Donle’s Daily Dispatches

Volume 1 Issue 138             Today’s News and Views         Monday, May 15, 2006

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Update of US Casualties in Afghanistan: 295

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Today's News and Views

Poll of Non Fox News Viewers, 64% support Censure of George W Bush, 75% Want Cheney Impeachment Investigation Started.

By Rob Kall

The OpEdNews/Zogby People's poll clearly shows that Fox News is the only thing keeping the Bush administration from being thrown out of office and into jail.

Our poll asked 707 respondents what TV news network they watch most often. This was used as a demographic variable. The poll also asked whether respondents supported the censure of George w. Bush. When crosstabulated against the network viewing habits, it found that 64% of people who watch any show other than FOx news want to see George Bush censured.

We also asked about support for the beginning of investigations that could lead to the impeachment of vice president Cheney. Not including Fox viewers, we found than over 75% of our poll respondents supported the beginning of investigations that could lead to the impeachment of Dick Cheney.

We report in another article

Poll: 2004 Election Was Stolen; according to viewers of all news networks except Fox News    Viewers who favor any other news source but Fox believe,by as much as 70% to 24%, that the 2004 Election was stolen. This article explores who Fox Viewers are in Detail based on the latest OpEdNews/Zogby People's Poll

These findings make it clear that Fox News is more than just an ugly, dishonest, partisan propaganda tool of the extreme right wing. It is an enemy of democracy that deserves the concentrated attention and focus of patriotic Americans who believe in the constitution and democracy. It is time to organize in any ways possible to weaken Fox News-- going after corporate advertisers, belittling watchers, reporting on Fox news ethical lapses and lies... They are more dangerous and getting worse. And now, with CNN starting toxic right wing puke monger radio talkshow jerk Glen Beck, they are starting down the slippery slope. Beck will be on tonight. I'm letting CNN know I will turn the off for the night.

Authors Bio: Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, and organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. He is a frequent Speaker on a wide range of subjects. See more of his articles here and, older ones, here.

Copyright © OpEdNews, 2002-2006

Frankly, until we read "Bullshit Artist," we had forgotten how abysmally clueless the Bushevik government is. Their theme song should be "Don't Send in the Clowns; We're Already Here."

Schalow's biting, down-to-earth asides remind us that we are the sane ones -- and also bring a smile to our face. Schalow confirms -- by focusing on the statements by Busheviks about their actions during 9/11 and the factual admissions -- that these are dolts of the most extreme variety. Their plea to the man and woman on the street appears to be, "doesn't everyone have the right to be confused, disoriented, and unable to act?"

Basically, when you finish reading "Bullshit Artist," you want a real common man as president -- not the faux Karl Rove creation. We nominate Ron Schalow, author of "Bullshit Artist: The 9/11 Leadership Myth." Because when you apply common sense to what happened surrounding 9/11, the "common man myth" of George W. Bush turns into fairy dust. He's just a smirking fool whose family name was used to put him in a position of power several thousand of times beyond his ability.

And, as a result, every life in the United States has been put in jeopardy.

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

© BuzzFlash.

Report: Military Ignoring Mental Illness

Sun May 14, 7:44 AM ET

U.S. military troops with severe psychological problems have been sent to Iraq or kept in combat, even when superiors have been aware of signs of mental illness, a newspaper reported for Sunday editions.

The Hartford Courant, citing records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act and more than 100 interviews of families and military personnel, reported numerous cases in which the military failed to follow its own regulations in screening, treating and evacuating mentally unfit troops from Iraq.

In 1997, Congress ordered the military to assess the mental health of all deploying troops. The newspaper, citing Pentagon statistics, said fewer than 1 in 300 service members were referred to a mental health professional before shipping out for Iraq as of October 2005.

Twenty-two U.S. troops committed suicide in Iraq last year, accounting for nearly one in five of all non-combat deaths and the highest suicide rate since the war started, the newspaper said.

Some service members who committed suicide in 2004 and 2005 were kept on duty despite clear signs of mental distress, sometimes after being prescribed antidepressants with little or no mental health counseling or monitoring, the Courant reported. Those findings conflict with regulations adopted last year by the Army that caution against the use of antidepressants for "extended deployments."

"I can't imagine something more irresponsible than putting a soldier suffering from stress on (antidepressants), when you know these drugs can cause people to become suicidal and homicidal," said Vera Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, a New York-based advocacy group. "You're creating chemically activated time bombs."

Although Defense Department standards for enlistment disqualify recruits who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, the military also is redeploying service members to Iraq who fit that criteria, the newspaper said.

"I'm concerned that people who are symptomatic are being sent back. That has not happened before in our country," said Dr. Arthur S. Blank, Jr., a Yale-trained psychiatrist who helped to get post-traumatic stress disorder recognized as a diagnosis after the Vietnam War.

The Army's top mental health expert, Col. Elspeth Ritchie, acknowledged that some deployment practices, such as sending service members diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome back into combat, have been driven in part by a troop shortage.

"The challenge for us ... is that the Army has a mission to fight. And, as you know, recruiting has been a challenge," she said. "And so we have to weigh the needs of the Army, the needs of the mission, with the soldiers' personal needs."

Ritchie insisted the military works hard to prevent suicides, but said that is a challenge because every soldier has access to a weapon.

Commanders, not medical professionals, have final say over whether a troubled soldier is retained in the war zone. Ritchie and other military officials said they believe most commanders are alert to mental health problems and are open to referring troubled soldiers for treatment.

"Your average commander doesn't want to deal with a whacked-out soldier. But on the other hand, he doesn't want to send a message to his troops that if you act up, he's willing to send you home," said Maj. Andrew Efaw, a judge advocate general officer in the Army Reserves who handled trial defense for soldiers in northern Iraq last year.

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press.

Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc.

Marc Chandler, economist at Brown Brothers & Harriman in New York, said: “Precisely what officials feared would happen from the large global imbalances is now taking place in reaction to their clumsy attempt to ‘fix the problem’. Volatility in the capital markets is rising. Global equities are tumbling.”

Friday’s US trade figures intensified concerns, even though they showed a narrowing in the deficit, as they also showed a rise in import prices.

Previous dollar sell-offs have foundered in Asia, with countries in the region intervening heavily to prevent their currencies rising too far against the dollar, leaving Europe to bear the brunt.

However the current sell-off, which has seen the dollar fall against the likes of the yen and South Korean won, as well as European currencies, has led to speculation of a tacit agreement to weaken the dollar. It is now referred to as a “Plaza-lite”, in reference to the 1985 Plaza Accord, when industrialised nations united to weaken the dollar.

By mid-session in New York, the dollar had pulled off it lowest levels of the day to sit at Y110.39 to the yen, with traders cautioning that a correction was likely.

© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2006.

Frameshop by Jeffrey Feldman

May 11, 2006

Up, Up and Away!

by Jeffrey Feldman

In the past few weeks, there has been a remarkable turn of events in the political debate over the economy.

For years -- it seems like forever -- the Republicans have controlled the debate on the economy. Suddenly, that is no longer the case. Republicans are caught in a tailspin even though the stock market is soaring again, hiring is up, prices are rising fast enough to force the Fed to raise interest rates. Despite all this, confidence in the Republican economic policies is way, way down.

The simple explanation to this turn of events is: gas prices. Gas prices go up at the pump, and the people turn against whoever is running the country. Fair enough.

But the bigger picture about the economy debate has to do with a simple transition in how Americans are talking: We've moved from "down" to "up."

The real reason the Democrats now control the debate on the economy is that they have seized control of the word "up." And if Democrats want to stay in control through 2008, they should focus not on complicated economic proposals, but on controlling that one word: "up."

Up? Down? How are these simple words the key to the debate?

"Down" Is Good

Over the past few decades, the central Republican economic idea has been this simple idea:

Low taxes

Every Republican running for office in the past twenty years has emphasized this point. When taxes go ''down' then the economy goes 'up,' leading to benefits flowing from 'top' to 'bottom.' Some call this 'trickle down' economics, which reinforces this basic idea of 'up' and 'down' in the GOP debate.

Rather than saying that the GOP believes more money should flow to the top of the food chain, they say that the key to economic prosperity is to bring taxes 'down.' Their entire economic strategy can, therefore, be reduced town to a simple formula:

down is good

The basic way of talking about "low" or "down" as good, is something that George Lakoff and Mark Johnson call 'grounding' a debate in a basic 'orientation' metaphor. We all know what we mean when somebody says 'up' or 'down.' They are among the most basic concepts in the human experience. So, when Republicans talk about Democrats wanting to make 'up' our taxes, we all know what this means -- or at least we feel that we know.

Down, down, down has been the GOP economic mantra. 'Lower' taxes leads to talk of 'relieving' Americans from tax 'burdens.' Here the notion of 'down' is tied to the idea of taxes as something 'heavy' that sits on the shoulders of citizens, preventing them from realizing their personal aspirations.

Like it or not, agree or disagree, there is no doubt that the GOP 'down is good' logic has been very effective at controlling the debate.

So what happened? Why is it slipping away from them?

"Up" Is Bad

The big change in the past few years of George W. Bush's presidency has been the rising sense that in the economy "Up" is bad.

For example, despite all the talk about bringing taxes 'down,' the Bush Presidency has been plagued by talk of the deficit being 'up.' In the past few months, the media has reported on the Republican Congress raising the debt 'ceiling,' thereby moving the deficit even 'higher.'

All this talk of spending being 'up' under a Republican government has slowly, but surely switched the focus of the economy debate in America.

But the real kicker has been the dynamics of 'up' and 'down' that unfolded in the gas prices debate.

As gas prices rose above $3 per gallon nationwide, the debate began to cripple the Bush Presidency and the GOP election prospects in general. How can the economy be 'good' if gas prices are 'up' so high?

In this environment, the economic debate was suddenly being controlled by a new formula:

up is bad

In response to this new debate logic, Republicans attempted to retake control by reasserting the logic of 'down is good.' Do do so, they proposed their familiar tax break or refund -- a check for $100 to be mailed to every American.

What was the strategy of the $100 refund proposal? It had very little to do with actual money, but was largely an attempt to take control of the debate again by reasserting the logic of 'down is good' in an economic debate that had switched over to 'up is bad.'

While talk of the deficit being 'up' had primed the debate, rising gas prices were the spark that set national anger at the President ablaze.

In this new debate dynamic, where 'up' was suddenly seen as bad, news that an Exxon executive was to be paid $400 million dollars in retirement benefits was quickly seen as a moral problem.

Imagine this news unfolding five years ago when the debate about the economy was still being controlled by the Republican logic that 'down is good.' In that environment, a high corporate salary would have been greeted as a sign of successful economic policy. But in the new economic debate controlled by the logic of 'up is bad,' the high salary was seen as evidence of corruption, greed -- poison to the economy.

Keeping The Debate 'Up'

Over the next two years, the success of Democrats in the economy debate will not rest on their sweeping and complex policy proposals, but on their ability to control the simple logic of 'up' and 'down' in the debate.

In a national debate where 'up' is defined as 'bad,' Democrats are at the advantage. And keeping the debate in that logic will be the key to winning votes.

But what can we say to make this happen?

The economic debate can be lead by Democrats by focusing on those issues that re-enforce the basic logic of 'up' being 'bad':

Gas prices are up!

The deficit is up!

The cost of living is up!

Executive salaries are way up!

Up, up and away -- with Republicans in office! The logic of 'up is bad' extends the framework of Democratic ideas to every aspect of the economy debate. The problem is not high taxes, but CEO salaries and bonuses that must come 'down.' The problem is not high spending on social programs, but the soaring cost of Republican corruption scandals that must come 'down.'

And these ideas can easily be backed up by staking out an equal claim on the logic of 'up is good' vis-a-vis investment:

Unless investment goes 'up' on preventative medicine, our children's health will go 'down.'

Unless investment goes 'up' on alternative energy, the quality of the environment will go 'down.'

Unless investment goes 'up' on smart intelligence, the war in Iraq will drag our economy and our morale 'down.'

To win big in 2006 and 2008, the logic of 'up' and 'down' must become the standard fare of Democratic debate. And if Democrats are up to the challenge, Americans will be down with them--at the polls.

© 2006 Jeffrey Feldman

Jeffrey Feldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Founder of Frameshop. First established in late 2004 on several large blogs and launched as an independent website Jan. 1, 2005. Dr. Feldman has a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology which he applies broadly to the analysis of politics and communication. He lives and teaches in New York City, conducts workshops on framing throughout the country, and is s a regular guest on the national syndicated radio show The Thom Hartmann Radio Program.

© BuzzFlash.

May 14, 2006

By Mary Shaw

On this Mother's Day 2006, my thoughts go out to all the mothers who have children fighting in George W. Bush's illegal, immoral, and unprovoked war of aggression. Your children volunteered for duty because they believed that America is a beacon of democracy, freedom, and opportunity. They signed up for job training, college money, and honor. They did not sign up to kill innocent Iraqi women, children, and men. They did not sign up to torture people. They did not sign up to die in a war based on oily corporate lies. They did not sign up to promote this country's transformation from freedom to fascism. May they remain safe and come home to you soon.

On this Mother's Day, my thoughts go out to all the mothers who have lost their children in Bush's illegal war of choice. My thoughts go out Cindy Sheehan, who is still waiting for an answer to her very reasonable question to George W. Bush: For what noble cause did her son, Casey, die? And my thoughts go out to more than 2,400 other mothers who won't be getting a Mother's Day card or a phone call from their kids this year because those kids were sent into a no-win situation with inadequate body armor to fight against non-existent weapons of mass destruction. These mothers lost their beloved children because, as Donald Rumsfeld said, you "fight a war with the troops you have, not the troops you want."

On this Mother's Day, my thoughts go out to First Lady Laura Bush. In her privileged Stepford world, she will never know the pain of losing a child to a political agenda. She will likely spend this Mother's Day with her pretty and well-protected twin daughters, whose greatest tragedy might be a broken fingernail or a Sunday morning hangover. She will never feel the pain that so many Iraqi mothers feel when their babies are blown to bits for Bush's agenda. And she will never feel the pain of all those American mothers of dead soldiers. My thoughts go out to her because I believe that she works so hard to find a way to justify the emotional distance. For that, I feel very, very sad for her. Sleep must certainly be difficult.

On this Mother's Day, my thoughts go out to Barbara Bush, the presidential family matriarch, who summed up her moral values and her views on the war by asking the following on national TV: "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" Why, indeed! She has always had the means to protect her brood from the ugly truths of the real world. But there are some things that money cannot buy. Like compassion. Like personal redemption. Like humanity.

On this Mother's Day, my thoughts go out to every other mother on this planet. You've got the most difficult job in the world, and you do it by choice (in most cases), for no pay and no glory. You dedicate your lives, 24/7, to something greater than yourself: Your child, and his or her future. And, in doing so, you're shaping our future as well. Happy Mother's Day. And thank you.

-----

Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist. She currently serves as Philadelphia Area Coordinator for Amnesty International, and her views on politics, human rights, and social justice issues have appeared in numerous online forums and in newspapers and magazines worldwide. Note that the ideas expressed in this article are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amnesty or any other organization with which she may be associated.

© BuzzFlash.

May 12, 2006

Silent Protester at Rumsfeld Speech Comes Forward

Work to be heard, even without words

by Randy Aronov

Work to be heard, even without words

By RANDY ARONOV

Published on: 05/11/06

Last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's speech at the Atlanta History Center was interrupted several times by protesters who yelled at Rumsfeld and unfurled banners, an event that drew national news coverage.

But in covering the speech, Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jay Bookman also mentioned another protester:

"But one man took a different approach. As showdowns go, it wasn't exactly two gunslingers face to face on a dusty street in Dodge City. But there was drama in it nonetheless. As Rumsfeld stood at the podium, starting to outline his vision of the American role in world affairs, a balding man in a coat and tie rose out of the seated audience, turned his back on Rumsfeld and stood silently."

My name is Randy Aronov and I am that silent dissenter.

Who I am is not important. What is important is that I am an American citizen who objects to the lies from the Bush administration that led us into the war in Iraq.

Turning my back to Rumsfeld was my way of showing my disapproval and my disdain for the policies of this administration, which so far has not been held accountable.

We've reached a point in our country where voting every four years is not enough to effect change. People need to become proactive: Write letters to elected officials, sign petitions, attend local anti-war meetings and demonstrations, and whenever possible practice acts of civil disobedience. We need to be doing more, a lot more.

It was unnerving standing there, facing Rumsfeld down with my back to him. It was hostile territory — the audience was packed with Bush supporters. I was very nervous, but this was something that my conscience told me to do. So as soon as Rumsfeld began speaking, I stood up and I stayed standing until he finished.

I was quite surprised that I wasn't hauled out like the other demonstrators; they just let me stand there. When the formal speech was over, I quietly walked out and joined the other demonstrators outside.

The galvanizing moment came later, during a Q&A session, when Rumsfeld was called down by CIA career veteran Ray McGovern, a man with impeccable credentials. McGovern's unrelenting questions concerning how the country was lied into the war in Iraq gave credence to our acts of civil disobedience.

It was an exhilarating experience and one I would recommend to anyone who opposes the illegal war in Iraq and supports responsible foreign policy from our government.

I took inspiration from Harry Taylor, another average citizen, who in early April at an open forum in Charlotte stood up and took President Bush to task for spying on Americans.

"I would hope from time to time, you would have the humility and grace to be ashamed of yourself . . . ," he told the president. "In my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of my leadership in Washington."

How many more Harry Taylors are out there who feel the same way but have never exercised their right to say so, a right guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution, which mandates that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech . . . or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

More than a right, it is our obligation as American citizens to stand up and be heard in opposition to policies that have led to so much needless suffering in Iraq.

• Randy Aronov is an Atlanta parent and political activist.

Copyright © OpEdNews, 2002-2006

Frank Rich:Will the Real Traitors Please Stand Up? (Must read)

Will the Real Traitors Please Stand Up?
By FRANK RICH

WHEN America panics, it goes hunting for scapegoats. But from Salem onward, we've more often than not ended up pillorying the innocent. Abe Rosenthal, the legendary Times editor who died last week, and his publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, were denounced as treasonous in 1971 when they defied the Nixon administration to publish the Pentagon Papers, the secret government history of the Vietnam War. Today we know who the real traitors were: the officials who squandered American blood and treasure on an ill-considered war and then tried to cover up their lies and mistakes. It was precisely those lies and mistakes, of course, that were laid bare by the thousands of pages of classified Pentagon documents leaked to both The Times and The Washington Post.

This history is predictably repeating itself now that the public has turned on the war in Iraq. The administration's die-hard defenders are desperate to deflect blame for the fiasco, and, guess what, the traitors once again are The Times and The Post. This time the newspapers committed the crime of exposing warrantless spying on Americans by the National Security Agency (The Times) and the C.I.A.'s secret "black site" Eastern European prisons (The Post). Aping the Nixon template, the current White House tried to stop both papers from publishing and when that failed impugned their patriotism.

President Bush, himself a sometime leaker of intelligence, called the leaking of the N.S.A. surveillance program a "shameful act" that is "helping the enemy." Porter Goss, who was then still C.I.A. director, piled on in February with a Times Op-Ed piece denouncing leakers for potentially risking American lives and compromising national security. When reporters at both papers were awarded Pulitzer Prizes last month, administration surrogates, led by bloviator in chief William Bennett, called for them to be charged under the 1917 Espionage Act.

We can see this charade for what it is: a Hail Mary pass by the leaders who bungled a war and want to change the subject to the journalists who caught them in the act. What really angers the White House and its defenders about both the Post and Times scoops are not the legal questions the stories raise about unregulated gulags and unconstitutional domestic snooping, but the unmasking of yet more administration failures in a war effort riddled with ineptitude. It's the recklessness at the top of our government, not the press's exposure of it, that has truly aided the enemy, put American lives at risk and potentially sabotaged national security. That's where the buck stops, and if there's to be a witch hunt for traitors, that's where it should begin.

Well before Dana Priest of The Post uncovered the secret prisons last November, the C.I.A. had failed to keep its detention "secrets" secret. Having obtained flight logs, The Sunday Times of London first reported in November 2004 that the United States was flying detainees "to countries that routinely use torture." Six months later, The New York Times added many details, noting that "plane-spotting hobbyists, activists and journalists in a dozen countries have tracked the mysterious planes' movements." These articles, capped by Ms. Priest's, do not impede our ability to detain terrorists. But they do show how the administration, by condoning torture, has surrendered the moral high ground to anti-American jihadists and botched the war of ideas that we can't afford to lose.

The N.S.A. eavesdropping exposed in December by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of The Times is another American debacle. Hoping to suggest otherwise and cast the paper as treasonous, Dick Cheney immediately claimed that the program had saved "thousands of lives." The White House's journalistic mouthpiece, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, wrote that the Times exposé "may have ruined one of our most effective anti-Al Qaeda surveillance programs."

Surely they jest. If this is one of our "most effective" programs, we're in worse trouble than we thought. Our enemy is smart enough to figure out on its own that its phone calls are monitored 24/7, since even under existing law the government can eavesdrop for 72 hours before seeking a warrant (which is almost always granted). As The Times subsequently reported, the N.S.A. program was worse than ineffective; it was counterproductive. Its gusher of data wasted F.B.I. time and manpower on wild-goose chases and minor leads while uncovering no new active Qaeda plots in the United States. Like the N.S.A. database on 200 million American phone customers that was described last week by USA Today, this program may have more to do with monitoring "traitors" like reporters and leakers than with tracking terrorists.

Journalists and whistle-blowers who relay such government blunders are easily defended against the charge of treason. It's often those who make the accusations we should be most worried about. Mr. Goss, a particularly vivid example, should not escape into retirement unexamined. He was so inept that an overzealous witch hunter might mistake him for a Qaeda double agent.

Even before he went to the C.I.A., he was a drag on national security. In "Breakdown," a book about intelligence failures before the 9/11 attacks, the conservative journalist Bill Gertz delineates how Mr. Goss, then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, played a major role in abdicating Congressional oversight of the C.I.A., trying to cover up its poor performance while terrorists plotted with impunity. After 9/11, his committee's "investigation" of what went wrong was notoriously toothless.

Once he ascended to the C.I.A. in 2004, Mr. Goss behaved like most other Bush appointees: he put politics ahead of the national interest, and stashed cronies and partisan hacks in crucial positions. On Friday, the F.B.I. searched the home and office of one of them, Dusty Foggo, the No. 3 agency official in the Goss regime. Mr. Foggo is being investigated by four federal agencies pursuing the bribery scandal that has already landed former Congressman Randy (Duke) Cunningham in jail. Though Washington is titillated by gossip about prostitutes and Watergate "poker parties" swirling around this Warren Harding-like tale, at least the grafters of Teapot Dome didn't play games with the nation's defense during wartime.

Besides driving out career employees, underperforming on Iran intelligence and scaling back a daily cross-agency meeting on terrorism, Mr. Goss's only other apparent accomplishment at the C.I.A. was his war on those traitorous leakers. Intriguingly, this was a new cause for him. "There's a leak every day in the paper," he told The Sarasota Herald-Tribune when the identity of the officer Valerie Wilson was exposed in 2003. He argued then that there was no point in tracking leaks down because "that's all we'd do."

What prompted Mr. Goss's about-face was revealed in his early memo instructing C.I.A. employees to "support the administration and its policies in our work." His mission was not to protect our country but to prevent the airing of administration dirty laundry, including leaks detailing how the White House ignored accurate C.I.A. intelligence on Iraq before the war. On his watch, C.I.A. lawyers also tried to halt publication of "Jawbreaker," the former clandestine officer Gary Berntsen's account of how the American command let Osama bin Laden escape when Mr. Berntsen's team had him trapped in Tora Bora in December 2001. The one officer fired for alleged leaking during the Goss purge had no access to classified intelligence about secret prisons but was presumably a witness to her boss's management disasters.

Soon to come are the Senate's hearings on Mr. Goss's successor, Gen. Michael Hayden, the former head of the N.S.A. As Jon Stewart reminded us last week, Mr. Bush endorsed his new C.I.A. choice with the same encomium he had bestowed on Mr. Goss: He's "the right man" to lead the C.I.A. "at this critical moment in our nation's history." That's not exactly reassuring.

This being an election year, Karl Rove hopes the hearings can portray Bush opponents as soft on terrorism when they question any national security move. It was this bullying that led so many Democrats to rubber-stamp the Iraq war resolution in the 2002 election season and Mr. Goss's appointment in the autumn of 2004.

Will they fall into the same trap in 2006? Will they be so busy soliloquizing about civil liberties that they'll fail to investigate the nominee's record? It was under General Hayden, a self-styled electronic surveillance whiz, that the N.S.A. intercepted actual Qaeda messages on Sept. 10, 2001 "Tomorrow is zero hour" for one and failed to translate them until Sept. 12. That same fateful summer, General Hayden's N.S.A. also failed to recognize that "some of the terrorists had set up shop literally under its nose," as the national-security authority James Bamford wrote in The Washington Post in 2002. The Qaeda cell that hijacked American Flight 77 and plowed into the Pentagon was based in the same town, Laurel, Md., as the N.S.A., and "for months, the terrorists and the N.S.A. employees exercised in some of the same local health clubs and shopped in the same grocery stores."

If Democrats and, for that matter, Republicans let a president with a Nixonesque approval rating install yet another second-rate sycophant at yet another security agency, even one as diminished as the C.I.A., someone should charge those senators with treason, too.

Baked by Richard TPD at 07:43 AM

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License

Divide Is Sharpening Among Republicans
Senate Compromises Irk House GOP

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 15, 2006; A04

From immigration policy to energy to emergency spending, House Republican leaders are publicly breaking rank with their counterparts in the Senate, fearing that Senate efforts at compromise are jeopardizing the party's standing with conservative voters.

The breach in congressional leadership has been especially stark in the past two weeks. As the Senate returns to the immigration issue this week, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said House Republicans will not agree to any plan granting illegal immigrants a path to citizenship that does not require them first to return to their home countries. House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) dismissed Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's proposed $100 rebate for gasoline as "insulting" and "stupid." And House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) declared a Senate-passed, $109 billion bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, hurricane relief and a bevy of home-state pet projects "dead on arrival."

Hastert even parted company with Frist (R-Tenn.) last week on President Bush's nomination of Gen. Michael V. Hayden to head the CIA. Hastert asserted, "I don't think a military guy should be head of CIA, frankly," even as Frist called him "the ideal man for the job."

"People are frustrated. They really are," said Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), who noted he is constantly hearing from conservative constituents who question why a Republican Party that controls the White House, House and Senate so often repudiates conservative goals .

Congressional leaders say recent clashes were individual policy disputes, not a sign of broader friction between the two bodies. "There is no tension," Boehner said. "You have got two different institutions, two different rhythms, and while there are always going to be some differences, if you look at Senate Republicans, you will see us agreeing on many of the same principles."

However, some House leaders privately acknowledge the tension as an inevitable byproduct of record low approval ratings for Congress and the president -- a disaffection that recently has spread to self-described conservative voters.

House members understand their constituents' anger. They rattle off bills the House has approved, to tighten border controls, repeal the estate tax, expand gasoline refineries and cap damages on civil lawsuits and medical malpractice cases. But voters want laws, not votes, and the Senate has not moved on any of those, Price said.

"I understand sometimes how [voters] get frustrated with the Senate and the way we do the things we do, but I don't think it's constructive," said Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), whose home-state projects in the emergency spending bill have drawn conservative ire. "And I have pleaded with the House, 'Let's not be shooting shots back and forth at each other, within our own party.' Whatever hurts us hurts them in the end."

The tension, in some sense, is built into the system, said Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), a former House member. Because they represent an entire state, senators must reflect a broader range of opinions and tend toward compromise. Because senators stand for reelection every six years, only 15 Republicans are facing this year's stiff headwind, compared to all 231 Republicans in the House. That is leading House Republicans to believe their Senate colleagues are insensitive to their political difficulties.

Indeed, some of the disputes may be political gamesmanship, Senate leadership aides suggested. The House leadership's firm stance against additional pork-barrel spending in the emergency spending bill was just what Frist wanted to press his spendthrift colleagues to relent on some of their pet projects, said Frist chief of staff Eric Ueland. Their stand on immigration could keep Senate Republicans from drifting too far toward the Democrats before a final bill comes up for passage.

But recent redistricting has exacerbated those natural tensions, said a member of the House leadership, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to not heighten the strain. House districts have grown increasingly partisan, more liberal in Democratic districts and more conservative in Republican districts. So when Senate Republicans tack to the center to placate their broader spectrum of voters, conservatives concentrated in Republican House districts are quick to anger.

To stop the hemorrhaging of conservative support, House leaders have taken a hard line against Senate compromise. Appealing to small-government conservatives, they have vowed not to accept any final emergency appropriations plan that spends a penny more than Bush requested for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, hurricane relief and prevention of avian flu. That would mean blocking the construction of a new railroad and a veterans retirement home in Mississippi, erosion control in California, flood relief in Hawaii and billions for drought-stricken farmers.

Massive street demonstrations by illegal immigrants and their supporters against a House-passed bill to get tough on undocumented workers appear to have struck a sympathetic chord with most Americans. A New York Times/CBS poll last week found that 66 percent oppose the House's measure to build hundreds of miles of fences along the southern border. Sixty-one percent said illegal immigrants who have lived and worked in the United States for at least two years should be given a chance to keep their jobs and eventually apply for legal status. Just 35 percent agreed with the House's position that they should be deported.

But House members say they are convinced that their voters came to a very different conclusion from the marches -- the problem of illegal immigration is even more troubling than they thought, and House Republicans must stand by their position.

House Republicans are also listening to conservatives who were infuriated when GOP leaders reacted to rising gasoline prices by proposing tax increases to pay for gasoline rebates and by suggesting the problem lay with price-gouging by the oil companies.

"I think you're seeing the pressures of the upcoming election really coming to the fore," Brownback said. "But I also think we'll be seeing the troops begin rallying and coming together, I hope real soon."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Pushing For A Poll Recovery

by georgia10

Sun May 14, 2006 at 04:45:02 PM PDT

The President's approval ratings are at a shocking low 29%, a number Stephen Colbert joking referred to as "backwash". Yet it seems that no all-time low is low enough to dampen the hopes of some in the media that the President will rebound and become Mr. Popular again. Take, for example, this ridiculous speculation from TIME:

There was a time -- say, four years and nine months ago -- when news that the government has been gathering up phone records might have the makings of a scandal, or even a constitutional crisis. But while there have been protests from civil libertarians and some criticism on Capitol Hill, early indications suggest the disclosures could actually give a political boost to a president who hasn't had many of those lately.

The day after USA Today broke the story that the National Security Agency (NSA) aimed to "create a database of every call ever made" within the U.S., as one of the paper's sources put it, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 63 percent of those who were asked said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to fight terrorism, and 44 percent said they strongly approved of it.

"Early indications"? The sole basis cited for the claim that the President will get a "boost" from the data-mining disclosure is the flawed Washington Post poll. That "early indicator" of a boost is eviscerated by the latest USA Today poll, in which a majority of Americans disapprove of the data-mining program (51%-43%).

But polls aside, why in the world would TIME conclude that the President would get a boost from this latest revelation? He sure didn't get a boost from the last domestic spying disclosure; his poll numbers have plummeted by at least twelve points since the New York Times reported on the domestic program last December.

The only reason for TIME to predict a boost then is that it wants a boost to occur. We've seen this pattern time and time again: the President is at an all-time low, the press frets and wonders aloud how the President can recover, and then they push a media narrative to help him recover (see the hacktacular WaPo poll).

What a pathetic, predictable press.

© Kos Media, LLC

Doug's apology

AN APOLOGY FROM A BUSH VOTER

By Doug McIntyre

Host, McIntyre in the Morning

Talk Radio 790 KABC

There’s nothing harder in public life than admitting you’re wrong. By the way, admitting you’re wrong can be even tougher in private life. If you don’t believe me, just ask Bill Clinton or Charlie Sheen. But when you go out on the limb in public, it’s out there where everyone can see it, or in my case, hear it.

So, I’m saying today, I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush. In historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a case can be made that he’s the worst President, period.

In 2000, I was a McCain guy. I wasn’t sure about the Texas Governor. He had name recognition and a lot of money behind him, but other than that? What? Still, I was sick of all the Clinton shenanigans and the thought of President Gore was… unthinkable. So, GWB became my guy.

For the first few months he was just flubbing along like most new Presidents, no great shakes, but no disasters either. He cut taxes and I like tax cuts.

Then September 11^th happened. September 11^th changed everything for me, like it did for so many of you. After September 11^th, all the intramural idiocy of American politics stopped being funny. We had been attacked by a vicious and determined enemy and it was time for all of us to row in the same direction.

And we did for the blink of an eye. I believed the President when he said we were going to hunt down Bin Laden and all those responsible for the 9-11 murders. I believed President Bush when he said we would go after the terrorists and the nations that harbored them.

I supported the President when he sent our troops into Afghanistan, after all, that’s where the Taliban was, that’s where al-Qaida trained the killers, that’s where Bin Laden was.

And I cheered when we quickly toppled the Taliban government, but winced when we let Bin Laden escape from Tora-Bora.

Then, the talk turned to Iraq and I winced again.

I thought the connection to 9-11 was sketchy at best. But Colin Powell impressed me at the UN, and Tony Blair was in, and after all, he was a Clinton guy, not a Bush guy, so I thought the case had to be strong. I was worried though, because I had read the Wolfowitz paper, “The Project for the New American Century.” It’s been around since ‘92, and it raised alarm bells because it was based on a theory, “Democratizing the Middle East” and I prefer pragmatism over theory. I was worried because Iraq was being justified on a radical new basis, “pre-emptive war.” Any time we do something without historical precedent I get nervous.

But the President shifted the argument to WMDs and the urgent threat of Iraq getting atomic weapons. The debate turned to Saddam passing nukes on to terror groups. After 9-11, the risk was too great. As the President said, “The next smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud.” At least that’s what I thought at the time.

I grew up in New York and watched them build the World Trade Center. I worked with a guy, Frank O’Brien, who put the elevators in both towers. I lost a very close friend on September 11^th. 103 floor, tower one, Cantor Fitzgerald. Tim Coughlin was his name. If we had to take out Iraq to make sure something like that, or worse, never happened again, so be it. I knew the consequences. We have a soldier in our house. None of this was theoretical in my house.

But in the months and years since shock and awe I have been shocked repeatedly by a consistent litany of excuses, alibis, double-talk, inaccuracies, bogus predictions, and flat out lies. I have watched as the President and his administration changed the goals, redefined the reasons for going into Iraq, and fumbled the good will of the world and the focus necessary to catch the real killers of September 11^th.

I have watched the President say the commanders on the ground will make the battlefield decisions, and the war won’t be run from Washington. Yet, politics has consistently determined what the troops can and can’t do on the ground and any commander who did not go along with the administration was sacked, and in some cases, maligned.

I watched and tried to justify the looting in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. I watched and tried to justify the dismantling of the entire Iraqi army. I tired to explain the complexities of building a functional new Iraqi army. I urged patience when no WMDs were found. Then the Vice President told us we were in the “waning days of the insurgency.” And I started wincing again. The President says we have to stay the course but what if it’s the wrong course?

It was the wrong course. All of it was wrong. We are not on the road to victory. We’re about to slink home with our tail between our legs, leaving civil war in Iraq and a nuclear armed Iran in our wake. Bali was bombed. Madrid was bombed. London was bombed. And Bin Laden is still making  tapes. It’s unspeakable. The liberal media didn’t create this reality, bad policy did.

Most historians believe it takes 30-50 years before we get a reasonably accurate take on a President’s place in history. So, maybe 50 years from now Iraq will be a peaceful member of the brotherhood of nations and George W. Bush will be celebrated as a visionary genius.

But we don’t live fifty years in the future. We live now. We have to make public policy decisions now. We have to live with the consequences of the votes we cast and the leaders we chose now.

After five years of carefully watching George W. Bush I’ve reached the conclusion he’s either grossly incompetent, or a hand puppet for a gaggle of detached theorists with their own private view of how the world works. Or both.

Presidential failures. James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Jimmy Carter, Warren Harding-— the competition is fierce for the worst of the worst. Still, the damage this President has done is enormous. It will take decades to undo, and that’s assuming we do everything right from now on. His mistakes have global implications, while the other failed Presidents mostly authored domestic embarrassments.

And speaking of domestic embarrassments, let’s talk for a minute about President Bush’s domestic record. Yes, he cut taxes. But tax cuts combined with reckless spending and borrowing is  criminal mismanagement of the public’s money. We’re drunk at the mall with our great grandchildren’s credit cards. Whatever happened to the party of fiscal responsibility?

Bush created a giant new entitlement, the prescription drug plan. He lied to his own party to get it passed. He lied to the country about its true cost. It was written by and for the pharmaceutical industry. It helps nobody except the multinationals that lobbied for it. So much for smaller government. In fact, virtually every tentacle of government has grown exponentially under Bush. Unless, of course, it was an agency to look after the public interest, or environmental protection, and/or worker’s rights.

I’ve talked so often about the border issue, I won’t bore you with a rehash. It’s enough to say this President has been a catastrophe for the wages of working people; he’s debased the work ethic itself. “Jobs Americans won’t do!” He doesn’t believe in the sovereign borders of the country he’s sworn to protect and defend. And his devotion to cheap labor for his corporate benefactors, along with his worship of multinational trade deals, makes an utter mockery of homeland security in a post 9-11 world. The President’s January 7^th, 2004 speech on immigration, his first trial balloon on his guest worker scheme, was a deal breaker for me. I couldn’t and didn’t vote for him in 2004. And I’m glad I didn’t.

Katrina, Harriet Myers, The Dubai Port Deal, skyrocketing gas prices, shrinking wages for working people, staggering debt, astronomical foreign debt, outsourcing, open borders, contempt for the opinion of the American people, the war on science, media manipulation, faith based initives, a cavalier attitude toward fundamental freedoms-- this President has run the most arrogant and out-of-touch administration in my lifetime, perhaps, in any American’s lifetime.

You can make a case that Abraham Lincoln did what he had to do, the public be damned. If you roll the dice on your gut and you’re right, history remembers you well. But, when your gut led you from one business failure to another, when your gut told you to trade Sammy Sosa to the Cubs, and you use the same gut to send our sons and daughters to fight and die in a distraction from the real war on terror, then history will and should be unapologetic in its condemnation.

None of this, by the way, should be interpreted as an endorsement of the opposition party. The Democrats are equally bankrupt. This is the second crime of our age. Again, historically speaking, its times like these when America needs a vibrant opposition to check the power of a run-amuck majority party. It requires it. It doesn’t work without one. Like the high and low tides keep the oceans alive, a healthy, positive opposition offers a path back to the center where all healthy societies live.

Tragically, the Democrats have allowed crackpots, leftists and demagogic cowards to snipe from the sidelines while taking no responsibility for anything. In fairness, I don’t believe a Democrat president would have gone into Iraq. Unfortunately, I don’t know if President Gore would have gone into Afghanistan. And that’s one of the many problems with the Democrats.

The two party system has always been clumsy and imperfect, but it has only collapsed once, in the 1850s, and the result was civil war.

I believe, as I have said countless times, the two party system is on the brink of a second collapsed. It’s currently running on spin, anger, revenge, and pots and pots and pots of money.

We’re being governed by paper-mache patriots; brightly painted red, white and blue, but hollow to the core. Both parties have mastered the cynical arts of media manipulation and fund raising. They’ve learned the lessons of Watergate and burn the tapes. They have learned to divide the nation for their own gain. They have demonstrated the willingness to exploit any tragedy for personal advantage. The contempt they have for the American people is without parallel.

This is painful to say, and I’m sure for many of you, painful to read. But it’s impossible to heal the country until we’re willing to acknowledge the truth no matter how painful. We have to wean ourselves off sugar coated partisan lies.

With a belated tip of the cap to Ralph Nader, the system is broken, so broken, it’s almost inevitable it pukes up the Al Gores and George W. Bushes. Where are the Trumans and the Eisenhowers? Where are the men and women of vision and accomplishment?  Why do we have to settle for recycled hacks and malleable ciphers? Greatness is always rare, but is basic competence and simple honesty too much to ask?

It may be decades before we have the full picture of how paranoid and contemptuous this administration has been. And I am open to the possibility that I’m all wet about everything I’ve just said. But I’m putting it out there, because I have to call it as I see it, and this is how I see it today. I don’t say any of this lightly. I’ve thought about this for months and months. But eventually, the weight of evidence takes on a gravitational force of its own.

I believe that George W. Bush has taken us down a terrible road. I don’t believe the Democrats are offering an alternative. That means we’re on our own to save this magnificent country. The United States of America is a gift to the world, but it has been badly abused and it’s rightful owners, We the People, had better step up to the plate and reclaim it before the damage becomes irreparable.

So, accept my apology for allowing partisanship to blind me to an obvious truth; our President is incapable of the tasks he is charged with. I almost feel sorry for him. He is clearly in over his head. Yet, he doesn’t generate the sympathy Warren Harding earned. Harding, a spectacular mediocrity, had the self-knowledge to tell any and all he shouldn’t be President. George W. Bush continues to act the part, but at this point whose buying the act?

Does this make me a waffler? A flip-flopper? Maybe, although I prefer to call it realism. And, for those of you who never supported Bush, its also fair to accuse me of kicking Bush while he’s down. After all, you were kicking him while he was up.

You were right, I was wrong.

Copyright © 2006 ABC Radio

war stories
The Right Kind of Paranoia
How the NSA could fix its data-mining program.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, May 12, 2006, at 5:00 PM ET

We have hit the point where paranoia is a proper frame of mind for assessing nearly everything this administration says or does.

The moment arrived Thursday, when USA Today revealed that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone records of tens of millions of Americans, with the aim of creating "a database of every call ever made," to people not only abroad but also within our borders.

This goes well beyond the scope of the NSA domestic-surveillance program revealed last year by the New York Times. President George W. Bush responded to that story by emphasizing that, under the terms of the program, "one end of the communication must be outside the United States." That assurance turns out to have been highly deceptive, if not an outright lie.

The NSA program, even such an expansive one, might be a good idea. As described by USA Today, it does not involve monitoring or recording the content of all these phone calls (an activity that no agency would have the time to do anyway). Rather, officials describe it as "data mining," for the purpose of "social network analysis."

Let's say X is suspected of planning terrorist activities. It might be useful to know who's been talking with X and who's been talking with those people. The feds wouldn't just want to take down X. They'd want to take down his whole network. By the time they discover what X is up to, it might be too late to monitor his future calls; so they'd want to know about his past calls. They can't guess, ahead of time, who those people might be—hence the idea of creating a comprehensive database.

Again, this isn't necessarily a bad idea. But here's the crucial issue: The executive branch of the government cannot be trusted with sole access to such massive and intrusive information. This has nothing to do with who the president is; it has everything to do with the nature of power. To dispute this fact is to dispute the need for checks and balances; it's to dismiss the constitutional premise of the U.S. government.

All this was widely recognized back in the 1970s, when Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and created the FISA court—whose records would be secret and permanently sealed—to enforce it.

The issues back then were similar to the issues today. (For a fuller history of what follows, click here.) In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled in Katz v. the United States that Fourth Amendment protections apply to wiretaps—except when national security is involved. Nothing in the law in question, it ruled, "shall limit the constitutional powers of the President to take such measures as he deems necessary to … obtain foreign intelligence information deemed essential to the security of the United States."

However, in 1972, the court noted in The United States v. U.S. District Court that the Katz ruling "implicitly recognizes that the broad and unsuspected governmental incursions into conversational privacy which electronic surveillance entails necessitates the application of Fourth Amendment safeguards." Noting that statutory guidelines didn't resolve this constitutional tension between national security and civil liberties, the court invited Congress to write new laws that did.

In 1974-75, Sen. Frank Church's Senate committee uncovered the vast extent of U.S. intelligence agencies' illegal domestic surveillance. So, in 1978, six years after the court threw down its challenge, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which created a procedure by which a president, through the attorney general, can request warrants for surveillance outside normal court procedures. As many have noted, the FISA court usually behaves as a rubber stamp; it considers no opposing motions, and it rejects very few requests. This is as Congress intended. The idea was not to create a fierce watchdog, only to provide a little outside supervision—a bump in the road to let the White House and the intelligence agencies know that they can't use their secret powers in whatever way they like.

The problem with the indiscriminate data-mining that USA Today details is that it's not susceptible to warrants. Under FISA, the application for a surveillance order must include the identity or description of the target, the nature and location of the place being tapped, the type of information being sought, how long the monitoring will last, and so forth. There's no way, under any law, that an attorney general could ask any court to approve surveillance of everybody, everywhere, forever. That goes beyond what warrants of any sort can do.

However, none of this snuffs out the spirit of FISA or nullifies the rationale for a FISA court—to provide a modicum of supervision over the executive branch's massive intrusion upon privacy rights.

Here's where we all have cause to be paranoid. It is clearer than ever that President Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and most of those around them are not the slightest bit interested in checks or balances or even in conveying the impression that they're interested. Their official response to Leslie Cauley's story in USA Today is the same as their response to James Risen's story in the New York Times last year: What we're doing is by definition legal, so back off. There isn't a hint of recognition that they're not the only ones to determine what is legal. They don't acknowledge what even many Republican legislators are now recognizing: that the laws in question are vague—in part deliberately, in part because they lag behind the technology—and that it might be a good idea to clarify the law or write new ones. Their solution to all ambiguities is to issue a sweeping edict: l'Etat, c'est le président.

This dispute is not over some legal fine point; it has all the makings of a constitutional crisis. Even on a less vaunted level, we are in the alarming predicament of facing a president who—at least on this issue—possesses absolute power. Bush and Gonzales may say they won't use the NSA data improperly. But there is nobody who can verify that claim.

Here's a hair-raising example reported, also on Thursday, by the New York Times' Scott Shane. The Justice Department's ethics office had to shut down its months-long probe into who approved the NSA's domestic-surveillance program, because the investigators were blocked from obtaining the necessary security clearances. "Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter," H. Marshall Jarrett, head of Justice's office of professional responsibility, wrote to Congress, "and therefore have closed our investigation." It was for such stories that the word "Kafka-esque" was coined.

The House and Senate need to determine whether this data-mining program is necessary. If they decide it is, they need to create some new independent agency with the statutory power, which the FISA court doesn't have, to supervise the program—including notification of, and veto power over, any action any agency wants to take as a result of this surveillance (for instance, if the NSA uncovers a terrorist network and the Justice Department wants to monitor the members' phone conversations).

Bush's approval rating has dipped below 30 percent. Republicans seeking re-election don't want to go down with his ship. Several of them have a libertarian bent that makes them hostile to domestic surveillance on substantive grounds. Who knows? Maybe on this slap, Congress will finally stand up and slap back.

Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com.

Copyright 2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

UPDATE: Early 'Wash Post' Poll on NSA Phone Spying Refuted

By E&P Staff

Published: May 13, 2006 1:15 PM ET

They may be owned by the same company, but two polls commissioned by The Washington Post and Newsweek magazine on the important issue of public approval of the National Security Agency's gathering of phone records produced quite different results. Now a USA Today/Gallup poll suggests that the original Washington Post poll was highly misleading.

On Friday, a widely-publicized Washington Post/ABC survey revealed that 63% of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism, including 44% who strongly endorsed the effort. Only 35% said the program was unacceptable.

This apparently inspired Time magazine to produce an article that suggested that President Bush might actually benefit from the revelations.

Then a Newsweek poll released Saturday found that 53% of Americans believe that reports that the NSA has been secretly collecting the phone records of U.S. citizens goes too far in invading people's privacy. Some 41% feel it is a necessary tool to combat terrorism.

On Sunday, the USA Today/Gallup survey came up with almost the same results. By 51%-43%, those polled disapprove of the program.

So what happened? Most likely views changed that much in one day after more negative media reports (including many from conservative commentators such as MSNBC's Joe Scarborough) surfaced. The Washington Post survey took place before many Americans had heard about, or thought about, the implications. The Newsweek Poll also reached twice as many Americans, and the USA Today/Gallup survey almost as many.

The Washington Post/ABC survey was conducted Thursday, just after the NSA news broke via USA Today, and reached just 502 citizens. Newsweek polled 1007 Americans on both Thursday and Friday. USA Today/Gallup polled on Friday and Saturday.

The Newsweek results were pretty stark: 57% of Americans say the administration has gone too far in expanding presidential power, while only 38% say they have not. The president's job approval rating in this poll declined one point to 35%.

© 2006 VNU eMedia Inc.

Parsing Bush’s Words on the NSA Scandal

Parsing Bush’s Words on the NSA Scandal

By Matthew Rothschild

May 12, 2006

Bush’s statement on Thursday about the burgeoning NSA spying scandal was a classic dodge.

He barely had gotten to the microphone when he whipped out the tattered old 9/11 card.

Forget about good morning, hello, or even my fellow Americans. No time for that: Make way for fear. Three of Bush’s first four words were “September the 11th.”

He said he had vowed to do “everything within the law” to protect us, and “as part of this effort,” he authorized NSA spying on Al Qaeda calls in and out of the United States.

Of course, tapping phones of citizens here in the United States without a warrant is not “within the law,” but Bush asserted that it was, as if saying so made it so.

Then, referring to the latest revelation of massive data gathering by the phone companies and the NSA, Bush said, “the government does not listen to domestic calls.”

The key fudge word here is “listen.” Administration officials say that the NSA isn’t listening in on the content; it’s just gathering data.

Bush didn’t cop to that, though. He said, ”we’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans.”

But they are gathering data on millions of Americans. Isn’t that mining and trolling?

Maybe Bush knows there is another stage of snooping that his Administration is involved in after the collecting of the phone data. And maybe, as Robert Parry suggests, the Bush Administratio