Politics

Whatever happened to Bernard Kerik? Well, it wasn’t just his nanny problem (original). Josh Marshall has the lengthy summary (original) of Kerik’s issues.

So we’re gonna do the elections differently in 2008. I’ve been thinking about it. I have a plan. We’re not going to vote for candidates. We’re going to vote for parties. You’ll cast one vote for a party, and you’ll be done. That will simplify things. Every party puts together a list of candidates, with their top candidate at the top and so on. Individuals can run too, but as you’ll see in a moment, it’s not a very good idea. ...

“Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned.” Mark of the Beast! Mark of the Beast! ...

Possibly it’s time to come to the conclusion that our government is not very good at preventing prisoner abuses. Yes, it happens occasionally, and a single incident doesn’t mean it’s endemic. But when DIA agents are being threatened in order to keep it quiet, and when the FBI is concerned about generally used coercive techniques, there is a clear problem. I manage people for a living. After a certain point, if a given problematic behavior pattern repeats, I figure out what the root cause is and I fix it. I do not say “well, that’s just one incident; it’s bound to happen now and again.” If you don’t think that torture is acceptable, you’ve got to ask why Donald Rumsfeld continues to allow this pattern to persist. And, of course, why George Bush doesn’t correct Rumsfeld’s failure to act. ...

There was some concern that Harry Reid wouldn’t be a combative Senate Minority Leader. Comes from a red state, so vulnerable to election challenges; moderate; all that stuff. Harry Reid on Clarence Thomas: “I think that he has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court. I think that his opinions are poorly written. I just don’t think that he’s done a good job as a Supreme Court justice.” He then praised Scalia’s intelligence but said Scalia has some ethics problems. So, yeah, the guy has some cojones. I’m betting he’ll make Frist use the nuclear option (original) if it comes down to it.

If you’re still wondering about the vote in Ohio and the exit polls and so on, you ought to be reading [Keith Olberman](http://web.archive.org/web/20130115011342/http://web.archive.org/web/20130115011342/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6533008/ (original)/) (original). He’s been covering the story non-stop since the election; it’s probably not too overwrought to say he’s staking his credibility on it. He is also being very careful not to wear a tin-foil hat. What’s clear at this point is that the Kerry campaign is very quietly working towards a recount in Ohio. The Libertarian/Green effort is acting, consciously or not, as a stalking horse. Jesse Jackson has come on board to do the heavy rhetorical lifting. A guy named Cliff Arnebeck is about to file (original) a contest of election lawsuit, and he looks like he knows what he’s doing. ...

The Red Cross says conditions in Guantanamo Bay are problematic, but won’t confirm a New York Times report that said the Red Cross claims prisoners were effectively tortured. The official White House response is not exactly conclusive: “We strongly disagree with any characterization that suggests the way detainees are being treated is inconsistent with the policies the president has outlined.” Well, that’s all very well and good, but it’s not entirely clear that it is inconsistent with the Red Cross claims. The President’s policies may or may not authorize actions that are effectively torture (original), after all. ...

Given the current state of the Ukraine, it is enlightening to look back on the history of Ukrainian nuclear weaponry. The Ukraine doesn’t have nuclear weapons because Senators Nunn and Lugar worked hard to convince Ukrainian leaders not to have nuclear weapons, backed up by government funding. Funding for Cooperative Threat Reduction peaked under Clinton in 2000 at $475.5 million. In 2001, it dropped to $433.4 million. In 2002, it dropped to $403 million. More on this here (original) (PDF).

So in the previous post, I debunked the draft rumor going around. I figured I’d do a little more poking and find out who was running Congress.org, the origin of the rumor. They do pretty shoddy research, whoever they are. No big dramatic reveal here, alas. Congress.org is owned by a company by the name of Issue Dynamics Inc.. They’re a political consulting company that focuses on liberal causes; they’re big on grassroots, which explains why they’re running Congress.org. It’s presumably an effective means of encouraging people to generate letters to Congressmen. ...

The talk on the Dean campaign wasn’t all that interesting — Keri Carpenter talked about how the Dean campaign was shaped by the people, and Tom Limoncelli talked about how it was a great experience and touched on the technology some. Nothing deep. Keri Carpenter did say, at the end, that clearly great netroots wasn’t enough but she didn’t really volunteer any ideas on what would have helped. Tom Limoncelli said he thought Dean lost because he was anointed the front-runner early and everyone teamed up to bring him down. That latter seems kind of self-defeating to me, since netroots takes some time to build. You wouldn’t want to use a strategy that puts you ahead early if being the front-runner leads to failure. ...