Bush’s great unraveling

everyweek.com

Bush’s great unraveling
by George Ochenski

Hate to say we told you so

If recent polls are any indication, the Bush administration is losing ground on virtually every front, from an outright rejection of Bush’s Social Security plan to a growing ennui with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The American people seem to have had it with the swaggering braggadocio of Bush, Cheney and their coterie of propagandists, Bible-thumpers and cover-up specialists. Slowly but surely the Bush presidency, heavy with secrecy, fraud and deceit, is beginning to fray at the edges, gradually unraveling toward the historical infamy it so well deserves.

For those who have criticized this administration from the outset, it’s tough not to say we told you so. In fact, though characterized as naysayers at best and unpatriotic traitors at worst, things have turned out pretty much the way many predicted, especially in regard to the spurious and costly invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Just last week the death toll of American soldiers in Iraq passed the 1,700 mark—and that doesn’t count the many who have been grievously wounded in body and mind, to say nothing of the estimated 100,000 Iraqi casualties.

And for what? While Cheney promised the nation last week that the Iraq insurgency was “on its last legs,” American generals are on record saying just the opposite. Not only is the insurgency far from weakened, as one general put it: “We can’t kill them all. For every one we kill, we create three more.” In Afghanistan, now that the Taliban is gone the opium trade is surging. Besides killing American soldiers on an almost daily basis, this supposed new bastion of democracy can now claim the dubious distinction of being the world’s largest producer of opium poppies.

These kinds of “victories” are not lost on the American public. While the U.S. mainstream media certainly deserve criticism for their whitewashed coverage of Bush’s phony “War on Terror,” even Fox News can’t spin the results of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars into positive poll numbers. In the latest Washington Post-ABC poll, almost 60 percent of Americans now believe those wars are no longer worth the effort. That’s a 20-point reversal in public sentiment from a year ago.

Foreign military adventurism aside, Bush is doing no better at home in his effort to privatize Social Security. After a 60-day nationwide tour in front of pre-screened friendly audiences, Bush succeeded only in driving down the numbers of people who support his amorphous plan to let Wall Street pick the pockets of Americans’ long-standing retirement fund. The latest AP-Ipsos poll found a mere 37 percent now support Bush’s plan, with 59 percent disapproving.

The same poll found big trouble for George W.’s leadership legacy, with just 35 percent saying the country is on the right track. Meanwhile, his handling of domestic issues receives approval percentages in “the high 30s and low 40s,” with Americans pegging Bush on the economy, for instance, at only 43 percent approval.

These kinds of numbers, and the almost impossible odds of radically improving the situations that spawned them, are reverberating through Washington. The Republican-controlled Congress that has pushed the Bush agenda through with little regard for process or legitimacy has earned the public’s enmity, as reflected in its miserable 31-percent approval rating. That means more than two of every three Americans think Congress is doing a bad job—not a pleasant reality check for those who have to go home and face the citizens in the next election cycle.


As for the blustering, swaggering Bush, with an approval rating at his all-time low of 43 percent, stuffing through any kind of a second-term agenda—let alone his wildly ambitious plans to turn everything from energy policy to social security over to his corporate cronies—is going to be tough. Perhaps the clearest indication of the problems are the increasing numbers of Republicans in Congress who are stepping forth with demands for a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq. Like “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner,” the albatross of Bush’s blunders appears to be too much weight for even staunch Republicans to carry around their necks.

In fact, it would appear that the rats are already starting to abandon G.W. Bush’s presidency. Paul Wolfowitz, one of the infamous planners of the ill-fated Iraq war, has given up his role as military advisor and sidled on over to the World Bank as the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate toward all-out civil war.

Or how about Montana’s former governor-turned-big-business-lobbyist, Marc Racicot? Having previously bailed from his positions with the Republican National Committee and his chairmanship of the Bush-Cheney campaign, just this week Racicot made the leap from the Texas law firm of Bracewell and Guiliani—where he lobbied for such luminaries as Enron and Burlington Northern—to his new position as president of the American Insurance Association. Reports say Racicot’s latest D.C. jump will land him with a nice 7-figure salary. Although it certainly won’t remove him from secret deal-making in the back rooms of the Bush administration, it will provide a media buffer to his former presidential proximity.

While Bush goes down the tubes of history, Racicot floats away on a raft of money, hoping to accomplish such notable goals as the “extension of the national terrorism insurance program,” “addressing lawsuit abuse,” and “modernizing the [insurance] industry’s regulatory system.” In Bush-Racicot speech, “modernizing” regulations simply means gutting them.

The great unraveling of the Bush regime was predictable. After all, you can only expect a house built on lies and deception to last so long. Unfortunately, the residual effects of this administration will be with us far longer than W. himself, as the pollution, loss of personal privacy and freedom, and trillions in national debt are passed on to future generations.

When not lobbying the Montana Legislature, George Ochenski is rattling the cage of the political establishment as a political analyst for the Independent. Contact Ochenski at opinion@missoulanews.com.

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Inside Joke

themoscowtimes.com

Global Eye

Inside Joke

By Chris Floyd
Published: June 17, 2005

As we all know, President George W. Bush is the most morally upright individual ever to set foot in the White House: a sober, righteous man of God. Yet this very rectitude obscures the fact that he is also one of the great wits of our time, a subtle and sophisticated ironist who has turned the dull business of governance into a highly refined comedic art.

With Shavian brio, Bush sends up the bourgeois pretension that words have meanings and actions have consequences. His specialty is the ironic reversal, known by old-time vaudeville gagsters as the "Orwell Twist." For example, you take a man who concocts justifications for torture, kidnapping and the exaltation of presidential authority beyond the reach of law -- and you make him the chief law enforcement officer of the land! It might look easy, but try doing it with a straight face, the way Bush introduced his criminal accomplice Alberto Gonzales as the new Attorney General. It takes real talent to pull off that kind of deadpan.

Or how about this gem? You steal hundreds of millions of dollars from the public treasury to secretly prepare for a war you've been planning for many years; you tell your closest ally months in advance that the invasion is on, come hell or high water; you unleash a massive bombing campaign against the target months before the war; you deceitfully manufacture and massage evidence to build a bogus case for launching an unprovoked act of aggression against an opponent who has already met all your demands -- and then you tell the world that you only wanted peace! What yocks, eh? Not even Groucho Marx could match such comic subversion.

The list -- and the Twist -- goes on and on: fostering a "culture of life" through capital punishment, gulag murders and "extrajudicial killings" by presidential fiat; spreading "compassionate conservatism" by gutting aid for the poor, the sick, the weak and the old; naming corporate polluters as environmental guardians; promoting "democracy" by coddling despots; "fighting terrorism" by spawning more terrorists -- it's a comedy cornucopia!


But Bush's satiric masterpiece, equal to "Annie Hall," "The Philadelphia Story" or even "Herbie Goes Bananas," might well be his appointment of nuclear war advocates to oversee -- wait for it -- arms control! Ain't that a hoot? Looney-fringe types who oppose arms treaties, want to build more nukes and use them "pre-emptively," even in "non-nuclear combat scenarios," are put in charge of all the pacts and programs to control and eliminate nuclear weapons! Thus "arms control" becomes "Armageddon" in the wacky jargon of Bush-speak. We haven't seen this kind of witty wordplay since the old "Arbeit Macht Frei" gag that the Bush Family's business partners pulled at Auschwitz back in the day.

But we said Bush was subtle. Almost no one has noticed his June 1 appointment of Robert Joseph as the new undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs. Joseph takes the place of John Bolton, the warmongering blowhard and serial fabricator whom Bush has chosen to be the United States' walrus-moustachioed face to the world at the UN. (Yet another masterstroke of wit from the Maestro: Bolton is copiously on record as despising the UN.) Although Joseph is cut from grayer cloth -- while still sporting plenty of nasal foliage, which is obviously a requirement for this baggy-pants role -- he is probably even more dangerous than his tempestuous predecessor, as Tom Barry of the International Relations Center reports.

Joseph has been a key player in the "nuke 'em all and let God sort 'em out" school of international diplomacy since his early minioning days in the diseased bowels of the Reagan administration. He came into his own after the Crawford clown-master seized power in 2000, serving as a "special assistant" to the president, in charge of destroying the ABM treaty, that 30-year bulwark against nuclear conflict. He was also instrumental in fashioning Bush's maniacal "Nuclear Posture Review," which calls for the production of "low-yield, precision-guided nuclear weapons" that can actually be used in combat, or in "pre-emptive" strikes at, well, basically anybody the president decides might pose a vague threat against "American interests" somewhere down the line.

But increasing the risk of global nuclear annihilation isn't enough for jolly old Joseph; he also has a fondness for biological and chemical weapons. Along with nukes, they make up a Holy Trinity of WMD that "have substantial utility" in the "international environment," he writes. And he doesn't just want user-friendly WMD to be "a permanent feature" of life on earth; he's keen on militarizing the heavens as well -- pre-emptively and unilaterally, natch. And it goes without saying that he opposes any attempts to place limits on U.S. testing and deployment of mass-death weapons.

That's "arms control," Bush-style, for you: a perfect joke. Yet Joseph's merry pranks don't stop there; he was also responsible for pushing one of the many big lies -- sorry, funny stories -- in Bush's pre-invasion propaganda blitzkrieg: the pure hokum about Saddam's nonexistent search for African uranium to fuel his nonexistent nuclear program. As with so many others, Joseph's egregious intelligence "failure" has been rewarded with honors and promotion. Because of course it was no failure at all; it was a well-played pantomime, faithfully following the script of Bush's war-crimes comedy.

Lurking behind all this cynical katzenjammer is the grinning skull of the Bush death-cult: a mad but all-too-plausible dream of conquest, loot and unlimited dominion. For this dream, the cultists have already murdered countless thousands and are gambling with the very life of the world itself. With these comedians, the joke is always on us.

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NYT Pulls A Gannon on Downing Street

thinkprogress.org

NYT Pulls A Gannon on Downing Street

At [Thursday’s] press briefing, Scott McClellan made the assertion that if you opposed the Iraq War, well, you don’t really count. The President doesn’t care what you have to say. Apparently neither does the New York Times. The stalwart of the “liberal media” covered the Conyers hearings with the headline “Antiwar group says leaked British memo shows Bush misled public on his war plans.” The lede to the article makes a point of stressing the type of people behind these dubious hearings:

Opponents of the war in Iraq held an unofficial hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday to draw attention to a leaked British government document that they say proves their case that President Bush misled the public about his war plans in 2002 and distorted intelligence to support his policy.

It isn’t until later in the article that the NYT bothers to mention that the hearings were being chaired by no less than the ranking minority member on the House Judiciary Committee Rep. John Conyers (D-MI).


The paper goes on to say that “the hearing and other events…reflected antiwar sentiment re-energized” by the British memos and as well as plummeting support for the war in Iraq. Of course, they don’t bring up the fact that the current state of the war in Iraq is another possible explanation for the “re-energized” antiwar sentiment.

Funny enough, the article does point out how McClellan responded to inquiries about the hearing. But then they play his lapdog one more time: “Activists have accused mainstream news organizations of playing down the document’s significance, even as antiwar bloggers have seized upon it as evidence.” Silly activists.

One of the witnesses at the hearing was John Bonifaz. A constitutional lawyer, Bonifaz is the founder and general counsel for the National Voting Rights Institute. Furthermore, he used to work with the Center for Responsive Politics and his writings have been published in both the Yale Law and Policy Review as well as the Columbia Law Review. How did the NYT sum up all his accomplishments? “John Bonifaz, anti-war activist.”

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Quote of the Day

politicalwire.com
June 17, 2005
Quote of the Day
"If Frist issued them a clean bill of health, we implore them to get a second opinion."


-- Lexington Herald-Leader editorial, to ex-patients of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), noting his Senate floor diagnosis of Terri Schiavo's condition was completely wrong. The Los Angeles Times also notes Frist "has come under renewed fire" for his comments.

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Ed Klein Rapes the National Discourse

Arianna Huffington
Ed Klein Rapes the National Discourse

You’ve probably heard -- because some people will print anything -- the allegations in Ed Klein’s latest piece of garbage, The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President. The most trumpeted one is also the most outlandish, based on the kind of sourcing that would make Jayson Blair proud -- that Chelsea Clinton was conceived when Bill raped Hillary.

Some have already been asking what is going to fill the sleaze slot in the news now that the Michael Jackson Reality Show has had its season finale. Sadly, there’s a good chance it’s going to be filled by Klein. The real title of his book should be: The Truth About Ed Klein: What He Does, Who Helps Him Do It, and How Far He’ll Go to Make a Buck.

God knows I’ve had plenty of disagreements with Hillary -- especially on Iraq. But what Klein is doing is disgusting. It has nothing to do with Hillary’s politics -- and everything to do with feeding the right-wing sleaze machine.

This bears no relation to legitimate political reporting -- and should not be treated as such. In fact, if there’s a rape involved in this book, it’s Ed Klein’s attempted rape of the public discourse.

But with the help of bloggers (and as you’ll see from the links below, they’ve been at it already), Klein’s book can be seen for what it is: a sordid, slimy attempt to make a buck while helping advance a sordid, slimy political agenda.


So let’s look at some of the people behind this garbage machine. The book is currently being offered for free on NewsMax.com if you buy a subscription to their magazine. One of NewsMax’s main investors? Richard Mellon Scaife, who funded the Arkansas Project, set up to try to destroy the Clintons in the 90s. NewsMax was also behind the ugly smear campaign against George Soros.

Klein was interviewed for the site by one of NewsMax’s “pundits,” John LeBoutillier. According to LeBoutillier: “Because Ed Klein and I are friends, we have been talking about this book for almost two years.” LeBoutillier is also the founder of something called the StopHillaryPAC. How convenient…

Then there’s Rush Limbaugh, who disgracefully peddled another piece of junk from the book, albeit in a way that he no doubt thought was very cute:

"I've got some interesting, juicy details on this book on Hillary by Ed Klein, but I'm not going to be the first to mention them. I'm not going there. It will come out eventually. It has to do with sexual orientation, and I'm not going to be the one...”

The leak of the book's claims of "revolutionary lesbianism" to the Daily Mail follows a time-tested strategy of using Fleet Street as a dumping ground for ludicrous claims, which the mainstream U.S. media would not report. But which, once published in England, can quickly make their way back to the States via right-wing outlets.

And how about the book’s publisher, Sentinel? According to the New York Post, Sentinel spokesperson Will Weisser “said he hoped that The Truth About Hillary would do to Clinton what the Swift Boat Veterans’ bestseller did to Kerry.”

And then there’s the garbage man himself, Ed Klein, whom the Philadelphia Inquirer described as “a recovering journalist” who “practices genetics and psychoanalysis, all predicated on a towering cream puff of assumptions”.

Let’s send him -- and his toxic trash -- back to reporter rehab. He’s clearly fallen way, way off the wagon… and into the gutter.

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Security Breach Could Expose 40M to Fraud

redding.com
Jun 17, 8:13 PM EDT

Security Breach Could Expose 40M to Fraud

By JOE BEL BRUNO
Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- A security breach of customer information at a credit card transaction company could expose to fraud up to 40 million cardholders of multiple brands, MasterCard International Inc. said Friday.

The credit card giant said its security division detected multiple instances of fraud that tracked back to CardSystems Solutions Inc., which processes credit card and other payments for banks and merchants.

The compromised data included names, banks and account numbers - not addresses or Social Security numbers, said MasterCard spokeswoman Sharon Gamsin. Such data could be used to steal funds but not identities.

It was the latest in a series of security breaches affecting valuable consumer data at major financial institutions and data brokers in an increasingly database-driven world.

The breach appears to be the largest yet involving financial data, said David Sobel, general counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

"The steady stream of these disclosures shows the pressing need for regulation of the industry both in terms of limitation in the amount of personal information that companies collect and also liability when these kinds of disclosures occur," Sobel said.


A flurry of disclosures of breaches affecting high-profile companies including Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and DSW Shoe Warehouse has prompted federal lawmakers to draw up legislation designed to better protect consumer privacy.

CardSystems was hit by a virus-like computer script that captured customer data for the purpose of fraud, Gamsin said. She said she did not know how the script got into the system. The FBI was investigating.

MasterCard, which said about 14 million of its own cards were exposed, first announced the breach in a news release late Friday afternoon, saying it was notifying its card-issuing banks of the problem.

Under federal law, credit card holders are liable for no more than $50 of unauthorized charges, and many card issuers including MasterCard will even waive the $50.

Reached on his cell phone, CardSystems' chief financial officer, Michael A. Brady, said: "We were absolutely blindsided by a press release by the association."

He refused to answer any questions and referred calls to the company's chief executive, John M. Perry, and its senior vice president of marketing, Bill N. Reeves. A message left for Perry and Reeves at the company's Atlanta offices was not immediately returned.

CardSystems processes less than 0.5 percent of American Express' domestic transactions, said company spokeswoman Judy Tenzer. She said a small number of its cardholders were affected, though she did not have an exact figure.

"We are aware of the situation, we're closely monitoring it and we do have an investigation under way," Tenzer said.

Discover Financial Services Inc. said it was aware of the situation and would not say whether any of its cards were involved. Visa USA and a large issuer of cards, MBNA Corp., did not immediately calls seeking comment.

CardSystems, which has a processing center in Tuscon, Ariz., has been in business for more than 15 years and handles transactions for more than 115,000 small to mid-sized businesses, according to the company's Web site. The company says it processes transactions worth more than $15 billion annually.

Sobel said the fact that the latest breach involved a third party "indicates that this is a shadowy industry where the consumer never really knows who is going to be handling and using their personal information," he added. "Presumably, the affected consumers thought they were dealing with MasterCard."

Earlier this month, Citigroup said United Parcel Service lost computer tapes with sensitive information from 3.9 million customers of CitiFinancial, a unit that provides personal and home loans.

There have also been breaches involving other kinds of sensitive data.

ChoicePoint Inc. said in February that thieves using stolen identities had created 50 dummy businesses that pulled data including names, addresses and Social Security numbers on as many as 145,000 people.

In March, LexisNexis Inc. disclosed that hackers had commandeered a database and gained access to the personal files of as many as 32,000 people.

The company has since increased its estimate of the people affected to 310,000. Information accessed included names, addresses and Social Security and driver's license numbers, but not credit history, medical records or financial information, corporate parent Reed Elsevier Group PLC said in a statement.

"Hardly a week goes by without startling new examples of breaches of sensitive personal data, reminding us how important it is to pass a comprehensive identity theft prevention bill in Congress quickly," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

---

AP writers Anick Jesdanun, Adam Geller, Harry Weber, Ted Bridis, Arthur Rotstein and Marcy Gordon contributed to this report.

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Democracy Is a 'Bad Word:' Microsoft Censors Blogs at Its New Chinese Portal

TechnologyReview.com
Democracy Is a 'Bad Word:' Microsoft Censors Blogs at Its New Chinese Portal

By Elaine Kurtenbach
AP Business Writer

SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- Chinese bloggers, even on foreign-sponsored sites, better chose their words carefully -- the censors are watching.

Users of the MSN Spaces section of Microsoft Corp.'s new China-based Web portal get a scolding message each time they input words deemed taboo by the communist authorities -- such as democracy, freedom and human rights.

"Prohibited language in text, please delete," the message says.


However, the restrictions appear to apply only to the subject line of such entries. Writing them into the text, with a more innocuous subject heading, seems to be no problem.

Microsoft's Chinese staff could not be reached immediately for comment. However, a spokesman at the tech giant's headquarters in Seattle acknowledged that the company is cooperating with the Chinese government to censor its Chinese-language Web portal.

Microsoft and its Chinese business partner, government-funded Shanghai Alliance Investment, work with authorities to omit certain forbidden language, said Adam Sohn, a global sales and marketing director for MSN.

But he added, "I don't have access to the list at this point so I can't really comment specifically on what's there."

Online tests found that apart from politically sensitive words, obscenities and sexual references also are banned.

MSN Spaces, which offers free blog space, is connected to Microsoft's MSN China portal. The portal was launched on May 26, and some 5 million blogs have since been created, Microsoft said.

The Chinese government encourages Internet use for business and education but tries to ban access to material deemed subversive.

Although details of the authorities' efforts are kept secret, users of many China-based Web portals are prevented from accessing sites deemed subversive by the government.

A search on Google for such topics as Taiwan or Tibetan independence, the banned group Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama or the China Democracy Party inevitably leads to a "site cannot be found" message.

Internet-related companies are obliged to accept such limitations as a condition of doing business in China. And government-installed filtering tools, registration requirements and other surveillance are in place to ensure the rules are enforced.

Recently, the government demanded that Web site owners register with authorities by June 30 or face fines.

Sohn said heavy government censorship is accepted as part of the regulatory landscape in China, and the world's largest software company believes its services still can foster expression in the country.

"We're in business in lots of countries. I think every time you go into a market you are faced with a different regulatory environment and you have to go make a choice as a business," he said. "Even with the filters, we're helping millions of people communicate, share stories, share photographs and build relationships. For us, that is the key point here."

The consequences of defying government limits can be severe: at least 54 people have been jailed for posting essays or other content deemed subversive online.

The international media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders has protested the online limits, sending letters to top executives of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and other companies urging them to lobby Beijing for greater freedom of expression.

"In terms of the reality of the situation, those business deals are going to continue as globalization expands," said Tala Dowlatshahi, a spokeswoman for the group. "But we want to make sure that pressure is being put on the companies to pressure the Chinese government to ensure a more democratic process."

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Democrats want more 'Downing Street memo' data

USA TODAY
Democrats want more 'Downing Street memo' data

WASHINGTON (AP) — Some congressional Democrats, brandishing a document known as the "Downing Street Memo," are insisting that the White House provide more information about what led to the decision to go to war in Iraq.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and other Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee were conducting a public forum Thursday, prompted by documents that have surfaced from inside the British government about pre-war planning.

The so-called "Downing Street memo" says the Bush administration believed that war was inevitable and was determined to use intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the ouster of Saddam.

The "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," says the memo, recounting a July 23, 2002 meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his national security team. The meeting took place just after British officials returned from Washington.

U.S. officials and Blair deny the assertion about intelligence and facts being "fixed," a comment which the memo attributes to the chief of British intelligence at the time. The meeting took place eight months before the invasion of Iraq.

Conyers pointed to statements by Bush in the run-up to invasion that war would be a last resort. "The veracity of those statements has — to put it mildly — come into question," he said.

The London Sunday Times disclosed the contents of the memo May 1.

Bush should respond to questions raised by the Downing Street memo, says a letter signed by Conyers and over 90 other members of Congress, as well as a half-million Americans.


White House press secretary Scott McClellan dismissed the memo on Thursday and indicated that no one in the White House plans to respond to the letter.

"This is simply rehashing old debates that have already been discussed," he said.

The Sunday Times also reported on an eight-page briefing paper prepared for Blair which concludes that the U.S. military has given "little thought" to the aftermath of a war in Iraq.

The briefing paper of July 21, 2002 says that a postwar occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise and that "as already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-06-16-democrats-memo_x.htm?csp=34

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Democrats Urge Inquiry on Bush, Iraq

Yahoo! News
Democrats Urge Inquiry on Bush, Iraq

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

Amid new questions about President Bush's drive to topple Saddam Hussein, several House Democrats urged lawmakers on Thursday to conduct an official inquiry to determine whether the president intentionally misled Congress.

At a public forum where the word "impeachment" loomed large, Exhibit A was the so-called Downing Street memo, a prewar document leaked from inside the British government to The Sunday Times of London a month and a half ago. Rep. John Conyers (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, organized the event.

Recounting a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair's national security team, the memo says the Bush administration believed that war was inevitable and was determined to use intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the ouster of Saddam.

"The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," one of the participants was quoted as saying at the meeting, which took place just after British officials returned from Washington.

The president "may have deliberately deceived the United States to get us into a war," Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said. "Was the president of the United States a fool or a knave?"

The Democratic congressmen were relegated to a tiny room in the bottom of the Capitol and the Republicans who run the House scheduled 11 major votes to coincide with the afternoon event.

"We have not been told the truth," Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in Baghdad a year ago, told the Democrats. "If this administration doesn't have anything to hide, they should be down here testifying."


The White House refuses to respond to a May 5 letter from 122 congressional Democrats about whether there was a coordinated effort to "fix" the intelligence and facts around the policy, as the Downing Street memo says.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan says Conyers "is simply trying to rehash old debates."

Conyers and a half-dozen other members of Congress were stopped at the White House gate later Thursday when they hand-delivered petitions signed by 560,000 Americans who want Bush to provide a detailed response to the Downing Street memo. When Conyers couldn't get in, an anti-war demonstrator shouted, "Send Bush out!" Eventually, White House aides retrieved the petitions at the gate and took them into the West Wing.

"Quite frankly, evidence that appears to be building up points to whether or not the president has deliberately misled Congress to make the most important decision a president has to make, going to war," Rep. Charles Rangel (news, bio, voting record) of New York, senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said earlier at the event on Capitol Hill.

Misleading Congress is an impeachable offense, a point that Rangel underscored by saying he's already been through two impeachments. He referred to the impeachment of President Clinton for an affair with a White House intern and of President Nixon for Watergate, even though Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment.

Conyers pointed to statements by Bush in the run-up to invasion that war would be a last resort. "The veracity of those statements has — to put it mildly — come into question," he said.

Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson said, "We are having this discussion today because we failed to have it three years ago when we went to war."

"It used to be said that democracies were difficult to mobilize for war precisely because of the debate required," Wilson said, going on to say the lack of debate in this case allowed the war to happen.

Wilson wrote a 2003 newspaper opinion piece criticizing the Bush administration's claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger. After the piece appeared someone in the Bush administration leaked the identity of Wilson's wife as a CIA operative, exposing her cover.

Wilson has said he believes the leak was retaliation for his critical comments. The Justice Department is investigating.

John Bonifaz, a lawyer and co-founder of a new group called AfterDowningStreet.org, said the lack of interest by congressional Republicans in the Downing Street memo is like Congress during Nixon's presidency saying "we don't want" the Watergate tapes.

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U.S. Democrats cite British memo in Bolton fight

Reuters
U.S. Democrats cite British memo in Bolton fight

By Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democrats rejected a Republican compromise over John Bolton's nomination as U.N. ambassador on Thursday and cited a British report backing their view that the Bush administration hyped intelligence on Iraq before the 2003 invasion.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, scheduled a procedural vote on Monday to try to break the deadlock. Democrats said they had enough votes to stall the nomination until the White House turns over information they demanded on Bolton, but Republicans hoped they would be viewed as obstructionists.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid demanded a full accounting of whether Bolton exaggerated assessments of several countries' weapons programs, a key issue in the long-stalled nomination.

"All over the news the last few days has been concerns about weapons of mass destruction by virtue of the memo that was discovered," the Nevada Democrat said, referring to the so-called "Downing Street memo."

The July 2002 memo, prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said President Bush had already decided to invade Iraq and intelligence was being made to fit that policy.

"Concerns about this administration hyping intelligence and Great Britain hyping intelligence cannot be dismissed lightly," Reid said, adding that it "is no small matter for us to learn whether Mr. Bolton was a party to other efforts to hype intelligence."

Bush and his aides, including Bolton, justified the invasion by saying Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were a threat to the United States, but no such weapons have been found.


Bolton met at the Capitol with top Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who told him he "needs to convince Vice President (Dick) Cheney to provide the information" they sought on preparations for testimony Bolton gave Congress on Syria's weapons and on classified National Security Agency intercepts, according to a statement from Sen. Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat.

Bolton, the top U.S. diplomat for arms control and a fierce critic of the United Nations, is a favorite of conservatives and failure to get him confirmed would be a setback for Bush.

PROCEDURAL VOTE

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said "some of the Democratic leaders who have already voted against John Bolton are not interested in a reasonable compromise. They are simply interested in continuing with stall tactics."

Republicans would need to pick up two more Democrats in the 100-seat chamber to get the 60 votes required to end debate on Bolton and go to a confirmation vote, if they kept all of the senators they had in a previous vote.

If they can get beyond the procedural hurdle, Republicans, who hold a 55-45 Senate majority, are confident they will have the simple majority needed to confirm Bolton.

Bush could appoint Bolton during Congress' July 4th holiday recess if the Senate remains deadlocked. That appointment would last through the end of this Senate session in 2006.

But a recess appointment would be viewed as a political retreat. Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a key Bolton backer, said he had not heard that suggested by administration officials.

In a bid to get more support, Senate Republicans tried to act as intermediaries to get some of the information on Bolton that Democrats are demanding, but the administration has refused to turn over.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts said on Wednesday he confirmed with U.S. Intelligence Director John Negroponte that key officials known to have had confrontations with Bolton over intelligence assessments were not mentioned in National Security Agency intercepts Bolton had sought.

Roberts, a Kansas Republican, said that should answer Democrats' questions on whether Bolton sought the intercepts to spy on or punish bureaucratic rivals. Critics have accused Bolton of bullying subordinates.

But Democrats said they still did not have internal e-mails and memos leading up to testimony Bolton gave on Syria's weapons, and the information on the intercepts was inadequate.

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Bush's Support on Major Issues Tumbles in Poll

The New York Times

Bush's Support on Major Issues Tumbles in Poll
By ROBIN TONER and MARJORIE CONNELLY

Increasingly pessimistic about Iraq and skeptical about President Bush's plan for Social Security, Americans are in a season of political discontent, giving Mr. Bush one of the lowest approval ratings of his presidency and even lower marks to Congress, according to the New York Times/CBS News Poll.

Forty-two percent of the people responding to the poll said they approved of the way Mr. Bush was handling his job, a marked decline from his 51 percent rating after of the November election, when he embarked on an ambitious second term agenda led by the overhaul of Social Security. Sixteen months before the midterm elections, Congress fared even worse in the survey, with the approval of just 33 percent of the respondents, and 19 percent saying Congress shared their priorities.

Despite months of presidential effort, the nationwide poll found the public is not rallying toward Mr. Bush's vision of a new Social Security that would allow younger workers to put part of their payroll taxes into private investment accounts. Two-thirds said they were uneasy about Mr. Bush's ability to make sound decisions on Social Security. Only 25 percent said they approved of the way Mr. Bush was handling Social Security, down slightly from what the poll found in March.

Moreover, 45 percent said the more they heard about the Bush plan, the less they liked it. The survey also found the public shared the growing skepticism in Washington about Mr. Bush's prospects for success on Social Security, with most saying they did not think Mr. Bush would succeed.


Still, Mr. Bush continued to have majority support for his handling of the war on terrorism - 52 percent - one of his strengths throughout his 2004 re-election campaign.

Mr. Bush's approval rating is below the historical pattern for June in the first year of a second term: President Clinton's stood at 60 percent and President Reagan's at 59 percent. But that could reflect, in part, the much greater partisan polarization in modern politics, underscored by the 71 percentage point gap between Mr. Bush's approval rating from Democrats and Republicans in the recent poll. Nicolle Devenish, White House communications director, dismissed the significance of the poll, saying Mr. Bush believes that following polls is equivalent to a dog chasing its tail. "We have advanced a broad agenda, and will continue to advocate the people's priorities," she said.

On Iraq, months of continued turmoil, insurgent attacks and casualties appear to have taken a further toll on public attitudes. Looking back, 51 percent said they thought the United States should have stayed out of Iraq, while 45 percent said military action was the right thing to do. That reflects only a slight erosion from findings by CBS News throughout the spring, but a marked turnaround from 2004, when pluralities tended to think it was still the right thing to do.

Moreover, only 37 percent said they approved of Mr. Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq, down from 45 percent in February. A strong majority of Americans now say the effort by the United States to bring stability and order to Iraq is going badly - 60 percent, up from 47 percent in February.

The latest poll was conducted by telephone June 10 through Wednesday with 1,111 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

In general, the survey found Americans in a darker mood. In one key measure, only 33 percent said they thought the country was on the right track, while 61 percent said it had gone off in the wrong direction. Similar results were found by CBS News in April and May, but that measure of national optimism was markedly better last November. There was little change in the way Americans rate the current condition of the American economy - 54 percent say it is very or fairly good. But the number of Americans who say the economy is getting worse is growing, to 36 percent from 30 percent in February.

When asked an open-ended question about the most important problems facing the nation, Americans cited the economy and jobs, war and terrorism at the top of the list. Social Security, which has consumed an enormous amount of political energy this spring, did not make the top six, suggesting voters have a different view of political priorities than the Republican-controlled Congress and the White House.

The public's view of Congress dropped sharply earlier this year, and has hovered at unusually low levels since March, according to CBS News Polls.

The sharpest drop in Congressional approval in recent months occurred among Republicans. In February, 54 percent of Republicans said they approved of the way Congress was doing its job; in the most recent poll, that had dropped to 40 percent. Some analysts suggest that Congress is paying the price for months of intense partisan struggle over judicial nominations and the decision to intervene in the right-to-die case of Terri Schiavo.

Christine Weisman, a 54-year-old Republican homemaker in Reading, Pa., said in a follow-up interview, "They're not getting anything done. They don't seem to be able to come together on anything." She added, "It's all a political thing and they're forgetting the basic needs of the people."

Representative Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois Democrat who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said, "The American people know instinctively that we have major problems and we've got a Congress that is not attending or dealing with them." As the party in control, Republicans should be held responsible, Mr. Emanuel said, although he added that the 2006 midterms were far too distant for predictions.

Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, who heads the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the old truism still held: "People are not enamored, maybe, of the institution of Congress, but they love their congressman." He added, "My advice to the policy makers around Congress is to continue to get the work done, and make sure that as we get the work done, people know about it."

Mr. Bush faces a very resistant public when it comes to his Social Security proposals. He recently embraced a solvency plan that would cushion the lowest income workers from any benefit cuts, but a majority in the survey said they still believed Mr. Bush's general plan would most benefit high income people.

He has spent months trying to explain the virtues of private investment accounts, but public opinion on them remains very divided. Forty-five percent said those accounts were a good idea, 50 percent a bad idea, the same breakdown found in the survey in January.

People like the idea that the accounts could be inherited and that they could result in more money for retirement; both arguments boost support for the accounts. But the idea that these accounts could lead to huge amounts of government borrowing - to finance the transition costs - resulted in a very negative response, as did the idea that the accounts would be accompanied by a cut in the guaranteed government benefit.

Americans also recognized that Mr. Bush has a Social Security plan and the Democrats in Congress do not. A majority said they would like to see the Democrats offer a plan and not simply oppose Mr. Bush's.

But most said they did not think Mr. Bush's plan for private accounts would do anything for the system's long-term solvency.

Mr. Bush's approval rating in the Times/CBS Survey is one of a series of recent national polls that registered difficulties for Mr. Bush. The Associated Press-Ipsos Poll found Mr. Bush with a 43 percent approval rating; Gallup with 47 percent, and the Washington Post/ABC News Poll at 48 percent.

Fred Backus contributed reporting for this article.

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Halliburton to build new $30 mln Guantanamo jail

Reuters
Halliburton to build new $30 mln Guantanamo jail
Thu Jun 16, 2005 7:20 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Halliburton Co. unit will build a new $30 million detention facility and security fence at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States is holding about 520 foreign terrorism suspects, the Defense Department announced on Thursday.

The announcement comes the same week that Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended the jail after U.S. lawmakers said it had created an image problem for the United States.

Critics have decried the indefinite detention of Guantanamo detainees, whom the United States has denied rights accorded under the Geneva Conventions to prisoners of war. The prison was called "the gulag of our times" in a recent Amnesty International report.


An air-conditioned two-story prison, known as Detention Camp #6, will be built at Guantanamo to house 220 men. It will include exercise areas, medical and dental spaces as well as a security control room, the contract announcement said.

The contract announcement did not specify whether the new prison would also hold foreign terror suspects.

Under the deal with the Norfolk, Virginia-based U.S. Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Atlantic, the work is to be wrapped up by July 2006. It is part of a larger contract that could be worth up to $500 million if all options are exercised, the Defense Department said.

The project is to be carried out by Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root Services of Arlington, Virginia. It includes site work, heating ventilation and air conditioning, plumbing and electrical work, the Pentagon said.

The first prisoners arrived at the prison camp in January 2002 after the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked airliner attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

The Pentagon has said about 520 detainees from more than 40 countries are being held at the prison, without giving a precise figure.

Rumsfeld said on Tuesday U.S. taxpayers had spend more than $100 million on construction costs and no other facility could replace it.

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White House rejects call for Iraq pullout

Reuters
White House rejects call for Iraq pullout
Thu Jun 16, 2005 10:11 PM ET

By Steve Holland and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Critics of the Iraq war proposed a congressional resolution on Thursday calling for a U.S. troop withdrawal in a reflection of growing American unease, but the White House and the Pentagon rejected the idea.

The resolution, backed by North Carolina Republican Rep. Walter Jones and Hawaii Democratic Rep. Neil Abercrombie, calls for the Bush administration to develop a plan by the end of this year to pull out all American troops from Iraq and to begin the withdrawal by Oct. 1, 2006.

Jones said U.S. forces had removed Saddam Hussein, given Iraqis a chance at democracy and were training their military.

"After they're trained, what else should the goals be? Do we want to be there for 20 years or 30 years?" he said.

The resolution was introduced in the House of Representatives as White House aides said President Bush planned a more determined effort to defend the Iraq war amid growing public doubts.

Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said setting a withdrawal date would send the wrong message to Iraqi insurgents.

"This message would say to the terrorists: 'All you have to do is wait until that day when our troops leave and then you can start carrying out those attacks and just hold out."' he said.


The resolution is not expected to get far in the Republican-led Congress, which, although critical of aspects of the war, has supported the president's efforts.

About two-dozen House Democrats held their own hearing on a British government memo that said that by July 2002 U.S. intelligence was being "fixed" around a policy that would inevitably lead to war with Iraq. U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in March 2003.

"If these disclosures are true ... they establish a prima facie case of going to war under false pretenses," said Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, who led the forum.

Conyers showed up at the gates of the White House with several other members of Congress to deliver the signatures of 122 congressional Democrats and 560,000 citizens on petitions seeking a response on the memo.

"We want an answer to our letter and if we have to send him 1 million signatures or 10 million, we're going to keep collecting them," said Conyers, who asked to deliver the bundles of documents in person but was told by White House staff members to pass them through the gate.

Dozens of protesters shouted "Let Conyers in" as they carried signs that said: ""Bushame on you. You lied, they died."

THE PENTAGON AND THE PUBLIC

At the Pentagon, Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Conway, director of operations for the military's Joint Staff, also did not support a deadline and expressed disappointment over opinion polls showing waning American support for the U.S. presence in Iraq.

Bush is facing some of the most pessimistic views on Iraq since launching the war two years ago. A new CBS/New York Times poll said 60 percent of Americans thought things were going badly for the United States in Iraq rather than well. Fifty-one percent now think the United States should have stayed out of Iraq, the poll found.

Bush's job approval rating was just 42 percent, down from a 51 percent rating in the aftermath of the November election, according to the poll of 1,111 people conducted in the past week. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Bush will host Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari at the White House on June 24 and deliver a speech about Iraq on June 28 to mark the first anniversary since the transfer of sovereignty from a U.S.-led coalition to Iraqis.

The Bush administration has offered a conflicting picture of events in Iraq.

Vice President Dick Cheney asserted recently that the Iraqi insurgency, which is killing dozens of people daily with brazen suicide attacks, was in its "last throes." Bush has offered a more sober picture while stressing progress is being made. (Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and Charles Aldinger)

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Nellie B: USDA Prime

huffingtonpost.com
Nellie B: USDA Prime

Remember "This is Karen Ryan, reporting" and President Bush's promise that the government wouldn't pump out any more of what the GAO criticized as "covert propaganda"? Yeah, and he also said that Saddam Hussein had WMDs and was a threat to Americans.

The new news about fake news comes courtesy of the Chicago Tribune, reporting that the US Department of Agriculture has produced and distributed more than three dozen TV and radio spots promoting the Central American Free Trade Agreement, a proposal controversial even with many Republicans. "I can't imagine how any senator or House member from ag country could stand up and vote against CAFTA," one spot quotes USDA secretary Mike Johanns. "It makes no sense to me. It's voting against our producers."


Rural communities have long relied on the USDA for news: that's part of its mission, providing information on the latest agricultural research and the like. But in between the updates on new corn varieties and poultry ailments, many of the smaller and more cash-strapped rural broadcasters are running the pro-CAFTA spots unedited, except for removing the USDA tagline at the end to make them look like news reports. Anti-CAFTA politicians are crying foul, or at least calling such "news reports" propaganda.

As for unequivocal propaganda -- y'know, psychological warfare from the US Special Operations Command -- the government outsources that stuff, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va. We could be spending some $100 million "for the [three selected] firms to produce print articles, video and audio broadcasts, Internet sites and novelty items, like T-shirts and bumper stickers, for foreign audiences." The war on terror waged on a bumper sticker?

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The Interactive Truth

The New York Times
June 15, 2005
The Interactive Truth
By STACY SCHIFF

It used to be that the longest unprotected border in the world was that between the United States and Canada. Today it's the one between fact and fiction. If the two cozy up any closer together The National Enquirer will be out of business.

More than 60 percent of the American people don't trust the press. Why should they? They've been reading "The Da Vinci Code" and marveling at its historical insights. I have nothing against a fine thriller, especially one that claims the highest of literary honors: it's a movie on the page. But "The Da Vinci Code" is not a work of nonfiction. If one more person talks to me about Dan Brown's crackerjack research I'm shooting on sight.

The novel's success does point up something critical. We're happier to swallow a half-baked Renaissance religious conspiracy theory than to examine the historical fiction we're living (and dying for) today. And not only is it remarkably easy to believe what we want to believe. It's remarkably easy to find someone who will back us up. Twenty-five years ago George W. S. Trow meditated on this in "Within the Context of No Context." Then it indeed appeared that authority and orthodoxy were wilting in the glare of television. Have we exterminated reason in the meantime?

If you are 6 years old and both your parents read one online, you can be forgiven for not knowing what a newspaper is. You would also be on to something. The news has slipped its moorings. It is no longer held captive by two-inch columns of type or a sonorous 6 p.m. baritone. It has gone on the lam. Anyone can be a reporter - or a book reviewer, TV star, museum guide, podcaster or pundit.

This week The Los Angeles Times announced its intention to exile the square and stodgy voice of authority farther yet. The paper will launch an interactive editorial page. "We'll have some editorials where you can go online and edit an editorial to your satisfaction," the page's editor says. "It's the ultimate in reader participation," explains his boss, Michael Kinsley. Let's hope the interactive editorial will lead directly to the interactive tax return. On the other hand, I hope we might stop short before we get to structural engineering and brain surgery. Some of us like our truth the way we like our martinis: dry and straight up.


Kinsley takes as his model Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia to which anyone can contribute, and which grows by accretion and consensus. Relatedly, it takes as its premise the idea that "facts" belong between quotation marks. It's a winning formula; Wikipedia is one of the Web's most popular sites. I asked a teenager if he understood that it carries a disclaimer; Wikipedia "can't guarantee the validity of the information found here." "That's just so that no one will sue them," he shrugged. As to the content: "It's all true, mostly."

What if we all vote on the truth? We don't need to, because we will be overruled by what becomes a legend most: entertainment. Twenty-one percent of young Americans get their news from comedy shows. Journalism once counted as the first draft of history. Today that would be screenwriting. As Frank Rich reminds us, the enduring line from Watergate - "Follow the money" - was not Deep Throat's. It was William Goldman's. And "Show me the money" was Cameron Crowe, not President Bush.

Evidently Deep Throat himself carped, pre-Watergate, that newspapers failed to get to the bottom of things. Of course apocrypha have always had staying power. That story about the cherry tree was a lie. Especially in unsettled times, we love conspiracy theories. They are comforting and safe. You can go out with a conspiracy theory after dark and not worry about foul play. Before Oliver Stone there was Shakespeare, although he generally had the good grace to let a century or two go by before he contorted history.

What is new is our odd, bipolar approach to fact. We have a fresh taste for documentaries. Any novelist will tell you that readers hunger for nonfiction, which may explain the number of historical figures who have crowded into our novels. Facts seem important. Facts have gravitas. But the illusion of facts will suffice. One in three Americans still believes there were W.M.D.'s in Iraq.

And that's the way it is.

Maureen Dowd is on book leave.
Stacy Schiff, the author of "A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America" and a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a guest columnist for two weeks.
E-mail: schiff@nytimes.com

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Comedian for Senator? Don't Laugh

The New York Times

Comedian for Senator? Don't Laugh
By DAVID CARR

MINNEAPOLIS, June 13 - The swells who showed up before Al Franken's speech at a Democratic fund-raiser to down finger food and punch were thrilled to see him, all the more so because he continues to make threatening noises about running for the Senate here in 2008.

A former writer and performer for "Saturday Night Live" and more recently a radio host on Air America, Mr. Franken has used his outsider status to hurl humor-based invective and indignation at the powers that be, but he is considering becoming part of what he so frequently assails.

On Saturday evening he worked the crowd as if being accosted by strangers in a sweltering tent redolent of meatballs was his idea of a good time.

It can get mighty personal mighty fast for a native son whom everyone seems to know.

"I jumped ya twice in Thief River Falls," said a middle-age woman in greeting at the pre-speech party in a tent next to the Ted Mann Concert Hall at the University of Minnesota here. The seeming inference of long-ago sexual congress would cause deep blushing elsewhere, but it actually meant that Faith Rud and Mr. Franken had bonded in a far more profoundly Minnesotan way: she had used jumper cables to revive his Volkswagen bus on a cold night long ago after a college gig.

Mr. Franken, who left Minnesota at age 22 but has made a habit of coming back frequently, has suggested he may move his radio show to the state sometime next year. His delivery manages to be caustic and laconic, an unhurried savaging of all that is conservative and Republican, all wrapped up to a trumpeted call to arms.


"In this country, we are going through a very dark period," he told his audience, "and someday your grandchildren are going to ask what you did, and you are going to tell them, 'I worked my butt off,' " he said, exhorting the audience to work to turn out the current administration. He is a public person who likes his public and enjoys a microphone. (He was heckled last week for going on too long while accepting an award from Talkers magazine.)

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura have already demonstrated that star power can create its own legitimacy in politics, but given Mr. Franken's penchant for going over the top and staying there, he may serve as a test of just how far a celeb-pol can go and still have a valid shot at being elected. A ferocious, unreconstructed liberal, he may show up for the troops as part of U.S.O. tours, but he believes that the war they are fighting is little more than a criminal conspiracy at the highest reaches of government. Mr. Franken can give a speech. He knows the issues. But could he be too partisan for politics?

"There is an intersection between humor and truth," said Sandra Yue, who attended the speech. "He has a sincerity and commitment that I think people will respond to." Before and after the speech at the University of Minnesota here, many people thanked him for rushing back to Minnesota after Senator Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash to campaign for Walter F. Mondale as the senator's successor. The effort failed, and Norman Coleman, a Republican, ended up in the Senate. Mr. Franken and others believe the seat rightfully belongs to the Democrats.

"Aren't you sick of Republican lectures about family values?" he said, mentioning Rush Limbaugh's battles with prescription drugs and Bill O'Reilly's alleged penchant for using the phone to titillating ends. (A sexual harassment lawsuit brought against Mr. O'Reilly was settled last year.)

The prospect of a comedian running for the office sparks belly laughs in some and genuine interest in others.

"Al is no better or no worse, no more or less qualified, that anyone else who has expressed interest in running in 2008, although that is a long way away," said John Van Hecke, campaign manager for the Minnesota House Democratic caucus. "Al says what a lot of people are thinking, but says it in a way that is a lot funnier than almost anyone."

A spokesman for Senator Coleman said that his office would not comment on a potential opponent in a race that is a few years away.

Mr. Franken continues to hedge his bets, partly because Air America seems to be gaining some traction.

"I am not sure that I am running yet," he said, sitting in the concert hall's green room before his appearance. "Part of the calculus is where the radio show goes. I don't want to leave them in the lurch."

There would not seem to be much of a fit between Mr. Franken and his re-adopted home state. Minnesota Nice, as it is called, means that when the woman serving coffee at Caribou, the local doppelgänger of Starbucks, asks how you are doing, she really wants to know. Although Mr. Franken is affable and sports a backpack jammed with wonky articles and books, he is not exactly Minnesota Nice. His last book was titled "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them," and he spends enormous amounts of time on his three-hour radio show truth-squading and savaging various people on the right.

Then again, Minnesota is a place of enormous, and not easily explained, contradictions. A place where lions of the Democratic party - Hubert H. Humphrey and Eugene J. McCarthy - once strode the earth, it takes voting very seriously, with a 79 percent turnout in the 2004 general election. Yet in 1998 it elected a professional wrestler to run the state. Minnesotans, who show up in droves at the state fair to marvel at seed art and butter sculptures but also show up en masse at the legitimate theater, are their own darn thing. So frequently cast as droll practitioners of the art of common sense, they have displayed some fairly atavistic tendencies, electing Mr. Ventura out of nowhere as both a slap and a jolt to the system. In their own quiet way, they remain mad as hell and are not going to take it anymore.

On Saturday the crowd of about 500 Minnesotans was hungry for Grade A red meat with a side of invective, and Mr. Franken did not disappoint. He pointed out that he had been married for 30 years and said, "If I get in a debate with Norm Coleman, I plan on asking him, 'Don't you want two people to have what you and your wife have?' " He paused as the roar grew in acknowledgement of the fact that Senator Coleman and his wife, Laurie, spend significant amounts of time apart because of her acting career.

The laughter filled Mr. Franken with glee, but in the next moment, he choked up while talking about touring with the U.S.O. He is surprisingly raw, breaking down when he mentions his father and, minutes later, screaming with indignation when he talks about money that has gone missing that was intended for redevelopment in Iraq. In that sense he is not remarkably different from Senator Wellstone, known to rattle a lectern with his sheer volume.

"I'd like to think that somebody like me, who says what he thinks and gets his facts right, has a place in politics," Mr. Franken said much later on Saturday, sitting in the Brave New Workshop comedy club on the south side of Minneapolis, where he started performing while in high school. Mr. Franken grew up in St. Louis Park, a Minneapolis suburb, and was admitted to Blake, a competitive and expensive prep school, because, he said, "they needed some Jews to get their SAT scores up."

Minnesotans, as Garrison Keillor has pointed out, are plenty smart in general, just not too fond of showing it off. They are more than willing to invite a prodigal back to the potluck supper that is life here, and to lampoon their own cartoonish dimensions at the same time. At the end of Mr. Franken's speech, he received a thunderous ovation - and a special gift from Margaret Anderson Kelliher, a Democratic state representative from Minneapolis.

She presented him with a Crock-Pot, along with some advice: "Nothing says 'I care' quite like wild-rice hot dish for the neighbors."

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Squelching Public Broadcasting

The New York Times

Squelching Public Broadcasting

Do little boys and girls out there know how to spell "spite"? For those who don't, the House Republicans who voted last week to gut federal support of public broadcasting - from "Sesame Street" to well beyond - are offering a graphic demonstration as they attack one of the nation's more valued institutions. The Appropriations Committee voted not only to end taxpayers' support for next year's children's shows on public radio and television (yes, "Clifford the Big Red Dog" and "Postcards from Buster," too), but also to close out entirely the $400 million in federal support of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting - the aid funnel to local stations - across the next two years.

A decade ago, Newt Gingrich tried a similar stratagem to "zero out" public broadcasting as Republicans claimed there was liberal bias in programming. The attempt failed in the face of cooler legislative heads and the proven indispensability of public broadcasting. This time, the Republicans' campaign is more threatening since it amounts to a second front in the culture war agenda identified with Kenneth Tomlinson, the Republican who is now chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Mr. Tomlinson is intent on ramming partisan "balance" on the airwaves - read that as dragging public broadcasting over to the right - by stocking the corporation with G.O.P. loyalists. In the next few weeks, the corporation's Republican-dominated board is expected to choose a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee as president of the corporation.


Mr. Tomlinson has said he is concerned about the cuts and will "make the case" for federal support. But he is in an awkward position, with his own objectivity more in question than Big Bird's or Buster's. Federal money amounts to 15 percent of public broadcasting's budget revenues, but it plays a larger and particularly crucial role for smaller rural stations. More than government support, the public's faith and donations could be threatened if audiences sense the Republicans are succeeding with an ideological putsch.

Republican lawmakers insist that the budget cuts are only one of many sacrifices required for fiscal discipline - a truly laughable contention from a Congress that has broken all records for deficit spending and borrowing. The pending highway bill alone has 3,800 pet projects (cue Porky Pig, not Oscar the Grouch). These include $2 billion-plus for two ludicrous "bridges to nowhere" in rural Alaska, where, incidentally, station officials say public broadcasting may fade from the air unless the Senate blocks the House's spiteful cuts.

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Bush Social Security plan dead, Democrats say

Reuters

Bush Social Security plan dead, Democrats say

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats say President Bush's plan to restructure Social Security is dead but vow to keep attacking it until he publicly drops the individual investment account idea.

"I think it's dead," said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, echoing comments by other Democrats about Bush's plan to let workers invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in stocks and bonds. "I think it's clear the votes are not there to be able to move that forward."

But with Bush showing no signs of giving up, private account opponents say they need to stay on the offensive.

"We're not going to leave any stoned unturned in trying to defeat privatization of Social Security," said Brad Woodhouse, spokesman for Americans United to Protect Social Security.

His group has arranged town hall meetings, Washington protests and other events to fight Bush's plan. On Wednesday it joined forces with rural organizations to build opposition in farming communities.

The groups said they plan to carry their anti-privatization message to rural communities, arguing that people in those areas rely on Social Security more than others.

Democrats say they will not negotiate with Republicans on the underlying issue of shoring up Social Security's finances until private accounts are off the table.


As a result Republicans are struggling to craft legislation that would overhaul the popular retirement program.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley presented to his Republican members last week a variety of proposals to address Social Security's solvency including raising the retirement age.

He told Iowa reporters on Wednesday there is still no consensus among Republicans.

"It is all in the discussion phase, nothing has been decided," Grassley said. He added he hoped to have legislation ready in July.

In the House of Representatives, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, a California Republican, is crafting broad retirement legislation that would encourage additional retirement savings as well as address Social Security.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, would not predict when lawmakers would have legislation.

"There is no set timetable," he told reporters. "I can't say it's going to be done by August 1 or September 13. But it's an issue for us, something we're looking at and something that we continue to work on."

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White House launches second day of attacks on Democrats

Reuters

White House launches second day of attacks on Democrats

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House accused Democratic leaders on Wednesday of obstructing President Bush's agenda in a second straight day of combative attacks against the minority party on Capitol Hill.

"I think the American people reject those who simply say no and stand in the way of getting things done," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.

The tough talk came as Bush prepared to play host to many members of Congress from both parties on Wednesday night at a picnic on the White House South Lawn.

The rhetoric suggested a level of frustration by the president at his struggle to advance his second-term agenda.

So far he has been unable to gain traction in Congress over his proposals to overhaul Social Security and has had ongoing struggles over energy legislation and the proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement, among other items.


On Social Security in particular, Bush has called on Democrats to offer their own proposals instead of simply attacking his, but the tactic has largely not worked.

"We've made some progress in this session of Congress," McClellan said. "But too often lately you're seeing Democratic leaders holding up the stop sign and saying no to everything that we're working to achieve on behalf of the American people, and that's unfortunate."

Bush's approval ratings are in the mid-40s, the lowest of his presidency, and pundits have quickly begun speculating whether he is on the verge of becoming a lame duck with three-and-a-half years left in his term.

Speaking to party loyalists on Tuesday night at a $23 million fund-raising dinner, Bush blamed "do-nothing" Democrats for holding up an overhaul of Social Security and delaying votes on his nominees to the federal bench and the United Nations.

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Guantanamo inmates can be held 'in perpetuity'- US

Reuters

Guantanamo inmates can be held 'in perpetuity'- US
Wed Jun 15, 2005 7:28 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican senators called on Wednesday for the rights of foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay prison to be legally defined even as the Bush administration said the inmates could be jailed there "in perpetuity."

The prison, currently holding roughly 520 inmates, opened on the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in January 2002 in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Many of the detainees have been held for more than three years, and only four have been charged.

At a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Republican Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said Congress should help to define the legal rights of the inmates at the prison, which the panel's top Democrat called "an international embarrassment."

Delaware Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden asked Deputy Associate Attorney General J. Michael Wiggins whether the Justice Department had "defined when there is the end of conflict."

"No, sir," Wiggins responded.

"If there is no definition as to when the conflict ends, that means forever, forever, forever these folks get held at Guantanamo Bay," Biden said.

"It's our position that, legally, they can be held in perpetuity," Wiggins said.

Earlier, the committee's top Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, said the United States may face terrorism "as long as you and I live." He asked Brig. Gen. Thomas Hemingway, who oversees military trials of Guantanamo prisoners, if that means America can hold prisoners that long without charges.

"I think that we can hold them as long as the conflict endures," Hemingway responded.


"Guantanamo Bay is an international embarrassment to our nation, to our ideals, and it remains a festering threat to our security," Leahy said.

"Our great country, America, was once viewed as a leader in human rights and the rule of law, and justly so. Guantanamo has undermined our leadership, has damaged our credibility, has drained the world's goodwill for America at an alarming rate," Leahy added.

Critics have decried the indefinite detention of Guantanamo prisoners, whom the United States has denied rights accorded under the Geneva Conventions to prisoners of war. The prison, was called "the gulag of our times" in a recent Amnesty International report.

Hemingway said the military commissions created by the Pentagon were the appropriate forum for trying Guantanamo prisoners. Human and legal rights groups have said the rules created by the administration are heavily biased toward the prosecution. The trials have been held up amid legal fights.

Navy Rear Adm. James McGarrah called "rigorous and fair" the Pentagon's annual review of the status of Guantanamo prisoners -- a process that can lead to their release. In those proceedings, detainees are prohibited from having lawyers and cannot see all the government's evidence relating to them.

Lawyers representing Guantanamo prisoners criticized their treatment and the government's system for trying them.

"The (reviews) are a sham," said Joseph Margulies, one of the lawyers. "They mock this nation's commitment to due process, and it is past time for this mockery to end."

Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama said: "This country is not systematically abusing prisoners. We have no policy to do so. And it's wrong to suggest that. And it puts our soldiers at risk who are in this battle because we sent them there."

Referring to detainees, Sessions added, "Some of them need to be executed."

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina joined Specter and others who said Congress needed to get involved to better define the process at Guantanamo.

"I think it would be tremendously helpful if the Congress and the administration came together with some general statutory language to help define what's going on at Guantanamo Bay, to better define what an enemy combatant is, to make sure that due process is affordable," Graham said.

Specter noted that legislation he introduced in 2002 on legal rights of detainees had gone nowhere.

"It may be that it's too hot to handle for Congress, may be that it's too complex to handle for Congress, or it may be that Congress wants to sit back, as we customarily do, awaiting some action with the court no matter how long it takes," he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled a year ago that Guantanamo prisoners had the right to seek their release in federal court. But decisions in the lower court have been contradictory, creating what Specter called a "crazy quilt" of rulings.

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House Votes to Limit Patriot Act Rules

Yahoo! News
House Votes to Limit Patriot Act Rules

By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer 32 minutes ago

In a slap at President Bush, lawmakers voted Wednesday to block the Justice Department and the FBI from using the Patriot Act to peek at library records and bookstore sales slips.

The House voted 238-187 despite a veto threat from Bush to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that allows the government to investigate the reading habits of terror suspects.

The vote reversed a narrow loss last year by lawmakers concerned about the potential invasion of privacy of innocent library users. They narrowed the proposal this year to permit the government to continue to seek out records of Internet use at libraries.

The vote came as the House debated a $57.5 billion bill covering the departments of Commerce, Justice and State. The Senate has yet to act on the measure, and GOP leaders often drop provisions offensive to Bush during final negotiations.

"This is a tremendous victory that restores important constitutional rights to the American people," said Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., the sponsor of the measure. He said the vote would help "rein in an administration intent on chipping away at the very civil liberties that define us as a nation."


Congress is preparing to extend the Patriot Act, which was passed quickly in the emotional aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Then, Congress included a sunset provision under which 15 of the law's provisions are to expire at the end of this year.

Supporters of rolling back the library and bookstore provision said that the law gives the FBI too much leeway to go on fishing expeditions on people's reading habits and that innocent people could get tagged as potential terrorists based on what they check out from a library.

"If the government suspects someone is looking up how to make atom bombs, go to a court and get a search warrant," said Jerold Nadler, D-N.Y.

Supporters of the Patriot Act countered that the rules on reading records are a potentially useful tool in finding terrorists and argued that the House was voting to make libraries safe havens for them.

"If there are terrorists in libraries studying how to fly planes, how to put together biological weapons, how to put together chemical weapons, nuclear weapons ... we have to have an avenue through the federal court system so that we can stop the attack before it occurs," said Rep. Tom Feeney (news, bio, voting record), R-Fla.

Last year, a similar provision was derailed by a 210-210 tie after several Republicans were pressured to switch votes.

In the meantime, a number of libraries have begun disposing of patrons' records quickly so they won't be available if sought under the law.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told Congress in April that the government has never used the provision to obtain library, bookstore, medical or gun sale records.

But when asked whether the administration would agree to exclude library and medical records from the law, Gonzales demurred. "It should not be held against us that we have exercised restraint," he said.

Authorities have gained access to records through voluntary cooperation from librarians, Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller said.

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Schiavo Autopsy Shows Massive Brain Damage

Yahoo! News
Schiavo Autopsy Shows Massive Brain Damage

By MITCH STACY, Associated Press Writer 32 minutes ago

An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind, the medical examiner's office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused.

But what caused her collapse 15 years ago remained a mystery. The autopsy and post-mortem investigation found no proof that she had an eating disorder, as was suspected at the time, Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Jon Thogmartin said.

Autopsy results on the 41-year-old brain-damaged woman were made public Wednesday, more than two months after her death March 31 ended a right-to-die battle between her husband and parents that engulfed the courts, Congress and the White House and divided the country.

Her parents cling to their belief that her condition could have improved, in spite of the autopsy report, their lawyer said.

She died from dehydration, Thogmartin said. He said she did not appear to have suffered a heart attack and there was no evidence that she was given harmful drugs or other substances prior to her death.

He said that after her feeding tube was removed, she would not have been able to eat or drink if she had been given food by mouth, as her parents requested.

"Removal of her feeding tube would have resulted in her death whether she was fed or hydrated by mouth or not," Thogmartin told reporters.

He also said she was blind, because the "vision centers of her brain were dead," and that her brain was about half of its expected size when she died 13 days following the feeding tube's removal.

Michael Schiavo said his wife never would have wanted to be kept alive in what court-appointed doctors concluded was a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery. The parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, doubted she had any such end-of-life wishes and disputed that she was in a vegetative state.


Regardless of the autopsy findings, the Schindlers continue to believe their daughter was not in a persistent vegetative state, their lawyer, David Gibbs III, said after Thogmartin's report. He said they plan to discuss the autopsy with other medical experts and may take some unspecified legal action.

"We are, at this point, examining every option and no decisions have been made," Gibbs said.

Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, planned to discuss the autopsy with reporters later Wednesday.

In Washington, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said that the autopsy results did not change the president's position on her case.

"Our thoughts and prayers remain with her family and friends," McClellan said. "The president was deeply saddened by this case."

The medical examiner's conclusions countered a videotape released by the Schindlers of Terri Schiavo in her hospice bed. The video showed Schiavo appearing to turn toward her mother's voice and smile, moaning and laughing. Her head moved up and down and she seemed to follow the progress of a brightly colored Mickey Mouse balloon.

They believed her condition could improve with therapy.

However, doctors said her reactions were automatic responses and not evidence of thought or consciousness, and Thogmartin's report went farther.

"The brain weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain," he said. "This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons."

Thogmartin said the autopsy report was based on 274 external and internal body images, and an exhaustive review of Terri Schiavo's medical records, police reports and social services agency records.

He said hospital records of her 1990 collapse showed she had a diminished potassium level in her blood. But he said that did not prove she had an eating disorder, because the emergency treatment she received at the time could have affected the potassium level.

Testimony in a 1992 civil trial indicated that she probably was suffering from an eating disorder that led to a severe chemical imbalance.

Over the years, the Schindlers had sought independent investigation of their daughter's condition and what caused it. Abuse complaints to state social workers were ruled unfounded and the Pinellas state attorney's office did not turn up evidence of abuse.

During the seven-year legal battle, federal and state courts repeatedly rejected extraordinary attempts at intervention by Florida lawmakers, Gov. Jeb Bush, Congress and President Bush on behalf of her parents.

Supporters of the Schindlers harshly criticized the courts. Many religious groups, including the Roman Catholic Church, said the removal of sustenance violated fundamental religious tenets.

About 40 judges in six courts were involved in the case at one point or another. Six times, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene. As Schiavo's life ebbed away following the final removal of her feeding tube, Congress rushed through a bill to allow the federal courts to take up the case, and President Bush signed it March 21, but federal courts refused to step in.

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Help spread the word about the Downing Street papers

Help spread the word about the Downing Street papers

The Downing Street Memo has been a repeated subject posted on "The Truth About Political Stuff" ( http://political-stuff.blogspot.com ). Well now, Democracy for America is looking to spread the word and is looking for suggestions. See below for the details, and when you go to their web page and make your suggestions, please mention that you read about it on "The Truth About Political Stuff"
( http://political-stuff.blogspot.com ).

Click the link below to find out how to help Democracy for America get the word out.


A secret British document revealed last month -- the Downing Street Memo -- now all but confirms a sickening truth. Obsessed with Saddam no matter what the cost, President Bush and his aides dragged the nation to war with fixed evidence and false claims about non-existent Iraqi WMD's.

Despite pressure from ordinary people who have read the few reports of the memo in the American press, the White House has stonewalled on the issue. And the vast majority of our complacent media allows it.

Democracy for America is looking for the best ideas on how best to spread the word on the Downing Street papers. Is it reprints in newspapers across the country? Is it a "Did You Get The Memo?" advertising campaign? Or, maybe, it's billboards in Crawford? Share your ideas:

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/downingideas

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Mother of dead soldier vilifies Bush over war

kentucky.com

Mother of dead soldier vilifies Bush over war
PRESIDENT RIDICULED AT INTERFAITH RALLY

By Frank E. Lockwood
HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER

The president of Gold Star Families for Peace, a mother who lost a son in Iraq, criticized the United States' "illegal and unjust war" yesterday during an interfaith rally in Lexington.

Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville, Calif., accused President Bush of lying to the nation about a war which has consumed tens of billions of dollars and claimed more than 1,700 American lives -- including the life of Army Specialist Casey Austin Sheehan.

Sheehan was one of more than a dozen activists who were scheduled to speak at yesterday's anti-war rally at the Red Mile, which was organized by the Clergy and Laity Network and co-sponsored by dozens of liberal religious organizations.

Sheehan ridiculed Bush for saying that it's "hard work" comforting the widow of a soldier who's been killed in Iraq.

"Hard work is seeing your son's murder on CNN one Sunday evening while you're enjoying the last supper you'll ever truly enjoy again. Hard work is having three military officers come to your house a few hours later to confirm the aforementioned murder of your son, your first-born, your kind and gentle sweet baby. Hard work is burying your child 46 days before his 25th birthday. Hard work is holding your other three children as they lower the body of their big (brother) into the ground. Hard work is not jumping in the grave with him and having the earth cover you both," she said.


Since her son's death, Sheehan has made opposition to the Bush administration a full-time job.

"We're watching you very carefully and we're going to do everything in our power to have you impeached for misleading the American people," she said, quoting a letter she sent to the White House. "Beating a political stake in your black heart will be the fulfillment of my life ... ," she said, as the audience of 200 people cheered.

The "Freedom and Faith Bus Tour" -- which brought Sheehan to Lexington, has already visited New York, Chicago and Indianapolis. The next stops include Columbus, Pittsburgh and Cleveland.

Other speakers included state Rep. Kathy Stein, D-Lexington, Clergy and Laity Network executive director Rev. Albert Pennybacker of Lexington, Kentucky Council of Churches executive director Nancy Jo Kemper and Baptist Seminary of Kentucky Professor Glenn Hinson.

Quoting scripture and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Hinson suggested the nation is greedy and morally bankrupt and warned that America's fear of terrorism is excessive and unhealthy. Denouncing "fear that immobilizes, fear that causes you to lash out mindlessly, fear that prompts a nation to launch a preemptive strike against an imagined enemy, fear in excess," Hinson said, "Only God's love can bring that kind of fear under control."

Reach Frank Lockwood at (859) 231-3211 or 800-950-6397 x3211 or flockwood@herald-leader.com

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GOP Senators May Make 69 Retirement Age

Yahoo! News
GOP Senators May Make 69 Retirement Age

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent 27 minutes ago

Key Senate Republicans are considering gradually raising the Social Security retirement age as high as 69 over several years as they struggle to jump-start legislation that President Bush has placed atop his second-term agenda, officials said Tuesday.

Under current law, the retirement age for full Social Security benefits is 65 1/2 and is scheduled to reach 67 for those born in 1960 or later.

The possible increase to 69 over two decades or more was among the suggestions that Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley (news, bio, voting record), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, presented to fellow Republicans on the panel last week as part of an attempt to give the program greater financial solvency, the officials said.

Grassley also suggested steps to hold down benefits for upper-wage earners of the future, these officials have said previously. They spoke only on condition of anonymity, saying the discussions were confidential.

The disclosures surfaced as Bush campaigned in Pennsylvania for changes in Social Security, including creation of voluntary personal accounts for younger workers — a step that would be accompanied by a reduction in the promised government benefit.


Speaking to a convention of the Pennsylvania FFA — formerly known as the Future Farmers of America — Bush said he wants to "make sure the system is a better deal for younger workers" and assured older people in the audience that they would continue to get their promised benefits.

The students would get the same benefits that seniors today receive, Bush said, without mentioning that his plans involve a reduction in the benefits younger Americans have been promised in their own retirement.

In a fresh illustration of the political stakes surrounding the issue, Democrats charged that rural Americans would be hit hardest by Bush's plans, which they consistently describe as privatization.

"Rural Americans tend to be older and more likely to depend on Social Security. In fact, more than 90 percent of counties in America with high senior populations are rural counties. In 2001, 20 percent of rural Americans were 60 years old or older, significantly higher than the 15 percent of seniors living in metropolitan communities," Reps. Stephanie Herseth, D-S.D., and Bob Etheridge, D-N.C., said in a joint statement. The two co-chair the Democratic House Rural Working Group.

Republicans on the Finance Committee are scheduled to meet privately on Thursday as they continue searching for agreement among themselves on legislation that achieves the goals Bush laid out in his State of the Union address last winter.

The fate of the effort is unclear, and some Republicans in Congress have suggested in recent days that the issue may not reach the Senate floor until September at the earliest. House Republicans have said in the past it's possible they will wait for the Senate to act first before they plunge into the politically sensitive issue.

The president has called for a bill to create permanent solvency for the program, and he also wants the bill to give younger workers the option of establishing a personal retirement account financed from a portion of their payroll taxes.

Under current predictions, Social Security will begin to pay out more in benefits than it receives in tax receipts in 2017, and the trust funds will be depleted in 2041. At that point, benefits will be cut to adjust for the reduction in available funds.

Along with curbs in benefits or increases in taxes, raising the retirement age is one of three general approaches that lawmakers can consider as they try to improve the solvency of Social Security.

Officials statistics show that Americans, on average, can expect to live longer than was the case when Social Security was created, meaning that they will receive more in lifetime government benefits than projected. At the same time, there are fewer workers paying into the Social Security trust funds per retiree than was the case in past decades.

Raising the retirement age is unpopular, according to some surveys.

Several officials said Grassley's suggestion for raising the retirement age would be phased in, possibly over two decades or more. The details would depend on future demographic trends, they said.

Crafting legislation has proven to be a challenge in Congress, even though the president has campaigned energetically in an attempt to build public support for his proposals. With public opinion polls showing tepid support for personal accounts, many Republicans have been reluctant to embrace the idea.

For their part, Democrats are unified in their opposition and threatening to use the issue as a major theme in the 2006 elections, when all members of the House and one-third of the Senate are on the ballot.

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