Op-Ed Columnist: Tuning Out the G.O.P.’s Siren Song By BOB HERBERT, NYTimes

Maybe it’s too much to hope for. But I wonder if we aren’t watching the beginning of a decline in the effectiveness of the Republican Party’s divide-and-conquer strategy.

For nearly half a century the G.O.P. has displayed an unparalleled mastery of the ugly art of devising campaigns that appeal to the very worst in us. It’s always the whites against the blacks, the middle class against the poor, the conservatives against the hated liberals, with the word ”liberal” spat out with the kind of disgust that’s usually reserved for child molesters. …

What seems to be unsettling to large numbers of voters (not just hard-core anti-Bush Democrats) is the notion that events are slipping — or have slipped — out of control, that there is no endgame in Iraq, no plan to rein in runaway deficits, no strategy to put Americans back to work, and no limit to the Bush administration’s willingness to shower its friends with favors and public dollars.

The Democratic primaries and caucuses have drawn record turnouts and sparked genuine excitement. Republicans are expressing concern that the administration has been thrown on the defensive. Already there is an attempt by the G.O.P. to divert attention from the real issues by chanting incessantly about gay marriages and the fact that John Kerry is — uh-oh — a liberal from Massachusetts.

That would be a travesty, and I hope the voters don’t allow it.

Op-Ed Columnist: Get Me Rewrite! by Paul Krugman, NYTimes

Right now America is going through an Orwellian moment. On both the foreign policy and the fiscal fronts, the Bush administration is trying to rewrite history, to explain away its current embarrassments.

Let’s start with the case of the missing W.M.D. Do you remember when the C.I.A. was reviled by hawks because its analysts were reluctant to present a sufficiently alarming picture of the Iraqi threat? Your memories are no longer operative. On or about last Saturday, history was revised: see, it’s the C.I.A.’s fault that the threat was overstated. Given its warnings, the administration had no choice but to invade. …

I’d like to think that the administration’s crass efforts to rewrite history will backfire, that the media and the informed public won’t let officials get away with this. Have we finally had enough?

Coalition Sues to Limit Drilling for Oil and Gas in New Mexico By SIMON ROMERO, NYTimes

Several cattle ranchers joined the unusual coalition because, they said, they had few options for preserving their ranches from the disruption caused by widespread drilling and road-building.

”What’s happening now in Northwestern New Mexico will happen 10 years down the road in many other parts of the West,” said Tweeti Blancett, a cattle rancher and hotel operator in Aztec, N.M. She said she was disillusioned with the Bush administration’s energy policies; she served on Mr. Bush’s presidential campaign in New Mexico four years ago.

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.”