From today's New York Times, "Report by the E.P.A. Leaves Out Data on Climate Change":

The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to publish a draft report next week on the state of the environment, but after editing by the White House, a long section describing risks from rising global temperatures has been whittled to a few noncommittal paragraphs.

The report, commissioned in 2001 by the agency's administrator, Christie Whitman, was intended to provide the first comprehensive review of what is known about various environmental problems, where gaps in understanding exist and how to fill them.

Agency officials said it was tentatively scheduled to be released early next week, before Mrs. Whitman steps down on June 27, ending a troubled time in office that often put her at odds with President Bush.

From today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Appeals court rules detainees' names can stay secret":

In a major legal victory for the Department of Justice, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday that the government can continue to withhold the names of hundreds of people detained in the war on terror in order to protect national security.

Update -

Even better, from today's Salt Lake City Tribune, "Appeals court rules detainees' names can stay secret":

"America faces an enemy just as real as its former Cold War foe, with capabilities beyond the capacity of the judiciary to explore," wrote U.S. Circuit Judge David Sentelle.

Damn fine comparison, Your Honor.

From this year's State of the Union address:

Americans are doing the work of compassion every day: visiting prisoners, providing shelter for battered women, bringing companionship to lonely seniors. These good works deserve our praise, they deserve our personal support and, when appropriate, they deserve the assistance of the federal government.

Today we find out that apparently the assistance of the federal government isn't appropriate.

But thanks for the praise, George. And maybe you can provide some of that personal support from your campaign fund.

Nobody does it better.

Makes me feel sad for the rest.

President Bush continues to submit the names of federal appeals court nominees to the Senate Judiciary Committee for its advice and consent. Most are judges so conservative that they make moderate Republicans blush and liberals downright sick to their stomachs.

Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee began considering the nomination of Bill Pryor, Alabama’s Attorney General. This is a man who has supported a judge’s right to post the Ten Commandments in the courtroom. The New York Times reports that Pryor filed a brief with the Supreme Court against a case challenging Texas’ sodomy law and wrote that granting individuals “a legal right to engage in homosexual relations would imply approval of ‘activities like prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography and even incest and pedophilia.” Well! This man and Senator Rick Santorum would certainly get along.

Other ultra-conservative judges nominated by Bush include Dennis Shedd, whose transgressions are too numerous to list, but you can view them here, and Miguel Estrada, who Republicans can’t believe hasn’t won the support of Democrats because he is a Hispanic after all. Apparently, we’re supposed to forget the fact that he is a conservative ideologue who hasn’t left a written record on much of anything. At least the Democrats are able to differentiate a person’s ideas from his skin color.

Bush’s nominees are consistently anti-abortion, anti-affirmative action, anti-states rights, gay-biased and pro-mingling of church and state.

So much for bringing a “new tone” to Washington.

Not that smoky at all.

The Bush administration has refused to send to the U.S. Senate for ratification the treaty that created the International Criminal Court – a body which uses international law to try individuals charged with genocide, war crimes, and other widespread crimes against civilians.

President Clinton signed the treaty in his final month in office, but it must be ratified before the United States is considered a signatory. The treaty has been signed by 137 countries and ratified by 90, enough to allow the Court to come into existence in July 2002 at the Hague. Other non-signatories include China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iraq and Turkey.

The Bush administration fears that the Court could someday indict American soldiers for human rights abuses, and has all but forced 37 developing countries to sign agreements prohibiting American citizens from being tried before the Court.

This represents an extreme dereliction of duty by the world’s only superpower, the ultimate in international arrogance. The Bush administration would rather have the perpetuators of war crimes go free than face the possibility that American soldiers who commit abuses could be indicted by the international community.

No doubt Bush believes that American soldiers would not commit human rights violations. But there are some survivors in a village called My Lai who would beg to differ. Perhaps if the American soldiers who slaughtered civilians in My Lai had known they could be indicted for their actions, they might not have shot so indiscriminately. And if policy-makers could have been indicted, they may not have left such unfit soldiers in the field.

Thanks to Bush, we won't have the possibility of indictment as deterrent in the future. So much for world leadership.

Sure, it's old news, but for the record: this is not okay.

In July 2002, the Bush administration withdrew $34 million in promised funding from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) the world's largest international source of funding for population and reproductive health programs in developing countries. In addition to promoting reproductive health and family planning, the UNFPA helps to combat maternal deaths during pregnancy and childbirth from diseases that are virtually unknown in developed countries.

The Bush administration withdrew the aid because it claimed the Fund provides aid to Chinese government agencies that force women to have abortions – even though a U.S. State Department fact-finding mission disproved these allegations. Meanwhile, millions of women in the 142 countries that the UNFPA provides family planning and reproductive health services in continue to suffer and die.

Here’s how you can help.

From yesterday's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Bush, economists differ on dollar's slide":

President Bush repeated his support Monday for a "strong dollar" and blamed its recent slide on Europe's higher interest rates.

Private economists say a far bigger factor in the greenback's decline is America's record trade deficit.

Bush indicated that he believed the dollar will strengthen now that the difference in interest rates between the United States and Europe was narrowing, but many private analysts forecast a continued fall - meaning that European products will cost more in the U.S. market and American tourists will find traveling in Europe more expensive.

Bush told reporters that he had spent time last week discussing the dollar's recent decline with other world leaders at the Group of Eight nations summit in Evian, France.

"I reminded our G-8 partners that there is a difference in interest rates, particularly between Europe and the United States," Bush said. "And that interest rate differential has caused people to sell dollars to buy euros to get higher return on investment. And that's why you're seeing pressure on the dollar."...

Analysts said interest rates have played only a small part in the decline, and say the bigger reason is soaring trade deficits. The U.S. current account, the broadest measure of trade, hit an all-time high of $503.4 billion last year, up 28 percent from the 2001 deficit of $393.4 billion.

Many economists believe the current account trade deficit, which reflects not only trade in merchandise but also services and investment flows, will hit a new record of $568 billion this year, meaning the United States must attract more than $1 billion a day in new foreign investment to pay for the trade imbalance.

From yesterday's San Franciso Chronicle (via Slashdot), "No-fly list ensnares innocent travelers":

As the war on terrorism spurs U.S. intelligence agencies to constantly expand aviation watch lists, many airline-reservation systems rely on name-searching software based on a 120-year-old indexing system that mistakes the similar spelling or sound of innocent passengers' surnames for those of terrorists.

The result: Thousands of travelers have been flagged at airports for additional searches and police questioning -- while critics say real terrorists could slip through undetected....

Nationally, the FBI cannot cite a terrorist who's been captured because of the no-fly list. Civil-liberties advocates say the Bush administration's refusal to disclose policies and practices about the secrecy-shrouded watch lists may simply conceal the lists' embarrassing ineffectiveness.

How many of you think George W. Bush knows the price of a gallon of milk? Or what one can and cannot buy with food stamps? He certainly doesn’t know what it’s like to work for hours on his feet, to look for change under the couch for bus fare or to eat instant noodles for the seventh lunch in a row.

How do you fix Medicare and when you’ve never felt the anxiety over how you were going to pay for your pills? Or offer solace to unemployed workers when you have never watched your mortgage balance precariously on the back of your unemployment checks? This is the life real people live in America. They don’t get dividends and they don’t get help from daddy’s rich friends.

Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld want to end our country’s ban on research and development of "low-yield" nuclear weapons. They say the terrorist threat requires it, not to mention the nasty nuclear intentions of North Korea. So, the idea is to control nuclear weapons by developing a lot more of our own.

This seems like a very bad plan. Unless, of course, we find a way to make smart low-yield nukes, ones that don’t come with all those pesky side effects like vomiting, hair loss, and bleeding, not to mention death.

Just be ready to duck and cover when Tom Ridge gives us the signal.

God help us, we’re all going to die.

From today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution,"Texans paying for Bush's spend now, pay later plan":

Leaders in Washington and Austin have signed deals with the devil -- the devil in the details about their budget austerity, the devil in the assumption that the next budget cycle, or the one after that, will deliver them from their hazardous, short-sighted but politically pleasing ways.

In Washington, the third round of Bush tax cuts will push the national debt toward $7 trillion, costing hundreds of billions of dollars in interest, to be paid off by someone else. But $7 billion is not the debt that counts. Factoring in Social Security and Medicare, the Treasury Department estimates that the sum of America's long-term, unfunded obligations is $43 trillion.

In Texas, it serves to remember that were it not for Bush tax cuts, two in successive biennia amounting to about $3 billion, this Legislature would not have been in such a hole.

But Gov. Bush looked good and electable doing it, as do his ideological heirs. You can't argue with success when it comes to finding a way to get someone years away to pay for what you are pulling off today.

Afghanistan and Iraq are utter wrecks. Sure, it’s exciting to go to war and take out the bad guys – it’s hard to argue that the Taliban or Saddam deserved to stay in power – but what about the more important job of putting these nations back together? What that takes is money, and the United States has simply been unwilling to give what it takes.

The Bush administration may dislike the United Nations because it’s cumbersome and doesn’t always let us win, but it sure comes in handy when you don’t want to cough up the cash. U.N. support means that Norway and Japan will help foot the bill – countries with foreign aid budgets that far outstrip ours based on percentage of GNP. No U.N. support means that the desperate, war-shattered peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq have to hold out their hands to a man who never had to scrape together gas money a day in his life.

Our economy may be in the dumps, but their economies have all but ceased to exist. And the nation that purports to represent freedom and the glory of capitalism can’t scrape up enough cash to do right by those who have suffered as we wage war on the world.

From Monday's entry on rushlimbaugh.com:

Even socialists know that there is one economic power in this world that every other country needs: America. You ought to see Mr. Vladimir Putin, Vicente Fox, that two-timing schemer Chirac and that Canadian frenchman. Even Crowned Prince Abdullah showed up at the G8 - they actually have like 20 guys it seems. I don't care what your liberal buddies in the press have told you; there is an obvious awe and respect for President Bush out there. You can see it in their eyes.

To say that the Bush administration sees gays and lesbians as morally reprehensible is, sadly, not going too far. Bush agreed to meet with the gay and lesbian group known as the Log Cabin Republicans as part of his 2000 campaign, but only after he was forced to and even so he was battered by the howls of "catering to the homosexual agenda!" from the far right of his party.

We're not sure just what a "homosexual agenda" entails, unless it means the freedom to live a life as full and as free as any other person, but somehow we're guessing that's not what they meant. Bush opposes granting domestic partners the right to health and tax benefits enjoyed by heterosexual couples who are married, which is the very least they deserve, to say nothing of addressing the broken "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military or bringing gay and lesbian issues into the national discourse.

Queer rights are the civil rights movement of our time, and let's not forget who had to drag the non-believers into the right last time: the federal government. Yes, it was the power of the presidency and its friend the Justice Department that forced the south to integrate and, slowly, began to change minds. You're not doing the job this time, Mr. President, and some day, when queer relationships are as accepted as mixed race schools or an integrated army, you'll be ashamed. Just ask Trent Lott.

From yesterday's Washington Post, "Bush Remarks Confirm Shift in Justifying War":

"We found the weapons of mass destruction," Bush asserted in the Thursday interview, released Friday. "We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them."

Bush's assertion, one of many recent administration statements shifting focus from Iraq's weapons to Iraq's weapons programs, indicated the president would consider its accusations justified by the discovery of equipment that potentially could be used to produce weapons. But the original charges against Iraq, presented to the United Nations and the American public, were explicitly about the weapons themselves.

Remember those heady days in the late 1990s when we didn’t have a budget deficit? Every quarter we’d get a sunny report from Tom Brokaw and those nice folks at NPR telling us that our nation’s surplus was even more than we thought! Well, those days are over. Under the Bush administration, we have returned to the days of deficit and – double-whammy – that darn deficit just keeps getting bigger.

What’s an administration to do? Cut taxes! Stimulate the economy! Go to war! (Those Iranians have been awfully pesky lately.) Anything but the cold hard truth of responsible budgeting: hold onto the money, pay the debts, make the difficult decisions and do what needs to be done. We learned that in Personal Finance in the 11th grade. Back when we could still afford to offer the 11th grade.

It's funny that this is around, considering how many real quotes there are out there.

Since there are already so many parallels between the administrations of Bush I and Bush II (Cheney and company, Iraq, etc.), it's only reasonable to expect a one-term presidency.

If you’re gonna do it like Daddy, you might as well go all the way.

So, we have a tax bill that few Americans are clamoring for, that the country cannot afford, and that hurts the poor and gives back disproportionately to the rich. There are so many, many problems with the bill Bush signed today that it's hard to begin. We only have space for a few:

Did anyone notice that most of the provisions in this tax plan last for only two years? Conveniently, they expire 59 days after Election Day 2004. We're unclear on just exactly how two years' worth of tax cuts is going to jump-start our economy, but we're pretty clear on how it's supposed to jump-start Bush-Cheney 2004.

Speaking of Bush-Cheney 2004, most Americans with kids will be getting checks in the mail this summer because of a $400 increase in the child tax credit that is part of the new law. We would like to point out that these checks will be received months before the end of the tax year for which these voters will receive their refunds, a fact which absolutely reeks of voodoo economics to us. Our guess is that those checks will be conspicuously mailed from "Austin", just like the $300 checks we received after our last tax giveaway in 2001. You know, those tax breaks that were going to stimulate the economy.

Does anyone in the White House care that the states are bleeding? Faced with looming budget deficits and books that must be balanced, state legislatures are slashing funds for health care and schools, Head Start and unemployment assistance. The tax bill does give $20 billion to the states, but only because a single Republican senator refused to vote for the bill without it. You know it's bad when Republican governors are begging the Bush administration for help. "No can do," says our man in the White House. "We've got a war on terrorism goin', and the economy needs free'n from that dividends thing that's been keeping my fellow Americans down." Oh, and meanwhile we're increasing the national debt by $1 trillion dollars. Our grandchildren, who will be working retail since their schools closed down before they could graduate, will still be paying off that one when we're gone.

Thanks George!

We couldn’t help but notice that former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman lost her Todd when she joined the Bush administration. Seriously. As (until recently) the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, she has been known simply as Christie Whitman. Which doesn’t pack the same punch, if you know what we mean. We fear that Christine may have lost her maiden name and her full first name because the whole package was just a little too brash, a little too "I’m my own woman" for certain members of the right-of-right side of the political spectrum. And after she gave up her Todd and helped him get elected, Bush gave Christine a crappy assignment at the EPA and then did not lift one finger to support her as she took hit after hit for the White House.

We would resign, too. Godspeed, Christine. We hope you get your Todd back.

Yesterday’s New York Times page 1 headline: "Buoyed by Resurgence, G.O.P. Strives for an Era of Dominance."