Bush flip-flops; now opposed to torture

While we were out Christmas shopping yesterday afternoon, the president came around to John McCain's opinion on torture:

President Bush reversed position yesterday and endorsed a torture ban crafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) after months of White House attempts to weaken the measure, which would prohibit the "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment of any detainee in U.S. custody anywhere in the world.

The announcement of a deal at the White House yesterday was a setback for the administration, which had pressed the senator to either drop the measure or modify it so that interrogators, especially with the CIA, would have the flexibility to use a range of extreme tactics on terrorism suspects.

Dick Cheney has been banished to his bunker until after the holidays, his whips, chains and waterboards removed.

Courage wins Progressive Patriot award

And along with it comes $5000 from Russ Feingold for Courage's bid to represent the 21st Congressional District. I've previously written about his challenger and the Republican incumbent in the 21st, the atrocious Lamar Smith.

I met John Courage at Camp Casey this past summer. He is everything a Progressive Patriot could be. Visit his website and introduce yourself.

Can we call it fascism yet?

A truly appalling revelation from the New York Times today: they concealed, at the request of the Bush administration, the fact that the president of the United States authorized the National Security Agency to monitor the international phone calls and international e-mails of hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of people living inside the United States.

Wiretaps on Americans without judicial approval. And the Times held back the report for a year.

Fortunately, I see that even reaction from Congressional Republicans has been swift:

A key Republican committee chairman put the Bush administration on notice Friday that his panel would hold hearings into a report that the National Security Agency eavesdropped without warrants on people inside the United States.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he would make oversight hearings by his panel next year "a very, very high priority."

"There is no doubt that this is inappropriate," said Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Other key bipartisan members of Congress also called on the administration to explain and said a congressional investigation may be necessary.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., appeared annoyed that the first he had heard of such a program was through a New York Times story published Friday. He said the report was troubling.

Do you feel safer from terrorism yet, knowing that your government may be eavesdropping on you?

Today, Senate debate begins on the reauthorization of the USA Patriot act. Senator Russ Feingold will filibuster, with the support of GOP Senator Chuck Hagel and others.

Perhaps some sanity can be restored to the cause of civil rights. We'll have to watch this outcome to know for sure.

Update (today) : The Senate rejected the extension, 52-47, with these Republicans voting against: Hagel, Murkowski, Sununu, Craig, and in a last-minute switch to take advantage of a parliamentary tactic (so that he could call the question again at any time), majority leader Frist.

Gammage files for Governor

As of this morning, the Texas Democratic Party will have a legitimately contested gubernatorial primary in March:

Bob Gammage today filed paperwork with the Texas Democratic Party, officially becoming a candidate for Texas Governor. Below is the text of his of his remarks.

“Good morning. Thank you all for coming. In the weeks to come we will have a formal announcement that addresses specific issues and goals. Today I will just make a brief statement about why I am running.

“This campaign is about reform. It is about opening state policy-making to public scrutiny. It is about restoring the public trust.

“When I first entered public life as a newly minted freshman member of the Texas House some years ago, the people of Texas faced a crisis of political corruption. Our lawmaking process and our entire state government were dominated by an authoritarian system, controlled by lobbyists, special interests and power elites who ran rampant in our halls of government, and who ran roughshod over the public interest. I soon became a proud member of the Dirty 30 - a bipartisan group of 19 Democrats and 11 Republicans in the Texas House - who stood up to the power brokers and, with the help of an outraged citizenry, beat that corrupt political machine.

“Today, unfortunately, our state government has come full circle. Once again we desperately need the citizens of Texas to take charge of their state government.

“Today there is a corrupt political machine which stretches from Washington, D.C. all the way to Austin. Tom DeLay and his cronies are at one end, and Rick Perry and his pals are at the other. The money flows both ways. It has corrupted our politics, corrupted our government and, more importantly, corrupted public policy and betrayed the public trust.

“Public office is a public trust. I am running against today's corrupt political machine. I am standing up for reform. I am determined to do everything in my power to restore the public trust and the integrity of the political system. Sometimes good citizenship requires you to put your personal interests aside and just do what's right.

“In an ideal world, the governor of Texas should denounce the shenanigans of Tom DeLay and his twisted, unethical schemes. But Rick Perry is too weak and too dependent on the wealthy, powerful and ruthless special interests that both he and DeLay work for.

“The sad truth is that bad values and weak character at the top produce bad policies for the rest of us. We've seen it time and again -- a leadership that preaches character and commonly held values while practicing neither. On virtually every important issue - funding our public schools, the tax burden on middle-income families, health care for our children, preserving our environment, funding for our public colleges and universities, and how we choose our elected officials -- the men at the top do not fight for the common good, but for the privileged power elite who bankroll their campaigns and keep their machine rolling.

Let's hope for the sake of ridding ourselves of Rick Perry that this doesn't turn into an expensive knockdown dragout that weakens our eventual nominee. Gammage sounds capable of taking the fight to the GOP, and he offers a clear choice between old guard and New Mainstream.

To be clear: if Gammage wins the primary in March I'll gladly support him.

But I'll support my former Congressman and friend Chris Bell in the primary, and I'm still waiting for Bob -- or anyone else -- to answer some questions for me.

Update (12/16) : Yesterday morning, I e-mailed the Gammage campaign the questions I asked in the blog post linked immediately above, and last night I attended the Harris County Democratic Party holiday party, where Bob Gammage coincidentally was a late arrivee. As I made my way over to introduce myself, his associate John Effinger intercepted me and -- being familiar with my questions -- brushed them aside with a curt "There's nothing there".

Well John, in the holiday spirit I chose not to make our intial meeting confrontational, but that answer just won't wash.

I'll keep asking them, and it might be wise if you suggest that Bob consider answering them straight.

Moneyshot Quote of the Week: Viggo Mortensen

King Aragorn has spoken:

“I’m not anti-Bush; I’m anti-Bush behavior,” Mortensen told Progressive magazine. “In other words, I’m against cheating, greed, cruelty, racism, imperialism, religious fundamentalism, treason, and the seemingly limitless capacity for hypocrisy shown by Bush and his administration.”

Mortensen also blasted the administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina and discussed why he supported anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, who has protested the war in Iraq since her son was killed there. “Cindy Sheehan and how badly Katrina was bungled are two shots to the heart,” he said. “I hope the beast does fall down soon."

Sorry been sick

... and posting's been light.

Finally seem to have gotten the blood glucose and the blood pressure back into some semblance of normal with the help of Big Pharma, so I'll catch up with the following quickies...

** I spent some time on a bloggers' conference call this morning with former CIA director Vincent Cannistraro and Elisa Massimino, the Washington director of Human Rights First, an organization recognized for leading the battle to end U.S.-sanctioned torture. Cannistraro and more than two dozen former CIA operatives and analysts are signers to a letter to the Senate, urging them to keep the McCain amendment intact.

(It may be that you are unaware that Vice President Cheney has lobbied John McCain to make exceptions to his amendment banning mistreatment of detainees, and redefines techniques such as waterboarding a form of 'enhanced interrogation', and exempt from the amendment. I'll probably have a lengthier post on this in the future, when I can tether myself back on the other side of the Looking Glass.)

** Bob Novak says Bush knows who the Plame leaker is:

"I'm confident the president knows who the source is," Novak told a luncheon audience at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh on Tuesday. "I'd be amazed if he doesn't."

"So I say, 'Don't bug me. Don't bug Bob Woodward. Bug the president as to whether he should reveal who the source is.' "

So do you think Novak might actually be telling the truth? And if he is, do you wonder --as do I -- why the President hasn't fired that person?

** People Get Ready has some pretty funny photos of deceased refrigerators in New Orleans.

I promise I'll get wordier later.

"Christmas has nuclear weapons"

"I'd like to get back to the operational ties between Santa Claus and al-Qaeda."

Watch the video or read the transcript.

What's your role in the War on Christmas?

Defender, Protestor, or Victim?

Go take Doonesbury's poll.

Richard Pryor and Eugene McCarthy, and racism and war

The passing of two prominent men, each of whom could be described by the same word, 'anti-establishment', is reported today.

Richard Pryor and Eugene McCarthy had a lot in common, but came at the American psyche from completely opposite directions. And because they were hardly two guys who traveled in the same circles, there's more than a small measure of irony that they proceed side-by-side to the hereafter.

Pryor made racism in America something white and black people could laugh at together -- the first time that may have happened (some would say Redd Foxx was ahead of him).

Eugene McCarthy made an increasingly unpopular war a seminal moment for the Democratic Party (and the nation).

And while the issues they tackled were -- are -- far from resolved, their places in history are safe simply by the impact they each had in shifting the conventional thinking of the time.

Pryor released an album while I was in high school in the mid-'70's called "That Nigger's Crazy". We rode around drinking beer listening to it and laughing our AO --and I grew up in small east Texas town where the Klan had a bookstore on Main Street. He later did a movie, one of my favorites, with Jill Clayburgh and Gene Wilder -- "Silver Streak" -- which started a long cinematic collaboration with Wilder. A couple of years later when I was in college, a racially mixed group of my friends went to see "Stir Crazy" and we cracked up all over again.

I was too young to be much aware of Senator McCarthy's influence on the political landscape; I was getting ready for Boy Scout camp in the summer of '68 when McCarthy's anti-Vietnam war campaign forced LBJ out of the race for the White House. McCarthy's campaign splintered an already fractious Democratic party that election year, and the American racial divide was on full display on the ballot that November with George Wallace, (I).

And that's how we got Nixon (and many more years of war and death and dirty political tricks and lies and high crimes).

I doubt whether McCarthy and Pryor ever met and discussed their respective influences on American pop and political culture, but it pleases me that they are somewhere tonight -- outside the pearly gates, or maybe some place warmer -- talking about it and having a chuckle.

Rest in peace, gentlemen.

Update (12/11) : Digby's got a great reminiscence of Pryor posted.

Bible-thumping approaches thunderous roar

Lifted entirely from the Benquirer, and offered for your reading pleasure without editorial comment:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As the outcry from religious groups intensified following the White House decision to sign its holiday cards “Have a Happy Holidays,” it would appear as though Bible-thumping levels across the nation are approaching near-deafening levels.

Members of the Christian Right are promoting a period of “prolonged Bible-thumping” in the wake of the President's holiday card decision and have moved in for the kill in the self-proclaimed War on Christmas.

This new war has taken precedence over the other, harder-to-spin and much bloodier war in Iraq. Supporters are now arguing that saving impossible-to-prove religious symbolism and rehashed Kerri Underwood Christmas sing-along CDs are more important to the future of humanity than a terrorist-making factory in the Middle East.

...

“We’ve done near worn out 12 Bibles just this week so it’s a good thing that, as God-fearing Christians, we keep an ample supply by taking the ones from the nightstands at all the hotels we stay at,” said Mary Joe Joe, a Catholic. “And who could not love Christmas trees and presents? It was all in the Bible after all, wasn’t it?”

It would be so much more funny if I didn't actually know people like this.