We Don’t Pray Together

England is giving Blair lots of grief for palling around with George Bush. Brits are really squeemish about Bush's dogmatic Christian rhetoric. That's especially interesting because this is the country the US broke away from because of its dogmatic Christianity. The BBC's Jeremy Paxman asked if he prayed with Bush. Blair curtly responded: "No, we don't pray together. No, Jeremey, No." Newsweek was great to point out that in the US, politicians would have jumped at the chance to brag that they prayed with Bush, no matter how much that flew in the face of the establishment clause.

Pollsters and the Democratic Party

Noam Scheiber has a great piece in The New Republic on the undue influence of Washington pollsters on Democratic campaigns. The upshot is that the party message is enforced from the mothership in Washington through the complex set of relationships between well-connected Democratic polling firms, the party election committees, the regionals, and the campaign committees. In 2002, the polling-derived message was almost certainly flawed and snuffed out any local issues where Democratic candidates would have otherwise found traction. Significantly, the Republican infrastructure has no such polling "inner circle" and candidates are therefore more flexible on campaign strategy. It's sharp thinking and a worthwhile concern, but blaming the Democratic polling machine for flaccid policy doesn't make me feel any better.

Sen. Miller to Endorse Bush Plan

It appears that Senator Zell Miller (D-GA) is set to endorse Bush's tax cut today. For those that know Senator Miller, this is not a surprise. He's an aberration in the system, alongside Senators Chafee and Hatch, whose party affiliation has precious little to do with his voting habits. Republicans will try to make hay from this, and be met with a shrug from everyone else.

Rep. Mike Honda Takes Coble to Task

Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) condemned the assertion by Rep. Howard Coble (R-NC) that Japanese-Americans were interred for their own safety during World War II. These remarks were weeks ago, and the two had met behind closed doors to talk it out. Honda's been waiting for the Republican leadership to do something about this guy, like strip him of his chairmanship of the House subcommittee on domestic security. The leadership hasn't moved, so Honda's calling them out.

SpamArrest Smackdown

The premise is this: you receive an email of unknown origin, and SpamArrest will bounce the message to sender, asking them to confirm their humanity before it forwards the in-doubt email to your inbox. A lovely idea, until SpamArrest sends spam. Their license allows them to use any email address they receive, from any source, for their own purposes. More from PoliTech.

In Defense of Military Action

On the Iraq issue, I have some serious reservations about the war, but I have even more reservations about the opposition. I often hear that the U.S. should not trade "blood for oil." This suggests that the United States is going to oust Saddam Hussein in order to control the second largest oil reserve in the world. This betrays some very soft thinking. Iraq would be more than happy to sell us all the oil we want. We have, in fact, strongly defended sanctions on the country which prevent Iraq from producing at full capacity. Say, for the sake of argument, that we hope a new Iraqi regime would flout OPEC and flood the market with cheap oil. That's unrealistic. A new Iraq would be compelled to join OPEC for the same reason everyone else does: price controls and amicable relations with its neighbors. Why would a new Iraq sell oil for less? It's going to be the lifeblood of the new country, and making itself a bargain on the world oil markets is self-defeating.

Indy Media Wastes My Time

Interested in what's going on uptown today, I take a gander at IndyMedia. Lies, damn lies, and propaganda. There's a piece on the much-discussed WSJ editorial solicitation, framed as another example of manipulation in corporate media. Hypocrisy: IndyMedia promotes, and then covers the F15 marches. Instead of responding to the City's injunction by "planning dozens of unpermitted feeder marches," these marches were planned well ahead of the City's injunction, and I imagine that they're still be staged out of inertia and bad organization, not as a response to anything the City has done.

Bush Disses Afghanistan

The new budget is out. Afghanistan was utterly forgotten.

CRS May Go Public

If we're lucky, a bill re-introduced by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) would make information from the Congressional Research Service available to the public. The CRS performs timely research on pending legislative issues, and is publically funded. Unfortunately, you have to buy its research at $30 a pop through third parties. On the recommendation of a Project on Government Oversight report, these two fine Senators want to make all the CRS material available online.

GAO Wusses Out

The GAO has decided not to pursue its appeal to the Walker v. Cheney decision. The result? The Executive doesn't have to tell you anything if it doesn't want to, thanks very much. Why did the GAO give up? Lack of Congressional support. Find out how your Rep and Senators stood on this.