From yesterday's AP wire, via the Wichita Eagle, "White House Seeks Secrecy on Detainee":

In an extraordinary request, the Bush administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to let it keep its arguments secret in a case involving an immigrant's challenge of his treatment after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel wants the high court to consider whether the government acted improperly by secretly jailing him after the attacks and keeping his court fight private. He is supported by more than 20 journalism organizations and media companies.

Solicitor General Theodore Olson told justices in a one-paragraph filing that "this matter pertains to information that is required to be kept under seal."

Justices sometimes are asked to keep parts of cases private because of information sensitive for national security or other reasons, but it's unusual for an entire filing to be kept secret.

As if the tortuous USA PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act wasn’t enough, here comes US-VISIT (U.S. Visit and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology).

And the quality of the acronym is just the tip of the iceberg.

From today's New York Times, "Bush's Budget for 2005 Seeks to Rein In Domestic Costs":

Facing a record budget deficit, Bush administration officials say they have drafted an election-year budget that will rein in the growth of domestic spending without alienating politically influential constituencies.

They said the president's proposed budget for the 2005 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, would control the rising cost of housing vouchers for the poor, require some veterans to pay more for health care, slow the growth in spending on biomedical research and merge or eliminate some job training and employment programs. The moves are intended to trim the programs without damaging any essential services, the administration said.

[. . .]

As he completes work on his budget, Mr. Bush faces criticism from conservatives, who say he has presided over a big increase in federal spending, and liberals, who say his tax cuts have converted a large budget surplus to a deficit.

Total federal revenues have declined for three consecutive years, apparently the first time that has happened since the early 1920's. But in those years, from 2000 to 2003, total federal spending has increased slightly more than 20 percent, to $2.16 trillion last year.

Brian M. Riedl, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said: "President Bush is not focusing on his fiscal conservative base right now. He's trying to position himself in between conservatives in Congress and the Democratic Party. It may be good politics, but it's bad policy, a lost opportunity to get runaway government spending under control."

White House officials deny that they have acquiesced in a domestic spending spree. They insist, as do some liberal advocacy groups, that appropriations for domestic programs are not exploding.

Such spending, they say, will increase 3 percent in 2004, after increases of 5 percent in 2003, 6 percent in 2002 and 15 percent in 2001. Moreover, they say, increased corporate profits should lead to an increase in corporate tax payments, lifting revenues in the coming years.

Richard Kogan, a budget analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning research and advocacy group, said the increase in military and domestic security spending in the last two years dwarfed the increase in domestic discretionary programs, which did not quite keep pace with inflation.

"The increases for defense, international affairs and homeland security have been much greater — and thus have played a much larger role in the return to deficits — than the increases for domestic appropriations," Mr. Kogan said.

From the AP wire, via the San Jose Mercury News, "Bush Decries Critics of New Education Law":

Gearing up for a possible election year fight on his education initiative, President Bush defended his "No Child Left Behind" law against critics who say it's been shortchanged and assumes all students learn at the same rates.

"The time for excuses has passed," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address.

Bush plans to mark the second anniversary of the initiative, the cornerstone of his domestic agenda, during speeches at an elementary school in St. Louis on Monday and one in Knoxville, Tenn., on Thursday.

Bush and other Republicans say the law, which the president signed on Jan. 8, 2002, expands testing and toughens standards for teachers, schools and students.

The initiative, however, has lost support of some Democrats who say too little money has been spent on the mandated actions. Critics have argued that the funding increases that Bush touts aren't nearly enough to cover the costs of the new requirements, including the expense of creating tests and processing their results.

Congressional Democrats have tried without success to provide billions of dollars of additional funding.

In the weekly Democratic radio address, Rep. Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., said this year's congressional agenda needs to include more money for "No Child Left Behind."

"Improving education is an American priority," Bishop said. "But last year, it was left under funded by more than $8 billion. This gap has placed a great burden on our educators and local school taxes."

From today’s International Herald Tribune, "Coming to terms with the logic of outsourcing":

In the next decade, as many as 6 million U.S. jobs may be sent to India, Ireland, Israel and other nations by companies in search of lower costs and a tech-savvy, English-speaking work force, Goldman Sachs Group said in a September report.

Indian workers earn as little as one-tenth of what their American counterparts do, and India produces 67 percent more engineers and computer scientists each year than the U.S. does. The slowing growth of the U.S. work force may also push companies to accelerate the transfer of jobs.

"More and more companies know they need to go global, they just don't know how," he said. Those companies that do not try to expand overseas "are going to succumb to competitive pressures."

While outsourcing, as the migrating-jobs trend is called, benefits companies such as Microsoft and Texas Instruments, it has triggered a debate about whether the U.S. economy is better off. About 2.4 million jobs have been lost in the United States since President George W. Bush came to office in 2001.

"We used to think that displaced workers, given new training, could move up the value chain," the former U.S. trade representative, Charlene Barshefsky, said in an interview. "There is now a question about whether that upward movement will be possible."

Analysts say the shift of jobs overseas is one reason job creation has not matched economic growth, which rose at an 8.2 percent rate in the third quarter, this year.

"The idea that corporate America is stepping up and hiring again is ludicrous," Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley's chief economist, said in a Dec. 9 televised interview with Bloomberg News.

U.S. services hiring is virtually unchanged over the past 22 months, in contrast to a 5 percent gain in the six previous business cycles, Roach said. That means the U.S. is "in the hole" by 2 million service jobs, compared with a "normal" business cycle upturn, he estimates.

Via Reuters today, "Bush: Not Involved 'In Any Way' in CIA Leak Probe":

President Bush on Thursday sought to distance himself from an investigation into whether someone in his administration illegally leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer.

"I'm not involved with the investigation in any way, shape or form," Bush told reporters here after wrapping up a hunting trip with his father and a family friend.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft on Tuesday stepped aside from the investigation into who disclosed the identity of Valerie Plame, a secret intelligence officer. Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, has publicly challenged Bush's reasons for going to war and has said he believes the administration leaked his wife's name as a means of retaliation.

Wilson, a retired diplomat, went to Niger early in 2002 at the CIA's request to assess a report that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger. He found the allegation doubtful and the International Atomic Energy Agency later dismissed it as based on forged documents.

But the charge found its way into Bush's State of the Union speech in January as part of the U.S. case against Saddam Hussein. Only after Wilson went public did the White house admit Bush should not have included it, blaming the CIA.

The Justice Department has named a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, to lead the investigation into the leak of Plame's identity to newspaper columnist Robert Novak.

Asked whether Ashcroft had made the right decision in recusing himself from the case, Bush replied: "You're going to have to ask him. I mean, I don't know the details which caused him to recuse himself.

"I've told the members of the White House to totally cooperate," Bush said. "And the sooner they find out the truth, the better, as far as I'm concerned."

Via the Scripps Howard News Service, "Nearly one U.S. soldier a day killed since Saddam capture":

In all, since the March 19 opening of the war, 478 American GIs have died in Iraq and environs, according to Pentagon figures. Of those, about 60 percent fell in combat.

The Scripps analysis of the recent deaths found:

- For the first time in the war, a majority of all U.S. deaths from hostile causes in December came from the makeshift bombs designated "improvised explosive devices" by the military. In all, 70 percent of December's hostile deaths were attributed to the bombs, compared with 34 percent in November.

- Americans died in a wide area throughout central and northern Iraq in December. This continued a trend begun in November in which enemy action spread beyond the so-called "Sunni triangle" abutting Baghdad, where anti-U.S. sentiments are strongest.

Only a third of deaths from all causes and a quarter of fatalities from hostile action occurred in Baghdad itself. U.S. deaths occurred an average of 71 miles from Baghdad in December and 102 miles from the capital in November.

- In December, about a tenth of all who died were officers, slightly more than a third were noncommissioned officers and the rest were from the enlisted ranks.

That breakdown mirrors the split during the 10 months of war and U.S. occupation in Iraq.

The average age of the December dead was 28, which matches that for the entire 10 months, as well.

- During December, noncombat deaths included a soldier electrocuted while working with a communication wire, one suffering a heart attack during physical training, another succumbing to "an undetermined illness," at least two perishing in vehicle accidents and two suspected of committing suicide.

A, from Laura Bush's comments on Meet the Press, via the New York Times:

"Well, the fact is I think it's hard for any wife, or husband for that matter, to give their spouse a lot of advice," she said. "You know, I don't really want a lot of advice from him and I know he doesn't really want a lot of advice from me. So I make an effort to only speak out when I really feel like I can't help but speak out."

Say, with all the fuss surrounding the capture of Saddam Hussein, did anyone happen to notice this gem from two weeks ago?

President Bush signed legislation making it easier for FBI agents investigating terrorism to demand financial records from casinos, car dealerships and other businesses.

The changes were included in a bill authorizing 2004 intelligence programs. Most details of the bill are secret, including the total costs of the programs, which are estimated to be about $40 billion. That would be slightly more than Bush had requested.

Bush signed the bill on Saturday, the White House announced.

The bill expands the number of businesses from which the FBI and other U.S. authorities conducting intelligence work can demand financial records without seeking court approval.

Under current law, "national security letters'' can be issued to traditional financial institutions, such as banks and credit unions, to require them to turn over information. The bill expands the definition of financial institution to include other businesses that deal with large amounts of cash.

Supporters of the change say it will help authorities identify money laundering and other activities that fund terrorism. But some lawmakers and civil liberties advocates say the change does not provide enough safeguards to ensure that authorities will not violate the privacy of innocent people. (via the Guardian, brought to our attention by Helpful Reader Kerri)

From today's New York Times, "The New Republicans":

Republicans have always enjoyed their reputation as the champions of business. The difference now is that they no longer couple their business-friendly attitudes with tight-fistedness. Discretionary spending has jumped 27 percent in the last two years; budget hawks complain Congressional pork is up more than 40 percent. Some of that money has gone to buy the allegiance of wavering party members in the closely divided House and Senate, but much of it is directly tied to the demands of big business. Agriculture subsidies to corporate farms have swollen to new heights, while energy policy has been reduced to a miserable grab bag of special benefits for the oil, gas and coal companies. The last Bush energy bill, which passed the House but died in the Senate, seems likely to be remembered most for the now-famous subsidy for an energy-efficient Hooters restaurant in Louisiana.

The two halves of Republican policy no longer fit together. A political majority that believes in big government for people, and little or no government for corporations, has produced an unsustainable fiscal policy that combines spending on social programs with pork and tax cuts for the rich. Massive budget deficits have been the inevitable result. Something similar happened in the Reagan administration. But unlike Ronald Reagan, Mr. Bush has given no hint of a midcourse adjustment to repair revenue flow. In fact, his Congressional leaders talk of still more tax cuts next year to extend the $1.7 trillion already enacted. That would compound deficits, which could reach $5 trillion in the decade.

This, it appears, is what compassionate conservatism really means. The conservative part is a stern and sometimes intrusive government to regulate the citizenry, but with a hands-off attitude toward business. The compassionate end involves some large federal programs combined with unending sympathy for the demands of special interests. If only it all added up.

From an article in the New York Times earlier this month, "Bush Restoring Cash Bonuses for Political Appointees":

The White House has decided that several thousand political appointees across the federal government will be eligible for cash bonuses, abandoning a Clinton-era prohibition that grew out of questionable practices in the first Bush administration.

Administration officials said the policy shift, ordered by the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., earlier this year but never publicly disclosed, seeks to correct the inequity of political appointees' working side by side with civil servants who routinely receive bonuses.

The new policy is being instituted at many federal departments, and a few agencies have already begun distributing awards of several thousand dollars each to political appointees. For example, the Justice Department has given bonuses to political appointees who were deemed to have played important roles in counterterrorism and the Sept. 11 investigation, officials said.

The policy is causing rumblings of discontent from some career officials. They say the policy threatens to reward employees for political loyalty and could force career civil servants to compete against well-connected political appointees for the millions of dollars in bonus money that their bosses distribute each year. The Bush administration did not help matters last week with the announcement that it was setting pay increases for career federal employees below what Congress was seeking.

[. . .]

The Bush administration has moved in recent weeks to place as many as 850,000 government jobs up for competition from private contractors. On Friday, the White House announced that the raise for federal civil servants next year would be 3.1 percent, lower than the 4.1 percent sought by Congress.

The administration's effort to reward political appointees threatens to increase tensions, particularly because civil servants will apparently be competing with appointees for the limited bonus pools, some civil service advocates said. Administration officials said no extra money was planned to pay for the political bonuses.

From an article by Renana Brooks's in The Nation, "The Character Myth":

Psychologists have long understood that people who hold views that are mutually inconsistent, or who perform actions that depart from their values or that threaten their positive self-image, will experience discomfort. This is known as cognitive dissonance. People naturally choose to remove the discomfort through rationalization, thus repairing their self-image as people who are reasonable and moral and act in ways consistent with their values. Bush's leadership style and use of language essentially have created cognitive dissonance in the electorate. The more that Americans observe the Bush presidency pushing policies they do not support, and would normally question, the more they confront the choice of whether to oppose him actively or rationalize away their discomfort. Many Americans have chosen the latter because the President has convinced them that the situation is desperate and that only he can handle the continuing crisis. The more they depend upon Bush, the more they rationalize away any objections they may have to his specific ideas and policies. In this manner, Bush has forged an emotional, visceral relationship with the nation, successfully bypassing conscious resistance and stripping away any sense that he needs to answer to a higher legal or constitutional authority beyond his personal moral force.

R&J: So, uh, happy birthday.

GWLITP&THJ: Thanks, but it's not my birthday.

R&J: Really?

GWLITP&THJ: Yeah. Some of my early followers moved it to December, when there were already a lot of parties going on.

R&J: Interesting.

GWLITP&THJ: I think they were going for what's called "synergy" these days.

R&J: That's actually a good segue - we wanted to ask you about branding.

GWLITP&THJ: Yeah, a lot of people use my name.

R&J: Does that bother you?

GWLITP&THJ: Oh, yeah, especially when they've strayed away from the fundamentals. Heal the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the poor, comfort the suffering. Forgive, and you'll be forgiven. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

R&J: Kick money changer ass?

GWLITP&THJ: Wow, this is a hardball interview!

R&J: Sorry -

GWLITP&THJ: No, no - it's okay. That is a tough one, considering how strongly I feel about turning the other cheek. But I can't say I'd do anything differently. I've never been comfortable with the profit motive.

R&J: What about family values?

GWLITP&THJ: You should go talk to the guy who lives under the bridge and thinks he's Paul of Tarsus. He has a lot more to say about that.

R&J: And what do you think of President Bush?

GWLITP&THJ: I love him.

R&J: So you'll vote for him next fall?

GWLITP&THJ: Oh, no. No, no, no. I love him - I love all humankind. But I'd like the President to show a better grasp of the fundamentals.

R&J: So who are you voting for?

GWLITP&THJ: I don't do endorsements any more, not after the Nader thing. Hey, that's a nice coat. Looks warm.

R&J: Uh, okay, but I'm not sure it'll fit you...

GWLITP&THJ: Oh, hey, no - I don't want it. Too girly for me. But you might want to give it to the woman who sits in front of the coffee shop and thinks she's Mary. That shade of blue would look nice on her.

R&J: Okay.

GWLITP&THJ: Well, I'd better get back to my can collecting. Peace be with you.

R&J: Thanks. You, too.

...unless someone can reprogram it to give a concession speech.

From an article by Dana Milbank on eCommerce Times, "White House Web Scrubbing":

It's not quite Soviet-style airbrushing, but the Bush administration has been using cyberspace to make some of its own cosmetic touch-ups to history.

White House officials were steamed when Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier this year that U.S. taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq -- which turned out to be a gross understatement of the tens of billions of dollars the government now expects to spend. Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency's Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished.

[. . .]

Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said the Natsios case is particularly pernicious. "This smells like an attempt to revise the record, not just to withhold information but to alter the historical record in a self-interested way, and that is sleazier than usual," he said. "If they simply said, 'We made an error; we underestimated,' people could understand it and deal with it." For months after the April 23 Natsios interview on ABC's "Nightline," USAID.gov displayed the transcript. "You're not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is going to be done for $1.7 billion?" an incredulous Ted Koppel asked Natsios.

"Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do," Natsios said. "This is it for the U.S. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada and Iraqi oil revenues.... But the American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this."

A White House spokesman, asked later about these remarks, responded vaguely that he had not seen the statement in question. Then, sometime this fall, USAID made it easier for the administration to maintain its veil of ignorance on the subject by taking the transcript off its Web site.

For a while, the agency left telltale evidence by keeping the link to the transcript on its "What's New" page -- but yesterday the liberal Center for American Progress discovered that this link had disappeared, too, as well as the Google "cached" copies of the original page.

USAID spokeswoman Lejaune Hall, asked about this curious situation, searched the Web site herself for the missing document. "That is strange," she said. After a brief investigation, she reported back: "They were taken down off the Web site. There was going to be a cost. That's why they're not there."

But other government Web sites, including the State and Defense departments, routinely post interview transcripts, even from "Nightline." And, it turns out, there is no cost. "We would not charge for that," said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider. "We would have no trouble with a government agency linking to one of our interviews, and we are unaware of anybody from [ABC] making any request that anything be removed."

From today's Salt Lake Tribune, Terror threat 'high' for holidays":

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge put the nation on high alert for terrorism Sunday, saying he feared an attack that could surpass the devastation on Sept. 11, 2001.

Citing what he called credible new evidence of terrorist plotting, Ridge raised the warning level from "elevated" to "high" and urged Americans to be particularly vigilant through the holiday period. Even so, he urged Americans to follow through with their travel plans.

Yeah, America - Fearless Leader isn't changing his vacation plans!

Also, buy lots of stuff and help protect the homeland economy.

Last August we cited Bush's habit of spending public money without granting public access while on the fund raising trail. Here's the latest from Hunts Point, Washington:

HUNTS POINT - Officials in this small town have received a check toward the cost of 100 police officers who protected President Bush during his 96-minute fund-raising visit in August.

Mercer Island's Dr. Tom Gumprecht, an ear, nose and throat doctor practicing in Redmond, wrote a check for $300 to put a dent in the $23,634.25 in costs.

Officials still hope cell phone billionaire Craig McCaw, the host of the $2,000-a-person visit, and his connections might reimburse the town.

The Bush-Cheney re-election campaign raised $1.7 million at the McCaw event.

Gumprecht, a lifelong Republican, said he wrote the check in the spirit of good manners, like helping clear and clean dishes after being a dinner guest. He said he was able to see and hear the president at a close distance, take a photograph and shake his hand.

[. . .]

"We really appreciate a civic-minded soul like that,'' said Hunts Point Town Administrator Jack McKenzie. "We sent him a nice letter of appreciation.''

But the quest for reimbursement isn't over, and has drawn national attention.

McKenzie said he got a call from Lexington, Ky., asking how to recoup security costs after a presidential visit for a gubernatorial candidate left that city with a $14,000 bill.

"I had to disappoint them,'' McKenzie said. ``I didn't have an answer for them.''

While Hunts Point officials still hold out hope that McCaw's connections will produce some cash, McKenzie said the city wrote a check for $21,634.19 to Medina to cover Redmond, Kirkland, Mercer Island and Medina police overtime, a tow truck, port-a-potties, food, water and coffee. Clyde Hill public works and police overtime have yet to be paid.

The money came out of the town's $600,000 general government budgets for office supplies and facility maintenance, among other things, McKenzie said.

"I have a lot of confidence the McCaws will put a lot of effort into doing something about it,'' McKenzie said. (via the King County Journal)

From Thursday's Guardian (UK), "Bush Overruled on 'Dirty Bomb' Suspect":

President Bush does not have power to detain American citizen Jose Padilla, the former gang member seized on U.S. soil, as an enemy combatant, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

The decision, which ordered that Padilla be released from military custody within 30 days, could force the government to try the "dirty bomb'' plot suspect in civilian courts.

In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Padilla's detention was not authorized by Congress and that Bush could not designate him as an enemy combatant without the authorization.

The former Chicago gang member who converted to Islam was arrested in May 2002 Chicago's O'Hare airport as he returned from Pakistan. Within days, he was moved to a naval brig in Charleston, S.C.

The court directed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to release Padilla from military custody within 30 days, but said the government was free to transfer him to civilian authorities who can bring criminal charges.

If appropriate, Padilla also can be held as a material witness in connection with grand jury proceedings, the court said.

"As this court sits only a short distance from where the World Trade Center stood, we are as keenly aware as anyone of the threat al-Qaida poses to our country and of the responsibilities the president and law enforcement officials bear for protecting the nation,'' the court said.

"But presidential authority does not exist in a vacuum, and this case involves not whether those responsibilities should be aggressively pursued, but whether the president is obligated, in the circumstances presented here, to share them with Congress,'' it added.

From today’s Washington Post, " Survey Indicates More Go Hungry, Homeless Aid Lacking as Greater Demands Conflict With Improving Economy, Report Says":

More cities have had residents turned away from emergency food and shelter assistance this year than in any year since 1997, according to a report released yesterday by the nation's mayors, who said that a weak though improving economy has made it harder to help the needy.

Overall, requests for emergency food assistance jumped by 17 percent this year and requests for shelter increased by 13 percent, according to the 25-city survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. On average, 14 percent of requests for food aid and 30 percent of requests for shelter went unmet. The annual survey pointed to unemployment and lack of affordable housing as the leading causes of hunger and homelessness.

"The survey underscores the impact the economy has had on everyday Americans," said conference president, Mayor James A. Garner of Hempstead, N.Y.

People were turned away from food assistance agencies in 56 percent of the cities and from shelter in 84 percent. Those figures -- the highest in six years -- reflect belt-tightening in cities and states, which has affected food banks and shelters, officials said.

"The economy coming back slowly has caused us to have more demands than we were anticipating," said Mayor Paul D. Pate of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who co-chairs the conference's task force on hunger and homelessness. "A lot of nonprofit agencies have been having a tough time financially. Private dollars have been slower in coming in, and there's no doubt that tax dollars are tighter."

[. . .]

The report found that the homeless population consists of 41 percent single men, 40 percent families with children, 14 percent single women and 5 percent unaccompanied youths. An average of 23 percent of the homeless population is mentally ill, 30 percent are substance abusers, 17 percent are employed and 10 percent are veterans.

Replacing Bush with someone who makes human services a priority is one way to help. Here’s another, or Google to find a shelter closer to your home.

From an article on Slate by Daniel Drezner, "Bush the Bumbler: The real trouble with the president's foreign policy":

There are three ways to criticize the Bush administration's approach to foreign policy. The first way is both simple and simple-minded: Bush is the evil creature of corporate interests, pursuing militarized disputes merely to reward his cronies. Adherents to this line suspect there may be something to the conspiracy theory that Bush knew something about the Sept. 11 attacks before they took place. Most serious people—with the possible exception of Howard Dean—reject this line of argumentation out of hand.

The second kind of criticism is more substantive. It holds that the costs of Bush's pre-emption doctrine—weakened international legitimacy, fraying alliances, increased global public hostility to the United States—are greater than the benefits. Click on any Democratic candidate's Web site (including Dean’s) and you'll find a version of this criticism. It will be with us at least until November 2004.

A third criticism has slowly emerged over the past six months. It agrees with the logic of Bush's grand strategy, but questions whether the policy implementation has been up to snuff. This line of argumentation has less to do with substance and more to do with process. To sum it up, Bush's management of foreign policy has been too detached for his own good. The president would proudly admit that he's not a detail guy, preferring to enunciate firm principles and let his subordinates hash out the specifics. However, this disengagement has encouraged bureaucratic rivalries to fester, diverting the attention of officials from the actual substance of foreign policy.

[. . .]

Process criticisms have begun to appear more frequently in the mainstream media. What's interesting about these critiques is that they come primarily from Bush sympathizers. Prominent Republicans like Newt Gingrich and Charles Grassley have voiced concerns about the proper management of key foreign policy priorities. Writing about the contract screw-up, William Kristol and Robert Kagan were blunt: "[I]nstead of being smart, clever, or magnanimous, the Bush Administration has done a dumb thing." George Will described the decision as "a tantrum tarted up as foreign policy." In his Sunday column, Tom Friedman lamented: "I fear we have a president who is setting the broad guidelines, above a squabbling bureaucracy and a divided alliance—and no one is cracking heads."

From last Friday's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, via Helpful Reader Kathleen, "TGIF -- it must be time for Bush policy changes":

The Bush I administration perfected Stealth military technology and deployed it to devastating effect as U.S. planes, invisible to Saddam Hussein's radar, began Gulf War I by destroying Iraqi infrastructure.

Bush II has taken a giant leap further. It has extended the reach of Stealth tactics into American domestic policy, delivering lethal blows to environmental and health regulations while presenting only the tiniest of targets.

The administration's new, political Stealth can be recognized by the familiar set of initials TGIF: Thank God It's Friday.

The end of the workweek has come to be the time to announce far-reaching regulatory changes.

"They do it on Friday afternoon because they know that is when it will get buried in the news cycle, when it will get the least attention," Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., explained earlier this year.

[. . .]

An environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, has tracked more than 100 environmental rollbacks implemented under Bush II: 58 have been disclosed on Fridays, just before holidays or during holiday weekends.

"It's not just the Friday timing," said Rob Perks of NRDC. "Decisions are announced by low-level officials. They are released in the late afternoon. On the grazing decision, we called up the agency and it would give us no information. Details were made available on Monday, when everyone had moved on."
With such tactics, TGIF-Stealth technology puts a "spin" on stories, keeps flak to a minimum and discourages pursuit of stories.

[. . .]

TGIF-Stealth technology is useful even when it comes to suppressing good news -- in cases where upbeat findings are at odds with the administration's agenda.

Friday, Sept. 26, saw the (very) quiet release of a new Office of Management and Budget study. It found that environmental rules are well worth the costs they impose on industry and consumers, resulting in major public health benefits and other improvements.

Major strikes against pollution and health regulations can require more than one Friday and/or holiday.

On Friday, Aug. 22, the Bush administration made final its decision to let America's most polluting coal-fired power plants and refineries upgrade facilities without installing state-of-the-art air quality controls.

Original announcement of the plan came from an underling just before Thanksgiving of last year. New rules formally easing requirements on polluters were issued on New Year's Eve.

Bush II picked Friday, Jan. 10, to propose guidelines "redefining" what constitutes a wetland entitled to preservation under the Clean Water Act. The guidelines could result in loss of federal protection for as many as 20 million acres of swamps and bogs across America. A final announcement is expected this Christmas season.

The list goes on: The Interior Department picked Friday, April 11, to announce "settlement" of a lawsuit with the state of Utah.

Under the accord, Bush II removed millions of acres of Bureau of Land Management property -- most in the Inland West and Alaska -- from being evaluated for protection as wilderness. The settlement opened the door to expanded oil and gas leasing in canyonlands of the Southwest.

It's all very skillful -- and cynical.

In the 1980s, loudmouth Interior Secretary James Watt -- "I don't like to paddle and I don't like to walk" -- taught the drillers, diggers and polluters that the public can get mad.

"Americans want clean air and clean water," said Perks. "You can't have a full frontal assault on environmental protection. Soccer moms like to go to parks. NASCAR dads like to hunt and fish and hike. If you want to weaken protection, you've got to go below the radar screen."

Okay, George - you pulled a dictator out of the hole...now how about pulling the budget out, too?

Despite market volatility and pleas from his own conservative base, U.S. President George W. Bush on Monday played down the need to propose a more concrete plan to reduce record federal budget deficits.

Bush also would not rule out proposing new tax cuts, which could add to a deficit already expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year. "We'll see," he told a news conference. (via Reuters)

Kudos to the Bush administration for its somber response to the capture of Saddam Hussein on Saturday. No celebratory announcements, no backslapping, just a nod to the troops and an admission that the mission in Iraq will continue to be difficult. It was the right tone.

But to paint Hussein's capture as a victory in the war on terrorism is missing the point. The war in Iraq was never about terrorism - it was about finishing the work of a previous administration, accomplishing a dream of the neo-cons who spent the 1990s ensconced in think tanks, planning a war that needed only a rallying cry, like phantom weapons of mass destruction or an artificial association with 9/11. It was also about moving on from a separate war - the one in Afghanistan - that was not quite turning out as planned. Foreign terrorists are in Iraq because of Bush's invasion, not the other way around.

The Humane Society is upset because Dick Cheney went "hunting" for pheasants. Fine. But where is the outrage over the fact that our elected leaders are off shooting at pheasants when they could be doing something that real people do - like working two jobs to pay for college or protesting AARP for supporting the weak prescription drug plan for seniors? The super-rich hunt pheasants in their spare time. Next time, let's try to pick someone who doesn't.

All of which brings us to Mr. Cheney's bird-hunting trip at the exclusive Rolling Rock Club in the hills of southwestern Pennsylvania last Monday, when he and nine others in his party shot some 400 out of 500 pen-raised pheasants released for the morning hunt. No one might have noticed the episode if The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had not reported it, including the detail that the vice president had shot more than 70 of the ring-necked pheasants himself.

As a result, a lot of other people noticed the fallen birds: hunters who pursue birds in the wild, the Democratic presidential candidates and the Humane Society of the United States, which likened the shootings to the first day of the Iraq war. (via the New York Times)

And they can't be trusted, either.

Pentagon auditors found that Vice President Dick Cheney's former company may have overcharged the Army by as much as $61 million for gasoline in Iraq, senior defense officials said Thursday.

Halliburton apparently didn't profit from the possible overcharges, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The problem, the officials said, was that Halliburton may have paid a subcontractor too much for the gasoline in the first place.

The Pentagon officials said the Halliburton subsidiary involved in Iraq reconstruction work, Kellogg, Brown & Root, also submitted a proposal for cafeteria services that was $67 million too high. The officials said the Pentagon rejected that proposal.

The defense officials said they had no reason to believe the problems were anything other than ``stupid mistakes'' by Halliburton.

[...]

News of the problems came as President Bush worked to justify his decision to limit Iraq reconstruction contracts to companies from the United States or countries that supported the war. The move angered governments whose firms were cut out of the bidding process, including France, Germany, Russia and Canada.

Many prominent Democrats also have criticized the Halliburton contracts specifically, suggesting they were a political payoff for a company with strong ties to the GOP and whose executives gave generously to the Bush campaign. ("Halliburton May Have Overcharged Millions ", via the Guardian)

Think a nuclear North Korea or Iran is bad? Just imagine the 9-11 terrorists with nuclear capabilities. A new arms race leads down a very bad road.

In a newly leaked memo, the Bush administration's top nuclear-weapons executive urged the three federal H-bomb labs to explore a full range of new thermonuclear weapons.

National Nuclear Security Administration chief Linton Brooks twice pressed weapons-lab directors last week to "take advantage of this opportunity" raised by repeal last month of a 1993 ban on low-yield nuclear weapons development.

Critics of the administration's new nuclear policies say the Dec. 5 memo suggests a no-holds-barred approach to designing new weapons that is more reminiscent of a Cold War arms race -- without a competitor -- than trying to curb the spread of nuclear weapons. ("Bush presses lab nuke research" in the Oakland Tribune)