Garbage In, Garbage Out

When I attended Congressman Markey's town hall meeting earlier this month, one of the points that Carol Rose, the President of the Massachusetts ACLU made repeatedly was that more informatioin doesn't always mean better information. Who knew how right she was. Today, the New York Times publishes an article that indicates that the NSA warrantless surveillance program may not have been, how shall we say, finely tuned, as the President would have us believe...

In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.

As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said.

President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program as a "vital tool" against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved "thousands of lives."

But the results of the program look very different to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.

"We'd chase a number, find it's a schoolteacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism - case closed," said one former F.B.I. official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration."

The article goes on to say that the FBI officials who came forward may not be aware of overseas successes attributable to the program, and also points out that combing through thousands of pieces of information looking for the small gem of useful intelligence is part of the NSA culture but not so familiar to the FBI, so part of the resistance from the FBI may be due to cultural issues. Still, the number of dead ends and innocent people investigated strongly refutes the President's claim that this surveillance only affected the 'bad guys'.

Can Congress Matter?

Today's Boston Globe contains a very interesting opinion piece by Drake Bennett entitled 'Can Congress Matter?'. The article looks at the concern among many that the Bush Administration's attempts to bypass Congressional legislation represents a return of the Imperial Presidency that reached its height during the Nixon Administration. While beginning with a brief discussion of how the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito are likely to make the Supreme Court much more deferential to the Executive, Bennett claims that the Founding Fathers originally intended Congress to act as the true brake on presidential power and it is they and not the courts that have dropped the ball in recent years.

Blake makes several key points. First, he documents how Presidents all the way back to Jefferson have taken actions that probably exceeded their Constitutional powers, especially in times of crises, particularly war. When the crisis ended, Congress would reassert its powers and balance would be restored. However, things seemed to change starting with the Truman Administration. Blake references Andrew Rudalevige, author of a new book entitled The New Imperial Presidency who claims that "during [the Korean War] era 'you had a sense of crisis becoming business as usual, so presidential power became business as usual.'" Jump ahead to today, with our constant emphasis on 'threat levels' and apocalyptic warnings of 'mushroom clouds' and you can see the attempt to maintain the sense of crisis in order to justify the grab for additional power.

Blake points to several key pieces of legislation passed during the 1970's in order to try and correct some of the abuses that occurred during Vietnam and Watergate, including FISA, the War Powers Act, and the Congressional Budget Act. Unfortunately, he claims, Congress has not followed through with diligent enforcement of these laws and so they have not had the desired effect of reigning in the Executive Branch.

Blake sees two reasons for this. The first is the increasingly partisan nature of our national politics. When members of Congress believe place political party above the institution it should not be surprising that Congress is not eager to reign in an President who, in their view, is 'on our side'. The second reason cited is the claim that Congressmen find little electoral value in taking stands on issues of foreign policy, seeing it as a high risk, low reward proposition. They have therefore been willing to cede foreign policy to the President, in essence letting him take all the risks, while they choose to concentrate on domestic issues which they believe play a far larger role in getting them re-elected.

A very interesting article. I've ordered Rudalevige's book, and will try to offer a review when I get a chance to read it.

More on the Band of Brothers Project

In an earlier post I mentioned the 'Band of Brothers' web site, the goal of which is to help organize support for military veterans running as Democrats in the 2006 election. Remarkably, the site now lists almost 40 candidates. That's almost 10% of the Congressional districts in this country, and if you assume that the vast majority of these men and women would be running for a seat currently held by a Republican, that would mean that almost 20% of the current Republican caucus could have to face a Democratic challenger with a military background in the coming election. I haven't seen much coverage of this trend in the MSM yet (I did catch an NBC news feature on one particular veteran, but I don't recall it putting her story in the context of a larger movement), but someone's bound to notice sooner or later.

More on the 'Not Even a Hint' Standard

OK, here's a real practical example of the right way and wrong way to avoid the appearance of ethical conflicts of interest. First the right way, in the form of a memo circulated by my company's HR department at the beginning of the holiday season last month....

Dear Colleagues:

We should all be proud to work for a company that upholds the highest ethical standards as expressed in our corporate vision, values and behaviors. With the holiday season quickly approaching, now is a good time to remind you about the company’s policy regarding gifts and gratuities.

Employees and members of their immediate families may not accept gifts over $10 in value from our suppliers or potential suppliers. This policy goes beyond the letter of the law to avoid even the appearance of improper conduct in our business dealings. The company also prohibits giving anything of value to officials or employees of the U.S. government, however innocent the intention. The company prefers that employees avoid giving or receiving even gifts of nominal value.

Should you receive a gift, please send it back unless special circumstances make the return impractical. For example, a perishable gift of small value may be shared with co-workers. You also may contact the sector Ethics Office to donate it to the company’s Holiday Giving Program, where it can benefit a community agency. Whether you return the gift or not, please send a note indicating our company's policy. For example:

Thank you for your recent gift. While I appreciate the good intention of your gesture, it is my company's policy that employees not accept gifts from our suppliers.

I am, therefore, returning your holiday gift. Thank you for your good will, and best wishes for the holidays.

If you are not returning the gift, the second paragraph above might be changed to read:

Since it would be impractical to return your gift, I have made it available to our company Holiday Giving Program, which will donate it to a community service agency. Thank you for your good will, and best wishes for the holidays.

For further information on gifts and gratuities...

Now the wrong way, as documented in this post from the Project on Goverment Oversight...

Deploying his deep pockets, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-VA) throws the annual holiday party for his committee staff. Some committees in Congress have their staff members cover the costs of their holiday party.

But House Government “Reform” Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) has come up a more creative arrangement. Lobbyists and defense contractors threw the annual holiday party for the Committee which, coincidentally, oversees federal agency contracting. Here's the invite.

Who needs Santa Claus when contractors have Chairman Tom Davis to thank for opening up the government’s coffers! By our calculation following the House gift rules, each of the nine sponsors could spend up to $450 per staff or member of Congress. That’s quite a party!!!

The December 15, 2005 bash was held in 2154 Rayburn House Office Building and was sponsored by:

-- McGuire Woods Consulting which employs former Tom Davis staffer Barnaby Harkins. Harkins worked for Davis for four years, “specifically focused on education, federal procurement and appropriations.” Harkins lobbies for one of the largest foreign-owned defense contractors, shipping giant Maersk. In addition, one of the firm's clients is defense contractor Northrup Grumman Mission Systems.

-- Patton Boggs, which, in 2005, retained Peter Sirh, the former Staff Director for Davis’ House Government Reform Committee and former Chief of Staff to Davis. Sirh helped Patton Boggs rake in a hefty $260,000 lobbying fee from MCI in the first six months of 2005, in part to “Assist MCI with contract issues relating to specific government contracts…” MCI is competing for a $20 billion telecommunications contract which has been a pet project of Tom Davis. Committee staff members strenuously deny that Davis has a hand in choosing who gets the contract but a recent article suggested that contractors think otherwise.

Sirh’s access to Tom Davis was a hot commodity for Patton Boggs. While there, Sirh also lobbied for:

* the DC government ($140,000 in fees in Jan-June, 2005)
* Defense contractor ADS ($20,000 in fees from Jan-June, 2005)
* Defense contractor DDL Omni Engineering ($20,000 in fees from Jan-June 2005)
* PriceWaterhouseCoopers ($100,000 in fees from Jan-June 2005)

-- Innovative Defense Strategies, where Peter Sirh also worked in 2005, also sponsored the party. It’s an awfully strange coincidence that the firm gave a $5,000 political contribution to Tom Davis’ wife in 2003, although Jeanmarie Devolites and Tom weren’t married at that point.

--PodestaMatton which lobbied on behalf of the government’s #1 defense contractor, behemoth Lockheed Martin ($140,000 in fees from Jan-June 2005) as well as the Native American Contractors Association ($100,000 in fees from Jan-June, 2005). Hey, whatever happened to the Committee’s investigation into abuses in Native American contracting?

--Defense contractor BearingPoint which reported a whopping $500,000 in lobbying expenses in 2005 (that’s a lot of Christmas parties!) including on “Govt. Contracting issues.” BearingPoint (previously KPMG) has supported Tom Davis’ annual legislative goody bag of contractor favors (known in shorthand as SARA and ASIA), some provisions of which he has succeeded in attaching to Defense Authorization bills.

--Holland and Knight which openly brags about joining in a “drafting summit… with members of industry” held by Davis’ staff to draft that contractor legislation.

--Defense contractor General Dynamics, which opened a production facility in Tom Davis’ district a few years back. At the time, Davis bragged of playing “a pivotal role in bringing the project to Northern Virginia.”

Must have been one heck of a party.

Injecting a Little Bible Into the Congressional Ethics Debate

As the Jack Abramoff guilty plea continues to shine a light into the complex relationships between congressman, lobbyists, and the clients who hire them, one of the most disappointing realizations is that the line between what constitutes legal lobbying and straight out bribery seems to be so gray and fuzzy. Since so many of our political leaders are eager to apply a biblical standard to the lives of their constituents, I thought it would be appropriate to turn the tables for once and remind them of the following passage from the book of Ephesians...

But among you there must not even be a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. Ephesians 5:3

Note that the standard for greed is the same as for sexual immorality, 'not even a hint'. It's not good enough to stop just short of illegality, you need to conduct your business in such as way that no one could have any question that your actions are motivated by greed and not by concern for what's best for your constituents. Bottom line, we don't need new lobbying legislation, we need more moral politicians.

The 'Few Bad Apples' Defense Starts to Rot

Its beginning to look like Lynndie England wasn't the mastermind of the plan to torture prisoners at Abu Ghraib after all. The Washington Post published a front page story yesterday indicated that Major General Geoffrey Miller is now invoking his right not to incriminate himself now that a colonel who served under him has been given immunity and ordered to testify at the trial of soldiers accused of using dogs to intimidate prisoners.

The idea that a group of overzealous, under trained National Guardsman started abusing prisoners on their own initiative without any guidance or direction from above in the chain of command has never passed my sniff test. There were just too many other alleged instances of abuse at other facilities and too much discussion of the issue at the highest levels of our government for their not to be a more institutional problem. Larry Wilkerson, the ex-aide to Colin Powell indicated last November he believed that responsibility may ultimately trace back to the Vice President's office.

Friday IPod Blogging

One of the latest fads to hit the blogosphere recently has been posting the first 10 songs that your IPod comes up with when you put it into shuffle mode. Not wanting to be left out of the cool kids club, here's my contribution for 1/13/2006:

1) I'm On Fire - Bruce Springsteen
2) Running From an Angel - Hootie and the Blowfish
3) Hey Kind Friend - Indigo Girls
4) Behind the Wall - Tracy Chapman
5) The Sounds of Silence - Simon & Garfunkel (Live in Central Park version)
6) Seen it All Before - Amos Lee
7) Tramontane - Foreigner
8) Mamma Cried - Alison Krauss & Union Station
9) Go Down Gamblin' - Blood, Sweat & Tears
10) Showdown - Electric Light Orchestra

The fact that half the songs are over 20 years old confirms my old fogie status.

We're Trying to Have a Conversation Here

There have been several times over the past six years when I have become so frustrated with George Bush that I just didn't know what to do. I had another one of those moments Wednesday night. 'All Things Considered' played a clip from the speach Bush gave yesterday. The gist of the clip was, "After 9/11 I was criticized for not connecting the dots, and now that we're using tools like the Patriot Act to connect the dots, I still get criticized. I can't win." My frustration springs from his obviously superficial understanding of the key issues in the debate over warrantless NSA spying. I was reminded of the recent television commercial in which a man and a woman or in a restaurant, and when the waitor brings the woman a Dr. Pepper she suddenly becomes so enamored with her soda that all of the conversation going on around her devolves into a sing-song 'Na na na na'. I seriously wonder if the President ever bothers to listen to what his critics are saying or just tunes us out like the woman in the commercial.

I'm aware that there people in this country who's faith in this Administration has been so totally destroyed that they are unable to trust the President on any issue. However, I'm convinced that the bulk of the current criticism being leveled at the President's actions is not directed at his goal, protecting the American people from another terrorist attack, but by the means he chose to achieve that goal.

In a democracy such as ours, process matters. If in the days after 9/11 the President believed he needed to institute expanded surveillance programs to prevent another attack, he had a duty to call the Congressional leadership into the White House and persuade them. He had the people of America behind him and as much political capital at that point as any President in modern times. That's the job he signed up for when he threw his hat into the ring back in 1999. If Congress had failed to go along and he had decided he needed to go ahead anyway, at least he could now make the argument that he tried to go through the proper channels first. To have not even tried is what many of us now find inexcusable.

I've long since given up trying to figure out why President Bush insists on going through life with such a black and white, you're either for me or against me mentality. I can't tell if he's intellectually incapable of grasping nuance and subtlety, emotionally unable to admit he's not perfect, or so arrogant as to believe he really is always right. Remember, we're talking about a man who's campaign for re-election was characterized by the unprecedented lengths it went to in order to isolate him from tough questions, who when asked in a press conference to share what he thought his biggest mistake was could only come up with trading Sammy Sosa when he was owner of the Texas Rangers, and who, after inviting every living ex-Secretary of State or Defense into the White House for a discussion on Iraq spent a mere 15 minutes listening to a few token comments, gathered the group together in the Oval Office for a photo op, and then passed them off to his NSA advisor (Bill Clinton, for all his faults, would have been dragged kicking and screaming from an opportunity like that). In the end, it really doesn't matter why he is the way he is, but its costing this nation dearly.

Here's what I know. In the next few months, we're going to have a serious debate in this country with respect to finding a proper balance between national security and civil liberties, and about the need for constitutional checks and balances and the rule of law. The President can participate in this debate, or he can retreat back into his White House cocoon, stick his fingers in his ears, and recent the '9/11, 9/11, Mushroom Cloud' defense until his term either expires or he is impeached. Either way, it won't be pretty.

On Trusting the Opinions of Government Lawyers

It occurs to me this morning that the Bush Administration is asking us to accept two competing views of the proper role of executive branch lawyers simultaneously. From the White House we are being told by the President and his spokesmen that we can be confident that the controversial NSA warrantless spying program is legal because White House legal counsel and the Justice Department have studied the matter. "Is it legal, absolutely," states the President. The unstated assumption of this argument is that, if these same lawyers had reached the opinion that the program was in fact illegal, they would have been free to say so and the President would not have gone forward with the program.

Meanwhile, down Pennsylvania Avenue at the confirmation hearings for Judge Samuel Alito, we are assured by the nominee that we can discount the controversial opionions contained in briefs he wrote while working for the government because he says "I was merely an advocate making my client's case." We were not getting his best, unbiased legal reasoning in these instances but deliberately slanted opinions designed to support a pre-determined side of the argument.

You simply cannot have it both ways. You can't take the legal arguments of the current crop of administration lawyers at face value and at the same time give Judge Alito a free pass. Either government lawyers have the right, if not even the obligation, to 'speak truth to power' or they are no more credible than your common ambulance chaser. Either way, the Bush Administration has a problem.

Lawrence Tribe Weighs In on NSA Spying

Rep. John Conyers asked well known legal scholar Lawrence Tribe to share his opinion on the Bush Administration's use of warrantless surveillance by the NSA. Tribe responds with this letter, from which my favorite line is "The technical legal term for that, I believe, is poppycock". Needless to say, he doesn't think much of the Administration's arguments.

In my business, I often find myself faced with non-technical people trying to tell me how I should build their software. They apparently think that, because they can make out a budget in Excel or defeat the demons in Doom they know how to design databases and build web applications. There's a lot of similar amateur legal analysis taking place in the current surveillance debate ("the Moose continues to believe that the President had authority both under Article II of the Constitution and the Authorization for the Use of Force passed by Congress to conduct the interception of enemy communications", for example). Marshall Wittman is free to believe whatever he wants, but I'm going to leave the legal analysis to constitutional scholars like Lawrence Tribe.

Rep. Conyers goes on to announce that the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are going to start holding hearings on Jan. 20th. He invites the Republican members to join them, but makes it clear they're going ahead with or without their participation. It will be interesting to see if the Republican leadership tries to force the Committee to hold its hearings in the same basement broom closet of a room they forced them into before.

Its The Republican's Stupid

I borrow the above title from a column published today by Rich Lowry, editor of that liberal mouthpiece, the National Review. It shows that the talking points circulating around trying to tie various Democrats into the Abramoff scandal are ridiculous even to Republicans. The basic message of the column is that, rather than playing a silly game of mutually assured destruction with the Democrats, the Republican party needs to face up to its problems and offer a reform package that actually stands a chance of making a difference.

Lowry goes on to address two of the issues that contribute to the current environment. One is the huge discrepancy between what a member of Congress is paid and what he, or even one of his aides, is able to make in private practice. Lowry suggests that this increases the temptation to accept the fancy golf trips and other favors that lobbyists have thrown at the members in the past. Lowry's solution is to tell the members that if they want the upscale lifestyle they should quit and go make the money in the private sector. An alternative suggestion I've seen tossed about lately is the idea of significantly increasing the base salary that members of Congress receive. It sounds expensive at first, but it only takes a few earmarks NOT getting inserted into the budget for this option to pay for itself. It might also have the side benefit of making public service a more attractive option to talented young individuals who haven't already made millions of dollars and therefore still need to be concerned with their family's well being.

Another suggestion I've heard is to institute a 72 hour waiting period between the time a bill completes markup and when it can actually be voted on. One of the memorable moments in Farenheit 911 was when in the course of a discussion of how the original Patriot Act passed in the middle of the night without most Congressman having a chance to read it, John Conyers explained that they don't have time to read most of the bills that they vote on. Now there's a case to be made that even the 72 hour requirement doesn't do anything to cut down on the volume of legislation that pass across the members desks, so I would like to expand the idea to require that these bills be posted on a public web site during the 72 hour period (exceptions to be made of course for bills dealing with classified issues). Then the public would at leaste have the access needed to scan the bills ourselves and contact our representatives if we see items we have a concern about. On issues like this, the more transparency the better as far as I'm concerned.

Legal Scholars Dispute Bush Administration Justification for NSA Spying

The Huffington Post publishes the text of a letter written by 14 legal scholars to Congress disputing the Bush Administration's legal justifications for the NSA warrantless spying program. These are serious men and women, almost all of whom have worked in the government at some point in their careers. It's not light reading, but if you want to be a serious participant in the upcoming debate, you owe it to yourself to try and slog through it.

Stupid Executive Tricks (Guam Edition)

Sometimes you have to ask if the Bush Administration is corrupt or just plain stupid. Today, Arianna Huffington points us back to the results of an investigation originally published in the LA Times back in August. The gist of the story is that the Superior Court of Guam hired Jack Abramoff to lobby on its behalf against a bill pending in Congres that would have ceded some of the court's power to the Supreme Court of Guam. Frederick Black, who had been the 'acting' U.S. Attorney for the island for over 10 years issued a subpoena on Nov. 18, 2002 seeking records concerning the connection of Abramoff to the court. The very next day, Black was demoted. The man named to be his successor turned out to be the cousin of one of the key figures in the investigation, so he recused himself and the investigation died.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck....

It should be fun to watch Scott McClellan try to explain this one away if the White House press corp ever gets around to asking him about it.

Law and Order, Capital Hill Edition

Wow, this just gets sadder and sadder. Now it turns out that Duke Cunningham wore a wire for a brief period in the days leading up to his guilty plea. Wonder who else the prosecutors may have in their sights now?

I Never Knew 'Political Scandal' Was Part of the School Curriculum

Talk about your weird coincidences, it turns out Monica Lewinsky and Jack Abramoff attended the same schools.

The 'Die Hard' Theory of American Politics (Supreme Court Edition)

In my last post, I outlined my 'Die Hard' theory of politics. It occurred to me last night that there might be another way in which the theory needs to be applied. Since the resignation of Justice O'Connor and the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist, liberals have reacted under the assumption that the overriding issue on which the nominations of their replacements must rise or fall is their views on Roe v. Wade. Given the recent revelations concerning the potentially illegal NSA spying program, which someone in the Administration must have assumed would get exposed and dragged into the courts sooner or later, is there a chance that the Bush team has been evaluating candidates based on their views on presidential power rather than abortion.

This might explain the Miers nomination. Ms. Miers made little sense to the religious right because her views on abortion were a bit muddled (whatever happened to that 'Every nominee deserves an up or down vote' principle, BTW?). But in the context of a presidential powers debate, she was the perfect nominee, at best a sure vote in your favor and at worst a recusal that would have resulted in a 4-4 tie vote. The fact that she was replaced by Samuel Alito, who seems to be quite a strong advocate for presidential power, seems to strengthen the argument. I hope the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee will take this into account when the hearings finally start.

The 'Die Hard' Theory of American Politics (West Virginia Edition)

I'm a big fan of the Die Hard series of movies. There are a couple of themes that run through these films. One is that, unlike many action heros, John McClain isn't invincible. At the end of each movie he may walk off with the girl, but he's a bloody mess who needs to be checking into a hospital rather than riding off into the sunset. The other is that in each movie, the plans of the bad guys depend on using the predictable response of the authorities to a crisis situation to create a diversion that hides your ultimate goals:

• Die Hard: Create a hostage situation that will lead the FBI to cut power to the building so that you can break into a vault protected by impenatrable electrical locks


• Die Harder: Crash an airliner so that the paramilitary swat squad (which happens to be under your control) gets called in


• Die Hard With a Vengeance: Send the police off in search of a bomb planted in school while you use the cover of an explosion in a subway station to break into the Federal Reserve and walk off with millions in gold bars

In the end, McClain always sees through the deception and saves the day.

All of this inciteful movie review has been presented as background for what I call my 'Die Hard' theory of American politics. The true powers of the Republican party don't really care about the 'values' agenda they've run on quite successfully for several years. It in fact runs counter to the small government, libertarian philosophy that has characterized the party in the past. However, since the rich comprise such a small percentage of the population and corporations can't vote, they have to find a way to distract people from their real agenda (helping the rich get richer and corporations make more profits) in order to get them to vote against their own economic interests.

Take the role that gay marriage played in the 2004 presidential election. Whatever your feelings about the moral aspects of this issue, laws governing marriage have always been controlled by the states. Republicans for years have been the champions of state's rights with respect to the federal government. Much of the resistance to the civil rights legislation of the 1960's was couched in the language of defending state's rights. Yet in 2004, the conservative Christian community was assured that, if George Bush was reelected, he would defend the sanctity of marriage. These congregations responded as you would expect, turning out in huge numbers to vote for Bush and probably swinging the election his way in key states like Ohio. Then, once the election was over and the real pay off that the religious conservatives had been looking for (a Supreme Court nomination for one of their favorite judges, Bush tried to appoint his own personal counsel instead. The furor that ensued was more than predictable.

What's this got to do with West Virginia, you ask? Well, the tragedy at the Saco mine has triggered a lively debate in the blogosphere over whether the Mine Safety and Health Administration has become too interested in protecting the interests of the coal mining companies at the expense of the miners themselves. Consider this post from Scott Shields over at MyDD...

In 1997, as a top executive of a Utah mining company, David Lauriski proposed a measure that could allow some operators to let coal-dust levels rise substantially in mines. The plan went nowhere in the government.

Last year, it found enthusiastic backing from one government official - Mr. Lauriski himself. Now head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, he revived the proposal despite objections by union officials and health experts that it could put miners at greater risk of black-lung disease.

More to the point, one of the "unnecessary" proposals canceled by [Laurinski] was a Clinton-era rule titled "Escapeways and Refuges." It dealt specifically with "methane ignition" and "entrapment deaths." This standard would revise and clarify an existing standard that requires underground metal and nonmetal mines to have at least two separate exits to the surface. Because of the physical limits in underground mines, fire, massive ground fall, methane ignition, inundation, for example, could result in multiple entrapment deaths. A second escapeway increases the likelihood that miners will not be trapped underground during an emergency if one escape route is cut off. In December of 2001, under the leadership of Lauriski, it was withdrawn from the agenda due to "changing safety and health regulatory priorities." In other words, increased regulation of the mining industry was seen as a roadblock to increased profits.

OK, let's be clear. Nobody's blaming this specific accident on President Bush. If the explosion was caused by a lightning strike, as is being theorized, the explosion was an act of God that no one could have prevented. However, if the rule requiring a second escapeway had been put into effect, the 12 men who died at Sago might have had a chance to make it out.

West Virginia coal miners used to be as reliable a Democratic vote as there was. In more recent elections, the state has gone Republican over issues like gun control and family values. Do you think in 2008 West Virginia miners ought to think a little more about which candidate is more likely to work to keep them safe on their jobs?

Pat Robertson, Meet William of Occam

There is a well known principle of logic known as Occam's Razor that is commonly translated as 'Given two equally predictive theories, choose the simpler'. Let's apply that principle to try and reason the cause of Ariel Sharon's stroke:

A) God is 'smiting' him for giving Gaza back to the Palestinians, or
B) He was a morbidly obese man working an extremely stressful job

Those who would pick answer B have successfully applied Occam's Razor. I really don't mean to make light of this situation, its always a tragedy when a man working to bring peace dies (yes, I know he's not dead yet, but according to the news reports I've heard it doesn't look good), and the nation of Israel has certainly lost its share. Isn't it interesting that the peacemakers are almost always those who have learned the horror of war the hard way.