A Progressive on the Prairie

Everybody is reading today about the fact Brandon Mayfield, a Portland lawyer, was released after being held for two weeks as a "material witness" (i.e., without charges being filed) in the Madrid bombings. He was held after his fingerprint was allegedly found on a bag of detonators recovered after the bombings. Many of the stories also report that Spanish authorities doubted any link from the outset. There is little, if any, mention of this statement in the May 17 Newsweek: "A top U.S. counterterrorism official told NEWSWEEK that the fingerprint was an 'absolutely incontrovertible match.'" (The article then parenthetically noted that Spanish authorities "weren't quite as sure.")

Maybe Newsweek just got some bum information from a bum source. Still, Reuters reports, "While the Americans found 15 points of coincidence between the print on the bag and Mayfield's fingerprint, Spanish police found only eight." It is more than a little disconcerting when an "absolutely incontrovertible match" becomes "oops, guess we were wrong" and our fingerprint expertise lags behind Spain's.
1 comments

I don't want to detract from the abuse/torture reports coming out of Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., or even claim some sort of direct comparison. In fact, I am beginning to believe these scandals may turn out to be the most likely things to topple the Bush Administration. But, unfortunately, physical abuse is just one sign of the lawlessness of the Bush administration. They continue to systematicaly abuse and torture the rule of law.

Striking my attention this morning was several paragraphs from a Seattle Times story about the detention and upcoming "trial" before a military tribunal of a man who was supposedly bin Laden's driver. The following excerpt is actually from the Argus-Leader's edited version of the story:

But using his broad wartime powers, here's how the president has set up the tribunals: The administration selects those to try and oversees their judges. Officials under the president's supervision come up with a list of eligible crimes as well as the rules under which the tribunals operate. There are no time limits, and no oversight by Congress or the judicial branch.

The government said Hamdan will be charged with a crime, but he still hasn't been told what it is. He was transferred to solitary confinement in December in preparation for trial, but no trial date has been set.

He has been told the trial will be fair but that evidence may be withheld from him, and his lawyer must ask the government's permission before revealing any facts of the case. He can seek redress only up the chain of command — in other words, to the people who decided he should be charged in the first place.

Last year, Hamdan was told he would remain in solitary until he agreed to plead guilty to an unspecified offense, according to the pleadings.

Hamdan is not a US citizen and, thus, not entitled to the protection of the US Constitution. Still, our claims of bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq as a starter for the rest of the Middle East certainly rings hollow if this is the due process lesson we are teaching in the process. It certainly seems that a cavalier approach to legal process would contribute to the ensuing physical treatment of detainees and prisoners.
1 comments

The trend numbers of the Mason-Dixon poll appear in today's Argus-Leader. The only surprise to me is the fact I evidently overlooked earlier erosion of support for Bush in the state.

The results indicate Bush's favorable name recognition has gone from 58% last August to 54% in November to 47% in February to the most recent 49%. Comparatively, his unfavorable numbers have gone 25%, 27%, 33% and 32%. The February and May numbers are within the poll's margin of error. Thus, any erosion appears to have stabilized for the time being, which is a bit surprising given the horrid month of April in Iraq. It's hard to tell what role the Iraq prisoner abuse stories played since the poll was being taken at about the time that story was developing.

None of this means Bush should be worried about carrying South Dakota and its massive 3 electoral votes. As the Argus pointed out, no Democratic presidential candidate has won South Dakota since Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide win over Goldwater. Still, the numbers do seem to reinforce that Bush's current support is largely the GOP core.
0 comments

KELO and the Argus-Leader are now beginning to report the Bush-Kerry numbers from the recent poll they sponsored. The first KELO story doesn't come as a shock on the surface. "If the election was held today, Bush would get 51% of the vote, compared to John Kerry's 35%, 4% would vote for Ralph Nader, 10% are undecided." Bush has a 49% "favorable" rating and a 32% unfavorable rating while 19% have evidently been doing nothing but watching reality TV programs the last four years and are "neutral" on Bush. On the other hand, Kerry has a 27% favorable rating, a 39% unfavorable rating, and 33% are neutral.

The KELO story plays this as "South Dakotans still like Bush" while the initial Argus article focuses on Bush's "double-digit lead." I think that's too simplistic. We have an incumbent Republican president who outpolled Gore 60%-38% four years ago now getting 51% against a guy with a 39% unfavorable rating. Additionally, Bush's 49% favorable rating closely matches historic GOP voter registration percentages. To me, that indicates the GOP base is about all Bush is holding on to. I'm no professional pundit, but this limited information leads me to believe Bush is seeing serious erosion in support. And if he's seeing it here, it can happen anywhere.

Perhaps there will be more clarity tomorrow when some of the trend numbers show up in the Argus article and later in the week when some stories on some Bush-specific numbers are slated to run.
0 comments

That is the headline of a recent article at the History News Network. An "informal, unscientific survey of historians" showed

• 81 percent of 415 historians surveyed viewed the Bush Administration as a failure.
  
  
• 12 percent of all historians who responded rate the Bush presidency the worst in American history.
  
  
• 17 percent said Bush was the biggest failure as president since Nixon, 14 percent said he was the biggest failure since Harding and 12 percent said he was the biggest failure since Hoover.

Plainly, it is too early to truly judge the legacy of the Bush administration. I personally believe the historians are not far off the mark. The sad thing is, the November election may teach us all too soon that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.
0 comments

The Diedrich-Herseth race draws the attention of the The New York Times. My favorite quote comes from Diedrich: "She [Herseth] has done a very good job of running as a Republican." Unfortunately, he is all too accurate.

The NY Times also reports that 48 Roman Catholic members of Congress have written a church representative objecting to the fact threats to deny communion are "miring the Church in partisan politics." Since the letter appears to have come only from House members, Tom Daschle's name is absent. Query: Given the Argus-KELO poll indicates a virtual tie in the Daschle-Thune race, would Tom sign such a letter coming from the Senate?

UPDATE: With respect to the comments regarding gay issues, as I have noted before, Stephanie has consistently said she supports Bush on the gay marriage constitutional amendment. For example, in a debate last month, she said: "I have consistently supported the president and would vote to pass a constitutional amendment if narrowly defined as he requested - to define marriage as between a man and a woman."
1 comments

Too much stuff attracting my attention as I get caught up on reading and web site visits. That leads to this brain dump-type of entry.

• I don't know about you but there's just something about conspiracy theories that kind of flips my trigger. I think that's true for a lot of people. I understand that even some of our state universities have offered classes or seminars in conspiracy theory. In any event, Mike Ward has a interesting column at AlterNet on the Top 10 Conspiracy Theories of 2003-2004.
  
  
• And didn't this lede in a Knight-Ridder article give you a warm and fuzzy feeling: "The U.S. Army is scraping up soldiers for duty in Iraq wherever it can find them, and that includes places and people long considered off-limits."
  
  
• A Colorado blogger has reaction to the pastoral letter discussed below regarding denying communion to Catholics who vote for pro-choice candidates. (Via Atrios). And John Nichols of the Nation expands on another issue I raised:

  But what about politicians, like President Bush, who violate church teachings with regards to launching preemptive wars and imposing the death penalty? Should conservative Catholic politicians who back the president and his war be denied the Eucharist? Should their supporters [be] sanctioned?

• The Village Voice has an almost frightening article on how the fundamentalist right holds sway in the Bush White House. Also, check out Juan Cole's excellent comments (from whence the link comes) as well as this somewhat related opinion piece in the Guardian last month.
  
  
• IsThatLegal? notes that the concerns about the Solicitor General possibly misleading the Supreme Court in the Guantanamo arguments (noted below) is evidently attracting more attention. It appears the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary committee has now asked for an investigation into this question.

0 comments