Robert Kuttner: Exposing prolife zealotry

Representative Barney Frank famously declared, ''The right-to-lifers believe that the right to life begins with conception and ends at birth," meaning that if antiabortion militants truly cared about life, they might expend more effort on what happens to children once born. We should now extend Frank's insight to end-of-life care: The religious right should also devote more energy to how society treats its frail and elderly while they are conscious and begging for decent services. (When did you see the religious right lobbying for, say, better nursing care?)

But isn't the religious right winning? The press has been filled with stories of earnest communities where biblical literalism is central to most people's lives. These communities, apparently, are growing, while those that reflect the spirit of the Enlightenment -- rational inquiry, religious tolerance, plural identities, strong civic life -- are shrinking. Many liberals conclude that they must live in a bubble not representative of the country.
(Boston Globe)

Stopbolton.org Launches Ad Campaign in Rhode Island

On Thursday, March 31st Stopbolton.org will air television advertisements on three major Rhode Island TV stations in opposition to the nomination of John Bolton for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
(US Newswire)

Patrick Kennedy Says He Won't Run for U.S. Senate

"I am grateful for the support and encouragement I have received to run for the Senate," Kennedy, 37, a six-term member of the House of Representatives, said in a brief statement.

"But over the past few days, I have determined that I can make the greatest difference in the lives of Rhode Island families by remaining on the Appropriations Committee in the House of Representatives and fighting for their priorities," Kennedy said.
(Reuters)

Bush critics blocked from presidential events

In Denver, three people say they were booted out of a presidential event last week even though they never uttered a peep, apparently because their car bore a bumper sticker denouncing the war in Iraq.

In Fargo, N.D., last month, local Republicans developed a blacklist of more than three dozen residents, including a city commissioner, who were to be banned from Bush's visit.
(Knight Ridder)

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Froma Harrop: Social Security mythologies

"Unsustainable" is the favored word. It makes people think that Social Security is in crisis. It conjures up the image of a stagecoach barreling toward a cliff. Snow was all over the airwaves last week saying "unsustainable" and promising heroic efforts to pull Social Security from the abyss.

These theatrics are totally unnecessary. The Social Security program is not only sustainable, it is easily sustainable. And given the economy's past performance, the odds are better than even that we won't have to lift a finger to keep it going.
(The Providence Journal)

GAO to Investigate Bush Administration Propaganda

The Government Accountability Office plans to investigate payments from the Bush administration to syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher, a GAO spokeswoman confirmed Monday. The congressional investigative agency will try to determine whether the Department of Heath and Human Services broke any laws when it paid Gallagher to help promote a marriage initiative, the spokeswoman said.
The GAO is already investigating a $240,000 contract with syndicated columnist/radio host Armstrong Williams from the Department of Education. Williams was being paid to promote the No Child Left Behind law.
(CNN)

Bush Puppet Maggie Gallagher

Bush Leaves Economic Unit With Weak Bench

President Bush has beefed up his national security team with big-name advisers but has left his economic agenda in the hands of lesser known officials whom some consider weak, unproven or inexperienced.
(AP)

59 American Ex-Diplomats Oppose Bolton

"He is the wrong man for this position," they said in a letter to Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Indiana Republican has scheduled hearings on Bolton's nomination for April 7."
(AP)

Slate: The Lesson of Tom DeLay's Mortal Hypocrisy

God may have taken Charles, but his family held the door open. They inferred, without written evidence, that Charles wouldn't have wanted to go on living in this condition. "Daddy did not want to be a vegetable," said Vi Skogen, who at the time was Charles' daughter-in-law. Tom DeLay's mother told the Times, "There was no point to even really talking about it. There was no way [Charles] wanted to live like that. Tom knew—we all knew—his father wouldn't have wanted to live that way."

That was then. This is now. At a press conference on March 18, Tom DeLay denied that quality of life could be valid grounds for withdrawing Schiavo's feeding tube. "It's not for any one of us to decide what her quality of life should be," he said. "It's not any one of us to decide whether she should live or die."

The Village Voice: The Bush Beat

The Iraqi kids are members of families whose homes were pulverized by the U.S. invasion and whose still-homeless clans were squatting in government buildings in Baghdad's Green Zone. Now, those families have been kicked out of the humorously named "Freedom Complex" buildings.

Meanwhile, U.S. soldiers and officials are still living in the Iraqi people's government buildings, including Saddam Hussein's former palaces, where Americans dine under chandeliers and splash around in the ex-dictator's swimming pools.

Richard Reeves: No One is Against Big Government

Was the great conservative, Ronald Reagan, the President who said he would get government off our backs? Yes, he did, as he ran up more deficit spending than all the thirty-nine men who proceeded him in that most powerful of offices. He borrowed that money to finance bigger government, particularly a bigger military. Yes, he did hate government bureaucrats, or at least the idea of them, but he never seemed to understand that a bureaucrat by any other name was still a bureaucrat, even in uniform.
(richardreeves.com)

John Nichols: Now Bush is Picking on Kids

Think of Ann Veneman as the Paul Wolfowitz of food policy.

Just as Wolfowitz used his position as the Bush administration's deputy secretary of defense to spin whacked-out neoconservative theories into the justification for an illegal and unnecessary war, so Veneman used her position as the administration's secretary of agriculture to spin equally whacked-out theories about the genetic modification of food and free trade into disastrous policies for farmers and consumers.
(The Nation)

Arm teachers, NRA official suggests

All options should be considered to prevent rampages like the Minnesota school shooting that took 10 lives — including making guns available to teachers, a top National Rifle Association leader said Friday.
(MSNBC)

Army’s Own Documents Acknowledge Evidence That Soldiers Used Torture

NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today charged that the government is attempting to bury the torture scandal involving the U.S. military by failing to comply with a court order requiring release of documents to the ACLU. The documents the government does release are being issued in advance to the media in ways calculated to minimize coverage and public access, the ACLU said.

Sidney Blumenthal: A confederacy of shamans

The politics of piety were transparently masked by Republicans attempting to make capital over the fate of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman who has been locked in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years and whose feeding tube was ordered to be removed by a Florida state judge at the request of her husband.
(The Guardian)

Joe Conason: Shameless Right-Wingers Exploiting Terri Schiavo

By intervening in the sad dispute over Terri Schiavo between her husband and parents, the President and his Congressional allies have again revealed how little respect they have for any conservative or constitutional principle that doesn’t enhance their partisan power. In the name of defending human life, they have swept aside their own party’s traditional commitment to federalist respect for state law and to the separation of powers between the legislature and the judiciary. In the name of equal protection under the law, they have departed from all traditional notions of legality.
(New York Observer)

Molly Ivins on the Environment

This is one of those stories that I'd really like to start with a loud scream to give people some idea of how terrible it is. As a newspaper story, it has no soundtrack and comes without pictures. It appears to involve some technical aspects of an environmental regulation, and that can be counted on to bore the shoes and socks off people.
(Creators of Syndicate Inc.)

Sen. Reed Visits Iraq

Sen. Jack Reed describes the progress as substantial but indicates that the United States may have to sustain "a huge commitment of resources for years."
(The Providence Journal)

PATRICK KENNEDY EYES A SENATE SEAT IN RI

"It would be a great race. The two are very evenly matched," said Brown University professor Darrell West, who has written a biography of Kennedy, 37. "Chafee is a sitting senator and people like him, but he has an 'R' next to his name in a 'D' state."
(AP)