Letters to W.

2004-06-08T12:17:00.000-07:00

I've been sick, and being sick means that I ended up overwhelmingly behind, and therefore, blogging hasn't been high on my list of things to do.

Eventually, there will be more letters, but the only thing I'll probably be writing today is a condolence card to my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Doltz, whose son died in Iraq on Saturday. I didn't really know him, he graduated from high school before I got there. I knew, and had an enormous crush on, his younger brother. You may have seen Ryan even if you didn't know it; he was in a commercial for some kind of shave gel or razor that featured VMI. The kid coming up over the wall was Ryan.

I'm going to be taking/making up 3, maybe 4 exams tomorrow. I have to go work on that now.

Congressional Oversight & You

2004-05-21T06:47:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

Over at Pandagon, I see that you've found an all new way to mess with government: Retroactively classifying information given to Congress two years ago regarding charges that the FBI missed terrorist warnings before September 11th. Even information on where the translator making the charges worked is now classified. This has never happened before.

This was the Justice Department's idea. You remember them, right? The department that decided to declassify a memo to mess with 9-11 Commissioner Gorelick for fun? Forgive me if I don't believe that this has anything to do with national security.

Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) is calling this "ludicrous" and he's right. If I was a staffer who had access to these documents, I'd be photocopying them and leaving them on windshields at every mall and grocery store in a 20 mile radius. Sadly, that probably won't happen, but seriously, do you think you could do things in a manner that could be described as something other than Nixonian? For me?

All Criminals in Their Coats and Their Ties

2004-05-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

I spend a lot of time thinking about how morally corrupt you and your administration are, but this just makes me ill. White House Counsel Albert Gonzales, who is currently in my top ten of worst people working in the White House, with a bullet, wrote that the war against terrorism, "in my judgment renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners." Human decency isn't a fad; it never goes out of style nor does it become obsolete. What is wrong with you?

He also said another advantage would be "would be that United States officials could not be prosecuted for war crimes in the future by prosecutors and independent counsels who might see the fighting in a different light." You know, this doesn't sound to me like an innovative new framework for a new time. This sounds like you knew goddamn well that war crimes were on your list of things to do and wanted to make sure your ass was nicely covered.

But it was the Justice Department memorandum that advised "creat[ing] a situation in which [American officials] could plausibly claim that abused prisoners were never in United States custody" that really made my morning. There are no words to express how disgusted I am with you right now.

Jesus Don't Want Me for a Sunbeam

2004-05-19T08:46:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

How many times am I going to have to explain to you that we don't live in a theocracy? Because this insanity horrifies me. If you want to meet with religious leaders about some things, great; some of them are terrific people. If you want to meet with diehard crazy folks who are most interested in having a US policy on Israel that brings them closer to the Rapture about US policy on Israel, we have a serious problem. How can you not find this alarming:

When Pastor Upton was asked to explain why the group's website describes the Apostolic Congress as "the Christian Voice in the nation's capital," instead of simply a Christian voice in the nation's capital, he responded, "There has been a real lack of leadership in having someone emerge as a Christian voice, someone who doesn't speak for the right, someone who doesn't speak for the left, but someone who speaks for the people, and someone who speaks from a theocratical perspective."

When his words were repeated back to him to make sure he had said a "theocratical" perspective, not a "theological" perspective, he said, "Exactly. Exactly. We want to know what God would have us say or what God would have us do in every issue."

These people got to meet with a variety of advisors on a variety of issues. What planet are you living on that these people represent anything other than a small sect actively interested in getting a lot of people killed?

I think Im going to go be ill.

My Home and Native Land

2004-05-19T08:35:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a country where access to safe medication wasn't overtly politicized because leaders care more about people's lives than scoring points with their base? I'm guessing not, but I still wanted to let you know that in Canada, my dream is a reality. Please try to keep in mind that you are the President, not a CEO, and in theory government experts exist to tell the truth for the sake of the people rather than to cover things up for the sake of marketing. I know you have problems with this concept, but I swear to you it's true.

Honesty, The Best Policy

2004-05-19T08:19:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

I think this headline really says it all: White House Is Trumpeting Programs It Tried To Cut. To make it better, you are doing this on trips I'm paying for. I just wanted to say thanks.

No, actually, I wanted to say knock it off because it's extraordinarily annoying. Use some of that ungodly money you fundraised instead.

Friday

2004-05-14T17:43:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, the weekend is here, so how about you hit up the President with your own letter? Don't keep it all inside. It's unhealthy.

An Accident, In That You Got Caught

2004-05-14T02:47:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

Explain this to me, like I'm six years old.

A group of senior military lawyers were so concerned about changes in the rules designed to safeguard prisoners during interrogation that they sought help outside the Defense Department, according to a New York lawyer who headed a recent study of how prisoners have been treated in the war on terrorism.

..."They were extremely upset. They said they were being shut out of the process, and that the civilian political lawyers, not the military lawyers, were writing these new rules of engagement," said Scott Horton, who was chairman of the New York City Bar Assn. committee that filed a report this month on the interrogation of detainees by the U.S.

And who did these civilian lawyers get their authority to fiddle with the Geneva Conventions from? Rumsfeld says these violations were approved by your own administration. But you didn't know that things would go so far or maybe you didn't know about this at all? Let's ask Mr. Horton what he thinks about that:

The military lawyers complained that the Pentagon was creating "an atmosphere of legal ambiguity," Horton said. "What's happened is not an accident. It is exactly what they were warning about a year ago," he said..."It's one thing when violations occur in the heat of battle, the fog of war. It's something else when violations of Geneva occur when it is a deliberate policy cast at the highest levels of the Pentagon — and I think it's at the highest levels of the administration," Horton said.

Sounds like Mr. Horton is calling bullshit on you, Mr. President. You're either incompetent, a liar, or both. My money is on the combination. I know that Republicans are in favor of smaller government, but I don't think this is what they had in mind.

So Goddamn Full of Rape

2004-05-14T01:26:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

Since you were apparently shocked that American soldiers raped prisoners, I wanted to make sure you didn't miss this. The Department of Defense decided to recognize that the military has serious problems with sexual assault. It took more than 100 of them being reported in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait in an 18 month period to get Rumsfeld's attention, but I'll take what I can get from him at this point.

I know we've been over this before, but I wanted to talk about it with you again for three reasons aside from the obviously egregious nature of this crime. First, we have this:

Some members of Congress and victims advocacy groups criticized the report because it did not specifically address contentious issues like the uniform definition of sexual assault, the role of victim advocates and the need for a policy of confidentiality for people reporting assaults, a provision many said would make victims feel more comfortable in reporting incidents.

I do not think you can possibly comprehend how difficult it is to report the person who raped you. What this tells me is a soldier who chooses to do so has to do it alone at risk of retaliation from peers and has no idea if her or his story will be placed under the category it should. That is an absolute nightmare. What did survivors of sexual assault in the military do to deserve this?

Next, there's this:

"They've done numerous studies over the years and they have all come out the same way," said Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York and co-chairwoman of the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues, which has had several hearings on the issue. "They report that they don't have this and that in place, but they never create things. Not only have they not come to terms with simple definitions, they have not come to terms with what to do, period. This calls out for legislation and that is what we have to do."

If legislation is necessary to do everything we can to stop soldiers' lives from being torn apart in this manner, then I suggest you get cracking, Mr. President.

Finally, I firmly believe that it wasn't coincidental that sexual violence and threat of sexual violence were used against the Iraqi prisoners and that the military has a major problem with sexual violence generally. The executive director of the Miles FOundation agrees with me:

"These are interconnected intersecting types of violence being perpetrated... There are serious interconnections about how these two issues are related to violence, control, and subjugation."

She's an advocate for a whopping 153 women who have been assaulted by other soldiers in and around Iraq. How many more will she be representing before you start caring about this?

I'm Afraid of Americans

2004-05-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

I haven't written to you in a while because what has come to light about how the United States treats prisoners literally makes me ill. I never expected to hear anything good about our worldwide gulag archipelago, but in my worst nightmares I could not have guessed it would be this bad. I suppose it isn't really fair to compare what we're doing to Stalin's prison camps. At least those people had an idea of how long they were going to be imprisoned, even if their sentences could be extended on a whim, but I digress.

You can express regret that this happened (and I'm sure is happening) until you are blue in the face, Mr. President, but this is your fault. What we have seen so far is not isolated or the end, but it is relatively new. General Taguba went in to that prison and found no method at all, sir, and that does not just happen out of nowhere. If nothing else, soldiers are taught to follow orders. They were told that this was okay.

I am well aware that it is logistically difficult for you to fire Secretary Rumsfeld, what with the confirmation hearings and all, but I don't give a good goddamn. We most certainly do not owe him anything aside from perhaps a warning not to let the screen door hit him on the ass on the way out. How dare you say he is doing a "superb" job?

On your behalf, Americans raped, killed, and tortured. The majority of people we've arrested did nothing wrong, but no one deserves this. I'm not interested in moral equivalency games; you have made a mockery of every idea this country was founded on. This does not happen spontaneaously. This is your fault.

Feeling Better, But Also Worse

2004-05-05T00:53:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

All kinds of fresh hell have come to light in the last few days, and I'm sure I'll get to that, but for now let's talk about censorship. This is a fairly small matter, but it serves as yet another reminder why I'm currently embarrassed to be your constituent. Disney has forbidden its subsidiary Miramax from releasing Michael Moore's new movie Fahrenheit 911 in North America. This isn't over an NC-17 rating or excessive budget issues, but rather how critical it is of you. The official word from Disney is that they don't want to alienate people.

But Moore's agent has a different take on the matter:

Mr. Emanuel said Mr. Eisner expressed particular concern that it would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb, is governor.

"Michael Eisner asked me not to sell this movie to Harvey Weinstein; that doesn't mean I listened to him," Mr. Emanuel said. "He definitely indicated there were tax incentives he was getting for the Disney corporation and that's why he didn't want me to sell it to Miramax. He didn't want a Disney company involved."

That's certainly an interesting fear to have, isn't it, Mr. President? Michael Eisner thinks that you and your family are such controlling, snivelling children that you'd seek financial retribution over a movie. I've heard that you believe in the free market, and if the movie is bad then no one would see it, right? Oh, wait, that is totally something you'd do, and you don't care about markets if you can't control them. My bad. When did this country become a bad gangster flick anyway?

I Heart Ezra and Jesse

2004-05-01T23:21:00.000-07:00

I've sick for the past couple of days, and the cold medicine is not conducive to writing anything coherently, so you should go to Pandagon and read this, which I wrote when my brain was still functioning. It's a synopsis of what happened at the March for Women's Lives. It was a happy day, and now you can pretend you were there, or if you did go, you can live it all over again.

Happy Hour

2004-04-30T14:09:00.000-07:00

Friday! Yay! I am going drinking and will update when I get back, but you, my friend, should write to the president evaluating his douche-iness. Go forth and e-mail.

Letters to Karen

2004-04-29T10:35:00.000-07:00

Tell Karen Hughes to eat a bag. It feels great!

Don't You Want to Know Why We Keep Starting Fires?

2004-04-28T00:12:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

The New York Times has a story today about yet another reason why you are unfit to govern a fraternity, much less the United States. You didn't like what the intelligence community had to say about Iraq, so you got other people to see if they could do better. And by better, I mean "what Dick Cheney wanted to hear."

This job fell to two men in the Pentagon in a room with no windows. I guess they wanted an environment equipped for maximum conspiracy theory potential. One of the "investigators" had this to say about what they were looking at:

We discovered tons of raw intelligence...We were stunned that we couldn't find any mention of it in the C.I.A.'s finished reports.

Raw intelligence reports are just gossip until you can prove that they have merit, Mr. President. If I call the CIA and tell them that my relatives in Canada are planning to invade, that doesn't make what I say "intelligence" even if they are massing on the border at Niagara Falls. It probably means that they are coming to my grandmother's house, which feels like an invasion, but just to my family and with more booze.

At best, you couldn't be bothered to find people who could differentiate between terrorist threats and random crap, but it was probably worse than that. As Patrick Lang, a former Middle East analyst for the D.I.A, put it:

I don't have any problem with them bringing in a couple of people to take another look at the intelligence and challenge the assessments... But the problem is that they brought in people who were not intelligence professionals, people brought in because they thought like them. They knew what answers they were going to get.

If there was really something to the allegations about Iraq, would it have been difficult to find professionals to work on this project? And Mr. Lang isn't kidding about the partisan cred of the men working on this:

When Mr. Perle was a top defense official in the Reagan administration, Mr. Maloof, a former journalist, worked as his investigator, assembling evidence that the Soviet Union was stealing Western technology. Mr. Wurmser, a Middle East expert who had written a book that attacked the Clinton administration and the C.I.A. for their handling of Iraq in the 1990's, had worked at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank where Mr. Perle was a resident scholar. Mr. Feith had been Mr. Perle's deputy at the Pentagon. And while they were all out of government, Mr. Wurmser, Mr. Feith and Mr. Perle had signed a 1996 paper calling for the overthrow of Mr. Hussein to enhance Israel's security.

I'm not comforted by their resumes, Mr. President, to put it mildly. Mr. Maloof was also in the habit of using his higher clearance to bypass what the intelligence community wanted them to see, "pulling" information from his other office and bringing it to their secret clubhouse. Isn't that illegal?

Unsurprisingly, the report they put together was "alarming," connecting practically every major terrorist group to one another as well as to states. Well, if you give me a Ouiji board, a copy of the Weekly World News, a live goat, access to Ahmad Chalabi, and some of your hair, I could tell you some alarming things too. What they were doing seems to be the intelligence equivalent of that.

Mr. Feith defends their work, inviting "anyone" to examine the quality of what they did. Okay, send it to me. I only have one class on Tuesdays and would be glad to look it over. All sorts of things were considered "logical" and "well-reasoned" until better evidence emerged. People used to believe that the sun revolved around the earth, that women had no sex drives, and that you were a moderate. I'm going to have to see this one and any evidence to the contrary to believe Mr. Feith. You have my address.

I'm Okay, You're a Terrorist

2004-04-27T23:13:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

With your help, Arlen Specter won the Pennsylvania primary over diehard crazy man Pat Toomey. I doubt you did this for any reason other than Specter is better for your Presidential prospects, but I have a question. Senator Specter is pro-choice, and I, and many others, like him for doing things like blocking Robert Bork from the Supreme Court. Your groupie, Karen Hughes, said that pro-choice folks are comparable to terrorists. By her addled logic, the senator falls into that camp. Since you haven't asked Hughes to apologize, I assume you agree with her. Because you endorsed Senator Specter, does that mean the terrorists are winning? Do you think that it is okay to work with "terrorists" like Specter and myself if it is politically expedient for you? Is this your idea of "steady leadership in times of change"?

Now I don't mind that Specter won. The prospect of Toomey winning was too frightening, and it's going to make it easier on the Democrats now that Specter has spent the last three months running to the right and spending all his money. But it bothers me that I'm a terrorist, while Arlen Specter gets the full weight of the RNC pulling his butt out of the fire. So ask Hughes to apologize, or better yet, resign. Your actions say to me that there is no option.

My Body, My Choice

2004-04-26T09:32:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

I'm back home after going to the March for Women's Lives. There were a million of us there, Democrats, Republicans (they aren't voting for you, I asked), moms, dads, kids, gay men, lesbians, college students, Catholics, Jews, Protestants, more people than I'd ever seen representing more kinds of people than I could count. We went right past your house, but you were hiding at Camp David. All you did was issue a statement acknowledging that the march was happening, which said the following:

The president believes we should work to build a culture of life in America and regardless of where one stands on the issue of abortion, we can all work together to reduce the number of abortions through promotion of abstinence-education programs, support for parental-notification laws and continued support for banning partial-birth abortion."

President Bush, I call bullshit on you. Let's go through this statement piece by piece and see what we discover, okay?

First we have the phrase "culture of life." I find that interesting coming from a man who executed 152 people, and better yet, doesn't seem to mind. You couldn't even pretend for the sake of appearances that you don't enjoy it. You felt the need mock a woman whose life was in your hands. That was classy.

Next, we have the series of badly considered policies. Abstinence only indoctrination has absolutely nothing in common with education. People should know how to avoid getting diseases that could possibly kill them, and if every kid was taught how to avoid getting pregnant, maybe fewer would. Parental notification laws are a big, steaming pile of crap. Women aren't going to avoid abortion because their parents will find out; it just makes their lives more miserable. It would be awesome if every family built the kind of relationship where a young woman could go to her parents, say, "This is my situation" and get the support she needs, but in my world there are incest, rape, and the kind of people who would go so far as to cut off their children entirely for wanting an abortion, regardless of the situation. Dilation and extraction is also something I support because I live in the real world. Pregnancies go wrong, parental consent laws delay teenage rape and incest survivors from getting the help they need, there are a million contingencies that are none of your business. Can't you see how each of these creates more of a problem with the following? I'm not behind you, and neither are the million people who were with me yesterday, because what you're promoting amounts to ignorance for everyone, and for some women, death.

Your statement wasn't the stupidest thing I've heard though. That honor is reserved for Karen Hughes, who in her ultimate wisdom, decided to compare me and everyone else at the march to terrorists. Of course I value life. The difference between us is that I value women's and children's lives, while you vaule a concept. If you want to impress upon me that you care about the life, then start by making sure that every mother and child is taken care of. Provide full health coverage, improve social services, and turn public schools into to palaces they deserve to be. Come out in favor of sex ed, so that accidental pregnancies will happen less often. Then publicly state that the death penalty is a terrible idea.

What really makes that statement ridiculous is the kind of people who will agree with the sentiment. Anti-choice activists have murdered doctors and posted the pictures and addresses of doctors and their families on the Internet to encourage others to do the same. Many of the counter demonstrators I saw yesterday openly held up Paul Hill as a hero and a martyr. If we're going to be throwing around accusations about who is a terrorist, I'm pretty sure these are the people you should be talking about.

All that said, though, yesterday made me feel great. Every person there wanted to send you back to crawford. It's going to be a beautiful day when that happens, and the march gave me all the hope in the world that day will be in the not so distant future.

TGIF

2004-04-22T23:04:00.000-07:00

It is Friday, which is totally sweet for many reasons. I'll be spending my weekend in Washington, Monday's midterm be damned, with hopefully one million other people who are totally pissed at our motherfucking president for being an anti-choice, patriarchal jackass. Well, more accurately, I'll be spending about 24 hours on a bus chartered by socialists so that I can spend 8 hours in DC, but whatever.

The point is it's a good time to exercise some of your rights as an American and vent at W. at the same time. So hit the link on the left and let him know why you, at this particular moment, think he's an idiot. It's fun, and more importantly from my perspective, I'll have more potential roommates who speak English when I get hauled off to Gitmo. It will be awesome, I promise.

You Got Served

2004-04-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

For the amount of time you spent thinking about campaigning, I would have expected you to be better at it by now. You made a great big deal over Kerry's military records not being public enough for you, and now every news outlet is going to be talking about how perfect those records are. Seriously, I'm 22 years old with zero experience running a campaign, and I could see this coming a mile away.

Maybe they'll notice this little contrast while they're at it. You're a disgrace, and I hope you and your friends keep making such a concerted effort to make it so obvious.

Try to Understand

2004-04-22T10:35:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

When I was in the fourth grade, I brought home a form and told my parents I was going to play the clarinet. Music wasn't something that had occurred to them as something I should do before that day, but my father has often told me that signing that form and shelling out for a crappy plastic instrument was one of the best decisions he ever made in regards to me. He's right. Because of music, even though I went to a pretty bad high school, I was a competitive candidate for the best colleges in the country, and I go to one of them now.

My commitment and success in a single activity looked good to admissions officers, but it was more than that. Music taught me how to really focus. It kept me out of trouble. I made tons of friends I never would have known otherwise. And while I have no definitive proof that there was a correlation for me, I was very good at math. I was an all-around better person for it.

For the others kids around me, it wasn't always music, but I can give you an absolute guarantee that every single one of us who wasn't giving up had something like it. Art, sports, community service, drama, vocational training; we needed them just as much as we needed algebra, probably more. So when I read this Washington Post story, I could have cried because Raymond Park Middle School could have been my own.

In the foyer of my high school, there was a mural that said "Tell me, I'll forget. Show me, I'll remember. Involve me, I'll understand." I guess somebody showed you statistics on poor districts' performance, but you don't understand. You don't understand the difference between education and being able to vomit up answers on demand. You don't understand that schools should be able to help the future engineer and the future construction worker, the writer and the ESL student, and the genius and the profoundly learning disabled, all at the same time. You've set a single bar that is too high for some, too low for others, and some kids are on a different playing field entirely. Every student at every school like the ones I went to are paying for your unwillingness to understand.

Schools should be palaces of education for everyone, whatever their needs may be, not Scantron factories. Republicans like to talk about "the soft bigotry of low expectations." The No Child Left Behind Act fits that phrase pretty nicely. If you ever bothered to get meaningfully involved in education, maybe you would understand.

Since They Aren't Pioneers...

2004-04-21T02:56:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

I would like you to explain to me why you have decided to fool around with one of people's most basic needs, shelter, out of nowhere. Of course, you wouldn't be you if you hadn't bothered to notify local agencies in writing before implementing this, retroactivated it to January, AND made sure that the formula used to allot money to local housing agencies did not have to consider increases in rent rates.

So the expenses for Section 8 vouchers are rising. I have news, Mr. President: When you mess up the economy, there will be more poor people. It is positively wretched that out of all the things you could choose to underfund (the millions you're spending on pleasing your base with "healthy marriage initiatives" come to mind) that you would pick on those who are in the worst position to fight back. You have no compassion, conservative or otherwise, and it is exactly this kind of nonsense that proves it beyond any doubt.

Say It Ain't So

2004-04-19T13:09:00.000-07:00

I'm not in any way making light of or ignoring the actual people who our Fearless Leader has managed to get killed or physically/emotionally maimed in real life, but now he may have killed B.D. as well.

Death Squads for Some, Tiny American Flags for Others!

2004-04-19T12:29:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

I see that you named John Negroponte as ambassador to Iraq because he "has done a really good job of speaking for the United States to the world about our intentions to spread freedom and peace." Is it Opposite Day? My desk calendar has something inane about mobile James Bond parties, and it would definitely have considered Opposite Day an important holiday. Did you issue some sort of decree?

I'm asking because unless "our intentions to spread freedom and peace" have something to do with death squads, you've hired the wrong man. It's very important to check the references on the resume to make sure they weren't copied out of a book or otherwise falsified, Mr. President.

Oh, wait, I forgot that you don't give a good goddamn. You already hired all the scoundrels and criminals left over from the Reagan administration's Latin American team, and this is just a promotion. Just as a quick reminder:

Negroponte served as Reagan’s Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. He was personally responsible for carrying out the Reagan administration’s illegal policy of training and arming Contra rebels inside Honduras for the purpose of overthrowing Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. He also oversaw the build-up of the Honduran military, while turning a blind eye to their campaigns of death and torture.

He still maintains to this day that no such horror was happening in Honduras. As the columnist puts it, our new ambassador is "either lying or he's totally incompetent." Either way, he sounds like a man after your own heart.

Worst. President. Ever.

2004-04-18T19:14:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,
I missed actually getting to see Bob Woodward on Sixty Minutes, but since just reading about makes me feel so ill, it's probably just as well.

There is a lot in there that we'll get to in a moment, but first an overarching question: Are you really so insulated and out of touch with reality that you thought telling all this to a journalist would be a good idea? I'm not saying I mind, but for all the lessons your administration took from the Nixon White House, it's interesting that you and everyone you work for decided to cut out the middle man and give all the damaging evidence directly to Bob Woodward instead of making him work for it.

I'm not surprised that Woodward is confirming that you were talking about Iraq five days after September 11th for reasons wholly unrelated to terrorism. It seemed pretty selfevident to anyone paying attention, and hopefully now a lot more people will be. No amount of red, white, and blue bunting, cowboys hats, or visits to military bases is going to cover your butt on this one, Mr. President.

Now for our old favorites, impeachable offenses! First, you illegally appropriated money from a fund that was supposed to be helping rebuild Afghanistan. Perhaps no one ever sat you down and explained it to you, but here in the US we have a Constitutional system of checks and balances. To keep people like you from funding anything without the consent of the public, you have to ask Congress. It's hard to wrap your mind around, I know, but I assure you it's in there.

Then we have you bringing in old family friend and ambassador to the US Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, and showing him top secret documents that explicitly were not to be shown to foreigners. But it gets better! In exchange for starting a war with Iraq, what did you win? An oil price fixing scheme designed to coincide with the election! My disgust for you right now really knows no bounds.

Maybe that's why you hadn't bothered to tell Secretary Powell about any of this until January 2003. I mean, all he was offering was a little bit of sanity, and that was no good to you. I'm sure that Karen Hughes, with her 35 years of military experience, was offering far more valuable advice...Oh, damn, wait, she's just a political advisor; it's Colin Powell with the 35 years in uniform. Were you having problems differentiating between the two?

Of course, saying anything about you being wrong about the whole WMD thing is just for the "elite circles." The elite circles of what exactly? My cousin's kindergarten class? You don't have to be an intellectual to understand that when the President promises something like a WMD program exists, but nothing is to be found, something has gone profoundly wrong.

You also think that this is a matter between you and God. Once again, that would be if we lived in a theocracy. This is a matter between you, me, and every other American citizen. One of these days, I'm going to send you a civics textbook with the important parts underlined.

As for how history will judge you, you said, "We don't know. We'll all be dead." That you might be right about, since I wouldn't be shocked if you got us all killed.

Classy

2004-04-10T23:37:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

Like you, I used to routinely embarrass myself by mispronouncing words. I don't know what your excuse is, but my problem was that I used to pick up all kinds of vocabulary from reading. I would know how to use the words, but since I had never heard them said out loud, I had no idea what some were supposed to sound like.

I mention this because in today's New York Times, a professor from the University of Illinois at Chicago comes out against race based affirmative action, and I agree with him. He talks about how the one thing UIC can depend on for pride in the face of a severe lack of resources is racially diversity; they're in the top ten in the nation in that regard.

But UIC didn't get to that place by recruiting minority high school students; UIC students are more diverse than say, Yale students, because they are much less affluent.

We are often reminded of how white our classrooms would look if we did away with affirmative action. But imagine what Harvard would look like if instead we replaced race-based affirmative action with a strong dose of class-based affirmative action. Ninety percent of the undergraduates come from families earning more than $42,000 a year (the median household income in the U.S.) -- and some 77 percent come from families with incomes of more than $80,000, although only about 20 percent of American households have incomes that high. If the income distribution at Harvard were made to look like the income distribution of the United States, some 57 percent of the displaced students would be rich, and most of them would be white.

I went to a pretty small high school that was mostly working and lower-middle class and Latino, but I knew people there who had what it takes to go to an elite university like mine and many more who would have gone to much better schools had their income tax brackets been higher. The kid who didn't have any extra-curricular activities because he worked fulltime, but got very high SAT's without trying, the immensely talented musician who gave it up because there didn't seem to be a point, the kid who went from ESL to honors classes in three years, I could go on and on. None of them are where they could be because they were poor, not because of the colors of their skins.

If you want to get rid of race-based affirmative action, that's fine with me. Replacing it with class-based preferences would help far more people. Of course, if you do that, we're going to have to undertake a massive overhaul of the public school system to make sure that all of the people like my high school friends can hack it in college generally. Remember "No Child Left Behind"? I want to see you try that for real as opposed to for politics. You get to end affirmative action as we know it; people like my friends get to go to college. We both win.

Not the Kind of War We Win

2004-04-10T19:47:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

I spent most of today simultaneously reading a book about Vietnam and watching 3 Lifetime Original Movies back to back, which is possibly the most depressing way one can choose to spend a Saturday. I was hoping against hope that when I finally got around to reading the news, it would be better than the rest of the week's, but unsurprisingly, it's about what I expected.

I see that the Vice President went to Japan to attempt to bolster support for the war while three Japanese aid workers are being held captive under threat of being burned alive if Japanese troops are not withdrawn from Iraq. Now, I wouldn't send the Vice President to rally support for anything because I find him to be downright freaky, but that's not what caught my eye in the article.

"It is absolutely essential in both Afghanistan and Iraq that we finish the task at hand," according to the Veep. The Times isn't reporting whether or not he managed to say it with a straight face, but it's still interesting. Did you finally figure out that Afghanistan is unstable, or did you get the memo about Afghanistan's booming market economy being fueled by opium?

Then there's the "task at hand" in Iraq: The worst week since the war began, although a ceasefire has apparently been negotiated in Fallujah. Hopefully it will stick. In any case, here's something from the first article that maybe you should print out and tape to your desk:

"They got rid of Saddam for us. None of us could have done it," Ismail said. "But they should have provided us with something better. Instead we got something worse."

Gen. Abizaid is looking into committing more troops, so he's finally catching up to the field of experts who said that was necessary before this war even began. Do you feel any shame over this since if you had committed an appropriate number of troops in the first place, maybe the past week wouldn't have happened?

This time of year, my sole vaguely religious thing to do is re-read A Prayer for Owen Meany, and there's one line from Owen I also think you should tape to your desk as well: THIS IS NOT THE KIND OF WAR WE WIN. Happy Easter.

500 Days Without You, Thought I'd Forget

2004-04-09T13:06:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

Your Communications Director, Dan Bartlett, got snippy over some of Senator Kerry's remarks about you being on vacation again, replying that you "aren't skiing" on your trip down there for Easter. Of course not; you're screwing around playing games with the NRA and some unnamed hunting groups. In any case, I can understand spending a holiday away from work, but here's the thing; you've spent all or part of 500 days on vacation since you took office, which adds up to more than 40% of your term so far.

Now I've never had a fulltime job, aside from being a student, but I'm pretty sure that if I took 40% of my time off, I'd get fired. When I was a senior in high school, I maxed out my number of absences because I was bored, but had I missed 40% of the year, the school would have had no qualms about failing me despite my very high GPA. Why is it different for you? When it comes down to it, people like me are your employers whether we voted for you or not, so I'm telling you to get yourself back to the White House.

I know that spending a holiday with the head of the NRA is probably a lot of fun for you, but anyone who told you that your job was supposed to be fun lied. You like to talk about your solidarity with the soldiers in Iraq (I understand that you'll be taking a sidetrip to Fort Hood), but a lot of them are in mortal peril right now. The least you could do is actually do your own job while they do theirs.

Good Friday

2004-04-09T11:18:00.000-07:00

It's Friday, the beginning of the weekend and the day I ask all of you reading this to write your own letter to W. It's good to vent (don't tell me you don't want to if you're reading this), and it's part of our obligation as citizens to let our elected (or in this case 'elected') officials know what we think of them. So hit the link at left and tell the White House what they did to bother you recently.

Subconsciously Stupid

2004-04-08T11:22:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

I admit that I did not get up this morning to watch National Security Advisor Condi Rice testify, but I'm reading the transcript now. The Center for American Progress has been doing factchecking so that I don't have to, and I think you may have missed my letter encouraging you to go over the definition of perjury with Dr. Rice. Go check it out what they've turned up so far.

One thing interested me from Dr. Rice's testimony that may seem trivial and probably won't get much attention is this:

Historically, democratic societies have been slow to react to gathering threats, tending instead to wait to confront threats until they are too dangerous to ignore or until it is too late. Despite the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 and continued German harassment of American shipping, the United States did not enter the First World War until two years later.

The Lusitania sinking was certainly tragic, but the Germans had been publishing ads in newspapers warning Americans that travel could be dangerous (I believe that the notice of the Lusitania's departure was right next to one of these warnings). Passenger ships were considered targets because the Americans were secretly using them to transport various military goods. The reason why the Lusitania sunk as quickly as it did and so many people died was because the torpedo hit a load of I believe bombshells that were in the cargo hold, but since nobody knew that, it was used for proganda purposes to build support for the war. It could just be a sloppy reference, but is Dr. Rice implying that your administration knew that we were at risk for attack, but didn't tell people and then used our ignorance to build support for your policies? I'm genuinely curious if that is the case, and if so, if you did it on purpose or if it was just your administration's collective subconscious slipping out.

You don't seriously expect us to believe that you didn't know September 11th was on the way, do you, Mr. President? The President's Daily Brief on Augut 6, 2001 was entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S." I know that you were "obsessed" with stem cell research at the time, but come on now. Presidents need to me multifunctional. If you think I'm wrong, then send me that briefing and everything else you had so that I can see for myself. If you think I'm right, but you're afraid it will be too hard for you if the public knew the whole truth, then you are not fit to be President. That's kind of a theme, isn't it?

An E for Egregious

2004-04-07T20:09:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

Over at Kicking Ass, they've posted a good round-up of what kind of education voucher schools are providing.

I'm actually not surprised at some of the voucher school abuses they've listed. We briefly had a charter school in my town. By my county's standards, my high school really wasn't very good, but rather than working on fixing some of its problems, a handful of people got together and decided to cost my school district a ton of money by opening a charter school, ironically named the College Prep Academy . It was closed due to financial mismanagement. Now, I only have speculative evidence that it was failing before that happened, but most of the parents I knew who were interested in seeing their kids succeed wanted to keep them in the public school where we had things like sports, clubs, and fine arts. Most of the kids I knew who went to the charter school were kids who were doing badly in the public school already, and their parents decided it was the school's fault, so they pulled the kids out to do badly in the charter school instead. The school also happened to be across the street from the bar my dad hangs out in, and the people who ran the school used to come in and get hammered pretty frequently, which probably didn't help either.

But alcoholism aside, if kids who aren't doing so well academically in public school pack it in to try a charter school, shouldn't we be keeping track of their academic progress or lack their of? Why are voucher schools exempt from the regulations that are bankrupting public schools? Secretary of Education Rod Paige said that "It's not a federal responsibility to have oversight over choice schools." It's almost as if you're intentionally trying to force a radical change in American education by making it legally and financially impossible to keep public schools open so that education can be an industry rather than a public good. Yeah, I'm sure you'd never do that.

The Definition of Compassion

2004-04-07T18:22:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

I try to stay away from your campaign site because it makes me feel violently ill, but a couple of sites were talking about the photos chosen for the section titled "Compassion" so I took a look. While making appearances at events for groups like Habitat for Humanity is a good thing, I think your definition of compassion is slightly off because it should involve a lot more than hanging out with Africans and African-Americans and taking pictures.

There are many things I could point to that you need to change before you get the compassionate thing down, but here are a few:

Some of your pictures had to do with your work on the high rates of HIV/AIDS in Africa. However, as we have been over before, you have endangered the lives of millions of Africans by cutting international aid for family planning.
You also choose to highlight welfare to work programs. It's great to have people working, but sadly, many of the people that have pushed off the welfare rolls are still poor. It's not enough to have a job; you need one where you can actually make a living, but you have actively worked to keep the minimum wage at $5.15.
You went on and on about how great No Child Left Behind was, but now many schools are facing budget cuts (this district for example is having fundraisers to afford chalk and is seeking private funding for their larger programs) and state legislatures are rebelling against it.

I could go on, and on, and on about the scores of examples you've left behind you over the years, such as your record on the death penalty as governor of Texas, but why don't you start with these three? It's an election year, so I know you're trying to make things look better than they are, but we're not being fooled. If you actually did something worthwhile, you might get our attention.

Six Down...

2004-04-06T21:49:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

Your Iraq fact today points out that six women out of twenty-eight total have been installed as deputy ministers in fourteen ministries, so I thought we'd take a look at how other Iraqi women are faring. Not surprisingly, they haven't been doing so well. Generally, fear of leaving the home has prevented many Iraqis from seeking treatment for both physical and mental problems, but it's especially bad for women. Just so you know:

In a recent case handled by [psychiatrist Dr. Maha] al-Salim, a woman, working because her husband's income was low, returned home late one day, so her husband started beating her. "It took us a while to treat her from that traumatic shock afterwards as all she was doing was trying to help the family get a better income," she explained.

Nearly 50 percent of 2,000 households in southern Iraq reported one or more abuses among themselves or household members, including killings, torture or beatings, according to a study released recently by the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), an NGO promoting health by protecting human rights...

The majority of households interviewed also did not allow freedom of movement for women, with restrictions on women's rights, which also had adverse health consequences for women and girls as they were unable to access health services or advocate for their needs.

Now that you've helped six highly educated, eilte women find jobs (and here's hoping they don't become targets because of their new positions), you can move on to the millions of others who need help staying alive.

And I Live By The River

2004-04-06T01:06:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

Salon is reporting that a handful of National Guardsmen are sick because they were exposed to depleted uranium. The military isn't commenting on any diagnoses, but the New York Daily News had nine of them tested and their doctor says that four of them "'almost certainly' inhaled radioactive dust from spent U.S. artillery shells containing depleted uranium." The paper had the testing done because six of the nine contacted them after the Army allegedly refused to look into their illnesses.

That's pretty awful, Mr. President. "The soldiers complained of headaches, fatigue, shortness of breath, nausea, dizziness, joint pain and unusually frequent urination." That sounds strangely familiar, doesn't it? But I'm sure this could not have possibly been predicted. Oh, wait, except it totally was. Here are some fun facts from Dr. Doug Rokke, former director of the Army's depleted uranium (DU)project, from a 2003 Tom Paine article:

The toxic mess we created ten years ago is getting all stirred up, making for a higher concentration of chemicals to breathe in.
People have been getting sick with rashes, diarrhea, and respiratory problems since they first arrived in Iraq.
The problems are more widespread then they were two years ago because the troops are doing more fighting and the military is more reliant on DU weapons.
Soldiers routinely risk their health by not following protocol in terms of respirators and testing for exposure because the military doesn't want to admit the risk involved.

Of course, you actively are complicit in getting these people sick. The same article reminds us of your role:

Meanwhile, in political circles, the White House has dismissed DU issues. On March 18, it issued "Apparatus of Lies," a report which, among other things, attacked claims that DU fallout from Operation Desert Storm has caused higher disease rates among Iraqi citizens. Those claims were part of "Saddam's disinformation and propaganda" campaign, the White House said.

You have been gearing up for a massive number of Gulf War Syndrome cases since before the war even started. I do not know how you can wrap yourself in the flag while knowing full well that thousands of American veterans will be permanently disabled because you wanted extra-lethal bombshells. You disgust me, Mr. President.

Can't Sleep, Clown Will Eat Me

2004-04-05T22:58:00.000-07:00

I am officially going to be a headcase between now and April 15th because I'm running one of the largest events at my university. And I have a midterm the next day because the history department wants to add to their fine collection of exams I've taken when I've been awake for three days.

I'm going to do my very best to put up at least one letter every day, but since I'm going to be living more or less out of my bag for the next week and a half, I'm not betting on them being the most stellar things I've ever written. But who knows? Maybe I'll reach a new level of consciousness and start channeling Thomas Paine. Anyway, forgive me for all poor writing and HTML errors between then and now, and in return I will try not to suck.

New Idea

2004-04-05T20:26:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

I started writing to you last month because I'm fairly confident that you are almost totally uninformed about the world around you. I saw two things today that reminded me of my goal of at least trying to change that regardless of whether or not you are listening. First, we have Billmon, who has collected a series of quotes from various American propaganda machines. Then, there's a post from Josh Marshall on the generally dire situation in Iraq, which contained the following:

This Observer last week relayed a concern that President Bush was not being given accurate reports from Iraq, but today, one assumes that even a President who prides himself on not reading the newspapers now grasps that things are not necessarily proceeding to our advantage, to borrow an historic phrase.

well, I don't like to assume anything about you, Mr. President, so I'm going to add a specific feature to my letters to you modeled on your own Iraq Fact of the Day. My time is going to be somewhat constrained for the next ten days, but I hope to make it a daily addition to your in box.

Let's start with the basics. First, all of these Americans are dead because of your war. The Post doesn't have an exact count (I wanted you to see their faces), but this site outs the number of dead Americans at 617, plus 59 from the UK and 43 from elsewhere. Then, but no less importantly, we have Iraqi civilians who have been killed; they number somewhere between 8,818 and 10,668. All of these numbers are going to get much higher, Mr. President. I'm not going to blame you, because you don't deserve that much credit for anything; I blame the American people, both politicians and regular citizens like me, who allowed you and your friends to get away with starting a war for no real reason. That was pretty stupid of us.

Tomorrow we will start getting into a wider range of topics, but I want you to always think about these people and those who will join them as the first, last and most important thing you're responsible for in Iraq. I don't suspect you will, but I have to try.

Daisies Through Concrete

2004-04-04T09:50:00.000-07:00

Dear President Bush,

You are so busted. The New York Times and the Washington Post are both reporting today that your administration has been collectively lying like a rug about the summer of 2001. From the Times:

A review of the Bush administration's deliberations and actions in the summer of 2001, based on interviews with current and former officials and an examination of the preliminary findings of the commission, shows that the White House's impulse to deal more forcefully with terrorist threats within the United States peaked July 5 and then leveled off until Sept. 11.

The review shows that over that summer, with terror warnings mounting, the government's response was often scattered and inconsistent as the new administration struggled to develop a comprehensive strategy for combating Al Qaeda and other terror organizations.

The warnings during the summer were more dire and more specific than generally recognized. Descriptions of the threat were communicated repeatedly to the highest levels within the White House. In more than 40 briefings, Mr. Bush was told by George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, of threats involving Al Qaeda.

So I guess Gary Hart was right about Tenet. Over at the Post, we have this:

But the broad outline of Clarke's criticism has been corroborated by a number of other former officials, congressional and commission investigators, and by Bush's admission in the 2003 Bob Woodward book "Bush at War" that he "didn't feel that sense of urgency" about Osama bin Laden before the attacks occurred.

In addition, a review of dozens of declassified citations from Clarke's 2002 testimony provides no evidence of contradiction, and White House officials familiar with the testimony agree that any differences are matters of emphasis, not fact. Indeed, the declassified 838-page report of the 2002 congressional inquiry includes many passages that appear to bolster the arguments Clarke has made.

So you'll be asking Sen. Frist to apologize and perhaps resign over calling Clarke a perjurer, right? You can pick on over a million little things that Clarke said or wrote that he didn't perfectly remember; I don't care. The big picture he paints is pretty convincing. Also, you can't seem to recall where you were for a whole year in the early 1970's or whether or not you ever used cocaine, so don't throw stones. Just get on TV and tell us, your constituents, everything you've been lying about or obscuring for the last 30 years. You'll feel better, I promise.

Buy Now, Pay Later

2004-04-03T16:50:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

I have some questions about the contractors who were killed in Fallujah on Wednesday. What happened to them was horrible and inexcusable, but I have to wonder about what they were doing there and if the US should be hiring people like them at all.

To begin, a lot of the headlines called them 'civilians,' but they weren't, were they? They were armed veterans of the most elite units in our armed forces. There are apparently at least ten thousand such contractors in Iraq, more than the number of British troops. I'm not going to go so far as to call all of them mercenaries, but some of the people being paid by my tax dollars honed their skills maintaining apartheid in South Africa or fighting for Pinochet in Chile. Of course, American contractors don't exectly have a bright shining record either. DynCorp employees in Bosnia committed sex crimes on a large scale. None were prosecuted though, because there's no accountability for military contractors who commit crimes.

The lack of accountability is probably attractive to you though, because by using contractors allows you to bypass the Constitutional rules for making war and the American public. You can just send off contractors to do what you want, and if there's a scandal like in Bosnia, you can clutch your pearls and say, "We had no idea, this is in no way our fault, and therefore we will do nothing about it." If they are killed, no one will care except for their families, like in Colombia.

Not all military contractors are commandos or criminals, but I have to wonder what those four men were doing in Fallujah. Supposedly, they were escorting a convoy of food to the Regency Hotel and Hospitality and the convoy managed to get away completely when the crowd attacked. It must be my liberal education talking, but I'm skeptical. Billmon can't seem to find any record of such a company existing and wonders if they weren't really doing something for the CIA. It does seem a little strange that you would need men with such elite training to escort food when you could probably use local people. And why would you send such obvious symbols of the occupation, military contractors riding around in SUV's, in a place like Fallujah, where Americans have been somewhat less than welcome for a long time? I already have one answer about who these men were:

Either the most foolish contractors in the history of mankind or frankly it may have been intelligence people doing intelligence work. I don't know. I was talking to a colonel friend of mine who is over in the Gulf right now, today, about this. And he said, if they're contractors this is Darwinian selection at work.

Do you have anything different to say?

I'm deeply disturbed that these contractors were in Fallujah to die, regardless of why they were there. Why don't you take some of the money you've been paying them and use it to make staying in the professional military a little bit more lucrative? I like having experts, but I've also known people who could potentially work for companies like Blackwater and I'd like them very strictly supervised.

But Who Will Think of the Children?

2004-04-02T12:23:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

I saw this story over at the Right Christians, and thought that it might be good for you the learn a little bit about the kind of hell neglected children are facing in Mississippi. Now, children's services leave a lot to be desired all over the country, but what's going down there is particularly egregious. The Cliff's Notes version is:

State case workers are handling up to 100 cases, and in one county 200 cases, when the national recommended average is 17.
Thirty-four child abuse prevention centers around the state are going to be closed.
100 families will lose their child care assistance payments this month.
Less than half of the reports they receive are follwed up on, and only 15% can be substantiated.

Mississippi is also in the habit of sending children back to homes where they will be harmed. In one case, an 18 month old (that's right, months, not years) girl was sexually assaulted, but caseworkers tried to send her back rather than identifying the assailant. Other stories are equally heartwarming:

Among the plaintiffs in the Children's Rights lawsuit are four siblings in Forrest County who were reportedly malnourished and living in an unsafe home. Instead of referring the case to the county's youth court, a caseworker sent the children, ages 2 to 9, to the home of their elderly great-grandmother, who was already struggling to care for six other children, the lawsuit alleged.

When the woman protested, according to the lawsuit, she was told the children would otherwise be given to strangers and she might never see them again. When the woman had a stroke, the caseworker sent the children back to the mother, who had earlier been determined to be unfit.

Court documents cite another plaintiff, Jamison J., 17, who has spent most of his life cycled through 28 foster homes and institutions, some of them abusive. The lawsuit claims the Division of Family and Children's Services ignored opportunities for adoption and later sent the boy back to the home of his mother, where he witnessed the beating of another child. Despite his complaints to a caseworker, the child was later killed by the mother's companion.

There was also the child who was killed for wetting the bed, and the infant who was scalded to death for no reason at all.

Since you're all for the rights of the unborn, as evidenced by your signing of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, I thought that maybe you should take some time today to think about the rights of the born victims of violence.

"This has gone on so long that it's hopeless to expect the state to ever cure the problems on its own," Mr. Drinkwater said. "Part of the problem may be financial, but it's more than that. It's about priorities and abused and neglected children don't have a lobbyist. They have no political influence in the Legislature."

When are you going to start changing that, Mr. President?

I Heart Hart

2004-04-02T11:08:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

Former Senator Gary Hart sure seems to have your number. He's not so pleased with you:

He (meaning you, the President) said, "I don't want Congress to do anything until the vice president advises me." We now know from Dick Clarke that Cheney never held a meeting on terrorism, there was never any kind of discussion on the department of homeland security that we had proposed. There was no vice presidential action on this matter.

In other words, a bipartisan commission of seven Democrats and seven Republicans who had spent two and a half years studying the problem, a group of Americans with a cumulative 300 years in national security affairs, recommended to the president of the United States on a reasonably urgent basis the creation of a Cabinet-level agency to protect our country -- and the president did nothing!

That's right, you were thinking about missiles instead. Because we've been hit by so many throughout American history.

But that's not my favorite part. Sen. Hart is of the opinion that you've got so many smoking guns that they are setting off the White House smoke detectors:

You know why I think George Tenet is still in his job? I think there are smoking guns all over the White House. I think if you crack the White House safe, you're going to find memos from Tenet saying, "The terrorists are coming, the terrorists are coming."

So you think the intelligence community was giving Bush information he should have acted on before 9/11?

Precisely. And that's the only explanation I can think of for why no one's been fired. Which leaves open the possibility that the president misled the American people.

I think it's more than a possibility. I cannot wait for all of those skeletons in your closet to start dancing.

It's Document Day

2004-04-02T10:48:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

Today seems to be all about documents. On Wednesday, US District Judge Paul Friedman ordered the White House to release documents that dealt with the Vice President's energy task force. You remember the one I'm talking about; you brought in lobbyists and corporate execs, but you've lied about it and claimed that all members were government employees ever since.

There has been all kinds of outrage over this case, which was appealed to the Supreme Court, because the Vice President used government funds to go duckhunting with Justice Scalia even though they both knew that the case would be in the Court very soon. So here's what we've got so far, Mr. President. Everybody knows that the task force included people who shouldn't have been there and that Scalia will vote in your favor regardless of the majority decision. So what's in the files that could possibly make you look worse than you already do? Are you simply hoping to keep this off the radar of Americans who don't already know that the White House is lying, or is it worse than that?

In any case, I'm hoping that the Supreme Court shoots you and the rest of the boys down. I mean, if they liked you, you would have had the opportunity to fill some spots on the bench by now. Remember, it's not too late to just give it up and hand over the documents. I know it's not your style to avoid giving up information until the last possible minute, but just try it this once. For me.

Less Than Instant Karma

2004-04-02T10:27:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

For a long time, the ratio between the egregious violations of my government you committed and responsible people forcing you to own up to what you did hasn't been very good. I think that's starting to change. I've been paying attention to the Valerie Plame case since last summer, and I've been looking forward Patrick Fitzgerald blasting his way through the wall you've built around the White House for some time, but this is like Christmas:

In looking at violations beyond the original focus of the inquiry, which centered on a rarely used statute that makes it a felony to disclose the identity of an undercover intelligence officer intentionally, prosecutors have widened the range of conduct under scrutiny and for the first time raised the possibility of bringing charges peripheral to the leak itself.

You've wrung your hands publicly, stating that you didn't think we'd ever get to the bottom of who leaked Ms. Plame's identity, but it seems like you were wrong! Aren't you just overcome with joy?

Since your administration has specifically denied the involvement of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, what do you think will happen if and when they get charged with a federal crime? Will Karl Rove be frog-marched out of the White House, providing Joe Wilson and his family the vindication they deserve? This is better than any summer blockbuster.

Friday Funtimes

2004-04-02T10:12:00.000-08:00

Hello out there, all 3.7 of you reading this. This blog is one month old today, and even with a week of vacation, I have written more than forty letters to the President. It is Friday, as well, and since it is such a happy spring day, you all should write a letter to the President as well. It's not good to keep how you think of him bottled up, so go ahead and use the link on the left to vent.

X-Files Stuff

2004-04-02T09:54:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

I think that you need to take a deep breath and calm down. Paul Krugman writes today in his column about how absolutely psychotic your administration is about attacking people who make you look bad, and how CNN helps you out with it.

The whole Letterman thing was just silly. The kid was bored; that's what you get for putting a 14 year old boy right behind you. Surely you can afford a ladder to get over yourself. Spreading rumors about Richard Clarke's personal life and trying to pass him off as mentally unstable is beyond the pale, though. I know that reading can be difficult for you, but as Krugman points out about the mind control paragraph, "it's a literary device, meant to emphasize just how ill conceived our policy is."

Once again I ask you, Mr. President: What happened to restoring dignity to the White House? From where I'm standing, you and your people have done far more to damage our government than anything President Clinton ever did.

The Body Hidden in the Trunk

2004-04-02T09:28:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

What is this nonsense about you withholding documents from the 9-11 Commission? Here's how you made Scott McClellan explain it:

Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said some Clinton administration documents had been withheld because they were "duplicative or unrelated," while others were withheld because they were "highly sensitive" and the information in them could be relayed to the commission in other ways. "We are providing the commission with access to all the information they need to do their job," Mr. McClellan said.

That sort of defeats the point of having a commission, doesn't it? If you know what information they need to do their jobs better than anyone else, then you clearly must know what the answers the Commission is looking for are. So get on TV tonight and explain it all to us.

Unless, Sen. Kerrey is on the right track with his take on the situation. ""If it did happen, it's an unintentional mistake or it's another intentional act of the White House that will backfire." My money's on the latter because you didn't create the most secretive White House in history accidentally.

So what is it going to be, Mr. President? Are you going to hold out like you did with Dr. Rice, or are you going to start acting like a President rather than like an Enron CEO? Give decency a chance, sir.

Take Two

2004-04-01T12:44:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

I believe that what we have here is a failure to communicate. Jesse at Pandagon points us to a story about your administration shortchanging the IRS's ability to investigate those who may be funding terrorists. Your administration's response?

Juan C. Zarate, the deputy assistant Treasury secretary for terrorist financing, said that "the I.R.S. certainly had a clear vision of how they wanted to allocate the funds, but there is a clear balance that needs to happen in the I.R.S., where they have to balance terrorist-financing investigations with other responsibilities, like drug trafficking and, perhaps most important, enforcement of the tax laws.''

Well, that's interesting because, as you may recall, you are already underfunding the IRS for those responsibilities as well. And next year isn't looking much better.

So what's it going to be, Mr. President? Are you going to fund the IRS or aid terrorists and corporate criminals? Seems like an easy choice to me, so let me know why it's so difficult for you.

Dizzy

2004-04-01T11:10:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

Today I woke up and had an epiphany. I realized the importance of nuclear families, the lives of the unborn, tax cuts, allowing men to rule the world, and the place of religion in government. I will definitely be voting for you the November because of I hate poor people, women, gays, and all those icky minorities. I also want to be able to carry a concealed weapon as often as possible. I think this change in outlook may have had something to do with the Chick tracts I was reading the other day. But sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, I have to say, "April Fools!" I really had you going there for a minute, didn't I? I would never vote for you. That would be un-American.

But moving on to more substantive matters, I'm a little concerned about what's going on at the Treasury Department. Apparently, my tax money has been spent paying civil servants to analyze Democratic economic plans at the request of Tom Delay. The party line on this, so to speak, is that it's a good thing to analyze all possible plans to test their viability. That's true, but when the resulting analysis is distributed posthaste not only to Republican politicians, but to the Republican National Committee and other "interest groups," a line has been crossed. Your treasury secretary has also been busy putting forth your agenda all over the country.

Interestingly, some Republicans were very upset at John Snow's predecessor, Lawrence Summers, for merely saying that Republican proposals dealing with Social Security were "highly problematic" back in 2000. So when are you going to stop politicizing our various departments? I know that Scott McClellan said that he was unaware of the White House approving the Treasury Department's decision to act on Delay's request, but excuse me, I need to stand up because there are monkeys flying out of my butt. Okay, despite it being Spring Quarter of my senior year in college, some of my brain cells still work. There is no way that you didn't approve this.

Therefore, in the interest of nonpartisan analysis and discussion of the economy, I ask you to call for a full analysis of your economic policies to be performed at the direction of Democrats. I think this would be a fair according to the standards you just set.

"A Political Disaster Awaiting Recognition"

2004-03-30T22:55:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

At various times over the past couple years, I have described your Presidency as "Nixonian, but probably worse." Some of the people I've said that to thought i was using hyperbole, but no less of an expert than John Dean agrees with me. I can't wait to read Worse Than Watergate, and I assume the same goes for you, although probably for different reasons, so I thought I'd point out his Salon interview. It's too awesome to selectively quote from, so bear down and read the whole thing.

How do you feel about being a more horribly anti-American values than Nixon? I'm looking forward to your many misdeeds being exposed to the public, but in which area do you think you're most susceptible to going down in political flames? I was thinking of starting a pool, and you can be in on it if you want. It might be an instructive way to test your perception of the real world. I'm not sure what I want to bet on, but I'm leaning towards the Republican National Convention blowing up in your face when you try to exploit September 11. A lot is going to happen between then and now, but I think the 9-11 Commission findings are going to make you seriously regret choosing to go to New York. I'm thinking calls for investigations into the run-up to the Iraq war, victims' families giving interviews to every morning show, not to mention what the body count from your war will be by then. And as an added bonus, there's the very special place emergency service providers' unions have for you in their hearts. Do you think I'm on to something with this?

Like Dean, I think everything you have done is just awaiting recognition. It's just a question of what will reach critical mass first.

Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels When You Sell Your Soul

2004-03-30T21:22:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

I've been thinking a lot about religion lately. I was raised Catholic, but I won't be attending Mass again until the Vatican figures out that misogyny and homophobia should be fought against rather than enshrined. Anyway, I don't know if it's the Catholic, the secularist, or the feminist in me that makes me so nervous about your kind of Christianity, but if this is the kind of future you are building towards, it is clear to me that it is a moral imperative from all three perspectives to destroy you politically.

I've always thought of your faith, particularly the whole God-is-on-my-side thing, as sort of an extremely expensive and toned down for public consumption version of a Chick tract. Since you have been incredibly explicit about it throughout your political career, I was shocked when I heard that your campaign people went ballistic over Kerry quoting the Bible. I knew it wasn't possible for you to suddenly be all for a bright line between church and state because your record clearly shows otherwise and your friends are obviously less discreet than you about their feelings on religion's place in society. Perhaps it was a sign of the apocalypse?

I checked for seven-headed dragons rising over Lake Michigan, but I didn't see anything. Then I saw the quote Kerry chose to use, James 2:14: "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?" Suddenly it all made sense. The Protestants like you who I've known have never been keen on social welfare and prefer to ignore those passages, but I think it's more than that for you and your staffers. The Right has done an impressive job of building up religion's role in politics while simultaneously bypassing all of those uncomfortably socialist parts. If Democrats reverse those trends, everything you've worked for is over. Screw the part about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, you care about now. I mean, you might fear hell, but I seriously doubt it based on your reckless and shameless administration.

I like what Kerry said, and I believe he's right about you. You're a Chick Tract, and I hope that the Democrats are smart enough to remind people of that at every turn. To adopt a slogan from your friends at the National Evangelical Association, what can millions of anti-dominionist people who enjoy religious pluralism do? Anything we want. I think that will happen, hopefully soon; if you were a halfway decent person, you would feel the same way.

Now Testify!

2004-03-30T11:20:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

So Dr. Rice wil finally testify publicly before the 9-11 Commission. That certainly took you long enough. Since Dr. Rice seems to have had some small problems with telling the truth, I thought we should review the definition of perjury:

Main Entry: per·ju·ry
Pronunciation: 'p&r-j&-rE, 'p&rj-rE
Function: noun
: the voluntary violation of an oath or vow either by swearing to what is untrue or by omission to do what has been promised under oath : false swearing

I suspect that Dr. Rice and your other friends have been somewhat overzealous in their rush to defend you at the expense of what is true, so you're going to have be very careful that she is mindful of the fact that knowingly telling the Commission anything false is a crime.

Moving on to you talking to the panel, all these limitations on their audience with you makes me think you're hiding something. You have spent more time on vacation than any other President, you and the Vice President have spent an obscene amount of time fundraising, and apparently you think that governing in just another 9 to 5 job, so it sounds as if you have more free time on your hands than I do. Why do you and the Vice President have to have a joint session in private? There are enough hours in the day to allow you to speak separately. And if you aren't worried about how your testimony will play before the American public, why not take advantage of millions of dollars worth of free media by going ahead and testifying publicly? I would totally skip class to watch that.

The truth will set you free, Mr. President, ideally by way of impeachment hearings. If you think I'm wrong, then prove it to me in public.

Things That Are Bad

2004-03-29T17:12:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

Remember the letter I sent you about sexual assault and relationship violence in the military? Well, this doesn't make me feel much better. This cadet was accused of raping another cadet, but was allowed to stay at the academy until he was arrested for sexually assaulting a woman in a wheelchair and has since been accused of raping a different cadet. He also apparently threatened to crash a glider into a classroom and recently violated his probation by attempting to solicit sex from a 14 year old on the internet. Luckily the "child" was actually an undercover police officer, but who knows if he hasn't done that before.

This young man doesn't exactly sound like an officer or a gentleman, Mr. President. It is extremely disturbing to me that he may have sexually abused three women when at least two, maybe all three could have been prevented had the academy been more serious about this issue. You say that you love the military, but sometimes it seems like you only mean the men. There is no excuse for this, so when will you do something about it?

Which Side Are You On?

2004-03-29T09:14:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

I'm sure that you'll be happy to find out that I just got a job offer. Your Presidency has created quite the market for people like me who want jobs working to get you out of office. You've been absolutely inspirational in that regard. Since it's currently a growth industry, maybe you can figure out how to count us as manufacturers in some way. We could be manufacturers of dissent.

But I digress. I'm also really excited about this offer because it includes full health benefits, probably because I'll be working for Democrats. It made me think about how much a problem healthcare is in this country. I was reading this article and these are the people you need to be working for, not the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. This man has worked for Safeway for 34 years and his livelihood is being severely hurt by businesses like Walmart. It costs his employers $17,000 a year to cover someone with his seniority, which is a serious expense that any other decent government would be helping business owners by covering. Forget tax cuts, we need universal healthcare. This man has a family, he loves his job, so why not help him and others like him?

I know that you have been having problems with WMD's, so I was thinking that you could work on the proliferation of Walmarts of Mass Destruction. This kind of WMD really exists and presents a far more serious threat to Americans than Saddam Hussein did. Give it some thought, since it would be a way more successful endeavor.

Not Funny Ha-Ha

2004-03-28T14:46:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

Remember how you used to talk about bringing dignity to the White House? This is not it. I may just be a kid from New Jersey, but my parents were pretty clear on how to conduct yourself in public and joking around about a snipe hunt for WMD's that to date has killed 591 Americans and wounded thousands more is probably something that I would avoid if I were the one responsible. Perhaps things are done differently in Texas. Let me know if that is the case.

In any case, I question your abilities as Commander in Chief if it is not possible for you to appreciate the gravity of the position. It wasn't just a one-liner; you did an entire presentation. You took time out of your day to have pictures taken of you looking in cabinets, but you only have an hour for the 9-11 Commission? You might want to rethink your priorities.

The Show That Never Ends

2004-03-28T12:06:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

I spent the last week in downstate Illinois/St. Louis this week visiting a friend, and I have to tell you, I had an awesome time. I got to watch the 9-11 hearings live and in full, and you have serious problems. When are you going to tell Dr. Rice to testify? If you don't do it, you look guilty (and I suspect you are), but if you do, it looks like you caved to people like me. It won't be that bad, I promise. I might even respect you a little for it. So go on and cave. It'll be an enormous weight off your shoulders.

Just to give you an idea of how things seem to be from the outside, Richard Clarke doesn't seem to be afraid of you. He's calling for his testimony and related documents to be declassified. That is what you wanted, right? I look forward to reading all that, so I assume that you will make it your top priority to make as much information public as quickly as possible.

I think the best part of the trip though was being in a market where you air your ads. I've always lived in such solidly blue areas that I'd never seen a presidential campaign ad in its natural setting. I'd seen your ads online, but the reactions of the people I was with were what made them great. My friend's boyfriend is a Navy veteran, and what he had to say about you was really beyond what would be fit for polite discussion. We also visited my friend's parents, solidly middle class, middle aged dog lovers on the Missouri side, just the kind of people you are looking to influence with all that money of yours. They hate you with the white hot fire of a thousand suns. It made me feel good to be in a swing state and meet people who would crawl over broken glass to vote for anyone other than you. How do you feel about that?

I don't think I'll be taking any more breaks between now and the election, so look forward to my letters. I'm really excited about the next 7 months, and I think that we will learn a lot more about why you aren't fit to be President.

I Hear the Train A'Comin'

2004-03-22T11:08:00.000-08:00

I'm headed off to fabulous southern Illinois for the rest of the week. I have no idea if or how often I'll be able to update this while I'm there, but that will make what I can post that much more exciting for the four of you reading this, right?

Validate my existence by telling me how much you'll miss me while I'm gone.

This Epic Problem's Not a Problem For Me

2004-03-22T10:04:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

I forgot to point out my favorite Richard Clarke quote to you earlier:

I have no idea, to this day, if the president saw it, because after we did it again, it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, I don't think the people around the president show him memos like that. I don't think he sees memos that he doesn't-- wouldn't like the answer.

That is absolutely insane. It's no wonder that you've gotten us into so much trouble.

OMGWTF

2004-03-22T09:17:00.000-08:00

Via Atrios.

Dear President Bush,

I want you to explain to me, using small words and charts, exactly what your intentions were with this. From where I'm standing, it looks like you've got no clothes, but let's see what kind of excuse you can come with.

Then, you can explain why the FBI's emergency request for counterterrorism funding after September 11th was cut to a mere fraction of what they asked for. Gun violence and drugs were more important? Has the lead in the water down there gotten to you?

Finally, you can explain why it's okay for Condaleeza Rice to refuse to testify under oath. She's "insisting that presidential advisers need not answer to legislative bodies." Excuse me? I can think of some presidential advisers who ended up in front of Congress for far less egregious offenses. In our government, answering to Congress is the medium through which government officials answer to the American people. Maybe you could spend some of your campaign funds on buying her a civics textbook.

Everyday I wake up thinking that you couldn't possibly have done anything worse, only to find out that you have. Try to make tomorrow a little bit better, Mr. President. That's the job you're supposed to be doing.

Hopeless Romantic

2004-03-21T18:23:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

i was thinking about the letter I wrote to you earlier today asking you to give the names of the gay friends you supposedly have when I read this. It affirms my belief that you must not know any LGBT people, because I don't understand how you could look any of these people in the eye and tell them that their relationships are worth less than yours or mine.

As these newly energized people found out, a marriage license is worth more than just the paper it's printed on.

"Before all this, I probably would have entered into a civil union — in fact, I did enter into a domestic partnership, because it was available and better than nothing," said James Krause, 53, a retiree who lives near New Paltz, N.Y. Krause and his partner of 15 years, Brendan Daly, 54, married during that town's brief flurry of same-sex weddings.

"But 'available'? 'Better than nothing'? How can you ask someone to settle for that?" Krause asked. "That's like telling Rosa Parks, 'Well, OK, you can move to the middle of the bus.' "

All these people want is the right to be married (Calling it 'gay marriage' implies that it's something different than what you or my parents have), something that you're apparently willing to pay out $1.5 billion to encourage low income people, single parents and high schoolers to do. About 10% of the population wants to write a Valentine to the nation about how great and important marriage is and you turn them down in favor of giving financial incentives to stay in bad relationships?

I don't know what scares you about this. Homosexuality isn't catching. I would have it by now if it was. And the idea that gays and lesbians are worse parents, that's just insane. I'd rather have parents who had thought it through and worked hard to get me than accidental parents who were woefully underprepared for me. More importantly, I can only hope that I will be able to have a relationship as stable as those featured in the article one day.

If you want my respect, you're going to have to start behaving a little more like Abraham Lincoln and a little less like Strom Thurmond.

Terrible Lie

2004-03-21T17:48:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

You seem to have made the wrong man very, very angry. How in the world could you have been so stupid to ignore the top counter-terrorism expert in the country? Richard Clarke served under five presidents, and who, as Billmon put it, "exuded hardliner crediblity -- through the pores as it were." Remember when I told you that you had be careful of becoming a kind of moron? Clarke is the man who could have prevented that, but instead, you demoted him and now you're trying to slime him. At least that last part is making you sound even worse than you had to. For example:

As for the alleged pressure from Mr. Bush to find an Iraq-9/11 link, Hadley says, "We cannot find evidence that this conversation between Mr. Clarke and the president ever occurred."

When told by Stahl that 60 Minutes has two sources who tell us independently of Clarke that the encounter happened, including "an actual witness," Hadley responded, "Look, I stand on what I said."

As amusing as it is to watch your surrogates fumble around on national television, I'm not gloating; I'm just watching the evidence pile up against the odds of you being reelected with great thanks. Because you did not listen to Clarke, thousands of people died and there's no sign of the toll slowing. The next time you feel like blasting anyone on national security, you sit down and think about that. You have done nothing but hurt our country, and there is a special circle in hell reserved for you and your friends.

Invisible Man

2004-03-21T11:30:00.000-08:00

Via Atrios.

Dear President Bush,

The Chicago Tribune had an article about the First Lady today, and I had a question about this:

She defended her husband's call for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriages, while acknowledging that she and her husband have gay friends. "They ought to welcome the debate," she said of gays who saythe amendment would relegate them to second-class citizenship.

Leaving aside the horrify bigoted implications of that statement aside for a moment, who are these "gay friends"? If you are going to insist on blasting Senator Kerry for not naming some of the leaders who support him, you really need to let us all know who these mystery friends of yours are. I would never be friends with someone who considered me less than a full American citizen, so I question the existence of these people.

If they really are out there, I seriously doubt that they "welcome the debate," and it's disgusting to say that citizenship rights should be debated at all. It's condescending, bigoted, and makes me ill. It's a slightly more polite version of George Wallace or Bull Connor.

If your gay friends are really out there, then bring them on. Even Andrew Sullivan is pissed with you over this. I can't wait to see who you come up with.

That Was Then, This Is Now

2004-03-21T10:48:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

Remember how you bragged that "We [Texas] are one of the first states that said you can sue an HMO for denying you proper coverage" back in 2000? M. Gregg Bloche does. The law that you were so proud of four years ago is now going before the Supreme Court, and your administration is pushing to have it struck down, which would entail "abandon[ing] a body of recent precedents that expose the managed-care industry in many states to negligence suits for withholding of coverage and care."

What gives, Mr. President? There's nothing "innovative" about health coverage that denies care to those who need it. I know that you could pay for any needed treatment out of pocket, but most of us need to deal with managed health care plans, which aren't exactly opposed to screwing the less well off out of treatment. I guess getting campaign donations from HMO execs is just more important to you than keeping Americans alive. That seems to be a theme with you.

Lies, Damn Lies, & the House of Representatives

2004-03-21T07:37:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

I saw that Tom Delay said something a little bit strange to the New York Times, and I wanted to know what you thought about it. If you didn't know, there have been some squirrelly goings-on in the House that just might be serious ethical violations, my favorite being some of your party members threatening to withhold campaign funds from Rep. Nick Smith's son's Congressional campaign.

Since you wanted to bring honor and dignity to Washington, you're probably interested in what the majority leader had to say about this:

Mr. DeLay and other Republicans dismissed the accusations and calls for ethics changes, claiming the criticism was part of an effort orchestrated by Democrats and allied interest groups.

"This is the way they play politics," Mr. DeLay said. "I think it is really unfortunate. We have to go through it, and the lawyers make a lot of money, and there is never a result except press reports."

Well, that's interesting, isn't it? I seem to remember something else that could be described that way. Hmmmm, what was it again? Oh, yeah, remember when Rep. Delay spent most of his time working on getting former President Clinton impeached? I'm of the opinion that bribery is more important than a blowjob, but that's me.

I was thinking that maybe you could remind Rep. Delay of what he said back in 1998:

But I have a responsibility to answer a question today. And that question is how will history judge our actions that we take today?

I believe that this nation sits at a crossroad. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law. Sometimes hard, sometimes unpleasant, this path relies on truth, justice and the rigorous application of the principle that no man is above the law.

Now, the other road is the path of least resistance. This is where we start making exceptions to our laws based on poll numbers and spin control. This is when we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us; when we ignore the facts in order to cover up the truth.

Call him up and remind him about this because he seems to have forgotten.

"You Fucking Die," I Said

2004-03-20T14:50:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

I wanted to point out today's Nicholas Kristoff column to you about the extraordinarily high rate of maternal mortality in poor countries. As he points out, "Each year, 500,000 women die, almost one per minute, in pregnancy or childbirth in the third world. Childbirth is terrifying for most of the world's people. As a local proverb here in Chad puts it: A woman who is pregnant has one foot in the grave."

He also most rightly points out that the US could be doing something about this problem, but you cut funding to the United Nations Population Fund and the Reproductive Health Response in Conflict Consortium they "supposedly cooperated with China's repressive family-planning program."

That would be one way to explain your reasoning. Another way would be to say that you ignored your own expert panel and legislation passed unanimously in the Senate and by a 3 to 1 margin in the House in favor of listening to a die-hard anti-family planning group to score a few points with your base. The UN was actually changing China's policies:

At the insistence of UNFPA, Chinese authorities have agreed to abolish family planning quotas and targets in the 32 Chinese counties in which it operates. An independent fact-finding mission in October 2001 found that found that the Fund's program in China is playing an important catalytic role in the reform of reproductive health services from an administrative approach to a client-oriented approach that promotes informed choice of contraceptive methods through information, education and counseling.

While we're on the subject, let's talk about your reinstatement of the global gag rule, even though that during the eight years it was previously in effect, there was no evidence that abortions were happening less frequently. In fact, "the policy is likely to have the opposite effect: it will reduce access to contraception, leading to more unwanted and high-risk pregnancies, more unsafe abortions, and more maternal illness, injury, and even death."

That's not partisan blustering; you have endangered the lives of millions in 29 countries, including Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland, which have have some of the highest rates of HIV in the world, where USAID no longer distributes condoms. Clinics have been closed all over the world as well.

What you're doing right now is immoral and disgusting. When you decide that having healthy, living women and children is more important than politics, be sure to let me know.

I want to Defy the Object of All Taxx Laws

2004-03-20T14:09:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

Since you've been having so many financial problems, but refuse to budge on your tax cuts, I thought I'd point you to this. Apparently the IRS doesn't have the resources to collect back taxes on people and businesses, even if they've been convicted for not paying.

I can't imagine that the IRS is your favorite federal agency, but check this out:

According to government budget documents, the amount of money the IRS knowingly left on the table last year equaled 1.8 percent of the total individual and corporate income tax take expected for 2003. It could have fully covered NASA's 2004 budget, the government's international aid programs, or the budgets of the departments of Commerce and Interior combined.

I know that this wouldn't solve all your problems, but when the median sum not being collected is $14,000 and the largest "involves more than $50 million" it might be something worth pursuing.

Just my two cents.

Family Values

2004-03-20T12:22:00.000-08:00

Thanks to ned, who is both fabulous and apparently psychic as to what will push my buttons.

Dear President Bush,

As surprising as this may seem to you, I come from a county where 54% of the voters wanted you to be President. Even without Nader, you still would have won. The Republicans in Morris County, New Jersey are really fabulous people. They pretty much hate anyone from my working class, largely Latino town on sight. When I was in middle school, I got spit on at my first away softball game. I was told by many, many people both my own age and adults not to apply to the top universities in the country because people from my town just didn't go to those kind of places. Others wouldn't speak to me when they found out where I was from. I got called a Doverican (rhymes with Puerto Rican) more times than I could count. I'm white, and I cannot even begin to imagine what these lovely people would have come up with if I wasn't.

I'm feeling pretty sick right now thinking about your supporters at home because what happened in Cherokee County, Georgia could so easily have happened in Morris County. The young men responsible targeted immigrant day laborers because they thought they were unlikely to contact the police and because they were likely to be carrying cash.

"After the assaults, the youths bragged at school that they had 'robbed some Mexicans' and spent the money, about $570, at restaurants and stores," according to the assistant Chief of Police, but as yet hate crimes charges haven't been added to the indictments.

You're probably wondering what all this has to do with you. Well, it seems that the families of the darling young men who did this are pretty bound up in the local Republican party. The prosecutor recused himself because of "his acquaintance with members of [indicted youth Ben] Cagle's extended family," which happens to include founding members of the county Republican Party who "remain active in civic affairs." The judges have done likewise, and although they cited no specific reason, it just so happens that young Mr. Cagle's uncle made a $400 contribution to one's campaign.

It's nice that Ben Cagle's family is so involved. One of the stories said that they were active in "cultural affairs" as well. I wonder what kind of culture that is. Traditional costumes like white hoods? The traditional kidnapping and beating of people less well off than yourself?

Anyway, I thought I'd let you know what some of your diehard supporters (Cherokee County went 73% in your favor in 2000) were up to lately. Is this the kind of thing you mean when you talk about "family values"? I'm genuinely curious.

Ground Control to Major Tom

2004-03-19T14:19:00.000-08:00

Happy day, it's Friday, I'm done with exams, and people apparently read this page without (more than a little bit of) mocking. Since it is Friday, I encourage all of you to hit up the President with a letter of your own. I haven't gotten more than 4 hours of sleep at a stretch this week, my eyes are all glassy, and my brain is mushy, so think up your own topic. I am going to nap.

Why Don't You Do Right?

2004-03-19T10:45:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

Did you have a good time at Fort Campbell? I know you're fond of costumes.

The New York Times is reporting that the troops were somewhat less enthusiastic than they were two and a half years ago when you visited them. I was afraid that you might be confused as to why that is.

Let's start here. This war is creating hundreds of veterans who will be permanently disabled. I can't imagine that it's heartening to not be sure that your "thanks" will extend beyond this election cycle.

Then there are the more immediate problems, namely the equipment shortages. The troops being deployed over the next few months will be better off in terms of body armor and armored vehicles compared to the troops returning, but they are only "moving toward a requirement of 4,100 [armored vehicles]." It's nice to have goals, but shouldn't they already have them? Shouldn't they have had them a year ago?

And it get's better because the current supplemental funding bill paying for all this expires in September, but you want to wait until after the election to ask for another one. What is that about? Democrats seem to understand that wars cost money. It seems pretty cheap for something you called "nothing less than a struggle between civilization and darkness, good and evil, life and death" to be up in the air about funding.

So, if I was a soldier, I wouldn't be too pleased. Maybe before you go out to have your picture taken with soldiers again, you should take care of these things.

Suspect Device

2004-03-18T10:46:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

With the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq coming up, I've been thinking a lot about how exactly we came to be involved there. I know that you think it was the right decision, despite the small matter of there not being any WMD's. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for a moment and assume that you really believed everything that you've said about Iraq over the last 18 months.

I've also been thinking about an anecdote in Daniel Ellsberg's memoir, Secrets. It's a great book overall, but a couple of conversations he had with Henry Kissinger really stood out. In December, 1968, Ellsberg met with Kissinger to go over a study of options for Vietnam that had been commissioned from the RAND Corporation. Ellsberg warned the new special assistant for national security of what, in Ellsberg's opinion, had made Vietnam policies so consistently bad:

"You've been a consultant for a long time, and you've dealt with a great deal of top secret information. But you're about to receive a whole slew of special clearances... that are even higher than top secret... First you'll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all...But second, almost as fast, you'll feel like a fool... [T]hat will last about two weeks. Then, after you've started reading all this daily intelligence input... you will forget that there was a time when you ever didn't have it, and you'll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don't... and that all those other people are fools.

"Over a longer period of time - not too long, but a matter of two or three years - you'll eventually become aware of the limitations of this information. There is a great deal that it doesn't tell you, it's often inaccurate, and it can lead you astray just as much as the New York Times can...

"In the meantime, it will become very difficult for you to learn from anybody who doesn't have these clearances... You will deal with a person... only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with, since you'll have to lie carefully to him about what you know... The danger is, you'll become something like a moron. You'll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours."

Ellsberg had been nervous about telling this to Kissinger, but he took it well. Nevertheless, Ellsberg feared that Kissinger didn't understand because "he didn't have the clearances yet" and he was right. In August, 1970 the two men met again, after the secret bombing of Cambodia had begun.

[H]e referred to his irritation at the group of Harvard scholars... who had visited him to resign en bloc as consultants in protest against Cambodia... He was contemptuous of their presumption that they could judge a policy when they knew so little about policy making from the inside. He said dismissively, "They never had the clearances."

Considering your contempt for nation-building as a candidate, at least publicly, I wonder if you don't have the same problem. You surrounded yourself with people who were only interested in pursuing their own agenda at the expense of the truth and let them punish anyone who disagreed, so I have to wonder if it's possible for you to see Iraq objectively.

I may not have the clearances to understand exactly what it is that you're trying to do, but I can read. Veteran intelligence professionals thought the case for war hadn't been proven, and "there is no word in the English language to describe [their] outrage" over the events of the past year.

You can tell me that humanitarian reasons make up for being wrong about any imminent threats to our country until you're blue in the face. I will always wonder about why you refused to listen to the professionals who told you that this was a bad idea. I think you've become something like a moron on this issue, Mr. President, and it scares me to know that you don't seem to care.

You've Got To Hide Your Love Away

2004-03-17T20:00:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

Before I get into the real meat of what's bothering me, I wanted to remind you of some things you said way back when you were a Presidential candidate. On October 11, 2000 you said:

I've been a tolerant person all my life... I don't really think it's any of my concern how you conduct your sex life. That's a private matter. I support equal rights but not special rights for people.

Then, to Larry King, on hiring LGBT people, you said:

Well, I'm not going to ask what their sexual orientation is. I'm going to put conservative people in the cabinet. It's none of my business what somebody's [orientation is].

With that in mind, some of your constituents in Tennessee want to be able to charge LGBT people with crimes against nature. They don't want to go after the heterosexual sodomites like me who engage in non-procreative sex, just gays. They're also looking into banning homosexuals from living in their county. Would protecting LGBT people from this kind of nonsense, as I am protected, be considered an equal or special right?

Next, we have your newly appointed Special Counsel has decided to engage in a little bureaucratic activism by deciding that LGBT people can be fired or demoted on the basis of sexuality. Now, I'm not a lawyer, but last I checked, you hadn't amended Executive Order 11478 to rescind Executive Order 13087, which prohibits the federal government from discriminating on the basis of sexuality. But anyway, is it a special or equal right to not be fired for something that is not criminal in any way? For example, if I was a federal employee with firing powers, and I decided to start firing straight people, what would happen?

To review, Rheas County, Tennessee is really crazy, which is horrifying, and your lawyer is going to get you sued and I suspect that you will lose, which should be fun. I thought I'd let you know.

Boys Will Be Boys

2004-03-17T14:43:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

In case you missed it, another soldier home from the war lost it. Luckily, this time he only killed himself. Maybe he was just the kind of guy who liked to threaten his wife by chasing her around with a firearm, because some for some guys, anytime is a good time for domestic violence, but this reminded me a series of things like this that have been bothering me since last year.

You remember these five murders from two years ago, right? Apparently, all of the couples involved in these cases had "a history of marital problems." I wonder what that means. A record of abuse? Not pushing the toothpaste to the front of the tube? I wonder if the Howells had a similar history because they are not the first, nor, I'm certain, will they be the last military family to to have this happen.

Then there's rape and sexual assault. The Pentagon told the Senate that "over the past 18 months, 112 sexual assaults have been reported by servicewomen in foreign countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait." And that's just the reported ones. What's even worse is, according to the Miles Foundation, a Connecticut-based research and advocacy group for victims of military violence, only 3% of those accused will ever be court-martialed. That seems a tad low to me, considering that the Pentagon is insisting that these crimes are not tolerated in the military.

There's rape at home as well; take a look at this story. The military response sure sounded hardcore to me:

When this wife told her husband she'd been raped, he took the first leave he could and came home. When he arrived, he found that Army investigators interrogated his wife for nine hours, asked her to take a polygraph test, allowed her attacker to confront her at the hospital, and even told him to call her on the phone from the investigator's office.

And let's not even get into what happened at the Air Force Academy, except to say that not guaranteeing victims any confidentiality is an absolute guarantee that the rate of 18% of female cadets being assaulted won't change anytime soon.

This issue bothers me more than you can possibly imagine because I take it very personally. I was sexually assaulted by a former Marine who is now serving as an Army officer while he was earning his degree at my university. It makes me sick to know that there are hundreds of servicemen just like him who get away with violence against women because nobody cares enough to make it stop. This is one of those things where silence is complicity, Mr. President, and as Commander-in-Chief, I haven't heard you saying much about this.

Baby Steps

2004-03-17T14:01:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

I know how big you are on personal responsibility. I'd imagine that his something to do with your personal struggle with alcohol, which is admirable, but it seems that you left out at least one person when you made a list of all the people you had harmed to apologize to. I doubt that it would harm this family to fix this. Maybe you should contact Ms. Smith and pay that bill. It's just a suggestion.

Many Children Left Behind

2004-03-16T01:27:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

I know how much you like to go on and on about not leaving any children behind, so I was wondering how exactly you'd like to explain this. I honestly don't give a good goddamn about standardized tests, but the idea that families like the Chandlers would have to turn their child over to the state to get him the kind of care he needs makes me sick.

I think this was my favorite part of the article:

No one tracks how many parents in Georgia have given up their children. But nationwide, parents handed over an estimated 3,680 children to child welfare agencies in 2001 for the sole purpose of getting them mental health treatment, according to the General Accounting Office, the research arm of Congress.

3,680? If this is good policy then I'm Phyllis Schlafly. If you're actually concerned with doing something for the children of this country, then I suggest that you start here.

Private Parts

2004-03-14T13:21:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

Last night I wrote to you about the Justice Department's efforts to get ahold of women's medical records from abortion providers in an attempt to enforce the Two Deaths for the Price of One, I mean, Partial Birth Abortion Act. I think it's a horrible violation of a person's privacy, but you cannot imagine my shock to find out that you feel the same way, courtesy of Patt Morrison in the LA Times.

On April 12, 2001, you directed Secretary Of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson "to allow a federal rule that will protect the privacy of medical information for millions of Americans to become effective." You expressed concern that with today's technology it is more difficult to keep medical records between a person and his health care provider. You said that you would "protect both vital health care services and the right of every American to have confidence that his or her personal medical records will remain private" and that maintaining medical confidentiality was going to be "an important goal" of your administration.

So what's going on at the DOJ, Mr. President? Are they ignoring you? You really need to look into this because as Morrison reports, women are afraid to come in to Planned Parenthood, an organization that doesn't even perform D & X procedures. It's going to end up being a uterine version of WMD's. There's nothing to find, but a lot of people are going to suffer anyway. Let me know when you have this straightened out.

Misogynist Bullshit

2004-03-14T00:30:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

A federal judge finally went over to the dark side and ordered the University of Michigan Health system to turn over copies of abortion records to the justice Department. I know that you signed the Let Women Die, I mean, Partial Birth Abortion Act with great gusto, so this probably isn't too much of a problem for you, but I was wondering if you ever thought about the implications this law has on everyday women's lives.

I know the description of this procedure isn't for the easily squicked out, but try to get past that. A woman doesn't put off having an abortion for six or seven months because she's too busy shopping for shoes. Only 1.4% of abortions are performed after 20 weeks of pregnancy; that number would probably be even smaller if your friends weren't so concerned with restricting availability to young and/or poor women.

Most women who end up having a dilation and extraction (the proper medical term for this procedure) do so when a wanted pregnancy goes awry. The Supreme Court has already ruled that a woman does not have to risk her life to carry a pregnancy to term, and that her physician can make that determination and continue with whatever procedure will best preserve her life, regardless of the effect that may have on the fetus (Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 1986). So you're kind of SOL for making your law so stringent, since the Supreme Court is sensible enough to not want mothers' mortality to suddenly go through the roof.

I suppose that you'll probably come back with a different version of the law though, so let's think about what it means for women who end their pregnancies late for other reasons. Now I understand that the First Lady's pregnancy that produced your daughters was difficult, but luckily both twins were born healthy. That was probably very difficult, and you're probably very grateful that things worked out as they did. Now imagine it had been different, that the doctors had come to you and your wife and said that they were extremely sorry, but after a battery of tests, they had concluded that your children were suffering from an extreme genetic abnormality or birth defect, and there was just no way that they would survive.

What would you have done if that had been the case? If it was me, I'd want the pregnancy to be over as soon as technologically possible to so I could get on with the grieving and move on. But under your new law, you wife would have had to carry such a pregnancy to term. She would have had to go to family gatherings and business functions pregnant with dead or dying babies. She would have had to go to the grocery store and the mall and be asked by sales clerks and little old ladies when she was due. She would have had to keep going to the OB/GYN to monitor her own health, and she would have had to sit in the lobby with all the lucky women who were going to have healthy children. That's dying a little bit everyday, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Hundreds of families have to deal with this kind of hell every year. Please explain to me why you want to make it harder on them that it already is. It seems to be a sight less than compassionate to me.

Math Is Hard

2004-03-13T23:05:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,

I see you've been out on the campaign trail blasting John Kerry for proposing a $1.5 billion cut in intelligence spending in 1995. You called this kind of thinking "deeply irresponsible" and claim that it would have "gut[ted] intelligence services."

Now, you may not have noticed an interesting trend lately, but when you make things up, people have started to notice. To begin, $1.5 billion only represented 1% of the overall budget, hardly a gutting. Perhaps you should have called it a "mole removal." Secondly, this cut was targeted at the National Reconnaissance Office, which had somehow managed to stash away from $1 billion and 1.7 billion without bothering to tell Congress, the Pentagon, or the CIA. If they were able to save up that kind of money for extra legal pads or booze or whatever, they probably weren't going to be hurt to badly by a budget cut.

What's more important to your credibility though, is the Republican role in this 'controversy.' Senator Kerry got the idea for a $1.5 billion cut over five years from Arlen Spector (R-PA). In the end, the NRO's budget was cut, by $3.8 billion, in the GOP-backed package that went through at a later time.

So logically, your argument must be one of two things, if you're getting the same facts that I am. One, it's a good thing for various federal agencies, departments, and subsidiaries to creat slush funds without informing their superiors or the American public. Alternatively, if John Kerry is bad on defending the US, the Republicans in Congress are even worse.

So which is it? You can't use the "September 11th changed everything" excuse, because if Republicans are granted amnesty for their "irresponsible" behavior in 1995, then Senator Kerry must be as well. Let me know when you figure it out.

Believe In What You Want

2004-03-12T10:57:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,
Yesterday you spoke to the National Association of Evangelicals in Colorado. It makes me wish that I had sent last night's letter earlier, but you're never to old to learn. Anyway, let's take apart everything the New York Times had in the article, and see what we learn. Ready?

You promised to "defend the sanctity of marriage against activist courts and local officials who want to redefine marriage." Let's begin with the idea of 'activist courts.' There are a few other court decisions from back in the day that could probably be defined as 'activist,' but without them we would still have anti-sodomy law, interracial marriage would be illegal, segregated schools would be Constitutional, states could outlaw contraception, and no one accused of a crime would have the right to an attorney or the right to remain silent. I cannot imagine living in a country where these things were not Constitutional. I suspect you agree (remember, 9 of the states where statutes were struck down following the Lawrence decision defined sodomy as anything other than procreative sex for everyone, and you only have two kids). Granted, there have been some cases where the Court went far beyond the matter at hand, but I don't think that kind of thing is likely to happen again. In any case, the whole "sanctity of marriage" thing sounds a lot like the arguments against interracial marriage to me.

You also said that "the union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honored and encouraged in cultures and by every religious faith." What about cultures that practice polygamy? That's pretty time-honored in some places. Anyway, remember what I said yesterday about mixing up your religion with your government? It's un-American. But I think I might have a solution. Why don't we end government sanctioned marriage entirely? Instead, we can have civil unions for eveyone, and once you've signed your civil contract, you can scamper off to your priest or Elvis or whatever to have a marriage ceremony if you want to. That would be somewhat more conservative than amending the Constitution.

Here's something else I found disturbing: The back of the convention's program said, "What Can 30 Million Evangelicals Do For America? Anything We Want." Oh, Mr. President, it is not good to support that kind of thing as President of the United States. We've been over the secular nature of our government, but it's also important to remember something else Jefferson said: "The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society." Those Evangelicals are not even close to being a majority, so what they're trying to do is even more egregious.

You also said, "I oppose the use of federal funds for the destruction of embryos for stem cell research... Human life is a creation of God, not a commodity to be exploited by man." Okay, once again, this is a secular nation. Don't make me say it again. And as I've told you before, embryos are not people. Embryos are clusters of cells that are routinely made in labs for such things as in vitro fertilization. If you are going to be against stem cell research, you have to oppose fertility technology as well, which is silly. However, deciding that our scientists should be limited in their search to find cures for a variety of debilitating and deadly diseases is nothing less than insane. I have an aunt and a first cousin with diabetes (if I have children, they would definitely be at risk for this), my grandfather and great-grandfather died of cancer, and the mother of one of my best friends has MS. Why do you want them and people like them to be sick? There is nothing compassionate about this.

I think you should spend more time with Robert Schuller. He seems to be a little more sensible than the rest of them. He said, "What upsets me about religious leaders of all faiths is that they talk like they know it all, and anybody who doesn't agree with them is a heretic," and "Politics is a force that pulls answers towards mediocrity. That is why when issues are politicized, I am gone." I doubt I'd get along to well with him in most respects, but he's right on about the role religion should play in society. Check him out.

Get Up Off That Thing

2004-03-12T10:48:00.000-08:00

For the two of you out there reading this thing, I've decided that every Friday I'm going to ask all readers to send in their own letter to the President. It might not seem like much, but one day literally dozens of people could be reading this and writing in on an almost monthly basis. So why not start now? I'm an optimist if nothing else.

I'll give you a topic: Attempting to ban marriage rights for LGBT people is neither compassionate nor conservative. Hit up the link at left and start writing.

If you send a letter, leave a comment so that I can see that someone, anyone, is reading this. If you want to suggest a topic for next Friday, go ahead. I would love you forever.

Jesus H. Christ

2004-03-11T21:07:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,
Tonight the College Republicans brought Roy Moore to campus, and I was there handing out quarter sheets with quotes from our founders about the separation of church and state. It occurred to me that perhaps you missed this particular facet of American history since you are such a fan of mixing religion and government. I'm more of a 20th century history girl myself, but it's nonetheless important to have some grasp of what was in the founders' heads when they established this country.

Most of our founders were Deists. While they believed in the existence of God, they rejected revelation and scripture in favor of nature and reason. Although they did not see much value in Christianity (as Jefferson put it, "Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man"), they did not demand that other Americans see things the same way, hence the 1st Amendment. It's very clear that these men had a secular government in mind, so why do you insist on injecting faith into so many of the things you do?

In fact, the "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, the "In God We Trust" on our currency and as the national motto and "so help me God" for oathes all came from Cold War anti-communism in the period immediately following Sen. McCarthy's little experiment in ruining people's lives. I don't know about you, but I'm not a real big proponent of continuing anything associated with such blatant and foul ideology. I bet it made our founders spin in their graves at high speed.

The United States was "in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine," according to no less of an authority than George Washington. To try to make it so is un-American. I like our old motto, "E Pluribus Unum" (Out of many, comes one) better. It seems more in keeping in what I like to see from American citizens. You could even bring back the old "uniter, not a divider" schtick from four years ago if you started using this phrase instead of the whole "chosen by God" thing, which totally creeps me out.

If you are against being a defender of the Constitution and keep insisting on dividing this country along religious lines, there are some theocracies you could go check out when you're done being President. I understand that your family has some friends in Saudi Arabia. I think the twins would especially like it there. I know it's Islam rather than Christianity, but it might be good for you to get some sense of being a minority in a world centered on religion. Go check it out, and when you come back we'll take another look at how you feel about religion in government.

Screws Just Fall Out All The Time

2004-03-11T12:17:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,
Remember how yesterday I referenced cuts in education budgets across the country? Well, Rod Paige, your secretary of education, went down to St. Louis to check out a magnet school to see how well No Child Left Behind is working out at a school that educates the top students in Missouri. I imagine that this kind of school really, really needed an unfunded mandate from the federal government to improve, but I digress.

Anyway, these kids in St. Louis are smart, and they are also optimistic. Right now St. Louis is looking at $23 million in school budget cuts that would effect art, music, athletic, and gifted programs, so Craig Szczesiul, all of 18 years old, bless his heart, asked Secretary Paige, "Can you help us with ideas about how to fix the problem?"

You know what the response was? "I think you stumped me with that question." The Secretary of Education does not know how to handle a problem that is affecting school districts all over the country? Isn't this supposed to be his specialty? He then went off on a tangent about how the 1996 Olympics brought the people of Atlanta together, and finished off by demanding applause.

This is the same man who recently called the largest teachers' organization in the country a "terrorist organization." He also manufactured the so-called Texas Miracle as superintendent of schools in Houston. Why does he still have a job?

If the qualifications for being Secretary of Education are more or less being able to BS, I can send you some of my old papers and exams. I need a job anyway, and not being held accountable for anything sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.

Don't Worry About the Government

2004-03-11T10:34:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,
There is a new bill in the Senate that I'm really excited about, so I wanted to make sure that you were aware of it. The first general election I was eligible to vote in was in 2000, and because of that I'm a big fan of making sure that every vote counts. Sadly, the new electronic voting machines that are getting more popular leave something to be desired on that front as Diebold, the company that makes them, has not done all it could to ensure that our elections are free from the problems that plagued Florida in 2000.

This bill calls for every electronic machine to provide a paper trail to make sure that in the event anything goes wrong with the machines, there is a back-up ready to go. This is not a partisan issue, but to oppose it would be on your part. Walden O'Dell, Diebold's chief executive and your supporter, has said that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." That kind of conflict of interest is what we call "sketchy" where I live.

To make matters worse, although they make a variety of machines that have paper print-outs, like ATM's, Diebold wants to make it "prohibitively expensive" for states to pay for this upgrade, which really should have been a regular feature. You should give Walden a call and ask him what is up with that.

And that's not all. These machines have major security flaws and could be hacked easily. "A self-described Christian arch-conservative, former Diebold systems manager Rob Behler," who sounds like your kind of guy, "says the company failed to adequately test its troubled equipment -- and balked when he warned them of widespread problems with the machines." And we'd never know, without paper trails.

After all, your election was not the most squeaky clean of all time. Do you want the Republican Party's legacy to be stolen elections? Your people do a pretty good job of distorting the electoral process as it is. People like me will be writing the history books, Mr. President. Keep that in mind, get Walden on the phone, and don't screw this up.

The Best Things In Life Are Free

2004-03-10T19:58:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,
I see that today you went to Ohio to defend your economic policy. You apparently talked about the government's responsibility "to create an environment that increases more jobs and helps people find the skills to fill those jobs." I think you had the right sentiment, but I'm not sure what you meant. Did you mean that people should only be able to find new jobs with the government? That's what happened last month. I'm pretty sure you haven't done anything else to increase government responsibility in this area.

I'm also curious about why you characterized your opponents' ideas about the economy as "a recipe for economic disaster." How is that substantively different from what you've done to the economy as President? You also seem to be under the impression that Democrats are in favor of higher taxes. Actually, they are in favor of higher taxes for those who can afford them. All your tax cuts have accomplished have been local tax increases for people like my parents. Why do you want Americans who aren't as well-off as you to be sick and under-educated? I know that your friends have a lot of money to throw around to pay for these kinds of things out of pocket, but most of us don't, so your tax cuts don't do anything for us. If we seem "tired and defeatist," that's why. Please try a little harder to wrap your mind around that.

16 Year Old Girls Giving Carnies Head

2004-03-09T23:46:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,
I've often wondered about what value you see in abstinence-only education. I suppose it would be great if fewer 14 year olds were having sex, but the whole "waiting for marriage" thing just seems bizarre. I'll admit that it made sense in say, the fifteen years following WWII, but back then most women were married by the time they were my age, 22, and usually earlier. But now a days, it's just silly to put off sex for that long. I mean, your old press secretary, Ari Fleischer, waited quite some time before he got married. Do you really think he was a virgin? Actually, that might be a bad example. Nevermind.

It's not the virginity part that bothers me about no-sex ed. It's the no ed part. In today's New York Times, there's a story about virginity pledges. According to the article, the kids who sign these pledges only hold off on sex about 18 months longer than kids who don't. They also had fewer partners and got married earlier. Although I suspect that the population inclined to sign these things is the same population that would hold off on sex a little longer, have fewer partners, and get married earlier anyway, any news is probably good news.

Then there's the bad news. The rates of disease for the former Virgins is exactly the same as for the rest of us, and even worse, they are less likely to get tested for STI's, so they don't know when they are sick. Shockingly enough, this probably has to do the fact that only 40% of these kids are using condoms, compared to 60% of the rest of us. The report doesn't say, but I wouldn't be too surprised if the reason why the former Virgins are twice as likely to be married at 23 than the rest of us is because their unplanned pregnancy rate is higher too. That is, of course, if untreated chlamydia or gonorrhea hasn't left them sterile. That could be the other half. It's hard to say.

I know you're not a fan of actually educating teenagers about sex, but I'd just as soon not have a generation of kids who don't know the difference between a clitoris and syphilis. I have enough problems with the guys I date as it is.

A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action

2004-03-09T10:23:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,
I write to you from my university, but I'm actually from New Jersey. Specifically, I'm from North Jersey, where it's practically impossible to be more than one degree away from someone who died on September 11th. I'd say that you can probably imagine with my frustration with the lack of answers as to why that tragedy occurred, but I don't think you do. If you were as upset by September 11th as I am, you wouldn't be giving the 9-11 commission such a run-around.

The Washington Post reports today that although your campaign chairman said the White House has been "entirely cooperative" with the investigation, "last week, Congress rushed to approve legislation extending the deadline for the Sept. 11 commission -- in large part because constant feuding with the White House had made it impossible for the panel to complete its work on time." You've also apparently only agreed to sit down with the panel's chairman and vice-chairman, even though former President Clinton and Vice President Gore have given unlimited time to the full panel. This is especially striking considering the amount of blame people in your camp have been trying to place on the Clinton Administration. In comparison to your predecessors, you're acting like a petulant child. What are you afraid of?

This morning, Scott McClellan said on your behalf, "Again, from this podium I'm telling you that the President, of course, will answer all the questions that they want to raise." The Associated Press is interpreting this as meaning that the time limit has been dropped, but that seems to be a leap of faith on their part. McClellan was asked repeatedly if he meant the one hour limit was being dropped, but he never gave a definitive answer. In fact, when asked "Scott, since now seems like the time is negotiable, the President will now answer for as long...", McClellan responded, "I didn't say that."

So what is going on in your White House, Mr. President? Are you, or are you not going to cooperate with the 9-11 Commission? After all, I'm not stupid, and neither are most of my friends and family back home in Jersey. We know the difference between an hour-long sit-down with two panel members and full disclosure. We also like Mafioso-style behavior confined to the TV. You are our (sort of, kind of) elected representative, not Vito Corleone or Tony Soprano, so start acting like someone responsible to your constituents. Don't make me go all high-school-civics-class on you tomorrow.

I Spy With My Little Eye

2004-03-07T23:49:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,
I've been following the Valerie Plame story since it first broke, and I have to tell you, I'm pretty excited about these subpoenas that were issued recently. I'm sure they make you feel all tingly inside, but in a different way.

Now you've said that you have instructed your staff to cooperate fully in the investigation, as outing an undercover agent is a pretty big deal, but that leads to a bigger question that Josh Marshall posed last week: Are you asking your staff to waive their 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination? If you really mean for the investigators to get to the bottom of this, I think you should.

After all, you've made great hay in the last few years out of how we're either with you or against you and all. Ms. Plame was probably a valuable asset in not letting the terrorists win. So I call on you to root whoever leaked this information to Robert Novak out of their safe hiding places and bring them to justice. I know you are a fan of such things. So show me what you're made of and bring it on!

No Fetus Can Beat Us

2004-03-07T12:45:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,
As I'm sure you know, the House of Representatives passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, or as I like to call it, the 2004 Assault on Roe Act. This law would make the death of a fetus or embryo a crime on par with the murder of a person. The guilty party would not even have to be aware of the pregnancy.

In cases of homicide or assault where this occurs, judges consider it an aggravating factor in sentencing, which makes sense. However, making the loss of a fetus or embryo murder is very clearly a backdoor attack on a woman's right to choose and the beginning of a slide downward to criminalized abortion. It also seems to me that you don't trust judges, men and women who have committed their lives to the public good, to do the right thing and adequately sentence criminals. Why is that? Do you think most judges are incompetent?

Now I know that abortion makes you all squicky, but I think we should talk about it. Criminalizing abortion will not change the number of women who get abortions; it will simply make it far more dangerous for them to do so. SaveRoe.com tells us that "in 1965, when abortion was still illegal nationwide except in cases of life endangerment, at least 193 women died from illegal abortions, and illegal abortion caused nearly 17 percent of all deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth in that year." Seventeen percent! I'm sure you wouldn't want that for your daughters.

Also, before you get all worked up about abortion, we should probably talk a little about the kids we've got now. Let's use your state of Texas, since you had some time to work on improving the quality of life for children there. According to the Texas Children's Defense Fund one in five children there grow up in poverty. Texas also ranks dead last for the number of uninsured children; that means you have the most, not the least. It seems that there is still some work to be done on raising the children of Texas and nationwide as well. Perhaps your time would be better spent working on this issue.

A woman can be a Cabinet secretary, the head of the National Security Agency, a Senator, a Congresswoman, a business leader, a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist, hopefully one day President, and anything else. Zygotes can't do anything because they are not people. Please keep that in mind.

Then they came for the professors...

2004-03-06T10:54:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,
This morning I was catching up on some reading from my modern Middle Eastern history class. Specifically, the book was on the events in Iran in the 1970's leading up to the revolution, and it's really fascinating stuff. It's remarkable to me that the United States was so completely unprepared for an uprising that seems so inevitable in hindsight. This class has been one of the most informative I've taken in my time as a student and I believe has better prepared me to understand the problems in the Middle East today. Did you ever take any on this subject? I'd imagine they were quite different if you did.

So imagine my surprise when I was reading Juan Cole's Informed Comment this morning. Unfortunately, it seems that some people in this country are against learning anything that doesn't completely follow a very specific, conservative ideology, the exact problem that lead to American problems in Iran twenty-five years ago. I am, of course, talking about HR 3077, the International Studies in Higher Education Act. This piece of legislation would create an advisory board, which would include two members of national security agencies, to make recommendations "to improve the programs under [Title VI of the 1965 Higher Education Act] to better reflect the national needs related to the homeland security, international education, international affairs, and foreign language training." The obvious goal is to stamp out any opinions in academia that conflict with those of our various intelligence agencies.

This is the exact kind of thinking that got you in so much trouble with the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Mr. President. Middle Eastern studies are going to be of tremendous importance in our struggle to help Middle Eastern countries. Just because a political scientist or a historian tells you something you don't want to hear does not mean what they are telling you isn't true. I also know it's difficult to deal with the fact that people close to you might not be the pillars of truth and knowledge that you've built them up in your head to be. That can be a real let down, but you're a grown man and I expect you to be able to shake it off.

HR 3077 is against the values our country was founded on and will only hurt American ability to think critically about the many problems in the Middle East as it is totally counterintuitive to the purpose of higher education. I think that we can agree that American involvement in the Middle East has been entirely too often based on ignorance, whether we're talking about letting the Iranian revolution happen, dealing with Saddam Hussein in the 1980's, allowing Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia become hotbeds of militant religious fundamentalism, or refusing to admit that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq for far too long. I know you're big on tradition, but you need to let this one go.

In the Beginning...

2004-03-06T00:18:00.000-08:00

Dear President Bush,
My name is Victoria (like I'm putting my last name on the Internet), and I'm 22 years old. Like you were, I am a history major, and like your wife and daughters, I am a sorority woman, so we have a lot in common. I even want a career in politics. Imagine that!

It has come to my attention that you don't read the news yourself, but rather your aides choose for you what is important. I think this may have been a mistake on your part because judging from a lot of the news that I've been seeing, some important information on a wide variety of subjects have been falling through the cracks. Sometimes it also seems as if your staff members and other Republicans working on your behalf do things totally without your knowledge, based on your insistence that you are a trustworthy and decent man with love for all Americans.

As a person with a little more free time than you, and as a concerned citizen of the United States, I would like to help you rectify this problem. Therefore, you can look forward to an e-mail from me several times a week letting you know what your aides may have missed or considered unworthy of your time. I hope you find it informative.

I know that you don't like using e-mail because of the potential for legal repercussions, but I assure you that I haven't done anything worth issuing a subpoena over, so you can feel free to contact me here with any questions you may have on what I send you. Just don't be too loose with the identities of deep cover agents, or anything like that. You already have enough problems with the Air Force One phone records.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I will begin in earnest tomorrow. I hope you are as excited about this little endeavor as I am.

What the Hell?

2004-03-05T21:21:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Letters to W. Let me explain what it is that we're trying to do here.

Earlier this week, I was working on a letter-writing campaign at our student center. Since it was easy, a lot of people stopped by our table and were excited to participate in representative democracy, which made me pretty happy since so few college students vote, much less do anything further.

While I was sitting there, I was also thinking about President Bush, who has publicly admitted that he doesn't read the news himself. Instead, aides decide what he should read and give it to him. While unsurprising, that's a terribly sad thing for a grown man.

So I thought to myself, why not combine the two? As often as we can, some friends and I will (as respectfully as we can manage) be writing letters to the President to inform him of what bothers us at any given moment and posting them here. We don't think that he'll read them, but hey, we think representative democracy is awesome and we should exercise all our rights as citizens.

And more importantly, you should too. There are a lot of people in Washington from the President on down who get away with all kinds of badness because their constituents aren't paying any attention. Use the links at left, and fire away to whomever you think needs to hear it.

On with the show.

Are You Out There? Can You Hear This?

2004-03-05T19:25:00.000-08:00

Hello?