By: Dan Savage  

...Gay groups called for Mr. Santorum's head, while antigay groups like the Family Research Council, once headed by Gary Bauer, rushed to defend him. But Mr. Santorum needn't worry about his leadership post. Unlike the former majority leader, Mr. Santorum didn't slip up and say something in plain English that every good Republican knows must only be said in code. Unlike Republican appeals to racist voters, Republican appeals to homophobic voters are overt. During the 2000 campaign, Alan Keyes appeared on the same stage as George Bush and denounced the "radical homosexual agenda" that he said was destroying the American family. Candidate Bush, now President Bush, failed to respond, even though his running mate's daughter is a lesbian.

But gays and lesbians are more than just sons and daughters. We're moms and dads, too. My boyfriend and I adopted a son five years ago, and we plan to adopt again. As more same-sex couples start families, it's going to be harder for Republicans like Mr. Santorum to say we are somehow a threat to the American family.

By: Don Wycliff  

Maybe they're too close.

I'm talking about the people who are looking for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Maybe they need to be 100 miles up in the air, taking a satellite's view of the situation. Or maybe they need to be halfway round the world in Washington. Maybe with a more distant perspective, they could see better just where those WMD's are.

That certainly seemed to be the case for the Bush administration before the Iraq war...

By: Norma Sherry  

Never did we imagine, even for a millisecond, that we could actually see the demise of democracy here in the land of the free, home of the brave - America. But there's a new threat to our freedom; to the rights we thought were our birthright. It is with horror and a heavy heart that I tell you that this threat comes from within; from the very ones we thought were our protectors; the very men and women held in esteem and regard; learned men and women; men and women we, the American public voted into office.

On October 26^th, 2001 this esteemed body of men and women signed a document that annihilated and abolished with a single pen stroke all that we held dear; all that our forefathers and our fathers and our father's fathers believed they had bestowed upon us forever. That document was the Patriot Act, now known as Patriot Act I. One, defining that there was yet more to come. The document that now nearly every representative said in their regret of signing it, that in their rush to invoke it into law they hadn't read it. Wow! Is that even comprehensible?

By: Paul Krugman  

Congressman Richard Gephardt's new proposal - to scrap the 2001 tax cut and use the reclaimed revenue to provide health benefits to the uninsured - has been widely dismissed as unrealistic. And in political terms that's probably true. After all, these days it's considered "moderate" to support an irresponsible tax cut that is merely large, as opposed to gigantic.

When a family without health insurance suffers illness, the results are often catastrophic - either serious conditions go untreated or the family faces financial ruin. Our inadequate insurance system is one important reason why America, the richest country in the world, has lower life expectancy and higher child mortality than most other advanced nations.

So why should tax cuts take priority over health care? I know the party line: tax cuts for high earners are the key to economic growth, and a rising tide lifts all boats. But there's not a shred of evidence supporting that claim. More than two decades after the supply-siders launched their tax-cut crusade, ordinary workers have yet to see a rising tide. The median real wage is only 7% higher now than it was in 1979, with all of that increase achieved after Bill Clinton raised taxes for the top bracket.

Devastated by war and isolation, Iraq now faces a humanitarian and environmental crisis 12 years in the making.

By: Ross Mirkarimi  

Like his father before him, when President Bush speaks of Iraqi liberation by removing Saddam Hussein, he implies a linear solution to the restoration of Iraq's health and welfare. But, like the bodies of people mangled by cluster bombs and toxic debris, the land and peoples of Iraq will not readily recover from the wounds that the combatants have inflicted, even when peace is achieved.

Conventional attitudes assume that the altered chemistry of a river or desert eco-system, the chromosome damage to a newborn infant or the shattered economy of an embargoed nation do not affect each other. If we look at all these disparate disasters as part of a whole, however, it becomes clear that the combined actions of all belligerent parties have gone far in destroying the natural environment in which the Iraqi people live. Once a modern nation, Iraq is now a country of waterborne disease, imperiled flora and fauna, contaminated ecosystems, eroded soil, and decimated livestock.

By: Clarence Page  

While American troops have been winning the war in Iraq, privacy rights continue to come under assault back here at home. Fortunately, we have those Fedayeen of free-speech advocacy, America's librarians, fighting back.

Arousing their dudgeon are provisions of the controversial USA Patriot Act, a mammoth anti-terrorist law containing more than 340 controversial pages that Congress passed in October, 2001, during the heat of post-Sept. 11 fears.

Sensing a threat to individuals' constitutional rights, about 90 local governments have passed resolutions condemning Patriot Act provisions that compel libraries and bookstores to assist federal investigators in monitoring the reading habits of suspect American citizens. On their own, some librarians have posted signs in their libraries warning customers about the possibility of the U.S. government invading their privacy. And some libraries are even destroying paperwork that might provide federal investigators with a trail to the book or Web browsings of library users.

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. All of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family. And that's sort of where we are in today's world, unfortunately. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist, in my opinion, in the United States Constitution."
- Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), Apr. 7, 2003

"Gay-bashing is not a legitimate public policy discussion; it is immoral. Rick Santorum's failure to recognize that attacking people because of who they are is morally wrong makes him unfit for a leadership position in the United States Senate."

- Howard Dean

By: James Carroll  

Even before conclusions can be drawn about the war in Iraq (Saddam? Weapons of mass destruction? Iraqi stability? Cost to civilians? Syria?) a home front consensus is jelling around a radical revision of America's meaning in the world.

Centered on coercive unilateralism, the new doctrine assumes that the United States not only stands apart from other countries but above them. The primitive tribalism of boys at football games - "We're number one!" - has been transformed into an axiom of strategy. Military force has replaced democratic idealism as the main source of U.S. influence.

By: John Moody  

Pity the Bush administration. They swore to the world that Saddam had massive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons all primed and ready to launch. Indeed, we were told that we had to attack due to the dire threats these horrible weapons posed. Then comes the war and 100,000 British and American troops tramping through Iraq with seemingly an equal number of embedded reporters and wouldn't you know it, no WMD anywhere. Why we were led to believe that you couldn't take a walk in Iraq without tripping over the damn things. But as luck would have it, just as the whole world was starting to shout: "Liar, liar, pants on fire!" the military gets a visit from the WMD Fairy.

WMD? Why yes we had them aplenty but just before you got here we destroyed them all. "Good enough for me", said the Pentagon. "Good enough for me", said the Chickenhawks. "Good enough for me", said Judith Miller of the New York Times.

By: Hugh Conrad  

Enter Conflict Resolution 101, a class that teaches students how to deal with conflicts before they escalate to the point that they did at Columbine.

The courses have been a waste of time, thanks to Bush and his neo-conservative Chickenhawks who are determining future U.S. policy.

The children watched a petulant President, saying that he was "sick and tired" of Saddam Hussein and that Hussein had "48 hours" to get out of town. Bush made a serious military conflict sound like it was a shootout at the OK Corral, not a bloody conflict with long-term ramifications for millions of people.

Instead of taking a non-violent alternative, allowing further inspections and using the nonviolent policy that won the Cold War - containment - Bush chose the violent path, attacking Iraq and killing, maiming, and psychologically inflicting punishment upon an entire generation of young Iraqis.

City wants DEA to stop confiscating medical marijuana and arresting those who aid sick people.

By: Martha Mendoza  

In hopes of stopping federal agents from again raiding a farm that provides marijuana to sick and dying people, Santa Cruz officials said they will file a lawsuit against Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Attorneys representing the city and county of Santa Cruz, as well as seven medical marijuana users, said Monday that they plan to file the papers Wednesday in federal court.

"This is a public-health issue to this community", Santa Cruz City Attorney John Barisone said Monday.

By: Ernest Partridge  

Can an entire country go mad?

Of course it can!

A deranged society is often, but surely not always, made so by a deranged leadership. This is especially likely when that leadership has effective control of the media. Then the leaders possess the means to convey their delusions to much of the public at large.

Now I don’t wish to claim that one George Bush has lost all his marbles, though I suspect that he may be "a few bulbs short of a full marquee" (Garrison Keilor). George Bush’s "world" may, to a disturbing degree, be out of sync with the real world.

"I think we're looking at an administration that's far worse than the [former Interior Secretary James] Watt years under Reagan, but they're subtle about it. They take a logging plan and call it the Healthy Forests Initiative. They take a plan that allows more air pollution and call it the Clear Skies Initiative."

- Brent Martin, director of Georgia ForestWatch

By: Cokie Roberts  

Unfortunately, the President's answer to sluggish growth has been more symbolic than real. He ties his economic plans to the war effort, saying he wants to create jobs for the troops when they come home from the Persian Gulf. And a highly targeted tax cut, funneling refunds into hard-pressed family budgets, could probably do some good.

But that's not what the President proposes. Most economists agree that the bulk of his package, eliminating taxes on stock dividends, will do little to stimulate the economy or provide work - for returning soldiers or anybody else.

In fact, his plan could make matters worse, fueling a wildfire deficit that is already burning out of control...

Editorial from:  

With this year's federal deficit exploding toward the $500 billion level and the national-debt ceiling needing a trillion-dollar increase, it seems unfathomable that Congress and the White House remain locked in a suicide pact of yet another tax cut. Yet here comes that persistent White House sales team with a fresh label on their tax-cut patent medicine. Facing only a small Senate line of Republican resistance, President Bush has sent out aides with some smooth talk about a phased-in, rather than full gulp, version of his beloved dividend tax cut. His plan would cost the Treasury $396 billion in lost revenues in a 10-year boon accruing mostly to upper-bracket taxpayers.

The administration move signals a strategic bid in a sorry high-stakes Capitol poker game over the size and nature of another tax reduction. The dispute should be about the wisdom of any tax cut right now in the face of deficit rollovers, costly debt, and government retraction from basic services in states across the land...

By: Lisa Ashkenaz Croke  

In an apparent effort to combat Homeland Security deficiencies, the House has authorized the same President who has been banned from Christ's birthplace to declare a national day of humility and submission in order to get on You Know Who's good side.

According to H. Res. 153, there is a "public need for fasting and prayer in order to secure the blessings and protection of Providence for the people of the United States and our Armed Forces during the conflict in Iraq and under the threat of terrorism at home".

We wonder, did the bill's author negotiate these terms personally - was Jesus involved or did President Bush use his personal relationship with the Lord to get this on the table?

By: Harold Meyerson  

And so, by strategy, inclination, and conviction, George W. Bush has been pursuing a reckless, even ridiculous, but always right-wing agenda - shredding a global-security structure at a time requiring unprecedented international integration, shredding a domestic safety net at a time when the private sector provides radically less security than it did a generation ago. No American President has ever played quite so fast and loose with the well-being of the American people.

In foreign policy, the Bush administration seems above all a coalition of religious and secular millenarians. For many fundamentalists involved in Republican politics, the United Nations and other instruments of "world government" are literally satanic. For the almost entirely secular neoconservatives who provide most of the intellectual direction for this administration, the United Nations, the European Union, the International Criminal Court, and kindred institutions are all obstacles to the emergence of unchallenged American hegemony. The neos don't view the coming American empire as God's kingdom, of course; they see it - better yet - as their own.

By: ckparm  

We see Reagan's 8 years and its voodoo economics (deficit spending like crazy) took us from 91M jobs to 105M, barely keeping up with population growth while putting us all deeply in hock. Bush 1 created only 3M jobs in 4 years - less than a million jobs a year, falling way behind population growth. That was widely seen as a complete failure to manage the economy responsibly. In other words "No New Taxes" is pretty much the same as saying "Get in line behind the other 400 people over there filing for unemployment insurance."

In Clinton's 8 years, the economic policy was reversed from Reagan/Bush. The Clinton policy stressed investment and the nation being responsible for paying its bills. The policy was reversed and so were the results. In Clinton's 8 years, employment went from 108M to 130M - almost 3 million jobs a year! Way ahead of population growth.

And now Bush 2 has reversed the Clinton policy and the results are reversed. Bush took office with 131 million jobs and we've been going backwards ever since.

By: Arianna Huffington  

From the moment that statue of Saddam hit the ground, the mood around the Rumsfeld campfire has been all high-fives, I-told-you-sos, and endless smug prattling about how the speedy fall of Baghdad is proof positive that those who opposed the invasion of Iraq were dead wrong.

What utter nonsense. In fact, the speedy fall of Baghdad proves the anti-war movement was dead right.

The whole pretext for our unilateral charge into Iraq was that the American people were in imminent danger from Saddam and his mighty war machine. The threat was so clear and present that we couldn't even give inspectors searching for weapons of mass destruction - hey, remember those? - another 30 days, as France wanted.

Well, it turns out that, far from being on the verge of destroying Western civilization, Saddam and his 21^st Century Gestapo couldn't even muster a half-hearted defense of their own capital. The hawks' cakewalk disproves their own dire warnings; they can't have it both ways.

By: Greg Gordon  

So through the uprising in Basra, the woman hung from a lamppost for waving at American soldiers, the civilians forced into service as human shields, the thousands of Iraqi soldiers killed in the Army's first night drive-thru into Baghdad, I didn't believe a word of it and waited for confirmation. In the weeks since, nothing has surfaced to support any of these stories, and to the extent reporters have sought to investigate them, the claims have been positively refuted by witnesses. All of them were lies.

But again, no matter. Once scattered, these lies flourish like weeds, and our mainstream press adds the fertilizer. Guerilla-style fighters became "terrorists" and "death squads" (as if the American military was causing neither terror nor death). Precision-guided bombs were sparing civilians (let no cognitive dissonance arise from those bombs that landed precisely in Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, nor from the obvious fact of thousands of dead and maimed civilians). Humanitarian aid is on the way (although Umm Qasr, a small town just a few hundred meters from the Kuwaiti border, still lacked water and electricity weeks after its "liberation"). Unpleasant facts, when acknowledged at all, must not be allowed to obscure the greater Truth, which has already been ordained. We Are Good, and All Is Going Well.

"The pressure coming from the government and big business to enforce conformity of thought concerning the war and politics goes against everything that this country is about - namely freedom. Right now, we are supposedly fighting to create freedom in Iraq, at the same time that some are trying to intimidate and punish people for using that same freedom here at home."

- Bruce Springsteen

By: John Nichols  

Recent days have brought news of the awarding of a contract worth up to $680 million to rebuild Iraqi roads, schools, sewers, and hospitals damaged in the war. Bechtel, which is jokingly referred to in business circles as Bushtel, donated $1.3 million to political candidates during the last two election cycles - with most of it going into the coffers of Republican campaigns, including the 2000 Bush for President effort. Surely, Bechtel is an attractive target for a Congressional investigation of war profiteering - like those begun after World War I and during World War II.

But if Congress is going to get serious about war profiteering, there is no better place to begin than the Texas-based Halliburton Corp. energy conglomerate that Vice-President Dick Cheney once headed. According to a letter from the Army Corps of Engineers released this week, a Pentagon contract given without competition to a Halliburton subsidiary to fight oil well fires in Iraq is worth as much as $7 billion over two years.

By: Nicholas D. Kristof  

President Bush, in his State of the Union address, described a vast Iraqi weapons program and talked about several mobile labs, 30,000 munitions, 500 tons of chemical weapons, 25,000 liters of anthrax and 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin. These weapons were supposedly deployed in the war and controlled by field commands that we have long since overrun - so where are they?

Those Americans who contend that Iraqis hail us as liberators should try traveling around Iraq. I grew a mustache to look more like an Iraqi so hostile locals wouldn't throw rocks at my car. (I've now returned to the U.S. and had to shave my mustache so my family wouldn't throw stones at me.)

The hawks also look increasingly naïve in their expectations that Iraq will soon blossom into a pro-American democracy. For now, the figures who inspire mass support in postwar Iraq are Shiite clerics like Ali al-Sistani (moderate, but tainted by being soft on Saddam), Moqtadah al-Sadr (radical son of a martyr) and Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim (Iran's candidate), all of whom criticize the United States.

By: E.J. Dionne Jr.  

The irritation so evident among rank-and-file Democrats reflects their frustrated acknowledgment that a President so many of them despise, carrying off a policy so many of them opposed, created a new commitment from which neither party can walk away. No wonder the Republican triumphalists are chortling.

They should enjoy their laughs while they can, because in democratic politics few victories are ever final. And the victory in Iraq has only forced to the forefront the pro-war camp's own divisions and contradictions.

By: Paul Krugman  

...let's pretend that the Bush administration really thinks that its $726 billion tax-cut plan will create 1.4 million jobs. At what price would those jobs be created?

By price I don't just mean the budget cost; I also mean the cost of sacrificing other potential pro-employment policies on the altar of tax cuts. Once you take those sacrifices into account, it becomes clear that the Bush plan is actually a job-destroying package.

Not that the budget cost is minor. The average American worker earns only about $40,000 per year; why does the administration, even on its own estimates, need to offer $500,000 in tax cuts for each job created? If it's all about jobs, wouldn't it be far cheaper just to have the government hire people? Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration put the unemployed to work doing all kinds of useful things; why not do something similar now? (Hint: this would be a good time to do something serious, finally, about port security.)

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