Latest From Our Writers

It gets tiring only publishing critiques of U.S. foreign policy. Especially over the past couple of years when one had to listen closely to Democratic rhetoric to discern how exactly they'd do things differently if they were in power. Yeah, yeah, we know about multilateralism and international institutions. Tactics are no substitute for vision. Meanwhile, most progressives were focused on what they wouldn't do in Iraq. Precious little ink has been spilled describing the principles of a progressive foreign policy. Until now. The International Relations Center is unveiling a new foreign policy framework this Thursday in Washington, DC.

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As Filibuster Showdown 2005 looms ever closer (our shoe-shopping Sen. Frist could 'go nuclear' as early as today or tomorrow), advocacy groups from many areas are launching last-ditch efforts to preserve the filibuster and discourage senators from supporting the nuclear option. One of the smartest is NARAL's call for pro-choice Republicans to help steer their party away from disaster.

The nuclear option is particularly worrisome to anyone who cares about preserving a woman's right to choose a safe, legal abortion. If Bush's extreme judicial nominees make it through the approval process, there's nothing stopping him from stacking the Supreme Court with justices who won't hesitate to overturn Roe v. Wade.  But there are a lot of Republicans out there who aren't ardently anti-choice—a lot more than we usually hear about—and they could be a big part of convincing moderate Republican senators like Chuck Hagel, Olympia Snowe, John McCain, Lincoln Chafee and Arlen Specter to vote against changing the Senate's filibuster rules.

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We were not at the National Conference on Media Reform in St. Louis yesterday. Too bad for us. Bill Moyers delivered his first public response to the news that Republican Party stalwarts are exercising political control over American public television. Moyers—who heads a foundation that contributes to TomPaine.com—took aim at the chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Kenneth Tomlinson, for ordering a review of Moyers' weekly news program to watch for "liberal bias." John Nichols at The Nation has the best summary of Moyers' speech here.

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Just got back from an impromptu rally outside the Campaign For America's Future and TomPaine.com offices. Turns out Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist , a supporter of Social Security privatization, was shopping inside Allen-Edmonds Shoes downstairs from our offices. CAF staffers handed out the signs and we generated a lot of noise and interest in a the span of half an hour (Frist says privatize, we say organize!) Passers-by (including tourists with cameras thrilled, no doubt, to stumble upon an authentic D.C. protest!) and passing motorists joined in with signs and honks. To his credit, Frist spoke to the crowd and wrote down suggestions to "take back to the Senate." We recommended rolling back the tax cuts for millionaires and raising the $90,000 income cap so the wealthy would contribute more toward Social Security's solvency. (For more information about these solutions, visit Americans United To Protect Social Security.)  Oh, and a parking enforcement officer started writing the senator a ticket, as his vehicle was parked in a no-standing zone. Rather fitting, I think.

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In a well-reported but poorly headlined article buried on page A18, Walter Pincus writes about the Downing Street Memo in today's Washington Post. To the uninitiated, this memo, from July 23, 2002, reveals that British Intelligence reported to Tony Blair that after meetings in Washington, it was clear Bush had already decided by mid-2002 to a) go to war and b) deceive Congress and the American people to do it.

Yesterday, I wrote about how this revelation, combined with the evidence collected in the Bolton investigation, will force Democrats to abandon the Bush-approved narrative of "intelligence failure" and shift to the narrative of pre-meditated intelligence fabrication.

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John Bolton's nomination has now been sent to the floor of the Senate without recommendation. That is a considerable victory. But whether John Bolton becomes the ambassador to the United Nations may be of secondary importance. The investigation into his record has created a small, but real, beachhead for an even larger undertaking.

Today, TomPaine.com published "Bolton's Yellowcake," an important article by 27-year intelligence veteran Ray McGovern showing that John Bolton ordered his staff to create the State Department "Fact Sheet" that included the then-discredited claim that Iraq sought to procure uranium yellowcake from Niger. On its own, this sounds like old news. But last week, McGovern and John Prados, in two separate articles, focused TP.c readers attention on the leaked Downing Street memo  which finally confirmed that Bush conspired to deceive America into an illegal war in Iraq.

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Today, Human Rights Watch shines a light on how the United States outsources torture, so to speak. In a new report, <!--StartFragment -->Black Hole: The Fate of Islamists Rendered to Egypt, HRW documents how the United States knowingly sends alleged Islamic militants to Egypt where they are tortured. But, insist Bush and Rumsfeld,  they get assurances from Egypt that they will not torture detainees. Bush takes a man at his word, after all. That's how they do it in Crawford. So what if Bush's own State Department recently said that torture and abuse in Egypt is "common and persistent"?

This report is only the latest evidence that the Bush administration is willing to violate international law in order to win the "war on terror." Asked about the practice of transferring suspected militants overseas—technically known as rendition—in his April 28 press conference , Bush had this rather galling response:

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We'll start with the good news: The government website www.4parents.gov, which advises parents how to talk to their kids about sex, has made some much-needed changes. The website, which debuted in March, is an abstinence-heavy collection of "talking points" for parents to use in discussing sex with their teenage children. Numerous health and advocacy groups protested the site, which included phrases like "alternative lifestyle" when referring to homosexuality and encouraged parents of gay teens to consult "a therapist who shares [their] values."

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This morning, the Senate is taking up an asbestos bill meant, originally, to provide payments to people who developed cancer or lung diseases from working with asbestos. The bill would create an asbestos trust fund from which liability payments could be dispersed, rather than relying on asbestos producers—many of whom are facing bankruptcy—to pay victims. The bill sounds a lot better than it is. A number of big firms—including Dow Chemical, General Electric, General Motors and Pfizer—are silently salivating at the thought of the asbestos bill, because their lobbying efforts could soon pay off to the tune of $20 billion.

Under the current asbestos laws, companies with liability for asbestos-related illness and death must pay the victims. A lot of these companies are facing Chapter 11 proceedings. If the new asbestos bill passes, their Chapter 11 liabilities would be erased in favor of the companies contributing to a new asbestos national trust fund. But here's the catch: The value of those trust fund contributions would be a lot less than what the companies are expected to pay now. In fact, the savings amount to about 79 percent .

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If you take the Bush administration's rhetoric at face value—that they accept the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission and want to focus more on diplomacy and democracy in their second term—then the budget should look something like the Unified Security Budget, released today. As it turns out, the Center for Defense Information and Foreign Policy In Focus report shows the real budget is leaving major domestic vulnerabilities gaping while funding billions in irrelevant Cold War-era weapons. That leaves America vulnerable while forcing cuts in essential domestic programs, like, say Medicaid.

However, if you reverse the USB Task Force's analysis and extrapolate Bush administration strategy from spending, the picture is even more grim. The administration is funding numerous weapons systems that are designed for great-power conflict while exacerbating those forces—energy insecurity, nuclear proliferation and fiscal imbalance—that are most certain to cause great power conflict.

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