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Thursday, September 26
Salon's Katharine Mieszkowski has another superb report on guerilla tactics by radical antiabortion zealots. This one details how one such group, Texas-based Life Dynamics, had staffers call up Planned Parenthood clinics posing as underage girls who had been impregnated by older men. The clinics are supposed to report these cases to police as potential instances of statutory rape or child abuse, but it seems Life Dynamics was able to record a couple of receptionists urging the callers not to tell the clinic the age of their partners if they came in for a visit. Life Dynamics then started feeding the tapes -- illegal in many states -- to news channels and local prosecutors, while launching websites accusing Planned Parenhood of protecting molesters and rapists. It's pretty awful stuff. [posted 12:25 pm]
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DASCHLE'S BIG SPEECH. Regular reader know that Tapped has long urged
the Democrats to get tough. By that we mean they should show a little outrage when George Bush or other Republicans lash out at or bully them. Bush is forever "warning" the Democrats about this or that, and they typically react like abused wives. But in this speech, Tom Daschle finally seems to have had enough. Good for him for going on the offensive. Let's just hope he doesn't decide later today that his speech has been "misinterpreted." [posted 12:20 pm]
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GORE'S BIG SPEECH. There were two peculiar things about the coverage of Al Gore's foreign policy speech in San Francisco. One was that of all Gore's most vociferous critics, including Michael Kelly (who turned in a bravura impression of a man utterly disconnected from reality), almost none engaged with the actual substance of Gore's speech. Instead, nearly all of the criticism focused on Gore's motives for giving it -- a common feature of bad political journalism.
The other peculiar thing was that, reading the coverage of Gore's speech, you could almost imagine that his own party was angry at him for giving it. But while Terry McAuliffe, Joe Lieberman, and Tom Daschle may have expressed some concerns, it seems that the reaction of almost all the rank-and-file Democrats was one of gratitute. Read this overlooked article by Mary Lynn F. Jones and Alex Bolton in The Hill for the details. The basic point is, Gore gave the speech that many other Democrats wanted to give themselves but didn't dare. [posted 12:15 pm]
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Wednesday, September 25
Who stacks up -- the rap star or the chat star? G. Beato has the answer here. [posted 3:15 pm]
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TAPPED IS GETTING ALL GRILED UP. We were pleased this morning to see some of the administration's conflict-ridden appointees getting front page coverage in The Washington Post. A report released today by Earthjustice and Public Campaign tells us that deputy Interior Department secretary J. Steven Griles (yes the same person TAP took on some time ago) isn't unique. The document exposes in overwhelming detail the all-too-obvious selling of the environment to corporate supporters of Bush and the RNC; it's a perfect demonstration of how the mercenary culture of Washington works. [posted 3:05 pm]
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THE FDA GETS A CHIEF. You might be wondering why it's taken the White House a year and a half to nominate a commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration. This article says that Ted Kennedy was the hold-up, but Tapped suspects a factional divide on the right was part of the problem. Religious conservatives wanted someone who would be sympathetic to their positions on cloning and abortion pills. Big drug companies wanted someone who would speed up the process for approving drugs. Luckily, however, the administration has put up a guy who, judging from the coverage, is no ideologue. [posted 3:00 pm]
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THE HEROIC HYDE. One of the few relatively consistent conservatives in the House is Republican Henry Hyde, long-maligned for his role in Bill Clinton's impeachment and his perennial sponsorship of the anti-abortion Hyde Amendment. But on issues of national security and law enforcement, Hyde has always been well aware of the dangers of overweening state power, and acted accordingly. Right now, Tapped is glad Hyde is listening to his caucus and crafting a much narrower resolution on Iraq than the White House wanted, albeit not as narrow as the Democrats would prefer. [posted 2:50 pm]
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HOW TO WIN ON HOMELAND SECURITY. Up until now, the Democrats have been letting themselves get rolled on the debate over legislation concerning a department of homeland security. They've let George Bush and the Republicans define the debate as one pitting Democrats and their lame special-interest demands (in this case, in favor of unions) against the interests of national security. But now that GOP Senator Lincoln Chafee has come to the rescue, replacing the vote of, er, Democratic Senator Zell Miller (who's going with the Republicans...again), the Democrats have another chance.
To make the most of it, they need to redefine the debate as it what it really is. Knocking around the unions a little bit is only a fringe benefit of the White House's homeland security policy. The real motive for turning what are nominally nonpolitical civil service jobs into patronage jobs, while simultaneously exempting the new department from whistleblower protections, is to allow the White House to execute homeland security policy without any kind of media or congressional oversight. This is an old story with the DOES ANN COULTER KNOW ABOUT THIS? Dick Armey says:
Wait a sec. We thought it was liberals who called other
people names, and called the other side dumb. [posted 2:30 pm] Tuesday, September 24
Columbia just announced a
committee of people who will be charged with assessing the role and future of the university's journalism school, commonly acknowledged as the best in the nation. Just to recap: The knock against journalism school in general is that it just doesn't produce a lot of stars. The best journalists in the field, it is argued, don't have a year of j-school on their resume. When Tapped was a rookie, we were often told that there wasn't much you could get out of j-school that you couldn't learn on the job -- where they pay you to learn, not the other way around.
The j-schools and their defenders usually insist that this is wrong, and trot out a list of prominent alumni to make their point. (On the whole, Tapped holds the former view, but feels that j-school is not a bad way
for late bloomers -- i.e., people who didn't rack up a lot of clips and internships in college -- to get their foot in the door.)
This new committee, however, seems to confirm the critics' point. The list consists of 26 journalists and quasi-journalists -- people working in journalism, at journalism thinktanks, and as journalism professors --
and seven academics or other people. A quick Google search reveals that of first group, only eight went to J-school at Columbia or elswhere. (Although a couple of them -- Columbia acting dean David Klatell and Michigan
Journalism Fellows director Charles Eisendrath -- we couldn't track down.) That means that of the 35 eminences invited by Columbia to serve on the committee,
only about 1/4 enjoyed the benefits of a journalism school education. Now, perhaps the school is simply trying to get a kind of outsider perspective, for which they can't be blamed. But maybe the Columbia Journalism School has
already answered its own question. [posted 6:10 pm] WE HOPE THE CUT WAS DUE TO SPACE CONSIDERATIONS. Tapped has come across an interesting anomaly, though we're not sure what to make of it. From Michael Kinsley's latest Slate column:
From the same column as it appeared in the Washington Post:
Needless to say, we prefer the Slate version. [posted 3:10 pm] NEEDED: TOUGH DEMOCRATS. Tod Lindberg has an important column in today's Washington Times arguing that a successful Democratic nominee in 2004 must be credible on national security issues -- which are not the same thing as foreign policy issues. "If Republicans have the ongoing electoral challenge of proving that they are sensitive to real people's concerns," he writes, "Democrats face the
challenge of proving they are tough enough." This wasn't as true during the Clinton years, when foreign affairs receded in important from national elections. But it's true again today. It's a smart column, and all the Democratic contenders should read it. (Especially John Edwards, who Lindberg names the most agile and foward-looking Dem on these issues. Credit that to Edwards' new foreign policy guru, former Richard Holbrooke speechwriter Derek Cholett.) [posted 3:00 pm] MISSED MANNERS. Isn't it about time the Bush administration dropped its habit of petty slights and insults to people with whom it disagrees? Not inviting John McCain to the campaign finance reform signing ceremony was one example; not calling Gerhard Schroeder to congratulate him on his very narrow re-election victory is another. Remember, Schroeder staked his entire political career on rallying Germans around war in Afghanistan; he almost lost a no-confidence vote in the German parliament about a year ago that would have brought down his government. America owes him one, even if he opposes invading Iraq. And this is the thanks he gets? [posted 2:40 pm] LISTEN TO THE GORE SPEECH. Like many of you Tapped was pretty stunned by
the Al Gore speech yesterday. Was that leadership? Political calculation? (Which would suggest that Gore's reading the polls and there is some sign of anti-war life out there.) Doesn't matter to us -- Tapped
liked the speech. And now TomPaine.com has posted it. Listen to it for yourself. [posted 12:30 pm] NOT-SO-FUNNY MONEY . . . EarthJustice and Public Campaign -- an environmental legal powerhouse and a campaign finance visionary, respectively -- have teamed up to produce a report titled, "Paybacks: How the Bush Administration is Giving Away Our Environment to Its Corporate Contributors." (The link will be live
tomorrow morning at 11 a.m.) The report documents the administration's give-back to their political patrons on six issues -- timber, clean
water, clean air, public lands and toxics. What's unique about the report -- and yes, Tapped has had a sneak
peak at it -- is that it not only links the Republican fundraising juggernaut to this administration's policies, but it also highlights the corporate
connections of the Bush appointees, including some of the lower-level
folks who've gotten little attention. Put it all together and you have
an incredible, undeniable indictment of Bush and company.
You may think you know it all, but you don't. Ever heard of Mark Rey -- a
man with 20 years' experience working for various timber associations?
He's a nominee to be the Under Secretary at Agriculture where he'll be
responsible for management of national forests and grasslands. How about
Jeffrey Holmstead, EPA's Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air
and Radiation who formerly represented an industry group opposed to
enforcement of clean air laws? How about the donation of money not only to campaigns but to recount committees and inaugural committees as well? Check it out tomorrow. [posted 12:20 pm] THE IRAQ DOSSIER. Here's the British government's compendium of evidence against Saddam, although it can't include the secret stuff. (This is the link to the executive summary. This is the link to the full thing.) It's pretty chilling stuff, especially the claim by a British research service that Iraq could assemble nuclear weapons within months of obtaining fissile material. Still, it's worth pointing out that the Blair government has already committed themselves to supporting the Bush administration on this question, and we're only seeing second-hand evidence. We'd feel better if Blair, and Bush, would share the direct evidence widely with members of the opposition -- i.e., the Tories and the Democrats, respectively. [posted 11:50 am] BAD NEWS, GOOD NEWS FOR BUSH. The latest Ipsos-Reid poll is out. It shows
that only 47 percent of voters would definitely re-elect George W. Bush if the president were on the ballot in September -- still under 50 percent, which doesn't seem to be a good sign. (Although we would appreciate readers
with more polling expertise writing in on this -- is this normal or bad for an incumbent president?) However, for the first time in a couple of months a majority of voters -- 51 percent -- think the country is going in the right direction. Which probably isn't great news for the Democrats going into November elections. [posted 11:35 am] ALL ARI, ALL THE TIME. Tapped choked on our cereal reading this passage from a New York Times report on actions at the United Nations in response to Israel's latest move against Yasser Arafat's office:
"Peace is best secured by new Palestinian institutions, and what Israel is doing is running contrary to that cause," he said. "The president views what Israel is doing now as unhelpful to the cause of bringing about reform in Palestinian institutions. The president's priority is peace. Peace has been secured by new Palestinian institutions. And what Israel is doing is running contrary to that cause. It is not helpful." What the heck is wrong with the media today? Isn't it the job of reporters to protect their readers from the full banality of Ari Fleischer -- to cut him off before he grates on our ears and our senses?
Alternatively, could it be that by playing Fleischer's broken record much longer than they have to, these Times reporters are indulging in subtle (subversive!) commentary on the state of White House press secretary-dom today? You be the judge. [posted 6:45 am] Monday, September 23
Boy, we bet that hooked you. Anyways, reader A.H. makes an important point about Social Security that we neglected: It isn't exclusively an old-age safety net. According to this document, retired workers are only about 63 percent of those who recieve Social Security checks. The rest are dependents, disabled workers, and
widows. As A.H. points out, focusing
NEW ARTICLES. Recently posted at TAP Online: John Prados explains how last week's hearings on September 11 intelligence failures demonstrate that the Bush administration is still more interested in protecting its poll numbers than getting to the bottom of our pre-9-11 intelligence mistakes. And Robert Kuttner says that Saddam's ploy of readmitting the inspectors, however cynical, gives Bush a golden opportunity -- one that he probably won't take. [posted 4:10 pm] THE NEW REPUBLIC GETS A BLOG. Well, it's about frickin' time. Here's the web address. It's titled "&c.," which will strike some
readers as obscure and difficult to pronounce -- kinda like Prince's old name, er, symbol. But TNR uses the same notation on their table of contents, and we always took it to be an old-fashioned typograph of "Etc." Like
Tapped, they appear to be going for short, unbylined pieces -- we'll know more when they post more. A warm welcome to our friends at The New Republic! And may they blog unto the end of days. [posted 2:20 pm] UPDATE ON "MEET THE PRESS." The transcript to last Sunday's edition is
now online. It's not quite bad as we
had heard. Here's the debate between show host Tim Russert, Republican Sen. Wayne Allard, and his opponent, Tom Strickland. The exchange contains more than a few hilarious moments -- Orwellianisms, Bushisms uttered by someone other than Bush, etc. -- that you should look out for. We're going to quote at length, and then insert commentary: SEN. ALLARD: Yes.
MR. RUSSERT: Some call that privatizing.
SEN. ALLARD: Yeah. Yeah.
MR. RUSSERT: Democrats prefer that term. Republicans object to it.
SEN. ALLARD: Yes.
MR. RUSSERT: With the stock market going from over 10,000 down to 7,000, are you now concerned that private accounts, where senior citizens would put a portion of the money they would pay in Social Security tax into private accounts, would be at risk? And, two, the president's own commission said doing that would cost a trillion dollars in transition costs.
SEN. ALLARD: Yes.
MR. RUSSERT: Are you willing to put that idea on the back burner for the time being?
SEN. ALLARD: Well, first of all, I don't support "privatizing Social Security." What I do support is that we give individual choices, just pretty much like federal employees. It's still managed by the federal
government, like you do the federal employee, and they give their indication, the participant, on how they want to have their money invested. Now, they don't have to invest in the stock market. They can still invest it in a savings
account in a bank. Your passbook account gets a better return on the dollars than what, you know, they would right now in the current Social Security system. Now, that return...
Russert lets this one pass, even though he shouldn't. Social Security is not a pension plan, so you can't compare it to the "federal employee" plan as Allard does. Redefining Social Security as a retirement plan rather
than an old-age guarantee is essential to Republican spin; if the public starts thinking of Social Security as a particularly low-performing 401(k), they'll support privatization. Russert might've nailed him on this one. But
Russert does press Allard on the basic trade-off that few Republicans will admit: Privatization will require a cut in benefits or an increase in payroll taxes. He asks: SEN. ALLARD: Well, I agree that there's going to be some extra cost to that. I'm willing to shoulder those extra costs because I would want to see future Americans to have the same benefit from Social Security as we do now. I think there's two ways to do it. You get a better return on the
dollars that go into Social Security, and you have to face up to the fact that we've been taking money out of the Social Security account, transferring it to the general fund. We've got to get that back into the account, establish some balances in there that will increase some revenue.
This is an astonishing admission, since it's the Bush administration that has decided to renege, in practice, on its promise to pay those funds back. The tax cut basically eats up the Social Security surplus. But Russert
lets it go, and this is where he calls "privatizing" a Democratic term.
That's rather annoying. However, to be fair, Strickland also wimped out, big-time. When Russert asked him what his plan is for Social Security, Strickland yammered on about Social Security for awhile and then, finally,
ducked the big question: MR. STRICKLAND: Well...
MR. RUSSERT: Would you put that on the table?
MR. STRICKLAND: ...again, what we need to do here, Tim, is consider the immediacy of the urgency. In 1983, it...
MR. RUSSERT: Would you be willing to consider those?
MR. STRICKLAND: What we need to do-let's put together a mechanism like with base closure. What we did with base closure is we took it out of the pure political process. We created a non-partisan commission and you put everything on the table.
The only credible answer to this question is: Repeal the tax cut. But Strickland, like most Democrats, is afraid to take it on. So he gives a non-answer. [posted 12:45 pm] SOME STIRRINGS. Helen Dewar tells us this morning that some lawmakers are hearing that not everyone out there is wildly for this war in Iraq. About a dozen House and Senate members are reporting overwhelming concern about the war, particularly if we proceed unilaterally:
MARK TWAIN. The website Commondreams.org -- a terrific resource on what progressive columnists are thinking and on what activists are doing (it's on Tapped's daily "must check" list) -- pointed our way to this piece written by Mark Twain in 1910. It speaks to "the loud little handful" who "will shout for the war." [posted 11:40 am] GET SOME ANSWERS YOURSELF. This item could have been titled "Thank God for the Web." Eric Umasky -- writing in The New York Times rather than in his usual gig for Slate -- points us toward a military watchdog group (Globalsecurity.org) where we can get some hard facts about what's going on in Iraq. Want to see some satellite photos of how the American airbase in Qatar has been expanded in advance of the war? Check it out. [posted 11:40 am] POLITICIZING THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT. The Times reported on Sunday that an appointee of John Ashcroft has been moving to put the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a Justice Department unit that tabulates crime reports from across the country and that has traditionally been independent, under closer authority of the attorney general's office: In a report to Congress on these changes, Ms. Daniels, whose brother, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., is director of the Office of Management and Budget, said there was a need to centralize control over these agencies because of the Sept. 11 attacks. Ms. Henke is a close associate of Mr. Ashcroft
and was responsible for inserting language in the Patriot Act undercutting the two agencies' independence, employees say.
Note (from Tapped to cruel and indifferent universe): What else was stuck into that Godawful bill when no one was looking?
You might wonder: Why, of all things, are Ashcroft's people interfering with this department? After all, they declined to install ideologues at Justice's Child Obscenity Enforcement Unity, which in the Reagan and first Bush administrations was staffed by anti-porn zealouts who spent a lot of time and bent a lot of rules to put a few dozen dildo catalogs out of business, but which under Bush has sensibly focused on child pornography. Why turn their attention to crime statistics?
Fox Butterfield, the article's author, doesn't do a good job of explaining, but here's the gist. Administrations like good news on crime statistics because they can claim (implausibly) to have lowered crime. They
don't like bad news because then they can be blamed (equally implausibly) for letting crime get worse. Ashcroft's people plainly want to have control over the release of bad news (to delay the information or otherwise
keep people from picking up on it) and over good news (to release it strategically so as best to benefit the administration). This is what happened recently when a top Justice official leaked reports showing a large decrease in violent crime early rather than on the normal timetable.
Somehow, all of this seems a tad more significant than the supposed "politicization" of the White House travel office that conservatives spent so much time yammering about during the Clinton years. This isn't some petty bit of patronage politics. Ashcroft and his cronies are damaging an important source of accurate and impartial information, information that informs policies that affect the entire country. It's petty and stupid. And it's of a piece with the relationship this administration has always had with accurate data, from deficit projections to tax revenues: They're allergic to it. [posted 9:00 am] THE TIMES'S CAMPAIGN NEWS. Katherine Seelye's weekly campaign column isn't the snoozer B. Drummond Ayres's is (or was -- did one replace the other?). Sunday's edition had several items of note. One is that GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio has come out with a new way of measuring which party is better placed to win seats in the House this November. Rather than polling the entire electorate to
arrive at a "generic" ballot (i.e., would you vote for a Republican or a Democrat), Fabrizio only polled voters in the 40 competitive congressional districts, as defined by the reputable Cook Political Report. He found that those voters favored Republicans 43 to 38 percent, with 19 percent undecided.
Now, Fabrizio is a GOP pollster, and if his numbers are accurate, they don't necessarily bode well for the Republicans. For instance, to take an extreme case, if every incumbent in those districts was a Republican,
these numbers would represent real opportunity for their opponents (any time an incumbent polls under 50 percent, they're in trouble, period). But nevertheless, we'd like to see a Democratic version of this poll.
In other news, Talking Points Memo's Veterans Administration scoop from back in August is apparently becoming a campaign issue in Mississippi. Seelye reports that veterans in Rep. Ronnie Shows' district are angry over the Bush administration's plan to dissuade them from seeking health benefits to which they are entitled. Democrats: Each of you, especially in rural districts, need to make more out of this. Demand that your GOP opponents denounce the Bush administration's attempt to deprive veterans of health care. Now. [posted 9:00 am] DID HE REALLY SAY THAT? One of Tapped's correspondents tells us that
on "Meet the Press" yesterday, Tim Russert described "privatization" as "the Democrats' word" to describe the GOP position on Social Security
reform. This is troubling; it suggests that the GOP's campaign to intimidate the press against using that word is working. That isn't the Democrats' word. It's the Republicans' word. More to the point, it's the accurate word. But as we've said before, this is the flip side of the journalistic cult of objectivity, which is better thought of as the cult of neutrality: Reporters shy away from the perception that they are taking sides in a
political debate, even when one side is manifestly the side of fact and the other the side of spin and deception. We'll look into this when a transcript becomes available. Email us if you were watching "Meet the Press" and can confirm or deny.
P.S. MSNBC also picks up a Reuters report that John McCain will not run again for the presidency. The Reuters item is based on a passage in McCain's book, in which he writes that he doesn't think he'll have "the opportunity or the reason" for another White House bid; McCain repeated the phrase on "Meet the Press" Sunday. But didn't Slate's Chatterbox have this weeks ago, from reading a galley of the book? And don't Slate and MSNBC play on the same team? [posted 9:00 am] WHAT'S A ZEALOT? Bill Keller has a very sympathetic profile of Paul Wolfowitz in the New York Times Magazine, a piece arguing that Wolfowitz isn't the man he's routinely made out to be. The section that motivates the entire piece, and that will surely be hailed by Keller's blogosphere fans as a brave rebuke to the Times' previous coverage of Wolfowitz, is this:
And though Keller concedes that "these epithets capture something of Wolfowitz's views and something of the company he keeps," it is clearly the writer's conviction that Wolfowitz has been maligned, and that, more importantly, his detractors have missed what is significant about the
man. "The shorthand version of Paul Wolfowitz...is inadequate in important ways," Keller writes. "It completely misses his style, which relies on patient
logic and respectful, soft-spoken engagement rather than on
fire-breathing conviction."
Tapped doesn't know Keller, but from his writing we imagine that he fancies himself a hardheaded debunker of silly liberal pieties. (Certainly Keller's fans on the center-right think of him that way.) This article, however, while it sheds a lot of light on Wolfowitz's thinking and
nicely frames the debate over invading Iraq, is a good illustration of Jonathan Chait's theory of how the media routinely mistake conservatives' personality for their convictions.
Chait argues that reporters assume that anyone who is friendly in person must be moderate in politics, while a man who is combative and brusque in person must necessarily be a fire-breathing ideologue.
To Keller, the fact that Wolfowitz is "soft-spoken," patient, respectful, and so forth militates against him being a foreign policy radical. Surely this nice man who argues so pleasantly must also be reasonable! But it is Keller who is being reductionist. It's doubtful that any of those descriptions of Wolfowitz were intended as a comment on the man's personality. They are comments on his
politics. And as such, they are mostly correct. Wolfowitz is indubitably a hawk, a unilateralist, a nemesis of Colin Powell's state department, and Israel-centric. This doesn't make him an "ideologue." But it doesn't make him right, either. [posted 9:00 am] Note: This section is currently a work in progress.....
Altercation: Eric Alterman has the best-named blog we know -- and the content's great too.
Instapundit: Glenn Reynolds is blogging's 800 pound gorilla.
The Nation: Bizarre link-less blogs. Weirder than naked mole rats!
Max Sawicky: If you like fiscal policy, you'll love Sawicky. And if you find it boring, that's okay too, because he isn't.
What is "Tapped"? Click here to find out.
Tapped Archives: Click here for all the crazy things we've said in the past.
E-mail Tapped: tapped@prospect.org Permanent Link: www.prospect.org/current/tapped (right click to bookmark)
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"Liberals are, in my estimation, just not bright
people," he said. "I have not been impressed with the
intellect of the left since I was a freshman in
college."
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In any event, wrapping yourself in the flag and burying your head in the sand -- please take a moment to imagine Bill Bennett in this condition -- is not an appropriate way to deal with an unwelcome philosophical challenge.
In any event, wrapping yourself in the flag and burying your head in the sand is not an appropriate way to deal with an unwelcome philosophical challenge.
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Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, called the Israeli action in Ramallah "unhelpful."
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...exclusively focusing upon the retirement/old age aspect of Social Security makes the GOP's privatization argument easier if people think that their contributions are supposed to be earmarked for them personally, rather than to help provide insurance for millions of disabled
people, widows, and children. The GOP argument concentrates on maximizing the total personal return and never mentions these additional classes of people.
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MR. RUSSERT: Senator Allard, you have suggested creating private accounts in Social Security.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me ask you. This is important. If you allow that, if you allow individuals to take some of the money they were going to pay to Social Security and put it in a private account, the fact is the money in the Social Security fund would go down and benefits would have to go down.
MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Strickland, the Democrats say they're against - many Democrats - private accounts or privatizing is their term. However, there used to be 35 workers for every retiree. There's soon to be two workers for every
retiree. There are now 40 million people on Social Security. There's soon to be 80 million people. If the current system is maintained, status quo, when the baby boomers retire, you'd have to either reduce benefits a third or double the taxes to pay premiums and benefits at the current level.
MR. RUSSERT: But if you double the number of recipients, how are you going pay for it? Would you be willing to freeze cost-of-living increases? Would you be willing to have a means test for richer Americans not to get the
same benefits?
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Aides to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) counted 5,614 phone calls over the past six weeks, only 136 of which indicated support for unilateral military action, with letters reflecting about the same division. Phone calls to the office of Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) were running 8 to 1 against war, a Frist aide said. Rep. Charles W. Stenholm (D-Tex.), who represents a hawkish district, said calls and letters were running overwhelmingly against a unilateral strike until Bush's speech to the U.N. earlier this month. Now, he said, they are about 50-50.
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These critics trace the shift to the passage in October of the U.S.A. Patriot Act, a sweeping antiterrorism measure that removed much of the freedom the directors of the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Institute of Justice had long enjoyed, giving their authority to the
assistant attorney general for the Office of Justice Programs, Deborah Daniels, and her deputy, Tracy Henke.
One result of this change, the employees say, is that statistical reports and decisions about research grants are now being sent to Ms. Henke and Ms. Daniels and then to the attorney general for clearance before being publicly released. Another result, said the employees, who
spoke on the condition of not being named, is that some reports and grants are being delayed for two to three months awaiting clearance.
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In Washington, some people go straight to caricature, without getting much chance to be interesting or complicated. Paul Wolfowitz, who is interesting and complicated, has been cast since Sept. 11 in the role
of zealot. Except for one humanizing incident when he was booed for mentioning the suffering of Palestinians at a pro-Israel rally, Wolfowitz has been summarily depicted as a hawk (The Economist preferred "velociraptor"), conservative ideologue, unilateralist, nemesis of Colin Powell's State Department and, sometimes, "Israel-centric."
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