Mercifully, you don't waste your money or your time listening to a fawning Bret Baier toss George W. Bush softball questions or lay rhetorical rose pedals as his feet during that 2008 hagiography. After his "unflinching, fair and balanced interview with the 43rd president," Baier explained how Bush "was inspired by the writings and deeds of Abraham Lincoln":

"We talked a lot about President Lincoln. And there's going to be a lot of people out there who watch this hour and say, is he trying to equate himself with Lincoln?

I tell you what - he thinks about Lincoln and the tough times that he had during the Civil War. 600,000 dead. The country essentially hated him when he was leaving office.

And the President reflects on that. This is a President who is really reflecting on his place in history."

That Lincoln didn't "leave office" but was instead assassinated just one month after his second inaugural is one of the more humorous errors produced by Fox News in its ongoing efforts to rewrite history on behalf of President Bush and the Republican Party.

As I documented previously, throughout his second term Dubya sought to equate himself with the Great Emancipator. As ThinkProgress noted in January 2008, "the list of conservatives who have sought to frame Bush as Lincoln is long; it includes Newt Gingrich, John Gibson, David Brooks, and Rudy Giuliani." In February of that year, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales during an address at Washington University "repeatedly made references comparing himself and the Bush administration to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, suggesting that Lincoln was highly criticized during his presidency and is now highly revered."

Meanwhile, over at the National Review, Seth Liebsohn was ecstatic, crowing that "Bret Baier just concluded the single best interview of President Obama in a year, by any reporter." And no doubt, it was the best interview of any president since Bret Baier described George W. Bush as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln.

—Perrspective 6:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) |

And that fury includes children. Echoing the 2007 slandering of then 12 year-old SCHIP recipient Graeme Frost, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and company are now targeting 11 year old Marcelas Owens.

As Media Matters detailed, Owens' mother Tiffany "died of pulmonary hypertension in 2007 at age 27 after losing her health insurance because she could no longer work." But because the former Jack in the Box manager was active with the Washington Community Action Network, the right-wing hate machine opened fire. While Glenn Beck asked liberal activists, "where were you when Marcelas' mother was vomiting blood?" and "where was grandma?" For her part, Malkin reprised her Frost character assassination by attacking the "new, dubious poster boy for Demcare." Marcelas Owens, she insisted, was no "insurance abuse survivor":

"Never mind that there is not a shred of evidence that any health insurer ever 'abused' Marcelas. Never mind that the family has made no claim that Marcelas himself has survived without insurance."

As for Rush Limbaugh, he had a simple message for young Marcelas:

"Your mom would have still died, because Obamacare doesn't kick in until 2014."

Of course, back in 2006, Limbaugh reached a new low by making fun of Michael J. Fox and his ever-worsening symptoms from Parkinson's Disease. On Tuesday, Limbaugh's tea bagging acolytes followed him into the gutter by mocking a Parkinson's victim in the streets of our nation's capital. As ThinkProgress summarized the disgraceful episode:

Activists staged "competing rallies" outside of Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy's (D-OH) district office yesterday, in a noisy, often confrontational attempt to influence the undecided congresswoman's vote. At one point, a man with a sign saying he has Parkinson's disease and needs help sat down in front of the reform opponents. Several protesters mocked the man, calling him a "communist," with one derisively "throwing money at him." "If you're looking for a handout you're in the wrong end of town," another man said.

(That performance was par for the course for a Tea Party movement which previously hecked one woman in a wheelchair and another whose daughter-in-law died because she didn't have health insurance.)

Ironically, Limbaugh himself is a poster child for blue state health care. When he was hospitalized recently with chest pains, he luckily found himself in Hawaii. Lucky, that is, because Barack Obama's home state not only ranks second among all 50 states for health care quality and access. As the New York Times reported, "Since 1974, Hawaii has required all employers to provide relatively generous health care benefits to any employee who works 20 hours a week or more," adding, "If health care legislation passes in Congress, the rest of the country may barely catch up."

But if Rush Limbaugh literally has the good fortune to receive great medical care, Ohioan Natoma Canfield wasn't so lucky. As President Obama revealed this week, breast cancer survivor Canfield dropped her insurance policy when her premiums doubled to $8500 a year, only to then contract Leukemia. With the eyes of the nation on the high-profile Cleveland Clinic's care of the even higher-profile Natoma Canfield, its executive director of patient financial services Lyman Sornberger was confident that the indigent Canfield won't lose her home. As Fox News crowed:

"She may be eligible for state Medicaid ... and/or she will be eligible for charity (care) of some form or type. ... In my personal opinion, she will be eligible for something," he said, adding that Canfield should not be worried about losing her home.

"Cleveland Clinic will not put a lien on her home," he said.

But as the New York Times reported:

Obama is not wrong in saying that a patient in Canfield's situation might have to choose between her home and health care, said Eileen Sheel, a spokeswoman for Cleveland Clinic.

''But this patient is probably not the best example of someone in that situation, although we've have patients in that situation who haven't yet qualified for Medicaid, or didn't have the resources'' to pay for care, Sheel said.

Nevertheless, Gateway Pundit led the right-wing blogosphere in rejoicing that thanks to some combination of Medicaid and/or the Cleveland Clinic's own $99 million annual charitable fund Canfield might be rescued from financial disaster:

"It Figures... Obama's Rally Prop 'Natoma Canfield' Qualifies For Financial Aid; Is Patient At Top US Cancer Center; Won't Lose Home."

As for the Medicaid program which may yet save Natoma Canfield's house, the Republican leadership in Congress has been clear in making its disdain known. Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, now at the forefront of Republican opposition the Democratic health care reform, repeatedly used the GOP dog-whistle "ghetto" to describe:

"A medical ghetto called Medicaid that none of us, or any of our families, would ever want to be a part of for our health care."

And so it goes. This week, every single Republican member of the House will vote on the Senate health care bill. Apparently, their scorched-earth opposition to President Obama is more important than the addressing the symptoms of the death spiral of the American health care system. Numbers like 50 million uninsured, 25 million more uninsured, 98,000 deaths annually from medical errors, 45,000 deaths to lack of insurance, 62% of personal bankruptcies due to medical costs, 1 in 5 Americans postponing needed medical care and 94% of health insurance markets nationwide are already virtually monopolized. Or that employer-provided insurance now covers less than 60% of Americans while the average annual cost of family health insurance premiums will rise from $13,000 now to $22,000 by 2019. Or that Republican red states have the worst the health care systems and the unhealthiest residents.

Or judging from their hateful rhetoric, Republicans and their conservative amen corner are just sick and tired of the sick and tired.

—Perrspective 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) |

While the U.S. continues its pushback against Israel's humiliating settlements announcement last week, Republicans in Congress predictably rushed to defend the Netanyahu government. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor branded the Obama administration "irresponsible" and claimed its treatment of the special relationship with Israel "jeopardizes America's national security." Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) parroted Likud Party talking points about American interference in a "zoning decision in its capital city." And for his part, John McCain blasted the "public disparagement" of Israel and instead called on Obama to "talk quietly among friends."

Of course, when the issue was the war against Iraq, the GOP had different ideas about how to win friends and influence people. Back then, the Bush administration, its conservative amen corner and John McCain most of all publicly mocked America's long-time NATO allies.

The invective hurled at Paris and Berlin for their refusal to follow the United States into Iraq wasn't limited to political stunts like the renaming of "freedom fries" or boycotts of France. Sarcasm, scorn and derision became the de facto official policy of the United States.

Starting with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Just weeks before the invasion, President Bush's man at the Pentagon blasted "old Europe":

"Germany has been a problem and France has been a problem. But you look at vast numbers of other countries in Europe, they're not with France and Germany... they're with the US. You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe."

That spring, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice summed up the Bush administration's new posture towards the Atlantic allies:

"Punish France, ignore Germany, forgive Russia."

But none was more scathing in his ridicule than John McCain.

As President Bush prepared to pull the trigger on the Iraq war in February 2003, John McCain was at the forefront of those browbeating the Chirac government for France's refusal to back the U.S. at the United Nations. On February 11, 2003, McCain co-sponsored a Senate resolution praising 18 European nations backing U.S. enforcement of UN demands for Saddam's disarmament. In his press release, McCain echoed Rumsfeld in thundering at the France and Germany of "old Europe:"

"The majority of Europe's democracies have spoken, and their message could not be clearer: France and Germany do not speak for Europe...most European governments behave like allies that are willing to meet their responsibilities to uphold international peace and security in defense of our common values. We thank this European majority for standing with us."

McCain's venom towards the French was on full display two days later during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. On February 13, 2003, McCain warned of "new threats to civilization [which] again defy our imagination in scale and potency" portrayed Iraq as "threat of the first order." He proclaimed that "the United States does not have reliable allies to implement a policy to contain Iraq" and pointed the finger squarely at France:

"Compare our great power allies in the Cold War with those with whom we act today in dealing with Iraq.

France has unashamedly pursued a concerted policy to dismantle the UN sanctions regime, placing its commercial interests above international law, world peace and the political ideals of Western civilization. Remember them? Liberte, egalite, fraternite."

Just days later on February 18, 2003, McCain continued his campaign of what he now calls "public disparagement" towards France:

"They remind me of an aging movie actress in the 1940s who is still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't have the face for it...

Perhaps Churchill and Roosevelt made a very serious mistake when they decided to give France a veto in the Security Council when the United Nations was organized."

McCain's feud with the French continued even after the start of hostilities and President Bush's May 1 declaration of "mission accomplished" in Iraq. But in a cynical July 2003 keynote address to the Atlantic Partnership (which promotes "the benefits of a strong and stable Atlantic community of nations"), Senator McCain acted as if he had never uttered his seething words of condemnation. Even in papering over the schism he helped foster, McCain couldn't resist taking a potshot at France:

"France and Germany shared the goals of our campaign to disarm Saddam Hussein's regime. We obviously disagreed over the means. Now that we have achieved our common objective of ending the threat posed by Saddam's Iraq, it's time to stop quarreling over the way we did so and move on. European nations that opposed the war must resist the tendency to say "I told you so," sit on the sidelines as the United States and our partners attempt to transform Iraq, and hope we find ourselves in a sandy quagmire that, in the eyes of some war opponents, would give us our just due."

Of course, that was then and this is now.

The United States and Israel share common interests, but not identical ones. That point was driven home not just by Vice President Biden, but by conservative darling David Petraeus. As Foreign Policy reported, the CENTCOM leader warned the U.S. Joint Chiefs earlier this year that "Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region." But while John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Sam Brownback and John McCain all urged unswerving support for General Petraeus when he served in Iraq, they are not listening to him now that the topic concerns another close American ally, Israel.

—Perrspective 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) |

Discussing the 2003 ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Court establishing marriage equality in the Bay State, Hayworth told an Orlando radio show (audio here):

"I mean, I don't mean to be absurd about it, but I guess I can make the point of absurdity with an absurd point. I guess that would mean if you really had affection for your horse, I guess you could marry your horse."

Of course, former Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum beat Hayworth to the punch seven years ago. As the AP reported in April 2003, Santorum was worried that man's best friend might become man's best friend with benefits:

"In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be."

The startled AP reporter responded, "I'm sorry, I didn't think I was going to talk about "man on dog" with a United States senator, it's sort of freaking me out."

The freak out continued in July 2004. Advocating a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in an address to the Heritage Foundation, Texas Senator John Cornyn declared that reptiles, too, needed protection:

"It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right...Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife."

Back in Arizona, Hayworth is running a surprisingly strong race against the man who led the Republican presidential ticket in 2008. Fueled by furious tea party supporters, J.D. Hayworth wants John McCain run out of town on the horse he rode in on. Just as long, that is, as he doesn't marry it.

—Perrspective 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) |

In the wake of the slap in the face that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brushed off as accidental and "regrettable," his ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren told diplomats that the relations between the countries faced their worst crisis in 35 years. And while Netanyahu suggested "that we not get carried away and that we calm down, his Likud ally and deputy speaker of the Knesset Danny Dadon slammed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's stern response as "uninvited and unhelpful." Of her "meddling in internal Israeli decisions regarding the development" of Jerusalem, Dadon said:

"In fact it is sheer chutzpah. I cannot remember another time that a senior American official deemed it 'insulting' when a sovereign nation announced urban zoning decisions regarding its primary city."

On Friday, the CBC among others refreshed Dadon's memory:

In the early 1990s, when then president George H.W. Bush became annoyed at Shamir's refusal to stop building settlements, he cut off $10 billion in loan guarantees, which Israel needed to resettle Russian Jewish immigrants.

At the time, James Baker, Bush's secretary of state, publicly recited the White House switchboard's phone number, declaring to Israel: "When you are serious about peace, call us!"

(He also, notoriously, told a friend, "F**k the Jews, they don't vote for us [Republicans] anyway.")

But Baker's famous f-bomb is beside the point.

The United States has for decades guaranteed and underwritten Israeli security - and national survival. But the mutual interest of the allied democracies in halting Soviet expansion and curbing Iranian influence does not mean their objectives always overlap.

As Foreign Policy detailed this weekend, CENTCOM commander and conservative idol General David Petraeus made stressed that very point to the U.S. Joint Chiefs. Chairman Michael Mullen was apparently stunned by what he heard:

The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM's mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, [and] that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region.

That's not all. Petraeus requested, though was later denied, the addition of the West Bank and Gaza into his theater of command. As FP reported, "Petraeus's reason was straightforward: with U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military had to be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged in the region's most troublesome conflict."

That is part of the back-story to the stark warning Vice President Biden delivered to the Israelis after their public humiliation of him:

People who heard what Biden said were stunned. "This is starting to get dangerous for us," Biden castigated his interlocutors. "What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace."

The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel's actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.

And to be sure, it is not in the national security interest of the United States to support those seeking the fulfillment of biblical prophecy by cementing the occupation of what some Israelis (and some Americans) call Judea and Samaria.

As ThinkProgress noted, just the day before Biden's arrival in Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu appeared onstage with Texas Pastor John Hagee in Jerusalem. Hagee doesn't merely oppose a two-state solution with the Palestinians ("If America puts pressure on Israel to divide Jerusalem we are following the blueprint of the Prince of Darkness," Hagee has said. "Amos 3:2 states that any nation that divides the Land of Israel will come under the severe judgment of God."). As he made clear in 2006, Hagee literally believes in Armageddon as foreign policy:

"The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West...a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ."

For its part, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) responded to the controversy by blasting not the Netanyahu government, but the Obama White House. As Steve Clemons suggested, AIPAC in its statement below got the story exactly backwards:

The Obama Administration's recent statements regarding the U.S. relationship with Israel are a matter of serious concern. AIPAC calls on the Administration to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish State. The Administration should make a conscious effort to move away from public demands and unilateral deadlines directed at Israel, with whom the United States shares basic, fundamental, and strategic interests.

As Tom Friedman wrote yesterday, friends can speak the truth to each other. As Friedman argues, the message the Obama administration should send Tel Aviv is "Israel needs a wake-up call. Continuing to build settlements in the West Bank, and even housing in disputed East Jerusalem, is sheer madness." Put another way:

Message from America to the Israeli government: Friends don't let friends drive drunk. And right now, you're driving drunk. You think you can embarrass your only true ally in the world, to satisfy some domestic political need, with no consequences? You have lost total contact with reality. Call us when you're serious.

What the Israeli government did last week was chutzpah. What the Obama administration is doing now is simply calling them on it.

UPDATE: While the number two House Republican Eric Cantor called the Obama administration's response to last week's outrage "iresponsible," Kansas Senator Sam Brownback parroted the Likud Party's talking point. "'It's hard to see," Brownback said, 'how spending a weekend condemning Israel for a zoning decision in its capital city amounts to a positive step towards peace."

—Perrspective 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) |

From the outset, Wilentz summarizes a case for Grant which he proceeds to expound in convincing detail:

Ronald Reagan deserves posterity's honor, and so it makes sense that the capital's airport and a major building there are named for him. But the proposal to substitute his image for that of Ulysses S. Grant on the $50 bill is a travesty that would dishonor the nation's bedrock principles of union, freedom and equality -- and damage its historical identity. Although slandered since his death, Grant, as general and as president, stood second only to Abraham Lincoln as the vindicator of those principles in the Civil War era.

If anything, Wilentz gives short shift to Grant's role at Appomattox and beyond in binding up the nation's wounds and welcoming back into the Union as brothers the Confederate soldiers he fought against at such great cost.

And to be sure, the respect and dignity Grant accorded Robert E. Lee and his surrendering Army of Northern Virginia was offered despite his disdain for their cause of slavery and secessionism. As he prepared to accept their capitulation, Grant later wrote of the moment in April 1865:

"I felt sad and depressed at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though their cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought."

Nevertheless, Grant offered Lee such generous and compassionate terms for his beaten and hungry troops that "Lee never forgot Grant's magnanimity during the surrender, and for the rest of his life would not tolerate an unkind word about Grant in his presence." Not only were Lee's men not imprisoned, but they were allowed to retain their personal horses and side arms. And on the day of their formal surrender, Grant forbade Union troops from displays of celebration or gloating as Lee's men filed past.

Years later, the Confederate General John Gordon recalled with appreciation and thanks the honor shown his men by his Northern counterpart, General Joshua Chamberlain:

One of the knightliest soldiers of the Federal army, General Joshua L. Chamberlain of Maine, who afterward served with distinction as governor of his state, called his troops into line, and as my men marched in front of them, the veterans in blue gave a soldierly salute to those vanquished heroes - a token of respect from Americans to Americans, a final and fitting tribute from Northern to Southern chivalry.

As President, Ulysses Grant continued to offer not recriminations or retribution but respect to Southern sensibilities. In 1869, several Congressmen sought to add to Capitol rotunda a huge mural depicting Lee surrendering to Grant at Appomattox. As authors Harold Holzer and Gabor Boritt wrote, Grant would have none of it. "He said he would never take part in producing a picture that commemorated a victory in which his own countrymen were losers." Grant is said to have remarked:

"No, gentlemen, it won't do. No power on earth will make me agree to your proposal. I will not humiliate General Lee or our Southern friends in depicting their humiliation and then celebrating the event in the nation's capitol."

(One can only wish that today's supporters of the Confederate flag would show as much consideration, sensitivity and respect to their fellow Americans as U.S. Grant afforded their ancestors 150 years ago.)

As Will Bunch documented in his book, Tear Down This Myth, the right-wing's Ronald Reagan legacy project has affixed the 40th president's name to parks and roads, office buildings and libraries, airports and museums and so much more across the country. But that is the country that Ulysses S. Grant fought to preserve and reunite. That failed businessman, often troubled solder and sometimes stumbling president wasn't just an American hero, but an American healer.

And that's worth a lot more than the $50 bill.

—Perrspective 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) |

Former Bush speechwriter, current waterboarding enthusiast and ardent defender of Cheney's "Department of Jihad" smear Marc Thiessen offered the purest analogy between Eric Holder's attorneys who once defended suspected terrorists and the Bush lawyers who created the legal framework authorizing their torture. Thiessen raged against what he called "selective McCarthyism" in the Washington Post:

Where was the moral outrage when fine lawyers like John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Jim Haynes, Steve Bradbury and others came under vicious personal attack? Their critics did not demand simple transparency; they demanded heads. They called these individuals "war criminals" and sought to have them fired, disbarred, impeached and even jailed. Where were the defenders of the "al-Qaeda seven" when a Spanish judge tried to indict the "Bush six"? Philippe Sands, author of the "Torture Team," crowed: "This is the end of these people's professional reputations!" I don't recall anyone accusing him of "shameful" personal attacks.

The standard today seems to be that you can say or do anything when it comes to the Bush lawyers who defended America against the terrorists. But if you publish an Internet ad or ask legitimate questions about Obama administration lawyers who defended America's terrorist enemies, you are engaged in a McCarthyite witch hunt.

But aside from the likes of Keep America Safe board member Bill Kristol, the National Review's Andrew McCarthy and perpetual torture cheerleader Michelle Malkin, Thiessen has little company in defending Liz Cheney's slanders. Ken Starr, Ted Olsen, David Rivkin, Michael Mukasey, JAG/Senator Lindsey Graham and other leading lights of the conservative legal community all blasted Cheney's attacks as "shameful," condemning them as "unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications." As they pointed, the role played by the handful of attorneys isn't merely "as old as John Adams's representation of the British soldiers charged in the Boston massacre." It also happened to be validated by the Supreme Court of the United States in its Hamdan and Boumediene decisions:

In several key cases, detainee advocates prevailed before the Supreme Court. To suggest that the Justice Department should not employ talented lawyers who have advocated on behalf of detainees maligns the patriotism of people who have taken honorable positions on contested questions and demands a uniformity of background and view in government service from which no administration would benefit.

Nevertheless, many conservative commentators who agreed that Liz Cheney was "out-of-bounds" insist her father and the Bush torture team were similarly slandered by the left.

Take, for example, self-proclaimed moderate conservative David Brooks. While calling the Cheney-Kristol ad questioning the loyalty of public servants "tremendously unfortunate," Brooks found equivalence where there is none:

"So, there has been a fair bit of criticism from fellow conservatives toward this.

But, again, I would say, if you look at the words that were hurled at Dick Cheney, who I am no fan of, but, believe me, he has been the subject of calumnies worse...

Well, if are you calling people evil, and members of the Taliban, or members of al-Qaida, or members of evil conspiracies, that is the corrosive factor here, who -- regardless of who you are talking to, which public servant you are talking to. There's ways to talk and there's ways not to talk."

And that line was echoed by former Bill Frist staffer turned right-wing radio host and CNN regular Amy Holmes. Appearing Friday night on Real Time with Bill Maher, Holmes served up the same "yes, but" response to the Liz Cheney imbroglio:

HOLMES: I agree with you. I don't think it's remotely fair to tar lawyers with the crimes of their clients. You could never have anyone defending a murderer or a rapist or anything like that and we do have a system where you get a fair defense, but other folks say... I don't agree with it... but turnabout is fair play. Look at what the left did to the lawyers in the Justice Department who were trying to give advice under the Bush administration. They were singled out. You know they were... fingers were pointed at them...

MAHER: Oh lord...

HOLMES: ...to try to tear them down and I think a lawyer should be able to do his job...

MAHER: Wow...

HOLMES: ...without being tarred as you say...

MAHER: That is quite an analysis there.

And so it goes in right-wing Bizarro World. Whether or not they support Liz Cheney's slander of DOJ attorneys who by defending even the most odious terror detainees upheld the highest values of the Constitution, the conservative commentariat believes that the Bush lawyers who rationalized away U.S. and international law to enable detainee torture deserve the same or greater respect.

Back in 1997, Seinfeld introduced Americans to the "Unvitation." The unvitation allows the cynical person to seemingly satisfy the demands of social etiquette by extending an invitation to an event or gathering which they know the recipient will - or must - reject. So, too, Republicans have perfected the art of the "Unpology," enabling this generation of Republican wrong-doers to deliver the facade of apology by uttering obligatory words of remorse devoid of actual regret, contrition - or even an admission of guilt.

By declaring their "pride" in Bush-era waterboarding, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are at least being honest. As for their supporters, well, yada yada yada.

UPDATE: It is worth recalling Professor Jonathan Turley's lament that the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) report which concluded John Yoo and Jay Bybee "exercised poort judgment" threatens to undermine the legal basis for accountability laid down at Nuremberg. As Turley put it:

Poor judgment is when you invite the NRA's Wayne LaPierre and Susan Brady to a small dinner party. Arguing for torture and misrepresenting settled law to facilitate a torture program is usually viewed as something of a slightly higher order than "poor judgment" or "bad form."

That is why the movie was not called "Poor Judgment at Nuremberg."

—Perrspective 1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) |

As the year-long health care debate approaches its end game in Washington, opponents of reform are being buffeted by a double-whammy of bad news. Last week, a Goldman Sachs analysis documented insurance rates for individuals jumping by up to 50% in some markets. Now, a new survey of large employers found that 56% will hold workers responsible for a greater share of health care costs next year. Coming on the heels of studies showing companies dropping workplace coverage altogether, the data reveal a system of employer-provided health insurance teetering on the brink of collapse.

As the Washington Post reported, the study National Business Group on Health of 507 companies with over 1,000 employees found that:

Many say they may charge more to cover spouses, tighten eligibility standards for their health plans and dispense financial rewards or penalties based on the results of certain lab tests. At some companies, overweight employees could be excluded from the most desirable plans.

Meanwhile, employees at many companies can expect significantly higher premiums, deductibles and co-payments.

That cost-shifting will take a number of forms. Twenty-eight percent of employers plan to use spousal surcharges next year, up from 21 percent this year. Meanwhile, 12 percent of employers plan to offer only high-deductible coverage next year. And the percentage of firms considering employee biometric screening and health care appraisals to incentives for hitting weight, blood pressure and cholesterol targets is growing rapidly.

The NBGH survey is just the latest symptom of the rapidly deteriorating system of employer-provided health insurance coverage. A 2007 report from the Economic Policy Institute showed a dramatic decline in employer-provided health care. That drop-off from 64.2% of Americans covered through workplace insurance in 2000 to just 59.7% in 2006 alone added 2.3 million more people to those without coverage. Census data since showed workplace coverage dipped further in 2007, down to an alarming 59.3%. A recent Thomson Reuters survey put the figure for 2009 at a stunning 54.6%. (Data from the U.S. Census revealed that it was only the expansion of government programs including SCHIP and Medicaid which offset the erosion of employer coverage in 2008.)

As the Washington Post also detailed in September, another survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the grim outlook for employer-provided health insurance is growing more dismal still:

Forty percent of employers surveyed said they are likely to increase the amount their workers pay out of pocket for doctor visits. Almost as many said they are likely to raise annual deductibles and the amount workers pay for prescription drugs.

Nine percent said they plan to tighten eligibility for health benefits; 8 percent said they plan to drop coverage entirely. Forty-one percent of employers said they were "somewhat" or "very" likely to increase the amount employees pay in premiums -- though that would not necessarily mean employees are paying a higher percentage of the premiums. Employers could simply be passing along the same proportional share of the overall increase that they did in 2009.

To be sure, Americans' health care expenditures are spiraling out of control, expanding at triple the rate of wages. That annual tab now tops $12,000. Of that, a recent analysis by the Center for American Progress found that "8 percent of families' health care premiums--approximately $1,100 a year--is due to our broken system that fails to cover the uninsured."

And with successful Republican obstruction of Democratic health care initiatives, those jaw-dropping costs would only continue their steep climb. A report last year from the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers forecast employers will face a 9% increase in health insurance costs in 2010. 42% of those business surveyed will pass at least some the new burden on to their workers. As PWC's Michael Thompson concluded in June:

"If the underlying costs go up by 9%, employees' costs actually go up by double digits," he said, noting that will have a "major, major impact" when many employers also are freezing or cutting pay.

Here's a snapshot of just how "major" that impact will be for American families. Pointing to data from the actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Center for American Progress warns that per capita medical costs are forecast to rise by 71% over the next decade. That would catapult the cost of the average family's insurance policy from $13,000 a year to over $22,000 by 2019.

As the Post detailed, business groups themselves are also ringing the alarm bell. A new report from the Business Roundtable concluded, "If current trends continue, annual health-care costs for employers will rise 166 percent over the next decade -- to $28,530 per employee." Antonio M. Perez, chief executive of Eastman Kodak and a leader of the Business Roundtable concluded:

"Maintaining the status quo is simply not an option. These costs are unsustainable and would put millions of workers at risk."

And not just workers, but for all Americans. With 50 million uninsured, another 25 million underinsured, 1 in 5 Americans already postponing treatment and medical costs fueling 62% of personal bankruptcies, the crisis of the employer-based system couldn't come at a worse time. But while Democrats are trying to get Americans the health care reform they so badly need, Republican leaders have another plan: go to the emergency room.

—Perrspective 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) |

The arch-conservative Washington Times opens by trumpeting the op-ed by the Kansas radiologist with the subhead, "A doctor savages his cousin Barack's reform plan." Only at the end of the piece do readers learned that the Obama family tree looks more like a game of six degrees of separation:

President Obama's great-great grandfather, Thomas Creekmore McCurry, is Dr. Wolf's great-grandfather. Dr. Wolf's mother, Anna Margaret McCurry, was five years older than Mr. Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. The two were childhood friends until the Dunhams moved from Kansas to Seattle in 1955.

But while the mystery of Wolf's distant relationship to the President isn't solved until the conclusion of his rant, his mission is clear from the beginning.

In his blistering critique of Democratic health care reform, Dr. Wolf puts his professional gloss on virtually every Republican sound bite. Sounding more like GOP strategist Frank Luntz than a physician, Wolf regurgitates word-for-word the tried and untrue Republican talking points on HCR. To list just a few of Wolf's diagnoses:

"Government takeover of health care"; "America has the finest health care delivery system in the world"; "the threat of multimillion-dollar lawsuits with every single decision"; "provisions that will ration care and artificially set price"; "decouple health insurance from employers and empower patients to be consumers once again"; "This free-market approach has worked for everything from high-definition TVs to breakfast cereals."

Never once mentioning the American Medical Association's endorsement of the "Obamacare" that he derides, Wolf instead offers himself as an authoritative focus group of one:

"Primum nil nocere."First, do no harm. This guiding principle is a bedrock of medical care. Sadly, those politicians who would rewrite our health care laws do not live in the same universe as do the doctors and health care professionals who must practice it.

While selectively citing a few data points on comparative cancer survivals rates, Dr. Wolf conveniently ignores the numbers that matter most about the death spiral of the American health care system. Numbers like 50 million uninsured, 25 million more uninsured, 98,000 deaths annually from medical errors, 45,000 deaths to lack of insurance, 62% of personal bankruptcies due to medical costs, 1 in 5 Americans postponing needed medical care and 94% of health insurance markets nationwide are already virtually monopolized.. Or that employer-provided insurance now covers less than 60% of Americans while the average annual cost of family health insurance premiums will rise from $13,000 now to $22,000 by 2019. Or that the total cost of the malpractice system and defensive medicine combined constitute at most 3% of national health care spending and that, if anything, there are too few and not too many malpractice lawsuits. Or that red states have the worst the health care systems and the unhealthiest residents.

(For data sources, see "The Republican 10 Point Plan for Health Care", "Republican Malpractice Myths", "Studies Confirm Americans Are Self-Rationing Health Care", "Family Health Insurance Premiums to Reach $22,000 by 2019" and "Red State Reality: Unhealthiest Residents, Worst Health Care.")

Wolf's own malpractice isn't limited to what he omits, but what he prescribes. In essence, Obama's relative suggests uninsured Americans should follow the advice of George W. Bush, Mitch McConnell, Tom Delay and countless other Republicans by just going to the emergency room:

Obamacare proponents would have us believe that we will add 30 million patients to the system without adding providers, we will see no decline in the quality of care for the millions of Americans currently happy with the system, and -if you act now!- we will save money in the process. But why stop there? Why not promise it will no longer rain on weekends and every day will be a great hair day?

Interestingly, while Wolf's free market won't respond to the increased demand for medical services by producing a surge in new doctors, it will magically solve just about every other problem:

This free-market approach has worked for everything from high-definition TVs to breakfast cereals, but will it work for medicine? It already is. Take Lasik eye surgery, for example. Because patients are allowed to be informed consumers and can shop anywhere, doctors work hard for their business. Services, availability and expertise have all increased, and costs have decreased. Should consumers demand it, insurance companies - now answerable to you rather than your employer - would cover it.

Like most advocates of so-called "consumer-driven health care" (CHDC), Wolf pretends that the health care market is an ideal one where buyer and seller meet free of coercion and with perfect information. Of course, that is not the case. There is not only a staggering (and unavoidable) asymmetry of information between patient and provider; in most cases, the patient can't simply walk away. He or she isn't buying a car, TV or milk; the patient often must have care now. In the health care market, patients as consumers find not Adam Smith's invisible hand, but a middle finger.

The results of health care free market mania, as I wrote four years ago in "Unhealthy Trends," are predictable - and ominous:

Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute and vice chair of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission concluded bluntly "this trend will shift more of the costs of health care onto the sick, especially those with chronic conditions, larger families, and older workers and reduce the burden on the young, the healthy and singles."

Which is exactly what appears to be taking place. In one the first evaluations of consumer-driven health care plans, a joint study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute and the Commonwealth Fund found much lower satisfaction, higher costs and more missed health care with CDHC plans than traditional employer health packages. Americans utilizing new high-deductible CHDC health plans such as health savings accounts (HSAs) and health reimbursement accounts (HRAs) experienced dramatically higher out-of-pocket costs, with over a third paying more than 5% of their income towards health-related expenses, versus just 12% of those in traditional plans. Worse still, CDHC participants, especially those making under $50,000 a year, were much more likely (35% versus 17%) to skip or defer needed health care. The key to the new wave of consumer-driven plans, it would seem, is to be healthy, wealthy and lucky.

And so it goes. Dr. Milton Wolf may be vaguely related to Barack Obama, but his prescriptions more closely resemble the Republican health care playbook. It's all there, even the bit about death panels. Sounding like Sarah Palin, Dr. Wolf concludes:

The problems caused by government will not be solved by growing government. Now that this new era of big-government takeovers has spread to our health care system, it's not just our freedoms or our wallets that are at stake. It's our lives.

UPDATE: For more of Dr; Wolf's right-wing writings, visit his blog here.

—Perrspective 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) |

"I'm not sure why we're there," Roberts told the audience in Tuscaloosa, adding:

"The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court -- according the requirements of protocol -- has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling."

But during the George W. Bush's tenure, the Justices served as a prop for his State of the Union battles with the judiciary.

Bush's Supreme politicking during his State of the Union speeches was a regular fixture of his presidency. For three straight years (2004, 2005 and 2006), President Bush denounced "activist judges" and insisted "for the good of families, children and society, I support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage." On the very day Samuel Alito joined the Robert Court, Bush used his 2006 SOTU for a victory lap:

"The Supreme Court now has two superb new members -- new members on its bench: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sam Alito. I thank the Senate for confirming both of them. I will continue to nominate men and women who understand that judges must be servants of the law and not legislate from the bench."

And throughout the presidency of Ronald Reagan, for whom John Roberts promoted the gutting of the Civil Rights Act, overturning Roe v. Wade and a dangerously ignorant policy in response to the AIDS crisis, bashing the Supreme Court was routine occurrence.

In 1983, President Reagan penned a screed in Human Life Review, echoing Justice Byron White's declaration that the Court's ruling in Roe was an exercise of "raw judicial power." Reagan wrote:

"Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the court's result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right. ... Nowhere do the plain words of the Constitution even hint at a 'right' so sweeping as to permit abortion up to the time the child is ready to be born."

And as radio host Michael Smerconish noted, Reagan didn't hesitate to get in the Justices faces during his State of the Union speeches:

Among Reagan's State of the Union addresses, on four occasions he did what Obama attempted to do: urge Congress to address a Supreme Court decision with which he disagreed. but in the Gipper's case, he avoided any direct reference to the Supreme Court decision.

The issue of abortion, he acknowledged in 1984, was "very controversial." He asked: "But unless and until it can be proven that an unborn child is not a living human being, can we justify assuming without proof that it isn't?"

One can only speculate whether Justice Harry Blackmun, a Nixon nominee and author of the majority opinion in Roe, wondered out loud, "I'm not sure why we're there."

When John Roberts first assumed the mantle of Chief Justice in 2005, George Washington University law professor, New Republic regular and author of the PBS series and book "The Supreme Court" Jeffrey Rosen lauded Roberts as the second coming of the legendary John Marshall:

"Whenever the Court gets dramatically out of step with the public, and issues intensely controversial, narrowly divided opinions, all of that carefully hoarded legitimacy can go out the window. That's why I'm persuaded by Roberts' argument that resurrecting Marshall's vision is all the more important in a polarized age."

But by 2007, Rosen expressed buyer's remorse over the radical and divisive Roberts, echoing Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) lament that his Democratic colleagues were "too easily impressed with the charm of Roberts" and concluded, "There is no doubt that we were hoodwinked." By July, Rosen aired his disappointment in a piece titled, "Will Roberts Ever Get Better?"

"Although Chief Justice John Roberts began the term by calling for greater consensus, a third of cases were decided by five-to-four votes, the highest percentage in more than ten years. The polarization inspired the four liberal justices to write some of their most passionate, incisive, and memorable dissents."

In the wake of the Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC, Rosen seemed to finally come to grips with John Roberts radical conservatism and naked partisanship:

While Roberts talked persuasively about conciliation, it now appears that he is unwilling to cede an inch to liberals in the most polarizing cases. If Roberts continues this approach, the Supreme Court may find itself on a collision course with the Obama administration--precipitating the first full-throttle confrontation between an economically progressive president and a narrow majority of conservative judicial activists since the New Deal...

Political backlashes are hard to predict, contested constitutional visions can't be successfully imposed by 5-4 majorities, and challenging the president and Congress on matters they care intensely about is a dangerous game. We've seen well-intentioned but unrestrained chief justices overplay their hands in the past--and it always ends badly for the Court.

And in case of John Roberts, for the people of the United States.

—Perrspective 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) |

That Liz Cheney crossed the Rubicon (or, more accurately, jumped the shark) with her McCarthy-style questioning of the loyalty of DOJ lawyers who in the past represented terror suspects is reflected in the opening paragraph of the statement Rivkin signed on Monday:

The past several days have seen a shameful series of attacks on attorneys in the Department of Justice who, in previous legal practice, either represented Guantánamo detainees or advocated for changes to detention policy. As attorneys, former officials, and policy specialists who have worked on detention issues, we consider these attacks both unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications.

And to be sure, David Rivkin has been no defender of suspected terrorists or their legal rights.

After the Supreme Court restored detainees' habeas corpus rights in its 5-4 Boumediene decision, Rivkin in June 2008 blasted the "arrogance" of the Justices. Worse still, as he told PBS News Hour, the result was the equivalent of declaring human beings property and codifying racial segregation:

"But to be honest, and not to be too dramatic, it's one of the worst decisions by the Supreme Court I've ever read, on par with Dred Scott decisions and Plessy v. Ferguson.

The reason for it is not because of its practical implications; they're quite modest. But the sheer ambition, the sheer judicial arrogance that you see here."

When the Obama administration released four controversial Bush torture memos authored by Steven Bradbury, Rivkin took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to claim "The Memos Prove We Didn't Torture." Of course, Bradbury himself not only questioned whether waterboarding and other techniques even worked ("It is difficult to quantify with confidence and precision the effectiveness of the program"), he specifically rebuked the Bush administration for depending on a military training program, Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, (SERE) to assess the risks that a suspected terrorist might face when being waterboarded. As McClatchy reported:

"Individuals undergoing SERE training are obviously in a very different situation from detainees undergoing interrogation; SERE trainees know it is part of a training program," Bradbury wrote, borrowing from the IG report's conclusion.

Nevertheless, Rivkin argued that:

All of these interrogation methods have been adapted from the U.S. military's own Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (or SERE) training program, and have been used for years on thousands of American service members with the full knowledge of Congress. This has created a large body of information about the effect of these techniques, on which the CIA was able to draw in assessing the likely impact on the detainees and ensuring that no severe pain or long term psychological impact would result.

Rivkin's Bizarro World conclusion?

Far from "green lighting" torture -- or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees -- the memos detail the actual techniques used and the many measures taken to ensure that interrogations did not cause severe pain or degradation.

The case of Nigerian underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab drove Rivkin to new fits of foaming-at-the-mouth frenzy. On January 5, 2010, he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer:

"The safety of the American people has been sacrificed on the altar of political correctness, animated by an irrational hostility towards the venerable military justice system."

A month later, Rivkin joined fellow Bush waterboarding enthusiast Marc Thiessen to protest the Obama administration's handling of Abdulmutallab's as a criminal suspect rather than an unlawful enemy combatant. Of course, Thiessen and Rivkin did not compare the Nigerian to shoe bomber Richard Reid who was arrested, tried and convicted by the Bush DOJ under almost identical circumstances. Instead, they cited the case of African embassy bomber Ahmed Ghailani, captured in 2004 outside of the United States.

(Sadly for Rivkin and Thiesen, one day after their Wall Street Journal op-ed appeared, Obama administration officials revealed that Abdulmutallab was "cooperating" and producing "actionable intelligence.")

Given his ultra-hard line on detainee torture, it would come as no surprise to learn that David Rivkin played the home version of the waterboarding game with his children while admiring a framed picture of Dick Cheney. Which is what makes his criticism of Liz Cheney all the more shocking - and noteworthy. They say politics makes strange bedfellows, but to witness David Rivkin support Eric Holder and the Obama Justice Department isn't just weird. As Stephen Colbert would say, "that's the craziest f**king thing I've ever heard."

UPDATE: Senator Lindsey Graham joined the list of conservatives blasting Liz Cheney's DOJ demagoguery. Former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey also added his voice to those denouncing Cheney and her group. Unsurprisingly, as Daily Show viewers witnessed Tuesday night, Marc Thiessen parted company with David Rivkin by rushing to her defense.

—Perrspective 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) |

In his new memoir Courage and Consequence, Bush's brain defended the war in Iraq and especially the hyping of the nonexistent threat from Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction. But as the New York Times summarized Rove's book ("Rove on Iraq: Without W.M.D. Threat, Bush Wouldn't Have Gone to War"), it was only the specter of the "smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud" and not the promise democracy in Mesopotamia which enabled the Bush administration to sell the invasion to Congress and the American people:

While the opportunity to bring democracy to the Middle East as a bulwark against Islamic extremism "justified the decision to remove Saddam Hussein," Mr. Rove makes clear that from the start, at least, the suspected weapons and their perceived threat were the primary justification for war.

"Would the Iraq War have occurred without W.M.D.? I doubt it," he writes. "Congress was very unlikely to have supported the use-of-force resolution without the W.M.D. threat. The Bush administration itself would probably have sought other ways to constrain Saddam, bring about regime change, and deal with Iraq's horrendous human rights violations."

He adds: "So, then, did Bush lie us into war? Absolutely not." But Mr. Rove said the White House had only a "weak response" to the harmful allegation, which became "a poison-tipped dagger aimed at the heart of the Bush presidency."

To be sure, even after leaving office the Bush White House team and its allies continued to defend the supposed "bad intelligence" they claimed lay behind their WMD doomsday scenarios and to peddle the myth of Saddam's link to 9/11 and Al Qaeda. But in December 2008 as now, Karl Rove insisted no WMD threat meant no war with Saddam's Iraq:

"Absent that, I suspect that the administration's course of action would have been to work to find more creative ways to constrain him like in the 90s."

Over at the National Review, Pete Wehner approvingly cited this Newsweek quote:

Bush's rhetoric about democracy came to sound as bitterly ironic as his pumped-up appearance on an aircraft carrier a few months earlier, in front of an enormous banner that declared MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. And yet it has to be said and it should be understood--now, almost seven hellish years later--that something that looks mighty like democracy is emerging in Iraq. And while it may not be a beacon of inspiration to the region, it most certainly is a watershed event that could come to represent a whole new era in the history of the massively undemocratic Middle East.

After declaring last Tuesday that "deeply heartening" development "didn't happen by accident," Wehner the next day offered a near-hagiographic portrait of George W. Bush as liberator of Iraq. Largely ignoring the original rationale for the war and the much-strengthened Iran it produced, Wehner lauds "the idea of consensual government" as "a gift we gave the Iraqis at the cost of many American lives and much treasure," adding, "It is a gift they appear to have received."

"What America has done for Iraq, which had been brutalized for so long, may not be the noblest act in our history. But it ranks quite high. The Iraq war was, in fact, a war of liberation. And the liberation appears to be working."

Two days later on March 5, Wehner's National Review colleague Jonah Goldberg declared that history would be kind to President Bush:

What most Americans care about is winning -- or, more accurately, winning in a good cause. Public attitudes are still raw when it comes to the war, and for good reason. But a generation from now, if Iraq is a stable, prosperous democracy, Americans will in all likelihood think the war was worth it, and that George W. Bush was right.

Perhaps. But even giving Goldberg the benefit of the doubt, a "stable, prosperous democracy" is not the "good cause" either the Bush administration or the American people had in mind in toppling Saddam. As I noted five years ago in "The Myth of the Bush Doctrine":

In fact, the word "democracy" is for all intents and purposes missing from the Bush administration's rhetoric regarding the War on Terror prior to the invasion of Iraq. There is no mention of "democracy" in President Bush's address to Congress and the nation on September 20, 2001. Aside from a reference to Russia, it cannot be found in the June 2002 West Point speech. Democracy was absent from Bush's September 12, 2002 address to the UN and his October 7, 2002 Iraq war justification in Cincinnati. And in the run-up to the invasion, democracy promotion remained essentially invisible in the 2003 State of the Union (ironically, it is mentioned regarding Iran), March 17 press conference, and even during Bush's March 19 address to the nation declaring the commencement of hostilities. The closest the President could come was one of his favorite platitudes.

"Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity."

As Karl Rove reminded us this week, in 2003 delivering God's gift simply had not become an American national security requirement. Eliminating weapons of mass destruction was. Put another way, George W. Bush didn't invade Iraq to promote democracy; he promoted democracy because he invaded Iraq.

—Perrspective 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) |

If that seems like an ironic turn of events for right-wingers taking a hard line towards Iran, it should. After all, Mitt Romney's brief divestment crusade backfired when it turned out his old company was doing deals with the mullahs. And Halliburton CEO turned Vice President Dick Cheney was opposed to the Iran sanctions before he was for them.

Even as the Obama administration is seeking tougher UN sanctions to press Tehran into curbing its nuclear program, "of the 74 companies The Times identified as doing business with both the United States government and Iran, 49 continue to do business there with no announced plans to leave."

The federal government has awarded more than $107 billion in contract payments, grants and other benefits over the past decade to foreign and multinational American companies while they were doing business in Iran, despite Washington's efforts to discourage investment there, records show.

That includes nearly $15 billion paid to companies that defied American sanctions law by making large investments that helped Iran develop its vast oil and gas reserves.

Among the U.S. contractors also profiting from Iran was Halliburton, which pocketed $27.1 billion from American taxpayers between 2000 and 2009:

Halliburton, former Vice President Cheney's old company, provided oil and gas drilling services to Iran through foreign subsidies. After a political furor erupted over the work, the company announced it would do no new business in Iran, and it exited the country altogether in 2007. While still operating in Iran, Halliburton won huge contacts from the federal government, including a no-bid contract to restore Iraq's oil sector, as did its subsidiary at the time, Kellogg Brown & Root.

As Perrspectives detailed three years ago, Halliburton had side-stepped the U.S. sanctions regime in place against Iran since the 1990's by using a Cayman Islands subsidiary. And what should come as a surprise to no one, CEO Dick Cheney opposed those very sanctions until, of course, he became George W. Bush's Vice President.

In 2004, the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes detailed the Iranian business dealings of Cheney's former company, Halliburton. Despite the prohibitions signed into law by President Clinton with his 1995 executive order and the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996, Halliburton continued to reap the profits of business with Iran through its non-U.S. subsidiaries. While U.S. law bans virtually all commerce with the rogue nations, Halliburton was able to jump through its major loophole: the rules do not apply to any foreign or offshore subsidiary so long as it is run by non-Americans. As CBS documented:

That subsidiary, Halliburton Products and Services, Ltd., is wholly owned by the U.S.-based Halliburton and is registered in a building in the capital of the Cayman Islands -- a building owned by the local Calidonian Bank. Halliburton and other companies set up in this Caribbean Island, because of tax and secrecy laws that are corporate friendly.

Halliburton is the company that Vice President Dick Cheney used to run. He was CEO from 1995 to 2000, during which time Halliburton Products and Services set up shop in Iran. Today, it sells about $40 million a year worth of oil field services to the Iranian government.

In the wake of the January 2004 60 Minutes piece, the company moved quickly to declare that "Halliburton's business in Iran is clearly permissible under applicable laws and regulations" and cited its October 2003 disclosures to the New York City police and fire pension funds. Despite those assurances, Dick Cheney's old firm was subpoenaed by a U.S grand jury in June 2004. In early 2005, Halliburton announced that it would end its business activities there when after fulfilling its ongoing contracts, including a $35 million gas drilling project it had just won the previous month. Halliburton's exit was completed in 2007.

Though he did not benefit directly from the Iran contracts of Halliburton's foreign-based subsidiaries, Cheney continued to have financial ties to his former firm. Despite Cheney's assurances that "I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest," a 2003 report by the Congressional Research Service found that the Vice President retained 433,000 shares of Halliburton. In addition, Cheney received $162,392 and $205,298 in deferred payments in 2001 and 2002, respectively.

Given the stakes, it's no wonder Dick Cheney had a born-again experience on Iranian sanctions when he entered the Bush administration. While Vice President, Cheney in 2002 denounced Iran as "the world's leading exporter of terror." But during his tenure as Halliburton CEO in the 1990's, Cheney strenuously argued against Clinton's sanctions regime and expanded Halliburton's business with Tehran. In 1998, he complained that U.S. firms were "cut out of the action." And back in 1996, Cheney railed against the Clinton prohibitions on Iranian trade and financial activity for American firms:

"We seem to be sanction-happy as a government. The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to always put oil and gas resources where there are democratic governments."

For his part, Dick Cheney never made tough but hypocritical talk about Iran sanctions part of a run for the White House. That comic fate fell to Mitt Romney.

Candidate Romney began his grandstanding on Iranian disinvestment by targeting the Democratic-controlled states of New York and Massachusetts. On February 22, 2007, Romney sent letters to New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, Senators Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton as well as state comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli urging a policy of "strategic disinvestment from companies linked to the Iranian regime." Romney's theatrics continued:

"With your new responsibilities overseeing one of America's largest pension funds, you have a unique opportunity to lead an effort to isolate Iran as it pursues nuclear armament. I request that you immediately launch a policy of strategic disinvestment from companies linked to the Iranian regime. Screening pension investments and divesting from companies providing financial support to the Iranian regime or linked to Iran's weapons programs and terrorist activities could have a powerful impact. New investments should be scrutinized as long as Iran's regime continues its current, dangerous course."

Sadly for Governor Romney, as the AP detailed within 24 hours of the letter's publication, Romney's former employer and the company he founded had recent links to recent Iranian business deals:

Romney joined Boston-based Bain & Co., a management consulting firm, in 1978 and worked there until 1984. He was CEO of Bain Capital, a venture capital firm, from 1984 to 1999, despite a two-year return as Bain & Co.'s chief executive officer from 1991 to 1992.

Bain & Co. Italy, described in company literature as "the Italian branch of Bain & Co.," received a $2.3 million contract from the National Iranian Oil Co., in September 2004. Its task was to develop a master plan so NIOC -- the state oil company of Iran -- could become one of the world's top oil companies, according to Iranian and U.S. news accounts of the deal.

Bain Capital, the venture capital firm that Romney started and made him a multimillionaire, teamed up with the Haier Group, a Chinese appliance maker that has a factory in Iran, in an unsuccessful 2005 buyout effort.

In response to the revelations, Romney played dumb -- and blind. The former Massachusetts governor claimed his investments were in Boston-managed blind trust beyond his control. And more importantly, Romney feebly declared that his new-found distrust of the Ahmadinejad regime in Tehran would only apply going forward:

"This is something for now-forward. I wouldn't begin to say that people who, in the past, have been doing business with Iran, are subject to the same scrutiny as that which is going on from a prospective basis."

As the New York Times noted Saturday, the Iran Sanctions Act was also devised "to punish foreign companies that invest more than $20 million in a given year to develop Iran's oil and gas fields. But in the 14 years since the law was passed, the government has never enforced it, in part for fear of angering America's allies." Which, needless to say, has drawn the ire of one John Bolton. Bolton, American ambassador to the UN under George W. Bush, said:

Failing to enforce the law by punishing such companies both sent "a signal to the Iranians that we're not serious" and undercut Washington's credibility when it did threaten action.

Of course, as the Iran follies of Bolton's allies Dick Cheney and Mitt Romney showed, credibility begins at home.

—Perrspective 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) |

Delay's latest jaw-dropper came during his defense of the indefensible, Republican Senator Jim Bunning's one-man jihad to block the extension of unemployment benefits to over one million Americans. As he told a stunned Candy Crowley on CNN, "there is an argument to be made that these extensions, the unemployment benefits keeps people from going and finding jobs."

CROWLEY: Congressman, that's a hard sell, isn't it?

DELAY: It's the truth.

CROWLEY: People are unemployed because they want to be?

DELAY: Well, it is the truth. and people in the real world know it. And they have friends and they know it. Sure, we ought to be helping people that are unemployed find a job, but we also have budget considerations that are incredibly important, especially now that Obama is spending monies that we don't have.

And when it came to Senator Bunning, Delay was effusive in his praise. "I think Bunning was brave in standing up there and taking it on by himself," Delay insisted, adding that, "Nothing would have happened if the Democrats had just paid for [the benefits]."

Of course, when Delay was the Hammer of the House, the Republican Party didn't pay for anything, whether it be the Treasury-draining Bush tax cuts, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or the Medicare prescription drug benefit.

From the GOP leadership's strong-arm tactics and the administration's budgetary chicanery deployed to secure the bill's passage to the industry giveaways it offered, the dirty dealing behind the Medicare drug plan showcased typical Republican politics in action.

For starters, consider Tom Delay's unprecedented machinations on the House floor to round up the needed votes. As the New York Times recalled:

Under heavy pressure from President Bush and Republican Congressional leaders, lawmakers backed the legislation by a vote of 220 to 215, sending it to the Senate, which is expected to act in the next few days. The vote, which ordinarily takes fifteen minutes to record, was kept open for an extraordinary three hours as Republicans struggled to switch votes and obtain a majority.

And what happened during those three hours was a new low, even for Tom Delay. As the Washington Post later reported, the House Ethics Committee later reprimanded Delay for trying to buy votes for the Medicare bill:

After a six-month investigation, the committee concluded that DeLay had told Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) he would endorse the congressional bid of Smith's son if the congressman gave GOP leaders a much-needed vote in a contentious pre-dawn roll call on Nov. 22.

Then there's the matter of the Medicare bill's price tag. As I wrote five years ago "Medicare's Prescription for Failure":

A White House desperate for an election year win on Medicare deliberately misrepresented the program's costs in order to ensure passage. On December 8, 2003, President Bush rolled out a program he claimed would cost $400 billion over 10 years. Within two months, however, the White House notified Congress that the real price tag would approach $550 billion. When Medicare actuary Richard Foster sought to present the true price tag to Congress in late 2003, then agency chief Thomas Scully threatened to fire him. Fast forward two years and the estimated 10 year price tag for the Medicare prescription plan now exceeds $720 billion for its 43 million beneficiaries.

But back when Republicans controlled the White House and Congress, Tom Delay had no problem at all with deficit spending that dwarfed the Bunning imbroglio's $10 billion price tag. The Republican position then as now wasn't about preserving conservative principles, but instead perpetuating a GOP majority at all costs. As Delay defended his party's fiscal recklessness that November night:

"We must forget about ideological absolutes."

On more than one occasion, the man known as the Hammer compared himself to the carpenter, Jesus Christ. On the day of his booking in 2006, the indicted Delay said, "let people see Christ through me." Apparently, Delay never saw the parts about healing the sick and "blessed are the meek."

—Perrspective 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) |

The 2006 Massachusetts health care reform that now covers 97% of residents was made possible not only by the commonwealth's already low rate of uninsured. As it turned out, the state was already paying $1 billion a year to fund emergency room treatment for those without insurance coverage. And those dollars helped provide the subsidies for lower-income residents when Massachusetts put its insurance mandate into place.

And that, former Governor Mitt Romney told the crew on MSNBC's Morning Joe, is what enabled the universal coverage there he supported:

"Oh, sure. Look, it doesn't make a lot of sense for us to have millions and millions of people who have no health insurance and yet who can go to the emergency room and get entirely free care for which they have no responsibility, particularly if they are people who have sufficient means to pay their own way.

And so we said, look, we've got an idea. Let's take all the money we've been spending to give out free care, paying hospitals to provide free care, and let's use those same dollars to help people who can't afford it buy insurance."

But as he made clear last week, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has a different idea.

"One thing you could do is change the federal law so that not every ER is required to treat everybody who comes in door even if they have a minor condition. They should be --If you have a minor condition, rather than being at the really expensive ER, you should be at the primary care clinic."

When Van Susteren asked about the scenario when "you come in with chest pains, and like, you get horrible chest pains," T-Paw countered, "You have to do a little triage. That's for sure."

What is also certain is that hundreds of thousands of Americans end up in the emergency room each year precisely because they can't afford access to a primary care provider.

And if Tim Pawlenty read page 1 of the Republican playbook, he would have learned that the reliance on overcrowded, inefficient emergency rooms isn't a bug in the GOP health care program, it's a feature.

During a July 2007 visit to Cleveland, President Bush unveiled the Republican emergency room cure for the ills of the U.S. health care system. Rejecting the expansion of the successful - and even more popular - State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), Bush assured Americans that there was no crisis in medical coverage:

"I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room."

In November that year, indicted former House majority leader Tom Delay took Bush's health care clown show overseas. Speaking in the UK, Delay announced:

"By the way, there's no one denied health care in America. There are 47 million people who don't have health insurance, but no American is denied health care in America."

The GOP's Emergency Room Health Care Plan also reemerged during the 2008 election. It was repackaged by the architect of John McCain's health care proposals, John Goodman. No one in the United States is uninsured, Goodman, pronounced, because Americans have access to emergency room care. As the Dallas Morning News reported:

Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American - even illegal aliens - as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care. So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

And as the health care reform debate heated up last year, the #1 Republican in the Senate led the charge. While repeatedly decrying Democratic reform initiatives he insisted "denies, delays, or rations health care," Mitch McConnell told David Gregory on Meet the Press that Americans "don't go without health care":

GREGORY: Do you think it's a moral issue that 47 million Americans go without health insurance?

McCONNELL: Well, they don't go without health care. It's not the most efficient way to provide it. As we know, the doctors in the hospitals are sworn to provide health care. We all agree it is not the most efficient way to provide health care to find somebody only in the emergency room and then pass those costs on to those who are paying for insurance. So it is important, I think, to reduce the number of uninsured. The question is, what is the best way to do that?

McConnell's GOP colleagues were quick to propagate the talking point. In July, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) announced, "There are no Americans who don't have healthcare. Everybody in this country has access to healthcare." Rep. Paul Broun, her Republican ally from Georgia, concurred in a response to a constituent:

"People who have depression, who have chronic diseases in this country...can always get care in this country by going to the emergency room."

Sadly, even that Republican strategy is rapidly being overrun by the events on the ground.

As it turns out, a convergence of disturbing trends - 50 million uninsured, 25 million more underinsured, one in five American postponing needed care and medical costs driving over 60% of personal bankruptcies and an aging population - are having a cascading effect on waiting times and treatment at American emergency rooms.

While high-profile cases of the deaths of untreated ER patients in Los Angeles and New York put a face on the crisis, a 2006 report by the Institute of Medicine revealed that U.S. emergency rooms can barely cope with the volume of patients in the best of circumstances, let alone in the wake of crises such as a terrorist attack or flu epidemic:

The study cited three contributing problems to the rise in emergency room visits: the aging of the baby boomers, the growing number of uninsured and underinsured patients, and the lack of access to primary care physicians.

The report found that 114 million people, including 30 million children, visited emergency rooms in 2003, compared with 90 million visits a decade ago. In that same period, the number of U.S. hospitals decreased by 703, the number of emergency rooms decreased by 425, and the total number of hospital beds dropped by 198,000, mainly because of the trend toward cheaper outpatient care, according to the report.

In 2008, a Congressional panel looked into the ability of the nation's emergency rooms to handle a terrorist attack on the scale of the 2004 Madrid bombings which killed 177 people and injured more than 2,000. The results were unsettling, including in Tim Pawlenty's home state of Minnesota:

None of the 34 U.S. hospitals surveyed earlier this year had the emergency space needed to handle a similar number of casualties. The results showed Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis had five treatment spaces open in the emergency room. There were three beds available in the intensive care unit.

Defending his draconian plan to ration Medicare through complete privatization of the system serving 46 million American seniors, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan recently argued:

"Rationing happens today! The question is who will do it? The government? Or you, your doctor and your family?"

Ryan, of course, omitted the real gatekeeper, the private insurance companies. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney wants to deny to Americans nationwide what he helped Massachusetts provides its residents. But if Romney wants to bar the gate to coverage for millions of people, Governor Tim Pawlenty wants to close the doors to the emergency room altogether.

—Perrspective 9:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) |

But in one area, the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Karl Rove will do what George W. Bush never did: admit a mistake. Sadly, the error Rove confesses is the uniquely Republican sin of not lying more.

As the AP described it, Rove's tall tale can be summarized as "if lying about WMD is wrong, I don't want to be right":

The former White House political adviser blames himself for not pushing back against claims that President George W. Bush had taken the country to war under false pretenses, calling it one of the worst mistakes he made during the Bush presidency. The president, he adds, did not knowingly mislead the American public about the existence of such weapons.

Of course, it's hard to imagine how the Bush administration could have pushed back any harder against charges that the President misled the nation into war. When Ambassador Joseph Wilson revealed the fraud that was Bush's 16-word claim about Iraq seeking uranium in Niger, the retribution included the outing of his wife Valerie Plame, covert CIA operative. The White House initially opposed the creation of the independent Silberman-Robb commission, later agreeing only on the conditions that its report be released after the 2004 elections and exclude any investigation of the uses of pre-war intelligence. Thanks to the obstructionism of Bush ally Pat Roberts, the Senate Intelligence Committee's Phase I report on Iraq war intel played the same game. As Democratic Senator Rockefeller lamented upon its release of its findings, "virtually everything that has to do with the administration has been relegated to Phase Two."

If Bush's Brain and his presidential hand puppet stumbled in their manufactured smoke screen about the absence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, it was by joking about it.

President Bush's response to collapse of his primary rational for the war against Saddam was to laugh it off. David Corn recalled Bush's performance at the 2004 Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner, in which the Comic-in-Chief regaled the audience with his White House hijinx:

Bush notes he spends "a lot of time on the phone listening to our European allies." Then we see a photo of him on the phone with a finger in his ear. But at one point, Bush showed a photo of himself looking for something out a window in the Oval Office, and he said, "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere." The audience laughed. I grimaced. But that wasn't the end of it. After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. "Nope," he said. "No weapons over there." More laughter. Then another picture of Bush searching in his office: "Maybe under here." Laughter again.

Asked during an April 2004 press conference if could name a single mistake he made as President, George W. Bush was surprised that his near-papal aura of infallibility had been challenged:

"I'm sure something will pop into my head here...maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one."

Only later would President Bush come up with the stock response he would use to evade accountability for his calamitous tenure. As he told Scott Pelley of CBS in January 2007:

"You know, we've been through this before. Abu Ghraib was a mistake. Using bad language like, you know, "bring them on" was a mistake. I think history is gonna look back and see a lot of ways we could have done things better. No question about it."

But it was former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who first pioneered the "we should have lied more" defense Karl Rove will publish next week. Rejecting criticism over the handling of U.S. attorneys purge, Gonzales in December 2009 announced that the problem wasn't that the Bush Justice Department wasn't too political, but that it wasn't political enough:

"We should have abandoned the idea of removing the U. S. attorneys once the Democrats took the Senate. Because at that point we could really not count on Republicans to cut off investigations or help us at all with investigations. We didn't see that at the Department of Justice. Nor did the White House see that. Karl didn't see it. If we could do something over again, that would be it."

Karl Rove couldn't agree more. (Maybe that's why he didn't title the book, "Truth or Consequences.") Even after President Bush left office, his water-carriers continued to perpetuate the myth that Iraq was linked to 9/11 and Al Qaeda. As for the controversy over WMD in Iraq, as Rove now seems to be saying, "that was my bad."

UPDATE: The New York Times has more on the Rove book in Peter Baker's piece titled simply, "Rove on Iraq: Without W.M.D. Threat, Bush Wouldn't Have Gone to War." As Baker writes:

"Would the Iraq War have occurred without W.M.D.? I doubt it," he writes. "Congress was very unlikely to have supported the use-of-force resolution without the W.M.D. threat. The Bush administration itself would probably have sought other ways to constrain Saddam, bring about regime change, and deal with Iraq's horrendous human rights violations."

He adds: "So, then, did Bush lie us into war? Absolutely not." But Mr. Rove said the White House had only a "weak response" to the harmful allegation, which became "a poison-tipped dagger aimed at the heart of the Bush presidency."

—Perrspective 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) |