There's quite a long list of Bush officials that belong in The Hague.

With the news that Pajamas Pete Domenici is retire from his New Mexico Senate seat, the Dems march closer to the magical filibuster proof number of '60'. Whether it is green developer Don Wiviott or a more well known New Mexican pol, the Dems have to be favored to take this seat. Add it to New Hampshire, Virginia, Minnesota, Colorado, and Oregon.

The more old-time Republicans that retire the more it incentivizes those that remain to follow suit.

The shithammer is coming down on eight years of the worst governance in our history.

DOA is an acronym which stands for Dead on Arrival. And apparently that is the current status of the Congressional contempt citations for which we've been waiting against former White House counsel, Harriet Miers, and White House Chief of Staff, Josh Bolten, officials who ignored lawfully issued subpoenas in the US Attorney's scandal, thanks apparently to our Democratic leaders in the House (courtesy TPMmuckracker):

"The scandal at the Department of Justice has gone on long enough," said Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D-IL) back in March. "Careers have been destroyed and legitimate public corruption cases have been derailed. It is time for accountability -- it is time for the truth."

Six months and several Department senior resignations later, it's a different time. The urgency is gone.

More than two months after the House Judiciary Committee passed contempt resolutions against White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former counsel Harriet Miers for ignoring committee subpoenas, it's still unclear when, or if, Democrats will hold a vote on the full floor.

The leadership has indefinitely delayed taking up the issue. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) told The Politico last month, “I don’t think anything is going to happen on that for a while,” and couldn't offer a range. Three weeks later, that hasn't changed.

And apparently scheduling concerns are not all that's at issue. A source familiar with the ongoing discussions told TPMmuckraker that getting the leadership to bring the contempt resolutions to the floor at all is an "uphill struggle." [...]

The issue, Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) has argued, goes right to the heart of Congress' oversight prerogatives. After Miers didn't even show up to claim executive privilege, Conyers asked, "Are Congressional subpoenas to be honored or are they optional?... If we do not enforce this subpoena, no one will ever have to come before the House Judiciary Committee again."

Oh, they can hold a vote condemning Moveon's exercise of it's free speech rights (and get it to the floor in record time). That's easy. But actually schedule a vote on contempt of Congress by Bush administration officials whose actions have deliberately obstructed a congressional investigation into the improper and potentially unlawful firing of US Attorneys by the Bush administration, the suborning of the Department of Justice into just another arm of the Republican Party's voter suppression efforts by forcing US Attorneys' to bring phony charges of voter fraud against Democrats, and allegations of potential White House meddling in prosecutions of corruption by Republican lobbyists and lawmakers in an election year? That's an "uphill struggle." Then again, getting the Democrats to use their political capital to actually oppose Congressional Republicans and/or the White House on anything seems like an uphill struggle most days.

Explain to me why I voted for these clowns in 2006. Better yet, tell me again why I should vote for these clowns in 2008? One thing for certain, it can't be because they intend to do the people's business and hold the Bush administration accountable for its execrable record of gross mismanagement, deliberate malfeasance and potentially criminal misdeeds. They've already gone missing in action when it comes to that fulfilling that responsibility.

Top this:

"Whoop-dee damn-doo," [Clarence] Thomas relates telling his wife when she interrupted his bath to report that he had been confirmed. "Mere confirmation, even to the Supreme Court, seemed pitifully small compensation for what had been done to me."

Cry me a river. Gotta anything good?

They play chess while we play checkers.

An Iranian university has invited U.S. President George W. Bush to speak about such issues as the Holocaust, terrorism and human rights.

Iran's Fars news agency reports Ferdowsi University in the northeastern city of Mashhad asked Mr. Bush to attend a question and answer session with students and professors.

The White House says it is not taking the invitation "too seriously."

Bush is too inept to travel abroad. Every single time he leaves this country he winds up humiliating himself. Every time. He peered into Putin's soul. He molested the German chancellor. He crashed his bike in Scotland. He couldn't find the exit in China. He almost fell off the stage in Australia. Under no circumstances should he be allowed to go to Iran. He'd probably drown.

I've been looking very closely at all 435 House races for 2008. Who is retiring? Where are there primaries? Where are there ethical scandals? What's recruitment like? The scene is looking more and more like a GOP disaster in the making. But it looks like the disaster is still confined to the north.

Illinois has 19 House seats (10 Dems, 9 GOP). Yet, it looks increasingly likely that the Dems will take over three Illinois seats (IL-11, IL-14, IL-18). All three seats are open and the Dems have outrecruited the Republicans in every case.

Ohio has 18 House seats (10 GOP, 7 Dem, 1 vacant that is solid GOP). The Dems are competing in five: OH-01, OH-02, OH-14, OH-15, OH-16. I predict the Dems will win the open seat races in the 15th and 16th Districts (Regula has not offically retired yet, but will), and will also steal away OH-01. That will reverse the partisan advantage.

Michigan has 15 House seats (9 GOP, 6 Dem). It should be an 8-7 advantage for the Dems after they get done winning MI-07 and MI-09.

Minnesota has 9 House seats (6 Dem, 3 GOP). The Dems are poised to win MN-03 and I predict an upset victory in MN-06. That will leave John Kline (MN-02) as the only remaining Republican.

This comes after the Republicans took a beating in Indiana in 2006. The Midwest is essentially cleansing itself of conservatives. This is a process that is nearly complete in New England (where Chris Shays CT-04 is the only remaining Republican in the House, and will lose in '08) and well underway in the Mid-Atlantic and Upstate New York. Republicans are in danger of losing two seats in New Jersey (NJ-03, NJ-07), another three seats in Pennsylvania (PA-03, PA-06, PA-18). In New York, the Republicans only hold 6 out of 29 seats, and only one of them should be considered truly safe (Vito Foselli's (NY-13) Staten Island seat).

These are the areas where the Republicans stand to be decimated. But there are a few other places where they will probably lose seats. AZ-01, AZ-03, CO-04, and NM-01 are at risk. I also see Dems picking up MO-06, CA-04, NC-08, NV-03, WA-08, WV-02, and possibly AK-AL.

This list is in no way exhaustive. There are more possibilities in Florida, California, and elsewhere. But the main theme is definitely a realignment. It would not be a shock to see the Dems pick up another 25-30 seats, with at least half those seats from formerly red states (mostly through retirement and scandal), and the rest concentrated in the Upper Midwest and Mid-Atlantic (Ohio, falling into both categories).

Imagine a future where the Dems have a 50-1 edge in House seats from New York and New England. Because that is where we are headed.

Sometimes, in the rush of current events, important stories, stories significant to each and everyone of us in our daily lives, are ignored. The war, GOP corruption and sex scandals, death by Blackwater, Moveon's "General Betrayus" v. Limbaugh's "phony soldiers," "Did Hillary cackle?", Bush's mangled English, which Washington DC pundit is most out of touch, Britney losing her kids, ad nauseam, dominate our current news cycle. Yet, often other, just as important events, the ones most relevant to the vast majority of Americans, go little noticed or reported upon by the media.

Case in point: Last year, about this time, the EPA announced it was going to tighten air quality standards. A good thing, yes? Did Bush finally did something right? Well, not exactly:

The Environmental Protection Agency's new rule lowers the limit on how much fine particulate matter Americans may be exposed to over a 24-hour period, cutting the existing standard of 65 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 35. However, it leaves unchanged the annual limit for "fine particulate matter," or soot, in the air. That standard remains an average of 15 micrograms per cubic meter per day over the course of a year. [...]

The EPA's scientific advisory panel voted overwhelmingly last year to recommend cutting the annual amount of soot Americans breathe, from a daily average of 15 micrograms per cubic meter to 13 or 14 micrograms. But William L. Wehrum, the EPA's acting assistant administrator for air and radiation, said officials concluded that the current annual standard "is in fact adequate to protect public health with an adequate margin of safety, and there isn't sufficient evidence to justify a tightening of that standard."

Let me simplify that for you. EPA's scientists told EPA to reduce the annual amount of soot ("fine particulates" if you prefer) that Americans breath in each year, but an EPA political appointee, William L. Wehrum (now working as a partner for the Washington law firm Hunton & Williams as an environmental air quality compliance lawyer decided that the scientists didn't know what they were talking about, and refused to follow their "recommendations" because there wasn't "sufficient evidence" to justify cleaning up the air we breathe.

Which, was, and is, a flat out lie:

Jan. 31, 2007 -- Air pollution is a much bigger factor in death from heart disease or stroke than has previously been recognized, according to findings from one of the largest studies ever to examine the issue.

Researchers followed close to 66,000 women -- aged 50-79 -- living in 36 cities. All the women were enrolled in the ongoing health study, the Women's Health Initiative.

After adjusting for other risk factors for heart disease and stroke, they found that air quality was a strong predictor of heart disease and stroke risks -- and an even stronger predictor of death from heart disease or stroke.

Fine particulate air pollution -- caused primarily by vehicle exhausts, coal-fired power plants, and other industrial sources -- was the sole type of air pollution associated with increased risk.

When all other risk factors were equal, the researchers found that women living in the most polluted cities had the highest heart disease and stroke risks, while women living in the cleanest cities had the lowest.

Shorter version: dirty air's a killer. And with the increase in the number of warmer days caused by global warming it's only going to get worse:

(cont.)

I've probably been distracted all these many years by the fact that the war in Iraq was launched on the back of a series of transparent lies. Worse than that, it never made strategic sense for us. Forget about the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and about the lost opportunity we had to rebuild Afghanistan into something people might actually admire. Occupying Iraq was bound to bankrupt this country...and it has. And more than just financially. But I want to talk about finance. And I want to talk about our national character.

Nothing offends me more about this war than the disconnect between the stakes, as the Republicans define them, and their absolute refusal to rally the country around the task by asking all elements of society to contribute.

We have all-volunteer armed forces. If the stakes in Iraq are really so great and we don't have enough troops...then bloody well draft the troops we need. And if we don't have the money in the budget to pay for the war? Don't goddamn borrow the money form China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. Make us pay for it and make us pay for it right now. That's exactly what House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI) suggested today.

But how do the Republicans respond to such talk?

Republicans fell over themselves to mock the proposal, with White House Press Secretary Dana Perino leading the charge.

“We’ve always known that Democrats seem to revert to type and they are willing to raise taxes on just about anything,” Perino said. “There’s no need to increase taxes.”

That's a jawdropper. The war in Iraq is not 'just about anything'. According to the president and his echo chamber, we are in a fight for our very way of life and for our survival. The war is being lost. And there is 'no need to increase taxes'?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said that Democrats want to look for yet another opportunity to raise taxes.

“I think there’ll be significant resistance to those kinds of ideas here in the United States Senate,” McConnell added.

Republicans said that paying for the war should happen through the supplemental since the current continuing resolution (CR) expires in Nov. 16. “We’ve covered troop funding for Afghanistan and Iraq through the CR until Nov. 16, but beyond that there is a great need,” McConnell said.

McConnell says that 'paying for the war should happen through the supplemental.' That means that we should borrow all the money to pay for the war. In a subscription only Wall Street Journal piece on the crumbling of fiscal conservatism in the GOP, we read:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former Democrat who left the Republican Party three months ago, complained Sunday at Britain's Conservative Party conference that conservative politicians in the U.S. were guilty of "lunacy" for running up deficits for future taxpayers to pay.

Here's Greenspan:

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he said: "The Republican Party, which ruled the House, the Senate and the presidency, I no longer recognize."

The United States has lost a war. But we lost it without drafting a single soldier or raising a single dollar to pay for the war. Not one dime for this war was budgeted and every dime was borrowed with interest. We will be paying for this war for generations. Think of the staggering Veteran's benefits and medical costs.

And, yet, the moment the Republicans squawk about the Dems raising taxes...we fold.

The House Democratic leadership quickly started pouring cold water on [Rep. Obey's] idea [to pay for the war with taxes], with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) stressing that “this is not a Democratic proposal.”

About two hours later, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) plunged in the knife, issuing a release stating, “Just as I have opposed the war from the outset, I am opposed to a draft and I am opposed to a war surtax.”...

...Reid would not say whether the Senate would act on the war tax plan, saying it was a House plan that did not appear to have Pelosi’s support.

There is no quicker way to end this war than to make its supporters pay for it. Obey gets that. He also gets this:

Obey’s announcement on the Iraq wartime supplemental spending bill may have a more lasting impact on the Iraq debate. He announced there isn’t going to be a supplemental unless Bush changes course. As chairman of the Appropriations Committee, he controls when and whether to try to send a supplemental to the floor.

“I have absolutely no intention of reporting out of committee anytime in this session of Congress any such request that simply serves to continue the status quo,” Obey told reporters. “We desperately need to force the White House into new thinking.”

Obey wants a war spending bill to end U.S. involvement in combat operations by January 2009, allow more rest time for troops between deployments and start a diplomatic surge.

Message to Reid and Pelosi: follow this man and watch his back.

And, as for our national character, what if this war really did matter? What if our way of life really did rely on the outcome? Is this the best we could do? We're in a massive decline as a nation. We have no self-confidence, we have no cohesion, and we definitely have no leadership.

[Promoted by BooMan]

Cross-posted from the ActBlue Blog. -KT

There is a rising force in the online community, often forgotten by the mainstream media because of their niche audience and dispersed nature. With over half a million readers a week they are on the front lines of grassroots battles. Their ears to the ground and their footsteps echoing in the halls of their capitals, they are often the first to report on issues and breaking news that eventually bubble up to the national discussion.

This force is the vast and ever growing community of state and local blogs, both those in the 50-state blog network and beyond. These blogs and their nearly 1000 authors are both a part of the national Netroots and unique local communities unto themselves. 

In some states with more established blogging traditions, networks of bloggers have created communications tools to facilitate the sharing of best practices and to coordinate messaging campaigns. Other blog networks have worked to grow readership and develop true community-oriented sites. This year has seen some of the most interesting developments as these blogging communities started flexing their fundraising muscle in state and local races. Even better, some have gone a step further by leveraging their online presence into offline action. This maturation of state blogging is truly exciting.

I've gotten in touch with some of the organizers of this new breed of activism in hopes that by sharing their experiences, we might inspire others to similarly innovative action.

Are you a woman or a girl?

Imagine, if you could even think of the horrific situation, where a 20 year old “pretty white woman” was abducted by six black men and women, raped, stabbed, made to eat rat droppings, drink from a toilet, threatened with death if she tried to escape and tortured for around a week.

Imagine, not only what living hell that poor woman went through, but also the fact that she was still undergoing treatment for her injuries around a month later. Imagine the 24 hour outrage on the cable news, the papers, every caring human being, not to mention the outrage by the racist people who would be decrying this, “the culture that promotes animals like this”, how this was a hate crime and the potential revenge for these horrific acts.

Imagine that the suspects all had prior arrests and records for prior crimes, including one who was arrested for murder of an 84 year old woman but pled to a lesser charge of manslaughter. We would hear about this for months, and we would all know her name, the suspects names, backgrounds and every little development in her treatment, the case and the potential blowback to the community.

After reading the following unfortunate quote at Susie's Place, I placed a call to Joe Biden's office

"Hi, my name is Brendan Skwire. I'm calling because i read what Joe Biden had to say about Iraq, and I wanted to point something out.

Joe Biden said,

'Other Iraqi politicians have said we have no right to tell the Iraqis (what to do),” Biden told reporters. “Let me tell you, we have a right. Three thousand and eight hundred dead. Twenty seven thousand wounded. Billions of dollars. Let me tell you as President of the United States, they'd have to understand full well that if they don't keep their commitment to implement their constitution then they're on their own. And so, ladies and gentlemen, the idea that al Maliki questions whether or not we have a right to express our opinion, he'd better get it straight real quick.'

Bowers has thoughtfully put together some electoral college maps that, based on the latest state polling, show that Rudy Guiliani is the best hope for the Republicans. For example, Rudy crushes Edwards 327-211 and Obama 297-229, while Romney loses to Edwards 362--176 and Obama 344--186. This, of course, is not news to rank-and-file wingnut Republicans, like Congressman Pete Sessions of Texas. But Sessions must explain to his wingnut constituents why they should be voting for a gay-loving, pro-choice, immigrant coddling, philandering and fornicating low-life, like the former mayor of all that is evil and wrong. The gymnastics are delectable.

"Mayor Giuliani respects the values of social conservatism, and his position on these issues would categorize him as a predominately pro-life Member of Congress.”

Just call him pro-life and the problem is mostly solved. Call him anti-gay while you're at it. Say anything...you always do.

The one thing Guiliani will do that conservatives will like, is he will take away more of your privacy and your civil liberties. You want to live in a country like that? Vote for Rudy. But he ain't a social conservative. He's from Brooklyn. He's a politician. He's dresses in drag whenever he gets the chance. He gets a new girlfriend every few years. He ain't going to church...he's going to the Yankees game.

It will be delicious watching the GOP explain to their socially conservative base that none of their concerns matter: God, guns, gays, or immigration, because Rudy is on their side.

More intellectual bankruptcy.

You'd think that after a report recently that Bush's EPA had drastically reduced its enforcement of our environmental laws against the worst polluters in America, that anyone in the Bush administration would be reluctant to raise environmental protection as a justification for its policies. You'd think that, but you'd be wrong, of course. For, as Homeland Security "Unterfuhrer" Michael Cherthoff explained yesterday, we need to build a fence along the United States' border with Mexico to stop some of the worst polluters on the planet: Illegal Immigrants:

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, whose department has come under fire from environmentalists for fencing off hundreds of miles of the U.S. border with Mexico at Congress's request, said yesterday that he knows of something worse for nature than a wall: illegal immigrants.

"Illegal migrants really degrade the environment. I've seen pictures of human waste, garbage, discarded bottles and other human artifact in pristine areas," Chertoff told the Associated Press, in remarks confirmed by his spokesman. "And believe me, that is the worst thing you can do to the environment."

It takes real chutzpah to justify building a border fence by claiming it will protect America from "the worst thing you can do to the environment," namely allowing illegal immigrants to cross the border. Especially when you consider that this administration has purposely slowed enforcement actions by EPA and the Justice Department:

EPA memos show that [its] investigators ... have encountered new obstacles to their long-standing practice of directly referring cases to federal or state prosecutors. A new policy distributed May 25 requires agents to seek prior approval from the head of their division and establishes new paperwork procedures. This has slowed agents' ability to make referrals, congressional investigators said. [...]

... The number of environmental prosecutions plummeted from 919 in 2001 to 584 last year, a 36 percent decline, according to Justice Department statistics collected by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. [...]

EPA agents cite other instances that they say have sent a subtle message about their enforcement work, such as the time James Palmer, the EPA's Southeast regional administrator, took a day off in 2005 to testify as a private citizen against his own agency as a defense witness for a Mississippi developer accused of environmental violations.

"The government's proposals were heavy-handed," Palmer testified when asked about the EPA's actions against the developer, his former law client. He also acknowledged calling the agency's tactics in the case "unethical."

The same Bush administration that Rolling Stone, in its 2005 expose on the Bush administration's environmental record stated "Bush has reversed more environmental progress in the past eight months than Reagan did in a full eight years."

What can you say about the environmental record of an administration that seeks to test pesticides on poor children and pregnant women? That argues in court that a dam is part of a salmon's natural environment? That places a timber lobbyist in charge of the national forests and an oil lobbyist in charge of government reports on global warming? That cuts clean-air inspections at oil refineries in half, allows Superfund to go bankrupt and permits the mining industry to pump toxic waste directly into a wild Alaskan lake?

Since President Bush was sworn in for a second term, he has not only continued his unprecedented assault on the environment -- he's intensified it. In recent months, the administration has opened up millions of acres of pristine land to developers, allowing them to log and mine without leaving behind "viable populations" of wildlife. It allowed the import of methyl bromide, a cancer-causing pesticide that was due to be banned this year under an international accord signed by Ronald Reagan, and it scrapped plans to regulate lead paint in home-renovation projects, placing millions of children at risk for brain damage. And on August 8th, taking advantage of solid Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, Bush signed into law his long-stalled energy bill, a grab bag of industry favors that provides $10 billion in oil, gas and coal subsidies while exempting Halliburton and other polluters from environmental laws. The measure approves oil exploration in marine sanctuaries, greenlights drilling on millions of acres of public land in the Rocky Mountains and Alaska, fast-tracks sixteen new coal-fired power plants and provides cradle-to-grave subsidies for new nuclear reactors. In a grotesque fit of petro-nuclear synergy, the bill even funds research into refining oil -- using atomic radiation.

But thank goodness Michael Cherthoff is on the job to stop the worst environmental polluters in the country, i.e., illegal Mexican immigrants. And yes, folks, that was intended as heavy handed sarcasm.