Immoral Knowledge

You would think that you cannot commit a moral violation simply by learning something. Apparently, even knowledge can be a dangerous and thus sinful possession. Looking beyond IMAX theatres holding off showing various documentaries because they endorse evolution or as I like to call it...reality, a state issue has revealed this of late.

Presently in the state legislature, a bill passed (pending Governor Owens signing or taking no action on it) that would force all ERs in the state to notify rape victims of the existence of the morning after pill to avoid pregnancy. It does not force them (many of them private Catholic institutions) to go against their beliefs and provide the pills (which do not abort but rather prevent an embryo from attaching to the uterine wall.) The bill simply suggests that the information should be presented for the individual to decide. Seems very reasonable right?

Never shying away from hyperbole, one state senator from El Paso County (I should have copied down his name when I was reading the Gazette article he was quoted in) declares that this bill will force Catholic hospitals to shut down their emergency rooms in order to avoid having to tell a rape victim, that might come in, about the morning-after option. Somehow, this is to protect their conscience. This would allegedly force all emergency victims into less hospitals and mean bad service. I highly doubt that the Catholic hospitals would actually close their ER; certainly the toll on their conscience from doing that would be much greater than mentioning the existence (not advocating) of the morning-after pill.

One thing is clear, on the issue of contraception, birth control, even the morning after pill, the far right does not represent the views of a large majority of Americans. Especially in the case of rape, Americans find more aggressive means to avoid pregnancy tolerable. Indeed, to deny a woman's rights and force her to suffer the results of her rape for months on end is unconscionable. One thing is for sure; the knowledge of an option can only help, not hurt.

My prediction is that the bill will become law, the public opinion, behind the vocal minority of religious extremism that too often dominates the political sphere in this state, is simply too strong. After a year or two, it will have produced no negative effects with regards to ERs closing but will have done the right thing by providing more knowledge, something progressives always find to be beneficial, unlike their counterparts. This example shows yet again the importance of getting information out to people...knowledge is power, and it is a power that greatly favors progressives.

Free speech checked at the door

By Jim Spencer
Denver Post Staff Writer

The man near the entrance of George Bush's nonpolitical, taxpayer-financed "town hall" meeting Monday stopped Karen Bauer and Leslie Weise. He directed the two Denver women toward a man in a smiley-face tie.

"You've been ID'd," the second man told them.

Bauer and Weise were amazed. Hidden under their business suits, the members of the group Denver Progressives wore T-shirts that said "Stop the lies."

Along with another Denver Progressives member, Alex Young, they planned to expose the T-shirts as the president talked about Social Security.

They reconsidered when smiley-face-tie guy said the Secret Service was coming to speak to them.

Soon, a stocky man with a shaved head, an earpiece and a red lapel pin arrived. He never identified himself as a Secret Service agent, but he did have a message.

"He said we were allowed to go in, but if we caused any problems, we'd be taken to jail," said Bauer, a 38-year-old marketing coordinator.

Bauer and Weise will meet today with Secret Service officials to discuss their removal from the Bush meeting.

"Freedom of speech, general assembly, they're all guaranteed under the Constitution," said Lon Garner, special agent in charge of the Secret Service's Denver district. "We are not an enforcement arm to the president other than security."

Garner said his agents don't remove people from presidential gatherings unless they break the law. The Republican staff, on the other hand, may ask people to leave, Garner said. And like the Secret Service, they also wear lapel pins and earpieces.

Garner said he understood that Republicans had two names on a "list."

The GOP operatives actually targeted three people who might turn the president's carefully contrived "town hall" meeting into real democracy.

More than an hour before the president arrived, Bauer, Weise and Young were ordered to leave the Wings Over the Rockies Museum.

The stocky guy "grabbed me by the arm and spun me around," Bauer said.

"We kept asking, 'Why is this happening?"' Young said. "The guy said, 'If the staff asks you to leave, you have to leave. This is a private event."'

It wasn't. Bush's Denver appearance probably cost taxpayers tens of thousands in jet fuel, room rent and personnel.

"This was an official White House event and not a political event," Colorado GOP executive director David Wardrop explained.

Anyone with tickets could have attended, added assistant presidential press secretary Allen Abney.

"The White House welcomes people exercising the right to free speech," he said.

The facts beg to differ. Bauer, Weise and Young had tickets. None acted up.

On Tuesday, Weise said a Secret Service spokesman told her that Republicans who asked to have her ejected from the supposedly nonpolitical event described her, Bauer and Young as "protest-type people" who were part of the "No Blood for Oil" group.

Weise, a 39-year-old lawyer, is not sure such a group exists. She does, however, have a bumper sticker on her car containing those words.

If that's what it's come down to in America, if a bumper sticker allows the Republican Party to bully you out of seeing the president of the United States, then George Bush and his GOP henchmen are living a lie.

The president constantly claims freedom as God's gift to everyone.

"We shouldn't be surprised when people are willing to take risks for freedom," Bush told GOP cheerleaders allowed to hear him speak in Denver.

"Free societies are peaceful societies. Free societies are hopeful societies. Free societies are the best way to defeat the dark vision of the terrorists."

They sure are, Mr. President.

But societies that smother dissent are never free.

Bush Wears the Flight Suit but Slashes Benefits for the Veterans

This week's best quote on the veterans' benefits issue is from the Governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell (a Democrat, of course!):

"While we, the governors, do all we can for our vets and our returning soldiers, our federal government has the primary responsibility for meeting the needs of our veterans," Gov. Ed Rendell said in his party's weekly radio address. "And that's why I find the president's budget cuts for critical veterans' services to be unconscionable."

In his budget, President Bush has proposed charging certain veterans a $250 annual registration fee and raising from $7 to $15 the copayment those veterans pay for a 30-day supply of prescription drugs. The budget also would cut $293.5 million by limiting the veterans whose care in state-operated veterans' homes is reimbursed by the federal government.

"During this time of war, it is absolutely the wrong time for our federal government to step back from any of its commitments to our veterans," Rendell said. "To do so would be penny-wise but pound-foolish."

SECRET U.S. PLANS FOR IRAQ'S OIL

SECRET U.S. PLANS FOR IRAQ'S OIL
By Greg Palast
Reporting for BBC Newsnight
17 March 2005

The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed.

Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protestors claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.

In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists."

"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.

An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant Falah Aljibury says he took part in the secret meetings in California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup d'etat.

Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration.

Secret sell-off plan

The industry-favored plan was pushed aside by yet another secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan, crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas.

The sell-off was given the green light in a secret meeting in London headed by Ahmed Chalabi shortly after the US entered Baghdad, according to Robert Ebel. Mr. Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil analyst, now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, flew to the London meeting, he told Newsnight, at the request of the State Department.

Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's "back-channel" to Saddam, claims that plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the US-installed Governing Council in 2003, helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on US and British occupying forces.

"Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're losing your country, your losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy billionaires who want to take you over and make your life miserable," said Mr Aljibury from his home near San Francisco.

"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines, built on the premise that privatization is coming."

Privatization blocked by industry

Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US Government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme.

Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer, the US occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that: "There was to be no privatization of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved."

The chosen successor to Mr Carroll, a Conoco Oil executive, ordered up a new plan for a state oil company preferred by the industry.

Ari Cohen, of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation, told Newsnight that an opportunity had been missed to privatize Iraq's oil fields. He advocated the plan as a means to help the US defeat Opec, and said America should have gone ahead with what he called a "no-brainer" decision.

Mr Carroll hit back, telling Newsnight, "I would agree with that statement. To privatize would be a no-brainer. It would only be thought about by someone with no brain."

New plans, obtained from the State Department by Newsnight and Harper's Magazine under the US Freedom of Information Act, called for creation of a state-owned oil company favored by the US oil industry. It was completed in January 2004, Harper's discovered, under the guidance of Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute in Texas. Former US Secretary of State Baker is now an attorney. His law firm, Baker Botts, is representing ExxonMobil and the Saudi Arabian government.

View segments of Iraq oil plans at: www.GregPalast.com/opeconthemarch.html

Questioned by Newsnight, Ms Jaffe said the oil industry prefers state control of Iraq's oil over a sell-off because it fears a repeat of Russia's energy privatization. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, US oil companies were barred from bidding for the reserves.

Jaffe said "There is no question that an American oil company ... would not be enthusiastic about a plan that would privatize all the assets with Iraq companies and they (US companies) might be left out of the transaction."

In addition, Ms. Jaffe says US oil companies are not warm to any plan that would undermine Opec, "They [oil companies] have to worry about the price of oil.”

"I'm not sure that if I'm the chair of an American company, and you put me on a lie detector test, I would say high oil prices are bad for me or my company."

The former Shell oil boss agrees. In Houston, he told Newsnight, "Many neo-conservatives are people who have certain ideological beliefs about markets, about democracy, about this that and the other. International oil companies without exception are very pragmatic commercial organizations. They don't have a theology."

Hypocrisy: Bush signing of Schiavo Legislation

As governor of Texas, George W. Bush signed into law a piece of legislation that made it legal for hospitals to disconnect the feeding tubes of people whose families WANTED THEM KEPT ALIVE. Tom DeLay, of course, is fully aware of this.

Blogosphere-dissemination credit to Mark A.R. Kleiman

But
Digby said it best:

By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient's family's wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother's wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are also aware that Republicans have voted en masse to pull the plug (no pun intended) on medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terry Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.

Those of us who read liberal blogs also understand that that the tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terry Schiavo's care thus far.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are aware that the bankruptcy bill will make it even more difficult for families who suffer a catastrophic illness like Terry Schivos because they will not be able to declare chapter 7 bankruptcy and get a fresh start when the gargantuan medical bills become overwhelming.

And those of us who read liberal blogs also know that this grandstanding by the congress is a purely political move designed to appease the religious right and that the legal maneuverings being employed would be anathema to any true small government conservative.

Those who don't read liberal blogs, on the other hand, are seeing a spectacle on television in which the news anchors repeatedly say that the congress is "stepping in to save Terry Schiavo" mimicking the unctuous words of Tom Delay as they grovel and leer at the family and nod sympathetically at the sanctimonious phonies who are using this issue for their political gain.

Hear, hear! [Tip o' hat to Atrios]