AUSTIN, Texas -- Sheesh, all I knew about John Roberts was that everyone says he has lovely manners -- and already I was prepared to be against him. Knee-jerk liberal? No, congratulations to the White House, Sen. John Cornyn, Fred Thompson and everyone else involved in "managing" Roberts' confirmation process. Can't these people do anything without being devious about it?

My first reaction to Roberts was: "Sounds like that's about as good as we can get. Quick, affirm him before they nominate Bork, Bolton or Pinochet." A conservative with good manners and no known nutball decisions or statements on his record? Hey, take him. At least he's not (whew!) a member of the Federalist Society.

No such luck. Cornyn, who I would have sworn is not this stupid, apparently signed off on having the nominee "forget" he was a member of the Federalist Society, and Roberts obliged, which is strange considering his reputation for brilliance and a spectacular memory.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Solidarity Forev ... ooops, make that, Solidarity Later.

Organized labor is weak, but unorganized labor is a hell of a lot weaker. That's what's splitting the AFL-CIO. You may think this is none of your beeswax, but if you work in this country, you owe labor, big time. And I'm talking to you, white-collar worker.

This is not about the old stuff -- 40-hour workweek, unemployment insurance, health benefits, safety regs, etc. This is about right now, today. The money that controls this administration is out to screw you -- it's your pension on the line, your salary on the line and your job on the line. If your company can replace you cheaper, you are gone, buddy. And this administration is pushing jobs overseas just as fast as it can.

The split is not a case of good guys versus bad guys -- it's good guys versus (we hope) some better guys.

ACTION NEEDED ON REP. LEE'S RESOLUTION

Congresswoman Barbara Lee and 29 co-sponsors are backing a Resolution of Inquiry which, if passed, will require the White House and the State Department to "transmit all information relating to communication with officials of the United Kingdom between January 1, 2002, and October 16, 2002, relating to the policy of the United States with respect to Iraq."

If the Downing Street Documents are not accurate, this is the White House's opportunity to prove it.

If your Representative is not a co-sponsor (http://tinyurl.com/8mzrn), we need you to ask him or her to become a co-sponsor of H.Res. 375. Many, even possibly some Republicans, will co-sponsor this, but they have to be asked.

Please do all three of the following:

Email your congress member:
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/50

Phone your congress member:
http://www.usalone.com/get_instantcongress.htm

While commentators, prompted by Republicans, claimed Bush won the 2004 election through the votes of a silent majority concerned with “family values,” Mark Crispin Miller writes that when voters were asked to state, “in their own words the most important factor in their vote,”only 14 percent named “moral values.”  He details how the press (except for Keith Olbermann on MSNBC) ignored “the strange details of the election—except, that is, to ridicule all efforts to discuss them…It was as if they were reporting from inside a forest fire without acknowledging the fire, except to keep insisting that there was no fire.” 

Then he lists the copious evidence pointing to a stolen election, easily available on the web or in paperback, from Michigan Representative John Conyers’ report, Preserving Democracy:  What Went Wrong in Ohio.  More than dirty tricks, it covers “the run-up to the election, the election itself, and the post-election cover-up,” listing “specific violations of the U.S. and Ohio constitutions, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Help America Vote Act.”

Hundreds of people were turned away today as capacity crowds packed public forums in U.S. cities to discuss the Downing Street Memo and related evidence that President Bush lied about the reasons for war.  Halls were filled to capacity and beyond in LA, Oakland, Seattle, Detroit, Northampton, New York, and elsewhere, for events led by Congress Members, including Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Jim McDermott, John Conyers, and Maurice Hinchey.

For the second time in the two months since we launched the www.AfterDowningStreet.org campaign, I've been overwhelmed by what we've tapped into.  The first time was when we put up a website about the Downing Street minutes and a demand for an investigation into grounds for impeachment.  I'd never seen a coalition grow so quickly or a website receive so much traffic.  Today we saw crowds of people in red and blue states chant "Impeach Bush!" at events with leaders not yet ready to use the I word.  The much maligned American Public is way out ahead of us – I'm telling you.

Unless they discover John Roberts dropped acid at Harvard or had been funneling insider stock tips to his wife, it looks as though he's a shoo-in for confirmation as a member of the U.S. Supreme Court. In his last job in the private sector, as a partner at Hogan & Hartson, an elite Washington, D.C. law firm, his gross income in 2003 was $1,044,399.54, so his gamble in accepting a seat on the federal appeals court on the D.C. circuit has certainly paid off. Already he's being talked up as maybe the next chief justice, replacing William Rehnquist, the justice he formerly clerked for.

Both the liberals and the Christian Right had amassed colossal war chests of around $20 million, expecting a convulsive confirmation hearing stretching far into the fall. They'll be hard put to spend the money, since Roberts's footprints have been purposively indistinct almost since he left the cradle.

A snooty conservative professor called Roger Scruton, an Englishman, wrote in the Times Literary Supplement earlier this year that "human beings are alone among the animals in revealing their individuality in their faces. The mouth that speaks, the eyes that glaze, the skin that flushes, all are signs of freedom, character and judgment, and all give concrete expression to the uniqueness of the self within."

What nonsense! In comparison with 90 percent of the people I see, I detect vastly more individual expressiveness on the faces of my dog (Jasper), horse (Agnes) and cat (Frank). When it comes to the physiognomic resources of the leader of the Free World, I'd claim superiority for my cockatiel (Percy).

With Reagan, a man whose face -- to judge from public appearances, was entirely immobile 99 percent of the time, I'd put up even my Gouldian finches as have a more sophisticated range of facial resources. With their cocking of the head my Gloucester finches are on a par with the late Great Communicator.

After he died on July 18, front pages focused on the failures of William Westmoreland as commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Overall, the coverage faulted him for being a big loser, not a mass killer.

The Washington Post noted that Westmoreland “was called a war criminal.” But the deaths of thousands of Vietnamese people each week during his four years as the top American general in Vietnam counted for little in the media calculus. The main problem, readers were encouraged to understand, was that Westmoreland pursued a losing strategy. “Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. called Westmoreland possibly ‘our most disastrous general since Custer,’” the Post reported.

From early 1964 until 1968, Westmoreland was in charge of a U.S. military machine that methodically slaughtered Vietnamese people. As the Post’s front page antiseptically recalled, “Westmoreland’s military strategy was to conduct a war of attrition, trying to kill enemy forces faster than they could be replaced.”

Augmenting his strictly military functions, Westmoreland did his best to spin the media. Along the way, he was eager to condemn Americans
My first view of General William Westmoreland was from coach class. He was in first, sitting ramrod straight, impossible to miss.

We were headed to the University of Florida at Gainesville to debate the Bomb. Why the man who commanded the armies of the Crusade in Southeast Asia from 1964 to 1968 needed in 1984 to debate a lefty activist like me was a mystery. Maybe he needed the money. Maybe he needed the challenge.

He looked like he'd live forever. Certainly into his nineties, which he did, passing away this week at 91. He was tall, poised, flinty-eyed, with zero apparent body fat. Unbent, unbowed, you'd've thought him a conquering hero.

The debate was about the Nuclear Freeze, a great campaign. Why it failed to bury all nuclear weapons remains a great mystery of human nature. Today's world would be infinitely richer and safer if only it had been wiser back then.

That night in Gainesville I lived out a peacenik dream: I got to ask the man who commanded 550,000 troops in Vietnam why we should heed his opinion about needing nuclear weapons when he had so catastrophically led America to its first military defeat.

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