Politics

The director of the White House Office of Administration, Timothy A. Campen, has decreed that any questions to the White House must be filtered through Republican committee chairmen, effectively cutting off any questioning from Democratic representatives.

The Bush White House, irritated by pesky questions from congressional Democrats about how the administration is using taxpayer money, has developed an efficient solution: It will not entertain any more questions from opposition lawmakers.

[…]

“Given the increase in the number and types of requests we are beginning to receive from the House and Senate, and in deference to the various committee chairmen and our desire to better coordinate these requests, I am asking that all requests for information and materials be coordinated through the committee chairmen and be put in writing from the committee.”

He said this would limit “duplicate requests” and help answer questions “in a timely fashion.”

It would also do another thing: prevent Democrats from getting questions answered without the blessing of the GOP committee chairmen.

“It’s saying we’re not going to allow the opposition party to ask questions about the way we use tax money,” said R. Scott Lilly, Democratic staff director for the House committee. “As far as I know, this is without modern precedent.”

From what I can tell, this seems to be the political equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears, squinting your eyes shut, and chanting “LA LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

Classy.

(via Len and Atrios)

I’m so disappointed that I didn’t find out about this earlier. I can’t tell you how much safer and more secure I feel about the world around me to know that our dearly beloved President declared the week of October 26th to November 1st, 2003, to be Protection From Pornography Week.

Why, just the other day as I was in the corner store by my apartment, I was suddenly assaulted by Pornography. Racks and racks of catalogs, cardboard squares just barely covering the bountiful breasts of the ladies on the covers. “BARELY LEGAL!”, they screamed at me. “JUST TURNED EIGHTEEN!” called out another magazine. I couldn’t get away — I tried to leave, but suddenly I was accosted by “THE GIRLS OF STARBUCKS!” It was horrendous!

And if that weren’t bad enough — though I shudder to recall it, dear reader, and I do hope that those of you of a delicate constitution will turn away — right next to these was an even more hideous display of Pornography. Videos! I didn’t want to look at them, but the gaudy colors, the huge type on the boxes, and the titles — my God, the titles! “HOT CHOCOLATE LOVE!” cried out one, and I tried to turn away, lest it tempt me further. But it did me no good — right next to it sat another, coyly taunting me with promises of “HOT ASIAN ACTION!”

I turned and fled — it was more than any sane person should have to bear. How can we continue to allow this filth, this putrescence, this utter degradation to invade our lives? Sure, some may try to claim that it was in a small corner of the store, that I didn’t have to look. But truly, brothers and sisters, they called to me! I was a slave to their wanton desires! This must be STOPPED!

Ahem.

Or we could just go on with our lives and spend our tax dollars on something that might actually do some good for once. Cripes.

And now, in honor of this precious and noble week, I give you…BOOBIES!

Another thing that D and I noticed while we were looking at the proclamation.

We have committed significant resources to the Department of Justice to intensify investigative and prosecutorial efforts to combat obscenity, child pornography, and child sexual exploi-ta-tion on the Internet.

“Exploi-ta-tion.”

The only explanation we could come up with is that breaking the word down like that is the only way President Bush would be able to make it through that many syllables without stumbling, and someone forgot to correct that before uploading the speech to the site. But even so — couldn’t they at least break it down into the correct number of syllables?

(via Paul)

The NRA has a 19-page ‘blacklist‘ of groups, associations, companies and individuals known to support gun control legislation posted on their website. Feeling left out ’cause you’re not on it? Sign up to be added!

(via MeFi and Dad)

Bonus link: The truth about the Second Amendment.

As a matter of law, the meaning of the Second Amendment has been settled since the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). In that case, the High Court wrote that the “obvious purpose” of the Second Amendment was “to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness” of the state militia. The Court added that the Amendment “must be interpreted and applied with that end in view.” Since Miller, the Supreme Court has addressed the Second Amendment in two cases. In Burton v. Sills, 394 U.S. 812 (1969), the Court dismissed the appeal of a state court ruling upholding New Jersey’s strict gun control law, finding the appeal failed to present a “substantial federal question.” And in Lewis v. United States, 445 U.S. 55 (1980), the Court upheld the federal law banning felons from possessing guns. The Court found no “constitutionally protected liberties” infringed by the federal law.

In addition, in Maryland v. United States, 381 U.S. 41 (1965) and Perpich v. Department of Defense, 496 U.S. 334 (1990), cases not involving the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court has affirmed that today’s militia is the National Guard.

Since Miller was decided, lower federal and state courts have addressed the meaning of the Second Amendment in more than thirty cases. In every case, the courts have decided that the Amendment guarantees a right to be armed only in connection with service in a “well regulated Militia.” The courts unanimously have rejected the NRA’s view that the Second Amendment is about the self-defense or sporting uses of guns. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit wrote, the courts “have analyzed the Second Amendment purely in terms of protecting state militias, rather than individual rights.” United States v. Nelson, 859 F.2d 1318 (1988).

(via [fold_and_mutilate])

Looks like the White House doesn’t want its citizens finding information on their website too easily (after all, that might encourage us to think for ourselves). They’re using a webserver configuration file — the robots.txt file, which controls what parts of a website are read by the automated crawlers used by search engines such as Google to index the content of a website — to block access to any directory with the word “iraq” in its name. This effectively makes it all but impossible to search the White House website for any information on Iraq using Google, Altavista, or any other external search engine.

Aside from restricting us to use of the internal WhiteHouse.gov search engine, why would they do this? The DNC’s Kicking Ass blog has some ideas…

It’s easy enough to understand the reasoning if you look at past White House actions. Earlier this year, the White House revised pages on its website claiming that “combat” was over in Iraq, changing them to say “major combat.”

One of the reasons some alert readers noticed the change — and were able to prove it — was that Google had archived the pages before the change occurred. Now that all of the White House pages about Iraq are no longer archived by Google, such historical revisionism will be harder to catch.

(via Scripting News)

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President Bush doesn’t think the current Patriot Act is good enough. In an attempt to “close loopholes” in the original legislation, he’s proposed three very frightning changes, examined here by Robyn Blummer of the St. Petersburg Times:

Bush wants three additional powers from Congress.

First, he wants to give the Justice Department the authority to confiscate records and compel testimony without review by a court or grand jury.

[…]

Second, Bush wants to chip away at the right to bail. …he wants passage of the “Pretrial Detention and Lifetime Supervision of Terrorists Act of 2003,” a bill that would keep people accused of a whole range of new crimes behind bars pending trial by making those crimes presumptively “no bond” offenses.

[…]

And third, Bush wants to expand the reach of the federal death penalty by making it applicable to “domestic terrorism.”

Under the Patriot Act, the crime of “domestic terrorism” couldn’t be more broadly written. Any criminal act intended to influence the government through “intimidation or coercion” involving “dangerous acts” qualifies. Aggressive protesters of all stripes from Greenpeace activists to abortion foes could easily fall within this definition, opening the door for politically motivated executions.

Bush also wants the death penalty for those convicted of providing “material support for terrorism,” a law that can be violated even when people think they are giving money to a charity and don’t know the group is a designated terrorist organization.

Put simply, Bush wants to finalize the process of turning America into a police state, where the slightest suspicion of dissent could land you in jail without bail, and possibly on death row.

(via TalkLeft, via Atrios)

Kookaburra has an interesting wrap-up of President Bush’s visit to Australia posted on his site. While it’s certainly no surprise, apparently Bush’s visit was heavily stage managed to make sure he got the most possible accolades, and the fewest possible questions…

Every aspect of the visit was stage managed to ensure that John Howard controlled it for maximum political gain. Simon Crean managed a single 20 minute audience with George Bush, despite more Australian’s voting for his party than John Howard’s in the last election. (Howard is in government as the leader of a coalition between his Liberal Party and the National Party).

Alan Ramsay (of SMH) in commenting on the exclusion of Crean, “…the Opposition Leader was left out in mugsville. He was not included in the welcome at Canberra airport, in the farewell, in the ceremony at the War Memorial, or in the barbecue at the Lodge, the only social occasion Bush would agree to. Even the press gallery was represented at the lunch by its president, Malcolm Farr of The Daily Telegraph. But not the Leader of the Australian Opposition. If nothing else, you’d have thought protocol if not manners might have extended an invitation to Crean.”

Lord knows we can’t have our President actually have to face questions about what he’s doing to the world — he might slip up and accidentally tell the truth.

I’d never heard this before, but it turns out that Dr. Seuss spent a couple years as a political cartoonist — and there’s a website that collects all of his published political cartoons.

Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel, 1904-1991) was a life-long cartoonist: in high school in Springfield, Massachusetts; in college at Dartmouth (Class of 1925); as an adman in New York City before World War II; in his many children’s books, beginning with To Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street (1937). Because of the fame of his children’s books (and because we often misunderstand these books) and because his political cartoons have remained largely unknown, we do not think of Dr. Seuss as a political cartoonist. But for two years, 1941-1943, he was the chief editorial cartoonist for the New York newspaper PM (1940-1948), and for that journal he drew over 400 editorial cartoons.

Looking through them, it’s fascinating how dated some of the cartoons are, while others seem just as relevant today. Neat stuff.

(via Mike Wedland)