Employment Relation

What really matters are Samuel Alito's attitudes about executive authority, the right to privacy, standing Supreme Court precedent, and women's fundamental rights over their own bodies.

But this puff piece appearing this morning in the AP looks at other things.

His music tastes tend toward Beethoven and Bruce Springsteen but "I force him to listen to Scarlatti and Bach," Mrs. Alito said in a Washington Post interview published Monday.

Wow, he listens to a Democrat musician. He can't be that radical, can he? He's practically a librul! (Note: A search on the Washington Post site revealed only this copy of the same AP wire story.)

He once attended a ska festival — that's rock music, with a touch of reggae and horns.

A ska concert?! Wow! He's a real musical adventurer. He couldn't be a racist now, could he?

"He's a great marksman — he can do double clays," she says, meaning he can hit two clay pigeon targets thrown simultaneously into the air before either hits the ground.

His talent with a shotgun is all some people need to know about Alito. For me, it's that he can make a decent salmon paté. Who gives a crap that he thinks the police without a warrant can strip-search 10-year-old girls in their own homes?

Most Americans seem to believe that Alito won't overturn Roe.

The survey also found that most Americans expect Alito, if confirmed, would not vote to strike down Roe v. Wade. In the weeks since he was appointed by Bush, abortion rights advocates have grown increasingly vocal in their opposition to Alito. They fear he may be the fifth and decisive vote on the court to overturn Roe--a decision that would instantly inflame national debate over an issue that already is one of the most divisive in American politics.

Instead, the survey suggests that the public expects Alito to follow a middle course on the court.

According to the poll, 38 percent predict Alito will vote on abortion issues in ways that do not significantly alter Roe. Another 26 percent said they expect Alito to favor greater restrictions on abortion but not to strike down the ruling. Slightly fewer than one in five--18 percent--say they believe he would vote to overturn the decision.

But they don't know Alito like Alito knows Alito. And they don't know Alito like the radical right conservatives know Alito.

Lusk warned adversaries: "My friends, don't fool with the church because the church has buried a million critics. And those the church has not buried, the church has made funeral arrangement for."

Lusk, a Bush supporter whose organization has received more than $1 million in federal grants under the administration's Faith Based Initiative, said, "From all I believe, this is the right thing to do," referring to his central role in "Justice Sunday III." "I believe this is what Jesus would have me do."

I wonder if the voice in his head told this Jesus insider which critics to bury, too.

But it seems Alito has been covering his tracks, including lawyerly statements of having no recollection that he bragged of belonging to the racist Concerned Alumni of Princeton. No, he's just a regular guy who once took dance lessons.

Of course, when we look at the actual record, which is in print and undisputed, there's more to be concerned about. That and how Alito so admires Robert Bork.

"I think he was one of the most outstanding nominees of this century," Alito told Michael Aron of NJN News's "Front Page New Jersey" in a little-noticed 1988 interview. "He is a man of unequaled ability, understanding of constitutional history, someone who had thought deeply throughout his entire life about constitutional issues and about the Supreme Court and the role it ought to play in American society."

How reassuring.

There's no doubt conservatives longing for a more powerful, more authoritarian government are drooling over Alito. All you have to do is look at random conservative blogs to see the near-hysterical complaints that we evil libruls are picking on poor Sammy. Maybe they long for the day when their government has the power to just silence dissent and libruls and non-Christianists must wear the Star of David sewn onto our clothing. Or just lock us all up in torture camps. You know, so they can demonstrate their "moral values" over all of us.

Or maybe they're really the scared little boys they seem to be, and really are afraid that libruls, who have no real power and make a whole lot less money than conservatives, are the real threat to democracy, not the corporate favor boys running the culture of corruption in DC, not the people sending spies to listen to your phone calls and read your emails, not the pork feeders who are running up the budget deficit into the stratosphere, not the big thinkers who consider government regulation of toxic chemicals dumped into drinking water onerous, but think government control of women's bodies is just part of the natural order of things....

Silly me for thinking democracy is for Americans, too.

Here's this week's reproductive rights news brought to you by the women of Our Word (and at least one of the guys!). If you see something you find relevant please email it to me, bayprairie at gmail dot com.

In January 2006 the Society for Adolescent Medicine, a multidisciplinary organization of professionals committed to improving the physical and psychosocial health and well-being of adolescents, released a review critiquing federally-funded abstinence only until marriage programs in the Journal of Adolescent Medicine.

::::much more below the fold::::crossposted from Our Word:::::

Their biggest challenge, in the end, is that they don't want to reform.

"The problem is that power corrupts, and we simply have too much of it," [Arizona Republican Representative Jeff] Flake said.

You think?

Even President Bush is getting into the appearing-to-reform act.

Abramoff raised more than $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign, making him an honorary Bush "Pioneer." But the campaign is giving up only $6,000, which came directly from Abramoff, his wife and one of the Indian tribes the lobbyist represented. The money will be donated to the American Heart Association.

I suppose that means Bush is less than 6% repentant.

All but three of the 24 politicians giving up the funds are Republicans. The three Democrats -- Sens. Max Baucus (Mont.), Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) and Byron L. Dorgan (N.D.) -- have pledged to shed a total of $97,000 in contributions. A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said Reid has no intention of shedding the $47,000 he has received from Abramoff's lobbying team and tribal clients.

"Abramoff was a Republican operative, and this is a Republican scandal," said Reid spokesman Jim Manley. "Any effort by Republicans to drag Democrats into this is doomed to failure."

We'll see how that plays. It's not like Senator Reid has an impeccable progressive voting record.

But there's one thing the Post is not mentioning: Indian tribes were giving to Democrats before they were Abramoff's clients. In fact, Abramoff got the tribes to give less to Democrats than usual.

Newt Gingrich says Tom DeLay must go.

"At some point it goes 'Tilt,' " Gingrich said. "You don't have to say Tom is guilty of anything to say they need a new majority leader. A very significant number of House members said to me [Wednesday] morning that the entire world has changed in the last few days" because of the Abramoff scandal.

The world looks different when the chickens come home to roost. And it's even worse when they have a political bird flu.

According to court documents, an unidentified House member received several benefits and favors from Abramoff in exchange for a series of official actions. One of those was the placement of a statement in the Congressional Record critical of the former owner of SunCruz, Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis.

Aides to Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) have acknowledged that he was the unidentified congressman. Ney has said he did nothing wrong, and that he was duped by Abramoff.

Ney translated: "I'm shocked -- shocked! -- that there's corruption on K Street!"

These kinds of weaselings by Republicans regarding their "culture of corruption" are drawing harsh criticism from Gingrich, who seems to be positioning himself for a return to public life.

"There are a series of behaviors, a series of attitudes, a series of crony-like activities that are not defensible, and no Republican should try to defend them,'' he said. "The danger for Republicans is to pretend this isn't fundamental or to pretend that they can get by passively without undertaking real reform.''

But so far, all we're seeing is posing -- in the form of "give-backs" and talk about "reform" legislation.

But it is not clear that simply shedding Abramoff's cash will get lawmakers out of the lobbyists' shadow. According to Abramoff's guilty plea, the contributions were aimed at winning specific favors, such as torpedoing legislation or securing federal contracts.

"You just can't give the money back and forget about what the money was for," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

With that in mind, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) asked Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) just before Thanksgiving to draft a package of lobbying restrictions, according to Robert L. Traynham II, a Santorum spokesman. That effort will run parallel to a push from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has drafted his own lobbying legislation. McCain's partner in an earlier campaign finance effort, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), also has a proposal.

"I will be working with colleagues this session to examine and act on any necessary changes to improve transparency and accountability for our body when it comes to lobbying," Frist said in a statement yesterday. "Some members have already made recommendations to me, or introduced legislation. I look forward to working to secure the continued integrity of the Senate."

I look forward to seeing any integrity at all. It's been a while.

Seems that in the Justice Department, Bush's spying on Americans was opposed at the top:

Several senior government officials have said that when the special operation first began, there were few controls on it. Some agency officials wanted nothing to do with it, apparently fearful of participating in an illegal operation, officials have said.One of those officials was John Ashcroft's top deputy.

The concerns prompted two of President Bush's most senior aides - Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel and now attorney general - to make an emergency visit to a Washington hospital in March 2004 to discuss the program's future and try to win the needed approval from Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery, the officials said.

The unusual meeting was prompted because Mr. Ashcroft's top deputy, James B. Comey, who was acting as attorney general in his absence, had indicated he was unwilling to give his approval to certifying central aspects of the program, as required under the White House procedures set up to oversee it.

With Mr. Comey unwilling to sign off on the program, the White House went to Mr. Ashcroft - who had been in the intensive care unit at George Washington University Hospital with pancreatitis and was housed under unusually tight security - because "they needed him for certification," according to an official briefed on the episode. The official, like others who discussed the issue, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the program.

Mr. Comey declined to comment, and Mr. Gonzales could not be reached.The hubris. Here's another wrinkle: It seems Bush's domestic spying agenda didn't pass the smell test with John Ashcroft, either.

[S]ome officials said that Mr. Ashcroft, like his deputy, appeared reluctant to give Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales his authorization to continue with aspects of the program in light of concerns among some senior government officials about whether the proper oversight was in place at the security agency and whether the president had the legal and constitutional authority to conduct such an operation.

It is unclear whether the White House ultimately persuaded Mr. Ashcroft to give his approval to the program after the meeting or moved ahead without it.

The White House and Mr. Ashcroft, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment Saturday on the hospital meeting.Do we now know the real reason John Ashcroft retired from his Attorney General position?

Via Garance Franke-Ruta's American Prospect blog post, I see that the Washington Monthly has a new article by Benjamin Wallace-Wells claiming to profile Daily Kos proprietor Markos Moulitsas Zuniga.

One passage, cited unquestioningly by Franke-Ruta, caught my eye:

The site, which has existed for only around three and a half years, now has 3.7 million readers each week. That's more than the top 10 opinion magazines—of both left and right—combined, more readers than any political publication has had, ever, in the history of the world.

That all sounds nice. But it's not true.

According to BlogAds, which has public statistics for all sites running BlogAds advertising (to inform potential advertisers), that 3.7 million/week figure (which BlogAds has this week as above 3.8 million) is not for readers, it's for page views.

Considering that each visitor is probably viewing many pages -- after all, you have to load new page views to read front-page stories, to read diaries, to read the comments to the stories and diaries, etc. -- and that many, if not most, people are returning to the site each day, the number of unique readers over a given week is but a fraction of that figure.

This is very basic web stats stuff. And something that should not have slipped by the Washington Monthly fact-checkers.

I note that Kos posted some other corrections to this Wallace-Wells piece, but not regarding the gross inflation of his site statistics.

It's great that Daily Kos is doing well -- we all benefit when alternatives to corporate-owned and -sponsored media succeed -- and Daily Kos is still by far the most active website in the political realm. But nobody is served by such false figures, or claims that Daily Kos has "more readers than any political publication has had, ever." It's just not supported by the facts.

And it makes the Washington Monthly, the American Prospect and the vaguely "progressive"/"liberal" blogosphere look bad.

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Update 2005-12-23: Another source for web stats on Daily Kos is SiteMeter, which, as I write this, reports 5.5 million page views and 4.5 million "visits." In this context, a "visit" is a slippery term as a person going away and coming back 20 minutes later might be counted as a new visitor, depending on the settings of the counting software. (15-60 minutes is the typical setting.)

There's no doubt that it represents a ton of traffic.

So why does this differ so much from the BlogAds stats? One reason is that the BlogAds are on the content pages, while the SiteMeter stats measure all page loads, including composition screens -- which see much use, given the wildly active discussion threads there. The BlogAds figures are a more reliable indicator of actual pageviews of content being read, or at least viewed.

Does that translate into "probably" 500,000 actual readers each week, as Kos now claims? That's "probably" stretching it.

Update Two 2005-12-23 7:15pm EST: Washington Monthly writer Benjamin Wallace-Wells has posted corrections, which say, in part:

When I wrote that his site gets "3.7 million weekly readers," I should have used the technical term "unique visitors," which is the closest available approximation of a website's readership, but is certainly bigger than the actual number of weekly readers.