Bernanke just raised the Fed Funds target by .25%.

Link.

Yesterday I broke one of my rules, and wrote about Palestine and Israel. It has been my experience, in my years online, that nothing is as contentious as the Palestinian question. I have been called an anti-semite, racist, imperialist pig and much worse, by both sides, for writing about the issues.

But I will confess that over the years I have moved from a strong support of the Israeli side to a disgust so deep that it is almost existential. I am not so self-righteous, so sure of my Gandhi-nature, to think that if I had been born in Palestine, as a Palestinian, that I would be committed to a non violent solution.

Kos told me to link to this. I'm one of his minions, therefore, I must comply.

This quote he cites is revealing:

Eleven Sunni insurgent groups have offered an immediate halt to all attacks - including those on American troops - if the United States agrees to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq in two years, insurgent and government officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Taken in the context of the amnesty offer could have been a serious win.win for the Democrats. But they shot down the amnesty offer before waiting to see that developments on the ground might actually be changing.

Kos is probably correct, however, that Bush's war [will waste] "hundreds of billions more and countless lives . . . for the rest of the [his] presidency."

We're in a war right? And it is a war in the shadows right? It's also a long war, right?

So why is the military treating this shadowy, long war like it's just another day in the DoD bureaucracy?

The list Arkin collected was so long, I just skimmed over it after the first six or seven names and assignments. But this graf caught me by surprise:

And then there's probably the longest-serving officer in one assignment in bureaucratic history: Lt. Gen. William G. (“Jerry”) Boykin. He has deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence and warfighting support since July 23, 2003. Maybe Boykin is indispensable, maybe he is so good at his job that Rumsfeld can't stand to let him go.

We all know who William "My God Is Bigger Than His God" Boykin is, right?

So, why has Boykin not been moved around, rewarded with a desirable post? Arkin is once again instructive:

[I]t's perfectly okay to keep Boykin in his job for three years -- a military eternity -- to avoid political trouble and oversight. When it comes to actually fighting the war -- if any of these generals and admirals can actually be labeled fighting -- on the other hand, year long or shorter assignments seem perfectly routine.

Just so long as it doesn't upset the boss, looks to me.

Yesterday's decision by the Supreme Court on Texas's redistricting said, in effect, that as long as districts are drawn so as to not dilute minority representation you can redistrict as often as you want.

As the LA Times notes, at first blush this seems like something Democrats can do - redistrict in every state they control to enhance their chances. What is fair for the goose, is fair for the gander. But...

Creating more Democratic seats could require shifting African American voters from districts designed to elect black lawmakers into neighboring districts more likely to elect a white candidate. In California and New York, and across the South, Democrats who want to redraw the maps would be forced to confront black leaders who have long advocated electing minorities to Congress even if it means handing the majority to the GOP.

I'm on a conservative email list, one of those lists that urges you to call your Congressmen, write a letter or send an email type of lists. And today the conservatives sent me this email:

-- George Bush and the Republican Congress have sat on their hands while illegal immigrants stream across the border daily.

-- Government spending is at an all time high and growing twice as fast under George Bush than during Bill Clinton's administration.

-- Record government deficits have put our country in a precarious situation with foreign governments financing our debt.

-- Good jobs and economic opportunities for our children, grandchildren and all our fellow Americans are rapidly disappearing.

-- We are engaged in a war in Iraq that had dubious beginnings and no foreseeable end.

This, from Conservatives. Do you think the base will be energized come this fall?

SCOTUS reached a decision today in the Bush Administration's illegal treatment of detainees at GITMO. The decision also touched on violation of the Geneva Conventions and how prisoners must be given at least the barest protections under said conventions. Read more by Adam, a lawyer, over at Kos. This decision doesn't mean GITMO willbe closed tomorrow, but it gets us closer to that day. It is also a win for those of us who believe the executive should act to enforce the laws of the land, not the current office holder's particular will. This decision places clear limits on what the executive branch can and cannot do.

Update: More at Think Progress.

Update 2: More from SCOTUSblog, here.

Patrick J. Buchanan | July 3 Issue

The American Conservative - While the Bush foreign policy appears to be failing at every turn, in neither party can one see another vision.

Are you interested in finding out if AT&T is spying on your internet traffic and habits? If so, then read this.

Run a tracert from your dos prompt and look for this: sffca.ip.att.net.

As Wired says:

The magic string you're looking for is sffca.ip.att.net. If it's present immediately above or below a non-att.net entry, then -- by Klein's allegations -- your packets are being copied into room 641A, and from there, illegally, to the NSA.

Read the whole post. It is fascinating. I wonder if Bush and Cheney are going to attack The Agonist for giving state secrets away? I wouldn't mind the press.

I swear, I just had no idea how militant the breast-feeding movement has become. What'll we tell the children?

What a surprise!

The UK mission in Afghanistan is in danger of failing because of "misguided" support for American military and drug-eradication policies, an international think-tank has claimed.

nstead of taking part in the reconstruction of the country shattered by decades of war, British forces find themselves "at war" with a resurgent Taliban and alienated from an increasingly hostile population...

...The study by the Senlis Council, a drug policy think-tank, predicts that the violence in the south will escalate. The Taliban and their allies have been exploiting the anger felt by farmers at the destruction of opium crops and by civilians who have suffered in US-led operations.

Steve Gillard in writing a short preface to a withering and brutal press release sent out by the Webb campaign, says this: "This is the kind of attack press release campaigns should thrive on and use often."

Read the whole thing, because it is "pure beauty." More of this from other Democrats, please!

It's on CSPAN-2 right now. Watch. Wyden rocks. Here's the story from B&C:

As the Senate prepares to take up video franchise/telecom reform in the Commerce Committee Tuesday, Senator Ron Wyden (R-Ore.) has threatened to put a hold on the bill if it is not strong enough on network neutrality.

Wyden, who has co-sponsored an amendment strengthening network neutrality language, told home state newspaper, The Oregonian, that "I will do anything I can to block a major telecom rewrite that undermines what makes the Internet special. I will block it. I will do anything I can to derail it," including a hold.

Video after the jump. Here is Wyden's statement and Sanford comments on today's action on Capitol Hill.

I'll have more on this shortly. But the Senate Commerce Committee voted 11-11 today on net neutrality.

Matt makes an important point here, as the momentum going into a floor fight is clearly on our side now:

They held under intense lobbying pressure from the telecoms. I think it's fair to say that we've reversed the momentum on this issue, turning it from a little noticed 23-8 subcommittee vote in the House on April 5 to today's 11-11 tie in Commerce Committee and clearly what will be a contentious floor fight.

Moveon.org agrees (from a press relaease, no link available):

The little guy has seized the momentum in this fight to preserve Internet freedom,” said Eli Pariser, Executive Director of MoveOn.org Civic Action. “Companies like AT&T thought they’d easily get Congress to allow tollbooths on the Internet by spending millions in TV ads, lobbying, and campaign contributions. But millions of Internet users are fighting back together to preserve Net Neutrality, and we’re holding politicians accountable on this issue.”

This isn't over and I will have who voted and how, up soon. McCain voted with the Republicans but every Democrat on the committee voted for net neutrality, and Olympia Snowe. Kay Bailey Hutchison is obviously no friend of net neutrality. Then again, she has received over $60,000 $13,250 from the telco cartel. Figures. She's not heard the last from us here at The Agonist.

More from Save The Internet.

Take action: Call Congress: 888-355-3588, it"s free Write Congress, Blog it or add the logo to your site, and make it your MySpace best friend!

Zachary A Goldfarb | June 28

WaPo - Electronic Systems' Weaknesses May Be Countered With Audits, Report Suggests

To determine what it would take to hack a U.S. election, a team of cybersecurity experts turned to a fictional battleground state called Pennasota and a fictional gubernatorial race between Tom Jefferson and Johnny Adams. It's the year 2007, and the state uses electronic voting machines.

Jefferson was forecast to win the race by about 80,000 votes, or 2.3 percent of the vote. Adams's conspirators thought, "How easily can we manipulate the election results?"

The experts thought about all the ways to do it. And they concluded in a report issued yesterday that it would take only one person, with a sophisticated technical knowledge and timely access to the software that runs the voting machines, to change the outcome.

Via Rawstory, we learn that Miles O'Brien, well, just watch and see:

I love it, of course, Frist is his usual WATBself.

Video after jump.

They seem to have gotten their missile up, but not, er, off. Maybe the North Koreans should call Rush Limbaugh and learn how to collaborate with the Dominicans?

What is a poor National Missile Defense Agency to do?

If you need background, well, we have lots of it for you to read, ya dig?

elevated from the diaries ~ Matt will be commenting on Texas politics from Austin throughout the campaign season for The Agonist, please give him a warm welcome.

Hours ago, the Unites States Supreme Court released there ruling in the Texas Redistricting case. It was a strong statement in support of hundreds of thousands of voters in the most diverse parts of the state.

In a time where less Texans are uninsured, education is failing, and the culture of corruption is sweeping our nation, it is troubling to have the court rule FOR an incumbent protection plan. With no test in place and no restrictions, state legislatures can legally choose to ignore the plight of children and seniors, teachers and doctors, veterans and first responders, and waste time by constantly changing the boundaries of a political district.

More after the jump.

And you read.

With apologies to Max and Atrios.

Take action: Call Congress: 888-355-3588, it"s free Write Congress, Blog it or add the logo to your site, and make it your MySpace best friend!

Ah, Obama:

Sen. Barack Obama chastised fellow Democrats on Wednesday for failing to "acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people," and said the party must compete for the support of evangelicals and other churchgoing Americans.

"Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation. Context matters," the Illinois Democrat said in remarks to a conference of Call to Renewal, a faith-based movement to overcome poverty.

See, now, this is a Lieberman moment. Because what Obama is doing is using Republican talking points about Democrats and religion to criticize his own party.

Now Obama was talking to an Evangelical audience, so obviously he had to speak of religion. But he could have said something along these lines. . .

More after the jump

SCOTUS ruled today on the DeLay-Rove reengineering of the Texas Congressional map. They ruled about as far away as the conventional wisdom and expectations could imagine. It's a mess. We might get a Bonilla-Cuellar re-match and Ciro? Who knows, we might see him again too. There is no limit to what the courts cannot make worse, ya dig?

Kuff has some initial thoughts. TexasKaos has some more. SCOTUSblog comments too. More from BOR as well. And yes, as Phillip at BOR highlights: this could effect my Congressional race as well, TX-21.

The full opinion is here. And Adam B. has an important post here.

Update:

"The three-judge panel will have the responsibility of deciding what to do with the redistricting map. The first decision is when they redraw the map for -- this election cycle, or the next. The second decision, then, is whether they will redraw the map themselves, and accept three maps from both Democrats and Republicans, OR whether they kick it back to the Texas Legislature for them to redraw the lines during the 80th Regular Session starting in January."

I'm being told "in any likely scenario" this will include CD 21, 23, 25, and 28.

And this is all excellent news because we won. As a friend, deeply involved in Texas politics, just wrote:

[This is a] substantial victory for the Voting Rights Act, a victory that puts the Southern Republicans on the spot, since they delayed VRA renewal to see what the SCOTUS did with Texas redistricting.

On the spot indeed.

In the Algerian war of independence the French crushed the guerillas. It's something people forget. The French "won" and then decided that their victory was hollow, and decided to leave.

One of the problems they had when they decided to leave was that there was no one to negotiate with. They had killed the leadership of all major opposing factions. There was, simply, no one to make peace with who actually had the prestige and power to make a binding peace. It didn't matter much because there's a sea between Algeria and France, but if there hadn't been, France would have had a big problem.

I've taken a couple of sideways swipes at Chuck Schumer in the last couple months. He rubs me the wrong way on practically everything. Like Rahm he interferes too much in Democratic primaries, he's a media hog, and he genuinely appears to believe that winning politics means selling out the progressive base for center right voters and he appears more concerned with reelecting incumbents than democrats (witness his refusal to rule out supporting a Lieberman independent run against a Democratic candidate.)

Guys like Schumer are what drive the party generally to the right because they genuinely believe that's where the party should be.

So today's reading is this post from a Schumer constituent over at Cognitive Dissonance. He has a good list of the more recent stunts Schumer has pulled, and he ends with a wish for something I'd like to see as well - a good primary challenge for Schumer.

One of the more amusing episodes of the last few years was when Arnold Schwarznegger went one hyperbolic step too far and threw himself into the propeller blades by attacking the Nurse's union. Turns out that people like nurses better than they like politicians... or Hollywood action stars and once the nurse's got riled up, public opinion swung decisively against the Terminator.

Now the nurse's, having found themselves attacked for political purposes have proved that they know how to attack the root cause of an illness - they've decided to back campaign finance reform reform in a big way, by putting it on the referendum ballot in California and campaigning for it.

Elections are a test of evolving system

Arturo Gallardo | June 28

MySA.com - The Mexican presidential election will be held Sunday, and one thing is certain: There have been many positives in the process, regardless of the outcome. The polls have indicated a tight race from the beginning, creating a fierce competition that has forced the candidates to be both creative and aggressive.

Felipe Calderón (PAN) has run an exemplary campaign, with his team turning the race into a real competition by exploiting the mistakes of López Obrador. Initially hurt by those gaffes, including his decision to skip the first debate, López Obrador (PRD) has successfully communicated his belief that poverty is the most important problem to tackle in Mexico, an issue that has mobilized the poor and the middle class. He is about to discover if he enjoys as much popular support as he believes.

Among the interesting phenomena in this election is the constant defection of PRI members, their alienation arising from a sense that the party no longer represents them. If the PRI continues to restructure the party, trying to secure a more centrist position, it would be very good for Mexico. more at link

Striking the Immigration Chord
June 26

WAPO Campaign Conexión ... A curious final paragraph in a Washington Post editorial that otherwise focused on U.S. immigration policy has set off a mini firestorm in Mexico political circles (as in, made the front page).nbsp; Continued after the jump


Ongoing detailed accounts of the election at:
 •  Mexico votes   •  Campaign Conexion blog  • Mexico Votes: SAEN