Rational Grounds

The Texas redistricting plan, like the Georgia voting rules change, was approved by top political appointees in the Justice Department over the objections of the professional staff:

Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan.

The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department's voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections.

[...]

Mark Posner, a longtime Justice Department lawyer who now teaches law at American University, said it was "highly unusual" for political appointees to overrule a unanimous finding such as the one in the Texas case.

"In this kind of situation, where everybody agrees at least on the staff level . . . that is a very, very strong case," Posner said. "The fact that everybody agreed that there were reductions in minority voting strength, and that they were significant, raises a lot of questions as to why it was" approved, he said.

The Republican Congressional leadership and the White House are both against proposed plans to push back the deadline for signing up to the Medicare drug-benefit plan, because they fear opening debate on the bill at all will result in radical changes to it. Could this be because Congress is ticked that it didn't have the same intelligence the White House did? (It's okay, the hidden higher costs that caused the initial scandal was only about half the actual cost, so the White House was lying to itself, too.) The guys pushing the later deadline say they just want to alleviate the massive confusion surrounding the plan's options:

Under current law, seniors who enroll after the deadline face a monetary penalty in the form of higher monthly premiums for as long as they remain in the program.

That's partly why the idea of granting more time is gaining ground, said a spokesman for Rep. Michael G. Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), who has proposed a bill seeking a six-month extension. Like Stark's [D-Fremont] legislation, Fitzpatrick's would delay the penalty.

What's with all the confusion?

Advocates for the elderly say the process of picking a plan has been made more complicated by the fact that some details on Medicare's website about the cost and coverage of individual plans have turned out to be wrong.

Ahh.

And of course, we have the army distributing covert propaganda to media outlets in Iraq that can easily end up in American news markets. Now, I don't know why everyone's so shocked by this - they've already done it here, folks. From an old post:

And that's just the groups involved with this Social Security protest shindig today. The bizarre advocacy network the government has worked up for No Child Left Behind is probably more famous, if only for it's eventual involvement with Armstrong Williams and the illegal fake-news blocks the Bush administration put out promoting its Medicare, drug control and NCLB initiatives. (The administration shows every sign of continuing these practices.)

Really, I would have been surprised to find out this wasn't happening.

Over at the EPA, the Bush Administration is again staying the course on it's hardnosed, no nonsense approach to the environment and public health:

Thousands of companies throughout the nation, including many in the Los Angeles region, would no longer have to provide the public with details of toxic chemicals they release into the environment under a Bush administration proposal to streamline the nation's environmental right-to-know law.

For nearly 20 years, the national Toxics Release Inventory has allowed people to access detailed data about chemicals that are used and released in their neighborhoods. In about 9,000 communities, the annual reports identify which industrial plants emit the most toxic substances, whether their emissions are increasing and what compounds may be contaminating their air and water.

[...]

Under existing rules, facilities that release 500 or more pounds of toxic substances each year must reveal how much of each chemical is emitted into the air, discharged into waterways and taken to landfills or other disposal sites.

But under the EPA proposal, unveiled in September, that threshold would be raised to 5,000 pounds. The smaller emitters would be required only to list chemical names without any data on environmental releases, such as amounts discharged into the air. Among the industries that could benefit are metal-plating plants, electronics firms, pharmaceutical companies, foam manufacturers, food processors and petrochemical and oil facilities.

And of course, the President continues to lie through is teeth about Iraq. Bush:

The progress of the Iraqi forces is especially clear when the recent anti-terrorist operations in Tal Afar are compared with last year’s assault in Fallujah. In Fallujah, the assault was led by nine coalition battalions made up primarily of United States Marines and Army — with six Iraqi battalions supporting them…This year in Tal Afar, it was a very different story. The assault was primarily led by Iraqi security forces — 11 Iraqi battalions, backed by five coalition battalions providing support.

Time reporter Michael Ware, who was actually at the scene:

I was in that battle from the very beginning to the very end. I was with Iraqi units right there on the front line as they were battling with al Qaeda. They were not leading. They were being led by the U.S. green beret special forces with them. Green berets who were following an American plan of attack who were advancing with these Iraqi units as and when they were told to do so by the American battle planners. The Iraqis led nothing.

Still, it's amazing how we've trained 200,000 Iraqi trooops (page 23) since September. That's the kind of good news the MSM just doesn't report.

Still you have to hand it to Bush. Scandal after scandal, and he's resolutely handing us the same kind of crap we've been getting for the past 5 years. That's steadfast leadership!