Duty to Warn

Hey you! Tom Daschle. WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You've been taking Tylenol PM again haven't you? I knew it. I told you that stuff makes you groggy. Get your punk ass out of bed and get back to work. And this time don't forget to dust off your balls, you piece of crap.  

What are you laughing at Nancy Pelosi? You suck too. Big time. You call yourself a whip? You should take that whip and hang yourself. I'm sorry. Did you say something Dick Gephardt? You didn't? Gee, I'm not surprised.  

You gutless, spineless, brain-dead, paralyzed, sorry excuses for human beings, don't you know that Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his assistant, that gnome Paul Wolfowitz, are trying to take over the world? You think that by ignoring them they're just going to go away?  

What was that Carl Levin? Aliens abducted you? What's your excuse Russ Feingold? How about you Joe Biden? Oh for crying out loud. He peed his pants again. Biden, how many times do I have to tell you that I am not President Bush? Helloooooooooo Barbara Boxer? Are you with me? Would somebody tap that cow on the shoulder and make sure she's still alive. Jeez.  

  By now, millions of Americans are sick and tired of the spam that's flooding their in-boxes with unwanted e-mail messages -- mostly offering products, services and scams that tell of big bargains, implausible windfalls, garish porno and dumb scenarios for bodily enhancements. In 2003, we're routinely slogging through large amounts of junk e-mail.

     These are aggressive advertisements that won't quit. They're doing a lot to pollute the Internet environment.

     Various technological and legal remedies have been developed. Filters on e-mail programs can screen messages. Some servers try to limit mass e-mailings. Legislators propose crackdowns on spamsters. But many of the proposed "cures" are apt to damage cyberspace more than improve it.

AUSTIN, Texas -- I rarely find fault with Washington journalist Josh Marshall and his thoughtful Blog "Talking Points Memo," but I beg to differ on this occasion.

            "My God," writes Marshall, "when they say down the memory hole, they ain't kiddin'! There now seems to be a secret competition -- perhaps it was announced and I just didn't hear it -- for the Iraq-hawk who can come up with the most ingenious, Orwellian, up-is-down rewriting of the history of the year-long lead-up to the Iraq war."

            Marshall goes on to discuss a few entrants in the secret contest but then votes, prematurely I believe, to award the palm to Bill Safire of The New York Times. Safire's recent column about "hyping the 'hoax' charge" is the most elegant of its kind: Suddenly those who ask, "So where are these weapons of mass destruction we went to war to over?" are the problem.

NEW YORK CITY -- Much as I hate to interrupt what is apparently a deeply felt triumphalism on the American right, now that it's over, does anyone see any reason for our having invaded Iraq?

I realize that's what we all kept trying to figure out before the invasion, but don't you think it should at least be visible in hindsight? Good thing we won the war, because the peace sure looks like a quagmire.

These are early days, certainly, to attempt a full historical evaluation. Could be a case of the forest and the trees. Perhaps we're well along the road to having everything work out magnificently, and I'm just missing it. Still, I can't see anything that's going right.

AUSTIN, Texas -- This is a gross scandal. The Center for Public Integrity has a stunning study out on the concentration of ownership in telecommunications. The even more stunning news is that the Federal Communications Commission, which theoretically represents you and me, is about to make all of it even worse. And behind this betrayal of the public trust is nothing but rotten, old-fashioned corruption. It's the old free-trip-to-Vegas ploy, on a grand scale.

The Public Integrity people examined the travel records of FCC employees and found that they have accepted 2,500 trips, costing nearly $2.8 million over the past eight years, paid for by the telecommunications and broadcast industries, which are, theoretically, "regulated" by the FCC. The industry-paid travel is on top of about $2 million a year in official travel paid for by taxpayers.

AUSTIN, Texas -- It was horrible and sickening, but I could not stop watching the final days of the Texas Legislature. Fellow Texans, the ripple effects of this disaster will come to haunt us all.

Just for starters, this budget is going to cost about 144,000 jobs. Perhaps its most serious effect is on public hospitals. A health-care system so fragile that it is almost overwhelmed now -- turning away ambulances for hours at a time, unable to admit a single patient -- will be swamped after this. The counties will be desperate, the cities not much better. Every area of social service has been cut, not because we have a $9 billion deficit but because House Republicans do not believe government SHOULD help people.

By now, it's a media ritual. Whenever the U.S. government raises the alert level for terrorism -- as when officials announced the orange code for "high risk" on May 20 -- local, regional and national news stories assess the dangers and report on what's being done to protect us. We're kept well-informed about how worried to be at any particular time. But all that media churning includes remarkably little that has any practical utility.

Presumably, the agencies that are supposed to help safeguard the public don't need to get their directives via network news or the morning paper. As for the rest of us, the publicity is very close to useless -- unless we're supposed to believe that feeling anxious makes us safer or looking sideways at strangers will enhance our security.

BOISE, Idaho -- When last we left the saga of Texas' few living elected Democrats, they had fled the state pursued by minions of the law -- legislators on the lam. These courageous citizens, fleeing vile Republican oppression in their state capital, took refuge at the Holiday Inn in Ardmore, Oklahoma.

Reporters embedded with the law-breaker law-makers in Ardmore say the perps remain unrepentant.

Meanwhile, back at the capitol, mighty was the wrath of the Republicans left holding session without a quorum. Bills died by the dozens as the lawmakers wanted by the law bollixed up the legislative works (bills not passed through second reading as of May 15 die automatically, a bit of legislative process the fleeing Dems cunningly used to their advantage).

Gov. Goodhair Perry, who keeps saying he wants more civility and bipartisanship, denounced the AWOL solons as "cowardly," childish" and "irresponsible." It was a bad day for bipartisanship.

AUSTIN, Texas -- They just went too far, that's all. This session of the legislature has been as brutal, callous and indifferent to the welfare of the weakest, the most frail, youngest and oldest Texans as it is possible to get. The level of pure meanness is just stunning. They have just gone too damn far.

The session was pretty well summed up by Rep. Senfronia Thompson when she illustrated what was going on by taking the House rulebook to the podium with her and dropping it on the floor. There is no rule of procedure, fairness, common sense or decency that has been observed by the Republican majority in the Texas House.

This is not about partisan politics -- although that has certainly reared its ugly head. In case you hadn't noticed, every major newspaper in this state has criticized the plans and performance of the legislature this session, often in harsh language. Those wild-eyed radicals at the Dallas Morning News and Houston Chronicle are just disgusted with the tacky display these people have been putting on.

To READ THE STATEMENT condemning Bush's new aggression against Cuba, go to www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/cuba/index.html

To see the INITIAL LIST OF SIGNERS, go to www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/cuba/signers.html

To SIGN the statement, go to www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/cuba/sign.html