Where Have We Seen This Before?

Hmmm. Execs from the top five oil companies were called on the congressional carpet yesterday to explain why they've all been using the same cribbed disaster response plan that was apparently originally written for a well located in an Inuit neighborhood a long time ago. Would saying the entire thing was made of weapons-grade awkward be a gross understatement? Yes. Yes, it would.

The second squirming executive at 0:57 is very familiar, but I just can't put my finger on where I've seen him and that look on his face before. Oh. Wait.

Yep, that's it.

Michael told me to write a disaster response plan, but I spilled my gallon can of Cheez Whiz on it. Costco, nine bucks. So I copied this other plan I found on the internet, and if anyone asks about it, two words: Caribbean. Walruses. It could happen. That's five words. Sometimes you have to think outside the box. [/kevin]

Jon Kyl: Meet Your GOP Representation, Arizona

How nice for you, Senator Kyl. I am elated to learn that you have never needed maternity care, since that would imply just a touch of intersexability, and lord knows that level of cognitive dissonance might make your delicate head explode. I wonder, though, how your wife managed to pay for her two bouts of prenatal care/delivery, or who paid to shepherd your four grandchildren through embryoship and fetushood and into the wide world. Then again, that's apparently not your problem; those harlots got themselves knocked up, so why should you have to worry about it? Or, even worse, pay for it? Seriously, you donated the sperm! What else do these freeloaders want?

I do wish Senator Stabenow had come back with a little more current rejoinder than "your mom probably did." Something along the lines of "I don't need ED coverage, but my premiums help pay for yours" might have been a little refreshing.

I also don't need a prostate exam and will never be at risk for testicular cancer, but--as long as my company policy also covers things like well-woman exams and contraception--I don't mind knowing I'm chipping in to help keep the guys around me healthy. Because, unlike Senator Kyl and the brain-dead Maricopa County voters who keep putting him in office, I understand that paying out a little for things that don't benefit me directly but are still necessary for the nation to keep humming along is part of the deal when you live in a society that falls anywhere on the continuum past bands of hunter-gatherers. And, frankly, those guys probably understood that a little extra effort on their parts to keep everyone in the band fed, clothed, and sheltered upped their own chances for surviving another season.

One Day, Two Hearings, Little New

Two separate congressional confabs today, although only one officially reached the level of "hearing." Naturally, that's the one I'm finding zero coverage of tonight on my first sweep through the online editions of the major papers. You know, the judiciary committee's hearings on whether it's okay to dispense with habeas corpus when dealing with suspected terrorists, unlawful combatants, shifty-lookin' Arabs acquired through dubious means... okay, after some digging I found a few stories. Interestingly, Specter's setting himself up as the anti-White House maverick on this one. It was certainly contentious.

Several witnesses told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the protections should be afforded all detainees.

Retired Adm. John Hutson says habeas corpus protects the innocent.

He says it would give "no comfort" to any terrorists who have fought the US.

But Texas Senator John Cornyn says "enemies of the US captured on the battlefield" shouldn't be afforded protections that are in the Constitution.

Never mind that an open-ended war on a noun makes the entire world a battlefield, to say nothing of the fact that I find it extremely curious that a man who has argued so vociferously that detainees should have no protections because they (1) don't wear a uniform or (2) fight out in the open in conventional ways should be so fixated on the no-rights detentions being okay because they were captured "on the battlefield" as if both sides were lining up in ranks and marching broadside into each other. As if they all actually had been captured with guns in their hands rather than being sold out by a rival warlord holding a grudge or maybe, just maybe, being grabbed under false pretenses on a layover in the States on their way home to Canada. Admiral Hutson summed it up best:

Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, a former judge advocate general of the Navy who is now the president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in Concord, N.H., told the senators they would be winning a “military victory’’ if they managed to preserve habeas corpus rights for detainees.

Terrorists “want to bring us down to their level,’’ he said. “Military doctrine says you have to hold the high ground.’’

The other event today was a Democrat-sponsored forum on the state of the war. This received considerable airplay and bandwidth, and featured three retired generals--all of whom served in Iraq--blasting the administration and Rumsfeld in particular.

"I believe that Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the administration did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq," retired Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste told a forum conducted by Senate Democrats.

A second military leader, retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, assessed Rumsfeld as "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically."

Predictably, the Republican leadership (which was not in attendance; they were too busy whinging about the considerable costs involved in giving detainees basic judicial rights) called it a pre-election stunt (with straight faces!):

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Armed Services Committee, dismissed the Democratic-sponsored event as "an election-year smoke screen aimed at obscuring the Democrats' dismal record on national security."

"Today's stunt may rile up the liberal base, but it won't kill a single terrorist or prevent a single attack," Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement. He called Rumsfeld an "excellent secretary of defense."

No comments were forthcoming from Sen. McConnell about the recent National Intelligence Estimate that concluded the war in Iraq has actually created more terrorists and increased the likelihood of future attacks. Nor about the news today that we have, at present, no more than three combat brigades available for emergency deployment. That's 10,000 guys, tops.

Think about the billions of dollars that have been squandered in Iraq, the thousands of lives wasted for Bush's, Rumsfeld's, Cheney's lies. Think about the couple hundred who have died in Afghanistan as their troop numbers and equipment have been inexorably drawn down, down, to the point of such ineffectiveness that the Taliban are resurgent and Osama's boys have found new digs in Pakistan. These fuckwits abandoned their first war before it was over to start a new one we can never honorably end, and in the process have left this country more vulnerable and less ready to respond to a disaster than it has ever been. And still they have the gall to stand up there and defend themselves and chide those of us who are screaming that enough is enough.

More. It Never Ends.

Cornyn says protecting marriage is important because it's the most fundamental institution of American society. Funny me, I thought our most fundamental institution was the structure of the republic, with the Constitution as its source. He still thinks laws should be determined solely by We the People, rather than given on high by activist judges. Of course, he's a Texas Republican, so he's probably still chapped about the courts decreeing from on high that non-whites gotta be treated as full humans after all, even to the point of letting them marry white folk.

Oh, and the Clear Skies Initiative really would clean up our air, and drilling could be done in ANWR in an environmentally friendly way.

Is this the same guy who was standing up yesterday talking about what a surreal experience it was? Yeah. Still pretty surreal from this end too.

Things I've Learned Thanks to the Gay Marriage Kerfuffle

Random tidbits from the Marriage Amendment debate. My reactions, as always, follow in italics.

From Sam Brownback:
Massachusetts marriage licenses now have spaces for "partner A" and "partner B" instead of "husband" and "wife." This means the terms husband and wife will soon disappear, and if that happens, Lord only knows how the terms "father" and "mother" will be redefined (shudder). Because Lord knows that if I don't put my name on a line explicitly labeled "husband" on a form, that word will permanently disappear from my vocabulary.

More from Brownback:
How this impacts religious freedom: Catholic Charities was forced to leave Boston! Because "they're not allowed to do adoptions anymore!" Never mind, of course, that they chose to stop administering adoptions rather than consider same-sex couples.

Brownback's closing argument:
Ask in your own heart: is this the best way to raise the next generation? Hmmm. Should we raise them to believe conformity with a specific interpretation of the Christian Bible should be mandated for an entire society, or should we raise them to believe the individual informed conscience should be the arbiter? Let me think about that one for two seconds.

Whoops, Sam ain't done:
It's very hard for children to be raised by single parents. So it somehow follows logically that the problems encountered by single-parent households are solely due to the absence of the opposite gender, rather than the absence of a second parent. One of the best ways out of poverty is to get a job and get married! So we better make sure that option is never available to gays.

Oh, goody, now it's Cornyn:
We're not raising this issue gratuitously. It was brought to us by people who ran to the courts claiming that one man-one woman is discrimination. The facts that it's election run-up season and Dear Leader's numbers are tanking have nothing--nothing!--to do with it.

Throughout history, the marriage of a man and a woman has been viewed as the ideal. Except, of course, when it hasn't.

Lawrence v. Texas signaled the beginning of the threat to traditional marriage. The court not only struck down the sodomy law but created a new constitutional right saying your intimate adult sexual relationships can't be regulated. Because conservatives want nothing more than for government to butt out of... oh, wait a minute, that only applies to business regulation.

This almost seems surreal to me. Try spending a day inside my skin, bro.

This is our Constitution. And it's the people's prerogative to amend it and say what goes into that constitution. Funny, I thought it was my Constitution too, but I seem to have very little say about what goes in or stays out.

This amendment will protect the American people from having to live in a country where the laws do not reflect their will. Oh, John, John, are you sure you want to skate out on ice that thin? Forty years ago there were a hell of a lot of people in this country who vehemently disagreed with the notion that two people of different races should be allowed to marry.

I'd live-blog more of this, but it's just too fucking depressing and I can't listen to it any more. Much more later, I'm sure.

Rampant Confusion

Perhaps inspired by the rutting pigeons currently puffing and circling to mark the coming of spring, Arlen Specter is doing his own little bit of neck puffery, threatening to cut off funding to W's domestic surveillance program(s) unless he comes clean about the whole deal, at least to Congress.

"Institutionally, the presidency is walking all over Congress at the moment," Specter said. "If we are to maintain our institutional prerogative, that may be the only way we can do it."

Well... yeah, can't argue the doormat point, but why am I remembering Specter leading the way in handing out free passes to the executive branch, personified by Alberto Gonzales, in the Judiciary Committee's wiretap hearings a couple of months ago? Why do I remember Specter throwing his support behind GOP declarations that the best solution to the wiretapping problem was to pass legislation making the president's very illegal activities retroactively legal after all?

Specter announced his intent to turn this pull-the-plug amendment to a spending bill into a full-fledged stand-alone bill, and to hold hearings. A bill and hearings! So there's hope for some stubborn remnant of decency here, right?

Specter made it clear that, for now, the threat was just that."I'm not prepared to call for the withholding of funds," he told reporters later.

Oh. Never mind.

He did say that he hopes to raise public awareness of the issue. If that has always been the case, why didn't he hit Gonzales harder? The obstruction and obfuscation was generated in those hearings was more than ample fodder for a public stink-making.

Meanwhile, the GOP Congress has come up with some great ideas for alleviating the financial crunch skyrocketing gas prices are putting on middle America. Number one, of course, is a $100 rebate check to every taxpayer. Think of it! One hundred dollars. That's between two and three tankfuls for people with average-sized vehicles, and less than a tank for Hummer, Excursion, and Escalade drivers (giggle).

It's the equivalent of tossing a quarter to a pestering 10-year-old at your backroom card game and saying, "Here's two bits, kid, now scram" in your best Jimmy Cagney.

But it's more than a simple palliative slap in the face. Take that hundred and multiply it by 100 million taxpayers, and whaddyaget? 10 billion dollars. Ten billion dollars... of taxpayer money... most of which will be paid right back to the oil companies. Should I point out that with that 10B we could buy other things? Should I be a shit and point out that it would buy us a week and a half in Iraq? Of course, should that provision pass, it would mean that the rest of the spending bill it's attached to passes as well, and what else could be lurking in there? Opening up ANWR to drilling? Unfortunately, yes. And, should it be defeated, how many Republicans are going to scream that the Dems took a Benjamin out of every poor and middle class American's pocket?

Long past time to get the bike dusted off and lubed up. And to rediscover my super-local economies of scale.

Random Wednesday

Some thoughts, in no particular order...

Scalia won't recuse himself from cases involving the right of captured enemy combatants to trial. He said:

"War is war, and it has never been the case that when you captured a combatant you have to give them a jury trial in your civil courts," he says on a tape of the talk reviewed by Newsweek. "Give me a break."

Hum. I would point out that it's also never been the case that we've been capturing combatants (or at least taking custody of people turned in to receive a bounty who may not be actual combatants) in the course of an open-ended war declared on a concept, but I suppose that's splitting hairs. How do we maintain the moral high ground, again, when we keep men detained for years without access to counsel or even a declaration of their specific crimes, other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time? There are surely some bloodthirsty bastards languishing in Gitmo. I suspect there are plenty more innocent guys who are there only because of shit-ass bad luck.

More from South Dakota, courtesy of Rep. Roger Hunt, main sposor of The Bill (thanks to this dKos diary):

Hunt notes that the bill forbids doctors from prescribing any drug or doing any procedure on a pregnant woman “with the specific intent” of ending a pregnancy. It also protects the right of women to use “ a contraceptive measure, drug or chemical, if it is administered prior to the time when a pregnancy could be determined through conventional medical testing…”

In other words, a woman presenting herself to an emergency room immediately after a rape, Hunt says, would be able to use emergency contraception; the trick is that she has to do within the first few days after the assault, before any test can determine whether she was pregnant in the first place. The lawmakers concluded that it’s OK for a rape victim to have an abortion, so long as she doesn’t know for certain that she’s doing it.

Well, okay, Rog. You just lost your cred for having repulsive but consistent logic. Before, you and your ilk were on rock-solid ground when you said all abortions are murder, regardless of the circumstances of conception, and thus prohibited. But now, we have to consider the extreme anti-choice position that because pregnancy begins at conception (as opposed to the mainstream medical view that pregnancy begins at implantation), emergency contraception preventing implantation thus is equivalent to abortion. You're saying that kind of abortion is okay if the woman doesn't know she's pregnant. So if she's raped and "impregnated," that is, if sperm manages to crash into egg and the woman goes straight away to the ER and has an "abortion," that is, she's administered enough birth-control meds to flush the uterine lining, well, that's okay.

That's where you lose any moral legitimacy you're trying to claim. By your own biologically shoddy definition, you're allowing the abortion of a rape-induced pregnancy so long as the procedure occurs within a timeframe you've so very tightly and arbitrarily defined.

If abortion is okay under those circumstances, it has to be okay under all circumstances of rape.

Maybe Roger thinks he's carved out the unassailable loophole that his conscience was surely nagging him for. All he's done is expose the uncomfortable (for the religious right) reality that people really don't like the idea of a woman being forced to carry and deliver her rapist's child. Maybe he thinks the window-of-ignorance exemption gives him a free pass because of course every woman who's raped by a stranger or coerced by an abusive boyfriend or husband marches straight to the emergency room, announces she's been raped, and is promptly administered the pill. And of course every minor girl who's raped by her father or grandfather or uncle does the same thing. Straightaway. Within a day or two. They all make it to hospitals staffed by doctors who don't put personal religious beliefs ahead of their patients' welfare.

Then they go home to find what the tooth fairy left under their pillows, with a side trip to pick up the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Another little gem from Roger Dodger:

Hunt says, once more citing the findings of the task force, “she may be dealing with a lot of pressure, from family, boyfriend, husband. We have a situation in which the woman may be getting so much pressure she’s not thinking clearly.” The doctor, on the other hand, “should be operating in a calm and collected manner, have identified all the risks to the woman; he’s counseling the woman. We think its appropriate to place a greater burden upon the doctor.”

The doctor is to blame for an abortion because unwillingly pregnant woman do not think clearly. Because she's not thinking clearly, she should not be given the option to elect an abortion. Apparently pregnant women are only considered to be capable of clear, independent thought when they decide to keep the baby. Lovely.

In happier news, the women's NCAA tournament had several barn-burners in the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight games. We are particularly enamored of Ivory Latta. Mainly because we are short and scrappy ourselves. The men's side of the tournament has been too cool this year, with seedings thrown out the window. A large commuter school with an on-campus population of only 5,000 has tossed the big boys aside with aplomb, although we were sorry to see our Tarheels go down to them. Anyway, go George Mason.