Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Free To Think

by poputonian

Mithras reports on a special coming out announcement:

On Monday, March 12, the Secular Coalition for America will make history by announcing the name of the first openly nontheistic member of Congress.

Elected officials who do not hold a god-belief are a rarity and only a few nontheist politicians have been open about their beliefs. …

As put forward in law by the U.S. Constitution, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” However, in practice politicians are compelled to expound on their religiosity, forcing nontheists to keep quiet about their beliefs or opt out of pursuing public office.

With next Monday’s historic announcement, the Secular Coalition for America hopes additional elected officials will self-identify as nontheists and establish that a god-belief is not a necessary prerequisite for public service.

Flashback to 1786, the year before the Constitutional Convention, and to the passage of a Virginia law and what Susan Jacoby describes as “the unequivocal guarantee of freedom of thought at the heart of the statute.”

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or beliefs; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

And though we will know that this Assembly, elected by the people for the purpose of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present, or to narrow its operation, such act will be infringement of natural right.

Jacoby continues in Freethinkers to describe the uniqueness of Virginia’s statute and why it alone was chosen as the model for the U.S. Constitution:

In America, where the great debate over the federal Constitution was just beginning, Virginia’s law was hailed by secularists as a model for the new national government and denounced by those who favored the semi-theocratic systems still prevailing in most states. As the Constitutional Convention opened in 1787, with George Washington as its president, legally entrenched privileges for Protestant Christianity were the rule rather than the exception in most states. The convention could have modeled the federal constitution after the Massachusetts constitution of 1780, which extended equal protection of the laws , and the right to hold office, only to Christians. And not all Christians: Catholics were only permitted to hold public office if they took a special oath renouncing papal authority “in any matter, civil, ecclesiastical or spiritual.” Even that restriction was not enough for the most committed descendants of the Puritans; sixty-three of Massachusetts towns registered official objections to the use of “Christians” rather than “Protestant,” bearing out a prediction by Adams that “a change in the solar system might be expected as soon as a change in the ecclesiastical system of Massachusetts.” State religious restrictions were grounded not only in old prejudices but in the relative political strength of various religious constituencies. The 1777 New York State constitution, for example, extended political equality to Jews — who, though few in number, had considerable economic influence in New York City — but not to Catholics (who were not allowed to hold public office until 1806). Maryland, the home state of Charles Carroll, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, guaranteed full civil rights to Protestants and Catholics but not to Jews, freethinkers, and deists. The possibility of equal rights for non-Christians had not even occurred to Carroll. In this old age, he wrote, “When I signed the Declaration of Independence, I had in view not only our independence of England, but the toleration of all sects professing the Christian religion, and communicating to them all equal rights.” In Delaware, officeholders were required to take an oath affirming belief in the Trinity, and in South Carolina, Protestantism was specifically recognized as the state-established religion.

But the framers of the Constitution chose Virginia, not the other states, with their crazy quilts of obeisance to a more restrictive religious past, as the model for the new nation. The Constitution is a secularist document because of what it says and what it does not say. The first of the explicit secularist provisions is article 6, section 3, which states that federal elective and appointed officials “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” No religious test. This provision, much less familiar to the public today than the First Amendment, was especially meaningful and especially sweeping in view of the fact that the necessity of religious tests and religious oaths for officeholders had been taken for granted by nearly all the governments of the American states (not to mention those of the rest of the world) at the time the Constitution was written. The addition of the affirmation is significant, because it meant that the framers did not intend to compel officeholders to take a religious oath on the Bible. The intent could not have been clearer to those who wanted only religious men — specifically, Protestant believers — to hold office. As a North Carolina minister put it during his state’s debate on ratification of the Constitution, the abolition of religious tests for officeholders amounted to “an invitation for Jews and pagans of every kind to come among us.”

So how did the world react to the secular politics of Virginia and America? Jacoby continues:

The significance of Virginia’s religious freedom act was recognized immediately in Europe. News of the law was received with great enthusiasm — not by the governments of the Old World, with their entrenched state-established religions, but by individuals who wished to promote liberty of conscience in their own countries. The Virginia law, translated into French and Italian as soon as the text made it across the Atlantic in 1786, was disseminated throughout most of the courts of Europe, and, as Jefferson wrote to Madison, “has been the best evidence of the falsehood of those reports which stated us to be in anarchy.” Expressing his pride in Virginia’s leadership, Jefferson observed that “it is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests, and nobles, and it is honorable for us, to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare, that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions.”

Amen to that.

Can Rover Come Over?

by digby

I hate to say I’m prescient, but … I’m prescient.

The White House acknowledged on Sunday that presidential adviser Karl Rove served as a conduit for complaints to the Justice Department about federal prosecutors who were later fired for what critics charge were partisan political reasons.

House investigators on Sunday declared their intention to question Rove about any role he may have played in the firings.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Rove had relayed complaints from Republican officials and others to the Justice Department and the White House counsel’s office. She said Rove, the chief White House political operative, specifically recalled passing along complaints about former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias and may have mentioned the grumblings about Iglesias to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Iglesias says he believes he lost his job as the top federal prosecutor in New Mexico after rebuffing Republican pressure to speed his investigation of a Democratic state official.

Perino said Rove might have mentioned the complaints about Iglesias “in passing” to Gonzales.

“He doesn’t exactly recall, but he may have had a casual conversation with the A.G. to say he had passed those complaints to Harriet Miers,” Perino said, relaying Rove’s hazy recollection.

Perino said such a conversation would be fairly routine at the White House.

“Lots of people at the White House gets lots of complaints about lots of different people on a multitude of subjects,” she said. “The procedure is to listen and take the appropriate action to notify the relevant agency.”

Right. And it’s perfectly normal for people to call up the political director of the White House to complain about Republican US Attorneys failing to prosecute Democrats and for the political director to casually chat back and forth with the Attorney general of the United States about it.

The minute I read that the Arkansas replacement was one of Rove’s little minions and that Iglesias had been pressured before the election to indict a Democrat, it was clear that this was Rove deal all around.

The Dems want to question Rove ao I suspect we are going to see some executive privilege claims start flying. Rove seems to have developed a bad case of SMS (Scooter Memory Syndrome) in which he can’t remember a damned thing whenever it becomes clear that he was playing politics in the lowest most obvious way possible. In his case, once the investigations start, the disease will render him braindead so he probably won’t be much use to anyone from this point forward.

And have I menioned in the last few hours that we are paying this asshat’s salary?
Can’t they at least get one of those rich swift boat creeps to pony up some wingnut welfare and leave the taxpayers out of it? I can’t see what possible purpose he serves as a government employee.

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Lancing The Boil

by digby

One of the most interesting things about following the Connecticut senate race last summer was becoming exposed to the local media. One stand-out was Colin McEnroe, who has written the piece that should have been written by a top flight national columnist except they are so in the tank, that I’m not sure they even understand the issue much less have the integrity to write something about it:

During the trial of Scooter “I. Lewis” Libby, the notes of Cathie Martin were flashed up on a courtroom screen. Martin was an aide to Vice President Darth Vader, I mean Dick Cheney, and her notes concerned ways in which Cheney might combat the notion that the White House had not been honest about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities. As option number one, Martin wrote “MTP-VP,” meaning either that the Vice President should aim his Death Star at some hapless planet and “massacre their people” or, more likely, that the Vice President should appear on the program you are not going to watch today.

Martin then did a pros and cons notation about this strategy. On the pro side she wrote “control message.”

Really? That’s the best thing about sending Vice President Cheney on “Meet the Press?” That you can control the message you want to get out? Interesting.

But then there were more notes presented at the trial. These notes were taken by Libby himself about a conversation he had with Cheney adviser Mary Matalin about how to deal with that meddlesome NBC fellow Chris Matthews. “Call Tim. He hates Chris – he needs to know it all,” was the advice from Matalin jotted down by Libby.

Hmmm. A Cheney adviser knows that NBC’s Russert hates NBC’s Matthews and that Russert will be helpful.

A couple of connectable dots involve Matalin’s husband, James Carville, and Russert’s son, Luke, who together launched a satellite radio sports talk show called “60/20,” a reference to their respective age groups, apparently because the title “A Giant Talking Adder and an Unqualified Stripling With a Famous Dad Discuss Big Strong Sweaty Men” was already taken by the Sci-Fi Channel.

Tim Russert and Carville actually promoted the sports show on “Meet the Press” (where Carville and Matalin regularly appear) without revealing that Luke Russert was the second host, as if that somehow removed the taint of hand-in-glove favoritism from this plug.

So Russert gets his kid a fancy gig with a famous and wired guy like Carville. It hardly comes as a surprise to think that Carville’s wife feels she has a little inside advantage in playing Russert for Cheney’s benefit.

But wait. There’s more.

When Russert was first subpoenaed, in 2004, to speak to the grand jury in the Libby case, he and NBC made a great show of fighting to quash that subpoena because, in the words of NBC News president Neil Shapiro, “The American public will be deprived of important information if the government can freely question journalists about their efforts to gather news.” This quote appeared in a “story” on the MSNBC website about NBC’s brave resistance.

Stirring words. Only one problem. It emerged at trial that Russert spoke freely to an FBI agent about this whole matter the first time he was ever contacted. The whole pageant of refusing to cooperate was kind of a charade. He had already cooperated. I mean, shouldn’t the story MSNBC ran about NBC’s commitment to the American public have explained that Russert compromised at least some of that commitment the first chance he got?

OK. Just a little more.

In his own trial testimony, Russert explained his own unique approach to the concept of “off the record” conversations with public officials. Russert said public officials do not have to ask to go off the record with him. They are always presumptively off the record. Then, if he wants to get them on the record, he revisits the point and asks them to go public.

This is a wonderful, generous strategy, and the only problem with it is that it represents a complete inversion of the standard operating practices of journalism. Every reporter who works at this newspaper, and pretty much every reporter professionally employed at any other reputable organ of the press has been instructed to do the opposite: assume that every utterance is on the record unless the utterer has explicitly gone off the record before uttering.

People who deal with the press are expected to know that.

You’re not even allowed to say, “The U.S. government blew up Pluto in November of last year, but that’s off the record,” although some reporters will give you the NBA continuation rule if you don’t pause for breath anywhere in there.

A gray area would be something like, “The real Zodiac killer was – and this is off the record – Andy Rooney.” That’s probably a legitimate off the record statement.

But Russert’s policy is one of his own invention, and it’s the kind of policy you’d have if you prized your cozy relationship with powerful people more highly than you prized your role as a reporter.

I mention all this because, here and there, you read comments about the prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and how much he damaged the First Amendment by sweating a bunch of journalists. Please. It’s more like he lanced some kind of infectious boil.

The reason why so many of us first amendment absolutists have come down on the side of the prosecution in the Libby trial has less to do with our desire to see him “nail Cheney” (although it would have been beautiful if he had) and more to do with this sickening Republican political and media establishment which suck their lifeblood from each other and in the process pervert and distort our politics.

We watched the press behave like a bunch of lapdancers for the Republicans for well over a decade. They wrapped their legs around Republican power so strongly that it finally led us into a circumstance that is killing people in large numbers. They were angry at Bill Clinton for “trashing the place” and it wasn’t his place. They took out their childish pique on Al Gore and stoked the fires that demanded Bush be seated in the white house no matter what the legitimate outcome of the election in 2000. After 9/11 they put on a modern martial pageant that would have made Joseph Stalin proud.

They can weep and moan all they want about the verdict and help the Republicans twist themselves into a pretzels trying to explain why lying about the reasons for a war is less serious than lying about a blow job. Fine. But we know that these mediawhores have been exposed. They can pretend that none of this was important and they can keep the GOP spin machine going with a few more tired whirls around that pole, but the people who are getting the accolades and the pulitzers and who will be remembered for their excellent reporting during this period will be the ones who have had the chutzpah to speak truth to power.

I’ll never forget Dana Priest on Meet The Press last year, breaking all the rules by exposing the spin for the spin it was — and making William Bennet so mad I thought the top of his head was going to explode:

MS. PRIEST: Every time there’s a national security story they don’t want published, they say it will damage national security. But they—for one thing, they’ve never given us any proof. They say it will stop cooperation, but the fact is that the countries of the world understand that they have to cooperate on counterterrorism. And just like the banks that did not pull out of the system, other countries continue to cooperate, because it’s a common problem.

MS. MITCHELL: But, Dana…

MR. HARWOOD: Have you heard…(unintelligible)…are pulling out from this system? I don’t think so.

MS. MITCHELL: Dana, let me point out that The Washington Post, your newspaper, was behind the others but also did publish this story. And a story you wrote last year disclosing the secret CIA prisons won the Pulitzer Prize, but it also led to William Bennett, sitting here, saying that three reporters who won the Pulitzer Prize—you for that story and Jim Risen and others for another story—were, “not worthy of an award but rather worthy of jail.” Dana, how do you plead?

MS. PRIEST: Well, it’s not a crime to publish classified information. And this is one of the things Mr. Bennett keeps telling people that it is. But, in fact, there are some narrow categories of information you can’t publish, certain signals, communications, intelligence, the names of covert operatives and nuclear secrets.

Now why isn’t it a crime? I mean, some people would like to make casino gambling a crime, but it is not a crime. Why isn’t it not a crime? Because the framers of the Constitution wanted to protect the press so that they could perform a basic role in government oversight[emphasis mine], and you can’t do that. Look at the criticism that the press got after Iraq that we did not do our job on WMD. And that was all in a classified arena. To do a better job—and I believe that we should’ve done a better job—we would’ve again, found ourselves in the arena of…

C&L caught it on video.

If the trial did nothing else it showed the sickeningly parasitic relationship between many in the press and the Republicans. The Libby apologists in the media and the political establishment are screaming bloody murder about the trial because there was no “underlying crime” so Scooter shouldn’t have even been been tried for lying to the Grand Jury. Forgetting their unbelievable gall in making this argument after their non-stop shrieking about the “rule ‘o law” in the Lewinsky matter when the alleged underlying crime of sexual harrassment had been thrown out of court on the merits, their crocodile tears for the first amendment are especially rich coming from the people who wanted to jail reporters in stories that revealed current illegal and extra-constitutional policies on the part of the administration. Dana Priest and others are actually doing the work they are supposed to do which is overseeing government and they are vilified by the same Republican establishment that has otherwise wrapped itself in the first amendment to defend Tim Russert and Judy Miller and the Bush administration.

This isn’t brain surgery. A reporter’s privilege should not be used to help powerful people in government lie to the public about what it’s doing or punish its enemies for speaking out against it. It exists to protect people who are risking their livlihoods by speaking out against those same powerful people. This is not hard for rational people to understand and yet in Washington they are so confused by their relationships with the powerful that they seem to be speaking in tongues on this issue.

The political press is not a monolith. There are incredible reporters like Priest who have done extraordinary work under very difficult circumstances. We can’t do without them. But the insider culture of Washington that McEnroe describes in his piece above is a decadent and insular little circle of celebrity and power that has affirmatively harmed this country. The Libby trial opened up that fetid boil and did this country a favor. I’m not surprised that they are squealing as loudly as they can — or that the rightwing freakshow is behaving as if they were born yesterday. After all, they all know they are compromised. They just didn’t think we did.

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No Proof Allowed

by digby

Following up on the post below, here’s an excellent article in the LA Times about the ousted prosecutors. This was an ugly episode all around. The reasons that are emerging for their firings are all very distrubing from the obvious political payback to a refusal to file death penalty cases where the only evidence of guilt hinged on the testimony of drug users and criminals. (Has there ever been a more bloodthirsty administration in history? They’re as bad as the Romans.)

But one thing jumped out at me that I had noticed earlier in the coverage of this issue and I could use an explanation:

Charlton further butted heads when he wanted FBI agents to tape-record interviews and confessions, particularly in child molestation cases on Arizona’s 21 Indian reservations, something the FBI historically has not done.

Charlton believed the recordings would help sway juries, but the Justice Department ordered him to back down last spring. Charlton offered to resign. Cooler heads agreed that he could do a pilot project for taping confessions. The project never got off the ground.

I can’t imagine why the US Government refuses to tape confessions unless it has something to hide. But I’m not a criminal defense lawyer or a prosecutor so perhaps I’m missing some nuance. It seems to me that forced confessions, such as those that were revealed in the probes in Illinois, are a problem. So, I’m sure, are false charges of the same. So I cannot think of a good reason why interrogations and confessions should not routinely be taped and put into evidence. If everything is above board then I can’t see why law enforcement is against it.

Am I being a completely irrelevant bleeding heart liberal here, or should we be questioning why in the world the Justice Department is so reluctant to tape confessions that they are willing to fire a prosecutor who thinks they are important?

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Are We Clear?

by digby

Crystal.

A couple of days ago I speculated about the US Attorney purge:

This little gambit has the mark of Rove all over it. The Arkansas crony was his little house boy. He even made the mistake of defending the decisions today and drawing himself into it publicly.

It’s long past time for Bush Brain to testify before congress, don’t you think?

Guess what?

Report: Rove was urged to oust attorney

N.M. GOP chief says he complained about prosecutor, was told ‘he’s gone’

The chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party was quoted Saturday as saying he urged presidential adviser Karl Rove and one of his assistants to fire the state’s U.S. attorney.

McClatchy Newspapers reported that Allen Weh said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove, asking that he be removed, and followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.

“Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?” Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event.

“He’s gone,” Rove said, according to Weh.

“I probably said something close to ‘Hallelujah,”‘ said Weh.

The GOP party leader made clear his dissatisfaction with Iglesias stemmed in part from his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation.

The Justice Department has said the dismissal of Iglesias and seven other U.S. attorneys was a personnel matter. White House involvement, Justice said, was limited to approving a list of replacements after the Justice Department made the decision to fire the eight.

The McClatchy story quoted Weh as saying he does not know whether Rove was involved in the firing of Iglesias or merely had been advised of the decision when the two talked at the White House.

“There’s nothing we’ve done that’s wrong,” Weh told the papers. “It wasn’t that Iglesias wasn’t looking out for Republicans. He just wasn’t doing his job, period.”

[…]

Neither Rove nor the White House press office responded immediately to e-mails Saturday evening seeking reaction to the McClatchy story. A reporter left messages Saturday evening at Weh’s home and cell phone numbers.

A White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said last week that administration officials were aware of the impending firings and offered no objections. But Rove “wasn’t involved in who was going to be fired or hired,” she said.

At a speech Thursday in Arkansas, Rove said of the general flap over the firings, “My view is this is unfortunately a very big attempt by some in the Congress to make a political stink about it.”

Iglesias has said he felt pressed by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., to rush indictments against Democrats before Election Day last November.

Domenici and Wilson acknowledge calling Iglesias, but deny pressuring him.

“Part of the controversy behind this is prosecutorial discretion,” Iglesias told the McClatchy papers. “What that means is it’s up to the sole discretion of the prosecutor in the case of how to handle the indictment and when to issue it.”

In case you missed it last week, here’s a little bio of Iglesias, the man whom the heroic Karl Rove axed for political reasons:

Iglesias, an evangelical Christian, was born in Panama, where his father was a missionary. His family moved to New Mexico when he was 12. After graduating from the University of New Mexico’s law school, Iglesias became a Navy judge advocate general.

In 1986, he was one of three JAGs who represented Marines accused of attempted murder for a hazing incident that their lawyers argued was encouraged by commanders at Guantanamo Bay. The successful defense helped the Marines avoid serious penalties, and the case inspired the hit Broadway play “A Few Good Men” and the later film. Iglesias was not consulted during the production of the play or movie.

He left the Navy but remains a captain in the reserves. He returned to New Mexico to start a family. Iglesias left a job in the Albuquerque city attorney’s office to become a White House fellow in the Clinton administration. He then returned to New Mexico and ran for state attorney general in 1998, narrowly losing.

After George W. Bush was elected president in 2000, New Mexico Republicans, led by Domenici, lobbied for Iglesias’ appointment as U.S. attorney. The expectation was that he would follow up his tenure with another run for public office.

“They felt they were grooming him for a political career,” said Joe Monahan, a New Mexico political blogger.

Iglesias didn’t make an initial splash. “He was very quiet,” Monahan said. He earned the ire of the state GOP by refusing to prosecute anyone for voter fraud after the 2004 elections, despite some Republicans’ contention that 15-year-olds voted. Iglesias said he could find no federal crimes.

The highlight of his term was the prosecution of state Treasurer Robert Vigil for extortion. Though Vigil is a Democrat from a prominent New Mexico political family, Iglesias’ prosecution was seen as nonpartisan and was supported by Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson. The first trial ended in a mistrial, but Vigil was convicted last year.

At the same time, New Mexico media were full of speculation about Iglesias’ investigation of local Democratic politicians’ involvement in the construction of an Albuquerque courthouse. That was the case that Domenici and Republican Rep. Heather A. Wilson had inquired about. The two politicians have denied they were trying to influence Iglesias.

David Campbell, a Democrat who was Albuquerque’s city attorney when Iglesias worked in the office, said his friend’s actions showed his character.

“As a Bush appointee he’s a stellar appointment, a right-wing evangelical Christian but somebody who plays his professional life with a lot of integrity,” Campbell said. “You couldn’t say a bad word about the guy.”

Karl Rove and his pals have systematically set out to make Republicans with integrity an endangered species.

Rove continues to be paid by the taxpayers of the United States and needs to be called to testify before congress on his role in this. I suspect that the White House will claim executive priviledge for this political henchman, but they should be forced to do that. The American people need to be reminded that they are paying for this assassin and that his boss, the president of the United States, is protecting him. It’s all part of the big picture that’s emerging about Republican rule.

Update: Josh Marshall wrote this, which seems to me to further make the case for Rove’s involvement.

Given what we know about New Mexico and Washington state, it simply defies credulity to believe that Lam — in the midst of an historic corruption investigation touching the CIA, the White House and major Republican appropriators on Capitol Hill — got canned because she wasn’t prosecuting enough immigration cases. Was it the cover? Sure. The reason? Please.

I’m not sure Lam would have been canned simply for prosecuting Cunningham. His corruption was so wild and cartoonish that even a crew with as little respect for the rule of law would have realized the impossibility of not prosecuting him. But she didn’t stop there. She took her investigation deep into congressional appropriations process — kicking off a continuing probe into the dealings of former Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis. She also followed the trail into the heart of the Bush CIA. Those two stories are like mats of loose threads. That’s where the story lies.

Rove no longer has any policy responsibilities. He’s the white house political guy, period. He failed to keep control of the congress. He has no job — unless it is putting out all these political fires. Dirty politics has, in the end, turned out to be the only thing he is really good at.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

If it Bleeds it Leads: New Fincher and Something Wilder

By Dennis Hartley

In a deliciously ironic scene from David Fincher’s new crime thriller, Zodiac, San Francisco homicide investigator Inspector David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), stalks out of a screening of “Dirty Harry”. He is appalled at what he sees as Hollywood’s obvious and crass exploitation of a real-life case that has consumed his life-the hunt for the notorious and ever-elusive “Zodiac” serial killer, who terrorized the Bay Area for a good part of the 1970’s. (Clint Eastwood’s fictional nemesis in “Dirty Harry” was a serial killer who taunted the authorities and the media, and referred to himself as “Scorpio”).

That is one of the “little touches” in Fincher’s multi-layered true crime opus that makes it an instant genre classic. The director has wisely eschewed the broad brush strokes of Grand Guignol that he slathered on in “Se7en” for a meticulously detailed etching that is equal parts Michael Mann and Stanley Kubrick, and thoroughly engrossing cinema.

The director’s notorious perfectionism serves the protagonists well-they are all obsessed individuals. The aforementioned Inspector Toschi and his partner Inspector William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards, in a nice comeback) are the type of dedicated cops that have could have strolled right out of an Ed McBain novel. Master scene-stealer Robert Downey Jr. is perfect as Paul Avery, the cocky crime reporter for the S.F. Chronicle who gloms on to the case; his “partner” of sorts is the Chronicle’s political cartoonist, Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is the first person to connect the dots (thanks to his obsession with cryptograms and puzzles). The nerdish Graysmith eventually becomes the most obsessed of them all, conducting an independent investigation over two decades.

Fincher has assembled a film that will please true crime buffs and noir fans alike. The combination of location filming, well-chosen period music and Fincher’s OCD-like attention to detail recreates a cinematic vibe that I haven’t experienced since the golden days of Sidney Lumet (think “Dog Day Afternoon”, “Serpico” or “Prince of the City”.)

And while we are on the subject of “media noirs”-warm up the DVD burner and mark this date on your calendar: March 17. Turner Classic Movies will be airing the rarely-screened 1951 Billy Wilder film The Big Carnival (9am Pacific; check your listings). Inexplicably unavailable on DVD (if anyone out there in the industry knows why, do tell!), it is arguably the most cynical noir ever made, and IMHO Wilder’s best film.

Kirk Douglas is brilliant as Charles Tatum, a washed up, alcoholic former big-city newspaperman yearning for a comeback (not unlike the Robert Downey Jr. character in “Zodiac”). He swears off the booze and sweet-talks his way into a job at a small-town newspaper in New Mexico, hoping that the Big Story will somehow fall into his lap.

He gets his wish when he happens across a “man trapped in a cave-in” incident. What begins as a “human interest story” turns into a major media circus, with the opportunistic Tatum pulling the strings as its ringmaster. Prescient, hard-hitting, and required viewing!

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They Want A Fighter

by digby

I keep hearing from the religio-political industrial complex that there are just oodles of voters out there who would love to vote for Democrats and agree with their philosophy if they just weren’t so horribly hostile to religion and unbending on abortion rights. And yet it seems that even the most hardcore social conservatives are far more flexible and open minded in their voting than that:

DAVID BROOKS: I know a lot of very socially conservative people who want Rudy Giuliani. They know where he stands on abortion and gay marriage. They know all that stuff. But they like him because they think he’s a fighter.

And they buy the story, which he tells quite well, that he fought liberals in New York, he even fought my newspaper, which goes a long way in the Republican Party. And so they like that idea, and so they’re willing to support him.

They say, “He may not be a great guy, he may not agree with us, but we need that kind of guy now.” So his lead is serious. I’m not sure it will hold up. His campaign is very poorly developed, but he is now the front-runner, with the support of a lot of social conservatives who will stay with him, I think.

I think Newtie could give him a run for his money among the social conservatives, but this is essentially correct in my view. Rudy is going to have to make some sort of pilgrimage to Jesusland and explain himself so that the High Priests of Southern Conservatism can give him dispensation, but as long as he’s a bonafide liberal hater and has a chance to win, he shouldn’t have a big problem.

And then there’s everybody’s favorite most excellent maverick who presents another challenge to the prevailing view that social issues are where the votes are. His social conservatism seems to have bought him exactly zilch.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How does that look to you, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I don’t disagree with David. I would say that John McCain, of whom I confess to be enormously fond, has to be hurt by the disclosure that Rudy Giuliani is beating him by 20 points among independent voters, because those were always John McCain’s really strong base and most enthusiastic backers.

And I have to think that John McCain is, by nature and definition and total inclination temperamentally, an insurgent, a maverick candidate. And as the front-runner going into this race, he almost became the establishment candidate, and it doesn’t work for John McCain.

And I guess the only thing I’d add to that is that John McCain, fairly or unfairly, has become the face and the voice on Capitol Hill of George Bush’s Iraq war, and that has hurt him, even though Rudy Giuliani has been a backer and supporter of that war, he hasn’t voted for it, he hasn’t spoken on it. He hasn’t been as identified with it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But how much does it matter, David, who’s ahead by 20 points or behind by 20 points at this phase, March of 2007?

DAVID BROOKS: There’s a long way to go, but I do think it matters. The money is being decided now. The press is being decided now. Obviously, a lot can change, but the campaigns have to react.

McCain, as Mark suggested, has to come back to the magic. A friend of mine put it this way: What the country wants is the McCain of 2000. When McCain is offering them is the Bush of 2000, the big front-runner campaign, the big, bloated operation. And he’s got to come back to that.

So he’s got to respond to what is a genuine and substantive shift in Republican opinion. Giuliani has to respond by actually offering a campaign. People like the past of Giuliani. He hasn’t yet developed the future.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And you’re saying he hasn’t done that yet?

Brooks is wrong about McCain.

For years now we’ve been told that a lot of people won’t vote for Democrats because we don’t have the proper reverence for their family values and war fighting capabilities. But it turns out not to be true at all. These allegedly deeply principled Americans are perfectly willing to vote for hypocritical, law and order drag queens over a man whose voting record and worldview has been consistently conservative and it’s because he has been a maverick, not that he isn’t one now. You can be forgiven extra-marital affairs or being a social liberal in your past — even being gay — if you are loyal to the Party. McCain bucks the hierarchy and that is the one thing that Republicans will not tolerate.

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Boo Hoo

by digby

I think I followed the impeachment saga about as closely as an average citizen could. I was so shocked and appalled I made some personal enemies with my vehement opposition to what was obviously an undemocratic usurpation of the constitution against the will of the people. You didn’t have to be clairvoyant to know that it was a partisan feeding frenzy that portended the illegal abuse of power that we are seeing today.

And I knew all about Newtie, or at least I thought I did. His immature peevishness was obvious, as that famous Daily News cover shows. But even though I am pretty well informed about this period, I was unaware of this piece that I came across this morning, written in 1998 by a very well-connected journalist for whom I have the utmost respect, Elizabeth Drew:

BARRING a miraculous turn of events — such as a Democratic sweep of the November elections, which nobody expects, or even a draw, which also isn’t expected — President Clinton will be impeached by the House. It will happen because House Republicans, led by Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., are determined that he be impeached, and also because the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee have already passed the point of no return. It will happen because the ever-stronger Republican base, the Christian Right, demands that it happen, and few Republicans will risk crossing them. This is more important to most Republicans than the president’s job approval ratings.

Some Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee jumped out early for making perjury — whatever the subject — an impeachable offense, without appearing to give the matter much thought. In 1974, what constituted impeachment was considered a solemn subject, and the then-Judiciary Committee members spent nearly a year before deciding. The bar is being lowered dramatically — and dangerously.

As of now the House leadership’s plan is that before Congress adjourns for the elections, the House committee will vote on — inevitably in favor of — a resolution to begin a formal impeachment inquiry; the inquiry would perhaps begin before the elections. After the elections, the committee would vote articles of impeachment, and the House would approve the articles (or article) before the end of the year, maybe even before Thanksgiving.

Gone, apparently, is the insistence of Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., the committee’s chairman, that impeachment must be bipartisan. And Gingrich’s statement a month ago that “only a pattern of felonies” and not “a single human mistake” should constitute grounds for an impeachment inquiry. (When Gingrich made this statement, he assumed — as did a lot of people — that Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr would come up with a report charging a broad pattern of obstruction of justice on the part of the Clintons.)

Gingrich, the moving spirit behind the current strategy — shared by the other House leaders — is driven, according to colleagues, in some substantial part by vengeance. Not against Clinton. Not against what he might see as serious offenses. A major motivation for Gingrich, these people say, is his lasting resentment of his treatment by the House ethics committee. (After a long investigation, the committee in January 1997 voted to reprimand Gingrich for use of tax-exempt foundations for political purposes and recommended a financial penalty for providing “inaccurate information” to the committee, causing a lengthened investigation. The House voted its agreement on Jan. 21.)

Gingrich feels that the process against him was unfair, that even the Republicans on the ethics committee didn’t protect him from the Democrats, who were on a tear, so why should he protect the president? This is an unusual rationale for proceeding to impeach a president.

The various establishmentarians’ efforts to put together a deal notwithstanding, Gingrich and the other Republican leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., have no interest in letting Democrats off the hook before the elections, or even in talking about a deal before the House has voted to impeach.

“They are discussing it as casually,” says one prominent Republican, “as if they were talking about passing a highway bill and saying `let the Senate fix it.’ “

This fits with Gingrich’s m.o. He was known for his petulance and childishness. You’ll recall that after the election that fall, Gingrich was finally tossed out by his own people. But I honestly did not know that the drive to impeach Bill Clinton was motivated in part by Gingrich’s hurt feelings over the ethics committee probe. It’s so like him.

Run, Newt, Run.

An Inconvenient Gasbag

by digby

On his widely syndicated radio talk show Thursday, Rush referred to those who accept global warming as fact as, “environmentalist wackos.” Sure Rush, the scientific community at large, as well as the Bush administration, are all environmentalist wackos. He then went on to address “some guy” aka John Kostyack of the National Wildlife Federation, as well as the environmental movement as a whole, with the following: “you are all wrong, and whether you know it or not, you are lying to your audiences.” In a further attempt to somehow make himself look even more ridiculous than he already does, Rush also claimed that the habitat of polar bears is not shrinking.

Here’s what he said:

Polar bears can swim 100 miles. They aren’t like us. We might be “stranded” on an ice floe if there’s no land nearby, and we had no helicopter and no jet ski. We might be in trouble, but they’re polar bears, and they can live in icy cold water by design. They love it. Have you ever been to the polar bear exhibit at the Central Park Zoo? I went to the polar bear exhibit, Central Park Zoo in June and it was scorching hot and one of the polar bears was nowhere to be seen. The other polar bear was outside and the zoo people had to come in with giant blocks of ice every hour or so for the polar bear to lay on. You talk about cruelty. Who’s doing more to hurt polar bears: the Central Park Zoo putting them out there in June in 100 degree temperature needing blocks of ice, or where they’re living, thriving naturally on these ice sculptures made by waves that had nothing to do with global warming or a melting glacier? It was so utterly false and propaganda — and here’s Sam Champion now on Good Morning America doing a story on how we’re killing the polar bears.

CHAMPION: The polar bear for many has become a living symbol of the dangers of global warming. The powerful kings of the arctic are finding their habitat shrinking.

RUSH: They’re not!

[…]

RUSH: The ozone is not being depleted. We’re not cooking because of it. You’re freezing your tush out there in Hartford. Aren’t you curious about how this is happening?

CALLER: No, I’m not looking at… I think the science has looked at centuries, not March 8. It is cold today.

RUSH: Records only go back 150 years in this temperature business. That’s another thing that’s fraudulent. Look, if you want to talk about the pollution coming from Ohio, please don’t leave out the pollution coming your way from China.

CALLER: Oh, absolutely.

RUSH: Well, okay.

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: China is not guilty of anything! They’re not even subject to any restrictions based on the Kyoto treaty. This is all aimed at the United States, but the vast majority of CO2, which is the number one greenhouse effect gas, occurs naturally: water vapor and other natural sources. Automobiles, these smokestacks in Ohio? (I told you people that they hate you in Ohio in the Northeast.) Four percent of green house gas is manmade.

And 100% of political gas is Rush-made.

The National Wildlife Foundation has some words for Dr. Limbaugh:

Unfortunately for Rush, the facts are on our side:

1) NASA photos and documentation showing a steady decline in polar sea ice since at least the 1970s.

2) The scientific community, as evidenced by the IPCC (pdf), has reached a consensus that it is “very likely” that global warming is caused by human emissions.

3) The National Snow and Ice Date Center: “If current rates of decline in sea ice continue, the summertime Arctic could be completely ice-free well before the end of this century.” Click here to see a graph depicting this decline between 1978 and 2005.

You can take action on this now by contacting U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall and informing him you are among the majority that supports the proposal to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The Fish and Wildlife Service is only taking public comments on this until April 9th so it is essential that you make your voice heard immediately!

Please distribute this message broadly and freely. The best way to counteract the work of global warming deniers is to let the truth spread like wildfire.

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The Screaming Minority

by digby

I hope that nobody gets the idea that Newt Gingrich’s comments to James Dobson exposing him as a rank hypocrite are going to mean anything to the Christian Right. They have proven that they are remarkably flexible when it comes to the personal morality of Republican leaders. If they repent for what they’ve done, they are forgiven, no harm no foul. (See most recently, Mark Foley.)

When it comes to Democrats, you have a very, very different story.

Here’s Dobson in September of 1999:

As with many Christians around the country, Shirley and I have been in prayer for our leaders in government who must deal with the fallout from this scandal. They will need great wisdom and discernment in the days ahead. Our most serious concern, however, is not with those in Washington; it is with the American people. What has alarmed me throughout this episode has been the willingness of my fellow citizens to rationalize the President’s behavior even after they suspected, and later knew, that he was lying. Because the economy is strong, millions of people have said infidelity in the Oval Office is just a private affair–something between himself and Hillary. We heard it time and again during those months: “As long as Mr. Clinton is doing a good job, it’s nobody’s business what he does with his personal life.”

That disregard for morality is profoundly disturbing to me. Although sexual affairs have occurred often in high places, the public has never approved of such misconduct. But today, the rules by which behavior is governed appear to have been rewritten specifically for Mr. Clinton.

[…]

How did our beloved nation find itself in this sorry mess? I believe it began not with the Lewinsky affair, but many years earlier. There was plenty of evidence during the first Presidential election that Bill Clinton had a moral problem. His affair with Gennifer Flowers, which he now admits to having lied about, was rationalized by the American people. He lied about dodging the draft, and then concocted an incredulous explanation that changed his story. He visited the Soviet Union and other hostile countries during the Vietnam War, claiming that he was only an “observer.” Numerous sources reported that he organized and participated in anti-war rallies in the United States, Great Britain, and Norway. Clinton evaded questions about whether he had used marijuana, and then finally offered his now-infamous “I didn’t inhale” response. There were other indications that Bill Clinton was untruthful and immoral. Why, then, did the American people ignore so many red flags? Because, and I want to give the greatest emphasis to this point, the mainstream media became enamored with Bill Clinton in 1992 and sought to convince the American people that “character doesn’t matter.”

[…]

It is obvious that the media now realizes they misled the American people. Most of the largest and most influential newspapers in the country are calling for Clinton’s resignation. Maureen Dowd, writing in The New York Times, said, “Mr. Clinton has killed something worthy and important in public life. All this carnage, and for what? To cover up some seamy sexcapades? His game has grown exhausting.”

[…]

As it turns out, character DOES matter. You can’t run a family, let alone a country, without it. How foolish to believe that a person who lacks honesty and moral integrity is qualified to lead a nation and the world! Nevertheless, our people continue to say that the President is doing a good job even if they don’t respect him personally. Those two positions are fundamentally incompatible. In the Book of James the question is posed, “Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring” (James 3:11 NIV). The answer is no.

[…]

Well, that brings me back to the issue with which we began. The American people have now heard the President’s dramatic confession of adultery. There is no longer any reason to speculate, and yet, the media reports that the majority continues to believe “it doesn’t matter.” At one point during the shocking revelations last month, Clinton’s public approval rating approached 70 percent! I just don’t understand it. Why aren’t parents more concerned about what their children are hearing about the President’s behavior? Are moms and dads not embarrassed by what is occurring? At any given time, 40 percent of the nation’s children list the President of the United States as the person they most admire. What are they learning from Mr. Clinton? What have we taught our boys about respecting women? What have our little girls learned about men? How can we estimate the impact of this scandal on future generations? How in the world can 7 out of 10 Americans continue to say that nothing matters except a robust economy?

I am left to conclude from these opinions that our greatest problem is not in the Oval Office. It is with the people of this land! We have lost our ability to discern the difference between right and wrong…Clearly, this nation has been blessed because it was based on a commitment to biblical morality. But that is changing. Eleven years ago, Gary Hart was forced to withdraw from the Presidential race after a brief tryst, and yet the majority today seems to find nothing wrong with behavior that is too disgusting to be reported on the evening news.

We are facing a profound moral crisis — not only because one man has disgraced us — but because our people no longer recognize the nature of evil. And when a nation reaches that state of depravity — judgment is a certainty.

Keep in mind that Clinton had publicly expressed remorse and asked for forgiveness numerous times at this point. He did everything but crawl down Pennsylvania avenue flagellating himself with a cat-o-nine-tails. The Christian Dobson would have none of it.

Like his soul-mate Joe Lieberman, his concern was not really with the alleged legal transgressions but rather with Clinton’s inherent bad character and the “evil” message it sent to the nation to have an admitted adulterer leading the nation.

He wasn’t alone.
Here’s more from a Christian Coalition meeting during the Lewinsky scandal:

At this year’s convention, which ends on Sunday, the group’s leaders used the Clinton scandal as the ultimate evidence that Washington was in need of a restoration of ”family values.”

”Character matters, and the American people are hungry for that message,” said Mr. Reed, the coalition’s former executive director and now a private political consultant. ”We care about the conduct of our leaders, and we will not rest until we have leaders of good moral character.”

I know. I know.

It’s possible that these people will reject Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani for the same “moral” reasons they condemned Clinton. But I very much doubt it. Dobson and Falwell and all these guys are hucksters and the people who follow them either have no moral consistency or they are shallow and insincere. Oh, they’ll find some lame rationale, as all Republicans do, but it’s long been clear that the only thing that matters to them is that the candidate be a member in good standing of the tribe and that they pay tribute to the High Priests.

I continue to wonder when the Democratic establishment is going to recognize that the Christian Right is run by a bunch of powerful phonies and that this small slice of the American electorate has been the tail that very cleverly wagged the dog of American politics for far too long.

These people will very likely back Newt in my opinion. He’s a real member of the right wing tribal leadership. And if they get behind him, he may win the nomination. Newt Gingrich is one of the most unlikeable politicians in America.

Run, Newt, run.

Update: Here’s Falwell today:

I was pleased to hear Mr. Gingrich state: “I’ve gotten on my knees and sought God’s forgiveness.”

He has admitted his moral shortcomings to me, as well, in private conversations. And he has also told me that he has, in recent years, come to grips with his personal failures and sought God’s forgiveness.

I have been very impressed with the spiritual maturity of this man and am convinced that he has been honest and forthright in clarifying his past failings and his quest, as a Christian, for God’s forgiveness.

Mr. Gingrich, now 63 and a grandfather, openly discussed his two divorces with Dr. Dobson, including the affair that took place during the Clinton impeachment proceedings. It is a “very painful topic and I confess that to you directly,” he stated.

As a pastor with more than a half-century of experience of working with fallible people, I have ministered to a few men who have experienced moral collapse. I have usually been able to tell which of these men was genuinely seeking forgiveness for their actions. My sense tells me that Mr. Gingrich is such a man. He is today happily married to wife Callista, and committed to be the husband he should be.

I well remember the challenge we evangelicals faced in 1980 when our candidate, Ronald Reagan, was the first presidential candidate who had gone through a divorce. We wisely made allowance for God’s forgiveness and America was the beneficiary of this historic champion.

Consequently, I decided earlier this week to invite Mr. Gingrich to come to Liberty University on May 19 as our graduation speaker. This will be his second commencement speech at Liberty, previously addressing graduates in 1991.

In recent years, Mr. Gingrich has dedicated much of his time to calling America back to our Christian heritage.

His most recent book, “Rediscovering God in America,” is a brilliant essay that highlights the unique and obvious Christian influence that inspired our nation’s dawning. The book takes readers on a tour of Washington, D.C., inspecting many documents, memorials, friezes and writings of presidents and national leaders who clearly put allegiance to Almighty God at the forefront of the nation’s development.

There has been a war on God in our nation in recent years and the effort to rekindle our national commitment to God is urgently needed.

Mr. Gingrich is certainly one of the brightest men I know in public life today, and he is becoming one of our great ambassadors for reawakening the spirit of our Founders.

In fact, his topic during the May 19 graduation will be, “Rediscovering God in America.” I am already anxious to hear it and am pleased that our young people will hear this modern American statesman.

I’m proud to call Mr. Gingrich my friend and I will continue to pray for him and his family as he contemplates a run for the presidency and as he deals with the coming media scrutiny of his past, present and future.

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