Mercury News | 04/09/2004 | Rice testimony narrows focus By David Von Drehle, Washington Post

Among Democrats, many believed that Rice’s testimony had pushed the trail of blame directly to George Bush. “Just one month before terrorists claimed the lives of 3,000 Americans at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was on a 30-day vacation in Crawford, Texas,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. “He was informed by his national security team that Al-Qaida operatives in the United States had the ability to hijack passenger airplanes.”

Cummings was referring to one of the hot spots of Rice’s testimony: She tangled with commission Democrats over the nature of a highly classified briefing Bush received Aug. 6, 2001. Ben-Veniste characterized the briefing as a dire warning of Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden’s desire to strike America. He underscored his point in one of the day’s most dramatic — and tense — exchanges.

“And I ask you whether you recall the title of that” briefing, Ben-Veniste said.

“I believe the title was, `Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States,’ ” Rice answered.

“It did not warn of attacks inside the United States,” she said. “It was historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information. And it did not, in fact, warn of any coming attacks inside the United States.”

Let’s see that briefing. Why would the daily briefing, with such a prescient title, be an historical report? mjh

Cool, Calm Condoleezza Rice by Tom Shales, washingtonpost.com

Rice clashed with Democrats Richard Ben-Veniste and Bob Kerrey. It’s a tossup who was more hostile. ”Please don’t filibuster me,” Kerrey admonished Rice as she rattled on. ”It’s not fair. I have been polite, I’ve been courteous.” …

It wouldn’t be unthinkable to call the Bush administration the most vindictive since that of Richard M. Nixon. Rice, however, puts the nicest possible face on that vindictiveness and is easily one of the administration’s most effective communicators. She’s also among the least likely to come off as fanatical, cranky, intemperate, or possessed by the delusion that she and God are on a first-name basis.

The Buck Doesn’t Stop By Richard Cohen

It is not heads the American people want, it is humility. That is what’s so lacking in the Bush administration. The real reason — the terribly secret reason — the administration was oh-so-slow to recognize the terrorist threat was precisely the quality so abundant in Rumsfeld: smugness. The Bushies knew it all. The very fact that the Clinton team told them to make terrorism job one led them to denigrate it: What did those Clinton jerks know?

But from the president on down, no one in this administration ever admits a mistake or concedes having been wrong. Dick Cheney, whose slogan should be ”Wrong Where It Matters,” nonetheless takes to the stump to lambaste John Kerry. After all, the vice president is the very man who warned us, assured us, promised us that we must go to war with Iraq because, among other things, that nation had an ongoing nuclear weapons program. None has yet been found — and no apology from Cheney has yet been issued. He was mistaken or dishonest. We await his choice.

What is so perturbing about this administration is not that no one of note has resigned or been fired — and some of them certainty deserve the ax — but that there is not the slightest hint that anyone (except Colin Powell) appreciates that mistakes were made not out of sheer bad luck but because the assumptions, driven by ideology, were so bad. …

In another country, some officials would quit in shame. In this one they can’t even quit being smug.

Air America Radio

Listen online to The O’Franken Factor (Al Franken), Majority Report (Janeane Garofalo), The Randi Rhodes Show, and others.

The O’Franken Factor blog with articles and links.

I have my doubts about ‘Liberal Radio‘ (NPR notwithstanding). Still, I wish them luck; Franken and Garofalo can be hilarious. mjh

Bush Scores Points By Defining Kerry By Dan Balz, Washington Post

Kerry officials acknowledge that the Bush campaign tactics over the past month have hurt. ”The Bush people dumped $20 million of negative ads on our heads; it’s going to have an impact,” said Steve Elmendorf, Kerry’s deputy campaign manager. …

A CNN-USA Today-Gallup Poll showed Bush leading 49 percent to 46 percent among registered voters, compared with a Kerry edge of 50 percent to 45 percent just after Super Tuesday. A Pew Research Center poll showed Kerry leading Bush 47 percent to 46 percent, down from 52 percent to 43 percent in mid-March. …

Bush’s overall approval rating moved up to 53 percent in the CNN-USA Today-Gallup Poll, after dipping to 49 percent a month ago. Meanwhile, his favorable/unfavorable ratings, which strategists watch closely as leading indicators of voters’ attitudes, held steady at about 57 percent favorable and 41 percent unfavorable. Kerry’s favorable dipped from 60 percent to 53 percent over the past month, and his unfavorable rating rose from 26 percent to 36 percent. …

[T]he Bush strategy is aimed at preventing Kerry from crossing a threshold of acceptability among voters interested in changing the direction of the administration’s policies. Voters ”want a change in principle,” [Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg] said, and the Bush campaign ”wants to make sure there’s no candidate for the job.”

Pentagon Drops Plan To Test Internet Voting By Dan Keating, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Pentagon has decided to drop a $22 million pilot plan to test Internet voting for 100,000 American military personnel and civilians living overseas after lingering security concerns, officials said yesterday.

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: OverseasVote

Use this site to send voting instructions to your U.S. friends living overseas.

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: Not Ready for Internet Voting

House Republicans Stop Effort to Limit Tax Cuts By Alan Fram, Associated Press

The Republican-led House defeated a fresh Democratic effort yesterday to limit Congress’s ability to approve new tax cuts, averting an embarrassing setback to President Bush’s agenda of continued tax reductions.

By a near party-line 209 to 209 vote — one vote short of the majority Democrats needed to prevail — the House turned down the Democratic provision urging budget bargainers to reimpose rules requiring that tax cuts or benefit increases be paid for with other budget savings. …

Democrats said Republicans were simply defending their treasured tax cuts while denying the obvious — that both the spending and revenue sides of the budget must be constrained to trim the mammoth shortfalls of recent years.

”I think it’s a conscious failure to accept reality, or perhaps worse, an attempt to spin, to deceive,” said Rep. Ed Case (D-Hawaii).

Republicans argued the rules would make it harder for Congress to extend tax cuts that will begin expiring after this year….

Dodge as You Go (editorial)

In the 1990s, Republicans seemed to agree that budget discipline was good for the country. They supported a stricter version of this pay-as-you-go rule, they made sure it applied to the House as well as the Senate, and it did some good. But Republican leaders are no longer concerned about fiscal integrity. Making certain that tax cuts can be enacted and extended without any procedural hurdles has become the central — you might say the only — budgeting principle of the Bush administration and its congressional allies.

Thus yesterday’s scene of legislating-by-strong arm. In a familiar episode of rule-stretching and bullying, a vote scheduled for five minutes was stretched to nearly half an hour. At one point, 19 Republicans defied their leadership to support the motion. But eight eventually switched their votes, creating a 209 to 209 tie. That meant the motion failed — and at that point, the vote was hurriedly gaveled to a close. “A meaningless vote but an important principle,” said a spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), explaining the need to make certain that tax cuts would be exempt from pay-as-you-go constraints.

Other principles used to carry some weight in the U.S. House of Representatives: allowing lawmakers to vote their consciences, not manipulating voting rules to get the desired result, and opposing a reckless amassing of budget deficits selfishly left for other generations. But that was under the leadership of other speakers, and other presidents.

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