Question

So why did George W. Bush fire a career prosecutor the day after he empaneled a grand jury to investigate Jack Abramoff?

Justice for the victims of 9/12, 9/13, 9/14...

Out of the Bush administration’s many disgraceful moments, I’ve always felt this was one of the worst: Just after 9/11, the White House rewrote EPA press releases to tell citizens that the air near the World Trade Center was safe to breathe, with no evidence to support that and significant evidence to the contrary.

We will never know how many people -- including and especially first responders -- will die in the coming years because they believed what the Bush administration told them.

I doubt George W. Bush will ever be held accountable for this, but perhaps his EPA administrator, Christie Todd Whitman might be:

A federal judge blasted former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman on Thursday for reassuring New Yorkers soon after the Sept. 11 attacks that it was safe to return to their homes and offices while toxic dust was polluting the neighborhood.

U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts refused to grant Whitman immunity against a class-action lawsuit brought in 2004 by residents, students and workers in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn who said they were exposed to hazardous materials from the collapse of the World Trade Center.

"No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws," the judge said.

She called Whitman's actions "conscience-shocking," saying the EPA chief knew that the fall of the twin towers released tons of hazardous materials into the air.

...Quoting a ruling in an earlier case, the judge said a public official cannot be held personally liable for putting the public in harm's way unless the conduct was so egregious as "to shock the contemporary conscience." Given her role in protecting the health and environment for Americans, Whitman's reassurances after Sept. 11 were "without question conscience-shocking," Batts said.

Finding the wellsprings of the "culture of corruption"

The “culture of corruption.” It’s a tag that Democrats are desperately trying to pin on Republicans, with only modest success. People don’t want to believe there’s a difference between the two major parties. But the sad fact is: as bad as the Democrats are, there’s a huge difference. The ethics of the national Republican party has truly devolved to the level of a criminal gang. If you don’t believe it -- or if you do believe it and want to know how this could have happened -- you must read this from The New Republic.

Nuclear terror: making it even worse

If you missed this Sunday’s 60 Minutes story on why we haven’t stockpiled a safe, reliable drug that could save thousands of lives in the event of nuclear terrorism, read the transcript here. Highlights:

Who made the decision to buy 100,000 doses instead of [the 10 million that are needed]? It was Stewart Simonson... a Republican political appointee who, before running Project Bioshield, was a lawyer for Amtrak. Republicans as well as Democrats have criticized his management of the program.

"Secretary Simonson just appears to be over his head on this particular issue," says Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican, who chairs the committee that oversees Project Bioshield... He says Simonson lacks the necessary technical and scientific background, and compares him to Michael Brown, the former FEMA director who resigned after Hurricane Katrina...

"Michael Brown had been before our committee prior to Katrina and exhibited the same kind of arrogance, a lack of expertise. This is a serious job at this point, and I think we need to have professionals filling it, not political appointees."

Seems the drug in question, NEUMUNE, can be stored and self-administered. This would seem to be helpful in the chaotic aftermath of a nuclear attack. Unless you’re Simonson, who

...wrote a letter to Congress emphasizing that nuclear victims bleeding to death could be treated in hospitals. Asked if he thinks hospitals would be able to handle the load of patients in such an event, Simonson’s deputy, Raub, says, "There would be hospital capacity that would be able to treat a substantial portion of that load. By no means would there be the ability to treat all of it, and therefore that’s what makes it a catastrophe."

Nuclear terror would be horrific even in the best of circumstances. But we’re choosing policies guaranteed to make it even worse, much worse. Just like Katrina. Just like Iraq. For an administration that has performed so poorly on securing stray nuclear material in Russia, Iraq, and elsewhere, you’d think protecting the homefront would be a slightly higher priority.

P.S. Kudos to 60 Minutes for covering this story. The so-called mainstream media’s taken their share of lumps lately, mostly well-deserved (see Deborah Howell and the Washington Post’s Abramoff fiasco). But we’re starting to see some nice work here and there again, and it deserves to be recognized. Perhaps the “Fourth Estate” -- the press -- is finally waking up from its long slumber. If only we could wake up the “Third Estate”: the citizenry. Increasingly, that’s where the problem lies.

News item: 71 companies agree to stop poisoning children

We take our good news where we can find it these days, and this is very good news.
     For years, dozens of the nation’s top retailers have been selling inexpensive children’s jewelry with unsafe levels of lead -- often, frighteningly unsafe levels, leading to serious lead poisoning, nationwide health warnings, and product recalls.
     Now, after the Center for Environmental Health filed suit against them, 71 of these retailers have agreed to do (in California, and hopefully elsewhere) what they should’ve been doing all along. They’ve promised to reduce lead in children’s jewelry to trace levels, and to actually take responsibility for keeping it that way.
     Once the agreement kicks in, it’ll be comforting to know that you can buy a little girl a bracelet at Target, Kmart, Macy’s, Nordstroms, Claires, Mervyns, Sears, Toys R Us, or The Disney Store without poisoning her.
     Next time you hear about “tort reform” or “class action reform,” remember: sometimes, it takes a lawsuit.
     If this had been about one random psychotic caught poisoning Halloween candy, you’d have seen non-stop 24x7 coverage on Court TV, Nancy Grace, et al. But since it’s about 71 major American corporations, you have to read about it here.
     Oh, and by the way, one company has refused to sign on. Take a wild guess who that would be.

A roaring ovation

I can’t watch George Bush’s State of the Union addresses: they’re even worse for my health than Health Savings Accounts. But this morning’s L.A. Times tells me that the President received a roaring ovation last night for, well,  breaking the law and lying about it:

President Bush received a roaring ovation Tuesday for his prime-time defense of wiretapping phone calls without warrants. But Bush's explanation relied on assumptions that have been widely questioned by experts who say the president offers a debatable interpretation of history...

... However, warrantless surveillance within the United States for national security purposes was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 — long after Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt stopped issuing orders. That led to the 1978 passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that Bush essentially bypassed in authorizing the program after the Sept. 11 attacks.

....The president echoed earlier administration assertions that the domestic surveillance program would have been useful before the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush said two Sept. 11 hijackers living in San Diego made telephone calls to Al Qaeda associates overseas, but that "we did not know about their plans until it was too late."

However, The Times has previously reported that some U.S. counterterrorism officials knowledgeable about the case blame an interagency communications breakdown, not a surveillance failure or shortcomings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Based on what you know about Presidents -- oh, heck, what you know about human nature -- let me posit a question. When someone gets a roaring ovation for lying, or for breaking the law, would you guess they’ll do less of it in the future?