Like a trapped rat, events this week showed the conservative movement remains rabid - and dangerous. The latest UK terror attacks in London and Glascow guarantee a new wave of Bush administration fear-mongering. Meanwhile in Washington, Vice President Dick Cheney briefly seceded from the executive to form a fourth branch of government even as the Bush White House set up a constitutional clash over Congressional subpoenas in the illegal NSA domestic surveillance and U.S. attorneys scandals. Over in the judiciary, the now-reliably conservative Roberts Court delivered Supreme wins for the right-wing on affirmative action, free speech, campaign finance reform, and church-state separation.

For the complete history of the Conservative Threat Advisory System, visit the archives here. And don't forget to get your own Conservative Threat Level t-shirt, the gift that keeps on giving.

In May 2006, Perrspectives detailed the one of the few efforts by the Bush Department of Justice to fight election bias. In a tragi-comic inversion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the DOJ argued that the African-American Democratic Executive Committee chairman in Noxubee County Ike Brown led an effort to suppress the vote of white residents. As it turns out, on Friday a federal judge agreed that white voters were subjected to discrimination based upon their race.

Given the U.S. attorneys scandal and the Bush adminstration's consistent effort to suppress minority voting, Americans could be forgiven for their skepticism regarding the Mississippi case. The Bush DOJ, after all, has not brought a suit on behalf of disenfranchised black voters since 2001. Far from backing African-American claims of voter suppression and intimidation, Alberto Gonzales has spurned enforcement of the Voting Rights Act in Mississippi, Texas, and Georgia.

Spurned enforcement, that is, except where the alleged victims were white and almost assuredly Republican voters. U.S. District Judge Tom S. Lee ruled that there was "ample direct and circumstantial evidence of an intent to discriminate against white voters which has manifested itself through practices designed to deny and/or dilute the voting rights of white voters in Noxubee County." That may well be true, but it's no wonder Wan J. Kim, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's civil rights division, lauded the decision.

As I wrote in March, voter suppression is at the heart of Alberto Gonzales' prosecutors purge:

[The dismissals of U.S. attorneys] reveal more than a White House determined to enforce loyalty to President Bush and entrench partisan Republican hatchet men throughout the DOJ's ranks. Simply put, the Bush White House planned to systematically drive down the turnout of Democrats and independents at the ballot box through an unaccountable campaign against "voter fraud." And as I wrote last November, suppressing potential Democratic voter turnout (along with mobilizing its own right-wing base) is one of the two essential prongs of the Republicans' electoral strategy of "Divide, Suppress and Conquer."

For more background on the Republican war on voting rights, see:

• "The Link: GOP Purging Prosecutors - and Voters."


• "Divide, Suppress and Conquer: The GOP's 25% Strategy."


• "The Amazing Race Card."


• "Republican Plantation Politics."

Michael Moore's controversial film SiCKO opens nationwide this weekend. Hailed by critics and widely praised across much of the political spectrum, Moore's look at the failing American health care system is already generating the predictable smear campaign from the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical lobby and their allies on the right.

But before the inevitable discussions about the accuracy of the film's portrayal of the U.S. health care system and the plight of insured middle class American come to dominate the airwaves, you can make up your own mind. Perrspectives has reached into its archives and combed through other recent research to produce a quick look at the U.S. health care morass by the numbers. The summary below includes comparisons of the American health care system relative to other countries and between the states, data on the uninsured, rising health care costs, the woes of Medicare and Medicaid and more:

• Comparing U.S. Health Care Performance Internationally
• Comparing Health Care Performance by State
• The Uninsured
• Rising Health Care Costs
• The Malpractice Myth
• Medicare Drug Coverage and Medicaid
• Limitations of the Consumer-Driven Health Care Model
• State Universal Health Care Mandates

Comparing U.S. Health Care Performance Internationally

In SiCKO, Michael Moore famously points out the United States ranks 37th among 191 nations in health care, just behind Slovenia and two slots ahead of Cuba. (Sadly for conservatives, France was rated #1 in the 2000 World Health Organization study.).

No doubt, recent global comparisons tell the tale of the relative failure of the United States to ensure the health of its people.

In May 2006 ("The Health of Nations"), Perrspectives looked at two studies showing that Americans are much less healthy than their Canadian and British counterparts. The U.K. and Canadian national health systems, emphasizing preventive care, appear to provide much better outcomes at dramatically lower cost than the ad hoc market-driven approach in the U.S.:

A Harvard Medical School study in the upcoming issue of American Journal of Public Health reveals that Americans experience suffer from a range of ailments and diseases at substantially higher levels than our neighbors to the north. Phone surveys of 3,500 Canadians and 5,200 Americans showed Americans 12% more likely to suffer from arthritis, 32% more likely to be plagued by high blood pressure and a whopping 42% more likely to have diabetes. Despite spending nearly double on health care per capita and smoking less than Canadians, the Harvard study revealed that Americans experience "higher rates of nearly every serious chronic disease examined in the survey."

The study also dispels many of the negative myths perpetuated by American conservatives regarding a lumbering, unresponsive Canadian health care bureaucracy. Harvard's Karen Lasser noted that "most of what we hear about the Canadian health care system is negative; in particular, the long waiting times for medical procedures." The data simply does not bear that out; while Canadians much more frequently reported long waiting times as a barrier to care (3.5% to 0.7% for Americans), treatment delays were not a major factor for either nation.

The Canadian results follow closely on the heels of major study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) similarly showing Americans' dismal health compared to their British friends across the Atlantic.

Americans reported twice the rate of diabetes compared to the English: 12.5 percent versus 6 percent. For high blood pressure, it was 42 percent for Americans versus 34 percent for the English; cancer showed up in 9.5 percent of Americans compared to 5.5 percent of English.

Other reports similarly reflect the abysmal performance of the U.S. health care system compared to other leading industrialized nations. Last week, a 2003 Commonwealth Fund report showed that the U.S ranked last across virtually every category of health care cost, access, efficiency, quality and lifestyles compared to Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany and New Zealand:

A 2006 Commonwealth Fund study ("U.S. Health System performance: A National Scorecard") of 19 industrialized nations ranked the U.S. 19th in infant mortality, 15th in preventable mortality and 14th in the use of electronic medical records, all despite spending far and away the greatest percentage of GDP on health care. Relative to other comparable countries surveyed, the U.S. has the greatest incidence of medical and prescription errors, highest emergency room waiting times and ranks near the bottom in duplicate medical tests. The U.S. spends 7.3% of its health dollars on administration and insurance, compared to just 1.9% in France, 2.6% in Canada, and 3.3% in the UK.

Comparing Health Care Performance by State

Two weeks ago, Perrspectives looked in depth ("Health Care the Latest Red State Failure") at another Commonwealth Fund report which revealed that Americans' health care varies dramatically from state to state. It should come as no surprise that in general Southern states ranked at the bottom in almost every category.

The Commonwealth Fund report, "Aiming Higher: Results from a State Scorecard on Health System Performance," examined states' performance across 32 indicators of health care access, quality, outcomes and hospital use. Topping the list were Hawaii, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Bringing up the rear were the Bush bastions of Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, Arkansas, Texas, with Mississippi and Oklahoma. The 10 worst performing states were all solidly Republican in 2004.

The extremes in health care performance are startling. For example, 30% of adults and 20% of children in Texas lacked health insurance, compared to 11% in Minnesota and 5% in Vermont, respectively. Premature death rates from preventable conditions were almost double (141.7 per 100,000 people) in Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi compared to the top performing states (74.1 per 100,000). Adults over 50 receiving preventative care topped 50% in Minnesota compared to only 33% in Idaho. Childhood immunizations reached 94% in Massachusetts, compared to just 75% in the bottom five states.

As the report details, federal and state policies, such as insurance requirements and Medicaid incentives, clearly impact health care outcomes. Importantly, equalizing best practices and funding levels across all 50 states would save as much as $38 billion - and up to 90,000 lives - per year.

The Uninsured

Moore's film focuses not on the 44 million uninsured Americans, but on those millions more with insurance who encounter denial of coverage every year. It's no wonder that medical-related expenses are far and away the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States.

Still, the sheer number of uninsured Americans is staggering. The Centers for Disease Control reported just last week that almost 44 million Americans (14.8%) are without health insurance. Among working age Americans (18-64), the figure reaches a mind-numbing 19.8%. Worse still, 54.5 million Americans were without coverage for at least part of 2006. Among the largest states, Michigan was the best performer, with only 7.7% of its residents lacking coverage, compared to 23.8% for cellar dweller Texas. The only bright spot concerned medical coverage for children, where expanded public programs such as SCHIP have dropped the ranks of uninsured kids from 13.9% in1997 to 9.3% in 2006.

It is worth noting that the Census Bureau recently changed its method for calculating the number of Americans without insurance and has not yet revised figures before 2005. For some historical context, the Census Bureau reported that 46 million Americans, almost 16% of the population, were without health insurance in 2004. That is a staggering increase from 40 million (14.2%) in 2000 and 32 million (13%) back in 1987, when the Bureau began tracking coverage.

Rising Health Care Costs

Back in December 2005 ("Unhealthy Trends"), Perrspectives looked at the rapid rise in U.S. health care costs. Coupled with the massive shift of insurance programs from employers to employees, working Americans are being buffeted by a double-dose of health care pain that is dramatically impacting their standards of living. As I wrote in "Unhealthy Trends" 18 months ago:

The looming crisis is much larger than just the steep decline in companies providing health care benefits to their employees. (According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, only 60% of companies now provide health coverage for their employees, down from 69% in 2000.) In just the last several weeks, Ford and GM joined the growing list of American companies cutting back on health care benefits for their employees, retirees and their families.

The prospects for the future are just as bleak. According to a survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, employer health care costs are forecast to jump by 10% in 2006. The firms surveyed, however, are only budgeting a 6.4% increase in spending for medical coverage, passing the rest of those costs onto employees in the form of flexible spending plans featuring higher deductibles, higher co-payments and greater constraints on coverage.

The Malpractice Myth

Among the favorite canards of President Bush and the Republican Party is the claim that out-of-control, frivolous malpractice lawsuits are driving up health care costs and driving doctors from practice. As with so much that passes for policy in the Bush administration, the claims bear little relationship to reality.

As I wrote in the 2004 piece "The Trial of John Edwards," numerous studies have consistently shown that increasing damage awards from malpractice explain only a portion of the rapid rise in health care costs. A January 2004 study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found from 1986 to 2002, malpractice insurance premiums jumped 15% per year, while the average damage award rose only 8% ($95,000 to $320,000). The jump in malpractice premiums has been almost double the rate of increase in health care costs per person, and roughly four times the rate of inflation. The CBO report also points out that “although the cost per successful claim has increased, the rate of such claims has remained relatively constant. Each year, about 15 malpractice claims are filed for every 100 physicians, and about 30 percent of those claims result in an insurance payment.” As the CBO concludes, GAO data shows that about half of the increase in doctors’ malpractice premiums is due to the drop in annual investment returns by the top 15 insurers. Recent low profit rates and market consolidation among insurers is creating additional upwards price pressure.

The myth of rapacious trial lawyers and their greedy clients filing baseless malpractice claims was also shattered by May 2006 study from the Harvard School of Public Health. The report, which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, exhaustively examined 1452 medical malpractice cases "to determine whether a medical injury had occurred and, if so, whether it was due to medical error." In a nutshell, the study found that by and large the American system of medical personal injury compensation works, with valid claims receiving compensation and frivolous ones not:

Most of the claims that were not associated with errors (370 of 515 [72 percent]) or injuries (31 of 37 [84 percent]) did not result in compensation; most that involved injuries due to error did (653 of 889 [73 percent]). Payment of claims not involving errors occurred less frequently than did the converse form of inaccuracy - nonpayment of claims associated with errors.

If anything, the data show that the United States may have too few malpractice legal actions, rather than too many. In 2003, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies issued a devastating report detailing the scope and gravity of the safety of the U.S. health care system. Two studies showed that "at least 44,000 people, and perhaps as many as 98,000 people, die in hospitals each year as a result of medical errors that could have been prevented."

In 2005, Tom Baker, director of the Insurance Law Center at the University of Connecticut School of Law, produced a powerful rebuttal to the Republican scare campaign in The Medical Malpractice Myth. His analysis supports the CBO's conclusion that insurance underwriting cycles, and not more malpractice lawsuits or larger damage awards, are largely responsible for the increase in physicians' insurance premiums. Similarly, malpractice lawsuit account for only a small fraction of the increase in health care costs. Baker provides extensive data to show that only a small fraction of medical errors and injuries result in malpractice litigation. And contrary to another aspect of malpractice mythology, juries generally favor doctors in malpractice outcomes, not the injured plaintiffs. Baker's analysis also suggests that President Bush's assertion that "lawsuits don't heal patients" notwithstanding, they no doubt prevented countless other deaths and injuries. And only in certain geographic areas and medical specialties is there some truth to President Bush's famously garbled claim that malpractice suits are driving physicians out of the business:

"Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."

Medicare and Medicaid

Perrspectives has also looked into the troubled Medicare and Medicaid programs. In "Medicare's Prescription for Failure," I detailed the history of a Medicare prescription drug program designed not to help American seniors, but to preserve both the private insurance market and the Republican majority in Congress. The result is a program who projected cost has almost doubled since it was passed n December 2003 while still failing to offer drugs at prices anywhere near the levels found in Canada, Veterans Affairs programs or even at near-wholesale resellers like Costco or Drugstore.com:

These ominous signs for the new Medicare prescription benefit should come as no surprise to the Bush administration. After all, President Bush initially opposed the program. In January 2003, CBS News reported that "a recent description of the proposal in government documents envisions 'no prescription drug coverage' for people in traditional fee-for-service Medicare." Instead, the Bush White House in 2003 wanted Medicare beneficiaries seeking prescription drug coverage to join some type of government-subsidized private health insurance program.

Ultimately, though, President Bush caved to overwhelming public pressure - and the demands of reelection in 2004 - for a prescription benefit as part of the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program. His support, however, came at a steep price.

For starters, the White House insisted that the final December 2003 Medicare Drug bill prohibit the government from negotiating prices directly with drug companies, a key demand of the pharmaceutical lobby. The same price leverage enjoyed by the Veterans Affairs Department and its program beneficiaries was surrendered by Medicare, with the predictable results described in the House report this week. In another poison pill added by the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies, the Medicare Prescription Drug Modernization Act beginning in 2010 provides subsidies to private insurers to compete with traditional Medicare.

Perhaps even worse, 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. (As it was, then House Majority Leader Tom Delay twisted arms and extended debate on the bill by hours to coerce recalcitrant Republicans, a move for which he was later admonished by a House Ethics panel.) 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.

Meanwhile, the Republican faith-based belief in the health care marketplace and consumer-driven health care threatens Medicaid, the nation's insurance program for the poor. As I wrote in "Medicaid's Fort Sumter," South Carolina is at the forefront of the effort to shed expenses - and beneficiaries - from Medicaid:

Now, the Palmetto State is again leading the way, this time by undermining Medicaid, the federal health care program for low income Americans. By seeking to move from a system of "guaranteed benefits" to one of "guaranteed contributions", South Carolina's step is the opening salvo in the war over social insurance.

As AP reported today, South Carolina seeking to dramatically overhaul its Medicaid program, one which currently serves 850,000 residents. Dealing with a program that already consumes 19% of the state budget (and estimated to rise to 29% in a decade), South Carolina has proposed moving to a system of health care accounts instead. These accounts would allow recipients to purchase private insurance or pay for care directly. State payments to the accounts would be based on the recipient's age, gender and physical condition.

Limitations of the Consumer-Driven Health Care Model

All of which serves to highlight the growing dangers to Americans' health and safety posed by the growing conservative religion of "consumer driven health care" (CDHC).

From "Unhealthy Trends:"

This trend is greeted with enthusiasm by the advocates of consumer-driven health care (CDHC) in the Bush White House and its conservative amen corner like the Wall Street Journal. They encourage new market-based approaches like tax-deductible health care accounts, which allow individuals and families to save towards health expenditures, rolling over unused funds from year-to-year. Cost-conscious health care consumers, they contend, will drive down costs by optimizing their "purchasing decisions" and avoiding unnecessary treatment.

CDHC detractors, however, argue that medical savings accounts and similar plans supported by employers will neither curb costs nor provide for healthier Americans. Arnold Relman of the Harvard Medical School in a stinging critique of the CDHC model rejects the model of patient and provider meeting as equals in the marketplace for health care, arguing:

"...Our health policies have failed to meet national needs because they have been heavily influenced by the delusion that medical care is essentially a business. This delusion stubbornly persists, and current proposals for a more "consumer-driven" health system are likely to make our predicament even worse."

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.

Perrspectives has more on the limitations of the consumer-driven health care model in "When Markets Attack." And Harvard's Relman offers a detailed critique and proposals for reform in his new book, A Second Opinion: Rescuing America's Health Care.

State Universal Health Care Mandates

With election 2008 approaching, voters and presidential candidates alike are paying more attention to universal coverage initiatives mandating insurance in Massachusetts, California and Oregon.

In "Health Care Monopolies and the Massachusetts Model," Perrspectives looked at the impact of increased consolidation and the entrenchment of health insurance monopolies on state mandated personal health insurance coverage:

On its face, the Massachusetts law seems like an innovative approach to providing health care coverage for all. Akin to auto insurance, all residents must acquire coverage, either through their employer, in the private market, or at lower-income levels, through state-subsidized programs. Residents must further show proof of coverage with their state income tax returns, or face fines. To pay for it, the state will redirect the $1 billion it spends annually on emergency treatment for the uninsured towards subsidized programs from a range of insurers.

Which brings us to the AMA report and the cloud it casts over the much-hyped Massachusetts model. In most states, the AMA concludes, the idea of choice among competing insurance providers is a myth. The study showed that in each of 43 states, a small group of insurers exerts such market dominance as to merit the Justice Department "highly concentrated" market methodology for assessing potential anti-trust action. In 166 of 294 metropolitan areas surveyed, a single insurer controls over half the preferred provider network and HMO underwriting. In North Dakota, for example, Blue Shield owns 90% of the market. It's no wonder that Jim Rohack, an AMA trustee, concluded "This problem is widespread across the country, and it needs to be looked at."

That's especially the case if other states are serious about adopting the Massachusetts model. Without a choice of providers, mandatory insurance plans have no mechanism to help states rein in costs for their taxpayers-turned-health care subscribers. The insurers growing market power means they can dictate both coverage terms and prices. 400 mergers in the past decade have helped fuel out-of-control health care costs, which rose at a double-digit clip from 2001 to 2004, three to four times the overall rate of inflation. The implications for middle class resident on their own in the health care marketplace are worrisome, to put it mildly.

For more coverage of the American health care system, visit the Perrspectives health care archives.

The AP this morning served up a nice summary of what has been a very bad week for Rudy Giuliani. But the former New York mayor and 2008 GOP White House hopeful isn't the only conservative miscreant who's fallen on hard times of late. Mitt Romney, Ted Stevens, James Holsinger and Lurita Doan are just some of the wrong-doers of the right to feel the wrath of retribution.

No doubt, the mayor of 9/11 suffered several body blows last week. First, Rudy's South Carolina campaign chairman Thomas Ravenel was busted for intent to distribute cocaine. His Palmetto State team acted quickly, replacing Ravenel with his racist father Arthur, who famously called the NAACP the "National Association for Retarded People." And the day after Salon profiled Giuliani business partner and accused pedophile Monsignor Alan Placa, former EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman drew Rudy into the quagmire over the Ground Zero environmental disaster. And then there was the story about the self-proclaimed 9/11 hero blowing off the Iraq Study Group. In comparison, getting caught in drag would be a welcome relief for Giuliani.

Mitt Romney, a man pretending to be a conservative for the duration his White House primary bid, joined Giuliani in the school of had knocks. First, long-time Romney aide Jay Garrity left the campaign after revelations he repeatedly pretended to be a Secret Service agent and state trooper. Then, Romney pledge to "double" Gitmo was put at risk by rumors the Bush White House would shutter the facility. And just days later, the Boston Globe detailed how Mitt got a Vietnam deferment in order to serve his Mormon mission in France. While Romney took his lumps this week, his hair remains perfect.

Meanwhile in Washington, GSA administrator Lurita Doan was formally revealed as GOP political appendage in a report this week. A U.S. Office of Special Counsel report concluded that Doan violated the Hatch Act in hosting meetings government employees and Team Rove to "help our candidates." The report was sent to the White House with the obvious recommendation that Doan be dismissed. President Bush, no doubt, will get on that just after he sacks Alberto Gonzales

In Alaska Ted Stevens, the Senator who famously described the Internet as a "bunch of tubes," may see his career down the drain. While his state senator son is caught up in the Veco bribery case, Stevens has been linked to his son's bogus consulting fees from fishery firms and real estate companies. It's no wonder the good people of Alaska decided not to erect a 9 foot state of their senior Senator.

And back in DC, Dr. James Holsinger, President Bush's nominee as surgeon general, is facing an uphill battle in his quest to make homophobia national policy. Apparently, Holsinger founded a church which "ministers to people who no longer wish to be gay or lesbian". And in 1991, Holsinger authored a paper citing the dangers of "anal eroticism." Taking a page from Alaska Senator Ted Stevens book on the Internet, he also used plumbing analogies of pipes and tubes to describe human sexuality. Holsinger, it would seem, is the worst high-profile Republican physician since Schiavo video-diagnostician Bill Frist.

For more right-wing evil-doers smote by the Avenging Angel, visit here.

As Perrspectives has detailed before, Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney seems pathologically incapable of keeping his stories straight. Whether the issue is abortion, stem cell research, rights for gay Americans or even his state of residence, Romney's rhetorical contortions have become legendary. As the Boston Globe suggested Sunday, Romney's flip-flopping even extends to his Vietnam draft deferment.

As it turns out, Romney was one of a privileged number of Mormon missionaries who received Vietnam deferments in the 1960's. The controversial practice enabled the Mormon Church to designate a limited number of males in each of its wards for deferments. Unlike his brethren in Utah, Mitt the governor's son was comfortably ensconced in Michigan and had little competition for a deferment. As a result, "his 4-D exemption as a missionary [was] all but automatic." From July 1966 to February 1969, Romney performed his mission outside of Paris, not in the rice paddies outside of Hue.

Mitt's good fortune continued in 1970. Romney also enjoyed almost three years of deferments as a student before and after his French mission. And when the time came to go through the selective service lottery, Mitt drew a high number.

Sadly, Mitt's conflicting recollections about his Vietnam non-service show him once again as the artful dodger (pun intended). Back in May, the blog Eyeon08 recounted Romney's dueling self-portraits as alternately tormented and care-free when it came to his fortuitous escape from Vietnam:

The closest he has ever come to a personal religious crisis, he recalls, was when he was in college and considering whether to go off on a mission, as his grandfather, father and brother had done. Mitt was deeply in love with Ann, his high school sweetheart and future wife, and couldn't bear to spend more than two years away from her. He says he also felt guilty about the draft deferment he would get for it, when other young men his age were heading for Vietnam. (Time, May 2007)

Romney, however, acknowledged he did not have any desire to serve in the military during his college and missionary days, especially after he married and became a father. "I was not planning on signing up for the military," he said. "It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam, but nor did I take any actions to remove myself from the pool of young men who were eligible for the draft. If drafted, I would have been happy to serve, and if I didn't get drafted I was happy to be with my wife and new child." (Boston Herald, 1994)

This latest chapter in the book of Romney flip-flops is just one more example of what Bill Maher writer Chris Kelly deemed Mitt's sense of romantic irony:

"Romantic irony -- the most wistful irony of all -- occurs when a character draws attention to the fact that he's just a character, or a narrator interrupts a story to remind the audience that it's just a story. And Mitt Romney -- alone among presidential hopefuls -- understands that he's a character in a work of art and that his character's job is to say anything, to anyone, at any time, to get elected."

Woody Allen's Zelig, however, might be a better analogy for Mitt Romney. His Vietnam deferment saga once again shows Romney as a human chameleon whose positions change as the latitude, longitude, time zone - and audience - require.

As the Washington Post reported this week, Internet giant Google has deployed a substantial lobbying team in the nation's capital. The company, whose corporate mantra is "Don't Be Evil," hopes to avoid Microsoft's anti-trust woes of the 1990's by getting its hands dirty in the gritty world of Washington politics. Of course, when it comes to issues of privacy and censorship, Google's hands weren't exactly spotless.

Google's lobbying efforts are already having an impact. Its bipartisan team of heavy hitters from the Hill and the White House helped fuel a Justice Department anti-trust action against Microsoft over the integration of desktop search functionality in its Windows Vista operating system. Last week, Microsoft relented in a compromise with federal and state officials monitoring the company's five-year old anti-trust consent decree.

Perhaps more strategic, Google is lobbying the U.S. government to view censorship of Internet searches and content as a restriction on international trade. Regimes throughout Asia and the Middle East are increasingly limiting web access and content, a growing problem not limited to China, where Google has over 20% market share. As Andrew McLaughlin, Google's director of public policy and government affairs put it, "It's fair to say that censorship is the No. 1 barrier to trade that we face."

And Google's high political profile isn't limited to cajoling the U.S. trade representative. As Perrspectives detailed back in May, Google is hosting 2008 presidential contenders in a series of forums at its Mountain View, California campus. With its visibility, friendly brand, Silicon Valley clout and large potential donor base, Google has become a "must-stop for candidates." Given the role that Google and its web properties like YouTube play in today's campaigns, it's no wonder that John McCain, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have already made the pilgrimage to Google HQ.

But despite its quirky, friendly brand and fervently loyal user base, Google is far from the chaste, K Street ingenue. Google, after all, agreed to onerous censorship requirements from the Communist government in Beijing in order to establish its presence in China. In 2006, a disingenuous CEO Eric Schmidt defended his company's accommodation with Chinese censorship, "I think it's arrogant for us to walk into a country where we are just beginning operations and tell that country how to run itself." That, Google's new lobbying effort suggests, is a job for the U.S. government.

Google has also wrestled with de facto censorship of users and advertisers alike. For example, in April YouTube removed an embarrassing video of John McCain performing his Beach Boys tribute "Bomb Iran." In addition, Google has repeatedly - and arbitrarily - banned advertisers whose web site content it deemed to "advocate against an individual, group or organization." (Perrspectives' own 2004 experience with Google's de facto censorship is detailed in "Google's Gag Order.") Even with its newer, more flexible editorial standard only limiting advertisers whose content advocates "against a protected group," Google's advertising programs remain ripe for abuse.

Free speech advocates aren't the only ones with Google gripes. Privacy advocates are concerned, too. A June 2007 report by U.K. based Privacy International ranked Google at the bottom of 20 Internet service companies in terms of user privacy protections. The report slammed Google, with its dominant market share and extensive, persistent usage tracking database, as displaying "entrenched hostility to privacy." (It should be noted that the Privacy International study's conclusions are hotly contested within the tech community and blogosphere.)

These flirtations with evil-doing, of course, do not make Google fundamentally evil. Google services, after all, indispensable, everyday companions for virtually any web user. The company has also been an economic development engine, bringing hosting facilities and data centers to cities and town far from Google's Bay Area campus. Google has also been supportive with university gifts, individual grants and scholarships, especially for open source development.

But fun and friendly Google is no innocent, either. And as its lobbying machine ramps up its work in DC, this is no case of "Mr. Schmidt Goes to Washington."

Watching President Bush getting pilloried by grassroots conservatives and his Republican allies alike usually tops any progressive's list of life's simple pleasures. But as Trent Lott and Mark Kirk showed this week, seeing the Congressional GOP get its hate on when it comes to Bush's immigration initiatives has become a truly disturbing spectacle.

Kirk, a Republican Congressman from Illinois, offered a novel solution to illegal immigration: distribute free condoms to Mexicans. Though the fertility rate in Mexico has plummeted since 1980 (now 2.5 children, compared to 2.1 in the U.S.), Kirk argued on the House floor that illegal Mexican immigration should be nipped in the bud (so to speak):

"A slower rate of growth of Mexico's population would improve the economy of Mexico. It would also reduce the environmental pressure on Mexico's ecosystem. But a slower rate of growth would also reduce the long-term illegal immigration pressure on America's borders."

While Kirk's brand of eugenics-lite for our neighbors to the south no doubt appealed to many in his Republican Party, social conservatives were naturally conflicted. Kirk's "contraceptives contra Mexico" proposal came during a House debate on a measure on whether to overturn the Bush administration's ban on distribution of contraceptives to international family planning agencies that also provide abortion services. Apparently, every life is sacred, unless it will live south of the Rio Grande.

Meanwhile, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott served up a new analogy, if not a practical solution, for the issue of illegal immigration from Mexico. Containing the tide of Mexican immigrants, Lott suggests, is like herding goats. In a nutshell, nothing an electrified fence couldn't quickly manage. As the Sun Herald reported on Thursday:

"If the answer is 'build a fence' I've got two goats on my place in Mississippi. There ain't no fence big enough, high enough, strong enough, that you can keep those goats in that fence."

"Now people are at least as smart as goats," Lott continued. "Maybe not as agile. Build a fence. We should have a virtual fence. Now one of the ways I keep those goats in the fence is I electrified them. Once they got popped a couple of times they quit trying to jump it."

"I'm not proposing an electrified goat fence," Lott added quickly, "I'm just trying, there's an analogy there."

Lott, of course, is no stranger to controversy. In 2002, he famously endorsed the 19848 presidential bid of legendary segregationist Strom Thurmond. And last year, Lott showed his sensitivity in the debate over the war in Iraq, declaring of Sunnis and Shiites, "They all look the same to me." Still, Lott was unrepentant regarding his casual comparison of Mexicans to goats. "I don't worry about offending anybody anymore," Lott said, "because I've already offended everybody."

Not in the Republican Party. Not when it comes to immigration.

Last week, Perrspectives detailed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lying under oath regarding the Bush administration's internal debate over the legality of its NSA domestic surveillance program. Now, former Attorney General John Ashcroft in closed door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee confirmed that Gonzales once again lied to Congress.

House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) summarized Ashcroft's description today of the discord within the Bush administration:

"It is very apparent to us that there was robust and enormous debate within the administration about the legal basis for the president's surveillance program."

That assessment backs the recollection of Ashcroft's former Deputy Attorney General James Comey.

During his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey detailed then White House Counsel Gonzales' visit to the bedside of the hospitalized AG, John Ashcroft. In March 2004, Comey served as the acting attorney general during Ashcroft's recovery from emergency gall bladder surgery. In that capacity, Comey had refused to recertify President Bush's illegal NS domestic surveillance program. On March 10, Gonzales and Bush chief-of-staff Andy Card went behind Comey's back to pressure an "extremely ill and disoriented" Ashcroft. Ultimately, President Bush intervened to make changes to the NSA eavesdropping program to avoid the resignation of Comey and others at the Justice Department. But clearly, Alberto Gonzales showed he was quite comfortable in bringing bedside pressure to bear on Ashcroft, a man described as "very, very ill; in critical condition, in fact."

On June 5th, 2007, Attorney General Gonzales confirmed Comey's account of the NSA program question during that troubled March 2004 hospital confrontation:

"Mr. Comey's testimony related to a highly classified program which the president confirmed to the American people sometime ago."

But on February 6th, 2006, Gonzales assured that Senate Judiciary Committee that this same program enjoyed unanimous support within the Department of Justice:

"There has not been any serious disagreement about the program that the president has confirmed."

Once again, the miracle of Alberto Gonzales is confirmed. Though he has lied to Congress three times under oath, he remains the top law enforcement official in the land. And even more miraculous, he makes John Ashcroft seem like an honest man in comparison.

In Washington this week, the Senate will take up the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Passed by the House 241-185 in March, EFCA would make it much easier for unions to organize. Predictably, red state Republican Senators backed by an alliance of business groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will likely prevent the measure from coming to a vote. Which is too bad. After all, from wages and benefits to job opportunities and collective bargaining rights, it is red state workers who need EFCA most.

First a little background. The decline of the American manufacturing sector combined with increased intimidation from employers have shriveled the unionized workforce to 9% (down from its 1950's high of 30%). The Employee Free Choice Act, as the Center for American Progress details, was designed to help American workers organize to improve stagnant wages and protect diminishing health and pension benefits in an ever more hostile bargaining environment:

"Under current law, an employer can insist on a secret-ballot election," even after a majority of employees express their desire to organize. The proposed law "would give employees at a workplace the right to unionize as soon as a majority signed cards saying they wanted to do so"...Employees "often feel intimidated by their employers during unionization drives and so are fearful of losing their jobs." Employers illegally fire employees for union activity in "more than one-quarter of all organizing efforts." Approximately half of employers illegally threaten to close or relocate the business if workers elect to form a union.

And as Perrspectives has previously detailed, working conditions and wages are worst in precisely those red states that elected George W. Bush.

For example, a December 2005 report by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts showed that Americans' working conditions in general closely follow the 2004 electoral map. The report's Work Environment Index (WEI) rated the quality of Americans' working lives by a weighting of three factors: job opportunities, job quality, and job fairness. The top five states were Delaware, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Vermont and Iowa, the bottom five were South Carolina, Utah, Arkansas Texas and Louisiana.

There are no surprises among the worst performing states in the Work Environment Index. Virtually all below the Mason-Dixon line, the WEI laggards feature dismal pay and an outwardly hostile environment towards union organizing, workers' rights and collective bargaining. Red America is the home of the so-called Right-to-Work (RTW) states. These "right to work" states prohibit workers from being required to join a trade union as a condition of employment. A leader in the Right-to-Work movement, Bush's home state of Texas was ranked 50th, with the percentage of workers with health and pension benefits running a full 10% below the top WEI performers:

But working conditions aren't the only area where denizens of the Republican heartland suffer relative to their blue state brethren. As Perrspectives detailed in January, minimum wage levels also vary significantly from state to state. Unsurprisingly, many of the "bluest" states lead the way in exceeding both the previous ($5.15 an hour) and recently passed ($7.25) federal requirements, with Washington, Oregon, California, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut mandating wages as high as $7.93. Only one of the 21 states (New Hampshire) mired at $5.15 an hour did not vote for George W. Bush in 2004.

But in the debate over the Employee Free Choice Act, the woes of red state workers will have no impact on their elected representatives. President Bush, of course has vowed to veto the bill. The Senate Republican Conference touts an op-ed piece by Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, which blasts EFCA while lauding his state's dismal economic performance. Shelby comically proclaims "Alabama workers have partnered with business and together they have created a vibrant economy."

And to think his fellow Republican Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called the bill "Orwellian."

The Perrspectives Bush-GOP Scandal Document Library has been expanded to include the latest news, key reports, document releases and other essential materials surrounding Bush administration and GOP wrong-doing. From the U.S. attorneys purge, Plamegate, and illegal NSA domestic surveillance to Iraq intelligence manipulation, torture scandals and the ongoing Jack Abramoff fall-out, it's all there:

• U.S. Attorneys Scandal Document Center
• Iraq Intelligence and WMD Document Center
• Plamegate CIA Leak Resources
• NSA Domestic Surveillance Scandal Center
• Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff Scandal Resources

For more, visit the Perrspectives Document Library here.

A new study released this week revealed that Americans' health care varies dramatically from state to state. It should come as no surprise that in general Southern states ranked at the bottom in almost every category. After all, whether the issue is health, education, working conditions, or virtually any indicator of social pathology, things are worst in precisely those states that voted for George W. Bush.

The Commonwealth Fund report, "Aiming Higher: Results from a State Scorecard on Health System Performance," examined states' performance across 32 indicators of health care access, quality, outcomes and hospital use. Topping the list were Hawaii, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Bringing up the rear were the Bush bastions of Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, Arkansas, Texas, with Mississippi and Oklahoma. The 10 worst performing states were all solidly Republican in 2004.

The extremes in health care performance are startling. For example, 30% of adults and 20% of children in Texas lacked health insurance, compared to 11% in Minnesota and 5% in Vermont, respectively. Premature death rates from preventable conditions were almost double (141.7 per 100,000 people) in Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi compared to the top performing states (74.1 per 100,000). Adults over 50 receiving preventative care topped 50% in Minnesota compared to only 33% in Idaho. Childhood immunizations reached 94% in Massachusetts, compared to just 75% in the bottom five states. As the report details, federal and state policies, such as insurance requirements and Medicaid incentives, clearly impact health care outcomes.

But health care isn't the only area where denizens of the Republican heartland suffer relative to their blue state brethren. As Perrspectives detailed in January, minimum wage levels also vary significantly from state to state. Unsurprisingly, many of the "bluest" states lead the way in exceeding both the previous ($5.15 an hour) and recently passed ($7.25) federal requirements, with Washington, Oregon, California, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut mandating wages as high as $7.93. Only one of the 21 states (New Hampshire) mired at $5.15 an hour did not vote for George W. Bush in 2004. (Click here to view a map of the minimum wage by state.)

And the minimum wage is just the beginning. A December 2005 report Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts showed that Americans' working conditions in general closely follow the 2004 electoral map. The report's Work Environment Index (WEI) rated the quality of Americans' working lives by a weighting of three factors: job opportunities, job quality, and job fairness. The top five states were Delaware, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Vermont and Iowa, the bottom five were South Carolina, Utah, Arkansas Texas and Louisiana. Unsurprisingly, all five of the cellar-dwellers are so-called "Right-to-Work" states featuring outright hostility towards union organizing. (Click the following links for maps of WEI by state and right-to-work states.)

When it comes to educational achievement, faithful red state Republicans do a little (but not much) better. Earlier this year, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a study titled "Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on Educational Effectiveness." The report looked at seven different performance categories, including return on education investment, workforce readiness, teacher skills, and academic achievement of low-income and minority students. Again, the top five states (Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Vermont and New Jersey) backed Democrat John Kerry in 2004. Only two of the bottom 15 states similarly supported Kerry.

The same dismal pattern applies to a wide array of measures of social dysfunction and pathology. 8 of the top 10 states with the highest murder rates are squarely in Red America. 7 of the 10 states with the lowest murder rates were in the Kerry column. (Interestingly, six of those states have no death penalty statute.) The 10 states with the highest divorce rates in 1998 all went for Bush in 2004. Red states constituted 9 on the top 10 in terms of out-of-wedlock births. And the Bible Belt has the greatest percentage of births to women under age 20, with the worst 15 states nationwide all among in the GOP ranks. By almost any measure of societal breakdown that so-called Republican "values voters" decry, it is Red State America where moral failure is greatest.

There are, of course, many explanations for the abysmal lifestyles and living conditions in the Republican strongholds. Poverty, age and homogeneity clearly matter. But when it comes to living standards, culture, politics and public policy are at least as important.

If the Republican electoral map closely correlates with social dysfunction, it is frequent church attendance which strongly predicts Republican party preference. Which is probably a good thing. Because if you live in a state that voted for George W. Bush, you're going to need all the help you can get.

UPDATE: In a further irony, Republicans in the Senate will likely block the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) from coming to a vote this week. Once again, it is red state workers who need EFCA most.

That wheezing sound you may have heard this week amid the chaos in Gaza, the carnage in Baghdad and the conflict in Lebanon was the final gasps of the Bush Doctrine in its death throes. Just two years after the President and his neo-conservative allies basked in the glow of their self-proclaimed moment of triumph, the Bush Doctrine of no safe havens for terrorists, American preventive war and democracy promotion is discredited, discarded - and dead.

The ruins of the Bush foreign policy vision lay strewn about the Middle East. In the Palestinian territories, Hamas militants now control Gaza after routing the Fatah forces of President Mahmoud Abbas. As Abbas seeks international support for his new prime minister in the West Bank, Hamas, the winner of the 2006 Palestinian elections, has established a de facto parallel government in Gaza. In Lebanon, Walid Eido became the fifth anti-Syrian politician assassinated in two years, even as the U.S.-backed Siniora government battled both Al Qaeda fighters in Palestianian refugee camps and the incessant pressure of Hassan Hasrallah's ever more powerful Shiite Hezbollah movement. And in Iraq, the new rubble of the Shiite shrine in Samarra and Sunni mosques in Basra symbolizes the unending sectarian violence and civil war which has paralyzed both the Baghdad government and the U.S. military surge. From Kabul to Cairo, U.S. backed governments find their democratic institutions under assault, their forces in retreat and their legitimacy in doubt.

What a difference two years makes. In March 2005, President Bush declared, "The trend is clear: In the Middle East and throughout the world, freedom is on the march." A smug Bush could almost be excused his premature elation. After all, the world had witnessed the first elections in Iraq, with the images of purple-fingered men and women filling television screens. In Ukraine, a poisoned Viktor Yushchenko led the "Orange Revolution" to power after hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest rigged elections. In Lebanon, the Cedar Revolution swept away the Syrian occupation in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Harriri. And in Palestine, the death of Yassir Arafat brought the election of Abbas, and with it, renewed hope for peace with Israel.

President Bush's amen corner among the conservative chattering classes were quick to proclaim the triumph of the Bush Doctrine and its four pillars of American unilateralism, no safe havens, preventive war and democracy expansion. On March 4, 2005, Charles Krauthammer declared, "We are at the dawn of a glorious, delicate, revolutionary moment in the Middle East," adding "It is our principles that brought us to this moment by way of Afghanistan and Iraq." Three days later in a Time piece titled "Three Cheers for the Bush Doctrine," Krauthammer mocked the opponents of the President's Bush Doctrine vision of democratic transformation in the Middle East, labeling them "embarrassingly, scandalously, blessedly wrong." And the next day, the National Review's Rich Lowry proclaimed:

"By toppling Saddam Hussein and insisting on elections in Iraq, while emphasizing the power of freedom, Bush has put the United States in the right position to encourage and take advantage of democratic irruptions in the region."

But it is the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol who was perhaps the Bush Doctrine's most vocal cheerleader and self-satisfied proponent. In the wake of the Iraqi elections, Kristol declared the complete victory of the Bush Doctrine and the arrival of a seminal moment in world history ushering in a new era of democratic change around the globe:

"Just four weeks after the Iraqi election of January 30, 2005, it seems increasingly likely that that date will turn out to have been a genuine turning point. The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, ended an era. September 11, 2001, ended an interregnum. In the new era in which we now live, 1/30/05 could be a key moment--perhaps the key moment so far--in vindicating the Bush Doctrine as the right response to 9/11. And now there is the prospect of further and accelerating progress."

It's no wonder that by July 2005, Krauthammer confidently announced that the Bush Doctrine and the idealism of the neo-conservatives, once so anathema to conservative foreign policy orthodoxy, was now "a governing ideology whose time has come." "What neoconservatives have long been advocating," he said, "is now being articulated and practiced at the highest levels of government."

As it turns out, President Bush was better lucky than good. And now, his luck is running out.

Of course, it's not quite accurate to say that the Bush Doctrine is dead. Actually, it was stillborn. An idea whose time never came, the so-called Bush Doctrine has been disproven by events on the ground. As the downward spiral of chaos in Baghdad, Beirut and the West Bank reveal, the neo-conservative proponents, to use their own parlance, have been mugged by reality. Only those most in denial, like the Heritage Foundation sponsors of "In Defense of the Bush Doctrine," still believe otherwise.

At the end of the day, the Bush Doctrine was a myth. It was merely a rhetorical device, just political opportunism masquerading as grand strategy. Along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda have a safe haven, indeed. In the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and the WMD debacle, most of the American political and military leadership (as well as virtually the entire international community) opposes pre-emptive strikes against potential future enemies such as Iran and North Korea. And the Bush administration's notion of democracy expansion remains highly selective, as the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and elsewhere attest. Even with Iraq, the embrace of democracy promotion was ex post facto: we didn't invade Iraq to promote democracy; we promote democracy because we invaded Iraq.

As for the Bush Doctrine, its short but unhappy life is at an end. Good riddance.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has lied to Congress - again. Raw Story is reporting that despite Congress' passage of the Preserving United States Attorney Independence Act of 2007, Gonzales has once again used the interim hiring authority for U.S. attorneys rescinded by that bill. Sadly, this is precisely what Gonzales promised Congress - under oath - he would never do.

During his January 18th testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, misled the Senate about the critical importance of a hitherto little-known provision of the Patriot Act enabling the Attorney General to appoint new prosecutors without Senate confirmation. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee that:

"I am fully committed, as the administration's fully committed, to ensure that, with respect to every United States attorney position in this country, we will have a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed United States attorney."

As it turns out, not so much. Even as the USA Independence Act has languished on President Bush's desk since June 4th, Gonzales will used the interim authority to entrench of George Cardona, the acting prosecutor for the central district of California. The acting tenure of Cardona, who replaced the abruptly replaced Debra Wong Yang, is due to expire on June 16th.

That Gonzales lied under oath to the Senate on January 18th comes as no surprise. After all, the very purpose of the interim hiring provision clandestinely slipped into the Patriot Act was to enable the White House to elude Senate confirmation for a new wave of partisan Republican prosecutors, each with a mandate to pursue mythical voter fraud cases and ideally corruption among Democratic officials. A September 13, 2006 email from former Gonzales chief-of-staff Kyle Sampson to White House Counsel Harriet Miers makes Gonzales' later falsehood clear:

"I strongly recommend that as a matter of administration, we utilize the new statutory provisions that authorize the AG to make USA appointments. [...] By not going the PAS route, we can give far less deference to home state senators and thereby get 1.) our preferred person appointed and 2.) do it far faster and more efficiently at less political costs to the White House."

Amazingly, this episode is at least the third time Alberto Gonzales provided outright falsehoods to Congress. In addition to his tall tale regarding use of the Patriot Act hiring provision, Gonzales on January 18th offered the Senate Judiciary Committee the Big Lie about the entire U.S. prosecutors purge scandal:

"I would never ever make a change in a United States attorney position for political reasons or that in any way would jeopardize an ongoing investigation."

But as the email exchanges between Gonzales' chief-of-staff Kyle Sampson, White House Counsel Harriet Miers and Karl Rove deputy Scott Jennings show, that's exactly what was going on. A damning Sampson email described the system Gonzales' DOJ would use for ranking U.S. attorneys, keeping those who "exhibited loyalty to the president and attorney general" and sacking the prosecutors who "chafed against administration initiatives."

And just weeks ago, the May 15th testimony of former Deputy Attorney General James Comey revealed that Gonzales misled Congress about the scope of and DOJ consensus support for President Bush's illegal NSA domestic surveillance programs.

During his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey detailed then White House Counsel Gonzales' visit to the bedside of the hospitalized AG, John Ashcroft. In March 2004, Comey served as the acting attorney general during Ashcroft's recovery from emergency gall bladder surgery. In that capacity, Comey had refused to recertify President Bush's illegal NS domestic surveillance program. On March 10, Gonzales and Bush chief-of-staff Andy Card went behind Comey's back to pressure an "extremely ill and disoriented" Ashcroft. Ultimately, President Bush intervened to make changes to the NSA eavesdropping program to avoid the resignation of Comey and others at the Justice Department. But clearly, Alberto Gonzales showed he was quite comfortable in bringing bedside pressure to bear on Ashcroft, a man described as "very, very ill; in critical condition, in fact."

On June 5th, 2007, Attorney General Gonzales confirmed Comey's account of the NSA program question during that troubled March 2004 hospital confrontation. "Mr. Comey's testimony," Gonzales said, "related to a highly classified program which the president confirmed to the American people sometime ago." But on February 6th, 2006, Gonzales assured that Senate Judiciary Committee that this same program enjoyed unanimous support within the Department of Justice:

"There has not been any serious disagreement about the program that the president has confirmed."

This latest chapter in the duplicity of Alberto Gonzales comes even as Scooter Libby faces the prospect of prison - or pardon. Meanwhile, Libby's Judge Reggie Walton faces threats of violence from the vengeful right-wing fringe.

Welcome to the rule of law in George W. Bush's America.

In a Washington court room today, Americans learned that the growing conservative campaign of judicial intimidation reached the Scooter Libby case. Judge Reggie Walton, recently appointed by Chief Justice John Roberts to the FISA Court and who last week sentenced former Cheney aide Libby to 30 months in prison, announced that he had received threatening phone calls and letters. Apparently, threatening judges is now business as usual for the American conservative movement.

Walton, noting that the threats would have no impact on his looming decision regarding whether Libby could remain free on bond while pursuing his appeal, briefly described being on the receiving end of right-wing rage:

"I received a number of angry, harassing mean-spirited phone calls and letters. Some of those were wishing bad things on me and my family."

Sadly, many of the leading lights in the Republican Party have it made clear that judicial intimidation is now an acceptable part of conservative discourse and political strategy. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), himself a former Texas Supreme Court Justice, has been at the forefront of GOP advocacy of violence towards members of the bench whose rulings part ways with conservative orthodoxy.

Back in 2005, Cornyn was one of the GOP standard bearers in the conservative fight against so-called "judicial activism" in the wake of the Republicans' disastrous intervention in the Terri Schiavo affair. On April 4th, Cornyn took to the Senate floor to issue a not-too-thinly veiled threat to judges opposing his reactionary agenda. Just days after the murders of judges in Chicago and Atlanta, Cornyn offered his endorsement of judicial intimidation:

"I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country...And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence."

As it turns out, Cornyn was merely echoing the words of the soon-to-be indicted House Majority Leader Tom Delay. On March 31st, Delay issued a statement regarding the consistent rulings in favor of Michael Schiavo by all federal and state court judges involved:

"The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today."

The impact of tacit conservative endorsement of violence against judges cannot be dismissed. After all, it extends to members of the Supreme Court of the United States. In March 2006, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg revealed that she and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor were the targets of death threats. On February 28th, 2005, the marshal of the Court informed O'Connor and Ginsburg of an Internet posting citing their references to international law in Court decisions (a frequent whipping boy of the right) as requiring their assassination:

"This is a huge threat to our Republic and Constitutional freedom...If you are what you say you are, and NOT armchair patriots, then those two justices will not live another week."

Neither O'Connor nor Ginsburg are shy about making the connection between Republican rhetoric of judicial intimidation and the upswing in threats and actual violence against judges. Ginsburg noted that they "fuel the irrational fringe" O'Connor blamed Cornyn and his fellow travelers for "creating a culture" in which violence towards judges is merely another political tactic:

"It gets worse. It doesn't help when a high-profile senator suggests a 'cause-and-effect connection' [between controversial rulings and subsequent acts of violence.]"

When anthrax spores were mailed to the Supreme Court in 2001, it did not require a leap of imagination to speculate on the ideological persuasion of the culprit. Aided by best-selling conservative author and media personality Ann Coulter, who joked in January 2006, "We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," the right-wing endorsement of retribution against judges increasingly permeates the culture.

So dozens of conservative luminaries and legal scholars take the high road take the high road on Scooter Libby's behalf, the threats against Judge Walton suggest the movements foot-soldiers apparently stand ready to do their dirty work.

Just the latest example of what passes for the rule of law in conservative America.

The Campaign for America's Future and Media Matters have jointly released a new data-rich report aiming to undermine the mainstream media conventional wisdom that the United States is essentially a conservative country. The study, "The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America is a Myth," relies on opinion research to conclusively demonstrate that across virtually the entire gamut of issues, a majority of Americans hold progressive positions.

Sadly, polls don't win elections. The CAF/MM report fails to tell the more complex story behind conservatives' ability to compete politically in the face of overwhelming disdain for their policies. As I wrote just after John Kerry's debacle in 2004, Democrats shouldn't confuse Americans' overall propensity to support a given position with the intensity of feelings held by some. More importantly, when voter turnout runs as low as 40%, the only thing that matters is getting the "half of the half" of people actually casting ballots. The GOP strategy of divide, suppress and conquer, which seeks to mobilize the conservative base while driving down the turnout of Democratic and independent voters, is premised on precisely that truth.

A quick review of the poll numbers confirms the report's central finding that the U.S. continues to be a progressive nation despite media assurances to the contrary. By 58% to 42%, Americans in 2004 thought the government should do more, not less, in addressing national problems, even if that means more spending (43% to 20%). Survey data shows majority concern over income inequality. In a 2007 poll, Americans thought globalization hurt (48%) rather than helped (25%) standards of living. 84% supported an increase in the minimum wage. And in a 2005 survey, 60% of respondents favored increased government investment over additional tax cuts.

Across the range of domestic, foreign policy and cultural issues, the results are the same. 56% oppose new laws making it more difficult for American women to have access to abortions, with 62% opposed to overturning Roe v. Wade. 78% support equal roles for women in business and government, and a stunning 89% back equal rights for gay Americans in the workplace. On energy, the environment and gun control, progressive positions also enjoy majority support. Even on defense and national security, two-thirds of Americans back international diplomacy over force in foreign policy. 63% support a withdrawal from Iraq. It's no wonder the authors conclude:

"Whatever Americans choose to call themselves, on issue after issue - economic issues, social issues, security issues, and more - majorities of the public find themselves on the progressive side. And on many of the most contentious "culture war" issues, the public has been growing more progressive year after year. Much of the news media seems not to have noticed. But the facts are too clear to ignore."

But while clear, the facts are not sufficient to win elections for Democrats. The CFA/MM report does not capture the dilemma of "intensity versus propensity." That is, while Democrats enjoy majority support on most issue nationally, for those conservative voters for whom "values" issue matter, they matter most. National preferences mask seemingly unbreakable Republican majorities in the South and Midwest. In 2000, Al Gore lost to George W. Bush in large part over issues of character and trust (Bush was preferred by 80%-17% of those for whom it was important), despite overwhelming support on the issues. In 2004, exit polls showed "moral values" was the single most important issue for voters (22%), and among them, Bush crushed John Kerry 80% to 18%. Abortion and gay marriage mattered to conservative Christian voters, and they turned out in droves. (Karl Rove said he wanted four million more evangelicals at the polls in 2004; they showed up and provided Bush his margin of victory.) At least so far, the economy, health care and reproductive rights haven't had the same mobilizing effect on America's progressive majority.

Mercifully for Democrats, the tide began to turn in 2006. Despite the Republicans' continued success in bringing out its religious right base, Iraq and corruption easily topped voters' list of most important issues. Even still, the Democrats may not have regained Congress without the Mark Foley scandal in October. (Apparently for many Americans, Republican men screwing the country is one thing; teenage boys is another thing altogether.) Looking forward to 2008, the current issue priorities for Americans (Iraq, economy, gas prices, health care, etc.) play to Democratic strengths.

Even still, that matters little for Republican strategy in the age of Karl Rove. That's because Republicans only care about the "half of the half" that actually vote. While analysts predicted heightened voter interest in the 2006 midterms, actual turnout nationwide was just over 40%, compared to 39.7% in 2002 and a pathetic 38.1% in 1998. That's where the GOP's 25 Percent Strategy comes in.

As I wrote just before last November's elections:

The Republican 25% Strategy of divide, suppress and conquer is simple. First, fire up the base with red meat issues, while using the proven conservative "distribution" channel of churches and single issue advocacy groups to get them to the polls. Second, drive down the participation of potential Democratic and independent voters through unprecedented redistricting, curbs on registration, onerous new ID requirements, and polling place eligibility challenges. Last but certainly not least for the Republican party of Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman, when in doubt, just cheat.

Voter suppression, after all, is what the U.S. attorneys scandal is primarily about.

As the "Progressive Majority" report implies, the current media environment also works to counter the Democratic proclivities of the American people. In my discussion of Al Gore's new book "The Assault on Reason," I detailed how media concentration and an oversupply of news sources have combined to produce a 21st century "infotainment complex" where politics, news, opinion and entertainment merge:

The result? There is no journalistic search for objective truth. Instead, all controversies are presented as ideological clashes featuring morality plays with two - and only two - sides. In that format, the "best" entertainers are the loudest, most aggressive and most theatrical. That gives conservative themes and messages a huge built-in advantage.

Politics is now entertainment, part drama and part competition in a passion play where confrontation, conflict, and good versus evil rule the day. In a time of great uncertainty at home and abroad, for overworked Americans awash in sea of information, visceral appeals and gut-level emotions, not data, facts and analysis, cut through the noise. Conservatives rage, liberals whine. And rage is much more entertaining.

This week's study from Media Matters and the Campaign for America's Future is an important arrow in the progressive quiver for shattering the myth of the United States as an essentially conservative nation. But that's just the first step in helping progressives actually win elections. As with any 12-step program, the first step is to recognize you have a problem.

In