Necessary News

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Losing the Battle of Hearts and Minds

• Cultural differences between the Iraqi people and American soldiers aren’t surprising, but we thought they’d been resolved better than this.
• This week, a U.S. soldier in Iraq was found guilty of using the Quran for target practice. [CNN]
• Pictures of the Quran show fourteen bullet holes and an expletive scrawled on one of its pages. [Reuters]
• The incident occurred May 9, though it wasn’t made public until May 17.
• Officials said the soldier claimed he wasn’t aware the book was the Quran. U.S. officials rejected the claim.
• Sheikh Hamadi al-Qirtani, speaking on behalf of all the tribal sheiks of Radhwaniya, said the incident was “aggression against the entire Islamic world.”
• Maj. Gen Hammond, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, apologized publicly on Sunday for the shooting.
• “I come before you here seeking your forgiveness. In the most humble manner I look in your eyes today and I say please forgive me and my soldiers.”
• Local leaders seemed unconvinced, chanting “Yes, yes to the Quran” and “America out, out.”

Nothing says respect for a religion like 14 bullet holes.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Meet The Press with Tim Russert

Guest: Sen. Jim Webb (D., VA), Gov. Mike Huckabee

Webb: “If President Bush were to use the right historical example, he probably should be looking at China in the 1970s rather than the situation in Germany in the 1930s. We had a rogue regime, with nukes, with an American war on its border, spouting all this hostile rhetoric and was not a part of the international community. And with aggressive diplomacy while at the same time keeping all options on the table and maintain all of our other alliances, we were able to arguably bring China into the world community.”

Russert: It sounds like your party’s in trouble.

Huckabee: It is in trouble. You know, I can’t sit here and tell you it isn’t in trouble. You’d look at me and you’d crack up laughing. If course it is in trouble. When we lose races in places like Mississippi, where we should have won that race, period. And the race in Louisiana and Ohio, there’s no doubt the Republican Brand is in trouble. It’s damaged.

Fox News Sunday with Chris Matthews

Guest: Senator Chris Dodd (D, CT), Senator John Kyl (R, AZ), Strategist Karl Rove

Rove: The Democrats in these races are running pro-life, pro-gun, anti-tax conservatives, pro-prayer-in-school conservatives. You can’t stand up and say, “That conservative Democrat over there is a liberal.” You need to treat them — you know, running an ad that says “liberal, liberal, liberal” is just not going to work. You need to treat their arguments substantively and engage on the merits.

Dodd: The economy’s in the worst shape it’s been in for decades in this country, and to continue policies here that have the largest deficit in our history — we’ve got jobs we’re losing in this nation. We’ve got a housing crisis of significant magnitude.And here we have John McCain talking about basically continuing the same economic policies. I think most Americans want a change. They want a new direction for our country. They don’t want more of the same.

Kyl: Take a look at Iraq, for example. Who was it that was first pushing for more troops in Iraq and criticizing the policy that we were engaged in there? It was John McCain. And the president agreed, then got General Petraeus to develop the surge plan, and that’s been working ever since.

This Week with George Stephanopoulos

Guest: Senator Joe Biden (D, CT), House Republican Leader Representative John Boehner (R, OH)

Biden (on Bush’s comments at the Knesset): What this is, is raw, raw politics, demeaning to the presidency of the United States of America.

Boehner: Well, there’s no question that the environment for Republicans is a difficult one. What I’ve been preaching to my colleagues now for over a year is that we have to be the agents of change. We have to prove to the American people we can deliver the change that they want and the change that they deserve.

We watch so you don’t have to.

Texas To Feds: Don’t Fence Us In

• Enough. That’s the message Texas lawmakers sent this week by suing the federal government over the politically motivated (and pretty ridiculous) border fence. [AP]
• Back Story: In October 2006, President Bush authorized the construction of a 700-mile fence along the 2,000-mile U.S./Mexico border. Department of Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff then scaled that back even further to a 370-mile fence.
• Border agents then approached residents who lived along the border and asked them to sign waivers allowing Homeland Security to build 18-foot concrete-and-steel walls through their properties. In at least one case, the agents announced they wanted to build the wall right through one senior citizens house.
• When landowners resisted…the federal government *sued* them.
• Friday, a group of Texas mayors and business leaders filed a class-action lawsuit, accusing the Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff of “hoodwinking” landowners into waiving their property rights so he could build the border fence across their yards.
• Attorney Peter Schey says in doing so, Chertoff broke a 1996 law that requires fair negotiation with landowners.
• They point to the blatant unfairness in where the wall has thus far been built. If you’re poor, say goodbye to your property. If you’re rich, however… [Texas Observer]
• For example, in Brownsville, TX, DHS wants to put the wall through property owned by 72-year-old Eloisa Tamez…but the wall would then stop at the edge of property owned by the River Bend Golf Resort and start back up on the other side.
• And sixty-nine miles north, DHS wants to build a wall through the house owned by 76-year-old Daniel Garza, a retired migrant farmworker. The wall would then abruptly stop, sparing land owned by billionaire Ray L. Hunt. (Hunt is one of the wealthiest oilmen in the world. He donated $35 million to build the Bush Library at Southern Methodist University. He’s also a former board member of Halliburton.)
• In the current lawsuit, Texas is suing for a stop-work injunction until the government can a) explain how they’re deciding where to build the fence and b) stops cheating people.

Summed up one mayor, “They are determined to build a wall to appease mid-America. This is a political problem that’s being addressed at the expense of all the border communities.”

Good News, Bad News

Watch out for the Bohemians!

Have you heard of the Bohemian Club? Neither had we, but according to the WaPo, they’re the world’s most exclusive men’s club. Since they’re clearly too busy being rich to worry about anything else, they’ve decided that the woods where they hold their secret retreat are too 2000s and not 1900s enough. Solution: thin the woods by 1 million board feet. One problem: their woods are 100 acres of old-growth redwoods spared from timber companies a century ago in the name of preservation. [Washington Post]

Good News:

As long as the playground of the rich and famous is in the woods, Perez will have an excuse to play monkey in the trees.

Bad News:

Isn’t cutting down hundreds of ancient redwood treets anti-Bohemian?

Quote Of The Day

“That was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair. He’s getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he — he dove for the floor.”

— Former Republican ‘08 candidate Mike Huckabee, making a “joke” during a speech to the NRA this week. [Washington Post]

Speed Round

THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS

Senate lion Edward M. Kennedy was rushed to the hospital Saturday morning after suffering a seizure. His condition is stable, and doctors are working to determine the cause of the seizure. [CNN]

FAREWELL

See ya! Hans von Spakovsky — President Bush’s nominee to the FEC and the guy with an unsavory history of voter suppression at the Justice Department — withdrew his nomination from the Senate Friday. [Think Progress]

PIRATES!

Arrrr! Somali pirates hijacked a Jordanian ship carrying aid to Mogadishu this weekend, matey, seizing 4,000 tons of humanitarian sugar. Arrr! [AP]

VICE PRESIDENT JOE?

The stars have spoken:Astrologers at the giant astrology convention in Denver predict Sen. Joe Biden will be the Democratic vice presidential candidate. [AP]

VERY FUNNY

Check out this funny new blog, “Things Younger Than John McCain.” Our favorites: Scrabble, area codes, Cheerios. [Things Younger Than McCain]

BUSTED

The White House says it knew nothing about the secret Pentagon plan to pay former generals to spread pre-war propaganda on American air waves. Oh, and would you mind just ignoring that pesky 2006 memo showing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally briefing White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley about it, okay? [Rolling Stone]

6

The number of staffers fired from the McCain campaign so far for inappropriate ties to lobbyists. [CBS News]

$104 MILLION

Amount of money the IRS stiffed Americans on their rebate checks due to a “computer glitch.” Try using that excuse during your next audit. [CBS News]

CRIME DOESN’T PAY, BUT WE DO

Billboard put up in Florida after police find that economic downturn equals more people willing to sell out their friends. We know times are desperate, but we never thought we’d hear ““Ring Ring + Bling Bling = Cha-Ching.” [New York Times]

PESKY LAWS

Secretary of the interior Kempthorne on why he classified the polar bear as an endangered species: “Well, I’ll tell ya, unfortunately I have to follow the law.” Unfortunate indeed. [Think Progress]

11

Number of states impacted by a major meat recall after e. coli was discovered in the beef products. We’re just wondering who buys products like ‘Boneless Chucks’ and ‘Gooseneck Rounds’. [CNN]

RIOTS IN SUBURBIA

Hundreds are fleeing the suburbs in South Africa after anti-immigrant mobs killed seven. One NGO worker said: “My staff said it was like a war zone. There was lots of police and stones being thrown. They said it looked like the police couldn’t cope.” [FOX]

90%

Girls who have experienced sexual harassment at least once. Cultural factors may control whether they perceive sexism as an environmental problem or as evidence of their own shortcomings, but almost all reported negative ramificatoins from the harassment. [University of Kentucky]

NOT SURPRISING

Experts have spoken out against new RFID cards to be used at the U.S.-Mexico border, arguing that the cards have few security provisions and allow criminals too easy of a target for crimes. We’re shocked. [Washington Times]

HURRICANE HELPER

Need help figuring out how to rebuild from a major hurricane? Want a home that will survive anything? Disney to the rescue! Their new exhibit, “StormStruck: The Tale of Two Homes,” puts visitors in the eye of Hurricane Charley and teachers rebuilding techniques. [Fox]