BREAKING NEWS: NEO-CONS GO AFTER JUSTICE KENNEDY

The right-wing has decided that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who helped throw the election to George W. Bush in 2000, must be impeached. Why? Because his decision overturning Texas's anti-sodomy law "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law," says lawyer-author-wingnut Edwin Vieira. Vieira seems particularly enamored with Soviet totalitarianism, referring to the Supreme Court as the Politburo and drawing inspiration from Stalin's "no man, no problem" mantra. "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem," was the full Stalin saying. A perfect motto for the culture of life crowd.
(The Nation)

Conservative Lawmaker: DeLay Should Quit

"If the majority leader were to temporarily step aside so that these trumped up charges can be dealt with in a less hostile environment, as they have proven to be an unnecessary distraction, it may be a productive move," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo.



Tancredo's comments come after Connecticut Rep. Chris Shays, a moderate Republican, urged DeLay to resign from his leadership position at the beginning of the week. Also, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, said DeLay needs to answer questions about his ethics.
(AP)

Families Paying Alternative Minimum Tax Increased 12-Fold under Bush

As taxpayers across the country work to beat tomorrow's tax filing deadline, more middle class families will be writing a larger check to the federal government, because President Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress have refused to address the growing problem posed by the alternative minimum tax.

In fact, more than 12 million families are expected to be ensnared by the alternative minimum tax this year. Just four years ago, when Bush first took office only 1 million families were subject to the higher tax rates, originally intended to apply to only very wealthy taxpayers.

"President Bush and Republicans in Congress are twiddling their thumbs as 12 million middle class families are confronting an income tax increase this year," said DNC spokesman Josh Earnest. "While the President says he cares about tax cuts, it's clear that his party doesn't care about the 12 million middle class families who taxes are going up."

The Bush Economic Plan: Still Failing

Wall Street suffered its worst single day in nearly two years Friday, with the Dow Jones industrial average falling 191 points for its third straight triple-digit loss. Deepening concerns over economic growth and higher prices led to the worst week of trading since August.
(AP)

Molly Ivins: Tracking Terrorists

This all started with a report in The New York Times last week that the administration is finding heavy sledding in its efforts to go after terrorist financing. But who could oppose such a worthy endeavor? For starters, this administration. You may recall that Bill Clinton had commenced an international effort to track terrorist money, but the Bushies, upon arriving, denounced it as yet another soft-headed multilateralist initiative and promptly abandoned it. Then came 9-11, and suddenly it was in vogue again, though experts in the field, such as Sen. Paul Sarbanes, criticized the administration's initial efforts as lukewarm and half-hearted.

The Bush Administration's Assault on the Environment

The Environmental Protection Agency seemed likely to miss a court-ordered deadline Friday for issuing new rules intended to improve the views and air quality in 156 national parks and wilderness areas.

EPA officials were considering on Thursday whether to ask a federal court to extend the deadline. They also were consulting with the advocacy group Environmental Defense, which sued the agency to meet cleanup goals that Congress put in place 28 years ago.
(AP)

No Surprise: Bush Backs DeLay

Republicans are engaging in abuse of power and the American people are paying the price," said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California. Added Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., "The Republicans in the House of Representatives are running the most closed and bitterly partisan House in the history of our country."
(AP)

Bush, House Republicans Continue Their War Against the Have-Nots

"This is the most special-interest-invested bill that I have ever dealt with in my career in Congress," said Rep. John Conyers a Michigan Democrat first elected in 1964. "It massively tilts the playing field in favor of banks and credit card companies and against working people and their families."

The AFL-CIO labor organization denounced the measure as "further proof that big business is steamrolling legislation through Congress."
(Reuters)

SEE THE FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 108

Jonathan Weisman: Erosion of Estate Tax Is a Lesson in Politics

In 1992, when heirs to the Mars Inc. fortune joined a few other wealthy families to hire the law firm Patton Boggs LLP to lobby for estate tax repeal, the joke on K Street was that few Washington sightseers had paid so much for a fruitless tour of the Capitol.

Today, the House is expected to vote to permanently repeal the estate tax, moving the Mars candy, Gallo wine and Campbell soup fortunes one step closer to a goal that once seemed quixotic at best: ending all taxation on inheritances.

"I think this train has an awful lot of momentum," said Yale University law professor Michael J. Graetz, a former senior official in the Treasury Department of President George H.W. Bush.

Last month, Graetz and Yale political scientist Ian Shapiro published "Death By A Thousand Cuts," chronicling the estate tax repeal movement as "a mystery about politics and persuasion."

"For almost a century, the estate tax affected only the richest 1 or 2 percent of citizens, encouraged charity, and placed no burden on the vast majority of Americans," they wrote. "A law that constituted the blandest kind of common sense for most of the twentieth century was transformed, in the space of little more than a decade, into the supposed enemy of hardworking citizens all over this country."

The secret of the repeal movement's success has been its appeal to principle over economics. While repeal opponents bellowed that only the richest of the rich would ever pay the estate tax, proponents appealed to Americans' sense of fairness, that individuals have the natural right to pass on their wealth to their children.
The most recent Internal Revenue Service data back opponents' claims. In 2001, out of 2,363,100 total adult deaths, only 49,911 -- 2.1 percent -- had estates large enough to be hit by the estate tax. That was down from 2.3 percent in 1999. The value of the taxed estates in 2001 averaged nearly $2.7 million.

Congressional action since 2001 will likely bring down the number of taxable estates still further. President Bush's 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut in 2001 began a decade-long phase-out of the estate tax. The portion of an estate exempted from taxation was raised from $675,000 in 2001 to $1.5 million in 2004. Next year, the exemption will rise to $2 million for individuals and $4 million for couples.

The impact has been clear, tax policy analysts say. The number of estates filing tax returns is falling sharply, from 123,600 in 2000 to an expected 63,800 this year. And only a small fraction of those will actually be taxed.

Under the 2001 legislation, however, all of the tax cuts, including the estate tax's repeal, would be rescinded in 2011. The vote today is the first to address the sunset provisions.
(Washington Post)

Rip 'em Off Abramoff

Where to begin examining the extraordinary career of Jack Abramoff? His work trying to secure a visa for the great Zairian kleptocrat Mobutu Sese Seko, perhaps, or the bilking of an estimated $66 million out of Native American tribes, clients he described as "monkeys," "troglodytes," and "idiots"? Or his leadership of a 1980s think tank financed, unbeknownst to him apparently, by the intelligence arm of South Africa's apartheid regime?
(Slate)

The Right Wing War Against Liberal Judges

The day after Terri Schiavo died, Gallup pollsters began calling Americans to ask them how various national figures had acquitted themselves in the operatic debate over whether to remove the terminally ill woman's feeding tube. The results seem to provide a simple outline of American opinion on the matter. In short, Americans think the Schiavo case was none of their business. The poll, like all other polls on the case, shows that Americans, by an overwhelming majority, don't think it was the president's or Congress' business, either. Asked what issues matter to them, Americans said pretty much the same thing they've been saying for months -- terrorism, healthcare costs, gas prices and the state of the economy. "Changes to how the federal courts handle moral issues" is an issue deemed "extremely important" by only 20 percent of the nation.
(Salon.com)

Matthew Rothschild: Bush, Cheney, Get Their Whitewash

Another investigation, another whitewash.

The presidential commission on how the U.S. was so wrong about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction gives Bush and Cheney exactly what they wanted: cover.

The Silberman-Robb report lays the blame primarily on the CIA for "poor tradecraft and poor management" and for presenting Bush with "alarmist" information in his daily briefings.

And it essentially exonerates Bush and Cheney from the charge that they cooked the intelligence. "In no instance did political pressure cause [analysts] to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments," it said.

Never mind that Cheney virtually set up camp at the CIA while they were drawing up those judgments.

How his unprecedented lurkings didn't represent political pressure is just beyond me.
(The Progressive)

The President to Provide Treatment for Children with AIDS...President Clinton, That Is

Former US President Bill Clinton's foundation is to spend an additional $10m to fight Aids among children in the developing world, he has announced.

The foundation aims to provide Aids-suppressing drugs to 10,000 children in countries from China to Africa and the Caribbean.

"These children need hope," the former president said, launching the drive.
He said children accounted for one in six Aids deaths worldwide, but only one in 30 receiving treatment was a child.

He said Cipla, an Indian-based company that makes anti-retroviral drugs for children, had agreed to provide medication at less than half the market price.

Paediatric Aids medications can be four to five times more expensive than adult drugs, the foundation said.
(BBC)

A "Kiss-up, Kick-Down Sort of Guy"

John R. Bolton, President Bush's choice to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a "kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" who bullied subordinates and threatened to end the career of an intelligence analyst who disagreed with him on Cuba's weapons arsenal, a former State Department official testified Tuesday.

Carl W. Ford Jr., the former head of the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research, said that Bolton sought to have analyst Christian Westermann dismissed from his job after Westermann followed "normal procedure" in challenging a statement Bolton planned to make on Cuba's possession of biological weapons.

Ford, a government intelligence agent for more than 30 years who described himself as a "loyal Republican, conservative to the core," told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he had "real questions about Bolton's suitability" to serve as chief U.S. spokesman at the United Nations.

"I have never seen anyone quite like Mr. Bolton," Ford said. "He abuses his authority with little people." Ford described Bolton as a "serial abuser" of people who disagreed with his views.

"Mr. Bolton needs anger management at a minimum," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

But Bolton's path to confirmation seemed to be open after Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island said he was "still inclined" to join the nine other committee Republicans in voting for Bolton's promotion.

Democrat Threatens to Block Bush's Choice for USTR

A U.S. Senate Democrat threatened on Tuesday to block President Bush's choice for U.S. trade representative unless leaders allow a vote on legislation aimed at slapping duties on subsidized imports from China.

"I decided to take this step because I cannot sit idly by while American workers and companies continue to be victimized by foreign countries who violate our trade agreements with impunity," Sen. Evan Bayh, an Indiana Democrat, said in a statement.

"Everyday American workers get up in the morning and already have one hand tied behind their backs because of illegal Chinese subsidies."
(Reuters)

Froma Harrop: The Bankruptcy Bill

The bankruptcy bill in a nutshell: If you get in over your head in debt, and still have a decent income, you can't wipe the slate clean with a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Instead, you will be shunted into what's called Chapter 13. There, lawyers will find a way for you to pay back what you owe. That means you will write your creditors checks month after month and, if necessary, year after year.

Richard Reeves: The Fall of Tom DeLay

DeLay is finished but he does not yet realize that, either. He was well-defended by his own as long as he only played bully-boy in the House of Representatives, pushing around Republicans grateful to him helping their careers along with fund-raising and parliamentary manuevering. It even seemed he could weather the ethical storms about his casual purloining of the political funds he raised with great energy and ingenuity. After all, taking trips around the world from lobbyists and putting his wife and daughter on the payroll were not exactly his own inventions. But taking on the judiciary -- his reaction to court inaction in the sad case of the life and death Terri Schiavo -- is a bit over his pay grade. Even Franklin D. Roosevelt failed when he tried to bring the judiciary to heel by “packing” the Supreme Court, adding liberals to neutralize the conservative majority created by Republican presidents earlier in the century.

Bush's Trade Deficit Hits $61.04 Billion in Feb.

The U.S. trade deficit hit a record monthly high of $61.04 billion in February as imports of oil and textiles surged while American exports barely budged.

The deficit figure sent tremors through Wall Street with investors worrying that the huge amount of foreigners' money America needs to finance the deficit could at some point trigger a freefall in the dollar and aggravate U.S. inflation problems.
(ABC)

Kerry: Trickery Kept Voters From Polls

"Last year too many people were denied their right to vote, too many who tried to vote were intimidated," the Massachusetts senator said at an event sponsored by the state League of Women Voters.

"There is no magic wand. No one person is going to stand up and suddenly say it's going to change tomorrow. You have to do that," he said.

Kerry supporters have charged that voting irregularities in largely Democratic areas made it difficult for voters to cast ballots in the November election. A lawsuit in Ohio cited long lines and a shortage of voting machines in predominantly minority neighborhoods, but the Ohio Supreme Court dismissed the suit.
(AP)

N.Y. GOP Mounts 'STOP HILLARY' Effort

Clinton, who has said she is not looking beyond her Senate re-election effort, has countered with fund-raising appeals of her own, including a March 31 e-mail warning supporters she is "the No. 1 target for the right-wing attack machine."

Spokeswoman Ann Lewis said Sunday that the Clinton campaign was "not surprised that the Republican Party has chosen to wage a personally negative campaign. They don't want to talk about Hillary's record of working for New Yorkers, throughout the state and in the Senate."
(AP)

Suddenly, Bolton Tries to Change His Tune

John R. Bolton, a blunt diplomat whose nomination as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. is opposed by most Democrats and some in the foreign policy establishment, pledged Monday to help strengthen an institution that has occasionally "gone off track."

The Bush administration is committed to the success of the U.N., Bolton, the undersecretary of state, said on the first day of his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He told lawmakers that "we view the U.N. as an important component of our diplomacy."
(AP)