Guarding us against repeat offenders
Once again, the level of compitence exhibited by our government in keeping us safe from terrorists is in the news.

A US no-fly list used to try to prevent terror attacks includes the names of 14 of the long-dead 11 September hijackers, US news channel CBS reports.
Jailed former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein also features on the list, which has been seen by CBS's 60 Minutes programme.

The names of Bolivian president Evo Morales and Lebanon's parliamentary speaker, Nabih Berri, also appear.

A former FBI agent told the programme the list was assembled hastily.

The document lists 44,000 people banned from flying in the US, and was drawn up after the 2001 attacks on the US, the programme reports.

[...]

"They basically did a massive data dump and said: 'Okay, anybody that's got a nexus to terrorism, let's make sure they get on the list.'"

However, the names of the 11 British suspects recently accused of a plot to blow up airliners flying to the US were not included on the list.

Cathy Berrick, director of Homeland Security investigations for the General Accounting Office told CBS that this was due to concerns that the list could end up in the wrong hands.

I might be wrong, but I think most suicide bombers tend not to be repeat offenders.

Taking responsibility
In a press conference today, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert said he did nothing wrong in the Foley affair and will not resign. He then demonstrated his talent for improvisational humor by delivering the line "the bottom line is that we're taking responsibility because ultimately, as someone has said in Washington before, the buck stops here" with a complete straight face. Hastert's idea of taking responsibility has been to play down the seriousness of the crime, blame other congressmen for not telling him (they did), blame Bill Clinton and George Soros for plotting against him (they didn't), try and make a staffer take the fall (he refused), order an ivestigation of the press, order an investigation of the victims, and repeat that he didn't do anything wrong. In what way does any of that constitute "taking responsibility?"

Just so you know
No woolly mammoth or mastodon has ever been accused of improper communications with or predatory behavior towards congressional pages. Sabre-tooth tigers, on the other hand, are predators.

Making up history
Pat Buchanan demostrates that his knowledge of the history of his own home town is as dependable as his knowledge of the Holocaust and other world events.

I'll tell you, this is going to boomerang on the Democrats for the simple reason of this. You know, the consensual age for sex in Washington, D.C., is 16 years old, which means if this congressman had gone off to a motel with this kid, it'd have been no crime committed, although conservatives would be outraged. One of the reasons the age of consent has been reduced is the gay rights movement, which is holy [sic] inside the Democratic Party.

The age of consent in Washington DC has been 16 since 1901. This either means that the gay rights movement was well organized and exercised influence far earlier than most of us ever suspected. Or that Pat Buchanan is just making stuff up to support his prejudices. I'm bettingthat it's the latter. As long as I'm in a betting mood, I'll also lay odds that back in 1901 the sge of consent was raised, not lowered. Washington DC is, after all, a Southern city.

Go do a good deed
Bora Zivkovic, our own Coturnix, is a grad student with kids in school and grown-up bills to pay. His rent is due and he's come up short this month. Go drop a few bucks into his tip jar (he's set up to accept PayPal or Amazon) and help out a friend. It will only take a couple of us to make a difference. Don't wait, do it now.

Mastodons in the news
A geologist and a physician have concluded from a study of 113 mastodon skeletons that tuberculosis was endemic in the big beasts during the late Pleistocene. Bruce Rothschild, the physician, fist noticed tuberculosis lesions on a metacarpal (front foot, palm bone) at a dig in 2001. Curious about how common tuberculosis might have been in mastodons, he sought out specimens in museums across the country and found evidence of the disease in over half of the individuals he examined.

One of the three major theories to account for the extinction of large mammals at the end of the last ice age is the hyperdisease theory. According to this idea, put forth by Ross MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History, an epidemic of a highly virulent disease wiped out many of the now extinct species. MacPhee has suggested the possibility that the disease was carried by humans and their dogs from the old world into the new. While the idea is intriguing to some, so far no evidence of a pathogen has been found in the remains of the last Pleistocene giants.

Rothschild's tuberculosis doesn't quite fill the role of MacPhee's epidemic. The mastodons that Rothschild examined come from a couple thousand years time span. While tuberculosis isn't the sole cause of the extinction of the mastodons, it might be a contributing factor--one stressor among many. Combined with the shifting of their range as the climate changed and the introduction of a new predator (us) the combination might have been enough to push them over the edge. It's important to remember that, to be a cause of extinction, a stressor doesn't need to kill every individual in a species; it's enough to merely reduce their birth rate to below the number required for replacement. At that point, they go into a fatal decline.

Are these three stressors enough to account for the decline of the mastodons? Maybe. Could they also account for the extinction of any or all of the other species that died off at the same time? Also maybe, but much more research is required.

Rothschild's partner in this study, Richard Laub, points out that their work has relevance in beyond solving a ten thousand year old murder mystery. Tuberculosis is still a killer today. Understanding this ancient strain and its spread might help to understand modern antibiotic resistant strains and the danger of epidemics during a period of climate change. This is a perfect example of how research that appears to be completely academic can suddenly have useful applications in real life. It's another argument you can save to throw at that anti-science in-law or co-worker the next time they disparage pure science research.

Another obsolete narrative
Although the conventional wisdom narrative of the Mark Foley affair hasn't been established yet, certain elements of it are starting to take shape. One of these treats the reprehensible actions of the House Republican leadership in covering up for Foley as something brought about by this election cycle. This ignores the indications that they have known about his improper communication with pages--or rumors that, if investigated, would have led them to know about the communication--for years.

As I've mentioned before, people like the cyclic or pendulum metaphor of politics and treat it as if it was a law of nature, even though it is not. One version of this comforting story is an organic narrative of the life cycle of corruption.

According to this narrative, when one party self-destructs through hubris, corruption, and an over-abundance of power, the voters rise up and replace them with the other party. That other party enters power with a moral purity gained through their Christ-like time in the wilderness. Their purity and idealism remain intact for a time, but soon the temptations of power begin to wear them down. They make deals with the devil in order to maintain their grip on power. They become increasingly arrogant and reckless until, finally, their corruption is so blatant and unashamed that the voters rise up and replace them with the other party, now made pure by its time in the wilderness.

We can see this narrative at work in the many pundits who make the observation that the Republicans have managed to become unbearably corrupt in twelve years whereas it took the Democrats fifty years to get that corrupt. The flaw in this narrative is not in the "power corrupts" side of the equation, but rather in the "suffering ennobles" side. Those who crave power, whether they are trying to keep it or gain it, are equally likely to make deals with the devil. No one is immune to temptation.

In interviews with ABC News and The Washington Post, former pages have said that they were warned to be careful around Foley as far back as 1995. What's significant about the year 1995? That's the year that the Republicans took power in the House in the Gingrich revolution. That's the year Mark Foley was first sent to the House. Within their first year in power Foley was revealed as a problem.

While we might not be able to prove that this or that Republican knew about Foley, it's highly unlikely that his actions could have continued and that the rumors could have been common knowledge among the pages with out at least one Republican congressman having heard them. What's more likely is that the Republicans have been determined to hang on to power since the day they first grasped it their hands. It's likely that many of those same Republicans who tried to impeach Clinton for his affairs were also protecting a child predator in their midst.

The Republicans didn't just recently become corrupt and decide to protect Mark Foley in order to keep his seat in the 2006 election; they have been corrupt since day one and have been turning a blind eye to rumors of his behavior since day one.

So, what else is news
While the Republican House leadership tries to get their stories straight about who knew or did what when and why they did or didn't do it, I wonder what else is in the news. For me, one of the most frustrating things about the last six years has been the hydra-like nature of the radical right's attack on the Bill of Rights, enlightenment civilization, and the things that make America worthwhile. Every time we focus on one crime, they take advantage of our distraction to degrade something else. As we tried to stop Bush's war from destroying an international order that took sixty years to build, they started dismantling the regulatory system that keeps our food and drugs safe, protects our environment, and stands up for the rights of workers and other powerless people. While we tried to save social security, they tried to gut the Endangered Species Act. When we rushed to defend the Bill of Rights, they rushed to sell off the national forests. So, what craven and destructive acts are they trying to sneak through while we're all trying to make the House leadership take some responsibility for their criminal inaction?

The party has been postponed
In this year's military appropriation bill was a line item authorizing twenty million dollars for the victory celebration. It seems the Congressional Republicans were sure we would win the war in time for the election and planned on a big party. The spending bill for next year includes a paragraph allowing them to roll that money over into next year.

Blame the liberals and the gays
I didn't think the horrible shooting at an Amish school in Pennsylvania could be connected with the Foley scandal in the House of Representatives, but the voices of morality on the far right have managed to make that connection for me. It seems that both of these are the fault of liberal cultural elites.

Since taking over the anchor desk at CBS News, Katie Couric has instituted a new feature called "Free Speech" wherein people not associated with CBS deliver a guest editorial. So far those voices have overwhelmingly tilted to the right. Last night she featured Brian Rohrbough, the parent of a child killed during the Columbine massacre. Mr. Rohrbough blames the school shootings on secular culture.

I’m saddened and shaken by the shooting at an Amish school today, and last week’s school murders.

When my son Dan was murdered on the sidewalk at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, I hoped that would be the last school shooting. Since that day, I’ve tried to answer the question, “Why did this happen?”

This country is in a moral free-fall. For over two generations, the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum, expelling God from the school and from the government, replacing him with evolution, where the strong kill the weak, without moral consequences and life has no inherent value.

We teach there are no absolutes, no right or wrong. And I assure you the murder of innocent children is always wrong, including by abortion. Abortion has diminished the value of children.

Suicide has become an acceptable action and has further emboldened these criminals. And we are seeing an epidemic increase in murder-suicide attacks on our children.

Sadly, our schools are not safe. In fact, we now witness that within our schools. Our children have become a target of terrorists from within the United States.

This is not a new argument; it's an old favorite on the religious right. The idea that evolution, secularism, and liberalism are to blame for all of society's ills was the theme of the television documentary From Darwin to Hitler pushed by tele-evangelist D. James Kennedy last summer. The argument is completely ahistorical and implies that Western Civilization existed in some golden age of peace until it was disrupted by the publication of Origin of Species or by the Supreme Court decision ending mandatory school prayer.

Mr. Rohrbough is entitled to whatever lessons he takes from his grief. I'm mentioning him because he happened to be pushing his blame liberal culture argument on the same day that political conservatives were pushing the same narrative to reduce their own responsibility for failing to do anything about Mark Foley's predatory behavior over the last five years.

Newt Gingrich on Fox News:

GINGRICH: I think had they overly aggressively reacted to the initial round, they would also have been accused of gay bashing. I mean, the original notes had no sexual innuendo and the parents did not want any action taken.

CHRIS WALLACE: How would it have been gay bashing?

GINGRICH: Because it was a male-male relationship.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page:

But in today's politically correct culture, it's easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert's head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. Are these Democratic critics of Mr. Hastert saying that they now have more sympathy for the Boy Scouts' decision to ban gay scoutmasters? Where's Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on that one?

Tom Minnery speaking for James Dobson's Focus on the Family:

This is yet another sad example of our society's oversexualization, especially as it affects the Internet, and the damage it does to all who get caught in its grasp.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, another Dobson front group:

The Foley scandal shows what happens when political correctness is put ahead of protecting children.

The problem is liberal tolerance. The problem is liberal political correctness. The problem is this modern culture. The cure is not fewer conservative Republicans in power, but more. It's a message that we'll hear more of in the next few days. It's also one hundred percent wrong. People like Foley, who betray the most sacred of trusts, have always existed and always will exist. They are not a sudden, new phenomenon created by liberal culture and a lack of prayer in our schools. The problem is not so much that Foley existed; the problem is that the Republican leadership chose to protect Foley and turn a blind eye to his victims. The Republican leadership chose to protect him because they were afraid of scandal and unwilling to lose even one seat in the House, not because they were afraid of the power of political correctness. As Digby points out, that argument is just plain laughable.

Since when has the GOP been afraid to be called homophobic or gay bashers? They positively revel in it. In fact, just a couple of months ago 202 Republican House members voted for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. (It failed to get the required 2/3rds for passage.) Somehow, I don't think the Republicans are quaking in their boots at being called anti-gay.

Foley betrayed our trust because he is a sick person; the Republican leadership betrayed our trust because they wanted to hang onto power. Foley is starting to face the consequences of his actions. When will the rest of the Republican Party face the consequences for theirs?