Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

"I was putting forward a hypothetical proposition. Put that forward. Examined it. And then said about it that it's morally reprehensible. To recommend abortion of an entire group of people in order to lower your crime rate is morally reprehensible. But this is what happens when you argue that the ends can justify the means," he told CNN.

"I'm not racist, and I'll put my record up against theirs," referring to Pelosi and other critics. "I've been a champion of the real civil rights issue of our times -- equal educational opportunities for kids."

"We've got to have candor and talk about these things while we reject wild hypotheses," Bennett said.

"I don't think people have the right to be angry, if they look at the whole thing. But if they get a selective part of my comment, I can see why they would be angry. If somebody thought I was advocating that, they ought to be angry. I would be angry."

"But that's not what I advocate."

Asked if he owed people an apology, Bennett replied, "I don't think I do. I think people who misrepresented my view owe me an apology."

• From the mind of Bill Bennett
  
  Tags: bill bennett, racism , abortion

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION of 2008 is a long way off, but Republicans better start worrying about it now. The 2006 midterm election? Republicans are likely to hold onto the Senate and House. But 2008 is another story. In the midst of a Republican era, Democrats stand a good chance of taking the White House then. Even Senator Hillary Clinton of New York--or perhaps I should say especially Hillary Clinton--has realistic prospects of winning.

What's the problem for Republicans? There are at least five of them. The field of Republican candidates is weak. Democrats will have an easier time than Republicans in duplicating their strong 2004 voter registration and turnout drive in 2008. Democrats, despite their drift to the left and persistent shrillness, barely trail Republicans at all in voter appeal. Besides, they may sober up ideologically in 2008. And the media, unless John McCain is the Republican nominee, will be more pro-Democratic than ever.

Let's look at each of these reasons briefly. The strongest potential Republican candidates are Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. None of them is running and Cheney and Rice are downright adamant about it. I've asked Cheney about 2008 on three separate occasions. He gives absolutely no indication of changing his decision not to run. And he says his health isn't the reason. He just doesn't want to be a candidate and won't do it, he insists, even if President Bush asks him to.

Rice is just as negative on the idea of seeking the presidency. And aides to Jeb Bush say he has no desire to run in 2008, but might consider it in 2012. Besides, he looks worn out after so many crises (hurricanes, Terri Schiavo, the 2000 recount) during his two terms.

That leaves the Republican party with a lesser field of candidates: McCain, Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Virginia Senator George Allen, and a few others. All of them have distinct handicaps. McCain's is that many Republican loathe him. Giuliani is a social liberal. Allen and Romney are inexperienced at the national level. Frist has a soft and blurred image.

The second reason for Republican anxiety about 2008 is organization. Democrats, with millions of dollars from limousine liberals such as George Soros, paid for thousands of campaign workers to sign up voters and get them to the polls. They produced a much larger Democratic turnout in 2004 than in 2000. Republicans used an army of 1.5 million volunteers to increase the Republican vote by even more. It was an enormous political feat.

But in 2008, there's a reasonably good chance Democrats will able to produce another great field operation. All they'll need is another infusion of money from rich liberals. But Republicans will have a harder time. The 2004 volunteers showed up because of their strong personal commitment to President Bush. Will so many volunteers work so hard for McCain or Allen or Giuliani or whoever wins the Republican presidential nomination in 2008? I doubt it.

Katherine Harris (FL-13)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $20,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 95% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-5015

Clay Shaw (FL-22)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $30,020.00
Voted with DeLay: 95% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
Contributions to DeLay's Legal Defense Fund: $5,000.00
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-3026

Ric Keller (FL-08)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $20,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 95% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-2176

Ginny Brown-Waite (FL-05)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $20,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 93% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
Contributions to DeLay's Legal Defense Fund: $1,000.00
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-1002

Tom Feeney (FL-24)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $10,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 94% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
Contributions to DeLay's Legal Defense Fund: $5,000.00
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-2706

Connie Mack (FL-14)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $10,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 96% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-2536

Adam Putnam (FL-12)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $15,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 97% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 3 times
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-1252

David Weldon (FL-15)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $13,569.00
Voted with DeLay: 95% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 4 times
Contributions to DeLay's Legal Defense Fund: $6,000.00
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-3671

Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-25)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $10,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 93% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
Contributions to DeLay's Legal Defense Fund: $5,000.00
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-2778

Mark Foley (FL-16)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $8,531.00
Voted with DeLay: 94% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-5792

John Mica (FL-07)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $5,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 94% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 3 times
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-4035

Jeff Miller (FL-01)
Amount accepted from DeLay: $10,000.00
Voted with DeLay: 91% of the time
Voted for weaker ethics rules for DeLay: at least 2 times
Contributions to DeLay's Legal Defense Fund: $5,000.00
DC Office Phone: (202) 225-4136

CALLER: I noticed the national media, you know, they talk a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I've read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn't -- never touches this at all. ... (Q&A in between...)

BENNETT: ... Well, I don’t think it is either, I don’t think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don’t know. But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.

Bennett's remark was apparently inspired by the claim that legalized abortion has reduced crime rates, which was posited in the book Freakonomics (William Morrow, May 2005) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. But Levitt and Dubner argued that aborted fetuses would have been more likely to grow up poor and in single-parent or teenage-parent households and therefore more likely to commit crimes; they did not put forth Bennett's race-based argument.

Depressed and demoralized White House staffers say working at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is “life in a hellhole” as they try to deal with a sullen, moody President whose temper tantrums drive staffers crying from the room and bring the business of running the country to a halt.

“It’s like working in an insane asylum,” says one White House aide. “People walk around like they’re in a trance. We’re the dance band on the Titanic, playing out our last songs to people who know the ship is sinking and none of us are going to make it.”

• The Martha Stewart precedent

An Army spokesman, Col. Joseph Curtin, said the Criminal Investigation Division recently began investigating the matter on behalf of Lt. Gen. John Vines, commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq.

The East Bay Express, a New Times weekly in Emeryville, Ca. last week published a lengthy story about the porn site, and interviewed its owner, who said he gave soldiers free access in exchange for photos of dead or mutilated Iraqis. The soldiers apparently had been having trouble subscribing to the site because of credit card problems. The Online Journalism Review also ran a prominent piece. AmericaBlog, a leading blog, then covered it widely this week, and included links to some of the photos.

• "I don't know how you can sleep at night..."
• Wait, wait, there's more
• Brownie, you're one heck of a putz
• Now hear this!

Officer Criticizes Detainee Abuse Inquiry
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 - An Army captain who reported new allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq said Tuesday that Army investigators seemed more concerned about tracking down young soldiers who reported misconduct than in following up the accusations and investigating whether higher-ranking officers knew of the abuses.

• Wait, wait, there's more
• Brownie, you're one heck of a putz
• Now hear this!

Tags: FEMA, Katrina, New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina, Politics, Rita, News, Bush, New Orleans

Rushing thinks part of his mission is to educate the American public on the reality of war. "War in America has its own branding—it's the American flag, it's that Lee Greenwood song, it's a sailor kissing a woman in Times Square. But Americans need to be aware of the consequences."

Like it or not, "Al Jazeera is the most influential Arab voice outside of mosques. It is the largest shaper of ideology," says Rushing. And if American voices are not heard in that venue, then they have no chance of having virtually any influence. "I've dedicated my adult life to the health and security of the United States and to representing the best of American ideas. I will maintain my credibility by continuing to do that." Rushing may discover that being a Marine might have been the easy part.

As far back as the Florida recount, soon-to-be Vice President Dick Cheney was poring over organizational charts of the government with an eye toward stocking it with people sympathetic to the incoming Administration. Clay Johnson III, Bush's former Yale roommate and the Administration's chief architect of personnel, recalls preparing for the inner circle's first trip from Austin, Texas, to Washington: "We were standing there getting ready to get on a plane, looking at each other like: Can you believe what we're getting ready to do?"

The Office of Personnel Management's Plum Book, published at the start of each presidential Administration, shows that there are more than 3,000 positions a President can fill without consideration for civil service rules. And Bush has gone further than most Presidents to put political stalwarts in some of the most important government jobs you've never heard of, and to give them genuine power over the bureaucracy. "These folks are really good at using the instruments of government to promote the President's political agenda," says Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University and a well-known expert on the machinery of government. "And I think that takes you well into the gray zone where few Presidents have dared to go in the past. It's the coordination and centralization that's important here." ...

...Some of the appointments are raising serious concerns in the agencies themselves and on Capitol Hill about the competence and independence of agencies that the country relies on to keep us safe, healthy and secure. Internal e-mail messages obtained by TIME show that scientists' drug-safety decisions at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are being second-guessed by a 33-year-old doctor turned stock picker. At the Office of Management and Budget, an ex-lobbyist with minimal purchasing experience oversaw $300 billion in spending, until his arrest last week. At the Department of Homeland Security, an agency the Administration initially resisted, a well-connected White House aide with minimal experience is poised to take over what many consider the single most crucial post in ensuring that terrorists do not enter the country again. And who is acting as watchdog at every federal agency? A corps of inspectors general who may be increasingly chosen more for their political credentials than their investigative ones.

Nowhere in the federal bureaucracy is it more important to insulate government experts from the influences of politics and special interests than at the Food and Drug Administration, the agency charged with assuring the safety of everything from new vaccines and dietary supplements to animal feed and hair dye. That is why many within the department, as well as in the broader scientific community, were startled when, in July, Scott Gottlieb was named deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs, one of three deputies in the agency's second-ranked post at FDA.

His official FDA biography notes that Gottlieb, 33, who got his medical degree at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, did a previous stint providing policy advice at the agency, as well as at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. What the bio omits is that his most recent job was as editor of a popular Wall Street newsletter, the Forbes/Gottlieb Medical Technology Investor, in which he offered such tips as "Three Biotech Stocks to Buy Now." In declaring Gottlieb a "noted authority" who had written more than 300 policy and medical articles, the biography neglects the fact that many of those articles criticized the FDA for being too slow to approve new drugs and too quick to issue warning letters when it suspects ones already on the market might be unsafe. FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford, who resigned suddenly and without explanation last Friday, wrote in response to e-mailed questions that Gottlieb is "talented and smart, and I am delighted to have been able to recruit him back to the agency to help me fulfill our public-health goals." But others, including Jimmy Carter--era FDA Commissioner Donald Kennedy, a former Stanford University president and now executive editor-in-chief of the journal Science, say Gottlieb breaks the mold of appointees at that level who are generally career FDA scientists or experts well known in their field. "The appointment comes out of nowhere. I've never seen anything like that," says Kennedy.

Gottlieb's financial ties to the drug industry were at one time quite extensive. Upon taking his new job, he recused himself for up to a year from any deliberations involving nine companies that are regulated by the FDA and "where a reasonable person would question my impartiality in the matter." Among them are Eli Lilly, Roche and Proctor & Gamble, according to his Aug. 5 "Disqualification Statement Regarding Former Clients," a copy of which was obtained by TIME. Gottlieb, though, insists that his role at the agency is limited to shaping broad policies, such as improving communication between the FDA, doctors and patients, and developing a strategy for dealing with pandemics of such diseases as flu, West Nile virus and SARS. ...

SHAYS: "Well that's why I'm happy you left. Because that kind of look into the lights like a deer makes me realize you weren't capable of handling the job..."

BROWN: "...I guess what you wanted me to do was to be this superhero and take everybody out of New Orleans."

SHAYS: "No, what I wanted you to do was to do your job of coordinating. ... I think its breathtaking for you to say that you didn't have the resouces to do your job and then to describe the job of coordinating in such a feeble way. ..." adding that Brown is doing more complaining about state and local officials than explaining what he perceived his job to be and what went wrong...

"I find it stunning that this hearing would start out with you Mr. Brown laying the blame for FEMA's failings at the feet of the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans. ... As you know, Governor Blanco requested emergency declaration three days before the storm made landfall and president bush made an emergency declaration two days before. But even if they had made no request at all -- even if they had been plainly dysfunctional (and I'm not here to defend them but I don't think that is an adequate characterization at all), FEMA had already made designations that made it clear that this was an emergency that the state and federal governments could not have handled at all. Your own documentation states that a catastrophic storm of this size would quickly overwhelm the state's responses.
If FEMA was overwhelmed, how much more overwhelmed would the state and local governments be?"

"What I meant to say was that we were just learning about it 36 hours earlier..."

1. Federalism...
2. We have no fire trucks...
3. We're small, we have no money...

And can you cite any personal failures, Mr. Brown?

1. Failed to set up regular press briefings to let the media know what a great job FEMA was doing ...
2. Was unable to persuade Blanco and Nagin to work together... (see FEMA response number 1 -- Federalism...)

And were you really an intern?

1. Hell yes, and a damned good one!

Hospital defends baby cooing ban
11.49AM, Tue Sep 27 2005

A hospital has defended a ban on visitors cooing at other people's new-born babies for fear of trampling over the tots' human rights.

Some new mothers at Calderdale Royal Hospital, in Halifax, have been astonished by the new rules.

The hospital states that visitors must not ask questions about other patients' babies or look at them in maternity wards.

But managers at the hospital said the drive was a necessary measure to prevent visitors gawping at new-borns or quizzing the mother.

Staff in one of the wards have set up a display featuring a doll in a cot. A sign next to it says: "What makes you think I want to be looked at?"

Cards were handed out to visitors stating: "Respect my baby" and underneath, as if written by a baby, are the words: "My parents ask you to treat my personal space with consideration."