Bush grows increasingly distant from women’s issues By Myriam Marquez, ORLANDO SENTINEL

Look at all that gloating testosterone. If ever there was an image that testifies to President Bush’s growing disconnect with women voters, it’s the bill-signing ceremony last week to ban a type of late-term abortion that Republicans have dubbed partial-birth abortion.

There was the president surrounded by smiling white men, all members of Congress. Not one woman in the bunch, even though this law will affect women with problem pregnancies first and foremost.

Where were women from Feminists for Life or other female-led groups that sought this ban? In their place – in the audience. …

The bill signing had Bush aide Karl Rove’s decidedly ham-handed imprints all over it. Rove is the darling of the religious right, and it looks as if the Bush administration has made a calculation to turn off independents and even some Democratic women who gave Bush their vote in 2000. Such a strategy seeks to capture about 4 million religious conservatives who stayed away in the last presidential election.

ABQjournal: Bush’s Abortion Ban Targets Pro-Choice
By Giovanna H. Rossi
Executive Director, NARAL Pro-Choice New Mexico

With the simple stroke of his pen last week, President Bush became the first president in American history to threaten doctors with jail terms for giving women sound medical advice.

The so-called ”Partial-Birth Abortion” Ban Act of 2003 signed Wednesday substitutes the ideology of anti-choice politicians for the judgment of medical professionals. In signing this deceptive legislation, President Bush has moved one step closer to ending a women’s freedom to choose.
Continue reading Eroding rights and freedoms →

F.B.I.’s Reach Into Records Is Set to Grow By ERIC LICHTBLAU, NYTimes

A little-noticed measure approved by both the House and Senate would significantly expand the F.B.I.’s power to demand financial records, without a judge’s approval, from car dealers, travel agents, pawnbrokers and many other businesses, officials said on Tuesday. …

Officials said the measure, which is tucked away in the intelligence community’s authorization bill for 2004, gives agents greater flexibility and speed in seeking to trace the financial assets of people suspected of terrorism and espionage. It mirrors a proposal that President Bush outlined in a speech two months ago to expand the use of administrative subpoenas in terrorism cases.

Critics said the measure would give the federal government greater power to pry into people’s private lives.

“This dramatically expands the government’s authority to get private business records,” said Timothy H. Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “You buy a ring for your grandmother from a pawnbroker, and the record on that will now be considered a financial record that the government can get.”

The Road to Preserving History

[T]he 1966 Department of Transportation Act say[s] that a federal highway project cannot destroy any historic area if there is a ”prudent and feasible alternative.” These words have blocked, for example, highways from paving parts of the French Quarter in New Orleans and Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.

But as Congress begins negotiating a new transportation bill, the Bush administration and the highway lobby are trying to weaken those protections in the name of “streamlining” the process of building the nation’s roads.

Remember: Bush and the Radical Right aren’t out to change ONE thing; they are bent on changing everything as quickly as possible, before they lose power. mjh

FOXNews.com – Politics – Senate Stalled by Partisan Divide

Senate Minority Whip Harry Reid (search), D-Nev., seized the floor and made it clear that he had no intention of relinquishing it. …

Reid’s move seeks to demonstrate the displeasure Democrats have over a Republican plan to force Democrats later this week to attend 30 hours of debate over judicial nominations in which they will not be allowed to speak.

Republicans said the goal of the 30-hour session, set to start Wednesday at 6:00 p.m., is to bring public attention to the fact that Democrats are blocking a handful of Bush nominees. …

Republicans were hoping the session would open up an opportunity for votes on Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, California Supreme Court Judge Janice Rogers Brown and California Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl. Owen has already been blocked several times by Democratic procedural delays.

Alabama Attorney General William Pryor, Mississippi judge Charles Pickering and lawyer Miguel Estrada have also been prevented by Democrats from appellate court seats. Estrada withdrew his nomination after Republicans failed to break the Democratic blockade seven times.

Reid’s mini-marathon was a pre-emptive strike and a chance to give Republicans a little taste of their own medicine.

“What are we going to spend 30 hours on? Not on the national debt, not on the budget deficit, not on the unemployed, not on poor people, not on the uninsured, but on four judges who we’ve turned down,” Reid said.

[Democrats point out that they’re approved more than 160 other judicial nominees and they say Republicans are only trying to make political points.]

See also Only 4 out of 172 Nominees

From the New York Times:

Lost amid the grandstanding about a ”crisis” in judicial nominations are the facts: 168 Bush nominees have been confirmed and only four rejected, a far better percentage than for President Bill Clinton.

The Republicans have no graciousness nor restraint in power; they simply have greed for more power. You’re either with them or you’re against them. So be it. mjh

President Bush smirks as he signs the so-called ”partial birth” abortion ban as all-male anti-choice friends look on.

prochoiceamerica.org : NARAL Pro-Choice America

Who decides? President Bush thinks he does, and has signed the first federal ban on safe abortion procedures to prove it. What do you think? Get mad. Get active.

Wow. Once again, Al Gore has delivered a scathing speech attacking the Bush administration clearly, thoroughly and emphatically. The media only picked up the ”Big Brother” line. Here is just part of Gore’s speech; the link leads to it all (and another link to hear the speech). mjh

Scoop: Freedom And Security – Speech By Al Gore Nov. 9th

I want to challenge the Bush Administration‘s implicit assumption that we have to give up many of our traditional freedoms in order to be safe from terrorists. Because it is simply not true.

In fact, in my opinion, it makes no more sense to launch an assault on our civil liberties as the best way to get at terrorists than it did to launch an invasion of Iraq as the best way to get at Osama Bin Laden.

In both cases, the Administration has attacked the wrong target.

In both cases they have recklessly put our country in grave and unnecessary danger, while avoiding and neglecting obvious and much more important challenges that would actually help to protect the country.

In both cases, the administration has fostered false impressions and misled the nation with superficial, emotional and manipulative presentations that are not worthy of American Democracy.

In both cases they have exploited public fears for partisan political gain and postured themselves as bold defenders of our country while actually weakening not strengthening America.

In both cases, they have used unprecedented secrecy and deception in order to avoid accountability to the Congress, the Courts, the press and the people.

Indeed, this Administration has turned the fundamental presumption of our democracy on its head. …

Almost eighty years ago, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote “Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. . . . They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.” Those who won our independence, Brandeis asserted, understood that “courage [is] the secret of liberty” and “fear [only] breeds repression.”

Rather than defending our freedoms, this Administration has sought to abandon them. Rather than accepting our traditions of openness and accountability, this Administration has opted to rule by secrecy and unquestioned authority. Instead, its assaults on our core democratic principles have only left us less free and less secure. …

This Administration simply does not seem to agree that the challenge of preserving democratic freedom cannot be met by surrendering core American values. Incredibly, this Administration has attempted to compromise the most precious rights that America has stood for all over the world for more than 200 years: due process, equal treatment under the law, the dignity of the individual, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, freedom from promiscuous government surveillance. And in the name of security, this Administration has attempted to relegate the Congress and the Courts to the sidelines and replace our democratic system of checks and balances with an unaccountable Executive. And all the while, it has constantly angled for new ways to exploit the sense of crisis for partisan gain and political dominance. How dare they! …

The Bush Administration’s treatment of American citizens it calls “enemy combatants” is nothing short of un-American.

See also:
08/13/2003: Gore takes Bush to task

The direction in which our nation is being led is deeply troubling to me — not only in Iraq but also here at home on economic policy, social policy and environmental policy.

Millions of Americans now share a feeling that something pretty basic has gone wrong in our country and that some important American values are being placed at risk. And they want to set it right. …