Mugabe cites U.S. program to justify wiretapping law.

By Matt Corley on Aug 11, 2007 at 10:33 pm

Yesterday, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe “signed into law the controversial Interception of Communications Bill, which gives his government the authority to eavesdrop on phone and Internet communications and read physical mail.” In order to defend the law, which has been called “the dictator’s tool kit,” Mugabe’s spokesperson pointed to President Bush’s wiretapping program:

Human rights lawyer Otto Saki told VOA that the law interferes and undermines the enjoyment of rights enshrined in the constitution and is a sign Mr. Mugabe wants to consolidate his power by “any means necessary or unnecessary.”

But Communications Minister Christopher Mushowe said Zimbabwe is not unique in the world in passing such legislation, citing electronic eavesdropping programs in the United States, the United Kingdom and South Africa, among other countries.

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Climate Progress

Must Read from RealClimate

By Joe Romm on Aug 11, 2007 at 9:58 pm

Not that anyone but a few Deniers was particularly worried that some microscopic revision in a few years of temperature data meant the theory of human-caused global warming was even slightly undercut — but progressives need to be know all the rebuttals. I had emailed Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate about this — I’m sure I wasn’t alone — and he put together a very nice debunking post.

As Gavin writes, “there is clearly a latent and deeply felt wish in some sectors for the whole problem of global warming to be reduced to a statistical quirk or a mistake.” Sad.

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Yglesias

Democratic Plans

By ThinkProgress on Aug 11, 2007 at 3:37 pm

Jeff Zeleny and Marc Santora have a good article up in The New York Times about how “Even as they call for an end to the war and pledge to bring the troops home, the Democratic presidential candidates are setting out positions that could leave the United States engaged in Iraq for years.” Specifically:

John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, would keep troops in the country to intervene in an Iraqi genocide and be prepared for military action if violence spills into other countries. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York would leave residual forces to fight terrorism and to stabilize the Kurdish region in the north. And Senator Barack Obama of Illinois would leave a military presence of as-yet unspecified size in Iraq to provide security for American personnel, fight terrorism and train Iraqis.

One way to look at this is to try to decide who has the least-bad plan here. A better way to look at it is that the situation on the ground is evolving, the candidates are all being vague, and it’s more important to build the strength of certain ideas in hopes of shifting the entire debate further in the direction of complete withdrawal. The problem with all of these plans is simply that they won’t work. It’ll be untenable to keep small numbers of troops stationed in the country in the way the candidates’ rhetoric seems to envision. What they’re saying they’ll do will either result in us going back to a big (80,000-100,000 or more) force or else down to essentially zero.

The correct answer is essentially zero. The candidates all realize that the status quo is untenable, but can’t seem to bring themselves to see that the alternative to the status quo is to leave and let Iraq’s fate be determined by the Iraqis.

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Media

MSM Diversity

By ThinkProgress on Aug 11, 2007 at 3:12 pm

This is kind of outdated, but this website from the era of Susan Estrich’s beef with Michael Kinsley over women’s representation in the LA Times opinion section has some data on gender diversity in the MSM that seems to me to suggest that the blogosphere is probably somewhat less skewed. Of course, the total number of people with elite op-ed columns gigs is so small that minor changes make a big difference. Thanks to Gail Collins’ addition to the roster The New York Times has now doubled the number of women with regular columns on the op-ed page. Seven of the Eight Elect are white, but one African-American columnist out of eight actually means that blacks are slightly overrepresented relative to their share of the population.

The Post op-ed roster is more confusing but seems to include a smaller proportion of women and blacks than does the Times. Neither paper includes any Hispanic columnists.

UPDATE: Jane Hamsher looks more closely at the blogosphere and sees many more women in top positions than Ellen Goodman found. It occurred to me that I don’t actually have any idea how many of the DailyKos frontpagers are women. McJoan is and MissLaura is, but it just occurred to me that I’d kind of been assuming that “BarbinMD” is a woman because “Barbin” sounds like “Barbara” and Barbara is a woman’s name even though, obviously, that line of reasoning doesn’t make any sense. You can, of course, look it up and it turns out that BarbinMD actually is a woman named Barbara. I don’t, however, actually make a habit of looking up the “real” names being people’s pseudonyms.

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Politics

Gonzales visits Iraq to offer advice on legal system.

By Satyam Khanna on Aug 11, 2007 at 3:05 pm

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales “arrived in Baghdad on Saturday for his third trip to Iraq to meet with department officials who have been there to help fashion the country’s legal system. ‘I am pleased to see firsthand … the progress that the men and women of the Justice Department have made to rebuild Iraq’s legal system and law enforcement infrastructure,’ Gonzales said in a statement released by the department.” The AP notes: “[h]is optimistic assessment came despite the frequent sectarian lawlessness and killings in the country.”

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Politics

Can Rudy Fail

By ThinkProgress on Aug 11, 2007 at 12:53 pm

I wonder about things like Wayne Barrett’s devastating takedown of Rudy Giuliani in The Village Voice. Mark Kleiman, for example, notes that it appears one factor in Giuliani’s otherwise baffling decision to put the NYC command post in the World Trade Center was that he wanted to use it as a love shack in which to conduct his affair with Judy Nathan.

Kevin Drum ponders whether this will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back even though “the Christian right has at least semi-forgiven Giuliani for his stands on abortion and gay rights. And the philandering and the messy divorce don’t seem to have hurt him all that much either.” The attack seems like it could, in principle, be very damaging. But coming from liberals it almost seems to me to help Rudy, whose campaign seems to be premised in part on the idea that if Village Voice writers hate him so much, he must be doing something right. I feel like these kind of stories would need to appear in National Review to draw blood. Otherwise, it’s the equivalent of how Hillary Clinton’s conservative detractors are her primary campaign’s best friend.

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Yglesias

Crucial Followups

By ThinkProgress on Aug 11, 2007 at 12:42 pm

GFR semi-answers my question about gender balance in traditional media to gender balance in blogs, but says you can’t really do direct comparisons because the structures are different. Here she says:

My experience in Washington is that virtually every woman who is in charge of anything has a reputation as either crazy or a bitch. Its really striking how many times people preface their remarks about women leaders to me with, Shes crazy, but, as a kind of apologetic move they feel is necessary before they can quote a female figure, and as if they would somehow be tainted by quoting or referring to her without first running her down. Its a tiresome tic.

But this, sure, has nothing in particular to do DC or political circles in particular rather than the treatment of women in leadership roles in general. If anything, I’ve found this somewhat less true of Washington than of other places where people are less politically conscious.

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Politics

Bush’s 10 yr plan for Iraq: bring back the draft.

By Matt Corley on Aug 11, 2007 at 12:27 pm

Yesterday, Bush’s “war czar,” Gen. Doug Lute, told NPR that “it makes sense to certainly consider” a military draft and that it “has always been an option on the table.” Americans Against Escalation in Iraq has produced a video that puts Lute’s comments into context with the administration’s plan to stay in Iraq for “a nine or ten year endeavour.” Watch it: