bookofdays

Paul Gregory House v...Sammy Alito?

Just back from California and  much to tell. But for right now, I want to  note that last Wednesday, while I interviewed brave antiwar veterans, the Supreme Court heard arguments in House v. Bell -- the case I wrote about here, when it was docketed. And according to the Linda Greenhouse ar the Times, the debate was mildly encouragng for House, and all for whom DNA proved their convictions were wrongly obtained.

An argument before the Supreme Court in a 20-year-old murder case suggested on Wednesday that the court might be willing to open the door a bit wider to death row inmates seeking access to federal court to present plausible but belated claims of innocence.

It was a gritty argument with an unusually intense focus on the evidence that a Tennessee jury considered in convicting Paul G. House of the murder of a neighbor, Carolyn Muncey. Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen G. Breyer were particularly steeped in the details and were deeply engaged on opposite sides of the case, debating it back and forth almost to the exclusion of the lawyers standing before them.

Like I said back then, it's unusual to find a SCOTUS case - even a death penalty case - that talks so explicitly about blood spatters and semen samples. (Then again, the Justices likely watch TV too.)

If Breyer et al. prevail, then my prediction of October may also come true.

Listen to the bigger, broader question the Court also accepted, leading to a rash of headlines like this:

What constitutes a "truly persuasive showing of actual innocence" pursuant to Herrera v. Collins sufficient to warrant freestanding habeas relief?

Listen to that gateway turning, in the Justices' mind, to a floodgate as the history of rotten jurisprudence - sleeping attorneys, watch-checking failure to cross-examine the forensics people, illiterate signed confessions and racist juries - is peeled open like some death-row Superdome. I don't know which Justice insisted it was OK to add the second question, but it's the one that could change the face of death row appeals (or not) very quickly.

Perhaps it's time to ask Sammy Alito, for whom "Scalito" appears to be, according to Dahlia Lithwick and others,  a kind nickname by all accounts,to give his perspective on the execution of innocents. The word, according to Douglas Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy. and Boalt Law School professor Goodwin Liu in the L.A. Times, is not promisng.

Such questioning, if done artfully, might just peel away Alito's"nice guy" facade once and for all.

satyagraha in NOLA

Mahatma Gandhi and MLK would both be proud of what they've done in the Ninth Ward. Not the government - the people standing in front of bulldozers.

When I 've taught introductory composition to community college students, I often insisted on either beginning or ending with an examination of Martin Luther King's "Three Ways of Meeting Oppression." It was in the text as an example of structured argument, one that examined both acquiescence and violence before asserting

The third way open to oppressed people in their quest for freedom is the way         of nonviolent resistance. Like the synthesis in Hegelian philosophy, the principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites acquiescence and violence while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both. The nonviolent resister agrees with the person who acquiesces  that one should not be physically aggressive toward his opponent; but he balances the equation by agreeing with the person of violence that evil must be resisted. He avoids the nonresistance of the former and the         violent resistance of the latter. With nonviolent resistance, no individual or group need submit to any wrong, nor need anyone resort to violence  in order to right a wrong.      

I was then often tasked with explaining what King (and I) meant by "nonviolent resistance." Did he mean boycotts? Walking around with a sign? I sometimes, even before they hit the news, cited "peace teams" like the Christian Peacemaker Teams, who place their physical bodies between armies and civilians; much of the coverage, since four CPT workerx were taken hostage, has the same kind of incomprehension as my students expressed about King. And talking about Gandhi and satyagraha, actual resistance in this country, about civil rights workers battered by police in Montgomery, just felt like a history lesson.

If I were teaching this spring, I'd start with that essay, and I would have  this example to point to: Ninth Ward residents putting their bodies between their homes and the bulldozers.

john mccain figleafs a national emergency

Those of you who faithfully read this blog only need to know this: the Graham Amendment, the one all set to undo Rasul and kiss habeas corpus goodbye, just got worse. Forget all the press about John McCain's heroic stand on torture (where were you when Gonzales was confirmed, sir?) - in the dead of night, that gnarly little amendment says, basically, that all such declarations are moot: evidence from torture can still be used as evidence in military tribunals. Contact your Senators now, especially if (as for New Yorkers) they're on one of the relevant committees: tell them to refuse, if necessary, to sign the conference committee report.

How do we know all this? Because they love it. Thanks as always, Hilzoy, for pointing out that

According to an amended draft of the measure being circulated Thursday among the sponsors, Graham has agreed to language that loosens the restrictions on terror evidence that’s obtained through “coercive” interrogations that may occur in other countries. Whereas Graham’s previous draft had forbidden the use of such evidence—in accordance with standard rules of military justice—the new draft says that it should be barred only “to the extent practicable.” The latest bill language also now says that the “probative value” of evidence should be considered—in other words, whether the information is persuasive.

on a magic carpet (bomb) ride

I know, it's been forever: I'm reporting simultaneously for two different pieces, one about domestic violence in New York's immigrant communities and one, called informally "The Things They Carry," about a prototypical new veteran I've been following around. And I write this about to head into a meeitng of the Veterans Advisory Board of the NY City Council.

But knowing Seymour Hersh's new piece was hitting today, I had to read it right away, and deliver some of the most disturbing bits to you. And of course, in the time I took to put this together, Jehanne was already giving a more plangent frame to it all.

Everyone who, unlike TV-resistant me,  watched Wolf Blitzer last night already knows Hersh's harshest: that when the inevitable troop withdrawals happen, they'll be replaced by an escalated air war, right on Vietnam-Not-So-Lite Schedule: The Return of Carpet Bombing.

In the battle for the city, more than seven hundred Americans were killed or wounded; U.S. officials did not release estimates of civilian dead, but press reports at the time told of women and children killed in the bombardments.

In recent months, the tempo of American bombing seems to have increased. Most of the targets appear to be in the hostile, predominantly Sunni provinces that surround Baghdad and along the Syrian border. As yet, neither Congress nor the public has engaged in a significant discussion or debate about the air war.

The insurgency operates mainly in crowded urban areas, and Air Force warplanes rely on sophisticated, laser-guided bombs to avoid civilian casualties. These bombs home in on targets that must be “painted,” or illuminated, by laser beams directed by ground units. “The pilot doesn’t identify the target as seen in the pre-brief”—the instructions provided before takeoff—a former high-level intelligence official told me. “The guy with the laser is the targeteer. Not the pilot. Often you get a ‘hot-read’ ”—from a military unit on the ground—“and you drop your bombs with no communication with the guys on the ground. You don’t want to break radio silence. The people on the ground are calling in targets that the pilots can’t verify.” He added, “And we’re going to turn this process over to the Iraqis?

sometimes the flashbacks burn your retina.

Italian journalists are taking revenge for Nicola Calipari in the best way they can:  they kept working, bringing us news we don't want but  need.  About Fallujah  - news that we could have guessed if we thought we could stand it.

In a documentary to be broadcast by RAI, the Italian state broadcaster, this morning, a former American soldier who fought at Fallujah says: "I heard the order to pay attention because they were going to use white phosphorus on Fallujah. In military jargon it's known as Willy Pete.

"Phosphorus burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for."

    -- The Independent, US forces 'used chemical weapons' during assault on city of Fallujah

I had just turned ten when photos of the napalmed Kim Phuc streamed across the AP wire.  I was probably still wearing that  Nixon button I got from my father; you can likely count me as one of the millions driven by that image to ask more questions about the war in Vietnam.

As much as they twist my stomach, I hope these images get out even more broadly.  Though I wonder - are people so saturated with fictional violent imagery that they won't have the same impact as 30 years ago?

(Via Hunter at kos.)

planet ferrer

Well, we know what really happened in New York's mayoral race. Here's what was happening in a corner of New York.... (No link because I wrote it, and not for a newspaper.)

The chant, repeated and embellished, filled St. Nicholas Avenue and 181st Street in Washington Heights .

 

"We want Freddy!".

"Cuando?" a deep baritone intoned through a bullhorn.

"Ahora!"

"Cuando?"

"Ahora!"

Storekeepers and customers peered out their windows to wave at the candidate, even when not urged by the bass voice crying out: "Ferrer aqui! Ferrer acqui!"

A grandmother dropped her grandchild's hand and ran into the middle of the street, braving a near-miss with the M4 bus to hug the slight, white-shirted candidate.

Copies of The Ferrer Express, handed out at every corner: an alternative, perhaps, to all those newspapers that muttered all week what the New York Post finally screamed: IT'S OVER.

Welcome to Planet Ferrer, where victory is imminent for the longtime Democratic underdog.

Fernando Ferrer spent Election Day entirely among supporters, in his home districts in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, where he was treated like the celebrity he is. All around him, Democratic candidates new and old put themselves quietly on display for Ferrer, while they lined up their chips for the next round of the game.

At his campaign breakfast at La Nueva Caridad, a Washington Heights diner, Ferrer was relaxed, un-anxious. He showed off his little grandsons, Jalen and Brendan. He looked, not just like the winner, but already the mayor.  Those polls that had Mayor Bloomberg leading by over 30 percent – they didn't exist.

"The only polls that count are happening right now," said volunteer Jeannette Acosta, 32, a Kingsbridge resident and student at Monroe College.

"I talk to my friends, and Democrats that I know – and they are all like,'Nobody talked to me'. The people that are voting weren't polled."

Acosta, a mother of two, said she became interested in Ferrer after she became sick of Mayor Bloomberg's claims on education. "I spent $200 on school supplies last month," she said, "including napkins, so they can go to the bathroom. Including soap, so they can wash their hands."

In Ferrer, Acosta saw a chance for a new start – and something more.

"We will make history today. We will elect the first Latino mayor of New York," said Acosta with a heartfelt smile. The sentiment seemed less a party line than a steadfastly maintained article of faith, spoken by nearly everyone willing to comment for this story.

At the breakfast, Ferrer and Luis Moranda, co-chair of the campaign, held court with most of Upper Manhattan 's Democratic power structure. Though former Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields was the official guest; by the time it broke up,  respects had been paid by City Councilman Miguel Martinez, Assembly members Eric Schneiderman and Robert Jackson, and even Carol Bellamy, former borough president and head of UNICEF. All the talk was of victory; Ferrer's wife, Araminta, commented to Fields that "when people see Freddy, they wake up!"'

The loyal volunteers agreed; the shock troops of Planet Ferrer were ready to march. Including Kenny Agosto, the man with the bullhorn.

Agosto, 35, is a Bronx native who's worked on three previous Ferrer campaigns. "You might call me a Ferrerista," he said, laughing. Then he turned and waved his volunteers to the sidewalk.

"To Fort Washington!" he cried, as if the general for which the street was named.

St. Nicholas Avenue, an already busy shopping street, now swelled again with volunteers waving blue Ferrer signs, campaign operatives in uneasy pinstripes, and Ferrer's wife, daughter and son-in-law, as well as his bouncy grandson taking turns on the bullhorn.

Once the group had taken its pre-victory parade up the hill at 181^st Street to Fort Washington , they took themselves into vans and cars and went across the bridge to the Bronx, to Ferrer's original home base at Jerome Avenue and Fordham Road.

Here, the crowds were thicker and the event more overlaid with local officials. Here, the Spanish chants developed more beats, and a line emerged that would continue throughout the day, in reference to Bloomberg's millions.

"Los votos no se venden!" Our votes are not for sale.

At noon the media presence tripled. Univision competed with RNN, and the pinstriped campaign staff tried to flatten themselves out of sight of the shouting volunteers. Planet Ferrer is not about pinstripes, on the surface.

A more appropriate image was presented by Victor Thompson, a long-time activist with the Service Employees International Union, with his cold-hardened skin, his baseball cap, his 25-year track record as an organizer.

"I worked on the Kerry campaign, and for Dinkins," he said.

Asked if he thought Ferrer could win, he said, "If I didn't, I wouldn't be here."

Planet Ferrer, it seems, is as much about party loyalty as about the injustices its inhabitants want to address. As evidenced by the arrival of the next special guest: Rev. Al Sharpton, who seemed a bit disoriented by the sheer volume of pure Spanish with which he was surrounded when he got out of his van.

It wasn't until the group marched east on Fordham, to Creston Avenue, that Sharpton made some semblance of an actual speech. "Mayor Bloomberg will see even his $100 million couldn't buy our votes," he started, going on to his usual talking points about the West Side stadium and affordable housing.

The campaign's last official stop, as the sun set, was in Parkchester, in the southeast Bronx, yet another home base for Ferrer. And there was yet another set of local and state politicians, all standing in a line to shake the hands of commuters, like a receiving line at a wedding.  Kenny Agosto's bullhorn voice was hoarse as he bellowed to the growing crowd: "Make room!"

This time, the lineup featured Comptroller William Thompson, who's often spoken of as a potential Democratic nominee should Ferrer lose. Now, he grinned when commuters approached him instead of the candidate. "I'm not Freddy!" he kept saying, over and over. The subtext to Planet Ferrer, then, may be a Democratic organization pulling together, and preparing for the next step.

The volunteers kept saying "It's looking good!" And the supporters who turned up, though less certain, still refused to believe it was a lost cause.  A Queens police officer facing retirement said simply: "If he wins, the last five years of my career will be hell."

The officer asked his name not be used, because "I'd be talking against my boss, right? I work for the Mayor." Like most of the inhabitants of Planet Ferrer, he thought the city had been too often run for the glory of Bloomberg. "That stadium project – like he thought it would be his legacy or something,"

He sighed. "Do the math. $200 million of his personal fortune into this campaign, if you count all those charitable contributions – and he won't even feel it. Yeah, I feel more like Freddy's my kind of people."

As the meet and greet wore down, the manager of the station's convenience store, Rose Bengal, quietly offered a whisper from the reality-based community. Asked if he had met the candidate, he said "Yes." Did he support him? "No."   Did he vote? "Yes."

Then he turned away, went back to selling lottery tickets and Coca-Cola, and let the Democratic procession continue unchecked outside his door.

2000

Uh-huh.

As we observe that number, remember also the tenfold more dead civilians.

Some links that fit these reflections:

• I'm late on this, but Maureen Dowd rules in her Miller piece.  Anyone who starts referencing Thackeray, on her  way to slicing Judith Miller to ribbons, demonstrates true class. Read it via Steve Gilliard, if only for the photo.
• It's not enough that they're stressed and getting shot at: now they get to lose it all at the table.
• Eric Schmitt gives the most concise expression to what we're all thinking when Bush/Rice start talking new war: With who?
• Via the Rage Diaries: Data bad! Data confuse government!
• Debra Dickerson's review in Salon of Kayla Williams' book contains this concise, extraordinary passage:

The military is full of diamond-in-the-rough kids like her who might have made a few mistakes but still know that there are uncharted worlds inside them. They know they were destined for a polyester uniform; making a break for the GI's outfit, rather than the burger flipper's -- or, God forbid, the inmate's -- is a daring demand to be taken seriously, to be invested in, to be challenged. To be seen. For poor or lost kids, joining up is an escape attempt, a prison break. Our all-volunteer military remains tenable only because these strivers somehow know that hot marches in the sun and nights spent sleeping in a foxhole will open the door to whatever's buried inside their dreams.

Now that it's Tuesday, I'll wrap up with what's frosted me since Friday  morning -- when I saw George Freeman, a lawyer for the New York Times, on Friday, try  to make Judith Miller's case an integral part of  a lecture on the legal concept of reporter's privilege.the pixie dust Freeman tried to toss in our eyes.

He allowed that Miller's work did not present the best argument for a shield law. "Would I have wanted a different set of facts in this case?" he said, spreading his arms wide. " Of course."

As part of the wider discussion, about how the concept of reporter's privilege involved, we of course discussed the issue of the inclusion of bloggers; having just written the post that appears below, I quoted it to him and suggested blogs were also a "weapon in the defense of liberty." He responded like  lawyer/politician: you'd never get the Senate to support that, he said.

Then Freeman proceeded to give a perfect, party-line defense of Miller. He said that Lewis Libby's original waiver, whose signing was mandatory as a condition of the White House, couldn't  be believed as sincere until the two of them talked -- and that recent events, including the negotiations that led to her release. were a sign that Fitzgerald was becoming "pretty desperate."

He stuck by Miller's story that she had "discovered" her June 2003 notebook just recently; a friend said later that she'd not been able to ask him about reports (by Murray Waas,  and now others) others that Miller only admitted that meeting existed after seeing Secret Service logs that proved she was there.

His politics came clear, and predictable enough, from his opinion of the leak case itself, which mimicked Richard Cohen's = not much of a crime, so he's going to create a conspiracy about a non-crime.  I so wanted to ask him about the Daily News' confirmation of Miller's  "charter membership" in the White House Iraq Group, but I'd used up my question time talking about free speech for blogs.

Now I join the rest of you in waiting to hear how many of the  powerful men, the suns to which Miller's flower turned, are placed under indictment - or whether the administration will decide to raise the flag of secrecy over the whole thing.

and they see only their own shadows

The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. These indeed have been historic weapons in the defense of liberty, as the pamphlets of Thomas Paine and others in our own history abundantly attest. The press in its connotation comprehends every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion.
        -- Justice Charles Evans Hayes, Lovell v. Griffin, 1934

In the height of the Great Depression, someone had an idea about whether  bloggers should be considered journalists. Not that Justice Hayes, born in 1882, would ever have conceived of the Web, let alone a Web log, as he considered whether the First Amendment applied to broadsheets put out in the city of Lovell, California.

I've been watching elite journalists muse soulfully on the question, "Are bloggers journalists?" for what feels like a sickeningly long time, but is probably only since this past February, when the National Press Club convened its first panel on the question in the aftermath of the Jeff Gannon scandal.

John Aravosis, had investigated a fellow named James Guckert, who had been allowed into the White House press corps under the name Jeff Gannon. Aravosis found out, among other things, that Gannon had advertised his services as a male prostitute online and that his news service, Talon News, was funded directly by the Republican Party (rather like those 18th-century news broadsheets Andie Tucher spoke of in that August lecture).

So with worried faces, a panel that included Gannon,  Congress Daily's John Stanton, former Philadelphia Inquirer staffer Ana-Marie Cox, now running an online column, mused soulfully on whether people like Gannon, or even like Cox, should be taken seriously, or seriously marginalized. (Aravosis, whose work exposing Gannon was the kind of digging Sree likes to talk about, wasn't invited onto the panel, though he spoke from the audience.)

The well-paid journalists in the room were worried, perhaps justly, about this blending of fact and opinion, which depending on who you read (just as with print magazines) can be crude or well crafted, thoughtful or not, original or lazy. These conversations seemed, at that point, kind of theoretical.

Not any more, in the wake of a journalism scandal far more explosive than Jeff Gannon and the resulting talk of a federal shield law, including testimony before Congress on the part of the very journalist who's at the center of the scandal. And the Press Club was at it again, on the same day as some of its  members were asking: do bloggers deserve this shield?  And the panel, this time including  Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics at the University of Minnesota, and two TV journalists, agreed "probably not." All of it part of "National Free Speech Week, which may define irony, as noted by Roxanne .

Suddenly we're wondering what sort of writer gets First Amendment protection, and of what kind. And that brings me - briefly, I promise - back to the Supreme Court.

burning down the House

Q. Do you have any recollection about anything that he said?
A. Oh, yeah, he said they had been into an argument and he slapped her and she fell and hit her
head and it killed her and he didn’t mean for it to happen.
Q. Was he intoxicated?
A. He was drinking real heavily, yeah.
Q. Was he emotional?
A. Very.
Q. All right. How very is very?
A. Well, he was crying and just all to pieces.
Q. All right. How long had he been there before he told you about this incident?
A. Maybe 10 or 15 minutes, not real long.
Q. Did he say what they were arguing about?
A. He had wanted to go to a dance or something or another and was wanting to go somewhere
else. That is what they got into an argument over.
Q. What did you do when you heard Little Hube say he hit his wife and she died?
A. I freaked out and run him off.
Q. You freaked out?
A. I freaked out and ran him off.
Q. Okay. After the party did you tell anybody about this?
A. Not that night. The next day I went to Union County and tried to talk to some law people
and —
Q. Would they listen to you?
A. Went to Union County to the Sheriff’s Department. I tried to speak to the Sheriff but he was
real busy. He sent me to a deputy. The deputy told me to go upstairs to the courtroom and
talk to this guy. I can’t remember his name. I never did really get to talk to anybody.
Q. Tried to tell them?
A. Yeah.
Q. Did you talk to your mother about it?
A. A little later on there wasn’t a whole lot said about it, but she was the one that took me to the courthouse.
Q. Your mother went with you to the courthouse that day?
A. She drove me. I didn’t have a vehicle.
Q. Did you know Carolyn Muncey?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Are you aware of whether or not Little Hube had ever abused her or beat on her?
A. She was constantly with black eyes and busted mouth.

Testimony of Kathy Parker, Nashville resident, testifying to a federal district court in Tennessed on behalf of Paul House, who is on death row for Carolyn Muncey's murder.

Is  this a Supreme Court preview, or an episode of CSI?

Well, it's House v. Bell, which turns out to be both.

Not that I've ever seen that show, actually, but I thought I'd be wrestling more with precedents than with blood spatters, missing or planted evidence, semen-stained jeans, or a theory that an entire rape-murder can be committed, in a rural area without a car, inside of 50 minutes. I didn't know that Paul Gregory House, who has been on death row since 1986, has multiple sclerosis -  of the most advanced kind, which may kill him before anyone tries to strap him down for the lethal injection or gas chamber.

It's all about the DNA, of course.
It's all about the revolution in our thinking about the death penalty thanks to the careful work of attorneys, all around the country, who have re-opened investigations that were done sloppily, or ineffectively presented, the first time.

And it's all about politics. Paul Gregory House was 2/3 of the way to exoneration when 8 of 15 appeals court judges declared he was probably innocent and he deserved a new trial. But a year later, when they could have made it official, four of those 8 judges, appointed by Democrats, had been replaced  by George Bush. Their replacements said no, he still hadn't established reasonable doubt - despite DNA evidence, despite eyewitnesses, despite affidavits that shot down, or at least seriously questioned, the forensic evidence offered by the prosecution.

And it's all about the word "no."

Specifically the "no" in the following paragraph from Sandra Day O'Connor:

a petitioner must show that, in light of the new evidence, it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The focus on actual innocence means that a district court is not bound by the admissibility rules that would govern at trial, but may consider the probative force of relevant evidence that was either wrongly excluded or unavailable at trial. The district court must make a probabilistic determination about what reasonable, properly instructed jurors would do, and it is presumed that a reasonable juror would consider fairly all of the evidence presented and would conscientiously obey the trial court's instructions requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Schlup v. Delo, the 1995 Supreme Court opinion quoted above, offered both hope and frustration to defendants with newly discovered evidence, as it instructs judges to imagine themselves that Platonic "reasonable, properly instructed juror."  In its poetry, it's  also proved a Rorschach blot, taken up by  both sides. And to Judge Dan Boggs, a grizzled veteran of the Sixth Circuit, "no reasonable juror" means exactly that: not a single juror. Basically, the Sixth Circuit panel demanded that every single piece of evidence put out by the prosecution be directly refuted  before it could order a new trial.

Is this all too arcane? Should I get back to the blood?

avian flu thoughts from someone who should know

A guest post from Walter, who's a disaster recovery planner for a Fortune 500 company -- and a very dear friend. A good counter to tabloidism, and complement for the terrific work being done by folks like Melanie on this stuff.

------

For those of us who are paid to worry, a flu pandemic has been near the top of the list for years. We ought to be pleased by the media attention it's suddenly getting. I am not.

 

Like earthquakes, pandemics come at long intervals, but are as certain as rain. Their impact, when they come, can be limited or devastating, and there's not much we can do to predict which the next one will be. Preparations have to be long term. We can stockpile supplies. Some materials can be used to limit the spread of disease, like surgical masks. Medicines can now help the immune system combat even new forms of viral disease. We can maintain vaccine manufacturing capacity. We can plan for how to function with a sharp! ly reduced workforce. We can plan for how to function under voluntary or mandatory quarantines. We can plan how to limit the vectors for spreading a disease. None of these can be effective when undertaken quickly; bold stands are of limited use against viral mutation.

 

The national media had been reporting the spread of avian flu in a consistent but low-key way. The tone recently and abruptly changed. George Bush was returning from a visit to Louisiana and Mississippi, where the Department of Homeland Security and local agencies had failed spectacularly to communicate with horrifying results. Liberal activists were happily allowing the radical right to take up the task of questioning the propriety of a Supreme Court nominee whose primary qualification seemed to be extreme personal loya! lty to the President. The Iraqi constitutional process was becoming increasingly farcical. And when George Bush got off the plane in Washington, he had been reading a book about pandemics.

 

Well, the good news is that we now know that he can read. His reaction (at his news conference on the 5^th) was typical: we can use the Army! But the most important effect was that the press began reporting on pandemics and avian flu in earnest.

 

It's a ready made story.  The risk is real. Our inability to protect ourselves reliably from the serious risk of death is real. The "not if but when" quotes are real, and well founded (though the Secretary of Health and Human Services sounds remarkably taken aback in his statements; he's running Mayor Nagin a close second for surprised panic in the face of the long known). However, none of this is new. It is news only because it previously has gone unreported. Mostly, it has become headline news at a very convenient moment for George Bush.

 

I still want to know why we're in Iraq, and when we'll leave. I want to know what can be done throughout the country to at least approximate the level of coordination between federal and local officials maintained in New York City. I want to know why we're still pursuing policies that increase our dependence on petroleum. I want to know who the heck Miers is, and whether there's any reason to think she would make a decent Supreme Court Justice. And if we're going to talk about avian flu, I want to know why B! ush's proposal for funding the Gulf (of Mexico, not Persia) states' recovery includes funding cuts to the Center for Disease Control.