This:

An amendment that would prevent the government from working with contractors who denied victims of assault the right to bring their case to court is in danger of being watered down or stripped entirely from a larger defense appropriations bill.

Multiple sources have told the Huffington Post that Sen. Dan Inouye, a longtime Democrat from Hawaii, is considering removing or altering the provision, which was offered by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and passed by the Senate several weeks ago.

Inouye’s office, sources say, has been lobbied by defense contractors adamant that the language of the Franken amendment would leave them overly exposed to lawsuits and at constant risk of having contracts dry up. The Senate is considering taking out a provision known as the Title VII claim, which (if removed) would allow victims of assault or rape to bring suit against the individual perpetrator but not the contractor who employed him or her.

“The defense contractors have been storming his office,” said a source with knowledge of the situation. “Inouye either will get the amendment taken out altogether, or water it down significantly. If they water it down, they will take out the Title VII claims. This means that in discrimination cases, they will still force you into a secret forced arbitration on KBR’s (or other contractors’) own terms—with your chances of prevailing practically zero. The House seems to be very supportive of the original Franken amendment and all in line, but their hands are tied since it originated in the Senate. And since Inouye runs the show on this bill, he can easily take it out to get Republicans and the defense contractors off his back, which looks increasingly likely.”

A supermajority voted for the amendment, as it passed 68-30, but big business can come in and grease the palms of one Senator and the will of the people is thwarted. And politicians wonder why people have no faith in government or think the government isn’t looking out for the little guy.

Who needs Republicans with folks like this?

No, we will not have a serious discussion about the death penalty. In fact, if you want to be exceptionally horrified, check out this Kay Bailey Hutchison statement referencing Rick Perry’s actions:

“As hard as Rick Perry’s office and his campaign may try to divert from the issue, this is not about one man or one case. The issue is Rick Perry’s heavy-handed politicization of a process and Commission established by the legislature to provide critical oversight. First, Rick Perry delayed the formation of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, then he tried to ensure it didn’t have funding and when all else failed, he fired everyone he could. The only thing Rick Perry’s actions have accomplished is giving liberals an argument to discredit the death penalty. Kay Bailey Hutchison is a steadfast supporter of the death penalty, voted to reinstate it when she served in the Texas House and believes we should never do anything to create a cloud of controversy over it with actions that look like a cover-up.”

She’s not concerned that an innocent man might have been killed by the state. She’s concerned that evil liberals might get in the way of killing more people.

And she is the “moderate.” These people are fucking sociopaths.

I’m reminded of the time a couple of weeks ago when Matt Welch finally, for a brief moment, mused that gun nuts attending Presidential events might not be a good thing, but only because Justin Raimondo pointed out that if someone did pop a cap in someone, it would be bad for… libertarianism. Again, you can’t make this shit up.

*** Update ***

Sorry, Publius. Kay is running to the RIGHT of Perry on this one. The real problem is not the possible execution of an innocent man or Perry’s apparent perversion of the investigation. The problem is the hash you goddamned liberals will make of the death penalty.

It isn’t a few bad apples with the GOP. The whole damned barrel is rotten to the core.

Not sure if you have paid attention, but a remote outpost in Afghanistan was assaulted this weekend by Taliban forces, and they breached the perimeter and killed a bunch of our guys. This write-up at CNN sounds like something out of Platoon or We Were Soldiers Once and Young:

The battle Saturday in which eight U.S. troops were killed was so fierce that, at one point, U.S. forces had to fall back as attackers breached the perimeter of their base, a U.S. military official with knowledge of the latest intelligence reports on the incident said.

***

The United States now believes that about 200 insurgents—mostly local fighters, with some Taliban organizers and leaders—had been planning the attack for days, hiding mortars, rockets and heavy machine guns in the mountains. Sources said the Taliban may have been watching the troops make preparations to depart and launched their attack at a time of vulnerability.

The Taliban were able to use their higher positions to fire into the base, pinning down the troops. As the attack progressed, the troops were forced back when enemy fighters managed to breach the outer perimeter of the outpost, the source said.

The story itself is disturbing enough, but then in the comments here there is a link to this website, soliciting donations to replace the… SOCKS AND BALACLAVAS for these guys.

You have got to be shitting me. What exactly is going on in this damned country? This can not be for real. We have two damned wars running, spend over a half a trillion annually on defense, and that is before the supplemental bills for hundreds of billions every year, and we need to pass the fucking hat to buy our troops socks? Seriously. What is going on? I’m seriously about to blow a damned gasket. I bet the lads working for Xe/Blackwater don’t need donations for socks.

Christ on a crutch. This country is just completely screwed. Please tell me this is a hoax or a misunderstanding and our soldiers aren’t relying on donations so they don’t freeze to death in Afghanistan.

You know, when I used the phrase Banana Republicans in the past, I didn’t really think it would come to this:

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.

America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn’t mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it.

[...]

Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a “family intervention,” with some form of limited, shared responsibility?

Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.

I eagerly await the Fonzi of Freedom Nick Gillespie, Matt Welch, and the rest of the Reason crew explaining how it is the folks in the middle who are a threat to Democracy and our freedoms.

And seriously, this person was an official in two previous administrations (Johnson and Carter). At what point does this shit become unacceptable in the village?

Listen to this, and explain to me again how the health insurance reform that Baucus is working on is good for you and me:

Also, earlier today I read this gem:

Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.) said on Wednesday that providing healthcare to uninsured Americans is “not what this healthcare reform debate is about.”

In making his comments, Ross, who is the centrist Blue Dogs’ health reform point man, questioned one of the primary healthcare goals of the White House and Democratic leaders.

“That is a side benefit to healthcare reform and an important one,” Ross told the Arkansas Educational Television Network. Instead, the fifth-term congressman said the bill should focus on “cost containment.”

Apparently the key to cost containment is to make it so expensive for the consumer that you can’t afford to go to the doctor. I also loved this:

In the end, Ross acknowledged that the House version may not make up the bulk of the final bill. He estimated that 90 percent of the conference committee bill would come from the Senate Finance Committee’s version.

So why do we even have the House of Representatives again?

Some winger who works at the LAPD (via MY):

You may be tooling along on a Sunday drive in your 1932 Hupmobile when, quite unknown to you, someone else in a 1932 Hupmobile knocks off the nearby Piggly Wiggly. A passing police officer sees you and, asking himself how many 1932 Hupmobiles can there be around here, pulls you over. At that moment I can assure you the officer is not all that concerned with trying not to offend you. He is instead concerned with protecting his mortal hide from having holes placed in it where God did not intend. And you, if in asserting your constitutional right to be free from unlawful search and seizure fail to do as the officer asks, run the risk of having such holes placed in your own.

Now, I’m confident that most police are good people. I’ve never had a bad experience with cops in my life. The one cop I know is a good, smart guy who is incensed by injustice when he sees it.

That said, I find this kind of arrogance stunning. Honestly, I hope these fuckers don’t expect people like me to vote them a pay increase anytime soon. And I say that as someone who knows that most cops aren’t fuckers. But whatever profession you’re in, you can’t have other members of your profession publicly state that they have the right to murder for no reason and not expect some kind of a backlash.

I’d like to see the Faternal Fraternal Order of Police or some such group condemn this kind of talk.

Update. And how is this different from “Cop Killer” in reverse? Only it’s worse, because he’s not talking about some violent fantasy, he’s talking about killing you as a professional matter of course.

Have any of you ever watched The Corporation?

Because that was the first thing I thought of when I read this story about a woman being fined for 2 million dollars for illegally downloading $20.00 in songs, and then I thought about the health insurance companies last week testifying to Congress that “Yeah, we’re screwing people and we’re not going to stop and I dare you to do something.”

And then in other news, Froomkin is out, but the powers that be at the Washington Post publish a bullshit op-ed from Paul Wolfowitz (and don’t forget about his girlfriend at the World Bank, Dave) right along side their stable of neocon morons.

Ain’t America great?

My fellow Americans, the number of American babies who fail to survive their first birthdays, and the even greater number who suffer life-long injury due to the lack of proper prenatal care, is a national disgrace. We are still the most prosperous country in the world, and yet many nations with far fewer resouces have lower infant and maternal death rates. The current economic crisis, where job losses and local government budget problems have cut off the access of so many of our fellow citizens to proper health care, and certain recent incidents of domestic terrorism directed against women’s health providers, have made it not only important but essential that we assume our joint responsibilities as a community and do our best to ensure that every baby in America has the chance to be born healthy and wanted.

As a start towards ensuring a better outcome for our children, while supporting job growth within our communities, I am submitting the Healthy Babies Initiative to Congress. This bill will provide for the establishment and support of prenatal and neonatal health clinics in every state, with the goal of ensuring that no woman will need to risk her health or that of her child because she can’t afford proper care, or because such care is not available within her community. Small neighborhood clinics will be set up with gynecologists, physician assistants, midwives, doualas, and pediatricians to give every woman in America access to information on general health care, birth control, infant health, and reproductive services. Counseling will be provided for pregnant women without sufficient social networks, those who need extra support to carry healthy infants to term and make the best choices for themselves and their newborns, including adoption services when necessary. Counseling will also be provided, and networked with shelters, to enable women threatened by violent partners or family members to escape the cycle of forced pregnancies and maternal and child abuse. Post-natal services, including well-baby care, new-mother training, and vaccinations will be provided for infants under 18 months of age. This will also help identify infants with physical or other deficits, and ensure that the early intervention so essential for the best possible outcome—for example in babies with Downs syndrome, or those born deaf, or autistic— can be started in a timely fashion, so that every baby is given the chance to achieve his or her fullest potential as a future member of the American community.

Larger reproductive health clinics will be set up to provide a full range of medical services to American women of all ages and needs. These clinics will provide more sophisticated prenatal and reproductive services, including fertility treatments and genetic counseling, ultrasounds and sonograms, sophisticated prenatal surgeries and support for problem pregnancies, medically necessary late-pregnancy terminations, as well as maternal, perinatal, and neonatal intensive care units. They will also train the next generation of American doctors, physician assistants, nurses, midwives and counselors to provide the full range of essential services—birth control education, including abstinence; the proper use of contraceptives and after-the-act pregnancy preventatives; proper treatment of rape victims and evidence collection for rape cases; women’s reproductive health, including mammograms and pap smears; the expanding range of infertility options available to those who desperately wish for healthy children, including adoption resources; safe and legal pregnancy terminations when necessary; and a level of childbirth care and newborn health provisions commensurate with the gifts of our great nation.

All these services will be paid for on a sliding scale, with full financial support for those women and their children who would otherwise be denied access to care. But we intend to provide a level of care such that every American woman, whatever her income, will know about all the options available for her and her baby.

Since, unfortunately, a very small number of misguided individuals have misinterpretated the guidelines of our great religious teachers as sanctioning coercion, violence, and murder in order to restrict others’ medical decisions, all of these clinics, large or small, will be provided with full security protection through both local and federal authorities. Funding for such security will be considered part of future federal job creation and support programs. Anyone considering any form of illegal activity directed at these clinics, the service providers who will staff the clinics, the women and their families using these clinics, or the businesses and homes in the vicinity of these clinics, should be aware that such activity will be treated as domestic terrorism and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Where necessary, the human resources required to protect every American woman’s access to reproductive care will be drawn from our enormous pool of highly trained federal agents. This may, at some point in the future, require shifting some funding from the resources currently being used to monitor those forms of widespread surveillance deemed least cost-effective by Homeland Security, or even some reconsideration of penalties and enforcement concerning individual possession or use of those drugs, such as marijuana, now categorized at the lowest levels of potential misuse. But we are too great a nation not to seize this moment and start working towards the great goal of ensuring that every American baby be given the best chance to be born healthy, safe, and wanted. Thank you all, and God bless America.

This is terrible:

George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death this morning as he walked into church services.

[....]

Tiller has long been a focal point of protest by abortion opponents because his clinic, Women’s Health Care Services at 5701 E. Kellogg, is one of the few in the country where late-term abortions are performed.

Tiller had been shot earlier, but survived. His clinic was vandalized earlier this month.

At what point are we allowed to start worrying about right-wing domestic terrorism?


Update. I’m not usually one for nutpicking, but the Freeper comments on this are unusually appalling. (They’ll probably be taken down but here they are permanently: pdf1;pdf2)

This turns my stomach and sounds even worse than what went on with the Catholic Church here:

A fiercely debated, long-delayed investigation into Ireland’s Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades _ and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.

Nine years in the making, Wednesday’s 2,600-page report sides almost completely with the horrific reports of abuse from former students sent to more than 250 church-run, mostly residential institutions.

It concluded that church officials always shielded their orders’ pedophiles from arrest to protect their own reputations and, according to documents uncovered in the Vatican, knew that many pedophiles were serial attackers.

The commission said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential.

According to Frank Rich, GQ will post some very interesting reports from journalist Robert Draper tomorrow:

Draper reports that Rumsfeld’s monomaniacal determination to protect his Pentagon turf led him to hobble and antagonize America’s most willing allies in Iraq, Britain and Australia, and even to undermine his own soldiers. But Draper’s biggest find is a collection of daily cover sheets that Rumsfeld approved for the Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update, a highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy.

Take the one dated April 3, 2003, two weeks into the invasion, just as Shock and Awe hit its first potholes. Two days earlier, on April 1, a panicky Pentagon had begun spreading its hyped, fictional account of the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch to distract from troubling news of setbacks. On April 2, Gen. Joseph Hoar, the commander in chief of the United States Central Command from 1991-94, had declared on the Times Op-Ed page that Rumsfeld had sent too few troops to Iraq. And so the Worldwide Intelligence Update for April 3 bullied Bush with Joshua 1:9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Including, as it happened, into a quagmire.)

I don’t expect this to receive too much attention in the media, not with Sykesgate and Pelosigate going on. But it looks like what happened was that the Secretary of Defense bullied a weak-minded president with Biblical quotations while the vice-president was trying to torture people into saying there was a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Just keep walking.


Update. The pictures-with-scripture are up now at GQ. If you have trouble with flash, you can view them as jpegs. Here’s the first one—just up the 01 to 02, etc., to see the others.

During the campaign, the wingnuts tried to smear Obama as hating the troops for some very sensible remarks he made about our situation in Afghanistan:

And that requires us to have enough troops that we’re not just air raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.

That was a sensible point, and it was met with howls of outrage from the usual suspects who broke out their GI Joe action figures and pretended that this was some sort of grievous insult to the honor and dignity of our troops. When, in actuality, not having enough troops on the ground and having to rely on bombing runs in which innocents are killed is wholly unproductive, and not only that, immoral.

So where are we now? Well, candidate Obama is now President Obama, and we have elevated the number of troops on the ground and are allegedly pursuing a new strategery in Afghanisatan. Change and all that, you could say. Unfortunately for those on the ground in Afghanistan, it is just the same shit different day:

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Wednesday he had dispatched a joint U.S.-Afghan team to investigate U.S. airstrikes that killed more than two dozen people in the western part of the country and prompted an outcry from Afghan officials.

Although the International Committee of the Red Cross said that women and children were killed in the U.S. strikes, Gen. David McKiernan told reporters in the capital that it was too early to know exactly what had happened. “We’re hopeful in the next couple of days we can have at least the initial truth,” he said.

According to the Red Cross, these numbers are not wildly exaggerated:

Red Cross officials are backing local reports that U.S.-led airstrikes in western Afghanistan earlier this week killed dozens of civilians. The U.S. military is sending investigators to the scene and President Hamid Karzai has pledged to take up the issue in meetings with President Obama.

Local Afghan officials say the incident occurred during a battle Monday and Tuesday in Farah province, when Afghan troops aided by U.S. soldiers were battling Taliban insurgents.

Local officials said bombing raids on the suspected Taliban positions killed as many as 100 civilians and residents are still digging through rubble looking for more bodies. A Red Cross team sent to the region backed up the claims of dozens of civilian deaths, including women and children.

I’m no pacifist. I understand there will be civilian casualties from time to time and that we will breezily call them “collateral damage,” but this has to stop. What is this accomplishing? What is the purpose in this? And why is the man who identified this as a problem a year and a half ago sitting by and letting this happen? A total damned disgrace, Obama.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about Time-Warner’s plan to begin “internet consumption billing” in my area. The billing plan was, quite simply, a way to screw consumers, as Fighting29th ably explains here, here, and here.

I live just about on the border of New York’s 28th and 29th Congressional districts. The 28th is represented by Louise Slaughter, the powerful chair of the Rules Committee, the 29th by freshman Congressman Eric Massa. I emailed both Massa and Slaughter about the cap. I heard nothing back from Slaughter. Massa’s office told me that they thought it was a serious issue, that they were getting complaints from a lot of constituents…and then sprung into action. The opening line of the video below (via) is “I plan on putting the entire full force of my incumbency and all the risk associated with that behind stopping this very, very ill-thought out decision by Time-Warner.”

Shortly after this, Time-Warner shelved their cap plan. Apparently, it was all a “big misunderstanding.”

In the ultimate sign that making TWC back down is a good move politically, Chuck Schumer is now trying to take credit for the whole thing.

Here’s Massa’s campaign web page if anyone wants to show support on this. He’s in a brutal district for Democrats (a +5 PVI for Republicans).

These days, it is hard to tell if this is good intentions gone awry or just another giveaway to Big Ag, but this certainly appears problematic:

The panics over salmonella, E. Coli and unsafe foodstuffs from China have heightened the prospects that Congress will enact a measure known as H.R. 875, the “Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009″. radishseedShould the measure in its current form become law, “food establishments”, which to quote Patrick at Popehat “means anyone selling or storing food of any type for transmission to third parties via the act of commerce”*, will have to register with a new federal regulatory agency, submit to federal inspections, and, perhaps most significant, keep “copious records of sales and shipment by lot and label”. Penalties for infractions will be very, very steep.

Acccording to OverLawyered and all the links therein, this will essentially kill the farmer’s markets all over the country where I go and buy really good vegetables and locally raised products.

You know what to do. Contact congress.

(via Cain in the comments)

*** Update ***

And as is the case with almost every hysterical claim on the intertrons, this is turning out to be a bunch of nonsense. I will always be a sucker, it seems.

Life inside the DC bubble:

For most of the last three decades, the lobbyist Paul Magliocchetti might have been mistaken for an owner of the Alpine, a wood-paneled Italian restaurant across the Potomac River from Washington where he routinely presided over boisterous tables of lawmakers and their staff members.

“Get me some oysters! Get me some steamed crabs! Get me a rack of lamb!” Mr. Magliocchetti would tell the cooks, strolling into the kitchen. “Every day a different thing,” the chef and owner Ermanno Tonizzo recalled fondly. “I don’t think he has ever seen the menu.”

That impresario act — pulling bottles from the private wine locker labeled “Mags” to entertain lawmakers at the clubby Capital Grille steakhouse, sending gift baskets or wine to lawmakers and their aides, or leasing each of his lobbyists a Lexus — helped Mr. Magliocchetti, a protégé of the powerful Representative John P. Murtha, build his lobbying firm into one of the 10 biggest in Washington.

Now, however, Mr. Magliocchetti’s generosity is coming to an abrupt halt: his firm, the PMA Group, is closing its doors next week, after reports that federal prosecutors had recently raided his office and his home.

Will be fun to see who all is caught up in this one. Murtha’s name is being tossed around already.