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country.

Tom DeLay (R-Texas, quoted from Late Edition, CNN, November 29, 1998:

I think it would be a travesty to the Constitution for us to lower the standards for breaking the law by not voting impeachment. It boggles my mind people would think that committing a felony is not impeachable, and therefore, I think the members, by conscience, will vote for impeachment.

Rule of law. Checks and balances. Healthy civil society.

Tom DeLay used to talk this talk. . .

Restoring the Republic depends on shutting down the Tom DeLay political machine. And those who fed off his brand of structural corruption in Washington need to be exposed and purged.

-- Steve Clemons

I learned -- in great detail -- about Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi's intentions to unseat Representative Jane Harman as Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence on Saturday, the 17th of September but sat on the story, both because I wanted to dig a bit deeper and also because I was being crushed by some other deadlines.

All that said, the story is out, and the Washington Post's Charles Babington has the best run down at the moment. Here is a longish excerpt of yesterday's story:

The widely praised Sept. 11 commission recommended that members of the House and Senate intelligence committees stay for several terms to build expertise. But the top Democrat on the House committee may be booted in early 2007, and the reason has more to do with internal party politics than intelligence matters.

Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.) has been the House intelligence panel's ranking Democrat for three years. She would like to hold the post several more years, and a January 2003 House rules change would seem to work in her favor. At the time, the GOP-controlled House exempted the intelligence committee's leadership from term limits in a bid to keep then-Chairman Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), now the CIA director. The rule change applied to the ranking minority member as well.

Nonetheless, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has told colleagues she plans to replace Harman with Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.) when the 110th Congress convenes in January 2007, assuming all three members are reelected next year. Hastings, the committee's next-most-senior Democrat, is African American, and the Congressional Black Caucus strongly backs his claim on the post.

The CBC is an influential player in Pelosi's 202-member Democratic caucus, and its members are sensitive on this issue. They remember that black lawmaker Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) lost his January 2003 bid to be the intelligence committee's ranking Democrat when Pelosi gave the post to Harman. Bishop and his allies said he had greater seniority, noting that Harman had quit the House in 1998 to run unsuccessfully for governor. But Democratic leaders, in persuading Harman to reclaim her seat in 2000, had restored her committee seniority.

Bishop was placated with a coveted spot on the Appropriations Committee, but black Democrats do not want to be passed over again. Hastings said in an interview that Pelosi has signaled he will be the intelligence committee's top Democrat after the 2006 elections. "If we follow the pecking order, I'll be the ranking member or the chairman," he said.

Harman would say only that the decision is up to Pelosi, who preceded her as the committee's top Democrat and retains a strong interest in intelligence matters. Meanwhile, some of Harman's supporters in the intelligence community have quietly urged Pelosi to keep the Californian in the job. House insiders say they are unlikely to prevail.

Nancy Pelosi is harming her party and the country with this petty gaming. First, the Dems ought to be pumping up the national security expertise they have on hand and keeping it on the front line through the next Presidential election -- and thereafter. Jane Harman has had the guts to withdraw some calls she made on Iraq and a number of national security votes because she said she was duped by the administration. She is smart and tough -- and a superb advocate for Americans who want to know more about the high-fear tactics that the White House, CIA, NSA, and Department of Defense have been engaged in these last several years.

Harman knows intelligence, strategy, technology, and is not giving the White House an inch to run with any longer on key national security questions.

Pelosi's candidate to succeed Harman is Alcee Hastings -- a former judge who was impeached and removed from office in 1989 for perjury and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

This makes no sense.

I had breakfast this morning with a prominent "former" member of the House of Representatives, a Democrat, who has long been a friend of Harman's and thinks that this Pelosi ploy is wrong-headed and harmful to the party.

That said, he reported that Harman was not well liked by her colleagues.

Well, John Bolton was not well-liked by his. The problem with Bolton is that he was undermining Colin Powell and Richard Armitage and harming the national interest.

It's clear to me that one of the few House of Representative Dems who has any competence in national security matters may be tough on her House colleagues who know less than she on defense and intelligence policy -- but she's helping to preserve and secure the country's interests.

I don't think that this can stand -- and while I want the Dems to do much better in the next elections against a White House that has taken this nation to the brink of real disaster, I won't embrace idiotic and petty decisions by the House Democratic Leader that harm this country.

Keep Harman in place -- and give the apparently rehabilitating Alcee Hastings some other face-saving slot that doesn't harm this country's national security portfolio.

-- Steve Clemons

I have just done a quick search at News.Google.com just to see what media outlets in the Google roster have posted anything about David Dreier being knocked out of contention for the House Majority Leader position like a pre-ordained, gay-leaning priest trying to get into Pope Benedict XVI's Catholic Church.

I just searched under "Dreier" and "homosexual" and three citations came up -- all blogs. I'm sure that there will be at least some mention in the main stream press, but thus far these blogs at AlterNet.org, RedState.org (be warned -- this link is tough to find even after registering), and OutsideTheBeltway.org are the only ones up. Many other bloggers are on this as well -- particularly at RawStory.

However, if the Republican-Majority-Leader-to-be was preempted because he was gay, that is real news. I haven't heard the commentary yet, but several people have reported to me that CNN's Wolf Blitzer stated that Dreier was blocked at the last moment because he was pro-choice, from Southern California, and had "other issues" -- the last part stated in a low and halting voice.

If true, what is that about, Wolf? If Dreier -- who is one of the most powerful and, frankly, capable members of House Republican leadership -- Chairman of the powerful Rules Committee -- was stopped from stepping into the indicted Tom DeLay's seat because he was gay -- can we finally get beyond the blogs and onto the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post about this real news?

Dreier was blocked because he has a long-term, loving relationship with someone of the same sex. This has been documented on many fronts and is widely known by members of Dreier's own caucus. If the reality of this blocked Dreier's ascension, then the news has a duty not to keep this matter hidden.

I'm pleased by Tom DeLay's fall from grace. But I'm irritated by the main stream media's complicity in hiding the bigotry that runs unchecked through a significant quarter of the Republican party.

I hope Dreier throws a few punches back.

-- Steve Clemons

Well, it seems that too many bloggers applauded too loudly in favor of Hastert's initial call for Dreier to succeed Tom DeLay -- and now have selected House Majority Whip Roy Blunt to succeed the indicted DeLay.

Dreier will get to play part-time helm-holder these next few months though in a special deal cut with Hastert and Blunt.

DeLay is still out -- very out, and that is great.

-- Steve Clemons

Yes. . .Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush have had their starring roles in the subversion of our system of checks and balances that makes American democracy work -- but they are all in the Executive Branch. Chief executives try to be monarchs; they can't help it.

However, Tom DeLay knuckled under his colleagues in the Republican establishment, the Democrats, the corporate community, and much of the media in a near total humiliation and emasculation of the Congress in its role as a check on the President and Executive Branch authority.

DeLay's role is the starring one that has undermined this nation because he kept Congress from behaving as Congress should vis-a-vis the White House: as a check on power. This has been the reality throughout American history, even when one party controlled the legislature and the executive -- until Tom DeLay.

I once told a group of gay rights activists, followed the next day by a group of climate change-focused environmentalists, followed by a large group of young American globally-engaged internationalists that the very best thing that they could all work on rather than their pet projects was to work to unseat Tom DeLay. Sue him. Unearth the scandals. Keep the pressure up.

Tom DeLay has done more than nearly any other person to harm the machinery of democratic process in America -- and his indictment for campaign finance conspiracy and fall today gives me some hope that some of what this nation has lost is recoverable. DeLay will fight his accusers -- but he won't be back in party leadership. The long knives are out to get him -- and it has been overdue.

Josh Marshall disagrees with me and thinks that Dreier got the job because DeLay thinks he can move him out of the position when he's done with his legal wrangling. I don't think so. I think that Dreier, Blount, even Hastert have all been patiently waiting for the Hammer to get hammered.

Many will decry the ascension to DeLay's job of House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier because of the conflict between his in-the-closet gay life and some of the votes he has taken on hate crimes and other gay-related issues. He should be challenged on those.

But at the same time, Dreier is not dogmatic ideologue. It's startling and refreshing that Hastert has thrown his weight behind Dreier to succeed DeLay as Majority Leader in the House.

He's a centrist -- and this is good news for progressives and sensible conservatives. Dreier will make sure that DeLay never gets back into that office.

-- Steve Clemons

Timelines -- good ones -- just undo ANY spin that Bill Frist's team want to give to the Frist HCA scandal.

Check out this sequence of events and information on HCA Stock courtesy of Think Progress.

Compelling.

The question for Frist is what didn't he know about his HCA stock at any point he had it in a blind trust.

-- Steve Clemons

I can't understand what the White House hoped to achieve with the President's press conference today on America's oil refinery problems in the Gulf.

The President is right that we probably have too little refinery capacity fueling the U.S. market, but the "alternative fuels" strategy he is suggesting is ad hoc and isn't serious. He suggested that he feels strongly about "nuclear" as an option. And he said, that we all need to conserve gas.

What kind of national leadership is that? If he wants to put a comprehensive energy strategy on the table -- that reaches beyond simple dependence on fossile fuels -- then maybe nuclear energy is part of that package.

However, WHAT EXACTLY is the package of alternative fuel sources that his administration is willing to invest in?

He said nothing about that.

Until they get serious about America's energy future, perhaps the President and VP could use a few fewer of those roaring black SUVs that race behind their limos all over Washington and elsewhere.

Conservation should start at home, Mr. President.

-- Steve Clemons

More later.

-- Steve Clemons & Oakley the Amazing Weimaraner

Ed. Note: Blogger Matt Stoller gets all the credit for the photo -- and here is his post about Oakley's puppishness.

This cartoon by Mike Luckovich at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution gets it just right.

-- Steve Clemons

Atrios pummels Senator Frist with some great material documenting Frist's past comments about his holdings in HCA and undermining his credibility.

Via Atrios, some excerpts from an ABC Report:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., was updated several times about his investments in blind trusts during 2002, the last time two weeks before he publicly denied any knowledge of what was in the accounts, documents show.

The updates included stock transactions involving HCA Inc., the hospital operating company founded by Frist's family.

Frist's sale of HCA stock is under scrutiny by the federal government. Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA said Friday it had received a subpoena from prosecutors for the Southern District of New York, asking for documents the company believes are related to Frist's sale of company stock this past summer.

Prosecutors also have contacted the senator's office, Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson said Friday. He said neither the senator nor his office had received a subpoena.

Frist's office confirmed the Securities and Exchange Commission was looking into the sale.

"Senator Frist had no information about the company or its performance that was not available to the public when he directed the trustees to sell the HCA stock," Stevenson said in a statement.

Frist sold his HCA stock from several blind trusts this summer, at a time when insiders in the company also were selling off shares worth $112 million from January through June. Frist aides say he sold his stock to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.

Frist, asked in a television interview in January 2003 whether he should sell his HCA stock, responded: "Well, I think really for our viewers it should be understood that I put this into a blind trust. So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock"

Frist, referring to his trust and those of his family, also said in the interview, "I have no control. It is illegal right now for me to know what the composition of those trusts are. So I have no idea."

Documents filed with the Senate showed that just two weeks before those comments, the trustee of the senator's trust, M. Kirk Scobey Jr., wrote to Frist that HCA stock was contributed to the trust. It was valued at $15,000 and $50,000.

Frist may not only not be running for President any longer, he may be doing a "Trent Lott" soon. . .

-- Steve Clemons

Major hypocrisy at the top of the Vatican hierarchy. . .

The effort to ban gay-conceptualizers rather than gay-actualizers from the Catholic priesthood is just outright hypocritical and a violation of the rights of those who want to work in established Catholocism as a priest.

From the Washington Post:

In recent decades, Vatican officials have stated several times that gays should not become priests because their sexual orientation is "intrinsically disordered" and makes them unsuitable for ministry.

This is unacceptable -- and TWN is hoping that those with inside knowlege, so to speak, will begin to expose those in Catholic leadership who are harrassing wannabe priests with this doctrinal bigotry.

For what I previously wrote on the need to Out the Vatican cardinals, click here.

-- Steve Clemons

Yesterday TWN gave Vice President Cheney some credit for focusing on the aftermath of Katrina and the coming onslaught from Rita -- while Karl Rove politicked at big fundraisers in North Dakota.

However, despite reporting to folks planning to attend a Santorum/Cheney fundraiser in Pennsylvania that Cheney had to postpone because of disaster coordination and relief, Cheney was actually readying himself for aneurism surgery -- which can be very serious.

This is (still) not the Soviet Union. Elected leaders should not mimic former Politburo members and say that they are out doing work for the nation when they are really at home (or dacha) ill, or out of commission.

Despite my intense frustration with this administration over the Iraq War and Cheney's recklessness that has damaged American prestige and position in the world, TWN wishes the Vice President well in this surgery.

But still. . .be straight with the American people, even would-be Republican donors.

-- Steve Clemons

Senator Bill Frist's holdings in HCA, a hospital holding firm that his family helped build, has been a conflict-of-interest for him during his entire time as a Senator -- but he seems to have only just realized this as he readies himself to make a run for the White House.

Held in a so-called "blind trust," Frist's HCA holdings were sold recently -- at his direction. Allegedly, he did not know how much of his family's firm he owned, nor did he know from his brother or others that the stock was about to take a dive.

This reeks of insider-knowledge type corruption -- and if Frist hoped to demonstrate an end to conflict-of-interest concerns, he actually did the opposite.

Now we need to watch carefully for any meddling at all by Bill Frist buddy and new SEC boss Christopher Cox.

-- Steve Clemons

Ted Widmer is the kind of historian who makes everything yesterday seem like it is happening now.

He is also politically connected. He journeyed these last couple of years every month from his home in Chestertown, Maryland to New York to serve as Bill Clinton's intellectual 'foil' as the former president sorted out his memoirs. Ted was a speech-writer on Clinton's National Security Staff and used to moonlight in a punk-rock band. He now heads the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College, whose advisory board I have just joined.

I found this recent New York Times piece by Widmer profound in what it says about the way in which American power and might, what is left anyway, are perceived in the world.

He reviews a Tom Clancy-style novel, Metal Storm, written by a Turkish author about a Turkish war with America. I'm one who believes that pop culture can tell you nearly everything about a society at a given point in time -- even though the real Tom Clancy didn't like my characterization of him as one of the most important pop culture forces in America when it came to thinking about America's wars and U.S. foreign policy.

If you are interested in a few minutes of commentary from Clancy at my recent conference, click here.

Widmer though gets to what Turkish pop culture is saying about America and its mess in the world. Here is an excerpt:

Although its title might sound more like a Judas Priest album than a political thriller, "Metal Storm" offers a highly realistic account of an American war with Turkey. In the grand tradition of the cold-war farce "The Mouse That Roared," the book describes a series of baroque plot twists that result in Turkey's humbling the American military behemoth.

To be sure, the book is trashy - its wild speculations include a shadow ruler behind the unnamed American president and arms smuggling via the Mexican drug mafia - and readers are presumably taking it with a grain of salt.

Yet it's a sign of how far America's reputation has plummeted that "Metal Storm," first published in late 2004, is now in its eighth printing of 50,000. The book is said to be very popular with the Turkish military, and men aged 18 to 30.

That tinderbox demographic plays a part in the book, in the form of a secret service outfit that recruits 14-year-old orphans. At the start of the three-year training, each boy is given a puppy. At the end, he's ordered to shoot it - a lesson in how to banish all love from his heart except love of country. "Come time, you may have to kill a little baby, maybe a whole family or the girl you love, in order to save your country!" the boys are instructed.

The plot of "Metal Storm" unfolds something like this. American forces invade Turkey over two weeks in 2007. After war planners discover Turkey has a high concentration of borax, a strategic mineral needed for nuclear weapons and space technology, G.I.'s overrun Turkey from their position in neighboring Iraq. The first phase of the invasion, Operation Metal Storm, resembles Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. The Americans have no difficulty taking over Turkey's primary cities, where they allow cultural vandalism. They fail to secure the countryside, however, and slowly their hubris begins to do them in.

Widmer notes that the book has even popped up in Congressional testimony:

So it's not surprising the book has attracted attention in Washington. How many new thrillers have been the subject of testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee?

In March, Zeyno Baran, a Turkey expert from the Nixon Center, told the senators that "Metal Storm" was "essential in understanding the Turkish mind-set today."

This is just fiction, but certainly, a compelling case can be made that part of an emergent Turkish national identity that sees itself as a more empowered actor in the world may fantasize about humbling America.

What is disturbing though is how quickly American prestige and the mystique of power may be dissipating -- in fact rather than fantasy -- and that the sense of American ascendancy that Bush talked about when he came into office is rapidly looking like the kind of decline that Nixon and Kissinger had to contend with when they came to office.

-- Steve Clemons

Sam Seder is holding the fort down at Air America's Majority Report on his own tonight and has squeezed me into his show at about 8:30 p.m.

We might be discussing the Vatican's labor problems with pre-ordained, wannabe priests who "might" be gay. Or we might be discussing Karl Rove's hurricane response "burn out" -- and how he's turning to fundraisers to build up his spirits. Or we might be back to my favorite topic, John Bolton, and why we may be seeing a resurgence of interest in the possibility that his chief of staff, Fred Fleitz, was involved (with Bolton) in the Valerie Plame leak.

Or maybe we'll be discussing a way to get U.S. foreign policy on a better course. . .but I doubt that. Only have about ten minutes.

I'm thinking of starting my own show one of these days -- just to get a bit more time on air.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Earlier I suggested that the EU should find a way to block the Vatican from utilizing euros.

But that just doesn't make much sense. People want to buy those rosaries, candles and pictures of Popes -- dead and alive. They want stamps and souvenirs and anything that they can find with religious depictions by the GAY Michelangelo.

They are going to use euros.

TWN has just consulted with some legal authorities on how to actually bring pressure on to the Vatican for failing to abide by the EU Charter on Fundamental Rights, which I refer to here earlier.

Because of the Vatican's failure to support this code of rights, a real LEGAL case could be made for ending national government subsidies (by Italy and other countries) to the church paid by the member state government if the right EU court found that the Vatican was in violation of the minority protections of the Charter.
According to my source, "This also goes to harassment in the work place, and presumably Catholic priests in Europe are also citizens of Europe and their work place conditions should be covered."

It's time for some lawyers to consider these possibilities. Some have notified TWN that they may encourage the EU to consider these actions the Vatican is taking more seriously than has been the case in the past.

But while we are waiting, some of the cardinals and "senior" echelon of the Catholic Church need to be outed.

-- Steve Clemons

Dick Cheney did the right thing in cancelling the fundraiser he was scheduled to do this weekend along with Senator Rick Santorum so that he could focus on America's hurricane challenges.

Fascinating though that just about everyone in the White House is off committed to fundraisers. . .

In any case, this just in via an attentive North Dakota blogger who cites the Times-Tribune:

Fundraiser featuring Cheney postponed

SHAVERTOWN -- U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum's Luzerne County fundraiser with Vice President Dick Cheney has been postponed.

The appearance, set for Friday, was postponed so the vice president could concentrate on helping deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, said John Brabender, spokesman for Mr. Santorum's re-election campaign. The event will likely take place in mid-October, he said.

The vice president was scheduled to appear at the Shavertown home of Ron and Rhea Simms for the $1,000-a-person fundraiser. Mr. Santorum is the presumptive Republican nominee. The leading Democratic contender is state Treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr. of Scranton.

Gotta give credit where credit is due. . .but not for Rove this round.

-- Steve Clemons

The Vatican's new campaign to bar the ordination of priests based on sexual orientation, as opposed to behavior, violates the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

The Vatican is not a member of the European Union but straddles being a church and state within Italy, which is a member. The Vatican uses the Euro, pretends a certain European sensibility, but gets away with many forms of descrimination, particularly against women.

However, the notion of banning access to a position because of perceived or alleged, as opposed to proven, "orientation" seems way out of bounds.

Perhaps Europe should consider barring the Vatican from the right of using the Euro within city walls.

Why should Europe contribute in any way to the economic rationality of this anti-modern institution, particularly if it is going to engage in a revived inquisition?

-- Steve Clemons

Europe is pulling back from its take-Iran-to-the-brink pledge to refer Iran's nuclear activities to the U.S. Security Council. While this may sound sensible to some, the ice we are all on is getting dangerously thinner.

This is big news:

The European Union has backed off from its attempt to have Iran immediately called before the UN Security Council over its nuclear programme, due to fierce opposition from Russia and China, diplomats said.

Several diplomats from the European Union's Big Three - France, Britain and Germany - said on Thursday they had dropped the demand in the interest of getting a unanimous resolution approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors, which is meeting this week.

Iran's official Irna news agency also confirmed this, citing Germany's ambassador to the IAEA, Herbert Honsowitz, as saying: "The EU has withdrawn its request to send Iran's case to the Security Council."

The EU earlier in the week had been calling overtly for Iran's immediate referral to the council over nuclear activities the US claims hide weapons work.

Perhaps a different form of European-sponsored resolution will eke its way forward in the future.

But the immediate consequences of this step are that (1) the U.S. will poke holes in Europe's inability to 'deliver' Iran and knock back well-intentioned European efforts to forestall a crisis and (2) could result in the U.S. pressing ahead with its own resolution on Iran -- just to force another division between America and the rest of the world over a major security issue in the Middle East. This could all very well look like a replay of the Security Council drama that preceded America's invasion of Iraq.

The fact of the matter is that America is not in a good position to take on Iran, but the "we make our own reality" folks in the White House seem to be unaware of America's limits at the moment, and that is profoundly disconcerting.

We need a more honest discussion in this country about what we, as a nation, will and won't accept from Iran. There is great theatre here and in Europe, about trying to stop Iran's burgeoning nuclear program. But what if it is not stoppable? What if the legal framework to stop Iran simply doesn't exist -- in part because of the failure of John Bolton and his former aide and Asst. Secretary Stephen Rademaker to prepare any substantive revision of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty earlier this year.

Zbigniew Brzezinski outlined this problem in a January 2005 talk he gave at a function I helped organize. Brzezinski stated:

. . on nuclear proliferation, I think we're on the edge of a major move in proliferation unless we can stop it.

And that is we have to stop the production of fissile material. The NPT was written in a time when the assumption was that the difficult part of acquiring nuclear weapons was the device itself. And that was so technically. . .you had to have that device in order to be a threat. Therefore the NPT says producing fissile materials is just fine as long as it's for peaceful purposes. Well, once you have the fissile material, a weapon is only months away, even from a rudimentary state.

So, the enrichment of uranium, the reprocessing of plutonium becomes a very important issue. And here, we may already be too late in North Korea, and we're right on the edge with Iran and how to deal with it. And right behind Iran is Brazil. There are different gradations in these three states. But they are all heading toward a condition which is [a weapon] 30 odd medium range states will present us with a fundamentally different world.

Iran, at this point, may not be deterrable from its ambitions -- not without a compelling array of carrots and sticks that were coordinated among the world's great stakeholders. However, the world is fragmented on what to do about Iran, and Iran knows this.

What thus is the next best option? Perhaps there are ways to deter Iran from an overt and publicly "seen" nuclear weapons program. Perhaps this can be kept underground and concealed for some time. I doubt that Israel would accept such a circumstance easily, but the question is what to do if Iran simply won't back off?

My hunch is that we will be dusting off analyses from the late 70s and early 80s on the importance of "balanced nuclear capacity" in achieving nuclear deterrence. While it may not be politically correct to state this -- my guess is that we may have to eventually "re-frame" our depiction of regional stability in the Middle East between two nuclear-armed states of Israel and Iran, both undeclared but both capable.

We aren't there yet, and there are many other possible outcomes depending on the brilliance, or lack thereof, of American and European diplomacy.

However, with the mystique of American military power stifled, at a minimum, and wrecked at worst because of Iraq, Iran has every incentive to push its nuclear program aggressively now.

If we can't stop it, we must think about new scenarios -- and a pissed-off, isolated Iran with nukes is about the worst outcome one can imagine.

-- Steve Clemons

I visited the Vatican in early August and met a person who is deeply "embedded" in the world of those who run Vatican City and who govern the global machinery of the Catholic Church.

According to this person's estimation, he guesses that a "conservative estimate" of those cardinals and senior church officials who are gay is about 50%. Practicing, as opposed to just flirtatious, homosexuals at the highest levels of the church are probably about 30%.

When I asked whether homosexuals would be better served under Pope Benedict XVI than under John Paul II, he responded, "Don't think that we will be any better served under a gay pope than a straight one."

While there wasn't much love lost between Pope John Paul II and the homosexual community, John Paul didn't spend his every waking moment thinking about how to screw over the gay community. This very-connected individual I got to know in Italy had a different view (let's just leave it at that) of Benedict XVI.

But here's the deal. The Vatican is now readying a new policy on gay priests -- working harder to ban them before ordination and pretty much symbolically lumping in predatory pedophiles with those who are gay -- which I find outrageous.

From a report by the Washington Post's Alan Cooperman:

The agency said the new document would indicate that men with homosexual tendencies shouldn't be ordained even if they are celibate "because their condition suggests a serious personality disorder which detracts from their ability to serve as ministers."

In an apparently new element, the agency said the document would also say that already ordained priests, if they have homosexual tendencies, would be "strongly urged to renew their dedication to chastity and a manner of life appropriate to the priesthood."

The American prelate overseeing the evaluations, Archbishop Edwin O'Brien, said earlier this month that most gay candidates for the priesthood struggle to remain celibate and the church must "stay on the safe side" by restricting their enrollment. He stressed that the church was not "hounding" gays out of the priesthood, but wants to enroll seminarians who can maintain their vows of celibacy.

The document has been controversial from the start, and there had been speculation that it may never be released because of its sensitive nature. Some priests have said the document is sorely needed. Others say it will do more harm than good, antagonizing existing homosexual priests and driving others underground.

I am generally opposed to "outing" those who are homosexual unless they are engaged in political activity that helps to repress others in society who are also gay.

I really do think that it is time to OUT specific cardinals and other senior church officials who contribute to this policy. Vatican City is a recognized city state -- and thus is subject as well to the currents of politics.

It is time that some of the currents ran back against this bigoted policy.

Note to John Aravosis and other bloggers -- time to direct some blog time to some Vatican confessions.

-- Steve Clemons

Senator Frank Lautenberg has just sent President Bush a letter decrying Karl Rove's negligence as the "point person for disaster coordination and recovery" in the White House.

Rove is departing Washington today to attend fundraising events in North Dakota while Hurricane Rita slams into Texas.

Bush has made clear that Karl Rove is his "point person" in heading up his team's response to these hurricane onslaughts. . .but he will be off-site collecting dollars for the party rather than helping those without resources or wealth who may still be trapped in Rita's path.

-- Steve Clemons

Ed. Note: hat tip to ML.

We finished the second major conference in our series trying to reframe the way policymakers think about our national response to terrorism.

This session was called Beyond Bullets: Economic Strategies in the Fight Against Terrorism, and the roster of speakers is here.

We will have these segments further truncated by specific speakers, but for those interested in an early look, here are the first digital archives of the conference today:

Opening Remarks -- Steven Clemons and Morton Halperin

Session One -- Peter Bergen, Seymour Hersh and Rand Beers

Session Two -- Michael Barone, David Hale, Sherle Schwenninger, Hattie Babbitt and Paul Glastris

Session Three -- Lael Brainard, Jay Winik, Johanna Mendelson Forman, John Gardner and Nikolas Gvosdev

Luncheon Remarks -- Richard Vague and Hernando de Soto

Today's session was terrific. More later.

-- Steve Clemons

THIS is way cool. (just click it)

Check out Walter Pincus's video survey of our recent mega-conference on America's "next phase" response to terrorism.

I'm off to dinner with Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, Senator Tom Carper (D-DE), Congressman Mike Castle (R-DE), CNN Terrorism Analyst Peter Bergen, former U.S. Agency for International Development Deputy Administrator Hattie Babbitt and others to discuss the economic dimensions of terrorism and our collective response to these problems.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Truth in advertising. Robert George is a friend of mine -- but we became friends by a long string of intellectual, policy, and political jousting matches that have spanned many years. He used to be a person deeply embedded in the Republican Party's message and mystiqe, but "his faith" -- let's call it -- has been strongly shaken.

Read this powerful material that Robert shares today on his fellow Republicans and their insensitivity to the mostly black, sometimes white and latin, impoverished and now itinerant citizens of New Orleans.

Dems want Robert George to jump ship. I want Robert to remain a Republican -- and want to keep showing the tension between those who are reasonable and sensible in that party and those who are just whacko ideologues.

Robert keeps thinking I'm a Democrat. He is wrong, but I'm fully willing to become one again if the Dems get their house in order, or if those I am helping to coax forward get a serious place at the helm of the party. Until then, I want neither party -- and will remain independent. The Republican ship is not one that can be hijacked right now. But the Democratic Party is floundering and much is possible, and that's why my intentions and aspirations (to some degree) tilt in that direction.

But after hearing Senator Chuck Hagel declare his obstinacy before the lord of the White House manor that asking questions of one's government, or one's president, is not disloyal and is in fact patriotic -- and hearing Rita Hauser, one of the mainstays of the Republican Party in New York, state that the White House has frittered away American prestige in the world; and now hearing Robert George make his case against those at the helm of his own party, well. . .

. . .at a point, the mathematics show that an insurgency might just be brewing -- still very embryonic -- inside the Republican party that would be healthy for the nation.

-- Steve Clemons

At 2:00 p.m. today, I will be discussing the potential major breakthrough in the Six Party Talks with North Korea on the Al Franken Show with hosts Al Franken and Katherine Lanpher.

Here are some points that need to be kept in mind.

First, the Chinese and South Koreans did the heavy-lifting here, but if it takes a little bit of applause of the Russian, American and Japanese roles -- fine. Interestingly, the language that China floated to North Korea in the deal-making process and which North Korea has used to base its statements seems to have originated with South Korean proposals.

But bottom line -- North Korea's statement is a significant positive step. They expect a light-water nuclear reactor and a phased-in approach in this process, and America has not signed off on those pieces yet, but still -- while the devil is in the details -- these are elements that are rooted back (in part) in the 1994 Framework Talks. Getting Korea back into the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and stopping (full stop) North Korea's nuclear weapons program are important achievements.

The other good news is that positive momentum has been created. The bad news is that we lost five and a half years getting to this point, when we could have been there in 2000. Since then, North Korea has assembled up to 8-10 nuclear warheads. That has been the cost of dithering, inaction, and John Bolton's subversion of Powell's efforts to get North Korea negotiations on track early in the Bush administration.

The other good news is that while John Bolton has forestalled important reform efforts and done some serious damage at the United Nations, he has not and will not have a role in the North Korea negotiations and efforts. Lead negotiator Chris Hill has done a super job in positioning America in such a way that this deal could be made. Had Bolton been up to his normal antics, Hill would probably have been undermined.

The irony here is that a "weakened Bush administration" may in fact be better for the country and world because it is more willing to deal. Bush has clearly backed off to objections to the possibility of a North Korea-stationed light-water reactor and seems to have conceded on some elements of a phased-in approach, at least behind the scenes. This is significant.

To avoid a crisis, Bush has stepped back from what many thought were rigid, immovable policy positions.

There is a great deal that could blow up what we have seen -- and there is a long, long way to go. Given North Korea's erratic behavior -- as well as that of America -- this should be taken as a clear positive step forward but not as anything near an endgame.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Folks, watch out.

A flurry of posts is coming shortly on TWN. I have been digging into pieces of a scandal involving FEMA contractors -- and have covered the Clinton Global Initiative and a fascinating forum that was probably off-the-record (but parts can still be revealed I think) of a New Republic-Third Way sponsored foreign policy retreat at the Aspen Institute's Wye Conference Center.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

I heard a figure that I wish I had a hard time believing -- but it probably is true. According to some economists that I heard last week, George W. Bush has had $3 trillion to the national debt in only four years.

I haven't had time to check out the data, but it sounds right to me.

Natural disasters occur. Wars occur -- though they should be avoided if at all possible. But in both cases, these problems must be paid for.

Bush seems to want to avoid paying for any crisis, and this simply makes the burdens worse for all.

Not generating revenue or finding budgetary offsets to help clean up and restore New Orleans and the Gulf region only makes the denial by Bush, Chertoff, Brown and others in the early period of the Katrina debacle even more offensive to those who have suffered and died there.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm on my way to New York to blog the Clinton Global Initiative for TWN and TPMCafe.

Thanks to JI for sending this photo -- which I offer you in humor.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

I just co-authored and published this piece on Japan's recent Lower House elections which many argue is about reform of Japan's massive postal agency, or "reform" in general.

Andrew Oros and I argue that it's all about the theatre of boldness -- but rather than just looking tough, Japan really does want to be tougher.

-- Steve Clemons

Via Talking Points Memo, this interesting article published by Knight-Ridder finds that Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff may have been confused about his role in specifying the priority of national emergencies.

From the article:

The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.

Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.

As thousands of hurricane victims went without food, water and shelter in the days after Katrina's early morning Aug. 29 landfall, critics assailed Brown for being responsible for delays that might have cost hundreds of lives.

But Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government's blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.

But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn't shift that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.

This is a hefty indictment of Chertoff.

Many people in New Orleans died because the Department of Homeland Security was not ready to operate without training wheels.

-- Steve Clemons

For those of you in Washington, D.C. on the 21st of September, feel free to join us for the follow-on conference to our recent mega-forum on new thinking about terrorism.

This forum will feature property rights reform advocate Hernando de Soto, Chain of Command author and provocative journalist Seymour Hersh, CNN Terrorism Analyst Peter Bergen, Former U.S. Agency for International Development Deputy Administrator (under Clinton)Harriet "Hattie" Babbitt, April 1865 author Jay Winik, former U.S. AID General Counsel (under G.W. Bush) John Gardner, U.S. News & World Report Senior Writer Michael Barone, and others (including yours truly).

We'll be at the Mayflower Hotel -- and I think that this will nudge forward the fact that exclusive police and military responses to terrorism do little to undo the factors that drive terrorist behavior or which earn them sympathy in the eyes of a global audience for whom terrorists are performing.

A draft schedule is attached here.

ON OTHER FRONTS, John Roberts stated that he believed that a constitutional case for the right of privacy did exist. This is somewhat stunning news -- and makes it tough for both left-of-center and hard-right strategists in the Supreme Courty appointment skirmishes underway.

Ted Kennedy is right that the American public deserves to see Roberts' notes when he was Solicitor General -- and he has made troubling statements about Roe v. Wade and about equitable gender treatment. However, it's clear that this candidate is extremely polished and unflappable.

He completely outclasses Scalia in his reasonable demeanor, and I can see Roberts recusing himself if he had been in the same duck-hunting mess that Scalia and Vice President Cheney were in when Cheney had the battle over his energy policy consultation notes pending before the Supreme Court. Scalia was gross about the whole affair and diminished himself and the Court by not recusing himself. I just don't see Roberts in the same mode, but maybe I'm being duped.

I heard Ted Kennedy on a conference call with bloggers last night -- and he said "This is John Roberts' job interview with the American people. . .There is no right to serve on the Supreme Court. . .You have to earn your way on to that court through the American public."

On the conference call, I thought Ted Kennedy was fair in outlining John Roberts' strengths and weaknesses.

But as he said, there is still much we just don't know -- and I think that most of what we will get to know is how polished he is -- not how he thinks and not what is in his heart.

-- Steve Clemons

I should have written "The Globe's Fragile Networks" above. Because so many of the interdependent networks that exist in the world run across national boundaries and tie up nations, firms, workers, consumers, and plain old citizens in a system of mutual assured destruction if any part of the 'system' fails, to try and think of this as just an American problem is flawed.

Nonetheless, Los Angeles was knocked off the power grid today -- by a set of human errors. Are we really tied together in that fragile a net?

I was in and out of touch with the Los Angeles Times' op-ed staff trying to nudge an article on the recent Japanese elections forward -- and the power outage shut down that exchange as well.

To get a very good, thoughtful read on why we need to correct corporate and government asset deployments and networks that have become too fragile and spread too thin, you must read my colleague Barry Lynn's new book, End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation. His book deserves more commentary than I can provide now. However, its about the globalized reality we live in -- the corporate and government dimensions of globalization and how we are all just "screwed" if we don't get back to regulating some critically important redundancies in our corporate and social networks.

After watching the breakdowns in New Orleans, Los Angeles must have been "on edge."

It shouldn't be this way.

-- Steve Clemons

From Thursday through Saturday, I will be up blogging up a storm in New York at the Clinton Global Initiative, for which I just received my press credentials.

After having just organized a major conference myself, I'm interested in the balance between conventional and provocative contributions to the discussion -- and how CGI harnesses anything that comes from the discussion into something that gets policy traction.

Should definitely be interesting.

If any of you are there, give me a shout.

-- Steve Clemons

I can't help but post this interesting commentary by the American Prospect's Mark Leon Goldberg who is writing and blogging from the corridors of the United Nations Millennium Summit.

Read the whole piece, but for John Bolton fans:

So far, John Bolton is all smiles as he wanders the hall from meeting to meeting. A European diplomat I met remarked that during the negotiations, Bolton has been polite to the point of creepy. But I can't help to think that unlike the ambassadors who only feign optimism, Bolton's cheerfulness is genuine: He may have succeeded in derailing the most ambitious set of UN reforms in the organization's history.

Right to the punch line.

-- Steve Clemons

A friend just sent me this astonishing weblink to the bin Laden file on the FBI's Most Wanted Fugitives and Terrorists Lists:

USAMA BIN LADEN IS WANTED IN CONNECTION WITH THE AUGUST 7, 1998, BOMBINGS OF THE UNITED STATES EMBASSIES IN DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA, AND NAIROBI, KENYA. THESE ATTACKS KILLED OVER 200 PEOPLE. IN ADDITION, BIN LADEN IS A SUSPECT IN OTHER TERRORIST ATTACKS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.

Here it is the first day of the fifth year since the attacks on September 11, 2001 and nothing about 9/11 is listed in his profile.

Perhaps we should call for privatizing the FBI's website and ratcheting up its news sensitivity.

-- Steve Clemons

ed. note: hat tip to MS for this interesting reference.

Robert Kuttner, Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The American Prospect, said it best about the conference Terrorism, Security and America's Purpose: "This conference has gathered both wings of the political establishment and under that tent breaks taboo after taboo. . .Al Jazeera is in the room. We are talking about correcting American responses to legitimate international grievances. This is the kind of discussion we must have to get American foreign policy back on a rational track."

Jon Basil Utley provides one of the very best comprehensive summaries of the conference I recently helped to organize:

An extraordinary two-day conference in Washington (much of it on C-Span) sponsored by the New America Foundation,"Terrorism, Security & America's Purpose" featured a host of scholars, elected officials, intelligence experts, journalists, an others, from Tom Clancy and Grover Norquist to George Soros and Ted Sorensen. Though perspectives varied widely, it is clear that experts from all sides reached similar conclusions, namely that Americans need to understand the enemy and that unending war and terrorism are not inevitable.

Below is a summary of some of the highlights. (Click here for videos of the presentations.)

Mitchell Reiss, former director of State Department policy planning, decried the lack of foreign language studies in America, comparing the lack of federal support to the hundreds of billions spent on the military. He explained that public diplomacy is almost nonexistent: explaining American policies to foreigners has now become dangerous in many nations. He added that every embassy needs a rapid-response team to explain in local media Washington's actions, since the old U.S. Information Agency was virtually liquidated at the end of the Cold War.

Congresswoman Jane Harman of the House Intelligence Committee and Robert Hutchings, now at Princeton University, urged changing the law to allow different levels of security clearances (e.g., current law excludes most immigrants with family ties abroad). This would allow hiring immigrants in America with foreign language skills to fill the dearth of translators in the Arab world and in Iraq. American soldiers are tremendously handicapped by the shortage.

George Soros warned that Washington's excessive reliance on military force played into the hands of the terrorists and that the "war on terror" was doing more harm than good for America. He said the occupation of Iraq was the greatest blunder in American history, that attitudes in the world had never been so negative toward America. He warned that when "American bombing creates innocent victims, we play into their hands."

Author Tom Clancy was very well received. He said that in writing novels he always studies his characters so he could see the world through their eyes. He warned against overestimating one's enemies, saying that most battles are lost because of "idiots." He argued that most human motivations are simple, and that one always needs to "know one's enemies." His main point was that economic prosperity would tremendously undermine terrorism, thus spreading it should be a major objective of American policy.

One of the most interesting talks was by Robert Pape, author of the new study, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. His database of all suicide terrorist attacks during the last 30 years shows that over half were secular, and over 95 percent had a political objective. He said that al-Qaeda was stronger today than before 9/11, having successfully stripped America of allies. Most terrorist attacks in the world have been to rid nations of foreign troops. He urged the U.S. to withdraw its military from Muslim lands while maintaining strong naval forces within striking distance for future security, a policy called "offshore balancing." Although some terrorist leaders might still want to attack America, they would find it much harder to find suicide bomber recruits after a withdrawal.

Rita Hauser of the RAND Corporation and the International Peace Academy also urged Americans to work with allies, saying that we had turned our back on the UN and other international organizations, and that our intelligence is "hopeless" unless we work with other nations.

Roger Cressey, formerly with the National Security Council, called Iraq "the war of unintended consequences" and argued that the U.S. message is lost because it is not trusted by foreigners.

Senator Joseph Biden claimed that most Republicans in Congress see allies and international agreements as "tying down Gulliver." He said that Washington's unilateralism has "given a green light to other nations to use force first, with minimal prior intelligence."

Nir Rosen, New Yorker writer and Iraq correspondent, urged Americans to pay attention to what terrorists actually say and write. The U.S. leadership usually ignores their statements when analyzing them.

Yosri Fouda, London bureau chief of al-Jazeera, also encouraged America to listen to its enemies in order to understand them. He explained the Arab view as being that America went looking for an enemy after the collapse of communism in 1990, but he added that he now feels much more optimistic about America, and that most Muslims now believe that America supports democracy and freedom in their nations.

Former Gen. Wesley Clark said that we can't win by just killing people and making new enemies, that we must put ideology first. He also suggested that we develop a volunteer civil defense corps to handle future terrorist events.

Grover Norquist exhorted listeners to read the PATRIOT Act. He said that all new laws invading constitutional freedoms should have sunset clauses to force reconsideration after a few years. He pointed out that Paul Weyrich, Phyllis Schlafly, and other key conservative leaders oppose parts of the PATRIOT Act and had preferred the Senate version to the House one. He said that the center-right coalition needed an ACLU- type organization to defend individual freedoms from government.

Gen. James Cullen, former chief judge, U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals, decried the torture of POWs, saying that the White House had written a brief for America's future enemies. According to Cullen, most retired generals support the Warner/McCain legislation to outlaw torture.

Ted Sorensen argued that public diplomacy, that is selling and explaining American policies, sometimes means changing the policies. He urged talking to one's enemies, citing how former President Kennedy (for whom he worked) picked up the phone to talk to Khrushchev. He said that America would not be safer by undermining our own values, that we should be careful about whom we call a "terrorist," that Washington has undermined America by calling all enemies terrorists, and that by current definitions, the Boston Tea Party would be called a terrorist act. He said there could never be peace without a "mutually acceptable Israeli-Palestinian settlement."

Francis (author of The End of History) Fukuyama's talk warned that future terrorists would not necessarily be Arabs, but could come be Muslim white Europeans such as the "shoe bomber." He argued that even a "benevolent hegemon" needs to be competent, that America now had tremendous credibility problems, that our ideas of American exceptionalism were no longer accepted in the world.

Banquet speaker Senator Chuck Hagel argued that America must engage its allies, and that we will not be safer isolating ourselves from the world.

Former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell explained that criticism of American policies by our allies does not mean that they are anti-American, but rather that they support and look to American power and see Iraq policies as weakening America.

Former Congressmen Lee Hamilton and Warren Rudman argued that relying upon military force is by no means a sufficient policy; we must reach out to moderate Muslims and do better in controlling the dispersion of fissile materials.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that listening to foreigners is also a key part of public diplomacy and that democracy is not imperialism.

Other key speakers included Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center, scholar Anatol Lieven, Morton Halperin, Congressman Jim Saxton, Daniel Levy (co-author of the Geneva Initiative for Mideast Peace), and Galima Bukharbaeva, who played a tape she took of the massacre in Uzbekistan.

One of the great things Utley does is that he links each speaker's name above to the short video clip of the individual's speech.

So, feel free to click through through his article, or alternatively, go to the official conference website and scroll down and see the video links next to the speakers in the agenda.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

John Smith, an employee of the U.S. Department of Commerce, arrived at work last week, and he and all other of his fellow department colleagues had a voice mail from Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez.

The voice mail went something like this:

Dear Comrade Smith:

As we commemorate those who perished four years ago on September 11th and fell before those who would try and steal our freedom, I encourage you to march to help keep this nation free, to honor those fighting for freedom in Iraq, those trying to preserve the way of life of our great nation.

A great way to show your love of this great nation and to make your claim that freedom matters, I strongly encourage you, Comrade, to Walk for Freedom on Sunday, September 11th at the Pentagon.

Ok. . .I inserted the references to "Comrade" and used an alias for Mr. Smith.

This is the kind of thing that used to happen in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The "party" prevailed over the government, over the bureaucrats and civil servants, and assured party loyalty over the interests of the nation and of civil society.

Secretary of Commerce Gutierrez prevailed upon his staff to attend a political rally from which the Washington Post itself withdrew sponsorship. This crosses a line -- and appears illegal to this observer.

When I consulted with various members of the media who covered the so-called Freedom Walk that co-mingled a memorial to 9/11 victims with a rally for our actions in Iraq, they reported that many of those who attended the several-thousand person rally were "unenthusiastic civil servants" from the Labor, Commerce, and other Departments who were pressured to attend.

The Freedom Walk certainly was not an expression of the type of freedom this nation is about -- not unless we are all about to bind ourselves blindly to the propagandistic theatre of those who sully important anniversaries like that of 9/11 -- and remember those who died that tragic day as well as those innocents who died on all sides of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan since.

I respect those who wanted to be there today -- who visited the Pentagon, walked across the Memorial Bridge, and listened to country music later. Those who showed free will to support this enterprise have a right to do -- but to pressure government bureaucrats to pump up a political rally is exactly what the Soviets used to do.

-- Steve Clemons

Today is turning into a day of ceremony for many. I just heard from one person covering the so-called "Freedom March" that just a few thousand people showed up -- and most, while they support America's actions in Iraq think that we have inadequate, incompetent leadership running the show. Bush has a 38% favorability rating. That says enough.

In any case, I will write more later about 9/11, my thoughts about it, and what I think our conference contributed.

However, for the time being I am looking into a story that is unfolding on massive fraud taking place in many FEMA contracted firms.

9/11 and the illogical but subsequent invasion of Iraq produced its own pervasive fraud and war-profiteeting.

More soon on this.

-- Steve Clemons

John Bolton's bashing of efforts to reform the United Nations is finally getting some high-priced attention.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has asked Condoleeza Rice to rein Bolton in.

This in from The Guardian:

The British government is mounting a huge diplomatic effort this weekend to prevent the biggest-ever summit of world leaders, designed to tackle poverty and overhaul the United Nations, ending in chaos.

The Guardian has learned that Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, has made a personal plea to his American counterpart, Condoleezza Rice, for the US to withdraw opposition to plans for wholesale reform of the UN.
He has asked Ms Rice to rein in John Bolton, the US ambassador to the world body.

Mr Bolton has thrown the reform negotiations into disarray by demanding a catalogue of late changes to a 40-page draft document which is due to go before the summit in New York on Wednesday.

Mr Bolton, one of the US administration hawks, became ambassador last month only after a long confrontation with the US senate, mainly caused by his ideological dislike of the UN.

The foreign secretary is planning to make calls to fellow ministers around the world over the weekend.

Mr Straw spoke to Ms Rice in a three-way conference call last Tuesday organised by Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, to try to break the deadlock.

Note to the National Security Agency: Has John Bolton made any transcripts requests lately?

We'd really like to know.

-- Steve Clemons

Ed. Note: Hat tip to MC for sending the reference.

This from the Houston Chronicle's blog:

DeLay to evacuees: 'Is this kind of fun?' U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's visit to Reliant Park this morning offered him a glimpse of what it's like to be living in shelter.

While on the tour with top administration officials from Washington, including U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao and U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, DeLay stopped to chat with three young boys resting on cots.

The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?"

They nodded yes, but looked perplexed.

He is completely out of touch. . .

-- Steve Clemons

FEMA Chief Michael Brown is reportedly being relieved of his duties.

It's about damned time. And there should be criminal charges for the incompetence of his office and others higher in command.

I just had lunch here in Washington, where life hums on along like normal. People are already forgetting what happened there last week, and still there are floating corpses tied to the railings of homes in New Orleans.

But read this powerful material by the Washington Post's Donna Britt. It will get you back in the zone of why we should all be outraged:

Washington is a thousand miles from New Orleans, but most of us have at least one post-hurricane "memory," one scene that plays and replays in our minds.

For my friend Tony, it's "the dead-body thing," the bloated, rotting corpses that -- more than a week after the storm -- still float languorously, lie draped over curbs or are nibbled on by vermin on New Orleans's streets. These scores of untended bodies suggest "a complete breakdown in everything we are supposed to do as civilized people," Tony says. "Even on the frontier, in the wilderness -- when somebody dies, we stop to bury the dead."

Shouldn't finding the living supersede interring those who've died? "This is America," Tony says. "Don't tell me we can't accomplish both."

A Virginia transportation executive I know keeps remembering FEMA chief Michael Brown speaking of thousands of flood victims who "unfortunately" might have perished because they didn't heed evacuation warnings. "By and large," says the executive, "this was not people choosing to stay in their beach homes."

Then there was the image Sunday conjured by New Orleans official Aaron Broussard. His voice breaking, Broussard described an elderly woman-- the nursing-home-bound mother of a city manager -- who phoned her son daily from the facility where floodwaters had trapped her. "Is somebody coming?" she kept asking her son. For four days straight, he assured her that, yes, somebody was coming to get her.

"And she drowned Friday night," Broussard said, covering his face with his hand as he sobbed. "She drowned Friday night."

Of all the scenes that fueled my weeklong grief and outrage, the image of this trapped woman dying in increments, inch by inch, enveloped by fetid water as her would-be saviors blundered and bickered, is the most heartbreaking.

We all have mothers. Could someone let ours die needlessly, inch by excruciating inch?

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

There are terrific video links up now of the speakers and panels at the major forum now underway in Washington: Terrorism, Security and America's Purpose.

The conference will be on C-Span live much of the day today (Wednesday) and when not live -- it is being taped and will air later.

Alternatively, the entire conference can be watched at AmericasPurpose.org.

-- Steve Clemons

Our big conference on terrorism -- Terrorism Security and America's Purpose -- starts today at 9 a.m. and will be live on C-Span for those who care to watch.

We will also have live, real-time web-casting at the conference website, www.AmericasPurpose.org.

My colleague and friend, Michael Lind, has the perfect lead editorial in the Financial Times today to focus our attentions this morning asking the question of whether America is now at a point of strategic overreach:

Samuel Huntington has called it the Lippmann Gap, echoing the American journalist Walter Lippmann in 1943: "Foreign policy consists in bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation's commitments and the nation's power."

The historian Paul Kennedy has another name for it: "Imperial overextension". Whatever you call this dangerous disease, the symptoms are clear in the US.

In early 2001, shortly after President George W. Bush was inaugurated and before 9/11, the Federal Emergency Management Agency warned of the three most devastating disasters that could strike the US: a terrorist attack on New York City, a hurricane flooding New Orleans and a San Francisco earthquake. The Bush administration was focused on its priority: Iraq.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

This is Ted Kennedy's statement last night on the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist:

This is a time of great loss for our nation. Vicki and I join the nation in mourning the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist and we hold his family and friends in our thoughts and prayers.

Chief Justice Rehnquist served this country with the greatest distinction, and I respected his leadership of the federal judiciary and his strong commitment to the integrity and independence of the courts.

We are at a defining moment for the nation. In the midst of great loss and great tragedy, it is a time for America to come together. As we have so many times before, we will continue to move America forward. Our first priority must be to remain focused on relieving the suffering of the victims of Hurricane Katrina and rebuilding those lives, those cities and those communities. The nation's eyes and hearts and attention are and should be focused on the ongoing tragedy in the South.

We must also recognize the importance of choosing two new Supreme Court justices at the same time, who will together help determine the direction of this country for generations to come. We should proceed carefully and appropriately in filling these important vacancies.

With Justice O'Connor committing to stay until her replacement is named, we can and should remain focused first on protecting our citizens who need help the most, while we prepare to do what is necessary to ensure that the Supreme Court remains strongly committed and able to protect the rights and freedoms of all Americans.

President Bush wants to move "expeditiously" in replacing O'Connor and Rehnquist. Kennedy is suggesting that we need time to come together as a nation, help those most in need, and then think about the consequential choices facing the nation in replacing two justices at roughly the same time.

Those in the White House may think that they "create their own reality," but true reality is going to barrel head-on into the White House if the President's team doesn't stop to gets its management team working effectively. It clearly hasn't been working given what we've seen in Louisiana.

Ted Kennedy gets it right.

-- Steve Clemons

Just posted this at TPM Cafe.

We ought to be helping out all those impacted by Katrina ourselves, and should be grateful for the international concern and support offered -- even from Japan. But $200k in cash?

Pretty pathetic.

-- Steve Clemons

Chief Justice Renquist dies last night.

Judge John Roberts' Supreme Court appointment hearings begin Tuesday (but may now be delayed).

Hurricane Katrina has devastated much of Southern Louisiana and Mississippi, raising questions about the competency of our national defense and security infrastructure -- and posing the question of whether Iraq punctured the 'mystique of American power in the world' and Katrina squashed what was left.

Peter Fitzgerald's investigation into White House complicity in the leaking of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert identity will pick up steam next week.

And our terrorism conference brings together lots of folks who will have important things to say on all of these subjects.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

There will be live web-cast of the Terrorism, Security and America's Purpose conference on this website all day and evening Tuesday next week -- and most of the day on Wednesday.

C-Span has just informed us that they will be airing the conference all day Tuesday live -- but we will hear tomorrow about Wednesday.

The impact of Hurricane Katrina is likely to figure tremendously in this conference.

The latest agenda is HERE.

-- Steve Clemons

I am beyond disgusted by Pat Robertson and have been for years.

Josh Marshall posts two items -- here and here -- on Robertson that just further reinforce everything I disdain about the man.

I have an admission to make about this reprehensible fraud. I attended a fairly splashy event about six months ago sponsored by The Week magazine as the guest of Margaret Carlson.

Senator Jon Corzine was there. So was Senator Ron Wyden, Tom Daschle, James Fallows, Walter Isaacson, and the like. It was star-studded in a DC sense, but so too was Pat Robertson there.

And as he walked into the dinner area across hard marble floors, he tripped hard over a carpet. I caught him.

If I hadn't, well. . .it would have been bad. It would be interesting for him to share this with his 777 Club -- particularly if he knew anything about my politics and private life.

As he goes on spewing his vile commentary, I think about that tripping episode and think I did the right thing. I would have done it again.

But if I did do it again, I'd rub his immoral arrogance in the fact that one of those people he thinks draws disaster to places like New York probably saved his life. He and Falwell blamed 9/11 on gays, liberals, and feminists. I think his definition of liberal probably includes centrists.

In any case, I'd like to see how he explains to his groupies that one of those "types" saved his life. Must have been God intervening, he'd say. Even through one of them.

On the real front of my frustration tonight are Louisiana and Mississippi. New Orleans is a war zone.

Former Senator John Breaux is making it clear that the writing has been on the wall for years about the faltering levee system around New Orleans. We did nothing. Wait we did -- we conjured up a $200 billion war that has killed tens of thousands, and probably more, in Iraq and the U.S.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

This is an important article that suggests that while hurricanes may not be preventable, there is much that should have been done to protect infrastructure and lives in the Gulf Coast states that was preempted by other priorities the Bush administration had.

Read the whole piece, but here is an excerpt:

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it coming. . .Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

In 1992, after Hurricane Andrew, California conservative-journalist-turned-candidate-for-the-U.S. Senate Bruce Herschensohn argued that the federal government had no constitutional authority to involve itself in disaster relief for states -- that state and local governments were the only entities empowered to act in such cases. He went on to say that when the "big quake" comes, California should absolutely refuse all federal assistance and coordination.

The Bush administration has been incrementally dismantling FEMA and legislating a general end to the central government's key role in disaster relief and remediation. What we see unfolding in Louisiana and Mississippi is not a break down of material supplies to help -- but rather of coordination.

What the federal government and large corporations tend to do well in this country is highly complex systems integration, organizing responses to demanding situations with myriad issues and players involved. However, we have gutted FEMA before there was another agency in place to take over its role -- and the Department of Homeland Security which Secretary Michael Chertoff is trying to rationalize and re-organize is not prepared for prime time.

These are real gaps in American security and well-being and after the many victims are seen to in these impacted states, the American public should be outraged and demand change.

-- Steve Clemons

ed. note: hat tip to LF for the article.