Open letters.

To Tim Russert.
To Chris Matthews.
To the Washington Post.

{ 1:05 PM }

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Filibuster, Bush, CIA, Iran. Robert Parry at AfterDowningStreet.org:

Supporters of George W. Bush are lambasting Sen. John Kerry for a threatened filibuster against U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. But 15 years ago, their attitude was different as backers of George H.W. Bush wielded the filibuster to block a probe into Republican secret dealings with Iran that could have doomed the Bush Dynasty.

In 1991, the Democratic-controlled Senate was planning an investigation into whether Republicans had conducted secret negotiations with Iran’s Islamic fundamentalist regime during the 1980 campaign, when Jimmy Carter was still President and Iran was holding 52 Americans hostage.

The unresolved hostage crisis destroyed Carter’s reelection hopes and gave an important boost to Ronald Reagan when the hostages were released on Jan. 20, 1981, immediately after he was sworn in as President and George H.W. Bush became Vice President.

A decade after those events, some Democrats wanted to get to the bottom of recurring allegations that George Bush Sr., a former CIA director, had joined clandestine negotiations with Iran in fall 1980 that may have delayed release of the hostages for political gain, what was called the “October Surprise” mystery.

Meanwhile, Republicans were worried that a full-scale October Surprise investigation might implicate Bush in near-treasonous talks with an enemy state and devastate his 1992 reelection campaign. Confirmation of the allegations also would have eviscerated the legitimacy of the Reagan-Bush era.

So, in November 1991, Republican leaders used the filibuster to block funding for the investigation. The Democrats mustered 51 votes – a majority – but fell short of the 60 votes needed for cloture. A fully funded investigation was prevented.

For 25 years, since Dubya's CIA daddy secretly negotiated with Iran, the Bush family has established and expanded its duplicitous reputation as the true Axis of Evil.

{ 10:47 AM }

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Don't you wish this were the big story today? WaPo:

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Author James Frey President George W. Bush confessed to Oprah Winfrey on Thursday that he made up details about every character in his memoir "A Million Little Pieces" the case for going to war against Iraq and the talk show host apologized to her viewers, saying she felt "duped."

"I have been really embarrassed by this," said Winfrey, whose praise for Frey's book in September helped make it the top-selling book on nonfiction lists in the United States last year apathy toward Bush and Cheney's disingenuous rationales helped lead to the deaths of 2,200 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

"I really feel duped," she told Frey Bush on her television show. She said he had betrayed millions of viewers.

At one point early in the interview Frey Bush said he still viewed the work as a memoir, not a novel war as "on terror" instead of "on Iraq." By the show's end Winfrey made him admit he lied.

"This hasn't been a great day for me," he said. "I feel like I came here and I have been honest with you. I have, you know, essentially admitted to ..."

"Lying," Winfrey interrupted.

"To lying," he said. "It's not an easy thing to do in front of an audience full of people and a lot of others watching on TV. ... If I come out of this experience with anything it's being a better person and learning from my mistakes and making sure I don't repeat them."

On the ever-expanding scale of American liars, Frey is small fry.

And yet this is what we focus on in hundreds upon hundreds of prominent media stories — one celebrity's trivial embarrassment, instead of the deaths of thousands.

{ 2:53 PM }

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A pension for me but none for thee. The real pension crisis, which is distinct from the fake, Republican-engineered Social Security crisis, masks yet another problem for American workers and investors: how corporate managements reward themselves for a job undone. WSJ:

WASHINGTON -- Rankled by the rich retirement payouts many troubled companies make to executives, Congress is moving to block such companies from funding the lavish packages.

The provision, tucked into legislation that would shore up the federal agency that provides a safety net for private-sector pensions, would keep financially troubled companies from setting aside any special pension benefits for top executives if their pension plans for rank-and-file employees weren't adequately funded.

Disclosures about bankruptcy-proof supplemental executive retirement benefits at some airlines, including a $45 million fund set up a few years ago for 35 top officials by Delta Air Lines Inc., have galvanized bipartisan support for reining in such perks at other beleaguered companies.

"We've heard too many stories of top executives of bankrupt companies sticking workers with unfunded pensions while running off with millions of dollars of so-called nonqualified pension benefits," says Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican.

[...]

The shift toward a dual system started in 1994, when Congress passed a law intended to limit the cost to taxpayers of runaway executive pay. The law barred companies from taking a tax deduction on compensation in excess of $1 million a year for any current employee. The result: Companies began setting up supplemental pension plans that encouraged senior managers to defer compensation.

Over time, the plans added generous benefits and covered a greater number of salaried employees. Now, more than 90% of the largest companies offer nonqualified deferred executive compensation plans, according to a new survey of the 1,000 largest companies by Clark Consulting, a Chicago benefits consulting firm. Most companies have expanded the programs to include all managers with annual salary and bonus exceeding $150,000, benefits experts say.

Many members of Congress think the proliferation of supplemental executive retirement plans has contributed to the trend of companies freezing or terminating defined-benefit pension plans. They reason that if executives have their own rules for setting aside money, they have less incentive to maintain nest eggs for their employees.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the Finance Committee, took Glenn Tilton, chief executive of UAL Corp.'s United Airlines, to task at a hearing in June for striking a $4 million benefit deal when he joined the airline while other workers were taking pay cuts. The benefit deal, Mr. Tilton said, was designed to compensate him for benefits he would have received from his former employer.

"The question of a double standard is very important and resonates with people in the middle class," Mr. Wyden said.

The double standard also represents yet another missed opportunity by Democrats to take control of the conversation.

They've had at least four years to frame the issue, because that's how long it's been since we knew that ultra-Republican contributor Ken Lay, Enron’s CEO, will receive a pension estimated at $475,042 a year for life, and a whopping, $12 million pre-paid life insurance policy to go with it.

{ 8:15 AM }

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Alito, no thanks. Wow. One of my local newspapers, the Republican rubber-stamp Chicago Tribune, published this editorial by Geoffrey R. Stone:

Alito is a smart, experienced and knowledgeable jurist. I have no doubt of his legal ability. On balance, the Senate should give more weight to excellence than judicial philosophy.

[...]

Given the times in which we live, we need and deserve a Supreme Court willing to examine independently these extraordinary assertions of executive authority. We can fight and win the war on terrorism without inflicting upon ourselves and our posterity another regrettable episode like the Red Scare and the Japanese internment. But that will happen only if the justices of the Supreme Court are willing to fulfill their essential role in our constitutional system.

Whatever else Alito may or may not have made clear about his views on such issues as abortion, federalism and religious freedom, he has certainly made clear that he has no interest in restraining the acts of this commander in chief. That, in my judgment, poses a serious threat to the nation and is a more than adequate reason for the Senate--Republicans and Democrats alike--to deny his confirmation to the Supreme Court.

A "serious threat to the nation."

Serious! Threat! To the nation! Call Homeland Security: we found a terrorist and his name is Sam Alito!

The sad thing is it's probably true: Alito probably is a serious threat to the nation. Forget abortion, who cares. Alito has made it clear that he wants to make the presidency an unrestrained dictatorship. Our Diebold democracy will become, if it hasn't already, a farce and the laughingstock of the developed world.

Stone is a law professor at the University of Chicago and the author of "Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism."

{ 9:49 AM }

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Pig without lipstick. Yet another of the missed opportunities Democrats fail to employ as a political strategy — the five-year flat stock market and the eroding economy. Here are a few snippets from (only) today's "What's News" in the Wall Street Journal:

DaimlerChrysler said it will cut 6,000 jobs over the next three years in a drive to lower costs by more than $1 billion a year.

Ford announced plans to slash up to 34,000 North American jobs over the next six years and shut 14 plants.

Knight Ridder plans to cut jobs and benefits and reduce newspaper sizes as part of an effort to improve its margins.

Lexmark's profit plunged 47%, but beat expectations, and the printer giant unveiled plans to cut 825 jobs and freeze its U.S. pension plan.

Slash and cut, slash and cut. Shares of these companies surged, naturally enough, because labor and benefits are so gosh-darn costly that they eat into corporate profits.

Ford workers can at least know that, though they have no jobs, their 401(k) shares of Ford are up 5% for the day. Yippee!

{ 9:21 AM }

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This is considered news. "Bush to Take Unscripted Audience Questions"

{ 10:39 AM }

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