So, you think you have a crappy job?

This is what happens when torture becomes acceptable in the mainstream. It’s also quite a stark commentary on the state of corporate employee / employer relationships:

A supervisor at a motivational coaching business in Provo is accused of waterboarding an employee in front of his sales team to demonstrate that they should work as hard on sales as the employee had worked to breathe. In a lawsuit filed last month, former Prosper, Inc. salesman Chad Hudgens alleges his managers also allowed the supervisor to draw mustaches on employees’ faces, take away their chairs and beat on their desks with a wooden paddle “because it resulted in increased revenues for the company.” …

I’ve heard of some extreme motivational techniques in the workplace, but this just seems a bit over the top to me. No word yet whether or not the company endorses electrodes clamped to employee’s genitalia as an additional incentive not to slack off on the job.

Is this how Prosper, Inc. won the E&Y Utah Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2005?

There’s a Dick Cheney joke in here someplace, but I’m too tired from traveling today to develop it right now.

Corruption in the Republican Party has seemingly resided at the top over the last few years. National figures are responsible for US Attorney scandals and leaking classified information about CIA agents. National figures and Congressman and Senators have gone down for payoffs in the Abramoff scandals, and More Republican Senators and Governors have been caught with their pants literally down. In the Democratic Party, corruption seems to be local, but when it happens it still gets one upset, and I’m upset this morning. Let’s start with Anna C. Verna, there on the left.

Ms. Verna is the head of City Council here in Philadelphia, a very powerful position in our government. She put together a commission to recommend a candidate for an important position to the veterans in our city, the Director of Veteran’s Affairs. That commission recommneded Robert Politz, a man with 20 years in the field and with a Masters degree in counselling. That should have been that. The job description calls for a college degree and experience in the field after all. But, no.

Anna Verna decided to use the appointment to make a political favor, instead. Edgar Howard has never worked with veterans, and has no college degree, but he’s a former city commissioner until he got booted by the voters, and he’s probably done a few favors for Anna Verna in the past. So Anna Verna appointed Howard, then she increased the salary of the position by 60%. Veterans are upset, and we all should be. Here’s a bit from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

The maneuver has infuriated city veterans.

“It got me upset that we couldn’t get the candidate we all thought was best, but what really burns my bridges is that he’s got the gall to take the director’s money and the deputy’s money,” said Ernest Landers, a member of the Veterans Advisory Commission and an American Legion leader. “It’s a slap in the face to veterans.”

The city’s American Legion chapter has begun drafting a resolution condemning Verna’s decision and declaring that Council “does not consider the interests of veterans to be of any concern or interest to them.”

Politz has also responded angrily, but it looks like Michael Nutter is not going to get involved.

Last week, Politz, 60, wrote an impassioned letter to Mayor Nutter, imploring him to exercise “fearless leadership” and intervene. The letter castigated Verna and Council for their “shameful disregard of the efforts of the Veterans Advisory Commission” and their “complete and utter failure to put the interest of the people ahead of the greed and self-preservation of a few.”

Politz said he debated whether or not to write the letter for weeks, concerned that it would come across as sour grapes.

“I’m not interested in pursuing anything in terms of employment. This really now is a matter of legitimizing the advisory commission and not using the office as some kind of depository for politicos,” Politz said.

Nutter, however, will not be getting involved.

Administration spokesman Doug Oliver said the matter “rests squarely within the purview of the Council president.”

“The mayor trusts the Council president’s judgment and respects her right to make the call,” Oliver said.

That’s bound to disappoint Politz, who sees the episode as a case of politicians taking care of their own at the expense of taxpayers and citizens who rely on city services.

“You know the reality of this stuff exists,” Politz said. “But when you see it firsthand, it’s an eye-opener.”

Our veterans deserve better than Anna Verna has given them, and our city deserves better. Indeed, Michael Nutter’s hands may be tied, and he may have made a decision here about this not being the battle to fight with City Council, but I’m thinking a bit more light on this subject will at least alert citizens just how their City Council works, by dishing out favors. Heck, though, that’s nothing new. Vince Fumo, indicted now on 139 counts, perfected the art of dishing out favors in his time in the State Senate. Do you imagine any politician criticizing Mr. Fumo? Not the ones who wat to stay in office, that’s for sure.

Ed Rendell, for instance, is quoted in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer that if asked he will endorse Vince Fumo in the Democratic primary for State Senator. I’m a bit floored. Sure, his nickname is “Fast Eddie,” and Rendell is known as a bit of a dealer, but to endorse a man who is the subject of a 139 count indictment is to ignore our system of justice. Rendell used to be a prosecutor, and he should know better. But here’s Ed Rendell’s words on supporting indicted State Senator Vince Fumo, also from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

“He hasn’t asked, and I haven’t done a formal endorsement, but all things being equal, I probably would,” Rendell said. “We would be lost in Harrisburg without him because of his skill. He has done great things, and we are lucky to have him.”

No, Ed, we’ll be lucky if we can get rid of people like Vince Fumo in our party. We need to dream, Ed, and that dream needs to be about getting rid of corruption, whether it is of the Anna Verna type or the Vince Fumo type. And we need Ed Rendell and Michael Nutter, two of the biggest political voices in our state, to do the leading in rooting out corruption. In these isntances, Nutter has demurred, and Rendell is actively offering to support a corrupt official. Not good news.

A report on the rising number of incarcerated Americans provides a disturbing look at the unspoken impact of economic inequality and the high cost we pay for perpetuating it. At the same time, during each election cycle, politicians from both parties accuse each other of practicing suspect fiscal discipline.

For this discussion, I want to look at the costs of incarceration in relation to providing universal health care as well as the Bush tax cuts. Time and again, the GOP points out the exorbitant costs that might be associated with providing universal health care. From what I’ve read, the plans being pushed by Senators Clinton and Obama are reported to cost 10 to 15 billion dollars annually. That’s a big expense…but before one concludes we can’t afford it, one must consider the burgeoning costs of incarceration and the distribution and impact of the Bush tax cuts.

From The Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

NEW YORK — For the first time in U.S. history, more than one of every 100 adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report documenting America’s rank as the world’s No. 1 incarcerator. It urges states to curtail corrections spending by placing fewer low-risk offenders behind bars.

Using state-by-state data, the report says 2,319,258 Americans were in jail or prison at the start of 2008 - one out of every 99.1 adults. Whether per capita or in raw numbers, it’s more than any other nation.

The report, released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, said the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said.

So in the course of 20 years, we have increased our annual corrections spending by a whopping $38 billion dollars. That is roughly three times the projected annual cost to provide universal health care…health care that would help elevate the very people who are disproportionately represented in the prison population. Factor in the following data on the Bush tax cuts and one will begin to see the larger picture.

From MSNBC.com:

WASHINGTON - Since 2001, President Bush’s tax cuts have shifted federal tax payments from the richest Americans to a wide swath of middle-class families, the Congressional Budget Office has found, a conclusion likely to roil the presidential election campaign.

The conclusions are stark. The effective federal tax rate of the top 1 percent of taxpayers has fallen from 33.4 percent to 26.7 percent, a 20 percent drop. In contrast, the middle 20 percent of taxpayers — whose incomes averaged $51,500 in 2001 — saw their tax rates drop 9.3 percent. The poorest taxpayers saw their taxes fall 16 percent.

Unfortunately, these percentages are deceptive. Let’s look at a practical explanation of what these tax cuts meant to the working poor.

From BusinessWeek.com:

Imagine you are a waitress, married, with two children and a family income of $26,000 per year. Should you be enthusiastic about the tax cuts proposed by President Bush? He certainly wants you to think so. He uses an example of a family like yours to illustrate the benefits of his plan for working Americans. He boasts that struggling low-income families will enjoy the largest percentage reduction in their taxes. The income taxes paid by a family like yours will fall by 100% or more in some cases. This is true–but highly misleading.

President Bush fails to mention that your family pays only about $20 a year in income taxes, so even a 100% reduction does not amount to much. Like three-quarters of working Americans, you pay much more in payroll taxes–about $3,000 a year–than in income taxes. Yet not a penny of the $1.6 trillion package of Bush tax cuts (in reality, closer to $2 trillion over 10 years) is used to reduce payroll taxes. Moreover, should your income from waitressing fall below $26,000 as the economy slows, your family could be among the 75% of families in the lowest 20% of the income distribution that stand to get absolutely zero from the Bush plan.

The President claims that the “typical American family of four” will be able to keep $1,600 more of their money each year under his plan. Since you won’t be getting anything like that, you might be tempted to conclude that your family must be an exception. Not really. The reality is that the President’s claim is disingenuous. Eighty-nine percent of all tax filers, including 95% of those in the bottom 80% of the income distribution, will receive far less than $1,600.

In other words, when a 100% tax cut is the equivalent of $20.00, a family of four might be able to translate that twenty dollars into a meal at McDonalds…one time in 365 days. On the other hand, if one is lucky enough to be in the top one percent (those with $915,000 in pretax income…and first class health care) of earners and receive a 20% tax reduction, I suspect the savings would buy more than one fast food dinner over the course of a year. The skewed advantages…and disadvantages…suddenly become obvious.

If that isn’t bad enough, let’s return to the costs of incarceration and look at future cost projections.

From The New York Times:

By 2011, the report said, states are on track to spend an additional $25 billion.

The cost of medical care is growing by 10 percent annually, the report said, and will accelerate as the prison population ages.

In less than four years, we will spend another $25 billion annually (more than enough to pay for universal health care) to incarcerate more and more Americans…the bulk of which come from the economically underprivileged.

More From The New York Times:

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.

The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that only one in 355 white women between the ages of 35 and 39 are behind bars but that one in 100 black women are.

Let me be clear…crime is wrong…and it should be punished. However, we cannot ignore the factors that facilitate crime. Failing to provide opportunities to those most lacking in resources is also wrong…and it often leads to a lack of education and therefore a susceptibility to participating in crimes that are driven by poverty.

We have likely exceeded the point at which it will cost us more to punish and incarcerate those who commit these crimes of poverty than it would have cost us to insure their education, to raise the minimum wage above the poverty level, and to grant them the dignity and peace of mind that comes with knowing one’s family members can receive health care when it is warranted; not just when it is necessary to prevent death.

Instead, under the guidance of the GOP, we have elected to ignore the fact that 47 million Americans lack health care and to focus upon further enriching the wealthiest…all the while being forced to endure asinine arguments that doing so will create jobs and thus facilitate a rising tide to float the boats of all Americans. It simply isn’t true.

At a savings of $20 a year, millions of Americans can’t even buy a seat in the boat…let alone stay afloat by treading water in the midst of the steady deluge of ever more ominous waves. If the number and availability of life preservers continues to dwindle, we are fast approaching the point at which our society will collapse under the weight of the inequity we chose to ignore.

If that happens, it will be as my grandfather argued many years ago, “They can eat you, but they can’t shit you”. The cannibalism has begun. What follows will not be pleasant.

Cross-posted at Thought Theater

I am quite floored by this. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi demanded that the Justice Department (gasp!) enforce the law:

Today, Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent the following letter to U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, informing him of the referral letter sent to U.S. Attorney of the District of Columbia Jeffrey Taylor on contempt citations of former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten. Taylor is required by law to bring the matter before a grand jury. However, Mukasey has indicated that the Justice Department intends to prevent Taylor from complying with the law…

In essence, Miers and Bolten refused to comply with congressional subpoenas to appear.

Let me ask a stupid question. Supposing that I was subpoenaed to appear in a local or county court for either a criminal or civil matter, however minor. And, let’s suppose that I refused to appear. What would happen?

A local magistrate could (and would) issue a bench warrant for my arrest. My name would be entered into a police database such that if I were driving down the road, with a bench warrant on my head, if I were driving a car registered in my name an pulled over by the local Hooterville constabulary, I’d be cuffed and taken to the local lockup until I made an appearance before the judge.

So how is it that miscreants from the Bush administration can ignore legally issued congressional subpoenas, be cited for contempt of congress, yet still walk the streets with apparent immunity from prosecution (or arrest or detention) by the U.S. Justice Department?

Isn’t that kind of making a mockery of the law for the rest of us? I’m just saying…

Those hoping for a kinder gentler presidential election complete with a heaping helping of compassionate conservatism might want to prepare themselves for a plate of partisan politics that will be far less palatable. I find myself suspecting that the GOP may be laying the groundwork for a bait and switch strategy aimed at satisfying voters newfound penchant for a civil campaign.

With the emergence of John McCain as the seemingly inevitable Republican nominee, voters may be under the impression that we’re moving beyond choreographed character assassinations and stealth swiftboating strategies. My hunch is that the GOP’s alternate approach includes John McCain appearing to take the high road while the usual suspects redouble their efforts to eviscerate the enemy.

I’ll try to explain. This week, we may have witnessed a preview of the plan. My concern is that the orchestration was evidenced in Bill Cunningham’s introduction of Senator McCain (and his effort to define Barack Obama)…which was followed by Senator McCain rapidly renouncing Cunningham’s remarks…even though the campaign had arranged the appearance of the raucous radio personality.

What happened before and after McCain’s criticism seems implausible to me. How could the McCain campaign have been so oblivious to what Cunningham was going to say? Why did Cunningham almost instantly withdraw his support for the Senator…stating instead that he would now join Ann Coulter in supporting Hillary Clinton? One, I can’t imagine the McCain campaign didn’t discuss the introduction with Cunningham. Second, I doubt anyone who is so well connected to a campaign such that they are chosen to introduce the candidate makes such an instantaneous about face. Hence, it’s important to analyze his actions; searching for the underlying objective.

Note that in shifting his support to Clinton, Cunningham has left himself room to change his mind should Obama be the Democratic candidate (the same candidate he sought to define as a soft on terror Muslim sympathizer). If we project ahead, let’s suppose Obama is the Democratic nominee; leaving the Coulter’s and Cunningham’s of the GOP without a candidate. We could assume they won’t vote…or we could assume something far more strategically savvy. Using Cunningham’s own word, I look for these current outliers to suddenly announce their own “kumbaya” moment…the one that states, “I actually supported Hillary Clinton…and that’s a difficult calculation to make…but when I imagine an Obama presidency as the alternative to John McCain, I have to support John McCain”.

So what does this achieve? Well, it sends GOP voters two important messages. First, it says that some establishment conservatives were actually willing to support one of the most reviled Democrats (Clinton)…a candidate the base could never support. Second, once Obama became the candidate, those same establishment conservatives decided to come back and support John McCain…because Barack Obama must be worse than Hillary Clinton. So what is the conclusion GOP voters will be asked to draw? If the choice in November is between John McCain and a candidate that is worse than Hillary Clinton, they have to get out and support John McCain.

By utilizing this approach, it allows people like Cunningham and Coulter to continue to rail against Obama as they supposedly support Clinton…all the while further defining Obama as worse than Hillary…doing the work for the McCain campaign while he keeps his hands clean and moves to higher ground. At the same time, the media darling McCain can stay below the radar and avoid being directly associated with the scorched earth strategy.

The bottom line is that the GOP desperately needs to define Obama…negatively. Having the GOP candidate do this dirty work isn’t ideal in 2008 given that a majority of voters don’t seem inclined to accept more of the partisanship fostered by the likes of Karl Rove. If this can be achieved by unattached surrogates who also have the ear of those Republican’s less apt to be enthused with a McCain candidacy, all the better.

If they succeed, then the entire GOP can sit down at the table…together with the independent and moderate voters they must have to win in November…ready to indulge in the equivalent of a twice baked batch of kinder, gentler, compassionate and conservative, comfort food…a delectable dish of “Krafty Mac & Sleeze”.

Cross-posted at Thought Theater

Just look at the way he moves his arms. He’s hunched a bit, his suit bunches at the shoulders, and his letft arm and its movements remind you of someone who just doesn’t move like a human. OK, I can’t go on with this much longer. Sure, I’m reminded of Bob Dole’s war injury when I see John McCain on the campaign trail, but that doesn’t mean he’s an alien (the picture there is of McCain as a baby in his grandfather’s arms). Indeed, I think this is a bogus issue, though it is being reported by the New York Times that John McCain has hired robust counsel to research the constitution on the notion of whether his birth in the Panama Canal Zone makes him ineligible for the Presidency. Here’s a couple paragraphs from the New York Times:

Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.

Almost since those words were written in 1787 with scant explanation, their precise meaning has been the stuff of confusion, law school review articles, whisper campaigns and civics class debates over whether only those delivered on American soil can be truly natural born. To date, no American to take the presidential oath has had an official birthplace outside the 50 states.

“There are powerful arguments that Senator McCain or anyone else in this position is constitutionally qualified, but there is certainly no precedent,” said Sarah H. Duggin, an associate professor of law at Catholic University who has studied the issue extensively. “It is not a slam-dunk situation.”

Mr. McCain was born on a military installation in the Canal Zone, where his mother and father, a Navy officer, were stationed. His campaign advisers say they are comfortable that Mr. McCain meets the requirement and note that the question was researched for his first presidential bid in 1999 and reviewed again this time around.

But given mounting interest, the campaign recently asked Theodore B. Olson, a former solicitor general now advising Mr. McCain, to prepare a detailed legal analysis. “I don’t have much doubt about it,” said Mr. Olson, who added, though, that he still needed to finish his research.

I need to mention again that I don’t see this as an issue, and I’m astounded that the McCain people see it as an issue enough to hire Ted Olson. That’s a waste of campaign dollars if you ask me, and that equals a mark against John McCain’s management skills. Be that as it may, it is important to note that no Democrat that I can find thinks this is an issue, but the Republicans? That’s a different matter. They’re talking about it over on Free Republic, and the Ron Paul folks have been salivating over the issue as well. There’s even a column about the issue at the right wing web site renewamerica.us. What a bunch of conservative infighting crap.

I say Democrats should let this issue remain with the Republicans. It is a complete nonissue, but let them whine and argue and litigate. I guarantee if this were to go so far as the Supreme Court the Supremes, strict constructionists though they be, will rule for John McCain, as they should. This is, as Barack Obama has said concerning other issues, “silly season” stuff, and if the Republicans want to attack their own candidates bvased on stupid issues, let them go at it.

Oh, I suppose hijinks like Comcast’s blocking opposition by monopolizing seats at the FCC net neutrality hearing in Cambridge the other day aren’t just Philly-style hijinks. The whole brouhaha is sure getting a lot of press, though, and Comcast is getting the short end of it. Let’s give a little background.

The FCC planned a hearing at Harvard on the issue of net neutrality. They planned it for a room that held 290 people, and Comcast paid people off the streets to take seats in the front rows. Petty tactic, but Comcast is claiming the guys off the streets were saving seats for Comcast employees, a claim that would work if the Comcast employees actually showed up to replace the shills off the streets who slept through the meeting. From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Attention was called to Comcast’s tactic by Free Press officials who attended the hearing. One photographed two seat-warmers sleeping during the hearing.

“We spent time educating the public about the event and the issue,” said Free Press spokeswoman Jen Howard, “and we did not have to pay anyone to attend.”

Bracy, of the Berkman Center, said the group of seat-warmers caught her attention when she showed up at the Ames Courtroom at 7:15 a.m. Monday to prepare for the hearing.

About 35 people - mostly men dressed in jeans and baseball caps and one in a camouflage jacket - were parked in the first three rows of the auditorium drinking coffee and reading the Boston Globe, she said.

They were “regular Joes” who looked like they could have come from Dunkin’ Donuts, Bracy said. She was surprised to find them there several hours before the late-morning event. “I thought, great, we’re reaching out to new communities.”

But Bracy’s suspicions of the Internet activists grew when none of them appeared to know about wireless Internet capabilities and two in the front row fell asleep during the hearing.

Why would Comcast do such a thing. OK, I know net neutrality is a contentious issue, and I know that Comcast is the wrong side of it, but I’m no expert on the issue. Indeed, I’ve always wondered why net usage hasn’t, at least somewhat, been priced by bandwidth usage. Comcast sure would love that, wouldn’t they? No, I’m not all that up on the issue of net neutrality, so this article isn’t about that subject, really. If you want to read about net neutrality, go check out the wikipedia article, or go to savetheinternet.com. No, I won’t talk much about net neutrality. I’ll write here about Comcast, their dirty little tricks, how they were incompetent at pulling those dirty tricks off, and how now they’re going to have to go into the belly of the beast, Silicon Valley, and argue their case. Of course, the Comcast story here probably starts with David Cohen.

David Cohen has a big rep here in Philly. He was a monster presence at Ballard Spahr, a large national law firm with its headquarters here in Philly. During the 90’s David Cohen worked for the Ed Rendell Mayoral Administration here in the city as Chief of Staff. I remember hearing a speech David Cohen gave to the local American Red Cross chapter about ten years ago. He had the wife and kids up on the stage, and he told a story that is also told in Buzz Bissinger’s book “A Prayer for the City,” a moving look at the challenges the Ed Rendell administration faced in Philly in the 90’s. The story was of an officer who had been shot, and of the intimate exchange that happened at the hospital between Mayor Rendell and the young son of the officer who died. No, not a dry eye in the house. To me, David Cohen will always be the man who told that story and moved me, though he is also now the Executive Vice President of Comcast, a company that has long thrown its monopolistic weight around here in the Philly area and across the country.

I’m not a Comcast fan. When I first lived in Philly I paid for their services, which went up and up and up seemingly every year. They had no competition, so they charged whatever they pleased, or so it seemed. Heck, that’s why I’m with Direct TV now. But I’ve been a David Cohen fan in the past. And this silly stunt Comcast pulled at the hearing in Cambridge is not something I would expect of Cohen. It is not that I think Cohen is above playing a little hardball on the issues that effect his company. It is that David Cohen has never been so clumsy and incompetent as Comcast has shown themselves with this incident. Let’s make sure to focus on the issue. One of Comcast’s most important tasks is to LOOK like it is a good corporate citizen, even if it is on the wrong side of such a populist issue as net neutrality. Comcast’s tactics blew that fiction apart. Indeed, Comcast will be rewarded with that with a hearing at Stanford, a place where Comcast critics are sure to have a crowd far more energized than the one in Cambridge.

Yeah, Comcast screwed up trying to protect David Cohen by filling the front rows of the auditorium in Cambridge with docile bodies of shills off the street. They should have left well enough alone, for they’ve gotten bad publicity and an even worse forum, from their viewpoint, for the next hearing. This is simple incompetence on the scale of a George Bush. David Cohen used to be a Democrat, but I’m beginning to wonder given this incompetent performance.

Y’know the flap earlier this week about a picture of Obama in native garb while he was on an African fact finding tour? And the allegations that the photo had come from the Hillary Clinton camp? (BTW, in keeping with the spirit of my previous post on candidate blogging, this is NOT about the candidates…)

Some of the big boys in the left wing blogosphere were really running with the story. Skippy has the complete rundown. The bottom line is that I agree totally with the skipster:

What. In. The. Hell. are big boy lefty blogs doing using Matt Drudge as a source of accurate information (or even inaccurate rumors) on anything??

The level of ridiculosity in the Dem campaign has grow tiresome.

The level of incredulosity that respected left wing blogs would give these kind of stories any legs just grows.

(Yeah, I know I butchered the King’s English. Get over it. )

It’s become almost impossible to keep up with the scandals that have plagued the Bush administration since the day he took office in 2001. And today, it became even more impossible for forensic investigation to reconstruct some of the scandals.

Jump into the ASZ WayBack Machine. Right around this time last year, the U.S. Attorney firing scandal was in full bloom. Investigations were being launched, and congressional witnesses from the Bush administration were lying and obsfucating. Subpoenas were being issued and ignored. In the midst of the scandal (which went cold from lack of cooperation by all of the GOP parties involved), it came to light that many GOP operatives within the White House had, since the beginning of the administration, been using RNC email domains to conduct official government / White House business.

As any computer geek knows, email lasts forever, even when it’s been deleted from an active email server. In response to House Oversight Committee concerns over the missing emails, in early April, 2007, White House spokesperson Scott Stanzel told the WaPo’s Dan Froomkin:

“I don’t want to talk about the scope of the review except to say we hope to be thorough,” Stanzel said.

Stanzel said the president has been briefed, “and he has instructed the counsel’s office to do everything practical to retrieve potentially lost e-mails.” …

Well, I guess it wasn’t practical, because today the Washington Post is reporting that the RNC has told the committee chairman, Henry Waxman, that…

…it no longer plans to retrieve the communications by restoring computer backup tapes…

But here’s the real rub:

…The RNC dispute is part of a broader debate over whether the Bush administration has complied with long-standing statutory requirements to preserve official White House records — including those reflecting potentially sensitive policy discussions — for history and in case of future legal demands…

Basically, by the time the Bush administration leaves office, there will be no records of any type. The shredders have been working overtime since the Dems took control of congress in 2006. Hard drives have been scrubbed. No one in the White House uses email much anymore - because it leaves a trail.

So much for transparency.

Michael Crawley of the New Republic called up David Duke to ask him his opinion on a Presidential race that just might bring us an African-American President. Yeah, he called David Duke, who claimed to be somewhere in Europe at the time, and was using secret email addresses. This is supposed to be of some import?

The content of this interview with David Duke on the prospects of Barack Obama, a potential Obama Presidency and its effect on America. . . the contents of the interview are pretty luke warm. I’m thinking those contents are so luke warm as to be a waste of bandwidth on the innertube. Well, it would be a complete waste, since there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of animus against Mr. Obama in the fringe white supremacist groups surveyed by Mr. Crawley. Here’s how Crawley describes Duke’s reaction to the Obama candidacy in the New Republic:

Yet, far from railing at Obama’s rise, Duke seems almost nonchalant about it. Self-described white nationalists like himself, he explained cordially, “don’t see much difference in Barack Obama than Hillary Clinton–or, for that matter, John McCain.” Sure, Duke considers Obama “a racist individual,” citing his Afrocentric Chicago church. But soon the founder of the National Association for the Advancement of White People was critiquing Obama as overhyped and insubstantial in terms you might hear from, say, Clinton strategist Mark Penn. “They say he’s for change. What change? He’s become almost a cult figure. I don’t see any shining light around Obama’s head. I don’t see any halos,” Duke said.

Crawley couldn’t get a story out of Duke that was incendiary enough when he asked about Obama. No frothing and no death threats. The story just wasn’t scary enough, eh? Dig a little deeper and he got another nice angle, I suppose, that racists of the David Duke ilk are noting the supposed significance of Jewish advisors of Barack Obama. But let’s be clear. That is not news. The twisted rhetorical strategy of the DAvid Duke types have always ended their winding road by blaming Jews for everything. NOT NEWS! So why give the guy print space in a major publication?

Michael Crawley evidently couldn’t even figure out who David Duke was. He introduces Duke to his readers as the founder of the National Association for the Advancement of White People. That’s true. It is also true that the organization appears defunct. One of those internet URL speculator firms is in control of the www.naawp.com web site, trying to trick naive racists into shopping through their links (network solutions ought to be ashamed to have ANY content on that site, much less content that pretends to be white supremacist). The ADL notes that Duke is a founder of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, and that he’s very popular among the racist groups in Eastern Europe and Russia. Yeah, you can find Duke on that web site, but note this: he’s distanced himself from American life. Look at his writings and you’ll see he’s just no longer interested in America, because he’s got groups adoring him in Eastern Europe. David Duke goes where the money is, but here in the US David Duke is a non-factor.

Why write about a non-factor, especially one known as a source of racial hate, if the only result is giving the guy a bit of publicity. That’s the case here. This is just a bunch of wanking, and it’s such an empty article one’s gotta figure it was assigned by the editors, because the only way to make this readable would have been to make a satire of it, and Crawley passed up that strategy. Yeah, the only way to make this thing interesting would be to make it an “In search of” piece, preferably with a Hunter Thompson flavor.