You might think that with the election only days away, and with widespread concerns regarding the handling of voters and the ballots in Florida and Ohio, that the Bush administration would be wary of appearing to favor blocking voters access to the voting rights that were established in the wake of the 2000 fiasco. You'd be wrong . The Bush administration has filed briefs in three battleground states arguing that only its own Attorney General, John Ashcroft -- not...

One of our regular topics here is whether the Bush government gave Halliburton a "sweetheart" contract for work in Iraq. Along with the old news that Pentagon is probing whether it was overcharged by the oil services company, it came out today that the FBI has now begun investigating possible criminal misconduct in the granting of the contract , and its "no bid" signing.

The news has been percolating all day that ABC affiliate KSTP had video, from an imbedded reporter, that show the presence of explosives at what is probably the Al-Qaqaa storage facility, immediately after the invasion -- when the site was under American control. Reuters is now reporting that this video shows the presence of the dangerous explosive HMX , with IAEA and UN markings that show this site was inspected immediately before the war. In other words, the explosives w...

Yesterday, I mentioned that Bush inaccurately claimed that Kerry had blamed the troops for the missing explosives in Iraq. In fact, Kerry blamed George Bush, and Bush was the first person to suggest the idea of blaming the troops. Well, this morning, after first saying the explosives were probably looted before the invasion -- this may be contradicted by an American television station that says it apparently has post-invasion video of explosives at the site -- Rudy Giuliani took the...

Just when you think it can't get more surprising when it comes to endorsing Kerry, The Economist has come out for him. The Economist has a long history of articles that are intelligent and balanced until the final few paragraphs, at which point they almost invariably weigh in on the side of the Republicans (when talking about American politics). As I've said, the most serious problem with Bush isn't his policies, it's his incompetence. The Economist agrees. Here's the money quote...

According to Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, Kerry will win if minority voters turnout at the level at which they did in 2000. In other words, current polls are working with a model of turnout that wouldn't accurately describe the vote in 2000, and may not be accurate now. In fact, since a larger percentage of Americans identify as minority members than did in 2000, Kerry may benefit more than Gore. This may explain why it appears that Florida Republicans are targetting minoritie...

As has been documented by several JoeUsers, it appears that nearly four hundred tons of explosively mysteriously disappeared from a site in Iraq, apparently after the US took over the country. To many of us, this seems like somewhat of a mistake on Bush's part, and naturally enough, Kerry has pointed out that Bush handled this poorly. After all, Bush was warned by the International Atomic Energy Agency, before the invasion, that this site was very important. After days of silence, Bush...

How can we be doing this? Do Bush supporters really believe everything's okay as long as we're better than the terrorists? It's somewhat old news, now confirmed, that America has been hiding Iraqi prisoners from the Red Cross, Congress, and the prisoners' families. In other words, except in the view of their holders, these prisoners have disappeared from the face of the Earth. Now it appears that some of these prisoners are being moved outside Iraq for "interrogation." This is a bi...

If Kerry wins, I can see that all the conservative and indepedent endorsements coming Kerry's way will cause us problems down the road. I can just see it: in 2008, Republicans will quote all these conservatives, "[Generic conservative] supported Kerry in 2004, so why has he turned against the President?" I guess we liberals will deserve it, after so benefitting from conservative disillusionment with Bush this year. Anyway, these are the concerns of the victor... and hopefully will be ...

Wow, I was pretty shocked by this one. Sure, lots of conservatives have come out against Bush, and Andrew Sullivan -- who once proved that one could be gay, conservative, and support Bush -- finally endorsed Kerry, but Christopher Hitchens? Hitch has spent years as one of the most hawkish of the Iraq hawks. It never occurred to me that he would endorse Kerry... he's spent the last four years defending Bush against most of his critics. In the end, Hitch -- who's still no fan of Kerry -...

As I think most readers know, Kerry is way ahead on both his number of major newspaper endorsements and total circulation of those papers. Bush supporters may not take this seriously, arguing that of course the "liberal press" is supporting the Democrats. Well, it turns out in the great majority of presidential elections, newspapers have supported the Republican candidate . In fact, only in 1996 and 1992 did the Democrat receive more endorsements from newspapers. The fact that the ...

It really says something when Republicans are so concerned about George Bush that they're willing to support John Kerry, a candidate with whom they have large policy differences. Non-Democrats are Endorsing Kerry If you've been following the newspaper endorsement race, you know that Kerry's built up a substantial lead in terms of both number of papers and the combined circulation of the papers supporting him. Many papers that supported Bush in 2000 are now supporting Kerry, while onl...

This is the big Iraq news of the day, high up at sites that rank stories by reader interest, although not higher than the Ashlee Simpson lip-syncing scandal -- "Lip-sunk" as the AM-NY daily put it. Anyway, Bush's policies are less of a problem than his incompetence... This is from the NY Times : BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 - The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demoli...

The government's contract with Halliburton stinks, and new information keeps coming up to cast suspicion both on the contract itself, and how it was issued without the normal competitive bid. Some people keep defending Halliburton and the contract, even as the Pentagon is investigating the company for huge overcharges. The linked article is about a contracting specialist who thought that the contract was fishy, pointed it out to the Pentagon people making the deal, and was totally ignored...

I've been suprised at how little concern there's been about Abu Ghraib -- and I think liberals are as guilty as conservatives when it comes to downplaying the significance that America is torturing people. That's a big deal, (1) because it's immoral and (2) because it's a huge fscking recruitment poster for al-Qaeda. I see people justifying the torture by arguing that anything we do that's not as bad as beheading people is morally justified, but I don't buy it. I hate to think what that ...