Month: September 2005

Via Steve Gilliard, via Reddit.

Wikipedia on the Enquirer:

Despite the sensationalistic perception, the Enquirer is also well-regarded for its very thorough research; their stories are often proven correct in many of their facts. The stories the Enquirer publishes about celebrities carry the risk that the celebrity will sue them for libel. In 1981, Carol Burnett won a libel judgement against the Enquirer for falsely claiming that she had been seen drunk in public, purportedly with Henry Kissinger; the fact that both of her parents suffered from alcoholism made this a particularly sensitive issue to Ms. Burnett (in order to be guilty of libel, a publication must be shown to have disseminated facts that were false and knowingly done so, or with reckless reporting).

This loss led to a considerable tightening of reporting standards with regard to stories about actual people and events. Subsequent celebrity stories broken in the Enquirer have generally been proven true; for example, it was the Enquirer that uncovered in 2001 that the Rev. Jesse Jackson had an illegitimate child. Details of the Monica Lewinsky affair would normally have been untouched by the mainstream press, had the details not been already made public knowledge by the Enquirer.

The former longtime chief editor Iain Calder has written a book explaining the claim that the Enquirer was forced by this reality to work very hard to check their facts and their sources well. The Enquirer and its parent company, American Media, were among the subjects of the 2001 anthrax attacks.

So it’s not like they haven’t broken a Presidential scandal before.

With that as a preface, here’s the Enquirer story on “Bush’s Booze Crisis.”.

BUSH’S BOOZE CRISIS

By JENNIFER LUCE and DON GENTILE

Faced with the biggest crisis of his political life, President Bush has hit the bottle again, The National Enquirer can reveal.

Bush, who said he quit drinking the morning after his 40th birthday, has started boozing amid the Katrina catastrophe.

Family sources have told how the 59-year-old president was caught by First Lady Laura downing a shot of booze at their family ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he learned of the hurricane disaster.

His worried wife yelled at him: “Stop, George.”

Following the shocking incident, disclosed here for the first time, Laura privately warned her husband against “falling off the wagon” and vowed to travel with him more often so that she can keep an eye on Dubya, the sources add.

“When the levees broke in New Orleans, it apparently made him reach for a shot,” said one insider. “He poured himself a Texas-sized shot of straight whiskey and tossed it back. The First Lady was shocked and shouted: “Stop George!”

“Laura gave him an ultimatum before, ‘It’s Jim Beam or me.’ She doesn’t want to replay that nightmare — especially now when it’s such tough going for her husband.”

Bush is under the worst pressure of his two terms in office and his popularity is near an all-time low. The handling of the Katrina crisis and troop losses in Iraq have fueled public discontent and pushed Bush back to drink.

A Washington source said: “The sad fact is that he has been sneaking drinks for weeks now. Laura may have only just caught him — but the word is his drinking has been going on for a while in the capital. He’s been in a pressure cooker for months.

“The war in Iraq, the loss of American lives, has deeply affected him. He takes every soldier’s life personally. It has left him emotionally drained.

The result is he’s taking drinks here and there, likely in private, to cope. “And now with the worst domestic crisis in his administration over Katrina, you pray his drinking doesn’t go out of control.”

Another source said: “I’m only surprised to hear that he hadn’t taken a shot sooner. Before Katrina, he was at his wit’s end. I’ve known him for years. He’s been a good ol’ Texas boy forever. George had a drinking problem for years that most professionals would say needed therapy. He doesn’t believe in it [therapy], he never got it. He drank his way through his youth, through college and well into his thirties. Everyone’s drinking around him.”

Another source said: “A family member told me they fear George is ‘falling apart.’ The First Lady has been assigned the job of gatekeeper.” Bush’s history of drinking dates back to his youth. Speaking of his time as a young man in the National Guard, he has said: “One thing I remember, and I’m most proud of, is my drinking and partying. Those were the days my friends. Those were the good old days!”

Age 26 in 1972, he reportedly rounded off a night’s boozing with his 16-year-old brother Marvin by challenging his father to a fight.

On November 1, 2000, on the eve of his first presidential election, Bush acknowledged that in 1976 he was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol near his parents’ home in Maine. Age 30 at the time, Bush pleaded guilty and paid a $150 fine. His driving privileges were temporarily suspended in Maine.

“I’m not proud of that,” he said. “I made some mistakes. I occasionally drank too much, and I did that night. I learned my lesson.” In another interview around that time, he said: “Well, I don’t think I had an addiction. You know it’s hard for me to say. I’ve had friends who were, you know, very addicted… and they required hitting bottom (to start) going to AA. I don’t think that was my case.”

During his 2000 presidential campaign, there were also persistent questions about past cocaine use. Eventually Bush denied using cocaine after 1992, then quickly extended the cocaine-free period back to 1974, when he was 28.

Dr. Justin Frank, a Washington D.C. psychiatrist and author of Bush On The Couch: Inside The Mind Of The President, told The National Enquirer: “I do think that Bush is drinking again. Alcoholics who are not in any program, like the President, have a hard time when stress gets to be great.

“I think it’s a concern that Bush disappears during times of stress. He spends so much time on his ranch. It’s very frightening.”

Published on: 09/21/2005

That ain’t cool. It’s not like we can elect John Kerry or whatever at this point. We’re stuck with this guy till 2008. If he needs help, is there any way he can get help for the alcoholism? Could he temporarily step down and hand things over to Cheney or whatever? Is there anything he can do, or is it impossible for a President in America to deal with a problem like this in an effective manner?

AlterNet: War on Iraq: The Insurgency: Neighborhood Watch

“Gen. George Casey, the U.S. commander of the multinational coalition in Iraq, told reporters on [June 27] that the worst-case estimate of the size of the Iraqi insurgency is less than one-10th of 1 percent of the country’s population — that is, a top end of 26,000 people supporting the insurgency.” — The Guardian

If you’ve been following guerrilla wars as long as I have, you have to laugh when you hear Army PR guys say that the Iraqi insurgents are just a teeny-tiny bad apple in a big barrel of shiny Red Delicious Iraqis. One bad apple — that little beady-eyed Al Qaeda operative Zarqawi — is supposedly responsible for the whole mess. Sorry, folks, but insurgencies just don’t work that way.

Of course, you can’t blame US Army guys for doing their job — lying to the press. But you sure can blame the press for buying it. I can’t believe how pig-ignorant reporters are about the basics of guerrilla warfare. This planet has been bursting with guerrilla wars for the past century, but the perky, smiley guys ‘n’ gals reporting from Iraq still know more about hair spray and “Dating Do’s & Don’ts” than they do about urban warfare.

Must read.

How about we just get the hell out of Iraq right now?

Google Founders Dumping Google Stock?

Interesting.

Mano Singham’s Web Journal: When does “looting” become legal? — links here.

Truly conservative jurists tend to invoke Natural Law. Well…..

Natural law theory typically is invoked to establish the sanctity of private property. But as Rutherford said, it contains the seed of this exception too. Here’s John Locke in his Second Treatise on Government, which is a bible of the property rights camp. It is a “Fundamental Law of Nature,� he said, that the property claims of the rich man “must give way to the pressing and preferable Title of those who are in danger to perish without it.�

This thinking found expression in many areas of law and policy. It supported the doctrine that sailors in distress could find hospitality in a British port whatever their nation of origin. It applied to entire communities as well as individuals; thus the colonial laws authorizing the tearing down of buildings deemed fire hazards, without compensation to the owner. “If the people’s welfare and safety were the highest law,â€? William Novak observes in his book The Peoples’ Welfare, “it followed that when the preservation of society was at stake lesser rules and conventions gave way.”

A kindred world view is evident in the colonial laws permitting people to hunt and fish on other peoples’ land so long as it wasn’t fenced. When push came to shove, the need for sustenance came before abstract rights of property. What is most interesting though is how the proponents of the law of necessity justified it. It was not that a needy individual had a claim on what belonged to other people. Rather, it was that the needy person had a prior property right – a common property right – that trumped the latter one in this circumstance.

At some point in the distant past, the argument went, all property was a commons. From this common pool, individuals asserted private claims, justified in Locke’s version by their own toil upon the land. (That theory of course leaves a major glitch: what about the speculator who owns but does not toil? Adam Smith was aware of the problem. Landowners, he said, seek to “reap where they do not sow.� We leave that for another time.)

But these private claims are provisional not absolute. They are valid in normal times but not all times. “[I]n cases of extreme necessity,� observed Hugo Grotius, the noted 17th century jurist, “the original right of using things, as if they had remained in common, must be revived; because in all human laws, and consequently all laws relating to property, the case of extreme necessity seems to form an exception.�

Natural law theory assumes that people consent to the impositions of society by a kind of implied contract. Property is part of that contract. “No one,� observes Novak, summarizing the commentators, “could be assumed to have consented away the right to use another’s property when self or social preservation were in jeopardy.�