Bob J. Perry strikes again. The GOP stalwart and financier of 527 groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004 and the Economic Freedom Fund this year has donated $2 million to a 527 group called Americans for Honesty on Issues, according to a recently filed FEC report.
According to the New York Times:
The leader of Americans for Honesty on Issues is Sue Walden, a close ally of Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader who left Congress amid questions on ethics and fund-raising. Ms. Walden has also raised money for President Bush and served as an adviser to Kenneth L. Lay, the former chief executive of Enron who died in July.
The group has already spent almost $1.5 million in attack ads on Democratic candidates. MyDD has the rundown on which districts Americans for Honesty on Issues has targeted.
Update: FEC reports this past week show that Bob Perry has also contributed $1 million to the Free Enterprise Fund, which has begun running TV ads against Ned Lamont in Connecticut.
--David Kurtz
The federal corruption investigation of Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) first reported yesterday by McClatchy has been confirmed by the Philadelphia Inquirer and the AP. h/t Laura Rozen.
--David Kurtz
GOP grumblings about the White House not being prepared for a loss in November:
"They aren't even planning for if they lose," says a GOP insider who informally counsels the West Wing. If Democrats win control of the House, as many analysts expect, Republicans predict that Bush's final two years in office will be marked by multiple congressional investigations and gridlock."The Bush White House has had no relationship with Congress," said a Bush ally. "Beyond the Democrats, wait till they see how the Republicans–the ones that survive–treat them if they lose next month."
A Democratic victory of any kind will be a rude welcome back to the reality-based world for Bush. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
--David Kurtz
Rep. Chris "that ain't torture, it's sex" Shays (R-CT) has suddenly found his moral compass, blasting his own party's campaign committee for distributing a flyer claiming his opponent wants to have coffee with the Taliban.
--David Kurtz
Is the Dem tide putting Sen. Menendez back on top?
You have to look long and far this season to find a Democratic candidate who is not exceeding expectations for their race. But one of the few has been right next door here in New Jersey, in the race between Sen. Bob Menendez (D) and Tom Kean, Jr. (R). (Menendez was a congressman appointed to serve by Gov. John Corzine (D) to serve the remainder of Corzine's term in the senate.) Here's our list of the polls in that race going back to July. The race has always been close and most of the polls, I think, have been within the margin of error. But the pattern is still pretty clear. Kean took the lead in September after being close behind for most of summer. But that lead now seems to have vanished. Seven polls have come out in October. Kean was ahead only in one, and that one was released ten days ago. If you toss out the Zogby poll which has Menendez up by ten points (I'm having less and less confidence in Zogby's numbers), Menendez's average lead is only like 3 or 4 points. The statisticians will note that that's probably not a statistically signficant margin. But when all the polls are coming up with the same narrow margin, I think you can say that Menendez is now back on top.
Normally, an incumbent under 50% with that kind of narrow 'lead' is in trouble. But Menendez isn't really quite the incumbent. And with the probable Democrat tide, I think that will be enough.
I'll be curious to see how much the Republicans pour into this race over the next three weeks. It could end up being the race that decides who's in the majority next year.
--Josh Marshall
The plot thicks yet again.
Korenna Kline, spokesperson for Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), abruptly resigned yesterday.
This comes just a few days after Kolbe issued a written statement about the Foley matter that contradicted in key respects comments Kline had already made about Kolbe's knowledge of Foley's problem with pages.
A staffer for a retiring congressman finding new employment before the term ends is not terribly unusual, but there is more going on here than simply new employment opportunities.
--David Kurtz
I wanted to go back to that excellent Washington Post piece on the increasing frequency with which the President declares world events "unacceptable," because it raises another issue, one which has been irking me since the North Korean nuclear test last weekend.
The issue, which Josh has raised in part, is this: Why do commentators continue to describe the President as a "hard-liner" on North Korea? That seems to me to be a disservice to the hardliners and to give the President far too much credit.
Just yesterday in the Wall Street Journal (no link), no less a Bush critic than Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Colin Powell's chief of staff at the State Department, asserted that Bush's hardline on North Korea has failed.
I have no doubt that there are genuine hardliners within the Administration who urged covert and overt military action against North Korea early in the President's first term, and certainly in response to the breakdown of the Agreed Framework. Every Republican Administration is going to have its share of Curtis LeMays.
But those true hardliners have not prevailed in the internal Administration struggle over whether the U.S. should lead with the carrot or with the stick. What has emerged as U.S. "policy" is inertia. No carrot. No stick. No nothing, unless cheap rhetoric about what is "unacceptable" counts for something.
There are quite reputable people in foreign policy circles, like former Defense Secretary William Perry, who have advocated much tougher measures against North Korea than Bush has adopted. Perry, for instance, proposed publicly earlier this year that the U.S. hit the DPRK's new ICBM with a U.S. cruise missile while it was still on the launch pad, before a test flight could be conducted.
The sad truth is that we have virtually no good options for putting the North Korean nuclear genie back in the bottle, and I am quite convinced that our military options at the moment range from bad to worse (and that the current Administration would be unable to competently execute any military option).
But in the same way that it is a mistake to conclude that the Clinton Administration offer of a carrot was a failure, it is a mistake to conclude that the stick has failed, too. Both may be needed in the future.
All that we can say with any certainty is that paralysis has failed to achieve our objective of a non-nuclear Korean peninsula. And paralysis, if I may say, is unacceptable.
--David Kurtz
Former Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA), the first openly gay member of Congress, whose name has been in the news lately because, like Mark Foley, Studds had his own "page problem," died Saturday.
--David Kurtz
This is good stuff:
President Bush finds the world around him increasingly "unacceptable.". . .
[A] survey of transcripts from Bush's public remarks over the past seven years shows the president's worsening political predicament has actually stoked, rather than diminished, his desire to proclaim what he cannot abide. Some presidential scholars and psychologists describe the trend as a signpost of Bush's rising frustration with his declining influence.
In the first nine months of this year, Bush declared more than twice as many events or outcomes "unacceptable" or "not acceptable" as he did in all of 2005, and nearly four times as many as he did in 2004. He is, in fact, at a presidential career high in denouncing events he considers intolerable. They number 37 so far this year, as opposed to five in 2003, 18 in 2002 and 14 in 2001.
More on this later . . .
--David Kurtz
Invading liberal hordes from the Bay Area making it tough on GOP Reps. Pombo and Doolittle.
--David Kurtz
As long as the Washington Post is talking about the beautiful Democratic faces to watch, we might as well give equal time to the GOP beautiful people.
For those of you who don't keep up with these things (I don't either, but some of our fearless readers do), here's the background. Country music star Sara Evans has filed for divorce, and it has gotten pretty nasty. I'll spare our more tender readers the allegations (porn) Evans is making (adultery) about her husband (a former GOP candidate for Congress).
Wait, former GOP candidate for Congress?
Yep. Ran for Congress in Oregon in 2002.
Funny thing is, his campaign website is still up--at least until this post it was. So you can see some of your GOP faves (President Bush) with the happy couple. There's even a photo touting the beauty of GOP women.
See what that WP front page has done? Now we're all wallowing in the gutter.
--David Kurtz
Caution: The front page of the Washington Post will make you hurl your Cheerios this morning:
Attractive politicians have an edge over not-so-attractive ones. The phenomenon is resonating especially this year. By a combination of luck and design, Democrats seem to be fielding an uncommonly high number of uncommonly good-looking candidates.The beauty gap between the parties, some on Capitol Hill muse, could even be a factor in who controls Congress after Election Day.
I know, it's no more hackneyed than the analysis Broder regularly churns out, but Page 1? Maybe I'm just grumpy today.
--David Kurtz
Huge amount of independent expenditures today by the NRCC: $9.3 million.
Here are the biggest hits:
$424,948.80 against Democratic challenger Darcy Burner in the WA-8;
$571,073.60 against Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy in PA-8;
$657,276.80 against Democratic challenger Joe Sestak in PA-7;
$652,884.80 against Democratic challenger Lois Murphy in PA-6;
$579,187.60 against Democrat Zack Space in the race for Bob Ney's open OH-18 seat;
$521,985.88 against Democratic incumbent Rep. Melissa Bean in IL-8;
$436,881.00 against Democratic challenger Ron Klein in FL-22;
$417,933.39 against Democratic challenger Ken Lucas in KY-4;
A whopping 99% of today's expenditure was for negative advertising.
--David Kurtz
Curt, welcome to the party. Yet another endangered GOP incumbent is under federal investigation.
--Josh Marshall
Boehner: Dems should be punished at the polls for not reporting our GOP pedophilia sooner.
--Josh Marshall
And then there were two? The Justice Department is "looking into allegations" relating to a rafting trip that Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) took with two Congressional pages in 1996.
--Paul Kiel
Sen. Allen's (R-VA) name shows up on a court record in 1974. An arrest? An unpaid parking ticket? Is there more than one George Felix Allen in Virginia?
We're trying to find out more.
--Josh Marshall
Question: Should Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) not be expelled from the House of Representatives now that he has pled guilty to repeated instances of bribery, public corruption and other bad acts?
Yes, needless to say, he says he's going to resign in a "few weeks", according to his lawyer. And he's not on the ballot for reelection.
But just as a matter of principle, shouldn't someone who has said in open court that he accepted bribes in exchange for services as congressman just be booted? Not, hang around until the end of the year to finish up his congressional business?
--Josh Marshall
I really used to think Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) was a pretty reasonable guy. Not in the party I prefer and voting for the wrong leadership in the House, but a reasonable enough guy.
But I don't see how you call Abu Ghraib a 'sex ring' rather than 'torture'.
Does he think the Iraqis in those pictures were a bunch of swingers?
--Josh Marshall
Won't have Bob Ney to kick around anymore.
Update: Actually, it turns out that we'll have at least a "few weeks" more of kicking.
--Paul Kiel
When Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) appears before the judge today to say he's sorry for taking Jack Abramoff's bribes, will he finally resign from Congress? That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Paul Kiel
This is surprising. We were supposed to think that Kirsten Gillibrand's race against Rep. John Sweeney (R-NY) just hadn't caught fire and was pretty much done. But CQ has just moved the race into the toss-up category. This is one we're going to be watching really closely.
For background, see this golden oldie from November 22, 2004 in which mutliple Sweeney constituents try in vain to get an answer out of Sweeney about whether or not he voted for the DeLay Rule.
Here's the results of Justin Rood's investigation of whether the kid in the background of this Sweeney frat house picture was smoking a joint (alas, he was not). Remember, back in April, Sweeney showed up sloshed at a frat house in the district and proceeded to have himself photographed with cracking up college kids who posed with him like he was ... well, like he was.
Then, again, who can forget Rep. Sweeney's many legislative fact-finding excursions aboard yachts provided by the National Marine Manufacturers' Association.
The list just goes on and on.
And, actually, isn't he about due for another boffo moment?
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader CH on whether it's all Foley ...
You will soon post on the "is it all Foley?" question, and I wanted to submit my 2 cents in advance. Here's the thing about the Foley scandal: it gives people space to change their minds about things. Think about when you've admitted a mistake or accepted someone's knockdown argument on a topic you believe in strongly. Sure, you look at the facts and exercise your capacity for reason. But there is an emotional component too, and it's a lot easier to change your mind when the other person, or in this case the general public mood, makes it OK for you to shift your perspective.
That's what Foley has done--provided an emotional space within which people can reevaluate their views without having to question themselves or their previous beliefs too deeply. I believe there has been a growing sense in the country that things are going badly, very badly, on all sorts of fronts. Foley, frankly, doesn't have much to do with that. But now it's OK to step up and say, "Hell with it, I'm tired of this crap." And change your vote.
I think CH is on to something here. I'd been thinking along the lines of a slightly different take. But I think we're getting at the same basic point. To me, you look at the basic numbers going back many months and they're simply terrible for the Republicans. There was a halt in the deterioration and then a very small but discernible rebound in early-mid-September, tied largely to the 9/11 anniversary. Among the political class that very small stabilization was very over-interpreted. Then came the NIE, more bad news out of Iraq, Woodward and then Foley.
In discussing the dynamics of elections we're all always groping around trying to find the least inapt metaphor. But my hunch is that that late September bad news for the White House didn't cut short a GOP resurgence. The blip was more of an Indian summer or dead cat bounce.
At the same time, Foley does seem to have been a deal clincher for a substantial number of people. Not that more than a very few people are going to consciously or affirmatively vote on the basis of Foleygate. But in our own lives we all have moments where we're frustrated, more frustrated, passively angry and then at one crystalizing moment something clicks in your head and you say, Enough. I'm done. And then you act.
I think that's something like what we've seen over the last two weeks, though we won't be able to know for sure until after election day. There's been a tremendous dissatisfaction in the country on many fronts. But it's been amorphous and latent. Or perhaps better to say people hadn't yet had to concentrate on just how they were going to act on those sentiments. Partisan identification also does weird stuff to people. For instance, is it really true that 40% of the public is satisfied with the job the president has done on Iraq? Objectively, I find that difficult to believe. But Republicans are Republicans. And for a lot of committed partisans, the Dems say No, so they say Yes. What the question in becomes somewhat beside the point. And, yes, same on both sides. My point is only that strong partisan identification props up support for things people probably don't really, in their heart or hearts, support.
In itself, Foleygate isn't going to drive many people's votes. And even fewer will admit that it has in polls. But I think Foley has provided a collective gut-check moment for the country, when perhaps a critical portion of the country has said, Enough. it's not about Foley. It's really about everything that has come before. But it's allowed people to step back, take in the whole picture and say: No, I'm done.
--Josh Marshall
The Times and the Post both have matter-of-fact run-downs of Kirk Fordham's testimony Thursday before the House Ethics Committee. The juicy details were behind closed doors. But the essential story is this: he said under oath what he told the FBI and the press last week -- that he warned Denny Hastert's Chief of Staff about Foley three years ago, that Palmer went as far as to meet with Foley and that Palmer told Fordham that he'd discussed the matter with Speaker Hastert.
That leaves two possibilities. Fordham is lying. Or the story put together by Hastert's staff two weeks ago is bogus, Palmer is lying and Hastert is lying. Real life seldom leaves such cut-and-dry alternatives. But in this case both sides have dug themselves in on very specific and unambiguous versions of what happeend.
The weak link may be Palmer's oddly broad and ambiguous denial of Fordham's account. Last week he said simply: "What Kirk Fordham said did not happen."
If you want to get squirrelly about, that might simply mean that it didn't happen in precisely the way Fordham said it. Maybe Fordham says they spoke in person when Fordham remembers them speaking on the phone. In other words, it may really be a classic non-denial denial.
In the real world, though, if he's lying, he's done and so is Hastert. It's just a matter of who gets to them first, the investigators or the voters.
--Josh Marshall
This analysis of the internal numbers out of the latest Gallup poll provides a very clear sense of why so many Republicans are shaking in their boots waiting the results of the November election. Gallup divided respondents into "white frequent churchgoers", "white infrequent churchgoers" and "all others."
Here we what are perhaps the two major cleavages in contemporary American politics -- religion and race. And we're looking at them through a rightward prism.
Whites tend to vote Republican as a group, if by not that great a margin. And strong religious identification/church attendance is a very strong indicator of Republican party affiliation. So "white frequent churchgoers" should be -- and through most of my adult life -- have been the sweet spot of the electorate for the Republican party.
Yet, according to this latest Gallup survey, Republicans are only coming in even with this group. If that number is even close to on the mark and remains so for the next four weeks you can be next to certain that the Democrats will blow the Republicans out in the House and very likely win back control of the senate too.
You see this in this graph. Anything above the dotted line is the margin of Democratic advantage. So in August infrequent churchgoing whites were favoring the Democrats by 12 points. Now they do so by 26 points.
As I think I've made clear a number of times in recent weeks I am very much in the 'believe it when I see it' campaign when it comes to November. But this is the core of the modern Republican party. And they can only split the votes evenly with Democrats in this core group, election day will really be a disaster.
The only thing this break down leaves me wanting to know more of is a denominational breakdown. I'd be particularly curious to see the breakdown between churchgoing Catholics and evangelicals.
Here's another look at the same process. Over at TPM Election Central, Matt Corley looked at two of the most watch election rating sites, CQ Politics and the Cook Political Report.
He found that over the two week period since Foleygate blew up on September 29th, no few than 30 House races had their ratings changed. And 29 of those were moves favoring the Democrats.
That is a sign both of tremendous flux and a decisive movement in one direction.
Next up, is it really all Foley?
--Josh Marshall
Momma don't take my 501(c) status away: A new Senate Finance Committee report busts Abramoff-tied charities, including Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, for possible violations of law and tax code.
--Justin Rood
I don't know if the Democrats are going to win back the House this year. And I'd really caution people against falling under the false assumption that anything is in the bag at this point. But I am starting to become cautiously optimistic that Joe Donnelly (D-IN) is just a few weeks away from sending Rep. Chris "the Count" Chocola (R-IN) packing. And that would end the one man reign of evil Chocola has brought to the House of Representatives since 2002.
You may think 'evil' is too strong a word. But a lot of conservatives bewail the fact that in modern secular society we are too cautious about using terms like 'good' and 'evil'. So I figure Chocola is as good a candidate as any. See his record of Social Security bamboozlement here.
On our IN-2 page we've now got eight polls going back to July 18. Two of those are sponsored by Dems, one by Republicans. But of those eight, Chocola has been behind every time, though three times within the margin of error. Four of those polls are from the last eight days.
Constituent Dynamics out today has the Count down by 4 points. A GOP poll out yesterday has him down by 1%. A Dem poll has him down 16 points. And a Zogby poll from October 4th has him down 10 points. Of all the independent polls, the closest is the one out today that has him down 4 points. The others have him at a 10, 10, 8, 8 and 5 point deficit.
If you're in Indiana's 2nd district, drop us a line and let us know how it looks to you on the ground.
--Josh Marshall
Roll Call (sub.req.): Rep. Shimkus to testify before Ethics Committee Friday.
--Josh Marshall
Ha! Okay, this is funny. Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) is going to campaign against Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH), the representative who called him a coward last year on the House floor.
--Josh Marshall
Is making detainees drop acid one of the US government's new 'alternative interrogation techniques'?
Update: It seems the government has been very slow to release Jose Padilla's medical records.
--Josh Marshall
House Republicans pull the plug on efforts to knock of four Democratic incumbents.
House Republicans are scaling back television advertising reserved for four Democratic-held seats in Ohio, South Carolina and West Virginia, officials said Wednesday, fresh evidence of the party's struggles as it tries to retain its majority.At the same time, GOP strategists signaled they intend to spend nearly $1 million in an attempt to hold the seat recently vacated by Rep. Mark Foley. The Florida Republican quit Congress last month after being confronted with sexually explicit computer messages he sent to teenage male pages.
These late in the campaign redirections of money happen every cycle. And both parties will be shifting money from less to more promising opportunities. But this is another sign that Republicans can see it's all defense this cycle.
--Josh Marshall
Mark Warner (D-VA) begging off a 2008 presidential run?
Update: Yup. Here's Warner's statement.
--Josh Marshall
We've known for a while that the House leadership leaned on Mark Foley to run for one more term in Congress before cashing in and becoming a lobbyist -- even if that meant keeping the House pages on their toes for two more years avoiding the F-man's constant advances. But apparently they weren't the only one. It now seems that Karl Rove also got into the act and threatened Foley's future lobbying career if he didn't stick it out in Congress for two more years.
--Josh Marshall
The House ethics committee investigation isn't wasting any time in their probe of the Foley scandal. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Justin Rood
Jonathan Weisman has a good piece in the Post tomorrow about the progress of the Hous Ethics Committee investigation into Foleygate. The first sentence outlines the basic story: "With House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert denying personal knowledge of former representative Mark Foley's activities, investigators for the House ethics committee are bearing down on three senior members of Hastert's staff to determine when they learned of Foley's actions and whether they passed on their knowledge to the speaker."
With that in mind, it occurred to me that you can't really cover or follow a scandal unless you know who the key players are.
Denny Hastert, of course, you know.
This is Scott Palmer, Hastert's Chief of Staff. He has been the focus of many recent Foleygate articles, but you may never have seen him. I'm impressed here by his John Grisham film 'heavy' look.
Palmer is sticking with the story that he didn't hear anything about Foley and pages until late 2005. But if Kirk Fordham, Chief of Staff to Foley and later Rep. Tom Reynolds, is telling the truth, Palmer was told repeatedly and went saw far as to meet with Foley to get him to cut it out.
According to Weisman's piece, a good candidate for the Hastert staffer most likely to get thrown under the bus is this guy, Ted Van Der Meid, counsel to Speaker Hastert. He even looks a bit worried, doesn't he?
Finally, in the trio of key Hastert staffers under scrutiny is Michael Stokke. He's Deputy Chief of Staff to Hastert. But he's really more of a political fixer.
Those are the three key Hastert staffers under the microscope.
Also of possible interest are the two page supervisors.
Peggy Sampson is the page supervisor for the Republicans.
Here she's going to speak with the Ethics Committee earlier this week.
And here is her Democratic counterpart, page supervisors Wren Ivester.
Tomorrow, if you don't remember, Kirk Fordham, who is shaping up to be the key player in the drama, is going to speak to the Ethics Committee.
--Josh Marshall
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
The AP's John Solomon take another shot at nailing Harry Reid.
--Paul Kiel
The National Republican Congressional Committee sends out a mailer attacking Dem Tammy Duckworth on Social Security that looks oddly similar to an official Federal mailing.
--Paul Kiel
Hastert to resign!
Well, at least according to K.A. Paul, the loopy evangelist who met with Hastert yesterday.
--Paul Kiel
From today until November 7th, every morning we're going to be sending out a short list of what we believe are the most important polls of the previous 24 hours. If you'd like to receive our update, sign up in the sign up form right there on the right in the top post.
--Josh Marshall
Rajiv Chandrasekaran responds to former CPA deputy Dan Senor's comments on Rajiv's book.
--Josh Marshall
I'm curious to hear from you on this. We're listening to the Bush press conference here. And evaluating it as objectively as I can, it really sounds like a train wreck. The last question had a line in it asking the president if he feels 'like the walls are closing in on him' with declining support for his Iraq policy. The other questions have been pretty relentlessly negative. And the more pointed ones the president hasn't been able answer, even with effective bamboozlement. But tell me. How do you think it's going?
Late Update: That's got to be the slogan, my failed diplomacy has 'new equity partners'.
--Josh Marshall
Just listening to this press conference, I'm really surprised his handlers had him hold this sort of appearance. His statement was a long meandering catalog of his policies -- a bit confused, with various defenses, none that great. Just in terms of effective communication, I would have thought they would have had him hit a few basic points -- international threats, make tax cuts permanent, etc. But my gut tells me anybody on the fence at this point would not feel reassured or heartened by what the president is saying.
On North Korea, needless to say, he fibbed about the basic issue, elided the key points. We'll see if the press teases out what he ignored and misstated. He let the Agreed Framework lapse. The excuse is alleged (and probably true) uranium enrichment research, which wouldn't have come to fruition for many, many years. The result was ramping back plutonium production which has now already created a bomb. The president's boast is that his failed negotiations have more participants around the table.
Wow.
--Josh Marshall
Does President Bush have an incentive to whip up a crisis over North Korea? Consider the incentives. Or rather consider whether there is any dirty laundry that could be uncovered during the president's last two years in office if the Democrats gain control of one or both houses of Congress. Do the math.
--Josh Marshall
Bush press conference at 11 AM. Will he get any real questions about North Korea? What would you ask?
--Josh Marshall
Conservatives' left-wing Foleygate conspiracy theory takes another hit. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Paul Kiel
Will someone come out and say what a monumental twit Condi Rice is as Secretary of State.
Here's the CNN brief on their article about Rice blaming Bill Clinton for the president's latest failure.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday defended the Bush administration's refusal to hold bilateral talks with North Korea in the face of Pyongyang's claim of a successful nuclear test. She told CNN the Clinton administration tried that approach in the 1990s and it had failed.
Bill Perry has a good rejoinder to this nonsense on the Post oped page.
But let's review the salient facts one more time.
"Failure" =1994-2002 -- Era of Clinton 'Agreed Framework': No plutonium production. All existing plutonium under international inspection. No bomb.
"Success" = 2002-2006 -- Bush Policy Era: Active plutonium production. No international inspections of plutonium stocks. Nuclear warhead detonated.
Face it. They ditched an imperfect but working policy. They replaced it with nothing. Now North Korea is a nuclear state.
Facts hurt. So do nukes.
--Josh Marshall
There's a fascinating article in tomorrow's Post about the decline of cursive handwriting. I'm 37. And I certainly remember fairly intensive instruction in handwriting -- first block letters and then the more daunting and advanced cursive handwriting, with the dreaded off-white paper with one solid line, one dotted below it, and another solid beneath the dotted one -- all to keep your letter creations bounded and in check. But, I guess not surprisingly given the ubiquity of computers and keyboards these days, instruction in handwriting has dwindled to almost nothing.
According to the article, primary school teachers spend ten minutes a day or less on the subject.
Another interesting factoid. When the SAT introduced written essays in 2006, only 15% of students wrote their essays in cursive. The rest printed them.
Not only do many young people today have difficulty writing cursive, many also have difficulty reading it. And that seems to be one of the main remaining reasons it's taught -- to maintain some basic level of cursive literacy.
On first blush, it seems hard to figure that young people would really have a hard time reading cursive writing. But it actually makes sense to me. In a former life I was studying to be an Early Modern historian -- focusing on the 17th and 18th centuries.
Read cursive handwriting from people who lived a hundred years ago, even up to close to two hundred years ago, and as long as their handwriting isn't especiallys sloppy, it's not too difficult to read.
Reading 17th century English handwriting, even after quite a lot of practice, was a task I at least found extremely challenging. Some words or passages of words I was never able to decipher. (As a side note to this point, I had historians of earlier periods -- who often covered longer spans of time in their area of specialty -- tell me that one got to know eras of relatively good penmanship and ones that were atrocious and almost impossible to decipher.)
So does it matter? Do we really need to drill kids to learn cursive when it's a skill they just won't use very much except to sign their name?
Possibly so. The article points to some research that suggests that cursive handwriting leads to cognitive advancement. Kids who learn cursive handwriting express themselves in more complex thoughts. Given the tie-ins between cognitive development and hands, I guess this isn't that surprising.
Here's a question. When you jot things down in your daily life or take notes, do you write in cursive? I found that as I got older, late adolescence through early adulthood I guess, my cursive writing slowly died away and was replaced by a sort of hybrid of printing with a little cursive thrown in.
I'm looking here in one of the tablets I take notes in during the day. And the way I write isn't really quite either. But it's closer to print than cursive. How about you? How do you write when you put pen to paper? And how old are you?
--Josh Marshall
Bill Perry, who was Sec Def from 1994 to 1997, has a good column on North Korea in tomorrow's Post. This passage captures the heart of the problem with Bush administration policy ...
For almost six years this policy has been a strange combination of harsh rhetoric and inaction.President Bush, early in his first term, dubbed North Korea a member of the "axis of evil" and made disparaging remarks about Kim Jong Il. He said he would not tolerate a North Korean nuclear weapons program, but he set no bounds on North Korean actions.
The Bushies claim that the Clinton policy was all carrots and no sticks. Not true when you consider we threatened war over the plutonium issue in 1994 -- and like all effective threats of force, it succeeded in getting the North Koreans to sit down and negotiate. But the Bush policy has been no carrots and no sticks. President Bush won't tolerate a nuclear North Korea. But he won't do anything about it either. Clearly, in Bushspeak 'won't tolerate' just means some high politics equivalent of 'I'll be vewwy, vewwy mad.'
As Perry says, harsh rhetoric and inaction.
--Josh Marshall
John McCain seems to have some difficulties with physics and the historical record in his attempt to blame Bill Clinton for the latest crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
Said the Arizona Senator: "I would remind Senator (Hillary) Clinton and other critics of the Bush administration policies that the framework agreement of the Clinton administration was a failure."
Some basic facts.
The 1994 crisis came about because the North Koreans were producing weapons-grade plutonium. Under the Agreed Framework, they agreed to shutter the plutonium production facility and put the already produced plutonium under international oversight.
In return, the US promised aide, help building lightwater reactors (which don't help with bombs) and diplomatic normalization.
That agreement kept the plutonium operation on ice until the end of 2002.
President Bush came to office wanting to pull out of the agreement and did so when evidence surfaced suggesting that the North Koreans were secretly trying to enrich uranium (a separate path to the bomb).
The bomb that went off yesterday was made with plutonium, the same stuff that was off-limits from 1994-2002. In all likelihood some of the same stuff that was on ice from 1994-2002.
To the best of my knowledge, no one thinks the North Koreans are close to having enough uranium to make a nuclear weapon that way. And it's not even completely clear they were ever trying to enrich uranium.
So Clinton strikes a deal to keep plutonium out of the North Koreans' hands. The deal keeps the plutonium out of reach for the last six years of Clinton's term and the first two of Bush's. Bush pulls out of the deal. Four years later a plutonium bomb explodes.
Clinton's fault, right?
There's certainly an argument to be made that you don't make agreements with parties you don't trust, like the North Koreans. And perhaps President Bush would have had some leg to stand on if he'd pulled out of the Agreed Framework and replaced it with something better -- either force or a better agreement. But he didn't. He just did nothing for four years. Now we have plutonium, probably uranium and actual bombs. And according to McCain, it's all Bill Clinton's fault.
(ed.note: As a somewhat separate matter, there is legitimate debate about who was more responsible for the breakdown of the Agreed Framework. Neither side lived up to what it had promised. But that's another story. The key though is what exploded Sunday night.)
--Josh Marshall
Okay, we're very big on reader participation and do-it-yourself muckraking here at TPM. And a bunch of new publicly available tools for such muckraking just went live today. So if you like to rake some of your own muck, check this out.
--Josh Marshall
You figure the Hastert-Foley drama is getting pretty much wall to wall coverage. But here's another bizarre chapter of the story. Apparently, Hastert has now sought the solace of a prayer meeting with a disgraced would-be-evangelist who, among other things, was caught faking his own leper colony. That and he takes credit for getting Charles Taylor to step down as Liberian dictator and other international hat tricks.
--Josh Marshall
Duke Cunningham: The Full Jailhouse Letter Revealed.
Give it a read and ponder how this fool ever made it into Congress.
--Josh Marshall
Former House Clerk Jeff Trandahl to break silence on Foleygate.
Update: False alarm.
--Josh Marshall
Rajiv Chandrasekaran begins his discussion about the Green Zone and the Coalition Provisional Authority rule in Iraq at TPMCafe's Table for One.
--Josh Marshall
To Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), it's just "not clear" if he alerted the Republican leadership about Mark Foley's page problem back in 2000 -- maybe it will become clearer when he talks to investigators? That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.
--Paul Kiel
With yesterday's apparent nuclear test in North Korea, foreign policy again comes back to center stage. And fortuitously this week, TPMCafe Book Club is discussing the new Princeton Project on National Security's final report: "Forging a World of Liberty Under Law, U.S. National Security In The 21st Century."
Participating in the discussion are John Ikenberry, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Daniel Drezner, David Rieff, Stephen Walt and Peter Trubowitz
--Josh Marshall