The Pentagon was recently embarrassed when it put out a pdf. version of the Sgrena report over the weekend not realizing that someone might be able to get around the electronic redactions.  Needless to say they did and the world is now privy to not only what we know about the insurgents, but also our organization and tactical responses to the insurgents.  Althought this story is getting big play, there is something larger that is being overlooked.

Why did the Pentagon release the report via pdf.?  Well according to an NPR story this morning, Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita said over the weekend that the report would normally have been released as a paper copy but Baghdad is so dangerous for reporters to move around in that sending it electronically made sense.

Baghdad is so dangerous that journalist can't physically get a Pentagon report?  Funny how that never quite makes it into the nightly news?

With a new Federal bank fraud investigation starting up, the gaping maw that is the Jack Abramoff scandal opens wider.  Who will fall in next?  GOP Congressman Bob Ney, perhaps?

"Mr. Speaker, how SunCruz Casinos and Gus Boulis conduct themselves with regard to Florida laws is very unnerving," Ney said in the March 30 Congressional Record. "I don't want to see the actions of one bad apple in Florida, or anywhere else . . . affect the business aspect of this industry or hurt any innocent casino patron in our country."

"I have come to learn that SunCruz Casino now finds itself under new ownership," Ney stated in the record. Kidan's "track record as a businessman and a citizen lead me to believe that he will easily transform SunCruz from a questionable enterprise to an upstanding establishment."

One thing is for sure, Gus Boulis has already fallen in:

A man in a BMW was driving down a quiet side street after an evening meeting at his Fort Lauderdale office when a car slowed to a stop in front of him. A second car boxed the BMW in from behind, then a dark Mustang appeared from the opposite direction. The Mustang's driver pulled alongside and pumped three hollow-point bullets into the BMW driver's chest.

Who said this?

The Senate, is not a majoritarian institution, like the House of Representatives is. It is a deliberative body, and it's got a number of checks and balances built into our government. The filibuster is one of those checks in which a majority cannot just sheerly force its will, even if they have a majority of votes in some cases. That's why there are things like filibusters, and other things that give minorities in the Senate some power to slow things up, to hold things up, and let things be aired properly.

Was it Harry Reid?  Al Gore?  Howard Dean?

Nope--It was the Family Research Council, the sponsors of Justice Sunday--where scores of fundamentalist wingnuts demanded the end of the filibuster as a way to stop votes on Presidential nominees.

What was the context?

FRC was defending Republican Senators' efforts to filibuster the nomination of a gay man, James Hormel, to be ambassador to Luxembourg.  OK you commenters, start defending the indefensible.

Update Tuesday May 3 3:00 PM:  Commenters remarked that

"If the Republicans of the past 34 years agreed that this example was ethical, then they would have done a LOT of endless filibustering of Clinton's nominees. The fact that they didn't diminished your example to practically worthless"

Well, of course they did, when the practice of Blue slipping failed.  Note that the Republicans wouldn't even give hearings to five dozen of Clinton's appointees.  Even the White House acknowledged that the problem came from the Republican's despicable practices in the 1990's, according to then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales:

We are trying to work through some of the logjams, but there is a lot of bitterness," Gonzales told CNN. "This is a bit of a payback. I can't argue with some of their [the Democrats'] perceptions."

Gonzales noted that some Republican senators placed "holds" on Clinton judicial nominees, denying them a Judiciary Committee hearing or a floor vote for as long as four years.

 "That was wrong," he said. "That's not right. Part of this is based on the conduct of the Republican senators in the past. We had nothing to do with this problem. But it does affect us."

Republicans have also used the filibuster recently against judicial nominees:  Read, for example, the words of Sen. Smith of N.H. as he filbustered a 9th Circuit appointee, Richard Paez:

"But don't pontificate on the floor of the Senate and tell me that somehow I am violating the Constitution of the United States of America by blocking a judge or filibustering a judge that I don't think deserves to be on the circuit court because I am going to continue to do it at every opportunity I believe a judge should not be on that court. That is my responsibility. That is my advise and consent role, and I intend to exercise it. I don't appreciate being told that somehow I am violating the Constitution of the United States. I swore to uphold that Constitution, and I am doing it now by standing up and saying what I am saying." (March 7, 2000)

According to Republicans, the right to an up-or down vote for judicial nominees extends only to Republican presidents.  Plain and simple, a power grab.

Jesse over Pandagon provides us with an analysis of the Bush Energy Policy that manages to be both incredibly insightful and absolutely hilarious at the same time:

"Hey, Bob, we're going through ink cartridges like they're water."

"Why don't we start up an arm of the company that makes ink cartridges, then we can buy them at cost?"

"Why don't we just buy this $50 program that would let us send interoffice memos through the network, which would cut down on printing by 40%?"

"Well, once we get the ink cartridge situation under control, we can do that."

"But...what about conservation of ink now?"

"We'll have our in-house ink supply firm work on a 90% more efficient cartridge. It should be done in, oh, 15 years."

"You know, I was wondering why we had ice swans made of refiltered Evian at our Boxing Day party. And why we had a Boxing Day party. I think I know why now."

Looks like the new Iraqi government is following the Bush administration example of taking controversial yet politically connected operators and giving them positions overseeing things they have no experience dealing with.  For example: Who is the new interim minister overseeing the Oil Ministry?  That's right, Chalabi.  Not only does he have no experience with the petroleum industry, but millions of dollars seem to mysteriously disappear from just about every enterprise he's been involved with.  The man has no shame but he seems to make a pretty good living off of it.

Thomas Sowell on the economic inequities between whites and blacks today:

For most of the history of this country, differences between the black and the white population--whether in income, IQ, crime rates, or whatever--have been attributed to either race or racism. For much of the first half of the 20th century, these differences were attributed to race--that is, to an assumption that blacks just did not have it in their genes to do as well as white people. The tide began to turn in the second half of the 20th century, when the assumption developed that black-white differences were due to racism on the part of whites.

So far, so good:

What is not nearly as widely known is that there were also very large disparities within the white population of the pre-Civil War South and the white population of the Northern states. Although Southern whites were only about one-third of the white population of the U.S., an absolute majority of all the illiterate whites in the country were in the South.

I'm with you, Thomas:

Slavery also cannot explain the difference between American blacks and West Indian blacks living in the United States because the ancestors of both were enslaved. When race, racism, and slavery all fail the empirical test, what is left?

Culture is left.

OK, getting a bit sketchy here.  Depends on what you mean.

The culture of the people who were called "rednecks" and "crackers" before they ever got on the boats to cross the Atlantic was a culture that produced far lower levels of intellectual and economic achievement, as well as far higher levels of violence and sexual promiscuity.

Ahh, Southern culture as a whole is a problem--I can't really argue against that.

While a third of the white population of the U.S. lived within the redneck culture, more than 90% of the black population did.

So the African-Americans were victims of a British-based redneck culture--intriguing.  But why are Whites now in a better socio-economic position?

It eroded away much faster in Britain than in the U.S. and somewhat faster among Southern whites than among Southern blacks, who had fewer opportunities for education or for the rewards that came with escape from that counterproductive culture.

But why was it slower to disappear amongst Blacks?  Oops, the article ended--no explanation.  Why would African American's continue to be trapped in a culture imposed on it?  Why did they have fewer opportunities for education or for the rewards that came with escape from that counterproductive culture?  What is left?

Racism is left. 

Sowell, who is African-American himself, constructs a perfectly sound theory of why African Americans continue to, on average, to be stuck in lower socio-economic strata, yet willfully blinds himself to the basic reason why they continue to be stuck there.  There is no doubt that in the Jim Crow South and in America in general, racism limited economic and educational opportunities for for African-Americans.  Indeed, it is not surprising that an ethnic group that had such a culture imposed on it, and that was prohibited from even learning to read for the first two hundred and fifty-years of its existence on the continent, would lag behind in recovering from such a blow.  That legacy has disappeared only slowly--and Jim Crow's "separate but equal" played a large role in assuring that African-American recovery would be slow. 

Finally it must also be said that Sowell paints the American traditions of his race with a terribly broad brush.  There are many strong communal traditions which have served the African Americans well, through these difficult times.  Furthermore, their manner of speaking is relatively irrelevant to success, as long as they can function in the greater society.  Instead of focusing on elements of Southern culture that have done a disservice to Blacks, Sowell portrays the culture as all of one piece, chains that must be broken and discarded before African-Americans can take their rightful place in American Society.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  As citizens, African Americans are fully entitled to all of the rights given other races--culture notwithstanding.  Mainstream American culture can and must adapt as much to the African American culture as the other way around.

Sowell stood one step away from getting a grip on the problem and shrank from the obvious conclusion.  Let's hope he gets it soon.

The new resolve in the Democratic Party is showing results.  The ruinous and indefensible changes to the House ethics rules that would allow one party to essentially shut down ethics violations will be rescinded by the House Republicans. 

On Social Security, Bush's ill-conceived plan to gut Social Security and replace it with private accounts in a desperate attempt to erase his legacy of spending has hit a brick wall.

On filibusters, a Washington Post poll shows that only 26 percent of Americans support giving the Republicans an easier time of moving their judicial candidates by ending the minority party's ability to filibuster nominations.

These events demonstrate that the only thing needed to defeat the Bush agenda is a strong, unified caucus willing to fight for what is right.  Keep it up, boys and girls.

I. The Enterprise
"At times material to this indictment there existed a criminal organization which is referred to hereafter as "the Chicago Outfit." The Chicago Outfit was known to its members and associates as "the Outfit" and was also known to the public as "organized crime," the "Chicago Syndicate" and the "Chicago Mob."  The Chicago Outfit was an "enterprise" as that term is used in Title 18, United States Code, Section 1961(4)."

Peter Fitzgerald takes down the entire leadership of the Chicago Mob from Marcello on down.

Great coverage at the Chicago Tribune.  (Reg. Req.)

The limits of the Bush Doctrine seem more and more evident when one actually pays attention to the paucity of the adminstration's international economic policies.  Last week it was " he of the perpetual 'deer in the headlights' expression" Treasury Secretary John Snow begging the Chinese to revalue the renminbi and today it is the President begging Bush family friend Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to pump a little more oil before the summer!  Although the Bush administration has gotten a lot of mileage out of wishful think and redefining the terms of engagement, begging others to fall in line behind our fiscal trainwreck is ultimately not a viable international economic policy nor should we fool ourselves into believing that because we are the world's largest economy that everyone else is eventually going to come around and bail us out. 

Who knew that being the world's only remaining Super Power meant not only not having to say you're sorry all the time but that you'd also be reduced to seeking hand-outs like a bum!

Attention America:  The Chicago White Sox are on fire with a 15-4 record and a seven-game winning streak. 

Its called fighting for what we believe--and it is worth it.  What is the Democratic Party if it doesn't fight for what it believes in?  And the results?  Excellent.

The country's leading business lobbying associations, close GOP allies in recent legislative efforts and political campaigns, have told senior Republicans that they would not back the Frist initiative to force votes on President Bush's judicial nominees.

Fundamentalists think that the fact that they voted for a man who won only 51% of the vote is enough to give them near-total control of every branch of government.  Democrats have to show them that we will continue to fight for the values of tolerance and personal freedom we believe this country should stand for.  We have nothing to lose but our chains.