Two-Dot-Oh!

I just got a request from my client to produce web pages that use recent technology to allow quick web page updates to individual fields without refreshing the entire page, resulting in a much more pleasant user experience... quicker updates and less flicker for the eye. I am aware of this technology but don't know how to use it yet. Just a couple of weeks ago I was wishing I had a contract for which I needed to use AJAX-style technologies and similar things. (Be careful what you wish for...) I'm very glad to have a legitimate excuse to learn to do this sort of thing. Hello, Web 2.0!

(Search wikipedia if you don't know the terms.)

Anyway, I'm two days stale on news, politics, war, etc., so I won't be posting on any of those things today. There will be cat blogging, but there may be little else here for a few more days: I'm really busy this weekend, and I'm headed to Austin Monday and Tuesday. Yes, I can blog from there, but I doubt I'll have time. Thanks in advance for your patience. You know where to find the good stuff while I'm away.

Steve
   PermaLink     

GOP Hates Young Women

According to an AP article via the Houston Chronicle, GOP senators wrote and passed, with the help of a distressing number of Senate Democrats, a bill that would require parental notification when someone takes a pregnant girl across state lines to obtain an abortion. The bill does more than that, though: it criminalizes the act, for anyone other than the girl herself or her parents:

WASHINGTON - A bill that would make it a crime to take a pregnant girl across state lines for an abortion without her parents' knowledge passed the Senate Tuesday, but vast differences with the House version stood between the measure and President Bush's desk.

The 65-34 vote gave the Senate's approval to the bill, which would make evading parental notification laws punishable by fines and up to a year in jail. Texas Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison voted for the bill.

     ...

Unlike the Senate bill, the House measure sets out a national parental notification law. It would require a physician who knowingly performs or induces an abortion on a minor who is a resident of another state to provide notice of at least 24 hours to a parent of the minor before ending the pregnancy.

Senate Republican sponsors said the bill supports what a majority of the public thinks: that a parent's right to know takes precedence over a young woman's right to have an abortion.

Bush urged the House and Senate to resolve their differences and send him a bill he would sign.

An earlier AP article, which was linked on the Chronicle news front but was quickly replaced by the link above, contained a lot more information and quotes. For example,

Bowing to public support for parental notification and the GOP's 55-44-1 majority, Democrats spent the day trying to carve out an exemption for confidants to whom a girl with abusive parents might turn for help. It was rejected in floor negotiations.

Democrats complained that the measure was the latest in a series of bills designed chiefly to energize the GOP's base of conservative voters.

"Congress ought to have higher priorities than turning grandparents into criminals," said U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.

And Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), via the NYT, offered this:

“I don’t think the American people support throwing Grandma in jail because she embraced her granddaughter and said, ‘Oh my God, I’m worried that your dad may hurt you if you tell the truth,’ ” said Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California.

One frequently hears arguments that very few pregnant young women are affected by such a bill, because the vast majority inform their parents themselves. That, of course, is true but irrelevant: the very girls who don't inform their parents are the ones highly likely to need protection from them.

But let me get this straight about the Senate GOP position, by way of an hypothetical but all too real example:

• An underage woman is raped by her violent, abusive father. She gets pregnant from the rape. Her father is the last person in the world she would think of informing.
  
  
• A kindly relative who understands what's going on takes the young woman from her state, say, Kansas, to a state where she is more likely to be able to get an abortion. The kindly relative of course doesn't tell the father, or the mother, who of course might tell the father.
  
  
• Under the proposed law, the kindly relative can be prosecuted.
  
  
• The father learns of the trip, manages to stop the abortion, and beats the living daylights out of the girl, who subsequently loses the pregnancy anyway.
  
  
• The GOP thinks this is a good thing. Fourteen Democratic senators also think it's good.
  
  

Then there's this jewel, from the earlier AP article:

A last-minute deal by U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., would cut off the ability of men who impregnate their daughters from taking them out of state for abortions and from suing those who help get the procedure in other states.

During floor negotiations with Boxer, Ensign rejected a proposal by Feinstein to protect from prosecution such confidants as grandparents, clergy and others to whom a girl might turn for help.

Another, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., would have encouraged the federal government to provide money for more sex education. That bill failed earlier in the day, 48-51.

"If we do nothing about teen pregnancy yet pass this punitive bill, then it proves that this (bill) is only a political charade and not a serious effort to combat the problem," Lautenberg said.

Word, Sen. Lautenberg, word. But not for Sen. Tom Coburn (R-[anything-but-]OK):

Abstinence is the best way to prevent teenage pregnancy, responded U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.

"How many people really think it's in the best interest of young people to be sexually active outside of marriage? Does anything positive ever come from that?" Coburn asked.

Um, yes, Sen. Coburn, some of us think it does. Some of us actually think that sex, with full consent and appropriate precautions, is healthy for young people. But whether I agree with you or not, you have inadvertently revealed the real Republican motivation behind this bill: you don't give a damn about the young woman's wellbeing; you just want to punish her for having sex. And so do the people who voted you into office. As I said in the post title... the GOP hates young women.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Busy Days Are Here Again

It's pretty intense. At least it doesn't involve living in tents, which is good, because my intent is paying the rent. Rented a tent... a tent... a tent... Forgive me if I'm a bit silly; I'm awfully fatigued at the moment. In tents and fatigued, and I'm not even in the military. What? I need sleep, you say? Well, yes, I do.

Thank you for your patience while I get up to speed on the project I've been contracted to do. Everything I've done so far is just reading documents and installing infrastructure; I haven't even gotten to the good part yet. I have installed all but one piece of software necessary to my part of the project on the laptop; much of it is even configured and working properly.

The one additional thing I need is Subversion. Yes you read that right. That's the name of the source control repository my new old client uses, and I think it's the greatest name I've ever run across for a piece of software. (Well, back in the late 1980s there was a programmer's editor called Brief, made by a company named Underware; that was pretty close.) How is Subversion subversive? Its authors state as their explicit goal the replacement of the venerable CVS, which fails mostly in that it lacks a cool name.

Clever software names aside, it's a grind to install and configure stuff. Things always go wrong in even the most straightforward setups. I won't bore you with details; those of you who do this for a living know exactly what I'm talking about. And everyone knows that no matter how much you love your occupation, they call it "work" for a reason. Again, thanks for your patience over the next few weeks; blogging may be a bit on the light side.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Not Just A Few Bad Apples

Josh Marshall points us to a Human Rights Watch report of soldiers' accounts of prisoner abuse in Iraq. I don't have time to go into detail right now, but it's clear from these accounts that detainee abuse was systematized... they even had a form on which one could check off what method(s) of abuse one intended, then get a superior officer, of rank between captain and colonel, to sign off their approval. Read Marshall's post and as much as you can manage of the report, whose conclusion I give you here:

Many of the crimes detailed in this report are violations of international humanitarian law, U.S. military law, and U.S. federal criminal law. The U.S. government’s failure to properly investigate these violations is an affront to the victims of the abuses, and a violation of U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions, which obligate states to prosecute serious violations of the conventions’ provisions (“grave breaches”).

The accounts in this report are further evidence that detainee abuse was an established and apparently authorized part of detention and interrogation processes in Iraq for much of 2003-2005. The cases also show that U.S. military personnel have faced systemic obstacles to reporting or exposing abuses, that the U.S. military in numerous cases has not taken adequate measures to stop reported abuses. The report also shows that the U.S. military has often failed to properly investigate and prosecute perpetrators, including officers who allowed abuses to occur on their watch.

This can't be America doing this, can it? Sigh. I'm afraid it is.

(It's back to work for me. I'll post again perhaps late tonight.)

Steve
   PermaLink     

Bush's Immoral Veto

A couple of posts below I discussed the heartlessness, the cruelty, of Bush's veto of embryonic stem cell research. Terry Curtis Fox discusses on Huffington Post a most significant companion issue of Bush's veto: its immorality. Setting up his argument with the observation that, when posed as "science vs. morality," the argument for science is usually lost, Fox reminds us that the political left has always had plenty of moral ground to stand on, and has done its best work when it took such a stand:

Going back to the revolution, the American left has won when it has cast its arguments in moral terms. Looks at the Declaration of Independence for starters, move on to abolition, the enfranchisement of women, Roosevelt’s “four freedoms” and the ensuing New Deal, the civil rights movement, and then to the early success of feminism and recent acceptance of at least some gay rights. All were expressed in specifically moral language.

Indeed, our moral stance is one of the strongest things we on the left have going for us... not a religious argument, though those whose notion of morality is grounded in their religious beliefs are more than welcome to make those arguments. However, many of us who regard our religious beliefs as orthogonal to or independent of our sociopolitical views nonetheless have our own reasons for taking a moral stance in the public sphere. Whether you as a Christian, like several of my best friends, regard Jesus as a liberal at the core of His being, on all the most significant human issues, and wish to emulate Him, or, like me, see the moral issues that impinge on government as being "self-evident," to use the words of our founders, there is plenty of high moral ground for liberals, progressives, Democrats etc. to stand on. Not surprisingly, by comparison, there are plenty of reasons to regard Mr. Bush's and his cohort's actions lately, including but not limited to the stem cell veto, as fundamentally immoral, based on the sheer number of people harmed or killed, the harm done to the planet we live on, the deep dishonesty of going to war under manifestly false pretenses, etc. The comparison itself is very much in our favor, no matter how you frame your own specific moral basis for your beliefs.

Take a moral stand. Never yield to people who pretend to be moral but whose actions are deeply, egregiously immoral. Face down Mr. Bush on his own ground, and use your own language... religious, humanist, whatever... to face him. As Howard Dean is fond of saying, you have the power.

I'm writing this post in the wee hours because, after Stella's very densely packed birthday adventures, I've spent several hours reading documents in preparation for doing some work for a long-ago client who actually went to the effort of finding me on the web. It feels good to be getting ready to do what I believe I do pretty darned well, simultaneously resuming earning an honest living (as opposed to no livelihood at all... I haven't turned to crime in the interim). Tomorrow (actually, today, Saturday), we're going to Stella's father's house to celebrate her birthday again. I've loaded a lot of docs, specs, spreadsheets and source code onto my laptop, and will be taking it with me in case I get a chance to do more prep work in the cracks of time between celebrations, but I probably won't get a lot of blogging done between now and my telephone meeting with my new old client sometime Sunday afternoon or evening. On the left (of course) is the list of excellent blogs you may want to read in the interim. I'll probably be back to the blog late Sunday evening. (If you haven't seen the cat pics below, be sure to take a look.)

Steve
   PermaLink     

Cat Blogging Buffet

Cats! cats! cats! Three cats! Six pics! Live, totally nude! Well, actually, they're wearing what they always wear. Friday is Stella's birthday; she has the day off, and we're going on a little excursion, so I almost certainly will not have time for cat blogging. To make up for that, here's your kitty feast for the week, a day early:

---

Hey, roommate, watch where you stick those claws!

---

Tabitha: Sheesh. These kits today, so full of themselves.
Samantha: I can be cuter than yooouuu caaaan!

---

Are you gonna finish, or drink it dry? Hurry up!

---

Lotus, vigilant, maybe even hypervigilant.

---

Lotus, asleep. Moments after this pic, still sleeping, she fell, ever so gracefully, off the pedestal, caught her fall with her front paws and, scarcely awakened, resumed her nap on the floor.

---

Hey, mister! Whaddya think you're lookin' at? There's no help for it: I'm smarter than you are, and better-looking, too!

---

Dialup users, my apologies for the bandwidth hit; there were simply too many good cat pics this week, and I couldn't choose among them.

Blogging will resume probably sometime Saturday, or at the earliest very late Friday. Y'all keep watch on our international relations for me: make sure Dubya doesn't break any more treaties, fondle any more chancellors, spew any more profanities with his mouth full of food, ... oh, never mind. There's no point in my asking the impossible.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Bush's Heartless Veto

Bush used his first veto to quash a bill that would have lifted restrictions on the use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research. There were no cameras present for the veto itself. Later, Bush met with families who have "adopted" frozen embryos, using them to produce children... 24 children. Dishonest in every way possible, Bush used those children (yes, used them; I mean what I say here) to imply that all such embryos could well be brought to term and raised in a family:

"These boys and girls are not spare parts," Bush said. "They remind us of what is lost when embryos are destroyed in the name of research."

Tell me, Mr. God-Playing Bush, what happens to the embryos... the overwhelming majority... that are neither born as children, nor saved for later use by the aspiring parents, nor "destroyed in the name of research"? Right... they are, metaphorically if not literally, flushed down the toilet. That, of course, in Mr. Bush's godlike estimation, is morally superior to using them to pursue research that could eventually save many lives. Better to the loo than to the lab... that's Mr. Omniscient Bush's motto.

As some of you may remember, my mother died of Alzheimer's disease. I experienced the sorrow of watching her decline from a vibrant, warm, intelligent, witty woman into someone who could not recognize friends and could barely recognize family before she died in 1990, someone emotionally numbed, someone deprived of that once active intellect, someone very nearly deprived... it was just a matter of time... of the ability to recognize her husband and her only son.

Mixed in with my sorrow was the understanding that this could be my future as well. But surely, I thought, Alzheimer's would be understood and cured by the time I reached the age of serious vulnerability. Now I'm anything but certain.

Back in those days, I had medical journals online at my disposal through my workplace. I read them with a passion I've seldom devoted to any subject. But nothing even hinted at a cure, remedy, preventative, etc. for Alzheimer's.

Now there are hints, and maybe more. Now there is cause for hope. Can stem cell research cure Alzheimer's? Today's short but true answer: maybe. We just don't know yet, and won't know until somebody tries.

Of course the WaPo, ever helpful to the Bush administration and its fundamentalist base, has been telling us for years that stem cells offer little hope for Alzheimer's sufferers. This is crap, but you may have to look offshore for a straight answer. Straight answers are hard to come by in America these days. Ideologically driven answers are a lot more readily available.

Mr. God W. Bush's veto today assured that if such a cure is possible, finding that cure will be delayed, and it probably won't happen in the United States of America.

In the interim, while Mr. God Whacking Bush is in office, someone else's mother, someone else's uncle, someone else's brother or sister, will gradually lose their mind to a possibly curable disease. And someone else will grieve as it happens. And this will happen over... and over... and over again, to more someones than Mr. Bible-Thumping Bush can apparently imagine.

Back before Bush's poll numbers went south, many of his supporters proclaimed him the heir to the throne of Ronald Reagan. I know I am a bad person for wishing it, but this is personal: may Bush be, instead, the heir to the fate of Nancy Reagan. May someone dear to him (if indeed anyone is dear to him) lose their mind to a disease whose cure he premeditatedly delayed for the basest of political reasons. I do not believe in an otherworldly Hell, but if there is a hell on Earth, it is watching a loved one drift away ever so gradually, and then not so gradually, into mental nothingness. To that hell I consign Mr. Bush. To hell with him for this veto. To hell with him.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Oh No! The Liberals Are Coming!

Oh horrors, anything but that... liberals with money, and it looks as if they're organized!

An alliance of nearly a hundred of the nation's wealthiest donors is roiling Democratic political circles, directing more than $50 million in the past nine months to liberal think tanks and advocacy groups in what organizers say is the first installment of a long-term campaign to compete more aggressively against conservatives.

A year after its founding, Democracy Alliance has followed up on its pledge to become a major power in the liberal movement. It has lavished millions on groups that have been willing to submit to its extensive screening process and its demands for secrecy.

     ...

Reporters Jim VandeHei and Chris Cillizza are clearly horrified at this not particularly new notion, as evidenced by their (ahem) liberal use of such contradictory terms as "Clinton White House" and "liberal tilt," "Hillary" and "center-left," etc. They aren't too clear on the political nature of this beast, but they can certainly supply the right buzzwords to strike fear into the hearts of the so-called centrists running the Democratic Party establishment.

Choosing one of their breathless assessments of Washington insider opinion more or less at random,

Democracy Alliance also has left some Washington political activists concerned about what they perceive as a distinctly liberal tilt to the group's funding decisions. Some activists said they worry that the alliance's new clout may lead to groups with a more centrist ideology becoming starved for resources.

Heavens! Do you think the DLC will soon have to beg for milk for their cereal?

About a dozen paragraphs into the article, there are at least a few scraps of presumably hard information:

     ...

Democracy Alliance works essentially as a cooperative for donors, allowing them to coordinate their giving so that it has more influence.

To become a "partner," as the members are referred to internally, requires a $25,000 entry fee and annual dues of $30,000 to cover alliance operations as well as some of its contributions to start-up liberal groups. Beyond this, partners also agree to spend at least $200,000 annually on organizations that have been endorsed by the alliance. Essentially, the alliance serves as an accreditation agency for political advocacy groups.

This accreditation process is the root of Democracy Alliance's influence. If a group does not receive the alliance's blessing, dozens of the nation's wealthiest political contributors as a practical matter become off-limits for fundraising purposes.

     ...

Democracy Alliance organizers say they are trying to bring principles of accountability and capital investment that are common in business to the world of political advocacy, where they believe such principles have often been missing.

     ...

Sigh. I guess I won't be joining up. But really, what a concept: recipients of Democracy Alliance's largesse are carefully evaluated beforehand for their effectiveness. And DA's "investment" strategy is long-term, directed not at the exigencies of a particular campaign or election year, but toward the building of a (relatively) liberal infrastructure comparable with what the right wing of the GOP has crafted over the years.

I would love to believe in my liberal heart that a veritable horde of grassroots organizations could do this on their own, collecting small amounts of money from all us little folks and directing it toward the greater good of democracy. But honestly, I think that a grassroots approach to funding is better suited to candidate support than to long-term infrastructure-building efforts. (Note: my examples were selected more or less at random; there are many fine grassroots groups.) There's room for both kinds of funding, and if some of the Democratic Party establishment are worried about the "liberal tilt" of this "center-left" effort, well, so much the better... the DP bigwigs haven't exactly succeeded in recent years with their approach.

(HT to Avedon.)

Steve
   PermaLink     

AG: Bush Blocked Probe Of Bush

Via TPMMuckraker, we learn that AG Alberto Gonzales testified that Bush personally blocked Justice Department lawyers in the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) from obtaining security clearances necessary to investigate their own department's involvement in the NSA domestic wiretapping matter. From MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that President Bush personally blocked Justice Department lawyers from pursuing an internal probe of the warrantless eavesdropping program that monitors Americans’ international calls and e-mails when terrorism is suspected.

The department’s Office of Professional Responsibility announced earlier this year it could not pursue an investigation into the role of Justice lawyers in crafting the program, under which the National Security Agency intercepts some telephone calls and e-mail without court approval.

At the time, the office said it could not obtain security clearance to examine the classified program.

     ...

The best commentary I've run across on this matter so far is by Jack Balkin, law professor at Yale who hosts and writes for the consistently readable blawg Balkinization:

     ...

For this reason, the idea of a unitary executive-- i.e., that the Executive Branch ultimately has one boss-- must not be confused with another idea sometimes also identified with the "unitary executive": the notion that the President has inherent authority to do certain things (because, for example, they are "executive" in nature) and that in doing them he may not be checked, impeded, regulated, or overseen by the other branches. Indeed, *precisely* because the President is ultimately the boss of everyone who works beneath him in the Executive Branch, somebody who *doesn't* work for him must be able to check him.

     ...

As Gonzales made clear in his testimony, there isn't any such person or governmental entity right now. Bush is operating unchecked, and attorneys within his Justice Department who attempt to check him find themselves blocked from doing so... by what? by Bush's own order.

As I have noted before, if Bush, acting alone, has the power to prevent examination of his actions by others in government, there is little to distinguish him from a dictator or a monarch. I cannot imagine America's founders had any such notion in mind when they constructed a government in three branches and spoke constantly of the need for checks and balances.

Put simply, Bush is operating outside the pale. If he will not yield on one end or the other of the duality of the "unitary Executive" as described by Balkin, he must be disciplined. As the only available effective discipline of a president in our system of government is impeachment, that means that Bush must be impeached. If the current Congress refuses its clear duty to reassert its own role in enforcing the checks and balances, we must turn out the current Congress in November and elect one that has enough respect for the Constitution (not to mention simple self-respect) to do its duty.

Steve
   PermaLink     

As Bad As Arnold

First it was Der Gropinator. Now it's the Groper-in-Chief (video thanks to John Amato). What is it with Bush? Can't he keep his hands off German Chancellor Angela Merkel? It might be different if it were, say, Tony Blair, whom Bush knows intimately, or Joe Lieberman, with whom he's on kissing terms. But Merkel? C'mon. I'd have reacted exactly the same way she did, although I'd probably have also thrown an elbow like an NBA player. As I noted two posts below, Bush is a boor. And now one might legitimately find other names for him.

The next time a right-wing nut mentions Clinton and Monica to you, show them the video clip over at Crooks and Liars (linked above), and remind them that what Clinton and Monica did was in private... and consensual.

(HT to andante.)

Steve
   PermaLink     

Guess Who's Blogging

Leon Hale.

When I was a kid, Leon Hale was a human-interest columnist for the regrettably long since defunct Houston Post. He later wrote for the Houston Chronicle, the newspaper that swallowed the Post, though I don't remember if his column ran continuously through the transition or not. He wrote a few books as well; I found a copy of one of them on my late father's nightstand. Hale's style is sometimes called "folksy," and I suppose that's accurate, but he reminds me of my own grandparents, great aunts, etc. in that his writing shows an educated polish atop the country undercoat. My great aunt Mary, from the tiny town of Ridge, TX, wrote a master's thesis on some literary subject; if she'd written a newspaper column, it probably would have resembled Hale's in style, though not in content.

Understand this: Hale may be older than dirt, but he is more enduring than topsoil... especially American topsoil; go reread Al Gore's Earth in the Balance. And a bit more than a decade ago, when he first got an email address through the newspaper, I exchanged pleasant words with Mr. Hale, taking a couplet with which he began a column and turning it into full-fledged doggerel. He was either pleased with or very polite about the result; I treasure that email, and I am delighted to add Leon Hale to my blogroll. Take a look, perhaps in a few days when he has had a chance to settle in to the routine of blogging.

Steve
   PermaLink     

News Flash: Bush Is A Boor

At G-8, Bush spoke to Blair about the Israel-Lebanon war, near an open mic:

     ...

"What they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over," Bush says with his mouth full as he buttered a piece of bread.

"Who, Syria?" asked Blair, standing next to the seated Bush.

"Right," Bush said. Within an hour or so, the remarks were broadcast around the world on CNN.

     ...

Many of us in Bush's generation use language like that in private, or among friends, or for emphasis on our blogs. But most of us are not the purported leader of the free world, acting not privately but in his role as president. As potty-mouthed as I am, even I know better than to say "shit" on the job.

Peter Baker, author of the linked article, offers an ironic opening sentence:

President Bush should know that in Russia, someone is always listening. In this case, it was the rest of the world.

Ummm, Peter, it's not only in Russia...

Obscenity-laden afterthought: it's obvious from the morning TV news that Bush's State Department hasn't a fucking clue how to get approximately 25,000 Americans out of Lebanon:

"We're trying very hard to keep the best possible records that we can so that when we have our plan in place we will be able to execute it," Harty said, adding that "we can't help people if we don't know where they are."

Oh, shit. For what it's worth, the French already have help on the way for their citizens in Lebanon.

(How am I doing? As a child, I was told every American kid should emulate the president...)

(Corrected "Isreal" to "Israel" after initial posting. Clearly a mistake: this isn't real, is it?)

Steve
   PermaLink     

ED Study: Public Schools Exceed Private

Via the NYT, an Education Department study shows that...

... children in public schools generally performed as well or better in reading and mathematics than comparable children in private schools. The exception was in eighth-grade reading, where the private school counterparts fared better.

The report, which compared fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores in 2003 from nearly 7,000 public schools and more than 530 private schools, found that fourth graders attending public school did significantly better in math than comparable fourth graders in private schools. Additionally, it found that students in conservative Christian schools lagged significantly behind their counterparts in public schools on eighth-grade math.

     ...

Forgive me if I am not surprised that the results were released in the weekly Friday dump, likely in an attempt to minimize publicity, or that the Secretary of Education, Miss Spellings, issued no comment on the study's results. This is not a matter on which I expect honesty from the Bush administration, because the results run contrary to their ideological bias. But how, actually, did Bush officials react when push came to shove, and they had to issue some response to questions?

A spokesman for the Education Department, Chad Colby, offered no praise for public schools and said he did not expect the findings to influence policy. Mr. Colby emphasized the caveat, “An overall comparison of the two types of schools is of modest utility.”

“We’re not just for public schools or private schools," he said. “We’re for good schools.”

Ah, yes, they're "for good schools." That's why they're so anxious to direct taxpayers' money to religious schools whose math scores "lagged significantly behind their counterparts in public schools."

The real surprise here is that anyone is surprised; many have known this long before the ED saw fit to study the problem. From Texas Freedom Network:

• Traditional public schools in Texas meet state performance standards at higher rates than do charter schools. A U.S. Department of Education study found that this fact did not change after controlling for the proportion of low-income students, the proportion of minority students, student mobility and student enrollment.
  
  – Evaluation of the Public Charter Schools Program, Final Report, 2004
  
  
• In recent Texas Education Agency (TEA) ratings, 11 percent of charter campuses received “Academically Unacceptable” accountability ratings, while only 1 percent of traditional public schools received this rating.
  
  – Texas Sunset Advisory Commission Staff Report, 11/04
  
  
• In 2004, only 42 percent of Texas charter school students passed the TAKS, compared to 67 percent of students statewide and 56 percent of students classified as low-income.
  
  – Texas Sunset Advisory Commission Staff Report, 11/04
  
  
• The Texas Sunset Advisory Commission found that children in some charter schools may be at risk of receiving an inadequate education. Without effective ways to measure student success, parents and school officials are ill-informed as to instructional quality.
  
  – Texas Sunset Advisory Commission Staff Report, 11/04
  
  

And it gets worse when you examine teacher qualifications, financial probity, technology availability, etc. Far from having the advantage, charter schools lag behind public schools, and that fact is not new.

I am sympathetic to the problems faced by all schoolteachers, public and private. But I do not condone direct government support of private schools at the expense of public schools. I admit I am hardly objective in the matter: my late parents were teachers in public schools. But I'm also a taxpayer, one who has paid his share of school taxes over the years, both directly through property taxes and indirectly through rent. On top of all that, I believe in a separation of church and state, a wall high and wide between any government and any religious institution, including religious schools.

But more than all of that, I am committed to a quality education for every single child in America, whatever their social class or economic status. Only quality public schools can assure that education for every child. And the evidence of this ED study is that those schools are doing as well as or better than private schools. There is simply no rational basis for spending taxpayers' money on private schools rather than on public schools: the Bush administration's preference for vouchers, funding of religious education, etc. is purely ideological, not grounded in the reality of providing a quality education. Public schools do that very well. Good, well-funded public schools are the key to America's survival in this century.

Many have asked whether the Bush administration would have been so dismissive of this study's results, so quick to release it in the Friday bad-news dump, if the results had favored private schools. Really, do we even need to ask that question?

(HT to Echidne and Bryan.)

Steve
   PermaLink     

His Majesty Condescends -- UPDATED

... to allow the FISA court to review, not individual cases of NSA surveillance of Americans, but the whole program of warrantless wiretaps, allegedly, according to AG Alberto Gonzales, to "test the constitutionality" of the program. As part of a deal worked out between the preznit and Sen. Arlen Specter, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the FISA court's evaluation of the program would take place in secret, with obvious consequences:

     ...

By having the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court conduct the review instead of a regular federal court, the Bush administration would ensure the secrecy of details of the highly classified program. The administration has argued that making details of the program public would compromise national security.

However, such details could include politically explosive disclosures that the government has kept tabs on people it shouldn't have been monitoring.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who's questioned the program's legality, said the legislation he's sponsoring strikes a balance between the president's inherent constitutional authority to protect the country and citizens' right to privacy.

"It is a weighing of the interests in security to fight terrorism with the privacy interests which are involved," Specter said. "You have here a recognition by the president that he doesn't have a blank check."

Specter said the FISA court wouldn't have to make it findings public.

Bush agreed to sign the bill only if it passed Congress without major changes, Specter said.

     ...

Let me get this straight: a Republican senator has brokered a deal through which a program of possibly unconstitutional actions ordered by a Republican president will be evaluated by a secret court which need not make its findings public, with no oral arguments, no friend-of-the-court filings, no external influence at all. Moreover, any Fourth Amendment issues raised by the program will be evaluated once and for all by this secret court, rather than on a case-by-case basis. Sorry; that's a non-starter for me.

If Democrats really care about Bush's probable Fourth Amendment violations in running this secret program, they will vote along party lines to squelch the deal Specter has brokered. They probably will not succeed in stopping the secret hearing on the secret program of probably illegally gathered secrets, but at least it will be clear to everyone which political party values their liberties and which does not.

(HT to Josh Marshall for the McClatchy link; his comment on Jonathan S. Landay's article is very much worth reading.)

(Minor correction made after posting.)

UPDATE: via TalkLeft, the ACLU comes to similar conclusions. Here's the ACLU press release:

WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union today strongly rebuked new legislation offered by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) that would give the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court "optional" review over the National Security Agency’s controversial program to spy on Americans. The legislation was announced this morning and was drafted in close consultation with the White House.

The ACLU and other organizations have filed challenges to the legality of the NSA program.

"This Specter-Cheney bill is nothing short of a capitulation by Chairman Specter to the White House," said Anthony Romero, Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union. "The ‘review’ contained in the bill is nothing more than a sham. The president could still choose to ignore the optional court oversight on the program. This new bill would codify the notion that the president is not bound by the laws passed by Congress or the Constitution. It would reward his abuse of power."

"The Senate - and the entire Congress - must provide proper oversight over the executive," said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "The law has been broken by the president, and instead of demanding answers, the Specter-Cheney bill would sanction his illegal activity. We urge the Senate Judiciary Committee to stand for the rule of law and reject this proposal."

As TalkLeft says, "A one time review is not oversight." Indeed it is not. If you need details of the specifics of the proposed bill, Jeralyn has a good summary. The bill is not pretty. And it is by no stretch any kind of middle ground or compromise: it is effectively everything Bush wanted, wrapped up and tied with a bow. Once again, Specter disappoints. Once again, Congress seems poised to abdicate its responsibility to check and balance this wayward president. How far will he go if he is not restrained by another branch of government? You know the answer to that.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Friday 'Through A Glass Brightly' Blogging

Samantha has a drinking problem...

... but as with many who consider themselves social drinkers, if you ask her, it's no problem! Honestly, she started this habit herself, though with a much smaller glass. Stella and I, bad parents both, indulge her. It's not really a problem, unless you mind drinking after a cat. As long as she hasn't just eaten any meaty or fishy food, we put up with it.

(Note the elongated refracted image of Samantha's nose and eyes through the ridges of the glass. Hey, if there can be "found art," why not a "found special effect"?)

Steve
   PermaLink     

Voting Rights: Same Old Roadblocks

Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, gives a good summary on TomPaine.com of the roadblocks to renewal of key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Republicans who are erecting the barriers. The short version: nothing is new under the sun. If you are old enough to remember the techniques used by Republicans from the South in 1964 and 1965, many of their methods today will seem familiar to you. If not, please read the linked article.

There is supposed to be (or to have been; I'm not certain) a vote in the House today. Keep your eyes open for attempts to amend the VRA to weaken its provisions that apply to states that still have a record of voting rights infringements... over 40 years after the Act became law... and prepare to raise hell if the law is substantially weakened.

I can't understand Americans who do not believe in the basic notion of representative democracy. Or rather, I understand them all too well, and I deplore their attempts to compromise democracy.

UPDATE: according to a WaPo article, Nancy Pelosi has announced that Democrats will block the bill if any of the weakening amendments are attached. Maybe there's life in the DP yet. This is a matter in which any compromise will essentially gut the bill, rendering it worse than useless. If Dems have enough spine to realize and act on that fact, they should be able, in an election year, to push the GOP to the wall, and get a clean bill. Time will tell, and not very much time at that. Eyes open, everyone.

UPDATE: The AP, in typical fashion, has replaced the article at the above link with one that does not even mention Pelosi's organizing dissent from the amendments, but the bottom line is basically good news... the amendments failed. By an overwhelming 390-33 vote, the House sent to the Senate a bill described by the AP as "a Republican appeal to minority voters who doubt the GOP's 'big-tent' image." Annoyingly enough, the AP article does not state whether the bill is a literal renewal of the 1965 Act or not. And of course the article is most concerned with a GOP political viewpoint, not with whether the results actually protect anyone's voting rights. But I've come to expect that from the wire services.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Terrette Is Blogging Again

terrette... world traveler, polyglot, superb writer and relentless voice for social justice... is back on the net, on the same blog that was mysteriously bloggered last November and just as mysteriously reactivated in the past few days. If you were a regular reader, you'll know why I am overjoyed at her return. If not, you have a treat in store for you.

Steve
   PermaLink     

 
Selected Links To Recent Posts

 
Click any permalink below to go to the original article on a previous page. Click a comment link below to add a comment to the original article. Your comment will be noticed, by the YDD at least: HaloScan has a page allowing me to view recent comments, no matter which post they refer to.

Too Funny; Too Sad

Considering that this was once a nation about which I could cheerfully sing the original song, it grieves me that I find this parody so apt. It's... nah. I won't describe it. Just go listen to it.

(HT to Jane Hamsher.)

Steve
   PermaLink     

Russian Bread, Irish Butter

That's my snack as I write this post. Stella, who stopped by Houston's Russian General Store on her way home, was kind enough to bring me some dark, dense Russian rye bread, two loaves, one with a picture of Peter the Great on the wrapper (hey, it's the bread, not the historical figure, that she was buying) and the other called Borodinsky bread. I happened to have some KerryGold genuine Irish butter on hand, something I treat myself to once in a rare while. The combination of the Russian bread and the Irish butter is a very satisfying bit of comfort food.

Given my part-Irish ancestry, my love of Russian food (or at least bread), and my mildly left-wing politics, does that make me a (ahem) sput-mick?

(Parts of HaloScan, but not all of it, are fried as I write this. If it's still cooked when you get here, my apologies.)

Steve
   PermaLink     

Democrats Who Support The Iraq War

... read Riverbend's post yesterday, and then tell me how you sleep at night. This nightmare will not cease when we bring our troops home, but it most certainly will not cease before we do so.

Steve
   PermaLink     

Another Use For Duct Tape

Steve
   PermaLink     

They Fought The Law

Steve
   PermaLink     

Dubya Moons Space Station

Steve
   PermaLink     

Bush Deplores Firefox Leaks

Steve
   PermaLink     

Crime Close To Home -- UPDATED

Steve
   PermaLink     

More Miss Spellings

Steve
   PermaLink     

Friday 'The Kiss' Blogging

Steve
   PermaLink     

Bush Kicks Researchers In Teeth

Steve
   PermaLink     

Judge: DeLay Or No One For GOP

Steve
   PermaLink     

Mexican Standoff

Steve
   PermaLink     

Would Thoreau Have Blogged?

Steve
   PermaLink     

Lay Dead

Steve
   PermaLink     

Jefferson's Last Declaration

Steve
   PermaLink     

After 7/4, Everything Changed

Steve
   PermaLink     

We've Got Issues -- DOGGEREL!

Steve
   PermaLink     

Joe Leaver-Man

Steve
   PermaLink     

Waas: Bush Ordered Wilson Slam

Steve
   PermaLink     

What Have They Been Smoking?

Steve
   PermaLink     

Is Michael Griffin Out To Launch?

Steve
   PermaLink     

May Memories

Steve
   PermaLink