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Sign on to www.gwbush.com and an altered, obviously fake image appears of a gleeful-looking Texas Gov. George W. Bush with a straw up his nose, inhaling white lines. Www.gwbush.com is not, needless to say, the official Bush campaign Web site (which is www.georgewbush.com).

And that's exactly the point, says the site's creator, Zack Exley, a 29-year-old computer programmer from Boston. Www.gwbush.com is so outlandish that anyone would spot it as a parody site, he says. . . . Bush's lawyers had warned Exley that he faced a lawsuit for his Web site's use of photos lifted from the copyrighted official Bush campaign site.

. . . Exley said Bush's intent is to intimidate and shut him down--a charge the Bush campaign denies. And Internet enthusiasts and free-speech advocates are closely monitoring the case because of its First Amendment implications.

In somewhat different circumstances, Barack Obama has, apparently, found control by someone not himself of the much renowned MySpace site, the one with the 160,000 "friends of Obama," objectionable. But unlike in the Bush situation, there is no question of cybersquatting, MySpace invoked its user agreement with Joe Anthony, the creator of the MySpace profile, and at the request of Obama, took the profile url away from Anthony and granted to it Obama.

First lesson of this episode? Don't build MySpace profiles of celebrities. MySpace will take them away from you at the request of said celebrities.

More lessons on the flip.

In his veto message to Congress, President Bush claims the Iraq Supplemental is unconstitutional:

[T]his legislation is unconstitutional because it purports to direct the conduct of the operations of the war in a way that infringes upon the powers vested in the Presidency by the Constitution, including as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.

Nonsense. Here is the Iraq language in the bill. Nothing contained therein "purports to direct the conduct of the operations of the war." It purports to condition the deployment of troops in the conduct of the war by requiring the President certify that certain conditions are being met.

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution provides among Congress' powers, the power:

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years

This appropriation is a direct and express exercise of that power. It clearly is constitutional.

According to the NYTimes:

The director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, said yesterday that the evidence of what is wrong with FISA was too secret to share with all Americans.

Don Imus isn't slinking off into obscurity as many hoped. Nor does it seem he has a new gig yet.

Instead, he's hired First Amendment Lawyer Martin Garbus to sue for him.

I'd rather watch Garbus on TV defending him than Imus pal Bo Dietl, but my main feeling is Imus is so last week.

Grounds for the suit seem to be contract provisions...although one would think CBS poured over them before taking decisive action.

Prediction: This will never see a trial. There will be a settlement.

In the wake of the London Bombings, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is leaning on Britain to restrict access to the U.S. for its citizens of Pakistani descent.

American officials, citing the number of terror plots in Britain involving Britons with ties to Pakistan, expressed concern over the visa loophole. In recent months, the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, has opened talks with the government here on how to curb the access of British citizens of Pakistani origin to the United States.

The proposals Chertoff is said to be considering:

Among the options that have been put on the table, according to British officials, was the most onerous option to Britain, that of canceling the entire visa waiver program that allows all Britons entry to the United States without a visa. Another option, politically fraught as it is, would be to single out Britons of Pakistani origin, requiring them to make visa applications for the United States.

Just what we need, more ethnic profiling. We should be working to eliminate racial and ethnic profiling, not coming up with new ways to embrace it.

Via Noah Shactman at Wired's Danger Zone:

The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops' online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say.

The new regulations are here (pdf).

Noah reports the rules "require a commander be consulted before every blog update."

[The rule] restricts more than just blogs, however. Previous editions of the rules asked Army personnel to "consult with their immediate supervisor" before posting a document "that might contain sensitive and/or critical information in a public forum." The new version, in contrast, requires "an OPSEC review prior to publishing" anything -- from "web log (blog) postings" to comments on internet message boards, from resumes to letters home.

Failure to do so, the document adds, could result in a court-martial, or "administrative, disciplinary, contractual, or criminal action."

Don't believe me? Well, allow me to retort. On January 31 I wrote:

Iraq CAN be the key to a lasting realignment in favor of the Democrats. . . . we can stride with great confidence into 2008 knowing that we may achieve the permanent political realignment we all dream of - Obama, Edwards or even Hillary, can then be our FDR.

Via Drum, Sunday, George Will said:

George, it took 30, 40 years for the Republican Party to get out from under Herbert Hoover. People would say, "Are you going to vote for Nixon in '60?" "No, I don't like Hoover." The Depression haunted the Republican Party. This could be a foreign policy equivalent of the Depression . . .

Just sayin' Of course Dems are currently in the process of kicking the issue away.

Time's Karen Tumulty provides me all the evidence I need:

[T]he sense I'm getting from talking to leadership sources is that, in the face of the reality that they can't override the veto, they are ready to jettison the deadlines for troop withdrawal. Democrats figure they have public opinion on their side at the moment, but that they won't if this drags on too long. The public wants to end the war, but polls suggest most voters are not yet ready to cut off the funding.

The poll Tumulty cites is an endorsement of Reid-Feingold:

The April 23-26, 2007 panel survey finds <b.57% of Americans favoring "the U.S. setting a timetable for removing its troops from Iraq and sticking to that timetable regardless of what is happening in Iraq," while 39% favor the United States "keeping troops in Iraq as long as necessary to secure the country, even if that takes many more years."

Tumulty says most voters don't want to cut off the funding. What she fails to understand is that withdrawal is cutting off the funding. And Reid-Feingold is for withdrawal by the only means it can happen, by cutting off the funding on a date certain, April 1, 2008. This gives the funding for the troops. Heck it even gives Bush's surge a chance to work. You have 11 months Mr. President. That's it. This is a winning political strategy for ending the Debacle.

The varied reactions to Jon Chait's Netroots piece brings to mind "Rashomon." My initial reaction is here. Other reactions I would group as reacting to Chait's take on the political activism component, see Bowers, the Right/Left blogwars component, Atrios, the New Left purity reaction, see Booman, and the semi-pundit reactions, featured here by TNR, of Matt Yglesias and Eric Alterman.

Of the folks who were or might be defined as Netroots, Bowers for instance, I think he took personal affront to the idea that he was a propagandist and not someone who is more married to the truth than to his desired political outcome. I understand his reaction but he doth protest too much. There can be no doubt that the Netroots, Bowers, included, pay attention to the stories that are favorable for his desired outcomes while overlooking those that are not. We ALL do that. Certainly propagandist is not right, but the idea that he is not engaged in at the least, advocacy journalism that is not truly interested in telling the whole objective story, is rather silly. Chris admits as much in his wrapup sentence on the subject:

Chait's standard for what counts as propaganda is absurdly broad. Basically, he seems to imply that anyone who is interested in making any impact on politics is engaging in propaganda, because that person is no longer engaging in a purely disinterested pursuit of ideas.

Correct.

The president's surge strategy has been nothing but bad news for the troops he's placed in harm's way:

Five U.S. troops died in weekend attacks, pushing the death toll past 100 in the deadliest month for American forces since December, the military said Monday as a wave of violence battered Iraqi civilians including a suicide bombing at a Shiite funeral. ...

The rising toll for U.S. soldiers also pointed to a potentially deadly trend: More troops exposed to more dangers as they try to reclaim control of Baghdad.

Bump and Update: You can listen to the tape here.

Original Post 4/30
Kent State Shooting Victim Asks for Re-opening of Investigation

May 4 marks the 37th anniversary of the shooting deaths of students at Kent State University. I write about it every year.

This year, there is news, and one of those injured in the shootings says he has new taped evidence to show there was an order given to open fire.

Alan Canfora, who was wounded in the right wrist during the 1970 anti-war protest, said he recently requested a government copy of the nearly 30-minute tape stored in the Yale University archive.

Just before a 13-second barrage of gunfire, a voice on the tape yells, "Right here! Get Set! Point! Fire!" Canfora said.

The tape will be released at a news conference tomorrow.

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming...

More...

mcjoan has a fantastic post applying wingnut logic to John McCain's cut and run in Somalia and how that "led" to 9/11:

[B]y his own logic, McCain and the party that forced the withdrawal of troops from Somalia are partly responsible for 9/11. Sounds pretty preposterous, no? Of course McCain isn't responsible. Bin Laden and al Qaeda are responsible. Terrorists like bin Laden do not need emboldening. . . . But if McCain wants to live by the McCarthyite sword, he should die by it. His attacks and smears of those of us who want to see this war brought to a responsible end as soon as humanly possible are reprehensible, as would be any effort to put the blame for 9/11 on him.

As mcjoan asks, did John McCain cause 9/11?