Duty to Warn

President Bush recently nominated Stephen L. Johnson, a 24-year veteran of the Environmental Protection Agency, to be the agency’s new administrator.  Mr. Johnson has been the acting administrator since January, and prior to that oversaw the EPA office handling pesticides and other toxic substances. In nominating Johnson, Mr. Bush described him as “a talented scientist” and having “good judgment and complete integrity.”

Yet his record as the Assistant Administrator for Toxic Substances casts serious doubt on whether he is suited to lead the E.P.A., an agency directly affecting Americans’ health and many significant industries, including automobiles and agriculture. During President Bush’s first term, Johnson was a strong supporter of pesticide testing on humans.

Sadly, it has come to this. Two years after the invasion of Iraq, the online powerhouse MoveOn.org -- which built most of its member base with a strong antiwar message -- is not pushing for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

With a network of more than 3 million “online activists,” the MoveOn leadership has decided against opposing the American occupation of Iraq. During the recent bloody months, none of MoveOn’s action alerts have addressed what Americans can do to help get the U.S. military out of that country. Likewise, the MoveOn.org website has continued to bypass the issue -- even after Rep. Lynn Woolsey and two dozen cosponsors in the House of Representatives introduced a resolution in late January calling for swift removal of all U.S. troops from Iraq.

Beware the stranger bearing gifts. Or as the law teaches, caveat emptor, buyer beware. Look before you leap. All these warnings apply to the emerging Republican positioning on the Voting Rights Act.

Forty years ago, after the bloody march in Selma, Ala., Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which requires that states with a history of discrimination get pre-approval from the Justice Department for any changes in their voting procedures.

This was a great victory for the movement that Dr. Martin Luther King led. Give us the vote, King taught, and we can begin to change America. As African Americans were able to register and vote and segregation slowly came to an end, a new South was created. The New South became a center of investment.

Politics changed, too. As Lyndon Johnson predicted when he signed the Voting Rights Act, Democrats paid a great price for being the party of progress. In the South, Republicans made themselves the party of white sanctuary. The current Republican majorities in the House and Senate are founded on the racial politics of the South.

AUSTIN, Texas -- I must confess, I have sadly underestimated the Bush administration's sense of humor. Appointing John Bolton ambassador to the United Nations: boffo! What a laff riot! Hilarious comedy, a delicious romp, great setup for a sit-com.

Bolton is known for being arrogant, humorless, self-righteous and confrontational, and he hates the United Nations. In other words, the perfect diplomat.

Speaking of setups, would the joke be half as good if President Bush hadn't just returned from a tour of Europe during which he assured our allies he was anxious to improve international cooperation? There, he was promising Europeans old and new that we'd turned a new page, we want nothing more than consultation, cooperation, being buddy-buddy. And then he names Bolton ambassador (oh, ha ha) to the United Nations (ha, ha, ha). Bolton keeps a bronzed grenade in his office to show how proud he is of being called a bomb-thrower.

Without his make-up, Dan looked like hell warmed over: old, defeated, yet angry. And he told our television audience something that just blew me away. Dan Rather said that American reporters may not ask tough questions about George Bush or his wars.

"It's an obscene comparison," Rather said, "but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around peoples' necks if they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be neck-laced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck."

Talking to another reporter, Dan told it straight about the careerism that keeps US journalists in line. "It's that fear that keeps [American] journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions and to continue to bore-in on the tough questions so often."

Imagine for a minute that we are back in the Clinton era.  Someone breaks the story that a former male prostitute using an alias and working for a phony news organization has been allowed into the White House every day without a full security background check.  This “reporter” got his start in the prestigious White House press corps despite having no prior journalistic experience and despite being denied press credentials by the journalist-run Congressional press office.

The Bush family and friends stole both the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections. The covert operations long associated with George Herbert Walker Bush, former President and CIA director, are now overtly practiced in key battleground states.

The mainstream media is much like medieval theologians, who refused to accept the obvious, that the Earth revolved around the sun. Instead, they plotted bizarre planet rotations to prove the Earth was the center of the universe.

President Bush and members of Congress are on a relentless crusade to rid this country of junk lawsuits.

“We’re making progress toward a better legal system,” said President Bush after signing legislation limiting awards for medical malpractice cases. “There’s more to do…We have a responsibility to confront frivolous lawsuits head-on.”

To find lawsuits most frivolous of all, lawmakers need look no further than free trade deals. Yet, when it comes to free trade, the Bush Administration turns a blind-eye on legal reform.

Public Citizen recently published a report, NAFTA Chapter 11 Investor-State Cases: Lessons for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which documents lawsuits filed by transnational corporations challenging local, state, and federal laws of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. These challenges usually mean cash payments to these corporations, which comes out of taxpayers’ pockets.

Here are a few examples:

AUSTIN, Texas -- In the magical upside-down world of right-wing blogs, it is now an accepted article of faith that Sen. Robert Byrd compared George W. Bush to Hitler last week. Republicans are demanding an apology, many have taken to high dudgeon, and another pointless flapette is on.

Actually Byrd, a noted scholar of the Senate and its procedures, made an interesting speech opposing the "nuclear option" of cutting off Senate debate on judicial nominees. "Rumor has it there is a plot afoot in the Senate to curtail the right of extended debate in this hallowed chamber, not in accordance with its rules, mind you, but by fiat from the chair," said the elderly Byrd. He is also famed for his magniloquent speaking style, a splendid old-fashioned oratory known to older Americans who had to study rhetoric. Byrd tangentially mentioned Hitler, quoting historian Alan Bullock to make the following point:

The U.S. Senate's senior Constitutional scholar has correctly equated Bush with Hitler, and the usual attack dogs are howling. But they are wrong, and Americans must now face the harsh realities of an increasingly fascist and totalitarian GOP.

Octogenarian Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia made the equation in the context of Bush's attack on Senate procedures which might slow or halt his on-going attempt to pack the courts with extreme right-wing fanatics. Byrd said Bush's moves to destroy time-honored Senate rules parallel Hitler's ramming fascist legislation through his gutted Reichstag. "Hitler never abandoned the cloak of legality," said Byrd. "He recognized the enormous psychological value of having the law on his side. Instead, he turned the law inside out and made illegality legal."

Anti-Defamation League Director Abraham Foxman has played the holocaust card for the Republicans, saying "It is hideous, outrageous and offensive for Senator Byrd to suggest that the Republican Party's tactics could in any way resemble those of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party.