Bush Expected to Endorse Amendment Defining Marriage By RICHARD W. STEVENSON, NYTimes

The ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ”is deeply troubling,” Mr. Bush said.

”Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman,” he said. ”If activist judges insist on re-defining marriage by court order, the only alternative will be the constitutional process. We must do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage.” …

Many social conservatives, though, have been impatient with the president on the issue, pressing him to take a stand. Mr. Bush’s conservative base is especially important to him in this election year because his political strategists say that his re-election could hinge much more on his ability to turn out the vote among conservative voters than on winning over a diminishing pool of more moderate swing voters. …

White House officials have always been more concerned about religious and social conservatives at the grass-roots level. Mr. Rove has fretted publicly on a number of occasions about Mr. Bush’s failure to motivate more evangelical Christians to vote in the 2000 election, saying millions of them stayed home that year.

When Christian Extremists start appointing judges and amending the Constitution, we’re all going to Hell. mjh

CNN.com – Pentagon halts Internet voting system – Feb. 5, 2004

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has halted a Pentagon project that would have allowed military personnel, including troops deployed overseas, to vote via the Internet in the November presidential election.

Wolfowitz said the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) could not guarantee voting records would be kept secure, thereby calling into question the integrity of the process.

This is very good news. The project was unsecure and would have cast great doubts on the entire election. Wolfowitz deserves some praise for this; the Pentagon was determined to go forward with this. mjh

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: SERVE Bush?

Digital Democracy 2/4/04 (Flash Animation)

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: Will Your Vote Be Counted? Or Changed?

Howard Dean Calls FCC Probe of Breast Incident ‘Silly’

Howard Dean, a physician and a Democratic presidential candidate, on Monday dismissed as ”silly” a government inquiry into whether indecency rules were broken during the broadcast of the Super Bowl halftime show when pop diva Janet Jackson’s bodice was ripped to expose her right breast.

”I find that to be a bit of a flap about nothing,” the former Vermont governor said. ”I’m probably affected in some ways by the fact that I’m a doctor, so it’s not exactly an unusual phenomenon for me.” …

Dean, who does not have cable television at his home in Burlington, Vermont, said Americans could inadvertently turn on “far worse things” while “cruising through cable at regular viewing hours.”

“I don’t find it terribly shocking relative to some of the things you can find on standard cable television,” he added. “I think the FCC probably has a lot of other things they should be pursuing.”

Scalia Flew as Cheney’s Guest to Hunting Trip

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia traveled as an official guest of Vice President Dick Cheney on a small government jet that served as Air Force Two when the pair came here last month to hunt ducks.

The revelation cast further doubts about whether Scalia can be an impartial judge in Cheney’s upcoming case before the Supreme Court, legal ethics experts said. The hunting trip took place just weeks after the court agreed to take up Cheney’s bid to keep secret the details of his energy policy task force.

According to those who met them at the small airstrip here, the justice and the vice president flew from Washington on Jan. 5 and were accompanied by a second, backup Air Force jet that carried staff and security aides to the vice president.

Two military Black Hawk helicopters were brought in and hovered nearby as Cheney and Scalia were whisked away in a heavily guarded motorcade en route to a secluded, private hunting camp owned by an oil industry businessman.

The Los Angeles Times previously reported that the two men hunted ducks together while the case was pending, but it wasn’t clear then that they had traveled together or that Scalia had accompanied Cheney on Air Force Two.

The couple was seen holding hands and sharing a sleeping bag. mjh

Read more about the Dishonorable Scalia.

NM Democratic Caucus totals

TheNewMexicoChannel.com – Primary Results (all of 2/3 primaries)

CNN.com – Transcript of Powell’s U.N. presentation – Feb. 5, 2003 (all 10 pages are online)

Iraqi denials of supporting terrorism take the place alongside the other Iraqi denials of weapons of mass destruction. It is all a web of lies. …

The United States will not and cannot run that risk to the American people. Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world. …

Today Iraq still poses a threat and Iraq still remains in material breach.

Tallahassee Democrat | 02/02/2004 | Miscalculation or outright lie?

The Bush administration was left with a single rationale: Iraq’s imminent threat to America.
Thus came Powell’s Feb. 5 multimedia extravaganza before the Security Council. You may remember it.

“Look at this (satellite image). This one is about a weapons munition facility, a facility that holds ammunition at a place called Taji. This is one of about 65 such facilities in Iraq. We know that this one housed chemical munitions….

“Here, you see 15 munitions bunkers in yellow and red outlines. The four that are in the red squares represent active chemical munitions bunkers.”

Again:

“At this biological-related facility, on Nov. 25, just two days before inspections resumed, this truck caravan appeared, something we almost never see at this facility, and we monitor it carefully and regularly. … Five large cargo trucks appeared along with the truck-mounted crane to move missiles. We saw this kind of house-cleaning close to 30 times.”

Oh, and enough anthrax (one spoonful of which was enough to shut down the U.S. Senate in the fall of 2001) to “fill tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons.”

And this: “My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.“