Man about Murfreesboro

I encourage everyone to read Dahlia Lithwick's article in Slate on the coming torture bill. She has a reputation for being fair and honest in her reporting, not a partisan hack. She lays it all out: this bill is being rushed through Congress without anyone reading it. Public statements by John McCain and others show no one understands what's in the compromise. Some in the Congress are actually proud of the fact that they don't know what's in the bill:

Congress doesn't want to know what it's bargaining away this week. In the Boston Globe this weekend, Rick Klein revealed that only "10 percent of the members of Congress have been told which interrogation techniques have been used in the past, and none of them know which ones would be permissible under proposed changes to the War Crimes Act." More troubling still, this congressional ignorance seems to be by choice. Klein quotes Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican, as saying, "I don't know what the CIA has been doing, nor should I know." Evidently, "widely distributing such information could result in leaks."

We've reached a defining moment in our democracy when our elected officials are celebrating their own blind ignorance as a means of keeping the rest of us blindly ignorant as well.

She also points out that the bill will effectively sideline the courts, giving detainees no access to challenge their imprisonment. This is not my America. I want the terrorists stopped as much as anyone, but I don't want to lose my country in the process. What disturbs me most is that John McCain signed off on this. McCain, who was tortured himself in Vietnam and set himself up as a defender of the Geneva Conventions, is not only going to allow Bush to keep unnamed detainees in secret prisons for torture, but he's going to vote for a bill that includes in it a blanket pardon for all the torture that the Supreme Court has ruled illegal going back to 9/11.

Now why is it, do you suppose, that Bush insisted on that last part? Because he knows that his people have, under international law, committed war crimes. Why the rush to pass it this week? Because if the Dems take over either chamber, it won't pass at all.

I am confident that once this bill is signed (with all the red, white and blue party ribbons Bush can find) it will be challenged and eventually ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. But in the meantime, America loses the moral high ground in the war on terror. We lose our international standing as a country of laws and justice. We feed the hatred that spawns the enemies that plot against us.

I would call my senators and beg them not to sign on, but one of them is Frist and the other is a rubber stamp with "Junior Senator from Tennessee" on it.

Where are the so-called "values voters" on this? Where are the religious right? Can they possibly believe that, since we're torturing Muslims, Jesus would be okay with it? Is this the country they want to raise their children in?

There is an obscure clause in the bill that no one is talking about. It allows Bush to sieze American citizens off the streets, declare them enemy combatants and put them in a military prison with no access to the federal courts and none of the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

With the signing of this bill, President Bush will have grabbed to power to take away every last vestige of your Americanness.

In a letter to Congress signed by 609 professors of law, the stakes are layed bare:

"Taken together, the bill’s provisions rewrite American law to evade the fundamental principles of separation of powers, due process, habeas corpus, fair trials, and the rule of law, principles that, together, prohibit state-sanctioned violence. If there is any fixed point in the historical understandings of constitutional freedom that help to define us as a people, it is that no one may be picked up and locked up by the American state in secret or at an unknown location, or without opportunity to petition an independent court for inspection of the lawfulness of the lockup and of the treatment handed out by the state to the person locked up, under legal standards from time to time defined by Congress. This core principle should apply with full force to all detentions by the American state, regardless of the citizenship of detainees."

Is this really what the Republicans want? House Majority Leader John Boehner does. He's steamed that more Democrats in the House didn't vote for the bill when it was up:

"It is outrageous that House Democrats, at the urging of their leaders, continue to oppose giving President Bush the tools he needs to protect our country." Then, he went on "Hardball" and told Chris Mathews that Saddam had WMDs as well as ties to 9/11.

What saddens me is that my congressman, Bart Gordon was one of the Democrats to back this measure in the House. My district has become increasingly conservative and Gordon, who is usually more centrist to left-leaning have voted for this legislation under some misguided notion that the GOP won't hammer him and all Dems on national security.

I wrote him and my friend who works in his local field office and told him that vote was a discrace and I'm not going to vote for him in November because of it.

One place you'll find the "values voters" is that the Values Voters Summit. They're not discussing America's moral slide with respect to the way it treats Muslims in captivity. No, they're worried about a much graver threat to America -- homosexuals in committed monogamous relationships that want the same benefits as married couples.

Arlen Specter proposed an ammendment to the torture bill that ensures habeas corpus rights to detainees. The senate voted it down along party lines. McCain, Warner and Graham all voted against it. Nevermind that it is one of the bedrocks of our justice system. Nevermind that it dates back to the Magna Carta where it was used to ensure that kings didn't lock up people and forget about them. Bush wants to be able to dissapear people down a hole, never to be heard from again.

This vote puts our troops in greater danger. By condoning this treatment of detainees by our government, we are tacitly condoning it when other governments do it as well. You know who else had secret torture prisons where unnamed detainees were brutalized and not given access to the courts?

Here is what the U.S. Constitution says about habeas corpus in Article 1, section 9:

"The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

Bob Woodward is going to be interviewed on "60 Minutes" this Sunday. In the interview, he will say that the Bush administration is lying about the level of violence in Iraq. He will also say that our forces are being attacked, on average, every 15 minutes. 900 times per week. While Bush says things are improving, intelligence reports say that the insurgency will get worse next year.

Today's Senate vote on President Bush's detainee legislation, after House approval yesterday, marks a defining moment for this nation.

How far from our historic and Constitutional values are we willing to stray? How mercilessly are we willing to treat those we suspect to be our enemies? How much raw, unchecked power are we willing to hand over to the executive?

The legislation before the Senate today would ban torture, but let Bush define it; would allow the president to imprison indefinitely anyone he decides falls under a wide-ranging new definition of unlawful combatant; would suspend the Great Writ of habeas corpus; would immunize retroactively those who may have engaged in torture. And that's just for starters.

It's a red-letter day for the country. It's also a telling day for our political system.

Is it still considered gambling if you never expect to win anything? I ask this question because each day, as I drive to work, I pass several billboards announcing the PowerBall jackpot. I watch it build, week after week and then drop back down to a measly $15 million.

On occasion, I've purchased tickets, but I never really expect to win. I enjoy thinking about how my life would change if I suddenly came into a multi-million dollar windfall. But I'm not naive enough to believe it will happen.

Lately, when I'm at Kroger, I'll stick a dollar in a vending machine and buy a scratch-off card. Again, it's fun to play, but I don't expect to win anything. So far, I haven't been disappointed.

But lottery tickets, like anything else, can be a problem if you overdo it. Take the case of Annie Donnelly of Farmingville, NY. She became addicted to idea of a quick buck through buying lottery tickets. She started spending all her money on scratch-offs and lotto. Then she started stealing money from her bosses. Eventually, she was spending as much as $6,000 a day on lottery tickets. When she finally got caught, an audit showed she'd stolen more than $2.3 million over two years.

A cautionary tale if ever there was one. She was charged with grand larceny and sentenced to 4-12 years in prison. At her sentencing, she yelled at the judge that putting her away won't help her with her problem. She's right. It won't. Most likely, when she gets out, she'll still be playing the lottery. But putting her away will prevent her from stealing from other people to do it -- at least for a few years. I hope she's able to get some help while she's in stir.

So Bush has ordered Negroponte to declassify the key judgements of the NIE on global terror -- the one the New York Times reported on a couple of days ago which they say concludes that the war in Iraq has made it more likely that terrorists will strike American targets because we're breeding a new generation of jihadists over there. Bush says that if you could look at the entire document, you'd see that the Times leak is taken out of context.

My question is this: if it is safe to declassify the NIE now, why was it classified in the first place? The answer is that the Bush administration uses the classification system not just to hide secrets that need to be kept that way, but to hide documents that politically damaging -- a clear abuse of executive power.

Now we hear that there is another NIE, this one deals solely with Iraq and has been kept in draft form instead of being finalized to keep it from actually reaching the Senate Intelligence Committee. National Security Advisor Frances Townsend has confirmed it's existence, but said it will not be released until January. Hmmmm.

Rice said Clinton was lying when he said he left behind a comprehensive plan for fighting terrorism. The 9/11 Commission Report seems to agree with Clinton. The Washington Post did an analysis of the report and concluded that the Bush administration's efforts were all talk, no action.

In fact, despite being urged by both Clinton and Richard Clarke to make al Queda a top priority, despite the Aug. 9 PDB warning that bin Laden was going to hijack planes and use them to blow up targets, Bush's cabinet didn't even discuss al Queda until Sept. 4, 2001.

DAN:
Corker and Bryson are a shoe-in.

MIKE:
Bredesen is a popular governor. I don't think he's going to have much trouble getting by Bryson. The Senate race is going to be close and I don't know who's going to win it . . .

DAN:
Corker!

MIKE:
I know who you want to win it, but Ford has a good chance of . . .

DAN:
Ford's a liar, saying he went to church in that commercial when he went to church in Memphis.

MIKE:
No, he says he learned right and wrong in church. What about Corker's ads that. . .

DAN:
He's a liar just like his uncle.

MIKE:
Now, Dan, how would you like it if people said "Dan is just like his uncle?"

DAN:
Okay, I take that back. I need your wisdom around here.

MIKE:
Corker is buddies with your boy Bush. He couldn't lead his way out of a paper bag.

DAN:
Bush is a fine president. Sure, we may have worn out our welcome in Iraq...

MIKE:
Were we ever welcome in Iraq?

DAN:
Gas prices are down.

MIKE:
Yeah, funny thing that happening right before an election.

DAN:
Well, you read the news and watch CNN and get all that information and you're going to vote Democrat. I don't pay any attention to all that and I'm going to cancel our your vote. So, I win.

Okay, I'm calling out all the moral scolds in the House and the Senate. If you vote to enact Bush's torture bill -- eliminating habeus corpous and enshrining torture in our legal system, then I don't want to hear another lecture from any of you about America losing it's moral center. That goes for Democrats and Republicans. No more. No more lectures about the evils of music, sex, drugs, gambling, television, Hollywood, abortion, gay rights, putting religion in schools, creationism/intelligent design, the wisdom of the framers or any other tirade in which you lay claim to the moral high ground.

Bush likes to say that some things are just wrong. Torture is one of those things. Locking people up without due process is one of those things. The Democrats have pissed away an opportunity here to stand up for values that are truly American -- the rule of law and equal justice for everyone. I weep for the future.

Another witness has come forward and claims to have heard Sen. George Allen use the N-word. He again denies it. Ultimately, I don't think it matters whether he said it while in college or however many years ago it was. What matters is that he's denying it now. The smarter move would have been to admit it, apologize and explain why that sort of language is no acceptable any longer and will not be tolerated in his administration by either staffers or supporters. Instead, he made definative statements about having never used the term. Ever.

You've got to know that this is killing his camgaign. He's getting asked about this at every opportunity. There is no way he can get his message out with that kind of signal/noise ratio.

You know, we have home-grown terrorists as well. Take the case of David Robert McMenemy. Last week he drove his car through the front doors of the Edgerton Women’s Health Center in Iowa. He then set his car on fire in an attempt to destroy the clinic because he was convinced it was an abortion mill. It turns out, the center doesn't perform abortions. But that doesn't belay the fact that this was a terrorist act and McMenemy should be charged for it. Instead, he's being charged with 2nd Degree Arson.

Oh wow. A couple in Idaho sold their home to help pay for some medical bills. They bought a smaller house with a couple of out buildings on the property. As it turns out, the house stands on a hibernaculum, which is a fancy word for place where all the snakes in the area return each winter to ball up and hibernate.

The couple has horror stories of opening doors and having snakes fall on their heads, turning on a light and discovering the pull chain is a snake and walking out in the yard and seeing the lawn move.

Snake farm/
It just sounds nasty/
Snake farm/
It pretty much is/
Snake farm/
It's a reptile house/
Snake farm/
brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

This is just ridiculous. In Texas, an art teacher named Sydney McGee, took her fifth grade class to the Dallas Museum of Art on a field trip. McGee has made this trip many times over her 28-year teaching career. But this time, a parent called to complain because a student saw a naked statue.

That's just ridiculous. It's the human body, people. The DMA is not a place to go see pornography, it is a place to go and appreciate art. Pathetic.

"We assess that the underlying factors fueling the spread of the movement outweight its vulnerabilities and are likely to do so for the duration of the timeframe of this Estimate."

That is fancy governmental jargon meaning our efforts in the war on terror are breeding more enemies than we can kill and it's likely to go on indefinately. Like my brother said, "We may have worn out our welcome in Iraq."

With such a bleak assessment of the war on terror, one would think Congress (even this Congress) would want to discuss these findings and debate options for how to proceed. Oh, but no, princess. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi attempted to take the House into secret session yesterday so that they could discuss the NIE and the Republicans voted not to discuss it.

While I can see wanting to avoid all the "I told you so"s being flung in their direction, by voting not to enter into secret session, the GOP has cast their lot with Bush and this futile war. The American people need to know that their leaders understand the situation and are making decisions based on facts. By refusing to talk about it, the GOP is demonstrating that they are the ones who are soft on national security.

The Big Dog took a chunk out of Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. Wallace asked President Clinton why he didn't do more to get bin Laden while he was in office. Boom.

Wallace asked why Clinton pulled out of Somalia so quickly and thereby demonstrating America's weakness to bin Laden. Clinton reminded him that we stayed in Somalia for six additional months and had an orderly transfer to the UN while the same right wingnuts who are squawking about Somalia now, were the ones who were yelling at Clinton for a full withdrawal the day after U.S. soldiers were killed and dragged through the streets.

Clinton then turned the tables on Wallace and talked about how Fox News doesn't ask these questions to anyone from the Bush administration. That the reason he gets asked is because of an orchestrated disinformation campaign of which Fox is a willing participant.

The right wing are trying to rewrite history, but the internet makes it much harder to do.

He was mad, he had the facts and he was effective. Most of all, he was ready for the question. I wish I could vote for him again.

I spent this morning at Lipscomb University. A client was addressing 2,500 students with Leadership Lipscomb. In case you're unfamiliar, Lipscomb University is a private Christian school. As I strolled along to Allen Arena, the throngs of earnest, young go-getters filed into the building for Monday morning chapel service. I didn't see one student smoking. No one was tatooed, pierced or demonstrated any sort of unusual adornment. There were no cigarette butts on the ground, no skateboards, no petting in the quad. At most I saw one couple holding hands on their way to see the dean about getting some "Friday chapel credits."

At the convocation, before my client's presentation, a student read from the Bible, said a prayer, led the group in three or four songs and made announcements about upcoming opportunities to get "chapel credits."

I also didn't see very many non-white faces. That isn't a reflection of Lipscomb's policies so much as just an observation. There seemed to be more women than men and the women I was introduced to were very bright-eyed and eager to shake my hand. Having attended a public university that, at the time, would accept anyone with a pulse and a check, I was a little creeped out by it all. It wasn't a bad feeling, but I knew I didn't belong there.

For one thing, mine was the only car with any snarky bumperstickers (or a Harold Ford, Jr. sticker).

Falwell says that a Hillary Clinton run in 2008 would motivate more conservatives to vote Republican than if the Dems put up the devil himself. This was part of a 40-minute presentation in which he assured those attending that God would preserve a Republican majority.

Now, I've got two brothers and a grandfather who are religious scholars and preachers. None of them would dare try and tell me God's plans for the midterm elections. But Falwell has no qualms about telling people that God is a Republican.

My favorite part of the story was that they referred to him as leader of the "once-powerful Moral Majority."

We took Dollie's mom to the Frist this weekend to see the Egypitan exhibit. It was a self-guided audio tour. When you came across an item that had a number, you pressed it into the device hung around your neck and you heard an audio file. The "family tour," which is what Rozzy and I listened to as we walked along came complete with animal sounds, narration by an Egypitan princess and archaeologist "Rip Caliper." The adult version was narrated by Jeremy Irons and the exhibit's currator.

Rozzy had a blast. She pointed to the various items as they came up in the recording. She whispered to me which ones belonged to a princess. She was very curious and respectful. She didn't touch anything and really seemed to enjoy herself. I was very proud.

Max said his favorite part was the cat mummy. It was in a display case with the mummies of a dog, a falcon and an ibis.

The New York Times published part of a classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq. In it, the nation's 16 intelligence agencies agree that the effect of the war in Iraq has made the U.S. less safe, not more because our invasion and occupation of Iraq has spawned an entire new generation of jihadists. You can read all about it here.

But here's the thing: the NIE was published internally last April. Bush, Cheney and the rest have had it for months, but they've still claimed as recently as last week that the war in Iraq was making us safer. They are lying to us and their war in undermining our nation's security.

That's okay, though, because according to Bush, when history records this war it will be just a comma. Thousands of dead Iraqis, hundreds of dead Americans and it will be a comma. He can't get out of office soon enough to suit me.

What did we learn from the season premier of "Oprah?" Well, for one, that she hasn't pumped her own gas for more than 23 years and has therefore lost the skill necessary to use a pump. Secondly, that Oprah, despite her fripping great wadges of cash, gets just as upset about high gas prices as everyone else. In her defense, gas pumps have gotten more complicated and she was suitably embarrased at not being able to handle a task the rest of us do every week without a thought. I still laughed, though, when she finished and looked at the pump.

"$29, that's it? Excellent." Then Gayle pointed out that it was 29 gallons. The price was $127.

O'Reilly told Barbara Walters during a "20/20" interview that it was "disconcerting" to be on the al Queda "death list." He said that the FBI had come to Fox and warned him and others at the network that al Queda was gunning for them and they should be careful.

That certainly would be disconcerting, terrifying even, but not for manly man Bill O'Reilly, the take-no-prisoners culture warrior who tells it like it is. Only the thing is, he's telling it like it ain't. It never happened. The FBI never warned Fox (or any network) about any list from al Queda or anyone else. O'Reilly's just making stuff up to make himself look tough.

When questioned about it, Media relations director Leah Yoon refused to comment because O'Reilly's interview is being aired on ABC.

"We shouldn't be shouldering the burden of something he said on someone else's network," she said.

That's hillarious. Fox bears no responsibility for what one of their stars says on another network? Wow. Of course, it actually happened, I'm sure Fox would have been happy to verify it.

Nearly 6,000 Iraqi civilians died over the last two months as a result of this war. If you extrapolate that number to the per capita population of the U.S. you get an equivalent of 75,000 civilians killed. Stay the course is getting us nowhere.

Now the three amigos in the Senate have "compromised" with the White House over it's plans to torture prisoners and try them in kangaroo courts using secret evidence in violation of the Geneva Convention. And what is this compromise? Well, the president gets to do what he wants and the Senate will look the other way.

Seriously. The president wanted to be able to have the CIA torture prisoners, try and convict them using secret evidence and reinterpret the Geneva Conventions. McCain, Graham and Warner wanted to adhere to the Geneva Conventions, stop torture and not allow secret evidence.

The proposed "compromise" is for the Senate not to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, but allow the president to ignore them. The "compromise" is to allow secret evidence to be presented in Bush's kangaroo courts, but to give the defense a summary of what they cannot see. McCain, Graham and Warner got nothing in return for caving in.

Right now the Democratic Party needs to step up and stop this bill. They need to hold out for a week until the congressional session ends and the midterm elections are held. Let the citizens have a say as to how much of our principles we're willing to compromise in the name of "security."

Powell was right, America is losing the moral high ground here and that seems to be just fine with the Republicans. Don't think so, consider this: historians consider one of the great scandals of the Abraham Lincoln administration was his temporary suspension of habeus corpus during the Civil War. Today, Bush ignores the right of the imprisoned to contest means and method of his imprisonment and the alternative plan by the three amigos suspends habeus corpus as well. It's just off the freaking table like it doesn't matter.

Anothing thing to think about: currently, it's the CIA that is using these "alternative interrogation techniques" to torture prisoners. The military is not. Under this new bill, not only will the military be allowed to torture, they will be expected to do so. It's not right. That's why so many military leaders are against this bill.

Think about it. We're not just deciding what is okay for Bush to do to terrorists. We're making the rules for what is acceptible for other governments to do to our captured soldiers. Will we stand by and let foreign powers treat our soldiers like we're treating our prisoners? Then wise up, people.

Tonight, Max and I will sit down and watch the original theatrical release of "Star Wars." I wasn't much older than he is when I first saw it with my mother. I'm going to enjoy seeing it again through Max's eyes. Sure, it's nearly 30 years old now and he's seen things that are way more fantastic and flashy, but I'm hoping he enjoys it.

I've been saving up my points this week so I can enjoy some pizza and watch it with him.

"Star Wars" is the first film I remember wanting to see that any adults I knew cared about seeing as well. My mother took me to see it because it was PG and I was too young to go myself. She sat patiently through it until the end when Luke, Han and Chewy are walking down the carpet for the medal ceremony. Lea was waiting for them at the end.

"Are they getting married?" my mom leaned over and asked. I enjoy telling that story to people. It's one of my favorite childhood memories.

So my parents weren't really into it, but my neighbor's step dad was, as was my uncle Curtis. Over the years, I've seen the film several times, of course.

Among my favorite memories of my high school years was an evening spent with some friends at the home of one of the smartest people I've ever known. Cindy was a huge Star Wars fan and had a bunch of us over to watch the original trilogy on laserdisc (the last versions of the film that actually match the original theatrical release). She stopped each film at various points and pointed out interesting things to us. She showed us bloopers, and innovative shooting techniques and all the things the geeks learned from watching them over and over again. It was like a master class in nerdom.

The point is that, before Lucas screwed it up with the second trilogy, I loved Star Wars. I bought the toys, I ran around the yard pretending to be a jedi. I fought space battles in my living room. One year I dressed as C3-P0 for halloween.

What brought up this current bout of nostalgia for it was a videogame. I rented the Legos Star Wars II: the original trilogy for the Xbox. It sounds silly -- a Legos version of Star Wars -- but the game is a lot of fun and manages to interpret all three films without the use of dialogue. I may have to buy it for my collection.

Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson told a group of Dallas businessmen last April that he once canceled a federal contract because the vendor didn't support President Bush. When it was pointed out to him that such an action would be a felony, he recanted, saying that he lied to the group to make his speech more interesting.

An internal investigation, the executive summary of which was leaked to Think Progress. Shows that Jackson did indeed instruct his staff to award contracts based on whether the vendor supported Bush. What's most telling is that Jackson doesn't see anything wrong with this. After all, this is Bush's Department of Housing, so why should he award federal dollars to contractors that do not support him?

Because even though it is Bush's administration, it is everyone's country and in America, you're allowed to have differing political opinions without being descriminated against. Also, it is against federal law to award contracts based on politics. This protects Republicans as well as Democrats when the opposing party is in power.

The nearsightedness of some Republicans is surprising. Giving Bush all this power to run amok aroung the world unchecked and unsupervised is incredibly dumb. Ask yourself this question: would you allow President Hillary Clinton to listen in on American phone calls without court supervision? Would you allow her to lock up citizens without due proces or habeus corpus? Would you sign a blank check for her to fight an endless war?

I didn't think so. Bush and the GOP will not be in power forever. One would think they'd understand that.

My anniversary isn't difficult to remember. For one thing, our wedding invitation is framed and hung on our wall. But for some, it is a problem. There are services that will remind you with an email or phone call. You can place a standing order with a florist to take care of it year after year. But one jeweler in Alaska has an interesting idea to help men (and presumably women) remember.

He wants to build a high-tech wedding ring that will heat up a day or so before your anniversary. Not enough to burn you, but enough to get your attention.

Max's school has a pretty non-aggressive PTA membership program. They don't hassle us too much to do stuff other than contribute money or sell something to make them money. That's why I laughed so much at the survey sent out by the PTA at Lester Elementary in Jackson, Miss. It asked parents to volunteer to help out. The last option on the survey read:

"No, I do not want to get involved. I want my children to be thieves, drug addicts and prostitutes."

Heh. Naturally, some folks got upset. Not helping with the PTA doesn't mean you don't care about your kids.

The Ford campaign has closed the gap (and possibly pulled ahead) of Corker. Not only that, but all the news coming out about Corker is bad. The TV spots are nasty enough to garner national attention.

The current hubub is over a land deal that Corker's company made a pile of cash on while he was mayor of Chattanooga. It seems that there was a conservation easement that belonged to the city. Corker's company paved over part of it to make way for a shopping center and pocketed $4.7 million.

The most telling aspect of Corker's career is that he made more money as mayor than he did in the previous 24 years combined. The current polls show the two candidates within the margin of error, so this one may be a squeaker. However, Corker has to testify in a case about another land deal in October, which will not lead to the kind of headlines that will help one's senate campaign.

I've got nothing against Hugo Chavez. He's a democratically elected populist president who survived America's attempts to overthrow him and Pat Robertson's calls for him to be assassinated. During the aftermath of Katrina, he offered to aid in the form of heating oil that Bush rejected. Bush doesn't like him because he's a socialist who took over the Venezuelan oil fields and established a trust to benefit the people, rather than set up sweetheart deals with American oil companies.

Incidentally, if you buy your gas at Citgo, you're supporting Venezuelan oil, not middle eastern. If that appeals to you at all.

So I can understand why Chavez is angry at Bush. I can even appreciate his sense of humor (during his address at the UN General Assembly shortly after Bush's he commented that it stilled smelled of brimstone up there. Heh). But the world stage is not a place for name calling and this schoolyard crap.

Not that Bush didn't deserve a verbal smacking after his sanctimonious speech about the "democracies" in Iraq and Afghanistan being models for the region. That kind of rhetoric isn't helpful when the rest of the world can see just how badly things are on the ground there.

Sen. George Allen's (R-Macaca) race in Virginia just keeps getting weirder. At a debate, a reporter asked him about his grandfather's Jewish heritage. Now Allen has been talking about his grandfather being incarcerated by the Nazis for at least six years. But the reporter wanted to know when the Allen family stopped identifying themselves as Jewish.

Allen responded angrily that the question was out of bounds. He was right to do so. A candidate's religion should not be part of the debate as the U.S. Constitution treats all religions equally. But Allen went a little too far when he accused the reporter of "casting aspersions."

The implication there is that Allen sees being called Jewish something about which one should be ashamed. The reporter was trying to insult Allen by calling him Jewish. That's the entirely wrong tack to take in that situation.

A day later, Allen confirmed his Jewish heritage, but added that his mother makes great pork chops and that he had a ham sandwich for lunch that day. Again, not the right tack to take -- not all Jews keep kosher and the ones who do wouldn't expect Allen to.

Now Allen has attempted to link the incident to the "macaca" debacle and say it's all part of his opponent's anti-semitic efforts to slur him.

Allen said he was "absolutely not" running from his heritage but that he was offended by a question he believed linked his mother and religion with the word -- macaca -- he directed at Webb supporter S.R. Sidarth. Allen has apologized to Sidarth and said he didn't know the word's meaning.

Allen said he faced "the question, the assertion, the offensive remarks that your mother taught you this slur, and that somehow it's because she has -- either she or her father was -- was Jewish."

Allen wants to defend his mother. That's great. Truth is that some have implied that his mother may have taught him the word macaca because it comes from Northern Africa where his mother grew up. But no one has claimed that she would have done it because she was Jewish. Well, no one but Allen.

The Allen campaign should serve as a warning for anyone running for office. The slightest flub can snowball into a deal breaker if you handle it improperly and continue to dig when you find yourself in a hole.

Let's discus the case of Maher Arar. Arar was born in Syria, but has lived in Canada since 1987. While traveling home from a vacation in Tunisia, he was detained during a stop at JFK Airport in NYC. The CIA accused him of having links to al-Queda kept him there for 6 days without allowing him to contact anyone.

Then he was sent to Jordan and eventually Syria, where he was put in a dungeon and tortured for more than a year before the CIA realized Arar was just a computer programmer from Canada.

Alberto Gonzales was recently asked about the Arar case. He said “Well, we were not responsible for his removal to Syria.” He added, “I’m not aware that he was tortured.” This was puzzling to the reporters because the question came up due to items in the public record from a Canadian government report. Today, Gonzales clarified his statement to say that what he meant was that the DOJ doesn't deport people for torture, that's handled by Homeland Security. Gonzales said he hadn't read the Canadian report and that Arar's case in U.S. Federal Court was thrown out.

I grow more and more sick of this. American isn't supposed to be like this. I don't care how many planes fly into buildings, we're supposed to be the good guys. We're not supposed to ship people off to be tortured in secret prisons.

So far, I've lost about five pounds, so I'm sticking with the point system. That said, even when I was eating whatever I wanted, I would have shunned some of the current offerings.

Burger King is about to launch the new "Quad Stacker" to compete with Hardee's Monster Thickburger. We are living in a fastfood golden age, my friends. No one can safely eat either of these sandwiches, by the way. I don't care if you have the metabolism of a tree shrew. But I believe it is the right of these companies to sell the product because 1) it's legal and 2) there is such a thing in this world as personal responsibility.

The Quad Stacker features four beef patties (totally one pound of beef) four slices of cheese, eight strips of bacon and a "creamy sauce."

I am reluctant to even consider the number of points one would have to expend to eat this monstrosity. It contains 1,000 calories, 68 grams of fat (30 of saturated fat). There are no veggies included unless you ask for them. As bad as this is, it's still comes in No. 2 on the fastfood lane to heart attack city. The Hardee's Monster Thickburger has 1,420 calories and 103 grams of fat. Subway has a double-meat tuna sub that's 1,580 calories and 110 grams of fat.

This is what the Center for Science in the Public Interest calls "food porn" and argue that people may not know just how fattening these foods are. Anyone who can look at the BK Quad Stacker and not realize it's fattening is a moron. That doesn't not count little kids. Just the other day Max told me he wanted to try the Meatnormous Omlet Breakfast Sandwich from Burger King (at 740 calories and 46 grams of fat). It was my job to say "no" and I did it.

This isn't to say I've become some sort of nutrician nazi. I haven't, nor do I intend to. Few things tick me off more than self-righteous people who have fixed some problem and want to fix yours now -- like the reformed heroine addict who doesn't want me to take aspirin.

I'm just taking control of what I eat and trying to avoid having a heart attack before I'm 40. If I can point out the ridiculousness of the fastfood industry while I'm at it, then woo hoo.

A new energy drink is hitting the markets in the UK. It's supposed to have 350 percent more caffeine than Red Bull. It's called "Cocaine."

Giving credit where it is due, Wal-Mart is testing a new program in Florida where they are offering generic prescription drugs at severly reduced prices. This will give them a PR boost and draw business away from the large retail pharmacy chains. Shrewd move.

Well, I hope you Christians are ready to fight because Pat Robertson says a war between Christians and Islam is coming.

It's been adventures in media relations for me lately. I started off last Friday accompanying a client to a taping of Nashville Business This Week. It's taped at the local CBS affiliate. I'm naive enough to be impressed by a television studio, so it was kind of fun. I sat on the set for "Tennessee Outdoorsman" while my client was being interviewed.

The show is three segments long. The

first was a couple of local real estate muckey mucks who brought their own flak with them. We chatted for a bit and soon realized we'd worked together back in the day, when I was working for Bridgestone/Firestone.

You could tell we were the flaks of the group because neither of us dressed for a TV taping and we were the only ones that turned down the customary offer of coffee/water.

I pointed this out to her and she laughed in that special way a PR professional has of pretending to find you really quite amusing.

Next, I got a call from a freelance radio journalist who works with the local NPR affiliate, WPLN. He wants to do a story about the podcast I created for another client. He also wants to pitch the story to "Marketplace" -- meaning some national radio exposure for said client. If this goes through, that will be quite a feather in my cap.

Today, I attended the organizational meeting of the Public Interest News Service for Tennessee. A third client is a non-profit who wanted the details of this new group so my boss, understanding my somewhat progressive political leanings, sent me.

"Be sure and show them your Harold Ford sticker on your car," he said. "That'll establish your bona fides."

The first thing they did at the meeting was pass a microphone around and let everyone introduce themselves. It was a veritable "who's that" of local, regional and statewide nonprofits. They all had very important sounding names, but no one had a polished PR professional representing them. Well, except for my client, of course.

"Hello, I represent the Association for the Fair and Equitable Treatment of Elderly Immigrants."

"Good morning, I'm here on behalf of Children's Defense of Tennessee Wildlife Fund."

One guy stood up to introduce himself. He had white-guy dreadlocks about two feet down his back. He wore a t-shirt and cargo pants.

"I'm with the Tennessee Independent Media Center and I'm also the Green Party Candidate for senate."

I am on a diet. I've never been "on a diet" before, but I'm afraid if my head gets any fatter I'm going to explode. So, Dollie joined back up at Weight Watchers and I'm cribbing from her books and charts and graphs and whatnot.

Over the course of a day, I've become obsessed by how many "points" various foods are. I'm alloted 26 points a day:

So you see what I'm up against. But I'm determined to do this. It worked for Dollie. She lost a veritable buttload of weight on this system and I will too.

"I should warn you," she said, when I told her I wanted to try this. "The first week is gonna suck."