"These boys and girls are not spare parts..."

The Frat-Boy-in-Chief, home from the G-8, all cleaned up and scripted (God knows, and now the world knows, how desperately he needs to be scripted), delivered a sentimental and scientifically misleading rationale for his first-ever-in-6.5 years-veto -- thus making good on his promise to deny hope to the tens of thousands who could benefit from stem cell research. But it's all OK, because Karl Rove apparently knows something about adult stem cells that scientists don't. Still, the plain fact is (from ThinkProgress):

Only about 10 percent of embryos are adopted — the rest are disposed of. Had Bush signed the bill into law, they could instead be used to develop potentially live-saving cures for millions of people.

Yes, disposed of.

The people who have the least, pay the most. But that's really of no interest to Bush.

"Does he often talk about poverty? No," Snow said. "There hasn't been a direct discussion of poverty, but he is focused on eliminating the barriers that stand in the way of people making progress."

Polls show the public is ready to sweep out the GOP this fall, and Mark Crispin thinks that means the GOP will be playing more dirty tricks than ever this fall. They've as much as said so. And they've certainly been laying the groundwork:

What the Republicans have created is, in effect, a system where they have multiple tools to deter their opponents from casting ballots in the first place--through the voter-ID requirement, the strict rules on provisional balloting and so on--and then making the vote count itself so opaque as to be beyond redress.

Last month, the Times said: "If there was ever a sign of a ruling party in trouble, it is a game plan that calls for trying to win by discouraging voting." The editorial continued:

The latest sign that Republicans have an election-year strategy to shut down voter registration drives comes from Ohio. As the state gears up for a very competitive election season this fall, its secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, has put in place "emergency" regulations that could hit voter registration workers with criminal penalties for perfectly legitimate registration practices. The rules are so draconian they could shut down registration drives in Ohio.

Mr. Blackwell, who also happens to be the Republican candidate for governor this year, has a history of this sort of behavior. In 2004, he instructed county boards of elections to reject any registrations on paper of less than 80-pound stock -- about the thickness of a postcard. His order was almost certainly illegal, and he retracted it after he came under intense criticism. It was, however, in place long enough to get some registrations tossed out.

This year, Mr. Blackwell's office has issued rules and materials that appear to require that paid registration workers, and perhaps even volunteers, personally take the forms they collect to an election office. Organizations that run registration drives generally have the people who register voters bring the forms back to supervisors, who can then review them for errors. Under Mr. Blackwell's edict, everyone involved could be committing a crime. Mr. Blackwell's rules also appear to prohibit people who register voters from sending the forms in by mail. That rule itself may violate federal elections law.

Mr. Blackwell's rules are interpretations of a law the Republican-controlled Ohio Legislature passed recently. Another of the nation's most famous swing states, Florida, has been the scene of similar consternation and confusion since it recently enacted a law that is so harsh that the Florida League of Women Voters announced that it was stopping all voter registration efforts for the first time in 67 years.

Florida's Legislature, like Ohio's, is controlled by Republicans. Throughout American history both parties have shown a willingness to try to use election law to get results they might otherwise not win at the polls. But right now it is clearly the Republicans who believe they have an interest in keeping the voter base small. Mr. Blackwell and other politicians who insist on making it harder to vote never say, of course, that they are worried that get-out-the-vote drives will bring too many poor and minority voters into the system. They say that they want to reduce fraud. However, there is virtually no evidence that registration drives are leading to fraud at the polls.

But there is one clear way that Ohio's election system is corrupt. Decisions about who can vote are being made by a candidate for governor. Mr. Blackwell should hand over responsibility for elections to a decision maker whose only loyalty is to the voters and the law.

I don't suppose that has happened, yet?

Here's Krugman, on the lessons of history - in the GOP's own words.

Bush personally blocked the justice department from investigating his illegal wiretapping program.

Bush's decision represents an unusually direct and unprecedented White House intervention into an investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, the internal affairs office at Justice, administration officials and legal experts said. It forced OPR to abandon its investigation of the role Justice officials played in authorizing and monitoring the controversial NSA eavesdropping effort, according to officials and government documents.

"Since its creation some 31 years ago, OPR has conducted many highly sensitive investigations involving Executive Branch programs and has obtained access to information classified at the highest levels," the office's chief lawyer, H. Marshall Jarrett, wrote in a memorandum released yesterday. "In all those years, OPR has never been prevented from initiating or pursuing an investigation."

You would think that might set off a few more alarms around the republic? At least The Globe gets it. (Seems Bush is more hands-on than we've given him credit for, doesn't it? He also personally authorized the exposure of Valerie Plame.)

One of life's great mysteries, solved.

Chris Hedges, "Mutually Assured Destruction in the Middle East":

This is the world of the apocalypse. It is the world where those on either extreme become indistinguishable. And if we do not find a new way to speak, and soon, there will be untold suffering—not only for many innocents in the Middle East but eventually innocents at home. It was the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon that spawned and empowered Hezbollah. It was the decades-long occupation and humiliation of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank by Israel that spawned and empowered Hamas, and it is the brutal American occupation that has bred the legions of extremists in Iraq. And when Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah promises “open war” against Israel, as he did in an address shortly after his Beirut offices were bombed, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he won’t cease his attack until Israel is secure, it is time to run for cover, especially when George W. Bush is our best hope for peace.

(But Tony Snow says it's not a war, yet.)

Please read this terrific TomGram, too.

What force has done, thanks to the Bush administration's utopian foolishness, is to tie the region's many competing groups, movements, and states into an ever-tightening, Gordion-style knot -- and that knot, in turn, has been ever more tightly hitched to the global economy, so that every tug on any loose end now sends oil prices up another disastrous notch and trembling stock markets into convulsions. (Call it stock-and-awe!) Just Friday, the Dow Jones completed a three-day, 400 point shuddering drop, while oil, not so long ago hovering in the vicinity of $30 for a barrel of crude, managed to hit a staggering $78.40 a barrel by the end of last week -- and remember, this was just based on "nerves," not on more oil supplies actually going off the market, as would certainly happen, one way or another, in a widening conflict in the region.

In fact, the oil heartlands of the planet look to be heading for further rounds of violence and turmoil and, potentially, the American and global economy with them -- and the only tool imaginable to anybody is still: Force.

The Bush administration had no wish for other tools -- that was the meaning, after all, of "unilateralism" -- and so now it has no other tools in its "arsenal." It lost most of its allies while in its unilateral dream-state. Focusing all its attention on the Pentagon and on military-to-military relations globally, it also lost whatever modest capacity might have been available to it not just to head down another path, but to deploy the most basic tools of diplomacy. What it has left is, of course, force; but its own on-the-ground forces are dangerously depleted and it's evidently no longer obvious to top administration officials exactly where American force (and forces) should be applied (much as they may loathe the Iranians and Syrians).

They launched a force party in the Middle East. Now it's in full swing; the club's pilled high with dancers; many of the exits are bolted shut; the bouncers are no longer at the front door; and, on stage, the performers are brandishing blowtorches, while the Earth's last hyperpower and its hyper-commander-in-chief President are watching, helplessly, from the sidelines. As Dan Froomkin, the fine Washington Post on-line columnist, pointed out this week in a column headlined Bush the Bystander, "stopping off in Germany on his way to the G-8 summit in Russia," as the Middle East caught fire, "Bush reserved his greatest enthusiasm for tonight's pig roast -- technically, a wild-boar barbecue -- bringing it up three times. ‘I'm looking forward to that pig tonight,' he gushed."

[snip]

Everywhere this administration is being less attended to. Everywhere, others are sharpening their knives, loading their weapons, and preparing to smite their enemies, inspired by the American example, liberated by its failure.

It's worth the longish read. Meanwhile in Iraq, where things have gotten "far more stable" than in 2003, Baghdad is collapsing, 100 civilians are dying everyday, and attacks on US and Iraqi forces are up 40%. Seems like it's just about time for Cheney to come out of his bunker and tell us the insurgency is in its "last throes."

Or perhaps it's time to keep an eye on the Rapture Index - currently at 157, or "fasten your seatbelts" territory. (For those unfamiliar with the tool, read Jon Carroll.)

(I keep forgetting to post this.) Refresh your memory of Rev. Tim Simpson's letter about the harrassment of a sixth-grade Jewish student and his family, and then read Jesus' General's brilliant letter to the Stop the ACLU Coalition.

Had we known our recent Tour de I-80 would take us through so many potential terrorist targets, we would have carried more duct tape!

I never heard this story before, and loved it.

The Weight of a Snowflake

A coal tit and a dove were sitting together on the branch of a tree.

"Do you know the weight of a snowflake?" asked the coal tit.

"Well!" laughed the dove. "Of course! It weighs nothing at all." And secretly he was thinking that, of course, even a coal tit ought to know that!

"In that case," said the coal tit, "I must tell you a surprising story.

"One cold night I was sitting on the branch of a fir tree, when it started to snow. I had nothing better to do, so I started counting the snowflakes as they landed on the twigs and pine needles of my branch.

I counted up to three million, seven hundred and forty one thousand, nine hundred and fifty two. When the three million, seven hundred and forty one thousand, nine hundred and fifty third snowflake dropped onto my branch, weighing, as you say, nothing at all, the branch broke off and I had to fly away."

The coal tit smiled at the dove and flew away.

The dove thought carefully for several minutes, and finally said to himself, "Perhaps only one more person's voice is needed for peace to come to the world."

When I googled for an origin, I realized I must be one of the only people who've never heard it. Then I wondered what the heck a coal tit was. It appears to be the British version of a chickadee.