April 30, 2005 - The parameters of the President’s plan to “reform” Social Security are out on the table. It features diverting one third of Social Security revenues to the private sector capitol market; raising the age at which retirees are eligible for benefits; indexing benefits to wages rather than the cost of living; and means testing benefits. Under the President’s plan the benefits paid to “poor” recipients would not be reduced or indeed might grow while middle class retirees would see their checks shrink and affluent retirees would forego almost all of their present benefits. There is not one word in the President’s package that would include what his father used to call “revenue enhancement”. Bush the Elder had to call a spade a shovel because he had us read his lips.

Put all together the President’s plan for Social Security is to reform it out of existence, at least as we know it. He does it by slicing off one third of the revenue as a snack for Wall Street and converting what is left into a soup kitchen. A program that was conceived as a system to insure wage earners the opportunity to end their lives without falling into abject poverty would be converted into a means tested welfare program – a program that will soon be the target of conservative rhetoric just as surely as a generation ago they railed against apocryphal Welfare Queens who made a business of bearing children. The President’s “reform” program is the fruition of Newt Gingrich’s promise to starve the savage beast of Social Security by cutting off its funds. Reform, as the President’s men define it, is the central feature of the Bush agenda but they use the word as a synonym for destruction by increments....click here for entire article.

April 23, 2005 - “I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the vote.'" That is how John Bolton introduced himself to a team of Tallahassee election workers in December 2000. He was then part of the Bush-Cheney team of lawyers sent to Florida to control and then prevent the recount. When asked what position Bolton should have in the new administration Vice-President Elect Richard Cheney replied, “Any thing that he wants.” When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced Bolton’s nomination as UN Ambassador she said, "The president and I have asked John to do this work because he knows how to get things done." As the President says, sometimes politics does get in the way of the peoples’ business.

As one after another career diplomat reveals personal experiences casting doubt on the nominee’s qualifications to act diplomatically as America’s spokesman to the world and as one after another Republican Senator expresses reservations as Mr. Bolton’s suitability for the job, the Administration is closing ranks and blaming the nominee’s temperament troubles on politics and a Democrat smear campaign. Perhaps bullying behavior has some place in political discourse at some level but the repeated pattern by which John Bolton has dealt with disagreement is more than just style. It evidences a state of mind that forces facts to comply with ideological objectives by cowing the investigator reporting the facts. Refusal to consider alternatives is not an emblem of strength; it is rather the mark of folly....click here for entire article.

April 10, 2005 - The doctor tried to avoid the using the word as he stepped through the CT scan images on his laptop. The left kidney appeared and then the spherical growth the size of a ping pong ball attached to the surface of the organ. He called it a growth then a cist or tumor. He was trying to convey the seriousness of the diagnosis without using the word that my generation understood as a death sentence. Finally, after hearing him use every euphemism he could think of I broke the ice. “Assuming the growth on the left kidney is cancer”, I said, “what is the next step?”

Again the area around the bush was being carefully beaten. “Some would advise a biopsy where we push a needle through the abdomen wall and take a sample,” he said, “but that risks seeding malignant cells when the needle is withdrawn. I think that the answer is to go directly to surgery. We have to assume that the growth is malignant.” He still would not use the word cancer or describe the unnatural structure growing on the kidney as a tumor....click here for entire article.

April 9, 2005 - When the Federal Courts at every level refused to order Teri Shiavo’s feeding tube restored Congressman Tom Delay is quoted as having referred to an “out of control” judiciary and promising that the judges involved in rejecting the Shindler’s appeals would pay the consequences. He accused the judges of ignoring what he called the will of Congress when they refused to issue orders to reinsert the feeding tube. Coming from the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives it was a barely concealed threat of impeachment. Yesterday in a video-taped address to a conference of conservative activists he repeated his attack on the judiciary and made the threat to impeach judges with whose decisions he disagrees quite explicit citing abortion law, school prayer, and racial discrimination as areas in which the Congress should exert control over judicial decisions. Fellow Texan Senator Cornyn seemed to join the chorus with a speech on the Senate floor but then quickly disavowed the sentiments he expressed. The President, speaking from Rome, proclaimed his support for an “independent judiciary” and declined to support his Majority Leader’s attack.

Yes, the Judiciary is out of control. It has been since it was created in 1787. That is the way that was designed – to be free of control of the legislature; out of control of the executive. The men who met that hot Philadelphia summer had experience with judges dependent on the whims of the sovereign. They created a judicial branch independent and free to base their decisions on the law and the Constitution protected from retaliation for unpopular decisions....click here for entire article.