Isn’t it fascinating that Bush needs absolute power over detainees. This President can’t stand any

interference or oversight. He’s worked very hard to distort the sacred “checks and balances” to absolute authority for the executive. He

might as well wish to be a dictator. mjh

Us soldiers barred from torture By Liz Sidoti

The US Senate delivered

a rare wartime rebuke to President George W Bush on Thursday by explicitly barring American soldiers from torturing or

maltreating prisoners. …

New strict US military interrogation guidelines were passed overwhelmingly by 90 votes

to nine in the Republican-controlled Senate despite White House opposition.

The senators approved an amendment that prohibits

“cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” against anyone in US government custody, regardless of where they are held.

The proposal was sponsored by Republican Senator John McCain, who was held as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.

It requires

all US military members to follow procedures in the Army Field Manual when they detain and interrogate terrorism suspects.

Bush administration officials say the legislation will limit the president’s authority and flexibility in war.

House GOP May Try to Weaken Detainee

Rules By LIZ SIDOTI

WASHINGTON — Leading House Republicans signaled Friday that they will try to weaken a Senate

effort to limit interrogation techniques that U.S. service members can use on terrorism suspects.

Their remarks made

clear that the language in the Senate-passed military spending bill faces uncertain prospects in bargaining between the Senate and House.

…

The White House said in a statement that advisers would recommend a veto of the spending bill if it includes language that

would hurt efforts in the war on terror by limiting the president’s authority and flexibility. Last summer, Vice President Dick Cheney

came to Capitol Hill to pressure McCain, Warner and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to drop the effort.

I’d like to think an evangelical Christian as worthy of the bench as a Jew, Muslim or Atheist

(knowing that an Atheist would never be nominated). Unfortunately, right now, the loudest, most noticeable evangelicals strike me as

dangerous, looney zealots who would despise me — or convert me — but never tolerate me. So, at the moment, nominating an evangelical

seems like nominating a zombie. I’m truly sorry to say that.

Nevertheless, I believe in diversity and recognize there are a lot

of views in America I don’t agree with but must tolerate, even views of people who in turn would condemn me. (This is why conservatives

beat liberals.)

What Bush’s vaunted Base^* is about to learn is just how bull-headed and doggedly

loyal he is to those he knows personally. They will not move him in the least. Only someone closer to him than Miers can do that, if

anyone can. mjh

^*Strangely,the translation of al Qaeda is “the base”.

HoustonChronicle.com – Dionne: Conservatives use religion when

it suits their aims By E.J. DIONNE

The use of Miers’ religion as a magnet for conservative support is not just the work of a

few religious voices. It’s part of the administration’s strategy. …

Let’s be clear: It is pro-administration conservatives,

not those terrible liberals, who are making an issue of Miers’ evangelical faith.

Liberals are not opposing Miers because she is

an evangelical. Conservatives are telling their friends to support Miers because she is an evangelical. …

And Ed Morrissey,

whose “Captain’s Quarters” is one of the most popular conservative blogs, said publicly what other concerned conservatives have said

privately. “The push by more enthusiastic Miers supporters to consider her religious outlook smacks of a bit of hypocrisy,” Morrissey

wrote.

“After all, we argued the exact opposite when it came to John Roberts and William Pryor when they appeared before the

Senate Judiciary Committee. … Conservatives claimed that using religion as a reason for rejection violated the Constitution and any

notion of religious freedom. Does that really change if we base our support on the same grounds?”

Fascism is definitely and absolutely

opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political and economic sphere. (p. 32)

The Fascist State lays claim

to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the

country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and

spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State. (p. 41).

Benito Mussolini, 1935, “The Doctrine of Fascism,” Firenze: Vallecchi Editore. Talk:Corporatism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Texas, The Hammer Runs Into an Anvil
Earle can defy

pigeonholing. Buck Wood, an Austin lawyer and friend of Earle’s, says the prosecutor is “definitely a moderate,” and that he’s

“not involved in the Democratic Party.”

Raised on a cattle ranch in the tiny north Texas town of Birdville, Earle served

briefly in the Texas House before being elected district attorney. A self-described “radical moderate,” he has faced

little serious opposition in his reelection campaigns. This comports with commonly heard descriptions of him — adjectives such as

“maverick,” “idealist” and “crusader.”

Indeed, Earle is a former Eagle Scout more interested in social policy than in collecting

death-penalty convictions. …

“Ronnie has a very deep philosophical belief about good and evil,” Keel said. “He sees

corporate involvement in politics as an evil to be attacked at any costs.” …

Earle says he has no choice. He was hoping

to retire last year, he says, but felt he could not abandon this case.

“The issue that we’re faced with is the role of

large concentrations of money in democracy, whether it’s individuals or corporations,” he said. “The issue is the same.”

Movement of $190,000 at Issue
DeLay Case Could Hinge on Original Source of

Money
By R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post Staff Writer

The head of a Texas political group organized by then-House Majority

Leader Tom DeLay made an urgent request on Sept. 10, 2002, to the group’s accountant: Send a blank check overnight to DeLay’s chief

fundraiser in Washington. The next day, the fundraiser, James W. Ellis, inscribed it to an arm of the Republican National Committee and

wrote in the amount: $190,000.

It was an odd, election-eve donation of funds to Washington by a political group formed to support

Republicans in Texas. But that was not the whole story. On Oct. 4, 2002, the RNC sent the same total amount in seven checks ranging from

$20,000 to $40,000 to candidates for the Texas House.

It is this transaction — the swift and loosely documented transfer of funds

from Texas to Washington and the subsequent transfer of the same amount in multiple checks back to Texas — that lies at the heart of

Wednesday’s indictment of DeLay and two political associates by a Texas prosecutor, Ronnie Earle. …

“I didn’t know they did

this legal activity,” DeLay told CNN, referring to the transfer of $190,000 to the RNC by his alleged co-conspirators, TRMPAC director

John Colyandro and Washington fundraiser James Ellis. DeLay also said he did not know which Texas candidates the two men had “targeted”

for donations from Washington in a note they sent to the RNC along with the check. “I did not know where the money went,” he said.

DeLay Arraignment Is Set for Oct. 21 By Amy Goldstein, Washington Post Staff

Writer

Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) has been ordered to appear at an arraignment on Oct. 21 in an Austin courtroom, where he plans to

plead not guilty to the charge that he conspired with two associates to funnel corporate donations to Republican candidates for the Texas

legislature.

Bush Fends Off Sharp Criticism of Court

Choice – New York Times By ELISABETH BUMILLER and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

“I know her well enough to be able to say that she’s

not going to change, that 20 years from now she’ll be the same person with the same philosophy that she is today,” Mr. Bush said.

That’s conservatism for you: unyielding, incapable of improving, frozen, rigid, unchanging. Bush is a fool if

he believes this.

In Midcareer, a Turn to Faith to Fill a Void – New York Times By EDWARD WYATT and SIMON ROMERO

Ms. Miers, born

Roman Catholic, became an evangelical Christian [in 1979] and began identifying more with Republicans than with the Democrats who had

long held sway over Texas politics. She joined the missions committee of her church, which is against legalized abortion, and friends and

colleagues say she rarely looked back at her past as a Democrat. …

A close relationship with Justice Hecht – also a longtime

member of Valley View – who frequently appears with Ms. Miers at social functions in Washington and in Texas, has been a steady feature

of her life for nearly 30 years. Justice Hecht is known as one of the most conservative members of the Republican-dominated Texas

Supreme Court.

Harriet Miers:

Devoted to Bush and Her Work By Michael Grunwald, Jo Becker and Amy Goldstein, The Washington Post

David Frum, a conservative

commentator and former White House staffer, wrote on his blog that Miers once told him the president was the most brilliant man she

knows. Many of her colleagues in the White House consider her personal views a bit of a mystery because she has subordinated them to the

president’s views.

I have to assume Frum is trying to undermine Miers with this comment. Not even Bush’s

staunchest supporters can really consider him “brilliant.” If she did say this, it undermines any claims about her own intelligence or

truthfulness. mjh

Confused? Well, you’re supposed to

be by Mike Littwin

All I know is, I can’t wait for the Judicial Committee hearings. “Ms. Miers, I have just one question:

Who’s the second-most brilliant man you’ve ever met?”

Bush Says He’ll Press

Ahead With Broad Political Agenda – New York Times
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
Published: October 5, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4

– President Bush said Tuesday that he still had “plenty” of political capital and that he intended to spend it on

battles over government spending, energy policy, Social Security and other issues that have so far proven difficult for him. …

“I’m still a conservative, proudly so, proudly so,” Mr. Bush said in response to a question about whether he could

still claim that identity after presiding over a rapid increase in the size and cost of the government.

The

Right’s Dissed Intellectuals By Harold Meyerson

You could cut the disappointment with a knife. “This is the moment for which

the conservative legal movement has been waiting for two decades,” David Frum, the right-wing activist and former Bush speechwriter,

wrote on his blog a few moments after the president dashed conservative hopes by nominating Harriet Miers to succeed Sandra Day O’Connor

on the Supreme Court. …

In one fell swoop, Bush flouted both his supporters’ ideology and their sense of

meritocracy.

Worse, he bypassed the opportunity to demonstrate their intellectual seriousness — conservatism’s

intellectual seriousness. …

But the conservative intellectuals have misread their president and misread their country. Four and

a half years into the presidency of George W. Bush, how could they still entertain the idea that the president takes merit, much

less intellectual seriousness, seriously? The one in-house White House intellectual, John DiIulio, ran screaming from the

premises after a few months on the job. Bush has long since banished all those, such as Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who

accurately predicted the price of taking over Iraq. Yet Donald Rumsfeld — with Bush, the author of the Iraqi disaster — remains, as do

scores of lesser lights whose sole virtue has been a dogged loyalty to Bush and his blunders. Loyalty

and familiarity count for more with this president than brilliance (or even competence) and conviction.

Cynical

Conservatism By Robert J. Samuelson

George W. Bush entered the White House preaching “compassionate conservatism,” but he may

leave known for cynical conservatism. … In practice, Bush has taken the most self-serving aspect of modern liberalism

(its instinct to buy public support with massive government handouts) and fused it with the most self-serving aspect of modern

conservatism (its instinct to buy support with massive tax cuts). …

Spend more, tax less. That’s a brazen political strategy,

not a serious governing philosophy. …

The outlook is for tokenism. Just what conservative values Bush’s approach embodies is

unclear. He has not tried to purge government of ineffective or unneeded programs. He has not laid a foundation for permanent tax

reductions. He has not been straightforward with the public. He has not shown a true regard for the future. He has mostly been expedient

or, more pointedly, cynical.

CNN.com – Bush military bird flu role slammed – Oct 5,

2005

A call by President George W. Bush for Congress to give him the power to use the military in law enforcement roles in the

event of a bird flu pandemic has been criticized as akin to introducing martial law….

Gene Healy, a senior

editor at the conservative Cato Institute, said Bush would risk undermining “a fundamental principle of American law” by

tinkering with the act, which does not hinder the military’s ability to respond to a crisis. …

Bush began discussing the

possibility of changing the law banning the military from participating in police-type activity last month, in the aftermath of the

government’s sluggish response to civil unrest following Hurricane Katrina.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Bush ally stung

by new charge and questions on favours for lobbyist

The new charge came as it became clear that Mr DeLay was being

investigated in a separate scandal, in which politicians are under scrutiny for doing legislative favours for a powerful lobbyist, Jack

Abramoff, in return for expensive gifts such as golfing trips to Scotland – a possible violation of federal anti-bribery laws.

Lady Thatcher’s office confirmed that it had been contacted by police to “clarify” details of a meeting the former prime minister held

with Mr DeLay in May 2000. Mr DeLay went golfing at St Andrews during the same visit, but has said he was unaware Mr Abramoff paid for

the trip, and that it was made for professional reasons, such as the meeting with the retired leader. Lady Thatcher had described the

meeting as a “courtesy call”. …

If the bribery inquiry into Mr Abramoff also reaches Mr DeLay, who once numbered the lobbyist

among his “closest and dearest friends”, the consequences for the Republicans could be even more serious.

Mr DeLay has said he

thought his British trip was paid for by a thinktank, the National Centre for Public Policy Research, of which Mr Abramoff was a board

member. But there is evidence the lobbyist reimbursed the centre for some expenses and paid others directly.